Show HN: Bulletin, a fast, clean Google Reader replacement - <AUTHOR>

https://www.bulletin.io
My friend and I spent the last 4 months building the fastest, cleanest RSS reader we could. There are a lot of features to come, but for now, I think we have the best experience around.
We'd love for you to check it out and give us your feedback. Tell us what features we should put it next. <comment><USER2> I'm really digging it -- I like the UI better than Digg.

(haha. ha. ha.)

Seriously, I do like it a lot and think it shows a lot of promise. I appreciate the clean design, but at the same time it has a little bit of character (more than most of the generic flat UI stuff everyone's jumping on).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> clickable: [https://www.bulletin.io](https://www.bulletin.io)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a GaTech senior who is just getting serious about web development (used to dream of doing game development but have had a change of heart). If I buy you a beer would you mind giving me a tour on the technical side of the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool. I'm a GT grad myself. I'd be glad to chat about how we built it, just shoot an email to firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like it. Looks great on my BlackBerry Z10. I haven't made a decision yet on a reader but this has a great responsive design and I may stay with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We made sure the site was responsive, so that we could cover all mobile platforms at launch. We're hoping that some app developers will jump on the API and build some native apps for all of the platforms.</comment></comment>


Collected Algorithms of the ACM - <AUTHOR> http://calgo.acm.org/ <comment><USER2> They seem like all mathematical algorithms for root finding, integration, etc. Very interesting though. Do the zip files contain more information about each algorithm, or are they just code. It would be amazing to have a wiki that had each algorithm and alternatives listed.

<comment><USER3> Yup, they're all numerical algorithms (er, at least almost all; I haven't checked anything like every single one). They started out in the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software. The amount of information you get along with the code is variable, but often small. The code is all too frequently in FORTRAN, too, especially (of course) in the older algorithms. But there's some very good stuff in there.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Client said he'll sue me because of an unfinished project. Need advice - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, recently i got a freelance web project from my brother's friend, we didn't sign any contract, all domains and server are under my name. The project was nearly finished, unfortunately, we had big argument during the past few days, so i refused to continue the project and refunded the money. The fight was due to his bad manner and attitude which i couldn't stand no more. Now, the guy said he is going to sue me if i discontinue the project and shut down the server because i'll have ruined his ideas. I don't think i did anything wrong since i refunded the money, so will i get in trouble because of i shut down the server? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> First, I am not a lawyer, so.....

1) threats of a lawsuit are not a lawsuit;

1a) lots of "bullies" like to throw around the threat of a lawsuit in order to "get their way". But, as with most bullies, they are all bark and no bite;

2) no contract means nothing concrete to sue over. So any suit (were it to even be filed) would devolve into a he-said she-said argument match;

3) his "idea" is no more or less ruined than before you started. Delayed, yes, ruined, no;

4) did you refund "all" the money (and has he cashed the check [you did use a check, so you can prove he received the money, right?]);

4a) if you refunded less that the total (i.e., the cost of purchasing the servers/domains) then just also transfer the domains and the server over to him, (with a paper trail) and then you will have properly refunded everything;

4b) if you have in fact refunded every penny (and/or turned over the domain and server) he has even less legs to stand on as far as a suit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually all the transactions were in cash, he paid me in cash and i refund ALL in cash too. His idea was just about how the webpage layout should be, very standard layout, nothing more than that, and some ideas were just "borrowed" from some other websites. Thanks a lot for the replied.

<comment><USER3> One thing I've learned from Judge Judy is that you should document all of this and keep any evidence you might be able to use in your defense. For instance, you should have some proof that you refunded the money, if at all possible. It makes you look much better if you have documents and the other guy doesn't. And anything is often better than nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If someone is threatening to sue you and you need advice, the advice you need is probably _from a lawyer_.

IANAL, but you may not be right to assume that just because you didn't _sign_ a contract, you don't _have_ a contract (signatures and writings are useful for contracts -- particularly as _evidence_ of what was agreed to and that it was agreed to -- but they aren't generally _necessary_ to form a contract), and even if you don't have a contract, there may be some other basis for a claim. OTOH, refunding what he paid _may have_ done enough that there is nothing left for him to claim. _But_ you'll get more concrete answers (well, presumably) from a lawyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't have any agreement at the beginning, just as simply as he paid me and then i started to work. Never mention anything about compensate whatsoever. Thanks for the advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi,

First, don't panic. Second, lawyer up. This just means at least talking it over with a lawyer. That lawyer will probably advise you to wait until he makes a move.

You need to lawyer up because even without a contract, certain states have case law that might be applicable. For example, there has been case law in my state where two people that talked about buying real estate, without a contract, eventually ran into a sticky situation like yours.

Again, don't panic, it will probably be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> It did make me panic and angry, yeah i shouldn't be panic. I'm just a fresh grad., don't have much saving for lawyer yet, so i'll wait and see. Thanks for the advice.</comment></comment>


Thank HN: You guys are the reason I made it through the SAT today - <AUTHOR> I'm a 17 year old high school student living in California, and while I'm no hacker, I find interesting articles on HN every day, and have been doing so for over a year now.
So anyways, I took the SAT today, and midway through the test I realized that out of the ten or so texts and references I was made to read, three or four of them were news outlets' covers of scientific papers on various topics. While reading these, I noticed it came significantly easier to me than I would have suspected, and then I realized why.
Those articles are the exact type of thing I browse through every day on this site. Over the past year, this community has taught me how to read and interpret scientific literature, and I just wanted to say thank you for that, because now you might be the reason I get into my college of choice.
Cheers! <comment><USER2> That's awesome! I remember taking the SAT 1.5 years ago and noticing the correlation between my supplementary readings (i.e. HN posts) and the stuff on the actual test. Now I'm in college, and reading documentation and ML papers is significantly easier for me.

Ideally, you should be able to take the same knowledge and prepare for the PSAT/NMSQT, which can result in large scholarships. If you have any questions about the actual process, I can share some of my experiences with you (link in profile).

Good luck with your college search and applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm going to need all the luck I can get!</comment></comment>


Nintendo announces updated Switch with better battery life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/20697601/nintendo-switch-new-model-battery-life-improvements <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people actually use their switch as a mobile game device. Almost everyone I have seen just uses it as a home console, so they really won't care about the battery life.</comment>


A look at tech salaries and how they could change as more employees go remote - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/a-look-at-tech-salaries-and-how-they-could-change-as-more-employees-go-remote/ <comment><USER2> Imho, salary would have to go up because of using part of your home as the office. I literally had to move because of the quarantine since my apartment was in a loud street with loud neighbors (on the street, but that's a diff subject) and could not focus properly. If companies no longer pay for office space, at the very least salaries should stay the same.</comment>


When memory is not enough - <AUTHOR> http://avd.reduct.ru/programming/external-sort.html

<comment><USER2> I think that memory limited apps are more common, at least when they're bootstrapped. Look at Digital Ocean, Linode or DreamHost. You get a VPS for $20 bucks with 2 GB of ram. My phone has 2 GB. My laptops have 16 GB. Life is different on these types of machines.

This makes picking tech rather difficult. On the one hand C++ or D would work well here since they both offer good memory management (D's hybrid approach is nice). They are incredibly heavy (and D confuses me. The collection wars still come: up Tango vs Phoebe). So i don't know how productive I'd be given that I'm the only person in my startup. On the other hand the JVM can tune itself and even Clojure so maybe memory wouldn't be an issue for a higher level language.

Picking a database is hard too. I want to use NoSQL (wrote a book on it, should use it). I like ArangoDB. Sadly, like MongoDB it is mmapped. There are no efficient, swanky memory management tricks like you get in an older model SQL engine. But it makes sharding/replicating a breeze. So rather than having to tweak the crap out of MySQL or Postgres and get into the engine replacement (eventually), I take a hit up front. I just have to vertically scale ArangoDB for a while until it makes more sense to replicate/shard.

<comment><USER3> I made my own comment.. but even with GC based environments, if you can control when GC happens you can set it up to run more frequently than the system controls in place. My node processing scripts tend to stay under 50mb (usually closer to 20), and services are usually pretty light as well.

You don't necessarily need to resort to a lower level language to avoid using too much memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For node.js processes, like importer/exporter scripts and other timed scripts, I actually use the command line flag to expose garbage collection, and manually call after each item... it keeps the memory allocation in check (20mb instead of climbing over several hundred before done processing), and it does a pretty nice job.

For services, I'd be more inclined to not call it as much, but given that all timed event scripts run on one server currently, and potentially simultaneously, I prefer it this way.

Even with gc based environments one should check on their actual memory usage. I worked on a game engine backend in .Net that would actually hang up for several seconds when GC ran... forcing GC more often kept things running a lot smoother. A fraction of a second for my use was an acceptable lag, but several seconds wasn't.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bit of a tangent but, I don't know if a segfault should be considered a consequence of a "naive" implementation. Seems more like a consequence of a broken one.

A simple if (!A) goto err_free; would turn that segfault into a "Failed to parse file"

Also, it looks like qsort is implemented on his system as qsort_r:

      http://osxr.org/glibc/source/stdlib/msort.c

Qsort_r appears to allocate O(n) extra memory when the data fits into 1/4 of physical memory. The comments suggest that the regular qsort is slower.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess, you're right - for naive implementation it should fall with error, not a segfault. Maybe I just add a check for realloc result.

