How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm just in a skeptical mood this morning, but I have a hard time believing that a cabal of really rich CEO types are going to turn to a single person to field technology questions ranging from crypto currency preferences to how you manage your guards in a dystopian future.

The intro to the article has the author reviewing a wide and diverse number of topics with these business guys for an hour. It made me curious what his qualifications were. His website mentioned that he's a "Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens". Again, not the first person I'd turn to if I wanted to talk technology.

I just have a hard time believing the story in the beginning. The author thought he'd be giving a presentation to an audience. Instead, he's in an hour long counseling session with some executives. Why would they do it that way? Why wouldn't you tell the expert what you're doing in advance and the topics you're interested in so he'd have time to prepare? Why not talk to individual domain experts in subjects you're curious about?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's the first thing I thought. Note that their questions were also not limited to technology, but veered into philosophical questions like "how do I maintain authority". If the author is an expert in that many fields, probably deserves his speaking fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not wealthy. I've had these same concerns. My wife and I have looked at locations to buy a house in an area that is least likely to be impacted by shifting weather, has farmable land, and is isolated from the coasts to avoid the ~1Bil+ migration once the mideast gets too hot.

There are a lot of really smart people on this site. Am I being crazy? I look at the modern political scene and things going the opposite way of improvement. I look at corporate endeavors to privatize vital commodities (looking at you, Nestle and water). We are seeing each year get worse and worse from a climate perspective, and while there are a lot of brilliant scientists and engineers working through solutions, a lot of eager youth to fix the sins of their elders—is it too late? Or at the very least, isn't it a valid to think that we may be too late and plan accordingly?

For the mega-rich, how is the process different from any other time in history? Isn't the answer to build an army?

<comment><USER5> I am skeptical there will be an 'Event', something more like a gradual decline seems more likely (so, more British Empire than Roman). But if there were a complete collapse, I doubt your preparations could be really save you. Or in other words, it isn't the apocalypse if you can survive it.

<comment><USER6> The British Empire was at its peak in 1922 and was largely gone by the 1960s - I think that is actually rather faster than the decline of the Roman Empire!

edit: 1992 to 1922

<comment><USER7> -

<comment><USER8> I assume they mean _18_ 92\. But, I dunno, maybe time travel is a thing, even at the global level. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing is; there won't be a "the Event" there will only be a long emergency and it's already in progress. Systems won't fail all at once and new temporary systems will be built as things change.

But if these fools think that that they will be able to keep their power and influence by doing the same things that made them wealthy they will be an amusing and schadenfreude inducing sideshow that most people will barely notice because they're too busy figuring out how to beat the heat.

The way to survive the transitions we are facing now is not to use today's wealth and influence to make yourself a warlord of a post-apocalyptic desert. It's to build cooperative societies that can make deserts bloom in difficult places and provide shelter from the storms to come. You cannot expect to maintain effective technologically adept societies by fear and coercion. You must be able to offer hope and inspiration if you want assistance of any level of cognitive complexity.

<comment><USER10> The funny thing is really that they'll hoard resources and power, but all of their power will mean nothing. A warlord isn't some clever, greedy dick, it's the guy who murders that dick and takes over his hoard. If you really want to prepare for an apocalypse, be the head of one of these idiots' private armies. When it falls apart, you casually blow his brains out and take over.

<comment><USER9> Keeping a private army fed, equipped and healthy is a hard problem; especially if you cannot rely on the large scale infrastructure systems that provide all of the advanced technology, effective medical care and civil order we take for granted.

What you are describing is a fantasy that would collapse with the first cholera outbreak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty saddening to read- instead of spending their billions to fight climate change, the rich have the "fuck you get mine" viewpoint. Hell, some of 'em probably made their fortunes on coal and oil.

Then again this could just be human nature.

<comment><USER12> > Pretty saddening to read- instead of spending their billions to fight > climate change

A pretty good way to fight climate change would be to mostly stop breeding, because fewer people means less energy consumption and thus less climate change.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately the people who should consider breeding less will never consider this. And anyone on HN who is conscientious enough to actually stop reproducing because of this post will probably cause a net loss for society by doing so.

<comment><USER14> AFAIK, there's no scientific basis for this argument, it strikes me as tone deaf and possibly racist or classist. While there is some basis on which to argue that genes may influence intelligence, it is certainly not the easiest or most direct way to influence intelligence: education, economic and social stability, general health, etc.

If everyone on HN stopped having children, I am sure the world would get along just fine.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/09/16/no-r...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/09/16/no- research-has-not-established-that-you-inherited-your-intelligence-from-your- mother/#71f3dcf76502)

<comment><USER15> From your own source "While maybe half of our intelligence as we currently define and measure it is inherited."

So the author admits that probably half of intelligence is inherited. Seems obvious then that education, economic status, environment etc. while contributing are substantially less important that genetics.

<comment><USER14> It sounds like you are arguing that manipulating genetics is an easier way to encourage intelligence then education and environment. Is that really what you are trying to say?

Because that sounds ridiculous to me.

<comment><USER15> Really? Care to point out which part of "Seems obvious then that education, economic status, environment etc. while contributing are substantially less important that genetics" implies that I think manipulating genes is easier than changing education or environment?

<comment><USER16> The part where you claim that the easiest part to manipulate is the most important contributor to intelligence.

<comment><USER15> Considering I never even used the word manipulate your attempt at putting words in my mouth is even more see through than the previous reply's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check out Neal Stephenson's fine novel SEVENEVES for a vision of what happens at The Event.

Yeah, and the final few minutes of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

These plutocrats are indulging themselves in a fantasy about their inherent superiority.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's intriguing to see rich people feeling just as out of control as the rest of the planet's population. I wonder what that really says about the current state of society? It seems like wealth inequality really benefits no one at all.

<comment><USER19> Well, I know that I don't have the funds to preemptively build a giant shelter, wall off some fertile land, and then store some seeds in the shelter so that I can grow food after society collapses. I can't afford to buy a giant container ship and ride out the apocalypse offshore by farming on the deck, away from the angry mobs.

But I bet Thiel or Zuck could afford that.

Seems to me that wealth is a definite means to surviving "the Event".

<comment><USER10> A giant container ship with food is just pirate bait. A walled off region full of food is raider bait. Hoarding resources in the face of desperate people in the absence of law and order is suicide, but these guys can't conceive of a future in which they don't command some form of control and respect so they plan this way.

The only feasible way to survive long term is either to form a large, well armed group of raiders, or a larger, better armed community full of skilled people who have each others' backs, probably intermarried and interbred; clans and tribes in other words.

<comment><USER19> You might be right but I think that's entirely beside and irrelevant to my point, which is that with money, you have a greater capacity to effect change of any sort than without. Including in terms of prepping for the apocalypse.

<comment><USER10> How is it irrelevant that the day after the apocalypse, when money is meaningless and law and order are gone, all of that preparation is just free for the taking by someone stronger? What does a CEO have to offer in that scenario? Leadership? Lol. No. Unless their prepping isn't all about relying on people they pay to do things for them, they're screwed.

Before an apocalypse they have a lot of power, but only as long as they're still just trying to accrue wealth. Within the system of scrabbling formevery nickel and dime, they have power, but outside of that? For all of his massive wealth and philanthropy, Bill Gates for example, is hardly saving the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like this rich people paranoia can be summed up as an old adage: the more you have, the more you are afraid to lose it.

<comment><USER21> Right. "No one would help me protect my bunker out of respect, trust. Let's put electric collars on all the guards and horde the food source."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've read so many stories about these plans and they all have the same flaw... nothing stops an ex-Navy SEAL from taking all of this stuff from them when money is worth nothing (as it will be in an apocalypse)

</comment><comment><USER23> What percentage of your networth is considered socially acceptable to spend on preparing for disasters? For a billionaire buying a new zealand vacation home is like most of us spending a couple hundred bucks on, eg a water filter, first aid kit, and non perishable food, standard preparations that FEMA recommends.

