Show HN: My weekend project - Hacker News inside Sublime Text 2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotty/HackerNews-SublimeTextPlugin

<comment><AUTHOR> Weekend project - my first Sublime Text 2 plugin. If you have package control installed, no need to go to the Github page, just search "Hacker News" and you should be able to find it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sublime Text 2 isn't too far off from being able to read mail, is it?

How is ST2 plugin development? Is the API stable? Well-documented?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe an email client could be my next plugin ;-)

It's not the best documented API I've worked with but it's also nowhere near the worst. There's also a very active IRC channel on Freenode (#sublimetext) which I found helpful. The API docs are here: <http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/api_reference.html>

I borrowed quite a bit by reading the source of other plugins too (especially PlainTasks, a very good To Do list tool for Sublime). I think this is pretty much essential to creating a plugin as there are parts that just aren't documented very well, or at least I couldn't find it.

Finally, Sublime borrows quite a bit from Textmate. The theme syntax, for example, is taken from Textmate - so you can always read the documentation for Textmate's API, which is somewhat better documented.</comment></comment>


How iOS 13 redraws your eyes so you're looking at the camera - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/schukin/status/1146359923158089728 <comment><USER2> I am reminded of a brief story about video calls in David Foster Wallace's _Infinite Jest_. Some excerpts:

 _Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her...Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable._

 _The proposed solution to what the telecommunications industry's psychological consultants termed Video-Physiognomic Dysphoria (or VPD) was, of course, the advent of High-Definition Masking;_

 _Mask-wise, the initial option of High-Definition Photographic Imaging — i.e. taking the most flattering elements of a variety of flattering multi-angle photos of a given phone-consumer and — thanks to existing image-configuration equipment already pioneered by the cosmetics and law-enforcement industries — combining them into a wildly attractive high-def broadcastable composite of a face wearing an earnest, slightly overintense expression of complete attention — was quickly supplanted by the more inexpensive and byte-economical option of (using the exact same cosmetic-and-FBI software) actually casting the enhanced facial image in a form-fitting polybutylene-resin mask,_

[http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527](http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527)

<comment><USER3> Yeah this whole snapchat phenomenon with filters is literally out of Infinite Jest. It's almost hilarious how exact he got the fact that people will be talking with each other on the camera, and it will literally be a visually enhanced version of themselves communicating with each other. I mean people have no shame in photoshopping their entire form and passing it off as themselves. We are a sad bunch. Except for the ones who don't comply.

<comment><USER4> I was very surprised when I downloaded zoom yesterday and noticed that an "appearance enhancement filter" is enabled by default. This is something that I am not used to outside of social and camera apps from (mostly) Asian countries

Sad state of the world where the _default_ in a business related App is essentially telling you that this is necessary. Can't be healthy for society

<comment><USER5> Eh, it really doesn't do much but smooth skin.

I'd rather a client/vendor/coworker not be distracted if someone on the call has big nasty pimples, and I'd rather have a coworker with big nasty pimples feel more comfortable getting on a video call.

<comment><USER4> The existence of the feature is not a problem, that's just where technology is heading. For individual use it could be enabled, if desired

But it being made default and thereby de facto saying that everyone needs it is absurd. There is no way that something like this is not damaging to society in the long run

<comment><USER6> I wonder, however, if smoothing skin makes for a lighter (compressed) image, resulting in bandwidth savings. We don't need to see skin details in a work conversation, just expressions.

Perhaps the feature should just be renamed/rebranded to something like "smartly reduce image details to save bandwidth"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't help but think all this image recognition/manipulation tech being silently applied is a tad creepy. IMHO going beyond things like automatic focus/white balance or colour adjustments, and identifying more specific things to modify, crosses the line from useful to creepy.

<comment><USER8> It looks like there's a toggle [https://twitter.com/flyosity/status/1146136279647772673](https://twitter.com/flyosity/status/1146136279647772673)

But yes, it crosses the line where it's no longer a camera (as a feature, it does not capture reality)

<comment><USER9> What is truth?

When the person on the other end of the call is looking at the image of me on their screen, the physical truth is that they're looking away from the camera, but the emotional truth is that their eyes are looking at me.

When I'm chatting with loved ones, which truth is more important? Physical truth, or emotional truth?

Consider for a moment that an offset front-facing camera might be just as serious a distortion of truth.

<comment><USER8> You've lost me at "emotional truth". The camera captures a specific scene. The result is processed to correct for lens distortions / colour / lighting issues. But none of those changes the content.

I don't think an offset camera is distorting anything. It captures the image it's expected to capture.

<comment><USER10> But it doesn't capture the image the _user_ expects it to capture - when on a Facetime call, they expect (or at least _want_ , if they think about it at all) to be looking _directly at_ the other parties to the call. All this is doing is correcting for _that_ , hence "emotional truth". Reality is always _shaped_ by our emotions and our mental state, and thus there is merit to the idea that a representation of reality that isn't _100% physically accurate_ can still be closer to what we perceive as reality.

<comment><USER8> I see where you're going, but I disagree with the "emotional truth" idea. It crosses the line for me: fixing eyes is on the same level as a gender swap or cat face filter. It modifies content and meaning and I'm against this being normalised in normal communication.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how the eye correction is any less of a "modification of content and meaning" than the use of an offset camera angle which it's correcting for. Just because the offset angle is currently a technical necessity and an "analogue" distortion, doesn't make it any less of a manipulation.

<comment><USER8> > doesn't make it any less of a manipulation.

I think we've got a fundamental disagreement here. We'll just have to agree to disagree :-)

<comment><USER9> In an effort to be more agreeable, I really do understand where you're coming from. I'm just openly wondering if there is a technology bias at play making stuff we're already accustomed to and which feels normal to us (e.g. cameras with rectilinear lenses capturing images from arbitrary angles) feel less manipulative than stuff which is new and technically sophisticated.

<comment><USER11> what up SJ. I have to comment on you again my friend. Why are you so passionate about this eyeball re-drawing technology? Do you video call your family and friends all the time because you live far away?

Reading these conversations i'm going a bit crazy as you try to rationalize why this eyeball redrawing business is a good and necessary tech. I think it's complete trash. Is this the tech that makes apple worth billions of dollars?

Not trying to stir shit up with you. just generally curious as I have an extremely opposite viewpoint. I am 28, prime millenial love to use apps and phone age. I am a huge nerd and geek (clearly as we are commenting on HN lol). I have literally never face-timed anyone except when other people are doing it and I am nearby.

<comment><USER9> I first used a Macintosh 512k when I was around 5 years old. I had my own PC by the time I was 18 (a dual celeron 300A at one point) and I now spend my days doing programming and web development.

I'm now 38 and I've seen my two year old son's face light up when he sees his mum through the phone screen.

My wife's parents are on the other side of the planet and their intercontinental video chats connect them to our family.

I love science, math, philosophy and photography. I should care about pixel perfect truth. But to me the value of FaceTime is entirely emotional. I say that when my wife looks into my eyes, I want to see her eyes looking at mine. The fact that this isn't how it works now is because of optical distortion. While this isn't a true holistic fix for the underlying distortion—that would be amazing—it looks like a neat solution.

I've not seen it live and I'll reserve final judgment till then. If it's even slightly noticeable I'll absolutely hate it. But if I can see no sign of trickery when staring into my wife's eyes, it might just make the world a happier place, even if only a tiny bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I fail to see how this is creepy (outside of potential uncanny valley issues in edge cases). There is a toggle to disable it, and this is something that most average non-savvy users would either want by default, or wouldn't even notice happening (because the end result will look natural to most).

I don't buy the slippery slope argument here, _yet_. All they're doing is shifting eyes and nose to compensate for physical offset from the camera. Seems like Animoji would be _more_ creepy, as it's capturing your entire face movement.

<comment><USER12> > I don't buy the slippery slope argument here, yet.

That's how the slippery slopes get you. They look all gentle and inviting at the beginning like you can totally stand on them no problem, then the slippery gets you and you're sliding right on down.

<comment><USER13> The real problem with talking about slippery slopes in tech is that we're already on an unrecoverable slide into the unknown. So the question is just "does this new thing make the slide even faster?" Not, "we're on stable ground and we need to be careful about beginning a slide."

There's no going back and we have no idea where we're headed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Before/after images: [https://twitter.com/WSig/status/1146146914985009154](https://twitter.com/WSig/status/1146146914985009154)

<comment><USER14> I really want to see this, but I opt out of having a twitter account :(

<comment><USER15> Hunh? You can view tweets just fine without twitter accounts.

<comment><USER16> This also happens with posts from Facebook often. People just want to show the world how virtuous they are by not having accounts in popular networks, so they don't even click the link but complain they can't read the content. Reminds me of this:

[https://twitter.com/1990sLinuxUser/status/97350916902105089](https://twitter.com/1990sLinuxUser/status/97350916902105089)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Huh. I was on a team that experimented with this a few years ago, and the results were so uncanny-valley that we quickly stopped going down the path -- despite it looking "real", people wound up looking like slightly possessed demons because there was something "just off" about their eyes. I mean, it seriously freaked us out.

I'm really wondering if/how iOS avoids this, or if it took a ton of extra work.

<comment><USER18> I'm just hoping that it will correct my eyes so I can watch TV in the background while my girlfriend thinks I'm looking at her during the videochat.

