Dow rallies more than 700 points after record surge in U.S. jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why Wall Street estimated that unemployment would continue to 20% (would have been a post-WWII high), despite the news that multiple states had already opened back up.

Anecdotally, I can attest that the married couples in our suburb are desperate to go out on date-nights again. I imagine that's similar everywhere - and the news certainly confirms that people aren't afraid of the virus (even if they should be). ...and since restaurants are desperate to re-open to pay the bills, it seems clear that they'd want to re-hire staff.

The real question is whether the re-openings and/or the protests will cause a large enough 2nd peak of the virus to cause additional closures over the summer - or impact the expectation of closures again in the fall.

<comment><USER3> The desire to go out is very unevenly distributed. I know people who are desperate to go out, but I also know people who plan to mostly stay in until there's a vaccine, and they struggle to believe the first group really means what they're saying. ("They must be trolling", I've heard from multiple friends.)

<comment><USER4> We are not. You're free to throw away another year of your life cooped up indoors because of a miniscule (for most people) risk that is not going anywhere, but most people will choose otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Realistically appraising risks, there are 3 reasons for limiting activity:

1) You're in a high-risk demographic: 70+, have health problems, lack access to high-level health care facilities.

2) You interact with people who are in high-risk demographics: nursing home staff, service industry where your customers are elderly, medical staff.

3) You want to support broader transmission mitigation. Mask-everwhere is the most obvious action here, but limiting high-risk activities helps too.

It's easy to forget that tragedy of the commons also means opportunity for the individual.

Some of us, despite not being in (1) or (2), feel good about doing what we _individually_ can to avoid another broad lockdown. Decreasing R_t through personal choices is going to be a big component of the aggregate number.

<comment><USER4> My honest reaction to this is fury, but let me instead only say that we do not agree about what is best for the commons, and I will never allow you to coerce me into going along with your plan.

<comment><USER6> I read the parent comment like four times and did not see any hint of coercion. It is expressed as a personal approach.

<comment><USER4> Just being candid, in case anyone is under the delusion that it might be worth trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is kind of strange considering that new jobless claims were 1.877 million and continuing claims are 21.5 million for last week. Which is a rise from the week before. There was a big dip 2 weeks ago so maybe that's it.

Anyway these job reports always get revised months later when more complete data is gathered.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it that shocking that some jobs bounced back quickly? I'd think even bears would expect a lot of retail jobs to come back right away.

<comment><USER9> It's shocking that jobs came back _before_ the lockdown ended nationally.

Especially shocking that retail hiring would pick up as protestors shut down streets and rioters loot and burn down retail businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> this reeks of "throw some good news at the cycle to boost up just enough to soften your recent losses and then brace for impact"

</comment><comment><USER9> The data are likely bunk and wall street is trying to convince main street that all is well [1].

I certainly do not share the optimism of the participants in the market. I think many people are in a state of denial and willfully ignorant optimism, which is understandable since people get irrational with their own money at risk (I've been there). The US (and arguably the world) is going through a lot of pain right now and it's tempting to look at this article (or any sign of hope, no matter how trivial) and think "everything is fine."

^^ Take a moment to reflect on the above - did it upset you? Are you smashing your keyboard in reply? Before you do, consider: that's exactly how rational markets become irrational, how markets crashed in 2000-2002 and 2008, and how they'll boom and crash in the future - unchecked emotional reaction to fear. If you need to take it out, just downvote and get it out of your system.

[1] [https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nothing-has-happened- shock...](https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nothing-has-happened-shocked-wall- street-responds-payrolls-offers-3-options-what-happened)

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a lot of rehires using PPP money.

Odd that 10% of jobs were dental office workers. I can see why they'd rehire staff for PPP but why aren't other healthcare specialties similarly overrepresented?

</comment><comment><USER12> "The unemployment rate in May was 13.3%, beating estimates of 19.5%, according to the Labor Department."

<comment><USER9> Am I the only one who doesn't feel warm and fuzzy from this info? I guess so, since the market is hotter than the corner liquor store I saw get burned down the other night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looking forward to learning how the DoL juked these stats. This doesn't pass the smell test, with the Atlanta Fed's GDPnow still predicting a 50%+ contraction through Q2.

<comment><USER2> Do you have any evidence that the numbers have been falsified or is your comment pure cynicism?

<comment><USER14> what evidence do you have that they're accurate other than taking the news' word for it?

<comment><USER15> The default state is that statistics bureaus can be trusted to report mostly correct numbers even if they spin them (e.g. report employment vs unemployment according to what's better).

So if someone says "they are fake numbers" they should be ready to corroborate that with evidence, it's not on the people who believe the institutions to prove that they are correct.

<comment><USER14> kind of strange that the BLS would release this on a weekend when it wouldn't effect markets. lol. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/05/may-2020-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/05/may-2020-jobs- report-misclassification-error/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rich text editing with WriteLatex - <AUTHOR> https://www.writelatex.com/blog/81#.U268SK1dVGl

<comment><USER2> Amazingly functional site for working with Latex documents! For example, I am working on screencast re: containers/docker right now, and created several diagrams using their editor, see: [http://i.imgur.com/NlYuaXp.png](http://i.imgur.com/NlYuaXp.png)

If this type of stuff interests you, make sure you check out [http://texample.net/tikz/examples/all/](http://texample.net/tikz/examples/all/) & [http://tex.stackexchange.com](http://tex.stackexchange.com) too. Also, if you want to try and play around with it, use the "Create A New Paper" link @ [https://www.writelatex.com/docs?template=paper](https://www.writelatex.com/docs?template=paper)

Here's the code I'm using:

      \documentclass[12pt]{article}
      \usepackage{tikz}
      \usepackage{verbatim}
      \usetikzlibrary{positioning}
      \begin{document}
      \pagestyle{empty}

      \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=.9,every node/.style={minimum size=1cm},on grid]

          \begin{scope}[
                  yshift=-83,every node/.append style={
                  yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
                  ]

              \fill[white,fill opacity=.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
              \draw[black,very thick] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
          \end{scope}

          \begin{scope}[
              yshift=0,every node/.append style={
                  yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
                             ]
              \fill[white,fill opacity=.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
              \draw[black,very thick] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
        \end{scope}

        \begin{scope}[
            yshift=90,every node/.append style={
            yslant=0.5,xslant=-1},yslant=0.5,xslant=-1
                             ]
            \fill[white,fill opacity=0.9] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
            \draw[black,dashed] (0,0) rectangle (5,5);
        \end{scope}

        \draw[-latex,thick] (6.2,2) node[right]{$\mathsf{Web\ Server}$}
             to[out=180,in=90] (3,2);
        \draw[-latex,thick](5.9,5)node[right]{$\mathsf{Your\ App}$}
            to[out=180,in=90] (2,5);
        \draw[-latex,thick,red](4.3,-1.9)node[right]{$\mathsf{rootfs}$}
            to[out=180,in=90] (2,-.5);

      \end{tikzpicture}

      \end{document}

<comment><USER3> I am a little confused. Did you use a tikz editor/assistant that they have? Or did you type your tikz just like you would with ed/vim/emacs? I did not see anything that would assist with creating tikz illustrations when I was poking around. Lowering the tikz bar would be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing additions, to bad it's not open source like ShareLatex. Will probably use this when working with none techsavy people.

Shameless plug: Do you need generated LaTeX documents, or just partial pieces, like tables and plots. In that case PyLaTeX[0] is probably worth looking at.

0\. [https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX](https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX)

<comment><USER5> There's also support for latex in plots via matplotlib[1].

[1]:[http://matplotlib.org/users/usetex.html](http://matplotlib.org/users/usetex.html)

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a good addition, but the big problem I've had with matplotlib is that the defaults are really terrible. The defaults of PGFplots are way better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Sage Cloud also had great support for Latex, with much of the same functionality as WriteLatex. [http://cloud.sagemath.com](http://cloud.sagemath.com)

<comment><USER7> More details: [http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2013/08/latex-in- cloud.html](http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2013/08/latex-in-cloud.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The site is way impressive. I recently produce a resume using it. One of the best features I didn't see mentioned was the fact that it either stores everything locally or in such a way that a local cookie identifies you uniquely to the server, even if you are not logged in. So if your computer happens to shutdown during editing, or if you close the tab, or whatever, returning to the website will drop you in right where you left off. The only complaint I had was the delay on auto-updating, but the manual updating was more then sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember seeing a UNIX Motif application capable of live editing back in 1999 (way better than Lyx), when visiting a professor on my university.

Somehow they never became widespread.

</comment><comment><USER10> Actually recommended this site to my Discrete Math students last Fall (this and sharelatex). They seemed to like it a lot.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was thinking about why this didn't exist already, just days ago. Great way to start playing with Latex.

</comment><comment><USER12> If they could support "track changes" like MSWord, I know a publisher that would die for this.

