Europe Complains: SpaceX Rocket Prices Are Too Cheap to Beat - <AUTHOR> https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/06/02/europe-complains-spacex-rocket-prices-are-too-chea.aspx <comment><USER2> That article seems odd...almost like it's trying to "damn with faint praise". It dances around what would seem to be the core point in defense of SpaceX, that they have a lower "government surcharge" than their competitors. If that's true, it makes the claims of subsidy ridiculous, and yet why would this article avoid saying it plainly?</comment>


An Incident Impacting your Account Identity - <AUTHOR> https://privacy.twitter.com/en/blog/2020/an-incident-impacting-your-account-identity <comment><USER2> Discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233074)

<comment><USER3> Hmm. That discussion is better than this one, and probably so is the article, since nearly any third-party article is better than corporate press releases.

Since the community still wants to discuss this, maybe it's best if we merge the threads and re-up that submission. Especially since it got hit by multiple software penalties which normally we would have overridden.

Good catch—thanks!</comment></comment>


3 days left to pledge for Python in Light Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table <comment><USER2> The funding model for this project is silly.

So for $50 you get a license for this product. What does it cost to generate a license key or send someone an executable? Near zero? They keep like $49.98 at this tier.

For $30 you get a t-shirt. Cost to the developer? I don't know. Lets say the t-shirt costs $10. Plus the design time. Plus the prep, making sure people get the right sizes and postage time * (105 + 208). Probably making a loss at this tier.

You then have the licenses. $200 gets you 2 licenses. Wha? $500 gets you 4!? of course the benefit of the $500 is being admitted into the buggy alpha testing phase. Great..

I think they probably would have raised 300k with better tiers.

I also wonder about this Python promise. If I was a Python developer and it failed to hit 300k I might consider withholding my donation. I mean why not? I want Python support. I donate to that end. The project doesn't make it to Python support. I should remove my donation as I am not getting the product I donated to.

This kind of fund raising seems to fly in the face of what Kickstarter is about.

<comment><USER3> As Joel Spolsky points out, you might value a t-shirt at $10 because it costs $10 at The Gap. But it actually costs closer to $1. Giving away free t-shirts is basically a no-brainer in promotional terms.

<comment><USER4> Where are you getting custom tshirts made for $1? Lets also not forget about shipping and handling (time is money).

<comment><USER3> The numbers aren't exact (I doubt Gap sells a t-shirt for less than $30 these days) but the point is: promotional merchandise works because it's actually worth a lot less than you think it is.

One guy I know in catering likes to bet that someone can't eat £1 worth of food. He's paying 2p for an egg and 1p for a rasher of bacon at wholesale rates...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's be real. If Python will be supported at $300K, then Python will be supported at $273K.

<comment><USER3> Oh sure, but the $300k gets it supported out of the gate, not "whenever we get round to it".

I am a Python user who pledged with that in mind. Never got into Clojure (and OCaml or Haskell support I suspect isn't high on the priority list!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who think Light Table won't work for Python?

I mean, look at all those getattr() setattr() stuff. LightTable doesn't stand a chance. Even dealing with some very primitive Django models.

<comment><USER7> I haven't used PyCharm a whole lot, but a friend of mine raves about it constantly. They've apparently added heuristics for Django (and other frameworks), so that it can make assumptions about the layout and behaviour of the code. See a render() call? You can click on the path and have it open the template correctly, even though that normally has to go through the TEMPLATE_LOADERS machinery.

You can get a long way by being slightly smart about things, instead of just relying on a naive static analysis. (I mean "naive" in the sense of ... well, not in the insulting sense :P)

<comment><USER3> We're all computer scientists here, but you're right, using terms like "naive" and "trivial" is often open to misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting: considering the tone of the YC announcement post I had assumed that funding via Kickstarter was put on the back burner. In particular I'm surprised that support for a given language would hinge on a funding goal therein! So a number of questions come to mind: Wasn't Chris offering to return Kickstarter donations? What will happen if some people take him up on that offer after the funding period has closed? Perhaps Python support should be based off a different metric now that Chris is guaranteed funding via YC?

<comment><USER9> If I recall correctly, when Light Table was accepted into YC, Chris sent out an e-mail saying that Light Table was now guaranteed to happen and that if the only reason you donated was to make sure the project went through, you can feel free to retract the pledge (no money is withdrawn until the actual end date).

He also mentioned that with YC backing Python support was likely to happen sooner or later, but the $300k mark still puts Python in the "sooner" bucket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> By reading the Kickstarters comments I sense that the most of money came from Python supporters. It would really suck if it falls short by 10K.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like a lot of Chris's projects, and clearly the community loves this one, but I don't yet understand whether this is open-source? I'm not sure that the language in the FAQ really means anything; at worst, it sounds deceptive.

I'm fundamentally very skeptical of an editor which I don't know that I'll be able to look inside of, hack on, extend, or fix. Given how the editor is at the center of most everything I do on a computer, all those pay-software fears are magnified for me.

Obviously 50,000,000 TextMate fans can't be wrong about paying for an editor, either, but this is a project I don't know that I can support.

</comment><comment><USER12> Given all the demand for python support in Light table, I wouldn't be surprised if some else is already working on it.

<comment><USER13> At least the latest demos posted include some Python examples, like: [http://www.chris-granger.com/images/lightable/flask- routes.p...](http://www.chris-granger.com/images/lightable/flask-routes.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are their goals still the same considering that they have been accepted into YC?

That is, are they still looking for 300k in Kickstarter funds before supporting Python etc?

<comment><USER15> On a previous post made after getting into YC (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992581>) they said:

>We're sticking with our goal on Kickstarter - if we hit 300k we'll definitely do it. There's a decent chance we will either way though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really don't like the way the funding model has gone for this project. It started simply enough, but now I really have to keep up on news to figure out what the state of play is. What next, $400k for Ruby support?

<comment><USER17> What smells bad to me is the ever increasing hype and pricetag around the thus vaporware product that is really just a bag of features that should be added to a strong and stable IDE like Eclipse with PyDev/JDT/etc. People are getting so excited by the iPhoto-pretty screenshots, and forgetting the dozens of other features they benefit from in an IDE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you don't support languages that people actually use, you're going to run out of money as they won't give a shit about your little toy IDE.

What's going to be the $400K mark?

Brainfuck?

</comment><comment><USER19> _"... While I can put together a prototype on my own, I certainly can't build an entire IDE in any reasonable amount of time by myself. The more money we get, the larger the team I can put together to turn this thing into a reality. ..."_

The lack of money didn't stop the Linux kernel or GNU.

<comment><USER20> Are you seriously saying that Linux would be where it is now, or even be a usable OS at all, if Linus hadn't been paid to work on it for the last 15+ years, and if there had been no money from RedHat, IBM, Google and all the other companies that have contributed over the years? Please. If there hadn't, it would be like HURD - properly flat-lined for all practical intents and purposes.</comment></comment>


When Sharing Is Not Caring: Over 1.5 Bn Files Exposed Through Misconfigurations - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/when-sharing-is-not-caring-over-1-5-billion-files-exposed-through-misconfigured-services/ <comment><USER2> All of my CentOS rsync mirrors are public on purpose. Are those files being counted too?</comment>


Hash Array Mapped Tries (HAMT) to the Rescue - <AUTHOR> https://adlrocha.substack.com/p/adlrocha-hash-array-mapped-tries <comment><USER2> Apart from the Steindorfer and Vinju paper [0], does anybody have any resources for implementing the CHAMP variant of HAMT tries?

Better yet, has anybody here implemented one before, and might I pick your brain?

[0] [https://michael.steindorfer.name/publications/oopsla15.pdf](https://michael.steindorfer.name/publications/oopsla15.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I have done more than enough work on the CHAMP encoded hashmap in Scala 2.13 to call myself a co-author

<comment><USER2> As I mentioned in another comment, I posted my parent comment opportunistically, so I have yet to distill my reading into specific, well- formed questions.

Is there any way I can message you when I get around to doing so? I'd really appreciate a super-quick whiteboard session, if you have the time.

<comment><USER3> Sure, my email is joshlemer [at] gmail [dot] com

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I've sent you an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain the reasoning for using a HAMT here? I have played around with hashtables quite a bit, but altough HAMT's are cool and a lot more memory efficient, they are likely not faster and will at some point suffer from more severe memory fragmentation than hashtables.

Is the concern speed or memory? Because speed would kind of seem strange, since after changing to the new architecture, they should see a strong decrease in messages being exchanged anyways, right?

Or are go's maps inefficient? Genuinely curious

<comment><USER5> HAMT is excellent for a persistent dictionary. Not persistent as in write-to- disk, but as in immutable-yet-small.

<comment><USER6> Btw, can it be used to build a persistent dictionary that keeps the key in insertion-order?

<comment><USER7> Sure. Map the HAMT to an index into a persistent vector or something e.g. Scala's VectorMap and TreeSeqMap. You could also reuse the old "linked list map" idea, but go through the keys every time e.g. whenever you add a value to the map, add a triple of `(Some(last_key), value, None)` and update the last keys value such that the third item becomes the key of the new item.

