What the World Got Wrong About Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/magazine/what-the-world-got-wrong-about-kareem-abdul-jabbar.html <comment><USER2> I am a huge fan of the Kareem/Magic era Lakers. I have read both of Kareem's autobiographies, Magic's autobiography, Jerry West's autobiography, and others. But I'm sick of Kareem's shit.

While the article hints at it, I will say directly what they will not: Kareem endured much racism, as undoubtedly did his peers, but Kareem is also a petulant and self-absorbed.

Ever since Kareem retired, he's been on a campaign to explain to the world how they just misunderstand him. For example, here's a NY Times article from 2004 with essentially the same "I'm misunderstood" through-line: [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/sports/pro-basketball-a- le...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/sports/pro-basketball-a-legend- learns-that-he-needs-to-be-liked.html?_r=0)

Notice that 1) even Isaiah Thomas' was under the impression that "Abdul-Jabbar supposedly had time for no one", and 2) even after being thankful for the time Kareem gave Thomas, Thomas said "I never saw that side of him that a lot of people talk about."

Consider also that no one in the NBA - prior to Thomas in 2004, 15 years after Kareem's retirement - was interested in employing him as a coach or execute. To quote the article: "So why has Abdul-Jabbar had only minimal involvement in the N.B.A. since he began lobbying for a return in 1995? It goes back to his reputation, which even he admits was somewhat well deserved."

<comment><USER3> Some people have a certain personality and that's only compounded by environment. You can't say that it was his fault, because though we want to overcome our flaws we are who we are... we're wired for it at a very young age. Some development psychologists say at the age of 4 if a child is a certain way they will remain that way around their peers for life. So... that's just the human condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Magic (Johnson) made white people feel comfortable. With themselves."

As a child being bullied by black people, seeing Magic Johnson made me believe what my mother taught me, "There is good in all races". Magic proved to me that we could all get along. Some of Kareem's comments in the article I find offensive. However, I forgive you Kareem. I wished you could forgive the white man and see him for what he is ... simply a man.

Any man of any color or race has the potential to do great harm to anyone.

<comment><USER5> What offended you? I read the whole article and could only find one even mildly controversial comment:

" _He was certain that racism wouldn't die until the racists did, and so was I. What I didn't tell him was that I hoped it would be soon and that if I could help them along, I would be delighted. I wasn't quite ready to pick up the gun, but I was intimate with the impulse._ "

But that strikes me more as someone being honest about the hateful impulses that were instilled in him through repeated mistreatment. I see no evidence from the article that Kareem thinks anything negative about white men in general.

<comment><USER6> I got the impression that he has quite a chip on his shoulder regarding race. I think maybe it's a good thing some people are like this, but maybe not.

<comment><USER7> When I think someone's got "a chip on [their] shoulder," I try to step back and check my assumptions. If my rationale includes that many weasel words, I hope to realize that it may not be a thing that actually exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are some people who seem consistenly very different when you watch an un-edited interview they've given compared to some journalist reporting their impressions of that person.

Kareem is like this. We can speculate why it's so. It's worth noting that the NYTimes would never run a story like this about /any/ democrat or republican politician. The way his discomfort with, well not fans so much as a man (and his young son) who recognized a famous person's face, was reported seems, well, to have the potential to be less than a fair reflection. All his sins of social interaction seem consistent with someone who freezes up a little when people are straight up rude to his face. The truth is probably more complex; I'm unlikely to ever meet Kareem or the author to know better. I just feel an actual transcript of discussion between Kareem and someone who is a little bit perceptive might be vastly more interesting reading.

</comment><comment><USER9> wow...even though I don't agree with with the politics, the article is exceptionally well written and captures the complexity of Kareem's personality and life with as much richness as if I were there myself. Read the whole thing in one sitting without getting distracted, that's how good it was.

<comment><USER10> What about his politics do you disagree with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sportsman, author, columnist and Bruce Lee cannon-fodder in 'Game of Death'. He was actually pretty good in that movie.

</comment><comment><USER12> I try not to pay attention to what authors say about themselves. KAJ is very smart about many other things and I'm interested in that. This article was only necessary for selling a book.

A buddy ran into him in Milan. He's more than cool in person and OK with that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Black parents are homeschooling their children to avoid racism [http://qz.com/380153/black-parents-are-homeschooling- their-c...](http://qz.com/380153/black-parents-are-homeschooling-their- children-to-avoid-racism/)</comment>


Proposal for an Ideal Instruction Set Arch - <AUTHOR> http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=634#634 <comment><AUTHOR> More details available here : [https://github.com/ForwardCom/manual](https://github.com/ForwardCom/manual)</comment>


Ask HN: Why Chrome keeps decorating links every other day? - <AUTHOR>

In chrome Link are displayed inside a dotted red box today although other browsers looks fine. In general I have seen Chrome striking though links occasionally. <comment><USER2> It hasn't been doing that for me at all. Maybe check your extensions. Try disabling them all, and if that fixes it, re-enable them one-by-one until you find the culprit.

Otherwise, log a bug.</comment>


Lab strips James Watson of final roles after continuing racist remarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/11/lab-james-watson-racist-remarks/ <comment><USER2> Very sad. How can we separate the statements or evaluate if a great man has lost their mind, made statements when very elderly or after an injury from their earlier achievements? At the least you can remove him or her from their honorary positions like they have done here.</comment>


Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning - <AUTHOR> http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/ <comment><USER3> Just thinking about this terrifies me...

When I was 18 I was effectively drowning at sea after (stupidly) swimming out to a bouy (100m from shore) with my friends. I had a panic attack on the way back for some reason and immediately lost control of my movement and voice -- I basically went into autopilot, though I was aware of what was happening. I thought I was flailing around but in hindsight I think I must have looked quite calm above the water, with my arms and legs moving like crazy under the water. In reality I was doing something akin to doggy-paddle, swallowing water in vast amounts and barely catching a breath. I couldn't raise my arms to wave for help and I tried screaming to my friends who I could see 20m or so in front of me. In my head I was screaming as loud as I could but all that came out of my mouth was a barely audible squeak. Somehow I managed to finally get out a cry for help between gulps of water and one of my friends turned round to come and get me. Even when he finally reached me I still wasn't safe as I had zero control over my limbs so he basically had to swim with my body weight and his combined, 50m or so back to the shore. I remember a couple of moments where he said that I was dragging him under and I was petrified that we wouldn't be able to make it back together (at this point no one else know what was happening). Fortunately he's a very strong swimmer and we made it back without any physical damage. I was so exhausted that I couldn't walk for quite some time afterward, nor speak much really.

It remains the single most frightening moment of my life by far and I am 100% certain that I would have died that day had my friend not have turned around to see what I was doing. I've never swum in the sea since out of a combination of respect and pure fear of what can happen. I am ok with enclosed pools though as I'm comfortable knowing that I have something nearby to hold onto and other people around to notice things.

If you feel uncomfortable with a swim at sea then just don't do it. It's not worth it!

<comment><USER4> I remember once I was swimming across a lake with a friend in high school and part way through I felt just so exhausted. Like, my arms and legs just didn't want to work.

It's a bit different of a feeling than when you're tired while running or wrestling (the two sports I played in HS) -- it's like you just cannot move. Even in those sports I never felt as _dead_ as I did trying to swim across the lake.

It probably wasn't as scary as your experience, but it was absolutely terrifying, especially since -- like you said -- above water you seem fine, but under you're frantically swimming trying to stay above water.

<comment><USER3> That sounds very similar to what I experienced, it was exactly like my limbs went dead and just didn't want to move properly, even though I was telling them to. Practically zero deliberate control. Glad you got yourself out of it ok though! It's a horrible thing to have to experience.

<comment><USER4> Uh-huh. Scary stuff. Glad you made it out too! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I almost drowned once in a public swimming pool. I was kicked in the diaphragm by an inconsiderate swimmer while turning and lost my breath, started the typical drowning response.

The worst part about it was that I was only a meter or two from the edge of the pool, but for the life of me, I just _could not_ orient myself to move forward and grab it. All my body was capable of was splashing my arms on top of the water and thrashing my legs to bob up and down vertically and get my breath. Thankfully, pools aren't too deep and I eventually managed to regain my senses, drop to the bottom and push off to the wall.

I was an older teenager at the time, so maybe I had a few more wits about me than younger kids, but it's surprising how little it takes to drown.

<comment><USER6> > All my body was capable of was splashing my arms on top of the water and > thrashing my legs to bob up and down vertically and get my breath.

Yeah but this article is about how drowning doesn't look like that at all

<comment><USER7> Uh, that's literally exactly how the article describes it.

> Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to > extend their arms laterally and press down on the water's surface. Pressing > down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their > bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

> Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot > voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people > who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and > perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a > rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.

> Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water: ... > Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder.

> Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they > don't look like they're drowning. They may just look like they are treading > water and looking up at the deck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also see [http://spotthedrowningchild.com/](http://spotthedrowningchild.com/)

<comment><USER9> That link really stressed me out.

