Ask HN: What programming feature can't you live without? - <AUTHOR> Monads? Type Safety? Hygienic Macros?<p>What's important to you, and why, when it comes to language features? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if you would consider this a feature of the language. But having a large community and large, readily available, libraries is huge.

</comment><comment><USER3> Concurrency:

I know this can be put in via libraries, but it's so much easier when it's part of the language (or a language that's sufficiently expressive/flexible to allow it to not look bolted on). Actors, CSP, I don't care. The designs that fall out of using concurrency versus interleaving the logic are just better. They're often simpler, more likely to be correct, often delivering more reusable components. Erlang and Go being two modern exemplars of this, though utilizing different mechanisms.

Bit syntax:

Erlang's bit syntax, paired with binary comprehensions (like list comprehensions but over binary blobs), make a lot of my tasks (at least for prototyping since my employers won't use Erlang in final products) a lot easier. It's clean, paired with Erlang's unification/destructuring bind version of assignment to variables.

Pattern matching:

Remove all those if/else/if blocks, switch/case (or make them more effective) statements. Move a lot of decision points closer to where they actually need to be made (in function dispatch). Paired with static typing, this can also be used to enforce things like that functions are total functions.

Expressive type systems:

Ada, Pascal, Haskell, MLs in general. There are other languages that do a decent job, but these do it best. This allows you to spend time specifying your system, and then describe the system via your types. I'm not passing around an array of 4 bytes, I'm passing around an IP address. In Ada, I'm not passing around an integer, and if you do get smarter and name it something like "MessageIdentifier" it's not _just_ an alias for Integer. You can constrain it to only hold values 0-15. You can make a type modular so that it correctly rolls over to 0, rather than indicating an error when you add 1 to the max value. This can be enforced (largely) at compile time, with some runtime checks. Via testing you can mitigate the need for the runtime checks and remove them if you want improved performance. But you have a smaller surface for runtime errors which greatly reduces burden on testing.

(Nearly) everything is an expression, few statements:

See lisps, erlang, really most functional languages. I find that this fits my mode of thinking and writing code much better. It can allow for some greater concision in code, though also potential for some really terrible looking constructs as well. Everything I write should have a return value of some sort. Even if expressions, switch/case blocks. Even if I choose to ignore it or put it into a throwaway variable like _.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a small thing, but function/method overloading and default arguments. Any modern language (hi Rust) without such basic programmer conveniences irritates me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious to see your opinion on this:

Java's overloading syntax always annoyed me as being overly verbose.

But what if you accidentally overload?

How do you think it should look?

<comment><USER5> In my experience, most cases of overloading are trying to achieve one of two things:

* An argument with a default value: foo(string bar), foo(string bar, string baz)

* An argument which can be of two or more types: foo(string bar), foo(byte[] bar)

I believe the first problem is better solved by an optional/default argument language feature (or in a pinch, a sentinel value).

I believe the second problem is better solved by either using a dynamic language, or an expressive type system that lets you say what you mean, either via polymorphism or union types.

For the remaining cases it's probably acceptable to have a second function with a slightly different name.

While we're on the subject: Keyword-specified arguments are a major quality- of-life improvement, especially once you have large signatures with many defaults. I see no reason why all languages shouldn't adopt python-style foo(x, y, abc=123, xyz=456). DoThing(myflag=False) is generally much clearer than DoThing(False).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Garbage collection or at least some sort of built in memory management that is consistent in all programs for that language.

</comment><comment><USER7> Composition (Interfaces) / Dependency injection / mocking.

Each one is invaluable on their own, but combined they make for very clean, maintainable, and easily testable software.

I find it hard to take any modern language that isn't capable of these seriously. For example, Rust (from talking to some Rust devs on /r/rust) does not have interfaces only "traits" and this prevents you from from being able to use DI thus limiting your ability to mock in the process.

And by dependency injection, I don't mean the XML bullshit that I see Java developers complaining about a lot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Closures and functions being first class objects.

Thank you Swift.

</comment><comment><USER9> Generics. Can't cope with a bag of objects I need to cast and hope.

</comment><comment><USER10> For me list comprehensions are a godsend. I believe the loop logic is much better expressed in a single line of code than multiple lines of for or while syntax. No intermediate variables too. Now, this is becoming a common feature in all young languages, but the first time I encountered it in python a decade ago, I was on cloud 9. It is still one of my filter criteria when deciding if a language is worth investing in.

</comment><comment><USER11> Polymorphism and inheritance

<comment><USER12> This is what I'd love to see die the most. All too often logic will be spread out through unmanageable inheritance trees. I've never seen a completely necessary use for inheritance and I've seen tonnes of misuse.

<comment><USER11> Inheritance is probably misused a lot. Having deeply nested inheritance structures is definitely a bad idea. It is useful in some situations.

Polymorphism on the other hand is a powerful technique to build flexible systems.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can I use Patreon to sustain a blog - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I was wondering if it is feasible to use Patreon to sustain a programming blog (as an alternative to ads) ? If yes, what is the best strategy to let patron pay per article or per month ? <comment><USER2> You can easily use a Patreon to sustain a blog (I've been doing research into it myself).

 _But_ typically Patreon is used more for subsidizing professions/activities with artistic merits and less income. It would be a tough sell as a programmer to justify taking money this way.</comment>


HeapStats: JVMTI agent and JavaFX analyzer for after-the-fact analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/HeapStats/heapstats <comment><AUTHOR> HeapStats is Java troubleshooting tool, which includes JVMTI agent, JavaFX GUI analyzer, and command line analyzer. HeapStats won Duke's Choice Award at JavaOneConf 2016.

[https://www.oracle.com/javaone/dukes-choice- award.html](https://www.oracle.com/javaone/dukes-choice-award.html)

<comment><USER2> The link to HeapStats site is wrong. Correct URL is here: [http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/HeapStats](http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/HeapStats)

Enjoy :)</comment></comment>


Spin-in startups from Cisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-cisco-showered-three-men-with-billions-2014-9

<comment><USER2> Cisco is famous for this; if you work in a field where Cisco is a potential acquirer, your company has probably had several meetings with Cisco BD.

There's a downside. A skilled PM or engineer in Cisco who gets a product MRD has a choice to make. They can keep their heads down and implement internally, or they can jump ship and start a company knowing that Cisco wants it in the future. To make matters worse: it's not exactly unlikely that Cisco will buy a company to get that product _even if you do a good job implementing it internally_.

It's not just MPLS that Cisco "spins in". I know people without the MPLS cachet that have done the same thing at Cisco several times.

<comment><USER3> I've known folks who left Cisco on the assumption that "The mothership will buy us, and I will get my old seat back." It didn't work out that way, though the folks wound up doing fine anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hear about lots of companies trying to do "internal startups." If your company is contemplating this.... then reading about Cisco's "spin in" successes is mandatory.

I keep trying to tell people: If corporate "startup" founders don't have massive upside potential (spelled out in contracts), then it's probably not a "startup." It's just another way for the company to extract more productivity out of salaried employees. Over the long term, equity-starved founders will have to endure insane stress, massive efforts, and other startup "glass chewing".... This will be challenging if founders don't have the potential for a big payoff upon success. For example, this is why VCs are so concerned about ensuring founders have enough skin in the game.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cisco does this because they suck at assessing performance of, remunerating, and retaining top engineering talent.