<comment><USER13> There's a version of track changes available in "compare" mode (see [https://www.writelatex.com/blog/154-a-first-look-at-the- new-...](https://www.writelatex.com/blog/154-a-first-look-at-the-new-version- comparison-feature) for details), and we'll be releasing a further update to this in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It complained about a Swedish character ('ä') and errored out for me.

Locally I use TeXWorks with the XeLaTeX "output" and it handles it fine...

<comment><USER15> If you click on the gear icon and go to Advanced Build Options, you can turn on XeLaTeX.

It's also worth noting that you can use accented characters with pdflatex: adding \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc} at the top of your preamble will usually do the job.

If none of that helps, feel free to send us the link to the doc via [https://www.writelatex.com/contact](https://www.writelatex.com/contact) and we will have a look.

EDIT: english

<comment><USER16> I personally hold the opinion that XeLaTeX should be the default anyway, e.g. Texpad app (iOS/Mac) already does this. I don't know of any downsides to choosing XeLaTeX over LaTeX.

<comment><USER3> Why do you prefer xelatex to lualatex?

<comment><USER16> Simply never used lualatex. Should I be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> not support chinese

<comment><USER15> Some LaTeX incantations are required, but we do support Chinese. Here's an example of one way to set it up:

[https://www.writelatex.com/examples/chinese-a-visit-to- qiant...](https://www.writelatex.com/examples/chinese-a-visit-to-qiantang- lake-in-spring-qian-tang-hu-chun-xing/xhzmbjjnbfrq#.U28HhK1dU85)</comment></comment>


Anonymous vs. HBGary: the aftermath - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-vs-hbgary-the-aftermath.ars <comment><USER2> "What happened to Barr? Anonymous loudly and angrily demanded that Penny Leavy fire him, since his list of Anonymous names could allegedly have gotten "innocent people" into serious trouble. Leavy made clear that HBGary Federal was a separate company from HBGary, one in which she owned only a 15 percent stake, and that she couldn't simply "fire" the CEO."

I found the comments on this article interesting: [http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/rsa-2011-winning-war- losin...](http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/rsa-2011-winning-war-losing-our- soul-022211)

"They claimed that the company was under separate management, and that HBGary, Inc. only had a 15% stake in the company. However, the Operating Agreement for HBGary Federal, LLC, reveals that Greg Hoglund and Penny Leavy were two of the original six Founding Directors of HBGary Federal. Futher, Penny Leavy herself signed the incorporation application with the California Secretary of State. This Operating Agreement confims the 15% stake held by HBGary, Inc. in HBGary Federal, but it also reveals that Penny Leavy herself holds a 48% share in the company. Her 48% share, plus that of HBGary, Inc. (15%) puts their combined ownership stake at 63%. In terms of dollars invested, their investment in HBGary Federal amounts to some 87.5% of the total monies invested.

"This operating agreement can be downloaded from: <http://cryptome.org/0003/hbg/HBG-Fed-OA.pdf> "

Exhibit B in the Cryptome PDF (page 31) does indeed show Penelope Christine Leavy with 48%, in addition to HB Gary Inc's 15%.

</comment><comment><USER2> From what I've read elsewhere, in terms of online crimes, the FBI is treating Anonymous second only to child porn ([http://www.dailycampus.com/mobile/news/fbi-raids-house- on-n-...](http://www.dailycampus.com/mobile/news/fbi-raids-house-on-n- eagleville-1.1961646)). Probably a function of the power and money behind the people they've attacked (the Visa/Mastercard DDoSes in particular).

<comment><USER3> That, and the fact that their existence is a direct challenge to the FBI's collective ego.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The characterization of Anonymous as some single or unique entity is misleading. The sign at the booth and the fax HBGary received were (likely) not perpetrated by the hackers who did the damage. Anyone in the right mood might have gone through with it, fueled by the success of the original attack. And the point made at the end of the article that Barr's list of supposed identities contained many innocent people was very true.

<comment><USER5> I would expect hijinks from the guys at Mandiant or any other exhibitor constituting even tangential competition (or anyone from Palantir for that matter) could include something like that sign.

There's something clearly going on that we're not being told - but then again, bear in mind that they're a private company so it's not like there's an obligation to disclose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _..."they struck gold with an SQL injection attack on HBGary Federal's content management system. [...] They quickly grabbed and decrypted user passwords from the website_ "

A security firm cracked by scriptkiddie tricks? Storing passwords in the database, instead of hashes? Hmmm...

<comment><USER7> From the information available it appears the passwords were hashed but not salted.

<comment><USER8> If that is true, then they must have used some really, really simple passwords for them to be cracked in such a short time.

<comment><USER9> There's some remarkably complete rainbow tables out there for MD5... Last time I heard any details, every 11char string and every combination of dictionary words including letter/number substitutions out to 16chars is now just a lookup away...

Any password small enough to remember is probably vulnerable if stored as an unsalted MD5 hash.

<comment><USER10> Ugh. Time for me to go to all 32 character passwords.

<comment><USER11> Or even better, don't use the same password on every site.

<comment><USER10> Why would I have plural "passwords" but only use one on every site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not much substance in the article, but: HBG come across as whiny little losers ("oh noes! we are being threatened!!"), and Anon seems to have gotten bored and moved on.

<comment><USER13> I have somewhat mixed feelings about it, but I think I like it how, with modern technology, civilian semi-organized groups can challenge and shame such shady and clearly power obsessed companies. It feels like a kind of balancing force against the most dystopian possible future.

<comment><USER14> That palantir page was really disturbing to see. I have to be glad that it was leaked.

<comment><USER15> This case, and the lawsuit with i2 has firmly put Palantir on my list of "sleazy companies" not to do business with or try to go work for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The biggest worry here is that HBGary is not being held accountable for their criminal activities. They have been using tools and psy-ops practices developed for the military against U.S. political targets. That is against the law.

</comment><comment><USER7> From the article:

      "Instead, he believes that Anonymous has "decided to continue their antics. They're in it for the laughs… this is a real funny game for them." Not content with the damage they have inflicted, they "harass a company that's trying to get back to work." Each time a new story about the company appears in the press, Butterworth said that these attacks spike again."

If the press is bad for HBGary why do they participate in it? A no comment would have been sufficient. I think HB Gary is participating in the press to incite attacks so they can present themselves as victims, collect evidence, have someone charged, and declare victory. Seriously, a sheet of paper written in sharpie. They're expecting me to believe that the RSA holds a security conference with out badges, with out video monitoring and that some anon in a Guy Fawkes mask walks up to the table and places a threatening did it for the LULZ paper on their booth with no one noticing. Maybe, V for Vendetta is a real movie and such a person really exists who can easily pass through intelligence services and evade video monitoring. If I was HB Gary I'd have extensive surveillance on the booth to catch just such a thing. I'll use the Aaron Barr method of finding anons and assume the anon who placed the paper is employed by HB Gary. This from a company whose services are retained for their ability to plant false documents. The sign should read 'We got laughed out of the security conference for using weak passwords, storing them weakly, and reusing passwords in addition to being vulnerable to basic SQL injection.'

In my opinion, officers of HBGary Federal were engaged in stalking people online and selling private information about individuals for commercial purposes, as well as engaged in defaming these individuals with false information to the FBI. Given the demographic of anonymous it's quite likely that some of these individuals were children. I'm not sure if this is illegal in the US, but if they collected and prepared to sell personal information without consent about Canadian citizens they'd likely be in violation of Federal Law. (PIPEDA)

Also, regarding the millions of dollars in damages, these claims would be impossible to verify with a private company. Public companies on the other hand are required to file damages to the company both tangible and intangible. In a lot of hacking cases you'll see millions of dollars claimed, but if you look at the 10-Qs (SEC Required docs) you'll see no such filing. If you want a case to look at in particular for this, look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Why is it ok for HBGary to take money to compromise computers, but when Anonymous engaged in expression of speech they are targetted by federal investigators?

This is a company that used intelligence assets against pro-union websites. My personal feelings regarding unions aside, this is attempting to violate the rights of individuals to peaceably assemble. Even if it isn't illegal per se, it's highly unethical.

If HB Gary only engaged in ethical business practices there would be little damage from the disclosure of the emails. The damage results from the conspiracy to commit activities that are likely criminal.

A better question to ask is given the emails why Federal charges have not been laid against HBGary?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act>

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure at any given RSA conference there are multiple folks who might personally/privately identify as members of anonymous, ie. they wouldn't need to "sneak in" to the conference b/c they are already there as legitimate members of the security community. <pure-speculation> Hell, there could be employees of HB Gary who think of themselves at anonymous. This would support your speculation that HB Gary made the sign, but complicate the motivations. </pure-speculation>

I do agree that HB Gary should be investigated as much as–if not more than–anonymous since there is some evidence of illegal or unethical business practices in the released email. I would like to think that we hold corporate security companies up to a higher standard of practice...

<comment><USER18> Anyone attending that conference could have decided to be "Anonymous". Isn't that the way the organization works?

<comment><USER10> Yes, the references to "V for Vendetta" aren't incidental. Many of the ideas in that graphic novel are an important component of the Anonymous ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On the first photo, was that "Defeating malware" or "Delivering malware"?