<comment><USER10> No kidding. The longer I took the more I felt like someone was actually going to drown. I eventually clicked the right kid after like 20 seconds, but I wasn't even positive when I clicked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I almost drowned in the ocean. Yeah it didn't look like drowning. It would have looked like someone bobbing up and down, maybe diving to look under water. There were people on the beach sunbathing and playing, they didn't notice. My wife saw and understood what was happening and yelled for help. So she saved my life.

<comment><USER12> What I wonder is, if you don't have any control over your own movements anymore, how likely are you to also drown the person that is trying to save you? Is that something that can happen?

<comment><USER8> From what I've read, it can be common practice to punch the drowning person to stun them and stop flailing limbs.

<comment><USER13> The simplest way to get a drowning person off you is to go down. With your arms at your sides, push up, like the reverse of when you're trying to lunge out of the water. As soon as the drowning person's head goes below water they will let go and you can come back for another attempt.

Don't punch them, it's less effective and can knock them unconscious, which can complicate the rescue.

Source: was a trained and certified lifeguard and swim teacher in my teens.

<comment><USER8> Better source than mine, listen to this guy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. > One way to be sure? Ask them, "Are you alright?" If they can answer at all – > they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 > seconds to get to them. And parents – children playing in the water make > noise. _When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why._

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel like we really have the technology available to prevent a lot of drowning. Maybe it's a sensor worn on the head that can send off an alarm after being submerged for x seconds.

Maybe a drone or fixed cameras running computer vision algorithms.

Those are just some example solutions. I'm sure you could come up with more after giving it some thought. I just would like to see something like this.

Or if nothing else how about public service ads that educate people what to look out for.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have lifeguards. Less sexy (well, in a strictly technology-enthusiastic context), but proven in use.

<comment><USER15> The comments in this thread would suggest otherwise though.

<comment><USER16> Life guards are a lot like teachers, the ratio of eyeballs to swimmers matters. A 100 to 1 ratio is impossible for any one person to track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having almost drowned due to a leg cramp in a crowded pool with a lifeguard just about 4 feet away from me, I can tell you that drowning most definitely does not look like drowning. Especially, when it is a proud/embarrassed teenage who doesn't want to have to be saved in front of a crowd. No one noticed and I made it out on my own, but it could have gone another way very easily.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am eternally grateful to a properly trained triathalon course observer who saw the signs and rescued me.

I was halfway through the swim portion (first segment) of a triathalon that required wetsuits. Coming from warmer climes, I didn't own one so I was fitted for a tri-suit at a pro shop two days before the event. I trained a few times with it in a gym pool to get used to it, and I thought everything was good for race day.

But it turned out it was slightly too tight, and I could not quite inhale sufficiently. Half-way across the Delaware river I remember remarking to myself that the waves were crashing over me; I was spending more time swimming under water than on the surface.

I wasn't terrified, I just felt really weird. It wouldn't make sense - <USER2> this training and I can't keep my head above the water?

I don't remember passing out, but an observer was watching me from a kayak, and he hauled me to a rescue launch. I hadn't inhaled any water, all they had to do was yank open the zipper on my suit.

I guess I turned from blue back to pink and everybody had a good laugh, but I couldn't thank that observer in the kayak enough.

I take a moment every now and then to thank those people who are trained and vigilant, standing station and ready to save us when we least expect it.

</comment><comment><USER19> My sister almost drowned as a 2-year-old kid. She was standing on the bottom of a 5ft pool. From above the surface, she looked like somebody just standing there, seemingly without being in distress. Other people in the swimming pool were making the usual noise, so everything seemed normal. Fortunately, my mom discovered her in time and she alerted me to get her out of the water.

</comment><comment><USER20> For "______ doesn't look like (Hollywood) ______"

See also choking, childbirth, and many others

<comment><USER21> this is a fun game. Let me think.

hypnotism, sex, knockout punches, and computer hacking too

<comment><USER22> Taking a bullet.

<comment><USER23> The naked human body.

Also, New York apartments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Once I went out snorkeling and had a hard time getting back because of the current. I exhausted all my energy trying to fight the current and was really running out of breath while panicking. Even though I had a snorkel, I was afraid I was going to drown since I was really pushing the limit of how fast you can breath through that tube. Fortunately I regained some presence of mind to just relax a little until I calm down and then try a slightly different route.

</comment><comment><USER25> Since this story had significant attention less than a year ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947237)), this repost counts as a duplicate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER26> Yeah. Thought it was a metaphor for startups. Also see: [http://spotthedrowningchild.com/](http://spotthedrowningchild.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not specifically about drowning, but here are some notes on ocean safety when near the shore.

\- Never turn your back to the ocean. You see tourists doing this all the time to pose for pictures, only to get walloped by a wave. This is especially dangerous when venturing out onto rocks or piers.[1]

\- Waves come in sets. About every 7th-10th wave can be much bigger than the other waves. So you may mistakenly think yourself safe near the shore if you base yourself on the last few waves you've seen.

\- One cubic meter of water weighs one ton, so even a smallish wave contains a lot of energy.

\- When swimming, watch out for "shorebreak" or waves that break right on the beach. These can pile-drive you right onto the bottom and knock you out or even break your neck.[2]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwGtU_MlYY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwGtU_MlYY) [2]" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1hQXCVxDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1hQXCVxDw)

</comment><comment><USER28> Neary drowned aged 4 in a lake.

I can vividly remember seeing rusty bikes and other things at the bottom of the lake, yet I cannot remember anything about the person that dived and saved my life.

Best advice I can give you - never turn your back on your children near water. It may sound obvious, but it only takes a split second and they are gone.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the video they mention in the article advanced to the point of the drowning response: [https://youtu.be/X1mVcSUttX4?t=38s](https://youtu.be/X1mVcSUttX4?t=38s)

</comment><comment><USER15> Can any recommend a good video of article about this to post on Facebook and such?

This one is good but I don't think it would work for all the people I know with short attention spans and limited ability to read multiple long paragraphs.

<comment><USER30> As lfowles pointed out elsewhere in comments, a portion of this was turned into a game

[http://spotthedrowningchild.com/](http://spotthedrowningchild.com/)

which still has some of the same text, but with heightened drama and motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Almost drowned in a sea as a kid with my whole family on the beach (none could tell anything was wrong), on the bright side learned to swim dog style on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is from 2010... Useful info, but the post has definitely made its rounds.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great read and I've passed it on, it may come in useful for me or someone I know some day. Just want to ask a few questions: 1-What triggers this response? Are you just swimming casually when all of a sudden this kicks in? 2-For those who have experienced drowning, what stopped you from swimming normally? I've always been a good swimmer and hardly ever had problems in the water. There was one year when I was 9 in a wave pool in Rhodes, there were no more Rubber Rings so I swam in, I was out of my depth and I got hit by a wave I miss timed, and couldn't correct my timing so I started to panic realising I was about to drown, luckily a woman close by saw this and pulled me up...drowning scares the hell out of me.

<comment><USER34> I'm interested in this as well.

I have had a few very close calls, but never had the drowning response, even when severely out of breath and panicking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > 3\. Drowning people _cannot wave for help_. [...]

> 4\. [...] Physiologically, drowning people [...] cannot stop drowning and > perform voluntary movements such as _waving for help_ , [...]

Hmm.

<comment><USER36> Re-worded in a less ambiguous way: "cannot stop drowning _to_ perform voluntary movements such as waving for help".

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality)</comment>


Ubuntu trademark nonsense - <AUTHOR> https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/trademark_nonsense/ <comment><USER2> I didn't realize that there was actually an issue here. Why is there explicit references to Ubuntu there in the first place?</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell asserts that Gates, not Jobs, will be remembered in 50 years - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57449162-71/in-50-years-steve-jobs-will-be-forgotten-gladwell-says/

<comment><USER2> Is this considered a controversial point?

I would have thought that most people would have thought the same thing.

it's really been amazing to see how Bill Gates reputation has rebounded in tech forums in the past 5 years.

5 years ago it would be the rule rather than the exception for Bill to be bad mouthed in tech forums. Now I've noticed that it's mostly the opposite.

My guess is that in 50 years Bill Gates will be more remembered because his achievements will seem alot more amazing that Steve Job's.

Bill will be remembered as the guy who put a computer in every house and then went on to save billions of people.

In 50 years Apple may no longer even exist, it will be much harder for people to remember Jobs as the guy who saved apple and help make computer animated films popular.

<comment><USER3> Not only is it controversial but it's probably wrong. Bill Gates hardly comes up in conversation anymore and Microsoft's relevance is way less than a company of its revenues, product usage and stature should be. I couldn't even name a single thing the Gates Foundation is doing, much less has accomplished. No one will remember desktop computers in 50 years when computing will be all around us (moved ever so far forward by Apple products). Your last sentence is drastically understating the impact Jobs had on multiple massive industries.

