Do I understand the Y combinator? - <AUTHOR> According to Steven McGeady, Cunningham advised him in the early 1980s, "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer." McGeady dubbed this "Cunningham's law".
According to the Cunningham's law, I propose my approach of the Y combinator concept in this page http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=Ycombinator , waiting for a nice/gentle coder who could give me the right answer.
I thank you. Alain Marty <comment><AUTHOR> [http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=Ycombinator](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=Ycombinator)

<comment><USER2> If the code works, it might make sense to post it at CodeReview.StackExchange.com

If it does not work, maybe StackOverflow if you can explain how it does not work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course it works! You can test it in the page [http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=Ycombinator](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=Ycombinator) and, maybe more easily, in this one: [http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=ifibo](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=ifibo)

<comment><USER2> Great. Then CodeReview would be my recommendation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I will follow your recommendation.

<comment><AUTHOR> ... but my question [http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/152579/do- i-un...](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/152579/do-i-understand- the-y-combinator) was immediately deleted without any access to the link. I'm giving up!

<comment><USER2> CodeReview requires that there is code to review in the question, so if it was linked rather than included in the body of the question deletion is not unusual. The site guidelines might be worth reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, thanks. I did follow your new recommendation and put a new questionhere: [http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/152621/do-i- un...](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/152621/do-i-understand- the-y-combinator) . Let's see ...

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the last answer of the StackExchange's moderators: "It seems you have misunderstood the purpose of this site." So I gave up!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Four L-system fractals in LaTeX - <AUTHOR> https://www.overleaf.com/docs?snip_uri=http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/TEX/lindenmayer-systems.tex&splash=none

<comment><USER2> You just have to expect your users to do these kinds of things when giving them a Turing-complete document formatting language :)

Reminds me of this postscript-rendered mandelbrot fractal:

      https://stech.muecke.pw/~spock/mandelbr.ps

Never tried to run this natively on a postscript-printer, though.

<comment> david-given Either it or another similar one was floating around my university back in the late 90s. The IT department started sending round emails asking people not to run it on the elderly Lasyjet IIIs; the results looked great but would block the print queue for about three hours.

<comment><USER2> That annecdote just perfectly describes the pandora's box of turing-complete document formatting languages: Ultimately, you will be faced with the undecidability of the Halting Problem [1] :)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> if anyone wants an overleaf invite (let's you - and me - get some more storage space) sign-up via this link: [https://www.overleaf.com/signup?ref=64cf3f9ff138](https://www.overleaf.com/signup?ref=64cf3f9ff138)

The online latex editor is very cool, but the more powerful piece is the direct submission to many journals, ability to sync with git, and all the pre- existing templates.</comment>


Sprint reportedly to entice iPhone customers with unlimited data - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2011/09/09/sprint-reportedly-to-entice-iphone-customers-with-unlimited-data/

<comment><USER2> _Sprint does require a "premium data" surcharge for its 4G/WiMax phones, priced at $10._

As of Jan 2011, the Premium Data fee now applies to all phones with data plans, whether they are 4G or 3G.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/sprint-brings- premium-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/sprint-brings-premium-data- charge-to-all-smartphones/554)</comment>


'Anti-meme law' could see Mexicans jailed for posting insulting images - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/anti-meme-law-mexico-insulting-images-veracruz-a8567041.html <comment><USER2> Is there a defining feature of this (or other) cyber bullying laws that make them antithetical to freedom of expression and the tools of oppressive regimes, rather than laws which promote more civil and effective discourse in the public sphere?

I want to say trolling is somewhat like obscenity—in that you know it when you see it—but that is a deeply unsatisfying response when so much discourse online is so polarized.

Because it's Ok for me to disagree with, even hate and detest, what someone is saying. It's Ok for me to shocked and angered and deeply offended by a thing you say. It's not Ok for me to go around clubbing people when they do this.

I think the current laws on libel, defamation, and slander are appropriate and fairly functional. Public figures in particular have a higher burden as well they should.

The new generation of anti-speech laws here and in the UK I find are deeply flawed and dangerous, and appear to me to be tools of oppression rather than the opposite.

<comment><USER3> > in that you know it when you see it

I would contend that one takeaway from companies like Facebook is that this phrase doesn't actually hold up all that well on a global Internet.

Facebook originally classified breast-feeding as explicit. At the time there was actual controversy about whether or not it fit into that category (public perception now is mostly that it didn't). Facebook's shift from "no pornography" to "here's a giant document about exactly what is and isn't pornography down to the number of nipples you show" feels to me like the white flag of a company that has decided it no longer knows it when it sees it.

I think "you know it when you see it" works _very_ well for small, tight-nit communities, and maybe not quite so well as soon as as you start operating on the scale of a country. On that scale, I kind of prefer the narrower definitions we have on stuff like libel and slander.

<comment><USER4> The problem with "you know it when you see it", even in tight-knit communities, is that it's used to shut down discussion: If you know it when you see it, then it's obvious, and if you're trying to argue the point, well, only a troll argues the obvious, innit? Nobody could disagree in good faith, so the only conclusion is that you're trying to make trouble and should be shut down.

It's logically indefensible, in that there isn't enough to it to make a logical case to defend it, which means the people proposing ideas like these must believe that either their ideas are so widely shared that nobody would ever try to attack it, or that they'll be able to destroy anyone who does attack it through means other than calm, logical argumentation. That second possibility frightens me.

<comment><USER5> I know a group of people that are sexually aroused by seeing someones eyes. It is not a small or fringe group. There is another even larger group that are aroused by feet. What are we to do about the feet pictures and videos?

There is a sub-group among them that are further aroused by sharing pictures of child feet on facebook. Something about doing that in public makes it more exciting for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Memes and Editorial/Political cartoons have been our oldest way of poking fun at government officials, of course they would want to ban them, and bullying is the perfect cover to do it. Think of the children!

</comment><comment><USER7> Mexico does not seem very friendly to freedom of expression:

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

[https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- press/2017/mexico](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/mexico)

</comment><comment><USER8> "There were 25,339 homicides in Mexico [in 2017], a 23% jump from 2016 and the highest number since at least 1997, the year the government began tracking the data." (CNN)

Good to see that the Mexican government is focusing on what's important.

<comment><USER9> They need to stop it before the first memecidio happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, it sounds like it has no chance of passing because both the outgoing and incoming mayor have pledged to veto it. Unless I missed something.

</comment><comment><USER11> not surprising considering the leanings of the new administration. AMLO is more of a socialist than populist.

<comment><USER12> your assesment is pretty imprecise.

