Show HN: Coredemia – share and discuss research papers - <AUTHOR> http://www.coredemia.com

<comment><USER4> See also:

[http://peerlibrary.org](http://peerlibrary.org) [http://www.pubpeer.com](http://www.pubpeer.com)

There have been many more "comment on scientific papers" sites that came before these, including one I built myself in 2011. This is a really difficult market to succeed in, in fact, no one up to this point has. I hope you do. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I searched for similar sites before making this but missed these, thanks for sharing them! Pubpeer describes itself as for researchers/scientists but Peerlibrary seems to be pretty close.

A little difference in intent: The idea I had in mind wasn't for someone to particularly do research/collaborate in a field, but just to discover interesting/enlightening papers to read given the urge to learn, in-depth, something new. I thought about attaching a "pre-requisites" fields or "difficulty" field but I wasn't sure if that'd work. The inspiration was just some people posting in my school's Computer Science group that they wanted to start reading research papers, asking where to start. Hopefully in the near future the "Most Favorite" will be a good list to begin with.

<comment><USER5> Not wanting to discourage you, but reddit.com/r/science does something pretty similar and very successfully - they have 6 million subscribers ,many comm enters are scientists, and the comment quality is usually very high , and they have the reddit mail support which is highly conductive to getting responses from people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some unsolicited advice: If anything, your consistent users have a lot of ways to discuss papers: classrooms, sections, MOOCs, stack* questions, conferences, proceedings, editorial pages of journals, invited lectures, ... In fact, a large of what people who read & write papers do is share and discuss them.

Another problem is, since your "social object" cannot maintain enough synchronous interaction, it becomes a dead social network. Not enough people will read & discuss the same paper at the same time. If you are going to fix one problem, this is it. # of papers or # registered users is not important, The only important metric is #time spent between me leaving a comment on the paper I'm currently reading & someone else liking, responding, etc. in a relevant way. Otherwise people have no reason to go there, it's an empty room.

So suppose you restrict the papers. Then it starts looking a lot like a scientific journal with social features - which a lot of sci journals are also doing, without a lot of interaction going on (see comments sections of PLoS journals).

As others commented - tough market. Try to elucidate a narrow user segment & journey using a model like "Crossing the Chasm".

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very useful advice, thank you. I wonder how I might further facilitate the discussion part of it. List of "unanswered questions" (taking advantage of the fact people like to help others in an intellectual setting, generally speaking) and having a "paper of the day" come to mind, among some other things. On that idea of narrowing user segment, I was initially of thinking for it to be just targeted for the "hacker" community (computer science, math, psychology articles seem pretty popular here), but I figure if that does happen it'll just happen naturally without restrictions/limitations.

<comment><USER6> Both of your ideas really good - a 'paper of the day' or some other way of narrowing content so achieve fusion. hacker community is also a great focus, since there is a lot of first-adopters, willingness to use new things etc.

Even more unsolicited advice: I would NOT assume it will happen naturally - <USER2> fact restriction is your best friend. Stackoverflow did not allow people to simply create new communities, it restricted this quite a bit. Even GitHub initially cultivated its roots in the Ruby community, which then spread to adjacent communities.

Likewise many communities delineate borders and delete user content. Stackoverflow likes concrete questions, for instance. Tumblr doesn't allow comments. Limits are your friend.

"Papers for Hackers" has differentiation & a lot more likely to succeed. I think it'd be awesome to cultivate this actively. Perhaps it comes with code examples linked to github etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the idea. There are quite a few people who regularly submit research papers to HN, usually as pdf files, but papers take more effort than articles, so seldom is there much uptake or discussion. You might want to look at the past pdf submissions on HN to help build up your library of papers. The Algolia HN Serarch does really good with this:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=#!/all/forever/prefix/0/pdf](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=#!/all/forever/prefix/0/pdf)

At present, I know of no way to find all of the HN submissions of abstracts, but searching for sites known for having abstracts (along with freely available papers) like arxiv.org should help find some more.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=#!/all/forever/prefix/0/arxiv.org](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=#!/all/forever/prefix/0/arxiv.org)

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Are there plans to license the posted content similar to stackoverflow so it can be used for the public good?

Having a queryable database of comments on journal articles would certainly be nice. The SO equivalent would be: [http://data.stackexchange.com](http://data.stackexchange.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I have very little knowledge about licenses/copyrights, what does a license on the content mean and how would it work?

<comment><USER8> The terms of service for coredemia is currently set so contributors retain nearly all rights to the content they post.

If you look at the bottom of stackoverflow.com you can read that all contributions to SO are licended under the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/3.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) with attribution.

This allows for the information on SO to be remixed and reused by the public.

This license allows for all of SO to be downloaded and analyzed by whoever takes the time an effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> for those who are not aware of it yet, there's a meetup group in NYC and SF called "papers we love" that meets to discuss a pre-assigned paper - <USER3> to book clubs but a bit less rigid

NYC [http://www.meetup.com/papers-we-love/](http://www.meetup.com/papers-we- love/)

SF [http://www.meetup.com/papers-we-love-too/](http://www.meetup.com/papers- we-love-too/)

<comment><USER10> DC [http://www.meetup.com/Papers-We-Love-DC/](http://www.meetup.com/Papers-We- Love-DC/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just wanted to let you know that the fonts being used aren't rendering well on iPhone (I would guess this applies to mobile screens in general). In the screenshot below, you can see the font on the <h1> has sort of a double-line effect going on. The .paper_title font has this problem as well, though to a lesser extent.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ep6dknim0p6pm2e/coredemia.PNG](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ep6dknim0p6pm2e/coredemia.PNG)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa I've never seen something like that happen. Hmm I guess it's probably the font file, though I don't think Futura Oblique just breaks at larger sizes lol. Weird... Thanks for pointing it out though!

<comment><USER12> This explains what's going on, I think: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont- ttf-s-bold-font-weight-rendering-bug)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty neat. The sign-up is very easy (thank you), but there is a bit of a hole when I try to search for something that doesn't seem to exist (I searched for "bone"). I would also like to be able to filter, not just search, by overarching field (biology, chemistry, compsci, physics, etc). Looks good so far, and definitely has the potential to be something I check regularly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah I probably should put a "no results found" when that's the case. Sorry, there isn't many papers right now to search for. I think a "show only _field_ papers" is a good idea, but there isn't enough to do that for now. I think I'll go back and do this when there are enough to get some results in each field. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I got reminded of academia.edu.

I hate that site. Way more than I hate LinkedIn. And that's something.

Sorry for derailing.

<comment><USER15> why?

<comment><USER14> Well first it uses .edu domain name, indicating that it's something else than it is.

Then it lures you in with a "download thesis" tease, with a big DOWNLOAD HERE link. Then it forces you to fill in pages and pages and pages and _pages_ of things that you have no interest in filling. Then it automatically "follows" tons people that you have no interest in following. Then it starts sending annoying e-mails.

Just because you wanted to download that _one file_ , you are suddenly in a "network" you had no interest of entering in the first place.

As one Czech saying goes, "you give then a finger and they bite away your whole hand".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A RSS for new paper would be handy. Also, most academic people have Gmail account, a Google account login support would be more convenient.

</comment><comment><USER17> I knew that some people would do that site if I do not. Thank you and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER18> Fantastic implementation -- are you considering a Papers integration?

</comment><comment><USER19> RSS Please! I love the idea.</comment>


Petition to promote tor use - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/require-use-tor

<comment><USER2> Bad idea. If tor use is required, all browsing will slow down, the relays will crash under the traffic, many services will be inaccessible (like anything using cloudflare).

<comment><USER3> Or the opposite could happen and the popularity/sudden interest could lead those with a new found interest and spare resources to deploy additional relays and exit nodes.</comment></comment>


Discontinued Microsoft Products - tech-historian https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft-products <comment><AUTHOR> Picking random products from the list:

\- Microsoft Chart: now just a feature of Excel \- Microsoft Works: seems like you can just replace it with MS Office? \- Windows Photo Viewer: virtually identical to "Photos" on Windows 10, apart from the new UI framework. \- Microsoft Cobol: superseded by Visual Studio which apparently also supports Cobol? \- Microsoft Frontpage: apparently replaced by Microsoft Expression Web, which is itself discontinued \- Microsoft Encarta: I have good memories, but in the age of Wikipedia probably not very profitable \- Microsoft DVD Maker: Kind of sad, but I don't remember the last time I burned a Video DVD

I guess this helps explain why nobody really feels like Microsoft is deprecating a lot of products. Most things on this list are either replaced by something better, not relevant anymore or never really found a market.

<comment> tech-historian A few things:

Windows Photo Viewer: Indeed, Microsoft has had several iterations of image viewers over the years. They all have nuances and pros/cons. But in the end, not everyone was happy about the "upgrades." WPV was deprecated and articles like this showed up: [https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-get-windows-photo- viewer-...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-get-windows-photo-viewer-back- in-windows-10/)

Works: Works was a free (with new PCs) entry-level office suite. MS Office is of course not free. They are completely separate product lines that happen to share some (but not all) file formats.

Cobol: I believe Visual Studio only supported Cobol starting in 2015. That's a ~20 year absence from the original.

The list shows deprecated products that didn't have a specific drop-in, straightforward upgrade path for the end-user.

