Leslie Lamport Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/computer-scientist-tells-mathematicians-how-to-write-proofs/ <comment><USER2> Lamport advocates for more rigorous proofs with a justification for every line, and lines arranged in a hierarchy based on assumption contexts. He is also the author of TLA+, a formal proof checker: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA%2B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA%2B)

Fully-justified proofs are frequently used to teach geometry and abstract algebra, and are also needed for machine-checked proofs. Outside these contexts, I agree with Lamport that they are useful to catch mistakes, but I wouldn't write them myself because they are incredibly tedious. For communication in papers, narrative proofs can convey ideas and intuition at a much higher bandwidth.

<comment><USER3> Higher bandwidth but also greater risk of mistakes? If the article is true that 1/3rd of papers have false theorems in them, that seems like a problem severe enough to justify slowing down and being more methodical.

<comment><USER4> > 1/3rd of papers have false theorems in them

Despite the wording in the article, this is false. A theorem is not false if there is an error in a proof for it. They only showed that 1/3 proofs of theorems had an error. It doesn't say if these were minor errors (omitting an edge case where it's still true, but not handled in the proof, but easily covered), or major (the theorem is actually false).

Quoting the article:

> Some of them were false because the proofs were wrong, and some were false > because they relied on wrong proofs.

This is not what 'false theorem' means. This might be pendantic, but isn't that kind of the point here?

<comment> loup-vaillant Regardless, unproven theorems should not make it to publish papers. At the very least, they should be marked as "conjectures".

<comment><USER5> Translating this to computer science/programming: what would you call an unproven program?

<comment> loup-vaillant One that isn't machine checked to conform to the specification (with Coq or similar). My standard is even higher for programs than it is for mathematical statements, because they tend to be orders of magnitude more complex.

On the other hand, it's okay for a program to not be proven, because it can be useful even if it has bugs.

<comment><USER6> > On the other hand, it's okay for a program to not be proven, because it can > be useful even if it has bugs.

True, and a very important point. But... if the program has bugs, do they affect the results? Do they affect the results enough to matter? How do you know? In particular, what is your objective proof that the program does what you need it to do?

For many programs, such concerns are extreme overkill. For some, though, you have to _prove_ that it does what you need it to.

<comment> loup-vaillant That's where you quit proofs, and start experimenting. I found tests to be extremely effective at rooting out most bugs. Especially if you use property based tests.

Programs that do need a proof still have model checkers like TLA+, and proof assistants like Coq.

<comment><USER6> Sure, tests are part of what I meant by "objective evidence".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> mathematicians writing for peers don't aim for the maximally explicit proof. details are frequently left out as obvious to the knowledgeable reader. leaving out tedious matter is a matter of professional style, like tightening regular prose so it doesn't club the reader over the head with every detail. (my instructor in Fourier analysis would subtly grimace at my very explicit proofs in office hours, but he knew i was a computer scientist so he politely said nothing because he knew it would do no good ;-)

<comment><USER8> I would also add that by and large this isn't done because of ego, but simply brevity. Seminal papers are often already hundreds of pages long, so to add every detail would bloat them to thousands of pages. And in any case, "skipping steps" is exactly how the top mathematicians think about the proofs when creating them.

<comment> loup-vaillant Yeah, well, paper sucks.

[http://worrydream.com/#!/ScientificCommunicationAsSequential...](http://worrydream.com/#!/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt)

No mathematician today doesn't have access to a computer. Just fold the proof to some appropriate coarse level by default, and let the reader expand any part they want to read. It's not like our computers had any meaningful limit on how big a mathematical proof could be.

<comment><USER6> I think the limit may be the _author_ , not the tool the author writes with.

<comment> loup-vaillant Historically, there was always a limit to how big a paper could be to make it into a journal. Papers that aren't meant to make it into a journal are often way bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dijkstra also challenged the sloppiness of traditional mathematicians frequently in his EWDs. His proof format is extremely readable, and each proof is a complete manipulable mathematical object, with the steps tied together by implication, consequence, or equivalence and the validity of the step documented.

<comment><USER10> Could you provide a link or citation where he does an expose no it? I am interested.

<comment><USER11> I found one more example in this TeX StackExchange question [1]. It's incredibly elegant. But the problem is that it does not seem to be easily reproducible in LaTeX because writing nested lists is such an unnecessary pain (take a look at the adopted answer). Need a package to popularize this style.

[1] [https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/49416/which- packages...](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/49416/which-packages- practices-are-relevant-for-writing-structured-derivations-simil/438750)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is the description of hierarchical proofs: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf)

<comment><USER11> This is a pure gem. It's like turning a prose into an abstract syntax tree for a human parser. :) I do think it adds to the clarity for the examples presented in it. But whether it applies well to more complicated proofs (those spanning hundreds of pages in a math paper) remains to be seen. I think at least writers of introductory textbook could adopt the style to benefit beginner students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The backlash he experienced might be due to the style in which he introduces his interesting work.

While not quite obvious, he could be seen as adverserial by labelling hierachical structured proofs as "proofs of the 21st century" and the ones other mathematicians use as "17th century proofs".

Promoting them as a thorough way to write proofs with additional advantage for the reader to adjust the level of detail of the explanation to their respective level of knowledge might have been a way to get people involved. He's even asking for feedback [1], unfortunately only to denigrate the adressed people in the next sentence [2].

It reminds a bit of Ignaz Semmelweis who managed to do good by reducing mortality of women in childbed by requiring desinfection before examinations but failed to spread the idea by being adverserial to his colleagues [3].

[1] "I am sure my way of writing proofs can be improved, and I encourage mathematicians to improve it", How to Write a 21st Century Proof, p. 5

[2] "They will not do it by remaining stuck in the 17th century.", How to Write a 21st Century Proof, p. 5

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)

<comment><USER14> I feel you do Leslie Lamport a disservice here. I read the SciAm article and the full "How to Write a 21st Century Proof" and did not get any sense of denigrating people or being adversarial. Sure, he is concerned about clarity and correctness, but that is the exact point of mathematical proofs.

So everyone else, please skim the SciAm article and then take 15 minutes to enjoy reading the paper [1] in Lamport's own words.

[1] [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf)

<comment><USER13> It's not clarity or correctness but how it is said.

See page 2 of the paper (page 5 of the PDF) for example. That is where he is talking about people being stuck in the 17th century and "how sloppy their proofs are" [1]. I am _not_ arguing that this might not be true! - I argue that it is _not helpful_ to approach introducing and advertising the idea in this way. I'm not a mathematician but I'd understand if someone reacted with defiance to wording like this.

[1] [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/proof.pdf), p.2 (PDF page 5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a recent example of programmers publishing a paper on how to better prove some mathematics by implementing and discussing the phenomenon in a programming language: _What's the Difference? A Functional Pearl on Subtracting Bijections_ [https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/new-icfp- functional...](https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/new-icfp-functional- pearl-on-subtracting-bijections/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny how the blog is trying to use the x^2 + 10x = 39 example to illustrate that modern notation helps understanding and reducing errors, but then forgets the second solution for the equation (x = -13). In all fairness, though, it's is just meant as a translation of al-Khwarizmi's text into modern notation where only one solution is given.

<comment><USER17> > In all fairness, though, it's is just meant as a translation of al- > Khwarizmi's text into modern notation where only one solution is given.

Probably because negative solutions were not recognized as valid at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good software engineers reduce until everything unnecessary is gone. Same idea, nice to hear people talking about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> More mathematicians need to know about constructive mathematics [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_\(mathematics\))

Basically, proof by contradiction is not a good idea.

<comment><USER20> Mathematicians know about constructivism, they just tend to rightfully reject statements like "proof by contradiction is not a good idea" as crackpottery. Mathematics will continue to be done, constructivists and finitists be damned.

<comment><USER21> There are settings where LEM is inadmissible. A lot of important mathematics comes from importing some theory into another, e.g. the theory of topological groups. Knowing in fine detail what principles a proof relies on let's you know whether a theorem carries through for free or not.

It might fail if it absolutely must rely on LEM, but a weaker doubly negated version will still work. This might be a deep, important fact in some setting or another.

If anyone thinks constructivism is crackpottery, then they're just ignorant and it's only incidental if it hasn't impoverished their toolkit.

<comment><USER20> I'll admit that calling all constructivists crackpots is unfair, as there are legitimate mathematicians studying homotopy type theory and whatnot that goes way over my head. What I refer to as crackpottery is people who argue that a random proof by contradiction is invalid or who reject things like Cantor's diagonalization argument with no justification besides their personal "intuition" or "philosophy" that math should be constructivist. And I think the latter group vastly outnumbers the former, at least on random internet forums. But I'll apologize if I offend any of those mathematicians with my flippant generalizations.

<comment><USER22> I'll not take offense, nor will I spout off about metaphysics here, but I can't let it pass without noting that Cantor's diagonal argument is in fact constructively valid --- given a function from a set S to its power set 2^S, Cantor constructs an element of 2^S which can't be in the image of f. The subtlety here is that there are statements equivalent to Cantor's theorem in classical settings that are not intuitionistically valid, for instance that there's no injection from 2^S -> S.

<comment><USER20> Ah, you're right, thanks for the insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For some reason this seems incredibly funny to me. I can imagine mathematicians laughing at this too.