<comment><USER6> >Sure. Map the HAMT to an index into a persistent vector or something e.g. Scala's VectorMap and TreeSeqMap

I do not have a persistent vector, only a HAMT.

Perhaps the HAMT becomes a standard trie if one sets hashcode(i) = i, and then it can be enumerated in ascending key order?

But the double-lookup in two data structures is unnecessary slow. The first HAMT could store (Index, Value) pairs and only use the "vector" for enumeration.

But I was hoping for a single data structure that can do lookups and ordered enumerations.

>. You could also reuse the old "linked list map" idea, but go through the keys every time e.g. whenever you add a value to the map, add a triple of `(Some(last_key), value, None)` and update the last keys value such that the third item becomes the key of the new item.

I have been using a linked list as sole storage so far. The lookup was O(n), which was fast enough with my data, but I wanted to improve it to be more scalable.

But enumerating the list is in reverse, is it not? Going from the newest key to the oldest key. I want it to go from the oldest to the newest key.

In any case it should be better to store pointers to HAMT nodes rather than keys.

<comment><USER7> > I do not have a persistent vector, only a HAMT.

Why not get a persistent vector?

> But the double-lookup in two data structures is unnecessary slow.

Not necessarily. You'd have 2xlog(n) and because you wouldn't be storing the data in the HAMT it could be denser / wider and thus better fit in cache. At least that's what happened with Raymond Hettinger's (non-persistent) naturally ordered dict: rather than a sparse array of buckets, the hashmap is a sparse array of indices and a dense array of buckets leading to much better memory density (even more so with an adaptive sparse array where the stored indices can be u8, u16 or usize depending on the number of items: most maps will only need a sparse array of u8 leading to even better memory behaviour for the most problematic part).

> But enumerating the list is in reverse, is it not? Going from the newest key > to the oldest key. I want it to go from the oldest to the newest key.

Not if you have a doubly linked list, but that increases your costs in storage and update complexity

> In any case it should be better to store pointers to HAMT nodes rather than > keys.

If you're implementing the entire datastructure then yes, I was rather assuming you were on the outside with an existing HAMT.

<comment><USER6> >Why not get a persistent vector?

I have not read about them. Might take a while to implement.

I use Pascal. But it is hard to find Pascal libraries for anything. Either they do not exist at all or have not been maintained for over a decade

So, if I want to use a data structure, I usually need to implement it myself

>Not necessarily. You'd have 2xlog(n) and because you wouldn't be storing the data in the HAMT it could be denser / wider and thus better fit in cache.

If I reuse the HAMT as persistent vector, it is not so good. There is no grouping, each node is allocated separately and could be anywhere in memory. One lookup could be five cache misses.

>At least that's what happened with Raymond Hettinger's (non-persistent) naturally ordered dict: rather than a sparse array of buckets, the hashmap is a sparse array of indices and a dense array of buckets leading to much better memory density (even more so with an adaptive sparse array where the stored indices can be u8, u16 or usize depending on the number of items: most maps will only need a sparse array of u8 leading to even better memory behaviour for the most problematic part).

I use such a hashmap, too, for the insertion order. (there are Pascal libraries with hashmaps, but even then I needed some weeks to customize it). But all indices there are 32-bit. Perhaps I will add the adaptiveness to it. 16-bit at least. 8-bit seems hardly worth it, at most it can save 256 bytes

>> But enumerating the list is in reverse, is it not? Going from the newest key to the oldest key. I want it to go from the oldest to the newest key.

>Not if you have a doubly linked list, but that increases your costs in storage and update complexity

But a doubly linked list would not be persistent.

Arbitrary many new nodes could point to one old node, but the old node can only point to one of them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see in this description any explanation of how to handle hash collisions - ie, when two keys map to the same hash value. Do you iterate through an infinite series of secondary hash functions when you run out of distinguishing bits? Or do you bottom out at a table that you linearly scan?

Overall, it seems like the algorithm is "maintain a trie on the hash values, using an auxiliary bitmap and popcnt to determine the index within any trie node." Does that miss anything?</comment>


An open source, wiki built on Node.js, Git and Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.js.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> This looks like the best JavaScript and node.js based Wiki platform I've seen to date.</comment>


New home for the [in]famous filesystem BTRFS - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/blogs/gsoc-2018-final-report <comment><USER2> > New home for the [in]famous filesystem BTRFS

Submitter changed the title to mock BTRFS. Which is funny, since APFS is probably at least as bad, and likely much worse[1], yet given how many Apple fanboys there are here, I doubt similar mocking of it would be tolerated.

[1] [https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data- on-a...](https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data-on-apfs- formatted-disk-images)

<comment><AUTHOR> RedHat discontinued BTRFS for a number of reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty misleading title. The article is a GSoC-report about adding BTRFS-support to ReactOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTRFS will be default FS in ReactOS

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious as to why they don't use something like NTFS-3G. I know it's a FUSE FS, but it's still pretty fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a FYI: SUSE is still developing and using btrfs, both in openSUSE and in the enterprise edition.

</comment><comment><USER6> Honest question: why choose btrfs over other filesystem?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you mean "user" or "reactOS devs".

If the latter, I can't be sure (besides the fact it's modern and has plenty of features), but as a user, I chose btrfs for its "subvolumes".

With subvolumes, you can selectively mount subdirectories in the partition without an explicit "bind" mount.

For example, I have 3 linux installs on subvolumes /rootfsUbuntu1804 /rootfsArch /rootfsFedora27. They all share the whole partition so I wont regret giving one too much space that it will never use, or worry about resizing partitions to create a new one. The fstab of any looks something like:

        UUID=...  /  btrfs subvol=rootfsUbuntu1804,compress 0 0

(the "compress" option there is also neat.) If using as /, you must add rootflags=subvol=rootfsUbuntu1804 to your boot options.

I also have my home directory and other "shared filesystem" things (like docker) as subvolumes, each being shared to reduce redundancy. The only downside is graphical file managers see each mount as a "device" so I have a lot of noise in the sidebar of Dolphin or Nautilus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> awesome!</comment>


5 Things to Know Before Dating a Tech Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://tech.li/2011/11/5-things-to-know-before-dating-a-tech-entrepreneur/

<comment><USER2> It's tough trying to work out the work/life balance as an entrepreneur. The same sentiments about business failure apply to a lot of entrepreneur relationships... failure always sucks--don't ever forget it.

</comment><comment><USER3> More like 5 reasons NOT to date an entrepreneur

<comment><USER4> My ex-girlfriend would agree. Sadly</comment></comment>


25 Companies That Are Changing the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/audacious-companies/25-small-companies-changing-world-2014.html

<comment><USER2> >> _such companies are defined as bold, courageous, even heroic_

Upworthy? EventBrite?

That must be a joke.

No Palantir, no One Acre Fund, no TransferWise...</comment>


The fall of Jersey: how a tax haven goes bust - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/08/fall-of-jersey-how-tax-haven-goes-bust <comment><USER3> _In a new code of conduct, the EU insisted that all members (as well as those jurisdictions that wanted equal access to its market, such as Jersey) tax local and non-local companies the same._

This was the turning point for Jersey, in case you missed it in a fairly long piece.

I wonder why Jersey didn't simply raise the corporate tax rate to 1%, and lower its citizens taxes to 1%. They still would have come in far below most of the rest of the world in corporate tax rates[1], but would have wildly increased their revenues.

As it happens, they ended up losing their financial industry anyhow.

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

<comment><USER4> This is why Cameron wants to have some "red lines" with the EU. He's terrified they are going to strangle The City.

<comment><USER5> For those of us that are unfamiliar with the special situation with The City, can you perhaps elaborate a bit? I'm curious to learn more about what you're alluding to.

<comment><USER6> CGP Grey does a really good job giving an overview of the history of The City of London.

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

Along with another video about the governing structure of The City of London.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bunch of separate items:

\- What about Guernsey? Are they screwed as well? How can you write an article about one half of a pair of twins without mentioning the other half? A fund I used to work for had a guy sitting there pretending to make trading decisions, precisely for the tax advantage.

\- Lived on Jersey for a bit. It was like a little piece of Surrey, on an island. Lots of expensive cars. Nice country pubs, good views in places. Roads are too narrow. A bit like an early version of GTA though: although there are variations, you quickly discover how small it is.

\- As a finance guy I never realised how bad the Dutch disease got on the island. I did realise there were an unusual number of lawyers and accountants. But I never thought it was as bad as it turns out.

<comment><USER8> Most EU venture capital funds structure holdings through Jersey or Guernsey SPVs as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's always frustrated me that Jersey/Guernsey/Isle of Man get away with reaping the benefits of being part of the UK (EU and EEC membership) whilst not actually being part of the UK, undermining our tax system, generally gaining from tax avoidance and evasion on the mainland.

These territories need to be given an ultimatum become part of the UK and implement UK tax laws or remain independent and be 100% responsible for their own affairs.

Edit: Amazon and Play.com used to operate out of Jersey to avoid VAT being charged on orders [1].

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT- free_imports_from_the_Chan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT- free_imports_from_the_Channel_Islands#United_Kingdom_2)

<comment><USER10> The IoM isn't part of the EU or the UK. As a Manxman living in Europe, I'm fortunate that my mother's side of the family is English or I'd have more trouble with work permits and whatnot. I haven't been able to exchange my Manx driving licence for a Spanish one, for example, since it isn't recognised.

