Ask HN: Is united blocking Linux laptops - <AUTHOR> When I tried to connect to United's WiFi with a laptop with Ubuntu it would not connect. Dmesg kept saying trying to authenticate. It could connect with my phone. My phone could connect with the WiFi. Has any one had this issue? <comment><USER2> Unlikely. I would suspect some quirk in the combination of AP and your WiFi client, not a conspiracy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried using my usb dongle too. Neither would connect, but they both connected fine to my cell phone.</comment></comment>


How Much Will Your Taxes Jump? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323689604578220132665726040.html#project%3DWEALTH0105%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive <comment><USER3> And this is pretty much why I have switched from the WSJ to Bloomberg Business Week. It's Wall Street news for people who can't help but laugh at info- graphics with single moms earning $260k standing with their sad looking young children.

Also: I'm trying to figure out what's interactive about this "interactive graphic."

Also: It's amusing to play "guess the profession." Mine: the single mom and the single women are lawyers--senior associates but not partners. The single mom is divorced. In the family of six, the dad is an MD at a bank, but in one of the less cash-cow divisions. The wife is a college educated stay at home mom. The retired couple: the man is a retired NYPD deputy chief, and the woman is a retired teacher. The single woman lives in Manhattan, the single mom lives in a gentrified part of Brooklyn, the retired couple has a nice place in one of the gentrified parts of Harlem, and the family of four lives in Greenwich and the dad commutes down every morning.

<comment><USER4> Hah, I felt exactly the same way. How ever will the parents with 4 kids making $650k per year ever be able to survive without that $21k taken in taxes? Will they not be able to remodel that master bath at their 2nd beach home in Nantucket for another month? Will they have to slum it in the penthouse of the 4-star hotel in Cancun for Thanksgiving this year?

<comment><USER5> God forbid, the mom might actually have to skip _one_ luxury D&G bag this year! OH THE HUMANITY!

But seriously, though, $260k single mom? What alternate universe do the editors live in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like that the headline has changed. Sure, it may have been editorialized, but if the editorialized headline was inappropriate, the whole submission should have been removed. Without the original headline, this post makes no sense.

If you're confused, the original headline was along the lines of "WSJ - Out of Touch?". The implication was that with the WSJ saying their idea of a retired person makes $180,000, their single parent of two makes $260,000, etc, the WSJ is out of touch with the common person's actual salary, especially during a recession.

<comment><USER7> Especially during a recession? 95% of Americans are never going to make that money ever. The state of the economy is irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> Well especially during a recession there are some Americans who _could_ be making this much, or even _used to_ make this much, but are un- or under- employed. Some may have retired with that much, but the falling stock market decimated their retirement.

It wasn't meant to read much into >_>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Look at those poor, sad retirees struggling to make ends meet on only $180,000/yr, with no change to their taxes.

Four children on $650,000, what a horrible life those kids are going to have - those parents look so stressed and tired.

That single person on $230,000 looks pissed off they'll have to contribute a whole $2,900 extra. How horrible for her.

<comment><USER9> I'm nowhere near the $230k mark but - based on my first paycheck so far - <USER2> increase will be well more than a mortgage payment for me.

<comment><USER10> Based on your comment, I can only surmise that your "nowhere near $230k" remark means you are really well past that mark in income, or your mortgage payment is indeed quite low.

<comment><USER9> Well below that.. and my mortgage payment is reasonable for the area (Austin, TX) but ridiculously low compared to SF, DC, etc.

I don't think it's the raw dollars that matter but what the alternative for those dollars are (aka opportunity cost).

<comment><USER11> If you were affected by the _highest possible_ increase in payroll tax ie 2% of the first 113k of payroll income, that would be $2260 per year, or $188.33 per month.

You must have a very low mortgage payment.

<comment><USER12> He meant 'a mortgage payment' .. meaning one month's mortgage payment. If not, then yes $188.33 is highly unlikely to be a monthly mortgage payment even for the affordable Austin, TX area.

<comment><USER9> $X * 2 paychecks/month * 12 months > mortgage payment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> this has to be the stupidest graphic i have ever seen

not only does it assign unrealistic income values, it uses different income brackets AND different deduction possibilities for each scenario. I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge.

<comment><USER8> > I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge.

This graph is showing there are people out there earning a lot more than you and I, so we need to put our noses to the grindstone, stat!

No more talking about extended vacations, citizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most single moms I know make at LEAST 7 figures, come on. What do you think these poor people are, some kind of slave class?

<comment><USER15> Can you imagine trying to raise 2 children on less than $260k? Thanks Obama :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> People making $260k a year are making $5,000 per _week_

Somehow I am just not worried about them.

There are tens of millions living on one tenth of that in this country and even millions living on one 1/20th

</comment><comment><USER17> That is one most biased examples of reporting I have seen. Blatantly trying to manipulate peoples perceptions by leaving out the cases that will apply to the vast majority of people.

I'm really disappointed that the WSJ would lower themselves to that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why does that married couple with 4 kids look so sad while making 650K/year!

</comment><comment><USER19> Only if you think they're trying to keep in touch with the average person.

</comment><comment><USER20> The median household income in the US is something like $45K/year. The people in these examples are paying more than that in taxes every year, except for the retired couple struggling along on $180K.

</comment><comment><USER21> When did the Onion buy the WSJ?

<comment><USER22> You're almost right... NewsCorp (i.e. Rupert Murdoch) bought them in 2007.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like how the 'poorest' person in the infographic makes $25k per year in investment income. Assuming an average rate of 8% in returns from an low-risk and diversified portfolio, that person has roughly $312,000 in investments. Man they have it hard.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no incentive to pay higher taxes as an individual.

Country prosperity and supporting social services are nice concepts but ask any CPA how the average high earner feels about being "business partners" with the govt.

So an honest suggestion - what if there were some small incentives created in govt controlled systems for high earners?

Pay the highest tax rate? Free carpool lane access for the next year.

Nothing insane, but some direct positive benefit in a transaction that overwhelmingly feels negative.

</comment><comment><USER25> And don't forget to multiply each of the "investment income" numbers by 25 for a rough calculation of their wealth, assuming a 4% return on investment. For example, that family of six with $180,000 of passive investment income has net worth of $4.5 million. They could move almost everywhere in the U.S. except Manhattan and San Francisco and never work another day in their lives.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow. I knew I was below the Wall Street Journal's target audience, but I didn't realize how far below, assuming those four examples are meant to by typical WJS readers.

</comment><comment><USER27> How can you be mad. They are showing you the numbers right there on the page. It's not like they're lying. How can they be out of touch if they know the numbers?

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a little surprised at the comments here on HN. I expected a much less sarcastic and "chip on the shoulder" attitude.

No one is saying that rich people can't _afford_ to pay more taxes. It's not a question of they're going to starve and be out on the streets. The real issue is, approaching 50% taxes (EDIT: state + federal + medicare/medicaid + social security) is in conflict with the American concept of capitalism. The fact of the matter is, there is nothing proportionate about how much you benefit to how much you pay. The more you make, the more you pay to Uncle Sam both as a proportion of your income and as an actual number.

It is not a question of how much can you "afford to give" while remaining well off - I think it's a much more core issue at hand: is someone who makes (to bring this closer to home) $250k as a single individual, perhaps doing freelance software development and consulting, culpable to the tune of $80k out of their salary to help everyone else out?

Yes, it's a moral question. It's a philosophical question. And it's also a legal question: even if they _are_ morally obligated - is it the government's job to enforce that?

Many people I know in that bracket actually give that much or more in very directed donations to non-profit entities (meaning they're no longer in that bracket thanks to tax deductions) because they feel they a) distrust the government to wisely spend their money to solve the problems, b) they should have a say in where their money goes, and c) it is not the government's job to take and redistribute wealth.

As for those that _don't_ make such donations - can you absolutely say they must?

Also remember, these tax hikes are really not targeted at the so-called "filthy rich" that have been the focus of all the ire and angst in recent years by groups such as "Occupy Wall Street" - they just affect the upper middle class. Capital gains taxes are ridiculously lower than income taxes. Your wall street bankers and trust fund babies don't have "income" in the traditional sense. You're not taking this money from people that have invested money and are making more money explicitly not doing anything, these taxes are on the upper class of _working_ citizens.

The biggest targets are small business owners, startups, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others of their kind. Can you say for an absolute fact that they _owe_ ~40% of their annual income to the government? I can tell you for a fact that the difference between a freelancer in high demand earning $250k/year vs $100k/year is a matter of the hours you work. If you kill yourself to work around the clock to make more money.... you are rewarded with higher taxes. It's not a different _class_ of people that are being taxed higher - it's just people that have worked harder for longer and are, as a result, more well off. This is literally the anti-thesis of core American values: work harder and be, quite frankly, punished for it.

(I'm not saying everyone can automatically make $250k/year by working harder and that if you don't make that much then you are lazy - I'm saying the difference between $50k/year and $350k/year is a matter is a matter of quantity, not type; whereas the difference between $250k/year and $200MM/year is a different beast.)

At the end of the day, people need to decide if you are paying for services provided by the government or if we are asking the upper middle class to subsidize the rest of the country. There's nothing inherently better or worse about one or the other - it's a matter of philosophy. At the end of the day, are our core principles capitalistic or socialistic? There's something to be said for both, and I'm not saying it's wrong to have socialistic taxes such as those that were just recently repealed in France - but if that's the case, we need to own up and admit that is what we want.