The best engineers figure out pretty quickly that they'll get more interesting work and more money by riding the Cisco-Juniper-Startup-Cisco merry-go-round a couple of times.

<comment><USER3> Is it that Cisco sucks at this, or do all big companies suck at this?

At some point "Getting along with others" trumps "Bringing in money" and "Building great things" (or combined, "Building great things that people will pay for") at big companies. The result of this is a bunch of "Well rounded B+ employees". Well rounded B+ employees don't change the world.

For every company that's 20+ years old with 10,000+ employees who does a great job managing top engineering talent, I can point 5 that do it awful. (ok, let's not go through that exercise, but it's the point...)

<comment><USER5> Well, you'd probably find that those 1/5 companies that don't suck at managing engineering talent are probably run by former engineers, not former sales guys.

The best career options for engineers in Cisco are: * sales engineer (not really engineering) * become a manager * jump ship to juniper * go to a startup, maybe even get bought back by Cisco with a career boost * shoot for the moon, stay and maybe become a Cisco Distinguished Engineer, which are like unicorns

Ergo, rank and file engineers are not valued by management, like they are at Facebook/Google/etc.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that you comment on that. One ex-Cisco engineering friend of mine went to both Facebook and Google.

I think the CEO does set the tone of which types of employees a company values. I recall a quote (I thought was Joel Spolsky or Bill Gates) around why the CEO of a tech company needs to be an engineer. It's basically that only they can understand the important technical details to make big changes in corporate strategies. There's also a component of knowing who to value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great, but how do they possibly come up with a fair price?

Even assuming Cisco doesn't want to screw anyone, what's MPLS's best alternative offer if Cisco's offer is too low?

</comment><comment><USER7> If a team consistently 'delivers' time and time again with a specific structure and arrangement it makes sense that the same team would be reconsidered -- time and time again.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting. It seems like a large bureaucracy like cisco recognized it's own flaws and used this method to get around the institutionalized toxicity to crazy ideas.

You get to leave all the friction of creating new ideas in a large org behind. The price seems incredibly steep vs just creating a company that is friendly to new ideas (of course creating such a company is no easy task).

</comment><comment><USER9> From what I hear, Noiro Networks/Project is the next "spin-in" from Cisco [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2176631/data- center/litt...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2176631/data- center/little-known-cisco-open-source-project-among-contributors-to-openstack- neutron-policy.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the the few cases where Clayton Christenson's insights on disruption apply. Insieme was founded on the premise of trying to disrupt Cisco's existing business because Cisco cannot effectively do so from within.

</comment><comment><USER11> Original article is at [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-cisco-showered- three-men-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-cisco-showered-three-men- with-billions-2014-9) (link currently points at a Yahoo copy).

<comment><USER12> Thanks—changed from [https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/why-cisco-showered- three-...](https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/why-cisco-showered-three- men-121320914.html).</comment></comment>


Explosive hypothesis about humans' lack of genetic diversity - <AUTHOR> http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/2008/03/17/explosive-hypothesis-about-humans-lack-of-genetic-diversity

<comment><USER2> The hypothesis is neither explosive, nor new.

More here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory)

<comment><USER3> I think by "explosive" they were talking about the volcano, not that the theory was that sensational. Granted the choice of the natural pun was probably not the best... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the Indonesian volcano reduced the human population to 1000-10000 breeding pairs, would it not also have reduced the chimpanzee population similarly?

It's an interesting hypothesis, but similar to the idea that the Yacutan asteroid wiped out the dinosaur population. If that were the case, how did other species survive?

</comment><comment><USER5> Look at figure 3 in this PDF:

<http://napobo3.lk.net/dna/Behar_2010.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> If true, it's remarkable that we exist today at all.</comment>


Comcastify.js: Sometimes images just load too damned fast - <AUTHOR> http://theonion.github.io/comcastifyjs/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised to see that The Onion has quite a few (serious) open source projects. [https://github.com/theonion](https://github.com/theonion)

<comment><USER2> And it looks like most of them have to do with Django!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The idea of repository as editorial makes me really happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/theonion/comcastifyjs/pull/5](https://github.com/theonion/comcastifyjs/pull/5)

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh wow, I'm back in 1994!

</comment><comment><USER6> Well done Onion!</comment>


Italy's largest press agency doesn't know what a millennial is - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ansa.it%2Fsito%2Fnotizie%2Fsport%2Fcalcio%2F2019%2F03%2F22%2Fkanervacon-italia-va-bene-anche-un-pari_5e1721f2-639d-4fe8-a6f5-b71a570afc05.html <comment><AUTHOR> Snapshots, in case the page gets changed: [https://imgur.com/a/AlHXB1i](https://imgur.com/a/AlHXB1i)</comment>


Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/philosophy-has-made-plenty-of-progress/ <comment><USER3> The only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap.

I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved.

There is a class of people who value a "small life," the kind we all need to adopt: zen monks. Unfortunately, such people are afflicted by the disease of irrationalism in their ideas about God, or some similar concept that offends the sensibility of the excessively rational so much that they can only paint Belief in the most lurid colors.

Highly unfashionable to study such people. Instead, a professional philosopher keeps giving interviews, attending conferences and publishing papers. I'll be glad when we can no longer afford them. I also apologize for my lack of charity but there it is.

<comment><USER4> I like you.

There's been a total over-correction away from religion and we've lost sight of why it evolved in the first place. Social scientists have long known that there is nothing rational about the decisions we make, and certainly not in groups. Religion may have led us to quite a bit of violence in the past and might not have given us self-driving cars, but simply understanding the universe is not going to be enough to save the world when we are all still driven moment to moment by our emotional predispositions. We need a way to engineer and shape our emotions and and our collective psyche - <USER2> religion evolved to do. Science is a valuable tool for good, but it is limited by our own lack of virtue in how we use it.

I think a lot of people dislike that idea because religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty. We're addicted to an illusion of certainty in a world where our actual lived reality is always uncertain. We need to get over that. Certainty is a lie.

<comment><USER5> Religion is not about certainty or uncertainty but about a higher purpose, about meaning. This life, this pain, this suffering needs to amount to something or why bother continuing?

Religion doesn't seem the answer, it always creates more problems than it solves. It thrives on suffering. Because suffering creates a need for religion, it sustains itself this way.

Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a way that isn't so detrimental to quality of life, now and in our future?

<comment><USER4> Religion does provide meaning and purpose, but that is hardly all it is "about."

Religion also provides inclusion for those that would otherwise feel outcast. It provides social structure and identity. It provides a framework for you to build culture upon. It acts as a moral guide for behavior. It unifies communities around central goals. It uses myth to convey inter-generational wisdom. It teaches rituals that improve mental and physical health. It provides dozens of important things.

The idea that religion is just about an individual doing X or Y to feel like they have "meaning" or "purpose" is nonsense. Religion evolved as the foundation of human social order. It's about communion and community, not self-indulgence. We know from our earliest architectural sites, like Gobekli Tepe, that religion preceded even the agrarian forms of human society. It's part of who and what we are.

It's extremely arrogant to call it detrimental, especially when our "post- religious" society - where everyone claims a god of their own but no one practices anything - has a workforce composed almost entirely of alienated, corporate slaves that lack more than half the things I mentioned in my second paragraph and a non-working population that suffers in silence because they offer no "economic benefit" to the rest. We are hardly enlightened in any meaningful sense of the word.

