Man Loses Home After Failing to Pay $8.41 in Property Taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2019/12/06/man-loses-home-after-failing-to-pay-841-in-property-taxes/#9abe2d32a207 <comment><USER2> One of the more important yet most overlooked and misunderstood features of American government and governance is the fact that a vast amount of power resides at the very bottom, and local officials often have discretionary powers that would be vested in higher level officials in other countries. This is a good thing in many respects, but the other side of the coin is that you have totally incompetent yokels wielding the power of petty kings.

The case in question is an absolute disgrace and an excellent example of the failings of the American system of government in its present state of (dys)function. I would argue that it should be much, much harder to evict people for any reason, and that seizing private property for trivial reasons should be near impossible. Many here would agree, but in this specific case it is purely a local matter.

Sub/exurban Detroit cannot be compared to Singapore. And the problem has little to do with global population or overpopulation, but it is curiously linked to population density. Jürgen Habermas and others have written extensively about the phenomenon of 'Verrechtlichung' or 'juridification', i.e. the process by which an ever increasing amount of human interaction and social and economic life is subjected to legal regulation and codification, corresponding roughly to increases in population density that came with urbanisation, industrialisation, and the advent of urban modernity from the late 19th century on. But that is really not directly related to the given issue exept in a rather abstract way.

<comment><USER3> So what can Americans do differently?

1\. Coalesce power to the top assuming that those people are more intelligent and deserving of control?

No. That's how authoritarianism starts.

2\. Remove the power to seize private property?

No. Because that's seen as an effective deterrent against crime. You can't have drug dealers putting their cash into untouchable multi million dollar homes.

3\. More checks and balances on local governments to not abuse their power?

Yes. This is how it's always been done, and will continue to be done in the future. There's the state and federal court systems which can provide relief. There's also state and federal legislators. There's also the free press which can illuminate these issues. Lastly there's elections. If you don't like the way someone has run government, you can vote them out.

<comment><USER2> 1\. Not exactly, no. The opposite of a federal state is a unitary state (like France or Ireland), not an authoritarian state (like Saudi Arabia). Interestingly, what you described (moving power upward) has been another major feature of American governance since the early post-war era.

2\. I generally disagree with regards to the seizure of property. You say that the seizure of criminal assets is seen as an effective crime deterrent. Who sees it as such? Is there any evidence that it works? Are you familiar with the debates surrounding 'civil forfeiture'? If not, it is worth looking into. There are jurisdictions in the US(primarily at the municipal and county level) that derive a large part of their total operating budgets from the seizure of 'criminal' assets without any sort of due process. The example of drug kingpins parking their money in real estate is a particularly lurid and unrepresentative example--there might indeed be a place for criminal asset forfeiture in the fight against organized crime--but at the very least the threshold should be rather high and not include petty infractions or minor unpaid debts.

3\. I see your point here, and you are correct on checks and balances, but I think you are naive with regards to the role of the press and the efficacy of simply voting out incumbent officials. Having said that, I will concede that the strategy actually works best at the lowest possible tier of government, but of course that requires adequate civic engagement in local politics.

More on the free press issue. Here's a story for you. In the early 1970s, my dad worked for a couple of local newspapers in the southern US. They would send him to cover city council meetings. He commented that the reporters from the big papers would show up for about 10 minutes and leave, and then write reports as if they had been present the entire time. And that was yearly 50 years ago, when the American newspaper landscape looked very different from today. Today most of those local papers are gone altogether and the press in general has undergone a total transformation. Beyond the occasional outrage story, I wouldn't automatically assume that the press is going to do its job.

Please don't take offense at my comments and fire back an angry rebuttal. This is not meant as criticism of you or your positions. Just thoughts and debate, nothing more.

<comment><USER3> 1\. What you're saying is true. But in the US, the term "Imperial Presidency" is used to describe the scenario when checks and balances fail between the three branches, thus the power primarily resides in the executive branch to make decisions, and with little oversight from the other branches.

Once there is no more legislative or judicial oversight, and the president can choose to make every action classified, then it might as well be an authoritarian system.

2\. > Who sees it as such?

The US's political establishment and law enforcement agencies.

Let's be clear about what I am for and what I am not.

There's two types of property seizure in the US:

A: Property seized directly as the result of a crime (cars used to transport drugs, houses used to store or manufacture drugs, bank accounts used to store proceed from drug transactions, etc.)

B: Property seized merely as being suspect to being involved in a crime. So called civil forfeiture. These are the weird cases like "US vs. $5000".

I'm all for A, but against B. And if you say you can no longer seize bank accounts or houses of convicted drug dealers, then that's a non-starter in the US.

3\. The framers of the constitution never put an article describing the role of the free press. Nor was the free press an original guarantee of the constitution. That came later with the first amendment. It was the final check on government corruption and overreach.

There's lots of national coverage on the Russia-Gate stories, but the local news doesn't have the resources to cover city-council coverup for a 1500 person town anymore. It's a shame, I agree because the people in the 1500 person town deserve just as strong a protection as those that live in NYC. But if you have a political party that attacks the media as being "partisan", people are going to stop subscribing to the local newspapers, because they're "partisan-by-default".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile in San Francisco, some rich assholes that failed to pay property tax for _decades_ got the tax sale of their street reversed years after it happened: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/28/rich-san-francisco- ho...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/28/rich-san-francisco-homeowners- get-sold-off-street-back/)

Different rules for the rich as always.

<comment><USER5> From the article, they actually defaulted on it twice and got it back both times:

It marks the second time the association has defaulted, but it won back the street in 1985 after paying up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just wonder how many unfair (and in this case, quite frankly bullshit) collisions there are codified in law that we rarely encounter. I don't believe the laws are perfect, or that they even can be perfect (especially since you're often catering to different groups with conflicting interests, and oftentimes more than just two). But as our populations grow, our bureaucracies slow, and more and more problems like this will manifest. I fear it's going to become more like trying to argue your case against Google for why your YouTube video was taken down without explanation - tough shit, good luck.

I have an unfounded fear that overpopulation is humanity's greatest threat, and I think we're way past capacity.

<comment><USER7> Are you talking about global overpopulation, or overpopulation in particular countries or cities?

Globally, we have more than enough to eat. And apart from the US exporting it's legal system everywhere (see [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything- everywhere-is-securities-fraud)), there's not too many spillover effects in terms of laws from one place to another.

When looking at different locales, generally denser places are more desirable. Hence their land rents and prices are higher. After taking higher rents into account, it's a mostly a wash and down to personal preferences---but that just tells you that the prices are mostly in line with reality.

Compare [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration)

About laws: that's one of the reasons we have human judges. As for perfection: for most purposes laws first and foremost have to be predictable in their effect. (Which this one here apparently was not in practice in this case.)

One of the densest countries on earth, Singapore, has one of the most efficient legal systems, especially in that regard.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps not coincidentally, almost all of the increased land rent that comes with increased density is captured by the Singaporean state, since it is the ultimate landowner ("privately owned" land is actually leased from the state on a 99 year basis).

This means that as an area becomes more desirable, more people move there, land rent goes up, and the state earns more and more capital to build/maintain infrastructure and bureaucracy that is proportional to its population.

Contrast with the Bay Area (only used as an exemplar of basically all of America/the western world), which is full of extraordinarily wealthy people paying enormous rents to live under a dysfunctional government with a budgetary shortfall of $6.3B.

It appears that high Singaporean rents go back into paying for a society worth living in, while high San Franciscan rents go into the pockets of a handful of landlords (who of course contributed nothing to San Francisco's explosion of productivity over the last few decades).

<comment><USER9> It's a whole different argument as to San Francisco productiveness. Is twitter productive? I'd call it a waste of time.

<comment><USER7> When someone uses a term without qualification, it's a reasonable first assumption to go with the meaning of the corresponding Wikipedia article, like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity)

Productivity is a technical term in economics. It connects to people's subjective judgement in the aggregate (ie San Francisco is only considered productive if people want what they produce) but doesn't care that one person in particular doesn't like what they do.

For comparison, I don't like 'Light Beer', but a big brewery figuring out how to make more Light Beer from less malts still counts as a productivity improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know how it works in Detroit, but in Texas where I am a lawyer, it is very hard to lose your home to property tax foreclosure. First, the property taxes are on the web, so the homeowner can go anytime and see how much they owe, and in some cases can pay online. Then, if you are delinquent, you are sent many notices that the homeowner must ignore. Then, even after the property sells at auction, the homeowner can redeem the property for the unpaid taxes for up to a year, again after receiving many notices.

<comment><USER11> The business of Detroit gaining ownership of houses due to unpaid taxes is huge. There are some documentaries on this but the short of it is the main seller of properties in Detroit is the city itself due to how easily it gains control over properties through taxation. The same kind of thing has been happening in Chicago with car impounding that leads to auctioning off cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From a month ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21464572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21464572)

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Its shocking how many posters in that thread thought it was entirely appropriate for the state to retain the profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is how you get killdozer.

<comment><USER15> Also mentioned in the original thread!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465657)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cases like this make my blood boil. It is really depressing when state can commit great injustice towards constituents without any redress and there is no special power that can fix plain and obvious wrongs right in place (well presidents pardoning their cronys are the exception).