It is an exercise in futility to ask to levy taxes on the middle class and above to subsidize the cost of a welfare nation _while pretending that is not the case_. If that's what you want to do, fine. Nothing in the constitution (despite what your favorite talk show might say) says a thing (explicitly) about capitalism vs socialism one way or the other. It's a democracy and we're free to choose our own path. But let's not do one thing while pretending to be another.

<comment><USER3> > The fact of the matter is, there is nothing proportionate about how much you > benefit to how much you pay.

I strongly disagree. I think how much money you make is a very good measure of how much you benefit from the existence of government and civilized society.

Take the family of four. The father sends his kids to public school in Connecticut. But he works at an investment bank. He draws his salary from the economic activities of companies he provides M&A advice to. Those companies benefit from having a work force educated at the public expense. Does the father just benefit from the education his own kids receive, or does he benefit from the educations of the workers at each of his clients?

> The biggest targets are small business owners, startups, lawyers, doctors, > engineers, and others of their kind. Can you say for an absolute fact that > they owe ~40% of their annual income to the government? I can tell you for a > fact that the difference between a freelancer in high demand earning > $250k/year vs $100k/year is a matter of the hours you work. If you kill > yourself to work around the clock to make more money.... you are rewarded > with higher taxes.

No, you are rewarded with more money. If I work more and make $250k instead of $100k, I still have $80-90k extra in my pocket. As someone taxed over 40%, I don't think "man, I'm sick of carrying the weight for all these other people." I think: "all these other people ultimately generate the wealth that allows me to live the way I do." There is a point at which I'd be upset and contemplate moving, but we're not near that point.

The fact is that anywhere else I'd want to live has higher taxes. That's the relevant criterion at the end of the day. My dad, an extremely ambitious man, left Bangladesh (taxes around 8% of GDP) for the U.S. (taxes around 26% of GDP) completely unconcerned about the increased taxes. Do I ever think: "man, it'd be great to go back to Bangladesh and pay low taxes!" Of course not. When I tell my wife "hey honey we should move there" it's never to a low tax place like Botswana. It's France, Germany, Canada, etc. Hell, I could save a lot of money and move to Texas but I'm not willing to do that either. Taxes pay for a pleasant civilized society.

Indeed, it's the doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, who benefit from that the most. We don't have "fuck you" money. We can't go to a low-tax jurisdiction in the middle east and set up a luxurious bubble for ourselves amid the squalor. We live in cities, use public transit, and have to interact with everyone else. We get to live very well in pleasant surroundings as a result of these taxes.

<comment><USER28> > I think how much money you make is a very good measure of how much you > benefit from the existence of government and civilized society.

Please explain how a web designer making $250k a year freelancing out of an apartment in NYC is "benefiting" from the government more than a $30k/year individual on welfare.

<comment><USER3> How much do web designers make in Somalia? How much do construction workers make in Somalia? Compute the incremental benefit for each of those people in moving from Somalia to NYC and you have your answer.

<comment><USER28> Seriously? Talk about a strawman. No one is comparing how much taxes are in Somalia to NYC. Tell me how much more a web designer in NYC benefits from the government than another random person _in NYC_ taking welfare.

<comment><USER3> It's not a straw man at all.

You asked: "Please explain how a web designer making $250k a year freelancing out of an apartment in NYC is "benefiting" from the government more than a $30k/year individual on welfare."

How do you measure how much someone benefits from the government? Your comment suggests you're looking only at the value of services directly received, but that's not the proper way of computing the total benefit. You have to do a marginal analysis, looking at the incremental benefit as you go from "no government" to "government."

The economic insight here is that your benefit from the existence of government is not a fixed amount valued by the services you utilize directly. Rather, it's a percentage of the incremental gain in wealth that is enabled by the existence of government. And because societies without government basically cannot create more than subsistence-level wealth, that increment is a big number.

<comment><USER29> _You have to do a marginal analysis, looking at the incremental benefit as you go from "no government" to "government."_

That's not a marginal analysis. A marginal analysis would be going from "slightly lower taxes, slightly less government" to "slightly higher taxes, slightly more government".

You seem to want to debate (all by yourself) primitive tribal society vs civilization.

<comment><USER3> The question was: "how does someone making $250k benefit more from government than someone making $30k living on welfare?" My point is that how you calculate how much you benefit from "government" (not bigger or smaller government, just government in general) is not just a function of direct services received, but the incremental gain in wealth going from no government to the government you have. Ergo, the fact that the guy making $250k in NYC would lose a lot more than the guy making $30k if there was no "government" he benefits more from the existence of "government."

This is not an argument about the desirability or optimality of bigger or smaller government or higher or lower taxes. That should be an empirical fight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just what about those income levels is representative of the rest of the country? It is not telling me anything.

</comment><comment><USER31> Apparently they all found out the one weird trick for making money online.</comment>


The Victorians were smarter than us, study suggests - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10053977/The-Victorians-were-smarter-than-us-study-suggests.html

<comment><USER2> Idiocracy.</comment>


Ask HN: What is missing from comp sci grads, why can't they code? - <AUTHOR> I have been hearing a lot of talk about computer science graduates and people graduating from the countless software development programs we have. The overwhelming opinion appears to be these institutions are dishing out graduates who can't code.<p>What do you believe; i.) Is lacking from the junior devs you have interviewed ii.) What can be done to rectify this problem <comment><USER2> It's simple:

* No mentoring from more experienced developers * Refactoring (techniques and reason) isn't a course * No real-world, e.g., practical, exercises (depends on school)

CS classes teach the basics, and theory. These are both important. They tend to fall over on teaching practical applications of both.

Most development takes place far outside the realm of "theory". I haven't implemented my own data structures since a decade out of college (in those days I still did because I did a lot of embedded work, and there wasn't much of an internet). Only rarely do I need to consider time complexity (although I do).

This is just my experience; I did embedded/firmware for a decade, then web development. For the first half of that I used math more than CS. For the past twenty years nothing I've done even _existed_ when I was in college.

The solution? Continue to teach the basics and theory: IMO you must have a strong background. But mix it in with real-world applications, with code reviews, with revisions, etc.

The best example of this we had back in my day was the final senior project, but even that had no code review or critique.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well when I was in school, I noticed that 80% of students would just copy lab solutions verbatim from their friends or older students. Professors were largely indifferent to this because so many people were doing it that it would involve expelling most of the class.

But even for students who took the effort to learn the course curriculum I would say there was big gaps in what is done in a professional environment. In the real world nobody implements everything from scratch in a single file. Schools need to spend at least a little time making students aware of tooling like package managers, source control and using third party code.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I was an undergrad and systems admin at a major American university, the Ph.D. students would often come to me for programming advice. We even had one guy who was a Ph.D. candidate, Java certified up to some awful level but had never written a Java program. Ever.

Grad students are usually good at conceptual stuff. They couldn't code well, and they needed help setting up a database. But I couldn't do the breakthrough stuff they were doing. (I'm still not sure what a wavelet is:-).

It's as simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are on the academic computer science track the game is to write papers, not write code.

Some CS professors and graduate students write beautiful code (if all C++ code were like MiniSAT I'd be a C++ programmer), but many do not. You can succeed in CS without learning how to do the "last 20% of the work to get to MVP which is 80% of the cost".

</comment><comment><USER6> ii) I think the University of Waterloo has it figured out. Your degree takes 5 years, but you graduate with 6 4-month work terms under your belt. Many of these are at Big 4 and the like companies. ycombinator seems to like Waterloo grads as well, and sama and others have written about this.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone used a dynamic equity sharing model (grunt fund)? - <AUTHOR>

I'm reading a book entitled "Slicing Pie" that outlines a dynamic equity sharing model that the author calls "grunt funds" for use in early stage start ups. I'm intrigued, but curious if anyone on HN has tried this model? If so, was it a positive or negative experience? Thanks for any input. <comment><USER2> I think not all the time everything goes by Grunt Fund. I didn't read the book, but know the concept a little bit.

Sometimes people contribute more than money, they believe in your startup and give you strength.

That is my personal opinion.</comment>


What problems does React Native solve? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Vs pure native: let's you avoid ad-hoc mutating the UI, makes state more manageable and predictable - the same thing that got React popular in the Web space, albeit with more competition. Not super-familiar with Objective C and Java-Android libraries so references to native equivalents would be appreciated.

Now compared to other js-based solutions is solves many of the problems they generate, such as poor java/objc interop, blocking javascript operations etc. But you'd have to compare them ad-hoc. The Titanium framework IMO was the state of the art before React Native, javascript-wise it solved perhaps all of the same problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Startup nerds not being able to write desktop apps in JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER4> @jarcane Just ... no.

Desktop : [https://github.com/atom/electron](https://github.com/atom/electron) Mobile : [https://cordova.apache.org/](https://cordova.apache.org/)

<comment><USER3> Have you even used electron? The performance is atrocious. That level of resource hogging and slow response wouldn't have been acceptable in the Java applet days.</comment></comment>


Being diagnosed with autism aged 27 changed my life - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/style/naoise-dolan-how-being-diagnosed-with-autism-aged-27-changed-my-life-lc9f7bzp0 <comment><USER2> Article is blocked behind a paywall. :(

Can someone provide an alternative link?

