Lenin was a mushroom - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom <comment><USER3> While reading the wikipedia article, I couldn't help thinking about two things: \- the Big Lebowski scene when Walter jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin and mixes Lenin with Lennon \- one thing I recently read about natural language processing [1]: "NLP began in the 1950s as the intersection of artificial intelligence and linguistics. (...) Early simplistic approaches, for example, word-for-word Russian-to-English machine translation,2 were defeated by homographs—identically spelled words with multiple meanings—and metaphor, leading to the apocryphal story of the Biblical, 'the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak' being translated to 'the vodka is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.' [1][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/)

<comment><USER4> Apt reference, but to be clear, it is Donny who jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin, and Walter who scornfully corrects him, "V.I. Lenin-- Vladimir Ilyich ULYANOV!"

<comment><USER5> Walter wasn't wrong, he was just... you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great :)

On a related note, someone posted a question to r/newzealand if it was true that having a vegetable garden is illegal in NZ[0]. The entire subreddit then spontaneously decided that indeed it was.

The deadpan was so well done, that it had lots of people actually confused, if not convinced!

r/OutOfTheLoop post "outing" the hoax: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the_new_zealand_antigardening_law_real_or_not/)

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_have_a_garden_in_new_zealand/)

<comment><USER7> the reason people ask this is because in america there are some cities that have outlawed gardens and types of plants you can plant in your front yard, it is insane. So the question is not that ridiculous but i am sure it seems ridiculous to new zealanders just like it laws banning gardens are ridiculous but they do exist

<comment><USER8> While I can't speak to garden state-laws, I can see some good reasons to outlaw poisonous plants in a garden that is accessible to children in a neighbourhood. Especially some of those cruel plants that look like they have good tasting berries that can in fact kill a five year old.

<comment><USER9> The laws in question are not about poisonous plants. It's about laws try to force people to have ornamental gardens rather than veggie patches to keep up the "tone" of the neighbourhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "one of the top regional functionaries stated that "Lenin could not have been a mushroom" because "a mammal can not be a plant.""

I love the the logic here. As though "Lenin was a bottle nose dolphin" would have been more plausible. Also did the Soviets have the same taxonomy as the west, meaning mushrooms would be fungi and not plants?

<comment><USER11> Fungi were plants in the west too until the early 80s. Anyone old enough to be making a speech on TV in 1991 would have probably thought of them as plants regardless of their country.

<comment><USER12> > Fungi were plants in the west too until the early 80s.

What brought about the change? Was some difference between them discovered or was it a matter of deciding that it would be more convenient to give them separate names?

<comment><USER13> Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.

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

<comment><USER14> Under "History" in that article:

 _> The close relationship between animals and fungi was suggested by Thomas Cavalier-Smith in 1987_

 _> Early phylogenies placed fungi near the plants_ [...]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The US today isn't in much of a different boat. Granted, a human being a mushroom is quite an extreme one, but I'm sure a well-crafted documentary reaching a wide enough audience could still have a deplorable impact. Here's a 2013 poll on conspiracy theories:

[http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-t...](http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy- theory-poll-results-.html)

I was in high school when one of the "moon landings were a hoax" documentaries made the rounds. A significant portion of my class was instantly converted by the documentary. I lost a little of my faith in humanity at that time, though much of it was quickly recovered thanks to an excellent math teacher who paid attention to his students, found out about the phenomenon, and dedicated half of a class to thoroughly debunking it.

<comment><USER16> When I grew up in Germany almost everyone seemed to believe that the moon landing was a hoax. In fact I was usually labeled as the crazy one by my peers for believing it actually happened.

<comment><USER17> It's still widely believed in Russia (more for the anti-American sentiment than particular veracity of the claim).

<comment><USER18> Man, if I was Russian I think I'd be even more likely to believe it happened than if I was American. I mean, given the propensity for governments over the years to call events American conspiracies, the fact that Russian leaders haven't ever said the landing was faked when they'd be gleeful to say it if it was is conspicuous.

<comment><USER19> It Was Broadcasted Live (or almost) In The USSR.

No Way, the Government of the USSR would have done that if they had any doubt about it being an hoax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Haha, hilarious, thanks for sharing.

I had to see this for myself.

Source:

Video, part1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU)

Video, part2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0)

The "revelation" occurs at 2m36s: [https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156](https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156)

<comment><USER21> That's a very short version.

I have a Lenin-grib.Sergey.Kuryohin.1991.avi with length of 1:33:11 on my PC.

<comment><USER22> Care to upload it? Since it was on Soviet television there isn't a copyright issue.

<comment><USER21> Pretty sure that broadcasting on soviet television does not remove copyright protection from the work. But there are many other almost complete versions on YT, so I uploaded it anyway:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4)

Also I see that owners of 4 music compositions in it will monetize it:

[https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png](https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the upload :P

There was no copyright during communism, there were no patents either. It's possible that archive footage has been purchased after the fall of the soviet union and now it's owned by some one.

And even today some public television does not restrict rebroadcasting including uploading it to sites like YouTube under certain circumstances.

<comment><USER21> There was:

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Авторское_право_в_СССР](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Авторское_право_в_СССР)

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

Anyway in 2012 Russia retroactively applied rules of the Bern convention to all RSFSR works by becoming the member of WTO.

<comment><USER22> That's an interesting read thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, I watched it on TV when I was 14 years old and shortly after USSR break up, obviously having no experience of mockumentaries before, having seen Lenin in the mausoleum few years earlier.. all that stuff was really mind blowing, even though it was hard to believe and raised mock suspicions - I remember I questioned my parents about it =)

<comment><USER24> > I remember I questioned my parents about it

What did they say?

Do you think any adults believed it?

You sounded confused rather than a believer.

<comment><USER23> Sure I didn't buy it, was just perplexed by the idea itself. I never seen anything so wacky on TV before.

My parents dismissed it right away and told me not to spend time watching that kind of rubbish. I doubt adults believed it, only those who'd fancy paranormal stuff. (All those UFOs, Bermuda triangle, fortune tellers were so ever popular in USSR those days).

<comment><USER8> Haha. For something equally funny, but more serious (in a way, although making fun of Lenin at the time is nothing to sneeze at), have a look at the work of "the Yes Men": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men)

Perhaps my favourite: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI)

"Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men" \- where they tricked media, including the BBC, into believing they were Dow Chemical spokespersons, and that Dow would take responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, after Dow bought Union Carbide.

[ed: some context: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA) ]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let us not forget the exceptional spaghetti harvest of 1957 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU)

Thanks, in part, to an unusual lull in population numbers of the notorious Spaghetti Weevil.

<comment><USER26> I am reminded of an advertisement for "compressed molecules" lager from the 80s. This is the only reference I can find:

[https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising- wa...](https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising-was-good-top- ten.html)

I was starting to think I'd imagined it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_\(radio_drama\))

<comment><USER28> Nice one, straight to the point! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg)

Here's the 55min version I've found - I think it's the longest one available on youtube.

Random phrases that I just had to translate to illustrate the whole tone of the video:

"Do you know that Quran allows jews to eat mushrooms only one day a week - <USER2> saturday?"

"So you would think that this is an ordinary small mushroom... Although really, it is a huge, spherical, energy-intensive, cosmological matter, spreading it's dome into open astral space. -- So where does it grow? -- Excellent question. The thing is, it grows nowhere. I reaches out and finds a human - see, it's mushrooms who are picking humans, not humans picking mushrooms."

"We are looking at a mushroom culture - not really a culture, but a geodynamic, geopolitic sphere of the mushroom world - as a certain telescopic object"

"A great group of mushroom geneticists work in the Nuclear Physics Institute."

"So, it's been said that mushrooms look like flaccid phalluses, so I thought that they carry within them a manly spirit - or corrupted manly spirit, actually, since they're flaccid."

</comment><comment><USER30> And this was just the first in the long line of hoaxes that included the world's largest pyramid (Ponzi?) scheme and legal homeopatics, which filled the faith vacuum left followed the dissolution of the union.

