A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/cia-tip-off-led-to-jailing-of-mandela-9mwcsdq9c <comment><USER2> The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a "Burn America" rethoric, which doesn't help their argument. CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own.

<comment><USER3> > CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where > changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the > stuff on their own.

Beyond you liking to think that, what evidence do you have that the CIA's policy is controlled by anyone other than the CIA's Deputy Director who commands internal operations, and its Director, who reports to the director of National Intelligence as well as having to answer to Congress and the White House?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#Or...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#Organizational_structure)

For the most part, theories of secret groups that control things are false, not counting well-known groups like the Masons, etc. that make secrecy part of their identity. There is plenty of evidence to support that Congress and the White House are lobbied heavily by outside interest, and that's no secret. Combine that with the varied interests and agendas in the involved organizations, human error, incorrect or misinterpreted information, etc. and you have plenty enough reason for things like this to go wrong.

If you are an American citizen, and you believe the U.S. government is so wrong and misguided, nothing is typically stopping you from leaving the country or attempting to vote for others that might be able to make some changes, but the fact is that there is an extreme momentum of the country that is simultaneous chaotic and well-intentioned, so no matter who you vote for, things will typically continue on. Well- maybe not if Trump is elected, because the entire country could turn into a sideshow ;) , but this is true for the most part.

If you live in another democratic country, vote for leaders that you believe will positively influence the U.S. in one way or another, or you can speak up about it.

Belief in some shadowy group is just not helpful, and is a result of the imprint on the psyche from movies, television, and other media sources. There are real groups out there with influence, and real single players with influence, but it's really not that hidden; it's just complex.

<comment><USER4> I think you are completely wrong about this. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that "shadow groups" of varied interests that sometimes align and sometimes dont, are often pulling the strings of "public puppets". Your view, while common, (especially in the academic world where conspiracy is avoided like the plague) doesnt seem to reflect reality.

The conspiratorial view of history is the correct one.

Would you like me to go into more detail?

<comment><USER5> Please go into more detail. Start with the evidence.

<comment><USER6> Could we start with asking you what kind of evidence would actually satisfy you? How much effort are you prepared to expend in questioning this?

Honestly. What do you need to just to consider the _small_ possibility that your view of things is the incorrect one?

Do you want macro/micro/historical/current evidence and do you expect such evidence to be easily disseminated here or are you just asking without any of these things in mind?

I guess we could start with the fact that it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that very few people control the economy in modern times - [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed- the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/)

We could also prove that for historical times.

The evidence is there. It just takes a little work to dig through and a lot of reading. So, I suggest trying to look around on your own first. Read about the United Fruit Company. 1950's Iran. Rand Corporation. There's just so much out there already that I think anybody who hasn't read about this stuff by now must not really care.

<comment><USER7> Not the OP, but it's sunday afternoon and you've piqued my curiosity. I'm not opposed to conspiracy theories, but my view of the world is one of different groups competing for power without a guiding plan. I find it interesting reading about individual conspiracies and learning how the world really works, but in my view they eventually backfire on the people who instigate them.

Take the United Fruit Company - so they lobbied the US government to instigate a coup in Guatemala. That's devious. (I've just looked up the coup in more detail, and the consequences for Guatemala were horrendous, so I'd say the coup instigators were not merely devious, but outright evil).

Thing is, neither party benefited. The US got involved to prevent communism growing in its backyard, but ended up pissing off the entire region. The UFC wanted to protect its assets in Guatemala, but was forced by Eisenhower to divest them all 4 years later.

What's the grand pattern here? What's the motive behind all these conspiracy theories? Do they intentionally backfire, or are the people pulling the strings just short-sighted?

<comment><USER6> Thanks, great response. I guess my overall point would be that once you think you know something, you've stopped thinking about it.

I agree that it's a fact that there are different groups competing for power and that there is a constant struggle. I would quibble over the "without a guiding plan" part because I don't know what you mean by that exactly. Large and powerful groups can certainly exert leverage over numerous smaller and less powerful groups.

A guiding plan could be a general philosophy. Look at all of our political and military power systems. They are designed hierarchically, so that the nearer you get to the top, the smaller and more powerful the group is. The pyramid on the dollar bill is obviously symbolic of this. That's indicative of some sort of guiding plan. I mean, there's one group (the Masons) who can get all of their secret symbols implanted into our money forever? That's scary to me.

Regarding United Fruit - yes, the company suffered but can you say that company profit was the prime motive for messing with South America? Have you considered that all warfare starts with economic warfare? What if de- stabilizing a region makes you all sorts of profits in other ways, with other companies? What if you can get all sorts of secret money to do secret things by controlling illicit trade that now comes out of that region?

I have a LOT of questions. How could the Taliban have virtually ended poppy production in Afghanistan in 2001 and yet our own government which supposedly is at "war" with drugs like Heroin, cannot quell the supply from that area which produces 90% of the drug for the rest of the world?

In my view of the world - the puppets change all the time but somehow shit stays the same, so I just am not that sure that there isn't a guiding plan of sorts. (EDIT: Even if that plan is just "greed". Endless greed. And "do what you want" mentality, which is the philosophy of Satan/Lucifer. You might think I'm crazy just for mentioning Satanism but secret power didn't start in modern times.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's kind of odd that the DailyMail and RussiaToday (RT) have more "info" than the linked article that's paywalled. Not necessarily a bigger "scoop" of the story, but they provided more info about the parties, backstory, pictures included. Honestly, I tried looking for a decent article after encountering the paywall, but most were just "rehashed" quotes and links to the TheTimes article, with absolutely nothing of substance added.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA- got-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson- Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security- forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html)

[https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela- arrest/](https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela-arrest/)

Anyone have a decent article on this with more info and backstory?

</comment><comment><USER9> Not too far off topic:the book "The Devils Chessboard", the history of Allen Dulles and the CIA is informative. The author was at Harper's Magazine for decades, and this book is full of personal accounts and information gleaned from historical records. The book is an eye opener. I was particularly shocked by how Dulles suppressed information of the holocost as it was happening, preventing obvious steps like bombing the railway lines leading to the death camps. Dulles was so fixated by the communists that any actions were to him justified.

Edit: Dulles was also fixated by protecting the interests of his law firm's Wall Street clients and he viewed the Nazi apparatus, minus Hitler, as a potential resource, something to be protected and largely left in place after the war.

</comment><comment><USER10> You know how we're still hunting down and jailing formers nazis and concentration camp guards? Why aren't we doing the same to these CIA agents and decision makers?

<comment><USER11> Because the United States of America didn't lose any wars, and winners make policy.

<comment><USER12> How about Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan?

<comment><USER13> How did they "lose" Iraq? They successfully invaded the country, changed the regime, changed the military, the police, the government .. everything. Then they left.

Iraq is in utter chaos, the US is doing just fine.

How exactly did the US "lose" in Iraq?

<comment><USER14> Because the stated goal of that war was for the instilled government to survive and for democracy to transform the region. Not for the country to become destabilized with former military operatives to go into Syria and form the next great political catastrophe. That definitely wasn't a "win" long term.

<comment><USER13> That's completely different from winning or losing a war.

The events you describe don't affect the US's dominance at all.

The region's current turmoil is all internal. The US can just wait it out and then when it's all over, the winner will be weak and the US can just come in again any time and reset the whole thing.

So this doesn't affect the US's ability to "write" history.

<comment><USER15> > So this doesn't affect the US's ability to "write" history.

It does, this thread (and thousands others like it) is the proof. The US are internationally much weaker than they were before the wars in the Middle East, and their international politics are now considered by growing amounts of people as illegitimate and harmful.

<comment><USER13> > their international politics are now considered by growing amounts of people > as illegitimate and harmful.

That has always been the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NYT reported this in 1990, we just didn't have confirmation and the name of the agent: [http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported- in-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela- arrest.html)

And it's still unclear whether anyone else was involved in the decision to tip off the police.

</comment><comment><USER17> > ...the world's most dangerous communist...

