Zuckerberg Asks Employees to Stop Crossing Out "Black Lives Matter" at FB HQ - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/mark-zuckerberg-asks-employees-to-stop-crossing-out-black-lives-matter-on-facebooks-walls/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> Great response from Zuckerberg. This is something that easily could have been dealt with in a much more ham-handed way or through middle management...to have the CEO take a stand is very helpful.

I think he states the position well. "Black Lives Matter" is meant to be a concise motto that is founded on the belief that society does not equally value its African-American citizens. It does not preclude lives of ethnic groups having value.

Perhaps the "All Lives Matter" group would argue that their stance is equally amicable...sure, it's just as well-intentioned. But what BLM and, apparently Zuckerberg believe is that this response insinuates that the BLM advocates are unfounded in their beliefs that blacks aren't equally valued by society.

<comment><USER3> Usually people in the "All Lives Matter" group seem upset at the inherent divisiveness of the "Black Lives Matter" slogan. I've never had a discussion with anyone in either camp that believes the system is fair towards black people. The actual divisiveness seems to happen when discussing if the system is also unfair to non-black people, like poor whites, who some argue are more likely to be shot by police than black people, which the "Black Lives Matter" doesn't seem to concern itself with.

<comment><USER4> Do you know of a useful slogan that concerns itself with all problems at once?

The theory behind the objection seems to be that black people must help white people fix problems that white people experience before we can even talk about the problems that black people experience. That seems crazy to me.

Even if the US hadn't uniquely maltreated black people for centuries, black people are just 12% of the population. Why shouldn't they be able to call attention to the problems they experience without white people saying, "But what about meeeeeeee?!?"

Yes, there are a lot of things wrong that we should fix. But when somebody tries to discuss problem A and somebody else immediately leaps in to say, "Why don't you care about B?" I often suspect that the point is not to fix problem B, it's to stop the discussion of problem A.

<comment><USER3> A useful slogan that concerns itself with all problems at once? Off the top of my head "Police enforcement in the US is out of control?"

And I think we immediately stopped seeing eye to eye right here "The theory behind the objection seems to be that black people must help white people fix problems that white people experience before we can even talk about the problems that black people experience. That seems crazy to me." No white person is saying "help me fix my problems first". They're saying, this is a single problem we all face and we should all work to fix it. They might even go further and say race is a bullshit social construct used to oppress and separate people and that their is no "us" and "them" only us.

<comment><USER4> You see your problem as "police enforcement in the US is out of control". Other people see different problems. You saying, "We should all work to fix my problem because I am sure your problem is the same as mine" is effectively saying, "help me fix my problem before I will listen to you about your problem". Because your notion that you understand the problems of black people better than they themselves do is definitely a sign that you aren't listening.

And sure, the American notion of race is a bullshit social construct, but it is one that white people created, put into law, and enforced. And of course used as a tool to gain power. So if white people would like race not to be an issue anymore, they should get other white people to stop making it a thing. Telling black people to stop noticing the racial bias directed against them by white people will not actually end the bias, it just hides the evidence.

[1] e.g.: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)

<comment><USER3> Well when I see cops shooting people for the diciest of reasons, and enforcing laws with little discretion and maximum force, I'm not convinced that I'm wrong by the argument "Black lives matter". People are free to believe what they want, but obviously there is a messaging problem with "BLM".

<comment><USER4> You don't have to be convinced to be respectful. It is certainly not their job and probably not their goal to convince you.

Also, it's not obvious at all that there's a messaging problem. I get that a bunch of white people don't like the message. But a bunch of white people will dislike anything black people do to push back against a system that harms them.

For decades white people have been telling black activists that they're doing it wrong. And their main cited evidence is that white people are uncomfortable. MLK got a lot of that, and he responded to it here:

[https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....](https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)

I certainly agree that the "Black Lives Matter" slogan makes me, a white person, uncomfortable. But as far as I'm concerned, that's just what it should be doing. If other people are being maltreated by a system that I have the power to change, that shouldn't feel warm and fuzzy.

<comment><USER5> "You don't have to be convinced to be respectful. It is certainly not their job and probably not their goal to convince you."

Sorry? If they want to create political change in a democratic society, it _is_ their job to convince him.

<comment><USER4> No, not at all.

Think about the technology adoption curve, as seen in Crossing the Chasm. It's not the job, or even the goal, of a person creating a new technology to convince _everybody_. At any moment, a small portion of people are open to changing their minds on a given thing. Mostly, they do what they grew up with, or what the people around them are doing.

The same is generally true socially. Consider this graph:

[http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...](http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/bb8ic2qate- wa_cbgc2ifg.png)

Now subtract the death rate from that graph. If you do, you'll see that a relatively small number of people changed their minds at any given point. Much of the change comes because old bigots died off, taking their retrograde opinions to the grave with them.

So basically, an activist who wants to change minds, like a technology marketer, shouldn't focus their efforts on convincing everybody. Persuasive efforts are best spent on the people who are most ready to change. Which in my experience is generally the person listening carefully, not the guy who runs up to shout, "No, you're doing it all wrong. Do it _my_ way."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spent my high school years in a poor, rural county in southeastern Virginia that was mostly black. All of these folks were descended from slaves, and there was never a doubt in my mind that white oppression in the past had created numerous, deep disadvantages for my friends and classmates who had the misfortune of being part of families who had suffered from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

That being said, I've always found that black ethnocentrism has a similar effect to white ethnocentrism: it causes further division and worsens the problem it claims to try to solve.

The statement "Black Lives Matter" offends me, because it makes the assumption that because I'm not black, I don't think black lives matter, and therefore have to be told that they do. Most of my friends growing up were black. My best friend was closer to me than my brothers, was best man at my wedding, and I at his. It also over-simplifies a complex problem, that has at its root the fact that the hostile relationship between blacks and police is not one- directional. It was started by white police with decades of oppression, but the current situation is a cycle perpetuated by the thought that police are the enemy. If you have been told your whole life that police are the enemy, then you are going to behave differently when they approach you than someone else. If the police are in a community where everyone has been taught this, they will behave in a way that ends up supporting this belief, and the seeds of conflict are sown.

Ethnocentrism has never, ever helped unify people. My personal experience growing up and socializing in a mostly black social environment left me with the impression that there is a minority of black Americans who, similar to a minority of white Americans, are ethnocentric and racist towards those who don't share their race. The difference is that the black variety of ethnocentric activists are openly tolerated and encouraged by white people who have never in their life spent ten minutes under the roof of a black person's home, let alone attended black churches or been involved in family events such as Thanksgiving dinners, weddings, funerals, etc.

Racism is a part of the human condition, as is its direct precursor, ethnocentrism. Pretending that it's different depending on the person's complexion tells me that these white folks view black Americans as different than themselves, almost less human. I hold all humans, no matter how difficult their background, to a higher standard.

<comment><USER7> I think the solution is to stop taking offense. The point isn't to say other injustices don't matter - it's to shine a spotlight on a particular type of injustice that needs attention.

And you can't say it hasn't helped. People are more aware of problems between the police and the black community than they were even a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is asking his employees to stop being ignorant and racist (my words, not his)_

It's pretty hard to take an article seriously when the author starts it like that. I wish the people reporting on these issues would leave the hyperbole out.

<comment><USER9> But if you clicked through to that point and were served ads, they kind of already won. At least short term.

<comment><USER10> I'm happy I have a habit of clicking through to the HN comments before reading the article, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "There are specific issues affecting the black community in the United States, coming from a history of oppression and racism..."

For anyone looking to read more on this subject, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness", was a helpful resource for me. ([http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration- Colorblindn...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration- Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/))

</comment><comment><USER12> The article disapprovingly states that 55% of Facebook is white as if that's a disproportionate amount, even though 63% of the USA population identifies as non-hispanic white. What's up with that

</comment><comment><USER13> And now it got crossed off the front page of Hacker News... sad.

@Dang - was this flagged by users? Seems crazy that it had 30 points in 20 minutes and now it's gone.

Zuckerberg's statement on this seemed really well written. The "Black Lives Matter" vs. "All Lives Matter" has been discussed endlessly, but he had another great point about crossing out the Black Lives Matter being essentially the same as silencing free speech.

<comment><USER14> The submission was flagkilled.

I vouched for it since despite what people may think about BLM, Zuckerberg's response is important and relevant.

<comment><USER15> I really would like to know the rationale behind the people trying to flagkill it

<comment><USER16> I think its probably the exact same rationale as crossing out "Black Lives Matter".

Though if I'm being more charitable, most likely some people see this as a political article which shouldnt be on HN (whether you feel that way is probably correlated to your opinion of Black Lives Matter).

<comment><USER4> That is indeed quite charitable, given that the story is about Facebook, startup culture, and the direct actions of one of the most prominent people in tech.

