Fukushima: Removal of nuclear fuel rods from damaged reactor building begins - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/fukushima-removal-of-nuclear-fuel-rods-from-damaged-reactor-begins <comment><USER2> I've been following TEPCOs media site casually for years. They actually used to have a really great media site showing the latest work being done on decommissioning but its gotten more and more closed off over the years as people care less and less. They used to post these really cool PDFs with technical detail.

[https://photo.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html](https://photo.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html) [https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/news/library/archive-e.html](https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/news/library/archive-e.html)

For example, the video referenced in the news article is the first video on the TEPCO archive. Worth a watch, the screenshot really doesn't do it justice.

They still post media, but it tends to be more PR stuff of complete work rather than ongoing work.

Here is another cool video :

[https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/news/library/archive-e.html?vide...](https://www4.tepco.co.jp/en/news/library/archive-e.html?video_uuid=vy9uep38&catid=69631)

A robot inside Unit 2 scrapping up samples of the melted-down core. Talk about cutting edge extreme environment robotics!

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this is the fuel from the cooling pool of reactor building #3. The cooling pool of reactor building #4 has already been emptied. And the we are still not ready to remove the heavily damaged fuel from the reactor cores.

<comment><USER4> It's also worth noting that the cooling pool is not inside the protective container that houses the cores. As such, if the water were to drain off these pools, it would possibly render Tokyo uninhabitable for a very long time. That danger was mitigated a while ago, but moving the spent and spare fuel is still a major factor in making the site safe again.

<comment><USER5> Tokyo Or Fukushima? Isn't Tokyo 150 miles south of the plant.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Not sure why I'm being downvoted. There is no question that if the spare/spent fuel were exposed to air, the resulting radiation would have required evacuation of a 150+ mile radius. They originally brought in an elite firefighting team to refill the pools for this exact reason.

<comment><USER6> No question that they would have evacuated, sure. But also little question that it would not have been required.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting how fearful nuclear energy makes people. The worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy, Chernobyl, will over the full course of time cause 4,000 premature deaths as estimated by the IAEA. This figure includes first responders sent in by the USSR with inadequate protections.

"A United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study estimates the final total of premature deaths associated with the disaster will be around 4,000 mostly from an estimated 3% increase in cancers, which are already common causes of death in the region." Interestingly, the most common cancer it caused was thyroid (due to the Iodine-131 released), which has a 98% survival rate. [1, 3]

Whereas, currently, burning of fossil fuels is killing 7.3 million (1825 Chernobyls -- 4x the total number of civil nuclear reactors on Earth) _per year_.

"According to the World Health Organization in 2012, urban outdoor air pollution, from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 3 million deaths worldwide per year and indoor air pollution from biomass and fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 4.3 million premature deaths."

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

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

[3] [https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid- cancer/statistic...](https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid- cancer/statistics)

<comment><USER3> It is not just directly related deaths, but also the area of land made un- inhabitable and the duration for which it will remain un-inhabitable. And the fact that we have no workable way of dealing with the waste. Sure it only take a small storage space, but it will be lethal for a million years to come.

<comment><USER8> Wildlife gets another chance with the land being _uninhabitable_ by humans for 300 years until Cs137 and Sr99 pass 10 lifetimes. A million years is a gross exageration. There are also people currently living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They even have a name: samosely.

<comment><USER7> They actually continued to operate two of the other reactors _at the Chernobyl power plant_ until Unit 2 was closed in 1991 and Unit 3 in 2000. [1] How crazy is that?

[1] [https://www.world-nuclear- news.org/Articles/Chernobyl-1-3-en...](https://www.world-nuclear- news.org/Articles/Chernobyl-1-3-enter-decommissioning-phase)

<comment><USER8> Well, it was the USSR.

'Gorbachev states, "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later"'

[http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2017/8/21/the- reaso...](http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2017/8/21/the-reason-the- ussr-collapsed-chernobyl-gorbachev-and-glasnost)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the video footage for anyone who's interested:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Jr4_MaCbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Jr4_MaCbA)

</comment><comment><USER10> Has this disaster improved robot tech. Might it help on Mars.

<comment><USER11> Before we think about Mars I suggest we should first get our shit together on this little planet.

<comment><USER12> Why do people always respond this way to space exploration but not other stuff? I seldom hear "Maybe we should stop making movies until we get our shit together" even though Hollywood has a budget about the same size as NASA's or slightly larger.

<comment><USER13> I used to say the same about the NFL vs cancer research. As in: "Perhaps we should divert all of the money we spend on football each year into cancer research until we cure it."

The fallacy is that even though both are ostensibly valued in "dollars", at the scale they operate at (society wide), they are not necessarily fungible. You might spend 1 football and get only 0.09 cancer researches. Or they might not be interchangeable at all. I don't have the numbers even to start to make that judgment.

Space is probably just an extreme example of this as it feels "expensive" and seems to directly effect the life of most people very little.

<comment><USER14> > I used to say the same about the NFL vs cancer research.

As someone who works in a cancer research-related role, it's nice to not think about work when I leave the office. I would also hazard to guess that many cancer patients enjoy the distraction of various types of entertainment.

Now we can certainly do some refocusing, but I would generally hope that as a civilization and species we can talk and chew gum at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://www.dw.com/en/japan-slams-tepco-for-false- informatio...](https://www.dw.com/en/japan-slams-tepco-for-false- information/a-6485423)

it appears that there were three mainstream sources of radiation measurement at the time of the accident, and in the following days, each showed a very different set of readings. The subsequent panics, and scandals, are a convoluted mess of conflicting data. In fact, a non-profit sent individuals to the area in later months, buying them inexpensive radiation detectors, to get another set of readings. True to political form around the world, this article above seems to be "blasting" the Tokyo Power Company TEPCO for the _opposite_ of what happened ? at which point ? opaque</comment>


Back door penetration: Lessons learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.inversoft.com/blog/2016/08/30/backdoor-hack/ <comment><USER2> Oh, this is about security. :-)</comment>


DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/series-b-funding-writing-a-new-chapter-in-the-digitalocean-story/ <comment><USER2> DO has really benefitted from Linode stalling over the past few years. I admire Linode for remaining a bootstrapped business but it feels as though the owners lost their fighting spirit and energy... Perhaps because the small pool of Linode owners felt they made enough money already.

DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a long time. And yet the biggest development in recent years at Linode has been a proprietary stats and monitoring system built as an upsell, which doesn't really do anything distinctive that Nagios or another package couldn't provide.

Instead Linode is now switching their entire platform from Xen to KVM, a curious move which will create risk and cost velocity that could have been spent on product development.

I have been a huge supporter of Linode over the years, and the startup I co- founded is one of their biggest customers, but at this point DO seems like the winning horse to back.

<comment><USER3> For all the money Linode has on hand, and the size of their technical team, it's absolutely insulting they haven't made any tangible improvement to their management front-end in at least five years, if not more.

The way it's behaving it's as if it was acquired and kept on life-support.

<comment><USER4> For what is worth, I've been a Linode customer for a few years and never really felt their management front-end was in urgent need of an update. It's solid and does the job for us. My only complains to be honest are 1) the lack of storage dedicated nodes, as OP points out, and 2) the price, it gets very expensive very fast as you scale and spin more nodes.

We are currently considering moving to dedicated machines but only because of 2), otherwise we would happily be their customer for life.

<comment><USER5> > never really felt their management front-end was in urgent need of an update

Even when it was hacked multiple times and customer VPSs compromised e.g.

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/bitcoins- worth-22800...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/bitcoins- worth-228000-stolen-from-customers-of-hacked-webhost/)

Nothing is worse than spending weeks securing every aspect of your VPS only to have incidents like this appear. And worst of all ? To this day Linode never clearly said what happened or what they did to prevent it happening again.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why this is being downvoted but the whole Linode hack incident was a huge factor for me to switch all my VPS's over to digital ocean.

<comment><USER7> I went to Vultr. DO's interface is just as bad if not worse than Linode's. :(

<comment><USER8> Its not that bad, it has been updated frequently though. Seems to be getting better.

I do remember it being quite lacking back in the day.

<comment><USER7> I haven't used DO since 2013 and I probably won't since I'm extremely happy with Vultr, but it's good to know that it's been improved!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used digital ocean for a while. My experience was bad reliability and random technical issues. I had various very experience ops people verify with me that it wasn't an issue I introduced into the systems running.

I went back to dedicated servers at a smallish provider and forgot how nice it can be to not have all the cloud virtualization stuff get in the way. It's just too fragmented among providers in the way they setup for me to use the service and not have a fear of lockin. Does it take me 3 or 4 days to get new boxes? Yes. Is it causing a massive headache for me? No, because I plan things and order them ahead of time.