AMLO has got nothing to do with this, he isn't even in office yet (though it kinda seems like he already is).

this is really just a proposed law from a state legislature.</comment></comment>


The raster tragedy at low resolution (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/tools/trtalr.aspx

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed this. I had a project once where I had to pre-render a font to be displayed at various (low) resolutions, and the Microsoft foundry fonts stood out as working exceptionally well at very small sizes. Almost nothing else was even acceptible at e.g. 6 or 7pt. I knew it was because of superior hinting, but I didn't realize how hinting worked, exactly, until now.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting read, but I just can't help but think that the tragedy lies with Microsoft and not the low resolution. It's 2011 and Apple has been doing font auto-hinting for ages, and so has been Adobe. Microsoft though still prefers to live in tragedy and defiantly clings to TrueType format and its horrendously labor-intensive manual hinting. I really don't know what's wrong with them, but for a fraction of Vista's 1bn budget they could've written a dozen of TTF auto-hinters.

<comment><USER4> And in 2011, "live in tragedy" Microsoft can render fonts sharply, Apple can't.

I'm a Windows guy temporarily using a Mac to write an iPad app, and the main thing that bugs me about OS X is how fuzzy the fonts look. In Windows, my fonts look ultra sharp on-screen; on Mac, fonts look fuzzy. Apparently it's because of this: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering- resp...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-respecting- the-pixel-grid.html)

But I say to Apple: unless one's monitor has the dot pitch of the iPhone "retina display", your font rendering looks really fuzzy. <rant>What good is "preserving the typeface design" if it makes your eyes water?</rant>

<comment><USER5> Apparently, this is subjective. I agree with you that OS X fonts look awful, but it's clearly a deliberate design choice, and knowing Apple, I suspect there is at least one person who thought it over and genuinely thinks their font rendering is the better choice. I can't fathom why anyone would prefer OS X fonts, but apparently people do.

<comment><USER6> The (IMO, terrible) font rendering on Windows is actually the second biggest reason I strongly prefer OS X (the biggest reason is not relevant to this discussion.)

So yes, this is quite subjective.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain why you prefer the font rendering in OS X, or do you think it's just a matter of what you've grown used to? I think fonts in OS X look notably fuzzy, and the strokes all tend to look too bold.

<comment><USER7> Anecdotally, there's definitely some truth to it being a matter of what you've grown used to. I moved from an old Windows desktop to a Mac OS X laptop. I found the fonts on Mac OS X to be exactly as you described -- fuzzy, bold, fairly annoying. After a month of heavy usage, I stopped noticing it. When I visited my old Windows computer a year later, I realized I perceived all the fonts as incredibly jaggy, thin, and hard to read. But after a while (1 week) I stopped noticing as much.

<comment><USER8> I have a similar experience, but while I can get used to the blurriness, and after a while I don't notice it as much, going back is always a breath of fresh air. I imagine it like putting your glassses on - if I had to wear any - everything just aligns right. In fairness this happens on Windows as well if I have ClearType turned on, but not quite as much. Mind you the MBP has a higher dpi than my desktop monitor, and the bkurriness is still noticeable. On a different laptop that has Linux running, slightly higher dpi looks good; same with my Android phone.

No matter how long I use font aliasing, without some very high dpi my eyes just cannot adjust, cannot totally ignore the bluriness. Seems like I'm in the minority though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating piece of history. I wonder if this will all once become relevant again for some new kind of display technology which trades pixel density and color depth for some other desirable property (such as e-ink etc.).

</comment><comment><USER10> What I find interesting is that the subtitles on DVDs, like "Deadwood" circa 2007 use a blocky font that looks like it was taken from a 1983 PC CGA card.

Closed Captioning fonts are hardly better.

<comment><USER11> That's probably because your DVD player is rendering them. When I watch a movie with subtitles in VLC I get really nice smooth Helvetica.

<comment><USER12> Iirc DVD subtitles are actually a pre-rendered overlay stream. YUV (with uv subsampling) works great for pictures, not so much for text (and has only ever the original DVD resolution and hence fails at upscaling). VLC does indeed grab subtitles from the text and renders them crispy in the screen resolution.

<comment><USER13> The pre-rendered ones are called subtitles, and the text is called closed captions.

Not all DVDs have both, although a lot do. Some have just one or the other.

<comment><USER11> It was my understanding that the difference between closed captions and subtitles was a semantic one--closed captions are for the hearing impaired and subtitles are for people that can hear but don't know the language.

So closed captions have stuff like "door opens, a radio is playing an old tune in the background. Sheila: _Hello_ " but with subtitles you'd just see "Hello" since if you can hear then you can infer everything else about the scene.

<comment><USER14> There are sort of two different definitions at work here - the semantic definition which is as you describe, and then there's the technical definition which has to do with the implementation.

"Subtitles" on a DVD are basically a 4-colour (3 + transparent) bitmap which is overlaid on the video stream. But DVDs also support the closed-captioning that was originally used for TV broadcasts, which is text embedded in the video signal that's decoded and displayed by the television set itself.

Media playing software can extract subtitles from the latter system and display them in whatever font you like - but you can't do the same with the DVD-overlay subtitles, because they're just images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A fun trick I like to do is tilt my head 90 degrees and look at the font on the screen.

This way you realize how terrible the font and resolution really are.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone else feel like your kids are going to not believe that this sort of thing had to be done as they grow up only with fine dot-pitch screens?

<comment><USER17> I doubt the need for font hinting will go away any time soon. Most monitors are still roughly 96 dpi (same as mentioned in this article). Apple's retina display might be in the area where hinting doesn't matter as much. However, reaching 300 DPI for a largish computer monitor is really outside the realm possibility today for anything but a completely custom design. For a 30" 16:10 screen you'd need a resolution of ~7575 x 4750. You'd be seriously hard pressed to come up with a graphic card / cabling solution to handle that resolution.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Also, 7575 x 4750 x 24bpp = ~96MB RGB framebuffer.

Additionally:

DPI of my 2011 laptop: 115dpi.

DPI of my 2011 monitor: 100dpi.

DPI of my 1997 monitor: 90dpi (100dpi possible at a rather ugly 60Hz)

DPI of my 1993 monitor: 91dpi

With this progress (or lack of) in mind, I think the pixel will be around for a while yet. Indeed, (thanks to LCDs) outside a few small-scale high-DPI places, pixels are more obviously visible than ever before! So why people are so sure that the pixel grid can just be ignored, I'll never know...

<comment><USER19> > With this progress (or lack of) in mind

IBM once produced 204dpi desktop screens (T220/T221, 3840×2400 in 22.2")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I disagree that "correct math looks wrong". You simply used the wrong correct math. Lots of other "correct maths" could produce even worse output. And some could produce better.

<comment><USER21> Indeed, «correct math» seems strange here, for interpretation of hints is equally correct as beziers.</comment></comment>


Open-source blogging platform Ghost begins rolling out its fully-hosted service - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/12/16/open-source-blogging-platform-ghost <comment><USER2> I'm using Ghost to host my blog: [http://www.sergiotapia.me/](http://www.sergiotapia.me/)

CPanel has a great 1 click installer. It just works out of the box.

Things I like about it are markdown support, and... that's pretty much it. I'm kind of underwhelmed by it.

No comment system, I had to tack Disqus on to the handlebars template file.

No statistics? It's a planned feature, but I feel like this should have been like priority one. Bloggers like to see that people are reading their material.

