1984 Day - Rally Against Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://1984Day.com/ <comment><USER2> For all the naysayers, I'd like to mention that the rally is a _much_ more effective political tool than say online petitions, precisely _because_ it requires significant effort to attend. It's very easy to ignore a bunch of people who clicked links online, much harder when they abandon their Sunday plans and show up downtown to make a lot of noise.

However, the age of the rally is waning these days. It was all the rage during the French Revolution, but telephony and television have created much better influence tools; such as the phone-in campaign or the political ad buy. It would be good to at least upgrade to '50s style politics and organize people for either phoning in to Congress ("OK Bob you want to help? You can call congressman Goodlatte's office around 3pm this Friday, here are some possible talking points") or running Kickstarter-style ad buys ("Donate $5 for running this ad on prime time national TV and we'll post your name on our wall").

Of course, the Internet offers new possibilities for politics that have barely begun to be scratched. Everyone uses Google, and Google is a democracy of sorts allowing for tactics such as Google bombing. It's hard to quantify its effect on the presidential campaign of senator Santorum (Republican runner-up last year), but it was probably out of proportion with the small number of people involved. And I'm sure there are many other things possible, if only more smart people directed their attention towards such issues. Politics is important - it won't make you as much money as a successful app, but can change the world a lot more.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently working on a social network that helps groups of people make decisions and build consensus. In most organizations, decisions are made from the top down and then implemented by small groups within the organization. The goal will be to enable large groups to make decisions involving broad-based goals and provide a mechanism to form working groups to carryout the actions necessary to implement those goals. What does HN think?

<comment><USER4> It seems like every few months a democratic idealist looks around and realizes that nobody chooses democracy as a decision making method when they have the choice, and goes about making tools to try to fix this peculiar fact.

The reason why nations use democracy as a decision-making method is 1) it has populist appeal and 2) they have a lot of resources to waste on bad decisions. The intelligence of a decision goes down with the number of people involved, until we arrive at the ideal of universal suffrage.

<comment><USER3> That's why broad, not specific, goals would be decided by large groups. One broad goal might be to "end domestic NSA surveillance". Specific actions could be decided by teams of people in working groups which is similar to the way actionable decisions are made in many businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I made a suggestion a while back on HN and decided to write a blog post about it: [http://austingwalters.com/hacker-news-the-nsa-and- freedom/](http://austingwalters.com/hacker-news-the-nsa-and-freedom/)

I think it would be more effective to try what I mention in the post. I know I'm currently in Illinois and would not be able to attend any rallies (having no car).

Kudos on the website though.

</comment><comment><USER6> is this tweets count random? i see 18 on my mobile and 27 from the office PC

<comment><USER7> Not random, set up a custom share buttons/counts and having problems with the cloudfront caching sitting in front of it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to Thomas for a) being awesome and b) setting this up. The reason for cacheing is to prevent user's browsers from pinging Twitter/FB/Google with every visit, and hopefully helping protect their privacy. We'll try and release this as open source code soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> might be worth having a DC presence.

<comment><USER9> I'm right next to DC this week. I was excited to attend the protest that I assumed would take place. The absence of such a protest is disappointing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, DC have been a bit slow in organizing, but there is a Meetup page set up where you can sign up. I just added it to the site, and it's also here: [http://www.meetup.com/Prince-William- Libertarians/events/132...](http://www.meetup.com/Prince-William- Libertarians/events/132071442/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honest question... what is he purpose of such a rally?

<comment><USER11> Raise awareness for starters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "RSVP on Facebook!"

 _sigh_

<comment><USER13> If you had a point to make, it wasn't articulated very effectively.

<comment><USER14> I suppose the idea was "we need some sort of social network that a) does not collaborate with the NSA, and b) offers real privacy". Networks like [http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) seem like a good start to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know about any such rallies in the UK?

</comment><comment><USER16> Slick site.

</comment><comment><USER17> USA Only?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sucks that the vast majority of Americans don't give a shit.

<comment><USER13> They're ignorant due to factors outside their control. But we're not all ignorant, and it's up to the informed to do something about it.

<comment><USER19> It is my experience that even when informed, most people cannot or will not do due diligence to understand the potential risks or long-term consequences of these things, nor will they make the connection to how it could affect them. When it affects them personally and individually, only then they will take notice.

I have a friend who works for a medical marijuana dispensary. It is legal in our state, but under federal law he is committing a serious crime multiple times a day. They organize their deliveries by gmail. I have warned him that they are listening, and his opinion is "they won't come for me." The fact that even today in California the federal government does in fact go after these people does not even register to him as a concern.

He will not care until he is sitting in a jail cell. Many, many people cannot be reached. This is a fact that has to be taken into consideration when trying to reach people, that _many_ people will simply _never_ be receptive.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Middleman-free sites like hnhiring.me/craigslist to find freelance work? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I've had good experiences through hnhiring.me and craigslist this last year, but I was wondering if there were any other good sites to browse for freelancing work (software, in my case)?
I'd like to avoid "middleman" services like upwork, as they tend to drive the price down and are saturated with mediocre off-shore contractors.
I recently started a small (currently four-man) software/marketing consultancy based in NYC. The work has been steady, but I've only been able to find a couple good online pipelines that don't go through a middleman service and we'd all love to take on more jobs.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You might consider looking at lets workshop.com, it's relatively inexpensive and is a curated list of online freelance leads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks. I'll check it out!</comment></comment>


Transatomic Power Wants to Build a Better Reactor - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/start-ups/start-up-transatomic-power-wants-to-build-a-better-reactor

<comment><USER2> There are quite a few independent attempts to do that: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Liquid_fluo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor)

Mostly based on thorium, but they seems just use enriched uranium (U-235)... So potentially you can construct an atomic bomb fairly easily out of this fuel.

<comment><USER3> Very mildly enriched uranium, at just 1.8% U-235: [http://transatomicpower.com/products.php](http://transatomicpower.com/products.php)

That's less enriched than conventional reactor fuel.

Using thorium doesn't _necessarily_ prevent proliferation. If you have a design that separates protactinium, you can let that decay to pure U-233, which by at least some accounts is easy to turn into a bomb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if the article had _any_ information about how this reactor would be different from the 50-year old MSRE ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten- Salt_Reactor_Experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten- Salt_Reactor_Experiment))

<comment><USER5> _" Transatomic Power has greatly improved the molten salt concept, while retaining its significant safety benefits. The main technical change we make is to change the moderator and fuel salt used in previous molten salt reactors to a zirconium hydride moderator, with a LiF - based fuel salt. During operation the fuel in the salt is primarily uranium. Together, these components generate a neutron spectrum that allows the reactor to run using fresh uranium fuel with enrichment levels as low as 1.8% U-235, or using the entire actinide component of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Previous molten salt reactors such as the ORNL Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) relied on high-enriched uranium, with 33% U-235 [1]. Enrichments that high would raise proliferation concerns if used in commercial nuclear power plants."_

From their white paper here: [http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf](http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000)</comment>


What Does Recruiters Look in Your CV - <AUTHOR> http://www.codespaghetti.com/cv-tips <comment><AUTHOR> According to a recent research recruiters spend around seven seconds in reviewing an individual resume. That's it, all you have is seven seconds to attract attention or your CV will be rejected.

To free yourself from the fear of rejection. You must work backward. You start with the perception of the interviewer. What job you are applying for and what he might be expecting.

You accept his short attention span. You think ahead about what to present and most importantly in which order.

And if you are able to present the right things in the right order. Then the readers will pay attention to your CV. Not always (so you can't be. disappointed) but most of the time.

Here are the five most important things recruiters look for in a CV in first seven seconds.

1- Recent Role: Is candidate's most recent experience relevant to the position for which they are hiring.

2-Keywords: If they are looking for an iOS Engineer, for example, and the words "iOS" or "Objective-C" don't even make a cameo appearance in someone's resume. It will be an instant rejection.

3-Experience:Is there a career progression? Does the person have increasing levels of responsibility? Do the titles make sense?

4-Projects: If the candidate has worked on any projects related to the job

5-Formatting: This includes spelling, grammar, ease of use, ability to clearly present ideas on CV.

<comment><USER2> How about you start with grammar and punctuation before giving advice on writing CV?

<comment><USER3> "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky." [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER2> Why do you think I wouldn't point out the errors to him face to face?

And conversely, _would you_ point me the guidelines face to face if I did that in real life? Are you yourself sticking to the guidelines here? The chances are that you wouldn't and you're not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What if Star Wars never happened? - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/7/17432928/star-wars-george-lucas-history <comment><USER2> A little weird that he glosses over the fact there was another popular special-effects-driven SF movie out in 1977.

<comment><USER3> Close Encounters?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another connection:

No ILM means no Lucasfilm Computer Graphics group, later renamed Pixar.

No Pixar, no involvement by Steve Jobs and the confidence to return to Apple after Pixar's successful IPO.

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/technology/pixar-steve- jobs/...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/technology/pixar-steve- jobs/index.html)

Would we have the iPhone without Star Wars?</comment>


Lessons on Bubbles from Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-10/bitcoin-was-prone-to-bubbles-until-bears-could-bet-against-it <comment><USER2> Is analysis of the crypto market and the price of various coins even possible? A lot of articles seem to approach the price of coins as something that can be rationally discussed, however at the same time we all know the market is a) unregulated b) has wash trading going on and c) is heavily dominated by a handful of actors. I mean, hell, even think about the enormous power the completely unregulated exchanges hold - they could literally behind the scenes be betting against you on any single trade using knowledge you don't have.