Just my 2 cents, I know others who use DO and love it.

<comment><USER10> Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the same as DO, and much more reliable.

But congrats to the DO team. They will only get better.

<comment><USER11> So, Digital Ocean doesn't have great reliable up time then? I've been using OpenShift's free hosting tier to host a Ghost blog, and it goes down CONSTANTLY, making it unusable. I was about to start paying the $5 a month plan with Digital Ocean, but I'm not going to if it also goes down frequently.

<comment><USER12> hrrsn@lillith:~$ uptime 15:13:16 up 233 days, 20:35, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05

YMMV, but I've had zero issues with DigitalOcean's reliability. This is a VM that has been running since I spun it up.

<comment><USER13> I agree. Our site, [http://www.gurufoo.com](http://www.gurufoo.com), has had ZERO issues with reliability. Continuous uptime, no outages. Very happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if the this pushes there valuation over 1B, if so I think that means that Techstars is the first accelerator outside of YC to produce a unicorn.

Personally I hope so, Digital Ocean is a great product and I think one of the really smart things they did was be generous with there free credits as it was at least a great way for me to get on there platform and later on drop a fair amount into hosting with them.

<comment><USER15> Is _unicorn_ just a billion dollar non-public startup? Isn't there some other magic sauce required like supernormal margins or superfew employees or exploiting toothless regulations?

DO seems to be almost a _too_ straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's idle server space on demand. Now that would be a game changer.

<comment><USER16> DO's UX is a game changer, I personally think is why they have been so successful in what seemed like a crowded market with the "same" business model as the others.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, the simplicity is great. AWS has 80 products and it takes months to figure how how they all work together. DO's click-n-go for $5 month helps just from a mental clarity point of view.

At this point AWS is so complicated they should be offering an official Cisco- like series of certifications.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure they're at the level of Cisco, but they do have certifications.

[http://aws.amazon.com/certification/](http://aws.amazon.com/certification/)

<comment><USER15> Oh, great to know. They are really cheap too ($150, $300, $75 re-up).

Amusingly, that page demonstrates the need for an AWS certification in the first place: the page has over 100 things trying to grab your attention with no focus or clear direction at all. Amazon as a corporate entity seems to go for "maximum information + maximum confusion" in their UX at every turn.

Always worth a re-read: [https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611](https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611)

<comment><USER18> AWS is an inherently complex product. It has far and away more features than any other competitor, so there is obviously going to be more confusion. I think the AWS dashboard is getting better and better and relatively easy to use if you keep each product isolated. There being 40+ products to choose from is overwhelming if you don't know what you are looking at, but that is the nature of the beast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've got two droplets now, one for email/owncloud and another for personal projects with automated backups. It's pretty easy to use, but I worry I don't have the sysadmin chops to keep it secure.

Edit: I followed tutorials on auto-updating packages through cron, securing ssh, and setting up ufw for only services needed when I set it up. It's been about 2 years now so maybe I shouldn't worry.

<comment><USER20> Would anybody be interested in esoteric hosting?

Think Linode, but specifically for FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Plan9/TempleOS/MinuetOS/etc.?

<comment><USER21> TempleOS has no networking :)

<comment><USER22> Which makes it that much cheaper to operate ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been with many VPS providers: KnownHost, RackSpace Cloud, OVH, Linode, etccc and DO has been a pleasure to work with because of all the integrations and tooling it has due to the increasing popularity/community.

I think this is a great step for a transition from a "developers cloud" to a "production cloud". I hope they continue to go in the same direction and soon offer multi-container blueprints as easy to deploy as their pre-built images.

0.02

</comment><comment><USER24> My only question, is the investment rounds the new form of private equity bubble fixing? How diversified are these investments and how does the interoperations of a company get changes to meet the revenue influx to ROI? I never really got this jist and how culture DOES change by these rounds. The pitches must damn near printing money kind of stuff made of magic Mike XXL and pixie dust to stick.

</comment><comment><USER25> > The $83 million is going directly into growing our team and expanding our > product offerings with networking and storage features.

Great to hear. Real private networking, object/shared storage and most importantly HA (IP failover/load balancing) is all DO is missing to start really competing with AWS for "big business".

<comment><USER26> I don't think HA is really on the needed list, seeing as you can roll your own load balancer in 5 minutes using provided tutorials. I mean I guess they could make an image for it to make it a little easier.. The AWS elastic load balancer is really nothing fancy.

Real private networking and object shared storage are both huge for sure though.

<comment><USER27> How is their current private networking offering not 'real'?

<comment><USER26> Any other digital ocean server in the same datacenter can hit your private IP.

<comment><USER27> Would you consider that to be a big enough risk to not deploy production apps in their environment? I.e. having your app on 1 droplet and a dedicated db on another. I'm new to ops and trying to learn all that I can :)

<comment><USER26> I do this in prod, you just need to take extra steps to protect. i.e. make a firewall rule on the database to only allow access to the database port on your private network card, from your specific web IPs (and make sure the traffic is encrypted).

<comment><USER28> I'd probably create static ARP entries as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > expanding our product offerings with networking and storage features

I'm so excited for this. I'd previously commented about how the lack of non- SSD storage meant I had to screw around with S3 when I really just wanted to keep everything on DO.

Great company. Been with them for two years now, and couldn't be happier. Combined with Cloud66 I worry less about deployments and servers and backups, and more about just getting the code out.

</comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone used Vultr.com?

I ask because they have all the same features as DO + way more (e.g. dedicated hosting w/ same great panel, BYO ISO, etc).

<comment><USER31> I am also curious about this. The fact that Vultr accepts Bitcoin as payment further piques my interest. Can anyone shed some light on their performance and convenience vs. DigitalOcean?

Edit: Found this [http://blog.due.io/2014/linode-digitalocean-and-vultr- compar...](http://blog.due.io/2014/linode-digitalocean-and-vultr-comparison), which seems to portray it quite favorably.

<comment><USER30> This doesn't compare against DO but it does compare performance against Rackspace and AWS.

[https://www.vultr.com/benchmarks/](https://www.vultr.com/benchmarks/)

<comment><USER32> Slightly objective performance comparison if you ask me. Obviously Vultr is going to say they're better than the competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using RackSpace for couple years before moving to DigitalOcean, I've had a good experience with Rackspace when I started but my bills kept growing and server started to have constant issues every now and then, so I've decided to move to DigitalOcean couple years ago. My traffic since then grew quite a lot from 100K/month to around 1 million visitors/month and my bills from DigitalOcean are still not much higher than they used to be at the later stages on RackSpace, and performance is much better for me with DigitalOcean.

The only thing I dont like about DigitalOcean droplets is the requirement to shut off the server before resizing, Rackspace allowed me to do it without a need to shut it off.

</comment><comment><USER34> Slightly offtopic, but I am curious if anyone has any insights into the legal side of hosting profit seeking services on top of VPS's in general. Is the boilerplate contract(s)/eula/tos good enough generally or do you seek to actually make changes to a custom one?

What about hosting websites vs reselling access for some other purpose (eg. similar to game hosting services that allow full customer control of the instance?)

It seems to me like there is a lot of room for a tool that can spin up an instance over multiple VPS providers, because sometimes one will have a colo close to where you want and sometimes another will.

Anyone aware of comprehensive location based benchmarking of all the VPS's?

<comment><USER35> There are some libraries you can use to abstract away differences between VPS providers:

[https://jclouds.apache.org/](https://jclouds.apache.org/)

[https://libcloud.apache.org/](https://libcloud.apache.org/)

[https://developer.rackspace.com/blog/gophercloud/](https://developer.rackspace.com/blog/gophercloud/)

[http://www.openstack4j.com/](http://www.openstack4j.com/)

For playing with JVM stuff I found openstack4j easier to use from Scala and Clojure than jclouds.

I didn't downvote you, but I figure someone thought you were too off topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love DO.

I'm a novice/intermediate programmer, and when I knew nothing about what VPS even was I started using Linode(due to many great recommendations).

Linode is a great service, but recently I've switched to DO and I like it so much more. As a person who just needs a simple and straightforward way to put several django projects online - DO offers me a simple and beautiful interface, cheaper prices, and a lot of great and extremely useful tutorials.

It is much nicer to use and a droplet price starts from $5/mo, which is freakin' awesome, and all I need from VPS service at this point.

Thank you guys, you are great, keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER37> Great work Ben and team! I've been a customer for 2 years now, absolutely love the service and see no reason to leave it.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd like a harddrive option. To get a large amount of storage is way too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER39> hm. Interesting. From what I know of the industry, their size and pricing, I would have thought they would be profitable enough that raising this sort of money wouldn't be particularly interesting.