<comment><USER19> I don't think it works like that. iOS is adjusting your eyes by a specific angle to account for the distance from the screen to the camera. If you look away it will appear to the person on the other end of the call that you are looking away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I understand why this feels creepy in our tech bubble, but I think it's worth noting how popular apps like FaceTune have become the past few years [0] [1].

I'm certainly not defending this trend and I think it's incredibly unhealthy — especially for the average teenager who's already naturally self-conscious about their appearances. But a minor eye correction will be peanuts in the eyes of this crowd (no pun intended) compared to the amount of processing that most of their Instagram and Snapchat photos go through before being uploaded.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/09/facetune- photo...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/09/facetune- photoshopping-app-instagram-body-image-debate)

[1] [https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/photo-retouching-apps- affe...](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/photo-retouching-apps-affect- impressionable-teens-social-media/story?id=56928554)

</comment><comment><USER21> Weird, what happens when you are actually trying to look at something else?

<comment><USER22> Insert image of Clockwork Orange film scene where a machine holds your eyes open and forces you to look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was wondering why skype and any other video chat don't do this five years ago, or more.

Probably we needed deep learning to do this well.

<comment><USER24> Correct. Apple certainly "reused" the infrastructure they established with realtime facial recognition and manipulation, all encapsuled in ARKit ([https://developer.apple.com/augmented- reality/arkit/](https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/arkit/)). Furthermore, these compute intensive codes are accelerated with special chips ("AI chip", "Neural engine", etc.). That's actually quite novel stuff which wasn't there five years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sorry I'm not seeing it, can someone explain in bit more detail what is going on?

<comment><USER26> One of the drawbacks of video chat is that the camera on your device is offset from the face of the person that you're chatting with (typically your camera is on top of your screen, rather than embedded in the middle of it). This leaves people chatting with the impression that the person they're chatting with is staring at their neck.

This new iOS video chat software modifies your video stream to correct for this camera/screen offset by _redrawing your eyes_. The end effect is that the person you're chatting has the impression that you're looking into their eyes rather than at their neck.

The effect is subtle, but can be made more obvious by putting a straight wire in front of your eyes. With the software feature disabled, the wire appears straight. With the software enabled, the wire appears bent.

<comment><USER25> thanks, I get it now and see it now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is such an elegant solution! Previous discussions about how to solve this issue revolved around putting a camera in the center of the phone behind the screen!

</comment><comment><USER28> The Simpsons did it again: [https://imgur.com/a/oGSkSgN](https://imgur.com/a/oGSkSgN)

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice to see this feature. A few months ago I made a demo app for my own personal use which did this exact thing, just to see if it would work. As I was still learning AR at the time, I didn't fully understand the API well enough and I just had a point cloud with loads of holes in it, but it still showed it worked, and made me wonder why Apple hadn't already done it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love this. What a casual use of futuristic technology to make what people want to express real. Great work from Apple.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had a video call interview and I was quite impressed how that woman always seemed to look at the camera, because I really thought she was looking at me and not me on the screen.

I told her, but she answered that she was not really staring at the camera. I guess it makes sense now.

</comment><comment><USER32> Off topic: anyone know why 100% of the time I load a Twitter post from HN it loads "something has gone wrong" and I must refresh the page once to see the tweet?

</comment><comment><USER33> I asked for this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12165812)

:)</comment>


Who has the most electoral votes right now - <AUTHOR> http://www.whoisthepresidentrightnow.com/

<comment><USER2> Start building your next app around their undocumented API: <http://www.whoisthepresidentrightnow.com/election-data>

</comment><comment><USER3> Technically speaking, Barack Obama is the president until next year. But, it would be interesting to know more about sites like this one -- how they poll realtime data, which sources they trust, etc.

Just calling the election based on "right now" is just for political adrenaline junkies. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER4> Given that the process is still unfolding, a single page site around a single, albeit moving, data point is slightly amusing. However, I fail to any other point to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Vague to say the least given the counting process. Obama has clearly won already by taking Florida.

<comment><USER6> Depends on Iowa and Nevada, but yes it's unlikely that Obama loses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Press refresh several times. It will cycle between the presidents, even though the number of electoral votes do not change.

<comment><USER8> Maybe they fixed the bug in between the time you posted this and when I tried it. It never changed for me, even after numerous refreshes (refreshi?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Should really quote a source? or sources?

<comment><USER10> Suspect it's <http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/results>

edit: or the same source as huffpost at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is bullshit.</comment>


Build a "Not Hotdog" Clone with React Native - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/build-a-not-hotdog-clone-with-react-native-8f9b9eb75bd2 <comment><USER2> Turns out, the original Not Hotdog app was actually built with RN. Somebody wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/@timanglade/how-hbos-silicon-valley- built...](https://medium.com/@timanglade/how-hbos-silicon-valley-built-not- hotdog-with-mobile-tensorflow-keras-react-native-ef03260747f3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not use tensorflow.js or onnx.js and just do this in the browser/locally? Models have gotten good and this type of classification is very cheap these days. Hitting the network for such a small task is very much overkill

</comment><comment><USER4> Azumio has a pretty nice API that does food recognition as a service if you want to expand beyond hot dogs :)

[http://caloriemama.ai/api](http://caloriemama.ai/api)

</comment><comment><USER5> Using yarn, without hooks, and giving Google even more data.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like you have some opinions on these things but didn't say what it is. Are those bad? Why?

<comment><USER5> Yarn is generally regarded as not necessary anymore: [https://medium.com/@vincentnewkirk/npm-vs- yarn-2019-e88757b1...](https://medium.com/@vincentnewkirk/npm-vs- yarn-2019-e88757b17038)

While hooks are generally regarded as faster, classes are actually much closer than previously though. But they still get beat out in the benchmarks: [https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/this-benchmark-is-indeed- fla...](https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/this-benchmark-is-indeed- flawed-c3d6b5b6f97f)

Firebase was bought by Google, which while there hasn't been anything in the news regarding Firebase, Google still collects and shares data. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Goo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google)

<comment><USER7> Just as a note, twice now you've said the word "generally" and provided the same link, one person's blog representing his own opinion. That's not what the word "generally" means.

You can say "one person has the opinion that Yarn is not required anymore". But saying "generally" means it's common knowledge and most people would agree with that opinion. That doesn't seem to be the case here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Time to Panic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html <comment><USER2> Good article. I've long felt that people who accept climate change are surprisingly complacent about it.

I suspect the nature of the problem is poorly understood. A lot of the focus in north america is on personally reducing. This feels similar to not littering, not spraying pesticides on your lawn, in other words not polluting _locally_.

But CO2 isn't a local problem. It's global. Reducing use in one spot or making use in a given case doesn't necessarily work. There's always a use for more energy globally, so someone else with a lower standard of living will justifiably want to take up what you don't use. Meanwhile, if a process is made more efficient, this frees up energy to be used elsewhere in the system. Jevon's paradox plays a role here too.

Global emissions are up, not down. Greatly up. Everything we've done so far has accomplished precisely nothing on the global warming front. We are richer, more people are out of poverty. Because we optimized for that, and not for lower co2 production, globally.

The central issue is that co2 is cheaper than alternatives, in at least enough cases that it's still widely used. Solar etc are dropping in cost, but not so much that they've cut carbon.

A carbon tax would raise the price of co2 and encourage use of alternatives. This could be combined either with an international agreement in other countries to tax carbon, or a system of tariffs on countries that don't.

The system wouldn't be perfect, but it would actually stand a chance of having us _switch_ to non carbon methods.

<comment><USER3> Sadly, I don't think clean energy will save us, even if deployed greatly. Because we're fundamentally incapable of doing anything else - or even imagining something else - than pursuing growth, renewables, so far, are simply adding megawatts on top of fossil fuels, not replacing them.

People keep thinking about how technology will fix stuff. But technology doesn't fix cultural or anthropological problems.

<comment><USER2> If renewables/nuclear etc become cheaper such that no one would even _want_ to use fossil energy, we can fix this.

If this doesn't happen or isn't possible, then we're likely doomed. A carbon tax will make us discover whether we can survive or not sooner.

<comment><USER3> I really wish we did carbon tax thirty years ago. Now, it's likely too late - we have 10 years to cut emissions in half, we (as in, the world) haven't even started to do anything since the Paris accords, even in Europe - which doesn't seem to concern many people, it's almost hilarious.

After that, all bets are off, we won't have the GDP for building the clean grid of cheap renewables, and we'll switch to disaster capitalism. It's going to be crop failures after flooding after deadly heatwaves after war after diseases.

I honestly have a hard time figuring the best course of action, baring a massive financial sector meltdown and a huge recession - and that's a very, very shitty scenario, i'm not downplaying it.

But still way better than a world at 4 degrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only two words away from the perfect clickbait title.</comment>


Ask HN: Ideas on promoting an open source project? - <AUTHOR> I released an open source project a few weeks ago ( http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/ ) and I haven't done much publicizing other than asking for some feedback here (which was great btw!)
It already has some 700 github stars, and I've been getting a lot of positive feedback, so clearly there's some interest in it.
I was wondering how do people here go about promoting their open source projects to a wider audience. Any ideas, tips, experiences? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Probably the single most impressive marketing effort ever for a OSS web framework was the 15 minute Rails build a blog demo. It's slick, polished, has a clear connection to a use-case which potential users of a framework will find motivational, and shows off a lot of why you'd actually care about Rails. Unfortunately, the vast majority of OSS projects do not have that level of savvy in their marketing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUH1hewXnC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUH1hewXnC0)

You might consider building a Mithril version for this, either for your todo list example or something with a bit more _oomph_ to it. I don't spend enough time with front end developers to know what would be clearly amazing for them. (Multiplayer 2048 in 15 minutes, maybe?)

