Giving the F.B.I. What It Wants - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/giving-the-fbi-what-it-wants.html?src=twr&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> > if 300 million people started sending private information to federal agents, > the government would need to hire as many as another 300 million people, > possibly more, to keep up with the information and we'd have to redesign our > entire intelligence system

This man is hopelessly naive about modern computer technology. Keeping track of 300 million people is not quite trivial (yet) but well within the means of the FBI at its current staffing and funding levels. Worse -- much worse -- is that data mining is _virtually certain_ to result in very convincing looking false positives.

This is why it is unwise to take legal advice from performance artists.

<comment><USER3> WHOOOOOAAAAAA, that is definitely wrong. The FBI is definitely not actively monitoring 300 million people, and is certainly not going to start anywhere near soon. In fact, it is not even close to being ready to take that on, and certainly not either at the current level of funding or staffing. What you've said is categorically incorrect in every sense of the word. Once again, I cannot emphasize enough that what was said here is wrong.

But, on the positive side, you are totally right that he is completely naive about data mining technology.

<comment><USER3> Adding to the above, when we talk about monitoring people, most people have in mind a model that requires O(log n) monitors; monitoring 300 people is like keeping 300 bookmarks in a book, as it takes only a few people to monitor those 300 bookmarks. To the government, the model is O(n). They're not maintaining 300 bookmarks, they're reading 300 pages simultaneously.

The reason is that people are the asymptotic bottleneck. If computers totally and automatically understood everything, then the dominating term would be compute time. But it's not. The dominating term is _clearly_ people, who must ultimately review the truly promising information. Maybe the compute resources make this linear relationship hold over lower constants, but it is still definitely linear. And any technological advantage is unfortunately shortchanged by the constant factor of red tape.

Ex-Googlers like Ron here no doubt have a different view on what can/should be done to monitor people, but I argue that this is irrelevant to the government. And even if they agreed with them in principle, there's enough red tape that a system like what they have in mind would just never be realistic.

<comment><USER4> In these sorts of situations, it is almost always prudent to overestimate your enemies capabilities.

If you're going to be surprised, it's best for it to be _pleasant_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is going to backfire, bigtime.

The way it works is you will never be cleared, the security-theater machine has "eaten" you.

You can only give them more reasons to collect evidence on petty crimes, their original motivation for stalking you, even if your file was flagged accidentally, is long lost.

With half a million names on the "Terrorist Watch List", once they have ways to automate this (ala nationwide facial recognition and domestic drones) you will be stalked for the rest of your life by the government. You'll be 80 years old and they will have terabytes on you for absolutely no reason. But if you even accidentally commit a petty crime, they will happily share the info with local cops to hassle you more.

<comment><USER6> I don't see how this will backfire. He seems to live a right life. No one in the government cares about whatever petty crimes he may commit.

Federal law enforcement only cares about petty crimes when they can lead to stopping major crimes. If they think you have information they want, they'll hold the maximum penalty for anything you do over your head until they get it. But they have no reason to harass someone who isn't involved in major criminal or subversive activity.

Being on a watch list sucks and it's going to cause this guy inconvenience for life, for whatever he does. But federal agents tend to be intelligent and driven people. They aren't any more likely to waste time harassing a stranger than you are.

<comment><USER7> That only works as long as he's not opposing the state or any corporation or individual with powerful state connections. I dare this guy to go down to the local Occupy Wall Street protests and then see how little the government cares.

The fact is, we violate laws every day. In addition to actual violations, we do many more things that look suspicious and can be construed as potential violations. The government doesn't have to convict you in order to radically lower your quality of life. It merely has to investigate you.

For example, I knew a person that protested against the RNC convention in 2008. Though they were protesting peacefully, their group was broken up and arrested by the FBI. For the next two years, their case was bounced down from federal court to state courts, and then from state courts to county courts. Two and a half years later, the case was dismissed without any explanation or apology. However, while the case was ongoing, this person was unable to get a job, unable to get housing, unable to do anything that would require a background check or a credit check.