In such a market the price of any coin may not even be set by a plurality of participants. It can be set by a single motivated participant who's motivations cannot be divined (except maybe the single driving motivation: make more money for me and fuck everyone else).

If you're trading in the crypto space today, you're crazy - you're sitting down for a card game expecting there to be fairness and rules, but there aren't any. The dealer can stack the deck however they want and change the rules of the game while you're playing, etc.

<comment><USER3> > In such a market the price of any coin may not even be set by a plurality of > participants.

Since you can take/give physical delivery of the coin that is not entirely true. Meaning that if you force the price to an unsustainable level (either too high or too low), other smart people will definitely take the other side of the trade.

<comment><USER2> Not when the buyer and seller are one and the same person.

There's extensive evidence to suggest wash trading, as it's known, is endemic in the crypto space.

<comment><USER4> It's worth remembering Ben Graham's 1949 parable on Mr. Market:

[https://www.fs.blog/2013/11/mr-market/](https://www.fs.blog/2013/11/mr- market/)

Basically, every market is basically an insane, irrational, manic-depressive, uncaring business partner who gives you the option to buy his share or sell yours every day, as long as market hours are open (in the age of cryptocurrency, this is 24/7). You are under no obligation to take the transaction, though. If you believe the price is too high, sell. If you believe the price is too low, buy. If you don't believe anything, hold.

Crypto and the stock market are no different in this regard. The short-term price is equally irrational in both. (There's pretty good evidence that wash trading is endemic in the stock market as well - wasn't Goldman Sachs caught taking both sides of a transaction in the 2009 financial crisis? And many derivative strategies explicitly rely upon being both long and short at the same time.)

The difference is that stock market investors have mostly figured out how to value stocks on fundamentals: the intrinsic value of a stock is all the discounted value of all future cash flows accruing to the equity investors. The intrinsic value of crypto is zero, unless, of course, it manages to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, in which case its intrinsic value is infinite, or more accurately the dollar's value is zero. Your estimate of the fundamental value of a cryptocurrency should be based on your assessment of the likelihood that it will replace the dollar as currency.

<comment><USER5> > wasn't Goldman Sachs caught taking both sides of a transaction in the 2009 > financial crisis?

Um, no? What are you talking about?

<comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong, but towards the end of the bubble (2008) GS had insured (bet against) the CDOs that it had previously been propping up.

[1] [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-cdos- that-d...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-cdos-that- destroyed-a_b_499875.html)

<comment><USER5> They had insurance on assets they held, sure. They bought the CDOs from some parties and sold (CDS on) them to other parties, like any middleman in any industry. A wash trade is something quite different: buying something from yourself, with no other parties involved in either transaction, to show a trade that manipulates the price.

There's nothing wrong with being in the middle of a line of trades. The crime is when that line becomes a loop and nothing is actually changing hands at either end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty new to trading concepts and financial markets so I may very well be missing something obvious... but from what I can make out, both CBOE and CME futures are cash settled, so you can't actually "short" bitcoin on them, just a derivative.

Further, the total volume of contracts for March works out at somewhere around 0.01% of Bitcoin's total market cap, maybe I'm missing something, but this just doesn't seem like something that could be held responsible for BTC dropping from 20k to ~7k - the only impact I could see it having is a psychological value, but then, Bitcoin has had futures from both BitMEX and OKCoin for quite some time (fee concerns and institutional accessibility aside) with significantly higher volumes.

<comment><USER8> The Bitmex and Bitfinex futures markets are settled in BTC and it's been blatantly clear that someone (most likely the exchange operators) are consistently manipulating the futures market (most likely to wipe out margin traders who don't know better) with short squeezes that return back to the norm within hours.

[https://i.imgur.com/LpgnksQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/LpgnksQ.png)

CBOE and CME futures being cash settled is a joke, and removes any incentive for the risk associated with the long position actually acquiring BTC, further proving the large traders just want to play with the tool for speculative market volatility and not actually facilitate using or acquiring the asset itself.

[https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest](https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest)

<comment><USER3> It's not the exchanges who are behind those spikes.

Source: someone who is working on a bot doing that kind of things

And because of the way the market works, there is no need to coordinate with anyone else doing it (ie: those spikes are self synchronizing)

Those "manipulations" also happen in the traditional markets (forex, ...), but due to liquidity and general sophistication they are much harder to spot, and dangerous to do if you don't know what you are doing (dangerous from a financial perspective, they are perfectly legal).

<comment><USER8>
       It's not the exchanges who are behind those spikes.

Please. If anyone is in a position to gain the most from market manipulation like that, it's the exchanges and there's a bucket list of evidence and malicious behavior from Bitfinex that would make it very surprising if it was some random outsider causing these types of movements.

Bitfinex and Bitmex margin trading volume has increased significantly and for the exchange operators have access to

      (1) order book + margin call data
      (2) ability to falsify trades and capital due to no audits

With those, it becomes insanely trivial to set some bait let the fish bite and simply drain the water or pump it back in on a whim because the order book is just a database and there's no accountability or auditing to keep the market exchanges honest.

<comment><USER9> There's also allegations about exchanges like Bitfinex where the owners/management trade on their own exchanges [0]. With insight on order book and people's stop prices there's an obvious conflict of interest there, as one can easily go stop hunting and manipulate prices. It's an unregulated market, and exchanges want to keep it that way (like how Binance's moving operations to Malta)

[0]: [https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/wash-trading-bitcoin-part- ii-...](https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/wash-trading-bitcoin-part-ii-who-and- why-is-someone-wash-trading-on-bitfinex-e1c7b5e0b3bb)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the actors in crypto have no shame. I love crypto, love the potential of the tech -- but does anybody doubt that coinbase, bitfinex, kraken, poloniex -- all the exchanges just flat out robbed people? When the narratives aligned they pumped/dumped.

Then they have no shame. Poloniex gets bought up. Coinbase/gdax announce venture capital arm. Its almost like they sucked too much money selling hopes and dreams to consumers, and now that SEC is watching closely they cannot keep pump and dumping the market. Just look at the volume drop.

Honestly, the democratized/decentralized characteristics everyone promotes is a bunch of bull until someone shows me a way democratically bootstrap ownership without total failures like Satoshi owning 20,000,000,000$ worth of BTC or a couple of whales owning 50% of the ETH supply because they bought when it was worth pennies and after BTC went up 10-1000x.

This whole thing seems to just be another means for wealth transfer.

<comment><USER11> I can agree and discuss the wealth transfer mantra on the crypto scene today. But what does exchanges have to do with that? They, supposedly, don't have any stake at any coin. They make money with trading volume.

I assume, a reasonable one will understand that it is in their best interest to have the market grow instead of spike trading volume on pump/dump events.

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that a good number of the exchanges currently operating require payment to list new coins, often in the form of a significant stake in the coin itself. At any point has any exchange ever stated that their company and officers do not hold stakes in the coins that are traded? I haven't seen it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Volume traded on CME futures has been _insignificant until about two weeks ago_ [1]. Click on the chart icon and look at the volume bar graph. Each contract is worth 5 BTC. Looks like they are doing about 10,000 BTC per day now. So I don't agree with this article at all.

CBOE bitcoin futures is much smaller, but they are also doing about 2500 BTC per day [2].

[1] [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us- index/bitcoi...](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us- index/bitcoin.html)

[2] [https://markets.cboe.com/us/futures/market_statistics/daily/](https://markets.cboe.com/us/futures/market_statistics/daily/)

</comment><comment><USER14> While I see their hypothesis that the decline in bitcoin from 20k to 6k was related to the introduction of the futures market there are lots of details that seem iffy. For example:

Bitcoin had many crashes in previous years

The dotcom boom had a fine boom and bust in spite of there being a futures market

The US housing bubble also did a big boom and bust without a good futures market or way to short houses (yeah I know some people kind of did by proxy in The Big Short but it was hard)

"price will be set by the most upbeat buyer" is kind of wrong. The price will be set by dealing between the largest buyers and sellers. If people are selling millions worth at $6k some guy who thinks its worth $100k but who only has $1000 to invest isn't going to move the market

You've been able to short bitcoin on BitMex since 2015, though using crypto rather than fiat

</comment><comment><USER15> totally trash, an average people can check real influence of that "futures" thing by himself here: [http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin- futures](http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures) there is actually more volume in cash on localbitcoin in a rural village in India in an hour than there in a whole day...

ps, also to short something you need to borrow the asset and pay for the time of the borrowing, this is bitcoin is really difficult, because pricing can be really high, holding means covering you from the risk of losing next "bubble", if you lose that for a miserable 1%/day you are losing all the point of that asset basically, so these things can happens only in the naive minds of wall street traders than don't have a real model for bitcoin yet, but just go on bitfinex and see by yourself if it's good to you to borrow bitcoin to people who want to short, as i say before, everything in this space can be checked, this old people with they old analysis are just extremely boring and meaningless.

<comment><USER11> Shorting futures doesn't require borrowing bitcoin. You usually also get paid on it (though recently the market has been on backwardation, so you pay). But the cost is kind of upfront.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Was this a coincidence? Maybe.

