Elastic Tabstops - <AUTHOR> http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/elastic-tabstops.html <comment><USER2> I've tried using fonts that are not monospace for programming, and it was ok for ~1h, then I started really hating it and switched back. It feel unnatural.. Maybe my eyes aren't trained for reading code with such fonts though.</comment>


One Hour, One Life, One Mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/ay0w64/one_hour_one_life_one_mess/ <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/blob/master/no_copyri...](https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/blob/master/no_copyright.txt)

>This work is not copyrighted. I place it into the public domain.

>Do whatever you want with it, absolutely no restrictions, and no permission >necessary.

>Jason Rohrer >Davis, California >March 2018

I would expect "absolutely no restrictions" to mean what it says.

An interesting question would be whether Jason is defaming the developers, claiming they have made an "unauthorized adaptation" and committed fraud?

<comment><USER3> He seems to have a perspective that his 'legacy' is under attack and that the derivatives of his work are ruining his reputation. To me it comes across as very naive to think that you can control your 'legacy' by making demands to people who use work that was placed in the public domain.

The mobile devs were fully willing to make the changes he wanted (even going as far as to offer him money, which he refused), but when the changes didn't actually make a difference and a mistake was made (their release in China was missing the changes and he was still being asked by fans about the mobile port) he doubled-down on the claims of fraud and eventually submitted take- down requests through Apple and Google.

I don't think there is a path towards his satisfaction until he understands the implications of placing work in the public domain.

<comment><USER2> Following this rabbit-hole a little further: [https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/issues/16#issuecommen...](https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/issues/16#issuecomment-373787426)

>Everyone out there in the world is a free person and can do whatever they want. I cannot stop them, even if I wanted to, and with this notice, I have promised not to even TRY to stop them.

A year ago he seemed perfectly aware that he was giving away his control over his legacy. I wonder what changed since then...

<comment><USER4> In the author's own words " This is the first time that an adaptation of my work has become commercially successful, and possibly more successful than the original (#1 paid app in Japan a few months ago, for example). Now suddenly, the details matter." That's a pretty damn cynical thing for him to say! "Do whatever you want with it, unless you start making money in which case I want it!"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 5S And 5C Will Still Not Do Simultaneous Data And Voice - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/iphone-5s-and-5c-will-not-allow-simultaneous-data-and-voice-on-verizon-or-sprint/

<comment><USER2> On Verizon and Sprint- it's a network issue, not a device issue.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but don't you realize that it's somehow still Apple's fault? :)</comment></comment>


Airlines using reverse auctions to determine true seat pricing - <AUTHOR> http://cheeptalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/be-very-afraid/ <comment><USER3> The author seems to be upset by this, but why? If you don't want to sell your seat back to the airline, don't.

Personally, I can't get upset with a situation where I have 100% control. Amazon's pricing experiments are similar; if I don't like Amazon's price + value add, I can just buy from one of their many competitors. So no need to get mad at them for changing their prices randomly. Similarly, I would probably be willing to give up my $50 seat for $2000, so I'd type that number in. If I got my $2000, great; I would walk over to the competitor's counter and pay the $500 walk-up fare. If not, travel proceeds as planned.

What is there to be upset about?

<comment><USER4> The system will never accept more than about 75% of the fare (or, potentially less). This is also a tactic employed by legacy airlines - the newer ones don't promise a seat, so you get bumped till later, no comp.

So you're faced with a flight with 105% passengers, you have to figure out who's not flying. The schmucks who'll take a $50 bump (free drinks at the bar later?) or those who'll hold out for $400?

When no-one takes a deal, or there isn't budget, then it becomes involuntary, with minimum comp. That sucks the most. It's like wheel of fortune, except the airline _always_ wins.

<comment><USER5> _When no-one takes a deal, or there isn't budget, then it becomes involuntary, with minimum comp._

I don't believe this is true. At least in the US, the compensation for being involuntarily bumped is usually much better than the voluntary, and as a result it is almost in the airlines' interest to find a volunteer. Also, the involuntary compensation involves cash, whereas the voluntary (on the US airlines I'm familiar with) is a voucher for future travel.

I believe these are the current rules:

"If the alternate transportation is scheduled to arrive between one and two hours after the original planned arrival (between one and four hours on international flights), the compensation equals 100% of the passenger's one way fare to his or her next stopover or final destination, with a $200 maximum additional cash compensation . If the airline cannot get a passenger to the destination airport within two hours (four hours on international flights), the compensation rate doubles to 200% of the passenger's one-way fare, with a $400 maximum additional cash benefit. This compensation is in addition to the value of the passenger's ticket, which he or she can use for alternate transportation or have refunded if not used.

The last time the rule was substantially changed was in 1982, and the last time the maximum additional cash benefit was raised was in 1978. For 2008, the DOT made several changes, the most important was a doubling of the maximum cash compensation to $400 for domestic flights and $800 for international flights."

[http://www.airsafenews.com/2008/05/revised-bumping- compensat...](http://www.airsafenews.com/2008/05/revised-bumping- compensation.html)

[edited to add the second paragraph, which mentions the 2008 changes, which I somehow failed to get in the first time]

<comment><USER4> That's actually not a good deal; again, this replies to legacy airlines. They don't refund your fare, as it's used to pay for your replacement flight, and most legacy flights are > $200 R/T.

That leaves you with $200-$400, which is not a particularly great ROI. (miles, however, are usually MUCH better comp). Note at that point, a delay could easily be "next flight" which may be the following day -- which could incur another hotel night or extra costs for parking, both which kill the comp.

Finally, note there is no law that applies for domestic flights. For example, see Delta's actual policy for domestic flights: [http://www.delta.com/help/faqs/suspended_travel/index.jsp#ha...](http://www.delta.com/help/faqs/suspended_travel/index.jsp#handle) \-- at best, you get money to spend on _delta products_.

<comment><USER5> Again, I think you are mistaken. This may be partly my fault due to the missed quote above, but I don't think you understand the way bumping works in the US. Perhaps this page will be clearer: [http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm#overbo...](http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm#overbooking)

The law definitely applies to domestic flights. It's actually international where it gets trickier.

Whether it's a good deal or not depends on your urgency in getting to your destination. I've probably successfully volunteered to be bumped about 6-8 times in my life, and have been satisfied with compensation offered, which usually is equivalent to a voucher for a free round-trip ticket. It has also included an overnight hotel voucher in couple of cases where it was necessary.

I've never been bumped involuntarily, likely because there is always a volunteer willing to take some offer the airline will make. The highest I've received (international with the next flight in the morning) was an $800 voucher, presumably because the alternative to the airline was $800 cash. But as always, your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER4> From the DOT page:

 _DOT has not mandated the form or amount of compensation that airlines offer to volunteers. DOT does, however, require airlines to advise any volunteer whether he or she might be involuntarily bumped and, if that were to occur, the amount of compensation that would be due. Carriers can negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation._

In other words, it's very much down to how you can negotiate with the airline to derive value. :)

<comment><USER6> I tend to doubt you'd be able to negotiate very far with the gate agent. Negotiation is rare in consumer-business transactions in the US, and in the few cases where it is normal practice, consumers absolutely loathe it (generally because there's no real "negotiation" going on anyway, I guess). Americans don't like to barter, they just like things automatically as favorable as possible, and I'd be surprised if your gate agents have any authority to do anything other than follow a three-step simple elevation process like: "Will you take $50? $100? $200?" If high number is rejected, the agent is probably obliged to move on.

This is not really negotiation, but a scripted process of elevation that some know how to exploit for maximum benefit and some don't.

<comment><USER5> It is usually done as a uniform price auction, with the airline upping the offer until they have enough volunteers. All volunteers usually receive the same (best) compensation regardless of what level they first agree to give up their seat. At least in my experience, you are right that it is not possible to negotiate directly with a gate agent, but then again I'm sure those with superior negotiating skill can negotiate just about anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a great idea to me. Creating a market where one doesn't currently exist. As a weekly passenger, I've always wondered why the airline can bribe someone to take the next flight, but I can't.

If I want to get on a full flight and another traveler is willing to sell his seat for [Cost] + $50 and I'm willing to buy it for [Cost] + $75 everybody wins. The traveler gets $50, the airline $25, and I get home a little sooner for a price I'm willing to pay. I don't know why people are casting this as "airline greed".

<comment><USER8> John Galt, I should hardly have to explain to you that some small number of people simply hate free markets, and a much larger number have no idea how they actually work.

<comment><USER7> I'd say it's more an attitude of entitlement. "The airline used to give you $200 to rebook, now they give you less!" As if the airline owed them the opportunity to take the next flight.

If anything this will allow the airline to overbook much more aggressively. Giving people the opportunity to take that money more often, and if anything make more than the old method overall. Of course when that happens the story will change to "The rich get to travel whenever they want and the poor are stuck waiting!" Or "Ticket speculators are increasing ticket prices so the poor can't travel!"

<comment><USER9> In reality, like in many markets, speculators will probably lose money more often than they'll make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this could be used as a part time business. You could buy several tickets on days when flights are usually overbooked months ahead of time. Good time to do this would be Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day, etc.

Then show up at the airport that day and sell each ticket for a premium above what you paid for.

<comment><USER11> Doubtful: someone else would likely underbid you, so long as the worth of it to them is lower.

Frankly, the more tricks like this they pull, the less I want to fly. At this point, I'm not willing to fly any more than is strictly necessary.