<comment><USER3> paywalls are getting more and more effective. I remember when it used to lag and you could stop the page before the paywall kicked in!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should we degrade our product to get a first, major customer? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
I'm here to share my frustration :)
Few weeks ago we met a CEO of a major company that had interest in our product.
He was really excited to work with us - up till the moment he heard we haven't developed an IOS version of our product yet.
The meeting ended when he said to us something like: "I'll be glad to work with you, but only when you have both Android and IOS versions."
So, after a short discussion we made a small pivot and started developing the product almost from scratch - with PhoneGap. (Not such a big deal since most of the logic reside on the server anyway).
Now although the app is relatively basic in terms of graphics, it feels a little sluggish and slow to respond.
So we were left with a dilemma - would you make a compromise about the quality of the product just to get a first major customer you would love to have on your porfolio? <comment><USER2> I can't tell if you need the money from the first customer, or just the credibility of having that first big customer in your portfolio. I also can't tell if you're looking for product improvement suggestions from this customer. If you don't need the money and you don't need the input, why half-ass a solution nobody will be happy with?

In my own experience we needed that first big customer for two reasons: the money, and the feedback from a real-world customer. Our approach was to deliver early and often, with a product that in hindsight was more "minimum" than "minimum viable", but we got good feedback and were very responsive to our customer's input. We ended up with a much better product with that deliver-early-and-iterate approach. Plus that sweet, sweet money.... But we had a customer who was cool with that, and we were cool with that, so it worked out.

Clearly you can't leave your product feeling sluggish and slow to respond, but one way you could go is to use the new iOS "prototype" to get buy-in and feedback from your new customer, with speed and responsiveness improvements as part of the improvement plan. I assume you're not married to phonegap, as your new implementation sounds like a quick-ish hack. So get your customer, get paid, get feedback, and get to work making it all better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insights :)

You are prefectly right - we need the feedback and the credibility, the money is not issue here.

Our main dilemma was whether to outsource the IOS development (and pay a lot of money to a freelancer that we are hardly familiar with) or develop it in- house with phonegap (Which is something that I can handle easily since I'm a web developer)

Eventually, we chose the second option, mainly because it will be very difficult for us to maintain an IOS version (in terms of bugs, new features, etc) that was built by a freelance.

With this big customer in hand, it will be much easier for us to get an investment and hire a full time IOS developer for the real deal. That's what we had in mind :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I were you, I'd try to find more customers within 1-2 months. Then, see if the current big customer is actually right in asking for a iOS version.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might want to ask them to preorder your product.</comment>


Show HN: Family.scss – a set of 20 smart SASS mixins - <AUTHOR> http://lukyvj.github.io/family.scss/ <comment><USER2> Looks like a great utility, but the output css isn't very compact. For example,

      ul li:nth-child(1) {
        background: red
      }

      ul li:nth-child(2) {
        background: red
      }

      ul li:nth-child(3) {
        background: red
      }

should just be

      ul li:nth-child(1),
      ul li:nth-child(2),
      ul li:nth-child(3) {
        background: red
      }

Also, it's not very clear how to download the family.scss file, it's buried deep in an oddly named subfolder in the repo.

<comment><USER3> What would be even better is this:

        ul li:nth-child(-n + 3) {
            background: red;
        }

See the last example on this page: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/:nth-child](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/:nth-child)

<comment><USER4> Wow, thanks for this one, updating now! :o

I assume that this is your github profile ? [https://github.com/JelteF](https://github.com/JelteF)

<comment><USER3> Yup

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure who/why somebody would use this library when it is fairly easy to write these selectors using just CSS (for most use cases anyway).

<comment><USER4> Hi,

There is no obligation to use it, if you think it's easy, then good for you :) You wont need it.

It's just here to make you save some time, to help you taming some wild targeting selectors. If you can do it, without some helpers, then just don't use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone else searching, the actual file is [https://github.com/LukyVj/family.scss/blob/master/source/src...](https://github.com/LukyVj/family.scss/blob/master/source/src/family.scss)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey, great work. I don't have a personal use for this but for designers building a lot of static sites, it could be nice. I will say that you can achieve the same effect using classes with less bloat in your compiled CSS.

<comment><USER4> Hey! Thanks for the nice words. Sure you could achieve the same effect with css classes, here I just present an other way to do it.

</comment></comment><comment> wes-k Nice library!

Note: there's a small bug in the first example. Css output sets 'color' while the scss used 'background'.

<comment><USER4> Fixed! Thanks

</comment></comment><comment> angry-hacker The website is somehow able to hang and crash my Chrome browser on Android. Just thought I'll let you know.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it can be really heavy for some systems. I'll work on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks nice, but I've never had the need for anything other then first/last and even/odd myself.

<comment><USER4> Thanks,

Of course, you'll use this project ony if you have to deals with some more complex nth targeting on a regular basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice work! Great docs.

<comment><USER4> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sass* :)</comment>


The Weak Men of the Online West - <AUTHOR> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-weak-and-cowardly-men-of-the-online-west-christchurch-new-zealand/ <comment><USER2> I think right in the first paragraph, the author defined the article when it referred to the shooter's life as a "childless, failed existence". Which is to say, I think it's more focused on slinging belittling remarks at the individual shooter than looking into why we have this horrific trend of behavior.

I also found it unfortunate he defined "living on the Internet" as a "dangerous phenomenon". The vast majority of my acquaintances are met online, and I spend a significant portion of my life online. But that doesn't mean I've come to blame the world's ills on another race or religion, and I have no desire for anyone to die.

The Internet isn't really this thing that's apart from the real world, it's a communications medium in the real world, and there are plenty of people who have healthy interactions with other people over it. An extreme minority of individuals with extreme mental disorder does not justify discrediting all people who spend a lot of time on the Internet.

<comment><USER3> I really could not have said it better myself.

I find these "loser" websites incredible as they are in sense sanctuaries for those who have been casted as lepers. I know these sites have helped me before and many others. It just comes down to the 1% rule that can so outlandish that it tarnishes things for others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the note he made about the kiwi farms admin is partially incorrect. the nz authorities were demanding ip logs for users of the site discussing the event and sharing media, not the shooter himself. kiwi farms may be a despicable stain but it isn't a nz site and he was right to refuse.</comment>


How I'll manage my next founding team - <AUTHOR> http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/ <comment><USER2> Bad link - it's to the blog, and what's on top will change as more things are posted. Here's a perma-link:

[http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/How_Ill_manage_my_next_fou...](http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/How_Ill_manage_my_next_founding_team/)

Having said that, it's an interesting read. Thanks.</comment>


The Orange Pi Zero single-board computer ships for $6.99 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3138886/computers/the-orange-pi-zero-single-board-computer-ships-for-699.html#tk.rss_all <comment><USER2> If you want worldwide support and a ton of software that just works, Raspberry Pi is for you. Want to mess around with a single board computer, then buy one of the 100's of boards out there. I'm a make computers do things for me, so the $28 difference is dust compared to what I think my time is worth, and what my blood pressure meds cost.

Love seeing all these boards, all the innovation, but none of them bring what a Pi does. Good hardware, pretty clean hardware, lots of community for a very low price.

Really don't like the ripoff of the name. Orange pi zero has little in common with Raspberry Pi Zero. Other than coat tail jumping, what's the point of confusing people?</comment>


Can You Work in Netscape Time? (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/netscape.html

<comment><USER2> Memory lane ...

Netscape was the first customer for my startup's static analysis tool PREfix. So we would report gobs and gobs of bugs and they never had time to fix them. I think they had about 40 devs and only one QA person -- and this was before xUnit.

It caught up with them a few years later and gave MS and IE the chance to catch up and then own the market. Still, it was probably the right strategy ... Netscape was perfectly poised to become the early market leader and they capitalized on it.</comment>


Stand to Work If You Like, but Don't Brag About the Benefits - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/17/470713717/stand-to-work-if-you-like-but-dont-brag-about-its-benefits <comment><USER2> Not particularly convinced by this.

All the article is saying is "no studies have confirmed that standing desks are correlated with positive health effects."

Given that standing desks are a relatively new thing, and as they mention _there are no good studies either way_ , that's not very surprising.

And the evidence that sitting a lot is bad for you is still there.

So the hypothesis that _not sitting all day_ is a good idea still looks pretty valid, and sit-stand desks seem like a decent way to achieve that.

<comment><USER3> There are many, many jobs where people stand all day long. Shouldn't be hard to find anyone working at cafes, hospitals, etc.

<comment><USER4> Except you can't compare the health benefits of standing vs sitting by comparing different jobs: those jobs have different salaries, populations, risks, and benefits which all have a say in health. Good luck trying to account for all of that to find causal evidence of sitting/standing's relation to health.

<comment><USER3> You won't be able to get ideal statistics this way (any large health study is hard) but you can still do lots to control for these sorts of things. It's not a new need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For someone who has a herniated disc in the lumbar spine a stand-up desk has been life changing.

I genuinely think if I'd had such a desk before and stood for say 20 minutes in the hour I wouldn't have got into the mess I did with my back.

While some of the benefits may be over-stated I am convinced variety during the day (sitting and standing) significantly benefits the spine.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I think variety is the key.

I also have a herniated disc (L4/L5) and need to get up every half-hour or so for a quick walk. Works wonders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The report just confirms my gut on this issue. I had to stand all day when i worked retail during high school as well as undergrad and i couldn't fathom why people would think it's significantly better.

