Linux 3.0-rc1 is here - <AUTHOR> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=summary <comment><USER2> For those wondering what's new:

"So what are the big changes?

NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is _just_ about renumbering, we are very much _not_ doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one ("20 years") instead."

by Linus Torvalds

source: ttp://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415

<comment><USER3> It would break many of the programs which rely on 2.6.x naming scheme. Linus always was on the side of not breaking things if they do work. It seems that he changed his views for this particular case.

<comment><USER4> He's also a huge proponent of "Don't be stupid". I think that applies to developers who did what you mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if that's fair. I mean, if you have a program that needs to parse out the Linux kernel version then you could very plausibly have assumed the format vX.X.X[-something|.X], given it's been that way consistently for 15 years (since 2.1.0 in '96). Even the kernel's own scripts do that, as Linus mentions in the email. Now it's going to have format vX.X for the first time since 2.0.

I can't actually think of the use case for needing to parse the complete version string outside the kernel, but it doesn't sound stupid to me that you'd assume a canonical format that's been there for a decade and a half. Apparently wrong, and decidedly unimportant & bikesheddy, but not necessarily stupid.

<comment><USER5> Kia specifically mentioned '2.6.x' naming. Obviously expecting three parts is AOK, expecting the kernel to remain at 2.6 forever is not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well he said the '2.6.x naming _scheme_ ', which I took to mean the 3 part versioning scheme (as used in 2.6 kernel versions.)

I agree with you that assuming the kernel would always be 2.6.x is not OK, I'd just assumed noone would be that shortsighted and stupid. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Linus' email is more interesting than the commit: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415>

<comment><USER7> Although that's not very interesting either. Linus: "What's new?" Linus: "Nothing."

<comment><USER8> Yeah, nice. "Major version? Minor version? Revision? What're those? I like round numbers."

Why not just go to a basic increment (Linux 3, 4, 5, 6, ...), or a date-based (Linux 2011! Now with new ribbon interface!) numbering instead?

...eh. I dunno why this bothers me so much.

<comment><USER9> It shouldn't. Open source version numbers greater than 1.0 dont mean a whole lot.

Chrome, the browser, around version 8 (give or take). How much sense does that make?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I know. At one time though, version numbering was used as a signal to other developers that relied on your software. Changing the major version number indicated a large change -- either API, or architectural, or both -- that was expected to break software that relied on it. So then, as an end- user, it was easy to keep track of which pieces were likely to be compatible with which other pieces; if your add-on or what-have-you worked with version 2.1, then it would work with 2.1.1, and probably work with 2.2, but probably not work with 3.0.

I guess people got bored with the sensibility of that, or something.

<comment><USER10> Linux has kept its main public interfaces stable for all of its several hundred post-1.0 releases, so using that scheme would mean Linux would have to use rather odd-looking version numbers like 1.632.5

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Despite all criticism and cynicism all over the Linux communities about the numbering and all that stuff, for me, every release of the Kernel (as well as any other major / dominant open source platform / project) is a reason for celebration.

It simply means, openness and freedom won the software/internet game. The fact there are people out there, spend the best of their times, contributing code and manuals docs, debugging and filing bugs, etc. etc. Is a sign that RMS and alike were not _"a bunch of hippies who likes to code for free"_ or even worst, a bunch of communists as some used to say at the beginning of Linux breakthrough.

From my own personal experience, it also means, the more open you will be, the more open software you will rely on, the more money you will make by the end of the day.

Thank you Linus, and all kernel contributors, for the great tools and platform you provided us for _FREE_!

<comment><USER12> > It simply means, openness and freedom won the software/internet game.

Except... it didn't. The far majority of programmers still write closed source non-free code. The far majority of software is still closed source and non- free. The far majority of humans browse non-free websites on non-free web browsers running on non-free operating systems.

<comment><USER11> Friend, I am afraid you have missed my point. What I meant was that open source have change the software world. Nothing is the same anymore, and in my opinion, the "cloud-revolution" we are observing today has a lot to do with open/free software.

It might be true that most browsers are closed source running on top of closed source operating systems, but that is just one half of the picture. the other half tells a story of most web traffic, especially on most popular ones, is generated by open platform.

Vast majority of programmers are writing closed source. yet they do not affect the market as those who write open source.

<comment><USER12> The EFF disagrees with you about the cloud. They believe the cloud is a serious loss of freedom, partially because cloud-code is hidden (even modified GPL code) and partially because people are giving away their privacy.

The cloud has been great for the business of writing software, but not because it is more free or open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One the one hand, the "benevolent dictator" model has shown itself to work pretty well for Linux, compared to some major failings of the "committee" model on other projects. On the other hand, does anyone think the fact that "major" changes can be done by one person who is "just going all alpha-male" will potentially spook people? I mean, I doubt too many people here on hn have a problem with Linus' personality. I imagine most of us appreciate his sense of humor and respect him as a penultimate hacker... I'm just thinking about starched-shirt types who call the shots in big businesses -- can you imagine being an IT manager and trying to explain to your boss that after 15 years there's a new major version of the Linux kernel because "well the head guy got tired of calling it version 2."

Edit: Penultimate apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant, so, what I meant was "...respect him as a very good hacker...".

<comment><USER14> You think linus is the second best hacker?

<comment><USER13> It appears my understanding of that word was faulty. I always thought it meant something along the lines of first-rate, I didn't realize it had such a specific meaning. TIL, I suppose.

<comment><USER15> No worries, the majority of people make that mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Version numbers? We can increment them!"

[http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=tag;h=refs/tags/v3.0-rc1)

</comment><comment><USER17>
      -VERSION = 2
      -PATCHLEVEL = 6
      -SUBLEVEL = 39
      -EXTRAVERSION =
      -NAME = Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs
      +VERSION = 3
      +PATCHLEVEL = 0
      +SUBLEVEL = 0
      +EXTRAVERSION = -rc1
      +NAME = Sneaky Weasel

<comment><USER18> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names>

Some interesting version names in there. I find 2.6.22-rc3 particularly intruiging...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite part is the commit message on the tag: [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=tag;h=2a23a510142a1ab597f0214e4fadb3c7350bbb8d)

"Version numbers? We can increment them!" -- Linus Torvalds

</comment><comment><USER20> A summary of the changes can be found here: <https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/29/204>

</comment><comment><USER21> So, when will Linus be released from mental institution? [0]

<http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/3/2/247>

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know why, but I always get a good chuckle or two from reading or watching Linus' materials.

</comment><comment><USER23> Its name was Sneaky Weasel.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, he said he might go to 2.8. This is madness.

<comment><USER25> No, this is Linux!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Down?

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://www.xkcd.com/178/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems a bit strange to me. A major version increment is supposed to announce "this is significantly different and possibly incompatible".

But now it doesn't mean that. It means 20 years.

There are extremely good reasons _not_ to increment the major version. For instance tools which take the conservative approach of checking for 2.6 will all be broken. Those tools _correctly_ elected not to risk wrong behavior resulting from a major version change.

When you add together the time it takes to compensate for this change for all maintainers everywhere (tools developers, distro developers, _everyone_ ), surely it will run into the hundreds of hours, perhaps thousands. All for, functionally, nothing. And sorry for calling you Shirley.

Seems to be an objectively bad move. Oh well. This needless-on-purpose change will cause resentment, but after time it will dissipate.

<comment><USER29> checking for 2.6 no longer means much, 2.6.0 and a current 2.6.39 have so many changes that just checking for 2.6 is not enough anymore. that was one of the reasons for the new version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know they invented git, but that website sure is fugly. Time to switch to github, perhaps :-).

<comment><USER31> There is a nice open-source (which github is not) web front-end for git repos, <http://www.gitalist.com/>, and would you believe it, even they use git-web on their website.

<comment><USER32> Unfortunately, <http://example.gitalist.com/> doesn't load any content whatsoever in my browser (Google Chrome with JavaScript disabled/whitelisted). Just a white page. And I have a hunch browsing with JavaScript off is more common for kernel devs than, say, GitHub users.

<comment><USER33> Well, Chrome must be broken then, as it's a validated HTML 5 page. It works with FF with noscript (with the domain blocked). Frankly, I have a hunch that people who care about javascript security don't use Chrome.

No chrome until noscript.

<comment><USER32> I didn't disable JavaScript for security reasons, but for faster web pages on my slow EEE laptop.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MapReduce — a two-page explanation for laymen [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~fokkinga/mmf2008j.pdf

<comment><USER2> Eh... The original Google paper is more readable than this (for laymen i.e.)</comment>


7 features proposed so far in Python 3.8 - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/7-features-proposed-so-far-in-python-3-8-acb0d97c83c8 <comment><USER2> I'd like Python to have the incredibly terse fat arrow function syntax from javascript.