If somebody only objects to political articles when it's politics they don't like, I'd be curious as to how they resolve claiming to be against politics while energetically politicizing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Primary source is Gizmodo ([http://gizmodo.com/mark-zuckerberg-asks-racist- facebook-empl...](http://gizmodo.com/mark-zuckerberg-asks-racist-facebook- employees-to-stop-1761272768)), but Gizmodo submission is heavily linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER17> > The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the > spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that > spectrum. CHOMSKY.

I agree people shouldn't cross out black lives matter.

However, if you're going to let them write "black lives matter," you should also allow people to write "all lives matter."

If our society has reached a point of guilt, where we can no longer acknowledge that all lives matter, and doing so is "racist," that means blacks (and allies) will have become the new de facto racist group.

<comment><USER18> "If our society has reached a point of guilt, where we can no longer acknowledge that all lives matter, and doing so is 'racist,' that means blacks (and allies) will have become the new de facto racist group."

This took a minute to sink in. Everyone should contemplate this statement for a minute. For me the phrase All Lives Matter seems very guiltless and brings feelings of unity, while Black Lives Matter brings feelings of division. Just seems like it is doing nothing to unite people on the cause... like a bad marketing campaign trying to guilt people into joining a cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> what he should do is ask employees to stop writing any such things at FB hq in the first place.

Individual Political messages like that don't belong in the workplace.

<comment><USER20> I totally agree with you. Political opinions are formed over a long time, and are a function of our experiences, prejudices, reading, ignorance etc...all very hard to change.

So its best to not have political discussions in a work place setting. These kind of provisions invariably just end up causing a lot of heart burn, and nothing more.

PS: I personally liked Zuckerberg's gesture as I know why it is important to have specific/loaded statements which hint at history, than motherhood/generic statements, which mean nothing, and often are the refuge of bigots. But at the same time, I have seen nobody (or very few) change their positions in arguments, and are just the cause of heart burns. God, how many people I unfriended on FB (when I was using it) just cause they hurt me real bad (in some cases, I regretted later on...that's why Facebook is a net negative IMHO, but I digress, Sorry).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 1 point by wkimeria 6 hours ago

Kudos to him. The tendency of people to refuse to understand what "Black Lives Matter" means is infuriating. I love Arthur Chu's Tweet some time ago on this

[https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/538015166634680320?...](https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/538015166634680320?lang=en)

'Do people who change #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter run thru a cancer fundraiser going "THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO"'

</comment><comment><USER22> The Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter debate is one where two friendly colleagues can easily realize they hate each other.

I'm surprised FB wants any part of it.

</comment><comment> awinter-py No surprise that an organization engaging in large-scale behavioral engineering ('click here') has a warped view of free speech.

I don't know how to reconcile 'we've never had rules about what people can write' with 'my clear communication that this is unacceptable' (or even with taking down photos of breastfeeding women).

His _interpretation_ is that BLM doesn't mean all lives don't matter, therefore the crossouts are inappropriate. (1) I'm not sure social justice movements want to be interpreted by nasdaq CEOs. And (2) crossing out isn't censorship, it's debate.

Given that this whole company is about people writing on each other's walls, you'd want them to have a more nuanced attitude towards graffiti.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not black or white. I'm not impressed with "black lives matter" or zuckerberg or "all lives matter" or whatever. The rule should be don't cross out what others have written... write your own thing. jeez. freakin' high school.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have to wonder why this dropped off the front page. I feel like stories like this get "crossed out" of HN. Anyone from HN wanna chime in?

<comment><USER24> There's a post with 10 votes that's 53 minutes old at #11. This one is at 32 votes 35 minutes old.

<comment><USER25> HN doesn't compute story rank from points and timestamp alone.

<comment><USER24> Is the algorithm public?

<comment><USER25> No. A version of HN's source code is included with the public release of Arc, but HN's algorithm has many extensions that aren't public. It has to be that way, because it would be too easy to game the system otherwise.

<comment><USER24> dang, that violate's Kerckhoffs's principle: "A system should be secure even if everything about the system is public knowledge." Security through obscurity.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle)

<comment><USER26> Kerckhoff's Principle holds only if the adversary's cost are unbounded. In reality, there's almost always a cost ceiling tied in some way to the value of the target.

In other words: you are welcome to spend unlimited hours and dollars finding and exploiting the flaws in HN's ranking model simply to prove a point, but hopefully, you have better things to do. Similarly, the HN team has better things to do than investing resources to defeat the (unlikely) adversaries who harness both skill and irrationality.

(This wrinkle of Kerckhoff's Principle comes up a lot in systems security work, which is why I was moved to comment about it.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Questions I Ask During Code Review - <AUTHOR> http://ericfarkas.com/posts/questions-i-ask-during-code-review <comment><USER2> Thank you for considering tests and testing as an important part of any code review !</comment>


Show HN: Makefast Workshop - <AUTHOR> http://makefastworkshop.com <comment><AUTHOR> Any high-level thoughts of running a physical startup workshop like this in the Midwest?

Is making tech things by hand still something people are excited about?

All thoughts/suggestions greatly appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: Should external links open in the same browser tab or new tab? - <AUTHOR>

I know links opening in the same page is the default behavior. Do you set same behavior (links opening in same tab) to both internal and external links? <comment><USER2> As a web developer, I feel external links opening in the same tab / window take the user away from my site (or the site I'm building) so I generally always force external links to open a new tab. The goal is always I think, to keep people on your site as long as possible. Opening an external link in the same tab stops that - maybe from the external link they find something else they want to read / do and don't come back? That would suck.

As an internet user - I'll generally force a link (command click) that might look external to open in a new tab so I can come back to reading what I was reading without having to reload the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your points. I do not think even most users would want a link to take them away from the page they are on. I am wondering why links on HN let go of its visitors!</comment></comment>


MariaDB Raises $9M More, Michael Howard Named New CEO, Monty Widenius CTO - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/21/mariadb-raises-9m-more-michael-howard-named-new-ceo-monty-widenius-cto/ <comment><USER2> This is only tangentially related... are there any open source databases that implement materialized views as well as Oracle? Postgres is getting close but they're not there yet...

<comment><USER3> Can you expand on that, I'm unclear on what you consider "better"

<comment><USER2> Sure, what I think Oracle does better is it provides a lot more flexibility with how you can refresh your materialized views. Oracle has 3 ways that I know of to refresh materialized views; complete, fast, and partition change tracking, furthermore Oracle allows you to refresh on commit instead of have to manually do it or schedule a job to do it.

Although it has nothing to do with materialized views Oracle also has a built in scheduler, which can be used to do periodic refreshes (hourly, nightly, etc). You can achieve something similar with postgres by croning a SQL script.

To my knowledge postgres doesn't really have these things (other than in 9.5? you can do refreshes without getting an exclusive lock like in 9.4), although I could be wrong. I just wish Oracle wasn't so expensive.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree that oracle has excellent materialized view support, but triggers and other strategies can go a long way also, I think Dan Chak did a really nice chapter on this in his book enterprise rails, that is also available online for free at [http://dan.chak.org/enterprise- rails/chapter-12-materialized...](http://dan.chak.org/enterprise- rails/chapter-12-materialized-views)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MariaDB plans for version 10.2:

\- [https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/plans- for-10x/](https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/plans-for-10x/)</comment>


Do we need more top level domains? - <AUTHOR> http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/icann-now-domains-no-needed

<comment><USER2> This article makes a few good (but separate) points.

1\. Hostnames are backwards. com.ycombinator.news makes much more sense than news.ycombinator.com, because the rest of a URL goes from least specific (protocol) to most specific (path components, query, fragment). The only case where the current form of hostname works is email addresses (user at sub dot domain dot tld). IIRC, one of the founders of the WWW (Tim Berners-Lee, perhaps?) already admitted that they got this wrong. I'm all for fixing it, but how? There would need to be easily machine- and human-identifiable differences between old- and new-style hostnames, or there's massive potential for confusion and collisions. There's also an unthinkable amount of software out there that understands hostnames in their current form.

2\. The TLD system is broken. Hierarchical hostnames make great sense when you want to refer to the host foo, owned by building four of the computer science department of Caltech. The TLDs we're using today are hacks, a valiant attempt by ICANN to conserve the domain namespace. I hate to admit it, but I think that registering TLDs based on trademark really could work. It'd mean the end of fun websites like <http://unicodesnowmanforyou.com/>, but would bring a huge amount of sanity to the top-level namespace. It would create to a huge new market for private subdomain reselling (whoever gets .www is going to make a killing) where resellers would have the power to be selective about registrations, and to pull domains out from under squatters. Spam-heavy TLDs would lose credibility.

It makes today's internet feel like the Wild West.

<comment><USER3> _"whoever gets .www is going to make a killing"_

I think that they'd have to make an exception for historical reasons, and simply pre-register "www.". (This kind of reservation is not unprecedented; "example.com" and similar names are off-limits, according to the original RFC 2606.) So "www." could be introduced as a giant no-op in the modified domain name system, and browsers would simply learn to ignore it.