Does this mean that they are operating at a loss?

<comment><USER40> There are many reasons to raise money. They may be operating at a loss but with growth in recurring revenue such that they expect to become profitable in a few years. But I wouldn't be surprised if they are raising this money to fuel an already growing fire, either by enhanced sales teams or even building out new capital projects that will open new revenue channels or create barriers to future competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love DO, they are doing great work. The only thing I regret is the relatively poor choice of platforms they support.

For example, there have been a really big demand for NixOS for two years now but still no announcement whatsoever.

<comment><USER42> Really? Do you have some stats on NixOS growth to support that?

<comment><USER41> [https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocea...](https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/4349028-support- nixos-image)

One of the highest voted customer feedback on their official forum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Well to be sincere, DO is implementing features most people actually care about. Working charms, it still has a long way to go :)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm pleased for DO. Seems like a decent company doing things well. I've never had a complaint with their services.

</comment><comment><USER45> it's pretty amazin what they've managed to do, what was essentially an over saturated market, they've managed to pull ahead of incumbents like linode.

<comment><USER46> how much do you think giving away huge amounts of free credits helped?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If all goes well, looks like they might be competing directly with AWS soon.

<comment><USER48> They aren't even in the same ballpark. Hell, Google isn't even in the same ballpark as AWS and Google made $83million in the time it took me to read the article. DO is great, but doesn't belong in the same sentence as AWS.

<comment><USER26> Azure is closest I think. Enterprisey cloud hosting.

<comment><USER49> my goodness, I was reading through this entire thread and all I was thinking about is "How come no one is mentioning Azure".

I have tried Azure, AWS, and DO, and by far the most stable and usable one is Azure. I thought I was the only one who thought Azure was good...

<comment><USER26> Most people here (including me) are not windows people, so Azure is obviously not going to be the first place we look to.

They have linux VMs which is cool, but still not sure I would pick them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which specialized tech jobs are rare to find? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The developer, sysadmin, or analytics guru who understands privacy laws and regulations.

There has been a sea change in regulations over the past 5 years and the pace of change is accelerating (thank you Snowden), but few individuals responsible for the collection, storage or processing of sensitive data have any clue about privacy. Most companies rely on their legal counsel but only a small handful of lawyers have a deep enough understanding of technology to properly mitigate risks from misusing data.

People who can fill the gap between the technology and legal issues are truly a rare breed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would think it's rare to find a Cobol coder today though the financial industry need it for it's legacy code.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting!</comment></comment>


Channel 4 to Make its Entire Catalogue of TV Programs Available Online for Free - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/2009/06/08/channel-4-entire-catalogue-tv-programs-free-online/ <comment><USER2> "For you non-Brits out there, unfortunately there aren't any plans to offer the service internationally just yet."

Buggers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every silver lining has its cloud, don't forgot - I predict a massive productivity-killing Brass Eye binge in the near future!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is mainly relevant to UK folk, but unless I'm mistaken I believe its a worlds first too.

<comment><USER4> you right this is an amazing move.

The fact they are moving to all browser based content is _as big_ news to me - that is fantastic because the desktop app is a PAIN :)

EDIT: any chance you could pop a source link in the article - I cant find the original source :)

<comment><AUTHOR> no source article, they were in touch with us direct

<comment><USER4> that would explain it then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The bbc are a bit behind, but have been talking about doing the same for a while now - and appear to be building this archive of (currently just very old) programmes out gradually: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/> Not sure whether it can be accessed from ip addresses outside the UK though...

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been waiting with baited breath for the BBC to offer it's content on the web internationally too. (They are in talks with google about this supposedly). It's a MAJOR bummer that we can't access Channel 4 or the BBC on the web here in the states. It's actually really really frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's funny it doesn't mention UK in the title. When I first read it I was a little confused. Here in the US channel 4 could be completely different even 10 miles apart.</comment>


SpaceX engineer's new startup: Black Sky - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2011-08-29/hpc_startup_backs_into_cloud.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the website: <https://blackskycomputing.com></comment>


A brief history of Online Terra Mystica - <AUTHOR> https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2014-11-27-history-of-online-terra-mystica/

<comment><AUTHOR> His wrap-up is gold:

"I find it interesting that it really did basically take a year of real time (and maybe 2 months of hacking time) before the implementation was in a shape where I would've thought about publishing it. And there's no way I'd put that amount of time into a project like this up front. Usually these projects are active for a couple of weekends before getting abandoned; fun parts are done but all the hard work of making it really usable remains."

"In this case people were eager to use even the incredibly crude early versions, so I got over that hump very quickly. And at that point every incremental improvement to the site was affecting tens, hundreds, or thousands of people. This is of course always more motivating than working on polishing the perfect piece of software that nobody is using."

"There were many architectural and design decisions done along the way that I ended up deeply regretting, and which cost me lots of time later on. But without all those early shortcuts there would've been no implementation at all. Easily the best example of Worse is Better that I've been personally involved with."

How it looks: [http://terra.snellman.net/game/4pLeague_S3_D3L3_G6/max- row=3...](http://terra.snellman.net/game/4pLeague_S3_D3L3_G6/max-row=371)

The Terra Mystica board game: [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120677/terra- mystica](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120677/terra-mystica)

On github: [https://github.com/jsnell/terra- mystica/](https://github.com/jsnell/terra-mystica/)</comment>


Computer People Don't Click on Ads - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/04/16/computer-people-dont-click-on-ads <comment><AUTHOR> Just a reminder: build something people want, but make sure that those people are not programmers / IT people, because we (rightly) expect that most things are going to be free.</comment>


A beginner's cheat sheet for web development - <AUTHOR> http://www.bentobox.io/ <comment><USER2> The title and the pitch on the actual site are kind of disingenuous. This is a collection of resources to learn web development. Its hardly a cheat sheet or "everything you need to know".

A cheat sheet would be a succinct set of syntax/concepts/examples required to get by.

Having said that, its a pretty website and its a worthy cause so please don't take my critique too critically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Anything to add in terms of tech I'm missing or better links?

<comment><USER2> [http://learnpythonthehardway.org/](http://learnpythonthehardway.org/)

As far as tech, you're covering a lot of different topics. My knee jerk reaction would be add more of the competitors (i.e. foundation since you have bootstrap) but there's value in maintaining a smaller list of technologies since this seems to be targeted at true beginners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I have this for ruby I think. Will add it in - or you can make the pull request and put it in there!

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hm, looks nice! The coloring of the columns doesn't seem to be meaningful in any way I can come up with. I think it would make more sense if things were grouped into categories (e.g. databases, web frameworks, frontend languages, backend languages, style/presentation). If you use color I would make it meaningful (e.g. represent order of learning things with color something?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah there's been a ton of suggestions for what the colors should mean but I'm leaning towards something like what you're suggesting!

<comment><USER4> The problem for me when I was beginning was not necessarily learning each technology, but rather the glue between each. That is what I tend to find confusing and is much harder to find resources for that clearly and exclusively demonstrate how to bridge the different technologies. Would love if you could add those type of items. For ex. I know Node, some Mongo, and am a avid user of Heroku. Recently I was trying to set up a system using all three and struggled quite a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - I know what you mean. When I first learned python, I had to figure out on my own how to piece it together with mongo heroku and tornado. I'll look into it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if the order is supposed to matter that much, but I feel like the blocks should be ordered from easy to hard. Why is PHP at the end of the list? Why is JSON so close to the front?

But yea, I just think the ordering could be better, still a nice resource!

<comment><USER6> It seems to be in order of relevance -- that would explain PHP being at the end. :)

<comment><USER7> What a zinger. Unfortunately a basic understanding of PHP is still required for enough tasks that I would recommend learning it early on. It is also a very forgiving beginner language that naturally segways nicely from html/javascript.

<comment><USER8> Today's most trendy baristas have nothing but negative things to say about PHP.

Programmers that use PHP would rebut, but they are too busy paying for their drinks using money they make from actually shipping code.

<comment><USER9> This needs to be on a shirt. (Probably in very small font.)

<comment><USER10> I would use my money earned by shipping PHP code to buy that shirt, regardless of ridiculously small font size. Para. 1 on front, Para. 2 on back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good list so far.

The lack of XML though, in addition to JSON's claim of being the ubiquitous data transfer format, seems a bit hyperbolic.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right XML should definitely be on there. I was going to put something in there with REST and SOAP with JSON and XML too. If you have suggestions for where, please pull!