Was this person involved in major criminal or subversive activity? I don't see how she could have been, given that all charges were dropped. However, the actions taken against her can only be described as harassment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _It was clear who had the power in this situation. And when you're face to face with someone with so much power, you behave in an unusual manner. You dare not take any action._

Sadly that's far from unusual. Meek compliance is how most people (myself included) tend to behave when confronted by federal or state agencies, regardless of how their privacy is being invaded.

If more people raised a stink, the number of US citizens subjected to such a thing would rapidly drop. People would not be dragged from airplanes or into questioning at the slightest hint of suspicion from highly questionable sources. You want to see what's in my storage unit? No problem, go get a warrant. As an aside - if the author was mistaken about its contents they just lied to a federal agent which itself is a crime, regardless of any original innocence).

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great example of how our government is making new enemies everyday by investigating _everyone_. They took a happy-go-lucky college student and turned him into an activist against government surveillance. I wish government employees would think more about the consequences of their actions against common people, but I fear that they are too preoccupied with their Hollywood- cop fantasies.

<comment><USER10> > how our government is making new enemies everyday by investigating everyone.

The sad thing is, as a system and individually they probably think they are helping a great deal. They are investigating and taking things seriously, they are protecting our country against pervasive and extremely dangerous terrorists. I bet most of them have brainwashed (and that includes brainwashing themselves) into thinking that.

They are making enemies but they don't see that, to them enemies just appear, spawned out of pure 'hatred of our freedoms'. The more they see this kind of antagonism, the harder they investigate everyone, the most they investigate, the more antagonism they generate.

<comment><USER11> Sorry but I lost you when you called them 'brainwashed'. That is incorrect and also derogatory.

<comment><USER4> Why do you say it is incorrect? And I don't think a statement of apparent fact can be called "derogatory". If there is a less offensive term for the meaning, I'm not aware of it.

<comment><USER12> Derogatory simply means critical, or a statement which detracts from the standing of something. A statement of apparent fact can easily be derogatory.

Women are on average physically weaker than men.

African-americans are on average of lower intelligence than asian-americans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's what I would like to know: has this lack of privacy resulted in the author not doing something he would have liked to do otherwise? Because the real problem with privacy invasion is not the information that is collected (which more often than not is mundane, like the author's), but rather the chilling effects on activities that, though legitimate, would raise suspicion, embarrassment, or other concern.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure that what he thinks is a big, unwieldy, dataset is trivial for the TLAs to data-mine. (How big is his data? I'm about to web-search for it). He provides photographs, but has he stripped the meta data?

I note that he's an artist, not a computer scientist, and that he may be blissfully unaware of the amount of computing and programming power available to government.

He does have a good point when he mentions that monitoring good guys means more false positives and more missed opportunities to monitor bad guys.

And he does make a good point in the last few paragraphs; privacy advocates are horrified by some of the things happening at Google / Facebook / Twitter / etc; but these services are very very popular. Why do people give up these freedoms so willingly?

<comment><USER15> _Why do people give up these freedoms so willingly?_

I don't think it's accurate to word it that way. Allowing some information about oneself to become public is more an issue of personal privacy than about freedom.

Now, if the government decides to use that now public information to detain or otherwise strip the freedom from that individual, that's another far more frightful issue.

I think that most people tend to post updates on Facebook/Twitter because they don't consider it private. Everyone I know knows that I'm married and to whom, so I don't worry about posting that on Facebook. People are often worried about online privacy, but I would bet that most people are pretty open with friends and family in in-person situations.

Now if a site like Facebook is taking data that I intend to keep private and turning that into public data, that's also a different, and far more important, issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> He seems to have come up with an interesting form of protest - civil over- obedience.

<comment><USER17> Similar: <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Work-to-rule>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This could make for a great front. Someone with such a meticulous personality could probably produce, for example, a well-documented "business trip" that is a complete lie, while engaging in something completely different behind the scenes. If designed right it would be nearly impossible to detect.

Or maybe I've just watched too many spy movies.

<comment><USER19> This was my exact thought too. In fact, I would go out of my way to fabricate a tiny but measurable percentage of the data, just to see what I could convincingly fake and to give me plausible deniability for any of the real stuff, just in case. In the event that I ever found it necessary to do something shady for whatever reason, I'd have a lot of practice masking it.

