Suggestions for setting up a Go project - <AUTHOR> http://dave.cheney.net/2014/12/01/five-suggestions-for-setting-up-a-go-project

<comment><USER2> It's worth mentioning that there isn't actually anything special about "Github, Bitbucket, Google code" with relation to go get. Those sites are actually just serving up a web page with a meta tag of name "go-import" with info that go get uses to grab the repos. You can, and I have, put that meta tag on any page and get the same functionality

<comment><USER3> That's interesting, I didn't know that. Just discovered that the go-import meta tag on Github appears on every repo, not just Go ones.

<comment><USER4> It's interesting that GitHub added the meta tag given that 'go get' and similar tools like godoc.org don't look for the tag on GitHub. These tools have knowledge about GitHub baked in.

Also, GitHub does not include the meta tag on all pages where 'go get' would expect to find the meta tag. For example, the tag is not on the page [https://github.com/golang/lint/golint?go- get=1](https://github.com/golang/lint/golint?go-get=1).</comment></comment></comment>


What do you want? - <AUTHOR>

I truly agree that a business is only successful if it builds something that people might want or addresses a problem that people have.<p>So, what is it that you want? I am interested to hear about all the (plausible) ideas floating out there. <comment><USER2> Ability to focus on things I really want, and beign free from daily life distractions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Immortality and fulfillment.</comment>


Show HN: Linkstore v2 – bookmarking service rebuilt with Elixir, 275kb → 35kb - <AUTHOR> https://linkstore.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, the previous version of linkstore was built using Meteor.JS. One of my non-negotiables was making sure everything was server side rendered, which I found myself going through a lot of hoops to get working correctly with React. Even when I did accomplish that, I didn't like that the app was bloated: ~275kb seemed a little crazy for something that just lets you view a list of links.

I recently started exploring Elixir and the Phoenix framework and decided to rebuild linkstore to get some hands up experience with the stack. While I'm a huge React fan, I was pleasantly surprised at how well I managed without it. The app now sits at ~24kb for the landing page and ~35kb for the main app. I also redid the layout so it now provides a better browsing experience (in the near future there'll be an option for a simpler view for those who don't like preview images).

The app is deployed on Gigalixir (which has a deployment experience that's just as awesome as Meteor Galaxy).

</comment><comment><USER2> There seems to be a problem with saving, doens't work for me (Chrome)</comment>


Mozilla: Rename all prefs that use black/whitelist names - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1642791 <comment><USER2> Surprised it took this long. I've always thought those nouns seemed "off."

It's interesting to see "blackbox" as a related bug though. That doesn't seem charged to me (in so far as "black-out curtains" doesn't either), since the metaphor is "put this in a place where you can't see it, only the input and output." But I'm not opposed to the change, since we might as well remove the possible connotation if we can.

By the way, there's still a lot of work to do in this space. For example, this even more explicit terminology is commonly accepted in engineering today: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface#In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface#Interface)</comment>


Chuck E. Cheese's, Silicon Valley Startup (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck-e-cheeses-silicon-valley-startup-the-origins-of-the-best-pizza-chain-ever/277869/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I find the history of Atari and all things connected to it fascinating, but this was particularly insightful in terms of marketing to your audience:

"The reason for doing the animals, believe it or not, was not for the kids. It was meant to be a head fake for the parents. Kids are really smart at knowing how to play their parents. and the kids knew that if they said, 'I want to go to Chuck E. Cheese and play the games' the parents would just see themselves spending money. But if they said, 'I want to go see Chuck E. Cheese entertainment -- and it's free,' they'd be good to go," Bushnell said. "The other thing was that we wanted the parents to have something to amuse themselves while the kids were in the game room. If you listened to the dialogue, it was fun, edgy stuff, kinda like Toy Story, written as much for the parents as the kids."

<comment><USER3> The other angle, which isn't mentioned here but is mentioned in Steve Kent's book _The Ultimate History of Video Games_ is that a lot of communities had banned pool halls and arcades.

By wrapping the arcade in a family restaurant, Bushnell and Atari were able to open more locations for their games and eventually work against the arcade bans in those communities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a hilarious WSJ article about how the badly the alcohol served at Chuck E. Cheese's mixes with the kid's entertainment: [http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2145637/posts](http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2145637/posts)

'In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.

Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.

Chuck E. Cheese's bills itself as a place "where a kid can be a kid." But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.

"The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles," says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. "There's a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there."

It isn't clear exactly how often fights break out at Chuck E. Cheese's 538 locations. Richard Huston, executive vice president of marketing for the chain's parent company, CEC Entertainment Inc. of Irving, Texas, describes their occurrence as "atypical," saying he has heard of "four or five significant adult altercations" this year. But in some cities, law-enforcement officials say the number of disruptions at their local outlet is far higher than at nearby restaurants, and even many bars. "We've had some unfortunate and unusual altercations between adults at these locations," Mr. Huston says. "Even one is just way too many."'

<comment><USER3> There a CEC near Chicago that was recently shut down by the corporation after 300 calls and 2 arrests in the last 6 years:

[http://wgntv.com/2016/12/08/chuck-e-cheese-leaving-oak- lawn-...](http://wgntv.com/2016/12/08/chuck-e-cheese-leaving-oak-lawn-after- multiple-violent-incidents/)

IMO, and I worked in this business for a while, the problems have less to do with alcohol being served than the fact that CEC lets birthday parties mix with the rest of the public during operating hours. You can't place the games in a separate room for kids to play during parties, and parents want to feel like they should get some exclusivity for what they paid (when, in reality, you're just reserving space at the tables to eat pizza together). Tensions easily flare up in these situations.

<comment><USER5> I'm waiting for our local CECs to get shut down. Every six months or so it seems there's another dust up, and we've even had several(!) shootings[0][1] at our two local joints.

[0] - [http://counton2.com/2016/05/28/one-person-injured-in- north-c...](http://counton2.com/2016/05/28/one-person-injured-in-north- charleston-chuck-e-cheese-shooting/)

[1] - [http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/calls-reveal-panic- fe...](http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/calls-reveal-panic-fear-as- shots-rang-out-wounded-by/article_ad5c9406-7fdf-5a67-b0f2-9c8bd38540bc.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder if original poster posted this story since news broke a few days ago that Chuck E Cheese is going public?

[http://fortune.com/2017/01/18/chuck-e-cheese-public-ipo- apol...](http://fortune.com/2017/01/18/chuck-e-cheese-public-ipo-apollo- global-management/)

</comment><comment><USER7> My first job was here at the Chuck E. Cheese here in Albuquerque. I learned an incredible amount from that job, which was good because the job started me at $4.25 an hour and worked me like a horse. Building a place that sucked in kids to play video games was a great idea, and it worked like a charm. The change machines brought in about half of our revenue. It's been twenty years since I worked there but recently went to another one and was surprised to see that the place is run almost exactly how I remember it. I can confirm what others have said about the behavior of parents, generally they were OK but we ended up limiting beer to two after two parties got in a fight with each other. I can see how some places would attract some consistent riff raff. It was a great first job for a sixteen year old.

</comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone ever taken a date to Chuck E. Cheese's? Is it fun for people in their 20's/30's?

<comment><USER9> I'm not even sure you can get in without a kid? Not totally sure the policy, but they at least discourage adults to keep evil scary men away from the kids. Something like a Dave and Buster's is a much better adult venue.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure you can go in without a kid, but it's not like the food is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like a short. I loved Atari. The latest from restaurants however is bad news.

</comment><comment><USER12> This has the makings of a hilarious screenplay</comment>


Poll: I would hand over my data for good -or- I would do anything for privacy - <AUTHOR>

In recent days large leaks of how data is being captured, combined and used has given us all food for thought.
I am currently working for a stealth startup, with the potential to capture a lot of data, to use it to provide contextually relevant information and target groups of people. I am curious to see peoples thoughts and opinions on data usage and privacy. So:
Would you hand over your data if it was used to provide better information to you?
Would you prefer that any data handed over was kept encrypted, so even the company could not access it?
If you prefer privacy, are you willing to pay for it? After all, data is where free services make their money.
Are there any limits to the data you would hand over? e.g. Location/Contacts/Calendar/Shopping preferences <comment><USER2> I agree with anigbrowl that this too vague and open-ended for a meaningful answer. But maybe a few datapoints will help you. (And for context, I'm generally considered a little on the paranoid side amongst my friends/peers.)