Most likely. Here's Arthur Hayes, CEO of Bitmex, explaining it:

> " _The short pressure at its logical maximum emanating from the CME and CBOE > contract holders is meaningless._ Therefore, the effect on the broader > market in actual flows is negligible. The contracts mainly bolster traders' > bullish sentiment....In terms of trading volume, BitMEX continues to blow > both of these contracts out of the water. In the year to date, the BitMEX > XBTUSD, XBTH18, and XBTM18 products traded a combined $53.14 billion versus > CME and CBOE combined Bitcoin futures volume of $4.48 billion. BitMEX is 12x > more liquid."

And:

> "The large financial institutions do not own Bitcoin in large quantities, if > at all. They are hamstrung by KYC/AML concerns surrounding Bitcoin. That > means that if they wanted to sell Bitcoin, they would need to borrow it from > a credible counterparty. Hey, Cumberland Mining, can we borrow $100 million > of Bitcoin?......Assuming banks borrowed Bitcoin with the intention of > shorting it, they would need to sell it on an exchange. _Given the > skittishness that inhibits counterparties globally from placing large > amounts of capital on an exchange, I highly doubt any compliance department > at a bulge-bracket bank would approve opening an account_.

> Let's suspend reality and assume they allowed trading desks to open accounts > on the largest Bitcoin spot exchanges. The maximum the desk could make is > 100% if Bitcoin went to zero. But, if the market instead face-ripped them by > 50% on a $100-million position, that loss would reach the global head of > trading and of the investment bank.

> If you were the line executive that green-lit that trade, you would lose > your job. You shorted Bitcoin, and lost a huge sum of money. That would make > it into the financial press; you and your bank would be ridiculed."

<comment><USER11> > The maximum the desk could make is 100% if Bitcoin went to zero.

That's an interesting statement coming from someone whose exchange allows x100 leverage. You can make more than 100% of your initial investment if you leverage more.

<comment><USER17> You can do that fairly easy when you are trading on a 10k account. It is more difficult with a 100 million account when you are a bank.

<comment><USER11> The total open interest of Bitmex + okex is around $1bn of futures. That's $1bn of shorts open on bitcoin.

Bitfinex has around half a billion of Bitcoins borrowed.

I'm not saying $100m is easy, but it is definitively doable in todays crypto space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The housing bubble is another example where betting against the asset in > question was extremely difficult.

Interesting - while you can sell your shares in company X, you wouldn't sell your house because you think the market might go down.

On the other hand, if there were futures options on the housing market, would that help to lower prices?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can sell your house and move to a rented one, some people do that when they think the market will go down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can futures really affect the price of Bitcoin when they're settled in USD?

</comment><comment><USER20> more usual weak analysis from Bloomberg, which has become another showcase for mediocre internet writers

OK..I proclaim myself the most enthusiastic person ever about bitcoin. Now why isn't the price at 20,000. By the author's logic it should be.

The price fell from $20k to $6k . that is evidence that shorting is not necessary for prices to fall a lot. look at beanie babies..same thing...no short seller was needed there either. If widgets are selling for $200 dollars and no one one wants to pay $200 , then prices fall or no widgets are sold.

<comment><USER21> You haven't bought at $20000, so your optimism is irrelevant. If you continued to buy at any market rate under $20000, then the market rate would rise towards $20000 until you either went bankrupt or bought out every seller less optimistic than you, at which point you would no longer be the most optimistic buyer.</comment></comment>


20 year old kid build "ENIGMA" the Worlds most Secure Encryption Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.builtinaustin.com/blog/20-year-old-kid-sagar-rana-build-enigma-worlds-most-secure-encryption-service

<comment><USER2> Never roll your own crypto?

Also, D-H was published 39 years ago, before the author was even born.</comment>


StartupWarrior shows the locations of computer technology companies across the globe - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupwarrior.com/ <comment><USER2> The map is tiny for the task. When I click on a pin for a company, the info bubble fills the screen, invariably moves the map, and it's difficult to get back to map without the bubble.

They need to make the map much bigger for this to live up to its promise. It really detracts from an otherwise excellent idea and implementation.</comment>


Google's CEO Doesn't Use Bullet Points - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/how-googles-ceo-creates-brain-friendly-presentations.html <comment><USER2> I can't wait after all these stories about companies doing away with bullet points to see some bullet point using maverick shaking up the industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope, he's too busy invading your privacy to use those!</comment>


The Amazing Twitter Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/neilkod/status/22263570715 <comment><USER2> Very true. I keep thinking I need to stay off it for a couple of days, but it is a very easy way to learn tons of new things with very little effort.

My guess is that in the coming months we will see more third party tools (proxlet) which help filter out the crap.

Then twitter will probably release their own. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more. My world has expanded because of twitter and the access it gives you to experts and people who are willing to share what they've learned and experimented with.</comment></comment>


Are "Better" Ideas More Likely to Succeed? An Analysis of Startup Evaluation [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/16-013_201e071c-9dd8-4838-b5aa-492f4f202822.pdf <comment><USER2> Full Abstract:

Entrepreneurs face high uncertainty, and often make costly investments in new business ideas without knowing the expected payoff. This paper empirically examines whether ex-ante assessment of earlystage startup ideas can predict their subsequent commercialization. We leverage an entrepreneurship program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which early-stage venture ideas, presented in the form of succinct standardized summaries, elicit subjective evaluations from a large set of experienced entrepreneurs and executives. Using data on 652 ventures in multiple industry sectors, evaluated over an 8-year period, we find that ideas that elicit more positive evaluations are significantly more likely to ultimately reach commercialization. We further show that these results are driven by venture ideas with documented intellectual capital in research-and-development-intensive sectors, such as life sciences and medical devices. We find no evidence, by contrast, that experts can effectively assess the commercial potential of venture ideas in non-R&D-intensive sectors such as consumer web and enterprise software. Finally, we find that industry-specific and scientific expertise is not critical to experts' collective ability to predict ventures' commercial viability.

<comment><USER3> Their results may be significant to VCs, but likely aren't to anyone else.

They get about a 4% increase in good outcomes, from 23% to 27%, for a 1 sigma increase in expert positive response. This is significant at the 5% level.

It's enough to say that "Experts do slightly better than chance in IP-heavy fields", but about 3/4 of those businesses will still fail, and that remains true regardless of expert evaluation.

If you're a big investor this could make a difference to your bottom line. If you're a small investor or entrepreneur, it is pretty much irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO: Venture capital has its own rules.

Rule 1: Find a startup with traction significantly large and growing rapidly in a huge market and where, still, the founders are very short on cash and will sign a term sheet with some really onerous conditions. E.g., the founders suddenly go from owning 100% to owning 0% and may get back to 60% on a four year vesting schedule. The BoD, dominated by the venture capital partners, can fire the founders before their stock is vested.

Rule 2: Claim a lot of items on a long list of what venture capital is about other than Rule 1. Claim it's about technology, innovation, brilliant founders, great leaders, changing the world, with the venture firm helping by using their long experience, "deep domain knowledge", etc.

Rule 2 is 100% noise, just _misdirection,_ to keep people from noticing Rule 1.

Other major parts of our society are really good at innovation, creating it, evaluating it, exploiting it, etc., but not the venture capital firms. They won't evaluate innovations. Instead, again, they just follow the two rules.

As in the title, "better ideas"? The venture firms never consider the quality of the ideas -- instead, they just follow Rules 1 and 2. Or, on evaluating the ideas, they just let the market decide and then look at traction to see what the market has decided.

Sometimes they make a lot of money, but on average their returns are poor.

<comment><USER5> Are VC returns _really_ poor on average? I thought their hit rate (1 company out of 50 being successful) was poor, but their returns are stellar because of the few unicorns.

If your conclusion is correct, how are the VCs staying in business?

<comment><USER6> The trailing 10-year average of VC returns is approximately the same as the S&P, but with orders of magnitude more volatility. [http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/venture-capital-funds- mak...](http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/venture-capital-funds-make-decent- money-this-is-news.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the abstract:

'We find no evidence, by contrast, that experts can effectively assess the commercial potential of venture ideas in non-R&D-intensive sectors such as consumer web and enterprise software. Finally, we find that industry-specific and scientific expertise is not critical to experts' collective ability to predict ventures' commercial viability.'

<comment><USER8> > venture ideas in non-R&D-intensive sectors

We're probably moving in to near tautological territory, here. If your venture doesn't depend in genuinely novel technology with significant R&D investment, then... its success probably depends on fundraising, marketing, and luck. All of which don't require industrial or scientific expertise.

<comment><USER9> This is not really true. There are plenty of ideas that don't involve a significant R&D phase (i.e. consist of more or less the implementation of the idea rather than the research-based refinement of an idea) which can immensely valuable.

Plenty of examples exist such as Uber, Basecamp, etc. Although the success of these ventures is dependent on fundraising and marketing, these are certainly not the only factors and these factors apply to research-heavy startups as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This paper provides evidence for what some might consider an obvious conclusion, but there is always value in documenting evidence, better yet, generating it.

The paper says established sectors are easier to predict than radical ones, just as progress is easier to measure in established sciences, as opposed to where paradigms may shift. And when faced with a paradigm shifting value proposition, no one really knows what to make of it until the rubber hits the road and the model is tested in the market.

But once established, even a paradigm shifter becomes a crowded R&D sector, no? The iterations are faster, but consumer web and enterprise software do seem more crowded. Search, social networks, and web technology plays also come to mind.