As for taxes, people on Mann get screwed over on prices - everything from groceries to petrol is more expensive than the north of England since it has to be shipped in. The tax breaks for residents are less than for corporations too, without the corporate breaks I think there would be less work there in general. Might get rid of the southern English bankers that all moved there in the 2000s if they removed so many incentives so it wouldn't be a complete loss ;-)

<comment><USER11> So what is the IoM status? Is it a separate country?

Wikipedia says its a Crown dependency - how is that different than being part of the UK?

I would love to hear more -- because how can IoM avoid Jersey's fate?

<comment><USER12> This video (5m long) might explain a few things

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. OMG. What a mess.

It looks like a system of whatever works and not upsetting an apple cart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I grew up in Jersey, and for sure there's a lot that I don't like about the place.

Still I found this article very poorly-written, poorly-researched, sensational, weighed down by anecdotes, cliches and an exhausting "Poor UK, evil Jersey" pattern. It gets worse as the piece goes on, increasingly opinionated and accusatory.

I am not an expert, but I sense that very many factors went into creating the situation there, many of them outside forces, and it's not possible or helpful to caricature an entire island in this way to look for a simple cause and effect relationship.

<comment><USER14> You were probably already better informed on Jersey than most of us were before reading the article. There may have been significant details left out, but as a broad brush I felt the article probably did a good job of presenting a general picture of the island's economy.

Perhaps there are some important specifics that you would like to contribute, rather than just criticising the article's tone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never understood why countries do not impose huge taxes on money moving in and out of tax havens. I guess there is always another route you can take to disguise the origin.

<comment><USER16> Why? The money doesn't belong to the government. The problem is that taxes are too high. Lower taxes and there's no need for havens.

<comment><USER17> You park your capital somewhere because you like the commercial, legal and financial infrastructure. Insofar as your financial mass distorts economic spacetime for everyone int eh vicinity, it's not unreasonable that you will be asked to pay some of the costs of said distortion. If you stay in a hotel that's only half-full and make your bed before you check out, would you expect your stay to be free? Probably not.

I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but your repeated claims that taxes are too high presupposes some objectively correct level of taxation. In the real world, what happens is that tiny poor jurisdictions set tax rates that would be economically unsustainable but for the prospect of attracting some huge international firm whose revenues are so big that even a tiny percentage of them is a lot of money for the poor jurisdiction, and the extra administrative costs of domiciling the corporation there are less than the difference between the unusually low tax rate and that of a more economically logical place for the headquarters, based on actual factors of production.

Why should taxes come down to the level of whatever the poorest country is willing to charge in order to attract itinerant capital? Why not (as we are sort-of in the process of doing) just deny market access to firms that don't want to pay prevailing rates?

It's not that I hate capital as such, but as an individual I have to pay some sort of taxes and my international economic movements are somewhat restricted, because of the basic fact that people can impose costs on an economy as well as contribute to it. I'm not enthused about paying taxes on the income I receive in return for my work product, but I recognize that there's a _quid pro quo_ here as I prefer to live in a civilized society and transact business using money rather than live in a cave and subsist on fish or something. I don't care for the idea that having a large sum of capital should exempt one from these rules, in addition to the obvious economic advantages that said capital provides (and which I slightly envy but do not resent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is Jersey really powerful enough to create a tax haven? Or is it that powerful people in foreign governments purposefully let Jersey exist so that they can benefit from its existence?

Basically, what I'm questioning is whether the tax haven is Jersey's doing at all. Of course they are complicit but I don't think that it's up to them to decide to be a tax haven.

<comment><USER19> Jersey is effectively owned by the Queen, albeit rather indirectly through her role as Duke (sic) of Normandy.

In practice the day to day running of the Channel Islands is left to what's called the Privy Council, but the Queen gets final say.

Parliament isn't involved.

If the Queen objected strenuously to Jersey's role as a tax haven, it would never have become one.

Jersey is one of those edge cases where the feudal nature of the British establishment becomes obvious. Parliament isn't quite only for show, but a lot of wheeling, dealing, and money hiding goes on behind the scenes. Neither the British parliament, nor City regulators, nor the EU have much oversight.

<comment><USER11> So does this mean the Queen is still the absolute ruler of some random bits of real estate?

I always thought that the Queen was reduced to a figurehead status.

<comment><USER20> UK constitutional affairs are crazy; believe me, I've looked at them at several times. It's a rabbit hole of ad-hoc agreements for little bits of land here and there, acquired or controlled at various points in time by feudal or commercial means, and just maintained as they were or with minimal harmonization. It's the same at all levels, from the smallest of towns to the humongous London (the City or the Metropolitan Authority? it's all a mess...) to Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories, etc etc.

You then couple this legal patchwork with Common Law and a formalized-but-not- quite-fully-consistent parliamentary process, evolved day-by-day over several hundred years, and you can understand how very few people at any given time actually know who really _should_ be in charge of this or that. What matters is that the right someone should be considered in charge at the right time on the right matter, correctness be damned. It's an extremely pragmatic stance on Power: it decouples highfalutin declarations of what Power is and where it comes from, in favour of simply making sure that Power exists and can be exercised for everyday purposes by trusted insiders without facing a riot.

The current system has been running continuously for more than 300 years (and it's not incredibly different from the one it replaced, which was almost 600 years old at the time). Imagine maintaining a custom backend for 300 years, piling hack over hack because you're never allowed to rewrite it all from scratch. That's what the British system basically is.

But going back to your question: of course the Queen is a figurehead, but it's _because she decides to be so_ , as British monarchs have done since the Glorious Revolution. In theory, she (or her heirs) could, at any time, try to force the constitutional compromise, reasserting everyday powers that today are in Parliament hands (the list grows longer every year, as it often happens with elderly rulers)... but there is really no reason for her to do so: she is well looked after, paid handsomely to basically be a 365/24/7 global PR representative for her country, and allowed to own a large amount of wealth and property, some of which she (or rather her heirs) can directly manage and profit from (Duchy of Cornwall etc). Why would you give up all that and precipitate a disastrous conflict and potentially a civil war? For some misplaced pride of power, at 89, after having seen through (and won) the Cold War?

So the powers stay there, she just doesn't use them (and would likely be rebuffed if she tried too hard to); she _exercises influence_ were strictly necessary and that's enough to keep everyone happy. It's a bit like owning nuclear weapons without ever using them.

This whole setup is also the reason some people still worry about the return of "activist" monarchs. HRH the Prince of Wales at various points tried to wield his unwritten power a bit... ungraciously, stoking these fears, but he seems to have recently accepted that his reign will be too short to really worry about, so we should be ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The UK controls what Jersey does and lets it do it. They have loads of other tax havens too. Let's hope the rich get what's coming to them and the people of the UK can eventually be free of the cancer that is The City.

People all over the world would be better off if The City is crushed.

<comment><USER21> And what is coming to the wealth creators? I guess you mean the 1% who contribute 30% of income tax in the UK for instance. Just wondering how you're going to make up the deficit (or what cuts you'll make) when they 'get what's coming to them' as you so crudely put it.

<comment><USER22> And here I thought that people actually building widgets in factories are wealth creators... As opposed to having your name on the deed to the factory.

<comment><USER23> Not really, no. Without someone willing to risk money creating the factory those people would be poking the ground with sharp sticks.

<comment><USER22> Without labour working in those factories, producing goods, those deeds are about as valuable as toilet paper.

You're confusing creating value with economic velocity. Mere ownership cannot create value. Mere ownership can change the rate at which money circulates in the economy.

<comment><USER23> You are completely ignoring the value of risk. Labor is just one input among many to widget making. Without somebody willing to take the risk, to sink money he has into the widget building business, it just doesn't happen.

This is why capitalism works far better than the alternatives.

<comment><USER22> So, before capitalism, people didn't build widgets?

My point is that labour does not need capital to produce value (Although access to capital can increase the amount of value labour can produce.) Capital without labour is, quite obviously a lame duck.

Crediting the super-rich (A very few exceptions aside) for creating wealth is nonsense. In the best case, the people they employ created their wealth - <USER2> people just ended up keeping less/spending more of it. In the worst case, collecting rents created their wealth.

<comment><USER23> >So, before capitalism, people didn't build widgets?

There was no "before capitalism".

>My point is that labour does not need capital to produce value (Although access to capital can increase the amount of value labour can produce.) Capital without labour is, quite obviously a lame duck.

Labor without capital is the same duck. Creating a business is risky, and someone has to be on the hook for that risk.

>Crediting the super-rich (A very few exceptions aside) for creating wealth is nonsense.

The super-rich are a sideshow. Most "capitalists" out there are people like you and me putting money into their 401(k) every paycheck.

<comment><USER24> How do you define capitalism? There are places that have _money_ but lack sufficient property rights to support a system of capitalism.

i.e. "it's my land because I live here and work on it" vs "it's my land because I own a title deed as recognised by some authority".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of havens, does Jersey have enough independence to become a data haven?

