Who is the most influential Indian Celebrity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.beevolve.com/2011/02/who-is-the-most-influential-indian-celebrity-on-twitter/

<comment><USER2> Celebrities in India are defined by two verticals,Cricket and Bollywood.Though Bollywood is somewhat tarnished with links to Mafia, cricket atleast has a comparatively clean image(Match fixing not withstanding).So, for an influential celebrity, my vote goes to Sachin Tendulkar.

p.s:Maybe in India, we should have two new degrees, MBA and MCA, Master of Bollywood Administration and Master of Cricket Administration where they teach you on how to monetize and build businesses out of these two :)</comment>


Show HN: A Helper JavaScript File for Performing Ajax - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/usernane/ajax <comment><AUTHOR> I would like to introduce a project which I completed in 2018 and it is almost dead but someone asked me about it few days ago and I decided to revive it again.

The project is a simple JavaScript file which helps in performing AJAX requests to the server.

Note that I'm not a professional JavaScript developer. I made the project just for fun and the code might have many design flaws. But it works for sure.</comment>


The SSN Numbering Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html <comment><USER2> I've always been curious how 1B numbers is enough? Will they rotate/reuse them?</comment>


The Coming War in the Middle East (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hoover.org/research/coming-war-middle-east <comment><USER2> This is a pretty good article and worth a read for people who are not already informed.

They were not completely correct. They seem to underestimate the stability and staying power of Jordan. Both US and Israel help to make sure that Jordan is protected. Stability of monarchies are typically underestimated.

Syria's government has not fallen, and Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) never managed to unify the rebel to any great extend and build a real powerful land and tax base. Thanks to Russia and Iran Syria is (very) slowly winning the fight against the rebels.

Looking from Saudi Arabia into Yemen we see as somewhat different picture now. Al Qaeda has a solid branch in Yemen but they have been very much infused into the culture and politics of the region. They lack real reach and hitting power for global jihad. They are to busy marrying tribal chiefs daughters and smuggling (mostly gas).

The real issue for the Saudis in Yemen is not Al-Qaeda (who are in the South) but rather the Hutti rebels that live right along the border to Saudi Arabia. These guys have been extremely successful and Saudi Arabia does not like it at all, they are spending Billions to fight them, much more then they spend to fight Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

They seem to view the Hutti mostly as a Iranian Proxy (maybe future proxy) even while the evidence for this is currently rather thin. The Hutti seem to want Iranian support but the Iranians seem to think that even without much direct support the Hutti are already doing a good job. Saudia Arabia is spending money like nobody buissness and the Iranians handle the same conflict with a tight budget.

Its the other way around in Iraq/Syria, there Iran is blowing the money and the Saudis can be rather conservative.

One interesting thing for everybody to know is also the strong decentralisation of Al-Quida, groups like ISIS and al-Sham (Nusra) do their own thing now. Al-Quida in Yemen is also not a very good branch of Al-Quida central.

<comment><USER3> Slightly off topic: does anyone know of any forums/news aggregators of comparable quality to the HN community (e.g. generally well informed, polite, and strictly moderated/self-moderated) that focus on geopolitics?

<comment><USER4> I'll like to know that too. Geopolitics is my thing, but haven't found a non- partisan site to engage.

<comment><USER5> Have you found a partisan site(s)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> America should rescue civilians and force safe corridors to stay open, but otherwise stay the hell out of there, and let them fight it out.

And yes, that includes ISIS! If the people who live there can not defeat ISIS American help will not work long term.

<comment> saiya-jin this advice should have been used and adhered to for last 50 years, and the world would be truly much better place. what a dream...

<comment><USER6> Sort of. Most of the time America intervened not for the benefit of the locals, but for its own (or its allies) benefit (including as a proxy against Russia).

It's harder to criticize that. It's bad for the locals, but America needs to do what's good for America.

In this case though, it's entirely "for" the locals, so America should stay out of it because it's not actually helping the locals.

<comment><USER7> It's difficult to claim that America's actions in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world have been good for America.

In fact, the only war America participated in that ended up being a net good for America was World War 2, which resulted in the devastation of much of Europe and allowed American industries to expand and advance virtually unchallenged for almost 50 years.

The Vietnam War however was a disaster of epic proportions. So was the Iraq War. The latter, instead of installing a friendly regime that guaranteed the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, resulted in even more instability in the region, not to mention further radicalization of extremist forces. And things continue to go downhill.

At the end of the day, it is worth understanding that America's wars benefit only a small number of people in America: higher ups in the military- industrial complex, the oil companies and the construction conglomerates. For everyone else, it's a waste.

<comment><USER5> The purpose of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the support of the Afghanistan insurgency weren't intended to be net positives for the United States. They were intended to be net negatives for the Soviet Union.

And they were. Now we have instable areas, but the US prevented the Soviet Union from continuing to expand and collapsed it by overwhelming it with military costs to stabilize its periphery.

In some circles that counts as a net positive to the US.

<comment><USER2> A net negative for the Soviets is a positive for the US. That is fair enough but it does not mean that your statement is true.

The War in Vietnam was far more costly and destructive then any 'damage' that was done to the Soviets. It was a absolute net lose in every way, money, lives, credibility and so on. It was a major victory for communism and all anti-imperialist colonialist struggles.

You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like J.F. Dulles were advocating. They looked at everything in cold war terms, black and white. The reality however is different. Just because some countries are neutral or maybe communist does not make them automatically Soviet puppets and the countries in the same region do not automatically fall to communism because of that.

Had J.F. Dulles just accepted the situation in 1953 the US would have been in a much better position during the cold war. Vietnam would not have been allied with China and Russia against the US. The idea of "world communism" is a fantasy that should not be a guid to policy.

> support of the Afghanistan insurgency

That was a great policy. Problem is just that even at the time people pointed out that it was unlikely (almost impossible) that the Soviets would attack threw Iran to the Golf. So there were no vital US interests at stack. The Soviet, we now know, had no plans to do so, and not the capability.

In order to support the insurgency the US had to massively support Pakistan, they ignored Pakistani spread of extremism, they ignored the Pakistani nuclear program and the money flowed to the kind of insurgence that should not get money, rather then to the moderate afghani nationalists that should have gotten the money.

How people defend this policy in still today is insane to me. A nuclear Pakistan and India is one of the greats dangers for nuclear war in the world right now.

<comment><USER5> > You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like > J.F. Dulles were advocating.

I'm definitely repeating the logic of the state. To be clear here, this isn't old logic attributable to Dulles or Eisenhower but the rationality behind _current_ US strategy.

This military/security logic is consistent over the past 70 years of great power struggle and I add it here not because I buy into all of the conclusions but because the arguments must be understood from the perspective of policy and decision makers in order for there to be a real dialogue between citizens and the state. Namely, citizens have to acknowledge the paranoid and aggressive tendencies of the state and understand reasoning from their perspective to counter the arguments.

When this isn't the case (look at Libya and Syria) the state interprets citizens' unhappiness to have to do with the number of soldiers killed (for example) or the financial costs of insurgency and so pursues proxy wars, support of terrorism, economic warfare, information warfare and other types of irregular aggression.

Anyway, pretty much fully agreed with your reply here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is okay, but it misses much of the context.

For example it says: "Just as Al Qaeda in Iraq has ostensibly been fighting to free Baghdad from what it calls heretical "Persian"—read "Shia"—domination, the Nusrah Front today fights to free Syria from the supposedly heretical rule of the nominally Shia Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad."

But then later posits: "If Al Qaeda/Nusrah can establish a base in Jordan, Saudi Arabia will find itself threatened by Al Qaeda franchises on both north and south that will be well-positioned to resume the pursuit of Al Qaeda's core goal of toppling the Saudi monarchy and "liberating" the holy cities of Mecca and Medina."

Al Qaeda is and has been fighting a pan-Islamist fight to extricate foreign influence - what it sees as continued colonialism - from the Arab World.

Interestingly, both the Ba-athists (Shia governments of Syria and Iraq) and Al Qaeda claim to be fighting against the forces of foreign manipulation. The Ba- athists approach it from a Pan-Arab manner rather than Pan-Islamist, but have histories of Western support (indeed the Alawites in Syria were originally militarily conceived by the French and the prior Sunni regime in Iraq conceived by the British) that can spoil their claim to independence.

