Programming Sucks - <AUTHOR> https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks <comment><USER2> I needed to hear this today.

Today I was presenting a training session on some advanced modelling techniques to a group of users who usually only meet once a year, and had tested the demo to death over the preceeding months. I'm aware much of the process relies on how tight the string between the two cans is pulled, and do my best to work around it. Just last week our main dev for modelling, who had written the code in the MOD-L language, did a mic drop and left.

Last night a patch was pushed out to users that updated their modelling program, and caused the xml output structure to vary. This morning, at about 3am during some last minute testing I discover that this means nobodies models will run when we import them into the new stuff today, except a backup model I had saved. So, we went from a live demo and potential UAT session, to "look at this shiny thing we built for you, but you can't have".

Shoestring, bubblegum, string joined tin cans, and a legacy of R&D that pretends to be production but is actually just a noose, hangman, and gallows in a peppa pig costume.

<comment><USER3> lol.. what's MOD-L language? The only reference I can find is that it's part of some simulation software named ExtendSIM

<comment><USER4> Seems to be exactly that, the underlying language used for simulating real- world processes in what's called "Discrete Event Modelling". ExtendSim has a number of nice tutorial videos, and the subject matter seems pretty interesting imo.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmI5cQMxY3uZ97Qz8gZXKow](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmI5cQMxY3uZ97Qz8gZXKow)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was from way back in 2014.

Luckily things have gotten unspeakably worse since then...

</comment><comment><USER6> It's because you're living in a simulated reality in which problems are created (holes) so that they may be solved (fills). These problems are not real problems. But, someone pays you a lot of money to fill the holes, so you don't think to yourself, "is what I'm doing necessary at all? There seems to be a better way, but I'm very busy right now. Hey, it seems to be a network problem, maybe we should centralize some of these problems." Let me say in no uncertain terms that you are kept busy to legitimize this process and to legitimize the monetary gains its financiers feel entitled to recoup. Let me also say that centralization isn't a magic solution, but creating an EXPLICIT flow from multi-faceted experimentation, risk, and uncertainty to low-risk, low-return, centralization is a GOOD thing, and instead of filling holes, we should use our free time to dream and to suffer and to love and to live, instead of sacrificing the whole of the lot to the self-eating, self- immolating hanged-man false god of sole self-interest.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you like this kind of dark cynicism about our profession as much as I do, you might also enjoy the essays and talks of James Mickens. Here's a collection of his work:

[https://medium.com/@soobrosa/my-humble-james-mickens- shrine-...](https://medium.com/@soobrosa/my-humble-james-mickens-shrine-a-k-a- the-only-real-combined-cs-degree-and-mba-you-will-ever-need-1f437f496d1c)

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprisingly well written and entertaining!

"What walkways? Well Fred made a good case for walkways"

<comment><USER9> _" Of course, they'll have to be built without railings, because there's a strict no railings rule enforced by Phil, who's not an engineer. Nobody's sure what Phil does, but it's definitely full of synergy"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the sense of wonder is gone, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> On one hand, yes absolutely true - on the other, I find myself thinking about this essay by Twain: [http://mrbazilewich.weebly.com/uploads/6/2/0/4/6204690/twain...](http://mrbazilewich.weebly.com/uploads/6/2/0/4/6204690/twain_river.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I'm thinking about this song by Meat Loaf:

[https://www.songlyrics.com/meat-loaf/everything-louder- than-...](https://www.songlyrics.com/meat-loaf/everything-louder-than- everything-else-lyrics/)

"If the thrill is gone, then it's time to take it back!"

"And I sure ain't in it for the wealth!"</comment></comment></comment>


What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dailyjs/heres-what-people-in-tech-had-to-say-about-javascript-when-it-debuted-in-1995-a4b81dc05b71 <comment><USER2> I note that all those ecstatic quotes are from executives.

Because the way I remember it, technical people hated it with a passion, from its design to its implementation.

In fact, the most popular JS projects have always been to avoid writing ES5, its DOM API, or depending of one of its implementation:

\- scriptaculous: we hate even the basic types, so we monkey patch our own code into it.

\- jquery: don't use any of the language paradigms and use ones from Lisp and Haskell. Avoid "this". Don't touch the DOM. In fact, don't code, just make a few calls and pass parameters. And we rewrite the whole damn browser API to avoid incompatibilities.

\- GWT: write JS from Java.

\- underscore and co: let's rewrite typeof, the equality sign and array manipulation methods. And provide an stdib for god sake.

\- coffeescript: we like Python and ruby but must do JS.

\- React: HTML in JS now please. And magic DOM. Oh, and prototyping is horrible, lets use classes. And we strongly advice immutability, but do what you please...

\- webpack and babel: ES6 and 7 are not here yet, but ES5 is so bad we will setup an entire ecosystem dedicated to make believe they are. Also pretend import works like in other languages.

\- typescript: ok, we were wrong, ES7 is not enough. Not nearly enough. Please make intellisense works.

Now, in 2020, JS is finally not so horrible to work with. You can use map(), () => and "..." and fake namespaces. Which is amazing to access the crazy cool plateforms that the modern browsers and the web are.

So I guess, in a way, this quote from the AOL guy was true.

<comment><USER3> JavaScript has a very high learning curve. But it becomes great once you are fluent. When manipulating the DOM it kinda sucks that you can't just monkey- path attributes, you have to use el.setAttribute. The DOM is also very slow. But the DOM do a lot of work - ever tried to make your own UI framework from scratch only using low level GUI calls? z-index, styling with CSS, screen- reader support, etc.

<comment><USER4> > The DOM is also very slow.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22391509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22391509)

> I still have people argue with me that the DOM is slow even though all the > evidence and browser vendors claim updates to the DOM is simply switching a > bit in memory. In other words many web developers have utterly no idea how > their platform works.

I guess not much has changed in 25 years. Most developers still fear the language, have no idea how it works, and will do everything in their power to pretend this language is some other language.

> ever tried to make your own UI framework from scratch only using low level > GUI calls? z-index, styling with CSS, screen-reader support, etc.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22321333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22321333)

<comment><USER3> I meant creating a GUI from scratch. Creating a GUI using the DOM is easy. Working with the DOM overall is simple. What I mean is that the DOM do so much work for us (that we take for granted).

What I mean by slow is for example adding a element to the screen, or updating some text. Compared to for example everything that happens on the screen in a 3d game.

I do everything using vanilla JS and I cannot understand why anyone would use a web framework, (although most web project does). I do however have a vague memory that the learning curve was fairly steep, as I have been working with vanilla JS for over 20 years. (whereas the average developer has only used JS for one year) it wasn't until I started to use JS full stack (with Node.JS) that I started to like it!

<comment><USER5> I worked with vanilla JS for some time (before Prototype.js or jQuery existed) and used a bunch of incantations of different libraries and frameworks over the years and I cannot understand why anyone would choose to use JS for platforms where you can use any other language (aka... any platform that isn't a browser).

No construct or design decision of JS is better than in other languages, the lack of a basic standard library hurts a lot. Dependency management was inexistent until recently, the same for a lot of basic constructs, data types and other utilities that should be baked into any modern language.

The current landscape of JS is so convoluted and with such a varying level of quality that is intractable for me just trying to get things done without getting into the community and everything around it, it's not an easy tool to use and it's not an ergonomical one.

I have used JS for the past 15+ years for different kinds of software and I dislike it, not intensely but I'd never choose to work solely on JS. Yes, you can be productive in it but there are much better tools for most of the job it does around, its only power was to be the only language you could use to script a browser and I hope that WASM kills that.

<comment><USER4> JavaScript has taught me that there are only two things separating a novice programmer from an excellent programmer: writing and data structures.

In order to improve as a programmer over the years I have had to learn to improve my writing. This requires a clear vision before putting keys on a keyboard and a solid sense of organization. You should know what you are going to work on with a strong confidence on how to go about it before doing any of the actual work. Sure rough spots will emerge along the way, but that shouldn't stop you from solving for the original vision. Then once the original vision is achieve refactor, debug, and refactor again. In writing that is call drafts and second opinions. This applies to any programming language equally.

A confidence of data structures is also critically important. Once skills and conceptual mental modeling of data structures becomes as common as spelling your name algorithms and logic almost write themselves. JavaScript does some things right by providing simplified data structures (objects, arrays, sets, maps, and such) and is really expressive in how you use them. JavaScript also does a lot wrong in this regard with its loose typing and some of its sloppy conventions. Fortunately, TypeScript interfaces coupled with consistent use of strict type declarations close many of those gaps.

\---

I have heard so much hope for WASM killing JavaScript over the last 3 years, and almost all of it based on ignorance of how the technologies work. So much of this hope hinges on the availability of the page's DOM to a WASM instance by people who have never written to the DOM and have no idea what they are really asking for. While the WASM working group says this will never happen I suspect that very simple technology reasons will get in the way first regardless of what anybody wants.

If, however, WASM does replace JavaScript because the page's DOM becomes available to a WASM instance I suspect it will be the same clusterfuck that those developers were hoping to replace. I suspect if those developers couldn't figure out the relationship-oriented tree structure of the DOM using JavaScript they fail all the same when using their favorite language.