<comment><USER9> Shouldn't those tricks actually make you want to fly more often? If the pricing gets more effective, that can only be good for the customer.

<comment><USER11> Wait... what? They're making it so that overbooking will happen more often and so that people will get less compensation for being bumped from their flights.

I'm curious as to why you think that's good for me, the consumer? More "effective" pricing means that the price I pay will get closer to the maximum price I'm willing to pay. In short, it means that I'll pay more. The article discusses this, with the airlines taking away as much of the "consumer surplus" as possible--i.e. getting people to pay them more money.

I'm really, really confused right now as to why you think that having to pay more would make me want to fly more? Surely I would want to do things where the benefit to me is higher than the price, not where the benefit and price are as nearly equal as possible. After all, I can do only so many things, so the opportunity cost of doing that instead of something with more benefit (e.g. taking a road trip instead of flying, or taking a cruise at sea) makes flying a losing proposition all around.

<comment><USER9> The trick will only have the effect described in the article if the airline is a monopoly. With competition they won't be able to extract all the gains. So you will have to pay less, eventually, and profit from other people's willingness to get off an overbooked flight.

Remember: Overbooking is usually not a problem, since a few people don't turn up anyway.

Compare an English auction to a straight sell: In the latter, the supplier just guesses a price, and you can accept it or not, and unless they guess right, there will be surplus left. In an auction with multiple bidders who value the item in question at similar levels, the supplier doesn't have to guess. The bidders will make sure that almost all surplus goes to the supplier; essentially the winner will pay slightly more than the second highest bidder was willing to pay.

Still, auctions are good for buyers, if there's competition between suppliers.

<comment><USER11> If they actually lower their prices, yes, that would make me slightly more willing to fly. Though, actually, I'd prefer that they lower their absurd fees (and that all the places to compare flights would give us a way to add up _all_ the fees up front in order to expose such shenanigans).

I don't really expect them to do that, though, even with this sort of setup. There would be little reason to get rid of a customer surplus if they planned to give it back to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reckless overbooking can get mightily expensive for an airline in Europe (or, to the best of my knowledge, non-European operators flying into, or out of an European airport):

<http://www.airpassengerrights.eu/>

Technical reasons is, according to a court ruling, not a reason to deny compensation. The court ruled that airlines are responsible for maintenance and the technical fitness of their equipment to fly.

The only way of weaseling out is an event, which is really beyond control of the airline. And even then they need to care for their passengers.

Overbooking can also be an expensive venture, since they must reroute you on demand with another airline on their expense.

<comment><USER9> So it seems like this could be even more useful in Europe, where getting volunteers to get off the plane has a higher opportunity benefit compared to involuntary bumping than in the US.

(I don't know if opportunity benefit is actually accepted terminology. I just use it for negative opportunity costs.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Forgive my ignorance, how does the sell back auction benefits the airline in an over-booking situation?

Let's say person A and B both bought a ticket for $100, and on departure day, A offers to sell the ticket back for $150 and B offers to sell the ticket for $120.

B sells his ticket and made $20 profit, A takes the plane. The airline made a total of 100-20 = 80 dollar for the seat, although it would have made 100 without the auction.

Am I getting it wrong?

<comment><USER14> The price people pay for seats when the plane is full is usually extraordinary - 3-10x a "normal fare". Thinking on the margin, the airline would get - <USER2> $700 - for the "overbooked" ticket in your example, and profit as long as someone will volunteer to be "bumped" for <$700*

* Actually, the airline would probably profit even if they had to pay $700 to compensate the bumped person - since they're only giving out travel vouchers. Additionally, they can involuntarily deny boarding to someone for a cost lower than $700 (at least in most situations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What if you stood up a sign outside the ticketing area that just read: "Delta 1500 LAX->SFO, please enter $5000 as your bid price."

You have an opportunity yourself there (assuming everyone plays along) to earn $4,999 if you are naughty.

In such a situation, would an airline actually pay out?

<comment><USER16> Game theory analysis of situations like this usually concludes that you won't get $4999.

Because another passenger will undercut you at $4998, and take the profit ($4998 - utility of flying) instead. But, of course, you'll anticipate that, and so undercut them for $4997.

And so on, until the price converges to near what its worth to you in the first place. That's what makes it an auction. Its harder to exploit than it first seems.

(Of course, such analysis doesn't always hold true in the real world - but I wouldn't expect to make 5k with that sign!)

<comment><USER17> You're assuming that someone standing with a sign and someone hurrying to get on a plane are equally interested in playing the game.

Then again, OP assumes that there are no ceilings to payout, which I'm almost certain isn't true.

And then again, as mentioned several times here, it's not like you get the real money - it's vouchers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, I know for certain I am not an economist.

I'm curious - is Delta's decision to start such a program premeditated in a similar way? Personally, were I to run a business, I'd be very ill-equipped to handle anything approaching such a level of economic theory.

<comment><USER19> Legacy airlines have revenue management departments that use sophisticated mathematical models to price discriminate between passengers to obtain the maximum yield from each day's operations.

Airlines without such advanced techniques to rip off less price sensitive customers have a hard time competing. F9 and WN* and the like have much less complicated models and more predictable pricing. To compete, they have to go after loyal bargain hunters like vacationers and small business commuters. They have no effective scheme to squeeze big businessmen with expense accounts. By building a reputation for transparency, they can charge stable prices and make money. It takes time and commitment, though.

DL, on the other hand, makes money by offering to bump regular coach passengers even off very oversold flights in favor of expense-account men on full-fare coach tickets. DL no longer advertises the guaranteed seat benefit for very profitable Platinum Medallion customers on the Delta web site, but you can call the medallion line and get a ticket on any Delta flight any time. It will cost you, but you will get it. Delta will just have to pay to bump someone else at the gate.

Two revenue models. Both survive in the market. Neither happens by accident.

*(Frontier and Southwest)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd argue that this system is less efficient when considering the significant costs of getting _to_ the airport in the first place.

<comment><USER3> For me, it's $2.25 and 45 minutes. I would imagine that most people who live in major cities are similarly lucky. (OK, not Tokyo. There it's at least 1200 yen to get from Tokyo to Middle Of Nowhere International Airport. But I digress.)

<comment><USER5> At least in the US, I don't think that's true other than for New York, Boston, and Chicago. Are there other cities that have good cheap public transportation to the airports? For a long time, it was basically impossible to have a direct connection due to federal regulations.

Not that it's always extremely expensive, but here in the Bay Area where we have better than usual public transport by US standards, it's $8.40 from downtown Oakland to SFO on BART, or $4.75 (with a nontrivial bus transfer) to OAK. From SFO, it's also about $8 to SFO, $7 to OAK (same transfer).

<comment><USER21> What federal regulations are you talking about? Most cities seem to at least have normal buses to their airports — all those service employees have to get to work somehow!

Seattle now has light rail directly to the airport, and Portland has for a while. In the DC area there's National just across the river with a normal subway stop and normal public buses to BWI and Dulles in the suburbs (that stop at subway stations).

<comment><USER5> _What federal regulations are you talking about?_

I was referring to direct subway interconnects to airports being very difficult to fund, but now I'm uncertain. I was always told growing up (80's - 90's) that the reason that reason for the ridiculous off-site airport terminals for subway systems was because of federal regulation prohibited the use of certain funds for air travel. I was always amazed to see how smoothly transport to airports worked internationally, and depressed by the difficulty in the US: Boston, New York, SF.

Since then, all of the cities have changed, and now have better direct connections from their subway systems. I presumed this was a legal change, but now I'm unsure. I can't find anything directly confirming this. Here's one of the closest I can find: [http://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/06/22/bart-moves- ahead-with-o...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/06/22/bart-moves-ahead-with- oak-connecter-despite-civil-rights-violations/)

In this case, it was determined that BART did not comply with the Civil Rights Title VI regulations regarding equity of spending for public funds, and thus was denied the use of federal funding for an Oakland subway extension. I believe this was the basis for the earlier prohibitions, based on the (reasonable?) presumption that the poor do not benefit proportionally from having easy airport access and the rich don't need the subsidy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The reasoning here applies only to monopoly pricing, but airline transportation is sometimes a competitive situation. In that case, the reverse auction can impose some price discrimination but cannot erode the total consumer surplus.

Of course, I am a Delta hub prisoner so my flights are in fact priced as monopoly rents. What I wouldn't give for some competition.

<comment><USER22> CVG?

<comment><USER19> SLC, but good guess. I suppose ATL is often considered the worst.

<comment><USER22> > SLC, but good guess.

Given your username (which I just noticed) it was a downright _horrible_ guess :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook: There must have been miscommunication with Limited Run - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-limited-run-response-20120730,0,5059899.story <comment><USER2> Their response focuses entirely on the issue of them charging them for a name change, and almost completely ignores the bot issue.

I personally don't see that as a big issue, it would make sense that they don't let pages change names willy-nilly. This response is peculiar

<comment><USER3> yeah, makes you wonder if there's someone internally who's been scamming companies

<comment><USER4> IMO it's more likely to be that they know full well those bots are skewing the figures underpinning their valuation and their general popularity with investors. They're trying to quietly move the narrative away from that part by focusing on the naming issue.

<comment><USER5> You seem to forget that Zuckerberg owns majority voting stock.

He could turn Facebook into a porn site and there isn't anything anybody can do about it. So when you understand this you will see how ridiculous this notion is that Facebook is complicit in scamming advertisers.