<comment><USER2> I kid. It's not going to be www, but whichever domain or set of domains is easy to type, sells subdomains for cheaps, and is aggressive about spam control will win.

It might be worthwhile for ICANN to make three-and-fewer character names off- limits to private registration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As just one example, who gets "era", and why?

<http://www.era.com/> ?

<http://www.era.mk/> ?

<http://www.era.hk/> ?

<http://www.era.pl/> ?

<http://www.era.ru/> ?

</comment><comment><USER5> I am starting to believe most new TLDs are simply a scam by registries to force trademark holders to re-buy their trademarks every time. They serve little other purpose.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's a late start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author is reiterating the complaints that major trademark holders raised over a decade ago during the initial generic TLD (gTLD) expansion process in the mid-1990s (see Milton Mueller's book "Ruling The Root" for details). More gTLDs meant the need to purchase one's trademark in each new gTLD in order to protect that trademark. The power that trademark holders/WIPO had in this process lead to "sunrise" periods where established trademarks were allowed to be registered before the registry opened generally, and I've heard claims that the dispute resolution process can tend to favor trademark holders too, though I can't vouch for that.

The problem with the claim that trademark interests trump all others in domain name disputes is that non-domain-name trademarks must be distinctive and are typically for a specific market. To use the example already given in the comments, Apple Inc. the computer manufacturer and Apple Records the music label can coexist because they aren't really in the same market and won't confuse consumers as such. However, domain names don't allow for this level of subtlety, and so whoever registers apple.com first with good-faith intent "wins", despite justified interest from computer, music, and fruit companies.

While this attitude towards new gTLDs makes sense from the perspective of existing second-level domain/trademark holders, what about those who aren't established yet. Is the person searching for a short or meaningful domain name out of luck because trademark holders are sick of new TLDs? There appears to be demand for new TLDs, and it's been shown that the root zone will scale, so it would seem to make sense to allow new TLDs for those whose needs aren't met by .com et al.

The deeper problem in all of this is that we interpret meaning in these unique identifiers, and use that meaning as part of branding and to judge authenticity of a site. If (for example) websites were identified by the public key of the certificate that signed its contents, and if we navigated the web using a directory system instead of typing domain names into browser URL bars, we wouldn't have this problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been saying we need a .app TLD for years!

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I've looked into this a couple times. I would really love to see this happen. In my (biased) opinion this would be much more meaningful/useful than some of the others that exist.

I don't know that anyone is actually _trying_ to make this happen, but I've come across a lot of people who think it's a great idea.

For anyone who's interested, here is some info from ICANN describing the application process and status of recent TLD applications:

<http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/> <http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld- program.htm>

It would be sweet if Google or someone big tried to get this done...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they fucked the squatters and parked domains off then we'd probably _never_ need another top or other domain again.

It's just stupid trying to find an unregistered domain now.

<comment><USER11> Be careful what you wish for. While that would kill off third-tier domaining, most domains worth owning are worth pulling a Demand Media type strategy on if you have no other option. If I had a hundred thousand domains like, I don't know, clevelandcars.com, I'd get myself something conceptually similar to Wordpress MultiUser (WPMU) installed so that they could all be administered centrally, hire swarms of low-wage freelancers to thicken them with less-than- awe-inspiring content, and slap adsense ads on all of them.

This would quickly be turned into a turnkey solution for parking -- it would cost $50 a domain a year, sure, but that is mouse droppings next to what a decent domain earns in a commercial niche.

<comment><USER10> That's true. Maybe policing domains would be a better strategy - use it and use it within specific guidelines or lose it.

<comment><USER11> I would be very, very pissed off if Scholastic Publishing convinced the Proper Domain Use Authority to bump the squatter off of bingocardcreator.com and let them put their shiny new multi-million dollar product launch there.

Again, be careful what you wish for. Any sort of recurring regulatory process puts hoops in front of us little guys more than it does for anybody else. We're the ones who don't have squads of lawyers sitting on standby with nothing better to do than push paperwork through the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could argue that the main problem with domains is their exposure to end users; they are essentially an implementation detail of a protocol. Since they are relatively simple to type on desktop computers, they've worked well for a long time. Now, finally, with touch displays, they may be called out for being too cumbersome.

The problem to solve is not the look of domain names, but authentication. How do you know that you've reached the "real" web site for a product or service or group? If you could know that in some other way, you wouldn't necessarily need to see an ugly domain name.

I could imagine something much more interactive. For instance, an app that lets you first specify your favorite products and services, that can then pop up a grid of touchable corporate logos to bring you directly to the correct web sites (no URLs needed). The existing DNS registry could be used to either figure out what you need, or give you a short list of choices. In time, apps like these would become so standard that you wouldn't "need" to register all permutations of a trademark, because they would already be choosing the correct one.

<comment><USER12> Bring back AOL keywords!

Seriously though, the DNS system needs to be exact, not a heuristic guess of what the user wants. A guess would make winners and losers out of equal competing sites; kinda like search engines do, but worse since there would be no second slot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea, I hate how he uses 'ridicules' instead of 'ridiculous'.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why don't we just raise the price of domain names? If you doubled the price you'd make a lot of domain squatting unprofitable.

How is it that you need baekdal.dk but not baekdal.cn? Don't they pose the same security threat when it comes to phishing? It's really not necessary to own 20 different tlds to protect your brand. How many people mistakenly go to baekdal.biz?

<comment><USER9> The fact that it's so cheap to get a site up online is one of the best things about the internet. I would hate to see the price of domain names go up in an attempt to fix this type of problem. I think it would do much more harm than good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Definitely agree. Java's packaging does it right. Unfortunately large changes like this are just not going to happen without some drastic event. Changing around the order of TLDs would be no easier than switching the US to metric system.

</comment><comment><USER16> We already have a system where anyone can buy any name they want. It's called .com. If we open up the root space as a free-for-all, then we will never be able to extend the system in the future. We can only do it once.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is interesting, because it seems to solve the problem of having to buy dozens of .tlds to secure your brand name.</comment>


Writing Great Docs as a Bad Writer - <AUTHOR> https://fritz.netlify.com/slides/great-docs/1 <comment><USER2> "A feature does not exist until it's documented"

Like the undocumented right arrow key to advance to the next slide?

You don't even know whether this is a slide show, or a misloaded page. You hit the space bar, nothing happens. Nope, can't be a slide show. Every slide show program you've ever seen advances to the next slide when you hit the space bar.

<comment><USER3> Ha! It's even worse on mobile, where you're just stuck on the first slide

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't work in mobile afaict

Or is that the Joke

</comment><comment><USER5> ironically (or extremely well fitting?) the most excellent content with an not so great slides format

<comment><USER6> The content is a worthwhile read and I love the idea of using this for a conference. Not so much as a reference though

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was for a conference. Is there a video of this anywhere I wonder? [https://www.webcraft.com.jm/speakers/chris- fritz.html](https://www.webcraft.com.jm/speakers/chris-fritz.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Too annoying in current format - needs better writing/delivery format...

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't seem to work in Chrome Mobile.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just realised how much I hate slides. Any tl;dr version of this as a paragraph of text?

<comment><USER11> I tried, it doesn't display anything than the opening slide on PC, privitized firefox and virgin chrome either.

<comment><USER12> Does the right-arrow or Page-Down key work for you? Took me a second to figure out</comment></comment></comment>


Two Emergency Room Doctors Are in Critical Condition with Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/us/coronavirus-physicians-emergency-rooms.html <comment><USER2> I don't want to sound alarmist, but ER docs tend to be 30-40-something's in fantastic health. I'm curious if there is cytokine storm involvement that further degrades lung capacity. Finally, there's a real risk they may never be well enough to return to duty after 6-8 weeks due to severe (and permanent) lung injury. ER docs, respiratory therapists and perfusionists don't grow on trees... taking just one out is a huge minus for a crashing tsunami of critical cases poised to break simultaneously.</comment>


Keeping GoogleBot Happy - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/368-keeping-googlebot-happy

<comment><USER2> Is there any mention of this phenomenon from Google? I had never heard of it. Sorry, finding it hard to come up with good terms for search queries.</comment>


Smalltalk Envy - <AUTHOR> https://paulhammant.com/2017/09/01/smalltalk-envy/ <comment><USER2> I worked using VA-Smalltalk and Envy for 3 years. One interesting thing about Envy, is that all the versioning model was available as objects that you can manipulate, and versioning was not file based but per module/class/method.

In our team each developer worked on a branch, we developed an in-house tool to automatically merge all the branches. Having the class model available made easy to identify conflicts and class shape changes. The tool resolved most of the cases and also created the migration script for the object database (GemStone).

Nowadays I'm working with JavaScript, using VSCode, webpack, and a long list of tools... it feels like something went wrong in the dev tooling evolution.

<comment><USER3> I am fully in sync with you, having used Smalltalk/V for Windows in the university, a couple of years before Java was announced.

