How NBA executive Jeff David stole $13M from the Sacramento Kings - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28078881/how-nba-executive-jeff-david-stole-13-million-sacramento-kings <comment><USER2> He would have gotten away with it if it weren't for the HR exec seeing a red flag. Makes you wonder how many other frauds are never discovered.

One other thing: These types of face-to-face, "close on a handshake" negotiations are really open to various types of fraud. I was thinking about this when listening to a friend discussing how he had negotiated a $12,000 discount for his child's base college tuition, by talking over the phone with someone in the college admissions office. Or a commercial real-estate deal that I participated in some years ago that involved several rounds of negotiation. If one or both sides of these transactions wanted to extract some financial benefit "on the side," it would be so easy to do it ... which leads me to believe it happens all the time, anti-fraud laws and signed declarations be damned.

<comment><USER3> I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority of white collar crime goes undetected.

Detection is probably difficult, and the agencies charged with investigating and prosecuting are likely over worked.

<comment><USER4> Especially at banks. Very embarrassing and not worth the attention it would garner if they pressed charges. There are a lot of financial institution that have very weak controls. I've seen it first hand.

<comment><USER5> Anecdote from third world country here. Friend works in 'IT security company', told me banks are the worst here.

One bank had guys in the IT department work for a couple of months then quit, one after the other, apparetly after having stolen 'enough' money (whatever that means to a thief). Rinse and repeat, till their company got called in. That bank's systems were apparently that bad.

I always wondered whether it was that the bank had no proof of the theft or an image thing where they could not afford to go after them because customers would lose confidence in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The craziest thing about this is that if Jeff didn't conduct all his (illegal) business on his work laptop, he may never have been caught. And, the only reason HR decided to look at his laptop was to find "a copy of a commission structure to build out the corporate sales team" that Jeff was supposed to leave behind before he left for another job.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, exactly. he covered his tracks pretty well otherwise, but he apparently lacked a fundamental understanding of how corporate computing assets are managed.

it's good that he was caught and punished, especially since white-collar crimes are relatively under-prosecuted. i'm more mixed about the severity of punishment--restitution plus 7 years in prison. on one hand, it seems fair relative to the sentence lengths of other crimes, but prison terms seem onerous and overly-punitive overall to me.

<comment><USER7> Regarding the seven years. He'll probably do less than seven. The federal system has no parole but has exemplary behavior and then he can also get supervised release toward the end of his sentence. I'm of a mixed mind on how severe white-collar crime sentences should be (and how to vary/judge them), however that seems quite fair (if not light) when combined with restitution. It's a very sizable fraud.

<comment><USER8> I was under the impression that you must serve at least 90% of your time sentenced in federal prison, and that's with good behavior. The real variable is whether you're put in minimum security prison. That's the tier where there are nicer facilities and no fences. You can literally walk "off campus"\--at least if you don't mind surely getting caught and sent to a high-security prison afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading this I couldn't help marveling at how poorly constructed the incentive structure must have been. This guy was basically leaving millions of dollars on the table until he realized he could take the money for himself.

How badly was his commission compensation setup so that he would turn to a life of crime rather than close the extra millions and cash the commission check?

<comment><USER10> According to other articles, his annual take-home was about $360k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The end of the article where David is the pauper despite making half a million a year hit home. Perspectives get so warped around wealth. I once worked with a guy making $500k/year despite relatively low skills and education because he was in the right place at the right time on Wall Street. But he fell in with a social crowd of people with true wealth and his ego turned out to be a dark monster. The guy ended up spending half a decade in prison after stealing millions to try and keep up appearances with that crowd.

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem is identified when Jeff realizes that _no_ _one_ _will_ _know_.

The problem is one of character.

<comment><USER13> This is pro sports there are a lot of shady people, the NBA is a lot cleaner that football is (soccer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think of ESPN and high quality in depth reporting in the same thought - perhaps I should be.

<comment><USER15> With the death of Deadspin and the hollowing out of Sports Illustrated over the last month or so, they are one of the few remaining places that will do this type of in depth sports reporting. However I will point out the target of this piece is not a league, team, player, or anyone that ESPN would have to be afraid of pissing off.

<comment><USER16> You're right about this, of course, but ESPN has stuff of this quality on a pretty darn slow drip given the talent they have and the even greater talent they could afford if they decided to make quality investigative / long form stuff a real priority.

I suspect the fact that they do it at all is that it's some enlightened manager's little feifdom that they protect and that it'll be gone as soon as that person finds another gig or retires. I doubt that dyed-in-the-wool corporate types are in love with these operations, as sad as it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A man in the middle attack can be avoided with mutual authentication. The fault lies with the companies that entrusted so much to a single individual.

<comment><USER18> The number of people involved in the authentication would have to exceed the other party's ability to bribe them. Corrupt practices could extend to both companies involved in a deal.

<comment><USER19> For an interesting read, check out the 1MDB scandal - the book "The Billion Dollar Whale" is quite a read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazing the lack of financial controls. You have the salesman drawing up his own invoices and payment instructions!

As someone who's seen the inside of pro sports teams, most of them are a complete mess.

</comment><comment><USER21> What would have happened to him had he had qualms of conscience before he was caught? If he'd owned up and paid the money back he'd probably have just gotten a lighter sentence.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm always surprised by people's willingness to leave so much personal information on a work computer. In this case actually leaving the breadcrumbs there.

</comment><comment><USER23> The obliviousness of what was facing him after learning the FBI was on to him is mind blowing. He thought he could pay it all back and be fine? His wife sticking by him this whole time is also amazing to me. Why? He's a crook. He's ruined her and their children's life. He doesn't deserve them.

<comment><USER24> > The obliviousness of what was facing him after learning the FBI was on to > him is mind blowing. He thought he could pay it all back and be fine?

I mean, it did work out. Guy will be out of prison in ~3-4 years. That's about 27 too few, given how we sentence people, but them's the breaks...

> His wife sticking by him this whole time is also amazing to me.

Blood runs thicker than water.

<comment><USER25> _> Blood runs thicker than water. _

Just FYI, that aphorism does not apply in this case. That is, unless David is a blood relative of his wife, in which case I guess he's got other problems...

<comment><USER26> "Bonds forged of blood are thicker than the waters of the womb" is the original, I believe. And it basically meant that people you fought besides were closer than literal family.

Not exactly the meaning of the modern version, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow. I feel bad for his wife.

<comment><USER28> Its hard for me to understand how someone could accept any explanation for being able to purchase a $8.8m house on a "low 6 figures" salary. To me thats the most idiotic thing - the guy just flat out SPENT the money, all likely in one sum.

<comment><USER29> Who says she knew what his salary was?

<comment><USER28> If you're married and own property together, it's stupid to not know the others financial state.

<comment><USER30> But he's a fraudster, you don't think he could manage to mislead her?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The classic take a cut at the middle

</comment><comment><USER32> Article starts like this:

"THE MOVING VAN from Sacramento chokes its way through Miami's thick August air"

What is it with want-to-be novelists and journalism? Who has time for all that? It's a plague lately in media. Just tell the simple story.

<comment><USER33> If you can't make it past the first three paragraphs before making an assessment of this well researched piece perhaps you need to evaluate how much time YOU have. It's a feature article not an AP wire report.

<comment><USER32> I wouldn't say I "can't", nor do I believe my distaste for this form of writing indicates I should evaluate anything about my use of time.

Frankly that along with the caps "YOU" comes off a bit hostile, but I see you are a writer so maybe it came of as a personal attack of sorts. Apologies if so.

I see these type of articles as ultimately doomed to fail because the audience they are after likely isn't the curl up by the fire with a novel while wearing a faded beige cardigan that smells of tea and old book set. Plus they are really annoying when I'm trying to obtain information.

It's not just time. More attention and working memory. These types of articles abuse it for very little gain. They are like Christian rock. Not good rock. Not very Christian.

This is an entirely different topic from how well researched the article is.

Consider this an opinion piece rather than a news comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > THE MOVING VAN from Sacramento chokes its way through Miami's thick August > air.

I immediately stop reading articles that start like this, because I don't know how many paragraphs it will go on for.

<comment><USER35> If that's the case you're missing out on quite a bit.

<comment><USER34> I'm okay with missing out on ESPN's attempt to write literary prose.

<comment><USER36> Then the podcast version of the story's for you:

[http://m.espn.com/general/play?id=28114264](http://m.espn.com/general/play?id=28114264)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've seen that obsessed accountant type, and I've been that obsessed accountant perusing public filings

There are lots of discrepancies that dont really need the fireworks

Self dealing, contracts awarded, etc

If they get paid its fine.

Jeff David should have been prosecuted in 2026 on event of non-payment from his unraveled scheme. If everyone felt they were made whole but noticed the external entities then it should have just garnered a slow upward headnod from the current executives saying "What a G, my G, ya feel"

<comment><USER38> I can't tell if you're trolling or not. But if not, this is a terrible way to think: It's okay to steal and gamble with someone else's money as long as you become rich enough to pay it back? Only if you lose more money than you steal do you belong in jail? Chances are that you will make money over time since the economy grows over time. But only wealthy white collar people should get this opportunity to make interest off money that isn't theirs, right?