<comment><USER14> I think this is a big part of the problem. That the 1% has become so insanely wealthy that they believe it is less expensive to prepare for the end of the world rather than take on some the cost of preventing it. Their belief that it would be better to start over with a small population (the 1% themselves, obvs) then to work to improve the world as it currently stands. And, of course, the naive belief that they can make plans robust enough they might somehow survive "The Event".

<comment><USER24> Playing devil's advocate: Why wouldn't the 1% plan work?

They would settle in NZ & AU, with a marine army defending against the rest of the world, which would be busy anyway fighting for survival against one another and climate. Use latest tech to keeps these lands habitable and self- sustaining. Maybe even expand to a space station in 50 years.

<comment><USER14> I think it's just too brittle.

If we look for examples of similar bunkers, there are a couple military sites but nothing (AFAIK) that's been inhabited long term. Their concerns about keeping the guards on their side seems valid, that could turn out to be intractable. If the whole world does crumble, they'll have to be able to build everything from raw materials, including sourcing all of those raw materials. And so on and so forth.

<comment><USER24> We're talking about 2 small continents: entire AU & NZ, not bunkers. They can definitely be self-sustaining.

<comment><USER25> > We're talking about 2 small continents: entire AU & NZ, not bunkers. They > can definitely be self-sustaining.

Why would the existing populations of AU & NZ consent to becoming the subjects of some billionaire aristocracy? We're talking about millions of people formed into actual nation states with sizable and competent militaries. Not even the combined private security forces of 100 billionaires and 1,000 millionaires could take control and dominate something that large. Elon Musk isn't going to be able to wow them into submission with minisubs and beads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What world will you inherit, provided you survive? Short term thinking is exactly the problem. We are all in this together, and your millions in stocks and etfs are worth nothing if the entire world goes to shit.

Sadly Gates is the outlier, not the norm, when it comes to how you use wealth.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fools and thier money. If they want to spend thier millions preping for the zombie outbreak, so be it. Id rather them hire people to build bunkers than sink those dollars into bitcoin futures.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3)

> Purporting to be an investigation into the UK's contemporary "brain drain", > Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the > event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on > Earth.[1]

> The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools' Day, > 1977.

</comment><comment><USER21> Def going to start referring to the apocalypse as "The Event" from now on.

<comment><USER29> Don't think about The Event! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X888i7hzvP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X888i7hzvP0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of discussion from when this was first posted on Medium. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468558)

</comment><comment><USER30> This article misses how "unbridled capitalism" has radically improved the lives of the global poor. While I consider myself left-leaning, but it's amazing how often left-of-center folks get this one wrong. I don't want a corporate dystopia either, but the number of people that have been lifted out of extreme poverty by the globalized economy is staggering.

What I think these articles truly represent is the psychic unease of the Western middle class, which has not been helped by this revolution but has seen their influence and social mobility wane. They realize (rightly, I think) that their societies face an existential risk from extremely concentrated wealth and concoct these narratives as a way of trying to signal that problem.

<comment><USER15> So we have improved the lives of some and toxified our planet in the process, potentially making it completely unlivable. Do you actually think that is a good deal?

<comment><USER31> get a grip, of course its not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bezos' 10000 year clock would be a good place to hide a hidey hole like these guys are planning.</comment>


Python-Dev: Adding braces to __future__ - <AUTHOR> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-December/114859.html

<comment><USER2> Guido's (somewhat surprising) response, for those too busy to read through:

      On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Cedric Sodhi <manday at gmx.net> wrote:
      > IF YOU THINK YOU MUST REPLY SOMETHING WITTY, ITERATE THAT THIS HAD BEEN
      > DISCUSSED BEFORE, REPLY THAT "IT'S SIMPLY NOT GO'NNA HAPPEN", THAT "WHO
      > DOESN'T LIKE IT IS FREE TO CHOOSE ANOTHER LANGUAGE" OR SOMETHING
      > SIMILAR, JUST DON'T.

      Every single response in this thread so far has ignored this request. The
      correct response honoring this should have been deafening silence.

      For me, if I had to design a new language today, I would probably use
      braces, not because they're better than whitespace, but because pretty much
      every other lanugage uses them, and there are more interesting concepts to
      distinguish a new language. That said, I don't regret that Python uses
      indentation, and the rest I have to say about the topic would violate the
      above request.

      --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

</comment><comment><USER3> What I miss the most with python is multi-line closures and "can't put statements in lambdas'. For instance:

      # Not valid.
      my_button.on('click', lambda x: raise 'unimplemented')
      my_button.on('click', lambda _: some_var = 'clicked')

I believe the whitespace delimiters is the main reason why we aren't allowed to have multi-lines lambdas. (CoffeeScript proves us wrong on that, but from my experience, multi-lines whitespaced functions look better in CS than in Python.)

Also, I'd like to point out that "where's the patch" is really unfair. Python programmers are 'users/customers'. So, it's like if a customer asked for a feature and you'd tell her to implement it..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, multi-line functions (lambdas, closures) delimited by whitespace shouldn't be a problem ... but I've heard the same argument made as well. Do you remember where it was that you first read that "whitespace delimiters is the main reason why we aren't allowed to have multi-line lambdas" ?

<comment><USER3> I've been arguing for ages about that on #python/freenode. Otherwise, I don't know. Different attempts have been made to include lambdas but it always feel wrong and unpythonic.

I believe it's not so much about multi-lines but more about how the standard library is designed. It's mostly imperative/OO and use really few callbacks. Thus, when you try mixing long lambdas, it feels wrong. Unlike in CS with node.js or jQuery (for example), where callbacks are really the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "What Python needs is an alternative to WSB and can stay Python by still offering WSB to all those who happen to like it."

And that's an argument? Why not include static typing, or single inheritance, GOTO while we're at it? I'm sure there are those who happen to like them.

Well if anything, this is one of the most vocative trolls I have ever read. :)

<comment><USER5> >> And that's an argument? Why not include static typing, or single inheritance, GOTO while we're at it? I'm sure there are those who happen to like them.

Why is static typing in that list? Unlike single inheritance or GOTO's, static typing is a good thing. Dynamic typing is often used in interpreted languages because once you're writing an interpreter, there's going to be a massive performance hit anyway and dynamic typing won't make it a lot worse. Dynamic typing makes compiling efficient code very difficult.

Of course, a good static typing programming language should have at least some kind of type inference mechanism to allow the programmer to leave out explicit type declarations when a compile can infer them from the program source code.

Boo is a statically typed, type-inferring language for the CLR that has a Python-like syntax. It seems pretty nice, I've written a few toy projects with it.

<comment><USER6> There's an argument to be made: one can't be all things to everyone. Python is a dynamic language, and adding optional features to make it work differently won't bring the benefits of either way of making things work consistently. Two syntaxes like that troll poster proposed would increase cognitive load, static typing mixed with dynamic typing would add some boilerplate for no real safety.

<comment><USER5> Simplicity can be a benefit, but there are examples of languages that are either dynamically typed with optional static type annotations and languages that are statically typed but have a special dynamic duck type (that may use something like the invokedynamic opcode in the java bytecode), so why not Python?

Examples: static typing with optional duck types: Boo. dynamic typing with optional type annotations: many Lisps, e.g. Racket.

<comment><USER6> Python can't become static with optional invokedynamic; static typing has to be built from the start. For example, the % operator can't be typed. Optional typing I've seen in Perl, and again it seems like boilerplate for no benefit.

<comment><USER5> I was thinking more about having optional type annotations to facilitate better optimization in (JIT) compiler based implementations of Python, like PyPy, Jython, IronPython or others. Type annotations may also be useful for doing some static sanity checking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jesus Christ on a crutch, just set up your goddamn editor to replace tabs with spaces and get on with life.

People who find this problematic need to find another language or stop focusing on trivia.

