Aleksey Vayner Has Died at 29 - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video <comment><USER2> I met Aleksey at Yale a few months after the video had gone viral and found him to be a nice enough guy who was intelligent and interesting to talk to, though it was clear that he had serious emotional issues as even then after all the ridicule he felt compelled to boast of unlikely achievements almost as a reflex. He was not the arsehole the internet had prepared me for but a decent and troubled person and I felt desperately sorry for him.

The communities and networks we have built online have proven to be fantastically capable to creating and organising for good, whether it be raising funds for disaster relief or catapulting some deserving person to stardom, but we've all too often decided to ignore our power to tear down and destroy with frightening speed. Aleksey Vayner's video may have been silly and weird but it did not merit the public humiliation he received.

It would be too much to expect that large scale ridicule of an individual like this will never happen again, human nature is what it is and cruelty and anonymity go hand in hand. But as individuals we can at least prevent ourselves from being a part of it by pausing before we forward, retweet or share the next picture, video or meme and considering whether the person being laughed at deserves to be destroyed for our amusement.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your entire post except for this one clause

> cruelty and anonymity go hand in hand

Anonymity and cruelty are orthogonal concepts - there is nothing about anonymity that implies or requires cruelty, and the connection runs the other way just as often, but as human beings, we find it easier to focus on and remember the negative more so than the positive.

<comment><USER4> Unrelated concepts, maybe, but by definition they are not orthogonal in the real world, unfortunately. Statistically, I'd be willing to wager people act worse when they think nobody is looking. Anonymity just extends this effect elsewhere.

People are much less likely to be cruel when people they appreciate could be made aware of it.

<comment><USER5> Relevant: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19>

This has actually been studied academically (the "online disinhibition effect"). Anonymity definitely seems to correlate with poor behavior, even if it's not a causal relationship.

<comment><USER6> No, it doesn't. I remember an anecdote of a bagel delivery man that calculated the percent of people (donations to the bagel plate were anonymous) that screwed him up was only 15%.

So majority people are actually nice even when anonymous. And penny arcade is a comic site, not a dispenser of truth.

<comment><USER7> _I remember an anecdote of a bagel delivery man that calculated_

I expect it was about Paul Feldman -- it was a very interesting story -- the guy was an MIT-trained economist who, in frustration at getting nowhere at a certain point in his career, gave it up to deliver bagels, etc. to companies every day and he collected data on people's behavior when it came to leaving payments.

The following NY Times Magazine article is by the Freakonomics duo about him (the story made it into the Freakonomics book):

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel- ma...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/what-the-bagel-man- saw.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

PDF of the same article from one of the authors (i.e. a non-nytimes.com link):

[http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WhatTheBagelMa...](http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WhatTheBagelManSaw.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The translation of the Facebook wall post seems incorrect. It's also in Russian and not Ukrainian. Here's my go at it:

You damn egoist, pick up the phone. Who will take care of [your?] mother?! At least sell your source code and fuck off to Costa Rica. The very same paypal will give you 200-300 pieces [I think these might be pills rather than dollars]. Pick up the phone bitch!

Edit: thanks for the corrections, indeed, that would most likely be $200,000-$300,000. Although I'm a native speaker I didn't grow up in Russia so my slang and colloquial language is pretty weak :>

<comment><USER9> "piece" is a slang word for thousand. You got everything else right.

OP mistranslates the comment horribly.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the translation in the OP was almost completely wrong; I'm not sure where they got the idea that there was a joke that said "kill yourself". Actually, the depressing thing is that the real comment points even more toward a suicide.

<comment><USER11> I still don't get what's happening.

<comment><USER12> The real comment sounds like someone knows that Aleksey was suicidal, and says, in order:

"Nobody sell this guy any pills" (so he does not kill himself) "You selfish bastard, who's going to take care of mom?" (if you kill yourself) "You could always sell the source code and fuck off to costa rica" (an alternative to killing yourself) "Paypal would pay you couple of hundred thousand for it" (saying that the above-mentioned source code is very valuable) "Pick up the phone bitch" (apparently he is ignoring the phone calls from his worried friends, and they wish him to stop doing so).

Does that help?

<comment><USER11> Kinda - I still don't get what code they are talking about and what Paypal has to do with it

<comment><USER12> I don't think anyone knows that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read the article, didn't know the details, but what I now see is :

\- somebody who has proofs of great achievements he did

\- a backstory showing how these achievements are compatible, possible and repeatable for this young immigrant who is decided to succeess

\- during the vice.com video, apparently a self-reflective decent dude, whose only mistake may have been to send a self promotion video to get the job he really really wanted.

He didn't hate. He worked on himself and was pushed my a great internal drive. He was trying to get the right to pursuit happiness _applied_ to his situation.

I call that a success.

Then the haters showed up and hated him, for daring to pursuit dreams, his dreams, thinks that they would certainly never get to do themselves, even in their wildest dreams

These haters may have seen him as a show-off - and that's sad.

I call someone like this a beacon of hope on what we humans can achieve if we really put ourselves to work.

Pay attention - these persons are quite infrequent, sometimes fragile (Aaron). Help them if you can. But they're here on a mission to change the world.

If you are one, I advise you to _HIDE_ the good things you do.

Poeple are jealous. Any good dead you do, any investment on yourself you make, any skill you have (breaking bricks for ex) - whatever. Consider that a dark secret of yours and wait for the day when usual humans will no longer hate, but welcome instead, humans with 'better' capacities.

RIP Aleksey, you seemed like a great man. The word unfortunately was not ready to allow access to people like you... yet.

<comment><USER14> According to his Wikipedia page, most of the claims he made were demonstrably false. (I had never heard of him before this HN post.)

<comment><USER15> I followed his resume story pretty closely when it broke simply for the outrageousness of it all and this is correct. I can't speak to what he achieved afterwards. The ones I remember distinctly:

\- Video of him skiing in the video is stock footage he bought on craigslist.

\- Video of tennis serve at 140 mph.

\- Plagiarized an economics paper in his resume

\- Claimed to be one of a limited number of people in Connecticut certified for nuclear waste disposal

ivygateblog.com seemed to be the biggest follower of his and may still have a lot of the articles and the paper resume.

<comment><USER16> Some of these stories such as the nuclear waste one came from stories from people who met him at Yale, and reported in the Yale campus tabloid Rumpus. Jordan Bass, an acquaintance seems to be the source for several of the outrageous ones which were told in the context of Bulldog Days, an official Yale event featuring illegal underage drinking for high school seniors that were accepted. It's pretty clear that most of what he said at this event, assuming he said it at all, was intended as a joke. After it got written up in the campus newspaper and people knew him for this it seems he continued with the joke during his time there since people obviously greatly enjoyed it.

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023ta_talk_mc...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023ta_talk_mcgrath)

* taught tennis to Jerry Seinfeld and Harrison Ford

* a specialist in Chinese orthopedic massage

* the Dalai Lama wrote his college recommendation

* he is an action star

* he is an espionage expert

* he is a professional athlete

* he practices on the C.I.A. firing range

* he participates in martial-arts competitions in a secret system of tunnels underneath Woodstock, New York

* he competes at skiing competitions in Switzerland

* he worked for the Russian Mafia forging passports

* won two games in a tennis match against Pete Sampras

* founded a charity for troubled kids

* wrote a book called "Women's Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust"

* is a professional male model

* must register his hands as lethal weapons at airports

* is one of four people licensed to handle nuclear waste in the state of Connecticut

* has killed two dozen men in Tibetan gladiatorial contests

My take? He was an awesome guy.