Also do people not remember when this was (and still is) happening with Google ? It's like spam. You can manage it but never really get rid of it.

<comment><USER6> If he did change FB into a porn site the minority investors would sue and most likely win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a "miscommunication" about the name change. I'm a little bit more concerned about the whole "80% of our clicks were a sham" thing. But that could be just me.

</comment><comment><USER8> No mention from FaceBook of bots and how they're planning on handling fake- accounts in the future. Is FB trying to deflect the issue by muddying the water with the "name-issue"? If so, bots must be a bigger problem for them than I thought...

</comment><comment><USER9> The sad thing is that this highlights one of the biggest problems with dealing with big technology firms (Google/Apple/Facebook/PayPal). You need to gain substantial media coverage before you get anyone from the firm willing to address your issue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't it always a miscommunication with Facebook, and always the user's fault - not abuse by Facebook - and us users simply don't understand that it's actually a feature they're so kindly providing us?

</comment><comment><USER11> When you consistently act in an unethical way, things like this ate even worse than normal. I suspect Facebook is going to crash - gut feel, of course.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems likely this was a mistake, and not the result of dishonesty or malicious intent. That said, such an enormous mistake should have never been made in the first place, especially by a company such as Facebook.

<comment><USER13> Can we please see some actual numbers! Given the advertiser's "popularity" it's possible they were over-charged something like $4 for a few hundred clicks in which case it's certainly not an enormous mistake.

<comment><USER14> Err, I don't think people are up in arms over the damage done to this one company. The story has legs because it implies that this is happening on a larger scale, and that Facebook is making a significant portion of its revenue from valueless clicks. Facebook should have had a system to avoid charging for such clicks, and if it doesn't that's a huge nationwide story. And it wouldn't be because they didn't realize they needed one.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that this is no different to Google.

It also earns a tonne of revenue through fraudulent clicks many by competitors. It's a big deal and Facebook needs to make attempts to fix it but the problem will never be completely solvable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _2\. FB may or may not be involved in the ad-bots, but, they will drop their > $ contingency on ad-rev for the name and payout these guys to shut them up._

This was predicted.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313405>

<comment> jack-r-abbit uh... you made three fairly different predictions of possible outcomes. You were almost guaranteed that _one_ of them would be true. I'm not sure that is all that significant.

<comment><USER15> Not saying it was significant, only predictable.

Also I think this was the most likely outcome. Act like a minor mea culpa and pay them off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They can't be that crazy, if they pulled that bot scam on just one customer, they risk alienating their entire user base. How could they possibly think they could get away with something like that? It doesn't add up.</comment>


Meet the man who's beating Airbnb in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/europe/housetrip-meet-the-man-who-is-beating-airbnb-in-europe/ <comment><USER6> I'm from London and I've never heard of HouseTrip. Airbnb is what I use and what people normally recommend to each other. 12 months ago there wasn't much awareness about Airbnb when I mentioned it to friends/colleagues but that seems to have changed now

<comment><USER7> I am from rome, live in budapest and travel frequently to milan.

In none of these places I have ever heard anyone speaking of of HouseTrip, in all three I know people using airbnb regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title of the article should actually be:

"Meet the man who's getting his ass kicked by Airbnb in Europe"

Your title is pure link-bait. You offer no specifics AT ALL in your article about how HouseTrip is beating Airbnb. In fact the one potential metric for success that you list for both company is money raised. If that is your success metric, then HouseTrip is getting demolished by Airbnb.

Let's try a different publicly available metric of success. Let's look at supply in Europe. Let's compare the offering of 'entire homes' in a few major European markets, this number will only compare like properties and remove Airbnb's shared spaces from the equation. If those had been included, Airbnb's numbers would almost double in each market.

London - HouseTrip - 1784 London - Airbnb - <USER2>

Berlin - HouseTrip - 717 Berlin - Airbnb - <USER3>

Paris - HouseTrip - 2991 Paris - Airbnb - <USER4>

Barcelona - HouseTrip - 2175 Barcelona - Airbnb - <USER5>

And for fun,

NYC - HouseTrip - 1000 NYC - Airbnb - 10,249

PS - Airbnb has not already raised $220 million, they have raised just under $120 million.

</comment><comment><USER9> I too am from London, have known Airbnb for a year or so but never heard of HouseTrip before.

I found it interesting the article focused on his attention to detail and large houses as their differentiator as I think OneFineStay is doing that far more successfully than HouseTrip when I look at their listings.

I have one question, (probably a noob question so forgive me) they mention funding from Index Ventures. I'm sure this happens quite a lot but Index has funded HouseTrip and OneFineStay both for series A and B and now HouseTrip in series C. Would they not find issues or difficulties with funding such directly competing companies?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little confused. If HouseTrip only deals with the rentals of entire homes, as opposed to people being able to rent out spare rooms...and the pricing is competitive...how could this model compete with airbnb on volume?

<comment><USER11> Deeper awareness, penetration and mind-share in its core market.

<comment><USER10> A quick search of their listings shows that HouseTrip has less than 3000 Paris options compared to Airbnb's 10,000+.

OF course, that doesn't account for quality. When I was looking for Italian rooms on airbnb, there were numerous generic entries by professional bed&breakfast operators...it was something similar to what you see overrunning Craigslist's apartment listing these days.

However, I'm not sure that the number of lower-quality entries is enough to offset airbnb's advantage. After all, what sets airbnb apart from craigslist is the ability to easily filter by recommendation/quality, thanks to the underlying social network.

It's possible that a native startup can beat back an American juggernaut...but when has that happened? I can think of Groupon in China and, well, Facebook and Twitter in China. I know there are such cases in Europe that have slipped my mind...but AFAIK, all of them involved European-to-European transactions (just as China's groupon clones are Chinese-to-Chinese transactions)...I know a lot of Europeans travel but I imagine the market to capture is still America-to-Europe type visitors, and Airbnb will seemingly always have that advantage.

So again the numbers in HouseTrip's niche seems to be this:

Supply: The number of people who can rent out their entire home

Demand: The number of people who can afford to rent out an entire home (and then, the subset of those who would rather just get a more centrally-located hotel room instead).

<comment><USER12> Why do you assume that America-to-Europe visitors are the market to capture? Europeans have (typically) more vacation time than Americans, and travel around Europe is pretty easy. Tourism within Europe is a very big market. I don't have figures to hand, but I'd think that it is bigger than America-to- Europe visitors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are Airbnb rentals cheaper then hotels? - <AUTHOR> https://www.travelstatistician.com/2016/02/is-it-cheaper-to-stay-in-an-airbnb-rental-or-hotel/ <comment><USER2> clearly cheaper, I'm using Airbnb for a couple of years</comment>


Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX all look nice, but what I really want is better file upload - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/05/flash-silverlight-and-javafx-all-look.html <comment><USER2> It's a mistake. Flash has ~99% penetration. This new plugin would have ~0%. That's makes it absolutely useless. Paul is far better off sponsoring this as a Firefox improvement (which would be copied by Safari and IE eventually). Even lobbying Adobe to put this in the next Flash release is a better idea. Creating a brand new plugin is a _big_ mistake.

<comment><USER3> Is Flash penetration that high? Based on the few "Mum at home with laptop" type people I know they're very wary of installing anything onto their Windows XP machines and they don't know the latest Flash plugin is any different from all the other things hammering to be installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be better to fix the browser itself, ie contribute to FireFox? Or is there a chance to get Mozilla to bundle the plugin by default?

What does it take to make a plugin universally available? So far only Flash seems to have succeeded? It's not only the users at home that might lack the technical skill, it is also the poor minions at the big corporations that depend on their admins goodwill...

<comment><USER5> I guess Paul wants it to be cross browser compatible so he's not tying it to any browser implementation (i.e. firefox). But if he succeeds, browser vendors will surely incoorperate this functionality into their browsers.

<comment><USER4> Of course universal browser support would be key. That poses the next question: what is the chance to get Microsoft to bundle an Open Source plugin with their browser?

<comment><USER5> Microsoft will be liable to just re-implement it in their browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there any other browser limitations that might make sense to cover in this plugin? Getting the distribution and the cross-platform functionality is the challenge. Once you've done that, picking off a couple more browser annoyances would be relatively straightforward.

Obviouly feature creep is a problem, but if you want this thing to be widely out there picking off a couple more things might help others push it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering which technology/platform is the best to implement this in? Maybe Flex? I know it definately needs a javascript interface.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's one way to get funded: write this plugin

<comment><USER8> You mean, funding for someone's own project? Or for the plugin?

<comment><USER7> Once you have the money, spending it is really up to you :)

I'm willing to pay someone to write this, but I'd also be a lot more likely to invest in a startup founded by that person (since they have proven that they can execute, assuming that the plugin works).

<comment><USER9> What if the reason you're asking for this is to use it in a competing project? Would you mind sharing your motivation for paying a lot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yup. "I'm serious about this, and willing to pay quite a bit of money to make it happen."</comment>


Show HN: Support the EFF and Others with ThriveLinks - <AUTHOR> http://www.thrivelinks.com/ <comment><USER2> What does the squeeze page show "Shared 16 times via ThriveLinks" on a link to a page I can almost guarantee no one has used ThriveLinks to share before?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the number of times the donation page has been viewed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't seen an "About" page or "How this works" page.

So, how does it work?

<comment><USER4> Looks like it inserts an interstitial into your link. Took me a little while to figure it out, using the example at the top of their page.