The article also misses the regional proxy war aspect, where Gulf Countries and the United States have been arming proxy groups to achieve geostrategic ends, such as the establishment of energy pipelines and determining the future of Mediterranean access.

</comment><comment><USER8> And how do we as a civilization in the 21st century prevent foreign meddling and funding of armed groups?

<comment><USER9> Stop funding and meddling with them?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but how? As an American I can try to vote for politicians that are opposed to meddling in the region, but the most that would do is create a non- meddling America. That's not going to affect the policies of other countries. In fact, a non-meddling America would likely open the door for even more meddling by countries like Russia. So: how? I really want to know.

<comment><USER11> I don't think Russia is interested in meddling.

If anything, it seems like a made up "threat" the US officials can use to justify whatever the heck they're doing.

<comment><USER12> As somebody from Eastern Europe, I can assure you that Russia is most definitely interested in meddling, controlling political parties, parliament, almost all the newspapers, key industries, online comments and pretty much everything in my country and I suspect the countries around me.

I know it is a joke, but I really have to say: THANKS OBAMA.

<comment><USER11> Which country is this? Where can I learn more about this type of meddling?

Anyway I think in this thread we were talking about direct military operations or indirect actions through funding the training and arming of rebels or freedom fighters or whatever. And the question was about middle east, not eastern euorpe.

As opposed to trying to influence the political and economical decisions or public opinion through "propaganda" or whatever the means?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article should have a (2013) tag at the end of it. But yeah, the Hoover Institute predicted this fight pretty damn well.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to predict a war long after it has started. It's like predicting WW II in 1942.

The Syrian war, which we have a heavy hand in - before and after it began, started in 2011. That article was written in 2013. And did you check the bio of the author.

It's easy to predict a war after it has started and when you have inside knowledge and a hand in how the war should proceed and end.

<comment><USER14> The notion that the Syrian Revolution began with foreign (especially US) meddling is absurd.

In 2011, the US was in the process of normalizing relations with the assad regime. Obama had appointed a new ambassador the year before. Clinton thought assad was a 'reformer.'

The war broke out for a very simple reason: assad's forces kept shooting peaceful protesters.

Despite assad's violence, the Revolution remained largely peaceful for several months. It became a full-blown war almost a year after it began, when it became clear assad was not interested in reform, much less stopping the killings.

<comment><USER4> That's the official (US) narrative, and it's the real absurdity here.

You should find out how those "peaceful protests" started, and the activities of the US ambassador to Syria just before the protests broke out. It's from the same playbook that was used successfully in Libya and Ukraine, and almost succeeded a few years ago in Cuba.

It's an interesting exercise if you have the time. Venezuela is in the same neighborhood too.

<comment><USER15> That's the conspiracy theory narrative, and it's the real real absurdity here. US ambassadors don't have the power to raise hell on the streets of any given country, especially in one where a significant portion of the population have long-standing and legitimate aggrievances against the current government.

<comment><USER16> It's not a conspiracy theory so much as a oddly popular Chompsky-ite view of foreign policy that can be summarized only a little tounge-in-cheek as: America is somehow responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened anywhere in the world. Nothing bad can happen anywhere without it somehow being a result of something that America did.

Which serves to infantilize the entire population of every other country in the world. See the GP's belief that apparently a few words by the US Ambassador is more powerful than thousands of years of history and culture, very difficult conflicts between religious sects, clans, and tribes, etc.

<comment><USER17> I was under the impression that it's not so much about America being responsible for every bad thing in the world, but that historically America has been taking advantage of those thousands of years of history, culture and of course conflict, to their own benefit.

So if due to some political agenda there is profit or benefits to be reaped from nudging certain conflicts this or that way, there's a high probability that people in power would try to obtain said benefit. I think it's in that sense that "America puts its nose into every conflict around the world".

Not saying that I agree or disagree with that view, but I do think it's a bit naive to say that America is the root of all evil, as much as it's naive to think that the most powerful nation in the world (for different definitions of most powerful) would have no interest in other countries' conflicts or in influencing them to their benefit.

In other words, if for whatever reason an escalation in the conflicts in Syria or other parts of the Middle East (or the world for that matter) could benefit the US, would it be so far-fetched to think that they would have a vested interest in creating the conditions for that escalation to actually happen?

<comment><USER16> I do think we're involved in some minor way in most conflicts, even if by not doing anything at all. When you get this big and powerful and economically interconnected, it's hard to completely ignore something - if you trading with somebody is normal and economically necessary, then not trading with them is an intervention.

The reasons behind any particular policy are of course complex. Some may be for good and noble reasons, others for not so good reasons. A few turn out well, many go badly or not at all as intended.

Many people in foreign countries even try to get us to intervene. Often they want us to fund them or to suppress their enemies. Some want us to suppress violence in other countries, just because they think we can - see Darfur. Their motives aren't any cleaner or dirtier than ours are, just saying we aren't uniquely or cartoonishly evil.

I think the important part to remember is that our real ability to change things abroad is very limited indeed and fraught with risk. We can nudge things a bit, sure. If a country is on the verge of civil war, we can maybe nudge them towards it or away from it, but we can't create the war from scratch, or control what the sides are. If they really want to fight, they will, and we can't stop them. If they really have no desire to fight, we can't make them. If we try to nudge, we may just cause the opposite thing to happen instead. It's a mess, and it's likely to continue to be a mess no matter what we do or don't do. There's always the hope that we can encourage things to be a little bit less messy, but that may not be in the cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [META]

A huge amount of disinformation in this thread, including people who are pushing personal opinions and state narratives as fact.

Sad to see this on Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> Well, exercise your privilege and correct them.</comment></comment>


Protect our Git repos: stop foxtrot merges now - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bitbucket.org/2016/04/28/no-foxtrot-merges-allowed/ <comment><USER2> This is one reason why I love mercurial's named branches if you are going to allow people to push "1st draft" type commits to your main repository. There is no question which commits in the history are "topic branch" commits and which are mainline.</comment>


We Need to Talk, AI - <AUTHOR> https://weneedtotalk.ai/ <comment><USER2> Cool details for pros and a perfect intro for newbees.</comment>


Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can Help - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/ <comment><USER2> "If you write great code or are an expert in genomics or know how to develop new seeds, I'd encourage you to learn more about the problems of the poorest and see how you can help."

Check, check, check. And actually it was a previous article of Bill's that made me want to become a scientist, and now we're Gates funded to develop more efficient crops.

Coders of the world - we have awesome data to play with. Come and help :)

<comment><USER3> "If you write great code..."

Sorry, but I nearly spat my drink all over my keyboard at that sentence. This from the man who a decade ago used all his influence to fight tooth and nail against the notion of sharing knowledge and code for the benefit of mankind instead of profit, and didn't blink at screwing over developing countries in this particular area to increase his profits

I'm sure he means well and does great things these days, but this is pushing it a bit.

<comment><USER4> Okay...

So, Selling code you wrote == Preventing sharing of knowledge.

<comment><USER3> No. But keeping the code you wrote a locked up secret and trying to discredit and destroy anyone that doesn't do the same is.

<comment><USER4> I am curious. Can you be more specific? If I am making my living writing software, and if you buy a copy of it and make it available to potential customers, why is it immoral to ask you not to do so?

<comment><USER5> If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him? Would I not be mean in denying him? If I would, then would you not be immoral for coercing me to be mean to my friend? That, in essence, is the argument.

You could argue that your business model requires me, i.e. all your customers, to agree not to give their friends (or anyone else) copies. _But the world does not owe you a living._ If your business model requires you to ask people to behave badly towards their friends, then it is destroying the social fabric of society, and you could rightly be called immoral.

Anyway, see [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why- free.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html) if you truly want to read more.

<comment><USER6> > If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it > to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him?

How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

Your friends "need" isn't necessarily a valid claim on the fruits of the software authors labor. (A "need" for software? Come on.) It might make a very compelling argument that the author _should_ choose to gift a copy to your friend, or offer an educational version (as many do), but I can't see the logic that a need is a valid claim, moral or otherwise, on someone else's work.