</comment><comment><USER20> the more i read about this HBGary the more i feel that justice is being served. These fat and lazy morons thought that because they've been doing dirty things for government they are above the law and basic ethical rules ... Of course, they are above the law that enforced by their government friends, yet there is the Karma law and "we the People".

<comment><USER21> "These fat and lazy morons..." Can we avoid juvenile attacks like these, please? C'mon, this is HN, not Kindergarten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Cobert Report summary: <http://ca.gawker.com/5769950/>

</comment><comment><USER23> The power of anonymous is that _you_ can become part of anonymous at any point.</comment>


Software Development on the Chromebook Pixel - <AUTHOR> http://charukiewi.cz/posts/2015-06-20-chromebook-pixel/

<comment><USER2> Why run any programming software on the chrome book? You can always just ssh into a box and do your dev there? I have been using that for years (and the web code editor I wrote). I have used the first Pixel as on the go dev machine for years...

<comment><USER3> Did you read the post at all? That's exactly the conclusion the post comes to.</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel: Fake Culture Wars Only Distract Us from Our Economic Decline - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/07/21/thiel_fake_culture_wars_only_distract_us_from_our_economic_decline.html <comment><USER2> Which is more brave?

(a) for someone to say that they're proud to be gay at a republican convention

(b) for someone in Silicon Valley to openly support Trump

I'm actually not sure.

<comment><USER3> he got an extremely positive reaction for being proud to be gay in the video. i think obviously it's b.

<comment><USER2> It's a little disappointing that it takes so much bravery to disagree in Silicon Valley. Supposed, it's a place of brave ideas and independent thinking. But in reality, there's a giant groupthink going on there.

Disclaimer: I don't live in Silicon Valley but I mostly admire it. Also I disagree with Thiel myself though I don't hold it against him.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

The majority of interesting projects to me have been fairly radical with political, social or economic propositions behind them even if that wasn't how they were advertised.

All the interesting things seem to happen on the peripheral. Whether the opinion is right or wrong for all time doesn't matter so much as it being divergent from regular thinking.

It is not that conventional thinking is bad. It works 99% of the time or it wouldn't exist. The problem with it is the same as with any habit. The population gets into a rut and begins to think there exists One True Way.

That's a big part of why I enjoy Less Wrong's Sequences and Slate Star Codex. It's so easy to fall into lazy thinking habits and sometimes the right turn of phrase or analogy can snap you out of it.

Examples (perhaps poor, you be the judge):

House prices go up. Why? Shouldn't they depreciate like cars? What's the difference between the English and Japanese housing market? It is culture or central bank policy?

Democracy will exist in the future. Why? They never lasted more than 2 centuries before, has that really changed?

This is not to say democracy shouldn't exist or house prices should rise, only that we ought to question our priors.

<comment><USER5> > House prices go up. Why?

Supply and demand.

> Shouldn't they depreciate like cars?

If you had to cannibalize key elements of existing vehicles to make most new cars, cars might not depreciate either. Real property and tangible personal property are different.

> What's the difference between the English and Japanese housing market? It is > culture or central bank policy?

Perhaps neither. I mean, 0.6% annual population growth vs. -0.2% annual population growth is going to produce a pretty big difference in the housing market, all other things being equal (other things between the UK and Japan obviously are _not_ equal, of course, but that difference alone is going to have an effect on trajectories in the market.)

> Democracy will exist in the future. Why? They never lasted more than 2 > centuries before

Iceland (lonest span 930-1430), the Iroquois (since perhaps ~A.D. 1142), and Switzerland (since A.D. 1648) suggest that your "never lasted more than 2 centuries before" is mistaken. And, obviously, these previous long-running examples spent all or much of their existence in their adherence to democratic norms was a notable exception to the surrounding context, one would expect democracies to last longer when it was a more-universal norm.

<comment><USER4> Very good! We could have a discussion on the subject(s), ranging wide or in- depth. We might even come up with useful corollaries and ways to test the validity of claims.

That would be impossible were we to approach those propositions with mainstream thinking and take our assumptions as givens. Probably this is connected to the Royal Society's motto "Take nobody's word for it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The two party system really sucks and I find it really troubling when LGBT are mocked by liberals for being conservative (eg Caitlyn Jenner).

<comment><USER7> That's an old view of the republican party. They were staunchly against gays, and the democrats didn't exactly embrace gays, but they didn't want to make their lives miserable for being gay.

But, we have a new republican party now - one that is centered on Trump at the moment and is entirely concerned with the economics of the middle/working class. I'm glad to see that's here. I've always been conservative leaning, but couldn't countenance being a republican because of their old social views which I thought to be completely backwards.

Now that they've dropped that, and (I think) embraced identity differences, I am more than willing to throw my hat in with them.

<comment><USER3> the biggest problem i have with trump is his seeming stance on protectionism and anti globalism.

but like most things he says, i'm not sure if he means it.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly how he plans to help the working class no? I don't want to get in to whether it _will_ help, just pointing out that you're basically saying "my biggest problem with Trump is the part of his platform you find redeeming".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In general, the whole "social issues are just distractions from economic problems, which are the only issues that matter" attitude taken by Thiel as a _huge_ red flag.

Peter Thiel doesn't have to worry about being forced to use the wrong bathroom. Peter Thiel doesn't have to worry about being impregnated by a rapist and forced to carry the baby to term. Peter Thiel doesn't have to worry about shot by the police while his hands are up because the cops are afraid of his skin color. And evidently Peter Thiel is so disconnected from ordinary life that he's forgotten that he has to worry about being denied service because of his partner's gender.

These issues are real issues to matter to real people, and for some of us (including me, a lesbian trans woman), they are our top priority. The only reason he's saying this is because either he's lucky enough to be unaffected or he thinks he's unaffected. If Thiel thinks these issues are "fake", then he doesn't belong in a position of power, and I am automatically skeptical of any candidate he endorses.

It's just like last year, when _Obergefell vs. Hodges_ happened, and immediately the anti-TPP crowd started claiming that _Obergefell vs. Hodges_ was just a smokescreen meant to distract people from TPP being put on the fast track. I'm sorry, but my and more importantly my friends' ability to marry whoever we want is deeply important and very much real. All that little outburst by the anti-TPP crowd did is prove to me that the anti-TPP agenda is opposed to the LGBT rights movement. They've basically guaranteed that I'll never speak out against the TPP.

</comment><comment><USER10> I understood this to be an attack on basically everything the Republican party stands for. Which seemed far braver than saying he was proud to be gay (which to be clear, was also brave in this context).

But everyone seems to assume that the "fake culture wars" are something the Democrats made up, and the Republicans are just fighting for the natural state of affairs, when it seems pretty clear to me that stirring people up about this stuff (e.g. the southern strategy of driving black people to the democratic party so that racists white people will vote republican, or recasting gay marriage as an attack on traditional marriage) is basically what lead to the modern malaise of the Republican party and Trump. There must be a lot of people who want "republican" style economic ideas that will vote Libertarian or even Democrat this year, just to avoid being associated with hate.

So his comment makes much more sense to me if you replace "but" with "because":

 _I don 't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform. _Because_ fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline._

That fits in neatly with the bit about stopping fighting expensive wars and focus on the economy. It also fits in with him being a proudly gay Republican (and not directly related to Thiel but the most famous transgender woman in America is also a republican). Yet everyone else is reading this the opposite way to me, so maybe I'm wrong?

</comment><comment><USER11> >Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East. We don't need to see Hillary Clinton's deleted emails: her incompetence is in plain sight. She pushed for a war in Libya, and today it's a training ground for ISIS. On this most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.

What? Isn't Trump for _escalation_ in the middle east? This makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER12> >Similarly for the more rigorous checks of people coming from countries having known radical islamist ties

I'm not going to touch the rest of your nonsense, but this is an utterly shameless attempt to rewrite history. You know perfectly well that Trump called on several occasions for a ban on all Muslims entering the US, regardless of origin. That is indefensible bigotry. I think you must know that it is indefensible because you tried to gloss over it.

<comment><USER13> When you find yourself impelled to enter a thread like this:

> _I 'm not going to touch the rest of your nonsense, but this is an utterly > shameless_

... please don't. Nothing good can come of a discussion that begins by breaking the site guidelines outright. This is true regardless of how important the issue is or how right you are, indeed gets truer as those things are more the case, because you discredit your position by behaving this way. If it's correct, you ought to be able to show that without fulminating.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142296) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER12> dang: If it is your policy to selectively tone police people who disagree with Donald Trump, then you have the right to do that as a moderator of this web site. But you should not pretend that you are doing something else.

<comment><USER13> That's precisely what I'm not doing. You don't get to break the rules here just because you're anti-X, even when X is Trump. Following the site guidelines means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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

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

<comment><USER12> If that's how you feel about it, I really think you should just enforce a blanket ban on political discussion on HN. My understanding was that political topics typically aren't permitted, and I suppose it's only because of Thiel that this one got to the front page.

