Craig Newmark Did Not Donate to EFF - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150701/14150431519/no-craig-newmark-did-not-donate-to-eff-he-helped-make-cfaa-worse-instead.shtml <comment><USER2> While there maybe subtleties in "public access by humans" over "automated scraping" \- these belong in the "business dispute" side of the fence. Using the CFAA is by definition - playing hardball - it includes Criminal Penalties in some cases.

What really amuses me is that in the Tweet highlighted, Craig is indeed implying that it is his money going to the EFF - who Opposed him in the legal case that lead to the money. So he should be called out for egregious bullying - using the threat of Criminal Sanction to get his way.

If an HN-friendly business (whatever that is) pulled the same move it would also be equally worthy of opprobrium.

<comment><USER3> Craigslist continues to destroy its competition by maintaining its walled garden. This wouldn't bug me as much if CL was actually serious about improving its user experience, which has more or less been the same for the past decade (just bad enough to be usable).

I don't mind it being spartan - but that aside there are usability issues. One simple example is the reason things like PadMapper and HousingMaps became popular. Another example is that their categories are often hard to filter through. Lastly, there are trust issues - something like "connect to Facebook" would really go a long way in some transactions.

If anyone ever needed proof that monopolies crush innovation, this would be a good starting point.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a problem with CL. It's dirt simple and it works. It reminds me of the simplicity of newspaper want ads.

<comment><USER5> We tend not to know what we're missing until someone gets sued for trying to give it to us.

<comment><USER4> Depending on how they're trying to give us something, they might darn well deserve to be sued!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even if CL's interpretation of the CFAA is legally correct, this is an abuse of it by any measure. Suing people for _accessing your publicly available website_ is absurd. The fact that Craig would publicly claim the money was a donation, after he obtained it by exploiting a very dangerous view of the CFAA and bankrupted a company that didn't do anything wrong, is disgusting to me. I've always found Craig Newmark to be a little creepy; now I think he's squarely in scumbag territory.

<comment><USER7> Why is it absurd to first withdraw permission to publicly accessible service and then sue if the individual continues unauthorized?

I can easily imagine a public irc channel that ip blocks abusing users that post goatse links (not illegal in itself). If some of those users than bypass that block, is it unreasonable that the owner would want to sue in order to stop the abuse from the then unauthorized access to the irc server?

<comment><USER8> It's reasonable that the owner can sue. But you don't need CFAA to sue someone and it opens the door to serious _criminal_ penalties which, no I do not think are reasonable for an IRC troll or for a Craigslist mapping tool.

<comment><USER9> You're the second person in this thread to suggest that the CFAA was somehow a nuclear option.

You're saying this because Techdirt is manipulating you.

The CFAA is in fact the logical private cause of action for suits to enforce terms of service. It is literally the section of the US code about enforcing ToS's.

A civil suit is a civil suit. CFAA-derived civil suits are not especially more scary than other civil suits. It's scary to be sued by Craigslist no matter what. The CFAA has nothing to do with it.

You should be irritated at Techdirt for misinforming you solely to generate rageviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't we just ban Techdirt submissions for their terrible and obviously biased reporting? Everything from them is blatantly one sided and not even trying to actually represent the truth.

From 3Taps own website right now:

"As part of the settlement, 3taps and its founder, Greg Kidd, have agreed to _pay craigslist $1 million, all of which must then be paid by craigslist to the EFF_ , which supported 3taps' position on the CFAA in this litigation, and continues to do great work for Internet freedom"

<comment><USER11> That doesn't sound like a "donation", though? At the very least Craiglist tried to portray it as something they're doing out of the goodness of their hearts.

<comment><USER12> Giving away a $1M settlement is clearly a donation, and it's "out of the goodness of their hearts" when compared to the obvious alternative: keeping the money.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't consider the result of legal settlement to be a "donation". A donation is a voluntary transfer of money. Had craigslist received $1M from a settlement and then voluntarily sent EFF $1M without being specified to in the legal settlement, then that would be a donation. The correct interpretation is that the $1M transfer is part of a legal settlement to resolve a lawsuit. I haven't followed this lawsuit too closely, but it sounds like craigslist might not have had a "open-and-closed" case, hence the need to offer these amenable terms to sweeten the terms of surrender, and thus hasten the resolution.

"As part of the settlement, 3taps and its founder, Greg Kidd, have agreed to pay craigslist $1 million, all of which must then be paid by craigslist to the EFF, "

<comment><USER14> Yes; specifically, if the proposed settlement was "3taps will give Craigslist $1 million, which Craigslist will have no restrictions on", then 3taps might not have agreed to it.

<comment><USER10> Maybe CL initiated the requirement that the money was going to go to the EFF after being paid to them? Seems like most of the ill-will related speculation might be just that until there is any evidence either way...

<comment><USER15> If they wanted to donate the money to the EFF, they wouldn't have needed to bind themselves to that in the settlement.

<comment><USER12> I often bind myself to ethical decisions in business. Taking away the opportunity to do the wrong thing later is a safety feature.

<comment><USER16> If you want to bind yourself to a donation, fill out a check and mail it.

This is not really a donation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Craigslist is a great example of how network effects can be leveraged to form the basis for a sustainable competitive advantage. The product is an embarrassment and yet it has users simply because it has users. Newmark knows this and that's why he sues anyone who sniffs in the general direction of his data. I think he's a self-serving fink.

<comment><USER12> What's so embarrassing, exactly?

It doesn't follow the latest web9.0 flat^Wmaterial^Wlook-a-monkey! design trends?

The interface remains usably utilitarian?

They don't try to capitalize to create an uber-exit that everyone can write a congratulatory comment on YC/TechCrunch about? Great hustle Craig!

Or is it just that you're of the Uber-style ethical camp that believes in disruption-through-cost-externalization? In this case, actively extracting value from Craigslist, despite their protests, and using it to undermine their business.

<comment><USER17> For the record, I'm a fan of the retro design -- or I guess it's original in their case. In any case, I don't mind that.

It's that the product could be better -- as in better features -- in a bout a million ways. How about notifying me when something becomes available for instance... Or showing a map view of apartment listings or heck all listings... Or a bit a zillion search possibilities...like -- here's one -- searching across a whole region or farther for a given item... Or some kind of attempt at reputation building as an option...

That list took maybe 90 seconds... My theory is that they are lazy because they can afford to be and they aggressively defend their laziness by suing anyone who tries to make it better. Finks.

<comment><USER18> Have you had ever used Craiglist? Everything you say is alreaady built-in.

<comment><USER17> Ok it looks like after suing that poor dude, they added a map to the apartment listings finally. I stand corrected on that one. It was missing forever.

I still don't see anywhere to search across regions. If you've ever tried to find a hard to find car you'd understand what I mean there. I'd like to search in, say, all of California. Can't do it.

My point is that there's a lot that could be done that will not be done because they won't let people scrape even if they link back. So, for example, say I wanted to add a state-wide search. Even if all my search results pointed back to CL, CL would cease and desist me. This goes for other enhanced functionality as well. This is all legal, but see it for what it is: an aggressive use of their position to retain their position, which includes squelching any and all uses of their data. It's an anit-competitive move that let's them maintain what, in my opinion, is a very poor quality product for all the traffic and data they get.

<comment><USER19> At least in the UK version, they do have some kind of cross-region search now in the sidebar. (Which is pretty much essential here, because their region boundaries don't make much sense and people don't always agree on what region they're in.)

<comment><USER20> That's great, and if it's essential for the UK, imagine how needed it must be in the US.

The UK has 243,610 square kilometers. California alone has 423,970.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cynical part of me sees all the people saying "EFF should give it back to show integrity" and wondering if that wasn't the hope all along from craigslist.

I would hope that EFF does not give it back but uses it to continue the good fight or donate it to another, unrelated, charity if they believe the money is tainted.

<comment><USER22> Everyone is just frustrated that Craigslist charges so little for their services and hasn't tried to monetize it in some abuse way like a typical capitalistic company would.

<comment><USER23> Craigslist charges for job posts in competitive markets; the posts disappear after thirty days.

I charge nothing for listings at [http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/) and they are permanent.

Among my objectives is to eliminate the corrupting influence of money from technical hiring.

In the long run I want to cover every occupation in which one can find a job by applying through the employer's website.

I won't monetize it in any way. Or perhaps I could say I will monetize it by offering my consulting services through my website, as I always have. Providing free content on my site results in sales leads.

<comment><USER24> > Among my objectives is to eliminate the corrupting influence of money from > technical hiring.

You know most people make compensation part of their decision on who to work for / who to hire? You can get money out of any kind of hiring..

<comment><USER23> I don't regard that as corruption.

What I do regard as corruption, is when a recruiter convinces a manager that they can find qualified staff, then expect thirty grand in commissions by placing someone whose rigor mortis is not quite started,

<comment><USER25> > ...someone whose rigor mortis is not quite started

I'll bite. What the heck does this mean?

