Ask HN: How do you learn how to implement data structures? - <AUTHOR>

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for "how do you learn about data structures".
Instead, more precisely, I'm looking for "When you're interested in or reading about a specific data structure, and wish to implement it in your programming language of choice, where would you typically go for a reference implementation?"
I've been wanting to beef up my overall knowledge of data structures (breadth and depth), and the best way I know how is to "do it".  So this means I will want to locate (preferably) canonical implementations of data structures.  From the searching I've done so far, I was unable to locate an authoritative list anywhere.
Of course I'm sure with enough searching I will come across implementations in libraries scattered across the web.  For most things this is probably ok, but given that data structures are such a fundamental part of CS it seems it would be nice to have a single source (if only links to other resources) where I could go knowing I will be directed to what the community considers the defacto implementation of a given data structure.
GitHub seems it would be a perfect place to start compiling such a list.
Also once that list is compiled I imagine another logical step would be to start annotating those in something like [http://genius.com/]
I of course have come across this:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures
But it really only gives me a good long list of data structures I may like to write implementations for. <comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Edition- Thomas...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Edition-Thomas- Cormen/dp/0262033844)

That's basically your bible of basic data structures & algorithms. There are, of course, many many other domain-specific ones, but that textbook is taught in the vast majority of data structures & algorithms courses, it covers most of what people would expect in an interview or in basic programming, and it teaches you how you might implement them. The book itself uses pseudocode, but if you're a halfway competent programmer you should be able to translate it into your language of choice.

(For a fun exercise, it can be interesting to translate them into a programming _platform_ of choice. For example, how would you implement a priority queue with an SQL database? How would you do reservoir sampling? How do you implement sorting on disk, where the dataset is >>> RAM size? How do you implement a graph algorithm on a cluster of 5000 machines? These are the sort of "Google level" problems that you end up facing in industry, but they require a full _understanding_ \- not just familiarity - with what the underlying algorithm is doing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the link.

I'm even trying to figure out, for example, maybe I read about a particular data structure in a blog post that I'd like to learn more about. I find the relevant article on Wikipedia, and from there it may or may not take me to specific implementations of that data structure.

Perhaps I'm mistaken but my hunch is Wikipedia won't necessarily be exhaustive (in terms of being able to extrapolate from the article what an actual implementation should look like).

Maybe that part of the question is more of a fishing expedition, as I imagine it's a small fraction of developers / engineers who are ever actually implementing complex data structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a little confused about what you're asking for, but this might help?

[http://blog.notdot.net/tag/damn-cool- algorithms](http://blog.notdot.net/tag/damn-cool-algorithms)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion, but I think the link you've provided definitely fits the bill. My original intent was to ask about personal preferences (resources people use) of people who implement (or have implemented data structures).

As an aside I was exploring an idea (probably where the confusion set in) that in my ideal world there would be a web page where I could go that would list all data structures. And each item in that list would link to the canonical / reference implementation of that datastructure. And if that didn't exist, then a list of all known implementations (by language) which would link to the source code of each implementation.

If something like this doesn't exist I am definitely up for taking a crack at it, but at least wanted to check to see what folks here might have to say, which may be a better idea or to confirm that it doesn't already exist.</comment></comment>


Shortsighted Greed (Angels are Good) - <AUTHOR> http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2007/07/shortsighted-gr.html <comment><USER2> That's all nice and well, and warrants are better, but who wants to spend that kind of money on legal fees for a small angel round. If you are doing >$500k than it's a different story.</comment>


More Wrong Things I Said in Papers - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2854 <comment><USER2> You know, these days, we shouldn't have the concept of a blog or paper being published. It should be collaborative effort.

The initial post should be a comment period where you ask for feedback and no matter how large your mistake, it should be considered okay.

And slowly as you get more eyes on it, it should solidify into a more accepted paper.

<comment><USER3> A large part of science drives on ego, the process you describe would reduce that considerably. 'Publish or perish' works if there are a very small number of authors at the top of a paper.

<comment><USER4> Great, let's change that. Letting ego drive everything does not seem like a good idea.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, because such things as human nature we can just go ahead and change...

<comment><USER6> If the communists could do it, we can to! Oh wait....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my PhD thesis I claimed a function was convex that was not. The embarrassing part was that in the next section I proved that an almost identical function was non-convex.

Phew, I feel better getting that off my chest. Good thing nobody reads dissertations.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish I was smart enough to be that wrong.

<comment><USER9> How do you know you are not? Well, you certainly have a case by making this assumption in the first place.

Are you "not smart enough" in _all_ areas, or just not not in (deep) math? Rhetorical question.

Look at "IQ". There is no such thing as "IQ" \- simply because there are so man vastly different things that you should measure. I forgot the lecture, but you can show that the exact same "IQ" can be for people with vastly different skill sets, or different IQs with a completely different distribution of abilities, and the higher IQ losing out in one or more fields. The guy with the Einstein math and physics abilities can be a total dimwit when it comes to managing or just dealing with people, for example, something I would argue the world is in much greater need of compared to getting more math geniuses.

When you don't understand something ask yourself: Do I actually _need_ to understand this?

I took about 70 edX and Coursera courses mostly in completely different fields then my own (CS). One of the most important lessons is that there is sooooooo much knowledge.

Have a look at this little story of a very simple product that humans make (ignore which concrete one they chose): [https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke- contains-221d4499...](https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke- contains-221d449929ef)

Summary quote (product name replaced with "X"):

        > The number of individuals who know how to make X is zero.
        > The number of individual nations that could produce X is zero.

That's for one of the most simple products out there.

You do _not_ need to understand each and every subject. You are _not_ dumb if you don't. You may be dumb if you think you are dumb that you don't understand every single random subject... :)

<comment><USER10> >Look at "IQ". There is no such thing as "IQ" \- simply because there are so man vastly different things that you should measure.

When you measure vastly different things, like reaction time and performance in IQ tests, there is surprisingly strong correlation (> 0.8 without correction for attenuation). This supports the hypothesis that there is such thing as G-factor.

None of those vastly different things we can measure measures it directly, but they all together point into the same direction. What has reaction time have to do with academic performance, job attainment, income, or IQ tests?

Most of those who argue for different intelligences don't provide good evidense against strong correlation.

<comment><USER9> That argument is like "economy" vs. "individual". When I wrote "there is no such thing as IQ" I mean (as stated?) that this is not a concrete thing, but a summary measure of many things. Of course it exists, it just doesn't represent a (single) concrete thing. The growth rate of the economy, maybe, comes to mind.

Of course averages work fine when you look at the grander things, but they are useless when looking at individuals. So sure, IQ "works" in that sense, for "big picture stats". It's not good for individuals. _(Necessary additional comment: Looking at more than one individual is not "looking at an individual", but it again is "statistics".)_

If you only want to place "the best" on average, going for "IQ" is enough. If you want to match each one (individually, not by global average - in which case after hiring by IQ you just place them anywhere) to the appropriate job it isn't. The _distribution_ of skills under a given IQ score can be very different.

        > IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes. A person who scores very low
        > on a competently administered IQ test is likely to struggle in many domains.
        > However, an IQ score will miss the mark in many individuals, in both directions.

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what- do-...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-do-iq-tests- test-interview-with-psychologist-w-joel-schneider/)

<comment><USER10> > IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes.

It's _very_ often the best single predictor.

As the article you quote puts it:

>IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes. A person who scores very low on a competently administered IQ test is likely to struggle in many domains. However, an IQ score will miss the mark in many individuals, in both directions.

If IQ test misjudges 5-20% of applicants, it's still hell of a predictor.

<comment><USER9>
        >  it's still hell of a predictor.

I think I had already responded to that. The question is "on what level" and "what for". See my previous response.

I wrote _" If you only want to place "the best" on average, going for "IQ" is enough. If you want to match each one (individually, not by global average - in which case after hiring by IQ you just place them anywhere) to the appropriate job it isn't."_

It's the same as arguing for racial profiling because "it works". Well it does! If you don't care about people (individuals) but only about peoples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote a paper a few years ago that was published in a journal and which I felt was subsequently refuted by another paper. (I argued that for various reasons a server can never tell if a client has been virtualized or modified or not in the absence of hardware-based anti-virtualization features, but [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jfrankli/hotos07/vmm_detection_hotos...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jfrankli/hotos07/vmm_detection_hotos07.pdf) and some recently work on obfuscators make me think I was mostly to entirely wrong.) Particularly since I don't have a blog right now, I keep thinking that I have no way to correct my assertions in public. It feels like it would be useful to be able to do that, just so if anyone somehow comes across the old paper they could quickly find out why its arguments aren't valid.

<comment><USER12> Whatever happened to loyalty.org & virtuanova?

<comment><USER11> Some things happened that made me no longer feel that my life was "new", so I stopped blogging there. (One thing is that the friend's server that it was hosted on went down.) I had trouble thinking of a new blog name and so neglected to start a successor blog.

<comment><USER12> If it makes the process of restarting any easier, consider sticking with one of the existing brands.

I'm a big fan of _not_ just writing to write, but focusing on having something to say. I find that when you think you do, you're almost always correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aaronson is awesome. Intellectual honesty like this is to be admired in any field.