Also destructuring support from javascript, which fundamentally changes much of my programming style.</comment>


Just Use Sublime Text - <AUTHOR> http://delvarworld.github.io/blog/2013/03/16/just-use-sublime-text/ <comment><USER2> I use sublime text, its good for general text editing and some light weight scripting.

That said, this is what I don't get....

Why choose a light weight code editor then add 30 plugins to it?

I've tried this approach with sublime text for Java, Groovy, Ruby, JS, etc. I honestly don't get it, IntelliJ / Rubymine / PyCharm kicks its ass in every way I've tried to look at it.

It seems there is some instilled fear of the term 'IDE' that scares people away or people just really enjoy piece-meal assembling an IDE. But for me, JetBrain's stuff just works 90% of the time and the last 10% is easily filled with plugins or an open terminal. Anything that just lets me code efficiently without a lot of mucking around is gold in my book.

If you like the minimalist approach, more power to you, Sublime Text is awesome for that. If you like the 'almost everything in one app' approach, I'd highly encourage you to at least try some IDEs, especially JetBrain's stuff. Eclipse sucks, no doubt, but not all IDE's are like Eclipse.

<comment><USER3> I can't stand using IDEs like IntelliJ or Eclipse or just about anything else I've tried. For some reason, all that crap that hangs around the editing area makes me feel claustrophobic and distracted. I also feel like a lot of the development process becomes a black box. Instead of understanding exactly how your project is compiling (i.e. with what settings) and what external resources you're including, the IDE kind of shields you from that. When you do a project with UNIX-style tools, you have complete control and understanding of every step.

And then there's also the fact that I can't _stand_ having IDEs underline everything in red when I'm in the middle of typing a line.

<comment><USER2> > For some reason, all that crap that hangs around the editing area makes me > feel claustrophobic and distracted.

I've heard this position before, I just don't get it. This is my screen while working on an early stage of a side project: <http://i.imgur.com/B9boU26.png>

I find it far less cluttered than most editors. In particular compared to sublime text, I hate that my only options are to have the 'project tree' view there, or not, most of the time its wasted space. In the screen shot I click on project on the left, it pops over the project structure, I open the file I want, and it disappears. Similarly with the bottom bits, I run the project in debug mode, it pops over with the process's output and disappears when there isn't anything I need to see. For me, this is much preferable to changing workspaces to see terminal output even though the OSX trackpad makes this easy.

> I also feel like a lot of the development process becomes a black box.

I guess it depends on the IDE but at least for the given project it builds in the IDE using maven, based on the pom settings just as it does using maven from the terminal or on jenkins. The only difference is incremental compilation during development which many people setup using a 'watch' plugin or the asset pipeline in rails anyway.

> And then there's also the fact that I can't stand having IDEs underline > everything in red when I'm in the middle of typing a line.

Changing the linting timeout is very simple.

<comment><USER3> >I've heard this position before, I just don't get it. This is my screen while working on an early stage of a side project:

Looking at that just makes me twitch for some reason. It's all so distracting to me. Maybe I have a poor attention span, but for some reason I feel like I can be so much more productive with something like this: <http://i.imgur.com/ADvQF6e.png>

I generally do text editing in Sublime (and like you said, the Apple trackpad + OS X's gesture detection algorithms is a very powerful combo) and I feel like my development is very "zen".

>Changing the linting timeout is very simple.

What I mean is that most IDEs are incredibly annoying about small mistakes, and sometimes something like a dropped semicolon can light up a whole file with errors.

The only IDE that I feel is sufficiently non-annoying about static code checks is Xcode. Xcode has very clever, non-distracting notifications about forgotten punctuation, control flow errors, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Efficiency from Keeping your Fingers on the Home Row

I prefer to use just keys. I find the context switch distracting.

>I can't stress how bad of an editor vanilla Vim is. Plugins are essential to make Vim usable.

I love vanilla vim. I used it for a long time that way. Even now I barely have any plugins running, just YouCompleteMe and a couple others.

>If you want to write a plugin you have to deal with Vimscript.

I thought one can write in Python and other languages for plugins now?

>Everyone remaps Leader from backslash to comma.

I didn't.

>Vim is hideous by design.

I find the minimalism allows me to work without distraction. If you hate it so much, vim bindings are available in other editors. I use XVim for Xcode and some other plugin in Eclipse.

>To code in Vim, you have to keep Vim in your head just as much as the code that you're editing. You have to constantly think about what you're doing.

I barely think about the things I'm doing anymore. And I've only been at vim for about a year.

This blog post needs a giant [citation needed]. So many unjustified claims that are really just his opinions. Just use Sublime and get back to doing something productive.

<comment><USER5> > I thought one can write in Python and other languages for plugins now?

Yes and no. Technically this is possible, but it's almost as unpleasant as just using vimscript.

Scripting vim in python involves using the vim module, which provides a very limited api to interact with vim. It doesn't allow the interception of any events, and interacting with vim more often than not seems to involve calling vim.command() or vim.eval(), which take vimscript as a string.

That said, I still think this is the direction vim needs to go. I think if the vim python integration improves in future releases it will be much appreciated, and will provide a boost to the vim plugin community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion from a couple weeks ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5411811>

<comment><USER7> I was wondering what is this doing on the front page again. I guess HNers can never get enough of discussing the virtues of Vim :-)

<comment><USER8> It also has a new URL after the github.com -> github.io change.

<comment><USER7> So basically OP realized he could resubmit it thanks to the url change and went for it. I see.

<comment><USER8> Or, they thought the article was interesting, and didn't realize that it had already posted (since he used the new URL). Not everyone is out for karma :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vim is good to have in your toolkit because it will work on nearly any terminal.

Don't use an old serial terminal? Well, you might actually get stuck only having serial console access to a physical machine in a datacenter. Maybe you're trying to fix a mean bug in production and everything is exploded and you are using some person's laptop which for some reason has a horrible terminal configuration.

I haven't used hjkl to move in years, btw. That's vi. Vim lets you use arrow keys - it's VI iMproved. ;)

This sort of nonsense rambling not only leads to serious generational knowledge gaps, which leads to people using utter shit like pico/nano, which I would fire someone for doing.

It also ignores the fact that TextMate is totally awesome and has something Sublime Text doesn't seem to : a command-line tool for opening files from the shell.

<comment><USER10> Sublime has the same sort of command line tool as TextMate. It's called "subl."

<comment><USER4> It doesn't work out of the box though. Have to run this:

 _ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/bin/subl_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is flawed because there are two questions: "is vim awesome?" and "is learning vim worth the effort?" The first answer is yes. The second answer is maybe. Getting up there and trash talking vim is stupid because anyone who is proficient at vim (truly proficient, like 10-years-experience expert) knows that it is great. But as a 15-year vimmer I won't discount the time and suffering you need to put in to get to that point, and won't shove it down people's throats because I know how painful it is.

I see it similar to typing on a dvorak keyboard. (or to a lesser degree, a kinesis keyboard.) Extremely painful in the beginning, almost mentally traumatic because one of your basic skills suddenly gets cut out from under you, but something that pays small but regular dividends for the rest of your life. (And contrary to Dvorak, vim is _everywhere_.) It's not for everyone and is probably not worth the effort for many but to somehow try to then extrapolate that to conjure up an argument that the tool itself is bad (which this article seems to be desperately trying to do) is dumb.

I guess another way to look at it, is if you could download knowledge instantly Matrix-style, would everyone use vim? Other consequences of the Matrix being real life notwithstanding, I would say many more would.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't vouch enough for that.

As someone who used to develop in Vim, I can attest it can do a lot of things and there are many useful scripts, but is neither intuitive or designed for our era, there are too many obvious UX flaws - modes in particular is not the magic pony people like to say it is, it's just archaic clunkyness.

You can replace Vim entirely with Sublime since it also supports scripting and smart editing movements, and "Go to anything" in particular blows Vim away.

I just wish the author iterated ST2 more before starting ST3, I'm afraid of another Textmate.

<comment><USER13> > I just wish the author iterated ST2 more before starting ST3, I'm afraid of > another Textmate.

That's business...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not just let people use whatever works for them? After reading through all the replies here that's the only conclusion anyone can come to. Why do we need one editor to rule them all?

<comment><USER15> For real. When it comes to editors, it's a matter of taste. Do you like to fiddle bits, stay on home row, never have to learn anything new, or push the boundaries of development speed? Install every possible extension, never install anything, or write your own plugins? There is an environment for everyone! Enjoy your notepad.exe guy from my old job. Enjoy your emacs lisp, old mentor. Enjoy your awesome rounded edges, IDEA user! Now, everyone go get some work done, yeesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These are just tools. Each tool has its place and its users. I learned vi first and I still feel very efficient on it vs. sublime. But for something, I prefer Sublime.

