Creation and consumption - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/7/13/creation-and-consumption <comment><USER3> Good to see someone reasoning logically around this strawman of a topic that never quite made sense (the numbers he collected are very useful too).

A few years ago, an 8 year old kid sitting next to me on the plane spent the entire flight making her own animation movie from scratch on an iPad. I don't think there would have been any equivalent 10 years ago, short of drawing a flipbook by hand.

Virtually 100% of teenagers these days spend hours every week framing, color correcting, tweaking their pictures to share them on social media. When I taught film photography workshops to teenagers 10 years ago, only a very minority had any interest in photography. You can argue all you want about Instagram not being "real photography", but the reality is that it has led more teenagers to asking for a DSLR on their 16th birthday than anything else in history.

Modern touchscreen devices have always been for creating, and those who say otherwise - as Benedict points out in the opening - <USER2> misunderstand what "creating" looks like.

Now obviously, there are still gaps - no Hollywood movie has been entirely produced on an iPad yet (although quantities of Youtube videos with millions of views have, so maybe that point is moot), and you can't write an Android tablet app on an Android tablet. But that won't be true fairly soon.

<comment><USER4> > Virtually 100% of teenagers these days spend hours every week framing, color > correcting, tweaking their pictures to share them on social media.

I think that, in the long run, making generalizations like this hurt us. It's probably a high %, but not "virtually 100%". You run the risk of siloing discussion around just a single topic (e.g., posting pictures on social media) when in reality modern smartphone use is just as vibrant as PC use is.

People do share photos on instagram. They also use iMessage/SMS/et al. to communicate via text, Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook to consume content, and a mobile browser to find driving test locations. Mobile gaming is a thing too.

You make good points -- especially about photography and interest -- but it's not like every "teenager" falls into the same category. Their device use is just as varied as the personalities of the people using them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very true. Especially the quote from Benedict Evans:

> Anything that you can't do on mobile/tablet and can do on a PC is something > that 90%+ of people couldn't actually do on a PC either.

However, while this is accurate, I'd argue the whole debate is irrelevant to whether or not desktop PCs will die. I mean, there's a lot of people who buy trucks or SUVs that could perfectly live with a sedan or even a smart car, but some people just prefer a bigger vehicle.

I think, too, that enthusiasts and builders alike will continue to run PCs, albeit in a smaller market, long into the future. And as it stands right now, mobile platforms are too limited to be built using themselves. That may never change because it's ideal from a security PoV, and making it possible would introduce complexities that may limit the broad appeal smart devices tend to have.

Though, I still wonder if more weird form factors, innovations input devices and/or software evolutions will change those assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know about the estimates on PC usage. Nearly every office job in the world demands the use of a PC. A mobile device or tablet cannot match the productivity of a PC, mouse and keyboard for everything from editing and viewing spreadsheets while checking email while tabbing over to Slack and other forms of messaging while tabbing between the 15 different cloud based systems people use to operate their business. Even now as I tap away at my Android touch screen to make this comment, I long for my mechanical keyboard to execute 80-90 words a minute. I could get a lot more great counter points in, but my thumbs are getting tired.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think if you look at creation in terms of creating value, all of a sudden huge swathes of what people do on mobile count as creation. They're being my productive. Yet people talk about phones and tablets being 'purely consumption devices'.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author doesn't acknowledge expertise. By their logic, since most people can't play the trumpet, it isn't really a musical instrument.

<comment><USER8> "Anything that you can't do on mobile/tablet and can do on a PC is something that 90%+ of people couldn't actually do on a PC either."

To extend the instrument comparison, that's like saying consuming the game 'Rock Band' is equivalent to creating music.</comment></comment>


Embedly Pro Lets Your App Embed Content From Any Link - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/26/embedly-pro-lets-developers-embed-content-from-any-link/

<comment><USER2> Hmm. This would be perfect for a project I'm doing involving Amazon, except that they rewrite my amazon affiliate tag with their own... :-/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, that's a bug. If the tag is there we should leave it and not add our own.

We will work on fixing that.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the quick response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 50,000 seems like a lot of URLs, especially if an app centralized and can cache its calls to Embedly. $20/month seems more than reasonable for this number of URLs.

<comment><USER4> But why is there even a fee? I mean... there's how many affiliate links that embedly will be picking up as a result and writing as their own... they're earning from your using it... they should be paying you for giving them so much revenue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever tried to make money on affilate links? In all honesty we make next to nothing from affiliating Amazon links. It's not even close to a viable business, we only do it because we don't like leaving money on the table.

<comment><USER4> Yes.

I make about £3k per month off a site that I set up for my own amusement and time-wasting. 6 million page views per month, I'm only signed up to 4 affiliate schemes. Amazon pay the worst of all of them, that's true.

It's a side project, but for something that I only do out of love £3k per month is quite tidy.

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that you could take skimlinks and knock them for six, and people would have a real benefit and reason to use embedly whereas skimlinks milk far too much and it's not even got a user benefit.

PS: Are you hiring remote workers? I know how to make this work ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I guess we are doing it wrong. I see what you are saying about skimlinks, we have received this advice in the past. It's just not something we are looking into now.

We might be up for a commission based remote worker. :)

<comment><USER4> Seriously consider it.

Hit me on email and I'll tell you more detail: david @ buro9.com

There are a couple of specifics to get right, mostly it's about giving a reason for webmasters to use it and what is massively under-estimated is that a lot of webmasters hang out places just like this and are asking for solutions to both embedding stuff and earning money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not mentioned, but reddit use embedly -- thought that might be... interesting?

[http://blog.reddit.com/2010/04/now-this-is-how-you-pitch- you...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/04/now-this-is-how-you-pitch-your- product.html)

<comment><USER6> They don't currently use pro, that's why they weren't mentioned.

<comment><USER7> Missed opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't found any (documented) limits to their free API. While it doesn't have the new added benefits, will it stay free? Unlimited requests?

<comment><AUTHOR> api.embed.ly will remain free, but it is a community resource. If someone is abusing it we will ask them to move over to Pro as to not effect the other users. We have not had to ask anyone to move over and don't see it happening in the near future.

It's in our Terms of Service: <http://api.embed.ly/terms>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using this for a while in a product I'm developing. One great use case is that it makes it crazy easy for users to embed content.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a demo/example page? Can't seem to find on on <http://pro.embed.ly>

<comment><USER6> You can check out <http://labs.embed.ly> for now. It is built on pro. In the coming week will be releasing and blogging about some more demo apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome! I've been looking for a solution to do this for a while.</comment>


Should i Quit? - <AUTHOR>

Here is my awful situation. My grammer isn't that good, keep that in mind while you read.
I work in a PHP (a language i despise) devshop as the lead developer (i only have 1 year experience in programming), we build CMS powered websites. I started working in this company a few months ago, before that i worked at 2 other similiar companies.
The main thing i hate is the workflow, for example here is how we build a website:

  * a design is sent to me by mail.
  * i go to a website we've already built and download it's source
  * i clean the source folders (images etc..)
  * i go to a website we've already built and export the database tables
  * i clean them.
  * i build it.
  * i upload it with ftp.
  * test using the refresh button :o
  * done.
 at no point unit testing is used (my boss says it's a waste of time). we don't use revision control tools (my boss says no one uses it). we don't use tools to automate stuff (deployment etc..).
When i suggest to my boss to use those stuff, he comes back "i have more than 5 years of experience you have 1". My boss isn't a developer, he thinks Firefox was built by Google and "IETester is better than ie9 so use it".
All of our websites have stuff like this in the code: `mysql_query('select * from foo where id = ' . $_GET['id'])`. Some of our websites have no password verification on the admin panel.
Keep in mind that i have seen those stuff in all 3 companies i worked in, this is awful.
HN'ers should i quit and start my own company ? <comment><USER2> Should you quit? Probably. Should you start your own company? That depends. What's your background (beyond "I only have 1 year experience in programming")? Do you have any contacts with people who would potentially want your services, or do you think that you could make them quickly?

My suggestion would be to keep the job solely for income while you hunt for another one. Ask questions during interviews like "What tech stack do you use?", "What version control do you use?", "What kinds of workflow automation do you have?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the reply.

I started programming 1 year ago, i'm a self taught programmer, that's basically it.

I know a lot of programming languages, mainly Google Go, PHP, Javascript and some Scala.

I have some customers i did a little bit of freelancing.

The funny thing is that in my job interview for the current job, i asked "do you use bdd testing" to which he replied "what's unit testing".

the problem i'm having is that most companies from where i am from, don't use or know those stuff....

<comment><USER2> If you're comfortable doing freelancing, it might be worth trying to set out on your own.

You have me curious as to what location you are in, although I would understand if you don't want to divulge that (to maintain your privacy). You might look into what remote opportunities exist, or maybe consider relocating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> you say you are lead developer then you should be able to get heard then, write a letter to your boss with all the improvement you can help produce in the company (write only 3-4 items), their long term benefits and tell him you want to dedicate 20% of your time to make them happen. If they say no or are ambiguous leave as soon as you get another job, if they say yes what the hell, stick there and if anything works ask for a raise.

what ever you do remember that your priority #1 is learning and growing professionally, with 1 year of exp I would guess that you can learn more in a job at a more organized company with senior devs to look up to than working by yourself.</comment>


French law requires written user consent for using communication for ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000034307602&dateTexte=&categorieLien=id <comment><AUTHOR> This is part of the law for a digital republic from october 2016 and just got its implementation decree published.