<comment><USER8> Another failed expedition on the desperate search for the fountain of youth.

<comment><USER9> Wait--it's a fountain?

<comment><USER10> well... disused well of youth [http://doublestealth.blogspot.com/2014/07/my- treadwater-desk...](http://doublestealth.blogspot.com/2014/07/my-treadwater- desk.html)

<comment><USER9> This comment.

(That was an insightful article. It was full of insight)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a desk that I can move between standing and sitting with the touch of a button.

I love the versatility -- I am certainly more alert while standing. That being said, I feel no more or less healthy, but the alertness impact is immediate and noticeable.

<comment><USER12> I have one of these too, and I agree... but I also become very aware of everything else going on in the cubicles near me... and it's quite distracting.

It's much easier to filter it all out when I'm sitting down with my cube walls around me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll happily tout the benefits to me thank you very much!

My standing desk[1] has been a lifesaver in terms of minimizing my sciatica. I tried a few different (expensive) ergonomic chairs, but nothing has been as good for me as standing has.

Whether or not standing at a desk will make you live longer is irrelevant to me. As the other comments here confirm, for some of us the tangible benefits are obvious. Try it out for a few _weeks_ and see how you make out.

[1] [http://randlet.com/static/img/standing_desk.jpg](http://randlet.com/static/img/standing_desk.jpg)

<comment><USER14> That looks super nice, did you build it yourself?

<comment><USER13> Thanks! My dad is a woodworker so I gave him the dimensions /height and a rough design and he ran with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Treadmill desks work for me? You can pull out studies for or against I don't really care.

I haven't been at my current weight in over a decade. I do 30 miles a week on it. It's tiring. If that's not exercise then ???

</comment><comment><USER16> I did this for about ~6 months and developed knees that ached all the time. I was running at the same time, so maybe that had something to do with it, but really I never noticed some huge health or energy shift.

The thing I will say about it though is that if you're tired, standing keeps you paying attention whereas sitting can make you slouch and relax. This is useful right after lunch, but all day? Save your legs the trouble and join a gym if it's your physical health you're worried about.

<comment><USER17> It's more probable that the knee pain was related to your running habit :)

<comment><USER16> Probably. It was pavement after all back then, but it would hurt more the longer I kept standing there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Science is terrible at understanding long-term effects on complex systems (such as the human body). At some point you just have to listen to your intuition and evaluate things with a sample size of 1.

For me, buying an adjustable desk two years ago has been a fantastic investment. I usually spend the middle of the day sitting, but I love to stand right after breakfast (I get tired when I sit down in the morning) and when I play multiplayer games after dinner.

<comment><USER19> This. And even if the "average" person in a study works a certain way, you might just be one of the outliers. People vary a lot and you have to figure out what works for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my opinion, standing vs sitting is irrelevant as long as you work out and have some muscles to support your spine and help maintaining good posture for long-ish periods of time.

I would guess fitness accounts for at least 70% of not having back problems, which makes me believe people with a strong back can sit/stand however the hell they want.

Can anyone enlighten me with any research or articles that correlates with my beliefs?

</comment><comment><USER21> How is standing up new or fashion?

Someone told me an architect studio was selling old stuff and we could probably be interested on some things so we could pay a visit...

I was socked when I saw they were replacing an entire room of drawing tables that architects used standing up, with computers that people used sitting down.

With the drawing tables there were stools. It was normal in chemical labs, repair shops, teachers giving a class, lots of places.

You could sit when you wanted, you could stand when you wanted. That is how I had been working for years, with my computer at eyes' level, with a stool I could sit when I want. Half the time I stand, half I sit without really sitting down, I just support my weight on the stool.

So because mouse and keyboard computers are hard to move like we do and are not very ergonomical, we degrade ourselves to computer level: we stare to near displays and don't move at all for hours.

For me it is not a long term solution. Improvements will happen over time.

</comment><comment><USER22> I stand at work and at home. I'm standing 90% of the time on a computer, and that's most of the day. First, if there's evidence that sitting down all the time is bad, then NOT doing that is already better. Second, and most importantly, standing is better not because you're not sitting down, but because you're in an active state, in a position ready to move around.

If you stand in exactly one position for hours (as if you're stuck in a chair) then you're doing it wrong. Standing up is really about having the freedom to move around as you're reading things on the computer, or taking micro-breaks to stretch your arm, etc. Constantly being in motion is the best way to stay active and use the computer all day.

<comment><USER23> _First, if there 's evidence that sitting down all the time is bad, then NOT doing that is already better._

That is something of a logical fallacy. Standing all the time is not necessarily better than sitting all the time just because research into sitting suggests it's bad. It may well be the case, but it cannot be concluded so in that way.

<comment><USER22> What I meant was that since sitting down all the time is bad, then not doing that is good. So, avoiding sitting down all the time is good (which means you will stand some of the time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have had an adjustable desk (sit or stand) for the past eight years. The biggest benefit in my mind is the _variation_ you get from switching between sitting and standing. Burning calories was never a goal.

I am particularly happy to be able to stand when I feel like it, because I had a pretty severe case of RSI in my arms, and thought that I would not be able to continue to work as a programmer. The biggest help came from using a break program, coupled with an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, but standing also helps.

More details here: [http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat- rsi/](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/)

</comment><comment><USER25> We seem to be best adapted to squat and hunker, not sit in a chair or even stand straight.

No studies that I can find, but when I lived in Asia, older men who gathered to chat, play cards, etc., tended to squat. There were still lots of squat toilets around, too.

I'm thinking of building a platform so I can squat at my desk rather than sit on my tush. Alternatively, would like to power my computer by pedaling or cross-treading, but that's probably a bigger project than I have time for.

But squatting, that's underrated in Western culture. It feels great; more should do it, and not just while on the toilet.

<comment><USER26> > But squatting, that's underrated in Western culture.

At least the Russians know what's up:

[http://weirdrussia.com/2014/04/24/slav-squat-russian- disturb...](http://weirdrussia.com/2014/04/24/slav-squat-russian-disturbing- street-trend/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think it's better to invest in figuring out ergonomics of your sitting desk, chair, arm rests, wrists, keyboard position, monitor position, etc etc. Combine with regular breaks, walks outside, etc and you're getting improved energy and less burnout. Ideally your employer invests in a good office as well, with excellent ventilation, plants abound, and lots of light -- but this is rare.

</comment><comment><USER28> This article should just say "do what works for you and keep it to yourself." Why does everyone need to evangelize every single decision?

</comment><comment><USER29> Anecdotal on my part, but previous, intermittent lower back pain basically gone after I began standing about two years ago.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anecdotally, standing for half the day has helped my hemorrhoids. Not sure if they were caused by sitting for 8+ hours a day in a desk chair, but not sitting definitely helps. Not something I brag about though :)

</comment><comment><USER31> My grandmother ran a store and was on her feet all day long. She had really bad vericose veins when she was older. That is a real problem with standing.

<comment><USER32> Obligatory "correlation != causation"

<comment><USER31> Obligatory... RTFA

> "I would say that there's evidence that standing can be bad for your > health." A 2005 study in Denmark showed prolonged standing at work led to a > higher hospitalization risk for enlarged veins.

If you read the article, they state that their is causation between standing and varicose veins. I am simply relating a personal anecdote confirming my experience that standing all day is not good for your health. I always wondered why this never came up during the standing desk craze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> At the very least, I imagine standing for long periods of time burns more calories than sitting.

<comment><USER32> RTFA

>The extra calories you burn from standing over sitting for a day are barely enough to cover a couple of banana chips.

>"But you're going to burn more calories standing than sitting. I know it's not a tremendous amount." Still, he says, "those calories every day over many years will add up."

<comment><USER34> I feel like Carr's analysis was overly optimistic. Even in the aggregate, it seems really doubtful that 20 years of burning ~12 calories a day is anywhere near as effective as integrating breaks into your workday and walking around more.

It's great that folks here have managed to ease some of the chronic spinal/back pain they're experiencing. But that's really the only positive effect I feel we can link with some level of certainty to standing (within the context of office work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Useless clickbait. Nobody ever claimed that the one and only benefit of standing is to "burn excess calories".

Personally I had developed back pain from too much sitting. When I stand, I have better posture and so I don't get the pain.

<comment><USER36> > _Nobody ever claimed that the one and only benefit of standing is to "burn > excess calories"._

Well, the article didn't claim that, either. It mentions that as one potential (arguable) benefit. It mentions this in the broader context of standing desk improving health in general, and the fact that there's basically no evidence for this.

<comment><USER37> Agreed. However, it seems to me that "health in general" is potentially harder to quantify than specific health conditions. It might be of interest to people who deal with workers in the aggregate, such as insurers and employers.

But I could imagine individual workers wanting to know more about the specifics: Could standing at work help with my personal health and medical issues? That question presented itself to me when my doctor told me that my neck and upper body pain was caused by sitting at a computer all day. Switching to a standing desk gave me fairly rapid relief after struggling for more than a year.

Of course that's just my anecdote. If someone else doesn't have the same problem, then the question is completely different for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> OMG the comments on that article... a significant chunk of the threads are talking about the freaking stock-photo model. when will I learn NEVER READ THE COMMENTS (whitelist=HN,Metafilter)

I like a standing desk. I have had chronic back problems aggravated by a slumping chair posture, and 100% standing for the last year or so has been (I feel) really helpful.</comment>


Farmaceuticals: The drugs fed to farm animals and the risks posed to humans - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/farmaceuticals-the-drugs-fed-to-farm-animals-and-the-risks-posed-to-humans/

<comment><USER2> Ah, externalities. Privatize the profit (bigger animals), socialize the costs (deadlier bacteria.)