What I didn't find the paper mention were how open source and the lack of IP monopolization as an option could be a factor, and also how the entrepreneurs themselves stacked up in comparison. For me personally, it would suck if "the entrepreneurs didn't really matter" (the conclusion asserts better human capital gravitates towards the ventures with greater potential, but doesn't say anything about any influences they actually have).

</comment><comment><USER11> I found a rather strange index to rate the success-rate of future projects.

(MentionedInConversation x InfectiousnessToOther) _EnduranceOfIdea_ ( 1/TechAffinity)

Meaning, if your aunt talks to your mum about it, and the general idea comes up once or twice a week and migrates on, even without mentioning the company - and your mum&aunt is not enthusiastic for just the technology, then its going to make it.

Case: AirBnB - mentioned once or twice - misspronounced, then mentioned only as concept for three months - the idea stuck to rent out rooms to total strangers without big formalitys. Such buisness_idea_memes are easy to scale, propagate themselves in a way and the technology has basically some catalytic function to a allready existing small scale buisness concept that a person is allready familiar with but did not dare the risk previously.

"I could make a small hostel.."

One could imagine this for allmost anything.. Make a app for people who wish they where at partys and able the enjoy them and are even willing to pay for that, and connect them with party-animals lacking the money, willing to drag somebody shy along. Idea could run without your app, but your app propells it onwards. Voila!

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this study is trying to make statistical predictions based on a limited dataset. The industry has shown the outliers (or statistical anomalies) are the ones that result in the biggest companies.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Using data on 652 ventures in multiple industry sectors, evaluated over an > 8-year period, we find that ideas that elicit more positive evaluations are > significantly more likely to ultimately reach commercialization.

It sounds to me that ideas with positive evaluations are more likely to be funded through to commercialization. Not a very interesting finding?

<comment><USER14> Just below that:

> We find no evidence, by contrast, that experts can effectively assess the > commercial potential of venture ideas in non-R&D-intensive sectors such as > consumer web and enterprise software.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't this support what I said? They studied which ideas reached commercialization -- not how successful they were once commercialized.</comment></comment></comment>


The ThinkPad TrackPoint tried to build a better mouse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2020/6/30/21292182/thinkpad-trackpoint-mouse-nub-button-trackpad-challenges-design-user-input <comment><USER2> I still use a TrackPoint from time to time (on the ThinkPad X220, not my primary computer), and personally think it's a way better experience than any TouchPad, no matter how large, could possibly offer.

It works particularly great wherever there is the need to be precise (such as when editing graphics) but in general I rarely find myself using the TouchPad when I have the choice.

The TrackPoint on the ThinkPad can also be used for scrolling when holding the middle button.

</comment><comment><USER3> I buy Thinkpad branded keyboard/trackpoint combos for server environments where a full size HID setup would be in the way.

I like trackpoints a lot -- the lenovo quality is suffering though. I have a lot of problems lately with the trackpoints wandering by themselves without human contact. This used to be because of a center cap that was incorrectly installed on older ThinkPad notebooks, but these keyboards do it without the cap at all -- like a problem with calibrating 'true zero'.

Oh well. It's a pretty limited market, gotta take what I can get.

</comment><comment><USER4> For mobile computing, there's no comparison IMO. With a touchpad, you have to shuffle your hands to the palmrest area to move the mouse. If your machine is on your lap, that might put your hands in a quite unergonomic position. And it of course interrupts keyboard input. And there's the subject of accidental inputs when typing.

</comment><comment><USER5> The best is to associate a touchpad and a trackpoint:

\- the touchpad is used for large movements

\- the trackpoint is used for precise positioning

That was done on several laptops, but many reviews lamented the existance of 2 separate mechanism. I wonder if the same people now clamor for the removal of touchpads on devices with touchscreens?

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure I ever really _liked_ the TrackPoint, but the trackpad on the Thinkpads I had (this is early-mid 2000s) were so terrible that it was at least an improvement. Doubt I'd be going back after the Macbook Pro trackpad.

<comment><USER7> My X220 trackpad is horrible so I just disabled it. I don't prefer the TrackPoint but yeah compared to their trackpad it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whoa this takes me back to the days of the Dell Inspiron. The TrackPoint felt so much cleaner and easier to use compared to the barely-responsive trackpads of the early 2000s.</comment>


AI can replicate 2001 Nobel Prize winning quantum physics experiment in 1 hour - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/9-innovations-that-could-become-the-next-big-thing-842f4bf6e324#.evthbtf3x <comment><USER2> Meh. It was a half-baked reinforcement-learning algorithm which optimized for efficient use of the lasers, but it didn't invent or discover anything.</comment>


Ask HN: When is it your fault that you don't "get" art? - <AUTHOR> I find that as a "normal person" consuming some kinds of art (novels, films/TV, paintings, etc.), I'm not sure how to react when I don't find something appealing or interesting. How do you decide whether it's because the art is of a low quality, because you aren't experienced enough to really appreciate it, or because it simply isn't to your taste?
Sometimes it feels obvious to me. I can read a page of a novel and realize "Huh, this writing feels clunky." Other times, I'll look at a painting that seems like gibberish to me, and which is presented without any explanation that helps me appreciate it.
Still other times, I will love a musical artist and consider them to have depth and subtlety, but a close friend will completely dismiss their music as nonsense. As a music school graduate and someone who can use music theory to "prove" for myself that the music I like is better than the music they like, I feel satisfied that I'm right; but of course, the friends also don't understand or really care about music theory, and are equally convinced that their own taste is correct.
How do you decide for yourself whether it's a quality problem or a problem with the consumer of the art? Have you had revelatory experiences where friends successfully got you to see the beauty in something you'd previously thought was crap? <comment><USER2> There's no reason to complicate your thinking about tastes and aesthetics. There is art that you like, there id art the you don't like. Then there are criteria by which you judge the quality of the things you like/dislike.

For instance, it becomes hairy once you get down to make any sort of meaningful comparison between the quality of musicians you like, even if the criteria are pretty meaningful. Is Chopin better than Katy Perry because his works are harmonically richer? Bach because of superior use of counterpoint? Maybe Ivan Wyshnegradsky for his use of non-standard tuning systems?

Something is good if you are able to appreciate and enjoy it. Trying to justify why you like/dislike something is not going to be very fruitful in thr grand scheme of things, unless you just want to find similar things that you'd enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Years ago I read a story of someone who took an Asian Art class as a fine art graduation requirement for college. They basically looked at photographs of Asian Art all semester.

At the end, he didn't think he got much out of it.

Then he went to a museum with Western Art. And found it a bit odd. He had grown used to the Asian styles and motifs.

Another story I have comes from a friend of mine. His (British) parents had a very odd cartoon book. It contained cartoons of people on fox hunts. They were actually political cartoons, and to understand them you had to know how mid-20th century British MPs were caricatured. He didn't, so it make no sense to him.

Duchamp's _Fountain_ is something which is hard to understood without knowledge of art history - if only because that transgressiveness is now much more common _because_ of Duchamp.

Someone deeply into classical Western music might have no interest in classical Indian ragas. Indeed, the music theory you learned doesn't describe ragas.

Innumerable art museum visitors have looked at something piece of art and exclaimed "my 4 year old can do better than that!"

And so on. For all styles of art.

That said, to get to your questions:

1) "How do you decide for yourself whether it's a quality problem or a problem with the consumer of the art?"

It's always a problem with the consumer. I may grow to admire the art of 4 year olds. I may find a pile tossed coffee grounds to be the next masterpiece.

But is it my problem that I don't care to put in that effort? No. Unless I want it to be.

2) "...something you'd previously thought was crap?"

I'm struggling to think of things which fit that description. Most things I file under "I don't know how to appreciate it."

Perhaps a good example is the false and snobbish belief I had that I was too mature to read, watch, and enjoy children's literature and shows. I remember dismissing _Fraggle Rock_ because "that's for kids". I then watched it when I was 30-something and kicked myself for my earlier viewpoints.

In college I looked a bit down on a friend who enjoyed reading children's literature. Now that I have kids, I can say there's some really great stories out there - stories that don't require a kid in order to enjoy them.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's never your fault that you don't get art. It's the nature of art. The purpose of art is to communicate things that are difficult or (ideally) impossible to communicate with words. This tends to be ephemeral things like emotions.

The thing about communication of this sort is that its error-prone: the "message" you receive may not be (and often is not) the "message" the artist was intending to convey. If the artist's communication style doesn't match your own way of thinking well enough, you may not get a message at all.

When that happens, that's not your fault. Nor is it the artist's. It's just a case of two people not connecting.</comment>


The Counterculture Is Better in the Suburbs - <AUTHOR> http://www.triggerwarning.us/the-counterculture-is-better-in-the-suburbs/ <comment><USER2> This is actually a common feeling. You need only watch SLC Punk which addresses this issue.

I really became aware of anti-sheep-sheep in college. I had a pretty tame outside appearance. My hair was short. I shaved. I dressed in a way that was affordable in the town south western I grew up in (Old Navy, maybe some music tshirts from Hot Topic). Ironically I actually hung out with some real counterculture people (by the definition of this article) growing up. They accepted me although I didn't always dress like them. There was no way to dress like them because there was no one style.

My first summer job in college was working with a group that was basically a group of liberal hippies from the east coast, and I don't mean that in an insulting sense. We did backpacking and trail work for an americorps program. I initially didn't get the job, but my girlfriend did. When someone dropped out of the program I joined.