</comment><comment><USER8> _tl;dr;_ \- troll posts long rant on why Python should do delimited blocks in addition to whitespace blocks, devs tell troll to take a hike.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious what is _your_ definition of troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main (and only?) argument this poster gives for adding braces is consistency with other languages.

Which is a silly reason. Why not add other things from other languages all to keep 'consistant'?

</comment><comment><USER11> Whitespace blocks means my editor can not correctly reindent when I shift levels of indentation and instruct the editor to pretty-reformat. This wastes my time because I have to manually sort things out. It also means that things I can't see are affecting my code. It's a pain to work with in Python and a pain to work with in Haskell. My experience is that it's an epically bad idea made attractive by revulsion from C++/Java.

Curlies or Lisp-like curves play a ton nicer with tooling and visual inspection.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a problem with your choice of editor, not Python. Try emacs or vim.

<comment><USER11> I use emacs.

It's an ambiguity problem similar to the dangling else. There's no way to automatically tell the editor that I want the statements to go here or there.

edit: _Yes_ , there's a reformat command in emacs. _No_ , it does not work correctly for Python, because the lack of delimiters means it does not have the information it needs to do the job right.

<comment><USER5> Do you have the appropriate emacs plugins for writing Python? I'm a bit surprised that the code isn't formatted properly with emacs out of the box. Then again, many editors need some sort of addon to be able to cope with whitespace sensitive syntax.

If it were an actual grammatical ambiguity, any editor couldn't get it right but it can't be since the Python parser can understand it.

<comment><USER11> It is not a grammatical ambiguity in terms of Python.

Here's a pastebin that illuminates the problem.

<http://pastebin.com/3fdxts4n>

<comment><USER12> I see. I never have that problem because when I C-S-<Backspace> and put my cursor at the beginning of the line I want to paste it retains indentation level fine.

edit: What version of emacs are you using? Are you using python.el or python- mode.el for editing Python? python.el handles try/except, if/else, etc., etc., indentation pretty marvelously.

edit2: If you'd rather talk about this out-of-band I'm on freenode as mdeboard or my email address is in my profile.

<comment><USER11> 23.3.x and python.el. It's very stock. What function does C-S-backspace give you? I see kill-whole-line on my install. Once I am writing in a block, the indents work fine, but... I can't paste something into a block and whack the 'reformat all' to come out correctly, especially if it has multiple levels of indentation. Since my code gets reworked substantially while I'm in the middle of it, this wastes my time. Braces are _not_ noise...

<comment><USER12> It sounds like you need to use the kill ring & pasting from the kill ring more. It preserves indentation levels, and selecting a region then M-x indent- region will handle all this for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first reply pretty much nails it: "where is the patch?"

There's a huge difference between going to a mailing list and asking for (unpopular) features and going ahead and implementing it. Provide a patch, along with test cases and practical use case examples and you're making a point. Abstract rambling with 0 lines of code examples is worthless.

What comes to the actual issue: I'm a huge fan of layout based syntax but I do hate writing white space sensitive parsers. I think Haskell's way of having curlies and semicolons in the core syntax and adding layout as a sugar coating hits a particular sweet spot.

<comment><USER13> The patch is a red herring. Braces have been explicitly rejected in the past. He needs to convince people that they're a good thing, and a patch isn't going to help. (At least not much compared to the time investment.)

> I think Haskell's way of having curlies and semicolons in the core syntax > and adding layout as a sugar coating hits a particular sweet spot.

I agree with this.

<comment><USER9> I think that was sarcasm because OP posted it in -patch instead of -ideas list.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't Hire the Best - <AUTHOR> https://codingfearlessly.com/dont-hire-the-best <comment><USER2> The author makes some really good points about the complexity of the often stated goal "hiring the best." Shifting the focus toward what would it take to close the gap between candidate's current state and what the company sees as the needed role and contribution.

I think it is always useful to shift focus and ask questions in a different manner or from a new frame of reference. Here are a couple that I think about.

Can we build an organization that has training, processes and tooling that help average candidates perform in a demonstrably superior manner?

Can we find/develop leaders that are so good at leading and developing people that they can take a team made up of mostly C and D players, inspire, develop and forge them into a team that performs at A level even though the individuals making up the team seem less impressive on an individual basis?

Can we get really good at judging potential?</comment>


Lyft's algorithm is trying to block people with names like 'Dick' and 'Cummings' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030601/lyft-algorithm-block-names-inappropriate-obscene <comment><AUTHOR> Besides the humor of how Lyft's filter flagged traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings" – _in addition_ to the usual issues with non-Western names, e.g. Pimpong and Poon – I'm fascinated/confused how this made it into production? The user database _already_ exists and was currently being used by the live application. Before deploying this new filter onto the production database, wouldn't you do a dry run to get not _only_ the count of users who will be flagged and notified, but a listing of frequently flagged names? Which you could easily manually eyeball to make sure there weren't obvious false positives?

With a userbase as big as Lyft's, I'm sure there were a ton of obvious true positives (anyone named "Fuck", ostensibly). I just can't believe they didn't notice a surname as relatively common as Cumming/Cummings. Yes, the apparent naivety of the regex is an issue, but this seems like a system for which a lot of testing on actual data would be easy and natural to do as part of the QA process.

<comment><USER2> > traditionally Caucasian names like "Cummings"

It always amazes me when US Americans talk in terms of human races like it's the most normal thing in the world. And no, "Cummings" is not a "Caucasian name" (whatever that is supposed to mean), it's an English name. I don't want sound too harsh, it's just that as a Central European with all our recent history, things like this really rub me the wrong way.

<comment><USER3> Caucasian is a funny word to apply to Europeans since its a part of the area around present day Georgia and is a highly diverse ethnic mix of people which most people would classify as Central Asian (like Turks and Armenians for instance). Not exactly what you would think would be "white" which is what many Americans assume it means.

<comment><USER4> It does mean white/of European origin in American English. Just like entree means main dish. Both don't correspond to the original meaning of the words. You can find similar shifts in meaning in other languages too (e.g., German calls a mobile/cell phone "Handy" which makes no sense to a native English speaker).

I question the wisdom of telling native speakers that their language uses a word wrong/that doesn't mean what "they assume it means". Stuff in AE (and other language) means exactly what AE speakers (and speakers of other languages) assume it means.

Cau·ca·sian /kôˈkāZHən/ NORTH AMERICAN white-skinned; of European origin.

<comment><USER5> 'Handy' comes from the WWII 'handie talkie', a transceiver small enough to hold in the hand¹, which followed the 'walkie talkie', a transceiver small enough to walk around with².

¹ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portable_radio_SCR536.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portable_radio_SCR536.png)

² [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scr300.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scr300.png)

<comment><USER6> Meanwhile, at least in the modern US, "walkie talkie" is the name of the handheld unit and "handie talkie" would get weird looks because it's not really known.

<comment><USER7> Same in Germany when you're talking about radios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems like tech companies have been doing DIY profanity filters. Apple has a profanity filter for engraving text onto a device in the online store ([https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1213188371452841984) ); intended to be your name, so terms like "Dick" have to not be filtered.

I learnt that Apple has a validation endpoint. Since the engraving service was recently updated, I took a profanity wordlist and checked it against the endpoint just for fun. The results are...counterintuitive: [https://pastebin.com/mzpECiQw](https://pastebin.com/mzpECiQw) (NSFW language, obviously)

<comment><USER9> The profanity filter in the Apple App Store was [0] amusingly wrong, but fortunately also a soft filter rather than a hard filter.

What happened was, the German localisation of the app description included the word "Knopf". Knopf is not a rude word, according to any German I've discussed this with — it is one translation of "knob" in the sense of "button", but Apple's naughty word detector clearly thought it was "knob" in the sense of the euphemism for a body part.

It didn't stop the app passing review, but the automatic warning was still a regular part of updates for that particular app.

[0] Back in 2012

<comment><USER10> Honestly if filter try to filter out euphemisms all is lost because:

1\. People who use them for that just come up with new ones all the time

2\. People still use the word in the regular sense, like would I now have to come up with a euphemisms to describe a door knob ?!

