The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattfriz.com/#/outbursts/recruiter-email <comment><USER3> Personally, I make the most of it. I try to see how far I can push the recruiters while still having them respond to me. Here's one such exchange. (I went all-caps because for some reason he emailed me in all-caps. He went back to normal but I decided to stick with it.)

Recruiter:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

Hey Aerovistae, THIS IS A GREAT POSITION FOR YOU IF YOU WANT TO GET IN THE FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. take a look please!

I am a technical recruiter and have a great job opening in Waltham that I was wondering if you would be interested in! Ive included some details on the position below, drop me a line if you have any interest! Thanks

\</comment><comment>----

Me:

I WOULD LOVE TO GET INTO THE FIELD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

\</comment><comment>--

Recruiter:

Hey Aerovistae, Would you like to speak over the phone this evening sometime? -Eric

\</comment><comment>--- Me:

I DO NOT HAVE A PHONE

\</comment><comment>--- Recruiter:

Hey Aerovistae, My phone recently broke also, so I feel your pain, but will you have access to a phone in the near future?

\</comment><comment>---

I HAVE RECENTLY ARRIVED IN SRI LANKA AND THE BROADBAND INTERNET HERE IS VERY GOOD BUT THE PHONE IS VERY EXPENSIVE, CAN YOU ACCEPT COLLECT CALLS?

\</comment><comment>----

After that he finally stopped responding. I have a whole folder of these. I think my favorite one is the time I tried to get the recruiter to do a CAPTCHA to prove he was a real person and not an automated bot.

<comment><USER4> > I have a whole folder of these.

PLEASE SHARE I WANT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR LAUGHTER

<comment><USER3> This is one of my very favorites.

Recruiter:

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>---

[Long email from "Steve" looking for Rails dev for a place called CustomInk]

\</comment><comment>

Me:

I only work for companies who recycle 100% of their paper and plastic and who have plans to run on solar power by 2017, could you tell me CustomInk's stance on these matters?

\</comment><comment>-----

Recruiter:

Unfortunately, I do not have this information. It is a fantastic company to work for, though.

\</comment><comment>-----

Me:

Okay, I might make an exception if it is really so fantastic. Could you please let me know whether there is a tactical obstacle course on the company grounds? I am used to having this available for exercise to break up coding.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

Recruiter:

Aerovistae,

There is not.

S

\</comment><comment>----- Me:

This is sounding less fantastic by the minute, Steve.

\</comment><comment>---

Recruiter:

I wish you all the best in finding an employer that offers you _everything_ you require.

\</comment><comment>---

Me:

Steve, don't take that tone with me.

\</comment><comment>----

After which he stopped responding.

<comment><USER5> more more more :D you have me in tears here.

I recently had one in The Netherlands that was trying to look smart by using expensive words but then failed to apply the basic syntactic rules of Dutch grammar. They also always start these days by : "I can understand that you're being spammed via your linkedin profile", and then provide no excuse at all and just spam you some more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brilliant.

But it's missing one detail: Recruiters just about never "send" emails; they always "shoot" them. They put an email in the chamber, and they pull the fucking trigger. BLAM!

<comment><USER7> I appreciate the Penny Arcade/Pokemon reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recruiter here, and one who is publicly critical of this kind of behavior in the industry. I write about career topics frequently and try to expose recruiter bad behavior. (1)

I completely understand frustration about being contacted for jobs requiring skills that are far out-of-date or that you don't have, the laundry lists of technologies, etc. On behalf of some in my industry, I apologize.

Although criticism of recruiters and their approaches are frequent, I don't see nearly as much guidance that might help recruiters in what information to share in an introduction. If you don't want to hear from recruiters at all, mentioning that on a LinkedIn/GitHub profile _might_ prevent some of these unwanted contacts.

The signal to noise ratio from recruiters is terrible, and it makes it incredibly difficult for recruiters with a targeted and applicable message to get heard. I enjoyed the days post dot com bust and in the recession when inexperienced or ineffective recruiters had to leave the industry.

Instead of parody, I'd like to seem someone write something that they think would be appropriate. What type of approach might get you to reply to a recruiter? What would get your attention?

(1) [http://jobtipsforgeeks.com](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com) has multiple pieces exposing recruiting tactics.

<comment><USER9> This is like a telemarketer asking what's the best way to sell their life insurance policy when interrupting someone's dinner. The problem is that there is a general lack of empathy in almost all of these 'introductions'. I already know there's a lot of developer jobs out there. So what are you accomplishing by emailing me, other than spamming me that the companies you represent are also hiring? How it is going to help _my_ career to leave my current position and join yours? Are you going to give me new experience in an interesting field? Let me lead a critical project? Pay me more money?

Telling me what VCs have invested, how 'fast-paced' the company is, how 'work- hard-play-hard' you are is pretty much irrelevant to me, other than I guess the somewhat desperate sounding angle that your equity will be worth a lot. Usually the reason you can't answer the questions I asked above is because you don't have a good answer to them - you are just trying to spam me by 'selling' a mediocre product with no differentiating advantages. So you're just spamming me, so don't send the email. If you _can 't_ answer the question of why it will be great for my career, past _OMG WE 'RE DEFINITELY THE NEXT FACEBOOK_ or _WE HAVE MICROBREWS AND UNDEFINED VACATION POLICY_ , then you're just a telemarketer/spammer and there's no sane advice to give you other then don't click send. Keep it on the job board and out of people's inboxes.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate the insight, and I should probably add that I've been recruiting for almost 20 years so my question is more geared towards helping those in the industry improve and not for my personal use. Shaming recruiters is so easy and trite.

The telemarketer comparison is interesting, but telemarketers aren't generally offering things that change someone's life. Being "offered" a job is significantly different than being offered pet insurance.

It's hard to determine how a job will help your career until we learn more about you. I don't know if it will pay more money until I know what you make.

I agree that most people don't want to hear about the nonsense that you've listed. But the things _you_ want to hear about, or at least a couple of the things you listed here ($, leadership, help your career), are almost impossible to determine via a GitHub, LinkedIn, and even a short conversation.

<comment><USER10> You may not know what I make, but you know what the salary range is on the position you're recruiting for. Why not share that up front?

<comment><USER8> I'll give ranges when applicable. The challenge is getting the candidate to understand that there is a high and low end of the range, and the high end is reserved for a certain level of candidate. Some candidates assume the high end of a range is their true market rate, and consider any offer below that to be a snub (even if the offer is above their market value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They always ask you to rate yourself on different skills from 1-5. One time, I had to rate myself on "SQL Injection". I felt like it was comparable to someone asking an architect interviewing to build a skyscraper to rate himself on "earthquakes".

<comment><USER12> On SQL Injection, I usually rate myself a "5;DROP TABLE USERS;"

<comment><USER10> I thought I was done laughing and took a drink of my beer. I now have beer in my nose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Contains too much detailed information about the company and too little spelling errors.

<comment><USER13> Not enough uses of coding ninja, -guru or -rockstar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _" You would work with our high-octane, driven, talented engineering team > very closely - literally. They all share a single folding table."_

This one is a bit painful since it's so hard to escape this mentality.

</comment><comment><USER15> Worst recruiter ever, for me:

He sent me an email for an 8-month contract on the other side of the country. This despite my profile on every job site saying "full-time only" and "I am not willing to relocate". I ignore it.

Later that day (or maybe the next day), he calls me. I tell him no, and I make it abundantly clear I'm not interested in any kind of contract position. He starts arguing with me, and he starts going into how it's more like a full- time job since the contract is long term. I say "don't call me again" while loudly speaking over him, and then I hang up without waiting a response.

A week later, he sends me another email for the same position. I reply with a strongly-worded email telling him to cease and desist from ever contacting me again and that I will never work with him or his firm.

An hour later, he calls me again. I chewed him out and hung up on him right away.

I planned on calling his recruiting firm's HR department and reporting his extremely inappropriate behavior, but I never got around to it. And if I'd had the money, I would've hired a lawyer to properly C&D him.

As far as I'm concerned, this guy is a spammer. I've dealt with dozens of recruiters offering contract and/or out-of-town positions, but none of them have been as pushy as him. With everyone else, I just ignore their emails without reply, and they never call me or send a follow-up email.

Other terrible recruiters include the legion of people who insist on asking for me by my old name, despite me having legally changed my name (first, middle, _and_ last) well over a year ago.

And just for fun, I saw a recruiter link his LinkedIn profile by posting the URL that takes you to editing your own profile.

</comment><comment><USER16> Epic

PS: Pro-tip, add a middle initial to your LinkedIn - the guys using auto-fill without even looking are an easy filter since it is part of your first name.

<comment><USER17> Most of the time I just shunt everything that has the word "unsubscribe" in it to the trash.

<comment><USER18> I'll combine both of your suggestions and tell LinkedIn my middle name is "Unsubscribe".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You forgot "N years of experience in something that's only existed for N - <USER2> years"

</comment><comment><USER20> List of required technologies is too short!

</comment><comment><USER21> I lost it at Cdim7.

<comment><USER22> I did at "Data"

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The worst recruiter I dealt with sent an email like this to 4 of my email addresses and tried to add me as a connection on LinkedIn twice (she had 2 profiles). All within 1 minute.

<comment><USER24> My worst experience was a recruiter who would send me an email every day and call me 5 minutes after sending it. Literally every day. Even though I never took her call she would try again the next day.

It went on for 2 full weeks before I lost it and finally replied to one of her emails with a simple "Stop calling/emailing me" and it stopped.