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought there was more to this story. I read about it before. It's not just how the guy miscalculated interest?

</comment><comment><USER18> While this is obviously unjust, I'm baffled by why someone paying an already delinquent property tax bill with clear risks of foreclosure wouldn't err on the side of overpaying.

When you overpay your property taxes, they send you a check for the balance. I accidentally overpaid mine this year by $10, the county mailed back a check in that amount with no further information or interaction required. I hadn't even realized the error until receiving it unannounced.

</comment><comment><USER19> What the f Michigan... I'm assuming it's different in other states?

Usually yeah the government forces you to sell your property and pay the debt, but any extra from the sale is the property owner's... Which makes way more sense.

How can you even call this ownership if your house is sold _and you get nothing_ if you don't pay your property tax...

<comment><USER20> In US, whether you really own your house is debatable. The appraisal district (the entity taxing your property), the home owner's association and the mortgaging bank can legally take possession of your house if you don't pay your dues.

<comment><USER21> I seriously doubt the HOA can seize your home over $8.41 in back dues and pocket the difference after they sell it.

The mortgaging bank OTOH is the _actual_ owner of the property up until you pay the full contractual price and they sign over the deed.

<comment><USER22> > The mortgaging bank OTOH is the actual owner of the property up until you > pay the full contractual price and they sign over the deed.

No, they are the owner of the mortgage which is recorded on the deed until the terms of the mortgage are fulfilled. While a mortgage is _a_ real property interest, it is not ownership of the underlying property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If only states gave out allodial titles/deeds.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is just as bad as police seizures

<comment><USER25> Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) obviously violates the 4th, 6th and 14th amendments to any reasonable person, but because the police profit from it, lawyering cognitive dissonance continues to legitimize it as legal. What it means is that innocent people carrying large sums of cash or having expensive property will continue to have it taken from them unless they are rich and have aggressive lawyers. CAF requires proving a negative (an impossibility), as well as assuming guilt, deprivation of property immediately and proving innocence later, which seems mutually exclusive with fundamental tenants of the US justice system: "innocent until proven guilty" and "due-process."

 _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it._ \- Upton Sinclair

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those homeowners in SV (at minimum), remember that your first installment of your 2019-20 is delinquent after Tuesday, so pay (or postmark) by then.

</comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of property taxes:

 _'Dear God, help us all': Utah taxpayers stung after home valued at [$987 Megabucks] in 'horrific' typo_

[https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world- economy/dear-g...](https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/dear- god-help-us-all-utah-taxpayers-stung-after-home-valued-at-14-billion-in- horrific-typo/news-story/61d618ab32e0d24ff537b5649b4d2993)

</comment><comment><USER27> It shows me a system that lacks flexibility, it's scary.

</comment><comment><USER28> Property taxes are a special form of BS: here's a fine for using the money you earned and we didn't seize from you in other taxes for merely parsing an asset.

<comment><USER29> Property taxes aren't fines or punishment - they're to pay for the civilisation around your property which costs money to run.

<comment><USER28> Does one have an option to consent? If there is no consent, it's one of punishment, fines, or theft.

<comment><USER30> You consent by buying / not selling your property. Besides which, where do you think your "rights" to "own" property come from?

<comment><USER31> It's my natural right to own property, with the caveat that such ownership is defined by my ability to defend it by whatever means necessary: socially, physically, logically, legally, etc.

Or at least that's what my country's founders might have believed and tried to establish. We might argue they're still correct in some sense even in spite of a government or society that insists otherwise.

<comment><USER32> "Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master."

<comment><USER30> To whom is that attributed?

<comment><USER32> Adam Smith.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sony uses DMCA to silence speech that reveals its security flaws - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message

<comment><USER2> "Sony is also bringing a slew of outrageous Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claims.... Simply put, Sony claims that it's illegal for users to access their own computers in a way that Sony doesn't like. Moreover, because the CFAA has criminal as well as civil penalties, Sony is actually saying that it's a crime for users to access their own computers in a way that Sony doesn't like."

Aren't Sony convicted computer hackers for their little cd+rootkit adventure? Did any CEO do time for that?

<comment><USER3> "According to the proposed settlement, those who purchased an XCP CD will be paid $7.50 per purchased recording and given the opportunity to download a free album, or be able to download three additional albums from a limited list of recordings if they give up their cash incentive."

"The settlement requires Sony BMG to reimburse consumers up to $150 to repair damage that resulted directly from their attempts to remove the software installed without their consent. The settlement also requires them to provide clear and prominent disclosure on the packaging of future CDs of any limits on copying or restrictions on the use of playback devices, and bars the company from installing content protection software without obtaining consumers' authorization.[34] FTC chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras added that, "Installations of secret software that create security risks are intrusive and unlawful. Consumers' computers belong to them, and companies must adequately disclose unexpected limitations on the customer use of their products so consumers can make informed decisions regarding whether to purchase and install that content.""

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sony_rootkit>

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be wonderful if that court case got cited in this new case? It could both serve to argue against Sony's claim that consumers don't have the right to tinker with their product after sale, and as a demonstration of the importance of giving security researchers freedom to study consumer products.

<comment><USER5> > the importance of giving security researchers freedom

If we are not careful about this, soon it will be required to register oneself as a security researcher.

No. _Everybody_ has the right to study whatever they own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like Pamela Jones of Groklaw plans to cover this case in full. Based on her reporting, it doesn't look like things are going well for Sony so far:

<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110112115731533> <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110114185542531> <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110117161946648>

Apparently, they are having trouble even establishing that they have the right to sue the defendant in a California court.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone here know what restrictions on the sale of an item are legal (at least in the U.S.)? If I agree to sell you item X given that you promise Y, what are the legal values of Y?

For example, I can't sell you a piece of property with the restriction that you can't sell it to a racial minority in the future. Can I sell you a car with the restriction you are not allowed to look at or tamper with the engine?

Note that I'm not asking whether or not it is good/moral to ask for these restrictions. But what is in fact legal.

<comment><USER8> There are lots of random rules about contracts. For example, terms can be struck for Unconscionability <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability> \- which is pretty arbitrary.

The article on EULAs is also interesting: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license_agreement#Enfo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license_agreement#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER9> And the rules are both random and logical in a perverse way.

For example, the terms of a commercial lease can much more exploitative than of a residential lease because a commercial leaser is expected to be more savy about such things.

For example, you can have terms with fine print that allows the landlord to evict tennent without cause AND demand a substantial payment at any time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting that they'd risk the Streisand effect in order to instill fear into people who research these jailbreaks. Granted geohotz research already has significant media coverage, so additional air into the flame wont do all that much. Then again, in the case report it says that Sony wants geohotz research materials (his computers and his site) seized; which may imply that they think they can stop it from propagating. It's hard to say whether this is a weighed decision of Sony's or if it's simply their lawyers going after blood.

<comment><USER2> "Pour encourager les autres" - they don't care about Goehotz, this is aimed at lots of universities who are now drawing up guidelines about the legal consequence of doing any research into computer security.

If you're Ross Anderson and Cambridge you can tell them to stuff it, if you are a new junior prof at Nowheresville U you might be persuaded to look at a new research area.

50 years ago the oil companies tried similar things to block Clair Patterson's research into lead in gasoline. If Caltech hadn't been so stubborn or there had been a law against analyzing gasoline we would still be breathing lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this is the best thing that could happen iff a group of lawyers backs up the professors all the way up to the Supreme Court. And of course, they win. I don't think any career politician will ever reverse course on the DMCA. They don't fully understand the implications and they don't want to alienate their campaign donors. Instead, we as a community will have to chip, piece by piece away at the vagrancies of a law which should never have existed in the first place.

<comment><USER12> It's unfortunate, though, that a few people's lives (the researchers) will be miserable and stressful for the next few years -- just to protect __our __right to free speech. The researchers deserve kudos for standing up to the bully, but it won't be a fun experience.

<comment><USER13> One thing, I might do if I ever make crazy dotcom money is create a fund to help/reward people who make stand like this. Even if all I can do is provide them with a nice vacation every year, or hire an assistant to keep it from significantly impacting their day to day life I think it would be a great help.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't the long-term be better if the fund went towards lobbying for better laws? Curing the symptoms, not the disease as the saying goes.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, but there are already funds/organizations that do that. I don't know of any that help the people who put their lives on hold while they go through these massive court cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I find really funny is how completely opposite MS has dealt with Jailbreaking of Windows Phone. Down to offering to send geohotz a phone to play with: <http://twitter.com/#!/BrandonWatson/status/27508118367772672>

<comment><USER5> If only Microsoft would be as helpful with jailbreaking the Xbox 360...

Last time I checked, gaming consoles and phones had completely different business models. MS profits for every WP7 phone sold (all three of them) even if the phone manufacturer takes a loss. Sony takes a loss with every PS3 sold and recoups that from every unit of every game sold for it.