How fads change. Had it happened today, they would have called him a terrorist.

Sadly, it's not really news that the U.S. only pay lip service to Democracy. After all, the dictator of our choice can guarantee our economic and military interests much better than any democratic regime.

<comment><USER18> >they would have called him a terrorist.

Actually the ANC (or at least a splinter group) did bomb civilian locations in a terror campaign so yes it was considered a terrorist organisation. Now they're considered the liberators/bringers of democracy. Hows that for a pivot hn?

<comment><USER19> If terrorists win they are not called terrorists anymore. Compare the Boston Tea Party which started the war of independence.

<comment><USER20> The Boston Tea Party was most certainly not terrorism. No one was hurt or killed, either combatants or civilians. It cheapens the word to use it for any act of defiance against a government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The CIA was also behind the assassination of Homi Bhabha (father of Indian atomic energy program) and Lala Bahadur Sastry (Prime Minister of India).

<comment><USER22> > Later, Gregory Douglas, a journalist who interviewed former CIA operative, > Robert Crowley, over a period of 4 years, recorded their telephonic > conversations and published its transcribe in a book titled, "Conversations > with the Crow". In the book, Crowley claimed that CIA was responsible for > eliminating Dr. Homi Bhabha, Indian nuclear scientist whose plane crashed > into Alps, when he was going to attend a conference in Vienna and Lal > Bahadur Shastri, who died at Tashkent summit in 1966. Crowley said that USA > was wary of India's rigid stand on nuclear policy and then PM Lal Bahadur > Shastri, who wanted to go ahead with nuclear tests. He also said that agency > was more worried about collective domination of Indo-Russian over the > region, for which a strong deterrent was required.

If that's true and if it was planned, there's probably a memo justifying it somewhere and we will declassify it in the future.

<comment><USER23> "Gregory Douglas" has written a number of conspiracy-theory books that encompass Holocaust revisionism and JFK assassination theories; he is widely believed to be the _nom de plume_ of Peter Stahl, who is also believed to have forged wartime Nazi documents and disseminated them to historians. It's all a bit of a rabbit hole, but the upshot is that there's very little reason to believe anything he writes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given the serious effort CIA puts into destabilising regions (Lets not forget the large amounts of sources who said people were being ferried and paid to go to Kiev when the Ukrainian uprising was occuring) it would not surprise me very much if they were also behind the Britain "exit" from Europe, since that would cause an economic collapse of the EU and would remove a super-power from play.

I feel like a conspiracy theorist when saying it out loud, but given the history...

I mean it's economic suicide for britain to leave the EU, yet someone is plastering it all over the media and it's not the politicians. :\

<comment><USER25> It's the workers who have been shafted by declining standards of living, stagnant wages, rising prices, false promises about the benefits of free trade agreements, and increased immigrant labor -- coupled with an increasingly bureaucratic EU organization that pushes more political change than economic/trade change. The citizens of Britain signed up for the EU when they saw it as a trade agreement that would benefit them down the line, instead they are giving up more sovereignty to EU's bureaucracy in exchange for benefits that disproportionately flow up to the elite.

And it's not economic suicide. In the short term it will most likely hurt but in the long term, Britain will survive and the EU will need to bend to accommodate Britain's consumers, even if the UK is not a member state. It is one of, if not the, biggest importers of EU goods and it's the EU, not Britain, who cannot survive without accommodating the other.

Also I don't see why the US would benefit in any way from a collapsed EU or UK. Trade and travel becomes harder when they are not a single unit.

<comment><USER24> the EU being overly bureaucratic is due to age, the UK system has the same issues.

our sovereignty is not important as long as we have the choice to leave in future, but the benefits awarded the middle/working/lower classes is unquestionable and we may not be awarded such luxury under a malevolent or overly 'for the rich' party. Rights are only rights until they aren't.

Workers rights in the UK are the best they've ever been, and better than those in the US, which is where our model seems to steer towards without EU guidance.

Quality of living (I'm guessing housing?) is bad in spite of the EU rules, not because of it.

We are awarded many luxuries and exceptions by the EU because of our status as one of the "core" members, if we renegotiate we don't have that. In addition trade agreements are not going to be in our favour unless with have something to barter with.

most of our industries are service/management layer, we're the middle people to a lot of things and without being a pivotal hub we may lose this and the foundation of British economy will be rocked, we need to produce something that the world cannot live without before making such threats.

Additional:

Without the EU being a unified block we do not have the clout to stand up to US bullying.

 _edited to remove condescension and provide only my points_

<comment><USER26> I'm British and back staying in the EU, but I think your post is unnecessarily condescending and incorrectly portrays your opinions as facts.

The immigration argument is about EU citizens which the Danish system can do nothing to stop/slow, and stopping the 'free-flow' of EU citizens is most Brexiters biggest desire from the campaign. The economic studies are definitely in Remain's favour, but economics as a field is very 'woolly', often wrong and more importantly does not resonate with a large populace who have seen living standards broadly stagnate since the last prolonged recession.

There are arguments for and against - the Remain camp don't have a satisfactory answer to people who are genuinely concerned over immigration or (albeit discretely) do not like immigration in their surrounding, and the Leave campaign have the consensus on the economic side due to uncertainty over post-Brexit state and agreements.

<comment><USER24> Fair enough I could have worded things nicer, I've seen a lot of very bad "facts" circulating about the EU leave/remain debacle and mostly it comes down to peoples feelings about sovereignty.

However, the Danish system does indeed stop and slow EU migrants.

As a British citizen living in Sweden, I can't go live over the bridge in Copenhagen unless I have a residence permit, which requires having a job, or meeting the required points.

Without a residence permit I cannot rent property or pay bills. I had to go through all the pain with my sister-in-law who is Estonian and studies business in Copenhagen. I'm fully versed on the difficulties of getting a residency there and it's certainly not as simple as being an EU citizen.

I've edited my first post to remove the comments about brainwashing as it's not productive to conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the interest of some context: Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. While a "political prisoner" he was offered freedom as soon as he would publicly renounce violent protest (i.e. terrorism) and he persistently refused to do so. His second wife, Winnie, enjoyed the necklacing opponents. So nice people all round.

<comment><USER28> Of course the government of SA didn't have to renounce violence, which is the way they dealt with any resistance. Violence, torture, intimidation. Refusal to negotiate.

Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these crimes.

He was not a communist, but an African nationalist. This is something he has always maintained and was confirmed when he became president, the national economic policy was pretty much neoliberal. The reason why he remained close to the communists is because they were sympathetic to his cause and lent a lot of support.

<comment><USER29> > Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these > crimes.

Almost everyone agrees that the Apartheid government was horrible. Almost no one holds them up as a positive example.

Conversely, almost everyone holds Mandela and his terrorist organization up as an example and as a hero despite them intentionally setting off bombs in civilian locations like shopping malls and restaurants.

<comment><USER30> From the biographies I read, they never put bombs in public, civilian locations. Only in strategic industrial/infrastructure locations, making sure there was not a person in place.

But, of course I read that in biased biographies. Do you have source that a person was killed by these attacks?

<comment><USER29> I'm no expert. Mandela cofounded [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Bombings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Bombings) has a list of atrocities committed by them. During most of them Mandela was in prison I believe. I don't know about his influence over the organization during that time or if he condemned these attacks, I'd guess he didn't but am happy to be proven wrong.

"five civilians were killed and 40 were injured when MK cadre Andrew Sibusiso Zondo detonated an explosive in a rubbish bin at a shopping centre shortly before Christmas."