<comment><USER20> Yes, but it's still ultimately under direct control of UK forces. If GCHQ wanted to tap your cables, they would do so in the same way as in Britain.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that wasn't possible.

<comment><USER20> Jersey is under UK military control, it even has a formal Territorial Army regiment, so it's certainly possible in factual terms.

In legal terms I honestly don't know, but after Snowden I thought we agreed that the law is no obstacle for these people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a Jersey in England?

fuhgeddaboudit!

<comment><USER27> This may shock you, but we also have a York and a Hampshire.

<comment><USER23> You should have named them "Old York" and "Old Hampshire". This way is confusing.

"Olde" would be acceptable, too.

<comment><USER28> I would like to renew my periodic proposal to replace all names with UUIDs. For example, the York in England could be renamed to E4D24E55-D779-402A-90D4-9EBE41FB2AA4. England itself could become 62F2B833-2462-4F64-A071-2887FF46105A. The "New" York in the colonies could be renamed to D6EE5383-2D68-4CC2-BCED-CDBB2B7661E0. This would eliminate all confusion.

<comment><USER23> We'll have to think up a new tune for Kandler and Ebb's classic _D6EE5383-2D68-4CC2-BCED-CDBB2B7661E0, D6EE5383-2D68-4CC2-BCED-CDBB2B7661E0_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So not collecting taxes didn't generate enough revenue to keep things in the black?</comment>


Functional Languages Discussion by Joe, Odersky & Don Syme  - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/functional-langs

<comment><USER2> I feel a bit for Martin as a non-native English speaker. It can be very easy for the native speakers to dominate a discussion unintentionally (and even when trying not to).

The impression Erlang gives me is one of being almost an anti-language, emphasising the system at large and discouraging over sophistication in the details. I think the point Joe Armstrong makes about hardware interoperability is telling. His vision of software is one much closer to hardware and the networking. Though I think the fact that there is an awful lot of unnecessary complexity in software it does not mean that sophistication and complexity is not sometimes necessary. Not that he ever voiced that, just sometimes in the process of advocating something pluralism can get left out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am amazed that there would still be discussions about what OOP is or is not.

The only agreement seems to be around "polymorphing" -- the ability to define a behaviour that works consistently over many "things" that share some similarities. Good.

But the root of evil comes back to very initial definition of what an object is:

An "object" is something very concrete, it is not a mere "thing", it has: \- an identity \- a state \- a behaviour

Is a "hello" an object? No, no more than 9 or any number is an object, because these beasts are "values".

However, the way a string is implemented is probably an object at some level (this is not true of a number, CPUs can deal with them directly). But this is an implementation detail.

Unfortunately the essential difference between what is a Value and what is an Object is poorly promoted/teached. But this is improving thanks to functional languages.

In a perfect world there would be "things", that are either "values" or "objects". In the imperfect world of us we have "objects", that are more or less mutable.

<comment><USER4> > An "object" is something very concrete, it is not a mere "thing", it has: - > an identity - a state - a behaviour. Is a "hello" an object? No, no more > than 9 or any number is an object, because these beasts are "values".

This seems to be strongly debated (still). Languages like Ruby (and Smalltalk) treat numbers as objects. You can argue that numbers are really objects with immutable state for example.

This is not to say that I disagree with what you are saying. But the topic itself is still debated (as is a lot of stuff about the theory and basics of object systems)

<comment><USER5> Indeed. The meaning of "object" has always been pretty fuzzy in CS. When you compile C code, you get .o ("object") files. It's like "thingamajig".

<comment><USER3> That's because the source is the plan to build a table, whereas the .o file is the table itself. Tables are objects, plans to build tables are ideas.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but the connection between that and "object" in the OOP sense is tenuous. For all it matters, the .o file could contain "chunks".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting and wide ranging discussion. Lots of ideas in there too:

> Joe Armstrong: What I'd like to see and we don't do is integrate the > language within the revision control system because if you rename a > variable, and you submit it to the revision control system and say "This is > a completely different version of a completely different program but you > just rely on the variable because there is no semantics at all just to make > it a little bit more readable if you correct a spelling mistake in a > comment." The revision control system is a sort of generic and applied to > any programming language and that's really stupid. They need to be much more > smart to check what really happening, not this superficial stuff.

> Don Syme: So we'll have Erlang RCS, Erlang specialized?

Early on, Joe Armstrong talks about Erlang being "object oriented". I don't really agree though, because by the time you actually get processes and things put together - especially with OTP - you have a lot of other stuff running underneath, so you're not just operating at a 'pure' level of sending messages back and forth. And there's lots of boilerplate too. However, it's still a good way of thinking about Erlang from an architectural point of view.</comment>


VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/10/18/vc-seed-funding-is-dead-long-live-vc-seed-funding/?awesm=bothsid.es_26&utm_medium=bothsid.es-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=backtype-tweetcount

<comment><AUTHOR> Some bits that caught my attention:

 _"... What exactly is seed funding anymore? Entrepreneurs want less cash because they want to control dilution and preserve exit options at lower prices ..."_

 _"... Are there inherent risks in taking angel money? If you have a VC that's bought into you and your business then it's far easier to put together a bridge round with a VC if you need that $1-2 million to get to your next milestone. ..."_

 _"... But unless you get top-tier angels who have deep pockets don't assume that angels are necessarily a better option than VCs. ..."_

 _"... When we funded our two seed deals we used the Y Combinator Open Source Term Sheet and were highly entrepreneur friendly. ..."_

Reads like a pitch for potential YC startups.</comment>


An app that can replace the pill - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/13/this-app-can-replace-the-pill---with-no-side-effects/ <comment><USER2> Well, nothing new here. It's a method known for quite a long time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_roulette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_roulette)

Next, we can cure cancer with a single app instead of chemotherapy!</comment>


GeForce GTX 980 Comes to Notebooks - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/09/22/notebooks/ <comment> some-guy While this may be a great engineering feat, I would rather see mass-market external GPU enclosures become the norm once/if Thunderbolt 3 becomes mainstream.

It would be really nice for instance dual-boot a Macbook Pro for work during the day, then come home and plug in an external GPU for gaming.

<comment><USER3> Some of us have been waiting for external GPUs for nearly a decade. I'm not sure a critical mass of demand exists for this type of interface.

Value gamers stick to mainstream ATX PCs, and often do their own work, as components can be much cheaper and the labor is free (supplemented by a few internet build guides).

High-end gamers often do their own work so they can ensure quality throughout the build and verify every component. Those that don't usually only buy completed systems, and replace these very frequently.

Almost all use cases where an external card device would be useful are already served by having a desktop instead of a laptop, where the discrete GPU is almost external, an ever-increasing stack of chips, fans, and radiators sticking out of a motherboard slot.

<comment><USER4> Note that Intel is explicitly supporting external GPUs this time with Thunderbolt 3. I don't think that was the case in previous versions. It sounds more likely to happen this cycle, though as you point out it's a small market, so I don't expect it to be cheap.

[http://liliputing.com/2015/08/intel-says- thunderbolt-3-will-...](http://liliputing.com/2015/08/intel-says- thunderbolt-3-will-bring-external-graphics-to-laptops.html)

[http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton- shilov...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/msi- preps-external-graphics-solutions-with-thunderbolt-3-interface/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a limitation on the width of the bus though. I recall reading this when it first was announced and it is referenced in the linked article that you reference [1]: 40Gb/s of bandwidth – or about 5GB/s – provided by Thunderbolt 3 is tremendously lower than 15.75GB/s offered by a fully-fledged PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot.

[1] [http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton- shilov...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/msi- preps-external-graphics-solutions-with-thunderbolt-3-interface/)

<comment><USER5> Single GPU setups show no performance degradation at 2.0 x16 and some/slight degradation at 2.0 x8.,

5GB/s should do just fine.

[https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI- Expre...](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI- Express_Scaling/21.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to see

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this mean that the Oculus Rift can now run on notebooks? that's a pretty big deal and means they might sell a lot of these!

[1] Oculus Rift specs [http://www.slashgear.com/final-oculus-rift-specs- revealed-fo...](http://www.slashgear.com/final-oculus-rift-specs-revealed- for-2016-consumer-model-11387922/)

[2] GeForce GTX 980 outperforms GTX 970: [http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce- GTX-980-vs-GeForce-GTX-970](http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-980-vs- GeForce-GTX-970)

<comment><USER7> "The new GTX 980 notebook offers a great portable option for the Oculus #Rift. We're excited to see high-performance notebooks powering #VR!"

[https://twitter.com/oculus/status/646348068594413568](https://twitter.com/oculus/status/646348068594413568)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This thing guzzles up to 300 watts under load. There is _no way_ this chip is not going to be throttled to death in a laptop form factor, unless the laptop itself makes more fan speed than a 747. I personally own a Gigabyte Brix Pro i7 and it gets hot and throttled as soon as you load the 8 cores, and this is a 65 watt TDP. Sure, this monster-chip-in-a-notebook pitch sounds great in the press release. It's not going to be a good piece of engineering.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce- gtx-980-re...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce- gtx-980-review/21)

<comment><USER9> The 9xx series has pretty good power management. In practice even at 4k resolutions a 980 or 980ti will spend a lot of time running below 100% TDP.