<comment><USER14> Do you really think Sony would be any different when it comes to this: [http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/11/exclusive-sony- ericsson-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/11/exclusive-sony-ericsson-to- introduce-android-3-0-gaming-platfor/)

<comment><USER5> It really depends on what the business model is. I'd say no because they are the hardware manufacturer and will be able to subsidize the phone expecting to recover the money with the games, which will, possibly, not run on other devices, despite the Android OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see how it's legal for any company to tell me what I do with my hardware once I purchase it.

That's like selling me bread and telling me I can only use it for bologna sandwiches, and that PB & J is against the rules, especially if I tell someone how to make one.

<comment><USER16> Or someone selling you an operating system and telling you you can only install it on hardware purchased from them. These things are far from uncommon in technology. (I will refrain from mentioning the other example that came to mind because I don't wish to target a specific company to the exclusion of others, since such practices are widespread.)

<comment><USER17> > Or someone selling you an operating system and telling you you can only > install it on hardware purchased from them.

How ridiculous!

Sent from my Macbook Pro

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Like their crappy products and horrible support weren't enough reasons not to buy from Sony.

<comment><USER5> In all fairness, the PS3 is a very good gaming console.

It was also interesting as a number-crunching machine a couple years back. These days, I think even a modest x86 with a cheap GPU can run rings around it for the same kind of money and much less work.</comment></comment>


4 out of the 6 SO most voted questions are common Git issues - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes <comment><USER2> Part of the fault lies with the documentation, and with the way git communicates with the user.

For example when I was learning how to use it I routinely had to Google for many tens of minutes to answer questions such as:

What the fuck is "fast forward" and why is git displaying that message?

What are "refs" and why would I want to update them?

What is HEAD? Why isn't it named something more intuitive?

Etc. Why did I have to Google around for it? Because the documentation didn't actually answer my questions.

It's all compounded by the way the documentation is written: namely, from the perspective of the user who is intricately familiar with how git works. You have to remember the silly and needlessly obtuse names for everything. Why is there no "git-undo-commit"? What the fuck does rebase do? Bisect?

I realized writing this that even though I have undone commits in the past, I don't actually know how to do it. I just Google it every time.

It has the advantageous position of being better for certain workflows than CVS or mercurial perhaps, but frankly git is just not a very good piece of software.

<comment><USER3> The problem to me seem to be that Git is too powerful. It has many features built in and my guess is that the average dev uses a tiny fraction of them.

[https://xkcd.com/1597/](https://xkcd.com/1597/)

The XKCD comic is true, because for most people downloading a fresh copy is far easier than working out how to use git properly.

<comment><USER4> > The problem to me seem to be that Git is too powerful. It has many features > built in and my guess is that the average dev uses a tiny fraction of them.

I don't understand why that is supposed to be considered a problem.

Everyone has their personal itch, and scratching that itch is more than enough to actually do your work.

No one needs to memorize a whole dictionary before getting to speak with someone.

> The XKCD comic is true, because for most people downloading a fresh copy is > far easier than working out how to use git properly.

If a local repository is broken, would it be better to:

a) spend hours trying to debug it, pinpoint the problem, come up with a solution, pray it doesn't affect remote repos

or

b) download another copy?

<comment><USER3> Depends on the circumstances.

Need a fix in the next hour option a)

You are going to be working with a large team on a long term project, no deadlines are immediately pressing option b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What we need is a GUI app for controlling git. Something that lets users drag and drop branches, and click undo, fix merge conflicts, etc, without having to use the command line. It would draw two commit trees, one local, one remote, and the common parts would be in one colour and the differences in another, etc. Basically make it /extremely/ intuitive and remove the need to know the command line.

(Also it can say what it's doing in command-line form, for those who want to learn it and move on from the GUI).

I didn't do an exhaustive search, if such a project exists please point me to it. GitHub's desktop app is a start but it does not fit the bill, same for git gui and gitk.

<comment><USER3> Eclipse / Pydev have at least two of these available (for some reason different project I have use different graphical git plugins).

They are nice for the easy stuff (push, pull, create new branch), but the simplified menu of command means that I don't actually know what git command I am executing if I select some of the options. As a result I stay away from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The git questions are really simple, almost at the level of "how do I hello world in X?"

I think this is more indicative of the level of git adoption than any complexity - and don't get me wrong, git is complex and messy.

I also think git gets a lot of these questions because developers want it to _just work_ , and it doesn't. People who normally happily spend days figuring out a framework but are resistant to understanding the git mental model. Compared to other version control, the 'basics' are an order of magnitude more complex, and without an understanding of the internals, you _will_ have a bad time.

<comment><USER2> A source control tool really ought to _just work_. I want to spend my time doing productive things, and not wrestling with arcane tooling.

<comment><USER3> This exactly what I think when people suggest removing code comments and keeping them in git commit messages instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Git is powerful, but it's a pain in the arse to use. I would rather be concentration on code problems rather than having to work out how to use the tooling. I am sure the majority of developers don't actually need a _distributed_ VCS (Github is popular as a centralized place for it after all).

</comment><comment><USER7> Surely this is an indication of its popularity?</comment>


Ask HN: My app is shared on Twitter every day. What should I do? - <AUTHOR>

I created an app last year that gained some popularity on Hacker News thankfully. I'm in a transition phase. I work full-time and I have a side job I'm finishing up for a client. Soon I can concentrate on building my next version.
My problem is it's shared on Twitter, but it has bugs and it's not good enough to begin marketing yet. I'm learning Swift to build the 2nd version, but I'm not an iOS coder, so the build is slow going. I've had a ton of feedback and I have the design and features of the next version planned.
Should I pursue seed funding? Should I apply to an accelerator? Should I look for a partner to help with coding? I don't have much money, but should I hire someone? I've looked at the analytics and the market segment is pretty clear. It makes me a little nervous to see the social sharing without much real ability to capitalize on it. I'm not sure how long Buffer will keep it in the suggested articles rotation (although it seems like it's been 6 months now). It's shared on Twitter and LinkedIn almost everyday for at least 3 months. I feel like the opportunity is slipping away.
I may be overreacting, but hopefully you can understand my anxiety. You can see the shares by searching Twitter for "rememberwinapp.com". <comment><USER2> Try to fix the bugs. Don't rewrite the app from scratch. Keep updating it and keep momentum.

The other questions are harder and really something you have to figure out for yourself. I can say a partner can help and turning a side project into a business is a ton of work. At the same time don't let fear of missing out force a rash choice and only work with someone you trust and have a track record with.

You have built something people seem to want and that's a great first step.

</comment><comment><USER3> _> it has bugs and it's not good enough to begin marketing yet_

Measure and prioritize the bugs. If you don't know how many people are dealing with them you can't figure out how many you need to fix.

 _> I'm learning Swift to build the 2nd version_

I won't tell you what to do, but software history is full of 2nd versions the morphed into death marches.

tl;dr Figure out the fewest amount of bugs you need to fix to make it work for 80% of your users and then market aggressively. Do not rewrite right now.

<comment><USER4> As someone who rewrote his app in Objective C into Swift, I highly recommend it if you think Swift is rad (I do!) and enjoy substantially improving the quality of your code.

That being said, I highly recommend against it if your primary goal is one of the following:

\- revenues

\- features

\- installs

\- bugfixes

It will take you longer than expected to accomplish very little in terms of meaningful improvements which can be relayed to your customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fix your bugs, etc etc but save all of these mentions to a Twitter list or favorite. Basically capture the interest so you can reach out to them when the app is closer to product market fit.

This is a good problem to have and there's not much you have to do to 'fix' it, just capture interest, improve product, and tell interested parties.

</comment><comment><USER6> Im not an iOS programmer, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you could interop swift code with obj-c. In that case, write new functionality in swift and fix the obj-c with the intention to convert it to swift later down the track. A rewrite would be overkill, just fix and update where appropriate.

Also, if you need someone to port it to Android, feel free to give me a yell :P

</comment><comment><USER7> You do know that maybe 20, 10, or even less than 1% of the people who Buffer'd it actually visited your site and downloaded the app, right? Most people use their suggestions on auto-pilot.

I would be excited if you saw people spontaneously praising it on Twitter, not Buffering it. When i search on Twitter, I only see the automated Buffers, not tweets like "Just found out this app.. love it!" or "Has anyone else used this app?".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for raining on my parade. jk

I know conversions are only a small percentage. Some people are excited and I still receive emails from people. Eyeballs first, conversions second right? My page visits have been growing, and Twitter is a percentage of it.

It's something to build on. My honest take is that people are interested in the idea, but I need to continue working on the product. Execution is important.

<comment><USER7> What's your business model? How do you intend to make money from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to make sure I'm solving the problem before I decide how to make money.

It's useful to several different groups: business teams, coaches, people in the employment space and normal people. I only need to cover rent and other expenses.

There are a few options (in-app purchases, ads, pro account for business teams).

<comment><USER7> Hmm.. The guys at Twitpic were solving a problem and even had an enviable number of users, but never knew how to make money. The ended up closing shop. So I suggest figuring out the money part too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't rewrite it - yet. Keep incrementally improving it. Find your users and engage them - improve it.

n.b., rememberwinapp.com is a pretty cool idea. You can definitely spin it along at least two angles: "life hack" approaches and "better mental health" approaches (work with a professional counselor on this one).

