Crowds vs. Herds - <AUTHOR>

I read Dharmesh Shah's "Lamenting the Loss of Reddit" at onstartups.com, which furter fueled a notion that's been brewing for some time now.
When does the Wisdom of Crowds become Herd Mentality? And why? The easy answer is that with wider adoption it's inevitable. Early adopters are, I would propose, more interesting people, generally, than later waves of mass market users.
If you're a social media startup is it an unconscious goal to make your community boring? Are Paris Hilton threads a sign of success?
This is only a thought stub, put out quickly. I'm interested to know what others think about this. <comment><USER2> If you look at Surowiecki's requirement for a wise crowd (versus a herd), you'll see that he asserts the requirement of a few things (pulled straight from <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_crowds>):

 _Diversity of opinion_ : Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.

 _Independence_ : People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.

 _Decentralization_ : People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.

 _Aggregation_ : Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

I would think that for most sites the first three would be the greatest challenges. The worst part is probably that what's most popular is getting greater exposure, thus making it more popular . . .

<comment><USER3> _Independence: People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them._

Haven't you ever noticed on Reddit: foo makes a comment, and then foo's comment karma drops to 0. All of a sudden, it goes way down to -3. Then bar makes a positive reply and gets a large karma score, and all of a sudden foo's comment shoots back up to 10 karma or more.

Well, people really are influenced by the opinions of others. If someone's downvoting someone, the majority of people are going to agree that downvoting that someone is a good idea. If a group of people are beating up someone, more people join in and beat up that someone.

Did you hear about the Juneteenth mob that pulled someone out of their car and beat them? Someone thought that was a good idea, and all of a sudden _hundreds_ of people thought that was a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A community is just a set of people and customs. Both aspects can evolve significantly in a short amount of time unless control is asserted in one way or another to prevent this possibility.

I don't think it is a sign of success or failure that communities have evolved, but just simply that they have evolved. I also don't think that every community wants to be boring eventually. In fact, many communities exert intense control so that this doesn't happen (barriers to entry for new members, moderation, etc.). It all depends on how it is set up, monitored, and controlled.

Finally, I also don't think that wide adoption necessitates being boring. Plenty of communities are heavily moderated/edited/whatever and still have a wide following. Extreme examples are newspapers, movies, and tv shows. Communities crop up around them, but most people have little control over what is published. This is interestingly slowly changing though with TV shows and newspapers. Comments on stories and online fan boards are starting to influence publishing, but it is still filtered in such a way that an attempt is made to keep it distinctly not boring.

<comment><AUTHOR> i think boring may have been the wrong word. i'm carving at the fact that communities seem to outgrow early adopters. which makes them more mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think to get wisdom out of really large crowds you need something like pagerank.

<comment><USER2> Would you please elaborate?

<comment><USER5> Among people there are directed and mostly acyclic graphs of deference to greater knowledge of various topics. E.g. my girlfriend would ask me about math questions, and I'd ask friends who'd been math majors, who in turn might ask specialists in some subfield. Weight people's votes on a topic by their position in the graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, one has to build the technology to maintain clusters of groups, not one big ball of people talking to each other at the same time. Sorry, I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but social groups are a hot topic, so: Read <http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html> :) it's a good read, you'll enjoy it. It perfectly captures all the issues between early adopters vs later adopters vs huge crowds.</comment>


CSS3 Animations with special effects - <AUTHOR> http://www.minimamente.com/magic-css3-animations/ Repository: https://github.com/miniMAC/magic <comment><USER2> What freaked me out about this site is that I have the OSX Mavericks wave as my background and the gradient transition on the site is the exact same color scheme[1].

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/QCyUUVd.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QCyUUVd.jpg)

<comment><USER3> What's displayed on the left side of your desktop?

<comment><USER4> Core temperature in Celcius. Maximum and current.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've written CSS for years and only recently started implementing some animations in my designs. I was worried at first when browsers started implementing it, fearing useless and insipid animations would sprawl around the web (like some jQuery ones). But like anything, if used sparingly, animations can improve an interface. Apart from adding life and being "cool" (probably the reason why designers implement them in the first place), animations add interactivity and affordance. Plus, they're less prone to bugs because the code is easier to read and write than jQuery alternatives, and the browsers' rendering engine usually prevents unwanted fluttering and infinite loops from happening.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome stuff, the fluidness of those animations versus something made with jQuery is astonishing. I wonder what kind of compatibility would this have with older browsers?

<comment><USER6> IE >= 10

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More like this: Animate.css [http://daneden.me/animate/](http://daneden.me/animate/)

<comment><USER8> Animate.css is great. But magic.css is very simple and small that means editable.

<comment><USER9> Animate.CSS has more animations than magic.css and in my opinion is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Repository: [https://github.com/miniMAC/magic](https://github.com/miniMAC/magic)

</comment><comment><USER10> Pretty fun—the perspective down animation inspired me to make css3 animated jacobs ladder: [http://mrcoles.com/demo/jacobs- css3-ladder/](http://mrcoles.com/demo/jacobs-css3-ladder/)

<comment><USER10> and the source code: [https://github.com/mrcoles/jacobs- css3-ladder](https://github.com/mrcoles/jacobs-css3-ladder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The key to many of these effects is to animate both the transform and the position of the transform-origin simultaneously. Done correctly, it can give the animation a sinuous behavior that makes it much more interesting to look at.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is cool. Anyone know what type of license this has? I can't find it on github or the site.

</comment><comment><USER13> And yet the CSS animation performance bug persists in iOS7.

</comment><comment><USER14> While technically interesting, I find those animations highly annoying as they are.

</comment><comment><USER15> iOS7-inspired background?</comment>


Wikipedia list of algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms <comment><USER2> Professor Arms at Cornell once said during lecture that he was most impressed by the quality of the math articles on Wikipedia, and I think the same holds true for the computer science articles (and, really, when you get to the point of talking mostly about algorithms without code, that's what it really is anyway).

<comment><USER3> I find the maths articles on Wikipedia to be absolute and utter rubbish. This is because I can only understand them if I already understand the underlying material. But of course I am not going to be reading an article about something I already know, I'm going to want to read about something I (as yet) don't know.

The maths articles on Wikiepedia are -- in my experience -- useless at teaching people maths stuff.

<comment><USER4> Part of the problem with math in general is that it requires work to gain understanding. Describing something does not give you the intuition needed to work with the concepts.

Reading any article on math and expecting to understand the ideas is like reading a description of a language syntax and expecting to gain a feel for it. That simply doesn't work. Python, Lisp, OCaml, Haskell, they all require that you write something serious before you start to grok the language fully. The syntax is trivial, and the gains from understanding only that, likewise.

 _All_ articles on math need to be _studied_ , not read. You need to work exercise, solve problems, _use_ the material.

Otherwise all you have is a description, not understanding.

You can't read math like a novel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.nist.gov/dads/> \- Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures is also amazingly awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is fantastic... one central source for all that Wikipedia has to offer with relation to this subject... I always used to look up algorithms individually, without the knowledge of this central list. Thank you!

<comment><USER7> Here's another good resource, Skiena's algorithm repository:

<http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/>

Feel free to post it if you want. Probably good for a good chunk of karma if it hasn't gone up yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I also like the AT&T OEIS:

<http://www.research.att.com/>

<http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A114574> \-- a good one :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't believe wikipedia can still surprise me like this. This is the most important computer science resource I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome post and the organization of algorithm in different sections is simply perfect...

</comment><comment><USER11> So HN: what's your favorite?</comment>


How Snipers Succeed by Missing Their Targets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.theqco.com/post/712070119/how-snipers-succeed-by-failing

<comment><USER2> Minor quibble:

Snipers and long range target shooters establish a baseline zero and then adjust their sights off of that based on variables like the wind. As the author correctly notes they learn how to make those adjustments by missing.

They learn how to make their bodies perform both by missing and by practicing a _lot_ ; a large fraction of those "5,000 shots in training" will be something better than "misses" if they're going to be successful in the field or competition.

Lesson for this domain:

Learning how to do some things reliably on demand is also a part of being generally successful (it's at least one foundation) and for almost all that takes plenty of practice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like to use the concept of course correction, here, rather than "hits or misses"/"success or failure". When I use the course correction concept instead, it drops all of the emotion loaded up into the thoughts of failure or success and it becomes _refinement_ (which is lighter) than "I failed" or "I succeeded".</comment>


Post-FCC Privacy Rules, Should You VPN? - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/post-fcc-privacy-rules-should-you-vpn/ <comment><USER2> _As shocking as this sounds, virtually nothing has changed about the privacy of the average American's connection to the Internet as a result of this action by Congress, except perhaps a greater awareness that ISP customers don't really have many privacy protections by default._

<comment><USER3> Whether anything changed substantially is arguable.

But there's no doubt that ISP customers are sitting ducks. VPNs took off after Snowden leaked. And they're taking off again now. So sure, maybe nothing changed. But as you say, it's a wakeup call.

<comment><USER4> If you use mostly SSL services is not all that you are leaking to your ISP is the domain name/ip of the site you are visiting? You are leaking the same thing to Google if you use their DNS server, and they are free to do with that info whatever they like... or any other DNS provider for that matter.

<comment><USER5> An interesting example of this is the alleged Trump tower server communicating secretly with Russia was all based on DNS logs.

Where did these logs come from and how/why were they shared...?

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841288)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe this change is more about making sure that ISPs continue to have their own incentive to keep user browsing histories - which in turn can be used as an intelligence data source.

