Stop using Material Design text fields - <AUTHOR> https://www.matsuko.ca/blog/stop-using-material-design-text-fields/ <comment><USER2> Piling onto the material design criticism.

I have been using GUIs since the 80s (remember Atari ST GEM). Not once have I been confused about whether an item was selected or not.

Enter material design.

On android's slide down config screen (the one with wifi, bluetooth, etc toggles) I always have to stop and think a bit to determine if wifi is on or not.

Similarly, on many other config screens, horizontal sliders that snap to either the left and right positions are used to indicate on/off but it is never clear which one is which.

I believe there are proper check boxes somewhere in the Widget set but they are not used much.

To me this seems like a case of aesthetic dogma trumping usability.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the consensus that right means selected? I don't remember ever been confused by that.

<comment><USER4> That might be sensible with a latin language read left-to-right, but for other scripts read right-to-left, it's ambiguous. Is the enabled state then the inverse? (I believe the guidelines are that it should be left as selected for RTL languages)

<comment><USER5> The problem with trying to do it properly for RTL is that half of systems won't do it properly which is worse than everyone consistently doing it wrong and users learning to cope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Here is just a small section of Gmail's settings form, which configures a > vacation responder message. The form UI here is much more conventional, with > bold, persistent labels and clearly outlined text inputs. So it seems that > even Google doesn't find it appropriate to use their Material Design form > fields for every situation.

Or, more likely, nobody touched this part of the UI since 2004.

<comment><USER7> That's probably the case, but if so then that's a real harsh judgement of Material design: that accessibility has actually _decreased_ since 2004.

<comment><USER8> > That's probably the case, but if so then that's a real harsh judgement of > Material design: that accessibility has actually decreased since 2004.

We've banged it too deep into our heads that change is progress, especially with technology. Sometimes change is really _regression_ , and that's more likely the more refined something gets.

Regressions are happening all the time now, and too many people foolishly defend them as progress.

<comment><USER9> The overuse of A-B testing is ruining a lot of practical well-thought design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stop using Material Design altogether. It's a prime example of the current "everything must be flat and monochrome" anti-usability principle.

The Windows GUI usability also peaked somewhere in the decade spanning 2000, XP and Seven, if you disabled the candy themes.

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by candy themes? Aero?

I think Windows 7 and Windows 10 still have very clear interfaces (I mean Win32 GUIs, not the Metro/Modern stuff no one outside of MS really cares about).

I've never understood however the need to disable Aero and switch to Windows Classic, which looks gray, boring and feels like using Windows 98 again.

Ironically, most of the people I know who used Windows Classic mode switched to Linux later using something like GNOME or Cinnamon and then complained how ugly Windows was in comparison :)

<comment><USER10> My definition of superfluous eye candy includes the default green and blue theme of Windows XP, Aero in Vista and 7, and Metro in later versions. What you describe as boring is predictable and usable to me.

You guessed right, I run various Linux distributions with Cinnamon on every computer but the gaming one, and I still envy the clean and crisp look of 2000.

Regarding Metro, the new control panel in Windows 10 lacks most settings a normal power user (not a domain admin) needs so all the useful functionality is hidden behind one extra layer.

<comment><USER12> [https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95](https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best UX test for me was that my kid at age 4 could easily manage iOS apps or sites with bootstrap-like design, but would get totally lost on pages with the material design. In their effort to make it super minimal they've removed too much of the visual hierarchy. If you can't read, you just don't know if something is a static label or a button to click. And that means that even if you can read it requires some extra mental strain to navigate it quickly. Obviously, like with anything, you learn to use it with time, but problem with that is that even a small change will confuse you again. Put an element in an unexpected position or too close to some body of text, and people will miss it completely.

<comment><USER14> Their Floating Action Button was one of the worst choices ever made in UI design. No Context, overlaps content if you want to see it, placed in a weirdly hard to reach space, hidden under the thumb. Gah.

</comment></comment><comment> undefined-1 Material Design has many other bad ideas in it too.

Examples: the color suggestions are garish. The idea that a website should simulate physical motion has usability problems for people with motion sensitivity. There is a lack of aesthetic restraint. It encourages gratuitous animation spam, like the ripple effect. It's like a cake where 50% of the cake is frosting.

Some of those things could be fixable, but I think it's unwise for other companies to adopt Google's visual branding in general.

</comment><comment><USER15> Its a matter of taste I guess, but Ive always found all of Googles UI design to be incredibly ugly. I use a bunch of them every day from Ads to Gmail and its all just bland and looks half baked. Am I alone in this?

<comment><USER5> Are you too young to remember original Gmail? It's been downhill ever since that blue and yellow.

<comment><USER15> Not too young no, but I wasnt impressed back then either :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never really liked material design. I don't care about your pretty icons, fancy text above (or inside) a box. Save me from your megabytes of CSS and scripts, and just give me the content. That's what I'm here for.

To author: Stop having XHR to load your images. Just load them. If I don't want them, I won't load them.

<comment><USER17> For me it was just ugly from first glace and I never warmed up to it. And convention of putting important button in the bottom right corner is still counterintuitive for me.

<comment><USER18> And overlapping actual content! Who thought that was a good idea? I'm consistently astounded by that one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Material design seems very over-engineered.

I guess it's nice that you can potentially customise everything, but working out what place in the class hierarchy you need to adjust takes a while. I mean most text fields will have a separate label and don't need a label as part of the text field. But how to get rid of it? That should be simple right..... not in my experience.

<comment><USER20> > Material design seems very over-engineered.

I'd like to add that most things done in the front-end space seem very over- engineered. It is as if developers are bored a lot and need to build overly complex structures and concepts in order to keep themselves busy, perhaps, employed.

<comment><USER21> The way I see it is that frontend developers at the far far end of a product development funnel. When it gets to their computers any suggestions from them are laughed at and they need to just make it work.

Imagine a frontend dev saying "this way of doing things is unreasonable, lets just use this simpler and more robust method instead" - very few places would allow this.

So frontend devs naturally gravitate towards solutions that are infinitely customizable which ends up being dramatically over engineered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> orbital-decay To be honest, _Adresse de courrier électronique professionnelle_ would probably look awkward on any kind of interface that is optimized for _Work email address_ , and vice versa. Is there any shorter equivalent in French? In my native language (with a non-Latin alphabet), we also have a long word for email, so in localized captions we often just use _email_ or _e-mail_ in English, and nobody has a problem with it.

<comment><USER22> I18N is the bane of my existence. It's a horribly thankless task. Apart from that, I work with a company that uses an external translation company for 30+ languages, and at least from cursory checking, most are horribly wrong, to the point where they are either completely nonsensical in the given context or just misleading enough to mean something slightly different in the context, which is even worse, since this is an industrial product that can cause severe damage). It's not my job to check or even correct the translations' content (just that they fit ot to make the changes to the layouts to make them fit), so I'm only reporting the most severe violations. Every correction is a multi- week roundtrip to the translation company, delaying releases.

<comment><USER23> I am suspecting that those translation companies actually just use Google Translate or something similar. I recently saw a commercial product for the blind, developed in an english speaking country, where the german translation of the app was so horribly wrong to the point of totally being useless to non- initiated users. Hours -> Stunden Minutes -> Protokoll

This is so horribly wrong, that it is very unlikely that it was translated by ahuman.

<comment><USER24> I remember a lovely example from when I was living in Germany years ago. I got a letter about some upcoming local election, and was very impressed that it was in English for my convenience, but it opened with the marvellous greeting "Dear male voter, dear female voter".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Material UI is bad to horrible on many levels. My recent "discovery" was their choice for font, color and contrast [1]

And their own guidelines are thrown out of the window on their own website. See an older version of the website [2] (the new one isn't much better), or their approach to displaying information [3]

Edit: And the problem is that these designs are applied with literally no thought involved [4]

[1] [https://grumpy.website/post/0TEJkwzPA](https://grumpy.website/post/0TEJkwzPA)

[2] [https://grumpy.website/post/0Ra93yy33](https://grumpy.website/post/0Ra93yy33)

[3] [https://grumpy.website/post/0TEKUvqDX](https://grumpy.website/post/0TEKUvqDX)

[4] [https://grumpy.website/post/0TKa2-she](https://grumpy.website/post/0TKa2-she) and [https://grumpy.website/post/0TBOWnfjB](https://grumpy.website/post/0TBOWnfjB)

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't agree with this article more.