At the end of the day, it's like the meaning of life, everyone has theirs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not open-source, no thanks. I'll stick with LiteIDE for Go and Netbeans for Java and C++.

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree mostly, and this was surprisingly well put for this type of post. However I do think that a good programmer should be able to get through a day with Vim (no plugins) alone if he/she has to, as it's free and installed everywhere. Beyond that just use what makes you happy. I do agree that it's much too hard to get started with Vim as compared to Sublime Text, but if you're a crazy vim ninja more power to you. I have never understood why you'd care what editor your friends/enemies use. As long as you're not coding in MS Word you're good in my book.

</comment><comment><USER13> Vim is great and this article is mostly FUD.

The only good reason not to use vim (or anything else) is if you don't want to. But don't let other people dictate to you whether you want it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I use Linux daily, I develop using open source technologies, it's not for me... it doesn't feel right.

\+ I want my freedom! I don't to be stuck with one product...

</comment><comment><USER20> As for editor wars, I believe using plaintext editor for editing code is ugly whatever the editor is. Especially, if the editor (like bare ST2 or bare Vim) has very low understanding of code semantics just enough to highlight the code and do most primitive type-ahead suggestions.

Unfortunately, there aren't many structured editors/IDEs that operate on AST/ASG instead of blobs of plaintext. And, sadly, none I could subjectively call good.

</comment><comment><USER21> Or use Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER22> As long as the editor lets me type cmd+t and insert opening and closing html tags that's all I need.

I read a lot, I scroll a lot, I browse a lot, I copy/paste a lot and my hands are always on the trackpad and the arrow keys.

Sublime is good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER23> A $70 text editor with pretty effects.. perfect for an Apple user, I suppose. Meanwhile, there are plenty of free and open alternatives, such as Geany, which I much prefer.

Pay with contributions to the project and also gain a reward to yourself.

</comment><comment><USER24> "or any other nasty way Vimmers have to use because of our archaic, ingrained keystrokes."

This is where I stopped reading. If you're trying to convince me to use sublime try to be less subjective.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm all for supporting good, independent software shops, but $70 for a ST2 license is obscene. I use the free version and would happily pay to remove the "Buy Me!" popup at a lower price point.

<comment><USER26> think about any other profession and think about saying that you refuse to buy the tools you need at a 70$ price point. Even if you wait tables, you would likely have 70$ in clothes you would need to buy and wouldn't think twice about it.

I can't think of any other job where you could even try the tools for free, much less complain about them being 70$.

<comment><USER27> But what if you could pick up other clothes for free, but they weren't your favourite colour?

<comment><USER26> sure, then you would, but would you then go to the gap and complain about their prices? Also, the difference is that they are using the 70$ tool, which is obviously better than the free or cheaper price points, but complaining that the price is obscene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I know Sublime is what all the cool kids are using, but I switched from it for a few months, to Chocolat (OSX only) and have never looked back. It's definitely worth a try.

<comment><USER29> Out of interest, why do you prefer Chocolat? I've just taken a look at it and it looks to be a really nice editor, but I can't quickly see any big advantages of using it (especially as Sublime presumably has a lot more plugins, etc).

It does look a lot cleaner, however - I'm not a big fan of the default UI of Sublime.

<comment><USER28> Sublime just always felt like a "ported" app. Chocolat is native, fits in with OSX perfectly, and at least for me, achieves the perfect sweet spot between customizable and minimalist. I just find myself being less "distracted" by the editor, and just getting my work done, than with anything else I've used. It isn't really one single thing that does it, but just the sum total of it. Not sure if that helps...

<comment><USER29> Sure, that makes complete sense. I develop on Linux about 30% of the time and OSX 70%, so it's useful to be able to use the same editor on both, but I'd definitely consider it if I was only using OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I spend most of my time reading code or thinking about it. Typing speed optimization is a premature optimization case.

</comment><comment><USER31> I still prefer TextMate & BBEdit. Sublime Text just doesn't feel like a Mac app.

<comment><USER32> > Sublime Text just doesn't feel like a Mac app.

Of course it doesn't - it's multi-platform. Which is a good thing if you bounce between Linux and Mac (and even Windows). But it does have a great feel to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> poor guy can't understand vim</comment>


Heterosexual College Students Who Hookup with Same-Sex Partners - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29671130?dopt=Abstract <comment><USER2> Imperfect classifications are nerd-bait, and that goes for political nerds (ideological-nerds, etc.) too.

Every time something comes up about dogs & wolves, polar bears and browns or some other case where classification of a taxa is grey, HN gets baited. Species are supposed to be speciated, and not supposed to breed outside of the species. When they ignore these rules, the whole concept of species gets muddled, and we get fascinated and sometimes get annoyed, resolved to create a more precise classification system. Genes are also supposed to flow from ancestors to descendants, and we have the same reaction when genes just float around and end up somewhere.

Anyway, heterosexual, bisexual, bisexual and such are fuzzy classifications. We've gone and built frameworks around them, moral frameworks and others. "Born this way" is an moral-political framework, for example. It was framed this way because it generally agrees with observed reality _and_ because it slots into minority protection, a rights framework that is well established. An alternative framework could have been, "Homosexuality is OK because it's harmless," which works fine as a personal/moral framework, doesn't require classification of people but does not work as well as a political rights framework. What will happen to our Lady Gaga songs if our classification goes away goes away? Oh no.

Anyway, the reason all these categories are imperfect is because they're descriptions of human behaviour, and human behaviour is complicated. So yes, most people have certain patterns of sexual behaviour, desire, identity or whatnot. Some people are chaotic. These patterns are affected by things, like the complicated and shifting societal "rules" about what is good, bad, shameful or otherwise.

Now that a good portion of the political work has been done (socially sanctioning homosexuality), I think we can start to complicate the story. One bit of complexity is the difference between "sexual" behaviour types: dating, sex, relationships, cuddling in front of the telly, marriage, family.... Our current framework at it's least nuanced assumes sex is the linchpin to all these. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are gay for some of these behaviours and straight for others. I think they always have been.

There are streams and rivers of pattern, but every drop of water does what it does. The rules (when they are adhered to at all) govern streams, not water.

<comment><USER3> Relevant article: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were- mad...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man- not-man-for-the-categories/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Fun read. I can't wait till this guy learns about "dag-nahash" :)

A lot of bad philosophy is like this, a pointless discussion about what words mean pretending to be a discussion about something. Even "real" philosophers do this. Theology is full of it, greek philosophy too. Modern philosophers (say, marx for example) try to solve this by creating their own, precisely defined words and concepts but they still often end up in the same stupid place.

I wonder if some level of fluency in a computer language helps with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Before commenting the instinctive "the title is a contradiction, this doesn't make sense", please read the damn abstract. It is short. If you are too lazy, here is the first line:

"Individuals who identify as heterosexual but engage in same-sex sexual behavior fascinate both researchers and the media. "

The whole point is about examining current categories, perhaps come up with more fine-grained categories, and finally, understanding human behaviour better.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like the basic premise of this study is far too complicated, because of traditionally far too static classifications.

People have never and will never be strictly heterosexual or strictly homosexual.

They have a preference, but they are never going to find the other sex entirely unattractive, even if some people would want to do your head in for claiming otherwise.

Ultimately, a butt is a butt, a nipple is a nipple and a man boob isn't that different from a woman boob either. Certain characteristics like fitness, charisma, nurturance, intelligence, loyalty etc. can be viewed as sexy, too, and are entirely decoupled from sex.

As such, when you identify as heterosexual, you have a preference for the opposite sex, which is high enough that you wouldn't consider both sexes generally equal like with bisexuality, but it does not mean that you cannot find anyone of the same sex sexy, too.

They could have lots of characteristics that are typically ascribed to the other sex. Or they just happen to have the right combination of characteristics, apart from the sex, that you find really attractive.

You would prefer for them to be the opposite sex, but you would also prefer for that opposite-sex-person that's into you to be a top model. At some point, you just stop holding your breath and bang what's available.

<comment><USER5> > People have never and will never be strictly heterosexual or strictly > homosexual.

Horseshit. I am attracted to the opposite sex and only the opposite sex. Trying to redefine sexuality in terms convenient for you, is frankly offensive. I'm sure if I tried to define your sexuality, you'd have an issue with it.

<comment><USER4> Well, I'm glad you always have your dowser ready to determine the sex of a butt, nipple or whatever else you might find sexy before you actually find it sexy.

And trust me, I have no problem pissing someone off who sees any need to be offended by someone insinuating that they might find people of the same sex sexy to any degree at all.