<comment><USER4> You can't name a single thing the Gates Foundation has done because you're uninformed and, unfortunately, don't seem to see anything wrong with that.

<comment><USER3> Well, I would consider myself pretty well-informed. But, no, I did not have the Gates Foundation's education and malaria funding top-of-mind. And after some brief research am still not quite sure what the money is going towards and if it is accomplishing much.

<comment><USER4> The Gates Foundation has arguably had more impact on human welfare than any other private organization in history, and yet is still in its early stages. So when you say you know nothing of this work, it suggests a lack of awareness of, and lack of curiosity in, global matters.

 _And after some brief research am still not quite sure what the money is going towards and if it is accomplishing much._

When you follow up with this, it suggests that either your "brief research" was too brief or your research skills are poor.

Now perhaps you've said all this to make a point, but that's not how it comes across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree that Gates and not Jobs will be remembered in 50 years, but for a different reason.

Gates vision of "a computer in every home" made computers a common item in most household in developed countries. People are using computers in their home and offices, where would we be without them.

In the same way people remember the Wright Brothers for planes, Edison for the light bulb (yes, he wasn't the first to invent it, but that's beside the point). Gates will probably be remembered for the personal computer.

If he succeeds with the malaria vaccine, it be just another feather in his cap

<comment><USER3> I don't really associate Bill Gates with "a computer in every home" and in fact it was Steve Jobs and Apple's vision well before Microsoft. And in 50 years I think we are going to be much more aware of "a computer in every pocket" and probably computers everywhere. The whole desktop thing will be quite quaint.

<comment><USER5> Do you have links which says that "a computer in every home" is Jobs' vision? Google search throws up Bill Gates. There is even a plaque for it <http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2184937614/>

Though I believe that there are others who should also be remembered, but I am of the opinion that rightly or wrongly history will remember and associate Gates with computers much like Edison is to lightbulbs, Wright is to planes and Bell is to telephones (this is what kids are still being taught)

<comment><USER3> We will see. Apple made the first widely used home computer and its "computer on every desk" predates Microsoft's "computer on every desk and in every home" (no surprise that Microsoft co-opted Apple's vision here).

I have a hard time believing that someone will be remembered for "computers" when he didn't even make them (same for Gates' involvement for whatever eventually happens with malaria since the one thing for certain is that Gates will not have been the one to eradicate it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This depends on whose memory you are talking about. For leader-types, academics and historians looking to study someone with massive charisma and ambition, it's Jobs they are going to remember. Videos of speeches and interviews will be preserved, and where Jobs and Gates are side by side it's clear that Jobs is the one with the presence.

For everyone else including the general public, it'll probably still be Gates, but Jobs certainly won't be forgotten, if for no other reason than his involvement in Pixar. Pixar's original string of hits (Toy Story{, 2}, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, etc) are definitely going to survive in public consciousness longer than 50 years. The narrative of Pixar itself will probably survive that long as well.

<comment><USER7> One of the videos that will be circulating around for quiet some time is [http://ed.ted.com/lessons/steve-jobs-at-stanford- university-...](http://ed.ted.com/lessons/steve-jobs-at-stanford-university- commencement-2005)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> rprasad wrote:

> You can quibble over whether he donated a dollar or two to some bum > somewhere, but ultimately, Steve Jobs donated less to charity than either of > us.

I don't know how to reply to individual posts, so I'll write in the main thread. Rprasad, you are still assuming many things about Jobs' private attitude in regards to charitable giving. After the New York Times opinion piece that appeared to stir up controversy after Jobs' resignation on Aug. 24, 2011, Bono wrote this as a response:

"Apple has been (RED)'s largest contributor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — giving tens of millions of dollars that have transformed the lives of more than two million Africans through H.I.V. testing, treatment and counseling. This is serious and significant...

You don't have to be a friend of his to know what a private person he is or that he doesn't do things by halves." [1]

What most people don't know when they compare Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is that Jobs' Buddhist beliefs probably influenced the nature of his charitable giving, which is to do it anonymously.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/opinion/bono-praises- steve...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/opinion/bono-praises-steve-jobs- as-generous-and-poetic.html?_r=3)

</comment><comment><USER9> I disagree. Jobs achieved the greatest comeback in business history. He was ousted from his own company, the company almost goes bankrupt, he returns, and with one innovative and wildly successful product after another manages to make it the most valuable company in the world (in terms of market cap).

I don't think this story will be forgotten in 50 years.

I also don't think Gates will be forgotten either in 50 years. Maybe in the much longer term Gates will be remembered more than Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER10> Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross, which provides disaster relief, first aid training, and large amount of the blood that saves people's lives in the US.

I suspect that she is less well known than many historical figures with no humanitarian impact. PT Barnum, Harry Houdini, or Bonnie and Clyde spring to mind.

Gates humanitarian work is commendable. One could make an argument that he is a more important figure in the history of the business of computing than Steve Jobs.

But I doubt that merit or rational argument will determine who will be remembered in 50 years.

Steve Jobs is a compelling character. His life is a colorful, primal and enthralling story. He said interesting things, in an interesting way. He will be remembered long after the guy who spent a lot of money to eliminate a disease that people will not be dying from.

Fair? No. Likely? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's somewhat odd that folks are suddenly measuring greatness along the dimension of philanthropy and forgetting that people who make history come in all shapes and sizes--good, bad, greedy, selfless, originals, remixers, creators of that which has fallen and creators of that which is still with us. To suggest that Jobs won't be with us simply because he didn't donate to charity is to forget a great number of reasons why people are remembered.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have for the last few years personally thought about this many times over.

I am from India and understand the problems that Bill Gates is trying to help solve, with his money, management skills and time.

I am a tech fan-boy and love good gadgets, I work hard to earn and buy a gadget. But people like me are minority. And moreover those gadgets die in 3 years flat.

For countries like ours, it is crucial to solve the socioeconomic problems and head towards a better tomorrow. In that respect what Bill Gates has been doing, has inspired me to think differently. He has made capitalism also look much better (I come from communist backgrounds). You earn and then you give back, the way you want to, where you want to.

Having an impact on actual living conditions of people is far more important than building better OS with a Metro UI or even a better phone with dual cores.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, a software baron in the same league as Pablo Escobar, who made billions in shady ways and tried to clean his name giving it all away, will be remembered more than a guy who was a living god among artists, creators, marketers and geeks?

Sure you can buy a couple of pages in history, a billion a piece, but your tarnished reputation won't wash away easily, no matter how many vaccines you fund or how many shills to down vote me you pay.

You can spend all your money buying a heaven but that won't make you a saint.

<comment><USER14> This is moronic. You're suggesting that Gates' work to eradicate malaria is worth less than Steve Jobs being worshipped among creative people? This kind of stupidity is prevalent among those who have never seen poverty in life.

I didn't downvote you because I respect your opinion, but I think you're dead wrong.

<comment><USER13> Have you seen poverty? Do you know where I live? Do you know how much money I have? Do you know what I had for lunch today? You don't. You won't win this fight so you better put the gloves down.

Back to the original idea of the post, you can't glorify a man who has ruined countless lives amassing a fortune with unethical practices, perhaps not illegal, but morally reprehensive no matter how you look at bribery, strong arming, patent trolling, fudding, and many more vicious ways of making money while keeping your competitors at bay, going bankrupt, and erasing them from their path to world domination.

So now that I have billions to boot and I will be remembered like a ruthless extortionist I decide to clean up my name and contract the greatest PR firm who tells me to give it all away in the most humane way possible, curing people, and paying bold headlines every time my "charitable donations" solve a third world problem.

Look pal, I don't know you and neither Gates nor Jobs put food on my table so fuck them all, but don't tell me I don't know poverty for I have seen the ugly innards of the beast and Saint Gates won't get me out of here, thanks but save your compassion.

Don't talk about stupidity if you can't even grasp the meaning of ignorance.

\----

Please accept my apologies if I offended you, this stupid fight won't make us better persons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Both Bill and Steve are class individuals right in their own accord and have changed the world for ever in their own ways.

They haven't (and shouldn't) base their life's actions on what will be remembered some indefinite time after their death but on what their calling is; on their existential view of the world and their purpose in it.

Since their actions are not optimized on how to be remembered the most, I think it is naive for us to try to predict it and while doing so, judging two highly accomplished individuals in the same scale. There is no absolute scale of who is better. It is all relative. We would all do better trying to focus on our purpose and calling in our existential view of the world and acknowledge others'.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can watch the video here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyL9H4wJ0VE&feature=share](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyL9H4wJ0VE&feature=share) (I recommend it).

This statement is part of a larger Entrepreneurship discussion

</comment><comment><USER17> some weeks ago i got talked into setting up the internet connection on windows vista machine (of a friend) - a very simple task i though. it was a horrible and unbelievable stupid experience. it took me two hours(!!!)

according to a quick google at least 88 000 000 windows vista copies had been sold. i expect that at least (and on average) every vista user had run into a similar issue at least once (probably more often, but lets calculate with "just once").

this means at least 176000000 hours have been wasted in a similar fashion. that's 7333333.33333333 days or 20091.324200913 years. well, if we calculate with a life expectancy of 70 years, this means that this was the life time of 287 people.

well, i think with this track recoded, yeah, bill gates will be remembered.