<comment><USER37> No not trolling

It is commonplace and yes transfers of money and property done in "white collar" ways have less harsh consequences and I no longer have any opinion on that

My only point is that this is a misuse of public resources</comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine 1.5.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2011/05/app-engine-150-release.html

<comment><USER2> Many people seem to be complaining about the shift from CPU-hour to instance- hour pricing. They don't seem to get that it's more or less the same thing: dynamic instances can handle "a small number" of concurrent requests.

So the GAE team has set the incentives correctly, to reward apps that work well with concurrency.

The current free quota is 6.5 CPU hours, and the upcoming free quota seems to be 24 instance hours. I know which I prefer.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"We have added a few restrictions to the Mail API to improve the reliability and reputation of the service for all applications. First, emails must be sent from email accounts managed by Google (either Gmail, or a domain signed up for Google Apps). Second, we've reduced the number of free recipients per day from 2000 to 100 for newly created applications."_

Probably good news for SendGrid.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking at getting into Go programming.

This could be a cool opportunity to do so. Does anyone have any resources for writing Go webapps?

<comment><USER5> Rob Pike is giving (or has given already?) a talk on writing web apps in Go at Google I/O today, it is not livecasted, but the video should be up tomorrow.

<comment><USER6> I really wish Google would set up all its presentations as one or more podcasts. I know it's unlikely, but one can dream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> New App Engine Pricing policy, the good the bad and the ugly. [http://gaengine.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-app-engine- pricing-...](http://gaengine.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-app-engine-pricing- policy-good-bad.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> The constant instances seem like a bid to take over the heroku type space.

<comment><USER9> There were a lot of complaints from people that had infrequently used (new) web apps, and so there would be a substantial delay to spin up an instance when the app did get hit. This makes your site seem "slow" even though it really isn't, which is a big problem if you are trying to build some momentum, or show off your site to potential investors. People were resorting to some less than ideal ways for keeping their instances warm, more information on the app engine for java group: [http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=24...](http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=2456)

<comment><USER10> I believe you can use a feature called "Always On" to avoid the cold start problem. I noticed such an option in my billing settings for $0.30 / day.

<comment><USER8> The always on feature in december fixed half the issue (cold start)

This fixed the other half (long running processes).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Principal Component Analysis on Images - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thehackerati.com/post/126701202241/eigenstyle <comment><USER2> PCA typically implies that the high dimensional data (images) lie on a low dimensional linear manifold (the principal components). In this case the data of interest (images of people in dresses) likely lies in a very non-linear manifold, so non-linear methods would likely result in much more appropriate models. This is part of why deep learning and tensor methods work so well on image classification tasks.

Nonlinear methods would require much more data, unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> > This is part of why deep learning and tensor methods work so well on image > classification tasks.

That statement sounds informative. Do you have a good non-specialist's reference?

<comment><USER4> You might be interested by colah's (Christopher Olah's) blog: [https://colah.github.io/](https://colah.github.io/)

Two articles in particular are good introductions to looking at neural networks in terms of higher dimensional data lying on lower-dimesnional manifolds:

Neural Networks, Manifolds, and Topology: [https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds- Topology/](https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology/)

Visualizing MNIST: An Exploration of Dimensionality Reduction: [https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-10-Visualizing- MNIST/](https://colah.github.io/posts/2014-10-Visualizing-MNIST/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the useful links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Using components to recreate image

Well, it seems like to me that the recreated image is in the "training dataset", otherwise the recreation seems too accurate. I would be interested how it handles recreating new, but similar images.

<comment><USER6> Likewise with the "predictions" of the authors likes/dislikes. Testing how the model will perform on an independent data-set (or at least cross validation [1]) would be much more interesting.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- validation_(statistics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- validation_\(statistics\))

<comment><USER7> The other thing I wondered about the predictions: she apparently rated all of the dresses, and the top/bottom matched the ratings. Fair enough. But what about the residuals, the missclassified ones - the ones where the logistic regression predicts a high or low score and her rating was actually the opposite? That might be interesting to look at.

<comment><USER8> That's there. Search for:

> The misclassifications are interesting too

One problem seems to be that it concluded she'd dislike anything the exact opposite color from her favorite shade of red. A common flaw in linear models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> PCA implicitly uses a quadratic form on a vector space. When done the usual way, this is just the identity matrix. But for image data, I think you would get better results using a quadratic form based on a kernel, so that Q_ijkl where (i,j) and (k,l) are pixel coordinates, is given by Q_ijkl = t((i-k)^2 + (j,l)^2) for some kernel function t.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see it (especially on other image data than just faces). But typically non-negative matrix decomposition creates less ghostly images, with an easier interpretation.

See e.g. [http://www.quantumblah.org/?p=428](http://www.quantumblah.org/?p=428) or [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/decomposition/p...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/decomposition/plot_faces_decomposition.html) (comparison of PCA and non-negative matrix factorization).

Of course, the non-negative factorization comes at some cost (mostly: much higher computational complexity), but it may be worth trying.

</comment><comment><USER11> "These aren't that bad. I do kinda like them, but think they'd be nicer with some minor adjustments (slightly less form-fitting, slightly less loud pattern, slightly brighter color)."

Would it be possible to use the like/dislike system to make/suggest the minor changes to the dresses?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this dataset available anywhere? I see the code on github, but I don't see the data anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really interesting, does anyone know more information on how the initial eigendresses were computed? Was there image processing to distill the dress into major components, hand tagging of variables (like short/long, color, etc), or just raw pixel data processed?

<comment><USER14> You might wanna do a search for "eigenfaces" (as opposed to "eigendresses" :P)

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

<comment><USER15> Reading that, I can't help but wonder how similar a machine-learned eigenface is to an infant-learned one. [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3273](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3273)

I wonder if there is some way to simulate the effect of growing up among people of different races on eyewitness identification and test if it matches what this lawyer is saying at [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3282](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3282)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Guess the Twitter source – TechCrunch, The Onion, HN, or PH? - <AUTHOR> http://guessthetwittersource.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Can you please show the correct answer when I get one wrong? I am not too familiar with TC or PH, so its hard for me to sort them out. This is especially true of the PH posts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Strangely addictive. Would be good if it gave you the ability to tweet your top score after you lose. Otherwise it is a bit of a gamble as to when you tweet.</comment>


Which industries take photos at multiple locations - <AUTHOR> I am trying to identify markets where i can develop photo-management application built over a map-environment, i.e. visualize photos in context of location...
for example the shipping industry might take photos of packages before delivery at a persons house, construction industry take photos at multiple construction sites, etc..
which other industry takes a large amount of photos where geolocation is important?
thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Rental properties, hotels, landscaping, maintenance companies

<comment><AUTHOR> great. thanks for the reply. i hadn't thought of hotels, will look into it more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Retail stores

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the comment. in what context do retail stores take photos? i didn't realize they do this.</comment></comment>


Minimal Linux Live: a minimalistic distro with basic network support via DHCP - <AUTHOR> http://minimal.linux-bg.org/ <comment><USER2> The answer to the question that's probably on everyone's mind: the resulting image is 12MiB for the x64 version and 11MiB for the x86 version.

By comparison, 16 MiB buys you a full-fledged (windowed) Linux live CD: [http://tinycorelinux.net/](http://tinycorelinux.net/) (or you can use their 11MiB kernel-only environment).

<comment><USER3> Seems equivalent. The 16MB TinyCore is the x86 version, whereas the x86-64 port takes 25MB.

<comment><USER4> OpenWrt 3MB

<comment><USER3> The x86 version seems to be 6MB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone remember Tom's Rescue Disk? This linux-on-a-floppy was a must-have for rescue and recover back in the day... The web site lives on, but many of the links are 404'd

[http://www.toms.net/rb/](http://www.toms.net/rb/)

<comment><USER6> It's not Linux, but QNX's demo floppy packed a ton on a single disk. Network drivers, web browser, VESA 2.0 video drivers, a few apps...

[http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html)

<comment><USER7> QNX was ahead of its time. I think it underpinned most versions of the BlackBerry OS and is used in cars / infotainment systems, but I think they would have made a killing in the IoT space if they had developed in another era.

<comment><USER8> QNX was only used in BB10, which was only introduced after the fall of BlackBerry's popularity (and, arguably, was part of the reason for their old products stagnating)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

The full build process is documented [1,2], and the sources are very readable and well-commented.

Also appears to include a basic install-to-disk script, which from the looks of it you definitely should _not_ try unless you know how to fix your MBR after it overwrites whatever you've currently got in place.[3]

Github: [https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal](https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal)

[1] [http://blog.idzona.com/2016/04/component-architecture-of- min...](http://blog.idzona.com/2016/04/component-architecture-of-minimal- linux-live.html)

[2] [https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal/blob/master/src/the_d...](https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal/blob/master/src/the_dao_of_minimal_linux_live.txt)

[3] [https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal/blob/master/src/overl...](https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal/blob/master/src/overlay_mll_utils_03_installer.sh)

</comment><comment><USER10> Good job. I'm personally a big fan of the alpine distro.