<comment> s-shellfish Computer science is more rigorous than mathematics. The proofs written for computers have to actually work in computer, which is a collection of mathematics that have provably been demostrated to retain their fundamental basic properties that allow computation to both define and test the validity of statements.

<comment><USER20> Math is built on a far more rigorous logical foundation than "this program ran on a physical computer, which proves that the statement is valid". Every valid mathematical theorem is a consequence of, and can be traced back to, a set of definitions and well-defined logical axioms. The parts of computer science that are most rigorous are strict subsets of math, e.g. computability theory, logic programming, formal languages, etc.

<comment><USER10> Show me the foundations for the continuum hypothesis.

What you're arguing for is a view of mathematics that has been dead for a century now. With the Godels incompleteness theorem and Turing halting problem show you that there are cases of 'true' statements in mathematics that can't be reduced to "well-defined logical axioms".

<comment><USER20> Re: Continuum hypothesis: the way I try to explain this is, take the statement S = "x^2 = -1 has no solutions". In Z, S is true. In C, S is false. What does it mean to say "S is true" without specifying the system? It depends on which underlying axioms you choose. There are extensions of ZFC where you can prove CH is true, and extensions where you can prove CH is false. In both extensions, the proofs are rigorous and valid, and there is plenty of valid mathematics to be done.

But ok, my point is, how can you say the CH is a true statement that can't be reduced to axioms? What does it mean to be "true" besides that something follows from other truths? The choice of axioms matters, sure, but everything that's true within a system follows from the axioms of that system.

<comment> s-shellfish There are two ways to see it. But that's also the problem.

> What does it mean to be "true" besides that something follows from other > truths?

I agree with you, but I also don't. You know as well as I, that 'true' can mean something besides 'that which follows from other truths'. All the rules you have to rely on (such as'implication) - that's a truth you are dependent on for math to work, but can not define within math. Implication is a fundamental foundation. But can you define implication without using the concept of implication?

> The choice of axioms matters, sure, but everything that's true within a > system follows from the axioms of that system.

It's easy to point out flaws in reasoning. It's so, so much harder to have an airtight reasoning system, that goes for mathematics and computation, both, together, alone, etc.

> What does it mean to be "true" besides that something follows from other > truths?

Truth is true, no more, no less. Once you turn it into symbols, it turns into a mess (or a work of art).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's a rubbish title. (edit: the original title was 'Computer scientist tells mathematicians how to write proofs')

Leslie Lamport is a mathematician by education. And I have a good idea he'd prefer to be called a mathematician if he had to choose between the two labels (mathematician and computer scientist).

That's not to say CS, and programming, doesn't contribute to the process of rigor. In fact, I had a realization that a program is a form of constructive mathematics, and hence a program is more rigorous than a proof on paper in the following sense: a single typo in a math proof would be overlooked by the reader, but a single typo in a program could make it fail.

Still, in order to make connections between programming and mathematical rigor, you have be trained in mathematics, not just computer science.

</comment><comment><USER25> Should tag with 2014

<comment><USER26> The relevant paper is actually from 2011.

<comment><USER25> Since the article provides information and context, its date is probably the right one to use.

<comment><USER26> You're right.. my comment was thought of as a note for people skimming over the comments, sorry.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reconstructing an Apple II+ on an FPGA - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/apple2fpga/

<comment><USER2> Great stuff. I'd love to see people use FPGAs to create new oddball architectures too, really weird and fun stuff and not only recreate the past.

<comment><USER3> Do you have ideas for features for some new oddball architectures?

An obstacle is that you need both the hardware, and an operating system, making for a much larger undertaking. Whereas if you were to clone an Atari ST you'd get both mindshare (lots of people are very fluent in 68000 machine code and and that architecture specifically) plus a lot of existing software.

If you're looking to play with some unusual stuff, you can get PandaBoard or BealgBoard kits for under USD 250 including SD card, cables and power adapter. They're ARM architectures with custom chips. I'm playing with PandaBoard at the moment.

I bet there would be PPC equivalents. Starting point: <http://yellowdoglinux.com/support/hardware/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also worth a look is <http://fpgaarcade.com/> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig> for cloning the Amiga

</comment><comment><USER5> this is pretty old but good nevertheless. Prof Edwards was my prof last year and advised my group on our senior design project!

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone tried to recreate an Alto, a Lilith or a Lisp Machine using FPGAs? Would they fit?</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do in your spare time (hobby)? - <AUTHOR> I would really like to hear what kind of cool hobbies you guys have. As for me, I play electric/acoustic guitar occasionally. It really helps me to relax. I even heard that playing any kind of musical instrument benefits your brain. What about you? <comment><USER2> I record music. I have a tube compressor, monitors with balanced cables, equalizer, 8x8 interface, lexicon vocal processor. I also have a akg 414 condensor mic, keyboard, guitars, beatpad thing, etc.

I like recording people who sing and chopping their vocals into samples.</comment>


Uber's New CEO - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/ubers-new-ceo/ <comment><USER2> This is a thoughtful analysis into the whole Uber CEO opinion, but it is opinionated. Aggregation theory is one way to derive Uber's value, but you can make a compelling argument that supply drives demand.

The reason why I don't use taxis in Australia is partly because the experience is far better with Uber and the cost is cheaper, but also because Uber is the most reliable. Without drivers and such reliability, I can't use Uber even if I want to.

Does demand drive supply? Yes. But does supply drive demand? Yes too. With a two sided marketplace, you can't just focus on one.

<comment><USER3> With "driving demand" you don't mean "creating demand" but "directing demand to my business instead of the competitors", right? Because it sounds a little like you want to say "creating demand", but your demand to go from A to B is already created before you choose between a Taxi and Uber. You don't decide to go to B because Uber exists.

<comment><USER4> > You don't decide to go to B because Uber exists.

Actually, I absolutely do. I've gone on many trips that I simply wouldn't have gone on pre-Uber. On a regular basis I'll decide to go somewhere (ex. a party in Brooklyn) which I wouldn't have bothered with if it meant a slow and unreliable taxi (or an even slower subway ride).

<comment><USER5> Just curious: What makes you call Uber fast and taxis unreliable in NYC? I would agree with you in almost any other market, but I find getting a taxi in NYC using Curb just as fast and reliable, yet cheaper.

<comment><USER6> Also being cyclist in NYC these yellow cab drivers are your worst enemies. I have almost got ran over more than once. You can listen to them moan about cyclists if you have been in enough yellow cabs. Having biked around in city for a while I personally go out of my way to avoid them. I only use them if I am in manhattan and have absolutely no patience or sobriety to call uber.

<comment><USER7> I do feel like this applies to Uber/Lyft drivers also (at least in SF and bay area). The bonus structure built on X rides per day makes some drivers quite rash.

<comment><USER8> More than that, it seems a lot of SF Uber/Lyft come from far away to work in San Francisco and don't know their way around and have their eye's glued to their phone's GPS. I ride a bike in SF and I've nearly been hit by a Uber/Lyft driver at least 10 times this year(once the same driver cut me off 3 times on 2nd street). I keep a eye peeled for those Uber/Lyft logos when I see them pulled over, when pull out into traffic they almost never look for bikers and usually screwing with their phones.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I rode in the car of a person that lives in Fresno, but drives 5 days in SF. He and a bunch of others sleep in their cars at night. He knows the city well enough now, but pointed out 10+ drivers in a 30min drive with cellphones in their hand.

The only time I felt unsafe _inside_ the car was when my driver drove with his elbows, with the Uber app in one hand and his wife on a different phone in the other hand. He just honked and cut across 3 lanes of traffic on El Camino on Mountain View. He told me later that he used to drive a taxi for years. I chalked it down as a cool story to tell people.later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To paraphrase George Soros here:

>The worse things look, the easier it is for it to get better

<comment><USER10> For most situations I disagree. There's a term I see floating around HN occasionally called "incident pit" which I think sums a lot of situations. The idea is for many situations each unit worse things get the harder it becomes for things to get a unit better, just like getting out of a pit. Eventually escape becomes impossible.

And i think Uber has been dealing with their own version of an incident pit lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 'Khosrowshahi will be leaving behind a ton of money at Expedia, though presumably for three tons of money at Uber, if all goes well. But I assume it's not just about the money. If you want to be the CEO of Uber, presumably it is because you like the CEO game, and want to play it at the hardest possible difficulty setting.'

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-28/tender- of...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-28/tender-offers-and- ceo-searches)

<comment><USER12> He should start a hedge fund called Dark Souls Management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Without question Uber has been horrifically served by its board of directors > — all of them.

Some of them are VCs. If you are raising funding, don't tell them anything confidential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course some of them are VCs. Investors generally get board seats.

<comment><USER13> My point is that these are not people who can be trusted to keep secrets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that the case of any board then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://twitter.com/dkhos/status/897660235313229824](https://twitter.com/dkhos/status/897660235313229824)

When he was 9, he fled the Iranian Revolution, and became a refugee in the U.S.

I have more respect for Uber today.

<comment><USER15> The CTO fled Vietnam on a boat during the Vietnam war and arrived in the US with basically nothing as a refugee. Extraordinary circumstances can make extraordinary people.