The old style material field which were mentioned that are just an underlined text instead of a box were absolutely terrible too. It's disgusting that someone would actually think those were a good idea.

Also, what he calls out in the end, use high contrast guys! The old material design grey text on grey background was terrible to read. GCP used to be full of this.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've noticed that when creating a large, dynamic, multi-tab form, the labels and help texts can get in the way of actually viewing the actual entered information in the form. It's actually pretty tricky to come up with technical solutions where the labels are initially very clear up front, when people are adding data, but disappear in the background when most of the information has been entered so the actual contents can get most of the visual focus.

It's easy to show in detail how a big, friendly and accessible label makes a field more usable, but in the context of a large, complex form, the overview of the form structure and completeness of the data already entered are also important. Too prominent labels and too much help text can distract significantly, also for those who are visually impaired or are relying on screen readers.

My conclusion is that some form of two-phase, view/edit approach seems to work best for large forms. Labels and help are minimal by default, but the parts or "blocks" the user is actively editing gets more help and meta information added while it has the focus.

<comment><USER28> > the overview of the form structure and completeness of the data already > entered are also important

Hum... The entered data is only important on the context of the place it is in.

By default labels and inputs have very clearly different appearances so that they would not be confused. And if you make the label information not accessible, you have just made the input information context-free and thus useless.

(Also, what is that with text prominence and screen readers? Are you completely removing the labels for blind people?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The interactive floating labels are for forms with only very few fields.

If you have a form with many fields, it's advised to force the label to always be in the top-left corner anyway.

The field should also be wider, which also helps with the text being cut off.

And with only a few changes, most of the complaints of this article are instantly fixed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, I really wish Google did a better job across the board here.

The gmail settings example is instructive, because the author is right, it's much more usable than the Material design examples. It does, however, look terrible! All the spacing and alignment for everything is wrong and the whole thing looks incredibly wonky (the radio buttons don't line up properly with _anything_ ). It looks very "programmer design".

I'd take it any day over inaccessible-but-beautiful Material design, though. You'd just hope that a company of Google's scale could do both.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't forget, the material design specifications and frameworks are being made freely available. When you compare interfaces designed by that vast majority of developers, using MD is an enormous step up in usability and functionality. It also incorporates concepts that, while not being the most "accessible", are patterns the vast majority of users have become familiar with and can navigate without explanation. For example, interactions like gestures are not accessible or obvious but are commonplace and understood.

Constructive criticism of design is important and with these frameworks being open source, we can modify and "improve" as we see as appropriate. Google has invested enormous amounts of money, energy, and time into making this available for free. They are not enforcing these concepts, even on their own platforms so we should appreciate that they make these systems available if you choose to use them.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure why the effort alone makes it worthy of use. The product needs to be judged on its functional merits, not based solely on what it costs and how much work was put into it.

I also disagree that it was a step up for spec made available by other vendors before. Apple's original Human Interface Guidelines for the Macintosh ([http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf](http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf) ) was a paragon of usability. AFAICT nearly everything we've invented since has been a step back.

If anything, Material Design is a textbook example of "you get what you pay for."

<comment><USER30> I'm not saying because of effort it's worthy of use. Just that it's not required and is a free resource. I also didn't compare to other specs, just common developer interfaces: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what- happens-when-you-...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what-happens-when- you-let-developers-create-ui/)

Outside github and dribbble there is a large population of developers creating internal tools that abide by no UI/UX standards or even common sense.

There are many frameworks available. Which ones might be a better choice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm glad Material Design exists — iteration is important, and MD was a massive effort that provided useful insight.

I hope future designers learn from its mistakes.

<comment><USER33> The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's mistakes. Design isn't a new field born out of itL

<comment><USER34> > The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's > mistakes.

While reading the original material design spec, it seemed enlightened, but now its clear it's more of a standard than a best-practice. Its by no means the "best" design, just like the qwerty keyboard wasn't the best. However, due to a huge marketing push by google, it's now considered a standard and if you do not conform, you'll look weird. Not so different than in the 1990s, if you had a Windows application without a "file" drop-down menubar, you would also be considered weird.

Material design should not be thought of as an optimal design approach, it should be thought of as a standard to rally behind. If you build something adhering to the standard, regardless of whether it's a good or bad design choice, users will understand it because they have already been it by Google.

If you have something that's better, it may be rejected simply because folks weren't already trained on it.

<comment><USER35> Oh the number of applications which had (and still have) a File menu when they don't really do anything with files...

<comment><USER36> _Inside Macintosh_ explicitly told developers that the first two items in the menu bar must be File and Edit.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, Apple's UI guidelines were considered best practice and widely adopted by other companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Finally accessibility is considered. Grey placeholders are barely readable because the lack contrast.

<comment><USER19> Can't you style that using standard CSS? (I assumed that you could but have never had the need).

<comment><USER38> You can[0], but you shouldn't put placeholders in most cases anyway[1]

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Web/CSS/::placeholder](https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Web/CSS/::placeholder)

[1] [https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/text- input/](https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/text-input/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Material design is bad, stop using it altogether.

<comment><USER40> Agree. Totally overrated. I ran away from it every time. Plenty of far better options.

<comment><USER41> Can you list some of those better options? Just curious what you use.

<comment><USER42> Not OP, but we've used Ant design and the gov.uk systems with good reception from our clients and only minor hiccups with end user testing

<comment><USER41> Thanks. I used ANT design a couple of years ago and it was good. I work on enterprise apps and material design just wasn't suitable.

I also like the look of Elastic UI [0], but haven't used it on a project yet, so don't know what the dev experience is.

[0] [https://elastic.github.io/eui/#/](https://elastic.github.io/eui/#/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'll join the choir with this example I came across a few weeks ago.

[https://twitter.com/gnyman/status/1230424668970024961](https://twitter.com/gnyman/status/1230424668970024961)

Not sure if it's material design widgets being limited, a lazy Web dev or google intentionally making it hard to update your marketing settings.

I think I'm having flashbacks to the custom windows UI's/skins of the 1990's when SW devs and designers felt they needed to differentiate and replaced the standard windows components with their own designs.

<comment><USER44> Hardly a '90s thing: every website out there completely redesigns all INPUT and SELECT fields, every day of the week.

<comment><USER43> Yes, I was unclear. I meant that I think it's coming back now. My feeling is (but it could be just colored memory) that for a long time people were happy with just changing the colors/borders/css of the standard components. Now I have the feeling people (or frameworks) code new <option> functionality from scratch in JS, thus making them look and function slightly differently on each site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I like material design. I have been deploying it to apps for years, and have had zero problems/complaints with it.

I work on way too many apps to pay much attention to any of them. I use Vuetify (a material design framework for VueJS) and it works beautifully.

Personally I think Development is becoming too idealistic. Ideally everything works for everyone all the time. But that's never the case, in my experience. These principles are a godsend for those of us who have bosses that want the app, "flashy", but also functional. While also having an abysmal amount of time to work on said app.

Personally I'd love to see less, "stop using this", and more, "start using this instead, here's why". I don't have time to go in and hack my material design framework, to fix an issue, I haven't had an issue with.

Read a book, and create your own UI doesn't work for me.

P.S. WCAG principles are basically unattainable in the real world. Almost any national entity has hundreds of millions of violations. I know because I also manage an app that scans for them.

<comment><USER46> All you said just means you are isolated from user's feedback or live in some sort of echo chamber. I would never believe that everyone is satisfied, you can never have 100% satisfaction, there will always be users complaining about any part of UI really just because they had a bad day.