I can understand replacing JavaScript for other reasons, but rarely (extremely rarely) are the well grounded reasons ever a primary motivation for wanting JavaScript replaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball.

It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what could be built with it. There were problems galore with cross-browser compatibility of what was written. There was no reliable vector graphics or canvas system, so you really couldn't do much graphically. The DOM interface was hard to understand to be charitable. It didn't run outside of the browser, so how dare you call yourself a developer if you were using it?

To the extent that developers knew JavaScript existed at all, it was not considered a programming language.

These things started to change in the early 2000. So deeply ingrained with the disgust for JavaScript, that it took a very long time for the consensus to emerge that you could actually build very complex software on a post-V8 runtime.

<comment><USER7> Complex javascript apps just weren't a thing...hell, it took google writing Gmail (2004) to really show everyone that a large SPA using javascript was even possible.

After Gmail...things really started to move in the javascript world...people started to put effort into both the runtimes and the libraries.

<comment><USER8> And even then, gmail wasn't really written in javascript. They compiled Java down to JavaScript because JS itself was such a pain to deal with natively.

<comment><USER9> I think most of it was written for the Closure compiler (JS-to-JS), with some bits like chat windows in GWT (Java-to-JS).

<comment><USER8> I was under the impression that the closure compiler didn't exist in 2004, only GWT, and that it was rewritten to be almost all JS later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> JavaScript is a fascinating example of Microsoft successfully getting a giant own goal.

The promise of the web was cross platform applications that required no installation. Microsoft's fear was that cross platform applications would make the operating system irrelevant and reduce Windows lock-in. Both Sun (with Java) and Netscape wanted Microsoft's worst fears to happen.

This was the era of Embrace-Extend-Extinguish. So Microsoft embraced the web and added a variety of extensions that only worked on Internet Explorer and Windows. The browser wars followed, which Microsoft resoundingly won.

Along the way, Microsoft demonstrated the power of their browser by doing everything that they could to encourage people to write web applications that would only run on Internet Explorer. Which, of course, only ran on Windows. One of the things that they did was write web versions of Microsoft applications using various Microsoft extensions.

One of those applications was Microsoft Outlook. Which needed to poll the server and find out if there was new mail. For that purpose they wrote the first version of the XmlHttpRequest object. This was in 1999 and they thought nothing more of it...until gmail and then Google Maps came out in 2004 and demonstrated what could be done with it.

The next thing you know, everyone is talking AJAX. Mozilla makes the web accessible to the world. And then Google decided to throw serious energy into a better JavaScript runtime (aka V8) because they wanted to be able to write more sophisticated applications.

And the result is that Microsoft's nightmare has now been realized. But none of it could have happened without that fateful decision to supply the missing piece for a ton of applications of having an asynchronous way to go back for more data without loading another web page.

<comment><USER11> > Along the way, Microsoft demonstrated the power of their browser by doing > everything that they could to encourage people to write web applications > that would only run on Internet Explorer. Which, of course, only ran on > Windows. One of the things that they did was write web versions of Microsoft > applications using various Microsoft extensions.

IE ran on Mac but, in a super-fun fashion, wasn't exactly the same IE, IIRC.

There was a period, pre-Camino (Mozilla fork before Firebird/Firefox for Mac got good), pre-Safari, where IE was the single best browser for Macs, yet still wasn't as good as IE on PC...

<comment><USER12> Oh I remember those days and yes IE was the better browser even in the early Safari days. Back in '03 I still had get a VirtualPC instance running for a few websites and let that crawl.

The old MS/Apple relationship is kind of weird almost like the Gates/Jobs relationship. For you young folks it may be hard to believe but Excel started as a Mac App.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that for consumer applications, JavaScript took a while to be really useful - like someone else noted Gmail was the first serious JS app I can think of. But for Intranets, it was pretty essential pretty quickly as web apps took over from Lotus Notes, Access databases, a million dBase applications and other proprietary front ends. And Microsoft was pushing it (and VBScript) hard in Internet Explorer under the DHTML moniker.

In 1999 I worked on a contract for Levi's in SF and clearly remember using JavaScript to pull data from a huge hierarchy of product styles and presenting it to the end user as a widget where they could add/remove/move entries around. I remember abusing the cookies API to save the latest client state between page refreshes as it was the only real way to do that at the time. Something like this would have been a total pain in the ass without logic in the browser. In fact, I may have been replacing some sort of Java Applet or ActiveX widget which did something similar in a slower, less flexible way.

So whether it was a huge success outside of corporations or not, I was using it to make a living pretty much from day one.

<comment><USER14> First proper JavaScript apps were Firefox/Netscape 9/Thunderbird where the user interface was done in JavaScript+XUL, while not being loaded from a server and most logic was done in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok, but what did people actually think about it? These are just quotes from high-up business people, they're trained to never say anything negative.

<comment><USER16> It was not well liked.

The majority of webpages did not use it, or it was used very sparingly for things like form validation.

Old versions of IE would have a dialog pop up if there was any kind of error during execution which happened frequently.

<comment><USER17> Not only that, for years afterwards the techie crowd and equivalent of places like HN (I suppose I am mostly talking about slashdot) had a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, etc.

I don't know exactly when the tides turned on this attitude. In 2000 the above were not controversial opinions. By 2010 it was gone, and I saw people call it crazy talk, but it probably happened earlier than that. Probably things like gmail in 2004 were a turning point.

<comment><USER18> >a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content,

I still feel like this.

<comment><USER17> Me too, I think. We're a minority though. I'm giving deference to the new normal.

<comment><USER19> My love of a paycheck drives me to give deference to the new normal. Meanwhile real desktop programs are still way more pleasant to use and way more respectful of my system resources, and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better performing than JS heavy ones.

<comment><USER17> > and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better > performing than JS heavy ones.

I dunno, there are some pretty egregious examples of this being false though. gmail is one such example. I remember using webmail in the days where every action was a full page load -- and we had slower connections then too, which made it hurt even more. Then gmail came out and blew everybody away with its response times. A well thought out AJAX solution could give you minimal load times for data. The issue lately is when the JS code is too big, not well tuned, and gives the equivalent of several 90s-era-website-full-pageloads worth of data with every action. That is to say a lot of websites aren't as lean as they could be.

I'm not a web focused person so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, this is my outsider's perspective.

<comment><USER19> "AJAX" when it was mostly grabbing chunks of HTML to insert or otherwise not doing much but "grab, render" was sometimes faster. Not so much these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All of these quotes are from business/sales/marketing people, not from developers actually using the language, and about a third of the people quoted have clearly mistaken it for Java.

</comment><comment><USER21> JavaScript is perfect example of Worse is Better [http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html](http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html)

Early JavaScript sucked bad. It sucked small planets.

As PG said 2005 about Web 2.0. [http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html)

>Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works."

<comment><USER2> I don't think it is. If JS had any sane competition, I think it would have lost. By some weird conjunction of events, it landed a monopoly on the most amazing plateform in the world.

PHP is a good example of Worse is Better, because it won over the competition, despite its flaws.

HTML vs xHTML as well. Bash, maybe?

But JS didn't win. It was the only one there.

<comment><USER22> What? JS had loads of competition back then. VBScript, Flash, and Java applets, just to name a few ways to get interactivity on a browser.

<comment><USER2> "sane" is the keyword here.

The alternative all depended on non technical users with slow connections to install the runtime.

Js code was guaranteed to work anywhere, and with no requirements, giving it practical monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article conflates "popular" with "loved". JS is popular because it's the only* language in which it's possible to write browser apps and extensions. The number of people using transpilers for this purpose is minimal.

In actual fact, most people try to avoid JS whenever possible, instead using TS or other languages that compile down to JS.

Saying people love JavaScript because it's the most popular is like saying people love McDonald's because it sells the most burgers

[*] since we don't have Java applets or Flash apps anymore. Writing in other languages still means transpiling to JS in the end

<comment><USER24> Meanwhile, you can use any language on the server yet many of us including myself use Javascript. I'd say modern Javascript is easily one of the best languages.

<comment><USER2> Most server side code is Java, quickly followed by PHP.

And of course next to JS, you have C#, Asp.Net, Ruby, Python, and Go.

I'd say that given that:

\- a lot of people only know JS (like designers)

\- JS has a monopoly on the front end and is the only language that can be used on the front and back

\- JS has existed for as long as Java (C#, Ruby and Go are way younger)

\- there are JS materials everywhere given the web popularity

\- the web is the most popular plateform in the world

The fact, as a freelancer going from company to company, I see so little JS on the server compared to other languages tells a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I vividly remember working on my school's website in 1997 with Microsoft FrontPage. I had built a rather complicated system where it would be possible to arrive at the same page from several origins. Whereas most web-pages had hyperlinks or allowed the user to use the "Back" button on the browser.

I decided I was going to have none of that amateur stuff or reliance on what is now referred to as "browser chrome" (though if the term even existed back then, I surely wasn't aware of it).