<comment><USER16> The CTO is also a ruthless, cut-throat businessman. There is a reason Travis brought him on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> lol

For instance, his brother Kaveh Khosrowshahi is a managing director at Allen & Co., the investment bank best known for its ultra exclusive Sun Valley conference. A few cousins are Google execs. His cousin Amir Khosrowshahi is at Intel after Intel bought the AI company he co-founded, Nervana, last year for $400 million. His twin cousins Ali and Hadi Partovi sold their startup to MySpace back in 2009 for $20 million and went on to become power angels backing Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, and Facebook and cofounding Code.org.

<comment><USER18> Wow. How does a whole family succeed at that level? Presumably some of it is connections, but connections only get you part of the way.

<comment><USER19> The family was a wealthy merchant family in Iran before the revolution. They brought money and knowledge of how to become wealthy when they left. Look at other wealthy persians in LA and you see similar patterns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> CEOs often lead to partnerships and strategy. I wonder what connections in travel this new CEO is going to leverage and how that will affect the uber operations in the short term, and the ridesharing product itself in the long term.

Uber's success has been about evolving a core product in an emerging category whereas Expedia is all about maximizing revenue from the existing mess of travel product categories.

If uber starts to retain customers with miles or try to diversify revenue sources, I think it'd be a bad sign. But, who knows.

<comment><USER21> Are we just copying people's comments from previous threads now? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15113793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15113793)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> why they want a 98 year old running uber is beyond me

<comment><USER23> Age is just a number and should be meaningless in any discussion to do with employment.

Also he's 48. Travis Kalanick is 41. Would you have preferred they got someone in their 20s or 30s? Why?

<comment><USER24> If anything, age is a positive indicator of work experience</comment></comment></comment>


Droid Does - <AUTHOR> http://droiddoes.com

<comment><USER2> Wow. _Verizon_ attacking Apple's hostility to open development? Talk about a pot and a kettle...

<comment><USER3> Verizon has done an unexpected about-face around a year ago, turning from the most closed carrier (crippled phones, removing bluetooth etc) to the one who, at least on paper, embraces open everything.

My guess is that they looked at the network capacity and realized that if they push other carriers into "who's got more open access?" war they will come out on top by virtue of having more bandwidth to sustain those apps. Their latest attack ads against AT&T pretty much underscore that with point made on watching mobile video.

I may be ascribing too much to Verizon, but I know if I had more XYZ then competition I would certainly make my current and potential users appreciate XYZ more in order to gain advantage. True for any value of XYZ.

<comment><USER4> To most people I talk to (and my personal belief), Verizon's commercials are directed squarely at Apple. I was hoping to have a choice in US carriers, but this ad seems to kill that possibility.

<comment><USER5> It is a network protocol issue. Verizon and Sprint are CDMA, AT&T and T-Mobile (and the rest of the world) are GSM. Your phone will work on one spec or the other, and depending on the spec you will have two carriers to choose from if you were to get an unlocked phone.

<comment><USER3> Things change. When it comes to 4G Verizon has abandoned EV-DV (Qualcom/CDMA family) and instead committed to LTE (GSM family). What this means is that come 4G there will be one standard across all major carriers both in states and in Europe. (I can't imagine Sprint having enough money to justify further EvDv R&D so they will have to switch as well).

Verizon is hard at work rolling out LTE equipment as we speak.

<comment><USER2> Seeing that play out will be interesting. I don't know how many people (like me) stick with AT&T and T-Mobile because they insist on having a phone that will work overseas, but I'd bet we're among the more _profitable_ consumers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see this but I get a blank white page on the iPhone.

<comment><USER7> I guess if they really want to poach iPhone users they'll need to make a non- flash site ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is Droid really going to have 800 x 480 screen resolution? Are screens with DPI that insanely high really capable of making it into devices sold for $200 with contract?

I've been waiting for a phone with such a usable screen resolution but it never seems to actually come true; it's just rumor. At this point I'd be happy just to get 640 x400.

<comment><USER9> My HTC Touch Pro2 (Windows Mobile) has that resolution. Verizon has already had a couple released 800x480 screens that run their BREW platform (LG EnV Touch). All are usable but none have the iPhone's hardware graphics acceleration. Kind of a shame, too.

EDIT: I should also mention that it cost me about $200 with renewal

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think we now have the answer to the question "Will Verizon ever get the iPhone?". Given how they are attacking the iPhone and Apple's temper, I would say "No".

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how it compares with the two android phones sprint is coming out with. I've been out of contract a while and I won't move to AT&T do to service problems in nyc, but I'd really like a more powerful smartphone then my blackberry. I've got my iPod Touch for my iApps.

</comment><comment><USER4> The droid trademark is owned by Lucasfilms??? I had thought it was just a generic word for robot (guess you do learn new things from commercials).</comment>


Accident at Nuke plant in Russia? - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/10/563286253/mysterious-radioactive-cloud-over-europe-hints-at-accident-farther-east <comment><USER2> Recommend this use the more accurate article title, "Radioactive Cloud Over Europe Hints At Accident Farther East." The expert cited said this doesn't sound like a nuclear plant accident, but a nuclear reprocessing plant accident.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668202)</comment>


0x API – Access all decentralized exchange liquidity through one API - <AUTHOR> https://0x.org/api <comment><USER2> This is awesome for the DeFi community. Glad to have a trusted source to aggregate liquidity from. Seems like liquidity aggregation will be commoditized on a long enough time horizon (think in terms of Plaid/Stripe positioning in legacy finance) and 0x is the first one to position themselves at the top of the funnel.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 0x API aggregates liquidity from DEX networks such as 0x, Kyber, Uniswap, and Maker's Oasis (among other sources) to give developers an easy way to swap crypto tokens at the best prices.

Learn more: [https://blog.0xproject.com/access-all-dex-liquidity- through-...](https://blog.0xproject.com/access-all-dex-liquidity- through-0x-api-d5dd9a45af31)

<comment><USER3> How is transaction and tax information managed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, interested to see how this compares to dex.ag.

</comment><comment><USER5> Been using other solutions but they're often down. If this is more reliable then it's already a big improvement.</comment>


RoughDraft.js – quickly create HTML mockups - <AUTHOR> http://ndreckshage.github.com/roughdraft.js/ <comment><USER2> IMO the client side looping and content creation becomes much more interesting when you consider throwing in an Ajax call and true content retrieval. Might be a case where it's beneficial to just output the base element to the client, have it decide on number of times to replicate and poll the server for content for each. This is a pretty common technique these days but it could be turned into a nifty little multi-purpose library.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point. reason i didnt was several lorem ipsum sites dont have nice apis, or output in different json styles. but i agree with the idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am crying out for _something_ \- this looks like the something - kind of.

I am interested in adding two parts - probably jasmine-ajax style stubbing of AJAX calls, and marionette style regions - basically I would like to roughdraft a SPA.

hmm - thinking about it really I just want to roughdraft a region then assign that region to be brought up by a button click - no need for ajax at all.

This seems to assume bootstrap exists too - is that correct?

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it -- couldn't you use something like Angular / etc. to do this? How could I use this to create something more rich than repeated div elements and placeholder text / images? Can you provide more examples?

<comment><USER5> The utility to me is that it is very easy to understand - I still don't know what Angular.js is, but this takes me seconds to get.

To me, it's basically a for loop for placeholder HTML, which is great.

I guess you could also use it as a kind of unit testing for, unicode support, or to iterate through all conceivable tags to see how the CSS fares, if the author decides to go along with that.

<comment><USER6> <http://angularjs.org/> \-- You'll see that the functionality is pretty similar, only if you start with angular, you'll be on your way to creating the fully functional site.

Plus angular is backed by google (hopefully not in a GWT way... ooooo java->js burn).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't find the documentation. Can you share the link to it?

<comment><USER8> It's on GitHub (which is linked at the bottom of the page as well): <https://github.com/ndreckshage/roughdraft.js/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it just me, or is this just a library that outputs placeholder divs and placeholder text? That doesn't fulfill the promise of "interactive HTML mock- ups" or "Quickly create and prototype a full interactive HTML mock-up."

<comment><AUTHOR> interactive compared to a psd/basic mockup. to get a feel for how site could actually feel, which is quicker than building the backend features. can change description if misleading</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where could I get quality content written for my startup? - <AUTHOR>

I want to have quality content written for my startup. Homepage content, paragraphs explaining the site, etc.<p>Where would I find this? <comment><USER2> You can consider these options;

\- Guest Post. Allow guest writer in your startup blog is one way to get quality content. To write a decent post do take time, sometimes it can be quite time consuming to do it day in day out.

\- Split your blog to Technology/Marketing/etc. It help to streamline your postings, and if you have a few developers in your startup, you can get them to contribute their ideas/solutions/problems too.

The whole idea is to connect with your customers, writing quality content is the way to go. How to go there is really up to your creativity.

</comment><comment><USER3> You know your site better than anybody. Write it yourself, then show it to a friend or two and figure out why it sucks. Wash, rinse, repeat until you have a kick-ass piece.</comment>


The dot enter mixtape: d3.js tutorial videos - <AUTHOR> http://enjalot.github.com/dot-enter/

<comment><USER2> Great tutorials! Btw, I find a thumbnail view easier to follow: [http://vimeo.com/search/sort:alphabetical/format:detail?q=%2...](http://vimeo.com/search/sort:alphabetical/format:detail?q=%22dot%20enter%22)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really nice tutorials, the background music is nice too, the pace is pretty fast as well which is something you don't usually see on tutorials, however this is way better than a slow presentation which makes it unbearable to watch after a point. Never used d3.js before, however i really enjoyed the tutorials. I ended up watching 3-4 of them and got interested on the library.