The page is completely blank with NoScript enabled, by the way. Surely you can figure out a way to display text without relying on JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> never has linking to meatspin felt so socially responsible:

[http://www.thrivelinks.com/xVOug38auu](http://www.thrivelinks.com/xVOug38auu)</comment>


It's time for Slack to get physical - <AUTHOR> http://code.viget.com/slackalert/ <comment><USER2> Hey everyone! I worked on SlackAlert (along with several other talented folks at Viget), so I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. We were itching for a screenless UI when we decided to make SlackAlert. It's fully functional with lights, sound, and four tactile buttons. You can easily make your own for ~ $50 and customize to your heart's content. Check it out and let us know what you think!</comment>


Visualization: The Richest People In The World - <AUTHOR> http://fastcodesign.com/1671766/infographic-the-richest-people-in-the-world

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the Bloomberg site: <http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2013-01-31/aaa></comment>


Apple Finally Lets A Google Voice Application Into The App Store (Again) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/17/apple-finally-approves-a-native-google-voice-application-again/

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone know if there was originally an official Google App and any scuttlebutt on its likely return?

I use Google Voice heavily and with the gtalk integration it is getting more and more useful. I still use Skype more though - probably from habit more than anything.</comment>


Otrera Games Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/757311659/otrera-game-builder

<comment><AUTHOR> Games today are made by big companies, programmers, and affluent people with a lot of time and money. There are millions of people around the world who would love to create their own games but have no resources to get started.

Otrera Technology is a startup founded in Long Island, NY in September of 2014. It is solely owned by Jonathan Bethune, a Jamaican-American software engineer formerly based in New York City.

Otrera Technology is developing a browser-based toolkit for creating game manuals and blueprints. It would provide the user with a number of templates and forms for taking a rough idea about a game, and creating the actual content and rules in a structured, well-formatted manner.

The program includes a number of analytical tools for testing and balancing a game engine. This is potentially an extremely disruptive feature for the tabletop gaming industry, as card and board game developers today rely on expensive, time-consuming, and imprecise playtesting for their games.

Originally meant to help people create pen and paper games, the Otrera software can also be used to design electronic games for phones, consoles, and computers. Users will be able to patent and sell the manuals they create to publishers and developers, or even use the generated blueprints to code the game themselves.

Otrera currently exists as a command-line app as the user interface is still in development. In order to create a complete and user-friendly web service, Otrera Technology is seeking funding via a Kickstarter campaign. You can visit the Kickstarter campaign here: www.kickstarter.com

Otrera is a timely invention given the recent GamerGate turmoil and the growing polarization between consumers and the companies that serve them. Otrera's tagline is "Democratizing Game Development," precisely because it hopes to give people the power to compete with the established players in the gaming industry.

Otrera will allow typically under-represented communities to create their own games instead of waiting for big corporations to do so. This will help break down barriers and add voices to an industry plagued with incumbency and monolithic thinking.

For more information on Otrera, please visit: otrera.com</comment>


Show HN: Atlasify – The Geography of Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasify.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. One suggestion -- if you're going to use dynamic URLs with query parameters, you should re-evaluate them when the browser back/forward buttons are pressed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks neat, but I don't understand the use case. I thought maybe it was a form of heat map, but then it asked me to determine what definitions were relevant. For instance, the civil war map. Why was it asking me to decide the correct explanation for the civil war? And what did the map represent...countries that had a civil war?

<comment><USER4> Hi Richard, Thanks for your question. It is just a feedback form to send your thoughts about the definition. Based on the feedback, we can improve upon. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm one of the Developers of Atlasify. Any Feedback from you guys will be very helpful. Thanks! :)</comment>


What is a Hacker? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

<comment><USER2> The way I look at it now is that a hacker is the dual of an engineer.

An engineer first makes sure that something is correct, then tries to build it. A hacker first builds something, then tries to make sure it is correct.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oooh - Brian Harvey. Brings up happy memories of CS60B; C, MIPS ASM, and the SPIM simulator. This guy is one of the best lecturers/speakers I know of.

<comment><USER4> I took CS61A from him freshman year, loved it, then TA'd it a couple years later (cause I needed my Scheme fix!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So when did the meaning of hacker change from someone who breaks in to computer systems, either as a white hat or black hat, to basically a programmer?

Was I mistaken all throughout my youth?

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://buzzboston.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/ben-franklin- was-...](http://buzzboston.wordpress.com/2007/08/14/ben-franklin-was-a- hacker/)</comment>


CodeAcademy - <AUTHOR> http://www.codecademy.com/gengyang I just finished the Python module on CodeAcademy successfully. I know have 288 total points on CodeAcademy ... <comment><AUTHOR> I just finished the Python module on CodeAcademy successfully. I was given 288 points on CodeAcademy ...</comment>


Ask HN: Do I have too many interests to fit in a single blog? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN.  I have a dilemma!
I would really like to write a blog.  Especially after a recent article that made it to the frontpage, which advocated writing a blog even if no one is reading.  I love writing, I do it all the time, but in terms of blogging I have one big problem: Too many interests!
If I had one blog, its subject matter would span video games, fencing, martial arts, armchair philosophy, ruby, python, Android & iPhone development, vim tips, some of my own illustration, general software development, personal finance, microfiction, graphic design and Photoshop tips.  Now, I know we're supposed to write a blog even if no one is going to read it, because it is its own reward; but I feel like there really isn't a point to publishing a blog unless you think someone out there is going to visit regularly.  Otherwise, there just isn't a reason to make it public--right?
My question to you fine ladies and gentlemen is: What should I do?  "Wing it" and put up an interdisciplinary blog, trusting that it'll get an appropriate audience (whether an audience of ten or ten thousand)?  Create a whole bunch of blogs and update each of them less frequently?  I haven't spent too much time fretting over this, because it's probably more important to actually get things done, but that frontpage article last week inspired me to really find a solution, because it really bugs me when I write something and have no place to put it.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> > there really isn't a point to publishing a blog unless you think someone out > there is going to visit regularly

Why does it have to be "regularly"? What would be wrong, in your eyes, to trust in Google and word of mouth to steer readers to your blog by issue instead. If there is a noticeable line through all your articles ("the voice") and people like it, they may even read on topics they were not originally interested in, and eventually subscribe to it, but why do you feel this is necessary to begin with?

Also, don't underestimate the degree to which interests are correlated. Off your supposedly varied list of interests, for example, there are only three that don't match mine.

<comment><USER3> _What would be wrong, in your eyes, to trust in Google and word of mouth to steer readers to your blog by issue instead._

Aside from the odd blog linked to from HN, the vast majority of blogs I most engage in are the ones to whose RSS feeds I subscribe and that regularly tick over. I can't remember ever getting to a blog as a result of a google search.

I much prefer single-topic blogs - unless you are Roger Ebert and can turn anything into a great essay, the reality is that most people only shine in their area of expertise, and when they stray it usually falls flat. Not saying that it applies to the OP, but it is my general experience.

<comment><USER4> _Aside from the odd blog linked to from HN, the vast majority of blogs I most engage in are the ones to whose RSS feeds I subscribe and that regularly tick over. I can't remember ever getting to a blog as a result of a google search._

For me, it's the opposite, though probably the most common way for me to find a post is through HN. I wonder how popular RSS feeds are for blogs, compared to sites like HN/Reddit, or search results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about the OP, but organising your posts is a task for when you have reams and reams of content that is too diverse for one website. If it's a personal blog and no one is reading it and you have multiple interests, blog about them all.

If a particular post or line of posts in a given category pick up a readerbase, then you can very easily create a view on just that tag or category for them to follow, be that the rss feed or the frontend site itself.

In my experience at least, keeping the enthusiasm for writing going long term is the hardest part of the blog, not how you organize your posts. I'd worry about that later.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personal Blog, then a blog that's for "professional" stuff. Martial arts, video games, fencing, etc. goes in the first. Finance, development, and design work goes in the second. Actively plug the second.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes it's too many interests to fit into a single blog - UNLESS you have some common theme. For example, minimalism or if you're a very humorous writer or something that ties it all together. My blog is very focused on hiring and managing programmers and I was actually surprised when I did a blog post that was tangential but very related (agile process) what lukewarm response I got to the subject matter. I won't be trying that again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use blogger and have different blogs for different topics:

1\. general (general tech, Java, Lisp, and a little on economy and politics)

2\. artificial intelligence

3\. Ruby

4\. Clojure

I like keeping things separate, and my thinking is that if a reader is only interested in, for example Ruby, then they don't have to skip over everything else.

</comment><comment><USER9> Make a blog, make sections, make RSS for each section and a ALL RSS.

</comment><comment><USER10> Jack of all trades, master of none.</comment>


Pay With A Tweet - <AUTHOR> http://www.paywithatweet.com/

<comment><USER2> So, advertising/spam on Twitter. I'm sure Twitter's not going to be implementing anything like that in the near future.

<comment><USER3> I thought that they'd pretty much announced that they were doing it? Effectively placing adverts in the timeline.

But this is about Twitter the platform rather than Twitter the organisation isn't it? It's closer to formalising the sort of promo the MacHeist guys do where you get extra stuff for tweeting about them.

I must admit I like the idea as a business. It's limitation is that the more successful it is, the more frequent it's messages, the more spam like it becomes, the more people will hate it and the less successful it will become...