Also, those measurements in the anandtech article are _total system power_ , not GPU power, which is why the idle measurement is in the 70w range. (Modern GPUs generally do not pull down 70w at idle.)

One of the upsides to having a really high-spec GPU in a laptop is that as long as the power management is done properly, it can burst up to full speed to get you low latency for rendering and then drop back down to idle. In sustained rendering scenarios (like games) it may end up thermal/acoustic/power throttled, but that happens on desktops anyway - <USER2> will just throttle quicker and scale down a bit more.

<comment><USER8> Point taken on the total system power, but it's still 165 watt TDP. Agreed for "burst" workflows it'll be fine. But how many people have "burst" workflows that need a _mobile_ 980? This thing is for gamers and they'll be maxing it for hours at a time, or (I personally) would be maxing it for GPU compute. I just think it's being done for publicity and that this is not really a serious use case for a chip like this. Indeed this whole "my chip number is bigger than yours" game is not seeing increases in real life performance because of aggressive throttling. I'm seeing lower-power chips beating throttled higher- power chips in small form factor computers.

You know how merciless gamers can be. Nvidia better be sure that the systems sporting this chip can achieve 980-style expectations, because otherwise these guys will light up the forums with criticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I'd like to see is a return to single slot video cards for desktop PCs, which should be entirely possible if they're cramming a 980 into a laptop. The monstrosities that AMD and Nvidia keep cranking out every year are just absurd at this point, especially if you care about form factor or power consumption.

<comment><USER11> You can find single-slot cards on the market.

<comment><USER12> Hardly. Mostly they're low-spec professional cards.

No single slot cooler will handle a 250 watt chip without making a racket.

<comment><AUTHOR> AMD Radeon R9 Nano was specifically designed for this [1]

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9621/the-amd-radeon-r9-nano- re...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9621/the-amd-radeon-r9-nano-review)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any word on what the power consumption is? This seems like a great way to get a painfully hot laptop with awful battery life.

</comment><comment> matthew-wegner There are a few comments on external GPUs/form factor/heat here. The thing is, this laptop is nowhere near a laptop form factor: [https://cdn2.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/zQi8qkv6X9tGfH4lsA6QsZ8lU5U...](https://cdn2.vox- cdn.com/thumbor/zQi8qkv6X9tGfH4lsA6QsZ8lU5U=/1020x0/cdn0.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4022492/asusgx700handson1_1020.0.jpg)

From: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9251275/asus-gx700-water- co...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9251275/asus-gx700-water-cooled- gaming-laptop-ifa-2015-video)

(It's basically an external enclosure bolted on to a laptop...)

</comment><comment><USER14> I spoke with a laptop reseller a few minutes ago and according to him, the 980 will only fit in laptops thicker than 1" \- so it will not be available in a slimmer, lighter gaming laptops like the MSI Ghost series.

<comment><USER15> Thinnest notebook from GTX 980 launch lineup is Aorus X7 DT:

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce- GTX-98...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-GTX-980-for- notebooks.150756.0.html)

While it's not yet listed on Aorus site, it's quite likely chassis would be same/similar to its older sibling Aorus X7 Pro:

[http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X7%20Pro- SYNC](http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X7%20Pro-SYNC)

This was 2x GTX 970M SLI model, pretty slim at ~23 mm with 3 kg weight.

I wonder though how well cooling will work with GTX 980. All previous Aorus models kinda struggled with cooling, and that was with less powerful GPUs (albeit SLI).

Out of announced notebooks, the least weird ones are MSI GT72 and Clevo P775DM:

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc2/G...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc2/GTX_980_Press_Deck_1442606447_page_022_4.jpg)

Pity they didn't include also 15" sibling of that Clevo chassis (P750DM). That one would be pretty awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> From your reference:

The first notebooks with the GTX 980 GPU will come by the end of this month. [1]

[1]: [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce- GTX-98...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-GTX-980-for- notebooks.150756.0.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like overclockability is the last thing Nvidia should be focusing on for laptops. The trade-off for overclocking is heat generation which is undesirable for laptops by far. These cards generate a lot of heat as is.

<comment><USER17> I don't think people are expecting these to be laptops, exactly. More like very portable "desktops". I know a lot of people in the VR community are going bonkers over this announcement. It's going to make setting up demos a hell of a lot easier. Nvidia's Optimus technology (don't ask me what it was for, I could never keep it straight) was a serious impediment to achieve low tracking latency, to the point of being downright impossible. I even once returned a laptop with a 980M the same day I got it after I found out Optimus basically made it useless to use with my DK2.

I probably won't buy one of these. I'll probably just stuff my desktop into an aluminum case suitcase. But you could pull the battery out and throw it away for all the VR folks care. This will get setup on a table at conferences by a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is great, but I was expecting notebook gaming to go the streaming way. What's stopping game streaming from becoming mainstream? Latency?

<comment><USER19> OnLive tried that. They're gone.

Yes, latency is the biggest problem. The absolute best case scenario is that you have a direct fiber connection to your ISP, which is hosting servers locally. Then it would probably be acceptable.

Realistically, with a standard consumer broadband connection you're adding tens of milliseconds on top of everything else, which completely ruins a lot of action games.

However! If you've got a desktop gaming PC at home, you can now play games from your laptop (or TV) with Steam in-home streaming. They don't even have to be Steam games. Over a wired LAN it's fantastic, and on WiFi it's still pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what the thermal budget looks like. I can't imagine that it can run at full crank for an extended period of time.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. Also, unless they've managed to massively cut down on the power requirements, the 980 would burn through your battery rapidly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> When is this available for purchase?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is AWESOME.</comment>


Users report 'fault' on iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8759590.stm

<comment><USER3> I got mine yesterday and noticed the reception issue while holding the phone from it's sides immediately. I hope it's only a software related issue.

EDIT: I was just on a call, holding the phone from it's sides, and I was stationary in a good reception area. The call hung up. So it's not just the bars showing incorrectly, it's actually losing reception. Btw, it takes approximately 30 seconds of holding it from the sides for the bars to completely go down.

<comment><USER4> Most of the pundits think it's a hardware issue that may result in Apple's first major recall.

<comment><USER5> Do they? I've seen more people saying they expect it's just a software/presentation problem. Not that I think there's any particular reason to expect either group to know what they're talking about.

<comment><USER6> [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/new- iphone-4-anten...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/new- iphone-4-antenna-causing-potential-reception-issues.ars)

Ars Technica usually know what they're talking about. I tend to trust them

<comment><USER7> I worry about the conditions apparently needed to reproduce this (and the fact that I still can't reproduce it). Even Ars' explanation includes "consciously" holding the phone in a different way than you naturally would and licking your hands before doing so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mr. Jobs' take? "Just don't hold it that way."

[http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/24/double-stevemails-on- iphone-4...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/24/double-stevemails-on- iphone-4-reception-just-dont-hold-it-tha/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried this, and I could only make it work when the phone was without a case. When I touched the metal directly I could make the signal go from 5 bars to 2 bars. With the case on I could not make it change at all.

EDIT: this was holding it with my left hand, I did not try it right handed.

<comment><USER10> Yes but this mean you MUST buy a case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got my phone today and i tried reproducing the network problem in various ways but luckily, the network holds up for me.

I suspect a bad batch of phones which were manufactured with defects ..

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I am currently streaming Pandora, holding the phone with my left hand cradling the bottom, while replying to this post, all on 3G. I haven't been able to get the bars to drop either...

<comment><USER3> Cradling from the bottom isn't the problem. Holding it from the sides without touching the bottom, and without a case, is the problem. Remember that the antenna is the metal on the sides.

<comment><USER11> The problems seem to arise from covering the seams so as to say where the frame pieces are connected. If the seam is not covered or touched by hand, there should be no drop in the network. Seems like the antenna's shorting out when the seam is covered by hand.

A small piece of scotch tape should do the job as far as avoiding this problem goes until one can get hold of a cover

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fault? No-button disconnect is totally a feature.

<comment><USER14> iRecall: it's like recalls by other companies but ours is shiny and you'll love it! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Happens to me but only in areas with a weak signal (NYC).

In strong signal I never lose a bar. At home, which is usually a dead zone - <USER2> was surprised to see so many bars with the new phone. But if I do cradle it with my left hand, the bars disappear completely within a few minutes.

But I cannot replicate it reliably elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> If I remember my RF classes, it will happen when there is one antenna in the region the phone is. If there are more antennas in different directions, roughly with the same power, the effect should be much less pronounced.

Radio is... complicated.

<comment><USER8> If I remember my networking classes, a GSM device is normally connected to a single BTS (tower) at a time. (Hand-overs between two towers are the major exception, and they're very brief.)

<comment><USER16> If your hand blocks the signal of one tower, the phone will switch to the next that is probably not in the same direction as the previously best one and signal strength will, hopefully, not suffer as much from your hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> happens to me as well.. I heard buying the bumper fixes the problem. Another $30 to apple from me I guess :|

<comment><USER18> You are really going to give them another $30 to finish their job of device packaging? If touching the antenna(s) makes the phone fail to function, then a case needs to cover the antenna(s), and that case should be part of the price of the phone to begin with.