The reason I say this is that political discussion has a moral urgency that technical and philosophical discussion typically lack. Civility in a political context implicitly says "I disagree with your view but it's one that should be taken seriously". I won't stir the pot by mentioning any extreme examples, but there are some political ideologies that do not deserve that level of respect. Of course, one may agree or disagree that this principle applies in the case of Trump -- I don't expect HN to take a position. But asking for maximal civility in this context is making a demand that's far less reasonable than it is outside a political context. Someone who sincerely believes that Trump is a dangerous bigot can't be expected to talk about him as if he's a serious candidate. And yet to refrain from commenting would leave his bigotry unchallenged.

So I'd say relax the interpretation of the rule slightly (it's not as if I was going completely off the rails), or make a firm decision about whether or not politics is off topic on HN. As it is, you're tending to give too much space to polite racist nonsense.

<comment><USER14> Thiel has substantial leverage over YC, and Thiel clearly is a very strong Trump supporter. So I'm not sure why you're surprised that anything which can be construed as anti-trump is being censored: YC supports Trump and will silence anyone who disagrees.

<comment><USER13> That is so remarkably far from the truth that it feels like the work of an optimization algorithm.

I don't know if Thiel has any leverage over YC, but if he does it must decay awfully quickly with distance, since I've never noticed any with respect to HN and I'm pretty sensitive about that. In fact the very notion strikes me as absurd, which I mention just as a data point.

As for YC supporting Trump (or rather YC people; I don't imagine YC as an org would support anybody), the data is both prolific and exactly the opposite.

<comment><USER14> I'd suggest pushing it up internally that Thiel should be removed as a partner. There's going to be a massive boycott/retaliation against Thiel and all of his investments. YC would do well to lead the way and disassociate themselves.

<comment><USER13> Even if I agreed with you and had any influence over it, it would not be in HN's interests to do that.

The reason is that such forms of influence are reciprocal à la Newton's third law. To attempt to exercise such influence would be to invite it in return. I think everyone at/on HN and at YC would agree that it's best for HN to remain free of that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Snowden ally Appelbaum claims his Berlin apartment was invaded - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.de/snowden-ally-appelbaum-claims-his-berlin-apartment-was-invaded/a-17315069 <comment> grey-area For some background as to why people like Appelbaum or Poitras might be so paranoid, here he is describing the harassment he has suffered at the hands of US border agents in the past (because of being involved in the Tor project):

[http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/we_do_not_live_in_a](http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/we_do_not_live_in_a) [http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/17/long_before_helping_ex...](http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/17/long_before_helping_expose_nsa_spying)

This sort of impunity to harass civilians who have not committed any crime is something you'd expect in a police state, not a functioning democracy. Sadly it seems the UK and US have now joined the ranks of countries who employ this sort of harassment routinely at the border.

<comment><USER2> It's not paranoia when it's actually happening.

He purportedly has video of the bag men. When he was in the US his girlfriend woke up to another bag man watching her through night vision goggles, presumably while his partner installed bugs in the apartment while Appelbaum was out of town.

<comment><USER3> > bag man watching her through night vision goggles

Pretty sure the "bag man" idiom doesn't mean what you think it does.

<comment><USER2> My mistake. I meant something along the lines of black-bag-job-man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stasi's Zersetzung: "The Stasi perfected the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies known as Zersetzung. ... This often included psychological attacks such as breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung)

It's just history repeating itself.

<comment><USER5> The Stasi perfected the technique, but that doesn't mean that anybody who uses it is on par with the Stasi. Psyching people out is natural human behavior. Heck, even Arnold Schwarzenegger figured out that stealing Mike Katz' lucky shirt before a competition might take off a few points.

Applebaum is probably less worried about his stuff being moved around to harass him and more worried about obtaining new computer hardware and a new place to live at this point. I really doubt that the main purpose of this attack was harassment.

<comment><USER6> > Psyching people out is natural human behavior. Heck, even Arnold > Schwarzenegger figured out that stealing Mike Katz' lucky shirt before a > competition might take off a few points.

Arnold Schwarzenegger? [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1002-01.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1002-01.htm) You cite _that_ guy as some kind of super centered human? ("even Arnold Schwarzenegger")

Also, where does the power differential come into play? Arnold snagging the shirt from a competitor, that's cute; but try an adversary with a near unlimited budget and arsenal, and many, many, many people. Try being one person, living in a foreign country because you would feel even more unsafe at home.

This, is being a bully. Not as a "human", but as a machinery built of humans (which can take on radically different properties btw). To bring up Arnold is correct in a way, but not because it's "normal" in any sense other than chimpanzees hunting others for fun and profit is "normal". Fuck normal. The question is, do we at this point in time and going forward want that. That is always the question. Some call it civilization, or decency.

And as for being on par with the STASI: [http://apps.opendatacity.de/stasi-vs- nsa/english.html](http://apps.opendatacity.de/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html)

Your argument is kinda that it's not being the STASI because it's being a normal human being. Just pause and think about that. By your logic not even the STASI Zersetzung was actually STASI Zersetzung, because it's just normal individuals doing what normal individuals do. There is nothing you could not justify with that.

Fact is, if you were the target of this, you'd appreciate support, you'd _love_ to see a change. But since you're not, you tell us what Appelbaum probably cares most about. He talks about how he realized how surveillance kills human relationships, how he lost many friends and even his girlfriend because they could NOT stand that pressure.

And you tell us it's not harrassment... just astonishing. Just no.

<comment><USER5> >You cite that guy as some kind of super centered human?

Where did I do that?

>And you tell us it's not harrassment... just astonishing. Just no.

Again you misread me. It may be harassment, but what was my point about harassment? Read again please.

<comment><USER6> > Where did I do that?

by saying "even Arnold Schwarzenegger". What does the "even" mean, then?

Another interesting thought is that he actually stole the shirt to demoralize, so for Zersetzungspurposes.

> what was my point about harassment?

That's it's "natural", and therefore not Zersetzung. Not really much of a point if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They pick on this guy and harass him with every chance they get to "send him a message" (they should know by now that doesn't work on him, but anyways). The US government really is extremely petty and vengeful. And that's just one of the many reasons why letting it have so much power over anyone in the world at anytime through mass surveillance is so dangerous.

<comment><USER8> The message is not meant for him, but for us. He is made into an example for others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's quite a lot more in the original article, if you read German (or use Google Translate):

[http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/spionage-skandal/jacob- appelb...](http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/spionage-skandal/jacob-appelbaum- zur-ueberwachung--eine-taktik-der-zersetzung-,23568638,25682272.html)

<comment><USER10> Interesting interview:

\- He obviously speaks german now quite fluently, so I assume he will stay in Berlin, in a much safer country.

\- Obviously the CIA still tries to get hands on the Snowden data to know how much and what exactly the journalists have, to be prepared. So they still don't have this information. This could eventually lead to better NSA reforms, as they still have to fear the worst.

<comment><USER9> > He obviously speaks german now quite fluently

I don't think so, it's probably a translation of an interview conducted in English. Based on what I've seen of him in videos just a couple months ago, he's learning a bit (he did use and mispronounce the word Zersetzung), but probably nowhere near fluency by now.

He applied for a residence permit, but I'm not sure if he has it yet. It's kind of interesting that he and Laura Poitras and a few others have all wound up in Berlin. Obviously it's no perfect sanctuary, but it's probably still one of the safest places to be for people doing this kind of work.

<comment> grey-area Riiis you have been hellbanned. Contact admins and perhaps ask them what rule exactly you contravened with this one comment - the hellbanning system here is truly kafkian!

<comment><USER11> > Contact admins and perhaps ask them what rule exactly you contravened with > this one comment

Being genuinely bad at posting would be one.

<comment> grey-area Presumably you don't have show dead turned on, here is their only post (just below here):

Why is this, when forces working with the German government itself can apparently swoop in unannounced? How is there any advantage to living in Germany? I'm genuinely interested in understanding.

<comment><USER11> I read the post. It's a bad post, and it could be a precursor to a toxic account. It's got the tone of a bad attempt at trolling. (It's at least clear the poster is either a bad troll or can't apply a modicum of critical thinking of their own.) HN has other information it can take into account when hell- banning somebody, like IP addresses, too. Go ahead and try making new accounts and see if you get hell-banned. Set them up from cafes and the like if you're worried about it being correlated with your IP address (and thereby treated as less likely to be a bad account). I've done this quite a few times recently and those accounts making one or two comments have never gotten hell-banned.

<comment> grey-area Couldn't disagree more.

<comment><USER11> Of course not, I wouldn't have replied in the first place if I agreed with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Given his level or paranoia, I'm surprised he wouldn't have set up some sort of security camera that continually uploads to Amazon S3 or something. Video of these thugs would be much more valuable than the single bit of information that an alarm gives.

<comment><USER13> Because S3 is totally out of the reach of these adversaries.

<comment><USER12> That requires they (a) notice the camera, (b) dissect the software running it to determine to where it's uploading (which might be a more secure intermediary), (c) take action to delete the video, and (d) hope that he doesn't have another service running which backs up the video _from_ S3 in realtime.

