Ubuntu 11.04 is going to be named the Natty Narwhal - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/478

<comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of Ubuntu (server and slowly trying to ween off OSX onto Ubuntu Desktop) and their regular release cycle is actually reassuring -- I've never had major problems when upgrading, although I keep all my production servers -1 LTS (all currently 8.04).

I'm not sure, however, what the big differences are between releases on the server side (lots of improvement on desktop, sure). All I see is slowly growing memory footprint but little performance gains or other benefits. Anyone have a thought?

<comment><USER3> For what its worth, Server 10.04 boots dramatically faster than 8.04. I've been able to reboot a VM in under 10 seconds (timed from typing "reboot" to getting a login prompt again)

The main reason to upgrade Server, though, is to get access to a new generation of packages which are considered stable. The stuff you get in 8.04, while reliable, is getting long in the tooth features-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Annnnnnnd Reddit just freaked out...

I'm always stoked for new releases of Ubuntu even though I don't really use them much at all (except on servers). Is there any real reason to keep up a release cycle like theirs when you can just update the apt repositories?

<comment><USER5> Momentum, I imagine. The best way to keep getting press is to keep making news :)

<comment><USER6> It's also a lot more rewarding to work on something that's released regularly than ploughing through a never ending queue of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That was a refreshing piece. It's good to see Ubuntu doing so well, and it is pleasing to hear that 11.04 will have some focus on more behind the scenes stuff like making more use of powerful GPUs. VLC is already doing some of that (an area where Mac users can envy their Linux brothers a bit). Hopefully many other projects will follow with those sorts of under the hood improvements. 10.04 was slick, Good work guys

<comment><USER8> _VLC is already doing some of that (an area where Mac users can envy their Linux brothers a bit)._

You are aware that VLC does work on Mac, right?

<comment><USER9> The point was that only the Linux and Windows ports of VLC have GPU acceleration currently.

<comment><USER8> Ah. I (mistakenly, it seems) thought that VLC used the framework that Apple released awhile back for hardware accel as well. Whoops. Ouch, at -3 for that, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always been a fan of their numbering scheme and regular release schedule, but I'm not a fan of the 6-month interval. It seems a little quick to me. 9 months would be better (though irregular) in my opinion.

First off, if you are installing mid-way between two releases you basically have 3 months before your distro is obsolete. I just put 10.04 on my laptop in July and already I'm thinking about upgrading again (which has not always been smooth, 9.04->9.10 sucked), and I haven't even gotten around to my desktop yet, and now I just decided to wait until 10.10 because why bother doing it now? So I'll still be on 9.10. It becomes a hassle for users after a while. I remember when I was downloading the release on the night it came out and updating my machine, but the releases these days are less and less noticeably different.

I also wonder if they could accomplish more in 9 months than in 6, some percentage of time is spent doing overhead for each release and a slower release schedule would allow them to bite off bigger chunks. 6 months made a lot of sense when it was a new project and there were a lot of low hanging fruit, but these days I feel like the path forward requires bigger steps and more time.

<comment><USER11> I don't think a new release makes the old release obsolete - that comes when they stop providing patches for it. If you're using an LTS release, like 10.04, you've got three years worth of support.

You don't need to update to the latest version every time - the 18 month support window for non-LTS releases is pretty decent. It means that they can have a quick release cycle to get support for new hardware out fast and get a fresh round of attention for each new release while not obsoleting old installs too quickly.

And if, like many people here, you feel the need to upgrade just because there's something new, odds are there'd be something else shiny demanding your attention anyway!

<comment><USER12> Honestly LTS releases are only viable for 3 years if you're OK with 3 year out of date versions of software. They never import new major versions of _anything_ , so you're stuck with whatever (eventually old and crufty) version you got. Hardy was stuck on an old and crashy version of Pidgin for a long time, whereas newer builds were actually much better.

<comment><USER13> Isn't that rather the point of opensource? I rely version 2.xx of Blah, i want security fixes to version 2 without being forced to update to blah 7, with all it's new incompatibilities and bugs, just because somebody has a sales target

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FreeBSD 9 Release will be called... FreeBSD 9 Release.

</comment><comment><USER15> Narwhals! Narwhals!!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc></comment>


Buku v3.8 bookmark manager released with self-hosted http server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jarun/Buku/releases/tag/v3.8 <comment><AUTHOR> ## Features

      - Lightweight, clean interface, custom colors
      - Text editor integration
      - Fetch, edit page title; add tags and notes
      - Powerful search modes (regex, substring...)
      - Continuous search with on the fly mode switch
      - Open bookmarks and search results in browser
      - Manual encryption support
      - Auto-import from Firefox, Google Chrome and Chromium
      - Import/export bookmarks from/to HTML, Markdown or Orgfile
      - Shorten and expand URLs
      - Smart tag management using redirection (>>, >, <<)
      - Portable, merge-able database to sync between systems
      - Multithreaded full DB refresh
      - Shell completion scripts, man page with handy examples</comment>


Deliver something of value every week - <AUTHOR> http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/deliver-something-of-value-every-week/

<comment><USER2> _My adaptation of esr's open source approach:_

      1. paint a picture of something really cool
      2. deliver the smallest possible subset of that functionality, that runs
      3. be guided by "bug reports" that request features to fill these *gaps*

This only works for a "flat" project - that is, where each additional feature can be added as a module. This requires a concept that is "flat" and an implementation architecture that is "flat" (has places to add each feature.) If the concept is not flat (or unknown), or if the right architecture is not flat (or unknown), this approach doesn't work.

This helps explain the kinds of projects that have popular open source implementations: copies (of concept and implementations) and system software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this principle the basis of agile development? Who is this post for?

</comment><comment><USER4> May be most relevant (possible) for small-to-medium size projects, but the principles of keeping the outcomes in mind and getting feedback* regularly (whether weekly or monthly, etc) are useful for me, at least.

* whether it's feasible to get the feedback from end user or from a tester.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ugh.

I love agile, but agile writing has a tendency to sound like Zen koans. (And yes, I include my own writings here)

It's just really tough to bridge that gap between "deliver something of value every week" and "what do I do in _this_ team, on _this_ project, right now?"

</comment><comment><USER6> Every week? That's what they do in enterprises and we all know how fast they move.

Every day? Still not granular enough.

You should deliver something of value every _hour_ , even if it's only to yourself.

Big Value = the sum of(many little values)</comment>


Hipmunk integrates calendar/appointment data w/ travel searches - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/1166233/hipmunk_update_integrates_calendar_data_with_travel_searches.html

<comment><USER2> What I really want Hipmunk to integrate is low-cost carriers, like Southwest.

If I want to book a flight from NRT to SFO, it's often cheaper to fly through LAX, but the big carriers don't offer that many runs between LAX and SFO. Southwest, on the other hand, has a plane every few hours, and they're really good about rescheduling should I get stuck at customs for an insane amount of time (which is a given, because LAX).

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that Southwest does not allow what you are asking for (i.e. no 3rd party sales/scheduling for SW tickets).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Hipmunk for every flight to find the best day, time and route. But I never buy thru them.