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh- pages/content.js](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh-pages/content.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Appears to be broken this morning. I see the template briefly, then nothing, in Chrome and IE. Which is sad because it sounds really great.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a violation of rule #21: Don't use Javascript to load/render your content text. It's idiotic. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> And what do you use, Mr. Fancy Pants? Markup?! Psh, that's poppycock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Only works for me in Chromium. Firefox is displaying "box.name" and "box.description" instead of their values.

<comment><USER15> Well, it doesn't degrade gracefully if you have js turned off (NoScript by default here).

<comment><USER16> I have JS enabled and it doesn't show any useful content anyway (win/Chrome29).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Where is knockout.js, SignalR, ASP.NET MVC, Azure?

Call it "hipsterbentobox.io".

PS: I am on BitBucket, I know it's not as hip as GitHub - sorry.

<comment><USER18> Also disappointed about the lack of ASP . MVC.net - but so it goes, I would hope it wasn't being intentionally ignored out of some personal bias. Either way, the site is still a pretty nice resource even if it fails to recognize some stacks.

<comment><USER19> This is not the first time I've noticed this omittance on HN posts.

Even though ASP.NET is one of the biggest web development frameworks on the planet, used by many, many companies, a lot of these so called web developers pretend like it doesn't even exist. Have they even used C# I wonder?

The Microsoft grudge runs deep in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER18> I've noticed this as well. It's unfortunate, I think, that I still run into a lot of people who carry unfounded negative opinions on c# web development simply because of their personal bias against Microsoft. But c'est la vie, this is a common problem in the realm of programming, champion <your language here> disregard <set of all other languages>.

<comment><USER20> I can assure you all my prejudice towards c# web development comes from experience.

<comment><USER18> Excellent. I can assure you that I wasn't including you in the set of people whose prejudice doesn't come from experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's an idea. Let each box 'expand', perhaps to its own page. This way, if you want to dig deeper, you can find more resources in the expanded box. You can let users suggest resources with an 'add' button; users can vote for resources so the best ones bubble to the top. You could take this further and break each resource list into beginner, intermediate, advanced.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: in case anyone has suggestions, this is also on GitHub: [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

Would love your feedback!

<comment><USER22> You should have links to webplatform.org - this is a varied collection of docs and tutorials contributed by browser vendors and other key web players, via the W3C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome - is it good for any particular technology or topic?

<comment><USER22> JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SVG. Not proprietary technologies (Flash, etc.) and not really server-side JS (yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the web would be a better place if you encouraged beginners to start with the HTTP block, rather than HTML.

<comment><USER24> I am happy I started with HTML. I composed a page, all full of blinks, and it blinked! And then on to CSS, where I found :hover, and I was hooked. Then javascript, python, and only after python and frameworks did I really need to understand HTTP. What I mean is that if I had started with HTTP, I would just have been perplexed, never hooked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've always been looking for something like this to send to friends wanting to learn to code. A couple of recommended

This step by step guide to learning Github: [http://www.thinkful.com/learn/a-guide-to-using-github- pages/](http://www.thinkful.com/learn/a-guide-to-using-github-pages/)

My first [hilarious] exposure to Ruby [http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant- guide/book/chapter-1.htm...](http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant- guide/book/chapter-1.html)

Eloquent Javascript [built in console with examples]: [https://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html](https://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html)

If anyone's interested in some front-end web development sources: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-sources-to-learn- web-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-sources-to-learn-web-coding- in-a-short-time?share=1) [You won't need to make an account with this url] [1st answer has the skills you'll need to learn with documentation and 2nd has a great collection of resources for newbies]

<comment><AUTHOR> I could really use your help putting this on there! (All the sudden there are so many changes to do haha)

Make a pull request if you can! [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh- pages/content.js](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh-pages/content.js)

<comment><USER25> will do! great job on this project :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where's the content? I thought it's just my browser (Chrome), but on browsershots it seems to be empty for most browsers. Is it a WIP?

</comment><comment><USER27> Hilarious to me that no one here gives a second thought of how intimidating a list like this would be to someone first getting into web development. On my initial scroll down the list, I first thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke ("cheat sheet"? Lol) about the incredible range of things your typical full stack developer needs to know to actually go from 0 to .com

<comment><USER27> Constructive point: I like the color coding, but use it. Server: red, database: yellow, app: blue.

Javascript: blue Postgres: yellow Nginx, Apache: red Django: purple Node: blue Express.js: purple LAMP: white?

If that won't work, maybe shades of those colors for the various types

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great! Thanks! As a beginner, figuring out what to learn, as opposed to how to learn, is a struggle. This provides a pretty great roadmap and explains how things fit together.

As for feedback, you could potentially add: -Hartl tutorial to the rails section -Udacity to the python section.

<comment><AUTHOR> Udacity is my absolute favorite tutorial for python - added!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For Rails, the article "What is Ruby on Rails?"

[http://railsapps.github.io/what-is-ruby- rails.html](http://railsapps.github.io/what-is-ruby-rails.html)

It's getting a lot of praise as a good starting point for beginners. (BTW I wrote it)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I would love if you added it :)

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh- pages/content.js](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh-pages/content.js)

<comment><USER29> Done! Awesome to see an open source project to recommend resources. On a bigger scale there is the Odin Project to create an open source web development curriculum. It provides some of the "glue" to explain the connections between the technologies.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it's a great site. What I need is the "glue"(how all the different programs, set of instructions) fit together.

I realize most website developement is not programming; it's following a lot of directions. This is the reason I hated working with computers when I was younger. I just wasen't interested in learning a bunch of man made terms that seemed to change yearly. As older dude, I'm looking at it differently.

I still think there's got to be a better way of learning dynamic website developement? I do like the idea of condensed teaching--like cheat sheets.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sometime ago I finished Codecademy's Web Fundamentals. I learned enough to understand what's going behind the scene but not enough to start hacking on my own. Since then I have started learning Python, also on Codecademy. There's Java for Android. And I would also like to learn C++/QML to hack my Arch Linux/KDE box.

Is it common for programmers to be proficient(reasonably well) and also be able to work on multiple projects requiring multiple languages at the same time? Or do most folks learn many things but tend to work with one language on one project.

</comment><comment><USER32> Awesome! I'd be great if the title of each language was a link to the language's home page (if applicable) rather than having a Home in every box.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an EXCELLENT idea. If you can make the pull on github that would be even better!

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh- pages/](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/blob/gh-pages/)

<comment><USER32> Okay! Just give me a few minutes..

Edit: Done! @see [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/pull/11](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/pull/11)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cool. Thanks for putting this out there. I like it overall, but stepping through the beginner's sequence by highlighting different squares doesn't work great. Separate from the exhaustive glossary view, you could have "track" views where you could guide beginners through different paths, like an all JavaScript path that takes users from front-end stuff to Node to Heroku or whatever. Like Codecademy's tracks. Beginners love that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER34> These kind of cheat sheets make order in my mind and motivate me to start doing something, or at least reinforce the thought that hopefully sooner or later I will!

In either case, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great stuff :)

Shameless plug for more of the same: [http://pineapple.io/tags/all](http://pineapple.io/tags/all)

<comment><USER4> This is great! I thought Bentoboox was good but I feel like it s too narrowly focused on learned each exclusive technology. I love how you have guides and other resources that bridge the gap!

<comment><AUTHOR> It is definitely meant to be narrow. I think that a lot of beginners are overwhelmed by how many resources there are for each piece (hence the <=3 links for each one).

I would love to put something in here for integration between each technology, though I'm struggling to figure out how...

<comment><USER10> How about a pane for "How to build a static HTML/CSS website" that hides all panes but prerequisites? Then maybe one on how to build a dynamic site (raw, no framework). Then to build an [x-framework] site. Then, the penultimate pane, "How to build a scalable web application with automated infrastructure (prereq: chef or puppet or whatev), advanced monitoring (prereq: Nagios, or whatever that CustomInk/Etsy toolset is called), test-driven development (prereq: Lang-appropriate testing libs), and continuous integration (prereq: Jenkins)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Javascript based templating engines and the web don't necessarily mix. They are ideal for mobile, intranets or other known environments, but not something I'd use in this sort of environment. Right tool for the job. [https://minus.com/ly4w7OtUMBvxX](https://minus.com/ly4w7OtUMBvxX)

</comment><comment><USER37> The colors are off. Particularly the yellow. It is hard to read. The blue is nice, could be a shade darker. The last square position is empty. Why not put one there with links to your blog or whatever? Its prime real estate, because the reader will flow into it. Having a blank space there takes away from the design.

<comment><USER38> This. The boxes are bright, so you would want black text. In general, white text goes with muted backgrounds, black text on bright backgrounds. This hurt my eyes =\\.