...Or maybe I've also just watched too many spy movies.

<comment><USER20> How would you know how much of the fiction was "convincingly fake" and how much was "blatantly fake" until they decided to come after you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know that stark interrogation room and the L shaped desk and camera well. The waiting room he describes is called secondary processing and it's a very unhappy place, mostly folks of foreign nationality about to be deported back to their home country. I met a brazilian guy there once who was almost crying and offered him some gum, trying to offer encouragement, condolences, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think he is being extremely naive here giving them all of his data.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" Cardinal Richelieu

The valuable data here is the personal data of the FBI interrogators , yeah we have nothing to hide but you (government, or power structures) have not either.

In real life you don't give your private information to stalkers that don't want to give theirs.

</comment><comment><USER23> > but if 300 million people started sending private information to federal > agents

I hope he understands he is advocating a DDoS attack on FBI's information collection departments ;-)

I hope this insanity ends someday, but it's not really a very rational expectation. Once paranoia sets in, it's hard to cure. It's costing us (mankind - I am neither a US citizen nor live in the US) resources that could be better employed. I am sure the FBI folks would prefer to spend their time investigating actual crimes instead of shadows. But, again, once you start believing every shadow is your enemy, it's very hard to act rationally.

Instilling fear is the goal of the terrorists they try to fight. As far as I can see, they won. Long ago.

:-(

<comment><USER24> I doubt that they'd prefer to investigate actual crimes.

People are paid for doing work. The fact that they did work is measured i.e. by the number of cases 'solved'. Would you rather get paid more ('solve' many cases) or less (go for difficult do solve actual cases)? People have to sustain their families etc.

A friend of mine summed it up pretty good. " 'Police' don't catch people they should catch, they catch those they _can_ catch."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I live in China for some years now. This sounds just like stuff that would happen over here. I have met so many Americans that, after having been here for more than just a few month, have realized just how similar China and the USA have become. Kind of scary.

The author was lucky not having had ties with the wrong political party or some other US opposition group.

</comment><comment><USER26> > When I first started talking about my project in 2003, people thought I was > insane. Why would anyone tell everyone what he was doing at all times? Why > would anyone want to share a photo of every place he visited? Now eight > years later, more than 800 million people do the same thing I've been doing > each time they update their status or post an image or poke someone on > Facebook.

The author makes an important point earlier in the article and here contradicts himself: he says that he intentionally presents the information in a disorganized way. This is a problem that Facebook and social networks in general solve. So don't think that because everyone has a Facebook and is therefore flooding the market with information about them it's no longer useful to intelligence gatherers be them governmental or private interests. That's actually the problem of a platform like Facebook where privacy is concerned.

</comment><comment><USER27> Giving up privacy? I hope you were only advising on public privacy, which I myself rather not give up. I understand where you are coming from, people can observe you to get all that information but when they are doing that you barely have privacy, by controlling the information they get by sending it to them yourself you control the border of private and public yourself.

-you can manipulate the stream of information and send false information, they will still check it and they will always do if they think it is necessary, you will never be trusted by them not even if all things you sent them are true.

-It is quite a hassle to keep all this information and to send it out. It would be easier to just let them investigate it themselves.

</comment><comment><USER28> Informing FBI whatever you do every time is such a pain. Dont you think it makes living less fun?

Also, in the future we could have sophisticated computer systems that could analyze data if everybody started revealing everything. His solution of revealing everything may not necessarily be a long term solution.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this guy should have just kept quiet. There is something called the right to remain silent. The more you talk the more they want.

<comment><USER30> You have a right to remain silent with the FBI, but they can use your silence against you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, it's really sad to see somebody so completely broken and brainwashed that he'll literally report his every move to authorities. If the government was monitoring his home with an iMac this would be right out of 1984.

<comment><USER18> Did you just completely miss the point of the article?

<comment><USER32> lol i think he did

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like someone always wanted a big brother.

</comment><comment><USER34> Maybee he should recommend this system to some of his coreligionist in his native country Lebanon. That would realy help the CIA and prevent innocent people being killed.