People had no clue that a TV can lie about "X happened" (rather than "X didn't happen"), what else you can do with money besides earn, buy and sell, and so on.

It was such a rich scam market.

<comment><USER31> It was not the first. It was after Allan Chumak made it to the TV. And after lots of other absurdity like teachings of Helena Roerich was thrown in to blow Soviet people's minds. Actually Kuryokhin was making fun of all of this, it's rather a parody than a genuine hoax.

<comment><USER30> Yep, should have said "one of the first". I was a kid during these times, so i don't quite remember the precise sequences, only that the onslaught worked kind of like a BS vaccine for the younger generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's up there with the great spaghetti tree hoax: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU)

"The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer..."

<comment><USER33> There is also the internet classic "Spiders on Drugs" although it drops the act half way through [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Gullibility research is an established area, as these things are important for selling products and getting people voted to office.

For example, things people believe about the EU will affect their vote on Brexit tomorrow. Here's an egregious example of a widely circulated totally false myth:

[http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp](http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp)

<comment><USER35> A quick keyword search for "cabbage" within EU legislation reveals 1273 documents:

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=cabbage&scope=EURLEX&type=quick&lang=en)

<comment><USER36> I looked at a few. I thought it was interesting that many of the ones I tried did not contain the word "cabbage", apparently they do some semantic matching which ends up including articles about cauliflower (which is a cabbage), endives and potatoes.

Also, the titles are hilarious:

 _Council Regulation (EC) No 969 /94 of 26 April 1994 fixing the basic price and the buying-in price for cauliflowers for the period 1 to 31 May 1994 _ [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31994R0969&rid=141)

 _Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1775 /93 of 2 July 1993 amending Regulation (EEC) No 2165/92 laying down detailed rules for the application of the specific measures for Madeira and the Azores as regards potatoes and endives_ [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31993R1775&qid=1466597258008&from=EN)

<comment><USER34> Those are quite short?

EU is for a large part an agricultural subsidy organization. The paperwork does cause a lot of overhead for the farmers, no doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the English wiki article is brilliant because the article itself is what it's describing.

Kuryokhin told a tall tale on the TV and people enjoyed its absurdity and humor. I would not say nobody believed it (you can find somebody who believes any given bs) but I'd bet the 11.25M number in the wiki is exaggerated many orders of magnitude. The whole statement of the article about many Soviet people falling for this is as true as that a lot of Americans believed that the film Borat is a documentary. Or, that Lenin was, indeed, a mushroom)).

</comment><comment><USER38> It was a very important step for people of USSR to understand that TV != truth. The movie was to the very point. Quite an important topic for USSR with an absolutely absurd statement just forces people to think and rely on their own judgement only. And it simple to do in this case.

Now people not just was given a freedom to think. Now it is a must. To think and to have OWN opinion.

</comment><comment><USER39> The artist/prankster, Sergey Kuryokhin was also a fabulous pianist

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA)

And quite possibly one of the greatest artists of 90s Russia.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am amused but not surprised and there this nothing unique about Russian people either.

Many times survival in society vastly depends on believing absurdity because cost to sticking to obvious truth could mean death. That is why women in Saudi Arabia were Hijab and take beating from husband even though for any sensible human being it should sound ridiculously stupid.

Americans are no different either. One has to only look at the irrational fear of guns, terrorists or Muslims that schools or media promotes on regular basis and sometimes well supported by laws too.

To give an example, one of my friends bought a simple bow and arrow to his kids who practiced in a safe environment of his backyard. The bow itself was not very powerful and the arrows did not have any harmful tips. So one day cops showed up on his door and claimed that the neighbor had complained.

The cops told the guy that a "Bow and arrow" is considered a "Gun" in California. A gun can be fired only in a range as per the law and what his kids just did was "discharging a firearm in an harmful manner". This is a felony that required them to arrest the father and send him to jail. What father had done was completely common sense thing. The law was absurd. The cops were gracious to let him go but later the father told me that if tomorrow anyone tells him that it is a felony to make barbecue in your backyard without FDA approval I might as well believe it.

</comment><comment><USER41> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU)

Is in Russian but has English subtitles

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone know the argument chain? I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible.

<comment><USER43> > I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible.

From the article:

> Soviet television had, up to that point, been regarded by its audience as > conservative in style and content. As a result, a large number of Soviet > citizens (one estimate puts the number at 11,250,000 audience members) took > the deadpan "interview" at face value, in spite of the absurd claims > presented.

I guess this had something to do with it? If people were used to TV being a certain way, and this "interview" was presented in the same way, then it would seem reasonable that it would be taken up in the same was as every other. Nothing (aside from content) made it stand out from other shows.

Saying that, the claim is crazy, and it does seem strange that it was seemingly accepted as truth. I wonder how a similar stunt could be attempted today, and what the reaction would be...

<comment><USER44> For a western analogue, try the BBC's spaghetti plantations.

<comment><USER45> or political correctness, as typically indoctrinated in school.

<comment><USER46> saying such things to this particular audience will result in massive downvotes.

<comment><USER47> With less variation it seems to result in someone complaining about their imaginary persecution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Has anyone ever classified forms of gullibility before? For example, is there a name for the form of gullibility that will make otherwise smart people believe ridiculous things if it reinforces their belief that they are smarter than everyone else?

</comment><comment><USER49> I've never heard of that before, pretty cool.

But now I've got the idea of trying to write lyrics for "Lenin Was A Mushroom" (to the tune of Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog) stuck in my head, but I can't because I have too much work to do today.

<comment><USER50> Haven't you heard? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A Parasite from Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Author(s): Alexei Yurchak Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 Published by: Stable URL: [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307) .

On Sci-Hub: [http://www.jstor.org.sci- hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview....](http://www.jstor.org.sci- hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307#)

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's one of the articles (JSTOR) referenced on the en Wikipedia page:

A Parasite from Outer Space:: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Alexei Yurchak Slavic Review Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333

[http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70....](http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307)

</comment><comment><USER53> "What I want to say here is that Lenin was not only a mushroom , but also a radio wave" (C)

</comment><comment><USER54> I for one believe that a person can turn into a mushroom: I have seen it on the TV.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w)

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't think many people believed it. Actually it was more of a satire than a hoax. A mockery of the BS wave that befell on gullible and unprepared audience upon Perestroika.

</comment><comment><USER55> I love how that official chose to correct the people: Don't worry everyone. Just remember that "a mammal cannot be a plant" and everything's going to be okay.

</comment><comment><USER56> Mario ( a working class plumber) made a career out of squishing mushrooms, to get the princess in the castle.

Once your deducation goes whack, you can never go back.

</comment><comment><USER57> Great to see Carlos Castaneda in this. The ultimate Troll and still good enough for New-Age ideologies.

</comment><comment><USER58> Now it's "Well I saw someone Facebook say that ... "taken as 100% truth.

</comment><comment><USER59> Ah the "Lenin Grib" story- tv announcers taken too seriously apparently...

</comment><comment><USER60> I read the headline and thought he was kept in the dark and fed excrement by Stalin.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wrote my dissertation on this

<comment><USER62> So would you mind sharing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> And yet his embalmed body was there all along for everyone to see.

<comment><USER64> If he wasn't a mushroom then, he probably is a mushroom now..

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> That's a well-known fact (as well as that Putin is a krab)

<comment><USER66> too bad there probably aren't enough russians here to understand that reference

<comment> mk-61 Quite enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Here's another clue for you all, The Walrus is Paul.