<comment><USER13> I can not comment on things I did not see. As I said, I read the article (and the posted video), didn't know the details or the story beforehand. I'm not usually interested in gossip - but with the news, it was interesting to try and understand the reasons of what looks like another suicide.

In the video, I see him breaking bricks and lifting weights, armwrestling etc.

All this is quite possible for me, and no reason to be ridiculed against. Physical prowess is a good thing!

The rest I don't know, and considering the "media fame" and joking aspects you mention, unless the claims are directly attributed to him by verifiable sources, I would call them hearsay.

<comment><USER14> > As I said, I read the article (and the posted video), didn't know the > details or the story beforehand.

I went straight to Wikipedia, which at least tends to have decent citations to follow. While it doesn't seem like anyone has a copy of his resume, the at- the-time President of Charity Navigator [1] says he literally lied on it [2]. I don't really see why Stamp would weigh in unless such a claim had actually been made, and Stamp's call for expulsion doesn't appear to have been rescinded.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20071012124658/http://charitynavi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071012124658/http://charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=19)

[2] [http://web.archive.org/web/20070929071909/http://www.trentst...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070929071909/http://www.trentstampstake.org/2006/10/im- not-laughing.html)

<comment><USER16> Here's his résumé, which you ask about:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070222123930/http://www.ivygate...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070222123930/http://www.ivygateblog.com/images/vayner.pdf)

Here's an article about his sister, who has been successful since age 22 investing in real estate:

[http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/04/real_estate/investment_prop/...](http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/04/real_estate/investment_prop/tycoongarber/index.htm)

She's relevant because an address she owns was used as the address of the charity. There's no evidence she knew what he was up to.

Students who know him considered it all to be a joke or at least not malicious:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080422030103/http://www.yaledai...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080422030103/http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/18308?badlink=1)

> But Won Chai '07 said that while Charity Navigator has a right to be upset > with Vayner, he thinks the humor of Vayner's resume should be appreciated.

> "I think clearly he was trying to play a practical joke or just trying to > draw attention to himself," he said. "Whether or not it was a good thing or > not, I couldn't say. People seemed to be enjoying it. I-bankers are > forwarding this stuff to each other. Maybe it's good for a laugh now and > again."

> Pieter Morgan '09, who has lifted weights with Vayner, said he thinks Vayner > often makes seemingly unbelievable claims because he genuinely believes them > to be true. Morgan said he thinks Vayner is a genuine person, despite his > penchant for seemingly implausible stories.

> "I think it's like in 'A Beautiful Mind' with Russell Crowe," Morgan said. > "When he tells you these stories, it's completely genuine, which is what is > completely amazing. He'll tell you with a completely straight face that he > knows the Dalai Lama, and he is completely serious. I think he is > fundamentally a nice guy."

Here's his charity site which seems to only have been active in November 2006. There was a web comment that mentioned that he used these sites to get girls and was apparently quite a player.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20061129145614/http://www.empower...](http://web.archive.org/web/20061129145614/http://www.empowerachild.org/web/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm so glad none of the bad judgements I made ever came back to haunt me. I'm sure we all sometimes make bad judgements. I distinctly remember doing very stupid things when I was a teenager.

When I was 14 years old, my mom took my iPod to a repair shop because it refused to turn on. In a week, when they said they fixed it, I went to this shop with my friend. Although I had the address, I couldn't locate the building, and we spent an hour searching for it in the cold. We passed an internet café and a wonderful idea popped into my head. I sent them this email:

        My fingers are freezing.
        Been looking for your motherfucking shop for an hour.
        Barely writing. Wait for me, assholes.

Of course actually meeting the guys who fixed my iPod wasn't exactly fun—I'm glad they had some sense of humor. But they also called my mom and advised her to teach me some manners.

What came as a surprise to me is that the same minute I walked into the store I realized that sending this email—heck, even stopping to write it—was a grand silly idea. Self-WTF. I couldn't remember just _why_ I did this. It was like I had this silly little brother who did it, but it was me who had to face the consequences. But then, just five minutes ago _this seemed like a really clever and fun thing to do!_

In such moments I did not just embarrass myself (and my mom) in front of people I don't know, but I also made my family extremely puzzled because I was the "smart" kid who has been learning programming by books since twelve, knew OOP and stuff, moderated a large internet forum dedicated to programming, and this kind of behavior just didn't fit together with what they knew about me.

Sometimes people do very silly things they later regret. And usually they do them because they try their best at a given moment, with all the knowledge and context they are given, and make a wrong decision. Such decisions I never regret.

But sometimes people do their worst for no apparent reason, and then they WTF at themselves. Their judgement fails them, something blinds them and they do unimaginably stupid stuff, and later they feel even more embarrassed because they don't just see how misguided they were—but that it was so _painfully obvious_ from the start.

I think it's important to understand this distinction this before judging people in any way.

<comment><USER18> My theory is screwing up like you did with your email generally gives us the experience to avoid screwing up in the future on much more serious counts, which is why most of us are not forever haunted by serious screwups.

This is in the general case, of course. It doesn't cover how the internet sometimes makes a big deal about fairly silly things.

<comment><USER19> "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am looking at his wikipedia page (in particular the "other details section [1]) and see a prolific amount and variety of "accomplishments". Coupled with HNers in this thread suggesting that many of these claims by Aleksey have been proven false, I am wondering if he suffered from _Pseudologia fantastica_ (pathological lying) [2].

I once worked with someone in his 50's who was undoubtedly a highly intelligent with an intense attention to detail -- super productive. However, he was known for claiming, among other outrageous things, that he was (1) a former Army Ranger, (2) a former Navy Seal, (3) a former Marine, (4) former Secret Service tasked with protecting Ronald Reagan, (5) Grandson of a 4 star general, (6) Leg press 800 lbs, (7) broken 3 aluminum "forks" on bikes (the part connecting your front wheel to the frame). This really is only a tip of the iceberg of the things he claimed. After several months, I found out that "pathological lying" is an actual psychological condition. The moment I found out, I was convinced that this coworker suffered from this condition.

I wonder if Aleksey was the same. My coworker was unusually bright, physically strong, and was good soul. I couldn't understand why he would _need_ to inflate himself through lies, given such obvious strengths of his -- until I found out about this psychological condition. Aleksey seems to have been the same way.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_%28video_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_%28video_r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9%29#Other_details)

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudologia_fantastica>

<comment><USER21> _(6) Leg press 800 lbs,_

That's actually pretty trivial for anybody who lifts weights even semi- seriously. I could leg press 600lbs as as skinny 160lb high-school senior. Now if somebody claimed to be able to _squat_ that much, they'd be making quite a claim, as that's possibly near world-class range depending on their weight. (At one time the world record back-squat was right around 1000lbs, but I'm pretty sure that's been broken)

 _(7) broken 3 aluminum "forks" on bikes (the part connecting your front wheel to the frame)._

That gets another _meh_ from me. Breaking frames and forks isn't that uncommon, at least in the mountain biking world. An XC bike that isn't designed for handling big drops might break if you ride off a 3ft drop, for example (bodyweight would also be a significant factor in this).

The other stuff though, especially taken all together, is, yeah, fairly incredible.

<comment><USER20> Agreed on both counts, when taken in isolation. It's when all these things converge, that even these independent data points become suspect.