<comment><USER14> It's rare to see folks admit mistakes even in private. Writing it on a blog which is probably widely read is extremely rare. Such incidents are deeply inspiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://retractionwatch.com/](http://retractionwatch.com/) is fun to visit once in a while</comment>


The New York Times is shipping Google Cardboard to its print subscribers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/20/9573165/nyt-vr-new-york-times-cardboard-app <comment><AUTHOR> It'll be interesting to see what happens when over a million people are prompted to start experiencing VR content.</comment>


Nintendo Cracked Open Its Secret Game Boy Stash to Help a 95-Year-Old Fan - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/nintendo-cracked-open-its-secret-game-boy-stash-to-help-1841905783 <comment><USER2> > When you've got a loyal customer that's already been through three copies of > your product, it might be time to give them a free upgrade.

Some reason that line of the article really annoyed me.

If I wanted my Game Boy fixed, I want a fixed game-boy. Not another product. Not bashing Nintendo, much kudos to them. But if my GBC broke and was swapped out with a Switch, I would be annoyed.

<comment><USER3> Plus, Tetris on the switch is some sort of weird online only dumpster fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The original Game Boy's screen is also notoriously awful, with just > 23,000-plus pixels on screen and contrast levels that make it a challenge to > play even under a lamp. Couldn't Nintendo have sent Tsusaka's grandmother a > Switch as a replacement? Or at least a New Nintendo 2DS XL, with its giant > and bright screen as a better alternative that would presumably be a lot > easier on her aging eyes? When you've got a loyal customer that's already > been through three copies of your product, it might be time to give them a > free upgrade.

Yeah, no.

Maybe this was meant sarcastically, but:

\- A front-lit LCD (i.e. lit with the room's ambient light) is arguably easier on the eyes than some bright UV-spewing modern replacement.

\- Neither the Switch nor the Nintendo 2DS XL are able to play the customer's Tetris cartridge (even the Game Boy Advance can't run non-Color Game Boy games, IIRC).

<comment><USER5> All models of the Gameboy Advance including the front-lit SP and Micro variants, are able to play all of the original B&W and Color carts. Even good ol'Tetris which spends a pretty lengthy amount of time in my SP.

The DS won't play them the original cartridges though--it will however play the Advance carts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doomsday supply of rare electronics in order to satisfy warranties would be an amazing research project

<comment><USER7> I mean, there was always that cache of Atari E.T. that they found buried in the desert...</comment></comment>


Retrospection and Full PCAP Reveal Instances of XcodeGhost Dating Back to April - <AUTHOR> https://www.protectwise.com/blog/retrospection-and-full-pcap-reveal-instances-of-xcodeghost-dating-back-to-april-2015/ <comment><USER2> It's an amusing trick to have the encryption key be "stringWithFormat", a common ObjC symbol that wouldn't look like a key if you found it in a strings table.

<comment><USER3> Hilarious! They really should have added a colon on the end to be fully accurate, but few people would pick up on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I continue to be somewhat baffled as to why malware authors don't use public key crypto for these things. Maybe commonly available libraries don't make it easy enough?

Also, single DES in 2015 -- amazing.

<comment><USER5> I think they just want the bar to be high enough to avoid arousing the suspicion of casual snoopers. Single DES is enough to do that.

<comment><USER6> But it's not really any harder to do it properly. So many good libraries exist. You kinda have to go out of your way to use the wrong thing here.

<comment><USER7> Pure speculation, but perhaps they thought they were making a compromise between obfuscation and performance. I've heard this argument made in similar contexts on the theory that software implementations of 1DES should be faster than software AES-128 or other alternative algorithms. In practice, however, the performance between 1DES and AES-128 is not that large, and probably not large enough to matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Access to Journal Nature - <AUTHOR> Hi, can someone who has access to Nature send me a copy of this article:
Your gut microbiome, deconstructed
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n12/full/nbt.3431.html
Thank you. I owe you a favor. <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n12/full/nbt.3431.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n12/full/nbt.3431.html)</comment>


Google Fortifies Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/7975/products/google-fortifies-chrome-microsoft-adds-ie9-versioning

<comment><USER2> I'd love to learn more about this malicious facebook script blocking thing. Surely that'll have adverse effects on bookmarklets?</comment>


Imagine A World with Multiple Internets - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shehzand/imagine-a-world-with-multiple-internets-70990abd4f69

<comment><USER2> This was roughly the situation circa 1990. There was a TCP/IP based NSFNet, VMS-based HEPNet/Spacenet and whatever DEC ran internally, a UUCP-based Usenet, Telenet, FIDO and probably some others I'm not remembering, not to mention various proprietary "walled gardens" like Compu$erve, Delphi, GEnie...

It was actually kind of interesting, for someone who wasn't stuck in a "my subculture is BEST!" viewpoint. Innovations arose in a small population, and spread based on merit. Really niche populations (OS-9 on a Color Computer III, anyone?) could live in peace, and not be swamped by advertising and a mass market that demanded _everyone_ be part of that mass market. You could laugh at the hicks stuck in DELPHI, or worse yet, GEnie.

The reasons the author of this article gives for favoring a single market (because that's what he really means) is "it's good for business, especially Big Business". Should I, as a consumer, just nod my head and say "Yes, Yes!"? A lot of generally accepted "good things" don't work from my point of view. Internationalization? I'm a native English speaker, exclusive ASCII works fine for me, why do I have to pay the performance penalty so that MSFT can sell bi- directional capability half a world away?</comment>


Marijuana might not be the culprit in adolescent IQ decline - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/marijuana-might-not-be-the-culprit-in-adolescent-iq-decline/ <comment><USER2> IQ raise in prolonged contact of people with higher IQ.

Maybe the culprits since the beginning are the adult being more and more stupid and having their IQ declining and blaming it on the youth?

Isn't searching for a third part accidental cause to an essential problem already a proof that IQ decline faster with responsibilities?</comment>


"I'm a public defender. Clients prefer jail to registering as sex offenders" - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/12059448/sex-offender-registry <comment><USER2> The problem with Godwin's law is if you cast something minuscule as being on par with what occurred in Nazi Germany, you're undermining the actual horrors committed by humanity during that time.

If you consider everyone that's taken a piss outside of a bathroom or the 17 year old who Snapchat's her boyfriend of the same age as sex offenders, you put them in the same camp as someone who has committed real horrific crimes with actual victims.

Hope to hell and back that you or someone you care about never find themselves cast as a witch in this witch hunt.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a risk on the other side as well. If this sort of equivalency becomes common, it becomes easy to dismiss all sex offences as minor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is from a linked memo from the California Sex Offender Management Board:

> One recent large study found a recidivism rate of 5.3%. The re-offense rate > is the lowest of any crime category (except murder) and research shows that > the rate and the risk continue to decrease every month and year that the > offender remains offense-free in the community. [0]

This memo didn't name other crimes and rates. So I checked Wikipedia. Wikipedia cites some study by the US's Department of Justice:

> Released prisoners with the highest re-arrest rates were robbers (70.2%), > burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those > in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%) and those in > prison for possessing, using or selling illegal weapons (70.2%). Within 3 > years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of > those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide. These are > the lowest rates of re-arrest for the same category of crime. [1]

As mentioned in the vox article, this is evidence against, "once a criminal, always a criminal," with respect to sex offenders.

[0] [http://www.casomb.org/docs/Challenge_of_Locating_Programs_3-...](http://www.casomb.org/docs/Challenge_of_Locating_Programs_3-17-16.pdf)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Recidivism_rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Recidivism_rates)

<comment><USER5> Data is tainted by the fact that robbery is nearly always reported, whereas sex crimes (especially against children) often never are.

EDIT for source: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/rate-of-child-sexual- ab...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/rate-of-child-sexual-abuse-on-the- decline.html?_r=0)

And CSA has fallen dramatically since the 90s, when the registry laws were passed.

<comment><USER6> Hasn't all crime gone down since the 90s?

Edit: [https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html](https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html)

So the answer is yes, crime has been declining since the 90s.

<comment><USER7> A crime rate decrease of 62% vs. 42% has an obvious difference in significance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to focus on one thing in here, because I disagree with a ton of the article.

Some people on the list shouldn't be on there.

In digging around to answer nosegoes question to find one instance of someone getting on the registry for peeing in public I found this site. It's interesting to see a compilation of bullshit ways your life can get ruined.

[http://www.solresearch.org/report/Look_Whos_on_Registry_Now](http://www.solresearch.org/report/Look_Whos_on_Registry_Now)

This is an example of a broken system in the USA. The rules to get on the registry are broken, but the idea of a registry in and of itself is, in my opinion, good. As a parent I want people to be on there who abuse kids, but also as a parent, I expect judges and police to know the difference between child porn and a family member capturing memories.

<comment><USER9> _but the idea of a registry in and of itself is, in my opinion, good._

Based on what, exactly? Your gut?

Before you consign folks to a lifetime of punishment, I'd suggest you actually analyze the data and determine if the concept actually yields a benefit, given the objective costs in both dollars spent and lives ruined.

The criminal justice system should be designed to protect the public, and to rehabilitate criminals. It doesn't exist to give you warm fuzzies through the implementation of otherwise ineffective laws that achieve neither of those goals.

<comment><USER10> The sex crime rate has been dropping faster than the general crime rate since the 1990s when the registry was implemented.

<comment><USER9> Do I really need to break out the old correlation/causation saw, or is that at least self-evident with this crowd?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least with jail you have garnanteed food and shelter. Being a sex offender means you're probably never going to be participating in society in any meaningful way anyway and at least prison sentences tend to have an end.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can assign the death penalty to every offense above stealing and it won't make a difference, the vast majority of actual criminals don't know or don't care and the vast majority of defendants (in the US anyway) don't know or didn't even think they committed a crime.

