San Jose State to offer ground-breaking low-cost, for-credit online courses - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22377206/san-jose-state-partners-silicon-valley-startup-groundbreaking <comment><USER2> Since it isn't mentioned in the article, here's the program page: <http://www.sjsu.edu/plus/>

Also, they only offer Intermediate Algebra, College Algebra and Elementary Statistics classes. SJSU's program is clearly intended as a precursor to attending college, not a replacement.

<comment> barry-cotter All true. But this could be the start of something beautiful. Within two years surely it'll be possible to get a STEM Associate of Arts degree online from a state system.Online education has many flaws and misfeautures but the only thing I can't see it doing is a thesis, and how many people do those before a Master's?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see a state university taking the lead here. Not to downplay what Coursera/edX are doing, but for US higher education to get cheaper, it's not the advanced courses that need to go online, it's the introductory ones, so that the required freshman and sophomore courses can be taken on the cheap (maybe while a student is in high school), and advanced ones can then involve tuition, use of labs, specialized equipment, and other university infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Completely agree. Anything 100 level should be brought online first; I could see this compressing a "four year" bachelors degree into two years.

<comment><USER5> Even compressing a "four year" degree into four years would make a substantial difference. At American state universities, only 31% of students graduate in four years.

<comment><USER6> I thought four-year degrees taking 5 years was a bit ridiculous before I moved abroad... after moving to Holland I see that the US is just not competitive here.

In NL, University students complete a Bachelor's in _three_ years, usually going on to complete a Master's in the following year, or a "Research Masters" in two years ("research" meaning you actually publish articles). Nearly the whole time is spent actually studying the subjects in your major.

<comment><USER5> True, but a HBO takes four years and is equivalent to an American bachelor's degree. Part of the problem is that in the US, a whole range of institutions shares this category called "college" even though everyone knows that MIT and a regional state university are vastly different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This could potentially start a tuition cost battle (reverse pricing) in the country and in the end benefit the students. Good to see SJSU taking leads from bigger players like Stanford and Cal in the valley.

<comment><USER8> Good for students in the short term; long term, it's strongly in students' interests for universities to get more money.

This is great progress, but it needs to be coupled with better funding for public universities.

<comment><USER9> It is not self-evident to me that it's necessarily in students' interest for universities to get more money.

As a purchaser of anything else -- gas, entertainment, books, electronics, whatever -- is it always in my long-term interest for the seller to "get more money"? (Even when that money doesn't come directly to me -- for example, government subsidies -- their bonanza doesn't necessarily inure to me, the customer, as opposed to insiders.)

<comment><USER8> Always? No. But when news agencies get more money, they have more careful copy-editing and better investigative journalism. When hardware companies get more money, they can afford better R&D, resulting in nicer products down the road. The things that get cut tend to be what avoids short-term losses, which isn't always good for the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's the announcement by Sebastian Thrun on Udacity:

[http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity- anno...](http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity-announces- for.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Is the ground-breaking part the cost of it? I just think it sounds like normal online courses. Maybe I am missing something?

<comment><USER12> It's a for credit online course that's available for cheap and as a non-degree student (i.e. MOOC). So it's the first set of courses to try and bridge the gap between MOOC's and "traditional" online courses/degrees.

<comment><USER11> Ok, thank you for explaining! I am not from the US so I didn't know it was uncommon with online courses for non-degree students.

edit: Although now that I think about it I should have guessed. Having a system with an expensive tuition to be paid by the student probably doesn't roll so well with pick-and-choose online courses for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What Udacity and EdX are missing is (1) verifiable testing; (2) accreditation. They are just starting on this with the Pearson deal.

But SJSU can provide the accreditation. But verifying that someone who could be in Bangor or Bangkok is really taking their test or doing their own homework is the big missing piece.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not only is this important in terms of accessibility (reach and cost), but also to consistently provide quality course content.

An online class won't suffer from potential variabilities in quality that may impact traditional ones. In fact, their quality can easily improve based on feedback.

</comment><comment><USER15> The University of London offers full distance learning degree courses. They don't offer very much in the way of support but they are cheap and reputable. See: <http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/>

<comment><USER16> Open University, too, <http://www.open.ac.uk/>, and it's got considerably better name recognition...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, I wonder, if they want to make money out of it as well or not. My question is why I would spend 150$ on a online course, that I can get on edX or elsewhere for free?

what is the catch :?

<comment><USER18> You can take the course for free, but you won't get credit for it. From the Udacity blog:

"Living up to our promise to always provide a free path to high-quality education, we are also offering these courses free of charge as conventional MOOCs, but this path will not include instructor access, additional support services, or a path to college credit."

Blogpost: [http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity- anno...](http://blog.udacity.com/2013/01/sebastian-thrun-udacity-announces- for.html)

<comment><USER17> As a recruiter, how can I tell if someone who payed, did really learn something from the course? Does the paid version, has a tougher exam?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI: <http://online-degrees.findthebest.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> You can take an in-person, face-to-face course at a community college for about the same price. I don't see how this program is ground-breaking.

</comment><comment><USER21> And just like that, it becomes clear how Udacity can become a multi-billion dollar company. I hope their investors get rich, the World will be a much better place if they do.

I think there has been a lot of interest in the company lately. I put them on my linkedin under education and even though I use a lot of popular keywords, searching 'Udacity' is the #1 way people arrive at my profile by a wide margin.

<comment><USER22> I find Udacity sort of gimmicky and too gamified. I really wish I could say I really enjoyed the intro to CS course. I hope they get better.

I'd jump at the opportunity to get the equivalent of a BS in CS for free. Or even for a modest per-credit hour fee.</comment></comment>


Real Shadow: jQuery Plugin that casts photorealistic shadows - <AUTHOR> http://indamix.github.com/real-shadow/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it is the amount of shadow-casting items on that page but if your ___landing page_ __maxes out my cpu and lags badly, I say goodbye faster than 20 frames render. (I use Opera.)

edit: They do look good though!

</comment><comment><USER3> This one even had lights. Illuminated.js – 2D lights and shadows rendering engine for HTML5 applications <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3958251>

</comment><comment><USER4> The effect is cool, so I hate to ask this, but-- in what sense is this "photorealistic"? They look like normal soft shadows to me.

<comment><USER5> in a marketing sense.

<comment><USER4> The normal computer graphics meaning, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where is the cursor on my phone? :)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Perfect for eye-catching demos and landing pages."

Can we stop creating stuff in JS/CSS that we would have ridiculed other people for doing in flash? I can't possibly think of any situation where this would be useful for a landing page.

<comment><USER4> Flash wasn't ridiculed because of how it looked. The principle of integrating interactive content into web pages is a fine one, so long as it's done in a way that's semantically consistent, machine readable, searchable, accessible, reliable, not too obtrusive, forgiving of network latency and performance, cross-platform, cross-device, and tolerant of errors -- the web, in other words. Flash was... not.

That doesn't mean we stop trying to make web pages look prettier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This pegged my duo core at 100% for both cores. Realtime shadows are great and all, but if I needed to achieve them I'd imagine I'd use WebGL if I didn't care about CPU or battery.

Using jQuery for this type of problem seems a little out of place to me. That said, this is certainly "neat." THAT said, I don't believe this has real world practical value. Its too computationally expensive considering what it adds.

<comment><USER9> I'd use WebGL if I _did_ care about CPU and battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On iPad I see shadows, but can't control them...

</comment><comment><USER11> I moved the cursor across the page and nothing of interest happened. This is Firefox 12. It did work on chrome though.

<comment><USER12> Do you have NoScript or similar? Even with scripts enabled it doesn't work for me, because of the mimetype: "[NoScript] Blocking nosniff Javascript served from [https://raw.github.com/Indamix/real- shadow/master/realshadow...](https://raw.github.com/Indamix/real- shadow/master/realshadow.js) with wrong type info text/plain, inline and included by <http://indamix.github.com/real-shadow/>

Edit: the fix is to add <https://raw.github.com/> to the pref noscript.inclusionTypeChecking.exceptions in about:config

<comment><USER11> Yup. Although I did switch it to "allow scripts globally", but I guess that's not enough.

And, sorry, but I'm not going to add that to about config.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My company released this effect a couple of months ago: <http://okfoc.us/okshadow/> and <https://github.com/okfocus/okshadow>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to confirm, it's working well on Chrome 20 on Mac for me (no lag, not maxing out the CPU, very smooth). It's interesting from a technical perspective, although design-wise I can't really see any practical reason to use it. Fun though.

</comment><comment><USER14> 2000 - drop shadows.

2005 - transparent drop shadows.

2012 - realtime drop shadows!