<comment><USER7> > which in turn can be used as an intelligence data source.

I find it ironic that so many people are distrustful of the government in some areas (intelligence, defense), yet at the same time wanting the government to take a bigger and more central role in their lives (social services, etc.). It's the same government across the board.

<comment><USER8> > It's the same government across the board.

This is an overly simplistic view of a complex bureaucratic entity, the US government.

There are restrictions about the ways in which governmental agencies may share information, and violations of such restrictions are considered serious and are sanctioned as such when they come to light.

This is entirely ignoring the fact that the goals of the various organizations, different departments, and innumerable individuals are often at cross-purposes.

In other words, the presence of governmental authority is not the same as the oppression and exploitation of citizens as a matter of course.

EDIT: clarify/reword second sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live with someone else who pretty much controls the wifi/router (billing account) I pay for it too. Anyway, how do I explain the need to do this? Are there notable adverse effects besides being targeted for certain products. It's hard to argue with this person, whenever I bring up stuff like "Hey man, don't be so quick to connect to open wifi" meh... rah rah rah... and I'm not really great at arguing I'll admit and I can't prove/explain why it's bad to use free public WiFi. I just think of apps that are already logged in, and if they're not using HTTPs. "Packet sniffing" but what is that... hahaha my internet bandwidth says one thing, sad single man, no need to study my data hahaha

edit: also last time I tried to setup/use VPN's they either cost money or I couldn't get it to work. With regard to using Tor it's super laggy which is understandable.

Ahh well I think for now I'll be a "stick my head in the sand" guy since this seems like a lot of trouble to get more than one person to agree/implement it, especially being in my situation. Still sucks though, what the hell, always about the money.

<comment><USER3> You don't need to setup VPN in the router. Decent providers have Windows and OSX apps that just work. Getting leak-free VPN connections in smartphones is harder, however.

<comment><USER9> Why only smart phones?

Yeah I guess I was thinking when I considered having to make it work for both of us. Although... I don't know pretty tired right now can't quite think.

I didn't mean to imply "in the router" I meant route traffic to VPN, I mean I guess I wouldn't have to tell the other person that we're now using a VPN assuming the internet speed isn't affected, we're using the 1000Mbps Google Fiber (haha ridiculous I know)

edit: throttle = better? Can't seem to reply to your post. Oh well, I don't want to replace Reddit with Hacker News haha, I used to be on Reddit but banned myself. I talk too much, especially more important to my clients when I go through what I'm thinking/doing word for word on Slack for example Jesus... self control is my problem, case in point.

<comment><USER3> I don't know Android or iOS, so I'm just repeating what I've read. I vaguely understand that, because you lack administrative privileges, you can't readily control how particular apps access the Internet. Maybe someone could clarify for us?

If you just run VPN clients in your devices, there will be no effect on the other person's devices. If anything, using VPNs will throttle your connections, so they'll have better speed. That's especially likely with a gigabit uplink.

<comment><USER9> Oh that's right I remember, Jesus I was off. Yeah I was trying a few, can't remember if I tried OpenVPN, AirVPN, and tunnelBear or something. Had to work on command line... yeah I couldn't get it to work if it was a free one (not free I wasn't trying to pay). Yeah I feel dumb now with the external configuration question.

Anyway thanks for your time, I suppose if I really needed/wanted to I can figure it out, I think I can read haha.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to get honest advice about VPNs. As Brian describes. That One Privacy Site has a good summary of what VPN providers say about themselves.[0] I tested a bunch of VPNs in Windows and OSX, and found several that I couldn't make leak.[1] There are relatively unbiased discussions on Wilders Security Forums.[2]

0) [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/)

1) [https://vpntesting.info/](https://vpntesting.info/)

2) [https://www.wilderssecurity.com/categories/privacy- related-t...](https://www.wilderssecurity.com/categories/privacy-related- topics.39/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks a lot for these links. Starting your count from 0? Come on now... haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As Brian notes, VPNs can leak DNS lookups and IPv6 traffic. There can also be leaks if the uplink gets interrupted. So one should use either the VPN's DNS server, or a reliable third-party DNS server. One should also have firewall rules that allow _only_ connections to the VPN server on the physical network adapter. All other traffic, including DNS lookups, should be restricted to the VPN tunnel.

<comment><USER10> There's also the side-channel leak that occurs when you connect to an authenticated service on your regular connection (e.g. Skype), and then again through your VPN. It identifies you as a user of the VPN and can provide patterns that hint at which VPN traffic is yours. Multiply this by the number of services (including ones you don't know you use, e.g. Windows background services).

WebRTC leaks your real IP as well, and cannot be disabled on Chromium based browsers. It's becoming an increasingly popular technology.

I'd like to see mainstream operating systems support isolation for connections.

<comment><USER11> There is an official (from Google) chrome extension to route WebRTC traffic through your VPN ip address: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-network- lim...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-network- limiter/npeicpdbkakmehahjeeohfdhnlpdklia)

<comment><USER10> I thought the consensus on such plugins was that they didn't work reliably. It's been a while since I looked into it, but back when I tested this plugin, my browser failed an online WebRTC leak test.

<comment><USER11> I just tried the following and they all had no IP or my VPN ip:

\- [https://www.perfect-privacy.com/webrtc-leaktest/](https://www.perfect- privacy.com/webrtc-leaktest/)

\- [https://browserleaks.com/webrtc](https://browserleaks.com/webrtc)

\- [http://whatismyipaddress.com/webrtc- test](http://whatismyipaddress.com/webrtc-test)

\- [https://zpn.im/webrtc](https://zpn.im/webrtc)

\- [https://www.vpnmentor.com/tools/ip-leak-test-vpns- tor/](https://www.vpnmentor.com/tools/ip-leak-test-vpns-tor/)

<comment><USER3> It's pretty easy to _block_ WebRTC, with plugins and/or firewall rules. But I'm guessing that getting WebRTC to work through the VPN tunnel is not so easy. I've never tried it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It'd be neat if there were an app for one-click deployment of OpenVPN using one's own AWS or Azure account. That would be much safer than picking from a list of shady VPN providers.

<comment><USER13> That seems like that could get rather expensive in terms of bandwidth. From some napkin math I did using [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on- demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/), even 100GB of data would cost $9. That doesn't even include the cost of reserving the instance itself, just the bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER14> Azure costs the same for network, apparently (up to 40TB), providing that you stay within US/UK/Canada. [0]

Google Cloud is supposedly cheaper in terms of network ($0.01/GB -> $1 for 100GB) if you're primarily visiting US sites [1]. Still potentially expensive either way, depending on your network usage.

You could use an always-free f1-micro GCE instance [2] and run OpenVPN on it 24/7, although configuration might take a bit of time (read: half an hour, tops? I'm assuming it's no harder than the equivalent software-based option on EC2).

I know on the other hand, Amazon's always-free tier doesn't include EC2 (it is included in their free tier, but that only lasts for 12 months). [3]

Disclaimer: Google pays me money to write code and stuff, so I'm probably biased. I've also never actually used GCE, but that's because I still have a bunch of AWS credits, among other reasons.

[0] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/pricing/details/bandwidth/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/pricing/details/bandwidth/) [1] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#general](https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#general) [2] [https://cloud.google.com/free/](https://cloud.google.com/free/) [3] [https://aws.amazon.com/free/](https://aws.amazon.com/free/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://wikileaks.org/bnd- inquiry/docs/Sek/MAT%20A%20Sek-13-...](https://wikileaks.org/bnd- inquiry/docs/Sek/MAT%20A%20Sek-13-3-q.pdf)

That pdf from the NSA in the BND documents on Wikileaks clearly shows that NSA decrypts VPN, both IPSEC and PPTP, in real time and in bulk.

The BND leaks came out what, over a year ago? 20,000 "hackers" attended the most recent Defcon.

How not one person notices this slide deck, including Assange himself, is pretty shocking in itself.

Hello, McFly, is anybody who's job earning 6 figures in Infosec paying attention?

Why is the Computing industry so asleep at the wheel? Yet the Beogrammers cranking out widgets for Startup Inc think they're the smartest guys in the room.

The arrogance from all the fake paper billions in this industry has made everyone lazy and dumb.

NSA LOVES it when the sysadmins are lazy and dumb. They're so much easier to hunt.

Of course that slide deck presents more technical questions than answers, but it proves VPN is no longer the Silver Bullet we once thought it was.

"Well that's what they're supposed to do, NSA is just doing their job, so that's not my Department" you say.

Yeah, well look at home careless NSA is with Cyberweapons and exploits. They lost the Keys to the Kingdom to the Shadowbrokers, and god only knows what else they lost that they never tell us about.

It is entirely reasonable to believe NSA lost their VPN exploit pack too.

Try to imagine the chaos that's possible in a scenario like that.

We might as well not have ANY security.

Which is funny, because yet again, RMS was right! His tales about the MIT Media Kab in the 70's where he rejected new mandatory security policy and instead all users of the system shared the sysadmin's password.

The honor system used to work. As a system of trust, high trust small tribes will always be better than any artificial security mechanisms.

We as an industy need to somehow get back to that. Trust in computing is only going to get worse, the hacks are going to become deeper as they copycat NSA's methods of industrial scale, and the consequences are truly unknowable.

Skynet and Mr. Robot could end up looking like naive optimism.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes.

[https://top10vpns.com](https://top10vpns.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> I had a question[1] regarding this. Any Canadians here?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13983728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13983728)

<comment><USER18> answered there, but copied here:

You should assume that every thing that happens in the US is happening in Canada. As a member of the Five Eyes, the G7, and G8, our policies are closely linked.