<comment><USER2> MS Office the desktop software isn't free, but you can use the online versions for free[1]. Considering the Works was never quite at feature parity with Word anyway, the gimped down version of Office Online is a decent alternative.

You also have the benefit of not having inconsistencies in file formats, which was always frustrating when working with Works and trying to edit files from Office.

[1] [https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for- the...](https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for-the-web)

<comment><USER3> Works was actually a completely separate codebase from an acquisition, and, as a result, many common features actually worked differently from Microsoft Office. This was problematic as it made upgrading from Works to Office difficult as many people who used Works were used to Works and found Office unfamiliar. I have been told by more than one person that they preferred Works to Office over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the Mac Works coders here: A slight correction. Works for the Mac was published in 1986, not 1988.

AppleWorks for the Apple II was written by Rupert Lissner of Scotts Valley, CA for Apple Computer. AppleWorks was released early in 1984 and was written in 6502 assembler. At that time, Steve Jobs was really anxious to have software on the new Macintosh computer that would make it appealing to business users. Lissner and Jobs discussed porting AppleWorks to the Macintosh.

Lissner teamed up with former IBM salesman and Apple exec Don Williams of Santa Cruz, CA to begin work on the Mac version. Don Williams was the creator of Desktop Plan and Graph'N'Calc for the IBM PC. Their company was named Productivity Software. Within months, AppleWorks became very successful so Lissner decided he didn't need to work on the Mac version. He dropped out without writing any code.

At that time I (Michael Watson) was hired as their first employee. Williams then hired Brian Haas to write the word processor and Tim Lundeen to write the spreadsheet. I wrote the database. Lundeen and I wrote the core code to integrate the modules. Later, Ben Halpern was hired to write the drawing and charting code. We wrote it in 68000 assembler and called it "MouseWorks."

In 1986, Bill Gates visited us in Santa Cruz and a deal was struck where Microsoft would publish our program as Microsoft Works for the Macintosh. Microsoft was working on Excel for the Mac, but it wasn't ready and they wanted something on the Mac.

Lundeen dropped out before it was published in a dispute with Williams. Haas, Halpern and myself finished it up. It was published in the fall of 1986. We did two more versions, then Microsoft bought us all out and took over in 1993.

AppleWorks for the Macintosh by Apple was called ClarisWorks and became a competitor, although not a significant one.

<comment> tech-historian This is great background, thanks so much for sharing! Good history lesson here.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I hope this helps future historians who are curious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For comparison, the total killed products here: 343, since 1975. That's about 7.8 per year.

Killed Google products: 194, since 1996 [0]. That's about 8.4 per year.

So all-in-all, Google isn't doing _that_ much worse.

[0] [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER6> It's not the same because Google's products are all (or at least mostly?) services, whereas many of the Microsoft products listed are simple releases with no continuing support required for them to still work (e.g. 3D Movie Maker).

"Killed" (can't use it anymore), vs. "Discontinued" (might stop working on new operating systems at some point in the future).

<comment><USER7> This is actually a great point, and one thing that has me skeptical of Stadia and other upcoming game-streaming services.

People who never got rid of their NES can still play their games. If it breaks, they could buy another one, or maybe even try to fix it themselves.

Once a service shuts down, you don't really have anything to keep or to revisit. If there was a Stadia-only game in the future, could you somehow get a copy and run it on local hardware to keep playing if Stadia shut down? Could you do it easily.

Super Mario Bros, Classic Tetris, etc. they still have active communities of speed-runners, tournaments, etc. It's kind of weird that something with the level of cultural impact a videogame can have could all of a sudden disappear because it doesn't exist anywhere but in a centralized space outside the control of the people who experienced it.

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I feel like removing ownership from the consumer is the goal of moving everything into a subscription service.

<comment><USER9> Software developers have discovered that people are bad at measuring value and they are bad at delivering additional value over time. Subscriptions always cost more and force a decision every year.

I play Super Mario brothers on my old Nintendo every couple of years. No revenue has been realized since 1986 or whatever. Just a payment for the NES and game.

Today, you can get unlimited access to virtually all music made in the last century or every show made by Disney ever for less than a subscription to some goofy text editor.

<comment><USER10> And even better they can grab a pile of FOSS software, hide it behind their paywalls and don't give a neither a dime, not code back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a hard time beliving that this one is real:

[https://www.versionmuseum.com/images/discontinued/discontinu...](https://www.versionmuseum.com/images/discontinued/discontinued- microsoft-hardware/discontinued-microsoft-hardware%5E2003%5Emicrosoft-iloo- illustration.jpg)

<comment><USER12> "The project was announced by MSN UK on April 30, 2003, and was widely ridiculed before being declared a hoax by Microsoft on May 12. On May 13, another Microsoft press release stated that although the project had not been a hoax, it had been cancelled because it would do little to promote the MSN brand."

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

[https://web.archive.org/web/20030705022312/http://www.europe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20030705022312/http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16337)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What, nobody mentioned Microsoft Bob yet? :)

That thing was terrible, but I'm kinda sad that a Microsoft Bob-like window manager (or whatever you want to call it) never panned out.

Yes, it blows for productivity, but it had "personality" \- it was colorful and silly unlike your average UI today which either looks "industrial" or subscribes to the "everything is flat and bland" school of thought.

Oh well. Here's to you, Bob:

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

Edit: Ninja'd by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776932)

<comment><USER14> > it was colorful and silly

You misspelled inflexible. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Visual FoxPro (1992-2007)

Tell that to the thousands of businesses still using it.

[https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=foxpro](https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=foxpro)

<comment><USER16> The majority of county boards of elections in Ohio are using a voter registration management application that is still written in Visual FoxPro (and still uses DBF files as the back-end).

Aside: It has a recently-added ToTP implementation that replaces their prior "scan a barcode" system of "two factor" authentication. Of course, you can just open the DBF files directly in another tool and manipulate them w/o any "authentication". The mind boggles.

<comment><USER17> Direct DBF manipulation is small potatoes. Since the database container (.DBC) has to be writable to be of much use, use that same tool to add some triggers that will run whatever FoxPro code you want (which can call just about any Win32 API you want). If you've got FoxPro installed, skip the hex editor and open the DBC like a table (it is a DBF). If one is going to use DBFs, skip the database container feature if you can. It was a good idea maybe 25 years ago (umm, not really), but it was a different time and long before Microsoft started getting their security shit together.

—

Former Fox team member

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft Comic Chat, never forget

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

<comment><USER19> Someone is still making comics out of them: [https://www.bonequest.com/](https://www.bonequest.com/). Very NSFW. I remember reading these in college and shocked it's still around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The more irritating thing Microsoft does is churn on their SDKs. I think there are at least a half dozen different ways I can generate a SOAP client from a WSDL, for instance. Or some of the abortive and competing UI layers; UWP vs WPF vs WinForms vs ATL vs MFC and so on.

Silverlight was probably the most painful. I've known some companies that made big bets on that technology, and most of them were caught flat-footed when it was announced that it would be discontinued.

<comment><USER21> Libraries to read XML: 3 at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I still sorely miss Microsoft Money and have found Quicken/et al to be terrible alternatives. Any recommendations? Strongly prefer offline entirely, and would be happy if it's cross-platform and can import standard bank statement exports.

<comment><USER23> I'm a happy user of Moneydance: [http://moneydance.com/](http://moneydance.com/) Offline (but can download from banks or import files) and cross platform

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The frustrating bit to me is when they bought up Creature House Expression (A Vector art application) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_House_Expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_House_Expression) rebadged it as a Microsoft product and then killed it. It was a really great vector tool in it's time. Buying up software companies and then killing the software is a problem we rarely talk about. AutoDesk has also done this with Softimage XSI, which, ironically Microsoft used to own as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> One interesting discontinued Microsoft product missing in this list is Xenix.

</comment><comment><USER19> Two things stood out to me: I really liked Sunrise and nothing seems to have done a good replacement of it. The other thing is that I really miss the Windows 95-style UIs for some reason. The UIs were generally responsive and the tooltips popped up quickly. I miss bland highly ordered rows of icons.

</comment><comment><USER26> They have a youtube channel apparently, I'll have to check it out when I get a chance. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDYfttV26QFApHJnMG6U1zw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDYfttV26QFApHJnMG6U1zw)

</comment><comment><USER27> I tried a few deeper cuts, and wow, this is really thorough! Has anyone noticed anything they missed?

<comment><USER28> Windows 10 S seems odd as you can still purchase products, brand new, that have it. So how is it discontinued?

<comment><USER29> Windows 10 "S edition" has been discontinued, in favor of Windows 10 "S Mode". What the distinction is, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER28> A lot of these disconnected products have pretty much direct replacements with slightly different names, same functionality, and probably even data continuity. Or were hardly separate products to begin with.

<comment> tech-historian Which ones? Products are only on the list if they didn't have direct descendant drop-in replacements that were straightforward for the user to upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't mention Platform Builder, a tool for creating embedded projects. Just a wizard really, stapled onto an old version of Visual Studio. Didn't do much - select from a very limited list of drivers and chip support to start your project.

</comment><comment><USER30> Windows Live Writer! I remember that. I actually miss it; it was a great desktop UI for WordPress.