<comment><USER11> I just wish there were an Alpine variant with native glibc support.

<comment><USER12> It would hardly be Alpine, and it would be much bigger, its very hard to make a small glibc.

<comment><USER11> A great deal of the cruft in modern distros comes from docs, example configs, etc -- things Alpine does a great job of cutting out. Obviously a glibc variant is going to have a much larger memory footprint, and (arguably) is less secure than an musl libc distro, but it gains the ability to run glibc- only software ( _cough_ Oracle Java _cough_ ) without having to ship around container/host images with all the extra junk deb packages bring along for the ride.

<comment><USER13> I may be misunderstanding the problem but wouldn't it be possible to package up the bare minimum for running the JRE?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty cool. Had one minor script glitch (the scripts do not defend against having './' in $PATH, so picked up wrong cpio at one point) but built up pretty much straight-away.

I then spent a few minutes adding Micropython to the image, so now I have a 12MiB image that includes a pretty nice and very compact Python, although I haven't added my favorite uPython libraries yet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can I build this for a floppy? I've got an old machine I want to install into.

<comment><USER16> Look for an older archive for a distribution like slackware. Your hardware should be more supported

<comment><USER15> The machine is an i486, it's not "that" old so I'd like to get it running with debian or preferably arch. If I can get something to bootstrap the network ISA card I've got in there and allow me to build a linux environment I can bootstrap the other OS over a small one (like this).

<comment><USER17> Try debian woody or slackware 10, both are from around 2004 and should run on 16Mb of RAM or less

There's also Damn Small Linux which is based on debian woody, you could install dos, then transfer DSL image using a null-modem cable and loadlin to disk and use that to bootstrap it from DOS

<comment><USER15> I'm on DOS 6.22, a 200MB HDD, 4 COM, 1 Parallel, and I've got a shit load of floppy disks. What I don't have is drivers for my network card.

How would I go about bootstrapping DSL? What is a null-modem cable?

PS: I've also got a zip program and a C compiler on there. If I need to write software to make this happen I have the power to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Projects like this is one of the things that make Linux the single most important, first-grade in its universal usefullness, operating system.

Another similar cool multi-platform project that has been around for a while is Aboriginal Linux.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome! I'm going to try this to cross-compile for ARM, so MLL might be the embedded linux 'boilerplate' which I need.

<comment><USER20> You may be better off using Yocto[1], which is a custom distortion builder for small-space use cases. It's an official Linux Foundation project as well.

[1] [https://www.yoctoproject.org](https://www.yoctoproject.org)

<comment><USER13> Has anyone used both Yocto and Buildroot? How do they compare?

<comment><USER21> Have used Yocto and Buildroot for Freescale board's official images. Cannot recommend buildroot.

Buildroot is a poor build system. Perhaps make has spoiled me, but I expect anything that calls itself a build system to be able to find on its own what needs to be rebuilt. With buildroot, when I changed a component, I either had to explicitly ask for it to be rebuilt (and the explicitly ask the final image to be rebuilt), or explicitly mark the component dirty. The problem with the latter being that it's a one-way action; there's no way to clear the dirty flag without a full clean and rebuild of that component. Made our custom kernel dev work painfully slow.

Yocto was simple enough to read about and understand the setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What are the usecases envisioned for this distro?

<comment><USER23> > All you get is a simple shell console which supports all BusyBox applets > and... well, that's all. This is why it's called "minimal".

> The good news is that the build scripts are very small in size and simple to > understand. You can easily learn from the scripts and later modify them to > include more stuff (I encourage you to do so). After you learn the basics > you will have all the necessary tools and skills to create your own fully > functional Linux based operating system. Entirely from scratch!

Build your own lightweight linux-based systems and utilities, I guess. And learn while doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've tried and it works perfectly;</comment>


New open source HTML5 mobile game platform - <AUTHOR> http://docs.gameclosure.com/ <comment><USER2> Michael Carter here from Game Closure, I'd like to clear up some of the licensing questions.

For background, before GC I founded a non-profit that helped open source projects deal with licensing issues, CLAs, and IP around software in general. I've been involved in 3-4 large OSS projects, and I've spoken at OSCON and Pycon multiple times. I very strongly believe in the GPL, though we also wanted to let businesses use GC DevKit for commercial use under the most friendly possible terms.

Our goal is to promote GC DevKit and ensure that 3rd party bugfixes on the commercial and GPL licenses both end up in the same code base.

(1) You can use this under the GPL, no strings attached. (2) We wanted to further allow you to create commercial products, so we ADDITIONALLY offer an incredibly developer-friendly license (GCFL)

* You can release paid games on iOS or android (Note below, we should add web at some point)

* You don't pay us money, it's FREE.

* If you improve the engine, you must contribute it back to our main GPL version.

* You need to show our splash screen and let us mention your game to promote our platform.

Also, yes, we probably should allow web games under the GCFL (But you can still do it with the GPL.) We just haven't made Desktop Web a priority so we disallowed it in the license. This could easily change if enough people are interested.

<comment><USER3> The GPL is a hard sell to anyone. But with your commercial license, where do you draw the line between building functionality for your game on top of an engine versus extending the engine? It seems fuzzy. Besides, not having an option to build a game without either making it open source or publicly evangelizing your product will make adoption a non-starter for many serious developers.

Licensing aside, it seems strange to build a platform on HTML5/Javascript without support for the desktop/web. To me, that would be the whole point of building a game in HTML5 in the first place.

Other than all those caveats, it's nice to see more alternatives to ImpactJS beginning to emerge.

<comment><USER2> I get your concern about supporting the web; I think it's because a lot of people really want us to be a web game engine, but we aren't. We're a mobile game engine. We simply chose "HTML5" as an API layer because of the excellent tooling around the ecosystem. It just so happens we support the web as a side- product, and that's pretty cool I think, but not really the point of the GC DevKit.

Great feedback on the fuzziness of the license WRT contributions! Overall our intention is to let people keep their source code proprietary, but protect clear bug fixes and enhancements to the core engine. We never, ever intend to come up with some "gotcha" and start charging money. Any suggestions on changes or clarifications to our license that let us accomplish that are very welcome! (Though please read our first attempt in Exhibit A "Modifications" first)

The good news is that the core native engine (c/c++/java/obj-c) is very obviously separated from the game code and so that's easy; it's just the JS libraries that we have to be precise about. Perhaps the MPL has the right wording and guidelines around that?

("The MPL is a simple, file-level copyleft license. The MPL's "weak" copyleft is designed to encourage contributors to share modifications they make to your code, while still allowing them to combine your code with code under other licenses (open or proprietary) with minimal restrictions.")

<comment><USER4> But games are all different. An improvement to the engine for one kind of game may not be an improvement for another kind of game. Most games would probably only use a small part of the engine.

Will the engine become a monolith with support for pretty much everything, and all games using the engine will only need 10% of it? Or something else?

I think you need to state very clearly what the goal of the engine is (best 2d engine, best tile game engine, best ??? engine, general purpose engine, etc?), which can help define exactly what kinds of contributions are actually useful.

<comment><USER5> > _But games are all different. An improvement to the engine for one kind of > game may not be an improvement for another kind of game. Most games would > probably only use a small part of the engine._

I don't really see them as all different. Especially at the engine level. Especially considering most 2D engines (Cocos, Game Closure, etc) are mostly the same and use similar concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always like to know how free services like this plan to make money.

Their careers page (<http://www.gameclosure.com/careers.html>) says they're hiring and have "top-tier funding," so obviously they're going to need to monetize somehow. Yet I couldn't find a single mention of a paid service or premium offering.

Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, but it's unsettling nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER7> _"You can distribute your application commercially, but you must also provide the source code."_

This little gem in the license information is pretty off-putting (<http://doc.gameclosure.com/guide/license.html>).

<comment><USER8> We've dual licensed the DevKit - you can choose either the GPL or our free commercial license: <http://www.gameclosure.com/license.html>

That page is about the GPL licensed version.

It's basically saying you're free to develop and release a game with the GPL version but (as per the GPL) you need to release the source.

The other option is to use the commercial license. Then you do not have to release the source of your game.

I'll look into clarifying the copy on the page you linked - hopefully this clears things up.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for clarifying! So, in a nutshell, if you choose the commercial license, you are going to be helping market GC. Are you planning on offering a paid commercial license at any point?

 _"2 You may not modify or enhance the GC DevKit or Engine whatsoever. The only exception is to perform bug fixes if you contribute your changes back to Game Closure. (See Exhibit A). You must incorporate a Game Closure splash screen logo into your game. (See Exhibit B)"_

 _"3 You must allow Game Closure to use your company and game name and logo for marketing purposes"_

<comment><USER8> If you are interested in a commercial license under different terms, you can contact me at email@example.com.