<comment><USER6> > Religion also provides inclusion for those that would otherwise feel > outcast.

Except for those who don't fit in the religion narrow view of what is acceptable..

> It provides a framework for you to build culture upon.[cut]It provides > dozens of important things.

Proof needed: there are many countries which have a high share of atheists/agnostics (northern European countries), these countries have their own culture and people seem to be quite happy in these countries _without_ needing a religion.

<comment><USER4> Culture, with all its variations in values, art, and identity, develops over very long periods of time. To look at modern, irreligious countries in Europe and say they have culture without religion ignores the fact that they only lost their religious identity in the past couple of generations. They're eating meat that their ancestors already hunted.

<comment><USER6> camelNotation,vanterdon: Reread what the GP said: he used the present tense, not the past tense. If you rewrite what he said in the past tense, I agree, but for the present tense? No, while it 's true that in many countries religions still shape the culture, there are some countries which mostly left religion behind so his generalization isn't correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a clever, witty, and charming guy. Would be very interesting to talk to him; I like his style of talking. Curiously ironic that he cites a consensus in personal belief in atheism and agnostics among philosophers (at least, modern philosophers, most philosophers in history believed in God..) as a good reason for philosophy not accepting the existence of God, which appears to be a popularity contest (and echo-chamber), then later in discussing a scientific belief says "This I do believe, but have no proof." Sounds like some faith to me... (and I agree that there is probably a surprisingly simple and elegant theory underlying all of physics, based on what I understand and see of the universe) Of course, I've found that most atheists tend to have faith in science without actually understanding science (though plenty do understand the science) and have some personal, emotional reason for not believing in God rather than a well-thought out chain of reasoning; but most people believe things for personal and emotional reasons, so it isn't surprising. It is always a bit humorous to ask them why they believe in science or what it is they believe and get back answers based on a fanatical devotion to, and blind trust in, the priesthood of "pseudo-"scientists like Dawkins, who makes all sorts of unsupported meta-physical claims in his books. I would always encourage atheists to investigating with an open mind, and to learn more about their system of beliefs, and more about logic. They should do what they believe is correct, and should always seek the truth, but be open to discovery of truth even when they may not like it. Most real scientists have a healthy skepticism towards the correctness of at least part of their own theories.

<comment><USER8> The point of science is that its supposed to be verifiable/ provable at least by someone. Its "trust" (in that "someone" or "group of people" who can prove it)... not "faith".

Faith is when its literally unprovable by anyone but you still believe it. Its completely different.

<comment><USER9> I've explained this to people a couple of times who make the "faith in science" argument. The difference is that you -can- verify it, not that you did verify it.

Your terminology of trust vs. faith is great. I will incorporate it into my arguments in the future.

<comment><USER10> I think you may have a different understanding of "faith in science" than brobdingnagians. It could mean anything, such as:

1\. A belief that the scientific method will definitely approach reality (a realist/pragmatist claim)

2\. A belief that the current consensus is right - (but it could be disclaimed)

3\. A belief that science will explain everything, so one could discard other studies, such as philosophy or theology.

Each of these positions can be disputed and may be wrong (especially since they were not acquired by the scientific method, but arrived at by philosophical thought), so to some extent you need some "faith" to accept these statements to be true.

<comment><USER11> Position 1 is analytically true.

No scientist believes position 2 in general. Regarding particular subject matters and well-confirmed theories, on the other hand, it's pretty much uncontroversial. No cell phone would work and no plane would fly if the underlying physical theories were flat-out false.

Position 3 is probably analytically true, too. The idea that there is something that can in principle not be explained by taking a close scientific (=skeptic, methodical, experimental, precise) look at it hardly makes any sense.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean by "analytically true"

<comment><USER13> Basically, "analytic" = "by definition", while "synthetic" = "empirically".

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic–synthetic_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic–synthetic_distinction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think philosophy is keeping up with the progress in AI, neuroscience and game theory. If it did, there would be less discussion about the 'Chinese room', qualia and 'hard problem' of consciousness. Instead, we'd head about embodiment, rewards, agents vs environments, learning, representation, exploration-exploitation tradeoff, and such. There are theories of language and meaning in philosophy, but in AI there are actual high dimensional representations for text and images, with their affordances and limitations. It's like comparing a drawing of a car with an actual working car, with its good and bad parts. Philosophy seems not to be keeping up the progress in the last 5 years, and it has been one hell of 5 years with amazing discoveries.

<comment><USER15> IMO, progress in philosophy leads to science. First you think and imagine (philosophy) then you try and know and have made progress (science).

From the article: Yes (with qualification) and yes. Already in Republic (Plato again!) we have an argument—a clear and compelling rational argument—that even the highest political office should be open to women. The argument? List what it takes to be a good leader of the state, then note the conditions that distinguish the sexes. There just is zero overlap between the two lists.

IMO there is not much of interest in philosophy regarding AI (except for the thinking and imagination of AI engineers). AI is still just computations as far as we know.

From the article: Almost all believe in consciousness and most don't have a clue how to explain it, which is wisdom.

<comment><USER16>
       Already in Republic

Given that Plato's _Republic_ was written over 2000 years ago, that's pretty weak a claim to progress in philosophy.

<comment><USER15> IMO the interesting point was the approach:

\- First thinking what could lead to progress.

\- Then progress in the form of 2 lists that answer the question if women should be allowed for the highest political office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Hasn't quantum mechanics demolished the hope that science will make reality > intelligible?

> Not in the least. As Bell said, study Bohm's pilot wave theory and you see > that everything can be explained perfectly well, with no funny business at > all logically or conceptually. We are stuck with non-locality, as Bell > proved, but maybe in the end you need non-locality for the deep simplicity > of law that I anticipate.

I'm not a physicist, but isn't dumping locality a bit of a bigger deal than this quote suggests?

<comment><USER18> Yes, it is!

I think that Bohm's pilot wave theory is appealing to non technical people because it replace all the scary equations of quantum mechanics with a wave and a particle. The trick is that the wave has a scary equation, and the interaction of the wave and the particle has a scary equation, but you can hide the scary equations behind a nice animated graph of a wave and a ball.

For a nonrelativistic particle, the pilot wave is equivalent to the other quantum mechanics interpretations. The other interpretations can be extended to the special relativity case, moreover all the work in the last 50 (or more) years in particle physis use the extended versions. Nobody know how to extend the pilot wave theory, and perhaps it's impossible.

<comment><USER19> I think you're being quite disrespectful in claiming that Bohm's theory is only appealing to "non technical" people, because it hides "scary" parts.

The appeal of Bohm is that it results in QM that is deterministic, without needing to resort to ill-defined notions of collapse.

I'm quite sure "hiding the scary equations" has absolutely zero to do with it, and it honestly comes across as offensive to suggest that it is.

<comment><USER20> > _ill-defined notions of collapse_

Actually, the wavefunction collapse is a very well defined mathematical construct; so, if you are ignoring or trying to avoid it, you are literally "hiding the scary equations."

