Germany Fights Population Drop - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/europe/germany-fights-population-drop.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& <comment><USER3> _" Demographers say that a far better investment would be to support women juggling motherhood and careers by expanding day care and after-school programs."_

In college I had a professor from East Germany that talked about this. The communists did a lot of things wrong, but one thing they got right was an impressive support system for working parents. The preschools and child care programs were excellent, and women were encouraged to work instead of staying home. After the wall fell, these support systems stopped, and his wife had to quit her job and stay home to take care of their kids. He thought it was such a waste of talent because his wife had a PHD and was also a college professor, but there were few other options at the time.

<comment><USER4> I think this is the biggest gap in western governments currently, and huge productivity boosts could be had if they solve this problem. Especially in the US.

It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time.

Paid maternal leave is not the big issue! After six months of leave, the problem remains that a child needs to be looked after and cared for while the mother returns to work.

<comment><USER5> > while the mother returns to work

But why?

I'm young and child-less, so I'm not speaking out of experience, but I really see no reasons why we should be encouraging people to be able to _work while having kids_. Instead, I think we should enable them to _not work and have kids_. 50 years ago, it was more than possible to sustain a family with only a single working parent. Nowadays, this doesn't seem even remotely possible (hell, many families barely survive with 2 working parents!). Furthermore, it's not like we're facing a shortage of workforce problems - we're facing unemployment problems. If we could enable e.g. 30% of the workforce (hopefully dads as well - I would love to stay at home instead of working) to stay at home with kids instead, not only would that solve the unemployment issues, but it would also be hugely beneficial for the children's development!

 _Edited to add:_ I actually come from a country where most adults worked even 50 years ago. However, when I was young, my grandmother was already retired, so she was able to take care of me and my brother until we started school. Still, I wish my parents had been able to spend more time with me when I was little, and I wish I'll have that opportunity with my kids.

<comment><USER6> I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other.

Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is a perfectly acceptable option too. Daycare isn't _un_ beneficial to a child.

<comment><USER7> I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

<comment><USER8> What? As a father of (soon to be) three children this sounds really odd to me. My kids have always loved going to daycare and I've never heard of it causing any developmental problems. On the contrary my own experience is that daycare really accelerates kids development.

Most children in Sweden have two working parents and start daycare when they are around a year old. Daycare in Sweden is considered part of the school system and the teachers working there have (approximately) the same education as 'regular' school teachers.

Edit: Also, as a related fact in this discussion, in Sweden children that are behind in learning to speak (language development) can actually receive special permission to spend _more_ time in daycare to help speed up their language learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> German here. The initiative to provide a kindergarden for every child is quite a failure. It was decreed by the federal govt that every city (i.e. local govt) has to provide enough resources, but there simply aren't enough kindergarden workers for that (and not enough money to get more people to do that badly paid job).

As I see it, it was just an easy way to gain votes. It's easy to pass laws that your own government doesn't have to apply, but _someone else_.

<comment><USER6> Coming from the US, the idea that kindergarten is not required seems odd to me. I was going to say that kindergarten is required here in the US, but I thought I should double check that just to be sure. I was pretty surprised by the results. Only 16 of the 50 states require kindergarten as part of the mandatory (compulsory) education [1]. The state where I went to school doesn't require kindergarten, but my very very poor family still sent me to school at age 5.

So yeah, I guess we don't require kindergarten, but I've never encountered anyone in the US who did not attend kindergarten. So it still sounds odd that Germany doesn't have universal kindergarten zumal das Wort ist Deutsch.

[1] [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_3.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_3.asp)

<comment><USER9> Funny that you say that, since the USA is a country where in many states even school is not mandatory. Why should kindergarten be?

In Germany school is mandatory until you're 16 (if I'm not mistaken), but kindergarten is completely optional. Most people - if they can afford it - would send their kids there, though, because it gives them (the parents) more time off, and it's good for the kids to spend some time with other kids.

There are public and private kindergartens here (same with schools), and for the public ones the price depends on the parents' income. It seems that the costs vary by county and by the number of kids you have (as an example I found this page: [http://www.netmoms.de/magazin/kinder/kindergarten/kosten- fue...](http://www.netmoms.de/magazin/kinder/kindergarten/kosten-fuer-den- kindergarten/) ). Looks incredibly cheap (I'm honestly surprised), so maybe it's time to plan for some offspring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Right now Germany hugely profits from immigration out of other European and overseas countries, bringing in more than 400.000 (net) immigrants in 2013 alone. The figure for 2014 will likely be even higher. If they can keep up this trend it will be able to compensate (to a large degree) the decline of the population caused by low birth rates. In fact, the 2008 demography report of the government (which brought the demographic issue to a large public awareness for the first time) ([http://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft- Verfassung/Dem...](http://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft- Verfassung/Demografie/Demografiebericht/demografiebericht_node.html)) calculated with a net immigration rate of 300.000 people in the most optimistic case, so bringing in 400.000 people per year is really better than anyone could hope. Of course some people will again complain that foreigner will "steal their jobs", but the truth is that they might actually do great service to the country, even if their rate of unemployment should be higher than that of native Germans.

<comment><USER9> Usually, immigration is good for the economy and for everyone who lives there. Germany is pretty cheap country to live in (food is probably the best and cheapest in Europe to come by, but salaries also are rather low, esp. compared to the US), IMHO probably due to the many immigrants.

We also need more qualified workers, as everyday I see German dumbos who are seriously unqualified for their job ;-)

But yes, if the day should come that German dumbos should be replaced with skilled people from Spain, Turkey, or Greece, many people might end up very pissed.

Edit: if you vote me down, maybe you'd like to elaborate on where our opinions or observations differ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently mired in biology and I think an interesting point can be made. We talk of 2 types of reproducers: R and K[0]. R is cockroaches; have just thousands of babies. K is Blue Whales; have 1 or 2 and nurture the hell out of them.

It seems that in the 1800s, we were more R type than we are today. We had lots of children (though not thousands) and weren't all that concerned with education, welfare, or health as to each one. At least in comparison to today.

Now, we seem to be much more K type. We take care of our children to an incredible degree. Mortality is very anomalous in child birth, it is rare in the 1st world to encounter an illiterate person, all but the true wackos get vaccines, etc. As a consequence, it takes a lot of time and resources to raise a child. Heck, we are even talking about the 20's being years of 'extended adolescence'[1]. I don't know if this is a mistake of correlations and causation, but they sure do seem linked.

[http://www.gapminder.org/](http://www.gapminder.org/)

Hans Rosling's TED talks are just so good here for extra material too.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory)

[1] [http://www.primermagazine.com/2013/live/wasting- your-20s-wit...](http://www.primermagazine.com/2013/live/wasting- your-20s-with-a-purpose-how-to-use-extended-adolescence-to-your-advantage)

</comment><comment><USER12> "Yet, with hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs unfilled, some executives believe"

I wonder if this is actually true or if its like the typical American sob story of we can't get PHD's to work for minimum wage so we need to outsource.

<comment><USER13> A bit of both. There is a certain shortage, but I hear that tune for 15 years or so now (that is, across two tech booms and one bust).

The difference is in the objective: Our tech lobbyists (luckily quite incompetent) would like to reduce the minimum mandatory wage for skilled immigrant workers which exists to avoid pressure on locals.

As if even lower wages make working in Germany more attractive to skilled labor that can choose between countries - including the US (where at least the gross pay is noticeably higher for skilled jobs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hopefully the resulting labour crunch will encourage more automation.

<comment><USER15> Worked in the Middle Ages after the Black Death.

Aside: I love the show Connections with James Burke and highly recommend it. Many of the threads weaved in the show come start near this time period because the labour crunch required machines otherwise there just wouldn't have been enough labour to run the society left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something that is rarely mentioned in these articles it's Germanys regressive policy on dual citizenship (i.e. only permitted in rare circumstances) this makes a country unattractive for long term immigration. While this may not be such an issue for intra EU migration, it certainly seems to cause issues with Turkish immigrants. It's a much bigger jump to naturalize if that means giving up your previous citizenship

</comment><comment><USER17> Aside from the main debate, I'm a bit surprised to not find visual representation of the said data. No pie charts, flow charts or bar diagrams :/

In my opinion that is a very inefficient way to talk about demographics.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is an editorial comment disguised as objective reporting:

"But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it."

The reasoning is something like "We can not save ourselves from collapse because we are collapsing." This is not a serious line of reasoning. Whenever people are faced with 2 problems, they need to make a decision about which problem is more urgent. If you honestly feel that problem B is more important than problem A, then you have a good reason to allow A to become worse so as to do something about B.

I could make an analogy to heart disease: aspirin can help lower the risk of a heart attack, but it has a risk itself: internal bleeding. Is aspirin worth the risk? That is something to be decided by a doctor and the patient. One needs to carefully weigh the risks of both decisions. One needs to examine all of the circumstances. However, where the risk of heart attack is serious, then the medical establishment is in agreement that it is better to take aspirin than to run the risk of a heart attack.