In general, if you treat my data as mine and are respectful about it -- explain to me why you need it, keep it safe, and let me delete it (bonus points for exporting) -- I'll be reasonably generous with my information. With that said, and in no particular order...

\- I prefer that data be as encrypted as possible, yes. But even more important to me is that when I delete the data on the front end, you delete it from the back end. And that there be a way for me to delete my entire account.

\- I will give you location/contacts/calendar/etc. data access if your service will provide me ongoing value as a result. I'm reluctant to hand that data over for a one-time benefit, largely because I don't believe you'll delete it when you're done. Similarly, I tend to be reluctant to hand over contact data just so you can find my friends once (I'll just do manually searches for the people I care about), and very reluctant to let anything connect to Facebook.

\- I do not find any sort of privacy-for-more-"relevant"-advertisements trade- off to be worthwhile. Frankly, I question whether anyone who has given it a few moments thought does. So far, I have no found targeted advertisements to provide me with any utility...except that I will occasionally lightly game the system to make unaesthetic/annoying advertisements go away.

\- If you only allow me to login via Facebook, I will use a fake profile (fake name, email, everything, no friends) to test out your service for fun, but will probably never use it seriously nor connect it to my main/real account.

\- I will absolutely dig through news articles and your support docs to find the answers to these questions. If I have to drop to your Privacy Policy to try and delete my account, I'm already pissed. If your answer to "is my data protected?" is a one line in your privacy policy saying "We use industry standard encryption to protect your data in transit and at rest.", then I'm gonna go pop some popcorn and wait for Stealth-Startup-ppening (or is it StealthStartupGate?) to begin.

\- For me to want to pay you, I have to trust you. If you don't respect my privacy as a free user, I'm never going to trust you enough to want to pay you. On the other hand, if you win my trust from the outset -- specifically by making it easy for me to leave by letting me export my data (where relevant) and letting me deleting my data when I quit the service -- then I am way, way more likely to pay you for other add-ons.

At the end of the day, I don't know how secure your service was -- I don't have the time or the competency to audit your code and organization, even if you were willing to open up to me, and that would just be a snapshot in time anyways. So I have to go by other heuristics, and I do that by your founders' and notable employees' reputations, what you say in the press, the quality of the code that I experience as a user, the language in your app (do you talk to me like an adult human?), the look and feel of your site, and the quality of your support docs. And from that, I get a sense of what the people on the other side of this app/service/site are like, and if I want to do business with them.

TL;DR: How much you respect your users shows. I go from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed answer. As it happens we do offer visualisation tools that show the data recorded and have a large, "erase me" button that hard deletes all information we keep for a user (also explaining at what cost).

We are also spending significant time and effort in redesigning the language of the app to be more respectful as well so I'm reassured by your comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Too vague and open-ended to admit of a meaningful answer. Everyone has an individual utility possibility frontier and your app will sit somewhere different relative to that. Your aim as a commercial entity is to sit along the median.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is obviously the fence to sit on, fighting with privacy advocates on one side and "these ad's aren't relevant to me" on the other, but my primary reason is to see if there is a viable market for privacy respecting apps or if ultimately, people just don't care.</comment></comment>


Should standards be copyirghted? - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/04/should-standards-be-copyrighted.html

<comment><USER2> Contrary to the article's suggestion, retaining copyright does "prevent bastardization of the standard by someone else who tries to publish a different version of it." One of the exclusive rights of copyright is the right to make derivative works (and to foreclose others from doing so).

The article claims that copyright is "designed to defeat" wide dissemination of standards. The author would be well-advised to reconsider this in light of open-source licenses such as the GPL, which _rely_ on copyright protection to ensure wide dissemination of works through their viral mechanisms.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the US, documents you write are generally considered copyrighted whether you put a copyright notice on them or not.

If you want to make a document public, it's a pretty good idea to claim the copyright and then release it under a very permissive license.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having been in attendance at various IETF committee meetings over the years, a standards committee meeting is a meeting that most everyone involved in related areas of nerdery should attend and experience. At least once. But that's another discussion.

Copyrights on standards documents can be permissive or restrictive, and can help or can hinder the acceptance of a standard. This is no different than copyrights explicitly or implicitly present on other documents. Having explicit copyright statements is almost always better than having no explicit copyrights; you know where you stand with respect to the contents of the document.</comment>


PHP best practices - The dos and don'ts - <AUTHOR> http://talks.php.net/show/php-best-practices <comment><USER2> Awesome how I can't see the site in IE because the author doesn't like the browser.

Great way to get people to read your blog. Not to mention the horrid UI even when I fire up the fox...

<comment><USER3> I agree. The UI is terrible. It was pure luck that I tried the arrow keys to navigate. And just blocking IE users like that is pure arrogance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Exceptions leak a little bit of memory when thrown

So their suggestion for dealing with a limitation of the language implementation, is to not use a feature? Great.

Also, teaching people to do ridiculous sub-optimisations, like using ++$i instead of $i++ isn't really what I think of as best practice. Or telling people to avoid OO because it's slow. Now I know, where those poor newbies get this stuff from ...

</comment><comment><USER5> Apparently a working UI isn't considered best practice...

Probably much easier to write secure, fast, elegant code when it doesn't need to do anything or interact with users...

</comment><comment><USER6> The dos and don'ts of UI design should be their first project. :)

<comment><USER3> And there are several don'ts in the slides too. Never give variables the same name as functions or other parts of the language.

They named their variables $int, $string and $bool...

<comment><USER7> In PHP it hardly matters, since variables have their own namespace. PHP is a lisp2.

<comment><USER8> It might matter to the human reading the code.

<comment><USER7> Well, sure, but that cuts both ways. :) It's convenient to have names like $bool and $int for didactic purposes, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The third example on the type safety slides bugs me (using the type safe comparison operator to prevent both a boolean true and non-zero int evaluating the same.) I would prefer use of a consistent return type from the function to begin with. I guess since some built in php functions behave this way, it's important to know/use...but I don't think I would recommend writing a function such that the type safe equal check is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting stuff from the slides:

      Use commas with 'echo' instead of dot concatenation
      Where possible use ++$i instead of $i++
      Use the class of ctype functions to check strings

Lots of slides here: <http://talks.php.net/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, the slide navigation seems to be missing. Can only navigate slides by including the slide number in the URL eg. <http://talks.php.net/show/php-best-practices/19> for slide 19.

<comment><USER11> Right and left arrows on my keyboard worked for me :]

<comment><AUTHOR> oops.. thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Google & Bing compare and contrast just the results - <AUTHOR> http://www.adevslife.com/post/59491259921/bing-google-results

<comment><USER2> I take it that both Google and Bing are broken...I get this message..

"um, you broke it. I could blame myself for letting you break it but that would make an ass out of you and me :)"

Nice try!</comment>


Show HN: Rockets – Reddit and websockets - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/rtheunissen/rockets <comment><USER2> The animated logo immediately caught my attention. Kudos to Ken, the illustrator [1]. Great portfolio.

[1] [http://cargocollective.com/kensamonte/](http://cargocollective.com/kensamonte/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Ken is very talented. I'll extend your appreciation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. It relies on a central service that's polling Reddit, though. Why not a distributed, peer-to-peer system instead? By combining the power of hundreds of individual nodes polling the site, you could have fast visibility of new content without being too obvious to the site being monitored.

<comment><USER4> I made a proof of concept like this some years ago.

It was only synchronising the scores, and was was running as a Chrome extension.

The idea is that each user sees the scores updated in realtime when he display a Reddit page, but he also broadcasts the updated scores back to the server every time he loads a page.