Also, the page starts with black text on white background and transitions to white on colored. I'd stick with one for consistency, in this case, black.

Here is what I mean, I just changed the box text color to black: [http://i.imgur.com/ENnoGnv.png](http://i.imgur.com/ENnoGnv.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> That...looks good! I changed the text to be a dark gray. Should be updating soon :)

<comment><USER37> I would also use a better font. Droid sans would work nicely (its on google web fonts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like this, you should include Udacity for the Python section. They teach everything from Basic Python to web development to software testing and even debugging. Can't find better resource for Python than [https://www.udacity.com](https://www.udacity.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was JUST about to do this. I love Udactiy's python course - since they take you through everything and even teach you to build a search engine on the way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> IMO clicking rails should show sass also. It shows less which can also be used with rails, but if I'm not mistaken sass is still the default. I'm sending you a pull request now. I didn't remove less, I figured you could consider that yourself, just added sass to rails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting, I do not see anything other than a link to github page. [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50999755/Screen%20Shot%2...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50999755/Screen%20Shot%202013-09-21%20at%208.39.52%20AM.png)

<comment><USER42> I get the same thing. It seems to be because "content.js" is lacking a comma in some of the elements making it invalid JSON.

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU Since a portion of beginners are interested in employment, I wonder how much of this sheet needs to be 'filled in' to become employable at a minimum, junior position?

I've found that the threshold between beginner -> employable is really fuzzy and that's a bit frustrating.

<comment><USER43> Can you build stuff that is useful and useable? That's the line. Not how many boxes you can check off.

<comment> FLUX-YOU "Well, I wrote a python script for this thing once..."

These are still subjective qualifiers though. Useful for who? Useable by which audience? I can easily do both given no other constraints (especially ignoring time). Useful and usable, but never used because chances are someone's done it better and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Other answers I've received have piled additional frameworks or languages on top of what I already know, or suggest specific projects that encompass a wide range of requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm not seeing any content and the console gives me:

"ReferenceError: CONTENT is not defined"

</comment><comment><USER45> hey Just pushed some laravel links to This project. . I'm actually wanting to start a dev boot camp her in Dayton that uses online learning resources to teach the fundamentals.. i.e why reinvent the wheel... with pair coding and real idea pitch sessions and learning while working on real startups that we may also help get some traction. ie Dev boot camp meets coworking space meets incubator/accelerator. this will be a great starting point for that... I learned a lot of my coding skills from code academy, team treehouse, and code school..and ruby koans..all are amazing resources.

<comment><USER10> Can I ask for an argument in support of Laravel being the only PHP framework on here? I think it's very "cool" (especially the Silex-esque routing), but there's not a whole lot of Laravel jobs out there.

<comment><USER45> I think that would make some mad in the php community.. though I'd love to see the whole lot of phpers get behind one framework like Ruby on rails or at least a couple like symfony(since laravel is built on components from symfony makes it important for the future of laravel), laravel, and possibly Zend...There should also be a cleansing old php versions and frameworks and spaghetti code since learning laravel I've become a much better coder and just love coding.. before it was a major headache that I put up with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I found out about this cool site a few days before it was posted on HN.

 _Pats self on the back_

<comment><USER47> D'oh! You missed out on incrementing your integer in a database!

<comment><USER48> Your integer has been incremented by one for this comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I can't say how many times I have been asked 'How can I start learning to build stuff for the web?' and wanted to give this as an answer. It's not perfect, but it's on GitHub!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yessir! Please contribute! [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Such a relief to see xml described as "An alternative to json".

</comment><comment><USER51> Would like to see the Ruby micro-framework Sinatra on this list.

It's a great starting point for Ruby development and could be a good entry point into Rails, which can be intimidating for a beginner.

<comment><USER52> Seconding this. If I had started with Rails I might have been just turned off by all the Active* gems it seemed had to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Why is ColdFusion always the ugly red-headed stepchild? I realize that the amount of people using it in comparison to PHP is very low, but it still exists! Can we get some love?

<comment><USER54> What about C# and Java? These are widely popular with big companies with a lot of money.

I think adding a "tools" section would be a little helpful for beginners, like myself, to find out about. I use jsfiddle for online code edit a lot, and I prefer Sublime Text 2 on my Mac and Netbeans on my PC workstation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is great, thank you. Some links for Scala:

Documentation: [http://www.scala-lang.org/](http://www.scala-lang.org/) Twitter School for Scala: [http://twitter.github.io/scala_school/](http://twitter.github.io/scala_school/) 99 problems in Scala: [http://aperiodic.net/phil/scala/s-99/](http://aperiodic.net/phil/scala/s-99/) Coursera with Martin Odersky: [https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun](https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun)

</comment><comment><USER56> Don't know if anyone else noticed this but I see the page template briefly before the content is loaded in.

Can't say I've seen this for long enough to notice before.

</comment><comment><USER57> "Java, a popular programming language." \- that's basically best thing you can say about it, but it also deserves a caveat on how awesome the JVM is.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't see anything related to web development on this site. It's just an empty page with a header, About Me and Pull request. What's going on?

</comment><comment><USER59> Periods. Overused. In marketing. So much. Appears normal.

<comment><USER60> Ha! I've always felt that way about exclamation marks in a lot of marketing copy. I can't help but think that the person that wrote it was coked up!! For some reason it annoys me :)

<comment><USER59> I feel like i have to read period-ridden marketing in a really dramatic way. In my head.

And if i'm not doing that, then i just have ideas. Separated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> iOS chrome: huge white popup with text "{{ boxes[more_index].name }}" Keeps reopening after I close it... will have to check it out on a comp.

<comment><USER62> its broken on desktop Chrome as well.

but I'm not sure why it go so many upvotes if nobody can view it. obviously some people can.

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier content.js:627 ReferenceError: CONTENT is not defined at new masterCtrl ([http://www.bentobox.io/javascripts/main.js:85:17](http://www.bentobox.io/javascripts/main.js:85:17)) at d ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:28:464)) at Object.instantiate ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:29:80)) at [https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:53:80) at [https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:44:136) at m ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:6:494)) at i ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:44:1)) at e ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:40:86)) at e ([https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:40:103)) at [https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angula...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.8/angular.min.js:39:153) angular.min.js:63

<comment><USER63> Yep 'tis broken. I'm guessing site robustness isn't part of the cheat sheet.

<comment><USER10> How does a syntax error have anything to do with robustness? Now if you had mentioned something that made sense, like "testing" or "continuous integration", then only the "'tis" would be irritating.

<comment><USER63> Robustness - "the persistence of a system's characteristic behavior under perturbations or unusual or conditions of uncertainty". Changes like Chrome versus IE; like 1 visitor versus 1000.

'tis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Good list indeed. But nothing about Play Framework?

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're going to include Laravel, which is built entirely on top of Symfony, you may also want to include Symfony.

</comment><comment><USER65> Why is there vim and not emacs? Emacs is far better suited for web development, especially with stuff like web-mode.

</comment><comment><USER66> "SQL" is not a database.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right - should change it to query language.

You can make the change directly too if you spot others! [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

<comment><USER24> "SQL" is not a query language.

<comment><USER67> Are you being ironic or something? The very name SQL stands for Structured Query Language. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Nice page, Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the layout, which is strange.

</comment><comment><USER69> Code snippets in the JSON tutorial are blocked by ad-block plus in Chrome

</comment><comment><USER70> Lost all credibility (in my mind) when it pointed to w3schools

<comment><AUTHOR> Removed them all (except sql...still need a good one).

Any suggestions? [https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> nodeschool.io might be a nice addition to the node.js seciton.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'll look into it. Also add it directly if you like :)

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The site's broken.

</comment><comment><USER73> I recommend to avoid that website. That's why: [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bentobox....](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bentobox.io)

<comment><USER74> If that is reason to avoid it, you should avoid this one too [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Good stuff! Commenting so I don't forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER76> I would rather hide blocks instead of graying them out.

</comment><comment><USER77> everything about web development... apart from the two of the biggest languages/platforms for web development.

<comment><USER6> And what are those two?

<comment><USER78> Java. If you did not write a EJB, a servlet ,used hibernate , and lost yourself with spring IOC, you are not a real developper ( sarcasm ).

<comment><AUTHOR> Added it in! Need suggestions for links though :)

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Awesome, nice design too. Thanks for this

</comment><comment><USER80> Does the color coding indicate anything?

</comment><comment><USER81> Green Yellow Red coloring never fails.

</comment><comment><USER82> Well done. A very well executed idea.

</comment><comment><USER83> Is it just me or is this site broken?