Rough translation:

To be able to use people private communications for advertising purpose, it is required to collect written consent of the person and it's valid for no more than one year.

This covers everything: email, instant messaging, PM, facebook messenger, etc. for the purposes of advertising, statistics or improving the service and applies to content, sender and receiver identities, and attached documents. Consent of both sender _and_ receiver is required.

Existing practices have 6 months to comply. Consent is specific to each usage (you can't bundle advertising with improving the service, those have to be distinct and are forbidden from being buried in terms and conditions).

This could be a fatal blow to surveillance capitalism. Let's see how facebook, google and the like react to this and if their usual "national law does not apply to us" stance will help them.</comment>


Resources to learn Go - <AUTHOR> http://andygrunwald.com/blog/2015/06/20/resources-to-learn-golang/ <comment><USER2> Waiting for this Kernighan piece: [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language- Addison-Wesley-Pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Addison- Wesley-Professional- Computing/dp/0134190440/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1434841954&sr=8-4&keywords=kernighan)

</comment><comment><USER3> Since my free/open source ebook didn't make the cut, please excuse the self promotion: [http://www.golangbootcamp.com/](http://www.golangbootcamp.com/)

I hope it will help some of you :)

<comment><USER4> I've used it recently. Thanks for the obvious effort that went into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned from John Graham-Cumming's O'Reilly video series. When I reviewed some of the Go books, I was frustrated by code samples with so many "we'll get to this later" parts. John's videos had a good pace, thoroughly explained concepts, and prepared me to write real code. The only downside was that they were expensive - if you are able to expense them, I highly recommend the videos.

<comment><USER6> Indeed so. This series gives a very practical real world view of how to use and apply the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> +1 for gobyexample that is my favorite resource, especially once you have broken ground, and are somewhere in-between having all the basics of the syntax mostly mastered, but some of the tidbits of the standard library not yet mastered.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you. This sort of thing (coming from a PHP/Python) background is what I am looking for.

Would love to see one day examples of doing something in PHP/Python and then how to do it in Golang.

Ultimately, I see myself dropping PHP in favour of Golang for my front-end stuff and continuing with HHVM/PHP for my backend development.

My daemons on servers are currently running in Python and do see them ported over to Golang in the future.

So +1 from me.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Would love to see one day examples of doing something in PHP/Python and then > how to do it in Golang.

Do you got some specific examples you want to see? For some usecases i don`t know if this would make sense to port in 1 by 1 from PHP to Golang (because of lack of features on both sides). But maybe you can name some pieces of code / examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been reading this e-book: [https://www.golang- book.com/books/intro](https://www.golang-book.com/books/intro)

Really enjoying it thus far!

<comment><USER10> mw too.. find this one really helpful

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want to throw the little go book into the ring as another great resource:

[http://openmymind.net/The-Little-Go-Book/](http://openmymind.net/The-Little- Go-Book/)

Short and also freely available.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'll give a +1 to Go in Action (Manning)[1]; the MEAP has improved quite a bit over the last couple of months, particularly with the rewrite of the chapter about types.

[1] [http://manning.com/ketelsen/](http://manning.com/ketelsen/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I missed it but I didn't see this mentioned: [http://gobyexample.com](http://gobyexample.com)

This site helped me tremendously. I still reference it all the time when I'm uncertain about something.

<comment><AUTHOR> This site is genius. It was mentioned in the blog article under "Further useful resources".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice summary.

Contributing to existing project is one more way to learn Golang. Perfect if you have some exotic needs which are not covered in existing golang libraries.

</comment><comment><USER15> One can also peruse the Camlistore source code at [http://camlistore.org](http://camlistore.org). It was a project started by Brad Fitzpatrick, the guy famous for owning Nest Protect smoke alarms. ;)

<comment><USER16> Also famous for the original Perl implementation of memcached ... and LiveJournal. And Perlbal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is another good resource

[http://www.miek.nl/downloads/Go/Learning-Go- latest.pdf](http://www.miek.nl/downloads/Go/Learning-Go-latest.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Also, slightly off-topic, but is there anything like Go by Example for something like C or C++?

</comment><comment><USER18> My recommendation would be not to learn go.</comment>


New Video Of Sand Flea Robot Leaping (Onto) Tall Buildings 30ft High - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/03/30/new-video-of-sand-flea-robot-leaping-onto-tall-buildings-30ft-high/ <comment><USER2> I think the most interesting thing about this robot is how it maneuvers while in flight. If you watch closely, you will see that the robot stabilizes into the 'flat' configuration before reaching the apex of its flight. Without stabilization, it would simply tumble end-over-end.

I believe the robot uses its wheels as reaction wheels, adding the proper torques to the tumbling body to cancel out longitudinal angular velocities. There are not enough controls to cancel out rolling, if it launches wrong. The robot would need an internal lateral reaction wheel or CMG cluster for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty cool robot and one I intend to copy at my earliest convenience! If they combine it with the Van der waal's [1] adhesion effect then you have a robot that should be a really good urban navigator.

Funny story, I designed a robot based on the hopping principle for the first DARPA challenge (the one where you were in the desert trying to go from Barstow to Las Vegas) except that we ran into issues with the ground being too soft in places to reliably jump. And the fact that we had an on board compressor which both weighed too much and took too long to recharge the jump tanks, but other than that :-)

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force>

<comment><USER4> > If they combine it with the Van der waal's adhesion effect then you have a > robot that should be a really good urban navigator.

It's funny you mention that. I went to grad school with the guy who created the jumping robot. His PhD research was in creating artificial Gecko footpads for robots.

<comment><USER5> Nice. My friend did his PhD on gecko adhesives too[1]. He later built[2] a "six-legged" robot like Boston Dynamics' RHex 'bot[3].

[1] <http://northdesignlabs.com/?page_id=12> [2] <http://northdesignlabs.com/?p=38> [3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISznqY3kESI>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I should caveat subsequent comments by saying that I would have given my childhood for this toy (and therein I would have learnt the meaning of irony too, but I digress).

Anyway I am wondering what this could really be intended for. If it is indeed meant to carry a camera payload for cheap soldier surveillance, then I have an alternative suggestion: [http://www.amazon.com/Parrot-AR-Drone-Quadricopter- Controlle...](http://www.amazon.com/Parrot-AR-Drone-Quadricopter-Controlled- Android/dp/B003ZVSHB0). This $298 quad-copter with two mounted cameras seems like it could do the job just fine. (Incidentally on the subject of cheap RC toys saving soldiers' lives and proving themselves viable short-term options: [http://www.rccaraction.com/blog/2011/08/04/traxxas-rc- truck-...](http://www.rccaraction.com/blog/2011/08/04/traxxas-rc-truck-saves- soldiers-lives-in-afghanistan/)). Anyway, especially with Petman (<http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_petman.html>) purportedly being for chemical suit testing (which in my opinion is like saying crash dummies need to have guns and machine vision), Boston Dynamics has shown that it likes releasing potentially mid-path projects for other-than-ultimately-intended purposes (makes perfect sense from a testing perspective). So I wonder what Sand Flea could be working towards other than surveillance? 11 lbs./30 ft is not bad considering a quad copter of similar size would be probably max 4-6 lbs. So maybe they are gearing it up for heavier payloads. Nothing like the 400 lbs alpha dog carries (at that point, assuming similar tech, the Sand Flea would have to be big enough to basically just roll over single-story buildings), but perhaps an explosive payload or something in the neighborhood of 10-20 lbs.

<comment><USER7> The Sand Flea would be able to monitor an area for far longer and is much quieter than a quadcopter. Also, the Sand Flea can enter buildings/caves, and likely carry a small munition load.

The REF doesn't invest in things that aren't ready to go to the sandbox. I think this is far further along than mid-stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All I could think of while watching it was 'its a parkour robot!'

<comment><USER6> Haha. Someone should do a web scrape of all parkour club directories, and then look at the intersection of that set with Boston Dynamics' team... could explain some things

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fantastic news, we are now one step closer to Pirate Bot / Wireless Internet Broadcasting robot that can circumvent internet shutdowns.

As regulations clamp down on internet free speech and authorities give themselves the power to administer internet blackouts during protests. This is the best way to respond in order to re-balance power back to democracies and people.

Now we need to make it a bit bigger and start working on the rechargeable battery pack, solar panel, kinect 3d camera, gps, and long range wireless router (the longest range wireless router allowable by law is a 1 watt router with a 1,200 foot range called Bountiful Router) but I'm sure you can extend the range much further with an illegal hacked version, and use repeater units to send signals further.

Basically a rogue mars-rover for Earth that sends out pirate signals. The future is horrifyingly awesome.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how it determines the height to see if it can leap or not.

I would think also it could be engineered to climb the side of the building by simply creating a triangle shape and motoring up the side or with some kind of suction.

<comment><USER8> I am assuming that its not autonomous and the angle/thrust is either pre- programmed for the demo or is human operator controlled.