<comment><USER19> It's well-defined mathematically but ill-defined philosophically. There is no agreement on what an "observation" is -- that is what is ill-defined:

> _The Copenhagen interpretation is the oldest and probably still the most > widely held interpretation of quantum mechanics. Most generally it posits > something in the act of observation which results in the collapse of the > wave function. According to the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation the > causative agent in this collapse is consciousness. How this could happen is > widely disputed._

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

<comment><USER18> It's an open problem, and I'm not sure if there are official tallies, but I think that currently most people think that the explanation is decoherence instead of consciousness. From the same Wikipedia page:

> _Erich Joos and Heinz-Dieter Zeh claim that the phenomenon of quantum > decoherence, which was put on firm ground in the 1980s, resolves the > problem. The idea is that the environment causes the classical appearance of > macroscopic objects._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I'm struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.

<comment><USER22> There is no single universally agreed definition of the term "free will".

So, it is possible to define "free will" in such a way that it is compatible with determinism (e.g., "my will is free if its decisions are the product of my ordinary processes of thinking–even if those ordinary processes are determined by natural laws–as opposed to the product of any extraordinary external interference such as drugs, brainwashing, mind control implants, etc").

Part of the dispute is over whether such a definition of "free will" matches people's everyday pre-philosophical usage, and also whether it works for the purposes of other disciplines in which the concept of "free will" might be invoked, such as ethics or law. Compatibilists would say it is close enough, and can be made to work for those purposes. Incompatibilists say it is a radical redefinition, and undermines those purposes.

<comment><USER23> I think you pretty fairly describe the current landscape of this debate, which is unusual in itself. Kudos!

> Part of the dispute is over whether such a definition of "free will" matches > people's everyday pre-philosophical usage, and also whether it works for the > purposes of other disciplines in which the concept of "free will" might be > invoked, such as ethics or law.

Fortunately, this is an empirical question that has been explored by experimental philosophy [1]. It turns out that most lay people employ Compatibilist reasoning, so I think this question has also been answered.

[1] The latest that I've seen on the topic: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan)

<comment><USER24> Lay people, yes, but lay people also believe in ghosts and angels. Lay people believing it doesn't make it true. Scientific reasoning shows compatibilism is inaccurate, But just how like how belief in an scientifically absurd afterife can make people happy, being scientifically correct is not equivalent to having a good life. And this is a potential definition of the essence religion or wait, properly opposed to science: faith can make you happy even when you are wrong, and losing that faith makes you unhappy. Therefore, having faith is the correct choice for an ideal human life. _It 's right to be wrong._

<comment><USER23> > Lay people, yes, but lay people also believe in ghosts and angels. Lay > people believing it doesn't make it true.

I suggest you read the study and others like it. If you flat out ask people what they believe, with no further context, they tend to support incompatbilist intuitions. But when they _test_ their responses to moral questions, they _employ_ Compatibilist moral reasoning, and agree with claims that are Compatibilist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it just me or is the title not supported by the article?

<comment><USER26> Just you. :) It probably refers to this part:

> Q: Your colleague David Chalmers has fretted that "there has not been large > collective convergence to the truth on the big questions of philosophy," > such as God, free will and consciousness. Does this lack of convergence > bother you?

> A: I disagree with Dave here. Overwhelmingly most philosophers are atheists > or agnostics, which I take to be convergence to the truth. Most are > compatibilist about free will and believe in it, which I also take to be > convergence to the truth. Almost all believe in consciousness and most don't > have a clue how to explain it, which is wisdom. It is not that there isn't > convergence, it is that the outliers who do not converge get much more > attention than the great mass of convergers, who don't particularly stand > out.

<comment><USER27> When most ancient philosophers were theists and believed in libertarian free will and an immaterial soul, was that a convergence to the truth, too?

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure what point you're making. When people believed in a flat Earth, or geocentrism, or miracles, those things did not contradict empirical knowledge of the world. Since then, we have established empiricism as the most useful tool for examining the real world, and expanded the scope of human knowledge considerably. I'm not sure what about that you might take issue with.

<comment><USER27> The idea that consensus entails convergence to the truth, when the best thinkers have consensus on antithetical ideas in different time periods.

<comment><USER28> You're ignoring the different amounts of information those people had about their environments. Do you happen to have issues with a particular scientific consensus, is that where we're going here?

<comment><USER27> It might be that our modern thinkers are missing the forest for the trees because they are overwhelmed with information about their environment.

I don't have any issue with the current consensus, it just seems incorrect reasoning to say consensus is convergence to truth. Why isn't consensus just groupthink, a notoriously bad way to arrive at the truth?

<comment><USER28> The current consensus is the closest that science gets to "truth". Depending on your definition of "groupthink" (which seems like a deliberately pejorative term), either that describes most categories of knowledge, or we can suggest that the difference is that there is a rigorous methodology and system of verification for these beliefs.

<comment><USER27> Consensus does not have the best track record in science. Much better is the actual evidence and experimentation instead of what people who call themselves "scientists" think about the evidence.

<comment><USER28> Consensus _is_ the track record of science. Observations are not theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a > good human life.

I don't think this a properly general definition of philosophy (although he says "contains",maybe he is not after generality). I would say philosophy is the science of definitions. This is why it is fundamental.

<comment><USER30> Bertrand Russell:

 _Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man 's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy_

<comment><USER29> This seems a qoute from the Introduction of his History of western philosophy [1]. But I think the next sentence is important too:

 _Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. [...]_

 _To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy._

But I'm surprised that he considers that "all definite knowledge ... belongs to science." Science, at least physics and astronomy, by definition, accept that their type of knowledge is provisional, always, and not definite.

[1] [https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/51485/in- whic...](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/51485/in-which- publication-does-bertrand-russell-define-philosophy)

<comment><USER30> You are right about the quote.

It seems that what Russell considers definite knowledge is _... answer can be found in the laboratory_. It depends on what is the best available method for proving, to the extent to which this is possible, a given hypothesis. Whenever an experimental method in the scientific sense is possible, then he considers that kind of knowledge definite. I agree that the fact that it is also provisional is confusing, but I think that it's just a matter of language in this case, maybe _definite_ is not the best word.

I agree that maybe his definition is not fully satisfactory. But this book's audience is lay people like me, it is not as much an academic work as a book of popular philosophy (like popular science). For this reason, he probably preferred to write engaging prose, rather than being totally precise but dry.

I posted this quote because whenever there is an article about philosophy in HN, people invariably enter a debate as to what exactly is philosophy. I find that for the lay man his definition is very clear, simple, memorable and beautifully written. I find it very useful in practice, for people like me it is a powerful definition.

<comment><USER29> Yes, I agree. He theologian's knowledge is definite in the sense of absolute. But knowledge gained in the lab is definitely knowledge under given circumstances, but absolute kndwledge.

This turned out to be a good example about the importance of clear definitions of words in philosophical discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can see why this guy is popular.

I wonder whether he'd be so quick to dismiss Gödel and Quine if presented with an utterance like,

        "This sentence is true, but cannot be proven true by any human nor any human-crafted device."

I'm quite confident that this sentence is true, but cannot put forth a proof which would convince anybody; at the same time, just like any other mathematical object, its proof is generated by the observer, who convinces themselves of its truth while simultaneously acknowledging the paradox.

Gödel's entire point was that this formulation was rigorous and could not be escaped by a mere change of (syntactic _or_ semantic) venue. Turing's point was that this formulation extends to computation and effective methods of producing results. Quine's point was that it is the quotation mark, and not the self-reference, that leads to the incompleteness/inconsistency.