I believe that Canada's ISPs might have stricter data protection laws, but really you should have been using a VPN well before this latest policy change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those who want to use a VPN, but don't want to pay for it as a service because of all the arcane issues that can come with it, and of course have some hardware laying around, I recommend using StrongSwan ([https://www.strongswan.org/](https://www.strongswan.org/)) + Stunnel ([https://www.stunnel.org/index.html](https://www.stunnel.org/index.html)) instead of openVPN

Why strongswan? Because setting up a VPN properly, and securely (thats very important) is hard! and I feel, personally, that openVPN is _alot_ for people to take in. I know it was for me, and I'm not ill experienced.

Strongswan is also open source, and they have a lot of very good documentation including cryptographically verified 'plug n play' (mostly) setups:

[https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/UsableE...](https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/UsableExamples)

While I'm at it, they have a wonderful entry on their wiki with security recommendations:

[https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/Securit...](https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/SecurityRecommendations)

From just my experience, and dealing with the community, and from what I understand from others much more educated in these matters, their usable configurations are indeed very good.

Strongswan of course supports pre-shared key authentication and certificate authentication in lieu of username/password. They also can take advantage of CA-certs for encrypting your conversations over SSL/TLS (think: letsencrypt!)

It also has the latest versions available, you can install on routers that support openWRT, lede-project.org and I believe DD-WRT has this as an option? I couldn't say for sure.

Why do I recommend stunnel though if it can use a valid CA ssl cert on its own? Mostly because Stunnel can re-direct any traffic over SSL (I recommend you do this wherever you can, stunnel is insanely useful for just this basic encryption traffic, because you can make ANYTHING run over SSL with it) and its insanely simple to setup, where as setting it up with strongswan as one its modules is a little more complicated.

Also, stunnel will redirect your traffic based on ports. So you can have stunnel listen on 443 and route the traffic to whatever port you are running your VPN service on. This gets around potential blocks on say, corporate networks, or public wifi, or even just ISP snoopage.

I feel like paying for a VPN if you don't have to is a waste compared to having your own. OWN YOUR TRAFFIC! Its the only way to ensure any semblance of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Simpler solution is just to move to a saner country: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK (for now) etc. Places where ISPs don't operate as monopolies, and/or places where the government isn't completely for profit.

<comment><USER11> The UK has awful internet/privacy laws, much worse than the US even.

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

"The country was listed among the "Enemies of the Internet" in 2014 by Reporters Without Borders,[6] a category of countries with the highest level of internet censorship and surveillance that "mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users".[7] Other major economies listed in this category include China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia."

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, though I would say its hard to qualify as a bigger enemy of the internet than a nation that judges all traffic of all users is allowed to be captured and sold at its source.

<comment><USER21> [http://web.archive.org/web/20110422071744/http://www.hitwise...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110422071744/http://www.hitwise.com/us/about- us/how-we-do-it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your daily reminder that this ruling was that an overreach of power was made by the FCC, not that Republicans are hungry for the blood of orphans.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/03/30/why- cong...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/03/30/why-congresss- rejection-of-proposed-fcc-data-rules-will-not-affect-your-privacy-in-the- slightest/)

It's still completely worthwhile to have conversations about privacy and what the proper limits of power are for Congress and the FCC here, but we're so deep into 1984 that both sides of the political spectrum are screaming how WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR and your only choice is if you prefer to have always been at war with EASTASIA or OCEANIA.

<comment><USER22> Lest anyone say this is oversimplified, from Ars:

"Republicans argue that the Federal Trade Commission should regulate ISPs' privacy practices instead of the FCC. But the resolution passed today eliminates the FCC's privacy rules without any immediate action to return jurisdiction to the FTC, which is prohibited from regulating common carriers such as ISPs and phone companies."

Sure its doublespeak to repeal the FCC side of things and promise FTC protection when you know the FTC has no jurisdiction. It's also ridiculous to say that eliminating an overreach by the FCC (debatable) would be a moral wrong when stood on its own.</comment></comment>


Chromium Extensions Design Doc - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/chromium-extensions

<comment><USER2> Ha! beat me to it. I loved this line:

"Web developers should be able to easily create Chromium extensions."

Thinking about this after seeing a HN user looking for a FF exten dev. I've developed a simple extension I haven't released yet, and it was the toughest code I've ever written due to lack of proper documentation.</comment>


Crowdsourcing Comedy on Amazon Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/crowdsourcing-comedy-on-amazon-reviews/

<comment><USER2> I enjoyed this, but much more interesting was a link from one of the comments to this talk by Jared Spool, "user interface expert." _Revealing Design Treasures From The Amazon_

[http://www.slideshare.net/jmspool/revealing-design- treasures...](http://www.slideshare.net/jmspool/revealing-design-treasures- from-the-amazon?type=presentation)

Kind of a breezy discussion of what Amazon does to improve the user experience and its bottom line, and why "Do it like Amazon" may not work for you.

Slide number 86/91 was a jaw-dropper for me. It was part of his section on "never forget the business."

What the slide shows is that any retail business buys product at day zero and pays for it at day 45.

Best Buy turns their inventory over in 74 days. So on average a product is eventually bought by a customer at day 74, and Best Buy gets the money at day 76 (processing time).

All of the days between 45 and 76 are debt.

Amazon turns their inventory in 20 days. So on average they get customer money on day 22 for a product that Amazon bought on day zero. All the days between 22 (got the money) and 45 (must pay the supplier) are _float_.

Which is why, according to Spool, Amazon can sell most things cheaper than everyone else. They focus on getting shit out the door quickly.

I'm sure that's not the only thing. But the fact of the float must contribute quite a bit, and is probably very welcome.</comment>


Debunking the Laundry List Fallacy: Why Doing Less is More Impressive  - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2008/03/14/debunking-the-laundry-list-fallacy-why-doing-less-is-more-impressive/

<comment><USER3> Interesting idea, but I think this could be dangerous to extrapolate outside of the target audience (people seeking entrance into university).

For example, most recruitment agencies these days use keyword filters on CVs to see if you interest them. Laundry lists are the obvious response to this. the more words on your CV, the more likely you are to not get rejected by the dumb computer which doesn't have a 'sidechannel'.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the main example given in the article - <USER2> students not raising their hands in class. I was one of those smart students, and I always put up my hand when asked. Why? Because if the teacher asked someone that hadn't understood the material, we would go into a whole long explanation (repeated) of something I had already understood. Boring! Move along, get on to some new stuff please! Teachers of course would stop asking the best students, because teachers want to know (at least at high school) if everyone has understood.

And of course, in the real world, if students that know the answer don't raise their hands, it's because it's not considered cool. They are sending a signal to their peers, not to the teacher.

<comment><USER4> my explanation is that i was too lazy to put my hand up

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Countersignalling theory predicts that the best strategy for the best > candidates is to have a short resume.

I believe that it has mentioned on this forum that exceptional people don't a resume at all and rely entirely on "the sidechannel".

</comment><comment><USER6> On skipping the first few paragraphs, the article is very interesting.

It's asking: the more people know who you really are, the less you have to tell them straight (such as labeling yourself Dr. X or adding ", Ph.D." to your email signature.)

The article goes on to argue that if you are indeed great but you keep telling people that you are, the less likely they are to believe you -because so many mediocre people are shouting that they are great.

They shout, you don't shout, then you're distinguished. Orson Scott Card knew this and told us all about it.

Makes sense.</comment>


What is Clojure-in-Clojure? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.n01se.net/?p=41 <comment><USER2> summarizing the article,

" 'Clojure in Clojure' == writing the compiler and the core data structures of Clojure in Clojure (vs Java). This is a cool thing to aim for."

Once upon a time the front page of HN would have a lot of articles on Erlang voted up . One day PG even requested a few articles on Erlang (iirc) and the whole of the front page was Erlang-ey for a day.

These days it seems to be articles on Clojure that always get (the same?) 12 or so votes rapidly to make it to the front page. Clojure 1.2 released, Clojure 1.2 and beyond, clojure conference, Clojure-in-Clojure. Keep em coming ;-)

It _is_ on topic for HN.

Just wondering what exactly causes these pahases have Erlang vanished from HN and Clojure appears, soon to disappear no doubt. Did we ever have a Haskell phase?

<comment><USER3> I think everyone here has heard how great Lisp is from PG, and now Clojure is finally an accessible Lisp. I do quite like it myself but I agree that there's been an unusually large number of Clojure articles making the front page, even if they aren't very interesting unto themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inception?</comment>


Gmail disabled access when JavaScript is turned off - <AUTHOR> I'm using Firefox on Android, and it seems I can no longer access Gmail without JS. I disabled JS and images to save a little mobile bandwidth. Can anyone confirm ?
"Oops, Gmail wont work because..." Response. <comment><USER2> First off, use a native app, Gmail or another email client. It's lighter since you aren't loading the UI resources like you would in a web app. It can also be set to store messages locally so that the app won't have to query the server for a message you already loaded sometime in the past. You can always disable live syncing and do manual checking to save bandwidth.

If native apps aren't an option, use Chrome or Opera for Android. They both have bandwidth-saving features. Your pages are crunched by Chrome/Opera servers so that they come in smaller to your mobile device. Should you want to continue using Firefox, Opera offers Opera Max. It's the same data-saving feature on the Opera browser, except packaged as a separate app and does compression on all device traffic where applicable.