<comment><USER31> It's been open sourced now:

[https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter](https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I still use Microsoft Money every day. It's great! There's nothing like it available now. Runs on the desktop, no internet needed. All data stays on my machine. Ledger, scheduled bills, and cash flow forecast are all I need.

</comment><comment><USER33> Appears to be missing "Microsoft Delta" version control system.

Also Microsoft's pre-Excel spreadsheet offering, "Microsoft Multiplan".

Also missing Xenix.

Isn't clear how they define "product". For example Cardfile is listed but that was never a standalone product just a program bundled with Windows. If they are going to include discontinued Windows components, there are a lot of those. (And discontinued components or features of other products too, like Office or SQL Server.)

</comment><comment><USER34> I see that IronRuby is there. They should also add IronPython to that list. That has been dead for a while now. It hasn't progressed since version 2.7.9 from 2018.

<comment><USER35> which is a darn shame. I think the lack of cffi support really hindered IronPython from catching on. the marshalling of data types was incredibly smooth and pleasant to use, and it was quite performant, but cffi is an indirect dependency of so many Python libraries that I couldn't use it for much besides "hello world."

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I still miss Sunrise. Outlook calendar doesn't compete last time I checked, so I've been using Fantastical plus some other integrations for special calendar subscriptions.

</comment><comment><USER37> Microsoft Bob (1995-1996), R.I.P.

</comment><comment><USER38> The MS product I miss the most is Midtown Madness 2, with San Francisco and London. It was the best city racing game I ever played, it had the best game mechanics, it was fast but easily maneuverable, games nowadays require hard training to run one minute without hitting into something. The maps and cars available were very entertaining and I remember freely downloading a lot of vehicles of very different types.

<comment><USER39> Agreed. MS Combat Flight Sim 2 also hit that sweet spot of "just felt right" that few if any others managed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The one that caught my eye was 3D movie maker. When I was young my siblings and I really had fun with it.

Basically there was a background, and you could add characters to it and make them move, rotate, scale, and do premade animations. Then you'd add music and sound effects. It seemed very cutting edge to us at the time.

</comment><comment><USER41> Somehow Xenix is not mentioned

</comment><comment><USER42> My local Children's Museum had a PC running Musical Instruments for years. I loved playing around with it; easily the only Microsoft software I've ever felt strongly about (in a non-negative way, anyway).

</comment><comment><USER43> They should open source the Basic 7.1 compiler and push to make it cross- platform. It was procedural, but super fast. Also not interpreted. It compiled and linked, just like a C compiler.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've heard from relatives that Microsoft MapPoint made a good tool for road trips. I always wanted to try it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Microsoft Infopath, still one of the best examples of how bad marketing can doom even the best product.

</comment><comment><USER46> I still remember my annoyance when Entourage was replaced with the vastly inferior Outlook for Mac.

</comment><comment><USER47> Give us clippy back.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't see Microsoft Songsmith on the list.

</comment><comment><USER49> How about QBasic?

</comment><comment><USER50> List seems inaccurate/incomplete.

E.g. Courier is on it, but Courier was never more than a design concept video, so considering it a "discontinued" product is off.

Similarly, no mention of the original Microsoft Surface - a 30 inch tabletop computer that shipped from 2008 to 2011.

<comment> tech-historian The original Surface table was renamed to MS PixelSense and it's in the list: [https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued- micros...](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft- developer-products#s28)

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


Software developers can stop Racism - <AUTHOR> https://web3.coach/how-software-developers-can-stop-racism <comment><AUTHOR> I am extremely disappointed to see how social platforms are failing the current moral crisis. In this post above I explain why and what can we do about it.

Help me spread the word and let's rebuild them: [https://twitter.com/Web3Coach/status/1267802413848723459](https://twitter.com/Web3Coach/status/1267802413848723459)

</comment><comment><USER2> A genuine question: How does Facebook already not address those points? Its an open platform and actually faces a lot of bar rep for being too open?

By open I meant: people can say/post whatever they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, sorry what do you mean by Facebook already being an open platform?</comment></comment>


Search for England's Forgotten Footpaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-search-for-englands-forgotten-footpaths <comment><USER2> > He came across it, and the rest of the Maze, while walking on his lunch > break. (His office was in an industrial park not far away.) I asked Fraser > if he had been trying to get anywhere in particular. "Well, I roam about all > over the place,"

I love just rambling around the countryside and seeing new things. I walk a fair amount every day, and I find that there's something good for the soul about walking a lightly-travelled footpath with no particular destination in mind, alone with your thoughts. If there's no undeveloped land at hand I'll walk through the city, which has its own charm, but I find it doesn't have quite the same effect.

I suppose I must be in the minority though. There are many trails near San Francisco where I never come across more than a handful of fellow walkers, despite the area's dense population.

<comment><USER3> It's 4 a.m. Nasruddin leaves the tavern and walks the town aimlessly. A policeman stops him. "Why are you out wandering the streets in the middle of the night?" "Sir," replies Nasruddin, "if I knew the answer to that question, I would have been home hours ago!"

-Rumi

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The world is different now, we walk for leisure rather than going to work. Also there are not thousands of rural folk who need to get somewhere by foot on a daily basis meaning it is a problem, where over the years paths and parts of paths have been closed so that the paths that are left just don't go anywhere useful and then the landowners attempt to close them on the basis that they are no longer used.

It is a further problem, where the council departments who are responsible for these paths are not funded adequately. I myself reported that a 'public right of way' sign was missing last year. The council representative asked if there was still a post present and when I replied negatively, they said that they would have been able to replace the sign easily but putting a new post in was subject to further funding which they did not have at the time. At least, I think, the footpath itself is shown on the OS map (definitive) and the council have it on a list (the representative said they were expecting new funding in the next tax year). I continue to walk it occasionally.

</comment><comment><USER3> 99% invisible had a nice podcast on the right to roam(mostly in England): [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/right-to- roam/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/right-to-roam/)

<comment><USER5> I don't think the "Right to Roam" in England and Wales is quite as extensive as it is here in Scotland - basically we have the right to walk and camp pretty much anywhere as long as you are sensible - don't damage crops and avoid the immediate vicinity of houses.

I'd really miss living somewhere where you can't pretty much wander about anywhere you want.

Edit: To add another cool aspect about the wilder parts of Scotland, there is a network of free accommodation as well:

 _" To maintain simple shelters in remote country for the use & benefit of all who love wild & lonely places."_

[https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/](https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/)

<comment><USER6> The Scandinavia influence is showing: they have allemansrecht.

<comment><USER7> Growing up in Norway, we were taught from primary school age that we could go pretty much whenever we wanted outside of urban settlements, as long as we behaved sensibly (no stepping on crops, no littering, ensuring you close gates to avoid letting animals loose), and that we could forage for berries or mushrooms without having to ask anyone for permission (fishing and hunting rights do have restrictions). It made it very strange to go elsewhere and realize how much land is fenced in and inaccessible to the public many places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _In England, public paths are made by walking them. You can make a new, > legally recognised footpath by simply treading up and down it, with a few > friends, for a period of twenty years._

Nice. You can't get more British than that.

<comment><USER9> Strictly, English (and Welsh), not "British".

The UK is a collection of countries (like Austria-Hungary) and Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own legal systems and different rules.

<comment><USER8> I know, I'm a UK citizen. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> recommended for a related read : Robert Macfarlane, "The Old Ways" \- a very lyrical book about tramping/hiking/roaming.

[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/560/56083/the-old- ways/97801...](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/560/56083/the-old- ways/9780141030586.html)

I also like the wistful poem "Roads" by Edward Thomas:

"On this earth 'tis sure

We men have not made

Anything that doth fade

So soon, so long endure:"

which contains the immortal line "Now All Roads Lead to France":

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57265/roads-56d23a98e...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57265/roads-56d23a98e9981)

</comment><comment><USER11> Article on the same subject in the _Guardian_ , from last month:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/memory- lanes-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/memory-lanes-the- ramblers-trying-to-save-10000-lost-footpaths)</comment>


Magnus Carlsen Buys Chessable - <AUTHOR> https://www.chessable.com/blog/2019/09/03/chessable-joins-play-magnus-chess24/ <comment><USER2> Great news. Both companies are really innovative and breaking new grounds in chess training. There is a lot other disciplines could learn from them.</comment>


Lazy Japanese and thieving Germans - <AUTHOR> http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/events/conferences/povertyandcapital/chang.pdf

<comment><USER2> Thanks ! I haven't yet read through the entire thing, but the ideas seem interesting. It would be good to have some context about this article/paper though. This reads more like a long blog post / opinion piece (at least as far as I've read, until now). You may choose to agree, partially agree or disagree. I won't consider this as something 'scientific' without first learning more about the context or research. The first page claims it to be chapter 9. I'd be interested in reading the rest.</comment>


Android O Will Be Released During the Eclipse - <AUTHOR> https://www.android.com/eclipse/ <comment><USER2> OREO!!!</comment>


Brexit has put the UK in an impossible position. This Venn diagram explains why - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/12098156/brexit-eu-britain-venn-diagram <comment><USER2> From what I understand (I am not a British citizen) the plan seems to be to delay triggering Article 50 for as long as possible, and then get the actual triggering to be voted in Parliament (expecting Parliament to vote against it and therefore nullifying the Brexit). This will dilute the (understandable) feeling of betraying for Referendum voters, especially if during the intervening period media and UE will scare people in believing that an actual Brexit would be a catastrophe.