As for qsort implementation - I was confused by glibc sources ;-) What I've found was a slow but in-place implementation, and what you've shown me is an actual implementation that invokes an in-place variant when allocation was failed:

      tmp = malloc (size);
      __set_errno (save);
      if (tmp == NULL)
        {
          /* Couldn't get space, so use the slower algorithm
             that doesn't need a temporary array.  */
          _quicksort (b, n, s, cmp, arg);
          return;
        }

Thanks for feedback!</comment></comment>


Why America needs to bring AI into the upcoming hyperwar to win - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/12/why-america-needs-to-bring-ai-into-the-upcoming-hyperwar-to-win.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how the military will train models?

<comment><USER3> In simulation using classified sensor/platform models</comment></comment>


The Lost Tombs of Oman - <AUTHOR> https://maptia.com/oriolalamany/stories/the-forgotten-tower-tombs-of-oman <comment><USER2> My immediate reaction as a Scot was "What are brochs doing in Oman?"

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

NB Brochs aren't as old and are a lot bigger. However, the visual similarities are quite striking.

Edit: Obviously this similarity is coincidental - there aren't _that_ many different ways of building a simple tower out of stone.

<comment><USER3> also sardinian nuraghe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe)

<comment><USER4> Nuraghes we're not built as tombs though, but rather as fortified structures. They even had several floors and walls around.

Both are amazing though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I lived in Oman for a few years and it's one of the most beautiful places. The best thing about the place is how much effort goes into conservation of historically significant structures and the country's focus on eco-friendly tourism. The people are very friendly and unlike the other Arabian Gulf states they are not arrogant about the oil wealth.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great pictures and a really interesting place.

However, it starts off saying it was discovered in the 90s by a British aviator but later talks about a local legend. So either the locals made up a legend recently or it wasn't really "discovered" in the 90s.

I tried to look up some information about the site but couldn't find anything definitive about how long it has been known about (a couple sites mentioned an archeological dig in the late 70s but it wasn't clear if it was at this site or nearby and one mention was on a conspiracy site so not exactly a credible source).

</comment><comment><USER7> Fascinating. Here's the location : [https://goo.gl/tji5ch](https://goo.gl/tji5ch)

Seems they're not so far from main roads, so it's a bit odd about use of GPS and four wheel drive vehicles.

<comment><USER8> And there seems to be a town nearby. I think they are so busted on this one.

They probably even have souvenirs and guided tours in place.

<comment><USER9> I think you both might underestimate just how formidable the desert can be, just a few kilometers away from the nearest road/track/goat-path .. having lived in deserts all my life, the mere presence of a track on a map doesn't mean much. Get out there under you own wind, and you might have a different compulsion towards criticism of the 'accuracy' of the story ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It reminds me a bit the Towers of Silence used in Zoroastrianism.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Some superb photography there, hopefully not too touched up

</comment><comment><USER12> I visited some of these areas on a recent trip to Oman - certainly beautifully and realistically captured

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they're kilns or furnaces rather than non-functional monuments, given the historical record of trade from the region.

<comment><USER14> I would expect the interior to still be blackened. Here is the photo from the article closer up:

[https://maptia.imgix.net/photos/75985/1456101557.jpg?cs=srgb...](https://maptia.imgix.net/photos/75985/1456101557.jpg?cs=srgb&s=df472bbb09971018060e26f24761e0a5)

From what I gather from other articles, no human remains have ever been extracted from them. Perhaps the buildings were used for a religious purpose or for temporary shelter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else see a reflection of mountains in the background, with the spacing of the tombs along the closer ridge-line?</comment>


Ask HN: Would this improve reading experience on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Sometimes I find topics with alot of comments to be disconnecting when I'm going through the comments. Especially when there are multiple replies within multiple replies, it can be tricky to follow the conversation and understand the comment's context.
Made a quick sketch of a hover action that would show the comment that it is replying to, to put the comment in context. Think it would help the comment reading experience?
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/29/hovercontextcomment.jpg/ <comment><USER2> Maybe! Greasemonkey scripts are pretty easy to whip up, why don't you try it? If you check my profile it links to a few scripts on Github that could get you started parsing the layout.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something that would perhaps help more people is a "show unread" when you visit a thread. Reading a thread with 60 posts today and 100 posts tomorrow is sub-optimal.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like this idea. Perhaps you could even show multiple layers of replies when I hover over a reply to a reply to a reply...?</comment>


Should Amazon EC2 follow Moore's Law? - <AUTHOR> http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/cloud-computing/should-amazon-ec2-follow-moores-law/ <comment><USER2> heh. yes, they should, but I hope they don't. When they started (I was accepting customers before they were) they beat my prices soundly. I was able to lower prices to slightly below ec2 probably a year ago, and now, my prices are about half amazon.com.

Really, though, I don't think of it as lowering prices. I think of it as giving the customer more resources for the same price. The cost of ram and cpu (both capital costs, and recurring power costs) per unit is dropping rather fast, while the per-account overhead (a big deal for me, because my provisioning system sucks. probably less of a big deal for amazon.) remains about the same.</comment>


Embedded Rust tooling for the 21st century - <AUTHOR> https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/21st-century-embedded-tooling/ <comment><USER2> Sounds great! Is the cargo runner based on probe-rs?</comment>


Show HN: Food News - HN Clone Built With Django and Drum, Uses Persona for Auth - <AUTHOR> http://food.hypertexthero.com/ <comment><USER2> Good job, this is very cool!

Maybe you want to use the triangle, that was featured on HN a few days ago :) -- [http://codepen.io/chriscoyier/full/lotjh](http://codepen.io/chriscoyier/full/lotjh)

Is the source available for this anywhere? I would love to see some of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Credit for the bulk of the work must go to Stephen McDonald who made Mezzanine and Drum, of course.

Blog post with more info here: [http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2013/10/intro-food- news/](http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2013/10/intro-food-news/)

The source is here: [https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn](https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn)

I'll check out the CSS triangle.

<comment><USER3> Very cool, thanks. I've been looking for something like this. I may fork it with a Disqus integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do!

I used Disqus (which I think is excellent) for another experiment I did (much worse than Stephen McDonald's work with Mezzanine/Drum!): [https://github.com/hypertexthero/hir](https://github.com/hypertexthero/hir) \- [http://rome.hypertexthero.com/](http://rome.hypertexthero.com/)

I often think about this, but at this time still prefer not using a third party for comments, especially on a site where the comments are so important.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I agree with you regarding third party comments for the most part, but I think by using Disqus there could be way less friction for account sign up in some circumstances.

In my case, there's another site that I frequent that has a huge Disqus community, but it is desperately in need of social bookmarking functionality. I'm considering launching an independent site to provide it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks great! How did you get so many people using it already? Was it just Hacker News crowd?

I recently also built a HN Clone with Flask, this one for Open Data, Data Visualization, and other things along those lines.

[http://www.datanews.co/](http://www.datanews.co/)

It was my first major Flask app and I mostly wanted to build it to learn. I definitely recommend this as a good learning application. Its complex enough you need to put in some thought but do-able at the same time.

Source for DataNews is here: [https://github.com/joehand/DataNews](https://github.com/joehand/DataNews)

<comment><AUTHOR> Grazie! I posted most of the initial links myself and showed the site to some friends before posting to HN. Very surprised it made it to HN homepage — maybe people are interested in Persona (I know I am)?

Thanks for letting me know about datanews and sharing the source. I like Python and Django a lot and want to try something with Flask, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quick plug: if you want to launch your own HN clone about food or anything else, you might also want to check out Telescope, an open-source HN/Reddit- style social news app: [http://telesc.pe/](http://telesc.pe/)

<comment><USER6> +1 telescope is incredibly easy to set up for an HN clone. Run in on a heroku cluster for free too. Thats what I'm doing with [http://www.hackb.io/](http://www.hackb.io/). Check it out for a live demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice, smooth flow to it.

It might be nice if rather than assigning you a random string as a username it used something like "Click here to set your user name".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Agreed and it's on the [todo list]([https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn#things-to- do](https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn#things-to-do))

I also should have figured out what was wrong with memcache before publishing. Server seems to be taking a beating right now. If it goes down, my apologies — working on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, I think :) [https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn/commit/f4fb16c07fdf12279...](https://github.com/hypertexthero/fn/commit/f4fb16c07fdf122792b15328264970bcad26134f)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cycling News clone: [http://news.2wheellove.com](http://news.2wheellove.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice, upvoting without logging in does have a small mistake though: "You must logged in."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out.

I think the messages are inheriting from Mezzanine's messages app here [https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/master/mezzanin...](https://github.com/stephenmcd/mezzanine/blob/master/mezzanine/generic/views.py#L65) \- will fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed and @stephenmcd already merged the change, most excellent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is so cool, I was dying for a site like this.

<comment><USER10> I'd suggest for you to change the title of the page so it looks better on my bookmark bar. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed and done :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great. Thanks for putting this together!