For me in an alternative universe of ChromeOS with Dart (given Gilad Bracha's presence on the team) could have been a much better experience with a Smalltalk like OS, instead no.

We still have Cincom, Squeak and Pharo though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used Envy from 1992 to 1993 on a prototype project to replace Sybase SQL server. It impressed me deeply for two reasons.

1.) It was directly embedded in the development environment. Just saving a method would check in the change automatically and make it sharable across the team. This was at a time when most people either not using source control at all or wrestling with cumbersome systems like SCCS. Combined with Smalltalk's built-in dev environment, it is still the easiest source control system I have ever worked with, as least from the developer perspective.

2.) More interestingly, Envy also made metadata about the code base and versions of code easily accessible. Not everyone knows this now, but Smalltalk was unique in that the entire environment above the level of the VM was built in Smalltalk itself and not only available for introspection but for modification. For instance, even execution stack frames were objects that you could see and edit directly to change their behavior. (Not a good idea I soon learned.)

Getting to the point, you could easily introspect every change to code and by combining introspection of classes and methods quickly determine which changes were happening where. We built a test framework that could list the changes since the last run, then compute dependencies and run an appropriate selection of test cases to check. This cut down test time by 90% or more for new changes. Because the dev environment was pure Smalltalk it was easy for us to integrate this this back into the tools so that it was available just by pressing a button.

Many of the ideas of Smalltalk such as VMs, self-documenting methods and classes, and auto-compilation made their way into other languages and products. However, I have never encountered anything quite like Envy since. It displayed the same level of transcendent innovation for developer productivity that characterized the original Xerox PARC windowing system for desktops.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know so little about Smalltalk and its way of software development. A year ago, I read about VisualAge, and asked this question on the lisp subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/4saada/curious_about_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/4saada/curious_about_lisp_storing_code_and_state_in_image/)

It has an interesting response from lispm. Having only worked in languages where the source is stored in files, it's hard for me to get a grasp on this kind of development. I catch rare glimpses of this. Here's another example, from [http://dept- info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~strandh/Teaching/Langa...](http://dept- info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~strandh/Teaching/Langages-Enchasses/Common/Strandh- Tutorial/diff-scheme.html)

> A major problem with Scheme that does not exist in Common Lisp is that the > Scheme language does not define an internal representation for programs, > although to be fair, all Scheme implementations do.

> For instance, in Scheme, there is a difference between:

        (define (f x y . (z))
           ...)

> which is syntactically illegal, and:

         (define (f x y z)
            ...)

> which syntactically legal.

(You'll probably have to read that short section "Program/data equivalence"; I couldn't find the right excerpt)

Scheme code is stored in text files. Common Lisp code is a sequence of lisp objects. This is a strange difference to me; I'm an unexceptional web programmer. But it's "the very basis of the Common Lisp macro system, which uses Lisp data to represent and manipulate Lisp code." I am condemned to be intrigued!

<comment><USER6> The distinction is that Common Lisp source code is not text; it's Lisp values. What you see in a text file of "Lisp source code" isn't actually Lisp source code; it's a text serialization of Lisp source code. Other serializations are possible.

As a practical matter, most of the time the distinction doesn't matter. You edit text files. Your Lisp reads the text files and the first thing it does with the contents is convert them to Lisp source code. The source code is then processed as you would expect.

One place where the distinction matters is in macro processing: Lisp macro expansion operates on Lisp source code, not on text. If it operated on text, as, for example, C preprocessors do, then macro expansion would be a matter of string substitution. Instead, Lisp macro expanders operate on abstract syntax trees represented as convenient Lisp data structures, which means that macros are not limited to what can be conveniently done with simple string substitution. You have the full Lisp language available, operating on a convenient Lisp representation, to compute the expansion.

More generally, when source code is represented as convenient data structures in the language, it's easier to build tools that operate on it. C compilers do not operate directly on text input; they convert it to internal data structures more convenient for the various stages of the compiler to work with. So does Lisp. The difference is that in a C compiler the representations used by the compiler are private implementation details, and in Lisp they are standard surface features of the language, available to every user.

<comment><USER7> For JavaScript, the Esprima parser [1] converts JavaScript to what appears to be a JSON format. It's formalized by the Estree spec [2]. You can try it out here [3]. JSON is just regular JavaScript data structures (maps and lists). If you want type safety, there are Typescript definitions, but you could ignore that.

Another example: Go has a parser and AST that comes with the standard library, which again is just using regular Go data structures (structs and interfaces). If you wanted to write a macro preprocessor, using the built-in parser seems like a much better idea than string manipulation.

So, I'm wondering if there's anything more to the way Common Lisp does it?

[1] [http://esprima.org/](http://esprima.org/) [2] [https://github.com/estree/estree](https://github.com/estree/estree) [3] [http://esprima.org/demo/parse.html](http://esprima.org/demo/parse.html)

<comment><USER8> Lisp does not use a tokenizer or a parser. It uses a reader, which reads a textual representation of data into data objects.

A reader is similar to a tokenizer, but the reader just creates an internal representation of some data from an external representation. Basically what a primitive JSON reader would do.

A parser would know the programming language syntax and create an internal representation of the program. The Lisp reader does not know anything about the programming language syntax. It just knows about numbers, strings, lists, arrays. But the reader does not know about conditionals, variable declarations, iteration statements, assignment statements, ...

      var answer = 6 * 7;

      (defparameter answer (* 6 7))

If we quote it, it is just Lisp data:

      CL-USER 8 > '(defparameter answer (* 6 7))
      (DEFPARAMETER ANSWER (* 6 7))

As you can see the evaluator just returns the data, though the symbols are upcased by default. The data is not enriched as a tokenizer or parser might do. Ideally the data structure prints as it is read. There are no type or syntax annotations necessary/used. Thus it is neither a tokenizer output nor a program parse tree. In your first link the tokenizer breaks up the input in strings and categorizes it. The 42 is read into a string '42' and it is annotated as being a numeric. The Lisp reader does not do that. It reads the two characters 42 and returns an integer number object with the value 42.

We can describe this data, it is a list with three elements:

      CL-USER 9 > (describe *)   ; describe the last value

      (DEFPARAMETER ANSWER (* 6 7)) is a LIST
      0      DEFPARAMETER        ; a symbol
      1      ANSWER              ; another symbol
      2      (* 6 7)             ; a list

On this level of s-expressions we know nothing about Lisp as a programming language. It is only known that DEFPARAMETER is a symbol, but not known that it is a language construct and which. It's just a symbol in the first position of a list.

Since this list is also a valid Lisp program (because we wrote it as such), we can compute its value and some side-effects. This process is called evaluation.

      CL-USER 10 > (eval **)     ; eval the second last value
      ANSWER                     ; it just returns the name of the defined variable

We can also input it directly, since the READ-EVAL-PRINT-LOOP already evaluates:

      CL-USER 11 > (defparameter answer (* 6 7))
      ANSWER

As you can see, the input to the evaluator is not a tokenizer output and not a parse tree. It's just an expression tree, where the leaves are data objects. It's not (token 3 :type number) or (literal-data :type number :value 3) or something similar. It is just the 3 as a data object.

The evaluator itself could be an interpreter or a compiler. The interpreter runs walks the expression tree and computes the values from the expressions, which it sees in data format. A compiler-based evaluator would take the whole expression tree, compile it and then run it.

<comment><USER9> There is definitely a tokenizer in Common Lisp, and one that is pretty much "sealed off" to the programmer. The current read table can assign a character to be a "constituent". Constituent characters are gathered by the reader into a token. Then they are analyzed. A sequence of unescaped digits like 12345 becomes an integer. Floating-point literals are recognized. A symbol token is analyzed for the package : or :: . And so on.

<comment><USER8> That's from the programmer point of view an implementation detail. The main interface for the programmer is the function READ and it returns data, not a stream of tokens.

<comment><USER9> Although there is no program-visible "token" data type, the specification describes tokens and uses that word. Since the reader is available to programs, programs can be written to test hypotheses about the implementation's treatment of tokens; tokens can be composed as character strings, passed into _read-from-string_ and the results of the operation can reveal something about the tokenizing black box, without yielding the tokens themselves.

(That said, the Common Lisp syntax isn't completely treated as a token stream by the reader, in the glossary sense of "token", since that word is defined only as the read syntax of numbers and symbols; thus string literals and other bit of notation aren't defined as tokens.)

<comment><USER8> Exactly, it reads single tokens in some places and then creates data from them. It uses the word token for that, but that's arbitrary.

That's not what a Tokenizer does, which usually would create a stream of tokens for all the elements in the input. A token would be a string with some metadata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Said to by /u/vfclists on Proggit ..

"folks should realize that ENVY was Smalltalk's Git, way before when before anyone heard of Git"

<comment><USER11> What was distinctively git-like about it that makes that connection more meaningful than "it was a version control system"?