<comment><USER45> > All you said just means you are isolated from user's feedback or live in > some sort of echo chamber.

An insinuation.

>I would never believe that everyone is satisfied

I've worked in this industry long enough to know no one is ever satisfied. That is background noise. I consider something to be a good implementation if I don't get consistent questions or issues about it. There will always be users that have issues with even the most basic and intuitive UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _So if Google jumped off a cliff, you would, too?_

Yes. This is why Google AMP is popular and how their SERP became an SEO wasteland for most search terms.

</comment><comment><USER48> About label size, I don't think the label should be that big anyway.

On an input, there is an option for explanatory text under the input element. At least in Material-UI.

So with proper responsive design, the input should expand with the label text size, and the label itself should be short, with the necessary explanation on the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is there a site where I can quickly check if my elements and designs are accessible? Like a cheatsheet on guidelines for text, forms, diagrams, etc?

<comment><USER50> Firefox dev tools has an accessibility tab. It can scan and verify things like text size and contrast, and flags violations.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Accessibility...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Accessibility_inspector)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I personally use old text fields.

</comment><comment><USER52> i think the solution for the first issue: label vs placeholder, is to just avoid placeholders that are not labels when using material design.

EDIT: for help text, put it below label or a tooltip

</comment><comment><USER53> I really wish these kinds of articles would take a less condescending tone. "stop doing this", "you should do that". No, I do whatever I want within the boundaries that my employer and the law have set.

</comment><comment><USER54> Valid points but relatively minor IMO. I don't think I've ever got confused by a material design text field.

<comment><USER55> Then you haven't lived, man! Get out in the world and take some risks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What is a material design text field?

The article seems to assume that this a well defined and well known term that needs no further introduction.

<comment><USER57> This thing: [https://material.io/components/text- fields/](https://material.io/components/text-fields/)

<comment><USER56> I want a concise definition, what feature makes it so? If I can't tell what is and what isn't a thingy the whole article is pointless.

<comment><USER5> Ironically, that's exactly what the article is about- In MD users can't tell what isn't nor isn't a thingy.

Anyway, it's like crystal meth. If you don't know what it is you are winning! The advice is for people who are unlucky enough to be near it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > Do make sure all text meets WCAG colour contrast requirements.

Presented by the person that places #BBBBBB text on #FFFFFF background. Meh. If you want to talk about good practices on the web maybe stop using lazy loaded images and that other unnecessary JS clutter.

<comment><USER59> > Presented by the person that places #BBBBBB text on #FFFFFF background

I scanned the site source code and the _only_ bit of text which uses that particular colour is the "#" symbol before headings.

Sounds like you're just trying to find something to complain about.

<comment><USER58> Check the other pages my fam.</comment></comment></comment>


Colorized old B&W photos that will change the way you imagine history - <AUTHOR> https://www.demilked.com/historic-photos-colorized-marina-amaral/ <comment><USER2> Loved it, specially the native indians, and the chilling portrait of Adolf Hitler at the end.

These photos could make an even bigger impact a few years from now, when shown in artificially high resolution.

Edit: this isn't an AI-project as far as I can tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not, the artist colored those in PS.</comment></comment>


Writing Math on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.5765,y.2009,no.3,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx <comment><USER2> I think the big problem with rendering LaTeX client side is that everyone uses different style files, fonts, etc. The options are to either include them all on the page (which would make it difficult for me to upload a LaTeX file, since I'd have to include half a dozen auxiliary resources). It seems like this problem has been solved adequately well by just having a PDF file (which embeds fonts, and doesn't need style files).

Even if browsers could render LaTeX clientside, I still feel like there would be no real advantage to PDF. Since there is no standard way to embed LaTeX markup in HTML, you would just have to link to a .tex file which the browser could display as a separate page, just like it displays a PDF.

I almost feel like XHTML would be a good fit for this problem. We could develop a XML schema for which a simple bijection to LaTeX markup exists. Then, since XHTML supports using multiple namespaces in a single document, we could include any LaTeX markup natively within an XHTML web page (by prefacing LaTeX markup elements with the proper namespace). You would still have to deal with fonts/styles, but I think that's a much easier problem in this sort of a framework.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a plugin for Firefox or something else that can convert math TeX to vector (non-raster) displays in the browser? Wikipedia/Mediawiki (and lots of other systems) converts equations to PNG, but they get pixelated when they're scaled up, they don't print well, and they don't look beautiful like a TeX PDF does.

In my math courses recently, I've come across lots of things that don't have any good explanations on the Web. I'd like to write a bit about them on my site to help other people studying the same things, and I'd like the equations to look really nice.

<comment><USER4> Why should it be done clientside? Far better to do it on the server; something like the latex to svg projects that already exist is probably ideal.</comment></comment>


How Freddie and Fannie Are Held Captive - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/business/how-freddie-and-fannie-are-held-captive.html?src=me&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The biggest issue is the structure of the mortgage finance industry. They've grown so dependent upon Fannie and Freddie that there does not exist a good private alternative who can compete on equal terms. And who can blame them? I wouldn't want to buy a 30yr loan paying ~4% interest. They sell those loans as fast as they can and collect their fee.

There's also a reluctance of the political parties to scale them back due to the repercussions it would have on home buyers. Who wants to be known as the candidate that stopped X from buying a home?

<comment><USER3> These days, a significant portion of the mortgage industry is built on rapidly transferring risk onto the Federal Government. Even though agency bonds are sold on the open market, after 2008, we all know those are effectively insured by the Federal Government.

This is a way to pass free money to everyday homebuyers.

<comment><USER4> The money arguably ends up in the hands of the sellers. The buyer maybe gets a little more buying power (but the people they are competing with are getting that too).

<comment><USER5> Not really, at least in competitive markets like the Bay Area. The buyer has an increasing need to anti up more of a downpayment because of inflating home prices. So while the financing is easier and they can leverage themselves more, they still need to come up with a quickly growing chunk of change to even take advantage of the cheap debt.

<comment><USER4> Are you agreeing with my parenthetical?

<comment><USER5> I was just clarifying that while the buyer in theory has more total buying power (so yes, I agree there), it is all on the debt side. Their buying power from a cash standpoint has, if anything, worsened, because of housing cost inflation and the extra downpayment they need to have saved up.

In this market with cheap debt, there's a large number of HENRY's (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) who can afford the mortgage payments, but are perhaps too young to have had a chance to have saved up the necessary downpayment without help from families and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Freddie and Fannie were the epitome of privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

Since inception they've benefitted from lower capital and mortgage insurance costs due to their implicit government backing. In return, they've accepted substantial oversight from the government in regards to their loan acceptance standards.

The 2008 rescue and then QE where the Fed bought Agency debt by the billions made the implicit government guarantee very, very real.

When Fannie and Feddie went insolvent, Congress and the Obama administration as the rescuers had the opportunity to completely wipe out the public shareholders and take over the companies. This is what should have been done.

Instead, we now have zombie public companies whose profits are siphoned off through political agreements instead of explicit contracts open to public scrutiny.

<comment><USER6> The article is making the case that they've become socialize the losses and socialize the profits... and goes on to say that this is somehow bad because shareholders. It seems to me that the status quo is a good compromise if you believe in the original intent of subsidizing American home purchases.

<comment><USER3> Public companies socialize their profits through tax, legal, labor and regulatory compliance. According to the article, Fannie and Freddie are being hit above and beyond those. This is quite unfair to the public shareholders.

If Congress wants the public benefit, then Congress and the White House should have wiped out the public shareholders in 2008 and taken over the companies.

<comment><USER7> Share holders essentially were wiped out and the government did take over Fannie and Freddie. The remnant equities have very little value. Only people interested in the last 8 years are lawyers hoping to get paid off.

What they should do is auction off the assets, pay off their creditors and let the banks, credit unions and other organizations manage the risk.

There's plenty of competition in the lending business.