</comment><comment><USER12> fyi, the hyperlink to mezzanine in your github readme is missing the colon after "http"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fixed.</comment></comment>


Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://echelog.com <comment><USER2> A long time ago parsing Echelog logs was how I was able to monitor the IRC activity of an attacker at a company I used to work at. I didn't normally sit on these channels myself, but Echelog enabled me to look back and collect data on the various handles that this person operated under.

There were 20-something handles they used over approximately a 6 month period of monitoring. I was always able to find a small piece of information to correlate these handles together. Sometimes it started with a hunch, such as the language (even slang) they would use, but eventually they'd slip up in some way and we'd have a pretty irrefutable link to the person.

This information helped us develop a motive behind the hack and the ongoing public info was then fed to national crime agencies. My employer never went through with prosecution, but as this person was of much interest behind other hacks they were eventually prosecuted and convicted. I always wondered if my occasional Echelog intelligence reports ever had a role in that conviction.

<comment><USER3> For the record, careful with doing private investigations. It might look good on Netflix, but can turn sour real fast.

<comment><USER4> What can happen?

<comment><USER5> There's probably a chance of you being retaliated against or going to jail yourself, depending on how you're doing the snooping.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, and in that respect Echelog was a great source of OSINT material for the anecdote I described above. That, along with `whois` data and other public databases can reveal a lot without putting oneself at legal risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't really use IRC anymore but at the time I remember really hating loggers. Chats were informal and I really didn't like them showing up in google results and elsewhere. Not everything needs to be saved.

<comment><USER7> I would have shared the same sentiment.

I never came across a logger, though, when I was still active on IRC. Are loggers a more recent (as in this millenium) development?

<comment><USER8> I would say chat history and asymmetrical scheduling for chat are expectations in this day and age, and the lack of them is one of the biggest reasons people find IRC irritating or difficult. (I ask a question, and if the person fit to answer it isn't logged in right now, it never gets even responded to.)

Every fairly modern chat solution, Skype, Discord, Slack, etc. allows you to see messages while you were offline. Compared to things from the older eras of messaging like AIM and YIM, when generally you couldn't even message someone unless they were online as well.

So it's not surprising to me for IRC loggers to be a relatively more modern element: They're filling in a gap IRC has with modern chat clients.

<comment><USER9> ZNC and earlier implementations have been around for 15+ years to provide queuing proxies. Pretty much all of the "unique" features found in current chat systems were also implemented in one fashion or another in the IRC ecosystem decades ago. Ease of use has definitely improved, in exchange for for-profit company control over communications in these systems. IRC's decentralized nature still argues for its relevance even now.

<comment><USER10> IRC is not really decentralised, is it? Or are you arguing that it's decentralised in the sense that each user can implement and control some features like logging?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10].

IRC is no longer difficult to use; there are great software applications across nearly every device that can be named which can work with and present the RFC1459 protocol splendidly, including weechat [11], KiwiIRC [12], Textual [13], Palaver [14], to mIRC [15], and AdiIRC [16], among others!

IRC has bots hosted by the community that can hook into github like bitbot [17] and supybot [18] among others.

You can also stay connected to IRC using an IRC bouncer like KiwiBNC [19], znc [20], IRCCloud [21], Quassel [22], Bitlbee [23] or shamlessplug jbnc [24].

[1] [https://freenode.net](https://freenode.net)

[2] [https://oftc.net](https://oftc.net)

[3] [https://rizon.net](https://rizon.net)

[4] [https://www.dal.net](https://www.dal.net)

[5] [https://tildeverse.org](https://tildeverse.org)

[6] [https://snoonet.org/](https://snoonet.org/)

[7] [https://quakenet.org/](https://quakenet.org/)

[8] [https://efnet.org](https://efnet.org)

[9] [https://ircnet.com](https://ircnet.com)

[10] [https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php](https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php)

[11] [https://weechat.org/](https://weechat.org/)

[12] [https://kiwiirc.com](https://kiwiirc.com)

[13] [https://codeux.com/textual](https://codeux.com/textual)

[14] [https://palaverapp.com/](https://palaverapp.com/)

[15] [https://mirc.com/](https://mirc.com/)

[16] [https://adiirc.com/](https://adiirc.com/)

[17] [https://github.com/jesopo/bitbot](https://github.com/jesopo/bitbot)

[18] [https://github.com/Supybot/Supybot](https://github.com/Supybot/Supybot)

[19] [https://kiwiirc.com/](https://kiwiirc.com/)

[20] [https://znc.in](https://znc.in)

[21] [https://irccloud.com/](https://irccloud.com/)

[22] [https://quassel-irc.org/](https://quassel-irc.org/)

[23] [https://www.bitlbee.org/](https://www.bitlbee.org/)

[24] [https://github.com/realrasengan/jbnc](https://github.com/realrasengan/jbnc)

Edit: Added a few that I accidentally left out. Thank you all! If I left anyone else out I apologize - IRC is so decentralized, spread out, and... alive... that it's hard to name all of the amazing projects, networks and implementations out there!

<comment><USER12> If only I could build weechat from source on windows! If anyone out there is willing to provide binaries I'd be glad to buy you coffee so I can switch over from irssi

mIRC is what got me into programming, actually... I miss the good old days

<comment><USER7> My first programming projects were scripts and modules for eggdrop. Every now and then I get a nostalgia flash. :) Surprisingly, some of those are still being used... 20 years after the last release.

<comment><USER13> Mine were mIRC scripts for banning spammers. Eventually we had a community of people writing bots in perl, PHP, and loads of other languages. I was introduced to Unix by means of wanting to run irssi in screen so I could collect messages even when I was offkyine. It is no exaggeration to say IRC is completely responsible for my career, far more so than education!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is sad because BotBot.me shut down not that long ago too.

We are pretty reliant on Whitequark's logger at the moment. [https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/](https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is?

On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie?

IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

<comment><USER15> IRC was the chat server. Freenode was THE OSS irc chat server.

There wasn't any other game in town that could scale well enough that was free.

<comment><USER16> Not just was, is! We still hold 90k concurrent users most of the time, and a couple hundred thousand unique users over reasonable spans of time, maybe 3 months?

<comment><USER17> I think this would be useful: how many unique users have sent at least one message in the last 24 hours?

I'm part of some of the channels you think would be largest on Freenode like #javascript and #nodejs. There may be hundreds of people in the online user list, but it's literally the same 10 people talking every day.

There's 10x that number of people talking daily in just Elm's Slack. I'm on three javascript-related webdev Discord servers that that each have at least 100 unique users interacting daily.

I have to wonder if 90% of people connected to IRC are just echoes in the system, autoreconnecting from old hardware long after their owners have moved on.

In these threads people always say "nah, IRC is doing great!" But frankly I don't think people realize how much IRC communities have shrunk. Its lunch has been eaten and it feels like the only people still around on IRC are aging people who once used it in its prime.

<comment><USER18> Many IRC communities have shrunk. Different reasons. Things like Discord and mumble, combined with more collaboration and multiplayer competition in games took gamers away from IRC and crippled networks like Gamesurge.

Social media, especially things like Twitter and the various short video sharing services took away the "general chat" demographic -- partially because folks who were closer (real-life friends and family) like to feel closer, and folks who are not tend to be younger, and the younger demographic trends towards newer technologies.

Tech stuff has held up on freenode for a while, but as you point out this isn't always the case. I would argue that freenode is probably safe from too much decline for a while yet -- those of us who are "aging people who once used [IRC] in its prime" (I'm 36, guy, "aging" is a bit harsh :)) also tend to be people with a lot of experience in $technical_topic. If you want to ask questions about $technical_topic, and the people with experience are on IRC, that's where you go.

You've pointed out a lot of Javascript-related stuff is not on IRC. Javascript is a relatively new technology (compared to IRC), Node is relatively newer, and Elm newer yet. The boom in web technologies, and the ability to run native applications written in JS has caused that community to surge. It's also relatively easier to get into Javascript than it is to get into (say) C. So you attract more people, and you're going to attract younger people, and you're going to have a really diverse audience for a wide range of topics. All of a sudden a single channel on a chat network doesn't make much sense anymore, and running an IRC network yourself doesn't seem like fun, so you decide to use Discord or Slack. I think this makes a lot of sense for lots of communities.

For other (especially smaller, or very niche) technical communities, IRC is still a good solution. It's not fair to say that "its lunch has been eaten" \-- it'll remain relevant until text-based messaging is no longer the most accessible way to communicate. But there are other, different solutions for similar problems that do a better job of catering to specific audiences. And that's just fine.

Unfortunately, it's kind of a PITA to get unique counts from server stats, which are mostly aggregates. So I can't answer that question. But Freenode's a rather active network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have an irc server, no rules, nothing illegal though. we have fun! irc.t60group.org +6697 #kotu

</comment><comment><USER20> I also ran a public IRC logger (mostly in and around the perl/raku communities, but also other channels).

Simplify figuring out if IRC logs fall under GDPR was nearly impossible to me, so I shut down some time ago. (It might have violated earlier privacy regulations as well, hard to tell).

Lots of people offered their opinion on that topic, but when it goes to court, none of those opinions matter. Hiring my own lawyer seemed too expensive, and nobody who asked me to continue running it offered to pay for a lawyer either. Tough luck.

<comment><USER21> what do you imagine would have happened if you kept it running?