The GCFL covers what we see as the majority case for game developers - we can work out other options as the are necessary.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Not looking to right now, but I like to understand what options are available for growth paths when choosing libraries/frameworks/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find disallowing modifications to the SDK (under the GCFL) to be a really bizarre choice. Is this allowed with a paid license of some sort? If not, why not? It's basically standard operating procedure in games that if the SDK you're using doesn't cut it, you work around the issues in order to ship. Is this specifically aimed at preventing people from using bizarre derivative forks of your toolset?

<comment><USER8> The spirit of the requirement is to encourage contributions back to the GPL version. You can fix or modify the GCFL version as needed - the only requirement is that you contribute back any changes to the SDK itself back to the GPL version.

This way we can ensure that everyone benefits from having the latest and most bug-free code.

<comment><USER9> I see, I read it as meaning that you can't use the GCFL version if you have any modifications that GC hasn't integrated into trunk. If it just means that you have to contribute the changes back under the GPL that's much simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm really glad that more game tools are starting to crop up, and its nice to see something from Game Closure who seem to fall off my radar for months at a time.

Looking around at this though, some of these licensing terms are very awkward. ImpactJS costs money but the licensing seems much less strict.

What's more awkward though is the focus on mobile-specific platforms, including an awful lot of native stuff, while lauding HTML5 :/

I don't plan on competing with Game Closure but I hope to contribute a lot canvas game-related tools of my own once I get free time again. UI-inspector style tools like the one they've created would be really helpful, especially for making point-and-click adventure games.

</comment><comment><USER11> I kind of like it, but it'd be nice if someone set up a comparison table of all these new html5 game engines. There are so many nowadays, am I supposed to learn each one to figure out what suits me?

<comment><USER12> Ask and you shall receive

<https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/Game-Engines>

<comment><USER11> ... too many options.

I wish it was easier to see what's abandonware vs what's being maintined.

Perhaps show github stars and last commit date?

I'd look at ruby toolbox for a good model to follow.

(mentioned in case you work/contribute to the project)

<comment><USER12> It is a wiki so I will consider contributing because I have some free time coming up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seeing how heavily this depends on node.js, I'd love to see it distributed through NPM. NPM already provides a centralised and clean package management system which can handle updates and installing executables and it makes it possible to make the engine a dependency of your game code.

It's the sort of thing that put me off meteor before, it doesn't seem like a great decision to reinvent the wheel. I noticed that during the install step it clones a number of other repositories as submodules, perhaps these would do well as individual NPM packages and the central package depends on each one?

Edit: having a play now and it's very cool :) Unlike another who reported silent failure when running basil on Ubuntu 12.04, it's working well for me on Xubuntu 12.04. I had a permissions issue as stated in the install guide, would it be possible to have this install to the home directory instead and add it to the local user PATH? This sort of thing seems like it would make more sense to install just for the local user.

</comment><comment><USER14> well, I was super excited when I see the video, until I see this in the getting started document:

      We're only supporting OSX at this time, but we have some success running on Linux and Windows.

haven't tried it yet though, so how much is "some success"? and what are the things that makes it OSX only, instead of UNIX compatible?

<comment><USER15> I've tried running it on Ubuntu 12.10. The install script seems to work without a problem, but when I try to run their command line tool (basil) it dies without an error message...

<comment><USER16> It's just a NodeJS tool so go take a look at <https://github.com/gameclosure/devkit/blob/master/bin/basil> and see what's up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not really a game developer but it seems weird to me that if you go with the GCFL you cannot release the game on the internet, but only in the appstores.

<comment><USER18> Totally agree. The only reason you would develop a game in HTML5 is for the build once, launch everywhere attempt. Otherwise you might as well use Corona.

<comment><USER19> ...or Unity or MonoGame (even better!).

<comment><USER3> ... or OpenFrameworks, Polycode, Cocos2d-x, Haxe NME

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Others I can think of, Construct2, ImpactJS, Crafy, Collie. Some of them are made for different things. For example Construct2 provides a visual interface, easier to build at the cost of having more limitations. ImpactJS has a level editor, based on blocks, physics are not hard to implement, and they document building for mobile app stores. Crafy is very light, an abstraction for the canvas, similar to Collie. Game closure looks like it's good for making network games, uses node.js.

<comment><USER21> I think you probably mean Crafty, not Crafy.

I found I enjoyed working with it the most -- it handled exactly the parts I didn't want to think about (drawing sprites, collision detection) and left the interesting stuff with me.

That said, in the end I did end up looking into their drawing/collision code to tweak the performance some! :D

<comment><USER20> Yes Crafty thanks for the correction, I have this skipping keys problem lately since I switched to a microsoft ergonomic keyboard that I'm not sure that I like now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks slick! Also see the blog post: <http://www.gameclosure.com/blog/?p=177>

</comment><comment><USER23> What is the state of OpenSource HTML5 game engine/frameworks? What's the most mature and useful one?

<comment><USER24> There are several good ones shortly described here: <http://wiki.ludei.com/cocoonjs:engines>

The issue is that mobile is eating up all the web traffic, and HTML5 in mobile browsers has terrible performance. So you need technology like CocoonJS to reimplement a subset of the browser needed for gaming with decent performance.

<comment><USER4> Cocoonjs, ejecta and now gameclosure all implement html5 canvas with opengl. With them, I've found rendering performance to be almost as good as native games. The update loop becomes the bottleneck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This looks pretty cool! I wonder if this gives you access to shaders, or if this is a planned feature? That's one of the things about AndEngine that I really like, and is one of the reasons I switched from HTML5/js engines for making mobile games.

<comment><USER26> You're free to implement your own shaders throughout the stack and push them back to mainline. See the gameclosure/native-core repository @ <https://github.com/gameclosure/native-core>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Proof that you don't need 100 pages of license terms to make your library unusable for commercial software.

</comment><comment><USER28> So I need to show your logo before my game starts in order to use this library ? Sorry, but that is a deal breaker.

Everyone should check out LimeJS. It is essentially functionally equivalent to what is being offered here, but without the shady license.

<comment><USER28> I should add a stipulation that LimeJS doesn't have a fancy marketing video, sorry.

<comment><USER29> Don't be a jag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How so @iends? You can do both, why would you have to release on the app store?

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I didn't see this.

What I mean is, the whole point of choosing HTML5/JS is that you can write once, run everywhere. The non-GPL license forbids you from writing your game and releasing it for the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> what's the theme song?

</comment><comment><USER32> another one?!

</comment><comment><USER33> that video is truly a catch.

</comment><comment><USER34> omg this demo just gave me the biggest dev bonner i have had in a while :D, looks awesome. anyone else loving the retro mega man theme song?</comment>


UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful 'for seven years' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/06/gchq-mass-internet-surveillance-unlawful-court-nsa <comment><USER2> The way this same story has been spun by the BBC worries me.

You'd think the news line has to be, as the Guardian and others are reporting, GCHQ mass Internet surveillance was 'unlawful'.

The Beeb did go with 'unlawful' in their original headline but the story has since been watered down with sheer wordiness.

'Unlawlful' now appears in the tenth paragraph, below an analysis panel, and is only then included in a quotation from a campaign group.

Nowhere in the article does the BBC succinctly say a tribunal held that GCHQ breached human rights law. It simply says the agency is now complaint (without saying that it was not for seven years).

To me at least, it seems the BBC is becoming less of a public-service broadcaster and more of a state one.

\-- GCHQ censured over sharing of internet surveillance data with US [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31164451](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31164451)

<comment><USER3> That's a great point.

About the only thing you can do is call them on it in social media; tell them you are paying attention:

      @BBC why won't you use the word "illegal" or "unlawful" in the headline?
      This is far bigger than censure.

<comment><USER2> I'm going to _try_ to stop reading BBC News instead.

It won't be easy because I've been using it for years. I like the site's navigation and readability but the content is often lacking given their resources.

They did something similar with the Prince Andrew story, reporting his "emphatic" denials before mentioning the allegations.

Clearly, he is innocent until proven guilty. However, the Beeb regularly seems eager to jump to the defense of the powerful rather than scrutinise.

I'm veering way off-topic now but this morning they had a big, brash, bullshit "breaking news" banner for a piece about a tennis player's wedding date.

That may be of interest to the public but it's not in the public interest. Too often the BBC conflates the two as meaning the same thing.

<comment><USER4> _> However, the Beeb regularly seems eager to jump to the defense of the powerful rather than scrutinise._

Well, the one time they got a bit too uppity (on the Iraq invasion), their head was literally cut off.