</comment><comment><USER15> It may just be for demo purposes, but using the mouse cursor as a light source seems like the 2012 equivalent of animated GIF backgrounds. Might be cool it could you specify a point light source at a given coordinate and let the page render from there.

<comment><USER16> You can. if you read the github readme, is shows clearly how to both disable the mouseFollow and set a global light source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Works quite nicely on Chrome. Too much lag on Firefox and Opera!

</comment><comment><USER18> Works on FF 12, but it's extremely slow.

<comment><USER19> Beautifully smooth for me, with Chrome 20 on Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> FYI doesn't work with IE 10

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks very nice in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER22> ubuntu1104+Chrome: perfect Mac+firefox13: a bit slow

</comment><comment><USER23> Needs more lens flare. And some bevels. Then we're back in 1998.

</comment><comment><USER24> well, I liked it, well done</comment>


Don't Make Squirrel Burgers - <AUTHOR> http://leewaterman.com/dont-make-squirrel-burgers/ <comment><USER2> I was wondering if it was about this story:

"Man Dies from Extremely Rare Disease After Eating Squirrel Brains"

[https://www.livescience.com/63831-squirrel-brains-rare- disor...](https://www.livescience.com/63831-squirrel-brains-rare-disorder- creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18268219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18268219)</comment>


Geckoboard Pricing: Let me know - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geckoboard.com/geckoboard-pricing-let-us-know

<comment><USER2> I have been seriously impressed by geckoboard, but do not have anything serious enough to use it on and so would be unlikely to pay much for it (for the time being).

One other thing is that if I was using for something serious, I may be worried by geckoboard having access to some of the more sensitive data. I think this could be a big deterent for some.

Overall, you have an absolutely kick-ass product, I suspect that if you dropped the prices a fair bit then even the most casual users would sign up, which should result in greater revenue for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a good read on pricing: [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/37737/Secrets-Of- Freemi...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/37737/Secrets-Of-Freemium- Pricing-Make-The-Cheapskates-Pay.aspx)

Per-device pricing means your users need to make a pricing decision every time they add another device, which they may hate and try to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have been using Geckoboard for a few weeks now but, sadly, none of my ventures have enough traffic for me to see the value in paying for the service (at this point). I believe that it is an awesome product but I believe the price barrier is going to be a huge deterrent for average webpage owners. You might consider going freemium and perhaps allow only 1 site/account up to 1000 views/day (these numbers are only to get my point across). The hope is that you gain a larger user base, including many who would have to upgrade if/when their sites get traction.</comment>


China Disrupts WhatsApp Service in Online Clampdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/technology/whatsapp-facebook-china-internet.html?smid=tw-share <comment><AUTHOR> It's unlikely that the current administration would ever confront China about its Internet clampdown on human rights grounds, but I don't understand why this isn't treated as a trade issue (or perhaps it is and I'm ignorant of it). There's no reason we should allow WeChat, Baidu, and other Chinese Internet companies to operate freely in the United States when American competitors are almost entirely locked out of the Chinese market.</comment>


Speech to Song Illusion (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=212 <comment><USER3> I'm not convinced that this is an illusion.

Here is the confounding thing: our ears perceive the spectral distribution as pitch. So that is to say "aaah" sounds higher than "oooo", even with the same underlying pitch; just different equalization.

If we boost a narrow frequency with a parametric equalizer and then sweep the frequency up and down, we can use it as a musical instrument, pretty much regardless of what is the input sound.

You can do this with your mouth: make a chhhhh voiceless sound and just change the shape of your mouth and move your tongue; you can make a melody. Yet, there is no underlying tone; just noise.

Your ear doesn't care; pitch is just which part of the basiliar membrane is stimulated more. Doesn't matter whether that came by equalizing noise so more of it is concentrated in that spot, or whether it came from a periodic signal.

The human voice is a combination of the periodic signal with harmonics from the vocal cords, and the filtration of the vocal tract creating the "formants". Both of these contribute to the perceived pitch; we know that we can make a melody just with the formants alone with the "chhhhhhhh" experiment. It's not just the vibration of the vocal cords that produces pitch.

I think we can even hear these separately. If I make a monotonous sound with my vocal chords and at the same time a constricted hissing sound "ghhhhhh", and then vary the shape of my mouth, then "inside the hiss", I hear the melody created by the filtration. At the same time, I also hear the unchanging pitch of the sound from my vocal cords as a separate voice. We can't say that the melody of the modulated hiss is an illusion because the vocal cords are pinned to one note.

<comment><USER4> I just tried to make a monotonous sound with my vocal chords while changing my mouth cavity to a melody, like in the "chhh" experiment, or as if I were whistling, and for me it's kind of impossible. If my vocal chords are vibrating, then the pitch they make follows my mouth shape.

I'm wondering did you need to practice that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hear this all the time when listening to almost any voice that has more than the minimum expression in the form of varied pitch.

I wrote a program to detect the most apparent rhythms from arbitrary sound input. It was based on the Echo Nest API. I was able to extract a few lines out of spoken word texts that had clear 4 on the floor rhythms.

But my project left pitch alone. We unconsciously vary aspects of our prosody to reflect our meaning, intention, mood, etc. You can even hear the children (at the bottom of the page) embellish the woman's loop with more consonant tones, e.g. on the syllable "strange".

If you listen very, very closely you can hear them alternate between strict reproductions of the tenser tones and their own re-editing to make it sound more consonant or friendly. I posit this is their mind playing along with a game of how they want to make it sound vs. complying with their leader.

NPR and most advertising makes me very uncomfortable as they're parroting each other's attention-grabbing prosodies, imitating tones of danger, confusion and great curiosity.

And of course, one of the great modern masters of hearing inherent pitches is Mono Neon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA2-eKbfaWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA2-eKbfaWI)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for posting about MonoMan! I'd never seen that before. I needed a good dose of artful joy. This technique can also be applied to our rhythmic cadences of speech as demonstrated by my friend Dan Weiss, playing the drum interpretation of the FedEx guy commercial: [https://youtu.be/mIIP4zIi4DM](https://youtu.be/mIIP4zIi4DM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm reminded of POGO - <USER2>

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY)

<comment><USER8> My favorite version, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnuGjcp8h2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnuGjcp8h2c)

Unfortunately the site that produced these kinds of images, yooouuuutuuube is no longer up, even though the domain is seemingly active on root url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Steve Reich did this in 1988, deriving melodies from speech in recorded interviews:

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E4Bjt_zVJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E4Bjt_zVJc)

<comment><USER10> Scott Johnson's John Somebody from 1982 is another good one

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Johnson_(composer)#John_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Johnson_\(composer\)#John_Somebody) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPlY4X5hrYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPlY4X5hrYk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > suddenly appears to burst into song

No, it doesn't. What am I supposed to hear? What does "burst into song" mean?

</comment><comment><USER12> Weird. I could hear a _possible_ increase in how 'musical' the repeated phrase sounded, but I was flabbergasted when I heard the subject recordings, because I didn't hear anything remotely as song like??

Maybe it is my phone speaker not being good enough ? That, or I'm just weird as usual.

</comment><comment><USER13> One of the first episodes of radiolab was about this [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91513-behaves-so- strangely](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91513-behaves-so-strangely)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _And here is the notated phrase as it is generally heard after it has been > played repeatedly:_

Can this point possibly be made without using the key of B, requiring a key signature with five sharps?

<comment><USER14> I don't know if it's part of the illusion, but I definitely hear this as being in B, ending on the dominant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't hear anything like that?

<comment><USER16> I could hear it. So well that in the full sentence it now sounds like the phrase is being sung. It will take a while for that effect to "wear off".

That being said, it may be related to something about western music scales. If you are used to music that doesn't use a 12 interval scale, maybe you wouldn't interpret it as music.

<comment><USER15> Maybe the opposite? The repeats make speakers of non-tonal languages notice the tones that they normally filter out from speech, and to them it sounds odd.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to invest in Blockchain and not in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> I can easily buy BTC. But i want to know what are the best methods to invest in blockchain?
Eg. Companies or stocks, ..
Edit: Seeing the responses: Blockchain =/= crypto currency. Blockchain is the tech behind it, which is getting adopted in the enterprise and governement. Crypto's are not. <comment><USER2> A case study of a business adopting blockchain and gaining massive cost advantages is yet waiting to happen.

Relevant questions to ask:

1) How will the miners be compensated? They're needed to keep the infrastructure running, and in BTC/ETH the compensation factor is built into the cryptocurrency.

2) In a consortium environment where only limited entities can add data to the blocks, what are the costs savings compared to a database with master/slave replication and daily dumps made available to the public?