</comment><comment><USER68> Probably not a fungi to be around at least

</comment><comment><USER69> It reminds me of the Yip Harburg song:

        Napoleon's a pastry
        Bismarck is a herring
        Alexander's a crème de cacao mixed with rum
        And Herbie Hoover is a vacuum

        Columbus is a circle and a day off
        Pershing is a square, what a pay-off
        Julius Caesar is just a salad on a shelf
        So, little brother, get wise to yourself

        Life's a bowl and it's full of cherry pits
        Play it big and it throws you for a loop
        That's the way with fate, comes today, we're great
        Comes tomorrow, we're tomato soup

(See [http://genius.com/Lena-horne-napoleon-lyrics](http://genius.com/Lena- horne-napoleon-lyrics) )

</comment><comment><USER70> Who wasn't? I am glad Lenin became a normal corpse, and I grief it has low buryability.

</comment><comment><USER71> In communist Russ Golden Teacher B+'s YOU!</comment>


Snowden's Asylum: 'It's the law, stupid' - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/2013841016657318.html <comment><USER2> Obama's cancellation of the summit with Putin over Russia's granting of asylum to one individual must be the most impotent foreign policy action for a quite a while.

To maintain a bit of American dignity, at least Obama could have pretended that catching a 30 year old hacker was less important than improving the relationship between the two largest military powers on the planet.

I can only see the move explained as internal American politics.

<comment><USER3> You do realize that is only one if the many reason why the meeting was canceled? Theres a long laundry list of other, and more important, reasons. Also, Putin has canceled the three previous meetings including two when he was in the US.

<comment><USER4> Obama wanted to brand Snowden as a traitor, ignoring the detail, subtlety and nuances involved in the case. Black and while, Snowden is a traitor. Yes?

Now, Russia gives Snowden temporary asylum, so in retaliation, Bush.... sorry, Obama cancels meeting with Putin. Black and white, yes? Let us, wipe out the detail and nuance. That is the rules, right?

So if Snowden is to be branded a traitor, Obama can be branded a petulant, entitled, pampered, sulky, embarrassed, teen-aged child who is used to getting his own way, and will throw toys out of the pram when mommy says "no".

Point being, this business of dirty tricks PR bites both sides. If Obama and co want us to see Snowden as a black and white traitor, we are perfectly entitled to state that the Putin meeting is canceled because of the Snowden asylum, and ignore and of the other details.

Or US politics could grow up. The US gov could admit over reach. It could thank Snowden and hail a new era of openness. It could redefine its role with people, all people not just precious Americans, (we are all equal, right?) and stop defaulting to treating them all like potential criminals, communists, terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles.......

<comment><USER5> FWIW Obama's cancellation of the summit is getting rave reviews from basically every major paper I've looked at. Conservative-leaning ones think Obama should go farther, liberal-leaning ones seem to acknowledge that Obama has gotten nothing from trying and it's time to quit proving Einsteinian insanity correct.

All of them note that there was way more going into this decision than Snowden; his was the proverbial straw on the camel's back.

<comment><USER4> Sounds all a bit "USA, USA, USA", rather than any sort of intelligent logic. I think the article this thread is based on pretty much explains that.

Any US folk considered how hard it is for the rest of the planet to reconcile US political and international posturing with normal international relations and the idea of the rule of law?

<comment><USER5> > idea of the rule of law?

The idea that you think Russia's actions have to do only with the rule of law, but that the U.S.'s actions have _nothing_ to do with the rule of law, is kind of surprising in my view.

Russia could have legally opted to decline the asylum request without extraditing Snowden. I.e. "We won't arrest him but he has no permission to leave the transit zone. Good luck convincing him to fly home".

In the same vein, even if you agree that _all_ of Snowden's disclosures are in the public interest he still broke the law, and knew he broke it.

If I were to take it upon myself to have shot Ariel Castro, for instance, I would likely still be charged with murder or manslaughter, even if I had known he was kidnapping women.

But let's say that Snowden should be completely pardoned for leaking PRISM. The U.S. government would still have grounds to charge him for leaking details about hacking in China, which certainly did not benefit the American public.

And that, at this point, is all we're talking about. Charges to be sorted out, and if some of those stick, sentences to be determined by factoring in _mitigating circumstances_. That is hardly evidence of a government rampaging through the international scene, as that is all quite standard material for extradition negotiations. Things like grounding Bolivia's jet are examples of roughshodding! But not this here.

But that's the thing. This isn't _strictly_ about rule of law. This is about Putin using the club of anti-Americanism to improve his stature at home. If Putin _really cared_ about "human rights" then why is Pussy Riot still in prison? Why is it illegal to mention the idea of homosexuality to those poor impressionable Russian youths?

It's not about human rights. It's about politics, just as much as Republicans used to beat the drum of the "welfare queen" to advance their own position.

Accordingly, American papers are not very happy to see America used as a convenient punching bag to advance Russian interests, even where they support Snowden's overall point about surveillance, because they realize that the world _is not binary_.

<comment><USER6> I live outside the USA and there's two messages to be heard out of the USA: \- "We'll catch this guy and kill him" and \- "Give him up, or else..."

The US administration sounds like a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath to the rest of the world, a psychopath who's still holding the Obama agenda to "protect whistleblowers" in their hands even while they make threats and act crazy.

Meanwhile inside the USA the highly predictable campaign to discredit the source is underway, with all the media happily participating, and nobody asking any questions.

We expect these things from a country like Russia or China. We don't expect them from the beacon of democracy, the USA. It means the USA pretty much _is_ Russia right now. Maybe a little less bad - fewer dissidents get killed (Hastings, anyone?). But overall, same thing.

Putin knows this and they play exactly that angle. Idiotic behavior on the side of the US administration makes that just soooo easy.

<comment><USER5> > The US administration sounds like a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath to the > rest of the world

No offense but if this is really what you hear then there is _absolutely nothing_ the U.S. could do or proclaim that would change your mind, or that of the world.

So in that regard why worry about what the world thinks anyways? The world will hear what they _want_ to hear, nothing more or less.

You need only look at the people comparing American human rights to Russian ones, or saying that the NSA is evil when they spy but the German BND "are not actually spying domestically and besides, they're incompetent".

The world has already decided, but let's not act like it's a completely evidence-based decision that was made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In the age of digital wonders, more than ever we are dependent upon the vigilance of citizens of conscience to protect us against Orwellian scenarios of those many wannabe Darth Vadors lurking in the murky depths of the governmental bureaucracy..."

This is probably the most sober assessment of the current situation which is both optimistic and depressing simultaneously. The technology has reached a point to make a snooper's wildest dreams come true but at the same time there are more and more ways to get information about wrong-doing out into the open and to discuss it which hopefully results in action to correct it.

The awkward part of the Surveillance Age is that permanent vigilance is very difficult to sustain and any lapse or general complacency will be immediately taken advantage of. Keeping governments in check now appears to be a 24/7 task.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I am an eternal optimist but in my opinion, it's impossible to keep all that crazy stuff under wraps for long - information wants to be free, and it will get out one way or another.

The USA is in a very bad situation thanks to the media's lock-step with the government, and all is controlled by big business. You'd think there is no way out. But at the same time, certain rights like the right to free speech do not go away.

In times of great despair, great help arrives. This is why I think new channels of communication apart from TV and newspapers will arise. New channels that will not be owned by big business. HN readers will probably laugh at the notion - hey, maybe the ...internet? Yeah I know - but it seems like mass media still has a huge influence and, now, in 2013, still defines "public opinion". What's on TV is what's true.

We have all the tech to change that, and I think it will change. Even though it hasn't so far. Some new way of determining AND making the public opinion will arise. I look forward to it (and if I can help enable it, I will)

<comment><USER8> >Maybe I am an eternal optimist but in my opinion, it's impossible to keep all that crazy stuff under wraps for long

It was kept under wraps for a long time. Those IRS training materials which mentioned DEA/SOD intercepts were from 2005-2007. Each of the little pieces needed to understand what's going on has been available for a long time, but we all collectively failed to put it together[1].

>In times of great despair, great help arrives.

In comic books.

[1] Some of of us managed to put it together, but they were crazy tinfoil-hat types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not particularly pro- or anti-Snowden, and I'm no fan of the Russian government, but I think this article is correct.