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the same spot with my app (digitaldetachapp.com).

I found an awesome developer overseas, but I'm at a point where I'm not sure how much money I want to put into it. I've decided to slowly keep improving based on customer feedback (I'm self-funding this). It's a great learning experience at the very least.

Here's what I suggest:

1) Fix the bugs and 2.) Consider charging more (I'd probably triple the price if I was you)

It seems like you're delivering quite a bit of value. Don't be afraid to charge more.

<comment><USER10> 2\. Or keep the price unchanged but unlock additional functionality via in-app purchases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey! I remember your app from your HN submission. Glad to see it's working out well for you.

This is tangential and not really an answer to your question, but you should probably work on your icon a little bit. At the moment, it reads to me like "sketchy website companion app". It'll be miles better just by removing the white/azure background and having the goblet a little bigger and by itself. (IMO.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You're probably right about the icon. LOL

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm somewhat biased, but you should consider using a crash monitoring tool like Bugsnag ([https://bugsnag.com](https://bugsnag.com)) to help you find and fix the bugs :)

Have you spent any time working out the total market size for your app? Doing some basic modeling might help you make your decision!

</comment><comment><USER13> Keep updating the app. It's awesome, I already have it installed. I can help you with coding if you need! Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you contact me at info at rememberwinapp dot com?

<comment><USER13> Done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From coaching and positive psychology, it wouldn't surprise me if there are ten more apps just like this one ... Or it's a new market opening up!

Either case, you seem to have an opportunity here. You should start with a business plan! Do not worry about the bugs right now.

An idea for business plan is that you can let people get a kickback for each purchase they referrer. You can start with the ones giving you feedback.

After some sense of market and estimated budget you should hire a freelancer. Not trying to offend you here, but you have been working on this for six month, a freelancer would probable be able to fix the bugs in six hours for $15 an hour or less.

If I was in the phone app business I would probably rip off your idea and have an app out by tomorrow :P

</comment><comment><USER15> First, this is a great problem to have! Enjoy it.

More to the point, is there a business entity that owns the app? If so (or if you can create one), giving some equity to someone in exchange for helping you complete the app (either the current version or the next) is a way to pay without any cash outlay.

Since you're already finding some success in the marketing department I'd think finding someone who'd "invest" in your business in that way would be a possibility.

Last... definitely not accusing you of anything, but I was just musing on the fact that this would make a good marketing campaign: young upstart with too much success and not enough capital -- it's like a cinderella story ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> Congrats on the organic growth! Many app makers can't even _pay_ to see this kind of traction!

Some of these are quick fix questions, others are more life questions. Sure, applying to an accelerator is a great idea, but it is a life commitment you really need to think about. See if you can fix the most noticeable bugs that folks seem to be talking about or ticketing. From there you can start to think more clearly about your goals.

</comment><comment><USER17> Check out Assembly.com as a potential option :)

(this involves releasing under GPL)

<comment><USER18> Is the GPL compatible with distribution on the (Apple) app store these days? I remember that back in 2010 it wasn't, and Apple removed GNU Go from the app store after this was pointed out by the FSF.

<comment><USER19> Apple inserts a additional license on any app that is placed in the app store. If the author do not permit such a thing, then apple would commit copyright infringement if went ahead and still did it.

The GPL license do not allow additional license requirement to be added, so apple would need addtional permission from the author before distributing the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is how startups are unfortunately supposed to feel. The fact it's spreading without you having to do much is a good sign. Just keep going as much as you can and don't worry too much. Easier said than done, but you're on the right track.

You don't have to optimize every part of the project for it to be successful. You're not going to miss out on anything if you don't perfectly execute right now, just focus on getting better a little at a time.

</comment><comment><USER21> How many monthly active users (or even daily) do you have? As far as I'm seeing through Twitter, it's just people sharing the link, but using it?

I'm in a similar situation with [http://petithacks.com](http://petithacks.com) Launched it last september while learning Rails, and got some traffic peaks that bring among 2-3k users/month (but only 100 active - liking, saving stuff).

<comment><AUTHOR> People are sharing it independently. I haven't added my url to any of my own tweets.

I'm pretty sure Buffer suggested stories and LinkedIn Pulse have been a some part in the growth. It's largely being shared within a niche on Twitter. It's a very simple app at moment. I don't have much for in-app analytics.

<comment><USER21> Start tracking who uses the tool, and how they do it. I reached out manually like 40-50 people to ask them (by email) why the were accessing to my site twice per week, what they were looking for. [http://mixpanel.com](http://mixpanel.com) have some free plans that might be helpful for your case.

drop me a line if I can help somehow firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Look for a co founder that has the programming skills you need. If you don't know anyone that's a good fit, apply to an accelerator like YC.

</comment><comment><USER23> Firstly, great idea for an app -- I often tell myself I need to take the time to enjoy the wins but there is always the next thing to move on to. Being reminded of them at a later date makes perfect sense, and I'll download the app to give it a try when I'm next on my ipad.

In terms of advice -- everyone's already said it: don't rewrite now, just fix the important bugs and give it a push.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> I downloaded the app and started using it. I really like it -- I keep a physical notebook for exactly this purpose -- it's a journal of highlights of the day.

I didn't see any issues in my usage -- just fix what you think is wrong -- polish up what you have and work on spreading it (not more features).

</comment><comment><USER25> Getting a technical co-founder might be a really good idea! That co-founder may be able to start sooner than you can. But you should definitely think about cutting bait on work and side project soon if you want to double down.

The fact that you already have market validation is huge! Many startups burn ask their energy and money just getting there.

</comment><comment><USER26> On your app website or store page, mention about the bugs and let people know that you are aware with that. This will give impression that you're still care about the app and hear users' feedback. Also share about your time problem to buy more time before you can fix it.

</comment><comment><USER27> any one with usa local banks and equity account platinum card > hacking school grades am hacker i leave in texas i can hack anything > for you load money to your bank account when i load money to your > bank account no upfront fee i do it we share it 5050 i need accounts > likes old boa welsfargo usaa navy credit union local banks equity > and a lots if you got university grades to hacks to clears criminal > records to breaks any data you hire me for that one i travel to your > place to do it asap for you or i do it here email me if u need good > hacker email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER28> Fix whatever bugs you can now. To make lots of downloads sustainable you have to be able to hold whatever rankings you achieve. Otherwise this will be a peak and you will be trying to fix the fall while you try to do anything else.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why not apply for YC summer batch and see how far it gets you.

Btw: just bought a copy of your app.

</comment><comment><USER30> OMG I want an Android version of this SO BAD. Maybe I'll build it... Don't worry, if I do it'll be for personal use, I obviously wouldn't release it and screw you over.

<comment><USER31> This is where I like the idea of just creating things like this as a website. Then stuff a thin layer on IOS and Android for those who care about it being an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would like to say that this app looks sweet, and that I hope to see an Android version (I've been periodically checking the webpage for updates).

Keep up the momentum!

</comment><comment><USER33> Ideally you'll be able to fix bugs and handle the growth as it comes.

Is your app free?

</comment><comment><USER34> Would someone care to explain what the hell Buffer is?

<comment><AUTHOR> Buffer (bufferapp.com) sends your tweets on a schedule so that you don't have to manually tweet them.

They also suggest tweets for you when your queue runs empty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> i can help with the coding

</comment><comment><USER36> Release it under GPL if you can, put it on github or bitbucket, document the bugs as "issues," focus on fixing show stoppers and high-visibility user complaints, don't worry too much about it (all these apps are buggy, we just don't like show stoppers), ask for donations and for volunteer drive-by coders.

<comment><USER37> This is a bad idea. You have to have a plan if you have a for-profit open source product. You need to give contributors something so they don't feel like they're being taken advantage of. It's complicated. It isn't as easy as just open sourcing it and asking for contributions.

<comment><USER36> > You have to have a plan if

This is a moot argument. Of course s/he has to have a plan if s/he wants to be in business. What was asked was suggestions, not detailed strategy deliverables.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you answer technical questions in interviews? - <AUTHOR> As a recent graduate, I've interviewed (for front-end positions) with a fair number of companies, though I have not gotten any offers. I have done a couple mock interviews and I realized that the format in which I answer technical questions is really scattered and leaves the interviewer with a sense of doubt, even though I know what the right answer is!<p>The types of questions are usually specific and almost rapid-fire. For example, the interviewer will ask me a gamut of HTML, CSS, and Javascript questions. I'm looking for a format that I can answer these questions (similar to the STAR method in behavioral questions).<p>"Explain the difference between absolute and relative positions in CSS"<p>"Explain what promises are in JS"<p>"Describe how client-side rendering works"<p>"Describe what the 'clear' property does in CSS"<p>"How would you go about writing your own HTML templating language?" <comment><USER2> From what I've been through, it's not about your answer, it's _how_ you answer them.

\- Being able to answer immediately means you have a good background on what the matteris.

\- Being able to wait for the question to finish before answering means you are not a "hit-the-ground-running" kind of person, and you wait for full detail before resolving the issue.