<comment><USER25> heh. And here I am feeling guilty when I will occasionally send a single follow up now and then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have an é in my first name, many automated systems still choke on this, and the email looks something like: "Hi Name<GarbledCharacter>EndOfName"

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been known to put fake skills in my LinkedIn profile in hopes of catching scripted recruiter emails that include these amusing keywords.

>>> "With your underwater basket-weaving chops, the Cloud Fabric Services team will surpass its goal of exceeding 100M users by 2015."

</comment><comment><USER28> They missed some my favorite cliches: "Rockstar", "Full-stack", "Startup mentality", "Outside-the-box thinking" and "Customer focused"

Very funny and completely true

<comment><USER13> "Startup culture" is just one big bag of cliches these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> But this kind of e-mail irony is equally true for any cold-calling sales guy, right?

I think the whole industry on the topic of "let's spam everyone and see who will get our bite" seems absurd.

</comment><comment><USER30> I personally respond to every recruiter email i get with the following:

Hi,

I am currently only available for consulting. My bill rate is $1000/hour, with a minimum commitment of 20 hours.

I rarely get a response email.

<comment><USER31> Make it $8000/day, with a minimum commitment of 3 days, and you might make tptacek smile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> These days, I am judicious about marking people like this as spam. Because they are. I'm hoping they will hopefully eventually get blacklisted.

</comment><comment><USER32> You have given all the budding recruiters the perfect email template to work with.

</comment><comment><USER33> Looks like you got the same email as I just did. How weird is that!

<comment><USER34> Knowing how these recruiters work, I'm not surprised at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Spot on.

</comment><comment><USER36> FRESHMAN</comment>


AWS IAM is having issues again - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RyanGartin/status/1306352941964701696 <comment><USER2> Wherever possible, don't use us-east-1. It's one of the older regions and parts are aging. Yes, I know there are things that are only available in the old regions but most services are globally available. I've worked with a few ex AWS SWEs and SREs. They drink the kool-aid and won't say anything bad about us-east-1 but they also won't launch net-new services there. YMMV

<comment><USER3> This is good advice, but does not help mitigate IAM issues. IAM is a global service.

<comment><USER4> IAM is mastered in us-east-1 with all writes going there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how on Twitter this currently has 3 retweets and 17 likes but on HN it has 110 points!

<comment><USER6> I started seeing this while running Terraform and immediately went to Twitter to see if it is down for everyone or just me. Same experience. From now on I will go to HN :)

<comment><USER7> [https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com) is an alt-reader that sorts the front page chronologically which helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess I'm going outside today.

</comment><comment><USER9> What a perfect time to onboard some new employees.

Blah.

</comment><comment><USER10> I modified some of our IAM policies earlier this afternoon, followed by the pages that some of our teams were having IAM issues, caused me great discomfort

<comment><USER11> Congratulations, this time it wasn't you!

Maybe, possibly, hopefully...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This probably needs a better link, but the AWS status page shows everything up.

UPDATE: Status page now shows it [https://status.aws.amazon.com/#](https://status.aws.amazon.com/#)

<comment><USER12> [https://stop.lying.cloud](https://stop.lying.cloud) if you (like me) keep getting the order of the aws, amazon, and status confused.

<comment><USER13> Is this just a gimmick run by AWS and the "honest" in the logo is just a play on the host name, or is it some third-party version that adds information that AWS isn't reporting?

<comment><USER14> Third party obviously. Check whois.

<comment><USER13> Does it add/edit any information, or is it just a proxy?

<comment><USER15> probably just cname.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's everyone's back up plans? Just a 'We'll be right back' page?

<comment><USER17> Switching to that sort of page is probably the most cost-effective solution for small businesses. I've heard of larger companies running a completely redundant hot standby on another independent cloud platform and switching DNS over to the standby when something goes wrong. With auto-scaling, you're not paying to have the standby running at full throttle. Of course, you have to exclusively use services that have equivalents on the other cloud provider.

<comment><USER18> > What's everyone's back up plans? Just a 'We'll be right back' page?

I've done a lot of cloud site HA work on large sites.

Waiting out the cloud outage so far ends up being the best solution for almost all companies, from both engineering and business standpoints. Eat the outage, but continue with a known-working site afterwards. You just blame the cloud provider for the downtime.

> I've heard of larger companies running a completely redundant hot standby on > another independent cloud platform and switching DNS over to the standby > when something goes wrong.

In theory, that makes sense. It practise, it almost never works.

If by "independent cloud platform" you mean another AZ or region in the same cloud, that is often attempted and can work reasonably well. If you mean failover from AWS to GCP, then that's unlikely, since everything is different.

An example is whenever DynDNS goes down for 2-3 hours, and everybody builds out flaky failover tools that are less reliable than their original DNS provider - and have to be maintained forever. Might work with one or two domains, becomes a huge ongoing problem with dozens of them. Also, DNS mgmt. APIs are flaky in several dimensions (availability, versioning, parameters, etc.)

Another is that you can't failover to another location that doesn't have all your data, current certificates, monitoring, etc., and the failover site needs the capacity of the original site to work. That costs ongoing money and time, and you never know how well the failover will work or how it will perform.

An example is Heartland, one of the biggest US payment providers, who failed over to another location and took a 5 day outage. Or gitlab, who took a one day outage because of database isues.

I have (automatically) failed over a large site for a publicly-traded company from one AWS region to another, but that took a year of work to setup, and I understood almost all aspects of the site. Afterwards, I realized that almost nobody really has time to organize that either at a conceptual or engineering level. And organizations don't recognize Herculean efforts like that, so think twice beforehand.

Key point: always involve your DBA from the beginning when doing a project like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did this link get changed to a twitter post from something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it was a link to nitter.net(an alternative twitter front end) due to HN guidelines for posting links to original sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Noticed something odd today I think is connected to this.

The other day we started using Access Advisor, and we found some of our KMS key policies with a Principal of '*'.

It wasn't marked as globally open, so we planned to fix them a little later.

This morning we found that status had changed.

While we were in the wrong to begin with, it was a little surprising to find the interpretation of the key policy changing overnight.

Of course it became our top priority and is now fixed. Something to look out for...

</comment><comment><USER21> I just feel bad for the oncalls...

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks to be affecting all regions - at least within the standard aws partition. Not sure about aws-cn and aws-us-gov

<comment><USER23> Not seeing any issues in aws-us-gov.

<comment><USER24> TIL of aws-us-gov

<comment><USER25> usually referred to as gov-cloud.

Has it's own version of everything, physically segmented, even for global systems such as IAM.

You have to be a US Citizen to work on it and you need special security clearances.

<comment><USER26> You might be getting GovCloud and AWS Secret Region confused. I've been told that I can access GovCloud if I cross the border from Canada, despite not being a US Citizen. (This came up in the context of providing FreeBSD AMIs.)

<comment><USER22> I believe the secret region is just part of GovCloud. Afaik, GovCloud is just the marketing name for aws-us-gov

<comment><USER27> GovCloud is a separate partition from Secret. Different regulatory framework alignment and customer onboarding.

GovCloud customers only need be a US person or entity, beyond that any further regulatory alignment is up to the customer. AWS does not audit the IAM user base for nationality or any compliance requirements.

Disclaimer: I am an AWS Public Sector Solutions Architect.

<comment><USER22> Ah it looks to be aws-iso (c2s.ic.gov, top secret) and aws-iso-b (sc2s.sgov.gov, secret)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Off-topic: I hadn't heard of nitter.net before, it seems pretty cool.

<comment><USER29> Sorry to disappoint, but we've changed the URL from [https://nitter.net/RyanGartin/status/1306352941964701696#m](https://nitter.net/RyanGartin/status/1306352941964701696#m) to the original source, as the site guidelines ask: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, sorry about that. Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> my site is down on all environments (us-east-1). oy vey

<comment><USER31> Is your site dependent on IAM?

<comment><USER32> Pretty hard to not be dependent on IAM. Authentication and authorization are some of the most core concepts you can have

<comment><USER26> Amazon says that "The issue continues to affect create, describe, modify or delete of IAM accounts and roles. [...] Authentication using IAM accounts and roles are not affected."

So it's entirely possible to depend on IAM but not in a way which this is breaking.

<comment><USER33> This makes sense, observing services that rely on IAM/STS very, very routinely --but without changing IAM properties--and no alerts popped up during this outage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can always rely on HN for finding out why AWS is broken... Is it time to switch to GCP?

<comment><USER35> No, sometimes you GCP failures posted here too. Your best bet is to move to Oracle Cloud. I have never seen an Oracle Cloud (not Oracle Data Cloud, which is the ad-tech product) outage posted here so I think they must have 100% uptime.

<comment><USER36> Sarcasm detected! There's always going to be pros and cons to every provider, so the obvious choice is host everything on my home theater PC since I never turn that thing off.

<comment><USER25> Please don't consider this a counterpoint, but I have had single physically deployed servers that have significantly higher average uptime than my ec2 instances in AWS us-east-1 in the last 5 years.

(significantly higher == 100% availability, it hasn't gone down... yet)

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

<comment><USER38> This doesn't apply. Having a server fail on you doesn't preclude you from posting to HN.

<comment><USER37> But it becomes uninteresting, which causes self-censorship. How many times did you hear about someone's server running for 12 minutes? How many times about server running for over a year? Nobody posts about the first one. (Unless it was a spectacular failure for some reason)

Similar issue comes with estimating how reliable things are. People are more likely to respond "I had an issue with X too, here's my story" rather than "all good, nothing to report".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Let's all move to serverless!