<comment><USER23> They are deceased, but not yet cold.

I am good at my work, I take pride in it but recruiters commonly solicit me for perm or contract work for which I am completely unqualified. For example I do osx device drivers and windows gui so on a damn near daily basis I am approached by recruiters who want to submit me for windows device driver work, even at microsoft.

Their applicant tracking systems other do not support exact phrase matching or the recruiters dont know what it is. Neither do they ever attempt to read my resume, not even when they do submit me.

Many of my "colleagues" were obvious imposters who found work through recruiters. The recruiters dont care, they get paid, see.

<comment><USER25> _sigh_ This isn't a problem with recruiters [0]. This is a hiring problem. Hiring isn't very easy, and it seems that a huge number of companies don't know how to hire.

You have opinions and your HN profile indicates that you've been programming for a long time, but that doesn't appear to have any relevance to your opinions on hiring.

Oh, BTW, you have some mojibake in the Education section of your online resume.

[0] Numerically, most recruiters suck. This has nothing to do with hiring. :)

<comment><USER23> LOLCats.

Oddly that page has utf-8 encoding. The mojibake were em-dashes in the original OO document, I don't clearly recall but likely copied it to the clipboard, then to textwrangler for OS X than marked up the HTML.

textwrangler can do every text encoding but it is fiddly to actually get it right.

Get A Load of:

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/ya-kazakh/](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/ya- kazakh/)

Russian for "I Am A Cossack!", more or less I have a bad attitude and fear no one.

The mojibake would be trivial to fix but my position is that I should not have to, I leave it there in hopes someone at Apache or Mozilla will clue into it.

<comment><USER25> I've seen that very same character sequence whenever a Slashcode site is asked to handle Unicode out of the ASCII range. If I had to bet, I'd say that textwrangler fucked up your document somehow, whether through poor design or improper operation. It's strange that you'd think that someone from Apache or Mozilla would:

a) Be randomly reading your online resume.

b) Think that the mojibake contained within was the fault of some software that _they_ maintained.

Additionally, I've had occasion to work with many, many people. I've found that -regardless of brilliance and competency- folks with bad attitudes almost always make bad coworkers. :)

Anyway. I hope you come to understand why your declarations about your side projects tend to mystify people, and why your strongly held stances tend to not gain traction with others. All the best, man.

<comment><USER23> Sorry I should have been more clear, I regard the mojibake in Ya Kazakh as a bug either in Apache or the web browsers.

<comment><USER25> People believe all sorts of things that are incorrect.

Carefully inspect -in a good text editor- the files that you have asked your web server to serve. I suspect that you will discover that what is being delivered to the browser is exactly what is in the files on disk. :)

Or, view source on your personal page. (Notice that the page is served up as UTF-8, so that what is served up will be what was on disk.) Here is a snippet of what's served up, verbatim:

Español Mexicano, Español Castellano: "MEE-gə-LEET-oh".

Por Favor?  Español Americano Centrale?  Español Americano del Sur? "mə-LEET-oh".
      "G" Silencio!

Я name is Міша.  Я казах!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Previous discussion of CL's suit against 3taps: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034)

The court ruling is at [http://www.volokh.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/Order-Denyi...](http://www.volokh.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/Order-Denying-Renewed-Motion-to-Dismiss.pdf) and is surprisingly readable.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not very familiar with him but stumbled upon this a while ago and it's some of the worst business and personal advice I've ever seen: [http://craigconnects.org/2014/12/knowing-when-to-keep- your-m...](http://craigconnects.org/2014/12/knowing-when-to-keep-your-mouth- shut.html). I wondered if he has some screws loose after reading it.

As someone deeply interested in UNIX history, it's also revisionist and dismissive of hard fought wins by people who don't cower like he did -- real UNIX is incredibly successful to this day.. SysV (Solaris/Illumos), BSD, etc.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for posting this. The TL;DR version of this article is:

> I was asked for my advice, there was a clear cut right answer, that would > have been good for the company and good for the future of the internet, but > would have upset my bosses.

> Instead, I kept my mouth shut to help my career. This makes me "grown as a > person" and "politically and socially clueful".

No, it makes you a jerk.

> btw, running craigslist is a "public service" and makes me a > "philanthropist".

So you've given away the $400 million you made off craigslist, then? No? Then you're a delusional jerk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Tangential to the main issue but Tech Dirt needs lessons on basic journalism. CFAA should have been defined at first reference. It's just bad writing. I had no idea what CFAA meant until I Googled it. I wish these kinds of publications would learn what a style book is.

</comment><comment><USER22> Craigslist had to sue or otherwise anyone could scrap data from Craigslist, whether they were making "Craigslist more valuable" or not. Simple as that.

<comment><USER30> I don't think people are really arguing that part. Well Techdirt is a bit with the whole whining about "b-b-but 3taps was making CL _more valuable_ " as if that mattered (apart from being open to interpretation).

The issue is that CL and this judge have set a precedent (I think?) that private companies can make up felonies by deciding what "authorized access" is.

You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil business issue. (And really, there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways. Or at least there should be some level of malicious intent required.) Trying to use a law with criminal/felony penalties is grossly out-of-line.

<comment><USER31> > there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly > accessible system anyways.

Are you sure about that? So you don't want any legal recourse for someone that overloads your API/web servers with thousands of requests per second? You might say a technical solution (like rate limiting) would do - but that will cost you time & money with no upside, and can be easily circumvented (use many clients in parallel with the same effect - hammering your server and increasing your costs)

I think a law for that is fine, as a last resort. It will keep people at their best behaviour.

<comment><USER16> A rule against hammering a server is not at all the same as a rule against accessing the server at all.

<comment><USER31> We likely are in agreement - isn't a rule against hammering a server 'a legal limit on the kind of behaviour to a publicly accessible system'? I was disagreeing with parent who said:

> there shouldn't be legal limits on that kind of behaviour to a publicly > accessible system anyways.

<comment><USER16> The difference between "limit on _that_ kind of behavior" and "limit on _the_ kind of behavior" is critical.

A limit on red cars is a limit on "the color" of cars, but it's not a limit on "that color" when someone is pointing at a blue car.

So when "that kind" refers to sanely-implemented scraping, then there should not be a limit. There is a limit on "the kind", to restrict it to activities like scraping that aren't inherently harmful.

<comment><USER31> Unfortunately english isn't very precise: it's difficult to parse what MichaelGG was referring to by 'that'. I assumed he was referring to scraping (his previous sentence), but it's also possible he was referring to the CL case.

For the record, I maintain my belief that there should be a law that applies to scraping of publicly available sites.

> You wanna sue a business for scraping your site? Hey, fine, that's a civil > business issue. (And really, there shouldn't be legal limits on _that_ kind > of behaviour to a publicly accessible system anyways

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can someone explain why, exactly, EFF is getting a payment as part of this settlement? Was it a stipulation of the settlement made by the defendants?

<comment><USER33> It's unclear: the article makes claims that can't be substantiated:

* The legal documents don't mention any payment (required or otherwise) to EFF.

* The EFF doesn't mention any payment (required or otherwise) from CL.

* Only 3taps' own blog mentions this, which the article quotes extensively without attribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What a shit show. From the surface it certainly feels like this is just money moving from one entity to another with Craig sort of taking credit for donating the money. There is clearly more to this story that the journalist either isn't disclosing or didn't find in their investigation. It's not to say Craig doesn't have $1M sitting around to give, and I'm sure he'd back the EFF, but this whole thing doesn't smell right.

</comment><comment><USER35> Quite odd that he'd donate money from a settlement to an organization that filed a brief _against him_ in the case. I wonder why he did that. Ah wait, I see, that was part of the settlement, the other businesses said they'd pay the penalty if he donated it to EFF and he agreed. Ha, that's something.

Perhaps EFF should earmark his donation in a fund specifically dedicated to legal defense against any future CFAA suits filed by Craigslist?

</comment><comment><USER36> It would be poetic justice if EFF dedicates this money to fighting future lawsuits from CL. I don't think we have seen the last of this.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is really silly. Reading the article, it seems that:

1\. Craigslist donated a bunch of money to somebody (which seems like a good thing)

2\. Craigslist sued some company for scraping their data and using it in violation of their Terms of Service. And won a settlement. (which seems like a good thing)

So in short, good job Craigslist. Why is the author so angry?

<comment><USER38> > Why is the author so angry?

Because you didn't really read the article (or possibly the article isn't well written but I understood it)

1\. Your order of events is wrong. Craigslist sued. Won. Then used the proceeds from the lawsuit to donate. This isn't money earned normally.

2\. The problem is the lawsuit itself. Craigslist is abusing a law that is meant to deal with hackers intruding on someone's private network. Visiting someone's publicly accessible website and access publicly accessible data is not intruding on someone else's network. Chances are other 3rd parties will now start to abuse this law. i.e. This somewhat reminds me of companies suing people for summarizing a news article into a blog post and linking back to the name original article. In this case, I believe the 3rd parties were creating embedded Google Maps based on the addresses found on Craigslist listing (because Craigslist pre-lawsuit refused to do so) and linking back to the original listing.