<comment><USER18> Not everyone is as inexperienced as you are in Windows Vista networking. Just because it took you two hours to figure out something, doesn't mean that it is the same thing for everyone.

<comment><USER19> I've put a lot of time into making a home network with both Vista and XP. It's near impossible. I'm not dumb, Windows is dumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> False dichotomy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Probably not Ritchie, either.

</comment><comment><USER22> Everyone remembers Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Stanfurd because of their generous acts. Nobody remembers their almost-as-successful, but far less generous competitors.

To date, Bill Gates has donated more money to charity than _Steve Jobs was ever worth._ Steve Jobs...has donated less money to charity than your average churchgoer.

<comment><USER23> Oh so you have Jobs' personal finance records? That's amazing! And you're breaking the news here on HN of all places!

Okay but seriously, you don't have a clue what Jobs did with his money and neither do I. So there's no point speculating.

<comment><USER24> According to the NYT "there is no public record of Mr. Jobs giving money to charity" ([http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of- steve-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-jobss- public-giving/)).

Giving publicly is important if you want to be remembered for your charitable work.

<comment><USER23> Right. Wanting to be remembered is just as selfish of an act as attaching your name to a donation.

Whether Jobs donated anonymously or didn't donate at all, I can respect him so much more for not chasing attention and approval.

<comment><USER25> So you're completely discounting the value of Gates attempting to inspire others to give- particularly other rich people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, all the attention around Jobs was pretty much fanboyism, and it was more of a fad that arose from the iPhone/iPad. In 50 years, there will be another fad with another face on it for fanboys to obsess over, while at the same time, Gates' philanthropic contributions will be remembered as the model billionaire.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's funny when people who won't be remembered at all try to detract from the legacies of great people.

Okay not funny, just stupid.

Gladwell has joined the ranks of those who make ridiculous statements about things they are ignorant of just to grab headlines.</comment>


19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands - <AUTHOR> http://mimimatthews.com/2015/09/28/19th-century-marriage-manuals-advice-for-young-husbands/ <comment><USER2> Call me old fashioned, but as a father and husband I do try to act this way: "He should always be ready to sacrifice his present personal pleasure to the future well-being of those who have the first and best claim to his regard."

<comment><USER3> "The same law which imposes upon the husband the duty of supporting his wife, gives him a general and paramount claim to her obedience."

I bet you don't get this bit in return.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't "claim obedience" from anyone, but I definitely think that (masculine) integrity inspires (feminine) loyalty. I'm not just talking about sexual loyalty, but loyalty of support and confidence. I have on multiple occasions thought about this dynamic and find it really interesting (protection/nurturing).

I think it has something to do with women's superior empathetic qualities. It seems to me like (often, in my own relationships) a woman wants to be inspired by/confident in my aspirations and judgement.

Obviously this doesn't encompass all relationships or people and I probably tend to attract women who reinforce my own qualities, so YMMV, but it's interesting to think about.

<comment><USER5> Primate authority comes from (at least) two methods or paths, dominance and prestige. I guess if you want a bad one line summary, dominance is management or in its more extreme form its like an overseer with a whip vs prestige is leadership or in its more extreme form its like hero worship. Because of long term memory for revenge purposes, and easy to use lethal weapons have been invented, prestige is way more important for humans than most any other animal, although some animals do use prestige signalling, just none quite as much as people. The animal world is mostly dominance ordered.

Anyway, grand op is claiming prestige signaling isn't going to provide results (which is incredibly unlikely in a human pack; maybe a wolf pack, sure, or if the human participants are doin it wrong or are crazy, sure) and you're claiming prestige signalling usually leads to prestige results, so op is wrong and you're right but it doesn't matter because you're talking past each other on separate topics. Ironically it doesn't matter because as you correctly point out, dominance and prestige results are more or less the same most of the time.

The hundred year old manual is talking something totally different from both of you, that there's a moral or ethical need for both results to be exactly identical or else things are going to get unpleasant because prestige means are generally way more pleasant than dominance means. She can either play along with her side of the prestige strategy or unfortunately the dominance strategy will inevitably end up getting played and that's no fun.

Assuming its your responsibility to water the horses, you properly lead a horse to water and it refuses to drink, that's just not going to be fun for anyone involved, it really is the horses job or duty to drink after its been properly led. Note its not just leadership, its leadership with the positive adjectives applied; no fair weaseling out on the obedience obligation due to poor leadership excuses if by the very definition of the claim it only follows from good leadership.

Good luck defining good leadership.

There's also some civilization wide social contract philosophy about good leadership inherently being owed obedience by the nature of the leadership being good, and no other justification is necessary assuming the leadership is good, blah blah blah, all kind of in opposition to the concept of the divine right of kings and hereditary monarchy. To some extent this is the moral justification of democracy, you have to obey the good leader you selected, assuming its not all a sham like modern elections, etc. And this is just applying that large scale societal stuff to a tiny family, for better or worse. This makes it a scaling problem and HN loves scaling problems.

<comment><USER4> So much content. Yeah, I've read a bit about the idea that good leadership inherently being owed obedience in the form of evolved social contracts (Pinker's books and "Sex At Dawn", can't remember the author's name..).

but fucking lol:

> This makes it a scaling problem and HN loves scaling problems.

Yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The early Victorian era saw the greatest separation between the roles of the sexes in Western culture (they even had rooms for men and rooms for women), and is the source of modern sexism -- a notion which is often misunderstood by many (and viewed as accusatory, even though it is merely descriptive). At the core of Victorian sexism lies the notion (which had not been so pronounced, or well-formulated before) that women are to be treated well -- adored even -- but completely removed from all power. Their activities were to be limited to the domestic sphere (although that started slowly changing in the late 1840s), which was their domain. As this document says, a woman is to be well-treated, and even indulged -- but matters of importance are left for the husband alone. To this day, this is the core of most lines of feminism, and a cause of confusion to those who don't understand what modern sexism means. Some confuse sexism with misogyny -- which is disdain towards women -- while the two are separate. Sexism (at least in modern times) is a feature of a society where women are kept away from power, regardless of how respectfully they are treated. This is our heritage from the Victorian era.

As time went by, laws and traditions have changed as they always do -- slowly but surely -- and sexism (as well as racism) has become less overt and clear, but much of the essence -- less power for women -- sadly remains to this day (and this, too, will change, slowly but surely).

<comment><USER7> I never viewed sexism this way. But now that I am taking this perspective I can't help but notice how some to many women play a part in this as well. To put it a bit blunt and simplified: a considerable amount of women want to be treated like a princess. I guess those type of fantasies are an exaggeration of how a woman should've been treated in the early Victorian era. Another variant that I have experienced is the (partially) subconscious behaviour that women want to be dependent on males, but they don't want males to depend on them. If these cultural notions of dependence and being treated to the point of being (almost) spoiled don't go away, then a form of modern sexism will always exist.

Note/nuance: I'm just stating the contribution of women here, because I've never thought about it this way. Males contribute to modern sexism as well in obvious ways (to me).

Edit: could down votes be explained? A down vote is not enough feedback for me to adapt my posting behaviour.

<comment><USER6> One of the basic things to understand in sociology and social psychology is that what people want is often shaped by what they are encouraged to want (and it's very easy to make people want something, as verified in psychology experiments). This is why modern feminism doesn't concentrate on the "want". Not because it's not important (it's very important!), but because it's hard to separate cause and effect, especially under an unequal distribution of power. We only look at the result: how power is distributed, and _assume_ that people don't "inhernetly" want to have less power than others, as that would mean letting others determine their lives. Of course, this assumption could be wrong, but so far there is no evidence that is the case. Consequently, feminism is not concerned with who "contributes" what to sexism (it is easy to make people want to be subjugated; can they later be said to be contributing to their own subjugation?). Sexism is an objective state of society, not a specific behavior (misogyny is), and when we say that some action is sexist we mean that it contributes to sexism; the action itself can be completely free of any ill intent.

<comment><USER7> I agree with the ideas you stated about social psychology & sociology. What people want is shaped by other people their encouragement. Thanks for stating it, I'm noticing I have a lot of implicit assumptions lying around there.

So it is indeed hard to separate cause and effect, I'm wondering if we need to, since cause and effect might go both ways here in a feedback loop. I'm very inclined to believe this myself (one of my implicit assumptions, perhaps even a bias). Cultural notions reinforces what people want, which reinforce the culture. So allowing to reframe yourself to want something different is definitely a course of action that one could take. As is changing other people their behavior (although it has some really difficult challenges IMO, it's easier to change yourself in my experience).

