Man sues feds after being detained for refusing to unlock his phone at airport - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/man-sues-feds-after-being-detained-for-refusing-to-unlock-his-phone-at-airport/ <comment><USER2> The problem with Customs and Border Protection is the attitude. They do have a challenging job. 99%+ of travelers are legit and doing nothing nefarious. They have to pick out the ones who are not legit/up to no good. I have no problem with them asking questions of myself or other travelers, even a lot of questions.

The problem is the attitude and abusive nature of their conduct. I have had this experience a couple times and one time with my mother and I am a citizen. Plenty of other countries have customs/border agents that quiz you without attacking or belittling you.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

I went through the TSA checkpoint at the United Premier Access this last Tuesday. They have the new automated bin return system. Some of the people who travel less frequently were leaving the bins behind instead of putting them in the machine to be returned to the front. The TSA agent shouted at them repeatedly, "do any of you read English? Can't you read the damn sign?" While he pointed at the instructions. He did this for the entire time I was near the checkpoint.

This is belittling. Not everyone flys frequently and knows this process. How about respecting them and teaching them the new way?

I wanted to say something to one of the other agents, but why risk ending up on a list especially when it's this hard to get through now.

<comment><USER4> I had this at Gatwick last year...

"Hey idiot, get your goddamn bags off the (expletive) belt! Hurry the hell up!"

At which point another passenger decided to take advantage of the confusion and tried to steal my phone...

"God (expletive) damn you! Are you trying to make my (expletive) life hard?! Just take your bags and go, you're holding up my line!"

Approached the airport, "we do not comment on security matters".

"How can I take this complaint further?"

"You'll need to ask your solicitor to contact our legal department."

And then there was Stockholm Arlanda...

(On the way in) "Good morning Sir. Welcome to Stockholm."

And on the way out...

"Sir, is this your bag? Can you please turn the laptop on for me?"

'Do you need me to log in, it's for work...'

"Oh no, I just need to see it turn on."

<comment><USER5> just to clarify ... a member of gatwick airport security staff said that you?

>"Hey idiot, get your goddamn bags off the (expletive) belt! Hurry the hell up!"

>"God (expletive) damn you! Are you trying to make my (expletive) life hard?! Just take your bags and go, you're holding up my line!"

That all sounds so un-british I can't imagine this playing out. Which part of security were you in?

I've flown through heathrow, gatwick and other uk airports loads of times and never seen anything approaching that level of rudeness.

<comment><USER6> Really? I've gone through a good number of British airports and I've seen similar scenes play out (typically not directed at me, though.)

British security/police seem to take their power a bit too far very often, in my experience. They have absolutely no problem with a little shouting. Of the first-world immigration officials I've had to interact with I'd rank them perhaps second worst, for general cluelessness and authoritarian behavior.

The typical British "don't say or do anything, just tut" behavior does apply often: Public displays of racism? Civil liberties being taken away? A simple tut will do. But if you're British immigration, then shouting incorrect or confusing instructions is just part of the job.

The number of times I've seen this is too high, and that's not even including the number of patronizing and wrong instructions I've gotten, either. For example, getting shouted at that I should have presented my American passport when I presented my Dutch passport (...what?)

<comment><USER7> "British security/police seem to take their power a bit too far very often"...

And that is the actual problem here as well. At the airport you end up in a "your rights end here" zone. According to the original story, the questioned person had no right to a laywer as he was not arrested. But he was also not free to go. So there you are: stuck between a rock and a hard place... Sure, you have every right not to unlock your phone. But you will go nowhere, miss your flight, your connecting flight, etc. And all the officers just go home when their shift is over and forget your case ever happened...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "unlock your phone" part is obviously a problem, and the focus of HN's attention.

What gets me is an Officer can say to your face "You are not under arrest" but then handcuff you, take you someplace against your will, and detain you there without access to a lawyer.

How can that possibly be the conduct of Officers in a free country?

I could even understand if the Officer just plainly said "we can not let you board this flight, you must leave the airport" or something similar. But handcuffs and detention even though you are not under arrest is insanity.

<comment> cbm-vic-20 This might be the "internet tough guy" in me, but if I was travelling alone I'd ask the officer if I was under arrest, and if they answer no, I'd ask if I would be under arrest if I walked away. If the officer says yes, I'd get up and walk away (not towards a "secure area"), proceed to get arrested, and immediately ask for my lawyer, and would say no more.

<comment><USER9> This. Once you've already missed your flight they have a lot less leverage to get your to not stand up for your rights. At that point it's not like you have plans for the next 24hr (the flight was your plan and that ship sailed) so you might as well stand up for your rights, get "arrested", contact a lawyer and have a chance at getting a small "please go away" settlement in a couple years.

Edit: changed words around to make it more clear.

<comment><USER10> Please don't give tough-guy "smart" advice like this on the internet. You're going to end up getting someone as naive as you into trouble.

I can _guarantee_ that most any officer will charge you with 'resisting' or 'non-compliance' or some other fuzzy, indefensible legal charge just because you pissed them off by 'challenging their authority'. And now you missed your flight and have legal problems for what, to prove a point?

Here's some advice on what pretty much any officer will think in these kinds of situations: _' Oh, you want to make my life harder? I'll make YOUR life harder'_. I know, it's bullshit, unprofessional childish behavior, but it's real. And believe me, he/she _will_ win.

Be practical. Changing this stuff comes from legislation, not some brave grandstanding power-move that literally not even the rest of your fellow travelers will give a damn about.

<comment><USER9> The legislation already exists. The laws that the government agency is usually in violation of in these sorts of situations became effective on June 21 1788.

The actual changes come from some judge who's had a bad day telling the prosecution "no, screw you, the officer's actions were in violation of the defendant's Nth amendment rights, you have no case when you act like this" and then that percolating up through the various appellate courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is certainly not the first article of its kind, and the legality of such action seems to be upheld in court (at least the use of search without a warrant at the border).

So, the selfish question then is: How do I protect myself from such unwarranted searches? Is there a way I can present my phone such that it drops into a mode that contains no data? Do I need to back my phone up before traveling, wipe it for the border crossing, and then restore once I feel safe?

It feels crazy to ask this question, as an American citizen, but HN, what do you do to protect your data at the American border?

<comment><USER12> Don't forget that the border zone extends 100 miles in from the actual border (including the great lakes). Most US people live their entire lives in the constitution free zone where this kind of violation is allowed.

<comment><USER13> "Most people" seems like a bit of a stretch...

<comment><USER14> The "most people" actually comes from the part he left out... it's not just 100 miles from any border, it's 100 miles from any international airport, which does include most people.

<comment><USER15> No, an intl airport is a point of entry, but not a border.

<comment><USER14> True, but it looks like the "100 miles from an airport" part of the law was not enacted after all. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Those "unlock your phone at the border" stories have become so famous that anybody who's "up to no good" would be traveling with a decoy phone at this point.

<comment><USER17> Right? This is nothing but harassment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I decided a long time ago that I will never travel to the US because I'm not white and cares about my privacy.

<comment><USER19> That's an absurd decision. The US has tens of millions of annual visitors, and given that the majority of the Earth isn't white, it's likely that a majority of the visitors aren't.

While the stories that hit the press are negative (and hence newsworthy), millions travel in and out without incident.

If you look at this statistically, you have a one in a million chance of having your phone searched at the border

<comment><USER18> The fact you have no human rights within the boder and must follow every orders from police without requiring the court order or face violence, detention without arrest, declined to contact the lawyer, or simply be shot are enough to avoid such place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's are the procedings [1] and the complaint [2]

Say what you will about the US and the fact that you can get shot for looking at the wrong guy at the wrong time, but the mere fact that this happening and so easy to follow is quite interesting. In Germany you'd be laughed out of the room and I've had my fair share of racism to deal with from the authorities despite having grown up here.

[1] [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/8168712/haisam- elsharka...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/8168712/haisam-elsharkawi-v- united-states-of-america/)

[2] [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.727665...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.727665/gov.uscourts.cacd.727665.1.0.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Sorry who would be laughed out of the room and for what? It wasnt clear to me from what you wrote

Also I found it interesting that Germans perceive the US as overly litigious but I found an article that said Germany has more lawsuits (per capita? In absolute totals?), funny how perception takes a long time to catch up to various forms of reality

<comment><USER22> German law allows predatory lawyers to file lawsuits on behalf of another party without their involvement. That level of BS thankfully doesn't happen in the US.

<comment><USER23> Abmahnung is not a proper lawsuit, it's a mostly legal way to get parties to agree in case of a legal dispute without having to actually involve a court. You can ask to be reimbursed for incurred costs for up to 1000€. The current government is working no reducing the abuse of this legal mechanism.