TDLR Craigslist successfully stopped a company from fair use of their public content by accusing them of hacking into their network. Craigslist then donates some of the proceeds of lawsuit's 'damages' to the EFF.

<comment><USER37> But wait, you haven't added any new information. You've just re-stated the information in the article.

So yes, they sued before donating. And yes, they used the proceeds. But that makes no difference to the fact that both were good things.

Even reading your comment (or its sibling that was posted during the same minute) gives enough information to come to that conclusion.

Craigslist said "don't scrape our data". This other company scraped their data and used it to build their business, so Craigslist sued. That's exactly the world I'd like to live in.

<comment><USER38> > But wait, you haven't added any new information. You've just re-stated the > information in the article.

Yes because from the little that you wrote, it didn't sound like you understood any of it. Maybe you should elaborate more from the start?

> But that makes no difference to the fact that both were good things.

You're wrong.

1\. Craigslist killed two companies in the process. The worse part is that if Craigslist only listened to its users and improved their website, none of this would have even happened.

2\. Now any company can stop anyone from fair use of their content. All they have to do is accuse them of Craigslists' definition of hacking under the CFAA. e.g. news sites can now potentially threaten companies like Google with the CFAA for listing their articles on Google News

3\. Maybe if the scraping led to an outright copy of Craigslist's listing content I can understand. However, they were transforming that content into something more (something that Craigslist refused to do on their own site for years), kind of what Google does with search results. Moreover they were linking back to the original post (attribution).

4\. Just because there's a term or clause in a TOS, it doesn't mean that it's legal.

5\. The main result from this is to help maintain the entrenchment of the status quo which hurts overall innovation.

Really we should start here: are you familiar with Fair Use?

<comment><USER37> > Craigslist killed two companies

... but they didn't. Those two companies killed themselves by building their entire business off of data that the didn't have the right to use.

And it's not like they were led to believe that the data was usable. It was clearly marked as not usable, for the exact purpose they used it for.

It may be that your personal opinion is that once a piece of text is on the internet, it's fair game to use. But it's not. Thankfully.

Chances are we're both wrong (you legally and me libertarianally). But the only thing we've established here is that we disagree.

<comment><USER38> > Those two companies killed themselves

I disagree. You're implying that Craigslist was passive, and they were just watching from the sidelines. They weren't. They sued.

> building their entire business off of data that the didn't have the right to > use.

This is our main point of contention, and we'll probably just agree to disagree.

> It may be that your personal opinion is that once a piece of text is on the > internet, it's fair game to use.

imo it depends on how you use it. Unless I misunderstood something, if we had it your way we wouldn't even be able to write wikipedia articles based on data gleaned from online content even with attribution unless the owner gives permission

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So basically our competitors can sue us now for browsing their websites?

</comment><comment><USER40> Craigslist has always been a sleazy company and didn't get serious about the violence that resulted from the postings on their site until massive public pressure. Craig Newark seems like someone who will put profit ahead of everything.

</comment><comment><USER22> Craigslist is a very cool company. They are basically a communistic approach to the internet. I say all the more power to them. If someone can do better than free, go right ahead.

<comment><USER41> Have you used Padmapper? It _was_ better than free. It was much nicer than Craigslist for the same queries, but -- because of Craigslist's size and entrenched position -- the data largely remained on Craigslist, despite Padmapper also having a free posting interface. That might be fair business, but it certainly wasn't a fair comparison of their products or philosophies.

Your analogy of communism may be entirely too apt, given how communism played out in practice last century. Sure, you got the overthrow of the capitalist economy, but if you were a tiny country who didn't really want to agree with Moscow on everything, sucks to be you.

<comment><USER42> I used PadMapper. It was fantastic, the user interface was so much better than CL. ...but its scraping of CL postings was risky and morally wrong. The "fuck the rules" approach has worked for Uber and AirBNB, but it's not going to work everywhere.

<comment><USER30> Why is it _morally_ wrong? It may be a risky technical decision, but how can it be morally wrong? Would it have been better if the data was processed via a client-side browser plugin?

And Uber's "fuck the rules" are on a totally different level than sending HTTP requests to a server to aggregate publicly accessible information.

<comment><USER31> 1\. The owner of copyright determines how the product is to be used

2\. Provider of a service can set out terms of service

3\. When using someone else resource, it is _polite_ to do as asked ("Please don't finish all the staples" or "Please don't use my stapler John. Jane can still use it")

Increasing CLs server load & increasing their bandwidth costs was morally questionable, it became clearly immoral once they knew CL didn't like what they were doing.

<comment><USER41> > 1\. The owner of copyright determines how the product is to be used

Padmapper mined data (apartment locations, prices, number of bedrooms, URL to Craigslist post), not creative presentation. Even if we believe that it's somehow morally reasonable for Craigslist to have copyright over the text of user postings, the data Padmapper required was clearly not copyrightable. This was a CFAA case, not a copyright case.

(Yes, in practice Padmapper also displayed descriptions and photos, but they could have avoided doing so, and the service would still have been useful.)

<comment><USER43> Thanks for clearing that up. We actually didn't include descriptions, though, just the title as part of the link back to the original.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Complete iOS Developer's Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://loneyeti.com/posts/24-the-complete-ios-developer-s-style-guide

<comment><USER2> why is opening brace in new line bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of those community consensus things. Most of the style guides and Apple's own examples usually include the opening brace on the same line as the conditional or method.

The real 50/50 proposition is having else on a new line. Some people love that and some hate it. It was hard for me to know what the consensus is, so I picked one way and if it turns out to not be what the majority find correct, others can correct it.

<comment><USER2> Right, because is a community consensus thing, you wouldn't mark that convention as 'bad'. You could write that the same line curly brace opening is 'preferred'.</comment></comment></comment>


Geek CAPTCHA - <AUTHOR> https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20180714/7e76a517/attachment-0001.jpg <comment><AUTHOR> From a post by Steven Schear.

[https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2018-July/042...](https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2018-July/042596.html)

<comment><USER2> Original source from last week might be [https://twitter.com/changelog/status/1015234147307188225](https://twitter.com/changelog/status/1015234147307188225)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I searched the file name, and got nothing.

Google image search yielded a bunch of hits. And that tweet seems to be the oldest. How did you find it?</comment></comment></comment>


Code to Write to Start a SaaS - <AUTHOR> https://nodewood.com/blog/the-huge-list-of-code-you-need-to-write-to-start-a-saas/ <comment><USER2> Edit: Dan has edited his blog post to address this comment ... good luck dan with Nodewood! See comments below. We should support a fellow founder and HN community member who is here and listening and working.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Original comment:

It's not clear until the end of the long post that this guy is selling and all in one development package.

No problem with that but it feels disingenuous to make building a SAAS super hard THEN say "he he I have the solution for you!".

He'd have been better to say up front his product solves the development complexity problem which looks like this....

Then at the end you'd say "gee this guy is right", instead of "oh I've been played".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point! One sec.

<comment><USER2> I love it that the web makes live edits possible.

If your making adjustments then I applaud you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just did. Thanks for the advice! I spent so much time putting together the list of code that when it came time to plug Nodewood, I didn't have much mental oomph left, so I just put it at the end. Your suggestion is much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article vastly overestimates what you need to start a SaaS, which is in the author's best interest.

Most of these don't fit into SaaS MVP at all...

</comment><comment><USER4> This is absurd. I've worked on very successful SaaS (B2B, not B2C) that dominate their industry, it was started by a bunch of students writing shit in PHP, then got rewritten in Java at some point. That's it. Along the lines it picked more tools and techniques of course, but you don't have to do all that in the first three months.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I had to build a CRUD-like SaaS tomorrow I'd probably choose

* postgreSQL

* postgREST

* React/TypeScript (with create-react-app)

Hosted on AWS for roughly $50/month (or for free with the Free Tier).

</comment><comment><USER6> My concern with SaaS's are the legal problems, need some blanket ToS I can use, do I need an LLC? Etc... Like this rendering bug caused a seizure give me money, sort of thing. Outlandish but yeah

<comment><USER7> > My concern with SaaS's are the legal problems, need some blanket ToS I can > use, do I need an LLC? Etc... Like this rendering bug caused a seizure give > me money, sort of thing. Outlandish but yeah

In the US, anybody can sue you for anything. And if they do, you will have to defend yourself in court.

No, you don't need a LLC, and it doesn't shield you from a lawsuit unless you manage the LLC like a real corporation.

I see this type of comment on HN quite frequently. If you're that worried about lawsuits, maybe starting a company isn't right for you.

