As crime dries up, Japan's police hunt for things to do (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt-for-things-to-do <comment><USER2> I was in a massively busy market street in Dotonbori, Osaka, at night.

A police whistle shrieked, and I turned and saw a police officer absolutely _booking it_ through the crowd, shoving through people, shouting at some perpetrator.

My American-cultured brain thought, "This is it, someone's about to die." It seriously freaked me out.

I watched, and he caught up to... a guy on a bike. It was a no-biking zone. He gave the guy a ticket.

<comment><USER3> Dude I recently had a run-in with the police over a bicycle, dang! It was an abandoned bike that had been in a field for several days and I was watching it rust to bits as I was walking my dog

So I did what any self-respecting Canadian would do, I decided to be a hero.. I wheeled it home and showed it to my wife she says 'you better do something with it' so a day passes and we show it to my mother in law and she decides to call the local police to come get it

Lo and behold they show up but right away the guy starts going at me 'why did you take another person's property?' treating me like a criminal i.e. guilty until proven innocent. He makes me sit in the back of his car, separates me from my mother in law, asks for my identification, takes my passport, my employment, the works

They even called the detective squad and three guys roll up in a van

It was some kind of interrogation, I felt like Otto Warmbier. He asked every question under the sun, apparently he thought my mother in law was calling to report _me_ for stealing a bike and he explained that it was no different than a bloody knife or a stolen purse. I decided to take the comical side and laughed my ass off when he told me that. It was more about him saving face to his command at that point

I couldn't believe the ludicrous nature of the whole deal. My only saving grace was that I'm married to a Japanese national so that got me off the hook, along with an intervention by my father in law and the local member of city government who lives down the street, otherwise I may have gone missing and ended up deported for all I know

Bicycle crime is real dude and I can totally understand why asian people suffer from such glaring groupthink and disdain for helping anyone -- no good deed goes unpunished for real

<comment><USER4> As a fellow gaijin in Japan, you seem like you've learned nothing about living here. The whole tone of your story is so smug and obnoxious.

The reason that even minor crimes (stealing a bicycle) are taken seriously is that letting small things slide is the beginning of an erosion of the rule of law. You should probably learn your lesson and leave things that aren't yours alone. Furthermore, the fact that you think your political connections got you off the hook tells us everything we need to know about your exceptionalist outlook.

People like you make the police skeptical of foreigners like myself who bother to learn and play by the rules out of respect for our host country.

<comment><USER5> I think you are post rationalizing. Places like Norway, where I live have far more chill police and would let smaller things slide. Yet Norway is about as safe as Japan.

Most difference between crime in Norway and Japan is more likely down to Norway having much larger immigrant population from poorer countries.

I think your attitude easily ends up excusing police states. Japanese justice system is highly questionable. Almost nobody ever gets acquitted in the justice system, and prison is rather harsh. Norway gets away with low crime despite (or because of) probably the worlds most liberal prison system.

Don't get me wrong. I admire a lot about Japan, but I think you easily fall into the trap of thinking that everything great about Japan is directly the result of something bad.

I would argue more important factor causing law crime in Japan is much the same as in Nordic countries. Low levels of inequality. How people are socialized. Stricter gun laws.

And let us not forget that the average age is high in Japan. Older people commit a lot less crime.

<comment><USER6> > Stricter gun laws.

In a country of literal ninjas and samurais, this is the most inconsequential of all the reasons you gave.

<comment><USER7> I assume you're joking, but this is sorta racist and also dismissive of the value of stricter gun regulations.

<comment><USER8> The value of stricter gun regulations is actually minimal - we already have the effective ones in place. Take a look at the studies for yourself, e.g.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309755075_Does_Gun_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309755075_Does_Gun_Control_Reduce_Violent_Crime)

<comment><USER7> Sorry I don't really have time to get into this.

I looked very briefly at that study. It compares US cities to other US cities using data from 1990. I would be more interested in how the US stacks up against other countries that don't have to act within the limitations of the Second Amendment. More recent data would probably be valuable as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've lived on an American military base with a crime rate so low that the military police spent months determined to track down some guy who robbed the liquor store because it was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages.

There can be a real downside to police officers overzealously looking for someone to bust just to have something to do.

<comment><USER10> Suburban cop favorites:

\- Dogs in parks

\- Dogs off leash in dogs-allowed parks

\- Dog poop infractions

\- People in parks after dark

\- Teenage parties

\- Curfew enforcement

\- Horribly bungling the case when something real and tragic does happen

<comment><USER11> "Curfew enforcement" \- is that actually a thing? What is this? Martial law?

<comment><USER12> Until you reach age 18 in the US you have very limited civil rights. Freedom of speech, assembly, bearing arms, due process, and privacy are restricted. On the up side for kids, the amusement park tickets are cheaper and the prisons are slightly nicer.

And in the US, parents would face criminal charges for things Japanese parents routinely do, like sending their kids to the store alone. Unfortunately the US is filled with plusungood sexcriminals (citation needed) and weapons (price of freedom) so we can't do it in the land of freedom.

<comment><USER13> Curfew is a city or county ordinance.

Charlotte, NC or Mecklenburg County curfew age was 16 and under when I was growing up.

Also the 17 year old age restriction for "R" rated movies is a suggestion. I hope Regal Cinemas as a business continues dying off for changing their policy to be 18+ when I was 17, and then reverting their policy back to 17 when I turned 18. My stepfather would buy a ticket, escort all of us into the theater, walk back out to the ticket box, demand a refund for his ticket, and leave us to watch. Silliest company policy ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That is a common trend in all kinds of enforcement jobs. As the number of rule breakers gets lower, the rules get tougher to compensate. For police officers, security guards and bouncers it means that they will intervene in less and less serious offences. But it appears it works the same in other kinds of professions too. For example, dental health is improving around the world so dentists are spending more of their time with cosmetic issues because fewer patients have holes in their teeth. It's even the same in software development. What do you do when there are no major bugs to fix? You spend your time fixing all the minor irrelevant issues!

I think the empirical evidence is soundly against the idea of people being lazy. People will always find stuff to do because almost no one likes rolling their thumbs all day.

<comment><USER15> > What do you do when there are no major bugs to fix? You spend your time > fixing all the minor irrelevant issues!

Frameworks, frameworks everywhere.

<comment><USER16> Nothing kills time as effectively as a nice casual game of dependency jenga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If they cared about women they would find lots of crime. Particularly on trains, so many women get groped and harassed.

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/22/national/media-...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/22/national/media- national/embracing-social-media-protect-others-danger-japan/)

<comment><USER18> Since when is "harassing" someone a crime?

<comment><USER19> It is when the harassment is of sexual nature.

<comment><USER20> Actually all harassment is a crime in the US. Just insulting people and saying lewd things isn't harassment, though.

<comment><USER21> I don't think this is true. There are 50 states, each with different laws and definitions of acts and crimes. I am not aware of any federal anti-harassment laws except for those governing workplaces, and even those do not consider all harassment to be illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Almost every evening a couple of officers stand at the end of my street in Tokyo. There they can easily catch motorists making an illegal right turn. The rule exists only at certain times of day making it very hard for motorists to comply.

The police know this and just wait there like a bear fishing for spawning salmon.

It seems so pointless. If the right turn is really a problem then mark it in such a way as to make compliance obvious. If not, then just allow it and stop enforcement.

<comment><USER23> My very first ticket, after I got my license in the mid-90's, was for the same thing -- but in Manhattan.

<comment><USER24> You lived in or near NYC and didn't know that right-on-red is illegal in the whole city, at all times? There's no possible confusion there (except maybe near the borders of the outer boroughs, but Manhattan is an island so pretty hard to claim you didn't know you were in the city).

<comment><USER25> Where did they say that they lived in NYC? Only that they got caught there.

<comment><USER24> That's why I said "or near". I figured it was common knowledge if you drive anywhere around the area. But it's true that it's not signed anywhere (that I know of), so if you're driving from farther away, it would be easy to get caught.

<comment><USER25> I lived in upstate NY and had no idea about this rule, and I visited NYC often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> End the war on drugs and alot of the police work will vanish.

In the U.S. they'll need to sort out the opiate crisis which frankly is weird to see anyway because it's the corporations who are the drug barons.

<comment><USER27> Drugs are highly illegal in Japan, yet there is no major drug crisis -- which seems to indicate that it's a cultural problem, and not related to enforcement and illegality. It could even be argued that extremely harsh punishments for drug related crimes could act as a deterrent.

<comment><USER5> Yes culture is a major part of it, which is why you need to compare similar countries. Among western countries those with more liberal drug laws tend to have less problems. Compare e.g. the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal with the US.