Sending one of these requires you also to clearly show how the recipient infringed on your rights or a law that affects you or your business in a negative way and lay out the costs you want reimbursed for sending the letter (up to 1000€). If you're wrong about it you'll have to pay all and any attorney fees of the other party.

If someone refuses to pay or sign the Abmahnung you have to go to court, in which case you'll need agreement from the party you're representing.

To file an actual lawsuit you still need to be wronged or damaged by the actions of another party, you can't just sue in the name of someone else without them agreeing to it. This is also limited to civil law, criminal law is handled by the state prosecutor via the police, not you yourself.

<comment><USER21> Very informative, sounds like a litigious society

I'll take "Semantical distinctions I dont have to care about" for $200, Alex

<comment><USER24> \- If you are found wrong, you have to pay the defending party legal costs;

\- If the defending party ever decides to fight and you don't have the approval of the wronged party, you can't even defend yourself (read the point above again);

\- It's only for small values, and there is no upwards negotiation (you must lay the costs down at the letter).

That's the government not requiring a judicial process for small values, while keeping all the rights of the defending party (I wish my country had something like that). You may not care about the difference, but that only speaks about you, because there's a huge difference there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So did anybody call a lawyer like he asked? Reminds me of the movie Trading Places where Eddie Murphy asked for a lawyer and all of the aristocrats coughed and turned away

My rehearsed line is "you in the <distinctive clothes> I'll split the settlement with you if you record this and call a lawyer!"

Gotta disrupt the bystander syndrome by calling out a particular person

And provide the financial incentive

<comment><USER25> How would this even work? I google for local "immigration lawyers"(??) and tell the person who answers a man whose name I don't know yelled at me to call them, and that they get someone down to the airport? I'd like to think if I saw this happening I'd step in to help, but I don't feel like I would have enough compelling --- let alone actionable --- information for a lawyer to be interested enough to intervene.

<comment><USER26> Here's how I would handle it:

In addition to calling several high profile agencies like ACLU and EFF, I would call one or two local lawyers and say,

"Hi, my name is FirstLast, at 2:05 PM I was at LAX Terminal 2. A man wearing XYZ was being led away by CBP agents and was pleading for someone to call a lawyer. Is this something you can handle? I imagine you can get in contact with LAX authorities if you are interested in taking this case."

I guess it's different at the federal level because they can detain people longer and with less cause, but eventually I believe they have to be offered the right to legal representation and being hauled in front of a judge publically.

Unless of course the US Govt wants to extradite you from LAX to Guantanamo, at which point a lawyer is the least of your worries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Do as we say or you'll miss your flight" probably get 99.99% compliance. Most people have plans and "have nothing to hide," or so they think.

Question: Why do they ask all these question about kids, schools, wife etc? Identity is established, the passport is legit because they can check it, WTH do they want?

<comment><USER28> It's normal interrogation techniques. They ask normal stuff to see if you lie or you get nervous. Just watch any of those airport security shows on TV to see how many people who end up smuggling stuff fail to answer those simple questions or change their story several times during the interrogation process.

<comment><USER27> I understand that...that's why they ask 100 times the same question in detective interviews. Truth is the same, but if you're lying you might refine it and eventually forget so you invent a new one.

So it's not to prove that you're John Doe but to see if you have anything suspicious with you or if you're up to no good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Suggestion: for international travel, when possible stow your powered off phone in checked baggage, and bring a non-important factory-reset phone or tablet for entertainment or to connect to the cloud if needed for work etc. If needed keep your work files in a hidden folder on an SD card in your camera... lots of annoying but increasingly necessary workarounds to deal with the growth of authoritarian states.

<comment><USER30> Just make sure you phone's battery is dead. Then you won't be able to unlock it anyway.

<comment><USER31> Hmm, I'm wondering how they'd respond if you stored your battery in your checked baggage...

<comment><USER4> "Just wait here sir, we'll get that... Also you're going to be charged with checking a lithium battery into the hold, you're not allowed to do that."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The border doctrine so clearly violates the Constitution, it's absurd that we allow it to continue (especially when it's applied to most of he population of the US due to the coasts). It has to go.

</comment><comment><USER33> The fact that border agents can search your personal effects is totalitarian, not unlike the stasi and other authoritarian regimes. The fact that this is 'normalized' in a democracy is astonishing.

This case also highlights the massive gap between civilized rule of law and what actually happens in these interactions, the dehumanization and arbitrary intimidation is not compatible with a democratic civilized society, and this culture of enforcement and lack of accountability is akin to a police state.

<comment> maze-le > accountability is akin to a police state

Not akin, the US is a police state. If you have ever been in a real police- state (Brazil, Israel, Cuba) you will immediately spot the similarities. And the US is not alone, just the most advanced state of a former democracy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Searching through a phone/laptop is like searching through your mind itself, this should not be legal under any circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER35> Geez. This is terrible. This just makes me consider using a burner phone and imaging my own laptop before visiting the States after being in China for four years.

</comment><comment><USER36> I was searched at the border a few months ago on my way in via car from Vancouver to Washington. It did unfortunately appear to be the case that they had selected a significantly larger number of non-caucasion looking people for searches that followed mine (I'm caucasion), thought I hadn't noticed until my girlfriend pointed it out to me. However, while I was waiting for them to finish searching my car, I spoke with a caucasion fellow who happened to be Canadian with a German passport. Based on what he described, they decided that he must have been trying to work in the states without the right visa. They then proceeded to molest him and his personal privacy for 4+ hours. He tossed me a pamphlet that they gave him indicating that they had the full legal right to do so and he was more or less screwed. I proceeded to start deleting every avenue they'd have to view chat messages, emails, photos, anything, but there really was only so much I could do. Fortunately, it seems like they just wanted to try and intimidate me. The search seemed to be a formality. From what I hear, similar things happen on the way into Canadians to Canadians. It's a strange world we live in, and I wish all the good fortune in the world to those who try and fight it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't take your devices with you.

</comment><comment><USER38> Was this incident recorded by any passers-by?

It may sound as if I'm asking out of doubt, but rather, I'm asking to see if my hunch that CBP is equally as reckless and uncaring in front of a camera as e.g. other law enforcement agencies.

<comment><USER39> It is not allowed to use phone/camera at the Customs area.

<comment><USER40> To the point they don't even like you texting your travel companions inquiring about the delay. Because of these horror stories, I use my phone's ability to disable the TouchID reader forcing the 18 character pass code to be used when returning to the US. On entry of a foreign country, I shut it down completely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> To me this kind of story should be on the front page of the NYT, not the fact that Netflix found out what my Candy Crush score was via my FB messages.

Being physically detained by law enforcement and having your Constitutional rights denied seems way worse than FB data leaks, at least to me.

And maybe I'm wrong but I can't help but wonder if race is a factor, that this and other stories like it would be bigger news if white U.S. citizens were the ones being subjected to this treatment.

</comment><comment><USER42> What's the protocol if the phone (or other electronic device) was provided to you by your employer? Wouldn't unlocking and handing over a "protected" device be against most company handbooks?

</comment><comment><USER43> Just a reminder: anyone that is on the TLA's shitlist will have their phones combed through as soon as it hits american networks(possibly others).

This is more or less a form of intimidation at the border.

</comment><comment><USER44> I would hate to go to a place where they tried to force me to unlock my phone and surrender my privacy.</comment>


How to be Successful at PyWeek (One-Week Long Python Game Development Challenge) - <AUTHOR> http://www.superjoesoftware.com/temp/pyweek-success.html

<comment><USER2> _Remember that judges have hundreds of games to play. If at any time during your game they get stuck, they are likely to shrug and move on to a different game.

...

Nobody likes a game that treats the player like an idiot. However, a player is far more willing to tolerate a Level 1 that they can pass without thinking, than they are to try to disassemble a masterpiece puzzle at the very beginning. Judges are much more likely to give up and move on._

I've entered two past PyWeeks; this part of the article really hit me.

My last two games were very, very short. I wanted to lengthen the game so I made the levels harder. The feedback that I got was that the game was too hard; judges got stuck within the first minute or two.

I'll again be limited by time but this time I'll prefer to make the game easy than hard. I think players will find it more enjoyable to finish the game than get stuck.

If anyone is planning on participating in the PyWeek a few weeks away, I recommend reading some articles from this list:

<http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/>

I particularly liked these quick tips:

[http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips-for-making-a-fun- pla...](http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips-for-making-a-fun-platformer/)

<comment><USER3> You might also find some useful tips on designing an engaging (fun) experience on the gamification wiki [1]. Making a game "easy" but providing constant "achievements" and "levelling up" opportunities could be a good strategy. I always remember how easy it was to get really high scores on pinball machines...

[1] <http://gamification.org/wiki/Encyclopedia></comment></comment>


The Illusion of Life: Disney's principles of animation - <AUTHOR> http://the12principles.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER3> Those animation principles absolutely apply in UI work, and I wish digital designers were more exposed to it. There is still a lot to be explored with what can be done with quality animation in UIs, and digital designers should absolutely pay attention to this. If you're a designer, doing motion well will do wonders to your career.