<comment><USER6> Yeah do it or don't easy to talk, I'll probably just find some off-the-shelf ToS/Privacy Policies to go with initially and if it happens to be profitable worry about lawyers later when there is actually money to use.

edit: me focusing on the negatives

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone actually serious about prototyping a SaaS, getting MVP out the door, try firebase. It solves a lot of the problems in the article for you. It's flawed and annoying but I believe indie hackers still runs on it.

It's relatively expensive, but if you consider productivity gains it's basically free for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks great — good luck!

For Rails, there's [https://bullettrain.co/](https://bullettrain.co/). For Django, there's [https://www.saaspegasus.com/](https://www.saaspegasus.com/). (I haven't tried any of them.)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is why I love Django. Most of this stuff comes included.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Some are going to be unavoidable, such as JavaScript if you have a web app > with any serious browser interactions

With the rise of things like Phoenix LiveView, Blazor for c#, Turbolinks and Stimulus Reflex for Rails, JS frameworks like React aren't unavoidable anymore.

And I couldn't be happier about that.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what is the shortest path to deploying a web application that is fully codable (as opposed to no-code), that includes user database/management/auth.

I suspect the closest is the old school libraries like Ruby on Rails and the equivalent in other languages.

<comment><USER10> Django has all three built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One should be aware of all the things you'll need to build but balance that with the amount of money available. It's probably still possible to create a sass with just plain php and ftp uploads and that might enable you to get a product out of the door fast enough so that money doesn't run out. If you have the time and the money, sure, do the best solution.

Special if you're working on a very small scale but plan to hire sometime in the future, remember every little piece of tech adds to the probability the person you'll hire is not familiar with it, so more training will be involved.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're evaluating tools for building a SaaS app, you may also consider using Laravel Spark. I recently used it to build an MVP for a client and was able to wrap up the project in less than a month. The tool chain is pretty robust, and the framework and ecosystem are both fairly mature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Spark is absolutely one of my inspirations (and competitors). I figure there's enough room in this market for a few solutions to this problem, and there will likely be people who don't want to use PHP (for a variety of reasons) that there'll be space for both of us.

<comment><USER13> For sure, if anything you may want to address some of Spark's weaknesses and use them as a way to differentiate your product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm exhausted before I've even got started. And to think all Zuck needed for world domiation was a P4 with 256Mb RAM and procedural PHP. There's a lesson somewhere.

<comment><USER7> He wrote the initial version of the Face Book at university, but after he moved to SV had about 4 developers working in a house with him.

My understanding was that he was very focused on reliability since some of the other social media networks were so flaky at the time, like Friendster.

<comment><USER14> The P4 with 256Mb RAM I was referring to is the likely spec of the server Zuck was renting for $85/month when Facebook launched. Amazing, considering the spec we have available today for only a few $ per month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be awesome if the author could include some screenshots of what the product looks like in action.

On side notes, is there any plan to support React components as well?

</comment><comment><USER16> >Getting all these various tools set up to work together will take some time as well. Just searching "configuring webpack for X" reveals a minefield of blog posts written for various versions of webpack and X. Some will help, some won't, and sometimes only experimentation will reveal which is which.

Yes, I too hate Webpack but it keeps getting pushed on me by companies where they have set up Webpack because it is what everybody uses.

</comment><comment><USER17> Or you could just build serverless and use Lambda...

<comment><USER2> That's real fiction right there.

How did lambda manage to create this false idea that it makes everything instantly easy? If anything in many ways it makes things much more complex and harder and more expensive.

<comment><USER10> It is easy when you are a novice and don't really comprehend anything other than the seemingly really low price per call.

I've had friends propose serverless startups by comparing $5 a month in hosting to the cents of serverless.</comment></comment></comment>


Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that ... - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu

<comment><AUTHOR> I was casually linked this by someone, and it made me think back to pg's criticism on the Segway.

I'm linking this because it seems like a good word to let enter into our vocabularies. :)</comment>


What Does Space Smell Like? (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/what-does-space-smell/ <comment><USER2> I know someone with experience on the ISS. Said it smelled like a gym changeroom and hot electronics. I guess kinda like my bedroom.

<comment><USER3> Well that's on par for a small-ish metal tube full of hairless apes and lots of fancy space electronics. Whereas the article is talking about the lingering gas particles floating about the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TIL that when astronauts are outside the ISS, space-borne compounds adhere to their suits causing a distinctive scent when they return to the station. The smell is so unusual that NASA reached out to a top fragrance maker to re- create the odor for its training simulations.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/fcjqgx/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/fcjqgx/til_that_when_astronauts_are_outside_the_iss/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Phish! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieddjSFFuCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieddjSFFuCU)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Though a pure, unadulterated whiff of outer space is impossible for humans (it's a vacuum after all; we would die if we tried)"

Not immediately. Jim LeBlanc has survived a brief full decompression accident in 1966. Still it's probably not possible to smell anything that way.

</comment><comment><USER7> What Does %s/Space/Other Astronomical Bodies/ Smell Like

</comment><comment><USER8> Astronaut Chris Hadfield says it smells like burnt steak. [0]

      [0] https://youtu.be/t6rHHnABoT8

</comment><comment><USER9> Somebody, please invent Smell-o-scope :)

<comment><USER10> Well, according to the documentary _Futurama_ , we'll have them by the 31st century at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> YOU WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER WHERE YOU WERE

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

<comment><USER5> lol, you beat me to it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blood?</comment>


Phone Cloning - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_cloning <comment><USER2> This is completely wrong, and in multiple ways.

For example:

> There are various methods used to obtain the IMEI. The most common methods > are to hack into the cellular company, or to eavesdrop on the cellular > network.

Or on Android, go in settings, about phone, and tap MEID. There should be an equivalent on iPhone. The MEID and IMEI are not secret at all. They just identify that particular phone.

The part that one would want to clone is the subscriber part anyway, not the equipment ID.

> A GSM SIM card is copied by removing the SIM card and placing a device > between the handset and the SIM card and allowing it to operate for a few > minutes and extracting the Ki, or secret code.[citation needed] This is > normally done with handsets that have the option of an "extended battery" by > placing the normal size battery in the handset and the Ki in the now vacant > extra space. This is done by allowing the device to log the interaction > between the mobile telephone switching office and the handset.

The Ki is just a cryptographic key (not a physical thing as the article would imply by it needing "vacant empty space"), and is not exposed on the wire protocol between the handset and the SIM card. The handset forwards cryptographic challenges from the mobile network to the SIM card, and the SIM card answers with the correct answer to the handset, which then replies to the network.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I took it like it mentioned ways to clone the phone without physical access to the device

<comment><USER2> Even then, it doesn't make sense to do that. Three letter agencies can just go ask the phone company for a wiretap.

Cloning the equipment ID is also useless on its own, you'd want to clone the subscriber identification, which is the part that says to the network that you're the device for this subscriber. It's how moving a SIM card to a new phone makes the new one ring and the old phone stay silent when calling the number associated with it.

<comment><USER4> Equipment ID and subscriber information used to be the same thing in the far past: [http://web.textfiles.com/phreak/cell.txt](http://web.textfiles.com/phreak/cell.txt)

People cloned phones to make free calls, not receive them — like a '90s/2000s version of blueboxing: [https://www.pressherald.com/2010/04/19/woman-finds- cell-phon...](https://www.pressherald.com/2010/04/19/woman-finds-cell-phone- bill-inf-lated-by-cloning-calls_2010-04-19/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, I was unaware of the fact that every mobile device has a unique radio fingerprint [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_fingerprinting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_fingerprinting)

<comment><USER6> I got to say, to me it seems rather ... unlikely that this is used on a wide scale. The differences in mass produced hardware must fall within a fairly small distribution, and they only mention rise-time as a measurable variable. Taking into account other variations like temperature and device aging, and I have a hard time believing that these fingerprints are highly unique or stable over time.

In addition it seems unlikely that your average receiver hardware could even pick up such details. These are super low-level details observable only at the lowest level of the radio stack.

There's also no sources cited that this is used on a wide scale. To me, I would put this in the bucket of hypotheticals (like the power company stealing your data from your PC based on voltage fluctuations from your laptop). Perhaps barely physically possible, but not really worthwhile.

(unless of course the fingerprints are put there intentionally and secretly... like the yellow dots from printers)

<comment><USER3> I know nothing of radio communicaion, but having slight variations on some part of network negotiation might limit conflict between devices. The same ways you would add some radomization on broadcast responses on networking, or auto-reconnect, but in a low level, on hardware manufacturing. This could be a easy to track, recognizable signature with standard antenna hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Back in the first-gen CDMA days, I copied the ESN from my phone to a second phone of an identical model (a friend was upgrading his). I tried calling them the number when they were both on and next to each other, and they both rang. Answering both allowed me to hear audio in both phones for a short time, until something got out of sync and the call would end.

Leaving one off, the other would work normally. It was a great way to have a backup phone when cell plans used to cost $70/mo and phones were locked to carrier accounts.

</comment><comment><USER8> Back in the day I found a guy who cloned the identity of my _analogue_ portable cell phone with my in-car cell phone so they both behaved as the same number. When one rang, they both rang.