<comment><USER6> Why? We got into this mess because the banks couldn't manage the risk and we had to bail them out.

<comment><USER7> Banks got into it _because_ the government was guaranteeing it.

Make a loan, collect the fee, dump the junk on the tax payer.

Government enabled and subsidized this. And still does. Home loan deductions, anybody?

We didn't have to "bail them out". We should have let them go chapter 11. Plenty of folks with responsible finances could have bought up the assets.

<comment><USER8> It happened to banks outside the US, where they weren't guaranteed (but did get bailed out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do think that shareholders simply should have lost their shares when the FMs failed--that's what happens to any other business that's fails. Why would they be exempt just because their failure was big enough to be catastrophic?

And nothing has changed. Just because the government didn't explicitly take away their shares doesn't mean they are suddenly entitled to the profits that the public investment in their companies has reaped.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's like Freddie and Fannie took out a student loan! They're finally making good money, but those interest rates man.</comment>


Numbermatics – the number explorer - <AUTHOR> http://numbermatics.com/ <comment><USER2> I put 13: "13 is a prime number. Like all primes, it is odd and has no factors apart from itself and one." Even if it "successfully" tells 2 is the only even prime number it should not say all prime numbers are odd.

<comment><USER3> Even though two is even, it's odd in that it's the only even prime: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_numbers#Even_pri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_numbers#Even_prime)

So all prime numbers are odd, even 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite number: [http://numbermatics.com/n/142857](http://numbermatics.com/n/142857) It's cyclic :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't tell much interesting things about 1729... at least from mathematical history point of view :) .</comment>


Why We Like Sad Music - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/why-we-like-sad-music.html <comment><USER2> Link to the study:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682130/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682130/)

> Three types of musical excerpts of approximately 30 s each were used.

> Forty-four people (25 females and 19 males) participated in our experiment > (mean age of 25.3 years; SD = 6.6). Seventeen of these individuals were > professional musicians or college students who were majoring in music (the > "musician group"; n = 17). The other 27 participants were working people or > college students who were not majoring in music (the "non-musician group"; n > = 27).

> The participants evaluated both perceived emotion and felt emotion by > responding to 62 descriptive words and phrases on a scale ranging from 0 > (not at all) to 4 (very much) using the numerical keypad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Naw, OP doesn't 'get it'!

First, let's get a leading example of "sad" music, the music for the death of Siegfried from Wagner's opera 'Götterdämmerung', damnation of the gods, the fourth and final opera in Wagner's _Ring of the Nibelung_ :

         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8wHteSOwW4

Yup, that sounds _sad_ alright! Sounds like how one feels just hit with the worst loss in life.

So, why does it make people feel better?

Well, to lead up to the answer, that music is _art_ as in the common definition _the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion_. So, that music _communicates_ the emotion of a big loss.

Now why would one want to hear that? Because the music clearly says that many other people both understand that emotion and have experienced it; so, a listener with such a loss and emotion is not alone; their loss is not nearly the first such; many others have been there before; the listener's loss is not unique and, thus, comparatively not as bad as they might have feared; so that's good news for the listener, and they feel better. That's why!

<comment><USER4> Well said!

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Not just everyone will understand what I wrote. Many readers will need to listen to the YouTube piece, and for the first few times through that music will be a challenge for many readers.

Glad you 'got it'. It's not really psychology but just Art 101. E.g., there's a good reason Wagner wrote that music; it's been darned effective for well over 100 years; lots of people 'get it', enough to keep opera companies going around the world.

"You mean you can make such sounds with a symphony orchestra?"

"Yes, Virginia!".

The music can sound like what it feels like to have a great loss, a dear child, a loved spouse, a company founded that failed, a case of cancer, and much more. Great losses are so common that the music can 'reach' nearly everyone in a large audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Sad is happy for deep people" \- 'Blink', Doctor Who

</comment><comment><USER6> I see nothing new here, just confirmations of the obvious, and a call to investigate vicarious emotions. But the real question all along has been, why do we enjoy sad or otherwise "unhappy" vicarious emotions. This study does nothing to answer that.

</comment><comment><USER7> The relation between minor key and sadness is very weak. Sure, if you ask people to listen to just two chords in isolation and ask which is "sad", they'll pick the minor one. But compositions are much more complex.

It's like, if you showed people a horizontal wavy line and a straight vertical line and asked which is sad, people might pick the wavy line. Does that explain anything about fine art?

Get Lucky by Daft Punk, the feel-good song of the year, is in F# minor.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. What makes (non-vocal) music "sad" is not inherent in the scales or harmonies used but in culturally-conditioned responses to them. The sad part is that some people can't enjoy truly beautiful music because of that kind of conditioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "[...] you dance to shake off sadness, and you wallow when you are happy, because wallowing is one of the luxuries which happiness allows you" \- music journalist Chris Heath, writing about the Pet Shop Boys backcatalog

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems my taste in music is related to my life philosophy. I used to like moody (or "emo" as others like to call it) music. Would listen to it everyday, and my life philosophy was one of ascribing meaning to most events in my life (aka my life followed a story). Now, I don't believe things have a meaning, and I prefer to listen to stuff that doesn't invoke either happiness nor sadness - just even-keeled music. If a song gets too upbeat, or emo, I immediately turn it off.

<comment><USER2> I have always found my taste in music shifted in a way that almost seeks out an external reflection of my internal feelings and dialog. A "like looking for like" type of situation that provides me comfort through similarity and external validation. I do not, normally, seek out "happy" music to become happy.

The researchers in the study talk about the disconnect between perceived and felt emotion, and how listening to sad music induces ambivalent or pleasant emotions, but leave out the consideration that the listeners were given the music to judge, instead of seeking out music they wanted. I would argue, the emotions felt, by the listeners, were a result of successfully identifying and differentiating the music's "feelings" from their own. (That music is sad, but I am not. Success.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _If this is true, what we experience when we listen to sad music might be thought of as "vicarious emotions."_

I don't usually like to roll my eyes at the objects of scientific study, but this conclusion is so obvious that it causes me to question the authors' emotional literacy.

</comment><comment><USER11> It is a way to give vent to sadness and depression, apart from tears and dejected face</comment>


Vulcain: A REST-Based Alternative to GraphQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dunglas/vulcain <comment><USER2> This makes me so incredibly sad.

The project is so exciting and so right. Fully REST compliant backend, designed to support access by either REST or GraphQL queries, and pairable with Mercure to have fully REST async push subscriptions. Full backwards compatibility with REST and full solving of modern API design problems. That's incredibly cool. And then you discover that it's AGPL licensed. Time to move on. So incredibly sad.

All that brilliant design work, all that fantastic problem solving. Shipped with a license that in the commercial world really is the kiss of death and that simply isn't possible to get past the legal department of any company large enough to have a legal department. My sadness isn't just that those of us with legal departments can't use this, it's that adoption will be so slow that all that incredible work you put into this isn't going to receive the uptake and adoption it deserves.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback! I just added a section in the README to clarify things about the license: [https://github.com/dunglas/vulcain#license-and- copyright](https://github.com/dunglas/vulcain#license-and-copyright)

* proprietary software can implement the Vulcain specification * proprietary software can be used behind the Vulcain Gateway Server without having to share their sources * modifications made to the Vulcain Gateway Server must be shared * alternatively, a commercial license is available for the Vulcain Gateway Server

<comment><USER2> I get that you're trying, but legal is still going to look at the AGPL license and say nope, because that's the license and that what governs what is and isn't allowed. I respect what I think you're trying to do there, but it isn't actually going to work. AGPL is a total deal breaker.

That's the first part. The second part is where you say "oh and there is a commercial license if you don't want to use AGPL" which leaves an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. Any time I see that on a project I think "got it. They are using AGPL as a fake open license, knowing no one will actually use it, so this is really just a paid commercial venture trying to make itself look open sourcey".