<comment><USER13> You're probably going to get a lot of flack for making a claim that (in America at least) goes against common opinion without backing it up with any sources. Here are a few.

[http://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx](http://nij.gov/five- things/pages/deterrence.aspx)

[http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/05/when-to- puni...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/05/when-to-punish-a- young-offender-and-when-to-rehabilitate/prison-is-a-poor-deterrent-and-a- dangerous-punishment)

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2007/01/the_irrational_18yearold_criminal.html)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/report-says-long-sentences- do...](http://www.businessinsider.com/report-says-long-sentences-dont-deter- crime-2014-5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't get how something like this gets published:

> The myth that those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend is > pure fiction; numerous studies, including those cited the California Sex > Offender Management Board's recent report, noted that sex offender re- > offense rate is actually lower than any crime other than murder. Indeed, > research shows that only about 5 percent of new sex offenses were committed > by previous sex offenders.

It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. The author tries to support his false debunking with two completely distinct statistics that do not speak one way or the other to the issue. Why doesn't Vox's fact checker flag this?

<comment><USER15> > It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to > reoffend" than the average citizen.

How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re- offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to re- offend.

This is much more accurate of an indicator - compared to their peers, sex offenders are much less likely to commit a crime again, yet they are the ones for whom the punishment never ends.

<comment><USER14> > How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re- > offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to > re-offend.

This is a silly comparison. Most crimes are much less serious than sexual assault, and so they simply happen more often period. (The recidivism rate for parking tickets is almost 100%!) The number of crimes which are at least as serious as sexual assault is much smaller. And all we know from this author is that one of them, murder, has a lower recidivism rate.

<comment><USER15> Again, using references from other threads, there are degrees of severity for "sex crimes" \- everything from urinating in public, to consensual statutory rape (i.e. Romeo and Juliet), viewing child pornography, making child pornography, to actual assault and rape.

Which causes a greater public harm: urinating in public or robbing someone's home? Is being beaten into unconsciousness obviously worse than being groped? Is being killed kinder than living with rape?

There are shades of grey that the sexual offender list does not capture - offenders are simply punished for life if their crime involves genitals.

<comment><USER14> I'm not arguing in favor of the current laws. I'm arguing against the this particular misleading statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The very premise of the title is faulty. It's not an either-or; such crimes generally mandate sex-offender registry _even after parole or release_.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is sad to read. :/ Can people convicted of this be around their own children?

<comment><USER18> i would think it would depend on the state, and the feeling of the other parent/family. Had a friend who was convicted of possession of child porn. I've no idea what the specific content was, but it was a mandatory 5 years in prison, and his ex-wife petitioned for sole custody of their child, and I think she'd tried to get all parental rights removed 100%. not sure if that succeeded. he had another teenage daughter at the time who just... didn't get to see him when he was in prison (michigan, but he was in prison in mass most of the time). She's... mid 20s now? They have an OK relationship now, from what I can tell.

<comment><USER7> Someone who engages in the exploitation of children probably shouldn't be around teenagers.

Painting him as a sympathetic character is just wrong. The things that he watched, and as a consumer encouraged to be produced have harmed children in irreversible ways.

<comment><USER19> If you're a 16 old girl with a picture of your boyfriend naked you can be guilty of child pornography.

How is she engaging in the exploitation of children? This is the problem, that a percentage of sex offenders are people like this hypothetic girl (or boy).

When a 18 years person can be guilty of sex offending by having ex with his/her 17 old partner we have a problem

<comment><USER7> Your comment is orthogonal to the situation posed by the GP. And I would say that if you're an 18yo who's looking at child pornography you should not be around children, especially those to whom you have unfettered access to as a parent/guardian.

>When a 18 years person can be guilty of sex offending by having ex with his/her 17 old partner we have a problem

I'm not arguing that Romeo and Juliet laws are a bad thing (even though I think that some state's implementations are too generous -- Georgia's laws effectively mean you can be a college freshman sleeping with high school freshmen). But when you're in the position that you're an 18yo with nude pictures of a minor, you do effectively have child porn. You should know well enough by that point to delete it. You are an adult.

A non trivial number of these pictures do end up on the internet. Do you think that you should be a sex offender if as an 18yo you disseminate a picture of your 16yo partner?

Do you think we should have a separate tier of images that are by definition child porn, but because of who possesses them they are not considered to be child porn? This will assuredly help actual offenders avoid the consequences of their actions.

<comment><USER19> > But when you're in the position that you're an 18yo with nude pictures of a > minor, you do effectively have child porn

I would like to know why you're so radical in this topic. Perhaps because I'm not American and attitude to sex here is not so puritan I can't understand it.

In the beach promenade we have a nudist beach, two meters apart, everyone, including child can see nude men and women, or other child, and nobody cares about it, they see it as normal.

I can see a lot of women breastfeeding in public and nobody cares.

The charges someone can face for peeing in the street is for uncivic behaviour (normally 30€), but they are not charged for a sexual offense.

> A non trivial number of these pictures do end up on the internet. Do you > think that you should be a sex offender if as an 18yo you disseminate a > picture of your 16yo partner?

You're always taking the worst case. The problem is when your 18 years old have pictures in his phone of his 17 years old partner and he/she is guilty of having sex porn.

<comment><USER7> You think that sharing pictures of people under 18, who have given the implicit notion that these are private pictures, is ok?

Because please dear god tell me that you're talking about the peeing in the street or something, and that was just a poor quote placement?

There's a difference between going to a nude beach, where you have an expectation of nudity vs. being in the street and taking out your penis. If you're doing this repeatedly, then you have been repeatedly exposing your genitals to people who have not consented to the exposure. There's a gigantic difference.

Nudity and being happy with your body and happy with the body of others is fine. The thing about nude beaches is that they are not sexual. People are not creepy at nude beaches.

I'm asking you to engage in a thought experiment. I'm wondering where the line for child porn begins and ends for you -- because its complicated is just not a fine argument when it comes to legal systems.

I think that judges should use discretion when it comes down to cases like the one you're talking about, but they only have to use discretion because it is still child pornography by definition.

<comment><USER19> > You think that sharing pictures of people under 18, who have given the > implicit notion that these are private pictures, is ok?

Do you have problems with reading comprehension? Tell me were the heck I have said that it is good to share the pictures?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >We must avoid "one-size-fits-all" labels for those convicted of a broad range of offenses.

I don't know what the author is going on about. At least in my state (WA), sex offenders are registered on a spectrum from I to III (most violent).

>Mario was a sex registrant because, as a teenager, he inappropriately touched a fully dressed boy on two occasions.

Uh... so her sympathetic example is a serial child molester? Note she does not say how old a "boy" or how old a "teenager" he was -- you can bet that the "boy" was probably under 7 and Mario was a 19-year-old, otherwise she would have given more details to make him seem more sympathetic (like she did with "fully clothed").

I am more concerned about the victims of our laws regarding petty drug offenses (i.e. small amounts of marijuana) -- those people are true victims.

<comment><USER20> This is a poor reply. There are 50 states, each with their own policies. Your state may have better policies, but you can't make a national argument by generalizing from your state alone.

And you're cherry picking a single example. The point is not that Mario is blameless – is that they effectively have a life sentence for a crime which did not carry a life sentence.

And relatively benign offences like public urination can carry a life destroying sentence too. You didn't even address the misdemanour element.

<comment><USER8> I can't reply to nosegoes directly so I'm replying to you in the hope that he'll see it.

[http://www.solresearch.org/report/Look_Whos_on_Registry_Now](http://www.solresearch.org/report/Look_Whos_on_Registry_Now)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070315180914/http://www.msnbc.m...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070315180914/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17589219/)

There is your example for public urination.

I found other comments and stuff about people fighting to get these crimes reduced to disorderly conduct, but I figured they wouldn't hold weight for you so I dug a little deeper.

<comment><USER7> Juan Matamoros had been charged with two counts of Lewd and Lavacious behavior at the time of that article being written. Pretty highly unlikely that they were both from the single incident of public urniation. When you're publicly exposing yourself repeatedly, maybe you should be a sex offender?

Man of the cases on solresearch mention that the people have been removed from the registry. Which I know has happened to one person who has serially had relationships with his underage students, starting at or before 16. He is no longer on the sex offender registry list because he convinced a judge that it was fine in his culture, and he didn't see the big deal. Anecdote, sure, but people act like the sex offender registry is something that brands you forever, which just isn't the case.

And ignoring that the registry has been wildly successful at reducing child sexual abuse is a huge oversight. These edge cases, who in many cases have legal recourse, outweigh the lives of rape and sexual assault victims?

<comment><USER8> I want to set the tone by saying, I can tell you feel strongly about this so I want you to know that most people here (IMO) don't think the registry is a bad idea, they just see poor implementation in places and think that updating the rules surrounding it is an obvious step toward improving justice.

EDIT: >> Juan Matamoros had been charged with two counts of Lewd and Lavacious behavior at the time of that article being written. Pretty highly unlikely that they were both from the single incident of public urniation. When you're publicly exposing yourself repeatedly, maybe you should be a sex offender?