The only negative comment i guess i can make (as a suggestion) is that on some videos the music is a bit high which ends up overlapping with your voice.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, this means a lot because that's exactly what i was going for! i also figured out how to use screenflow better like 5 videos into the process, so hopefully the sound will be better balanced from now on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the freestyle music in the background. Makes the videos seem more on- the-spot.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! it helps me keep on time and makes things a little more fun

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! D3 was intimidating to me, and personally screencasts similar to this are helpful when trying to get a broad overview of a library. Even better, all the code for each video is provided with a live code editor.

</comment><comment><USER6> d3.js tutorials have been sorely lacking. Glad to see you put this up, cheers.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is so awesome. These are the d3 screencasts I've been waiting for.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any thoughts on d3 vs raph? I lean towards raph, but d3 looks nice,too.

<comment><AUTHOR> i haven't played too much with raphael.js, but it seems convenient for vector drawing, and i hear its pretty quick to get started with. d3 really shines when it comes to data-driven graphics, and it's a much broader set of tools for data visualization in the browser. it also has a steeper learning curve, which i'm trying to alleviate with these videos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is cool. What live code editor is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's my project called Tributary <http://enjalot.com>

<comment><USER10> Very very cool project... I will be using this a lot. I put it on my site if you don't mind :) <http://pineapple.io/resources/tributary></comment></comment></comment>


Numba vs Cython - <AUTHOR> http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2012/08/24/numba-vs-cython/ <comment><USER2> You probably should add a "2012" tag in the title. Numba has progressed quite a lot in the past 8 months.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone seen a Matlab vs {Numba, Cython} comparison anywhere?</comment>


Show HN: brutal.js v1.4 – landing keyed DOM sync with no vdom - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago-coder-0/brutal.js?v=1.4 <comment><AUTHOR> Brutal.js is a small "framework" for building brutalist web applications.

After experimenting with stateful components ( like React ), I decided against that as too complex and implemented keyed templates that cache on the first time you instantiate them and, on subsequent calls with the same key, minimally diff their associate DOM using methods like replaceNode and setAttribute and without keeping a vdom. I think this approach is simple, and has the potential to be very fast.

Simple, less code, fast, is what I'm aiming for with this framework for building brutalist web apps. Thanks for checking it out :)

For a clear demo, a minimal, literate todo app in the style of TodoMVC but without the MVC ;) is here, alongside its GitHub pages site:

[https://github.com/dosyago-coder-0/rvanillatodo/](https://github.com/dosyago- coder-0/rvanillatodo/)</comment>


Why Static Code Analysis is Important? - <AUTHOR> http://javarevisited.blogspot.sg/2014/02/why-static-code-analysis-is-important.html

<comment><USER2> Good article. However, I would suggest that if you intend to reach a wider audience that you get someone who speaks English natively to edit your articles before you publish them. It's clearly not your first language, and lets be honest, broken English doesn't get taken seriously unless you're already a writer of repute.

Otherwise, good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks laichzeit0, I understand.</comment></comment>


Chess Programming Wiki - <AUTHOR> https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page <comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled onto this while looking (because nostalgia) at portable chess computers. An interesting section is on chess on the arduino: [https://www.chessprogramming.org/Arduino#Chess_Programs](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Arduino#Chess_Programs)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the ways to destroy your asset without giving it away? - <AUTHOR> are there ways to just burn millions in bank account without redistribution or donating back? <comment><USER2> Serious answer: I run a business doing this exact thing for some very wealth clients looking to disappear some cash. My fee is 5% of the total assets you want destroyed. I offer a few different methods, so get in touch and I should be able to get it sorted.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always liked Leonard Wibberley's idea from "The Mouse On Wall Street": buy stock in a company that's headed towards bankruptcy. As the stock price continues to fall, your money essentially vanishes into thin air.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't that redistribution? Aren't you sweeping debt of the bankrupt company by buying its share thus pumping money into the economy? or am I missing something here?

How will it vanish into thin air?

<comment><USER3> > " _Aren 't you sweeping debt of the bankrupt company by buying its share > thus pumping money into the economy?_"

In theory, the shares at the time of purchase are worth the amount of cash that the market price is. The owner of the shares may realize a net gain or loss relative to their own purchase price but that doesn't change the fact that $X of shares are being exchanged for the equal and equivalent $X in cash. So what is being redistributed?

> " _How will it vanish into thin air?_ "

As the shares trend from price $X to zero, where does the value go? Answer that and you will have answered your question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I offer you the opportunity to wire it to me and you'll never have to think about it again.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sell it for $1 in cash, then burn the dollar.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is illegal to burn $, no?

[https://www.thoughtco.com/is-burning-money- illegal-3367953](https://www.thoughtco.com/is-burning-money-illegal-3367953)

Selling it for a dollar doesn't lower the value of the assets or stop it from circulating back into the economy?

<comment><USER6> Based on your requirements, I think you would be able to withdraw the cash from the bank, put it into a briefcase and sink it to the bottom of the ocean in some "accident" :) You are right it's technically illegal to willingly deface currency, like melting pennies for copper.

Another idea is to find someone who will sell you something at face value, that they also acquired for face value, such as silver bars or copper bars or something of that nature.

In that scenario, the person who originally sold the metal to the guy who sells it to you will have made a profit, but not a very big one after accounting for the expense they went through to obtain it. This is one way I can think of that avoids the technical illegality of defacing currency.

But I would definitely put the cash in a shredder or burn it. It will be quite difficult to prove what you did with the cash-- you can just say you spent it on consumable goods like food, drinks, vacations, blah blah :)

<comment><AUTHOR> would it be for millions or even billions? I feel like that last option would attract attention soon.

Not sure how legal would it be to buy a block of potentially more valuable land and put nuclear waste on it both paid by your money?

I guess, other ideas include paying selective group more and target loans for risk taking behavior causing holes in a small economic country by creating instability and inequality. Maybe pay people to pollute their land? Marketing to make people unhealthier and reduce their life expectancy or invest in scams/drugs? Although all of those seems less direct and depends on generating negative value to counter the spread of money.

<comment><USER6> It's a strange and interesting thought.

Buying silver with your cash and then sinking it to the bottom of the ocean would definitely destroy economic value. Silver is used for producing goods and protecting against inflation. If you start destroying silver faster than the world is producing it, you will measure your economic impact by the rise in price of silver, since you reduced the supply. It currently isn't illegal to destroy silver, but the US govt has made laws in the past regarding the confiscation of silver in times of scarcity.

Putting nuclear waste on land, specifically useful land like manhattan or etc would also destroy economic value and also be highly, highly illegal :) It would desttoy money and make people's lives hard, because they would have to spend money to relocate away from all the nuclear waste. Skyscrapers and tunnels would become worthless as there's no reason to go near them anymore.

Convincing people to give you money in a scam also destroys economic value because they are not getting anything in return for their money sent to you :)

Ultimately, the world economy is built on labor and resources. If you destroy resources and also make it impossible for people to perform labor, then you've destroyed value, measured in dollars :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting case about silver. What if someone wants ethical disposal of the money?

One idea I could think of is funding legal euthanasia (where it's allowed). That should be 'ethical' and cost economically more in the long term disposing value you invested.

Human life in UK for example costs about 2-4 million dollars.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a 2 person startup already uses 26 other tools / services - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kunaljasty/how-a-2-person-startup-already-uses-26-other-tools-318da014cf38 <comment><USER2> I'm curious about any sort of struggles you (or anyone else too!) run into with deep tool/service stacks like this. I'm currently working on an inbox as an app platform. We want to easily kick off cron jobs and other automations. Things like composing and automatically send a summary of today's commit, or firing off a build when an email arrives at a certain address, and rolling back when a new keyword appears. Any insight or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Some initial thoughts and questions: Are there integrations between these tools you'd wish to have? Do you see value in integrating commands across toolchains like this to avoid log-ins for standard actions? Have you looked in scripting automation across some of these tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest issue is that we have all these tools but don't have the time to integrate any of them :). Most integrate with Zapier though

<comment><USER2> Of course :) Is it a question of perceived value for you vs limited time/friction or something else? Are there any things in your stack you wish were automatic if someone made that for you today?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the biggest thing would be automating / integrating our outreach across channels. Something like boomerang across channels would be really nice

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great list and I would be curious to know if you have done a cost- benefit analysis when compiling this list.

E.g. something like Stripe for payments is probably much more cost effective than paying for some other services like Notion (which I assume you can get away by using google docs or whatever).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We haven't, but we get a lot of this for free because we're so small. As soon as we grow we will have to prune the list for sure (but will replace these tools with others)</comment></comment>


For profit prisons have formed a powerul lobby - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/

<comment><USER2> Next up, prison time for traffic tickets and littering. Got to maximize those profits, and parole is bad for shareholder value.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a way, this is really not unlike slavery in its nature. It is the undue extraction and exploitation of wealth and money through abusive means. This time around it's just that the source of that money and wealth is not human labor as in the industrial age, it's tax money and debt that is piled on all of society as it is percolated to the top.