And no, I would not have a problem with you defining my sexuality. I'm frankly not sure what that's even supposed to mean. I find things sexy that I find sexy. There's nothing to define about it.

<comment><USER5> You're a hot mess :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, being attracted only to the opposite sex while having fun researching various possible ways of having pleasurable sex doesn't seem that strange to me. If you're open to experiments in bed and don't feel any stigma attached to same-sex intercourse that seems like a natural thing to try, regardless of whether you feel that you are hetero-, bi- or homosexual.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this link to a study flagged? Maybe some of those people who flagged it can comment on their reasons?

<comment><USER2> I guess that a hint is probably in the abstract, "people are fascinated by this" (I am speculating) in a similar way to how they're fascinated by political stuff, that speaks directly to a currently important ideological point.

That fascination, in HN-clickstream behaviour form... it looks like a "flag" to HN's flag classification system, human or machine, because the last time people were so fascinated a nasty flame ware emerged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just another deeply flawed, likely invalid "study".

> We analyzed the Online College Social Life Survey dataset[1]

Is there any way to guarantee that the sexual choices and attitudes are independent of the likelihood of responding to this survey?

> dataset of over 24,000 undergraduate students

Let's establish a large yet completely irrelevant sample size.

> students whose last hookup was with a same-sex partner (N = 383 men and 312 > women).

So, our actual universe is at most 2.9% of the original self-selected group of individuals who chose to respond to this survey. If the OCSLS is representative, then this means at most 2.9% of all undergraduate students at U.S. colleges hooked up with a same-sex partner the last time they hooked up with someone.

> significant minority of these students (12% of men and 25% of women) who > labelled their sexual orientation "heterosexual"

So, now we are down to 46 men and 78 women for a total of 0.52% of the original "over 24,000 undergraduate students". Again, if the original OCSLS is representative, this means at most 0.52% of all undergraduate students who identify as heterosexual had a hookup with a same-sex partner the last time they hooked up with someone.

> Latent class analysis revealed six distinctive "types" of heterosexually > identified students whose last hookup was with a same-sex partner.

So, now we are able to split those 124 students into six separate groups. 75 of them engaged in "private sexual experimentation". There were 15 women who were 'conforming to a "performative bisexuality" script of women' and 34 of them had "strong religious practices and/or beliefs".

So, 0.14% of undergraduate students in American colleges have strong religious beliefs that may preclude homosexuality and their last hookup was with a same- sex partner.

> including 7% who exhibited "internalized heterosexism."

That corresponds to about 9 people out of the 24,000 whose last hookup was with a same-sex partner who also exhibited internalized heterosexism.

I am making no statement about the behavior of anyone other than the "researchers" who like to mention one-large number, and use percentages the rest of the way. This effectively creates the impression of more practically significant results than warranted, especially since the survey and responses on sensitive questions like this are subject to selection bias in the first place.

[1]: [http://www.nyu.edu/projects/england/ocsls/](http://www.nyu.edu/projects/england/ocsls/)

<comment><USER7> And I point these out, because I know how these kinds of "academics" sell these kinds of "studies"[1]. Here is what the title and subtitle of the Marie Claire story on this research says:

> What's a Label Anyway?

> New research shows same-sex hookups are pretty common.

In fact, the research used an existing data set which presumably is being mined to the Nth degree, and actually shows the opposite: Only 695 out of the 24,000 reported that their last hookup was with a same-sex partner. Only 124 of the 24,000 respondents reported that their last hookup was with a same-sex partner and identified as heterosexual.

The story in Marie Claire does not contain any overt lies, but is designed to create a certain impression so that, among other things, the author can get invited on TV shows etc.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/AliciaMWalker1/status/986644676353691648](https://twitter.com/AliciaMWalker1/status/986644676353691648)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Individuals who identify as heterosexual but engage in same-sex sexual behavior" are simply not heterosexual, by definition.

<comment><USER4> The definition of heterosexual is "sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex".

You can have sex with someone without being sexually attracted to their sex in general (with them being the exception) or even without being sexually attracted to them at all. Maybe you just want company while jerking off.

<comment><USER8> There are multiple definitions of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Unfortunately the article didn't specify which one.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/heterosexuality](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/heterosexuality)

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homosexuality](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homosexuality)

<comment><USER4> The article's use of "heterosexual" describes a person. Those two definitions that you listed describe a feeling or behaviour.

And while there are people who will call others "gay" as soon as they do anything that could be interpreted as vaguely sexual with someone of the same sex, that's hardly a scientific definition. And no one will identify themselves as this kind of "gay".

<comment><USER8> So you're saying there's no connection between "heterosexual" and "heterosexuality"?

<comment><USER4> That is not at all what I am saying. I cannot explain this to you better than I already have. Your diverging definition of heterosexuality describes a behaviour or a feeling. It does not apply to people being heterosexual. This is how definitions work. It describes a thing that this word can mean. If what you want it to mean does not fit into the definition, then that's not what it means.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on my startup, OpenStarts - <AUTHOR>

Please take a look at OpenStarts (www.openstarts.com, clickable link below) and let me know what you think.<p>I'm also looking for a non-technical co-founder to do business development.  If you're a developer or a designer with spare time on weekends, let me know as well. I'm at: email@example.com <comment><USER2> What are the implications of founding a company in Malta ? -are you bound by their tax regime, legal system, how does the corporate structure effect acquisition potential.

Also I'm guessing you'll only be able to take investment locally, you won't be allowed to promote the opportunity in countries which have minimum investor requirements (like the UK and the US) so that'll probably substantially decrease your pool of investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are bound by Maltese taxes and its legal system. It's EU, though, so it's not that different than the UK or Germany, for example.

Companies can't _promote_ the opportunity -- and that's a key point covered in the slides. OpenStarts, like Crunchbase, lists all sorts of companies but for those that are Malta public LLC's, you can _inquire_ and solicit a prospectus. So the user is asking the company; the company never promotes. Investment may be made by anyone, regardless of nationality. If they can invest in SAP, for example, they can also invest there.

<comment><USER2> Germany and the UK have hugely different tax and legal systems, many startups from across Europe incorporate in London due to the fact that London is much more business friendly.

Won't OpenStarts itself be counted as a form of promotion ? - most hedge fund websites block people from outside their home country so they don't get prosecuted for offering an investment opportunity in countries where they're not licensed. Your building this directory for the sole purpose of helping companies get funded, that's probably enough for you to be classified as a financial promotion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Different, yes, but I guess we have different definitions of "hugely different". I thought your question was, "Would incorporation in Malta preclude an acquisition later?" And I can't see, if it is EU, how it would _preclude_ one.

OpenStarts is many things. It's a Crunchbase listing of startups worldwide, but also a listing of ideas, a place where co-founders can meet and more. We'll play down the investment connection to whatever level is necessary, upon launch.

It seems to me that if I incorporated in the same way and got listed in Crunchbase, then I don't see how that could be construed as promotion of a subscription.

These are great questions and I'm still investigating the answers. For example, can we show the public information of the trades of these public companies? It seems like that would be a no-brainer, but it's not.

Would you be willing to be an advisor for occasional questions? Your background is a great match.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a good time to consult a pretty knowledgeable lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As paradox as it sounds: I think you have a really great idea here but you would need to go the US or have a least a co-founder in the US to get it started with the right traction. You said it yourself: funding in the US was 16bn USD. Its also a matter of the marketsize: the European markets are still too tiny.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you see this? - [http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/08/president-s- americ...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/08/president-s-american- jobs-act-fueling-innovation-and-entrepreneurship)

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure, but I think I've read that something like this is illegal in US (only rich people can invest in such things) it also can be illegal in other countries, have you investigated this?

<comment><AUTHOR> _That's the point_

If you read the deck again, you'll see that what you're saying about rich people (meaning 'accredited investors') is true for private companies. You can invest in Amazon but not Facebook; you can buy shares of Google but not Twitter. And that's what is being solved here!

What OpenStarts does is to assist in the creation of "public but not listed" companies in the EU -- perfectly legal -- and then offers a directory where you can find them and potentially buy shares (subtly, but legally, eliminating the problem of listing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need a back button too. I skipped a few slides quickly and now have to reload to go back :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://www.openstarts.com></comment>


Ask HN: How does your startup organize roles and duties - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You have a typo in your title. It should be "does" not "dose".

<comment><AUTHOR> thnx. fixed</comment></comment>


Show HN: Universal Geometric Algebra with Multivariate Polynomials in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://grondilu.github.io/clifford/ <comment><USER2> Very cool, thanks for creating this and sharing!