<comment><USER19> So what would you suggest? Pouting loudly?

This problem seems over-emphasized. I can get my phone to do it if I hold it in a funny way (and I am a righty but usually lefthand my phone). I'm not trying to make excuses for Apple here, I'm trying to say that this problem's press coverage makes it seem worse than it actually seems to be in the real world.

<comment><USER18> Since when is asking a company to fix a product that isn't working on day one "pouting"?

The way people are holding the phones in the demo videos is not exotic or weird. So, yeah, that can sound a bit like an excuse. It sounds even more like blaming the people who are seeing the problem. Maybe their hands just aren't good enough, right?

If an piece of electronics needs a case that insulates a part from contact to the user, then leaving that off is incomplete packaging. Simple as that. If the issue is coming from a bad batch of phones or design flaw that is leading to the failure or under-performance of some mechanism designed to deal with that contact to the user, then those hit by this deserve their choice of a new phone that isn't from that batch or, at the very least, a free case.

The first Android phone I had would reboot every few minutes while being used, I tried the full reinstall that the technician recommended, but when I walked back in and said it hadn't worked, he didn't blame me. He handed me a new phone (no problems since). No one expects perfection in new hardware rollouts, but it is right to expect proper customer service. Since you asked me, I would suggest Apple fix it in software if that is possible, and/or start handing out free cases like candy.

<comment><USER19> > Since when is asking a company to fix a product that isn't working on day > one "pouting"?

No. Speculatively suggesting Apple will not make good on this when they have a fairly good track record is pouting. If there is a serious problem noticed by lots of consumers, it's obvious that Apple will at the very least offer a case to those affected. Most people here have been repeat Apple customers because of reasonably good service over the years.

> The way people are holding the phones in the demo videos is not exotic or > weird. So, yeah, that can sound a bit like an excuse. It sounds even more > like blaming the people who are seeing the problem. Maybe their hands just > aren't good enough, right?

Nice try, but I didn't do that. It takes a very specific (and I mean specific, I have to try multiple times to get it to happen, it's not casual finger contact) grip to do it. Short term: do not hold the phone that way. Is that acceptable as a long term fix? No.

My only point: The press is making it to sound like the phone "does not work" or "is unusable" and anyone who's saying that is as guilty of hyperbole as the people saying it is no problem at all. We can easily strike a balance here were we say the phone has a "idiosyncrasy" (or "flaw", take your pick of connotation) without implying that everyone who bought one is lying to themselves and every phone is a brick. I see the press, particularly the linked bbc story, skewing to the "this is a brick" end of the scale when that's false to any realistic examination.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely "this is a brick" is an exaggeration... good thing I didn't said that then, huh. And I don't remember suggesting that Apple won't make good, so your pouting charge is still misplaced and increasingly impolite. I questioned someone's, seemingly abject, willingness to take the hit for fixing it themselves rather than putting the responsibility where it actually belongs.

The electrical properties of skin can vary quite a bit. One person's specific and firm grip to get good contact is another person's sweaty handed casual touch. That still sounds like blaming the user that finds the problem to me. The guy in the key-test video mentioned that his company's half a dozen phones all behaved the same.

Is the press inflating things? They do for everything, so sure. Just how much is a guess till some stats come out on this thing. If and when we do get good numbers, this will make a good example case for the distortions introduced by internet media.

<comment><USER18> Addendum: Moving right along with the "will make it good" idea... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459629>

<comment><USER19> Apple always does exactly what Steve Jobs says at any given moment. Exactly.

<comment><USER18> So having to go through the old "there is no problem", "a little problem that isn't our fault", "ok, maybe our fault but we admit nothing and nothing can be done", "ok here is a fix"... is that your idea of great customer service? Why not just cut to the chase and be responsible about it?

You asked me earlier what I suggested, and though you have consistently miss- characterized it, I answered in a way that I think would be a PR win for them. What would your suggestion be then? The old corporate song and dance?

Also, you can have the last word on this, if you wish. Since, although I'm pretty certain I've listened to you, I'm not at all certain you've listened to me in this exchange and that doesn't incline me to continue this communication. If I just wanted insults pushed at my general direction, I'd go spend some more time on reddit. Later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought the whole story about how Apple was holding up the release of the white models was a littly fishy.

Theory: Apple realized they may have a serious problem at some point after the launch (black?) model was flowing to retail channels, but before they released the white model. So they're hurrying to address it before white ships, at least.

This does smell like a recall.

</comment><comment><USER20> ah I would be bummed to have to buy one of those ugly bumpers, I like apple devices the way they are bare.

<comment><USER21> I like certain other things when they're bare, but I'd never want them to go out in public without clothes on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Made it happen without trying, left hand. Gratis bumpers seem like the quick fix solution.

<comment><USER23> Duct tape is the quick fix solution.

<comment><USER24> Actually, yeah: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonko/4731332788/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> They had to have known about this problem. They just decided to sell it anyhow knowing people would buy it, regardless.

<comment><USER25> Hey, you voting me down:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over- iphon...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over- iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Apple have created a phone_

"Apple have?"

Isn't it ironic that the very people who are supposed to be the keepers of English can't even use proper grammar? Apple HAS created a phone. Apple is a company. Singular. Not plural. There is no earthly defense (er, "defence") for referring to Apple, a company, in the plural.

<comment><USER27> I think it is an usage specific to the UK.

 _Use of a plural verb after a singular noun denoting a group of persons (known as a noun of multitude) is commoner in the U.K. than in the U.S. Fowler wrote: "The Cabinet is divided is better, because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and The Cabinet are agreed is better, because it takes two or more to agree."_

Taken from: <http://alt-usage-english.org/groupnames.html></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What does it mean to have a 4.0 GPA? - <AUTHOR>

As a person who studied in the European system, I'm having some difficulty understanding the GPA concept in America. Whenever I read an article about some smart person, there is usually a line that says - he graduated with a 4.0 GPA. My understanding from Wikipedia is that he either scored a perfect value on all his tests, or he got above a 90% on all his tests.
What does a 4.0 mean? Does this mean the person never failed to get below a 90% on every single test that he ever took at the university? Is this a linear system where 90% actually means that 9 out of 10 questions were correct?
What's the perception of other scores like 3.7 or 3.5? Are those considered low?
Do people have the chance to go back and correct an exam where they scored less than 90% or are these 4.0 people really that smart? <comment><USER2> The letter grades A and A+ are equivalent to 4 "grade points." A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, B- is 2.7 and so on. If someone has a 4.0 this means they received an A/A+ in every class.

Depending on the university and the professor, this can mean different things. If the class is curved, one third of the class will probably receive A-/A/A+ range grades. If the class is not curved, anywhere from 85% to 95% may be considered an A depending on the professor, class, and university. Most commonly a 90% range is considered A- and up and 80% range is B- and up (assuming no curve).

The overall GPAs themselves are usually calculated by taking specific units of each class into account to give some classes more weight than others. For a 4.0, all grades must have been A anyways so this detail is insignificant.

3.7 and 3.5 are often considered very good GPAs in university. Receiving an overall 4.0 GPA is fairly rare at many schools as an receiving even one A- or below would ensure less than 4.0.

</comment><comment><USER3> 4.0 means you got an A in every course, and in each course the grade is usually based on a weighted average of tests and papers. You usually don't have the opportunity to redo work or retake tests.

I spent 2 years at a good state university and 2 years at a top private university, getting 4.0 and 3.97 respectively. I think getting the 4.0 at the state school was harder as there was less grade inflation.

You do not need to be a super genius to get a high GPA. It's a combination of intelligence, interest in the subject matter, hard work, and priorities. Looking back, I thought getting a very high GPA was essential, but now I don't think it matters all that much, nor was it worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER4> 4.0 means he got the best grade for each class that he took. You can fail a test and still get an A, depending. I believe you can retake a course to get a better grade in my school. 3.5 is fine. 3.0 I guess might be average or not stellar.

<comment><USER4> In my school career fair, ratheon or some weapons manuf acturing company only accepted candidates with GPA 3.8 or higher. I thought that was high, but I guess those companies want straightedge people.</comment></comment>


Chrome/Eclipse-like Scrollbar Search Highlighter for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/scrollbar-search-highlighter/

<comment><USER2> I would love for some simple HTML(5?) API where certain anchor elements automatically show up on the scroll bar. That way, for instance, you could have a huge document split into chapters visible from the scroll bar, or a blog post where you can just glance at the scroll bar to see how long the article is and how many comments there are.

Something like `<a rel="scroll">`

<comment><USER3> You mean like iOS style? That is a pretty good idea. I've certainly seen it done with custom boxes but it would make a nice addition to the browser chrome in the same way that the link element can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Search inside a webpage is broken on all browsers, as it tries to find an exact string match: it's impossible to find a "paragraph", for example, that contains two words that aren't next to one another.

(The problem is: what's a paragraph in a webpage? But maybe a paragraph is simply a block element that doesn't itself contain other block elements.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not just ... use Chrome.

<comment><USER6> "Chrome is a new browser."

Why not just... use Firefox?

"Firefox is a new browser."