Exactly the same reasoning should apply to Germany and the issue of population. Which issue is more pressing, the issue of national debt, or the issue of declining population? One can make an argument either way, however Germany has a level of debt that is better than France, Italy, and many other European nations:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_deb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt)

More so, Germany's public debt is less of an issue than it seems because the public is itself not highly indebted (as opposed to the public in the USA, which carries immense private sector debts).

If you project Germany's debts 50 years in the future, the situation seems bleak, because of rising retirement costs -- but that problem exists exactly because of the low birth rate, so if it was possible to solve the low birth rate, then the debts in 50 years would cease to be a problem.

The reality is, Germany has the financial resources to take some action against the low birth rate, if it wanted to. While there are important issues to be discussed, both pro and con, the financial arguments tend to be fake arguments.

Germany is restrained in its actions because of the continuing cultural force of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche". Aggressive action to raise the birth rate would automatically mean a change in the private sphere of life. More so, it would likely mean a revolution in the social status of women, and there are many in Germany who are wary of changes in gender relations.

Between the years 1874 and 1899 my great grandmother gave birth to 16 children. My family lived on a farm in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At that time, children as young as 5 were used for farmwork. A child as young as 12 could bring in a surplus -- they were, in a sense, "profit centers". Over the last 150 years children have transformed from units of production to units of consumption. Raising a child is now very expensive, and it is against the law for children to do any work that might offset their cost. Because of that, people have cut back on the number of children they have. Whereas my great grandmother had 16 children, most of my friends are content to have 1 or 2 children. Nowadays, having 3 children seems like a large family.

If Germany were serious about lifting the birth rate, it could take aggressive action to mitigate the costs of raising children. I am sure each of us can imagine some program that we think might work: free day care for children of all ages, or a huge bonus at birth such as $100,000, or some method of feeding children such that food is effectively free for children, and parents are saved the cost.

The important thing is to imagine what aggressive action would really look like. It would make some people flinch: their instinct would be that whatever program you suggest, the program is "too expensive". But, to repeat the point I made above, the financial arguments are nonsense. If you believe that Germany faces crushing debts in the future because of rising retirement costs, then raising the birth rate is the solution to Germany's financial problems.

But if you believe that the money simply doesn't exist, and that we are, in 2014, unable to do what my great grandmother did in the late 1800s, then the entire narrative of the Industrial Revolution needs to be re-examined, because you are suggesting that we are all poorer now than we were 120-140 years ago. Ask yourself, do you honestly believe that today's technology has left us poorer? Most economic historians would argue that, even with the reduction of child labor, most families are better off today than they were 120-140 years ago. If you assume that more per-capita wealth exists in the world now than circa 1880, then it should be possible to pay families for the cost of raising 3 or 4 children.

<comment><USER19> We are not poorer now, but as you pointed out, children have gone from being profitable to being a burden, so no matter how much money we may have, there is less incentive to have children.

I'm also thinking that back in the day, your children were your retirement plan, so better have enough of them to make sure you will be taken care of. But now that the state is our retirement plan, even less reason to have kids.

<comment><USER18> Do you honestly feel that, in the entire nation of Germany, there are no families that are constrained primarily by money, when considering how many children to have? Given the way population tends to accumulate over time, you only need to convince 15% of those women who have already given birth to have 1 extra child, to raise Germany's birth rate back up to the replacement level. The question then is, are there those families who might like to have another child, if the cost was less of a burden? To borrow a phrase from economics, such policies seek to influence those families "at the margin", that is, those families that are considering having another child, and for whom some extra subsidy might be exactly what is needed to influence their decision in a positive direction. As in sales, there is no need to go after those who would never buy your product. There is no need to go after those women who are happy to be childless. The focus of pro-natalist policies is always to influence those who are open to the idea and who can be persuaded with some form of help.

<comment><USER9> Children have always been expensive, haven't they? But I think that's more of a cultural issue - people prefer consumption to investing in raising kids.

And working children don't usually bring in lots of money, but back in the day they would care for their elderly parents, which was a good reason to have kids.

I think it's not mainly about money (why do Germany's academics have the fewest children?), but about creating a children-friendly climate and a culture where raising children is considered a good thing and not just a burden that keeps you from consuming. Children and modern consumer culture - bad fit.

<comment><USER20> > _I think it 's not mainly about money (why do Germany's academics have the > fewest children?), but about creating a children-friendly climate and a > culture where raising children is considered a good thing and not just a > burden that keeps you from consuming._

This is so interesting; I was thinking about this exact problem (consumerism vs. child rearing) the other day after noticing some anti-child undertones on Reddit. Some themes I saw were workplace discrimination toward women in their 20's ("Why should I have to pay to train a female employee when she's highly likely to get pregnant and leave? I'd rather just hire a male."), shaming parents experiencing financial hardship ("It doesn't matter if you got cancer; you should have accumulated more savings before deciding to have kids!"), and an overall positive view of a child-free lifestyle ("All of our friends with kids are poor now -- I'm happy without kids so I can buy whatever games and gadgets I want.").

I just find it weird that people can forego such a defining element of any life form (reproduction) for the sake of consuming more "things". To take it to the extreme, could consumerism lead to the end of the human race?

<comment><USER9> Well, on one point I do agree: you should have your life/finances sorted out (meaning: positive cash flow, enough to raise kids) before you have kids. Everything else is just irresponsible.

Generally, it's a personal decision. However, consumer people might well remove themselves from the gene pool this way. The problem is that their culture is everywhere, and all kids catch that virus in school ("mom/dad, Timmy has a PS4, when do we get one?", "I also need to collect all Pokemon, or I'm not cool.") and want to grow up to be models/popstars/celebs or other meaningless things. Here's hoping my (future) kids will grow out of that phase quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think at this point it is pretty clear that the dramatic population decline in Europe (started late 20th century but has accelerated since the 60s) is not something that can be solved by money nor does it seem to have to do with life style choices (the first and second world war did not do much to change the overall trend[1]).

One fascinating book I read a couple of years ago compared Western European nations with each other vs the "European counterparts that settled America", i.e. the Caucasians in North America. It's interesting that in this particular comparison America (main difference: less social welfare, more individualism, more religion) still has the _highest_ of all ethnic Caucasian birthrates approx. 2.4 [2]

One economist's work that is very interesting to follow on this topic is Gunnar Heinsohn[3] who publishes his findings in intriguing essays usually backed by a lot of statistics and numbers.

But back to the article: the whole topic raises a couple of important fundamental questions: What do you mean by "Germany's" birth rate plummeting? The population overall, of course, has been steady for the most part and was recently admitted publicly by the ministry of federal statistics (a few years back) [4] Germany itself will be a majority Muslim country by 2050. So the population itself will probably not change or not much, it will rather turn into a different cultural entity, one with a small and shrinking "original" ethnic group (similar to the Japanese, for instance) but being replaced by a (mainly) Turkish/Middle Eastern cultural group that will incorporate their own beliefs and traditions into the aging German society and probably eventually dominate it (it is, after all, just a number's game). It's also not really a workforce problem as the article alluded - some here have already pointed out increases in productivity and automation that might offset these issues. The whole notion of population decline is inherently a cultural/ethnic question IMHO - even if a desire to shrink the population to improve the quality of life is your goal and immigrant birth rates fall over time: the fact of the matter remains this that you might be looking at a new "Voelkerwanderung" and all that comes with it.

Personal anecdote: I used to work for an IT company in Germany about 10 years ago - I had roughly 40 co-workers in an age-range of 20 to 40 (I was 25 at that time). I was the only one with 2 kids - nobody else had kids! Zero. My colleges had dogs, cars, expensive vacations and lived for the most part in those parts of town that shielded them nicely from the mass immigration taking place in what they called "(immigrant) ghettos". The life style benefits were non-negotiable for most of them but left not much for kids either (taxation is tough if you have to fund healthcare and mass immigration :-). The girls were brought up to loathe the idea of being a mother (and all the single mothers at the edge of society were an effective warning sign). So they were all headed for their careers, making it near impossible to have their first child before the age of 30-35. Not much time left after that. The climate in the bigger German cities that attract all those young and bright Germans looking for work is quite detrimental to raising children as well: very often our experience was that kids were seen as nuisance (in the US we had quite the opposite experience which might be one reason for the difference in birth rates - <USER2> US provides (in many emotional daily interactions) a way more supportive place to raise children than Western Europe).

At this point, sadly, it seems to me that population growth is linked to (a lack of) education and / or religious indoctrination. It does not seem to make much of a difference when some European countries pump millions into their social projects to support families (Sweden, France) or when they do not (Germany, Britain) - the birth rate decline is almost the same for all of these countries (again, I am talking native population, not immigrants) [5].