They are simply too expensive. It is _always_ cheaper to purchase thru another portal and that is unfortunate because their tool is hands down the best...

<comment><USER5> Can you give an example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried using hipmunk the other day, and I liked it but I didn't see any obvious way to filter by time. Just something like eliminated all flights that departed before 7pm. Did I miss something obvious?

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you're talking about their mobile apps or their website, but on the website the answer is yes. You can resize the time box by dragging the left and right edges (see the arrows at the top?) and then there is also a "Filter by Time" drop-down in the upper right that gives you a few pre-set options like "no morning departures" or "hide red-eyes".</comment></comment>


Why don't more producers sell on-line? - <AUTHOR> http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/why-dont-more-producers-sell-on-line/

<comment><USER2> Clothes is one thing that I hardly ever buy online for the very simple reason that I like to try it on first.

<comment><USER3> I'd much prefer to buy stuff like socks and underwear online, but it ends up being cheaper to just catch a sale at Macy's.

And it gets me out of the house. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's eome more on this topic:

[http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/more-on- forw...](http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/more-on-forward- integration-into-online-retailing/)</comment>


Ask HN: When/where are the Spectre and Meltdown patches for OS X 10.12.6? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Meltdown is mentioned in this update released on Dec 6th: [https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208331](https://support.apple.com/en- in/HT208331)

(Entry updated Jan 5th)

<comment><USER3> The Meltdown reference there does not include Sierra or El Capitan (only High Sierra). Apple had included them in a previous version of the page, but have since removed the references, suggesting they remain unpatched.

There's been some previous HN discussion about it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16078414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16078414)

And The Register claims macOS before High Sierra remains unpatched:

[https://twitter.com/theregister/status/949358083431546880](https://twitter.com/theregister/status/949358083431546880)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps it's part of "Security Update Developer Beta 2018-001", which I saw appear on my 10.12 box yesterday. I can't find any info about what's included in it though. :(</comment>


Feedback: PDFAmigo.com, easy, online PDF form creation - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
I would very much appreciate your always thoughtful feedback on my web app:
http://www.pdfamigo.com
Please use the invite code "hackernews" (sans quotes.)
This is the very first public release of the app and I am sure there a lot of things to be improved and fixed. Frankly, I am feeling quite nervous submitting this for public scrutiny. At the same time I believe it's at a stage where user feedback is crucial both for fixing bugs and determining where to go from here.
I have tried to test the app with FF3.0/3.5, IE 7 and Safari 3/4. If you are using other browsers I'd love to hear about your experience. Honestly, I am not very optimistic about IE6.
Eventually, this is something I'd like to charge for. What are your thoughts on that? Would you pay a few bucks per form? Do you think a subscription model would work better? I am all ears.
Many thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Don't start users with a blank sheet of paper. Give them some indication as to what to do next -- for example, starting them off with an in-progress document or giving explicit "Click this, click this, click this" direction on the sidebar.

If you're worried about screwing up their work flow you can use heuristics to figure if they're still newbies and, if so, give them the prompting. (My online app figures you're a newbie until you save your first document, and continues prompting appropriately. Five lines of Rails code plus the template, doubles the percentage of users who successfully save a card.)

Can you figure out a way to do live preview prior to hitting the Apply button? I know, having done it, that it is NO FUN whatsoever to code, but it is a HUGE win in terms of usability. Users are spoiled by years of using MS Word which gives instant visual feedback for every action -- you should try to be more like Word.

You might consider a drag&drop metaphor for putting elements on the page. At present you click a button and they get thrown into the top left corner, which might cause them to cover an element already there and will always require repositioning. This is friction, consider eliminating it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you patio11. That's a great tip (starting non-empty) - more so given that it's backed by actual data from your site.

[I have edited the following paragraph a few times revising my understanding of the definition of live-preview as I go along] With regards to the live preview: by live-preview do you mean editing the text in rich-text editor fashion within the actual page? Or, just applying attributes as they are changed in the attribute editor without the user having to click the "Apply" button? The former would be hard I guess. The latter should be easy.

Regarding element placement, it can be confusing right now. You might be scrolled down all the way, add a text field and not even notice because it's placed in the top-left corner. Drag and drop would be the way to go.

Thanks, these are subtle yet crucual points you're making - your experience is invaluable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The UI is super slick. In that regard, I would say I like it better than something like Adobe's form Designer.

I would suggest trying to add more objects, like tables and such to make it easier for people to make the form they want. Maybe something like an option to make custom objects made of other objects? Also, being able to fill the form from existing data is useful too. If someone wants a form that dynamically grow depending on how much input there is, I'm not sure how PDFAmigo handles that, if at all. For instance something like an order form, where a user would want to be able to order 1 thing or 100 different things (which could mean multiple pages, etc...)

With all that said, this is a really nice polished product, and the interface you have so far is a pleasure to use, great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Boryas thanks so much for the feedback.

These are all really great points you are making. I am indeed working on adding UI features like the ones you mentioned. I just want to make sure that they are built on solid foundations and that's why I asked for feedback at this point in time.

As for the 1 vs 100 lines in a text field, good observation. It is an omission on my behalf as I forgot to enable multiline text fields. I will fix it asap.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm wondering: what's your target audience? That would influence my suggestions. But generally I'd strongly second the "don't start with blank page."

Would a few examples of a range of possible end products possible (even just screen shots) help noobs envision the usefulness of it. [sorry if that's getting you into marketing issues (?prematurely?).]

Maybe noobs could even be shown an editable example (eventually: _several_ examples to choose from - templates essentially) to play around with: i.e., a "sandbox".

Nice work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, good question. I think my target audience may be a bit too broad (I hope!) to define... but I am sure there is a lot of companies that produce PDF forms all the time. So, in a sense, I am mostly targeting businesses rather than individuals.

In any case, form examples, screenshots, etc are an absolute necessity so thanks for pointing that out.

<comment><USER4> Yes, good luck with it. A challenging project to bite off without a doubt - but some awesome potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-priori I whipped up a quick sample and tried to save the PDF, but it came out corrupted (Preview refused to open it). Here's the document I made: [http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxI...](http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxIIRG9jdW1lbnQYSww)

In case it's useful to you, here's the PDF that it generated: <http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2779/pdfamigo.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. That's very useful. I've mainly used Acrobat Reader to test the generated PDFs but they should really work everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just an update: I have fixed this and your PDFs should work with Preview now. I had accidentally commented out a fairly crucial line of code residing very close to a not so crucial line of code... ugh.

Having said that, Preview is not the best in rendering PDF forms unfortunately...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're going to have a _show gridlines_ option (Good Thing), you should probably have a _snap to grid_ option for the form elements, so people don't have to stare at the screen and jiggle their mouse to make it all line up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to implement that using jquery but it proved to be tricky. Still, no excuse. It's on the todo list! Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there is a usecase/market where you offer an HTML-Interface to the form and save/send the results as pdf. Imagine a job-application form at a big company where the applicants can fill the form online but the HR guys get mailed a pdf (which they are used to). Maybe its out of scope for this site, but if you have the technology you may start another one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your suggestion is spot on. Form distribution and data collection is part of the plan. This is one of the features I am thinking of charging for.