Why not just... use IE?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm less concerned about minor UI enhancements, and would much rather have a regex-capable search box.</comment>


Why Bitcoin will be banned sooner or later. - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5807416/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable This shows that perhaps the potential for bad uses are far outweigh the legitimate ones. <comment><AUTHOR> A case in point where Bitcoin makes it insanely easy to do illegal activities. Hence, the provocative title. The potential for bad uses far outweigh the good ones.</comment>


UK government declines to pardon Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2012/02/uk-government-declines-to-pardon-alan.html <comment><USER2> Whilst my gut reaction would be that this is the wrong decision, this - "However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long- standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times." - is actually a rational and convincing response.

<comment><USER3> During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was by other nations at the time, too). I'm not convinced by the whole "...but it was the law at that time!" rationale.

(That said, and before anyone unfairly cites Godwin's law, I'm of course _not_ saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.)

<comment><USER2> I think the point that the government is making here is not "...but it was the law at that time!" but rather "we will let our mistakes of the past stand, and rather than hide from them we will learn from them". There is perhaps the danger that by 'fixing' the past you can then forget about it.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence with pardons, however it doesn't change what happened or what resulted from it.

It's better to stand by your mistakes than to pretend they never happened.

<comment><USER5> It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust.

<comment><USER6> We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust".

A pardon is a separate and distinct _legal_ action, which is unwarranted.

<comment><USER5> Sure. But warranted or unwarranted, it's anything but a whitewash.

<comment><USER4> It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid. Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity.

It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the point of the apology.

An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash" <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash>. You don't "whitewash" something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash" actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or try and BURY it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's extremely interesting. Turing is dead and can't accept an apology, so an apology is completely useless. But a pardon actually clears his name. Given the reasoning "The conviction was correct", it makes the apology hollow even if he was still alive.

At this point in history, an apology and pardon would slightly _clear the name of the Crown_ from a legacy as a bigoted hateful illegitimate government that tramples on rights and whose amoral so-called "laws" tortured a good man until he gave in to suicide.

By refusing to do so, the Crown can not harm Turing whose legacy is assured by history. They only harm themselves, and quite frankly, it is their choice to do so.

It is Turing whose pardon _they_ must secure. Not vice versa. As he is deceased, that opportunity is past and their crimes remain both unforgiven and unforgivable.

<comment><USER8> "an apology and pardon would slightly clear the name of the Crown."

I think is is the same reason that they declined to issue the pardon. The ministers didn't feel it was appropriate to try and retroactively whitewash the actions of the crown and that it should continue to bear a stain for those actions.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that's very interesting. If so, then it's a reasonable and almost noble acceptance of responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is interesting to note how the main point behind the resolution _not to pardon_ Turing is exactly the same point that, in other legislations, is used _to pardon_ people sentenced under no-longer-actual laws.

Italian case (also present in many other civil law jurisdictions): you are sentenced in 2012 for sharing a music file. You are fined and jailed because so says the law in 2012. 2020, an act is passed that says that sharing a music file is no longer felony. fifteen days after the day that act has been enacted you can go to a court and say "ehi, I was just ahead of the time, clean my criminal records" and you will instantly get your records cleaned with a "il fatto non è previsto dalla legge come reato" sentence ("because that actions is no longer seen as a criminal offence under the current law"). In some rare cases you can also get money back from the state.

In the recent times this principle has been used to provide blanket pardon for things that once were felonies such as having or providing an abort, divorcing (abroad), opposing to draft, hiding jews from the police... You know, these things that change over time.

<comment><USER10> To a U.S. observer, the U.K. (or maybe just the monarchy?) has a very peculiar notion of what "pardoning" (even ceremonially) means, or is meant to accomplish.

In the U.S., many (Presidential) pardons are used for crimes that everyone agrees were indeed committed, and even crimes for which we fully intend to continue prosecuting other people in the future!

<comment><USER11> The UK concept of a pardon is the same as yours. Historically it was used in much the same way as your Presidential pardons are (i.e. to get friends of the ruling elite out of prison or spare them the gallows).

In modern times we've pardoned people who we consider to be wrongly executed (including all soldiers executed for cowardice in the First World War) and people who have been wrongly executed for other crimes.

However, there is still a general principle that a pardon doesn't remove the original conviction but instead removes the punishment that was applied. So in the case of a miscarriage of justice there is a tendency to allow the conviction to be quashed by an appeal court rather than pardon someone (unless time is of the essence e.g. they are close to death and the appeal would take too long).

<comment><USER7> This is getting really interesting.

Pardons are indeed based on the idea of forgiveness. So, to issue a pardon would be to say that the person committed a crime and needed to be forgiven. Thus, it is possible a pardon may be inappropriate as it would send the wrong message.

It sounds like Italy has a different concept available, where things no longer considered crimes are no longer considered crimes, rather than sins that must be forgiven. I wonder if the same sort of principle is possible at all under English law.

<comment><USER11> Laws which retroactively criminalise behaviour are expressly forbidden under Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights [1] but merely _ex post facto_ law (which may presumably make something legal retroactively) is merely "frowned upon" in the UK [2], because the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (i.e. parliament can do what it likes) takes precedence.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_European_Conve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_Kingdo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_Kingdom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting to read the author's reasoning on why they don't support a pardon ( [http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting- campaign-f...](http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/why-im-not-supporting-campaign- for.html) )

One reason is that there are other people, not just Alan Turing, who were convicted under this law, and are still living. They had a criminal record. However a new Act essentially deletes the criminal conviction for that part, so those people no longer have a criminal record.

<comment><USER13> Under Rehabilitation of Offenders act do those criminal convictions (surely 'spent' now) have any affect?

Do they make it harder for people to travel to, eg, US ("Moral Turpitude" on visa waiver)? Do they count for job applications?

Certainly many people had their lives destroyed, and lived in fear. Ignorance and bigotry isn't dead either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A deeper problem with pardoning a man who's been dead for almost 60 years is that it's a wholly empty gesture. It lets various campaigners grandstandingly "champion" a cause that everyone is behind, without getting their fingers dirty in actual politics. There are plenty of issues to get into if you want to champion gay rights - unfortunately, most of them requires you to take a position that will have people on the other side of it. Ick.

It's the same deal with being anti-nazi. Yeah, big deal, >99% of the worlds population has been with you for 70 years.

</comment><comment><USER15> It makes me wonder who they'll be pardoning in 50 years time from now. Assange, Manning, David Kelly, McKinnon etc.

There's no excuse to get it wrong in the first place and I'm sure for the people concerned, a pardon is probably virtually irrelevant by the time they have issued it. Either the people are dead or their life is wrecked.

<comment><USER16> They can't pardon David Kelly. He wasn't ever charged with anything, much less convicted, was he?

<comment><USER15> Not every part of the government operates under the same rules as us. If they don't want someone around, they bully them to suicide or kill them (opinions are open as to what happened there). Then they run a public inquiry, ironically headed by school chums of the ruling class to shut people up about it.

<comment><USER17> This isn't a conspiracy theory site. For the sake of polite conversation this isn't the place to start making such claims.

<comment><USER18> Previous discussion on this subject (two years ago): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073405>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I think that Turing's prosecution was absurd and inhumane, I'm not sure it's an easy step to conclude that he should be retroactively pardoned now that the relevant laws have changed.

To do so would be to accept that there is no definitive law at any present moment, and run the risk that individuals could be convicted in the future for activities which were perfectly legal at the time. This could have dire implications for both justice and personal liberty.

<comment><USER19> Your conclusion does not hold: making something retroactively legal is vastly different than making something retroactively illegal. The first happens all the time and is the entire point of a full pardon. In the US the latter is unconstitutional and the former explicitly constitutional.

Besides which, your approach assumes the law that allows for chemical castration because he was gay was a legitimate application of state power. I maintain that it was not.

<comment><USER20> Exactly. The law in any sufficiently just system is always asymmetric with respect to guilt and innocence, in innocence's favour. Retroactive action should be no difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Um, no, you pardon everyone under a wrong law as well as declare the law immoral and invalid.

Let society carry the black eye, not the victim.

</comment><comment><USER22> That is the most insane reason I have ever heard for not pardoning somebody.

Especially since they did pardon the soldiers who were shot for cowardice during WWI (admitably a little too late to do anything by about 90 years).

</comment><comment><USER23> I personally don't like all these campaigns which must take up an inordinate amount of time, energy, effort and money to try and somehow right the wrongs of past governments.

I really don't get why a country 'apologises' for past actions - I don't feel any tie whatsoever to the government / laws of the time / my fellow countrymen of years gone by and why me apologising would make any difference

Let people be responsible for their own actions and decisions.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a link to the excellent documentary "Britain's greatest codebreaker" that tells Alan Turing's story. <http://documentaryheaven.com/britains- greatest-codebreaker/>

</comment><comment><USER25> Alan Turing is one of my hero's. His conviction was from an earlier, less enlightened time and is a prime example of political expediency over common sense.

The headline is slightly sensationalist because as the article points out, he was given a full, unreserved apology by the British Government in 2009.