You're killing your project with AGPL and not actually going to achieve your intents with it. There is a reason why MIT and Apache are the dominant open source licenses today. Projects need adoption to be successful. It they get adoption, they get PR's. No adoption = no PR's, AGPL or not. The work you're doing is too important to needlessly kill it like this.

<comment><USER3> > They are using AGPL as a fake open license

Actually, AGPL is the only license respecting copyleft's spirit for network applications such as the Vulcain Gateway Server ([https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero- gpl.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.en.html)).

If big companies don't want to play the game for whatever legal reasons, that's on them. And... so there is the commercial license (even if I'm pretty sure I'll never sell a single one for Vulcain). If they really want to use it, they can pay (they pay for AWS, Windows, Sales Force... and a lot of other proprietary software after all).

> knowing no one will actually use it

MongoDB (among other big projects) is very popular, and has been licensed for a while with AGPL (and it wasn't even restrictive enough to prevent Amazon to predate them, but that's another topic). Also Ghostscript, ownCloud, nextCloud, SugarCRM...

In the case of Vulcain, the protocol is what has most value (IMHO), and it is not licensed under AGPL.

It's pretty easy to implement directly the protocol in an app server (if it is written in a programming language able to deal with HTTP/2 directly such as Go, Rust, C or Node).

> so this is really just a paid commercial venture trying to make itself look > open sourcey

My goal when publishing free software isn't to help big companies making proprietary services to make even more money without giving anything back (MongoDB, Redis, ... stories).

Thanks to AGPL, users not able to modify the software (lack of financial resources, time or skills) can still benefit from changes made by big companies. That's the goal of copyleft.

If they don't want to play according to the copyleft rules, then ok, they can pay as for any other proprietary software. It looks like a fair deal to me.

> The work you're doing is too important to needlessly kill it like this.

I really appreciate, and I'll maybe consider switching to another license at some points if it's a real blocker. Mercure.rocks (another of my projects) use the same strategy (permissive spec, that anybody can implement, and AGPL implem) and so far it got both adoption (and PRs, even if, as for Vulcain, the main value is in the spec, the server is a tiny piece of software that doesn't require too much maintenance).

For lower level stuffs (such as my PHP libraries), I use MIT because they are designed to build something bigger, not to be used as-is such as the Vulcain Gateway Server or Mercure.

<comment><USER4> > If big companies don't want to play the game for whatever legal reasons, > that's on them. And... so there is the commercial license (even if I'm > pretty sure I'll never sell a single one for Vulcain). If they really want > to use it, they can pay (they pay for AWS, Windows, Sales Force... and a lot > of other proprietary software after all).

If I were looking at using this, it's somewhat of a show-stopper for me not because I think that my company wouldn't want to pay for it; it's that the procurement process is so painful that it becomes almost not worth it for the limited scope of use.

I think a lot of people miss one of AWS' greatest selling points: I go through procurement once to get authorized to use AWS, and it then opens up a whole cache of services I can utilize. Things with a wide range of functionality are worth fighting with procurement over; things that implement a single function start to kick in cost-benefit questions over whether I can get by with the functionality provided by MIT or Apache licensed projects, or if I can re- implement the portions I'm interested in.

> In the case of Vulcain, the protocol is what has most value (IMHO), and it > is not licensed under AGPL.

I shudder at the thought of trying to convince legal of this. That may be your interpretation or goal, but Legal is likely going to take the broadest possible interpretation of the licensing. I'm not a lawyer, I have no context to discuss who's right here, but my experiences with legal have been to always assume that they will take an extremely conservative approach (as is their job). That being said, Mongo does do the same thing, and the surrounding discussions seem to agree that using Mongo's API does not make your software a derived work.

The AGPL introduces a risk that someone, maybe an intern or someone 3 years later who doesn't know the licensing context around the AGPL software, will do something that makes internal applications a derived work. Even denoting what makes something a "derived work" gets into murky territory that, afaik, has not entirely been legally tested in court.

It has far less to do with being unwilling to contribute the changes back to upstream, and more to do with a fear of the risk that someone will accidentally violate the segregation between our applications and the AGPL'ed one, and suddenly all of our proprietary code is under the AGPL because one application violated that boundary. Which is legitimate fear if your codebases are tightly coupled (i.e. this app used Vulcan as a library, and that app links to this library that almost all of our applications use, so now it's all under the AGPL). The problem is not contributing changes to Vulcan upstream, it's the risk of the license infecting proprietary software.

This is super cool, and I am definitely going to dig into this for personal projects. I really appreciate the work you put in, and you open sourcing this. The licensing is entirely up to you, and I'm going to poke around in it either way; but it is a killer for trying to use it in enterprise-y environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like that syntax. It seems to have been well considered. I don't have a good understanding of how widely supported http/2 is, but I'm happy to see it implemented productively here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't speak for client libraries, but for browsers 95% of real users in the wild support it: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=http2](https://caniuse.com/#feat=http2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know much (no longer employed in software development) about the use cases.

But I just skimmed some of these HN comments and I'm impressed by @kdunglas engaging in conversations here.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope it's better done than his other projects that, while impressive at first, are full of corner cases and incomplete documentation ... which is brilliantly convenient when you sell consultancy for them.

(just speaking from experience, not a personal attack)

<comment><USER3> All my projects are free software (including their docs). You are free to improve them, or to not use them, or as you stated to hire me or anyone else to do it for you.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing more about the corner cases and incomplete docs you stumbled upon, to fix/improve what can be done.

<comment><USER7> We did all these things :) And I can attest you and your coworker were professionals.

Sorry if my previous post was too negative. I can't be too specific though as I was more affected by this than directly involved.

<comment><USER3> Thanks then :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Alex Masters SEO (The World's First Children's Book on SEO) - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540382001 <comment><AUTHOR> Kindle version here: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NCLWNI0/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NCLWNI0/)

Happy to answer any questions! :)</comment>


Going to Graceland - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/going-to-graceland <comment><USER2> Graceland is a fun visit. For all Elvis' fame and wealth, the house really isn't all that fancy. He had the best available at the time, but there are better things today.

About the recording, I expect I know how it's going to be. When the list of contributors includes Alec Baldwin and James Carville it seems likely that it's not really about entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER3> This quote from Van Jones does a great job of explaining why "cultural appropriation" is a thing that some black people feel strongly about.

>It's an interesting country. It inflicts pain on black people, denies that it inflicted pain, but then benefits from the soulful cry that arises from the pain.

<comment><USER4> It's a good quote but a rather simplistic description of black music which is much more than just a soulful cry. It can be joyous, funny, bawdy, sexy, devout - every emotion under the sun. And its roots pre-date slavery.

I can't imagine living in an America without black music. It would be for me like living in a desert, but I also wonder what people would say if someone told Wynton Marsalis or Yo Yo Ma that they can't play classical. I'm guessing some people did tell Ray Charles that he couldn't play country, which he loved, and he did it anyway, but I don't think re-drawing those lines benefits anyone.

Same with visual arts. So many great black painters working in America today. Are we supposed to deny them access to the western art tradition? Sorry, Picasso and Matisse are for white guys.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps by "soulful cry" Jones was referring specifically to the blues and gospel? The article mentions that these were two of Elvis's primary influences.

It's hard to imagine a world without cultural exchange. It seems a huge part of what makes us human. I don't think people who write or speak about "cultural appropriation" want cultural exchange to end. I think it's more about questioning the terms under which the cultural exchange takes place. E.g., who has the power to begin with, is it a fair exchange.

>I also wonder what people would say if someone told Wynton Marsalis or Yo Yo Ma that they can't play classical.

Growing up as minorities in America, one supposes that Marsalis and Ma _were_ told in ways subtle and unsubtle that they were less than. So playing classical music might be seen as a way of defying the prevailing and unjust expectations, rather than appropriation.

Realistic or not, there may also be an expectation that, if you benefit from a people's culture, you should be a proactive ally to said people when the chips are down. And pipe up even when it's not politically expedient to do so.

It was interesting to read in the article that

>the two black newspapers in Memphis at the time, both reported favorably on Presley, whom they saw as a kind of ally.