<comment><USER40> Legit not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.

<comment><USER41> Maybe your sarcasm detector is broken.

<comment><USER40> I'm not a robot, I'm a person, please speak to me as anyone you'd meet in person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It sirtainly is. And I came in this morning specifically to creating some Lambda roles to test. Fark.

</comment><comment><USER43> I noticed (pre outage) IAM console won't work at all if I --disable-reading- from-canvas in my launch args to prevent fingerprinting. All the other service consoles I use work. I have to have a special config for my browser just for AWS because of it. Wishful thinking, but maybe they're fixing that just for me.</comment>


James Gosling on Richard Stallman [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6XHroNewc&t=10377 <comment><USER2> From a 2002 Stallman lecture:

 _There was no free software Emacs editor that ran on Unix. I did, however, have a friend who had participated in developing Gosling 's Emacs. Gosling had given him, by email, permission to distribute his own version. He proposed to me that I use that version. Then I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a real Lisp. It had a programming language that was known as 'mocklisp', which looks syntactically like Lisp, but didn't have the data structures of Lisp. So programs were not data, and vital elements of Lisp were missing. Its data structures were strings, numbers and a few other specialized things.

I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all, the first step of which was to write an actual Lisp interpreter. I gradually adapted every part of the editor based on real Lisp data structures, rather than ad hoc data structures, making the data structures of the internals of the editor exposable and manipulable by the user's Lisp programs.

The one exception was redisplay. For a long time, redisplay was sort of an alternate world. The editor would enter the world of redisplay and things would go on with very special data structures that were not safe for garbage collection, not safe for interruption, and you couldn't run any Lisp programs during that. We've changed that since — it's now possible to run Lisp code during redisplay. It's quite a convenient thing._

[https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms- lisp.en.html)

<comment><USER3> >I concluded I couldn't use it and had to replace it all

Which happened over time. He used it as a starting point, replaced some important parts first and gradually rewrote everything. This took some time. Meanwhile the partial rewrite was being distributed.

It's not a black-and-white story of theft versus clean rewrite. Also I don't recall Gosling Emacs having any license terms included with the code ... and I studied it at the time (before GNU Emacs.)

[edit] this emacs timeline is helpful: [https://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs- timeline.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-timeline.html)

<comment><USER4> Google Cache, since jwz is re-directing that link, now. :-)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G9nZNd...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G9nZNdD9w5QJ:https://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs- timeline.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER5> It's not him redirecting that link; he redirects all links from HN by checking the Referer. If you copy and paste the URL it works fine.

<comment><USER6> Why did we piss him off? I don't think I ever heard that story.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there's a story, he just hates the VC/startup scene for exploiting workers and ruining San Francisco. And he's not wrong.

<comment><USER8> NIMBYS ruined SF. It has Peter Pan syndrome instead of being the greatest most modern city in America.

<comment><USER9> Por que no los dos?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I found these two guys who ran this little company called Unipress, it was > literally two guys in a garage, and I said, "Look, this needs to be free for > universities and not ridiculous for everybody else."

Gosling _sold_ them Gosling emacs. Before that he apparently "distributed it freely with no copyright notice."

Although Gosling wrote Gosling Emacs, it was based on the plans he and Richard Stallman had developed for a new, widely portable Emacs.

> And, you know, I realize I'm a radical. I like to actually have a bed to > sleep in and food and I will occasionally sleep in my office, but not as a > regular thing.

Gosling made _millions_ at Sun Microsystems. That's a little more than needing "food on the table" and "a roof over one's head". Stallman also could have made similar money, but didn't because he thought other things were more important. That's everyone's choice to make, but putting down others because they approached something differently is just bad form.

(edit: spelling name)

<comment><USER11> A copyright notice is not required for copyright; by default in the US, everything copyrightable is copyrighted unless it comes with a public domain notice.

If there's no license attached, or no agreement somewhere, then you do not have legal right to redistribute someone else's work, even if they gave it to you freely.

Gosling was perfectly within his rights to sell gosemacs to Unipress (though note that Gosling never explicitly says in the interview that he sold it to them; he may have given it to them for free). RMS was _not_ within his rights to grab Gosling's sources and change the copyright notices to suit his fancy.

You are quoting Gosling in a selective manner in order to paint him in a bad light. Please don't do that. The bit about a bed to sleep in was a direct response to the conversation veering into how RMS at the time didn't have his own residence, and slept in his office, so there was little legal recourse against RMS since RMS had nothing to lose in a suit.

Nor is your comment even relevant: Gosling had not yet made millions at Sun back in the 80s. He was a grad student, and, presumably, like most grad students I know, was not exactly flush with cash.

I really don't get how you're coming at Gosling so hard; after listening to the interview, he's clearly uncomfortable talking about the topic, tries to avoid pointing the finger at anyone unless appropriate, and it was the _interviewer_ who makes a quip about RMS's hygiene, not Gosling.

<comment><USER12> That only started to be true in 1988, when the US adopted the Berne Convention with its copyright law. In 1981 or 1983, anything without an explicit copyright declaration was considered public domain.

<comment><USER7> I'm looking at the Gosmacs source right now, and just above the skull-and- bones warning it says "Copyright (c) 1981,1980 James Gosling"

If nothing else, Gosling had a valid copyright. Mind you, there were no license terms on any file and it was distributed as source code.

<comment><USER12> Since Gosling never initiated legal proceedings against RMS, and since the statute of limitations for copyright is three to five years [1], the issue is moot today.

[1] [https://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/copyright_l...](https://law.freeadvice.com/intellectual_property/copyright_law/copyright_statute_limitations.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a transcript [https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...](https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/10/102781080-05-01-acc.pdf) This part starts at the bottom of page 29.

Edit: I suspect the professor mentioned there is Mike Shamos and the transcript misspelled his name. [http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/shamos.html](http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/shamos.html)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for posting that... Here's the core piece:

> And then Stallman freaks and he gets a copy of my source code, does a whole > lot of editing. He doesn't actually-- You know, he edits, like, almost all > of the copyright headers, but he doesn't edit all of them and he only kind > of thinly edits it and then he re-releases it as GNU Emacs. And then IBM and > Digital Equipment pick that up and start distributing it. So these, so the > two guys in the garage who had been doing okay suddenly find that IBM and > DEC are distributing their thing for free and they're dying. So they decided > to sue DEC and IBM and they got a, you know, and that turned into a big, big > court case. They won. It was kind of a pyrrhic victory. You know, so IBM and > DEC paid them some damages, but that didn't stop GNU Emacs. .. ..he hadn't > actually changed all of the copyright notices. So it was like, duh. But then > it sort of took on its own life and it's become the GNU Emacs that everybody > uses.

<comment><USER15> And right after that Gosling describes how he did much the same thing with Wirth's pascal compiler! He thinks that's OK because there was no copyright notice attached.

<comment><USER16> He may be right. The law about copyright notices changed on 1978 Jan 1 [1], so if Wirth's compiler predated the change to US law...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Summary: Gosling gave the source for two guys in a garage (UniPress) so that they could turn Gosling Emacs into small business. RMS took the code and removed copyrights and made it into GNU Emacs.

I don't think we would have Emacs around anymore if the Gosling Emacs would have continued as a business.

<comment><USER18> It seems that Stallman genuinely believes he was given permission to do so, although I the evidence doesn't support that.

Not that I liked the way it happened, as a daily Emacs user it's hard to resent the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's worth noting the historical context of this:

Gosling and Stallman have always been rivals. One of the reasons it took so long for Java to be open sourced was because Gosling was so adamantly against it - in part because of his hatred of Stallman.

Stallman _started_ the whole open source movement in part because he thought it was wrong that Gosling could put restrictions on distribution of Emacs.

<comment><USER20> Stallman started the open source movement due to a Xerox printer driver!

[https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer- story201...](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer- story201d-redux-a-testimonial-about-the-injustice-of-proprietary-firmware)

<comment><USER19> Yes that's true too! But the context of that story needs to be understood: in the Lisp dominated world of 1980's MIT, redistributing EMACS was a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first public release of GNU Emacs was 13.1 in March 1985. In July 1985, 16.56 was released with (RMS claims) all of Gosling's code replaced with new implementations. So we're talking about four months here.

I think Gosling is claiming that some of his own code was still in there, regardless of what RMS said he rewrote. Just from casually poking the source code I can scrounge up [1], it doesn't look like there's any Gosling code in GNU 16.56 or later versions. But there's a lot of code in there so who knows.

As a side note, as late as 1995 [2] Unipress was still trying to sell its Gosling derivative starting at $395 a seat. It had a nice list of features, including "Demonstrably better than vi", but I bet it didn't let you psychoanalyze Zippy.

[1]: [https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs- history](https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history) [2]: [http://web.archive.org/web/19961125071933/http://www.unipres...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961125071933/http://www.unipress.com/cat/emacs.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> XEmacs docs sound a little bit different: [http://xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/internals_3.html#T...](http://xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/internals_3.html#Through- Version-18)

> _As described above, Emacs began life in the mid-1970's as a series of > editor macros for TECO, an early editor on the PDP-10. In the early 1980's > it was rewritten in C as a collaboration between Richard M. Stallman (RMS) > and James Gosling (the creator of Java); its extension language was known as > Mocklisp. This version of Emacs-in-C formed the basis for the early versions > of GNU Emacs and also for Gosling's Unipress Emacs, a commercial product. > Because of bad blood between the two over the issue of commercialism, RMS > pretty much disowned this collaboration, referring to it as "Gosling > Emacs"._

My impression is that "Gosling Emacs" is misunderstood as "Gosling wrote all of it", even though it just meant "the dirty commercial version of Gosling and RMS Emacs".