<comment><USER26> While they may have called it 'unreserved', the apology remained reserved in an important part: there was _no_ pardon. 'Disregarding of convictions' is not the same thing as a pardon, it is what it says it is: it is, simply, 'we will no longer take these convictions into account' (and a db admin gets to run a very rare delete command).

A pardon would be recognition that the conviction was in itself wrong, even at the time (the paragraph of law that made sex between men was snuck into a bill of 1885 which dealt with sex crimes relating to young women. It took nearly 75 years to remove).

Even if it is impractical to pardon everyone, pardoning Turing would have made a very public statement alongside the 'Disregarding of convictions'.

I believe the statement would still be worth making and I would go further to include a few others, e.g. Oscar Wilde.

Note also that the bill specifically holds a paragraph to make exactly this kind of pardon possible:

      87 Saving for Royal pardons etc.

      Nothing in section 86 affects any right of Her Majesty, by
      virtue of Her Royal prerogative or otherwise, to grant a
      free pardon, to quash any conviction or sentence, or to
      commute any sentence.

[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/14...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmbills/146/11146.68-74.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since the issue at hand involves Turing's homosexuality, there is a tendency to see it in terms of bigotry. But it is not. The real issue is one of morality. The governments persecution of Turing, and other homosexuals, is immoral, because their acts did not harm anyone, and were consensual in nature. However, the governments acts did cause harm and were non-consentual. (Turing didn't consent to be prosecuted, he didn't have a choice.)

The law is not the definer of morality. The law is subject of morality, much in the same way as US laws are subject to the constitution, which is itself also subject to morality.

Thus the persecution of Alan Turing was itself a criminal act, in the eyes of anyone who accept morality (or at least the moral premise that consensual acts among adults that do not harm anyone are moral.)

The failure to pardon him -- that is, the failure to renounce the crime the government committed in the past-- shows the government to have as little regard for morality today as it did then.

This is confirmed by the manifold laws currently in place in that government that persecute people for "crimes" that are not immoral.

For example, the criminalization of drug use.

The thing that trips people up is that they're taught to believe that government is moral. Government is a collection of people, which engages in acts some of which are moral and some of which are immoral.

Since the law in question was immoral, thus enforcing it is a moral crime, and the governments failure to renounce such enforcement via issuing a pardon (and to be honest, paying some appropriate sum to the estate of the man in compensation, with interest) shows the government to be immoral to this day.

If it were a moral government, it would act morally, and remove the conviction while paying compensation for the crime.

And it would do so for every person prosecuted under this law.

<comment><USER28> Morality changes with time. The laws have been changed to reflect. The UK government is saying that they can't pardon something that at the time was a crime and was prosecuted properly. I don't see that as immoral even if I find the past law immoral.

The are many things considered morally wrong by enough people to make them illegal. Assisted Suicide is an example. If it ever becomes legal, should everyone who was arrested and convicted under the current laws be pardoned? many people today would find that immoral.

Edit: Some in other threads have a raised another good point, what about things that are now considered crimes? Should we retroactively prosecute these people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Even Martin Luther was pardoned after death ..oh come on now..

<comment><USER30> Martin Luther founded the movement that led to the modern British church as we know it, so I'm not sure what you think the UK government convicted him of?

In the case that you're confusing Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, MLK was also not convicted by the British government of anything, and as this is a British government policy, I'm a little curious as to what relevance you feel this has on the discussion at hand...

<comment><USER31> I think that was Henry VIII that set up the COE

<comment><USER30> It's more complicated than that, but you could do worse than start with:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Governments are just scared to even slightly question their own actions. If some laws from 1952 were inhuman and oppressive, then what chance of some of the current laws being the same? No way they are going to diminish their power. Never.

<comment><USER16> Then why did the government posthumously apologise to Turing, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair"?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Free iOS keyboard for shruggies - <AUTHOR> http://www.shrugsterapp.com/ <comment><USER2> An easy way to do this without custom keyboards is to go to "Settings > General > Text Replacement". Add a new one and set "( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)" as the Phrase and something like "lenny" as the Shortcut.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea, I like the clean design it has.

Would Android be supported soon?</comment>


Ask HN: How much passive income do you generate, and from what? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A few months ago I launched my first commercial video game, Omnicube. It's a really hard puzzle game set on a talking cube in space.

After the initial launch sales bump, we've been earning about $400/month.

We launched the game on Steam, Windows Store, and itch.io.

I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of the project in more detail. Here are the links to the store pages for anyone who is interested:

Steam: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/800860/Omnicube/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/800860/Omnicube/)

Windows Store: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/store/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mm...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/store/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mmh)

Itch.io: [https://trykon.itch.io/omnicube](https://trykon.itch.io/omnicube)

<comment><USER3> Great game :-) Reminds me Sokoban with an evil twist on it.

I guess it would do great on mobile; but I am not sure how easy to port would it be since the screen area is quite big.

Just for curiosity, how many effort did you need to do the levels? I always tought this kind of games were 20% coding, 80% model design. Am I right?

<comment><USER2> Thank you! I appreciate the kind words :)

A lot of people have mentioned wanting to see the game on mobile, and I do plan to port it later on this year. You are very much correct in assessing the main issue, which is the fact that it's hard to fit a 14x14 grid (plus the surrounding art) onto a small screen. We're considering things like zooming the camera all the way in on the grid itself, and then re-arranging the buttons to the top and bottom of the screen, or maybe giving the user a control to zoom in and out, but we haven't committed to a solution quite yet.

As far as distribution of effort, I certainly thought the same when I started the game -- I thought I'd just write the code for the mechanics in a few weeks and then spend most of the time refining the puzzles and level balance. To be honest, though, I found the exact opposite to be true -- I spent probably 3-4 weeks designing and perfecting the puzzles, but all the implementation of the mechanics/UI tweaks/transitions took several months. This was probably partly due to the visual style we decided on, though.

The project I'm working on now is much, much simpler visually. Since Omnicube was our first commercial game, we felt a lot of pressure to make it "look like a real game". My thinking now is more biased toward focusing on the content quality and worrying less about what people will think about the professional- ness of the visuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Own 2 triplexes.

Generating $500/month net positive cashflow after all expenses, mortgages and get to live for free.

Can retire today and literally be a bum with a $500/month paycheck where the buildings will pay themselves down and be worth over 1.5 million within 20 years.

Instead, I'm choosing to continue working and buy a larger farm/acreage to go off grid and raise animals.

Other passive income:

\- small app subscription business making $250/month

\- dividend yielding stocks producing about $40/month

\- solar array equipment that produces $200/month

My net worth is only about $150k today.... but will steadily climb to about 1.5 Million within 20 years from doing basically nothing.

This is the difference between Rich vs. Wealth.

The Rich spend and have no systems in place to generate income (ie: they have money)

The Wealthy do not have to work, and have systems in place to generate passive income.

I like to think that I'm well on my way to being Wealthy as opposed to my little 'w' wealthy today.

Ps.

\- I drive 10+ year old cars in entire life (never spend more than $4k on a car)

\- Buy everything on sale, if not used

\- wear basic clothes

</comment><comment><USER5> The question comes up regularly but rarely gets traction. And unless it's specific to apps/websites/side-projects half the usual answers are stock market, interest, real-estate.

See 3 months ago (90 comments) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815842)

<comment><USER6> I think most people here are expecting to see passive income from side projects.

Unless you are withdrawing dividends and selling shares for income, it is not passive income. Just good ole regular investing.

And I don't how anyone can consider real estate passive income. It is a business with a lot of downtime but also some serious headaches. I have few properties, most of my tenets are nice. But when you get one bad tenet, it wipes all your goodwill towards any tenet. Then unexpected expenses wipe out years of profit in an instant. Finally, you hope one day the building will be paid off and you will live off rent checks, then you do some calculations and realize that you would have made almost same rent check if you had just invested your down payment in stock market.

<comment><USER7> Could depends on what country you live in

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Referral or Partner Program is one of the options of the passive income. In most cases, you get a share from a commision that a person you've referred a product/service to has paid. One of the examples is [https://www.crazycall.com/partners?source=news.ycombinator](https://www.crazycall.com/partners?source=news.ycombinator). Your could also do blogging or create youtube videos.

</comment><comment><USER9> None. I'm not rich. Is this a normal thing people expect to do now?

<comment><USER10> What does you being rich have to do with generating passive income?

<comment><USER9> How else would you do it? Don't you need to own some asset from which you can extract rent?

<comment> scott-smith_us Royalties from a book or patent or software?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts help navigate HN? - <AUTHOR> I would love to be able to use news reader type hotkeys for threads for easy navigation of articles/threads. E.g., skip thread/mark as read/etc...
Personally, I am thinking back to the days of Xnews (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xnews).
Am I alone in wishing for such support? Does it already exist somewhere?
Robert <comment><USER2> Not exclusive to HN, but I use Vimium for Chrome. Pressing "f" highlights all links and gives them a key combo that clicks the link when I type it.</comment>


Fake noise will be added to new electric cars starting today in the EU - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/1/20676854/electric-cars-artificial-safety-noise-low-speeds-european-union-rules-2019-2021 <comment><USER2> Wasn't that already the case?

</comment><comment> java-man A very good idea indeed.</comment>