The UK is a funny country. Lots of freedom, but certain powerful interests simply won't be restrained by things like laws or common decency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, one of the key things about this ruling is that it declares "that prior to the disclosures made and referred to in the Tribunal's Judgment of 5 December 2014, the regime governing the soliciting, receiving, storing and transmitting by UK authorities of private communications of individuals located in the UK, which have been obtained by US authorities pursuant to Prism and/or (on the Claimants' case) Upstream, _contravened Articles 8 or 10 ECHR_ ".[1]

ECHR refers to the European Convention on Human Rights[2]. Article 8 covers privacy. Article 10 covers freedom of expression.

The Human Rights Act 1998 declares that "It is _unlawful_ for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right"[3] (and GCHQ is classified as a public authority) but I'm not aware of any legislation that would classify such actions as a crime. Therefore, while monetary damages may be awarded[4], it seems unlikely that anyone could be held personally accountable (in the sense of being charged with a crime).

Ironically, the Home Office just announced a public consultation on the draft codes of practice for interception of communications and "equipment interference" (which covers hacking).[4]

1: [http://www.ipt- uk.com/docs/Liberty_Ors_Judgment_6Feb15.pdf](http://www.ipt- uk.com/docs/Liberty_Ors_Judgment_6Feb15.pdf)

2: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Ri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights)

3: [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/section/6](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/section/6)

4: [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/section/8](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/section/8)

5: [https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/interception- of-...](https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/interception-of- communications-and-equipment-interference-draft-codes-of-practice)

<comment><USER6> I may be alone here, but while I don't always agree with the laws of the country, I want the government, army, police, and civil service to be acting inside those laws.

<comment><USER7> I get the impression that the agencies actually do want to act legally. And the government go to great efforts to make sure that these kind of actions are legallised after the fact. I wouldn't be suprised if this ruling is used as an excuse to leave the ECHR.

Personally I think it is better to have tight laws that are sometimes broken than loose laws that authorize anything. I understand that there are situations where agents may have to break the law and should have a reasonable defence against prosecution (akin to self defence). Instead we get this world in which these grey areas are ignored to the detriment of everyone.

<comment><USER8> You're being downvoted unfairly IMHO. I'm against the status quo, but the people in these organisations tend to believe they're doing the right thing. They're not scofflaws, but they are isolated and insulated.

There are a lot of legal exemptions for agencies, but they are well aware they're not above the law. The public scrutiny will create genuine headaches for them, and I can guarantee you right now that there are a lot of people whose sole job is to ensure that they meet directives.

They're not gonna change international agreements over it though.

I am surprised that people on HN aren't seeing this for the genuine victory it is; only law can bind these entities, and it's not a quick process. This is the process working, as well as it ever does (for ill and good).

<comment><USER9> > but the people in these organisations tend to believe they're doing the > right thing. They're not scofflaws, but they are isolated and insulated.

I agree. They think they're following UK law. Here's an article from Grauniad which supports that: [http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal- loopholes-gc...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes- gchq-spy-world)

> _The briefings, which are entitled UK Operational Legalities, stress that > GCHQ "is an organisation with a highly responsible approach to compliance > with the law"._

> _GCHQ also has a well staffed legal team, known as OPP-LEG, to help staff > navigate their way through the complexities of the law._

> _But there appears to be some nervousness about Tempora. In a paper written > for National Security Agency (NSA) analysts entitled A Guide to Using > Internet Buffers at GCHQ, the author notes: "[Tempora] represents an > exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ's > special source data._

> _" As large-scale buffering of metadata and content represent a new concept > for GCHQ's exploitation of the internet, GCHQ's legal and policy officers > are understandably taking a careful approach to their access and use."_

<comment><USER10> The mob also has well staffed legal teams to help their staff navigate through the complexities of the law.

It's easy to keep the appearance of following the law when you're a secret organisation on a mission, with little public oversight. And unlike organised crime, intelligence services don't have to rely on blackmail to get a direct line to the executive and legislation.

Admit to the stuff that's legal, make the stuff that's borderline a political issue, make excuses for the stuff that was illegal then retroactively legalise it, all the while relying on the bottom end of the iceberg being secret for long enough that you've got time to destroy the evidence or nobody cares anymore.

I'm sure that's how it works, it's not even malicious, it's just tribalism. It's why we institute transparency and accountability in most other places. Give your local library enough funding and remove all the oversight and in 10 years it'll have a bunch of skeletons in the closet and a "well staffed legal team to help them navigate their way through the complexities of the law."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whilst I applaud the ruling, I doubt it will make much of difference. The British government simply uses extensions to the "temporary" Terrorism Act 2000 and its modifications in 2001, 2005, 2006 and 2008 and/or RIPA.

I'm getting a bit tired of politicians standing up in the House of Common's, stating we need a "temporary" act to reduce liberty and privacy under the guise of terrorism, only to extend the rulings indefinitely. It's bullshit.

Also, with regards to RIPA, the section related to "Use of communication data" requires only "senior member of that authority", whilst wire taps and reading post requires authorisation from "Warrant from Home Secretary or Cabinet Secretary for Justice". The first one should also move under this authority and blanket surveillance should be banned.

Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time.

P.S. Interestingly, Germany is one of the few large European nations with troops in "Muslim lands", that has to date not had a major terrorist incident. They have a large Muslim population, which although largely very moderate and westernised, do have a minority of people who are preaching extremism. Also, many of the terrorist cells (including 9/11) have originated, or passed through Germany.

<comment><USER12> _Conspiracy theorist me says we should expect another "act of terrorism" on the UK mainland. This government needs to bolster its control, as they did in Australia, France and Canada. After every attack, the direct effect is that politicians start looking for ways to spin that into invasions of privacy and liberty. Every god damn time._

I appreciate that you prefixed this, but are you _really_ implying that the recent attacks in France were planned by the government? Or that the 7/7 bombings in London were?

That really dilutes the value of the other points you make – which I do agree with.

<comment><USER13> It's not so much that such an attack would be created by the government (which if that's what GP is saying, then I utterly agree with you). It's more what's done after the attack — painting it as a terrorist attack in the first place, then arguing that it like all terrorist attacks could have been prevented if intelligence were more powerful, etc.

I found it very interesting recently that the BBC has decided to stop using the word "terrorism" to report these attacks[1], and I hope that this will lead to a more nuanced argument over different events.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-bbc-has- just...](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-bbc-has-just-done- more-to-eradicate-terrorism-than-all-our-wars-since-911-10003927.html)

<comment><USER14> This only applies to BBC Arabic.

<comment><USER13> Ah, shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "was unlawful", "is unlawful" and "will be unlawful".

It will not stop just because of the court decision. The rule of law is for mere mortals, and not the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies, unfortunately.

<comment><USER6> The UK has a pretty good track record of nobody being above the law.

<comment><USER16> Lets see what happens to Tony Blair after the Chilcot inquiry report is published:

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/tony- bl...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/tony-blair-war- crimes-prosecuted-eel-like-boris-johnson)

<comment><USER6> Can we also just take a moment to consider the monumental stupidity in accusing Blair of "war crimes" for "crimes against peace" by invoking the Nuremberg principles?? If it's "crime against peace", then it is - under the Nuremberg principles - not a war crime.

<comment><USER16> Personally, I don't see what is stupid about charging him with an appropriate crime here in the UK (if there is one - IANAL) if he lied to parliament to start our involvement in a war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So roughly speaking, the US could spy on the UK but when they shared the data with the UK it was illegal for the UK authorities to "solicit, receive, store and transmit" that data.

However they previously had said that the new process of sharing data was now legal. In order to comply with the law GCHQ and the NSA have ... Made public the fact they are sharing information and how much.

Yeah, please take that one to a higher court and decide not on narrow technicalities but should we be doing this at all?

I am rather proud of Liberty (who I used to work for (IT and campaigns it's fun!) - it took a long time to get here.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope other governments will take notice of this ruling in considering political asylum for the person who blew the whistle to expose these human rights violations on a massive scale.

</comment><comment><USER19> One presumes that the court doesn't deems there's been a serious criminal action here. More the status quo isn't legal. I'd like to know if this means the current actions will stop. When? If the government will fight it. Or legislate around it? There needs to be an official response from someone will real authority. It's been judged as illegal...so what next?

</comment><comment><USER20> So, like @higherpurpose pointed out - ruling without enforcement is nothing in this case.

I seriously doubt GCHQ will transform their Cornwall facility into a tourist attraction like Bletchley Park, after NSA recently invested in it such fancy amounts of monies.

</comment><comment><USER21> Such rules will need to be accompanied by _consequences_ for those doing it. A ruling without enforcement isn't worth much. That said, this is a great, and perhaps quite surprising ruling, considering it's a secret Court.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't strike me as particularly surprising. Judges have secrets they don't want spooks reading, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "... for seven years." Also probably all the other years.

</comment><comment><USER23> And will it stop? ... not a chance

Will anyone be held accountable and brought to justice? ... not a chance

</comment><comment><USER24> Terrible and completely misleading headline. The court ruled that the SHARING of surveillance data with NSA was unlawful until this past December. Its another meaningless verdict that effectively supports the gross invasion of individual privacy while claiming to oppose it.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is important to fight surveillance in the courts, but as they keep making ever more draconian and broad surveillance laws it will eventually become pointless. At the end of the day, this is a political question.