In theory when I answered a call on one, the network would be signalled to say I'd picked up and it would stop telling the other to ring - but once in a while the other phone would keep on ringing .

iirc phone cloning may have been illegal here in the UK at the time...

<comment><USER9> That's interesting. Slightly off topic, but this seems to reveal a small error in the movie Primer.

The two main characters travel back in time one day to use their knowledge of the stock market to make money on some good trades. Their doubles are of course also in the past, so they make efforts to avoid them at all costs so that they don't interfere with causality.

One of the characters mistakenly brings his cellphone with him back in time. When his wife calls, they assume that since the his phone is ringing that the double's phone couldn't be ringing, so he decides to answer it and pretend to be at work as his double is.

In reality it seems both phones would have rung?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "This section does not cite any sources"

</comment><comment><USER11> Around 7 years ago I had a Galaxy S2 on Sprint (CDMA) and home internet via ClearWire. Sprint and Clear both used the same WiMax network (same cell towers) for '4G.' My phone was rooted so I could mess around with some normally locked settings, and at some point phone service for my S2 was cancelled.

One day I changed the APNs (which virtual network the phone connects to via its radio) from the default Sprint ones to the Clear ones, and also changed the MAC address (might not be the exact term, but WiMax 4G was basically long- range WiFi and so the device had a sort of MAC address). Even though my phone's service had been cancelled, I was able to use internet from the Clearwire plan. Of course no phone calls / text messages.

It worked as long as I was at home - I think they both connected to the same cell tower and so couldn't be distinguished.

<comment><USER12> I think you still had the same IMEI

The sim card allows you to connect to the same physical cellular network.

The APN gave you access to a virtual network inside this physical network where they didn't check you had the right to use it.</comment></comment>


Ventilator maker: we can ramp up production five-fold - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2020/03/14/ventilator-maker-we-can-ramp-up-production-five-fold <comment><USER2> "in a 90 to 120 day period", and "Ventec is a fairly small player". A five- fold increase in production of a company that's not making many ventilators to start with, in 3-4 months, isn't going to do a whole lot even before you get into the problem of finding the staff to actually run the things correctly and not kill the patients.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have hundreds of thousands more people infected than you have ventilators, every ventilator you add is a potential life saved.

As for adding staff, now is _also_ the time to be thinking about how to ramp that up.

<comment><USER3> But not even China has 100,000 people infected, and their rate of new infections is slowing down. Italy still has <30,000 cases. And in both cases, the number of people requiring ventilators is obviously much lower.

Where are you getting this "hundreds of thousands more people infected than you have ventilators" idea? We've already had a couple months of the virus spreading at this point, maybe it's time to start making more realistic estimates?

<comment><USER4> When China started the lockdown of Wuhan in Jan 23, they had 830 cases, and almost all concentrated in one location. Even with the hard lockdown they were at over 70k infected people in Feb 16, before the infection rate slowed.

The US already is at over 5k, every state has infected people, and there is no proper lockdown to speak of in any state, only "strong recommendations". Assuming the same growth rate, the US will be at 440k infected in 24 days, but sadly without the reduced infection rate after April 12.

<comment><USER2> When China started the lockdown of Wuhan on Jan 23, they may only have had 830 confirmed cases - but the number of confirmed cases was basically limited by the rate at which they could test people turning up at hospitals with severe symptoms and continued to be so for quite a while, from what I can tell. There's a more interesting figure buried in the WHO's final report from their joint mission to China: at some point, someone went and retested old samples taken from people in Wuhan with flu-like symptoms, 20 per week. They found no positives before January, 1 in the first week of January, and 3 in the second week. Those are not pretty numbers.

<comment><USER4> But was this different to the US? I don't follow the US news that closely, but my impression was that testing capacity is only significantly growing since yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The seven-year-old, 135-employee Ventec is a fairly small player in a market > dominated by Medtronic (under the Puritan Bennett brand), GE Healthcare and > Allied Healthcare in the U.S., and Hamilton Medical, Getinge, Drägerwerk and > Philips Healthcare in Europe. Kiple estimates that worldwide production > capacity is in the range of 40,000 to 50,000 units a year, but some of this > output is of machines not suitable for intensive care units.

Forget about start ups and tiny companies now. The government needs to call on the big players here - those mentioned in the quote above look like a good start. Not just for ventilators but for everything else like masks and gowns that will be needed. And field hospitals capable of handling massive numbers of people. Something will need to be done about training and deploying large numbers of medical staff quickly too.

In WW2 Roosevelt commandeered the car factories to build planes and tanks. It didn't hurt the car factories as far as I know - the government paid them in full. We sorely need a leader of that caliber at this time with the vision and capacity to make bold moves like that.

<comment><USER6> > _The government needs to call on the big players here_

Call on them to do what, stand behind the President in a press conference and give short speeches? They manufacture ventilators for hospitals, and it's the hospitals who pay for them.

<comment><USER7> War time measures like taking over private factories to produce armaments is a significant ask, especially when factoring in timelines of a few months turn around (at best). It's a fair question.

I personally don't see how filling up small companies orderbooks with a giant federal order makes sense when other countries like Italy and Germany have a real and active shortage today, while the US still has capacity. Ramping up production as we face a second wave is going to be happening regardless. There's more than enough demand globally and from the various hospitals already. Adding more orders on top of it doesn't exactly make things run more smoothly, there should be plenty of capital readily available for them to expand.

Supporting the hospitals/industry in their purchasing and production efforts and clearing red tape is something that could help now. Which I believe is what the giant stimulus and relief packages include already?

I guess people won't be happy unless they buy it all up themselves first then donate it to the most needy, or hoard it more efficiently than others?

<comment><USER6> > _I personally don't see how filling up small companies orderbooks with a > giant federal order makes sense when other countries like Italy and Germany > have a real and active shortage today_

But, the federal government doesn't order ventilators. That's not how the US system works, we don't have an NHS like the UK.

<comment><USER8> Not only does the federal government order ventilators, it is specifically mandated to stockpile them for a public health emergency.

The President also has emergency powers under the Stafford Act to (1) put government orders at the "head of the line" for any manufacturer, and (2) to pre-fund production of materials or products necessary to protect the public or national interest in an emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My thoughts on this virus. I am NOT an expert (no where close. But if people respond it will shed some light for everyone):

* Since the federal government has be slow to respond, I am beginning to wonder how much of our emergency supply chain is NOT located within the US. In a pandemic situation, every country is going to be looking after their population first. We may have lost the capacity.

* The expected death count is 1-2 million. Our country is full of people with preexisting conditions.

* Heart Disease: 22,000,000. Death rate due to Coronavirus: 10%

* Diabetes: 34,200,200. Death rate due to Coronavirus: 7.3%

* Chronic Respiratory Disorder: 16,000,000. Death rate due to Coronavirus: 6.3%

* High Blood Pressure: 108,000,000. Death rate due to Coronavirus: 6.0%

* Cancer: 1,735,000. Death rate due to Coronavirus: 5.6%

Granted, there is a lot of overlap, but even if we just use High Blood Prease, that's 6,000,000 deaths alone (multiplied by expected spread of virus e.g. 70%). This excludes death rates for all healthy people over 60.

All sources are from coronavirus related wikipedia articles and .gov sites dedicated to American health statistics.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > _What's the U.S. government doing about a potential shortage here? Not much, > it seems._

> _The ventilator industry is getting a burst of desperate orders from China > and Italy._

Why don't the feds see the urgency here? Is it not predictable that the US will be in the same situation shortly?

If the feds won't take action, can state governments work around them and order directly?

<comment><USER10> The government is not the one who should be seeing the urgency here. Hospitals and other health care facilities should. They are the ones who should be placing orders for ventilators.

If the hospitals and other facilities need _funding_ to help with that, that's something governments might be able to help with. But it's still the facilities themselves that should be forecasting an obvious future need and taking steps to meet it.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

> _If there is a risk of a surge in need, and if it takes three months to > boost part deliveries, somebody ought to be placing orders right now. But a > hospital might well hesitate, given the perhaps equal risk that the extra > machines will never be used. Who would eat the cost? That explains why the > German order came from the government._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some emerging theories of pathology suggest that lung function can be increased by reinflating collapsed alveoli with constant pressure: [https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/cpap-covid/](https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/cpap- covid/). This source describes cases where oxygen supplementation could be reduced or eliminated.

This development ([https://www.isinnova.it/easy- covid19-eng/](https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/)) looks very promising for 'sub-intensive' cases -- adapting decathlon masks to provide positive air pressure (to help reinflate lungs) without intubation or leaking contaminated exhaust.

I don't know how many of these rapidly improvised ventilators can provide constant pressure, but if the closed mask method could be used successfully to prevent serious cases from progressing to ICU (or more importantly, keep people in their homes a little longer), it could have a huge impact.