<comment><USER3> > This will dilute the (understandable) feeling of betraying for Referendum > voters, especially if during the intervening period media and UE will scare > people in believing that an actual Brexit would be a catastrophe.

I am not confident the government won't plot its way out of Brexit but I am confident that politics will take on a new character if they defy the outcome of the vote. After all it was the largest vote by numbers in the history of the state.

This was an historic victory, and a complete one, by a group that has rarely had its opinion accepted as valid in the media or government. If you dismiss their vote they have nothing left. This is an important point! There is nowhere else to turn. There is no way to get their desired policy enacted democratically or by playing the game. UKIP had one MP. One!

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/i-loathe-ukip-one-mp-3-9-million- vo...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/i-loathe-ukip-one-mp-3-9-million-votes- national-disgrace-1501080)

Media propaganda will not work. Neither the Trump support nor the Brexit Leave voters give it any credibility. Surely you have noticed this. That is why the prediction machines appear to be broken. That tool is no longer functional for anything except stroking the neurosis of the middle class. If I were a mischievous person I would wonder if that were always the case.

The Exit camp do not care what happens to the economy either, not in the short term. They are not sitting down and biting their fingernails about share prices or house prices. For them this is primarily about dignity, their pride in their British identity and national sovereignty. Repudiating that as xenophobia/fascism and then defying a democratic outcome is interesting. A reasonable person would wonder if perhaps the people were bored and sought wish fulfillment of some kind from the drama of history.

Thinking this will pass off peacefully is delusional. You cannot back so much as a dog into a corner and hyperventilate if it bites you. The British police are more likely to join the Exit rioters than stop them. They hold identical views to the working class because they are the same people. The best they will do for civil order is call a 'sickie'. That means this escalates promptly. The riots of 2011 were only based on a few thousand people and it seemed like half of London was on fire at the time, imagine the 2016 riots with 10x to 100x that number, not looking for shops to loot, but heads to crack.

Now I prepare for my daily allotment of downvotes for saying the obvious. You can play with internet points, you can flag me or even ban me, but the fact remains that defying this vote is a dangerous move. I lived in a British housing estate for years, I think I know how they think. My prediction is conservative, but if I told you everything I know I would be dismissed as scaremongering.

The middle class left wing always protest, always are on the streets. For some of them it is an occupation, for others it is more about free expression. They have packed lunches and t-shirts for the occasion.

Do you ever remember a right wing protest? I mean outside of political rallies of course, that is not protest. They are quite unusual as protests go, because they are so rare. Have you noticed how sheepish and amateurish the PEGIDA protesters seem? They are not used to this. So. If you do get to see a mass protest of the right in your lifetime, be prepared, because this time it will be serious.

<comment><USER2> First of all: I was not saying that this is necessarily the best choice, or that I endorse Remain or Leave.

I was just trying to explain what - from what I read so far - seems the most probable strategy for the next months.

Also, while the economic results of the Leave might be exaggerated (as part of the same strategy I was explaining) do you think that Leave supporters have properly considered the risks of splintering UK (Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly Wales deciding to get independence)?

<comment><USER3> > First of all: I was not saying that this is necessarily the best choice, or > that I endorse Remain or Leave.

Oh I understand, my post is mostly aimed at those who appear to believe defying the vote result will be just shrugged off as if it were just another case of politics.

The working classes are quite hard to politicize, but once they are involved it is like a train speeding up on a track. The middle classes tend to have, ah, more flexible opinions and less conviction about the world and their beliefs shall we say. This isn't good or bad for either case, it's just so.

I think the chattering classes are underestimating the effects of a backlash because they themselves are more flexible / less committed and their (wrong) intuition that everybody else is the same. Sure there are lots of enthusiastic and firm believers of <political paradigm> in the middle class, but they are a minority. Most middle class people will eventually accommodate the idea of a Britain without the EU. The working classes will not respond in the same way, because once they commit to a political ideal it is much harder to shift them. That's a grudge that's never going away, even if there somehow magically was no rioting.

> I was just trying to explain what - from what I read so far - seems the most > probable strategy for the next months.

That would be my hunch too. Looks like we're about to enter interesting times.

> Also, while the economic results of the Leave might be exaggerated (as part > of the same strategy I was explaining) do you think that Leave supporters > have properly considered the risks of splintering UK (Scotland, Northern > Ireland and possibly Wales deciding to get independence)?

No. I don't even think the Remain side considered this proper or they would have emphasized it much more in their propaganda instead of economics. However Scotland wants to leave anyway, Brexit is more of an pretext for that than a cause. I am confident Wales and Northern Ireland will stay with England. Politically speaking the Scots and Home Counties don't have a lot in common, the South is much more right wing than the North, so I don't think a 'deal' ameliorates the situation if it succeeds in Scotland staying and Britain stays in the EU.

I suspect, and I'm not very sure of this, this is just a guess, that the EU officials are going to deny Scotland entry to the EU even if they become an independent state which will piss them off no end (this is to prevent a precedent setting off country fragmentation in Europe e.g. Catalonia). I think the closing of ranks against Juncker has something to do with this. Then an olive branch will be offered to the British. Obviously there's quite a gap between the cup and lip here so we'll have to wait and see.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Programmable Government - <AUTHOR> http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/213-towards-a-more-open-government

<comment><USER2> Love this title - although the "APIs" are query only.

But a '''programmable government''', run by optimization algorithms? I like this - as long as it's open source. No politicians, just good code and bad code. No lobbyists, just competing, crowd-sourced algorithms.

Sounds too Utopian or too nightmarish?

<comment><USER3> > run by optimization algorithms

What is the evaluation function? How do we measure?

For example, we may agree that leaving houses empty is a bad idea and disagree as to whether we should leave them in the hands of folks who couldn't afford to buy them or to foreclose and sell them to people who were priced out of the market before.</comment></comment>


The Case For Working With Your Hands - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html <comment><USER2> I started growing a garden and only afterward realized that the reason I did it was to work with my hands. I honestly believe that there's a fundamental (perhaps evolutionary) drive to build things and which originates from these meaty paws. We may see and hear the world, but through touch we shape it.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I once accidentally dropped a feeler gauge down into the crankcase of a Kawasaki Ninja that was practically brand new, while performing its first scheduled valve adjustment. I escaped a complete tear-down of the motor only through an operation that involved the use of a stethoscope, another pair of trusted hands and the sort of concentration we associate with a bomb squad. When finally I laid my fingers on that feeler gauge, I felt as if I had cheated death. I don't remember ever feeling so alive as in the hours that followed."

Was I the only who smiled when they read this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Labor has become so specialized that individual workers are too often disconnected from the final product or outcome. It's hard to remain motivated and engaged under such conditions.

I'm not an entrepreneurial hacker like so many on this site (wish I was). My job offers great opportunities to craft creative solutions to interesting technical problems, but I am far too disconnected from those who will ultimately benefit from my efforts. This disconnectedness really takes the interestingness out of solving interesting problems.

By the way, if anyone knows of a list of manual trades well suited to hackers, please post it here.

Recommended reading: Wendell Berry: _What Are People For?_

<comment><USER5> Second the book recommendation. Great title to read for HN denizens, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's good to know that I'm not the only geek who occassionally dreams of being a carpenter or mechanic.

<comment><USER7> Before computers came about, the geeks _were_ carpenters and mechanics. I find I get along well with both types of people and we usually have lots to talk about.

<comment><USER8> Carpenters, mechanics, electricians, ham radio enthusiasts... hackers have a long and distinguished heritage. Makers and doers.

<comment><USER5> You forgot the land surveyors and cartographers ;-) Great article, BTW. If only I had a hundred upvotes to give...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting to see these memes questioning basic assumptions about the economic structure of our society. I think many of us just assumed someone else had figured it out, that all of those economists and politicians calling for more "knowledge workers" knew more than we did. Or assumed that Wall Street knew things we didn't, which explained why they could offer credit to people who used to be bad risks but now, suddenly, were not. Or that salaries for people with a college degree could continue to increase even as the number of college graduates exploded.

Nobody trusts any of those institutions any more. It will be interesting to see how people's behavior will change with this changed outlook.

Having said that, I think I am one of the few people actually happier with abstractions than actual things. Shop class projects generally ended in tears for me. So, I am fine with many people leaving to engage in more hands-on professions, leaving more "knowledge work" for me. :)

<comment><USER10> It's not as simple as "knowledge work" tho'. E.g. a doctor has a lot of knowledge, but his services have to be performed in person, he's not a knowledge worker like a programmer is. Similarly an artist is primarily a symbol manipulator too - her job can be done from anywhere, but there's no easily quantifiable body of knowledge or "hard skills" behind it.

<comment><USER9> I would put the doctors with the mechanics. Same kind of real world diagnostics and problem solving, where criteria for success or failure are clear and easily observable.

The scare-quotes-knowledge-worker is someone who never gets that kind of clear, observable criteria to know if she really did a good job, or just played the office politics well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My friend sent me this article this afternoon because I work with my hands. I dropped out of comp sci/engineering before I finished college because I decided I wanted to make 'real' things not just stare at a screen all day, or draft (on paper) as new engineering grads were expected to do back then.