I wonder why.</comment></comment></comment>


A biologist explains why science can't "solve" trans debates - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-gender-sexuality/anne-fausto-sterling-science-wont-settle-trans-rights <comment><USER2> Ironically enough, not only can science not solve the trans debates, the view of a scientist has no special weight in the matter. It is only as the scientist puts on a non-scientist hat that she has any credibility in the discussion.</comment>


Microsoft May Back Dell Buyout - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/microsoft-may-back-dell-buyout/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if we might see Microsoft just buy a Dell or Nokia in the next few years? If you told me back in the day that Oracle was going to one day buy Sun (or that Google would get Motorola) I would have laughed at you, but I really sense that tech landscape that I've known since the 80s and now 90s is about to become unrecognizable.</comment>


Sociologists Examine Hackathons and See Exploitation - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/sociologists-examine-hackathons-and-see-exploitation/ <comment><USER2> This article almost seems satirical. Given I can only speak for the hackathons I've been to; a couple in college and others at two of the big 5, I still feel like nothing about them is forced and people just work on whatever they feel like working on. If my company paid me to just work on passion projects of course I'd work into the night - that's what I do already for side projects that I enjoy. And hell, if companies want to provide food and beer for a few days while I do what I'd be doing anyway, that's awesome! I can see how maybe a culture of being forced to work on weekends due to corporate culture can be bad, but I don't think that's what happens. And yeah if FB actually does have hackathons over weekends and the culture doesn't give someone a choice to not go that seems wrong, I just highly doubt that's the case based on my experiences.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd been going to and organizing hackathons since late high school, and I definitely agree with this sentiment.

I was lucky enough to go to the Pennapps that was hosted in the huge Wells Fargo stadium in Philly, and even though there were tons of sponsors, it felt genuine.

I think that was around the time that things seemed to go downhill.

Nowadays, I don't recommend friends to go to hackathons. Even though there was a time where I went to (and often placed/won a sponsor prize in) most hackathons I applied to.

You can see the attitude shift in everything from the focus (sponsor prizes are insane, "swag" is hyped), to the attitude of the attendees (less about making a project, more about winning). And maybe nothing makes the point hit home more than when Google leaves a bag full of prizes on the table, and lets everyone duke it out over the crumbs.

The entry forms and emphasis on prize value make it clear: these are events that focus on recruiting and idea pumping. I literally won a sponsor prize, that had a requirement along the lines of giving up IP to claim a $1k prize.

They used to be student-organized hackathons. Now I'm not so sure it's the students doing the organizing, so much as the corporate sponsors that provide the funding.</comment>


The brain appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121450609076407973-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI0NzUyMDc2Wj.html

<comment><USER2> They should scan a violinist playing a fully-rehearsed piece. I wouldn't be surprised if the "decision making" parts of the brain never light up. That doesn't mean that the piece isn't played according to conscious decision. It becomes mindless, just like arbitrarily deciding which letter to choose.

They should also try passing random math problems. Let's see if the motor regions of the brain can calculate 12,000 * 1.08.

</comment><comment><USER3> 10 seconds seems long to me. Could the article mean 10ms. I can easily make conscious choices, based on previously unknown data, in less than 10 seconds.

I think nearly everyone who drives a car does it every day. See a problem, suppress the initial reflex action, make a choice, execute. All in less than 10 seconds to be sure.

<comment><USER4> The article clearly means ten seconds. It's not clear from the experiment whether _all_ decisions are made ten seconds earlier, or just decisions similar to the ones in the experiment (which was a conscious, non-urgent, non- reflex-based decision).

But if it turns out to apply to all decisions, it means the "split-second" decisions you make while driving are a function of trained response and what your brain was doing many seconds before you saw the problem... which implies that the amount of conscious choice you have in the matter is much more limited than what your brain is telling you. It's a bit surprising and scary.

<comment><USER3> I guess what I'm getting at (and perhaps driving is a bad example) is that I can make decisions (in a non-reflexive way) based on data that I've been aware of for less than 10 seconds.

How could I have decided something 10 seconds ago based on what I've only known for 5?

Another example. I get on an elevator, see my doctor is on the 5th floor, and press the 5th floor button. This takes about 7 seconds. How could I have decided to go to the fifth floor 10 seconds ago? Hell, I decide what to get at burger king in less than 10 seconds after looking at the menu-board.

<comment><USER4> What the experiment implies (assuming it applies to a broader range of decisions than just those in the experiment) is that the act of getting on the elevator, reading the names, and pushing the correct button is mostly done on unconscious autopilot following the conscious decision to go to your doctor's, despite the illusion that you are consciously reasoning about each step.

Likewise, Burger King purchases are unlikely to require conscious thought: you probably already knew what you were in the mood for when you entered the Burger King, and you certainly had a good idea what was on the menu before seeing it. Matching your known desires with the available choices (also largely known) was an automated process that didn't involve a conscious decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=230703>

But your title is more accurate.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Your brain has a mind of its own"</comment>


Google closes Issue 9 - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9#c1097 <comment><USER2> Google's response to this makes me want to create a pornography search engine called "Go Ogle!" and respond to the inevitable cease-and-desist letters with "the naming similarity is unfortunate, but I don't expect it will cause more than minimal confusion".

<comment><USER3> Go Ogle IT:

<http://www.googleit.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The book is on Lulu [1] and there is an Information Week article [2] on the issue. I would be pretty ticked if Google (a web search company) stomped on my work. It just seems like a really cruddy thing to do. It's in the logic / agent group of languages and I have run across the article a couple of times but it is my no means famous. It is not like Google's Go is super well known either, so picking a new name that could be googled would probably be the kind thing to do.

[1] <http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/lets-go/705004>

[2] [http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/sh...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221601351)

<comment><USER5> Flip side:

If someone takes out a patent and has a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent business around actually performing the patent, but sues anyone who independently comes up with the same idea, we call that person a "troll".

If someone chooses a name for a project and builds a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent community around it, but complains about anyone who independently tries to use the same name, we curse his vile oppressors.

(Is there just a _bit_ of a difference between this situation and a patent troll? Yes. Is the difference small enough that you can see there from here? Yes. Should people be thinking pretty hard about what precedents they want in this type of situation? You bet your ass they should.)

<comment><USER6> You liken it to a patent but it is more similar to a trademark. I would think most everyone agrees trademarks are very good things in practice 99.9% of the time.

<comment><USER7> That's because if you don't use your trademark, you lose it. There's no equivalent to "Oh, I used the name in a little-known paper I wrote and now I can sue you." If nobody knows about your trademark, you probably don't own it.

<comment><USER4> Technically it isn't the lack of use that will kill a trademark, it is the lack of defense or people using it as a generic term. The need to defend actually causes most of the trouble with trademarks since you really need to be a little more agressive than you would like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would've been interesting if they had renamed the language, "Issue 9".

I think Google missed an opportunity to gain a little developer goodwill here, but I don't think it will hurt them in the long run. (Assuming Go ever becomes a popular language)

<comment><USER9> I don't know, it seems to much like assuming the mantle of Plan 9, and that... has some negative connotations.

<comment><USER10> Aren't a bunch of the Plan9 devs working on Go though?

<comment><USER8> Rob Pike and Ken Thompson were not only on the development team for Plan 9, many of the ideas in Go come directly from their work on the Limbo language.

<comment><USER11> And Russ Cox (<http://swtch.com/~rsc/>) is the creator of Plan 9 from User Space (<http://swtch.com/plan9port/>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do feel for the guy, but if I'm being honest and practical, it will be less trouble for him to change the name of his obscure and almost unused language than it would be for Google to rename Go.

It would have been nice if Google had avoided the name conflict, but unfortunately there's no central programming language registry and he had done nothing to make his language easily discovered (to the point where it didn't even have a website), so it seems likely that Google chose the same name in complete innocence — at the worst, it seems like they might have thought it was a toy name for a toy language used simply for explanatory purposes, not something anyone cared about.