3\. How I wore is my decision. As long as I don't hurry anyone intentionally or knowingly no person and even less company had the (moralic) right to constraint me. (Through wrt. Minirs, Y least younger ones, their parents opinion matters, too.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is what happens whenever someone decides that they have enough expertise in something they don't.

We see the same phenomena with encryption, authentication, and password security. People just tend to have a myopic understanding of the topic and vastly overestimate their ability in something they've barely even studied, which is the worst kind of ignorance. And they very much deserve to be named and shamed when they inevitably screw it up.

When dealing with names & addresses, consult an expert.

<comment><USER12> > _When dealing with names & addresses, consult an expert._

And phone numbers, and dates.

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

the scunthorpe problem will never die.

<comment><USER14> You could almost say it's a clbuttic problem.

<comment><USER15> At least they did not try to modify the names... imagine if every Dick got renamed to Penis!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Patio11 has a good post about this topic from 10 years ago. [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

As a programmer, it's difficult how little of the world follows consistent "rules" that you need to build straightforward conditional logic.

Really, the only surprising thing is that Lyft didn't cross this bridge years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> My last name "Hung" was blocked by Apple's Genius Bar at one point when they displayed the names queue on the digital board. They don't like certain methods of Chinese romanization (particularly the one used in Taiwan).

</comment><comment><USER18> This sort of thing happens to me all the time. (Bad) Spam filters are a big problem too. And how do you even try to fix this?

I ended up taking my name off (the emails and website) of an open source project I maintain just to please the spam filters: [https://twitter.com/j__st/status/1210559583934189568?s=19](https://twitter.com/j__st/status/1210559583934189568?s=19)

I can appreciate the funny side of it, but it's also profoundly saddening somehow. I was born with this name, what do you expect me to do?

<comment><USER5> If you want to have fun with the English slang, change it to 'Joost De Tip'. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Just%20the%2...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Just%20the%20tip)

<comment><USER19> Joost ryhmes with toast though

<comment><USER5> Doesn't start with an English _J_ [dʒ] sound, either. Not important to the casual English reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How do they not realize what an obvious shitstorm this will cause?

And who is bothered by this, really?

I find it hard to imagine that it's the drivers calling themselves Dick Cummings out of immaturity. So what does it really matter what the customers call themselves?

<comment><USER21> >I find it hard to imagine that it's the drivers calling themselves Dick Cummings out of immaturity. So what does it really matter what the customers call themselves?

That was my thought too. It's one thing if you're using obscenity in an anonymous online alias, as a great many Redditors seem to love doing, but I'm struggling to believe that it's something people do in signing up for real- life ride-sharing apps, either as a driver or rider.

Obviously there must be some amount of people doing it, otherwise Lyft wouldn't bother with this at all, but it's just so... _unexpected_.

<comment><USER22> > " _Obviously there must be some amount of people doing it_ "

There's no data that this is true. It could simply be a project manager deciding that it's a good thing or the result of a tiny fraction of complaints.

<comment><USER23> Complaints about what

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A few years back, Facebook and others were banning People with the name Isis. Anyone with more than two brain cells who had spent some time studying the humanities would not have made that mistake. I'd think that people who write code and design algorithms would at least be aware of the concept of overloading, too.

<comment><USER25> Wow, that's ridiculous! Isis is a common name in many countries! [https://www.behindthename.com/name/isis](https://www.behindthename.com/name/isis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names":

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

Discussed most recently just 63 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492464)

<comment><USER27> Poor Mr Graham-Cumming. Both an hyphen and a word banned by Lyft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The US has a serious problem with saying normal things like fuck, cunt and shit. I find it extremely offensive to hear beeps in series and even the verge author self censors his article. Fucking stop being hypocrites.

<comment><USER29> Twitter seems to filter through the prism of US standards of speech. Woe betide you if you're Scottish and use the word cunt. In Scotland there's quite a lot of nuance in the usage of cunt. In fact I go so far as to say that the use of "profane" language is a bit of an art form in Scotland, but sadly not appreciated by our Facebook and Twitter overlords.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdCmFg4xIPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdCmFg4xIPI)

<comment><USER30> Ditto in Australia. In fact we even have a saying about it: "Australia: where you call your mates cunt and you call cunts mate".

Obviously context and tone play a lot into it and both "cunt" and "mate" can be friendly or threatening/derogatory depending on delivery and circumstance, but I imagine it would be remarkably difficult for people who aren't immersed into Australian culture to figure out which is which based on text alone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> And my name was filtered by Spectrum, who at the time was the only ISP in my area. Made chat support incredibly difficult whenever I had to type in my name. Explaining why I wrote it with spaces with an explanation to remove which spaces was quite the test in reading comprehension apparently. Especially funny was when the customer support tried to type it back to confirm only to see nothing! Confused them even though I just explained why I was doing it!

I hope to one day be able to see the feature spec and QA that led to these types of hiccups.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hereby propose the term "AS" for _Artificial Stupidity_ : The use of software to automate obviously stupid behavior.

Sample usage: "AS is sometimes an unintended result obtained when insanely smart people work with vast resources on very complex problems for long periods of time."

<comment><USER33> 'Automated Stupidity' would be more descriptive and correct. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's always funny (not) when companies don't slice realize that there is a certain overlap between "bad" words and last names (many because of a shift over time wrt. What words are bad, and differences between languages and dialects).

</comment><comment><USER34> I got randomly "banned" from nexus mods two months ago because they forced a password change, which wouldn't proceed because it said my name wasn't allowed. Apparently having "fucker" in your name is against the community guidelines for a website which lets you download adult content such as hyperviolent and hypersexual game mods. I've also had this account for almost a decade. I ended up getting in quite a spat with customer support until they stopped responding.

I expect I will be receiving a similar notification from Lyft soon as the email address I am registered with definitely has a name which would incorrectly trigger this algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER35> Doesn't Lyft know the real names of these drivers by the time they're on the road? If people are offended by other people's given names then they're the ones in the wrong, not the people named "Dick Cummings".

When are we going to grow up and realize that the mere appearance of words like "dick" and "cum" don't hurt anybody?

</comment><comment><USER36> Religious, especially Puritan, values still echoing down through the decades. Organizations reinforcing the idea that words about body parts are inherently offensive are even worse.

I remember getting sent home for using the word "Penis". My parents both went to the school for a parent-teacher interview. That principal had brought the teacher in and were serious about my need for detention etc. The whole thing ended in farce as my father laughed in the principal's face then angrily demanded no consequence for me.

I doubt today's generation of teachers would tolerate this. Probably react to being humiliated like this by calling it harassment or similar nonsense. But I also think my father if he was part of this generation would have twittered the whole incident instead and let the twitterverse do it for him.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can't wait for their algorithm to expand to city names too.

[https://www.travelettes.net/funny-town-names-from-around- the...](https://www.travelettes.net/funny-town-names-from-around-the-world/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I guess it's one less high-profile customer for Lyft in London: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings)

</comment><comment><USER39> What happens if someone after-the-fact makes the term 'lyft' offensive a la 'santorum'?

</comment><comment><USER40> This is a problem not just in profanity filters but also on marketplaces like Etsy. Heaven forbid anyone named Harry Potter wanting to sell on Etsy. They would more likely than not find themselves banned with little recourse.

In this case for 'trademark' reasons, but the problem is the same. Filter for a set of things, and eventually legitimate examples of said thing are going to get caught up in it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds like a bad product manager. Could've talked to literally any company that has a real name policy on common pitfalls and this would be near the top.

</comment><comment><USER42> Man butplugg that's rough. Would not want that name in middle / high school.

<comment><USER43> My first impulse was that was a troll name and I wondered if the journalist verified it. I'm sure it's possible, I just haven't heard it or variants of it before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Ah the good old Scunthorpe problem. Funny to see people still run into it.