<comment><USER20> There's a 80% chance that nothing would have happened, a 15% chance that people would complain about the privacy implications but won't do anything about it, and a 5% chance that somebody takes action and I get some sort of legal citation/penalty/whatever.

All percentages estimations only, of course :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if archive.org would be interested...

<comment><USER23> Already pushed WARC files into the Archive for Wayback ingestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honestly, it is sad but I grew up on IRC. Time to put all those ill advised remarks to bed..

</comment><comment><USER24> Can I use this on my iPhone? I haven't been able to find easy to use ones.

<comment><USER25> I prefer Igloo IRC, but finding a server and chatroom is an exercise you'll have to do on your own depending on what you are looking for. I would start with Freenode if you don't know where to begin.

<comment><USER26> The screenshots for Igloo look nice, but the developer responses to reviews are... entertaining, and concerning.

<comment><USER19> yeah he's legit crazy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good riddance. I like irc more when I don't have to measure every word I say because some douchebag is silently logging everything and putting it in a website for everybody to see, index and archive, without my permission or anybody else's.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sad to see GDPR still slowly killing anything too small to pay a legal team (basically anything that can be sued that hasn't incorporated, ie, human persons).

> Furthermore, the cost (financially, mentally and legally (GDPR)) of running > the site, no longer makes sense for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am surprised that privacy aware companies are not using IRC more for their intra company chat, and that none invested in a webcam voice chat client for IRC. Even the most basic server can handle thousands of clients.

<comment><USER13> I recall working at companies where the ops or DevOps teams would run their own IRC servers pre-slack. It was basically the only way to get stuff done if you had a desktop PC and needed to work closely with anyone. The problem is that most companies don't know how to do due diligence on a tool like IRC and the clients aren't very friendly. The lack of commercialisation of the space is what prevented companies from paying for it, and that meant no easy and rich clients got built, which meant it never got commercialised, etc etc..</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you organise your notes? - <AUTHOR> As per the title, are you still maintaining paper notes OR is there a better digital way of doing it ?
I have been experimenting with OneNote and seems to be working. (I can search hand written notes)
But just asking here in case there may be a better way ? <comment><USER2> Topic maps for the win :) I have developed a topic map-based note taking (and knowledge management) application for my own use. A good explanation of topic maps is at Microsoft Developer Network: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa480048.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa480048.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use this for making notes while working on multiple projects. [https://github.com/int3rlop3r/jot](https://github.com/int3rlop3r/jot)</comment>


Court rules that people can't be locked up indefinitely for refusing to decrypt - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200210/14173343897/appeals-court-rules-that-people-cant-be-locked-up-indefinitely-refusing-to-decrypt-devices.shtml <comment><USER2> > The Fifth Amendment gives witnesses a right not to testify against > themselves. Rawls argued that producing a password for the hard drives would > amount to an admission that he owned the hard drives. But the 3rd Circuit > rejected that argument. It held that the government already had ample > evidence that Rawls owned the hard drives and knew the passwords required to > decrypt them. So ordering Rawls to decrypt the drives wouldn't give the > government any information it didn't already have. Of course, the contents > of the hard drive might incriminate Rawls, but the contents of the hard > drive are not considered testimony for Fifth Amendment purposes.

It sounds like this ruling is more against indefinite detention than a ruling that allows you to invoke the 5th before handing over your passwords. The quoted text above [1] tells me that the courts have thus far not recognized any right to keep your data encrypted against the wishes of law enforcement. Maybe it means they can only lock you up for 18 months, but I don't see how this changes things appreciably. I guess if the crime you're accused of carries a sentence worse than 18 months, it might be worthwhile, but who knows...

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who- refused-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-to- decrypt-hard-drives-is-free-after-four-years-in-jail/)

<comment><USER3> > Rawls argued that producing a password for the hard drives would amount to > an admission that he owned the hard drives. But the 3rd Circuit rejected > that argument. It held that the government already had ample evidence that > Rawls owned the hard drives and knew the passwords required to decrypt them. > So ordering Rawls to decrypt the drives wouldn't give the government any > information it didn't already have. Of course, the contents of the hard > drive might incriminate Rawls, but the contents of the hard drive are not > considered testimony for Fifth Amendment purposes.

This would seem to imply that if the government has ample evidence that you murdered someone, they can require you to admit to it in court.

<comment><USER4> They can't require you to personally admit to it, but if they know about a notebook where you wrote it they can require you to give up the notebook. (The rule makes more sense if you think about it in terms of financial crimes; it'd be hard to ever prosecute someone for fraud if they didn't have to give up their books.)

<comment><USER5> > it'd be hard to ever prosecute someone for fraud if they didn't have to give > up their books.

I'm pretty sure it's relatively simple for police to break into offices and take financial records. I would imagine it happens relatively often, because simply asking a suspect to give up their books seems more likely to result in them attempting to hide or destroy their books.

The reason police and prosecutors don't like encryption is because they can't use violence to acquire what they want, at least directly. They need new (or at least specifically-clarified) laws about what they can do to you to make you decrypt your data.

<comment><USER6> > attempting to hide or destroy their books

This is precisely why "Obstruction of Justice" is a criminal offense with severe penalties available. The question then becomes: is deliberately encrypting and refusing to provide access to those books obstruction?

I know the folks here would argue otherwise, but IMHO it's not at all a clear argument legally. The original reasoning behind the fifth amendment was that without that protection the government would be tempted to use coercive tactics to induce a false confession. It's designed to prevent the torture of accused witches, not to be a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for crypto nuts.

<comment><USER7> To not encrypt your books for a business would be negligence; I assume you leave all your valuable information as clear text for the convenience of future investigations?

<comment><USER6> I wrote "is deliberately encrypting _and refusing to provide access to those books_ obstruction?". And again, I don't think that argument is anywhere near as clear cut as you want it to be. The fifth amendment, again, is intended to prevent torture, not to prevent the collection of evidence in a criminal investigation.

So technicalities like you're invoking (is refusing to do something "obstruction" or not?) need to be balanced against technicalities on the other side (is providing a decryption key "testimony"?). And when courts have had to make decisions like this they've almost always done it by splitting the difference in some way instead of finding an absolute interpretation on one side or the other.

<comment><USER7> Oh, after the fact? I would agree that is definitely obstruction. Before the fact - maybe for business, but not for personal. 5th amendment is to protect against forcing someone to provide evidence against themselves whether that is through torture or coercion, it does not matter.

<comment><USER6> But again you face the technicality: is providing access to already-existing documents "testimony" in the sense the fifth amendment intends? You can't torture someone into producing documents that don't exist, obviously! Nor is going to jail for obstruction of justice "coercion", effectively by definition.

I'm not saying I disagree with you in principle, I'm saying that very reasonable courts might not. This isn't a cut and dry argument, at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The idea of being locked up for not handing over a password terrifies me.

I was deployed a few years ago and living in the conexes. I was bored and decided to go all out on encrypting everything. I picked a completely random 16 character password (I piped the output from /Dev/urandom through some tr command that only allowed typeable characters through) and committed it to muscle memory. I used this laptop every day for about a month before I went home. I took about a one week vacation midway home.

With the break and change in surroundings I completely forgot the password. No idea what it was. I tried for about a week before I have up and reformated it. I don't encrypt my computer any more.

That's a crime they can lock you up for life for? Crazy talk.

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that if there is evidence that you were committing crimes with connection to this encrypted data, there is a problem for you. Otherwise, this is not a problem.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like a very dangerous assumption. You don't get to decide that you have nothing to hide. They do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem with this new territory is exactly the unsettled issue of whether providing a password is testimonial and protected.

The protection against self-incrimination is/was a protection against being put on trial and being forced to say or give testimony that you took part in or committed a crime. It is not a protection against any and all evidence from being produced against you.

In a previous age, not saying words was enough protection, because evidence was usually physical (objects). The novel problem now is that the types of evidence being protected by passwords (and the method of protection) now are so closely linked that it's quite difficult to say whether being compelled to reveal a password is testimonial.

Suppose a suspect murdered someone and was seen putting the weapon in a safe, where the combination was known to be written in a person's private papers. Those papers could be compelled to be revealed without jeopardizing privilege because the discovery of the combination is not forcing a person to testify. Even compelling the person to reveal the combination might not be testimony. And in any case, the safe could be opened with much effort and a blowtorch.

But now, the safe can never be cracked, and the person's knowledge of the password is the only thing that will open it. The person revealing the password will surely confirm his/her guilt, so it now feels very much like the info/knowledge is self-incriminating testimony.

Modern problems. They need some court resolution at a high level.

<comment><USER12> In Germany is rule is simply that you are not required to do _anything_ to actively help our own prosecution.

They want to take your fingerprints? You don't need to help by lifting your arm. They want you to open a safe? No need to tell them the combination, through they will crack it open if you refuse. Same with encryption keys, you don't need to say anything. Telling the truth? As the accused you're allowed to lie in court however you want.

If you do get sentenced you can get a reduced sentence if the court thinks that you've been cooperative. But you can never get punished simply for the fact that you didn't help with your own prosecution.

<comment><USER11> > As the accused you're allowed to lie in court however you want.

Really? I'm interested to know how this works, and how it is not perjury.