Conclusion: Religion might be one(?) way that natural selection ensures a population's continued growth - I like to be proven wrong, but I can't think of a nation where the growth rate is high and Atheism and Enlightenment reigns the day. A positive outcome would be a gently declining population overall on planet Earth that becomes supported by automation and a growing population on Mars while leaving violent fanaticism in the past...

\--- [1] [http://www.trykkefrihed.dk/interview-a-continent-of- losers.h...](http://www.trykkefrihed.dk/interview-a-continent-of-losers.htm) (could not find a better one, but there are numerous essays describing his theory of "youth bulge" on the web [2] [http://www.pop.org/content/fertility- decline-in-western-euro...](http://www.pop.org/content/fertility-decline-in- western-europe-1727) [3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn) [4] [http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/german-population-plunge- ir...](http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/german-population-plunge-irreversible- federal-stats-office-admits) [5] [http://www.pewforum.org/files/2012/07/MDII- graphics-webready...](http://www.pewforum.org/files/2012/07/MDII-graphics- webready-90.png)

</comment><comment><USER7> > "If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is the higher the gender > equality, the higher the birthrate,"

I think that's exactly backwards. Afghanistan has the highest birthrate. The less gender equality, the higher the birthrate. You get astronomical birthrates in the Hasidim and Islamic parts of Africa where women hold a subservient place to their husbands and have a constrained gender role. The Nazis had some success raising the birthrate by promoting and elevating stay- at-home motherhood, not by promoting equality.

I think there's a strong case to be made that banning women from colleges and professions would dramatically raise the birthrate. I'm not advocating this, I'm just saying it's what the data suggests. The more professional status is available to women the less they reproduce. This is very clear all over the world across cultures.

<comment><USER22> Nah, you can fix the sentence by adding what was unspoken but assumed:

> "If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is that in developed > countries, the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate,"

<comment><USER7> It's so obviously not true between developed countries and across time. The more traditional the gender roles (opposite of "equality") the higher the birth rate. I would have to see the data before I even believed the claim that within an industrialized nation more "equal" couples have more kids. I highly doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lets be honest.. the multi-cultural society brought on by leftists and feminists and foreigners leads people to give up on the future of their culture. These people don't want families with non-Germans and they don't want Germany to be non-German, but they are occupied by foreign cultures and they can't do anything to change it.

edit: Every German will upvote this comment

<comment><USER24> > Every German will upvote this comment

Please stop generalizing people using their nationality.

I am a German and I certainly do not agree with your views.

<comment><USER23> Generalizing is what demographers do. Generalizing based on nationality is not wrong. You are an outlier.

<comment><USER25> And here on this computer are 4 Germans sitting who also do NOT agree with your opinion – stop saying this xenophobic bullshit.

<comment><USER23> I am generalizing for the people who don't have families because they see Germany being handed over to foreigners in the future. You do not agree with my opinion? That is fine.

But it is not xenophobic to say that people want to keep German families German. Did you know that China has less than a million immigrants in the entire country? Maybe it is time you respect your people, too. Your group of 4 sounds like some xenophile party.

With this article we have the sexual relations of Germans strewn about and we are expected to just sit back and let the whole world morph the demographics of a nation they aren't a part of. I don't agree with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Society needs fresh blood to work, pay taxes, pay our retirement pensions, but the bill is still stuck upon the individuals that choose to have children. Only crazy people have children nowadays.

<comment><USER27> Do you think people choose to have kids out of obligation to "Society?"

<comment><USER22> Most don't, obviously. He's still right, though: kids financially benefit the wider society, but most of the initial costs are borne by the individual parents. And since statistically speaking, having kids doesn't make you any happier (and at least temporarily makes you less happy), having kids does seem rather irrational on its face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "in about fifty years Germanys population will fall by about twenty percent"

Wow, in 50 years robots will do most of the work. They will drive our cars and clean our houses. They are starting doing it.

In fact 50 years is so much time we could had done great breakthroughs like the discovery of nuclear fusion, or the manipulation of DNA so we remain young forever(and most people will not die from age).

I am more worried about what will happen THIS YEAR if Germany continues supporting USA invasion of Ukraine and Russia closes the gas key.</comment>


Unix Pipes as IO Monads (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/monadic-shell.html <comment><USER2> The "pipes" library for Haskell has a more comprehensive take. Having this kind of streaming built in really makes shell a fantastically productive language. Declarative composition of "concurrent streams" or "coroutines" is an extremely versatile pattern. Especially when you add named channels ("named pipes", "FIFOs") so you can create arbitrary networks.

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pipes-4.1.6/docs/Pipes-T...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pipes-4.1.6/docs/Pipes- Tutorial.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to have more positive social impact? - <AUTHOR> Let's say you were a fairly comfortable mid-level engineer type at a big tech company. You'd been doing it, or something like it, for more than a decade, and you have a fair amount of financial freedom, no dependents, and a lot of angst about American and European politics, inequality, and the fact that you're not really helping.
You can give away more of your salary than you do, or try to seek a job (which may not fully utilize your professional skills) in the non-profit sector. Or just read "Enlightenment Now" and convince yourself it's not really all that bad.
What do you do? How do you move the needle in a meaningful way on the social issues you care about? <comment><USER3> If I were in that situation, I would do one of a few things:

1\. Donate more to charities that I respect because they are better prepared to help than I am. Furthermore, if possible, volunteer in some way in your local community. What you do for volunteer work depends on the local community's needs. The main thing with this is to do things regularly, but it doesn't actually have to be fundraising. Bonus points if you can use your professional skills to help somewhere out - but if not, no worries, there is usually plenty to do.

2\. Get involved in politics, up to and including running for office. Make sure folks have actual choice on the local ballot for all positions. Recruit like-minded folks if you can, especially for those positions that only one candidate is running (in total). You can even volunteer to work the polls and/or making sure disadvantaged folks can get to the polling places - <USER2> other imaginative things. This provides some catalyst for longer-term change.

The option with a non-profit job is completely up to you. In the end, it will still be a job, so I'd take care to make sure you'll enjoy the work (as much as possible). I'd likely keep my eyes open to see if the right opportunity comes about.</comment>


Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.  - <AUTHOR> http://savetheinternet.eu/en/ <comment><USER2> Net neutrality has become law in the Netherlands after a public outcry about the traffic discrimination plans of the major mobile providers.

The issue is no longer only known to an obscure minority, and this in a country where the mood is very strongly against relinquishing any more autonomy to the EU.

In other words: if the EU attempts to nullify Dutch net neutrality (this proposal would override Dutch law), there will likely be a considerable backlash.

The EU explicitly revoking our online freedom could be the final nail in the coffin for Dutch support for the EU.

<comment><USER3> Bullshit. The Netherlands is never ever stepping out of the EU (of which it was a founder btw), it would be economic suicide.

For everyone outside The Netherlands: Net neutrality was instated after the largest telecom provider wanted to count Whatsapp messages as SMS messages. This lead to public outcry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm disappointed that this site for such an important issue doesn't even seem to work very well when trying to contact your MEP. It doesn't even recognize my country, and then it picks MEPs at random from multiple countries. If they didn't have something very reliable, they could've just showed you a list of countries to select your own, and then pick the MEPs which you want to e-mail (or all at once).

Also, these EU organizations don't seem nearly as organized as the US ones (although the US ones aren't that great at this either). I found out about this _the same day_ the EU Parliament had to vote on this like a month ago. Fortunately, they canceled the vote back then. Then I heard absolutely nothing about it until _yesterday_ , again a day before the vote.

These organizations need to do a better job at keeping the public updated on these Internet issues. We need an EFF of Europe.

<comment><USER5> It's not just that, the colour scheme used on the site is so jarring that it makes reading the content an unpleasant experience (and that's assuming you even take it seriously as it looks almost like a prank site).

In the end, I gave up and read the comments on HN to try and work out what the issue was. And I'm someone who's very keen to keep updated on issues like these, so I can't imagine how many casual visitors they'll lose because of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it about net neutrality ("all packets were created equal") or is it about censorship (by which I mean government actions like court orders to block sites and filters)? Or is it somehow about both?

Why is it the DEATH OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT when it's a new regulation that doesn't go as far as they want in the net neutrality direction? And all they want are some adjustments?

The idea of banning specialised services functionally identical to those on the Internet means banning all specialised services because you can provide arbitrary services over the Internet. Including TV and telephone which is what cable providers here usually sell in addition to Internet access.

Honestly, I don't really understand the issue at hand. Is there a concise, less agitating explanation somewhere?

<comment><USER7> I think you're taking this too lightly, to be honest.

That's _exactly_ the point of the Internet: it offers arbitrary services. Banning stuff because it could compete with other services you offer is opening the door to the internet being crippled on all ISPs.

That's seriously terrifying.

<comment><USER6> That's my complaint about this site: who's banning what? I just checked, VoIP works on the same coax that my ISP uses to provide telephone services.