In my native Norway, punishment for almost anything is quite mild including drug related crime. Yet drug usage is much lower than in the US.

We are all more similar to the US than Japan, being all derived from European culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They could crack down on the touts fronting tourist scams in areas like Shinjuku? I'm sure there's a lot of less visible crime that occurs (in all cities around the world, not just in Japan), but it's harder to solve so it gets overlooked for easier, more straightforward crimes that return a better bang-for-buck.

<comment><USER29> What are these tourist scams?

<comment><USER28> Touts (generally African immigrants) aggressively try to encourage you to come grab a drink with them, trying to be all friendly and acting shocked that you might not want to come with them when they want to shout you a drink in a bar. Once in the bar (who's in on it), the scam ranges from charging you way too much to buy ladies drinks, through to drugging and robbing you before dropping you home.

They'll never get physical with you beyond getting really close in your personal space and trying to shake your hand, but if you don't acknowledge them and walk past them then they often don't even do that. Their target is young white male tourists with lots of cash who wanna get drunk and party with ladies.

[https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/tokyo-warning-specific- typ...](https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/tokyo-warning-specific-types-of- nightlife-unsafe-for-travelers.44284/)

<comment><USER29> Good to know, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Heaven save us from law makers and enforcers with too much time on their hands.

<comment><USER31> You would have to have society that creates such situation in the first place. Honestly, I'd rather choose that kind of society among others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tell you what. Check on the elderly sole survivors who don't have anyone checking up on them. Bring some community to them. Help them with their emergencies, things they have difficulty executing.

<comment><USER26> That's the job of a social worker, a different kind of government employee.

<comment><USER33> It _is_ a different job, but should it be? Why can't they be cross-trained?

In Vancouver, the police are on the front lines of helping the homeless / drug addicted / mentally ill population (there's a very large overlap between the three groups) access shelters and treatment.

<comment><USER29> I can't speak to Japanese police, but in America you wouldn't want our police doing any kind of social work. The police here are just bullies who have been given badges and guns, and are exactly the wrong personality for any job that requires compassion. Moreover, they're extremely trigger-happy and are well- known to shoot people who are having mental health episodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Being bombarded with Hong Kong news on Bloomberg [1], I am thinking perhaps Hong Kong took the other extreme. Having one of the lowest homicide rate in the world [2], the police is apparently turning against its citizen.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/search?query=hong%20kong](https://www.bloomberg.com/search?query=hong%20kong) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

</comment><comment><USER35> Initially I thought this was really good, and it really is.

I will say, some of the crimes investigated seem to be a waste of time and money. for example > In one recent case, she says, they arrested a group of people who had shared the cost of renting a car, deeming the arrangement an illegal taxi.

and

> One woman describes how five officers crowded into her cramped apartment > after she reported her knickers being swiped from a clothesline.

I hope there has been a push to use this manpower in other, better ways (such as how the article mentioned they were better handling domestic abuse).

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading the "police blotters" in my quiet town's weekly paper is one of my favorite traditions.

This week the police intervened when the wife played music the husband didn't like, so he unplugged the radio. The police did not charge anyone since there was no physical violence...

Also some loose change was stolen from a car.

<comment><USER37> The Flathead Beacon has some good ones too. Recent: July 18: "10:08 a.m. A Kalispell resident called 911 because she had read in the police blotter that law enforcement rescued a ferret and she was curious if she could have it. Police informed her that they did not keep the ferret."

[https://flatheadbeacon.com/section/police- blotter/](https://flatheadbeacon.com/section/police-blotter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They should create some squads to work on cold case files.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Register to read this article in full: Sign up

I don't want to create a new account to read an article? Is there any other option to read this article?

I know one could say that if I don't want to create an account like the website wants, then I have no right to read the article. Yes, I understand that. I respect the website's owners' right to enforce access to the article however they please and I am okay to not read the article if there is truly no other way to read it without creating an account.

<comment><USER40> [https://outline.com/www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as- cri...](https://outline.com/www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries- up-japans-police-hunt-for-things-to-do)

<comment><USER39> This is cool. I wonder how outline.com manages to get past the sign-up wall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately, this also means they can force "confessions" from people because they have little to do. [https://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/13/9989250/japan-crime- con...](https://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/13/9989250/japan-crime-conviction- rate)

</comment><comment><USER42> The article is missing a very important answer: do people get discriminated in the system after jail or prison time ? how fast do system organize court for a recently arrested "criminal"? These are realy important to judge the actions of the police.

</comment><comment><USER17> If they cared about women they would find lots of crime. Particularly on trains, so many women get groped and harassed.

</comment><comment><USER43> The funniest thing I saw in recent memory was some Japanese tourists (in the US) break a law.

They brought a bag lunch of sushi to the zoo, and sat down as a family to eat it at a picnic table. Shortly after they started eating their sushi, the parents proudly started drinking 24oz cans of Sapporo.

Yes, the Japanese tourists were violating American drinking laws by drinking in public!

(And, yes, I know that what they did is perfectly legal and culturally appropriate in Japan!)

</comment><comment><USER44> (2017)

</comment><comment><USER45> They should come to Europe, then. Plenty of crime here.

</comment><comment><USER46> Can anyone read this article? It's behind a paywall for me.

<comment><USER47> You can quickly reload the page, and stop it before the JS for the paywall loads (esc on pc) The HTML loads but not the js that implements the paywall.

<comment><USER48> If you have Safari's reader mode set to activate automatically, it will also kick in and grab the content before the JS engages the paywall.

<comment><USER49> this is good to know. thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow, that is awesome! We (USA here) can learn some things from Japan.

<comment><USER51> The grass is always greener.

But in the case of the US, it usually is when the grass is the rest of the developed world, sadly.

After staying in Japan, there is no doubt that I would live there if I were Japanese. It is even a consideration as a non-Japanese.

Quality of life seems to be a lot better there, even if there aren't as many job opportunities.

<comment><USER52> Quality if life seems better everywhere when you are a tourist. I think people in the USA work crazy hours and take no vacations. How does Japan compare?

<comment><USER51> IMO from what I have heard from folks working at Japanese offices of big tech companies: people work harder in SV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> in singapore they use teenage to police the island

</comment><comment><USER54> I honestly don't know why police don't first and foremost do social work, helping out their communities (visiting elderly, helping folks with disabilities, helping collect data, repair or fix ailing public facilities, etc) instead of putting them in jail and fining them. Call me crazy, but what a wonderful world that would be... if people saw a cop and thought "fuck yeah, this person is here to help me," rather than "find or create a situation in which I've done something wrong and will be punished."

We are all long-term pretty fucked as long as we have institutions devoted to our worst selves. As another commenter said, we need to incentivize better behavior if we want it...

<comment><USER55> When I was a child I read picture story books which taught me that this was the purpose of police - to help citizens. They showed old ladies being helped across the road by humble bobbies and exhorted me to seek the nearest policeman if I ever became lost.

In adulthood it didn't take too many encounters with actual police to realise that they don't see their purpose the same way AT ALL.

<comment><USER56> Parents should be more responsible and teach their kids about police. One bad encounter can be the end of their child's life. Letting them read things like this without providing a realistic perspective is quite irresponsible, IMO. I grew up in a society where no one was deluded like this about the role of police. We all knew they were evil and out to hurt or kill us. Those lessons paid off after I moved to America. Here the cops are just as bad but many people kid themselves into thinking they are not. That's a delusional society.

<comment><USER57> Cops in the US are out there to hurt you or kill you? Talk about delusional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> That sounds amazing. Here in provincial NZ officers won't even respond to a car crash or minor violent crimes, because they're so understaffed. I can go a month without seeing them. I have zero faith in police to deal with the large anti-social behaviour here, and it's made me dislike having to be in public.

If you're a criminal come to NZ. You can rob any shop you want, no one has guns, and police departments won't bother with you even if the victims have your face on camera.

<comment><USER59> Why is this voted down. Just wondering.

<comment><USER58> I assume it's because I pointed out shop owners not having guns makes them easier targets.

Also a lot of wealthy americans tend to fetishize New Zealand as a place they can 'escape' to every time a republican becomes president - so maybe this ruins the image they have of it.

<comment><USER60> Funny isn't it, that they think they would be welcome because they vote blue... New Zealanders tend to consider Americans undesirable immigrants regardless of their political beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Was this article written before or after the Kyoto Animation Studio fire, [https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/07/18/kyoto-animation- studi...](https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/07/18/kyoto-animation-studio-arson- attack-japanese-officials-report-33-dead-anime/) ?</comment>


An electronic song reduces attack and mating success in Aedes aegypti - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922800 <comment><USER2> _The observation that such music can delay host attack, reduce blood feeding, and disrupt mating provides new avenues for the development of music-based personal protective and control measures against Aedes-borne diseases._

Once they had this preliminary result I wonder why they didn't just get a synthesizer and explore it systematically. It might be as simple as some threshold volume of low-frequency tonality, as opposed to any musical structures.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full title: The electronic song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" reduces host attack and mating success in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti.