</comment><comment><USER84> descriptions about why I would want to learn each one would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER85> Add 'donate' button!

Great work

</comment><comment><USER86> I was hoping to see GO

<comment><USER87> I recently made this resource for a camp on learning Go with the end product being an http server. If it's helpful I can repurpose it for general use. It's a series of 2 quick tutorials currently, start here : [https://github.com/rdallman/gofirst](https://github.com/rdallman/gofirst)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Django but no Drupal?

</comment><comment><USER89> Groovy? Grails?

</comment><comment><USER90> Brilliant

</comment><comment><USER91> beautiful

<comment><AUTHOR> omg hi hoon

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> The thing I was most interested in was backbone, and it just links to the original site. I mean the colors are nice but this is pretty much useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need suggestions for backbone! Any good links?

[https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh- pages](https://github.com/JonHMChan/bento/tree/gh-pages)

<comment><USER92> This is what I started with, but it's incomplete - [http://backbonetutorials.com/](http://backbonetutorials.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Love all these new technologies that are hardly proven in production and many have been proven to have fundamental design problems leading to security issues that cannot be engineered around without breaking the flexibility offered by the technology, such as PHP and Ruby.

JSON and XML are just data formats, there's nothing special to know about them other than that a lot of stupid enterprises decided that they are standard now so that's what you'll use. Considering that Javascript isn't even a defined standard (although ECMAScript is) , I find the idea of a standard based on it quite laughable.

This is more like a cheat sheet for farmland development, as requested by the landowner. Bring your own tools and teach yourself how to use them, just don't bring your own land unless you plan to forfeit it.

<comment><USER94> > Considering that Javascript isn't even a defined standard (although > ECMAScript is)

ECMAScript isn't a different language than Javascript, its just the name on the standard for the language (IIRC, the name is because of the trademark Sun had -- and Oracle now has -- on "JavaScript" [1].)

[1] [http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_N...](http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75026640&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch)

<comment><USER93> > ECMAScript isn't a different language than Javascript

That's not true, Javascript is what is implemented in various browsers under the standards those developers choose to implement. If ECMAScript was the same thing, then why would Mozilla bother licensing Javascript from Oracle?

Considering all these tools are just development platforms for THE WEB? Shouldn't you be learning how the Web works so you know what you're actually building? No mention anywhere here of ports, REST, SOAP, caching (like I dunno, nginx which is now on what? like 75% of internet facing web hosts?)

These so called technologies are shit, as proven in various papers on the subject. All you'll be doing is laying the groundwork for your enterprise to get hacked and taken over by large corporations using older, more secure and proven technologies.

<comment><USER94> > If ECMAScript was the same thing, then why would Mozilla bother licensing > Javascript from Oracle?

Trademarks are basically labels; what Mozilla licensed from Oracle (actually, as I recall the history, what Netscape licensed from Sun and transferred to Mozilla) is the right to use the trademark "JavaScript". It has nothing to do with the actual language, just the label.

<comment><USER93> That's just more fuel for my argument. The fact is that the trademark is where the value is, there is no value in the Javascript language. Every other day there's another Javascript vulnerability because that is how it was designed.

[http://thehackernews.com/2013/09/internet-explorer-zero- day-...](http://thehackernews.com/2013/09/internet-explorer-zero-day-exploit- used.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Emotion-detecting tech should be restricted by law - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50761116 <comment><USER2> When I first read that some retailers (Walgreens) were putting face-scanning emotion profiling tech in their stores, I couldn't help but think about how many false readings would come from people who have resting bitch face.†

Then I thought it would be awesome to go to Dallas or some other place where this is common and flood the stores with these people, making the technology useless.

† [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resting_bitch_face](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resting_bitch_face)

<comment><USER3> When all the retailers share data they'll identify you as Rufus Postlethwaite and calibrate to your resting bitch face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone from a less represented group in tech, I would want to know exactly who is classifying emotions present on the dataset. I don't want to be mistaken as feeling angry anytime I don't look happy or sad. There's definitely unconscious bias to how certain people's feelings are interpreted that lead to inaccurate perceptions.

<comment><USER5> Note: as long as you are well represented in the dataset your representation in tech won't matter.

<comment><USER4> I can be well represented in the data set, but here people can unwittingly classify my emotions incorrectly due to unconscious bias. What good will the data do if every time, I appear confused, I am labeled and angry?

<comment><USER6> The biases of labelers are tricky, because that work gets outsourced to low- wage countries.

<comment><USER4> That makes things worse, but we would still have a problem with the work being done primarily by us tech workers. I wouldn't place the blame solely on unskilled low-wage workers. I've worked with Ivy League graduates that think I am angry when I ask a question and am just confused. The US education system is moderately segregated and many of our most educated students are not taught to be more critical of stereotypes perpetuated in the media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I guess with my anxiety disorder even computers will think "I have something to hide" because I look nervous. Jesus christ this world is a dystopia.

<comment><USER8> If it makes you feel any better, before computers it was the security guards that thought you had something to hide instead.

<comment><USER9> However, we tend to see a computer's analysis as absolute while a security guard's analysis is more of an opinion.

You can also reason with a security guard. The trust we have in the computer's analysis prevents a perceived shoplifter from reasoning against the accusation, for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh this is fun. So how clear is your hue?

There was an anime about where this might head [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho- Pass](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass)

Classic Dr. Who also had a fictional place where you had to be happy, but I don't recall the tech angle that arc used.

</comment><comment><USER11> You dont all where balaclavas and sunglasses when interacting with technology?

<comment><USER12> My juggalo makeup works even better.

[0][https://www.fastcompany.com/90373952/to-thwart-face- recognit...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90373952/to-thwart-face-recognition- maybe-just-wear-juggalo-makeup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How we express our emotions will change and this will be useless

<comment><USER14> Unlikely; emotional expressions seem to be innate and hard-wired into the brain, hence the fundamental similarity between emotional expressions of groups separated for tens of thousands of years.

<comment><USER13> All of whom are connected and changing together now.

Also; hard-wired by who or what other than volume of use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To protect the jobs & social status of those lucky enough to have a natural aptitude at emotion/deception-detection?

<comment><USER16> To ensure that the ruling body telling you what you can't use is the only group that gets to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't every ad tech emotion detection? A like is an emotion

</comment><comment><USER18> Emotion-detecting technology is software and distribution of source code is speech, ergo banning it infringes on free speech.

However it might make sense to ban its use in certain cases — like say in order to manipulate public opinion for instance.

<comment><USER19> The article mentions police investigations as one use case.

Mass surveillance technology is software and speech too, but we also might want to live in a world where it is restricted in application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe certain professionally empathic people at MIT Media Lab should have used their high-tech emotion detection software to determine if Joi Ito was lying through his teeth to cover his ass by an appeal to authority when citing the names of a bunch of "very respected & well-known" people who vouched for Epstein being reformed. I still would love to know what the names of those people are, and if they're "well known", are they still "very respected"? How about a bit of empathy for his victims, huh?

[https://twitter.com/RosalindPicard/status/116899800880720281...](https://twitter.com/RosalindPicard/status/1168998008807202816)

</comment><comment><USER21> And we should ban prosthetic limbs because amputees might use them to smuggle drugs.

Emotion-detection tech is a prosthetic for autistic people, and if it's banned I want consistent treatment for all disabilities.

<comment><USER22> Give me a break. People don't use prosthetic limbs as a tool to decide if someone is lying to the police or if they should get the job. Your analogy is less than adequate.

<comment><USER23> Can you please edit swipes like "Give me a break" out of your posts to HN? Your comment would be fine with just the other two sentences.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER24> Seriously? What pedantic nonsense. It's a minor, hardly offensive phrase designed to add some emotional color to comments. We're not robots here. Many people write comments with expletives (and don't get downvoted) along with all sorts of things, but you fixate here on "give me a break".

<comment><USER23> I understand how this can seem pedantic, but when people lead with swipes like that, it subtly cues the discussion towards disrespect and even aggression. Maybe they don't land that way with you, but the spectrum of the audience here is pretty broad, and it's best to just omit things that predictably activate major subsets. Given that such remarks are cheap and mechanical, adding no information, it improves the signal/noise ratio to take them out anyhow. To me it seems clear how much better the GP comment reads without the first bit—how much more visible the actual point becomes.

Emotional color is welcome in HN comments, but reflexive indignation is a different thing. For the sake of the commons here, we all need to work on containing the petty anger that flares up instantly and is all too easy to vent onto the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a practical matter, it is not _possible_ to prohibit the use of an algorithm, and any attempt to do so will cause more harm than anything that algorithm might possibly do.