> "Several scientific, peer reviewed risk assessments demonstrate that > resistance emerging in animals and transferring to humans does not happen in > measurable amounts, if at all," said Tom Super, spokesman for the National > Chicken Council.

This feels like echoes of "Cigarettes Are Safe" from previous decades. (Yes, that comparison is a bit prejudicial, I know.)

<comment><USER3> We socialize the profit; cheaper meat.

<comment><USER4> Looking at the waistlines of people I am not sure this is profit :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The emergence of "superbugs", bacteria resistant to antibiotics, is a well- known phenomenon and the basis of recent pressure on physicians/providers to discontinue prescribing antibiotics to humans when bacterial infection is absent, e.g., a viral infection is the problem.

The use of antibiotics in animal-raising industries has long since been suspected of contributing to bacterial resistance. The article points out how this happens and specific instances where it did happen.

Living in Oregon I remember when the Foster Farms incident occurred. At the time, poor hygiene practices at the farm were blamed, and the grower promised to comply with demands to clean up their act. However, I don't recall that grower's antibiotic use was reported or discussed as part of the problem, though if it was it was kept low key and escaped my attention.

Given the range of growers' experience reported in the article, and difficulty of FDA maintaining oversight (so many growers, so few FDA inspectors), it would make sense to simply ban the use of "medically important" antibiotics in the chicken and other animal-growing industries.

I've seen it happen, people are made seriously ill or die because of treatment-resistant bacteria and we are all at risk. Health care workers are especially vulnerable given the greater chance of exposure to resistant organisms.

OTOH consumers of chicken and meat products can help themselves by assiduously adhering to hygienic practices when handling uncooked meat, and make sure foods are adequately cooked to destroy potential bacterial contamination. While incidence of contamination is low, it's not nil, and taking these precautions is only prudent.

</comment><comment><USER6> Without this kind of unsafe drugging of animals, meat would probably be more expensive. But expensive meat is only a problem if people eat a lot of it, like Americans do today.

The solution to this problem, really is to eat less meat. There are many health benefits to eating less meat, in addition to the antibiotics problem. Two books that explain this well are The Enzyme Factor by Hiromi Shinya and The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.

This matches my own experience as well. I used to have a nasty acne problem. Cutting down on meat (and dairy) has made my skin much nicer. Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop is a great cookbook for (mostly) plant foods, by the way. It seems that the Chinese have been aware of the health benefits of a diet centered around plants, rather than meat and dairy, for a very long time.

</comment><comment><USER7> While it may be difficult to do, I highly recommend anyone in tech to go visit a farm supply store and wander around.

Bags -- BAGS of antibiotics available for purchase, to be mixed into feed.

Buy local, buy sustainable, buy pastured meat.

<comment><USER8> "pasteured meat"? so pre-cooked? no more steaks for you?

tapeworms and other shit are fun.

<comment><USER9> pastured != pasteured, in addition to the latter not being an actual word in English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is turning similar to the vaccination debate with children.

you need to vaccinate the herd if you want risk-free meat. a lot of people used to die due to contaminated meat and animal products.

free range chicken does not even exist anymore - can't can keep them outside due risk of infection from other birds (bird flu). etc etc etc.

you can turn to vegetarianism, with all the other issues it brings. separate discussion. but once you're ok with using animals for food, you need to get real about vaccinating them. no way around it.

nature is NOT a romantic mother, it is a very harsh place which is the sole reason for our civilization. all inventions (housing, agriculture, etc.) are meant to protect us from nature - cold, bugs, predators, accidents, genetics, etc.

<comment><USER10> Antibiotics are not vaccines.

Antibiotics are used to produce larger animals and to avoid the effort and cost of raising animals in sanitary conditions, without much regard for the effects on antibiotic resistance.

Vaccines are another matter. Chickens, for example, are routinely vaccinated against Marek's disease without much controversy.</comment></comment>


Never delete files again : easy archive from command line - <AUTHOR> http://qpleple.com/never-delete-files-again-easy-archive-from-command-line/

<comment><USER2> I delete files because I don't want to see them. I don't want to see an ugly "Archives" subdirectory in every directory on my machine.

Far nicer would be an "arc" folder in, say, my home folder. But at that point I might as well just wrap git commit, and get branches and diffs.</comment>


Am I Cratsman - <AUTHOR> http://jeroenbourgois.be/am-i-crafstman/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like what he is saying. Our jobs are seriously underrated most of the time.</comment>


Ask HN: Sendgrid or Mandrill? - <AUTHOR>

For transactional email which one do you prefer and why? <comment><USER2> I've used both in production and ended up moving everything to Mandrill in the end. Three main reasons:

(1) It's easier to take care of my e-mail related customer support issues with Mandrill. They're typically things like investigating missing notification mails or identifying the causes of large daily volume changes. Mandrill's reports and features, like tagging mails with sub-accounts to separate them by app, makes these things very quickly investigated and resolved.

(2) Sendgrid customer support did things that were unsettling to me. One of _my_ users was having trouble receiving e-mails from one of my services. He decided to debug that on his own using e-mail headers and talked to Sendgrid directly. As a result, a Sendgrid support agent went into _my_ account and changed a setting without my authorization. The purpose was benign (to get e-mails delivered to this one mailbox), but I was not at all happy with changes being made by someone other than me. What if I had blacklisted that recipient on purpose?

(3) Mandrill/MailChimp is older and bigger. E-mail delivery is a relationship business; getting mail through to major ISPs and webmail clients on a daily basis is about reputation and knowing who to talk to when something gets trapped in a filter/blacklist incorrectly. MailChimp's staff has been working with Google/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc for 14 years. They deliver the newsletters for innumerable recognizable brand names. SendGrid's been around since only 2009 and only handles transactional mail; they don't have the same relationship depth or the same clientele.

<comment><USER3> Wow #2 would bug me. Its good they are willing to help an end client, but they should never change your account without discussing it with you first.

Out of curiosity, how did Sendgrid compare to Mandrill with deliverability? You mention the point about Mailchimp having the deep relationships (which is one reason I have stuck with them for most emails), but did you see that benefit quantifiably, via less delivered mail with Sendgrid or some other metric?

<comment><USER2> I never had any systemic deliverability problems with either one. I did have a weird issue with only SendGrid where I'd receive spam reports from AOL mailboxes that, when I reached out personally, said they had never clicked the spam button in their mail client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use Sendgrid for my previous company ([http://matchist.com](http://matchist.com)) and using Mandrill for my new one ([http://getdonald.com](http://getdonald.com)).

We used Sendgrid because in additional to transactional email, we needed parsing and events. Sendgrid was just the biggest name at the time so I chose it.

All the Sendgrid competitors offer the same functionality for lower prices now, so there's little reason to choose Sendgrid today, in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> I can't find another email provider to give out dedicated IP addresses for less than sendgrid. We whitelabel a lot of our service so this is a significant cost.

<comment><USER4> Ah, we didn't need dedicated IPs so not familiar with those costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At my previous company we used Mandrill and were extremely happy with it. I like their Web UI a lot.

I never used Sendgrid though so I can't compare the two.

</comment><comment><USER7> Haven't used Sendgrid but Mandrill works great for transactional emails. First 12,000 emails are free as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Mandrill with Mailpoet (wp plugin), and have nothing but good things to say about them.

You didn't ask, but we compared them with AWS, and the big problem with AWS was that we had to throttle our own SMTP output. Mandrill will rate limit for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Mandrill and AWS to send transactional emails. Have never used Sendgrid so I can't comment on its capabilities. But I can say Mandrill has been really good overall and the webhooks make things really easy to tie in.

</comment><comment><USER9> At my company, we switched from Sendgrid to Mandrill when we ran into some deliverability problems with Sendgrid that we could not identify a cause for, but which magically disappeared once Mandrill was doing the sending.

</comment><comment><USER10> My previous company migrated from Sendgrid and Mailgun to Mandrill exclusively. Great service, good pricing, great customer support, good reporting, pretty strong all around.

</comment><comment><USER11> Neither, I really like Mailgun for their receiving email API. Their dev tools make everything really easy to set up and use. For outgoing email, Amazon SES works for me and is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER12> MailGun.

</comment><comment><USER13> You should have a look at Mailjet too.</comment>


Is There a Libertarian Case for Bernie Sanders? - <AUTHOR> https://niskanencenter.org/blog/is-there-a-libertarian-case-for-bernie-sanders/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER3> ...is wrong about as often as it is right.

I've been tempted to propose a law to the effect that people who cite Betteridge's law almost never actually check first to see if the article they are responding to is actually one of the cases where it is right.

That appears to be the case here, since the article concludes that there is, and they state this in the first paragraph.

<comment><USER4> In this case, you can't argue that it's not right.

>The libertarian case for Bernie Sanders is simply that Bernie Sanders wants to make America more like Denmark, Canada, or Sweden … and the citizens of those countries enjoy more liberty than Americans do.

So, those countries are more libertarian than the United States, despite imposing top-heavy government on its people with the goal of taking a sizeable percentage of their income. Right...