</comment><comment><USER45> What about the Wangs, Coxes and Butts of the world. That's a significant portion of the population Lyft is shutting out.

Also, is it really "the algorithm" or does Lyft just maintain a list of entries of banned names? I know "the algorithm" is the hip new thing, but I have my suspicion it's the latter.

<comment><USER46> Hey, the Wangs of the world probably only number about 100 million. Almost certainly less than 200 million. Even at the high end, that's only 3% of the world population. ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> A german user was banned on Twitter for writing "Die Boomer" = "the boomers"

[https://www.dw.com/en/german-grammar-in-ok-boomer-tweet- gets...](https://www.dw.com/en/german-grammar-in-ok-boomer-tweet-gets-twitter- account-banned/a-51225631)

Also my all time favorite when Facebook banned people posting about faggots which is a traditional food in the UK Midlands

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10419598/Man...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10419598/Man- banned-from-Facebook-for-liking-faggots.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_(food)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_\(food\))

<comment><USER48> I have to say, when I first moved back to the U.K. after a long time in the states, I absolutely could not control my shock followed by giggling when people asked if they could bum a fag off me at a pub or suchlike. (Fag is slang for cigarettes for those outside the U.K.)

<comment><USER49> I've always known the word "fag" to also mean a bundle of sticks, like you'd use to start a fire. I expect the meanings are related.

Life seems to be peppered with problems with people with limited vocabularies who would rather make themselves "offended" by something, rather than think.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well I guess Benedict Cumberbatch is really in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER51> <speculation>

It's not an algorithm, it's some overjealous dev/PM with not many important tasks on hand except for a little incident which he made big deal out of it by downloading all dirty words and do string contains.

</speculation>

</comment><comment><USER52> Names are funny, you can't really tell people what names they can use because they are THEIR NAMES. You try to censor certain names and you will trample someone who has a name you didn't expect just because of their background or race.

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

</comment><comment><USER53> There must be some very smart people behind Lyft making decisions, as if they have never met a person named "Cummings" or "Dick". I'm astonished by this. I mean, those people have degrees in CS and software engineering. What were they thinking? I suspect that they chose the _easy_ solution, not the smart solution. In that case, because the "Community Guidelines" and the filtering system disrupt business operation, I would fire everyone involved and replace them with smart people.

<comment><USER54> yes, fire them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> FromSoft has a similar problem with totally inane censorship of names in online play in the Dark Souls series. E.G. you would think they'd whitelist the word "knight" in a game about knights, but it's always censored to k __*ht. There 's some other wacky stuff going on but in this case I don't quite blame them because the devs probably don't speak English natively or at all, and you can tell they had a tight budget/schedule.

</comment><comment><USER56> Not being from the US originally, I always found it very strange that someone would name their child Dick... what's the reasoning?

Not a good reason to block them though...

<comment><USER46> That would be rare; the child would usually be named Richard and nicknamed Dick.

It's not clear to me why Dick is the standard nickname for Richard.

<comment><USER57> Better question; why is Jack short for John?

<comment><USER46> Middle English Jan -> Jankin (diminutive) -> Jackin -> Jack.

Compare manikin, a little man.

Apparently unrelated to French Jacques, despite the similarity.

<comment><USER57> Wow, that's a much better answer than I've ever seen; I'm so glad I asked here. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Facebook did the same with Native American names ([https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/facebook- nam...](https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/facebook-name-police- native-american-names-aren-t-authentic-enough-zOU6k2YnK0ST5s09nFRl7A)), anyone remember if they were eventually sued for that?

</comment><comment><USER59> Words change their meaning over time.

[https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/10/people-living-on-butthole- lan...](https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/10/people-living-on-butthole-lane-say- they-would-never-change-their-street-name-5096585/)

</comment><comment><USER60> What happens with towns like Cumming, GA?

<comment><USER39> Lyft just avoids operating in the city at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system)

Dick Pick created an operation system named GIRLS !

</comment><comment><USER62> Maybe the Danes are on to something here.

[https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-strict-name-laws- of-...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-strict-name-laws-of- denmark.html)

</comment><comment><USER63> I've run into something similar when naming loadouts in Call of Duty. "Assault" is never accepted presumably because it has "ass" in it. It's not even something other players can see, like a username.

</comment><comment><USER64> A clbuttic mistake.

The underlying story is getting tragic, however: "you can't blacklist impropriety" is apparently not learnable, despite decades of failed attempts.

</comment><comment><USER65> My lastname is bassi and some sites doesn't like the "ass" part.

</comment><comment><USER66> The good old Scunthorpe problem. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

</comment><comment><USER67> I remember in secondary school the terrible filtering stuff they used would block "weightwatchers". Apparently annoyed a lot of the teachers :)

</comment><comment><USER68> This reminds me of a story arc on "Hill St. Blues" where LaRue comes across a great stand-up comic and invests in his management... only to find that his full name is "Vic Hitler"... and further finds that Vic had made his father a deathbed promise that he wouldn't deny his surname or family "on account of that one unrelated lunatic".

</comment><comment><USER69> So what year are we in, again?

</comment><comment><USER70> And what about Gary Null?

</comment><comment><USER71> It's funny because Verge in french is a synonym for dick!

</comment><comment><USER72> so ... tough luck for people like Whitney Cummings?

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

</comment><comment><USER73> Tech companies will never learn.

How many times must we go through "real names" idiocies before these supposed geniuses stop being imbeciles

<comment><USER8> Real name policies are not a good analogy here, as being on Lyft requires in- person interaction.

<comment><USER73> What does an in-person interaction have to do with the idiocy of building software to decide what names people are allowed to have?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Clbuttic

</comment><comment><USER75> Its funny to me how they try to apply christian values like avoiding vaguely sexual sounding words while also making significant amounts of money off late night debauchery, picking people up from clubs at 3am.

<comment><USER76> How does this directly relate to "Christian" values? Could "Islamic" values be applied? Afterall, the Prophet Mohammed made his opposition to crude language clear in the Hadith.

Follow up: Also appears there are some misgiving regarding crude language within the Hindu religion as well. [0]

[0]: [https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?...](https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=4005)

<comment><USER77> Ok, let's call that puritan values of abrahamic religions.

<comment><USER78> Ironically a lot of "puritan" values are now considered "social justice" values.

See eg "shirtgate" where an astronomer was castigated by feminists for wearing a shirt with skimpily clad figures, on the basis that it was offensive to women. Ironically, the shirt had been given to him by a feminist woman friend who thought it was liberating.

<comment><USER79> There's always some subset of the population whose conception of "morality" consists of blindly bellowing the dogma of the day. It's not weird that the behavior looks identical even though the dogma itself is nominally different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Bit of a dick move

</comment><comment><USER81> Philip K. Dick would get a dystopian feeling about this if he were alive.

</comment><comment><USER82> Tell me again why anybody cares? Is it because the Church is so central to our lives? We're masters of rationality and technology, who believe in a retributive super-ape in the sky?

Is it because we're medieval scribes and we really want to use the Latin _faeces_ to indicate our scholarly intentions, instead of the Anglo-Saxon _shit_ that everyone around us uses?

There is no reason I can think of that comports with a technological or innovative worldview.

Including cybersecurity. ("Shit" is just an identifier or a guessable string with 13 bits of "chaos" completely equivalent to "Dave" or "Phil.")

Edit: Well I see small-minded superstitious dunderheads have shown up to downvote me, so FUCK CUNT SHIT ASS

<comment><USER83> Words have meanings. These particular words have offensive meanings, in the sense of them being used to intentionally offend others. There's no word I'm aware of that is only ever used to offend and they all have (and generally have stated with) inoffensive meanings.

In pretty much every community, we seek to reduce the friction between members, and as a part of that, different communities would often choose a point on that chance-to-offend spectrum and discourage use of anything more (potentially) offensive than that point. Despite myself generally preferring more open (and more offensive communities), I find it very rational for others to set the bar at other points.