That we're even talking about restricting tech that tells us true things about the world indicates that the level of internal contradiction in the standard worldview has reached an unacceptable level. Only a bankrupt and illegitimate philosophy needs to prop itself up with censorship and bans on true statements.

You can't hold back progress, but you do have a choice between sticking your head in the sand and facing the technological change head-on and making the most of it.

> AI Now

Oh, this is AI Now. The article makes sense now. This organization isn't a research group. It's a political advocacy organization dressed up as a research group. All they do is put an "AI" spin on the standard tech-activist political agenda. You don't have to actually read any of their papers, since the conclusion is always the same: _they_ get to decide what technology _you_ can use.

<comment><USER26> > That we're even talking about restricting tech that tells us real things > about the world indicates that society's internal contradictions on certain > subjects have reached a breaking point and that we need to reevaluate > certain previously-inviolable assumptions.

I agree with your general point, but TFA quotes a co-founder of "leading research centre" saying,

> "At the same time as these technologies are being rolled out, large numbers > of studies are showing that there is... no substantial evidence that people > have this consistent relationship between the emotion that you are feeling > and the way that your face looks."

So a large part of the problem is that we're rolling out cargo-cult crap without adequate self-reflection. (That's a different problem than our tech forcing us to confront real things we would rather leave latent.)

<comment><USER25> > large numbers of studies are showing that there is... no substantial > evidence that people have this consistent relationship between the emotion > that you are feeling and the way that your face looks.

Total, absolute bullshit --- which is exactly what I'd expect from AI Now. Everyday experience shows that we can read people's feelings via their faces. (Yes, deception is possible, but the possibility of putting on a fake face validates the thesis!) Happy people look happy. Sad people look sad. Millennia of literature and art confirm. "Large numbers of studies" confirm lots of things that would be convenient if true, but aren't. The social sciences are totally and catastrophically broken.

These expressions are older than people. Even dogs and humans can read each others' emotions. Anyone who's met a dog understands that you can tell that a happy dog is happy. I'm amazed that the person quoted in the article was able to make the above claim with a straight face.

> So a large part of the problem is that we're rolling out cargo-cult crap > without adequate self-reflection.

So what? Astrology doesn't work either and we don't have to go around banning that. If this technology didn't actually work, activist groups wouldn't be trying to ban it.

<comment><USER26> > ...which is exactly what I'd expect from AI Now.

I don't know anything about them before today.

Did you see [https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI- snake...](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snakeoil.pdf) which they link to in their report? It seems pretty solid to me.

> Everyday experience shows that we can read people's feelings via their > faces.

Yeah, humans can, sometimes, but that doesn't mean these systems can.

> Astrology doesn't work either and we don't have to go around banning that.

First off, astrology _does_ work, depending on the astrologer.

Second, yes, if people were selling astrology to HR departments to screen candidates I think we should ban that.

<comment><USER25> > astrology does work

Is anyone supposed to take seriously anything else you say now that you've claimed that astrology works? You might as well be claiming we can predict the future by looking at bird entrails.

<comment><USER26> > Is anyone supposed to take seriously anything ... you say ...

That's really entirely up to each person, and none of my business really.

I will say that, although I make mistakes, I never lie, and rarely exaggerate. I don't participate in HN to talk nonsense.

Now then, yes, some people can predict the future by divination of entrails. Thankfully this particular mode has become quite rare.

All forms of divination work, BTW, and have the same underlying motive.

\- - - -

Anyway, did you look at that PDF? If so, what did you think?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Audience Engagement – The New Black in Digital Media - <AUTHOR> https://www.quintype.com/blog/tech/2018/03/02/audience-engagement---the-new-black-in-digital-media <comment><AUTHOR> In the age where content/news sites are struggling to survive. This is story by an insider who interacts with media houses and his take on how news sites should embrace the change in media scene and should adopt new engagement tools, see a bigger picture to build communities, conversations to be future proof.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wait, did no one build a product which solves all these issues?

<comment><USER3> There are a few out there in the market which solves bits and pieces of this problem but none which solves all. There is one product which is attempts/aims to solve all those problems which I am working on. Check it out at www.metype.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you yet find a middle ground between subscription and ads because I see lot of ambiguity around that and even hear ads are dying do you think they will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> nice article</comment>


Obama Team Finds It Hard to Adapt Its Web Savvy to Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/01/AR2009030101745_pf.html <comment><USER2> This says something very interesting about bureaucracy when the supposed "most powerful man in the world" is having such difficulty sending an email.

I really hope that they not only fix the problems here, but fix the problems that caused the problems in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will always hand it to Obama, his team understands the Internet. I do find it funny however that people think because Obama is great at the Internet that the whole Democratic party is good at the Internet.

We are working on a new web app that deals with politics. And in the last few weeks I have been to every member of the congress and senates websites. And I can say without question, they are all equally pathetic at using the Internet. It is just because Obama is the only mainstream (minus Ron Paul who isn't quite mainstream) politician that gets the Internet that people think democrats are so much better at it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I cannot believe they have to archive every change. My understanding of FOIA was that interim and draft documents did not have to be retained. Maybe that was just for Illinois FOIA.

<comment><USER5> True, but wouldn't something like a version control system + magic scripts solve the issue ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's disappointing Obama's Twitter account hasn't been updated since inauguration.</comment>


The History of Processing - <AUTHOR> https://maxoffsky.com/research/research-essay-the-history-of-processing/ <comment><USER2> Since the server is down: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180419080129/https://maxoffsky...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180419080129/https://maxoffsky.com/research/research- essay-the-history-of-processing/)

Great read!

</comment><comment><USER3> I like processing. It easy to get up and running with it and the tutorials are great. Programing graphics is fun (I cut my initial programming teeth on logo). I didn't realize its kinda Java till I started using Java at work.

The name "processing" isn't great though. It can be difficult to remember.

Somewhat fun there are "javascript versions" for the browser, but somewhat confusingly there are a few versions: processingJS [1], p5js (which I think is the official processing port).[2]

[http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/) [https://p5js.org/](https://p5js.org/)

<comment><USER4> > It can be difficult to remember.

To google, too.

<comment><USER5> Possibly the more important trait these days

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Processing is a truly pleasant introduction to programming

</comment><comment><USER7> Over the past 3 or 4 years I've introduced maybe a couple dozen absolute beginners to programming. I always use Processing.

In 25 lines you can make something awesome and get them engaged, and before they know it they are learning core programming / logic fundamentals, and maybe OOP principles as well.

I agree with others that Processing is not a good name.

</comment><comment><USER8> Using libraries made for Processing in straight Java or other JVM languages is a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> I understand that this is the exact title of the original post, but a postfix like " (programming language)" or " (software sketchbook)" would clarify it on HN.</comment>


Best Websites 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1918031,00.html <comment><USER2> Stay Tuned.........There's more to be added to this list of 50.</comment>


Let's do Befunge-93 (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://bef-93.blogspot.com/2014/06/bef-93-tutorial.html <comment><USER2> Befunge is a fun language to play around with, though I prefer the esolangs article[1] on it. Its rather enjoyable to play around with, almost like a puzzle.

Befunge-98 is also an interesting advancement on Befunge-93, allowing more dimensions (first, and third dimension), and adding a variety of more complex features. I haven't played around with it nearly as much.

The self-modifying behavior that you may do in Befunge is where I really enjoy playing with it. A while back I wrote a very simple 'controllable' little character in a grid map. The language is relatively simple to implement (though Befunge-98 is way more complex), and I found it a fun project to do whenever I learn a new programming language. Probably the favorite (online) interpreter to use is [2]. [1] [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge) [2] [http://qiao.github.io/javascript-playground/visual- befunge93...](http://qiao.github.io/javascript-playground/visual- befunge93-interpreter/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Link is broken - [http://bef-93.blogspot.com/2014/06/bef-93-tutorial.html](http://bef-93.blogspot.com/2014/06/bef-93-tutorial.html) has no content.

<comment><USER4> Try opening it in private mode (assuming yours is configured to disable addons) or another browser. It's fine for me in Firefox private mode (I have uMatrix installed and was too lazy to configure it for the site to work.) Blogspot has always had some crazy javascript (I think) required rendering.

<comment><USER3> It's not a matter of addons or private mode; the blog text is completely absent from the HTML file.

<comment><USER4> Yes, because the content is retrieved, presumably from a database, by javascript.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Black Silk - Chinese J-20 Stealth Fighter Takes Off - <AUTHOR> http://www.asb.tv/blog/2011/01/black-silk-j-20-chinese-stealth-launch/

<comment><USER2> So they begin to spend $Bn on more and more elaborate weapons systems to challenge a non-existent threat.