<comment><USER7> Lets put this into concrete examples. Let say there is a kid who want to learn physics, and I got study software that the child needs. However, the license agreement say I can't. The child could maybe, in theory, reconstruct the necessary experiments or read about them in the library.

Or let say that a cab driver see a child who missed the buss back home. However, the cab drivers contract says he is not allowed to pick up passages who can't pay. Without the drive back home, the child need to walk several miles.

This is what people call moral dilemmas. To help a child, or to follow the contract.

<comment><USER8> You could buy a second copy of the software for the child. You saw enough value in it to consider letting them use it and you saw enough value to buy it for yourself. Either you consider the asking price fair for what it delivers or you don't. If you don't think it's a fair price then you can either write something yourself for them or spend your own time helping them learn.

There's no dilemma preventing you from helping the child.

<comment><USER7> So someone should go to university and study to become a programmer, and in several years into the future when the child has grown up, you might be able to reproduce the program? Could you provide a more straw'ish argument?

It is possible that you can spend money to buy a new copy, in the same way that the cab driver could "pay" his employer the drive the child home. However, anyone who sees the child could also spend the money for the cab. Is the argument here that they are all equally moral bankrupt when they child end up walking all those miles home? Does it matter that the cab driver was driving in that direction anyway?

Many people around the world can say that they are helping children to become the best they can be. Someone who refuse sharing can not. Which one are you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Wars are becoming less frequent."

He wrote, as we approach the centenary of The War To End All Wars.

No one with an appreciation of human history would write such a thing. Nor would they imagine that the technological innovations between us and that war have been marginally more important than those in the century proceeding WW I. The Green Revolution is fine, but it seems hard to believe its productivity improvements outstrip those from the mechanization of agriculture, or the use of railroads to move grain. Polio prevention is awesome, but its gains pale before those from imposing simple sanitation codes and providing clean water.

And perhaps the "salvation through technology" set should reflect on the impact of the addition of mobilization by railroad to the diplomatic problems following the assassination of Ferdinand. Or on the confusion, to horrifying cost, of military and grand strategy by the introduction of the machine gun. The unintended consequences of those innovations, and the complete failure of technology to solve them, made for the costliest and stupidest war to its date.

By all means, pursue better and better technology. But the world's deepest and most serious problems have always been political, and always will be, and will always be beyond resolution by better gadgets.

<comment><USER10> That's not just a soundbite, it's a measurable fact.

Even when we include the horrors of the world wars, the 20th century _had fewer per-capita battle deaths (both civilian and military)_ than the centuries before it.

The same trend is detectable at decade timescales, and shows that we are still improving since the world wars.

Stephen Pinker's book "The Better Angels of our Nature" goes into the underlying statistics to support these assertions.

<comment><USER11> Centuries or a single century (20th)? I have no access to the book and I would be interested to see the numbers. It's hard to outdo the 20th century with the jump in the military technologies (starting with the machine gun, the first weapon of mass destruction), and two massive world wars. How, for example, do we compare to the 19th century?

<comment><USER12> There are quite a few resources on Pinker's website about the work. The FAQ is probably a good place to start: [http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently- asked-questions-abo...](http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked- questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined)

Here is a direct answer to the question. There's a ton more info on the topic and a huge portion of his book is dedicated to it:

*Wasn't the 20th century the most violent in history?

Probably not; see chapter 5, especially pp. 189–200. Historical data from past centuries are far less complete, but the existing estimates of death tolls, when calculated as a proportion of the world's population at the time, show at least nine atrocities before the 20th century (that we know of) which may have been worse than World War II. They arose from collapsing empires, horse tribe invasions, the slave trade, and the annihilation of native peoples, with wars of religion close behind. World War I doesn't even make the top ten.

Also, a century comprises a hundred years, not just fifty, and the second half of the 20th century was host to a Long Peace (chapter 5) and a New Peace (chapter 6) with unusually low rates of death in warfare.

<comment><USER11> Thank you! The FAQ is very informative and indeed answers many questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > " _40 percent of Earth's population is alive today because, in 1909, a > German chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to make synthetic ammonia._ > "

More people living doesn't necessarily mean people living better lives. In a finite world with limits to growth, relaxing one bottleneck only leads to the next bottleneck.

(I use the term _limits to growth_ in reference to the book Limits To Growth -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/the_best_book_on_the_environment_eco...](http://joshuaspodek.com/the_best_book_on_the_environment_economy_and_ecology) \-- which strongly informs my perspective and I recommend to others as particularly relevant here. It offers a _systems perspective_ \-- [http://joshuaspodek.com/systems-perspective- population](http://joshuaspodek.com/systems-perspective-population) \-- necessary to create effective strategies to help everyone in the context of a finite planet.)

Reducing suffering caused by disease undoubtedly improves people's lives, but increasing the population without the ability to provide everyone resources doesn't. We know that simply having enough resources for everyone doesn't mean everyone will get enough resources. How we distribute resources matters and that's a social issue, not technical. Trying to solve social issues with technology doesn't work that well. Changing social patterns is much harder. Capitalism is great at increasing the pie, but poor at distributing it to those without capital.

I applaud his optimism and support for reducing suffering from disease and supporting education. I suspect he's helping create a world with similar fraction of people suffering versus happy, just more of them. And accelerating toward limits to growth, some of which we can't overcome with technology.

(If you challenge the belief that the planet has limits to growth or even that we're near any, I recommend the excellent blog "Do the Math" \-- [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do- the-math/post-index) \-- which looks at physical consequences to growth by a Caltech-trained physicist. I also recommend it if you like reading thoughtful, intelligent blogs by knowledgeable people who do the math behind what they talk about.)

<comment><USER14> This is glib Malthusianism. Population in the developing world is growing, but metrics for quality of life are improving --- we're eradicating disease, reducing malnutrition, enrolling students, and starting to enable bottom-up markets. The limits your comment refers to are abstract, even hypothetical, while the progress being made is concrete. "Better lives"? Polio: bad. Freedom from polio: better.

<comment><USER15> It's not just glib Malthusianism, it's neo-colonialism. It's paternalism and cultural superiority in green clothing.

In short: it's bullshit.

Oh, the poor little wogs, they lead such brutal lives, it's so sad that there are so many of them, if only there were fewer of them the world would be a better place. This is the sub-text that I see underlying these comments. It's "surplus population" crap yet again.

These are people. People with dreams and ambitions. People with lives and families. People who are capable of amazing things if given a chance. They're not just grubby uneducated unwashed masses. These are folks who will build the world of the 21st century, who will help lift their own countries out of poverty. These are people who will build fusion reactors, and space ships, and nano-technology. People who will cure cancer, create art, and music, and literature. They don't need people who think that they are wastes of resources, all they need is a chance, and just enough help to start building their own futures.

<comment><USER16> This.

Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto, if you are naive you might think Bill Gates is a saint. He is really just a globalist with an extremely stubborn perspective of the future.

Think of his contributions to IT: Proprietary software.

Anyone that is a fan of Bill Gates cannot also be a fan of humanity unfortunately.

<comment><USER17> _Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto_

I take it you aren't a fan of GMO foods then? If so, then you are wrong. I'll leave it to former anti-GMO activist Mark to make that argument[1].

If you are talking about their business practices, then generally I agree with you. I can understand the point of view of people who think otherwise, though. I think people who agree with Monsanto's view are wrong, but that is a disagreement about methods, not outcomes.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark- lyna...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lynas-truth- treachery-gm)

<comment><USER18> Thats an interesting link. I've felt the same about left-wing activists - paying lip service to tolerance, while being very close minded in reality. Doesn't mean I agree with nuclear power and GMOs, but I respect anyone who bases his arguments on scientific reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Simple things that could be done now by simply "changing the rules"

1\. Change "Foreign Aid" to be based on direct micro-loans rather than dumping excess agricultural commodities and destroying local markets and pumping money into corrupt governments that steal it.

2\. End the Drug War. It's killing people and is the foundation of organized crime. And why grow food when you can make more money growing dope?

3\. Recognize women's rights: unfettered access to contraception/abortion and education.