Further, I don't think the bandwidth savings are that great if you disable JS. Resources like JS and CSS _are cached_ by the browser. Assuming you don't always clear the cache and let it work the way it should, they only impact is the initial loading of pages where it has to load all resources. Further accesses are retrieved from cache when possible.

Again, use a native app or just use the app the way it's supposed to be used and save yourself the headache. Disabling JS is like trying to drive a car but insisting on having the engine removed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would expect the Gmail to not work at all if you disable JavaScript. Is there a valid reason for doing so on gmail.com?

<comment><USER4> Gmail has a html-only version (it's useful for slow connections): [https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h)

<comment><AUTHOR> that is the html desktop version, that indeed does work on mobile, but how could one read on a mobile so many tiny lines of text ?

There is a mobile webpage for gmail when JS is on, and there was also a mobile version HTML only, buy no longer.</comment></comment></comment>


Making full table scan 10x faster in InnoDB - <AUTHOR> http://yoshinorimatsunobu.blogspot.com/2013/10/making-full-table-scan-10x-faster-in.html <comment><USER2> Yoshinori is the engineer who developed MHA, MySQL replication auto failover. It's essentially a perl script that ensures a master is always available and functional. This is so DBAs don't have to spend hours manually fixing a broken master/slave replication.

</comment><comment><USER3> > When doing full table scan, InnoDB scans pages and rows by primary key > order.

What the fuck?

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that make sense if data is clustered by the primary key, as InnoDB does?

<comment><USER3> Derp, yes. It's not an auxiliary index. However, it still seems weird for a full table scan to be implemented this way instead of whatever's convenient given the page layout. Why does it guarantee that the results will be in PK order?

<comment><USER5> Many MySQL applications expect results to be delivered in primary key order if no "order by" clause is supplied

<comment><USER3> That seems dumb. If you require a particular ordering, you should have to specify it and it might cost extra to put the results in that order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Only because it was the first thing that popped into my head, you can use async file IO in Java 7+ with the AsynchronousFileChannel class[1]

Currently digging through Google to see if I can find how those async calls are implemented on Linux/Windows to see if you can expect similar speedups in performance as Yoshinori saw in this article.

[1] [http://openjdk.java.net/projects/nio/javadoc/java/nio/channe...](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/nio/javadoc/java/nio/channels/AsynchronousFileChannel.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I would guess that InnoDB is trying to preserve some behavior of MySQL where full table scans are expected to proceed by primary key order.

The solution sounds fragile; I guess you can't query by extent?</comment>


Show HN: I interview startups so you can find a better job - <AUTHOR> http://startupfrontier.com

<comment><USER2> This is a cool approach.

One tip - I'd make your signup box a lot flashier (the subscribe form and button are pretty subdued), along with adding a clear call to action. It's difficult to understand right off the bat that this is an email list you should join to learn more about how cool startups approach hiring.

"Tired of "nerf battles" and "rockstar developers" in job listings?" is much less clear than saying "Join our email list to learn how awesome startups approach their hiring." and then a byline below that listing some of the startups you've interviewed.

Just my point of view - could be wrong. Hope it helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the feedback! I'm running a few A/B tests right now with headlines and such - you got the boring "default" variation. I agree that it is very poor.

I'll work on making it clearer, flashier and less ambiguous. :)</comment></comment>


Shodan Computer Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://shodan.surtri.com/?q=amazon+HTTP-Server

<comment><USER2> <http://twitter.com/hdmoore/statuses/6009657364> -> [http://shodan.surtri.com/?q=port%3A23+%22list+of+built- in+co...](http://shodan.surtri.com/?q=port%3A23+%22list+of+built- in+commands%22)

</comment><comment><USER3> wait, this can't be right... <http://shodan.surtri.com/?q=google+lighttpd+php>

<comment><USER4> The Location: header is a redirect to Google. That's not actually Google's server using Lighty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently nginx is popular in Germany: <http://shodan.surtri.com/?q=nginx> . Any ideas why?

<comment><AUTHOR> perhaps since nginx is available in the German language, among other European translations including Russian, Polish, French.</comment></comment>


1 in 3 antibiotics prescribed in U.S. are unnecessary, major study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/1-in-3-antibiotics-prescribed-in-u-s-are-unnecessary-major-study-finds/ <comment><USER2> Not surprising at all. Some doctors will actually prescribe anti-biotics as a placebo treatment!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way of following statistics on a specific industry - <AUTHOR> Specifically interested in the restaurant industry. Once in a while there are articles in online that show stats, percentages, infographics etc. Is there a way to make sure that everytime something like that happens I know about it. Something along the lines of Google Alerts but somehow it seems like it's not precise enough for Google alerts? Thanks in advance :) <comment><USER2> If you are able to identify the blogs/papers that publish what you are looking for, you could subscribe to them on feedly and use it's 'mute filters' to filter out the rest. It's a pro function in feedly, but there might be other apps which offer the same functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, I love Feedly, never tried the pro features. So you are essentially saying that I can filter for just statistic related acronyms?

<comment><USER2> Something like that would be what I would try I suppose. I guess you could also customize an rss-inbox in most e-mail clients to do something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JiFi: Jira Client with UI Menus - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blufor/jifi <comment><AUTHOR> Mainly the responsivness of the JS heavy webUI of JIRA made me do this. Now I can do basic issue operations from within my desktop environment in shorter time and much more efficiently ;)</comment>


The $100K Taxi Ride, One Year Later - <AUTHOR> http://baydin.com/blog/2011/09/the-100k-taxi-rideone-year-later/ <comment><USER2> Boomerang for Gmail is a really nice product - I recommend trying it if you haven't yet.

It give you a "Send Later" option in email, which helps if you want to write a reply but don't want it to go out yet - for instance, if you want to say "The blog post is live now," but the post won't be live for another three hours.

It's pretty cool. You wouldn't even realize how useful it is until you try it. Check it out.

Edit: <http://www.boomeranggmail.com>

<comment><USER3> Wow, I've wanted something nearly exactly like this for a long time. But for me "Send Later" is one of the lowest value functions (I think gmail already has a lab that does this). Instead I like an email re-appearing in my inbox if no-one has responded to it in a few days so that I can then follow up on it. Their email game seems pretty nice too, although I wish it had keyboard shortcuts as well.

<comment><USER4> I think you're looking for <http://www.followupthen.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love what Dave has been doing from an investment perspective, and the accelerator program that 500 startups has set up is top notch.

I haven't heard a bad thing about him from any of the startups that he's invested in... aside from the fact that he's really, really hard to get a hold of.

For all the talk of the Silicon Valley Bubble in the NYT, and the Economist, etc..... the majority of "silly" fundings you read about in the main stream press end up having a back story like this... revenue, serious traction, founders that have been working their asses off eating ramen noodles for years, etc...

</comment><comment><USER6> What's wrong with East Coast VCs? Do they lack money, vision, or both? It's not the first time I hear people with great ideas complaining about their inability to get funded, only to receive decent investments the moment they move to Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER7> Faced similar situation.

My thoughts (based on my very limited experience) are that East Coast VCs seem to be more risk-averse.

Which makes sense. It's easier to be more risky when you know investors down the street who have made 1000x with the who's who of the Internet.

<comment><USER8> Maybe they are worse at assessing value. If a VC has no real idea what the value of a company is, they have to make a conservative valuation, to avoid being conned. They will also take longer to do the due diligence. A good VC may be able to make a good guess whether a company is worth investing in just by speaking to the founders for a few hours. A less skilled VC might take weeks, and still have no idea, so they can only offer a lowball bid.

<comment><USER9> Could whoever downvoted parent explain why? I don't want to start an argument or berate you; just curious.

Do you object because it puts East Coast VC in a negative light?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My goodness!! I so need this!! I saw it's just $29 for a license. Just spoke with my boss and she said lets buy for the team. I'm looking for a group license (not every employee will use a CC for a license). By the way, she and I are both shocked by how cheap this is. We would have even paid you more than twice that much for each license. Also, we would want to pay once, and then use for many, for example, we would need 7 or 8 licenses and make it available to 6 people so they can, if they so choose, use the service.

This is corporate America speaking btw.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good to see he hasn't let it get to his head. Still eating ramen suggests they're scrappy, and his post is about customers rather than an exit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Its really pretty unbelievable that life takes such turns.These happen every once in a while. Steve Jobs says - you cant connect the dots looking forward,it is only possible looking backwards.What if a person just believed in his destiny and went off with only one belief that dots are going to connect for sure someday, and then they don't? Many must have tried to connect the dots but were unsuccessful. For all the entrepreneurs in the world,I think,it all boils down to this: 'Is it worth it, if the dots don't connect? Will they not complain that they should've taken the safe route?'. If the answer for both the questions are 'yes' for once,never think again - its only going to waste valuable time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Site text can be read here: [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://baydin.com/blog/2011/...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://baydin.com/blog/2011/09/the-100k-taxi- rideone-year-later/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Server seems a bit overloaded. Cache: [http://baydin.com.nyud.net/blog/2011/09/the-100k-taxi- rideon...](http://baydin.com.nyud.net/blog/2011/09/the-100k-taxi-rideone-year- later/)

<comment><USER15> A for effort! But this one is timing out for me too :/

Edit: working now!

<comment><USER16> Here is a Google cached version. Sorry about this guys.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://baydin.com/blog/2011/09/the-100k-taxi- rideone-year-later/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic product. Along with rapportive, I find this to be the best product that compliments gmail. Thanks mate.

</comment><comment><USER18> You have a really good product!