Slow despite being so light in features. This one suprised me; the page is so miniscule in feature that I wonder why it's taking so long to render blog pages.

No syntax highlighting built into the markdown for code support. :(

I feel like Ghost has tremendous potential but it's just underwhelming in it's current state. It's landing page marketing is fantastic, hell it got me to use it, but once I had it I was like: "is this it?"

<comment><USER3> It's an MVP currently. They built the smallest possible number of features to make it work.

I think it's great. They'll have real feedback to work with and I can get it on ground floor.

<comment><USER4> Took a heck of a long time for an org with access to shitloads of cash and cream-of-the-crop developers to release such a basic "MVP".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before I make a comment I wanted to say I think Ghost is an awesome initiative and hope that it furthers what's already been accomplished by Wordpress.

That being said, I was a bit bummed to see it as a pay only option. I get it, you have to pay bills. Seriously, I get it - we just ditched our consumer product due to this fact.

$5/month is more than I'm willing to pay to try it out. And in reality, it's too much for me to pay even if I like it. That keeps me from trying it out and falling in love with it.

You know what I would pay $5/month for? A blog for my business. But I'll end up installing or signing up on Wordpress because I'm familiar with it. Because I was able to use it for free.

This mentality sucks, I know. Welcome to the consumer Internet.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that they offer a free plan. I wouldn't. I hope they focus sooner than later off the consumer market.

<comment><USER6> yes... I mean, I'm paying $5 for my VPS, so the same amount for a blog seems "too much".

And yes: those who are looking for a free blog would choice WP or some static system on GitHub.

$1/month would be interesting for me (and even more if I can pay with bitcoin), but I don't know anything about marketing :P

<comment><USER7> You can run Ghost on that VPS...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does Ghost offer that can't be accomplished on Medium?

<comment><USER9> For starters, it's open source!

[https://github.com/tryghost/Ghost](https://github.com/tryghost/Ghost)

<comment><USER8> That's a good start! I guess I wonder how much the uptake will be for a broader audience who can get WP for free and may not care as much about the customization experience.

<comment><USER7> The biggest problem with that is a huge portion of the WP audience is using whatever cheap shared hosting they can find, which is great for WP, because PHP and MySQL are ubiquitous when it comes to shared hosts, but Node (which is what Ghost uses) isn't.

Using Node, while something the developers probably liked, might not have been the best decision because it severely hinders adoption by the casual users that WP currently owns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Octopress is more fun :) No offense</comment>


Ask HN: What's a good way to handle cofounder leaving? - <AUTHOR> Suppose your cofounder has raised a substantial amount of friends-and-family money and you've raised angel money, and built a startup. All existing stakeholders are looking for a return and your startup already generates revenue but not enough to just start paying dividends. The understanding was always that you will raise VC. You have a great product and lots of traction. However...<p>Your cofounder who everyone has always seen with you just quit. At this point you can continue to raise the VC money but they'll wonder why you are suddenly a solo founder. You want to raise VC and grow fast instead of slogging for years to generate a return via dividends. The question is, how best to handle the question of why he quit, to VCs and to original investors? This is what happened and my main goal is to produce a return for investors, who have been waiting for years. VC would help, but does it make sense to get another cofounder just to impress VCs and generate a faster return for investors? Or perhaps I just won't compromise anymore and let the chips fall where they may? Anyone been through something similar, I'd appreciate some advice. <comment><USER2> My random advice from the internet is to realistically assess the company's chance of success. The sunk costs are sunk costs. They have no correlation to future success. The only thing that correlates with future success is the current state of the company and with a founder leaving a two person team that state might not be viable.

A couple of points, in the Silicon Valley terms, startups don't pay dividends and return on capital comes in the form of increased value of equity. If the FFF round was sold to the investors based on paying dividends, there is a disconnect between those investors and venture capital investors with Silicon Valley VC investment strategies. This is something to consider in terms of whether the company ought to consider.

Going forward with the company means that the FFF investors may wind up with nothing. In terms of Silicon Valley style startups, that's the most likely outcome of all such startups. If protecting the FFF's assets is a primary goal, winding down the company and returning proceeds may be the best likely return even if it is pennies on the dollar.

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle is to be realistic about your motivation and enthusiasm for carrying the business forward alone. A sense of obligation is often a path to resentment and resentment is probably not a hallmark of success.

Anyway, my empathy on your plight. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Suppose your cofounder has taken a substantial amount of [...] money_

If you mean "taken" in the literal sense of actually taking it, call the police. If you mean the cofounder earned it while working on the business, say they earned it.

 _At this point you can continue to raise the VC money but they 'll wonder why you are suddenly a solo founder._

Investors don't "wonder". They'll ask why your cofounder left. Just tell the truth.

If your business is years old then it's too late to add another founder. Founders are the people who started the business. That's all. Whether you should bring in another person (as a partner, employee, etc) depends on what your business needs. Having two (or more) people running things isn't a show you put on to raise money; you often need more people simply because there's too much for one person to do. If your business is established and has traction that might not be the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fixed "taken" to be "raised". We raised money. Our investors want to see returns. VCs want to see teams not solo founders.

I hear what you're saying. Personally I think the preference to see more than one founder is the main problem in all this, and maybe I should just ignore it. A company with a good team and popular products is quite fundable regardless of how many founders are still with it. Right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> VCs don't want teams, they want business cases that have shown to be scalable.

Do you need your cofounder? Can your business continue without him/her? If so, continue to build out your business. If it's worthy of another round, it will come. If not, you just have a healthy business and you could always focus on a stock buyback program with interest to offer a more instant gratification for your angels/f&f investors. About 99,9999% of business are funded this way.

Everyone's always hoping to score big time, but if a startup grows into a regular business that's a pretty good result. Even a little dividend after ten years beats a liquidation.</comment>


Why is nobody interested in verifying their site's password storage? - <AUTHOR>

Two weeks ago I made a weekend project: http://www.saltedhashed.com/ and posted it to HN (twice) and reddit, and also blogged about it. But nobody seems interested.
Is it that:
- too much effort is (thought to be) required for validating ones site
- the incentive is not good enough
- it's not clear what it's about.
I'd like any feedback, so that I can improve the possibility of people showing off their good password storage algorithms. <comment><USER2> hey there,

I'm running elipsis.io which is basically an online password vault. I almost registered my app on your website but ended up not doing it. Here is why:

1) yes, creating an endpoint specific to your app is not something I am willing to do. Mostly because of the effort, also because I consider it bad practice. I'm not going to pollute my webapp for some 3rd party that is not core to my 'business'.

2) you're pretty much telling me to return an API that I need to protect against DDOS attacks. Yes, computing a salted hash is CPU expensive, as it should be, and I'm not going to make it easier to DDOS me. I have a whole bunch of higher priority items. Password salt verification is at the bottom of the list.

3) There is no incentive to use your service. I completely feel your pain there. You need a lot of users to know your service for third parties to register and use your brand. And you need these third parties to help your brand be known to the end users. Which come first ? The egg of the chicken ? I am sorry but I am not going to be the chicken...