(I myself could back squat 350lbs at my peak so I understand that leg pressing 800 lbs on a machine isn't particularly unfathomable. However, _usually_ you don't find power lifting and road cycling -- which was the subject of the conversation at that time -- in the same person, especially riding enough miles to stress fracture three different aluminum forks [1]. I'd certainly consider switching to steel at that point.)

[1] Although I myself am a powerlifting cyclist :P

<comment><USER22> BB back squat 360# 1RM.

45 degree inclined leg sled: 1010# for 10 reps, when my squat was ~250#.

The press gives you a _lot_ of mechanical advantage (1.7x), removes stabilization requirements, and subtracts out bodyweight (part of your total squat lift).

Power lifting and road cycling is actually a very good training complement: <http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/16/health/he-cycling16>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What an unkind title. Rest in peace Aleksey and thank you for the countless hours of entertainment you gave the internet. Impossible is nothing, sometimes we just need to be reminded.

Edit: looks like the title has been updated

<comment><USER24> My curiosity has overcome my propensity for courtesy, so I must ask: what was the original title?

<comment><USER25> It referred to him as an "Internet laughing stock".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is definitely worth watching the video in the OP. He has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about what happened to him and placing it in a framework that has helped him understand it and cope with the aftermath. It seems clinical at times but also healthy (which aren't exclusive of course). It would be sad if it wasn't enough for him in the end.

It makes me wonder if there are counselors specializing in this domain and sociological research into how this kind of stuff happens and how it affects all people involved. These events are quite sad but also a bit fascinating and novel.

</comment><comment><USER27> Long before the name change reported in the article to Alex Stone, and long before the video resume, there was an earlier name change to Aleksey Vayner from Aleksey Garber.

Before the spike in notoriety from the video resume, there was a much smaller burst of unflattering notoriety for Aleksey in the May 2002 edition of Yale's Rumpus magazine [1] by one Jordan Bass titled "Craaazy Prefrosh Lies, Is Just Weird".

It starts out like this:

"Maybe, once, you lied about your age, or your weight, or your location the night your unfaithful boyfriend was stabbed to death. Maybe you lied about your criminal record when applying for a job, or your sexual history when donating blood. Little things. Everybody does it, right? What's the harm? Maybe your slight deviations from the truth even give you a little thrill, a mild buzz gained from subverting the truth and risking discovery. You're a badass, right?

Aleksey Garber, who has been accepted to the Yale class of '06, is not impressed. When you're a guy who tells the truth about as often, and with the same reluctance, as the average person goes to the dentist, you've got no regard for those who dabble in tall tales."

It ends like this:

"What can you say to that, really? This is the man's life, as he tells it. Is any of it true? Well, what is truth? [...] In the end, all we can really say is that "Truth" is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements, and if you look at it that way, then it's all true. We who have encountered him should feel privileged that Aleksey Garber has deigned to include us in the epic adventure that is his life. I know I certainly do."

[1] <http://www.yale.edu/rumpus/archives/pdf/rumpus_02may.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me strangely of L. Ron Hubbard, who claimed similar superhuman achievements throughout his life that he couldn't live up to. Hubbard desperately wanted to be seen as awesome, and that alone may have contributed the larger part of the motivation for the founding of Dianetics and Scientology.

My current guess is that Vayner killed himself but not in a Swartz-like way: he simply OD'd on recreational drugs (something a lot of egoists, including Hubbard to say nothing of HN's friend John McAfee, make a hobby of).

</comment><comment><USER29> The article implies suicide, but doesn't actually say that explicitly. Does anyone know what the case is?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, the article half tries to paint a story which doesn't really make sense without a cause of death.

Also, the cryptic comment is clearly in Russian. That, or some unlikely intersection of Russian and Ukrainian. More likely, they figured the guy was Ukrainian, so the comment must also be in Ukrainian.

<comment><USER17> The comment is in Russian. Many Ukrainians speak Russian as primary language.

<comment><USER31> Right, there are a handful of grammatical errors and colloquialisms that a person who knows some Russian may take for Ukrainian. But it's Russian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You guys should watch the video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P-NMygTekQ>

It really doesn't paint him in that bad of light. (I know nothing of the rest of his history, but I find the video pretty motivating)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's pretty sad, but not because I knew him in any capacity, or actually have heard of him until now.

It's sad because he clearly had a psychiatric issue and only if people were more educated on this matter, they could've reached out to him and offered him help to get his problem under control, instead of just laughing at him.

To an uninformed, uneducated person, it's likely that this is all he was: a pathetic, over the top compulsive liar.

I presume he died because he killed himself, which is something someone would do after at least temporarily snapping out of the psychosis that made them do all of those things and realizing it wasn't something they would ever be able to take back or sweep under the rug, thanks to the 'wonders' of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER34> There appears to be a culture of bullying among a certain segment of the Ivy League. See, for example, this piece on Evan O'Dorney: <http://verynoice.com/2011/09/the-fresh-five-part-two/>

</comment><comment><USER35> Probable cause of death - drug induced heart attack, according to this <http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1247410>

</comment><comment><USER36> I feel like Aleksey Vayner got hit by a confluence of factors.

Most of us do stupid things in our early 20s to establish ourselves. The problem for him is that he applied to jobs in investment banking. In 2006, IBD analyst programs were _the_ destination career for 25th-percentile graduates of elite colleges. So there was this huge crowd of douchebags that wanted to be bankers and were falling over themselves to get in the door.

So when Aleksey Vayner's video resume was leaked, he was immediately typecast as a douchebag and ridiculed. People no longer saw him as a person, but just as some pathetic, arrogant pre-banker. In retrospect, it's evident that he didn't deserve that.

I have the sense that being ridiculed on the Internet is becoming "just a thing" that almost everyone goes through on the way to accomplishment. It's like being heckled for stand-up comedians. The first time it happens, it's extremely unsettling. Then you figure out a way to deal with it-- there are the Jimmy Carr, George Carlin, Louis CK, and Steve Hofstetter approaches-- but it takes some time to get good at that.

</comment><comment><USER37> 4:08 "He passed away from cervical cancer..."

<comment><USER38> Yea, I had to go lookup what a cervix is because that didn't sound right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why on earth this is the first news on the front page? In the end this article is rumor-like and just speculating on the cause of his death...

<comment><USER40> 'Cause 87 people thought it should be.</comment></comment>


New York eases proposed cyber regulations after industry complaints - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-finance-new-york-idUSKBN14H1I3 <comment><USER2> What were the points of controversy with the original proposal?</comment>


Ask HN: What are awesome boilerplates? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have a related question (or maybe two):

\- Are you really using boilerplate when you start working on a new project? \- Will you use a cli app that can create boilerplates for web (react, angular, vue, etc.), desktop (electron, nw, etc.) and cli?

I'm asking this because I had a project that I started to build for myself, then I abandoned it because I thought it'll be really hard to manage.</comment>


Alma reveals unusual composition of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-alma-reveals-unusual-composition-interstellar.html <comment><USER2> From [https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-release/alma- reveal...](https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-release/alma-reveals- unusual-composition-of-interstellar-comet-2i-borisov/):

"the concentration of CO is higher than anyone has detected in any comet within 2 astronomical units (au) from the Sun,"suggesting that "the comet must have formed from material very rich in CO ice, which is only present at the lowest temperatures found in space, below -420 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius). [...] If the gases we observed reflect the composition of 2I/Borisov's birthplace, then it shows that it may have formed in a different way than our own solar system comets, in an extremely cold, outer region of a distant planetary system."