Aedes aegypti is a mosquito specie</comment>


Ask HN: Is any one else fed up of developing apps on ios? - <AUTHOR>

iOS has such bad system for app development , from last 5 hours I am trying to figure out send the freaking app to test flight , there are 10 websites where I need to fill 100s of forms and god know how many configurations . Why cant it be a single click process . Its my machine my phone and to send between them SO MUCH IS NEEDED ??? REALLY ? <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, there's very little competition in the domain of app stores, notably for iOS devices...

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 too ... but sadly there is no solution !! ...

</comment><comment><USER4> +1 for rage.</comment>


Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn't be more wrong (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal <comment><USER2> Folks like Stephen Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), and Max Roser (Our World in Data) have done a compelling job of presenting data that shows poverty has decreased substantially in recent generations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, amazing propaganda.

$1 will actually feed you well even in a city in India. It's cheaper in other Asian and African cities.

While paltry in developed countries, getting to $1 a day was a big problem and developing countries in Asia are rapidly pioneering the change.

<comment><USER4> The article really does glamorize the pre-industrial past. Since the author doesn't use facts to back up the claim that industrialization has made people's lives worse, how about looking at caloric intake over the past 800 years: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita- supply-o...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-supply-of- calories?time=..2013&country=FRA~GBR~USA)

<comment><USER5> that's actually a terrible metric. During the height of the early industrial revolution the life expectancy in Liverpool fell to 25(!) years, despite higher caloric intake as people were basically put through a manual labour meatgrinder.

This is actually the glamorized superficial narrative that you're accusing the author of. More calories = progress, graphs go up = everyone happy.

For most of industrialisation life was actually extremely harsh, monotonous, life expectancy fell, communal ties were destroyed and that's the case in much of the developing world today. Yuval Noah Harari gives a good overview in _Sapiens_ as well.

[https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did- livin...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-living- standards-improve-during-the-industrial-revolution)

<comment><USER4> How has life expectancy gone since the height of the early industrial revolution? How has life expectancy gone in the developing world of our day?

I believe Yuval Noah writes mostly about pre-agricultural life, not pre- industrial life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like many liberals, I thought it was a fact that US wages had stagnated in the past 40 years. And rich were the only beneficiaries. But in fact the median income has steadily risen: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_Unite...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

So I ask HN, why has this narrative become so widespread?

<comment><USER6> The graphs at [https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/](https://econographics.wordpress.com/tag/wages/) paint a less rosy picture. [1] is I think what is sometimes cited. Which does show growth, but slower than productivity growth. A quick glance at the graph on top of the wiki page you linked suggests it's consistent with it. But [2] is I think most often cited, and shows hardly any growth at all post 1972 or so. I'd also be interested to know why it looks so different from your graph and [1]. Perhaps how 'real income' is defined differs from the adjustments [2] made.

[1] [https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivi...](https://econographics.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/productivity- vs-compensation.jpg)

[2] [https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay- gap/](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the difference is hourly pay vs. median income. The lowest tier of workers hasn't risen as much as the median income.</comment></comment></comment>


New Yahoo! Start Page goes live - <AUTHOR> http://my.yahoo.com <comment><AUTHOR> TechCrunch said the new My Yahoo! personal page will go live today. I think it's awful; especially on a wide-screen monitor.</comment>


Ion: Cross-platform OpenGL library from Google - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/ion <comment><USER2> Neat. This and Oryol [1] appear to have similar goals, I think this already calls for a more in-depth comparison... Either way, this kind of technology could end up being a better choice than the node-webkit / electron paradigm, for many projects that want to target in-browser and native platforms.

I've been planning a project like that using raw GL, but with these frameworks popping up, the concept might go from experimental to very robust.

The native version is inherently lightweight and the emscripten/browser version could also be very lightweight and efficient, depending on how much attention they pay to that target while developing the framework. Looking forward to see how this plays out.

[1]: [http://floooh.github.io/oryol/](http://floooh.github.io/oryol/)

<comment><USER3> The main advantages of electron are html, css and javascript. This is not going to be an alternative to it unless you implement a browser engine on top of it, going full circle...

On the other hand, something like react-native for desktop, coupled with a nice GUI library, could be very interesting.

<comment><USER2> Sure, this will never be a 100% alternative to electron. People who derive pleasure from writing HTML, Javascript, and CSS whenever possible will never stray from that kind of framework. As you say, some also choose these frameworks because of the extensive browser API features. However, some people who don't particularly appreciate these languages and API still use electron because it allows them to target browser and native with a single code base. This is where things might change.

The sad fact is that most electron applications only use a small fraction of the massive featureset provided by a full browser, and whenever a tiny GUI application gets forcibly bundled with 70+MB of browser runtime, a cute fluffy animal dies. I think this new kind of framework has the potential to save some cute fluffy animals in the long term, though certainly not all of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get "ERROR: gyp returned non-zero" while building. Missing dependencies? (Win10.)

<comment><USER5> I get the same error. Earlier in the error message it says generate_ninja_environment.gyp not found

It does not appear to be in the file system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks quite nice.

Since it is also from Google, even though not officially, maybe the Android NDK team could learn a few things about C++ code quality.

Ion's code looks so much nicer than any these APIs

[https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html](https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html)

<comment><USER7> The NDK for me is an island of sanity when it comes to dealing with mobile SDKs.

<comment><USER6> Not when compared to tooling offered by iOS and WP SDKs for C++ developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Uhh so how do I use this? the readme makes it sound great but doesn't really give me any instructions

<comment><USER9> [https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/demos](https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/demos) and [https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/doc/usersguide...](https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/doc/usersguide/examples) may help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks pretty good, but would like to see more than just a features list. Some documentation? An issues list? A way to discuss the project with the developers and other users? (e.g. via Gitter or a Google Group)

</comment><comment><USER11> This might be what I need, but it needs guides and tutorials ... Basically what I'm looking for is a thin client that can render a canvas, or image, and get keyboard/mouse inputs. And if possible use the HTML Canvas API, and run JavaScript. Basically something like nw.js or Electron, but with only a canvas. With cross platform support.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice to see screenshots at some point, other than that, maybe incorporate any / all requirements for building the project if any.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wish there was something cross-platform like this, but with the syntax, tooling, performance and compute shaders of Metal.

</comment><comment><USER14> Build fails in Yosemite inside zlib. I forked it and trying to fix it.. Anyone did?

<comment><USER15> I don't really understand their build system so not sure how to fix this cleanly but I added:

#define NOCRYPT (1) #define NOUNCRYPT (1) at the top of ./third_party/zlib/src/contrib/minizip/zip.c and unzip.c

And that got past the zlib errors on yosemite and built some of the demos (I will post some screenshots on twitter @joeld42, but it's just boxes and stuff). However, there was a linker error later with some json parser (maybe it was in the tests? I can't even tell) that I didn't figure out yet.

I also had to install "ninja" because apparently it needs like six different build systems.

The "ios" targets build... but I don't know what to do with them. I ended up with a directory full of .app files. Maybe zip them and rename them ipa?

Anyways, it looks like there's some cool stuff in there but there's a ton of dependencies and it doesn't really feel "lightweight". I'll definitely keep an eye on this one but it really could use more documentation for people not familiar with google's ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Putting the project name/author in the title would probably draw more attention (i.e. "Google's Ion: cross-platform C++ OpenGL application framework")

<comment><USER17> "not an official google product"

<comment><USER18> "Used by many teams across Google, running on billions of devices through multiple Google products"

<comment><USER17> still not appropriate to refer to it as "Google Ion" or even "Google's Ion"

<comment><USER19> "Copyright 2016 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved." Is in all of the files. It's hardly imprudent to call it Google's.

If it's not Google's, it's nobody's.

Could go for "Google publishes Ion, a cross-platform OpenGL abstraction."

<comment><USER17> There is a subtle and nuanced difference between simply owning the IP for something, and endorsing it as an officially supported product.

<comment><USER18> That's right. But 'Google's' covers both cases. Evidence:

case a: Bernie Sanders' socks.

case b: Bernie Sanders' campaign promises.

You weren't confused by the nuanced difference in ownership and endorsement, but you learned more about the socks - and may be more interested in them - than if the name was omitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This illustrates one of the serious issues with C++: numerous code files in a project authored relatively recently that are dedicated to basic application plumbing such as memory allocation/tracking and concurrency.

Its 2016. There are a number of performant cross-platform systems/languages that have good built-in facilities for these basic plumbing problems.