<comment><USER4> i encountered this sort of "pay with a tweet" (pwat?) via a macheist promo you're mentioning and i had _exactly_ the same reaction as actually paying cash, except that it was more difficult because it was a sort of half-hearted, monetarily encouraged plug for something i wasn't internally raving about. At the point i actually did it, i felt like i had sold out.

Which is to say that _pwat_ could be totally effective in being a payment mechanism, but only if the stakes of the _pwat_ 's message are high enough to equate to a non-trivial reblogging of a url.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm, at first this is not a bad idea.

As opposed to spam or other Twitter ad-networks where you need thousands of followers before you can earn a dollar, this creates a win-win situation for both the payer and the payee. Instead of hoping that people who downloaded your free product will recommend it to others, you can now rely on it.

However, you tweet before you have seen the product. Thus you might be recommending crap to your followers that you would rather warn them about.

<comment><USER6> > this creates a win-win situation for both the payer and the payee.

And a loss for every follower of the "payer".

<comment><USER7> You could use an account with no real followers.

<comment><USER8> Just like we all have something like a fake/spam email address (that we give out to the sites we don't care about) -- we'll end up with fake twitter accounts.

Also - can't we just filter this out from a client?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I saw the title my first thought was a system like <http://flattr.com/>

which would monitor your tweets and then distribute your monthly $3 to the sites or persons.

That way your donating that you have interest or a book that you have read. Instead of spamming your friends

</comment><comment><USER10> And of course, the moment I get one of these from some person is the moment I unfollow that person.

And if they become truly prevalent, I'll delete my twitter account (which I was already kinda on-the-fence about).

</comment><comment><USER6> ...so, getting people to spam for you.

<comment><USER11> It's on par with the services where people charge you for them to Tweet about something and they don't seem to to have been received to badly. Just another form of advertising I guess.

<comment><USER3> I have a separate account for that stuff - JonIsAWhore I believe it's called (it's been a while since I used it).

I don't mind these things. If I have friends who abuse them I unfollow them or hide their updates.

The only thing I'd like is to know that I can get the product / service the old fashioned way if I want by paying cash, and keeping my soul clean if that's what I choose to do.

<comment><USER12> Very good account name. Twitter is the pimp and the advertisers are the Johns. Google and FaceBook are pimps too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See also: <http://www.tweetforatrack.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> So, how long before someone makes a twittinator? (See <http://www.mailinator.com/.>)

</comment><comment><USER14> Because there's not enough spam already.

</comment><comment><USER15> We launched a feature like this last year; we called it Tweet to Download (demo <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIngL60r3_M>).

At first it did seem like spamming, but I am at peace with it now. It is analogous to the FB Like button. You should only tweet out stuff that you like, and want to share and download.

The key is to give a sample of the product (in our case song clip) before broadcasting to your social network. I think we could even allow full song stream, and still see similar download/tweet numbers.

In a world where musicians don't get real currency, they are asking for your social currency.

</comment><comment><USER16> Despite my misgivings, I do think it's interesting how Twitter's evolving as an interpersonal protocol .. with natural language and semantic hacks expanding the scope of each 160 character blob.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ok, I like it.

About the spamming bit: It is a genuine recommendation. You are directly recommending that product. It is not like a product where you have to recommend some other product that you don't care about or don't even care to use.

Every tweet is to be judge by a case by case basis.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a 'minimum followers' option? A tweet to 0-1 followers isn't so great. I'd try it with a PDF I sell.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do you make it up through volume? What is the tweet to dollar conversion ratio currently?

<comment><USER20> Last I checked the value was on par with the Zimbabwe dollar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This company invented this model <http://promojam.com> and they are already working with all the big record labels and entertainment co's...

</comment><comment><USER22> Using this service the user is effectively trading time of his followers for money. One of the worst kind of spam ever.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow, somebody reinvented the snowball system except for that in this model actually only one person is going to profit.

</comment><comment><USER24> No thanks. I'll give you money, but I'm not going to waste my friends' time for your business gain.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't see a button that let's me tweet about this company/service.</comment>


The Decentralized Social Network - A Nerd's Wet Dream - Curtis McHale - <AUTHOR> http://curtismchale.ca/2012/09/25/the-decentralized-social-network-a-nerds-wet-dream/ <comment><USER2> Does not mention OStatus; flagged.</comment>


Ask HN: Facebook Java SDK - <AUTHOR>

For fun and to get more familiar with Java I have been writing what I will only call a Java SDK for the Facebook API. It is coming along quite nicely considering I have to basically recreate all the Facebook objects in Java. As long as you can pass your access token to the script you can easily call any of the objects the Facebook API will return. The JSON is all parsed and everything. Is this something anyone would be interested in? I am a couple days away from having implemented all of the Facebook objects and would need to clean up the code and do some documentation if I posted it online. <comment><AUTHOR> It is still a few days away from being ready for anyone else but my email is tbeauvais[at]gmail[dot]com.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very interested actually. Shoot me an email at email@example.com?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interested! How can I contact you?</comment>


Cypriot Bailout Sends Shivers Throughout the Euro Zone - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots-rush-to-get-their-money-out-of-banks.html?hp&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> _"After five years of bailouts financed largely by austerity-weary European taxpayers, wealthy nations like Germany and the Netherlands have decreed that from now on when a bank or country fails, it will be bond investors and perhaps even bank depositors who will be forced to pick up a big share of the bill._ "

This is so incredibly stupid that it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. They're basically telling everyone in the Eurozone that their money isn't safe in the bank, and that if you want to make sure it keeps being yours you should wthdraw it and move it to a safer place. Either under your mattress or outside of the Eurozone.

They're basically asking for a bankrun across the southern European countries. Didn't any of these geniuses take econ 101?

<comment><USER3> Smug US/UK commentators have now been shouting for 3+ years about how incredibly stupid the EU is, how the Euro will break up in two weeks... But why is the Euro up 16% against the USD and 23.3% against the UK pound over the last 10 years? Why are German bond yields lower than the US bond yields, and why do some stable eurozone countries still possess a triple AAA rating by all credit agencies, in opposition to the US?

Considering the population, Cyprus is more like a middle-size city than a country. It joined the EU in 2004 and the Eurozone in 2008 - their problems are much older than that. Other than for humanitary reasons, the EU shouldn't and doesn't really care if they go under. If panicked investos withdraw their money they shall - smarter investors will pick up their holdings and realize gains; the doomsayers will end up as losers, like the US hedge funds ala Paulson betting against the EU the last years.

<comment><USER4> > _But why is the Euro up 16% against the USD and 23.3% against the UK pound > over the last 10 years?_

You think it is something other than supply and demand? The Fed and BoE can print; The ECB cannot. The result (which is related to printing) you failed to quote: Greek deflation.

It's not complicated.

<comment><USER3> What exactly is your point? If we see market prices as reasonably efficient, the current Euro price shows that the typical "Stupid Eurocrats idiotic mismanagement of the flawed Euro project will lead to European collapse in 2 weeks" simply doesn't have a base in reality.

Individual (small) countries may fail, the system will be fine, and misinformed doomsayers will - as always - end up making fools of themselves.

<comment><USER4> > _What exactly is your point?_

The euro is up 16% because there are more dollars in circulation chasing the same number of euros. Same for the pound.

A deflationary environment in Europe (what are prices doing in Greece? What is the Spanish unemployment rate?) is exactly what you would expect, and _the Euro up 16% against the USD and 23.3% against the UK pound_ is evidence of that.

Or to put it another way: You quote evidence that supports the point you are trying to refute.

(Perhaps you are being confused by the term "up" in currency exchanges? It makes exports more expensive, which makes the deflation worse since fewer employees will be needed.)

<comment><USER3> You do realize that I quoted numbers for the last 10 years? Since the Eurocrisis started, the Euro has losses of around 6-10% against the other major currencies, so your deflationary argument isn't really sound.

All I wanted to say is that in the long run, foreign exchange rates express some form of judgment about the soundness of a currency. The markets still consider the Euro a very sound and safe currency - at least more so than the USD and the UK pound. A weaker exchange rate might be preferable, but that is not a way Europe wants to go. Instead of printing money, the idea is to restructure the economy. In the short run this will of course be super painful and allow commentators to shout "Look, austerity has failed". Let's talk again in 2025, bond yields for Greece,Italy,Spain are already down...

<comment><USER5> "You do realize that I quoted numbers for the last 10 years?"

No, you didn't. You compared two isolated data points.

If you look at the actual graph of the last ten years, the Euro has been both considerably higher and considerably lower against the dollar over that period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree People across Europe will react with horror to this latest development in the Eurozone crisis. This will not strengthen the case for stronger European integration but turn many more against it.

Notice too how the supporters of these measures attempt to frame the debate around wealthy foreign tax evaders while minimizing the plight of ordinary Cypriots.

This extract from an opinion piece in The Guardian says it all

 _"..the debt burden has been transferred from the banks, where it properly belongs, to households, who had no part in their lending decisions.