</comment><comment><USER3> > Stefanie Milam at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, > revealed that the gas coming out of the comet contained unusually high > amounts of carbon monoxide (CO). The concentration of CO is higher than > anyone has detected in any comet within 2 au from the Sun (within less than > 186 million miles, or 300 million kilometers).

Is that really that far in the scale of things traveling through our solar system?

<comment><USER4> Not sure, but maybe that implies that most local comets lose their CO before getting that close to the sun?</comment></comment>


Is China really blocking all the US search engines? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_china_attacking_us_search.php The answer seems to be unclear! <comment><USER2> The constant "concern" over China becoming some sort of significant world super power/super economy really puzzles me.

There is nothing about the way China is acting, as a country, to indicate that they have any real ability to scale.

It has been said, (and I happen to agree) that the thing that makes the US so attractive from a standpoint of innovation is the government. I have a lot of issues with the US Government (and I don't just mean in a me-too anti-Bush sort of way), but overall in the US are not limited to the information you can access, in your opportunity to create wealth, and in your ability to keep that wealth and do with it what you please. At least as compared to the rest of the world. I recognize the obvious problems with various FOIA requests, taxes, patents, etc. But overall you are free in the US to design, develop and sell any product or service that you feel will have a value.

Then you look at China, and the government of a few is trying to manage the efforts of billions. This is like taking everything you should have learned from "The Mythical Man Month", and extrapolating out to the worst possible case.

It may take 20 years, but China is going to implode from their own lack of management. OR, they will get smart and make massive changes to the way things are done, so that they can become something other than just another lowest- cost-bidder.

I cannot think of any case in history where their "model" has been successful.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, but I'll play devil's advocate.

Right now 3 out of 4 of the world's super cranes are in China, constructing new office towers. The Chinese are holding something like a trillion dollars that we've traded them for TVs and such. The Chinese military is building a deep-water navy, and China keeps making no-so-subtle threats against Taiwan. In addition, the Chinese have a tendency to build up a lot of nationalistic anger whenever they feel threatened, whether the threat is real or imagined.

Now the kicker is exactly as you describe: they cannot scale. Their system is rotten and broken, and the only reason it's still working is that they "sold out" to capitalism, effectively creating an oligarchy just like in the bad old days.

But how would an implosion occur? There's good money that says that the worse things get, the more China is going to be looking for somebody else to get into a tangle with -- what better way to keep people's attention elsewhere. The blame has to go somewhere, and it can't be the leadership. There's an easy case to be made that China could blame it's impeding implosion on lack of cheap resources, favored-trading status of Taiwan, Japanese hegemony, United States imperialism -- pick your bad guy. In a pressure cooker the steam has to go somewhere.

That's the worry.

<comment><USER4> The best thing that could happen to us if they end up like Japan. Japan was buying everything in sight, then there banking system collapsed from all of the bad loans (worse then our housing market I suppose) and they have yet to recover. I know China is making bad loans, we can only hope they collapse because they are eating our lunch right now, in fact we are giving them our lunch they don't even have to take it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: FlexyForm – Form Submission Backend as Service - <AUTHOR> https://owwly.com/product/FlexyFrom-54 <comment><USER2> Is it flexy fOrm or flexy fRom? Form makes more sense for the service and is in the HN title but everywhere on owwly says FlexyFrom!</comment>


Circus, Nginx and Websockets - <AUTHOR> http://nathancahill.github.com/circus/

<comment><USER2> Are you aware of adapters for other WSGI-like bindings for Circus? I might be interested in trying it out if I could run, e.g., Rack or Plack applications on it. A general adapter that could bind to Circus' FD and forward to a random port and manage a child process would probably work just as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Circus is just the process and socket manager. You can bind anything to Circus' FD. The WSGI bindings I used are through Chaussette, which, as far as Circus is concerned, is just a process bound to a socket.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I see. I wonder how hard it would be to make Circus open feed a port instead of an FD. That would make it easy to work with existing process servers that don't know how to bind to an FD.</comment></comment></comment>


Eiffel programming language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> As a teenager I read "Object Oriented Software Construction" by Bertrand Meyer, and was convinced that Eiffel was THE programming language of choice.

However, that love didn't last long. Too many simple things just took way too much effort to do, and most damning of all, there was no working ecosystem of libraries.

There were some libraries, but getting them to actually work with your version of Eiffel was a huge hassle (and not always successful), and there were, like 20 to 50 libraries in total.

I'm still missing some of the language features in other languages though...

<comment><USER3> I don't think Meyer understood that the era of free compilers had begun.

He continued to charge money for the compiler while Java was establishing itself. We were starting to see rules of language adoption (like "build Hello World in 10 minutes, something trivial in the first hour"). But by the time he learned these too, the Java train had already left the station.

But one of the other things we were starting to learn is that most successful languages have a champion, in the form of a larger corporate backer (Java, Go, C), or an IDE company (Kotlin, Turbo Pascal). Once in a while a flagship application will serve (Rust, Elixir, perhaps Ruby). I don't recall Eiffel having any of those.

And I wanted to try Eiffel but could not afford the cover charge, by the time I could I had specializations that were still uncommon enough that switching languages seemed like a bad move. I still have it on my todo list to hunt up some of Meyer's writing and spelunk for lost wisdom, but not for the language itself.

<comment><USER2> > I don't think Meyer understood that the era of free compilers had begun.

That's right, and something I had totally forgotten.

I started with a shareware version (?) of Eiffel Studio, and later it was made free as long as you used it either for non-commercial purposes, or released your software as GPL.

Looking back at it, that just sounds quaint.

I think the IDE was actually written in Eiffel, and was pretty good for that time, but not good enough to stand out, like Turbo Pascal did back in the days.

<comment><USER4> Ah, yessss, Cepage, or "seepage". At the very first talk I went to, to find out about Eiffel, in 1986, Meyer spent 3/4 of his alotted time talking about Cepage. Soured me.

It was an interesting language, in some ways, and could have been extended enough to be useful but, like Modula-3 and Oberon, even at the time obviously would not supplant C++. Rust could still suffer the same fate if it can't fix its compiler-speed problems. It's the only candidate on the horizon, with its Drop trait, for those places where nothing else will do.

<comment><USER5> Wirth has mentions in one of its articles, not sure which, that he just expected too much from mainstream.

He was convinced, that by building such systems, mainstream programmers that cared about quality engineering would just flock to Modula-2 and Oberon, and in retrospect some advertising effort could have been done.

Modula-3 was killed by Compaq and HP, after their cascade acquisition from Olivetti research labs, they never cared about this kind of research.

Rust might have better chance, because just like it happened with C++ vs C, there are a couple of big names that care about it nowadays. Microsoft just had an internal Rust Summit.

Also Ada is still around, NVidia and Genode OS being two relevant names that have recently adopted it for security critical software layers.

Ada has had RAII since Ada95.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm fascinated by the idea of first-class support for preconditions/postconditions and class invariants. Has anyone worked on a large code base (whether in Eiffel or not) that made extensive use of those constructs?

Obviously it's common to put argument validity checks at the start of functions, and to check invariants at some critical points. But I'm curious how the existence of specially designated slots on every method/class for checking arbitrary invariants affects developer behavior and productivity.

<comment><USER7> @jaw - I have; but first, a rant:

Architecture with a big A is something that is often looked down upon in this community, because it has the bad rap of being over-engineered, not scalable, "done by contractors who don't know anything/are trying to pad billable hours", et cetera.