<comment><USER8> It's increasingly the case that internet, tv and telephone services are provided by a single company over a single set of infrastructure. Because those service providers have a vested interest to protect the commercial viability of their own offerings (specifically, the TV and telephone packages), there is an incentive to limit the internet service's viability as a replacement for TV and telephone services. Such limitations allow ISPs to engage in text-book antic-competitive behaviour by directly hindering their competitors, and, arguably, the "specialised services" language would allow them to do just that by treating competitors as a specialised service, and differentiating the service conditions (e.g. by throttling the bandwidth offered).

Additionally, using the specialised service language, services like, say, Youtube, Facebook, Netflix or iTunes can pay ISPs to be treated as a a specialised service, offering a better-than-standard experience (lifted traffic limits, increased bandwidth). Such a treatment is sure to be pretty damn expensive, and raises a very tall hurdle that new entrants in those markets must jump if they want to compete with the incumbents on even ground. This is, once again, highly anti-competitive.

<comment><USER9> There's also an incentive - competition - to provide services that people actually want over their own offerings. For example, here in Portugal, mobile provider(s?) are offering unlimited mobile data for services that compete with SMS, like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.

Personally, I'm not ideologically opposed to net neutrality legislation, but I'd rather identify why is competition not preventing ISPs from violating it, and what can be done to strengthen it. I'm getting somewhat tired of laws that are just trying to fix the problems created by other laws, like those which grant privileges to certain economic groups (not that I'm saying this is the case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The vote by the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Research and Energy already took place today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421545).

The committee voted against strict network neutrality, and for the possibility of differentiated "specialized services". The bill now goes to the European Parliament for vote.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm an advisor to the vicepresident of the European Commission Neelie Kroes, she is in charge of the Digital Agenda and it seems that she helped to put this forward.

Although I'm in her group of Young Advisors (we're 25), I didn't know about this until today.

I just sent an email to the other advisors and to some people of the European Commission to see what's up. They're always talking about how to improve net neutrality so I can't understand what's going on here.

Anyway I'm really angry about this shitty law killing net neutrality. This is kind of shocking.

If this law passes, I'll seriously ask myself if I want to continue in my role as an advisor.

</comment><comment><USER12> This came up on reddit's /r/portugal and I had a look through their points to figure out what was going on. The legislation is here:

[http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/docu...](http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=2734)

Their 5 points:

 _1) We don 't want a two-tiered Internet, all data should be treated equally. Article 19 of the European Commission's Telecoms Single Market proposal must be deleted._

It's a tough article to read but as far as I can tell it says the opposite. That any ISP can operate in any part of the EU.

 _2) Private companies cannot be judge, jury and police over online content. Article 23.5.a. of the European Commission's Telecoms Single Market proposal must to be deleted._

23.5.a. just says that one of the few exceptions that allow filtering is "implement a legislative provision or a court order, or prevent or impede serious crimes". That last "or" may be poorly interpreted I suppose and I don't know who gets to say what's a "serious crime". Other than that it seems reasonable.

 _3) Europe won the Nobel peace prize – The European Commission's credibility on human rights issues shouldn 't be jeopardized by engaging in the same type of internet censorship that Europeans critique elsewhere in the world._

This isn't a demand of any sort, just a political point.

 _4) The current definition of "specialized service" (Article 2.15) increases costs and risk to internet users, and must be changed or deleted._

I can't really see the problem with this. Once you've set rules that you can't filter/degrade service, letting your users hire specialized services on top doesn't seem out of order. I suppose the risk is that if there isn't enough competition "proper access to Netflix" may become a "specialized" service.

 _5) Article 23, "Freedom to provide and avail of open internet access," must replace "shall be free" with "have the right" to protect internet users from online discrimination._

This on I don't get. Maybe in legal-speak this makes a difference. I only went through the rest of this very lightly but it seemed to go in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER13> The main problem here is ISPs as a bottleneck. Longer term we need to figure out how to bypass the bottlenecks, which seem to be increasingly acting as points of political control and surveillance. Such a project would need to have a legal and technical side to it. On the legal side there would need to be an area of radio bandwidth reserved for public internet. On the technical side you need mesh networking software and hardware. There is likely to be an evolutionary path between the internet we have now and something which is less dependent upon ISPs.

<comment><USER4> To bypass ISPs we need to democratize the ISPs and decentralize them some more. Perhaps in the future, I could get Internet in France from a German ISP that has solar-powered drones or balloons over France, or a satellite.

The longer term goal should be to create meshnets, so we can give Internet to each other.

Direct censorship of stuff might not even be the biggest threat, though, but traffic shaping. We could avoid direct censorship if we build more P2P systems, which can't be "taken down". However, they probably could be throttled to a crawl, if the ISP is allowed to shape traffic and discriminate against the type of traffic they choose. Bitcoin for example can't be censored, but it can be made unusable.

<comment><USER14> The bottleneck is due to the 95th percentile way of billing and the fact big content provider don't buy the bandwidth equally for everyone. Normally you peer (free exchange), if and only if you have almost as much in as out. If you have clearly more input coming to your AS than output, you are supposed to buy your internet transit, else your behaviour is parasitic.

Yes google buys internet transit, but not in Europa, they expect the users to pay for their free services when they are not north american, and they provide the "free VoIP" services this way.

Google, amazon are the problems, they don't assume the cost of their services and make it stand inequally amongst the users. Google is killing the cost model of ISP.

In this condition, how do you expect a sustainable free internet if you destroy the business model of ISP ?

<comment><USER14> gosh, I made some mistakes on peering. but it does not change the big picture. Sorry.

Peering is just opened to anyone, and people prefer peering to buying. So people prefer to have the less possible amount of traffic leaving their AS.

[http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=15169](http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=15169)

They peer quite a lot even in Europa, it is a good move when you want to become an ISP.

Still they consider it is the ISP to support most of the cost of the dimensioning of the pipes. Without returned value.

Pfiou, good idea to double check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Our freedom online is threatened by every government, even those not our own.

</comment><comment><USER16> This sounds terrible. On the other hand I'd like to know what's the status quo right now in Europe. For example, are ISPs required to not block or restrict access to online services?

<comment><USER17> I know the Danish courts has ordered Danish ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, so I doubt the status quo is that ISPs are required not to block online services.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but according to this, ISPs may decide _themselves_ to block stuff, without any court orders. This is something MPAA has been pushing for a long time with ACTA, TPP, and apparently with this, too.

They want to bypass the judicial system, so they can censor stuff en masse, like they do with Google/Youtube and their automated takedowns, but since it's at the ISP level, probably at a much larger scale and in a more comprehensive way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does this proposal (and Article 19 specifically in it) create a worse status quo that we have today in Europe?

</comment><comment><USER19> Serious question: Why do we have to fight this every year? Why haven't they (the lawmakers) learn?

<comment><USER20> Because businesses won't give up a chance to get more profits in. Since lobbying is legal, politicians won't give up either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How was the SOPA strike organized? We need another one, pronto.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, I have sent email to a member from my country. Although it might be too late for this vote. Hope it affects his view anyway or at least rises a question or two.

</comment><comment><USER23> On the one hand I think firms would just have to compete on offering as many services as possible. On the other hand I suppose if the offer is "10$ a month for free streaming of all Hollywood movies and free porn, and 10$ extra to get access to some opinions on the internet you might not agree with anyway", many people might opt for saving the 10$.

</comment><comment><USER24> To someone who knows more than me, how can a US citizen who just moved to the EU help fight this?

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is not possible to have alternative internetworks?

<comment><USER26> It is. It is just hard. The SIPRNET is the only big one I am aware of. Plus you can't tweet,email mom, Facebook stalk, or check HN from an alternative network until someone adds that functionality for you.</comment></comment>


Ten Things You Should Know About Haskell Syntax - <AUTHOR> http://fpcomplete.com/ten-things-you-should-know-about-haskell-syntax/

<comment><USER2> Very nice article.

> 7\. Functions Have Precedence over Operators

Yup. The killer for me has always been things like

      f x:xs

Never does what I want. But at least there is only a simple rule to remember.

> 9\. There is no Order

Oooo, careful there. It may not matter what order I define f & g in, but the following means something else if I reverse the order of the lines:

      f 0 = 1
      f x = x

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic article. Thanks for posting it.</comment>


Ask HN: How to identify promising entry-level coders? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen some discussion here about how few opportunities there are for entry-level coders. From a hiring perspective, it makes sense: how do you know if someone will do well unless they have a record of doing well?
I'm curious: if you had a small budget to hire a completely inexperienced coder, and the freedom to train them a bit and give them time to study, how would you identify good candidates? What kinds of tasks might you give them where they could become useful in the first month or two?
I'm not talking about CS grads, but someone who's genuinely never coded but is smart and wants to learn. <comment><USER2> I saw a line once, "hire for attitude, train for skill." I think this is dead on. There are people on HN who have picked up coding in 6 months because they were really committed and really wanted to learn.

I think the ideal candidate will have broad interests and experience, be passionate about achieving excellence/mastery in their interests, and show some aptitude at logical thinking.