</comment><comment><USER12> We are going to need the ventilators by 2020-03-22 - 2020-04-10. We also need to distribute oxygen tanks and regulators in the community.

<comment><USER13> And there may be a second bump in the fall. There's no reason not to build out our healthcare infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was reading about ventilators the other night. On the principle that surely even a rudimentary ventilator is better than no ventilator, why can't we revert to basic designs? 'Manley Mark II' and 'Bird Universal Medical Respirator' are two that are cited on wikipedia. These were manufactured in the 1950s. I can't see that it's that difficult to spool up a production line for a similar model today.

<comment><USER15> > surely even a rudimentary ventilator is better than no ventilator

This is not a given. Ventilators damage alveoli, which (I am not a doctor, so not 100% sure) I think is not recoverable. Thus increasing air flow with a basic ventilator might do more harm than good, so whether it is worthwhile depends on the patient.

That said, building _good_ ventilators should be very easy as well with the modern industrial base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is where emergency government powers to temporarily take over industry and direct production would be appropriate.

<comment><USER17> Yes. They should commandeer production enough to reel in vulnerable supply chains too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the future, I see a robust economy built around communicable disease prevention. This was a wake up call for the world. The free ride is over. But this virus can't overcome humans making a concerted effort to beat it. Worldwide we see the need for increased sanitization and emergency treatment and having lived though this we will all be properly motivated. There's a lot of jobs to be created and money to be made in our new health oriented economy.

<comment><USER18> In my humble opinion wake up calls were in 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1, but we decided to ignore those, now we get the real thing, that has improved and evolved.

<comment><USER19> Maybe, maybe not. I predict we're not gonna take any lessons from this either; 10 years from now people are gonna write comments like this saying "2020 COVID19 was the wake up call, now we get the real thing, that has improved and evolved".

<comment><USER20> I think at the very least some regulations/restrictions have been lifted which are never coming back. Examples might include allowing doctors to practice telemedicine accross state borders and allowing local labs to create their own tests without waiting for federal approval.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's fortunate that this started out in China, where the bulk of manufacturing takes place.

Hopefully they've been able to rapidly shift production to meet the upcoming demand for respirators and other products this pandemic will need.

</comment><comment><USER22> This might well be a very naive question, but, provided the peak rate of infection differs between nations, could a part of this be solved by borrowing from abroad?

</comment><comment><USER17> Do build a bunch of these, and do create a nursing nation guard (though not under military control please!) as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER23> The bottleneck is a lack of people to actually use ventilators an not just a lack of equipment though

</comment><comment><USER24> what is the ifference between a ventilator and one of the $500 oxygen generators that does 6 litres a minute of 30-40% O2?

And I mean in terms of practical outcomes of home use.

</comment><comment><USER25> "... in 90 to 120 days"

</comment><comment><USER26> Italian doctor advice is to skip ventilator and go straight to intubation instead, because intubation is used anyway later.

<comment><USER27> Ventilators are how intubated patients breathe. That's what the tube is hooked up to.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to grow skills-wise (eg, dist sys experience) when in a small pond? - <AUTHOR> It's becoming clear to me that I"m "growing out of" my current role. I work on a small IT team (within a medium-sized IT department) and the work is/was interesting but I've hit the ceiling in terms of technical challenges, and there is somewhat of a culture of micromanagement in the department (e.g., engineers clock their time against specific "tasks"), further hampering the ability try different/new things. We have a few systems that 'talk' to each other but as far as things like message brokers, partitioned data stores, etc., such things are beyond the scope of what I work on today.
I've been reading here on HN about "systems design" interviews, etc. Seems like a catch-22: I know that many employers nowadays will ask systems design questions as part of an interview, but I'm not sure how to present myself as technically competent in that area.
How could I leverage my current role to bolster my skills? Or, If I had to do take on a side project in my spare time (not ideal but if that's what's needed, then OK), what would you suggest? <comment><USER2> My thinking: It depends on how much you can do on your own. If you can make viable stuff on your own, say if you're in web development and you can work on something you can deploy and test independently.... you have some wiggle room.

But if you do things that aren't as easy to do on your own (I once did networking, you can only do so much there with a home network) .... time to change jobs.

Granted personal projects eat personal time and aren't always a substitute for experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest getting a new job in a bigger pond.</comment>


Running Drupal, Wordpress or Zend Framework on YAWS - <AUTHOR> http://kkovacs.eu/running-yaws-with-drupal-wordpress-zend-framework

<comment><USER2> didn't get the fundamentals behind _"mixing Erlang and PHP is a very, very potent combination"_. Anyone care to comment on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

The killer app would be to do the "usual" web stuff comfortably from PHP, while having a (possibly distributed) Erlang core deal with "persistent" stuff like an in-memory session database, and also to handle the comet functions (keeping track of even thousands of dormant connections that wait for an event to happen). Erlang is good in that stuff.

Best,

Kristof</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone created any TypeScript and Express and SQL boilerplates? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't use Express, but I have built up my boilerplate for Vue/TypeScript and various backends in other languages. The boilerplate isn't so much a template as it is a simple app that I've already done and I just copy/pasta.</comment>


The Largest US Trading Partners All Put Higher Tariffs on the US Than Vice Versa - <AUTHOR> http://thesoundingline.com/nearly-all-the-uss-largest-trading-partners-impose-higher-tariffs-on-us-goods-than-vice-versa/ <comment><USER2> This is overly simplistic.

You should look at the trade from in value added basis and how the trade benefits different couturiers differently.

Take for example US vs China. US products exported to China have value added close to 80-90%. Chinese products exported to US have value added around 40%. If Chinese import stuff, join them together into a thing that has export value $100, only $40% of the value stays in China. When the US does the same $80-$90 of the value stays in the US.

Trade agreements are negotiated over long time to be beneficial for everyone involved and nobody can claim that US is easy negotiation partner that has been taken an advantage. US allows higher taxation from other countries in exchange of some other things (lobbied by the the financial sector inside the US).

In general the whole "imports bad, exports good" outdated folk mercantilism is just silly. It's unfortunate that the political discussion anywhere can't raise above that.

<comment><USER3> It's also telling that the chart shows tariffs in %, not in absolute numbers. From what I saw in other articles it mostly balances out. This aside from the bit which you mentioned that it's a bit more detailed than import/export.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, so this is complicated. Tariffs are only part of the story.

First I agree that some countries will protect industries they consider to be of national interest or are just politically important, like the Canadian dairy industry. I actually think this is OK.

Second I think it is true that there is some hypocrisy here on both sides. It's fair to say US trading partners impose tariffs on US goods and ask why the US shouldn't do the same.

But the US doesn't play fair here either. Take wheat. Or agricultural products in general. In the US (and the EU) these are massively subsidized.

If you're talking about tariffs, you should also include subsidies.

But it gets worse: as an example the the US has historically blocked Australian agricultural products (including wheat) on quarantine grounds. While protecting local ecosystems is valid (eg Australia has, I believe, the only disease-free farmed salmon in the world) it's also used as a barrier to trade. It's clear the US here has historically used quarantine as an excuse to protect US farmers (ironically when Australian farmers aren't subsidized and US farmers are).

Fun fact: this little trade spat led to a deal in ~2006 that resulted in the Australian-only E3 US work visa.

The problem here is we have a complete buffoon in the White House who is the poster-child for anti-intellectualism. So, why put tariffs on Chinese tech goods? Those are primarily just assembled in China these days. China imports most of the parts from Korea, Japan and other places.

It's also clear that China plays favourites with local tech companies. It's a fair question to ask why the US should open up to Chinese tech companies when China won't reciprocate?

<comment><USER5> Buying subsidized products from another country means you benefit from the subsidy. Having native producers to cover basic food needs via plants is reasonable, but importing subsidized beef is a net economic benefit.

<comment><USER4> So here's the problem: doing so can decimate a local industry, which is fine until the subsidies stop or, now having eliminated the competition, the exporters jack up the price or otherwise hold the importer hostage in some way.

Australian dairy exporters have been suffering from this because a traditional export market (SE Asia) has been flooded with cheap (subsidized) dairy products from the EU (particularly Italy IIRC). This typically gets labelled "dumping".

Now market forces (and since subsidies are in play it's not really market forces) will otherwise kill the local industry. When those producers are gone and a change of government ends the dumping those producers don't magically reappear. It takes time.

This sort of thing is why so often self-sufficiency and key industries are touted as being in the national interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tariffs are backdoor wealth redistributon in some sense. Hear me out.

US export industries are more high tech with higher wages, imports are comparatively low tech. When US imposes tariffs it creates low-tech jobs in the US. When the trade partners impose tariffs they destroy high tech jobs in the US.

The net result is high tech jobs lost, low tech jobs gained. Overall economic efficiency goes down due to loss of high tech jobs and benefits of specialization.

<comment><USER7> > When US imposes tariffs it creates low-tech jobs in the US.