Since then I use a computer as much as anyone running a business does, but the scope of what you can do with a computer these days is so much larger now.

I am programming now so I can hack on my homemade CNC machines which are in my opinion just magical.

</comment><comment><USER12> > This style demanded that I project an image of rationality but not indulge > too much in actual reasoning

Now that's a very eloquent description of bullshit-artistry.

</comment><comment><USER13> The title is a little off. From the article: "The work is sometimes frustrating . . . And it frequently requires complex thinking." Sound familiar?

What is really being discussed is the line where work becomes about craftsmanship. As software hackers, this is the space where I'll bet most of us prefer to operate. Not mindlessly churning out code to some spec, but rather building that piece of code that elegantly solves the problem presented to us by the user.

That preference is one of the reasons I think many hackers feel a lack of satisfaction from standard IT cubicle jobs. I'm not saying you can't find that challenge and reward (dare I say the flow of code) working as a corporate IT person, but surely corporate IT doesn't do much to encourage that experience.

I suspect that's why (at least in this forum), so many of us are interested in startups or extracting a living from software away from the cubicle (or, maybe I should say, from a cubicle not owned by us).

<comment><USER14> I found myself thinking of the ways in which programmers have tried to make programming more like working with real world, erm, objects, over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think that anybody who resonates with what this author talks about should consider volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. As a software developer by day and a volunteer on the weekends, I find that doing manual labor building a house for a family that needs one is a great way to work off stress. You also get a sense of accomplishment not only in the work that has been done but in the fact that you've helped the less fortunate with your skills and labor.

</comment><comment><USER16> When I was in high school and college I worked for a local construction supply company unloading railroad cars of bulk and bagged stone 'by hand.' It was back breaking work to put it lightly.

But it contributed to my education in more ways than one.

Last summer I was asked by the same company to consult, advise and implement a complete conversion of their accounting and information management systems. I did and it went well. They paid me more for that work than I ever made working in the yard.

As much as I like working with my hands, I'd rather get paid for using my mind than for using my back.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is definitely a well-written essay. I also have a favorite passage:

"There probably aren't many jobs that can be reduced to rule-following and still be done well. But in many jobs there is an attempt to do just this, and the perversity of it may go unnoticed by those who design the work process. ... you put the manual away and consider the facts before you. You do this because ultimately you are responsible to the motorcycle and its owner, not to some procedure."

There lies the crux of the problem. Here is a man dedicated to good work. The people who design the work flow processes know that they do not always fit the actual world. The point is to get it right enough of the time to keep enough customers happy so that growth targets for the quarter or year are met. When you have tens of thousands or millions of customers, you can do very well by getting it right 80% of the time. The underlying capital serves as a cushion for the rest of the cases.

The lone mechanic has to prioritize keeping his customers happy if he wants to stay in business for long. And that's exactly how the author likes it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I code all day. I highly recommend chopping wood and demolition work.

<comment><USER19> I agree. If you buy a fixer-upper house, you have an opportunity to get your fill of demolition work and wood chopping through sweat equity. I swear our house helps keeps me in shape.

[Edit] : From my home improvement work, I started practicing carpentry using both power and hand tools. A bench plane can be a lot of fun to use.

<comment><USER15> Totally agree! I just remodeled our kitchen; tore walls down, built news ones up, and installed new cabinets and countertops. It was oddly fun and exhilarating and I never thought it would be. I felt a sense of accomplishment that I had not experienced in quite a while at my day job as a software developer. I don't know, I think I did a pretty good job at the remodeling and I keep thinking about doing it for other people and going into business for myself. Then I wake up and realize I've only done it once and that doesn't make me a master carpenter/installer. But I probably will continue down this path and see where it leads me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thing is, it doesn't even have to be something intensely physical like chopping wood or landing crabs. I code all day, but I come home and enjoy cooking. Not only do I get healthier food out of it, but there's the satisfaction of producing something deliberately physical that my friends and I can enjoy for what it is.

<comment><USER21> Or washing up and cleaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having grown up working on a wheat farm as a youngster, a significant fraction of my emotional energy was devoted to getting out of that. However, this is all relative. While we worked with our hands in the sense that the author means, we did it with machinery. My grandfather farmed using horses. I know he thought that working with horses was "closer to truth" than driving a tractor. I am sure that my Dad would not want to go back.

So we no longer gap our own spark plugs, fix our own broken rear springs, replace our own tires, weld our own truck beds. Has something gone out of the world? Yes. Is the answer to teach every city kid how to use a pair of pliers? Can't hurt, but that does not lead to an appreciation of the fullness of a life based manual labor.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?"

Maybe this is why Obama was so fond of Rahm Emanuel (who famously lost a middle finger to a meat slicer).

<comment><USER14> I copied this exact sentence out while reading, intending to post it here. Something about this and the notion of a fundamental thoughtfulness tied to real perception and physical habit struck me as the most interesting and compelling aspect of the article. I grew up in a DIY household, and now that I've lived on my own for 10+ years, I still do all of my own mechanical work: cars, bikes, guitars, electrical, plumbing, you name it; I'll fix it until it's really broke and then fix it until it's fixed. I don't do yard work or menial manual labor, though, as I find that tedious and soul-sucking. Anyway, I've always assumed my slow, and careful, habits and thought process were merely genetic. But now I wonder if maybe having gotten a few crushed fingers over the years, and had a few jobs that ended up taking far longer than they should have been due to early mistakes in the process, don't have some share of the responsibility for the way I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What a wonderful, well-written article. Thanks for the submission. Peace.

Also, the article vividly describes the moral dilemma common in corporate institutions of being forced to say or do one thing, while acting otherwise for survival.

Just one of the great passages in the article:

"I was actually told this by the trainer, Monica, as she stood before a whiteboard, diagramming an abstract. Monica seemed a perfectly sensible person and gave no outward signs of suffering delusions. She didn't insist too much on what she was telling us, and it became clear she was in a position similar to that of a veteran Soviet bureaucrat who must work on two levels at once: reality and official ideology."

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm pretty terrible at working with my hands in the manner described, but this was one of the most enjoyable, well-written and rhetorically adroit articles I have ever seen linked on HN.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's been a long while since I read it, but Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance hits on some of the same issues.

<comment><USER26> It looks like the author is aware of the similarity. His book this was adapted from is titled "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work", no doubt a reference to the latter part of the title of Pirsig's novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> complimentary video to add to this article:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html)

(video is more than about "working with hands", but reminiscence of repeated manual work that many people enjoy)

<comment><USER21> Nice! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Finds like this keep me coming to HN. Thank you. I found an amazon link for the book it is extracted from:

[http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry- Value/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry- Value/dp/1594202230/)

I also recommend de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work to those who enjoyed it. I read it in a single sitting.

[http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Sorrows-Work-Alain- Botton/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Sorrows-Work-Alain- Botton/dp/037542444X/)

And blessedly, I didn't have to negotiate any subscribe forms at nytimes.com.

</comment><comment><USER28> I completely agree. That is why I started sewing handbags. It was really refreshing to do this kind of work after working in front of a computer all day. I have not used the sewing machine in almost a year, and I am really feeling the need to sew again.

You can see the bags here: <http://lucasrockwell.etsy.com></comment>


How Statisticians Could Help Find That Missing Plane - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help-find-flight-370/ <comment><USER2> it sounds like the strength of the bayesian model is completely dependant on the ability of experts to provide accurate statistical guesses

<comment><USER3> Bayesian inference is definitely only as good as the quality of the chosen prior, if the number of samples is low.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is technically correct - as Bernstein-Von Mises guarantee under certain conditions that the posterior is independent of the prior after sufficient data is observed.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_t...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_theorem)

<comment><USER5> It was actually "technically correct" \- he said "if the number of samples is low".

You're correct about the general case, of course.

<comment><USER4> The previous comment was edited - the comment I replied to said something along the lines of ' _especially_ when the number of samples are low'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By Submarine in the 1960's, he's referring to Dr. John Craven's methodology for finding the USS Scorpion using Bayesian search theory. It was interesting to read the back story in Blind Man's Bluff, although I did get the feeling it was punched up a bit for drama.

<comment><USER7> James Surowiecki also tells the story of the search for the _Scorpion_ in his book _The Wisdom of Crowds_ , where I first read about it.

The Wikipedia article [0] gives a basic account, and the article on Bayesian search theory [1], in addition to describing the procedure quite well, mentions several other searches in which the method proved successful.

0\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)#Search:_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_\(SSN-589\)#Search:_1968)

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this is the case, let's see it in action. There is a great deal of information about this event that has been released to the public so I am curious to see if the experts in this field can generate probable locations of the aircraft and when the aircraft is found take a look and see if following the recommendations would have found the aircraft more quickly.

<comment><USER9> I think they need actual data - GPS coordinates, search areas, precise search methodology and a whole slew of other hard data that, afaik, is not available to the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would guess that the authorities already have some stats guys working on it.

<comment><USER11> Last I heard they recruited a witch.