As part of that propaganda campaign, the focus has been on Russian oligarchs and tax evaders who have been laundering funds through Cypriot banks. In fact, among those caught in the upper savings bracket are bound to be pensioners for whom this represents their entire life savings, and others who have recently borrowed enough money to buy a modest home. But even if only oligarchs were affected, this is surely an admission of guilt by the European and international authorities, who are responsible for the global regulation of banks and co-ordinating anti-money laundering activities. Their own failure can hardly be a justification for expropriating the small savers of Cyprus."_

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/17/savers-h...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/17/savers- horror-troika-raid-cyprus)

<comment><USER6> Reading British newspapers for Eurozone financial commentary is like reading Soviet Pravda for its poignant analysis of American life. The rhetoric is so thick and the motivation so obvious that it's easy to forget that there's always someone who will take it seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what most resembles Soviet-style propaganda is the public denouncement of Russian oligarchs as a pretext for collective punishment of Cypriot depositors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _It's an entire crony bankster program. Those who lent money to Cyprus's banks by buying their debt rather than by depositing money at the banks, will suffer no losses at all. Those who lent money to the insolvent Cypriot government, will be paid off at 100 cents on the euro. In other words, the banksters are protected. Only depositors with banks will suffer losses in this International Monetary Fund engineered plan. It's as blatant example of who the IMF really works for._

[http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/what-to-keep- in...](http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/what-to-keep-in-mind- about-tax-on.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> The banks are supposed to open on Tuesday. Extending the bank holiday and blocking international transfers is most likely a violation of the EU treaty which guarantees free movement of capital.

[http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/capital/framework/treaty...](http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/capital/framework/treaty/index_en.htm)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _The government also extended a bank holiday that was put in place to try to stop a run on the banks. The holiday was supposed to end Monday night. Now, banks will not be opening their doors Tuesday, as planned. There was talk that they might not open Wednesday, either._

 _[...] "As soon as banks in Cyprus reopen, people will rush to take all their money out, because they don't believe this is a one-off deal," he said. "When a bank run happens, the E.C.B. will have to pump in liquidity," he added, "and what you will have is a shell of a banking system supported by E.C.B.-eligible Cyprus bonds, which will rocket the debt of Cyprus out of control."_

<comment><USER9> There was a comment that a lot of russian mob money is held in Cyprus banks. I wonder if this is actually an attack on them in an effort to take the money from the russian mob.

I also predict acts of vandalism on the banks. Where the goal is to cost the banks money to repair their facilities given the situation.

<comment><USER10> Definitely not.

The confiscation is 6.75% on small accounts (mostly EU savers and pensioners) who are covered by deposit insurance, and 9.9% on large accounts (yes, a lot of which is Russian money). Overall it will collect a total of around €6B.

If you wanted to get €6B from just the accounts that aren't covered by deposit insurance you'd need to confiscate around 30%. So, basically, the EU had a choice of either taking 30% from the (mostly Russian) wealthy and 0% from the poor and middle class (a lot of whom are pensioners), or taking 9.9% and 6.75%, and they went with the latter.

If anything, this entire debacle is an effort to protect Russian (and Cypriot) oligarchs at the expense of ordinary people. As a bonus, it also makes bank runs, the collapse of the EU financial system, and the destruction of the eurozone much more likely.

Very odd.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for that info.

What was the potential impact of doing nothing? As this action "makes the collapse of the EU financial system... much more likely" -- what would the impact have been to the EU financial system had nothing been done at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Forget the lawyer-talk and economist-talk. To 90% of all depositors, they have a simple contract with the bank: I give you my money and you can use it to make more money (loaning it out at interest, etc) on one condition: you keep it absolutely safe and give it back when I ask.

That's it, that's the deal as far as almost all depositors care. And if they think for one microsecond that the bank might welch on the deal, they want out, now. Not tomorrow, n.o.w.

This is an brazen raid on personal deposits: a new, unexpected tax on funds people thought had already been through taxation and were safe. People will hate it. And they'll see the banks as both having breached their understood contract and being the cause of an unfair tax.

If the government puts in rules restricting withdrawals, they'll just take it out at whatever rate is allowed and send it elsewhere, or invest it in tangibles like gold or gems and put those in private lockboxes.

The net result over the next year will be a steady flight of small-investor capital out of every country that is even slightly suspected of this scam. A lot of it will just disappear from the economy. This will depress those economies for years if not decades.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be pretty ironic if the Cyprus bailout of 2013 will noted in history books as the event that lead to the collapse of 21st century banking (next up bank runs). Is it probable? No. Is it possible? Maybe.

<comment><USER13> Here are your options: lose all of your money or lose 10% of your money. What do you choose?

<comment><USER12> Option 1: Make rational decisions and rely on everybody else being rational

Option 2: Panic and make rash decisions

<comment><USER14> Relying on everybody else being rational is irrational.

<comment><USER12> I guess that boils it down to one option :)

<comment><USER15> Option 3: Make rational decisions and rely on everybody else panicking? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They can't reopen the banks without limiting the amount of money people can withdraw. Thus the death spiral of the entire worldwide financial system begins.

<comment><USER17> No. We'll see some bank runs mostly in southern countries, but the deposits are power law distributed and thus the financial majority (in sum, not in numbers of accounts) will probably act more rational than members of the frightened, over-emotional masses that withdraw their 5-10K or so. The rational will transfer their accounts to more stable banks, e.g., in Germany and won't put their money under the mattress.

Of course, it's a bit dirty to grab the money from those <100K too, it destroys trust, no question. But the essential players and movers were protected, that's why we created this small injustice (yes small, compared to what's possible).

<comment><USER16> >>>The rational will transfer their accounts to more stable banks, e.g., in Germany

Ah, so Cyprus will just collapse on its own then without any repercussions elsewhere? I don't think so.

<comment><USER17> Cyprus won't collapse (and even if, that's not the end, they'll stand up again and as an EU member state they'll receive help as they did before). Their banking sector is overblown and the intention is to reduce it to EU average by 2018. They tried to copy Luxembourg, but screwed it up. Now they have to come up with something different.

Anyway, that's far away from your "death spiral of the entire worldwide financial system." :)

<comment><USER16> >>>Anyway, that's far away from your "death spiral of the entire worldwide financial system." :)

We'll see. Bank accounts are private property. This is an unprecedented confiscation. And if this happens without open rebellion, nothing is safe for anyone anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From fbme.com (large bank in Cyprus):

 _16 Mar 13 2.00pm 17 March 2013

The authorities in Cyprus have announced the delay of a Parliamentary debate on the provisional agreement signed by European Union finance ministers for a bailout package for the Government of Cyprus. Though there is considerable media speculation on the detail, some of it no doubt unfounded, the Cyprus authorities have yet to confirm arrangements within the agreed package and the implications for the banking industry and its customers. These are under discussion at the present time.

FBME Bank is in close contact with the authorities in Cyprus and is monitoring the situation with regard to Parliamentary and Regulatory Authority discussions. We will keep our customers informed as to developments and expect to update this statement each day in the coming period as soon as information becomes available. Please refer to our website www.fbme.com for the latest statement, which we expect to update during the course of Monday, 18 March 2013 and thereafter.

At this moment, we wish to assure all our customers that the financial condition of FBME Bank is sound and depositors' monies benefit from the strength of the Bank's dynamic and well diversified Balance Sheet, which at all times meets European Capital Adequacy and Liquidity Standards. It continues to be the Bank's intention to keep a very high liquidity and strong solvency position. If there is further information required please email firstname.lastname@example.com_

<comment><USER5> "The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Taxing those who are saving rather than the ones who are earning more. Call it a case of misaligned incentives. And what about the long term implication on the banking system? How far it will limit the effect of central bank to control inflation now since people will think twice before putting money in bank account?

Would love to see some macroeconomics views on this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Couldn't the large account holders just split the large accounts into smaller ones and just save themselves the 3.15% margin? Even taking transaction fees into account, it would still be a lot.

</comment><comment><USER21> How safe are bank deposits in northern coutries? Germany, uk?

<comment><USER5> The UK isn't on the Euro, so they won't be impacted directly. Panics have a way of spreading, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's something worse that lawyers who can't count. Lawyers who think they can.

The problem is that politician dream up of an european union to make sure no more french / german war would happen. But politicians can't count: they're for the most part lawyers.

So they build this monstrosity: the European Union. A mad bureaucracy / technocracy where every document is translated in 27 languages (including obscure ones): small countries love it because they can send people to get jobs in Brussels at crazy high salaries. For what? Paperwork. Nothing but paperwork.

Then they dreamed up the most stupid thing ever: a common currency (the euro) without a common fiscality. Only stupid lawyers can come up with nonsense like this. Economists did warn them, before the first euro even circulated, that it would end up in precisely the current situation (even the default of Greece and Spain had been forecast).

Nobody listened.

Wanna know what's coming next? It's easy: go read what economists who predicted the current situation are saying. They're from the Milton Friedman school of economics thought. Keynesians lost is and lost it a long time ago. Nothing to learn there: they never predicted anything more than a few years (two or three) before it happened. If you want to predict 15 years+ ahead you have to read Friedman and its disciples.

What coming next is simple: these stupid politicians and lawyers who created all this crazy paperwork and non-sense laws are going to try anything they can, including more and more non-democratic measures, to try to save the euro.

But they can't save it: it's fundamentally flawed. Countries have to get out or the entire eurozone is going to split and go back to national currencies.

The cost is going to be about 15% of the GDP for all the countries exiting.

If the euro ain't split in the few years coming we'll be going to have the BCE defaulting (the BCE basically already became a bad bank, drowning under state debt from states who are going to default) and massive civil unrest: people losing everything.

Here we're talking about a worldwide GDP drop of about 30%.

So either we bit the bullet now and take about a 15% GDP loss by going to national currencies or we try desperately to save the euro and we'll end up creating a _much_ bigger problem.