\- Knowing or not knowing the answer to the question is just half the story. The other half is how you deliver your response. A critical skill needed is to respond sensibly, especially on project estimates. It's normal to face unknown technology and learn as you go.

\- General knowledge is preferable. Specialization is good, but you will be under the microscope if you aren't capable of being moved to say, another language or technology.

\- Confidence. Seriously, I've seen friends pass interviews like it was a walk in the park - and they don't even know what they were talking about.

\- Interview is just to know what you are on the surface. Companies will tend to take you in and test you out for a few months. That's where the real challenge is. Do your best there.

My advice to you: Do some light reading, and work on your communication skills (though knowledge _is_ preferrable).

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's how I would answer these, and how I would expect a candidate to answer them:

Absolute positioning defines the placement of an object based on the boundaries of its parent. Relative positioning defines placement as an offset from where the object would have appeared in the normal document flow.

Promises are a way to handle asynchronous events...you can define now what you want to happen in the future when an expected condition is met in a way that is cleaner than nested callbacks.

Client side rendering inserts data into templates and pieces them together in the browser using Javascript rather than generating html on the server and sending the rendered page.

Clear specifies whether other objects can float next to the current object or whether they have to go below it.

Html templating is best left to the professionals. I doubt I could do better than one of the popular open source ones.

Source: I am a director of engineering

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you byoung2 for your answer!

Although those are the correct answers, I was looking for a format to answer these. I guess I'm really scattered brain in terms of answering open-ended questions.

<comment><USER3> I guess there is no set format, just answer concisely and confidently. If you don't know something, say so, like I did with the last question. The last 5 job hunts I did I got the job after interviewing with only one company.</comment></comment></comment>


How Microsoft Can Fix The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://browserfame.com/758/micorosft-can-fix-internet-ie10-update

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is aggressively promoting upgrade to Windows 8, even for XP users. If that works out, and with the added effect of replacement of old computers for new ones, the number of users unable to run IE 10 in, say, a year, should be much smaller.</comment>


Paul Graham Is Wrong: Or Where to Find the Best "Bad Idea" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@snootymonkey/paul-graham-is-wrong-411fe084a7da

<comment><USER2> What are some examples of startups that failed because the idea was indeed "too-good-to-be-true"?

<comment><USER3> If you expand your question to, "what are some examples of startups that haven't [yet] succeeded because their premise is too good to be true", you get lots:

fusion

household robots

molecular nanotech

strong AI

world peace

elimination of poverty

Small plug: my side project's vision is in that category, I think (AutoMicroFarm). But I'm working hard to merge the current reality of the prototype with the vision.</comment></comment>


Data At GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1112-data-at-github

<comment><USER2> As a preview, here's a quick spreadsheet I pulled with a few stats for month of April (via BigQuery): <http://bit.ly/github-bigquery>

\- 5.8M events in April

\- Most popular languages? Javascript, Java and Ruby.

\- Most popular new repo? Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II

\- Most watched repo? meteor

If you want, you can also access the raw archives, see instructions on githubarchive.org

<comment><USER3> Can't seem to get the demo project and query to return anything...</comment></comment>


Jack Daniel's Sends the Most Polite Cease-and-Desist Letter Ever - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2012/07/22/jack-daniels-trademark-letter/

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually this has already been discussed here[1], sorry.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277485></comment>


'Acting Wife': Marriage Market Incentives and Labor Market Investments - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/papers/w23043 <comment><USER2> The funny thing is, I preferred ambitious women, especially when contemplating marriage.

It seems easier to get along with someone who has a career and therefore similar goals and troubles and life-rhythm.

And a wife with a career is less likely to look for long term alimony in the event of a divorce.

<comment><USER3> The fact that a woman can look for alimony shows that system is broken.

<comment><USER4> Alimony comes after divorce. I am questioning the validity of something that comes even before that..marriage. I have often questioned the usefulness of marriage in the modern world. What is its function other than the religious aspect of it? There is certainly no moral clause to it..fidelity doesn't have anything to do with a piece of legal paper. Does the state benefit by validating and continuing to reward what is essentially was born as a religious contract between two people. Personally..I think a lot of issues from gender inequality to lgbt inequalities can be resolved if the artificial social contract of 'marriage' loses its validation from courts and the state.

<comment><USER5> Arguably one of the benefits of marriage lies expressly in the expense of divorce. It's a way of precommitting people to working through the rough patches in a marriage instead of splitting at the first sign of trouble. If you look at it strictly from a game theoretic viewpoint, there's definitely value in having a contracted cost of separation. The tough part is in making sure this cost isn't too high (as it used to be) nor too low (that people run immediately).

<comment><USER4> The social benefit of staying together instead of splitting up at the first sign of trouble is to raise progeny together as a bonded pair.

Birds do this better than human beings and that's why they are usually bond for life. It is expensive to raise offsprings and it is not worth expending energy to gather resources to raising offsprings that aren't your own.

So..from a game theory point of view..it is not about divorces or alimony but the ability or inclination(or lack thereof) to be monogamous.

Earliest mention of alimony occurs in the code of Hammurabi..wherein a man shall return the dowry of the woman along with a portion of his property ..but only when the woman has borne his offsprings. And until the children have been reared and the property/monies split evenly amongst mother and children, she cannot seek another suitor or marital partner or have other children.

Alimony comes from necessity ..it is necessary in a society that is rife with inequalities. If men and women were equal in a marriage, there would be no need for alimony.

In the olden days, a woman entered a marriage with a dowry. In gold or currency or property. The dowry was meant to be her financial nest egg and the man has no rights over it. Entire dynasties and kingdoms were based on marriages and dowries.

And then it was the time of churches to decree what is moral and what wasn't. Divorces were all initially only due to infidelity and often by the man. Alimony became a safeguard so a man wouldn't profit from his philandering ways. If the fault lies with the woman, the woman forfeits the right to collect alimony.

With no fault divorces in our modern times, alimony became part of the divorce settlement. If we don't have divorces, there won't be alimonies..if we don't have a marriages, there won't be divorces.

Therefore, the only way eliminate gender inequalities is to eliminate the institution of marriage.

Times have changed. What if..as a thought experiment, we revamp all manners of social contracts. We will have to reconsider the basic human right to procreate to perpetuate the species. It should become a responsibility and a privilege to be earned..not a birthright to be exercised by all. And also eliminate the institution of marriage.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER5> I didn't mention alimony at all in my comment and would rather not delve into it, so I'm not sure why you fixated on it. Divorce can be costly even without any sort of alimony (personally, I think it is mostly an outdated concept).

That being said, while I agree that historically marriage was all about children I do think there are social benefits to bonded pairs which extend beyond raising children. For example, single people are more likely to commit crimes.

<comment><USER4> Sorry...so what is 'expense of divorce' that you mentioned in your original comment? How else is it 'costly'?

<comment><USER5> The legal fees alone can be a lot, as can splitting assets even if there is no ongoing alimony.

<comment><USER4> I see. Well..the reason I spoke of alimony was because we were speaking of alimony in the thread before your comment contribution to it. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Full Text PDF: [http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pallais/files/acting_wife.p...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pallais/files/acting_wife.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't have access to the full paper, but I'm surprised to see that there's no definition of "ambitious." Is it ambitious to want to start a company or to want to raise children successfully? Perhaps women have a different definition of "ambitious", therefore men are trying to hold up women to their standard.

<comment><USER8> It is self-reported and relative to others.

> "The questionnaire asks how often students are willing to travel for work, > the number of hours per week they are willing to work, and their desired > compensation. They were also asked to rate their ambition relative to their > most recent work colleagues and their tendency to lead in day-to-day > interactions on a 1-to-5 scale."

<comment><USER9> So it's about ambitions in the workplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Women have been trained to be a timid, subservient partner to men for a millennia, and it's hard to get away from. The answer is the same for women and men: know your value, constantly strive to improve your value, and command that you get paid your value. Also, know your interaction with business is just that, business. Be more willing to cut a business relationship than a personal one. Don't blame yourself if someone doesn't see your value, just find someone who does.

Disclosure: My wife is also a programmer.

<comment><USER11> I'd say that the "timid, subservient" bit is mostly an illusion and male fantasy ;) It is true that women, in many cultures, were trained to focus on family and reproduction. And men were encouraged to "do great things". And to die in wars :(

Maybe there's some biological basis for that. But mostly, I think, it was just historical accident. Driven by technological limitations, perhaps. And for sure, it's all in flux now :)

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's a male fantasy. I also don't think it's biological. Just look at how women and men are socialized from a young age.

Example: up until recently, many young girls in the west grew up on Disney princesses. Rewatch the movies, and pay attention to the female protagonists in those movies being active vs passive agents. Most are passive -- they're simply dealt a series of events (which generally happen only because they are beautiful or otherwise intrinsically valuable, not because of how they act).

Being exposed to those narratives from a __very __young age surely has an effect on identity, personality formation, etc.

<comment><USER10> Not only that, but her mother was brought up that way, and her mother, and her mother, etc. The Civil War in the US broke that mold without a doubt, as certainly did WWII, but the people who make the rules and make the propaganda love inertia and keep trying to push women back into that traditional role, even though it is unhealthy in today's knowledge economy.