<comment><USER35> He is not from Lebanon. His Wikipedia page [0] identifies his native country as Bangladesh.

[0]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi></comment></comment>


Command Line and User Friendliness - <AUTHOR> http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/05/30/command-line-and-user-friendliness/ <comment><USER3> What I think would be interesting would be some strongly-coupled CLI-GUI interactions. For instance, let's take Word as a start. What if you could swap to your CLI and say "load letter template" and it would walk over to Word and do that for you in the GUI? Or in Excel, instead of clicking through the charting wizard, instead have a CLI that lets you configure the options at will?

I think that would be the next greatest thing in non-mobile What I think would be interesting would be some strongly-coupled CLI-GUI interactions. For instance, let's take Word as a start. What if you could swap to your CLI and say "load letter template" and it would walk over to Word and do that for you in the GUI? Or in Excel, instead of clicking through the charting wizard, instead have a CLI that lets you configure the options at will?

I think that would be the next greatest thing in non-mobile UI design. (But I'm a heavy CLI user, so I'm kinda biased.)

<comment><USER4> This is supported by some individual applications. For instance, firefox will let you open a new tab in a running browser, ratpoison will let you run a bunch of commands against it, etc.

I'm still not thrilled because it's usually still difficult to move data the other way (although xclip or xsel can certainly help).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Typing in a particular phrase in the Google search box won't delete all of your mail and files, so you could think of it as a "safer" or "immutable" shell.

CLI in contrast can modify things, not just give you back information.

<comment><USER6> In some sense, the omnibar in Chrome is the CLI interface for Google. It both manipulates your browser and does searches. Probably wouldn't take much for Google to expand on this and add commands to help you send emails, interact on G+, and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am one of those people who thing that CLIs are not user friendly. The premise - giving a computer instructions via Natural Language (NL) - is very sound. However, the way CLI is done right now (from the ground up) - <USER2> broken. The most obvious example - why are CLIs ASCII-based? I want to pass around objects - "ls" should only give me just that, an array of objects (which can be serialized for output in any graphical way, including ASCII). There shouldn't be any ASCII flags or switches - those (if really needed) should be an array of objects as well. Another example, piping, something that UNIX proponents are quite proud of, is a good concept, but it isn't perfect. I can't even count the number of times I wanted to pipe an output of one program to multiple others, or pipe multiple programs into one. The list goes on and on.

CLI is the best tool that exists at the moment for a few things, but I definitely see how there could be a superior, semi-graphical, non-"scrolling- ASCII-buffer" alternative.

Note: I have tried Linux as my main OS for almost a year, I've done extensive dev under Linux, customized the hell out of my .profiles and *rcs, etc. Still, I see it as flawed. If someone comes up with a sane CLI, I'll be the first in line.

<comment><USER8> > _I can't even count the number of times I wanted to pipe an output of one > program to multiple others_

          ls | tee >(frob x) | grep y

should output the output of ls to both 'grep x' and 'grep y'. The '>(foo)' syntax in bash will create a subshell to run the pipeline in the parens, and evaluate to the name of the FD for the pipeline (eg, /dev/fd/42).

For multiple inputs, similarly:

         grep foo <(ls dir1) <(cat somefile)

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I didn't know about tee. My gripes were from working with something like this ( <http://i.imgur.com/LnAvV.jpg> ), and then trying to emulate that in CLI. (The picture shows a graph-based image processing system, Blender's compositing mode) \--- Source: <http://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/ca33eb4833.png>

<comment><USER8> That should probably get a domain-specific tool regardless; Generalizing the command line UI is probably going to end up getting too hairy for the common case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But you are missing something...

Try photo manipulation with a CLI. Art requires spatial interaction, not merely "conversational" expressions.

<comment><USER10> Not just art. Try writing and editing text with nothing but shell tools.

One thing that I'd _love_ to see in all GUIs is a unified "search box" for commands, settings, and tasks. The OS X help menu comes close (but it only searches help and menu bar items); the "Control-Q" box in the Visual Studio 11 beta comes even closer (but it only works in Visual Studio).