Motion has always been extremely important, but with the faster processors and GPUs we have in our mobile phones we finally have the extra cycles for it - Apple's latest iOS does really well on that front (far from perfect of course, but they're trying really hard and getting places). It's no coincidence that UIDynamics shipped with iOS7. CSS3 brings its lot of cool things too.

Also no coincidence is that Apple and Pixar grew very close together - a lot of OSX's charm comes from subtle and delightful animation (genie effect, apps bouncing on the dock, etc.) that Windows didn't even try doing until Vista. Relevant article: [http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/are-apple-ui-designers- lear...](http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/are-apple-ui-designers-learning- from-pixar/)

I've been maintaining a blog where I document animations that I find particularly interesting: [http://www.ui-animations.com](http://www.ui- animations.com) (no throbber/loading spinners, those are very rarely interesting from an animation standpoint, even though they may be cute from a graphic design point of view).

For the more academic minded of us, I like this CHI 1995 paper: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=974941&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=974941&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE) (ACM paywall, but Google Scholar is your friend. Also, you should get an ACM membership- it's really worth it and will make you a better computing professional)

<comment><USER4> Can you recommend any high-level libraries to incorporate motion into web UIs? It's annoying to work directly with CSS3 animations.

<comment><USER5> #1 by far: GSAP! Lots if not most award winning stuff w/ them, ex, spend a few minutes on [http://intothearctic.gp](http://intothearctic.gp)

It makes famo.us look like the 80s.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing inherently special about Into The Arctic that isn't easy to accomplish in both famo.us and GSAP, so I can only conclude that you haven't really used famo.us (which would be understandable since it's only been available publicly for 3 weeks now).

The reason I find the tone of your post interesting is because we just hired someone two weeks ago who has been using GSAP professionally and sees much more promise in what we're doing. Personally I haven't used GSAP enough to render an opinion, so I use his decisions as proxy until I can give GSAP the attention it deserves.

Furthermore, no regular HNer who values the high quality of discourse on this site would say something like "It makes famo.us look like the 80s." That's kindergarten playground smack talking. So, given the tone of your post, do you have any conflicts of interest or biases you should be disclosing to the HN community? Mine are obvious. I work at famo.us.

total karma 80, average karma per post 0.39. That helps be better consider the value of your contribution, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Besides any conflicts of interest, how long have you been using GSAP and how long have you been using famo.us?

<comment><USER5> (Rather than your personal attack or your self importance, lets focus on the discussion instead of redirection, m'k.)

Let me underline a stark fact: GSAP can and is used by designers. Famo.us is used by programmers, so it is not a fair fight, designers writer nicer and more creative UI, end of story. Look at Swing apps, they lost out to Web due to programer UI.

Famo.us took too long to develop and the window is now closed shut, that is my prediction. That is the footnote to famo.us investors, too long, too many pivots. Ads are being done in GSAP, google IO ([http://www.google.com/events/io](http://www.google.com/events/io) ) is GSAP, etc. due to works with existing flow. It's true that something done in GSAP by designer quickly, could be re-done in Famo.us by a programmer later, but it won't be. And games won't be done in Famou.us either, it does not work w/ models, or modelers, but a game engine like [http://typescript.away3d.com](http://typescript.away3d.com) does.

Famo.us is interesting and fun tech experiment, but it will be the market development (lean) that decides, not me. Famo.us are behind in the market and way slow development velocity to pivot again.

I am a techie and root for such, but famo.us is an example that makes techies look bad, a solution w/o a problem, as just chasing a tech w/o market. I did start out liking famo.us when it first came up, but moved on after the long delays. There are positive examples of techies aligned with a market, that is what we need.

Anyway, I just made a prediction of your market, lets it in 2 more years.

<comment><USER6>
        Famo.us took too long to develop and the window is now
        closed shut, that is my prediction.

        Famo.us is interesting and fun tech experiment, but it
        will be the market development (lean) that decides, not
        me. Famo.us are behind in the market and way slow
        development velocity to pivot again.

I'm not going to make a prediction myself, since I have a dog in this fight, but you're just spreading FUD and Github can back me up on this. As of today, Sunday May, 4, 2014, GSAP JS libs [0] have 1265 stars and 226 forks, 1 open issue and 35 closed issues. The famous github repo [1], which has been publicly available for 3-4 weeks has 3229 stars, 404 forks, 38 open issues and 119 closed issues (main repo and submodules combined). That's hardly a textbook case of "window [of opportunity] is now closed shut". In fact, in light of this new evidence, you may want to re-evaluate if you are on the right side of the decision being made by the market. Being first doesn't matter. Google wasn't the first search engine, nor was Facebook the first social network. In fact the market is littered with the bodies of first movers.

        And games won't be done in Famou.us either, it does not
        work w/ models, or modelers, but a game engine like
        http://typescript.away3d.com does.

FWIW, One of the main creators of [redacted quantity] top 40 highest grossing video games of all times is exploring famous for his next game.

Again, one of my questions still stands, have you even used famo.us? Yes or no?

Also, what do java swing apps have to do with famous and GSAP?

[0] [https://github.com/greensock/GreenSock- JS](https://github.com/greensock/GreenSock-JS)

[1] [https://github.com/famous/famous](https://github.com/famous/famous)

<comment><USER5> I'll wish you good luck. Please post websites, webapps or games built w/ famo.us when they are. The personal thing of yours, you must work for GSAP and now something else, is not a good approach to evangelize your brand. I gave you specific example where you'll fail: no workflow for designers or modelers. Famo.us was early as it relates to your example, but chose not to release. What year were your first showing those cool videos? Famo.us chose not to do customer development apparently. How do I import a model? ex: [http://kurst.co.uk/samples/awayts/tests/?test=js/Intermediat...](http://kurst.co.uk/samples/awayts/tests/?test=js/Intermediate_PerelithKnight.js) Most if not all WbGL work w/ Maya, Blender, etc. One game may be written in famo.us? m'k. A few of classic mistakes.

Please be open to learn the lesson of a solution looking for a problem w/ $5M ( [http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/famo- us](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/famo-us) ). The investors made a mistake, it happens.

<comment><USER6>
        The personal thing of yours, you must work for GSAP and
        now something else, is not a good approach to evangelize
        your brand.

I normally calmly address negative points people point out (there are some and they are being addressed), but that's not how you began the conversation at all. Instead you began with the comment "It makes famo.us look like the 80s." and no further content backing up that claim. When I challenged on your initial claim, I did so because I knew it could only be rooted in ignorance (i.e. never actually used famo.us) since the people I know who have spent time with both don't hold such beliefs.

My other comments on this thread were there to evangelize a tech product that I work on because it has merit. My comments to you are rooted in no such thing. Instead they are rooted in responding to behavior that is not forthcoming of mature intelligent discussion on HN. I've been in this community for a long time and participate regularly. I care very deeply about it and hate it when people treat it like reddit and lower the quality of discourse. With that in mind, my replies were my own and were composed on behalf of Hacker News and not my employer. It's not different than when a wikipedian challenges an obviously bogus claim on the talk page or with a "citation needed" superscript.

If you want to judge the a piece of technology based on my comments, you are free to do so (despite being very poor methodology). If you don't use famous, because of those replies, that's unfortunate for us both. However, if next time you comment on HN on any topic and choose to give pause and give more thought and consideration to what you write instead of mindless fanboi-ism, I will have considered it a worthy sacrifice.

Regarding the criticisms of the workflow. You're 100% correct. We don't have a workflow for designers or modelers. It's simply not ready for consumption by audiences who can't code. FWIW, our plan is to build out towards those audiences layer by layer since doing so keeps our platform far more extensible and usable by many audiences. If you built out for designers on day one, it's very hard to really be able to then build out lower level foundational APIs. If you instead take a unix philosophy approach, you can build out layer by layer like an onion and each layer can be made of composable parts.

This means that we'll eventually have a layer that makes it very easy to build out the designer tools on top. Not only that, whichever developers (in the company or from the community) build out the layers for designers and modelers, will be working at a higher level of abstraction that affords them more flexibility and speed when creating need features and exploring different directions.

Apple only achieved what they did with UIKit for iOS and AppKit for OS X because they had a very robust base called FoundationKit, that is built on top of Darwin/BSD.

If you play the short game and satisfy higher level customers instead of building out the right code infrastructure, you are more likely to create a platform that is short-lived and can't stand the test of time. Also, by building out for developers first, you create a community that can magnify your capabilities and reach since your initial core community has the skills to contribute back to the commons. If you skip this group, then you are on the hook for the majority of improvements to your platform because someone needs to be a senior developer to understand the code base all the way down to the lower levels.