4) I'm not going to tell the world how many iterations are used to generate hash based on my XXXbits key. Good security is only through transparency but there is no need to tell the number of hashing iterations. Users don't care. I just make sure it's as high as my hardware allows vs user's response time.

5) any website can lie to your service and be 'verified' as secure.

6) even if your service was worth it, there are many attack vectors that I am more worried about than just the password hashing. Password hashing is a no brainer if the standard solutions are implemented. Other stuff in-memory protection (make sure a plain text password is not in your redis), SSL, etc. are a bit more complicated.

Sorry, I'm not just buying the idea. I'm sure there are plenty of things that could be done to help people be better at security. Keep improving !

</comment><comment><USER3> Your using stock bootstrap (which is fine) and targeting developers (which isn't) and mentioning words like password, secure and verified.. First impressions count</comment>


Reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/27/science.abc6197 <comment><USER2> The problem is the scientific community did not immediately denounce those scientists that clearly were putting policy before science.

It wasn't just the masks saga. Anyone with basic comprehension of physics and particle data can see how and why masks work, so Don't try to fool the public by lying and don't sit by when some colleagues are basically destroying the whole of the scientific community's credibility just to appease some political interests.

Same for 'social distancing' in enclosed spaces. If you let that sort of nonsense stand, how can you not realize you are just throwing the whole of the scientific trust under the bus?

And now the latest one: 'Children do not transmit the virus' just because some political parties want to reopen schools ASAP?

Just stick to the science, and leave the politics to the politicians.

As I said here back in March, the damage done to scientific credibility is the most saddening collateral in all of this. There wil always be some persons willing to do someone's dirty laundry for fame, gain or even just because they genuinly believed it all 'white lies' for the best of intentions. The huge failure of the scientific community was not calling them out.

<comment><USER3> What is your evidence that children actually do transmit the virus efficiently?

I have seen multiple independent studies from different countries coming down with a very similar conclusion that children are not good vectors for this thing to spread.

<comment><USER4> > What is your evidence that children actually do transmit the virus > efficiently?

OP's point is about if children transmit the virus. Either they do or don't.

But your question is about the efficiency of how children transmit the virus. It's an entirely different question although your personal choice of weasel words makes it look differently.

It makes no sense to waste time talking about efficiency if you're talking about a known virus transmission vector.

<comment><USER5> By that measure masks do not work since N95 allows a certain level of particles to transit. Perfection is not necessary, only reducing the replication factor.

<comment><USER4> > By that measure masks do not work

That's a stupid remark. N95 are used mainly to reduce the emission of our own droplets, not to eliminate it nor to make us invulnerable.

Still, the recommended approach is still to stay at home and avoid contact altogether. As it's obvious to anyone, no exposure is far better than some exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many steps of the scientific method should scientists need to get through before they can make policy? Throughout this pandemic we've been getting whipsawed by "science". Is a few months really enough time to do all the science on a question as difficult as the efficacy of masks during a novel virus pandemic?

<comment><USER7> Masks are prudent, considering that they are a very low risk and low cost prevention intervention, irrespective of demonstrating efficacy.

True, it takes a long time (often very long) to establish factual information that becomes widely accepted, but that is not the issue here. Also, the scientific method and peer-review process cannot be altered, and these processes (along with always following a strict code of ethics, staying updated on ethical matters, never compromising on ethics, and never losing sight of all of the above—ever) are even more important during a pandemic. Implying that these processes should be altered is unethical and unconscionable.

We have known that SARS-CoV-2 spreads via respiratory droplets, and that it was, most likely, by far, the main mode of transmission (although that would have needed to be demonstrated too, in a pandemic). Wearing a face mask to capture some of those respiratory droplets (even 10%) would at least help, and would not be insignificant if people are required to wear them in public.

We know that cloth masks capture more than that though.

Also, based on a case report, it is possible that up to 80% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic.

Considering that, and the fact that it is spread mainly by respiratory droplets, it is prudent to require the public to wear at least cloth masks.

Czech Republic (along with Slovak Republic—Slovakia) required people to wear face masks in public starting around March 13, and was one of the first western countries to require this. They are now easing restrictions and are doing well.

One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (US is the other one) has not had any reported coronavirus infections for 3 days in a row. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country, still feeling the after effects, with a relatively high and rapidly accelerating quality of life, by western standards.

Stuff like mask wearing is not rocket science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally. What was obvious from the Diamond Princess data months ago has been acknowledged.

<comment><USER9> Can you be more specific on what you think was going unacknowledged? The abstract is just "wear masks and test like crazy". Which has been pretty much universal consensus since March. There's a whole industry of amateur mask makers on Etsy at this point.

<comment><USER10> Except that everyone stopped wearing masks about two weeks ago.

<comment><USER11> For certain narrow classes of everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That is one of the stupidest graphics I have ever seen in an academic journal article.

<comment><USER13> > For society to resume, measures designed to reduce aerosol transmission must > be implemented

This is an opinion piece disguised as science. It's presumptuous of a science writer to make determinations about whether and how society will be permitted to resume.

If we want people to be perfectly safe we'd also ban fast food, meat, alcohol, nicotine, driving and sex. But the goal of society is not to keep people 100% safe. Why are we okay with having our liberties trampled over an illness that the CDC estimates has a 0.26% death rate?

<comment><USER14> Because the death rate is way higher than 0.26%. If the CDC really thinks it's that low for the general population then they are wrong. The general consensus I have seen, based on antibody tests in New York, Italy, Sweden, and Spain point to a death rate between 0.75% and 1.25% for most developed nations. For less developed nations (which, to be fair, is most of the world) the death rate will be lower because there are fewer old people. I agree that we don't have to shut down everything, but everyone should be wearing masks as much as possible in public. Public smoking is highly restricted, at least partially because of the risks of secondhand smoke, and the risks of COVID-19 are way higher than that. People can do what they want at home, but we have to share public spaces. It's not right for someone else to make decisions that endanger me and my family just because they don't care about the risk.

<comment><USER15> The CDC latest best estimate is 0.4% death rate from Covid. This compares to a death rate from the flu of around 0.2%, also based on CDC estimates [1].

Every death is a tragedy, but we didn't do half-lockdowns for the flu before. Why are we doing a full lockdown for something that is 2x the flu.

Antibody testing largely supports a 0.4% death rates conclusion, I've tracked this data in a spreadsheet I made [2]. 0.4% is close to the mean and median of the studies I recorded.

Edit: I know it's gauche to complain about downvotes, but this post is just citing data to make a point. Even if you are worried about Covid, it seems dishonest to downvote data.

[1] [https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data- cd...](https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc- estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b)

[2] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTla...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTlad1jnQZ9W7p_P_yS-0D6j1-8/edit#gid=0)

<comment><USER16> I genuinely mean this with no disrespect but how knowledgeable are you about this & if you aren't why do you think some data collecting from the internet & "back of the envelope" spreadsheet-ing makes you able to reasonably question world experts that dedicated their careers to virology and pandemics?