<comment><USER22> This version is flatly contradicted both by the Gosling interview linked and the Stallman speech linked above; Stallman says his friend (Fen Labalme) had contributed to Gosling's version, but not that he (Stallman) had, when Stallman decided to base GNU Emacs on Gosling's implementation. I suspect that the XEmacs docs just got confused about the history, and Stallman didn't want to hear anything about XEmacs/Lucid Emacs, much less read over their documentation to correct minor historical errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Considering RMS' social skills and choice of priorities, I'm not exactly surprised by this. But yeah, seems to be old news randomly bubbling up… not gonna get excited about this.

</comment><comment><USER24> Look how far people are reaching to tarnish Stallman's reputation. This is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER25> So maybe we should call it Gosling/Emacs?

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone have any more info on the court case he referenced? I'm kinda surprised this isn't already common knowledge, given that IBM actually got sued over it.

</comment><comment><USER27> The shot at Stallman's hygiene was unnecessary. It was the interviewer, not Gosling, that brought it up...still.

<comment><USER28> His personal hygiene is above reproach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ouch, that's no small claim. I was just learning emacs because it's GPL... But if it was stolen then, well, that's an entirely different story... What about the other tools Stallman wrote ?

<comment><USER18> Don't learn emacs because it's GPL, or because of who wrote it. Learn emacs because it's a great tool.

<comment><USER30> Learning great tools that aren't under the GPL may leak to lock-in and pain in the future.

<comment><USER31> As an OSS nerd working in today's corporate culture, I can assure you that GPL is its own form of lock-in. I had to abandon some of my favorite tools when I left university.

<comment><USER12> Well, I have as part of my job duties scanned dependencies of source code to make sure it didn't inadvertently include any GPL-licensed libraries.

The GPL does not control use, it controls distribution. So, using Emacs and GCC as one's toolchain does not require a company's code being made open source.

However, using a GPL licensed library "taints" any and all code which touches it. With the complex mazes of dependencies modern NPM/Node, Java/Maven, Python/Pip, and what not have, there's a non-zero chance that some dependency of a dependency of a dependency is GPL code without the company knowing about it, which puts the company at risk of being sued if they make the code depend on that GPL library, no matter how indirectly.

Anything a GPL library touches in a bundled executable taints the entire code, forcing it all to be open source.

This is a serious problems for companies selling software (including hardware that uses embedded software). There are commercial products which exist to make sure code is not GPL-tainted.

<comment><USER29> Not to nitpick but :

>>> This is a serious problems for companies selling software

No. It is a serious problem for companies trying to make proprietary software. That's quite different. The monetary aspect of the question is independent of that. That is, you can perfectly sell GPL programs. What you can't do is prevent competitors _and_ users of reusing it the way they want to.

GPL is a stance against proprietary software, not commercial software.

(now, I'll readily admit that this seriously undermines many commercial prospects, but that's just a consequence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow 3hr video only has 1000 views. Looks great. (bookmarked for later) :)

</comment><comment><USER33> "You can't sue a homeless person" LOL!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> I found watching this at 1.5x speed was good as James ums a lot.

<comment><USER35> So very java of him

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> James Gosling sounds like an Uncle Rico.

</comment><comment><USER35> Funny how the recent minsky affair made me biased. I watched this video thinking 'knew it, stallman was evil all along' whenever it just examplifies how history is denser than it seems.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is a bit late to be arguing about the IP in Emacs. Only 4.5% of developers use Emacs today. More than 50% use VSCode. See [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology- _-most-popular-development-environments)

<comment><USER38> You don't really expect to find many Emacs users on a platform where 30% of developers uses Notepad++ though, do you? :) I personally wouldn't.

<comment><USER39> Sigh. Many years ago, I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code in Emacs, wasted many hours in elisp macros, etc.

Nowadays Notepad++ is OK by me.

<comment><USER38> I don't think I wrote more than 20 lines of code in Emacs, and all my previous attempts to learn it properly have died off boredom. So, I'm not even the kind to stick to it, but I know some who do and you won't find many of them on StackOverflow taking surveys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Most of this is verified in the Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs)

<comment><USER41> which uses this video as a source...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs#cite_note-6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs#cite_note-6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This sounds quite damning and makes me reconsider Stallman's character. Nevertheless it's an account of only one party, which has to be also considered.

Dunno why people who were against RMS didn't try to argument with this instead innocuous Epstein comments.

<comment><USER43> Because the Epstein comments, although just comments, were made on a subject a lot more sensitive to the eyes of general public; in this time and place once you're hit on that subject you're labeled for life.

If the purpose was to discredit RMS in order to get rid of him and affect negatively all Free Software principles, that was the way to go. Had someone used the Emacs argument, he could have replied either with details in his defense (if he had any) or alternatively tell about the number of GPL violations a lot of companies commit when they literally steal software written by volunteers for their profit without giving nothing in return, violations he and others at GNU/FSF contributed for decades to fight against, making the whole accusation of stealing Emacs code, even if proved true, next to ridicule in comparison.

I'm not saying he is being attacked on purpose by people with a hidden agenda, however the timing and the number of simultaneous attacks by multiple directions doesn't sound normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> James Gosling is responsible for Java which supports cubicle hells where programmers are viewed as interchangeable spigots. Why do people without any intellect whatsoever talk about intellectual copyright? Hillarious.

<comment><USER45> Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

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

<comment><USER44> Who am I attacking here?</comment></comment></comment>


Yo: the new app that takes simple to the extreme - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2014/06/yo-the-new-app-that-takes-simple-to-the-extreme/

<comment><USER2> I'm not gonna register just to read some shitty blog.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best Linux Laptop 2016? - <AUTHOR> Looking for new laptop. I'd like to buy top hardware and run linux (probably Arch).<p>What is your recommendation? <comment><USER2> You might want to take a look a the comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503951)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I bought the IdeaPad 700, specifically because it's 1080p (not messing with scaling). Works 100% out of the box (with ubuntu gnome, at least). you can find it here: [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/700-series/700-...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/700-series/700-15-inch/)

I have the 1049 USD model, but the specs are similar enough between them (just CPU/RAM/HDD differences) that they should all work similarly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just got a Thinkpad x260 and I'm running Ubuntu MATE on it. The wireless card is Intel, so no problems with drivers or anything.

It comes with mini displayport too, but I've had some issue where the laptop will freeze up when the display port is plugged in and the laptop screen is also on. Other than that it has HDMI and about 17 hours of battery life.

</comment><comment><USER5> "best" will heavily depend on what you expect / want to use it for. So, you should probably specify this more clearly.

On the "for linux" part: most (not too) current hardware is fine, compatibilitywise.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't quite call it "top hardware", but I've been very happy running Fedora on my asus zenbook ux305la.

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out the latest dell xps13. They come with 16gb ram, ssd, great screen, etc. Also pre-installed with ubuntu

</comment><comment><USER8> My Lenovos run Ubuntu and Fedora well.</comment>


"who reads news" Google Query is TechCrunch article about Hacker News Banning ValleyWag - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22who+reads+news%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS267US268

<comment><USER2> Now it's this story.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> At least at my location, and cross checked on another computer.</comment>


Soccer Robots Score on Humans at RoboCup: GOOOOOOAL - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/soccer-robots-score-on-humans-at-robocup#.U9j99x237HY.hackernews <comment><USER2> > RoboCup's goal is to make this work with humanoid robots, but I'm not sure > what the point is of doing that, besides that it would give the robots > artificial ankles to grab after they fall over in dramatic fashion.

I would certainly watch that.</comment>


Saudi files for 'killer' tracking chip patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090515-19313.html

<comment><USER2> _the invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law – which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals_

I didn't know German Patent Law worked this way. I wonder if this clause has any actual effect. Is the actual manufacture and use of such inventions also prohibited or does this just mean that nobody in Germany can have a monopoly on such things?

<comment><USER3> That paragraph lists exceptions to patentability - inventions that infringe on "public order" or "moral conventions". In particular listed are human cloning, methods to modify the human germline, industrial use of human embryos and modification of animal germlines which cause suffering to the animals without providing any medical benefits for animals or humans. So every invention that can be used to breed a master race is explicitly non-patentable, plus there's a blanket formulation that can be extended to mean "anything the Nazis would have liked to have invented to make their job easier". An implant that poisons you when you don't follow the Führer would arguably fit right in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can imagine a non-lethal version of that could be pitched to prisons in the future assuming it could be made to be reliable. No need for giant walls and several layers of perimeter when you have a virtual walls to keep the inmates from escaping.

<comment><USER5> I'd imagine implanted chips are more easily removed then it is to get out of a walled prison. Prisoners have devised clever ways to hide and remove things from their body in the past.

</comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Reminds me of the Bruce Sterling novel, "Heavy Weather" where the bad guys that work for the government have Rolex-like watches that have explosives in them permanently clamped to their wrists.

In the novel, when a force 6 storm goes through, they hang out in a bunker and one by one try to remove the watch/bomb so that they can then be free of coercion and also, untrackable in the future.

<comment><USER6> There were at least two films which featured remote-controlled "bomb collars" for prisoners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will doubtlessly cost me Karma - but all too often it seems as if my brothers are either living under tyranny or building implements that allow others to be subject to the same humiliation.