That way no polling is involved, and it doesn't generate any additional load on Reddit servers since the updated data comes from people who were loading tbose pages anyway. This means im not bound to any API restriction (it's basically distributed scrapping).

[https://github.com/MasterScrat/LiveReddit](https://github.com/MasterScrat/LiveReddit)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very cool idea. An unintended side-effect of rockets could be that it _reduces_ the load on reddit's server. My theory is that there are N bots that rely on monitoring new content, and they're all polling for the same data. If those bots just hook into something like this, that's N less requests per second sent to reddit.com.

<comment><USER5> There's of course a side effect of data being untrusted. While an individual couldn't game this if the system would depend on multiple sources, an organized group (like 4chan) could likely make the system show whatever they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> How might they achieve that?

<comment><USER5> I was referring to MasterScrat's idea of a browser extension. In that case, it's only a matter of saturating the service with crafted data, something that 4chan excels at doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That seems to work really well, thanks for your work. I might use it.

One thing I'm struggling with is the data model, of what exactly is returned on an event. I see that right that rockets is sending data like the API would've returned them, and that is why they are not defined in the code?

I'm new to Reddits Api and was wondering how to get a comments url. Just realizing that I should just echo the full object and find keys that way. I'm leaving the comment, maybe you want to add some documentation/links to the proper Api documentation in that direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> > maybe you want to add some documentation/links to the proper Api > documentation

That's an excellent idea, added in [http://git.io/vOOKi](http://git.io/vOOKi).

> how to get a comments url

A comment permalink is a strange combination of the comment itself and its parent post. You can build a comment permalink using the following template:

      reddit.com/r/{subreddit}/comments/{link_id[3:]}/_/{id}

<comment><USER6> Thanks a lot! I discovered link_url and that would have worked for the moment, but the real comment permalink would have taken a lot of time to find out.

The link to the json-wiki page is perfect as well, that is exactly what I searched and did not find. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant! Do you poll Reddit for new messages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, every second. There's roughly ~30 models created per second on average.

<comment><USER8> This is absolutely amazing. I'll definitely be using it extensively.

I'm also incredibly curious about how it's implemented though. As far as I know, reddit doesn't have an API point for all new comments, do they?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me know if you have any problems or questions. Re: the implementation, take a look at the task that fetches new comments: [http://git.io/vOGT3](http://git.io/vOGT3).

reddit's primary 'new comments' endpoint let's you fetch at most the 100 newest comments. But you have to account for times when the previously 'newest' model is more than 100 comments in the past, ie. you have a gap because there were too many comments or another request took longer than expected.

The endpoints themselves are simple, but the task to make sure you don't miss any or fall behind is tricky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wanted this for a script I was thinking of writing, nice!

Unfortunately, I'm a total convenience victim these days, and any node-based service is very unlikely to enter my stack. Python is okay, Go is best. I just love only deploying a single binary. I think it speaks volumes that I like writing Python but like deploying Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can still make full use of this. All you need is basic websocket support. The node client [1] is small, so wouldn't take long to port to Python or Go.

[1] [http://git.io/vOOZo](http://git.io/vOOZo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Websockets? That means the Reddit bot will be listening from a webpage? Is that how Reddit bots operate? I'm confused, I thought Reddit bots would be a normal computer process, listening/polling for content and making HTTP calls to the API, nothing from a web browser. Someone please explain it to me!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessarily from a webpage.

Web browsers support [1] what's called the WebSocket API [2], which allows browsers to create socket connections to a socket server.

But many programming languages also provide a library to create socket connections on the server. This is what most reddit bots would be doing, as demonstrated in the rockets-client [3], which uses a Node.js websocket library called 'ws'.

So it's incredibly flexible. You could wrap a UI around it in the browser, or use it server-side with any mainstream programming language that supports websockets.

[1] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=websockets](http://caniuse.com/#feat=websockets) [2] [http://www.websocket.org/aboutwebsocket.html](http://www.websocket.org/aboutwebsocket.html) [3] [https://github.com/rtheunissen/rockets- client](https://github.com/rtheunissen/rockets-client)

<comment><USER10> Thank you very much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what's Reddit's take on something like this?

<comment><AUTHOR> The company? I don't think they mind, as long as you're following their API rules [1], which I am.

The community? Surprisingly disinterested. Not sure if I did something wrong. I thought they'd love it, but only got 2 points in r/programming and 7 points in r/node. It's not about the points but it's still discouraging.

Maybe I timed it badly, maybe I didn't bait lazy leaders well enough, maybe it's actually not something cool, maybe the ranking algorithm just wasn't in my favour.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/API](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/API)</comment></comment>


The Dumb Idea Paradox: Why Great Ideas Often Start Out by Sounding Dumb - <AUTHOR> https://andrewchen.co/dumb-idea-paradox/ <comment><USER2> A lot of the best startups (Airbnb, Uber) started with what was actually a dumb idea. But that dumb idea was in the neighbourhood of a very good idea, and the founders were flexible enough and persistent enough to navigate the startup from the former to the latter.</comment>


When Silicon Valley takes LSD - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-silicon-valley/index.html

<comment><USER2> The modern tech industry's obsession with psychedelics will always baffle me.

<comment><USER3> Why?

<comment><USER2> The communities I explored them with's values are completely antithetical to SV culture. It's hard for me to reconcile the two to say the least.

Plus they just seem overly idealized. They're just drugs, but I feel like a lot of folks see them as a possible step to becoming Thompson, Richie, Jobs or Gates.

<comment><USER3> Those a valid complaints. And I agree that they're overhyped.

But I do think that psychedelic drug experimentation match up with SV values. We're pro-risk and we're fine with breaking barriers. Psychedelic experiences can be good, but I think it's just a good signal on someone's willingness to explore, curiosity and bravery if they're willing to try it.

You might consider doing psychedelics with other engineers. It's good times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the acid helped or it's just SV rich folks sometimes do stuff recreationally. I've heard it said Burning Man is a big part of SV culturally and that it's pretty trippy as it were.</comment>


Mark by Mark Zuckerberg - Fashion for Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.markbymarkzuckerberg.com/

<comment><USER2> When i see the tote bag, i think of

<http://designobserver.com/images/features/jacobs.jpg>

which, if you ask me, is _beyond_ hilarious and the most ridiculous self- lampooning brand statement _ever._

        Jacobs
        by
        Marc Jacobs
        For Marc by Marc Jacobs
        In Collaboration With
        Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs

The relevant paragraph from the original article[1] here:

 _Marc Jacobs skewered his own eponymous empire with his "marc by marc for marc" tote. This fascination with cheap bags seemed like part reaction to, and part extension of the high-end handbag frenzy that gripped the fashion industry for much of the 00s. It had all the same qualities of exclusivity and brand envy, but also seemed at least in part to be an acknowledgement that things had gone too far. Was Mr. Jacobs' self-mocking tote a mea culpa for the astronomical hand-bag prices he had helped engineer at Louis Vuiton or was it a sly attempt to mainstream the phenomenon?_

[1]: Paper, Plastic, or Canvas? (Dmitri Siegel) <http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=7917>

edit to include alt content of the image link.

<comment><USER3> The description takes a different direction, but it made me laugh out loud nonetheless:

 _Consider the purpose of a bag, of a sack: we most often use sacks to carry many individual objects in the form of just one object – we want to represent and encapsulate many distinct entities into one vehicle…. You should definitely get yours – for as Goldman Sachs certainly knows, grouping individual objects as one has all kinds of wild benefits and will allow you to circumvent all sorts of annoying obstacles._

See: [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/01/05/pm...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/01/05/pm- sec-looks-into-goldman-sachsfacebook-deal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> every day we take another step toward idiocracy

</comment><comment><USER5> I almost wish this weren't a joke site.

<comment><USER6> It almost isn't, you can click items to buy them

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Where is the signature grey shirt?</comment>


Sony to ban gamers from PSN unless they waive right sue over security breaches. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14948701

<comment><USER5> These are my comments from an earlier thread on this story:

IANAL, but arbitration clauses are standard in contracts[1] at least in the United States. Arbitration is generally seen as preferred because suing people in court is actually very expensive for the plaintiff, the defendant, and the court system.