'feminism is not concerned with who "contributes" what to sexism' <\-- do you mean all forms of feminism? Or just the 3rd wave? I have the feeling that there are forms of feminism that do look at this, since various feminist views can also disagree with each other (2nd wave vs 3rd wave for example). I wouldn't know which forms of feminism do look at this though, it's more of a heuristic: since there are so many forms of feminism there must be a few of them doing this.

"can they later be said to be contributing to their own subjugation?" <\-- Perhaps I have a different idea of what "contribution" means. Even if someone would be brainwashed and completely programmed to destroy the world, then IMO that person would still contribute to destroying the world if acted towards that goal. I do acknowledge that the initial intent was never there and this person was completely reprogrammed (assume a The Matrix scenario, where someone is plugged in and reprogrammed). Nevertheless, a non-intentional behaviour is still a contribution. Even zombies contribute to cultural notions of society (if they'd exist). So I don't think it's the person's fault for being this way, it's the fault of the programmer. But if the person (now destroyer of the world) would realize this and try to stop it, that would be great.

A pragmatic form of feminism that I have experienced myself is that feminists need to take care of their own personal development. This also means that people who are aware of sexist actions and view the need to change it, need to change themselves if they have habits conforming to old views. In that sense, feminism is concerned with who contributes (behaviorally) to sexism, because it gives a lense to look within oneself to change behaviour contributing to sexism. Knowing your gender role and in which way you conform to it is a handy tool to have in general for self-reflection.

"and when we say that some action is sexist we mean that it contributes to sexism; the action itself can be completely free of any ill intent." <\-- Thanks for the clarification. I do admit that my understanding of sexism is not as laser focused as I'd like it to be.

<comment><USER6> > do you mean all forms of feminism? Or just the 3rd wave?

Different forms of feminism differ in their views on specific issues, not on the basic idea that women are allotted less power in society. Differences stem from various sources. One is historical or circumstantial: when women were overtly discriminated against by the law, targets and priorities were clearer. Another is awareness: leaders of movements for change always tend to be among those who are relatively most powerful in their group. They can therefore be blind to the plight of those who are qualitatively less powerful than them. Yet another is that inherent difficulty in interpreting wishes in a society which shapes them. I'll just note that some anti-feminist views that try to simplify things, say stuff like, why not just assume that everyone has free will and everyone's choices are equally free? The answer to that is that research has clearly shown this is not the case.

> Even if someone would be brainwashed and completely programmed to destroy > the world, then IMO that person would still contribute to destroying the > world if acted towards that goal.

Absolutely, but there is no clear programmer and programmed. We are all equally programmers and programs, and equally "emotionally" innocent of the situation. Everyone, of course, is responsible for their own actions, but they're actions at once are shaped by others' and shape others'. The only relevant distinction is that some have power and some don't, and as change is better carried out by those with power, they carry most of the responsibility. OTOH, those with power, of course, are less interested in changing the situation. Not just because they don't want to yield power, but also because they don't see the problem.

> A pragmatic form of feminism that I have experienced myself is that > feminists need to take care of their own personal development.

Of course, and this, BTW, is something that often gets them a lot of scorn. But it is important to realize that change is only accomplished when those who work for it attain enough power. That power could be in numbers or in changing the mind of the powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord The destruction of Western society's moral backbone through the degeneration of traditional marriage such that the Victorian account reads anachronistic to a modern reader, is, I'd venture, a relatively positive development. The conception of traditional marriage that cruder familialists and social conservatives promote then is not really that traditional, nor divinely enshrined.

<comment><USER8> A good sentiment, though I'd quibble about the use of the word "moral" here. It's a shame there isn't better developed terminology, but the social norms and standards of the Victorian elite were quite far from anything I would term moral. Selfish, oppressive, iniquitous, abusive, racist, hypocritical, and worse. This was the culture that spawned and supported numerous physical and cultural genocides against native populations around the world. The culture that was so iniquitous it gave rise to the backlash of Marxism and totalitarian communism which had such a disastrous impact on humanity in the 20th century.

<comment><USER9> The noble savage is another Victorian invention.

The Victorians can hardly be singled out for conquering and enslavement, given that was pretty much the norm for human history to that point. Victorians are saints compared to roman times, and the Romans themselves were honourable compared to what went before.

<comment><USER10> Actually, the concept is most often associated with Rousseau in the 18th century. What the Victorian era had as an advantage was steam powered printing presses to spread uniform cultural concepts (regardless of their veracity or value) over broader areas more quickly. I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that.

<comment><USER11> And an empire with the world's largest military, ruled by a despotic aristocracy which had made most of its money from slavery, drug running, and land + resource grabs in distant countries.

"Moral" is perhaps not quite the most apt word.

>I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that.

We haven't. The product has become American Neoliberal Capitalism instead of British Imperial Capitalism, but it's now sold on the Internet and through Hollywood and the media just as aggressively as the Victorians promoted their idea of culture to the world.

<comment> barry-cotter > And an empire with the world's largest military, ruled by a despotic > aristocracy which had made most of its money from slavery, drug running, and > land + resource grabs in distant countries.

Calling the ruling class of the British Empire a despotic aristocracy is a very big stretch, or better a contradiction. Despotic regimes have non- existent or vestigial aristocracies, e.g. the Ottoman Empire or most Chinese dynasties. The Russian Empire had an aristocracy had what looked kind of like a Western European aristocracy but a service nobility functions very differently from one where the nobility have independent power bases. For much more on this Francis Fukuyuma's "The Origins of Political Order" is excellent. In brief there are three political classes in pre-modern societies, the monarch, the high nobility and the gentry/bourgeoisie. The peasantry are irrelevant because they can't coordinate so their numbers are moot. A strong civil society with rule of law that binds the king/state as well as other actors emerged only in Western Europe. If the law binds the king he's no despot, and it did. In Britain, Scandinavia and the Netherlands the king allied with the gentry, in France and Iberia, with the nobility but their power was constrained.

Imperialism did contribute to the power of these states, more to the noble class than the country as a whole but it was not where that power ultimately came from. It came from growth in economic productivity and the organisational capability it made possible. The British Empire was not planned, it was the product of absurdly huge differences in capability. It was acquired over centuries by men on the spot chasing personal glory and advancement.

This is not to deny the slavery, drug running and land and resource grabs but they are frankly secondary. The Royal Navy was _the_ force behind the destruction of the slave trade. The British parliament abolished slavery within the British Empire over the protests of some very rich and well connected domestic interests. The opium trade and the immiseration of India were enormous crimes but the capability preceded the crimes and was only possible because of it. Britain's wealth was not built on the Empire, it was built on trade, commerce and industry.

<comment><USER12> Excellent comment. While the American revolution and American Civil War is well known[1], the British Civil War and the Glorious Revolution are probably not given the attention they deserve. If you look closely at history, you can see similar patterns: despotic monarchs run out of money, give more power to the nobles in return for taxation rights. Nobles use their new power to restrict the absolute powers of the monarch and then the monarch and nobles struggle. Britain was the one country where the nobles were successful in restricting the absolute power of the monarch and continued the tradition of sharing power, bringing democracy to Western Europe after a long time.

Anyway, that was completely off topic. I agree that the British Empire, while most certainly not the most moral or fair, cannot be characterized as despotic.

[1]: Perhaps I hear more about it because I currently live in the US. Not sure about how popular that part of history is in the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An interesting thing about marriage is that no matter who earns wages it is ultimately an economic partnership.

Someone must keep the living space clean, someone must obtain food, etc. If there are children, someone must care for them.

Because of this, when marriage is freely chosen, it typically starts out as equal. Both participants have roughly equal costs and benefits, and are both happy with the exchange of value.

But time changes things. Wages often increase, looks often decline, personalities evolve. Profound setbacks occur as loved ones get sick or die, careers suffer failures and successes, etc.

Most people are morally average, of average attractiveness and average intellect. Most have an average work ethic, average level of discipline, and average level of fortitude.

Life stretches most people beyond their endowment in many areas. We lie or deceive, we get lazy, we get complacent, we give up, we cheat, we fail to observe data without significant and harmful bias, we let life happen, our faces take on a habitual grimace that becomes permanent as our skin's elasticity diminishes.

For a marriage to work long term it must be resilient to this abundant averageness and the inevitable decay that occurs over time... when the weak or neglected parts of the mechanism start to falter.

The question is, should a marriage work long term? Is it a failure when it does not? What if it lasts 10 years, or 20, or even 5? Should it not have occurred?

We marry because we are the primates with dogged optimism about pair bonds. We seek another who will provide us with the validation or the comfort that we seek, and who will dull the harshness of the world in some specific way that we consider most wanting and most sacred.

Even the gay marriage debate, for all the focus on equality, is fundamentally about the symbolism of the pair bond and its primacy in our primate society. We are herd animals, and the minimum viable herd size is two.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article:

        > Indeed, in many conservative religious denominations,
        > the same tenets are echoed today.