I probably wouldn't mind so much, but he seems like the kind of guy who believes in physical cause and effect.

<comment><USER23> > Gödel's entire point was that this formulation was rigorous and could not be > escaped by a mere change of (syntactic or semantic) venue.

Well that's not true, because there exist logics that are both consistent and complete, they simply don't have the expressive power of full arithmetic. This is a syntactic or semantic change, depending on how you frame it.

<comment><USER32> Can you give an example of a consistent and complete logic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 08-15 > No amount of just grinding out the digits and checking will ever prove it: > there are always more digits to check.

This guy doesn't know how mathematical proofs work. If the above was close to reality, nobody could ever proof Fermat's major theorem, because there are "always more triples of numbers to check".

> All Gödel did was find a clever way to construct a provably unprovable > mathematical fact.

That not what Gödel did, and certainly not all he did. Gödel demonstrated that number theory expressed in first order logic is incomplete, i.e. admits more than one model. He did that by constructing a statement that is true in the smallest model, but does not have a proof, because it is false in others.

With these ignorant statements, Maudlin just reinforced my opinion that philosophers are simply professional bullshitters.

<comment><USER33> You're taking that bit out of context. In that sentence he's talking about a very specific thought experiment in which we constuct a theory that certain digits in the root of 17 and the 27th power of pi match. I think his arbitrary example is supposed to be an analogy of Godel's work.

 _Example: let's say that the decimal expressions of the square root of 17 and pi to the 27th power "match" just in case either they have the same digit in the tenths place, or the same two digits in the next two places, or the same three digits in the next three places, etc._

The point of his example here is that the 'match' is defined in never-ending terms. If the 10th digit doesn't match, you check the next two. If they don't match, you check the next three. And so on. You can go on comparing digits forever, even though finding a 'match' becomes less and less likely.

<comment> 08-15 Oh no, not at all. The context is the whole problem, because this is an awful analogy. Maudlin confuses "I think this proposition is false, but I don't know how to prove it." with "This proposition is neither true nor false and I can prove it.", and he does it because he doesn't know what Gödel's work is about.

(Also, "I don't know a proof" is only equivalent to "There is no proof" if you're a pompous asshole that thinks you're smarter than everyone else. Learn some humility, Tim Maudlin.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting that he brings up the story of Er. Plato made all the arguments when it comes to philosophy's why and how. The story of Er is the comprehension test at the end of the book. Sadly, Tim did not pass the Er's test.

<comment><USER35> What is the intended interpretation of Er?

<comment><USER34> Not sure "intended interpretation" can be used to describe anything in the Republic.

The Republic is written to guide human souls out of the cave. Can the curious readers find the truth themselves in the story of Er upon careful examination? Is Er a philosopher? Does a philosopher need rewards described by Er? Can a philosopher choose an inconspicuous life (especally after the disussion of the philosopher's life earlier in the book)? Can you take a story given in a book as the truth without examination after prose was denied place in the Republic?

All is up to the reader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Surprisingly, Ycombinator co-founder Paul Graham was a philosophy major for most of his college years. He has a lot to say about it in one of his essays:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

<comment><USER37> From that article:

>Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley. I have a nice edition of his collected works. Will I ever read it? Seems unlikely.

This is like buying a book about React, putting it on your shelf, not reading it, and then complaining that React is too difficult.

In my opinion, the lack of equations makes philosophy harder, because it's easier to delude yourself. You can read a chapter, parse all the individual words, completely miss the point, and say to yourself, "I read it, it was pointless".

The only productive way to approach philosophy is as a paper-writer. Don't just glaze your eyes over Berkeley, rather, read Berkeley with the determination to go and write an original research paper in response. Now, that paper might very well have a title like "Berkeley's Blunders", but you have to be able to articulate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > So pure theory is not for everyone. But if you love theory, philosophy is > the top of the heap of all the disciplines.

I think calling philosophy "theory" is a bit of a reach. Theories (Relativity, Quantum, Evolution) draw on, and can be falsified by, direct evidence. Philosophy is more argumentation on subjects that won't have scientific basis (morality, meaning of life) or don't yet have one and may never (consciousness).

<comment><USER39> "Theory" is a much broader term than "scientific theory", which is what you're defining. For example, in mathematics you have the "theory of natural numbers", or in art you have the "anti-essentialist theory". These aren't required to be hypotheses about the real-world. Rather they are like frameworks or languages which enable us to discuss and explore complex structures.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps I'm inclined to read it that way from working in physics, which is divided into theory and experiment. He also refers to 'experimentalists' in the preceding sentence, which adds to the effect.

Also if you take the fully general meaning, it's so vague I don't understand how it's something you can 'love', but then maybe that's why I'm not a Philosopher.

Edit: The author's work [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Maudlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Maudlin) is all on the Theoretical Physics / Philosophy boarder, in which "theory" vs "experiment" is the more common usage.

<comment><USER39> I understand where you're coming from but I think a charitable (and perfectly reasonable) interpretation is that he's making a generic theory/practice distinction.

I'd disagree that theory is something you can love since I strongly identify with this sentiment myself. I am not a practical man (as my wife is more than happy to vouch for), but I'm in love with ideas, concepts and abstractions. I love mulling them over and discussing them with like-minded people. It often doesn't matter much to me whether an idea has physical grounding or _can_ be put into practice.

> I want to start off by emphasising that I am not proposing to take sides on > the propositions expressed in this book. I'm an intellectual. Ideas are my > trade. Show me an idea and i'll taste it. Belgians are foodies; my much- > loved colleague Andre Petry lives out in the country. Once when I was > staying with him the field opposite his house delivered overnight a vast > harvest of a kind of particularly delicious toadstool called _coprina > comatus_ , a delicacy regrettably of incontestably phallic appearance known > to English country people as Old man's tool. Most people I have met express > shock and horror at being asked to eat it. Not so Andre. No Belgian will > allow anything to get in the way of a new taste experience. It is the same > with me and ideas.

[https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf/jaynes.pdf](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf/jaynes.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting interview.

"Already in Republic (Plato again!) we have an argument—a clear and compelling rational argument—that even the highest political office should be open to women.'

What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and distinctions. And that is, frankly, absurd and untrue.

'People are free when they are unconstrained and can act as they will to act.'

Again, the argument depends on (i) that you accept the post-Hobbesian account of negative liberty, and not the Hegelian account of positive liberty, or the neo-Roman account of liberty as freedom from domination, or the various socialist accounts of liberty (and again, whether we do goes back to the first point viz. what premises we start from, and what categories we use); (ii) and upon specifying what it is to be 'constrained', especially whether this involves mental, and not just physical, interference.

<comment><USER41> >What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and distinctions. And that is, frankly, absurd and untrue.

I'd think that defining "rationality" as "a sense in which one can be rationally compelled through argumentation to (verbally) adopt premises, categories, and distinctions" is circular. You end up sorta just defining "rational" as "the thing we do in the Agora".

<comment><USER40> I don't follow. I meant to suggest that humans will never agree on the same structure of premises and argumentation, and that we simply cannot get past that, to a space above or beyond historical language, to an uncontested consensus. But if not, on what grounds can we possibly say that one particular conception of morality is True or Rational? That is what is required of moral realism - which I take, as an atheist, to be as odd and implausible as theism.