Ask them what they like to do. If they can talk intelligently about half a dozen hobbies and show that they've achieved excellence (or at least intently pursued it) in those fields, then they'll probably be able (and willing) to do the same thing with programming. If they like to watch TV and play video games to the exclusion of all creative output, then they probably are of no use to you.

Ask for references. Talk to the references and ask about what the candidate has done to impress them. If the reference says they're a good kid and will do well, that's not much use. If the reference says they once single-handedly cooked a meal for 150 people in one day, then it probably doesn't matter that they don't know anything about coding yet. They obviously know how to dedicate themselves to a task.

Disclaimer: I have never been in a position to hire anyone.

<comment><USER3> Basically, there's a spectrum people fit into. On one end, are those who follow instructions to cover their ass. They fulfill the letter of your instructions in such a way as to make a good case that they were obedient and they tried. On the other end are those who are goal-oriented. They interpret your instructions as a kind of goal, and they fit that goal into the general aims of the organization they are a part of.

Give people small tasks, but with only general goals and leeway for initiative. See what they do. The goal-oriented people will get things accomplished. They may not be exactly the things you pictured, but if they are smart, you will find the result useful from some perspective. Hire those people, especially if they already share your perspective.

The problem with references, is often you don't know what end of the spectrum the referrer is on. Maybe they value lackeys that fulfill the letter of the request. Smart goal-oriented people who see things your way are much better to delegate to, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone who's never coded is a waste of your time. With the extremely low barrier to entry for learning through all the free and cheap resources available, and open source projects to work on, the question is simply: why haven't you coded?

Make them write a simple project and come back in 2 weeks and present it to you. That will tell you everything you need to know.

<comment><USER3> Give some very precise specifications and leave other instructions incomplete and let them know explicitly that they have the authority to make decisions on your behalf. See to what degree they make excuses, vs. get useful work done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have (for the last two decades or so) found that getting a candidate to draw a couple of flow charts usually 'tells the tale'.

Not that I've not found people who could not draw flow charts at all to later turn out to be _solid_ assets, but poor flow charters have almost always turned out to be 'duds'.

(Do I need to rephrase the above paragraph or what?)

<comment><USER6> I see no need to rephrase what you've wrote. I think that's a pretty simple and clever way to determine how someone solves problems. I'm going to give that a shot.

My personal philosophy is to hire "aggressive learners." This is type of person who will get visibly agitated when you do something for them without explaining what you're doing. Or will spend hours teaching themselves a skill so that can be more independent. That type of personality seems to learn quickly, adapt easily to new challenges and will welcome change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would definitely never hire someone who's never coded _at all_. These days it's trivial to install PHP, or even dabble in some browser Javascript.

<comment><USER8> Agree. It's hard to imagine someone is going to be a great programmer if they've never given any hobbyist or intro coding a shot.

<comment><USER9> Are you really suggesting that the majority of people who have not coded have no shot at becoming a great programmer? What if they're 5 years old?

Then what's the difference between being 5 and being 20?

Seems very elitist to eliminate people based on the fact that they simply haven't been exposed to a field.

<comment><USER10> I think you've missed the point.

The topic outlines the person in question is interviewing for a coding job.

If you come into an office looking for a coding job, but have never attempted to program before, you have not shown any level of commitment to the job of being a coder.

<comment><USER9> Gotcha. It's more of a signaling mechanism, rather than a generic way to identify coders at an early stage.

What do you identify with programming potential outside of a hiring context? I've been working with my friends to get them programming (it's the single most valuable skill a person can have in this age). I know that I can help them most by identifying their positive traits (and just pointing these out can reinforce those traits). So what do you think I should look for and "amplify"?

<comment><USER10> Before you start trying to get your friends to learn how to program, make sure they are interested in it first.

I know several people that got into programming, hated it, but stayed involved anyway solely for the money -- They rarely like their jobs.

With that out of the way, I think the two most important traits are curiousity and good problem solving skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Independence / self-direction. Searches google / manuals for answers instead of asking you every few seconds.

<comment><USER12> This is 100% correct. I have worked with and hired people at both ends of this spectrum.

And I would even say it matters as much as native talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a study in a CS dept. somewhere that had a pretty convincing test. I can't remember where I saw it or the school, so I'll just try to recount it.

The test was given to students before the first bit of instruction in computer science (and for the sake of simplicity, let's assume it controlled for those with previous experience). Basically, students were given a problem set of code snippets in a non-existent language, and were asked to write what the code evaluated to, i.e. 34 @@ 14 --> [2], followed by possible answers.

It turned out that the students who performed well in their subsequent CS courses were not those who got the right answers, or those who got the wrong answers, but those who answered consistently. The best single predictor of a good student of CS (not strictly equivalent to a programmer in a startup...) was forming a consistent model of what they were looking at, and sticking with it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Attitude (willing to learn, willing to listen but also not afraid to ask questions and challenge things). Willing to make mistakes quickly and fix them quickly. Not afraid of feedback.

<comment><USER3> _willing to learn, willing to listen_

The latter is quite valuable, and less common than many think. (To listen really well, you need to be constantly seeking what you don't even know that you don't know.)

 _also not afraid to ask questions and challenge things_

In a constructive way, if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > where they could become useful in the first month or two

Actually, it often takes experienced coders several weeks to become truly useful to a team. I've heard a consulting manager say that only after 6 months do they charge the full amount for their people.

</comment><comment><USER16> The HN community contains many such candidates. More information about the opportunity (e.g. location) would be nice to have : p

<comment><USER17> I don't know why you got downvoted, but I'll say that as someone in this sort of a position as well, this discussion is very informative about what skills and character traits I should focus on.

Same for PG's essays. HN is a chance to grasp great hacker/entrepreneur ideals that I can tune myself to while off of HN.</comment></comment>


Openidealapp - <AUTHOR> http://openideaapp.com <comment><USER2> I only get an error when I click the link.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> New version of ideation platform

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> demo.openidealapp.com learn more openidealapp.com</comment>


Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-asking-for-help-119-days-ago/ <comment><USER2> Here is the HN thread from back then. Some of it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading right now.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484>

<comment><USER3> Something particularly bugs me about edw519's comments in the thread you linked to and the recent one about the tragedy -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047571>. It's an odd contrast.

<comment><USER4> Let's remember the original comment is the top one because it was voted so by the community.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the idea to upvote useful and interesting comments? A message can be of value even if you greatly disagree with the content of it.

<comment><USER6> Are you suggesting that this is what people should do, which might be a nice sentiment, but not particularly relevant to the issue at hand.

Or are you suggesting this is what people actually do, to the point of upvoting a comment past all others to the number 1 position. In this second case, I think you have a long way to go to prove your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the takeaway here is to _stop assuming you know entirely what is going on and give people the benefit of the doubt. There may be more factors involved than the ones you see; in fact, there always are_ \-- something HN is notorious for _not_ doing (read: AirBnB, Dropbox, etc, etc, etc, etc).

<comment><USER7> Word. I have been refuted, disproven, turned around 180, subsequently enlightened when more is revealed so many times on so many issues... It's embarrassing.

I'm trying very hard to be less of an outspoken opinionated blowhard.

And to admit whenever I've been wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So this is on the OP, which quotes the Lessig post:

> _For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to > accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in > April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the > financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the > ire of a district court judge._

I never understood this assertion. Under what procedural grounds would a judge punish someone raising funds for their defense? Or is referring to more of a "the judge will be annoyed at you" kind of sanction?

<comment> mark-r Presumably the problem wasn't in asking for funds, the problem was in explaining why the funds were necessary. I read a recent story, probably linked here on HN, about how standard procedure for the Justice dept. is to freeze all your funds so you can't afford adequate representation, then dump so much paperwork on you that you have no chance to defend yourself. All of this would have been facts related to the case which the judge could easily gag.

<comment><USER9> How can a judge gag the defendant from speaking out? I don't really understand this.

<comment><USER2> My best guess is that it may be to avoid polluting a future jury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is TechCrunch playing the role of Jerry Springer.

In spite of the way many interest groups are trying to make Aaron's suicide into a symbol, the fact is that suicide is simply a symptom of mental illness, and _nothing else_.

Unless we have reason to believe otherwise, most of us assume that those whose actions/views we discuss on HN are of normal (average) mental health.

So while Aaron's death is jarring, it's the mental illness that is jarring and not the nuanced view expressed by edw519.

TC must be hurting for clicks/readership these days. I think that story (sadly the current top story on HN) is a new low.

<comment><USER11> > the fact is that suicide is simply a symptom of mental illness, and nothing > else.

This is simplistic and wrong.

Mental illness is a factor in some attempted or completed suicides.

But is mental ill health the only factor? No. There are many things that contribute to someone attempting suicide. Significant factors include debt, relationship breakdown, recent release from a MH hospital, previous attempts at suicide, a relative who completed suicide, etc.

Many people have mental ill health, and not all of them kill themselves. The difference between the people who try suicide and those who don't is not severity of illness, but severity of other pressures.