Other than that, Azure recently rolled out blockchain-as-a-service [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/2016/...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/2016/08/01/getting- started-with-blockchain-as-a-service-using-microsoft-azure-dev-test-labs/) expect AWS and Google to do the same if the demand picks up.</comment>


Canonical adds a $625 and $675 UbuntuEdge reward level - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity# <comment><USER2> Well that decides it - I'm in.

I'm excited about the possibility of a genuinely hand held, pocket sized device that I can hook up to behave like a full desktop.

It's a format that has been tried before but the power/price ratio has never been favourable - this feels like the first real chance for it to work.

<comment><USER3> Just wondering what scenarios you foresee you using the desktop feature in?

If your travelling there won't be a screen available unless you lug one around. In which case you might as well carry a laptop.

At home and work you probably have a computer.

I think it is an interesting concept but I don't quite see the practical use. Unless it had like a stand and a projector or something.

<comment><USER4> I wonder the same thing. But I would be really interested in trying a small Mac Air sized screen/keyboard shell that had a port that I could slide such a phone in to. Sort of a portable docking station.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of my old Motorola Atrix [1]. It had a laptop docking shell that booted a restricted version of Ubuntu alongside an instance of Android. It was totally cool, and everyone that saw it was amazed. However, actual usage was another story. Tegra2 just wasn't powerful enough to drive Ubuntu and Android concurrently in a usable manner.

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G)

<comment><USER6> We've come a long, long way since WebTop.

Our code runs fairly well on the Nexus 4 today, and through much dogfooding, we've learned that RAM is the biggest limiting factor in performance. So when (if?!) Edge ships with 4GB of RAM, the desktop mode will fly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any information on whether the drivers on the phone will be open source as well? I'm on the fence, but the main thing stopping me is that I'm not very keen on buying yet another phone powered by a bunch of proprietary binary blobs.

I'd like to hack on the software, build my own, try to install Debian on it instead etc. All that is going to be much harder if I have to use whatever kernel version their binary blobs target.

<comment><USER6> We plan on an unlocked phone, with an unlocked bootloader.

Unfortunately, for the planned volume, we won't have much influence with the SoC vendor, and therefore, it is highly doubtful you will see open graphics / radio firmware.

Sorry, it's not our preference either.

<comment><USER8> Just for everyone's edification...

You're unlikely to see an open-source firmware for the 3G/4G cellular radio, the WiFi, or the low level Bluetooth stack (up to the HCI layer). Ever.

The reason? This stuff costs a lot to develop, and the major chip vendors don't want to give any help to their competition.

As for graphics... I had heard an announcement by one SoC vendor who was just putting in more general-purpose processor cores, and they had planned to do all the video decoding (such as for H.264) and OpenGL graphics in software (using Mesa?). This was allegedly going to be possible with a power budget not too much larger than the typical hardware implementations of these blocks. What ever happened to them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't quite get what's going on here. Is this an idea for a major commercial product or is it a quirky fun thing for the ubuntu community? The scale they're aiming for seems to imply the former.

Usable as a desktop is a cool idea, but more of a "linux on your wristwatch" idea than one with real use. I mean, if you have a keyboard & monitor handy, how hard is it to have a PC too? Cheap micro desktops are coming out all over the place. Cheap.

Am I missing the point entirely? Is this all about Ubuntu mobile itself with android & ubuntu desktop as extras?

I hope this doesn't sound like hating. I actually want this to succeed. It's cool. Crowd funding a major player in the OS/mobile space is even cooler. Lots of potential spinoffs down the road (like the iOS laptop I've wanted to get my dad for years). That said... Can anyone explain this to me? What are they trying to do here?

<comment><USER10> >Am I missing the point entirely? Is this all about Ubuntu mobile itself with android & ubuntu desktop as extras?

It's a phone! It's a computer! It's both!

More seriously, imagine a phone that is always a phone unless you want to make it a computer. Plug it into a TV/Monitor/glass and you have a full computer desktop.

I travel quite a bit. I have in my bag at the moment a laptop, a phone and a tablet. With this, I need just the phone.

I also used to work in an office. When I went home, I had a computer at home. If I never wanted to do anything, read an email or what not, I needed to VPN in or sync something. Things ALWAYS got out of sync. Now, I can just plug into a monitor and have my work system at home.

Or, say, you are a corporation. You have 10,000+ people. Assuming you are a normal corporation of that size, many of those people have phones AND computers/laptops. It is highly likely that a very large number of those people could get by with one device: a phone that is also a computer. Cost savings for those corporations would be huge.

<comment><USER9> _" With this, I need just the phone._"

You still need the keyboard and monitor, don't you?. If you are traveling, it would probably be best if they snapped together into a nice, book-like shape. Like a laptop, but with the computer conveniently removed?

Regarding money-saving at a 10,000 PC corporation.. really? First, they would have to use Ubuntu, and they use Windows. Second, its not really that much money. Even if this is free in the sense that they need to have a phone anyway, they still need the monitor & stuff. If they were happy with an ubuntu appliance PC, I'm sure they could get the computer part of the computer in micro computer form for $200 or so every 3-5 years if the saving was worth it. Most importantly, phones break, get lost or stolen.

I don't see it.

<comment><USER11> Find me an equivalent in a micro computer form for $200 or so.

Find me an equivalent in a cellphone form for 830$.

Now find me an equivalent that do both.

I don't think it's a really good idea to replace everything with a single device, but you can't say that it's not less expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shuttleworth's interview about how they are going to keep the long term future of Ubuntu's phone OS from fragmenting while still allowing complete manufacturer customization was a really disappointing string of non-answers. I am really confused about how this is going to shape up. Maybe this will set a precendent for a Nexus-style standard device with the blessing of Canonical itself.

<comment><USER13> The general message is this: you don't put a new UI over the top, you add your own services (videos displayed, music store, books, mags, etc, etc). There is a small amount of leg room for making minor UI tweaks such as the welcome screen layout, general colour scheme, etc - but that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Up to date graph: [http://vertior.com:9000/](http://vertior.com:9000/)

<comment><USER15> That's a wonderful visualization, the second graph shows very clearly that the new strategy is working wonders.

I still think Shuttleworth will eventually top-up with his own money, but this should reduce his exposure somewhat ;)

<comment><USER16> Can he do that? I thought kickstarter tries to block people from doing that. How does indiegogo deal with that issue?

<comment><USER15> I don't think indiegogo is as strict as kickstarter... regardless: I expect something that brings 32m through IG would get preferential terms anyway.

Mind, it's all speculation at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At current levels they need more than 30,000 people to commit to buy an $830 dollar phone which is not expected to released for at least 10 months and with next to no marketing clout.

I'm not saying it can't be done but I'd be very surprised if they meet the target.

<comment><USER18> To me, this isn't so much the problem as the realities of producing a phone with a Bill of Materials like the one they're intending.

I can't imagine that spec sheet, at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014, is going to be cheap. They'd be hard pressed to manufacture this phone at all, let alone with sapphire screens and such.

Think of it this way, Samsung won't even broker a discussion about RAM unless you order >100k units. If they sold 32M of phones at $600, that's about 53k handsets, which is about half of an initial production run for any serious manufacturer.

I'm bearish, but I'd be thrilled if we had another competitor against iOS and Android. Blackberry and WP8 are not real contenders, Canonical could easily get the 3rd slot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a lesson there - you cant sell a lot of kit (available at some future date) at a price that is over 30% more than a ton of other folks got it for. The reward price "spread" is an attempt to reproduce that initial enthusiastic sales surge but I wonder...

Might come off but it feels like a marketing "cock-up" to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am struggling to justify buying a phone now that won't ship for 10 months. By then Apple, Samsung, HTC etc will all have far superior devices

<comment><USER21> This isn't _buying_ a phone. This is making a donation to support the project [1], and, if all goes well, you'll be rewarded with a very cool phone.

[1] I'm pretty sure I've got this right. The text I'm referencing is from their FAQ:

      > What if you fail to reach the funding target?
      >
      > We appreciate every bit of support we receive during the
      > 30 days, and every backer will be welcomed into the
      > Ubuntu community. If we don't reach our target then we
      > will focus only on commercially available handsets and
      > there will not be an Ubuntu Edge.

(edit: I picked a terrible FAQ item to support the point that I was trying to make, which is that the phone may take longer than predicted to produce, and there's even a possibility that it'll never be produced. I think that Canonical is being very responsible by raising a lot of money as a hedge against the risks, but still, there are some risks.)

<comment><USER22> No, if the campaign doesn't succeed, Indiegogo won't take your money. The campaign is only funded if they raise the full $32m, so there is no worry of not paying and not receiving the phone.

<comment><USER21> Yes you are correct. I screwed up by pasting the wrong FAQ item.