While I'm not going to claim I hold the same tenets as a book I've never read, I guess that I'm in one of the "conservative religious denominations" which the author is indicating here. I can certainly see some resemblance between a few of the examples cited from the book and my current (religiously-inspired) views on marriage.

However, one thing I'd like to explicitly disclaim is the notion that there is any prescriptive support in the Bible for the victorian-era idea that wives should be Doormat Debbies, as alluded to throughout this article.

The most often-cited passage in this regard is Ephesians 5:22-24...

        Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do
        to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife
        as Christ is the head of the church, his body,
        of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits
        to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands
        in everything.

If this is all you know of "Christian marriage philosophy", please take the time to inform yourself. I'd suggest you find someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage and ask them how this passage specifically plays out in their married life. (Hint: If the passage is truly being followed, what you will find is anything but a bully of a man and a brow-beaten woman)

<comment><USER15> Perhaps a problem is that this passage tends to be the most taught marriage- related passage in the evangelical churches and para-church organizations I've attended?

One can make many cases for models of Biblical marriage (David, a "man after God's own heart" was polygamous. This is not spoken against in the Bible, but his adultery with another man's wife was condemned. To me, this is implicit support.)

One can also talk about whether Jesus himself would have supported Paul's interpretation and writings about marriage. I tend to find their respective teachings disharmonious.

Paul very much believed in the order of things, and in authority. And in this case (as in the case of master/slave relationships!), the man has authority. Both masters and husbands have obligations to use their authority kindly, but Paul did not decry the authority of one individual over another.

So yes, in the most common interpretation of evangelical Pauline Christianity (i.e. that practiced in Heartland America), the men are not bullies, but they do possess power and authority over women, and I think this power is the thing liberals and humanists take issue with.

<comment><USER16> The Torah allows polygamy.

Ashkenazi Jews(descendant of those living in Germany around 900 or so AD many of whom later move east to Poland, Ukraine, and Russia) banned polygamy around ~1000 AD.

I think it mostly died down in Sephardic and Yemeni after most of them moved to the Israel but I'm not sure if it was that common before that time.

<comment><USER17> Even when permitted it was very rare.

For one thing only the very wealthy could afford it - each wife was required to have her own house (separate rooms in one house was not enough).

For the most part it was practiced mainly by traveling businessmen/salesmen who would have a wife in each city where they worked. (Don't forget how slow and long travel used to be.)

The main reason for permitting it is that historically males died more often than females, so there is a small surplus of females, and permitting a small amount of polygamy helps with that.

It's no longer relevant these days.

<comment><USER18> As an insurance student, let me just point out male mortality is still considered higher than female mortality (hence higher premium rates for men). Though i have no numbers if the world has more females than males right now

<comment><USER19> There's female infanticide and gender-biased abortions to more than balance higher male mortality in lots of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My parents have a pretty Biblical marriage in a number of ways. It's beautiful and has made me wish I believed in that doctrine just in order to have something like that. They believe, much like the article/manual states, that the man is the head of the household. However, he always consults the woman and in caring for her, does not make decisions that are harmful to her or cause her distress. Obviously it's not an either-or scenario, but it seems to work much better than other marriages I've seen where both people are so focused on what they want for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER21> I prefer Lina Wertmüller version of male/female co-existence: : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_Away_(1974_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_Away_\(1974_film\))

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it interesting that books written ~100 years ago are now considered out dated and in many instances plain wrong, yet hundreds of millions of people think we should follow a book written 2000 years ago to the letter.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sexism 101.</comment>


A Python Substitute? I Tried the Best Programming Language You've Never Heard Of - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-programming/a-python-substitute-i-tried-out-the-best-programming-language-youve-never-heard-of-9e29cd1893c0 <comment><USER2> This is the actual blog post title but it is clickbait. Also this is HN - people have heard of Nim.

I don't want to have to click through to know what the language comparison is.

<comment><USER3> I was actually curious at first and then I was like ah shit here we go again "NiM : the python killer", it for real is not by any means gonna be able to replace python given the stark difference in usage atm in addition to Nim's inadequete marketing and advocacy present right now. Just doesn't add up.

<comment><USER4> I feel the opposite: Nim is overmarketed here on HN, just like D.

It's marketed as a modern systems programming language, but I don't see any benchmark comparision with C/C++/Rust on language benchmark shootout.

As for me I selected Julia from the language benchmark shootout as my to go programming language, and I'm not looking back (Rust/C++ are a bit too level for my needs, but I still need performance).

<comment><USER5> > I don't see any benchmark comparision with C/C++/Rust on language benchmark > shootout.

Funnily enough this is because the author of that benchmark outright refuses to include new languages such as Nim.

<comment><USER4> That's so sad :(

I learned a lot from the benchmarks themselves. Somebody could just fork it if it's not well maintained, but I know that it's extra work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question of it being "clickbait" aside, I find the title a bit odd. I can't see any language that "You've Never Heard Of" as being a possible Python substitute. In my mind, one of the single largest reasons for using Python is how ubiquitous it is and how large the community is.

Virtually any question or problem I run into with Python's core libraries or language features is answered in detail by the first Google result. It's getting rare to not find a reasonably well documented Python binding for any given library, and many projects have official Python bindings. It's almost trivial to find an example of how to do virtually anything in Python.

Any language could be argued as an _alternative_ to Python, but very few can be a _substitute_ for it given the scale of investment and mind-share Python has.

<comment><USER7> This. Python is a genuine great choice for so many disciplines as well. If I have a ML project, then need to make a web app around it, and want to manage my environment, Python is a genuinely great language for _all_ of those needs all at the same time.

Great as they may be in their own domains, you can't say that about Julia, Nim, Matlab etc.

Just JavaScript transpiring seem A bit lacking atm, then it is complete...

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with Julia here? Its webservers and web app packages are pretty amazing. I just moved everything from a mixture of Ruby and Python over to various forms of it and have had far less issues. I think the testing and the "one language stack" culture of Julia leads to more robust software and you can fairly clearly see it in the general-purpose areas.

<comment><USER7> Nothing _wrong_ with Julia, and likely my knowledge of it is outdated. But my point is, Python ranks, in popularity, quality and appropriateness, as a top choice for so many categories of SE. It's not like a, say, good scientific programming language with an also surprisingly good web front end. Not sure you would say that about Julia, for lack of popularity if nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like Nim uses let and var to declare immutable and mutable variables. I prefer this to var and val in Scala

That's also how Swift does it too.

Throw in type inference and statically typed languages look much nicer.

Swift uses C style braces, while Nim seems to use white space like Python.

<comment><USER10> I wish languages used let to mean a lazily evaluated named expression. Then you can define all your terms that can depend on other lets and only the ones needed in the executed code path get executed once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nim is my "scripting" language of choice for any quick tools I write. Just today I needed to do some data exploration on a 1 million line CSV file. No formal data analysis, just needed to understand the shape of the data and answer a few questions. Writing the script was easy thanks to Nim's nice syntax and big standard library. My most complex query finished in a minute, most of my queries took less than 20 seconds to complete. This is all unoptimized code using the garbage collector and idiomatic language features. Nim isnt without its faults, but it is a seriously underrated language.

<comment><USER12> The problem with examples like this is that simple FileIO operations are optimized across all languages. It would likely have similar speed in very naive unoptimized Python.

Here is an example:

Given `create_csv.py`:

      with open("output.csv", "w") as csv_file:
        for i in range(1_000_001):
          csv_file.write(",".join([str(i)] * 100))  # creating 100 columns per entry out of a million
          csv_file.write("\n")

and `search_csv.py`:

      import sys

      for row in open("output.csv"):
        if "1000000" in row.split(","):
          print(row)
          break
      else:
        sys.exit("row 1 million not found!")

With the first script creating a 1 million line csv with each row containing 100 columns, and the second one being a worse case search (has to make it all the way to last row, has to search every column). The performance is better than what you mentioned on commodity hardware, very unoptimized Python code, and default Python3 installation:

time python3 create_csv.py

      real    0m3.267s
      user    0m2.589s
      sys     0m0.608s

time python3 search_csv.py

1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000,1000000

      real    0m6.132s
      user    0m5.954s
      sys     0m0.162s

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nah man, i've tried Nim. it's meh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Would be cool to hear your thoughts: what was meh about it? Lack of tooling maybe?

<comment><USER3> yes exactly plus there are some things not about the language itself but the whole foundation backing it up, it lacks marketing and advocacy. It looks appealing but given that lack of marketing and popularity, it needs to have A LOT OF advantages to still be considered a contender in mainstream production environments which it fails to achieve since it doesn't really have a whole lot of advantages to it ( I'm just saying there aren't as many to back up for the flaws of it's foundation ). Hence, I don't dislike Nim at all but I don't find it good either, I find it alright.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I completely get that. Was talking to a core dev today and he mentioned the limited tooling/ecosystem. It doesn't help when you're a competitor of either very well-established languages or ones that are backed by big corporations (e.g. Go)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Bypass the paywall with this link: [https://medium.com/better- programming/a-python-substitute-i-...](https://medium.com/better- programming/a-python-substitute-i-tried-out-the-best-programming-language- youve-never-heard- of-9e29cd1893c0?source=friends_link&sk=61b12cfd6456f992013ba61e710efc72)

<comment><USER13> Or just disable Javascript. On Medium, you get a great experience doing this, because it disables what I call the "progressive degradation" strategy set up on Medium. This allows the "graceful enhancement" strategy to kick in. See how images and text render perfectly without JS.