<comment><USER12> From the sounds of it he recruited himself. Malaysia has denied involvement.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/13...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/03/13/with-satellites-unsuccesful-in-plane-search-malaysian- shaman-tries-coconuts/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was thinking yesterday that there are not _that_ many jets the size of the 777 in the world, and the location of most of them can probably be detected by U.S. military satellites. If that satellite data were correlated with data from the airlines on the location of their planes, some much smaller set should emerge that consists of planes whose location does not have an official explanation.

<comment><USER9> Commercial satellites are ok for seeing planes for that matter. It's knowing where and when to look that's important. I don't think that even the US military constantly monitors _vast_ tracts of empty ocean on the off chance that a plane might crash there.

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B3N+118%C2%B009%E2%80%B206%E2%80%B3W&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=35.062179,-118.158946&spn=0.03172,0.066047&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=61.711173,135.263672&t=h&z=15)

For instance, these two maps are pretty similar in scale (I couldn't make Maps do the exact same scale though)

[https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.14170...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.141703,33.815918&t=h&z=6)

[https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.6984...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.698429,33.815918&t=h&z=6)

That's a "whole lot of nothin'".

<comment><USER14> _I don 't think that even the US military constantly monitors vast tracts of empty ocean on the off chance that a plane might crash there._

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

<comment><USER9> Lines (chains, as per your article) have a "lot less area" than rectangles do, though. In other words, it's way, way easier to answer "what has crossed this line, at what time?" than "is there a needle in this haystack as large as Europe?", especially when the rectangle in question is basically of zero interest 99.9999% of the time, and you're tying up resources that could be pointed at China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, San Marino or other more 'interesting' places.

Furthermore, as your article mentions, they decommissioned some of that because it was too expensive and didn't serve much purpose with the end of the cold war. Even those guys' budgets are not unlimited.

<comment><USER15> Pardon my ignorance, but why is San Marino in that list?

<comment><USER9> You never know what the Sammarinesi are plotting up there on that rock! Mostly just to see if anyone was paying attention :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seemed like a pretty clear (if low level) explanation of Bayes theorem.

</comment><comment><USER17> so, October Sky 2014?</comment>


Ask HN: I just heard someone else's call on Skype - <AUTHOR>

This legitimately freaked me out.
I use Skype to frequently make calls to cells.  I just fired up Skype this morning, dialed a cell number and hit "call".  Then, without ringing or any delay I was suddenly on a call between 2 other callers.  It sounded like a business meeting (talking about agendas, deliverables, etc) and the audio was a bit garbled with some type of distortion, but I could with some effort make out what they were saying.
Then they hung up and my call ended.
What happened here?  Does this happen frequently? <comment><USER3> I have had this happen to me once. I am from India and we used to have this quite often when cell phones were just starting out, we even had a name for them - "cross connection". I could hear conversations but it happened only once. For what its worth, Skype tends to act up for me whenever there are rains in the location where I am calling to.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is called "crosstalk". It used to happen in POTS reasonably often, and I have experienced it in mobile to mobile calls a few times as well.

Classical crosstalk on POTs is fairly easy to get your head around - <USER2> from one circuit leaking out onto another circuit through EMI, e.g. wires near each other, faulty amplifiers etc.

I never came up with a good explanation for crosstalk in mobile (GSM, CDMA, ..)[1] etc as audible crosstalk doesn't seem to be possible at the radio level. In fact I would be surprised if the actual voice baseband signal is analog at any point on the network.

Nevertheless, it happens.

Most likely, you experienced crosstalk at the cellular end of your Skype call. In theory, barring some pretty severe software errors, VOIP or Skype crosstalk should be impossible.

[1] AMPS networks, sure, but the newer digital systems, no.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had this happen to me 6 years ago in the U.S. on a cell phone. The only thing out of the ordinary was I was in a ship (not a cruise liner) at the dock with a bad cell signal at the time. I'm not exactly sure what happened then, but it was probably a "perfect storm" scenario for that to happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> I noticed a load of icons downloaded to my Android Gallery application. They were not pictures I had taken, and didn't seem to be cached from something else I had looked at.

</comment><comment> ag-lobal Maybe is an "IP conflict / IP duplication", and the VoIP packets go to both IP addresses.

IP duplication can be caused by some type of "monitoring/spy" at their (or your) computer, and a dynamic IP address.

it's not usual.

<comment><USER7> Still very strange. Shouldn't the calls be encrypted? If the other call was started before, and the OP's client wasn't there for the handshake, how could it decrypt the call content?

<comment><USER8> >"Shouldn't the calls be encrypted?"

Calls Skype to Skype are encripted, but as far as I know you lose that when you make calls to landlines or mobiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not gonna happen with Sococo Teamspace. It uses unique encryption keys for every conversation, every pair of participants.</comment>


Imagine there's no Army (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.diplomatmagazine.co.uk/issues/2010/september/321-imagine-theres-no-army-v15-321.html <comment><USER2> Deep in the article:

 _it should be noted that since the first half of the twentieth century, Costa Rica has entrusted its defence to the United States, directly or indirectly._

Easy to give up spending money on defense when someone else is willing to spend a LOT of money to defend you.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps even more true in the case of Panama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _There are other advantages, too. Colombia spends 3.7 per cent and Guatemala 0.4 per cent of their GDP on their militaries. That money could be put to use elsewhere, in development, education, tourism, conservation._

I suppose the large, organized communist insurgency that's trying to overthrow the Colombian government, that issue would sort itself out?

<comment><USER5> Given that much of the support for that insurgency stems from heavy-handed anti-civilian actions by the Colombian army and associated paramilitaries, it actually might.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Resources exceeded:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.dip...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.diplomatmagazine.co.uk/issues/2010/september/321-imagine- theres-no-army-v15-321.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Costa Rica's lack of an army is one of my favorite things about it, along with almost entirely renewable energy.

</comment><comment><USER8> And imagine no country on the planet has an army. And then someone comes up with the idea. I hope you like the guy.

It has the same problem so many other idealisms have : it's not a Nash- equilibrium and thus certainly not Pareto-efficient. Good ideas in politics are things that are Nash equilibria, or very close to them, and don't exist yet. Great ideas are Pareto-efficient, but don't exist yet.

Any idea that doesn't have the Nash-equilibrium property should be fought tooth and nail because it will, by necessity, blow up really really really badly for everyone. They cannot exist for any length of time since it only takes one non-cooperative person to blow them up.

Like stopping climate change by law, for example, which is an idea that's obviously not a Nash-equilibrium for the economies involved (it is, however, Pareto-efficient for the politicians involved, which is why it's getting pushed through). One country can blow up the whole arrangement, and profit from the fact. Hell, one large company could do it. And they can profit by doing just that, which means that one of two things will happen : 1) that country/company grows until it, by itself, is so big it blows up the balance by itself (will never happen) 2) every other company is adopts it's practices.

And exactly what you'd expect happens : politicians get better from pushing through those laws, but the economies behind them spend untold amounts of money to get around those laws, and they do it successfully (for example by threatening those politicians in giving them the carbon tax back as subsidies or leave regions of production, which will leave an economic mess and lots of unemployed). The net-effect of the effort, you might think, is good : it slows down the progress, or at least, doesn't speed it up. Well, not quite. Once a company finds such a loophole, it has a limited window to exploit it. And because the company cannot just use the direct approach, they generally have to make use of less efficient methods to unload their byproducts, which means more energy is needed, which means more byproduct, and because the loopholes will get closed, it means they have to use them as fast as possible, so they have to dump it quicker.

But of course, nobody wants to hear the anti-idealists message. It's not bad news per se, but it's also not good news. Pushing through a 99% drop in fossil fuel usage is simple, but it cannot be done in Washington or at the UN. It requires finding an energy production scheme that blows fossil fuel out of the water. Fossil fuels have 3 big advantages : 1) energy density is liquid fossil fuels is bigger than any technology we have. Sure, it doesn't beat currently- in-the-lab technologies by that much anymore, but it still beats production technologies by a factor 2 easily.

A Tesla electric car has to carry a battery pack of 450 kg, for a range of roughly half what you'd get with 55kg of fossil fuels. Not the most efficient battery technology available, but within 20% of what you can achieve in the lab.

Needless to say, this gives fossil fuels a massive advantage. Lugging around Tesla batteries for power would not be economical. But you can transport fossil fuels once around the globe by burning ~ 0.2% of their weight (by ship). The Tesla battery equivalent would be ~30%.

2) Fossil fuels do not require infrastructure. For example, one energy source that beats the living hell out of fossil fuels for density, is uranium-235. There is just no contest. If you took a graph listing the energy density of a Tesla car at 1cm from the axis. You'd see fossil fuels at about 20cm, and you'd see uranium at about a kilometer.

Problem is that the smallest nuclear reactor (just like a car is a fossil-fuel reactor), is about the size of a 2-bedroom apartment. You can make them smaller, but not without accepting serious disadvantages.

So fossil fuels have a massive advantage in infrastructure required. I once saw a 35% efficient kerosine engine core, for a model plane, that was 5x4x2 cm in dimensions. The fuel tank was double the size of that engine, weighed a few hundred grams, and kept the propellor going for ~1.5 hours with more power than you'd ever need for the plane.

Of course electricity can be transported through cables, which are much simpler than pipelines, but that requires infrastructure. We would not be able to operate mines in inland Indonesia, or many parts of Africa with electricity, for example. Just can't be done.