Imagine the reverse case - a Russian government agent reveals massive and pervasive, questionably legal surveillance by the FSB approved by secret courts and without proper political oversight. Said Russian arrives in the US and applies for political assylum. It would be appalling not to grant it, while obviously allowing Russia to pursue normal legal channels to apply for extradition.

<comment><USER10> What this episode has shown, is that a surprising number of Americans (also commenters here in Hacker News) seem to lack that kind of sense of symmetry.

EDIT: Also some people responding to this comment (whoa).

<comment><USER11> Whilst I acually agree with simonh's point, there's nothing like an actual symmetry here. Russia is, and always has been, a far more oppressive state than the US ever has been.

<comment><USER12> Have you any evidence to back up this claim? I would wager that the list of countries attacked, invaded or 'freed' as they like to say, is way higher for the USA than Russia. That in my book makes the USA much more oppressive than Russia.

<comment><USER11> Yes, my evidence is the whole history of Russia from the Tsars, through communism, to post communism, plus the history of the US from the War of Independence onwards.

The US played a huge role (though not _quite_ as much as Americans would like to think!) in freeing Western Europe from Nazism, freeing Asia from Imperial Japan and freeing Eastern Europe from communism. It played a huge role in reconstructing Europe after WWII and I guess the same is true of Japan.

Unfortunately the HN mix of American libertarians and European liberals is rather myopic on this issue.

<comment><USER13> > freeing Western Europe from Nazism

Here I was thinking it was "World War II" not "America saves the world II".

> freeing Asia from Imperial Japan

Yeah Russia had NOTHING to do with that one (except for pushing them out of china, and being as pivotal as the US bombing of Japan in it's ultimate surrender).

> freeing Eastern Europe from communism

Because communist are evil and all that other crap US propaganda teaches us.

> It played a huge role in reconstructing Europe after WWII and I guess the > same is true of Japan.

Well yeah, it played a huge role in destroying them as well...

Any more cherry picking you'd like to ad to that list? Invented freedom perhaps?

<comment><USER14> The USSR/Warsaw Pact was evil. I don't think you can even debate that, unless you want to claim Hitler and Pol Pot were misunderstood as well.

<comment><USER15> I've got some bad news for you about the US and Britain. I assume you know about Churchill's prefered method for dealing with 'uncivilized tribes', poison gas?

<comment><USER11> I don't understand the line of argumentation that, because one entity is (partly) very bad it can't be much better than another entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In essence, the US government (not it's people) could be regarded as the global bully. It's probably because bullying works and is economical. It makes sense for them and the world where the US would have to apologize for it's behaviour is not the world we live in, no matter how much we would want to.

But isn't it also a slight sign of weakness? Comparing to China, it's apparent that US more often resorts to bullying tactics. Especially if you count in military operations in that spectrum. If the US were an economical power the bullying would not be more economical than a more long-term, silent and behind the scenes overtaking of the global economy. Which is what China is engaged in and US has been in the past.

<comment><USER17> Historically speaking, it's hard to find a nation that with broad power outside its own borders that has _not_ used that power to bully others.

<comment><USER18> And also historically speaking, nations with the kind of relative power that the United States has have behaved far, far worse towards other countries. There are things the US could improve upon, but the bar has been set impressively low by those who have held power before (including the United States of years past).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ot to a point, I will be real curious if Time gives serious consideration to Snowden as its man of the year.... let alone the boys in Sweden.

back ot

I said awhile back, Snowden fate is purely up to Putin, disclaim it all he wants but if Putin found advantage to shipping him home it would happen. Russia is far worse than the US when it comes to rights, but the US deserves the embarrassment it receives from this to include the obvious snub of the White House by Putin. The people who should be most embarrassed of their behavior are the press, but they are so in bed with politics now that reporting like that occurred with the Washington Post in the seventies cannot occur today.

<comment><USER20> The Nobel peace prize is actually given out by a committee nominated by the Norweigian parliament. Alfred Nobel did'nt trust his countrymen in this matter.

<comment><USER21> It should be noted that Norway and Sweden were in a personal union at that time – a union that wasn't dissolved until 1905.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The idea of protesting the Olympics in Russia while we merrily went to China would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

Many bad things the Russians do, we do right here. If it's a contest for stupid, evil behaviors, we would only come out slightly ahead, certainly not win any race for humanity.

And by the way, Russia has nuclear weapons still pointed at us - thousands of them. Canceling ANY kind of talks is a bad idea, you never know the mentality of someone behind the button.

<comment><USER23> >Russia has nuclear weapons still pointed at us - thousands of them. Canceling ANY kind of talks is a bad idea, you never know the mentality of someone behind the button.

Wow, talk about a Cold War throwback.

I do know their mentality: very much the same as ours. The Russians weren't "irrational crazies" after WWII, and they aren't now.

<comment><USER22> Wasn't even implying they are crazy, after all USA also has thousands of nukes pointed all over the world too.

I am saying any two countries with such powerful weapons pointed at each other's citizens should always be talking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In 5 years time Snowden will get fed up of the constant games and finally gives himself up to the US government out of sheer boredom. Then he will get shoved into a small cell, Kevin Mitnick style for 15 years. After great expense will it have been worth it ? I mean for the American people ? All those tax dollars wasted.

Why isn't anyone holding the government to account for all the bad things that Snowden _told the truth_ about ?

<comment><USER25> Are you kidding me, why would he give himself up?

History is not on your side, most exiles or refugees live all their lives in exile.

<comment><USER24> I think you'll find that there is a big difference between the people who planned and willingly went into exile and those who had no choice.

Of course he wouldn't want to give himself up.

You've missed the point though. The US government is directing the world media on the chase for Snowden and keeping them distracted; no one is remotely close to being held accountable for the things that Snowden leaked about.

"You told everyone that _we_ had done something wrong, and now you're going to have to go to jail to make up for it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish that somebody (Michael Moore perhaps?) would make a great documentary on the topic of the surveillance state that everyone watches. (And on the seemingly broken American political system, as well.)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of the best articles I have read on this subject yet.

<comment><USER27> Yeah. A breath of fresh air, as they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This about sums it up, yes.

</comment><comment><USER29> > and a moral and political duty not to do so, especially in the circumstances > surrounding the controversy over Snowden.

What? Moral duty not to do so? Howso?

</comment><comment><USER30> Snowden's future directly affects us all. If he was incarcerated against the will of other powerful countries, it would send a strong message that personal freedom is a thing of the past, and that if you do the right thing at the expense of the government, you will be hunted down and punished.

I would really like to see Snowden being more vocal and discussing his beliefs more. I think he could be a very powerful leader in the fight for privacy and policies that restrict the government's snooping activities.</comment>


Your Time Estimate Is a Joke - <AUTHOR> https://www.jesuisundev.com/en/your-time-estimate-is-a-joke/ <comment><USER2> The crux of the problem with agile. Agile has poisoned the industry, we got many products launched before agile without problems. It wasn't waterfall either. People had areas of ownership, you might give a rough time estimate so the stake holders had some idea of how long it would take. Or you were hired for a contract where you had a set of requirements and a 6 or 9 month length of contract to complete them. Under agile you attempt to micro manage when the managers are technically clueless by design its the worst train wreck ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> we can only be accurate in estimating when we have the same task in same environment and same condition. but it's not a joke. it's nature, and in my opinion its better to give yourself an extra hour than be in a hurry and fail</comment>


Great tools for bug tracking, and then some - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, this definitely feels like a "just google it" question, but I didn't come across good discussion on this yet.
what do you use for issue tracking and metrics?
I've used clearcase extensively, and its WAY too detailed and complicated to use. its nice to have the features, but when you have to jump through a dozen dialogs and checkboxes just to send a bug to testing or change the status to 'in progress', its way too much work. ontime seems to be the same. you know what I mean. a tool that isn't easy to use isnt going to get used no matter how many features it has.
basecamp is pretty great, but its too highlevel. I cant see developers using it to worry about branches of code and releases and bugs.
so basically, I need a tool that is somewhere in between basecamp, msproject/clearcase/ontime, is properly usable for devs.
I know its out there. <comment><USER2> Check out Gemini from CounterSoft

<http://countersoft.com>

Two videos that may help you get a feel for it:

<http://countersoft.com/webcasts/gemini/planner/planner.html> [http://countersoft.com/webcasts/visualstudio/VisualStudio201...](http://countersoft.com/webcasts/visualstudio/VisualStudio2010/VisualStudio.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/>

looks really cool. anybody using this?</comment>


Ask HN: Having problems with sleep disorder, what to do next? - <AUTHOR>

I was sleeping at 6am until 11am for a long time, as another "cool" kid I thought working midnights are better (maybe true, no one disturbs from work). But now I am having problem with sleep excessiveness, even though I am going to sleep at 11pm and can get up at 7am, not feeling fine and again going to sleep until 11, 12. What to do next, it really hurts my life now? <comment><USER2> This question really helps me a lot to reset my sleep cycle. I also have difficulties on sleeping from time to time, and the video from Anonymous (second-top voted answer) especially helpful. Hope this helps!