<comment><USER11> I'm thinking just basic geometry and some rangefinders and other sensors. It needs to know how high off the ground its rangefinder is, and how far away the base of the target is. Once it knows that, it's some basic arithmetic to determine the height of its target landing area. Set a trajectory, charge for both the distance and height (and possibly to compensate for wind) and you're done.

There's some implementation subtleties I'm sure, especially considering your launch surface may vary, but that's the gist of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their RHex bot is pretty impressive too: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISznqY3kESI>

</comment><comment><USER12> This is so awesome! I was a big fan of the Big Dog but this thing is slick and might be my new favorite robot!

</comment><comment><USER13> We need to put a camera on this and send it to Mars

</comment><comment><USER14> What, am I seriously the first one to say this? I don't care what this thing is supposed to be used for; I want one!

</comment><comment><USER15> That's really cool and Boston Dynamics is amazing but there's most certainly not a 30ft jump in that video.

</comment><comment><USER16> Now we just need a Clifford the Big Red Dog robot.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't the building jump look really fake to people? The image changes at 0:16 right before it pops up. I call bullshit.

<comment><USER18> I don't _necessarily_ call bullshit, but I can't help but question what was cut out.</comment></comment>


It's Not JavaScript "Tool Fatigue", It's JavaScript Bullshit Fatigue - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mrannedev/it-s-not-javascript-tool-fatigue-it-s-javascript-bullsh-t-fatigue-5f90f81423fb#.ge21jkr0h <comment><USER2> No where that mentions Broccoli. Broccoli isn't that new. I think it deserves a mention.

Broccoli is a build tool and not a task runner. You can use Grunt or Gulp to drive it. Heck, you can use make if you want.

First time users often found there's a steep learning curve to get started. But the effort is well worth it because of its architecture and philosophy. The problem with Grunt and Gulp has always been trying to combine incompatible plugins together. This never happens with Broccoli plugins.</comment>


Nicholas Taleb: The Great Bank Robbery  - <AUTHOR> http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/taleb1/English

<comment><USER2> Dr. Taleb's book, Black Swan, was a truly interesting treatment of long-tail statistical events and how humans perceive said events. It is unfortunate to see him indulging in so much hand waving in this article.

 _"For banks that have filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion...... is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees"_

I don't understand where this number is coming from. According to the data from the 2007 Economic Census[1], the U.S. commercial banking sector employed (approx) 1.6 million employes and compensated them with a total payroll of (approx) 95.8 billion dollars. Total payroll for the finance and industry industries is $502 billion for 6.2 million employees.

What is this $2.2 trillion that he is referring to? In his opening statement, he makes it sound as if this amount is direct compensation, but the actual numbers for the industry make that figure seem unlikely. (I am not an accountant, but I seriously doubt that some type of compensation that doesn't appear on the annual payroll is going to make up the bulk of that difference.)

 _"That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, and other long-term projects"_

First of all, this $5 Trillion dollar number is a projection, and projections need to be analyzed critically[2]. Second of all, this is wrong (as pointed out by yummyfajitas elsewhere in this thread). So long as money is not being (quite literally) stuffed into a mattress, it is doing something in the economy. Now whether that something offers benefits over opportunity cost may be a product of market failings and questionable regulations, but that can hardly be blamed on the banking industry.

 _"It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact \"Black Swan\" events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees."_

I think that it is disingenuous to paint the entire industry as being composed of individuals out to cheat the system. I think that it makes more sense to note the behavioral economics at work.

A disturbing number of financial institutions were making money from home mortgage loans. Any financial industry not doing so would be left out of the crowd. Regulations allowed for massive leveraged financial positions to be taken in the market. Financial companies became more and more aggressive (after all, the models say everything is fine, and if we don't play along shareholders will question our financial performance). The bottom fell out and everyone got clubbed (but some worse than others).

There is no great, malevolent force working in finance. The industry was governed by (and possibly still is) some pretty lackluster regulations, but it is a questionable premise to paint the entire industry as willfully fraudulent.

 _"it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks."_

Activity by the Fed is not "secret" but rather it is a matter of public recored: <http://www.federalreserve.gov/>

(Or, more specifically: <http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm> )

 _"We don't believe that regulation is a panacea for this state of affairs. The largest, most sophisticated banks have become expert at remaining one step ahead of regulators"_

This is not really the case. It is more the case that the regulators are often underpaid (relative to what they could make in the private banking industry) and over-worked (due to staffing cuts). This creates an accelerated revolving door between the public and private spheres. This revolving door makes it very hard to get any good regulations out of our current institutions.

 _"A well-functioning market would produce outcomes that favor banks with the right exposures, the right compensation schemes, the right risk-sharing, and therefore the right corporate governance."_

A well-functioning market would favor the banks that offer the best risk- return ratios. Now whether or not the measure of risk is correct will only be obvious in hindsight, but market outcomes are a product of aggregate information on a grand scale. Exposures, compensation schemes, risk-sharing... These are not the kind of factors that are rewarded in a free-market (unless his definition of well-functioning is some variation of central control).

If you want to institute a change in the incentives within the finance and banking industry, just institute a very, very small transactions tax. This would decrease the viability of trading for its own sake (make enough trades fast enough, have a slightly more than random number of successes, and profit).

It wouldn't fix everything, but if you are a critic of the current structure of the industry, then a small transaction tax is the thing that is most likely to move the industry further away from the temptation to function like a glorified roulette wheel.

I'm not even going to address the problems with Dr. Taleb's proposed solution to problems in the banking industry (last three paragraphs of the article). It makes no sense.

[1] 2007 is the most recent data available. It is not the most up to date (the banking sector is likely a bit smaller now), but it is worth using some actual facts and figures. Direct access here (industry code 522110 for commercial banking): [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?...](http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ECN&_tabId=ECN1&_submenuId=datasets_4&_lang=en&_ts=246366688395)

[2] <http://xkcd.com/605/>

<comment><USER3> Respectfully, I think you are overanalyzing something that is very simple.

1) Humans are very good at cheating the system. In fact, we are built to cheat, and we have come up with amazing ways of cheating and scamming people out of their money. To ignore this is to ignore hard facts that are right in our face.

2) Most people are honest. But it only takes a few dishonest people to do a lot of damage. And with the right amount of money, you can get away with anything in this country.

3) Corruption is the most seductive activity you can engage in with your clothes still on.

4) It goes beyond conspiracy at this point - we can literally see money transferring hands. Is it not funny that almost everybody was against the bailouts, but the govt. green flagged them regardless? Is it also not a bit strange that every past Secretary of Treasury for the past few decades has been affiliated with Goldman Sachs?

As for free markets and regulation:

Do you believe in evolution? I do. Evolution gets a LOT of things wrong in the beginning, but in the end, it usually produces pretty ideal designs. Evolution is what happens when you have an environment free of artificial contraints.

Likewise, I think that the best economy will be produced by many mistakes, and learning from them. One thing I am pretty sure we will learn is that no corruptible entity should ever control an economy, because corruption is always the end result. (All hail our new robot overlords :D)

And I will just leave this here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Hayek> I'm sure you have probably read up on this guy.

<comment><USER2> I appreciate your thoughtful reply. While I am making the transition to a web developer at the moment, I have a graduate degree in Economics and I have spent some time working in the investment industry (Main St, not Wall St). I would just like to share an alternative viewpoint with you:

1) I wouldn't think of it as "cheating the system", but I would think of it as rational self-interest. Given a set of constraints, people will optimize for the best personal outcome.

2) People maximize their utility (utility is a measure of happiness). Whether someone is honest or dishonest is nothing more than a preference input into their utility maximization functions.

What this means is that if the punishment for breaking some law is exceeded by the benefits (to the individual) of doing so, then that individual will break the law. Think about how many people casually drive 5 to 10 miles over the speed limit (or 20 to 30 down here in Texas).

With that said, whose dishonesty is responsible for the housing collapse:

* Were the homeowners dishonest for taking on loans they could not afford to pay back?

* Were the lenders and real estate agents dishonest for making the loans to the home owners?

* Were the finance guys responsible for thinking that risk could be mitigated using the tools of finance?

* Were the investors being dishonest for cheering on returns that were above market-average without considering the risk?

Painting a market with the brushes of corruption and dishonesty does very little to advance an understanding of how the event happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future.

4) Professionals with an understanding of the financial industry were generally in favor of the bailouts. The government listened to the professionals.

Goldman Sachs hires _a lot_ of economists and finance guys, and they hire the people with the best resumes. One should hardly scream conspiracy if it turns out that some of these "cream of the crop" individuals end up working in the treasury. Statistically, the probability of it happening randomly is actually quite high.

 _"Likewise, I think that the best economy will be produced by many mistakes, and learning from them."_

I completely agree with this.

 _"One thing I am pretty sure we will learn is that no corruptible entity should ever control an economy, because corruption is always the end result. (All hail our new robot overlords :D)"_

There is no need for us to resort to robots. We simply have to understand that people are self-interested and build a system that channels this self-interest into outcomes that are efficient for society as a whole.

 _"And I will just leave this here:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_von_Hayek> I'm sure you have probably read up on this guy."_

Hayek was an amazing logician, but the application of his theories to the modern economy is unproductive. The questions that he asked have been answered by modern economics in the 50 years that have passed since he asked them.