Regarding getting it to a wider audience: Conference talks, taking it around individually to people who should be using it, writing and writing and writing about it, creating complements of the OSS and using them as friendcatchers for it, etc, are every bit as effective for OSS as they are for paid products.

<comment><USER3> ...and interesting enough rails hasn't produced a winning blogging software yet. that increases the success of the blog demo more.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK nothing other than PHP or Perl has ever produced "winning" blog software.

Rails is actually not a great fit for mass-market blogging software, though, because it doesn't have very good support for theming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By far the best thing we did with Django in the early days was to have a beautifully designed site. I think a lot of people started using the framework because the site looked great.

<comment><USER6> Yes. The very clear website and documentation are what took me in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's what I did to promote beets ([http://beets.radbox.org](http://beets.radbox.org)) over a long period of time (3ish years) before it became "popular":

\- Post to domain-specific forums where I thought people would be interested. That includes stuff like /r/python on and /r/music in my case, as well as the user forums for music-streaming systems.

\- Build community. IRC, mailing lists, close collaborations on GitHub. Encourage people to become GitHub collaborators early to solidify their commitment to the project.

\- Keep trying to delight the users I have. Other people's endorsements on Twitter, HN, etc. consistently work better than my own.

\- Screencast. On YouTube so it's easily shareable.

\- Patience. Relentlessly make the project better. This is far away the best thing you can do; over the months and years, people will notice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wrote a post about this for Mozilla Hacks a while ago that you might enjoy/find useful :-) [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/how-to-spread-the- word-abo...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/how-to-spread-the-word-about- your-code/)

In short though, preparation, homepage, copywriting, social networks, influencers, bloggers, niche media, user curated news sites, user group meetings.

</comment><comment><USER9> Stackoverflow has dedicated a portion of their advertising to OSS projects. It is controlled by stack user votes, so it might not be that big a driver at first.

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/23899/free-vote- base...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/23899/free-vote-based- advertising-for-open-source-projects)

</comment><comment><USER10> You should do an Ask-HN post asking for ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious why you care? Seems like it has good basic traction (700 stars), so there are people out there. And you're getting feedback (good). Why push it faster than it wants to go? What do you hope to achieve by that? Integrate the feedback, add your features that you want to add, iterate and repeat. It will get big or it won't.

A lot of those "wildly popular" open source projects have been around for years if not decades. It takes time for things to filter into the brains of other folks.

<comment><USER12> All great points, but you can't fault someone for wanting more eyeballs on their project. In this case more eyeballs -> bigger talent pool -> more/better contributions.

But in general, as the old adage goes, don't count your chickens before they hatch. It's fine to spend a little time marketing, but I totally agree to focus your energy on your product with your initial traction.

<comment><USER11> I agree with the adage about getting ahead of your expectations but I'm not sure I understand the expectations. Why start an open source project if not for ones own edification and enjoyment? Is not the journey its own reward in this case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cleaver ([http://jdan.github.io/cleaver/](http://jdan.github.io/cleaver/)) got some good mentions in JS Weekly, and had a few blog posts written about it. 1100+ stars but I'm not sure if anyone's actually using it.

I continue to work on it because it's rewarding and I have an insatiable need to make quick slideshows.

I think a screencast would help your framework a lot. Something to highlight its awesome features.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cross promote? Try to get a successful project using it done, or wait until one is, and hope they use a logo on their site.

You could approach a company that has problem x and say your oss solves x and see if they are interested in checking it out/funding it/whatever.

other ideas: good docs, irc channel, mailing list, youtube screencasts, books on the topic, blog posts on the soft, conference talkson it, etc

you could also just buy adwords -_-

</comment><comment><USER15> Write tutorials!

and comparison blog post are great, but keep it genuine.

</comment><comment><USER16> IMHO, A website with a fresher and professional look never hurts, better documentation, a nice and easy tutorial that show the core and fundamental features of the framework. Pretty much, i am describing you how Django started, except with the look of their website, even though is easy to navigate in it, that thing needs a revamp ;).

</comment><comment><USER17> I would say documentation and presentation are two big things you can put effort into having your project seen in a good light.

Also once you have that in place, its critical you get it in front of the right audience. i.e. talk to weekly newsletter guys or personally email influential people in the javascript (in your case) that are looking to try new things! Listen to their criticisms improve and iterate. Also empowerer people in your community of developers one man shows frameworks can start off well but don't last very long without building out a community.

</comment><comment><USER18> I launched Martini with a nice clean website and a fun little video to get people excited about it. I think it had a pretty good launch.

[http://martini.codegangsta.io/](http://martini.codegangsta.io/)

and the video

[https://vimeo.com/79487342](https://vimeo.com/79487342)

<comment><USER19> OT question: What's the editor you use in your intro video? Looks like it's running inside tmux AND has a cool Go mode with auto complete?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just registered to say that I've been trying out mithril throughout the week and some examples would be really helpful.

An example of multiple views being controlled by a single controller would be good, like the components page but more examples.

Its really cool though I like it

</comment><comment><USER21> Have you considered working with a designer to gussy up the site a bit? That could go a long way toward representing more legitimacy.

That said, I'm very impressed with what you've done, and I'll be passing this along.

</comment><comment><USER22> Highlight supported browser versions right away, especially if supporting older ones (otherwise this could actually count against the project)

</comment><comment><USER23> Do you have a mailing list or forum for it? That's pretty common with open source projects as a place to interact with your users.

</comment><comment><USER24> You get promoted by asking for help on HN and having patio11 respond to you.

</comment><comment><USER25> Front page of HN = OSS promotion complete. :-)

<comment><USER26> true ! but long term committment and the demonstration that the project can be used to create large applications IS also important.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As always, the helpfulness of the people here is really great, so thank you :)

I do have a mailing list here ( [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mithriljs](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mithriljs) ), which I made a bit more prominent on the site just a few minutes ago, and some of us have been using the github issue tracker ( [https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/issues?state=open](https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/issues?state=open) ) for suggestions and general Q&A.

I have a few ideas of things I'd like to write about in more detail so I'll probably put an article out soon.

@ChuckMcM: there are a few good reasons to push on the marketing front:

\- more popularity means more bugs found and fixed, and thus better software

\- developing a community increases the quality of the ecosystem around the project exponentially. For example, one criticism I heard a few times at release was solved by a contributor before I even got the chance to take a stab at it ( [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mithriljs/lGiNpog2mbc/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mithriljs/lGiNpog2mbc/ThZSdgw_nucJ) ). I feel that community involvement is a really important factor to take the project to the next level.

\- semi-related to the previous point, many things on the project roadmap for example are things that anyone looking for a side project can pick up and do. Some don't even require you to know anything about the framework. I'm really put off by the high barrier of entry to contribution to projects like Angular, and I feel that giving people of all levels the chance to crank some code is a win-win for everybody.

\- another related point: different people tell different stories. It's one thing for me to put out a lot of examples and reading material (which I do try to do w/ the docs on the site), but often, people do things that I never anticipated. They can write better, more focused articles and share them with audiences that I might not have even known existed. And even if they're just retweeting something I wrote, their social reach is different from mine: a lot of people that might find Mithril useful don't read HN, but they might hear about it from a friend that does.

\- a somewhat unique reason to Mithril is that it has a pretty stable core already, and the project needs to move forward in _some_ front in order for it to be seen as an "active" project.

Also, it's marketing 101 to stay on top of people's minds. If they keep hearing about Mithril from different sources, then they're more likely to spend a little of their valuable time to try it out and hopefully fall in love and join the community.</comment>


Java 8 Developer Preview Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/09/jdk8-preview

<comment><AUTHOR> I am just really looking forward to the lambda support. I don't care how it's implemented (generated anonymous inner classes or whatnot) or if the syntax isn't exactly what everyone might have wanted... I just want some simple block support. I am just not thrilled about Scala, so I won't even go there. I worked on a large Swing application a few years ago (two years of development work) and how I would have loved it[lambda]. I would have saved thousands of lines of boilerplate (due to listeners and such). We had used Groovy in parts of the application but that almost killed the product as it was just too slow for the UI.