<comment><USER13> Lying is not illegal. Lying _under oath_ is illegal. In Germany, judges rarely require witness to swear under oath.

There also aren't juries in Germany.

There also isn't cross-examination in Germany.

The English way of law isn't the only way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> According to this article, the court can't seem to understand why the prosecution is going to such lengths to compel production of password. Is they court willfully ignorant or is the article misleading?

It seems pretty clear the prosecution was trying to use this case to set a precedent that not producing a password means you stay in jail forever. That the accused is all but convicted for child porn makes it easy, from a PR standpoint, for the prosecution to play hardball. If it was a journalist or a whistleblower, amicus curae brief would be stacked to the rafters.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if it is possible to get the charges dropped because he was denied the right to a speedy trial.

The government's behavior on this is reprehensible, and, frankly, I'm more worried about abusive prosecutors than pedophiles.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish people would stop linking to Tech Dirt, when there are alternatives ([https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who- refused-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-to- decrypt-hard-drives-is-free-after-four-years-in-jail/)). Tech Dirt is a self- proclaimed rumor mill site, similar to the The Sun.

<comment><USER17> Advocacy groups wear their bias on their chests proudly. "Neutral" news purveyors hide their bias behind misleading headlines and selective reporting. I would much prefer to read about something related to digital privacy in Tech Dirt. Not that I have anything against arstechniaca in particular.

Can you link me to an example of a false rumor Tech Dirt has spread?

EDIT: As danso points out, this issue probably wouldn't even have been reported by ars if Tech Dirt hadn't done the actual work of digging up the court documents, so complaining about the admittedly outraged tone of their articles is just petty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a certain irony in the coincidence of the defendant's name being "Rawls", who was a political philosopher [0] that sought to define what "justice" should be within political society...

his work "Justice as Fairness" _" describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system."_

[0] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/)

</comment><comment><USER19> A surprising but welcome ruling. This case is yet another example of the government using the repugnancy of a crime to attack fundamental rights. It's happened before, it's happening now, and it will happen again.

<comment><USER20> Alleged crime.

And this is braindead simple application of the Fifth Amendment. The courts are a joke.

<comment><USER21> This is not braindead simple 5th amendment stuff. Among the unsettled the questions in this case: (1) is providing a decryption key a testimonial act? (2) are the contents of the drives would constitute testimony protected by the 5th Amendment?

Courts have come to different conclusions on both questions. Experts disagree on both questions. Even the precursor question (is requiring a defendant to provide the combination for a safe subject to the 5th Amendment?) is unsettled.

The court in this case came down on the side of treating the decryption key as a testimonial act, but avoided dealing with the 5th Amendment issues.

<comment><USER20> (1) is obviously true. Nobody can dispute this in good faith, even if the jurisprudence is hard to settle among bad actors. Prosecutors are simply upset technology makes the 5th powerful.

(2) is obviously false. You can't get to it without testimony, though, so too bad. This is the intention of the 5th.

The court avoided the 5th Amendment issues because, again, the courts are a joke.

<comment><USER21> (1) is not obviously true. Even judges known to favor defendant's rights can't agree whether this would constitute a testimonial act. Claiming otherwise suggests that you don't understand how the law works, how the technology works, or both.

(2) is not obviously false, because you're conflating two separate things: the encryption key and the contents of the encrypted device. Using the analogy of a locked safe: a picture taken by the defendant, for example, would be testimonial, but a picture taken by a third party would not. There's no way to know without actually reviewing the contents.

If you have a simplistic understanding of the law, it's easy to make black and white statements. But the law is not deterministic code, and has never worked that way.

<comment><USER22> I dunno what the law says. However, it is very easy to imagine a situation where someone LEGITIMATELY cannot decrypt the device. Is indefinite detention without even a criminal charge a valid punishment for that? We can make analogies all day "is it testimony? Is it like the code to a safe?"... But there is a real concrete fact that the government wants to be able to imprison someone indefinitely, without a jury trial, for claiming not to know something when there is certainly a reasonable doubt about them knowing it.

So, whatever they have to do with the analogies, this decision cannot go the way the prosecutor wants it to.

<comment><USER21> _Is indefinite detention without even a criminal charge a valid punishment for that?_

The defendant was charged with child pornography offenses.

 _But there is a real concrete fact that the government wants to be able to imprison someone indefinitely, without a jury trial, for claiming not to know something when there is certainly a reasonable doubt about them knowing it._

The defendant was claiming to forget the encryption key to a device because it allegedly contained a massive trove of photos that would likely get him locked away in prison for life. Said device was one he had owned and used for years, including shortly before he was arrested and the device confiscated (based on testimony of his sister). It's not reasonable to believe that he just conveniently forgot his encryption key as soon as he was arrested, especially when forgetting the key was beneficial to him in the underlying proceeding.

 _However, it is very easy to imagine a situation where someone LEGITIMATELY cannot decrypt the device._

Yes, but this isn't that situation. And this ruling benefits that hypothetical person.

 _this decision cannot go the way the prosecutor wants it to._

We agree on that, but it didn't need to. The prosecution already had a strong case against him on the underlying criminal charges. They got what they wanted -- a deterrent to others trying to do the same thing just to avoid jail time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A minor miracle, while Chelsea Manning still rots in Alexandria City Jail for not cooperating with the political persecution of Assange.

<comment><USER24> It's so great, that Obama "commuted her sentence". Clearly that was a meaningful action that significantly affected something.

<comment><USER25> He commuted her sentence _for a different crime._ He didn't give her a pass to commit contempt going forward.

<comment><USER26> A different crime based on the same original actions. It's way too close to double jeopardy for my liking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As others have mentioned a lot of this boils down to the wording of the 5th amendment. Specifically: "...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...".

I recently found out that, for example, the Texas Bill of Rights [1] has stronger wording that addresses this. From section 10: "...He shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself...".

1\. [https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/SOTWDocs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/SOTWDocs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER28> Idea: write malware that drops random data/encrypted files on the infected devices drive but is otherwise harmless, distribute widely. Bam! Plausible deniability for everyone.

<comment><USER15> We sort of already have this, since stegfs provides an existence proof:

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

<comment><USER29> One problem with this is even after fully cooperating, the prosecution can still claim you're hiding more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What about if your password itself is an admission of committing a crime? Like your pass phrase is "IMurderedJeffreyEpstein"

<comment><USER31> "I can't, your honor, the password itself is a confession." Is now my newest password.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe in this case, it is somehow clear that there is encrypted stuff and the government is also sure who can decrypt it (who owns the key to decrypt it.) But since a variety of Deniable encryption[0] exits, what happens when they think there is something to decrypt when there isn't? Or when they can't prove it but they want to believe there is something there?

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

</comment><comment><USER33> >> _Since that day, more than four years ago, Rawls has been held in federal custody. Rawls seeks release arguing that 28 U.S.C. § 1826 limits his maximum permissible confinement for civil contempt to 18 months._

This much jail times ruins almost everyone, think of the mess it makes in your life /job/relationship /fiances. But I guess it beats doing xx years if you provide the passwords and evidence found there is used.

</comment><comment><USER34> If your password itself was an admission of guilt then would that count as testimony and protected under the Fifth Amendment?

<comment><USER35> If you pleaded the fifth on your password, the court might be able to compel you to _enter_ the password such that they don't get the password but do get the data.

The next question is, if doing so immediately decrypts a file (e.g. a text file) which is a direct admission of guilt, can you plead the fifth against the decryption process itself, esp. if the government isn't already aware that such a "guilt declaration" exists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's no mistake that they select the most unsympathetic people to try to weaken the protections for us all.

</comment><comment><USER37> What if you testified that you forgot the password (if password was used). Unbelievable it might seem, let's say you set up the passwd 1 week before the deed, it is a possibility and IMO they would have to prove otherwise (+ good luck with the decrypting)

</comment><comment><USER38> mods: can we edit the title to mention that this is about the US? US law != global law.

</comment><comment><USER39> How can they prove that the person didn't forget the password / no longer has access to it?

I'm pretty careful with that stuff but still it happened to me before.

</comment><comment><USER40> Came there to read the article, then saw their informed consent form. By far the best one I've seen up to now, my commendation for that.

</comment><comment><USER41> So 365 days or so, just not indefinite.

</comment><comment><USER42> so they can keep you 4 years if they have nothing on you?

> Man Who Refused To Decrypt Hard Drives Is Free After Four Years In Jail

<comment><USER43> 18 months is the new limit. It only applies to federal courts though.

<comment><USER42> it is still wayyyyyyyyyyyy too long.</comment></comment></comment>


Green party's Jill Stein invites Bernie Sanders to take over ticket - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/08/jill-stein-bernie-sanders-green-party <comment><USER2> That would be an interesting move. I continue to think that the current status has opened the way for a third party candidate to be a spoiler like Ross Perot. But who does that spoil? Hillary's run or Donald's ?</comment>


Alternative 'recipes' for potential Covid-19 drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/ai-invents-new-recipes-potential-covid-19-drugs <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the preprint on ChemRxiv:

[https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Reinforcing_the_Suppl...](https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Reinforcing_the_Supply_Chain_of_COVID-19_Therapeutics_with_Expert- Coded_Retrosynthetic_Software/12765410)

Title is slightly editorialized to remove "AI" buzzword from title.</comment>


Show HN: Fallgate – A tiny game built in TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://mbforbes.github.io/fallgate <comment><USER2> Neat. Did you also make the music?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Quite hard without a mouse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally, takes some getting used to with a trackpad. Move + look at the same time a lot for the brain to do. Just pushed experimental gamepad support if you have a controller lying around.</comment></comment>


Think Legroom on Planes Is Bad Now? It's Going to Get Worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-25/this-airline-plans-to-break-a-record-cramming-flyers-into-jets <comment><USER2> Eliminate the food service and bathrooms. Include a free Depends underwear with every ticket. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just get a private jet everybody...