<comment><USER12> grandalf's comment is inaccurate, but it's also a sort of understatement to say that mental illness "is a factor in some attempted suicides or completed suicides". It's by far the biggest factor.

> More than 90 percent of people who die by suicide have [depression and other > mental disorders, or a substance-abuse disorder (often in combination with > other mental disorders)]

[http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in- the-u...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us- statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml)

<comment><USER10> Exactly, I didn't mean to generalize to claim that mental illness is the only cause, but I would say that mental illness is the common thread in 99%+ of suicides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As the OP of the HN thread in question, the response then saddened me. But that pales in comparison to the grief I feel now. I hope HN takes this as an opportunity to reflect and introspect.

<comment><USER2> I completely missed it at the time and I feel that I'm a complete fool because of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the one hand, it is probably unlikely that HN could have done much to prevent Aaron's death. He was facing a terrible situation, one that he could not bear to face, and I doubt anyone here could have substantially changed his situation.

On the other, I can think of few things worse than facing a terrible situation, and feeling like you're doing so completely _alone_. The amount of speculation and analysis of Aaron's case here on HN was absurd (at one point prompting my only comments on the matter, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544693>), and yet for all that analysis and speculation, there were ever so few comments that came out fully in Aaron's support.

Then he takes his own life, and suddenly it's torches-and-pitchforks for the prosecuting team, it's "why didn't he ask for help", it's "this was unjust", it's "this was unfair", it's "why didn't he have more support". I felt saddened by the news, but I also felt a rising amount of bile for the HN community, and I'm glad that nikcub and Arrington have shone a light on this.

<comment><USER8> I dunno...as you say, having a community behind you, especially one you count yourself a respected member of, feels much better than going at it alone. I don't know if I had read his defense fund thread and didn't care enough to register a comment or just missed it...either way, I feel a little guilty of not inquiring more about how his case was actually going. I didn't know him personally but was absolutely crushed to hear the news, more than I had imagined I would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I distinctly remember that thread, and not commenting. I was disappointed at the responses. I had given a small amount towards his defense fund since I thought his goals were worthwhile. I consider it a privilege to have contributed.

Now, I wish I had given more, and I wish I had commented on that thread.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

<comment><USER16> That Edmund Burke quote just spurred me to donate $X (where X=a substantial amount relative to my income) to Demand Progress in Aaron's memory. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this speaks a bit to the mentality of technical people.

Your job is to find things that suck and call them on it/make them better. Unfortunately this tends to carry over into all aspects of life, that we can be/are overly critical of everything. Look at almost any great tech/design mind - they can be overly cynical at times.

One of the skills I respect most in a technical person is when they can say, "I hate this, but I love this" at the same time. Or better yet, "You're good at what you do, but this isn't your best work. X is good, but Y really sucks, fix the Y."

Honestly we have a long way to go regarding dealing with people.

</comment><comment><USER18> It must have been hard on him to see his peers throwing him to the wolves. I think he could have tried harder to appeal to the hacker community, or maybe he couldn't for legal reasons, and that's yet another travesty revealed here.

His case was muddy. He did a few things that most of us would never do without expecting to be punished. He deserved a slap on the wrist, not to be robbed of his assets and locked up for years.

I think HN would have rallied to his cause after we realized how disproportionate the punishment was. I remember personally thinking things seemed weird, but was naively optimistic that it would turn out fine.

Lesson learned, the very hard way: it can't hurt to rally around someone even if they're not 100% in the right, if it looks like they're being bullied.

<comment><USER19> Well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see zero inconsistency between on one day saying that someone should take personal responsibility for their activism, and on another day regretting that this same person took their own life.

The notion that Aaron's legal position caused his suicide is an opinion of many people on this board. Despite the numbers of those holding this opinion, it is still only an opinion, and needn't be read as fact for any other analysis or opinion. The insistence that everyone hold _your_ opinions for all of _their_ opinions and moral calculations is, at very best, deeply problematic.

<comment><USER19> You could perhaps see the consistency also between rallying round a cause and making a difference to the status quo.

These "opinions" are shared by his family, read the statement.

_You_ are problematic.

<comment><USER20> You are advocating for your beliefs (here, ironically, freedom of information) by insisting that others surrender their freedom of thought.

I don't mind causing problems for people doing that.

I am terribly sorry for the family and their loss. But that loss does not make them arbiters of responsibility.

Neither do the needs of any cause give anyone the right to dictate what others think or conclude or hold as fact. I could agree with your "cause" 100% and I would still, I hope, oppose this sort of demand for mindless conformity with "correct" opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is BS. edw519, and most of us, are not politicians. We should be free to believe in something to the best of our knowledge at any time. I have changed my perspective on almost everything I have ever believed in based on what information I come across.

To hold him, or anyone else for that matter, hostage to what he said 120 days ago is dishonest.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bummed to see this thing dropping like a rock off the main page.

24 points in 26 minutes should have this article in the #2 slot, not #26. Is HN downmodding because it doesn't like the mirror?

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            68      6       0
            24      0       26
            194     11      0
            28      4       0
            115     9       0

_edit: something changed - now it's at #3... sufficiently many upvotes?_

</comment><comment><USER23> The primary thing that stands out to me here, and what I believe is the main point of the TC post, is that edw and others clearly have very interesting 'before' and 'after' posts.

Before: "Aaron should man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills."

Then: Aaron can't pay his bills, decides to take one form of responsibility and kills himself.

Now: "OH NO! Stunned & heartbroken." "Thank you, Cory. This wonderful post will bring understanding (and maybe even comfort) to many of us who are sad and confused today. It will also probably save some lives."

It's not that Ed is to blame for Aaron killing himself, it's that there's a marked change in sentiment and sympathy after his death.

Did it really have to take Aaron killing himself for us to change our sympathies towards him? It seems not many of us really cared that much until he hung himself - and now we can't stop talking about him.

So the point I'd like to make is there's something wrong with a world that only cares after you kill yourself. Maybe Aaron even made the right choice is this is really how it works. Otherwise he might have quietly lived out his 50 years in prison and died later and no one would have given a shit the entire time. At least now this is getting some attention.

<comment><USER24> In most cases, people simply don't know how bad it is or can't imagine it could be that bad or have no idea how to help, etc. It makes me crazy and I wish the world were better about such things. Yes, it took his death for people to "care", because his death was clear information about how very bad it was. People are still talking in part to try to figure out how to see it more clearly beforehand next time and not have to wait for such a clear signal. At least I hope that is part of the motive, for some people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> edw519 is a good member of this community. Let's not turn on each other.

After researching founders for my interviews I can tell you that it's easy to make anyone look bad based on old posts. It's much harder to stay focused on what's important.

<comment><USER26> It is rather unfair to single one person out too - the sentiment of the initial thread was in line with edw519's comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems significant to me. There are a lot of users on HN whose default move is to criticize whatever story just made the main page. Maybe that's not the best default position.

<comment><USER28> Here's a long discussion thread from mid-2012 sort of on that subject: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747>

Paul Graham also mentioned somewhere that he's been collecting examples of "middlebrow dismissal" as a common kind of default response, in an attempt to understand/combat the phenomenon.

<comment><USER29> Like a commenter upthread mentioned, I think it's a combination of that and people upvoting names they recognize or that the community knows as/sees as "voices of" the community. They just take their word for it given past posts, rather than having it occur to them that maybe this topic isn't actually their forte. Additionally, someone taking the time to write out rebuttals just to be downvoted and "told off" with pointless and degrading one-sentence rebuttals is pretty pathetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Michael Arrington has written his share of trollish articles, but this is just mean spirited. I have a hard time remembering anything so hypocritical and hindsight-biased written after someone's death.

I will do my best to avoid reading anything written by Arrington from now on.

</comment><comment><USER31> "unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge."

Considering the outcome... Does anyone know an example of what judges do when defendants appeal openly for financial help? Was this really good legal advice?

<comment><USER2> I suspect - but this pure conjecture on my part, IADNAL and so on - that this may have something to do with prejudicing a potential jury. Any jury member that knows about a case before being sworn in is automatically disqualified. Giving potentially nationwide attention to your case by running a funding drive in your name would pollute any potential jury.

Again, please don't put too much weight on this, it is purely speculative but it is the best I've been able to come up with so far.

A quote on this subject: "One of the most important reasons for not selecting a member of the panel to sit on the jury is prior knowledge of the case."

Source:

<http://www.therightjury.com/publications_real_purpose.html>

<comment><USER32> I think he should have risked pissing off the judge and getting the word out, but hindsight is 20/20. Its sad this is the way our justice system works, feels like a modern day witch trial.

<comment><USER8> ...unless you're on the other end of it, facing a media-friendly opponent who uses the public spotlight to demonize you before you face off in court...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _"...judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases."_

This seems _very_ unjust, when the prosecutors love to hold a media circus where the handcuffed "perp walk" is the star attraction.