So I looked into this JavaScript thing, and wrote my first ever script embedded into a button:

onclick="javascript.history.go(-1)"

I was so proud of myself. For about a year users of my school's website were visibly amazed.

</comment><comment><USER26> JavaScript was used for very simple things when it was launched. Most pages used it for modifying button images when you hover or press a button, and for handling some web form operations. As others say JavaScript was very confusing, a programming language that was launched with Java in its name and to fill gaps in HTML limitations but there was no clear direction towards web app programming. Another confusing aspect was that Java was created for this purpose (to create web apps via applets).

We should not forget Macromedia Flash, it was a very interesting option offering a better programming language but it was not an standard with an open source reference.

<comment><USER27> Actionscript 1: a simple little language that could only be entered via a huge dropdown menu

Actionscript 2: basically Javascript, when I was writing stuff in AS2 my O'Riley pocket JS guide saw a lot more use than the pocket AS guide.

Actionscript 3: completely ECMAScript4, Macromedia/Adobe was on the standards board for that, but then Mozilla went a different way, I think, it is a giant mess [1]. Also AS3 was a _lot_ more verbose than AS2 which did not endear it to the people with one foot in art and one in programming that was a large part of Flash's user base.

1: [https://auth0.com/blog/the-real-story-behind- es4/](https://auth0.com/blog/the-real-story-behind-es4/)

<comment><USER26> In conjuntion with AS Flash offered animation capabilities that were impossible at the time. This animations are from 2000: [http://swain.webframe.org/zeek.html](http://swain.webframe.org/zeek.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is pretty clear none of them have any clue what JavaScript actually is. These are "endorsements" from "partners" trying to get on the hype train. They just want to ensure everybody that this new thing is a perfect fit for their product.

"JavaScript allows Internet applications to easily connect to production databases such as CA-OpenIngres"

"We plan to integrate our automatic document indexing and abstracting technology to leverage the power and functionality of JavaScript. "

"Illustra's unique extensible Object-Relational architecture makes it an ideal intelligent queryable store for content management applications using Java and JavaScript objects"

"JavaScript is a great way to get cross-platform scriptable access to databases and move the resulting data into Macromedia Shockwave"

"The creation of a general, standard scripting language for Java development will accelerate adoption of this new, exciting technology for delivering dynamic, live content to the consumer."

You could replace "JavaScript" with "Machine Learning" or "Blockchain" in the above quotes, and they would make just as much sense.

</comment><comment><USER29> For me the most interesting part of the article is how virtually all the influential companies being quoted have disappeared. America Online, Architex (who?), Computer Associates (haven't heard _that_ one in a while), DEC, HP (still around but a shadow of its former self), Iconovex (?), Illustra (?), Informix (acquired by IBM), Macromedia (eaten by Adobe), Metrowerks (?), SCO, SGI, Sybase, ...

<comment><USER30> Sad part is I remember them all, it was the best of times it was the worst of times. Be thankful you don't know who Computer Associates is. They are the grim reaper of software. Their model is buy aging software and milk the licences to death before the software is completely dead. Think Oracle with no initial innovation that distinguished them from any other IT mega-corp back then.

Metroworks built dev tooling and IDE's the where big on Mac's back in the day and they where awesome for their time.

<comment><USER31> Computer Associates is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. They changed their name at some point to CA Technologies and ended up being acquired by Broadcom sometime around the end of 2018/2019.

Another fun fact is that they had a huge accounting scandal around the dotcom crash involving a 35 day month! They ended up settling for around 300kk USD.

Edit: They settled for 225kk USD. Sanjay got 12 years in prison and an 8kk USD fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When JavaScript first came out, it couldn't do much. Aside from toys (eg: scrolling text in the status bar) the "serious" uses were mostly:

\- (hopefully redundant) client-side validation \- some styling (CSS was also brand new) \- basic animation (eg: changing the on-hover appearance of stuff) \- form "tweaking" (eg: disabling/hiding parts of a form dynamically based on other field values).

It wasn't really for writing apps in, just for adding small enhancements to apps that did their real work server-side.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow, apparently JavaScript was 100% great and there was nothing at all negative about it ever, according to people in tech!

<comment><USER34> That's because they hadn't used it yet. :)

In all seriousness, everyone was in on Java. Even Microsoft (Everyone was in on Java, even Microsoft ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B)). So most of us saw browser plugins and applets as the future, and some of those plug-ins were very impressive in those days.

JavaScript was seen as a glue language to manipulate components built in better languages. We thought there was going to be a rich component marketplace that was going to be embedded in web pages. We didn't think we'd still be mucking around with HTML and DOM manipulations.

<comment><USER35> I also thought Java was the future. But, Java tried to be an entire virtual OS, and gained too many security holes because of that. Flash had a similar fate.

It's not that JavaScript solved that, it's that it's built into the browser such that you can't really skip it. Like the Java and Flash engine, a web browser is also a fat bloated leaky client. However, if you toss the first two, you are then dealing with 1 fat client instead of 3 fat clients. It's easier to keep 1 FC up to date than 3.

<comment><USER34> Do you think the security holes killed Java and Flash? Or do you think they were just nails in the coffin?

I suspect performance and inconsistent experience killed Java applets and Sun stopped caring about desktop Java when they realized they can't make much money off it. Flash stuck around a lot longer than Java because it was fast, fun and ran consistently. It still lingered for some time after Jobs poisoned it.

Honestly, I don't think people cared that much about running updates. For most people, if the computer tells them they need to update, they update. I also don't think average users cared about security issues back then.

<comment><USER35> Re: _I also don 't think average users cared about security issues back then._

Recommendations in common publications to remove them unless absolutely necessary coincided with their market share slide, as I remember it.

Yes, Java applets was imperfect, but generally got better on every release. It was improving about as fast as JavaScript + DOM + CSS + HTML was.

Re: _For most people, if the computer tells them they need to update, they update._

It didn't help them in that they tried to trick you into installing extra junk apps during the update process, like tool bars (AKA spam bars) and "free" anti-virus scanners.

Java had a big issue with applications that needed older versions, but the older versions often had security holes. Oracle didn't manage backward compatibility well. Trying to be a virtual OS instead of just an app platform contributed to the too-much-complexity-to-manage problem for Oracle. KISS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> No printf. Less keywords than Java. Lame.

<comment><USER37> CmdrTaco will never live this down.

<comment><USER38> You have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wrote my first website in 1995 and started using Javascript in 1996 (only I think it was called Livescript back then)?

I was not impressed. On the client side I would use it for very few things and when I tried the server side version I decided that I would rather stick with Perl and CGI. Although I did not like Perl, I could get things done with it. (Oh, I just remember: also Cold Fusion!)

My opinion of Javascript has not improved over the years. I worked with Javascript for a while and in complex enough problems that my name ended up on 2-3 patents and patent applications. I no longer work on the web, but I have occasional need for Javascript and I always hate my time with it.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but frankly I am perplexed by its popularity, because it is neither simple nor elegant.

<comment><USER40> > I think it was called Livescript back then)?

As Encyclopedia Brittanica (!! who'd have thought) puts it,

 _JavaScript was developed in 1995 at Netscape Communications Corp. and was conceived of as a companion to Java. It was originally called Mocha and then LiveScript before Netscape received a marketing license from Sun.[0]_

And then it became 'a dialect of ECMAScript'...

[0] [https://www.britannica.com/technology/JavaScript](https://www.britannica.com/technology/JavaScript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what Brendan Eich actually thought about it at the time, I mean he had and did do it pretty quickly. Was he actually thinking this will be really cool and people will need it or was he thinking stupid pointy haired bosses, we should use applets!

I mean the quality he did put into it argues for he thought it was really cool, but perhaps he is so much of a craftsman he wouldn't put in less effort on something he considered to be a bad idea (unfortunately not many people have this admirable quality

</comment><comment><USER42> I couldn't make heads nor tails of it when it debuted. But I was only 17.

This article brings me back to a time when every product had a bunch of these "empty suit" quotes about it. The person never said that stuff, it was all written for them. I remember being on a project where marketing fluff was "said" by someone who had no idea what was going on and, besides, the product wasn't doing anything, let alone what he claimed the technology enabled it to do.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm sure they would all love how far it's gotten. Like, on the Medium site that we're reading this on, how they help google track you with JS by using google sign on nagging you every damn time you visit to sign in with whatever account you're currently signed into google in, in any of their services.

</comment><comment><USER44> > "AT&T's support for JavaScript is more than support for cool technology — it > is support for an open standards process. Open standards are and will be as > important to the success of the Internet as open connectivity."

Still true, but ironic to hear a huge telco monopoly say it.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder what the alternative reality could be in which browsers adopted Tcl instead.

<comment><USER46> That might be an interesting counterfactual for a blog post (or series). What if {x} had been the dominant web scripting language?

What does that language offer that JS can't match, and what trade offs does it make to get there? I suppose you'd have to write a hypothetical spec for dom APIs, etc that don't exist in the target language, and then pretend to use it and see what the pain points/unexpected pleasures are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The language Self was just released couple years before that and I thought it was the coolest language since sliced bread. Then Javascript came out and wow, it incorporated the key ideas from Self.