Immediately I stuck out like a sore thumb. These people weren't even close to being accepting of any ideas other than their own. They were conformists. I didn't have the right hair, it wasn't long enough. I didn't wear the right brand of shoes, Chacos were required. I didn't even drink the right kind of water because I refilled a cheap gatorade bottle rather than use a Nalgene. Even the things I did that happened fit in with the group were questioned. During our first team party I mentioned how much I liked "The Doors", and I someone had the balls to say I didn't look like I would like that kind of music.

I ate the wrong food because I wasn't vegan. The chain smokers told me: "don't you know the crap you're putting into your body?".

After 3 months of backpacking and working in national parks my appearance was quite a bit scruffier. The head of the program actually had the balls to say "I looked like a team member now".

I began to value people who had their own ideas, regardless of whether those ideas were or weren't mainstream. I'd rather see new culture than counter- culture. I'm suspicious of people who define themselves by being the disagreeing with mainstream because to me that seems just as restrictive as conforming.

It's extremely rare to find anyone who's not looking to be validated by their peers.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to be a peer validating you, but this comment really hit the mark for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article serves as a pretty clear cut example of the pejorative "hipsterism". She's essentially rejecting the very culture she identified with previously solely because of its perceived higher degree of popularity in metro areas.

She also has a wrong headed idea about metropolitan areas in general and about San Francisco specifically. These are not cities that have inherently normalized counter-culture, raising a generation of conformist non- conformists. They are centers of migration. The overwhelming majority of the population is not from San Francisco or even from California.

The reason you don't see many counter culture types amongst adults in the suburbs is because, by the very nature of conformity, it's difficult to get a job and making a living as an outsider. So as you grow up, you either conform or you move somewhere where there are like minded individuals. San Francisco didn't create counter culture...the counter culture moved there and created San Francisco.

She didn't move to S.F. and find out city kids are posers. She moved there and found 1,000's who moved there from the suburbs just like her. Confronted with the cognitive dissonance of discovering that she's not a unique snowflake and, in her own way, is just as conformist as "mainstream", she decided to declare herself "authentic" and every one else a poser.

She was counter culture _before_ it was cool. For real.

 _edit_

I've seen this sort of reaction so many times it deserves its own logical fallacy.

The True Scotsman Fallacy.

The True Scotsman Fallacy is the assertion that oneself, or one's inner group, is the only true representation of a particular culture, viewpoint, or interest group. All other groups are rejected for various, seemingly arbitrarily selected, criteria.

<comment><USER5> May I suggest the People's Front of Judea fallacy?

<comment><USER6> Splitters!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a temporal factor here the author's missing? The specific countercultural elements she's talking about are all the best-known artifacts from the countercultures of 30, 40 years ago. Listening to GG Allin in New York isn't subversive because in New York he's been old hat since around about the time that I suspect many of the people reading this article were still learning to read. Listening to GG Allin in the suburbs might be, though, because it would have taken years or decades for him to show up as a new thing in the suburbs of south Florida.

The Book of the SubGenius was also pretty darn subversive by the standards of the whitebread town I grew up in, but the cultural context in which I understood it sure changed a lot after I grew up, got a job, and found myself occasionally having drinks after work with a colleague who happened to help write it. She was nearly old enough to be my mom, and found my enthusiasm for what she considers to be a youthful lark to be rather adorable.

I bet my parents also thought it was adorable when I discovered the music they grew up on when I was a kid. Or rather, perhaps they were irritated because by then the psychedelic counterculture they belonged to had just become another puppet to use for selling processed cheese products.

I don't know that I can really judge the urban counterculture for the city I live in nowadays. I'm too busy being old and married and raising a kid and paying the bills to really notice it. And I'm in bed by the time the shows start, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sure, countercultures have their own social norms that their members conform to, and can behave just as sheeply. The thing is, the regular guy from the suburbs who doesn't do anything 'different' can be the awesome, interesting person you think only your 'freak' friends were/are. The clothes and labels are all just junk. You got it right on the big city counterculture, but still getting it wrong when looking at the suburbs you grew up on.

<comment><USER9> We're all in a subculture of some kind.

And in pretty much every subcultures, there's clothes, labels, things, and activities that 'define' you as a member of.

<comment><USER10> Except for the subcultures who are _actually_ trying to take over the world, and who therefore dress and self-label _exactly_ so as to fit into the mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How narcissistic does one have to be to think that an important characteristic of being for or against "the war" is how alienated and edgy it makes you feel?

And while a sense of "not being a part of the crowd" does impact the subjective experience of culture, to put that at the center of one's appreciation of is hollow and empty. There's a reason why people view hipster "I liked it before it was cool" attitude with contempt.

<comment><USER12> Feeling deeply alienated can make one hyper alert, which can lead to interesting art if you don't let it kill you.

My big problem with the article was the idea that Miami is considered suburbs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This guy needs do some travelling. If you want to feel different, go some place where you really are different. Go live in Mongolia. Immerse yourself in the art scene in Milan. Move to a favela.

If you just want to be different for its own sake, then sure, being a goth in the burbs will work. But if there's any point at all to it—artistic, spiritual, practical or whatever-you'll get way more benefit from immersing yourself in a genuinely foreign culture.

<comment><USER14> FYI the author is a woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish people would just behave the way they want and allow everyone else to do the same (as long as no one is being hurt).

I've often thought that extreme liberals and extreme conservatives are far more similar to each other than they are to those in the middle. Both groups have a system of fixed, rigid beliefs. Their mind has been made up on an issue before you even begin discussing the topic, and the use of logic and reason fails spectacularly on them. The only difference between them all is that they just happened to be born into different environments, so their particular beliefs are mere manifestations of chance.

I'll ask my friends occasionally, "Why you believe that?", and I'm amazed when I realize that beyond a few brief soundbites, there's no real foundation beneath their viewpoints. Strong emotions but little rationale.

And the problem is that these same people always want to enforce their way of thinking on everyone else. I just don't know why. I'm unsure about almost all of my beliefs -- there's so many variables and so much data behind most of these subject that I'm perplexed about how _anyone_ can be so certain they're right.

Quick tip for identifying people like this: if you are debating with someone and they quickly become emotional, angry, or start using a variety of logical fallacies ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)), then you're dealing with someone whose beliefs have no substance. The rules apply both ways though; this tip applies only if you didn't provoke them somehow. (For instance, I can become angry in a debate when someone starts attacking my character rather than my position.)

<comment><USER16> > Quick tip for identifying people like this: if you are debating with someone > and they quickly become emotional, angry, or start using a variety of > logical fallacies > ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)), > then you're dealing with someone whose beliefs have no substance.

At this point, it's worth noting that none of Xcelerate's tips are provably true, and his advice is, at best, an anecdotal fallacy. Every single one of his methods for proving that a person's beliefs are baseless are, themselves, baseless. People become emotional and angry for many reasons, and this is not tightly tied to the underlying rationality of their position. An anti-death- penalty advocate might have a long list of logically sound reasons for their belief (e.g. cost of error, ultimate in government overreach, etc), but they might become emotional because some aspect of state-sponsored executions touches their heart as well. Please do not fall into the fallacy that just because the person you're debating gets emotional that they are necessarily wrong, or that you are necessarily right.

Further, people use logical fallacies all the time. It's very hard to avoid them, unless one has practiced quite thoroughly.

Another common explanation for all of these phenomena is that you're being perceived as a jerk. For instance, if you're the sort of person who says 'I map all of people's beliefs to a single arbitrary dimension and if their beliefs aren't near mine, then they are almost certainly idiots who haven't thought things through and can't accept new evidence', then I'm pretty sure I'm done with you.

<comment><USER15> Haha, fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On a metaphysical level I think Grant Morrison touched on conventional counterculture in The Invisibles. Counterculture is just another, essential part of The System expressing itself. Things happen because of The system you're inside The System, and your "individualism" is an emergent property of it. The example I think he used was the police. Was there ever a year when nobody decided to become a police officer? If society was made up of free people making free choices, there would always be catastrophic upsets like this, but it doesn't ever happen. So to that extent, I think the article is incorrect because while you may feel more "authentically counterculture" the further away you are from "conventional counterculture", you're still just a slightly rarer perturbation in the tank.

Your counterculture is only useful if it combats or shields you from a dominant paradigm that is offensive to your values, and if you're alone in the suburbs being hardcore, you're probably losing. Unless your real goal is to feel cool, I guess, then by its own standards yes you are more counterculture than "counterculture". Establishment countercultures may be hypocrites because they don't recognize they're establishment, but they may also be creating systems that ultimately comfort the people in them. But it's probably not sustainable because your primary definition for a culture cannot be one of contrast to something else. America is a nation that has was born in and has internalized rebellion. This is probably the worst value we have, because you can't actually build on that for very long, it's "meant" for the tearing down phase of a bloated bureaucracy. As a nation gets settled if it doesn't abandon that value it will start turning inward and attacking itself, which I think is exactly what is happening.

Did I read too much into this essay?

</comment><comment><USER18> >In South Florida it is edgy to be against war. In San Francisco it is socially enforced to the point of banal conformity.

You can be against a war because that war is wrong or against a war because it's a fun novelty to be so. I would hope for the former because heaven help the people under the bombs when the hipness of opposing it wears off.

</comment><comment><USER19> There was a professor at school who considered monks, nuns, the Amish, DIY punks, etc to be countercultural.