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-reset-ones- sle...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-reset-ones-sleep-cycle)

</comment><comment><USER3> You should go to a doctor. Sleep is complicated and extremely important for your health. They will help you. There is a book called something like _The Harvard Medical School 's Guide to a Good Night's Sleep_. You could check it out for an overview, but not in place of seeing a doctor.

Also, don't use a computer or any other illuminated screen in bed (or ideally an hour before you sleep).

</comment><comment><USER4> The main things that ever helped for me are regular meal times, regular wake up time, gentle relaxation exercise before bed and a sleep monitor app on my phone. Phase change is a common issue with tech people. Some prefer to shift later and later and wrap around to the target schedule. Ultimately your body should tell you if things are going wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> See a doctor certified in sleep medicine. Sleep is a delicate habit that can be tough to fix. The consequences of poor sleep are huge. Frequently broken sleep is a warning sign of other health problems.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like you may have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome - a condition where you circadium rhythm is later. I've had this since, well, birth =). Always had difficulty sleeping at normal times and am naturally a night-owl.

Doesn't matter what I do, if I wake up before Mid-day I generally feel quite tired until the evening. Likewise I can be awake for 24 hours straight and come evening on the next i'm still raring to go.

</comment><comment><USER7> Doctors don't bite, you know.</comment>


SpaceX has flown its third "flight proven" rocket - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/wednesday-launch-attempt-could-validate-spacexs-flight-proven-rockets/ <comment><USER2> I know we will probably never get to see this (or at least not in the near future) but I would love to see the cost to reuse.</comment>


Rage Against the Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/rage-against-the-algorithms/280255/

<comment><USER2> An especially interesting thing about machine learning algorithms is that even understanding the algorithm itself will often tell you nothing about its biases: the biases often come from the training data. The article talks about this a little bit, but I think it's a very important point for programmers in particular. For one, this means that even an open source algorithm, with the best intentions, might have significantly detrimental biases.

This also explains why I _personally_ do not find machine learning satisfying. It's obviously very useful, and I'm not making a judgement about the field, but I just find solving a problem with machine learning to often feel empty. You get a solution, sure, but you get no additional insight on the problem itself. And I'm often far more interested in this insight than in any given problem itself.

I certainly find the underlying principles fascinating, but that fascination usually does not translate to whatever field machine learning is used for. Writing a system for identifying cat pictures will teach you quite a bit about "identifying", but not very much about cats.

Ultimately, all this just means that you have to pay attention to what your machine learning algorithm is doing _right now_ , even if you understand the algorithm itself really well.

<comment><USER3> > An especially interesting thing about machine learning algorithms is that > even understanding the algorithm itself will often tell you nothing about > its biases

A related problem is that many (most?) machine learning algorithms cannot tell you WHY they make the decisions or classifications that they do. Suppose you are a bank, using a neural net to decide on credit applications, and the net turns down an applicant. You are required by law to tell them why they were denied credit.

How do you do that for a neural net?

I can think of one way: try tweaking their application until it passes, and then derive an explanation from that. For instance, if you find that they would pass if they made $20k/year more income, you tell them they were rejected because their income was too low. I have no idea if that would be sufficient to satisfy the legal requirements, though.

<comment><USER4> Well you don't train the algorithm to just give you Yes/No. You tell it to give you

a) Yes, SUPER green

b) Yes, Green

c) mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyeah, ok, but watch this guy

d) please review manually

e) no, too many other loans

f) no, but maybe yes, with more collateral

g) no, convicted felon

h) no, unemployed

i) no, your wife has a billion loans

j) no, insufficient money down

k) ...

(there's like 300 or so different reasons in practice)

So the inputs to the neural net would be all the information you know about the applicant, appropriately encoded. Then you sprinkle hidden layers to personal taste, and the output layer would be a->i binary neurons.

<comment><USER5> True, but I believe the argument still stands for other ML algorithms, such as support vector machines. There is no way to query directly why the SVM maps an instance to a label.

<comment><USER6> It seems like in SVM the best way to find out 'how to pass' is to find the shortest path from your point in the feature space to the separating hyperplane. The length of that vector in each axis explains how much you need to change to cross the threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing about not auto-correcting abortion is, I speculate, actually because it'd be really unpopular if other misspellings were mis-corrected to read abortion. I think there's likely a short blacklist of words that are in the dictionary but aren't auto-corrected to.

</comment><comment><USER8> > A recent survey found that 76 percent of consumers check online reviews > before buying

Bullshit.

<comment><USER9> I normally disagree with this type of comment, but based on the actual survey they refer to [1], you appear to be correct. The most probable way I see that they've come to this number is by using the other side of "24% of consumers never use online reviews". The rest of the data is "27% of consumers regularly use online reviews" with the remaining 49% checking occasionally.

The way the statement is worded, I feel that many would read it as "A recent survey found that 76 percent of consumers _regularly_ check online reviews before buying" even if that's not how it's written. A better statement would make the breakdown of regular vs. occasional checkers clear.

That said, single word comments don't add much to the conversation. As stated, and if the survey is to be believed, the line is factually correct even if it is misleading. I'm not sure if "bullshit" refers to how you interpreted the statement or the results of the survey. Without clarifying your objection, though, it will likely be ignored by most.

[1] [http://searchengineland.com/study-72-of-consumers-trust- onli...](http://searchengineland.com/study-72-of-consumers-trust-online- reviews-as-much-as-personal-recommendations-114152)

Edit: added link to the survey

<comment><USER10> I think Theriac25's "bullshit" was reference to the fact that 86% of statistics are either made up on the spot, or fudged data from non- representative samples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More transparecy into credit scoring algorithms would be nice.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get a job in Tech industry without long education? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently trying to find startups or companys that are looking for young, creative and engaging people but without any education. I'm 20 years old, live in Barcelona and have no education related to IT what so ever but have been building websites and web apps since I was young. I've provided examples for jobs that I've applied to but every time, my lack of education seems to ruin it for me.<p>My question is as the title, how can I get the first stepping stone experience within the tech industry when all positions require long education? <comment><USER2> I know how you feel, diggan. Go to my startup's About Us section on our website (which I develop! <http://cyberialabs.coldstream.ca> ) and read my bio (my IRL name is Kimberly Crawley). I have a mere CompTIA A+, but like you, I have a self-taught web development background (since 1995, age 11). I've done some consumer tech support (Windows, x86 hardware). But it was really tough for me to get my tech support job (it was before I got my A+, even!), where we weren't paid much and treated like crap. Now, my only real employment is in my co-founded IT security/data centre startup. We got our first client (few days ago) but our business has yet to have revenue (we're getting there pretty soon, first client). In addition to everything else, I'm a woman. One who looks even more feminine than average. I've got to fight tooth-and-nail to be taken seriously in this "boy's club" industry. At least my fiance and co- founder is a Computer Scientist (who, even with his amazing IT security career, including working for the military and international public transit systems, and contributing to data security laws here in Canada), finds it tough to make money these days, hence our startup. I'd gladly take you on, especially if you have some skills outside of web development, and you can remote into our work in Toronto, Canada and South Africa. We could pay you once we start making SOME money... I'd have to learn more about you though, honesty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your response Kimberly! I've sent a reply via email to you at your coldstream.ca address with some more information about myself and how I look at things.