</comment><comment><USER48> The GIFs are the best part

<comment><USER49> I'm actually very disappointed in the gifs.

Most of the memes are faux retro. The fiji water bottle is representative of the vaporwave aesthetic from 2016 or so. The font animation is also super modern, circa early 2010s. It's all fake.

They should have pulled more stuff from Geocities archive. This is not how things were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Based on those comments, it seems that a lot of vendors saw JavaScript as an integration opportunity to sell their database software. It's interesting that it didn't work out that way and JS today mostly interacts with databases via intermediary server software.

</comment><comment><USER51> Lol document.write in a table in Netscape 2. Still remember my first experience with a buggy js implementation :-)

My favorite early js story is writing a "life cycle of stars" app in 4 hours in 1997 and getting a full high school semester worth of credit for it :-)

</comment><comment><USER52> ""Paper Software plans to use JavaScript as the glue which lets our development partners couple Java, plug-ins, and Paper's multi-dimensional VRML user interfaces within a distributed, online application.""

These quotes don't sound right. I was working for an ISP around 1995ish and telling people how to set up Trumpet WinSock and MacTCP and Internet Explorer. Java wasn't even public yet, was it? Someone wanted an interactive web page, so I used Perl and CGI.

"JavaScript is a great way to get cross-platform scriptable access to databases and move the resulting data into Macromedia Shockwave, where it can be rendered, animated and made into live interactive multimedia for the Internet."

Live interactive multimedia? At 3.6KB/s? I remember a T1 (24 simultaneous calls) being a big deal, now my phone seems to have about 40 times the bandwidth.

A lot of familiar stuff came out around that general time, but it didn't spring forth fully formed. Someone was creating what would become eBay at the time too, but that doesn't mean it was a thing yet.

Maybe these are all genuine quotes, but they feel like they are from someone who thinks of 1995, 1998, 2002, etc. as all being "a long time ago".

</comment><comment><USER53> Fast forward 25 years and we have three different semantics for "not a thing"

</comment><comment><USER54> It was also the scripting language for Netscape's web server

</comment><comment><USER55> I loved building JavaScript apps when JavaScript wasn't cool yet. (2006-2010)

<comment><USER56> I built JavaScript apps in 1995-1996... Must have been extremely uncool then...

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> This obviously lends the question, given it's criticism back in the day, which PL is the next javascript?

<comment><USER58> Maybe it depends on what's the next platform. C/C++ was sort of a base programming language for desktop apps, javascript for the browser, and Objective C & Java for mobile. Server apps have been a mix of PHP/python/java/ruby/node.js.

I guess my 2 wild guesses for the long-term future might be either or both 1) a visual/block programming tool (which perhaps might perhaps be more usable in virtual reality type environments) or 2) natural language programming (programming in English and/or other natural languages), which might be more usable in both virtual reality and chat environments.

<comment><USER59> So, Smalltalk/Pharo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> JS was unusable for me before ES6. Hated it back then. Then ES6 came, and it finally became usable, though not great. Types are still missing, apart from several little things. There's Typescript but something native to the language would be preferable;

</comment><comment><USER61> To be fair, I didn't start programming in JavaScript until 2000, but even back then I could see that it would be a game changer for the web.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you keep business & personal tasks/projects in one place? - <AUTHOR>

I run a small 3 person web development shop where we use Basecamp for project management, and I personally have been using Omnifocus for everything else.  I am interested in hearing how others handle these separate aspects of their life.<p>Do you keep "get oil change" and "review client request" in one master place/app?  Why or why not? <comment><USER2> I used to have the same workflow. Checkout <http://spootnik.net> to sync OmniFocus with your Basecamp accounts. Then you can just work in OmniFocus for the most part.

I've since moved everything into <http://getflow.com>. If you're mainly using the task lists in Basecamp, have a look at them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally was/am having a hard time with items being in two places. The quick entry feature of Omnifocus made that the dumping ground for tasks, that then I would go into Basecamp to breakdown, explain, and assign.

I have used spootnik as well, and now I am testing getflow.com for not only myself but for the team in replacement of Basecamp. I like the quick entry feature and the delegation....interested in seeing how it compares as a project management tool to Basecamp.</comment></comment>


Google debuts Pixel 4 phone, wireless earbuds with AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.detroitnews.com/story/tech/2019/10/15/google-new-gadgets-pixel-4-wireless-earbuds/40321649/ <comment><USER2> I will never ever buy a phone without a fingerprint scanner on the front. It might be under the screen or a separate button, I don't care. It just has to be, and it must be on the front side.

<comment><USER3> Behind the phone is actually pretty natural if you try using it.

I have the Pixel 3 XL, and my index or middle finger rests naturally on the fingerprint scanner when I pickup the phone or take it out of my pocket.

Having the scanner on the front of the phone means you need 2 hands to unlock it... on the back... it can be done in 1 action.

<comment><USER2> Of course, I speak from experience. I had a miserable week of using a phone with a fingerprint scanner on the back. Front-faced scanners allow unlocking the phone while it lies on the back, without lifting it. Rear-faced, not so much.

> Having the scanner on the front of the phone means you need 2 hands to > unlock it...

Why is that? I almost never use my 6.4" phone with two hands, and my thumb rests naturally on front-facing scanner. Anyway, YMMV, but rear-faced scanners made me very miserable, so I will stay away from them, and face-unlock-only devices.</comment></comment></comment>


The Ugliest Sign in America - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/thing-piece-the-ugliest-sign-in-america-5f53652ba7b <comment><USER2> Is it a common opinion that these signs are _ugly_? I certainly don't consider them aesthetically pleasing, but they are so ubiquitous, functional, and necessary that it never even crossed my mind to think of them as either ugly _or_ attractive, in the same way that I've never pondered the aesthetic merits of stop signs.

<comment><USER3> > ubiquitous, functional, and necessary

I think it's like the plumage of the male peacock. It doesn't make sense at all to put on that display, but if everyone does it you can't be the only one out, because it's expected.

Here in old-timey Europe I know only one shop that has an open sign like that, and it's a massage parlor.

<comment><USER4> In Italy, I kind of associate signs like that with fast food - kebab shops, for instance.

<comment><USER5> Those are the first places I consciously registered seeing them myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tangential story: I live in Norway where neon signs are basically unknown (or at least, were back then). When I was a kid and visited the continent for the first time, I recall being struck by how common neon signs were, even in "serious" establishments like drug stores. At the time, already the pretentious aesthete, I quickly decided that the popularity of neon signs on the continent was a sign of poor taste.

After reading this article, I wonder why these kinds of differences between countries exist. In Norway it would _almost_ be gauche to open a brick-and- mortar business without first hiring a designer to create your visual expression, but other countries seem to like neon signs (and the like) better or alternatively just don't care as much about the visual design of a store's sign.

<comment><USER7> > After reading this article, I wonder why these kinds of differences between > countries exist.

The US has high per-capita income (lower than Norway, but not by much), but that average hides a lot of income disparity. This percolates to other disciplines as well; lots of highly educated people but also a large disinterested population; plenty of artistic talent but also a majority which is not able to fully appreciate aesthetics.

Some level of homogeneity (which is the true form of equality) is perhaps a characteristic of sophisticated future societies.

Add: Among wealthy nations, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Japan sit at the bottom of income disparity indexes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ..).

<comment><USER8> Just because someone's taste differs from yours doesn't make them "not able to fully appreciate aesthetics".

<comment><USER9> Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Because LEDs are essentially microchips, they can be programmed."

This is incorrect. The die process size (and chemistry) used for making LEDs would make absolutely terrible microchips. All programmable signs have separate control chips.

<comment><USER11> LEDs at 4 V DC are probably much easier to control with "microchips", which operate at a similar voltage, than neon at 2-15 KV AC. I agree he worded it badly, but the conclusion still makes sense for a loose reading of "essentially".

<comment><USER12> Plus, the RGB LED pictured in the article can be "programmed" in the sense that the colour can be defined on the fly, and isn't bound to the bulb colour defined in the original design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a former night worker, let me say, no matter how ugly, JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU'RE OPEN. And your hours of operation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Neon "doesn't feel cool" and LEDs make a taco place seem upscale?!

LED signs like that make a place seem cheap and tacky.

I would've said that neon was retro/cool?

<comment><USER15> Different things seem cool to different people. _In particular_ , different things seem cool depending on your social class, especially depending on which social class you want to signal membership in/which social classes you think you could be mistaken for and want to disclaim membership in. I bet you don't think gold-colored iPhone cases with fake jewels on them look particularly cool either.

See part 1 here: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new- left/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/)

<comment><USER16> Moreover, even things that look cool to different people can look cool in different contexts.

A traditional neon "Open" sign might look horrible contrasted against the sleek interior of an Apple store, or Crate and Barrel, but could well be perfectly appropriate and hip at a Johnny Rockets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's funny is that I have come across small shopping places, not quite large enough to be called centers, which only allow the old-style carved in wood, probably with a precision router, but non the less, only visible with the aid of daylight and at night focused lights. Depending on lighting conditions, and the contrast, they can be hard to read.