I can see this in the kind of schlock being peddled as the next great front- end/web solution; usually done by people who would do very well to revisit the last 30-40 years in thinking about the Design of software. Thinking that testing and TDD are replacements for and/or better than static typing is Pretty Fucking Stupid™.

Design Patterns as given by GoF, Fowler, etc are more often than not questionable, but design patterns extracted from your code base are worth their weight in gold.

We have a beefy .NET codebase composed of some 80+ projects (used to be more then we trimmed it down) integrating with 25+ external data sources/APIs and we have leveraged every single fucking thing out there to make sense of it and not let it overwhelm _our_ systems.

Type-level invariants along with a layered validation system is definitely something that we made a bet early on and it paid off. It's very hard to mess it up once it is in place, and not that difficult to understand.

Some of the things we applied are discussed in Enterprise Architecture by Fowler, the Domain Driven Design book also discusses it a bit. Your own application of these principles is what matters, and that's where things get hairy.

.NET/C# is nice because it provides enough facilities through Reflection and Attributes to be able to "pattern"-ize some of the things that come up, and there are other languages that do it better still. I really like Ruby's method_missing and I wish that C# provided an equivalent, but to my knowledge most of the approaches within C# to do something like that are kludges at best.

<comment><USER5> Agree with you

As for method_missing, what do you miss from IDynamicMetaObjectProvider and related classes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing that I never understood about Eiffel is why, for all the focus on correctness, it has that gaping hole in its type system in form of catcalls (and IIRC there were also some implicit and not-always-safe variance assumptions for generics?).

I know that Meyer insists that covariant redefinitions are necessary to model the real world. But that's only true with Eiffel's inheritance model intermingling types and implementation! In OCaml, for example, subclasses of a class need not be subtypes; and if you want both subtyping and catcalls, then you parametrize the base class accordingly.

<comment><USER9> Meyer did not know that the type system was unsound. This was discovered later by Luca Cardelli. Meyer said that he would correct it but it seems that existing libraries used this covariant feature too much and they instead made some ugly hack using whole program analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Eiffel was always great, the biggest problem as I remember it was that the compiler was very expensive, like a few thousand dollars a license. Meanwhile C++ was much cheaper (and easy to pirate) and Java was free. You can see the resulting popularity.

<comment><USER11> I was on the Java train in the 90s, so I didn't pay much attention to C++ compilers.

Therefore my question, wasn't the GNU C++ compiler an option at the time?

<comment><USER12> My experience in the early 90s: the compiler from HP was better than gcc, but for some reason we were downloading each version of gcc from the Usenet, building it (hours) and using it. Maybe some of the servers at university (all HP) didn't have a compiler licence? Or gcc did something the HP compiler couldn't do: maybe it compiled all the GNU userland and the other free/open source and the HP compiler couldn't. I remember that the portability issues were quite big back at the time (BSD vs SysV derivatives, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eiffel is the reason I always looked at Java as a horrible fad. In high school when I was reading everything I could about software development, I read Object Oriented Software Construction. Immediately after, I read a book on Java 1.2 to learn Java, and could only think how poor Java was in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER5> Besides introducing "Design by Contract", Eiffel was one of the first languages to introduce non nullable references, a development environment that mixes JIT and AOT (via system C and C++ compilers).

A bit too late I guess, but nowadays there is a community edition for open source projects.

</comment><comment><USER14> NICE still exists - just about (Nonprofit International Consortium for Eiffel).

[http://www.eiffel-nice.org/index.html](http://www.eiffel-nice.org/index.html)

Had a lot of fun with Eiffel back in the day. Being able to work closely with Bertrand on the language was a great privilege.

For me the great innovation of Eiffel was the ability to turn _off_ the pre- conditions once you'd shown the code works, thereby preventing your code methods wasting time verifying and validating the parameters needlessly at run time.

<comment><USER15> > For me the great innovation of Eiffel was the ability to turn off the pre- > conditions once you'd shown the code works

So, like assert() and NDEBUG? Hard to describe that as an 'innovation', tbh. Though it's a nice feature indeed.

<comment><USER14> It was in Eiffel from the late 1980s. When did the assert macro end up in C?

Eiffel and the OOSC book had a big influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Eiffel was THE language of choice at my university for the "commercial engineering" degree. It's a masters that mixes engineering with business courses and has IT too but is not Software Engineering focussed. I always wondered if there are actual large scale production systems using that language.

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny to see this here on the front page of HN! I'm currently enrolled in a university level course in Software Design that uses Eiffel [0]. The Eiffel language makes sense for wanting to translate your design by contact (DbC) logic to code, but is very frustrating to work with. The tooling is quite old and outdated compared to modern IDEs. I will say that the course works very well fro demonstrating applications of EECS 3342 - System Specification and Refinement [1] that extends MATH 1090 - Introduction to Logic for Computer Science into the application world.

In regards to modern usage, it is hard to think how we can validate preconditions and post conditions in a cloud native world without additional development of libraries.

Overall though, the course has students struggling with learning the new tooling and syntax when the University has only taught Java and C thus far.

I do find DbC interesting and I think it would be interesting to see it given first class support (Go Contracts draft [2]), but the reality is that TDD can accomplish the same at a much faster development speed.

[0] - [https://wiki.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2019-20/W/3311/sta...](https://wiki.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2019-20/W/3311/start)

[1] - [https://wiki.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2019-20/W/3311/sta...](https://wiki.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2019-20/W/3311/start)

[2] - [https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draft- contracts.md)

</comment><comment><USER18> IMHO Eiffel's concept of simplicity is rather similar to what golang is aiming at today. It didn't serve Eiffel well.

<comment><USER5> They are totally unrelated.

Eiffel has generics, value and reference types, design by contract, non nullable references, pure OOP in Smalltalk linage, agents, it is designed for IDE based tooling, since the beginning had a mixed mode development workflow (VM inside the IDE and C or C++ compilers for release mode), uses dynamic loading for extensibility,...

The only thing that killed Eiffel in the mainstream was the target audience of Eiffel Software, basically enterprise with deep pockets delivering projects in areas where Eiffel capabilities are relevant.

The fact that Eiffel Software remains in business, kind of proves that there are enough companies willing to pay for such tooling.

<comment><USER19> Enterprises supporting their sunk costs supports _a lot_ , that by itself isn't a good judgment of quality. I wouldn't be surprised if more enterprises use Clipper than Eiffel...

Eiffel had similar issues that Pascal had: Appearing too much like an educational, purist language and having "good enough" more popular alternatives on the market (C/C++ vs. C++/Java).

And authors that don't compromise to sell stuff.

The crappy "SmallEiffel" situation didn't help either. It started out pretty great (good feature set, quick and cross-platform compiles via C), but then, erm, FOSS nature took its course. Which is why I'm a bit ware of similar language and their situations since then, e.g. Nim.

Man, there was a time in the 90s where I was hoping that we'd get Eiffel (or Sather) as the next big open source desktop language. Instead we still have walled garden C++ and reinvent-the-wheel C.

<comment><USER15> > ...the next big open source desktop language. Instead we still have walled > garden C++ and reinvent-the-wheel C.

The RESF might take issue with that statement. Though it was of course largely true as late as the 2010s, not just in the 1990s.

<comment><USER19> I was just talking about Linux/BSD desktop apps and their implementation languages/libraries. Not a lot changed there, and the RESF seems to focus on more fashionable/achievable things (The only non-C++ option for Qt right now seems Python, and the most popular non-C language for gtk is probably Vala).