Yes, the NSA _can_ do that, but it takes time and effort, and given that they couldn't even find/disable one of his mundane alarm systems, it's likely that the wouldn't have disappeared the video evidence.

<comment><USER14> ...or have a small power outage or internet outage lasting a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Probably US agents were trying to get access to some of Snowden's archive. I'm not sure harassment was intended either.

I'm keen to say thought, that Snowden is _winning_ this as the time goes by and NSA is loosing ground time and again. I just don't know how this whole surveillance thing, will work out on the next elections. You have the Obama administration clearly embarrassed but ultimately unwilling making any substantial change in the patriot act or it's powers. On the other hand, Republicans are the ones usually advocating greater surveillance, more police state, etc. It's a full-frontal battle of central authority (Congress vs Population) vs democracy.

Accepting the fact that NSA is _wrong_ would be admitting that Snowden's ultimate sacrifice[1] was justified and welcomed, and that's even more _expensive_ than putting an end on NSA's surveillance for a political team, government or party.

[1] IMHO The guy did a huge sacrifice. I understand the controversy by some overzealous _patriots_ to treat him as a traitor, but in my view he screwed his life over something he believed.

<comment><USER16> It won't have any effect on the next elections except maybe a few people here and there to be elected to champion for the rights.

The majority of the NSA programs were operated with both Republican and Democratic blessing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _A US Internet activist and one of the people with access to Edward Snowden 's documents, has told a Berlin paper that his apartment was broken into, saying he suspected US involvement._

GMAFB. The Snowden documents would be hugely valuable to _any_ government or large criminal organization (think drug cartels) that could get their hands on them. If you admit you have access to them you are painting a target on your back for groups beyond just the US government.

<comment><USER18> Large criminal organizations don't have to stick to the "sneak in and try to be unnoticed" tactic as closely.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure of that. One big theme in intelligence / counterintelligence is that it isn't necessarily what you know. It's how you know what you know. Secretly having a copy of the Snowden documents is much more valuable than having a copy of the Snowden documents and everyone knowing that you have them.

E.g. If I am the U.S. and I want to manage some agents in Iran, I might have to alter my strategy if I know Iran has the Snowden docs. I think you can s/Iran/Sinaloa Cartel/ and it still makes sense.

<comment><USER19> Is there much evidence that large criminal organizations care about the standard themes of intelligence / counterintelligence?

<comment><USER14> The leadership of the Los Zetas Cartel, the largest and most powerful cartel in Mexico, comes almost exclusively from special forces and intelligence backgrounds.

According to a number of leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel that have been charged in US courts, the CIA has been providing material support and training to The Sinaloas since 2008 in an attempt to offset explosive growth of the Zetas.

<comment><USER19> Los Zetas are hardly famous for a subtle approach. Are they actually operating like intelligence agencies?

It seems to me that even if they have the knowledge, they don't think it is worth the effort in practice.

<comment><USER20> Los Zetas have built a country-spanning network of radio repeaters using kidnapped engineers. They are clearly cognizant of information security.

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/zeta- radio/](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/zeta-radio/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I was looking for a flat in Berlin in 2003. I was given a key and the address of an obviously not empty appartment. When I opened the door that was clear immediatly.

Since then I alway change the lock in the main door. This has also the advantage that I can go for something better than what the landlord deems apropriate. Last time I went for EVVA 3KS. Is that still state of the art?

I am not saying this happened here.

<comment><USER22> > _Since then I alway change the lock in the main door._

I'd check your tenancy laws, that's certainly not legal in some countries. I would be evicted if I did that.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. And frightning. So your landlord always has access to your home? That is certainly different in Germany.

Are you allowed to install an alarm system and not give him the code?

He is not allowed to enter any time, I guess? Or is he?

<comment><USER22> Entering without my permission (or 2 weeks notice) is grounds for immediate termination of my lease (see the link below). Installing an alarm system and not giving them the code isn't covered, but I would be extremely unwise to do that. There's a lot covering the tenant if the landlord does enter without permission, and the only time I've had a problem with it lead to a lot of voluntarily refunded rent. It's not really thought of as strange, though I would prefer to have my own locks personally.

[http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/rta1997207...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/rta1997207/s70.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, he had 4 alarms and not a single camera that streams video to an offsite server? I am not saying he is lying or anything like that, just find my self saying "WTF" when I read that.

<comment><USER6> Where did you read he _doesn 't_ have such a camera/stream?

<comment><USER23> The english article mentioned nothing about it. I can now see that there is a German article with a lot more info. Sadly I do not read german and google translate is a poor substitute. If he does have a stream, can some one link to it, if it's public.

<comment><USER24> It is not mentioned (in either the English article or the original German) exactly what his "alarms" are. It is quite possible that (at least) one of those involves recording video but we can't know for certain. In addition, I certainly can't blame Appelbaum for not publicly describing just what his "alarms" are.

Just because the article doesn't say that he has video does not mean that he doesn't have it. In other words, as the saying goes, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are people who think they are doing a good job breaking and messing people up.

Well payed people too, some are probably reading hacker news. Still working and toiling at NSA/FRA whatever, and thinking "damn those plebians why cant they understand what we do is cool is good, we mighty advanced than our enemies"

</comment><comment><USER26> Besides intentionally sending a message, what were they thinking? This is the guy who crosses borders with no hard drive in his laptop and the Bill of Rights written to the block device of his USB thumb drives.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would think, in addition to governments, organized crime would literally kill to get their hands on the information that Snowden has. Not only to resell, but to understand the threat to their own livelihood.

</comment><comment><USER28> So basically what he has access to every single government on this planet wants access to. Not to mention a number of criminal or opportunist organizations.

<comment> grey-area Given the incredibly bad security at the NSA, and the number of contractors with access, I think you can take it as given that Russia and China already have access to these documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm shocked--shocked!--to find gambling going on here!

</comment><comment><USER30> Snowden indiscriminately leaked a huge trove of classified information to the press. Governments desperately want to know what has been compromised and what has not. What Snowden stole, they want to steal back, or at least catalog. Is there honor among thieves?

<comment><USER31> So, arrest Snowden then, if that becomes possible. Invading the home of someone who is not guilty of a crime is an unacceptable escalation by the governing state.

<comment><USER30> Appelbaum is in possession of stolen information. He is being surveilled and surreptitiously searched like any common suspect might be. The FBI conducts secret sneak and peaks all the time, legally. Public arrests may or may not happen, but that's not the game right now. The first order of business is identifying who has what information and with whom they might be sharing it. An arrest would cause any extant network or conspiracy to go further underground.

<comment><USER32> I doubt that the FBI (or any other US authority) is allowed to operate in any state outside the USA. Similar with all other countries.

<comment><USER30> It's easy enough to engage the local authorities, but if they won't cooperate, a unilateral op. in the name of national security is not unheard of.

<comment><USER32> "Easy enough?" I am also not sure if that is really so easy. We are not talking about a terrorist here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vim esckeys - <AUTHOR> http://ksjoberg.com/vim-esckeys.html

<comment><USER2> To the OP, Thanks, I knew why it was delaying but didn't realize I could disable the behavior!!

The leads back to the very old days of serial terminals and the horrible ^[ prefix in many terminal's function and arrow keys. I remember fondly working with Wyse60's and some other terminals that used ^A instead.

Imagine trying to detect ^[{randomDelay}O{randomDelay}C -vs- the user typing ^[{randomDelay}O

The Wyse60 used left=^H, right=^L, up=^K, down=^J so there was no need for the delay to detect the sequence.

Back in the old days Vi would detect this lack of multi-character function keys and not use a delay.

On a 1200 baud modem it was very nice however later as DEC and ANSI multi-byte sequences became more popular this became much more painful.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termcap> for more terminal insanity fun.

On a fun note, I have a customer with a 1987's era copy of Microsoft Excel for Xenix (yes it really existed).

Each time we upgraded their system to a more powerful cpu I had to patch the binary as it literally used a spin loop to delay long enough to detect the keys (never mind tty settings can help with that at kernel level). The last time I had to make it work on a recent core I literally set the "spin loop counter" in the millions to get it to work via telnet on a local network where they keys come fast and low latency!

It took me a couple hours the first time with a debugger to find this little gem, so I have a README in the binary's lib dir that explains how to update it. Every couple of years I have to dig in and figure out the right value! Fun!

EDIT: It's possible the magic was actually happening in termcap with the original vi. I didn't dig into the source to verify. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd wondered why hitting 'O' after hitting escape led to such a nasty delay when running vim in a terminal. Now I know.

For those that still want arrow keys in insert mode (sacrilege! ... but I do), this is probably the .vimrc option you want:

        set timeout timeoutlen=1000 ttimeoutlen=100

<comment><AUTHOR> imurray, I will update my blog post with the given settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having remapped my caplocks key to be escape, I find myself using it fairly often not just with vim but in all sorts of ways. Considering I never used it as caplocks before except accidentally I found the remapping a good investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I could.