That is, what made it Smalltalk's git, and not, say, Smalltalk's CVS or ClearCase? The linked-to page suggests that ENVY used a centralized system. (Eg, "The Git model is better for distributed development" and "it had a small process that ran on a server to manage record locking".)

Consider also some of the limitations in ENVY. "You would bring your changes to the machine in the form of (IIRC) a list of RCS-like versions of individual methods, then review and merge them with latest." and "What wasn't available, was automatic merging".

<comment><USER12> > what made it Smalltalk's git

Nothing obvious. What made it more than "Smalltalk's CVS" was fine-grained method-level control of versions and configs.

<comment><USER11> And why not ClearCase, or DSEE before it?

Ah, I think I understand it. I think it comes from a belief that most people treat "git" as a synecdoche or even the entirety of version control systems.

The quote here uses "git" in two ways: 1) "ENVY was Smalltalk's Git" meaning "ENVY was Smalltalk's version control system", and 2) "anyone heard of Git" meaning "anyone heard of the Git system, started by Torvalds."

If so, I think it does a disservice as it reinforces that wrong belief, and is confusing for those who know of other VCSes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I immediately recognized the name OTI, because I had seen it in some early articles about SWT, which is now the cross-platform UI toolkit of Eclipse. So, was SWT also originally implemented in Smalltalk? Or did it come after the transition to Java?

<comment><USER14> I don't know about the internals. But OTI developed Visual Age for Smalltalk and other VA for X products such VA for Java. They were all written mostly in Smalltalk, including VAJ (very interesting! It was a VM that ran both Smalltalk and Java).

Eclipse was supposed to be inherited from VAJ, but having used Eclipse in its early days, I didn't see much resemblance..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > On the contrary, we developed a style where no branch lasted more than a > day, and usually only half a day. This came about, I think, due to our > direct observation of something Kent Beck taught us, which was that if > something hurts, we should do it more often … If you wait a week or a month > to integrate outside changes, it's quite difficult, tedious, slow, and > error-prone. When you integrate after a few hours, it goes much more easily.

This strikes me as relevant to the monorepo vs. multirepo debate: having multiple repos makes it easier for things to get out of alignment, necessitating all-or-nothing hell-merges.

I was also surprised by how long ago these practices I tend to think of as modern actually started. I was learning waterfall back then!

</comment><comment><USER16> Is JPMorgan still running their on fork of Envy?

<comment><USER10> I believe so.</comment></comment>


Getting Started with Webpack: Source Maps - <AUTHOR> https://bendyworks.com/blog/getting-started-with-webpack-source-maps?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=aggregator&utm_campaign=blogged-getting-started-with-webpack-source-maps <comment><USER2> Was hoping for a more in depth explanation of source maps.

<comment><AUTHOR> "in depth" and "getting started with" are typically not compatible. The audience I'm targeting with these blog posts are developers who are very new to Webpack and JavaScript.</comment></comment>


Ct: C for Throughput Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ddj.com/212700222?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All <comment><USER2> This is a word-for-word copy of what's on Intel's website: <http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1514.htm>

The bottom of Intel's page, however, has links to more information (blog, whitepaper, presentation).</comment>


A Brief Above Average Parenting Moment and the Lack of Women in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2010/07/29/a-brief-above-average-parenting-moment-and-the-lack-of-women-in-tech/

<comment><USER2> That is a proud parenting moment.

Given the kerfuffle that blew up last weekend over a couple of Google scholarships for women, I sometimes wonder if the boys club mentality turns away bright women from our industry.</comment>


ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence - <AUTHOR> http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/69081166#/69081166/1

<comment><USER2> In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel:

\- Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 has a trackpad, but I only use it by accident.

\- An LED that lives above the monitor and has a shield that points it down to light up the keyboard. This is a lifesaver on long flights.

\- Docking stations. I've got two USB drives, a pair of headphones, a few USB- powered accessories, two monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard plugged into my computer when it's at the office. My MBP-toting coworkers have to connect and disconnect all that when they pick up their computer; I press the big _undock_ button and it all stays where I left it, and reconnects when I put it back on the desk.

\- Accessory comparability. I've still got the power adapters from the first ThinkPad I had. They work fine on my current one, and mean that I have more of these bricks than I could ever need - so I can keep one at work, in my go bag, at my home office, in my living room, in my kitchen, and still have a few backups around.

\- Repair manuals. Want to know how to do any type of repair on your ThinkPad? The repair manual is freely available, and tells you exactly how to do anything you'd like to. To swap out the network adapter, for example, involves taking off the keyboard and going from the top.

Was ordering it in the first place a pleasant experience? No. The website sucked, I had to call in to do half the customization I wanted, and it still took two months to get here.

<comment><USER3> I have a ThinkPad (T420) too, I love it. I agree with everything that you said - nobody else comes close. Plus, their keyboards are by far the nicest laptop keyboards out there. The X220 is in my mind the perfect portable laptop... except, like every Lenovo laptop I've used, it has an absolutely terrible screen. It drives me nuts, because they come so close, and yet still miss by so much. I mean, I'm not expecting a Retina display here, but if Asus can put a 1920x1080 display on their $1000 Zenbooks, would it be too much to ask for Lenovo to put a 1600x900 panel on the X220?

My laptop - the T420 has a 1600x900 panel on it, but colors change at every angle, and I find myself constantly having to adjust it to get the angle just perfect. And even then, it's fuzzy.

<comment><USER4> Try the X230 IPS screen or any of the 15" screens. Lenovo's T400 series screens are truly notoriously bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have privately been using ThinkPads exclusively for many years now. These are the best laptops I ever used (and I am being supplied with work laptops that ranged from MacBook to Dells).

The part I relate the most with in the presentation is that ThinkPads are not trendy or flashy. No they are not, they are not gadgets or things you show off, they are functional tools that just work.

<comment><USER6> The one thing I don't like about ThinkPad is that like pretty much every PC maker they insist on bundling their own software (in their case, ThinkVantage). I wish PC makers would start shipping PCs with Windows, any necessary hardware drivers, and nothing else. This, more than anything, is what makes me dread buying another PC.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I tried to multiple times to purchase ThinkPads without the bundled software (I use Linux). But it is not an option.

This in fact is the only reason why I look at other offers at all. Every time I need a new laptop I re-check whether I get a ThinkPad without Windows, then I look around for other offerings that do not bundle useless software; so far the ThinkPads have just been better.

First thing I do is wiping the Windows and "factory" partitions and install Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, that was a horrible experience. Sure, my connection is unforgivably slow, but a long player download (in my case, about four minutes) followed by a long per-page content download (with no apparent prefetch) means that I didn't get very far before bailing. Oh, and none of the usual keyboard navigation (arrows) work. There are a lot of ways to present something like this that _work_ ; this doesn't, particularly.

<comment><USER8> On the other end of the spectrum, I thought the presentation was impressive. I have a typical broadband connection, and I thought it worked just fine. The loading time seemed instantaneous.

I actually appreciate that modern websites are increasingly being designed for higher standards of internet bandwidth/connectivity. It's not that I think bandwidth isn't precious, but when websites can deliver beautiful content at the cost of an extra 10th of a second of loading time on a modern connection, I think it's worth it.

A four minute download time on your part implies you have some kind of dial-up connection, is there a reason why you haven't upgraded to a faster service?

<comment><USER7> Actually, that's what was passing for 3G at the time (it's not always rock- solid, and one doesn't have private towers). It doesn't take a lot of stuttering to make a site like that fail. Beauty and responsiveness are not mutually exclusive, and none of the content I saw warranted a player -- garden-variety HTML and CSS would have done as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thinkpads are the only other computers I'll willingly use besides a Mac. I think they're the only other computer that actually feels like it's purposefully designed instead of just being a forgettable, reactionary me-too from terrible OEMs that offer zero real innovation.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have two ThinkPads: X201 Tablet running Windows 8, and a T530 running Ubuntu. The craftsmanship of the keyboard and ThinkPoint nub is unmatched. As a hacker, I cannot find any sufficient replacement.

<comment><USER11> For many years, ThinkPads had the best quality keyboards on any laptop. At least that was true of the IBM models I've had. I can't speak to the quality of the Lenovo-era models.

<comment><USER12> The non chiclet ones are still great. Perhaps not as good as the IBM ThinkPads but I think they're still better than anything the competition offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Last year I bought a Thinkpad E420s based on the praise I had read from multiple review sites and more importantly, the laptop is listed as Ubuntu certified. The first thing I did when I got it was install Ubuntu, of course. I'm not sure what "certified" means to Canonical but I assumed that every component would work flawlessly, such as the microphone, no sound output artifacts, smooth webcam, power & thermal management (although I understand Linux sucks in this regard), etc.

A few months ago, I bought a Macbook Air and as expected, there was a world of difference in seamless integration between OS and hardware.

If a vendor such as Lenovo built a Linux-based Thinkpad with something approaching the seamless integration and quality of OSX and Macbook hardware, I would gladly pay a premium over an Apple notebook.