The tricky part I believe is secure handling of user data as these form can contain sensitive stuff...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> link: <http://www.pdfamigo.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Simple and intuitive. The UI is fast. Not much more to ask.

You should submit it to <http://AppUseful.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Better if possible to group multiple choices and rename fields.

Best,

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Great idea for streamlining the UI.</comment></comment>


Now What? - <AUTHOR> http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/now-what/ <comment><USER2> _I mean… will any employer possibly care if I told them that I've worked through half of SICP, internalized maybe thirty Emacs commands, can do some moderately interesting stuff with sed and pipes on Unix, and can write crappy Perl code? Will all of this stuff remain merely a secret weapon of mine while I continue on in work environments where such tools are unknown, actively feared, or completely off the radar?_

 _Now what?_

Start your own company (duh, right?), or become a manager at one. If you know these things, you can probably spot talent a lot better than the average manager... and companies want managers who can spot talent well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, I'm normally not a spelling Nazi, and I follow his point and all, but "per say" really ruined this piece for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> ... What was this post about? (or: "Now what?")

<comment><USER5> An average programmer learns a variety of tools that lead him to a series of epiphanies.

With his eyes open, he no longer can cope with the lame blubiness of his career, but he finds him self pigeonholed by his old job description. He doesn't have the credentials to strike off into a job that would allow for more professional growth. But he had no idea that the many small development choices he'd been making over time would lead to this crisis. Now what?

<comment><USER6> Grad school.

I'm not normally found arguing in _favor_ of the grad school option, but every tool has its use. If you're in a place where you can't imagine getting a job outside of the narrow boundaries of your resume, you need a different environment with different friends and colleagues. It's time to escape the resume-ruled world for a while and get a master's degree.

When you emerge from school it will be like being born again: Society will understand it when you declare that you no longer want to be known as a Blub guy -- you'll have moved to a higher plane, or at least a different one. Plus you'll have a lot of smart friends who might want to help start a company.

Other options include: start a company [1], downshift your career (find the job that you think you want, find the entry-level job that leads toward that, and get that job -- swallow your pride), build some independent projects (websites or open-source projects) and launch them... or all of the above.

[1] Here on news.yc I'm contractually obligated to include this advice somewhere in every post.

<comment><USER3> > Grad school. This is not the first time I've seen you write something like > this; so as a general question, how would one who hasn't had much > involvement in academia (perhaps ever) get back into (perhaps into) > academia?

<comment><USER6> Let's define our terms carefully. When I use the word "academia", I usually mean "getting a job that's on the career path to becoming a tenured professor, at least in theory".

If that's what you're asking about, I can talk about that, although my first advice will be to forget all about it. ;) But that's not what I'm recommending in the post above. I'm not even recommending going to grad school for the credential, exactly. I'm recommending going to grad school because it's a great, society-approved excuse to quit your job, get the hell out of your cubicle, take some interesting classes, do some small and interesting projects (either for school or on the side) with a bunch of other smart people who have similar interests, and change the direction of your resume.

(There are obviously other ways to accomplish the goal of changing your career's direction, and one of those might be better. But this particular scenario -- a person who feels trapped by their own job history -- just smelled to me like someone who might prefer the grad school route. It's a fairly safe, classic, and well-respected way to mix your life up a bit for a year or two.)

<comment><USER7> I'm quitting my BigCo job in one week to do exactly this for exactly those reasons. It's almost creepy how well you described it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heated discussion on python-dev regarding proposed PEP 572 - <AUTHOR> A lot of drama regarding a new syntax proposal (which I fell is terrible) which allows assignment in expressions:
while (value := read_next_item()) is not None:
assert 0 == (x := (y := (z := 0)))
stuff = [[y := f(x), x/y] for x in range(5)] <comment><USER2> Link?

In principle, I like it. But I don't think it's worth the cost of making the change. Python is accumulating a lot of stuff you have to know but that isn't that valuable. Don't want it to end up like C++.

Also, the second and third examples wouldn't be idiomatic, and I believe there's already a better way to write the first.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some products you wish existed and you would happily pay for? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I see a lot of people on Twitter saying "If someone would do this, I would happily pay X". Trying to see what are the common problems you face every day and what can be a potential solution you'd want someone to build. <comment><USER2> Affordable local system space travel (Would love to fly around Saturn 1 time before I kick the bucket)

General virtual reality (I like many others have migrated for work. It'd be nice to give my parents a real hug through the web)

Open source computer brain interface (I want Emacs but for all corporal senses)

Provably valid crypto-elections (Let's say I have a dispute with my local neighborhood about garden gnomes, we can all vote and agree on a binding solution and have no doubts about the legitimacy of the outcome)

Personal and private bioinformatics (Let me sequence my own genome without the usual Silicon Valley Big Brother using my God-given DNA for secondary purposes). Your own DNA is not implicitly copyrightable by yourself under American law, correct me if I'm wrong.</comment>


Speaking of the British - <AUTHOR> http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?z4596068789&z=1250248780

<comment><USER2> This is hilarious :) I honestly thought it was a joke... but now I am uncertain.. he seems to _genuinely_ think that Britain is like this :S

The best bit is the wonderful caricature of Oxbridge interviews, as if the modern world is left behind once you step foot in those hallowed halls :D One guy at our school that went to Oxford worked like absolute hell to get his grades, pass his entrance exam and pass the exhausting round of interviews (2 days, testing all sorts of aptitidue).

Sure; the colleges have a tradition of "sprawling on sofa's" while enjoying a glass of the good stuff. But it is just tradition!

 _Aged 18, perhaps hungover, you read out your pitiful but elegant essay. The tutor points out gaps in your knowledge. For an hour, you talk your way around those gaps._

Hahahahahahahahaha. Ahem. All of the friends I have that went to a really top flight university (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, etc) were basically working flat out for their exams from about January every year..

(I was the drunkard.. see "winging it" below)

 _Traditionally, elite Britons then leave education aged 21. Until recently they rarely bothered with graduate school._

Meh, classic nonsense confusion regarding the British and American educations systems.

 _Britain's rulers still struggle to judge scientific arguments about nuclear energy or climate change_

Very much struggling to see American, or indeed any other countries, "rulers" doing any better.

 _It was the urge to amuse that recently prompted Cameron to riff on an old TV ad and shout "Calm down, dear," at a female Labour MP._

Failing to understand British humour, he only got it in the neck because at that level of politics you have to work with international norms.

 _Admittedly, ignorance sometimes saves Britain's rulers from error._

And here we really get to the crux of it. We are not talking about "winging it", or an aptitude for rhetoric, but "ignorance". I'll be first to admit that the UK political elite are, to some extent, "clueless" on technical topics. But... how is that any different from any other politician in the world? Is that not why they have advisors? Hmmmm.

Nah, this is just some sneer-y anti-British hit piece. A caricature of the great and powerful of Britian as bumbling idiots who get by through a wing and a prayer.

But.