I realize the "sex" part of #3 may be controversial to some, but those who are offended can just fuck off.

<comment><USER20> I realize this is a social news aggregation site and not a diplomatic summit, but I think you'll find people a lot more receptive to your ideas if you can refrain from adding the last touch in your post. It reminds me of how I feel about Bill Maher: I agree with him on almost every major policy issue, but he comes across as so smug that it actually annoys you to hear him say things that you agree with.

<comment><USER21> Just stop being a pussy.

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately this is the internet, and you have no idea who I am, so I can't offer my personality as a counterpoint. I definitely understand the idea that catering to the overly sensitive part of our population is a losing battle.

However, to even bother posting something like that, you have to be trying to do one of two things:

(1) Trying to convert others with differing opinions to your side

(2) Make yourself feel superior and smarter by talking down to those with different opinions

#1 seems to be a more meaningful use of one's time, so I was offering some insight as to how to be more effective in doing that. If #2 is what you're after, then by all means, please continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It makes me feel incredibly guilty for how much a lot of people (myself) hated this man over things that seem so petty now a mere decade or so later.

<comment><USER23> I doubt the people who's lives he ruined consider those things petty.

<comment><USER24> Ruined? Most businesses fail, and most large businesses cause many others to fail (this includes IBM, Google and Apple) as well as providing the means for many others to succeed and prosper.

Even if you were right, I don't think the lives of Silicon Valley yuppies have been "ruined" in quite the same way as some of the victims of Chinese factory production lines....

<comment><USER25> Yes ruined. Instead of having desk jobs these failed business owners could have had a shot at saving the world. The fact is he screwed people.

<comment><USER24> Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates. None of them has done remotely as much to make up for it.

Indeed, while you are getting your panties in a twist about things you think happened in the 1990s, Gates has saved millions of lives.

Have you considered worrying less about a few capitalists being "ruined" (while living in the world's richest society and consuming a huge proportion of the world's resources) and worrying more about the millions suffering from war, starvation, disease and various other afflictions?

<comment><USER23> > Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed > people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates.

I don't recall any of them being being brought up on anti-trust charges and losing.

And no amount of saving lives wipes away those you ruined.

<comment><USER24> Being found to have a monopoly (by a judge who explicitly excluded Macs and Linux machines) meant Microsoft was held to much higher standards. Other companies can and do behave far worse and get away with it.

You want to compare the effects of these lives "ruined" (whose exactly?) with the Chinese workers making your products committing suicide?

<comment><USER23> I made no such comparison and any such comparison is a red herring. Bill the businessman was ruthless and unethical and destroyed many a business via illegal means. Bill the philanthropist is a great man who's doing great things that I very much support. One does not negate the other. I can despise Bill the businessman and look up to Bill the philanthropist at the same time.

<comment><USER24> First, you're overstating things wildly. Unless you come up with some names (people and companies) I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Second, Gates wasn't uniquely bad, and he had plenty of equally ruthless rivals including Jobs, Ellison and Noorda. He was, as mentioned, held to much higher standards.

Third, it still shows a profound lack of humanity to think that what was mostly antitrust-theatre has anything like the same importance as real life and death issues in the wider world.

<comment><USER23> > I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Well fuck off then, we're done. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating Microsoft's crimes to someone's who apparently blind to them and continues to throw out red herrings.

<comment><USER24> You've already made it obvious you don't actually know anything about Microsoft's crimes. Which, sadly, I do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Personally, I feel that the biggest problem in developing countries is corruption. Imagine all the wealth being created to disappear into bureaucracy. I've seen police bully businesses, engineering projects finish that is woefully substandard, rigged market competition, stolen aid money, abuse of monopoly, and so on. I truly feel that this is the sauce of problems many poor people face.

I really admire Bill Gates help with poverty and education. I only wish that people start looking into anti-corruption. Maybe we should start creating anti-corruption technologies.

<comment><USER27> _> Personally, I feel that the biggest problem in developing countries is corruption. _

Isn't it a problem in "developed" countries as well?

<comment><USER28> People in developed countries can't even imagine the corruption that exists in developing countries. In Bangladesh, my dad once had to pay a bribe just to get his telephone service hooked up.

Going to lobby for an industry after leaving political office is what people in developed countries call "corruption." Tens of billions of dollars in aid money just getting "lost" is what people in developing countries call "corruption."

<comment><USER27> Yeah, that's actually not hard to imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> With all of the philanthropy that Bill and his wife are doing, my gut feeling is that centuries from now, Bill will go down as being remembered more so for his contributions to humanity than everything he did in his professional career. Regardless, a great human being.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps. Here's a quiz: Name a big Philanthropist from 300 years ago. From 150 years ago. From 50 years ago...

<comment><USER31> 50 years: Rockafeller. 100 years: Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt. 150 years: Alfred Nobel. 300 years: John Harvard.

What do I win?

<comment><USER32> The thing is, I don't remember those people as philanthropists...

<comment><USER31> You didn't watch enough PBS as a child then ;)

What do you remember Alfred Nobel as? John Harvard?

You could make a case for the industrialists, but I'd give good money people can name "Rockafeller Center" before they can name "Standard Oil".

<comment><USER32> I didn't watch PBS since I'm not American :(

I read about Alfred Nobel in a children's encyclopaedia in primary school; I mostly remember him as the inventor of dynamite who got a crisis of conscience and thus created the Nobel prizes (I didn't think of those as philanthropy, and I'm not sure if the "crisis of conscience" part is factually accurate).

John Harvard, purely name association with Harvard University. I guess I should check his Wikipedia page out.

Edit: It's actually Harvard College. Shows how much I know.

<comment><USER31> The name association with Harvard _is_ remembering him as a philanthropist. The name of the college was changed because of a generous gift upon his death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One of the things I really respect about Bill Gates is that he actually goes and talks to poor people. I know so many people who will go on and on about what poverty is and how to solve it, whether it's funding education or creating a culture of responsibility or whatever. But unless you're chatting with actual poor people, saying "hey how's it going?" at least every couple months, I just don't think you can really have a workable understanding of the problems.

</comment><comment><USER34> Reading the article I can't help but feel awestruck at how lucky the global community is that Gates turned out the way he did.

Here is someone who thinks clear thoughts, behaves in an altruistic manner and has the raw power to make it happen - a near impossible combination in today's world.

And as if that is not spectacular enough he is in a position to persuade other rich people to follow suit.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's a common misconception that inherently social problems (drug abuse, mistreatment of children, crime, war) can be solved with technical solutions.

The answer isn't in a new drug or a new device or a new kind of weapon, it's in ourselves, and we don't need a foundation of rich entrepreneurs to catalyze this change.

<comment><USER36> Do you really think that poor kids stop dying of preventable diseases if every single person who's reading HN changes? Inner change is not the vaccine, it can't feed people, it can't help with improving living conditions for the poor countries. It's Doing something for them that should help. Bill Gates is so right at having his own plan how to help people and offering us to take part in it. The actions should help not mere inner change.

<comment><USER35> Internal change can solve most every problem, because most every problem is a reflection of an internal conflict.

It sounds far fetched, but when you boil people's problems down to what they really are, you'll see the traditional western way of fixing things tends to invent a technical solution to make up for where the previous one failed.

For example, factory-made pesticides that cause hyper-evolution in weeds that try to resist. A newer more powerful pesticide can't fix the problem created by the old pesticide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "I tend to trace it back to a trip Melinda and I took to Africa in 1993. We went on a safari to see wild animals but ended up getting our first sustained look at extreme poverty"

All of us with privilege need to stop referring to the place as just 'Africa'. It's an incredibly diverse place, and just smacking that label on it to refer to every place on the continent trivializes the population.

Sure, the national boundaries are just some lines colonists in Europe drew on a map when divvying up the resources they were going to steal, but we need to be able to have a respect for people while we're talking about these problems.

<comment><USER38> Chill out. He was simplifying his discussion throughout the essay so that his writing would be accessible to a broader audience.

For all you know, his trip covered several African countries and he didn't care to list them all in that sentence.