Edit: Go here to get the binaries directly [http://jdk8.java.net/download.html](http://jdk8.java.net/download.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Does your work support your side projects? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
As I mature as a developer and my capabilities expand, I find myself with more and more ideas I'd like to see through. Thinking about my future career, my greatest desire - more than salary or benefits considerations - is autonomy and the freedom to pursue a development life outside my employer.
I know support for side projects is rare, and that even Google has pulled it's 20% support policy, but does anyone here have examples of an employer that encourages and rewards employee projects? Even in small ways? Or is freelancing the only answer? <comment><USER2> Google has not pulled its 20% support policy[1]

[1]: I work at Google

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the correction! It's nice to know someone is doing it right.</comment></comment>


Utah legislature wants to eliminate tenure for university professors - <AUTHOR> http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700109900/Lawmakers-bill-would-end-tenure-for-Utah-professors.html

<comment><USER2> A lot of this is rooted in the clashes between the legislature and professors at the U, especially those who study climate change. It's not a competition thing, it's a "we want to make sure we can get rid of you if we disagree with you" thing, the very reason there is tenure.</comment>


How to structure start up with partners who already own a business? - <AUTHOR>

I'm forming a partnership with a friend to develop an internet application. My friend already owns an LLC equivilant business together with a partner in Eastern Europe. Their current company develops applications for various clients and employs about 15 programmers.
Our new partnership will develop an original application. I will have 50% ownership and the remaining 50% of the company would be split evenly between my friend and his business partner. I was thinking we would start the business just as a general partnership in the beginning and then possibly incorporate it later in the U.S. (I'm based in California).
What I'm wondering is whether the business should be structured with my friend's current business entity as my partner or with my friend and his current partner as individual partners in the new business. Or does that even matter?
We will be dividing development costs evenly. Most of the actual development work will be done by one or more of their current employees although I personally will also work on some parts of the code. My half of the development costs is based only on the actual costs for them to employ the developer calculated on an hourly basis. (So it doesn't include any profit for them as one of their typical client deals would.) Any work I or the two partners do on the app will be uncompensated directly. We will split any future profits. <comment><USER2> Complex partnerships require corporate/tax lawyers and billable hours. Sorry, but there's no way that you'll get a credible answer on HN.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping someone would have an idea just on whether it makes a difference to have his business as my partner or to instead have him and his existing partner as direct partners in my new business.</comment>


Show HN: The Chinese hardware attack is false - <AUTHOR> considering the irrationality of executing the memory attacks through hardware mod:
If the device has secure boot in place, whereby memory is signed and sometimes encrypted, any attempt to modify the SPI memory bus, the focal point of discussion thus far, will be useless++. And if secure boot of BMC is not in place then the manufacturer (read `evil chinese') will just modify the memory before shipping. Cheaper, more efficient, less detectable.
What this means is that everyone is looking at the wrong place for origin of attack. It is highly unlikely to be the manufacturer.
++ modification of memory is prevented by secure boot unless that secure boot implementation has a runtime flaw, which can be fixed through software patch. <comment><USER2> instead of 'false' say click bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unable to change title ;)</comment></comment>


The Life and Death of Amazon Is the Life and Death of Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/09/03/22807820/the-life-and-death-of-amazon-is-the-life-and-death-of-seattle <comment><USER2> It's almost like there isn't another giant tech company called Microsoft there or anything like that.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention a number of "smaller" tech companies like Zillow, Expedia, and Tableau that would love to hire all the ex-Amazon employees, should Amazon ever have mass layoffs.

My concern is a downturn in the whole tech industry. We have Starbucks, Costco, and Nordstrom so we might be better off than Silicon Valley, but that's not saying much.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention every large tech company has a presence here.

<comment><USER5> not to mention Seattle survived for the two decades it took Amazon to get into the black.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Strangers at a cocktail party - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1808-strangers-at-a-cocktail-party <comment><USER2> If you need to hire fast, there are ways to get the group to be effective quickly. If you normally work on long projects, it could take a long time before everyone gets a chance to interact, debate, reach conclusions and pull together to deliver. So, why not get everyone together and run a mini-project over a few days - a sharp, intense, end-to-end experience which really forces people together to debate, conclude and deliver. That can really accelerate the group's transition from forming/storming into norming/performing.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree. Test mini-project is probably the best way to see person in action. No tests, recommendations or anything else can assure that person will actually _fit_ your team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The opposite of this, of course, is groupthink...

<comment><USER5> It's also part of this. Groupthink is a danger regardless. Either you're all trying to appease each other so no one tries to have different ideas or stand out, or you're all friends so no one with different ideas lasts.</comment></comment>


Why America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygEEL57AcZs <comment><USER2> In modern discourse a Republic is a form of democracy. Pointing out that a Republic is not a democracy is in-group signaling among people who trade conservative talking points.

In 18th and 19th century discourse, meaning was more fluid and context dependent. Often writers were responding to criticism that any democratic system of government (of which the U.S. was undoubtedly one type) was intrinsically less stable and irrational than aristocratic or monarchical governments.

To quote John Adams,

      A democracy, then, is a republic, as well as an aristocracy,
      or any mixture of both.

      The Federalist is a valuable work, and Mr. Madison's part
      in it as respectable as any other. But his distinction
      between a republic and a democracy, cannot be justified.
      A democracy is as really a republic as an oak is a tree, or
      a temple a building. There are, in strictness of speech and
      in the soundest technical language, democratical and
      aristocratical republics, as well as an infinite variety of
      mixtures of both.

      (Letter to J. H. Tiffany, April 30, 1819)
      (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7104)

The John Birch society quotes "Samuel Adams" as saying,

       Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes
       exhausts and murders itself.

But the quote was actually from John Adams. (See [http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371](http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371)) Apparently whoever threw that video together didn't actually read the real document. They probably just copied a quote (or in this case, a misquote) from a book of quotations, as people trying to make a point are so fond of doing these days.

If you read the actual letter the context of the quote selected by the John Birch society is clear. Adams is responding to what he believes is a mischaracterization of something he stated earlier. It's a scholarly argument among gentlemen about how intrinsically prone democracies are to violence.

      I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the
      whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy.
      Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as
      Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more
      bloody than either.

Elsewhere in the letter it's clear the argument relates to some introspection by Americans on the bloody conflict in France. You can't assume that what Adams discussed in that letter he thought directly applicable to the U.S. The context was different and he wasn't making a grand argument about democracies generally, unless you believe he was happy to contradict himself five years later.

The notion that certain forms of democracy which check the passions of the majority are for that reason _alone_ intrinsically more stable is a very modern notion. It emphasizes one particular aspect of the structure of American government over all the others. The U.S. constitution employs several different devices. It was a hodge-podge of ideas. Few Founders expected the U.S. to last as long as it did. Remember, it was version 2.0. There's no reason to believe that they expected it to last much longer than version 1.0 (Articles of Confederation). Longevity was not the exclusive goal; it was at best an equal goal along with equality, security, prosperity, autonomy, etc. More likely longevity on the scale of human history was the lesser of those goals.</comment>


Hoisting in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/16 <comment><USER2> The examples switch between using let/var which is what actually causes hoisting to occur and doesn't explain that at all. I feel like if you didn't know what hoisting is and read this article you'd walk away with a really poor understanding of what's going on

I hope this doesn't discourage sharing things like this.. I know sometimes the best way to learn something is to try and teach it.</comment>


Hackers who hit Google continue string of attacks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/09/google-hackers-carry-on/

<comment><USER2> I read through expecting to see where people actually died because of these attacks. Spoiler: no one actually dies.

</comment><comment><USER3> The two main attack vectors according to the article are IE and Flash. I think I read here in HN a while ago that using Windows boxes was highly controlled in Google nowadays, and even some kind of permission was needed. Strong correlation here, it seems that Google was indeed hit and probably hard.

<comment><USER4> Windows is highly controlled because of the 2010 attack the author references. Google eliminated Windows as a workstation choice for employees after that, allowing only Linux or Mac. They still have Windows around for testing, or special cases that have to get approved, but very sandboxed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correction: not lethal.

</comment><comment><USER6> <sarcasm>

Whatever you do, do NOT turn off Javascript, or stop using Microsoft products like Windows, or Adobe products like their "Flash" player or even their seemingly harmless PDF viewer.

Don't be fooled into thinking these "highly sophisticated" hackers need such things in order to succeed in their "exploits".

And even if they did, the costs of NOT using Javascript, Microsoft and Adobe far, far outweight the benefits.

</sarcasm>

Nevermind the word "lethal", I've always wondered by the word "attack" was chosen within the cryptography/computer security world. Maybe someone knows the history behind it? Once you get used to this term it's seems normal. But at first it's a bit strange. Playing around with computers and binary numbers seems like the furthest thing from an "attack" one could imagine. But I guess it goes without saying that computer nerds have very vivid imaginations.

</comment><comment><USER7> Had this discussion 2 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488173>

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a bad thing made worse by the fact that victims are unwilling to come forward because it is embarrassing.

<comment><USER9> Some victims may be unwilling, but I'd say a higher portion of them are un _witting_ ; most of them almost definitely have no idea what the extent of the attacks were, if they know at all. When you're dealing with advanced attackers, just knowing that something is going on isn't going to be obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The number of victims affected, the duration of the campaign, and the difficulty of identifying and exploiting so-called zero-day vulnerabilities mean the resources required "could only be provided by a large criminal organization, attackers supported by a nation state, or a nation state itself,"

Just say it, you want us to A) hate China. B)Give up internet freedom so we can have a bigger cyber army

<comment><USER11> I love how people are always up at arms how "a nation state" OBVIOUSLY means Israel in a given story why don't they come out and say it???, or OBVIOUSLY means China in another story, or OBVIOUSLY means the NSA, come on!!