In Sony's favor, Sony excluded small claims. So for pretty much everyone this arbitration clause is meaningless. The limit for small claims is in the thousands of dollars depending on state [2]. The circumstances where Sony would be liable for more than a few thousand to a single consumer would have to be pretty extraordinary. And yes, this includes losses due to identity theft. Although the expenses due to fraud can be high, the out of pocket damages to the individual are generally very low. As of 2006 the average out of pocket expenses were about $422 and on a downward trend [3]. Keep in mind that the federal government limits liability for credit card fraud to only $50 in the United States [4]. And most credit card companies actually limit the liability to $0. The actual costs of fraud end up getting absorbed by businesses as the financial institutions try to unwind the transactions as best it can.

Also in Sony's favor, Sony did not choose to use the arbitration clause to set an onerous jurisdiction. Sony could have said all arbitration needed to take place in a specific city in the middle of nowhere. Sony didn't even pick the location of its headquarters; you can pick any jurisdiction. Most arbitration clauses I've seen set a jurisdiction that favors the contract writer, so I'd say this puts Sony in a decent light for not doing the same.

Likewise, Sony does not cap damages awarded through arbitration. It could have easily set the maximum damages to some amount that would make arbitration a non-starter compared to small claims.

If you really wanted to find fault with Sony's particular arbitration clause, it would be that neither side can appeal the decision of the arbitration panel to a higher court. But keep in mind this cuts both ways, and it really isn't unusual. It is even endorsed in the United States.

I should also note that arbitration clauses can be voided if the panel can be proven to be biased. So this isn't necessarily a license for Sony to circumvent the law, at least against a well funded opponent. And anyone with the balls to sue Sony for any serious amount of money would be a well funded opponent.

NB. I understand arbitration clauses such as this may not be legal in some countries such as Germany. Whether that is good or bad I can't say. I'm sure the Germans thought it was good, though.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause>

[2] [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits- ho...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-how- much-30031.html)

[3] <http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/safetyquiz.asp>

[4] <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm>

<comment><USER6> Ok, but Sony is still trying to block class action lawsuits. There are now millions of PSN users who are signing away their right to participate in and benefit from such an action if Sony is abusive or careless again.

<comment><USER7> That is a good thing. Judging from past results, rather than anti-business rhetoric, the only people who usually benefit from class action suits are lawyers. Many plaintiffs in class action suits end up with a few dollars or even just coupons while the lawyers get rich.

ADDED: Responding to a comment I read further down the stack; as for "punishing the company", in reality you are only "punishing" those who buy from them since they will just increase the price to cover the expected cost of dealing with suits.

If a suit wasn't expected, so they hadn't built it into the price, or other companies were keeping their prices low enough that they couldn't raise their prices, it might actually hit their stock price or dividends. Since, from comments from many PlayStation owners suggest neither is the case, my point that class action suits will just benefit lawyers and raise prices for PS users stands.

<comment><USER8> Hilarious that you talk about "anti-business" rhetoric and then respond with gems like:

>as for "punishing the company", in reality you are only "punishing" those who buy from them since they will just increase the price to cover the expected cost of dealing with suits.

Well, I guess there's nothing we can ever do to a company then! Wouldn't want them to raise prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can opt out of the arbitration clause by sending a snail-mail notification of your choice to Sony.

From the associated Ars Technica article[1]:

IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THE BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER IN THIS SECTION 15, YOU MUST NOTIFY SNEI IN WRITING WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE DATE THAT YOU ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT. YOUR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION MUST BE MAILED TO 6080 CENTER DRIVE, 10TH FLOOR, LOS ANGELES, CA 90045, ATTN: LEGAL DEPARTMENT/ARBITRATION AND MUST INCLUDE: (1) YOUR NAME, (2) YOUR ADDRESS, (3) YOUR PSN ACCOUNT NUMBER, IF YOU HAVE ONE, AND (4) A CLEAR STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH ANY SONY ENTITY THROUGH ARBITRATION.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/09/mandatory- ps3-upd...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/09/mandatory-ps3-update- removes-right-to-join-in-a-class-action-lawsuit.ars)

<comment><USER10> If you do not wish to have a brick thrown through your window, your written notification must be mailed to...

<http://bash.org/?577451>

<comment><USER11> wow that quote has been around forever and still proving itself to be relevant :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The solution to this is simple and has been clear for years: stop doing business with Sony.

<comment><USER13> It amazes me how little this seems to be grasped. Or even if people don't want to cut off Sony entirely, they could still think, "Ah, this is from Sony. That's a black mark. Do the positives really outweigh this negative?" But apparently few people do think this way.

Therefore, to those who wonder why Sony doesn't quit all this nonsense with rootkits and DRM and privacy violations, etc., etc., the answer is, because it doesn't hurt them. People still do business with them anyway.

(Kinda makes you wonder about all the "you must treat your customers well" articles you see on here.)

<comment><USER14> The gaming industry and the politics that surround it are some of the most toxic relationships I've ever seen. I dont think its a stretch to draw comparison between the relationship between and addict and a dealer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This shouldn't even be legal.

Since it probably is; I think these days most people are probably buying a PS3 for PSN so if users can no longer access it they should bring the device back and demand their money bag. If Sony gets away with this expect more companies to follow suit.

<comment><USER15> The SCOTUS recently affirmed that not only are such clauses legal, but that individual States cannot pass laws to forbid them.

[http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/att-mobility-v- co...](http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/att-mobility-v-concepcion/)

<comment><USER16> If I read that correctly (not a lawyer), SCOTUS ruled that an agreement prohibiting class-action lawsuits is legal if both parties agreed to use individual-arbitration instead. So you can still sue them individually in court, or go through the arbitration process, to grieve a claim against them.

My question is, how do you know the end-user agreed to that? You have no signature, video, or audio proof. PSN accounts generally remain logged-in, and it's possible someone other than you agreed to the EULA and upgraded your PS3's firmware, like a guest or roommate, without your knowledge or permission.

<comment><USER15> The problem with arbitration is legal resource mismatch and sealed results. Each complainant would have to find, pay for and manage any suit or negotiation (bringing the likelihood of complaints escalating beyond the initial offer to near-zero). And even if a John Doe and his cousin-lawyer managed to dig up a smoking gun, no-one else would know about it. So each individual would go through the process ignorant of other results, while the Corporation builds experience and additional strategic advantage dealing with the situation over and over again.

If you approach class-action lawsuits from the standpoint of "what good comes of it for the individual" there's not a big change and I've heard that we could expect more people (who put up with the process) would be more likely to get some award and that such an award is likely to be higher than what they'd get from a class-action suit. [1]

But if you approach class-action lawsuits from the standpoint of "what punishment does the misbehaving corporation suffer", mandatory individual arbitration is a tragedy. [2] It's implausible for the legal investigation into the corporation to approach the same level and implausible for the net penalty to even remotely approach that of a class action suit. The corporation is already heavily favored in any legal battle and individual arbitration simply compounds that advantage. And PR damage done from having said bad behavior exposed to the market at large is no longer a concern. In short: the penalty for misbehavior is massively reduced.

As to "how do you know the end-user agreed to that": click-through EULAs have also been upheld by US courts for some time. Though I don't believe the SCOTUS has addressed them directly just yet.

[1] I've read that multiple studies have found arbitration as having a higher and more frequent payout rate for complainants than class action lawsuits. I won't vouch for that position, but I don't take issue with it, as those results are largely irrelevant from my viewpoint.

[2] Yes, there is a ton of progress that could be made on the question of how that penalty gets distributed. But I believe it's far more important to address that issue on its own than to effectively _end_ class-action suits.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing that roc. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're essentially confirming that their systems continue to be insecure and guaranteeing that your personal information will be leaked to third parties again in the future.

Thanks for the clarification Sony.

<comment><USER18> Would you guarantee that any system you build/manage will be safe?

<comment><USER19> The point isn't that it's impossible to happen.