I consider myself an advocate for breaking down the wall that exists between modern economics and people that would like to increase their understanding of modern economics without being economists themselves. If you have anything that you would like to ask me about anything that I wrote above (or any of Hayek's specific points), then I would be happy to answer them (regardless of the beating that my karma takes).

<comment><USER4> "There is no need for us to resort to robots. We simply have to understand that people are self-interested and build a system that channels this self- interest into outcomes that are efficient for society as a whole."

Here's the difficulty that Hayek was pointing out in his book Road to Serfdom. Who gets to decide what the right outcomes are and whether they are efficient?

<comment><USER2> _"Who gets to decide what the right outcomes are and whether they are efficient?"_

Whether or not an outcome is "right" is subjective, and is more in the field of law and philosophy than economics.

Whether or not an outcome is efficient for society does not need to be determined as it can be measured. An outcome is efficient for society if it makes at least one individual better off without leaving any other individuals worse off. (This is Pareto efficiency).

Of course in the real world, there will almost always be winners and losers with any policy change. The solution is thus to make sure that the total net benefits of any policy change is positive.

The net benefits are the benefits (both implied and explicit) of a policy minus both the costs of doing the policy and the costs of potential gains that could have been had by pursuing alternative policies. Both the costs and the benefits should be aggregates that include the costs and the benefits to all parties affected by a policy.

One thing that I think is worth thinking about when you look at recent developments in the markets is this. From the time period of roughly the 1950s to roughly the 1980s this form of detailed cost-benefit analysis was popularly employed by both governments and private companies. (I am not actually this old, but I have heard this story multiple times from economists considerably more seasoned than me).

Unfortunately, starting in the 1980s, a more expedient form of cost-benefit analysis that focuses mostly on the immediate costs and benefits to the organization conducting the analysis began to dominate. This type of analysis was championed by the finance and accounting oriented economists that began to spring up at around this time. (Disagreement over this and other issues led to university economics departments around the nation dividing from business departments and finding a new home - and less funding - with the liberal arts and social sciences.)

It is expensive and time-consuming to conduct a thorough impact analysis, so I can understand why the more academic approach would fade away in favor of something more expedient. However, I think that a lot of the recent problems we see in governance can be traced to this fast-food economic analysis:

* Lack of investment in infrastructure? - Well, this report on my desk says that it will be expensive to fix those roads and the ones we have now seem to be holding up just fine

* Internet providers want to throttle bandwidth based on its source? - Makes sense, according to this report on my desk providing bandwidth obviously costs money - why not charge for it?

* A tax on transactions? - Well, this report on my desk says that would make it more expensive to trade stocks - there's no way this could be beneficial.

While the right answers to many of these questions can be found either in economic journals or by speaking with an independent consultant, policymakers rarely have the enthusiasm for a topic to dive so deeply.

I hope that soul-searching due to the financial meltdown brings the old approach back in favor. It is sorely missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's one investment banker's first hand version of what investment banking really has become...

"...My first job out of Cornell was on the trading floor at UBS. So when news would hit the wire about an American company closing a domestic factory, I felt a good deal of conflict as I watched the company's stock price go up as a result. Those sorts of factory closings had ruined my neighbourhood, my city, and many of the people I'd grown up with. I was not alone in this feeling, but there were not many of us, either. One of my British friends from the training programme, who later became a currency trader, once told me: "I mean Christ, mate, every time they close a factory in Wales the goddamn market goes up. The whole system's a little fucked, don't you think?" And of course it was. The question was how to deal with it.

The easiest thing was buy into the system, convince ourselves that there was no other way to live. A few semesters worth of economics classes certainly helped; the in-house economics classes taught by the bank helped even more. The financial markets operate on the principle that, at our core, we're all basically shit: selfish, self-interested creatures. There's a whole branch of economics devoted to proving that if you help someone, say, run in front of a speeding train to push another person out of the way, you are actually acting out of self-interest, not altruism; that what most of us would consider humankind's cardinal virtues - love, honor, compassion - do not actually exist.

The idea that we're nothing more than selfish animals is an attractive philosophy to a person pulling down a few million dollars a year. It is a philosophy that negates guilt. The guilty feeling a normal person gets while visiting a Third World country is the same feeling a senior investment banker gets when they see a working class neighborhood in Birmingham or Philadelphia. When your paycheck could cover the salaries of a few hundred nurses or teachers, you need some explanation for why that's okay. The only one that really works is that life is a pure meritocracy. That whether rich or poor, we're all getting what we deserve.

The fact is, I became pretty good at making this argument myself. Until a roommate of mine, a guy named Mark Brewin, asked me: "So is that really what you want to be? A selfish animal?" "It's not like we have a choice," I said. "No," he said. "You always have a choice. It's just easier to pretend that you don't." Ouch. The strangest thing was, this thing I'd wanted for so long, this chance to become wealthy, was causing me more internal conflict than anything I'd ever done. I began writing a second novel, about a kid from the provinces who comes to Wall Street and is both drawn in and horrified by the culture of excess.

I understood it well. I put on 45 pounds in my first year at the bank, and, as you might guess, it was not from eating McDonalds. Occasionally I ate stuff like sushi, but mostly it was steak. We went to the good places like Sparks, Peter Luger's, and the Strip House. We tended to look down on chains like Morton's and Ruth's Chris-they were for car dealers or stock brokers, not traders. Regardless of where we ate, we ate in quantity. My standard strategy was to order half a dozen appetisers, plus a steak and lobster, plus a few desserts and much wine as I could drink, as long it was under a few hundred dollars a bottle. Followed by a digestif, typically a 30-year-old port. There's not any way to justify this except to say I was trying to catch up to my colleagues. We would treat those restaurants like Roman vomitoriums. And it wasn't the food so much as the wine. Being a junior employee, I couldn't really order bottles that cost more than a few hundred dollars, but the senior guys could get nicer stuff - Opus One, Chateau Latour. As long as we were out with a client, the bank paid. I remember being stunned the first time I saw a dinner bill for ten grand. But that was just the beginning.

What it boiled down to was austerity for everyone else and rampant consumption for ourselves. I never saw anyone literally set fire to money, but I did drink most of a bottle of 1983 Margaux ($2,000)...."

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american- ex...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-excess-- a-wall-street-trader-tells-all-1674614.html)

<comment><USER5> That's what we're cutting Social Security and Medicare for... so some Goldman- Sachs or UBS investment banker can guzzle $1000 bottles of wine and vomit them back up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> $5 Trillion is a lot of money even over 10 years.

It's 7 years and 35 days worth of ALL the U.S.A.'s collected taxes. It's ~$25,000 paid by each adult in the U.S.A.

It's $1M every day for the whole of humanity's 5,000,000 year existence.

Paid to the already wealthy shareholders and employees of a few banks…

<comment><USER4> I think there might be an error in your maths :)

5M years times 365 days times $1M is 1825 trillion dollars or just under 2 quadrillion.

Actually I just realised that you probably meant to write "year" instead of "day"

<comment><USER6> oops… I stuck the numbers into Wolfram Alpha. Must have made a boo-boo. I'll recheck and re-edit.

<comment><USER6> No I won't. It won't let me edit it. My foolishness can live on for posterity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My biggest concern about 2007 collapse is that we DID NOT reform financial system after the collapse. Everything remains the same. The banks still operate in same way as before 2007.

And everybody should be careful to bet on recovery: we have a financial system which relies on public funds to be viable. We did not envolve.

We should do two things:

\- allow failed banks to fail (ok maybe some gov oversight but essentially they should be broken up and sold in pieces)

\- the regulatory system must be reformed (reform credit rating agencies, etc.)

<comment><USER8> Ratings required by the SEC, and the public, should not come from 'for profit' companies (S&P, Moodys, Fitch)when investment banks are allowed to shop around for the best rating. Blatant conflict of interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping this would be a quality piece of investigative journalism, but it seems very heavy on editorial content and unsupported assertions; and very low on reporting of facts. Just to give one example, it is not even explained where the headline figure of $2.2 billion comes from.

I was very disappointed because I am sure Taleb has enough command of the facts to write an article on this topic that is actually informative.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article makes a very strange assertion:

 _That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees._

What does the author believe the bank executives and employees do with that money? Some of it is spent on consumption, but most bank executives consume a far smaller portion of their income than anyone else. [1]

Whatever they don't consume is reinvested in the economy.

[1] If you disagree with this claim, then it logically follows that the best form of Keynesian stimulus is tax cuts for bank executives.

<comment><USER11> _Whatever they don't consume is reinvested in the economy._

You'd be forgiven for saying that because thats always been the case. Until 2009.

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCRESNS>

The banks don't spend the money, they stuff it in the Fed. The bankers dont spend the money (as you point out), they put it in bank, or in treasuries, or they buy stock (and then the seller puts it in a bank, or in treasuries, or they buy stock). Or they pay off some debt. Sometimes, rarely, the money is invested in a small company that actually creates jobs. However, if I was rich and didn't give a shit about my fellow citizens, I'd be investing in emerging economies, not the USA. Any evidence bankers are like that?