"a bomb was detonated in a bar, killing three civilians and injuring 69"

" terror campaign continued with attacks on a series of soft targets, including a bank in Roodepoort in 1988, in which four civilians were killed and 18 injured. Also in 1988, a bomb outside a magistrate's court killed three. At the Ellis Park rugby stadium in Johannesburg, a car bomb killed two and injured 37 civilians. A multitude[14] of bombs at restaurants and fast food outlets, including Wimpy Bars,[15] and supermarkets occurred during the late 1980s, killing and wounding many people."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A non-paywalled report of the news: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA- got-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson- Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security- forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Agency's like the CIA are just symptoms, the obvious to late, to little effort done after problems seem unsolvable by politicians. And they often are. If you have a population that basically votes with there feet for a war every second generation. If you have a social system that depends on constant corruption, to get everyone through the day. If you have resources that allow those in power to get by without any responsibility to there country's. If you got armed groups, which provide to second sons of a second sons a future in guerilla warfare - what is a group of man in a office building to do about that? The answer is nothing. They cant turn stone to bread. They cant reason with the unreasonable. They can try to gamble who gets to sit on the iron throne. The sad fact is- the CIA- on a larger scale, has no power over the population, which going in murderous cycles, stomps there own future into the ground. They make a excellent blame-pinata though.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think it's interesting how the CIA's goal seems to be more or less "maintaining the status quo" in the global power struggle. This is obviously a useful thing to have, but if it gets too strong, how can we ever have the positive revolutions that have given us things like democracy?

<comment><USER34> Not really. They have repeatedly sought overthrow of numerous governments in the past (including democratic, communist and dictatorial). Not really maintaining the status quo.

<comment><USER33> Mostly relative young governments though, no? Governments that were trying something too radical, or were positioned too far from the established way of doing things.

<comment><USER34> Yeah. You are right. When i think about it, Even in case of old governments, the cia was motivated by maintaining some status quo which the government was trying to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Oh my God! This can't be true can it? I dont want to wake up tomorrow and learn that the Iraq war adventure was not based on wrong CIA intelligence, but a manufactured one, and 100% of the US political establishment knew it (in addition to basically the rest of the world).

<comment><USER36> Not sure if trolling... ??

Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non- credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him, never mind a used car. And it was well known that this source was completely non-credible.

In addition, various other bits were combined in ways that the appearance of a threat was manufactured out of pieces of information that both weren't threatening in themselves and also did not constitute a real threat when combined appropriately (the infamous 45 minute claim is among these). For more, see the various UK inquiries regarding "intelligence failures" leading up to the Iraq war.

The difference between that and manufacturing the whole thing from scratch is at best marginal.

<comment><USER37> > Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of > it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non- > credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him

Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one second, the Bush government was looking for any excuse, even fake to invade Irak. I pity the families of all the soldiers who died there, they died for nothing. And the locals who were massacred,during and after the war,the US is directly responsible for their death.

<comment><USER38> Why do you pity the families of US soldiers who invaded Iraq but blame the US for the deaths of Iraqis? If what the US did was wrong, then the soldiers who carried out those orders were wrong too.

How do Americans maintain this doublethink that their government's military actions are bad but the people who carry them out are good? Is a US soldier somehow more righteous than an ISIS soldier? They both kill innocent people, they both do it to serve "bad" purposes. Why not treat them all as what they are - killers?

<comment><USER39> The soldiers didn't know any better, and the situation wasn't clearly evil enough for there to be expectation of rebellion or refusal of orders.

The leaders, by contrast, knowingly engineered it (according to parent)

No one brought up isis soldiers.

<comment><USER40> If the soldiers didn't know any better, then that's a sign that our cultural attitudes towards war are somewhat lacking. Those people were not forced to sign up to the military, and if their moral compasses were distorted enough to believe wars not based on self defence can somehow be justified then why is that message getting across?

We shouldn't blame the soldiers for doing a difficult job, especially after the damage is done, but we can and should discourage people from signing up in the first place.

<comment><USER41> _> Those people were not forced to sign up to the military_

You should read up a bit on the US military. A lot of those people came from disadvantaged backgrounds where army careers are the only ticket out of poverty.

The US political and military establishment literally preys on the poor for their cannon fodder. It's the post-Vietnam equilibrium: they won't draft, so (white) sons and daughters of the middle-classes will be left alone, and in return such middle-classes don't ask too many questions about where, how and why the military is used.

To assuage collective guilt, a narrative has emerged in which grunts are not blamed, since they are effectively victims of a system nobody really wants to change.

<comment><USER40> > "A lot of those people came from disadvantaged backgrounds where army > careers are the only ticket out of poverty."

They are not the only ticket out of poverty, speaking broadly these people have choices. What is happening is that the military provides, for some people, an attractive way to get out of poverty, because it comes along with a certain level of prestige. Change the level of prestige and you change the influx of new recruits.

<comment><USER41> _> Change the level of prestige and you change the influx of new recruits._

Who can change the level of prestige? Upper and middle classes. Why would they do that, when the system works just fine for them? Nobody is legally coerced, and still cannon fodder is overwhelmingly provided by the "right" people.

From a certain perspective, it's a beautiful system.

<comment><USER40> > "Who can change the level of prestige?"

We all can, and we can start by resisting the narrative to refer to those involved in preemptive war as 'heroes'. There's nothing heroic about playing the role of the aggressor.

Furthermore, we need to find a way to better engage with those who have taken part in war so that we can learn from their experiences. The more we can see war for what it is, the less likely we'll be so casual about it continuing.

<comment><USER41> You also have to design and pay for alternative careers and education streams. It's not a coincidence that the countries who most value military careers are often ones where higher education is extremely expensive or restricted.

That will mean raising taxes and fighting tax evasion, which might mean less "free money" from VC gluts.

<comment><USER40> Putting aside the situation in developing countries, I'm suggesting making the changes closer to home.

In developed countries potential soldiers already have other options so it's not a question of making economic changes, it's a question of changing how we cut through the propaganda that glorifies soldiers. The only cases for soldiers as heroes are in cases of defending against an external aggressor or defending the helpless. Becoming a soldier does not automatically make you a hero, just as lawyers are not automatically heroes, it all depends on the causes they serve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder what would happen if we just told everyone at the CIA to go on a 1 year vacation. We might have world peace

</comment><comment><USER43> Here's another source: [http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271](http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271)

</comment><comment><USER44> Well, sending him to jail helped make him an important figure. True, there's no way of knowing how it have gone otherwise

Not to be demonized but not to be idolized as well

<comment><USER45> I'm curious, how did it help? I've always been under the impression that he succeeded despite the 27+ year prison time.

<comment><USER46> Being in prison isolated him from the less moral things the ANC did during the '70s and '80s, while still being seen as a figurehead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> ""The agent firmly believed Mandela was in the pocket of Communist Russia and was planning to incite the Indian population in the Natal region, where he was based, to rise up.""

Given ubiquitous surveillance and increasing state power, how long before average citizens start getting locked up because a single cowboy at an agency "firmly believes" they are a threat?

<comment><USER48> Never mind "ubiquitous surveillance", this has always happened.

And given that Mandela was a member of a banned organization that was wanted by his own government for attempting to start armed rebellion using weapons (acquired from from sympathtic communist-aligned powers), it wasn't exactly as if the whim of a single agent was the main factor behind his detention (or the CIA's ultimately unfounded belief in what might happen if he succeeded)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The title of this link is misleading. A former CIA spy (is that even confirmed?) claimed it. That's incredibly different from the CIA actually admitting it.

Which is not to say I really doubt his claims (assuming it can be verified he was a CIA operative who was in South Africa at that time.)

</comment><comment><USER50> Mandela & his organization were responsible for a terrorist (in the classical sense - using unfocused attacks on civilian populations as a bargaining chip and method of instilling fear) insurgency that killed thousands of people in incredibly brutal ways. The ascendancy of that government has resulted in South Africa turning from a reasonably prosperous & stable country into one of the most dangerous countries on earth, especially for the white minority, who is ~ one election away from genocide at any given moment.

Props on Mandela for being gracious in victory & not immediately going Full Zimbabwe, but it is insane to suggest that he was some sort of sainted figure that there was no reason to even fight.

</comment><comment><USER51> Find it funny that they label Mandela a communist while the apartheid government owned all important sectors of the economy eg telkom (telecommunications), eskom (electricity), amscor n denel (weapons), sabc (radio and tv broadcasting), spoornet (rails and ports) acsa (airports) just to list a few. Apartheid was basically socialism for white people and brutal facism africans.