If you are a programmer how much would you appreciate a medical doctor with no training or experience in software development questioning your technical decisions about what to use when building a software service?

<comment><USER17> Probably because it's hard to trust public health experts in a crisis whose very existence has already demonstrated a failure in their authority.

If I wanted to reduce the risk of acquiring or transmitting an airborne infection back in February, I would wear a mask and avoid enclosed spaces without waiting for CDC's permission. Indeed, I would ignore their advice to the contrary, which stood until April (!)

It would be really nice if we could defer to competent technocratic experts, but they earn their trust by having credible track records, not by collecting credentials.

<comment><USER18> No thanks. The Hippocratic oath is meaningless unless the subject decides what constutites a medical procedure.

The train to technocratic ditatorship is paved with... the great glucose poisioning epidemic, loss of free speech, loss of self defense. Todays conventional wisdom is often not looked on favorably in the future.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRnB9El_V5g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRnB9El_V5g)

Are we going to wear masks for the rest of our lives (outside FFS)? Pandemics are an authortarian dream. The ability to engineer pandemics will only expand.

A bit of scale: Consider how many children go missing in the US each year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't really take anything seriously anymore:

> Aerosols can accumulate, remain infectious in indoor air for hours

I remember Michael Osterholm said CoV2 wasn't airborne, but respiratory, and he made the distinction airborne viruses stay in the air for hours (like Measles). "Aerosols" would indicate they mean respiratory but then they talk about it sticking around for hours.

> silent shedders

We are told there are asymptomatic people who spread the illness, but there is also tons of research to show they may not ([https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32405162/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32405162/)) or that some of them weren't even asymptomatic; they had symptoms but no one asked (can't find that link).

This whole pieces seems like a long article to say "wear a mask," but all of us see people who wear a mask incorrectly or wear a cloth mask that isn't very effective against viral matter ([https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342](https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342)) and most people don't wash them daily, so they can build up moisture and bacteria ([https://publichealth.uic.edu/news-stories/commentary- masks-f...](https://publichealth.uic.edu/news-stories/commentary-masks-for- all-for-covid-19-not-based-on-sound-data/)). A lot of people treat them like a fashion accessory or just a thing they have to do and hang them up when they get home.

When states mandate masks, you're no longer asking people, and you brake the social contract. A lot of people do it just so they aren't shamed. A lot of people who don't wear masks do it as a political statement. When you boil it down ... it's all either political or shame.

There is a lot of explicit social conditioning and behavior modification going on here and it's sinister. I'm sick of pre-pubs that get contracted the following week and everyone going into hyper panic mode always. There are tons of secondary effects (people not going in for regular cancer screenings ([https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is- mo...](https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more- dangerous-than-the-virus/)), suicide attempts ([https://archive.vn/N18t9](https://archive.vn/N18t9)), heart conditions, etc.) that will catch up with us.

I went into more detail earlier this month about getting fed up with our terrible information situation. This is not a time of honor:

[https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of- hon...](https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/)

<comment><USER20> I don't think the primary motivation for wearing masks is to protect yourself from others. It's to protect others from you. That's why there's shame involved in not wearing one; if you don't wear it, you're advertising that you don't care about the health of people around you. That's truly sinister.

Unfortunately, something as innocuous as mask wearing has been politicized in the US by certain unsavory political and media figures. In more enlightened countries and cultures (see most of Asia), wearing masks in the midst of a pandemic is just common sense. America is broken.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, I sympathize with the anti-mask requirement sentiment, even though I wear one in indoor public spaces like grocers. I don't think people should be shamed or that they should be mandated.

When I read into it it's not always clear masks work well to limit egress of virus, and I do think the scientific community is to blame to some extent for presenting things as "masks are scientific and lack of masks is not." This approach might only worsen things relative to a message of "we don't really know but it's a good idea to be prudent."

Linked scientific articles advocating masks I find are often misleading. They often are based on _other_ viruses that potentially have other transmission properties, or make questionable assumptions, like that the mask is an n95 mask or is wet cloth. When I have found actual studies of SARS-CoV-2 with dry fabric of the sort most masks are made of, the masks work, but not nearly as well as you might think.

The problems with masks have really been underscored for me practically too. I've tried a couple of masks now, fit to my face, and I've run into a telling problem: when I breathe in mildly colder air, my breath shoots out from underneath my mask and fogs my glasses immensely. Not only is it evident in a very visible way that when I'm wearing the mask it's not actually blocking airflow very well, but then I have to constantly adjust things because I can't see, and sometimes have to resort to removing the mask entirely.

I still wear the mask and the fogging has gotten better as it's warmed, but my overall impression is that there are good reasons people might not wear masks, and I think the evidence in favor of them is much weaker and less rigorous than is often acknowledged. I think if the scientific community were being honest, they'd say they don't work great, but it's something, and every bit can count. That message seems to be enough; it would go a long way.

<comment><USER22> * I think if the scientific community were being honest, they'd say they don't work great, but it's something, and every bit can count.

Funny, because that's exactly my impression of what they _are_ saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Masks reduce airborne transmission.

Not as much as Ebola suits: [https://www.welt.de/img/gesundheit/mobile130688133/039162761...](https://www.welt.de/img/gesundheit/mobile130688133/0391627617-ci23x11-w960/DWO- WS-Ebola-Institut-Aufm-jpg.jpg)

1 Ebola suit for everyone, with an air supply rucksack.

<comment><USER24> You try finding a PAPR in stock for sale to anyone who isn't a purchaser for a medical provider or first responder agency right now..

True story: I almost bought a 3M PAPR last fall because I wanted it for a "The Expanse" prop replica space suit I've been thinking about building. Decided that a few hundred bucks was too much to spend for the look of something alone, though. That would've been the best gratuitous purchase I ever made, in hindsight. Of course I probably still wouldn't be able to get filters for the thing, and properly caring for and disinfecting non-disposable hardware like that is nontrivial...</comment></comment>


Romance website Match.com sued for $1.5 billion over 'unauthorized' photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/25/net-us-usa-florida-match-idUSBRE9AO0Y420131125 <comment><USER2> I had a friend who used to work for one of Match's competitors. He left when he learned of the unethical bullshit that goes behind the scenes. It's actually pretty awful.

The fake profiles are almost always female because sites like Match.com are heavily male dominated - they're what you would call sausage-fests. To even out the numbers, the site hires contractors to create fake but plausible profiles of decently attractive women, which is not a hard thing to do.

But it doesn't stop there. Let's say that you as a male user subscribe to the service and send out twenty beautifully-crafted messages to women who seem like good matches, and eagerly wait for a response. When none comes (since every decently attractive woman receives tens of messages everyday, and yours was just one of them), you lose your motivation. Just as you're about to cancel though, you receive a hopeful "nudge" or a "wink" from someone. Maybe you message back and forth a few times, enough such that you decide not to write off the site and allow your subscription to renew.

What happened is that you got gamed. These sites are very good at algorithmicly determining "at risk" users and they target them heavily with attention from fake profiles to induce them to stay. Of course, nothing comes out of those interactions but that doesn't matter - the longer the site can string along the user, the more money it makes.