We're witnessing history. We're seeing a bunch of clueless politicians (who are mostly lawyers) totally f^cking up the entire economy of a continent (and probably of the entire world).</comment>


Microsoft Small Basic - <AUTHOR> http://smallbasic.com/ <comment><USER2> Author here. I made Small Basic when I was in MS in 2008. My goal then was to remove programming language ceremony (imports, defs, etc.) and get to instant gratification.

There are several others that are keeping it alive with a well maintained blog ([https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/home?forum=sm...](https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/home?forum=smallbasic)) and a friendly forum that welcomes programmers of all age and expertise.

There's even a strong community in a Facebook group ([https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallbasic/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallbasic/))

PS: I need to find a better host for the website.

<comment><USER3> Since you're the creator, I'd like to ask you, why BASIC and not Smalltalk? You mention a desire to eschew boilerplate and provide instant gratification-- doesn't Smalltalk provide that as well if not better than BASIC?

<comment><USER2> This was a subjective decision. While I agree it's less succinct, syntactically, I feel Basic reads easier than Smalltalk - especially to someone with no programming exposure.

<comment><USER4> But that being the case, wouldn't Pascal have been even friendly to someone with no programming exposure? Of all the languages I've used, I think Pascal reads the easiest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, if my nephews ever want to take on programming this might be a good place to start. Simple syntax, simple concepts, even the posibility of third- party libraries? Sounds interesting for teaching the young (and not so young too, but at that I'd prefer Python because of it's easier "real world usage" \-- this does seem a bit too oriented at "toy programming").

<comment><USER6> Hmm... nah, go straight to Haskell ;) Just imagine them in 5th grade trying to explain Monads to their friends.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it would be interesting to learn about pure functions and referential transparency before basic algebra.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but it's not clear to me that it's not actually a potentially good idea, in two ways.

The first, important, way is that a tool that _offers_ solid theoretical foundations does not (necessarily) _require_ those foundations. You mention algebra, for example, and it's fair to assume that most school students (and probably their teachers!) don't really appreciate the theoretical grounding of algebra—but they can still hopefully _use_ it with proficiency. In the same way, pure functions and referential transparency need only be difficult to apprehend if you insist on investigating their theoretical foundations; they can just be the way things work, and, if this is a first programming language, then there are no habits regarding mutable state to unlearn before being able to handle immutability.

The second is that, as nine_k ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982600)) points out, learning these concepts before algebra could make understanding algebra itself easier. There are deeply mathematical ideas in the foundations of most programming, even if they are (and even when they should be) hidden, and learning these ideas can help one to come to grips with abstraction in a context that encourages play and experimentation, unlike (unfortunately) the usual mathematics classroom.

<comment><USER7> Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic? I didn't really mean it that way, I genuinely do think it would be interesting to see what happens. Sometimes I wish I had been taught math from a more theoretical perspective. When I was younger, math seemed really boring, just problems to solve; how much money is left after this series of transactions, what is the area of this shape, etc. When I did learn simple algebra, it only seemed useful for those kinds of problems.

I've only found mathematics really interesting within the past few years, realizing how useful it is for creative things, like making music and art, or understanding programming at a higher level. If I had learned about functions in a more interactive way, maybe being able to create art on a computer screen, or write up physics systems in games, I think I would have been fascinated, and maybe the concepts would have stuck.

<comment><USER8> > Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic?

I honestly wasn't sure, so I tried not to assume. Subtleties of tone are easily lost on the Internet; thank you for taking the time to clarify.

> I've only found mathematics really interesting within the past few years, > realizing how useful it is for creative things, like making music and art, > or understanding programming at a higher level.

While I am deeply in sympathy with this point of view, and agree with it to some extent, I think that it comes dangerously close to the monad-tutorial fallacy ([https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction- intuiti...](https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuition- and-the-monad-tutorial-fallacy)). As a teacher, I have four reactions to "why couldn't I have been taught this way?":

1\. First and foremost, this is true. Course structure is often not set up to reward creativity and exploration, and that is a real shame. However …

2\. I have heard students complain about not being taught in a way that I know is common pedagogical practice. That does not prove (they could just have been taught by bad teachers), but leads me to suspect, that sometimes students don't _recognise_ (or don't want to see: "just show me the formulas!") alternate approaches when they are presented with them.

3\. In many cases, the 'aha!' moment now _couldn 't_ have been an 'aha!' moment then; it is only _because_ of the long struggle, and the additional learning and maturity, necessarily beginning with the confusion and uncertainty of yesterday, that everything can suddenly click today.

4\. Even if I knew today the exact thing that would cause that 'aha!' moment for you, it is almost guaranteed that it wouldn't cause the same reaction for (many) others. The mission of a teacher is to serve the class as a whole; it is simply impossible, in terms of time and (let's be frank!) the teacher's knowledge, to explore for each student the application that will serve him or her best. This is not to say that _some_ more applications and creative exploration wouldn't be welcome—they absolutely would—but more that, often, the best that can be done is to provide you with the _basic_ tools that will allow you to explore and find the 'aha!' moment on your own, probably outside of the classroom.

<comment><USER7> It seems very difficult to come up with aath curriculum that works for everyone. I agree that a creative approach might not be as practical as I imagine it, I've definitely suffered from the "aha, monads are burritos, why hasn't anybody told me this" fallacy before.

I keep hearing (mostly negative) things about the Common Core program in the US, I wonder what it's really like. Creative new ways of teaching always sound good on paper, but I hear so many parents complain about the way their kids are being taught. I wonder if most of those complaints are warranted, or if the new style of questions just take getting used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I get a 503 Service Unavailable ?!

Anyways, it probably did not change much in the last few days:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150727212504/http://smallbasic...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150727212504/http://smallbasic.com/)

Its good this is (still ?) available. But I would prefer my friends or kids to learn in a more platform independent way. Like Python.

<comment><USER10> Nitpick: *it's

<comment><USER11> Have you ever looked up the definition of nitpick? I just did on a few different services. It's not flattering, and provides a good narrative for the downvotes.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the explanation, I am not a native English speaker. According to [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitpick](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitpick), the literal meaning is exactly what I meant: I was doing a small correction without much importance. I did not know it was negatively connoted.

<comment><USER11> How negative it's interpreted is likely related to view relevant it is and how much it detracts from the discussion. If that nitpick was a rider on a salient point, I doubt people would have downvoted.

<comment><USER10> That's why I wanted to keep it short, but still commented: it's a typo that is quite disturbing to the reader, especially non-native English speakers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the idea of a lightweight programming language/environment dedicated to entry level learners. Perhaps what would also be interesting is having a basic-esq L/E for whatever programming paradigm that is useful (procedural, oop, functional, etc.)

<comment><USER13> Isn't Javascript already suitable for that?

<comment><USER5> Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times, I never understood why people would want to teach it to people without any programming knowledge.

<comment><USER14> 1) No installation, compilation, or packaging required

2) Runs essentially everywhere

3) Practical (lots of jobs, syntax is close to that of other important languages)

4) Easy to share your creations with friends (see 1 above)

5) Has REPL, garbage collection, closures, objects, recursion, anonymous functions... soon to have TCO.

6) Can be a compilation target for other languages

7) Good libraries for media, 3D graphics

8) Hard for a beginner to trash the machine (at least with browser-based JS, Node of course is a different story)

Yeah, it's pretty ugly in spots (it's certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as Scheme), but there are some real advantages there.

<comment><USER15> Not sure about the jobs (3) thing. It's a bad idea to focus on language popularity when starting out programming, because that changes rapidly. Javascript has only been really popular in the last few years. Who knows what will be popular five years from now.

Learn to program. Don't worry so much about the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I understand that a lot of programmers started with BASIC at a time when Smalltalk was out of reach, but now that we have free, open source distributions like Squeak and Pharo, what possible advantage could BASIC still offer, other than nostalgia?

</comment><comment><USER16> this held my interest until I clicked play on one of the featured games and it wanted me to install silverlight.

<comment><USER17> The most useful thing about this site was that it reminded me I needed to uninstall Silverlight (dodged a bullet there!)

Edit: that came out wrong... I'm sure the site serves a legitimate purpose in education about programming, which is certainly useful. I guess I meant "the most useful thing for me".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's nice Basic is still around. But SmileBasic is far, far more interesting: [http://www.smileboom.com/product_nintendo3ds.php#01](http://www.smileboom.com/product_nintendo3ds.php#01)

Basic should be fun to learn, and being able to program the 3DS - with a nice library of game-ish sprites and sounds - gets you to fun a lot faster.

<comment><USER19> That does look pretty interesting. Here's the english-language page with examples: [http://smilebasic.com/en/](http://smilebasic.com/en/)

Wish I had this when I learned to program :-)

Edit: and this hilarious video with english subtitles! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgnAmLwtP6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgnAmLwtP6Q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Recently ran across this, another MS research project: [https://www.touchdevelop.com/](https://www.touchdevelop.com/)

It runs completely in the browser. There are some interesting things in the interface, stuff I had even been considering adding to my project, like a full on-screen keyboard with special keys.

<comment><USER21> Is Small Basic a Microsoft Research project?

<comment><USER20> Well, it's an MS project. It was early, I didn't really think through my typing well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> QBasic was the first programming language I learned, so I was curious:

> _How is it different from QBASIC?_

> _Unlike QBASIC, Small Basic is based on .Net and can consume (not produce) > "Objects"._

> _It supports distinct Operations, Properties and Events._

> _It doesn 't have GOSUB :)_

So this looks like an Object-Oriented QBasic. Awesome!