Wrong, it appears to be pretty likely actually. [http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2007-03-21/news/VOFFENDE...](http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2007-03-21/news/VOFFENDER21_1_matamoros- deltona-incident)

"Haverhill police arrested Matamoros the next morning, charging him with two counts of "open and gross lewdness," a charge used when a suspect exposes or touches himself with the intent to shock or scare people."

Looks like he was charged with two counts for the one incident.

>> And ignoring that the registry has been wildly successful at reducing child sexual abuse is a huge oversight. These edge cases, who in many cases have legal recourse, outweigh the lives of rape and sexual assault victims?

Resources? Sounds like a WAG on your part... But lets assume it's true.

Just because I can defend one portion of this article does not in any way mean I fully agree with it. A registry is a GREAT idea in my mind. I want to know about people who should be on there. I take issue with stale laws and what I consider lazy legislation that allows for stupid situations where it is possible for someone to be placed on the sex offender list because they urinated in public. It also dilutes the efficacy of the registry by including people who really shouldn't be on there

>> outweigh the lives of rape and sexual assault victims

In what world does it have to be binary? I want the law to make sense! I expect that our regulators find issues like this and close loopholes. Yes I expect that we can keep people who deserve to be on the registry on there, while removing idiotic loopholes that place people on the registry needlessly.

Lets agree that 1) the registry needs to be there 2) it has a net positive effect 3) we must protect people from rape and sexual assault

I propose 4) pissing in the street not 2 or 3 (we may not agree on this one) 5) laws need to be updated and include common sense when a "bug" is found, this one is no different

Please see my other comment for more context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038643)

P.S. in my quick google search I found another anecdote by a man who had to pay 14K in lawyer fees to get his charges dropped to disorderly conduct. That's ridiculous to me! It seems like such a simple thing to fix.

<comment><USER7> I stand corrected -- Matamoros seems to be a dude who peed on a car once. I do not think that is what the registry is for.

I still think that allowing for repeated public genital exposure is probably a slippery slope.

I've read previously that nearly every case of this is not prosecuted until exposure has been repeated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenSSL is written by monkeys - <AUTHOR> http://www.peereboom.us/assl/assl/html/openssl.html <comment><USER2> I have had this experience many times when I tried to use a library where every function was tailored for a very specific concrete situation. The perfect example here is finding an extremely complicated mass of code to read a cert from a file, but no way to read a cert from any other source, not even from a buffer in memory. So if you read it from some other location, or read it from a file yourself, or constructed it yourself in memory as part of a test, you're out of luck. People who write code like that tend to be pretty incredulous and insulting when you explain what you're trying to do. "I mean, if you want to read a cert that isn't in a file, obviously I need to educate you until you stop wanting to do such a stupid thing. Not that it's stupid in itself, but you are probably solving your problem in such a dumb way that you should stop right now and start over when you understand what you're doing. If you're super-polite I might even help you." That kind of thing.

<comment><USER3> The good old "I really know better than you. I even know better than you what it is that you want/need to do. Do it the way I tell you to, because that's how I would do it, and that matters more than what you want/need to do."-personality so incredibly prevalent in a certain sphere of programmers we are all very familiar with, who gladly spend 5 minutes pushing you down instead of spending 20 seconds to just kindly, sociably and helpfully answer your question.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that in many cases, there is not an answer that easy. And instead of admitting that the current design is too crippled to allow such a thing or makes such a thing pretty horrible and difficult, they try to defend the design by declaring that thing as something you don't want to do anyway normally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to wonder - if the API was so bad, but he didn't have to do anything that isn't available from openssl "the tool"... why did he write the code at all? Excerpt from openssl x509 help:

        usage: x509 args
         -in arg         - input file - default stdin
         -out arg        - output file - default stdout

It does reading / writing via std{in,out} pipes - why not just spawn openssl with the right options and interact with it?

<comment><USER6> Maybe he wanted something a bit more efficient.

<comment><USER7> If you're generating new CAs in such volume that the (in)efficiency of a UNIX pipe becomes a problem, you should just stop right there. That should be a red flag.

<comment><USER8> It's not the pipes, it's fork() and exec() and re-main()-initialization. Try doing that a few ten thousand times and see how long it takes compare to doing everything in-process where you only initialize once.

<comment><USER9> The entire internet gets by on a few hundred CAs. If you are generating so many CAs, you are doing something wrong.

Performance is a misdirected concern, here. Error-handling and reliability are better reasons to use the API over the tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I generally agree that the OpenSSL library is somewhat horrendous, this specific use-case addresses a very tiny subset of what the library does internally to do some real magic.

I used to work for a very large public facing certificate authority and there was a period in which one of the public CA systems used OpenSSL, so we had to be able to call several of the signing functions via a JNI extension. Why? Because OpenSSL has fairly remarkable support fir internal context objects that allow you to designate PKCS#11-interfaced hardware security modules for private key operations.

Yes, the levels of indirection are painful to read through and when you get down to the levels where you can actually do a signing operation you have multi-level points ( __something) of strange types, but it works almost magically when you need it to.

It's also the combined with the intersection of handling/reading certificates. The IO interface has to correctly handle PEM and DER information. Even if you can parse those structures all you're left with is ASN.1 annotated structures and ASN.1 is an exercise in pain.

So a library that can read a broad format of single-bit sensitive data, correctly decode and preserve the structure of ASN.1 entries, perform crypto operations, and then somehow make sense of it all across how many years is mostly likely going to be complicated as hell. Or at the very least, given my proficiency with C I think I would have a hard time coming up with a library that worked on as many platforms as transparently for as many years.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why he persisted in using OpenSSL. There may not have been a lot of alternatives ten years ago, but we developers are practically spoiled with choices now. I heartily recommend Botan, which is BSD licensed, written in C++, and has a clean API. I loved it so much I donated to the developer.

<comment><USER12> You're only seeing the very first steps, but not noticing where the intent is.

Building an entirely new replacement implementation will fight the battle of adoption. By wrapping initially an abstraction around the existing code, you can then go back and replace the original while at the same time, keeping everything relying on the original working. If you see Marco's initial work as a "shim" to enable replacement, it makes a lot more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For what should be simple, it's not.

After creating roughly twelve hundred lines of C and hundred or so lines of command language to get OpenSSL working for network connections and to get a CA and signed certs a few weeks back, I can well appreciate the author's frustration with the OpenSSL library.

And at the same time this was being developed, one of the associated OS platforms went through an incompatible-API OpenSSL upgrade; you got to find and rebuild everything that was built against it, or you saw, um, cryptic failures.

</comment><comment><USER14> Having had to reverse engineer the way openssl generates keys from passphrases for certificates I can attest to the general f'ed upness of openssl.

Why did I have to reverse engineer it?

Because the documentation was both lacking and wrong.

<comment><USER15> The only documentation I found useful at all was the RFC. It seems that if you want to use OpenSSL, you need to read both the RFC and the source. It's also preferable to have examples of its usage in other OSS code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> BIAS: I'm an editor on undeadly.org

If anyone is interested, an overview/interview with Marco Peereboom was recently published on the OpenBSD news site.

[http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=201009072...](http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20100907204555&mode=expanded&count=2)

<comment><USER16>
        "In 2004, the head flying height was equivalent to a
        Boeing 747 airliner flying at 0.05 cm above the ground
        and travelling at 92 Km/h (7200 RPM drive)." That was
        in 2004. What would that translate into these days?

The... same? At least, if you're using a 7200 RPM drive, but 10k and 15k drives existed in 2004 as well.

Bit density has increased dramatically over the last six years, but rotational speed has remained constant, thanks to so some hard physical limits; and now that SSDs are no longer a howling black hole of suck on a dollar/GB basis, we won't see any more breakthroughs done with mechanical hard drives. Solid state drives are just better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suspect he'd be happier with Cryptlib. It's a much saner toolkit, and already has most of a CA built in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Complex code is never good for security. In 2006, a small change was made to the Debian port of OpenSSL to do something like remove a few compiler warning messages. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of making the random number generator predictable. This security flaw wasn't discovered for over a year and in that time many weak keys were generated and used. See here for more info: <http://wiki.debian.org/SSLkeys>

</comment><comment><USER19> If there's one thing we don't hear enough in the programming world, it's "all this code I didn't write sucks!"

Oh wait, that's about all we ever hear. It makes for boring reading (and boring comments), so I'm flagging the article. When you write about how you've rewritten OpenSSL to be more flexible and featureful, I will enjoy reading about that. This? It just makes me mad.

(If you want to whine about a particular issue with a particular library, at least try to generalize it to something meaningful. The lesson here is "be careful writing a library that only one app uses and then calling it a library". A lot of C programs make this mistake; sure, they have a small app that calls libapp to do all the real work... but the functions that do the real work are things like read_config_file_and_then_handle_the_applications_foo_command, which is really unhelpful to everyone.)

Anyway... OpenBSD guy whining about code he didn't write? Big surprise. On HN, I want valuable articles that show me something cool or teach me how not to be uncool. This is just a rant that has no real value.

<comment><USER2> Personally, I found it educational that a vital piece of security infrastructure like OpenSSL is a tangled piece of sh... paghetti. When my coworkers and I write something security-critical in our code (not that I've ever touched anything as important as OpenSSL; I suspect OpenSSL is more critical to our security than any of the code we've written ourselves) we make it as dumb and simple and clear as possible and document it very well. With OpenSSL I would have assumed ( _did_ assume) the whole project was implemented that way, bending over backwards for clarity to minimize the chances for a vulnerability, either in the code or due to misuse of the code. It's shocking and interesting to find out that it isn't.

