Differences between German and British manners - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13545386 "Germans really don't do small talk, those little phrases so familiar to the British about the weather or a person's general well-being, but which she describes as "empty verbiage"." <comment><USER2> Being German, I find it fascinating that so many people on both sides of the Channel are so fascinated with the differences between the Brits and the Germans. Coming from a German perspective, I don't think there is any other country whose manners the German media is so obsessed with. Similar feelings seem to exist in Britain with big Sun front pages about German misbehavings once in a while covering all aspects of life (see "two world wars, one world cup" for example).

I also like how they used the lack of a German word for smalltalk in the article. Whenever I explain differences between German behavior and Anglo- American behavior to Americans/Brits I tell them the German language has no words for smalltalk, jaywalking, and date rape to set the tone for my explanation. :)

<comment><USER3> Hypothesis: German and British cultures are so similar as to create an 'uncanny valley' situation. British and Italian or Spanish habits are so obviously different that individual differences are quite unremarkable. British and German habits are so similar that any differences are unsettling. Faux pas are much more painful when the situation feels very familiar.

<comment><USER2> Hm, this uncanny valley idea is actually really interesting. Thank you very much for bringing it up. I'll think about this for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am a Dutch student currently studying in the UK, and many of these differences are true indeed, and possibly even larger between Dutch and English people than between Germans and the English.

'Thanks', and 'please', are used in Dutch only when there is much to thank for (saving someones life, or at least possessions or the like). While in English they are part of almost any question or exchange, no matter how trivial.

Another one is 'how are you doing', which in Dutch is used to express concern/interest between close friends, or towards a stranger looking extremely distressed. While the English use it almost instead of the neutral 'Hi' between people who met once before. At first it made me wonder whether I looked alright (yes I shaved and showered, and all :).

So yes, they take getting used to, and a common mistake for Dutch/German people probably is (it was for me) thinking that they are meant as strongly as one is used to. But it does not take long to get used to.

Call it a cultural bias, but I slightly prefer the Dutch/German way, as it takes up less time, makes it more straightforward to find out what people think (fewer understatements as well), and does not deflate the meaning of the terms used as much...

(strangely enough the English don't use different terms or pronunciations when there is more to thank for, than the usual, making it hard to judge the extent of gratefulness / problems, etc)...

Anyway, at home they think I am very polite now, thanks :)

<comment><USER5> I think the Germanic approach is particularly helpful for Asperger people, which are obviously prevalent in the IT industry. The social protocol is easier to parse.

Interestingly, attitudes differ even among German-speaking countries: Austrians often criticize the German "yes means yes, no means no" attitude. I've read an article which attributed this to Austrians' centuries of experience with their Balkan neighbours, which has increased their acceptance of slack and thus has made them much more relaxed than the Germans. Not sure in how far this is true ;-)

<comment> barry-cotter I was shocked to find out the Schwyer were even more um, polite, than the Germans. Hallo is an implied "du", as was tschüss so unless you want to piss everybody off, it was either Guten Tag or Grüssi and Aufwiedersehen.

Very formal people the German speaking Swiss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "In a lift or a doctor's waiting room, talk about the weather in German? I > don't think so," she says.

What a ridiculous article. Of course Germans have inane conversations about the weather and other trivialities. You know what the German word for "small talk" is? It's "small talk".

<comment><USER7> You're right, but what does it say about Germans when they have to borrow the word "small talk"?

<comment><USER8> Much the same thing that it says about English-speakers when they have to borrow the word "entrepreneur".

<comment><USER9> There is a slight difference, though, in that the English speaking world has taken a huge amount of its vocabulary from French. It may be less remarkable when Americans borrow a word then when Germans do this. That said, "Entrepreneur", from what I read on wikipedia, was a 19th century import, not a William the Conquerer import, so you do make a pretty good point - it does seem more of a "borrowed word" than a core part of the language.

You'd have me convinced, except that I have it on the assurances of a fine former US president that the French, in fact, have no word for entrepreneur.

<comment><USER10> English has a huge vocabulary from German. Even the royal family was mostly imported from Germany.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, English vocabulary may be even more German than French... what I remember is that while overall English vocabulary is heavily French, it leans more German when you consider the most frequently used, conversational words.

<comment><USER11> The little words tend to be Germanic the big words tend to be French. The names of farm animals tend to be Germanic the names of meats tend to be French. Swearing is Germanic.

It's a class thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter I used to think smalltalk was annoying and useless. I was most of the way out of that attitude by the time I lived in Germany, and was thoroughly rid of it by the time I left.

Growing a new social circle in Germany is a complete bitch in large part because people really are less superficial and more direct. The _"etiquette of simulation"_ makes everything _so much easier_. I'm not saying it's all that easy to get to know people in my home country, Ireland, but there is at least a place where talking to total strangers will not get you funny looks, the pub.

And dating, oh god, dating.

I miss Germany.

<comment><USER12> _And dating, oh god, dating.

I miss Germany._

Why, are German women like: "Yes, all required attributes check out. How far is your apartment?"

<comment> barry-cotter No. It's much more about intersecting social circles than other places I've been. That said you can get places in nightclubs and the mindgames involved in courtship are different. But if you wanted to settle down and were a relatively respectable, solvent man, Germany'd be great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"For their part, the British have what House calls the "etiquette of simulation". The British feign an interest in someone..."_

Or sometimes you're making small talk with someone because you actually are interested in them, and just want to keep the first minute or two of the conversation light for whatever reason. Maybe you haven't seen them in a while and do want to catch up on really general things, or the weather really has been odd lately, or you can't think of anything to say right away and having some stock questions gives you a chance to get your bearings.

Just because it's a bit formulaic and routine doesn't mean all small talk is insincere.

<comment><USER14> There's also the aspect of accents. Which is less applicable in America (IMHO). More small-talk = more exact understanding of where someone is coming from (in all senses).

And that's why I prefer NYC : I prefer people to listen to what I have to say, rather than rate me based on my cultural baggage...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> « _The German language doesn't even have an expression for "small talk", she says._ »

When will this idea that because Language X doesn't have Y, the idea Y represents is alien to X speakers finally disappear ?

Although language _does_ have an influence on one's thinking habit, this idea is a gross misrepresentation of very complex phenomena.

There's no word in French for the verb "to need". There's no future tense in Finnish, nor are there any articles. There are no perfective verbs or declensions in English.

Yet, if an idea is intelligible, chances are you can express it in any language, and translate the result in any other.

<comment><USER16> > There's no future tense in Finnish

Huh, really? How do they express phrases that refer to future events?

<comment><USER17> In German at least, the future exists, but is rarely used unless it is necessary to disambiguate. For example, you would just say, Ich fahre morgen mit meinem Auto in die Schweiz. Lit. translated: I drive tomorrow with my car in/to Switzerland. More idiomatically translated: I will (or I'm going to) drive in my car to Switzerland tomorrow. I assume it's the same in Finnish, but it might not be because Finnish isn't even a Indo-European language.

N.B: I just finished my first semester of German. Please someone correct me if I am anyway wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we please kill that stupid "X has no word for Y!" snowclone? Please? (Or at least get people to do some basic research before they say something stupid like that.)

As some light googling will reveal (or thinking for a few seconds, if you are, like me, a native German speaker), German does indeed have a word for small talk. There is "Plausch" (that's the noun) and "plaudern" (and the verb). I suspect that there are also a few other words in regional dialects. ("Schwätzchen", maybe.) There is also "Tratsch" but that's more along the lines of gossip and usually between two people who know each other.

I do suspect that small talk is rarer in Germany but I would like to see a quantitative study confirming that, not (what seems like) idle speculation from a Professor who doesn't even know that her own language has a word for small talk.

<comment><USER15> On one hand, I want to say you should read the thread before posting, on the other hand, if someone reaches the same conclusions independently from the rest, it decreases the likelihood that we're all insane.

<comment><USER18> I did read the thread but only after my comment was already written. I feel kinda bad about posting but I didn't want to throw the comment away. (I searched the thread for "small talk" before I started writing and didn't find anything because everybody who decided to write about German and small talk seems to have decided to write "smalltalk".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The German language doesn't even have an expression for "small talk", she says. It is so alien that in the German translation of A Bear called Paddington - Paddington unser kleiner Baer - it was omitted."

Klatsch? Gerede? I'm pretty sure Heidegger's Gerede comes pretty close to what we call "small talk".

<comment><USER20> Native speaker of German here.

"Klatsch" is not "small talk", it's "gossip".

"Gerede" is a word that I've only heard in debates to suggest that something is not to be taken seriously, i.e. it has serious negative connotations. Perhaps it used to mean "small talk" in the past when Germans did such things, and then changed to have the negative meaning when small talk fell out of favour? Of course, the German word "Smalltalk" also tends to be used negatively ;)

<comment><USER10> Unterhaltung

Konversation

<comment> barry-cotter Both of those could be applied to any conversational exchange, whether information was really being exchanged or not, and smalltalk is heavily weighted towards the "not".