Right now not enough hubris for either Go or Rust to do a build their own thing right from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To me Eiffel and its pre/postconditions are clearly inferior to Dependently Typed languages like Idris. (Also check Agda, Liquid Haskell...)

<comment><USER21> Except for the little fact that Eiffel has had those features since 1986.

Agda first release was in 2007 Idris also in 2007 Liquid Haskell thesis was published in 2016

<comment><USER20> Note the words "to me".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we see more HTTPS? Is CPU an issue? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering if I should put time into making SSL handshakes faster (by using more modern primitives). I get conflicting reports about whether the lack of common HTTPS support (https://news.ycombinator.com doesn't connect, for example) is exacerbated by the CPU load of performing handshakes.
Here are the numbers:
ECRYPT says that 1248-bits is the "Smallest general-purpose"[1] modulus size these days. Well tuned HTTPS sites (Google, Amazon) will negotiate RSA/RC4/SHA1 [2]. Google uses a 1024-bit key, Amazon has a 2048-bit key.
An SSL handshake with cipher-suites that involve RSA require an RSA private-key operation on the server[3]. The ECRYPT benchmarks suggest that a 2048-bit RSA private-key operation takes about 14Mcycles on a Core2 [4], which is about 158 ops/sec/core. (You can also run `openssl speed rsa` to get numbers for your system.)
So, if you run a non-trivial website, my questions are:
* Why don't you support HTTPS (if you don't) * How much is a problem is the CPU load of HTTPS (if you do), and do you worry about getting slashdotted? * How many connections/second/core do you handle (if you're willing to reveal such information)
Cheers
[1] http://www.keylength.com/en/3/ [2] `openssl s_client -connect mail.google.com:443` [3] RFC 5632, 8.1.1 [4] http://bench.cr.yp.to/web-impl/amd64-margaux-crypto_encrypt.html <comment><USER2> Why though - would anyone want to browser a site like news.ycombinator.com over SSL? The vast majority of web data is public data so encryption is of little value, and due to the way SSL works, then there's arguably little value in SSL for authentication (if someone can hack the site, they can generally apply/install for a new SSL cert easily enough). In terms of privacy, SSL gains little - given that SSL breaks Host based virtual hosting, then accessing dodgysite.com's IP address lets a man in the middle know (almost) as much as about your browsing habits as accessing the site without SSL.

In terms of downside, SSL adds latency (ignore CPU time for now, it adds a further 2+ RTT times for the CLIENT_HELLO and SERVER_HELLO + cipher negotiation/key exchange on connection. Breaks (until SNI becomes about) HTTP Host based virtual servers. Breaks any web-caching by a proxy, and in many cases by the browser (most browsers don't use their disk cache for SSL content).

All that downside, for what upside? Yes - for the few forms where someone submits passwords or other private data, yes. But why on earth would you want to use SSL otherwise?

<comment><USER3> If I am reading stuff at the library or other public wifi (says right hear "The Library's wireless network is not secure") I don't want eavesdroppers to know.

<comment><USER2> Even with SSL though, an eavesdropper would know:

a) What site(s) you were accessing (the IP address is visible, and as it can't be a shared IP, a DNS lookup or SSL connect to that site should give them what site) and the length of time on each site. b) The approximate size of those pages, and the number of embedded items, so could quite probably and within reasonable time know what pages. c) If they knew your browser (through seeing non SSL traffic) they could probably know the length of the URL.

Have you really gained anything through using SSL??

<comment><USER3> They don't see the content coming or going. That to me is pretty significant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most larger companies have an "SSL Accelerator" which is usually part of a router/switch/load-balancer. This device does SSL in hardware, so it can do the offloading much faster and let the web servers and app servers worry about serving-up the app and doing that work. Most SSL Accelerators can do millions of connections without working too hard, so it's possible at large scale for larger websites without really worrying about CPU on the server-side. I'll bet that they just don't worry about SSL except for when it's absolutely necessary (personal info - login, purchase, ...).

</comment><comment><USER5> Can somebody lend some insight into how SSL certs function for international users? I've had no problems with the inexpensive SSL certificates with domestic (US) users, but I've had complaints of users accessing things from other countries. Do SSL certs not function the same globally? Is it common for the CA's to not be globally accepted?

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't worry about CPU. What I do worry about is cost and most of all the amount of effort required to set it up. You'd have to get a key somewhere (figure out where you get one that is both supported by most important browsers and as cheap as possible), install it (probably an afternoon's worth of work, mostly because of researching how) and then test it.

Cost is important too. As a small start-up we adhere to the principle that a penny saved is a penny earned.

Combine all that with the fact that there's no real demand for more security on our sites and you'll come to the conclusion that it just isn't worth the time and money spent on it. We're not running a bank, so it's not all that important anyway.

<comment><USER7> Nitpicky: You don't get a key somewhere. You make your own keypair, and send the public key off to be signed. It costs ~$100/year + you need an IP address, compare that to what I pay for shared hosting ($75/year including domain) and you get your answer.

<comment><USER6> _> Nitpicky: You don't get a key somewhere. You make your own keypair, and send the public key off to be signed._

Precisely the type of details you'd had to figure out. For my current (very rudimentary) understanding of SSL that doesn't matter. Setting it up myself would mean I would have to know such things and more.

As for costs: We have several IPs and our hosting costs are about 70 euros/month/server. Still, I wouldn't shell out the 100 bucks per year simply because it's lost money. It doesn't solve any of _my_ problems and my users don't care, or at least seem to not care.

I believe that to be the main reason. Users don't care. Tech people care, sometimes. Sometimes a site owner cares (banks etc.), but most of the time no one really cares too much about it. And when you think about it, if nobody cares, is it really a problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Companies would rather not spend the money. It's as simple as that.

Also, you might be interested in: <http://bench.cr.yp.to/index.html>

<comment><USER9> Single-domain certificates are cheap. RapidSSL charges $79/year, and you can do better.

Wildcard certificates have come down as low as $200 a year, very recently.

The price issue is mostly perception at this point, but like they say, perception is reality. I would gamble that most people don't realize how much cheaper SSL certification has become.

<comment><USER10> I agree that it's all perception, and that even with wildcard SSL at $500/year (what the cost has traditionally been), it's worth it to protect your customers' data.

What scares me are companies that allow a front 'login' page on a non-SSL domain, and have everything else on their domain name via https, allowing for easy man-in-the-middle attacks.

<comment><USER6> _> I agree that it's all perception, and that even with wildcard SSL at $500/year (what the cost has traditionally been), it's worth it to protect your customers' data._

I suppose that depends on the data. $500 keeps one of my servers running for 6 months. For a bank the security is very useful. For a site like HN where the only sensitive data is the password, it isn't so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For most startups, the performance hit is not a big deal. If your a serious startup, you need your own IP, so this shouldn't be a roadblock. Setup is not hard. If you can't setup an SSL cert, how are you going to manage the rest of your server concerns? Cost of the cert? This is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of your startup.

For most, the big problem is the all or nothing decision. Most end users don't like the browser asking about switching protocols, for example, for the login or credit card process. So the easy choice is to use https for everything. But that's a waste, most of your requests don't need it. But there is lots of waste that buys you value: ruby, multi-layered frameworks and libs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> For HTTPS you need a dedicated IP since security negotiation happens before the HTTP hosts header is posted and your cert needs to cover the host you want to connect to. That is, it is impossible to host several sites using HTTPS on one single IP. HTTPS using SSL (instead of for instance TLS) means that this is a limitation built into HTTPS itself and can't be mitigated.