Neither, however, go beyond basic substring matching, and they really should. As an example, help searching for "disable Flash" in Safari could easily point me to the appropriate preference pane and the Safari extensions Web site before falling back to a general Web search as a last resort.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, this is what Unity tries to achieve but has been overshadowed for other reasons.The search box in the Windows 7 Start Menu also does a great job at searching programs, files, and the control panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest difference between, bash and, for example, Google, Quicksilver, etc, is the level of fuzziness that they will accept. With Google, you can enter damn near anything you want, and it will accept it and try to do something sensible. With the shell, you get cryptic errors if you have a small typo.

        ls foo(bar)

doesn't list files that look like foo(bar), it says "bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('". It has no method of easily discovering that 'ls' means 'list files'. And typos can potentially harm data.

None of this means that the command line is useless or a bad idea, but it does make it relatively unfriendly towards newbies. Even if the concept is more intuitive, the current incarnation can be scary.

</comment><comment><USER12> What seems to be getting lost is that "user-friendly" has the word "user" in it. And "user" is relative to the situation.

A Formula 1 car is not designed for novices, but it gives the driver maximum control in a very high-stress situation. I would suggest that the interface is as "friendly" to the intended user as millions of $cash and hours of research can possibly make it.

The CLI is the result of 30-40 years of similar evolution, and the fact that it has survived this long, and mutated in the helpful ways mentioned by the article, would similarly suggest that many users find it useful. I know I do, and I'm a user.

</comment><comment><USER13> The command line may be efficient, but it is far from intuitive.

I work with command line tools every day, and I am still constantly searching Google and man pages whenever I need to do something outside of my normal flow.

<comment><USER4> How is checking a man page logically different than digging through menus? Either you know how to do what you want to do, or you need to find out how, regardless of your interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Agree that CLI are powerful but also scary to novice users.

So who's going to make cliacademy.com to ensure that everyone learns how to use a CLI?

<comment><USER14> Who's going to make a lighttable for the CLI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter is effectively a CLI. Posts that start with "D" form a direct message rather than normal status update. You can also issue other commands which follow people, edit your profile, and more.

[http://support.twitter.com/articles/14020-twitter-sms- comman...](http://support.twitter.com/articles/14020-twitter-sms-commands)

<comment><USER15> It's a CLI with terrible feedback. So many people (including people whose jobs are in some way related to Twitter) don't know that when you start a message with an @reply, only your followers who also follow that other person will see it.

A few years back, when more people used the SMS interface to post, it was common to see people occasionally slip and post what was supposed to be a direct message. I don't see that anymore now that people use GUIs.

<comment><USER3> There was a lovely gaffe last year when @neilhimself accidentally did a public tweet of his hotel phone number in what was supposed to be a DM to his wife.

Also, I did not know that about the @reply. Twitter needs to come with a --help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "You type something in, and the machine either executes your command, or goes "I have no clue what you just said, did you by any chance mean XYZ?""

What sort of wizardry is this? My shell (BASH) does not say "did you by any chance mean XYZ?" It stops after saying "I have no clue what you just said" and then stares at me like I'm an idiot.

<comment><USER17> >What sort of wizardry is this?

      [Redacted]@[Redacted]:~$ nncat
      No command 'nncat' found, did you mean:
       Command 'sncat' from package 'sn' (universe)
       Command 'ncat' from package 'nmap' (main)
       Command 'uncat' from package 'socklog' (universe)
      nncat: command not found

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good, as far as it goes, but misses (IMHO) the biggest advantage of the shell, which is composability. In the shell, you can interleave and connect any actions you have access to. In the GUI, programs can typically only interact in ways explicitly supported.

</comment><comment><USER18> TOPS-20

Autocomplete.</comment>


JQ.Mobi Is A Mobile-Optimized HTML5 Rewrite Of the JQuery Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/01/jqmobi-is-a-mobile-optimized-h.php#.TxRDA8sY9vc.hackernews <comment><USER2> Something about the marketing of this makes me feel uneasy.

The graphs that depict size are misleading. The initial release (today) is already at v0.9 and the site (opened 1 week ago?) says it's "fully ready to use in production" The video aims to enumerate and demonstrate a number of issues with jQuery UI and Sencha touch ("we can't get anything to work..."). "Zepto is slow", Zepto objects are big and have "large footprints". "We polled a large group of developers...".