The point is that Sony is disclaiming responsibility for anything it does wrong.

It's like saying, "Well, I'll work as an engineer for you, but I refuse to be held responsible if the bridge collapses." Even the nuttiest libertarian could find reasons to pass laws forbidding that kind of contract. And even if it's legal, I wouldn't drive on that bridge. (Or would I? If everyone does it and it looks safe enough...)

This is even worse when I think about it. It's more like buying a plane ticket, being in the airport, and suddenly the pilot goes "I am not legally liable if I crash the plane while I'm drinking on the flight."

<comment><USER20> Though a better analogy is that it's like buying your ticket, passing security, being boarded and right as you are about to enter the plane - <USER2> stewardess tells you you have to sign this agreement that the airline is not liable. You have the option of not agreeing to those terms - but then you will have to turn around and find another flight on another airline with no recourse for a refund on your ticket.

<comment><USER21> Or in the case of current PS3 owners, being presented that agrrement after take-off.

<comment><USER22> ...with a parachute just in case you want to get off right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure this makes perfect sense to their legal department, but it's yet another reason why I'll never buy another Sony product.

<comment><USER24> I actually feel a little bit bad for the Japanese on this point. One can imagine them wanting to expand out of designing and manufacturing great value televisions and hi-fi components, coming to America to see how to do business here, and falling in with a pack of LA entertainment industry lawyers who steer them down the path to moral ruin.

I'm sure it didn't actually happen that way, but it's funny how it fits the observed behavior if you look at it a certain way. It's not like people would be any happier with them if they'd kept exactly the same set of business practices as goes on in Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is so bullshit!

Basically, leaves non-security-aware people out in the cold. Instead of trying to champion good security practices and locking down their shit, they are saying "this is a glory hole, buyer beware" in a document that no one reads.

Sigh

<comment><USER26> Why use a Ps3 when Xbox has the same titles and a serious security team?

<comment><USER20> Some people prefer the PS3 - I do. No fanboyism etc, I just have been a loyal Playstation user since the start and have every one of the consoles - <USER3> there are major issues I have with the Xbox line - but those are my personal opinions. It sucks that Sony has been mismanaging all of this and definitely took shortcuts in inappropriate places - and instead of improving on those issues they are just making things worth with bad PR. I hope they can change that in the future, as I would still be purchasing a PS4 when that became available - unless they really don't get a clue and make things even worse.

<comment><USER26> "loyal playstation user". Why? I mean, I hear this all the time with banks. Customers come in expecting an amazing mortgage rate with their shitty credit scores because they've always been a "loyal customer". We have to try to explain that loyalty has little value to the bank, other than lifetime value, which is already factored into the pricing.

For the playstation/xbox, go where the fun is. Don't support a company out of misplaced "loyalty" because in the end, it just slows free market progression.

<comment><USER20> I have fun on the PS3 - and while there are some serious issue in how things are working behind the scenes, to me that's where the fun is. I like the Playstation line, and I like the exclusive games they have, but as I said it's all about opinion and if others prefer the Xbox line, then that's where they go for their games - and that's fine with me.

<comment><USER27> You should realize that fanboyism doesn't have to imply an irrational dislike of competing brands (which thankfully you seem to lack). It need only imply an irrational affinity for a brand. Why would you "like the Playstation line" for any reason _other_ than "the exclusive games they have"?

<comment><USER20> It might seem like an irrational affinity for a brand - but besides the exclusive titles, I actually enjoy the interface, the controller feels more natural to me than that of the leading competing systems, I like having a built in blue-ray player, and above all I like that I have been able to run custom code on each of my Playstation consoles. Things like backwards compatibility were huge for me as well (which is why I have the original 60gb PS3 with PS2 compatibility). There are various reasons that I have stuck with this line - and as far I'm concerned they are valid reasons because they are my opinion of the system and the line. I own a Wii, and I had an Xbox - <USER4> line is they are not my preferred systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sony took this from the Guide "How to write abusive and unfair contracts". Seriously, it will be interesting to see how the class action lawyers will deal with this: I'm not sure the judge will like that kind of shadow manoeuvering, where the consumers see nothing coming.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow. So let me get this straight. I can start a service, that people pay money to use. I also tell them that their credit card / personal information may not be secure and if they want to use the service that they already paid for, they have to accept that I am not liable for its security and if (when) this information does get stolen, I can give them a coupon and get way with it? Please tell me I'm wrong. This can't be legal.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yet another instance of the triumph of short-term CYAism over long-term customer strategy.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is the first news I've read of Sony reacting in any way to those hacks. Great press for them.

Hopefully they're not storing these waivers in plaintext.

</comment><comment><USER32> The work around to this would be to not put any valuable Personally Identifiable Information on Sony's network. You can use a proxy credit card number. Set up an email address that is not connected to any of your other accounts and use a unique password. That way if your data gets compromised you wont really lose anything...

But basically they are saying that they are not willing to put their reputation and money behind their own business which makes you wonder....

</comment><comment><USER33> Temporary solution: don't buy anything (i.e. give them credit card details) or store anything important (i.e. re-use a password) on PSN...

Yes, I know, we all miss DLC...

<comment><USER34> There are always gift cards if you want DLC.

And really, if you use anonymous gift cards (or no payment information), you have the option to not even give them your real _personal_ information, never mind your financial information.

That way there's literally nothing to steal other than the account itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Devil's advocate here. Given that one (among others) of the motivations to hack Sony is to harm them in the press and financially, is it possible that forbidding gamers from class-action suing - and therefore eliminating the possibility Sony would be fucked over by a large settlement - could REDUCE the incentive for hackers to break Sony?

<comment><USER8> Why would this reduce anything? If anything I would expect this sort of customer bullying to get them targeted even more. After all, if customers have their credit card info stolen, get robbed and then can't even sue Sony for incompetence then that should make them less likely to spend money with Sony, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The average customer will subconsciously weigh the cost of enjoyment from using the PSN against the opportunity cost of a security breach to them. After making that calculation most will choose to waive their rights.

</comment><comment><USER37> ansy comment here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3000383> is clearer then both articles in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wait, can't a EULA be invalidated if it's deemed too extraneous? I remember something about that happening in a Microsoft case...

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm not an expert in these matters, but I am interested to see how this will be interpreted under Louisiana's redhibition laws.

</comment><comment><USER40> I hope there's some way PS3 owners can sue Sony for forcing them to waive their right to sue them.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thank you, Sony for yet again reminding me why I refuse to spend any money on your products.

</comment><comment><USER42> That means we can sue over prior security breaches?

<comment><USER27> You can sue your neighbors nonexistent cat for assassinating Elvis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> They don't give a damn.

</comment><comment><USER44> I thought this was always the case, basically everywhere. This is what EULA's are for.

</comment><comment><USER45> Since the start, the only piece of info I've had in there is a mailinator address and a password I don't use anywhere else. They can get breached all day for all I care.

</comment><comment><USER46> As an answer, Sony headquarters should be enclosed in a huge airtight balloon and only let breathing air in if they agree to stop fucking people.

<comment> john-n Useful contribution to the discussion.</comment></comment>


FuncShell – A Haskell-based alternative to awk - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell <comment><USER2> Do any of you know how they got such a beautiful looking shell [0]? I'd love to know if there's a clean way to achieve such a nice result.

[0] [https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/raw/master/fsh.gif](https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/raw/master/fsh.gif)

 _EDIT_

As an aside, FuncShell looks like a beautiful demonstration of how powerful Haskell can be. The source code is terse and clean.

The only oddity I noticed isthe rather large 68MB binary file committed into master in the repository [1]. Why do people do this? Especially on GitHub where there's support for cutting releases with a binary for each targeted platform...

[1] [https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/blob/master/fsh](https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/blob/master/fsh)

<comment><AUTHOR> >The only oddity I noticed isthe rather large 68MB binary file committed into master in the repository.

Thanks for bringing it to notice. I did this and later realized I can opt for the github release option[0]. I will fix this and the installation url asap.