I'm not quite sure what we're dealing with here politically. I wonder whether this extent of surveillance is simply the will of the poeple or whether democracy has been subverted by a power hungry security aparatus.</comment>


Reducing Redux Boilerplate in TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://warhol.io/blog/reducing-redux-boilerplate-in-typescript <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer.

There's a much better solution than what this blog describes. We've just released a new package called Redux Starter Kit [0], which is meant to provide opinionated defaults and simplify writing common Redux code patterns. It's already written in TypeScript, and works great in TS apps.

In particular, the `createSlice` function [1] allows you to provide reducer functions that use "mutative" update logic (thanks to using the Immer library [2] internally), and auto-generates action types and action creators based on the provided reducers. Really, there's no reason to write an action creator or action type by hand ever again. `createSlice` also makes it really easy to organize your Redux logic using the single-file-per-feature "ducks" pattern [3]

The "Advanced Tutorial" page [4] shows how to use RSK with TypeScript, and with our new React-Redux hooks.

Going forward, Redux Starter Kit is our recommended way to use Redux.

[0] [https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/](https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/)

[1] [https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/api/createSlice](https://redux-starter- kit.js.org/api/createSlice)

[2] [https://immerjs.github.io/immer/docs/introduction](https://immerjs.github.io/immer/docs/introduction)

[3] [https://github.com/erikras/ducks-modular- redux](https://github.com/erikras/ducks-modular-redux)

[4] [https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/tutorials/advanced- tutorial](https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/tutorials/advanced-tutorial)

</comment><comment><USER3> The concept of action types inferred from module types is something we use in Warhol's code a lot. It also fits nicely with the architecture of Conceptual Components as I described in my blog post here: [https://drublic.de/blog/conceptual- components/](https://drublic.de/blog/conceptual-components/)</comment>


As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/local-recycling-costs.html <comment><USER2> It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China".

I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By the late 2000s everything was moving to "single stream recycling", where you just throw all your trash, cardboard, plastic, etc. in one bin and somehow it'd magically get sorted at the facility. That frankly seemed a little too good to be true to me, but everybody was buying into it.

Suddenly Plastic China comes out, China stops accepting recyclables, and we're back to where we were in the early 90s. What if all the "progress" was just an illusion where companies figured they could brand trash-hauling as recycling for eco-friendly customers, charge more for it, and then dump the trash on an unregulated Chinese buyer who could do whatever they want with it?

<comment><USER3> I assure you that anything metal gets recycled. It's much cheaper to recycle than dig more ore out of the ground.

 _tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket_

<comment><USER4>
      tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket

No core charge or other incentive from the parts store?

<comment><USER5> Not on brake rotors, no[1]. They are always from new - there's nothing to recondition on them, they're only suitable for melting down again. I'd think they would be prohibitively expensive to handle for the retail chain, given their low scrap value.

[1] Aside from top-end stuff that has a separate bell and rotor, but this is maybe 0.001%, if that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs.

There's big money involved.

Imagine the costs to the packaging industry if it was no longer allowed to create infinite garbage.

I do find it strange that there seems to be zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles.

<comment><USER7> It would create infinite other forms of garbage that people throw in the trash anyway.

<comment> crooked-v Single-used cardboard wrappings for non-perishables don't have nearly as much impact on the environment as plastic, even if just thrown away.

<comment><USER8> It really depends on whether you value apples or oranges more highly.

My understanding is that paper fares better on the litter front, since even the stuff that escapes landfills still degrades quickly, while plastic tends to fare better on the carbon footprint front, because it's lighter (which reduces fuel burned to ship things) and less energy-intensive to manufacture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People keep saying that China was _accepting_ recyclables. They weren't _accepting_ them, they were _buying_ them.

It's hard to make a case that it was all just trash when somebody was paying for it.

<comment><USER10> It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

<comment><USER11> Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

<comment><USER12> Or perhaps we could just stop creating it in the first place. Is there really a need for all of the one use plastics or the excessive packaging ?

<comment><USER13> My city Bangalore effectively enforced a plastic ban. So some grocery stores now only have paper bags even to pack veggies. I think it's doable. The government enforced the ban as there was no alternative, we don't have enough space for landfills.

A city like Singapore however uses a lot of plastic and thermocol. I wonder where they find space for their landfills. Probably they are doing the same, exporting all the trash to China or Indonesia.

<comment><USER14> China still accepts rare-earth/metal trash, but also properly sorted trash too. For example, recently mainland declined to accept Hong Kong trash until they implement sorting. On these conditions, they can continue sending their garbage to the mainland China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure about burning recyclables, but burning trash in general is more environmentally friendly than it seems. Sure it releases CO2 (which isn't really an issue if that energy would otherwise come from fossil fuels) but it's possible to scrub out most other contaminants, and it prevents the burnable materials from languishing in a landfill producing methane. It's not recycling, but it is reusing.

I'm kind of skeptical about the benefits of recycling certain materials that are so cheap that the operational costs of recycling are much greater than the value saved. This seems to be happening in the article where people are increasingly subsidizing unprofitable recycling programs. As far as I know, it's not an environmental disaster to just dump aluminum, glass, and plastic in a landfill, and it seems cheaper to just produce more of those products from their original materials than to recycle the used materials. Maybe we should take a step back and ask ourselves whether it's worth our time to recycle certain materials.

<comment><USER16> High temperature burning is a bit better environmentally than people just burning garbage at home. The extremely high temp is the key.

There is a demand for aluminum and metal, many people make a bit of a living collecting these for money.

The problem with glass is that it has food residue on it. This causes leaching in the landfills.

Farmers need COMPOST! Soil around the world is nearly depleted. We need an efficient way of cleaning out the food particles from food containers, before disposing or recycle, and having those particles end up on farms.

<comment><USER17> When I first moved to the UK I was frustrated about the fact that I had to separate my food waste from my general garbage, or my glass from my general recycling. I can see now why it's a better system because the potential to reuse these materials is higher when they are separated at the source.

Not to mention the fact that cities have landfill/recycling centers you can drive to and get rid of anything and everything for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the > terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a > landfill.

I heard other cities doing that. It is interesting in municipalities where people diligently separate their recycling into multiple streams, everything neatly going into a separate bins and so on, and then it all goes and gets dumped in the landfill.

That says something about human psychology. People need to engage in this ritual because it makes them feel better. They might say to themselves "I am separating my glass, from metal, from plastic, I am saving the environment! I feel good about myself". The economy doesn't work out in the end, but nobody dares to tell the people that, so they happily continue to sort their trash. It's kind of a dystopian win-win situation.

<comment><USER19> Well no, the environment gets ruined so it's more of a "everyone suffers and die ahead of time" situation

<comment><USER18> That's why I called it a "a dystopian win-win" :-)

<comment><USER20> Recyclables, Please! Steam greenlight that stat. I'd buy it. Maybe the plot twist is you're homeless all along!

<comment><USER21> Or the recyclables are made out of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The problem is not waste but the fact that is not a problem for consumers or manufacturers. A lot of product packaging only makes sense because you don't have to worry about disposing in a responsible way. Milk used to come in glass bottles, which the milkman would take back for reuse. Not anymore. There's no more milkman and the factory uses cheap to produce one time use packaging. Disposal cost is not their problem.

The solution is twofold.

1) we can do better now at separating waste using AI and robotics. Instead of having 3 or 4 bins at home where we toss things based on our mood, gut feeling, or simply which bin is the least full; a robot could confidently be sorting waste into hundreds of buckets. And unlike humans they'd get it mostly right. Waste becomes a resource when you treat it properly. There are some places where former land fill sites are being mined for precious materials. This stuff is not worthless anymore.

2) Price for disposal needs to be part of the deal when selling a product. E.g. disposal cost for e.g. washing machines is part of the sales price in some countries. They take back the old one when you buy a new one. Already payed for when you bought it. Also, super convenient to not have to do that yourself.

<comment><USER23> Something like [https://zenrobotics.com](https://zenrobotics.com)?

Sorting action in [https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA](https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In Germany you pay a deposit when you buy a bottle and when you bring it back, you get your money back. At least when I lived there the system worked well. there is always a lot of pressure from industry to go one-way though.

<comment><USER25> California has this as well -- CRV, but I dont see too many people taking advantage of it. Part of the problem is that most stores dont accept the bottles back -- you need to bring them to a recycling dropoff point that seem to be relatively rare and far in between.

<comment><USER26> Here in Germany, almost every store takes almost every bottle.

<comment><USER24> Is there a law or is it voluntary? I don't remember.

<comment><USER27> When you sell something with a deposit on it you have to accept returns of stuff with deposit on it.

<comment><USER28> Nit pick, things work differently for multi-way and one-way containers:

\- There are no special regulations for multi-way bottles (glass and plastic alike). Most stores will accept only those they are incentivized to, i.e. the brands they sell (manufacturers are eager to get them back to be able to reuse them).