I've been interested in (U)GA and related subjects for a while. Looks really promising and its advocates make it seem like it solves all kinds of problems. But I hesitated to dive in because the learning curve looks rather steep, and it's not clear if the cost-benefit of ascending that curve ends one up in the black.

How useful is (U)GA, really? In other words, what are the concrete benefits relative to traditional vectors, matrices, quaternions? Are those benefits worth the additional complexity (or is GA actually a simplification)? Are there applications where GA is the clear win, or is it simply an alternative way of expressing what can already be expressed through the 3 primitives I mentioned?

On another tack, how would you characterize the power / utility of (U)GA? For instance, it _seems_ like (U)GA is a super-powerful tool that's just misunderstood and everyone would benefit from learning it (like Lisp in the early 2000s). On the other hand, papers often extol the virtues of (U)GA by showing how it can solve (seemingly) esoteric higher-order math problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> > what are the concrete benefits relative to traditional vectors, matrices, > quaternions?

Traditional vectors are fine, but things get ugly when you do things like cross products. People should really just use bivectors. It is conceptually simpler and doesn't entail arbitrary sign conventions.

Matrices are way too general a tool to criticize them as a whole. Using them makes sense for some problems, and much less sense for others. As far as I understand it though, GA is not really competing with matrices as a tool to do linear algebra. GA is mainly about geometry, and not all linear algebra is about geometry.

Quaternions really are bivectors behind the scene. Exposing them as such would make them much easier to understand. And I don't think we would necessarily lose in performance. It could just be a matter of notation really. Instead of naming them i, j and k, we should name them jk, ki and ij respectively. At the cost of a sign change, we would make them simpler to understand imho.

> how would you characterize the power / utility of (U)GA?

I'm afraid I'm not qualified to make the case for GA. People much smarter than me did, and since you're interested you probably know them (David Hestenes, Chris Doran...). Me, I'm convinced and charmed, but I'm just a hobbyist who would like to do 3D graphics elegantly.</comment></comment>


Facebook accidentally shipped VR hardware with conspiratorial messages - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/facebook-accidentally-shipped-vr-hardware-with-big-brother-is-watching-inscribed-on-components/ <comment><USER2> >"Tens of thousands" of unreleased consumer units have the phrases "This Space For Rent" and "The Masons Were Here." written while some of the developer units have "Hi iFixit! We See You!" and, perhaps most embarrassing, "Big Brother Is Watching" inscribed internally.

Pretty amusing all in all</comment>


Ask HN: What is the salary for a Software Engineering Manager? - <AUTHOR>

Many other threads or polls focus on engineers or remote workers, but I'm interested in those who are in software engineering management positions.<p>Include base salary + bonuses / stock + job title + location <comment><USER2> Unless it contains "junior", title is the least interesting factor in compensation for tech workers. Things that matter significantly more:

* Is it a technology company or not?

* How big is the company?

* How old is the company?

* Where is the company located?

The idea that a flood of people are going to give you nicely formatted compensation information is a bit wishful. A better idea would be to be more specific about the job you're considering, so that people can answer your question directly.

<comment><USER3> In addition the number of reporting developers, is it managing a cost center or a profit center, and most importantly, how much can you get from another employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just ran a search on data I scraped.

Most of the jobs with manager in it had no salary data, but what I got is below. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of thing qualified as engineering manager so I just grabbed anything with manager in the job title.

Rakuten Loyalty, Product Manager, 70,000-100,000

Robots and Rockets, Senior Mobile Product Manager, 100,000-150,000

The Foundation Center, Enterprise Database Manager (3+ Years), 90,000-115,000

Yelp, Engineering Manager - Mobile, 140,000-200,000

Restoration Media, Software Development Manager, 60,000-90,000

[edit for clarity]</comment>


EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content - jonah-archive https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies-falsely-report-more-than-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/ <comment><USER2> A clever circumvention of innocent until proven guilty - make disobedience carry huge legal risk. You must obey orders (takedown 'requests'), not backed by any court. If you fail, and _one_ turns out to be legitimate, you get punished.

Imagine if you had to stop doing business with anyone reported as a thief (but not convicted).

<comment><USER3> The ability to smear through accusation, without proof, without due process, and without the presumption of innocence has always been the province of tyrants in power and the tool of would-be tyrants trying to gain power.

Those who accuse and un-person are the villains throughout history. In the past, people were smeared as sexually loose, as belonging to the "wrong" religion, or as having the "wrong" sexual orientation. In the past, people were smeared as being of the "wrong" racial background. Always be wary of those who smear to enforce their power.

A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. Evil is recognizable in its epistemological hazards:

        - Don't ask questions.
        - Don't read or hear the heretical opinion.
        - Don't associate with the "wrong" people.

The side of good, the side of the long arc of justice, is the side of rational argument and of principles. The side of justice is the one saying, "hear me out."

It's the side of evil which uses vilification, seeks to silence, and uses fear against questions.

<comment><USER4> >A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits.

How do you square this with the recent surge in flat Earth and anti- vaccination beliefs? The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.

<comment><USER5> _The merits of truth aren 't guaranteed to win this battle._

Winning a battle is an unfortunate metaphor for public debate or democracy in general. After all, what we want is to discuss options without violence.

Someone has to win elections, right. But that doesn't make the losing option wrong, just not as popular. There are many options that I consider wrong, or very wrong, that are "winning" right now. I accept that situation, at least while there's no need for me to adopt them. What I find scary is what stcredzero points: that many ideas "win" by despicable means.

<comment><USER4> >After all, what we want is to discuss options without violence.

One side of this debate is inherently violent. People are dying from easily preventable diseases.

>What I find scary is what stcredzero points: that many ideas "win" by despicable means.

Anti-vaccination beliefs are already winning by despicable means because those with virtuous means choose to do nothing.

<comment><USER6> But the pro-vaxx side DOES do something. Everything from debate to memes are used to either disprove or mock the anti-vaxx side.

The overall point is that we need to defend our ideas through speech and not through IG/FB censoring anti-vaxx speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny how exactly EU follows the path Russia has recently taken. After Russia passed the law that banned online material promoting terrorist content, suicide, drug information and harm to children, and so on, there was an avalanche of false takedown requests and misidentifications, including attempting to block Wikipedia, ban Bhagavad Gita commentary (yes, really) and many more anecdotes that sound funny unless you live there. Now Russia has progressed to banning "insulting" the government publicly, i.e. direct ban on political dissent. I wonder how long it would be until EU does the same.

<comment><USER8> I think we're still a long way before we reach the excess of Russia regarding free speech et subordination of democratic values.

<comment><USER9> Spain banned speech critical of the government several years ago, and several people have been jailed already. At least one person has been jailed over a tweet.

Europe isn't one big whole, parts of it are already obviously worse than others.

<comment><USER10> > Spain banned speech critical of the government

Could you please provide some reference? I seriously doubt that what you said is correct.

<comment><USER11> Spain has passed a law banning the "glorification of terrorism" or "humiliating victims of terrorism". While this is not 'speech critical of the government' the law is vaguely worded and has been broadly interpreted. More detail in this report from Amnesty International:

[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/Spain- Counter...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/Spain-Counter- terror-law-used-to-crush-satire-and-creative-expression-online/)

<comment><USER5> I don't know why you're being downvoted. While the GP comment is total BS, what you wrote is simply the facts.

There's nobody in jail for writing anything.

The report is based on facts, but it goes overboard with the conclusions.

Edit: the BS comment is by oarsinsync, so it should be GGP, sorry if that led to confusionl.

<comment><USER9> Apologies, I appear to have overstated things for sure.

That said, satire against the police force lands you in court:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/07/satirical- arti...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/07/satirical-article- spanish-riot-police-cocaine-lands-editor-el-jueves-court-catalonia)

And tweeting can get you a suspended sentence (which got overturned on appeal, but didn't prevent the original conviction):

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/spanish- studen...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/spanish-student- cassandra-vera-conviction-twitter-joke-overturned)

I did overstate things, but "total BS" doesn't seem fair either.

<comment><USER5> First of all, I'm opposed to that law. If it was up to me, it would be annihilated from existence.

Please understand that joining a few imprecisions, innocuous in isolation, the result is totally incorrect.

'Incorrect' would have been better than 'BS' indeed, sorry. The reason for verbal escalation is we have to see this kind of "imprecision" very often and it's not funny anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Politicians do not care about the ramifications of this. They only care about granting themselves power over who sees what when through the guise of combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc. Posting a blog about this will change nothing.

<comment><USER13> It's really hopeless each time one realizes how French and German politicians perceive the internet. For them the internet is not synonymous with the freedom of creativity and expression, but with the freedom to restrain and to control.