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats baydin team!</comment>


HTML5 apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/03/html5_apps.html <comment><USER2> Building a better buzzword: A righteous campaign, to be sure.</comment>


Does innovation arc toward decadence? - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5452 <comment><USER2> I wrote a post some years ago about why screens have won over rockets. [http://wanderingstan.com/2010-07-27/screens-not-rockets- medi...](http://wanderingstan.com/2010-07-27/screens-not-rockets-media-over- moon))

Why are we now more concerned with melding __media __than melding __matter __.

I agree with the author that it's about values; now that survival, food, shelter, etc are cheaply met, our reward system has the luxury of indulging in TV watching, candy crush, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another, simpler explanation for a slowdown in innovation is that the innovators have harvested all of the low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER4> Slowdown? It seems to me that innovation has _exploded_ recently (say the last 4-8 years) - soft AI is suddenly everywhere, new wearables are everywhere and can do things that seem like magic to me, philips put a wifi reciever in a lightbulb and I can talk to my phone (I am afraid of cursing at my computer, one of these days it is going to talk back).

On the not so electronic front serious steps are being made to put a colony on MARS, new innovations in medicine is being made, etc.

<comment><USER5> Arguably, that all is breadth, not depth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      Does innovation arc towards decadence

Of course it does. Decadence is sort of a human manifestation of entropy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Neal Stephenson[0] implies some innovators can't make good use of the information at their fingertips, a likely explanation for the information age.

[0] [http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation- starv...](http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation)</comment>


City Hall and Uber Clash in Struggle Over New York Streets - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/nyregion/city-hall-and-uber-clash-in-struggle-over-new-york-streets.html

<comment><USER2> The mayor claims to be a man of the people but really he is representing Taxi fleet owners with their $1 million _per taxi_ medallions over the needs of people who want to work as drivers and other people who want to hire the Uber Cabs.

Basically, the mayor is supporting using politics to continue the market inefficiency where politics originally limited the number of Taxi medallions (Microeconomics term is "rent seeking"). Thankfully, Uber and others had a mechanism to undermine that market inefficiency, the rent seeking. Now the Mayor wants to introduce yet more politics to create market inefficiencies for the multi-million dollar fleet owners.</comment>


Ask HN: App/scripts to create model of person from various photos - <AUTHOR> Is there a good app (or script collection) that could help me make a 3D model of a person from various photos, maybe with machine learning. I believe this is called photogrammetry? I only found a paper discussing such a thing but there was no app "included". <comment><USER2> Funny I tried to solve this problem for a long time... still unsolved.

If you have (several) high resolution photos and good enough angles, you can do a 3D reconstruction of the person. There are several projects on Github, which might or might not use AI, and that have different approaches to the problem. OpenMVG is probably the biggest, developed by the friendly French guy Pierre Moulon at IRIS.

You should specifically look into Structure from Motion if you are using photos and not videos, because certain algorithms need time consistency between the images.

[https://github.com/openMVG/awesome_3DReconstruction_list](https://github.com/openMVG/awesome_3DReconstruction_list)</comment>


Ask HN: What Statically Typed Language Will Add Most To My Resume? - <AUTHOR>

I have a background in PHP/Ruby/Javascript but also have some experience with Java, Haskell, C and a few others.
I've come to the conclusion that I need to specialize in at least one statically typed language in order to increase my value to potential employers.
It seems like there's a move towards functional programming in the "enterprise" world with the likes of Scala, F# and C# coming to the fore.
My question is what statically typed language will add most to my resume over the next 5 - 10 years. I'm not talking about a basic understanding/knowledge -  I can pick that up pretty quickly. I'm talking about investing a substantial amount of time in really gaining some expertise in one of them. Which one should it be? <comment><USER2> As soon as you talk about jobs and statically typed language, my preference goes to Java. Though there is a great market in .NET and C# but you are limited to MS platform (unless mono picks up in a big way.).

<comment><AUTHOR> I know there's a lot of Java jobs out there, but there's also a whole lot of Java programmers. Would it not be a smarter move to learn something like Scala over Java? I'm trying to gauge where the demand will be in a few years rather than pander to the current job market. I'm also trying to increase my value rather than my general applicability if that makes any sense?

<comment><USER3> I can imagine a world where companies have Java legacy code but build new software in Scala to (1) ensure interoperability b/w legacy and new code on the JVM, and (2) give developers a language with more options (functional- style code, REPL)

A lot of companies in SF & NY (Yammer, Twitter, 4sq, for example) use Scala. These cities are pretty cutting-edge in language choice, and I'd imagine these practices will expand geographically as devs migrate to new places.

I'm interning at Knewton, and we have this posted up on our jobs page:

[http://jobs.knewton.com/apply/xYwHXb/Software-Engineer- Scala...](http://jobs.knewton.com/apply/xYwHXb/Software-Engineer-Scala-And- Python.html)

and Twitter has this listing:

<https://twitter.com/jobs/positions?jvi=ospeWfwL,Job>

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Java</comment>


Researchers crack RSA 4096 by listening to sounds made by CPU (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.extremetech.com/computing/993-researchers-crack-the-worlds-toughest-encryption-by-listening-to-the-tiny-sounds-made-by-your-computers-cpu?origref=

<comment><USER2> Why was this not a bigger story? Does this mean that ed25589 is all that's left?</comment>


Ambly: embedded ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://ambly.fikesfarm.com/ <comment><USER2> Got to say, Mike Fikes comes across as a lovely person and his blog posts are super informative

</comment><comment><USER3> > Ambly is designed for use when developing hybrid ClojureScript / native apps

Can someone shed some light on where Ambly would fit into the development workflow?

<comment><USER4> It gives you a CLJS REPL on the phone: [http://blog.fikesfarm.com/posts/2015-03-05-ambly-app- bootstr...](http://blog.fikesfarm.com/posts/2015-03-05-ambly-app- bootstrapping.html) Live editing code directly on the device is rather badass.

<comment><USER5> finally a maclisp _cough_ machine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this the only way to get ClojureScript on mobile?

<comment><USER7> No. ClojureScript works with React Native, and in that case you can use the Figwheel REPL. See [http://cljsrn.org](http://cljsrn.org)

Ambly can be useful in other situations where you are not building a React Native app, but still want ClojureScript driving things. For an example with Ejecta, see [http://blog.fikesfarm.com/posts/2017-04-29-clojurescript- eje...](http://blog.fikesfarm.com/posts/2017-04-29-clojurescript-ejecta.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting. Can it be used to implement live wallpaper?</comment>


Apple deletes an entire galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2011/08/11/apple-deleted-a-galaxy.html

<comment><USER2> They were dropped for not adhering to the App Store guidelines. They are appealing, but it's unclear which star violated which guideline, so they are probably out of luck.

<comment><USER3> I don't find them appealing at all, I find them dim and uninteresting.

<comment><USER4> Apple went super-nova on that galaxy!</comment></comment></comment>


Have you dealt with a law troll? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a cofounder of a 3-man Web startup.  Recently a competitor sent us a threatening letter accusing us of stealing their proprietary information, and now they have begun filing patent applications.  Their accusation was baseless, and their patent application is so broad it seems to cover anything with interactive data plots.
Anyway, the specifics of the accusation or patent aren't the issue here, and I am not asking HN for legal advice.  We already have a lawyer.  I am asking for practical business advice from people who have been through something similar.
Have you dealt with a law troll?  What did you do? <comment><USER2> IANAL but I'd ignore it. Especially the patent applications. A patent application is far removed from a patent, and even an issued patent is not that dangerous a weapon between two startups.

You're 100x more likely to die from not making something users want than from this. So worry about the tiger chasing you rather than the possibility you'll be hit by a meteorite.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping someone would say this, because I want my struggles to be about finding the right set of features do deliver, not about who invented what when. But to be clear, are you saying that your startup ran into some legal threats, that you more or less ignored them, and that strategy worked?

<comment><USER2> Yes, actually, we did have someone from a competitor call Viaweb, telling us that we should license some bogus patent they'd been granted. I told the guy we thought the patent was bogus and we weren't interested, and he replied by asking if we were hiring.

You can't ignore _all_ legal threats, but I usually advise startups we fund to ignore threats from competitors involving IP.

<comment><USER3> This is right. Patents and patent games really only become important when you have enough money that people care about trying to take some of it away.

For tech startups, execution is 100x more important. IAAPL, and the only time when I would recommend that a tech startup get a patent is when:

\- There is a hard technical problem that you solved that is core to your new product/service (think Google) \- You are building a device that requires custom hardware. \- You are in the Biotech space.

<comment><USER4> Patents are long term intangible assets. There are two reasons to patent a technology. 1) Protection. Pharmaceutical companies invest billions in drug development. Patents protect them from low cost providers coming in without the dev cost. 2) Licensing. The Unreal game engine is in hundreds of games.

However with the accelerated development and apllication schedule in the tech industry, it is often more profitable to keep the technology in house. Unless you are developing products for licensing don't worry about patents. Conversely, startups that try to get into the patent game are not likely to have developed anything worth worrying about. Remember, the patent process takes time and you as the patent holder are required to police their property.

<comment><USER5> > _2) Licensing. The Unreal game engine is in hundreds of games._

You can license the right to use a patent, but you don't have to have a patent to license technology you own. Epic Games owns the engine technology (source code, documentation, data files, etc) that licensees pay for the right to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first time someone threatened to sue my startup I took it very seriously and spent a lot of time worrying about it. I also ran up some legal bills talking to my counsel about it.

The second time someone threatened to sue my startup I took it seriously and spent some time researching their claims but didn't bother with the counsel, since lawyers are pricey.