<comment><USER13> _unhealthy in today 's knowledge economy_

As I say above, it depends what you are optimising for. Not that long ago, a typical single-income household could afford a house, a car, a couple of vacations a year and to send the kids to college and to save some. Now a typical dual-income household is struggling to make ends meet. I don't have any strong feelings either way on whether the man or the woman should be the breadwinner; that's up to each individual couple to decide between them. But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.

<comment><USER10> >But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.

It's already the norm and has been for quite a while now. I'm specifically speaking on women getting paid their value. I mean if both partners have to work 40s, then might as well maximize profit on that labor.

<comment><USER14> It may be the "norm," but their point was whether the dual earner approach is optimal. I.e., whether it "should" be the norm. Truth is dual earner started as a way to try and vastly increase the household income. Unfortunately all it did was double the supply of labor and drive down real wages. This isn't a gendered argument. We would all likely be better off if every couple chose one of them to work the 9 to 5, and the other one to manage the home and finances (and pursue side ventures). If this happened we'd hope to see real wages increase for those left in the labor market. To some degree we're already seeing this. Labor participation among males is at its lowest point in decades and still falling. Though it's still early days so real wages haven't yet increased to compensate. Unfortunately this may not happen because corporate America is used to plentiful cheap labor, and as the labor supply diminishes they're pursuing automation strategies. In other words, corporate America has options for adjusting to the ebbs and flows of labor supply which they used to lack.

Even now the dual earner household exists because many people believe it improves their lifestyle. But let's be honest, most people wouldn't want to work if they didn't have to. Sure, in the absence of the need to make a paycheck they'd likely still do productive, valuable activities, but very few like to work for corporate America. Most jobs suck. Most managers suck. Most of the time pay sucks. Having a job isn't (or shouldn't be) special for either gender, it's a necessity to whatever point it takes to keep a roof over your head.

Maybe when the robots take all our jobs we'll finally find a better way of living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You'd probably get different answers if you didn't study MBA students.

<comment><USER16> I think the assumption is that MBA students are more ambitious than normal. Students often choose the MBA degree because they are unsure what they really want to do. An MBA is seen as a generally useful degree which could lead to a high paying job in many different fields. Limiting the study to students who had made that choice, for whatever reason, could very well have an effect on the study's outcome.

<comment><USER15> So why not study medical students? You'd get vastly different responses.

<comment><USER16> Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my experience, it is deathly hard to meet ambitious women. I've known many ambitious men, but women in my experience seem to lack the desire to really go all out in their careers.

I am sure there are biological factors, including variations in androgenic hormones etc. But I do believe it is largely cultural and this study matches what I've seen in my own life quite closely.

This is unfortunate because I am attracted to more ambitious women.

<comment><USER18> I had a direct report for years. She was very smart, capable, effective, and a great thinking partner on my leadership team. She also got an unfair (IMO) amount of blowback from her interactions with other leaders.

"Rough", "abrasive", "difficult" were the common labels. While there were things she may have done differently, I don't think I'd have seen the same blowback from an identically-acting male leader. I suspect that her experience is common and that if it's gender biased (I think it is), this continual molding could tend to create the outcomes you observe.

Thought experiment: How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy" as compared to how often we say that to young boys?

Or "Imagine that you just heard a mom tell her kid, 'Don't be so bossy!' What gender is the child that she is addressing?"

<comment><USER19> > How often do we tell young girls "Don't be so bossy"

I can't say, but every time I wind up watching a children's show targeted at girls (usually in a lobby or exercise room), the protagonists are all highly assertive and there's often heavy-handed promotion of the subtext "boys are dumb and useless and it's OK to be a complete asshole to them if it gets you what you want."

<comment><USER18> If you saw the exact same content in a show you perceived to be targeted at boys, how certain are you that you'd think the same subtext existed with the gender roles reversed?

<comment><USER19> When was the last time you saw a children's TV show endorse violence towards women? It was only a few month ago, in a hotel exercise room, that I saw a non-self-defense kick-to-the-balls presented in a positive light (giggles from the protagonists, affirming + explictly gendered statement from the narrator). I was upset, but not shocked, because I've seen it before.

Hopefully it's just part of the natural swing towards over-correction and it'll all settle out in another few decades, but a corresponding overcorrection in corporate policy could get ugly. Psychopaths do well enough in the corporate environment as it is.

<comment><USER4> I have a friend who mentioned his 'kick in the balls' theory..it goes something like ..every chick flick will have a 'kick in the balls'(literally) slap stick scene because it is cathartic to women and that Hollywood knows that and will cater to that unconscious trigger for laughs. I started looking for it in movies after that and I have to admit that it's true that there would be at least one hurt male genitalia routine. Remarkable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am going to guess that there aren't any women in this thread..

<comment><USER20> Try reading it to find out next time instead of just popping in with a mindless comment. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13681690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13681690)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> i think down grading your worth is negative in the partner market. and that is why they are single. or that they rated themself acording to social rank to not piss off their class mates.</comment>


PostgreSQL 8.3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.918

<comment><USER2> While I have enjoyed Postgres's reliability, the clients (for OSX) have left me feeling empty.

A majority of the time I just want to see the tables. When using pgAdmin3, I am forced to expand Servers->Local Server->Databases-><the desired database>->Schema->Public->Tables

And then when I finally get to the table I want, if I double click it, it brings up the properties for the table? Huh?

So I figure out I must click the table icon on the toolbar to bring up the table. Instead of bringing up the data within the same pane, it pops up a second window? Grrr....

While the tool gets the job done, I'm starting to miss MySQL just for the sake of having CocoaMySQL at my side.

<comment><USER3> Why not just use psql and '\d my_table'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who else here besides me is using PostgreSQL for a public web site?

<http://ourdoings.com/>

<comment><USER5> We are.

<http://www.massify.com>

<comment><USER6> <http://www.centraldesktop.com> uses PostgreSQL

</comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Sloan School of Management at MIT uses PostgreSQL for their "dotLRN" based system... <http://dotlrn.org>

Harvard's Leadership for a Networked World uses PG - <http://lnwprogram.org>

DIYPlanner.com uses Drupal/PG - <http://diyplanner.com>

PowerfulIntentions.com (lots of forums, separate user pages, etc. all dynamically generated from PG database) - <http://www.powerfulintentions.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking over the XML datatye [1], at first it doesn't seem that this would be very useful.. It doesn't seem to index the XML, only store it in a string-like manner..

But when I look at the XML functions [2], I can start to see where the real value is. In Chron X, we're storing vast sums of XML in SQL as strings, so being able to parse it per-element and pull them could be very helpful.

[1]<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/datatype-xml.html>

[2]<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/functions-xml.html>

<comment><USER8> It doesn't index the XML because it also doesn't provide any comparison methods for XML. Largely because string comparisons on XML tend to be less than useful, I think.

<comment><USER9> Although you can't index xml columns directly, you can define functional indexes over them. As long as you are careful to use the same function in your where clauses the index can be used.

Here's an example taken from Nikolay Samokhvalov's XML Support in PostgreSQL paper[1].

      CREATE INDEX i_table1_xdata ON table1
      USING btree( xpath_array(xdata, '//person/@name') );

[1] - [http://www.pgcon.org/2007/schedule/attachments/16-xml_in_pos...](http://www.pgcon.org/2007/schedule/attachments/16-xml_in_postgresql.ps)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always been a fan of PostgreSQL. The one bit that appealed to me was its erstwhile ability to 'shard', or partition data across tables.

[http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2006/11/04/postgres-for- the...](http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2006/11/04/postgres-for-the-win/)

Any comments?

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately the current PostgreSQL optimizer/executor doesn't do as much as it could when joining records from subtables partitioned with inherits clauses.

If you have a query with a predicate that can be pushed down to a subtable index then you're probably ok. However if you are doing something more intensive like an unqualified aggregation then you'll be in for a disappointment since the executor doesn't know how to preserve ordering when it scans the subtables. It will always give you a hash join or a merge join involving an intermediate sort even when the sort could be avoided by using an index scan of the subtables with something like a priority queue.

This can be worked around by doing your own incremental aggregations over the subtables and combining them, but it's a little bit of a pain.</comment></comment>


Rate my startup: GPU.NET - GPU computing on .NET, from TidePowerd - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN! We've just announced v2.0 of our MVP ("GPU.NET"), which aims to make GPU computing as simple and easy as possible by allowing you to write GPU-accelerated code in C#. Think of us as the managed equivalent of CUDA or OpenCL.
Our target market consists of two major segments: industries/companies who write a lot of numerical or computationally-intensive code in C#, as well as those currently writing GPU-based code in CUDA or OpenCL who may want a better way to integrate with .NET.
Any constructive feedback you'd like to offer (related to either GPU.NET or our business model) will be much appreciated.
We're also looking for interesting new example projects; if you put together a cool project, submit a pull request to us on GitHub (or alternately, email us at firstname.lastname@example.com).
Check out our existing example projects at http://github.com/tidepowerd/GPU.NET-Example-Projects
Thanks! -Jack
http://www.tidepowerd.com <comment><USER2> Linkfied versions of the above: <http://github.com/tidepowerd/GPU.NET-Example- Projects> <http://www.tidepowerd.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> who writes computationally intensive code in c#? on what market research is this based on? also does it run on linux? i'm asking because in hpc some prototyping is done on win pcs, production code is almost always on linux nodes. so, why .net?