C++ is an outdated language, and the entire mindset and ecosystem is wasteful and constantly reinventing the wheel. C++ was still sort of relevant when I was playing with it in High School in 1994, but even then it was dated in most ways.

These are some very poor software engineering choices.

Educate yourselves about the Nim programming language.

<comment><USER21> I'm not exactly a fan of C++, but this isn't fair. What you're describing is more of a problem with this project's coding style than the language. Most of [https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/base](https://github.com/google/ion/tree/master/ion/base) is covered either by the STL or Boost; most of what the C++ committee has been doing lately consists of trying to encourage people to not do what this project is doing (by improving the breadth of the standard library).

<comment><USER6> I have seen the C sub-community of C++ obsessed with things like what makes the compiler generate more optimized code, i++ or i = i + 1.

This goes for every code line that one writes, most of the time backed up by urban legends and popular beliefs instead of profiling the code.

Whereas other programming languages cultures, tend have a more meaningful approach to optimizing software.

<comment><USER22> I know a guy who works at an airline company. He's porting all the C++ and assembly code to 64 bit architecture. He genuinely did not know C++ was a seperate language from C.

To be fair, he shamelessly bragged about getting the job through nepotism.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Documize: Upload Word Documents, Get Back a Wiki (Open Source) - <AUTHOR> http://www.documize.com/ <comment><USER2> Is this really a "wiki" or is it an online document editor? It's easy to create the basics of a "wiki," and while reliably importing documents into a wiki isn't easy, it's just a starting point. The important features of a Wikipedia (Mediawiki) are an emphasis on links within the site, the ability to view changes across the site, changes on one page, and to see how a page was composed in clean markup, the clean markup also preventing behind the scenes jumbly messes of "structure." Missing any of these points loses a vital aspect of wikis. The category structure and templates are also important features, supporting what in Wikipedia's case is a strong support community that can go well beyond what a formulated menu structure can offer. (Mediawiki has emphatically refused to implement any kind of fine grained access model, this is one area other wikis have advantages.)

But now people expect more, they don't want to be forced to use markup and they want to simultaneously edit documents in a rich editor, in a social setting where its easy to find and connect with other contributors. This is the current focus of Wikipedia and while other efforts have their own strengths, not connecting finely to Wikipedia's developments is, to me anyway, missing the greatest element of development.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's online document editing with approvals, diffs, etc.

The funny thing is regular business users think of it as a wiki. Me and you know different!

Think of the business folks at Wells Fargo or any other larger enterprise. They will upload 100's if if not 1000's of documents. Now they can link between documents or just work on each document as they do.

Wiki is a word we think doesn't fit -- but we keep running into it.

The joy of start-ups: too much uncertainty!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if the word "wiki" might not work against you though. In my experience people's idea of a wiki is fixed on something from a decade ago. They often react with outright revulsion to the word (though granted most terms in our field such as "portal" and "CMS" have also been abused). But there have been so many examples of "wikis" that turn into woolly messes or are too technical for 'ordinary' uses to want to commit to so fail in their goal of being open for anyone. Without the traction of a Wikipedia style site I would think you might be better off using another word.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Just looking for that word!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Documize co-founder here. Would love some initial feedback on our new startup, Documize.

Documize is targeting enterprises who have mountains of Word documents full of intel and know-how that people struggle to find and maintain. Running a couple of pilots at the moment.

Dual licensing approach supporting open source and commercial. Public beta coming soon. Expect freemium/paid plans (SaaS) and commercial support plans (on premise).

Tech stack: Go, Angular, MySQL (Windows, Linux, OSX)

<comment><USER3> > mountains of Word documents

Is it one wiki per doc, or does it try to cross-link docs into a single wiki?

> Dual licensing approach supporting open source and commercial.

Could you share a bit more about your vision? Dual-licensing is often used with dev tools, how would it work with a SaaS offering?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can upload all your documents and work/share them individually. Then linking between becomes easier because they are not just Word files sitting on disc.

For SaaS:

\- freemium plan for 1 user \- paid plans based upon number of users

On-premise:

\- download and install core product \- enterprise features like AD auth, redacting, workflows are paid for

We plan to put the core product source code onto Github so anyone can have their on hosted "wiki".

Hope this makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool demo video. At first it sounded like gibberish, then words started coming into focus, by the end I was amazed at the density of information being communicated.

<comment><USER4> In terms of information density, it is pretty slick. Listening to it on a less-than-great set of laptop speakers in a not-quiet environment, it was nearly impossible to make our the words.

My advice: you are innovating in the speaking/presentation style, and that is pretty slick; if you care about it, bring it to the forefront by lowering the music level by half. If you don't care about the voice enough to put it far in front of the music, put the words on the screen so people can just mute it and read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The start is always one the most difficult part. So congrats for getting at this stage.

I like the idea and just signed up for the beta!

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations, love the idea of converting my docs to wiki. The rap video is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER7> A perfect tool, this is great!</comment>


A month with the Nexus 4 - <AUTHOR> http://text.krona.tm/post/42457585250/a-month-with-nexus-4

<comment><USER2> >in my old phone(2.3.4-ish I think),

Yeah that's going to make a HUGE difference.</comment>


How Safe Is Apple's Safe Browsing? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2019/10/13/dear-apple-safe-browsing-might-not-be-that-safe/ <comment><USER2> This only affects users in China: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/10/14/apple- acc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/10/14/apple-accused-of- sending-data-from-1-billion-iphones-and-ipads-to-china/#462c1627104c)

</comment><comment><USER3> See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21254166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21254166) from last month.

</comment><comment><USER4> They are querying a Chinese database (Tencent, likely highly connected to the Chinese communist government).

What do you think the list would contain/not contain?</comment>


Shaken by Amazon's rejection, some cities ponder what went wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cities-spurned-by-amazonwonder-if-it-was-all-a-charade/2018/11/15/9c32ac2a-e783-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html <comment><USER2> Nothing went wrong. They dodged a bullet. Tax breaks to "create" jobs, public financing of professional sports stadiums, hosting the olympics. None of these are good investments of public funds. They aren't even mediocre investments. They're bad for everyone but corporate beneficiaries and the politician who gets to pretend he or she did something useful for five minutes.

<comment><USER3> This has always been my gut feeling about these deals but happen to know of any research highlighting the observed results?

<comment><USER2> I actually just came across this one this morning and happen to have it open in a tab. I'm only about halfway through but it's really interesting. They mention that some states have constitutional clauses that would seem to prohibit these sorts of arrangements altogether. I'm planning to check Westlaw to see if anyone has ever brought suit alleging the breaks to be unconstitutional but I haven't had a chance yet.

[https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/farren_and_philpot_- _p...](https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/farren_and_philpot_- _policy_brief_-_amazon_hq2_the_story_so_far_-_v1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The astronomical tax breaks and other perks that these companies get when relocating or building new seem a little strange when I think about it. Municipalities are going to have to deal with fallout from 50,000 new people, for example. Road use will go up, traffic patterns will change, maybe require more first responders, sewer, utility usage will go up, there may be environmental concerns.

What justifies giving out the perks (and probably bribes, if we're being totally honest) in light of the real costs to municipalities that get a relocated or new multinational? Is it all just increased tax revenue on the new jobs brought in? Because we should say that's the economic benefit. It's not at all clear right now. As a resident of Denver, one of the semifinalists, I think, I was watching this pretty closely locally, and we just got phrases like "economic benefits". Nothing specific.

<comment><USER2> I just read this interesting (and frankly, absurd) article about the creative "concessions" offered by various cities. Unfortunately this seems to go well beyond tax breaks. Though the tax breaks are pretty ridiculous it's just the tip of the iceberg. I would guess most taxpayers would oppose spending precious funds on: free zoo tickets, a private Amazon airport lounge, and free pet microchipping for new employees, among other ridiculous perks.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/14/amazon- ne...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/14/amazon-next- headquarters-losing-city-bids-what-offered)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> how can one private company have so much power?

<comment><USER6> They just threw the words '50k jobs, economy, and did I mention jobs?' in there, and that's all it took.

I'd bet that the same thing would happen if Microsoft, Apple, Google, or any other number of big tech firms decided to 'branch out.'</comment></comment>


SHA-1 Isn't Just Broken, It's Dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/sha-1-collision-attacks-are-now-actually-practical-and-a-looming-danger/ <comment><USER2> Stupid title. What this article is actually about is there is a chosen prefix attack for SHA1.