One day we may have something that works for Maya or Blender. That day isn't today, and people who cannot code and need a capability like importing a model, should definitely go with GSAP. If on the other hand they can code, then they may find famo.us to be the more interesting platform. There's no silver bullet. Given the number of forks, followers and activity in the community so far, we think we've made the right decision by going developer first.

It's not really possible to make the judgement of "a few classic mistakes" until you've made an effort to understand the end-game. For example, if GSAP wanted to build out a true platform, then building out to designers and modelers first, IMHO represents "a few classic mistakes", but that's not their product and not their market, so they've done a great job in reaching that market today. I wish we could serve that market today, but we've made a conscious decision to play the long game here.

We don't think we're a solution looking for a problem, and given the play that smart investors[0] are looking for, we're pretty well positioned [0].

[0] [https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/462476067463102465](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/462476067463102465)

<comment><USER5> We are going in circles. You need to realize that just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that they are a bad community member. I'm not getting paid for essays or to PR. I predict your corp will fail, prove me wrong.

You agree that ad/agencies won't use it as it does not work for designers, game companies won't use it as it does not work with model pipeline. I repeat that should you guys fail, it makes other tech founders look bad to other investors, and that affects me. You should have done lean process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool animations and most fit the principals nicely but there's very little info on this page. I found the wikipedia page helpful and relevant - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_basic_principles_of_animatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_basic_principles_of_animation)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not generally a big Disney person but the books on animation theory from them that I've bought are quite enjoyable.

There is book that the linked-to animation is based on: The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas

Two other Disney animation resources that I've picked up over the years include:

* The 2 volumes of Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes by Walt Stanchfield

* Walt Disney Animation Studios: The Archive Series in 4 volumes: Story (about storyboards not writing), Animation, Design, and Layout & Background

I haven't seen the flip books they released recently for each of Disney's "Nine Old Men" but it sounds interesting.

<comment><USER3> I own all of the books mentioned above, as well as the flipbooks. They're really great, but you have to have a certain appreciation of animation beforehand to enjoy the details. It's really just the flipbooks - <USER2> accompanying text or anything. It gives you great insight into how talented animators animated certain movements, but you have to know what to look out for.

Not Disney, but the Animator's Survival Kit is also heavily recommended. Also recommended: Timing for Animation. I also have been meaning to check out "Elemental Magic" (2 volumes, about animating substances such as water, fire, etc.), and "Setting the Scene".

/signed a computer scientist who wishes he can retire and attend CalArts on his startup millions ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the greatest resource on animation I've found

By Richard Williams

[http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/](http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/)

<comment><USER10> So you would say it's worth the price? ($959.50)

<comment><USER11> Obviously it depends on what you do for a living.

If you are an animation pro, $1000 could be even cheap if you earn way more money thanks to it.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, a friend got me the book and videos so had no idea how expensive they were... Guess I have just found out I have a good friend :)

here are some excerpts from the videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbtbbdA4kUM&list=PL1A1FEDA47...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbtbbdA4kUM&list=PL1A1FEDA47ADC18D4)

also the book is also amazing

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Kit- Principles/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Kit- Principles/dp/086547897X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399122684&sr=8-1&keywords=animator+survival)

and only $30

if you need any excerpts or advice on this stuff, tweet me @jonathanmatthey happy to help :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For great examples of these principles in videogames, see World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (1992)

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

and Disney's Aladdin (1993)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Aladdin_(video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Aladdin_\(video_game\))

</comment><comment><USER13> There are two editions of the book which is a masterpiece (the longer edition is intended for serious animators). If you have any interest in animation you owe it to yourself to grab a copy.

I don't think that two of the principles are dealt with well in the animations — staging and pose-to-pose. The morphs are too subtle to really illustrate the principle well. (The elegance of animating a cube for each principle is fantastic.)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is a video that goes along with this:

[http://www.centolodigiani.com/117722/3078861/work/the- illusi...](http://www.centolodigiani.com/117722/3078861/work/the-illusion-of- life)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey, nice. This was one my favorite books in film school! Also, 'In The Blink of An Eye' by Walter Murch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very neat. Not really sure how to appy this though.

<comment><USER17> Do you need to present a series of images in rapid sequence, to the user, in a seamless manner, evocative of a particular concept?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The fake film-dirt noise is really silly.</comment>


Ask HN: What organization to support to prevent climate apocalypse? - <AUTHOR> What organization should best be supported to prevent the climate apocalypse? What organization has the best chance to actually change things to the better? <comment><USER2> What kind of support do you mean? Financial? Or more along the lines of joining and contributing to some project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean primarily financial support, but I don't want to exclude a more direct contribution in the question. However in my concrete case it would be easier to donate than to engage directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any organization that has a plan to replace our current 'democratic' systems.</comment>


Vim tricks - <AUTHOR> https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/intermediate-vim/ <comment><USER2> There's a few commands I LOVE but find frequently unmentioned.

In insert mode, <C-x> is a contextual completion. So like the normal <C-n> or <C-p> you just do <C-x><C-n> and you can keep hammering the <C-n> to fill in multiple "words". You can also complete lines, file paths, dictionary words, thesaurus words, tags, spelling, etc. See `help ins-completion`. Seriously, I can't do without this command. <C-x> needs to be in everyone's daily use.

Also in insert mode: <C-w> deletes a word back. You'll commonly find this is a lot of editors and stuff where it doesn't close a window. Similar to <C-backspace>, though I many times accidentally hit <C-w> in my browser instead of <C-backspace> because I use this so much (bad speller).

<C-[> much easier than pressing Esc

0 much easier than pressing ^ (honestly I have anything that is $,%,^,&. They aren't easy to reach)

Honestly, vim has some of the best written documentation I've read. If you really want to master vim, just read the docs on commands you already use. I guarantee you'll find something you didn't know.

<comment><USER3> can you give more examples of <C-x><C-n> in code editing? I have tested that out in vim and its cool but i cant think of times I want to repeat a series in another part of the document, perhaps I'm just very uncreative right now

Thanks

<comment><USER2> Totally. But I will tell you, <C-x> is a habit built around the other options too. So I just use <C-x> on any completion (which I frequently use <C-x><C-f>).

Here's a dumb example (dumb because there's other ways to do it that are better)

Let's say I'm overloading a function.

void foo(int a, int b) {}

I could do v<C-x><C-p> until I fill in the b, then type ", int c)". Now it'd be totally easier to do "v<C-x><C-l> backspace , int c)", but that's a different point.

Maybe this one is a little more useful

"def _<C-x><C-p><C-x><C-p>" may expand to "def __init__(self" Note that here I'm holding down ctrl and just hitting "xpxp"

Honestly I end up finding a lot of patterns in my code just because I started thinking about it this way. It is more one of those things where once you start thinking about it with it in mind you will find patterns.

It is also an easy habit to develop, if you already use <C-n>, because when you press ctrl you just also hit x and keep your pinky down on ctrl. I feel like there is just no downside to using <C-x> because in reality it is just one more keystroke, which is done with the other hand (so even less increase in work).

<comment><USER3> Dude! That is awesome... it makes sense now. I totally didn't even know bout <C-x><C-l> either!

Do you rebind your caps to control as well? That was another thing I did which is 10/10

<comment><USER2> Yeah I rebind keys and write my own functions. I have a preference for distilling things that I use out of plugins[0] and into just vanilla vim (I still use plugins). I'll share my configurations[1]. I don't document it well btw and there's frequently changes. But I find that looking at others rc files many times gives me ideas that I hadn't seen before. Also, if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

[0]see my git rebindings instead of using tpope's plugin

[1][https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles](https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles)

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Here's mine. I am busy atm but I will circle back and tell you my favorite tricks.

Read my README for most of my favorite tricks.

[https://github.com/9mm/dotfiles](https://github.com/9mm/dotfiles)

Things that come to mind

\- ZSH-autocomplete is probably by far my favorite thing ever \- iterm3 full overlay with <C-i> means that i have a full overlay terminal immediately available no matter what im doing. No messing with stupid windows \- i made my own custom theme etc you can check out

Vim favorite things

\- `gx` opens the current URL under the cursor in your browser \- `gq` for word rewrapping comments on the fly \- `Bda!` look in my .vimrc for Bda! which deletes all open buffers, useful when youre working and have 40 open buffers you forgot about and want to start fresh

I'll think of more later!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Exobrains, on the other hand, stuff Vim full of plugins, functions, and homebrew mappings in a vain attempt to pretend they're using Emacs."

This is _disturbingly_ accurate from my point of view. I keep wondering if I should finally jump ship and stop tweaking vim with questionable results. Spacemacs? Pure emacs + evil? Suggestions welcome.