I'm using an U.S keyboard layout and need the ability to write ÅÄÖ sometimes(I'm from Sweden). I've customized my keyboard layout to switch three keys when caps lock is pressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instead of Esc you can use Ctrl-C without any delay. I learned this years ago when the latency of a satellite Internet connection would interfere with Esc and Meta.

And, if you remap Caps Lock to Ctrl, Ctrl-C will be easier to type.

This works 99% of the time. The _only_ exception I know of where it performs differently is in operations on a visual block (not visual line) selection -- hitting Ctrl-C only applies changes to the current line but Esc does what you want.

<comment><USER6> It's not well-explained in this article, but the problem is that when press a key like O in normal mode (to insert a line), vim will wait a certain amount of time to see if there's another key of a sequence about to follow. Reducing this timeout or disabling esckeys will reduce the or eliminate the wait time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I forgot all about this problem ever since I remapped 'jk' to <esc>. Although when I was primarily using <C-[>, I tried the timeoutlen and ttimeoutlen solution but couldn't really find any values that didn't conflict with my preference of delay allowed between entering personal map key sequences (other than the default, which is what partially causes the problem).

<comment><AUTHOR> The combination of 'jk' to <ESC> seems to be a very common solution. I use 'jj' to <ESC> myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that you don't actually have to wait for the delay to start writing. If you press <Esc>O and just start writing during the delay, vim will "cancel" the delay immediately (but of course, if the first letter you type is, for instance, a C, Vim will think you pressed the right arrow key and so on).

</comment><comment><USER9> I only just figured this one out myself a few days ago. Another alternative is to map jj or jk (or whatever) to esc in insert mode. Then you just need to get out of the habit of hitting esc. Of course, then there's a delay on hitting j but I've found it less of an annoyance.</comment>


The Evolution of Bacteria on a "Mega-Plate" Petri Dish - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/180908160 <comment><USER2> I had read the article but didn't see the video. Happy I came across this, really amazing stuff.

Obviously, real life is way more complicated. But why don't we see antibiotic resistance happening faster in the wild, as the video would suggest...?

<comment><USER3> Not a doctor or biologist but I'm guessing that the evolution seemed so rapid was due to the perfect lab conditions and the ramping of dosage instead of just from nothing to very strong. Also, it's giving the bacteria a safe home from which to launch their next wave of attacks, vs taking the no antibiotic zone and dropping an anti-biotic bomb on it as would be the case if you e.g. Had an infection then began a strong course of antibiotics. In the human body you'd also have other factors (immune system etc) working against the growth, so it's not just the antibiotics which would be killing off the bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previously on HN as: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456938)

</comment><comment><USER5> Could this training actually produce some harmful organisms or will they be out competed by their antibiotic susceptible counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there any horizontal gene transfer going on here and if so how can we visualize it ?</comment>


Remote Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.remoteyear.com/ <comment><USER2> I wish these existed when I was just out of college. I would have loved to spend a year doing this before family, kids, mortgages, etc. Now I am just getting depressed...</comment>


"Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays" by Andrew Chen - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.co/marketplace-startups-best-essays/ <comment><USER2> It's crazy to me that there are so many moving parts to businesses like this - how do you keep it all in your head? Or are there strategies to reduce the complexity of the business problem so you don't have to keep everything in your head?</comment>


Man Who Introduced Millions to Bitcoin Says Blockchain Is a Bust - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-18/man-who-introduced-millions-to-bitcoin-says-blockchain-is-a-bust <comment><USER2> > "Blockchains are a pain to work with," wrote Thomas, the chief technology > officer of Ripple Labs.

One thing to note is that he works for Ripple Labs, which created another protocol that is similar to Bitcoin/anything blockchain based... so it's pretty much a competitor calling their competition a bust.

<comment><USER3> Its worse than that he scammed many people with Ripple in past, then he proceeded to rebrand as Stellar (and somehow suckered in the guys from Stripe who are being very qiuet about it now) and is repeating the same steps as before.

<comment><USER4> talking about a wrong dude :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "In a blockchain like ethereum, everyone has to think the same," he said. He > plugs Ripple's Interledger Protocol at the end, describing it as a more > flexible and individualized way to send or receive payments.

It's a quid-pro-quo. Journalist gets their headline, Thomas gets his asset pumped.

<comment><USER6> You seem to be suggesting that his core argument is only worthy as headline- bait. I thought it was quite an interesting critique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm already seeing people pile in here to call Stefan Thomas a business scammer and "a competitor calling his competition a bust" and whatever, so it's worth mentioning here that Stefan pioneered using Bitcoin with Javascript, and the most popular wallets in the world still use what he helped create today: [http://bitcoinjs.org](http://bitcoinjs.org)

Please have respect for the idea that his opinions on Blockchains aren't just biased in connection with his work and possessing of no technocratic merit. If you don't at least give him that, he will have received neither money nor respect for his hard work that definitely improved the Bitcoin space (because he sure wasn't getting paid to work on BitcoinJS).

<comment><USER2> That is a good point to add! With my comment "a competitor calling his competition a bust" I just wanted to make sure people took what he said with a grain of salt. If you hadn't read up on Bitcoin/blockchains/Ripple before it could be easily overlooked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Blockchains are so far really only effective at attracting venture capital to startups.

We're at the end of the mobile tech cycle, people are desperate for a new investment theme. IoT and blockchain are showing up everywhere but it feels like a contrived attempt to start another cycle.

Remember "push" technology and B2B exchanges? Two other keywords that popped up in contrived efforts to start new tech cycles after the first .com implosion.

</comment><comment><USER9> Blockchains are only useful when you need a decentralized system where nobody trusts anyone else, and where different actors need to be pseudonymous. Otherwise there are far simpler solutions.

<comment><USER10> Could you please give a few examples of such simpler solutions?

<comment><USER9> Server - client architecture, using IP addresses instead of using public/private keys, etc.

<comment><USER10> Then the own employees can change the ledger (for example).

I thought your claim was serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hear echoes of [https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is- moving/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/). The argument that open protocols become effectively static after adoption is compelling, but I wonder if perhaps we can do better.

</comment><comment><USER12> > "Blockchain, the ledger software that makes the digital currency possible"

Huh? The blockchain is a name for a feature of the Bitcoin protocol. It's not a piece of software and it's not a proper noun.

But you'd be forgiven for not knowing that, given the constant hype about "blockchains" these days and their use as a hammer to try and hit every imagined nail. There's also a company named after it, which _is_ a proper noun.

The blockchain, incidentally, is not mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper,[0] which refers to a "proof-of-work chain". "Blockchain", as a word, was merely internal jargon to refer to Bitcoin's specific implementation of this concept.

[0] [https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf](https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting how influential some people are. What should have been an offhanded reddit comment is an article on Bloomberg.</comment>


Reddit Grew 230% in 2010 at Digg's Expense - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/01/03/reddit-2010-growth/

<comment><USER2> The comparison to Digg feels forced and unnecessary, especially without numbers for Digg in January and December.

Reddit had 250 million pageviews in January, Digg had 200 million in July (before the redesign - this likely means Reddit was already ahead in January), and Reddit ended the year with 830 million.

Most of Reddit's growth couldn't have come from Digg.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe there's room in the market for a third big player* now? Digg's reputation has gone down the toilet and is declining.

Reddit has taken over 1st place but they have a few problems: First, Conde Nast doesn't supply them with enough resources compared to their popularity. This makes the user experience painfully slow, and the site is down even more times than Twitter was in the early days.

They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad.

Third, they lack the creativity to make money off their huge userbase.

I'm sure these three reasons are related. If a start-up would be launched now it could even exploit the recent delicious-catastrophe by importing those links. This could bootstrap the community and content, and it'd make for some good marketing.

* I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then.

<comment><USER4> _They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad._

I've heard this repeated a number of times, and I completely disagree with it. Reddit may not be the prettiest site on the block, but it's damn functional. There is very little unnecessary stuff on the screen, and I quite like it that way. I tend to turn off custom subreddit styles because they takae away from the minimal, functional interface. I've heard people talk about "improving reddit and HN's design", but I've never seen any clear examples of where they think it's bad.

 _I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then._

4chan's an entirely different category. They're less about linksharing, and more about...well, whatever the hell they are. I don't think I'd put them anywhere near Digg or Reddit except for the fact that they both have memes. That's pretty much the only comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the growth was more at Reddit's expense. There was a drastic downturn in the quality of material hitting the front page in 2010. The comment quality has gone down significantly, too.

(Yes, I know you can decide which subreddits appear on the front page when you are logged in).

<comment><USER6> The biggest win has been for smaller niche subreddits that now have enough of a readership to feel like communities now. Reddit's strong suit has always been in the discussions.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I've been filtering certain default subreddits (e.g., AskReddit) from the front page because the signal/noise ratio is terrible. As an example, I like the fact that /r/coding was spawned from the fact that 90% of the articles in /r/programming are not related to programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a very impressive growth spurt, though I wish they could scale the site accordingly.