<comment><USER82> Sure, agreed, and Lyft's apparent priorities are a big part of why I'm not in a relationship with them or part of their "community" (read: "customer base." _Community_ is a lie and therefore offensive, despite being totally a "clean" word... great and unexpected example... I digress).

Edit: sorry, digressed so far that I forgot to finish. By "priorities" I mean, Lyft, pull your people off of pointless projects like messing with people's identities, and put them on QA of basic functionality like accepting a credit card payment via your website. Last and only time I tried it, it failed utterly. Now I don't know how much anti-sales other people need to de-persuade them before they'll not-buy, but in my case that was enough. The person for whom I was trying to buy a gift card, got something nicer with a lifecycle that doesn't burn such an obscene/offensive quantity of fossil fuels.</comment></comment></comment>


The Wikipedia Dispute Index: Algorithm rates the stability of states - <AUTHOR> http://www.disputeindex.org/

<comment><USER2> Link to an English article on the University of Heidelberg pages: [http://www.uni- heidelberg.de/presse/news2011/pm20110708_netz...](http://www.uni- heidelberg.de/presse/news2011/pm20110708_netzwerk_forschung_en.html)</comment>


Learn from the most popular posts on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestofhackernews.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept!Not sure how it would work from a writers perspective though? Would the featured writers get paid?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are looking at ways of addressing this. We have a couple of ideas, but nothing solidified yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like it, the 4-Hour Hacker. Ebook would be good. Do you think enough articles are evergreen to stay relevant?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I think we would need to think long and hard about the articles to include. Maybe 10 years from now a lot of the stuff would be out of date, but I think for the next 1 to 2 years it would be relevant. Thanks for the comment and feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would really appreciate any feedback or thoughts on this.

Is it something that would interest you?</comment>


Google is finally making web apps first-class citizens on Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/3/14497570/google-chrome-add-to-home-screen-web-apps-android-improvements <comment><USER2> Can't wait to have all kinds of malware sites try to put shortcuts to my home screen.</comment>


My Last Post - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rjacobs/archive/2013/01/10/my-last-post.aspx

<comment><USER2> I hope you can recover soon enough to continue following your dreams.</comment>


Seth Godin: The New Business Toolbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.skillshare.com/classes/business/The-New-Business-Toolbox-Help-Your-New-Business-Do-It-Right-The-First-Time/1185976550/

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: I just enrolled in this (really looking forward to it as a Seth fan myself) and Skillshare has a referral link that gives $10 off: [http://skl.sh/1d1vWdC](http://skl.sh/1d1vWdC)

If it doesn't work, reply here so I can take the link down, if it does, enjoy the discount.

</comment><comment><USER2> The first thing I saw was a giant pop-up obscuring the content, so I immediately hit my back button.</comment>


Smart Luggage Hacked – A detailed component level review - <AUTHOR> http://travpacker.com/smart-luggage-hacked/

<comment><AUTHOR> After researching the topic for a few weeks I've just published an article that answers: What components make up smart luggage? Is it worth it? How to hack your own?

Let me know if you need any clarification (I'll try my best).

I was a bit afraid to post my article on Hacker News as BlueSmart is a Y-Combinator backed project. Please note that I fully respect their efforts.</comment>


90 percent of plastics polluting our oceans come from 10 rivers - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/90-percent-of-plastics-polluting-our-oceans-come-from-10-rivers/article/524230 <comment><USER2> In short, the problem isn't really about plastics, but about waste management.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous submissions from the time of the original publication:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15918984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15918984)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459894)

</comment><comment><USER4> What I find most interesting is that none of the top rivers are North American - which to me says that while the North American method of waste disposal is still not as efficient as Europe's, it does seem to work.

I wonder what the consumption of plastics are in NA vs other industries.

<comment><USER5> I think you give too much credit to Europe which is ill deserved over here we have no problem exporting our waste to Poland (which also imports it from all over the world even Japan and Australia) that simply burns it. Currently over a 100 landfills in Poland are burning their trash as we speak.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/poland- to...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/poland-to-curb- waste-imports-as-landfills-burn-amid-chinese-ban)

[https://newsmavens.com/news/smoke-signals/1608/is-poland- the...](https://newsmavens.com/news/smoke-signals/1608/is-poland-the-next-big- rubbish-dump-of-europe)

We also export our garbage to China, India, Mongolia and many other places. As much credit as people here like giving the EU it's the mother of don't look too closely because the reality is much much less pretty than the show we put on.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5309215/Britains- rec...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5309215/Britains-recycled- plastic-dumped-landfill.html)

<comment><USER6> Do note that while "burning trash" sounds absolutely horrific one shouldn't imagine setting fire to a garbage dump but more a factory where trash goes in on one side, and power and ash come out the other. There's fairly stringent requirements on what sort of thing is allowed to come out the chimney.

All in all it's probably not worse than running a coal plant.

<comment><USER5> No, one should imagine exactly that as open landfills are set a blaze to burn trash from all over Europe and in fact the world.

Unless this looks like a power plant to you: [https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iZWE1fyTym4...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iZWE1fyTym4w/v1/1000x-1.jpg)

This has been going on in 100's of landfills in Poland and in other parts of Europe for years now, this year its exceptionally bad for many reasons. This is institutionalized intentional practice that is been swept under the rug for far too long.

<comment><USER6> Well jezus that _is_ horrific, but I doubt that that is legal anywhere in europe. Doesn't stop people from doing it anyways obviously but still.

Over here (the Netherlands) burning trash looks like this: [http://medias.photodeck.com/67e4af84-ce8c-4b05-86e1-a75e521d...](http://medias.photodeck.com/67e4af84-ce8c-4b05-86e1-a75e521db727/300735_xgaplus.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a link to the actual publication: [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368)

</comment><comment><USER8> Which ten?

<comment><USER9> It's in the article, and the article isn't terribly long. But here you go anyway:

> Eight of the rivers are located in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; > Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I was following the maze of links that all pointed to other articles. Saw that a bit late. Thank you.

<comment><USER10> A map of all ten rivers appears here: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4970214](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4970214)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End Of Blippy As We Know It - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/19/the-end-of-blippy-as-we-know-it/ <comment><USER2> "The real reason Blippy didn't work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn't solve a problem."

That, and it kind of makes you look like an asshole.

The original idea never made any sense, and then they never fully committed when they decided to pivot. (The new version was much better, but they never built out the features that would have been needed to make it go viral.)

I do think there are other markets they could go after by repurposing the technology platform they've already created. For example, I could easily see the technology being used by an MLM company as a social network for their salespeople or something.

And it seems like they have a quality team, so I think there is still potential for the company despite the dubious first idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most important line in the article, IMO: "But hopefully he's taken to heart the real reason Blippy didn't work: Sharing purchases with friends doesn't solve a problem."

If you don't solve a real problem people have, you will fail. People may not know they have the problem, but they must have it. If you can't articulate the pain, it's time to pivot.

<comment><USER4> What pain did Twitter address?

I can come up with broad, hand-wavy justifications. But those justifications apply just as well to Blippy.

<comment><USER5> It allowed people to update their social status pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced that is more of a pain point than:

"It allowed people to share their recent purchases pretty much from anywhere at any time with minimum friction"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. Spectacularly wrong conclusions.

1 - "The service never had a clear business model, just an attitude of "get user adoption and we'll figure it out later.""

#%^&*! A site where people post their purchases. Does anyone really believe it would be hard to "monetize" that? If so, you're not cut out to be CEO.

2 - No one wants to share their purchases? Really? Tell that to the women that post youtube videos of the stuff they bought. Or tutorials explaining what make up to buy and how to apply it to look like celebrity X. Buyosphere is making that easier.

I didn't see a trend to people posting their credit card statements online. Making that easier is absurd.