What I was trying to get at is that there's no guarantee of a phone _even if the project is funded_.

<comment><USER23> > What I was trying to get at is that there's no guarantee of a phone even if > the project is funded.

Guarantee from whom?

Normally I'd agree, because the fundraiser is typically a startup, perhaps a limited company, with no existing business with which to back refunds. So they could burn through the money and end up with nothing to issue refunds with. So from your perspective, there's no guarantee, since suing them would certainly do you no good anyway.

But what about an established company? If they want to guarantee it, why can't they? But, of course, are they? I'm not sure whether they're saying they are, or whether the law would say that they are. But I don't think it's as clear cut as the new startup case.

<comment><USER21>
      > Normally I'd agree, because the fundraiser is typically a
      > startup, perhaps a limited company, with no existing
      > business with which to back refunds.

What type of entity is raising the funds (startup, limited company, etc.) is irrelevant. The point is that they are asking for an _investment_ , and yes, as you point out, there are no refunds if an investment doesn't work out.

This is very different from the mindset of a consumer, who is purchasing the product that was created with the investors money. If the investment doesn't pan out, the consumer has nothing to buy. The investor looses their investment.

My concern is that by offering product in exchange for investment (essentially a forward contract[1]), consumers are lured into taking on the risks of investors. The language on the fundraising page is, unfortunately, quite vague about this.

Again, I'm not saying that Canonical can't deliver, and I'm certain that they'll do their best to make this work out. I do wish that they'd make a better effort of warning off people who think they're simply buying a phone that won't be delivered for many months.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "[Kogan] LivePrice allows you to purchase a product while we are in the process of manufacturing or shipping. The price of the product gradually increases... " [http://www.kogan.com/au/liveprice/](http://www.kogan.com/au/liveprice/)

</comment><comment><USER25> So long as a Paypal account is required to make a > $500 contribution, I won't be contributing at any of those tiers. I know I'm in the minority though so I doubt this will have a big impact on the overall funding.

<comment><USER26> I'm wih you on that. While we're probably in the minority, at least in the U.S. PayPal is not a monopoly with Stripe and other services around, so I make it an effort not to use PayPal and it's easy to do so. I havent't logged into PayPal in years and probably don't even remember my password.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Done. £419 for a phone that good, that I only need a screen and a keyboard for to turn into a mobile workstation. Fingers crossed that enough people find this as compelling as I do and sign up!

<comment><USER17> Slightly OT, but do you know where you stand from an import duty/VAT standpoint?

A quick google suggests you could be liable for around £90 in duty & VAT[1]

[1][http://www.dutycalculator.com/popular-import-items/import- du...](http://www.dutycalculator.com/popular-import-items/import-duty-and- taxes-for-smartphone/)

<comment><USER28> Its says free shipping in the US and UK, so I'm guessing, as Canonical is based in London, they'll do the importing and deal with duty, so the price you see is the price you pay! I'm guessing.

<comment><USER17> Ah, I never knew they were headquartered in the UK!

<comment><USER29> And thus all EU countries should have it without duty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Man, what a bummer. Can't make a purchase without a paypal account. Guys - please enable credit card payments and you'll have a horde of buyers from India :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I can't comment on their thing so I'll say something here hoping someone there reads it...

They really ought to make their $20 founder level a lottery.

And then after that was publicized, make two more tiers.

$20 - 1 ticket

$50 - 3 tickets

$100 - 8 tickets

And then throw in some of the $10,000 one of a kind prizes in the drawing.

<comment><USER32> That sounds possibly illegal, or at least against the TOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Selling out all the "limited" tiers still lands them $7 million short. I hope they make it (I backed the $600 tier), but I'm still doubtful.

<comment><USER34> I'd hope shuttleworth would step in and lay that 7 million down as a contingency action.

<comment><USER35> Nope, I don't think that will ever happen, there is no incentive for him doing that. Mass production of 40-45K phones really need capital, and if he put 7 million, how he is going to avoid a loss, let alone profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "The last few days have been absolutely incredible -- over $3.5 million in the first 40 hours."

This seems quite low. With thirty days they must achieve over a million dollars per day. I would assume that the first 40 hours brings way more money than the days 3-27 but that's only double than the required average income. I hope they reach the target, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER37> Crowd funding generally receives the bulk of it's funding in the last few days. Many projects succeed when they at < 50% funded a couple days prior to the end.

<comment><USER38> Yes but crowd funding is generally raising a bit less than $32 million. Impossible to tell whether this project will follow others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Founding rate: [http://ownu.net/rate.txt](http://ownu.net/rate.txt)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd say its a good move (even if it is a fluke). Think this way, people saw 600$ and 830$ initially. So in our subconscious mind, 830$ IS THE price, rest will be played by psychology, anything less than 830 would be at a discount and most probably I'll be TEMPTED to buy it.

</comment><comment><USER40> 625 is sold out already. Any idea what the likely BOM cost to Ubuntu would be for this?

[http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung- Galaxy-S...](http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung- Galaxy-S4-Carries-236-Bill-of-Materials-IHS-iSuppli-Virtual-Teardown- Reveals.aspx)

Suggests 400$ is achievable, which should leave them plenty of room for profit at 600 USD. Given the dropoff when the price goes up to 675 from 625 here: [http://vertior.com:9000/](http://vertior.com:9000/) and the lack of marketing / distribution costs you'd think they'd do better just to leave the price low.

<comment><USER41> With such low handset numbers (<50000), I would be surprised if they don't lose money.

<comment><USER6> The cost of my team's engineering time over the next multiple months is not covered by the $32M.

I do not think you will be surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm all for an Ubuntu phone, almost to the point of shelling out, but I'm not sure I'd get a commensurate benefit from this phone. I would probably go for it if it weren't for remote desktop apps like iTeleport. Pull out whatever mobile device you've got (this morning it was my iPad), launch the app, and there's your home desktop (assuming you've got a cell or WiFi signal). It's laggy, but such things improve over time.

Maybe I'm missing the point.

<comment><USER43> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing) It may take a bit more configuration than iTeleport (or not, I dunno), but it's worked fine on every major OS for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Their goal of $32M seems impossible, unless I'm not understanding how indiegogo works.

If all the pledge levels 'fill up' (Only $830 and $20 do not have caps) They hit about 11 or 12 million. That leaves about 20 million to be supplied by the $830, $20 levels - or just random goodwill givings. Is that correct?

*edit, an illustration of what I was seeing: [http://pastebin.com/8GfXRzbY](http://pastebin.com/8GfXRzbY)

<comment><USER45> You didn't count the $600 level and there is no cap at the $830 level. I have a feeling they'll keep finessing the levels throughout the campaign to keep the money coming in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'd like to see another reward level: I would pay $50 for an option to buy the phone at $650 at launch or soon afterwards. Say 2 months after launch to give the people who have paid outright up front an advantage.

You'd get an indication of volume and free money. Not many companies get the chance to charge potential customers.

Also, if this suggestion brings you more than $1m, I'd like a free phone please.

Reader: if you'd like this option too, why not chime in here.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone really think the $32 will be reached? The trend seems to me to be against this

(and I'm not jealous, I actually gave $630 on the day one)

</comment><comment><USER48> Why do they have the same exact item/reward point at $625, $675, $725 and $830? It seems to me they're realizing there's no way they can reach they goal selling at the $830 price point, but why have all other levels simultaneously? Are people really going to pick 725 over 675 for the same thing?

<comment><USER49> One of the important points here is that each price level (aside from the last one) has an allotment of 1250 units. So, while most people won't buy at $625 vs $675, so long as $625 is available, it provides incentive for people to buy now vs later and risk the lower level selling out.

Edit: Although, the $625 level is now "1296 out of 1250 claimed" \- so I'm not sure what that is about.

<comment><USER50> Looks like they're probably letting people through if they've entered the pledge process while there were free slots even if all were filled by the time they completed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> That's quite cheap, given that you can easily pay $1,500 for a Galaxy S4 here.

</comment><comment><USER52> why not make founder $100 and give a discount on batch 2.

the phone seems too high and the founder too low. I'd like it to happen but I would rather wait for a second batch.

<comment><USER53> There won't be a batch 2:

"The Ubuntu Edge is an exclusive production run, available only through Indiegogo."

<comment><USER54> Yeah, it'll be the Ubuntu Edge 2, and they'll have worked a lot of the bugs out of the second one that they didn't anticipate in the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> From the funding graph slopes it is obvious that the market prices that device at 650$. So expect 626 and 666 (Devil badass edition) tiers soon.

</comment><comment><USER56> this graph is great

[http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding- level/](http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding-level/)

you can really see how the new "deals" really helped it take off again.