They've done well considering the massive amount of traffic and the complex way they are constantly adding comments, but the site is slow as sin and, honestly, quite unpleasant to browse sometimes.

I don't want to be reminded of refreshing a page on dial-up.

<comment><USER8> They're working on it. They still only have 4 engineers (!), plus a trainee. They've hired/are hiring a couple more, so maybe that will work.

Unfortunately, by selling to Conde Nast, they've ceded control on things like hiring. Every time they want to hire somebody, they have to beg to CN for permission. If it was VC funded, they'd have 40+ employees by now, and the site would look/work good. Unfortunately, CN just doesn't know what they have.

Also, never mind the headline; Mashable pretty much lives off of Digg referals, so this is just linkbait.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with the design? I love the minimalist feel. I think Reddit's and HN's design works great for news aggregators.

<comment><USER8> I agree that it's functional, but it's not hugely intuitive, which is why most people who've only ever glanced at reddit complain about its design. Vim has a great design with fantastic UI if you're an expert with it, but it's confusing as all hell for people who've never used it. Similarly, I think reddit (and HN, for that matter) could probably make more effective use of their space and lay things out in a way that's more intuitive. That's not to say I want them to be digg, or one of the many over designed CSS nightmares out there, but it's be nice if they had a UX expert really sit down and hack away at it.

I'd settle for it loading, however. That'd be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In before senseless reddit bashing...

The reddit admins are quite adamant that their growth was independent of digg.v4 and if you look at their numbers, they seem to be right. There are some increases associated with v4, but reddit was enjoying growth prior to that as well.

<comment><USER11> The graph based on their Google Analytics data [https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en...](https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=reddit.com&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=true) shows that the increase in reddit's numbers to due to Digg's problems was major, whether their admins want to admit it or not.

<comment><USER10> Not really. There was a short term spike, but their year-over-year growth was much more consistent AND greater in magnitude.

<comment><USER11> Did you look at the graph at all? It shows that the spike right around when Digg's problems occurred was just as big as their traffic increase over the last two years with the spike excluded. You need to count the increase in estimated and direct graphs separately because of the discontinuity.

<comment><USER10> It looks temporary to me: <http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png>. It also think this logic is supported by alex_'s logic [1].

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oracle Releases an OCI-Based Container Runtime Written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/oracle-opens-oci-container-runtime <comment><USER2> From a few days ago with more discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14705888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14705888)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that CrashCart use nix under the hood.

Outside of the usual problem of being from Oracle, seems interesting.</comment>


Inside Uncle Sam's "trusted identity" plan - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/01/identity-ecosystem-inside-uncle-sams-trusted-identity-proposal.ars <comment><USER2> I guess the devil is in the details. Who is allowed to be an identity provider. How much information do you have to give to the Attribute Provider before this system is usable to you? Is there tracking? Who, besides hospitals, will require this? Who will be able to get these ID's? US citizens obviously, but what about green card holders? H1B's? Visitors? What if the woman in the example lives in the UK and her husband happened to be in the US when he was admitted to the hospital? Is there a fallback to this system? Can you host my own identity provider in some fashion?

</comment><comment><USER3> _The Trustmark—some kind of image, logo, badge, or seal that authenticates participation in the Identity Ecosystem. "To maintain trustmark integrity," the report explains, "the trustmark itself must be resistant to tampering and forgery; participants should be able to both visually and electronically validate its authenticity."_

Maybe we don't need to worry about this. It will never succeed.</comment>


What does a healthy game publisher/developer relationship look like? - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanSumo/20191126/354767/What_Does_A_Healthy_PublisherDeveloper_Relationship_Looks_Like_With_Real_Contract_Details.php <comment><USER2> > Assuming review builds are unsatisfactory, Publisher will communicate > concerns with Developers to ensure any issues are resolved within next > build. Unsatisfactory is defined as the build having missed the majority > (majority defined as more than 80%) of promised milestone features.

> If agreement is terminated due to missing milestones or due to a decision by > Developer to cease development of game indefinitely, Developer must repay > all amounts paid by the Publisher

Is this normal? I'm not sure if this is a healthy relationship, seems like the publisher takes no risk at all for the development of the game like this, they just take the risk of the game not selling when it releases. And they could affect that as well, by pushing for more aggressive milestones at the end of development if they think the game wont sell enough until the developer either fails to deliver or it is good enough. Seems like these type of contracts would result in a lot of overtime crunching.

<comment><USER3> I've worked in games for over 25 years. This sort of arrangement is very common. Note there are bad developers and publishers so both get screwed at times.

Relationship building in games is very hard, there is a lot of distrust. Milestones can be very hard to pin down as a task being complete is very subjective (when are player controls done? when implemented or when they feel good? what does feel good mean?). You can meet every milestone and deliver a game that isn't fun, you can miss every milestone and deliver a best selling game.

At it's core the industry is trying to use the Hollywood movie model for financing, designing and developing games. It's not working, they are far less linear, far more interactive and significantly less well known as an art form.

There are no (or few) unique problems in videogames but they do tend to be in the extreme compared to the other arts and engineering problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most game developers have no revenue stream beyond their publishing contract. Of course these contracts look exploitive. One side has no leverage, and is basically an all in one out source shop.

<comment><USER5> > One side has no leverage

This seems perverse. Game development seems to require a high amount of skill and creativity in terms of design, art and development. But whenever I read articles or hear talks about the business of things it seems like there is a huge disconnect between requirements and the compensation. And not only that but the economical impact of games is rather large. It seems like big publishers are doing very well.

Another (very general) field where this is the case is STEM research. Even though I would guess that you generally earn more and have more financial security, the discrepancy between skill, impact and compensation is even larger. I know it is an extreme example but it showcases a complex problem and other fields can partially relate.

Examples like these at least seem to falsify the notion that the market rewards skill and impact in general. It specifically rewards market and business skills. We as craftsmen often laugh at stuff like the Dilbert comics but there is a truth behind it: The ones that have the most _actual_ leverage, skilled workers and problem solvers, seem to be controlled by people who focus on negotiation and even bullying.

Should the lesson here be that everyone needs to be a negotiator? Should we teach/learn this in school? Are we playing the game of capitalism wrong or is it actually rigged? I honestly don't know, but I personally feel that it all looks imbalanced and even phony.

<comment><USER6> The lesson is that there's no guaranteed ROI for either games development or pure STEM research, so people are justifiably stingy with money and play hardball with contracts.

If you don't believe me, the Kickstarter craze a few years ago exposed all of this to the consumer. Many games were hyped well and got huge funding but were released to mediocre-to-bad reviews and much backer regret, to say nothing of the ones which fell apart completely during development and were never successfully released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this is healthy, what does an unhealthy contract look like?

<comment><USER8> Like the relationship between Descendent Studios and publisher Little Orbit. A virtually finished game gets frozen with no end in sight, developers work for free, and the publishers aren't available for comment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where the publisher and developer are the same company.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unionized, with most bargaining power in the hands of the developer.

<comment><USER11> So now instead of being able to negotiate my own salary based on my skillset, I'm beholden to union agreements....

<comment><USER12> Talent unions set minimum pay scales, not maximums.

Hollywood actors are part of a union (SAG). Do you think that Tom Cruise got paid the same as an extra that was also in the SAG for the last Mission Impossible?

<comment><USER13> There is a reason some shows use non-union labor. Even if you had a programmer union, what's to stop people hiring non-union programmers?

<comment><USER12> I would very much like to know which broadcast or cable shows you think use non-union labor, because that would be a violation of almost all studios agreements with the unions.

AFAIK, only Netflix uses non-union labor on shows...and even they have entered into negotiations with multiple unions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm working on a database of TV scripts (currently 706 shows and 30,000 scripts) - <AUTHOR> http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/tv_show_episode_scripts.php

<comment><USER2> I hate to be negative, but the formatting of these scripts make them unreadable: [http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts...](http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv- show=against-the-wall&episode=s01e05)

Are these even scripts? Or just subtitles?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I checked a few shows that I am familiar with, and they all look like subtitles.</comment></comment>


Pushing data directly to RDBMS with Diggernaut - <AUTHOR> https://blog.diggernaut.com/i-want-to-have-my-data-flow-directly-from-digger-to-rdbms/ <comment><USER2> _Shameless plug_

My chrome extension [https://github.com/assafmo/chrome-page-to- json](https://github.com/assafmo/chrome-page-to-json) seems to extract your sandbox page beautifully! ([https://www.diggernaut.com/sandbox/](https://www.diggernaut.com/sandbox/))

BTW very nice platform. Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Great work, but unfortunately your extension does not solve many problems. Well, we offer a comprehensive approach to solving the problems of the majority of web - scraping.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does software smooth lines? - <AUTHOR> Photoshop and other digital paint apps have a "smoothing" option that causes lines drawn to be curvier. What's the math of it? <comment><USER2> I'm not an specialist, but you can start with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_anti- aliasing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_anti-aliasing)