In any case, the author himself then seems to conclusively answer No, without explicitly saying "no":

>The lesson Bernie Sanders needs to learn is that you cannot finance a Danish- style welfare state without free markets and large tax increases on the middle class. If you want Danish levels of social spending, you need Danish middle- class tax rates and a relatively unfettered capitalist economy. The fact that he's unwilling to come out in favor of either half of the Danish formula for a viable social-democratic welfare state is the best evidence that Bernie Sanders is not actually very interested in what it takes to make social democracy work. The great irony of post-1989 political economy is that capitalism has proven itself the most reliable means to socialist ends. Bernie seems not to have gotten the memo.

If you buy the author's argument that Denmark's brand of democratic socialism is the closest to the libertarian ideal we have in the world, then the logical conclusion is that Bernie doesn't understand what makes Denmark's brand of democratic socialism work, so there is no libertarian case for Bernie Sanders.

<comment><USER3> You are conflating the rightness or not of the article itself with the rightness or not of Betteridge's law applied to the article. As Betteridge himself explains [1]:

        This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that
        any headline which ends in a question mark can be
        answered by the word "no." The reason why
        journalists use that style of headline is that they
        know the story is probably bullshit, and don't
        actually have the sources and facts to back it up,
        but still want to run it.

When you have an article like this one which uses the question style of headline and then answers the question "yes" it is not a Betteridge headline even if others might argue that the answer should have been "no". Even if the article answers "no", it still isn't necessarily a Betteridge headline if there was actually some reasonable question over whether the answer was "yes" or "no".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Congress's Quantum Science Bill May Not Keep the US Military Ahead of China - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2018/09/congresss-quantum-science-bill-may-not-keep-us-military-ahead-china/151319/?oref=d-river <comment><USER2> I meam, does anyone really believe the average congressman or congresswomen really understands any of this?</comment>


Amazon Redshift GUI client - <AUTHOR> https://prabhatsharma.in/blog/dbeaver-sql-gui-client-for-amazon-redshift/ <comment><USER2> I would loved to have seen a list of other clients considered and discarded before the conclusion arrived at `DBeaver`.

I am curious how your criteria graded `pgAdmin`, `Postico`, `DataGrip`, or `PSequel` - for example.

Every article online for `10 Best Postgres GUIs` feels like it's a BuzzFeed article written for entertainment. I think Prabhat would be well suited to give an update on what else was considered in the `bake-off`.</comment>


Philae lander finds complex organic molecules like acetone on comet - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/philae-lander-finds-complex-organic-molecules-like-acetone-on-comet-1.3174326

<comment><USER2> It would seem this publication in Science pertains to the original science suite performed on Philae's landing:

[http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/30/science-on-the- surfa...](http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/30/science-on-the-surface-of-a- comet/)

Which is not to detract from the magnificence of the accomplishment, simply to note that this isn't from Philae's recent reawakening.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also a rather more mundane possibility: it could be residue from some sort of cleaning process done when the spacecraft was still on Earth. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened.

<comment><USER4> It's hard to imagine how an acetone spill on the craft exterior (or even interior) would survive the launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The following is some related reading on "Tholins" along with the history of the term. The CBC.ca article is sparse on details, and it seems the " _Science_ " paper is paywalled.

[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2015/0722-what- in...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2015/0722-what-in-the- worlds-are-tholins.html)

<comment><USER6> [http://email@example.com...](http://sci- firstname.lastname@example.com)

<comment><USER7> That's the one! Thank you!

(And shame on you, silly ESA, for allowing your publicly-funded science to be locked away by a third party).

There's some fascinating, very suggestive CNOH compounds in that list. Here's what the last paragraph says about them:

        CH2OHCHO [glycolaldehyde] is an efficient initiator in the prebiotic formation
        of sugars (21). HCN [hydrogen cyanide] is a key molecule in the prebiotic
        synthesis of amino acids (21, 22) and nucleobases (21) and even offers an
        elegant pathway to sugars (23). HCONH2 [formamide] provides a prebiotic route to
        nucleobases (24). HCONH2 (24) and CH3CONH2 [acetamide] (21) catalyze
        phosphorylation of nucleosides to nucleotides, in which amines also play a role
        (21). Isocyanates play a major role in the prebiotic synthesis of peptides,
        through the so-called isocyanate route (22). The complexity of cometary nucleus
        chemistry and the importance of N-containing organics imply that early solar
        system chemistry fosters the formation of prebiotic material in noticeable
        concentrations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is amazing discovery. By this we can say that organic molecules might not be a rare phenomenon in the universe and hence the chances of life increases...

<comment><USER9> What gets me is that we're taught Earth's fossil fuels are just that: biological fossils. And yet Titan has methane lakes, and we've discovered giant clouds of methanol in space.[1]

Boy am I confused.

1\. [http://phys.org/news/2006-04-astronomers-alcohol-cloud- spann...](http://phys.org/news/2006-04-astronomers-alcohol-cloud-spanning- billion.html)

<comment><USER10> There's a tiny little bit of difference between methane and methanol and "all that shit in crude oil and coal".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Acetone is an organic compound. Either somebody up there was distilling whiskey or biosynthesis was taking place wherever this slush came from right?.

<comment><USER7> This is from the paper,

        All the COSAC organics can be formed by UV irradiation and/or radiolysis of ices
        due to the incidence of galactic and solar cosmic rays: alcohols and carbonyls
        derived from CO and H2O ices (19), and amines and nitriles from CH4 and NH3 ices
        (20). Hydrolysis of nitriles produces amides, which are linked to isocyanates by
        isomerization.

"Organic" only means "made of C,H,O,N", and doesn't imply biology. (But these are actually pre-biotic chemicals, which is why it's very interesting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could we please have a veto in the popular press on the use of the word "organic" to describe carbon-containing molecules?

I'm pretty sure "organic" has an entirely different meaning to most of the population, and it's not helping anyone...

<comment><USER13> I'm sure organic chemistry was named before organic food...

In fact, organic food is known in some other countries as "from biological agriculture" (often abbreviated to "bio food").

<comment><USER12> This isn't a question of who's technically "right" or "wrong". I'm not suggesting we stop using the word in textbooks or the classroom. It's just simply, by modern popular usage, misleading to use the word "organic" in mainstream news articles about carbon-containing molecules. It gives people the wrong idea.

<comment><USER14> Changing what something has been called for a long time because the word has (relatively) recently been coopted to mean something else sounds like a really bad idea to me.

<comment><USER12> > Changing what something has been called for a long time because the word has > (relatively) recently been coopted to mean something else sounds like a > really bad idea to me.

It's how language change works though. Very few words still mean what they meant several hundred (or even tens of) years ago. The people who write dictionaries are perfectly pragmatic about this. What is the aim of journalism on a mainstream news website? To communicate? If you want to communicate with someone who doesn't have a science background, a member of the public, you have to be sensible about it.

So what's the alternative to "organic" in that context? "Carbon-containing"? The latter is far less misleading to the average person. And to people who understand both, either works. So why wouldn't you want to do that?

It's pure stubbornness on behalf of scientists (and I say that as a professional scientist myself) to be prescriptivist about this sort of thing. And, again, I'm not suggesting we stop using the word in technical contexts (the classroom, textbooks, journals, etc.). It's just that I've been at a few outreach events recently, and I talk to people casually a lot, and _so many_ people read "organic" in a headline and think "signs of life" that it's obscene. It's a real problem. We can either choose to try and communicate better, or we can carry on misleading people–because _we are_ misleading them, whether we like it or not. Burying our heads in the sand and just pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git Project Hell - <AUTHOR> http://djberg96.livejournal.com/178299.html <comment><USER2> You want the answer? Start adding some of those people to the main project. If they're writing the proper tests and the code is solid, add them. If they botch a release, remove them and roll back.

There are two scenarios:

1) You aren't responding to pull requests in a timely fashion 2) Your original code isn't meeting the needs of the users

If there are that many active forks, consider inviting the most active contributers to IRC and finding out why they aren't making pull requests. If they are and you aren't responding then the blame lies soley with the master repo maintainer.

<comment><AUTHOR> The answer is a proper, centralized project, with a mailing list for communication and coordination, and for the forkers to at least make a stab at getting involved.

If that's not working, one of the forkers should fork the _project_ , not just the code.

Projects are things involving people, when all is said and done. Community and communication are what make an open source project work, not the ability to bounce code around with push/pull requests. Those things help, because they're more efficient than mailing patches around, but people have been doing this stuff for a while without github...

<comment><USER2> Good point about the mailing list. At this point though, it seems that just finding a way to deal with the multitude of forkers is the biggest issue. That might be a mailing list or it might be a shoutout on github asking for information.

I'm not too keen on a big structure off the bat when you don't know what the reason for the forking is. Then again with google groups it's really not that big of an issue to set one up.

And I'm fully aware that people have done this for the longest time without github but right now, github is where the "community" lives. It would be unwise to go shunting the community around to some new thing without first establishing what the community is.</comment></comment></comment>


Racial and Ethnic Gaps Remain a Big Question in Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/racial-and-ethnic-gaps-remain-a-big-question-in-medicine/ <comment><USER2> "Hispanic death rates are higher than non-Hispanic white patients' for diabetes, chronic liver disease and kidney disease"

Do they also have what lead up to these issues? Is it diet? Exercise? Genetics? My guess is that the majority are factors that the actual person can solve with discipline and a certain percentage is genetic. The big question is why are we only blaming the system instead of trying to solve the root of the problem?