</comment><comment><USER4> The article is paywalled for me. Anyone have another link possibly?</comment>


The American Way of Hiring Is Making Long-Term Unemployment Worse - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/the-american-way-of-hiring-is-making-long-term-unemployment-worse/ <comment><USER4> I think at one point in America's history, Long-Term-Unemployment(LTU) was a semi-decent indicator of a possible problem-employee because nobody was questioning "Is college worth it?". Back then, you were pretty assured that your degree(whatever it was) guaranteed you a job... so if you didn't have a job for a long time, then either you're a lady who became a mom or you're a man who messed up in life. But today, especially after 2008/9 real-estate mess, a bunch of totally legit people fell into LTU by no fault of their own... but the stigma still remains.

I also think this is more a problem for non-tech jobs. In today's world, if a software-engineer wanted to travel the world for 8 months I suspect she could easily get a job when she's done. She'd probably be getting recruiter-calls _while_ on vacation.

<comment><USER5> I don't know. I can't tell if the phenomenon of ageism in tech is under or overrated, but I do think that techies have the advantage of never truly being out of work, so long as they're hacking away at something.

In fact, older LTU workers could learn from the tech strategy of consulting and freelancing when "gaps" in their careers emerge. So long as you have something to show for it, such as a new skill or someone in your network that can raise their hand and say, "Oh yeah, she mentored me through this big project my company is working on" then you can help yourself out a bit.

I want to know how much of this is HR's fault. What the hell are they looking for, and why? Everyone admits this is a problem, but HR goes on as if they're oblivious to it. And then you read about how they're dismissing candidates that don't have an adequate social media presence, and you begin to wonder why on earth these goons run hiring.

<comment><USER6> _I can 't tell if the phenomenon of ageism in tech is under or overrated_

It's bad in VC-istan but I don't think it's bad in technology as a whole. There are plenty of 50+ programmers at places like Google who are well- regarded.

The fear that many of us who are in our 20s and 30s is that the culture of age discrimination-- one that we, although young, really don't support, but that is inflicted upon us by the VCs-- will get worse in the next decade or two. Right now, it's not apocalyptic and most good programmers will be fine. The concern is that if VC-istan becomes the new normal in employment, ageism will be more of a problem when we get to 40+. Right now there are still a lot of good jobs for 40+ programmers at the Staff+ SWE level at places like Google and Amazon, but that won't be true if VCs acquire more power.

 _Everyone admits this is a problem, but HR goes on as if they 're oblivious to it. And then you read about how they're dismissing candidates that don't have an adequate social media presence, and you begin to wonder why on earth these goons run hiring._

HR looks for reasons to reject people. They have to, because they get so many junk resumes. They cut for too old or too young or too long at the last job or too short at the last job. You need, whenever possible, to engage with people who are looking for reasons to _accept_ people.

<comment><USER7> In other words if your career is in any way unusual, the HR folks don't want to let you in. They have no way to judge a resume by objective standards because they haven't got a clue about the work being done in their company. So they rely on hiring people who conform to some fantasy of what a modern company employee should be like.

<comment><USER8> In my experience, the hiring managers have been the problem, not HR. I've been very frustrated by my managers' attitudes and expectations when trying to hire folks for my team. They've rejected resumes against my recommendations. And after interviews, they've declined to offer jobs to people that I thought would be great fits. And then they continue to complain to _their_ managers that we _just aren 't getting quality candidates_. Not true!!! And again, this is not HR. . .these are the hiring managers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any discussion of "overqualification" should begin with this chart: [http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm)

We often worry that acquiring human capital is a double edged sword, but it's hard to find that in the data.

That said, BLS has written that older workers face both lower rates and longer durations of unemployment: [http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/summary_10_04/older_workers.htm](http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/summary_10_04/older_workers.htm)

It seems contradictory at first glance: how do older workers have better and worse luck at the same time?

One way to explain this is that as older workers gain in specialized skills, it makes "search costs" more difficult, it's harder to match them to the right job. PhD's in narrow disciplines face a similar situation: it's much harder to find that good fit right out of school, but in the long run, once you find a place, you're more likely to be well compensated, poached, or retained in employment by those who understand your skill set for the rest of your life.

There could be other explanations. But from the raw data, if you had to bet on someone being employed, try to pick someone who is highly educated and older, no question.

<comment><USER10> So, not only is college "useless" now, so is having experience. As 31 year old DevOps making $low_six_figures, this is somewhat worrying re: future prospects.

Even adapting is no assurance of your future employability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story resonates with me because while I have had an active consulting business for about 15 years (and right now I have a consulting gig at Google), twice in the last five years potential customers wanted to hire me for projects but they were blocked by their HR departments who thought I was LTU. Offering to show tax records did not help.

I am also in my 60s, so I also feel for people who might suffer from age discrimination (or gender, race, religion, etc.)

There should be a level playing field, but sadly that is not always the case.

<comment><USER12> But that is horrible. Just to rephrase:

> twice in the last five years potential customers wanted to hire me for > projects but they were blocked by their HR departments who thought I was > black. Offering to show birth certificate of my father did not helped.

<comment> All-Delib-Speed While I can appreciate the point you're trying to make. Please don't think not hiring someone because they're black, and not hiring someone because they've been, or appear to have been, unemployed for a long period of time are the same thing.

There is no ethical, legal, and legitimate reason to not hire someone for a consulting job because they're black. There is an ethical, legal, and legitimate reason to not hire someone because they have been unemployed for a long period of time. Or to at least consider other candidates who don't appear to have been unemployed for a long period of time.

I'm hoping your comment about showing a parent's birth certificate was solely an attempt at an analogy and not meant to be something you think realistically would or does happen. An employer can't deny a candidate employment because a candidate is or isn't black, or their parents are or aren't black. That's the point. Race and color are both protected classes in the US [1]. A person's long term unemployment, just like their level of education and attractiveness, isn't a protected class. Meaning a job can discriminate against a person all day every day based on their history of long term unemployment.

And just to add, the birth certificate of one parent doesn't determine a person's race as far as society is broadly concerned, particularly if you're considered black in the US [2][3][4].

[1] - [http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/](http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/) [2] - The President of the United States [3] - [http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/%E2%80%98one-d...](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/%E2%80%98one- drop-rule%E2%80%99-persists/) [4] - [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixe...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not so much a comment on the thesis, but the actual "research" is missing and it would improve the essay if it was actually _presented_. Even in a synopsis. Its a shame, as the The only link is to the "forthcoming book" on Amazon.

 _My research, involving in-depth conversations with hundreds of unemployed job seekers, indicates that no group of workers is more committed to contributing to a company that gives them a chance to prove their value than older workers who have been long-term unemployed.

Importantly, while some employers fear that older workers will not sticking around, my research suggests the opposite is more likely. It's worth considering whether, in fact, it is younger workers in their 20s and 30s who are more likely to be actively searching for opportunities to move across jobs in an effort to develop a portfolio of marketable skills and experiences. Older workers are really looking for a company where their considerable skills and experiences are valued and can make a difference._

One concern tha jumps out (i'm sure to many) is the reference to a measurement of "future comittment", which seems at best unpredictable. Take, for example the divorce rate amongst newlyweds. His methodology may indeed be wide- rangingly useful (assuming its good), but we don't get a sense of it here. It does seem, in any event, that the HR heuristics at BigCos these days are apparently shallow.

</comment><comment><USER14> It stands to reason that if the bias against long term unemployed workers is strong enough there will exist a surplus of highly qualified workers who have been out of work for 6 months or more. Everything else being equal, the long term unemployed could be hired at lower than market wages for their skill level. A smart company could pick up qualified workers pretty cheaply by ignoring unemployment length right now.

<comment><USER15> I'm far more interested in the VALUE of a prospective employee than I am in the COST.

I expect a technical employee (myself included) to bring to the company some multiple of their salary each year. With that in mind, I'm far more interested in the possible upside of a good employee than in reducing a portion of the costs of a possibly cheaper employee. (I'm generally "on the hook" for some amount of constant costs: 401-k match, insurance, building occupancy costs, free food/drinks, management attention/overhead needed, etc, so a 25% lower salary might only net me a 15% lower overall cost.)

Long term unemployed, excessive job hopping without good explanation, long stints of employment without promotion or other evidence of growth are all red flags. They're not fatal in isolation, but believe me, they get scrutiny by hiring managers who are paying attention.

Someone involuntarily out of work in a tech field for 6 months is likely to, at a minimum, interview poorly. (Otherwise, they'd likely land somewhere inside of 2 months.) For your plan to work, one has to be willing to low-ball a candidate who likely just interviewed poorly with you. I don't think the risk-reward works out, which is why I'm probably part of the problem, but willingly so.