My friend told me that ALL paid online dating sites (including Match) engage in this practice, which makes total sense. After all, you don't want users leaving your site in droves and signing up for the competition. You need to convince them somehow that they aren't total losers, and the best way to do that is to have a blond, 27-year old "Jessica" \-- who loves dogs and just moved to the user's city and is looking for fun things to do -- give them some attention.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know a lot of the people that are in charge of removing these scammers (they're not really spammers as much) from OKCupid and Match. The idea that they are conspiring with these scammers is mind-blowingly insane. Why would they? Match makes plenty of money charging a highly legitimate subscription for their excellent service of helping us find people we love. What possible benefit would they get out of conspiring on western union money scams with morally and economically bankrupt people that consult witch doctors to gain internet fraud powers (I'm not making this shit up: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc)) and can barely type out english?

My suspicion (without knowing or asking) is that the scammers are probably using profiles stolen from other people, and this crazy lawsuit lady/lawyer/seriously-who-gives-a-fuck decided that there was a conspiracy between the two, while the reality is that Match is working their asses off (especially on holidays like Thanksgiving because the scammers assume people are on vacation and double-time it) to ban the scammers from the site.

Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. This is a hail-mary attempt by asshole lawyers to extract money from, unlike them, a productive industry that makes money from providing us with a useful service and doing a good job. If I was as big of a shithead as these people were, I would need about 1.5 billion dollars worth of opulence to forget how horrible I was too.

If they're interested in suing scammers, they should sue themselves.

<comment><USER4> Putting all other things aside, I know the incentive for the websites to outsource somebody to create fake profiles (see the comment here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194)). But what's the incentive for the 'scammers'? How can they 'scam' people on match.com by creating fake profiles? By making them come all the way to Nigeria and rob them? Give me a break.

I am not a big fan of the lawyers, but you sound too biased with statements like - "Match is working their asses off" "their excellent service", "piece of shit a piece of shit".

<comment><USER5> Gathering info for a future scam? Match seems like a good vector to get people to divulge personal details that then make a later "it's your friend john, I'm stuck in the airport and need you to wire me some money" scam work.

You could use Facebook, but I have no reason to tell people on Facebook details about my past. They're my friends, they already know. Dating sites are the best way to get a stranger to tell you something personal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of the dating sites do worse than just steal pics. They hire cheap labor (3rd world) and using fake accounts send fake replies to guys (paying members). All under a ToS saying it is for entertainment purposes only.

Match will just claim it was spammers and scammers, not done by match.com's in house team.

There are companies set up out there that will populate a dating site with fake profiles. (I don't know their urls, but seen them before)

I think there was also a UK documentary on scammy UK dating sites, on tv a little while ago. All using fake profiles of course.

<comment><USER7> I don't know if Match.com incentivized this kind of behaviour, though it's very possible - however not sure that would make them liable, most likely they have in their ToS that they don't allow certain behaviours - but don't enforce it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lol, it must be difficult being sued for $1.5bn in a $2.1bn industry. [http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises- Inc-v41...](http://www.marketresearch.com/Marketdata-Enterprises- Inc-v416/Dating-Services-6773764/)

</comment><comment><USER9> The complaint itself is here:

[http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...](http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1585&context=historical)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused here. Why would match _want_ fake profiles on the site? Wouldn't that drive people away pretty quickly once they catch on that the hot chicks they're trying to talk to aren't what they seem?

<comment><USER11> Well for one, it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem that dating sites face when starting out. And I guess even with traction, you want people to feel like they are in "a crowded room", even if a bunch of the profiles don't respond back or flake.

<comment><USER12> All dating sites do this. If you know of a single dating site that did not "seed" with model photos when it was started, I would be interested to know about it.

badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious

the online dating scene is big money and very poor ethics

I'd like to see google dating - with a "don't be evil" motto

<comment><USER13> > All dating sites do this.

That's not true at all. I know this for a fact. I

> badoo is another scam site with 80% fake model photos - it's obvious

I don't know the badoo guys personally, but I'm pretty sure they are working just as hard combatting fake model photos. It's not an easy solution, as you can't just say "Oh, look, let's ban everyone with this photo" because they will change photos constantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quite an accusation :

Match are acussed of

\- seed their database with fake profiles using photos of models to make their site more appealing. So many that they make the difference in their leadership of the US market

\- match use Russian/Nigerian scammers to do this - or at least knowingly allow the scammers to create enormous numbers of fake profiles (not too clear which choice)

My view: yes this goes on, and the whole case hinges on how much effort match puts into cleaning its house on a regular basis .

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this a case where a lawyer reached out to people who would back him in his pursuit of a settlement?

</comment><comment><USER16> Hm, why stop at $1.5 billion? $150 billion would be even funnier.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1.5bn!!!...they have to go bankrupt..

<comment><USER18> Uhhh... Good?

Okcupid did a great analysis on why match.com's business is fatally flawed, they took it down when match.com bought them out, but you can probably still find it.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay- fo...](http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online- dating.html)

<comment><USER4> That was an interesting read. Thanks for the link. It also confirms what I always thought about their 'model'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let me see if I got this right... If the allegations are indeed true, this "part-time model" believes that fake pictures of herself posted on match.com have resulted in $1.5b of damage to her career?

If I ever have daughters, I guess I should push them into part-time modelling...

<comment><USER21> You didn't get it right. From the first sentence in the article: "A Florida woman has filed a $1.5 billion class-action lawsuit against online dating site Match.com..."</comment></comment>


Apple Didn't Invent the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=340

<comment><USER2> > _And like the term "Windows", "App Store" is a generic computing term that > was in use prior to Apple's product._

Is there an example of the usage of the term "App Store" before Apple popularized it? The date search via Google hasn't turned up anything.

edit: I did find this blog post from 2006: [http://nerddawg.blogspot.com/2006/08/debugging-windows- prese...](http://nerddawg.blogspot.com/2006/08/debugging-windows- presentation_16.html)

<comment><USER3> Is that a reference to a store, as in a place that sells things, or a store as in storage? I am not familiar with the topic discussed on the page, but to me, the term "app store" is referring to app caching/storage mechanism.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure, I suspect it refers to storage, but that was the only example of the term 'app store' that I could find prior to Apple's app store announcement.

<comment><USER2> beej71 your comment is dead, but I presume this is the usenet post you were referring to: [http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sony/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sony/browse_thread/thread/c982f7ba9bfbab72/94bc2f0e6160b8cd?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22basically+a+PC+app+store%22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Apple says, "...nothing like the App Store has ever been attempted before."

What Apple actually says is """As a columnist for The New York Times remarked soon after the launch of the service, "[nlothing like the App Store has ever been attempted before.""""

Yes, Apple is trying to push that idea, but it is not them that said it (in that instance). Apple even notes that similar mobile phone download marketplaces existed before their version of one (though they do not mention the Wii store or Xbox live marketplace which also predate it).