This is OSS. Why is the trashing of other developer's work necessary in promoting your own?

On the other hand I do appreciate that someone has delved into mobile issues and is trying to address them. But why market it like this? Why tack on "an HTML5-ready jQuery" for no (apparent) reason. CSS3 transitions aren't html5. querySelectorAll is not html5. Those other libraries don't have their problems because they are not "HTML5".

I don't know, it doesn't sit right.

<comment><USER3> Especially when parts are straight copies out of Zepto.

Zepto Closest Implementation: [https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/master/src/zepto.js#L...](https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/master/src/zepto.js#L232)

JQ.Mobi: [https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L3...](https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L388)

Zepto End Implementation: [https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/master/src/zepto.js#L...](https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/master/src/zepto.js#L402)

JQ.Mobi: [https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L4...](https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L418)

That said, it's all open source and there are only so many ways to write these functions succinctly.

<comment><USER4> They didn't even bother to change the indentation whitespace...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't call this a rewrite of jQuery, it's more of a from-scratch implementation of a very small subset of jQuery APIs.

The semantics of the subset vary significantly from jQuery as well. Take for example the show/hide implementation. `.show()` blindly sets the display to block. jQuery remembers the value it had when you hid it (block, inline-block, table-cell, etc.) and restores that setting.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, John Resig shared that exact same critique when Zepto first came out over year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843787>

Funny how both rewrites are missing this level of detail, or it could just be further evidence of how much JQ.Mobi "derives" from Zepto

<comment><USER4> This is sort of thing that happens when developers start thinking that jQuery is "bloated" and that they can do better and start ripping out code without fully understanding the expected behaviour. Nothing in jQuery is there without good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> WebKit only. That might be acceptable in certain circumstances, but only if your definition of acceptability stretches to "95% of the world is on IE6; we don't have to support anything else for our site."

See also: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Edit: to downvoters, I'm not being cranky: I specifically wouldn't use this because of this lack of compatibility and would advise against using it for the same reason (especially seeing as the couple of people I've pointed this out to hadn't realised). Can you explain why you think I'm not adding to the conversation?

<comment><USER8> It quite clearly states it is intended for the certain circumstances you describe, Webkit on mobile devices. I don't believe anyone would suggest using this for the desktop environment.

<comment><USER7> Why would I be talking about desktop browsers on a post about a mobile framework?

Firefox I know at the moment is a very minor browser on mobile, but it has the potential to grow its install base. Opera is massive outside the US (StatCounter suggests it's leading worldwide [1]) and doesn't use WebKit either. And Microsoft doesn't embed WebKit as a default browser on Windows Phone 7.

It's fine to make the choice that you only want to support WebKit but you're cutting out potential users and that should be highlighted, not hidden away in the source code comments.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww- monthly-201012-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww- monthly-201012-201112)

<comment><USER8> Well, I can't argue, excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a side note, the graphic that illustrates code size compared to Zepto and jQuery libraries is a bit misleading.

The shading and reflections suggest that the objects on the illustration are spheres, for which the volume ratio of jQuery to jQ.Mobi is about 500:1. If the objects are circles then the area ratio is still around 60:1.

One can argue that it's more or less OK for the radius ratio, but IMO the chart gives a falsy impression in general.

</comment><comment><USER10> Buggy as all hell. Clicking on average takes two to get the UI to respond, the iOS transitions are awful and momentum scrolling is really bugged. No way you could use this on a proaction app.

Did RWW even try it out before they wrote about it?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm very interested in this- I'm currently building an app using jQuery+jQuery Mobile and I'm very disappointed with jQM's speed.

However, I'm up against a deadline, so I don't know if I'll have time to implement it, and I can't find any documentation or examples anywhere- are there any? That'll be key to working out if I can transition my code in time.

<comment><USER12> Hey, here's the git hub account w/ API examples: <https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi>

<comment><USER11> Ah, interesting, thanks. I'll take a look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never had a need for JQuery on mobile. Since all mobile browsers support document.querySelector and document.querySelectorAll, I don't feel you gain that much from JQuery. That was always its killer feature on desktop. The event stuff is just sugar.