</comment><comment><USER52> "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care." \--Nelson Mandela [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson- mandela-i...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-iraq- israel_b_4396638.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> Here's a very similar article from 1990 - [http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported- in-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela- arrest.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> The new title "an individual admitted something not the organization" is definitely more accurate, but represents an unsettling (to me) blame shift. I suppose the original title incorrectly placed responsibility on the organization and not the individual.

</comment><comment><USER55> Linkbait title. If the testimony is true then at best its a tip off about a then wanted man's location, nothing to do woth cia behind a conviction or anything else.

<comment><USER56> As if Mandela was going to go free by Apartheid regime.

When you know the outcome, you don't get to wash your hands of the guilt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Of course we did. We've been behind almost every coup of any truly democratic (we Americans like to call this communism) society in the last century.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would like to thank all the people who had a comment on this article, but did not post it. Truly, you improve the community with your silence. I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point, but logical consistency would prevent this sentiment from ever being expressed.

As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that frequents this place is mistaking being smart with being informed.

<comment><USER43> >> "I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point"

Given I commented, calling you out to explicitly state why you feel that my comments on this page somehow show that I don't know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER54> I am also curious to hear why c2the3rd is so confident about the ignorance displayed here and why silence instead of noise is the solution. Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts, and perhaps with some effort by all of us we can respond intelligently to those popular thoughts and also get up voted. Even if ignorant, isn't it worth discussing and responding to if that's what most people are thinking?

<comment><USER59> >>> Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts...

And therein lies the problem. Echo chambers are only good at making you wish to be deaf, if even...

<comment><USER40> Only if you treat downvotes as bad. My own comments on this thread have received a fair number of both upvotes and downvotes. I consider when that happens (assuming I haven't been overly antagonistic, which I don't think I have been) that I've hit a raw nerve. I could be wrong, but alternatively I could've said something someone isn't willing to hear. That can be useful feedback in its own right (though I prefer the clarity of comments over votes).

<comment><USER43> Maybe it's me, but it's rare that my comments get more that 10 votes (up/down) - and as such, I don't make anything of votes to my comments; statistical significance, poor sample, puppet accounts, etc.

What I do make something of is meaningful responses to my comments.

<comment><USER40> Sure, such feedback is rare, it does require significant feedback in both directions, it doesn't work with single upvote/downvote swings.

It's also very obvious when you've said something that annoys one individual as you can get a string of downvotes in quick succession across multiple comments. Such feedback is easy to spot and see as childish, so I enjoy it for what it is instead.

That said, I much prefer comments, even those that disagree with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Non-paywalled: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA- got-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson- Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security- forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html)

<comment><USER61> Why is everything behind a damn paywall these days?

<comment><USER62> It's newspapers and the decline in print.

<comment><USER63> Newspaper death throes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Paywalled. Next.

<comment><USER65> Get my upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Not really an "admission", he was guilty of the crime for which he was charged.

<comment><USER43> Given the systematic abuses by the state authority in South Africa, at the time of Mandela's arrest, against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices, believe a some context is worth considering in deciding who was right and wrong.

<comment><USER67> The "abuses" by the Apartheid government was actually negligible compared to the violence South Africa has experienced since the unbanning of the ANC. [http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf](http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf)

<comment><USER43> Reviewed the document, though see no evidence to support your claim. What exactly is your point and the evidence supporting in and why do you feel the sources and methods used to collect it are valid?

<comment><USER67> People point to a few abuses and then say the Apartheid government was so terrible. But it did a decent job of providing safety and security, which is a basic human right.

The ANC undermined the police service when they were unbanned When they took office, they ran the police service into the ground. They do not protect the rights of minorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68>
        struct NelsonMandela *nelson_mandela =
            (struct NelsonMandela *)malloc(
                sizeof(struct NelsonMandela));
        free(nelson_mandella);

</comment><comment><USER69> Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country?

If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa, as the local communist party claimed when he died, and as this former CIA operative has claimed, then he had to have known he was playing a tricky game. Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one.

[Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I also doubt anyone commenting here lives in a communist country, or has ever spent much time in one.

<comment><USER70> Why are you talking in hypotheticals when Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994?

Your false dichotomy is empirically false because apartheid was ended without creating a 'communist paradise'.

Even if we were to accept your limited worldview/binary choices; it is not clear how a state with codified racism (apartheid) is superior to an egalitarian communist one.

<comment><USER71> An egalitarian communist state has never existed, it's always a state where the ruling party does as it pleases while the majority has no rights whatsoever. (Whether _this_ is superior or inferior to an apartheid state is a tough question.)

<comment><USER28> That's not true, Cuba is egalitarian, to a far greater degree than the Soviet Union was. Revolutionary Spain was very egalitarian. The Soviet Union can't really be called socialist, it was more of a totalitarian dictatorship.

<comment><USER71> Grandparent said "communist", not socialist, so while many people argue about the difference it doesn't seem relevant here.

Revolutionary Spain did not survive long enough to discuss IMO.

Cuba... egalitarian in what way? Is there anything the government does that the citizens can legally undo without overthrowing it? (Note that a benevolent dictatorship can exist, in theory, and among other things it can be a communist - or a racist - dictatorship; nothing prevents from the dictator to grant freedoms to the subjects, the point is that nothing prevents him from taking them away, either. If you don't refer to rights in the sense of things the government cannot prevent you from doing but instead refer to "egalitarian" in some sense of Cuban citizens living substantially different lives than Soviet citizens, I'd be curious to hear what exactly you mean.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unbelievable time required to cover immense distances of space (1910) - <AUTHOR> http://www.infomercantile.com/images/f/fa/Unbelievable_Time_Required_To_Cover_Immense_Distances_of_Space%2C_1918.jpg

<comment><USER2> Link to the page that graphic's on, please. They block hotlinking images.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops [http://www.infomercantile.com/blog/2009/03/steam-powered- spa...](http://www.infomercantile.com/blog/2009/03/steam-powered-space- ships-1918.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What math principles are much easier to grok as code?]]] - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I don't know if this qualifies as "Math" per se, but I just read a book on Bayesian statistical analysis that demonstrated in Python code how to accomplish certain things while also explaining the rationale.

It was very good and helped me "grok" Bayesian stuff in a way that I hadn't been able to purely by reading academic material.

I also learned a few things about Python from that book. It is called Think Bayes.

Disclosure: I am in no way affiliated with this book, its author, or its publisher. I'm just a guy who wanted what it had to offer and found it very useful as an addition to my formal training.

As a sidenote, I would say that, while a lot of statistics is easier to understand with code than it is with the math; the math is very important.

Understanding the math is key to understanding the limitations of any given statistical procedure and to understanding the needed assumptions about a data set before any approach can be decided on.

We have a lot of issues in modern scientific thought that are based in people understanding code and not understanding math where people figure out how to run a statistical procedure on a dataset, but don't bother to understand if that procedure should be run on that particular data.

These kinds of errors happen from Climatology to Neuroscience. It's widespread.

I think they are fundamentally math principles, but I think it's fair if people disagree with me.

My tl;dr respsone is this: always take the hard way. You will benefit in the long run. Find a teacher or a website that will take you down the hard path. It will be good for you. Once you understand the concept, the code will be obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> Abstract algebra and group theory. For example strings under concatenation (append) forms a semigroup. Another example is addition of durations (say you are writing scheduling software and want to calculate: 2 days and 3 hours + 4 hours) which I believe forms an abelian group. Finding examples of rings and more complex algebraic structures in programming is left as an exercise for the reader. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think many Machine Learning algorithms (and optimization techniques) become clearer when you actually implement them. Writing out the for loops instead of looking at 6 nested summations helped me to understand the runtime complexity of algorithms, and why some things are and aren't feasible to compute.