That appears to signal 'upscale' and cachet, I guess, as I have mostly seen it in tony areas.

As for LED vs Neon, I think it all depends on the design and how well it fits in to the design of the rest of the business.

If it's simply for utilitarian purposes, like say a dry cleaner's, all you need to know is that they are open or closed. Aesthetics, don't come much into play, except for the new 'green' dry cleaning, so i suppose LEDs would reflect conservation a little better.

Anyhow, I think one's preference for signage depends on your exposure. If Neon signs remind you of Bail Bonds, dodgy motels and other peripheral businesses, you'll probably think they are tacky. If instead they recall a great BBQ joint or sushi bar, you probably have a favorable view of them. Same for the other signage technologies.

</comment><comment><USER18> The ones most people buy from Sam's club [1] look a lot better than the samples he shows in the article (and look better in real life than on the Sam's Club site). I had one of these in my store, and the fake neon actually looked pretty good. And it had the handy feature of telling customers when the store was open.

[http://www.samsclub.com/sams/double-stroke-open-sign- super-b...](http://www.samsclub.com/sams/double-stroke-open-sign-super-bright- led/prod1260423.ip)

</comment><comment><USER19> While the article was focused on why LEDs are bad, it did briefly touch on the history of signage but missed an important point: The masses were until relatively recently illiterate, and a sign had much power.

"Where shall we meet?" "The White Swan." Which could be identified by a picture of a while swan hanging outside.

I can't help but feel signage still achieves these purposes of association (which the author also touched on, but didn't elaborate on): A tacky neon sign can be recognized instantly from 100 meters or more: size, colours, rough silhouette, instant recognition of what it means, an assurance of the level of quality (i.e. average, run-of-the-mill, but probably good enough).

</comment><comment><USER20> In my town someone has gone up and down the main road selling variously- colored LED light strips, and many businesses have used them to outline their windows, doors, trees, fences, etc. In many places, the LEDs are so bright you can barely see the name of the business at night -- which often is non- illuminated.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's wrong with electroluminscent wire?

It's inexpensive, has the 'swoosh' and is pretty much indestructible.

[http://www.thepoopers.com/house/blog/diy-neon- sign](http://www.thepoopers.com/house/blog/diy-neon-sign)

<comment><USER22> Very cool. But quoting the article:

> The light coming from EL Wire has varying intensities depending on the type > and thickness you buy. They do not compete with traditional neons in terms > of intensity though. But you're getting a compromise for an easy do-it-at- > home alternative. All EL wires naturally slowly degrade in UV light, but > they're just fine for most purposes. If you need extra UV protecion, > coolneon.com's "Phat" wire have extra UV protection, so they could work > indoors or out (but you probably should keep it away from bright sun > anyway).

I did, while reading the original post, had to wonder: why don't more signs use LEDs to light up coloured plastic from behind? It might look nicer... But it might also end up costing more, so perhaps I have my answer. And of course, this is all assuming you want a tacky open sign instead of something more useful, or redesigning a storefront to more clearly indicate if you're open or not. I hate when people forget to turn off the open signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article mentions Wade Swormstedt and the Swormstedt family's background in signs. Tod Swormstedt founded a sign museum in Cincinnati, OH ([http://www.americansignmuseum.org/](http://www.americansignmuseum.org/)). If you're at all into the history of signs and placards you'll really enjoy visiting it.

<comment><USER24> I'm not into the history of signs or placards at all, and I _still_ thought that museum was superb. I took the guided tour with Tod himself. His enthusiasm for signage made the whole thing all the more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As an European visiting the US, I have to say that these Open signs are definitely useful.

You can tell from afar if a place is open or not.

</comment><comment><USER26> So an outdated technology was replaced by a cheaper solution that served the exact same purpose. Sounds like we should be cheering for the the LED signs.

</comment><comment><USER27> Neon signs are confusing during day. They are not bright enough in bright sunlight. You have to look closely to see if they are on or off. Flip boards seem very practical and do their job well in day or night. I see purpose in having name of the shop done in neon as it's the brand name. Don't see why Open signs should also be in neon. Initially, I thought thats what the article was about.

</comment><comment><USER28> The author, Dan Koeppel, runs a cool event called Big Parade ([http://bigparadela.tumblr.com](http://bigparadela.tumblr.com)).

He chooses a walking route through an area with historical significance, and gets a group of people to walk it. The main one is downtown LA to Griffith observatory, which gets several hundred people, but he has done other one- offs. From the description:

"The Big Parade is a two-day walk in Los Angeles. It includes about 80 public stairways over 35 miles, from downtown to the Griffith Observatory. The walk runs on a timetable, and is designed as a series of attached loops, so that people can come and go as they please - join us for a mile, an hour, or an epic."

</comment><comment><USER29> The idea that neon is classy but nearly-indistinguishable LED is not seems completely arbitrary and idiosyncratic.

<comment><USER30> Neon has a long history and have a retro nostalgia feel that harkens back to the 30's,40's and 50's. LEDs are just cold modern technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do we need open/closed signs at all? Isn't it often obvious if the store is open or closed?

<comment><USER32> I think the benefit of these signs is seeing it from a distance, so you don't have to go up to the door and check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)

 _Understanding media_ is _enormously_ worth reading if you haven't already. It's short but dense with insight.

</comment><comment><USER34> From my point of view, these signs always seem to be _WAY_ brighter than corresponding neon.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have this one on my wall, very cool.

[http://www.mystiglo.com/index.php?route=product/product&path...](http://www.mystiglo.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_60&product_id=50)

</comment><comment><USER36> Disappointed that they aren't covering the _real_ reason:

[http://youtu.be/OtX2IToSuHY](http://youtu.be/OtX2IToSuHY)

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the neon one is a really great looking sign, particularly the one in cyan with a cyan surround.

Not so sure on the LED ones though!

</comment><comment><USER38> What's with the disgusting "Are you human? Recommend this story." bullshit at the bottom? Are they implying that only robots would read it and not be grateful enough for the wisdom imparted upon them to recommend?

</comment><comment><USER39> Nah,

The "open" signs provided beer or soda makers were uglier. The LED open sign just kind of mediocre.

America has always been a rather ugly place. The many wretched, tasteless signs hanging on liquor stores provided by the nastiest sugar, tobacco and alcohol interests have overall been the capstones of this typically American ugliness. Anything is better than these. Not classy or nice looking but not quite as terrible.

<comment><USER40> I think that's a bit of an over generalization. I find many of its buildings quite breathtaking: \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Center_for_the_Performi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Center_for_the_Performing_Arts) \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240_Centre_Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240_Centre_Street) \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley_Post_Office](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley_Post_Office) \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alwyn_Court](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alwyn_Court) \- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_U.S._Custom_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_U.S._Custom_House)

Yeah, I might have to agree that American art and beauty might not best be showcased at liquor stores but lets not use that brush to paint the rest of the country.

<comment><USER41> Funny how tastes differ. I certainly wouldn't disagree that the US has great architecture (such a rich, diverse, and big place is practically guaranteed to have that), though the examples you picked seem like the blandest bombast ever to me. All interesting and even fascinating buildings, certainly, though not something I find aesthetically pleasing.</comment></comment></comment>


Trade in mammoth ivory, helped by global thaw, flourishes in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/25/europe/mammoth.php

<comment><USER2> I fail to see how they could sequence a mammoth's genome, yet consider it unlikely we'll eventually be able to clone one.

I want a pet mammoth dammit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had no idea this existed for sale. What an awesome gift it would make.</comment>


Web Server Benchmarking, a rant - <AUTHOR> http://jlouisramblings.blogspot.com/2011/06/web-server-benchmarking-rant.html <comment><USER2> A very interesting breakdown of how statistics can end up skewing conclusions, if you aren't asking the right questions.

 _Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything. ~Gregg Easterbrook_</comment>


How to Spot a Spook (1974) - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/dirty-work/spot-spook.htm <comment><USER2> A (probably apocryphal) story which I heard when spending a few weeks at a facility deemed of the greatest interest to spooks a couple of decades ago was that the security services tended to identify infiltrators by questioning the bar maid at the local pub.

Apparently, regulations required the agents to only have small beers, presumably to avoid indiscretions while inebriated.

Only problem was, none of the locals ever ordered small beers, as the general practice was to get wasted enough to forget what a godforsaken place you'd wound up in, if only for an evening.

</comment><comment><USER3> This piece reminds me of [http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amaz...](http://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_amazing_success_identifying_cia_agents_in_the_field/)

"What Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas."