<comment><USER23> same here. My first run into with Basic was when I was 6 with an MSX. I was captivated by it but didn't understand what the white letters against the blue background meant. (MSX was ironically more popular in Asia than America where it was built by Microsoft). Pretty soon I got my own but it was a Korean version of MSX with only games on it. My friend had the MSX with keyboard and he showed me how to type stuff on it but we played games. It was interesting since I began to wonder how these games were made. Then later, I had an old intel 286 with monochrome monitor during the mid to late 90s. No internet, just a thick book about Qbasic from the public library, and me trying to create games on it. The thought of making my own video game was more than enough of an incentive to learn yet to this day I have not achieved it as I keep telling myself it's too hard, too much time.

Then came DarkBasic when I was reading PC Gamer in the late 90s and I got so excited about it. Downloaded it over the 56k modem (couple hundred megabytes) and fiddled around with 3d stuff. I learned how to make 3d models with animation in TrueSpace. But never got to make a complete game, just lot of new projects that never went anywhere. The most I got was creating a FPS level using sphere as the 'skybox'. It was so exciting to create my own world using photo textures and add lighting which gave it pretty good look. Gives me a huge shot of nostalgia just thinking about it and other early demos in DarkBasic. The UI was literally had a dark feel to it and that made it even cooler.

I've always thought that BASIC had a lot of things right in terms of being newbie friendly, I mean it was easy enough for a 10 year old so. It's what sparked my early interest in programming.

Even in the early 2000s we were using Visual Basic in high school, we could create a lot of neat things with it. Gui apps that just sorta worked. Anybody could pick it up and yes, students of all shapes and sizes were able to follow along and create things on their own. _Everyone was coding_.

Compare that with today with the myriad of frameworks and hundreds of different opinions happy to rip each other apart for the sake of ideology. A much less inviting community core (ex. stackoverflow) to new comers asking "dumb" questions and being punished. We seem to be going through a very chaotic period in the development world where Javascript is suddenly king and simplicity and user friendliness is shunned.

<comment><USER22> Wow I really wish I had gone to your high school. The late 1990s at my high school were just like the late 1980s - each classroom had a computer but we were all too busy doing assignments on paper to ever use it. I didn't get to see VB until college.

I used to write games and utilities on my TI-83. It was generally frowned upon, because teachers were afraid they would be used for cheating. Even writing your own program that would compute the Quadratic Equation was banned because it was unfair to students who couldn't.

<comment><USER23> I'm really just tripping on nostalgia right now but fuck it someone might appreciate these details so I'm going to continue. I also remember playing so many good stuff on the Ti-83. We used to download Bubble bobble and even 3d wolfenstein and just slack off. Students did cheat using the Ti-83 by putting formulas and cheat notes. I'm not sure why they didn't ban it. It was expensive at the time too and I lost or broke mine twice.

I'm not sure if all Canadian high schools were like ours but we had dedicated courses for learning everything from Qbasic to Maya. I was mad jealous of kids that were creating crazy 3d animations with 3ds max but the class was always filled very fast :(. Had I learned the stuff I might have become a computer graphics artist or something in that area. The course I took taught Visual Basic and then QBasic towards the end (I was like dayum I already know this at age 10, let me play web games while teacher is not looking). At lunch time computer graphics lab hosted Counter Strike (1.3 back then) where you paid a dollar to play for 45 minutes and sometimes after school it would go until for several hours. Like jam packed with 20 people screaming and shouting when somebody got knifed. You couldn't curse tho because the instructor was a hard ass and kicked people out for typing swear words in the chat. Damn, we even had Battlefield 1942 tournaments.

Ironically, being in a poorer school meant ton of corporate endorsements and goodies (free Vancouver Grizzlies tickets & free lunch). During the mid 90s when I was in elementary school, our school had everything from Apple II to Imac. Like almost every Mac from different timeline. One of my favorite was a black & white tiny monitor Apple that had Hypercard on it and I used to create something like dragonball Z stick figure animation (obviously inspired by stickdeath.com) on it. Fuck those were good times especially since I didn't have a computer back then and the school provided all these things.

In grade 6, our teacher was super supportive of us using technology (he was into tech, even bought a monochrome projector off ebay so he could teach material from the computer). Looking back I can see how fortunate it was to have experienced all these things. I was especially fond of playing games like Lode Runner and Lemonade Stand on the Apple II. Pretty much all of my recess and lunchtime was spent on figuring out 1) find games in dusty bins in school gym 2) figure out how to run it. Our school used to host Zip Zap Map Canada (tetris meets geography) tournaments. At home my dad taught me how to create my own website (so 1997 or 1998) using Netscape Composer (on win 95 or 98) and uploading it to a free host. Used to brag about it and impressed my teacher a lot. I picked up a book on HTML for dummies from the library and started reading about Javascript and Java but these books were in Korean and I had a tough time. Eventually geocities came along and it was day dreaming about making a popular website ( never happened :( ).

During this time, we got fresh new iMacs and it was off to the races to find games to run on it, Bugdom, Nanosaur, Sim City Classic & 2000, weird game where you walk around a dungeon and kill monsters and level up. We were also trying to run some weird emulation that supposedly allowed us to play windows games but at super low fps.

Everything was going good until one day thieves came in stole all 6~10 iMacs from our classroom. It was shitty but it was also a shitty neighborhood (think Compton without any rap song about it). My grade 6 teacher was really crushed. We got another batch of iMacs and this time we had cables to hold down the iMacs in case someone tried to jack it again and they came in with cable cutters and made off with it AGAIN. Finally they created a dedicated iMac lab on the second floor classroom where thieves couldn't break into.

Quite a long thread stemming from BASIC lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one getting "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable." on the link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe HN is too much for MS? :-)

Half an hour ago it was still working fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Open-source and, best of all, not polluted by M$:

[http://smallbasic.sourceforge.net/](http://smallbasic.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Learning BASIC made sense in the days of the Apple II or the Atari 800. It provided a nice-ish low-level abstraction of the computer, with PEEKs, POKEs and GOTOs to numbered lines. Today, with Ruby, Python and so many others providing simple ways to write simple programs, as much as it served us well in the 80s, we should let BASIC die rather than trying to mutate it into something that has no longer a place in this world.

</comment><comment><USER27> If I put my kid in front of a modern Windows PC, leave them alone for a few hours, and hope they learn something, I'm not very optimistic.

Let's say I install Small Basic on Windows 8.1 or 10. So now I've put my kid in front of an operating system that has such a high-level UI that it doesn't even have a proper list of programs. The media consuming portion of the OS is so heavily emphasized over the creative portion of it. You can see this because the OS is designed to be used without a keyboard!!

PCs are entertainment devices. Designed for watching Netflix, visiting Facebook and listening to music. This is like putting a small piece of Broccoli in the middle of a bowl of ice cream.

No thanks!!

I'll find a minimal windows manager for linux. Something that can be invoked just to get the window for the game they're writing up and running.

<comment><USER28> I don't get your argument. I wrote my first programs using the very limited BASIC that came with my Commodore 64. Now _that_ was primarily an entertainment device, and I still managed to learn interesting things with it!

<comment><USER29> the internet is an infinite amusement park, desperately plying you for pageviews

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd like to be positive about this especially considering the thought behind it, but...this is bad. I read the tutorial PDF hoping not to find BASIC-style unstructured programming. I was disappointed. QBASIC was the first language that I learned as a kid, and I regret it to this day. Learning to solve all my programming problems using GOTO in such a formative time set me back months when I finally moved to structured programming languages. In addition to that, the syntax of this language is so inexplicably heavyweight that I feel like "SmallBasic" is an intentionally ironic name.

I'm assuming that this article is apropos of the article posted on HN earlier today about how Python is the new BASIC, as far as educational languages are concerned. I agree with the sentiment. These days, we can and should do a lot better than BASIC as a first language for kids.

<comment><USER31> You can only blame yourself for overusing goto in qbasic. It had functions, loops, block ifs, and all the other staples of structured programming.

<comment><USER8> > You can only blame yourself for overusing goto in qbasic. It had functions, > loops, block ifs, and all the other staples of structured programming.

When talking explicitly about _children_ beginning programming, I think "you can only blame yourself" is overly harsh. I would certainly say this of a seasoned developer; but a child just starting will—and, I think, _should_!—do whatever the language allows him or her to do, and it is too much to expect such a child to see, before the bad habit is ingrained, the price that he or she is paying for the apparently wonderful freedom of navigation that GOTO affords. An _introductory_ language should, I think, be very opinionated in matters of underlying structure; just having good options is not enough, if they are not forced (or at least strongly impressed) on the novice who doesn't yet know to use them.</comment></comment></comment>


My path to emacs - <AUTHOR> http://hashnuke.com/2016/01/31/my-path-to-emacs.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand the need to use project files with a text editor. Its like one of the reasons why I don't use IDEs - they force you to use a damn project file. I just use folders and I keep it organized the way I like.</comment>


Vim/neovim: Arbitrary command execution (CVE-2016-1248) - <AUTHOR> http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/11/22/20 <comment><USER2> There was a similar CVE way back, also to do with modelines CVE-2002-1377. I've never understood the idea of modelines, executing arbitrary commands from any file you open? Sounds like a bad idea to me. I've long had the following in my config.

        set modelines=0</comment>