</comment><comment><USER3> you can read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-spline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-spline)

most of them simply use a lasso method.</comment>


LA residents call police upon seeing the starry sky during a blackout (1994) - <AUTHOR> https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd43 <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _"I can see millions more stars than people that live in the city," one resident told The Los Angeles Times. "It's unbelievable. I can see the Milky Way — the whole Milky Way."_

Try living in a truly remote area in the Southern Hemisphere. The Milky Way is unbelievably more spectacular from the Southern Hemisphere.</comment>


Airbnb hosts are planning to sell off their properties because of the pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/25/tech/airbnb-hosts/index.html <comment><USER2> Good!</comment>


Ask HN: Which soft skills do you develop as a programmer? - <AUTHOR> I have been a programmer for about 15 years now, and I still try to hone in on skills that will make me better every day. One thing I realized is that I do not spend as much time on soft skills, There also aren't many companies out there who target programmers for soft skill development either.
For me, I focus a lot on communication – especially presentation and public speaking, which is always an issue. Now I am branching out. I've started searching for things like Ethics (especially with the improvements in AI, this is becoming a hot topic). And since I work remotely, I am also realizing the benefits of teamwork, getting promoted while working remotely, creating a company culture are also important skills to gain.
What do you think? What soft skills or side skills should programmers focus on improving? Anything else you think would be beneficial to add to a developer's collection of skills? <comment><USER2> Communication for sure. I think one of the hardest skills to develop is being appropriately critical without coming off like a jerk. This is especially true in remote teams where even the best conferencing solutions can't transmit subtle cues like body language.

I have been going about this by devoting a lot of time (maybe triple what I would intuitively expect) to writing thoughtful comments on code reviews/issues. And, while doing so, thinking through how I would go about the same conversation if it were in person.</comment>


The Art of Bootstrapping - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_boot.html Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic. <comment><USER2> Very good article, some of it is reiterating things I would take as a given, others like the bottom up market size estimation are very useful points that are easy to miss when caught up in the hope and dreams.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a little older but has some good points.</comment>


7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails - O'Reilly Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html

<comment><USER2> When I have seen large rewrites fail, it's often because of an all-or-nothing rather than iterative or staged approach. At my previous company, 2 different managers approached the migration of a massive VB6 project. The first tried a total rewrite in C#. The code was ingenious and better in many ways, but ultimately it failed after many wasted man-years, and he was let-go. There was just too much hidden wisdom in the spaghetti code to replace it quickly and easily. A wiser manager, and friend of mine, managed the rewrite, but in stages. He would carve out a chunk, and have it replaced. He's a director there now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary: (1) He's a better programmer now, having internalized RoR best practices, and can apply it to raw PHP code, (2) Decreased load issues, (3) All company code can be PHP, and it sounds like there was a lot of legacy code that didn't play well with Rails portion.

Would have been nice to read more about the mismatch points between Rails and legacy code. Was this a legacy DB structure that couldn't be loosely coupled to the Rails side, e.g., exposed as an internal REST service?

I also wonder if others can just as easily extend his code than if he had used a well-documented framework like Rails. In any case, it's impressive he rewrote the whole system (doesn't look like a small web app) in 2 months.

<comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm wrong. But I keep hearing (from the community) that the word "well-documented" rarely showed up next to "Rails"

<comment><USER5> In the rails API docs (api.rubyonrails.org) next to each function you can click 'show source' to see what's going on under the hood. I hardly have to do this.

But when I do, it's usually just 5-20 lines of code that's not that complex to grok. (but you're right, not many comments inline) It would not be fun to try and decipher RoR internals as a new ruby programmer.

<comment><USER3> There's also the caboose edge API documentation. It's updated 3x per day from the most recent rails edge code and has all the private (#:nodoc) methods exposed:

<http://caboo.se/doc.html>

If you think rails internals needs more documentation and can help, check out the Rails Documentation project:

<http://www.railsdocumentation.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title's kind of misleading. It's not like the guy gave up on Rails, he even said that for future projects he would love to use Rails if it was designed for Rails for the ground up.

It sounds like he was trying to using Rails to retrofit on to an existing PHP DB schema, which is an obvious nightmare and probably a stupid idea in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Its really not as bad as you might guess. It takes some time up front to go through each model and tell it what the actual table name is, what the actual primary key is, and etc.

Once that is complete though, its pretty much Rails business as usual.

This might not be practical for all applications. But, in looking at CDBaby, I would find it hard to believe that their data is all that complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ... because of a 404? J/K

The correct link is here, please update it and delete me. [http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_swit...](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html)

And it's odd that this post has 2 points while being a 404.

<comment><USER9> Strangely, it went 404 right after I read it the first time. The link must have been changed very shortly after this was posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this article gets to the heart of the matter. Coding in Rails is much nicer. But PHP is still a very easy and capable language, and will continue to be the BEST language for large-scale Web Apps for many years to come IMHO.

Coding in another language like Ruby helps improve programming skills tremendously. But then it makes sense to apply those improved skills and learned design patterns to code PHP apps.

<comment><USER11> Neither you nor Derek Sivers has made a case for PHP being the best language for large-scale web apps. In fact, Sivers only makes one argument for PHP: it's "small and fast". The rest of his arguments are either against Rails or against switching platforms for part of a production system that still needs to integrate with the old platform.

Unsupported blanket statements don't contribute anything useful to the discussion.

<comment><USER10> Sorry you're right I didn't make any kind of a case. In making claims I prefer statistics to theoretical proofs. I would rather take a quick look at the statistics of large-scale web apps than make any kind of formalized argument about which is better: PHP or Ruby.

I don't have any numbers off hand(I will find some when I have some free time) but I would _assume_ PHP has 10x more large scale websites than Rails.

That's case closed for me. Although Rails is nice and fun. But if I have to make a business decision today, its PHP all the way.

<comment><USER11> So your argument can be summarized as "I guess PHP is the best option"? That still sounds like an unsupported opinion.

Let's assume you're right, and that there are ten times as many "large scale" (whatever that means) websites running on PHP as Rails. That might mean that an equal number of people have tried building large scale websites using PHP and Rails, and that ten times as many failed using Rails as PHP. Do you think that's the case?

5 minutes of searching on Google fails to return any conclusive numbers, but PHP certainly seems to be several times more popular than Rails. PHP has also been around for 13 years, while Rails was first released to the public just three years ago. Both have been gaining popularity since their introduction, which suggests an explanation for the greater number of large scale PHP sites having nothing to do with the suitability of the tools: PHP has been around longer and has more users. If you want to measure like that, you should be programming in Java, not PHP.

The number of projects attempted and failed with a given toolset is a much better indication of its suitability than overall popularity. Even that can fail though. I suspect a greater proportion of Rails projects succeed than PHP, but I don't think Rails is the reason in a direct sense. I think the sort of people who choose Rails are more likely to succeed than those who choose PHP.

<comment><USER12> " I think the sort of people who choose Rails are more likely to succeed than those who choose PHP."

I'm sorry I don't quite get you here. Could you clarify this statement...cuz it sounds a hell alot like the elitist BS that is being peddled around by Rails fan boys as of late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He used MVC and DRY practices not common in PHP but is still very possible(I know I use them). Very nice! I would give kudos to Martin Fowler's Active Record pattern which can be found in (phpclasses.org). Very nice library and easy to use as well. I'm willing to wager the author is taking advantage of PHP5.

<comment><USER13> He mentioned using a feature only available in PHP 5, so yes.

PHP definitely can be used in a reasonably professional way, you just won't get a lot of examples of it being used that way in books or in code you'll come across on the Internet, usually.

Probably most of the people who know how to use PHP as well as it can be used work at Yahoo.

<comment><USER12> Sadly that's true. There aren't many good examples of using PHP the professional way. That being said I can somewhat relate to the author(coming from PERL/PHP jumped to Rails and back to PHP). I loved the way Rails was constructed and how it approaches web app development not to mention. I definitely think most web development frameworks should take a page off it's book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So use some other framework for Ruby. Why would you switch languages because of one framework??

</comment><comment><USER11> This is yet another article comparing a framework to a language. Aside from #2 and maybe #4, his points would be equally valid comparing Rails to Ruby without a framework. Only #4 is an argument against starting a new project using Ruby, and I think it's a bad one; programmer time is almost always orders of magnitude more valuable than machine time.

Edit: I took a look at the site in question. It's simple, fast and mostly well-designed, but the fact that it required 12k LOC and 2 months when he had the best possible functional spec (a working, but internally messy old version) doesn't give me much faith in his abilities or recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've never tried rails. But I know that PHP can get messy, and if Rails does clean it up I wouldn't say that rails cant do anything that PHP cant. Because clean code is something that enables faster development (theoretically speaking) and more innovation. Of course, probably each has its own use. In some cases the scale gets unbalanced, it can happen.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am a better coder now, thank you for reminding me.

</comment><comment><USER17> switch to django is best ;)

<comment><USER18> care to tell why?

<comment><USER17> because is easy and powerfull less code and more app</comment></comment></comment>