<comment><USER41> >I meant to suggest that humans will never agree on the same structure of premises and argumentation, and that we simply cannot get past that, to a space above or beyond historical language, to an uncontested consensus.

So what? People don't have to _agree_ on the truth. It just has to be true.

>But if not, on what grounds can we possibly say that one particular conception of morality is True or Rational?

Well partly that depends on how you define "morality", but first and foremost, we can do it by the same means we use to determine that a particular conception of "cream cheese" or "routing algorithms" is True and Rational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk."

Oh, the staggering irony of responding to the charge that philosophers don't produce anything worthwhile with an ad hominem. Res ipsa loquitur.

<comment><USER13> It wasn't ad hominem. He had addressed the argument, and refers to that, before adding that Popper was an egocentric jerk. That might be abusive, but it's not ad hominem (because it's in addition, not instead of, a rebuttal of the argument).

See the excellent "Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy":

[https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html](https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html)

<comment><USER42> We'll just have to agree to disagree about that. It's pretty clear to me that "egocentric jerk" was intended to impugn Popper's credibility and not just a random insult.

But if it wasn't an ad hominem, then it was a non-sequitur. Either way, it's not the most effective way to support the position the philosophy has made progress IMHO. Hence: irony.

<comment><USER43> Being an egocentric jerk makes you no less credible, it just makes you unpleasant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> A bit off-topic, but philosophy has a huge underground following now. Even I started to get into philosophy of systems (general systems theory) as well as pure topics like epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and logic.

If you are out of Uni and never learnt it while in Uni, I recommend looking into Objectivism.

</comment><comment><USER45> Philosophy to me is a kind of fanciful thinking. Article mentions something about being "purely theoretical", but is your life theoretical or real? If it's real you can't approach it by pure theory. As well as there is much more to life than just thinking.

<comment><USER46> > Philosophy to me is a kind of fanciful thinking.

Then you don't properly understand philosophy.

One thing philosophy does is help you construct valid arguments and to recognize fallacies, which are very useful, practical skills.

I took a course on logic as part of my undergrad degree, and it was there that I learned about De Morgan's laws -- which I use frequently when I'm programming.

Moral philosophers confront some really big issues, but they're not all bizarre hypotheticals. Many of them have real-world consequences, such as the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Philosophy is not all about navel-gazing. It's unfortunate that so many people hold mistaken views about it.

<comment><USER47> I am quite competent software engineer and good at math too. But never really understand what Philosophy meant and what does it tries to study. To me sometimes it sounds like too much of a fake stuff like religion. Any resources or books that you can point to get a clear understanding of what philosophy really tries to study about ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Philosophy has made progress -- backwards. Most developments since the end of the scholastic era have been failures.

<comment><USER49> 100%. I was cringing throughout this entire article - first off, Philosophy in scientific journal. Those two domains are innately distinct from eachother. When people start talking about science and intermixing philosophy I cannot help but cringe. People need to really read and understand Aristotle before attempting the enlightenment authors, then the postmoderns. This whole article was nothing short of nonsense</comment></comment>


Tell HN: YC is hosting a Work at a Startup Expo in Los Angeles on March 7 - <AUTHOR> Y Combinator runs its annual Work at a Startup Expo in SF each year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20033551), and one of the biggest requests we've been hearing is to bring this to engineers in other areas.
To that end, we are looking to host more location-specific events in 2020, and the first one is in Los Angeles/Culver City on March 7th. We welcome engineers to apply to attend: https://workatastartup.com/expo
For this event: founders and hiring managers of 20+ YC companies (mostly from the LA area) give quick pitches about their business, their tech stack and why an engineer might be excited to join. After the pitches, we host an open house where engineers are welcome to meet directly with the founders/team to learn more. These events are an efficient and effective way to meet a lot of YC-vetted startups quickly, and to see what jobs are out there in case you're looking for a new role.
LA's startup ecosystem has been continuing to get stronger, and we're excited to help engineers find great YC-vetted startups. This year's companies cover the spectrum across software infra, AI, cannabis, health & fitness and more, and include both 5-person startups and bigger ones like Standard Cognition and Reddit (much larger, but still a YC-backed company and interesting to many people!)
Working for a startup may not be for everybody; Justin Kan has a great post on why NOT to work at a startup: https://www.atrium.co/blog/work-at-a-startup/. I've been through my fair share of startups and large companies, and will be the first to tell you what you're getting into with either. I'm also happy to chat 1-1 with anybody who might be interested or have reservations: ryan AT ycombinator.com.
For any engineer in Southern California who is interested or curious about working at a YC startup, apply to attend the LA event here: https://workatastartup.com/expo <comment><USER2> Only 5 of the listed companies are actually in LA. All the rest are in SF/Bay Area. No thank you,

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I should have checked more carefully before noting that. The LA startups currently lined up and based in Los Angeles are: FightCamp, FLOWER, Relativity Space, Sorting Robotics and UpKeep.

I'm working to have a few others LA YC startups join us as well. The rest have founders & teams coming in from SF (and one from Chicago), and are eager to chat about remote or SF roles.

If these LA startups and/or the opportunity to relocate to SF isn't possible, you're right -- it's not a good fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a quick note: we're continuing to onboard more companies in Southern California. Recently confirmed are GOAT, Embrace and Intersect Labs (San Diego).

I apologize again for not checking my work earlier. Being from Anaheim, I've always hoped that a LA/OC startup community would emerge, and I'm hopeful that this event can showcase some great YC startups that have chosen to plant their roots down there.

Will provide more updates as they come, and hope to see many of you there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you share this with the TechLA subreddit? [https://reddit.com/r/techLA](https://reddit.com/r/techLA)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a fantastic idea. I'll do so, and let me know how I can be helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Ryan, great event. At some point will it open to design/marketing as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! YC companies are looking for a variety of roles; if you want to share a profile, feel free to email it to me and I can float around our community.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Cheers Ryan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the same weekend as SCaLE. Unclear if that's a good or bad thing

<comment><USER6> I went to SCaLE the last two years and I've found the talks to be pretty mediocre overall, but yes I imagine this will draw traffic away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any possibility of an East Coast meetup in the near future?

</comment><comment><USER8> Dupe and typo in the title...

<comment><USER9> I looked at it like 5 times and didn't see the typo. Talk about Paris in the the Spring. Fixed now—thanks!

(Submitted title was "Tell HN: Y Combinator is hosting a Work a Startup Expo in Los Angeles on March 7".)

<comment><USER8> You are welcome Sir!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dont do it. Startups are awful, they are companies that are not mature. Its like working for a 13 year old. Not a serious professional environment.</comment>


Show HN: Decoupled – A lightweight music player for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://decoupled.app <comment><USER2> Hey there,

Would you be interested in collaborating on a music project. I'm working on a selfhosted music streaming server called mStream that allows you to stream music from a home computer to any device. I began writing it several years ago when I couldn't find a good solution for FLAC streaming.

The main thing I'm missing is an iOS app. Let me know if you're interested.

The project: [https://github.com/IrosTheBeggar/mStream](https://github.com/IrosTheBeggar/mStream)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I'm looking to set something like this up soon. What are the advantages compared to more established protocols with servers and clients, like Subsonic/Airsonic, or Ampache?