It's not what you say, but how you say it. /exaggeration

<comment><USER21> Schwatz, Plausch, Plauderei, Tratsch? And as we're getting very informal here, local dialects take over. Which is one of the reason why "small talk", sounding a bit more high-brow, was so easily adopted.

<comment> barry-cotter Dear God, I don't recognise a single one of those. But what about people from areas that might have local slang but don't have a dialect, like Niedersachsen or (bits of) the Rhineland? And what about the university attending classes, who are much more likely to become free-floating German instead of being rooted to anyplace particular?

<comment><USER21> Germans from beyond the Danube are cold heartless people who don't chat. No, seriously, I'm not really an expert when it comes to dialects, and there doesn't seem to be a proper etymological German dictionary online. And just because they don't appear to have a dialect (which is wrong anyway, it's just that their dialect is now "proper" German) doesn't meant that there aren't slang words. And it seems that a lot of the words for chit-chat area onomatopoeic...

Just saying that there are words for mindless chatter that don't mean gossip per se (i.e gossipy "Klatsch" vs. chatty "Tratsch").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _For their part, the British have what House calls the "etiquette of simulation". The British feign an interest in someone...

From a German perspective, this is uncomfortably close to deceit._

IMO, this is one of the reasons the Germans lost the war. The English speakers are by nature sneakier.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_(flying_bomb)#Deception>

[http://www.suite101.com/content/allied-misdirection- fooled-g...](http://www.suite101.com/content/allied-misdirection-fooled- german-defenders-in-world-war-two-a339014)

<comment><USER22> Why do people forget about the Soviet Union when talking about "the war"?

<comment><USER23> His post didn't mention the US or Italy either. I'm not sure what on earth that has to do with a discussion about British and German etiquette.

<comment><USER12> _His post didn't mention the US..._

Last I checked, English is the language spoken in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Even UK and German attitudes to IT secruity and social are very different. I was fascinated to see that Germans are far more likely to block Twitter in the workplace that Brits: <http://twitpic.com/52e4cm>

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds pretty similar to articles I've read comparing American speech with Russian.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hi. I'm German and the word for small talk is "Schwätzchen"

<comment><USER27> The word is (almost) extinct and has long been replaced with "small talk".

<comment><USER26> Sorry but this is nonsense.

<comment><USER28> Maybe it's a regional thing.

I have never heard the word used in the more than 6 years I've lived in Vienna.

<comment><USER18> But surely, you must have heard someone talk of "plaudern"?

<comment><USER28> Yes, that's a common word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like when British people say "we should have a proper catch up" and they mean exactly nothing...</comment>


US lawmakers propose $20B in subsidies to revive domestic chip production - <AUTHOR> https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revolution/article/21137131/proposed-laws-seek-to-revive-us-chip-production-part-1 <comment><USER2> Not from the US but I think this a good decision. The economic policies of the last decade cannot convince by performance indicators and high tech nations as well as developing countries need some form of protectionism.

The EU for example, from its strongest but slightly naive fans held up as an example of border-less trade without restriction has similar approaches.

Otherwise I wouldn't know why they want reports how many of our parts we use are manufactured within the EU.</comment>


Tim Cook responded to this young illustrator's open letter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ZoOlson/dear-tim-cook-abc3fbffba1b#.6ducz17jg <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: the illustrator who wrote the open letter is my 15 year old sister — she is currently pretty stoked right now.

</comment><comment><USER2> An iPad Pro with a Pencil seems like it would provide an endless sketchbook for someone who can already draw or paint.

My question is what's a good way for someone with zero ability to develop these abilities? Getting ProCreate, the iPad Pro, and the Pencil is the easy part. Developing a little bit of drawing skill is a big hurdle.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: Not an artist myself, however i have learned much of the basics and am friends with many artists (e.g. [http://kaceym.deviantart.com/](http://kaceym.deviantart.com/) ) who earn their daily bread with commissions and have heard plenty about how they progressed.

The best way to develop them is, as with any physical skill: Basics, basics, basics. One doesn't become a master carpenter without hammering in thousands of nails.

This means, before telling you what to do, i need to warn you to not get too emotionally involved with any given piece. A day where you did 20 sketches in 5 hours will bring you forward. A day where you spent 10 hours on one piece holds you back. (At least at the start.) Don't bother with colors. Learn geometry, projection, proportions, lighting first. Colors only help to hide mistakes. Once you know all these things in and out, that's when it's time to start breaking rules.

Lastly, look up the books on drawing technique by Burne Hogarth and Andrew Loomis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with all of this. I draw/paint a lot more since I got my iPad Pro, and it's helped my skills.

Still, I can't draw nearly this well, and I'm over twice her age. Clearly the tools are nice, but raw talent is still 90% of the equation.

Congratulations, these illustrations are beautiful!

<comment><USER5> thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author makes it seem like drawing on an iPad pro is so much fun that I want to try it. This kid has finally offered me a compelling reason to try an iPad pro. Apple should hire this girl.

<comment><USER5> Thanks so much!!!! Try it out at your local Apple Store and you won't be disappointed.. although they don't have Procreate on the demo versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since I first heard of the pen and saw the technical details of it (e.g. latency, tilt feature, palm detection) and general faith in Apple's ability to leapfrog innovate, I knew it'd be a huge deal.

I'm not an artist but when I tried it for the first time at the Apple store, I was blown away much more than I expected and had I been an artist, I would have probably had the same reaction as the author.

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: Fangirl writes gushing praise to CEO about company's new product, CEO sends back response written by marketing department.

That's assuming the whole thing isn't astroturfing.

P.S: You're not a "simple 15 year old" if you can afford an iPad Pro.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree. What's noteworthy here? That a corporate demigod answers briefly and mechanically to an email? That a fangirl can't hide its hype? That a talented girl is using this expensive piece of hardware to make its creations? I'm confused.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes people just like things.</comment></comment></comment>


Cambridge team demonstrates light-driven photoreforming of biomass to H2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/03/20170314-cambridge.html <comment><USER2> Sounds good, but I wonder what the economics will be. I mean, it isn't much good if it costs a thousand dollars to build and produces only ten cents worth of hydrogen a day.</comment>


CSS Flexbox Cross-Browser Inconsistencies - <AUTHOR> http://flanneljesus.github.io/web%20design/2014-12-06/flexbox-cross-browser-inconsistencies/

<comment><USER2> I've noticed a lot of, relatively minor, inconsistencies since switching to flex-box. It definitely takes a while to adjust to them and iron them all out. At this point, now that it's working, I've mostly forgotten what the quirks were.

But I agree with the author, there was a lot of trial and error moments to get the layouts we wanted working across browsers, and even then there were some unexplainable quirks that we just couldn't figure out and had to back away from and take different approaches.

IE, as usual, seemed to have the biggest issues. I recall that one issue was it didn't behave consistently if you left out the flex-basis value. So instead of `flex: 1`, you would find that fully specifying `flex: 1 1 auto` would behave more consistently in certain situations.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Move into Management Role? - <AUTHOR> I've been a software developer for eight (8) years now and while my programming skills are decent I think I've developed a much better sense of how teams function (or don't) and processes that help or harm the operations of a team.<p>All of that to say, the management track seems like the entry-level job paradox.  You need management experience to get into the role so there's no way to get that original experience.  I'm also coming at this from the perspective of someone who is currently under a manager who simply got the role due to seniority and only plays the manager role when absolutely necessary and I believe that my "team" has a ton of untapped potential because of the lack of true leadership. <comment><USER2> 1) Start doing as many management- or senior-level activities as possible without being asked and without asking permission. You may encounter some resistance from above, but just be polite and persistent. Have the mindset that this is just part of your job.

2) Try to negotiate a team transfer with your boss's boss, saying you need a new challenge.

3) Whenever you get transferred, ask your new boss for a promotion right away and list all of the things you used to do on the old team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, #1 has been what I've been doing so far. I'll have to think about how #2 and #3 would work in my context (fairly small company).

<comment><USER2> You can always start floating out your resume. Replace #2 with "transfer companies."

Honestly, smaller companies are not the best places to get into management because there aren't that many people to manage.

The key point is that you create a conversation between two people about your management potential. That way it becomes a social fact, as opposed to just a thought in one person's head, who may or may not act on it depending on how much they like you or want do to you a favor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software- Eng...](https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software- Engineering/dp/1430243147)</comment>


Cactus (Crowdsourced Decisions; Beta) - <AUTHOR> http://cactustheapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys: I'm working on an app (will enter beta very soon) that lets users post polls and vote on them. Atm it's a bit rudimentary (UI will change, push notifications will be added, gamification features upcoming, etc.), but I'd love to get it out to you bunch asap and see what happens. The link above will let you look at the app and register for the beta.

Note: I'm planning _two_ sweepstakes. If you register now, you'll be entered into a sweepstakes, and if you happen to register later on, you'll be entered into a sweepstakes with a smaller prize. So, register now! Feedback is welcome. Thanks again!