The third time someone threatened to sue my startup I did a quick Google search on their name, archived the e-mail, and got on with it.

Since once you've been at this for a while you'll get desensitized to idle threats, I recommend learning from my experience and skipping to the blasé stage immediately.

</comment><comment><USER7> Publish their threatening letter on your blog. Gain the respect of your customers, and new potential customers of yours and theirs, by being the good guys and showing them to be the ones that resort to legal threats to discourage healthy competition.

<comment><USER8> In some areas this might work, but I'm not sure it's a good idea in general. That sort of thing plays well among tech-geek audiences, but I think not among more general audiences, who will be distracted at best, or scared off at worst.

<comment><AUTHOR> I, too, imagine that customers wouldn't appreciate the controversy. But what do I know? Has anyone had a positive (or negative) outcome from publicizing a legal threat?

<comment><USER7> I think it very much depends on your customers. It's true that I was thinking of companies with very tech-oriented customers when I was remembering other cases of this. I can't remember exactly who they were though, sorry.

But yes, I should have qualified my earlier response. This is only going to work for certain businesses. If your customers don't care, then I probably wouldn't bother.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Example-Driven Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2016/07/30/example-driven-development/ <comment><USER2> Hoogle[1] is also a pretty awesome example of this. It doesn't track the values themselves, but in Haskell there are usually only so many (sensible) functions for a given type which mitigates it a bit.

[1]: [https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/](https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/)

<comment><USER3> Parametricity actually cuts the number of possible functions at a given type much more effectively than any small number of examples: [http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/19548/how-can- re...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/19548/how-can-relational- parametricity-be-motivated)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been posted before, but anyway: Flashfill from excel sdk: [https://microsoft.github.io/prose/documentation/flashfill/us...](https://microsoft.github.io/prose/documentation/flashfill/usage/)

Keyword: program synthesis

</comment><comment><USER5> There's also Magic Haskeller [0], which generates potential Haskell functions from predicates. It's surprisingly good.

[0]: [http://nautilus.cs.miyazaki-u.ac.jp/~skata/MagicHaskeller.ht...](http://nautilus.cs.miyazaki-u.ac.jp/~skata/MagicHaskeller.html)

<comment><USER3> The difference in sophistication between supplying individual individual examples and supplying predicates is like that between unit testing and property-based testing. One method is brutish, being invented by and for the abstraction-challenged; the other at least tries to investigate general properties of the desired solution.

<comment><USER6> I do agree with you, though I'd suggest being nicer about it if not in general then at least outside of preaching to the choir.

<comment> vertex-four This is, overall, a huge issue with much of the Haskell and pure functional programming community that puts people off - there's a minority of people who view what the vast, vast majority of the world's programmers do as beneath them, and the programmers in question as stupid. The community doesn't appear to do enough to weed these people out.

<comment><USER7> I think there's a mistake in imagining that there is a Haskell community or a pure functional programming community and that people you come across represent these communities.

Like, I'm a fan of the language, I do stuff with it, I worked with in professionally, I chose my school specifically to pursue it in 2005... sometimes I discuss topics related to it on the internet... but I don't really see myself as a "community member," I don't represent a community when I discuss, and the comments you're reacting to have nothing to do with me or my values.

So if stuff I say is taken as representing some "community", that's ascribing a false belonging and imagining a society where there's mostly just a loose association of different individual nerds who sometimes collaborate in different constellations.

Unless there's something systemically and blatantly wrong with some actual existing community project, I think it makes more sense to criticize individuals. There's no way to "weed out" people from the internet just because their tone is annoying.

<comment> vertex-four The thing is, people gravitate to languages where they can learn about the language and its ecosystem from people they can get along with. Many people avoid confrontation - especially when they're trying to learn about something.

If you don't get along with dudebros, you're going to avoid languages where the IRC channels and forums and random online discussion about the language is populated by dudebros - if you don't get along with people who speak aggressively, you're going to avoid languages which you see people speaking aggressively in support of - if you're really not a fan of active community management a la codes of conduct, you're going to avoid languages where their users speak in favour of such things.

Rinse and repeat a bunch of cycles, and whether there's a formal community or not, there's a type of person who permeates discussion of the language and its ecosystem, and is generally accepted by users of the language. Attempting to avoid them is difficult, because the existing language users see no problem, so you're stuck with a very limited number of places to learn, interact, and ask questions without coming across them.

I don't think the people in question represent the community as a whole, but they do represent what I'm signing up for when I need to communicate about the language with others - in Haskell's case, there's a higher chance than with most languages that I'm going to come across people who will proclaim I'm stupid if I don't immediately and from birth know why XYZ abstraction is amazing and universally good. And god forbid I disagree.

<comment><USER8> > in Haskell's case, there's a higher chance than with most languages that I'm > going to come across people who will proclaim I'm stupid if I don't > immediately and from birth know why XYZ abstraction is amazing and > universally good

It's terribly sad if this is true because it wasn't the case before. Haskellers used to be very welcoming and very tolerant of beginners struggling with the language, because we had all been through the same struggles ourselves. I hope I'm correct when I say that the two public Haskell fora that I participate in (Haskell Reddit and haskell-cafe) would never proclaim anyone as stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty neat. I've definitely spent hours scribbling examples on a sheet of paper trying to come up with the correct math to go from my desired input to output for one or a few examples of input/output. Two drawbacks to this kind of solution, that I can think of: (1) the examples I'm thinking of are pretty complicated and I can't imagine this could solve them for me, and (2) playing with numbers on a sheet of paper is kind of fun, and jumping straight to the answer would remove that bit of fun from my life.

</comment><comment><USER10> I watched the video of a Pharo demo linked in the article and it was amazing. I don't know how much of that capability comes from the way Smalltalk is built vs just a clever IDE feature.

I imagine this would be much easier to implement in a language with strong typing since the vast majority of possible matches could be ruled out with a simple signature check instead of evaluation.

Having a feature like this would be very useful when teaching people how to program since it would help answer a lot of the basic questions that get asked.

</comment><comment><USER11> It feels strange saying this but finding a function from a set of inputs and a set of outputs is what machine learning is all about.

<comment><USER3> Not all function spaces are equally easy to search. If you're looking for a continuous, possibly even monotonic, real map that approximates a given data set, fine, just perform a regression. If you want to attach one of finitely many tags to every element of a data set, fine, just use a clustering algorithm or perform a correspondence analysis. But, can you find higher-order functions using these techniques? Or can you find arbitrary computable functions on the integers using these techniques? Note that the integers don't have a very good notion of "sufficiently near", unlike the reals.

<comment><USER6> > Note that the integers don't have a very good notion of "sufficiently near", > unlike the reals.

You could use the p-adic norm. But that will probably not be the right notion for most applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you like this you should look at the demos for Pharo. It takes this concept to another level. Very cool project.

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems to me like a less-formal (and consequently less powerful) implementation of type completion in dependent-type systems and theorem provers such as Agda or Coq.

<comment><USER14> I believe you are correct. The advantage, on the other hand, is that you don't have to first acquire a PhD in mathematics and then learn Coq/Agda. Seriously though, simpler interfaces can add a lot of value, but only if the increase in ease of use makes up for the decrease in expressiveness.

<comment><USER15> You don't need a PhD to use dependent types. I don't have a Bachelor's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh cool!

      ;; Inputs (one per line):
      '(a b c d)

      ;; Desired output:
      '(1 2 3 4)

      ;; Suggestions:
      ;; No matches found.

Damn :(

<comment><USER17> Perhaps this suggest thing could do with some kind of a genetic algorithm searching for new functions that seem to do the right thing..

<comment><USER3> Would you actually want to use software written like this? You submit a bug report or feature request, and the maintainer tells you: "Okay, let's see whether my AI can make sense of it..."

<comment><USER18> > "Okay, let's see whether my AI can make sense of it..."

"I'll pass your feedback on to the devs" by any other name would sound as sweet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Connecting something like this to github and other large public repos would be fun.

Similarly for pseudocode rather than only ins/outs.

Maybe code analysis for similar implementations to (or optimizations of) what you're in the middle of developing.

Have long wondered about this, but never got around to dinking with it at all. Cool to see things along these lines.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "Hey $COLLEAGUE, is there any function that takes this list and returns a > list like this?"

Go back to your cubicle, grab a piece of paper, clarify your thoughts, describe what you want in the general case, provide at least 3 examples, possibly more of there are lots of tricky corner cases. And only then come back. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple's Playground is another alternative

[https://developer.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/](https://developer.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've never had a problem tracking down the function or language construct I need with Google.

</comment><comment><USER22> What if we combine this with AI?

<comment><USER23> I'm working on that! Long story short, it's hard. Most functions are big ones, and knowing where to look in the infinite set of functions is a big challenge. But it's a super fun problem :-)</comment></comment>


Got An iPhone? Join The TechCrunch Loopt Mobile Social Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/01/got-an-iphone-join-the-techcrunch-loopt-mobile-social-network-and-never-be-lonely-again/

<comment><USER2> Because I really want to fill my life with those awesome TechCrunch readers.

<comment><USER3> There's a massive flaw with all these location-based iPhone social networks. They attract only a limited subsection of the world; namely, people interested in location-based iPhone social networks. And you don't need gadgetry to know when there's one of _those_ in the vicinity. Just look for the bloke who's got a TechCrunch T-shirt, an Apple logo imprinted into his hand and a bashed nose from walking into the lamppost while gawping at his location-based iPhone social network.