Often it's useful to go start from the "stupidest" implementation and then optimize it. At the end you'll arrive at the formulas that were given to you ;)</comment>


Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install? - <AUTHOR>

Previously due to work and other reasons (I have a large amount of windows knowledge) I have been a windows user. This week, my first mac book pro arrived.
I'm looking for developer tools and tweaks, and cool programs that I'd know if I was a mac regular. On windows I'd point myself to sysinternals programs, registry hacks like opening a command prompt in a folder from explorer and registering dll's from a right click, tortoisesvn, putty, etc. For background, I'm doing development in rails at the moment.
So what do you suggest? So far I have quicksilver and growl. <comment><USER2> Honestly, I would hold off installing a bunch of software until you have a need for it – or at least until you can appreciate the problem it solves.

OS X comes with a lot of tools out of the box, and I think it'd be better to stick with that stuff until you outgrow it or are no longer satisfied with it.

For example, people will recommend the VLC player, but QuickTime with the Perian plugin is what I use: more stable than VLC and plays all the formats. And it's one less app.

I didn't use Quicksilver for much more than a launcher when I had it. The Spotlight menu in OS X 10.5 is pretty much as fast as Quicksilver for launching apps. So maybe wait to install Quicksilver.

Same with Adium: iChat is good enough for me.

And people recommend Growl, but I found it more annoying than helpful. Pretty much every third party app registers itself, which means seeing tons of alerts I don't care about. (Unless you go into the Growl preference pane and unregister everything, which made Growl too high maintenance for me.)

The only essential things I'd recommend (again, only get them if they make sense to you):

TinkerTool <http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html > – Gives easy access to hidden system preferences.

Perian <http://perian.org/> – A plugin for QuickTime that lets it play all the formats it doesn't play.

Paparazzi! <http://www.derailer.org/paparazzi/> – Makes taking webpage screenshots easy.

Service Scrubber <http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/> – Lets you prune the Services menu. (Don't worry about installing this until you see a need for it.)

TextWrangler <http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/> – Free text editor with terminal integration and excellent file search capabilities.

Transmission <http://www.transmissionbt.com/> – My favorite bittorrent client.

<comment><USER3> How did you get away with iChat? I don't know a single person on AIM account, everybody is either on Yahoo/MSN or even ICQ.

<comment><USER4> Are you or your friends from outside of the USA? Seems like AIM is only really popular in the USA.

<comment><USER3> Hm... some of them are (ICQ users), but the American portion of my contact list is split between Yahoo and MSN. For some of them those messengers are "corporate standard", i.e. everybody at work is running one of those two. Another sizeable group of corporate IM contacts is on Skype, and growing fast, due to the encryption I suppose. Frankly, I've never heard of AIM until I bought a Mac last month.

Am I on an island? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First, the basics:

Signup with the Apple Developer Connection (ADC)[1].

After that you will want to install XCode. You can get that from the ADC or from the install cd.

You should then install macports[2] so that you can easily get BSD tools and utilities.

There is also a friendly GUI shareware app called Port Authority[3] you can use to maintain your ports tree.

[1] - <http://developer.apple.com>

[2] - <http://www.macports.org>

[3] - <http://www.codebykevin.com/portauthority.html>

I'll skip the whole code editor issue. XCode has one and you'll probably want to use some other one you already know about in addition to it anyways.

Some of my must-have utilities:

Disk Inventory X [4], so you can see where all your space went.

Hex Fiend [5] is a good open source no-frills hex editor.

[4] - <http://www.derlien.com>

[5] - <http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend>

When I need to write technical documentation suitable for printing, I use Scrivener[6], with MultiMarkdown[7], TexShop[8] and MacTex[9].

[6] - <http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html>

[7] - <http://fletcherpenney.net/MultiMarkdown>

[8] - <http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop>

[9] - <http://www.tug.org/mactex>

Finally, here are a few things I've already posted to YC in the past.

FreeDup - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89078>

KeyCue - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97555>

Top 100 Essential Mac Applications - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110233>

<comment><AUTHOR> I installed macports. Before I get to deep into this, is this error obvious to anyone? Note--I do see it's a missing folder, but what is unclear is why I don't have it, and whether it's a part of something larger I'm missing. When I run:

sudo port install putty \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> Error: Target org.macports.extract returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_textproc_expat/work" && gzip -dc /opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/expat/expat-2.0.1.tar.gz | /usr/bin/gnutar --no-same-owner -xf - " returned error 127 Command output: sh: /usr/bin/gnutar: No such file or directory

gzip: stdout: Broken pipe

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: gtk1 gettext expat libiconv ncurses ncursesw glib1 pkgconfig Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like this may be your problem: [http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports- users/2007-Au...](http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports- users/2007-August/004842.html)

Ryan Schmidt suggests:

 _Please verify whether you have /usr/bin/gnutar. If you do not, then your Mac OS X installation is incomplete. I believe gnutar is provided by either BaseSystem.pkg or Essentials.pkg from the Mac OS X DVD, both of which are quite essential to Mac OS X's functioning._

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW. I just grabbed gnutar from a buddy who installed Leopard from CD. His machine had gnutar and mine didn't. Now, macports is happy as a clam. Seems bizzare that I didn't have it. I found one other person who had the same problem with a factory install. Weird.

[http://nullstyle.com/2007/10/27/how-to-build-imagemagick- and...](http://nullstyle.com/2007/10/27/how-to-build-imagemagick-and-install- rmagick-with-macports-on-mac-os-x-leopard/)

<comment><AUTHOR> As a breadcrumb for anyone stumbling across this via google, I also had to install the latest X 11 to get the X windowing to show me anything. X 11 is grayed out on my install disks in the optional installs for leopard. Until upgrading X 11, the terminal window would run and the X 11 process would launch, but no visible window would appear.

<http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz/wiki/X112.1.4>

Now the macports putty is working. Sweet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always get cool stuff from the following links. You'll learn a hell of a lot from what you find here and it will be useful virtually everyday:

<http://del.icio.us/tag/mac+osx>

<http://del.icio.us/tag/macosx>

<http://del.icio.us/tag/mac>

<http://del.icio.us/tag/osx>

You'll also discover all the cool ways Macs are being used and it might even give you some new ideas on how you can use your Mac in ways that are not possible on Windows.

I would also suggest that you first see if there is a way to install ANYTHING Unixy via MacPorts (as posted by another user). This is a VITAL component for developing on Mac OSX.

</comment><comment><USER7> Textmate of course.

After that I'd get MacFUSE from Google Code for connection to Unix boxes, CheckOff for simple task lists, Twitterrific, xPad for notes, pgAdmin3 for PostgreSQL, Mailplane for GMail accounts, iWork08 or NeoOffice for Office apps, Parallels for virtual machines, and Adium for chatting.

You're all set then!

</comment><comment><USER8> I just got a Macbook Air and listed the first things I installed/uninstalled when I got it. Might be of use. It's at the end of this post:

[http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/06/how-i-got-a-macbook- air-...](http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/06/how-i-got-a-macbook-air- for-15-dollars)

<comment><USER9> Happy with the air? I really considered getting one and a powerful desktop...but decided to wait.

<comment><USER10> I love mine. I was sceptical at first but its been a lovely machine so far.... and I've owned 10+ Macs in my time.

<comment><USER11> It's lighter than an X61, yet has a larger screen. That's what the thin-ness buys me.

I'd still have gone with a thinkpad if they came with anything but #$%# vista.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not a developer tool, but it does mean you can put your MacBook Pro -on- your lap. <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049>

I'm also a big fan of SubEthaEdit for collaborative editing. <http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Textmate, Transmit, CocoaMySQL.

A nightly build of WebKit AKA Safari is much faster than Safari out-of-the- box. You can get it here: <http://nightly.webkit.org/>

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't actually bother installing much desktop software these days. Just a good text editor, browser, subversion...