Thanks once again for the opportunity!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think your best shot, if you don't care about the money short term, would be in trying to get a traineeship job; here in Germany for instance most companies are always willing to take extremely cheap employees regardless the background, as long as you show you can do stuff, and a 6 months traineeship at a middle sized company would do wonders to your chances to find you a job afterwards, imho.

Other than that, either find a friend/relative who could recommend you to a company, or make money on your own, for example by building a small web SaaS and charging for usage, since you seem to have the tech skills for it, and what is not technical (e.g. how to charge customers, how to set up a business) is trivial to learn with a bit of research on the internets.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you have a portfolio of work. If it's quality work you can use it to get a good job. Follow these steps - Find the right companies to target, locate the hiring manager (not HR) and develop your personal marketing campaign. People get hired to solve problems. Use your marketing campaign to show that you know the problems the hiring manager is facing and offer solutions. Done well, it leads to that all important interview, - As a veteran CEO, I developed this process to help people in your position get a job.

Stay the course!

www.mycareeraccelerator.com

Bob Prosen CEO -The Prosen Center

</comment><comment><USER5> I make 6 figures as a software engineer with an English degree. I used my freelance portfolio and experience in a different field (test prep) to land a job at an educational tech startup. I then used that experience to apply for the next job, and so on. Try to find a company in a field where you have non tech experience and get them to hire you as a developer. A CS degree is not as useful as someone who gets the industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Try to find a company in a field where you have non tech experience and get them to hire you as a developer."

How can I get a company to hire me as a developer without any real experience?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feel free to shoot me an email (address in my profile); depending upon the languages you know, I may have some work for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've sent away a email to you, explaining my current skills and what skills I'm trying to evolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> one simple rule: be cheap.

don't ask for a salary that will make the graduate seem more appealing. after you gain experience, ask for a higher salary.

<comment><AUTHOR> The salary isn't really the thing I'm after. I just want to build things that people use...

To gain the experience, I need a job which gives me experience. And to get this job so I can get some experience, I already need experience.

<comment><USER7> from my experience I can tell you, that employers can trade your lack of experience for a lower wage.</comment></comment></comment>


Happy New Year in Your Time Zone - What's your resolution? - <AUTHOR> Since we all live in different time zones, I wanted to post this now.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
In America, we have a tradition of making New Year's resolutions. What one thing are you going to do better this coming year, that you know you have to improve? And how are you going to do it? <comment><USER2> Some questions:

* does it bother you when you say stock phrases such as "HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!"?

* does it make sense to have resolutions once a year at the same time as everyone else?

* what exactly is the new year a celebration of for most people? The fact that humanity is still here? Or perhaps the making of resolutions? Something religious?

* what do studies say about how effective the making of resolutions is and whether they improve society overall?

<comment><USER3> * does it bother you when you say stock phrases such as "HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!"?

No, it allows me to simply respond with a stock answer and move on with my day.

* does it make sense to have resolutions once a year at the same time as everyone else?

Yes, Life is long. Having a sprint last a year makes sense. It is also easier for people to reflect and major changes in their life on natural boundaries like a new years, 20th, 30th, 40th... birthday.

* what exactly is the new year a celebration of for most people? The fact that humanity is still here? Or perhaps the making of resolutions? Something religious?

I will speak for most people; they are celebrating the past years accomplishments, friends they made, places they have gone, things they have experienced...

* what do studies say about how effective the making of resolutions is and whether they improve society overall?

It is not a time for research... it is a time for drinking late into the night while coding your next project.

2010 kicked ass, but now it is on to the next one!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My resolution: 1024x600.

Seriously though, I have a project that I've been putting weekends/nights/vacations into for a couple weeks, that's going to make me some money next year.

<comment><USER5> That's one small-ass screen.

<comment><USER4> Netbook. Goes everywhere with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in the UK. We're do the same - although often people break them!!! My wife and I have done 'goals' for the year. I'd say 50% of them are easily achievable, but things we want to 'get done' and 50% of them would be a stretch. It's amazing that by writing them down how many times we achieve things by focusing on what we want to do in that year. Some years we are way way off, but then that's just amusing.

For me, I'll not bore you too much but I want:

1) To learn Python. Sounds a bit boring I know but I'm primarily a business guy these days, though I taught myself PHP years ago so that I could converse and work better with the team of coders I work with

2) To focus on 3 products I want out the door. Not to go off chasing new shiny things!!

3) To meditate more, do yoga to a better level and become a vegetarian (an odd one to some people I know, but its a goal I have!)

Irrespective to what I want to achieve, I'd like to say thank you to everyone on HN. I've been on this site since the beginning and whilst I don't know any of you guys personally it is a wonderful community and I have learned (and continue to learn) loads about tech, but also a much more rounded group of topics.

May I wish you the very best for this coming year both on a personal level and also for what you choose to do in terms of work.

</comment><comment><USER7> New Year's Day now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. ~Mark Twain

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions! ~ Joey Adams

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. ~ Oscar Wilde

A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other ~ Anonymous

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am going to get organized by using project management tools, make sure the finances are in place for my company to operate comfortably, so I have lots of time to meet with people and create new opportunities. And hopefully that will free up more time to spend with the people that matter to me the most.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1920x1080. There's no substitute.

<comment><USER9> well, except for 2560x1600 of course..

<comment><USER10> or 5760 x 1080... (<http://i.imgur.com/bSxMQ.png>)

<comment><USER11> I don't see why it's worth paying so much money just to be able to do your normal work and see a Windows logo all day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So what do you hope to accomplish if you do these resolutions?

</comment><comment><USER12> Double down my investment of time in things I love doing.

</comment><comment><USER13> My resolution: Write more Scala ;-)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Build and publish my first real app

2) Cut the beer consumption

3) Lose weight (already lost about 10 pounds in about a month due to beginning #2 early)

4) Begin regular exercise (I already started semi-regular walking but then weather suddenly went to -25C and 60 cm of snow...)

5) 1280x1024 and sometimes 2560x1024</comment>


Samsung Galaxy S III Review and price in India - <AUTHOR> http://techdistance.com/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-review-and-price-in-india/

<comment><USER2> Cons listed are '8MP primary camera', and 'Not released yet'

How are either of those cons?</comment>


Why our team cancelled our move to microservices - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/why-our-team-cancelled-our-move-to-microservices-8fd87898d952 <comment><USER2> Micro-services are not a magic bullet.

That said a it's fairly common too have need to cross services -- to have something aware of all services to coordinate some aspect. That thing, itself, could be a micro-service that helps you split up everything else.

Of course, it's much easier to build as a micro-service than to convert to micro service. It sounds like this article had a lot of coupled services to start with, so going to micro-services was not just isolating components but rewriting a lot of business logic

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

The project can be done by a small dedicated team though.

Many teams require support past development life cycle, so I could see a small team upgrading and passing support back to the original product owners.

It seems the politics for this type of move was too costly, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There were a number of red flags indicating that microservices were not a good fit here:

> Microservices had been sold to us [...]

It seems no one really understood the benefits or costs--somewhat understandable as there's no learning better than doing.

> Building on top of a third-party impacted how we could divide our domain > into microservices.

Usually the features come together at the top where the user is, in this case it may be both the top and bottom.

> We couldn't identify any obvious candidates in our monolith to be broken out > into a microservice. So instead, we started drawing arbitrary lines between > our domain models

This is how most first-time microservices designs fail drawing boundaries around 'nouns'. With each being a source of truth for information needed in many contexts. A microservice should be one of these contexts and the data it needs from each 'noun' source separately from serving requests.