</comment><comment><USER34> So people told it as they saw it.

That's the way hackers work and speak - and that sort of frankness is one of the major reasons that HN remains outstanding in terms of signal vs noise. We don't escape everything with weasel words and second-guess the way it's going to be interpreted. Commenters say what they think. Voters agree or disagree.

Yes, it comes back to haunt people. Yes, people are wrong on here every single day. But that's the nature of the discourse, and it will be a sad day if HNers start to worry about voicing their opinion because it could be taken the wrong way.

And, to pre-empt what I know will come, NO-ONE ever has all the facts. Ever. If we needed all the facts before we formed an opinion then we would have none.

</comment><comment><USER35> To the HN elite (edw519 and tptacek): good on you for commenting on almost every thread, it's gotten you the most 'karma' possible.

Unfortunately, it means that when you jump into a new thread and contravene your other clearly-stated positions, it's a rather transparent attempt to get more attention.

You're not part of Aaron's family, you're not related, and your own words were pretty clear as to what you thought about the guy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484>.

For the love of all things good, can people who didn't care in the first place about Aaron or his cause stop their fake sympathy now that he is dead? I didn't do anything for him either, but not going to cry any crocodile tears to show everyone how politically aware and smart I am.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't think this post should be here-- it's turning a tragedy into a witch hunt. I don't think this level of negativity and mob mentality is appropriate for HN.

<comment><USER37> I agree. What an ugly turn of events after a tragedy already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> And the witch hunt continues. This is all very reminiscent of the furore around the prank call nurse who committed suicide in the UK, with people calling for the unfortunate DJs to be charged with murder. I would have expected a more rational, dispassionate response from this crowd.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm convinced there has to be something _bigger_ than that trial. Trying to rationally explain a suicide by pointing fingers at prosecutor might relief a bit of guilt for some but it's IMO naive. As far as I'm concerned, Aaron committed suicide because he didn't want to live on this planet anymore. He tried so hard to change things, to make the world better. And he actually succeeded, but that probably wasn't enough for a brilliant mind like his. Could it be that he was disgusted at how indifferent people were? By people, I mean _most people_ , not just the governments or some particular entities.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is dumb...

A person can disagree with an individual's actions and still be sad when that person passes away.

There was no need for this by techchrunch. In fact this article is useless, and complete bullshit.

This article does nothing productive, it adds no value to anything, but only takes away from the whole situation.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not sure why I'm commenting here, I expect it'll just be shouting into the void given the nature of this thread. However, there are some things that rub me the wrong way about all this, so maybe I'll try to make a few points.

One thing that's been bugging me is how, to be blunt, intellectually lazy so many people seem to have been about this whole thing, especially the case against Aaron. Everyone is looking for the easy answer, the soundbite that wraps the whole thing in a bow. I thought that HN was a bit smarter than that, that's a sucker's game, it's a game for tabloids and cable news, not a way for smart people to approach complex problems. And this is a complex problem with no easy answer. The case against Aaron was complex. The law involved was complex. And the application of the law was also complex. It's not as easy as "he was innocent!" or "he was guilty!", because even if either one were easily established in the "court of public opinion" then that's really only the starting point of several much more difficult questions.

I think it's probably fair to say that guilty or not the prosecution was overzealous, as the sorts of punishments he faced was all out of proportion to what one would expect for a white collar crime, even one potentially involving thousands of dollars of losses.

In the same vein people have been reacting to this tragedy by trying to find scapegoats. Whether that's the prosecutor, or edw519, or MIT, or whomever. I don't think I need to spend time addressing why that sort of behavior is a bad idea.

Going back and looking at the comments in the older thread about Aaron's legal troubles I've spotted a few instances of several trouble behaviors that I've noticed have become more and more common. One, the idea that "rich" people are less deserving of sympathy because of their wealth. I've seen this in the rise of the "99%" mentality and other phenomena. Personally I don't think there is any amount of wealth that renders an individual's pain and suffering unworthy of caring about. Two, the idea that punishment is reasonable after being charged but before being sentenced, or infliction of pain and suffering in general as a response to crimes. You see this sort of thing in support for torture, support for poor conditions in jail, sympathetic depictions of police brutality in fiction, public approval of widespread sexual assault in prisons, etc. And you also see it in the idea that there's nothing wrong with a trial being a punishing, life-altering, resource draining experience.

I think these sorts of things are antithetical to the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, rehabilitation, etc. that we should desire our societies rest upon, rather than base instincts like jealousy, revenge, punishment, retribution, schadenfreude, etc.

I don't think this saga bears much, if any, similarity to a fight between absolute heroes and absolute villains. I think that even in as much as the prosecutor was overzealous it's as much a systemic problem of the way that computer and IP related "crimes" are perceived and handled by the criminal justice system as it is to be due to any ill-will or villainy on her part.

I'd much rather we, HN and the tech community in general, were taking the time to talk through the details of the case more carefully, discussing the details of the relevant law (and whether it's well grounded, meaningful, useful, and generally well applied), and bigger issues such as IP issues, computer security issues, problems with our criminal justice system in general, etc. than looked for quick-fix easy answers and tried to fit this story into a simplistic mold. I wonder what sort of discussion Aaron would have preferred take place.

<comment><USER42> Exactly. In a few sentences, edw519 took apart Aaron's whole life and claimed to know enough to write off his plea for help. I think a good first step would be for Ed to apologize and stop trying to defend his rude comment from 4 months ago.

<comment><USER43> Oh, please. What is this, a witch hunt? Or maybe some good old-fashioned lynching? Hang the prosecutor on one tree, and Ed in the other tree? Or maybe we should rename HN 4chan, because the general maturity level does not seem very different. How many of those valiant defenders of Aaron put a dime in his defense fund?

Clearly, plenty of people agreed with Ed at the time, enough that it was the highest-rating comment. Similarly, plenty of people (at least in the US) agree with tough-on-crime policies. Singling out people, name-and-shame, etc is something only relevant in so far that the actions of an individual deviate, in a bad way, from community norms. This is not the case here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I remember wanting to contribute, but didn't after finding out he was the co- founder of a successful startup.

I also remember, half a year ago, looking at his comment history that seemingly appeared as if he was fine, thinking "How is this guy taking it? If it was me I am not sure I'll be able to handle the pressure".

I realise now he was only human, like us, and everyone needs other's support in their darkest times, but it's too late.

</comment><comment><USER45> The principle of free information transmission must extend to its advocates: if you advocate that information must be free and you engage in civil disobedience, then you ought to expose your finances to the world when requesting support for a legal defense fund. Exposing one's finances at such a time demonstrates adherence to principle, and it blunts skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why would it be a surprise that people change their opinion or become more vocal after something serious occurs to the people involved.

<comment><USER47> This is Techcrunch, all they're doing is combing back through his public postings to find something they can inappropriately hype as significant.

<comment><USER46> I suppose everyone needs a living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> On the other hand, the comments on this post (120 days ago) is quite supportive of Aaron and criticizes the govt for its harsh indictment. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083>

</comment><comment><USER49> It must be quite easy to generate cheap melodrama such as this when you can use the front page of TechCrunch as a glorified "retweet" button.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's pretty hard to read that thread. This is a good lesson in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Always.

</comment><comment><USER51> _If only most knew then, what they know now._

It's saddening that a positive response to that appeal _might've_ actually helped him - both mentally and financially.

</comment><comment><USER52> What a sorry post. This is the kind of thing I expect to be banned from the front page.

</comment><comment><USER53> A few months ago, edw519 made a comment that many here feel was inappropriate given that we now know more facts, and given that Aaron committed suicide. So the lesson people take away is: "Be careful about what you say to people, even on HN: your words may have a real effect, and being dismissive or mean to people may just haunt you later".

This is a good lesson, in general. But what I love is the irony - the way people are sending out this message _is by being dismissive and mean to edw519_! If (God forbid) something ever happened to edw519, and someone in 4 months posted this thread, the same people condemning edw519 will b IN EXACTLY THE SAME SHOES as they think he is now. How are the people posting so blind to this?

Note: edw519 is a great person and member of this community. Despite the lesson that I believe can be learned from this post, I absolutely DO NOT think he did anything wrong, and thinking otherwise is clearly because things look different in hindsight, especially given more information. Seriously edw519 - consider this another person who is sure you did absolutely nothing wrong.

</comment><comment><USER54> It does kind of suck to look back and realize that his own people turned their back on him, though. Not very hacker of us, sadly. I remember reading that article originally, and obviously looking back I wish I had taken some kind of action. Didn't have to be money, I'm sure, but something would have been better than basically rejecting his plea for help in a condescending tone.

</comment><comment><USER55> Asking that someone own up to their responsibilities or shoulder their own problems is ABSOLUTELY NOT the same as wishing them dead.

</comment><comment><USER56> Ugh. I wish I'd seen that thread originally, but I was on my first vacation in years, and not reading HN for some reason.