With the current shortage on IPv4 IPs and most shared hosters trying to squeeze as many websites as possible onto the same single IP, that effectively means that getting a site up and running with HTTPS (and that is not even mentioning the cost of getting a properly signed certificate) is very, very costly and hard compared to regular HTTP hosting.

Until IPv6 goes mainstream don't expect any of this to change.

<comment><USER10> If you're like most newer startups that have their customers under a TLD (foo.mycorp.com, bar.mycorp.com), you can use wildcard SSL to manage the problem. Otherwise, yeah, you're looking at one IP per TLD.

<comment><USER13> Am I correct in thinking that a wildcard only gets you one level deep? e.g. that *.mycorp.com matches "foo.mycorp.com" but not "foo.bar.mycorp.com"?

<comment><USER14> Depends on the browser, which in practice means just one level deep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't support more HTTPS because of the cost of static IPs on EC2 (i.e. ~72/mo)

<comment><USER16> Elastic IPs are $7/mo. only if they are unused. They cost nothing if attached to a running EC2 instance.

See: (<http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing>)

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I know, but you can only attach one per instance, so the effective cost per elastic ip per month is 1 small instance.</comment></comment></comment>


My Guess at the truths of marketing - <AUTHOR>

I've done a lot of research on marketing (like many people here) and I've made a list of traits I think are universal in humans as related to persuading people. Most of it probably seems obvious, but I think it's good to have a "checklist", so to speak.<p>Tell me what you think: - Ethos is the most important - People make judgements by comparison/anchoring - People process information best from stories - People are foremost interested in things that effect them. - Breaking patterns gets attention - People to look to other people's decision when making decisions - People will believe things more easily that fit their pre-existent mindset. The converse is also true. - People handle one idea at a time best - People want more choices, but are happier with less - People decide first, then rationalize - If people are stuck with something, they will like it more over time. - Experience is memory, the last part of the experience is weighted heavily. <comment><USER2> WHAT PEOPLE REALLY WANT:

Life Force 8: \</comment><comment></comment><comment>-- 1) Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension. 2) Enjoyment of food and beverages. 3) Freedom from fear, pain, and danger. 4) Sexual companionship. 5) Confortable living conditions. 6) To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Jones. 7) Care and protection of loved ones. 8) Social approval.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked this up and I see it came from the book cashvertising - is it any good? The information looks useful but the cover looks spammy, and I worry the Amazon reviews are bought.

<comment><USER2> Don't let the spammy book cover fool you. It's likely one of the best marketing books you will ever read...seriously. Quite insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think you've been watching Dan Gilbert :)

In all seriousness, I've been meaning to do the same kind of thing for my future marketing adventures, and you've saved me the bother - it's that good and covers everything I've learned and more.

Apologies for gushiness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I appreciate your comments. There's a lot of great Ted talks for marketing, Dan Gilbert is one, Dan Ariely is another.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't check what it looked like visually after I posted it, I meant to have them in a line going down, oh well.</comment>


Improving GitHub for science - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science <comment><USER2> So, aside from DOIs (which anyone can create: [http://www.doi.org/faq.html](http://www.doi.org/faq.html)), this post is mostly about free private git repos.

But the thing is, _anyone_ can get as many free private git repos as they like at bitbucket.org right now. You only have to pay when your team is over 5 people, and even then it's pretty cheap. So if you want hosted git but cost is an object, just use Bitbucket. There's no reason to pay a premium for hosted git. It's a commodity.

<comment><USER3> Another tiny attraction of bitbucket for science is MathJax support in reStructuredText [0]. Unfortunately not implemented yet for markdown [1].

There is an unfilled niche for version control with out-of-the-box rendering of scientific formats: \- mathjax everywhere \- And of course full latex. This may be specialized enough to be better served by separate services, but now that sharelatex is open source a tighter integration is possible. \- bibliographies (rendered as publication lists?) \- Notebooks like IPython [2] and Sage; literate R. \- plots of various kinds \- tons of formats I never heard about (chemistry, bio, astronomy...)

Third-party web renderers exist for most formats (e.g. nbviewer.ipython.org) but there would be value for doing them all in one place - making repos pretty enough to serve as poor man's website (think how Github's up-front README rendering was good enough for many projects).

The obvious direction is improving[3]/forking Gitlab. I hoped Banyan.co would be that but just discovered they went down :-(. Authorea does some of this. And cloud.sagemath.com exposes an impressive amount of tools under one roof. Though it's focused on working more than browsing.

[0] [https://bitbucket.org/cbensf/test- math](https://bitbucket.org/cbensf/test-math) For some reason not working at test-math/src view (reported [https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/9483](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/9483)) [1] [https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/7908/enable- mathjax-...](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/7908/enable-mathjax-in- markdown-bb-9086) [2] [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/bitbucket.org/mforbes/paper...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/bitbucket.org/mforbes/paper_dvrvsho/raw/tip/docs/notebooks/DVR_Demo.ipynb) [3] [http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...](http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/5569530)

BTW, Gitlab.com also has free private repos.

<comment><USER4> We're on the same wavelength here. This is exactly the problem I'm trying to tackle with Penflip ([https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/)).

      - Began as a fork of Gitlab
      - Hosts public and private writing projects that are backed by git repos
      - Git repos allow for local editing, remote access, and easy collaboration
      - In-browser markdown editor with syntax highlighting
      - MathJax support (as of yesterday - still testing and tweaking)
      - Extended markdown support for tables, footnotes, etc
      - One-click downloads in PDF / HTML / ePub / Word format

Originally, Penflip was geared towards writers, but I am seeing an increased demand for scientific and academic uses. I'm exploring this right now.

EDIT: wow, just realized you're the one behind mathdown.net, which I recently discovered while researching MathJax. Excellent work!

<comment><USER5> Now that's an interesting site.

It would be cool if the free tier included one private project, so you could test it without making a public project full of typical test blathering. (I see the Discover page lists a few projects that are clearly only testing.)

The git import/export is very nice but looks a bit magicky -- am I right in thinking text files called anything other than document.txt will be silently ignored? I was looking at this with a view to working out how to import existing documents, ideally with history: what's the best workflow for that?

A serif font option in the editor/preview would be welcome.

Looking forward to trying this for something more substantial, though. Nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ... meanwhile Github doesn't support viewing rendered SVG files when you click on a .svg file, yet they have viewers for 3D objects and maps that render in SVG.

It's frustrating how difficult it is to get anybody at Github do work on small things since there's "no manager" and everybody wants to focus on grandiose projects.

<comment><USER7> Browsers are really not good at rendering SVG. Both WebKit and Gecko are riddled with bugs once you start using the non-trivial features of SVG. Worse still, browsers don't even support the latest version of SVG, which suffered a fate similar to ECMAScript 4. However, vector illustrating programs will happily generate files which use the browser-incompatible newer versions.

So while it may be possible to target SVG as a backend for rendering basic drawings, displaying arbitrary SVG files is, in practice, a lost cause.

<comment><USER8> They don't have to send the straight svg for preview. They could either modify it for compatibility or at least render it server-side to raster and send it over. It's not impossible, at any rate.

<comment><USER9> It's not only a matter of compatibility but a multitude of security issues as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like that the DOI association is with a tagged release, making it easy to identify specific versions of the repository. In principle, this will make duplication/checking of research results easier, as one can ensure use of the same version of the software as the original work.

<comment><USER11> Tags can be moved in Git. How much you want to trust the tags depends upon your use-case.