</comment><comment><USER57> if all the price tiers are sold out, it would generator 2.5 million only.

That is pretty far away from the 32 million they need

<comment><USER58> You're off by an order of magnitude. All tiers combined (including the already sold out $600 tier) is around $25m.

<comment><USER57> oh. i meant by all the discounted price tiers and not including existing raised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> At this prices they will need to add financing options to their phones.

We are in the era of Ben Bernanke free money for everyone. Getting credit should not be that hard.

Financing is a top priority thing for selling phones and cars in the real world. Probably not in Mark Shutterworth's land thought.

<comment><USER60> Even in the US, financing for phones is becoming more unfashionable with time. Prepaid plans and bring-your-own-phone is now on most if not all major carriers. Google is selling their Nexus phones directly rather than carrier subsidy. People are starting to wise up to the fact that financing is unsustainable.</comment></comment>


In Search of Simplicity — Improving Wunderlist's sync - <AUTHOR> http://www.6wunderkinder.com/blog/in-search-of-simplicity

<comment><USER2> I guess a lot of teams are going through these same things right now. If anyone has more topics they're curious about, add them here or on the post and we might add to the series. Thanks!</comment>


What game should artificial intelligence take on next? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081021-what-game-should-artificial-intelligence-take-on-next/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully not The Most Dangerous Game.</comment>


Bipolar Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://adriancunanan.com/blog/2013/3/12/heres-to-the-crazy-ones

<comment><USER2> What he doesn't talk about is the depression parts. If you just read these descriptions, you'd have to think bipolar disorder is some kind of "over- achievement disease". Some people would kill for the ability to persuade others, have great ideas and work days without sleep.

The NY Times article touches on depressive episodes, but the contrast between high energy and low energy phases is maybe the worst aspect of the condition. Both a manic and a depressive episode can ruin or even end a patient's life.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a very inspiring story that brings the importance of mental health management forward in a positive light. It is hard enough to take the leap to create a startup and then deal with the extreme highs and lows of the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the words of support!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get started with Algo trading? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in getting started with Algo Trading, but I'm not really sure where to dig in. I  have a BA in economics and finance and did a capstone in pricing derivatives. Any good recommendations on how to get started? Any good MOOCS or books? <comment><USER2> If you're considering algo trading as a career then be sure to talk to a lot of people doing it. I spent several years trying to break in to the industry at a few prop firms with only middling success. Here are my observations:

1\. The vast majority of firms only hire people with CS or math degrees from top 10 schools, with an MS being the minimum. There are few exceptions.

2\. Nobody is making as much money as they used to.

3\. Depending on what firm you end up at you will probably spend a lot less time building cool strategies and a lot more time trying to shave off a few microseconds here and there.

4\. Be prepared for a pretty rough work environment. Swearing, violent outbursts, people being secretive and not sharing ideas.

5\. If you're lucky, management will be STEM people. If you're not, they will be former floor traders who have managed to stay alive this long.

<comment><USER3> I'm like you trying to break into prop trading (Ms applied mathematics) would you think it is still possible to 'make a career' in this kind of stuff? Or would you advise getting a PhD first? How was your experience at the prop firms?

<comment><USER2> I gave up ~3 years ago. I had to choose between aggressively pursuing low- paying trading jobs or being pursued for high-paying tech jobs. The decision was pretty easy for my family and me. As we'd say in the industry, I went were the edge was. I'd recommend doing the same -- the security, stress level, work/life balance, work environment, and transferability of skills is much better in tech than trading.

Put concisely: if you can't handle seeing a smaller paycheck next month because a guy on your team pressed the wrong button and lost $50k in 10 seconds then trading is not for you.

If you want to get in I would recommend as much math and programming as possible. A PhD probably isn't necessary, an MS from a top school will do. You'd better be prepared to do programming, math, AND arithmetic in interviews, though. I once had a options trading interview that included ten "please multiply 148 by 72 in your head, we'll wait" questions.

<comment><USER4> _> I'd recommend doing the same..._

Sadly this advice only applies to USA... E.g. UK has such an over-abundance of IT workforce that tech salaries are significantly below US despite comparable cost of living.

<comment><USER5> I would argue the lower salaries are for societal reasons (health care, cheaper university tuition, etc) more so than Europeans coming to work in the UK. Consider AmaGoogBookSoft salaries in London: lower but not scandalously so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/) has a great community, lots of examples & tuts available, and you can look at everyone else's algos. It's free, there's free backtesting, etc. They're a "crowdsourced hedge fund" using Python and the zipline library.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would start by getting industry experience and understanding how some of these trading firms are businesses, not speculative machines. From that understanding, you should be able to have a better idea of where algos might provide some sustainable value.

Source: I was offered a spot at CTC, wound up at a large bank. Maybe the better wording would be, "truly understand market making and market mechanics, and where improvements there could be valuable, and then see if algos could solve that problem." Algos have solved lots of problems but when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Technology was the limiting factor in markets for awhile, and right now the technology isn't the bottleneck, it's the politics and the people - see Bitcoin. But before you go full Marc Andressen, remember that finance is fundamentally about using the massive trust and resource allocation system within the human society, and so to think every valuable problem in the space can be solved by an algo may be dated thinking.

</comment><comment><USER8> Surely you'll find interesting Stockfighter [1], a trading game developed by three members of this community; Erin Ptacek (elptacek), Thomas Ptacek (tptacek) and Patrick McKenzie (patio11).

[1] [https://www.stockfighter.io](https://www.stockfighter.io)

<comment><USER9> Do those people have enough insight/experience for the domain?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the best resources I've seen is Mike Halls-Moore's QuantStart: [https://www.quantstart.com/articles](https://www.quantstart.com/articles)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're in the NYC or bay area, there are a few quant groups on meetup.com that have regular events. Might be a good place to drop in.

</comment><comment><USER12> There was an almost identical post about 3 weeks ago here.

Let me state flat out that I don't think there are any good books about algorithmic trading all all.

Most will talk at surface level about what they are doing but non will give you a start to finish example that can be deployed with a brokerage like interactive brokers. Trading & Exchanges I see was recommended. I'd skip it, most(All?) trading strategies that the average person will come up with won't be market micro structure related, and if it is then I'm going to flat out state that you've lost before you started.

If you really want to get into it, then please don't start with machine learning.

I've said this many times but ask your self:

\- "what machine learning techniques could I apply that 100 fresh PHD's haven't done on their first week at a hedge fund?"

\- "What data source do you have that the average hedge fund doesn't have access to"?

\- "What market insight do you have that someone whose done this for years doesn't have?"

If after all that you still want to get started then honestly your best bet is to start with quantopian. Don't look at market data changes at a granularity of less than 1 day until you can create a strategy on your own that makes money.

Quantopian can give you access to a backtesting platform and clean market data, which is the step most people get stuck on, and usually quit at.

Once you've found a strategy that makes money, put your money into an account with Interactive brokers, If after 3 months you still want to continue then start looking at market data slices of less than one day.

Tl/DR

\- first step is don't

\- second step is to focus on time slices of 1 day or more

\- third, put your own money into action on you strategy for 3 months

\- fourth step, there is a very small chance you'll make it this far, look at time slices of less than a day. At this point you can start to apply machine learning and build your own software. Even at this stage you are more likely to be an ATM for a hedge fund than you are to make money.

Good luck

Feel free to reach out to me, personal email in profile if you'd like to chat.

</comment><comment><USER13> check out [https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> u should be in financial engineering for algo development.get nt7 and test b/s signal.more thing u should have a good money management rule with wyckoff/pitch fork rules etc. u should have good understanding on OFA/MP too.

</comment><comment><USER15> hi, yes there is an excellent online course developed called trading strategy launch framework, helped me go from zero to cracking hubdreds of robust strategies

<comment><USER16> can you share the online course?</comment></comment>


George Orwell's 1984 is our world today - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/06/13/what-orwells-1984-tells-us-about-todays-world-70-years-after-it-was-published/ <comment><USER2> "Miller argued that television in the United States teaches a different kind of conformity than that portrayed in the novel. In the novel, the telescreen is used to produce conformity to the Party. In Miller's argument, television produces conformity to a system of rapacious consumption – through advertising as well as a focus on the rich and famous. ... Many viewers conform by measuring themselves against what they see on television, such as dress, relationships and conduct. In Miller's words, television has "set the standard of habitual self-scrutiny.""

Well, and not only that. As near as I can tell, we are rapidly diverging from "classical" Christian Western values and substituting them with new values that are even less tolerant.

I can't tell the last time I've seen a movie or series with a regular family, male and female without issues like adultery, problems with alcohol, gambling, perversions, single-parent households, divorces, etc.; with normal kids, that aren't using drugs, or having sex at age of 14, and so on, and so on.