I couldn't give him much money, but it sounds like just talking to him about the case would have helped, and I doubt even people who thought he did the wrong thing or should have gone to jail to continue his protest would have begrudged him that.

Sorry, Aaron. :(

</comment><comment><USER57> When you say that a person who committed suicide "asked for help", it makes it sound like he reached out for emotional support in a time of desperation.

While that might have been partially what Aaron was doing, I think the headline leads you to picture a horrifying scenario in which the young man's death might have been avoided, if only the community had been more encouraging or sympathetic. Instead, you find that he was asking for financial support, and there's of course no reason to believe that sending him money could have altered the tortured course that ended with him taking his own life.

It may seem like a trivial point but in my opinion it completely warps this whole conversation. For example, suppose someone shares with you that they have been terribly depressed and contemplating suicide. In this case, I agree, telling them to "man up" is pretty bad form. But that is not _exactly_ what happened here.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can we be a little nicer?

There were nasty comments about Aaron in that HN post, which got nasty replies.

There were nasty comments about Ed in this thread, which got nasty replies.

There were nasty comments about Michael in the linked post, which got nasty replies.

We can say the most criticizing things in a way that is not nasty, how? but putting question marks instead of exclamation points. By talking about facts and not opinions. By being aware that the persona we are taking about is also a person, by always thinking what if I was on the other end of that comment.

Is there any drawback in being nicer? I can't think of any. Is there any benefit for being nasty? I can't think of any either.

</comment><comment><USER59> Allow me to make a confession:

I didn't think much of Aaron Swartz while he was alive. Most of his writings seemed self-absorbed to me. I had difficulty understanding how someone with his politics could be a mac fanboy. People I think highly of (Chris Webber, John Sullivan) thought highly of him so I was induced to give him some benefit of the doubt on those grounds, but I certainly couldn't understand what they saw in him.

I assumed he was a millionaire with enormous resources that he was using to thumb his nose at powerful people. I felt that if I had the resources (I assumed that) Aaron had, I would use them differently.

I saw the thread about Aaron's campaign fund and I didn't post, but I did read it.

And I read Edward's comment and I agreed with it.

I knew very little about Aaron's case. But the way that fund was being put together seemed underhanded to me, like he wanted to take people's money without really acknowledging it. Is he a millionaire or not? I wondered, and if not, why doesn't he come out with it and explain what happened?

Of course now I know of the existence, from Lawence Lessig, of the bizarre Kafkaesque muzzle the judge had on Aaron, but how could anyone who wasn't very closely familiar with Aaron and his case know about that?

There's a sort of sick serendipity in this for me. Just last week I read Kafka's The Trial. The word "Kafkaesque" keeps getting thrown around but it's stunning--- _stupefying_ to me, how many parallels there are between that book and Aaron's case.

In Kafka, after the protagonist is arrested he's immediately released. The police even escort him to work and tell him to go about his life. At first he thinks that's an great thing that he wasn't hauled off in custody, but as the trial grinds on he comes to realize that being forced to live every day as the facsimile of a free man being required to do what free men are inclined to do while carrying the additional burden of dealing with his trial, is itself torture.

If anyone remembers the bruhaha around Dmitry Sklyarov, or before that DVD John or Kevin Mitnick knows that this community rallies around men sitting in jail while the authorities try to come up with a crime to charge them with. There's no doubt in my mind that if the prosecution had hauled Aaron off to jail "for downloading some PDFs" the reaction would have been swift and boisterous.

I've learned a great deal about this country's "justice" system over the past two days, and mostly I've learned about the special sort of hell it put Aaron in, and I've come to realize that I was complicit in its work through my ignorance and indifference.

And all I can say about that is I feel a little bit sick. And that it won't ever happen again.

</comment><comment><USER60> If anything "Tech Crunch" is the troll of the day.

Is it really such a shock people might inhibit their opinions after someone has just killed himself. No one expected it to get to this, Aaron probably wasn't _completely_ innocent, And Our judicial system seems to have failed him.

Trying to polarize it into some "You're either with Aaron" or "you're against him" just means falling deeper into this cesspool of a thread.

</comment><comment><USER61> It strikes me that another relevant comparison would be the Hacker News reaction to weev's conviction: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4808676>

</comment><comment><USER62> Wrong or not, Ed's comment was very cold-hearted, uncompassionate, pretentious, egoistic even sexist. That said, I see a lot of this in IT/tech word in general and it makes me sad to work in this field.

</comment><comment><USER48> In retrospect, this comment by "mibbitier" is particularly saddening.

"I agree. He was extremely foolish and arrogant at best. I don't think this belongs on HN. Also didn't he make a ton of money selling Reddit?! :/"

</comment><comment><USER63> HN is the big brother you worship, your hero, the coolest guy you know. Then one night you find him drunk and coked up sleeping in the backyard in a pool of piss and vomit.

This topic is the backyard.

</comment><comment><USER64> Leave it to TechCrunch to try to get more views on their website...

</comment><comment><USER62> Why is this thread not showing among first results? It is heavily up-voted.

</comment><comment><USER65> Is that the best Arrington could come up with?

</comment><comment><USER66> This is sick. I'm at a loss for words.

</comment><comment><USER67> Lets face it, HN and similar discussion sites bring out the worst in some people, including me.

I'm not going to comment on Ed's unfortunate statements because I've been an asshat to people in the past too.

It's a terrible thing when you don't have the opportunity to apologise later.

I'm sorry for all parties involved.

</comment><comment><USER68> It's an accurate reflection of a subset of visitors of Hacker News. That subset are those that post here. I don't think they like what the reflection shows, so it might be a good learning experience.</comment>


Ask HN: What websites do you frequent? - <AUTHOR>

The title says it all: "What websites do you guys like to frequent?" When I ask this I mean websites similar to HN, reddit, etc..<p>Please don't say google, twitter, or facebook. haha. <comment><USER2> Hacker News, oddly enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google Reader

<comment><USER4> Favorite feeds?

<comment><USER3> I share some posts here: <http://www.google.com/reader/shared/rottled>

It's not strictly tech related and I tend to share the non-tech items.

edit: I just dumped the xml file of my feeds and extracted all the titles. Here they all are, in their disorganized glory: "IBM developerWorks", "SlickDeals.net", "developerWorks : Featured content", "Scene 360 Illusion", "we make money not art", "Wooster Collective", "Schneier on Security", "SecGuru -", "Theory to Practice", "Hack a Day", "Cocoa with Love", "Consumerist", "Eli Bendersky's website", "Joel on Software", "Overcoming Bias", "Paul Graham: Essays", "Philip Greenspun's Weblog", "The Frontal Cortex", "The Internet Food Association", "The Simple Dollar", "Unclutterer", "Climbing Narcissist", "NYT > Rock Climbing", "Online Climbing Coach", "RSS - Hot Flashes Climbing News", "Hoefler & Frere-Jones", "Nice Web Type", "SpiekerBlog (en)", "TypeNeu", "Code & form", "Processing Blogs", "Modern Forager", "Falkenblog",

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I lurk at <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Stack Overflow

</comment><comment><USER7> HN, OvercomingBias.com, LessWrong.com, Bruce Schneier's blog (schneier.com/blog/), Megan McArdles's blog (<http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/>), Steve Sailer (isteve.blogspot.com), and I probably spend as much time browsing Amazon and reading reviews there as any one of the others. I spend less time at (only because they write less) Freedom-to-Tinker.com, Armed and Dangerous (<http://esr.ibiblio.org/>), One Small Voice (Peter Saint-Andre, <https://stpeter.im/>), and DavidDFriedman.blogspot.com.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://metafilter.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> Slashdot Ars Technica

although I don't comment a lot, or at all but do read many articles

</comment><comment><USER10> Quite a few:

<http://slashdot.org>

<http://serverfault.com>

<http://securityfocus.com>

<http://sucuri.net>

<http://matasano.com/log> (well, while it was up and I hope it comes back)..

<http://taosecurity.blogspot.com>

<http://linux.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://typophile.com>

<http://trendir.com>

<http://cardobserver.com>

<http://minimalsites.com>

and the usual bunch - slashdot, engadget, ars technica

</comment><comment><USER12> nytimes.com/technology roughtype.com gigaom.com

</comment><comment><USER13> serverfault.com

</comment><comment><USER14> guardian, bbc news, HN, /. (but mostly lurking these days), google news, nu.nl

</comment><comment><USER15> another vote for lambda-the-ultimate.org gpgpu.org insideHPC.com

</comment><comment><USER16> My favorites folder (which is a folder in Chrome that I 'open all in tabs' with each morning) includes the following URLS, which makes them at least daily reads:

news.ycombinator.com damninteresting.com (now that they're back especially) kk.org/kk/ - Kevin Kelly's blog federalwasteland.blogspot.com -- hasn't been updated in a long while. :-( asofterworld.com xkcd.com idsgn.org

</comment><comment><USER17> Streamy</comment>