<comment><USER2> Subsonic/Ampache wins when it comes to client support. mStream's biggest downside is the lack of good mobile clients.

mStream has an advantage in the areas of DB and installation. mStream makes use of LokiJS, an in-memory DB that is VERY fast. mStream also comes packaged as a single click installer for Win/OSX (see the release pages for this). These installers have no dependencies and are configurable via a GUI, making very easy for non-technical people to setup their own home servers.

mStream is also taking a turn to support a different market in the future. I'm working on adding eCommerce tools to the server, so bands and musicians can use it as a way to sell music/merch without having a 3rd party take a cut of the revenue.

Also mStream will always be FOSS, if that matters to you

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jens-c I have been looking for something like this for a long time on iOS. I am not into streaming at all, but I have a large collection of physical media converted into electronic form. (I also very much appreciate your no tracking and analytics policy.)

One feature that I still do miss is to organize or browse my collection on the app by a self-defined folder structure. Most apps offer to sort by artist, album titles, genres etc., but I do not find this sufficient or convenient, especially if your collection is very heterogenous.

For example, I have my pop albums sorted by artist, but my classical music by composer (rather than artists/performer). I also have a large collection of singles which I prefer to have in a separate folder (to not clutter the pop artist directory too much), sorted chronologically. Similarly, I keep compilations in a separate folder, and do not want every artist of a single song in a compilation appear in my overall list, or have all compilations lumped under "Various Artists".

As far as I can see, Decoupled already maintains the files in the user-given folder structure, and technically I can just click on "Files" and then browse through it. Would it be possible however to place this option more prominently on the main screen that is visible when the app opens up? Or even make the options on the main screen user-configurable, similar to how the iOS music player allows enabling and disabling the "Artist", "Genre" etc. entries in the media library?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, how about putting "Files" in another tab at the bottom like "Library" and "Playback"?

<comment> jens-c That would be an option, too. Can I then set the app to open with the "Files" view by default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, that's how I would implement it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > An app for those who take music seriously.

> Do you like music streaming services?

> Do you enjoy companies telling you what you should listen to each week?

> Did you stop buying music years ago?

> If you answer with "yes" to any of these questions, Decoupled wasn't made > for you. Sorry.

Why bother alienating people who enjoy streaming services? Plenty of people, myself included, use Spotify but also have music that isn't on Spotify and want a good player for it.

I would also argue that anyone who takes music seriously should love music streaming services, because they offer an incredible value for the price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for making you feel alienated. It's just a snarky tagline, that's all. You can have Spotify and Decoupled installed side by side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very nice at first glance.

I liked the multitude of transfer options in VLC, but felt like the UI was too busy. Decoupled has most of the same transfer options, but looks a lot more like an iOS app.

One odd thing I noticed; I uploaded several directories of music using AirDrop, and every single file I uploaded shows up on the device with a corresponding 212 byte file with the prefix ._ mixed in. Does Decoupled add that? It makes reading the file list a bit harder.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's called a resource fork: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork)

Those files contain out-of-band metadata for the given file. Now, for file systems that don't natively support resource forks (read: anything but Apple's own filesystem(s)), Finder insists on storing them as dot-underscore files. E.g. Mac clients are notorious for littering SMB shares with these dot- underscore files.

As for why it's created when sharing stuff through AirDrop, from one Apple device to another, that's beyond me...

I think it might make sense to hide these dot-underscore files from the file browser, along with .DS_Store and maybe thumbs.db (I'm not even sure whether modern Windows still creates thumbs.db). Will do it in the next version.

Thanks for the feedback! I wanted exactly this iOS-native look & feel you're talking about. I personally don't like other apps forcing their designers' UX vision on me... A curated music library with quality artworks speaks for itself. I don't want my app to stand between users and their libraries :)

<comment><USER6> >I'm not even sure whether modern Windows still creates thumbs.db

Just chiming in here to let you know it does. Quite at random it seems (at least that's what it feels like) - but it does! Also thanks for shedding some light on the mysterious ._ folder/files that get created for me when I use Beets ([http://beets.io/](http://beets.io/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool. As someone with a giant library of ripped cds organized in a nice file structure, this is definitely interesting. I hate going through the iTunes library.

Any chance you could let it access audio files stored in Dropbox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I guess accessing files from Dropbox is not too hard in itself. You can already do that in a somewhat roundabout way by choosing "Open in..." in the Dropbox app and then selecting "Copy to Decoupled".

Indexing and keeping track of all items in Dropbox, without actually storing them locally is a bit harder. But then I guess you would need streaming for those files too, which is another can of worms.

Long story short: possible in theory, but unlikely in near term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sent you an email. I would love to be able to add "weight" to songs in my "shuffled" playlist so I can identify songs to play less often and other to play on "heavy rotation".

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it! Check your inbox ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice work grabbing a .app domain!

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually Decoupled wasn't the original name of the app, but when the .app TLD was opened, that original name was already taken. So I had to come up with a new name for the release.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Around a year ago I've became tired of not being able to play FLAC or Opus on my iPhone, so I've checked third-party apps in the AppStore which supported these formats. Sadly, all of them looked very unpolished, so I've decided to write my own.

<comment><USER10> You should totally make this a few bucks

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but I'm not planning to monetize it. If it gains adoption in its niche, that's enough for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You should add the application/project name to the post title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, is it possible to edit post titles? :/

<comment><USER12> For an hour or two, usually. Then it goes away. When it is possible to edit the title, you will see an |edit| link under your submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Meh. I'm way past that unfortunately. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Raindrops that refract and merge (canvas, js) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dllu.net/raindrops/ <comment><USER2> Nice. But I expected some gravity, so the raindrops slide slowly over the "glass".

Another problem is that when the raindrops are too big, then a "cross" appear over them (I guess it's an artifact of the ilumination.) [http://imgur.com/bX9Uebp](http://imgur.com/bX9Uebp)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, gravity can be implemented easily I think. Another thing is that raindrops are not always perfectly circular.

The "cross" is an artifact of the way I deal with saturation. The raindrops are simply Gaussian functions and the shading/refraction depends on the gradient thereof. If you keep clicking in one spot, the function values and the gradients become very large -- then the top half of the raindrop becomes black and the bottom half becomes white. To mitigate this, I simply run everything through the sigmoid function f(x) = 2/(1-exp(-x))-1, but this leads to the "cross" artifact. I'll think about how to deal with this a bit more.</comment></comment>


More information about our processes to safeguard speech data - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/more-information-about-our-processes-safeguard-speech-data/ <comment><USER2> > Audio snippets are not associated with user accounts as part of the review > process.

This is a bold claim. The VRT journalist were able to re-identify few data subjects and confirmed with them that their data was being listened by Google contractors. "'This is undeniably my own voice', says one man, clearly surprised." wrote the journalist.

> The Google Assistant only sends audio to Google after your device detects > that you're interacting with the Assistant.

Well, this is not what the contractor said [1]. The contractor heard private conversations, sex scenes, and violence including "a woman who was in definite distress".

[https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/07/10/google-employees- are...](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/07/10/google-employees-are- eavesdropping-even-in-flemish-living-rooms/)

<comment><USER3> > The contractor heard private conversations, sex scenes, and violence > including "a woman who was in definite distress".