<comment><USER14> Germany is ruled by liberal conservatives for well over a decade. While there is some maliciousness and desire to expand control, I see mostly the lashing out in an attempt to retain the control the state used to have. The internet brings an unprecedented amount of freedom, and that weakens the state. Where previously you could wiretap the phone of a criminal, today you have no way to read his whatsapp. They don't know how to deal with that. Being a conservative party with a lot of old voters they try to slow the change down, but their failure to understand the internet leads to ridiculous attempts.

<comment><USER15> Just as a reminder, the ruling party, specifically our chancellor Merkel, said: "the Internet is Neuland (uncharted territory) for all of us". And that was only 6 years ago.

<comment><USER16> Was she wrong? The "modern" internet (fast, for everyone, modern sites) was only about a decade old at the time. That's a mere moment in Germany's history

<comment><USER13> Many EU countries with much younger democracies behave much more mature regarding the internet. Some silly slogan is a miserable explanation of the state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not quite my circus, not quite my monkeys, but I wonder if it's possible to fight fire with fire.

Could a committed group of individuals report the most pernicious EU politicians' homepages and facebook pages as similarly banned content? Looks like the firehose has overwhelmed whatever inadequate safeguards they originally had in place.

<comment><USER18> A few weeks ago there was a case in Poland where a party that strongly supported article 11 and 13 was using copyrighted pictures and banners made by a small artist. The news was big in Poland, the party was notified, but they ignored the case, voted for art 11/13 anyway.

<comment><USER19> Those articles are immaterial (although they are a little ironic) in this case, because what you are describing was already not allowed. Thankfully a small artist doesn't need media exposure in this case, this is what courts are for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's very sad to see the path the EU has chosen to follow in regards to speech and the free flow of ideas.

<comment><USER21> It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged.

Free speech is not unconditional in the US; there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. European nations have simply drawn the line in a different place, for entirely understandable historical reasons.

<comment><USER2> Some of us have also learned that censorship can mean censorship of pacifist and anti-war speech: [https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship...](https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship#What_was_Censored_3F)

I'm sure sympathizing or trying to understand a terrorist's motives (perhaps their home country is being occupied by the US?) can fit under the terrorist content umbrella.

Edit: Let's not leave unaddressed the farcical idea that Europe prior to World War I was some bastion of free speech, and that this somehow led to the wars:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_Empire_\(1871%E2%80%931918\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Prior_restraint)

[https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766](https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766)

<comment><USER7> BTW the famous "fire in the crowded theater" quote was used by Holmes exactly to suppress anti-government anti-war pacifist speech: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States)

Judge Holmes came to regret his support of speech suppression, but a lot of people still seem to miss the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why does the proposed EU legislation have a 1-hour deadline? No matter what you think of the action it's trying to take, a 1-hour deadline is preposterous for anyone and seems expressly designed to force people to set up an automated process that acts on takedown notices without prior review. But who benefits from this?

About the only thing I can think of is if some big company, think Facebook or Google, lobbied for this because they're large enough that they can actually implement it with review, whereas anyone smaller can't.

<comment><USER23> I think the idea of the 1 hour deadline is to pull it offline before others can download and repost it. The police/governments especially in Australia and New Zealand have worked out that there is simply no way to remove a file from the internet if someone else grabs it in time.

Its a fruitless effort and very dangerous when misused but thats what I assume they are trying to do anyway.

<comment><USER24> I'm in New Zealand, and finding the Christchurch shooter's manifesto was harder than you'd think.

The "it's not foolproof, so it's fruitless"-argument strikes me as missing the point. We can't prevent many things from happening (rape, thieving, excessive drug use, etc.) but that doesn't mean that efforts to contain this are useless.

<comment><USER23> It was very easy to find if you know where to look. If you know the domain for 8chan you could find it in seconds. The massive attempt to hide the video probably made it much easier to find as so many people who saw it saved it expecting it to be gone in the future.

<comment><USER25> Yes, if you look hard enough, you can find anything. But I think the idea is to make it so that the bad things don't just continue to float around where people not looking for it might see it.

Just like terrorist content (how to make bombs/attack infidels and such) still exists, and those looking for it would probably find it, but the governments are trying to make it so that innocent people that have no inclination to perform horrible acts don't run into it by "chance". And just like they did to Muslim extremists and violent ideas in that front, they are now trying to do in other areas.

<comment><USER26> I've been on the Internet my entire life and not even once I've seen something I didn't want or expect to see. It's simply not possible to force people to watch a several minutes long video or read a manifesto with dozens of pages, so I don't understand this sentiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone with a bit more information explain why the EU might have any saying as to what a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library can and can not host?

Disclaimer: I currently am a EU citizen.

<comment><USER28> As they mentioned in passing in the blog, EU might block the site entirely within EU.

<comment><USER29> Oh, the horror.

<comment><USER30> Not for anyone outside of the EU, and not in short-term. However, I believe that it is an alarming tendency that can cause a lot of damage over a sufficiently long time period.

<comment><USER31> It's still a problem for us in the U.S, because there are always politicians in the U.S. that look at dumb things being done in Europe and say, "We should be doing that, too.", and voters who will vote for them.

<comment><USER29> In the long term, though, it could cause noticible implosion of related industries. I'm kinda imagining that this kind of regulation is going to be so clearly harmful that its removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In situations with notice-and-takedown like this, I always wonder why there aren't stronger protections against abuse. Should a platform or user who had their content ordered removed in error be able to receive damages? Should the lawyers or civil servants instigating these notices be disciplined for issuing erroneous, improper, or overly broad takedown notices be disciplined or blacklisted?

<comment><USER7> I guess the same reason why police and government is allowed to lie to you, but if you lie to police or government you're a felon. Because they can. As long as people vote for such situation to continue, it continues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hey, someone ought to start reporting EU sites as "terrorist content".

Edit: Or better yet, report major MPAA members for copyright infringement, using spoofed accounts for other major MPAA members :)

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't knowingly sending false reports be a misdemeanour, or even felony?

<comment><USER34> Then isn't sending reports without verifying their validity the same thing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So underfunded and overworked EU agency is asked to manage reporting for poorly thought out and overly broad legislation.

Maybe this is the best outcome as it might provide a valid defense for those who choose to ignore the notices.

<comment><USER36> > So underfunded and overworked EU agency

Like engineers who have never underestimated their time commitments to a project, government agencies have never been overfunded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How do we push back on these agencies for their obvious flawed process?

<comment><USER38> We don't push back on the process, we push back on the principle.

The point of the principle of free speech is not that all speech is beneficial but that we can't possibly trust any agency with the power to decide what is and isn't.

The "process" probably has no more flaws than any other process designed and implemented by mortals, it just goes to demonstrate why the whole censor-the- internet idea is wrong.

<comment><USER39> Where do you stand on falsely claiming "fire" in a crowded movie theater?

<comment><USER40> I'm old enough to remember when conservative pundits would pose similar challenges when discussing which forms of contemporary music needed to be outlawed. So where I stand is that I've learned to associate anyone offering the fire in a crowded theater argument as another advocate of the prevailing moral panic.

<comment><USER41> The "fire in a crowded theater" argument was created by advocates of the prevailing moral panic, in fact. The panic in question was anti-war and anti- draft propaganda by socialist parties in the USA during WW1, and the phrase originated in a Supreme Court ruling that said that it's legal for the federal government to imprison people for speaking such horrible things.

It never ceases to amaze me how common this trope remains in defense of censorship, given that it was _designed_ as a slippery slope.

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

<comment><USER40> > The "fire in a crowded theater" argument was created by advocates of the > prevailing moral panic

I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is this the end of websites being available 24 hours a day? Just switch off the web server every evening when leaving the office?

<comment><USER43> The CIO (!) of one of our clients seriously proposed that last year for a new big online B2C service. We were just laughing at that point, knowing the CEO will not go for that, but even the though process was scary, and made some sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What exactly is "terrorist content?" Do calls to arms from the American Revolution against England count? What about other revolutions of the past?

<comment><USER45> Yes, I would say that anyone calling for armed revolution would be classified as a terrorist by the government they opposed.

Governments tend not to take sides against other governments unless they want to go to war with them in some way. So you can imagine that in many cases most other governments would back the terrorist label.

This points out one of the big issues with the use of the word "terrorist" in today's world. It is a label that dominant organizations use against any group that presents a serious threat, regardless of the activities of that group.