<comment><USER15> That's where I'm at, too--just keep it simple. vim, svn, FoxBug, and I'm all set. I believe simplicity correlates with productivity.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. And if you keep your desktop light, you can switch to working on another desktop easily. There are some pretty usable webapps out there these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> AIM: Adium

IRC: Snak

RSS: NewsFireRSS

Notes: FreeMind

Newsgroups: Unison

Misc: Aquamacs, AppFresh, WhatSize, Flip4Mac, Twitterific

If you go to Startup School then you should also have a copy of SubEthaEdit installed. It's a text editor for mac that lets you take notes collaboratively in real time.

<comment><USER17> Why Snak for $29 when you can Colloquy for free?

<http://colloquy.info/>

Also, if you're a terminal freak and want a good text mode IRC client, I probably don't have to tell you that you can install 'irssi' over MacPorts.

Real hackers use irssi. :)

<comment><USER14> why install an IRC client when you can just <http://www.mibbit.com> :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Path Finder yet. It's a serious file manager that makes the Finder look like it was designed by Fisher-Price.

<http://www.cocoatech.com/pf4/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I've used SCPlugin for Subversion access on the Mac desktop, it has a similar feel to TortoiseSVN on Windows.

I would also tinker with Apple's Automator (a built-in application) and look at the Finder's Folder Actions (which Automator supports). With surprisingly little effort, you can create some very powerful commands to use when right- clicking desktop items.

Finally, perhaps the Mac equivalent of a "registry hack" is the command-line "defaults" program (also built in). It allows you to explore and change the preferences of many programs. You can turn on hidden features and other cool stuff that way.

</comment><comment><USER20> Text utils: TypeIt4Me (expands your codes into frequently-typed text) and JumpCut (multiple clipboard).

MenuCalendarClock replaces your menubar clock with with a menu of a simple calendar (ties in with iCal too, but i don't even use that).

As soon as Aion is updated for Leopard get it if you deal with time zones.

Alarm Clock 2 wakes you up to your selected iTunes playlist (with gradually increasing volume).

UnRarX deals with .rar files.

</comment><comment><USER21> For what it's worth, the apps I normally install on a new development box include TextMate, Cyberduck, QuickSilver, OmniGraffle Pro, Photoshop, and Skype.

</comment><comment><USER22> Coda has been the answer to my prayers, I hope it helps you

<http://www.panic.com/coda/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Learn some Unix -- Bourne shell and all the usual suspects like awk, sed, grep. OS X has Unix under the hood, you might as well make use of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm already down with shell scripting, but otherwise that is generally good advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't have much to add, but how do you like your MBP so far?

I've had mine for almost a year and like it very much. I liked my Dell laptop running Ubuntu, but I do prefer the (more expensive) Mac hardware. The fan runs almost silently when compared to the Dell and, okay, it's just a nicer design too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it very much so far! I don't have a nagging paranoia that I've somehow got a virus. I like the quiet, and design itself. It's also faster all-around, and slicker.

The only downside at all so far--I can't stand the way the home and end keys work and I'm having trouble with not having ctrl-C/ctrl-V and ctrl-Z work--the apple key does those functions, but on my keyboard, I find that key to be more awkward. It's screwing with my keyboard shortcut mojo.

<comment><USER24> you can swap cmd and ctrl keys if you want, in the keyboard area of system preferences. you can also change caplocks there to something more useful.

for home/end is the problem them not moving the cursor? try cmd-up-arrow and cmd-down-arrow

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try the swap asap for command and ctrl. That's great-- Thanks!

In windows, home and end jump to the end of line/beginning of line, so I frequently hit shift-home or shift-end to select a whole line of text, then I copy or cut and move it.

I found app-specific hacks here:

<http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2006/keyfixer/>

but I haven't checked out how it works yet, as I think I can add Thunderbird and other programs myself. Or I'll just re-adjust...

<comment><USER2> Rather than rearranging everything to be like Windows, maybe you should learn to use things the way they are on Mac.

Just consider that every hack and customization you make will make it that much harder to use another Mac without all your Windows-y adjustments.

For example, on Mac you navigate around text with the Command and arrow keys. So:

                             Win        Mac
        Beginning of line    Home       ⌘←
              End of line    End        ⌘→
         Beginning of doc    Ctrl-Home  ⌘↑
               End of doc    Ctrl-End   ⌘↓

<comment><AUTHOR> I have had that thought, but I find the positioning of the apple key awkward. Also, 95% of my productivity is determined by how fast I get around my own machine, and also it's unavoidable for a while that I will be using my mac and other people's pcs.

Thanks for the translations.

<comment><USER2> It's awkward because it's unfamiliar. I was pretty good with Windows before I switched to Mac and now I definitely prefer using the Command keys with my thumbs than the Ctrl keys with my pinkies.

It does suck though to be using something so unfamiliar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This from Marc Andreessen's blog: <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_ideal_os_x_.html>

and one more: <http://bestmacsoftware.org/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Perian and NicePlayer are required for watching random bits of video from the rest of the world.

<http://perian.org/>

<http://niceplayer.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER27> I spent a long time looking for a decent, free text editor. I eventually found two: Komodo Edit and Text Wrangler. The only reasonable terminal program is iTerm, although I'd give it up to get a Mac port of PuTTy.

<comment><USER19> There's a ton of Mac terminals. I use MacTelnet as an OS X terminal, even though it isn't finished.

<comment><USER27> I don't know about "a ton", at least not with tabs and a nice user interface. But MacTelnet looks nice, thanks for the tip :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quicksilver, Adium, MacPorts

</comment><comment><USER29> I really like Coda for text-editing, especially if you want an integrated FTP editor, text editor and preview in one app. Textmate + Cyberduck + Safari is great, but it's a lot of extra clicking around.

</comment><comment><USER30> Check out the MacBreak Weekly Picks. MBW is probably the best Mac podcast out there. The hosts recommend a product each week.

<http://mbwpicks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://www.rescuetime.com> :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Vienna is a great free RSS reader. Colloquy is great for IRC.

<comment><USER24> Why do you like colloquy? I found it barely adequate.

<comment> a-priori I find Colloquy is fine (though it has a bad habit of pinning the CPU every now and then...), but there's nothing special about it. I'd switch in an instant if someone suggested a superior alternative.

What do you suggest for an OSX IRC client?

<comment><USER17> If you're a terminal junkie, then try installing 'irssi' over MacPorts.

Love it.

<comment><USER24> /upvote

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> emacs22

<comment><USER34> Aquamacs is very good

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Debian, actually.

<comment><USER36> Parallels or VMware. I have a mac book pro and I find that having access to windows and Ubuntu is great. The best of all three worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> DarwinPorts

</comment><comment><USER24> no one has mentioned installing firefox yet. plus web developer extensions.

also get VLC for playing video files and DVDs

<comment><USER38> the only reason to install firefox 2 or firefox 3 is for the developer extensions, namely firebug.

safari is much faster and feels better to use because of the natural OS X interface.

<comment><USER24> i also prefer safari. but another reason to use firefox is in combination with Spaces, which isn't very good at having an app's windows divided between spaces. (yes there is a setting to change this, but it has its own downsides)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Privacy Check - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001952.html

<comment><USER2> I deleted my Facebook account so didn't get to try this but it may do something similar/better:

<http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to get all of them?

I can't choose to hide my ID/name/timezone/friends or friends' wallposts....

<comment><USER4> No. Hopefully when the new FB privacy controls roll out you will be able to. You maybe able to unset your timezone and gender in your profile to "hide" them.</comment></comment>


Lessons learned building an open source business - <AUTHOR> http://werd.io/2015/open-issues-lessons-learned-building-an-open-source-business <comment><USER2> It's also useful to remember that a business doesn't need to approach the idea of open source as an all-or-nothing proposition. In many circumstances, particularly with the recent emphasis on services and decentralization, companies might be able to comfortably open up some aspects of their core software. Well-built, internal software libraries or components which have good public utility but few opportunities for massive profits could be good candidates; there must be some sort of middle ground between keeping a stranglehold over all extrinsically valuable IP and opening your whole software stack to the masses.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that there are lots of companies making an open core model work. It is hard but if you can get to massive adoption like Elastic Search or Hortonworks you can generate significant income. I must admit that both companies are not profitable by a long shot as far as I know. At GitLab we're mostly close to but below cash flow break even.</comment>


Show HN: Bigdelivery, online meat delivery service in Brazil - <AUTHOR> https://bigdelivery.com.br <comment><USER2> I like it a lot, but do you deliver to the entire country? If not, then you should say somewhere to where do you deliver. I don't believe you deliver to my house, so I won't place an order, but maybe you do!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! For now it's just Salvador, Bahia and neighboring cities. We will add a warning about that.</comment></comment>


IPhone App in Approval Limbo for 3 Months, Dev Decides to Open Source It - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1015614125/google-voice-says-hi

<comment><USER3> A few things to consider (I went thru the exact same path):

\- Android: toll to get approved on the Android market is significantly less. You can release the apk unsigned, they'll install.