<comment><USER4> >"The invariable indicators...agency officers _usually_ had more than one working foreign language, their cover was _usually_ as a "political" or "consular" official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations _usually_ left agency personnel untouched"

Reading stuff like this is really irritating. Do the author and editors not know the meaning of "unchanging and invariable"? It just makes the entire article seem idiotic.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Outside of formally defined abstract systems, "invariant" almost always means "usual"

<comment><USER4> I am a native English speaker and have never heard someone use "unchangeable" or "invariable" to mean anything other than the correct meaning: "not variable; not changing or capable of being changed; static or constant."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Mossad had a big embarrassment some years ago. Wearing ties is not common in Israel, but, for forged credentials, people were usually photographed wearing a tie. The photography shop provided people with a tie.

The Mossad used the same three ties for everybody.

<comment><USER6> Contamination kills; I'm amazed they reused forging facilities like that.

<comment><USER7> I doubt CIA Technical Services was burned down and reconstructed for every mission. Seems like intelligence agencies are always going to want some shared, reusable resources.

<comment><USER6> Of course not, but they don't use the same signature techniques on all forged documents either -- that would just be silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The CIA has a different health insurance plan from the State Department. The premium records, which are unclassified and usually available to local employees, are a dead giveaway."

I wonder if this is still the case? Seems like a very externally observable difference, especially today.

<comment><USER9> it would be fascinating to have an update about these ideas, and a look at which signals have changed, what signals are the same, and what new signals might exist.

<comment><USER10> I generally get the feeling that people were way more wreckless before the 80's. The level of technology at the time is surprisingly low. Card catalogs and the dewey decimal system represented a nominal level of information technology, rendering many audit trails nearly opaque.

Of course, physical, structural security was bad too. Break a window and climb on in, just repair the window when you leave and maybe that'd be enough to capture some records. If it wasn't a bank or a prison, a building probably wasn't a fortress unless it was extra special.

People cared a lot less about how life turned out 40 or 50 years ago. Alcohol, tobacco, diseases everywhere, and medicine was kind of terrible. You get a feel that risk taking was normal.

Now, people clench up at the thought of breaking any rules. Call it the new technological superstition. We don't believe in god, but we believe in logs.

<comment><USER11> Having worked with some departments where the average age was 50+ I've definitely seen flagrant rule bending for risky behavior (e.g. not carrying radiation detectors, working on roofs without proper "safety" equipment, etc). The thing is these people got the job done. The younger generation (which I belong to) would likely throw up their hands and claim they couldn't complete the task because some prerequisite for a rule wasn't in place.

<comment><USER12> Why would you work in an unsafe environment without proper tools and safety measures? If you get injured the insurance company won't pay a cent, since you broke the safety protocol, and the employer will probably just fire you. Dead people can't sue for damages either.

If you are an just an employee, it makes perfect sense to throw up your hands and claim you can't solve a problem, when the alternative is taking risks that reward the company, rather than yourself.

<comment><USER13> It depends on values. Many of a certain age grew up in an environment that placed less emphasis on benefits to an individual and/or their employer and more on "gettin' it done".

Not endorsing either POV, just noting that one's formative era affects one's behavior.

<comment><USER2> Also, in an entity large enough, you may find that your incentives clash all the time as different parts of the organization have different views of what constitutes success; one department may put the organizational equivalent of barbed wire and minefields in your path, while another department, blissfully ignorant of said minefields, order you to charge ahead.

So, what do you do?

a) Throw up your hands in despair and do nothing, annoying whoever asked you to wade through barbed wire only to find the minefield.

b) Get down to it, step on a few mines after getting cut to shreds on the barbed wire, annoying the people who placed the mines as well as the ones who asked you to charge ahead (which are, by now, annoyed that you didn't complete the task on schedule.)

c) Try to point to the inconsistencies of The System and ask for clarification and advice. Annoy both the people who put down the mines (who fail to see why anyone wouldn't want a mine field there, it's not like they put them down for fun!) and the people who simply want you to do your job (noting that you complain that the sappers keep you from doing it well, rather than just getting down to it.)

d) Quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There were a couple of things I found interesting. One was the article's assertion that David Bruce was clearly regular Foreign Service, yet his bio shows he worked for the OSS, the direct predecessor of the CIA.

>Bruce, David KE--b Md 2/21/98, m (Evangeline Bell). >Princeton U AB 19. Mem Md bar. US Army 17-19, >42-45 col overseas. PRIV EXPER ... >GOVT EXPER with Off Strategic Sers 41-45

The other is the date of publication, just before the Church committee crippled the CIA for a number of years. It makes me wonder how this fits in with all the other events of that time.

<comment><USER15> Good eye. It does say "GOVT EXPER _with_ OSS" (emphasis on 'with') rather than "XYZ _of_ OSS", implying some sort of external role – such as helping establish chain of command in the early days, or some other bureaucratic help. A glance at the register itself shows that most OSS involvement is cited with the "of" convention: [https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biograph...](https://archive.org/stream/biographicregist1950unit/biographicregist1950unit_djvu.txt) (BR, 1950 edition)

<comment><USER14> The distinction of "with" and "of" is interesting in itself. I guess he may have coordinated external logistics or something else during the war for them. '41-'45 is a long involvement, either way; surely he knew plenty of people there. Makes me wonder about the motives for bringing up his name then dismissing him as anything but career foreign service in the original article.

And that's exactly what makes spy work so interesting to observe in the first place: trying to figure out the motives, reality vs. cover, intent, etc. of complete strangers. It's all fun and games until you become their target, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As I understand the situation, the agents that are placed this way have only the shallowest cover and their job is to interface with the agents and sources that are actually secret.

The overt description of covert operations, made by the CIA, in their career description, is that agents _handle_ sources and sources do whatever dirty deeds the agency really wants done. Of course, the CIA has entirely different sections with military or hacking capability but basic "game" of embassy based agents interfacing with covert agents interfacing with actual sources remains.

<comment><USER17> I guess these shallow cover people could be followed or bugged to find the deeper agents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me a bit of this: [https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum- spies.htm](https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm) (The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies)

</comment><comment><USER19> I was surprised to find the Central Intelligence Agency in my weblogs. This means they both leave JavaScript on and use the company IP for casual browsing. I'd expect that they make attack vectors as small as possible and have access to IP ranges that can not be so easily traced back to them, but maybe the rules are more relaxed for casual browsing/research.

Don't these agencies, militaries, and companies (BAH, Lockheed, Boeing, Dell) get micro-targetted exactly like this? I'd imagine foreign intelligence agencies use websites and ad networks to drop zero-days on persons of interest.

<comment><USER20> The US military uses NIPRNet which blocks a range of websites on the internet. HN is not one of them thankfully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are the Foreign Service List and the Biographic Register still published? A quick search only yielded editions many decades old.

<comment><USER22> The FSL still exists; don't know about the Biographic Register -- haven't seen that. Essentially the FSL is provided to host countries with a listing of all personnel on diplo passports. NOCs are obviously not listed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nowadays it's easier to tell – if they work for gov and aren't active on Twitter, they're hiding something

<comment><USER23> Probably a silly question, but how do you know they're not active on Twitter? I mean, outside of well known elected officials here (like the US president, UK prime minister, mayors, etc) I'm not sure there's much of a reason for people to state they work for the government on social media sites.

Might be a fair few government employees who just don't tie their social media presence to their real identity for one reason or another. If I get a role in the UK civil service I'm certainly not putting a job description in my Twitter profile, but that doesn't mean I work for MI5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So this story at then end suggest that the human intel is out dated and we should rely on technical means. This is what we did and it ended up being a major cockup that led to failures to understand and predict issues, Iran and Iraq being some of them. We are still rebuilding our human intel assets. The Russian who lacked the technical expertise have always relied on human intel and it shows (trump, et.al)

</comment><comment><USER25> I started reading this but had trouble maintaining my interest. Near the beginning (called the "hook" in journalism) it said that the station chief had had his own office bugged.

\- Could someone who read through to the end mention what the eventual answer the journalist gave, as to why?

(I see I got almost instantly downvoted[1], but could you answer the question?)

Thanks.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png](http://i.imgur.com/wH95OMt.png)

<comment><USER25> really, guys? downvotes galore, but not half a second to reply briefly? I didn't ask a lot.

<comment><USER26> if you are too lazy to read the article, don't expect others to do the work for you and give you a synopsis. Do your own work or quietly move on

<comment><USER25> I didn't ask for a synopsis, but whatever. reading articles isn't "work" and not everyone has to be interested in every aspect of everything, all the time.

<comment><USER26> if you are interested in the answer to your questions, read the article.

<comment><USER25> >if you are interested in the answer to your question

I guess I'm not. Hey, let me ask you something. Are you a very experienced Linux user? It's the only other community I've heard this perspective from.

<comment><USER26> no</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Database as Filesystem [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN6IwNriwHc <comment><USER2> Building a POSIX-compatible file system on top of a database engine (Postgres, MariaDB) on raw partitions..

I could see advantages like being able to have indexes, relationships, run queries on files' metadata, import/export the whole tree or branches (folders), maybe easier managing of distributed file systems..

Aside from the performance overhead for the sake of experimentation, from my not-very-knowledgeable perspective, the idea seems to have enough interesting implications that I'm curious to see where it could go.

I also like other variations on this, like "file system as database", "Git repo as file system", and so on.