<comment><USER7> I suspect the real reason is one which is all too common for startups' failure, but is hardly ever mentioned: the founders got bored. I guess it's easier to cite problems with the business model and traction, than to say this is not as exciting as we thought it would be, so we want to do something else.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to see real evidence of that. Every entrepreneur I've met treated the business like a child. I've never seen one walk away bored (too be clear, I'm talking in anecdotes, which may be wrong, but you'll have to convince me with real evidence).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Looking through your friends credit card bills is really, really creepy, but what if we put it ONLINE."

</comment><comment><USER9> I never even heard of this thing and I keep up with stuff to a certain extent. Definitely not anything I would want to use, the idea of broadcasting all my credit card purchases to a subscription list seems like a really bad idea that no one would want to do.

<comment><USER10> It seems as though they have gotten lots of coverage[1], and it is perplexing to read someone claim that they follow startups, yet not have heard of Blippy. Check out their Angel investor list, about 10 posts on TC, and it boggles the mind you would claim to be "keeping up with this stuff."

[1]<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/blippy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, there have been a lot of "blippy is dead" "no we're not" postings and messages over the past few months.

I think merely sharing purchases is a non-starter, but aggregating data from consumers, blinding it, and helping people make decisions (the way creditkarma does for a single variable of credit score and a limited number of levers, and the way mint, etc. should do, but don't) is what Blippy should have done.

<comment><USER12> > What we failed to ask was, "Who cares?"

truth be told, nobody really wants to share that level of information nor be responsible for the purchases made by others in their social graph based on their recommendation. Or better yet, it could've worked, to an extent, if an amateur wasn't the driving force behind it. That being said, I have to congratulate Pud in convincing someone to plunk $13M down on his idea, vagina- selling t-shirts aside.

<comment><USER9> Oh, it was the Pud FC dude behind this, the dude who did all the porn videos staring himself where he paid the actresses, and then stuck it on his website. Huh, interesting, I didn't know that guy was still around doing stuff.

<comment><USER11> I think you mean "owned a really cute gray cat and was able to get a lot of models to pose semi-naked and only wearing his brand t-shirts while holding the cat". Maybe there was real porn too.

He also did AdBrite and a few other things; pud is pretty damn prolific, and a smart/nice guy (I've seen him speak at Founder Institute and other startup events). The other people involved in blippy are earlier in their careers but also pretty involved in online forums, clueful, etc.

<comment><USER11> Oh, actually he was working with the Little Grey Guy guy. He did not actually own a cute gr[e|a]y cat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I spent some time as a contractor working for a "Social/E-commerce" startup. They were heavily customer development driven and found out early on that chasing after Blippy, and similarly Swipe.ly (who was doing the same thing at the time but looks pivoted now) would be a waste. They found this because everyone (potentiel customers) they talked to showed no signs of interest in the idea at all.

</comment><comment><USER14> Blippy in the FC deadpool = irony.

</comment><comment><USER15> 'What we failed to ask was, "Who cares?"'

I think that's the first thing I asked myself when I heard about Blippy. Is it their over-enthusiasm towards funded startups that blinded them, or just shortsightedness?

</comment><comment><USER16> I haven't read the article, but they should adapt it to Bitcoin. Showing where people are buying stuff, and what they are buying: de-anonymousing Bitcoin. Tax departments would like it to see what's going on, and it could help legitimize Bitcoin. People can see what bitcoin shops are hot, and trust- worthy.

It should run as a node, and merchants can register their address so it knows what to look for.

I guess the issue is faked buyers, so you'd allow users to put a widget on their site that shows their bitcoin address as registered with the site for that url. Basically, a trust and identity system tied in with the block chain. Pretty straight forward and useful, then providing something like the Verisign logo for sellers. Big startup potential.

</comment><comment><USER17> "And I Feel Fine..."

</comment><comment><USER18> I am no psychic, but seriously - when this came out I knew, I said to myself "this is retarded, this is going to fail -- too many people are actually afraid to let people know what they spend money on - how much they have."

I am not surprised at all - and honestly, I think that a service like this adds absolutely nothing to the world.

What value would this add? Clearly - nothing.

<comment><USER9> "afraid to let people know what they spend money on"

I doubt it is about fear for most. How about it's none of the other people's business. This meme about how people are "fearful" of whatever corporate agenda has been decreed is kind of annoying actually.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: System Admin/Security Admin jobs in Ottawa, Ontario? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I'm wondering if anyone has any information on system admin jobs in the Ottawa, Ontario region. I'm looking for short-term/long-term contract work.
I am proficient in high availability systems, data center deployment, system security and user management. To list a few things.
Frankly, the job market here seems to be sparse and job postings for system admins, non-existent. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> CSEC is hiring - You'll need a security clearance at the Top Secret level and this will involve a polygraph among other things...

[http://www.recruitingsite.com/CSBSites/CSE/English/JobDescri...](http://www.recruitingsite.com/CSBSites/CSE/English/JobDescription.asp?JobNumber=643937&CategoryCode=11984)</comment>


1891 Patent for Toilet Paper Settles the Over/Under Question Once and for All - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/a14780/toilet-paper-patent/

<comment><USER2> I don't think the debate is whether over or under was the intention of the inventors. The debate is whether over or under is "better", and what the patent says is pretty irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> "Under" makes it a lot harder for a cat to unspool the entire roll.</comment></comment>


Blender crowdsourcing an open film - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.blender.org/gooseberry/

<comment><USER2> Blender suffers from a presentation issue (and has for years, almost a decade now): they like to show the very impressive results, but they struggle in explaining how what they do is different. People understand how they can edit Wikipedia; coders get Open Source, but most people when seeing that bouncy result have little idea what they can contribute in terms of work, or what makes it so expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it a little bit weird to not be able to collaborate with anything smaller than 20€.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looking at the status tab I'm surprised India is 60% done in cloudfunding, the most.</comment>


GraalVM and Truffle/JS: Programming Languages and Runtimes Overview - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oracle-labs/program-languages/overview/index.html

<comment><USER2> Excited to see this get more press, a lot of Graal/Truffle stuff has been going into jruby lately! [https://github.com/jruby/jruby](https://github.com/jruby/jruby)

<comment><USER3> Every time i see Graal/Truffle I thought of JRuby.

But what exactly is OTN license?

<comment><USER4> OTN license

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/early-adopter- lic...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/early-adopter- license-2299792.html)

Not legal advice: TLDR: only evaluate 1 copy, do not use in production, do not download if you are located in or associated with "axis of evil"</comment></comment></comment>


Watch_Dogs WeAreData - <AUTHOR> http://wearedata.watchdogs.com/ <comment><USER2> A very unique and awesome website. Beyond anything you can really start to imagine...</comment>


An experiment in passive income - <AUTHOR> http://clark.ghost.io/2014/03/07/an-experiment-in-passive-income/

<comment><USER2> The website looks great but if you have to print and ship bags yourself it's not very passive.

That's why selling software is great. The cost of delivering a software product is $0.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. But I don't have to print and ship bags myself at all. It's all automated by the good folks at shopify and Printful. They take a good chunk of each sale of course, but the net results are worth it.</comment></comment>


Google Mine: new Google Product coming? - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.at/2013/06/google-mine.html

<comment><USER2> > Google Mine lets you share your belongings with your friends

Oh dear mother of all things holy. Please God, no.</comment>


Backblaze acknowledges using curl, becomes the new largest single-shot donor - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/01/14/backblazed/ <comment><USER2> Donation to the sum of 15,600 US dollars. From the article: "Backblaze was started in my living room on Jan 15, 2007 (13 years ago tomorrow) and that represents $100/month for every month Backblaze has depended on libcurl back to the beginning." \-- Brian Wilson, CTO of Backblaze

Very good solution.

<comment><USER3> Yev here -> We love open source (our erasure coding, storage pods, other stuff is all out there) and after we got his email we did realized our error and wanted to make things right with Daniel and libcurl, it seemed like the fair thing to do!

<comment><USER4> Cool, cool, so desktop Linux client is coming along then? Or is B2 / alternative vendors the only foreseeable option?