<comment><USER37> I get that, and it's the simplification of an incredibly complex situation that is the problem

<comment><USER38> Rest assured that Bill Gates has spent at least 2 decades and countless financial resources in order to build his own understanding of the incredibly complex situation that exists not only in Africa, but also the rest of the world. He's part of the solution; are you?

<comment><USER37> Sure, half of my family is from "Africa", and have started businesses that create jobs and lift people out of poverty.

I also put myself out there to take a beating from peers of privilege to speak up about things I think are part of the problem. Reinforcement of otherness I think is a large part of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's great what he and Melinda are doing.

I'd put the focus much more towards reducing or even reversing the tremendous population growth. Malaria, Polio, fertilizers.. all about more people (yes it helps them, is good...; complicated, I don't know how to argue). But - if you ask the overstretched seas, overhunted animals and so on - less are needed. And each one will be more valuable.

<comment><USER40> The general idea, as I understand it, is that as child survival and education rates go up, population growth will eventually reverse itself as it has in developed countries. Check out Bill Gates' favorite TED talks for some Rosling, as well as Melinda Gates on birth control: [http://www.ted.com/playlists/35/bill_gates_my_13_favorite_ta...](http://www.ted.com/playlists/35/bill_gates_my_13_favorite_tal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When I was considering a career path, I thought a lot about this sort of thing. Should I devote my career to helping people in the greatest need? In the end, I decided I should not. Bill Gates correctly identifies the need for money to do the things he wants to do, but money comes from economic growth. And I believe that technological progress is a big driver of growth.

So I decided to make my career in advancing technological progress. Not necessarily hardware, in fact I'm a software engineer, but I want to work on things that push the boundaries. If I can write a library that makes 1% of programmers 10% more efficient, or saves academic researchers 1% of their time, that is probably a bigger contribution than I could make if I worked directly on global health.

</comment><comment><USER42> Don't get me wrong, I love what Gates is doing. I do believe that while technology has given us so much, it comes with incredible costs.

> How far away do these women live? we wondered. Who's watching their children > while they're away?

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe (where the bush/wilderness is very similar to that of Kenya) and this specific quote really shows the good and the bad of technology and innovation. Those women walk miles to get water; technology can now use pipes or boreholes to bring water closer to people - giving them a slightly easier life. However, Bill fails to mention how these women approach this hardship - having come across many of these people during my hikes in youth I can testify that they are singing and laughing for the entire duration of those daily ordeals. You simply won't find a person with that attitude towards hardship in the first world/technology world. Their lives are hard, but they are happy. Our lives are easy, but the first world is struggling with depression[1]. Us people in the first world need to stop making the mistake of assuming that a hard life is an unhappy one. Bring these people water, bring them food, bring them vaccines - but don't destroy one of the last bastions of happiness on the planet with the internet and laziness.

As for their children and who is looking after them: they are looking after each other, playing in the dirt and in the sun, making their own toys out of sticks, old tires and coat hanger wire [2][3]. What are _your_ children doing? Sitting on an iPad? Their parents don't have to worry about psychopaths or kidnappers - that is a first world problem in a very real way.

I'm a saying that what Bill is doing is wrong? No: he is making a very real and very positive difference in these people's lives. What I am saying is that us people in the first world need to stop assuming that technology solves problems. The reality is that technology _replaces_ problems with other problems.

[1]: [http://www.inquisitr.com/129438/depression-rates-higher- in-w...](http://www.inquisitr.com/129438/depression-rates-higher-in-wealthier- countries/) [2]: [http://www.bsmarkham.com/mission/Africa/Apr%2005/huffs/18%20...](http://www.bsmarkham.com/mission/Africa/Apr%2005/huffs/18%2002.jpg) [3]: [http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/africa/sudafrica/k_lesotho0...](http://www.losviajeros.net/fotos/africa/sudafrica/k_lesotho0004.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER43> If you want to see real work on improving the rural Africa, we have to look at sustainability, not bringing Monsanto into every corner of the world with GMOs and ammonia fertilizers. This is the kind of work that is needed: [http://workingvillages.org/about/](http://workingvillages.org/about/)

Getting African farmers into self sufficiency, not dependent on Monsanto or any oil company. There is nothing wrong with doing manual labor on a farm. Why should we measure progress by how many people stop working on a farm and work in a factory instead. We should aim to improve efficiencies on a farm not by minimizing the people per acre, but by maximizing the output per acre.

<comment><USER44> As people become self sufficient, they are going to look for ways to increase their income. This will drive mechanization and the use of fertilizers.

I'm not saying that is the only way forward or that it will always be happening, I'm just saying that at least some of the people you are talking about will be motivated to exactly what you are saying they shouldn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Did anyone asked Bill Gates to fund research efforts that could potentially have global benefits?

Anyone succeeded?

<comment><USER2> Yes, we have Gates funding for the C4 rice project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Maybe he could have Microsoft disclose the deal they made with the NSA over the purchase of Skype and the change in encryption practices. Or is that not the kind of improvement he is talking about?

<comment><USER47> It's not. He's talking about something much more important.

<comment><USER48> He is talking about the same thing, which can be summarized as _control of the many by the few_. "We, the privileged, decide what's best for everyone else."

<comment><USER49> > "people who have escaped poverty represent a huge market opportunity" \- B. > Gates, 11/12/13, Wired Magazine

<comment><USER50> Not sure why you quoted this. Is that not true?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I know it will be a wildly unpopular question to ask but, after his own history at the helm of Microsoft, where he made most of the money he's using now, can we trust him?

Is there a way we can be sure his donations (and the donations of people and companies that decide to donate because he is doing so) are not furthering his own agenda and creating a market for the companies he invests in? Even if they are beneficial to the affected populations, can we call that philanthropy?

<comment><USER48> While he claims he is a _devout fan of capitalism_ , he fails to address the capitalist role in sustaining poverty and warfare. Africa is still completely colonized by the IMF and World Bank, whose policies over the past half century have forced its nations to take loans they can't repay, and as a result, they are forced to sell under-priced foods. This food is then largely _wasted_ in developed countries where Capitalism commands that people consume more than they need to survive. At the apex of the Capitalist market is the arms industry, selling weapons to tin-pot dictators in African nations which have the opposite effect and only serve to increase poverty and suffering.

Meanwhile, Gates attends "private clubs" full of the men who run these banks, are shareholders in those same arms companies and who dictate the foreign policy of the developed nations. (e.g. Bilderberg 2010)

If not disingenuous to the point of turning your stomach, he is just naive and sees the world through a very narrow scope. I suspect it's a bit of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "If you write great code or are an expert in genomics or know how to develop new seeds, I'd encourage you to learn more about the problems of the poorest and see how you can help"

I feel like I'm a great coder but I have a hard time connecting the dots and seeing how I can help - am I the only one? I'd love to help - if folks know of opportunities, I'd love to hear about them.

</comment><comment><USER53> > 'That innovation is the key to a bright future'

The road to innovation is a minefield of patents and lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER54> Now that's an outstanding man! I lived in Africa for almost half my life and not once did I step foot outside of my comfort zone in the north west. If anything I feel ashamed but thankfully enlightened and looking forward to take the initiative to do something, anything.

</comment><comment><USER55> Bill Gates writes in the article kindly submitted here, after giving some examples of inventions, "Thanks to inventions like these, life has steadily gotten better. It can be easy to conclude otherwise—as I write this essay, more than 100,000 people have died in a civil war in Syria, and big problems like climate change are bearing down on us with no simple solution in sight. But if you take the long view, by almost any measure of progress we are living in history's greatest era. Wars are becoming less frequent. Life expectancy has more than doubled in the past century. More children than ever are going to primary school. The world is better than it has ever been."

And that is correct. I'll focus on the huge increase in life expectancy, since that is often discussed here on HN. The low-hanging fruit of increasing life expectancy is increasing it for young people, by reducing infant and child mortality. The Gates Foundation does a lot of work in developing and delivering vaccines to protect children against infectious diseases. That means mothers can be more sure of their children surviving infancy, and all over the world (as other comments here have already pointed out), that results in a "demographic transition," of families eventually having dramatically fewer children. Children who grow up healthy and survive to adulthood do a lot to transform societies from backwardness into development and innovation.