"And one in three Hispanic people living in the U.S. does not speak English well, and may have difficulty in conversations with a doctor."

If I go to France and try to only speak English with the Doctors, the same thing will happen. It's unrealistic to expect to live in a country where the primary language is English and only speak Spanish.

Americans are called assholes all the time because they attempt to go into foreign counties without actually learning any of the man language there. However, this attitude doesn't seem to ever apply to groups of people coming into the US. Why?

"The medicines that they need were rarely tested on people like them. Some medicines act differently or are appropriate at different doses for particular demographic groups"

Like 'them'? So are we going to bring in genetics into this? I thought that was a big no-no.</comment>


Show HN: The Breezy Button, Easy Secure Printing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.breezy.com/announcing-the-breezybutton-easy-secure-print

<comment><USER2> Hey folks, Breezy CEO here.

We built this button (which allows devs to integrate robust print functionality into any iOS/Android app) because there are basically no PC/Mac apps that lack a print button, and ultimately we think it should be the same on any mobile platform.

We've put a fair amount of work into making this SDK as easy for developers to use as possible, and we'd love the HN community's feedback on how to make it better. We'll be monitoring this thread so please let us know what you think.

Thank you in advance!</comment>


Ask HN: Sale of LLC Interest to Co-Founder. Advice?  - <AUTHOR> Hey HN!
LONG time lurker, first time posting...
Well the time has come for me to move on from my start-up, and I will be selling my interest in our LLC to my co-founder (50%).  We're leaving on good terms and sale will benefit everyone in the long run.
My Question is does anyone have any advice? What tax implications are there?
We currently have just under 1M in liquid assets (Cash) and 250K in hardware.
I will be working with our attorney, tax advisor, and CFO but I always like to go into these meetings knowing what I want to get out of them.
Do you think I should bring in outside council?
Everything is operating under good terms right now so I really don't want to rock the boat too much.
Thanks in Advance. <comment><USER2> You should talk to another counsel, who has only your interests in mind and has experience with these sorts of deals, to help make sure all relevant issues/ideas are under consideration and no avoidable mistakes are made. An expert can think of ways to structure things that save everyone costs/worries down the road.

But you can probably skip bringing them directly into the process, at least until papers are drawn up.

I think it's common in such cases for the buy-out to be paid over a period of years, if the company/remaining-investors don't have the liquidity to pay the agreed-upon price up front.

<comment><AUTHOR> liquidity of my co-founder is an interesting issue. We've discussed dissolving the LLC all-together and porting over our TMs and other intellectual property to a new wholly owned entity. This way we could both divvy up the current LLC's assets in a way that is acceptable to everyone.

Ex: They would maintain possession of a majority of the hardware for example I would get more cash based on the depreciated value of those hardware assets.

<comment><USER2> Assuming the business is ongoing and profitable beyond just paying managers' salaries -- that cash balance accumulated from something, no? -- the value of the future earnings may dwarf the current assets you're focusing on.

Or not -- depends on a lot of things including risk, margins, and so on. But the value of a profitable business is a lot more than its book value.

<comment><AUTHOR> No your correct, but that is something we are going to have to work out during the process. Current assets are a known quantity right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Like gojomo said, you should definitely get external legal counsel, who has your best interest in mind. Also, the value of your startups assets are worth the investment.</comment>


IRS Demands Identities of All US Coinbase Traders Over Three Year Period - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/irs-demands-identities-of-all-coinbase-traders-over-two-year-period <comment><USER2> "The IRS further justifies its request by claiming it is targeted toward a specific group of people; namely, US taxpayers who have conducted transactions with virtual currency."

How about IRS makes requests to people who live in homes worth over a certain amount of money who pay absolutely no taxes. At least my suggestion isn't a wild goose chase.

"Targeting a specific group of people," never turns out to work fairly for those targeted for some reason.

<comment><USER3> Jeez, that sounds so much like a writ of assistance (which is what inspired the Fourth Amendment), it's ridiculous on its face that anyone would grant a warrant like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coinbase statement: [https://blog.coinbase.com/2016/11/18/protecting-customer- pri...](https://blog.coinbase.com/2016/11/18/protecting-customer-privacy/)</comment>


How to find your perfect Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://hatchery.io/how-to-find-your-perfect-co-founder.html

<comment><USER2> I've seen a lot of startups which missed to think about founder vesting in the beginning. One year later the "co-founder" holding 50% decided to travel around the world because "this is way to stressful...". This can cause some serious trouble talking to potential investors.</comment>


2017 is also a (re)Prime Number - <AUTHOR> https://blog.reprime.io/2017-a-re-prime-number-4b094db42d7d#.z9go8sj4r <comment><AUTHOR> Memory is an expendable resource and on average, we tend to spend it on three to four most urgent things in a day, but that doesn't mean little things aren't important.</comment>


Rare and Bizarre Media Types - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvXXkB2jic0 <comment><USER2> The 8 Bit Guy(David Murray) is a fantastic YouTuber and retro computing enthusiast. If you enjoy Retro computing he's currently trying to make a "Dream Computer" which is fully C64 compatible. He's also made several pieces of interesting software for C64 and similar platforms. [http://www.the8bitguy.com/download-davids- software/](http://www.the8bitguy.com/download-davids-software/)</comment>


A Tweet About Hacking Gets a Google Engineer in Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/defcon-tweet-about-hacking-gets-engineer-trouble <comment><USER2> Based on the title, I had assumed that Google somehow reprimanded the engineer, but as far as I can tell, Google has nothing to do with the story -- he was kicked out of Caesar's Palace while at Defcon.

Well, I wouldn't have clicked on it if the title was "Man Banned From Caesar's Palace For Defcon Tweet", so I guess Wired knows their business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anything can be made to suit an agenda when taken out of context.

I read the tweet before reading the article. And I understood his intent of the word "attack" immediately.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but you're likely at least somewhat familiar with cybersecurity. I'm less certain that's true for management at Caesar's Palace or the LVMPD.

For the record, I also understood the context of the word attack in this tweet, but I would guess we're in the minority.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully nobody at the airport after Defcon yells "Good luck with your bombe!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Offtopic if anyone working at wired is watching this : the page took too long to load, i cancelled and move to the comment section instead.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yawn, so sick of news about the enlightened twitterati.

<comment><USER8> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot, we've asked you more than once already, and we eventually ban accounts that won't stop doing this.

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


Delhi Hackathon September 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://hfdelhi.in/ <comment><USER2> need more details on the agenda. who's coming? what's the topic? need a good reason to spend a fine weekend away from loved ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Cost: Free*

with no corresponding *... huh?</comment>


Ask HN: Whatever happened to Offer HN? - <AUTHOR>

I remember every once in a while a few years back, a group of folks would offer their services, gratis, to startups, for a couple hours a week or the like, in exchange for exposure, potential for future paying work, or simply experience.<p>I've got a good friend who is just getting into development (and hell, even I) who could benefit from this sort of thing again. <comment><USER2> The individual "Offer HN:" posts still occur and can be found through HN search [1]. At one point in time, long ago, there was some push back on too many "offer" posts [2], and pg responded by creating an /offerless and /offers page [3,4]. They were simple but short-lived additions that he made in the arc REPL so they didn't survive the next reboot.

The trouble with "Offer" posts is they can be fantastic when altruistic and done purely for "hack-value" fun. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is altruistic, so if lots of offers are posted, then you end up needing to wade through plenty of spammy or even manipulative offers. If you know of a way of ascertaining actual human intentions, even through the standard HN posting uniform of tin foil hats, then we might be able to filter the various types of offer posts. ;-)

Earlier this year, someone started a "Help Me Out (HMO)" and/or "Help You Out (HYO)" type post [5] but the title used was inconsistent. Since the first one was well received, there was talk of it becoming a regular monthly post like 'whoishiring' posts [6] but the idea petered out. I cannot find the exact post, but when the idea of making it a monthly feature was mentioned, our fearless HN moderator 'dang' warned that the only one allowed to make automated monthly posts is the 'whoishiring' bot.

[1] [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Offer+HN#!/story/sort_by_date/pref...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Offer+HN#!/story/sort_by_date/prefix/0/%22Offer%20HN%22)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839723)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839808)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840060)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172)

[6] [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been contemplating doing that as well, however it had not occurred to me to do it through HN.

What I can offer is debugging, performance optimization and resume screening. I don't have any specific requests for what I ask of clients in return, other than that they say nice things about me to their colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER4> It was a great spontaneous idea the first time around. Since, OfferHN has increasingly correlated with "will work cheap." An effect of the evolving community I suppose.</comment>


Rural America has too few dentists — and too few patients who can pay - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/07/feature/rural-america-has-too-few-dentists-but-also-too-few-jobs-to-create-paying-patients/ <comment><USER2> Ironically a tooth extraction is one of the cheapest and least complex surgeries that someone could perform. The non insured price is something like $70-200 dollars, and many charities perform them at no cost to the consumer.

There are people that even extract their own teeth.

Now obviously nobody wants to deal with this pain, it can be a damaging and horrific procedure with some long term complications. But it's cheap and will save your life if your tooth is truly in danger.

The real issue is that licensing and tuition for dentists is too restrictive. In Asia, many dental procedures are cheap and are done by unlicensed professionals.

If I couldn't afford anything but an unlicensed dentist, I'd still give it a shot.