Can that be a coincidence, sometimes I wonder..

It sure feels like we are gambling with the Western civilization. We are quick to forget that everything in this world is more or less a result of it, doesn't matter how politically correct we must be in the "new world order".

Even God cannot defy facts.

Anyway, the article is not worth reading - we are, after all, doing this ourselves out of our own volition. So, it's a choice. It's still a choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not at all. For me it's like a mix of 1984 and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.

<comment><USER4> For me it is Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell at the moment.

While current technologies might enable Orwellian world in not too distant future we are very far from 1984.

We are far from propaganda preassure of Stalin's Great Purge or Mao's Great Leap.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London)

<comment><USER3> Didn't read. I'll write down the title to remember it and try to read it soon.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet we are still somehow free to publish or post articles such as these without being arrested, tortured, interrogated, electrocuted, and having our heads locked in a rage cage. Perhaps the author is exaggerating just a bit.

<comment><USER6> Pack it up everyone, we can talk about it so therefore end of argument

<comment><USER3> We can talk about it, but many people can't. Let's talk about them.</comment></comment></comment>


China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-china.html <comment><USER3> I wonder if there was a way to help the protestors. They have shown amazing resolve and discipline so far

<comment><USER4> Is there a way to donate? I've heard that because of the daily protests people are losing a lot of money, and protestors can't afford food/masks/protections.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.facebook.com/612Fund/](https://www.facebook.com/612Fund/)

This fund is the most popular among locals.

<comment><USER6> Wow so nobody gives props to Facebook for making their channels available for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Just send a few tanks over to clean them up."

It's ironic that this was written by someone whose government has made it illegal for him to learn what happened the last time his government cleaned up some protestors with tanks.

<comment><USER8> Not really ironic — it's to be expected

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was taken aback by a recent conversation with an very Americanized Chinese Harvard grad (grew up in Northern Cal) who genuinely asked me after having said my parents are from Taiwan whether it's true if the people of Taiwan think China is "a part of Taiwan."

I couldn't believe that any person in the West could believe such a thing, and the only explanation is that Chinese disformation spreads far and wide beyond China's own borders.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the official position of the Taiwanese government, though - <USER2> they are the only legitimate government of all of China and the current administration of the PRC are not legitimate?

I understand that there's a diversity of opinion among the people of Taiwan (and some mixed messages from the government itself) regarding the issue, but it doesn't seem unbelievable that someone might think that the people of Taiwan share a belief in their country's official policy.

Is there something I'm missing?

<comment><USER11> When the nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, they wound up killing a lot of the intelligentsia already there. So you had a huge divide between pre-1949 Chinese (mainly of fujian descent), who became the populous working class of the island, and the minority 1949 mainlanders, who became the richer factory owners and such (and also ruled the country in a dictatorship until the 80s). To add more kindling to the fire, the Japanese treated the Taiwanese pretty fairly before the war ended, with Taiwanese considered almost as full Japanese citizens (unlike the Koreans). So whenever these questions are addressed, it isn't just antagonism against the PRC that comes through, but also a lot of antagonism for the ROC.

Now that the opposition can easily win elections, they have mostly become the ROC government, but they don't buy those original tenants of mainland unity at all (though they don't have the power to change them, nor do they want to antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could).

<comment><USER12> > though they don't have the power to change them, nor do they want to > antagonize the PRC as much as they would if they could

I want to also add that the oppositions, although not antagonize the PRC as much as they would, is also antagonizing the PRC _more than the nationlists_ ; the PRC-hating original tenants died off (it's been 60 years after all), and the nationalists transformed themselves to fully embrace PRC in the name of economy. You have the nationalists (Kuomintang) occupying both ends of the pro/anti-PRC spectrum, and this weird situation is arguably one of the prominent problems of Taiwanese identity.

<comment><USER11> The richer nationalists have lots of business interests in China now (think Foxconn), so they are firmly aligned with the PRC as a matter of interest. It doesn't help that the opposition are primarily working class and their interests are actually hurt as the good jobs go to China (think republicans vs Democrats in the states without the Trump populism, and very counter intuitive to communism).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not related to China, but I am noticing more disinformation on sites I would not expect - like even imgur for example.

<comment><USER14> Imgur is not any better then reddit in this regard...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For anyone "wish" Chinese gov send tanks or armies, you will be disappointed, this gov really learned a lot from 1989. Those videos about military movements in Shenzhen are released by official medias from China, which is obvious bluffer: if they want to do sth, they will definitely do it secretly, and just another reminder, China do have a lot legal armies in HK.

</comment><comment><USER16> Also doing the same thing to Taiwan, Australia, the US, and a bunch of other places.

</comment><comment> n-exploit Anyone have a mirror?

<comment><USER17> [http://archive.is/I7axm](http://archive.is/I7axm)

<comment> n-exploit Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's strange, but information like this makes me more sick to my stomach than if they were just crushing the protests with brute force.

<comment><USER19> Careful what you wish for, looks like they might add in the brute force option soon:

[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chinese-military- ama...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chinese-military-amasses- outside-hong-kong-as-protests-continue)

> _" Beijing's latest response to protesters came as a grave threat issued > Tuesday morning through state-run media, saying Hong Kong citizens are > "asking for self-destruction,"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Btw. There was another thread[1] which got a bunch of points and comments very quickly and got bounced out of the front page very quickly as well. Are posts about China/Hong Kong being penalized on HN?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20687266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20687266)

<comment><USER20> Probably people flagging it. I tend to flag stories that are "just news" and don't have a particularly compelling link to standard HN topics, or ones in which HN isn't going to have any particularly interesting angle to add to the conversation unique to the community's strengths, or ones that are coming up a lot, like this one. (I mean, yes, nominally everything is on topic, but there's still boundaries.)

There's a strong attractor basin around discussing the same news as everybody else that's worth pushing HN away from, in general.

<comment><USER4> I really hope people can stop flagging these then. One of the world's capital is about to go down and this is going to impact all of us.

<comment><USER21> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they > 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or > disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's > probably off-topic._

<comment><USER22> Okay, then let's talk about the protester's novel tactics and use of technology to coordinate a distributed, leaderless protest.

That seems like it should be fair game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >"The assertion was more than just spin or fake news."

Wait, is there a difference, or is it just a matter of scope?

Surely we know China is a great propaganda power. This is the bread and butter of any serious socialistic regime on the left and right. It's no surprise and no revelation. What is surprising to me is the nonchalant approach to fake news western media is prone to when it comes to both domestic as well as foreign issues. So, yes China is foing bad things, but come on NYT, you also do the lesser evil when it fits your agenda (or doesn't fit the agenda of the day)

<comment><USER24> >serious socialistic regime on the left and right

What's the connection between "great propaganda power" and "serious socialistic regime"?

Also what's a "socialistic regime on the right"?

<comment><USER25> Not the person you were replying to but there's this strange idea amongst alt- right folks that Nazis were socialists because the party called itself the National Socialist party. Could be referring to that.

<comment><USER26> Interestingly, these same folks are somehow able to see through the "Democratic Republic" part of "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". An odd blind spot.

<comment><USER27> It's not a blind spot. They are not conservatives, they do not believe in liberty and God-given individual rights. Actual alt-righters oppose capitalism and believe in economically socialist and communitarian ideas. Similarly but to a lesser degree, "far-right" parties in Europe are oftentimes more economically socialist than their mainstream center-left and center-right opponents. Le Pen vs Macron is an example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's the formal demands from the HK protests?

Can someone point to some official documents from the protesters?

<comment><USER9> Carrie Lam's resignation, plus:

The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill

The government to withdraw the use of the word "riot" in relation to protests

The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped

An independent inquiry into police behaviour

Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/what-do-the- ho...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/13/what-do-the-hong-kong- protesters-want)

<comment><USER28> > The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill

Reasonable.

> The government to withdraw the use of the word "riot" in relation to > protests

Unfortunately, not reasonable.

OK, now it's no longer factual to say that it's not a "riot". I do not defend either side, but let's be sure to use the word correctly.

> The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them > dropped

Sorry, not reasonable.

What about the protester who is claimed to bite off a police's finger: [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and- crime/article/30...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and- crime/article/3018831/hong-kong-protester-appears-court-accused-biting)

> An independent inquiry into police behaviour

Reasonable.

But there will be an independent inquiry being requested on the protesters as well. I am not suggesting that, I am just saying obviously Chines government is going to demand that as well.

> Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Moderately reasonable. You are asking a country to adopt a different political system in a prominent area.

But if you want to retrieve the skin of a lion by asking politely, or assume you only suffer minor scratch, you'd better prepare to get killed.