New jobs come from small businesses. $5t would jump start a lot of small businesses.

The irony is that if that $5t were invested in small businesses etc, the bankers would probably be making just as much if not more.

<comment><USER12> What are Treasuries, exactly?

<comment><USER13> Strange circular reasoning. Why should taxpayers pay the banks to lend them money at interest?

The Fed has been doing this as a backhanded way of recapitalizing the financial sector (lending money at extremely low rates which banks then pour into liquid but higher-paying investments like Treasuries along with more speculative leveraged plays against the USD).

It isn't hard for players with privileged access to capital to print money in this situation, and this is what makes the exorbitant compensation rankle: if the unstated justification for the money pump is to recapitalize the financial sector the constant hemorrhaging of assets on personnel compensation is parasitic and abusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Banks lend out more money than they have. They report to their account holders that they have the money on hand. That is both fraud and a ponzi scheme.

This is the root of the entire problem. Until fractional reserve lending is frowned upon internationally, as money laundering is, this problem will not end.

Of course, there is no political will to end fractional reserve lending. Both politicians and those who elect them demand economic growth today, and in as much volume as possible. As we are seeing now, the results of a bust only serves to aggregates this problem while during a boom the system appears to be fully functional and healthy.

So build your companies for wealthy bankers.

</comment><comment><USER15> I share the authors' concerns however I'm not so sure that investment managers can be relied upon to make the investment decisions they have described. Like the large bank executives, investment managers earn large sums of money and, I believe, are likely to identify with bank execs in that regard. People who earn huge amounts of money tend to rationalize their compensation. They believe they are worth it. In fact, Taleb makes this point in one of his books when describing successful traders. In fact, most of the people in a position alter the state of affairs in compensation disparity are the 'winners' in terms of power and/or money and would seem unlikely to want to change things. The remarkable thing is that America has lasted so long without the huge income gulf that exists in other countries. Not sure what the answer is, but I don't think it's from within the 'winners'.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just realized something, back in 2001, the day before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, Donald Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon lost $2.3 trillion dollars.

It's funny how that same sum comes up again:

 _the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. For banks that have filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion_

The government seems to keep losing its money through malice and corruption.

<comment><USER17> There's a difference between "lost" and "qualified audit".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> so.. what are you guys gonna do about it?

<comment><USER19> Apparently our politicians are going to continue to get paid by bankers to manufacture class warfare narratives that will get one half of the dying American middle class screaming at the other, allowing further decimation of organized labor by these same politicians, further enriching the bankers and ultra rich, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think Taleb has ever written a book or article that didn't use the phrase "Black Swan".

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't care if you are a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Totalitarian, Socialist, Communist, or Anarchist. You should be angry. Very angry.

I don't even think it is a conspiracy at this point - there is so much in plain sight.

Everyone with me:

I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! :)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn- Op7Q&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn- Op7Q&feature=player_detailpage#t=126s)

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh give me a f __king break.

> That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, > and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American > economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees.

This argument applies to any salary paid by any firm. Plus of course salaries are spent and invested, which is the very definition of a successful economy.

> In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer > the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees.

Right. Just like any other public company.

This guy has made a career out of one single, simple premise, which through fortuitous timing on his behalf, made him a lot of money.

It's also extremely trite to be dissing the banks like this when everything he is is thanks to the banks. Doubly so as he profited from shorting the equity markets.

Whilst I'm not saying that banks don't have a fair amount to answer for, his arguments and assertions are bullshit, more characteristic of a hack journalistic seeking to sensationalise and troll, not a "Professor of Risk Engineering" at a top University. For some great comment on this and why Washington have a lot to answer as well, see Alastair Heath's piece [1] in today's City AM - a great journalist whose editorial column I read nearly every day and someone who actually knows his stuff.

1\. [http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/allister- heath/how-w...](http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/allister-heath/how- washington-created-sub-prime)

<comment><USER3> I don't think you understand...

The government is funneling tax-payer money into privately-owned organizations, like banks. Normal tax-payers are not reaping benefits from this (such as roads, schools, etc). But even then, I suspect most of this bailout money is going into golden parachutes for executives or bailing out bad/risky investments.

The original logic behind these bailouts is that it would somehow keep the economy more stable and "save" the companies - the latter part is a joke though because most of the bailed-out companies now trade as junk stock (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc).

<comment><USER21> Are you seriously trying to tell me that the banks are the only industry which either a) has been bailed out at some point or b) receives government subsidies?

<comment><USER22> It's probably the industry that gets the biggest bailouts, the fastest, without any serious questioning and without having to make any changes. I would have been OK with the 2008 bailouts if there had been any serious reform of the banking sector. I think they should have reinstated some version of Glass-Steagall.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If AI is going to be the world's doctor, it needs better textbooks - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1367177/if-ai-is-going-to-be-the-worlds-doctor-it-needs-better-textbooks/ <comment><AUTHOR> "When you actually talk to real doctors and patients, suddenly the things that weren't apparent to computer scientists working in a basement with data become more evident,"

Am I the only one who thinks, frankly, computer scientists already know this? Which competent data scientist doesn't know that the models need a variety of data?

If there is going to be a backlash against AI, some of it will have been caused by these crude images presented of a data science craft that doesn't actually work that way.</comment>


Twitter releases SPDY library for iOS and OS X - robert-boehnke https://github.com/twitter/CocoaSPDY

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the way Twitter gets something done in improving the internet using an open source library. For instance, Bootstrap is all over and did encourage a lot in pushing responsive/mobile websites.

Its a lot better than having your tab page hijacked to show a google search box like in Google chrome a closed box from an open source project - webkit. I hope twitter stays this way 5-10 years from now.

<comment><USER2> You are aware that SPDY was developed by Google, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its also not that widely adopted which is the problem its a great protocol I think. When Google pushes something it doesn't always work so well, besides android, there was also WebM and its picture counterpart which aren't well adopted.

What I mean by this is If I as a developer want to use it in my project its not all that easy. Big sites adopt it but I wish more of the internet would & it would easy to build APIs on it too.

Before bootstrap a whole lot of sites worked on mobile but because of Twitter a significant chunk of new sites became responsive and mobile.

<comment><USER3> Google uses it for nearly everything. Facebook supports SPDY. Twitter supports SPDY. All CloudFlare sites support SPDY. nginx supports it.

It's becoming more widely deployed on the large Internet sites that have the capability and engineering resources to make it happen. If you want to deploy it on your own site then nginx makes it easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are right most of the big sites use spdy. The issue I meant to speak of was Its not that easy to use in the 'immediate' type of way.

If I wanted to build a site running on SPDY and have a client side app to communicate to the server its not fully covered.

Nginx wouldn't help to fully enjoy full of the benefits of SPDY because it would just be a transparent proxy back towards http.

For instance I want to connect to my meteor app over DDP using SPDY but Its not possible to do that yet.

When twitter does something like this they try and solve a legitimate issue without having much of an agenda that belongs only to itself. We all could use this.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Google does great engineering, but their "developer-as-an-end-user" to their engineering really suffers. Take a look at Android documentation vs. iOS documentation if you want an example. I really wish Google would hire some great engineers who actually LOVE technical writing and understand developer experience to create their APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I added a pod for it, if anyone is interested. Also hoping I didn't do something bad. I set the license and contacts as from what I could find for the other libraries.

But I suspect I might have have too high of versions set for the libraries. iOS 7 and OSX 1.9. Let me know if that should be changed :)

I'm quite pleased that they did it properly by going through the NSURLProtocols so any library that is an abstraction of those will benefit from this.

EDIT: I also rewrote their tests for XCTest, just for kicks and replaced their project with a workspace that used the pod locally. I'm sick and bored :& \- my version of eating ice cream and being in bed (which I am)

<comment><USER6> People like you are the reason I love the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A naive question: if multiplexing of SPDY is so important to load speed, why not promote SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)?

EDIT: It was reported that SPDY over SCTP was faster than SPDY over TCP. [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2012AprJun/...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2012AprJun/0184.html)

<comment><USER8> So much existing infrastructure only supports TCP and UDP that a new protocol at that level is pretty much a non-starter. UDP is lightweight enough that you can put SCTP on top of UDP, but at that point you might as well make something optimized for that use case, which is why Google is working on QUIC.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly the case. It is an explicit goal of the SPDY and HTTP/2 projects to be something that can actually be deployed on the current internet.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/whittlbc/wat-py <comment><USER2> Just saw "wat" talk ([https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)) linked in another HN thread. Thought this was somebody trying to climb the ladder using that vid. Amazing how the mind works. That talk is so great that this word is now a reserved keyword for me for the rest of my life I fear.

Still not disappointed to browse this github for a bit.

<comment><USER3> If you loved that video, try this great Perl presentation from Netanel Rubin: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noQcWra6sbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noQcWra6sbU)

And it's follow-up cousin "The Camel Strikes Back" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYl3-c2JSL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYl3-c2JSL8)

(He says wat alot and it's hilarious)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this now irrelevant since Pep 553[0] (adding breakpoint()) was introduced in python 3.7?

If not, it's not very clear how this differs from breakpoint().