We need to pass some laws that make jailing corporate executives, bankers, lobbyists, and politicians highly profitable. There should be a kind of profit sharing, a civil forfeiture law, with prisons when moneys earned through and during illicit activities are confiscated from the top. I guarantee that there would either be a frenzy to go after white collar criminals, or the system would collapse because that's all quite a bit too close for comfort for those involved.</comment>


JVM Anatomy Park - <AUTHOR> https://shipilev.net/jvm-anatomy-park/ <comment><USER2> I really enjoy the completeness of this publication, additionally the ability for me to read it later from an epub is great.

This reminds me when the Java Pub House did a few podcasts on Garbage Collections and performance ([http://www.javapubhouse.com/2012/04/episode-22-garbage- man-i...](http://www.javapubhouse.com/2012/04/episode-22-garbage-man- introduction-on.html))

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I would love to see this become the standard for longer blog posts.

Would also love details on the author's workflow and automation behind this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regarding the question in the 1st topic: ([https://shipilev.net/jvm-anatomy- park/1-lock-coarsening-for-...](https://shipilev.net/jvm-anatomy-park/1-lock- coarsening-for-loops/))

" for (...) { synchronized (obj) { // something } }

…could it optimize into this?

synchronized (this) { for (...) { <\----XXX---- // something } } "

The answer would be no in general, I think, since it is unsafe.

Moving the entire loop into the synchronized block would make the statement marked XXX above, i.e. "for (...)" execute inside the synchronized block, which has the potential to change the semantics (for example, the statement may include an rpc, and we don't want to make that rpc under the lock).

The earlier optimization of

synchronized (this) { statement1; }

synchronized (this) { statement2; }

to

synchronized (this) { statement1; statement2; }

is safe.

<comment><USER5> > Moving the entire loop into the synchronized block would make the statement > marked XXX above, i.e. "for (...)" execute inside the synchronized block, > which has the potential to change the semantics (for example, the statement > may include an rpc, and we don't want to make that rpc under the lock).

That's not change in semantics. The JVM doesn't provide any guarantees about parallelism or scheduling semantics in the first place so how can you possibly argue about the semantics of holding a lock too long?

And it's unsafe? For what definition of safety?

But in practice - yes you obviously wouldn't do this if the code in the loop control code had any side effects.

<comment><USER4> >And it's unsafe? For what definition of safety?

Let me try to answer with an example. Let us say, we have original code like this:

      synchronized(this) {
       a();
       b();
     }
     c();
     synchronized(this) {
       d();
       e();
     }

It would be unsafe (in general) to transform the above code to

      synchronized(this) {
        a();
        b();
        c();
        d();
        e();
      }

Simply because Compiler does not know (again, in general) what may happen during the execution of c(). However, the following transformation is safe (the timing behavior changes, but as you point out, that is not a guarantee programmers should expect).

      synchronized(this) {
        p();
        q();
      }
      synchronized(this) {
        r();
        s();
      }

to

      synchronized(this) {
        p();
        q();
        r();
        s();
      }

since there is nothing happening between the two synchronized sections.

For the for loop, an example of code where pulling the synchronized statement out of the loop is problematic:

      for(a = AcquireLock(), c = 0; c < 100; c++) {
        synchronized(this) {
          f();
        }
      }
      ReleaseLock(a);

I don't think it is safe to transform to

      a = AcquireLock();
      synchronized(this) {
      for(c = 0; c < 100; c++) {
          f();
        }
      }
      ReleaseLock(a);

Perhaps you (and the original blog post) assume we are only talking about movement of code after ensuring that such movement is safe, but it was not clear from the document.

<comment><USER5> Just looking at your final example, I can't understand how you can say that is unsafe. How would anyone be able to tell the difference between the two? I think anything you tell me I'm just going to be able to answer 'but Java never guaranteed you that in the first place'. If nobody can tell the difference then how can it be unsafe?

<comment><USER4> >Just looking at your final example, I can't understand how you can say that is unsafe

Let me change the example a bit. Say we have two locks aL and bL, that we must always acquire in the order aL first and then bL.

Following the rule, say we write code like this:

      import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;
      class X {
        private static ReentrantLock aL = new ReentrantLock();
        private static ReentrantLock bL = new ReentrantLock();
        static int x = 0;
        static int c = 0;
        static public void main(String[] args) {
    	for(aL.lock(); c < 100; c++) {
    	  synchronized(bL) {
    		x = x + 0x42;
    	  }
    	}
    	aL.unlock();
        }
      }

If I understood it right, the blog post was asking a question whether JVM can transform this to:

      import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;
      class X {
        private static ReentrantLock aL = new ReentrantLock();
        private static ReentrantLock bL = new ReentrantLock();
        static int x = 0;
        static int c = 0;
        static public void main(String[] args) {
          synchronized(bL) {
            for(aL.lock(); c < 100; c++) {
                x = x + 0x42;
            }
            aL.unlock();
          } // end synnchronized
        }
      }

Since the locks are now acquired in a different order, does that not qualify as observable behavior?

<comment><USER5> But that's just a different example to the one you gave before. In your previous example acquiring the explicit lock always came before the start of synchronised block, both before and after the rewrite. You've changed it here so it's a different question.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I meant to write:

      synchronized(this) {
        a = AcquireLock();
        for(c = 0; c < 100; c++) {
            f();
        }
      }
      ReleaseLock(a);

which is inline with what the blog post was proposing.

To repeat the blog is a question:

      for (...) {
        synchronized (obj) {
          // something
        }
      }

…could it optimize into this?

      synchronized (this) {
        for (...) {
           // something
        }
      }

My answer to that is in general, no.

<comment><USER5> You mean because ... could be code that can detect whether or not the monitor is held?

Yes, but I think it's an assumption so obvious as to be not worth stating that the author means as long as ... does not do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is of no real consequence except curiosity, but I'm at a loss to understand what "park" means in the title.

I don't even know what sense of the word is intended. Is it "park" like a city or amusement park that you visit, and the idea is that you enjoy a variety of different activities while you're there? Is it "park" like a ballpark, and the analogy is that sporting events take place there and each one of these topics is an event? Is it somehow "park" like a parking lot? Maybe "park" is a too- literal translation from another language where the corresponding word has a meaning that the English one doesn't?

I'm trying to guess based on context, but none of these really seems to fit.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it is a reference to the Rick and Morty episode "Anatomy Park". [http://rickandmorty.wikia.com/wiki/Anatomy_Park_(episode)](http://rickandmorty.wikia.com/wiki/Anatomy_Park_\(episode\))

<comment><USER6> Oh, that has to be it! So it's just a reference I didn't understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Besides being interesting in itself, this is the best collection of examples I've seen for JMH. When I looked last the official documentation was a bit thin, and most articles on it just included an unmotivated hello world example.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why PDF is so large?

</comment><comment><USER10> 7k views, 155 upvotes, 1 comment...

<comment><USER11> I was skeptical at first as well, but your own stats show a different picture: the site gets a lot of views, which correlates with the upvotes. No comments is probably due to the fact that people use upvoting as a mechanism to save links to material (which might be of use later)

<comment><USER10> To clarify, I don't think this is improper use of the upvote mechanism, I was just hoping for more engagement with the comment feature of Hacker News, given the 7k click thrus.

<comment><USER11> That's just what you've achieved :-) Probably not the way you intended it, though</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heroku Redis GA and Introducing Heroku Data Links - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/6/25/heroku-redis-ga-and-introducing-heroku-data-links

<comment><USER2> > Fortune 500 companies spend months and years building software and databases > to federate data to garner insights. With the one, two punch of Data Links > and Dataclips, you'll have a fully baked analytics solution in a fraction of > the time.

Statements like this tend to irk me. They seem to be suggesting that what they've come up with solves the same problems that Fortune 500 companies are trying to solve with their own federation solutions. I get that it's marketing speak, but it seems rather heavy-handed to me.</comment>


Y Combinator W15 batch - <AUTHOR>

This is for anyone who has applied to ycombinator W15 batch, it doesn't matter if you got the interview or not.
If you have developed an amazing website and looking for some exposure please read this.
I'm CEO of enythings. Enythings is a new search engine that let's you search, discover and compare websites! It is for people who are not satisfied with Google.<p>As of right now, we are looking for more websites to add to our ever-growing library of websites. So, please contact us now if you would like to publish your website on our site (you will get free exposure for free). Email us at: email@example.com Please have a look at our website: enythings.com Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> Very misleading title</comment>


Alda Merini's 85th birthday (today's Google's Doodle) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/doodles/alda-merinis-85th-birthday <comment><AUTHOR> I am Italian. For many of us, Alda Merini represents something truly special. Someone who suffered a lot. Someone who fought to affirm gender equality, and many other important "battles" of the 20th century.

If you have a chance, take a look at some of her poems. They're short, and beautiful.</comment>


Is Uber now ripping off their customers? - <AUTHOR>

On Saturday night we ordered an UberX car to pick us up from a New Jersey and to take us back to our apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. When I received the receipt I noticed a $20 toll charge for the George Washington Bridge.... The only problem is, is that this is only supposed to be a $11.00 toll. When I asked UBER about this discrepancy, they responded:
The $20 surcharge is not only to compensate for the toll, but also the vacant ride back to NJ. NJ partner drivers are not licensed to pick up riders in NYC, so they will need to travel back empty to get their next fare.
Okay, that makes sense. Except that our driver told us he was from White Plains, New York and that he was hoping to catch a fare back to Manhattan so he didn't have to pay for the return toll.
So not only do they overcharge me, they try to cover it up by suggesting that the driver was from New Jersey and that he'd have to deadhead it back. <comment><USER2> This is disclosed in [https://www.uber.com/cities/new- york](https://www.uber.com/cities/new-york): "$20 surcharge on all trips between NYC and New Jersey." It doesn't have anything to do with where the driver is from. It also appears to be included in the fare calculator there. (I can't be 100% sure because it doesn't break down the bill.)