The hipsters of the forties+50s,the beats, the hippies, etc he saw as seekers of higher, truer things to consume, and he didn't see that as significantly different from trying to consume the appliances/cars etc that the Joneses have.

<comment><USER8> the former are true countercultures. The latter are just subcultures. Often people use the two terms as if they were the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's > another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of > nonconformity.

\- Bill Vaughan [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Vaughan#Quotations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Vaughan#Quotations)

</comment><comment><USER10> You know, I grew up alienated in an awful suburb, so I think I feel qualified to say: _that was fucking dumb._

Counterculture is indeed about rebelling against something, and it indeed dies on the vine when corporatized, mainstream culture has already absorbed it and there's no more cheap-and-easy rebellion to be had. But hey: suburbs are fucking alienating for everyone. If your only moral or political principle on which to take a stand is, "I feel alienated in suburbia", you're about as Homo Sapiens as it gets.

The real lesson is not, "counterculture should be preserved by having smart, rebellious, artistic kids grow up in the suburbs." The real lesson is, "This is why the overwhelming majority of people don't choose to live in suburbs when there's any kind of alternative available, but instead in either real cities or real countryside."

Also, for a bonus lesson: you can't spend your life rebelling against the suburbs, or in fact against anything whatsoever. At some point, you will either become just another hipster, or your "rebellion" has to be _for_ something.

<comment><USER21> You could also simply live the way you want, even if other people see it as some kind of rebellion, without it being for anything.

<comment><USER22> Yes. I don't really get it: why the burning need for fulfilling the definition of rebellion? Does it give you some sort of safety? Want to be both unique and socially accepted? This is an immediate contradiction, you know, as wide acceptance comes at a price of fitting oneself within one or more (couter)culture categories. Instead just do whatever you want man.

<comment><USER23> It's because you will probably interact with people, and having a socially aware human brain will cause you to recognize surprise and judgement in others, and you'll have to find a way to emotionally deal with the resulting rejection and exclusion.

Most people do this by saying "It's ok: I'm doing it on purpose. I didn't want to be accepted anyway."

And that's what rebellion is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I noticed that a lot at hacker conventions (CCC). You might think that the guys in simple black t-shirts are tolerant about clothes and don't judge people by their appearance.

<comment><USER25> I have always wanted to attend a hackaton wearing a 3 piece suit and shoes so shiny that I could mirror myself in them, just to see if they really wouldn't judge me for it.

Of course I know the answer.

<comment><USER26> I've seen kids do this at hackthons. Good luck staying as natty by the end tho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The problem with counterculture is that it encourages people to uncritically accept that mainstream culture is horrible (e.g. boring, White, materialist, racist/sexist/homophobic) and must be rejected.

While everyone feels this way on some issues, counterculture encourages people to turn a dissatisfaction with some aspects of mainstream culture into a total rejection of it. And it does so not by rational argument, but by exploiting people's desire to feel special and enlightened.

<comment><USER28> In my opinion aligning yourself too much with a particular 'counterculture' should be the domain of teenagers and those in their early-twenties. And that's fine: we're social creatures and we often need some help breaking out of the paradigms we grew up with.

But at some point one should learn to forge their own path, separate from any package of beliefs that comes with any 'culture'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If ever there was a condemnation of the concept of a "counterculture" this is it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I sort of agree here, but I think teen alienation is another factor. You don't feel like you fit in wherever you are, at times in your life. She was in SF after that period.

</comment><comment><USER31> "In South Florida it is edgy to be against war. In San Francisco it is socially enforced to the point of banal conformity."

Banal conformity: that was a great summary of the article.

<comment><USER32> Banal conformity is not necessarily a bad thing. Boring perhaps, but _that_ conformity is often why people move to cities like San Francisco, to be with like minded thinkers.

I grew up in the suburbs and went to college in a small conservative city. But, my family visited California when I was a child and I always liked it, although I'm not sure I could put my finger on "why" as a child. So, when I had the opportunity to do a college exchange program in California I jumped on it.

The first thing I noticed was that people felt comfortable being different. As someone who always felt like I didn't belong, I immediately felt comfortable.

It took me about 10 years after college to make my way to California, but I finally feel at home. I don't enjoy the excitement of being different, I like the comfort of similarity.

<comment><USER31> It's interesting how some of us like the same while some others like different. I like SF because I am the most boring person you can imagine (opposite you, who I imagine edgier. I have no tattoos and my hair is natural color, stereotypically boring). But I like that I can go there and see people who are so different than me and different among themselves.

<comment><USER10> Excuse me, but the Straight Edge subculture is a thing. There are lots of people with very strange or unusual ideas who don't have tattoos and don't dye their hair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think Freaks and Geeks made this argument pretty conclusively. It'd be interesting to see what happened to Lindsey after she joined the Dead Tour.</comment>


Technical debt: What it is and why you should care - <AUTHOR> http://sdtimes.com/technical-debt-care/

<comment><USER2> A hot topic for sure, but this is a highly simplified view in my opinion. (remember too that everyone's experiences vary)

>There are tools that can evaluate your existing software code and determine estimated levels of technical debt. If your IT department is not using this, force them to do it. If they can't, hire someone who can

Tools shouldn't be a requirement, a culture of open dialog should be. Your team knows where the risks are, make sure they are comfortable raising issues and are able to prioritize them AS A TEAM.

>Lastly, now that you now about the silent killer, make sure that you adopt the software development practices necessary to insure that excellent code quality is baked into the product. Adopt BDD/TDD and Continuous Integration and Delivery.

For my teams I like to put the CI foundations first instead of last. This lays the groundwork for TDD. Also understand that the dynamics of changing a team to BDD/TDD is a much larger undertaking ( with plenty of risks all in its own right ) and can take months of hard work and time investment.

Setting up CI gets all the delivery roadblocks out in the open and enables the team to focus on repeat-ability and reliability. A simple accounting exercise in documenting all the instances of technical debt does nothing to directly resolve these issues and is a burden in its own right. While sometimes useful, it should be a living document and part of the teams process, not merely a one-and-done step.

A wholly separate topic is explaining technical debt to business users who may not be truly familiar with SDLC.</comment>


Lifetick: Work SMARTER, not Harder (goal-setting app) - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefultools.com/2009/06/work-smarter-not-harder/

<comment><USER2> The site seems to store your password in plain text or 2 way hash. I'd recomend against creating an account there with a password you use anywhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! Going in to change mine now....

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My immediate gut feeling to an ad is - to refuse.</comment>


Swedish Covid-19 chief Anders Tegnell: judge me in a year - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh9wso6bEAc <comment><USER2> Sweden's economy took a worse hit than any of neighbors because it took them far longer, in the end, to get it under control. Infections and death are obviously terrible, at 10x per capita compared to neighboring Finland, Denmark, and Norway. They are not going to achieve herd immunity, and the infections were all massed at the start of the pandemic, where far less was known and, for example, death rates on respirators were 80%, compared to 25% now.

So at this point Sweden is in worse shape than comparable countries along any conceivable dimension. They might somehow end up better than others a year from now by pure chance, or because of smart choices from now on. They have recently diverged from their earlier eerie parallel track with the US, proving that they are, fundamentally, a functioning society capable of rational action.

But, right now, they are behind with nothing to show for it.

So, yeah, I can see why he'd want to delay judgement.

</comment><comment><USER3> By principle, a pretty risky and negligient attitude.

On the spectrum of events possible, mass deaths is a viable outcome and this guy feels OK rolling the dice on it.</comment>


Fecal Transplant Is Linked to a Patient's Death, the F.D.A. Warns - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/health/fecal-transplant-fda.html <comment><USER2> That's a grossly misleading title (no pun intended?)

The article clearly states that it has ordered fecal donor material be tested before being transplanted.

Saying "halts clinical trials" implies they are no longer allowed, which is not true.

I can't imagine who decided to transplant untested fecal matter...

<comment><USER3> > I can't imagine who decided to transplant untested fecal matter...

There are plenty of people out there doing DIY transplants, believe it or not. Personally I think eating a varied and balanced diet is more useful for your gut microbiome's long-term health but I can't deny that the research into this field seems promising for some health conditions.

<comment><USER4> I think the one that started this one was Josiah Zayner.[1]

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/4/11581994/fmt-fecal- matter-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/4/11581994/fmt-fecal-matter- transplant-josiah-zayner-microbiome-ibs-c-diff)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like a straightforward addition to the studies' protocol; survey donors and exclude those likely to harbor drug resistant bacteria (presumably those who have been on antibiotics recently) and screen the samples for harmful, drug-resistant pathogens. Hopefully this isn't too hard as this technique has always struck me as an elegant solution to an awful problem. I wonder if it's possible to bake a short term self destruct into these transplants so that any infections that occur can be easily destroyed.

<comment><USER6> The natural way to destroy it would be with antibiotics , and the problem here is the problem bacteria is resistant to most.

<comment><USER7> Switch to phage treatment of the donor material?

<comment><USER8> Even more experimental, and you cannot introduce bacterial species this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Fecal transplants have come into increasing use to treat severe intestinal disorders, particularly an infection caused by a bacterium called Clostridium difficile, which can be deadly and tends to occur in hospitalized patients who have been heavily treated with antibiotics. The idea behind the transplants is to use stool from a healthy donor to restore the normal balance of bacteria and other organisms in the intestine, the microbiome.