<comment><USER2> I see a blank screen.</comment></comment>


Saul Bass and Logo Design: Then and Now (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://annyas.com/saul-bass-logo-design-then-now/ <comment><USER2> Based on these - if you have a Saul Bass logo you can only go backwards if you release a new logo.

</comment><comment><USER3> These logos are incredible, and so many of them have stood the test of time so well. The mind boggles at the ones that were "redesigned" by some other agency but are essentially the same. I can only imagine the hours that were billed and the meetings that were held debating why those few pixels of difference were significant.

Unrelated to the logos - the graphic design of the site itself is horrible. The dark gray tones make it look like a UI element in the "grayed out" disabled state. And the contrast between the background and the text is far too low.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only improvement I see from Bass' design is United Way (gradients suck in the long run, though they were the bee's knees in 1972). If you cannot silk screen it easily onto a T shirt with spot colors, it's not a good logo.

Saul Bass also did some incredible movie titles.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqM3McG4-LE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqM3McG4-LE)

A great many experimented with his simple text and cutout animation, but I especially like the cinemagraphic ones in black and white -- (time index 29:26) -- Something Wild, Walk On The Wild Side

</comment><comment><USER5> Imagine being that good of a designer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazing, in almost every case where the logo was 'refreshed' it got worse.</comment>


How companies should treat their most enthusiastic customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21711011-research-shows-firms-ignore-passionate-consumers-their-peril-how-companies-should <comment><USER2> I'm currently enjoying a special experience courtesy of a company that recognizes and supports its enthusiastic customers. They provide a service and are about to launch a new offering. Instead of just dropping the new thing into the market, they emailed me (and a number of other highly-engaged customers who tweet about them and otherwise get involved) and gave me a free weekend of the new thing. It's freaking amazing and I'm looking forward to being able to tell everyone I know about it once the launch happens.

It's also much easier to forgive faults and lapses when a company has engaged you in the past. I certainly don't expect every interaction with a business to be perfect, but when they have good service recovery and make me feel appreciated, I'm not going to get bent out of shape if something is amiss. For example, Starwood has done a great job of making sure I enjoy the many nights I spend in hotels. It's not always perfect, but their expert handling of the times it has been imperfect are actually what make me loyal to them when I have options on where to stay.

</comment><comment><USER3> The portion of the article regarding The Innovators Dilemma is very important. It's easy to get so focused on the enthusiastic users that you forget about everyone else. Balancing between those two concerns is hard, and it's even harder to have to tell your enthusiastic users that you're not giving them what they want immediately.

<comment><USER4> This is why companies that can properly classify their user base and serve compartmentalized/customized products to those specific niches flourish.

If you are making a product for everyone, you'll eventually dissolve. This is what I see Apple's problem as being right now. They're shifting their entire OS towards the lowest common denominator which are casual users. Meanwhile their OS is becoming more and more like the new Windows.

<comment><USER5> Apple has always been focused on usability and simplicity at the expense of power. Remember the one button mouse or first desktop without any external media options?

But also, do you really think causal users care about Thunderbolt 3.1? Or previously, Firewire 800? And want a $3000 laptop that can drive two 5K screens?

I realise you talked about the OS, but it's the same deal. Apple OS'es were always dumbed-down compared to Windows - just compare the control panels and application "installation" features. Have you seen Group Policies?

<comment><USER4> Ease-of-use /= stupid

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why we here at Microsoft (in the developer side of things at least) have an "MVP" programs. This program is something I really love and am proud of as it lets us connect, take early feedback from (under NDA) and invest in our biggest developer platform fans. They do a lot for us, so its well deserved.

[https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/](https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/)

<comment><USER7> On the developer side of things, Google has the Google Developers Experts (GDE) program. It plays a very similar role. [https://developers.google.com/experts/](https://developers.google.com/experts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm just going to throw this out without comment or naming names.

Never ever _attack_ your most enthusiastic customers.

<comment><USER9> Never say never. Unyieldingly binding your company to its most-enthusiastic customers at a single point in time ossifies it. Kodak and Blackberry, it could be argued, failed by refusing to bail on sinking ships.

<comment><USER10> Binding!=attacking

<comment><USER11> I think you're misunderstanding their point. The gp was saying don't ever attack your most enthusiastic customers, parent was suggesting there is equal potential for harm in refusing to detach from your enthusiasts and citing Kodak as an example. Sometimes your most enthusiastic customers are also out of touch with how the rest of the industry is heading - it's easy to get complacent and fall from the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" Eric von Hippel of MIT's Sloan School of Management has found that about 80% of breakthroughs in scientific instruments came from "lead-users" rather than the manufacturers."_

It seems to me the main focus of OA is on enthusiast end-users or members of the public who become fans.

The 'lead users' for scientific instruments are the scientists in laboratories doing research. Almost by definition, they will be using instruments in new ways/pushing the limits and so feedback from them is critical to the manufacturers of scientific instruments. More like a craftsman/patron relationship.

Struck me as a different kettle of fish.

<comment><USER13> Similar to the IBM story. the principles resonate across different consumer types.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does SpaceX verify their simulators? - <AUTHOR> In the past, others have reported that SpaceX execs have stated that one of SpaceX's engineering goals is to create a process "where   software could be installed from head at any time and used to immediately fly a mission."
"The most important point stressed was the deeper they got into developing their process, the more focus they spent on building and verifying their simulators and test suite and the less emphasis they put on writing the actual code."
So what I'm wondering is: Do they have a faster way to verify their simulators other than good old fashioned traditional code reviews and just blowing rockets up more often than the average joe, or does that pretty much cover it?
Anyone knowledgable in the subject care to chime in?
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spacex-bringing-agile-bdd-final-frontier-timothy-brandt (a little kool-aidish ref, sorry) <comment><USER2> I've worked with major US car crash testing facilities.

I used to think that crash testing was just a video of the car crashing and an opportunity to walk around the car afterwords to how the car did. Maybe it would pass, and maybe it would not.

The reality is that before crash time, a team of guys spend three days wiring hundreds of accelerometers and other sensors onto the car's structure at precise places. During the crash these sensors are recorded at high data rates, and 3D dataset of the moment by moment deformation of the car's internal structure is reconstructed.

This reconstruction is then compared against previous software crash simulations, and if needed the simulator is updated.

Because the crash simulators are refined across hundreds of crashes, when a big manufacturer sends a car to be tested, they not only have a pretty good idea that it will pass, but to a fraction of an inch how much each piece of metal will bend.

The real design work happens against the simulator, and reality just validates the simulator.

Similarly, SpaceX has enormous amounts of sensors flying on each launch. This data lets SpaceX ensure that the simulator version of the rocket matches the behavior of the real one.</comment>


ESR agrees with RMS about "Software As Service" - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=932

<comment><USER2> So, are people who rent vs. own their homes non-free because they are opting into the home-as-a-service trap? Of course, they are at risk. The landlord could kick you out, forget to pay the water bill, etc. But, you accept those risks because you perhaps want the flexibility of renting, the extra time saved by not having a lawn to mow, or the financial benefits of living without a mortgage.

Why stop at owning a server? If you rent rackspace in a datacenter, they own you too. What if they lock the door and won't let you in? They could even steal your server along with all your data. What are you going to do then? Perhaps you should build your own. Then, you're still in trouble. What if the monopolies that control the pipe into your datacenter decide that you don't deserve connectivity anymore? Then, you're really screwed. You should just go live in a cave or something. Life is just too risky.

Seriously, business/life/whatever has inherent risk. Often when faced with a binary choice, both options have non-trivial risks associated. You either accept the risks or mitigate them. Most importantly, you measure them. Is Amazon willing to risk what must be its fastest growing business segment by holding someone's data hostage? Doubtful. Are you, as a small start-up, capable of messing up servers you physically manage. You bet! So, pick your poison.

<comment><USER3> _The landlord could kick you out, forget to pay the water bill, etc._

Actually, most areas have tenants rights provisions that prevent a landlord from doing these things. Hence, your rights as a renter are protected.

No such laws exist for software.

<comment><USER2> Contracts allow for civil penalties including "specific performance" as ordered by a court -- this might mean "give the customer his data back." One would hope anyone hosting something of significance would have a contract in place with his hosting provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who the hell still listens to ESR? After the CML2 fiasco, his series of incredibly stupid border-line racist blog posts, and the general realisation that Raymond hadn't, after all, done anything much except for relentlessly promote himself, I thought we'd dispensed with him as a spokesman for Open Source?

<comment><USER5> That reminds me: <http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/show-them-the-code>

Actually, every time I see the letters ESR I think of that comic strip. It's so perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, isn't that like Robin agreeing with Batman about the Joker?

Not that I disagree with their basic logic. I think you need to take steps to keep your data yours, though going so far as to completely cut yourself off from web services seems a bit too black and white.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, now I am imagining RMS wearing a Batman costume. Thanks, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I disagree. With the caveat that you should not let your data escape, there are very good services out there: 37signals, salesforce, web analytics, where it isnt worth trying to host it yourself. My friends, this is where we are going to make our money. Thank RMS for GPL, gcc, and other fine tools, but let's ignore his rants.