\- As soon as a store sells a kind of one-way container (plastic bottles, aluminum cans), they have to accept, pay out the mandatory €0.25 deposit for, and properly dispose of each and every one-way container of that kind customers bring in (in household quantities). There is a clearing mechanism, since store's sales might not match their returns.

<comment><USER29> Re: one-way bottles, it was not always that easy. When the one-way deposit was introduced in ~2004, shops were only required to take their own SKUs back. This was absolutely horrible for consumers and producers alike, so retailers introduced the shared system voluntarily.

<comment><USER28> Good point. Fortunately, that seems to have been mandated by law since 2006 (at least for stores larger than 200m² ≅ 2150 sq ft).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I often wonder how much of the plastic in the ocean actually came from "recycled" plastic being shipped to another country for burning and/or burial.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a market opportunity to come up with less costly systems that can operate at slim margins and with scale.

Recycling will never be the greatest of businesses. However the scale of demand in a country as large as the US is extraordinary. 5% margins at $100 billion in sales is ultimately a giant, $60-$80 billion market cap business. That's the kind of opportunity this presents for an enterprise that can quickly move to be the solution to the post China recycling problem.

<comment><USER24> I always think this is a great opportunity for AI and Robotics. Sorting recycling automatically would be a huge improvement.

Edit: I know you are not supposed to ask about downvotes but I have no idea why this got downvoted. This would finally be an application of AI that benefits mankind instead of more surveillance for ads.

<comment><USER32> I didn't down vote you, but I do know that some robotics is used now. In addition with different sized mesh screens to filter size. Then they use float/sink and melting point to further separate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there anyway to get transparency on what individual communities are actually doing? At our last county fair, the recycling department had a game set up to help people understand what should go into trash versus recycling. I was asking the manager about the specifics and he said that the recycling was taken to a local facility where local people were paid to sort through it on a conveyor belt to pull out stuff that should've gone into the trash. It sounded feasible at the time, but reading through these comments I wonder if the recycling was actually being shipped to China (this was before the whole thing about China refusing recyclables started). We are on the west coast by a large port, so I would think it would easier for us to have been shipping recyclable to China that people farther inland.

</comment><comment><USER34> Recycling was always a lipstick on a pig. Inefficient, subsidized, hypocrisy.

Wanna help the environment? Reduce consumption overall.

<comment><USER35> very specifically: don't take the plane, don't got to work with your car, and live in high density housing.

<comment><USER36> And have a vegan/vegetarian diet.

<comment><USER2> And don't have kids.

<comment><USER37> I think this is a misguided sentiment, and this article sums up the reasons why pretty well: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want- to-help-fight-climate-change-have-more-children?utm_campaign=socialflow- organic&utm_content=view&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter- view&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is a problem with the materials the packaging industry uses. Are there any start-ups or big companies working on a solution?

</comment><comment><USER39> I think that we should have started with municipal composting, paper recycle and plastic Reduce programs. Most of the contamination is from food waste and it makes up most of the weight of trash (obviously because of water content) and I imagine is the major source of methane in our landfills.

Somehow we started with recycling plastics programs (perhaps industry manipulation) which is a complicated mess. Where I live, they still can't recycle black plastics so they end up in the landfill anyway. The these latest developments, I am sure if we actually looked, we would find out that there are provinces in China making a fortune importing recyclables that actually just went straight to a landfill. Of course, now they have decades of trash to contend with. Meanwhile we can all sit pretty thinking about how wonderful we were for separating our recyclables.

<comment><USER16> I can't even find a way of properly recycling batteries. It would be nice if all the fire halls allowed you to drop-off batteries, and old fire-alarms (they contain radioactive material).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Someone I knew was trying to make a film a couple of years ago following the recycling stream from his neighborhood in nyc to China. His takeaway was that basically nothing is recycled.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have a family of 5 (three young children). We don't bother trying to recycle paper or cardboard anymore. We compost it or use it in the garden as sheet mulch.

Still our recycling bin fills faster than our "trash" due to packaging.

I also make eco bricks out of any plastic bags or plastic wrappers.

<comment><USER42> Please share more about your eco bricks, this is the first I've heard of them. Is it as simple as filling a 2L plastic bottle with other plastics? Do you donate them, what are they used for?

<comment><USER41> I use Gatorade bottles. I'm currently using them between the studs in my shed to act as insulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there some life cycle assessment (LCA) writeup somewhere on the whole plastics issue? From what it looks "recycling" was big lie due to no accountablity? So all consumer facing regulation in societies with a working waste disposal system is pretty much pointless, if the mess is on the systems top end side.

In Germany, I now get everything in single use paper bags as the default, if I don't intervene, which I see as worse environmental impact, the then few grams of plastic bags we had before. As long as you have a closed system, with near 100% waste caputure, no plastic should end up in the wild when accountability is enforced through all waste management transactions.

So I'm still not shure, how this whole garbage patch topic connects to consumer policies in countries with working closed disposal systems, is this just activism to distract from inability to control the systemic issues here?

</comment><comment><USER44> The alternative to total recycling could be to rough recycling what can be easily extracted and used (ie metals) and the rest could go through a cycle of thermolysis/pyrolysis, powered by solar or other sustainable sources...

</comment><comment><USER45> In school we were taught the 3 RS: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Nobody ever taught me that they were in order. Reducing consumption is best. If you can't reduce, reuse. If it can't be reused, recycle it.

I think we thought recycling was enough.

</comment><comment><USER46> My understanding was that since China decided to stop taking in the world's plastic and toxic recycling, it's now virtually impossible to get rid of this stuff. Allegedly some of it is now dumped at sea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Key to the economics of it working was that profit from redeemables (beverage cans, bottles) would pay for the rest of the process. Then came people "harvesting" out all the valuable elements.

</comment><comment><USER47> So is there a startup disruptive market here?

Since less than clean recyclables is the new environmental pollution, is there an UberTrash in sight?

Honey, I have a new gig, I pick up trash and my hours are flexible. Wee!

</comment><comment><USER48> How do compostable products compare to recyclable ones? How much better/worse are they and how much impact do they have?

<comment><USER49> Just my opinion, but compostable doesn't make that great of a product in a lot of places they're being pushed. I've seen a bunch of places switch to compostable silverware and cups. The silverware is a lot less durable than plastic (which is already a low bar) and coffee lids don't fit properly. One place I frequent uses them and I constantly hear others complain and discover this for themselves. I sound like an old man, but I am often very explicit about getting a mug of coffee when I order, but a different person fulfills the order and often puts it in a compostable cup.

Poor products turns people off to that technology and discourages me from ordering coffee.

<comment><USER50> Arguably, being annoying is a feature, not a bug; we want to discourage single-use packaging and get people to bring their own reusable containers.

<comment><USER49> I was trying to think of a way to write my first comment without coming across as insensitive to the environment. I much prefer the cheapest reusable containers to most expensive disposable. I believe it's common for people in Japan to carry their own towels to dry their hands. I think it's becoming more common for people in China and Japan to carry their own cutlery. I hope that catches on.

My preference would be to get coffee in a mug, which they offer (afaik they don't offer byo containers), but due to whatever other incentives (poor communication between workers when ordering or not wanting to wash a dish) I often get a compostable disposable cup.

<comment><USER50> FWIW, I didn't think your comment was insensitive; mine was about the population in general, not targeted at you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A problem crying out for a robotic solution.

</comment><comment><USER52> Isn't burning the trash also hurts the environment?

<comment><USER53> Extremely high temperatures mitigate most of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Where's Mr. Fusion when you really need it?

</comment><comment><USER55> Recycling is treating the symptom and not the root cause. The real problem is people buying too much crap they don't really need or shouldn't consume in the first place.

<comment><USER56> That's a narrow perspective - the root case is the broader expectations about packaging, from both producers and consumers. Lots of food comes wrapped in single-use plastic, too. It's one way to keep food shelf-stable. We need alternative packaging (or package re-use), since can't stop buying food.

<comment><USER55> I would argue most of what you are referring to as "food" is not and should not be considered food for humans though.

<comment><USER57> This is a rather elitist perspective.

<comment><USER55> Eating fruits and vegetables that can easily be composted is elitist? News to me.

<comment><USER57> Ever heard of a food desert?

<comment><USER55> Give me a break. First address the atrosious food consumption habits within the 94% of US population who do not live in so called food deserts before it can be used to justify the behavior of the vast majority.

<comment><USER57> Poverty? Marketing?

<comment><USER55> What? It's often helpful to form a full sentence if you want others to engage in a discussion with you.

<comment><USER58> Since we asked you repeatedly not to do flamewars like this, I've banned this account.

<comment><USER59> How was that a flamewar? I replied to a person who used 2 words in a discussion where there was no clear relation to the comment being replied to, and suggested they use a full sentence so that I can understand their point coherently.

<comment><USER58> The comment was insulting, and you'd already crossed into incivility before that. The reason we're banning you, though, is that you've done this way too much on HN—usually on the same topic—and ignored our requests to stop.