The increases in lifespan are occurring at the old end of the lifespan too.[1] (This is a point that is often specifically denied in HN discussions, so I thought I should draw attention to it here.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. The increase in lifespan in developed countries has been so steady for so long that a girl born in the developed world since the year 2000 has a better than even chance of celebrating her 100th birthday, with boys likely to live almost as long.[2] And this comes from steady, incremental progress in the prevention and treatment of disease and the maintenance of good general health, not at all from any path-breaking research in "life extension." This suggests that similar day-by-day improvements in human life can come about from simple, barely noticed better practice replacing former haphazard practice. The programmers who Bill Gates encourages to join in on solving problems of the world may be able to harness computer power to notice patterns in data that may improve health and longevity, environmental quality, recycling of natural resources, and a variety of other important aspects of human life little by little all over the world.

I read _The Limits to Growth_ when I was a kid, soon after the book was published. It was the most spectacularly factually incorrect set of predictions of all the predictions of the future I have ever read. I think Bill Gates here is writing based on a better understanding of how the world works, and I expect when my daughter has her 100th birthday in the twenty- second century that she will enjoy a world almost unimaginably better for almost all people than the world we share today.

[1] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

[2] [http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER56> How can I contribute my skills as a programmer to directly help out charity organisations?

<comment><USER57> Find an organization and reach out on twitter, or via email if they aren't on twitter. You'll probably find they would love the help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Good luck stopping religions that don't believe in birth control, which sadly the largest part of the population seems to follow, regardless where in the world they live - one of our last major presidential candidates has FIVE children.

</comment><comment><USER59> Step 1: Stop pushing GMO foods on people who can't afford to choose otherwise.

<comment><USER20> I have not seen any well-constructed study showing that GMO foods are harmful, but I see the argument you are advancing fairly frequently. Could you share why you think GMOs in general are bad? I'm not informed enough to make a determination either way at this point so I'd be very curious to see what is compelling other people to have such strong opinions about it.

<comment><USER60> I don't trust science at the current state to understand the long term impact of GMO. Besides, I prefer to eating natural ingredients regardless if science finds no problems with GMO in the future as well.

<comment><USER61> >Besides, I prefer to eating natural ingredients regardless if science finds no problems with GMO in the future as we

This statement is absurdly irrational. I'm surprised to see this sentiment on here.

<comment><USER62> Wanted to comment that I downvoted not because of your first sentence, but because of the second. Hackers have not proven themselves more rational than society at large and I wish we would stop arrogantly thinking of ourselves that way.

<comment><USER61> Yeah, I was a little hesitant about that second part also. It was more for effect; I fully realize we're definitely not an insular bunch who can be expected to be rational in all parts of our lives in comparison to the irrational unwashed masses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> "Everyone's life has equal value"

That's a very idealistic premise, but not very realistic. Surely he values the life of his children higher than that of some random hideous criminal.

</comment><comment><USER64> [The last question]([http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm](http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm))

</comment><comment><USER65> One of the greatest philanthropist of our time.

</comment><comment><USER66> Good jobs for everyone + managed population growth/stability.

</comment><comment><USER67> Leave me alone.

</comment><comment><USER68> The way to improve the world is to have a global minimum income. Give every person on Earth $5-10k per year, no strings attached. If you are living and breathing, you get the money.

<comment><USER69> You wouldn't need to have minimum income that large to make a big difference. The international poverty line is $1.25/day. A minimum income of $500/yr would make a big difference to absolute poverty. More importantly, it would be affordable ($3.5 trillion or 4% of world GDP) while your proposal would be huge burden.

It would have little effect on the relative poverty in developed nations. But there are a surprising numbers of people in the US ((1.65 million households) in extreme poverty (defined as $2/day) that would be helped by a low minimum income.

<comment><USER68> That's a pretty good point. Even $500 per year would be an enormous help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> why is no one addressing the problem of overpopulation?

<comment><USER71> There is no problem of overpopulation. The population growth is declining. This means we hit peak population between 2050 and 2100.

Also there are enough resources to allow a decent life for everybody. It is all just a matter of distribution.</comment></comment>


More T - <AUTHOR> http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/index.html

<comment><USER2> this links to the missing t revival page, which can be found via archive.org:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070205145001/mumble.net/~campbe...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070205145001/mumble.net/~campbell/t/t.html)

many downloadables are at: <http://people.csail.mit.edu/riastradh/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't think that Riastradh would approve linking parts of his site to places like news.yc. He started removing the pages because of that.

<comment><USER2> I'm not trying to offend the fellow, but if the stuff is publicly accessible, and there isn't even a big "please don't link to my stuff from popular web sites" or whatever notice, there isn't much I can do. I don't have any idea who this person is, or how I would've gone about finding out why the pages were gone. (And honestly, it didn't even occur to me that somebody would put up this old material and not want folks to look at it.)</comment></comment>


My Software Codyng Secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.anastacioraygoza.com/my-software-codying-secret <comment><USER2> (Spoilers) You can't give away the twist in the title and expect it to be a big reveal at the end. I think the slowest reader will have figured it out when he loses his coding ability again. I was expecting the twist to center around "Where has the narrator's code been going all this time?"

Any actual hacker would drop everything to investigate where the code was coming from, and try to harness it in parallel to become a 10x developer. I don't want it to just be unexplained magic unless it makes some kind of realistic point like Kafka's Metamorphosis.</comment>


Markdown and Calendar and Notes? - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/markdown-calendar-notes-28b87f965e5d#.pht2krsuo <comment><USER2> I like the idea - this would be cool as a self-hosted webapp. What I don't like: "coming to macOS and iOS" \- I would Love to have this ported to other OS too (Linux/Android - even windows). Or as I said - a webapp

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the feedback!

It was originally planned as webapp and a prototype is made and online, but I wasn't entirely sure how it would fund itself. That's an unfunded side-project and servers need to be maintained. So macOS app was the simplest choice. You can reach out to me via firstname.lastname@example.com, if you want to have a look and if you have some ideas.</comment></comment>


A tool to help you keep up with 1000+ sources in the tech startup space - <AUTHOR>

We are a group of CS researchers and a MBA from Stanford and have built this technology in the past 2 months that uses machine learning and crowd sourcing to pre-digest the flood of data published by 1000+ sources and give you the latest noteworthy happenings buzzed among the 1000+ sources.
Please take a look: www.mokini.com
We'd love to get your to try out this alpha product and provide feedback. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Sounds great, and I would love to try it, so as others have stated, please do open up the sign in process!

</comment><comment><USER3> bump - open up the sign in process !

</comment><comment><USER4> I understand your motivation for requiring a Facebook login, but I want you to know that it immediately turned me away from your service, which sounds like it could be really cool.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you on this. Requiring facebook credential to log in is a big turn off for the kind of crowd that will use this service so I think you should give people the option of using other credentials to log in like twitter and google accounts.</comment></comment>


Hacking law firms with abandoned domain names - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gszathmari/hacking-law-firms-abandoned-domain-name-attack-560979e0b774 <comment><USER2> This is why you need to take DNS seriously. It's a single point of failure. It's often overlooked, but losing administrative access to a (former) domain name is really, really bad. It's not just email, the hacker can also buy certificates, hijack or transfers the domain (if domain is not locked) and more.

Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17704828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17704828)

</comment><comment><USER3> Having consulted for many law firms over the years, they are notoriously stingy when it comes to taking care of their IT infrastructure. Almost all of them are low-hanging fruit due to this. Especially as more and more of them started getting rid of in-house people and began to solely use MSP types.

<comment><USER4> As someone who has done IT for law firms, administrated law firms, and owned a law firm, I endorse this statement.

I have dealt with firms that pay tens of thousands per month in physical space rental that will balk at the idea of a couple-few thousand _per year_ for IT/web infrastructure/maintenance/etc.

Lawyers are probably not especially more cheapskate than other people, but I would not exactly be surprised if we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something that came into my mind after reading this:

Let's say your name is Jon Doe and you've purchased domain.tld that was previously-used by some company. So you create to yourself firstname.lastname@example.com, and figure out that the previous owner had an employee named Jon that used it as a primary or secondary email across dozens of most popular services.