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised that you're surprised. It's old code that nobody touches. It's written in C. Of course it's going to be bad. (Why? Because "good" changes every year or so, and if nobody has needed to touch the code for a year, it's going to be bad by definition.)

Sure, it's good to clean up old code to minimize the number of unanticipated failures. But this takes time and money; there aren't magic fairies that do things "because they should" or "because it's a critical piece of infrastructure". If it's boring and there is no money to be made, then it's not going to get done.

The author shows why; sometimes, it's just easier to hack around the problems than to fix them.

<comment><USER20> _It's written in C. Of course it's going to be bad._

You are being unfair. I did a little Samba hacking in recent memory, and found it quite easy to understand and follow. (Granted, I didn't delve into the low- level implementation of Microsoft protocols.) I'm sure other well-written C programs exist.

<comment><USER21> I've only written a little C, but I find it hard to believe that anyone can write bady in C and actually get it to work.

<comment><USER2> Never underestimate the power of savant-level intelligence combined with a complete lack of taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm using MatrixSSL (<http://www.matrixssl.org>) in my product. It's cross platform, small footprint, has dual commercial / GPL license options and a sane API.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I'd be interested to know how GNUTLS compares

</comment><comment><USER23> Shouldn't there be a debate about the technical merits of the idea? I want my libraries and tools to make unwise things hard to do, and the wise easy and obvious. It's a framing issue, one that I think Marco's right about. But I'd like to hear what OpenSSL has to say about this and other, other, other things.

</comment><comment><USER24> Try gnutls

<comment><USER24> and there ares BIOs to read from memory so your point is wrong.

The documentation is a mess though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not going to defend or support OpenSSL, but I find your tone extremely frustrating. For better or worse OpenSSL is an open library for you to use, and you should be thankful for that.

Also, insulting the people working on it is no way to improve the situation.

<comment><USER26> Imagine my surprise at discovering that someone who writes with a tone like that is a prominent OpenBSD developer. ;-)

<comment><USER12> Have you ever actually talked with any of the OpenBSD developers?

Marco is a fantastic human being and absolutely hilarious. On top of all that, he's also an amazing programmer. Yes, I've met him in person, and we've traded emails and packages for years. In fact, there's a half a pallet of donated gear sitting behind me in need of being shipped out to him. --It should go without saying, but he's a friend and I have a strong bias.

Getting frustrated by widely deployed but poorly written software _should_ be expected. Just voicing said frustrations solves nothing and wastes time, but voicing frustrations while providing an alternative is actually beneficial.

<comment><USER26> It wasn't intended as a comment on anyone's personal worth as a human being, or what they're like in person. I have spent a good amount of time following OpenBSD-related mailing lists, though, and I'd say "polite and collegial" is not the prevailing tone--- hyperbolically trashing other people's work and calling them stupid monkeys is more par for the course. Admittedly, they don't have a monopoly on that; plenty of GNU mailing lists are similar (esp. anything RMS or Ulrich Drepper regularly posts to).

<comment><USER12> The majority of open source projects, OpenBSD included, have difficulty differentiating between attacking a problem and attacking a person.

If you read the recent HN article: "How to keep someone with you forever" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1677013>

And ponder it a bit, you'll see how it applies to open source projects, and interactions on mailing lists, or as the case may be, a homepage article by an open source developer.

For me at least, the more fascinating question is why open source projects eventually degrade into "sick systems" of interaction? --I wish I had an answer, but the only speculation I have is it's the result of frustration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you do C++, try Crypto++ it's very nice.

</comment><comment><USER28> old</comment>


Holy Cash Cow, Batman - Content Is Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/business/media/10warner.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> _Ka-ching. The opening-day box office receipts for the Batman film "The Dark Knight" had just set a record. And for myriad reasons — including the late Heath Ledger's delicious turn as the Joker — the blockbuster is still filling theaters on a pace that may land it just behind "Titanic" on the list of all- time, top-grossing films._

Psh. If it were legal to shoot file-sharers on sight, it would be the highest grossing movie ever! Won't someone _please_ think of the movie executives?

</comment><comment><USER3> I should really sign up for an nytimes.com account considering the number of times/day i bypass their login prompt</comment>


30 Quotes That May Inspire You - From HN - <AUTHOR> http://nickfrost.org/post/58432609932/30-quotes-that-may-inspire-you

<comment><USER2> That was beautiful, thanks. My favorite was MLK's about being a street sweeper.</comment>


Panic – Nova Private Beta - <AUTHOR> https://panic.com/nova/ <comment><USER2> I'm a heavy user of VS Code and recently RubyMine (JetBrains does a wonderful job on their IDEs), but I'm really excited about this.

I wonder mainly about two things.

One, how can Panic compete with a free tool like VS Code? Its extensions are stellar, free, and well maintained. The core product is _extremely_ well maintained and constantly improving.

Two, if they're competing with products like WebStorm or SublimeText, again... How?

I don't doubt that they can do it and that they have a solid plan, and that's exciting. Panic delivers on polish and that alone is very appealing. RubyMine for example is really great in terms of function, but it feels clunky as hell at times. It feels like the beastly Java app that it is. I respect the work JetBrains does on their platform more than enough to pay for it, but there's a ton of room for polish!

I'm eagerly waiting to give the beta a test run anyway. The prospect of a new tool to play with is always exciting, and I've never used a tool from Panic that I didn't enjoy.

<comment><USER3> Panic's tools are native and have real macOS UIs. This is a very well-trodden path for small companies to make money selling tools in fields that are typically not huge moneymakers because of free competition.

<comment><USER4> This is why I'm excited about Nova. I'm still using TextMate despite Sublime/VS Code/whatever having way more features just because a non-native UI makes me feel icky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I LOVED Coda, it was my first "real" editor (a step up from NP++) but now that I'm using IDEA I can't imagine going back to something with such a small market cap/plugin developer ecosystem. I wish Panic the best (and I still love them as a company) but I just don't see Coda/Nova being worth it (price or ecosystem-wise) just to have a beautiful editor. Maybe I'll try a trial when it comes out but it just looks... less powerful... that I really need from my editor.

All that said Panic is awesome and the breadth of what they do (Mac Apps, iOS App, Games, handheld gaming hardware) is crazy. I wish they would show Prompt some more love as I fear that is slowly being abandoned and I'll have to find an alternative SSH iOS client.

<comment><USER6> Termius is an excellent alternative. (I am a happy user, and unaffiliated.)

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

<comment><USER5> If it was a one-time purchase I'd be interested but I don't want or need a full terminal replacement across all my platforms. I just want a solid iOS SSH client and I'm willing to pay (I already paid for Prompt and Prompt 2 along with a handful of other SSH clients that I've since discarded).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> VS Code + fork.dev + TablePlus + Insomnia lets you achieve a lot more for free.

<comment><USER8> Didn't know TablePlus, so looked it up. Looks very interesting, but it isn't free: [https://tableplus.io/pricing](https://tableplus.io/pricing) (doesn't even seem to be trialware).

<comment><USER7> It's free and has limited tabs (2). But it's fast and works better than DBeaver or other Electron based solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honest question here:

I was a user of Textmate for Mac for years. I'm not a web developer, so I just needed it as a programming text editor. But it wasn't updated for, like, a decade.

Then I discovered Atom. I know a lot of people who don't like Electron apps, but honestly, it's been fabulous for me.

At this point is there any reason to go back to a paid text editor like Coda or TextMate?

<comment><USER10> > I was a user of Textmate for Mac for years .... But it wasn't updated for, > like, a decade

Still a Textmate user, it was updated 16 days ago.

Honestly I'm so close to moving full time to Windows on all machines for performance reasons, Textmate is the only reason I use a MBP for my laptop.

<comment><USER9> It's good that they're updating it again. I stopped using it about two years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the idea of a Mac-native code editor (although I spend most of my time inside vim or VS Code). Regardless of all the alternatives, it might be worth pointing out that Coda was really good, but that its extension ecosystem and language support was... well, limited.

I hope they have a real solution for that this time around, since I eventually stopped using Coda even for relatively common stuff like Python.

</comment><comment><USER12> TBH screenshots look very similar to Visual Studio Code/Sublime Text/Atom as far as functionality goes (there's a terminal, code outline, file browser, linter errors, quick command popup, ...).

Not saying that's a bad thing, far from it, but they're calling it "totally rethought". What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> They've rethought their existing editor product, 'Coda'. They're telling you it's not just what they have now with some tweaks and features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meta but about the design on this site: that slanted line/text format made me super uncomfortable for no good reason. And all the pink-on-black... ugh.

<comment><USER14> Counter-opinion: I loved both of those things. And love the idea of having completely different themes depending on context (local vs remote editing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Idk if it's just me, but it hurt my eyes to look at that site. The dark background and red/pink font were too much.

Apart from that, it looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> I get that Panic is a mac shop, and they make great platform-specific software but...

I recently ditched macos as a dev alongside a handful of my friends. The wall is cracking due to a combination of Apple's poor hardware (mbp kb) and Microsoft's frantic efforts to catch up.

The fact of the matter is that if you work on a team, you probably have a pretty standard set of tools and runtime environment. And, mac only tools exclude both linux and windows users, but also people who have existing configurations.

But the biggest barrier, as I see it, is that there's no midrange space. You have the "low end" of free tools, like vs code, and high end (IdeaJ). I just don't see value in paying for an editor if it doesn't go "all the way".