<comment><USER3> You can read on the background and challenges here in Salman Niazi's PhD - [http://kth.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1260852/FULLTEXT0...](http://kth.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1260852/FULLTEXT02.pdf). This is not a new topic - WinFS (part of the failed Longhorn project) was the best known example, which tried to use SQL Server as the metadata store for a new windows FS. Performance killed them.

The reason why we managed to get better performance compared to all previous attempts it three-fold:

1\. we used an in-memory high performance DB (NDB) and we did not de-normalize our schemas (no caching!)

2\. with denormalized tables, we needed cross-partition transactions at high performance

3\. we did a reasonable job at re-implementing HDFS' POSIX-like model using read-isolated transactions and row-level locking and new protocol for sub-tree operations.

<comment><USER4> _> Performance killed them._

I've often wondered if there's a point at which something like WinFS would become practical simply through the perpetual advance of hardware. MS started working on the concept back in the early '90s (as part of Cairo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_\(operating_system\))), and eventually gave up on it in 2006, which was nearly 15 years ago now. Devices today have significantly more memory and compute power on tap than they did in 2006, and if you roll the comparison all the way back to 1991 we're on a completely different planet today. And there are entirely new _types_ of hardware that could be leveraged now too, such GPUs, solid-state disks, etc.

I have no idea if MS ever published their performance data, but if they did, it'd be interesting to use it to figure out what a theoretical machine that could run WinFS, as it was when MS gave up on it, fast enough to be useable would look like, and how close to that theoretical machine the machines of today are.

<comment><USER5> I guess when the next Windows would include a novel FS, people would not care. After decades of experimenting (does anybody remember the fears of users when it was introduced that Longhorn deprecates the traditional filesystem for query-based dynamic folders and thelike... In the end it remained only as another "addition", not a replacement), people expect a desktop filesystem to do what it always did.

Even more, the way how Android and iOS hides away the filesystem from the user in everyday tasks shows that for end users, the technical fundament isn't in the focus anymore. Modern filesystems is something which will change how servers ("backends") work but not how customers do.

That's why I think MS burrows WinFS and will probably never dig it out again...

<comment><USER6> I know why they did it but to me hiding the filesystem is one of the most annoying and cumbersome parts of mobile operating systems. It's a shame to have such a lack of freedom with data.

<comment><USER7> You mean iOS? You have fairly extensive access to everything on storage on Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me a little bit of the ideas behind Reiser4[1] -- the idea being that we could unify different namespaces of data (files, metadata of files, databases, anything) into a unified namespace which you could then use Unix tools on. It is a bit of a shame that the ideas behind Reiser4 have been lost with Hans Reiser's murder conviction, and nobody has really picked them back up since then.

One of the neat ideas more directly related to this talk is that Reiser4 had the ability for users to define their own data layout (I think they were called "modules") which would allow you to optimise the filesystem layout for databases while still allowing non-database software to read the contents.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrMVPnxa04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrMVPnxa04)

</comment><comment><USER9> This was the idea behind murdererfs, right? It worked pretty well to power mp3.com for a few years.

The great [https://philip.greenspun.com/panda/databases- choosing](https://philip.greenspun.com/panda/databases-choosing) talks a bit about the issue:

 _The great thing about the file system is its invisibility. You probably didn 't purchase it separately, you might not be aware of its existence, you won't have to run an ad in the newspaper for a file system administrator with 5+ years of experience, and it will pretty much work as advertised. All you need to do with a file system is back it up to tape every day or two._

He goes on to say that the main thing RDBMSes add to your web-serving life is ACID transactions, which I think is pretty much true. Sadly modern filesystems still don't support ACID transactions, though often they do manage to export sufficient functionality for user-level code like Postgres and SQLite to do so.

<comment><USER10> > Sadly modern filesystems still don't support ACID transactions

They offer range locking, optimistic locking, snapshots, atomic swaps, durable writes and various other interesting features as primitives. If you're willing to build some data storage around a specific filesystem you can do a lot. The correct incantations to get those features can be a bit gnarly, but so is coding database engines.

NTFS even offers actual transactions, although their use is discouraged.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, why is their use discouraged? Because Jim Gray's sailboat sank?

<comment><USER10> [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/fileio/deprec...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/fileio/deprecation-of-txf)

<comment><USER9> This just says that since nobody uses it they might delete it, but it doesn't explain why nobody uses it. Presumably because it doesn't work well or is hard to use, but which, and how?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> HopsFS is based around using an in-memory database as the metadata store for a filesystem -

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast17/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast17/technical- sessions/presentation/niazi)

HopsFS is a drop-in replacement for HDFS, and the above paper showed 16X throughput improvement for Spotify's Hadoop workload over Apache HDFS. Since then, HopsFS has added small files in the metadata layer, with over 60X throughput improvement and an order of magnitude lower latency for writing small files (ACM Middleware'18):

[https://www.logicalclocks.com/millions-and-millions-of- files...](https://www.logicalclocks.com/millions-and-millions-of-files-deep- learning-at-scale-with-hopsfs/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Thats one of the reasons why need to rely more on micro-kernel design OS first, so it's easiar to advance and experiment with different designs for the storage layer.

The "everything is a file" mindset was great to move us from the chaos they were in back in the day to where we are right now. But with the modern ecosystem is holding us all back, because is too rigid, and a abstraction that its a poor fit to a lot of modern scenarios.

With micro-kernels, we could have the kernel dealing only with persistent storage blocks and leave the storage abstraction to the userspace where it belongs.

If im not mistaken, The Zircon kernel go even further by abstracting through pages.. so you could just map a collection of blocks to those pages and deal only with the pages in memory, no matter they source (if disk, network or only on memory).

Leaving the abstractions to userspace and by doing so, enabling us to download, install, and mix those abstractions in a way that is a good fit for a giving scenario.

As we have seen, the monolithic kernel have trouble with the bazaar approach as those experiments have to be shipped in kernel-space, with all the trouble this entails.

</comment><comment><USER12> I do it the other way around, filesystem as database: [http://root.rupy.se](http://root.rupy.se)

Just learned to partition the SD card for my RPi 2 cluster properly with ext4 type "small" so I don't run out of inodes.

Also purchased 6x 256GB Toshiba for 40$ each, I have been waiting for large and cheap microSD cards since 2015!

<comment><USER13> TMSU ([https://tmsu.org/](https://tmsu.org/)) is another one like this. It's simple and inter-operates with everything that currently exists and it offers most features you'd want out of a database file system.

<comment><USER12> Ok, do you know how tmsu stores it's metadata? I found references to sqlite3 in the source.

ROOT actually uses the filesystem AS database, it has no separate index files except the "link" ones and those only store a binary list of long id's to other files.

ROOT has some features that are missing from tmsu though; like distributed real-time replication over async. HTTP (scales across continents). HTTP API with JSON support. User management and security. All of that within ~4000 lines of code.

I built it to have a MMO database that doesn't need manual moving of data for region switching and backup while avoiding the sync. bottleneck of all other databases.

Here are two sites that use it: [http://talk.binarytask.com](http://talk.binarytask.com) and [http://fuse.rupy.se](http://fuse.rupy.se)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The original Be File System (BFS) for BeOS had _some_ attributes of a database. I'm happy to see more research being done on the concept.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are different portions to a FS that actually need to be treated indivudually:

\- Bricks / Blocks / Blob data.

\- Metadata / Tags / Xactional data.

The deal is that any DB <-> FS has to support both of these separately. The Bricks/Blocks are optimized for raw performance/seek/access pattern with very low overhead; The Metadata are optimized for fancy querying / fast lookup semantics.

Any DB/Key Value store for large data could be modeled on top of a volume layer, like LVM / ZVOL; This could absolutely become the foundation of a FS as well.

The deal is that extensible / flexible storage space used to be something filesystems used to provide, but those functions have been moved to a volume manager in regular systems. The reliability and metadata part can be moved to the database layer, so that leaves the filesystem doing a No-Op.

</comment><comment><USER16> Altria did something similar almost 30 years ago with MVFS - [https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21230196](https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21230196) \- on top of RDM. The SCM tool (IBM Rational Clearcase) that makes use of MVFS to map a database of modifications to a file system is still around.

I always admired the concept behind Clearcase / MVFS, though in practice it was a nightmare to administer.

<comment><USER17> Clearcase might be a monster to deal with, but it has several advance features that I miss in FOSS alternatives.

One being the ability to share build binaries across users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a similar vein, I ran a little experimental project using redis as a distributed filesystem using this: [https://steve.fi/Software/redisfs/](https://steve.fi/Software/redisfs/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This kind of thing was one of the foundational notions of Plan 9, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I often wonder how different our world would be if they'd only had the foresight to release the code freely instead of keeping it proprietary.

</comment><comment><USER20> See also Michael Olson's "The Design and Implementation of the Inversion File System (1993)", from the 1993 USENIX conference ([https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/sd93/)), PDF here: [http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/S2K-93-28.pdf](http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/S2K-93-28.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> Database and filesystem share a lot similarity, but still have their own characteristics. To use database as a back-end for filesystem has some benefits, such as reliable persistence, ACID transaction and etc. It reduces complexity to achieve durable storage which filesystem should deal with.