<comment><USER9> Referring to his conclusion in relation to this issue as a rant is unfair, and mistaken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Then why don't we have/create a free version of "Software As A Service"?

How could that be applied to the various cloud computing services that RMS has an issue with? Like Google Docs, Gmail, cloud computing power (like Amazon, Google).

In my limited view, I think software is not the problem - it's the hardware. There's a lot of upfront cost to setting up a server farm and employing people to run it, and there's a lot of competition out there.</comment>


Ask HN: do you value Github profile more or StackOverflow? - <AUTHOR>

So I know that there is no zero sum game etc but I was wondering how do you evaluate another hacker based on their online profiles ? Github lets you see someone actual work/code samples etc. but a forum like stackoverflow gives you insights about how someone approaches a problem, respond to it etc when answering questions. A combination of both is of course ideal but if you have to only choose 1, which one ? <comment><USER2> I think github and stackoverflow are both good indicators of how people use their spare time (and the quality of work they expect from themselves). It shouldn't be used blindly or out of context, however I feel both can be a powerful addition to a talent-judging heuristic.

To comment on the actual question, i.e. which do I value more, I'd say github. This probably comes from my bias of valuing execution slightly more than domain knowledge (and understanding executors better than domain experts).

Here's an example to illustrate why I believe this way. Person 'a' may write an instruction manual for some appliance -- this may take considerable skills (it is unclear whether they borrowed the instructions or composed them entirely themselves). How do we know if the instructions are accurate without first implementing them? Either we or someone else, let's say person 'b', must execute on said instructions and have the knowledge to know whether the build was a success. By this, I do not make the claim that everyone on github who builds things writes good code (or even understands if they've assembled the parts correctly). I have, however, experienced that a good github profile (on average) provides me with more information than a stackoverflow post. Do they contribute with others, do they comment their code, do they catch bugs, do they write efficient code, how regularly do they contribute? Granted you can obtain some of this information from stackoverflow, but this leads me to a question of my own -- why choose just one?

</comment><comment><USER3> When I review the public GH and SO profiles of various developers I know, they seem to be very poor indicators of competence as I judge it. So many of the excellent developers I know are have negligible GH and SO; some don't even partake.

And I see one chap I'd recommend you all steer clear of and he looks positively rosy on SO; its downright misleading.

Just my data-point.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is good, heavy question.

I think it depends on the user.

On github, you might only have code - personal projects. But you might also have responses to issue trackers, a timeline, responses to pull requests, a commit log, documentation, etc. On SO, you have a lot of things but you'll never have the code.

So if the user uses github like I do - as a git repository and nothing else - then it's probably not super worthwhile and SO is probably more useful, but if they are engaged in the github community and have active projects with multiple pull requests and keep good docs, then it's probably the more valuable resource.</comment>


Context Switch Definition (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.linfo.org/context_switch.html <comment><AUTHOR> I found this article very interesting while studying a bit more about the various pieces of information displayed by glances.

It neatly explains the differences between processes, threads, and context, and I learned about the fact that Linux has an extremely low cost of context switching and mode switching compared to other systems.

Yet, I'm still not sure what to do with this ctx_sw value from glances. Anyone using it? How can I define whether the number is too large? What actions should I then take? debugging the processes causing a large number of switches, rebooting, other? I would love to hear from experienced linux users!</comment>


How the Soviet Union Led and Lost 'The Space Race' - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this-is-why-the-soviet-union-lost-the-space-race-to-the-usa/#3c6670594192 <comment><USER2> USSR was perhaps 80% of the way to the Moon flights. They had a spacecraft, which in the form of Zond flew around the Moon and returned with first animals from Moon's vicinity to Earth; a lunar lander, LK, which successfully completed 3 LEO test flights; and a big launcher, N-1, had upper stages tested (their smaller size allowed to do that easier than for the first stage). USSR also had automatic probes on the Moon surface and on the orbit around the Moon, with works toward later Lunokhods and automatic soil return.

Had Korolev been alive, he'd probably both realize the shortcomings of existing systems (chiefly engines on the first stage) and workarounds (one of Korolev's last directives was to enhance cooperation with Chelomei, leading to Proton-Zond circumlunar launches). If not the first, USSR would at least had manned landings, and then the question would shift to comparison of lunar infrastructure; by that time N-1 could be debugged, planned upper stage with hydrogen put in place and Barmingrad (a Moon village project) given go ahead. While expensive, USSR's manned Moon project costed about 6 times less than Project Apollo.

A big takeaway from N-1 problems was that rockets should be tested on the ground first; it costed a fortune, but Energia was tested on the test-stand in full and flew both times successfully. Which makes more troublesome recent ideas to launch SLS without comprehensive testing of launch stages on the ground.

</comment><comment><USER3> ONE 'space race' not necessarily THE 'space race'.

Interestingly the Russians are still capable of putting men in space, while the US which 'won the space race' has not been capable of doing that for the last decade or so.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought by most definitions they won the Space Race, by being the first to have a habitable space station</comment>


How a Snowflake Turns into an Avalanche - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/how-a-snowflake-turns-into-an-avalanche

<comment><USER2> Beautiful video and phenomenal explanation, I as a layman in that field understand perfectly how and why avalanches occur now.</comment>


First Movie Of An Entire Brain's Neuronal Activity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first-movie-of-the-neuronal-activity-in-an-entire-brain-ab315e8ab013 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, in the process of sensationalizing the topic, the article strongly suggests that the discovery is breaking news. While a recent revision to the original research was posted on arXiv two weeks ago, the original was published in Nature in September 2013 and the corresponding movie was posted on YouTube 9 months ago as well.

tl;dr: This is old news; temper your expectations.

<comment><USER3> You logic is fascinating there.

If the reader knows this is old news, then they wouldn't have expectations to be tempered, because it's _old news to them_.

But if the reader didn't know about it, and finds the news exciting, then it's _news to them_ , why temper their expectations?

There's no logical scenario under which someone would find this event notable, but be bummed out because it happened 9 months ago.

<comment><USER2> Maybe some people don't like following ambiguously-titled links only to discover old news masquerading as something new. Novel idea and totally ridiculous, I know. How could I have been so silly?

Furthermore, my logic is perfectly valid. Scientific research is time- sensitive by nature. If someone were to post an article hailing the discovery of Neptune, while interesting to someone who has been wholly ignorant of Neptune their entire life, it warrants a caveat noting that it's an outdated discovery. And yet under your logic, you would reply: "There's no logical scenario under which someone would find this event notable, but be bummed out because it happened 168 years ago."</comment></comment></comment>


PostGIS 2.5.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://postgis.net/2018/09/23/postgis-2.5.0/ <comment><USER2> If you're looking for a quick way to try the new version on your Mac, I made a new build of Postgres.app that includes PostGIS 2.5.0: [https://github.com/PostgresApp/PostgresApp/releases](https://github.com/PostgresApp/PostgresApp/releases)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been experimenting with a lot of geo-based projects over the past couple of years, and something I've been wondering quite a bit lately:

Why is the projection ID(SRID/EPSG) situation so horrendously bad?

As far as I can tell, the only way to take a Shapefile and figure out the proper SRID number, is to take the .proj4 file and run it through an API like [http://www.prj2epsg.org/search](http://www.prj2epsg.org/search) (which spent some number of weeks down earlier this year, and I haven't tried again to see if the API is back up).

It's funny, because you can't actually take in map data in PostGIS without the SRID properly set, and yet there's no reliable way to get the number, so working with multiple projection datasets is just... not possible unless you manually do the conversions?

Honestly, if I could get the data that the API above has, I'd run the service myself to at least make it reliable, even though it requires a lookup. But there should be a better system, somehow.

<comment><USER4> The situation is bad for Shapefiles because people forget to export the prj file and it can get lost in the process of transformation. I feel your frustration - it's just a very old format which encodes data into 4 different files.

This however, has nothing to do with PostGIS. PostGIS will ingest any geo data you give it. and if you don't know the SRID you can use -1. As for the problem of Shapefiles there are better alternative formats now like geojson and spatialite based geodatabases that encode SRID in a single file.

<comment><USER5> I sort of hope GeoJSON takes off a bit more, it just seems easier to work with at the very minimum with things like Leaflet. Of course you have Bing which uses their own objects for their latest rendition of the Bing Maps v8 JS API. Thankfully using Leaflet we were able to use their imagery instead. Having dealt with Shapefiles I can say it definitely felt like dealing with something quite dated, especially compared to how much simpler JSON can be.

<comment><USER6> Everybody is hoping something other than shape files eventually takes off, as its's universally agreed to be a pretty terrible format. The problem is that the industry hasn't unified around a single format with GeoJSON, GeoPackage and to a lesser extend KML all trying to become the next shape file.

As it stands however, everybody and everything can read shape files and that cannot be said about any other format.