\- Use webkit to wrap your app inside some dummy binaries. Apple approves your app then you keep updating your app leaving on AWS or Google App Engine _your pick_

\- Don't go full blown. Release a lite app with minimum features, then add more as you go. Apple tech reviewers are humans. You need to familiarize them with your app, then you can crank up the features.

\- Blog about it and get the community to be supportive and all jazzed up on how evil Apple is (IMHO: you did that too late)

\- Release some libraries open source. I am not sure why you released the whole thing, because I don't think it will help you much beside maybe the buzz factor (which you would have gotten by writing to techcrunch, hacker news, slashdot and theregister.

\- Finally, never give up, never surrender. It's a tough world out there and if it was easy, everyone would be able to do it.

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> _\- Blog about it and get the community to be supportive and all jazzed up on how evil Apple is (IMHO: you did that too late)_

Before you do this, make sure that:

1) You've got a valid complaint. I've seen too many developers complain about something being rejected when everyone who looks at the rules will instantly see that they're in violation (if you think it's a dumb rule doesn't matter, Apple made it up and Apple decides both if you're in violation and the consequenses of the violation)

2) Be aware that you're most likely burning bridges at Apple and killing any goodwill you might have with them. Calling them an evil empire just isn't the kind of thing that's likely to bring them over to your side.

I think that the OP has carefully avoided calling Apple names and such, and instead focused on the basic facts: he's spent a lot of time and effort to make the app (which has been received well by people at Apple), but there's a limit to what resources a small company can spend while waiting for a response. You'll also note that he's making sure to point out that he'd like to get back to work on it as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how many indie developers make a choice to not develop significant iOS-based products (such as this one) and instead build "unit converters" and "fart apps" since those make it into the store with no problem.

<comment><USER6> The abundance of such trivial apps is more than adequately explained by (1) their trivialness to implement, and (2) their established reputation for actually making money.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but I don't believe the kind of people who want to make significant, high-quality apps like the one Rob made are the kind of people who would so easily stoop to making a fart app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just have to wonder if had Rob released a minimum viable product - <USER2> the polish and all the types of interactions and months of hard work and submitted it to the App Store - would it have been rejected sooner.

With our apps, even though they are fairly standard, we know the biggest risk is rejection by Apple. We hedge that risk somewhat by submitting a MVP (setting the release date in the future so it won't go live accidentally if approved).

<comment><USER6> Barring the possibility of Apple ever laying down clear, comprehensive, stable and reliable guidelines for avoiding rejection (with many real, anonymized examples), it sounds like the MVP approach is the best way to go.

Rob's case is special, though, because his app was never actually rejected. I suppose if he'd been willing to submit a MVP and wait the same amount of time in limbo before putting any more effort into it, he could have saved himself all that hard work. But the aggravation of not getting an answer would have still sucked.

<comment><USER8> The quiet issue that most people don't hear about are not initial submissions, but _updates_ that get stuck in the same review limbo for months and months. My app has been on the store for nearly two years, had many incremental updates, and my iPad compatibility update (not even a new app) has now been in review for 3 months. It's really hard to explain to your existing userbase why you cannot get an update released. Many of them aren't even aware that Apple can be the bottleneck for such a long time.

<comment><USER6> That's true. There really isn't a good way to communicate with your userbase. You're basically limited to updating the app description and hoping your existing users bother to click the "More" link to read it (assuming you didn't put the update at the top, because that's prime real estate for attracting new customers).

It really astounds me hearing about how long new apps and updates can get stuck in limbo, with no feedback from Apple or path to action. So far I've managed to avoid any nightmare scenarios, but every new anecdote I read makes me increasingly anxious that one day, that time will come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be fair, it is using interpreted code, which is clearly not allowed. He chose to build something that clearly goes against the terms and then he's hoping for an executive-level exception to the rule because "it's so cool". But if they give him an exception, everyone else will be pointing to how the approval process is inconsistent when they reject someone else's with some form of interpreted code.

So the question of Apple being at fault for not having "clear, comprehensive guidelines" can't really be raised.( In this particular case.)

And so the headline is a bit sensational.

<comment><USER10> Really? Limbo he says and limbo is sure what it seems to be.

If what you're saying were true, Apple should have fairly quickly rejected it citing the grounds you state. Something else is going on.

And isn't it the case that there are already quite a few interpreted code exceptions already in place, e.g. Lua in games?

<comment><USER9> I thought he made it pretty clear that he made some effort to get his software approved by exception through talking to execs, etc. So obviously that explains the "limbo". Presumably, he recognized it would just get rejected through the ordinary channels.

And with respect to the other thing, your bringing that up kinda proves what I said, doesn't it? :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone else concerned Apple will release a touch-screen iMac, and all future "touch" software will need to go through the iTunes store? If touch software ends up being more popular I see all development needing to go through the Apple development screening. I'm beginning to feel that if they could screen websites they'd do that too, oh wait. They do that too by limiting Flash.

<comment><USER12> The software wouldn't need to be touch, they could have a separate section for desktop apps.

Can you imagine the revenue stream for Apple if you could get desktop apps on iTunes?

I'm not at all concerned about it as they couldn't make it exclusive, people would run to windows... but they would still achieve a huge market share.

Maybe OS X 10.7?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As we know, this is a good reason to be on Team HTML 5 (with all it's tradeoffs). I admire Rob's incredible amount of patience though and hope it pays off.

<comment><USER14> Even with the risk of arbitrary rejection, it seems like the odds of payoff from your hard work are better with an iPhone app than a website written in any HTML dialect.

<comment><USER15> The biggest problem with deploying an HTML webapp to iPhone users is that they aren't trained to accept them. Users are forced to learn to use the App Store, but virtually none of them know how to make a bookmark on the home screens and even fewer know that this can then enable a website to become an application. (For those not washed in the gory details, full screen is not available until the user relaunches from a home screen icon.)

All together, you will need to have a motivated and technically adept audience for your webapp to succeed.

<comment><USER16> You hit some of the reasons why we created <http://OpenAppMkt.com>

<comment><USER13> Awesome! I'm sure even Apple will solve it as they know HTML 5 is going to be a big part of the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I agree with the comments, HTML 5 is really the key to bypass all these restrictions.

What is the best HTML 5 framework so far? I saw sencha's, webkit and a couple of others here and there.

Any recommendations?

<comment><USER18> There is <http://jqtouch.com/> and <http://jquerymobile.com/>. Also <http://openappmkt.com> to distribute.

<comment><USER19> Is it ok to create an iphone app that just opens the iphone browser to your html5 app?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1637368>

<comment><USER21> I flagged that, because the title is basically useless, and the glaring result is that no one reads about this important case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just don't get it. Awesome app. Why would they reject it? What would the actual reason for rejection be?

<comment><USER7> Interpreted code

> No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for > code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and builtin > interpreter(s)...An Application may not itself install or launch other > executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use > of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or > otherwise.

> Briefs are eventually compiled into binary .plist files for delivery to the > iPhone. But authoring uses a simple language called bs. BS is a simple > language written specifically for creating briefs. Its syntax is very > similar to CSS (helpful for those experienced web designers).

<comment><USER23> Briefs are compiled into binary .plist files on the Mac not on the iPhone.