<comment><USER29> Universal suffrage in the election of the Chief Executive was definitely, and I think - though I'm not certain - of the legislative council was in the handover agreement. The Sino British agreement China was happy to sign and see lodged with the UN as binding international agreement.

The one China says doesn't matter any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I do not meant to defend either side. But the first comment on the NYT article has the following statement:

""" Well dear reporters, you failed to mention the fact that the story actually first started on Facebook. Some guy who claimed himself the victim's brother posted on FB saying his sister was actually shot by her fellow protesters accidentally. This incident is now heartedly discussed on a popular online community in HK([https://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=28439217](https://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=28439217)). Those who can understand written Cantonese can take a look. Anyway dear reporters, those above may not qualify to be a reliable source but still...the "state-run" media didn't make up the story out of nowhere. """

My feeling is just that the news report in modern time is simply no longer fact-driven.

<comment><USER30> My feeling is that I'm seeing a lot of comments from people whose usernames are a common word plus three characters that defend China in a backhanded way.

It's just a feeling, but I'd say that's about as credible as these comments.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't have to be a feeling. It's been well documented that the Chinese government has a group of people that it employs to spread pro-Chinese propaganda and downvoted perceived threatening speech on social web sites around the world.

HN has been a target of this brigade for years.

<comment><USER31> This comment breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing. If you have evidence, I'd like to see it—we take actual evidence seriously and always look into it. But the overwhelming majority of comments like this one turn out to be nothing more than the commenter imagining an explanation for comments they disagree with. Such imagination feels extremely convincing, but it is imagination nonetheless.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TOML – Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language - <AUTHOR> https://toml.io/en/ <comment><USER2> TOML superficially looks clean, but it has many of the same problems other similar languages have.

Such file formats are typically used for configuration files. Yet, a substantial amount of effort was expended on data types not commonly seen in configuration files, such as a date-time-offset. Meanwhile, _much_ more common data types typically used in configuration files is missing, such as GUIDs, IP Addresses, and byte arrays.

Most disappointingly, TOML has a "table" type, but unfortunately, just like other "RPC as Config" formats, the column names need to be repeated for every row, which is just crazy. It also makes _no sense_ to talk about "arrays of tables", which are actually just "rows" in standard terminology. An array of rows... is a table.

Here is a terse example of the type of thing that _does_ come up very often in bulk provisioning of the type that needs config files full of data:

        @"
        Server,Subnet,IP
        db01,databases,10.1.2.3
        db02,databases,10.1.2.4
        user01,filers,10.3.10.1
        user02,filers,10.3.10.2
        "@ | ConvertFrom-Csv | New-VMBuildScript.ps1

I'm yet to see a config file format that can even approach this in terms of its readability and terseness.

<comment><USER3> I've been using TOML recently and what displeases me most is that almost all string values need to be quoted.

<comment><USER4> Otoh, I got plenty of support requests from people not understanding that the space at the end of a line in an .ini file is part of the value. (app is using glib ini parser)

Quoting at least makes it clear what's part of the value.

<comment><USER5> What sort of nightmare format from hell has significant whitespace _at end of line?_

<comment><USER4> ini file

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of configuration file formats, TOML is my favorite. It hits the right balance of power and simplicity, it's been able to handle my needs with minimal effort and fuss.

I tried Python's INI for configuration, but it was both too simple and too complex at the same time, very frustrating.

YAML is a nightmare, the formatting is way too easy to get wrong and accidentally break your configuration.

JSON is too strict/simple. You can't even have trailing commas in a list!

<comment><USER7> I recently wrote a TOML parser in Idris2. It's a cool language, but has some quirks. For me, it's that it's just a simple KV store with some sugar (that's nice!) but it also means that a lot of information is lost forever in parsing. For example, these two documents are strictly identical:

        [info]
        name = { first="bob", last="jones" }

and

        info.name.first="bob"
        info.name.first="jones"

This can be seen as a positive (it's a really simple document) or a negative (it's hard to machine-generate nice TOML, and it's easy to think there's more to the structure of a written document than there is).

<comment><USER8> Can you expand on the negatives? I don't think I understand what you mean.

<comment><USER9> I believe the main negative he is referring to is that there is no canonical representation for a given document. The input file can be structured to share common keys (in the example above it's `info`) or not. Since both inputs are parsed into the same value it means that writing a printer is harder: you now have the choice between different output representations.

As a comparison, there's not much choice when serializing to JSON - the only variation is around whitespace. When serializing TOML you need more insight to decide what's the best representation for a human. A contributing factor to this issue is that TOML is mostly used for configuration files, so it often matters that the output is readable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If curious see also

a bit from 5 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707387)

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513770)

2013 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5272634](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5272634)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5274025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5274025)

Alternative formats to this alternative format:

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17765426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17765426)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18023105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18023105)

</comment><comment><USER11> YAML and TOML wouldn't have been necessary if JSON had been _slightly_ more expressive. If JSON had

      * comments
      * bareword (not double quoted) object key names

it'd be a much more suitable configuration file format for everything, and I don't think we'd see the motivation to make things like TOML and YAML.

<comment><USER12> JSON5 pretty much addresses all the problems with JSON as a config format. I'd love for it to just replace JSON entirely.

[https://json5.org/](https://json5.org/)

<comment><USER11> Generally looks good, but ugh, I dislike allowing single quotes. Allowing single quotes has close to zero ergonomic value but increases the number of ways to write the same fundamental thing.

But that's a minor quibble. If everyone adopted this thing instead of legacy JSON, we'd be better-off.

<comment><USER13> Having two ways to quote is a useful feature, not just one way to do the same thing.

Javascript already has this, so allowing single quotes simplifies copypasting object literals, which is a common use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had tons of headaches trying to get toml to do what's trivial in Json (nested arrays of objects of arrays of ... etc). 1/10 would not try again. For very simple, hear "flat" config it checks out. But then, so does yaml or even ini files. Anything requiring composite types was just a nightmare. I'd even prefer xlm before using toml again.

<comment><USER15> I never had to work with it seriously but I still don't get why people hate XML so much.

<comment><USER16> XML is verbose, surprisingly complex, and first and foremost not designed to be written and consumed by humans.

There's plenty of room for debate, e.g. element versus attribute and things get unwieldy pretty quickly [1]

The "note"-example illustrates the issue quite well: the order of the elements matters and you end up writing every element identifier twice.

Not to mention the bloat that comes with using an XML library that's actually compliant with the standard and includes all the bells 'n whistles.

[1] [https://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_dtd_el_vs_attr.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_dtd_el_vs_attr.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always had a soft spot for the classic .INI style configuration.

Modding command and conquer through "rules.ini" was always an adventure.

<comment><USER18> I also like how it just does one thing: key/values. It doesn't try to be a complex serialization format or its own full language - it's just keys and their values. Granted, sometimes data needs to have more structure, but for settings/flags INI is very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I discovered TOML a couple of years ago when I started playing with Hugo, as it was Hugo's format of choice for configuration files.

I honestly find TOML harder to read and more complicated to use than YAML. I tried to look into it but frankly I still haven't found a use case where it made more sense to use TOML.

<comment><USER20> Interesting how differently competent people can perceive things. To me, YAML is a cruel joke, and I carry suspicions about the competence of anyone who opts to use it out of all possible options. I think I've even grown to like XML configuration over it.

<comment><USER21> if json only allowed comments...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Strict_ yaml claims to have fixed most of the problems of yaml and other languages used for configuration. Basically it is yaml with only string as a basic datatype, and other complexities removed. Handling of data types is done on a higher schema layer.

[https://hitchdev.com/strictyaml/](https://hitchdev.com/strictyaml/)

It's a smaller project so probably could use some support.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another one I've been partial too lately is recutils ([https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/](https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/)), it's similar to sqlite but has the benefits of being minimalist and plain text.

Generally I prefer actual code based configuration though, there's only a small subset of people than can read and edit these config formats but would be unable to configure something like DWM through real code ([https://git.suckless.org/dwm/file/config.def.h.html](https://git.suckless.org/dwm/file/config.def.h.html)) and this approach gives far more flexibility without code bloat. Once customization through config is removed it's only machine-to-machine configuration that changes and these are easily handled by TOML, INI or even environment variables.

</comment><comment><USER24> TOML is great if you think of it as JSON, but optimized for being written by humans instead of machines. I hope no new first-class types or syntax features ever get added after the 1.0 release so it can have the same stability that makes JSON great. The vast majority of the proposals that I see in the repo's issues would collectively destroy the value of TOML, and I'm glad the current maintainer seems to have the sense and fortitude to resist such additions.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Obvious" is subjective. I find TOML to be remarkably confusing and surprising and UNobvious, whereas YAML makes perfect sense to me, even though plenty of folks hate it. Essentially, the name is pretty obnoxious in multiple ways, given that it's basically just an extension of the long-established INI format.