Winging it very much is a British tradition. One I have always been consistently proud of, because we tend to be fucking awesome at it. I winged it through school, university, life, career. And it works, brilliantly.

So, ba shucks ;)

I could go to America and make a casual, 2 second, assessment that the masses were pretty crass (seriously, the amount, scale and volume of advertising on your TV is terrible!), thick people and that the ruling elite were basically a bunch of manic argumentative idiots. Because they are the most vocal or visible types of people. I could go to France and make a similar assessment of the people there as rude and xenophobic. etc etc. But that would be a disgustingly shallow view. Quid Pro Quo. This is just thinly disguised xenophobia and the FT should be ashamed to print it.

<comment><USER3> The author, Simon Kuper, is British and studied at Oxford (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuper>), so while he may be wrong, it's not because he's unfamiliar with the country or the eduction system.

<comment><USER4> He has a British passport. He was born in Uganda of South African parents, spent his childhood in the Netherlands, "also lived in Stanford, California, Berlin and London", and studied at Oxford and Harvard. He currently lives in France. He should stay there :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a really horrible article, and it's clear that the author doesn't have a great grasp of English culture by the bad generalisations he makes.

While I haven't bothered with University, I did go to an expensive private school (a step below the likes of Eton) (fees paid by a scholarship), and I have had some links to Oxford University which technically make me an alumnus of an Oxford college and gave me the experience of the university without having studied there (long story). So I'm pretty familiar with the people this article is trying to talk about. For example I have been in the same class as the son of Peter Hitchens, the brother of Christopher who is mentioned as an example in the article, and also the same class as a boy from the Getty family.

Overall, I would say that as a country we value talking and arguing highly as skills, more so than many countries. It definitely becomes more noticeable the higher you climb on the social ladder, but that is generally just because the better educated you are, the more practise you get and the more you learn. It's not that middle/upper class education teaches people these things, it's just that, as with all subjects, private education tends to give people an easier ride.

The idea that at OxBridge it's more about talking than knowing. This was much more true before I was born, a few decades ago. It's certainly what many people who went to those universities in the 50s-70s would say.

 _"Traditionally, elite Britons then leave education aged 21."_ That has nothing to do with being "elite", simply that the majority of people who go to university don't study past their BA.

 _"When Tony Blair hinted that Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction' could hit London within 45 minutes, the establishment mostly believed him."_ Actually a huge number of us didn't believe him, but we blamed it on lies rather than mathematical difficulty. Many of us took to the streets in protest against these lies.

 _"Educated Americans would often praise Blair for arguing the case better than President Bush could."_ If you have to draw comparison with GWB to prove that someone is good at arguing a case then you've lost the argument already. I don't know a single working class person who doesn't manage to appear more engaged when speaking than Bush.

 _"But in general, Britain's ruling classes are funny speakers."_ Nonsense. Britain as a whole tends to have a sense of humour, in my experience the upper middle class has _less_ humour than lower classes.

 _"It was the urge to amuse that recently prompted Cameron to riff on an old TV ad and..."_ It wasn't the urge to amuse, and anyone who tries to suggest that Cameron, or frankly any of our leading politicians, has a sense of humour, hasn't spent enough time listening to them talk. That was Cameron's attempt to appear hip and youthful.

 _"Admittedly, ignorance sometimes saves Britain's rulers from error."_ How can such a claim be made without given a single example or a single piece of logic to justify it. I don't know if it's a good or a bad point because, without any context, I've no idea what he's even trying to say.

</comment><comment><USER6> I went to Oxford. I studied Physics. Yes, I learned to "wing it". If you can maneuver your way through a "tutorial" (2 students, one tutor) where the person evaluating you is one of the smartest people in the world and an expert with 40 years more experience than you, and you're hungover and didn't really study the material properly, and still come out looking ok, you can deal with almost any situation where you need to "wing it" in the future. It's solid training.

That said, most of those students were very, very, very smart. To me, Oxford was the place where I went from finding it fairly easy to get whatever grades I wanted to struggling and working hard to get the minimum I found acceptable (a 2:1, or Upper Second, result in the overall degree). That was because the final grades were all relative, and there were a lot of very, very smart students I was competing against.

And, as far as the subject studied is concerned, don't forget that in the UK people rarely go on to work in the subject they studied. Sure, it's still better to do hard sciences, but apart from lawyers and doctors, most people end up doing something else after university.

Which is fine, imho - university is not and should not be training for a job, but, instead, training for life. And as far as life is concerned, in the world as it is today, winging it is certainly a more valuable skill than quantum mechanics.

<comment><USER7> Small case-study I know but I work with somebody who just came out of Cambridge and did a CS-like degree.

He cannot program for shit and talks like he does but show him a bit of C(++), PHP, javascript (even bash or Python) and his eyes just glaze over. I was teamed with him but he was forever unable to get anything done. In the end I was left with it all and made much better progress and he was left to book to overheads.

I'm certain he's an edge case though, I've met a few others who went to Oxbridge and they are definitely on the ball. However, I've found those who went to Bristol, Imperial or Loughborough are people that are the smartest.

<comment><USER6> That's not a case study, just an anecdote. In my experience, there were almost no people in Oxford that I wouldn't consider "very smart". Probably the only place in the world where that's been true.

That said, I don't know how Cambridge's "CS-like" degree is/was, but Oxford's was very bad at actually teaching programming.

Then again, are you really sure he went to Cambridge? Smart people have no problem with learning to program when they need to. That guy doesn't sound so smart...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, anecdote is the correct term. He definitely went to Cambridge which is why we questioned his choice of employer (the hirers decision). It doesn't matter what language he's given a task in others are always curious as to why he's taking so long or when it's ever going to be done. It's not like he's making a cathedral of every task as ctrl+c & ctr+v are his key tools along with a good smattering of ugly hacks(i get the feeling he has no grasp of OOP or VCS).

He's comfortable in Access though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This phenomenon isn't limited to England. The one thing all Harvard undergrads learn (probably as much from one another as from the professors) is how to defend themselves in conversation. Some are smart, and some aren't, but by the time they graduate they all know how to sound smart.

<comment><USER9> A trait I've noticed when working with or arguing with the products of elite universities is the incessant ability to respond to most challenges in the form of a blank stare. Harvard grads in particular, but I've noticed it in some military officers as well.

They won't get riled up, they won't back down, they won't...well...do anything in particular.

While being incredibly infuriating, it also makes them nearly impossible to read or assess. Are they smart? Are they dolts? No idea!

This enigma-like quality _can_ get one very far in certain contexts. The ability to operate in elite positions, without becoming ruffled is a tremendously valuable skill.

The downside of course is that if things really do go pear shaped, the normal response is to show some kind of stress reaction and hopefully buckle down and get to work. Not acting like there is anything in particular going on just makes those around you wonder if the ol' gears are actually turning at all. Are they out of touch? Do they care? It can be tremendously demotivating to those around.

A company I worked for early in my carerr had to let two people with this trait go (both top-tier uni graduates) because the management didn't think they were taking a then current crisis seriously enough. We came to find that with both of them, they were effectively doing no work at all as there was almost no extra work that came out of their leaving.