<comment><USER4> I've built a physics engine in C# called Farseer Physics Engine. Believe it or not, but it is acutally faster than the original C++ code it is based on. I did a benchmark on physics engines (based on Box2d) in Java, C# and C++: [http://ianqvist.blogspot.com/2010/12/benchmarking- box2d-base...](http://ianqvist.blogspot.com/2010/12/benchmarking-box2d-based- physics.html)

<comment><USER5> so... you rewrote something and it's now faster? i applaud the outcome, but i'm not sure it necessarily implies that the VM is better than other VMs or native...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is interesting, if only because I've heard a lot of talk from C/C++ developers who believe that by compiling to native code their programs will _always_ be faster than the equivalent C# code running on the .NET CLR. It's nice to have some data points to debunk that theory.

<comment><USER5> I've always heard that VMs can do JIT optimization that may be hard to get to with native, and for the most part I've never heard of the .NET CLR being any better than any other, except for perhaps the LLVM which is _better_ , for reasons specific to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Value of Circular Definitions: stats & graphs on structure of human language - <AUTHOR> http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevX.2.031018

<comment><AUTHOR> Original paper (free): <http://prx.aps.org/pdf/PRX/v2/i3/e031018>

A talk by the authors: <http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/tlusty/talks/Loops2012.pdf>

Some discussions in forums suggest some possible relation with other self- referential constructs in math such as recursive functions, logical paradoxes, Godel incompleteness, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on potential alternative tools for managing supplier SKU data - <AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I've uhm'd and err'd about asking this here for a year or so, but as it's Friday evening here I'm seizing what's left of the day.
Background: For a new project, I am a reseller of items from a single supplier. Said supplier provides a ~25,000 line Excel sheet with SKU info on a sporadic basis. The number of available SKUs goes up and down. The Excel sheet is valid until a newer one supersedes it.
I currently take the supplied Excel workbook, keep it native Excel and run various calculations, transformations and formulae across it to make suitable input CSVs for Magento Community Edition, eBay and Amazon.
My issue is that the spreadsheet has passed 100MB and the quantity of calculations is making it unwieldy and difficult. File -> Save takes close to 90 seconds (i7 4790K, 32GB RAM, Excel 2016), and Excel is unusable during this time.
I'm using Excel because a) the source material and and CSV output for the various platforms are easily made from it and b) I know Excel pretty well. This thing has morphed into a catch-all tool for what I do, and I fear Stockholm Syndrome is creeping in. It's portable at the moment, rather than being spread across 5 different workbooks
My question: what should I consider for alternatives? I am coming to a point where I can afford the time to learn a new thing, should that be more appropriate.
If Excel is the answer, that's absolutely fine, too -- your advice and feedback is very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance, and happy weekend to you.
Edit: macOS is my primary platform, I have a recent-ish i5 ready to go with Windows, Linux or something else Intel-y. <comment><USER2> You are looking for Product Information Manager (PIM) software.

See Akeneo, open source and play nicely with Magento and others

[https://www.akeneo.com/](https://www.akeneo.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect -- thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> might want to look at MS Access and or sqlite.

You can import into a table then transform/insert into another export table

[https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/d5432b8e-08f6...](https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/d5432b8e-08f6-4b6a-b13d-fc7656970704/export-an-access-table-to-a-csv- file?forum=isvvba)

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you seen [http://cobby.io/](http://cobby.io/) yet?</comment>


Programming as Theory Building (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/onlurking/fc5c81d18cfce9ff81bc968a7f342fb1 <comment><USER3> The topic of how we as developers implement solutions in code has been on my mind for years.

The one insightful idea I found in this essay is that coding is a lossy one- way operation, from which you cannot fully derive the original idea or the 'theory'. That seems similar to losing information when compiling source code, making it impossible to restore the exact source code from its machine code representation.

So if we work backwards, it's: machine code (bits) -> source code (text) -> idea/solution (human thought?)

Despite losing some information, machine and source code have interesting properties, such as being able to copy them easily, transpile to different format, etc.

What I'd like to ask the HN brain is if anyone can think of another way to express a higher level thought other than language? In his essay, Naur implies that there is no such thing. I wonder if we had made any progress on that front in the 35 years that have elapsed since this essay was written.

The only thing I can think of is something like UML, which has tons of diagram types for structural and behavioral properties of a system, but I've always found it hard to 'see' the real idea they're trying to describe, in the same way how I find it hard to imagine a 4D object by looking at its 3D projections. With enough effort its certainly doable, but I wouldn't say the process is intuitive or easy, so to me, diagrams are like projections of an idea from different points of view, but how do we encode the idea/thought/theory itself?

What is it about language and apprenticeship that makes conveying ideas or theories possible? I view this process as an inefficient way of serializing an idea and transmitting it over voice to another person, who has to unserialize the sounds, convert them to words, then they have to create the associations in their brain based on the meaning of those words, and then probe into the correctness of the associations by asking clarifying questions.

Is this really the best we can do in 2020? How are other fields conveying complex abstract notions and ideas?

<comment><USER4> You're butting your head against the fundamental paradox of communication: in order to communicate an idea that's in your head to somebody else, you have to encode it in a way that the other person will recognise and decode; that is, you need to already have some shared context. However, if you have a _new_ idea then by definition it can't be part of the shared context, so it can't be communicated.

We get around this by invoking combinations of existing ideas and hoping that the recipient puts them together in more or less the right way: we might say "a leopard sits in the tree to your left", invoking the existing ideas "leopard", "tree", "to your left" and "sits", which can be combined in the obvious way. UML, musical notation, mathematics... all these are variations on "language" in the sense that they have a vocabulary of existing ideas, and a grammar of natural ways to combine them, and so you can bootstrap ideas in another person's brain by giving them pieces they already know and hoping they can assemble the idea correctly.

Language is messy and non-portable and unreliable, and it is exactly those properties which allow it to convey novel ideas from one person to another.

<comment><USER5> We get "around" this by ostentation: words in a spoken (natural) language _refer_ to the world.

I point to examples of trees and say "tree", etc.

"New" ideas are acquired by example -- language is not a closed system.

<comment><USER6> Which is harder than it sounds if you are trying to do it from scratch. Even pointing is a part of language, and trying to convey that concept is far from trivial. I think a big part of language learning in children involve the child seeing other people react to language and imitates. E.g., father points and mother gaze in the direction of finger, child follows mother's gaze.

<comment><USER7> To further this idea, dogs intuit the meanings of commands, some more easily than others, but teaching a dog to understand a human pointing at something is hard. My own dogs seem to interpret it as "just keep looking"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "If you lose the people, you lose the program."

I had a protracted, bitter struggle with this at one job. We had a business process, really in the top two of business processes, that was neglected as it was critical. When I was new to that role, I said, "We should rewrite this. This is scattered across multiple servers, the code has almost no comments (in the places where we still _had_ source code), and more importantly, people were leaving."

One of the original programmers had died. People responsible for the _why_ of certain decisions were retiring or leaving. And so on and so forth. I used to joke that our process was documented in C, except for the places it was bash, or borrowed Powershell, or ... Like an evolved process, instead of problems being solved, later systems were added to correct issues, only epicycles, even as the bus factor continued to decrement every so often.

I still have a low level of sour antipathy when I think of it, that my efforts to "do the right thing" came to nothing.

It's a shame. When I had a freer hand to work as I liked, systems I built could detect, in a limited fashion, when the world had changed, that is, if the theory of the world was wrong. If the vendor changed some critical portion of the database, the program would identify the new column or the missing table, then loudly expire after issuing its complaint.

This understanding of the slice of the world a program must interact with is so critical and worse yet, fragile, subject to both breakage and decay.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, much of this paper resonates around the knowledge we need to build a system, lot of this is like the understanding of business rules, is the context we need to build a working software in the first place.

The problem is that knowledge is mostly "tacit", and tends to grow as the software evolves. For example, several development tasks are normally completed not only based on the documented user stories, but they also carry the context from meetings or discussions that aren't documented.

When you lose the original authors of the program, it becomes very difficult to rebuild the necessary context to understand how the system works - <USER2> like adding new features or modifying existing behavior becomes very hard. Also in the "The Metaphor as a Theory" part, much of the work is a shared knowledge between the developers, when you have several programmers working in parallel as fast as they can, the design of the program can become highly incoherent.

Nowdays we have practices like testing which could be a really helpful companion when it comes to understanding how the system works and the expected behavior of it's parts, which can be treated as a documentation, also we have code reviews that can guarantee that any addition to the system is consistent according to the system's design if is done right.

But still, this dependency of the context it's a very hard problem to resolve.

<comment><USER9> > The problem is that knowledge is mostly "tacit", and tends to grow as the > software evolves

Totally agreed. I agree that the missing codification is the context that was needed at the genesis of the program -- the context necessary to understand it holistically.