So yeah, it's easy to armchair strategize, but I just don't see who this is for other than existing coda users. Or maybe, that's enough. They know better than I do, after all.</comment>


Eurovision Song Contest won by Denmark - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22566260

<comment><USER2> This contest has became a joke. Loreen who didn't just win last year. But got the highest amount of points possible and also the only one ever to get it. She had to cancel her conserts because nobody wanted to go to them. That about summarize the total of all crap in that contest.

The #1 ever, cant even host a consert.</comment>


Are you sure you need VC money?  - <AUTHOR> http://startupjourney.blogspot.com/2007/01/are-you-sure-you-need-vc-money-asks-vc.html <comment><USER2> Beyond the money, the reason to work with VCs and angels (in theory) is for their connections and deal making clout.

The last several acquisitions Google made (YouTube and JotSpot most notably) were, supposedly, driven by the VCs of those firms.

I'd be interested to hear more anecdotes from the field (or any comments debunking that), so does anyone have an experience they can share?

</comment><comment><USER3> Potentially stupid question: If they could sell the company today at $20-30mm, why would they take a pre-money valuation of only $15mm? Or is this standard for VCs to take a 'discount' on valuation? (instant upside!)

I know YC does this, but thought that was peculiar to that situation...

</comment><comment><USER4> TFA says "HotFeature.com has 10 employees"

The website says "This page is parked free"

Whats wrong here?

<comment><USER5> I just assumed it was used as an example.

 _typo</comment></comment>


Y Combinator's growth fund to back challenger bank Monzo - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/monzo-mystery-investor/ <comment><USER2> Monzo, Revolut and N26 (backed by Peter Thiel) are all splashing down around the same time in the U.S. to vie for the Challenger/Neo-Bank crown, where they will compete with:

-Simple/BBVA ([https://www.simple.com/](https://www.simple.com/))

-Varo ([https://www.varomoney.com/](https://www.varomoney.com/))

-Qapital ([https://www.qapital.com/](https://www.qapital.com/))

-Aspiration ([https://www.aspiration.com/](https://www.aspiration.com/))

-Empower ([https://empower.me/](https://empower.me/))

-MoneyLion ([https://www.moneylion.com/](https://www.moneylion.com/))

-Acorns (Spend) ([https://www.acorns.com/spend/](https://www.acorns.com/spend/))

-Chime ([https://www.chimebank.com](https://www.chimebank.com))

-Zero ([https://zero.app/](https://zero.app/))

-Point ([https://trypointbank.com/](https://trypointbank.com/))

-Finn/Chase ([https://www.chase.com/personal/finnbank](https://www.chase.com/personal/finnbank))

-Marcus/Goldman Sachs ([https://www.marcus.com/](https://www.marcus.com/))

-Greenhouse/Wells Fargo ([https://www.wellsfargo.com/greenhouse/](https://www.wellsfargo.com/greenhouse/))

-GoBank/Green Dot ([https://www.gobank.com/](https://www.gobank.com/))

-Square (Cash) ([https://cash.app/](https://cash.app/))

-PayPal

-Apple ([https://www.apple.com/apple-card/](https://www.apple.com/apple-card/))

-(Maybe Amazon soon)?

(edit: links)

<comment><USER3> All those options, and I still can't find a US bank with an API.

<comment><USER4> What would you do with an API that can't already be done? I understand the hesitancy of giving a third party such as Plaid your bank credentials, however an exposed API to your bank seems to be a rather niche need.

As an example, Monzo was quite outspoken about their API at first, but it has since taken a backseat, presumably because they didn't see a huge need for it.

<comment><USER5> >As an example, Monzo was quite outspoken about their API at first, but it has since taken a backseat, presumably because they didn't see a huge need for it.

You're not wrong.. but it's still very much functional and has received some recent additions (receipt API). I do wish they'd do more with it, though. I suspect the problem is that most customers just don't care.

The internal API is fairly trivial to begin using, if necessary.

<comment><USER6> > I suspect the problem is that most customers just don't care.

IMO the reason is they (perfectly rationally) realised after spending several million building an authorised bank that APIs are a pure downside scenario for them, i.e. intermediation risk. Why spend so much money to stand up a de novo bank and let everyone else capture the value? 99% of the value is top of stack. This is why no market in the world has provided 1st party banking APIs for retail products. It's taken regulators to do so in Europe and the results of that (predictably) fell short of what everybody had hoped. No criticism of Monzo for this. Based on their incentives this was the rational course of action.

<comment><USER5> You have a point, and I agree OB has been disappointing. I think there's a middle ground where you offer something that still provides value for personal use, attracts potential patnerships (see Flux) but doesn't give away the "keys to the kingdom" so others can profit off of your work without you, as a bank, benefitting from building the platform in the first place.

I suspect there are is a decent number of 'techies' and early adopters who found Monzo's API, despite its limitations, attractive to them. I've used it to save myself a bunch of time with expenses and it's nice to know that, if I wanted to, I could use the internal API too.

In its current state, Monzo could easily expand the existing personal API (which deliberately doesn't allow you to scale - only whitelisted user IDs can use your OAuth client) whilst minimising intermediation risk, provided that they didn't add the same endpoints to AISP API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What shocks me about this is... Monzo to me (a regular user of about a year) is just a normal bank card without a branch and with a basic app.

Are established banks so incredibly ossified they can't keep up with that?

<comment><USER8> As someone with a Monzo account, but whose main accounts are with Barclays and Nationwide, I find the hype around the "challenger banks" in the UK a bit unexpected. I'm not really sure I understand what they are offering that is so revolutionary. I still think it's great they exist as competition is overdue in the UK banking sector, and I hope they do well.

I find Monzo works well for what I use it for, which is tracking my daily small item spending (getting lunch, buying a coffee etc), while the Barclays and Natwest apps work well for the "grown-up" banking. Between the latter two I have 4 bank accounts, two credit cards and two mortgages, and the apps (combined with Faster Payment's awesome transfer time) make it ridiculously easy to manage my finances.

Monzo app is definitely very nicely done, and there are some neat features, but for my day-to-day banking I have absolutely no issue getting everything done with the Barclays and Nationwide apps. Both could do with a bit of UX work and decluttering, but they are perfectly fine.

Are the rest of the main banks just really awful compared with Barclays and Nationwide?

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

I have a fancy colored debit card now, which is cool.

Tend to use my HSBC for direct debits and bills, and Monzo for daily life/luxury/fun items.

It just seems like the legacy banks are awful rather than Monzo is breaking boundaries. I have a Chinese bank card and I get opt-in text notifications for my spending and have done for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just imagine how many more microservices they'll be able to deploy now!

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Azlo for business checking, very happy with them so far. I think they are backed by BBVA.

Best thing is I could sign up online without ever having to go to a branch. I think they are the only business checking account that allows that.

</comment><comment><USER11> From October 2018 to April 2019, what exactly changed with Monzo? If you were to objectively take the 2X-ing of valuation, you'd assume their revenues and profits (if any) doubled in that time frame.

Hard to believe doubling of real KPIs (like GAAP revenues) in 6 months, I hope YC isn't contributing to the unreasonable doubling of valuation without actual KPI changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> The timing of this funding round is also the biggest surprise for me. Their last round was in November last year and they raised a significant amount of money. It's genuinely taken me aback that five months later they are raising funding again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really interesting to see the re-rise of challenger banks. IIRC Simple was one of the first and did OK never hit the valuation that these new ones are getting.

My hunch is that these are doing comparatively better outside the US because basic banking elsewhere is relatively worse than here. In my experience with at least Chase and Capital One the "big banks" have invested pretty heavily in their UI/UX and I haven't had any issues getting CX questions answered when I need to.

<comment><USER13> Banking in the US is definitely worse than banking in Europe. People still use checks, are you kidding me?

<comment><USER14> I just moved from the USA to the UK. It was shocking how much better the consumer banking system is here.

With 10 seconds of typing on my phone, I set up my standing rent payment to my landlord (which would have been too much money to use Chase's QuickPay at home). I gave my gym and utilities my account number and sort code and they can (with my permission, which I can revoke any time without talking to them) bill me regularly. I recorded a little video of me holding my passport and a scan of it, and that was sufficient ID for them to give me a new account. For everything under £30, I just tap my wallet on the little terminal. For everything over, they bring a terminal to me and I type my PIN. I never have to give up my card to anyone for any reason.

It's a pretty low bar to get over, but Monzo is definitely the best bank I've ever had. The US consumer banking system sucks by comparison.

<comment><USER15> Just to distinguish Monzo from all other banks: "I recorded a little video of me holding my passport and a scan of it, and that was sufficient ID for them to give me a new account." Everything else is standard for all banks in the UK.

<comment><USER16> I've worked for a major UK bank on the branch side and I also interviewed at Monzo a couple of months back on the platform side - their verification process satisfies KYC requirements but it feels so modern in comparison to existing banks.

Back at my previous bank they're still taking copies of ID and sending them off to a central location to be re-digitised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what is a challenger bank?

<comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_bank)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder who the initial sponsorship bank is. I imagine any very large bank is going to see the kinds of differentiators that Monzo is offering (whatever they will be) as things they should just clone, rather than grow a partnership with a competitor over, but I really have no idea how this industry works. Anyone have insight from the peanut gallery?