I think this is a bit disingenuous and intentionally sensationalist, nobody has any reason to believe that the Assistant is always listening or will just trigger randomly or on demand by Google because they want to listen to particular conversations, that doesn't even really make any sense. Also various parties have access to the source code, so if it were malicious, there can be evidence of it. That there isn't any evidence is important to mention in this context.

In reality its just that it can randomly miss-classify "Ok Google", nothing malicious about that, and obviously the purpose of the annotator is to look at unrecognized samples, so obviously they are gonna frequently hear those cases, that's sort of the whole point of this.

Maybe "well, duh, how do you think it knows your voice? magical pixie dust?" is a bit of a cop out, but honestly there are two options, them doing what they are doing right now, and not have Google Assistant.

<comment><USER4> My experience with my Google home before I unplugged it is that it would randomly kick on - even in relative silence, unless the clack of a keyboard and maybe a fan whir could be misheard as "okay Google"

I would notice because it sat on my computer desk.

To be clear, I don't think it was nefarious that it would, just that I realized I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would and decided to unplug it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google's argument is that the audio they store is non-private and non- personally identifiable. So this statement doesn't make sense:

> We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data > security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data.

Isn't the whole point that the audio is supposed to be innocuous? "Hey google, play Coldplay" or "Hey google, play Taylor Swift." If that's the only audio that Google stores, then there should be no problem with leaking it to the press.

But it isn't, which is what the translator was trying to show in the first place!

<comment><USER6> I believe this is the article that they're referring to: [https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/07/10/google-employees- are...](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2019/07/10/google-employees-are- eavesdropping-even-in-flemish-living-rooms/) Basically after listening to a bunch of audio, the reporters found some where the device had turned on but recorded identifiable information. Also Google would consider any audio to be confidential even is the material in it is innocuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Building products for everyone is a core part of our DNA at Google. We hold > ourselves to high standards of privacy and security in product development, > and hold our partners to these same standards_

I guess those standards don't include clearly letting end users know that their data will be stored, shared and transcribed by 3rd parties (not that the 1st party in this case isn't bad enough).

The leak is not the problem here (and it's extremely disconcerting that they're focusing on that). Their lack of communication with consumers is the problem. This blog post makes things worse as far as I'm concerned.

</comment><comment><USER8> I will not use google home unless they remove the restriction to provide both browser history and location on your google account / cell phone. When my google home refused to work after disabling tracking features I unplugged it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the home bricking itself when you turn off those settings is infuriating. The Google Assistant effectively bricks itself too.

As if they need your location and browsing history if they're gonna play that song you asked for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This response is no inadequate that it is almost laughable.

They claim that their experts can listen to a small number of recordings of human speech directed at their devices. However, there is no telling what people might be speaking to their Google devices. I don't use Google Home, but given that it allows one to set reminders, etc., I would think that people could be saying pretty sensitive things, including phone numbers, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. which combined together can identify them uniquely or at least allow those bits of information to be misused.

Also, embedded in the figure of 0.2%, mentioned for the percentage of spoken interactions listened to, is the assumption that it is a very small number. However, that number implies that 1 out of every 500 interactions are listened to. For a family of 4 owning a Google Home, the number of spoken interactions with it in a year would easily run into thousands. Therefore, the experts at Google are listening to at least a handful of interactions every year for each family. Given the speech-to-text state-of-the-art, if these recordings are being converted to text and being stored, it would not be hard to group the recorded interactions per family and derive some identifiable information about them from it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have both Home and Alexa in my house. If I give Google the full benefit of the doubt and believe that they only record when I say 'Hey/OK Google', what about Alexa? Does it send the recording to its server all the time or only transfer them when I invoke its service?

<comment><USER12> In both cases they only send what they heard after you used the wake word.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand how this is a controversial claim that people refute when it's so easy to test with something like Wireshark. If someone is paranoid enough spread FUD on the Internet, they should be paranoid enough to actually check with freely available tools.

<comment><USER14> If conspiracy theorists looked at facts, they wouldn't be conspiracy theorists. The common denominator of people who claim that these devices are always sending voice data, is that they have zero interest in learning how they actually work, the information is widely and easily available.

<comment><USER15> if by 'conspiracy theorist' you mean the literal definition, then you're talking about anyone who theorizes regarding the existence of a conspiracy. There's nothing wrong with that.

If by 'conspiracy theorist' you mean someone who suspects the government or corporations of foul play, then don't forget about 'government surveilance', one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the last several decades - until it turned out to be true. (did you dismiss them as well, before snowden put hard evidence behind the reasonable speculation?)

Either way, you shouldn't talk down to people who find minimal, available evidence worthy of speculation. It's not conducive to reasonable discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One would think that with all the very smart people that Google hires that such issues would be thought about and measures put in place to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen. Yet it seems to keep happening so I question how hard they are really trying.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a conspicuous lack of anything like "we ask permission to save data at setup time and don't store anything unless the user clicks Yes."

</comment><comment><USER18> How many of these incidents have to become public before some prosecutor decides they can make the argument that people in the vicinity of digital assistants no longer have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070)

<comment><USER12> That was the discussion about the actual incident, not Google's response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to see "An update on Google Assistant".</comment>


How my Mac Book Pro 2017 destroyed 2 USB-C devices - <AUTHOR> https://smallhacks.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/how-my-mac-book-pro-2017-destroyed-2-usb-c-devices/ <comment><USER2> May be another Class Action? I doubt Apple will fix it for free if it was over a year. Not to mention the damaged USB Disk, and the invaluable data inside.

Killed Airport, No Mac mini update, No iMac Redesign or just thinner bezel, No Mac Pro in 2018, Worst MBP in Apple's history. Apple now is nothing more then an iPhone company. And Mac is something they "care" about when they have spare time.</comment>


Am I Still Here? - <AUTHOR> http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4234

<comment><USER2> I love that he calls his envious half "Z". The letter after every other letter; even the lower case "z". Of course, there are numbers but screw 'em; they are cold and calculating.

"Z" should be the last of his worries, but, first thing in the morning, it is the first of his concerns. Start with "A" and work to "Z". This world; our connected universe tells us to ignore our intuition and instinct and rely on the "real" information.

Your son wants to know more about his grasshopper leg, but you're burnt out with the web(a source of information greater than all libraries of the world, past and present) because you relied so heavily on being informed by an ultimately artificial world.

He's right. These moments, these thoughts; what do I know? why I am here? what did I do today?, are recurring thoughts. Now, 200 years past and future, they'll still be there. You're son or daughter, your wife, will not. The life with them lasts only briefly in the grand theme of existence. The emotions and joy or sadness felt only briefly. If you don't catch them like confetti in the wind, you are lost. You will always be lost.

Start with "A" and work towards "Z".

<comment><USER3> Both the article and you have inspired me to ban digg and reddit from my reading list. There are grander things in life than reading about yet more war atrocities and political boondoggles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seem to know if I am still here, but not where I am going. When I think I know where I'm going I could not tell you if I was still here.

</comment><comment><USER5> And that is why I have an old school cell phone...

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd say it's at least 50-50.</comment>


The Politician and the Engineer: Why Managers Hate Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://joshuascholl.posterous.com/the-politician-and-the-engineer-why-managers

<comment><AUTHOR> I should note that this is a discussion of engineering managers: I'm pretty sure that if you're the manager of a field that doesn't traditionally involve critical thinking, relatively little of this would apply.</comment>