<comment><USER7> The real annoying thing is that one of the reasons shapefiles are so bad, and so hard to replace is they fill a bunch of niches in a half assed way and no sane replacement format is going to replace shapefile in all situations.

Need a standardized way to disseminate data that's super easy to ingest? GeoJSON and KML work great there, while GeoPackage is going to be not a great fit for things like APIs plus you can't do a streaming read.

Need a way to edit and work with data locally and maybe send stuff around your office? Geopackage is going to be a much better fit then GeoJSON or KML.

<comment><USER6> Another 'hidden' feature of shape files that I've seen regularly abused (and abused myself more than once) is that they use the standard dBASE format to store their data. Meaning that all kinds of apps that know nothing about shape files (like Excel or Access) can be used to read and analyse the data stored within them.

<comment><USER7> also the encoding of the database is stored in a file that ends in `.cpg` which I'm pretty sure stands for code page.

Source: I wrote a shapefile parser and generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I once worked on a project where we were forced (over the entire engineering team's objections) to use Oracle Spatial (geospatial add-on for Oracle) instead of Postgres+PostGIS :( Not nearly as good. Really, expensive as hell and it doesn't even come close to PostGIS in performance and capability.

Ah, government contracting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reading the change log one feature strikes me as very useful for machine learning projects:

ST_QuantizeCoordinates

With this you should be able to store coordinates with whatever precision they come with but get back queries that only care about the 'city level' or 'block level' and can be encoded with an exact number of bytes for a neural net.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does PostGIS have any version control or is Geogig the only option for this still?

<comment><USER9> I think the answer is still no. Have you had success using geogig? I have been watching the space and have hopes for solutions like the Dat in Rust rewrite: [https://datrs.yoshuawuyts.com](https://datrs.yoshuawuyts.com)

<comment><USER10> I'm just looking into a match between needs and capabilities at the moment. I think we want something we can run analysis on in R-spatial, and I'm surprised this doesn't already exist.</comment></comment></comment>


L'Oreal's Fires First Trans Model for Saying White People Are Racist - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/09/01/munroe-bergdorf-loreal/ <comment><USER2> Probably the first thing to do is say that the word "racist" has passed its "used by date".

Most people discriminate against some other group, I have seen this in action in some very interesting places. Whether the discrimination arises from colour of skin (so that a black person discriminates another black person because of the differences in shading) to being born in a different locality (this shows up in so many places) to different heights (tall vs short or short vs tall) to different colouring of hair (blondes vs brunettes vs auburn vs redhead) to body shape (thin vs thick) to education background (which school or university you went to) to occupation (white collar to blue collar to etc) to religious background (moslem vs hindu vs christian vs atheist vs anything else) to politics (you got a pick there) to any other form of difference, we see many whole hearted action to discriminate.

I have seen the term "racist" given out by those who themselves are more "racist" than those they accuse. It is a term that is wholly intended to cause conflict and not solutions. It is no different to the word "sexism" or "sexist".

Instead of recognising that all people have value, we, as people, go out of our way to discriminate against others.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Will there ever come a day that we can lay the "isms" aside and focus on what can unite us rather than jumping on that which divides us?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Helping Hands – free delivery for the vulnerable during Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpinghands.community/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Wanted to share a site that myself and a group of volunteers - mostly former employees of Google, Uber, and Facebook - have been building. Helping Hands connects those most vulnerable to COVID-19 (such as the elderly and immunocompromised) with volunteers that can run errands for them - <USER2> delivering groceries and picking up prescriptions.

We're a 100% volunteer effort. We have a few hundred users signed up and a several dozen deliveries made, and we're trying to further spread the word to those who need help and those who can volunteer.

We're also looking for help on the product & eng side - if you'd be interested in contributing to this, feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment>


Google's Duplex is rolling out to Pixel owners – here's how it works - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/21/googles-duplex-is-rolling-out-to-pixel-owners-heres-how-it-works/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting comment at the end:

> If they respond with "I don't want to be recorded" or some variation of the > phrase, the call is handed off to a human operator on an unrecorded line. > (Those operators also annotate the call transcripts used to train Duplex's > algorithms.)</comment>


Startups should immediately consider managing their cloud? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudmanagementinsider.com/why-startups-cloud-management-platforms/ <comment><USER2> "Recently, CB insight posted research in which they mentioned that 90% of the startups get failed due to the spiraling cost of the cloud" and yet the linked research shows no such thing.

The article's also in serious need of an editing pass; good god.

<comment><USER3> > "In today's world, most of the startups prefer cloud computing over on- > premise to cut down their cost and loss of getting failed."

"Get failed" feels clumsy. (I've never heard that before.) I'm guessing that English is not the author's first language.</comment></comment>


GDC 2013: Michael Abrash on "Why VR is Hard (and where it might be going)" - <AUTHOR> http://www.roadtovr.com/2013/03/31/gdc-2013-michael-abrash-virtual-reality-oculus-rift-presentation-slides-4415/all/1

<comment><USER2> Excellent talk. I got my rift dev kit on Friday and I can _easily_ see this being the future of gaming! I haven't had time to really dive in to the SDK yet, but simply watching a few videos tailored for the rift was an incredible, highly immersive experience.

That said, one of the videos makes me terribly motion sick, so... I'm hoping my body can get used to this.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a lot of exciting VR news out of GDC 2013 if you were paying attention and knew where to look, especially this:

[http://www.roadtovr.com/2013/03/30/gdc-2013-oculus-rift- raze...](http://www.roadtovr.com/2013/03/30/gdc-2013-oculus-rift-razer-hydra- tuscany-unity-demo-4401)

</comment><comment><USER4> For anybody interested, I've got a browser plugin ready for streaming the sensor data, and will finish the implementation as soon as my kit arrives

<https://github.com/grimwire/ohmd-plugin>

<comment><USER5> Could you try out something I've modified to work on canvas on Firefox Mobile? Are you driving the standard HTML orientation variables? <http://ljd2.com/nemesis/indexcanvas.html>

<comment><USER4> That's interesting; I'll put it on the roadmap if it maps well enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the idea of VR is beginning to shift: head-mounted displays are clunky, a much more immersive solution is to project the virtual world on a large curved screen or a wall, and then use array microphones, and a set of cameras for tracking user motion.

I worked on a project like this a while ago: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVVKNTP0lfo>

There are a few places where this research is going on, USC's ICT also has a really nifty setup, a lot like HoloDeck v0.0001 from Star Trek: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTswP0sF9w>

<comment><USER7> Taking you literally, I'd say that a wall is clunkier than a headset. But being reasonable, I'd say that those approaches are pretty different and neither is obviously better. Why do you favor projections?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great and really forward looking. I have been working on an AR project on the side for almost two years now and the things Abrash points out as problems are core issues that we are trying to fix (without using real world markers).

Of the three core problems that he points out, tracking really stands out as the key differentiation for us. Adding to that, how the objects must remain fixed in space is really the factor that if solved would plunge us right into next generation AR. Improved latency is almost a nice to have at this point.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome talk. I was just thinking about AR and it's possibilities from this invasive code post ( <http://www.verious.com/board/iNVASIVECODE/augmented- reality/>). It seemed like the first salvo towards VR, but it's good to hear they're progressing in unison. Will Doom 4 impress us to the next level?

<comment><USER10> I got my Rift dev kit on Friday, and my weekend was expected occupied.

I"m not sure if I want Doom 4 in VR. Even in the very rough, early, low- resolution state of the Rift there is an uncanny realism to it - I can easily imagine people literally getting scared to death in horror games.

Games like Amnesia are scary enough on a flat screen in a lit room, there may be real issues with putting them in VR.

There's a thought. Gaming so realistic people stop playing them.

<comment><USER11> Did you try playing Team Fortress 2 with the Oculus Rift?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it's pretty much the best possible demo of the Rift's abilities. The Tuscany demo in the SDK is IMO not great for showing the full promise of the technology - everything is static and the level geometry means you never really get _close_ to anything for the depth perception to punch you in the face.

TF2 has all of that and more. My score has taken a punishment, but it's just so damn enjoyable.

I'm also that ass on your team that's walking around looking at stuff in amazement instead of shooting the enemy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The space-time diagrams are a great visualization tool for various display artifacts.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great! Was already considering buying GDC Vault annual fee of 500$ to just see this presentation... let's see if the read can spare me this money. :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> roadtovr appears to be taking a beating. Mirrors?

</comment><comment><USER15> The tracking problem seems easy to solve; but admitedly I never went to college so this may be just dumb, but why don't just use a external reference device? A little device that saves your initial position and triangulates the diff between your initial position and your current position.</comment>


Japan sets goals for companies to prevent deaths from overwork - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/31/national/japan-sets-goals-companies-prevent-deaths-overwork/ <comment><USER2> If companies here started by respecting Labor law, they would not have to set such goals, because there would not be any karoshi, there would not be wage theft, pension theft, etc. and the economy would be booming with rested Japanese families visiting places all over the country.

It is a little hypocritical of the Japanese government to pretend to be doing something when the ILO treaties regarding labor issues are not even respected.