<comment><USER20> Barclays</comment></comment>


Polymon - <AUTHOR> https://polymon.polymer-project.org/ <comment><USER2> Author of the game here. We built Polymon for the Polymer Summit to help attendees connect with the team and show off features of the web platform. Team members all have QR codes on their badges that can be scanned by attendees to "catch" the Polymon. Locations of the scanned Polymer team members are updated on a map as they are scanned. There is also a battle system where you form a team of your caught Polymon and link up with someone near by for a local challenge.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> So you can't do anything without these QR-codes?

<comment><USER2> For now, no. But eventually we are considering expanding the game for a few other conferences and incorporate other neat platform features like physical web beacons. Eventually we might add a general mechanic that allows anyone to participate, but in the near term it is just meant to be a reference game for others who are interested in building apps on the web platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is new equivalent PokemonGO?

<comment><USER5> It's already more of a game...</comment></comment>


What I've learned in my first year as a college dropout - <AUTHOR> http://jessepollak.me/what-ive-learned-in-my-first-year-as-a-college-dropout/

<comment><USER2> Great post. Specifically on the "I can tell in five minutes whether I'll like someone or not part," getting into local maxima is definitely possible but it's not a bad place to be. The folks at that level are great folks and one is able to discern them with less work. I've found, though, that some folks that I initially got a negative impression from turned out to be really great people, outside of the "5 minute" criteria, though it took some work to get there.

So as with any case of potential local maxima, my approach is to spend more time with some of the folks that fall outside this "5 minute" criteria, to a) meet a more diverse group of people and b) improve my "5 minute" criteria so that there are fewer false negatives.

<comment><USER3> It's a good catch to realize that the main downside to this approach is an inevitable lack of diversity in your friend group. That feeling you are basing it on is a general sense of cultural similarity and worldview similarity. Some of those similarities you want but many you don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> 'While efficient, I'm not sure how I feel about this revelation. At first glance, it seems great, but as I've thought more about it, I'm worried that in this initial judgement I'm likely biased towards certain types of people.'_

I'm glad the author is thinking this one over. Without exception, I've found people who are unquestioningly confident in their quick judgments to be horrible judges.

I'm guessing it's some sort of loop of confirmation bias latched with confidence in the initial judgement.

 _> 'Finding a balance here is something I'm working on now.'_

For me, I've found it helps to try and change perspectives. To go from trying to classify how I feel to considering how 'they' might feel.

It's going to sound cheesy and possibly really abstract, but I try to think of people less as a classification problem - sorting marbles into bins and more like legos - considering a fit for each piece.

</comment><comment><USER5> While it's really interesting and insightful overall, the "$40,000/year is enough" part bothers me. I see it doesn't include health insurance, and while it includes "savings" I have to question how much of a safety net he's actually building himself.

It looks like a classic case of "I'm young and nothing bad's happened to me so why get insurance?".

<comment><USER6> He says he's on his parent's insurance, so at least he has that. Also, people survive on far less than 40k a year in the states.

<comment><USER7> "The states" are not the Bay Area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dread the "what do you do?" question so much; lately I just deflect with "I'm one of the assholes ruining San Francisco, what about you?"

Granted that's in the context of hanging out with people other than startup people. At meetups and whatnot I usually give them some of the highs and the lows, it lets the other person know they can open up too. We don't all have to be fronting positivity 24/7.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it must be so nice to do something that everybody understands. "What do you do?" "I'm a lawyer."

<comment><USER10> "I'm an electrician" "I'm a teacher" "I'm in the military"

.. It's weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love these essays. Particularly the "what do you do", "living on $40,000", and "value of writing".

This year I lived on around $30,000 from my start-up and probably another $10,000 in help from parents on plane tickets and other non-essentials. It's been a very comfortable year with travel and probably too many toys.

I live in Colorado :-)

<comment><USER12> The scary thing about only having 30k/yr is the lack of a real safety net should disaster strike. I've been there and it's perfectly doable, but I'm quite envious of the people I know with a few million in assets. Hopefully I'll be there soon. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > a $40,000 a year salary (coming out to ~$30,000 post-taxes)

Seems like a lot going to taxes especially considering the low income.</comment>


How we hacked Facebook with OAuth2 and Chrome bugs - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.se/2013/02/hacking-facebook-with-oauth2-and-chrome.html <comment><USER2> Discussion in an earlier post here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5249337></comment>


REST is the web, nothing more - <AUTHOR> http://damienkatz.net/2008/08/rest-is-the-web-nothing-more.html

<comment><USER2> An interesting REST read: <http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife>

Anyway, the point is not GET, PUT, and DELETE so much as it is making use of the HTTP architecture as it exists, rather than rebuilding features on top of it. As we move forward on the web, it will be more important to have a standard set of verbs, if for no other reason than to make interoperability easier.

<comment><USER3> The aspect of REST I've always liked most is the uniform interface and the way it can influence your API. The limited verbs are important because they add some constraints and make developers think twice before designating GETs to some URL to delete resources. (Just saw one example of this in an app building on top of one of my open source projects.)

David Heinemeier Hansson made a pretty good speech on the benefits of RESTful constraints when he introduced the RESTful directions of Rails. Think more about proliferating resources (nouns) and dealing with as limited a verb population as possible. This is more important to me than deciding whether to use PUT, DELETE, HEAD, etc. or faking them in overloaded POSTs.

I think the rise of RIAs goes well with the stateless constraint and code-on- demand.</comment></comment>


Are Like Buttons Evil? The Open Web Reacts To Facebook's Not-So-Open Graph - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/23/like-buttons-evil-facebook-not-open/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

<comment><USER2> I really dislike this title. It seems like ever since Google said they would 'Do no evil', people have been calling any company that does anything they don't like evil. Facebook isn't evil, they are a company just like any other. As much as some people hate this open graph idea (and I REALLY hate it), it does not make the company evil.

Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand is evil. :D

<comment><USER3> To avoid confusion: this comment refers to a prior version of the headline which said "Facebook = Evil" or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The real issue is this concept of putting a frame in a website that you click on and then automatically does something with your credentials on another site. It really should be handled by a browser toolbar plugin (for those who want this obnoxious feature) not by something that sites can embed to use your credentials as they see fit. It's fundamentally insecure.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to use the iframe, that's there for the people who don't want to use the fbml markup and javascript in their own pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article has a Facebook like button right under the title.

<comment><USER7> It really gives their article much more weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is some quality tabloid journalism from Techcrunch.

They have lined up some open advocates who they can trot out to call "Facebook" evil, then ride the controversy, while suggesting Facebook will "win" because of their "500 million users".

Whatever you think of Facebook's currently strategy all the people quoted in the article work at huge companies, Kevin at BT and Chris is at Google. Both of those companies, along with many other (like mine, Yahoo!) have huge user populations and they aren't going to sit idle while Facebook attempts to dominate.

At the end of the day this will be decided by how much Facebook users like or dislike the new features, not by anything else.

<comment><USER9> _This is some quality tabloid journalism from Techcrunch._

This surprises you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like Facebook is now taking the heat off of Apple for being the "evil" company...

</comment><comment><USER11> These new facebook plugins that have been released, are they useful to us small web business? Can we use these to make more money or gain more users?

<comment><USER12> Ease of signup. If all I have to do is click a "sign in with my facebook account" and I don't have to sign up for yet another site, I might be compelled to join your site and thus be your customer.

Not saying facebook login is the best way to do this, but as a user, it's comfortable enough.</comment></comment>


They Would be Gods: History of the Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/gods.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this mentioned in the wikipedia entry for "Silicon Valley" and it credits Paul Graham as the author.

<comment><USER2> I ended up talking about this with someone and looked it up.

The article was written by Jerry Borrell. <http://web.archive.org/web/20011031192234/http://www.upside.com/></comment></comment>


Show HN: BorderWait, predict your wait at U.S. airports - <AUTHOR> https://borderwait.net <comment><USER2> What's the difference between going to this website and the one mentioned in the about page?

<comment><USER3> The AWT Page is just a long html table. This UI is simpler in a good way.

I'm not sure how much AI is actually used here.

<comment><AUTHOR> a small amount. I began by trying to average the dates but the result was very poor so I decided to try my hand at some TensorFlow and I basically created a model based on that table.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Varnishtuner.py - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unixy/varnishtuner.py

<comment><USER2> Admittedly, I generally write procedural and/or functional python code... but how is:

      class CPUInfo(dict):
    	def __init__(self, *args):
    		dict.__init__(self, args)

    	def __getitem__(self, key):
    		val = dict.__getitem__(self, key)
    		return val

    	def __setitem__(self, key, val):
    		dict.__setitem__(self, key, val)

Different from:

        class CPUInfo(dict):
            pass

Doesn't the overrides behave just like dict does?

<comment><USER3> Author probably has future plans for the class. I've seen people write classes like that to later do overloading. Others write out the methods to sort of document that those are the ones they are using. I know it might not be one's cup of tea, but let he who writes perfect code every time push to production without testing it first.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's nice to see my intuition was right. Seems a little redundant as documentation - at least for classes in the standard lib. And I'd prefer the diff from "pass" to "added overloaded method" rather than "changed standard method". I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I'd suggest right off the bat is psutil. It looks like y'all did a lot of manual work to gather basic system information that you'd get out of the box with psutil. Plus, they've abstracted a lot of the cross-platform inconsistencies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me, I did consider it. It'd have made things easier a bit. But the goal (as stated in Github) is to _not_ depend on any external module. Execution flow should be to wget && python varnishtuner.py similar to the way mysqltuner.pl works.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a link to the mysqltuner.pl?