This makes attacks much more practical.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seen on Mastodon:

> _How long till someone introduces an intentional cycle in a git repository? > Anyone want to place bets on which one? My guess: the linux kernel, sometime > in the next 1.5 years._</comment>


Plan B – Retro Demo - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/demos/detail/plan-b-retro-demo <comment><USER2> _This is a pure HTML /CSS3 animation that is supposed to look (and sound!) like one of those demos in the days of the C64 or the Amiga. There is no JavaScript at all involved._

It's an interesting demo, but as someone who has used a real C64, and watched the demos on them (this is better than C64 graphics, but definitely something resembling the capability of mid-80s era hardware), there's something about using several more orders of magnitude more resources to recreate the same effects that just doesn't feel right...

<comment><USER3> What feels right to you would mean that nobody who didn't have physical access to the original hardware would be able to experience any such thing as a demo in the sense we mean.

The best way to preserve software is to emulate, emulate, emulate, and then get those emulations out into the world. (INSERT JASON SCOTT HYPE HERE: [https://github.com/jsmess/jsmess](https://github.com/jsmess/jsmess) ) Hardware dies and browsers are a platform now, so this is just the next logical step.

Really, though: I'm sure the people who spent their time getting the technology of the 1980s to do amazing things at the limits of their capacity would be horrified to see a new generation getting a new platform to perform at the limits of its capacity. Horrified, I tell you!

<comment><USER4> It doesn't feel right, because the experience had two levels.

How the demo looked like. Which this demo is wonderful made, not a single complaint, specially because of the innovative step of using pure HTML/CSS.

How programming looked like, trying to squeeze everything into 64KB of memory, while taking advantage of hardware tricks and invalid register modes in the process. No one will experience this while playing this demo.

So it is great that new generations get to see how it looked like, but they don't get to see how it felt to program them.

This is what the OP was complaining about, I assume.

<comment><USER3> At the programming level, we're trading constraints.

The original constraint was fitting machine code into RAM. The new constraint is finding quirks of the standard and/or implementations which allow new and interesting effects, possibly on more than one version of a given browser and/or on more than one kind of browser.

The fact the original constraint doesn't exist here is secondary to the fact there are some constraints in play. We can go back and forth on which constraints are more limiting, and there _are_ competitions about who can do the most in the least Javascript (for example), but as far as I'm concerned, the essential spirit remains.

<comment><USER5> An important thing about the Amiga demo scene was that those constraints were also the edge of what was possible in home computing. So they were approached in a different spirit from say, someone writing a 64k demo on a pc with 8gigs of ram, or running demo effects in the browser.

When I watched demos in the Amiga days it was because I wanted to see something new that had never been done on a computer before. Seeing a great demo effect was like discovering a new superpower in your computer; it opened up new possibilities.

Being on the limit of what is believed to be possible is, I suppose, formally the same as being within a constraint, but the spirit is completely different. It was about pushing back boundaries.

Over the edge of that boundary, there was nothing, just mythical SGI workstations somewhere in the far distance :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unlicense Yourself: Set Your Code Free - <AUTHOR> http://unlicense.org/ <comment><USER2> IMO the disadvantages of license proliferation outweigh the benefits of "unlicensing". MIT/BSD licenses are already compatible with everything. If you really want to avoid "enriching lawyers" you shouldn't invent new (un)licenses, since many companies will require the unlicense to be lawyer- approved before they'll touch it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation>

</comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that this is generally considered a bad idea because copyright law in some countries does not recognise the concept of a "public domain" (i.e. you can't disavow copyright even if you want to).

I don't know if that's correct, but if so it would seem that something like the ISC (or modified BSD) license would be superior.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've always appreciated the blessing in SQLite:

Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing:

" May you do good and not evil

May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others

May you share freely, never taking more than you give. "

<http://www.sqlite.org/different.html></comment>


Virgin Plans iPad-Only Magazine for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/virgin-ipad-magazine-maverick/

<comment><USER2> That's a really bad idea.

Sure, we (their market) are a tech-savvy bunch, and most of us do have iPhones or Android phones, but I'd guess that a fairly small percentage of their market have iPads (5%?), and most people aren't going to want to read a full magazine on their phone. Plus, there's a lot less screen real-estate for ads on a phone, and the UX gets considerably worse when wasting screen space on ads.

It's a nice gimmick that'll get them some attention, but in the end, a reasonable portion of their audience (1/3?) won't have a compatible device, and most of the ones who do will just have phones, not iPads. I see lots of advantages to it being _online_ only, but they really should also distribute it as a PDF or website (HTML5 app? They could swing Webkit-only and get fancy HTML5 interaction on all platforms including desktop.) as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how the picture shows them only using a conservative 50% of the screen for advertising...

</comment><comment><USER4> _the new, all-digital magazines that aren't saddled with expensive print versions_

I think they call that a "blog".

<comment><USER5> Completely different. The average iPad owner is worth way more to advertisers than the average blog reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have an ongoing issue with magazines for 'entrepreneurs' because of the overuse of the word. I'm sure the magazine will be very well done, but will top-10 lists of twitter clients really be catering to entrepreneurs, or will it be catering to the mass market of average people that like the few hours of enjoyment they get from buying this magazine and imagining themselves as a successful entrepreneur.

A magazine for entrepreneurs is like a club for anarchists.

</comment><comment><USER7> So what happens is I'm not a douche with an iPhone?

<comment><USER7> Haha wow, good to see people know what a joke is.</comment></comment>


Restored Edison Electric car from 1889 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/06/restored_edison_electric_car_from_1.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not an expert in turn-of-the-century automobiles, but my father is -- probably one of the foremost in the country -- and I've grown up around them all my life.

So, I'm quite certain that's not an 1889 anything. The first dead giveaway is the wire wheels -- they're earlier than late-20's model A wires, but look similar to Buffalo wires in the earlier 20s. I would guess that there's just no way that the wheels are earlier than 1917, _at best_. In 1889, almost all available automobiles had derivatives of carriage wheels. They were usually wood, with a thin, uninflated hard rubber "tire". (Remember, paved roads didn't really exist yet.)

The tiller steering would be correct for a turn-of-the-century car, but the body is just not. Cars of that era weren't fully enclosed shiny sheet metal ordeals; they still closely resembled carriages, built mostly out of wood and hand-forged steel, with seats on leaf springs and a small motor box.

There _were_ electric cars in 1889, but this wasn't one of them.

<comment><USER2> ...derp. Right at the beginning of the video, and at the top throughout most of it, it says in plain sight that the car is ca 1914, which looks perfectly reasonable.

Clearly I need to go play outside for a while.

<comment><USER3> The article does say that the motor is a GE automobile motor, _patented_ 1889.</comment></comment></comment>


Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/neil-postman--five-things.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Neil Postman (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman>) is the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, a fantastic book on the danger of our ever- increasing access to information.</comment>


Designing from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ (More than I bargained for) - <AUTHOR> http://aten.co/2014/09/12/designing-from-iphone-5-to-iphone-6-iphone-6-more-than-i-bargained-for/ <comment><USER2> Looks like iOS development is going to join the ranks of Android where we have many ways to handle all the screen layouts, sizes, and densities. E.g. the nine patch format to specify which parts of a graphical asset are content, which are padding, which are scalable; resource folders with resource specifies that will activate on different devices; fragments to extract widgets and their controlling code from one screen and use them on others so you can have tablet screens with more functionality and separate phone screens that use reusable components from those, etc..

<comment><USER3> Ah, yes, but now it will no longer be decried as fragmentation, but as progress. Thus are the ways of the Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Designing for variable screen resolutions in Photoshop is insane. Something like Antetype with automatic layout makes much sense: [http://antetype.com](http://antetype.com)

<comment><USER5> Seems nice but is only for Mac OS X. Is there an alternative for Linux or Windows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Talk about fragmentation.

</comment><comment><USER7> What does it even mean for a gradient to be "pixel-perfect"?

<comment><USER8> If you look I messed up some of the borders while smoothing on the 6+ one that I didn't fix before uploading.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you feel about Slack developer communities? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed quite an increase in non-commercial project developer communities that use Slack as their primary medium of communication, particularly for help and developer-related inquiries.
My gut reaction to this is a negative one, where I feel like the siloing of developer releated questions and answers is against the nature of the web, and more importantly detremental to the community itself, as it prevents discovery of previous discussions in forums, Google Groups, Stackoverflow etc.
How do you feel about these? <comment><USER3> My experience with these communities is that they are very close to non- functional, for several reasons. I use paid Slack, to pretty good effect, every day at work.

First of all, they have to rely heavily on hacks to store information long- term because of the 10,000 message limit.

Second, even with fairly diligent use of Google Docs for important stuff, tons of info is still lost. I've got a slack where I have DMs with four different people starred. But for two of the four, I have no idea why, because I don't recognize the names and the entire conversation history is gone.