<comment><USER4> And if you don't _have_ a TechCrunch T-shirt <plug> <http://startupschwag.com/shop/> </plug> ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's SO annoying about this is that it's SPONSORSHIP! It's very very very misleading. But after I made a comment, he added a disclosure.

"Disclosure: Just to be 100% clear, this should be considered a sponsorship and will be noted in future Loopt coverage."

</comment><comment><USER6> add the tag newsyc and find other new.ycers</comment>


Millennials Strike Back: An Esoteric Reading of the Last Jedi - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/millennials-strike-back-an-esoteric-reading-of-the-last-jedi <comment><USER2> There is definitely some sort of messaging going on in the Last Jedi. SPOILER Why else spend half the movie on a pointless and ultimately destructive sidequest? The rebelliousness of the rebellion shoots itself in the foot. The thief seems to have the most insightful line in the move, that the war is essentially a machine making money for the arms trade. I guess the point is meant to be, if Jedi are really trying to bring harmony to the force, their good vs. evil fight is not very effective.

<comment><USER3> This moral theme would be a fantastic way to wrap it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Assuming this is at all serious (which I doubt), it would be a rather cynical, facile, and insipid reading of both _The Last Jedi_ and history itself. The most egregious point (of the many to choose from that I could dissect) is the following:

> But she has absorbed the rebels' self-serving narrative, and it prevents her > from realizing that the Skywalkers and the Rebellion—or Resistance, or > whatever they are calling themselves now—have no answers.

The answer is "not fascism." The Empire and First Order are fascist regimes. Fighting fascism _is_ the answer. There is no perfect system. But systems that support the systematic oppression of all people via threat of violence are evil.

<comment><USER2> The empires are just attempting to establish peace throughout the universe. The rebels, on the other hand, appear to want chronic instability and violence, getting entire civilizations obliterated due to their dislike for authority figures.

<comment><USER5> Maybe the authority figures don't need to respond by obliterating entire civilizations?

I think it's enough that a guy like Snopes or Palpatine wanted to control the galaxy to rebel against that.

<comment><USER6> >Snopes

A rebellion against fact-checking? The movie is now even more relevant ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like something that should be in r/theempiredidnothingwrong.

I went into this movie full on ignoring the metaphorical connections to the real world and let it exist in my mind as just an entertaining movie and story and to my surprise, it blew me away (although obviously far from perfect).

Its interesting to see people pick this movie apart, as if the originals had perfect acting, no flaws, and were the epitome of originality (were you expecting your life to change after watching this?)

Personally, I think Luke's change in demeanor was perfect, which not so ironically, he is pretty far from. Luke is human, which he conveys very well and is probably what upsets people the most because he doesn't reach this state of perfection upon which he has mastered the force, his feelings (he's not Leonard Nimoy), and has total control of self (again, not a Leonard Nimoy).

Could it be possibly that people are still holding onto the idea fed to those of us born in the 80's and onward that every one of us is "special", that our dreams will come true if we just believe in ourselves and never give up? These may be the people that do not care for the more realistic approach to Luke Skywalker, as opposed to the "one who will bring balance to the force."

<comment><USER8> I just didn't think the movie was as 'fun' as the previous movies. I think the Disney movies are good movies, I felt like the Lucas movies were fun movies. All the rest of it is secondary to that for me.

<comment><USER9> I think the prequels tried to tell a good story. Apart from a few glaring mistakes(like the idea that Anakin built C-3PO) the story and plot ideas were good enough. But scene to scene, it was poorly executed, with stilted dialog, bad direction (which often shows up as bad acting and unlikable characters), and uneven pacing. There's legitimate character development. The problem is, execution of those character arcs are clumsy or forced and lack the dramatic impact they should have. Certain plotlines are tedious, but you could make an argument that better editing could have fixed those flaws.

I think the Disney movies don't even try to tell a good story. The plots barely make sense and frequently violate established rules and conventions for no apparent reason. Apart from perhaps Kylo Ren, the new characters are static and uninteresting. Rey is likeable but has no growth. Finn is likable but isn't believable as an ex-stormtrooper. The relationship between The First Order and the Resistance/Rebellion is muddled and confusing at best. Where the prequels dwelt too much on tedious political details, the sequels go the other direction fail to establish a compelling galactic context for the war. As for Rogue One, I enjoyed that in the way I enjoy a dumb, mindless action movie. The characters were bland and uninteresting and the plot was just barely good enough to keep me interested.

The original trilogy had a good well-focused story, a good plot, a simple but sufficiently compelling political context, likable characters that experienced legitimate growth and character arcs. It had exceptional editing, great pacing --albeit slower than any blockbuster you'd see today-- and amazing sound design and music. There are some flaws, and some internal inconsistencies. But it's easy to argue that the major ones, such as Vader being revealed as Luke's father, enhance the story more than detract from it. It makes Obi-Wan's character seem less virtuous, for example-- but he's a fairly minor character and a minor flaw isn't a problem anyway, it makes him seem more human.

The original Lucas trilogy wasn't perfect, but it's far superior to either the prequels or the Disney sequels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disney didn't pay a few billion for the Star Wars property to just end the war. The resistance/rebels will be fighting forever.

<comment><USER11> Nobody is going to buy tickets to "Star Peace".

<comment><USER12> I can't speak for everyone, but I would _definitely_ have bought tickets to Star Peace. Especially over "Star Wars: even more cgi edition".

<comment><USER13> I can see it now. Two hours of Luke, Leia and Han just hanging out talking about how awesome things are without the empire, maybe make fun of C3PO a bit have a few drinks then just cruise around checking out how chill all the planets are now.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure they could still manage to get into some side adventures.

<comment><USER13> Don't misunderstand. That would be a way better movie than the last two even without side adventures. They're two of the very few movies in my life I've fallen asleep in the middle of. I don't do that often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll assume spoilers are fair game here, since this article is pretty much a spoiler in its entirety.

The authors take many liberties in interpretation to fit their viewpoint. For instance, Luke didn't "hallucinate" Yoda's presence on Ahch-To, unless you think his previous force ghosts (as in ROTJ) were hallucinations, as well. Perhaps Rian did mean for Yoda's force ghost in this scene to be a hallucination, but I don't think he did. The authors just twisted this scene to fit their interpretation, which is disappointing.

UPDATE: The piece is satire [https://twitter.com/smcohoe/status/951474247104307200](https://twitter.com/smcohoe/status/951474247104307200)

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's a silly interpretation. Especially inconsistent since if Yoda is Luke's hallucination as the article asserts, then Luke himself is "killing the past" in the same way that Kylo Ren does, and treating the film as a Millennial attack on the Baby Boomers is rather short-sighted when they are both doing the same thing.

As far as I can see, the only thing approaching a coherent theme in TLJ is the question of how one can move forward if encumbered by the past (Finn and Rey also have these issues). This offers perhaps 1% of the thematic and political subtly of the Lucas trilogies. But even this seems a challenge for the script to grapple with coherently -- surely Yoda (presented as a figure of wisdom) should not be using lightning and fire (Sith tools) to destroy embodied wisdom. And if we are to view Luke as doing the right thing then surely the only logical conclusion of this way of thinking is that Kylo Ren is on the right track.

Ironic that Poe Dameron (who destroys most of the Rebellion) is seen negatively when all he was doing was clearing the way for victory by getting rid of all those ships (human lives)!

<comment><USER14> Note what Yoda says before he destroys the tree: "There's nothing in those books she does not already possess."

And then remember the final scene on the Falcon, where you can clearly see that the books are safely with Rey. She must have taken them before she left, and Yoda knows this.

In that period of time, though, the audience (and Luke) is left to believe that Yoda truly did choose to destroy ancient Jedi artifacts. Which really makes one wonder what the heck is going on—and leaves you to question which side is good, and which is bad? It really blurs the lines between Light and Dark, and crescendos at the throne room scene where Snoke is murdered to when Kylo asks Rey to join him. You almost _want_ her to say yes to his offer! Unlike ESB, the offer isn't just theoretical. Snoke _was_ just overthrown.

In my opinion, the whole sequence was masterfully done.

<comment><USER15> Hey Lionheart. Just to be clear -- I don't think TLJ is devoid of meaning. The film clearly wants to say that anyone can be a hero and that what matters is not being trapped by the past (protect what you love, learn from your mistakes and move on). There is nothing wrong with this message.

It doesn't bother me if people like TLJ, although I personally don't think the film makes much sense. If Yoda deceives Luke that saves TLJ from having Yoda actually mirror Kylo Ren, but it doesn't explain the fire and lightning (Sith tools associated with hell imagery) nor does it resolve the underlying problem since deception is also Dark Side behaviour....

There are a few other areas where the film contradicts itself, but this is an obvious one: if we take the film seriously we must surely ask ourselves why Yoda is acting like a Sith Lord? I didn't see any attempt to answer that puzzle in the film and while we may get the solution in film #3, as far as I can tell TLJ just accepts that whatever Yoda does is good (because he is Yoda) and whatever Kylo Ren does is bad (because he is the villain). The filmmakers have bought into the loose symbolic framework of the saga, but they don't seem to understand it and/or act consistently within it. To the extent there is a message, it comes out because the good guys tell us exactly what it is and we aren't supposed to think too critically about it.