0) [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0553/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0553/)

<comment><USER5> Yes, in Py3.7 which everyone uses by now, although it is very annoying to have to then type "interact" after hitting a breakpoint to actually get to the interactive shell.

This appears to just be a macro for

      code.interact(local=dict(globals(), **locals()))

And it doesn't pretend to be otherwise. But this lib is still a fantastic idea, because that code.interact line is obnoxious as hell to type when you need it and breakpoint doesn't actually get you to the shell.

<comment><USER6> I mean:

        import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

is totally a thing. And ipdb is even better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> how about using pdb?

</comment><comment><USER8> What advantages does this have over pdb (built in) or ipdb?

</comment><comment><USER9> That's really cool! I'm going to have to remember this when I'm debugging stuff without pycharm.

</comment><comment><USER10> What are the advantages to this over pdb or pdb++?

</comment><comment><USER11> Great name for sure.</comment>


A map of every company that Disney owns - <AUTHOR> https://i.imgur.com/yQ41WNV.jpg <comment><USER2> Got a non imgur link? Turning on JS only to see a static image is a bit too much for me.

<comment><USER3> I would like a version where you can actually read the information.</comment></comment>


China bars stock index web search after Tiananmen match - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18327767 <comment><USER2> Wow... Chinese people seem to be able to manipulate their market at will. I'd say the government has a bigger problem than a few people knowing about what happened 23 years ago.

What sane investor would put his or her money in such a market? They can make it change whenever they want... to whatever they want. Crazy.</comment>


Here's how much of your life the United States has been at war - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/18/heres-how-much-of-your-life-the-united-states-has-been-at-war/ <comment><AUTHOR> The terror wars are the most alarming because it has also militarized our police, created a lower bar for our justice system or two justice systems, created secret courts, attacked our Constitution with the Patriot Act, abolished privacy, and the cost is more than all other wars combined.

In the end, every war since WWII, where the world was decimated and we got the advantage of rebuilding, has left the country in a worse economic condition than the last. Every single war creates a sideways market and has created more imbalance.

We now have the possibility of losing the people internally and that is typically how all empires fall, from within due to overextended wars and lack of spending internally.

You could also throw in the War on Drugs as another war not recognized by this but that is the war that has taken the most of our freedoms since the War on Terror. Overriding the justice system to force moralistic laws, taking freedoms from individuals on a grand scale, general warrants that we crossed the ocean to get away from. There may be an end to the War on Drugs in some ways soon, but the War on Terror seems to have no end or way to end it until it has broken the US internally.

If 'terrorists hate our freedoms' then why are our lawmakers taking away our rights?

<comment><USER2> Both wars are on abstract ideas, and are pretty unwinnable wars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> American wars will never stop precisely because the war has no great adverse impact on American lives.

When other countries go to war, like Pakistan against India for example, their citizens feel the pain. So sooner or later they realize war is not all that good and they form an uneasy peace agreement. Americans have no such compulsion towards peace, because the wars they finance always ruin some other country and kill some other people. At the same time, it sustains a good war economy and keeps the public occupied. These wars are win-win from the perspective of the American establishment.

As a side note, this is why 9/11 was such a monumental event from an American point of view: it was one of the very few times that Americans were in the crosshairs. As Chomsky put it "This is stuff that we do to you, you don't do it to us."

<comment><USER4> The cure for the American love of war is to have more of these wars fought on the American mainland.

<comment><USER5> Thats the greatest ruse. There will never be another war on American soil. At least anything other than opportunistic strikes - suicide bombers, untraceable ICBM strikes, or attacks by non-governmental groups. You will never see Chinese, Russian, Mexican... any foreign nationalities soliders walking down the streets of New York or LA. A real war, in the modern world, without all the bullshit proxyisms and toying with lives, is resolved with nuclear arms first and foremost.

Don't think for a second this country would tolerate anything less than nuclear retaliation to a ground invasion of the mainland USA by a foreign government. Hell, an organized terrorist group would see themselves nuked out of existence if they tried to do a land invasion. It is instant suicide to _attack_ America directly. Why do you think the entire point of the Taliban during the 80s against Russia, and of all the myriad terrorist groups operating against the USA today, was to lead a band of nomads to commit suicide raids and guerrilla attacks against them? They knew they could never "win" a war. They could just make their enemy lose. They worked to help bleed the USSR dry, and are winning by all their own metrics to this day by doing the same to the USA. They hide in caves while we flush a trillion a year down the toilet in the name of security against them. And people wonder how Rome fell.

<comment><USER6> This kind of thinking, the same of Fox News and the media uses, is what support this "war on terror". All of great empires thought they would never been invaded or destroyed. Until they were. It would not be that impossible to invade USA if the country's foreign policy keep turning every country in the world into an enemy. A full war against Americans (which is not impossible to happen, as the US is doing bad even to european countries) would put US in a very fragile situation.

<comment><USER5> All the great empires did not have weapons that could render the planet uninhabitable a _hundred times over_. Don't act like nuclear arms did not change war.

No, the USA would not survive a global war versus _every_ other power. The US has enough missile subs, secret launch bases, and distributed silos to make it impossible to do a joint strike to eliminate the entire American nuclear arsenal. But very few would survive that war - most of the planet would be an irradiated uninhabitable wasteland. I would expect you would have survivors of a global nuclear war, but it would not be a pleasant world to live in.

There is no situation where you could do a ground invasion and takeover of _any_ sufficiently nuclear armed first world country where that country would not use nukes as a final measure. That is what they are for. I mean go ahead, try taking over Pakistan and see if they don't nuke you for it, for example.

<comment><USER4> "All the great empires did not have weapons that could render the planet uninhabitable a hundred times over"

Like Ukraine's nuclear weapons protected it from Russia ?

Here is a clue. As the world situation changed, Ukraine lost its nuclear weapons. Want to bet that will NEVER happen to the USA or the successor of the USA ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see the country's involvement in war as an inevitability born from the continued evolution of the military industrial complex. Like any organization, a primary goal of the military is for it to self sustain. To reduce its size to a level suitable for peace time you'd need to fight back against so many incentives to keep things the way they are. It's a Herculean task.

This pressure to scale it back was supposed to come from Congress but it's no secret that the public's faith is in Congress's ability to do their job is at an all time low.

So now you always have to have a conflict. Slowly the bar for what merits involvement gets lower. Other comments here have echoed my fear that the bar may get so low that the focus to find a suitable enemy turns inward.

<comment><USER8> I spent almost six years working for the Department of Defense. From my perspective, the entire organization is engaged in a giant game with two objectives. One, funnel as much money as possible to defense contractors. Two, keep the game going for as long as possible, by any means possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's more interesting than the "definitions of 'at war'" are the definitions of "young men and women [who have] died," "children [who] lost a parent or sibling" and "life-altering injuries".

Apparently ABC's Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent thinks only U.S. men, women and children are worth counting.

<comment><USER10> Well, it _is_ Memorial Day, an American holiday to remember Americans who have died in wars.

<comment><USER9> The speech was given on May 16. Moreover, the definition of what constitutes a human doesn't change on Memorial Day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't want to diminish the difficulty and danger the soldiers at the front today face, or the danger that the civilians in those areas face, but I'm not sure that the war on terror belongs to the same category of conflict as world war two.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually, because Congress or the President have not yet acted, we have been in a period of war since 1990.

[http://www.benefits.va.gov/pension/wartimeperiod.asp](http://www.benefits.va.gov/pension/wartimeperiod.asp)

source: am Veteran/Military lawyer

<comment><AUTHOR> Good information, so essentially the Gulf War never ended, and war powers have been active since 1990.

> Mexican Border Period (May 9, 1916 – April 5, 1917 for Veterans who served > in Mexico, on its borders, or adjacent waters)

> World War I (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918)

> World War II (December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946)

> Korean conflict (June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955)

> Vietnam era (February 28, 1961 – May 7, 1975 for Veterans who served in the > Republic of Vietnam during that period; otherwise August 5, 1964 – May 7, > 1975)

> Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – through a future date to be set by law or > Presidential Proclamation)

That makes the Gulf War the longest war combined with the terror wars from the article (2001-present). We are only 15 years into this century and already have seen as much war as last century which included the world wars. I guess perpetual war has already started.

<comment><USER13> So the durations increased monotonically, except for WWII as kind-of- surprisingly defined to last through 1946 making it edge out Korea. I didn't expect such a simple pattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Odd that they don't seem to count the Cold War. I understand that their measure of what they count as a war is subjective, but surely the Cold War impacted the average person's life at least as much as the War on Terror and had a significantly bigger economic impact.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/local/2014/08/09...](http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/local/2014/08/09/remembering- pfc-williams/13841727/)

Killed last year in Afghanistan at age 19. He was six years old on 11 September 2001.

<comment><USER15> Wow that's very sad.

<comment><USER16> What I'm going to say seems like extremely unpopular opinion, but _why exactly is it sad_? Because somebody died? Yeah, sure, this part could be sad, except people die all the time.

Because "Young Brave American Soldier" was killed by "the enemies"? Oh hell no. He didn't die on someone's behalf: he was the one who invaded somebody's home country and was killed by people protecting that place from people like him. I'm more grieving for people he killed, than for himself.