Many filesystems are able to use DB as back-end, I also made a filesystem ZboxFS ([https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox](https://github.com/zboxfs/zbox)) which can also use sqlite as underlying storage.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the real interesting value in putting an RDBMS underneath the filesystem would come from relationally modeling the objects in the filesystem, ie files and types and their contents, and then being able to query those things with SQL. If their relational schema is just inodes and blocks I don't really see the value - after all the filesystem is just a miniature RDBMS purpose-built and optimized for that fixed schema and so it's not surprising that their system is so much slower.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would be awesome to query a DB, like `ls /db/america/ny/cities` using tags or something in files to automatically and predictably sort data into folders/files.

</comment><comment><USER24> What happens to performance if you store a database inside this filesystem?

<comment><USER25> Just speculating, but the database is mostly used for the metadata. If implemented well, there will be very little overhead for reading and writing to a file, especially if the size stays constant.

Some databases rely on specific low level file system operations, which may not be optimised in a niche filesystem. But in theory there shouldn't be anything preventing it from being optimized, and the database from running at close to maximum performance.

<comment><USER24> Ok, but if you store only metadata then you lose the advantage of running all the file operations inside a transaction. Then again, posix has no notion of transactions ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> graph database could handle the infinite directory nesting with ease</comment>


It's not such a problem that the Large Hadron Collider hasn't found new physics - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/64/the-unseen/fine-tuning-is-just-fine <comment><USER2> I think the high expectations are mostly a result of us making so tremendous (from our point of view) progress in the understanding of the universe in the last 100 years. There's no reason that nature should make it so easy for us to discover new laws of physics in the future though, especially since our technology is still quite limited (e.g. we can't produce very high energy particles and can't control quantum systems very precisely yet).

It is said that at the beginning of the 20. century many physicists thought that there wasn't that much more to discover and that most of the theories had been worked out already. There were a few areas where "weird" phenomena were observed (notably in electrodynamics and atom theory) but many people were confident that these would eventually be resolved with the existing theories. Fast forward 20 years and two completely new fields of physics (quantum mechanics and relativity) were discovered.

Personally I still think that we've just scratched the surface of the laws of the universe and it's not impossible that we'll have another wave of theories that will make our current understanding of physics seem hopelessly outdated by the end of the century. And in fact there are some areas where "weird" stuff seems to happen, dark energy or dark matter is a good example for this. I'd be really disappointed if we already discovered everything there is as well in terms of the laws of physics, I mean how boring would that be?

<comment><USER3> > Personally I still think that we've just scratched the surface of the laws > of the universe and it's not impossible that we'll have another wave of > theories that will make our current understanding of physics seem hopelessly > outdated by the end of the century.

I hope that this the case, otherwise humanity will die on this planet. If there are no new physics then there is no faster-than-light travel and escaping earth will be pretty much impossible.

<comment><USER4> With a constant 1g acceleration up until near the speed of light you can cross the observable universe in a human lifetime.

To the other side of the galaxy it would be 12 years

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration#Ship_reference_frame)

<comment><USER5> And what does modern physics say is necessary to maintain a constant 1g acceleration for years at a time?

<comment><USER6> A ball of iron the size of Earth. I'll show myself out now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a problem, because we are no closer to answering questions like:

\- what is dark matter (the stuff which makes up 97% of the universe!)

\- what is dark energy (I.e. Why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate?)

\- what happens inside a black hole?

\- what happened at the big bang?

\- how does gravity work at the quantum scale?

The Standard Model has nothing to say on these, it is fundamentally incomplete. I fear we won't answer these questions within my lifetime, sure, we may get tantalising hints from astronomy, but not direct observation in experiment.

This is troubling for theoretical physics, it needs guidance by experimental physics. But all these super-smart theories to supersede the SM cannot be verified by experiment right now.

<comment><USER8> Errata:

* _purported_ dark matter

* _purported_ dark energy

* _purported_ black holes

* _purported_ big bang

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't put dark energy, black holes and the big bang on a level with dark matter.

Dark energy is just a name for what's otherwise known as cosmological constant. Yes, some people might believe that it's unnatural for the cosmological constant to be as small as it is and others might believe that it should really follow from a proper quantum theory, so there are definitely a bunch of open questions. But that doesn't change the fact that it's there.

The same thing goes for the Big Bang and black holes. We have absolutely no reason to believe they don't exist. (To the contrary, we have every reason to believe so.)

Dark matter, however, is just _one_ possible (and comparatively speculative) explanation for various experimental deviations from theoretical predictions, regarding among others the stellar velocity distribution within galaxies, gravitational lensing and structure formation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few responses here highlight a very common problem in science: namely that people don't appreciate negative results as much as positive ones.

We've generally bemoaned (forgive me for not bothering to find examples but they're there) how difficult it is to get negative results published in scientific journals but we're exhibiting exactly the same attitude that leads to this in many comments here.

<comment><USER11> This is entirely why I find engineering far more trustworthy than 'science' in 2018.

Academia has a professor who wants to prove their idea is true. They rig up an experiement to prove their idea is true. They teach a kid how to collect the data. Then wow, they proved it true! Discovery? No.

Engineering- prove your idea works and dont stop until the problem goes away.

<comment><USER12> > Then wow, they proved it true!

I don't know of any reputable scientists that would claim to "prove" anything. Popper rather put an end to that.

<comment><USER13> It would be improper to say it doesn't revolve around certain outcomes though. I know a few guys in college that would get free money and travel to some remote part of the world to "research" climate change. It was pretty much a paid vacation for them. If you were studying how the climate followed cycles and it may have less to do with what humans are doing, you wouldn't get the funding.

<comment><USER12> I think there's a lot of bullshit in academia but it's not so much about the engineering vs science distinction being made here as it is about any situation where people can play the game.

I think any large organisation will have it's fair share of bullshit and people playing the system. It's hard to align incentives with outcomes.

<comment><USER11> Producing unverified researching is different than releasing a product.

One gets checked by customers, the other gets... reported?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is a problem when the whole premise of funding it and how it was sold to the public and politicians was that it will find new physics...

<comment><USER15> This is what I expected the article to be about, but it's more interesting than that.

<comment><USER16> And so far, not a single comment in this discussion is concerned with the actual topic of the article, fiine-tuning and naturalness.

<comment><USER14> Sometimes the subject at large is more exciting than the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I posit this hypothesis that does away with both dark matter and also dark energy. I posit that at a distance of approximately 1.5 million light-years gravity becomes slightly repulsive, gradually increasing with distance to achieve a peak repulsion, and then decreasing with distance to zero.

Thus, cosmological expansion is caused by galaxies pushing against each other, and galactic rotation can be explained by the fact that each galaxy is surrounded by a "womb" of dust, gas, and other galaxies, and this "womb" pushes with repulsive gravity upon the outer stars of a galaxy to keep them in orbit at a higher speed than expected.

I give a cosmological / mathematical justification for this behavior in my Reddit article:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MyTheoryIs/comments/87pcgq/what_dar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MyTheoryIs/comments/87pcgq/what_dark_matter_is/)

At the bottom, in the responses, I explain how General Relativity can be adjusted so as to retain time dilation while rejecting curved space and retaining flat, 3D, Euclidean space.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The LHC hasn't seen anything new besides the Higgs. This means the laws of nature aren't "natural" in the way that particle physicists would have wanted them to be. The consequence is not only that there are no new particles at the LHC. The consequence is also that we have no reason to think there will be new particles at the next higher energies – not until you go up a full 15 orders of magnitude, far beyond what even futuristic technologies may reach.

"So what now? What if there are no more new particles? What if we've caught them all and that's it, game over? What will happen to particle physics or, more to the point, to particle physicists?"

[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-multiworse- is-c...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-multiworse-is- coming.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I would say it is a problem, because it has costed us a lot of money.

<comment><USER20> And yet we also gained a lot of value we did not expect, such as the World Wide Web.

You cannot predict the true value of basic research in a straight forward manner so let's just stop. This is about extending our understanding of the universe. We will find ways to use that knowledge and ways to enrich our lives because of it in due course of time.

<comment><USER21> > And yet we also gained a lot of value we did not expect, such as the World > Wide Web.

Did berners lee even work on the LHC? I know he worked at CERN, but didn't realize he took part in the creation of the LHC.</comment></comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering the Z80′s 16-bit Increment/Decrement Circuit - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2013/11/11/reverse-engineering-the-z80s-16-bit-incrementdecrement-circuit/

<comment><USER2> Hackaday gives a nice synopsis, but the meat is here:

[http://www.righto.com/2013/11/the-z-80s-16-bit- incrementdecr...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/the-z-80s-16-bit- incrementdecrement.html)

<comment><USER3> The author of the text that is original is Ken Shirriff, who few days before wrote about another impressive detail: The Z-80 has a 4-bit ALU!

[http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu- heres-h...](http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu-heres-how- it.html)</comment></comment>