</comment><comment><USER3> >10 percent of companies introduce fixed rest hours for employees by 2020

So in other words, they did nothing.

<comment><USER4> Purely political move to make some PR.

<comment><USER5> To a large extent, sure, but this kind of norm-signaling is also actually effective as a change-driver in Japan.

For instance, I can't believe how fast Tokyo converted to nonsmoking restaurants. When I got back here in 2008, after a decade in California, literally every restaurant I ever went to in the first 2 years still allowed smoking. But then around 2009 or 2010 it was like "blah blah government initiative to reduce public smoking". Nothing much changed for a while, but fast forward to this year, and — despite eating at least one meal out every day — I haven't experienced that even one time.

A similar thing happened for paternity leave, here, and I witnessed the push for compliance at a previous employer. About a decade ago the government issued some statements like "hmm something something paternity leave", then regulations were issued but with large loopholes for several years to give companies time to come into compliance, and now, maybe not _boom!_ but like _(... booooooooooom...)_ it's basically Germany. You totally can take 18 months of paid paternity leave (not full-salary, but something like $2400 a month, same as women get), and companies are not allowed to refuse you.

So yes, the problem is cultural and not regulatory, as you say in the sibling thread, but at the same time this kind of thing is how the culture starts to change in Japan.

Official statement about problem X, then NHK covers it, then people start to talk about it at lunch, the companies form internal working groups to address it... it takes a long time, but I'd bet lots of companies in Japan are already scheduling manager meetings to talk about how to handle this issue (and yes, probably scheduled after normal business hours without anybody noticing the irony...)

<comment><USER4> No smoking in restaurants? Go in Osaka and you will find it very hard, apart from lunch time, to find any restaurant where smoking is banned during meals. And people are just smoking everywhere just like they used to be. It hasnt changed one bit in experience even after 2009, so I would put it as well as a PR move. If you are a non smoker it s almost impossible to go dinner outside at night. Tokyo may have more places because of its sheer size but Tokyo is not Japan.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's true; the radical change in smoking environment is only in Tokyo so far. I assume that's because Tokyo is _first_ though, and we will see similar developments in Osaka, Sapporo, etc. over the next 5-10 years... but I guess we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've known one U.S. karoshi. Beyond that, I know maybe four or five individuals, myself included, in private and public sector U.S. roles, who have overwork habits: cigarettes and/or coffee, fasting diets, sleeplessness, social isolation, second jobs and volunteer schedules which seem necessary to hold their communities together. Probably all the truckers who die in their 40s or 50s are overwork deaths.

Truckers and office worker overwork deaths are probably among the most absurd, though I don't have figures regarding light industrial factories. The millenary lifestyle of agriculture and correspondence with the bureaucratic authorities is mostly lost, as arable land is commodified into multi-million dollar "lottery property" which renders a life without the risk of overwork death, and with happiness and a modest, long-duration passive income, almost entirely inaccessible to those not born into a family holding that sort of land. I don't know if that's entirely true but I've been doing research and the bootstraps by which I might hoist myself do indeed seem mythical.

Not all citizens are guaranteed a pension or benefits, and cannot necessarily access roles which do. The pensions and their management are a political talking point ("Candidate X will disrupt pensions"), which is outward and openly-admitted evidence of corruption, and where the situation becomes even more troubling.

This is not merely something a company could fix, at least not in the U.S.A..

</comment><comment><USER7> This made me chuckle. Japan is the most unproductive Asian market of current times, because instead of working to get work done (ie being productive) they work to pretend to get work done. It's somewhat ironic that their culture of faking hard work, is actually killing people from overwork. I'm struggling to believe it.

<comment><USER8> For me the better mental model is of ant societies, where some percent of the ants don't do much while other work around the clock. People staying at their desks "for the show" are the "lazy" part, while other employees will do actual crazy hours partly compensating for the others.

More precisely, a lot of overworked people are doing part of the job of their manager who pressures them into doing it.

Also I don't think that's a purely japanese perspective, French people's stereotype is laziness, yet the amount of burned out people is crazy high. And most countries will have their shares of people living a slow life, while others are overworked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While people are complaining at the lack of figures, it's at least an admission by the Government that three is a problem, from here, progress can be made.

<comment><USER4> The problem is cultural. It's not something you fix by stupid regulations. The fact that people feel obligated to stay long hours because their boss is in the office, and the whole concept of "we are all in this together so we should all suffer together" is a key driver. It's not unique to Japan at all by the way, Korea and some other Asian countries have the same problem, and this is rooted in a long tradition of Confucianism. Japan is the not the West.

<comment><USER10> > The fact that people feel obligated to stay long hours because their boss is > in the office, and the whole concept of "we are all in this together so we > should all suffer together" is a key driver.

You see this culture in the US military also, and not just when deployed where it is warranted, at home when there is no reason for it.

"One team one fight"</comment></comment></comment>


Why many employees feel devalued even in booming job market - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/6c9263d76e9e477da15abaec2045f6c9 <comment><USER2> People are being pointed at immigrants, when it is company cuts and outsourcing that are the problem.</comment>


Build an Experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewmachado.com/blog/build-an-experience/

<comment><USER2> Forgive my cynicism - because of course I agree with the idea that you should aim for "building an experience" - but isn't this infinitely easier said than done? It seems like saying "you should make something disruptive and amazing." I'd be interested in a conversation of the best ways to go about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Max,

You bring up a good point. Maybe the language should be changed. Happy to chat email me anytime firstname.lastname@example.com

Andrew</comment></comment>


Big Victory: Judge Pushes Jewel V. NSA Forward - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/big-victory-judge-pushes-jewel-v-nsa-forward <comment><USER2> Anything the EFF thinks is awesome is awesome to me also. Kudos.</comment>


Web Payments - <AUTHOR> https://web-payments.org/

<comment><USER2> Really bad design. I can't tell what this website is for. Is it an XML-based currency? Yuck!</comment>


A visual exploration of the spatial patterns in endings of German town names - <AUTHOR> http://truth-and-beauty.net/experiments/ach-ingen-zell/ <comment><USER2> The german ZEIT magazine publishes entertaining, beautifully designed maps of Germany with a plethora of subjects in their "ZEIT Magazin"; the maps are also online at [http://www.zeit.de/serie/deutschlandkarte](http://www.zeit.de/serie/deutschlandkarte)

Here's one that shows cities whose names are verbs: [http://www.zeit.de/zeit- magazin/2014/52/staedtenamen-verben-...](http://www.zeit.de/zeit- magazin/2014/52/staedtenamen-verben-deutschlandkarte) and here's a map that shows cities whose names are used for american cities: [https://ssl.zeit.de/images.zeit.de/lebensart/2013-02/d-karte...](https://ssl.zeit.de/images.zeit.de/lebensart/2013-02/d-karte-08/d-karte-08-thickbox.jpg)

<comment><USER3> The most often used German townsname in the US seems to be Hanover/Hannover - which is interesting, as it is a rather mid-sized city of half a million. Though the reason for this is most likely that it's also the name of the duchy and later kingdom of Hanover which was in a personal union with England from 1714 to 1837. Apparently, quite a number of soldiers from the state of Hanover (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_the_American_Revolu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_the_American_Revolution)) were sent to the US to fight against the American revolutionaries - some of them probably stayed on and founded these cities. Well, obviously much more complex, but might be one reason for the higher than expected number of towns named Han(n)over in the US.

<comment><USER4> Similarly there are a lot of US towns named Lafayette, Fayette, or Fayetteville, after the marquis de Lafayette, who fought for the US in the American Revolution.

<comment><USER5> Also interesting here is a common American use of the place name La Grange/Lagrange being a reference to Lafeyette's home castle (as opposed to the mathematician from whom we get such concepts as Lagrange Points).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did this too, except in with less detail (ie theirs is better) and with less focus on germany

[http://blog.mclemon.io/placenames-slash-maps-search- mashup](http://blog.mclemon.io/placenames-slash-maps-search-mashup)

[http://places.mclemon.io](http://places.mclemon.io)

<comment><USER7> Nice! After the original post I was wondering how that would look for my town and it seems I'm located in the highest concentration of place ending with 'ies' and it's a pretty small area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Consider adding -ham to the list, that seems to be an ending predominant in eastern bavaria. Very interesting stuff. You can nicely see those places which were founded by slavs, ages ago (-roda and -ow, among others, if I remember correctly).

<comment><USER6> -itz too, I think

<comment><USER6> To clarify, I was saying "-itz" was one of the interesting slavic suffixes, not that it's missing from the linked page. In fact it's quite nicely highlighted there, and is a nice example of the suffixes which appear to be more prevalent in the former DDR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is some nice work. Keep it up!

I see the code is available but as well ask before taking a look - is there much effort to remap for different geographies and languages?

</comment><comment><USER9> A UK version, showing Norse names (which famously show a very clear divide): [http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/past_exhibitions/2014/...](http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/past_exhibitions/2014/vikings/old_norse_origins.aspx)

And for just England, [http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/](http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/), dividing by source language.