Maybe it's sad because he died because of USA government, who is so fond of making war? For me, it doesn't seem to work either: as far as I know USA has a volunteer military, nobody forced him into it. He has consciously chosen killing others (and, possibly, being killed himself) as his professional activity. For me, the fact he voluntarily made such choice is more sad than the fact he suffered from it.

So why exactly is it sad?

<comment><USER17> it's sad because the fact that he thought that his choice was the best for his country - a sort of misplaced, misguided loyalty. And it's being taken advantage of by those in power to propagate an agenda that doesn't benefit many americans at all.

<comment><USER3> Would you extend the same courtesy to fighters on the other side?

<comment><USER18> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "More than 6,500 young men and women died in these wars"

I love how the hundreds of thousands of people _WE_ killed somehow don't make it into this count.

<comment><USER4> MILLIONS that we killed, not hundreds of thousands.

The body count in just Iraq is over 200,000.

[https://www.iraqbodycount.org/](https://www.iraqbodycount.org/)

This is the way the American world looks. Bleak and littered with corpses.

<comment><USER20> Actually the way the American world looks, is one in which no major world powers have gone to war since WW2 ended, with America maintaining the peace and protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union.

Global poverty and global violence - in fact, nearly every major negative measurement has plunged in the last 70 years during which America has reigned. The global median income and standard of living keeps rising. The world has never had it so good, as it has during the time in which America has been the leading superpower.

Endless war among major nations for centuries. America becomes _the_ global superpower, not a single major war between major nations in 70 years.

Two world wars in 25 years. Zero world wars - despite vast global military armament, including two aggressive communist powers that murdered a hundred million of their own people combined - in 70 years. America has been the sole thing holding it all in check.

Global wealth - at an all time high. Global charity - at an all time high. Global median income - at an all time high. Global median standard of living - at an all time high. Child death rates, at all time lows. Science, space, manufacturing, global trade, innovation, opportunity, education, pick a topic - the world has never been better off than it has been the last 70 years on average, and especially since the collapse of the USSR and old-line Communist China, both of which occurred on America's watch.

<comment><USER21> That is one way of seeing it.

Here is another way: global period of prosperity in which a world superpower has (momentarily?) solved the problem of maintaining its supremacy (mainly economic, but also military and political) by leeching the rest of the world using various mechanisms: dollar as reserve country, military occupation of resource rich countries - sometimes by tacit alliances with repressive regimes - international intellectual property agreements skewed to favor the home economy, rigged international financial markets ...

Which is fine, but here is the problem: it is not that America has chosen the "peace-americana", it is that the "peace-americana" is working in its favor. As soon as it does not work anymore, the US will very willingly fight other major powers, in a race to the bottom.

All this, of course, discounting the fact that during the "peace-americana" the US has killed millions of people (most of whom are innocent bystanders), while at the same time suffering the loss of a couple of thousand people. Every person killed is a big loss, and that means the millions of people killed are a very big loss, even if you do not care.

So, what is the grudge we in the rest of the world have with the US? Speaking for myself, just the fact that you are not using the chance that this period of prosperity is giving the world to engage in a permanent and objective international state of affairs, which is not just a way for you to control us and maintain your supremacy.

You are just a bully, which is to be expected: everybody would do exactly the same thing in your situation. Just don't try to sell it as something that it is not.

And let me tell you one more thing: even if it is in your short-term interest to act as you are doing, long-term it is just stupid. Instead of fostering collaboration you are creating enemies (Russia, China, some parts of south america, now even Europe); in the long run, your supremacy will be eroded and you will fall, like all empires fall. The question is if another empire will come, or an international cosmopolitan establishment will be created to regulate the relations among people on Earth (hopefully not country-based anymore). You could have lead this path, but my impression (based on the status of the world and particularly the US economy, as related to the upcoming powers) is that that chance has already passed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _> Young Americans have lived in a country at war for almost their whole lives, but they have to be reminded of it._

This statement would benefit from a historical chart of journalism practices in war reporting.

<comment><USER23> There's something more to it, though.

America has such a massive commercial and industrial apparatus (regardless of what anybody trying to puff up the Chinese or Russians might say) that we have effectively made it entirely possible to maintain a relatively high state of war without the general economy really ever feeling it.

In concert with this, the clever manipulation of the populace by both mainstream media, government agencies, and also by internet news outlets has allowed the populace to at once constantly fear for their safety while never actually building to the point of questioning why, exactly, the same officials and policies are held day in and day out. This isn't the matter of conspiracies, mind you, it's simply business.

The utterly _terrifying_ thing is that, in the meanwhile, all of us nice techies have been training people to accept ubiquitous surveillance and even outright writing the tools ourselves.

And so, the credible foreign enemies gone, we see all this apparatus beginning to turn inwards.

<comment><USER22> Can us nice techies put our minds towards a non-violent economic migration plan for the entire military-industrial complex :) Other industries are regularly lectured on the merits of adapting to a changing economy.

<comment><USER24> The best way to think of the military industrial complex is a giant social and corporate welfare program. Just like there are prison towns, where the entire non-imprisoned population depends on the prisoners for jobs, there are entire swaths of our country dependent on military bases, contractors, etc.

<comment><USER25> There is also a disturbing ratchet effect. It is almost always easier to argue for more (weapons/surveillance/police/prisons) in the name of safety. Far more difficult to argue against them. So we only seem to be moving in one direction.

The seemingly-now-inevitable decriminalization of marijuana and lessening on the Drug War in the US notwithstanding (which is a welcome development, but I'm not sure it is because of a general discontent with the militarized state of daily life)

<comment><USER26> When it comes to military conflict we're certainly only moving in one direction: smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is dumb. Being "at war" is not binary and it's silly to think of it as such. Call the US's involvement whatever you want, but saying it's the same thing as WWI or WWII is insane.

<comment><USER23> It's not at all, at least from a financial standpoint:

[http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June20...](http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June2010CRScostofuswars.pdf)

We've spent more on the Middle East than WW1 and Vietnam _combined_.

<comment><USER26> Not in terms of % of GDP which is the only measure that actually matters.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't strike you as, I don't know, a little _odd_ , that we have paid for a Vietnam and a WW1 without noticing it?

Yes, the sheer performance of the rest of the economy has enabled the % GDP to be smaller than previously, but that doesn't make the scale of the thing any less impressive.

<comment><USER26> It doesn't strike me as odd at all. We are vastly richer now than we were in the 1970s. When I was 12 years old $10 was a huge amount of money for me. Now it's lunch. You've gotta look at things relatively, not on an absolute scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Janus_%28Roman_Forum%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Janus_%28Roman_Forum%29)

</comment><comment><USER28> > But that state of war, we are told (I am too young to know better) feels > different than America during World War II...

Whenever my dad or grandparents would talk about war, they'd always mention how less involved our current wars are.

During those wars, it was an all-out effort on the homefront and you were constantly reminded that you were under attack.

It's crazy how shut-off we are from current conflicts because of 1) the scale, and 2) the distance. Even though the news _constantly_ reported on the Iraq War and the conflicts over in the Middle East, it wasn't something I thought about while I was growing up.

I wonder how much more respect our soldiers would see, and how less willing we'd be to go to war if we actually felt impacts day-to-day. (E.g., rationing, everybody knowing somebody overseas, women taking over factories, etc.)

<comment><USER26> The fact that the conflicts of today are much much smaller (by any measure you choose to use) than those of last century is a WONDERFUL THING. It's not crazy. It's AWESOME. Fewer people are dying or being injured. It's costing less money. Fewer people's lived are impacted. It's one of the biggest areas of progress for mankind. Celebrate it!

<comment><USER29> This is true only if the effects are symmetrical. If we're barely feeling the effects and our opponents are in agony, that's not a step forward, as we have no motivation to end the conflict and the total suffering may actually increase.

<comment><USER26> The effects are symmetrical:

[http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2013...](http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/Pinker.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Appalling (from the speech):

 _" More than 6,500 young men and women died in those wars"_

Strangely typical that people forget that "human" is a definition that applies to more than just "American". Just take one of the wars, the Iraq war, and include in your definition of "young men and women" at least the Iraqi civilians that also died and you should have a number above 112,000+ that died.

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

This slip of the tongue speaks volumes.

</comment><comment><USER31> What really drove it home for me was how much my Mom freaked out when the war in Kuwait broke. I was seventeen at the time, and she was worried that I would get drafted.

<comment><USER26> It drove home what for you exactly? The fact that your mom was irrationally worried about something that was never going to happen?

No one in the US has been drafted in over 40 years.

<comment><USER31> The last time it happened, people my mother's age were the ones being drafted. It really looked like a flashback experience.

And if you want to insult my mother, please do it to my face. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> what about the "war on drugs", which If I recall was 1990? Or the Cold war? How are these not the same as the war on terrorism (which gets some sort of recognition specially here, maybe just to make things look more dramatic)? Wars against ideals or ambiguous targets make this binary thing very difficult to pin down.

<comment><USER33> 1971 by Richard Nixon:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There have been very few years when the USA military wasn't engaged in a military conflict: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_milit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations)

</comment><comment><USER35> "We've always been at war with Eastasia".

</comment><comment><USER36> This is not true. The US hasn't been at war since WWII. Everything since has been a conflict. Even Vietnam.