> We have approximately 12 developers spread across 2 feature teams

This is the biggest red flag. The primary advantage of microservices is for scaling teams so each can deliver independently. With only 2 pizza-sized teams there's not much point.

There may still have been a useful feature that could be extracted into a microservice if given more consideration. Think along the lines of 'what has to change a lot for a particular recurring reason' might point somewhere. Another way is if there's a mixture in the tech stack, e.g. search is often split off.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you run a book store, it is a good practice to define some way to categorize your books.

But what if you pick a weird criteria for categorization and end up with 10000 different sections? That is almost as bad as having each book have its own category.

What if you consistently end up with books that are fundamentally different in every way in the same categories? that's almost as bad as completely random categories.

And the same can happen with software. What goes into a service must be consistent and make sense.</comment>


Edward Snowden says it's your 'duty' to install ad blockers - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/11/17/edward-snowden-says-its-your-duty-to-install-ad-blockers/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link#BkfDRPKzRuqy <comment><AUTHOR> Ironically, this site presents a huge ad at its top that makes reading on a small laptop a challenge until the ad disappears.

<comment><USER2> "Edward Snowden Says X" has become pretty effective clickbait.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to deny that he says smart things that make sense, that's probably why. Whatever people may think about what he did, he remains quite an intelligent fellow with a good knowledge of relevant matters.

<comment><USER2> It's also hard to deny he's become a brand, and most of what's attributed to him, now, comes second and third-hand from sources with a stake in viewership.

Not that this discredits anything, but if we're moving into a post-Snowden age in terms of most coverage being meta-coverage, people might need to start being concerned about the biases and motives behind stories attached to him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Im personally more concerned about trackers more than ads. I don't want commerical companies collecting more than 2000 data points on me then selling it to some other data broker. I've used many tracker blockers, and one that lets me keep organized is [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redmorph- browser-c...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redmorph-browser- controll/ghpfnohpiocmklpejkcliiloniceahdo).

</comment><comment><USER4> I happen to agree that it's a good thing to use ad blockers (and that malvertising is becoming a bigger and bigger problem), but it's a bit much being lectured on duty by someone who betrayed his duty, betrayed his colleagues and betrayed his nation.

<comment><USER5> How did he betray his nation exactly?

From where I'm sitting, it looks like he did everyone except the government a huge fucking favour.

Your government is not your nation, and your government are the ones betraying you.

<comment><USER4> > How did he betray his nation exactly?

He revealed information about supposed national-security intelligence- collection measures.

> From where I'm sitting, it looks like he did everyone except the government > a huge fucking favour.

He certainly did the Chinese and Russian governments a huge favour.

> Your government is not your nation, and your government are the ones > betraying you.

Hardly. Nothing he has alleged is illegal; nothing he has alleged is unconstitutional; everything he has alleged was appropriately targeted.

I'll grant him this much: he doesn't think he's evil; he thinks he's doing good. But what he's actually done is cause exceptionally grave damage to the government _and people_ of the United States of America (and, insofar as the United States act as guarantors of the Pax Americana, he's endangered the rest of the world as well).

<comment><USER5> > He certainly did the Chinese and Russian governments a huge favour.

How?

> Hardly. Nothing he has alleged is illegal; nothing he has alleged is > unconstitutional; everything he has alleged was appropriately targeted.

Have you been reading the same news/leaks as I have?

> But what he's actually done is cause exceptionally grave damage to the > government and people of the United States of America (and, insofar as the > United States act as guarantors of the Pax Americana, he's endangered the > rest of the world as well).

Again, how do you know this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm guessing that Edward pays for all content and services he uses along with the rest of the world so the ad model is unnecessary. And so his advice doesn't equate to stealing. ;)

<comment><USER7> The ads are "stealing" your: cpu, battery, bandwidth. Thanks to economies of scale it costs them almost nothing to serve the ad while it costs you a measurable amount to download it and display it. If it cost equally for them to serve the ad there wouldn't be so many obnoxious ads.

Also, malware.

<comment><USER6> They're not stealing anything. You are agreeing to them when you consume ad- supported content. You are free to never use that site again. Yet, you come back because you think the benefits are worth the cost. There are people who don't come back and gripe about a different kind of ad: those snuck into paid services by oligopolies. I feel their pain as _they_ are getting shafted by the power the oligopolies have.

The rest of you want to freeload and aren't getting the freeloading experience you desire. Feel free to try but be responsible enough to admit what you're doing. Otherwise, many services that are ad-supported can be replaced with paid ones with more privacy-focused ones than ever post-Snowden. There's also the alternative of not using what you won't pay for in attention to ads. If you're just getting robbed by ads, feel free to give up the content as it had no value to you and was a robbery rather than an exchange.

<comment><USER8> No. Clicking a link does not constitute consenting to ads, as the link itself does not come with any legalese saying so. And since I'm already using an adblocker by default, the content as displayed on my screen gives no indication whether or not I'm missing anything. So me being a return visitor is also not any indication that I've consented to whatever my browser is not showing.

There are a few sites that don't work at all with an adblocker, and those sites I'm happy to not visit again. But the whole "consent by default" is not a valid interpretation of consumer law in the EU, whether you phrase it as freeloading or not.

In fact, my browser is muted by default, and I always mute TV commercials (used to have a mythtv plugin for it, even). Are you now going to accuse me of stealing for protecting the silence of my own home?

<comment><USER6> I already agreed with another commenter that I should've exempted the first click. The rest of your arguments seems to go like this.

1\. You know that most of the web's content is paid for with ads.

2\. You've installed an ad-blocker to prevent them from loading.

3\. You didn't see them when you do so it doesn't count.

That's a funny argument, right there. You could just as easily cover your eyes as you're driving through traffic and make the same argument. However, you knew what would be ahead of you, the significance, and made the decision anyway for selfish reasons. Fine if you do as I run an adblocker, too.

Strange that so many pretend like they aren't ripping off sites giving them content or a huge uptake of this wouldn't damage those same sites. Why do you keep pretending?

"In fact, my browser is muted by default, and I always mute TV commercials (used to have a mythtv plugin for it, even). Are you now going to accuse me of stealing for protecting the silence of my own home?"

Did you blank the content that the ads paid for, as well? Or just your end of the arrangement? I'm accusing you of talking content while blocking what pays of it. If it's not stealing, it's something very similar.

Many ads are visual or textual, though, so I'm not sure why you're bringing up the silence of your home as a counter to all ads except as a reframing of the discussion to make your ad-avoidance seem more sensible. Realistically, you don't care if they loose money and go out of business so long as you get the content with little to nothing in return. That's your actual position.

<comment><USER8> I don't pretend. You make it seem like I need to defend my choice of using an adblocker, I disagree with that premise. There is no sales contract, and I have no obligation to waste my attention on webpage ads anymore than I have an obligation to listen to TV commercials. There is no moral argument to be had either, as long as we ignore the morality of user profiling by the same ad community.

Besides, the cash flow for ad monetization is so convoluted that it would be very hard to conclusive demonstrate financial harm by my actions.

<comment><USER6> The user profiling and obscure cash flow I agree with. They certainly have to get some shit straight on their end, too. Haha.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US government lists fictional nation Wakanda as trade partner - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50849559 <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently it was a "staff test" :-)</comment>


Andy Rubin innovating than leaving (again) - <AUTHOR> Andy Rubin, is definitely this generations innovator that we do not think of much, as he is the person that brought us the most used phone os, and phone android, than when he departed the company, he set out to make something new, He brought us essential, it might be one of the nicest looking phones, without bezels completely. Now due to some reasons, he said he is taking some time off, will he be back or will he permanently leave the company. <comment><AUTHOR> If you would like to know more about this, go to tech crunch, here is the link [https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/andy-rubin-takes-leave- fro...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/andy-rubin-takes-leave-from- essential/)</comment>


Media Temple launched choose-your-own Linux OS VPS hosting - <AUTHOR> http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/ve/

<comment><USER2> I've used MT hosting before. For the price and performance, I couldn't recommend it to anyone.