On the bright side, Science marches on!... if it helps shore up the corrupt local monarchies.

<comment><USER8> yeah, it's kind of scary. Fundamentalism (of any kind) and technology are a harsh mixture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know, the Saudi nationality is in the lede here, but god knows how many batshit crazy immoral ideas the USPTO has had to deal with over the years.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ethics besides, this patent as described is obvious to anyone who's read decades-old science fiction, like Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ (though he does use a more spectacular means than poison).</comment>


I raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor–here are my parenting secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/i-raised-2-successful-ceos-and-a-doctor-here-is-one-if-the-biggest-mistakes-parents-make.html <comment><USER2> I think her advice is actually good, but here's a cynical take:

Be a parent with multiple higher degrees, a stable income, a house in an extremely expensive place with excellent schools, and strong ties to the community where the CEOs per capita is probably the highest in the world.

Once you accomplish _those_ things, then the rest of her advice is practical to increase career-type success to the next level.</comment>


Crypto-currencies have lost 30% of their value in the last 3 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/ <comment><USER2> Gold, which is possibly the oldest store of value used by civilization, is just as volatile.

The inflation-adjusted price per Troy ounce of gold went from a high of around $2400 in the the late 1400's, to a low of $200 in 1919; then, it rose in fits and starts until it peaked at nearly $1600 in 1980; it then declined, again in fits and starts, until it bottomed just below $400 in 2002; then it rose to nearly $2000 in 2012; and since then, has dropped to just over $1200, today's price:

       1490   1919   1980   2002   2012   2017
      -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
      $2400   $200  $1600   $400  $2000  $1200

The price of gold is unstable over shorter time frames too. For example, since the start of last year, the price has oscillated between just over $1000 and nearly $1400 per Troy ounce.

This kind of volatility seems normal for assets used as a store of value.

Sources:

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/charting-price-gold-all-way- ba...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/charting-price-gold-all-way-back-1265)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment#/media/File:Gold_price_in_USD.png)

[3] [http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html](http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html)

<comment><USER3> Except that during crisis Gold is guarantee to fall back at worst to it's "practical" value as a metal being used for jewelry. Even tulips bulbs have a practical value as every gardener could tell you.

However the practical value of a crypto currency is zero. And no technical small talk was able to contest this truth so far.

EDIT: Downvote what you can't contest, how mature!

<comment><USER4> * I can buy a new Dell laptop with Bitcoin ([https://blog.dell.com/en-us/we-re-now-accepting-bitcoin-on-d...](https://blog.dell.com/en-us/we-re-now-accepting-bitcoin-on-dell-com/)).

* For that laptop I can buy Windows with Bitcoin ([https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13942/microsoft-acc...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13942/microsoft-account-add-money-with-bitcoin)).

* I can book my holiday with Bitcoin ([https://www.cheapair.com/help/payment-and-billing/what-is-bi...](https://www.cheapair.com/help/payment-and-billing/what-is-bitcoin/)).

* I can donate to Wikimedia with Bitcoin ([https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give#bitcoin](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give#bitcoin)).

Can't really do any of those things with tulips or gold. This is just a small set of places where I can do purchases with Bitcoin.

As for currency, sure a tulip has practical value. But does a $100 bill? You can roll it for a cigarette or it can give you 5 seconds of warmth if you burn it. But that's about it. The reason you have all your savings in $ or € or something else, is because we all as a society say "this piece of paper (worth less than a cent in materials) is worth $5, and this one $50, and this slightly bigger one is $100". Same with crypto-currencies.

<comment><USER5> You're agreeing with him.

Gold and tulips are commodity currencies, they have value outside of their uses as a currency.

The dollar and bitcoin are not commodity currencies, i.e., they have no value or use outside of their use as currencies.

Whether bitcoin can be called a 'fiat' currency is debatable because it's not a currency "by fiat", though "fiat" currency has come to mean a non-commodity currency.

<comment><USER4> I see now that I misunderstood his point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully everyone looses confidence in mining and I can start buying cheap used GPUs.

<comment><USER7> Is it a good idea to buy GPU from mining farm? Surely it was overclocked and in bad thermal condition, so it could barely survive. I think, electronic circuits degrade in those circumstances, so this GPU won't last long.

<comment><USER8> Mining is about flop/$, rather than flop/s, so overclocking is actually rare. The best mining GPUs are the ones that are most efficient, not most powerful; overclocking usually trades efficiency for power.

<comment><USER9> Not true in the current environment. Right now pretty much everything is profit, so more hashrate means more profit, even if your electricity costs are higher.

Once AMD and Nvidia print enough cards to match demand though that'll change again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why am i not surprised? Nearly all or maybe all ICOs since May have been a deliberate scam. That is beyond the word 'bubble'. That is just it - collective scam. Crowdsourced Bernie Madoff.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. People pay real money and get nothing in exchange.

Plus, its amazing how people don't get how the system works.

<comment><USER12> I'd be genuinely interested to find out what you feel is real about the money compared to the nothing you got in exchange?

Also how does the system work from your point of view?

<comment><USER13> The thing that's real about real money is that you can use it to pay your taxes. You may talk about how you could, in principle, barter goods and services and account for everything in terms of chickens, but the IRS doesn't accept chickens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For now it's just a rather small correction, keeping in mind how much they had gone up in the last 60 months.

On the other hand, the uncertainty with Bitcoin's Segwit activation, possible chain split etc won't help in the next few weeks including August. It could make the bubble pop... or not.

What's weird is that coins that have already adopted SegWit, like Litecoin, seem to suffer even more than BTC during the dips (even if LTC was the best alt during the one since yesterday).

<comment><USER15> 30% is not a small correction. Per definition, anything that is down more than 20% is in a bear market.

<comment><USER16> Over a two-month period, usually. If the price shoots up from here (and that would be pretty normal for btc, etc), then it was just a correction. It could also drop another 50% from here. cryptocurrency markets are nuts.

<comment><USER17> Yes, they're nuts. And that's so because they're so small, relative to fiat markets. So it doesn't take much to push relatively large amounts into them, or drive them out.

But whatever. I just use Bitcoin because I can easily make it as anonymous as I like. Price spikes are sweet when they happen, and crashes can be an inconvenience. But that's just what's so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ethereum traded around $380 three weeks ago and is now hovering around $200, which is quite a loss in value.

Ethereum makes up 44% of the total market cap of altcoins, but does anyone know what percentage of the remaining altcoins are just ERC20 tokens ? My gut tells me those ERC20 tokens are vulnerable to ETH price declines since miners get paid in ETH. A token may lose value, for example, as transaction times start increasing especially during a sell-off. When trading volume goes up but network capacity goes down that can cause even more panic selling.

Note, ETH mining is done with GPUs so it is really easy to just mine another currency. Mining CAP is about 7X more profitable than mining ETH at the moment [1].

[1] Coinwarz.com

<comment><USER19> There's not a huge difference, practically, between 17 seconds and 13 second block times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to see the paradigm of "bitcoin is doing well, everything else must be less useful" is making a comeback? I the reason progressively larger corrections have been happening is due to more people who know nothing about crypto entering the space, therefore introducing more volatility and reflexive baseless reasoning.

If you question this, join one of the "crpyto currency" groups on FaceBook and read through a majority of the posts... I've come across people who've taken out loans to purchase crypto and people who installed wallets locally and wondered why the crypto they bought on CoinBase didn't magically appear. The most disconcerting posts are those who constantly ask "why did the price go up or down" or blindly post their chart predictions as to why the currency will keep going up in value.

<comment><USER21> The fear emotion is really something else.

People fear they are missing out on something - a quick scheme to make money...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like it's Ethereum and Ripple which are falling, no? Bitcoin is pretty stable, Litecoin has been climbing, didn't check the others.

<comment><USER23> Bitcoin is down over 20% from its high a month ago. Not exactly steady, but weathering a bit better.

<comment><USER24> When ETH and XRP drop by 20% in 1 day, 1 month duration seems mild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this include all of the altcoins built on top of ethereum? For example, BAT adds another $90million of value that isn't represented strictly by looking at the ethereum market cap[0].

[0] [https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/basic-attention- token/](https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/basic-attention-token/)

<comment><USER26> I'm not familiar with what "built on top of" means in this case, as it pertains to overall cryptocurrency value. Is it additional, actual coin with tradable value? Is it a derivative? Can someone describe in comparison to traditional means what this is?

<comment><USER25> Ethereum is a blockchain technology where every block contains a list of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) instructions. The EVM is a Turing-complete virtual machine that allows arbitrary programs to be built upon it, making it much more powerful than Bitcoin, which (although it has a limited scripting language) is really just for transferring value.

Every program in the EVM is called a "contract" but in reality it's a program. One of the fundamental contracts built atop Ethereum are additional coins, traditionally sold in an ICO. Most coins follow a protocol called ERC20 that allows them to be easily exchanged with any other ERC20 coin and Ether itself. In liquid markets, like for the Basic Attention Token (BAT), one can sell off a lot of BAT for Ether without tanking the market too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any speculations on why this is happening, and whether/how much they will grow in the near future ?

<comment><USER28> 1st of aug there is a fork (maybe) which makes people very nervous. Most people I know sold off because of that (and not understanding what stuff means as in ; all crypto is the same and this sounds dangerous!). And correction which was needed anyway. I'll be buying.