<comment><USER14> The e420 is of the 'Edge' series. What you want to get is a T, X, or W series thinkpad. The E series is just thinkpad in name, so its no wonder that you had a bad experience.

Ofcourse, you are not to blame since Lenovo still markets it as a ThinkPad..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm typing this on a T400 because my usual T61/T60 hybrid has a cracked GPU BGA and I don't have a torch or a heat gun.

Comparing and contrasting the two machines, it's shocking what a step backwards in design the T400 is.

I think everyone knows about the terrible screen already, and I'd cut Lenovo some slack but for the fact that when IBM needed better screens, they _founded IDTech_ as a joint venture with Chi Mei. Lenovo could at least push its suppliers around a bit; I think they have the volume for it.

The audio ports of the T400 are on the front, rather than the side. This isn't much of a problem at a desk, but using it as a _lap_ top, it means headphone plugs often interfere with the user's body or clothing. It's especially bad using the machine in a reclined position. I'd look for a pcmcia sound card or bluetooth headphones if I had to use this machine for long.

The machine is bulky for the screen size. There's nearly an inch of bezel around the left, top and bottom of the screen. The bottom seems a bit reasonable; the inverter for the backlight has to go somewhere, and placing the screen too low puts the user's hands in front of the screen in some working positions. I see no excuse for the rest of it; the 14" 4:3 T61 had the same keyboard and much less wasted space.

The USB ports are vertical. I currently have a USB 3G stick inserted, and I can't set the machine on a flat surface without risking damage because it protrudes below the base of the laptop. It's not an unusually large 3G stick; even some flash drives have this problem.

I haven't spent any time with the newest Thinkpads, but models from a couple generations ago are shockingly worse than their immediate predecessors. Incidentally, it seems to have happened about the time they dropped the IBM branding, though Lenovo owned the Thinkpad division for several generations prior to that.

</comment><comment><USER16> The font on that page is making my head hurt. I can't even read it.

<comment><USER17> Given the content is not dynamic, they could have posted a webpage or a pdf and made it easier on everyone. There is some irony here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know David Hill. He is a great designer and knows his clients intimately. His clients are the heads of IT for large organizations that want reliable solid unbreakable working machines. And that is exactly what Lenovo builds. They aren't sexy. They aren't meant to be sexy. Functionality comes first. Form gets a say if it's lucky. This is also how large organizations function and what they are most comfortable with. For this reason it's no surprise that Lenovo will likely become the largest PC manufacturer by volume this year.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thinkpads /were/ great. They took a serious quality dive several years ago, and I've had a number of bad problems with customer service (e.g., orders "stuck" for months, miscommunicaton of warranty issues), and now I won't recommend them.

My guess is that when things go great, you'll be fine, but the moment you need something out of the ordinary then Lenovo will be just as bad as Dell.

<comment><USER20> How many thinkpads have you purchased recently? Multiple orders stuck for months? Granted I have only had 3 thinkpads in 8 years but I have never had any problems.

<comment><USER21> Just got my T430s 6 weeks after ordering. Lenovo charged and uncharged my debit card and revised their shipping estimate 5+ times. 5 days before receiving the machine, I received an email telling me that federal regulations did not permit them to continue to keep the order 'pending' and that if I did not respond and waive my rights under these regulations, they would cancel my order for me. I did not respond.

They have serious fulfillment issues.

<comment><USER19> T61: Died one week out of warranty. Lenovo later did a recall and out-of- warranty repair of a design flaw, but forgot to tell us before the recall window closed.

T420: Weeks on order, canceled, resurrected, re-canceled, repeat. Took about three months for delivery.

T420: Overheated and died. Fixed under warranty.

X100e: Runs very, very hot. Expecting this to die soon.

Lesson: Get the warranty or you'll be sorry.

Another lesson: Given the cost of the warranty, there are better machines out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know what the paulultra font is? pdffonts lists the following fonts in use:

        HTFDidot-B11Bold
        HTFDidot-M16Medium
        PaulultraPlain

PDF: [http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=6...](http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=69081166&selectedPages=all)

</comment><comment><USER22> i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly- offset up/down/left/right keys - at least 3 times a day i will hit page-left or page-right by accident, causing tab switching. <http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/e82f8ee408.jpg>

a huge win in all situations is having the cooling vents on the sides rather than bottom and keyboard drain/spill tray.

<comment><USER23> What I find great is that, at least for the business models, they offer service manuals that describe everything you have to do to change any part (from RAM to CPU).

<comment><USER22> I used to do routers/networking for a shop that was an Apple certified service center. The amount of teeny screws the techs had standing up on the magnetic bases was simply dumbfounding. With just the cases off, there was already a forest of these things similar to this: [http://img.alibaba.com/img/pb/469/933/263/1282659625153_hz-c...](http://img.alibaba.com/img/pb/469/933/263/1282659625153_hz- cnmyalibaba-web2_3860.jpg)

A couple of times someone knocked over one of those things and it was a disaster of crawling around on the floor for 60 minutes.

I can probably service my whole ThinkPad notebook with < 30 screws and 30% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very interesting, but the Flash-based player of this is not very readable. Is it available as a PDF?

<comment><USER25> This URL was hiding in the source: [http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=6...](http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=69081166&selectedPages=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't believe I'm reading an article touting the design smarts of the Thinkpad designers... honestly I've always thought that the standard black Thinkpads were unspeakably ugly. And I'm not even a design snob. Usable yes, but aesthetic? No way.

<comment><USER27> You're confusing design with visual appeal. Steve Jobs loved to rant about design and longetivity, but Apple laptops only seem to excel on visual appeal (and this is a recent phenomenon - just look at the first PowerBook G4s). Design has to be functional, and this is where Apple always makes sacrifices.

Bringing chiclet-style keyboards back into vogue (to the point where even Lenovo now puts them on Thinkpads) shows a complete disregard for the functionality of the laptop as a computer. Try comparing the new apple-style chiclet keys, to "skateboard-ramp" shaped keys (an "innovation" introduced by IBM to save costs), to the spherical shaped keys (<http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?page_id=1458#shapes>) of high-end keyboards from the 1980s and you will see how far computer keyboards have actually degenerated. This isn't just my opinion - Kathleen Potosnak's review of literature (appears as chapter 21 in Helander's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction) shows that shaped keys are better for typing.

There's a lot to be said about 3-button mice as well. One thing I do like about Macs is the touchpad on the newest ones (it took Apple a long time to make them really useful, though). Again, this is a sacrifice in terms of functionality. You can do things like <https://github.com/vsedach/mouse-copy> with the Thinkpad touchpoint and even the trackpad, but it's not convenient with most other trackpads (especially ones like the Mac's that don't have separate keys).

In terms of longetivity and visual design, I'm typing this on a 2004 Thinkpad T43. Nothing on this machine is broken, and despite 8 years of almost continuous use, even the keyboard labels only have a few nicks. This laptop looks as new or as old as the early 90s 386 Thinkpad we have at the hackerspace or the X230 my friend bought a few months ago. It wasn't until the PowerBook that Apple hit on a design with any sort of longetivity. Besides Apple and IBM/Lenovo, there's no one making laptops with a lasting design across many product generations.

<comment><USER28> I've always thought the ThinkPad's keyboard is one of its worst attributes. The keyboard's layout is very cramped. The keys feel flimsy and loose. Their edges are sharp and exposed when you type.

<comment><USER29> For the life of me I cannot find a single sharp edge on this keyboard, as I type on it right now.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps "sharp" is not the right description. <:) I meant that when you press a key down, it is possible to feel the edges of the neighboring keys. Your finger can catch on a key's lip (if you try) and flex it up. To me, it (literally) feels cheap and flimsy. I've only had two (Lenovo) ThinkPads, so I don't know if different models or IBM's models had better build quality.

<comment><USER27> That sounds strange. They keys on most Thinkpads can't depress far enough that you'd catch the edge of the key in the upper neighboring row. I just tried, and I can catch the edge of the key in the next row below, although I'd have to have my fingers pulling down on the keys to do that. That's part of what the key shape does - it's supposed to guide your finger to the center of the key and keep it from sliding off.

As far as the actual mechanism of the keyboards, almost all laptops (including Macbooks and Thinkpads) have used the same scissor-switch mechanisms for about the last decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Someone has looked at their Paul Rand history when designing this booklet.

</comment><comment><USER31> Funny how they talk about how classic the machine is after completely botching up the keyboard. They even mentioned the keyboard in the PDF!

<comment><USER32> I for one like the new keyboard and think it's great. (I used both old and new keyboard on two Thinkpads simultaneously for 2 months)</comment></comment>


How to learn higher math: An illustrated guide - <AUTHOR> https://mathvault.ca/10-commandments/ <comment><USER2> Aside from the cutesy pseudo-Biblical language and the cutesy illustrations, has anyone gotten value from reading this series of motivational posters? It looks like content from eHow.