<comment><USER5> I particularly prefer doom-emacs [1]. I migrated from Vim to Spacemacs, however doom-emacs is leaner, faster and has better evil integration. For example, Spacemacs has no mapping for evil-numbers, however doom-emacs maps it to Ctrl+A (increase number) and Ctrl+Shift+A (decrease number) [2].

However, you will probably need to do some customizations in doom-emacs. Spacemacs works mostly only using its internal layers, however when you try to do something that isn't included already... Well, it is less than optimal. doom-emacs assumes that you will want to customize things.

[1]: [https://github.com/hlissner/doom- emacs/](https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/)

[2]: And as for why it isn't Ctrl+X to decrease number like in Vim, it is because Ctrl+X is probably the most important keymapping in Emacs itself. However I find Ctrl+Shift+A quite good because it follows the Vim convention of the reverse of some operation is on Shift.

<comment><USER6> I recently moved from Spacemacs to Doom. I second, that it's so much better, in that it's faster, leaner, and easier to comprehend. Some of the keybindings could be more thorough. I find myself M-x'ing a lot. I take this as an acceptable trade off, as keybindings are easy to set on one's own.

<comment><USER5> I like it because it is easier to add than remove. Spacemacs has so many language specifics keybindings that, while taking less time to be productive, also makes customization much harder thanks to the multiple conflicts that you will probably get when trying to map something.

However this is the trade-off. You have to spend more time in doom-emacs, however there is less friction to customize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've discovered q: when trying to quit vim in a hurry. You always keep finding new quirky things to do in vim but I guess the same hold true for other text editors like Emacs

<comment><USER2> That's how I found `K`. I was surprised the first time I got a man page open. Now I find it pretty useful and wish it extended to more than man pages.

<comment><USER8> Take a look at `:help 'keywordprg'`.

<comment><USER2> Can I do things like get `K` to work on python commands? Including modules? Or with other languages?

I see that I can do `set keywordprg=pydoc` but I want modules too.

<comment><USER9> Check out vim-dokumentary: [https://github.com/gastonsimone/vim- dokumentary](https://github.com/gastonsimone/vim-dokumentary)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use gf (mnemonic: go file) all the time -- it will grab the string under the cursor (the cursor doesn't need to be at the start of it), then attempt to open a file with that name. You can look up the details but it uses a path type mechanism so if the name of the file isn't absolute, it will check the path.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget about its twin gx. For example on MacOS gx uses the open command to open a file in the default application. Really helpful when you want to open up a website quickly in your browser or you have the url to an image in a markdown file and want to see it. Helpful trick for relativ paths: [https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/7xs8x3/opening_local_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/7xs8x3/opening_local_relative_paths_with_gx/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" :, @: ": is the register storing the last executed command. You can write ":p to print it to the buffer. @: reruns the last command._

That seems like a mouthful. I use :<up arrow> to run the last command and <up arrow> some more to run the ones before that.

<comment><USER13> And if you wanted to repeat that 10 times you would...?

<comment><USER14> Press up ten times. That's still what a lot of us do in terminal (particularly when we're on a machine without fancy shell history fuzzy-searching etc.).

I guess I might press and hold at ten.

<comment><USER15> Your machine probably has ^r for working through bash history

But that aside, if you're into arrow pressing, a few lines in your .inputrc can go a long ways

Test this out sometime:

      # Incremental searching with Up and Down and Left and Right
      "\e[A": history-search-backward
      "\e[B": history-search-forward

Now you can type "find" and press up/down arrow to just cycle through history that starts with find

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > U is the same as u except it does the undo as a new change, which is > functionally useless.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is the default undo behavior for emacs...What horror to only have vim's forward and backward undo history! Said the emacser on the vimmer's post.

<comment><USER17> Maybe misunderstood what you meant, but vim's undo is not linear but rather tree-like. You can undo, make a change, and still get back to the initial state. [https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Using_undo_branches](https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Using_undo_branches)

Edit: this also seems to be in the original post

<comment><USER16> You are definitely right, and I still find the emacs undo confusing...but I did think it was funny that one dev's trash is another's treasure—now that I know what to expect, I even kind of like the emacs way, but when I first switched I _hated_ it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Text objects are crucial to composing vim commands. Vim offers quite a few but honestly, there's plenty more. I'd recommend using the vim-textobj-user as base to add appealing text objects. Personally, I can't live without the "entire" text object which allows one to act upon the entire file. Like "indent entire file" etc.

[https://github.com/kana/vim-textobj-user](https://github.com/kana/vim- textobj-user)

[https://github.com/kana/vim-textobj-entire](https://github.com/kana/vim- textobj-entire)

</comment><comment><USER19> One I learned recently transferring some LaTeX over to rST is visual highlight => "gq". This breaks up long lines to multiple lines based on your stored text width. It can also be coupled with motions, e.g., "gq}".

<comment><USER20> Yeah. That's a really nice one. I use 'gqip' a lot when writing prose in latex, md, etc. One really cool thing is that it respects comments, so it will split long comment lines into multiline comments as necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > If you're constantly tweaking your vimrc, do yourself a favor and add a > command for that:

> command! Vimrc :vs $MYVIMRC

I just use marks for this. Capital letter marks work across files, I use 'I (for init.vim, I use neovim).

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it bad that I've used Vi/m since the early 80's, and I still don't know (or really feel like I need to know) a lot of tricks?

Sometimes efficiency is not about "tricks"

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem is, how do you remember all of this stuff? Tabdo/bufdo is as advanced as it ever gets for me.

<comment><USER3> You have to make a deliberate attempt to learn it. What i would do is when coding I would focus on a single command and do it 5 or 6 times until it was engrained, then I would go to the next one. I spent about 15 days straight fairly intensively learning vim .. taht was 8 years ago. Best decision I have ever made in my entire programmign career. Now I pick up new vim commands like I am multilingual in 20 languages. All the commands I can usually remember without even typing them, they just stick. It definitely has the rolling snowball momentum effect

<comment><USER23> At my billing rate "15 days straight" is approximately equal to a low end BMW. So I think tabdo/bufdo will have to do for now. At least until I get a salaried job and can learn the rest at my employer's expense.

I do think there's Pareto principle at play with all this obscure stuff. Knowing 20% gets you 80% of the benefit, every additional percent gets you exponentially smaller fraction of the remaining 20%. That's how I play it anyway. I don't feel like I'm any less productive with my 20%.

<comment><USER24> >At my billing rate "15 days straight" is approximately equal to a low end BMW.

So, you're saying you are making too much money to learn something new?

<comment><USER23> Oh no, I learn "something new" every day. It's just not related to text editing. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at editing in vim. After all, it's been my editor of choice for the last 15 years or so, and I see no reason why it would not remain in that role indefinitely. I'm just not convincing that learning the more obscure stuff is valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Clickbait title conceals a decent article.

<comment><USER26> Changed now.</comment></comment>


MySQL to PostgreSQL converter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mihailShumilov/mysql2postgresql

<comment><USER2> I would recommend using pgloader ([http://pgloader.io/](http://pgloader.io/)) instead. It is simple to use in the default case, but can be configured with rules for how data types should be converted if necessary. It can also clean up weird timestamps like 0000-00-00 00:00:00.

<comment><USER3> Upvote for pgloader. Moving data from SQL Server into Postgres with PGLoader has been fairly seamless and the maintainer is very responsive on Github.

<comment><USER4> There doesn't seem to be any mention of SQL Server on the site? I am in the process of researching a move to Postgres from SQL Server, so if you have any other info on how you achieved this that'd be very much appreciated.

 _EDIT_ I see it now. Still, anything that you think useful would be great :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No foreign key support is kind of a deal-breaker. Hard to believe anyone who is actually in the position of needing this would have a schema so simple that it contains no foreign keys.

<comment><USER6> Hard to believe mysql doesn't include that data in one of it's dump formats.

<comment><USER7> It is supported, just not in XML dump format.

<comment><USER6> Ah. That's a relief, I was a little worried. But that makes it strange that someone, knowing of this limitation, would choose to start with the xml dump format.

<comment><USER8> I think the fact that this form of dump doesn't contain foreign keys is even more extraordinary.

What's the point of having a dump format that you can't use to restore your database properly?

Does it have a health warning advising that it's not a proper dump?

<comment><USER9> Well, I've had issues with pg_dump's standard format. It can't be directly used to restore a db, one must manually set it to dump a .bak or something else.

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you refer to here. All pg_dump formats should work for restoring a database. The only flaw in pg_dump that I know of is the mess if you want to dump an entire cluster of databases but still have one file per database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We were getting really close to converting our RDS instance from MySQL -> PG, but now with Amazon Aurora being the spiffy super-scalable/etc. RDS engine, we'll probably end up moving to that when/if needed.