<comment><USER41> I think the question is, does it stop being terrorist if a revolution happened in the past, but the actions are still recognized as having being terrorism? Are Jacobine writings terrorist in nature, for example? How about a scan of Pravda circa 1918, with headlines like "Long live the Red Terror!"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Reminds me of: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man- charged-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man-charged-with- leeds-terror-offences-appears-in-court)

> The charges allege that Golaszewski was found with copies of 21 Silent > Techniques of Killing by Master Hei Long, The Anarchist Cookbook and The Big > Book of Mischief on 23 February in Leeds. It is also alleged that he had in > his possession the Improvised Munitions Handbook, Murder Inc, The Book by > Jack the Rippa, and Minimanual Of The Urban Guerilla, by Carlos Marighella.

The guy is charged with possession of six books, some of these books are likely to be present at archive.org

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel- golaszewsk...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel-golaszewski- uk-terror-leeds-arrest-right-wing-a8815116.html)

> Pawel Golaszewski faces six counts under the Terrorism Act and has been > charged with possession of a document or record "containing information of a > kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of > terrorism".

Six books, six counts.

••••••••••

Unsure where is this heading. Does anyone think the law can stop technology?

<comment><USER41> I knew that UK was pretty bad in this regard, but I didn't realize it's _that_ bad. You know what "possession of a document or record containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" reminds me of? "Contacts leading to suspicion of espionage" \- one of the common charges under Article 58 in USSR circa 1930s, according to Solzhenitsyn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Essentially, this is the DMCA for terrorist content. With a somewhat short time requirement driven by some recent events (New Zealand being the most prominent, but not first).

Here's a link to the current EU draft: [https://www.laquadrature.net/wp- content/uploads/sites/8/2019...](https://www.laquadrature.net/wp- content/uploads/sites/8/2019/04/Terr-Reg-LIBE-Final-Compromises.pdf)

(It's a document highlighting the latest changes from committee, making it somewhat hard to read but not less interesting)

I'm not sure if it's fair to compare notices from the current program, which sends out notices without any legal force, to what this envisages. The directive sets out a process and requirements for notices, including detailed reasoning for each. It also specifically mentions avenues to protest (and sue) in cases of disagreements.

I'm no particular fan of this for both practical and philosophical reasons. If youtube had invested in some sort of oversight that prevented this kiwi neckbeard from live-streaming his massacre of innocents, the vote this week would probably have ended differently.

</comment><comment><USER48> Maybe we should have some anonymous (preferably distributed) internet archive which is only available through tor?

<comment><USER49> This isn't a bad idea. You don't even need that much resources either - <AUTHOR> mirror content that has been taken down from archive.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> 550 in the past _week_ , not in total!

<comment><USER51> I guess someone put a test system on a live server? Doubth they have enough employees to have some just sit there filing takedown claims manually.

<comment><USER52> From their website it seems like they perform periodical "action days" where they sit down jointly with different groups and flag content on specific platforms. Might have been one of those.

<comment><USER53> If it's urgent enough that websites have to comply within an hour, why on earth do they wait so long to make these requests in batches?

<comment><USER51> The one hour compliance is _proposed_ legislation, not actual law. If the requirement makes it in I expect it would be for extraordinary cases at high traffic sites, like the new zeeland terrorist livestrem on youtube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I thought Europe got over the whole book burning thing in the 1940s.

</comment><comment><USER55> Happened in Feb 2019 to a story on telegra.ph archived by me. It was scary first, then I asked the archive.org webmaster and I understood that it was a telegra.ph link, not because of the content. Now the archived link works OK. [https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM](https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM)

</comment><comment><USER56> I could see a TPB-style federated proxy service emerging for archived URLs that are unduly censored.

<comment><USER45> Why does it need to be federated? Why not something p2p like IPFS or just torrents?

<comment><USER56> i may be missing an as-yet-unidentified-by-me core concept here. if a torrent has multiple listings (and perhaps multiple trackers) then isn't it being distributed via federation? how is this different from IPFS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Interestingly, I can't get one of the linked videos[1] to load, although the other stuff seems to work fine.

[1]: [https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712](https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712)

</comment><comment><USER58> Blocking the EU seems to be the only viable option here, right? Am I missing any less bad options? Or would blocking the EU still leave publishers vulnerable to some abuse?

</comment><comment><USER59> Do any web sites based in the USA have to honor these takedown notices from countries based in the EU?

<comment><USER60> There is an appellate court case pending involving Google and foreign court orders.

Depending on how is decided is the answer to your question.

Edit: no they do not need to remove content because a foreign entity asked them to [https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de- in...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de-indexing- order-wont-apply-google-us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Given US state linked organizations like Atlantic Council, ThinkProgress, Propornot manned by ex US security services personnel are working with Facebook, Google and other social media websites to 'takedown' dissent on US involvement in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, black activism against police brutality, general anti-war activism and socialism leaning content it seems the time to be concerned about censorship is passed.

Who can explain these SV 'relationships' with state actors? Anyone who cares about censorship should be extremely concerned about state actors flagging content. Snowden is still in Russia, Assange is virtual imprisoned and Manning is back in prison. Isn't it curious that these basic actions of whistle blowing and dissent are not able to operate freely in the west?

Is it simply as transparent as when other countries take down dissent or imprison activists its censorship and totalitarianism and when we do its 'fake news', 'Russian propaganda' or 'some reason'. It's incredible people can ignore everything and talk of free speech, censorship, and democracy as if none of the above is happening.

</comment><comment><USER62> Shocking, who would have thought

</comment><comment><USER63> Just doin their job and slowly but safely moving towards a well off retirement...

Why is this surprising or unusual? It doesn't matter to them. Citizens aren't their customers and can't refuse to fund them. What other outcome can one rationally expect?

</comment><comment><USER64> Reporting things falsely as a terrorist action IS a terrorist action!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER65> what the EU thinks is irrelevant. I wouldn't respond to a GDPR notice, a cookie notice, "terrorist content" takedowns. they are free to block my site. I'm free to never visit their 1984 land. good thing the UK is leaving them.

</comment><comment><USER66> I can see why the UK would not be excited to remain.

<comment><USER60> The UK is doing much worse

[https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s...](https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s=21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The EU is a nightmare. Once the UK leaves and people see they are doing better it's going to start a procession of other countries out the door. Too many regulations and red tape like this make doing business in the EU difficult. I am slightly annoyed every time a cookie banner blocks my view on a website. To think some person in Belgium decided that was a good idea and now everyone online has to deal with it is disturbing.

<comment> munk-a I don't think that in the best of terms the UK not being part of the EU would be beneficial to the UK - the way Brexit is happening is definitely going to hoop them though. They are taking an antagonistic stance against all their major trading partners and to continue to do business with them they'll end up needing to follow those regulations anyways.

I am unaware of major cases of regulatory capture in the EU governance and most regulation proceeding this has been well intentioned - if the cookie banner is annoying then tell your the site to stop tracking you.

<comment><USER68> GDPR is effectively massive regulatory capture, benefitting Google and hurting small ad networks that haven't been able to effectively comply.

[https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/study-google-is-the-biggest- be...](https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/study-google-is-the-biggest-beneficiary- of-the-gdpr)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> How are we going to punish the EU for this? The penalty for interfering with Archive.org must be so severe that even an international entity would never contemplate doing this again.

</comment><comment><USER70> Thank Uncle Sam for the first amendment. Not that this kind of censorship won't happen in the United States but there are stronger institutional barriers to it here, so it will take longer.

But it's coming here too and not slowly. For instance five years ago 48 US Senators voted gut much of the core of the first amendment. ([https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint- re...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint- resolution/19/text)) After every terrorist attack we hear how the constitution is not a suicide note (and therefore the bill of rights is highly contingent). Pressure to act against (flexibly defined) hate speech is growing particularly in the young cohort of voters.

In the not distant future I expect hundreds or thousands of US officials to have the same kind of power that their EU counterparts are seeking here: to automatically switch off almost any domestic web resource if it hurts the feelings of an important constituent.

Many of us will fight it, and as in the EU, we'll lose.</comment>


Ask 37signals: Can I build a product business if I'm just a designer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/668-ask-37signals-can-i-build-a-product-business-if-im-just-a-designer

<comment><USER2> Making development environments for non-programmers that are useful to non- programmers and possibly flexible enough to create real products seems pretty hard.

I know a lot of programmers are very skeptical of anything like that for various reasons.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny. Seems that programmers wish they can design. And designers wish they can program. And both parties feel bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been working with brilliant people who don't know how to program. They have been very valuable and very capable of building a business. But in a typical startup you get to that phase where everyone is working full throttle and then what happens is that these brilliant people do stuff like manual data cleansing work for weeks on end simply because they cannot bring themselves to learn how a loop and a regex works. That's a shame. Trouble is that sometimes that kind of work cannot be outsourced because it requires intimate knowledge about the project to do it right.