<comment><USER3> No Linux client on the horizon - B2 is your way to go!

<comment><USER5> B2's great until you store more than 1.2Tb. After that you're penalised for your choice in OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> well it's good what libcurl and the curl developer did. libcurl is so widespread that it's sometimes not easy to figure out that the library your using does use libcurl.

I mean who checks every library (even core libraries) if it uses an mit licensed product. most people probably do not. btw. .net core uses libcurl on linux which means that every product deployed to linux with dotnet needs to acknowledge it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used libcurl 10 yeara ago in a C project and found it really difficult to use. Granted, I was young and inexperienced but the C API struck me as super baroque and strange. Does anyone else feel this way? It's totally possible (maybe even likely) that I was just a terrible programmer though...

<comment><USER8> Backblaze CTO here....

> I found libcurl difficult to use in 'C'

Umm.... it is literally the most simple API that could possibly exist? Here are the four lines in 'C' to fetch a URL:

curl_global_init(CURL_GLOBAL_SSL); // do this once inside of "main()"

CURL _ch = curl_easy_init();

curl_easy_setopt(ch, CURLOPT_URL, "[http://www.google.com");](http://www.google.com"\);)

int res = curl_easy_perform(ch);

I'm not sure how you could fetch a URL without initializing the library or specifying the URL?? It is like profoundly the most simple API that could possibly exist, I challenge you to specify any imagined API that is shorter or more simple or more straight-forward??!

The nice thing about the libcurl API is the above works and is the "base" concept, but if you want to specify something like a "network throttle" to be polite to other things on the network, you just start adding one extra line at a time to the above code:

curl_easy_setopt(ch, CURLOPT_MAX_SEND_SPEED_LARGE, (curl_off_t) (256 _* 1024)); // 256 kbits/sec

<comment><USER9> I founded an online load testing company called Load Impact, and we have also used libcurl since way back. I agree the API is very simple, and libcurl is a very reliable and performant piece of software. Daniel is also extremely helpful while not charging a penny for all the time he puts in.

It's a great idea, this "paying back" accumulated moral debt (or whatever you'd like to call it) to open source developers whose software you've built a successful business on. Applauds to you, and to Backblaze!

I am not running Load Impact anymore, but will see if we can follow Backblaze's lead here and do something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who thinks this amount is very small?

Considering tens of thousands of paying users that use a service which would not function if it wasn't for libcurl, I was expecting nothing short of 50k$

<comment><USER11> $15.6k is generous considering the license requires them to pay $0. If the author of libcurl wanted to profit from it, then he wouldn't have picked a license that allows it to be used for free with basically no restrictions.</comment></comment>


5-Week-Old Fetus Brain, in a Dish? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150819083334.htm

<comment><USER2> MISLEADING TITLE

It was grown from ADULT brain cells and is now about the saize of the brain typically found in a five week fetus (pencil eraser sized).

<comment><USER3> It was grown from skin cells actually. Its the size and structure of a fetus brain, because it is essentially a fetus brain.

<comment><USER2> A lab-grown brain organ grown in a petri dish is not a fetus brain. It's the size of one, but it is not.

Labeling that tissue as a fetus brain can encourage many people (I hesitate to say which groups, though you can guess) to start their warbling even if they're wrong.

Making a point of saying "lab-grown brain organ," or organoid (though it sounds kinda like 50-ish pulp sci-fi), helps keep them docile.

Not splitting hairs or arguing for fun. When posting science articles, accurate descriptions are important.

<comment><USER3> They actually detailed how its growth was that of a fetus brain, including visual stem etc. In what way would we expect it to be different? Would it be more PC or politic to pretend its something else?

It sounds like they can't win - they make up a name like "organoid" and they're hiding something. They call a spade a spade and they're 'encouraging warbling'? Remember, its supposed to be science. So made-up words to pacify the public would actually be wrong.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I wouldn't want to try and coin a name for it if I were in that position as a researcher. No matter what you choose, someone will be mad.

It did grow in a similar manner to a fetus brain, but it is also missing parts, those being the 1% of genes that aren't present.

"Fetus-like brain" works and is less ambiguous.

Warbling.... Man. I really need a break from the pre-1900 novels for awhile. At least until I stop my unthinking use of archaic terms and phrases.

<comment><USER3> No! Keep warbling! Lets bring that word back. It was a kinder and gentler time.

<comment><USER2> I have become rather partial to it, myself. To me it applies the mental image of a small and rather stupid bird to the target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds horrifying - human brain grown outside of a body. But its only actually a few cells, with absolutely no capacity for higher function. Not materially different from a worm or insect brain.

But what next? A viable brain with vascular system? Down this road come serious questions about mortality and the nature of humanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> "brain of a 5 week old fetus"... isn't this completely nuts? Who knows what it is capable of. I suppose not much. I'm trying to think back, but I somehow cannot remember that 5th week in the fetus. Still.. you are right... what is next?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tools for practicing a musical instrument as single HTML files - <AUTHOR> https://ctrager.github.io/music_tools <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a retired software developer. I hadn't really coded in like four years. But with the lockdown, and my wife in the next room sewing masks, I got the urge to craft something too.</comment>


Announcing the shutdown of the Ada Initiative - <AUTHOR> https://adainitiative.org/2015/08/announcing-the-shutdown-of-the-ada-initiative/

<comment><USER2> I don't think much is lost. The Ada Initiative is mostly involved in sensitivity education. This is important, of course, but there are a lot of organizations that do the same thing.

I think that there are other organizations that are more effective for your charity dollar. This includes Outreachy, whose success can be measured.</comment>


Google's Victims - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/startups/googles-victims-250084.php <comment><USER2> Google with lots of cash in its pocket seems to be an eye sore for everyone. Many knives out to get them. But from small companies perspective, google is trying to fill in the shoes of microsoft...using freebie as a bait to kill competitions. As of now they seem to be doing alright and only time will tell how they will shape up.</comment>


VLC 2.1.0 RC1 is out... - <AUTHOR> http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/videolan-announce/2013-August/000166.html

<comment><AUTHOR> So, this is going to be the major release in a couple of weeks, but I'm going to share some stuff that should fit better the audience here on HN, and that are not part of the main announcement :)

First, this is a release that fixes some important architecture mistakes we've done in 2.0.x branch of VLC. I'm notably speaking of the lag in reactivity, notably on volume change (that was shared on the mpv thread) and seeking, but also some grave video settings propagation. I wish we could have fixed and shipped that earlier, but we couldn't (long release cycle).

Then, this is the first official release of libVLC that is LGPL for most of what you need as a developer, including the right modules. SDKs for Win32/64, MacOSX, iOS and Android are getting ready.

If you are a web developer, our VLC plugin now supports Windowless, to fill the gap between Flash and HTML5 (it should work on IE6,7,8 without too much work).

If you are on Mac OS, the interface is finally polished after the major changes of 2.0.0 :)

Finally, we decided, as a community that we will accelerate the major release cycle of VLC. The fact that we needed 1,5 year to get the fix to some critical audio core and video settings issues out is way too much. We will move towards a 6-months schedule with LTS.

Sure, there are other very good players on each platform, but we are doing our best so that you can play everything everywhere for free :)

<comment><USER2> As someone who embeds VLC via vlcj, I'd like to say thanks for your hard work.

Also thanks for the license change, much appreciated. The gluecode of vlcj is still gpl3 but I can re-write those

I saw you mentioned seeking within a file. Will seeking to positions close to the end of a media file be better now ?

My player has a tough time under VLC 2.0 seeking to within 30s of the end of the file.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be faster. What is the format?

<comment><USER2> WMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "For developers, libVLC and most libVLC modules are now licensed under the LGPL" \- interesting, is there a full list somewhere of which modules are/are not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. The list will be ready for the final release. But mostly DVD input, streaming output and visualizations (the later 2 will be LGPL in 2.2.0).</comment></comment>