Which is a mixed blessing; Aurora sounds great, but I was looking forward to getting back into PG after years of RDS being MySQL-only.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find the more difficult issue to be rewriting bulk "insert ignore" and "on duplicate key" queries.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, seems like postgres is the only database that doesn't support those things. I mean, I use postgres, but I curse the lack of this feature regularly.

<comment><USER13> Which other databases support "insert ignore"?

<comment> mh- while not that specific syntax, _upserts_ are widely supported. e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_%28SQL%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_%28SQL%29)

I think PostgreSQL is relatively alone in lacking it.

<comment><USER14> I have tried to read into why PostgresSQL doesn't yet (they are working it) have upserts. Several times I have come across people discussing that Merge which is much more powerful the simple upserts, also doesn't really mandate the nature of upserts in most databases.

Simply a user might expect that upserts always succeed with either an update or insert, and never return an error (except when the consistency model is set high enough).

The problem is that many implementations of merge doesn't provide that guarantee, unbeknownst to many users. Or they are simpler databases such as sqlite (which doesn't provide the same multi-user/transaction performance). Postgres, as they are well known for, want to implement it properly. They know that application developers does not expect that they have to resubmit failed upsert. Aside: they are also working on audit features, which presents a number of implementations difficulties that upserts also does. So some time or later, probably not to far away, we will see upserts in postgres. Proper atomic, performant, nice upserts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://github.com/philipsoutham/py- mysql2pgsql](https://github.com/philipsoutham/py-mysql2pgsql)

Works very well for me.

I think the only limitation is related to spatial data. I'm not aware of anything else.

</comment><comment><USER16> A big problem I've encountered was MySQL-specific functions used in client code.

Fortunately there was a project that reimplemented many of these functions in Postgres:

[https://github.com/pornel/mysqlcompat](https://github.com/pornel/mysqlcompat)

<comment><USER17> There was but the last commit is from 2011?

<comment><USER16> That's when I've migrated ;)

The code is even older, but fortunately the most common MySQL functions haven't changed in maybe a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for Your comments It's really very important for me I think that next version of converter will be supported raw dump format

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql- converter](https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter)

does the job for me

</comment><comment><USER19> When I saw this was a PHP project: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31250/gifs/no- thanks.gif](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31250/gifs/no-thanks.gif)

<comment><USER20> Really? What does the language it's written in have to do with anything at all here?

<comment><USER2> Here it actually matters a bit. The pgloader project was rewritten in Common Lisp from the original Python version to speed up processing the data. You want to be able to migrate terabyte databases without too much downtime.</comment></comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz launches Job Book, an encyclopedia of jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2007/10/30/jobbookorg-up-and-running/

<comment><USER2> The problem with job/salary surveys is that the people who respond tend to skew towards the more satisfied and higher paid range. That's why when I was in undergrad, all the jobs seemed so darn great - the companies sent the happiest, chirpiest employees they could find.

On a separate note, does jobbook.org look a bit under developed for a publicized app that "took several months"? Maybe there's magic behind that simple UI.

<comment><USER3> ding ding.

Personal salary surveys are considered so inaccurate that HR firms won't bother to do them. I saw something similar with salaryscout.com.

HR pros usually ignore salary data from employee sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aaron Swartz is to ycnews, as xkcd comics are to reddit. Instantly upvoted to top page all the time. It gets boring on both sites IMHO

<comment><USER5> What about PG?

<comment><USER6> Ron Paul

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone noticed that the site is built using the infogami codebase? (<http://infogami.org/dev>)

</comment><comment><USER8> Aaron seems to be using the wiki/notetaking/lightweight approach to a number of things, throwing things up and seeing what sticks. Not a bad idea per se but I have a feeling that each of these projects will need a bit more handholding and followthrough if they are to succeed. But best of luck to him.

</comment><comment><USER9> Like a lot of UGC sites, I'm not quite clear what the incentive is for the contributors...

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea. Not just for choosing careers, it's also a good source for startups that have a general idea but aren't sure what particular group of users to focus on first, and what special requirements that group has.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting... some of the goals of this sound similar, and complementary, to Path101 (<http://blog.path101.com>).

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I'll make a Web 2.0 startup that thinks up names for new Web 2.0 startups.

What shall I call it? Startnom? CeaseGuerre?

</comment><comment><USER13> Aaron Swartz.. truly the most brilliant human to come to the tech world. He is a revolutionary.

<comment><USER14> I'm searching for the /sarcasm tag. Please tell me it's there somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's a cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> infogami ... reddit ... openlibrary ... jottit ... jobbook ... This guy's on fire!

<comment><USER17> True, although he abandoned Infogami to start reddit, which he left to start the rest (and that's after starting a few other now-neglected projects like the Alex Kozinski Site (<http://notabug.com/kozinski/>) and a proto-Wikipedia at <http://theinfo.org/>).

He appears to be very smart -- but a little too brilliant (<http://taoyue.com/stacks/articles/brilliant-men.html>).

<comment><USER18> "start reddit" ?

<comment><USER19> Yeah he definitely didn't start Reddit. He joined up with the Reddit team in December '05.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PPA for Netflix Desktop App - <AUTHOR> http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/ppa-for-netflix-desktop-app.html <comment><USER2> I wish Netflix would come out with a first-party native app for the Mac platform. Silverlight never gained any traction, and if it weren't for Netflix I could get it completely off my Mac.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also an Arch PKGBUILD on AUR for anyone using Arch. Seems to work on my 64-bit Arch installation.

<https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/netflix-desktop-bin/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know if this will mess with my existing wine setup or install side by side? I'd like to try it but I use other wine apps and don't wanna break them.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the initial post:

'This build is not compatible with "vanilla" Wine, so installing this custom package will uninstall any existing Wine installation you have. Back up your current WINE folder to be safe.'

[http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/netflix-on-ubuntu-is- her...](http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/netflix-on-ubuntu-is-here.html)

<edit> A peek in Synaptic shows both wine 1.4 && wine-compholio installed. Perhaps the PPA resolved the necessity of the uninstall. In the interest of public safety, I would definitely back up before proceeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried it on my kubuntu i386 netbook earlier today. The ppa installed ok and when I ran 'netflix-desktop' for the first time the wine installer downloaded and installed mono, then proceeded to install firefox. I noticed some errors but didn't look at them very carefuly.

I ran 'netflix-desktop' again and it said 'firefox.exe not found' at which point I gave up.

</comment><comment><USER6> Off-topic:

In this image: [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R2DPjmtAo3E/UKkcVxeORZI/AAAAAAAABK...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R2DPjmtAo3E/UKkcVxeORZI/AAAAAAAABKw/r9_g2CErISU/s1600/netflixonubuntu.png)

I see an elephant icon that looks like the Evernote icon. Anybody know what's going on there?

<comment><USER7> A quick search of google returns this [http://www.webupd8.org/2012/09/everpad- integrates-evernote-w...](http://www.webupd8.org/2012/09/everpad-integrates- evernote-with-ubuntu.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn, it wants to install a thousand i386 packages on my system. Too much to ask for an x86-64 build? :D

<comment><USER9> > Too much to ask for an x86-64 build?

Yes, based on the fact building Wine on x86-64 Ubuntu requires a chroot environment and using debootstrap to set the arch to i386. Wine implements the Win32 API, which apparently relies intimately on i386 and can't be done using pure x86-64 code.

<http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Runs choppy for me. What can I do?

</comment><comment><USER11> Now this is cool. I wasn't particularly impressed with the article that went around about using Netflix with Firefox in WINE but now that someone took that and applied it like this is something I can get behind.

<comment><USER12> > the article that went around about using Netflix with Firefox in WINE

I'm not aware of any previously existing solution for Netflix on Linux using WINE. You mean the article from just a couple of days ago? This is the exact same thing, except provided in an installable package....

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Works on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. Installed, watched a part of a movie.

One thing is, it starts in full screen mode just press F11 to exit it out of it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hope the PPA doesn't contain MSFT code and instead downloads it on first launch from MSFT servers!

<comment><USER9> > I hope the PPA doesn't contain MSFT code and instead downloads it on first > launch from MSFT servers!

It downloads both a 32-bit Firefox for Windows and the Silverlight plugin. (The Firefox is entirely contained in its own little bottle and can't conflict with anything else.)

<comment><USER14> Glad to see the legalities were taken care of. =)</comment></comment></comment>


Can you give examples of above average websites made by users of HN? - <AUTHOR> I searched for websites made by users of HN, but I didn't find enough of them that interest me or that attract interest from more than some visitors. Maybe I don't have enough skills to search and its my fault. Can you confirm or give counter examples ?<p>One of the last example I found was about chatting when you wanted to express your feelings after a bad day, which is a great idea, but I don't have time today for that. Another one was about subscribing to something that even myself as a technical user I don't remember.
So I have time today to discover new websites and give owners real feedback, but I could not find something interesting. <comment><USER2> Recent: [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show)

All time: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=show%20hn&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=show%20hn&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I cant believe how many interesting ideas I found, it will take me a lot of time. These guys are really cool!</comment></comment>


The Hysteria Over Google's Wi-Fi Scanning - <AUTHOR> http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000718.html <comment><USER2> Recording a few packets off an open wifi doesn't sound like much of an issue. But the fact that governments -- be it Hongkong or Germany or the others -- line up to grab a share of the data should tell you that someone, somewhere, has a real, tangible (and not necessarily non-evil) use for it.