Third, where the message limit is less of an issue, and low barrier to entry is important -- ones with a lower activity rate, and where the community is not super close-knit -- tend to suffer from constant challenges to the group's norms. People drift in and out, wanting to argue again and again about how it's OK for them to use exclusively male pronouns all the time, or how it's OK for them to discuss irrelevant topics. This takes up a ton of the message history, and lowers the information density.

Like it or not, IRC, with a web client, and a publicly available archive that is searchable, is far more functional for this situation. Paid Slack is a pretty good tool for work communication, but the free version, for now, doesn't translate well to open communities.

<comment><USER4> > My experience with these communities is that they are very close to non- > functional

I had really good luck with the Elixir Slack channel when I was first starting out with the language. I guess I'd say Slack can be a great newb friendly place to ask dumb questions. There were plenty of times I didn't know what to Google, because I didn't understand a basic concept, and I couldn't figure out how ask a clear question on StackOverflow. When you're in newb territory, having a Slack channel full of helpful people is nice.

<comment><USER5> > When you're in newb territory, having a Slack channel full of helpful people > is nice.

Exactly my experience as well. In those cases, Slack is just like an old school IRC channel with a shinier interface.

<comment><USER6> You both missed the point, which is - for such use cases, Slack is even worse than an old school IRC.

<comment><USER5> Well, in those cases you go where the community is. Maybe one is better than the other, but my personal preference doesn't matter here. I would still use one or the other, regardless. If something better comes along, you should use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't mind the chat aspect. Instant chat is something common in communities, development or otherwise. I used to hang out on my share of dev IRC channels back when I was younger. I'd argue that instant chats like these are actually _crucial_ for maintaining communities.

I mind _Slack per se_. I could understand non-technical communities going for it, but developers? Come on. Why choose a commercial walled garden that forces you to use a single, heavyweight and non-ergonomic interface? A product made by a startup, which can unpredictably go in any direction _including disappearing overnight_ , if some big corporation opens their wallet widely enough?

<comment><USER8> Because even developers appreciate the same UX ergonomics that our end-users users do. Did you think everyone uses Vim?

I don't really if all chat messages disappear. It's chat. It's ephemeral. No value to me beyond sentimental. And most people including myself think the UI is ergonomic, and far more featureful than any IRC client when nobody bothers to run their IRC clients on an always-on server.

The worst part of IRC is that everyone is offline the second they close their laptop or client when their question is. They won't be seeing your message. That only a few power users will bother to receive messages "while offline" is also a mark against IRC for the general public. Notice that developer /= IRC power user. Not even close.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with you that Slack is an ergonomic interface. I'll give two examples off the top of my head:

      1. New Threads sort with new items at the top.
         This is opposite of everywhere else in the
         app. And there is no indicator, e.g. the
         date isn't displayed.

      2. Try backspacing over an @ mention or two.
         It is very unpredictable behavior.

I could find many more if I had Slack in front of me. I'm not saying that IRC is the solution, but I can't believe that Slack is the best we can do.

<comment><USER8> I claimed it was ergonomic (at least more ergonomic than IRC since that was the comparison), not flawless.

And many of those ergonomic points come from features that IRC clients don't even have.

<comment><USER9> And I'd rather use Vim.

<comment><USER10> Me too, but we're not the target demographic. In any case I think Matrix is the best bet for open communities right now - it has full slack integration anyway.

<comment><USER7> > _Me too, but we 're not the target demographic._

Well, that's a problem. How is it that tech savvy people created a tech industry that increasingly caters to _everyone except the tech savvy people_? It's getting really annoying. Operating systems are gradually losing features. A lot of software moved to the web, shedding functionality, and they evolve towards dumber and less functional forms over time. Smartphones are getting locked down and dumbed down. Hell, the only smartwatch company that made tools instead of toys went down, and I can't get a sensible smartwatch either. I don't like this trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They're unsearchable (with google), require an account just to read and have no seperation of discussion besides channels. I prefer forums.

<comment><USER12> Zulip has "topics" inside streams (kind of what they call channels).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't like it for a number of reasons:

* Exclusivity. Often they require some kind of signup before you can even read it. This isn't a big deal but I prefer a more open discussion.

* Lack of google visibility. Lots of good discussions will benefit the asker and a few people in the slack but no one in the future, searching for the same information.

* Lack of searching for the members. Once you get to 10k messages, you can't search the older ones. If you have a large slack, it doesn't take long to get there. And unless see company is willing to pony up thousands of dollars a month, those discussions are lost forever.

On the other hand, maybe three memory hole aspect of slack is actually a feature not a bug. Perhaps it lets folks speak more freely.

<comment><USER14> > * Lack of google visibility. Lots of good discussions will benefit the asker > and a few people in the slack but no one in the future, searching for the > same information.

> Lack of searching for the members. Once you get to 10k messages, you can't > search the older ones. If you have a large slack, it doesn't take long to > get there. And unless see company is willing to pony up thousands of dollars > a month, those discussions are lost forever.

This is the default state on the old real-time communication medium, IRC. Communities can solve the problem on Slack the same was as on IRC, using accounts controlled by bots who log channel messages. If the bot then puts the logs somewhere Google can find, you have a record that can be Googled. This only happens for the public if somebody cares.

<comment><USER15> You actually can't do this with slack and be compliant with their TOS ([https://slack.com/terms-of-service/api](https://slack.com/terms-of- service/api)):

"Functionality. You may not use the Slack API to replicate or compete with core products or services offered by Slack. You acknowledge and agree that Slack has or may in the future offer products or services that are similar to your Application, and nothing will prevent Slack from doing so;"

So any communities doing this can get their community shut down by slack at any time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a well reasoned post, so my first reaction is to agree with you. But, then I remember two things. First, I largely learned to program because of some (extremely patient) people on IRC. IRC is similar to Slack in that it theoretically silos away questions and answers and prevents future discoverability. And second, despite all these years of conversations that were held on IRC, I can still find answers to any question imaginable on Google.

In retrospect, I think that Slack (or IRC) might actually be a great way to disseminate information from developers to highly technical people. And, I think that many of these first generation learners blog about what they learned or go to answer questions on other services (ie - StackOverflow).

But, I'm a sample of one and have absolutely no proof of any of this...:)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't like this trend either. What I particularly don't like is that to be signed in into multiple Slack communities, I need to add them to the Slack desktop app. And the more apps I have, the worse the desktop app seems to perform.

I wish the developer communities would realize that IRC has been around for years and performs much much better than Slack.

<comment><USER18> Discord seems to be a more elegant solution than Slack tbh, and I happen to be on several developer servers. The web app/desktop app/mobile app all function brilliantly.

<comment><USER19> The issue I have with Discord is the lack of threads. When you're helping multiple people at once threads can help distinguish who you're talking to. Or when you have multiple conversations happening at once it stops things getting confusing.

<comment><USER18> wholeheartedly agree with this. The counter on the top an be annoying as it just aggregates all private chats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not a fan. Annoying to access, limited history, ...

Can be improved with having external logs and/or a strong culture of moving things to external documentation, you can set up open gateways for joining, ..., but few Slack-based communities bother.

</comment><comment><USER21> Over the years I've seen projects using stackoverflow to answer dev/user questions and just recently I started using [http://stimulusjs.org/](http://stimulusjs.org/) which runs a discourse installation for their users. Which I like a lot because it discourse is fixing a lot of the problems stackoverflow has while not being a chaotic chat like slack.

I like my information well-ordered, grouped, focused and easy to search. Slack is a waterfall I just can't stand. (plus the emojis, am I too old for those?)

</comment><comment><USER22> If we're talking about an open-source project dev community, I honestly think there are better tools out there these days.

There are two main problems I have with Slack communities: the message limit, and having to create yet another account. Being able to search for a question that may have already been asked is great, and the need for more accounts is a bit of a turnoff too.

Gitter was specifically built with open-source projects in mind, which is great. However, once a project becomes large enough, having a single channel is probably not conducive to productivity.

Lately I've started seeing open-source communities use Discord, which seems rather interesting.

Of course, there are also the projects out there that use Matrix and have IRC and Gitter bridges.

Having said all this, I'm also a part of some non-project-based Slack dev communities. I can definitely see the appeal to these; a lot of people already use Slack for work, after all.

<comment><USER23> Gitter's search is also terrible and barely existent. I think this is to do with the way they store logs after a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I suggest Zulip as an alternative. Two main advantages:

\- free & open source.

\- threads are google-able and linkable.

</comment><comment><USER25> I see what you're saying, and I agree with all your points, but there are positive points as well:

1) When you need low-latency help, i.e. where you need to have a conversation about your problem, a real-time communications medium is ideal.