<comment><USER3> > The real issue is that licensing and tuition for dentists is too > restrictive.

The guilds have designed professions that pay well. Over-education is not required for most of their tasks, so the grunt work is passed off to inexpensive hygienists/nurse practitioners/etc.

The Arizona legislature has been considering allowing dental hygienists (er, "therapists") to work independent of their DDS overlords, but the dentists have been fighting back: [https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/health/2017/0...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/health/2017/01/23/push- for-dental-therapy-in-arizona-stalls-amid-legislative-resistance/96836364/)

<comment><USER2> Right, the dentists have been fighting back because they would rather see people die of infections than let a low cost provider jeopardize their salary.

Physically sickening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like the market is working, to me. Who wants to work for no pay? Not I! I'm a free market fundamentalist!</comment>


TeamTrees has almost hit 20M trees planted - <AUTHOR> https://teamtrees.org/ <comment><USER2> Note that no tree has been planted, they only collected almost US$20M. From the FAQ:

> _When will the trees be planted?_

> _Trees will be planted throughout the year starting in January of 2020 and > completed no later than December 2022._ [...]

<comment><USER3> This makes the headline and the claim on the page itself rather misleading, doesn't it? It's a predicate - the trees are planted or they are not planted. Speaking past tense about things that may or may not happen in the future is deceitful at best.

I hope it succeeds. It obviously would be a good thing. But the current claims are not unlike Trump demanding a Nobel for his North Korean Summit that totally didn't work out like he said it did, or his fantasy reports of the many new miles of Wall being built at a time there were no new miles at all, but MIGHT be built, depending on if he can secure the money by squeezing it out of other places first.

It _really_ casts a shadow of doubt on the entire premise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any good articles on hash function design? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested to learn about how the internals of hashing functions are designed. To me, in my cryptographic ignorance, merely using modulo operation is sufficient for making something irreversible. But clearly there are many things to keep in mind and I'm very interested in how it's done.<p>Has anybody come across any good resources on how famous hashing algorithms were designed? Anything from MD5 to bcrypt. <comment><USER2> [https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols- Algori...](https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms- Source/dp/0471117099)</comment>


My History With Forth And Stack Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines.html

<comment><USER2> I've been using Forth for a while to write small video games, and honestly I find the process delightful. The extreme simplicity and flexibility of the language lend themselves well to the kind of special-case explosion that often occurs as I tinker with game logic, and puzzling out the cleanest way to express complicated ideas is very intellectially satisfying. Working on a simulated game console with no underlying operating system and unrestricted access to memory seems to be an ideal case for the language.

If anybody's curious, all my development tools and forth code are on github: <https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks pretty neat! I've been thinking of using FORTH in the same way; I'll be really interested to read through your sample games.

(I played around with GraFORTH on the Apple ][ back in the day, and I remember it was wicked fast, and kinda fun)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! There's a few things about my dialect of Forth that are unusual if you've worked with Forth before, mainly just the fact that it is a "static" subroutine-threaded forth which lacks the ability to define new immediate words and it has some special-case syntax for string constants and the like. I do have a quick-start manual available: [https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBas...](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBasics.md)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing your VM & games -- I've been reading through the docs & source and finding them both interesting & inspirational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Around 1980, while still a Stanford student, I used Laboratory Microsystems' PCForth to write a editing/publishing system for SAT math preparation, complete with embedded figures and equations and animated answers. The 'aha' at the time was to store the graphics not as bitmaps, but as a stream of parameters that were interpreted, allowing my system to save hundreds of quiz questions on a single floppy. That vector approach also made editing objects and layers trivially simple. Got the attention of ETS and Addison Wesley, both of whom flew me out to demonstrate how I did it.

But when I started building my own software product to sell and support, adding things like one of the first networked learning management systems and a homemade graphics windowing system (schools were MSDOS or Apple II in the day, if you wanted a GUI you built one) I switched everything over to C even though that meant teaching myself C and re-architecting everything from scratch.

Creating and working with abstraction layers was critical to that project's success, and simply not doable in Forth. So I've always thought of Forth as kind of like a first girlfriend - maybe not "The One" but a delightful and important phase that helped me learn what was important to me.

<comment><USER5> <http://factorcode.org/> may be of interest to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a whole FORTH interpreter[1], and I have to agree with the article, in part. I don't think it's a good language for large scale engineering, and I don't think if I was a great FORTH programmer I'd change my opinion of it.

[1] <http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=summary>

<comment><USER7> I've known two "great" FORTH programmers in the last 30 years. They were both very pragmatic individuals, good engineers who made good decisions and good products.

I've also known a number of FORTH enthusiasts. In general I've not been impressed with their efforts, or their insistence that FORTH is the Universal Language, and everyone not using it for everything is missing out big.

I think it'd be fun to hack on one of Moore's multiprocessor systems. But I don't think I'd want to program one for a living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> old comments :

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1680149>

</comment><comment><USER9> that was an absolutely fascinating (and very well written indeed) article. for those of you who tl;drd it, this bit towards the end was particularly insightful:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Why pay this cost? Because I don't do algorithms, other people do, so I have to trust them and respect their judgment to a large extent. Because you need superhuman abilities to work without layers. My minimal stack of layers is - problem, software, hardware. People working on the problem (algorithms, UI, whatever) can't do software, not really. People doing software can't do hardware, not really. And people doing hardware can't do software, etc.

The Forth way of focusing on just the problem you need to solve seems to more or less require that the same person or a very tightly united group focus on all three of these things, and pick the right algorithms, the right computer architecture, the right language, the right word size, etc. I don't know how to make this work.

My experience is, you try to compress the 3 absolutely necessary layers to 2, you get a disaster. Have your algorithms people talk directly to your hardware people, without going through software people, and you'll get a disaster. Because neither understands software very well, and you'll end up with an unusable machine. Something with elaborate computational capabilities that can't be put together into anything meaningful. Because gluing it together, dispatching, that's the software part.

So you need at least 3 teams, or people, or hats, that are to an extent ignorant about each other's work. Even if you're doing everything in-house, which, according to Jeff Fox, was essentially a precondition to "doing Forth". So there's another precondtion - having people being able to do what at least 3 people in their respective areas normally do, and concentrating on those 3 things at the same time. Doing the cross-layer global optimization.</comment>


Creating a Computer Science Canon (2003) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ctg/pubs/sigcsecanon.pdf <comment><USER2> It is ironic that a paper calling for a CS canon does not follow any of the ACM or IEEE formatting guidelines for submitting a paper, such that a reader could tell when it was published.

So this paper came out at some point in the last... fifteen years?

edit: thanks for updating this with the date

<comment><USER3> That the HN headline was updated with the date does not make your point any less valid. _All_ content needs to have a date on it. (And as long as I'm ranting about this, the word "latest" should never appear as a substring in any title or file name unless it's a symlink.) People seem to continually lose sight of the fact that it will not always be now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we put together all the listed papers here? Reply with one if you know where it is. One paper per reply please.

<comment><USER4> My personal favorite, Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication: [http://worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%20Communication.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Heh, just found a mistake in this paper:

"A device with two stable positions, such as a relay or a flip-flop circuit, can store one bit of information. N such devices can store N bits, since the total number of possible states is 2^N and log(base2) 2^N =􏰃 N."

This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order. If they are unordered, then N devices can store only log(N) bits of information (because the state of the system is completely characterized by the number of 1 bits, and that ranges from 0 to N).

This is not a completely academic observation. For example, if you have two thumb drives, each of which stores N bits, the two of them together store 2N bits ONLY if you can tell which drive is which. If you can't distinguish them, then the sum total of information they contain is 2N-1 bits.

<comment><USER5> > This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order.

I think that's an assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first three paragraphs in chapter 2 are thought-provoking in that they challenge you to shift from a transactional model of consumption of information - "I need to read these books to achieve something" \- to one that is more instructional - "I need to read these books to learn how to think".

</comment><comment><USER7> I was a little surprised by the list of works included in the canon until I realized after a more careful reading that it's more of a reading list for a particular class the author appears to teach.

I'd love to see an actual CS canon some time. Anyone know of anything that comes closer to one?

<comment><USER8> 1- [https://teachyourselfcs.com/](https://teachyourselfcs.com/)

2- [http://mfleck.cs.illinois.edu/building- blocks/](http://mfleck.cs.illinois.edu/building-blocks/)

<comment><USER9> I'd love it if some more people could vouch for these sources. The both look very interesting.

<comment><USER7> They're both interesting but they're not "canons" in the traditional sense. The first is a short resource of the bare-bones subjects in CS with the handful of most popular books, and the second is an intro book about basic math and algorithms.

edit: to add, I think they're interesting but I would not refer people to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would be next level is to find the papers, then also find prominent programmers/professors etc to do a youtube series and discuss said papers. I'll take a stab at reading the papers, but like great works of literature I'm sure I'll miss things that a more educated person could highlight. Imagine someone like Alan Kay expounding on one of "The Canon" for ~15-20 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER11> Came to see the CS Cannon. Left learning how to differentiate Canon and Cannon.

<comment><USER12> Canon is a short Cannon, for close quarters shelling or installation on narrow ships.

<comment><USER13> This is my headcanon now. Do not confuse with a head cannon.

<comment><USER14> Is a head cannon a device for projecting noggins or an article of millinery?</comment></comment></comment></comment>