<comment><USER14> > _If Yoda deceives Luke that saves TLJ from having Yoda actually mirror Kylo > Ren, but it doesn 't explain the fire and lightning (Sith tools associated > with hell imagery) nor does it resolve the underlying problem since > deception is also Dark Side behaviour...._

It comes down to intent. Fire, lightning, and destruction aren't relegated to the Dark Side of the Force. Jedis have always had their share of destruction and murder. They were a literal army during the time of the Old Republic. Obi- Wan and Qui-Gon's behavior in the first scenes of TPM show this firsthand. They were sent to the Trade Federation to intimidate—not a very noble thing to do on the surface, but it was in the greater good.

There have been innumerable essays and analyses understanding how the two sides differ, but the one that's always stuck with me is that the Jedi are at their core more of a guiding force, whereas the Sith are a controlling force.

Everything the Sith do is for their own greater good, whereas the Jedi will do things (even kill, or destroy) _if_ it leads to the greater good of others.

And, in this case, the destruction of the temple leads Luke to understand that old books aren't what are important. No one died when that tree was destroyed. And it may very well have been what pushed Luke to self-sacrifice and save the remnants of the Resistance. That seems like a very "Jedi" thing to do (IMO).

<comment><USER15> > It comes down to intent

There is nothing in the film that communicates this. It may be that we are supposed to view the film this way, but the film itself is not sophisticated in communicating this message. Meanwhile, there are many characters who are clearly well-intentioned (Poe and Finn) whose actions seem to be explicitly criticized.

Lucas was a far more sophisticated filmmaker. In his prequels the Jedi are deeply flawed, and the audience is supposed to notice that they abandon their commitment to peace ("I can protect you, but I cannot fight a war for you") to the point that they die (literally and allegorically) marching into war. Likewise, Luke's effort to rescue his friends in Empire is well-intentioned, but nearly destroys him because he chooses violence as his tool (similar to Anakin's efforts to rescue Padme through violence). It is not accidental that the temptation that Vader offers Luke is the same temptation Palpatine offers Anakin: the use of violence for the sake of good ("join me, and bring peace and order to the galaxy") -- a trap in both films.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the bottom of the article, since people are wondering whether this is serious:

> The views expressed in this article are not endorsed by and do not in any > way represent the opinions of their employers or Leo Strauss. They should > also not be taken to express the views of the authors.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know it's satirical, but the authors have a point. Everyone in the movie in a position of authority has no clue about tactics or strategy or a plan that's likely to work.

(In 20th century history, WWI was the war of the clueless generals, while in WWII, both sides had relatively competent leadership.)

</comment><comment><USER18> My biggest problem with the movie was using the hyperdrive as a weapon. Why couldn't that have been used on the first, second or third deathstar?

<comment><USER19> I'll steal a comment from elsewhere [1] that gives a perfectly reasonable justification for this.

> A few hypothetical reasons why light speed attacks are not common despite > being so effective:

> \- A capital ship's particle shields can usually tank smaller objects, like > fighters, traveling at relativistic speeds. Only very large objects can > attain enough kinetic energy to punch through the shields. However...

> \- ...the size and complexity of the engines required to accelerate an > object to light speed increase geometrically with mass. Outfitting a dense > asteroid with a hyperdrive system would make for a hideously expensive one- > shot missile; it's almost always more practical to invest your year's worth > of Mon Cala's GDP in a ship, which has broader sustained applications.

> \- The calculations for hyperspace jumps to or from gravity wells are > incredibly fraught. Because of latency issues and certain limitations of > droid cognition, an extremely skilled pilot must be physically onboard to > perform the jump; no one wants to waste a pilot like that on a suicide run > unless there's no other option.

> \- Even a skilled pilot is going to find targeting an individual ship very > difficult because extreme velocity and distances turns small errors into big > misses. The timing is also crucial; in the Star Wars universe, ships enter a > hyperspatial dimension shortly after hitting light speed. If Holdo had > accelerated too quickly, she would have passed "through" the Supremacy > without hitting it; too slowly, and she wouldn't have accumulated enough > energy to overwhelm its shields.

> Holdo only succeeded because a bunch of factors aligned: she was a good > pilot, her target was very close and very wide, she had no nearby allies in > the blast radius, she and her ship were expendable, and the math broke her > way.

[1]: [https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last- Jedi...](https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last-Jedi#167147)

<comment><USER20> I only think the last reason is actually reasonable. You can argue that all the other small ships that they sacrificed could have also turned tail and gave it a go, even if it was difficult.

However, the blast radius part wouldn't make as much sense, because the escape pods were likely fairly close, just at some orthogonal vector.

However, this is all besides the point. The real problem is that the hyperdrive weapon was never motivated and it introduces plot holes in past movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Note that in none of the eight movies so far is the intensive and painful Jedi training regimen followed through. Not a single real Jedi is produced."

Well... they've got a point... we see many already produced, but none during the films' times IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is some overfitting happening here but generally speaking I agree with the analysis. People I interact with from my own generation and younger can see that our established institutions may have failed to secure the near future for existing and arriving generations, and they are permanently shunning those institutions wherever possible.

You can see this in IT as well where we have myriad foundational problems at the levels of W3C, ICANN, MITRE, NIST and other standards/governing bodies. Cynicism spreads about whether they are sincere about delivering their core missions; meanwhile a "move fast and break things"/disruption culture thrives.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, simple answer: we need heroes and villains for a story.

But I think there is some cultural "zeitgeist" reflected in the more optimistic original Star Wars and the cynicism of the current reboot.

I find it refreshingly actually. When the original Star Wars came along it seemed to shut down the cynicism of Sci Fi that had dominated up to that point (Soylent Green, West World, Logan's Run, Rollerball, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I actually enjoyed this interpretation. In a way it kind of made me less disappointed that I watched that entire crappy-ass movie.

</comment><comment><USER25> Please note: I think this piece is satiric. Please see the end note:

 _Caleb Cohoe is associate professor of philosophy at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Samantha Cohoe is a Latin teacher, writer of young adult fiction, and frequent contributor to twitter.com. The views expressed in this article are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of their employers or Leo Strauss. They should also not be taken to express the views of the authors._

<comment><USER2> According to Leo Strauss' esoteric doctrine, satire is one of the best ways to communicate truth through the disillusioning power of the comic, such as Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hope the authors were being tongue in cheek.

I saw it as the younger generation not learning and repeating the mistakes of the past.

The first order being like neo-nazis to the empires nazis.

The republic failing and the rise of trade federation again.

Very cyclical and nihilistic.

<comment><USER25> From the end of the article:

 _Caleb Cohoe is associate professor of philosophy at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Samantha Cohoe is a Latin teacher, writer of young adult fiction, and frequent contributor to twitter.com. The views expressed in this article are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of their employers or Leo Strauss. They should also not be taken to express the views of the authors._

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What irked me in the new trilogy was that not just was the first part a xerox of the beginning of the first trilogy, there was also _no explanation given at all_ why had gone so horribly wrong.

We left the scene at the end of episode 4: The empire was defeated, the good guys had all the power, wisdom and allies on their side, there was a big victory celebration and everything was abuzz with hopes and plans for the future.

Then... _things_... happened and suddenly everything is reset to the same bad old times.

Yet no one even attempts to find out _why_ this happened and where exactly the old plans and assumptions went wrong (and where they didn't). All that is done is either stoically holding on to the old plans or frustratedly admitting "failure".

I guess you could see this as an analogy to today's times as well: Everyone is panicking that the fascists are back, that inequality is rising, that living standards are falling and that no one is stopping climate change - but there seem few discussions about _where_ exactly things went wrong, except that all it's somehow the baby boomers'/the millennials'/facebook's fault.

</comment><comment><USER28> I do agree with the author that there's a lot of generational shift in the deeper tangles of meaning buried in the new Star Wars movies. I disagree with some of his interpretations, however. Here's my view:

[https://florin.myip.org/blog/edit-blog-entry-divisive- drama-...](https://florin.myip.org/blog/edit-blog-entry-divisive-drama-star- wars-last-jedi)

TLDR: The story is basically re-told for the current young generation. There's less "magic", there's more "realism" (mind the quotes). Old mythologies are ignored. There are vast, sweeping cultural shifts such as the rise of feminism. And, yes, there's this youthful drive to declare that the past is dead, long live the future.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think millennials saw TLJ as a metaphor for baby boomer disillusionment so much as a crushing disappointment that Ewan MacGregor didn't stride into a cameo as the inexplicable forbearer to Rey.

</comment><comment><USER30> Although I suspect the authors were being tongue in cheek, I think there are spot on with the older generation falling into familiar patterns and the younger generation rejecting that in their own ways.

</comment><comment><USER31> What makes it effective satire is it takes legitimate interpretations "The good guys in this story tend to shoot themselves in the feet and normal people get killed in the process," and stretches it to ridiculousness to highlight that point, like "Luke hallucinates Yoda's approval."

</comment><comment><USER32> How about "token conformity to the cultural norms du jour strikes back"?

</comment><comment><USER33> Interesting! Last Jedi was quite disappointing for me, so I'm glad the authors here managed to bring some meaning to it.

</comment><comment><USER34> the movie sucked but at least this satire review was funny

</comment><comment><USER35> The original Star Wars was about a son and his father, with redemption, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me" still gives me shivers. But now Luke Skywalker says: "It's time for the Jedi to end." In other words: "it's time for patriarchy to end."</comment>


Barclays' former CEO is long Bitcoin and says big banks need to start over - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1099705/former-barclays-ceo-antony-jenkins-believes-in-bitcoin-and-says-big-banks-need-to-start-over/ <comment><USER2> QZ got really creative with that headline. The article is primarily about new fintech companies forcing big banks to re-invent themselves. Bitcoin only comes up in the last question, and Mr. Jenkins responds with a carefully hedged answer.</comment>