<comment><USER14> jQuery Mobile adds a lot of other useful stuff -- primarily the ability to create an iPhone-style UI from HTML markup. Unfortunately as other posters have mentioned, it's pretty slow.

<comment><USER15> Yup. All great projects but jQuery Mobile is just too damn slow. Drives me crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's just far too much shit-slinging for me to even consider evaluating it.

I mean, cool, mention where your product does something a competitor doesn't. But repeatedly go for the jugular (with incorrect facts) and it really reflects poorly on you.

</comment><comment><USER17> From their blog: "If you have seen our jQ.Mobi video, you'll see we outline problems with jQueryMobile."

Where's the video?

<comment><USER2> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNdWZsRXgk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was wondering why to use this over Zepto. Then I saw the performance graphs. Is it really that much faster?

</comment><comment><USER19> does anyone know if it's compatible with backbone like zepto can drop in and replace jquery on mobile?

<comment><USER20> It might take a bit shimming to get it to work but JQ.mobi supports a lot of the most obvious methods used by Backbone: .bind(), .unbind(), .html(), .ajax(), .append(), .attr().

It doesn't seem to support .delegate() or .data() though, so you would probably have to shim these (and probably a couple of others that I forgot) yourself.

<comment><USER2> Does backbone use .data()?

<comment><USER20> Actually, you're right, it probably doesn't. I always use Backbone with the backbone.modelbinding plugin, so I forgot that it's not part of the Backbone core lib.

edit: Looks like JQ.Mobi does support .data() anyway: [https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L3...](https://github.com/appMobi/jQ.Mobi/blob/master/jq.mobi.js#L388)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You Will Never Beat This Robot at Rock, Paper, Scissors [video] - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/06/27/rock-paper-scissors-robot/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4163714> <\- comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166652>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166722>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166912></comment>


Longworth by the Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.longworth.com/numbers.html

<comment><USER2> Every VC firm should have a page like this!!</comment>


Pivotal is preparing for layoffs ahead of its $2.7B acquisition by VMware - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/pivotal-layoffs-vmware-open-letter-dell-2019-11 <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/ELqhNS](https://outline.com/ELqhNS)

<comment><USER3> Thank you!</comment></comment>


ElasticSearch 0.17.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.elasticsearch.org/blog/2011/07/19/0.17.0-released.html

<comment><USER2> ElasticSearch enables our small team to do complex data mining and search functions that would otherwise be very difficult and expensive to achieve. Shay Banon's (founder of ElasticSearch) contribution to the open source community is nothing short of incredible. Please keep the hits rolling!</comment>


Ask HN: What is your preferred stack for prototyping new apps? - <AUTHOR>

Rails used to be my go-to a couple years ago, but I'm wondering what the latest and greatest is specifically for weekend projects and hackathons. For example:<p>- Rails<p>- Rails + Frontend Framework<p>- Sinatra + Frontend Framework<p>- Meteor<p>- Node + Frontend Framework<p>Feel free to get more specific if you have a very thoughtful stack. <comment><USER2> I usually start with Sinatra (without a DB). Instead of an ORM & DB I'll create simple Ruby objects in memory. Maybe I'll have a Post class with an #all method. Similar to AR, but I'll hold off actually creating a DB.

As a prototype (I'll be throwing this code away) this approach works well enough to simulate how the real app might work. Mimicking some of the conventions I'll be using later makes the transition easier.

I avoid a CSS framework when prototyping. I might pull in jQuery if it's essential.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rails. Plain old straight rails.

</comment><comment><USER4> Rails + Zurb Foundation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Middleman and Bootstrap</comment>


Clickhouse DBMS - <AUTHOR> https://clickhouse.yandex/ <comment><USER2> It is very nice to have JDBC driver :)</comment>


Why We Still Need Monsters (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-we-still-need-monsters-rp <comment><USER2> Found Stephen Paddock a weird choice of focus for the article. Perhaps we expected a motive to be discovered by law enforcement a year from now.</comment>