2) They _do_ tend to lean towards becoming _communities_ , and communities are very good at driving engagement within that community. I've joined a few Slack communities and become a contributing member, whereas I experimented with early Stack Overflow and haven't really engaged with it since.

Honestly, I think they tend to lead to _stronger_ communities, since you have to join and participate even a bit to get your answer out of it. With GG/SO, you can just pop in, read your bit, and move on, having never contributed.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've become a regular on Symfony's (PHP framework). It works really great for creating a sense of community. Slack is great to talk with each others and split concerns between channels. The thread feature is great at keeping the main channels from getting clogged.

Now the main issue is that those Slack workspace are always on free tier. The only other options would be to charge the users as it's a fixed price per users and paying $8/users/month is impossible for open source projects.

Since those are on the free tier, message history is lost. You cannot leverage Slack's great search engine and community support gets lost. On a regular forum, you could search for previous questions. On Slack, you cannot.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would rather have the projects advocate IRC with some nice frontend, I get there are some benefits of slack for developers, but this is thin ice - <USER2> the projects are prepared to pay for channels that have thousands of users.

</comment><comment><USER8> They are great because they create actual communities.

Chat is ephemeral. If you have a question that's not on StackOverflow, then you can just ask people in chat. It's even better for deeper questions because you can have a conversation.

Not every social vessel we have in the world needs to become an archived knowledgebase. And one of the reasons StackOverflow exists is because it's so hard to mine Q&A from even more static mediums like forums much less chatrooms.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love that Slack exists. I don't see any need to use it myself. It provides a great honeypot for the Eternal September influx. IRC is (to steal Metacity's slogan) like Cheerios.

(Yes, I used Slack for a while, at a company I worked for. I found it technically unimpressive, and the UI seems to be designed primarily to encourage every channel to descend into emoji and memes, and to maximize distraction.)

I find the lack of logging/search on IRC to be a feature. I think people are more open in a community when they know they're not going to be hyper-analyzed by strangers on the internet in the distant future. There do exist IRC loggers, but I think most of the channels I frequent don't allow them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Overall, they are good simply because you do often get quick real-time help, like Irc but with more people.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find spectrum.chat working better for communities when compared to slack. Somehow slack adds too much noise to your "work communication"

And I hate when people tag the whole channel for some silly reasons(most communities disable this option...but still)

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree with all the other negative comments here plus one more - Slack just isn't very good software, it frequently bugs out or outright crashes and is rediculously slow.

</comment><comment><USER32> misc thoughts -- if the service is free, then you are the product... Commercial companies can change their terms at will, and are long-term motivated towards vendor lock-in ... FOSS producers need FOSS IRC channels.. and lastly, crowds move by both fashion and fiat. Efforts may not be immediately returned, but over the longer term this can change quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree. the information they're sharing would better serve those communities by being public.

Its a short-sighted solution.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think steering questions to a chat is a terrible idea. There is no collective learning anymore.

</comment><comment><USER35> It sucks. Bring back IRC now!

<comment><USER36> IRC never went away and is alive and well, and still both useful and fun.

<comment><USER37> I keep hearing that and then I go to an irc room and ask a question and sit... and sit some more... I think I'm at 5 times in a row now that no one even answered. I am done wasting my time there. Irc might not be totally dead but despite all the denial it's definitely on its way out. And good riddance.

<comment><USER38> Was this on freenode? What channel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://spectrum.chat](https://spectrum.chat) tries to solve the problem of giant Slack communities. It gained a lot of popularity in the last year + it's open source, if that is something you care about.</comment>


7 Reasons Why You Should Simulate a DDoS Attack On Your Site   - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mazebolt.com/?p=171

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be interested to hear what you think about this topic

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't take your website security for granted!</comment>


Chrome passes IE in browser share - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Chrome-passes-IE-in-browser-share-1580620.html

<comment><USER2> Although this has been partly helped by MS's resistance to innovation (e.g., with regards to HTML5), Chrome's rise for the last few years has been truly amazing nonetheless. Chrome is not just for developers any more. I see more and more IE9 commercials these days, but would it really help to reverse or slow down Chrome's momentum at this point?</comment>


This Verbal Confrontation Shows Why Walmart Will Never Accept Apple Pay - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/11/09/this-verbal-confrontation-shows-why-walmart-will-never-accept-apple-pay-video/ <comment><USER2> Walmart's Mike Cook asks an interesting question;

At a physical store, if you use any other mobile app, like LevelUp, then the merchant pays the higher 'card-not-present' rate. The same transaction with Apple Pay pays the lower 'card-present' rate. But an in-app purchase on an iPhone still charges the 'card-not-present' rate.

Visa's Jim McCarty's response is, "Fundamentally because the payload is different. One is a full EMV track read transaction and the other is not."

"Because it's a rule that y'all made?"

"No, because the data doesn't flow. It's why the standard was written like that." ... and then later Jim quips... "That's the first time Mike's complained about getting the card-present rate." which the moderator replies "OK, that gets the best answer beer."

The format of the packet is irrelevant. The security properties are derived from the _user interaction points_. Specifically, Alice loads her card into Apple Pay by taking a picture of it. A week later Alice uses her phone to pay with Apple Pay and the merchant would get a card-present rate. _Can any other app do the same thing_? Is there an open standard which allows LevelUp (who currently is forced to pay card-not-present) to use the same exact steps and get the same favorable rate? If not, I think Cook has a very valid point.

Apple Pay wins by default if they are the only mobile app in town which can get a card-present rate. I assume Google Wallet is card-not-present, for example. Merchants won't pay a higher rate so you can use some app. Jim McCarty specifically mentions the scale problem with changing brick & mortar merchants card-not-present rates.

<comment><USER3> I would imagine that it is because brick and mortar merchants are a lower fraud risk than an online property. Don't forget that visa and MasterCard suck up fraud on both sides of the transaction.

Which is not to say that there aren't shenanigans going on, but there's a reason that consumers really like MasterCard and visa, they both look after customer interests, sometimes at the expense of merchants.

<comment><USER4> What kind of fraud is there to suck up at the merchant part of the transaction? Isn't it so that if the merchant doesn't deliver, they don't get paid?

<comment><USER5> In the EU, merchants have to pay for swipe card fraud. Let's say you buy something with a swipe card, scribble a signature on the receipt, then ring your bank few hours later saying that there is a transaction you don't recognize. Then your bank requests the receipt from the merchant, the signatures don't match = you get reimbursed full amount, the merchant has no money and no goods - because in EU it is the merchant's responsibility to check if the signatures match. If they don't, they didn't do their job properly, therefore they have to pay.

This is the reason why pretty much nobody accepts swipe cards in EU anymore - there's very few places which even have swipe terminals, it's all chip and pin. The couple times when my chip didn't work, the cashier had to key in the number of the card manually, because she didn't have a swipe terminal at the till.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry, but what is the god damn deal with those video players? I am so so tired of companies and sites building their own _ _always_ _ shitty video player, and then it's like they don't even test them! And Recode! A site for tech enthusiasts, made by tech enthusiasts! I am so confused, sitting in hazy cloud of memories of real player...

On a mac, neither safari nor chrome will allow me to watch the video.

<comment><USER7> Try removing your ad-blocker maybe ?

<comment><USER8> No ad blocker here (Win 8/Chrome) and it won't work for me either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article mentions cards linked to a customers checking account. I assume that means a "debit card", i.e. one where transactions are deducted immediately rather than aggregated into a monthly bill? How common are those cards in the US?

Here (.se), most Visa and Mastercards are bank-issued debit cards, and almost everyone would have such a card, even if they also have a credit card from Visa/MasterCard. Is the situation the same in the US?

<comment><USER10> In the US you would typically get one of these debit cards automatically with your checking account, and it works as you describe. If you want a credit card you would have to submit a separate credit application at the same (or different if you like) bank and that would be a completely different card with its own account and terms. I think this is the same in most countries.

<comment><USER9> Ok. Guess the difference is not technical but cultural, here the debit cards are used more frequently, and many never get a credit card. I do think we have bonuses on many cards, but I have never found them appealing enough to switch to a pay-later system. I prefer knowing the balance all the time. I use mine only for work expenses and "future" expenses such as flights, where an airline going bankrupt would be problematic if I had already paid the ticket up front.

Maybe we also have less fraud since chip+pin is used everywhere?

<comment><USER11> Same in the UK. Debit cards (with Chip+Pin) are pretty much the default

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting to think of how various technology-business complexes could have unfolded differently f they had gotten onto a different track. What if Google had been bought pre-IPO? Could the World Wide Web have "lost" to some other technology, perhaps centrally controlled? etc.

You end up with a lot os scenarios where certain things get set back decades. It's hard to imagine WWW and its internet riding siblings thriving in the same way under some different paradigm. The creative zeal of the telecommunications industry is not a force I would like to rely on for progress.