I can kind of follow your argument. I can see how it might be true for, say, the recent US steel tariffs (although I don't know enough to say that steel production is 'low tech' these days).

But, in general, doesn't your argument depend upon which mix of goods the US includes in the tariff?

I mean, I wouldn't call car engines, cell phones, memory chips, television sets, game consoles, etc 'low tech' but the US imports a good deal of them.

I also wonder how countries like Germany and Japan manage the blend of tariffs. They certainly produce a lot of high tech goods.

<comment><USER8> >I wouldn't call car engines, cell phones, memory chips, television sets, game consoles, etc 'low tech' but the US imports a good deal of them.

Making them is pretty low tech, there's a team of people that design machines, robots, and human processes to manufacture the parts. That would be high tech but it's not that many jobs, and many of those jobs were already here. Then, there's a few people to get the stuff the robots can't do, and a couple guys to grease the robots, and a couple guys to maintain the conveyors and such. None of those are really high tech jobs. The senior machinery tech and the senior robotics guy and a sysadmin may be 'high tech' but most of the work, even working with the robots, is swaping parts, lubing and calibrating. And that, while it pays more than the floor workers, is still far below what we would think of as a high tech salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the benefit of HN readers, no serious economist supports tariffs in any form. Tariffs appeal to the naive idea that trade imbalances between two nations are a bad thing. They simply are not a bad thing.

But due to the political history of tariffs it becomes possible for politicians to claim (falsely) that tariffs will benefit the economy, when in fact they are (at best) a handout to specific industries.

What really boggles my mind about the groundswell of support for tariffs is that much of it is coming from people who would traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare. Yet they are happy to receive it when it's called tariffs and also happy to receive bailout money when their industry is harmed by the tariffs.

Put another way, tariffs are simply a way of introducing the government into economic transactions. If a foreign government foolishly decides to tax its citizens via a tariff on US goods, this harms the foreign citizens. When the US then plays tit-for-tat and adds its own tariff, this punishes American consumers in an attempt to harm foreign exporters.

But I repeat, no serious economist (someone who studies the economy scientifically) supports tariffs. They are a political phenomenon and the rhetoric used to support them has no basis in reality. There have been countless blog posts and articles from economists since the president began talking about tariffs that have pointed out the many ways in which the president confuses the meaning of some of the big numbers he presents as justification, etc.

The understanding that tariffs are foolish is a universal among economists and is not remotely a partisan issue.

It's one thing to want to grant welfare to a specific industry for some political reason, but completely another to introduce a distorting factor like a tariff.

I have a trade deficit with my grocer, for example. Why? Because I chose to exchange money for groceries. How is this bad? The same applies to nations.

<comment><USER10> > traditionally have frowned upon receiving welfare

You weaken your (otherwise solid) argument when you do that. Tariffs and welfare are two different things, and you know that, and everybody reading this knows that, but you try to sneak in a conflation anyway. They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), welfare involves paying out of tax revenues into individuals pockets. Tariffs are exactly the opposite - tariffs involve increasing tax revenue by collecting taxes on imports, and then using that tax revenue for whatever you use all the other tax revenue for. Trying to imply that they're the same just looks like you're trying to score cheap points with people who have poor critical thinking skills.

<comment><USER11> > They're both bad, but they're bad for different reasons: accepting that > taxation is a necessary evil (I'm not sure I do, but set that aside), > welfare involves paying out of tax revenues into individuals pockets. > Tariffs are exactly the opposite - tariffs involve increasing tax revenue by > collecting taxes on imports, and then using that tax revenue for whatever > you use all the other tax revenue for.

If Mr. Widget isn't competitive at $100 vs. imports sold at $90, and you add a tariff of $10 so its "competitive", suddenly Mr. Widget's sales will increase. The other country, knowing their widgets aren't competitive (except $$ wise) then tariffs something like solar panels to protect a nascent solar panels industry.

Tariffs are a form of welfare for domestic corporations. Creating a new Mr. Widget on the assumption that tariffs will remain the same is an expensive gamble you take only if you are sure your widgets are better than Mr. Widget's widgets.

Subsidized loans (i.e. "The Bank of Boeing") are another example of welfare for domestic corporations.

<comment><USER10> Well, you can argue (as you seem to be, although I'm not entirely convinced) that tariffs and welfare lead to the same result, but to imply that opposing welfare means you must also oppose tariffs is a non-sequitur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The US is not a serious country. During decades they spent millions trying to convince smaller countries to open up their economies, because this was supposedly good. Now that they're starting to slip back in the competition against other countries (particularly China), they do a sudden 180 degree change and introduce tariffs. Only the uninformed can take this seriously.

<comment><USER13> The USA is a democracy, and therefore can have a president like Obama sometimes or one like Trump sometimes. Even then, the USA is hardly homogenous, many people in the country take many sides of different positions.

I suppose many other countries are like that as well. Fickle because you know...people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I don't know if you're being intellectually dishonest on purpose

That crosses into personal attack. Please edit such bits out of your comments here, and follow the rest of the guidelines as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Edit: We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17718957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17718957) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER15> Edited

<comment><USER14> Appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No shit. Protectionism is only bad when we do it, for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER17> The headline's use of the word "put" has an oddly vague interpretation.

The first time I read the headline, I imagined "put" was in the past tense, which implied the recent past, i.e. the last 6 months, due to the recent political action. Which would give the impression that Trump was foolish and got backlash worse than the benefit he gained.

Then I read the article and i realized "put" is in the present tense, which implies this is the way it has been for the long time, which gives the impression that Trump is smart for just trying to catch up and make things fair.

<comment><USER18> A better one would be "the largest ys trading partners all had higher tariffs on the US goods than vice versa"

<comment><USER19> also ambiguous as had in this case suggests that might no longer be the case

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's their loss and US consumers' gain. Why is everyone so quick to assume that anything that benefits exporters is the what we must pursue?

<comment><USER21> Thats your theory at least. At some point, you don't need any more cheap shit from Amazon, but you need a decent job. As a top 5%er or whatever, surely cheaper is better for you... But prob not your lower middle class neighbor who has to compete more globally in the low skill labor market, where other countries are protecting their people in that regard

<comment><USER22> In which case, I'd much rather we increased taxes on income and/or wealth to a) help workers move up the value chain, and b) provide a safety net for people who lose out on trade.

A tariff on "cheap shit from Amazon" is a heavily regressive tax, and acts to reduce total delivered value. Whereas taxing the well-off to pay for education and encourage investment increases total delivered value.

<comment><USER23> How does taxing the well-off to pay for education encourage investment?

<comment><USER24> More education = higher jobs for more people = more people have money = more people spend money at walmart/amazon/malls/movies/local restaurants/etc... Some of these people will use their money to start businesses.

Some of these people may have ended up in a poverty trap all their lives, and never contributed. One may even go on to end cancer, or do something amazing with the extra opportunity they now have.

Education ALWAYS contributes to society as a whole, not just that individual. America needs to start valuing education more, I see dumbasses on social media and elsewhere who don't fact check anything, believe everything they're told and can't even tell which side of the civil war Lincoln was fighting on.

They are the same people Jay Leno used to make fun of by asking simple questions on his Jay Walking bit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How over 25 People Got Scammed into Working at a Nonexistent Game Company - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/how-over-25-people-got-scammed-into-working-at-a-nonexi-1836834497 <comment><USER2> Previously on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20575409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20575409)</comment>


Ask HN: How can the BPG format be so much better, why isn't it widely supported? - <AUTHOR> The BPG image format is so much better than all the other formats, packing better quality in smaller file sizes.<p>How can the difference between it and the rest be so huge, and why isn't it getting a lot of traction (that I know of)? <comment><USER2> > Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image > format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is > patent-encumbered and royalty-bearing. That poses a major problem for free- > software projects in any jurisdiction that recognizes the patents—meaning > most of them.[1]

I hadn't heard of this format before; after some cursory research, I believe the above quote provides a likely explanation.

[1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/](https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/)

<comment><USER3> This came up a while back and I remember thinking...

If you were Google or Cloudflare, and you were paying for transit on petabytes of traffic associated with images, at what point would a strategy of "buy the patent, release it, encourage people to use it" pay for itself many times over?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the same thing and I can't figure it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Elementary OS - <AUTHOR> http://elementaryos.org

<comment><USER2> Would anyone who's used elementaryOS care to comment? I was looking for a Linux distro to sideload onto my newly-acquired Chromebook Pixel and it's a toss-up right now between elementaryOS and Cinnamon/Mint.

I'm hoping for something that looks nice, can take advantage of the Pixel's high-res/high-density display, and still has reasonably high compatibility with any development tools I may need to install.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quote: "We believe in the power of open source and global collaboration. That means anyone can download, use, modify, and contribute to the code we've written to bring their ideas to life."

A noble sentiment, but over time this makes Luna another version of Linux, with all the advantages and drawbacks of a kitchen with many cooks.