<comment><USER26> YAML makes perfect sense until one of its many, many edge cases bites you.

There is a subset of yaml that is almost good. But even then, there are cases where yaml is interpreted differently the average human would expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I still don't understand why the Python steering committee decided to switch to this format for package configuration instead of the perfectly serviceable and existing setup.cfg. Packaging is already a pain to setup, now you gotta learn _three_ (3) different ways to do it (if only to translate from one to the next) because everyone's split. The choice doesn't even matter very much, just settle on _something_ whatever it is

<comment><USER28> There's not much to learn. It's basically .ini on steroids.

<comment><USER26> What confuses me is why there isn't a toml module in the standard library.

<comment><USER29> I think the general feeling in the community is that the standard library is where packages go to die. Once something is in the standard library, it can't get meaningful features/updates outside of the yearly release cycle. pip and setuptools are already vendoring a TOML implementation, and once you have pip, you can pick from multiple great toml implementations that are all under active development. Maybe once the packages/standards for TOML are finalized and the only thing left to do is fix bugs, maybe then we'll see a TOML implementation in the standard library, but in the modern age where you can fetch dependencies at any time, there's honestly not that much incentive for CPython developers to take on more burden of maintenance and development for the already-massive standard library.

<comment><USER26> > the standard library is where packages go to die

I totally understand that sentiment. But that does seem to contradict the "batteries included" philosophy. Then again pip itself seems like one of the batteries you would expect to be included, so maybe that philosophy is just no longer as relevant to python.

<comment><USER30> my understanding is that the batteries included philosophy wasn't really successful. probably it would have been better if they had a smaller standard library providing core language-level functionality and then many blessed p packages that with independent versioning

<comment><USER31> It was successful at the time. Remember Python is nearly 30 years old now, and has always had the worst dependency management of any major language.

<comment><USER26> I don't know c++ dependency management is pretty terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People keep confusing program configuration files and program stdin and are surprised that TOML is not a good fit for it.

If you are provisioning servers from a TOML files, you're doing it wrong. That's your program main input, not config.

If you have deeply nested values, chances are you are again confusing configuration vs main input.

JSON and CSV are great main input formats.

TOML is a great configuration format.

YAML and XML try to do both, and end up doing average on either, but being abused for all of them (looking at you Ansible and Solr).

So you should use each format for the correct purpose, as usual.

A config file looks like ~/.ssh/config or /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, not like ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or /etc/nginx/site-available/default.conf.

Just because we love to put a lot of data input in config folders (.config and /etc are full of input data) and call that configuration doesn't make it so.

How to know if something is configuration and something is input?

Conf data is usually only manually edited (authorized_keys changes with the life cycle of the program) and doesn't contain logic (default.conf if full of logic). Conf is also how the program is going to behave when performing its main task, the boostraping state, not the data used for it's main task (so not ip for provisioning servers, which is not meta, but the main course, or default.conf, which nginx uses to perform the main task). Conf rarely changes, main input often does. Conf is not piped or redirected to stdin.

</comment><comment><USER33> Self plug: I wrote a simple web app in the same vain as jsonlint and yamllint for toml files. [https://toml-lint.com](https://toml-lint.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> Whoa cool. I remember seeing Tom's initial proposal/spec for TOML on here years ago. Like maybe a decade even. Glad to see it's still out there and actually been implemented

<comment><USER35> It's used often in rust. Rust crates are configured with toml files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> TOML used as an `.ini` file is nice, but it gets verbose and confusing pretty quickly if you try to store more complex data in it.

`[[foo]]` syntax is not obvious at all. It's a bit weird that top-level declarations use ini-like syntax, but values can use JSON-like syntax, and there are multiple syntaxes to express the same data structure.

It doesn't strike me as very elegant, or obvious. Still, it is less annoyingly-inflexible than JSON, less verbose than XML, and less footgunny than YAML.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was constantly reading/writing config files and the structure and comments were what convinced me TOML was worth to try. I did end up going back to JSON for the schema validator bit, but I just found out that TOML is still working on it: [https://github.com/toml-lang/toml/pull/116](https://github.com/toml- lang/toml/pull/116)

<comment><USER38> IF you need schema validation, you should probably be using XML

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can't stand TOML. I find it's method of representing arrays and tables of objects so much harder to read and reason about than YAML.

</comment><comment><USER40> TOML sucks in so many ways. It is about 8x better than YAML, INI, or JSON though. It is good enough that I can ignore its flaws.

<comment><USER41> JSON should be banned for configuration, if only for the fact it doesn't support comments.

<comment><USER42> JSON is great, but not for config: It was never really meant to be written by humans.

<comment><USER43> I agree totally with you, but designing a language that's not "meant for humans" is an _incredibly_ stupid idea. Of course humans will try and write any protocol by hand. Who's gonna stop me?

If it looks like text, make it as easy as possible for humans to consume and write by hand. Period.

That's a small but very important reason why HTTP rules the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I hope this catches on some more. I'm tired of being bitten by all the issues that I encounter with yaml configs.

<comment><USER45> What are these issues? I've been using YAML comfortably for years

<comment><USER44> This link has a decent overview: [https://www.arp242.net/yaml- config.html](https://www.arp242.net/yaml-config.html)

There's also the NO/Norway problem (although it seems this instance of the problem may be fixed if you're always using newer versions): [https://allan.reyes.sh/programming/2018/06/20/The-YAML- NOrwa...](https://allan.reyes.sh/programming/2018/06/20/The-YAML-NOrway- Law.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've always enjoyed using HOCON in Scala projects. I wish it saw more adoption.

</comment><comment><USER47> And so the language churn continues. This time for configuration. TOML is fine, I guess. It doesn't seem to offer much benefit over Yaml or JSON. In the absence of those it would be great. But in a world where Yaml and JSON exist it's _yet another_ structured data format you have to learn.

<comment><USER48> It's not like TOML is new. I'm familiar with it because of Python's pip tool, and InfluxDB/Telegraf. Apparently it's also used in Rust's Cargo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm personally sick of yet-another-config-formats. Why did designing metaformats become cool?

They all have warts because using the same symbolic notation for data and structure leads to encoding issues that have cognitive overhead.

So instead of getting used to the pratfalls involved in making mistakes in one format/library set, we can do it in a whole bunch of different ones. And of course if anyone uses the new format much much, we'll get multiple, slightly incompatible versions, all with different bugs.

Thanks?

<comment><USER50> > I'm personally sick of yet-another-config-formats. Why did designing > metaformats become cool?

I can't seem to find a date for it, but I think TOML is pretty old, so probably predates a lot of these YACFs.

I think that the problem is that it's such an easy workflow:

1\. No existing config format is perfect. Look at this should-be easy thing I want to do that isn't easy!

2\. Create a new format that makes the desired should-be easy thing actually easy.

If you have one or two pain points, then it's really easy to address them, and your life gets so much better for a little while. If you're lucky and you're a good YACF designer, then your life gets so much better for quite a while—and, by the time you realise why the design isn't perfect, you're already invested in it.

<comment><USER51> > I can't seem to find a date for it, but I think TOML is pretty old, so > probably predates a lot of these YACFs.

Not _that_ old. TOML's first release was in 2013.

But as a testament to the config format, it was only about a year old when Rust's cargo adopted it fully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Unicode handling seems nice:

>"

\uXXXX - unicode (U+XXXX)

\UXXXXXXXX - unicode (U+XXXXXXXX) "

</comment><comment><USER53> I use only yaml for humans and json for machines. i see many projects that use toml but i just hate it. maybe toml is not bad itself but i have never seen project that would have toml config really human-friendly. it always loks like a retard-child of some ini monstrosity. yaml all the way, hands down.

</comment><comment><USER54> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)</comment>


Oracle proposes donating OpenOffice.org to Apache Software Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/445620/ <comment><USER2> Are Oracle _intentionally_ being nuisances?

<comment><USER3> * I'll bet from their perspective they felt they had to 'maximize shareholder value,' and when that failed they can just off-load (since the community left, there is no reason for them to keep it).

* It's possible that they didn't want the projects, but felt that just donating the projects away wouldn't jive with their responsibility to 'maximize shareholder value' so they went for some gungho approach that would drive people away and let them drop the project (in a way that they could justify to shareholders as just a failed attempt to 'make the project profitable').

* It's possible that they are slowly realizing that they can't attempt heavy-handed tactics with folks that can just walk away from the project and fork that code into a new project.</comment></comment>