<comment><USER5> Yes, I noticed Apple carefully quoted someone else as saying they invented an app store. There is also the context of mobile here, where there is less prior art (because of the mobile telcoms hold on such things). If Apple attempted to be super broad here, then I might turn and sue them for 30% of all app store (and Mac store!) purchases, since I built and pitched Apple the concept in the mid and late 1990s. Even met Gil Amelio. Right before the purchase of NeXT. Lawyers can always add my name to any discovery requests from Apple. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> List of things Apple didn't 'invent':

* WIMP GUI * All-in-one PCs * Laser Printers * USB * Hard drive audio players * Online media/software marketplaces

List of things Apple made wildly popular with the general populace:

* WIMP GUI * All-in-one PCs * Laser Printers * USB * Hard drive audio players * Online media/software marketplaces

</comment><comment><USER7> While not the same thing, show me one person who's touched Linux that didn't immediately scream "Repositories!" when they first heard about the iOS App Store...

It's a Storefront for Applications. There's only so many variations of the name you can come up with before they start stepping on each others' toes.

<comment><USER8> The App Store bears far more resemblance to Steam than to Linux distro repositories, which are primarily about resolving dependencies and being able to upgrade things without breaking dependencies. iOS and OS X Apps don't even _have_ external dependencies other than OS-provided libraries, and most Linux package management systems don't have a standard GUI, let alone one at all like iTunes or the Mac App Store.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with your claim of their primary use. They're _for_ installing software; the convenient upgrades and dependency management are merely a side effect of handling that task correctly.

Also, from TFA, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_(software)>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In which a minor freetard business celebrity fails to distinguish trademarks from patents.

<comment><USER11> "Freetard"? What are you twelve? A corporate troll or a Windows user? I will be so happy when this "*-tard" meme goes away, it is truly irksome.

<comment><USER12> Freetard, iFag, luser, Microdroid, B1ff, Pointy haired, Marketroid.

The 'us and them' mentality exists across many boundaries and I don't think it's going away any time soon. Most just learn to ignore it because whatever you decide is good, someone, somewhere, disagrees with you.

<comment><USER10> I am a long term FOSS user and contributor, so I am 'us' here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, is it "app" or "store" that Apple objects to? Or is it simply the combination of those terms and, in all actuality, Amazon could simply call it the "Android App Mart/Market/Superstore/Supermarket" and Apple would just go away?

<comment><USER14> It's the combination "App Store" that they object to. So yes, Amazon App Market would be fine, as is the "Windows Phone App Marketplace".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Broadness in itself is not a reason to deny a trademark. "Christmas Tree Shops" is hardly distinctive. "McDonalds" is a last name. These trademarks are recognized because brands were successfully and identifiably built around them. I think the same can be said about the app store - ask any "normal" who he thinks of when he hears the phrase "App Store." Hint: it's not Google or Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought there was an Palm download store back in the late 90's, for the Palm V and such, but I can't seem to find anything about it.

Am I completely mistaken?? Couldn't you download apps for the old Palms?

<comment><USER17> Yes you could. There may have been a centralized "store" at some point, but I don't remember it. Palm OS let you install arbitrary executables, so you didn't need one.</comment></comment>


Reddit as a City-State (by Reddit CEO) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/sk1ut/iam_yishan_wong_the_reddit_ceo/c4en44e <comment><USER2> A city-state of Eternal September basement dwellers does not strike me as a viable nation.</comment>


Trump transition team picks regulation foe as telecom point man - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-transition-team-jeffrey-eisenach-229276 <comment><USER2> _The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistibly against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege. They are laughing at the dainty affectations of the Leawoof toffs. They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills, hoisting the black flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands. 'We are here,' they scream, 'to cut your taxes."_

― Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?

Except in this particular case, they are here to deregulate your monopolies.</comment>


NPM staff claimed they were fired after trying to unionize - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/22/npm_fired_staff_union_complaints/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19724674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19724674)

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad, I didn't saw it. And it seems the links were different (extra # in the other link), so this submission was accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I still used npm I would be very concerned that it will go the way of SourceForge.

<comment><USER4> You mean yarn?

<comment><USER5> yarn is just an interface to the vast npm ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> My bad I thought they use their own CDN

<comment><USER6> Yes they do. They have their own CDN on top of npm. Potentially they could fork the registry if they wanted to. (AFAIK, they currently don't)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Extremely concerning.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you found ORMs help more than they hinder? - <AUTHOR> I've not seen a case when using an ORM was helpful. Often the added complexity isn't worth it. Plain SQL is great, once you learn it and most ORMs have a query language that means you just have to learn another query language.<p>That said these exist in droves so they must serve a purpose. I can see the case for database portability but I've not worked with a project that needed to shit databases. So are there other cases when an ORM pays off? <comment><USER2> 1\. Good luck finding all places that access some table if you want to change something, especially if table is called users or products.

2\. ORM provide abstraction layer. Otherwise every place needs to know all details of tables it accesses. Migration from db to solr for example is much easier with ORM. Ensuring that you call strip_html or other logic in all relevant places is also easier if you have one entry point you can hook into.

3\. Strings compose poorly. Building complex queries from set of parameters sucks.

4\. Database portability is crucial, even if you will never migrate. It gives you access to far greater mindshare and toolset.

<comment><USER3> _Good luck finding all places that access some table if you want to change something_

Is it really that hard though? All we need to do is have a class for Users (or products or whatever) and put all queries in that class.

ORMs are annoying, they add another layer of complexity and take the joy out of just writing a simple query. Now I have to learn yet another syntax which is totally unnatural. There is no guarantee these ORMs convert to optimized queries, and not all ORMs support all SQL features either.

Just reading a 20 line ORM query with multiple complex joins vs the same thing written in plain SQL hurts the eyes and brain.

<comment><USER2> > All we need to do is have a class for Users (or products or whatever) and > put all queries in that class.

Yes, and this is very close to doing what orms do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ORM's are nice for majority of writes and simple reads based off of an object (a model).

It starts to hinder once there's a requirement for complex reports. I find, that's where the distatse of ORMs in an organization starts.

The other way to deal with majority of these complex reports is to create a separate OLAP table (model) to write/update too, and pull aggregates from there. But that's treading on a thin line of over-engineering.

ORM's are supposed to be used for Objects. If a report isn't a well-defined object/model, then it's going to fight against an ORM.

</comment><comment><USER5> They are useful if you only use them for simple things. Any queries which are non-trivial or aren't cleanly expressed in your object model can lead to absolutely monstrous queries.

I once saw a 1000 line query - which unsurprisingly timed out - generated for getting a single user record from the database! There were several lookups to rate limit failed login attempts etc, however this should be a couple of lines of efficient sql if hand rolled.

I can tolerate something like Rails' ActiveRecord if used with restraint. E.g.

        user.addresses << Address.new(blah)

Is very useful, it doesn't get in the way and does all the boring stuff for me. People just need to learn this isn't the only way to access the database, and you can drop to sql if you need to.