[0] [https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/releases](https://github.com/iostreamer-X/FuncShell/releases)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, unless you rewrite history, it'll stay in there and bloat the download for anyone who wants to clone the repo.

I don't know if I want to recommend rewriting history or not. But for what it's worth, I'm currently on a cellular connection and couldn't download something this size if I wanted.

<comment><USER4> git clone --depth 1 if you don't need the history?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Similar idea, but uses sqlite to make an awk like utility with sql syntax: [https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk](https://github.com/dbohdan/sqawk)

<comment><USER2> And just yesterday, people were asking [0] what Tcl is good for! This is a great example.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229266)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happened to hell[1]? It was apparently destroyed by this commit[2].

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1r7oci/hell_a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1r7oci/hell_a_haskell_shell/)

[2]: [https://github.com/chrisdone/hell/commit/f34259e5e92f6edf464...](https://github.com/chrisdone/hell/commit/f34259e5e92f6edf464b65d9735965b0533b470b)

</comment><comment><USER7> Similar idea, but uses LUA as inline language: [https://github.com/HeinrichHartmann/luawk](https://github.com/HeinrichHartmann/luawk)

``` > printf abc | luawk -p '_:gsub("a","A")'

Abc ```

<comment><USER8> An awk with a luajit backend would be quite interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar tools that use Python as the query language:

\- The Pyed Piper: [https://code.google.com/archive/p/pyp/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/pyp/)

\- Puffin: [https://github.com/kespindler/puffin](https://github.com/kespindler/puffin)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice! How do I bring new function into scope though? This looks very similar to hawk, which has documentation on how to add your custom code [1].

Also, there are some nice CLI tools for JSON [2] or CSV [3] specific data.

      [1] https://github.com/gelisam/hawk
      [2] https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/
      [3] https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv/blob/master/README.md

<comment><USER11> I think hawk should steal the idea of aliasing "|]" personally ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always have mixed feelings on awk alternatives. I find awk to be one of the most underused tools in scripting. Awk has saved me numerous of times.

Now replacing latex with a modern syntax would be awesome!!!

<comment><USER13> I tried to explain to a historian with an open source textbook initiative the basics of latex. As soon as I opened the demo page that had looked nice enough, with him by my side, my heart sank. It's just so far away from being usable by non-technical users.

It's too bad, really.

<comment><USER12> A good theme and sharelatex.com can go a long way to get someone to use it. I usually only get Math Majors to invest in it.

I did almost all my Master Theology papers in it. Just difficult to use different languages. I usually have to use one or all of these Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Danish or German in my papers. Latex didn't make that easy. Actually nothing does.

<comment><USER13> I used sharelatex.

the notation full of \, {, }, etc. is just too confusing for people.

<comment><USER14> What isn't too confusing then? Markdown and HTML are just riffs, it's all based around the idea of opening/closing tokens and special tag names that do different things. I think if there is in fact a technical barrier, then it's the underlying fact that your representation of a document has a separation of content and design/layout. If people can't deal with that, then they can only use WYSIWYG (and not the hacks of rendering to the side while you still type in TeX), and there's no point in trying to update LaTeX's notation to fit people who never will get that underlying separation.

<comment><USER15> Markdown has fewer ways to inexplicably (from the point of view of a naive user) munge text.

If you type plain text, it mostly comes out as plain text.

I've paid John $4.50 for a sandwich.

Renders fine in Markdown. Renders like crap in LaTeX.

<comment><USER16> Markdown has its own magic incantations that can infuriate if you don't get them just right. GP is right: most people can't handle markup languages, period. Or, they can, but _vastly_ prefer WYSIWYG text formatting.

For me, if I'm writing something for a web page, I use HTML in a decent editor (emacs). Markdown, reST, or anything else is not easier, just different.

If I need a really nice-looking document, I'll probably use LaTeX. But for a simple document or one that I'll work on with other people, I'll normally just use google docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like how you made this version use pipes instead of being a shell. Do you have any plans to create a new JS version of Awkward using pipes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that this caters to a very specific audience which knows haskell. Hence I plan to support JS as the inline language. I don't want to create a new JS version because I want to learn more of Haskell :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In typical usage, do you need the type hints much? I saw ":: Float" in there for the df example, for instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, in the example of df, I was filtering on the basis of size, which is not int usually but a decimal value, hence I had to provide the type hint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm amazed by the powerline-command prompt. Shiny things seem to draw my attention a bit too much.

<comment><USER20> Haha, me too! I want to read an article on getting my zsh prompt to look like that.

<comment><USER12> Windows - [https://amreldib.com/blog/CustomizeWindowsCmderPrompt/](https://amreldib.com/blog/CustomizeWindowsCmderPrompt/)

zsh - [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agnoster/3712874/raw/c310...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agnoster/3712874/raw/c3107c06c04fb42b0ca27b0a81b15854819969c6/agnoster.zsh- theme)

powerline theme on github - [https://github.com/banga/powerline- shell](https://github.com/banga/powerline-shell)</comment></comment></comment>


The Author of #SOPA Is a Copyright Violator (bit.ly/xuNPWP) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Don't post links that way. Just put <http://www.vice.com/read/lamar-smith- sopa-copyright-whoops>

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry about that :)</comment></comment>


What are the best sources for programming problems? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Simple exercises? <http://projecteuler.net/> and similar.

In depth learning? Your own pet project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Curiosity. Just this minute I started working on a "Scroll Wheel Detector" javascript because I wondered what % of people use scrollwheels to scroll.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://acm.sgu.ru/problemset.php?show_volumes>

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.topcoder.com/></comment>


Don't be a morning person if you're not one - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20171114-why-you-shouldnt-try-to-be-a-morning-person <comment><USER2> No such thing as natural morning or night person. Peoples rhythms are thrown out of wack due to artificial light. Get rid of the artificial lights and we all go back to our natural circadian rhythm. We start to get up and go down with the sun.

All you need are glasses that block blue light. Try it.

<comment><USER3> ... and possibly enough vitamin D early in the morning (e.g. before 10am), either as a supplement, or, preferrably, by exposure to the sun. And also quite a bit of exercise.

Or not. Anecdata are plenty, scientific evidence is scant.

<comment><USER4> calling bs on the "blue light glasses work" as well. No direct scientific evidence.

<comment><USER3> To be clear, I was not calling bullshit - I experimented with UVEX blue- blocking glasses, and so a marked difference in "natural" sleep times. Similarly with early morning Vitamin D, and exercise, and I am not the only one.

However, I am not aware of any reasonably objective evaluation of these claims, so I don't consider them "truth" or "science" \- they are anecdata, which might be interesting, but not science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, I'm one of the "night owl" people type.

I've always been since when I memory of.

If you're reading this and you are interested in more data for studies or experiments to challenge my chronotype, let me know.

Tried many different method and nothing really worked. If not forced out of bed I'd wake up past 12AM and go to bed around 4AM.

Working as a remote for a different time zone helps a lot with work, luckily :)

Well hit me up if you want to know more.

I can probably do an AMA if people are interested enough.

<comment><USER6> You've probably tried many things, but just curious: have you tried melatonin (and if so, what was the result of that)? I've had some or other form of sleep and/or sleep time window issues since early teenage years or possibly before as well; regular exercise and (some form of) diet helps, but what _really_ changed sleep for me (and therefore had a measurable impact upon my quality of life) was melatonin (I have a strong aversion to the idea of regular use of sleeping pills). It's used by jetlagged people to reset circadian rhythm, etc. (See e.g. [https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin))

Apologies if this is nothing new at all to you (probably not), but interested in what you think re. this (perhaps melatonin does not help at all in your case, which is also interesting in itself).

<comment><USER5> I tried melatonin and it was awful :D I did it in the wrong way though. Specifically I took two pills instead of one (I think it was 500g each and I took two) and I slept for about 24 hours straight! I simply couldn't stay awake so I just took one sick day at work and sleeped it off :O

I also don't like the idea of building my life on top of regular pills usage, unless it's the only way to go through.