<comment><USER29> Other metrics indicate could be just that it's holiday season. In the northern hemispheres, people are outdoors & enjoying the summer.

This coincides with the sudden drop in Google searches for bitcoin and others, also I've noticed the number of users online on poloniex has dropped significantly. This seasonal pattern was first observed with bitcoin, check this out: [https://medium.com/@octskyward/bitcoin-s-seasonal- affective-...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/bitcoin-s-seasonal-affective- disorder-35733bab760d)

Also, other negative news: 1. Alphabay, the largest darknet market went offline, not sure if that is significant. 2. Bitnumb, largest(?) crypto exchange in South Korea got hacked, also not sure how much impact this had, but usually an exchange hack has a short term effect on prices and there has been a lot of recent activity in SK.

Other reason may be that boom and bust cycles are a natural occurrence of crypto markets. They were getting white-hot for the last few months and finally need some time to cool. So move along, nothing to see.. The cycle continues. The next boom might be bigger than anything we've seen before :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Market cap" is a vacuous and bogus number.

Cryptocurrency advocates and lazy journalists like to talk about it, but it's not actually useful - it's not money that was put into the crypto, it's not a realisable value like a company market cap, it doesn't affect prices. It's just an easily-calculated number that sounds good in a headline. It literally doesn't indicate anything.

Trading is so thin in any crypto, even Bitcoin, that you could never realise a fraction of the number in any way.

If you want to compare interest and activity in crypto assets, you need to compare trading volumes, if you can find good numbers for those.

What the drop indicates is that prices in _all_ cryptos track each other, as is usual.

</comment><comment><USER31> It looks like if you stack them it would be largely flat; just movement from btc --> ripple, eth?

<comment><USER32> The third plot? It adds up to 100% by definition. ;)

<comment><USER31> it's dollar market cap, so no it doesn't.

<comment><USER33> _Percentage_ of market cap, so yes it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there blood in the streets already?

</comment><comment><USER35> What I don't get is why alts are losing value against BTC. Like, if you look at this chart it shows that Bitcoin is gaining market share and alts are losing it:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#dominance- percentage](https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#dominance-percentage)

I would think that people would be leaving BTC and putting their money in alts due to August 1 jitters, but it seems to be the opposite that's happening.

<comment><USER36> its not the same thing, Bitcoin is decentralized, the others have clear owners, just like regular fiat (dollars, euros, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps the Petya effect. If users don't trust paying bitcoins will help them recover their data, they don't have any reason to buy bitcoins to pay a ransom.

</comment><comment><USER38> I still remember when Bitcoin was at $1,000 for the first time. The Economist ran a story and it was discussed nearly everywhere. The price fell by 30%+ after that. A few years later it was at $3,000.

It's normal that markets crash when everyone starts talking about how high they are. Once booming stockmarkets make it to the front page of newspapers it's often the end of the boom. It wakes people up who realise they still have stocks (or bitcoin in this case) and quickly sell it.

So the crash after hitting $3,000 was somewhat expected, given the attention in the media. Doesn't mean that it won't be strong over the next 2-3 years.

</comment><comment><USER39> Haha, just wait. It's the normal market manipulation...

</comment><comment><USER40> Crypto currency, the currency for crooks based on air.

<comment><USER41> I used some bitcoin in place of a wire transfer last week. It worked well. Amazing what air can do these days!

<comment><USER42> Given the fees now required to get anything through the network, was it actually worth it? A SEPA transfer is normally free these days (though not sure what the status of wire transfers in the US is).

<comment><USER41> I did it for speed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Newsy: The News Is Broken, But We Can Fix It - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/newsy-the-news-is-broken-but-we-can-fix-it/

<comment><USER2> One of the fundamental problems with the current news business model is very simply that there is strong fiscal incentive /to/ highlight differences over similarities - the demographic split between Fox News and MSNBC is not, by any means, a matter of serendipity.

Where does the money to pay journalists come from? Though audience fatigue and inurement has somewhat disrupted the formula, news outlets still make their money via basing their sales to advertisers on the quantity of audience they can bring forth. Basic, sure - but this kind of business model fundamentally encourages a confrontational approach to journalism versus an educational approach.

When the point is to get as much attention as possible, the goal is no longer to be informative, just alarmist. As we can see, this is well-reflected in the hiring and editorial policies of the major papers and networks.

<comment><USER3> Traditional news organizations (magazines and newspapers at least, I can't speak for TV or radio) erect high barriers between the news and content side of their operation and the business and advertising side, specifically to stop this kind of interference and fiscal incentive. They know that having a business motive in the reporting damages their credibility and so they avoid it.

At the same time, there is another wall between the editorial pages that contain opinion pieces from the news pages that contain objective reporting. Unfortunately, many people don't realize that this wall exists and that when a columnist for a particular paper writes something, they are not representing the viewpoint of everyone at that paper.

I don't think TV bothers trying to maintain these distinctions as almost all TV news is opinionated and alarmist.

The journalists at most newspapers are still by and large impartial, the problem is that the ones who now get the most attention are the loud, impartial ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But, but.... isn't this what journalists are SUPPOSED to do in the first place? Hearing both sides of the story, I mean?

</comment><comment><USER5> An extremely though provoking concept. I'm not sure what I think of it or it's future yet, but it's definitely interesting. Thank you for posting.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's techmeme for video, on the iPhone.

"Techmeme for video" is a fun idea.

They just need to find a way to automate it so it will scale.</comment>


Announcing Cloud Transcoding for Live Video - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zencoder.com/2013/03/27/announcing-cloud-transcoding-for-live-video/

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit confused when term "Live Video" is used with these kinds of services. Just to make sure I understand, this isn't like Ustream.tv correct? What I mean is, viewers aren't watching the video as it is broadcasted. It looks like you use the API to configure the service to accept a live stream which is then encoded to individual resources which cannot be viewed until the stream is complete. Does that sound right?

Sorry if I'm off topic. I'm actually in the market for white-labeled service which will allow me to broadcast live video to a large audience in real-time and also 'record' that live stream as it happened to my blob storage. UStream so far is the only company I can find to offer anything similar to this.

<comment><USER3> Viewers are indeed watching the video as it is broadcasted. I think the thing that's throwing you off is that you can request a VoD asset be created upon completion, but the RTMP and HLS outputs are a live broadcast.

Don't apologize, I think this is perfectly on-topic. It actually sounds like the service would be a really great fit for what you're talking about, so feel free to reach out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Exactly what I need currently. Looking forward to giving this a shot!</comment>


Ask HN: Certification services for OSS professionals - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I've build a first prototype of web platform that will allow companies and individuals involved in open source projects easily provide professional certification services around their products / technologies.
Do you think there is any demand for such product?
IMHO the service will be valuable for:
a) OSS authors and contributors - as a source of money to support their efforts,
b) professional users of OSS (developers, admins, etc.) - giving them opportunity to improve their knowledge, prove their professional credibility, promote their expertise,
c) clients using OSS in their projects and businesses - making easier for them to find experts in specific products / technologies (esp. less popular).
I will be happy to hear your feedback on the idea.
In the meanwhile we're preparing for private beta.
If you're interested in beta invitations, please visit http://www.certihub.com/
Best regards, DD
PS. I have a technical background, plus tech and design skills, yet I'm looking for a partner with experience in front-end development (HTML5/CSS/jQuery) and UI & UX design. I believe that magic things happen when you collaborate with talented people, so if you're interested, please contact me at certihubhq /at/ gmail.com. <comment><USER2> I think it's a valid idea. I'm not aware of anything similar to this. I can see it shining especially for clients finding experts in less popular technologies.

There are two crucial points for this project to succeed: 1) Platform must be recognizable by clients - those certificates has to be acknowledged. 2) A few popular open source projects should join with their products

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback! About the recognition and acknowledgement - the idea is to allow OSS authors / maintainers / contributors / OSS project team members build and maintain their "authorised" certification programs as a part of the project (just like they maintain documentation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea. Would be ideal if Apache Software Foundation joined to your project with certificates for palette of their products.

</comment><comment><USER4> Success of this project depends on participation of subjects which accept this way of certification.</comment>


Ask HN: What hosting provider do you use? - <AUTHOR> I haven't looked into web hosts in a long time. Is there any that stand out feature/price wise compared to the rest?<p>Initially I just want a host to get my project online so I don't have any big requirements. <comment><USER2> I have been using asmallorange.com they're great with support and technically. They have a no bullshit policy opposed to many other hosting providers who give "unlimited" plans but still have restrictions. They use Marian for data bases and they also give you jailed shell access to your server even on shared hosting plan that's pretty awesome.

<comment><USER2> Mariadb (stupid autocorrect) [https://asmallorange.com](https://asmallorange.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I keep hearing good things about [https://surge.sh/](https://surge.sh/)</comment>


C Legacy Is Evil - <AUTHOR> http://kalnitsky.org/2014/10/25/c-legacy-is-evil/

<comment><USER2> > If you wrote your own struct in C++, you have to define constructor to > initialize all members with some default values.

No you don't. You are free to define a constructor that leaves some fields as garbage; in fact that's the default behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it's possible to make mistakes in C. News at 11. Some mistakes are unique to C, some are shared with C++, and a _bloody huge heap of them_ are unique to C++. What is proven by picking one bug from the first or second bucket and ignoring the third?

</comment><comment><USER4> As long as we're purging evil legacy, this particular bug could also be solved by getting rid of daylight savings time and updating the struct accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course, in C you'd just use designated initializers and avoid the problem entirely (any unspecified fields are zero-initialized).