Meanwhile, the reporter is the only one smart enough not to speculate based on nothing.</comment></comment>


Google Caching Overview - anand-s https://peering.google.com/about/ggc.html <comment><AUTHOR> I own a small ISP in SEA, Bandwidth from ggc is about 70% of our traffic (mostly youtube). While we don't have GGC ourselves yet, our upstream does and we have peering with them. Its amazing, how much of the actual "Internet" goes through GGC. We also have akamai peering, which handles about 10% of our traffic.

<comment><USER2> Are you at SIX? I'd guess there's at least one of these there, if Google themselves aren't connected. I'd wager Akamai and Netflix are at SIX too.

<comment><AUTHOR> whats SIX?

We are at SEA (South East Asia) :)

GGC's are everywhere, its relatively easy to get, other than proper business paperworks the onle requirement is to have decent bw, I think minimum 1gbps Google BW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Similar to what other providers of original content do, e.g. Netflix.

I wonder, if local cache setups would have different impact on jurisdiction, taxes and such. Google is known to always say you deal with Ireland, e.g. outside of the US but what if the cache is local?

<comment><USER4> Does Netflix have caching beyond AWS data centers?

<comment><USER5> Yes:

[https://openconnect.netflix.com/peeringLocations/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/peeringLocations/)

This was somewhat famously part of the network neutrality debate because certain large ISPs were trying to claim that their customers were transferring too much from Netflix and thus needed to be double-billed but those same ISPs refused to install the free OpenConnect servers which would have reduced that traffic.

<comment><USER6> My understanding though is that if you have an open connect box on your network it can act as a DDOS, stressing all your infrastructure closer to the customers. Netflix eats all bandwidth.

<comment><USER5> That's not a DDOS – it's called "actually delivering the service your customers paid for". If you've underprovisioned your network, that might be a problem but it's not an attack.

It's also something of a best-case scenario because the only party affected is the same party which has the ability to fix the problem: since it's on your network, you can add additional capacity or institute some sort of fair- queuing without the need to negotiate with outside companies.

<comment><USER3> I imagine the Open Connect box would do automatic bitrate tuning for all users on that network for immediate mitigation and notify obviously Netflix and the open connect ISP for long term capacity management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Anyone know if Google will allow these to be installed at IXPs? $work (ISP) likely isn't large enough to warrant having one of these on our network but a bunch of us smaller ISPs all peer together at a private IXP (in Indianapolis) and our collective traffic levels almost certainly justify it.

Then again, with tens of gigabits to Chicago (where Google has a major datacenter) it probably isn't really necessary.

<comment><USER7> (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google, and my team is implicated in this infrastructure.)

This stuff is designed to be able to go almost anywhere that's willing to host it under the standard contract. File a request, let the relevant team figure out if it's worth putting a rack in. Nothing bad can happen as a result of asking the question.

(Ah, "major datacenter" in Chicago. It's bad of me to be amused by this. We don't have anything we'd call a "datacenter" in Chicago, that's a small installation ;). The list is here: [http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/](http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/))

<comment><USER2> Yeah, sorry, I know there isn't a "real" Google datacenter there (too late to "s/datacenter/presence/" on my original comment now). I don't technically have any of my own datacenters, but I'm present in a few, just like you guys have a "major" (to me) presence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In YouTube if you right-click on video you get 'Stats for nerds'. Does anyone know how to translate the stream hostname to actual IP / geolocation?

<comment><USER9> ${hostname}.googlevideo.com

$ dig r1---sn-4g57knez.googlevideo.com +short r1.sn-4g57knez.googlevideo.com. 184.108.40.206

The videos are split among a couple of domains/hosts. uMatrix gives a nice overview over the used domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this what AppEngine apps / Google cloud storage files are served from, or is that a different CDN?

<comment><USER2> That data would be served from Google's own datacenters.

To be as efficient as possible, these devices would only serve content that is accessed by many users (e.g.: popular Youtube videos).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From [https://peering.google.com/iwantggc](https://peering.google.com/iwantggc):

"GGC is implemented as a set of servers deployed in your datacenter, remotely managed by Google."

Basically you're leading the greedy little boy Google by the hand to the back door of your house, unlocking the door, and going on about your business. "Don't you go in now, kid".

<comment><USER12> I don't know who down-voted you and why.

This other product has been around since many years ago (pre Snowden), and people has been connecting it to intranets, BI systems, etc:

        https://www.google.es/intx/en/work/search/products/gsa.html

More on the same to think about what you commented.

<comment><USER5> It's just evidence-free conspiracy babble and you're making it worse by mentioning Snowden in a misleading attempt to imply they're working with rather than, as Snowden showed, being attacked by the NSA.

More broadly, however, these things are cache nodes – putting one in a data center makes sense but that's not saying you need to give it the privileged access stereokai implied. The win comes from deploying it on the same physical network but you'd still want to firewall it like public internet traffic.</comment></comment></comment>


Culture! What is it good for (absolutely nothing?) - <AUTHOR> Let's talk about culture y'all.
I've been perplexed by the concept of company culture ever since having the first hiring conversation at my agency in the early days as to whether a potential candidate was toxic and whether he would be hired despite of it.
We hired him and it was an unmitigated disaster which only went to show me that it only takes one rotten raisin to spoil the pudding.
Since then the primary mission has been to understand what even is toxicity, what makes a company culture, does culture even matter and where can we even find a good culture.
Believe me it goes deep but the reason is I know that organizations that design software end up designing software that reflects the organizational and communicational structure of their organization and toxic companies design toxic software in general.
I've wanted to attain the zen enlightenment state of flow and toxicity is the enemy as far as I'm concerned.
Now this is a very nuanced conversation and there are many opinions but recently I've read The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle and more than any authority on the subject it puts things into clear perspective.
Essentially there are characteristics of good culture and it generally revolves around belonging and a shared future. Things you can't fake.
A lot of the hiring in our industry is based on technology-centric or superstar-centric strategies which I've never seen succeed unless there is something more pulling us together i.e. a culture of acceptance and belonging.
I want to hear your stories. How do you define culture, what is your measure of toxicity?
Have you experienced outstanding cultures or toxic environments?
Looking at the who's hiring threads can you see through the glitter to the core of what's real vs. what's more of the same?
Do you actually prefer more of the same or are you looking for something that doesn't seem to exist anywhere? <comment><USER2> I'd split it into 3 types:

1\. Selfishness/laziness

Some people want just a job to pay the bills. They don't identify with it. Or they have other goals. They won't be good at their jobs, only doing the minimum to not get fired.

This is possibly the most common type. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It can be toxic because people who come in wanting to contribute more will be pulled back and ostracized, blamed for working at nights, and so on.

This is probably interviewed and filtered for the most. The best solution is bureaucracy, where they can perform to minimum and everyone is still happy.

2\. Defensive

Bullying. Blaming. Sexism. Racism. Most of these are self-defence. The person insisting Indians are bad because they're cheap. The person bad mouthing the framework the seniors use, or juniors' tendency to keep trying new frameworks.

Sometimes it's a fix to a bad culture. Accountability is a cure to laziness, but sometimes some people are given too much accountability. Sometimes goals are too ambitious and teams continually take turns blaming each other to drag out the deadline. Quite often, this blaming is the culture, and consultants may even be brought in to participate.

The fix is usually to calm their insecurities. Bullying, blaming, racism, all seem to drop in less aggressive cultures.

3\. Toxic hard work/ambition

Some work hard, and think they need to be rewarded with power, position, money, women. Sometimes they push others down to be higher. Tends to be classist. Some blame others for not working 80 hours/week, for not sacrificing, or for having a family. They wear their divorces like a medal.

These are most likely found in brand name places like FAANG or working for top tier consultants and financial institutions. Many of them aren't that good, as they tend to overwork themselves inefficiently. Some are actually from group 1 but resentful at being forced to work hard.

They tend to be the least filtered group, because many employers/interviewers want someone hardworking. Their real danger is that they tend to get promoted somewhere and burn the place down.

These are the three I'd actively filter out in a personality interview.

There are of course endless lists of toxicity. The inappropriate pervert. Some who score top grades but are too dumb to live (or stay out of prison). Some will resent people who help them. Some think getting paid is dishonest. And so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot to process here and I can't help feeling like we're overthinking it when we resort to these psychoses.

Being that one ought to believe in people over processes we ought to examine what in the process is causing these outcomes rather than assigning blame to the people?

Of course people have responsibility over the processes but by the same token they must be freed from the blame and given the chance to improve the process.

There's gotta be a game theory approach that allows for good and bad actors to coexist given the right incentives?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I worked in good to borderline psychotic cultures. It is all about management; if they condone bad behavior or not. If management ignores selfish bullying behavior then the good employees leave, the bullies stay, and productivity is history.

<comment><AUTHOR> We take for granted that we need managers but I'm not buying it.

The manager is an anti-pattern in software and so too in organizations. What is their role anyway? Naming things is hard perhaps scheduler would be a better classname or resolver?

<comment><USER4> As the founder of a small bootstrapped team of 15, I can confirm that good managers are needed. I am already struggling at this size so I can now fully appreciate the role of good managers in larger orgs. Trust me, you need good managers. It is not only required but very critical to the success of any team and organization. There is a reason good CEOs and Executives get top dollar (and yes not all are worth the money but many are) because ultimately their job is to manage the company. Lower level managers as well have a critical responsibility to manage their own groups/teams.