When asked why they were kept around for so many years, promoted etc., management simply responded that they seemed well poised, like they knew what was going on, attended tons of meetings, sent out lots of email...so it _looked_ like they were burning furnaces of activity.

When the crisis struck, they kept plodding along this track, scheduling meetings, refusing to let them run long, sending out dozens of emails a day, long after the rest of the team had changed behavior patterns to deal with the issue. It became such a nuisance, especially the content free, but tightly scheduled meetings, that they were finally put under higher scrutiny.

It's a office-space-esque/dilbert-esque lesson I've kept with me through my career and have run into this trait dozens of times.

I've personally found it so infuriating a trait to work with that I'm loath to hire people from certain majors in certain universities under the assumption there is some kind of communications coursework that teaches people to respond with this blank stare.

I've coined the term "the management stare" for this phenomenon.

On the other hand, the people who I've found to be top performers were consistently the dynamic, emotive people in an organization. They responded rapidly and naturally to changing conditions, showed outward emotions and got really emotionally involved in conversations, meetings and tasks. They brought an energy to the company that drove the rest of their peers along with them.

<comment><USER10> I have consistently found the dynamic, emotive people to be disastrous in crisis situations. They tend to act rashly without thinking through the consequences and often make things worse. When faced with a technical problem I prefer dispassionate experts who can apply a discipled, scientific approach and never get flustered.

<comment><USER9> I think I'm phrasing it wrong. I'm definitely not saying that people prone to histrionics are good performers, just people who show that they are concerned about the situation, have some leather in it, and want to fix it above all else seem to be the people that actually get it done the best.

A rational approach to actually solving the problem is definitely best, I agree.

A blank stare, followed by business as usual, is a non-starter in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That article is a bizarre caricature, chock-full of misleading half-truths. "You probably did school exams in just three subjects. At university, you only study one" -- that's glaringly inaccurate. The underlying feature of the British education system is that from age 16 if they're going to university students tackle 3-4 subjects at "A" level, rather than a whole slew of them. However, the depth of study for an "A" level qualification is supposed to be (or was, in my day) roughly equivalent to finishing the first year of a degree in that subject. The "at university you only study one" reflects the nature of the British university system: rather than a hodge-podge of courses culminating in a major, British students focus on a particular area from the start -- other subjects are studied, but they don't rate separate examinations or qualifications. It's a system based on specialization: narrow but deep rather than broad but shallow.

Finally, anyone who went to Oxbridge having read that article and taking "nor is workaholic study encouraged" at face value is going to be in for a very nasty surprise ...

<comment><USER12> This is really noticeable if you go through A levels, then end up in a university course with a high foreign student intake. The first year is almost _entirely_ catch-up, as those who didn't do A levels get the content pumped into them so that the course proper can start in the second year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some of this resonates, but this does not:

 _Oxbridge's teaching methods reward good talk_

In my experience, Cambridge University Engineering Department rewards those who can _at age 19_ show _on paper_ a sound grasp of all branches of engineering, from vector calculus, to materials science, to the physics of a transistor, to thermo dynamics.

Those who can do both that, and also speak well, are often 'poached' into consulting and banking, whereas those who can only do the former tend to pursue more technical fields. But to blame that on Oxbridge seems unfair.

On an unrelated note: I've worked with many Oxbridge graduates of Humanities, Classics (Greek, Latin) and English Literature - all of whom (by selection of my firm's hiring process) are very numerate. I.e. the two are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER14> That said, I'm American, went to Oxford and am now at Cambridge, and I can assure you that most Humanities graduates are shockingly innumerate--I seriously doubt most Arts students given the Math SAT would be able to do more than shake a stick at it. The best evidence is probably in PPE; the only people who stick with E(conomics) did Math/s at A-level. The system doesn't encourage it. You do your 3-5 A-levels, and people tend to focus on the Arts or the Sciences, with little to no overlap.

Also, I was never offered sherry at a tutorial, but I did have friends studying English who were offered wine~

On a related note, this is a good summary of the differences between English vs American values/elite educations: [http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/apr/23/whats- better-o...](http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/apr/23/whats-better- oxfords-depth-or-yales-breadth/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a lot to be written on the subject of the British (or just the English, the other parts of Britain being a whole different ballgame) and speech. Certainly I don't know of anywhere else where a person's manner of speech tells you nearly as much about their geographical and socioeconomic origin. (But of course, I only speak one language so my attention is pretty restricted).

In Australia they say there are three accents: broad, general and cultivated, and which one you have is mostly about your socioeconomic level. In my experience, though, it's more of a spectrum, and the "broad" accent goes in several different directions depending on where you are -- I can usually pick out a Queenslander, for instance.

The most interesting thing I've noticed about American accents is that you can often tell someone's _political_ persuasion, at least on the radio, if not from their accent then from their manner of speaking. Flip through the radio dial in some unknown area and you can instantly tell whether you're listening to a right-wing or left-wing show -- the right-wing voice is deeper and more aggressive while the left-wing voice sounds higher-pitched and a bit naggy.

</comment><comment><USER16> This writer writes well. Perhaps unaware of the gaps in his knowledge, he simply writes around them.

<comment><USER17> Ahhh meta analysis; the funniest comment I have read on HN for weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I studied CS at Cambridge having previously come from a below average state school. Although the article is a cliche of half-truths there is in my experience some truth there. I had 2 interviews to get in which lasted only 15 and 60 minutes. I only made it to about 25% of lectures and talked my way through supervisions. Through good exam technique and my own independent study, I walked away getting a first in each year. So contrary to most people here I think there is actually a degree of reality to the article.

</comment><comment><USER19> As the old joke (fact?) goes, Sir Winston Churchill was giving a speech in the House of Commons and someone nearby noticed that there was a handwritten comment in the margin of his notes: "Weak argument: talk loudly."

<comment><USER2> Churchill was not the smartest (from a technical perspective) cookie in the cookie jar, he was not a careful quiet thinker, he was a bit racist, from the "old school" and rather stuffy. But he was very very very very good at two things; patriotism and rhetoric.

Which, when you are in a war, is a good thing. The generals win the battles. The politicians win hearts and minds.

Think of the "talk louder" (I have heard to story too, and I think it is true IIRC) as simply a technical aspect of his ability, akin to the hacks, short cuts and pieces of useful code we programmers have hanging around to get things done faster :)

<comment><USER20> Churchill was also a master of English prose - quintessentially English prose. He is like Dickens in this respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the article misses a point - in order to speak well, particularly off- the-cuff, one must first be able to think quickly and clearly. Looked at this way, judging people on how well they speak is a useful short-cut to assess their thinking skills (although not definitive).

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm british, but I have to say; this article is utter arse gravy of the highest order.

<comment><USER23> I'm also English. Calling something 'utter arse gravy of the highest order' isn't a particularly informative form of criticism.

<comment><USER5> It is a rather English insult, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article is complete bullshit:

> Nor is workaholic study encouraged. A South African relative of mine started > his first "supervision" at Cambridge by confessing that he hadn't read every > single book on the reading list. "Good God," said his supervisor, "nor have > I. I put them down hoping that you'd look at a couple, and tell me what they > said."