The fee shouldn't be dependent on where the driver happens to be from, or you'd be rolling the dice on which driver you happened to get: it's fairer to have a consistent price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes, the fine print. Because we wouldn't want to know in advance that we'd be charged $20.00 for an $11.00 toll. So it's safe to assume that Uber charged the other passenger $20 going into Jersey, and then another $20 coming back. This makes me wonder if Uber pocketed the $20 collected as the driver went into Jersey or if it set aside some to cover the driver's cost if he had some come back as a deadhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that toll is at most $13 . More interestingly, there is no charge when leaving Manhattan on the GWB -- it's completely free. Fishy...perhaps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Toll charges are here: [http://www.panynj.gov/bridges- tunnels/tolls.html](http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/tolls.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just curious, how do taxi's handle the issue of tolls? I've never thought about it before.

<comment> Brian-Puccio _On all trips within New York City, any bridge and tunnel tolls to the destination shall be paid by the passenger, who shall be informed before the start of the trip.

On all trips within New York City, return tolls shall not be charged except for trips over the Cross Bay Veterans, Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial, and Verrazano Narrows Bridges.

On trips beyond New York City, all necessary tolls to and from the destination shall be paid by the passenger._

[http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtm...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rate.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should it have been $11 x 2 = $22?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no charge going from Manhattan to New Jersey over GWB so they've arbitrarily added a $9 fee saying that the driver will be returning to New Jersey. Which raises the question, did the passenger who he took to New Jersey also get charged $20? Altogether that would be $40 in toll charges for a single $11 toll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> hmm..do we now see the problem with de-regulating the Taxi industry?

<comment><USER6> Zinger appreciated, but it's a disclosed surcharge -- the real problem would be if it were deceptive.

As any New Yorker will tell you, pre-Uber cab regulations were not exactly followed to the letter. For example, they state among other things that a driver has to take you anywhere you want to go. Ever tried hopping in a cab at 4:30 pm and asking for JFK airport?

<comment> Brian-Puccio Which is exactly why you get in the cab, then tell the cab where you want to go. Do it in the reverse order and the cab will take off without you in it.

<comment><USER6> While hiding your roller suitcase behind a lamppost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Free-range' parents plan to file lawsuit after police pick up children - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-plan-to-file-lawsuit-after-police-pick-up-children/2015/04/14/ed4f7658-e2b7-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html <comment><USER2> We're so obsessed as a society on making life "easy" for our kids that we completely remove our children's ability to fend for themselves in the real world.

These parents were doing their children a service and trying to break free from the overprotective craziness that has everyone keeping their kids inside. And the response they received is crazy. As if its not hard enough to go against the grain and give your kids more independence, now there is precedence that if you do, you may be at risk.

Our jobs as parents is not to protect kids from life, but to give them the tools to navigate it.

Part of giving them tools is giving them the opportunity to fail and learn from it.

The rates of depression, suicide, bullying and drug use have been climbing higher and higher -- we're not helping our kids stay safe, we're keeping them from gaining wisdom.

Eventually it will change, though I suspect things will get worse before they get better... change comes when the pain of staying the same is too great -- we're all too comfortable keeping our kids inside.

<comment><USER3> It opens your eyes travelling to other countries, different rules and different social norms.

Most places have kids running wild and seem to be enjoying themselves. Obviously there is risk, but 99.99% of adults would go to a childs aid if anything happened. But there is always one overprotective person in a position of power who delights in taking away some freedom in the name of security. It's hard to argue with someone when they are making kids safer... <cue dramatic music - dun dun duuun> but at what cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related visualization of how kid's range has shrunk over four generations: [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2b/4e/b3/2b4eb36f9...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2b/4e/b3/2b4eb36f91e4c82bf017188613ac9a63.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Yesterday I needed to run some errands and it hit me pretty hard how silly we've become. My seven year daughter didn't want to come with me and while I'm sure she's mature enough to stay at home by herself I went to Google to determine if I'd be viewed as a criminal or not in the eyes of my parenting peers or the state. It turned out that my local child protective services had a Q&A on their site stating that it's okay to leave a child home alone at age 11. I then went to my city and state statutes and couldn't find a single law which said it would be illegal. After a bit more research I found plenty of parents recommending that kids not only can, but should be left home alone if they are okay with it. This helps to build independence and self-esteem. I ended up leaving her at home alone for about an hour and not a single bad thing happened.

<comment><USER6> Homes are pretty dangerous and sometimes children do stupid things. While child protective services shouldn't be called[1] for someone leaving a child for a short time CPS needs to have clear and easy to communicate guidelines. They might want to say "11 and up; unless they're not stupid and the home is safe and you're not gone too long" but, well, the target audience needs clearer information.

[1] it'd be good if we had a "report early, report often" culture and the funding to go with it. A single report of a mild incident means nothing happens; several reports of mild incidents from different agencies means a freindly chat to see if help is needed or wanted.

<comment><USER7> "Report early, report often" sounds extremely creepy and intrusive to me. I realize my culture is fully embracing the police state all around me, and I try not to play the Orwell card too often, but how can it not seem eerily Orwellian to suggest that parents should be reported early and often? What's next, CPS monitors in the home?

<comment><USER6> It sounds creepy _because you live in a police state_ where people abuse their powers.

Imagine a better society. A six year old child turns up at school unwashed and hungry. The parent, who normally collects the child every day, is not there at pickup time. The child lives 3 miles from school. A couple of weeks later the same child is taken to ER. The mother is evasive, but the injuries seem to match the story. The child is again unwashed and a bit dirty and hungry. There are very many cases where these kind of signs go unreported; and one of these signs on it's own probably doesn't reach a threshold where anyone (even if it is reported) will do anything about it. But when collated they start showing that maybe there is something where the parents need more help, or ultimately the child needs to be protected by removing it from it's family.

I live in a country where every single child attending A&E deparments for any reason is reported to their local child protection social workers. In the vast majority of cases nothing happens; no letters; no visits; no threats. But in some cases abused children are detected and protected. It's not perfect, but it's better than letting untrained people guess at what should or shouldn't get reported. Report early report often culture avoids the need for mandatory reporting, which is IMO worse.

When I talk about human rights my American friends say things like "obviously we believe in human rights. The only reason we don't ratify those UN things is a constitutional matter about our courts and our laws", but looking at what Americans in power shows that some of them have no concept of human rights.

A bunch of this stuff is pretty clear in international law (freedom from arbitrary interference; right to a family life for parents; right to a family life for children; family is findamental unit and should be allowed to parent; protect children from harm).

<comment><USER8> First thing to get a little closer to that better society -- we need to lose the shady system of secret courts the parents are taken through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really boggles my mind how crazy people have gotten when it comes to kids. I grew up in the 1990's with overprotective Asian immigrant parents.[1] They wouldn't let us do anything other kids did. But hell if we weren't walking home from school when we were about the same age as these kids.

As an aside, I hear people complain about lawsuits against police departments, because ultimately any judgments are paid out of tax dollars. I find that argument unavailing. In almost every municipality, police departments are the product of democratic processes. The police department is shitty because the people who vote for the leadership are shitty. This happened in Silver Spring, MD, a suburb of DC and home to a large number of uptight paranoid people. I grew up just on the other side of the MD-VA line: the only tragedy here would be if these taxpayers weren't on the hook for a big judgment to these parents.

[1] I honestly thought that it wouldn't get worse than when I was growing up-- assembly rooms full of teachers and parents shrieking "just say no!"

<comment><USER10> I too had overprotective immigrant parents, yet at age 6 I was walking to elementary school, just a short distance of 4 blocks. Middle school was considerably further at 1.7 miles, and through the woods, but there was never any problem. We were also taking the bus, unaccompanied by parents, around town by age 12.

I think also that people are more uninvolved with the people around them these days, especially in metropolitan areas. People don't know their neighbors and don't have the commitment to their neighborhood as in the past. You rarely hear of people verbally disciplining someone else's unruly children, or watching over them, as you might have read in stories from 50 years ago. People now are more likely to stand and watch a crime or an accident, or simply ignore it, rather than get involved. All this implies a greater danger to unaccompanied children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Until the age of 10, I roamed in about a square mile of lakes, woods, creeks and fields. At the age of 10, we moved to a different state and city and my range increased considerably and it was common for me to roam miles away from my home. Granted, my parents just thought we were "in the woods" or "on the bikepath" and probably didn't know the full extent of our travels but they didn't make hard rules as to where we could be, either. The freedom I was given encouraged me to push my boundaries and it expanded my mind. I wouldn't trade those years of exploring woods, swimming in creeks and quarries and observing wildlife for anything. There weren't many other kids who traveled as extensively as my brother and I did. Perhaps more children would be persuaded to put down the iPhone and go outside if they had the freedom to roam as they please. Limiting them to their backyards and next door neighboor's house isn't nearly as enticing as "go roam".

<comment><USER12> Similar story here. Our parents made sure that all children could swim well as early as possible. I remember them supervising us only as long as there was a weak swimmer in the group. From then on I think they generally kept an eye on where we were, not always and without us noticing, but I think they actually had a good idea of our range.