<comment><AUTHOR> The larger an organization scales the more it relies on signals rather than explicit spoken directives.

In fact the majority of communication operates on signals and we ought to know that by this millennium.

If you're not using signals to advantage well then maybe you've got a culture where people are putting out the wrong signals and they're being ignored or people are putting out conflicting signals and a lot of the wrong signals are getting picked up or any other combination that doesn't spell success.

I wonder how many founders in the industry would say the same and how many of them are captains of a barely floating ship with dozens of little holes?

And a million other questions about why victory is never guaranteed, only deserved.

Or maybe you think culture grows organically like some crazed survival of the fittest type of scenario.

I can tell you more about how that works out by examining the kitchen and the bathroom than attending any management meeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Talk about picking up on signals -> [https://qz.com/work/1861934/study- suggests-we-can-hear-someo...](https://qz.com/work/1861934/study-suggests-we- can-hear-someones-hand-gestures)

Imagine all the emotional leakage coming out of your casual workforce

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a step towards answering my own question I view culture something like a complexity issue or a proof by induction. Call it a question of human calculus.

Given n where n>=1, how can we optimize such that n+1 is maximally effective

The current corporate tropes have utterly failed us but instead of reinventing corporacy in a newer image we seem to have thrown out everything that was good about it and then replaced it with this toxic sludge of performance evaluations and weak, conflicting signalling. Anyway.. Who's reading this in the belly of some beastly code dungeon?</comment>


Profiling Go Programs - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/cloudflare/go-profiling-john-graham-cumming

<comment><USER2> One thing I find frustrating about the net/http/pprof package is its init method, which does:

        http.Handle("/debug/pprof/", http.HandlerFunc(Index))
        http.Handle("/debug/pprof/cmdline", http.HandlerFunc(Cmdline))
        http.Handle("/debug/pprof/profile", http.HandlerFunc(Profile))
        http.Handle("/debug/pprof/symbol", http.HandlerFunc(Symbol))

In my particular case, I wanted all normal application traffic to be handled by my 8080 handler, and the /debug/* traffic handled by another listener on port 6060. Even if I explicitly link the above handler functions into my port 6060 ServeMux, because of the init() method it still registers across all of my handlers. I.e. port 8080 and 6060 both respond to, for example, /debug/pprof/cmdline.

<comment><USER3> Create a separate ServeMux for your application and let the utilities register to the DefaultServeMux via init (and you can even register your own!). Bind the DefaultServeMux to the debug port (6060) using http.ListenAndServe(debugPort, nil) and bind your app to its port (8080) with http.ListenAndServe(appPort, appMux).

<comment><USER2> This worked great, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the usefulness of the pprof tool. I also like Rob Pike's book "The Unix Programming Environment". It's clear that Mr. Pike likes small command line programs that do an isolated task well.

I just wonder if it could be more beneficial to the community if Google invested in an IDE with a GUI for all of these tools.

</comment><comment><USER5> Slide incorrectly attributes the "premature optimization" quote to Hoare, but it's Knuth's. [http://hans.gerwitz.com/2004/08/12/premature-optimization- is...](http://hans.gerwitz.com/2004/08/12/premature-optimization-is-the-root- of-all-evil.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Just recently felt the need to profile a tiny little Go program that I converted from Perl. Found out just how damn fast Perl's (C-based) regular expressions are. Go's Regexp library is absolutely awesome, but in this specific case significantly slower. Profiling was a piece of cake.

<comment><USER7> If you've already done the profiling, you're probably already aware of this, but for anybody else:

Go uses RE2, not PCRE (which Perl uses, obviously) for regular expressions: [https://code.google.com/p/re2/](https://code.google.com/p/re2/). There is also a third-party PCRE library for Go somewhere, though the standard library uses RE2.

One of the advantages of RE2 is that it guarantees that the regular expression runs in linear time (in the length of the input), unlike backtracking-engines like PCRE (which are provably undecidable, like the halting problem).

However, aside from not supporting backtraces, it also can be slower on certain kinds of regexes and inputs.

As always, the best (only?) way to know which approach is better is to test (profile) - which, I agree, is a piece of cake in Go.

<comment><USER8> Perl doesn't actually use PCRE by default, though it's an option in 5.10.

Incidentally, one of the reasons that PCRE is faster is that it uses a JIT in newer versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For interested people: Here is the discussion about the mentioned pool package: [https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4720](https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4720)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have a link to download the slides? Slideshare apparently doesn't believe people can exist without either a Facebook or LinkedIn account or both.

<comment><USER11> Looks like you can sign up just fine with only an email address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good Slide .. has anyone seen the video ?</comment>


Review: Does my presentation give a clear picture of the project? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, Just got over with a website for our surveillance project we bunch of students are planning to do. I've made a website presenting the idea through a slideshow. Since, we 4 people work on the project, we already have a good idea of what we're doing. I just wished to check if people too do get the right message that we're trying to convey. Just for a reality check, what impression do you get about the project when you look at the presentation ? have a look - http://spacelock.madetokill.com/
One point someone mentioned is that I never actually described the project in detail on our website... I'm working on that right now. I wonder if I should actually explain every detail of the project, it's meant for a contest - Student2Business, should I disclose the whole working ? the basic architecture is already visible. There are some features which we wish to keep secret too!
Thanks <comment><USER2> My comments:

\- The presentation gets too text heavy later on. Cut out some of the text and get more straight to the point. It also might be a good idea to make the text stand out more.

\- I did enjoy the pictures, but on my 1024x768 resolution (laptop screen) I had to scroll down a bit to see it all. Maybe make them a bit smaller or minimize the header.

\- On the last slide, it goes back to the first. I know this isn't done, but make sure you lead into a "GET IT NOW" page or something similar after I've gone through the slides.

I understood what the product is offering. Seems to be software that uses a webcam to create a simple security/monitoring system? Sounds neat, although when you near the completion of your software it might be a good idea to also show some examples of how easy it is to use (screenshots), instead of spending 4-6 slides describing the problem you are solving.

Hope that helps :)

<comment><AUTHOR> @truebosko: Thanks! I'm clearly able to see some flaws which got ignored now! I'm planning to put up some more descriptive text after last slide. Yes, it does get text heavy... will reduce that for sure. I see, the balance in the presentation is kind of one sided... we're still developing the system... once done I'll surely remove some slides and put a few to show how easy it is.

thanks a lot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- Back button

\- On the first slide, the second person isn't the first person. I noticed the hair and something between its legs (below the "Always on the run!). Nitpick? :p

\- On the third slide, what is an IP camera?

\- On the 4th slide, "We talk of IP camera, well how many of store owners around us are willing to spend Rs. 8000+ for an IP camera? "... you can make it shorter "How many store owners are willing to spend Rs. 8000+ for an IP camera?

\- 4th: Isn't there a better solution (question mark missing)

\- 5th: Remove "When such great milestones have been already achieved, why do we re-invent the wheel ?". It's unnecessary. And your product is about integrating these milestones, right? If it's new, how come we re-inventing it?

\- 5th: Remove the purple cellphone. There's already a better cellphone icon with the envelope;

\- 5th: There are small white dots on the guy left arm;

\- 6th: VERY IMPORTANT. If you ignore everything that I say, please don't ignore this. REMOVE "Besides, with SpaceLock's modularity, you can always plug-in a better camera or updated software as we develop it further." Here's the problem with this phrase. You're saying that your product might not be good enough. You're selling something (security with common infrastructure), and at the same you're saying: if it doesn't work, you can always make it better! Oh, er... customers want assurance that what they're buying will solve their problem, not that it might not, and they can "upgrade it".

\- 7th: "You can use your webcam for a really great purpose.". What great purpose? This is the solution explanation slide... and this phrase is too vague.

Overall, I read all the slides and still don't quite get what the thing is all about :) Ok, webcams on cubicles? How does Spacelock helps me manage all these exactly? Some screenshots, maybe a demo website, or a link to an YouTube video showing someone using the app..

Edit: I know what an IP camera is, I just am not sure someone reading the slides will :)

<comment><AUTHOR> @inerte: Wow this is even better ! It took me some time to really understand but I can't stop appreciating 6th point and the Edit. Well, I'm surely gonna re-plan my slideshow with all these valuable inputs. I find it really tough to get the PoV of a user - a common person.

We just talked over things and tried thinking deeper, but no deeper than you did. Thanks for your suggestions, will surely go forward with this way of thinking. Thanks, I love HN :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that having your javascript fail gracefully is important. (i.e. click on a link in the slide show and it actually takes you to the next slide.) This is not only for the people that have javascript turned off for whatever reason but also for the search engines. If they cannot navigate to it you will not get ranked. Hook your javascript into the next link after the page has loaded and then override the behavior if they have javascript turned on if they don't then the link will still work because it is a valid link to the next page. There are plenty of resources out there that teach this javascript idiom.

Have a good url structure using rewrites such as foo.com/why-ip-cameras-are- bad/ and translate it behind the scenes to whatever slide it maps to.

I also agree with inerte that the slides are too text heavy. Make it more succinct for the presentation and people will be more likely to actually read the whole thing. You can go on in more detail on other pages of your site.

Overall it looks like an interesting product and I wish you luck.

Are you planning a OS X Version?