<comment><USER6> Bad correlation.

This is about a bad language that force GOOD developers to figth against it.

"Always use memset onto struct variable before usage, because by default it's filled with garbage."

See? The language PUT GARBAGE on your code. Good or bad developer, not matter.

Now, a more _experienced_ developer will remember that it need to correct the problems the language force on ALL the users.

Not all the blame is in the people. Somethings, the tools are at fault, too..

<comment><USER7> The language just gave you a block of memory. It lets you decide whether you'd like to dedicate resources to clearing that memory.

<comment><USER6> Ok, so for what is usefull to have garbage after get memory?

<comment><USER8> Why do I need to zero an image array if I am about render something into it? You spend time setting each byte to zero.

<comment><USER6> I understand if I get null/empty... but garbage?

And in relation to this post, the behaviour is not the same across compilers/archs? Thats nuts.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to programming in the real world. If that's the nuttiest thing you have to deal with on any given day, it's a good day.

<comment><USER6> Yep, I know programing is hard. +18 years of it.

Is crazy the amount of punishment a developer accept, and when the fail is elsewhere, it blame itself ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure Bjarne Stroustrup (and the C++ committee) had enough time and resource to mandate that structures are zero-initialized, if they were so inclined. (I mean, think about it: any time you read from an uninitialized value is an undefined behavior, so no conforming program will be broken by this change. Literally.)

The fact that they didn't tells me that this was a conscious decision, not some "Legacy C" cruft that's left there for the sake of backward compatibility. And indeed the core tenet of C++ is "You only pay for what you use", isn't it? Zero-initializing a struct would be against C++'s philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I clear structs using a template; saves copying and screwing up the length:

template <class C> SPL_INLINE_FORCE void Zero(C &c) { memset(&c, 0, sizeof(c)); }

struct tm tm_struct;

Zero(tm_struct);

<comment><USER11> There's also a way to do this without any user-defined functions that works in both C and C++:

        struct tm tm_struct = { 0, };

<comment><USER10> Does that work on char array members in the struct?

<comment><USER11> Yes, as far as I believe, this should always work in standard C89/C99. In the char array case, it works due to the brace elision rule in aggregates: assuming

        struct foo { char bar[3]; };

These declarations are equivalent:

        struct foo f1 = { 0, };
        struct foo f2 = { { 0, } };

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At least in C your initialization functions are first class citizens. Not like in that messed-up language, in which a constructor just should not fail...

<comment><USER13> What do you mean by "a constructor just should not fail?" Constructors can and do fail in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it?

He didn't initialize a struct properly, results in errors...

Conclusion: C is evil?</comment>


Mindfuck Movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/reviews/mindfuck_movies.php <comment><USER3> Since this is fast turning into a list of good mind-bending movies, I'm going to put a shout out for eXistenZ, as it always seems to be slightly overlooked.

Also, most of Lynch's non-Dune stuff would fit in this category.

<comment><USER4> Seconded. Lynch's every movie is pretty twisted. Even Twin Peaks was bizarre.

<comment><USER5> Except for the Straight Story, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Highly recommended mindfuck films from across the globe:

El Método/The Method (Spain): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427582/>

15 Park Avenue (India): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449159/>

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi/Spirited Away (Japan/Animation): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/>

Moustache, La (France): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428856/>

Monday (Japan): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239655/>

Shutter (Thai/Horror): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440803/>

Gaau ji/Dumplings (Hong Kong): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472458/>

<comment><USER7> Spirited Away wasn't really a mindfuck, actually; it was a lovely, fairly straightforward fantasy/coming-of-age story. Highly recommended nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are few recent popular flicks that I think are worthy of consideration -- or at least honorable mention.

I'd add The Matrix. Although it's not great, it did have the most impact on the most people.

I'd add The Sixth Sense for the same reason. When you "get it" then you are almost forced to rewatch the movie to make sure it still all adds up. It does. It was a great work by M. Night, who (to me) is really not doing as well as he used to.

<comment><USER9> He mentions both of them:

      (Bruce Willis was balding the whole time?!)
      I love The Matrix. But

However, I think both movies where actually vary straightforward. I suspect they where popular in large part because they felt like mind bending movies, but most people never felt lost. _The Usual Suspects_ is another great example of this. "Wait that was BS?"

<comment><USER4> I can't judge on The Sixth Sense, because I saw it knowing the ending and so nothing seemed too surprising. _The Matrix_ is incredibly straightforward: the plot is rehashed philosophy mixed with a pretty simplistic story that allows for lots of fighting. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you watch it and it all makes sense in a cool "What if?" way. That opposed to, say, Eraserhead, where you finish the movie feeling like you've had your mind scrubbed hard with steel wool. Again, not necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER10> The thing that annoyed me about _The Matrix_ is that I didn't think it was nearly as clever as _it_ clearly thought it is. It had a pervasive smell of intellectual smugness. I much prefer movies that present themselves as rollicking good fun, but include some nice little bits of brain-fodder.

I liked Dark City a lot.

<comment><USER4> I like _The Matrix_ as a guilty pleasure: it's so fun listening to the pontificating. I haven't seen Dark City either - looks like I have a lot of watching ahead of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good list. I'd add Oldboy (Korean) to that list.

<comment><USER12> does 'the usual suspects' count or is that too mainstream ? Brazil ?

<comment><USER13> Brazil! Brazil!!!!!

One of my favorite movies.

And a serious mindfuck.

<comment><USER4> That final sequence is one of my all-time favorite. Gilliam at his best, directing-wise.

<comment><USER10> I loved Brazil, but I still have a soft spot for 12 Monkeys.

I also like the fact that both films feature tiny parts for Simon Jones, the original Arthur Dent.

<comment><USER4> Man, now I absolutely have to see the original HGTTG. Was that the radio one or the TV bit?

I also haven't seen 12 Monkeys, unfortunately. My experience with movies is sadly lacking, and the sheer number makes picking a good starting point paralyzing. (I still haven't seen Citizen Kane, which has been on my computer forever.)

<comment><USER12> The original hitch hikers guide to the galaxy is the radio series as broadcast by the bbc on radio 4 in 1978, after that there were the books starting in 1979, the tv series in 1981, and finally the movie in 2005.

<comment><USER14> There was a new series to the radio play fairly recently. Just for anyone who missed that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I originally omitted Donnie Darko from this list but then I realized I would get hate mail if I omitted Donnie Darko from this list so I put Donnie Darko on this list."

<comment><USER4> Donnie Darko is such a terrible movie. It's utterly lacking in craft and expertise. People like it because - despite claims - it's easy to comprehend and simplistic in moral, but it's plain bad.

<comment><USER16> I liked the movie, however it didn't need comprehension. If I was reviewing at the time this move came out, this is what I'd likely say: I thought the plot was simplistic and prayed on a naive thoughtless audience, it didn't explore any truly remarkable metaphysical ideas that hasn't been thought by teenagers watching too much TV with poorly defined goals.

Honestly, I don't think I'll ever need to see the movie again in my life because it didn't take a single iota of thought to connect the plot elements.

<comment><USER4> I was expecting a genuinely good movie. I got a shamble of a tale with pretty much nothing going for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's always bound to be something you think needs to be on these kinds of lists. Personally, I'm disappointed there are no Alejandro Jodorowsky films on the list. I certainly think those qualify.

<comment><USER18> Santa Sangre is my favorite movie of all time. I've probably seen it about 25 times since I always make other people watch it and end up watching it with them. It still gets better every new time I see it.

I think this is the only Jodorowsky film that qualifies for the 'mindfuck' category (the others are more just surreal and weird), but it really is mind- blowing once you understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> First of all due to this thread I think that I won't be going out for at least a month. Thank you HN.. :P

I'd like to make my own contribution to this thread since it hasn't been mentioned. It's "The man from earth". Not exactly mindfuck material, since it lacks that "surreal" element, but at least on my case, each time I finish it I can't help but just sit silent and think about the claims it poses, from a philosophical point of view. In that sense it could be in the mindflirt- romantic-dinner-with-potential category..

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd add The Thirteenth Floor for anyone who likes Dark City, Abre los Ojos, or The Matrix.

</comment><comment><USER21> Anybody having any views on Primer? I watched it after reading about it on Kottke. Around the sametime a few days earlier I had watched Memento. And the contrast was as clear as heaven and earth.

Memento was v.intellectually stimulating and if you watched it closely (maybe twice) everything was there in the movie itself to figure out the 'mindfuck' elements. The very minute details which you may still miss were clearly explained in some article online, so all in all it was a comprehensive experience. It made you feel good at the end of it because everything had an explanation.

Whereas Primer just seemed like a bad movie and maybe partially because it was low budget. Throughout the movie I just thought I couldn't clearly see what was there in the scene. Many scenes felt like there was no proper light or sound.(youtubeish). And the storyline seemed so out of whack, and I remember watching it thrice, and lurking on the official movie forums trying to figure out the timeline and 'mindfuck'ness of the movie, but it just seemed like the whole movie could sort of come together only if you could imagine that half the movie was not shown. There were so many timelines in forums, and all of them seemed to miss out on major plotlines, which they would explain with a handwave as "director is v.smart and intended it to be so and you could feel that's what he wanted to portray... it was just not shown on screen...blah blah". The director himself lurked out on forums and gave conflicting and deliberately confusing interviews at the time on indie media sites and honestly he never seemed to explain wtf was going on.