In some cases, the transplants have worked quickly and saved the lives of patients who were wasting away with uncontrollable diarrhea. But the procedure is not approved by the F.D.A. and is considered experimental."

For anyone else wondering what this procedure is for.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are a number of pathogens in some blood and plasma donations that are usually not screened. Babesia, a parasite similar to malaria but less severe, has been passed along by blood donors. The FDA did approve something in the middle of last year for testing blood, but it's unclear how widespread the testing is.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda- appr...](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves- first-tests-screen-tickborne-parasite-whole-blood-and-plasma-protect-us-blood- supply)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not let the free market solve the problem?

Find fit, healthy, young people, with a clear medical history and that pass all tests, and let them make regular donations in return for payment?

It still strikes me as odd that we don't allow or encourage a free market for blood, semen, egg donation.

<comment><USER12> How would that solve the problem of dangerous bacteria in some people's donations?

The free market version of solving this problem is counting on some transplant places to do adequate testing of donations. The ones that don't will accidentally kill more people, and presumably they'll lose business over it, and eventually they'll be forced out of the market - maybe.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there not a memory-safe C? - <AUTHOR> I'm going through a lot of "Why Rust?" reading material, and starting to wonder why is there no memory safe subset of C?
While going through Rust tutorials, I'm realizing how much more sophisticated Rust gets than C in terms of the language. So many syntactical things to remember.
Could there be a less powerful subset of C that we can use in situations where we're not building operating systems or distributed systems? <comment><USER2> A lot of Rust complexity exists to allow memory manipulation while ensuring safety without requiring garbage collection. Take something simple like taking the address of an object on the stack. In C, you get a pointer that becomes invalid when the function returns; subsequent access to that pointer will access garbage, or the local variables of another function activation. In Go, the local value is promoted to the heap; you can continue using the pointer once the function has returned, but you need a GC to clean it up. In Rust, you have memory safety and don't need a GC. But you get a pointer qualified to a region such that it can't escape the scope of the enclosing function. The whole machinery of regions (and corresponding syntactic complexity) arises out of the need to achieve memory safety without GC.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is C not memory safe? It's because you can create things and forget to destroy them, destroy things that are already destroyed, or trust an inaccurate wrray length.

If you never do anything of those your program is anecdotally memory safe. Turn all things into libraries (strings, basic data structures, etc) and verify those closely and your C is now what many people call "memory safe". Add valgrind on that and you're pretty safe.

Good patterns and good tooling can combat any issues you have with C if you need to use C. Otherwise just use one of the "!C" languages out there

Other good things:

        - Every warning is an error until you can explain to me why that code can't be rewritten any other way

        - All code is compiled with -pedantic

        - preprocessor hacks should be replaced with inline static functions

        - const everywhere

<comment><AUTHOR> True that there is a safe way of writing C, if I followed x guidelines, and did Y checks. But, I cannot in good conscience trust all the libraries and tools I import have gone through the same diligence.

Another thing is, even the basic constructs of the language (for simpler needs like the ones I described in original question)are deemed unsafe - like string processing. Someone told me in passing that I should use Redis's SDS[1] if I want safe strings in C. Do not use char * and manipulate them. I admit that I haven't spent my time understanding why that is the case, or have validated whether it is mitigated magically by using SDS. The point is the need for doing such things for basic elements of a language - strings.

What I wonder is why there isn't a language that is C, with safe defaults, easy-to use syntax, as fast as C, and consequentially less powerful. I was hoping Rust was it, until I started to feel scared just looking at the code. At the risk of prejudice, I feel it is more of a glorious C++ than a language I could use for simple general purpose programs(that are still as fast as C).

[1] - [https://github.com/antirez/sds](https://github.com/antirez/sds)

EDIT : Grammar and reference

<comment><USER4> > I was hoping Rust was it, until I started to feel scared

I recommend you stick with it. Your understanding of it will improve with practise.

Memory safety isn't free -- there's either a language complexity (borrow checking), a runtime complexity (garbage), or a programming complexity (avoiding making mistakes). While there's no one correct option, there is in my opinion a wrong one. Human minds are fallible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> D programming language has a memory safe subset called safe-d ([https://dlang.org/articles/safed.html](https://dlang.org/articles/safed.html)) and a subset called better c ([https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html](https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html)) so you can probably use a combination of two subsets

<comment><USER6> Came for this

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also Cyclone which tried to be safer than C in some respects. It was used by a DoD Linux distro called AUXillery OS iirc. Mysteriously disappeared from the internet a few years back. They were making sure every bit of the kernel was safe. I think its goals was for jet planes or something mission critical enough. Kept looking back every few years on Wikipedia till the page disappeared and the homepage.

Edit: Wow now I absolutely cannot find a darn thing about that distro. Used to be one last page detailing the project left. It was quite interesting, wish they hadn't shut down the homepage at least.

Edit 2: Looks like it was called AuroraUX here's a bit more info on it:

[https://www.openhub.net/p/AuroraUX](https://www.openhub.net/p/AuroraUX) [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyMTI](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyMTI)

Even found a blog post from someone who was apparently developing AuroraUX:

[http://ultravioletos.blogspot.com/2009/09/opensolaris- distro...](http://ultravioletos.blogspot.com/2009/09/opensolaris-distro- auroraux-makes.html)

Gotta love mysterious little Operating Systems. Looks like they were being maintained by Blastwave which was some sort of OpenSolaris focused company.

Found a Spanish wikipedia entry still alive which mentions support for Cyclone:

[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuroraUX](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuroraUX)

(Google Translate if you don't know Spanish :)

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I looked around - could the name have been AuroraUX? A page about it survives in Russian wikipedia (deleted in English back in 2012).

It's said to have been based on DragonFly BSD, with new components written in Ada (!), but also supporting Cyclone.

<comment><USER7> Oooh I think that might actually be it! I think they went from Linux to BSD eventually... (Totally forgot about that change) I just remember 'AUX' being part of the name, maybe they changed it to AuroraUX after some time. Nice catch thanks! :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say that this is Rust. Ensuring at compile time that references are handled in a memory safe manner (borrow checking) requires a certain amount of complexity. There are of course plenty of memory safe languages more syntactically and semantically similar to C which just use a garbage collector. D and Go for instance.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think unfortunately that the way C handles memory is so ingrained in the language and the standard library that to have a safe version of C would be a different enough language to have to call it a different name.

There is Safe-C[0], but it's not directly compilable as C and vice versa, and there are libraries like Cello[1] which provide higher level mechanisms like garbage collection to C.

[0] [http://www.safe-c.org/](http://www.safe-c.org/) [1] [http://libcello.org/](http://libcello.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. I tried to check safe-c. But, it only had a compiler for Windows. Its documentation has screenshots of setting it up on Windows but no mention of Linux? Is it just Windows only?

<comment><USER9> Yes, unfortunately. It's more of an academic exercise than a production compiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, there is. It is called Go.

Well, while my answer is not meant to be serious, Go started as "C with some improvements", and the three person team who first wrote it had among them Ken Thompson, one of the first users of C. Because it is garbage collected, it mostly abstracts away the memory allocation from the programmer. There's penalty in performance, though. It's a trade-off that allows the programmer to not think much about it. Go favors simplicity over speed while Rust tries to have speed as a main goal, and sometimes the tradeoff is more complexity.

<comment><USER11> Go is not "memory safe C".

Go has garbage collector and that is not zero cost.

Rust has zero cost abstractions, so Rust is sort-of "memory safe C".

However, Rust is notoriously hard to learn, read and write in. So that sort of shows you that desugning low-level, zero-cost language is _H_ A _R_ D _

<comment><USER10> The OP didn't ask for zero cost abstractions. Furthermore, maybe "zero-cost" is not the best way to describe Rust abstraction; they may be zero cost for the machine at runtime, in exchange for a bigger mental burden on the programmer, thus being better labeled as a trade-off in more speed in exchange for more complexity. Whether this trade-off is worth it, will depend on some factors like the use case and the programmers involved. And the OP was actually complaining about the added complexity, thus my answer being Go.

<comment><USER12> > Furthermore, maybe "zero-cost" is not the best way to describe Rust > abstraction

"Zero-cost" has always been about runtime cost. Other costs are not part of the slogan. Everything always has a cost!

<comment><USER13> And notably, Rust didn't start the "zero-cost abstraction" meme, C++ did.

<comment><USER12> Yup!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you started on the project of making such a language, you would have to make choices about how to adapt dynamic memory allocation, pointer assignment and arithmetic, the various ways in which functions can return pointers to out-of-scope variables, the way C decays arrays to pointers when passing them to functions, and the way C accommodates separate compilation. Most of these issues touch the core paradigms of C, and if you were to build a decision tree of all the options, you would find that none of the leaves would be a subset of C. You would probably also find that each leaf is already well-served by an existing language.

</comment><comment><USER15> Take a look at Cyclone:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_\(programming_language\))

[https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/](https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/)

[http://wiki.c2.com/?CycloneLanguage](http://wiki.c2.com/?CycloneLanguage)

</comment><comment><USER16> Rust should be compared to c++, not C.

Your question still stands. However, it's not too hard to be "memory safe" in modern c++.

<comment><USER17> I agree that safety aspect in C++ has improved in its modern versions. But, these modern features are best practices as documented in C++ core guidelines. The issue with best practices is that it cannot be enforced. That is, lets say everybody on my team follows the latest guidelines. We even have latest static analysis tools. However, the same cannot be said about the 3rd party libraries that we will use. In this regard, Rust is much better since the every line of code is subjected to the same strict rules.