<comment><USER7> Yes and they are "run" on the iPhone.

This makes me wonder if the real reason there is not Balsamiq for iPad is because of the threat of rejection for "running" and "editing" Balsamiq markup models. I understand that Balsamiq is an Adobe AIR/Flash product, and it would have required a major port to CoreGraphics/Cocoa (since the CS5 compiler was banned because it leveled the mobile platform playing field by allowing near write-once, run any device).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe he should sell it in source form as a "build it yourself" product. I'd definitely pay for it.

<comment><USER25> Of course you would also need a mac and a $99/year certificate to install it on an actual device.

<comment><USER26> Most people willing to pay for an iphone prototyping tool probably already paid the $99 fee to work on something else too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From an entrepreneur's perspective, devoting one's business solely into the app store isn't a wise move. Since Apple has the veto power over the app distribution channel the risk of wasting hundreds of hours but not getting to the market is too high.

What one should do is to develop software that runs multiple platforms, and if it becomes popular I doubt Apple would want to lose out in the fanfare.

Imaging Apple disapproving Dropbox? not quite possible, because people love it on other platforms, and if Apple doesn't support it on iPhone people will go get a blackberry.

</comment><comment><USER28> The video for the app isn't very informative. It explains the problem, but does little to show how this app is useful and how it solves the problem presented for over 2/3's of the video.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe consider Jailbreak - there's a paid jailbreak-apps store called Rock, which I heard is legally legal (don't quote me on this). Although I suspect people who jailbreak their phones may not be the target market for something like Briefs

</comment><comment><USER29> Brief is very cool. I loved his demo at iPhone meetup. Best of luck Rob!

</comment><comment><USER30> My full respect for releasing it as open source, even after the big disappointment of being not approved. I can sense the hard work, that has been put into this. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Honestly, this scares me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like a really cool app. I guess open sourcing it will allow iPhone developers to run it?

I guess Apple really wanted to reject the App, but didn't want the backlash so is just letting it rot. Sorta like those companies that you interview with that never send a 'no' back and make you go mad with being in limbo. There are reports about some apps being pending review for 200 days.

I guess he's hoping for approval or he might have released it on Cydia.</comment>


Stop Whining About Facebook's Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2214447/

<comment><USER2> I'm very surprised that people haven't noticed that Facebook really screwed up certain aspects to the redesign and instead keep trotting out the "users don't like change" excuse. There's "disruptive" and then there's "poor design decisions".

Interesting to see they've already addressed some of the negative feedback: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/facebook-tweaks- redesig...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/facebook-tweaks-redesign-in- response-to-disgruntled-users/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't like the new home page at all, and I have been visiting Facebook less, but presumably the company has global data on actual user behavior and decides such issues on that kind of REVEALED preference rather than on expressed preference manifested in user complaints. I'm a small enough part of the user base that I could boycott the company forever and Facebook might not care.

<comment><USER2> How can you tell from user behaviour that people want something if it's missing? That comes from qualitative feedback.

From what I've heard, usage did drop after the release, although I'd be interested to see real data rather than hearsay.</comment></comment></comment>


271 Picasso paintings discovered in Paris - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8168491/271-Picasso-paintings-discovered-in-Paris.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a (probably apocryphal) story about Picasso and a carpenter.

He had called in a carpenter to build a bookshelf. After sketching out the design, he handed the sketch to the carpenter and asked how much it would cost to build. The carpenter asked him to "just sign the sketch."

However, from the article, it doesn't seem that Picasso was all that free with his originals. Too bad for Monsieur Le Guennec.

Side note: Should you have the chance to see it, the film "The Mystery of Picasso" (<http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Picasso-Pablo/dp/B00007ELEI>) is very enlightening. I didn't much care for Picasso's celebrated works, although I knew that he was at least a competent artist in the traditional sense as well as the modern. This film shows how he develops several paintings, from the initial concept to the final work, and you can see how he starts from a traditional framework, then pushes it out of all recognition. I still don't /like/ most of his paintings, but I can much better appreciate how he got there.</comment>


Show HN: What should I include in my Covid-19 shopping list generator? - <AUTHOR> I'm making a COVID-19 shopping list generator (covid.shopping) where you select a number of people, diet, the length of the quarantine and get a sharable shopping list.<p>What should I include? <comment><USER2> Start with a justification for sharing. Don't cause a run on any of the food suggestions people are giving.

Be sure to allow large families. People can have over 20 kids, at least 4 generations in one house, or lots of cousins together. Some people even rent out rooms or live in a commune.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ramen + bottled water + disposable bbqs

</comment><comment><USER4> Condoms!

</comment><comment><USER5> Potatoes

</comment><comment><USER6> Sugar!

</comment><comment><USER7> oatmeal ; oat porridge

</comment><comment><USER7> pasta and dried cheese

tomato cans

</comment><comment><USER8> flour

<comment><USER3> \+ yeast + breadmaker + batteries (+ hand-crank power generator)</comment></comment>


Test Driven Development in Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/5463

<comment><USER2> is anybody really doing this in the real world? it seems kind of inefficient to go through 15 testing cycles to write 10 lines of dead simple code.

i like to write tests before my code when i am trying to solve a specific problem, or think of a new potential issue and want to test it, but i find "pure" TDD takes it way too far. i don't see practical use in exhaustively testing every single potential case for a simple wrapper around datetime. i do like the idea for really critical sections, but it seems way overkill for most code.

TDD to me seems, like most things, as a good tool to have in the tool box, but moderation is key. articles like this are helpful to describe the practice but tend to always prescribe it for everything.

<comment><USER3> Doing TDD isn't always about having 100% test coverage and as you described is often wasted. But having coverage in line with how "important/complex" that piece of code is wonderful, frees you to refactor more easily and saves you from writing throw away test code, and/or manual testing.

Like most things in life, it's about moderation. Do you need 80+% test coverage on your "tweet this" feature? No. Do you need 90+% test coverage of your signup and ecommerce process flows? Absolutely!

Don't get hung up writing trivial tests as you described above, instead focus on the things that really matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm actually interested in infrastructure around this. There is lots of documentation about how to use the various unit testing libraries out there, but what's the easiest way to _run_ all of your unit tests? In Perl, the Makefile generated from Makefile.PL (or Build script generated from Build.PL) has a 'test' command that will run tests that look like t/*.t (the pattern is actually more permissive than this, but I'm not sure what the specs are beyond that being the most common case). It will automatically setup the library paths to include the code, etc, so that you don't have to manually fool around with @INC (Perl's sys.path).

Is there something similar in setup.py? If so, how does it find which files have tests to run?

edit: So there really isn't a standard Python way to 'run all unit tests?' (I'm not counting v2.7 because Python unit tests have been around a lot longer than that version has). I thought that Python was all about "there's only one way to do it." I find it a little odd that it took so long for anything like that to be included in the main distribution.

<comment><USER5> I really like nose (<http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/>). You can simply run "nosetests" in the root of your project, and it will locate and run your tests.

nose will adjust sys.path to make sure your tests can find the packages they're testing. This may depend a bit on the layout you're using for your project, it has always worked for me so I have never had the need to look into HOW it works :)

<comment><USER6> I tend to find a bare "nosetests" catches a little more than I want it to, so I generally specify at least a test directory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The linked article is seven years old. For more up-to-date Python TDD techniques, see chapters 13 & 14 of Mark Pilgrim's 'Dive Into Python' (available free at <http://diveintopython.org/>), and for Python 3 (though plenty applies to Python 2) chapter 9 of 'Dive Into Python 3' (available free at <http://diveintopython3.org/>)

</comment><comment><USER8> TDD is very similare to define the use cases which make sense to di first. The difference is that they are expressed in a very formal way that can be used as validation test.

In such example, the benefit would be that a change in the date matching algorithm could be done later and rely on the unit tests to detect a regression.

</comment><comment><USER9> attest (<http://packages.python.org/Attest/>) is a really nice test framework too. Feels much more natural to me than the usual setUp/tearDown pattern.</comment>