I don't exercise regularly, but I have such a busy life that I find it really difficult to find time (and consistency) to stick to it. When I _DID_ exercise regularly (daily, 30-45 minutes, for about 4 months) it didn't change my sleep habits.

And to be honest I _CAN_ wake up at 7 - 8 AM if somebody kicks me out of bed or if there's an "emergency" (like one of my children shouting for help or crying) or some family appointments... but I'm referring specifically to natural sleep rhythm or what my body would "like" to do.

I also somehow find it WAY easier to wake up when I'm NOT at home.

On an interesting note, I live in Italy (UTC+1) and when I went to San Francisco (UTC-7) for work, not long ago, I kept waking up at 7AM consistently, naturally and went to bed around midnight more or less. I felt NO JETLAG AT ALL. When I came back, I felt nothing for two days and then I had to sleep for about 12 hours to catch up the normal sleeping rhythm, then I went straight back to my normal habits.

I admit I probably have the weirdest sleeping habits I can know of :)

<comment><USER6> Hmm very interesting! Thanks for sharing. :)

> _I think it was 500g each and I took two_

I _do_ hope you meant _mg_ , not _g_ \- I've seen (usually American) online malatonin pills with 50g+ dosages (effective dosage seems to usually be within the range of 0.3-1.0g), so could be _g_ :O but hope not. 0.5-1g does the trick for me, fwiw.

> _I also don 't like the idea of building my life on top of regular pills > usage_

I hear ya; the reason I'm ok with melatonin is that there appear to be no tolerance buildup, addiction, or any actual effects specific to long term usage (see Gwern's meta-analysis of literature, etc.) But - yeah.

Very interesting sleep time window patterns. Have you thought about consulting professionals re this? See e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder)

<comment><USER5> > I do hope you meant mg, not g

ahaha XD Yeah sorry. one pill == 500mg :D

> Have you thought about consulting professionals re this?

I did but since I found a way to accomodate my schedule (more or less) by working in the afternoon and evening and sleeping through the morning (til about 10.30 or 11 AM) I'm fine for now.

I'd be more interesting in the CHANGE itself.. like in experimenting on changing my sleeping habits, more than in the results.

I'm a tech/sci/IT nerd afterall :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've heard someone say that he thinks a lot of night people aren't actually night people--they're just people who don't decide when they want to sleep or wake up and drift until they collapse.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have to admit that I'm quite ignorant about the science of "morning persons" VS "night persons", sleeping schedules, natural rhythms so for anyone more in the know than I am, aren't body and brain extremely flexible and retrainable to accommodate for different schedules? As in, if you force yourself to go to bed at 10PM every night and wake up everyday at 7AM, don't you eventually become a "morning person"? And say that "eventually" happens over a period of a few years to make the transition smooth.

Genuine question, I'm really curious.

<comment><USER9> > As in, if you force yourself to go to bed at 10PM every night and wake up > everyday at 7AM, don't you eventually become a "morning person"?

Been trying that for ~15 years, hasn't worked yet.

<comment><USER10> You should have some children, you will turn in 2 years or so

<comment><USER9> Thanks, that drew a chuckle.

<comment><USER11> nose exhale</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Split keyboards, a five year experience and review - <AUTHOR> https://raymii.org/s/articles/Split_keyboards_a_five_year_review_including_the_ErgoDox_EZ_Matias_Ergo_Pro_and_Kinesis_Freestyle_2.html <comment><USER2> Very cool article! I've been looking into getting a split board for ergonomics for a while now. I appreciate the comparison between all these different models.

Some of them look really good (the matias and the cheap kinesis especially, since I'd rather not solder my own board) but I can't get over the fact that some of them don't even care about the insert key. I need a full nav-group (eg pg up/down, home/end, ins/delete)!

Ergodox is still king though it looks like. So thanks again for the post!</comment>


Hire by Google - <AUTHOR> https://hire.google.com/ <comment><USER2> Active discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14796381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14796381)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's easy to forget, but LinkedIn doesn't have rich resume data of candidates. With Hire, Google now gets rich resume & employee data - data, when coupled with search history, that can now be used to build better user profiles than before.

Given this, "Hire" is (or could become) a trojan horse into replacing the network effect that LinkedIn has created.</comment>


Show HN: Snippety, a good looking snippet sharing tool - <AUTHOR> http://snippety.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice Idea! not new but could work well! You need better background-image! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks! I just grabbed a Subtle Pattern background :) if this becomes more popular I'll redesign the entire app :D</comment></comment>


'Shadows from the Walls of Death' – Studying Poisonous Pages of a Lethal Book - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/article/shadows-from-the-walls-of-death-studying-poisonous-pages-of-a-lethal-book/ <comment><USER2> "O king, open the book."

The king did this, but he found the pages stuck together, so he put his finger into his mouth, wet it with his spittle, and with difficulty he opened the first, the second and the third pages. He opened six pages in all, but when he looked at them, he could find nothing written there.

"Wise man," he said, "there is no writing here."

"Open more pages," said Duban.

The king opened three more, but soon afterwards he felt the poison with which the book had been impregnated spreading through him. He was wracked by convulsions and cried out that he had been poisoned...</comment>


Reforming American Health Care - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13899647 <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because it has some unusually good statistics regarding what is actually the problem vs what is often thought to be a problem, but isn't really.

Also, I always assumed that, while our system is very expensive, it at least was the best in the world. This article mostly dispels that notion. The numbers on infant mortality and death rates after strokes was telling.</comment>


Data crunching to find the cheapest airline in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnooz.com/2012/12/14/news/data-crunching-to-find-the-cheapest-airline-in-the-world/

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something here? Aren't these results basically useless beyond trivia unless you normalize for the characteristic of routes. If an airline does mostly short haul flights, which are obviously more expensive by mile, then any graph proving that a short haul carrier is expensive seems to just show a tautology

<comment><USER3> In theory, the "fixed cost" should be captured by the $50 term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. You should also graph them next to things like safety and customer service scores and other indicators of quality - and give overall rankings.

Cost is not the only important factor!</comment>


The American Middle Class Hasn't Gotten a Raise in 15 Years - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-class-hasnt-gotten-a-raise-in-15-years/ <comment><AUTHOR> I post because it's true and interesting, but the real trend goes back a lot further: to ~1970.

[http://thecurrentmoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/producti...](http://thecurrentmoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/productivity- and-real-wages.jpg)

Among other things, I think this exonerates Silicon Valley. Information tech did not cause this. I've smelled an agenda to frame SV and its larger economic and cultural orbit for middle class woes for several years, mostly emanating from curmudgeonly journalistic and literary circles. I think it's total baloney... the dates just don't match up. This murder occurred while the suspect was in diapers.

Interesting in light of all the recent discussion around Peter Thiel's new book which argues that fundamental (as opposed to just incremental) technological innovation has slowed in most areas since roughly the same date. I would add the above graph to the very long list of things that went off the rails in the 70s.

I'm very heartened by all this talk, especially given that it's coming from multiple points on the political landscape. I'm hearing liberals, conservatives, and libertarians all talking about how something really broke around that time-- something I've personally believed _very_ strongly for many years. For years I've said that on or around 1970 "the future was cancelled." As for why-- I don't know. I scribbled down my own hypothesis here: [http://adamierymenko.com/c/](http://adamierymenko.com/c/)

<comment><USER2> You might enjoy this: [http://strikemag.org/bullshit- jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

Specifically the part where it talks about how the current establishment is squeezing the value-creating workers (teachers, police, factory workers, artists, mechanics, etc) while ballooning the "bullshit jobs" (school and hospital administration, lobbyists, PR researchers, consultants, etc)

<comment><USER3> After reading the article I don't think the author has actually worked BS jobs. I have. BS jobs are more stressful because all you do all day is battle others with BS jobs, directly or indirectly. You're the footsoldiers of empire building. (edited to emphasize, we have a centrally controlled economy focused on limiting freedom, so rather than having 100 competing firms where footsoldiers would be highly advantageous, we have the .gov paid off to limit the marketplace to maybe 2 competing firms, each of 50 departments fighting tooth and nail with whichever department is weakest, lets say 25 of 50 of supposedly friendly internal departments, and the locals are a lot closer and more fun to fight than the competitor, so most of the foot soldier fighting is internal, not with customers or competitors)

Humans are strong worthy opponents and battling them all day is tiring, either directly or indirectly as what amounts to being a toolsmith. TPS reports and such.