Offcourse, one can argue that the 3rd party Rust libraries can use a lot of "unsafe" code which we as consumer may not know about. But the situation is still better than C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, there is a less powerful subset of C that is memory safe.

You can use local variables, but no pointer types - no variables with pointer types, no functions that return a pointer type, and don't use the * or & operations which dereference or create a pointer.

Initialize everything - there are compiler warnings to help with that.

Admittedly, this subset of C isn't particularly useful. No dynamic memory, no strings or file i/o since those functions from the standard library take pointers. You could definitely do some arithmetic and return the value from main() in a completely memory-safe manner using this subset, though.

</comment><comment><USER19> There have been a few attempts to make C safer. However, one of the most popular aspects of C is the fact that it works everywhere. That means vendors are expected to have a working compiler for their platform. The easiest way to do that is to keep C features minimal. C99 was controversial because it asked these vendors to comply with changes in the language. C11 actually reduced many of the requirements in C99, making them optional. Sometimes this can be frustrating for programmers. Luckily clang-tidy and various sanitizers or valgrind can catch many issues you will encounter writing C.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would have to be so radically different that it wouldn't resemble C. All sorts of standard C idiom is inherently unsafe, like zero terminated strings and pointer arithmetic.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is. The D programming language [https://www.dlang.org](https://www.dlang.org)

</comment><comment><USER22> You need to be more specific about what you are looking for: user-choice safety (i.e., a convenient way or a library for users to do most of the things that C does in a memory safe fashion, which is not _enforced_ by the language / compiler), enforced safety or something else. Depending on this choice the arguments and benefits for it might be different.

That said, IME _new_ C projects (not maintaining old monsters, for which a new language or library will not help) are mainly small components or libraries where you need to be close to hardware. In those cases, it might be better to reap benefits of being simple, clean and close to problem domain (hardware) and mitigate dangers by keeping the C code small, modular and clean.

Not criticizing, just asking an honest counter-question: what for (use cases)?

</comment><comment><USER23> The main value of C is being the most compatible, well-known lowest common denominator. As soon as you add anything to it, it's no longer _the_ C language, and you lose the benefit of universal compatibility and acceptance. This creates network effect in the C ecosystem that is so strong, that C99 is still "new", and C11 is an experimental curiosity.

Anyone trying to improve C has to face the dilemma that being "C but better" doesn't seem to offer enough for C users to switch (you get all the headache of a "new" language for one or two features), and languages adding enough improvements to justify cost of switching have to evolve to the point of no longer looking like C.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are quite a few as research projects. They've just never hit the mainstream. Or gotten out of the lab at all.

If I can nitpick your last sentence for a second, that's the wrong way to think about it. The parts of C that are dangerous aren't the "powerful" parts; in particular, whether your can write a distributed system is beside the point. The dangerous parts of C include basics like arrays that you need for every program. Fixing them won't affect your ability to do almost anything.

</comment><comment><USER25> There is also a language called zig[1], which popped up on hckrnews a few times in the past. I didn't have the chance to try it out, but am following the blog.

From what I can gather, it supports compile time code execution and reflection, so no preprocessor necessary. Furthermore it has a lot of safety features and optional checks, a nullable type instead of null value and manual memory management but also provides a `defer` statement.

[1] [https://ziglang.org](https://ziglang.org)

<comment><USER12> Memory safety is an explicit non-goal of Zig, or at least it was previously. It tries to help, but makes no guarantees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Could there be a less powerful subset of C

You probably meant minimal superset of C (as C doesn't have nontrivial or similarly performant memory-safe subset). And probably, although its niche would be smaller. Either you have complexity in language or in code. Systems software is more often larger and more complex so it less often makes sense to choose language that's easier to learn that is then harder to write in.

</comment><comment><USER27> That reminds me ADA selling points about 20 years ago: Type safe, concurrency, and easy to read syntax.

Of course ADA didn't made it outside military contractors.

Anyone dos know why?

<comment><USER28> Compiler prices mostly.

You could get a compiler for C, Pascal, Basic, Forth, ... for a few hundred, while Ada compilers were priced in thousands.

Then when vendors started selling SDKs for their OSes, it was an hard sell to get management to pay for the SDK and then an additional compiler, instead of using the languages provided on the OS SDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Have a look at C2: [http://c2lang.org/site/](http://c2lang.org/site/)

<comment><USER4> Is C2 memory safe? It's not mentioned in the design goals, and appears to just allow free use of pointers.

<comment><USER6> No it's not more safe than C, it's just more convenient.

[http://c2lang.org/site/introduction/changes_from_c/](http://c2lang.org/site/introduction/changes_from_c/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The question and all answers so far assume that memory safety is a clear and well-understood concept!

 _Au contraire_!

Can I bring [1] to your attention? The paper argues that our intuition about memory safety means allowing for _local_ reasoning about state.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07354](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07354)

</comment><comment><USER31> C was always intended as a higher-level assembly, so by definition, it can't be memory-safe.

</comment><comment><USER32> It needs to be revised and is not cool(tm) project than creating new language and rethinking how to avoid any pointer arithmetic (starting from char *str, to arrays char str[999]) is not very easy task.

</comment><comment> jmg-prog [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C) is what you are looking for

<comment><USER33> This is the best answer in my opinion as the vehicle safety standards for programmable safety systems are derived from IEC61508 which, among other things, gives guidelines for methodologies intended to create and validate software with target known failure rates. See this for a brief overview [https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http...](https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Munir_Afridi/publication/268378225_C_PROGRAMMING_IN_SAFETY_RELATED_ENVIRONMENT/links/5469c5980cf2397f782d9977/C-PROGRAMMING- IN-SAFETY-RELATED- ENVIRONMENT.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiw0vPv1p7bAhXJabwKHWQBBJk4MhAWMAJ6BAgJEAE&usg=AOvVaw0xIgVn2toXHrMKXz0mdW2N)

Functional safety is a specialised branch of engineering all of its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://github.com/Microsoft/checkedc](https://github.com/Microsoft/checkedc)

</comment><comment><USER35> Worse is better. Process isolation, valgrind and similar tools are good enough.

D is better than rust IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER36> There are at least a few memory safe C compilers (PoCs) [1] [2] [3] and probably more than a few memory safe C subsets [4] and dialects.

However, they are not part of the C ecosystem, they don't compile into C and don't provide anything like musl gcc wrapper to be able to incrementally add memory safety in certain situations.

[1] [https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~santosh.nagarakatte/softbound/](https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~santosh.nagarakatte/softbound/)

[2] [http://sva.cs.illinois.edu/index.html](http://sva.cs.illinois.edu/index.html)

[3] [http://chrisseaton.com/plas15/safec.pdf](http://chrisseaton.com/plas15/safec.pdf)

[4] bounds checking feature in tcc [https://bellard.org/tcc/](https://bellard.org/tcc/) [http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/tinycc/](http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/tinycc/)

</comment><comment><USER37> What is the use case for a "safe C"? You use C because you do want control over how your data is actually stored in memory, for reasons of efficiency, or performance, or dealing with hardware, or whatever reason. The ability to just grab a bunch of bytes and cast them to a struct is absolutely key in many real systems.

But if you really do want it, C offers the opportunity to replace malloc() with whatever you like... or to not malloc at all...

</comment><comment><USER38> For the same reason there is no memory safe assembly language.

</comment><comment><USER39> You could use smart pointers in c++11

<comment><USER40> You could easily get a deadlock if a shared pointer gets destroyed within a thread it manages. Shared pointers alone are not the answer to memory safety.

<comment><USER39> I Said SMART not SHARED. That includes weak_ptrs and unique_ptrs

<comment><USER40> Not sure how that makes the situation any different.

<comment><USER39> Shared_pointers are thread-safe from a creation and deletion aspect. Futhermore, you can use weak_ptrs to reference a shared_ptr and use that where you suspect a pointer might be deleted to a resource that is still required. Furthermore, the trusty old keyword const can make the pointer immutable thereby mitigating the problem. (And don't say what about const_cast.. because that's undefined behavior masquerading as acceptable because it rarely causes side-effects.

<comment><USER40> My point is, "making sure x happens" or "follow this sure to work design philosophy which will break once the system is more complex than a game of billards" is not a guarantee to anything, therefore none of the smart pointers solve any problems about deadlocks caused by resource sharing.

<comment><USER39> I can tell you're not familiar with the latest C++ developments. RAII solves deadlocks so do things like std::lock_guard. C++ 11 is as safe as you're ever going to get while still maintaining fine granularity over the control of the system.

C++ applications are some of the most vastly complicated programs in existence so I don't follow the argument that they break on projects larger than a breadbox.

<comment><USER40> I am familiar with all developments in C++ since 2001, that is why I am pretty sure that moving mutex primitives from platform level to language and memory model level has not changed anything in terms of deadlocks and you are just googling new stuff as we go.

<comment><USER39> You should really check out the new stuff. It's a barely even the same language anymore. They've made many improvements.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


South African court rules against mass surveillance on citizens by the state - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/09/16/south-africa-mass-surveillance-court-rica-illegal-tapping-spying/ <comment><USER2> Yeah turns out our government was spying on us all along, not really shocking as it's within the means of any world government.</comment>