<comment><USER6> [http://mysqltuner.pl](http://mysqltuner.pl) (seriously).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs closes its BRIC fund after years of losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-08/goldman-s-bric-era-ends-as-fund-closes-after-years-of-losses <comment><USER2> G</comment>


Social Media is Going to Disappear - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2009/03/28/social-media-is-going-to-disappear/

<comment><USER2> The title is a 'hook'. From the article:

 _By "disappear", I mean that sooner rather than later, social media as a hyperbole-driven, standalone, new-kid-on-the-block entity is going to evolve into a communications, marketing and sales strategy and distribution vehicle that happens to rely on a variety of valuable and useful online services._

Maybe a "social media will, eventually, merge with the usual stuff" is not as nice as title

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Incidentally, why can't I downvote this? I've seen negative points on things, but I don't seem to be able to apply them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Theres nothing interesting to read here.... move along.

</comment><comment><USER5> Twitter sucks. It is only for people who don't have real friends and don't have face-to-face social skills.

<comment><USER2> I made several now face-to-face friends after meeting them on Twitter</comment></comment>


Startup Had 'Masturbation' Zone, Exec Who Took Off Pants in Meeting: Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/02/her-tech-boss-took-his-pants-off-in-meeting-that-was-far-from-the-only-issue-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> wow this is super toxic, not to mention probably illegal. I'm surprised nobody else spoke up before. Even as a male I'd find this disturbing and highly dysfunctional. I can't even fathom how the plaintiff might have felt. I hope she sues them to oblivion. Such companies don't need to exist.

<comment><USER3> A culture only becomes "toxic"when it encounters someone who doesn't like it. We would bot have had this story if Rachel was never hired in the first place.

<comment><USER4> There's no place for weird bullshit like this in business. Open display of deviant behavior is a weird power trip on the part of whomever is in charge that ultimately speaks more about the incompetence of the investors and board than anything else.

<comment><USER3> You may be too wrapped up in outrage to have seen my bigger point. Anyone can come along and claim a corporate culture is toxic for virtually any reason. If your company had a policy that gave extra breaks for people who smoked and said people formed a clique that excluded non-smokers then you'd have grounds to call this "toxic" and agitate for change just because you didn't smoke yourself.

<comment><USER4> When people are watching porn and jerking off in the server closet, it's toxic.

<comment><USER5> Only if it's not done privately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having spent my whole career working in majority women companies, it's sometimes hard to picture how poor working environments can be.

Articles like this give a disturbing insight.

Important to remember that the lawsuit is just one side of the story, written carefully by a lawyer to present the company in the worst possible light, and likely fed to the reporter directly. I'd love to see their response.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems like the startup was still pretty small, but the plaintiff was hardly the only employee there. If you're working in an environment like this, I think you have a very real responsibility to speak up. If that doesn't work you should leave. Anyone working in tech, especially in SV, has alternatives. You have a moral responsibility to squash out this kind of behavior by making it clear it's not an acceptable workplace - even (especially) if you're not the target of harassment.

<comment><USER3> You may have meant "ethical responsibility". Viewing porn as immoral doesn't sound very 2018.

<comment><USER8> The sum of the alleged behaviors here is immoral IMO. Simply watching porn is a world apart from this situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The amount outright toxic comments and toxic people posting in this thread is astounding. Seriously, boys, grow up and join the professional world. Disgusting.

<comment><USER10> Well, not everyone shares the anglosaxon culture of puritan shame about sex and that it's outrageous to discuss outside the bedroom.

So a lot of stuff in the post is not about going outside some professional limit (e.g. few would have been offended if they played with nerf guns in the office, like tons of startups do and most are alright with -- but which a lot of cultures would deem "unprofessional" as well, since it inherently has nothing to do with work).

Though this does go beyond limits:

 _And the harassment escalated, she alleged. In December, English called her into his office, shut the door and took off his pants, she claimed. Moore said she was uncomfortable, told him his behavior was "harassment," and asked to leave the room, but English "would not let her" and began talking about his ex-girlfriend's faults, she claimed._

as it's not mere talk (which can be crude, sensual, or whatever), but actual abuse: nobody asked to see his genitals...

<comment><USER11> As I was saying to your other gross, now deleted comment... Context matters.

I can talk with my friend, in great detail, about sex. Outside of work. At work, it's inappropriate for the same reasons that talking about religion or politics can be. It will alienate people and make them uncomfortable.

But when that extends to have masturbation rooms at work, or your superiors bragging about how great they are at sex (lol), then it crosses a line. A pretty obvious line, to me. Even without the boss undressing. How do you not see that allowing the former sets the culture and leads to the latter? there are power dynamics inherent to the workplace and sex that are undeniable and unignorable if you care about an equal, respectful workplace.

No one anywhere has said "sex is dirty" and it strikes me as a pretty flagrant straw man.

<comment><USER10> > _I can talk with my friend, in great detail, about sex. Outside of work. At > work, it 's inappropriate for the same reasons that talking about religion > or politics can be. It will alienate people and make them uncomfortable._

In some cultures (e.g. Southern Mediterranean), people are not alienated by talking about "religion or politics" at work either. In fact people do so frequently.

See, not everybody shares the cultural constrains of your own culture...

<comment><USER11> Thanks for ignoring the entire point of my post to nitpick a single part of a sentence to advance your same point without addressing what I said. I think I'm done with this thread. Enough toxicity for one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This Daily Beast article twice links to an article from the Mercury News and appears to be just a rewrite of it. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/02/her-tech-boss-took- hi...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/02/her-tech-boss-took-his-pants- off-in-meeting-that-was-far-from-the-only-issue-lawsuit/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks. We changed the url to that from [https://www.thedailybeast.com/startup-had-masturbation- zone-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/startup-had-masturbation-zone-exec- who-took-off-pants-in-meeting-lawsuit). Calling that one a rewrite seems kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> These allegations are more severe than those in a typical sexual harassment lawsuit. I'm interested to read their defense.

</comment><comment><USER15> Everyone that enabled this behavior should be blacklisted by any and all respectable companies and investors.

</comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has, on multiple occasions been required to watch pornography as a part of my job, I cannot fathom how people think that this kind of culture is acceptable in a workplace. It's one thing to have to deal with sexual content, especially in mixed genders, it's an entirely different thing to then turn your workplace into a sexual haven. Unless your job is specifically in the sex trades, there's no reason to ever unzip your pants in front of a co-worker male or female. Keep your privates private. If you really feel the need to masturbate at work there are private stalls in most workplaces that would serve this purpose just fine. The fact that this kind of thing still needs to be said boggles my mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised she waited that long to sue them.

<comment><USER3> She had to gather evidence first. If the facts are truly as the article lays them out to be then this is a slam dunk for her legal team and a nice payday for everyone.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure how she could have proof of any of the accusations beyond perhaps crass emails as circumstantial evidence. A lot of it is the sort of stuff that doesn't leave a paper trail, I doubt there was an official email declaring the server area the masturbation zone, maybe there was something with a double entendre though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I read stories like this I amazed that anybody thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable! It's like we live on different planets.

Ok, maybe the getting away with something so inappropriate is thrilling?

I want to understand..

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it because Startup these days get WAY too much money, and far too well paid that they simply ignore all the consequences of what ever they do, as long as they can produce hyper growth ( with no profits )?

Or may be they watched a little too much Wolf of Wall Street?

P.S I don't know if the site thedailybeast.com is reputable or not, or the story is true or not.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds terrible.

I hope the company is sued into oblivion, and the officers publicly shamed. What an awful place.

</comment><comment><USER22> This website took so long with load and was loaded with so many animated ads and unresponsive scrolling while more ads just kept popping up slowly it's amazingly awful how [news] sites have gotten these days to try to survive.

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe we should hear all involved sides before judging anyone.

<comment><USER24> I'm sure the CTO has a perfectly good reason to drop his pants in his office. Perhaps he urgently needed to urinate and his office door was the best place to do it?

While what is alleged is over the top, it's not all that far from what women face in even the typical workplace. Source: my wife and first hand observations from other coworkers.

<comment><USER25> "I'm sure the CTO has a perfectly good reason to drop his pants in his office. Perhaps he urgently needed to urinate and his office door was the best place to do it?"

Droping pant is a way to show that, we are all in the game with new tech stack and we not holding anything back, not even our pants. In a startup, we should do whatever it takes to succeed.

<comment><USER13> We've banned this account for trolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Workplace Wanking - comedy becomes reality: [https://youtu.be/VKH9ECC_Qa4](https://youtu.be/VKH9ECC_Qa4)

</comment><comment><USER27> what the fuck did I just read?

</comment><comment><USER28> the site requires switching off scripts in order to read article, there is no way i am switching off adblocker

</comment><comment><USER29> Are there so few women out there that these guys can't just get a girlfriend?

<comment><USER30> No girl is dumb enough to be their girlfriend.

<comment><USER29> When it comes to what many women put up with, Stanford man-children are fairly benign in comparison.

<comment><USER31> This is not a true statement

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


FaceBook doesnt allow reporting Adverts - <AUTHOR> Why cant we report adverts of contriversial nature on Facebook? Does FB copy check each publisher?
I have seen multiple ads with smoking being glorified and one TV series is actually named as a ciggerate! <comment><USER2> They review the adverts before being published.</comment>