Essentially, once the name was already associated in people's minds with Google, the horses were out of the barn. He chose to get concerned about Go!'s presence in the public consciousness far too late.

<comment><USER12> How much hassle would it have been for Google to have changed the name _before they announced it_?

You're right there's no central repository of programming language names... But there is such thing as a search engine...

<comment><USER13> > How much hassle would it have been for Google to have changed the name > before they announced it?

Or right after they did, considering the state of the language at the time I doubt it was used that much internally, so it's not like it would have cost them billions of man-hours in lost productivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What some people are missing is that before Google's Go, the Go! language was so obscure that even googling for "go" would not have found it. In fact, the second comment ([http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9&cnum=500&...](http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9&cnum=500&cstart=33#c2)) on the issue, by the Go! designer himself, suggests that to find its page you should google for his name, not for "go" or "go programming language".

<comment><USER13> > What some people are missing is that before Google's Go, the Go! language > was so obscure that even googling for "go" would not have found it.

Nobody's missing it, it simply isn't relevant to the discussion/

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Before people get carried away with stories about how the big guy is crushing the little guy, keep in mind that there are at least 4 different programming languages named D, and this doesn't seem to have killed any of those projects. Name collisions are inevitable when everyone picks names that are around 1-4 characters.

</comment><comment><USER16> >Status: Unfortunate

That's cold, Google.

<comment><USER17> And I thought "WONTFIX" was harsh.

<comment><USER18> I would have just used WORKSFORME.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what not being evil looks like. Imagine the howls if Microsoft had steamrollered over a small developer who'd spent 10 years working on M#.

<comment><USER11> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish Google would have come up with a new name, and I feel bad for this guy, but it's just way too common a name to figure you'll have it all to yourself. I'd feel the same way if the language was called "Do" or "Run".

</comment><comment><USER20> Did anyone _really_ think Google was going to respond in any other way? I read Issue 9 when it came out along with some of the comments on it. I knew then Google would just close the ticket and do nothing.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Status: Unfortunate"

<comment><USER22> "Resolution: Get over it"

<comment><USER23> Workaround: Go! fuck yourself.

<comment><USER24> Methinks "Go! [bang] yourself" alone would work :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I quite liked the comment suggesting Google rename their language to the eligibly employable moniker "i9".

<comment><USER26> Hello lawsuit from Intel.

<comment><USER27> How about iNine?

Hello lawsuit from Apple

<comment><USER28> Visual Eye-Nine# Enterprise Edition.

<comment><USER29> Visual Eye-Nine# Enterprise Edition (Service Pack 3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On the one-hand I feel for the developer who originally named his language "Go." On the other hand I've never heard of it... Who does HN think is right in this case and why?

<comment><USER30> I think they both chose a terrible name.

<comment><USER4> There are some great language names for search, but go isn't one of them. Perl and PHP seem to work really well. Ruby and Python sure don't.

<comment><USER31> Worse still: J, K, R, Io, T. At least with Python and Ruby, you can google for "python programming" or "ruby programming".

Also, some forums don't allow you to search for single-letter names.

<comment><USER28> Ummmm, C?

<comment><USER31> True, but C's past the critical mass where googling for just "C" is likely to get you info about the programming language. 3 of the top 10 results (including #2) are about C programming. Most of the rest are about Citigroup, which has the stock symbol 'C'. (Oddly, Cookie Monster is missing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The guy should rename _his_ language to issue 9 and he will get the good will and publicity :).

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems like an instance of the well-known "Michael Bolton Problem" from Office Space. You had a name, you were using it, but something significantly more notable comes along with the same name. They didn't steal your name, but by virtue of being much more popular, now nobody thinks of you when they hear your name, they think of the other thing that you have no association with and came after you. There's no theft, just an annoyance for you. You were probably never going to be famous, but now it is much harder. On the ironic upside, people who didn't care about you before now remember you, because of the naming conflict.

</comment><comment><USER34> The original bug submitter's language, originally called Go, is now called Go!: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go!_(programming_language)>

<comment><USER35> As far as I know, that language has always been called Go! (your referenced wikipedia page doesn't state otherwise, although the wikipedia page for Go! didn't even exist before Google annouced its Go language).

<comment><USER34> You're right; I misread that Wikipedia page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > From the comments - <http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9#c576>

"Gone" can also be an alternative :))

</comment><comment><USER37> He could still use the name "go-bang" or something like that which is even arguably better googlable. However, google response makes me sad too.

</comment><comment><USER38> Now what am I supposed to do with issuenine.com? ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> I love the issue status (Status: Unfortunate). Poor bastard.

</comment><comment><USER40> The Go logo looks like a potato with feet.

</comment><comment><USER41> No one really confused the two and I don't see how having similar names would hurt any of them.

Also it's not even the same name: 'Go' vs 'Go!'

It is "unfortunate", carry on.

<comment><USER42> This is what gets me; nobody gets C and C# confused. Why Go and Go! ?

<comment><USER28> # is pronounced "sharp". How do you pronounce "!"?

"Go [rising intonation]"?

<comment><USER43> go bang

<comment><USER44> Very good advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Both will be irrelevant soon enough anyway.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project: Play Zork on Twitter - <AUTHOR>

In an homage to Andy Baio (http://waxy.org/2004/03/infocombot_for/), I've created a twitter bot wrapper for dumb frotz. To begin or restart a game of Zork, tweet "@playzork play zork".
The code powering it all is open sourced at:
https://github.com/dgouldin/twinfocom
Since twitter will not allow duplicate tweets, you can prefix your commands with any number of periods or delete your previous duplicate command tweet. <comment><AUTHOR> Aaand looks like I went over twitter's daily tweet limit. I didn't know that even existed. Its api says statuses/update is not rate limited. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted ... :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The rate limit has been increased a bit but still remains. So, the bot is up for now, but it's not really a solution, just a temporary fix. Go get your nostalgia on while it lasts! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Personally I think it was a cool hack, makes me wonder if there is an operations infrastructure idea in there somewhere. Tweet out to all your servers "hey get the latest update now." :-)</comment>


Will investment into autonomous cars dry up in the short term? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/auto-industry-coronavirus-impact/index.html#click=https://t.co/rQegWIVtCK <comment><USER2> Depends on Waymo or Zoox. If they have a widespread launch this year, then AV push will carry on no matter what.

Otherwise, we might possibly approach the trough of disillusionment.</comment>


SR-71 Blackbird Flight Manual - <AUTHOR> http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/ <comment><USER2> This plane never ceases to astound me.

It was so fast the standard evasive maneuver when it was shot at was simply to increase speed. There was just no missile that could catch it.

During flight, the plane would heat up so much from friction that it would expand significantly–as a consequence, the plane leaked fuel on the ground, since the fuel transfer system only fit together right at 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Truly a marvel of human ingenuity.

<comment><USER3> I've been reading "Skunk Works" (<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003>), which talks about the development of the SR-71 and other planes (such as the U-2 and the stealth bomber) at Lockheed's Skunk Works facility. It's a good read. I think it may have been suggested by another HNer.

<comment><USER4> I read this a few years ago. Quite a few years ago, come to think of it. It makes you wistful for those time when such a small group of skilled engineers came together to make incredible, physical things.

What we all do with code doesn't even come close.

<comment><USER3> It really puts things into perspective. We get excited when we come up with a different way to display a form and these guys were building planes that traveled at Mach 3 at 80,000 feet nearly 50 years ago. The amount of technical problems you have to solve to get such a plane into the air is simply staggering. Unbelievable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite section is emergency procedures which contains gems like this:

"If both the A and B hydraulic systems fail as indicated by illumination of the A HYD and B HYD warning lights and confirmed by loss of A and B hydraulic pressure and deteriorating control effectiveness:

1\. Eject"

</comment><comment><USER6> Hm, frustration, none of the pages work for me, they come up with a blank image.