IMO, Google put itself in a bad position having this data, whether they intended it or not, because other people can get to this data, by subpoena, thinly veiled threats with law enforcement (in countries where the state doesn't get checked and balanced that much), or plain economic espionage (for all the mobsters out there). It's a little bit like creating an atomic bomb in your backyard: even when you're not planning to do any evil with it, it's still a bad idea to have one because the others will come and want.

<comment><USER3> Google wants to delete the data and has already deleted much of it. But they've constructed a catch-22 where they believe that under German law it is illegal to possess the data, illegal to delete it, and illegal to give it to the government, so they're doing nothing. It will probably have to get hashed out in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article, like the controversy, is a cup of very vague weak tea with a hint of general conspiracy. It would be more informative if the author provided any information about the specific laws allegedly broken by Google and who Google's adversaries are.

<comment><USER5> I'd be curious to see how accessing an open wifi can be made illegal. I mean, it's legal to scan for wifi networks, this how we all connect to wifi networks. Now, what happen when my laptop finds an open wifi network? I if I click to connect to that network, my laptop wifi is going to ask permission (through handshake and protocol etc) to the open wifi which is going to accept and grant me permission. How can asking first and receiving a positive response to enter an open wifi be illegal? I mean it's not like I actually broke into it or cracked the password, I actually asked first and got an inviting response.

<comment><USER3> _I'd be curious to see how accessing an open wifi can be made illegal._

Using the magic words "expectation of privacy". If we assume that the general public is clueless about computers and thus many people expect that their open wi-fi is private (even though technically it isn't), then there's a problem. Also see the debate about thermal camera scanning of homes.

 _...my laptop wifi is going to ask permission to the open wifi..._

But that's not what Google did; they were sniffing traffic without associating, so the APs had no opportunity to deny access.</comment></comment></comment>


Money Can Buy Happiness [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/26/rp_26_1.pdf <comment><USER2> > The economist Robert Frank, hardly an unqualified enthusiast of money, > essentially acknowledges as much when he writes: "...becoming more > productive is a good thing, if only because it gives us more options. It > enables us to earn more and buy more if we choose to, but it also enables us > to earn the same amount by working fewer hours, or to spend more on > environmental cleanup. Other things being equal, the more productive a > society is, the greater is each citizen's ability to pursue his vision of > the good life."

And, yet, here we are, more productive than we've ever been as a species, still slogging through 8 hour days 5 days a week, 260 days a year (give or take, if we're lucky). When do we get to sit back and say, "cool, I think we're done."

<comment><USER3> > When do we get to sit back and say, "cool, I think we're done."

When collective productivity is turned into collective leverage.

<comment><USER2> It's a nice platitude, but what does it mean in practice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post makes the assumption that happiness should be a permanent state rather than a transient state like any other emotion.

Shouldn't we seek to just 'be', and react accordingly to what the moment impresses upon us? If we seek to be happy at all times, wouldn't that be as much of a sickness as being sad all the time? Wouldn't happiness become something common place and fall into the background like so much white noise?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The author of this paper, Tara Smith, did an interview on the subject of "Achieving Happiness". It has a lot of additional concrete advice for making decisions in life.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eok34BJwIm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eok34BJwIm4)

</comment><comment><USER5> Money might not buy happiness, but it's a huge stress reducer. Not having to worry about bills or checking finances before making purchases feels amazing.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago I came across a comic[0] that stated "Serotonin and Dopamine are technically the only two things that you enjoy," which had an surprising impact on the way I look at happiness. I'm still processing the idea that on a fundamental level, joy is just a chemical response.

Long story short, I'm trying to focus on fulfillment, scaling the Maslow pyramid[1], and accept that happiness may or may not be a byproduct.

Money seems almost always necessary for the journey, but I have no idea if it gets you past the first few levels of the hierarchy of needs. Direct observation shows me that it can help a person acquire the trappings of all five, but I'm not convinced about the authenticity of self-actualization or esteem based on materialism.

[0] [http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=013111](http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=013111) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

</comment><comment><USER7> I view money if ever graced with an abundance of it would allow me to fulfill creative dreams.. like write a few hits songs by hiring for a ton well known songwriters to write with or run/own a music publishing company.

We all have dreams yet not all will be fulfilled but it's a lot and more fun (happiness) to pursue them either way!

<comment><USER8> That's how I view it as well. Everybody is too caught up on being "productive" these days. Whatever happened to just casually tinkering with a car, a program, or your plant garden? You might never achieve anything better than what's out there but it can certainly give you a lot of happiness and peace of mind while you're doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was an HN comment from ages ago that was one of my favorites, but I am unable to find a link to it.

Basically it was a user listing how life changes at different levels of wealth.

ie.

1MM : take family on a big vacation each year

5MM : stop worrying about retirement

10MM : stop working for other people

100MM : private jets to wherever you need to go

and on and on, or something to that effect

Please reply if anyone can find a link.

<comment><USER10> This isn't the post you were referencing, but a similar one on reddit regarding extreme wealth.

[https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_insan...](https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_insanely_wealthy_people_buy_that_ordinary/cnnmca8/)

<comment><USER11> Did not expect that ending on that post. Oof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think I'm happy and I agree with this paper. I've been struggling with my relationship with money for months and I wish I had read this sooner.

After covering your basic needs, money gives you the freedom to pursue your greater needs, and in that sense it can buy happiness. Whether those needs are good relationships, health, or fulfilling work, money in a sense, can buy or help you buy that, at least the time to build relationships or work.

However, something I have been struggling with is the hedonic treadmill. I feel like expectations are consistently being raised. I worry that it will never end and I also worry about what will happen if it does end. Has anyone ever felt this way? I think that's the point of enjoying the journey... Does anyone have tips on how to enjoy the journey?

<comment><USER8> This is long. You have been warned.

> _Does anyone have tips on how to enjoy the journey?_

Every time in my life I got subdued by my hedonism during my rich perioids I was struck by severely awful series of events that ended up humbling me and making me thankful even if I can only cover bills and food afterwards. EVERY DAMN TIME.

So I guess the answer is: you need contrast, for all your life. Which means a lot of pain and stress, periodically, until you learn to universally appreciate what you have and not eternally moving your own personal goalpost.

The danger of being rich for a long time is that you lose perspective and have no other extremity to compare with. This leads to many mental problems.

Observing myself and others, I noticed that the longer your basic needs are not in danger, the more you lean to doing pretty useless crap: mostly tooting political views of which you know nothing about, or my personal favorite -- looking down on people in ever more and creative ways. I legit heard a former friend of mine say the famous Marie-Antoinette phrase: "No bread? Let them eat cake" when we dicussed the gypsy population of my country. Everybody on the table was baffled even more when we realized that he didn't know about that historical quote at all. He reinvented it right there and then on the spot. Really makes you think what is the common trend that makes people lose touch with reality so severely.

 _What I am trying to say is: when you are rich for a long time, you either become Lara Croft / Batman, or you become a very plain hedonist_ (like the rich guys who outbid each other on a rare bottle of wine in Vegas and end up paying $6000 for a glass of it... WTF?).

Our brains always need to solve problems. So if one lacks ambition to solve hard problems still existing out there then they end up inventing their own problems and focus on them, usually until the day of their death. It's no coincidence that many rich people end up taking a lot of drugs. They have no struggle in their lives at all and end up feeling empty and directionless.

Giving example of myself: I am currently in an absolutely horrible period of my life. Lost 3 pretty lucrative jobs / gigs that I managed to juggle for years... basically in 2-3 weeks space (5 months ago), and still cannot recover because I refuse bad jobs and don't want to invite stress and burn out back in my life. _(I say I lost them and that 's not obscuring reality: I only refused to renew contract on one of them because it was really toxic and stale, and political decisions took the other 2 jobs under my feet basically days later)_. Long story short, if I manage to stabilize and get to a middle-high- class level again as before, I definitely will be buying myself a few years of break and will just work on trying to invent General Artifical Intelligence. I don't care if I will succeed. It makes me happy and fulfilled to combine workout, walks and movies with my wife, and several hobbies (of which inventing AGI is one).

I know I'll never be a hedonist; I would buy myself a beach house and two good bikes but would never _ever_ reach for a private jet even if I can afford a fleet of them. The poor periods of my life have taught me that many kinds of money come with stress and tons of maintenance attached to them. And that other kinds of money you just spend so you can impress other rich people. I don't want any of that crap in my life.