When we were around 11, we were given tools (hammer, saw, nails and old left- over boards with rusty nails in them) to build our own tree house. Our parents started with a basic version, and we were free to build extensions (without supervision). This was really fun and there were only minor injuries. I'm not sure it would still be possible today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anybody have the opposite perspective on this?

Supposedly, "most people" nowadays think that children should not be allowed to roam, but I only ever hear from people who think that's ridiculous. For instance, I just scrolled the comments here and they are literally 100% "I can't believe how paranoid we've become". The conversation I read and hear on this is so one-sided that I really have no sense for what the argument of the other side even is.

<comment><USER14> I think this is just media sensationalist bullshit.

You wouldn't hire a ten year old to babysit your six year old. End of story.

<comment><USER15> I _frequently_ babysat my six year old _twin_ brother _s_ when I was _eight_.

You should seriously consider the possibility that _you_ are the victim of media sensationalism. The world is safer for children today than it ever has been. Children do not need round-the-clock adult supervision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a parent myself, I find all of this paranoia completely insane. My daughter and a school friend (8 at the time) walked down a half a block to our neighborhood park here (in the scary city!) to play, and her friends' mother found out and LOST it.

It's crippling to children, and unbelievably annoying for adults (need to run into the store for a stick of gum? Gotta unpack the kids and bring them with for the 1 minute transaction, or someone will call CPS!).

Here in Minnesota, my theory is that Jacob Wetterling's family and the "news"-mongers are largely to blame. That sad incident of course, was 25+ years ago now, and is still regularly dredged up to scare the pants off of parents.

Feh!

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

</comment><comment><USER17> A paradox of a safer society is that tragic acts like child abductions make more news than they would if they were more commonplace, inflating the perception of the threat.

People feel that the threat is greater in fact because it is so much rarer.

<comment><USER18> Child abduction by strangers is extremely rare and around 100 per year in the US although that may be an outdated number. The one stat I just checked said 515 stranger abductions between 1990 and 1995. And that was when free range children were far more common than today.

<comment><USER19> Overprotective parents will claim that's a result of their actions.

Also, as less parents allow their children to roam, the risk to the remaining ones increase as there are a smaller pool of children readily abductible.

Meanwhile 3 million children a year have substantiated reports of abuse (50% of reported) [https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse- statistics/](https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the age of 10, I commuted to a school that was 15 miles from my home (because it was better than the local elementary school). With two of my classmates, 'alone'. With train. Everyone considered this completely normal and acceptable.

Life is getting safer and more secure as time passes. 2015 is safer than, say, 1995. This whole thing is just sad and crippling for kids (and also for the parents, but it's mostly their fault).

</comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting how people's perceptions have changed over time.

My brother and I walked home from school down dirt roads and through mature forests 3 miles. We weren't supposed to, but it wasn't a big deal.

We were 11 and 6. I wonder what would happen today.

<comment><USER22> Now your parents would be considered libertarian nuts and prosecuted by the state.

Notice how what were once normal parents are now "free-range" parents.

<comment><USER23> I can't help but think they've given themselves this label. I have no evidence for that but it has way too positive connotations to be slapped on them from a distance - with sizeable negative connotations for the alternative too. It seems too easy to come up with something far more negative if you wanted to make them seem bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence I grew up in The Netherlands (until I was 8) and Switzerland (until I was 12), at age 12 I moved to the US.

In The Netherlands me and my friends had quite the range. We were allowed to go down to the soccer field half a mile away, I remember walking to see friends half-way across town. In Switzerland I had a very similar range, and by the time I was 10 I was taking the tram to school (in Basel, other side of the city). I was allowed to roam as much as I pleased so long as I was back home by certain times. I remember spending hours with friends in Basel.

When I got to the US I had the same amount of ability to roam around.

I am now 27 years old, and I am watching all these parents hover over their kids, and it makes me afraid for society as a whole. All that roaming and being outside and away from the house just made me who I am, not afraid, and gave me a huge sense of self-worth, confidence and self-esteem.

<comment> david-given I'm British, but I live in Zürich; it's awesome to see random packs of kids roaming around doing stuff on their own.

I think there's two main things which make this possible: firstly, the amazing public transport system, which means that it's basically impossible to get stuck everywhere; also the culture that adults are not scary, which means that they feel comfortable talking to adults (and vice versa). Admittedly, they mostly talk in thickly accented Schweizerdeutsch, which I don't understand a word of, but they're still talking.

In the UK it's dangerous for an adult even to make _eye contact_ with a child.

Another interesting observation is that packs of children here that I've observed are, IMO, well behaved and polite. I have yet to see anything like the adult/child antagonism that you see in the UK. They're obviously doing something right here, while we're obviously not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Police said an officer saw a "homeless subject" who was "eyeing the > children."

We should focus on the real problem: nasty filthy homeless mens wanted to steal our precious children!

Also, there's no possible way the cop just made that up.

<comment><USER16> Even worse, he might have been having impure thoughts! Clearly, he should be arrested for blatant pre-premeditated pre-crime./s

Why was this boob hanging around watching a hobo allegedly ogle unaccompanied children? Clearly said indigent's activity didn't rise to the level of even mild beating, so I'm not sure why officer Friendly even bothered mentioning it, other than to scare the impressionable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They were found in a parking garage where a homeless man was "eyeing the children"?

So the police officer got the homeless man's information, right? Oh, no, no evidence to back up his story? THAT'S SHOCKING! Police NEVER lie in order to paint the story they want, EVER!

</comment><comment><USER26> Question on a slightly different setting: in more urban areas with public transport, is it common for kids (past some age) to be allowed to travel places on their own on metros/buses? It's definitely common here (Copenhagen), and from what I gather also fairly common in other European cities, and in Japan. But I have no idea if it is in NYC, SF, or Chicago. I think it's partly normalized here from a certain age because we don't have school buses, and instead kids are expected to take the regular transit. So then it's not a huge stretch for them to take the same buses to piano lessons, friends' houses, etc.

<comment><USER16> In a rare fit of sensibility, Minneapolis public schools stopped bussing highschool kids around. They now get free city bus passes, and our roads aren't (as) clogged as they were with giant yellow kindertransports full of young adults.

As a bonus,it exposes random middle-class kids to city busses they might otherwise never consider using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm 19. Pretty sure I walked to school at 11 here in the UK. Probably earlier actually, I can't remember when I started, I just know I definitely went by foot to secondary school (which I started at 11).

I'm not sure I'd be okay with a six-year-old on their own, but they are accompanied by a ten-year-old. Why can't they walk together back home?

In Japan, it's common and encouraged for young children to walk to school on their own from an early age, or so I have heard.

</comment><comment><USER28> Let's see:

(1) Fifth grade, I got a trumpet so rode the city bus downtown, 7 miles, to music lessons.

(2) Once also downtown there was a movie I wanted to see so got a little extra cash and went to the movie after the music lesson.

(3) About then on radio I heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony. So, when the NY Phil came to town, I got a ticket and rode the bus, right, to downtown, 7 miles away.

(4) After school, I did what I wanted, went exploring.

(5) Soon I got a bicycle so rode it to and from school and otherwise was GONE on my bicycle, commonly rode five miles away, once about 10 miles to the next state.

(6) When about 11, visited a friend my age in the country. He had a motorcycle, and we went "two up" for miles and miles.

 _Onion_ solution for the threat of abduction and harassment of children in MD, not entirely in jest: Put the MD police and CPS in diapers in bed overnight, and in the morning have them write 500 times "I will not be a fool". Have all their travels out of house or office supervised _with_ a leash and a GPS ankle bracelet. Four days a week have them wear an orange jump suit with lettering "I am a fool" and work on their knees with a toothbrush washing the sidewalks. For the next year, have them do 15 minute _check ins_ with actually competent _adult supervision_.

Much simpler solution: Drastically cut the budgets of the police and CPS.

Likely actual solution: Have the MD police and CPS lose a big law suit, and have that legal case provide _cover_ for the bloodless bureaucrats that put up with such nonsense to tell the hysterical busy-bodies to _cool it_.

</comment><comment><USER29> So, all crime stats are down since the 70's when I grew up, we have more children that are out of shape, and children are no longer allowed to play outside or go to the park unattended. Yeah, we are seriously stupid and screwed.

I guess the "hey, check out that hill, wonder how far it is to bike there?" mentality in children is long, long gone.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is actually a prime business opportunity -- outdoors child-sitting. You'd watch over children and escort them home and to pre-approved locations. More liberal and hands-off parents could allow their children to explore as much as they like, as long as they don't trespass other property.

This should also help to create a lot more job openings.

<comment><USER31> A dog walking service for children?

<comment><USER32> Well, [https://adlibventures.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/daycare- sc...](https://adlibventures.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/daycare- schoolbus-2.jpg)

I've only seen that in Japan so far but both there and in New York I've seen the long leash where each child is clipped on with a harness. But these are for daycares and school field trips... _clearly ripe for disruption._ What parents need is an app like Uber for when they just need to go somewhere _now_...

<comment><USER16> Uber for kids is a fantastic idea (I mean really fantastic, as in, I fantasize about it regularly, usually while driving my kids back and forth).

I suspect the liability & trust problems would be insurmountable though. I'd pay up into the high hundreds per month to not have the time-suck of pick up & drop off constantly...