<comment><USER5> That the "business person" in a typical startup doesn't have anything better to do during the build phase creates typical startups, in my opinion. Brilliant people should be doing brilliant things. If they're not, maybe they're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Encouraging words for designers.</comment>


Mal – Make a Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kanaka/mal <comment><AUTHOR> While I might have been able to implement my first Lisp interpreter on my own, the Mal guide was pure gold. It kept nudging me in the right direction without ever taking away the joy of learning and understanding.</comment>


Robinhood Gold - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robinhood.com/news/2016/9/28/robinhood-gold <comment><USER2> > Pre & After Trading Hours: Once reserved for institutional investors, > extended trading hours let you trade before the opening bell and well after > the closing bell — an extra two and a half hours of access, every day.

Pre/post market trading is different than normal hours. The liquidity is totally different and generally done with only limit orders. If you don't understand what those are, you shouldn't be doing it.

> Additional Buying Power: Gold Buying Power is money that we lend to you to > buy stocks, giving you the equivalent of a line of credit for the stock > market. You get up to 2x your buying power so you can invest more, and keep > any profits. More information on our Help Center.

This is called a margin account. It's interesting that they don't call it that.

> Bigger Instant Deposits: Take advantage of Instant Reinvesting, which lets > you access proceeds from a stock sale immediately, and Instant Deposits, > which eliminates the three day wait period for funds to transfer from your > bank into Robinhood.

Again, this is called a margin account. The way it works is rather than waiting for the prior trade to settle (i.e. the counter party to the trade provides the cash and you deliver the stock), your broker spots you the expected proceeds so that you can trade as if you already have the cash.

Scrolling down is the details, terms, etc. I can't tell if making it a different color so you don't notice it's there is intentional or just stylistic choices by their designers.

Going to their help pages[1] I found this:

> Do I get charged interest on top of the monthly charge for using Gold buying > power?

> No! You will not get charged interest or fees in addition to the fixed > monthly charge of the tier you selected.

I'm genuinely curious how they have the capital to do this. Can I open an account and use double buying power to purchase a money market ETF?

[1]: [https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/213262686-Ro...](https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/213262686-Robinhood-Gold-Buying-Power)

<comment><USER3> They don't call margin "margin" because they market their app to people who don't know what they're doing. People who know what margin is will understand what they mean by "extra buying power", but an investing novice with $500 will have no idea what "margin" is.

That said, it's scary to think they're giving margin to people who don't know what margin is - I hope they try to properly educate them on the risks involved.

<comment><USER4> I think even novice traders know what margin is. I'd prefer they just use the correct nomenclature.

I have an account with Robinhood and have much more than $500 in it. I don't think the assumption that most of their users only put small amounts is entirely accurate. I like Robinhood because I can lower my dollar cost average buy buying small little chunks on the way down commission free.

<comment><USER3> RH's headline feature is "free trading," a feature that mostly appeals to people who are investing smaller amounts (for whom an $8 commission is significant). Their oversimplified interface is consistent with this targeting of novices. I'm saying it as a generality - of course it's not completely black and white.

That said, RH does have several problems - notably their unreliability on days of high volatility and their poor customer support - that generally deter bigger investors from using them over a traditional broker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know that robinhood is trying to improve things (I guess) but just remember folks that somewhere around 80-90% of retail traders lose money. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12339076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12339076)

<comment><USER6> What is improvement exactly, better ux?

<comment><USER7> At the most basic level, retail traders are paying 8 bucks every time they enter or exit a position, which leads to reasonably significant underperformance versus not having to pay trade commissions on Robinhood.

<comment><USER6> Is that an $8 commission fee per stock trade or an $8 loss on the bid/ask spread?

If the former that is definitely the high bar. there are many places (discount brokers) that offer low comissions on stock ttandes more in the 1 dollar range.. or even pennies, that arent 'disruptors'.

I think if you are trading often enough thay $1 commission is a problem you'e doing it wrong. Presumably we are talking about folks that are not pattern- day-traders.

<comment><USER8> That's an $8 commission.

I know Interactive Brokers offers less, but they also charge $30/month prorated against your commissions. What other discount brokers charge pennies or $1?

<comment><USER9> FWIW it's $10 per month, and waived if your account has over $100k in assets: [https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So when exactly can we UK people use Robinhood?

<comment><USER11> I wonder if the whole Brexit thingy had any effect in delaying the operation. But the expansion to Australia was more than a year ago, so probably there is something else going on.

<comment><USER12> I signed up when they announced but I never heard back from them. I just assumed they gave up on Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When Robinhood was first announced a few years ago, I was excited that the retail brokerage industry was becoming more accessible for a number of reasons. Most obviously, we live in a capitalistic society, and inherently those who are able to make an equity investment (whether it be in a home, a small business, a startup, or a publicly listed company) are giving themselves a better chance at long-term financial freedom if they are also able to properly diversify their investments.

Robinhood still provides a great service to those who have a relatively small amount of money to create a diversified custom portfolio, but I would highly recommend against Robinhood Gold in today's interest rate environment. If you are 25 or younger, which is a core demographic of Robinhood, you are much better of with Interactive Brokers for any type of margin account. The UI/UX leaves a lot to be desired, but you will likely save a lot of money. Let's say that you have $2000 to invest and want to borrow another $1000 for a total investment of $3000. Since you understand the importance of long term investing as well as diversification, let's assume you are going only going to make 10 trades per year (if you are making more than 10 trades per year with a $3000 account you should seriously reconsider your investment strategy). For simplicity, let's also assume your portfolio balance maintains a $3k balance. Each year you will pay:

Interactive Brokers: (max($1 x trades per month, $3) * 12) + 1.9% * $1000 = $55 per year

Robinhood: $6 * 12 = $72

Of course, this is a very specific comparison, but I encourage you to look at the total cost of a margin account for your specific situation:

[https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal...](https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20Retail%20Commisions%20and%20Fees%20Schedule.pdf)

[https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1595](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1595)

I would also highly discourage anyone from trading outside of 9:30 AM to 4PM ET unless there was major news on a specific company (up to 4:15PM for the most actively traded etfs given the futures market keeps the bid/ask spreads tight).

Finally, I would encourage you to read more about the systemic risks ETFs pose to the market before deciding to use them as an investment vehicle. They provide great utility to small investors, but also contribute to liquidity risks that are still not fully understood/tested.

</comment><comment><USER14> Robinhood is great. I'm hoping they will go forward with a public API, and perhaps allow options trading soon.

<comment><USER15> I think the margin accounts (gold) is the first step toward allowing Options trading. Excited for this to happen as well. Glad to see a company finally doing a more subscription based model for stock trading instead of the pay per trade rubbish to date.

<comment><USER16> I would not want to trade options on a platform that:

1) Doesn't allow limit orders

2) Goes down with even modest spikes in intraday volatility

3) Markets and caters to "uninformed" flow

I imagine they'll only allow long options or impossible-to-break spreads to limit their risks, if they actually go this route (as evidenced by the severely limited margin given with RH Gold).

<comment><USER17> > 1) Doesn't allow limit orders

They certainly allow basic limit orders for buying and selling in my experience, though not the fancier types (conditionals, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interestingly they promised shorting when margin accounts are available. I don't see shorting on that list.

[https://twitter.com/robinhoodapp/status/581924425244655616](https://twitter.com/robinhoodapp/status/581924425244655616)

</comment><comment><USER19> Subscribed to Gold yesterday, I don't like trading on margin but after hours is nice.

<comment><USER16> How and why do you trade after hours without limit orders?

Execution on RH is already pretty poor, this seems like a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER19> From my underatanding, they are using the same exchanges than other low cost brokers. It has been confirmed with my experience using TradeKing in parallel of RobinHood (same spreads and same speed of execution.)

I haven't tried trading after hours yet, but it had happenned to me that I wish I had the option in the past.

<comment><USER20> The actual orders are handled by Apex Clearing. Apex sells this client flow to a mix of Citadel, KCG, and a few others [0].

[0] - [https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal...](https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20PFO%20Disclosure.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love Robinhood. The idea of trading on credit gives me the heebie jeebies though.

<comment><USER22> Think of it as acquiring technical debt. Can help you grow faster, but need to monitor it carefully to prevent eventual trouble.

<comment><USER23> Using technical debt as a metaphor for debt is... I wish I could use the "100" emoji here.

<comment><USER24> [http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/im-like-a-chocoholic-but- fo...](http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/im-like-a-chocoholic-but-for- booze-10739)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know of any brokerage that allows me to buy shares from an individual (after exercising them from $STARTUP)?

<comment><USER18> Why would you need brokerage for that?

<comment><USER25> Let's say if I wanted to buy shares from a competing company to hedge my bets. I imagine they wouldn't want to sell to me directly.</comment></comment></comment>