      > When proactivity and thinking are absent, our
      > mathematical growth is capped by what the environment
      > has to offer, but when they are present, the growth
      > can be unstoppable.

Slap some positive-sounding generalities with some stock art and you've got yourself a content!</comment>


Online comments need moderation, not "real names" - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/04/13/newspaper_online_comments_moderation_open2010

<comment><USER2> Make downvoting also cost the downvoter one point.

<comment><USER3> might be good for hn, I guess? I think the problem with voting on HN (and in general) is that people downvote things they disagree with rather than just spam and trolls, and they use upvoting to mean "I agree" rather than to mean "well written" or "you are contributing to the conversation".

of course, this gets into a deeper discussion... many people /want/ to only talk with people who agree with them. For most people, the 'groupthink' that results from voting moderation systems /improves their experience/

The original article is suggesting paid moderators. Personally, I think PG coming on here and setting social expectations (he dressed me down, once.) probably has more to do with hn being a tolerable place than anything else. Paid or not, having a 'community owner' who can designate things as unacceptable, either by having a large amount of social capital (as pg does) or by having access to the banhammer as a paid moderator would, I think, is more important than anything else when it comes to maintaining an online community.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should you intern for a startup before launching your own? - <AUTHOR> I know there are multiple paths and no right way, but I want your 2 cents.<p>As a recent college grad, would you not work at a startup in your space/industry for a year or two before launching your own venture? Why? <comment><USER2> It depends heavily on the culture at the startup. As an employee at a startup, it is very rare to really be exposed to what it means to _run_ a startup. Most of the time you'll just be a code monkey, spending 60 hours in front of a computer and watching the CEO come and go without really knowing much about what they do.

Some companies try to be very transparent, keep everybody up-to-date when it comes to deals, negotiations, stuff like that. In such an environment yes you can gather some good knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you now _exactly_ what you want to do, go for it, launch your startup. Startups are not about technicalities so much as about putting up an MVP asap, with as low budget as possible and test it against the potential market.

If you don't have a very clear idea, then work someplace else. Experience will enhance your success odds when you decide to pursue your own startup.</comment>


Google releases list of top 2011 searches - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsmart.com.au/technology/google-releases-list-of-top-searches-smes-urged-to-stay-on-top-of-current-events/201112074790.html

<comment><USER2> "Top Overall Searches: 1\. Facebook 2\. YouTube 3\. Google"

In other words, many people still don't know the difference between the address bar and search.</comment>


Nations Buying as Hackers Sell Computer Flaws - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/europe/nations-buying-as-hackers-sell-computer-flaws.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> Responsible disclosure is one of the worst things to happen to the information security industry, and the sale of exploits is similarly terrible. Modern-day white hats have effectively turned into 'green hats' whose goals are no longer compatible with the previously-held ethical hacking belief system.

Personally I feel that the sale of exploits should be outlawed, or at least specifically to customers have no intentions of fixing the exploit (buying a hackers silence), or to governments that are intent on conducting clandestine/offensive operations.

I also agree with the EFF's stance on exploit sales, and that is that they should be front-and-center in any and all national cyber-security debates:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/03/zero-day-exploit- sales...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/03/zero-day-exploit-sales-should- be-key-point-cybersecurity-debate)

Also on Schneier.com: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/06/the_vulnerabil...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/06/the_vulnerabili.html)

No I'm not arguing for zero disclosure or that security researchers shouldn't be compensated for their hard work, I just think that the people and organizations that sell these exploits are effectively complicit in the destruction resulting from these exploits.

The world of information security is slowly but surely moving towards a Cold War scenario where nation-states are fostering sustained and escalating tensions, especially where they maintain a stockpile of exploits to be deployed in war-time scenarios.

<comment><USER3> I don't think exploit sales could ever be made illegal in the US. Courts have already ruled that code is speech [1], and the Constitution puts restrictions on how the government can limit speech. First 0-day exploits are illegal, then The New York Times.

Exploit sales are basically a byproduct of living in a free society. If you want them to go away, find the exploits yourself and post them to full- disclosure. Or pay someone to.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States)

<comment><USER4> Publishing exploits should certainly be protected as free speech, but the sale of exploits to a party with ill intent (governments included, even ours) is moving into the realm of arms dealing because that exploit is going to be weaponized. Intent matters.

If there is a transaction with weaponization as the intent => arms dealing

If it is published to edify => free speech

<comment><USER5> By that logic, having a perl RSA implementation in your signature is arms dealing because the intent is for that speech to spread to others to weaponize it into encryption software. Reality already won that battle, let's not fight it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised Endgame Systems isn't mentioned. As far as I can discern, they're one of the largest purveyors of zero-day exploits to the IC.

They sell a target-mapping tool known as Bonesaw, and for a couple million a year you can upgrade it with zero-day exploit packs for every region on the globe. It's system compromise made point-and-click.

EDIT: Should have read the second page. I'll leave it up as a testament to my haphazard reading ability.

<comment><USER7> It was interesting to see that some of our own silicon valley folks are on Endgame's board. Notably, David Cowan from Bessemer and Ted Schlein from Kleiner Perkins.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. I'm DC based, so it's more "your" than "our."

But you'd be equally surprised to see the flow of money that moves in the opposite direction. In-Q-Tel, the non-profit venture capital firm of the CIA, has invested in many Valley companies including Facebook and Palantir.

Now, I've heard that In-Q-Tel funding does not imply any obligation toward government interests in the future. However, from an organization who's stated mission is "specifically to help companies add capabilities needed by our customers in the Intelligence Community," such relationships pose interesting questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite frankly I also blame the criminalization of responsible bug reporting.

For example, Barret Brown ( [http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/11/jailed_journalist_barr...](http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/11/jailed_journalist_barrett_brown_faces_105) ) is facing jail time.

Others have tried to report security issues and been threaten or charged with hacking. ( I will let you google for examples - there are quite a bit)

At DefCon there have been cases where presenters were threatened with charges for reporting security issues.

Selling the vuln "solves" the problem for the responsible hacker.

I know if I found a bug - I would be unlikely to report it - too dangerous.

<comment><USER9> It's sad but accurate. The safest route for the reporter is to sell it to people who want to attack their enemies, the vendor wont bully them, administrators wont attack them and you're shielded from criticism.

It's unfortunately common for administrators to believe security is the state of perpetual ignorance of vulnerabilities that affect them, if Windows Update says "No updates available" then you're secure. If you tear them from that blissful ignorance, then they get angry and shoot the messenger.

Security researchers do not introduce insecurity, they expose it. This is apparently a very hard concept to grasp for a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Exploits are not weapons, they are research. They are the discovery of the correct sequence of bytes that someone else's program has been written to accept as input and perform actions that the author (probably) did not intend. Exploits are not any _act_ of doing this, they are the knowledge of _how_ to do it.

There is no physical analogy. A bomb doesn't care what its target is, it's an indiscriminate destructive force. You cannot do something similar with an exploit. The exploit only has context within the rules set forth by the programmer of the target software.

Just because I know which inputs you accept that cause unintended behavior, that you put there and I had nothing to do with, does not mean I have "created" something, positive or negative. Fundamentally, exploits are not created, they are discovered.

This discovery process is expensive, and it's easy for you to say that it is ethical for me to share what I've found for free. I think that's arrogant and disrespectful, and I also think that criminalizing my knowledge is far more dystopian than what you think my knowledge might be used for if shared with someone else.

I don't like what some governments are doing with them or that my tax money is feeding the industrial complex, but such a fundamental attack on freedom cannot be tolerated.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apparently Regulation of exploits has made it into the 2014 NDAA: [http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/07/thanks-eff-for- outlawing-c...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/07/thanks-eff-for-outlawing- code.html#.UeQmUcUjsUE)</comment>


If W. Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, how high will sea levels rise? - <AUTHOR> http://features.csmonitor.com/discoveries/2009/05/15/if-w-antarctic-ice-sheet-melts-how-high-will-sea-levels-rise/

<comment><USER2> Interesting point at the end: the climate models in current use seem to be wrong (based on the fact that observations are contradicting their predictions). Just like the global warming deniers are claiming.

Unfortunately for the global warming deniers (and the rest of us): effects seem to be _worse_ (i.e. faster ice melt, with higher sea levels ahead) than current models predict.</comment>


Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers#cite_note-1 <comment><AUTHOR> I saw the FSI learning expectations referenced in an infographic. I couldn't find a live .gov page showing them, so this search result seemed to be the best option.</comment>


23 Tweetable Startup Insights From Seth Godin - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/13978/23-Tweetable-Startup-Insights-From-Seth-Godin.aspx <comment><USER2> Very very good list of ground rules and food for thought. Many of these I felt deep in the marrow of my own experience.And of course "Every activity worth doing has a learning curve" is true from day one. Thanks.</comment>


TED: Joachim de Posada says, Don't eat the marshmallow yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that the presenter responded to many questions and comments on the site.</comment>


German Data Privacy Commissioner Says Article 13 Inevitably Leads to Filters - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/german-data-privacy-commissioner-says-article-13-inevitably-leads-filters-which <comment><USER2> I'm currently creating an online platform with user generated content.