3) Efficiency of production. Even with the above things, there's still a few substances that could potentially beat fossil fuels : liquid hydrogen is one, there's a few others. I doubt you would like the accidents that can occur with them any better than you like nuclear meltdowns (although that's true of pretty much any energy-dense material for obvious reasons). But there's another, more important economic consideration : making them has negative ROI (in fact less than 0.25, and practical methods, less than 0.1).

Making liquid hydrogen costs a LOT more energy than you're ever going to get back out of them. Of course, technically that's true of fossil fuels as well, but not in practice. In practice producing oil had, until 2000, an ROI of about 9. For every kw of energy invested you'd get 9kw burnable fuel. Right now it's about 3, and dropping fast (which is why the oil rig count everywhere is going up to such insane levels. It takes ~4 pumps today to get the amount of oil that 1 pump would provide just 10 years ago. That number goes up exponentially, and so far we've followed the exponential curve. That's going to stop of course, and soon).

So stopping global warming is easy. You have to find a fuel that's energy dense (so not batteries), easy to collect from somewhere, and can be transported, without infrastructure, around the globe for a tiny percentage of the energy it contains. If you also want to not find out what happens to our world when available energy drops of a cliff, you have ~6-7 years left (best guess, could be 15 years, could be 1), to find it.

Please keep in mind that keeping people alive during winter at any latitude above halfway between florida and newyork requires heating them up, so please do not say "we'll just wait for oil to run out", because you'll have to relocate all of Canada to Texas in 15-20 years to go with that option, and of course, lots and lots of people will not move but die. Without using to much energy for building new buildlings, of course.

That would be the Pareto-efficient way to do it. And if you do it that way, there's very good news : it can't fail. There's also the Nash-equilibrium way to do it : conquer the middle east, not like before, but actually destroying it's population and really stealing the oil. The Nash-equilibrium way can be seen as the "default" option. Barring a Pareto-efficient solution, one way or another, it will happen, just the details of when and how are in doubt (I'm not saying exactly this will happen, but something along those lines must happen).

<comment><USER9> Wasn't Nash's game theory formed whilst he was mentally ill and suffering from a persecution complex. Hasn't he renounced this as delusional thinking since?

<comment><USER8> He has, actually. Declared all of it a big mistake. He's also declared it a CIA conspiracy several times.

Watch the movie "A beautiful mind".

Unfortunately, the theory was analysed by mathematicians and, under certain assumptions, was proven correct. In a system with many independent actors pursuing their own interest, anything that isn't a Nash-equilibrium cannot exist for a long time. Anything that isn't Pareto-efficient will be very, very bad for 99% of those independent actors.</comment></comment></comment>


The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography - <AUTHOR> https://typography.guru/journal/the-capital-sharp-s-in-now-part-of-the-official-german-orthography-r53/ <comment><USER2> As a german, I see this as a step in the wrong direction.

The sharp S is a PITA to begin with, so I'd rather abolish it completely.

Now there's a whole bunch of complications coming from this - how do I type this? To type lowercase "ß", I press the key above "p" (in the same position as with qwerty) and "ü" (to the right of it), which will do "?" when pressed together with shift. So do we move "?" somewhere else?

QWERTZ is already bad for e.g. programming with all its punctuation (typing "]" means holding altgr and pressing 9), so that would make it even worse.

Personally I'd rather use composing since that would mean I could continue ignoring "ß" like I already do (I use "ss" instead), only now I'll ignore both forms.

Note also that a capital "ß" is barely useful to begin with - no word begins with it, so the only reason to use it is to write a word in ALL CAPS.

<comment><USER3> As a German, I disagree with you. German's not English, even though you might prefer if it was. Others don't. It's fine that it uses the letters it ended up with historically. This change fixes an internal inconsistency, your reply seems fairly irrelevant. It feels like replying to some bugfix in, say, Ruby with something like "I never liked Ruby anyhow".

<comment><USER4> How is using "ss" instead of ß in German any worse from using "th" instead of þ in English?

<comment><USER5> Annoyingly, English uses "th" for two rather different phonemes: þ ("thing") and ð ("this").

Icelandic maintains this useful distinction. I feel like English spelling would need at least half a dozen more letters to disambiguate. As it is, English is actually a not great choice for a global language because it's so unphonetic.

<comment><USER6> Every language has something dumb about it that makes it "not a great choice for a global language". English spelling is a nightmare, but the grammar isn't too bad, and most importantly, _it has no gendered nouns_.

<comment><USER7> What's so bad about gendered nouns? They are quite useful, especially when the language allows you to omit the noun and leave only a pronoun, or maybe the entire subject altogether.

<comment><USER8> How are gendered nouns useful? (I'm referring specifically to assigning genders to nouns that refer to objects that aren't intrinsically gendered.)

My native language is English, and I never have to remember whether a "keyboard" or a "rock" is masculine or feminine. I've studied a few other languages (French, German, Spanish) that do expect me to remember such things.

To be clear, I'm not trying to refute your statement that they're useful, just asking how. I'm interested in learning about a different perspective.

<comment><USER2> I'd imagine the use is that it sometimes makes pronouns more useful.

Substituting "he" and "she" for gendered articles:

"I have he keyboard and she rock. He is large and she is grey"

Without that, I'd have to repeat the "keyboard" and "rock".

The question of course is whether this is worth all that rote memorization (since no language I know is fully logical here - german's "Das Mädchen" \- girls are apparently of neutral gender - being a particularly egregious example).

<comment><USER9> The thing about this, though, is that it only works if you get lucky and none of your nouns share a gender. I feel like that undermines the argument at least a bit.

<comment><USER10> I feel like I could come up with some examples if I had kept up with German after high school. I remember it being difficult for a year or two, then it seemed more helpful as we got into more complex language mechanics. In any case, German felt more consistent than English, and most of the words just felt right with one gender or another (and in speech you could usually get away with something between "the" and "duh" if you weren't sure about der/die/das).

<comment><USER9> They are generally going to sound good together because the word and the pronoun co-evolved. If they didn't sound good together, either the pronoun or the word would have changed. That isn't about the gender being right so much as just the sound, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß)):

In German orthography, the grapheme ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˈʃaɐ̯.fəs ˈʔɛs], [ˈʃaː.fəs ˈʔɛs]), in English "sharp S", represents the [s] phoneme in Standard German, specifically when following long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels. The name Eszett represents the German pronunciation of the two letters S and Z.

It originates as the sz digraph as used in Old High German and Middle High German orthography, represented as a ligature of long s and tailed z in blackletter typography (ſʒ), which became conflated with the ligature for long s and round s (ſs) used in Roman type.

The grapheme has an intermediate position between letter and ligature. It behaves as a ligature in that it has no separate position in the alphabet. In alphabetical order it is treated as the equivalent of ⟨ss⟩ (not ⟨sz⟩). It also has no traditional capital form (although some type designers have introduced forms of "capital ß" de facto). It behaves like a letter in that its use is prescribed by orthographical rules and conveys phonological information (use of ß indicates that the preceding vowel is long).

<comment><USER12> This seems to be a poorly writen article for various reasons:

> The grapheme has an intermediate position between letter and ligature.

It might have been a ligature in the past, but it is definitely not a ligature today. A ligature is a purely typographical device that is completely interchangeable with the non-ligature variant. This is not the case with ß.

> It behaves as a ligature in that it has no separate position in the > alphabet.

Not having a separate position is not sufficient evidence that it is a ligature. ä, ö, ü also don't have separate positions when ordering stuff.

> It also has no traditional capital form (although some type designers have > introduced forms of "capital ß" de facto).

It had the same traditional from for almost 130 years. Yes, there are a few stylistic variations on the traditional forms, as well as some early experiments trying something completely different which have never been widely adopted.

> It behaves like a letter [...]

It is a letter, just like w is a letter, not a vv ligature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most commenters seem to be under the impression that German orthography gained a new letter, or that uppercase sharp S will be the norm. This is not the case. From the original article:

> The change doesn't mean that everyone now has to use a Capital Sharp S. The > previous spelling of replacing ß with SS in uppercase texts remains the > default for the time being.

The Council for German Orthography sanctioned the use of the uppercase ß. They just accepted the fact that it exits and is used. No more, no less.

That being said, I find it a bit ironic that at first Unicode had to bend over backwards to allow the strange surjective mapping that only German requires, only to later resolve to problem the easy way with the introduction of a new character. I mean it's probably the right thing to do, because both things are used in German, but on the other hand it introduces a lot of complications just for one very specific special case.

<comment><USER14> It's a bit more important than that, since ẞ didn't "exist" in official use before (if you have a name with ß, the spelling on your ID card can now use ẞ, instead of SS where its unclear if it is ss or ß, now it becomes valid in schools, ...), but yes, it's only an accepted variant now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article and comments are a bit misleading. The actual official document is a bit clearer:

> E3: Bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben schreibt man SS. Daneben ist auch die > Verwendung des Großbuchstabens ẞ möglich. Beispiel: Straße – STRASSE – > STRAẞE.

[http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Regeln_2017.pdf](http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Regeln_2017.pdf) (page numbered 29, page 27 of the PDF)

Roughly translated:

> When writing in uppercase one writes SS. Additionally the use of the > uppercase ẞ is also possible. Example: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE.