<comment><USER37> Vietnam meets anyone's definition of war.

<comment><USER38> Except United States' technical definition of war, which must be authroized by Congress.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States)

<comment><USER37> > _However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation > must have in order to be considered a "declaration of war" nor does the > Constitution itself use this term._

<comment><USER10> Furthermore, there's no doubt that the U.S. can be at war without an official declaration by Congress: those instances when another country formally declares war on the U.S. first.

For example, the U.S. was officially at war with Japan from 7-8 December 1941, for a few hours with Germany and Italy on 11 December following their declaration of war against the U.S., and from 13 December 1941 to 6 June 1942 against Bulgaria.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_w...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Japan)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_wa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Germany_\(1941\))

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_wa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Bulgaria)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is depressing.</comment>


Startup to IPO: Why Few Companies Make the Leap and What We Can Learn from Them - <AUTHOR> http://scale.cc/2009/07/05/startup-to-ipo-why-few-companies-make-the-leap-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Misleading comparisons + empty truisms, rendered in Jakob Nielsen's sales- letter page style. The combination makes my head spin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi theoneill, thanks so much for your comment. I don't mean to create a sales- letter page style and I also understand this research was not professionally conducted. Probably has a lot of statistic errors. Yet I don't mean to imply any causation based on my research. I just want to share my findings with people who have a strong passion in entrepreneurship. If my post has offended you in anyway, please accept my apologies.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long did you wait until your product started generating revenue? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Immediately- b2b charge for the value your service provides and cover all costs</comment>


Clubhouse for "X" - <AUTHOR> https://sifted.eu/articles/clubhouse-for-x/ <comment><USER2> We are creating in that space. You can say it is a "Clubhouse for sub- communities / Reddit". [https://voicehub.app/](https://voicehub.app/)</comment>


Linus: People take me much too seriously, I can't say stupid crap anymore - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-people-take-me-much-too-seriously-i-cant-say-stupid-crap-anymore/ <comment><USER2> I for one despise the political correctness that has occurred/is occurring in the current online communities. Anything and everything can and will be misconstrued to suit the needs of the "offended". Offense is taken, not given. I am sick and tired of the entire SJW mindset that has permeated the WWW and development circles.

What was "innocent" a few years ago is now grounds for doxxing, shutting down of accounts, getting people fired, you name it. It seems that "tolerance" is only tolerated if it is agreed with. Voltaire comes to mind here.

I never thought Linus was in bad form. His project, his rules. Ditto Theo de Raadt, who I think is a great project leader. I've heard him speak more than once, and he is a very nice guy. Like most leaders of tough projects, these guys endure massive amounts of BS from BS artists, and they need to be able to trounce the idiots and expose them. I have a feeling the majority of people would disagree with me anymore, but then again, my mindset and attitude were largely set by the military long ago, so I like strong leaders who don't brook BS.

<comment><USER3> I despise the anti-SJW stance. I think it's about time loud-mouth, offensive people think twice before speaking. You used to have the power to offend whomever you wanted and now you don't. We haven't lost anything as a society and have gained so much more: the people who used to bear the brunt of such bullish behavior can finally have a voice in addition to yours. That's a good thing.

You're imagining shadows on the wall coming to get you if you think that there are people literally waiting for you to say something to take your job away. Meanwhile the people who are picked on do have people doxxing them, emailing them grotesque photos and death threats, showing up at their houses, etc. I would bet a good sum of money that you've never had to deal with any of that.

Maybe you should check yourself. Learn some non-violent communication. Empathize with other people. If we're all kind to one another what is it we need to be afraid of exactly?

<comment><USER4> Keep that straw-man away from the fire lest he burn.

You are intentionally misinterpreting the GP's comment or at least seem to be from my interpretation. Nobody is annoyed that they can't sprinkle legitimate criticism with personal attacks. That was never considered normal or ok though it may have been tolerated in some contexts. People are annoyed that any direct criticism can be construed as a personal attack.

<comment><USER5> GGP's comment is that he can't keep doing the things he used to do like calling foolish behaviour "retarded", slapping the female members of the seam on the butt in place of the high-five his male colleagues get, or asking female colleagues out on dates.

The people most upset about being called out by "SJWs" are the ones whose behaviour is most problematic and exclusionary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a concept that any leader needs to take to heart.

If you want your words to be taken seriously, you can't simultaneously expect people to always intuit when you do not mean your words seriously. Since humor often carries some grain of truth, you have to be careful that your people don't interpret the wrong grain of truth. I've seen this several times where a CEO cracks a joke and the employees take it the wrong way, then culture changes weirdly and nobody realizes that it was a miscommunication over a joke.

</comment><comment><USER7> This zdnet piece doesn't add anything, besides ads, to the Linux Journal interview which was discussed here yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19559970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19559970)

</comment><comment><USER8> When I was a child I thought as a child and I spoke as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.

<comment><USER9> It's nice of you to proclaim superior morals and character, but there is an underlying story of modern media, society and political correctness that is relevant here.

<comment><USER10> They weren't proclaiming superior morals, rather quoting a rather relevant portion of (what a quick Google search determines as) the Christian Bible.

I won't comment on the second half but it only toxifies conversation to assume the worst in others.

<comment><USER9> > it only toxifies conversation to assume the worst in others

Isn't that what the parent comment did? That's the only reason I commented - i.e. implying that not being serious equals being childish. Quote or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry Linus, you can't both be BDFL of the world's most popular OS and be able to "stupid crap". Given the choice between the two, I think it's good he's taking some time to work on the "stupid crap" part.

<comment><USER12> > Sorry Linus, you can't both be BDFL of the world's most popular OS and be > able to "stupid crap".

Yes you can. He has been BDFL for the "most popular" OS for the _vast majority_ of its lifetime while occasionally saying "stupid crap". Who is to say it hurt Linux in any significant way?

Frankly, if you're one of these tone-policing developers (not gonna name names) then _I_ don't want you on the Linux project. Linux is too important to be engulfed in this anglo-centric culture war that is going on right now.

</comment></comment><comment> village-idiot Success comes with its own punishments. The consequences of prestige and power is that you have to guard your words more carefully, because more people are paying attention.

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't read the comments... don't read the comments...

</comment><comment><USER14> This illustrates the folly of rule/law keeping. You can make all of the codes of conduct you want, but what they really serve to do is enhance the power of the rule makers rather make any real progress.

Real leadership is expressed through relationships, not rules. Linus apologized because he cared about those relationships. He changed his behavior to enhance those relationships and encourage new ones.

</comment><comment><USER15> The irony in this headline is strong

<comment><USER15> For context: in another part of the interview he lamented the fact that every opinion he shares becomes a news headline</comment></comment>


Taxpayers Paid Millions to Design a Low-Cost Ventilator for a Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/taxpayers-paid-millions-to-design-a-low-cost-ventilator-for-a-pandemic-instead-the-company-is-selling-versions-of-it-overseas- <comment><USER2> If they dont build it we should just strip them of all the plans and open source them</comment>


Reasons why your startup needs an API - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/06/top-5-reasons-why-your-startup.php

<comment><USER2> I think the article should just say "because it's in vogue" and "because Twitter did it", or something along the lines.

I would say there are few startups that need APIs the way Twitter needed, for example.

<comment><USER3> I agree on the article but not on the API. In my opinion the real reason your startup should have an API is because it's good design.

The thing that always bugs me about the API debate is that an API is just another word for "Business Tier with User Authentication". So 90% of the work that you put into making an API is work you should already be putting into your business layer to begin with.

Startups should create an API/Business Layer up front and then use that to build their own app. Then they can decide whether they want to open it to the public

<comment><USER4> These are wise words. Options for scalability can be a lot easier to make and engineer even if internal services are exposed via an API between each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> APIs need a framework like CRUD does. Too many unqualified people are making unusable APIs. Biz dev doesn't help either; please don't make me request access by filling out a form, verify my identity at the access key generation step, the standbox should be world reachable and treated as anonymous ftp at all times.

</comment><comment><USER6> Soon to be followed by "why you should understand what an API is".</comment>


Dnsteal – DNS exfiltration tool for stealthily sending files over DNS requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/m57/dnsteal <comment><USER2> It's a fun little program, but calling it stealthy is a reach. It seems to just extract a bytestream from the subdomain of the domain requested. Very easy to detect, very easy to see, and not much data can be xfered.

It's equally as "stealthy" as just sending requests to a domain you own and logging every request. e.g. mysite.com/<bytes>

<comment><USER3> Lots of big enterprises shops monitor http traffic (proxies, transparent and otherwise).. DNS is one of those left unmonitored usually..

<comment><USER2> I think your use of dots speaks for itself there ;). I know of several companies that log DNS, and it wouldn't pass inspection by a human operator which also has to be considered for something to be stealthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> more generally - ip over dns [https://github.com/yarrick/iodine](https://github.com/yarrick/iodine)

</comment><comment><USER5> Be extra careful running this code, the second line contains a stack smash attempt.

<comment><USER2> It's NOP in x86 asm and the guy's handle. [https://twitter.com/_x90__](https://twitter.com/_x90__)

Or what is the second line to you?

<comment><USER5> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>