Fortunately I started developing at a time where there were no ORMs, but I fear there is a new generation of devs who see SQL as some esoteric ASM for databases.

Also, I disagree with database portability as an argument for ORMs. All abstractions are leaky, and trying to unify everything will stop you taking full advantage of your data-store of choice

</comment><comment><USER6> ORMs are good for dealing with the domain by representing abstractions in a clear fashion. The assumption is that you usually have highly normalized tables. If you do not have highly normalized tables due to cruft and technical debt, it is usually easier to use plain SQL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps you are suffering from Blub? [http://wiki.c2.com/?BlubParadox](http://wiki.c2.com/?BlubParadox) One reason for wanting to shift databases is testing. The unit tests might be running on the developers own sqlite instances because running them on the company-wide SQL Server installation is prohibitive.

A well-written ORM generally do not introduce much complexity. For example, C# Linq expressions (yes, I know they are used for many other tasks than db access) aren't more complex than the equivalent sql statements.

<comment><USER8> > One reason for wanting to shift databases is testing. The unit tests might > be running on the developers own sqlite instances because running them on > the company-wide SQL Server installation is prohibitive.

That doesn't strike me as a _shift_ , though. Presumably, if sqlite (or, say, its heavier weight, also free, cousin PostgreSQL) can mimic enough functionality of the proprietary company-wide db, why isn't bare SQL enough to access those functions?

Why is SQL not a good enough abstraction? Too difficult to ensure one is writing a portable subset of the language?

> A well-written ORM

This runs into the danger of being a "true Scotsman" type argument if it doesn't apply to at least most popular ORMs (or at least one for each popular language).

> aren't more complex than the equivalent sql statements.

They are, by definition, if one already knows the equivalent SQL statement: one has to learn the additional, separate syntax.

<comment><USER7> > That doesn't strike me as a shift, though. Presumably, if sqlite (or, say, > its heavier weight, also free, cousin PostgreSQL) can mimic enough > functionality of the proprietary company-wide db, why isn't bare SQL enough > to access those functions?

It is, but then developers have to make a conscious effort to stick with a portable subset of SQL. It is much easier to have an ORM do that job for you.

> Too difficult to ensure one is writing a portable subset of the language?

For complex applications, that is very difficult, yes.

> This runs into the danger of being a "true Scotsman" type argument if it > doesn't apply to at least most popular ORMs (or at least one for each > popular language).

Some of the earlier Java EE ORM:s were truly garbage. They included way to much convenient magic. For example, it was often hard to predict whether a someObj.getFoo() call would trigger a database lookup or not. OP might have cut his teeth on one of those and therefore believe they all introduce extra complexity.

> They are, by definition, if one already knows the equivalent SQL statement: > one has to learn the additional, separate syntax.

For example, in C# Linq is already used for functional list processing. Using them for SQL is just a change of backend.

<comment><USER8> > a conscious effort to stick with a portable subset of SQL.

Or perhaps just a validation tool. Since you mentioned testing, it might even be enough to use a stripped-down parser from something like SQLite. Granted, integration could be tough if these don't already exist.

> It is much easier to have an ORM do that job for you.

> For complex applications, that is very difficult, yes.

I was hoping for more than the bare assertion. What makes it so difficult? What makes an application "complex" in this context?

> Some of the earlier Java EE ORM:s were truly garbage.

So modern ones are all (or mostly) well-written?

> For example, in C# Linq is already used for functional list processing. > Using them for SQL is just a change of backend.

This sounds very much like an application developer treating the database as merely a dumb datastore, which I suspect (and I admit I'm speculating here) the OP would consider an anti-pattern.

Perhaps that's the real source of the OP's question, the perspective of someone who's well-versed enough with RDBMSes and their ability to manipulate/process data before it even reaches the application, even with only portable[1] SQL.

Hopefully the OP, or someone who responded with a "me too" to the OP can chime in to support or refute my speculation.

[1] I would expect the intersection of MSSQL, Oracle, and Postgres to be suitably powerful

<comment><AUTHOR> op here. I'm not sure about using the database as a dumb database. The only times I've seen that done the code was so bad that the datbase structure was not really the main concern. I will say that often there are a lot of missing indexes and foreign keys in those situations. I get my understanding of the data model from the database. Foreign keys not only help constrain things to valid data but they provide a nice map to navigate the database with.

> Perhaps that's the real source of the OP's question, the perspective of > someone who's well-versed enough with RDBMSes and their ability to > manipulate/process data before it even reaches the application, even with > only portable[1] SQL.

Yeah you are totally correct here. I find I can significantly reduce the complexity of the code by putting a lot of logic into the SQL. SQL is a very good domain specific language. Additionally the database is very efficient at it's job. I've never been able to replicate this in an ORM.

In ORMs I have found the large number of database queries can make it difficult to move the database to a different machine to the application.

But even this aside I have to learn a lot to use a tool such as hibernate. All that learning and added complexity has to pay for itself somewhere. I'm not sure I've seen that pay off. But I honestly think I'm missing something.

<comment><USER8> > But I honestly think I'm missing something.

Since you confirmed my presumption, I don't think you're missing anything. Put another way, I think you're mostly missing the _perspective_ of the typical ORM proponent.

From that perspective, even if the datastore isn't necessarily _dumb_ , as such, it's more like an afterthought, conceptually subservient/inferior to the application, perhaps even a necessary evil. The job of the ORM is to release the data from that terrible (relational) paradigm and bring it into enlightened (object) world of whatever language the application is written in. This is, of course, a bit of a caricature for effect.

There was a fairly extensive discussion of a database-first paradigm a few weeks ago here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17247088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17247088) [https://blog.jooq.org/2018/06/06/truth-first-or-why-you- shou...](https://blog.jooq.org/2018/06/06/truth-first-or-why-you-should- mostly-implement-database-first-designs/)

It's worth noting that even that author didn't suggest entirely avoiding an ORM, but, rather, using code-generation (in one that offers it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know I personally find them quite useful and time saving, esp Eloquent ORM. I don't think I have written a direct sql query in a very long time unless it's an exceptional case like below.

But the best part is if I ever needed to, the ORM isn't stopping me.. like recently I wanted to `insert ignore` thousands of values in the table using a single sql query. Afaik that isn't supported by Eloquent so that I did using query. Rest the ORM is able to handle almost everything and keeps the code much more readable and easier to write.

</comment><comment><USER10> An ORM is like any other tool, you can either use it properly or misuse it. I've seen terrible hand written SQL code, and I've seen terrible LINQ queries. But with EF for example, once you learn LINQ and it's power, it becomes a very invaluable tool.

Also, the argument of it getting in the way is moot too, as you can still call a stored proc via an ORM as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's been more than a few times where I'm working on a smaller project and start looking at ORM's, the time it would take to learn the ins and outs and getting it set up, and then just write a few SQL statements instead and call it done.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nor me. A possible smart ORM should take the DB as it is and shouldn't generate static code (ok at runtime).

</comment><comment> UK-Al05 Micro orms are the sweet spot for me.</comment>