In other words, it's an officially blessed variant spelling. The new standard actually defines several variant spellings for cases that have been debated since the last reform, e.g. Delfin ("new") vs Delphin ("old"). It's a lot more forgiving, standardizing a lot of existing usage rather than making up arbitrary rules.

It's far more descriptive than the previous spelling reform some fellow Germans still like to bitch and moan about. The reason the capital sharp S is singled out as being newsworthy is mostly that it's one of the few additions; almost everything else is just establishing widespread non-standard variants as permissible.

</comment><comment><USER16> While the glyph is still missing from many fonts, Unicode 5.1 designated a code point for it:

U+1E9E ẞ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S

</comment><comment><USER17> I for one find this GROẞARTIG. Maybe not using umlauts or writing nouns in lower case is more efficient, but sometimes it feels good to have something like this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interestingly, this is the opposite as what happened in Spanish [1]

We had two extra letters, CH and LL that were just ligatures, so we dropped them and everyone is better off.

[1] [http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del- abeceda...](http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abecedario)

<comment><USER19> As other's have written already, ß is not simply a ligature. Since the orthography reform in the nineties it universally indicates that the preceding vowel is lengthened, dropping it would lead to a large amount of homophones. An example is Maße (measures) vs Masse (mass).

<comment><USER20> What a non-issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So when will we see it in string.toUpper()?

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't like it, it looks too much like B. At least lower-case version stands out among its lower-case peers, but the big one is the same size as B.

</comment><comment><USER23> Were words using ß ever spelled with sz? The ß is pronounced as sz (in German) and I think it's a ligature of old German shrift s which is a line when found in the middle of a word, and z. So again, were words like strasse, spelled as strasze and hence the ß? And then later it became ss as the sharp s?

Edit: OK nevermind. Other comments and wikipedia discuss this.

</comment><comment><USER24> "straße".toUpperCase() is still "STRASSE", though.

Wondering how any current i18n system will get out of this mess ;)

<comment><USER25> Hopefully this will motivate a libpango replacement written in Rust. :)

<comment><USER26> The Rust Evangelism Strikeforce is already gathering :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, I've read a few articles now but I'm left wondering: How do I enter the new character "ẞ" on a german keyboard? Pressing the key for "ß" \+ shift obviously doesn't work (it yields a questionmark).

(I used cut + paste to get the ẞ into this post)

</comment><comment><USER28> And how do I type thiß capital sharp S?

The Unicode input seems a little complicated :-/

CTRL + SHIFT + u1E9E = ẞ

<comment><USER29> On a Unix-like system with X11 and a compose key, I believe Compose + S + S should work (away from my computer, so can't test).

<comment><USER30> Do tell, which key is this "Compose"?

<comment><USER31> Depending on your keyboard layout, the key might be the "AltGr" key, or have an Apple logo, an MS logo or a penguin on it.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the hint. While neither of those keys seems to be the compose key on my linux, SHIFT + ALTGR + S workẞ here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And it has been in unicode since 2008. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_%E1%BA%9E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_%E1%BA%9E)

</comment><comment><USER33> ParselsprachebenutzerInnen feiern! ẞssssßs sss!

</comment><comment><USER34> So ß is finally out of β-test!

</comment><comment><USER35> First of all, it's not a 'sharp' s, as one can see compairing 'Maße' and 'Masse'. I doubt this will be used in practice. Many people nowadays are confused by last orthography rules and even write 'Straße' wrongly with double-s.

<comment><USER36> Well, it is commonly called "scharfes S" (sharp S), at least in Austria -- and I'm pretty sure in Germany too. I certainly plan to use it in practice, and have already started telling my friends and relatives about it. The substitution with "SS" always rubbed me the wrong way, since it should be "SZ". The capital "ẞ" solves that problem for me, and I no longer have more letters in the uppercase version of certain words, which is nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What a typographic disaster.

Making an uppercase version of a lowercase ligature was bad idea from the get go.

I suggest to type designers who want to add this symbol to do an SZ or SS ligature.

Caveat: I studied typography in another life.

<comment><USER15> It's not a ligature. It's not even a variant anymore. Yes, in orthography it's defined in contrast to "ss" but it is not acceptable to substitute "ss" for "ß" in names. Mesner, Messner, Meßner and Meszner are different names.

Typography is not just about making pretty shapes that work nice alongside each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Again, an unelected body decides on my mother tongue (the orthography reform of 1996 was the same, but more catastrophic).

The Rechtschreibrat is tasked with codifying existing changes to the language, not inventing something new.

Capital ß does not exist and never did. Before a few years ago when Unicode accepted it and a handful of designers played with it, there was exactly one documented occurence in hundreds of years of the language: the title page of one singular run of an orthography book in the GDR. The runs before and after that had SS.

I think there should have been an uprising (violent, if necessary) in 1996, but the ship has sailed. Very few people care about their language. Heck, most people get the simplest parts of orthography wrong and imitate English patterns (even the famous contatenative property is dying, people are just writing constituent words serially, with space in between).

Never forgive, never forget.

<comment><USER39> > I think there should have been an uprising (violent, if necessary) in 1996, > but the ship has sailed.

Lol you want a popular revolution over the Rechtschriebereform?

Strong contender for First World Problem hall of fame here.

<comment><USER38> You're a prime example of what I've talked about: people without any love for or sense of their language (whichever one in your case).

<comment><USER40> You say that as if it's an inherently bad thing. Different people have different passions, and assuming one's own interests are "more important" seems kind of ridiculous to me. Most people simply use their language to communicate, and nothing more.

<comment><USER38> Mother tongue isn't a hobby you choose. It's part of your identity and a core of your being.

That's why we consider the Turks eradicating the Kurdish language a human rights violation, but don't say the same thing when, say, a swimming pool closes.

<comment><USER41> > Mother tongue isn't a hobby you choose. It's part of your identity and a > core of your being.

How much it is a part of one's identity and a "core of one's being" is up to every specific person to decide, not for you to impose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> ASK HN: Why is this at the top of HN?

<comment><USER43> Because it was up voted.

HN likes linguistic things, and typographical things, and Unicode things, and this is all three. And the weird .toUpper behavior required by ß->SS is an old example of string-handling pitfalls that non-German programmers probably remember (and obviously German ones know about the issue!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Languages with priesthoods make me chuckle.

<comment><USER45> >Languages with priesthoods make me chuckle.

You'll likely be downvoted by the way you made your point, but there is a point to be made here. Native English-speakers, for instance, probably couldn't fathom there being an official body that makes decisions like this about the language. It just so happens that some of these official bodies make a point to stave off the influence of English on their respective languages (for better or worse - I won't argue either here).

<comment><USER46> Right, we don't have an academy of English. Instead we have several competing organizations publishing dictionaries and style guides to the same purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Arguments against:

ß is a ligature, one of ss. ffl is a ligature, but that doesn't mean FFL should have one too.

Just get rid of it. Switzerland did and they're managing just fine.

Capitalisation in Unicode for German locales is just a headache, and this really doesn't help.

How would one enter it on a keyboard?

Argument for:

ss is pretty much the same shape as SS, and Dutch has ij and IJ.

It's just an optional ruling, anyone can do whatever they want and as with the new orthography, they did. Prescriptive linguistics is useless anyway, especially over the past two decades in German-speaking regions.

<comment><USER48> It started out as a ligature of ſ and ʒ, forms of s and z that don't exist anymore today in German. And it became a letter like æ did. Also this happened at a time where z was pronounced differently from how it is pronounced today.

<comment><USER47> > It started out as a ligature of ſ and ʒ

I know that, but again prescriptive linguistics vs. descriptive and descriptive definitely says ss.

<comment><USER48> Ss is horrible because double consonants signify short preceding vocals in German. Yet ß is preceded by long vocals. If you want to replace it, then just with s.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accessing Google's Private Key - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ECCTLS/accessing-googles-private-key-c3d6f8226468 <comment><AUTHOR> Cloudflare Key Compromise: [https://twitter.com/ECCTLS/status/980661799539310592](https://twitter.com/ECCTLS/status/980661799539310592)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an April Fools joke, as his followup post notes.</comment>


The Insecure Elephant in the Room - <AUTHOR> https://casecurity.org/2019/10/10/the-insecure-elephant-in-the-room/ <comment><USER2> The TL;DR of this article is that you should have to pay for certificates and pay a lot for extended validation certificates because if everyone has a certificate the differentiation for trusted websites is diminished.

Its unsurprising that this is from an association of Certificate Authorities.

<comment><USER3> Fine. The author might have a financial interest in the outcome. But is he wrong? His data strongly suggests that the easy availability of DV certificates and the deprecation of EV certificates makes the creation of phishing sites far too easy.

<comment><USER4> The idea that paying for something somehow makes it more trust worthy is a bit of a farce, the whole system of commercial paid for certs was a bad idea, and is being propped up by those that have a financial interest in keeping it going.

EV certs cost a crazy amount, and the issuers tout an exhaustive validation process, but it isn't actually that hard to get a fake one issues. use a process very similar to one covered here ([https://www.cyberscoop.com/easy- fake-extended-validation-cer...](https://www.cyberscoop.com/easy-fake- extended-validation-certificates-research-shows/))

I think having the free SSL option has allowed a lot of sites to move to a more secure web.</comment></comment></comment>