Candidates that interview poorly get a polite rejection, not a lowball offer.

<comment><USER16> But you are not competing against competitors who might steal them away for -24%. You are competing against Walmart: -75% salary, -100% fringe benefits.

<comment><USER15> Still misses the value side, but even on the cost side, that's just a recipe for getting someone back in the workforce for 18 months until they re- establish their credibility and confidence and jump ship to another firm for what will be a 300% raise for them. I wouldn't blame them in the least; they'd be an idiot to keep working for me under those circumstances.

Hugely helpful for the employee, but an "adequate, not spectacular" employee who works for me for 18 months isn't helping my company much overall. The first 6 months is straight negative; the next 6 is break even, and the next 6 pay back the hole we dug in the first 6. So, good for them and hopefully break even for me, except I lost 18 months of "tempo" with one of my employee spots.

For a cash-strapped company, this plan might make more sense. For a profitable and growing later-stage company, I think this makes much less sense. (I work a much later stage company, so that surely colors my opinion and biases here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience this is not just a problem with older workers and with long term unemployed, but also a problem with immigrant workers. There is a lot of experience out there that could be a productive part of the economy if only hiring managers would give their head a shake and break out of the ritualistic processing of resumes.

More creativity is called for. For instance, are you snowed under by 300 resumes for only one position? Maybe you need to rethink how you describe your requirements. Read every 10th resume and then rewrite your requirements. Winnow down the resumes to a semi-short list based on one or two key things. For instance in software development look at the type of projects they did. What did they deliver regardless of the technology that they used. You will probably still have 100 resumes. Then send your new requirements to each of these people by email, give them 24 hours to reply with a two page letter explaining how they can help you achieve what you have described in your new requirements. Probably most of them either won't reply in time, or their letters will be godawful things that you can't even read to the end.

But you will find a few gems to interview.

To do this right your new requirements need to focus on describing the problems that you face and the timeline in which you want to solve those problems. Ask people explicitly to question your current approach. Maybe that guy with no PHP experience actually does have something to offer to your all- PHP shop.

Or do something else. Just do it creatively, think out of the box, and try to make it interesting for the applicants as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just went through a (long for me) job search. As someone who has typically been able to have another job within days, this time it took me roughly three months. It was exhausting and frustrating, but also very eye-opening. I found a pattern among companies that gave me great insight, and from that I could choose a course of action.

I found two different companies trying to hire -- those looking to fill positions, and those looking to solve problems. Huge difference between those two; the former is tactical, the latter is strategic. Everyone needs to strive to find the latter.

I found interviews with those looking to "fill a position" bordered on the absurd in terms of their hiring approach. It throws you (the job seeker) off your game and makes you question your own competency. Don't fall for it; keep looking for those companies that are trying to solve problems.

<comment><USER18> Can you elaborate? Every company I've ever encountered is looking to fill a position because it has a problem to be solved that needs someone in that position to help solve it -- they can't develop their new product without three new programmers, for instance. Strategy is executed via tactics, they're not mutually exclusive.

Could you give some more concrete examples, or something? Are you talking about ongoing maintenance jobs (like your time will be spent mostly bugfixing) vs building-new-product jobs? I'm really curious what you mean.

<comment><USER17> Don't take that in the literal sense -- of course, anyone who is hiring someone is technically filling a position. Think of this as a classification of a company's motivation to hire in the first place.

I found companies that were "filling positions" were those that had a previous role defined, and now needed to either replace the previous owner, or add to the organization (they had budgeted for it, for example.) These tended to be larger companies, and the focus for the job was the role. In these cases, the role had largely been pre-defined.

The short-list of companies I spoke with that were trying to "solve a problem" didn't think about what role someone should fill, but rather what capabilities a candidate could bring to their team. These companies I found were often smaller (less than 100 employees), although I'm sure it could apply to larger ones. The difference with these companies is that their focus (from my vantage point) was not on organizational structure, but rather on thinking about how a candidate could augment their team.

It was very eye-opening, and once I picked up on that pattern, I began to ask the "right" questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pass a law exempting businesses and individuals from paying payroll taxes on new hires for the length of time the person was unemployed before they hired them.

</comment><comment><USER20> This almost seems like an unfortunate consequence on the "Innovator's Dilemma", whereby older workers compete on experience and qualifications, but are then deemed overqualified by employers. Much like how technology consistently outpaces market demand.

Rather, it seems like workers need to compete on a new trajectory and perhaps be re-educated. Although, I don't know if how system supports that very well.

</comment><comment><USER21> One thing I don't understand about long-term unemployment is why you wouldn't immediately start freelancing if you couldn't find a job. Start a company, take occasional contracts, and list that on your resume. Boom, no employment gap.

Can someone explain why people don't just do that instead of complaining about "discrimination?" Heck, I myself would never hire someone who had been unemployed for a year and lacked the ability to either get a job or start their own thing.

<comment><USER22> Well, it's not as if one can just snap one's fingers and line up a freelancing gig. The reason people don't "immediately start freelancing" is the same as the reason they don't immediately just go out and get a job.

<comment><USER21> Maybe I wasn't clear. This doesn't have to be a _real_ company in the sense that it actually generates profit.

All you need to do is file for DBA and start accepting really low-paid gigs off a site like elancer. And yes, you can literally just snap your fingers to get those.

The point is you're not starting the company to actually succeed. You're just starting it to list something besides unemployment on your resume and hence get a real job.

<comment><USER23> I get your point, but it really isn't as easy as that.

"All you need to do is file for DBA and start accepting really low-paid gigs off a site like elancer."

If you're going to bother to be on elance/odesk/etc, you'll have a public profile. To get any decent work there, you'll have to have a _good_ public profile, which can be tarnished by any one of the people you work for making extremely outlandish and ever-changing demands, with the threat of a 'bad review' hanging over your head.

Furthermore, there are always dozens (at least) people vying for the $100 gigs - you can't just 'snap your fingers' and get one (or several). And again, even if you could get one, it's not really the sort of work you want to do (in many cases).

Your point about labeling yourself an independent contractor is, in itself, not bad, but it's partially just a smoke screen - doesn't really help pay the bills on day 1.

And even more to the point, there are a number of companies that _won 't_ hire people who've been freelance/contract for any period of time - they see it as the person being too willing to be 'disloyal' or 'job hop away' at a moment's notice.

Labelling yourself as a contractor or independent business during unemployment period is definitely one way to explain a long gap, but it's not a silver bullet.

<comment><USER24> People have a different perspective on life when they are 20 years old as opposed to 30, 40, or 50. Elance is definitely not a way to make a living or be taken seriously by a potential employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I looked at the data supporting the article's assumption that older workers make up a greater percentage of the long term unemployed than exist in the marketplace, and it is just no that great of a difference.

Instead of blaming employers, there are other causes for long term unemployment. The first of course is a slow growing economy that would normally absorb the unemployed. The other, I believe, is the greatest cause of our long term unemployment: raising the federal minimum wage $2 back in 2008.

Without going into detail, creating an artificial floor for the price of something limits the supply. For example, Some employers won't hire someone at $7 an hour, but might at $6. Some employers could hire 5 employees at $5 an hour, but only 4 at $7.

<comment><USER26> Compete for starvation wages, ye masses!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If I may be forgiven for wool-gathering for a moment:

Many positions have quite limited returns on the right tail, that are easily reached by people of no special intelligence. If you're a Mickey D worker, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you're a clerical worker, again, doesn't matter much. Almost anything that falls under admin, doesn't matter very much. Sales? Well, there's a certain charisma required but certainly working in most of sales doesn't require much intelligence - I know, I've done sales myself before and written procedures for it. Once computer speech is reliable I expect a lot of sales people to become unemployed outside of B2B.

Being a manager? Well, if you're in a technical firm there's a fair amount of person experience required there, but it's not hugely challenging - it's more a matter of decency and common sense. (And honestly, my faith in companies being able to reliably select for managers is 'HAHAHAHA, no.')

And the dreadful thing here is that the better you are at a skill, the harder it is for people who don't share that skill to recognise it. So unless the company's hiring procedure is geared towards finding it, i.e. they live to find the right tail, that will likely go unrecognised. The search costs increase the more skilled you become. Hence why so many crap programming jobs are advertised as 'X years experience' ; the person doing the hiring is an HR girl who doesn't know how to recognise the real deal and probably doesn't really have the time anyway.

If you're doing most any job that doesn't qualify as intellectually challenging, it doesn't matter much how smart you are to the company, they'll not profit by your intelligence. If you're doing any job where ability is poorly assessed, (which kinda screws you if the person interviewing doesn't know the job themselves,) it doesn't matter how smart you are - they'll not ask the right questions to find out.

#

If you want to look at how people end up LTU, I think you have to stop thinking about them as people; with hopes, dreams, and virtues. (Yes, that does make me feel sick.) That's not what they look like when you're looking at their CVs.

Think of them almost like you're picking horses in a race: Someone tells you a horse has been out of racing for a long time. Do you gamble on it?

If it was a truly exceptional horse, maybe you do. But the average unemployed person is going to be average at best. Given you can't expect them to be any better than the employed person, do you gamble on them?