In the end instead of a real mindfuck movie (like Memento), to me it just felt like a bad movie, where nothing could be explained and everything was left half-finished. I am still open to be convinced otherwise though it seems unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER22> A very good list. For me I was disappointed because I'd seen virtually all of them already.

</comment><comment><USER23> Disappointed that Lost Highway didn't make it..

Check out Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation".. brain bending on a different level..

</comment><comment><USER24> Jacob's Ladder is one of my favorite movies and for me the most mind-blowing ending ever. More recently we've had many movies that somehow had the same idea for an ending (don't want to mention them so not to spoil Jacob's Ladder) but AFAIK this was the first time that it was used.

<comment><USER25> I love Jacob's Ladder to death, despite the fact that it once gave me vivid nightmares. Or maybe because of that.

But the ending really sucks. The last minute of the film just fucks the whole thing up by being so simplistic--in a sense it makes the whole movie easy to dismiss. It should just end at the stairway.

[http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4218389/Jacobs_Ladder_(1990)...](http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4218389/Jacobs_Ladder_\(1990\)_%5BDVDRip%5D_By_%5BKooKoo%5D_%5Bh33t%5D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Serial Experiment Lain. You probably haven't heard of it, and you had to be introduced first to the anime subculture, then be not frightened away by the number of bad releases in that genre, then adjust to the japan mentality, take into consideration the fact, that it was basically pre-matrix (1998), watch the movie in a one night marathon, then start reading the mentioned, and omitted literature. However, the sheer amount of mindfuck going on in each, and every episode vastly outnumbers every single movie mentioned above, and this makes it very worthwhile.

<comment><USER27> And blatant Vannevar Bush, Xanadu and Ted Nelson references!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anybody here seen Waking Life? I loved it!

<comment><USER29> Waking Life is a perfect example of something that sends out all the right signals for being artsy and deep to activate the GoodThink centers of your brain without having any actual substance. That movie made me want to punch the director.

<comment><USER30> I guess it's ironic that I've tried to watch "Waking Life" three different times and fell asleep midway each and every time. I still haven't fully watched it but I'm keeping it as my personal antidote for insomnia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'll check some of these I haven't seen out. He's got a Hitchcock and Kurosawa film on there, and they're two of the finest directors of all time. Rashomon is actually one of my least favorite Kurosawa films, but it's still great - <USER2> just much more greatly like Ran (English: "Chaos", his best film), Ikiru ("Life", it drags towards the middle but the government council scene at the end is incredible), Kagemusha ("Shadow", wow what an incredible premise - really an overlooked masterpiece when looking at his career), and of course Seven Samurai. Then you've got Yojimbo which is an interesting story but kind of campy, and Rashomon which is a great piece of storytelling and a great piece of directing, but just isn't as satisfying of an experience as Ran, Ikiru, Kagemusha, or Seven Samurai. If I was recommending Kurosawa to a new viewer, I'd say watch them in that order, and then perhaps Rashomon.

I haven't seen all of Hitchcock's films, but it's something I've been meaning to do. The thing both of these directors (Kurosawa and Hitchcock) have in common - they're both absolutely obsessed with presentation. They don't waste a single scene in their movies. In their better films, Kurosawa and Hitchcock don't even waste a single _shot_ \- everything is perfectly constructed for a very specific reason. Really incredible experiences to watch them, and highly recommended for people who love movies, stories, or simply just art.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks for the list.

The Machinist is up there with Memento and Vanilla Sky. The Butterfly Effect might be in that league (directors cut only - different ending than the theatrical release).

</comment><comment><USER33> Some films by Alain Resnais deserve to be on this list:

Je t'aime, je t'aime: a time machine experiment gone wrong. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063152/>

Providence: a story told while it's being written. Sometimes the writer changes his mind, sometimes his imagination takes him where he doesn't want to go. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076574/>

Smoking / No Smoking: two films that explore different possible 'forks' of the same story. The first fork is the decision by one character to smoke a cigarette. In the first film she does, in the second she doesn't. There are three or four forks in each film which all completely change the fate of the characters. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108167/>

Other films that come to mind:

Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys , by Michael Haneke. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216625/>

Akira has an ending just about as powerful as the ending of 2001. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/>

Beyond a reasonable doubt (Fritz Lang) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049006/>

(but why am I writing this on hacker news?) Vertigo (Hitchcock) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/>

</comment><comment><USER34> There are many more mentioned in two related MetaFilter threads:

 _Mindf_ _k movies_

<http://www.metafilter.com/79096/Mindfk-Movies>

 _Help us rally around a common weirdness_

[http://ask.metafilter.com/109842/Help-us-rally-around-a- comm...](http://ask.metafilter.com/109842/Help-us-rally-around-a-common- weirdness)

</comment><comment><USER35> After watching Le Jetée, I kinda want to watch 12 Monkeys again.

</comment><comment><USER36> The original version of Sleuth (Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier) should be on the list.

</comment><comment><USER37> As Rod Serling would say, "Submitted for your approval":

      Eraserhead
      Forbidden Zone
      Gaslight
      Invaders from Mars
      Invasion of the Body Snatchers
      Laura
      Minority Report
      Mirage
      Rebecca
      Suddenly, Last Summer
      The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
      The Devil's Advocate
      The Wizard of Oz
      Total Recall
      Vanilla Sky

Some are better than others, of course. And some fit the mindf definition better than others. Oh, well. These are some films that popped into my head.

</comment><comment><USER38> Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la bête), and Orpheus.

Try the version of Beauty and the Beast with the Phillip Glass soundtrack (basically turning the film into an opera).

</comment><comment><USER39> Mind Game is a good one.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Game_(film)>

</comment><comment><USER40> requiem for a dream?

<comment><USER40> &pi

<comment><USER41> &the fountain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hmm, I find the list kind of "meh". There are some good films on there, but a lot of them I don't consider adventurous enough to be on among The Truly Strange. Lynch's stuff fits that bill well, but doesn't belong on the same page as e.g. Donnie Darko. A lot of these are really just witty.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you really want a good time along the same vein, then watch "Let the right one in". BUT! You have to watch it without reading about it, or watching the preview. Just watch it without preconceptions.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'll add 'I Heart Huckabees'.

<comment><USER4> That's not really a mindfuck: it's straightforward and consistent according to its deranged world.

Fun movie, though. The soundtrack is incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The Exterminating Angel, Luis Buñuel, 1962. I still don't get it.

<comment><USER46> I don't think this fits the "mindfuck" label. It's not hard to understand, it's simply absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The Crying Game, Soylent Green, Requiem For A Dream, Misery

</comment><comment><USER48> What's this doing on the frontpage?

Am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER49> Mindfuck movies have the hacker nature.

Also, from <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>:

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did._

<comment><USER48> Sory, I didn't mean to be obnoxious. Just wondering.

<comment><USER49> No worries. I may have pulled the trigger too fast on the HN guidelines smackdown. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> waiting for the "Life of Pi" as a movie. Night supposedly (rumor ??) has the rights to make a movie, would be an awesome one...

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow, I'm so glad Primer is on this list!

</comment><comment><USER52> Could have been named, "Enterprise".

All time sequences reversed?

No short term memory?

Memento

What?

</comment><comment><USER25> Lists like this should really contain links to torrents of the films.

</comment><comment><USER53> Belle du Jour

<comment><USER5> Don't know. Where's the "mind" in that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Fun list! He's got some facts wrong (e.g. _2001_ was not made as a companion piece to the novel, which came later), and he apparently never understood _Jacob's Ladder_ (think _Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge_ as a full-length movie). But who knew you could watch all of _La Jetée_ (inspiration for _12 Monkeys_ ) on Youtube?!! (Speaking of _12 Monkeys_ , why isn't that on the list?)

<comment><USER55> I think the article is pretty much right about 2001: the book and film were both developed by both Clarke and Kubrick at the same time, though the book was released later [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_(film)#Writing>]

<comment><USER54> It's a technicality. I did a thesis on the movie, and that's why I suppose I'm picking on a nit. Clarke wrote the novel later, but he and Kubrick wrote the screenplay together over the course of maybe three years. Clarke did always intend to novelize it, but a simultaneous release wasn't planned. (But I admit I'm totally picking nits.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> U-Turn belongs there too.</comment>


Cell phone subscriptions to hit 5 billion globally - <AUTHOR> http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10454065-78.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

<comment><USER2> This astonishing number can also be linked to a trend that many individuals have 2 cellphones: a work cellphone and a personal cellphone. I _highly_ doubt that all but a bit under 2 billion people on this planet have a cellphone.

"People in developing countries are increasingly using their cell phones for mobile banking, even those who have no bank accounts." - Is that a joke or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> What's hard to believe about mobile banking? Poor people are using their phones to pay for stuff. It's safer since they don't have to carry around what little money they have. It's going to be a huge market over the next decade.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if you didn't read it, but it said "even those who have no bank accounts." I suppose I was thinking of "mobile banking" as checking bank account balances and transactions. Does this merely just add the balance of their bill to their phone bill?

Not sure why this was down-voted as it really is a fact that a LOT of people have two cellphones. Also, the wording of the article is unclear on the point of mobile banking (they should have elaborated possibly).</comment></comment></comment>


Life and Breath: The human story of how ventilators came to breathe for us - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-human-story-of-how-ventilators-came-to-breathe-for-us <comment><USER2> I find some paragarphs in the article somewhat moving, especially the ones related to the polio epidemic. Sharing breath with another human and later witnessing her/his death must have been a daunting experience.</comment>