Perhaps parents could pool enough money together to actually keep a full-time chauffeur around somehow. Scheduling would be rather dicey though.

<comment><USER32> If 15 parents would pay $3000 per year, they could give one person a $45k/year salary for their services. Somewhere in there is a way to get a TaskRabbit to Uber your kids to their next Meetup. Private daycares exist. Chauffeurs for kids exist for people with enough money, as do parents using Uber for their kids (there was an article here a while back about it). Start with children and then branch out to the elderly and disabled. Call it _Chaperone_. Piggyback on existing startups so that individuals don't have to be qualified as drivers, caretakers, etc.; their job as chaperones is to ensure that everyone else does their job while mostly just _being there_.

Found this but for at-home babysitters: [https://angel.co/chaperone](https://angel.co/chaperone) Don't know if telling people to "think Tinder" for the UI is the best association though.

I am not a parent, but I think we're losing some brightness in our future if we can't resolve trust issues that lie in the way of better services for parents and children. Lots to think about...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I read that, on average, it would take 700,000 years for a child sitting on a bench in the park (unaccompanied) to get kidnapped.

</comment><comment><USER34> I grew up less than 10 miles from the area where this is happening. Now granted when I was these kid's age it was the mid-70s to early 80s, but still from the time I was in kindergarten I walked to/from school about a mile each way every day regardless of whether it was sunny, rainy, snowing, whatever. After school I walked through our community to go to friend's houses at the ripe old age of 5 or 6. And on the weekends, kids of all ages were found running around the community from sunrise to sunset. Our parents trusted us and the other members of the community.

Yet while our parents were letting us do this just around the corner one of the most notorious abductions in the area took place ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon_sisters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon_sisters)). So you can't tell me that there were not predators around at that time.

IMO, the difference was that instead of calling the police on kids that seemed lost, most parents in the community would ask the kids if they needed help. I don't know where or how the shift occurred, but today it seems we live in a society where everyone wants to pass blame and cares only about themselves.

I have two theories why this is occurring. First, the media of today is much different than the past. Today, it seems to me at least, the media has a bad habit of over-sensationalizing every story to pit two sides against one another. This story in particular has created such a havoc in this neighborhood that these kids, and their parents, will never live a "normal" life in that community again. The media has stirred the pot so much that there are now lone individuals that don't agree with these parents that are going to target this family every time they see something they don't like.

My second theory is that we live in a society now where people are afraid of their own shadows at times. When I was about 7 or 8 I was skateboarding down a street a couple blocks from my house. I fell and cut my chin wide open requiring stitches. I started crying and walking home. In that time I must have had 4 or 5 different people come up to me to ask if I was alright with one finally giving me a ride home. I believe if this same situation happened today those 4-5 people would have probably just called 911 instead of trying to get involved and help me. They would have done this out of fear of being sued for not helping better. Or sadly there are those individuals in the community now who will label that person as a predator just for helping.

Where I live now is a small town where everyone that lives here knows everyone. Kids of all ages run up and down the street at all hours of the day in the summer. We have a strong local police force that is always actively community policing and knows everyone that lives in the community. On the other hand it is a tourist town and during the summer the population swells drastically (we go from about 300 residents to well over 10,000), yet nothing changes. People look out for each other. More importantly, we also don't have any local major media outlets that report regularly on news in our area. And because it is a resort area where there is fear if bad things are reported it will drive tourism away, the media doesn't tend to report on all that occurs. Yet nothing bad happens that is out of the ordinary. I mean we have our increased bar fights, DUIs, thefts, and on occasion there has been a murder, but still I can wake up on a nice day and hear kids running around the street playing. No one calls the police on other people's kids. Even high school house parties go unreported as long as the kids don't violate parking laws or destroy someone else's property. And even if they do the party is usually just broken up, people sent on their way, and damages worked out between the parents.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good. Children today are insanely over supervised. You can't individuate in the presence of an authority figure.

</comment><comment><USER36> "free-range parenting". Or, in the vernacular of all previous generations, "parenting".

</comment><comment><USER37> How can kids get to school in such an environment? They are not old enough to drive after all...

</comment><comment><USER38> They chose to let their kids go out unattended. So obviously they accepted that bad things might happen.

And something bad did happen. It seems like the kids learned a valuable lesson - the police may stop and detain you and there is not a whole lot you can do.

But now the parents are saying they get to pick and chose which consequences are OK. You can't have it both ways.

<comment><USER39> My guess is that they would sue the Post Office if a postal worker ran them down too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I hope they do.

Somehow, a lot of us --maybe a few too many of us, have decided to go both authoritarian and over protective with children.

Given how I grew up, this emerging set of norms is disturbing and depressing.

One thing I noticed among my peers is those who really got sheltered had a number of common and significant problems later in life, and they all centered on both the rebellion stage, and their exit from "the bubble" they grew up in.

Rebelling is common, and for most people, just an ordinary part of coming of age. We get through it, and that's that. For the sheltered kids, particularly those who experienced a very authoritarian up bringing, not only did they rebel, but they often over did it!

I'm convinced they overdo it, because the second aspect of this; namely, the sheltering or "bubble" type upbringing really didn't socialize them well enough to cope with basic human realities and diversity, nor did it expose them to the world, it's real limits and risks, not just the safe ones, or invisible ones they didn't see while in their protective bubbles.

Many ended up OK, somewhat protective still, but many didn't either. And they continue a bad cycle, perhaps trying harder with their own kids.

Some of this comes down to wanting to protect the kids and insure they have all the opportunity possible. Noble, but short sighted, given that same lack of general exposure to the world and social dynamics may well inhibit their ability to exploit those hard won opportunities!

Another contributor is the desire to mold the kids, in a sense, insuring they carry some values and norms the parents find important for their reasons. But nobody really asked the kids, did they?

In fact, a big part of the sheltering is to keep them from asking too!

And that's a crime really.

If some value, religion, norm, whatever really does have merit, should it not stand a basic and rational skepticism? Of course it should.

More importantly, does it make sense to structure how people grow up in ways that deny them the critical mind needed to actually make those choices for their reasons?

There is a lot wrong with this growing norm.

Heck, when I grew up, the rules were really basic. Don't get lost, don't get hurt, don't steal, don't fuck with the animals, etc...

From there, my peers and I would gather in a meeting place, decide on the adventure for the day and have at it! We quickly learned the world is real, and that real things happen to people in it, and we took care of one another, getting through just fine, despite the fact that on many a weekend some of us could very easily have gotten killed, seriously hurt.

We can't do everything for our kids. And I submit we really shouldn't. They need to explore, learn, do, think, play, build, and if they don't, or it's too well managed, that managed experience will clash hard with the real world as they enter it.

And the vast majority of them will enter it too. Better to do so eyes wide open, experiences true, minds potent.

I also think we are going to pay really hard for this folly too. Who cares for us in our old age? Who will be calling the shots some time from now?

They can and should file. More parents should.

</comment><comment><USER41> "We must ask ourselves how we reached the point where a parent's biggest fear is that government officials will literally seize our children off the streets as they walk in our neighborhoods," he said.

I think the quote speaks for itself.</comment>


Show HN: pavoq – WebGL Shaders as Website Backgrounds – Written in Rust and Elm - <AUTHOR> https://www.pavoq.com/ <comment><USER2> The idea is nice by itself, but please let us not have animated backgrounds. Please.

<comment><USER3> Animated backgrounds are fine or even more suited in some cases as long as you are able to read the text</comment></comment>


Thank HN: For saving me hours of reading - <AUTHOR> I almost exclusively start with comments on HN these days and it has saved me hours of reading through misinformed, flat out wrong, pointless rants, you name it. I've also learnt as much in comments as I have reading the actual posts. I'm aware that I may be missing good content as well but I think the pros here grossly outweigh this con.<p>So thank you HN :) <comment><USER2> It helped me too.

But the opinions posted here are probably mostly from white male academics from the US below the age of 40. (Are there any statistics who uses HN?)

I'm one of these people (but not from the US) and can often identify with these opinions, but as far as I can tell, there are many people who aren't like this and don't think the majority of comments posted here have any value.</comment>


Judge Alsup Denies Oracle's JMOL [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/order.denying.motions.pdf <comment><USER2> I stopped reading at some point, but it seems to be an excellently written and argued text.

The argument is precise and "lawyerly", yet, the tone is conversational. Nothing like people commonly expect court documents.

But US judges do have a tradition of writing pleasantly, sometimes even humorously.</comment>


Investigative Strike Teams - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ist <comment><USER2> Great post Aaron, now let's see it happen! You have the connections/resources, why not you?

<comment><USER3> I think he is already doing that with : <http://www.watchdog.net/> <http://www.stopfakereform.com/> and <http://change-congress.org/>

<comment><USER4> He's playing the role of the technical guy, and to some extent, the blogger, in those roles. He's certainly not assembling all the other pieces of the puzzle in any of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All this needs is a revenue model that can make these teams self-sufficient.

<comment><USER4> That is certainly the biggest hole in his idea, so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like this idea except for the part about investigative teams being more activist. I think that having a political agenda, even a completely overt one, undermines the credibility of such a team.

<comment><USER7> Except that everyone who spends a large portion of their time/effort on some issue will _inevitably_ end up having a bias towards one side or the other, and so it's better to have it out in the open rather than falsely claim objectivity.</comment></comment>