That's just completely untrue. Just talk to some student from Oxford and you'll find that many of them are massive workaholics and very intelligent. It's not simply all 'talk'. You can't succeed in that environment simply by being good at talking!?!!

<comment><USER25> "I disagree with this article! Here's a hypothetical that proves it - I know it's true because I disagree with this article."

I'm all for nuanced positions, though.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. Well, I'm not going to be able to create a good argument because mine is also based on the people at Oxford (and Cambridge) that I've met and how they've acted, too. (It could just be that I only meet certain kinds of people?) However, I suspect the author of this articles is speaking falsely because it doesn't match with the reality I've seen/heard. You have some of the brainiest people in the UK there and you expect me to believe that it always comes down to talk?

For instance, my brother comes back from Oxford and I see the amount of work he brings back with him. He reads and writes more in one term than many other University's expect from their students in a few years... There are folders and folders of notes proving the workload. The reading lists that he has been provided have _not_ been finished. This is because they're pages long and it is impossible to finish them in the time they are given. He often spends full days revising or reading, and especially now that is exam time he gives himself very few hours to relax. Of course there is a mix of people: some that literally work from 8AM till midnight and others that somehow seem to mix this with being a socialite (perhaps those people don't do any work and just buddy up to the professors by telling them that they do no work!? To me, that sounds bizarre.) Despite the different kinds of people that are there I think it is disingenuous for somebody with a relative that goes there to argue that workaholic study is not encouraged. I have seen the opposite; I have seen people under way too much stress and pressure to succeed and work hard.

Okay, not very nuanced but maybe you see why I call it bullshit.

<comment><USER25> I have admit - I have a cousin that's been through Cambridge (went through a nanotechnology track, now taking a doctoral at Max Planck, will always feel inferior to him) and I do agree with you: he's barely poked his head out and reconnected with the extended family in ages. I'm interpreting this as "complete devotion to work" because complete disconnection is rather unheard of in the Asian family he comes from. So my observations line up with yours to some extent. I can't prove the existence of lack of of the opposite, annoyingly enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yep. This rings true even of technical graduates. Makes them really hard to interview because they are so good at _interviewing_!

I think it's an under-rated skill outside oxbridge. I certainly think it's helped me and I only have the very edges of this skill that I picked up at Cambridge.

<comment><USER13> >Makes them really hard to interview because they are so good at interviewing!

Hmm. In my experience interviewing Oxbridge grads, I didn't find that. Being good at talking around gaps in knowledge works very well in free flowing conversations, but if an interviewer ask a specific question, and the interviewee cannot answer it, then the ability to talk round it does no good. E.g. I used to ask a question relating to the amortization of a loan, and I would ask the interviewee to draw a graph of _time vs. loan balance_. You can't talk your way out of not being able to do that.

<comment><USER26> You're right. I'm talking about the ones with the pre-requisite knowledge, not the total blaggers. It's hard to address their answers to the questions that don't have right or wrong answers because they answer so well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Learning how to speak and articulate what I am saying has been the most valuable skill I have ever learnt.

I am constantly blown away by how poorly grown adults converse.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a current Cambridge undergraduate studying computer science, I find this absolutely outrageous.

The article seems to imply that the scientific fields simply aren't studied here.

The particular example of Lord Cherwell is particularly misleading, as his results were mistrusted by other scientists of the day.

Also, the application process is completely misrepresented. I had two interviews, with the people who would be supervising me. I didn't get offered sherry, they were sat respectably in chairs, and they asked me maths and logic questions.

My director of studies informs me that he then runs all our results (interview, A levels, personal statement) through a number of statistical tests to work out who are going to be the best candidates.

Also, it's strange, I didn't think that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had any effect on the legislative direction of America...

And the point about "workaholic study is not encouraged" is absolutely untrue. The full reading list probably consisted of about 3 pages of literature. The workload here is high: it's certainly not unknown to have a fifty hour working week here.

</comment><comment><USER29> as an Irishman, it's instinctive to have mixed feelings about the British, our once brutal, now friendly neighbour.

In any case, they must be doing something right. They have some of the best institutions on the planet - the NHS, the BBC, and yes their Education system. And their police force is really the best in the world. I've never met a Bobby who wasn't professional, friendly, and reasonable, despite a very difficult job.

</comment><comment><USER30> Odd that he mentions Margaret Thatcher without mentioning she was once a research chemist and had a chemistry degree.

Doesn't fit with his content free story I guess.

p.s. the link is bad, it's not moreover.com it's from the ft.com.

<comment><USER31> The moreover link helps avoid the FT paywall.

<comment><USER30> ah, fair enough then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So for those of us who didn't go to oxbridge and didn't acquire this valuable skill, how do we acquire it as adults?

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that if you put on an upper class accent (think Hugh Laurie) that would be enough to make the author of this article assume that you have the skill.

<comment><USER33> You mean RP: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation>

<comment><USER5> I've never actually heard that term before, though I am familiar with it being called the Queen's English, and BBC and Oxford English.

But commonly it would be considered "upper class" within England, and probably considered "English" outside the UK.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, I've heard it called that, but my Brit friends usually call it "posh." Incidentally, we have our own version of RP in the States, it's called the "Mid-Atlantic accent", many talking heads on news and radio are encouraged to imitate it if they come from the South of the US or New England.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn't worked out disastrously – or at least not yet"

Good grades are certainly not enough, but they are almost always required. Oxbridge only invites the best students to interview, and even the top 5 most academically competitive schools in the UK struggle to send more than a third of their students to Oxford or Cambridge in a good year.

<comment><USER34> "Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn't worked out disastrously – or at least not yet"

The largest empire the world has ever seen whittled down to its homeland, a naval base in the med, and some godforsaken islands in the south atlantic. I'd call that pretty disastrous.

It'll only get worse. In an increasingly technical world, the brits have the wrong culture of Snow's two cutures running the show.

<comment><USER35> > The largest empire the world has ever seen whittled down to its homeland, a > naval base in the med, and some godforsaken islands in the south atlantic. > I'd call that pretty disastrous.

Actually, I would count the graceful degradation of the British empire (i.e without the entire country going to hell) as quite an achievement - particularly considering it happened with a surprisingly low level of long- term resentment incurred from the former colonies. Further, the claim that it was due to poor management more than, for example, two ludicrously expensive wars, is more than a touch disingenuous.

I suppose one could argue that the first of those wars was rather a waste, but Britain was hardly the only country to be affected by that particular insanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's a touch of truth in the article but for an ignorant elite they don't do too badly. They are around 4th in line for Nobel Prizes in hard sciences per inhabitant and well ahead in terms of large countries. The top 'winners' are Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark all with populations under 10 million (1999) though I am not suggesting that detracts in anyway from their achievement.

</comment><comment><USER4> This guy should stick to writing about sports.

Although I agree that the English value both 'winging it' on limited knowledge, and banter / witty repartee. But that is regardless of background.

</comment><comment><USER37> Haha, the ending comments - yes, the lack of finance & maths knowledge really has impacted. It's soo frustrating that those in the cabinet office here don't even have basic maths knowledge.