I hope this project succeeds, but I don't see how it differs from other Linux distributions, apart from how it's described.</comment>


Hacker News Mandrill email followup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@losvedir/hacker-news-mandrill-email-followup-e8947d10186 <comment><USER2> I went for Sendgrid. Very happy with it so far, pricing is great as well.

Easy to use, easy to setup, sane configuration for things like domains and DNS.</comment>


State of the News Media - <AUTHOR> https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/state-of-the-news-media/ <comment><USER2> It is almost shocking how data-poor these reports are.

For instance there is a "fact sheet" on cable news that aggregates together groups of three cable news networks. These could be hiding large variations between, say, Bloomberg and CNBC, so why are they doing this?

This fact sheet talks about total viewership but doesn't say anything at all about the demographics of the viewers.

Just way to thin for what is supposedly a well-funded organization.

<comment><USER3> The saddest part is that a lot of individuals won't even consider this when seeing such content.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no quality free reverse telephone lookup service? - <AUTHOR> Maybe there is one and I haven't found it? But, it seems like all the reverse lookup sites are extremely scammy. Obviously, it probably costs something for the data, and to keep it current. And, advertising is probably the only realistic revenue stream. But it seems like there should be a way to do this without asking for several dollars for a "telephone number report." Thoughts? <comment> cia-killer My guess is that there's no easy way to get bulk telephone data for free. If there was a government service that linked everyone's identity to their telephone number, then it'd be easier to scrape it and publish it online for free. As far as I know there's no easy way to get people's real name from a number besides purchasing a bunch of different marketing/caller lists. This is expensive so you probably can't make a profit just by running ads. Plus I bet Adsense has rules against you running ads on a site that gives away personal info. Just my guess though.

</comment><comment><USER2> It doesn't exist because many people don't want it to exist, chiefly due to privacy concerns.

In the mid aughts the Consumers Union successfully lobbied against the creation of a 411 directory for cell numbers: [https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp- content/uploads/2013...](https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/wireless-411-senate-testimony-final.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Twilio charges a penny per lookup. Highly recommend it.

[https://www.twilio.com/docs/lookup/tutorials/carrier-and- cal...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/lookup/tutorials/carrier-and-caller-name)</comment>


Generalise, don't specialise: why focusing too narrowly is bad for us - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/12/generalise-dont-specialise-why-focusing-too-narrowly-is-bad-for-us <comment><USER3> Glad I checked to see if someone else had posted the link before I did myself. Having been through several careers before finally landing in IT as a web developer, I found the article (it's a long read!) to be very interesting and thought provoking.

One of the big barriers I had when trying to land my first job in IT was my age; although I can't prove anything, there seemed to be a bias towards younger people - getting through tests and stuff to reach face-to-face interviews was one thing, but you could see people's expressions change within seconds of meeting me in the flesh. It was - disconcerting.

It would be good if people - especially recruiters and interviewers - <USER2> read this sort of article before they make their employment choices. Having a broader, less focussed range of skills beyond coding shouldn't be seen as a reason not to hire someone for a job.</comment>


Setting the Record Straight on Jedi - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/setting-the-record-straight-on-jedi/ <comment><USER2> Its been kind of entertaining watching random VPs in Microsoft and Amazon duke it out in passive aggressive blog posts. Undoubtedly, many of the same VPs' jobs are on the line. For previous episodes in this drama, see:

2020-05-07: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2020/05/07/amazon-...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the- issues/2020/05/07/amazon-jedi-re-do-dod/)

2020-04-15: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/15/dod- ama...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/15/dod-amazon-jedi- contract/)</comment>


Backup, then delete your Instagram account now - <AUTHOR>

Too much. They've gone way too far with this new policy.
Backup your photos here http://instaport.me/
Delete your account. Milk cows are no longer producing milk.
I hear Flickr is back in the game. <comment><USER2> I hear that Flickr is owned by Google, another company which monetizes their users in much the same way that Facebook does. Although Flickr is on record, for now, for saying that they'd /never/ do that to their users, it seems to me that migrating to Flickr is just trading a set of current privacy problems for a set of future privacy problems.

<comment><USER3> 1) Flickr is owned by Yahoo, not Google.

2) Flickr has been around a lot longer than Instagram, without ever engaging in this kind of privacy abuse. Its age and past behaviour both earn it a certain amount of trust and indicate that it is unlikely to need to turn to privacy abuse for short-term monetization to satisfy investors.

3) Flickr has a plausible monetization strategy built around its heavy entrenchment in the pro community that does not involve privacy abuse.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that a move from Instagram to Flickr isn't a big, big step up in terms of privacy protection.

<comment><USER2> I stand corrected. I use neither and for some reason hopelessly confuse Flickr and Picasa as being owned by the wrong folks.</comment></comment></comment>


Lol my thesis – Summing up years of work in one sentence - <AUTHOR> http://lolmythesis.com/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome! Some of these "honest" titles are much more clear than the original, academic ones. We tend to use buzzwords/keywords to try and get noticed or even "respected", but it is all complete bullshit. Research should be informative. My submission:

"Acoustic treatment materials for aircraft engines work (sort of), but we are not sure how; airplanes still loud as f..k"

(On the modelling and characterization of acoustic liners under grazing flow.)

</comment><comment><USER3> See also the Annals of Improbable Research's 24/7 lectures:

"Each 24/7 Lecturer explains their topic twice:

"First, a complete, technical description in 24 seconds

"Then, a clear summary that anyone can understand in 7 words"

[http://www.improbable.com/ig/24-7/](http://www.improbable.com/ig/24-7/)

</comment><comment><USER4> _Decisiveness is overrated._ \- Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz

 _Rocks that are next to each other in Massachusetts now were also next to each other 400 million years ago._ \- Geology, Amherst College

 _Rats will go to great lengths to earn a pellet of sugar, and even more so when on the right kinds of drugs._ \- Neuroscience, University of California, Los Angeles

Older favourites from lolmythesis, in my fortune clone @ [https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is clearly a superior format for explaining papers. Research should be accessible and it isn't. It really doesn't make much sense to have the academic profession riddled with "abstractese." That is, language that even educated people have trouble understanding without a definition sheet.

</comment><comment><USER6> This site would be a lot more interesting if it could link you directly to each thesis.

<comment><USER7> Yep, that would be awesome. I bet a lot of them are behind auth walls, though.

<comment><USER8> I'd expect you could at least get a formal abstract, as with published academic papers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> """I made some nearly imperceptible changes to a piece of software, and then I wrote a paper about it.""" Yeah those are pretty common :D

This one seems relevant: """If you stop being such an arrogant asshole, your startup may succeed"""

</comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, I find these blatantly honest short sentences more informative than abstracts.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you like this, you might like [http://tinytocs.org](http://tinytocs.org) also (computer science papers with a 140 character limit).

</comment><comment><USER12> My fave:

"People can't even with 'I can't even.'

I Can't Even Because Language: Investigating Attitudes and Spoken Use of Internet Phrases

Linguistics, Emory University"

<comment><USER13> I mean - linguistically speaking, it's fascinating. I really want to read this paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's mine: "A graphics hardware feature added to support texture virtualization is really helpful for implementing texture virtualization".

(relevant OpenGL spec: EXT_sparse_texture2)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _if someone notices a sound designer's work, they're doing it wrong so therefore nobody ever recognises good sound designers which makes them sad_

Depressingly accurate, which is why I decided to get out of the sound department.

</comment><comment><USER15> The one I'm writing now: "Creating and implementing deterministic multithreading programming language significantly harder than hoped"

<comment><USER11> It's not that hard. I'm thinking the song "let it go" can help (define determinism as an eventual goal; at least, that is the approach I find that works for me).

<comment><USER15> It's not that it's theoretically hard, but writing a compiler with typechecking and all is just a lot of work. It's a master thesis, btw, not a doctoral one.

<comment><USER11> My own project, Glitch uses replay to work out glitches (bubbles of non determinism in a deterministic execution), it incidentally also makes writing incremental compilers easy (see [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/smcdirm/managedti...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/people/smcdirm/managedtime.aspx)), and I recently used it for a new type checker (see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__28QzBdyBU&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__28QzBdyBU&feature=youtu.be)). Ok, it's still a lot of work, but if you look at the problem you are solving, solving it can make the compiler writing aspect easier also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mine: "Can you sequence DNA by unzipping it? No."

</comment><comment><USER17> Mine is: "Plants in cooler regions do not like hot weather"

</comment><comment><USER15> Some of these are better than the actual titles...

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't the thesis title supposed to do just this?

<comment><USER10> Unlike the title this also include the main result and a bit of derision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "I just wanted to write about Kanye, idk." doesn't even have a link to the paper ;(

</comment><comment><USER20> Starting graduate school in the Fall! Looking forward to contributing to this site.

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like this would be a good format for buzzfeed as it leaves out all relevant context, completely stamps on all the hard work put into these thesises and packs it into a nice less-than 140 characters sharable format.</comment>