I've already said this here, but progressive degradation is a great strategy going like this: you start with a sane and nice baseline, and then add crap to that for supported browsers and configurations.

You can be thankful to Medium for adopting this technique, because if everybody did that, you'd get a perfect Web by just blocking Javascript on anything that is supposed to be a freaking document. Please lobby for this. The team behind Medium might even be secretly doing this on purpose but don't tell their boss.

<comment><USER14> I use the same trick, the problem is in this case the code examples don't work, you need to unblock JS for a moment.</comment></comment></comment>


Depression Quest – a text-based game - <AUTHOR> http://www.depressionquest.com/

<comment><USER2> "This video does not exist."

<comment><USER3> The link to play the game still works, though. I'm guessing the video was just promotional material, so I'm not flagging like I normally would for a page with broken content.

A lot of people have been flagging, though, and it is now just one flag away from getting killed.

<comment><AUTHOR> My fault for not checking the video (I knew this site for some time and didn't check it now - especially as I expected people to go straight to "Play"). Would it be to bad to repost it, providing a direct link to the game ([http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html](http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html))?

EDIT: OK, I did it ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9875014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9875014)), with a full disclaimer.</comment></comment></comment>


Multiple Brazilian sites are down due to a DNSSEC issue on .com.br - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/danielcid/status/1290366704711692288 <comment><USER2> It appears to be working fine now. I would like to read a postmortem to know what could cause this kind of problem. It propagated real fast and in a few minutes all DNS servers I tried to query aren't responding to br domains.</comment>


Clojure's Concurrency Types: Refs, Atoms, Agents, and Vars (video) - <AUTHOR> http://blip.tv/baltimorefp/clojure-s-concurrency-types-refs-atoms-agents-and-vars-5935562 <comment><USER2> Hey, there's a better quality one here: <http://vimeo.com/36245706>

I know, because I uploaded it :-)</comment>


The Death of George Floyd, in Context - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-death-of-george-floyd-in-context <comment><AUTHOR> I thought the lack of discussion of one of the more pressing matters of our time continues to be an expression of privilege for HN.

Perhaps there are ways that tech / vc / others here can help.

<comment><USER2> While I find this case, and other similar crimes committed by the US police, appalling... It's not a new phenomenon, does not gratify my intellectual curiosity, and I've already heard about this in the TV news.

The HN guidelines are good, and they have been followed here.

If you have something more to say about this, perhaps write a blog post and share that here.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: I am letting people on the Internet control my life - <AUTHOR> I had this crazy idea of people voting on Instagram on what I should do and do whatever is voted the most.
First thing was whether I should quit my job and pursue my ideas full time or stay at my job and pursue my ideas in the free time. 52% voted the former and I quit my job.
Now i'll put up every major decision as a poll and do whatever is voted the most while recording the entire journey.
It'll be cool if you guys can participate too.
Instagram - https://instagram.com/fullofsid <comment><USER2> Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not?

Just a fun little experiment, nothing to lose :)

<comment><USER2> Nothing to lose... until the majority vote says to do something illegal or destructive. Even when George Costanza decided to "do the opposite" there was a logical explanation for it. I realize that's an example from fiction but I don't think it's valid to simply say "Why not?" \-- it's not a reason but a statement of surrender or indifference to your own ability to make rational decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> They decision is taken on the options I give them. If I give an option that is illegal or destructive that'd be my stupidity</comment></comment></comment></comment>


For those that build web applications, do you use a framework - <AUTHOR>

I build PHP applications and have yet to use a framework. However, I am greatly considering to start. I was wondering what the general opinions here about using an existing framework. <comment><USER2> I never used to but I tend to for all but the simplest of things these days. I personally use CodeIgniter because I like how it stays out of my way.

Be aware though that CI tends to be looked down upon in a similar way to how PHP itself is. I like it (and it has good docs), but if you use it be prepared to be the lowest of the low :)

</comment><comment><USER3> We CakePHP on our flagship product, which is a government level enterprise application.

I used to use codeigniter, but there are too many things that (in my opinion) should be done for you, that you have to do yourself.

Codeigniter is a great first framework also. Much easier to pick up than CakePHP, or Zend.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd definitely recommend CodeIgniter with the Data Mapper ORM, I've tried others (Cake, Zend, etc) and CI seems to be the only one that never over- complicates things.

For me it's about getting shit done, I'm too busy to worry about being looked down on by Zend users :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Existing frameworks remove a lot of the problems that come with attempting to roll your own code all the time. From security to just making things simpler.

I would suggest usually using a framework when you can.

</comment><comment><USER6> I always use either a framework or a CMS that's a framework, like Wordpress with Thematic. Every time I get involved in a project that has no framework (and too low of a budget) I regret it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So far we have 1 recommendation to use a framework, and 1 recommendation to use KohanaPHP IF you choose to use a framework. Any other recommendations or thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER7> For PHP, I recommend KohanaPHP. I've played with it, and it appears to be the most complete framework I've examined.

<comment><USER8> Same here.

It does have an issue I find significant, which is the Views being a mix of logic and templating. I find this messy and contrary to the original MVC pattern, since it pushes too much presentation code to the controller (it has to decide what formats to present the data in, for example).

But with KOstache[1], a Kohana module, you get your real Views again, along with logicless maintainable Mustache templates. Win/win.

[1]: <https://github.com/zombor/KOstache>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks. I have downloaded and am messing around with Kohana now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> CakePHP is really quite nice. I've used CodeIgniter, Zend and several others, Cake is still my favorite.</comment>


Amazon's first bookstore in New York City sucks the joy out of buying books - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/990164/amazons-first-bookstore-in-new-york-city-sucks-the-joy-out-of-buying-books/ <comment><USER2> > The shelves are tidy, because the books are placed with their covers facing > out

Spine-out doesn't facilitate browsing, so I can't see why this is a bad thing. More books doesn't equate more options or a better experience.

> and prominently featuring the opinions of exemplary randos.

Fantastically dismissive, but the book buyer is also a "rando," so it's a useful metric.

> The store selection is populist, elevating aggregate user ratings; the > author's name is, notably, the smallest thing on each card.

The only problem I see is that it doesn't need to be there at all. It's prominently featured on the cover of the actual book, right above the card.

</comment><comment><USER3> They've had one of these stores for a while at the Washington Square mall in a suburb of Portland Oregon. I entered it exactly once.

As you walk in the first thing you see is a sign that says, more or less: "all books are list price unless you're an Amazon Prime member". Which is not something that influences me in a positive way. They're basically saying I need to pay them $99/year to shop there.

Not that I'd want to shop there. I just don't see the point. As this article notes, there is very very little physical inventory. You can play with Kindles. Maybe that's the point?

<comment><USER4> Window shop at amazon store, buy on walmart.com (which now has free shipping over $35 with no membership). Oh how the tables have turned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > clutter that mirrors Amazon's own site

Amazon has never managed to come anywhere close to the joy and value of accidental discovery that you can have from browsing the categorized shelves at a well-stocked bookstore, or better yet a university library. They've never even really tried as far as I can tell, so I guess it's not a surprise that their attempt at a physical bookstore would miss one of its biggest advantages.</comment>


Nord: An arctic, north-bluish color palette - <AUTHOR> https://www.nordtheme.com/ <comment> semi-extrinsic Aargh, it's kinda pretty and I _want_ to like it, but it really bugs me that these colors don't actually match their descriptions. It feels like an "arctic" color map made by people who have mainly seen the far north on Instagram.

Especially the "Aurora" palette, which is made up mostly of colors that are extremely rare to see in auroras. But also the light and dark palettes without any blue in them are way off, and the description of arctic ice as green-ish is weird.

Also the visual contrast between e.g. nord7 and nord8 is extremely poor.

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you're down-voted - that was my initial reaction too. Especially the "aurora" palette seems at odds with the name. Add a red and a purple to the "frost"-palette, and you might at least call it "aurora" with a straight face. That said, I'm not sure pastels like these would ever capture an "artic" feel.

Overall, apart from the lack of contrast, they're not half-bad. But the naming doesn't seem to reflect the colors - it seems rather arbitrary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have seen lots of color palettes that look just as nice as these.

But in terms of _marketing_ and _positioning_ a color palette, this is a really superb effort.

The Nordic inspiration and theme, the association of emotions (peace, balance) with colors and color combos ... it's all extremely well done.