Of course you don't. The horse might have been out of the game for a number of reasons. But how many of those reasons are good - and what's your gain over gambling on a horse that hasn't been out for a while? If you had more information about it than the market then you might - but your expected value of information for most jobs is going to be low due to the lack of recognised ability to leverage their intelligence in most roles.

If you're LTU, without some form of background check, that's indistinguishable from having been in prison, or having a mental breakdown, or getting sacked for a reason. What were they doing for the last six months? You don't know, but there's a higher than average chance of it being something bad.

When you have multiple candidates to choose from, and you can't easily distinguish quality given your initial investment in them, and your EVI is lower than the cost of that information, it makes sense to be risk averse on easily seen indicators. Maybe you're missing great candidates, but for most positions, what's your motivation to care?

When they're competing with people who aren't LTU, and who can do the job about as well, the company's expected return on investing in them - <USER2> the time and money to check these things - seems likely to be _negative_ outside of companies that can leverage exceptional individuals.

</comment><comment><USER28> Fair enough, but the European way of firing (or lack thereof) leads to persistent underemployment. And tons of "off the books" labor. The most recently reported unemployment rate in Spain is 26.7%. Do you think a young democracy (they had a dictatorship almost into the 1980's) could actually handle a real unemployment rate that high with fomenting a revolution?

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem older workers face is simpler. They don't fit in to the hierarchical corporate environment, which is yet another reason why that mode of organization is outdated.

If you're old and good, the supposition is that you'll resent being told what to do by someone inexperienced and probably not as skilled. If you're old and bad, then you're not a desirable hire anyway. Catch-22.

The way to fix this is to move to organizational models that don't rely so heavily on subordination and hierarchical rigidity. Conceptual hierarchy is necessary, but a fixed hierarchy of people is not.

Also, I think the VCs are to blame. They pick founders who are very young, because they're easier to take advantage of. Since it's rare that a capable 50-year-old will happily work for a 25-year-old founder, and the "boss should be older" rule traverses the hierarchy, the accepted age band at every rank becomes younger and more narrow.

<comment><USER24> I think that hiring decisions that work against older workers are based on a lot of unsubstantiated presumptions.

There's no reason to resent someone being your boss if they happen to be younger. If they are a good leader, that has nothing to do with their age differential.

I do agree that VCs have a lot to do with youth bias in startup culture, and for the reasons mentioned. It is easier to get a younger person with no external obligations to work insane hours. Why else would Facebook and Google build campuses that employees never have to leave?

I don't believe in homogenization of demographics, age and experience over the long haul. It leads to stagnation of perspective and ideas, because the experiences of the teams are so similar.

I think that people can learn from each other, both directions, and that is good for a team that has the bravery to challenge the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The problem isn't with the American way of hiring, it's with the American way of voting.

</comment><comment><USER30> >One set of stereotypes is directly about the purported effects of age. For example, that older workers are less energetic or less able to use new technologies.

The problem is there is a lot of truth to these stereotypes.

<comment><USER31> I find at age 39 I cannot work my previous 12-16 hour days of the past, due to my sedentary lifestyle. However I make up for it by sticking to what I know will work rather then doing as much experimentation that I used to do. I get months worth of work done in weeks.

<comment><USER30> How do you think you'll perform at 50?

<comment><USER32> My very first hire was a guy who was 50. I was 24 and my manager was 30 - <USER3> were both intimidated by the thought of being the boss of someone so much older than us.

For the first two weeks of his employment, the guy was quiet. Really, really quiet. He just kept to himself and read the material I'd given him. I was starting to get worried, when one day he asked to talk to me about his tasks... He then proceeded to ask a series of incredibly pointed questions about the work we were doing and his part in it. Not only had he absorbed the details of our requirements, and our plans to meet them, but he had already anticipated the problems & challenges that we would be facing months & years down the line when it came to testing and delivery. He was completely on top of his game.

As a youngster, my approach was very different from his. Lacking experience, I would energetically tackle things head on, and deal with problems as they arose. Working with this older guy really made me appreciate that other approaches are at least as valid.

So, if someone is on top form at 40, they'll probably be even better at 50.

<comment><USER30> One of my first hires was in his 50s, too. He kept falling asleep at his desk.

Not everyone ages well. While there are certainly great employees in their 50s and 60s, you'll also find a pretty high percentage that

1\. Stopped learning 20 years ago, either because they didn't force themselves out of their comfort zone or because they became experts at something and couldn't take the financial hit to do something else as a non-expert.

2\. Have some sort of medical problem that affects their concentration. I work with a guy who has terrible back problems for which he has pain meds. He can go for a few hours without taking his meds and he's pretty productive then. Otherwise he can't concentrate very well and doesn't add much. Nearly everyone ends up taking blood pressure medications, and they have side effects.

3\. Have ordinary age-related cognitive decline. This is the big one. If you were a genius at 30 you'll most likely be pretty smart at 50. But if you were average at 30 you're going to be below average at 50, with below average memory and reasoning skills. _Everybody_ has cognitive decline, even in the absence of other problems. In many industries experience makes up for it. Not so much in software.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you shouldn't hire people over 50. All I'm saying is there's truth in the stereotype.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does anyone want to be "well-read?"  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/04/death_disports_with_writers_mo.html

<comment><USER2> The article showed a postage stamp bearing Samuel Clemens' visage, but didn't include his relevant quote: "A classic is a book that everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to read."

<comment><USER3> Yes. Additionally: lots of people aspire to be well-read, but disagree with her choices. As far as I can tell, they're all fiction.

She doesn't list Michel de Montaigne, Thoreau, Emerson, William James, or other authors of "classics" that _I_ would consider to be required to be considered "well-read."

<comment><USER4> No Descartes, Augustine, Plato, Homer, etc. either - It's a bit of an English major's list, and with no one like Richard Wright, Jose Saramogo or V.S. Naipaul it lacks enough when it comes diversity of viewpoints to raise the question, Is being well read as valuable as being widely read?

<comment><USER3> None of it matters if it doesn't lead you to be a more thoughtful, flexible, inquisitive, humble, introspective person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being well-read has more to do with reading the classics than the more modern authors (which the author does seem to half-acknowledge, though I'm not entirely sure what point he's making).

You find out which are the classics as you observe them enduring for decades, and then centuries. Dickens will always be with us. So will Hemingway, I suspect. JK Rowling? Unlikely.

The fact that someone like Lionel Trilling is no longer read simply indicates that, no matter the critical acclaim at the time, he was not, in fact, destined to become a classic, imho. And yes, "classic-ness" is not something that an author will know about themselves during their lifetime. History is the judge, and history only judges dead authors.

</comment><comment><USER6> Regarding lists, this one by Fadiman&Major is one of the most compact and pertinent I have seen:

<http://interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtfad4.html>

<comment><USER7> Thanks for that. Has a lot of my favorites so it must be good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems quite Amerocentric. Are English speakers particularly averse to translated literature?

<comment><USER9> The list beginning the article is very much the US literary landscape--largely the New York literary landscape--of Ozick's youth. The chances are good that she had met nearly all the persons mentioned, and knew two thirds of them fairly well. So I wouldn't infer too much from that.

I don't know whether we're particularly averse to translated literature. A neighborhood book club I belong to has read four translated books out of about 30 total. For myself, I find it frustrating at times: I often suspect that the translator got something wrong, but can't guess what.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, from her list, I do read a few: Kenner and Powers within the last six months; Ransom not recently, but I could recite at least two, maybe four of his poems most of the way through with reasonable accuracy. Others I have read, and consider to have taken on a factitious importance from America's own sense of itself following WW II. I wonder how any of Bellow outside _Seize the Day_ will last, or Updike, or Mailer.

I don't want to be well-read, though I often want to read.

(And is John Auerbach really Erich Auerbach in disguise?--go to Google and see what you think.)</comment>


TSA warns of potential $11,000 fine for walking out on security check - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/kswb-man-faces-fine-for-refusing-tsa-scan,0,2174559.story

<comment><USER2> Video and first-hand account are here: <http://informationliberation.com/?id=33127>

It doesn't help that he wasn't exactly as polite as possible in dealing with the TSA agents in the screening area.

Can anyone point to the statute making it illegal for him to leave? Interesting that he's threatened with fine and lawsuit after leaving, but the agents who escorted him out get a pass for not knowing it was illegal for him to leave.

<comment><USER3> _It doesn't help that he wasn't exactly as polite as possible in dealing with the TSA agents in the screening area._

Why should he have to be?

<comment><USER2> Politeness should not be required, but impoliteness on his part is counterproductive. People are too likely to dismiss him as someone who just should not have gone looking for a fight (even if he should have).

<comment><USER4> Polite is not required in the use of a right. A right is a right, polite or impolite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentioned the guy is a programmer. Anybody want to bet he's been reading the TSA articles on either Reddit or HN?</comment>


Apple Cancels Some Arcade Games in Strategy Shift to Keep Subscribers - blinding-streak https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/apple-cancels-arcade-games-in-strategy-shift-to-keep-subscribers <comment><AUTHOR> Paywalled:

[https://archive.is/zm0Th](https://archive.is/zm0Th)</comment>