How the hell do you proceed with your account creation?

The entirety of the web is built on the notion that email addresses are unique, but there are multiple cases in which that might not be the case. What are your options then? firstname.lastname@example.com?

<comment><USER6> Add a tag:

        email@example.com

If the service will accept that of course. It's perfectly valid, and you'll know if it works when you get the confirmation email.

<comment><USER7> While common, I don't think this is a standard, so it will vary by service provider or email server. According to spec, "+" can be a valid part of an email address:

        Without quotes, local-parts may consist of any
        combination of alphabetic characters, digits, or any of
        the special characters

            ! # $ % & ' * + - / = ?  ^ _ ` . { | } ~

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3696#page-5](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3696#page-5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently registered a domain name and set wild card email forwards to my yahoo address. I suddenly start receiving emails with confidential attachments (like employee/vendor payment settlements, disbursements, hr communications, etc.). These emails are from a very large company. I recognized we had phonetically similar sounding domain names. Only one letter was different. Whenever somebody misspelt the domain name in the email, i got that email.

<comment><USER9> This is known as typo-squatting and is not always done accidentally.

An interesting related technique is known as bit-squatting where you register domain names of a target company 1 bit different from the original.

It can be used for receiving emails, phishing sites, capturing internal DNS requests that have gone rogue due to bit errors (due to anything from hardware errors to cosmic rays).

There is a really good talk by Artem Dinaburg from Blackhat about it (first talk about it? I think) [https://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-11/Dinaburg/BH_US_11_Dinabu...](https://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-11/Dinaburg/BH_US_11_Dinaburg_Bitsquatting_WP.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I had a look through the paper, that's very interesting!

The talk is available here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WcHsT97suU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WcHsT97suU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I bought a four character dot com domain after it had failed to be renewed by a Bank.

Let's just say that setting up a catchall for that domain generated countless hours of entertainment.

Highly unsophisticated people will put the dumbest things in emails to their bankers.

On the other hand there were rare heartbreaking instances where families would beg to find a way to keep their homes or cars.

I always forwarded those on to the intended recipient.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the name of a bank usually trademarked? And often trademarked domains are much easier disputed? A bank could way easier take back the domain, no?

<comment><USER13> Since he mentioned it was a 4-letter domain, it could be the bank had a mark for a longer name but used the LLLL for customer convenience? The fact they failed to renew suggests it wasn't an acronym in common use - like HSBC, for example.

<comment><USER11> Yes. It was an abbreviation for the bank and it was a small regional bank in a rural area that eventually folded into another company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whether he's in the clear or not, this sounds like an excellent way to get sued.

<comment><USER15> Yeah definitely the wrong people to piss off.

<comment><USER16> Someone using this in order to take criminal advantage of the previous owner's email address will most likely be using a fake identity, and most likely not care about lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one incensed at the fact that unlike haveibeenpwned, spycloud stores the passwords in the database, right next to the usernames?

</comment><comment><USER18> he sure took it to a whole other level by accessing third party sites and accounts using the hacked credentials.

<comment><USER19> They didn't actually access those accounts, they only verified that they could. Definitely more likely to get peoples' hackles up, but worth bearing in mind. Quote:

> As for all other services, we did not complete the final step of the > password resets for privacy reasons meaning we did not log into or take over > the user accounts, or access any information stored in online services, > although we could have.

<comment><USER20> >> We did not complete the final step ... for privacy reasons

But they did read a ton of email they knew was private? Censoring it for public consumption doesn't change the fact that they accessed it.

Anybody doing this kind of thing in Australia should be familiar with the 'Cybercrime Act 2001' model. In NSW it is implemented in Part 6 of the Crimes Act 1900, and other states also mirror the Cth legislation with various modifications. Some of these (eg Criminal Code 1995 (Cth) s 478.1 / Crimes Act 1900 s 308H) are absolute liability offences, so it is not necessary to prove anything about your intent. Read the definitions in, eg, Criminal Code 1995 s 476.1 for how broad they go ('guided or unguided electromagnetic energy').

The federal offences have to be within the constitutional limits on Cth legislative power, so they 'only' apply to Cth computers/data or when 'the access to, or modification of, the restricted data is caused by means of a carriage service', i.e. The Internet. So they can usually be applied.

These provisions are extremely broad, so there's a lot resting on prosecutorial discretion. Nobody can say for sure whether these things breach the act, but there are plenty of ways to interpret the provisions and cast the actions within them. For example, they might have impaired the electronic communication to or from a computer per s 477.3, and it's not like they were asking anyone first. Also 'here are some private emails we received' is just so plausibly within 'unauthorised access to restricted data'. Probably talk to a lawyer before hitting the big Publish button on Medium Dot Com, and maybe refrain from actually deliberately receiving people's emails, especially when everyone already knows that email compromise = everything and there's nothing to prove.

[https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00298/Html/Volu...](https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2018C00298/Html/Volume_2#_Toc520809589)

[http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/viewdb/au/legis/nsw/conso...](http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/viewdb/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/#s308)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What annual plan/lifetime investment would you make with $100 in 2020? - <AUTHOR> Just stumbled on $100 from an old paypal account and wanted help from the community to make a purchase that is both productive as well as instantly gratifying :) <comment><USER2> Saltwater Taffy for 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER3> Art consumables.</comment>


Restore one-click certificate viewing in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/restore-one-click-certificate-viewing-chrome/ <comment><USER2> Not entirely sure why this isn't default behaviour, but very glad this is now a toggle-able option! Saves a lot of silly clicking around to view certificate info.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perfect. Thanks for linking this.</comment>


Show HN: HTML5 DOM in PHP (with included query selectors) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ivopetkov/html5-dom-document-php <comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks. I would like to share this library of mine. I've been using, improving and optimizing it for the last year and a half. I think it turns out great. I hope it will be useful for you too. Any suggestions and recommendations are welcome.</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need a Mac in order to be taken seriously as a web developer? - <AUTHOR>

People used to use Windows for business, Linux for programming, and Mac for art.  The use of Mac for development has risen significantly since the advent of iOS and I seem to notice a growing trend of web developers moving to Mac.  I have always considered Macs to be overpriced and representative of a "style over function" mentality, but I now accept Apple hardware and software to be of high functional quality.  I am finding more and more web development tools, guides, and tutorials aimed at Mac OS X.
What trends have you noticed?
What trends do you anticipate?
Is it time for me to bite the bullet and go Apple as I attempt to break into web development in the next couple years? <comment><USER2> Short answer: No

Long answer: The computer you use is just a tool. To be taken seriously you need to have an impressive portfolio of projects, you will be judged by your results and not by the tools you used.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my real questions are: Are Macs the best tools available? If yes, will they remain the best tools available? Will the trend of development tools and communities targeting Mac OS continue?

<comment><USER3> Quit worrying about this crap and start making stuff. I know that sounds like a harsh non-answer, but it's true. I offer it because sometimes I have the same problem. Quit sharpening pencils and start writing.

Do as much as you can with whatever computer you have and a copy of gedit or something similar. If you hit the limits of this within the first few months, it's probably your limit, not the tools. If not, then by that time you will be able to determine for yourself what tools you need.

<comment><USER4> Amen to all of this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No. If you want to be taken seriously as a web developer, I would argue to take testing and cross-browser compatibility (HTML/CSS/JS) seriously, whatever machine/environment you decide use doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends what you want. If you're trying to get a job, then yeah, it might actually help to seem more like the cool kids. Get a Mac, use RoR/Node.js, insist on NoSQL, and wear a Afghan scarf too for good measure.

In practical terms it doesn't matter at all. The web is cross-platform and if anything I'd say Linux has the advantage as a development environment. It allows you to create a local environment identical to your server environment.

<comment><USER7> _I'd say Linux has the advantage as a development environment_

It really depends on how far you lean towards design, if you do a bit of design you are going to find more support on the OSX side, if you do pretty much all code, then I would say you can forgo the Mac. I agree with the parent post though that Linux or one of the Unix variants (Including OSX) has broader development tools support that Windows.