While this doesn't split by toponymy, if you click on the towns, you'll find the toponyms explained.

</comment><comment><USER10> Note the locality of the places with the "-ow" endings which point to the probable Slavic origins. That map has probably the clearest "signal" of all of them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Quite some cool project. Coming from Germany and having relocated from south- east to northern Germany, I discovered quite some nice things there.

</comment><comment><USER12> The proximity of -ich to Netherlands suggests it may be the closest to the Dutch -wick and the English -wich.

<comment><USER13> From a Norwegian perspective the Dutch word Wick sounds like the Norwegian word Vik or cove, bay, inlet in English. If you look at the coastal location of these towns that link seems to make some sense.

<comment><USER14> > the Dutch word Wick

Wick is not a word that I know of, do you mean Wijk (neighborhood)? Like Noordwijk en Katwijk? Because that's almost certainly not related to 'bay'. Many coastal towns are named something with a 'dam' however (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Monnikedam).

<comment><USER12> Yep, I meant _wijk_. Not sure what happened there! _wick_ is also used in English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This should be expanded to include the other majority German-speaking countries, Austria and Switzerland.

<comment><USER16> And even to Alsace/Elsass imo as it also has a lot of towns ending in -heim, -haus, -hausen, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has also been done for Italy, by Stefano Maggiolo: [http://blog.poormansmath.net/on-the-distribution-of- italian-...](http://blog.poormansmath.net/on-the-distribution-of-italian- towns-by-their-endings/)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is the tool the viusalisations are made with: [http://ssz.fr/places/](http://ssz.fr/places/)

You can pick different countries and run your own expressions against them.

</comment><comment><USER18> -ingen would also be interesting, Baden-Württemberg is full of those.

<comment><USER17> Here is a visualisation comparing the "ingen" towns of Baden-Württemberg and the "ing" towns of Bavaria:

[http://ssz.fr/places/?de#ingen$/ing$/](http://ssz.fr/places/?de#ingen$/ing$/)

</comment></comment><comment> _-__--- "-ow" implies "Poland was here?"</comment>


Google Stock Falls $200 As Market Closes (But Not Really) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/30/google-stock-falls-200-as-market-closes-but-not-really/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me who thinks that the way stock markets process trades is hugely inefficient? From a technical perspective, this seems like a trivial problem - what am I missing?

The cynic in me says it's because the people benefiting from the flaws and inefficiencies are the only ones who have the power to change things... is that really the case?

<comment><USER3> Few organizations have higher uptime requirements and so much money (literally) at stake... I'd imagine that it'd be tough to push through any kind of software/system change, let alone large-scale ones. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) There's substantial risk to upgrades like that unless they're _flawless_.</comment></comment>


The standard unix password manager - <AUTHOR> http://www.passwordstore.org/

<comment><USER2> As seeing before:

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9571394 (this submission)
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9455330 (21 days ago)
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7850080 (1 year ago)
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7804377 (1 year ago)
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472719 (3 years ago)</comment>


Thinking about what a modern, compile-to-js Lisp might look like. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sjl/alienscript/wiki

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now I'm just brainstorming and don't really have any intention to implement it myself. I'd love any feedback.</comment>


Why I'm writing on the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/2018600/why-im-writing-on-the-ipad.html <comment><AUTHOR> I get where the author is coming from but I have to say that the autocorrect/autochanging of words on iOS drives me crazy and cursor placement is a pain. I don't have the author's distraction problem, either, but there are word processors like WriteMonkey or Darkroom.</comment>


Google releases first beta SDK for Dart, including 20% faster analysis engine - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/06/19/google-releases-first-beta-sdk-for-its-dart-javascript-alternative-including-20-faster-analysis-engine/

<comment><USER3> It's very exciting to see Dart reaching beta status. The project is definitely maturing, and hopefully this means that the 1.0 release will be in the next few months.

The Angular team recently announced[1] that they are going to start supporting the Dart project too. This means that if you're already familiar with writing Angular code but you want a language with some better semantics, better tooling, and a standard library, this may be a good time to start checking it out.

[1]: [http://news.dartlang.org/2013/06/angularjs-announces-port- fo...](http://news.dartlang.org/2013/06/angularjs-announces-port-for- dart.html) , [https://github.com/angular/angular.dart](https://github.com/angular/angular.dart)

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea of Dart is great - but the 'Google' brand attached to it is very worrying. Dart feels like exactly the type of service that Google will just drop in the future if it doesn't get popular quickly enough, and with only Google supporting it, that makes any code written it in a huge risk. Google's track record is the single clear problem facing Dart at present. Personally, I've been holding off on Dart for exactly that reason.

I have no idea how Google could get around that - maybe a written promise to provide support for Dart for X years?

EDIT: Another similar worry: if Dart really does take off, will Google not just drop support for other browsers besides Chrome from stock Dart?

<comment><USER5> As someone professionally responsible for maintaining and extending a legacy GWT project, I couldn't agree more with this view.

I'm no longer willing to tie my career to google's fickle attention span. Particularly since as I understand it the dart team has some of the same personnel from the old gwt team. They are masters at the art of soft deprecation through neglect.

<comment><USER6> Wait, what? My sympathies for maintaining legacy GWT, but that isn't at all equivalent to Dart except in that they both have JS compile targets. Go is at least a somewhat more reasonable comparison, but still isn't great. The biggest problem with any legacy GWT project is all the widgets people loved to make and use which grafted unnaturally to JS and the DOM, and certainly not the code transpiler, which is all that really matters here.

Dart is lead by Lars Bak out of Aarhus, which IIRC wasn't even a Google office location before they hired Lars to do V8. Even if some people transfered over from GWT, I doubt it would be many, and I don't see how it would have substantial impact with someone like Lars at the top.

 _And_ it's been 7 years since GWT was released. Yes, yes, enterprise needs whatever, but many web technologies fade away over time. It sucks if you were an early adopter and were heavily invested, but at a certain threshold, no one cares anymore. Is YUI's nearly negligible update rate a sign of Yahoo's fickle attention span? No, because _no one uses it anymore_ (sorry YUI users), and at a certain point you have to cut your losses. If the community is self sustaining enough, it can pick up the slack with these open source frameworks, but if it's not, I really can't manage any indignation. It happens sometimes.

I'm not advocating using Dart in production (I would advocate just learning JS if you're targeting browsers anyway...), but this critique is specious at best, not least because the SDK is apparently just entering beta, so it says right on the tin not to found your production pipeline on it.

<comment><USER5> GWT may have been released 7 years ago, but it isn't like it was abandoned 5 years ago and the last stragglers have been dying off since then. The release tempo didn't fall off a cliff until the end of 2011, which just so happens to be when Dart was announced.

Not that there weren't signs of ADD before that, what with the dizzying changes in how-things-ought-to-be-done with each point release. But an attendee of 2011 Google IO could quite reasonably have come away with the impression that as far as Google was concerned the future of GWT was glorious. (see [http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions.html](http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions.html))

Even in this age of iterating, pivots, and agility, two years is a quick turnaround from breathless evangelizing to dead and buried.

<comment><USER7> Since GWT is open source, Google 'dropping' it (many largish Google projects use GWT and they still commit code) is not the death knell for GWT based projects. For the same reason it is being actively developed and has a steering committee and regular participation of googlers. It is also 'probably the best cross-compiled JS framework in the world', to borrow a phrase from the beer industry. Full-featured and works today, not 'maybe in five years' which is what Dart promises (I'll be the first to jump onto it when/if that time comes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have played around with Dart - very nice to use the same language on client and server. I have a small client server example: [http://blog.markwatson.com/2013/05/complete-but-small- dart-c...](http://blog.markwatson.com/2013/05/complete-but-small-dart-client- server-example/)

I stopped playing with Dart when I "discovered" Meteor recently. That said, the Dart language is very nice and I might still use it on a real project.

</comment><comment><USER9> Barely on topic. Here's a recently posted video on a Dart alternative called TypeScript.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Anders-Hejlsberg- Stev...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Anders-Hejlsberg-Steve-Lucco- and-Luke-Hoban-Inside-TypeScript-09)

</comment><comment><USER10> Finally google will have a proprietary language to compete on a level playing field with Apple without having to worry about web standards.

<comment><USER11> By "proprietary language" do you mean fully open sourced with a liberal patent covenant and a well documented hosting API that as a goal encourages its adoption and contributions, that's being developed in the open and is in the process of being standardized once released?

<comment><USER10> Yes, because none of that will have any effect on Google's control over what runtime goes into Chrome and their ability to make unilateral decisions about the language's future. It's fully owned and controlled by Google.

<comment><USER11> > their ability to make unilateral decisions about the language's future

So just like every language being developed today then?