<comment><AUTHOR> We plan to port to linux using mono, i guess mono projects also work on OS X :)</comment></comment>


MongoDB: Minor Data Loss for Slave - <AUTHOR> https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-3367?focusedCommentId=66490&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-66490

<comment><USER2> This is some old stuff - he was using the non-recommended way of replicating (master-slave, not replica sets), plus it's a bug filed against 1.8 which isn't the current stable.</comment>


Ask HN: Stories of breaking into tech without a tech background? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone on here transitioned into working in the tech/start up world without a tech background (specifically, for a non-tech role)?<p>I'd love to hear stories about the transition. <comment><USER2> Austin Gunter wrote a great book about how to do exactly that, "The Liberal Arts Techie: How to Break into your First Startup Job" ( [https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Arts-Techie-Break-Startup- ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Arts-Techie-Break-Startup- ebook/dp/B01IB3OD0A/)) based on his personal experiences.

More about Austin: [http://www.austingunter.com/](http://www.austingunter.com/)

He's a coworker, full disclosure, but it's a good book that I paid for with my own money.

<comment><USER3> Hey Itamar, thanks for sharing this.

I definitely started with zero tech experience (and perhaps some ambivalence towards the industry), and build a career out of not much. \- Graduated with a writing degree at the height of the 2008-2009 recession \- Very minimal business experience \- No clue about tech, startups, or entrepreneurship

What I ended up doing was writing job descriptions at startup companies, selling my ability to do content marketing and community marketing until one hired me. Then I did it again 2 years later, got hired again, and then moved to San Francisco to help open a satellite office.

The rest is history.

I wrote more about how other people can create tech jobs from nothing in the book Itamar mentions, and if you want a high level look, the following blog post will be useful:

[http://www.austingunter.com/2016/09/biggest-business- lesson-...](http://www.austingunter.com/2016/09/biggest-business-lesson-can- create-job-nothing/)

Thanks for reading, and I hope all of the above is useful!</comment></comment>


Genetically Engineering Yourself Sounds Like a Bad Idea-But He's Doing It Anyway - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/genetically-engineering-yourself-sounds-like-a-horrible-1820189351 <comment><AUTHOR> For some context, this person is also starting a biotech version of a coding bootcamp.

[https://twitter.com/4LOVofScience/status/1110599228340858880](https://twitter.com/4LOVofScience/status/1110599228340858880)</comment>


OpenSSF: Open Source Security Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ossf <comment><USER2> Maybe this should link to [https://openssf.org](https://openssf.org) or the press release ([https://openssf.org/press-release/2020/08/03/technology- and-...](https://openssf.org/press-release/2020/08/03/technology-and- enterprise-leaders-combine-efforts-to-improve-open-source-security/)) rather than to the GitHub project?

Highlights from the FAQ:

> OpenSSF is focused on improving the security of open source software (OSS) > by building a broader community with targeted initiatives and best > practices. It will start with a focus on metrics, tooling, best practices, > developer identity validation and vulnerability disclosures best practices.

> OpenSSF will be supported by Linux Foundation membership dues with targeted > organization contributions to support initiatives

> The founding members are GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC > Group, OWASP Foundation and Red Hat, among others.

<comment><USER3> I was interested in it but when I saw the corporations supporting it I ended up with a sour taste in my mouth. Reading the rest of the comments it seems more like as an organization with the intention to support their own interests rather than to support the interests of the community.

<comment><USER4> Can't their interests be aligned with the oss developers?

Google has project zero and Safe Browsing API which does helpful things to me, GitHub auto scans dependencies, and owasp guidelines are helpful I think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is really interesting that major open source initiatives are now being ran by corporations. I feel this will be open source in the sense that it is being developed in the open, but not in the sense that they will foster an environment of community contribution.

For example, the working group for vulnerability disclosure includes a lot of corporate players, and from what I can tell, not a single security researcher. Only one side of the disclosure process is represented in that working group.

Realizing how allergic major companies are to GPL code really creates some skepticism when they speak about embracing open source.

<comment><USER6> >> Realizing how allergic major companies are to GPL code really creates some skepticism when they speak about embracing open source.

While orthogonal to your main point, this sentence conflates Free Software (GPL) with Open Source. It should be emphasised that the GPL is NOT open source, and that Open Source is not Free Software.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.en.html)

<comment><USER7> ...GPL is an Open Source license as defined by the OSI. Free Software and Open Source Software have overlapping (but not 1:1) definitions.

<comment><USER8> This is correct. Here's the OSI's list of approved licences: [https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical](https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Such a shame these initiatives don't build on existing standards working groups but go away and reinvent a wheel instead.

Take a look for instance at ETSI TC Cyber, or ETSI NFV Sec.

Even more available in specific domains, such as intelligent transport systems (ISG WG5)

Let's have one more standard promoting another agenda and set of priorities.

Open standards should also promote consolidated standards.

<comment><USER10> What gave you the impression that they are reinventing the wheel?

<comment><USER11> Did you take a look at the ETSI organizations mentioned in the comment you are responding to?

> Take a look for instance at ETSI TC Cyber, or ETSI NFV Sec.</comment></comment></comment>


Can Germany Fix Facebook? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/germany-facebook/543258/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I think, what is important to understand in German law is, that you are not prevented from uttering your opinion. You are rather prevented from claiming false facts.

Let's take the example of the photo of Angela Merkel and the Syrian refugee, mentioned in the article. If you publicly declare, that the person on the photo is a terrorist, and the person is not, you are clearly breaking the law, because you are damaging the persons reputation with arbitrary false claims. If you mention something as a fact, which you cannot prove, you are held responsible for the consequences of the claim and you are prevented from repeating the false fact.

If you would declare "There have been rumours, that the person on the photo is a terrorist", the legal perspective is completely different. Because there obviously have been the rumours this is not a false claim. It now depends very much on the context. If it was known to you, that the person is not a terrorist and you declared the fact of the rumours, but in a way, that it nevertheless makes the person appear as a terrorist, you might be breaking law, but this now depends very much on circumstances and can only be deciced individually in a court case.

Saying "I completely believe the person is a terrorist, even though there is no prove" would most likely be covered by freedom of speech in Germany, because the claim is not presented as a fact, but an opinion. There are limits here (you cannot hide abuse and revilement in an opinion), but interpretation is extremely generous in those cases and makes, in my eyes, the biggest difference to systems like China.

I am completely fine with this approach. I think that a proper differentiation between fact and opinion is the key for a healthy social discourse.

How would anyone be able to defend himself against false claims, if any utterance of whatever was covered by free speech?

<comment><USER3> Your example is interesting, because 'terrorism' is a rather ill-defined term - i.e. some people refer as 'terrorists' to what other people refer to as 'freedom fighters'. When is the former making a false claim?

<comment><USER2> There is some legal definition for "terrorism" in german criminal law (do not ask me the details, but there is a difference if an act of murder was a terroristic act or not - it has to do with intentions, means, motives, acting alone or in a network and so on). So there is some factual definition.

A quote like "They call him freedom fighter, I call him terrorist" is clearly an opinion and yes, it makes a difference whether you use the word in the sense of a legal definition or an abstract concept or a hyperbolic metaphor. The level rod is dignity.

<comment><USER3> My point wasn't that there isn't a definition somewhere that is clear, but that people very often use it in different ways - whereas I don't think we want to treat all these people in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a really good article.

And you cannot reiterate enough that our laws regarding free speech were _heavily_ influenced, if not outright imposed, by the Allies, and foremost the United States. This is one of the few articles out there that explain it.

<comment><USER5> And as a German citizen I am thankful for them. The concept of dignity has, in my opinion, an important place in our society and cannot become obsolete in the digital sphere.

To address one point in the article, I find the deflection of responsibility on facebook's part alarming. Imagine a scientist letting a wild chimera loose on the population, would we not hold them accountable? Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they provide, they are responsible for the consequences of the technology they put out into the world.

And also notably, in the digital space they have acquired the size of nation states, and even that might be an understatement. Facebook is essentially the policeman, the firefighter, the inkeeper and the landlord all at the same time. As well as the sole administrator.

<comment><USER6> > Companies like Facebook are getting rich off the infrastructure they > provide, they are responsibility for the consequences of the technology they > put out into the world.

I call this "externalization of costs". Private companies skim off the profit and leave the costs to society - be it in construction with the ÖPP (public- private-partnership) or "lease back" scams, or with social media where the victims of mobbing/nazis and police have to suffer.

<comment><USER7> You are implying that people who use Facebook are not free agents who can decide for themselves what their impact on society should be.

<comment><USER8> They are not. If the public plaza is private, you have only the option to not participate and be a social outcast or to bow to the allmende-renteers laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Can you delete your profile completely?"

I want the ability to continuously erase everything I do on Facebook, except for the last N days, where N is a fixed number chosen by me.

<comment><USER10> I wonder why we use these services if we aren't satisfied with how they work.

<comment><USER11> Facebook does one thing that no other service can duplicate: it has all of my friends on it.

<comment><USER12> Arguably, that's one of the problems with Facebook. Not all of one's contacts should be in the same conversations together.

<comment><USER13> Didn't Google try to solve that with circles. I never used Facebook or any other "social network", so I'm probably unaware of some details, but I read about circles when Google+ came out and it sounded like a solution for exactly this problem.

<comment><USER12> I think they got the idea of circles from Diaspora.