I'm based in Belgium, but if this bill passes, it leaves me no choice but to take my company abroad. Funny how the EU tries to compete with US startups and multinationals, with various incentives, and then tries to get this crap enforced on all of these same companies within the EU.

Bunch of idiots.

Although I live within the EU, I hope various companies will block access to their services.

<comment><USER3> The EU doesn't really need to compete since they can get as much revenue as they want with regulatory fines. They don't care if you go abroad since if you get big they will find a way to get their money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So we will have automated censoring. What a world we have to live in. Do the MEPs really do not understand what they are building?

<comment><USER5> Why, they do perfectly - their careers and their retirement plans.

<comment><USER6> Not if we can get everybody to vote them out. We need more public attention for this. There are plenty of people who will be hurt by this who blindly vote for the parties that support this.

<comment><USER7> It's not going to happen. The number of voters in EP elections is low and the main parties at home will devote their resources on these elections.

<comment><USER6> If the number of voters is low, it's actually easier to mobilise voters to vote against the people who support Article 13.

<comment><USER8> also the most effective way is to write a letter or call them in person (engaging them on facebook etc has little value in comparison)

<comment><USER9> Yes

For those in Germany they can use this service to help them assemble a letter to be send by post [https://botbrief.eu/](https://botbrief.eu/)

This site also helps you call them directly [https://pledge2019.eu](https://pledge2019.eu) ( _please be polite_ \- the best way we can win them is not by acting like we don't know what we're talking about)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Horrendous law with an incredibly severe consequences to us all. And I'm saying this as the one benefiting most as my company is the ultimate upload filter (we are orders of magnitude larger than Content ID [0]).

We are not going to stand by idly and let it to wipe out all competition because they can't afford to be compliant with this idiotic law. As such, we are making our services free to all rights holders and platforms [1]. This is the best way we, as a company, can fight the law and make sure that it will have the least negative impact as possible.

[0] [https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1102655191654981632](https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1102655191654981632)

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsy...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsyYJbEv6hGI64-ptGgQB0/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER11> Well, thanks. But using your service doesn't feel like "fighting the law". It's just complying with the law by being dependent on one generous external company.

I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response to these kind of laws.

<comment><USER10> > I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like > youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response > to these kind of laws.

You know the complete opposite will happen. Those are literally the only ones that can comply "easily" with the law. What about the rest?

> Well, thanks. But it doesn't feel like "fighting the law". It's just > complying with the law by being dependent on one generous external company.

I'm on this with you. I'm European living in US. I don't want this law any more you do. I'm still hoping the law is going to be dropped. But even then, the law will eventually come back in some form or shape. So we are trying to find a sustainable way for others to comply with it and be able to compete with the giants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why aren't American Internet giants react like it was done with SOPA?

<comment><USER13> Because they benefit.

<comment><USER12> How? E.g.: Google wouldn't be able to display website content descriptions for free anymore (OK, they are allowed to display a few words of the description).

I understand that content creators will benefit most (e.g. news sites).

<comment><USER14> Who will be able to run infrastructure in terms of money and people that will fulfill the requirements of Article 13? Only the big players.

So, let Article 13 take place and lots of competition will vanish.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I am with you. However, I also don't see how Google can continue with its business model in Europe when Article 13 goes into effect.

<comment><USER14> Ah, they will find their way. Make some concessions, cry about the laws, show some figures and bribe some politicians. In the end there will be exceptions which are strangely well-tailored for those big players...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What Cory misses is that the proposed legislation is technically impossible to implement. Even giants like Facebook and Google cannot do content violation filtering on every media, like text submitted by text area boxes ("citations" over de copying the minimis limit), sound and video. Maintaining hashes of protected content is also technically impossible. Who's gone decide which data will get processed, and from where?

Only the previous legislation is technically implementable, the current proposal will make user input on all European websites illegal, like Hacker news, reddit, WordPress blogs with comments, wikis like wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook,... you name it. Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it, leading to risk of becoming a random target, or disable all userinput at all. which will be the death of internet 2.0 in europe.

even a theoretical central filtering service will not be able to solve this problem, because registering and filtering all worldwide protected content is not feasible. there will be 5% of some big studios and press agencies content hashed, but not much else. adding legislation on this idea is just destructive. the previous legislation is the only practical and useful way.

<comment><USER16> > Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it, > leading to risk of becoming a random target

Not random target, it's by design, first make a law that almost all website owners break, then you are free to punish whoever you want.

The future looks bleak for Europe. If this continues, in a few years you woldn't be able to criticize politicians online or uncover corruption they're involved in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm waiting for the inevitable EU firewall that will ultimately be required to aggressively control all Internet usage for anyone in the EU.

It can end no other way than that. Particularly as these draconian regulations continue to get worse. How else will they enforce these policies against foreign entities that can trivially ignore them while still serving EU users? They have to put a stop to that, as it's an easy circumvention.

I can build a service in the US. Allow EU citizens to sign up. Entirely disregard most, if not all, EU laws. Monetize the huge US market first as a cash springboard. Acquire scale. Then turn on EU monetization when it's convenient to deal with the regulatory challenges there. There might be considerable retroactive fines involved for ignoring EU law over time while still taking on EU users (when you attempt to monetize the EU users, requiring business on the ground in the EU, that's when they'd land punches financially; the retroactive approach would be the solution the politicians would come up with as a desperate stop-gap against this approach); so what, I'm now a monopoly platform, I already won, hit me with your speeding ticket. If you make the speeding ticket too large, I'll demonetize the EU users, remove all business from the EU, ignore any fines, retain the EU users anyway to prevent competition, and keep going (come back later and see if I can lobby/bribe the EU politicians in some kind of fine settlement).

The sole means to stop that scenario - which is almost obnoxiously beneficial to furthering US dominance in platforms - is to lock down all Internet usage in the EU and dictate by permission what sites may be used. The tighter they get with Article 13 style regulations, the more likely they have to implement an EU firewall.

<comment><USER18> Which draconian regulations continue to get worse? I'm only aware of article 13, which hasn't passed yet.

<comment><USER7> GDPR. It has some good parts, but a lot of bad in it as well.

<comment><USER18> You're going to be searching for a long time to find a piece of legislation that only has good parts in it. The GDPR is overwhelmingly positive, and a massive step towards ensuring privacy online.

In my opinion, it has been pretty overwhelmingly a net positive, whereas article 13 is a clusterfuck that made me come up with a Cloudflare rule to block EU visitors from accessing sites (and yes, that includes myself):

[https://twitter.com/Stavros/status/1100799044862033922](https://twitter.com/Stavros/status/1100799044862033922)

If anyone from Cloudflare is reading this, can we get a "redirect" firewall rule so I can point the visitors to something like "you can't access that site because the politicians you voted for are morons"?

<comment><USER7> I don't need a legislation to only have good parts in it, but I do want it to do more good than bad. GDPR does not do that. The harm it causes for internet businesses in the EU in the long term is going to be too much. It's already making EU companies less competitive[1] and it'll become worse as time goes on.

[1] [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912)

<comment><USER18> Yes, all regulation makes companies less competitive than unregulated companies. That's why you regulate everyone.

Whats the harm of the GDPR?

<comment><USER7> Less competitive companies means that we won't have these types companies in the EU. We are already doing very poorly when it comes to anything related to computer technology and this will make it even worse.

<comment><USER18> The GDPR is pretty sane and not very hard to comply with, unless you're being scummy. I'd rather not have scummy companies, even if that means we won't be competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This comes as a surprise to no one but Axel Voss.

<comment><USER9> Nah there are a lot of artists that think it's just fine to censor the entire internet so that they can make more money

James Blunt is one of them [https://twitter.com/CDU_CSU_EP/status/1098531302490468352](https://twitter.com/CDU_CSU_EP/status/1098531302490468352) and "helping" the CDU campaign

<comment><USER11> According to the following tweets, this video is not in regard to article 13. They just reused some old video there and put it falsely into this new context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gjsman-1000 Only a few days from most signed petition in human history? If true, very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER20> A little off-topic and a real mental leap, but wayback (hundreds of years), the katholic church was the one with a information-monopoly (dome-building, history and mint studies for example) crawled with the years by the principle of syncretism. All the katholic church had to do, was to use their 'Leitungsschutz' (german word) to make their bucks... history... info-bits -sure... ^^

</comment><comment><USER21> If advisory of German specialists from the either side will make the internet in the EU anything like the internet in Germany, in any regard, people will be really pissed. Kindly bugger off and let decide those from the places were the internet works.

<comment><USER22> That comment makes no sense in this context.

<comment><USER23> It does in a way. Article 13 is largely a product of French and German politicians. Just because the German data commissioner says something like this doesn't mean there aren't plenty of German politicians eager to implement Article 13.</comment></comment></comment>