The other thing is a quality PC laptop is going to be pretty close in cost. I view the Sager laptops as being on par with Apple as far as quality of components and they where not that much cheaper last time I looked at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To answer the question posed in your title: Absolutely not.

If anything (like another poster here have mentioned), Linux seems to have the most advantage out of "The Big 3", but it really doesn't matter in the long term. You should try to be fluent in at least one environment (OS) , and capable in the others.

Thanks to virtualization, you can run Linux or MacOS on Windows, or any vice- versa-ed combination you might choose. Pick the platform that has the best tools for the language you want, and go with it.

One caveat: If you work in an office with all macs, don't be the guy with the windows machine making the rest of the teams life more difficult. Same goes for an all Linux or all Windows shop. For your professional development needs, you should strive to work in unison with your team.

Personal needs? Go with your heart.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have also thought about this lately although not exactly in terms of being taken seriously as a developer but I am noticing more and more that, the "publicly seen" portable computer of choice is Mac OS X. In more and more recorded video tutorials, presentations(seminars)- you see the developer using Mac OS X. Sure I know it doesn't matter what you use as long as the job gets done. However sometimes you wonder why a mentor or someone you learn from change from say a Linux box to a Mac. You want to know what tipped the scale in favour of a Mac.

</comment><comment><USER9> I run Linux on a Thinkpad, boot into Windows and OSX on virtual machines, and I don't know if I'm taken seriously, but I get a lot of work done.

<comment><USER10> Me too.

Its not the hardware, but the nut behind it that matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, tough question but if you don't have a Mac how do you test? With a Mac you can test easily on Windows and Linux. But if you just use Windows, then you need an alternate machine to test for Mac compatibility, you can dual boot into LInux.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by "Mac Compatibility"?

Safari?

<comment><USER11> Sure, you can test on equivalent browsers under Windows during development. That covers most problems. I wouldn't be comfortable with that though. Not for a final product.

<comment><USER4> Wanting the tried and true Mac environment for testing is fine.

But that's testing. Your QA team (even if its a team of 1) should have access to some kind of Mac environment. That doesn't mean your devs need to use Macs.

Ideally, anyways.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo <comment><USER2> I was just trying to explain this to my niece last week. She responded along the lines of how messy the English language is, but my counter argument was that it highlights the flexibility of language, which allows its use to be artistic as well as functional to a degree that's entirely at the discretion of the speaker / writer.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best I can do is "The space between Fish and And and And and Chips is too small on that sign"

<comment><USER4> Martin Gardner came up with a somewhat contrived but still brilliant extension to this:

"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"

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

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Similar tongue twister in Finnish:

        - Kokko, kokoo kokko!
        - Koko kokkoko?
        - Koko kokko!

Meaning (Kokko is a male name but also means 'bonfire'):

        - Kokko, gather up a bonfire!
        - You mean the whole bonfire?
        - The whole bonfire!

</comment><comment><USER6> This one is pretty fun:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ono_no_Takamura#Takamura_in_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ono_no_Takamura#Takamura_in_later_literature)

"子子子子子子子子子子子子" \--> "the young of cat (猫, neko), kitten (子猫, koneko), and the young of lion (獅子, shishi), cub (子獅子, kojishi)."

</comment><comment><USER7> See also garden-path sentences.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden- path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

"The old man the boat."

"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families."

"The horse raced past the barn fell."

<comment><USER8> "The horse raced past the barn fell" is embedded just one level deep. Besides it becoming completely unintelligible, there's nothing to say that you can't nest arbitrarily:

        The dog the cat the mouse liked hated barked.

Of course, language isn't prescriptive, so it's arguable if this is allowed. It's grammatical, in a technical sense, but not acceptable to, I'd imagine, most English speakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

</comment><comment><USER10> Barely related but I love it: "it was warm" in Japanese can be said 'atatakakatta'.

With the kanji gives it context within the language, 暖かかった, but written in rōmaji it's hard to know what's what.

</comment><comment><USER11> I also enjoy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden- path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

</comment><comment><USER12> Yorkshire (England) dialect.

"It is not in the tin."

"T'in't in tin"

\- Jimmy Carr

</comment><comment><USER13> WILL WILL SMITH SMITH? YES, WILL SMITH, WILL SMITH.

enjoy the uppercase!

<comment><USER14> Odd, I never noticed capitalization making things clearer, but it helps.

Will Will Smith smith? Yes, Will Smith, will smith.

<comment><USER13> it doesn't and that makes it even funnier

<comment><USER14> Sure it does, while not unambiguous both of these for example are valid.

      Will Will Smith smith? Yes, Will Smith, will smith.
      Will Will smith Smith? Yes, Will Smith, will smith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A similar example from Doric Scots: "Fit fit fits fit fit"</comment>


CMU Time Series Database Lectures - <AUTHOR> http://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2017/ <comment><USER2> Andy Pavlo never ceases to amaze me! I'm adding this to my must watch list.

<comment><USER3> He is a very colorful guy, I was at Brown back in the days and had 2 years overlapped with him.

I took 2 databases courses organized by Stan and Andy, like his adviser, Andy was very good at explaining complicated things in layman terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in peoples experience with Timeseries DBs. I deal with a lot (~1 TB and growing) of sensor data and store it all in sql server. Seems to work pretty well.

<comment><USER5> Conceptually, there's no real benefit to using a TSDB if all you need is a list of values (or pairs), and storage/performance is not a concern. Are you using the time-seriesness of the data, or is it just happens that your data come in a time-series shape and you don't do anything special about it?

Many TSDBs offer specialized advantages:

* need fast append-only changes? influxdb covers that

* need performance for short-term time-series data? go for Prometheus

* most TSDBs offer compression to the data stored. In TSDBs, especially the timestamps, can be highly efficiently compressed. Some TSDBs (Chronix[0], for example) even offers an option to completely drop the timestamps in exchange for space savings. E.g., in Chronix's home page, they listed: _The dataset contains about 3.7 billion pairs and takes 108 GB serialized as CSV. Chronix needs only 8.7 GB to store the dataset._

* high-level analytics that only makes sense for time-series data. Chronix[0], again for example, offers a list of high-level functions[1], such as derivatives, integrals, frequency, scaling, or even SAX. Note that you _could_ implement in SQL Server, but would be a huge pain. It's really great that you could push these to the database layer.

(I'm not affiliated with Chrnoix in any way, I just happen to be a very happy user in my recent project. You can see a review of Chronix by Adrian Colyer in [3])

[0]: [https://github.com/ChronixDB/chronix.server](https://github.com/ChronixDB/chronix.server)

[1]: [https://github.com/ChronixDB/chronix.server#function- query](https://github.com/ChronixDB/chronix.server#function-query)

[3]: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/03/10/chronix-long-term- storag...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/03/10/chronix-long-term-storage-and- retrieval-technology-for-anomaly-detection-in-operational-data/)

<comment><USER4> There's a bunch of things we do, but when we do things like transformations, then they generally aren't temporary, so we generate new transformed series of data. There's some aggregations where we use SQL to do some basic stats, but a lot of transformations are done via application level transformations which can essentially do anything with any set of data to produce new data.

The most interesting thing about Chronix, to me, seems to be data size ( would be interesting to see what the performance is like too ). I think I'll do an experiment and spit a bunch of data into it and see how it does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The speakers in this video series give great overviews of their products and their uses. This lecture series reminds me of an in depth meetup, which is nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> Caught this one made me wonder...

"Due to problems in previous seminars, we will not be allowing therapy snakes into the room anymore. Thank you for your cooperation."

Is that an inside joke or is there a snake story somewhere?

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure it's just a joke

<comment><USER9> the x-wife thing is a joke too AFAIK - but why? i don't get it and it reads very unprofessional. explain.

<comment><USER10> > explain

It's a thing called humor. Many humans, even older ones with an actual profession seem to relish it. This even includes some great academic minds like Einstein and Feynman, whose accomplishments could dwarf those of most other humans who dislike this humor thing.

It has been observed by prominent humanologists however that in certain grey corporate circles (especially in protestant-derived cultures) it is frowned upon -- much alike in our own professional culture here on Vulcan.</comment></comment></comment></comment>