The WWW works best when used as intended: decentralized communities that encourage people to be creators rather than consumers.

Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your interests (for example, forums).

Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email.

Instead of Medium, learn how to create your own independent blog with something like Metalsmith, Hugo, or Hexo.

Etc.

<comment><USER14> >Instead of Facebook, participate in independent online communities around your interests (for example, forums).

Replacing your actual social network with anonymous internet strangers leaves you in a much worse position on the axes on which people usually criticize Facebook. Facebook may be a poor substitute for meatspace interaction with your actual community, but your connecting with your actual community is surely more important than connecting with internet strangers.

>Instead of chat apps that attempt to envelop everyone you've ever met into monolithic walled gardens, use SMS and email.

SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden. Email is federated in theory but in practice is almost always Google. Both systems have the uniquely privacy-hostile property of being in cleartext by default and in the overwhelming majority of real-world usage.

<comment><USER15> >SMS is a spectacularly low-quality monolithic walled garden

How do you figure? I can communicate with SMS to anyone in the world, on any mobile provider. Seems pretty federated to me.

<comment><USER14> Ever tried to get an SS7 connection?

Sure, you can rent access from Twilio, in the same way that you can rent access from Facebook. It's extremely unlikely that you could ever become a full participant in either network.

<comment><USER15> Okay, so there's a high barrier to entry. It's pretty hard to become an ISP too. That doesn't make either a walled garden.

It's not so much about whether I personally could federate with the network, as it is about whether some reasonably large number of other entities could. I don't have exact numbers, but it seems there are 1000+ phone providers worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good article, was informative.

Germany isn't the only country considering laws like this, and companies with large online presences need to find some way to get a handle on the user created content they're propagating. The fact that it's open season as far as what users post is going to eventually lead to the companies doing the propagating: Facebook, Google, etc, being the ones called before the state to answer for it. This ultimately isn't fair and is terrible for business, but the situation we have right now isn't fair either, especially to the individuals who are being slandered with no recourse.

<comment><USER17> It's legal in my country to mock religious figures like Jesus, Moses and Mohammad. In other countries it is illegal to do so. If I post an image portraying Jesus, Moses and Mohammad as lovers (admittedly it's in poor taste) to MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn, does MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn have the legal authority to delete my post since it _might_ be seen in a country where it's illegal?

<comment><USER18> That's obviously a complex problem that emerged because the Internet on itself does not respect traditional juridical boundaries and I doubt that there is already any general consensus on how such things ought to be handled. But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where it is illegal. If it is illegal in the home country of MyFaceGoogleLinkedSpaceBookPlusIn or if making the post were illegal in your home country, then deleting seems appropriate. In reality things are probably even more complicated, if something is illegal may for example depend on where you are when you are doing it but may also be tied to your nationality and be independent from where you are. Or think about companies operating from several countries.

<comment><USER19> > But in your example it seems reasonable to me to just block the post where > it is illegal.

From a technology perspective, that's a _much_ harder problem than it sounds. To the degree it's even possible, it's a good way to make sure that social networking gets consolidated into the hands of a few companies and that never get challenged. Or that social networking breaks back up into country-specific sites, making the "world-wide" part of the WWW more of a technical possibility than a practical reality.

<comment><USER20> Sure, it's probably impossible to have this block 100% effective. However, this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all. Even the simplest technical measures will stop most people.

Also, the discussed German law (which I'm not particularly fond of) addresses the problem you raised: it only applies to the largest companies giving startups enough time before needing to solve these issues.

<comment><USER19> It's still regulatory capture, but you're probably right about the small company exception. The biggest effect is probably to make it easier for a German social network to thrive over a foreign one looking to move into (or stay in) Germany.

So, again, it's probably going to reinforce information bubbles as places to share thoughts and ideas will stay tied to a nationality and/or small.

> ...this is a bad excuse for giving up trying at all.

I think _all_ of Western Europe is struggling with information bubbles as surprising election results have been happening one after another. Is it "giving" up to not double down on that phenomenon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some of the Disqus comments at the bottom of that article illustrate the complexity and prevalence of the problems.

Of course, The Atlantic, and many other websites continue to tolerate massive troll operations in their own comment sections, for the same reason that FB and Twitter do.

</comment><comment><USER22> > They also made fun of his firm's no-frills website.

You don't need a cool website to practice law.

</comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me of Google vs. the Chinese government.

The government wanted heavy censorship for certain forbidden targets. Google picked up their toys and went home, and let the Chinese discover the joys of VPN.

If that's what Germany wants, Facebook should pack up and leave, and make people use a VPN to access Facebook.

Every time you give censors the ability to arbitrarily determine what's ok and what's not, the ability always gets misused by the government, in my experience.

For instance, compare and contrast the results shown for Tiananmen square in Baidu vs. Google. It's even forbidden to show relevant results for June 4th - most Chinese people get around that by searching for May 35th.

If you can control the present, you control the future. By forbidding speech that is not currently fashionable, you open the floodgates.

<comment><USER24> On the one hand you have a point about China's actions, on the other hand, you are comparing Germany to mainland China as equivalent threats. As an American I would trust most countries in the EU with stuff like this over even my own country given the direction of the USA. This is all opinion and I'm not criticizing your view, just disagreeing, but I would hazard a guess from the wording of the last sentence the worry is about Orwell's 1984 dystopian future coming true when the bigger problem is that the problems in Huxley Brave New World is much closer to reality (even given the current autocratic/far right's non ironic use of doublespeak across all countries and forms of government). Germany already bans Nazi imagery and wording in many forms except for history purposes and they seem to be fine. We already have problems in the USA where now nonviolent political protestors are being prosecuted by the federal government and officials are encouraging people to commit violence against the protestors in spite of the protestors having the First Amendment to back them up - statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.

<comment><USER23> I appreciate your response. Just one thought:

> statutory limits or freedoms are not magic that make things right.

You're right, they're not, we have to fight for them. But if the laws are on the books, you have at least some recourse given an independent judiciary.

Hate speech and marginalizing other groups is such a maddeningly vague category that either everything falls into, or nothing does.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm highly individualistic and freedom oriented. The fact that there's an ill defined law on the books that can be enforced with no recourse raises my hackles.

Just like the beef I have with the TSA and the "no fly list". You can't figure out why you're on the list, and there is no real way for you to get off the list. I think due process is the most important thing. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > the spread of symbols belonging to unconstitutional groups

Cool, so an ideal "group of people who wants separation from the state" would also be banned? (Let's say like the Catalan party which is going on since years...)

> But what makes content "manifestly" illegal is left up to human

The least biased would be to have 1 person from each political party to assess these things and reach an agreement.

EDIT: downvoting without comments... come on guys, you can be better than this.

</comment><comment><USER26> The joke is young people don't use Facebook anymore. Those most interested in policing and shaping it seem to be German internet-clueless politicians and activists in their 50s and 60s. Meanwhile half of web/IT jobs on German market require React.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand what you want to say. Your points don't seem relevant to the issues the article raises. Care to elaborate? Thanks!

<comment><USER28> I figured it was some new variation on the ancient Slashdot meme of "In Korea, only old people use (insert name of technology)..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The promise of the internet was that it would be free and open to all ideas, thoughts and discussions. The hope was that it would raise the rest of the world to american ideals of liberty, free speech and right to assembly. Instead, we are dropping ourselves to the lowest common denominator. Rather than the outside world bettering themselves with free speech, we are instead lowering ourselves to the anti-free speech levels of germany, china, saudi arabia and russia.

We are to stifle free speech because of "human dignity"? That's what dictators say. That's what extremists say. Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death over a short film that insulted the "dignity" of muslims. North koreans kidnap or kill people because their "dignity" is insulted. Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"?

It isn't facebook that needs fixing. It is germany. What germans, chinese, saudis, russians, the extreme liberals and those who are anti-free speech don't understand that free speech is a necessary component of human dignity. You can't have human dignity without it. It is an essential characteristic of human dignity.

<comment><USER30> >Following that logic, aren't neo-nazis human? Don't they deserve "dignity"?

Banning them from insulting other people's dignity and threatening their safety is not diminishing of their dignity.

<comment><USER29> Sure it does. Depriving people of speech is diminishing their dignity. Even better, depriving people of reading books they want or even wearing clothing they want is diminishing their dignity.

> Banning them from insulting other people's dignity

So you support banning anti-nazi speech right? All the speech attacking and insulting nazis should be banned right? Because it's wrong to insult people right?

<comment><USER30> I believe in the German principle of a proactive defense of democracy. There's only one option to be used against neo-nazis, and it is to silence them. No, they won't grow bigger because of that. You would certainly think this is anti-democratic and paradoxical. Well, it's not, because I'm defending democracy from the people that would destroy it, so in the end, I don't fucking care: they deserve no right to spew the kind of hatred they spew. We have a duty to stop them, because they're dangerous to society. And fucking NO, you can't extend this line of reasoning to other forms of contrarian speech, so don't even start. It's true only for neo-nazis. That's it.

tl;dr: I'm sick of neo-nazis.

<comment><USER31> >> And fucking NO, you can't extend this line of reasoning to other forms of contrarian speech, so don't even start. It's true only for neo-nazis. That's it.

Yes, you can -- antifa is just as dangerous as neo-nazis, and they have to be stopped. Period.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>