I've no idea how this countries decline can be reversed. Knowledge based economy? What a joke :(

I wonder if there's any page listing the qualifications of all those in power in the UK. Have their grades deteriorated over time I wonder haha.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why is this a link on c.moreover.com and not ft.com? All the sharing links at the bottom of the page use an ft.com URL.

<comment><USER39> It circumvents the paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Seems silly to suggest that articulate people are uneducated. If that's not an oxymoron, what is?

</comment><comment><USER41> It's probably a humour piece.

The trouble is that many foreigners tend to take it at face value because it panders to racist stereotypes they hold about the British.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried to get into Cambridge. The first question I heard was "What make of car does your father drive to work?" I told them and they politely rejected me.

</comment><comment><USER42> By the way, does the FT have editors or something?</comment>


Neural Networks on iOS and Android: Classify Images with TensorFlow Lite - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/neural-networks-on-mobile-devices-with-tensorflow-lite-a-tutorial-85b41f53230c <comment><USER2> How does this compare against [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/createml/creating_...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/createml/creating_an_image_classifier_model)

You should be able to easily take a TF model and use it, many developer tools: [https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/build-run- model...](https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/build-run-models/)</comment>


All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/international/21710276-all-around-world-nationalists-are-gaining-ground-why-league-nationalists <comment><USER2> I'll directly quote a comment by HN user thewarrior ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320)), one of my favorite comments, here:

\---

It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend.

The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is for economic reasons or just plain bigotry is something for the sociologists to study and not something I can pontificate on.

Also people seem to care a LOT about immigration and preserving their culture. Instead of patronising these people it's time we tried to understand their concerns and try to assuage them.

There is no genuine leftist alternative. It's a choice between center-right "left" that's sold out to the establishment and the far right.Economists need to stop acting like priests in the medieval ages who justified the existing order . The rural voter who lost his job doesn't care about the theory of comparitive advantage.

If this trend holds this will soon take hold in France and other European nations. This is a return to the world of the 1920s. Not gloom and doom but a much more unstable global order with every country for itself. Not what we need when we face planet scale threats like global warming. Get out of your bubble.

Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with.

The divide is bridged one person at a time.

PS - Reposted my comment from another thread as it got flagged. Hope its OK with the mods.

EDIT: His concession speech seems to indicate that he's beginning to appreciate what he's been entrusted with.

<comment><USER3> The majority of voters voted against Trump.

<comment><USER4> This was the exact explanation[1] given in India when the Left and INC were getting into a "unholy" alliance to form government. I find this hilarious, by the extension of the argument, majority of voters voted against every candidate.

edit: [1]the argument was majority of voters voted against BJP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People are more afraid of more things than ever.

Many of the fears are quite concrete and actionable, such as climate change displacement.

My theory is that in an age of 'infinite communication' and 'infinite information', few people can keep a conscious and subconscious rational, risk appropriate outlook when bombarded with an endless array of not only bad news but also associated vivid imagery.

Even though we as a species are safer than we ever have been, even though women are doing better than ever, even when the worst kinds of poverty are at historic lows, we're more afraid than ever. (Note: I'm not saying things are all peachy, and we have a long ways to go, but the historical trends are clear) Our evolutionary psychology is based on over-reaction to bad things, because that has been, for nearly all of our existence, a survival advantage.

Now, though we try to look at things rationally, that evolutionary baggage is still there, making us afraid, on conscious and subconscious levels.

That's one part of it. The other part is the more directed role technology plays.

Social media wants as much of our attention as possible. That's a business model.

I think they have discovered, via actual direction and/or via various machine learning sources, that our attention is maximized when we are formed into like-minded groups or tribes, and when those tribes are 'fighting' inside the social media lobster cage.

I don't mean to say that there aren't 'villains and heroes', because there certainly are.

But I do believe that most of this churn is straightforward, natural and even an inevitable result of the explosive increase in connectivity and communication capabilities.

In short, technology is the main reason we're getting kind of crazy. And I have no good ideas about how to realistically bend the curve back toward less crazy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on the tone of comments around here lately, I'm getting the sense that HN has been populated by closeted alt-right for a while now.

<comment><USER7> "closeted alt-right"

Alt-right is just a meaningless catch-all term to describe someone who is sarcastic and "not-liberal."

According to this definition, Bill Hicks was alt-right. Thus, the term has zero value.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with both of you.

helpfulanon: I think there are more people than you expected here who are willing to state that they lean right. (That's not the same as "closeted alt- right" by any means.) Some of those people are a bit strident right now. But there are a bunch of people who lean left who are pretty bitter, too. And I think that the only thing that changed was that we had an election. Those people who lean right, leaned right before the election. They didn't just come here in the past week to triumphantly throw their weight around.

newswriter99: According to _your_ definition. I don't think that's the right definition, though. Wikipedia's definition seems pretty accurate: "The alt- right is a loose group of people with far right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States." That's why they're "alt" \- they reject the normal, mainstream right. So not everyone who voted Republican is alt-right. Trump, however, is certainly not a candidate who embraced normal conservatism, so it might be fair to call him an alt-right candidate.

<comment><USER7> The Wikipedia goes on to say (also, quoting Wikipedia as a source, kek) that there's no telling how many of the "alt-right" are trolling, how many are dead serious, and how many fall in between.

I repeat my previous statement: the term is meaningless.

<comment><USER9> One tell of someone who supports the goals of the alt-right is use of oddball terms like "kek." So you're not a disinterested bystander curious about the labeling of the alt-right, you are most likely a member of the alt-right, and as claimed above, attempting to extend the Overton window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The present internationalist regime is a holdover from the Cold War. Institutions (social or political) like the EU or Buckleyite conservatism or the promotion of a trans-national, US educated elite itself (eg Barack Obama Sr) were explicitly founded & run with a mission of countering the USSR.

With the collapse of the USSR & communism generally, these institutions no longer had a sensible mission and started spiraling into rent-seeking and self perpetuation without any sensible feedback being exerted on them, to the point where they began to feed on the populace.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Napoleon's Grande Armée marched not just for the glory of France but for liberty, equality and fraternity."

Ohh, man, I can't withstand "The economist" anymore. The non sense propaganda is growing and growing as they feel their Keynesian power threatened . Napoleon destroyed my native country, Spain and half of Europe because of just one thing, personal glory.

Napoleon was a sociopathic ambitious man who claimed to be against Monarchy but declared himself Emperor and his son and family as Throne's heirs.

There is always good words with any invasion. Liberty, equality and fraternity are destroyed when you have to use blood, extortion and humiliation in order to impose them.

In Spain there were people that followed those values, in peace, the "afrancesados", but most of them revolted against France when the invasion happened.

French people consider Napoleon a hero, like Lincoln or Washington in the USA or Bolivar in Venezuela, I understand it, every country has their heroes but the Economist?.

The Economist have been going to big contortions in their arguments in order to defend the Keynesianism order. For example Hillary earning a quarter million dollars for a single speech from the same people that later benefits from her politics was totally normal because scientific Nobel prices could win 50.000 after having changed the world in something.