<comment><USER59> It is solely your own opinion that it was insulting. I believe your opinion/judgement of that comment is clouded by your overall personal disapproval and disagreement with my political and health-related views.

I simply stated that in order to have a discussion, a full sentence should be used. The commenter asking "Poverty? Marketing?" added absolutely nothing to the conversation and I asked him/her to clarify.

The other times that you say I've "crossed into incivility" have already been addressed by your previous warning to me from a few months ago, which I have since made it a point to not engage in what you referred to at the time as flamewars with regards to my topics. My comments often generate healthy debates and conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Recycling is good for the world.

NO! YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG!!

Recycling is NOT good for the world. It is bad for the environment, it is bad for our health, and it is bad for our economy. I'm not kidding. Recycling is not good for the environment. It is destructive to the earth and it is a major contributor to global warming. Recycling is not good for our health. It contributes to obesity and diseases like heart disease and cancer. Recycling is bad for our economy. It increases the cost of a product, and in turn, the price of everything that is made with that product. Recycling is not good for our nation. We pay a tremendous price for the privilege of having the world's most advanced and efficient recycling system. Recycling is a huge, colossal waste of time, energy, money, and resources. And THAT is why we need to get back to basics and get back to basics in our recycling efforts. One of the best ways to start is to look at the process of creating a paper product. When you make a paper product, it is basically a long chain of materials. Everything from the raw materials (wood, cardboard, paper, etc.), to the reagents (dyes, solvents, etc.) to the printing equipment (chemicals, glue, paper, ink, etc.), to the packaging, to the packaging materials (mercury, chemicals, etc.) to the processing equipment (heating, cooling, etc.), to the packaging materials, to the packaging materials that are shipped overseas and to the packaging materials that are used in the United States. Each step along the way creates tons of waste that we constantly have to clean up. The process of making a paper product is a very wasteful one. But the end result is something that all of us need to consume. And if we want to keep the recycling process running efficiently, then we really need to think about each and every step that goes into making a paper product.

<comment><USER61> Nice try GPT-2 :)</comment></comment>


My Journey into Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/my-journey-into-data-science-39e9bbbbf452 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Everyone! Remember me with my post on "Data Driven Guide to Becoming a Consistent Billionaire"? I just published how I got into Data Science from Chemical Engineering. Hope you like it :)</comment>


Security in Ten Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/12/security_in_ten.html

<comment><USER2> My predictions:

buffer overflows will no longer exist because anything user input facing will be written in 'safe' languages

sql injection/cross site scripting will be no more as frameworks continue to prevent them out of the box

somebody will create a user friendly sandboxing system rendering trojans and spywhere obsolete

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows will be dead?</comment>


Show HN: Cosmic JS: A Better Way to Manage Content - <AUTHOR> https://cosmicjs.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it like like [http://contentful.com/](http://contentful.com/) or [http://osmek.com/](http://osmek.com/)?

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't understand it. How do I get the content from CosmicJS to my website? Ajax calls? How I implement the client-side stuff?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few client libraries available for:

Node [https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs- node](https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs-node)

Browser: [https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs- browser](https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs-browser)

PHP: [https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs- php](https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs-php)

And checkout some examples: [https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs- examples](https://github.com/cosmicjs/cosmicjs-examples)</comment></comment>


Matt Aimonetti: Why on earth would you ignore Merb? - <AUTHOR> http://rubylearning.com/blog/2008/12/18/matt-aimonetti-why-on-earth-would-you-ignore-merb/

<comment> old-gregg ... because it's impossible to find a Merb programmer? Sure Rails beats the shit out of ASP.NET but good Rails programmers are rare, expensive and have _very_ cocky attitudes. It has been a major, major problem for us, to a point where I've started thinking that doing a project in ASP.NET can actually be cheaper and more _pleasant_ experience.

With Merb, I am afraid this issue will be even more pronounced. Merb isn't as widespread, and seems to be technically solid. This, I suspect, will only give these Ruby assholes more reasons to bring all that elitist crap to the party.

<comment><USER2> That's a lot of poor speculation. If you explore Merb and its community more, you will see that the elitism is pretty much non-existent. Merb is extremely new, so of course it does not have as many developers as more mature frameworks. When Rails came out of the gates, you could have said the exact same thing.

<comment><USER3> The big difference here is that when Rails came out it solved a real problem. Every other popular web technology at the time was much, much harder to use and slower to develop in. Since then it's acquired some inevitable complexity but most of that was in response to somebody's need for a feature. Merb will accumulate the same complexity if it's successful.

To me this just sounds like Common Lisp vs Scheme all over again.

<comment><USER2> _Merb will accumulate the same complexity if it's successful._

Not likely. Merb will accumulate plugins. Rails had most of its complexity, or at least signs of it, from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just don't get the appeal of Merb at all. Rails was such a relief after a few years of roll-your-own--web-stack Java. Why would I want to go back to dealing with all the little incompatibilities and bugs that creep in once you start mixing and matching pieces to build your own stack?

<comment><USER4> @kuniklo merb is designed to be modular and to get its pieces working together smoothly. However, this is a harder problem that having one well defined stack. merb isn't for all, and if you are happy with the framework you use, you should stick to it. However, if you happen to have to fight with it to make it do things it was not designed to do, then you might want to look at merb. Also, note that merb also comes in a full stack version that you can customize if you wish to.

So again, in this article, I was not trying to convince people to give up on what they use, but instead offering an alternative for people who are looking for something else.

As Matz said: "We have several post-Rails frameworks, which is very good, and I believe in diversity."

\- Matt

<comment><USER5> Agreed that diversity is a good thing, but the article asks why wouldn't I, when I am asking, why _would_ I?

It doesn't help that today, adding more RAM costs very little, and that the new VM in Ruby 1.9 runs my Rails apps 3x to 5x faster, so I have very little reason to look outside Rails.

<comment><USER6> ruby 1.9 does not run rails apps 3-5x faster. More like maybe 10-20% and slower on some things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Merb's appeal to me is stability. A public framework API means plugins will stay working after upgrades. With slices, you'll be able to build up reusable components that will _stay_ functional.

If you code Rails, try getting your 1 year old code run today. 99% chance is it will be broken by default. The goal on Merb is to maintain a stable, defined API so the code your write for it wont break down the line.

After coding Rails for 2 years, this is very appealing to me. There are lots of other benefits/drawbacks of Merb, but a stable API is what sold me on it.</comment>


An Engineer's Guide to DNS - <AUTHOR> http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2009/11/an_engineers_gu.html

<comment><USER2> "The DNS hosting service typically thrown in for free by domain registrars is not very good. For most sites, solid DNS hosting costs about $USD 50 per year. It's worth the effort. Heck, set up with two different services for failover."

Can anyone recommend a company that provides solid DNS hosting? Are there measurable performance benefits? Thanks!

<comment><USER3> ultradns.com - fast, reliable, scalable

<comment><USER4> Absurdly expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 'It's hard to observe the DNS directly yet it exerts an obscure, pervasive influence without which everything would fly apart'

They're right, but a tip: dnstrace is brilliant for doing exactly that.

<comment><USER6> I like dnstrace _r_ better: <http://www.mavetju.org/unix/dnstracer.php>

<comment><USER5> dnstracer is actually the tool I meant, oops.

Easy to get confused (especially since from an end user [but not backend] point of view, they're both similar to traceroute).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A minor irritant: using "the DNS" rather than merely "DNS" (but NOT in the title!). I find that somewhat distracting. Examples:

 _" It's hard to observe the DNS..."_

 _"Using the DNS is often compared to..."_

When should "the DNS" ("the domain name system") become "DNS"? Should it?

I'm currently reading: Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought". My apologies for unshouldering this heavy linguistic burden.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it bothered me too. :) I was trying to get across that I was talking about a singular world-spanning entity instead of some abstract protocol. I'm not sure of the real grammar rules.</comment></comment>


Superhuman AI for heads-up no-limit poker: Libratus beats top professionals - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/12/15/science.aao1733.full <comment><USER2> Wasn't heads-up limit poker basically solved, where an optimal closed-form strategy was found and now you can prove the probability of a long term win? I do not think you need AI for this any longer. But I could be wrong.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's why this news about no-limit poker is interesting.

<comment><USER2> Ah okay :)</comment></comment></comment>


Google In-Page Analytics Signal of Visual Analytics Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.reedge.com/google-in-page-analytics-signal-of-visual-analytics-revolution.html

<comment><USER2> This is in a way similar to what Omniture does with the ClickMap plugin.

[http://blogs.commerce360.com/archives/omniture_sitecatalyst/...](http://blogs.commerce360.com/archives/omniture_sitecatalyst/omniture_tip_sitecatalyst_clickmap_becom.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know CrazyEgg has a nice overlay but its more color and heatmap oriented. I think thats a small feature to add in In-Page Analytics... Color coding the page would give more insights.</comment>