Anyone else looking to market this type of work would do well to study it.

<comment><USER4> I'm baffled why people are suddenly marketing CSS themes

Is it just a demonstration of skill?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes in the North the light will shine too brightly off the snow and blind a person a bit [https://color.a11y.com/Contrast/](https://color.a11y.com/Contrast/) finds 10 color contrast issues.

And really some of the color combinations were just obviously not going to pass.

But I agree it's pretty nice, and the marketing is mad men quality for a color palette.

<comment><USER6> Why should every color pallet follow accessibility standards? Especially when it is for personal use..

<comment><USER5> I assume that persons with poor eyesight may want to use things in their capacity as persons. But sure one can decide to not provide the possibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like this project may be intending to write one, but is there any existing documentation on syntax colouring that goes beyond "what we thought looked nice"?

For example, what should have similar colours and why, what should stand out the most. How far apart do two colours need to be to be effective for the various tasks involved in writing and understanding code and so on. Is there s trial research on this?

<comment><USER8> > Sounds like this project may be intending to write one, but is there any > existing documentation on syntax colouring that goes beyond "what we thought > looked nice"?

I tried to do something link this with a color scheme for VSCode [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=narenran...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=narenranjit.chandrian) . Some highlights:

* Warm Colors are used for action keywords - throw, return in programming languages, links in Markdown files.

* Cold colors are used for definitions - Function names, variable values etc.

* Muted neutral colors are used for punctuation, comments, and anything else which detracts from the code.

I've been meaning to write a more detailed post on this (as well as an update), but comments/feedback welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are lovely! I might use this in some cartography work.

Do these palettes take color blindness/accessibility into account? I looked around on the site (admittedly not thoroughly) but didn't see this addressed.

<comment><USER10> Speaking as a colorblind person browsing that page:

I don't think they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've used this theme for 3 years or more now and I can't live without it.

It's soothing and distinct at the same time. I have everything in this color range. There are few themes with such a wide range of ports. The support is fantastic too! Everything is on github and monitored.

Give it a spin, you won't regret it!

<comment><USER12> Any link to your works that uses this theme?

<comment><USER11> Sorry, I now realize I've been very sloppy with my wording: I use this as a Terminal theme (Windows Console Host) [0] (you need ColorTool, which supports iterm format for themes), a vim theme (nord-vim) [1], for dircolors [2], and a tmux theme (nord-tmux) [3].

[0] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- iterm2](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-iterm2)

[1] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- vim](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-vim)

[2] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- dircolors](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-dircolors)

[3] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- tmux](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-tmux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. I've had the idea for generating palettes based upon captured nature scenes or animals, especially birds and fish. Now that I think about it, take it a step further to include the habitat, and there you go: ecosystem palettes.

<comment><USER14> I wrote a simple web app to find the five most dominant colours in a photo, and present them as a bottom layer to the uploaded photo with the hexadecimal code included. So much used, at least by myself I love to see detected colours in all sorts of scenes or motives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have used Nord for years and added it in [https://noobs- term.com](https://noobs-term.com) (terminal configuration).

Coworkers commented on how nice my terminal looked and wanted to replicate it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looking at the Github page it doesn't look like it's maintained very well. Some of the work on ports haven't been updated for 2 years.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any specific reason to imply they're not maintained? Most of those ports look like "Done" to me. When something is Done, then it's a _good thing_ they don't mess around with it for no good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The theme looks a lot like Solarized dark but with a little more blue. I don't really "get" why I should prefer this theme to any of the many other color themes out there.

</comment><comment><USER19> I tried this several months ago. It's beautiful, but I find it lacking in usability. The lack of contrast is a little more straining on my eyes than I'd like

</comment><comment><USER20> MS-DOS Shell called, it wants its aesthetic back

<comment><USER21> That would be Cobalt2 which is another fantastic blue-based theme :)</comment></comment>


Diginotar confirms security breach - <AUTHOR> http://www.vasco.com/company/press_room/news_archive/2011/news_diginotar_reports_security_incident.aspx

<comment><USER2> [http://www.diginotar.nl/Actueel/tabid/264/articleType/Articl...](http://www.diginotar.nl/Actueel/tabid/264/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/327/Default.aspx)

[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.diginotar.nl/Actueel/tabid/264/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/327/Default.aspx)

Incompetence doesn't begin to describe this statement. They say: Your browser might throw some warnings when communicating with government services. In 99.9% of the cases this is a false alarm and you can safely ignore it.

By own accord 1 in a 1000 (of 9 million users) can get MitM'ed and yet you teach people that it is safe to ignore it... They appear to use the same audit company from last time.

The Consumentbond already tells people to expect warnings and ignore them, for they have not been hacked, but merely experience a temporary "browser issue". Reports of DigiD helpdesk telling people to ignore warnings, lower security settings or place the site in "trusted sites".

<comment><USER3> > The Consumentbond already tells people to expect warnings and ignore them, > for they have not been hacked, but merely experience a temporary "browser > issue". Reports of DigiD helpdesk telling people to ignore warnings, lower > security settings or place the site in "trusted sites".

Isn't that because Mozilla also blocked certs used by the Dutch gov (which DigiD uses I suppose), which aren't actually compromised?

I read that in a new update they'll unblock the Dutch gov certs though.

Still never a good idea to teach people to ignore warnings, especially not on a site like DigiD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "VASCO does not expect that the DigiNotar security incident will have a significant impact on the company's future revenue or business plans."

Anything less than termination of the DigiNotar business and paying for a real third-party equivalent SSL cert of equivalent length for all affected customers who have ever been issued DigiNotar certs, plus compensation for the cost of rekeying, should result in action against VASCO (the parent company). It's obvious they don't take the SSL cert business seriously, and it's a small part of their revenue, so they need to just exit it.

<comment><USER5> They're probably right. VASCO's core products and DigiNotar's appear to be separate BUs (they don't even share IT infrastructure according to the press release). And even within DigiNotar, the SSL CA appears to be an afterthought; VASCA says it did less than $100k EU last year.

Yes, this does beg the question of why an organization like DigiNotar was allowed to be a browser CA root.

<comment><USER6> To get a better understanding of how DigiNotar operated, have a look at the Mozilla bug for their CA inclusion: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=369357>

<comment><USER7> I read through this, but I didn't understand enough. It seemed like they were new to this - what did I miss?

<comment><USER4> That it is kind of absurd that the lives of Iranian dissidents depend on this relationship between browser developers and incompetent bid dumb organizations asserting trustworthiness and competence, IMO.

Having lots of CAs is commercial pressure, but as log as any can issue for any, it means security is as vulnerable as the weakest company's weakest system or staffer.

<comment><USER5> The lives of Iranian dissidents (a) really don't† and (b) shouldn't depend on browser CA configurations. In reality if your adversary is a hostile government, you should be taking steps beyond verifying SSL certificates.

† _but not for reasons that will make you happy_

<comment><USER4> True, the only reason this happened at all is that unlike most state actors, there are no Iranian CA in the browser roots to directly pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is even worse: They noticed the breach, and failed to properly identify all certificates issued.

I've already removed Diginotar from my Firefox trusted CAs. I don't think they're going to earn their way back in.

<comment><USER9> They think that by the end of the week they'll be trusted by Microsoft, Google and Mozilla again, they "followed the correct procedures", see [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F76466%2Fhackers- genereerden-zelf-vervalst-google-certificaat.html)

<comment><USER10> Wow, DigiNotar is insane if they really think that.

The fact that they said that makes me trust them even less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an Über Failure if I have ever seen one. They detected the breech on July 19th but didn't think to check to see if anything was amiss?!? I think that OS companies and browsers must come down hard on compromised certificate authorities. A ZERO tolerance policy should be enforced resulting in a permanent BAN if your private keys are compromised!

</comment><comment><USER12> There's some interesting additional commentary on the F-Secure Blog (<http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002228.html>). Looks like they'd been breached multiple times.

<comment><USER13> From that blog post...

 _What can you do with such a certificate? Well, you can impersonate Google -- assuming you can first reroute Internet traffic for google.com to you. This is something that can be done by a government or by a rogue ISP. Such a reroute would only affect users within that country or under that ISP._

This is not entirely true...

 _For a short time on Tuesday, internet traffic sent between Facebook and subscribers to AT &T's internet service passed through hardware belonging to the state-owned China Telecom before reaching its final destination_

\-- [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/23/facebook_traffic_chi...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/23/facebook_traffic_china_telecom/)

<comment><USER14> Any ISP or country which sent bogus routes like that would get away with it briefly, before getting blackholed. So, sure, if you just needed a window of a couple of minutes and you didn't mind it making international news, you could do this.

Also, any entity trusted only to receive traffic but not to route third-party traffic will typically get limited to routes that lead to its own IP block, making this only an option for entities trusted to actually _route_ third- party traffic. And if any such entity pulled a stunt like this more than once, they'd have a hard time arguing that it occurred accidentally.</comment></comment></comment>