Linode and Slice are better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. It's interesting how many different services MT is beginning to offer, but I wish they would work on the reliability of the existing ones.

I don't understand why they got so popular since this seems to be the prevailing opinion of them.

Edit: By the way, the reason I noticed this in the first place was to check on their system status since someone was complaining email was down, which it is, which is common with them.

<comment><USER2> The only reason I tried them was because of Techcrunch's seal of approval years back.

Their customer service is awesome in terms of being able to get someone on the phone 24/7 even on the cheapest plans, but yeah I wouldn't need to use it so often if they're stuff was reliable.

Which services like Heroku, I don't even know how MT is still alive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> linode:

       ram: 540MB
      stor:  24GB
      tran: 300GB
     price: 29.95

MT:

       ram: 512MB
      stor:  20GB
      tran: 350GB
     price: 30.00</comment>


AI Dungeon now uses the largest GPT-3 model offered by OpenAI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aidungeon/ai-dungeon-dragon-model-upgrade-7e8ea579abfe <comment><USER2> I was just introduced to AI Dungeon by Leigh Graner of Mostly Walking game ([https://youtu.be/BP_49Wp7ePQ](https://youtu.be/BP_49Wp7ePQ)) and am so happy to have this introduced to my life. Amazingly fun stuff thanks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Super excited about this! It's crazy to see the progress AI Dungeon has made from its early beginning one year ago to where it is now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this could be used to test out GPT-3 without having access to the beta

<comment><USER4> Well, it is GPT-3; through dev told me on Discord it's finetuned, prompt is more limited than what's possible (I think), to just generate lots of text one has to spam enter (with an empty prompt)...

But if you just do "custom" scenario, it works well.

Here's navy seal copypasta parody, like Gwern did (through he had much longer prompt; I could fit only one long and one super-short example): [https://pastebin.com/Lc7tC8j9](https://pastebin.com/Lc7tC8j9)

I've been most impressed by this so far, because I didn't expect GPT-3 to handle language other than English so well: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hqnteu/my_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hqnteu/my_time_in_azer_showcase_of_ai_dungeons_gpt3based/fy0bjhw/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Woot woot</comment>


Florida Cops Have a New Device for Tracking Your Cell Phone - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/florida-cops-have-a-new-device-for-tracking-your-cell-phone-d9a181a4cf27#.7cc4dct1t <comment><USER2> Dupe, and blogspam of

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/harris-imsi-catcher- picture...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/harris-imsi-catcher-picture- phone-tracking-device-in-the-wild)</comment>


Internet Archive to create a copy of its digital collections in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-accessible-and-private/ <comment><USER2> So with Canada's history of blowing away archived history, thats one of the last places I would have picked.</comment>


The Strange Theory of Coronavirus from Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-strange-theory-of-coronavirus-from-space <comment><USER2> FTFA: _" I would say, though, that the coronavirus-from-space theory is still more plausible than some other theories of COVID-19. "_

IMO less plausible than that it flew out of a Chinese lab!</comment>


Ask HN: Domains for sale should be striped from the owner - <AUTHOR>

The numbers of domains registered purely to be sold on seem very high compared to those actually in use. Could / should ICANN do anything about it? <comment><USER2> Hell, no. If you have a car just sitting in your garage, should you have to surrender it to the DMV (department of motor vehicles)? I've purchased many domains that I planned to use; but plans don't always work out. That doesn't mean I should have to surrender my assets. Yes, I'm frustrated when a domain I want is taken and I visit the site only to see a "search page". But that's the owner's option. Maybe all those dormant projects on SourceForge should have to give up their project names, too?

<comment><USER3> Right I agree, this gets into the who fairness and equality debate, where everyone has a definition of fair and equal. The fact is, the people that purchased those domains played by the rules. Sure speculation can seem like a free ride and it is not that sexy but people should not be begrudged for getting lucky especially if they did so via a little foresight.</comment></comment>


The Content Marketing Handbook - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/the-content-marketing-handbook/ <comment><USER2> Content marketing to promote these guys' own content marketing services. The short version is still sensible as a general strategy for those just starting out. Will keep it around.

I also recommend "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg, which ties content marketing into a broader marketing strategy.</comment>


What I learned about online-to-offline - <AUTHOR> http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem <comment><USER2> Great points. As someone who has founded a couple tech-meets-meatspace businesses (including a cleaning company) these observations certainly ring true.

Another thing I would add, is that people often don't correctly estimate how much of a pain it can be to deal with customer/worker issues day in and day out. Most tech companies have limited support access, which greatly reduces their exposure to angry clients.

But when you're in a services business you are pretty much forced to spend hours each day talking with angry customers, unreliable providers, and helping resolve seemingly endless conflicts. You can mitigate some of this with better systems and tech, but ultimately this burden only increases as you scale. At the end of the day there will always be a subset of your customers who are belligerent, unreasonable, or trying to con you outright. And that's to say nothing of unreliable/dishonest workers.

It can be a great business to be in, but you will need a thick skin, velvet tongue, and something of an indomitable spirit.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Good help is hard to find. If you're smart and capable, you're above that $20/hr line, and if you're not... well you're just not.

2\. Service business is hard. Customer support can eat up your time, money, and energy day in, day out. Maybe if one had worked in retail in their youth they would understand it.

3\. One of the more homegrown trends the past few years has been maid service. There's a vibrant community on Reddit and blogospheres revolving around setting up maid services in various localities. They all build off the same model. Good to see that it's validated by Exec switching to focusing on that.

In the end, these businesses revolving around re-organizing labor structures and managing people result in the inevitable grand truth: people are complex creatures, sometimes a person is good, sometimes a person is bad, then sometimes a person is cheap, and sometimes a person is expensive.

But we keep insisting on using an iPhone app to sort human beings into quantifiable skillsets then driving down the costs to utilize them. Everyone serves as little cogs in our lives commanded by our remote control. So future.

<comment><USER4> Right. The problem was his misconception with society on the side of the errand runner. All he seemed to have experience with was the exec who has tasks needed to be done.

On that note, something like this in a society with very high unemployment and a large casual labor market could possibly do well (granted, people were wealthy enough to own smartphones). My partner's family in India would constantly go through servants/maids/gardners/etc because there're so many people willing to work.

<comment><USER5> One of my parents is Egyptian and when she was growing up they had multiple "servants" but each with a different speciality. One was the transportation (pick up/drop off) guy, one did cleaning, one was the handy man, one was the doorman/concierge type person, one did shopping, someone watched the kids, etc.

In effect, there were no errands for the family to ever run because they had one servant that specialized in one thing but that servant did it for all the families on the block resulting in a full time job. All the affluent city blocks had their own network of specialized servants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprised nobody is talking about how Homejoy is killing it with the exact same model that exec pivoted too.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps because talking about that doesn't invalidate the points he's making? It's a hard business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One observation I have made is that when you are transparently keeping a percentage of revenue from the person actually providing the service, there is often a huge disconnect between what is perceived as fair, and what is required to make the service work.

By the time you factor in credit card fees, provision for loss, marketing, the economics don't work unless you are keeping 30%, and then the people providing the service feel ripped off.

Unless the service is inherently viral with zero marketing costs, it is really hard to strike a good balance.

<comment><USER9> Some of those things, like credit card fees, don't really count as you keeping it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this Justin's 3rd or so exit? Anyone know why he decided to exit the market so quickly? I got the sense that exec was just getting off the ground.

<comment><USER11> It seems like the business-as-a-startup failed, but remained as a normal cleaning company: the kind that might provide a perfectly good living to someone motivated to manage a herd of cleaners, but not a massively-growing software-based company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what he thinks about focusing on one geography vs. opening it up.</comment>