<comment><USER12> The DOI is linked to a zip archive on zendodo / figshare, which will not change, even if you change the tag.

<comment><USER13> So if you publish the DOI as a part of a paper, and then later improve the code in the Github repo (but of course not in the archived snapshot), is there some way that the people who follow the DOI could also find the improvements?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Something they don't mention until _after_ you've signed up: the micro plan only lasts for two years. I assume any private repositories will become locked if you don't pay for a subscription after that (as with regular accounts).

In comparison with BitBucket (not to advocate, but they offer a comparable service): the restrictions they waive for academic accounts are done so permanently.

<comment><USER15> You can renew it after two years though (still free of charge).

<comment><USER14> Is that spelt out somewhere? The only mention of it I can find is in the confirmation email they sent: "will be free for the next two years".

<comment><USER15> I don't think so. I just filled the form and my request was approved (they did check my school email).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Im very excited that github is pushing forward with this. As a graduate student Ive been desperately trying to get my lab to switch over and use github as opposed to myfile.m --> myfile_diego.m --> myfile_diego_changed.m etc!

I want researchers to use it not just for code, but for latex files for paper writing as well!

<comment><USER17> Our department recentlyvset up a self hosted gitlab. Works great. As many private repos as you like and you don't have to worry about github disappearing off the map.

<comment><USER18> Seriously, the chances that github just disappears off the map are about the same that the gitlab team decides to stop working on the OS product. Non-zero, but still low. However, the impact is only mediocre: It's simple to keep a copy of the repo around and just a simple to keep a copy of the wiki around: They're git repos too. The only thing you'd loose is the issue history and your network of clones.

If that's what you're concerned about I'd be more afraid of your internal gitlab server crashing down in flames because somebody fat-fingered a critical update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is very good news for digital science, and has been a long time coming. For those wondering why this is new and different from previous efforts, I will try to summarize.

Up until now, there have been many places to permanently store your public scientific research objects, so long as you were willing to use a Creative Commons license. Similarly, there were many places to freely host your software, so long as you didn't need a permanent store for your scientific code.

The GitHub-ZENODO partnership is the first web application to bridge these two needs. An earlier attempt with Figshare almost got it right, but failed to support code licenses (everything at Figshare is CC BY). This isn't the only way to host or cite your code, but it's definitely a good default.

<comment><USER20> Most universities already have systems to host research long-term. Most researchers are just too lazy to use it. Also, I would place more money on a university being around longer than Github if I was worried about longevity.

<comment><USER19> I agree that University archives present another opportunity, particularly among the "first-tier" research institutions in the US. One problem is that many University archives are paywalled or require restrictive licenses. Another is that these archives generally do not accept submissions from outside the University.

Let me turn this around on you. Given the availability of University preprint servers, what's the value of a service like arxiv?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not so sure about allowing for private research repos. As a former scientist, incentivising siloization seems to be the wrong direction; if they want it, they should pay for it. A normal micro plan is cheap enough that it won't break the wallet of a researcher.

<comment><USER22> As long as society continues to reward individuals for generating new research, individuals will, out of necessity, keep their research materials private until they have finished extracting personal gain from it. Otherwise they would go through all the pain of working on a problem only to have someone swoop in 10% before it's complete and cross the finish line holding a borrowed baton.

<comment><USER21> If it's done in the open, it's pretty trivial to figure that out and the person who swooped in runs the risk of being shamed. The few egregious cases of this I can think of (Leo paquette and Armando Cordova) only were able to operate because of siloed work and secrecy; and still they got exposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't think their Markdown flavor supports any Latex extensions, that would be a good start, IMO.

<comment><USER19> It used to, but MathJaX does not play well with GitHub's Markdown parser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there any style or guidelines for citing code (e.g. as we have APA for citing papers)?

Usually when I want to give credit to a software or code that I have used I cite the paper that describes the that software or code.

Another point: if you attribute a DOI to your code, that could result in it "stealing" the citations from a paper that describe that code.

<comment><USER25> Your latest point can be resolved through explicitly asking authors to cite the paper rather than linking to the website/github repo.

For instance I used Intel Pintools and they specify in their FAQ[1] : I used Pin for my latest paper. What citation should I include? [actual paper here]

[1]: [https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pintool- faq](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pintool-faq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is actually rather cool! There has been a movement in some fields towards reproducible research ([http://reproducibleresearch.net/](http://reproducibleresearch.net/)). If people were required to provide source code in their publications (by funding agencies), it would be rather useful for those cases where there are questions about the data analysis (for example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti)). It would allow a serious referee to check to see if there were either obvious or subtle mistakes in the analysis. Also, it would allow subsequent researchers to see what previous researchers actually did in the reduction-- not just the final figure.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like quite a big deal -- the parts were in place already, but having a route promoted by Github will probably make a big difference in academia. The idea of having a citable DOI for your work exerts a magic that is possibly out of proportion to its practical advantages for research code.

I imagine the private project thing may be a blow to Bitbucket, which is quite widely used by academics.

The pessimistic part of me finds it quite discouraging that this will only centralise things more at Github. The optimistic part hopes for more matter- of-course publication of research code and a happier relationship between researchers and the software they write.

(Disclaimer: I run a subject-specific academic code repository, [http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk](http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk))

<comment><USER19> And it's a very nice site! I might suggest making it more clear one of your help or about pages what licenses are acceptable for hosting. I am not a UK academic or a sound analysis computational scientist, but it's something that I would be concerned about when choosing a place to store my code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been thinking about this for a while, and thought github finally understood the value of a "git for data". Github really needs to be data repository, with "Code" being only one type of data. But then they become a hosting service for large data files, and that is a headache and a different business. I dont see how academics who work with reasonably large datasets would move to github as long as they have to manage their data on another platform. Perhaps Github could have deep integration with AWS / DO and collaborate to solve that pain point.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have been working on a little python cli project electrophysiology. I will write a paper about it but it is such a simple and small project that many journals may not want to publish it, however it could be really useful for other experimentalists. I personally don't care too much about giving credit, but I want people to be able to clearly communicate what tools they used to do their science and citing github repos or tags is not really done at the moment. Kudos to all involved for getting this to work!

<comment><USER19> This is a perfect fit for the SciPy conference. There are also several open journals that focus specifically on publishing openly licensed software used in academic work.

Citing software really varies by community. It is very consistently done in some communities, and is gaining broader acceptance in others, some with surprising rapidity (ecology comes to mind).

It's an exciting time to be a scientist!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone else having trouble verifying an existing primary .edu address (no "Verify" button is apparent)?

<comment><USER30> Have you already verified it?

<comment><USER29> Checks old email... yes (thanks :) ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So that's "Improving (GitHub for science)", not "(Improving GitHub) FOR SCIENCE!".</comment>


Ireland Signs Controversial 'Irish SOPA' Into Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120229/13541517916/ireland-signs-controversial-irish-sopa-into-law-kicks-off-new-censorship-regime.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> Can we please, as citizens of the countries that are pandering to corporate interests at the expense of freedom and liberty, fire our governments?

</comment><comment><USER3> All .info, .mobi, and .org domains are now subject to Irish SOPA.

Afilias is based in Ireland and effectively owns those gTLDs.

Expect to see actions similar to how the US governs .com and .net domains, namely broad-sweeping and baseless take-downs.

</comment><comment><USER4> EU referendum coming up!

<comment><USER5> and we'll have referendums till the government gets the result they want.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nice></comment></comment>