Finally, I work really hard to maintain a balance between being rich and having to do minimal housekeeping. That I believe is a very good balancing factor to help you stop and appreciate life as well.

<comment><USER12> Pdimitar, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it.

I'm sorry that you are going through a terrible period right now. I feel like I'm a little in a similar boat in that I am turning down lucrative opportunities that don't resonate with me... and still trying to navigate that but I am confident that you'll be able to succeed your way out of this slump! You've gotten this far, I think you're just having a small road bump.

I totally agree with you. I hope to find balance.

For me when I said hedonic treadmill and raising expectations, I wasn't talking about material objects. The number one thing I'm afraid of is always reaching for another personal growth bar. I find success painful. I think I might have success ptsd haha. I've already lost "friends" multiple times, every time I grow.

Every time I've grown, I can no longer be happy with where I was or what I achieved. I thought it was good enough to help build businesses that do $100k/mo and then 2-3x that but I just met someone who takes $100k/mo businesses and 5x that. Now the bar has raised and I can't be happy with the success I have achieved so far. And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. Unfortunately I know that's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at managing the highs and lows.

<comment><USER8> Oh gods. Seems I made a wrong assumption and just wrote an essay about it. Please accept my apologies, if possible!

Looking at it from the side -- I think you are quite okay but still compare to the others. That can be a good motivator but you should stop at some point because it can get very exhausting for your soul. And it can make you pursue outcomes that you will eventually find out you never wanted in the first place.

> _Now the bar has raised and I can 't be happy with the success I have > achieved so far._

...But why? Are you aiming at having a network of luxury real estate in Europe and renting that until the end of days? Do you like the idea of a fleet ot private jets or yachts?

If not, you should not have any PTSD in my eyes. If your basic needs are met and if you can afford to travel and work on whatever tickles your fancy then you are already in the top 10% rich people in the world. Why is that not good enough?

> _I find success painful._

I can sympathize with that. As mentioned in my previous post, some money come to you attached with a lot of stress and maintenance baggage. Is that the case with your money? I hope not... But if so and if you have enough of them accumulated then you can always hire somebody to manage those for you. Less stress is always worth investing into!

> _And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience > it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. > Unfortunately I know that 's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at > managing the highs and lows._

That many people are envious and spiteful and drift away from you if you are a better achiever than them is a part of life, an inevitable one at that. I am sorry that you haven't found true friends yet. But they do exist, trust me! There are a lot of pretty cool people out there. You will find them if you get out of your zone.

And I am pretty sure you will manage your highs and lows better with time. Just don't second-guess yourself; life is one huge and constant lesson and you never really "complete" it. You just decide one day that enough is enough and you can stop there. Nothing shameful in that, we don't live to only achieve.

Wanna chat? My email is in my profile (although a bit obscured to stop spam bots). I feel we both can offer the other side an interesting perspective. If not, apologies for offering it! No disrespect intended.

Don't give in to doubts. Reflect on what you have (and others don't) and don't only compare to more successful people than you. Life is not a race.

I think you are doing quite well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whomever said "Money can't buy you happiness", never owned a Pomeranian :)

</comment><comment><USER14> For me is hard to see what meaning of "value" is used in the article, for example this sentence:

> Spending money is a means of acquiring other goods and services that are > one's values or that will enhance one's ability to realize one's values.

Which one is it?

\- "value" as principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life. "they internalize their parents' rules and values"

\- "value" as estimate the monetary worth of. "his estate was valued at £45,000"

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter is an expression of the former.

To say an object is worth $10 is not a claim of the object's intrinsic value - it is to say that it is worth $10 _to someone_. That person assesses the worth of the object based on their principles and values (whether held explicitly or implicitly).

Edit: Elsewhere in this thread I've linked to additional resources to expand on the philosophy behind the article. I think they are worth the small investment of time to get a view on a radically different approach to life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Being poor is incredibly expensive so yes it can definitely buy happiness or at least make your life less stressful which leads to increased happiness.

Unfortuneatly I kinda know that

</comment><comment><USER16> I've always said money doesn't buy happiness, but being poor will make you sad for free.

<comment><USER17> That's a great saying, but I would hesitate to make it causal with the word "will". I know I've certainly felt miserable due to finances, but my grandmother who grew up during the depression and had nothing her entire life but her family, died at 90 with a smile on her face and no regrets. Meanwhile, I see a wealthy man like Anthony Bourdain end his life early.

So for me, as someone without money, I can look at these two cases and consider: do I find happiness now without money, or do I do what it takes to get money, and hope it makes me happy, but knowing that it's not guaranteed to.

<comment><USER18> You can still be extremely happy while being poor. It just means that they are happy in spite of being poor. That does not mean that a poor person will choose to not become rich if given the chance.

<comment><USER17> > That does not mean that a poor person will choose to not become rich if > given the chance.

This is very true. I can't say I wouldn't, that's for sure! But at the same time, I've also seen how money can corrupt and change a person. Someone I once knew and loved became rich, and then became a different person entirely. I'm sad that person is gone, and I often times wonder if the same would happen to me, and how I could avoid it if I ever became rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The YouTube channel Casually Explained has a video on levels of wealth which is pretty enjoyable. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANApS0P4z8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANApS0P4z8)

</comment><comment><USER19> Money can buy stuff that makes you happy.

</comment><comment><USER20> This starts to get very shaky as soon as it gets to the "Happiness" heading.

> Happiness is the psychological condition that results from the achievement > of one's [values](sic).

I'd say that's meaning. Puppy videos give you happiness. They don't give you meaning.

> Values are ends that a person acts to gain and/or keep. They are those > things that a person cares about having or doing.

That... what? My values are not my ends or my activities.

These two definitions end with a footnote:

> Both characterizations are from Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics," The > Virtue of Selfishness (New York: Signet, 1964) 31, 16.

Without taking a stance on Rand, is that really the foremost place to find a definition of happiness and value? This strikes me as intellectually dishonest to the point of silliness.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like a quick introduction to Rand's complete philosophical system, check out Leonard Peikoff's video "Introduction to Objectivism". It will help clarify a lot of the difficult statements you pointed out.

Starts at around 3:50

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJD0i_WwdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJD0i_WwdQ)

Edit: With regard to your comment about puppy videos, I'm curious what you thought about this paragraph from the article:

> It is useful to distinguish particular incidents of happiness from a more > pervasive condition. While happiness results from the achievement of > specific goals, when a person seeks happiness itself, he is after a more > global kind of satisfaction with his life—with his daily activities, as he > is engaged in them, as well as with what they all add up to, when he steps > back to survey the totality. This more encompassing happiness requires > knowledge that his time and energy are being spent in worthwhile ways and > that he is efficacious in acting for the things that he cares about.

<comment><USER21> Sorry to burst your bubble, but Ayn Rand is philosophically meaningless

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll accept your apology if you share how you came to that conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Happiness is the psychological condition that results from the achievement of one's vales

Wrong.

>Spiritual values encompass such things as knowledge, beauty, a stimulating book, a challenging chess match, rewarding work, mental health, self-esteem, character traits (e.g., honesty, optimism, initiative), a friend or a husband.

Wrong.

>Happiness is essentially the satisfaction that arises when a value has been realized

Wrong.

>Thus we expect a person to be significantly happier when he has completed a college degree, won a coveted promotion, or married the love of his life.

Terribly wrong expectation.

One might go very far away in his conclusions, but if you start with wrong assumptions it only means you went further away from reality.

<comment><USER23> I think your post is really good

But what is happiness then?

<comment><USER2> I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. His post is awful. It's simply barking "wrong" without explaining anything.

<comment><USER23> I'm actually genuinely asking? I know from him what it isn't, but what is it according to him?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reddit User Receives Secret Santa Gift from Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/26/us/bill-gates-secret-santa-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> I have previously seen countless acts of generosity from Gates over the years, but this is the most generous I have seen from a person like Gates. It's great to see that at least he is doing something to combat the stereotype of the champagne Scrooge, unlike those who are still high up in their high-horses, private jets and first-class trains still unable to guess the price of a jacket potato.

Had there'd been less of people like Gates, there would be a larger proliferation of scrooges stashing their trillions from the 97% of the population.

What a fascinating story!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I want something like this for my Christmas, too :)</comment>


Announcement of Completion – The Flyspeck Project - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/flyspeck/wiki/AnnouncingCompletion

<comment><AUTHOR> They have produced a formal proof of the Kepler Conjecture [1].

A non-formal proof had been produced by Thomas Hales, but mathematicians were not able to verify that it was correct. A panel of 12 referees spent 4 years reviewing Hales proof and were "99% certain" it was correct. Hales started the Flyspeck Project to produce a formal proof to settle the matter.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture)</comment>