At the moment the goal of the Dart language is to provide a structured language to help create large scale web applications with much faster Starup and runtime performance that's being developed by experienced language designers with input from skilled VM engineers who were on teams that's brought the worlds fastest language VMs: i.e. StrongTalk's VM (later acquired by Sun to form Java's fast Hotspot VM), V8 and are now working on Dart's VM. Google's goal for Dart is to provide a better language to develop, faster and richer web applications - I'm not sure which of their goals are harmed from being a Google Sponsored project.

Note the Dart team frequently asks for feedback on the Dart Mailing list and invites features and language enhancements on the projects issues list: [https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/list](https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/list)

<comment><USER10> No - not like JavaScript.

None of Google's goals are harmed by Dart. That's the point - it's there to serve their goals by diverting effort away from improving JavaScript - <USER2> project that benefits _everyone_ towards supporting Dart - a project that benefits Google.

<comment><USER11> The purpose of a language isn't to divert effort away from a language it compiles to as a first-class concept. That's actually not a goal, that's just someones cynical view of a potential side-effect when trying to invent a new more productive language for the web without JS deficiencies, with better language semantics, faster start-up and predictable run-time performance.

In Lars and Kasper Google I/O talk, they explain that V8 has become an extremely complex code-base, now weighing more than 500k LOC, with advanced compiler tricks to achieve the leading performance it currently has. The V8 designers think they're nearing the max performance ceiling possible with JS where it's unlikely they'll be able to get a further 2x perf improvement: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huawCRlo9H4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huawCRlo9H4)

Which is in contrast to Dart which was developed with the input of VM engineers, is a much smaller and simpler code-base that is able to support proper classes, real integers and SIMD support which is already capable of delivering 10x faster startup times (with snapshots) and 2x faster and more predictable runtime performance which is still in beta and has yet to receive anywhere near the engineering effort V8 has.

Google is big enough to attempt 2 competing strategies to improve web development and performance, i.e. a faster JavaScript being led by the Standards committee that's enhancing JavaScript at a comittees pace and by introducing a completely new language for the web built from the ground up to be faster, structured and more consistent: [http://infrequently.org/2011/09/google-the-future-of- javascr...](http://infrequently.org/2011/09/google-the-future-of-javascript/)

<comment><USER10> Ok these are fair technical reasons for them doing this. Nevertheless Google's strategy _also_ happens to leave them in control of resulting language and platform.

<comment><USER11> Once its standardized anyone is free to safely implement it from the language specs, which they don't even have to do since they are free (and encouraged) to use the open-source implementation.

Dart wouldn't exist or have anywhere near the technical excellence it has today if it wasn't a sponsored project. Its existence also doesn't prevent any other browser vendors from trying the same thing - it may even encourage it if it yields noticeable end-user improvements.

<comment><USER10> 'Once it's standardized' is a chicken and egg statement - since to be standardized can only happen if other parties get on board. If nobody does, Google can say 'well we tried', whether or not they made any serious attempt to involve others in the process (which thus far it would apper they have not).

The fact that others could try to make their own competitors is an exact description of the situation where the web breaks down in favor of proprietary solutions and the strongest companies end up owning the web.

<comment><USER11> You can submit a language specification as a standard without outside buy in. It becomes an open specification that anyone is free to implement. You seem to interpret every open initiative Google tries to do with Dart as a bad thing. What else can they do? How much more open can they make the implementation to appease critics? What haven't they done yet to make it any more open? V8 was open sourced and its now powering node, running server side procs in PostgreSQL databases, creating rich cross-platform Desktop apps with node- webkit - what has Google done to stop it's pervasive use? Before V8, JS performance was orders of magnitudes slower than it is today, with little focus on performance - and now there's an arms race.

The web doesn't have to worry about the strongest companies making too good compelling open-source solutions that people fear will end up owning it, we're in 2013 and web development is still fragmented, inconsistent and progressing at a glacial pace. The biggest threat is coming from proprietary native apps in walled garden mobile platforms being developed behind close doors without a standards body in sight and no desire for any open or interoperable initiatives.

Without any attempts at any new initiatives trying to make web development better, in the next 5 years we'd still be building buggy web apps on a broken language running at similar to todays performance - but hey, at least we waited for the standard bodies to create all possible solutions. All other attempts that stray from the script be damned.

<comment><USER10> The web ending up being controlled by Google isn't 'saving' it from proprietary platforms at all.

If standards bodies are as feeble as you suggest aren't going to be a serious custodian for Dart anyway.

Ossified standards bodies or unilateral action are not the only options. Google could have engaged in cooperation with other interested parties throughout the development, so that it was a truly collaborative effort.

Whilst I agree there are technical problems that Dart is solving, they have chosen an approach designed to maximize their control over the web.

<comment><USER12> But how Google's "control" over Dart (meaning: "leading the development"), maximize their "control" over the Web (meaning: "currently providing the best suite of applications")? It's a language. If it takes off, it will be self- sustaining. Has IBM's "control" over Eclipse given IBM dominance over the Java ecosystem?

I read a lot of criticism of Google's centralized incubation of Dart, that it has not been developed by some standards committee. How would this prevent the nightmare scenario of a Google overlord (it's a _language_, for Pete's sake)? What was the last successful committee designed language you've used?

tl;dr Hate Google for all kinds of reasons, but judge the language on its merits.

<comment><USER10> Since when was eclipse the same as the java language? That analogy seems almost like a deliberate misdirection - do you really mean it?

Your TLDR says it all - you tell us to look at Dart as if it were some disembodied platonic entity independent of the goals of the corporation that controls it.

But Dart _isn 't_ independent of Google, so can you explain _why_ we should limit our thinking like this?

<comment><USER12> Eclipse is a tool that was wholly developed by IBM before it was spun off as an independent foundation. Even then, IBM was the largest contributor to its development. Regardless of the fact that IBM was using Eclipse to advance its corporate interests (to provide a tool suite to replace Visual Age and support Websphere), the IDE is still useful.

You see, it's possible to separate the product from its origin.

A language has even _less_ to do with advancing corporate interests (other than Google's professed goal to "make the web faster"), since it's an agnostic platform rather than a product designed to further a specific goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where is the "Works better on Google Chrome" badge?

<comment><USER14> Google Chrome has yet to implement the DartVM, I believe the OilPan memory experiment allowing for multiple languages to interact with the DOM without leaks is experimental still. Secondly, Dart compiles to efficient Javascript and works on all modern browsers.

<comment><USER15> Sounds interesting, is there more information on that that I can read?

<comment><USER6> Check out [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/blink- dev/V1vJmirHUGE) or just look for oilpan on blink-dev.

I haven't seen anything about Dart (the big win would be eliminating the really slow DOM "GC" cycles on the webkit/blink side of things), but it would be interesting if this opened the way for easier VM integration. My understanding was that post-webkit they were tying v8 deeper into blink, though, not allowing more flexibility...

<comment><USER15> Thanks, yeah, that was my guess too (fix leaks by GCing DOM stuff, which is a nice idea), I was surprised to hear it was related to Dart somehow. I can't seem to find anything online explaining a connection between them (is it just speculation?).

<comment><USER16> See [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hua...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=huawCRlo9H4#t=2848s)

<comment><USER15> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple wises up by sharing its Mac OS X Lion code with hackers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/26/apple-wises-up-by-sharing-its-mac-os-x-lion-code-with-hackers/ <comment><USER2> It's a good thing to note here that 'code' doesn't mean 'source code'. They're giving the security researchers free access to the same OS X seed you can get by paying Apple $99/year.

<comment><USER3> I really don't even see how anything they gave to the security researchers could remotely mean source code. The title's total flame bait

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Contrary to what the article reports, this isn't the first time Apple has done exactly this. It may be the first time they've been so public about it, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like weird PR engineering to me. Everyone and their dog can get the dev seeds for free and without an NDA if they want them. You'd run into trouble if you disclosed something based off of a pirated/torrented seed, but all you have to do is wait and "rediscover" it in a legit copy, or pay the $99 when you know you have a bug to sell.

There is no real-world change here, just an administrative one. It seems like this is just about politics and is fairly inconsequential.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Apple could afford to put security as a lower priority for many years because hackers always went after Windows instead."

They kind of just snuck this backhanded comment in at the end of the article. I don't know if it's true or not, but either it's the opinion of the reporter in an otherwise "non-opinion" article, or there should be some cited source that has actual insight into Apple's internal history around security issues. Otherwise, it's just unsubstantiated conjecture tacked into the end of a news article.

</comment><comment><USER7> It wouldn't be hard for Apple to stick an NDA in to stop these guys from releasing bug info further down the line.

Of course, I hope the guys who received the CDs are at least getting paid - otherwise I imagine we'll see a few bugs go the other way but some may choose to wait till the final release anyway.

<comment><USER4> Apple is basically just offering security researchers access to the developer seeding program. The same NDA in place for developers applies to researchers here too: you can't disclose findings until Lion ships (technically, you can't disclose anything you find on a seed at all).

This is obviously only fair. If you don't want the NDA, don't take the seed.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for pointing that out, it makes a lot of sense.

It'll be interesting to see whether these guys pony up all the 0day before release or wait until the blackhat/defcon after.</comment></comment></comment>