Our plan to destroy them is working, it got rid of the USSR, now China, just the USA to go.

<comment><USER3> China is continually at war with their citizenry. I'm sure they'll find a use for it in Tibet.

<comment><USER4> Air superiority fighters are not enormously useful in fighting against insurgents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I so guess all these years of exfiltrating military design secrets from the West has finally paid off.

<comment><USER6> Yes. And they're not shy about it either.

"The way in which the J-20 was unveiled also reflects China's use and control of information technology to support national interests. The test airfield is located in the city of Chengdu and is not secure, with many public viewing points. Photography is technically forbidden, but reports suggest that patrols have been permitting the use of cell phone cameras."

[http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-on-chinese- stea...](http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-on-chinese-stealth- fighter-and-apt.html)

<comment><USER5> interesting. On a slightly tangential note, I wonder if the Chinese are going to attain sophisticated manned aerial capabilities just in time to have it completely superseded by American UAV capabilities which aren't constrained by having to contain human meat bags.... <http://wiredforwar.pwsinger.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does this prove? Apparently, they have a new airplane. Is this plane really stealth? What are its capabilities? Does this really matter?

<comment><USER8> I've been wondering that too - what makes it stealthy?

It doesn't look stealthy - it has large fins, a big cockpit bump, and the engines don't seem to shield their exhaust.

Anyone know more about this subject, and can explain?

<comment><USER9> The WP entry has something to offer:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20></comment></comment></comment>


Jamming XKeyScore - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/jamming-xkeyscore_4.html <comment><USER2> _Continue this for megabytes worth of bridges (xks-0001), and it 'll totally mess up XKeyScore. It has no defense against getting flooded with information like this, as far as I can see._

Yet it would be trivial to defend against trivial attacks like this. They just need to set a length limit on ingested messages, clean up those regexes, and they're done. A clever NSA developer (of which I'm sure they have several) might implement a garden-variety spam filter.

We're trying to inject noise, but this noise is _obvious_. It's like a nation- state playing Cold War-era radio games by broadcasting "DOUBLE AGENT X COME HOME, DOUBLE AGENT Y COME HOME", etc. Sure it's noise, and it might distract them for five minutes, but it doesn't win the war.

Want to fight XKeyscore? Make the noise impossible to distinguish. Set up free email accounts that bounce randomly-generated "interesting" messages among themselves, in between notes to Mom about the World Cup. Get open source software that uses network communication to piggyback some keyword-laden (though non-incriminating) text onto messages it would send anyway. Run a Tor exit node that blocks illegal activity in your country (so you don't go to jail).

Or someone else should, at least. I'm busy. And now, I'm on a list.

<comment><USER3> I am not a lawyer. I would imagine you could be charged with 'obstruction of justice' or some other such law if you did this in the US or as a US citizen. Something to think about before doing such a thing.

 _edited to be more verbose_

<comment><USER4> [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-73](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-73)

This is the federal obstruction of justice statute, could you point out the part that applies to jamming the illegal collection of inadmissible evidence by an agency that enforces no laws or regulations and conducts no criminal or administrative investigations or proceedings?

<comment><USER3> No, I'm not a lawyer and/or qualified to do that. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't care to find out by attempting it.

<comment><USER5> This is an unintentionally perfect demonstration of the concept of chilling effects. Someone should take a screenshot of this and put it into a textbook.

Wikipedia link on chilling effects: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect)

<comment><USER6> The fear of getting caught shouldn't be the only reason you don't do something. Either it's important enough to do, or there's multiple reasons doing something isn't a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if you don't like Slavoj Žižek, he has a funny story related to this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os#t=1614](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os#t=1614)

He talks about how he and his associates were dissidents and had meetings and they agreed on a protocol to talk gibberish at the end. Fake, military sounding code words and stuff. It was a fun thing to do. Years later they discovered the amount of head-aches and resource drain they caused on the secret police who tried in vain to discover the meaning in this nonsense, thinking that perhaps there was some serious stuff going on.

That is why I hope one good thing comes out of it, and that is people might start taking cryptography slightly more seriously and they'll also start actively fighting back. This is one way and it is fun too. (for some strange value of "fun").

<comment><USER8> Another great Žižek story/parable about surveillance is the red ink one, which I think is also relevant here:

So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: "Let's establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false." After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: "Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink." This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For all their illegal spying on American citizens, can the NSA point to one attack* they have stopped?

I, for one, am not aware of any. And that's the real big problem here. They all this sh1t, invade everyone's privacy, and to what ends?

*I am not talking about the NSA spying on non-US citizens.

<comment><USER10> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They may have stopped attacks but not revealed any information about this publicly, or engaged in misdirection as to their role using parallel construction.

<comment><USER11> Absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. It's absence of proof that is not proof of absence. It may or may not be strong evidence, depending on how likely evidence is, but it is evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is based around the source that author claims to be faked in another article, [http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating-xkeyscore- code....](http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating-xkeyscore-code.html)

edit: fixed link

<comment><USER13> I think you mean this one: [http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating- xkeyscore-code....](http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/validating-xkeyscore- code.html)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, clipboard wasn't syncing properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a similar idea to something I've been working on for quite a long time (since June of last year, actually)[1]. I have experience with graph- generating software used by Five Eyes governments to map relationships, and I've been developing software that will dilute the effectiveness of those graphs by generating tons of noise across the system. Now it's a half-finished Chrome extension, but my hope was to build a complete set of browser extensions, and then bleed the design to Android/iOS to help dilute the graphs of people's phone behavior.

[1] [https://github.com/shroudproject](https://github.com/shroudproject)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think encryption will remain a better way of jamming XKeyScore for the forseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER16> The NSA will see this post, write more rules with regexs to catch anybody doing any of these things, and then tag them as terrorists in XKeyScore.

 _edit_ not to mention that the source of these rules is from a non-verified document that is at least 2 years old and woefully incomplete.

<comment><USER17> Tagging a bunch of harmless HNers as terrorists is going to get them nowhere.

The key is real, effective, _targeting_ of that tiny minority who actually organise terrorist acts. Unless this is just some huge job creation scheme/security theatre for politicians.

<comment><USER18> "The key is real, effective, targeting of that tiny minority who..." that's what they want you to believe, bahahahaha :D. Ok, ok I'm not paranoid. But can "we" (common people) really know what "they" (elected and unelected officials) really want ? They have the power, they have the information, they define and pursue the "national interest", they keep it classified, they create secret tribunals, they pick the "national threats", they whack them because terrorists, they make the "no fly" lists, they pick the "extremists"...

<comment><USER17> So is this basically Catch-22 for the 21st Century or just a bureaucracy that grew and became self-perpetuating?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is funny because Robert Graham is very likely a GCHQ asset.

<comment><USER20> based on even just his last few blog posts i can see "blowhard" or "shill" but intelligence asset? what's your reason for saying this?

<comment><USER19> At the bottom at this page is part of the evidence [http://cryptome.org/2014/06/wl-harrison- hoax.htm](http://cryptome.org/2014/06/wl-harrison-hoax.htm) . Every single time a anti-NSA story comes out he is first to try to defend the actions of the NSA. He is a provocateur and clearly biased.

<comment><USER21> Someone consistently disagreeing with you is NOT evidence they are acting maliciously or are part of a conspiracy against your viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I guess NSA owes Robert a beer for the helpful QA service!

</comment><comment><USER23> So, if they're using a standard regex parser, and not cleaning the input, maybe some regex wizard can come up with some interesting Bobby Tables type fun.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hmm, I may have to update my project to include this sort of junk data in the response body of its API calls.

It sure would be amusing if most of HN did this. Everybody has to do their part, right?

<comment><USER10> You'd be wasting your time as there is no feedback as to whether your attempts have worked to frustrate their targeting, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that someone picks up on your efforts and casually flags you to make your life more difficult - extra searches at borders, no fly list, and so on.</comment></comment>


YS Flight Simulator 20th Anniversary - <AUTHOR> http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2019.html <comment><AUTHOR> There is discussion thread on _YSFHQ Community_ forum.[0]

All versions of _YSFlight_ available in YSFHQ archive.[1]

Join to _«Tropic Thunder Airshow»_ \- a _YSFS AIR-20 Event_ on Saturday, July 13th, 2019![2]

Check full list of _YSFS AIR-20 Events_.[3]

[0] [https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=10190](https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=10190)

[1] [https://ysflight.org/download/](https://ysflight.org/download/)

[2] [https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=10201](https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=10201)

[3] [https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=10200](https://forum.ysfhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=10200)</comment>