<comment><USER7> It uses PHP to serve the images from a database - e.g. [http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/3/display.php?file=3-8...](http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/3/display.php?file=3-8.png). Going to the image manually shows this:

 _The Database Must Be Down._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> WARNING: This discovery cost me about 3 days of productivity a couple of years ago ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Saw this the other week (I think its been posted to hacker news before). It's actually surprisingly easy to understand, even for private barely-trained pilot's.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure I wasn't the first to see it, but I posted it last Thursday. I'm not surprised it didn't get any traction, though; the Dow was busy eating its own head around the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure there's a section in here about nose-dives...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Caught part of a MILT channel show from 2002 about the SR-71 / Lockheed Skunkworks.

One thing I hadn't seen before was this... an unmanned drone, launched from the back of an SR-71, at Mach 2. What a country!

<http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/d-21.php>

</comment><comment><USER12> you should watch James May(top gear)as he goes to the edge of space in one of these: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6cZLfK4Zjk>

<comment><USER13> That's a U-2, not an SR-71

<comment><USER12> thank you for correcting. I thought they were from the same 'family'. too late to delete my comment.

<comment><USER14> Both come from Lockheed's 'Skunk Works' and they applied a lot of what they learned on the U2 to the SR71, so you're not so far off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'll just leave this link here...

[http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the-thrill-of-flying-the- sr+71-bl...](http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the-thrill-of-flying-the- sr+71-blackbird)

<comment><USER16> A better excerpt of the "king of speed" story from Sled Driver stuffed into the middle of that article is here:

[http://groups.google.com/group/rec.aviation.stories/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/rec.aviation.stories/browse_thread/thread/b9e23a24a784a26a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now I really want to watch The Right Stuff again.

<comment><USER18> It's on Netflix streaming. I'd say you owe me 3 hours, but I liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I take it the parts that remain classified contain the max speed and altitude?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hoping to find a model for X-Plane to try this out on...

<comment><USER20> X-Plane comes with the SR-71 by default.</comment></comment>


2+ coinbase accounts hacked, 20k+ stolen, coinbase offers no help - <AUTHOR>

Cross-post from reddit, but worth posting here.
Reddit link: http://redd.it/1uk37k
tuttle123's hack story: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/1uk37k/coinbase_account_was_hacked_16000_stolen_3_weeks/cejcq8p
Woke up December 15th, check my email and to my horror see "You just sent X BTC..." and "The X BTC you just purchased..." emails in my account. In the span of 3 minutes, the hacker sent the 10BTC I had in my account out, then made instant purchases and transactions of 5 BTC, 3 BTC, and 2 BTC.
Blockchain transactions:
~10 BTC: https://blockchain.info/address/12VvMbLGRAiBYK8fxqNNKEFA3xdapaFhJR
5, 3, and 2 BTC here: https://blockchain.info/address/1PQRoB6sK5MMDQ1WTd4awxsok24gMVSERA
I report this to coinbase through their ticket system. 24 hours later, they sent me some questions. I'll summarize my responses: 1. I had a complex single-use account password. 2. Was not using API, though did have iphone mobile app. 3. Used 2FA with Authy, which never left my side.
I heard nothing from CoinBase for 3 weeks.
A few days ago I received this response:
"I'm very sorry to hear this. It appears that an attacker was able to access your account by using your API access key. While disabled by default, it's imperative that this information be stored securely once enabled. If someone obtains this number they would be able to send all of the bitcoin out of your account."
To reiterate, I didn't enable API access beyond their own mobile app. Apparently I'm out of luck. I don't believe I was particularly negligent here, and their lack of any help (even info, etc) is very frustrating.
I'm happy to answer any questions, here or elsewhere. Advice or recommendations definitely appreciated. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428757)

> HN is a news site, not a customer support forum for companies funded by YC, > and in fact the site guidelines explicitly ask that it not be used that way:

<comment><AUTHOR> I respect that, but unfortunately it seems like the only way to get a response.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's pretty obvious you don't respect that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it? I tried to work with them for nearly a month directly, but they don't respond to any of my emails. I've seen people post here and get responses. You wouldn't even consider posting if you thought it would help?

<comment><USER2> You're changing the subject. I have no comment on Coinbase or on what I would do in your shoes.

I am commenting on the rules of HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They did offer help, they told him the IP used by whomever initiated the transfer, he's crying over the fact they didn't give him back his BTC.

Given the information provided I'd say it's highly likely his mobile device was the attack surface used. I don't use Coinbase, but a glance at their API docs makes it appear that the API key alone isn't sufficient to initiate a transfer since authentication is required.

If that's the case, this is analagous demanding a refund from your bank when your account was emptied because you lost your wallet, ATM card and a postit note with the PIN # written on it.

nbs

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, they didn't tell me the IP address. That X was in the original email.

Also, my phone has a password on it, and the coinbase app and my Authy app both had passwords on them.

So actually, your scenario isn't analagous at all. But thanks for automatically assuming I'm to blame!

You honestly think it's entirely reasonable that someone was able to get past 2FA, take all my coins (+ purchase more) with no security check, and then to have CB give me nothing but radio silence for 3 weeks? Literally not a single word? And then finally tell me "That sucks."?

<comment><USER3> > Also, my phone has a password on it, and the coinbase app and my Authy app > both had passwords on them.

What difference does that make to malware/trojans? Presumably they already have those.

To elaborate:

Trojan on phone catches passwords, phones home & hands them over to the malicious user. Malicious user initiates BTC transfer, uses trojan's remote command and control to bypass 2FA. Job done.

From that perspective, whilst CB could see that a person from a given IP accessed and transferred from your account, what do you expect them to do? Come round to your house and forensically dissect your phone and PC to see what went wrong? Even if they did, to what end? It's not their problem, it's yours.

If you want reaction, go report the crime. If you think Coinbase should refund your BTC, take them to court. Heck, do both. The chances of getting your BTC back are slim to none in any case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude, what are you talking about?

This is an iPhone (non-jailbroken.) Are you saying the official CoinBase app had a trojan? Or Authy, the most widely used 2FA app?

If you're actually curious what I think they should do, we could talk about it, but I don't think you care beyond blaming the victim.

What I don't understand is why you assume I MUST have done something wrong. Do you really think it's impossible that this was a weakness on their end?

If 110 million credit cards can be stolen from Target, maybe it's possible API keys can be stolen from CoinBase?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to Bitcoin, where giving up your private keys is synonymous with donating your Bitcoin to the thief who will eventually, inevitably, rob you.

Feel free to sue Coinbase for stealing your money, although it will understandably be hard to prove.

Your best bet is to monitor the Blockchain and hope the coins hit another third party service, you can try to order them to seize the coins.

More than likely they will get mixed beyond recognition before that point, but it's not without precedent (see StrongCoin)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya that's the biggest issue for me. They have all the evidence. They haven't even given me the IP used to make the transactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Banks do this all the time. They notice fraudulent transactions, call you, or block the transaction outright till they can investigate. The fact that this happened, no one called, no one checked, reduces the faith in the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to mention that after it happened, they won't even so much as respond to my emails.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: CoinBase eventually concluded that my API key may have been exposed due to a security flaw that they've since patched. They decided to refund me, and my coins have been returned. Thanks CoinBase!

</comment><comment><USER6> Does API access need to be enabled in order to use the iPhone app? I have API access disabled on my account, and I use the Android app.

<comment><USER7> I have the iPhone app and under my account when I log in via the web, it says API is disabled. I don't recall it requesting to be enabled for access when I set it up originally before the app was pulled.

<comment><USER6> It could be that the app uses the api key (despite it being disabled), and somehow someone was able to steal it. I hope it isn't sent in plain text.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't speak to their architecture, but the mobile app must be using some kind of API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If crypto-currencies are ever to be widely adopted the institutions involved must be held accountable for these kind of liabilities.

</comment><comment><USER9> There has been a consistent stream of negative coinbase stories, why do people still trust them with their money?</comment>