Anyway, I think that most "money" industries might be like the web if it hadn't hit some lucky breaks. Financial services, ways of moving money from one place to another are incredibly clunky, bureaucratic, expensive, difficult to understand, slow, expensive and expensive. Credit cards are expensive, complicated, & oligopolistic. Bank transfers are slow and bureaucratic. It's ridiculous that heavy, stealable, physical money is cheaper to handle than electronic variants.

This is all a very straightforward example of "transaction costs," a concept at the centre of many basic and fundamental economics theories. Basically, transaction costs permeate everything in economics by reducing efficiency and limiting the velocity and cumulative volume of transactions, which are one of the few very basic elements in the economics' periodic table (say, resources, labour, technology, consumption & transactions… or something).

Many massive efforts have been made to reduce transactions costs in the form of barriers to entry or international trade. Transaction costs inherent in our financial services industry are the same sort of problem, probably even more important.

A 10, 100 or 1000X reduction in transaction costs could have a lever effect on the economy similar to the discovery of a new energy source, continent, new method of communication, better legal paradigm or some other fundamental column in an economy.

This is why I was (and still am) hoping for cryptocurrencies to succeed. Who knows where it could go.

Whatever you think of Walmart, they are obsessed with costs and efficiency. I'm not surprised this pushes their buttons. The suboptimal state of electronic payment is as bad or worse than the energy industry in the worst days of cartels.

</comment><comment><USER13> Apple's never had any problem hiding behind rules and standards they write for their own walled gardens. Why start complaining now?

Better to take action. Just pull their products from retailers who won't roll over. It's what Bezos would do. They could also subsidize purchases made at flagship Apple Pay partners. They have the cash for it. $1B in subsidies to happy retailers would have a punishing effect on those who decided not to play. With the thin margins in retail, that would like translate to quarterly results questions like "why aren't you taking the free money from Apple?" Or "How has turning down Apple Pay hurt your business? Company X reports a healthy jump of Y."

<comment><USER14> Young bull, old bull. Credit card associations don't overtly lean on anyone much, and neither need Apple do so now that it's working with them. As Apple Pay gains traction, the same effect will come into play on its behalf that keeps merchants paying fees to take plastic -- people used to using Apple Pay will take their business to merchants which allow them to do so, and merchants who don't will come to understand that half a loaf is better than none.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The idea that WalMart is paying a high percentage is nonsense. For an commerce startup I work with, we're getting .5% from First Data. I'm sure WalMart can do better than us. This is about something else.

<comment><USER16> Even .5% at Wal-Mart scale is a lot. Regardless, it's a bad enough situation that in March Wal-Mart withdrew from a $7.5 billion settlement to continue its own lawsuit against Visa et al: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-27/wal- mart-sues-visa-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-27/wal-mart-sues- visa-claiming-card-transaction-fee-fixing.html)

I found a few other articles that support the guess that the big retailers are in the middle of an all-out war with their credit card processors (e.g. [http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new- economy/2011/0413/Cred...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new- economy/2011/0413/Credit-card-swipe-fees-US-firms-pay-too-much-and-it-hurts- consumers), [http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/07/24/wal- mart...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/07/24/wal-marts-swipe- fees-are-a-political-weapon-against-visa/)), so now CurrentC and the rejection of Apple Pay makes a little more sense. I didn't get it before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That website... where is the volume control? And if I want to re-watch the clip, I have to re-watch the damn 25 second long commercial! And I have to sign up in order to comment. Horrible website.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think I'm missing something. How does Apple Pay have enough info to generate the larger payload they're looking for if you add cards by typing in the number?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.zdnet.com/apple-pay-and-security-could- tokenizati...](http://www.zdnet.com/apple-pay-and-security-could-tokenization- be-the-tool-that-curbs-data-breaches-7000033585/)

[Apple Pay] "Tokenization removes the actual credit card number and replaces it with a randomly generated number. That number, or token, can be configured to expire after one purchase or made specific to a certain transaction, making it a useless target for hackers or fraudsters.

But what's more, tokenization removes a huge storage burden from merchants, since they never see a person's actual credit card information and it never enters their POS system or online payment portal.

Now, Apple didn't invent tokenization. But by taking the tokenization route, the Cupertino powerhouse could be looking to ride the security wave all the way to payment success, especially considering the rising number of merchant data breaches and instances of stolen credit card information that continue to hit the payment and retail industries."

<comment><USER19> > But what's more, tokenization removes a huge storage burden from merchants, > since they never see a person's actual credit card information and it never > enters their POS system or online payment portal.

Yes, merchants think that getting additional customer-identifying information that forces them to run extra analyses on the mountains of transaction data they warehouse is a huge burden they'd like to be relieved of.

</sarcasm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't most of them use loyalty cards for that purpose anyways?

Target's data [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/11/targ...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/11/target- customer-traffic/6262059/) showed showed that customer visits, sales and profits decreased significantly following the breach. They would probably be happy to offload that nightmare onto somebody else.

<comment><USER19> As I understand it, retailers use loyalty cards to improve their customer- level data and as a way to act on that data (e.g. targeted coupons), but even the baseline they can extract without loyalty cards is very important to them.

In fact, even after last year's breach, Target clearly isn't happy offloading that nightmare. They're currently teting CurrentC: [http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/11/10/...](http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/11/10/target- testing-its-own-mobile-app-hopeful-that-it-can-rival-apple-pay.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sigh, why do we even allow a company to build quasi monopolies like this?

<comment><USER21> Not sure if you're referring to Walmart or VISA/MasterCard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> an article from recode.net - really? a fox news of tech.</comment>


How Google+ Affected Social Shares and +1 Adoption Rates - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/plus-one-adoption-rates-and-social-sharing-statistics <comment><USER2> One or two of the charts show Facebook shares have been cut in half after Google+ launch. This goes to show how important the "early adopter" crowd is for any service or product, and Facebook is losing that crowd to Google+.</comment>


Extremes of Conventional Music Notation - <AUTHOR> http://homes.soic.indiana.edu/donbyrd/CMNExtremesBody.htm <comment><USER2> What a fascinating collection!

Many very odd ones.

pppppppp (8 p's) in Ligeti's Etudes for Piano, 1st Book (1988-94)?

As against ppppppp (7 p's)? I.e., Meaningless unless a definition is supplied. The point about abbreviations is that they refer to a common understanding. None such exists for this.</comment>


Machine Learning Yearning [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://gallery.mailchimp.com/dc3a7ef4d750c0abfc19202a3/files/Machine_Learning_Yearning_V0.5_01.pdf <comment><USER2> In case people are wondering, this is a _draft_ version of the first 12 chapters of Andrew Ng's new machine learning book entitled "Machine Learning Yearning". He has a reddit thread dedicated to ongoing feedback on the book's evolving content: [https://www.reddit.com/r/mlyearning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/mlyearning/)

This information was stated in his Mailchimp email update he sent out yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can sign up for the newsletter at [http://www.mlyearning.org/](http://www.mlyearning.org/). Andrew will be releasing more draft chapters in the next week.

I've already read the first 12 chapters. I found it very practical for developers who have already worked with NNs. Basically the book discusses common problems and how to deal with them. Gold resource.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Chapter 7 : with 10,000 examples, you will have a good chance of detecting > an improvement of 0.1%

That's not true. Accuracy based on assuming an underlying binomial distribution has standard deviation sqrt( p (1 - p) / n ). Unless your accuracy is very near to 0 or 1, you're going to need more like a million samples to have a good chance of detecting a difference of 0.001 and be able to reject the hypothesis that it was not caused by statistical noise.

If the assumption is not an underlying binomial, can you explain why? I was hoping for more a lot more hard maths in this text.

</comment><comment><USER5> At this stage, this book is an introduction to introduction to introduction to machine learning. It has not math/theory background. I'm curious to see the final product. However, I'm worried about the bias to NN. His plots on perf for NN vs traditional algorithms is too general and false depending on the problem.</comment>


Tip: Don't record laser tattoo removal (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/ayua7d/tip_dont_record_laser_tattoo_removal/ <comment> rvp-x Cool.

I recently saw a car with a light flashing the license plate periodically, I wonder if the driver was going for that effect.

</comment><comment><USER2> Tattoo removal tends to use ~1MW pulsed lasers (yes, megawatt). The pulse is extremely short (nanoseconds), but at that power/instant-brightness it's enough to fry sensitive imaging electronics.

Can also do fun things like blast holes through CDs.

I'd learned about the topic the other day here ("plays" with a cheap tattoo removal kit off the web): [https://youtu.be/-BeTq99LqUo](https://youtu.be/-BeTq99LqUo)</comment>