Seems to me a valid way of understanding this problem is that there is a missing piece of documentation. It's generally well documented where/what the starting point product/business idea is as well as where/what the end point code is, but how point B was derived from point A is oftentimes not well documented. This method of derivation highly informs the structure of the result, and is a lossy conversion. It can be thought of as the "spirit" of a program/an org's engineering department (what happens in between the product ideas you can see going in and the lines of code output you can see coming out).

If that part, and the methods and techniques by which an org maps and translates an idea from the domain of business into the domain of code, is codified and documented and evolved alongside the programs the org produces then it may help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this could be applied to all spheres of human knowledge.

We have books written in languages we don't understand. There _has_ to be shared context beneath all forms of communication and communication itself can be seen as CRUD operations of the layered cake of shared contexts/stories/narratives/ideas that have dependencies between them.

Study of CRUD operations and interactions between the layers and what the various types are and what common dependencies occur and when would be a very fruitful field of psychology, if not perhaps some AI modelling - I don't know if there already is a psychological model along these lines.

For example when you haven't seen a friend for a long time and you reconnect, if your life experiences haven't updated or deleted large parts of your shared context, you'll fall right back into the groove.

It does make me wonder if there needs to be an update of the shared context country or even world-wide to make people feel a sense of community again. We've done away with religion and the many community bonding experiences that it offered. We've tried the 'get rich or die tryin' context and I don't think it has been fulfilling for the majority of the beta testers :)

Time to try something else, perhaps with a little more thought and rigor put into it?

</comment><comment><USER11> This concept evokes many familiar memories of reading other people's code, which is always extremely hard. I feel multiple ways about this concept. On the one hand, I believe programs can be sectionally reduced to a inputs, outputs, and a sequence of states in between, and a programmer can understand those things well enough to extend an existing programmer competently in many cases. It must be true, because it does happen.

On the other hand, while a programmer can learn from source and documentation the wheres, whens, and whats of the program, there is always the remaining question of "Why?", which is central to this discussion. Here, I think good high-level examples of usage tend to do a good job of covering the inputs and outputs. But with regard to all of the intermediary states of the program... there is too much detail there to really document it. Those details evolve as an evolution more than a design. There is code added, then replaced or omitted entirely. Things are designed which work, but then are restructured for performance, organization, or to eliminate repetition. In these cases, there is information that is manifested in the _absence_ of code, and the second rendering of the code better captures its function, but obscures its evolutionary history.

Here's something I've been consuming lately: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbpMiKiSKm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbpMiKiSKm8)

This game programmer (Sebastian Lague, who is excellent, by the way) walks through the development of procedural terrain generation in Unity. What's fascinating to me is the way he does it does this really effective job of "theory building". Things are implemented; results are observed; some code is deleted altogether that was only ever present to allow building up to that illustration, but will no longer be necessary at the next stage of evolution.

This is the way programmers work. Information is lost. If you weren't there to experience it at inception, only a great imagination and testing can replace it--at which point, you may find yourself actually rewriting the code, using existing code as a reference.

<comment><USER12> So if reading code means reconstructing a theory, that could explain why we have so much NIH.

<comment><USER11> NIH?

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Peter Naur is one of the unsung(?) giants of software. His name _should_ be instantly recognizable.

This is perhaps the best paper ever to explain the nature of collaborative program development and maintenance.

If I had a company I would make this mandatory reading for everybody - everybody, not just programmers.

<comment><USER15> I am currently leading a topic group at work on code documentation in AI development. I was already planning to skip the lists of dos and don'ts, as well as the usual best practice language, but maybe I should just refer everyone to this gist and Naur ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > A program is a shared mental construct (he uses the word theory) that lives > in the minds of the people who work on it.

Absolutely. The plain English definition for the word "program" that Google shows is (noun) "a set of related measures or activities with a particular long-term aim", (verb) "arrange according to a plan or schedule".

A software program fulfills a certain set of behaviors, serves a certain purpose, is a materialization of an idea, or otherwise is a transcription of something from a certain domain into the domain of software. The "source of truth" of what that something is is external from the program.

The knowledge domain of a programmer is therefore not only both their code and the idea it represents but the mapping in between. Both ends are easily documentable (in the narrow context of their specific domains), and it feels like this could have led to a possible convolution of what it takes to be a good programmer.

We have endless measures, philosophies, and codifications for what makes for good form when drawing back the bowstring, what release techniques make for the least disturbance to the arrow's path, what arrow shape makes for the most optimal flight, etc, but less for an archer's aiming technique. All we can do is just look to see if the target's been hit or not.

How an org "aims" the "arrow" of code towards the business target is a higher level concern than how awesome the arrow shot is or how straight it flies. If you're not controlling how you aim you lack the context to fully qualify your assessment of how arrow choice, pull/release form, or even flight path affected your result.

Codifying not only how your org builds product ideas and how it implements software, but how your org maps from one domain to the other helps mitigate knowledge siloing.

</comment><comment><USER16> This makes sense to me. I think it's really important to be able to predict what the software will do under certain circumstances. You can do that only if you have a pretty good concept of the thinking behind the code. I usually get nervous when something doesn't behave as expected because it indicates that there is a mismatch between the theory and its implementation.

This would explain why a lot of corporate software isn't good. There is no shared understanding and a lot of people make changes without understanding the big picture.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related discussions on HN:

10 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20487652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20487652)

2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833278)

5 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491661)

</comment><comment><USER18> I only read the abstract (first paragraph), so maybe I'm way off base here. I'm about to go to bed and want to bang this out:

I think it's three pieces that need to come together. The source, the system it's running on, and the user. You don't necessarily need all 3

1\. If you only have the user and the source but not the system then you're screwed. I could print out the entire FreeBSD source and docs, go back in time to 1820 and it would be pretty much useless since I need a C compiler and a million transistors, power supply and a bunch of other stuff. Obviously this is an extreme example, since most of the time you'd just have a slightly incomplete system (e.g. crappy build scripts but you know they built it on a unix system 2 years ago) so it's usually workable

2\. If it's the user and the system then that's basically proprietary software. You can reverse engineer the source. Tedious but doable

3\. If it's the source and the system, then you might be able to get a new user study both and understand everything again. Depends on the complexity of the source/system and the docs.

I think of it as an organism, like it can be damaged and heal itself. There is redundancy between these 3 axes. Depending the circumstances, you can heal it or it might be permanently damaged

</comment><comment><USER19> The basic notion of program as theory fits into what I personally stumbled upon recently on my own. Notably, expanding on it, I like to see every execution of a program as an _Experiment_ \- in that it may support or invalidate the _Theory_ (by manifesting bugs/undesired behaviors). I'm happy to see I'm not the first one to think of this idea. However, I am not necessarily convinced by the main claim the article seems to make based on it, that the Theory cannot be resurrected from the code of the program + documentation. I think it may be very hard, and depend a lot on many factors (quality of code, docs, the resurrecting team, their time, and as suggested, access to the domain where the program is used), but it may still be possible to a huge extent. I believe some sentences used by the author actually provide hints in support of this claim. Also, in other sciences like math or physics, albeit not easily, knowledge/theory transfer through writing can be done, or at least helped significantly.

</comment><comment><USER12> > the primary aim of programming is to have the programmers build a theory

I don't agree with that statement, but I don't think the primary aim is to produce a program either.

I believe the primary aim is to enable users to use a program. For that they need a mental model. Maintaining a consistent and simple theory among developers is a means to that end.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I think it explains very well why software developed by large IT companies¹ that puts developers after developers for a few months on their clients projects are systematically very bad, to stay polite.

[1] I refer to what are called SSII ( _société de services en ingénierie informatique_ ) in France.

</comment><comment><USER21> The primary aim of programming is to solve problems. The moment you forget that one simple fact you are already heading in the wrong direction.</comment>


Snowden sharply criticizes anti-terrorism laws adopted by the State Duma - <AUTHOR> http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1638570/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article - from NTV, one of Russia's major TV networks - is for those who suggested there would be no mention at all about Snowden's criticism of the anti-terror law among major Russian media outlets -- or if there were any, it would be presented only in mocking or condescending terms.

Here's my attempt at a refurbished machine translation:

 _Snowden referred to the new legislation as a "Big Brother" law which would "take the money and freedom without security improvements."_

 _On his Twitter feed the ex-US intelligence officer said that the new laws are "not only dangerous, but also impractical." In support of this Snowden drew attention to the rule according to which operators must keep records and reports within six months._

 _The so-called Anti-Terrorism Suite was introduced by the chairman of the Duma 's security committee, Irina Spring, and passed by the Parliament on Friday, 24 June. In particular, it specifies life imprisonment for international terrorism, sentences for failing to report the impending attack, and new rules for storage and reducing the age of liability threshold for terrorist crimes to 14 years._

 _Snowden, who formerly worked with the NSA, because famous throughout the world after as he told about the large-scale surveillance, organized by US intelligence agencies. In 2014, American was given a residence permit in Russia. In the US, Snowden faces up to 30 years in prison._</comment>