A "real job" is much more asymmetric warfare. You, with high technology, cheap energy, financial capitalization tools, an advanced mechanized transport system, and health care support, vs a poor defenseless forest of trees. I wonder who will win?

Even retail vs customer is fundamentally asymmetric warfare, not person to person warfare.

Nationally, as per the article, we probably do spend only 10 or so hours per week working on average. But we also spend maybe 30 hours per week national average fighting other people, either directly or more likely as support troops.

The purpose of this new procedure or report or process is solely for exec A to screw over exec B. Don't worry about the customers we have .gov on our side to eliminate competition.

I don't feel bad about working these jobs. Some high level crook paid off the government to collect a huge amount of money in an unfair market. If I don't collect my share for basically doing nothing, the crook will get it. The system is designed so its completely outside my control other than accepting my cut for doing not much. Well OK then. My carefully designed TPS reports or new procedure or whatever will report my feudal overlord is better than the other feudal overlord. Whatever.

<comment><USER4> For all your mentions of the government, it's hardly the primary source of competition-oriented jobs, is it? I mean, even without the government's help, there are a lot of jobs in Company A and Company B simply fighting each other for greatest share of a fixed pie of consumer attention (e.g., large parts of marketing and advertising, though the phenomenon is far from restricted to these), no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the fall of the middle class has a lot to do with a lot of different factors, but probably the biggest is the lack of negotiation that happens in our country by the average person.

We are a country of price takers, not price setters. Most people are taking whatever price they are offered with no push back. No raises this year? Well maybe next year. Maybe a tiny bonus. Etc.

Unions had their own set of problems and at some point might be unsustainable, but when people stop negotiating deals, they get taken advantage of.

I've changed jobs more than some people I know because it would get me a better deal, and it has. But before that, I experienced myself and watched my parents stick to the same job without getting appropriate raises and bonuses for the work they did.

In our current economy the best way to get a raise seems to be to switch companies because companies don't like giving raises and people don't like asking for them. Eventually what used to be a early raise negotiation will be a yearly job negotiation. It's starting to happen with younger workers and the more that is normal, the less efficient all these businesses will become.

All because people stopped negotiating.

<comment><USER6> Maybe people are afraid. The new mantra is "you're lucky to even have job" with this economy. People are less inclined to push back because they don't want to potentially jeopardize their job.

I agree that ideally people should always be pushing back, but if it's potentially between a raise or you're fired(at least in the minds of people requesting the raise), then people will be more cautious.

Also, young(cheap) workers are in large supply so people _may actually be fired_ for asking for a raise; they can just fire the guy and hire a new younger worker(probably working for less too).

Many of these tech companies out here in the Bay probably pull hundreds of millions of dollars in "free" labor using an army of temporary interns(because it's cheap).

<comment><USER7> >The new mantra is "you're lucky to even have job" with this economy.

The limit is shown in the recent fast food strikes: when the existing jobs are so damn bad that people can't get by from working, people start fighting back again.

<comment><USER8> > existing jobs

"There are three million good jobs that no one seems to want."

[http://profoundlydisconnected.com/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/)

<comment><USER9> Sounds just exactly like the "can't find enough skilled engineers" whining in the tech sector. The other half of that thought, "at the price I'm willing to pay" is almost never mentioned.

This country has a deeply embedded, cultural and in my opinion entirely unhealthy bent toward deference to the wealthy and connected that borders on obsquious.

<comment><USER8> I doubt it. Like I said in another comment, the only people I personally know with paid-off houses in California are tradespeople and startup lottery winners.

> _The other half of that thought, "at the price I'm willing to pay" is almost > never mentioned._

Think on that for a second. Let's say CompanyX _is_ willing to pay huge gobs of money for engineers. Now CompanyX employs all the good engineers and everyone else whines that they can't find any. So CompanyY comes along and offers a bit more. Some engineers bail and move over, but most are happy where they are/don't want the life change/etc. And on it goes. It's like the search for a mate: the older you get, the more likely it is you've found a situation you want to keep. In the engineering case, "skilled engineers" are for the most part older, may have other responsibilities (mortgage, kids, spouse), have had the opportunity to "sow their wild oats" by trying a few different companies/startups/whatever, and have found a situation they want to keep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any commentary on stagnant wages in the United States that does not mention health care is essentially not worth reading.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. The amount employers are paying to employ people has gone up, in constant dollars. But the increase is getting eaten by the increased cost of providing health care.

<comment><USER12> Except for all the employees that don't receive health insurance through their employers...

<comment><USER11> The bottom end has been held down by illegal immigration. You don't add eleven million people with sixth grade educations to the job market and expect wages for unskilled labor to go up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the first ever analysis I've seen of this that really digs into the different corollary factors - awesome! A perfect example of what I hoped 538 could do more of.

</comment><comment><USER14> The trade deficit and globalization have more to do with this than demographics.

"The United States has been running consistent trade deficits since 1980 due to high imports of oil and consumer products. In recent years, the biggest trade deficits were recorded with China, Japan, Germany, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. United States records trade surpluses with Hong Kong, Australia, Netherlands and Belgium."

[http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of- tra...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade)

[http://economyincrisis.org/content/failed-trade-policies- hav...](http://economyincrisis.org/content/failed-trade-policies-have-erroded- middle-class)

</comment><comment><USER15> _In 1970, 55 percent of U.S. income was earned by households in the middle 60 percent of the income distribution. More than half of households were in what Pew Research Center has labeled the "middle tier" of households (those earning between two-thirds and twice the median income). In 2013, both numbers had fallen to about 45 percent._

It's not clear that this is an apples-to-apples comparison, but this AEI chart suggests this statistic might not be as disheartening as it sounds:

[http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has- be...](http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been- disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into- the-upper-class/)

 _In other words, America's "middle class" did start largely disappearing in the 1970s, but it was because they were moving up to a higher-income category, not down into a lower-income category. And that movement was so significant that between 1967 and 2009, the share of American families earning incomes above $75,000 more than doubled, from 16.3% to 39.1%._

<comment><AUTHOR> "In other words, America's "middle class" did start largely disappearing in the 1970s, but it was because they were moving up to a higher-income category, not down into a lower-income category."

Is this for real? Are you actually serious?

Go talk to some ordinary people, or maybe tour some of the country outside whatever rich coastal enclave you inhabit.

Edit: to clarify: I don't trust the source. Doesn't it make you suspicious that AEI and their orbit are the _only_ ones saying this while everyone else says otherwise? All I'm saying above is that my anecdotal experience clearly supports what "everyone else" is saying, not what AEI is saying. When I read stuff like that I'm like "uhh... what parallel universe is this from?" Pravda always had graphs that made the Communist Party look good too. (Side note: during the Bush years it really struck me how oddly "Soviet" the American right is in its thinking and character. I guess, like Nietzsche said, when you fight against something you become what you fight against.)

<comment><USER15> Does "everyone else" include progressive wonks like Matt Yglesias?

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/18/median_family...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/18/median_family_income_since_1989_is_the_stagnation_real.html)

He's arguing that life has gotten better for the median family, not about how "fat" the distribution is around that family, but based on your other comments, I assume you think "everyone" agrees that things are getting worse.

<comment><USER16> > Does "everyone else" include progressive wonks like Matt Yglesias?

Its kind of odd that the only people I ever see positively citing "progressive" Yglesias are doing so in the context of using Yglesias's support for an economic position to bolster the idea that its not a particularly conservative viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I fear the truth is worse, that some of us have gotten fairly large raises (or you might even say exited the middle class) and the rest are taking a pay cut relative to decades past.

</comment><comment><USER12> This post seems to have been flagged down pretty fast.

</comment><comment><USER18> Said Screwtape: If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they.</comment>