Now reading the article I don't know how to start, it colvolves and cortorts again the arguments in order to portray as lunatics anyone against the Soros worldview.

I travel around the world around and I see different cultures, what the Economist interest represent is creating a single world country with a single currency, with a single elite in charge.

But people want to preserve their culture and their interests and it is totally ok and good for the world.

In the past we had competition in policies, we could see West Germany with an economic system and East Germany with another and we could compare.

Now this people want nobody to be able to compare, they want all the world banning cash, all the world with negative interest rates, all the world printing money like crazy, Corporations having more power that States.

And they don't want competition, because if someone else follows other policies, it could prove their system not being so good as they claim it to be.

</comment><comment><USER12> When a country's economy falters, the first reaction is usually nationalism, whether it be through state directed propaganda (e.g. China) or self directed by the maligned (e.g. US, Britain). Scapegoats feel good.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a feeling we're all trying to imitate China. For at least a decade now a dominant rhetoric has been, 'China spends all their time and effort focused on their own country, as opposed to being involved in human rights, foreign aid and foreign wars, and look at how much GDP growth they're getting!

At the same time however, I feel that there has also been a 'push back' effect in terms between local and global culture. With every move we make trying to stitch together the world with a unified, global ideals system, the value of local culture and traditions gets magnified, especially among conservatives and nationalists.

In a world under economic stress, it is easy for nationalists to win when all they have to do is point to China's growth story.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tariffs are one thing, but since the 1990s globalization has been about "non- tariff trade barriers" which seems to be a euphemism for environmental, health and safety laws.

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the difference between populism and nationalism?

Niall Fergusson seems to think that it is populism we are facing around the world specifically in the northern hemisphere. The experiment seems to have failed in other countries.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having- populi...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/28/having-populist- moment/zjlU4sGIT7NMieozkmnfbO/story.html)

<comment><USER16> You could ask similar question: what is the difference between socialism and populism?

All extremes are bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Really nice article.

Last week I was at Websummit in Lisbon. Right after Trump won the election, there was a lot of noise about it and almost every talk included some comments about where the world is going to. Sadly one of the talks was about AI and robots, which included a demo of a robot, that was promised to "Replace people in child-care, public service, restaurants, etc.". Boy, I was so shocked when they said that. The only way that you can fix this statement is with the follow up : "Once we have the basic income, technology won't be so unfair".

</comment><comment><USER18> For me the most interesting chart is #2, "My Country is the Best Country in the World".

Some countries (US, AUS, and a bit less the UK) show a marked divide between young and old responders for this.

Any ideas why?

<comment><USER19> The younger ones see what the older ones are doing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lying about "fake news" after the loss by media doesn't help either : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyS3Ghevf2I)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe because you can't force globalism and multiculturalism down people's throats.

Maybe there should be actual sensible discussions about the merits and drawbacks of these concepts, rather than name-calling and assumed acceptance.

<comment><USER22> While your comment is rather snarky, I think the sentiment is true: many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism. At the same time, much has been revealed through various leaks, pulling back the curtain on various activities that many don't agree with.

I think this mentality of "the people versus the elites" (aka populism) has caught on quickly throughout the world, with the refugee and immigration issues being a catalyst.

<comment><USER23> | many people are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, etc., for simply opposing nationalism

Now I'm completely confused. Is this really happening?

<comment><USER22> Oh, sorry, I must have not been paying attention. I mean "supporting nationalism."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Use "Amazon 1 Button" Chrome extension to sniff all HTTPS websites - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kotowicz.net/2013/07/jealous-of-prism-use-amazon-1-button.html <comment><USER2> This sort of abusive, insecure extension poisons the well for all extension developers. Now, I wish to submit a couple of feature requests to the Chrome team.

1) I wish there was a way by which an extension could declare its access patterns in much more fine-grained manner (kinda like CORS headers). Then I can _prove_ to my users that my extension _cannot_ do the sort of ugly crap that Amazon is doing.

2) Second is an API to expose details of an XMLHTTPRequest's (or maybe even 'document' object's) SSL server certificate. Even a binary blob will do: I can parse it in JS. Without this, you can't do "certificate pinning" for extensions.

Chrome extension permissions are too coarse-grain. Why is DOM write permission not separated from DOM read perms?

If Google doesn't crack down on abusive extensions like this, they risk users losing trust in the Chrome "brand". Just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER3> More extensions should use fine-grained URL permissions-- far too many request access to "all data on all websites" when they could only run on their own domains: [https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/permission_warnings....](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/permission_warnings.html)

A way for users to restrict some permissions of an app would be good, but a UX/support problem when they disable something that breaks core functionality.

<comment><USER4> That's for the extension devs to handle. I'm personally in favor of the following:

1) Users can enable or disable any permission they like 2) This is transparent to developers - i.e. if you access geolocation, you'll always get one. It just won't be the right one if you don't have permission. 3) The extension is allowed to query which permissions I've given. So devs can handle blocked permissions more gracefully if they choose.

<comment><USER5> So... we've come full circle. Extensions can still say "nope, you need to give me ALL permissions".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My paranoia in installing extensions is finally justified. If Amazon is pulling these kind of stunts, then imagine the kind of mischief the smaller apps are pulling off.

This whole "scorched earth"-style permissions model that users can't make educated decisions about is what annoys me about current platforms like Chrome, Android and iOS.

JavaME had an interesting model where the app asks permissions after it is installed (e.g. internet access, local file system access) for each thing it wants to do. And the app has to consider the fact that the user can decide not to grant that particular permission. Of course, once you decide to trust the app, you could disable the prompts.

<comment><USER7> > where the app asks permissions after it is installed (e.g. internet access, > local file system access) for each thing it wants to do

iOS does the same for the permissions it supports (access to photo library, contacts, GPS/location, twitter accounts, etc etc), but a lot of things are always allowed (such as internet access). Facebook also lets you deny specific permissions to apps on their platform. I've always wondered why Android and browser extensions don't let you line-veto deny permissions.

<comment><USER8> There's a tradeoff here - apps become harder to write because you know have to deal with a larger set of possible configurations.

App authors also might shut off the app in less you give it all the permissions, which will cause users to just say yes every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.kotowicz.net/2013/07/jealous- of-prism-use-amazon-1-button.html)

The "news" part of this is that the extension allegedly reports all the URLs you've visited to amazon, including https ones, plus some reporting of site contents to alexa.

<comment><USER10> Amazon owns Alexa, just to make that clear.

<comment><USER11> Which sort of shows what a farce this hullaboo about information sharing is. "Megacorp promises not to share your information with other companies", but Megacorp owns dozens to hundreds of company-like projects anyway.

<comment><USER12> Usually, they say they can/will share data with their "affiliates" \-- you know, pretty much anybody they might enter into any type of agreement with.

<comment><USER13> I think these agreements are in place so that if a malicious employee is hired and he accesses your data without authorization, they can fire the employee and be done. If their privacy policy said they wouldn't share the data, then they'd have to pay you damages. Since users aren't demanding actual privacy but do demand damages when they technically can, one would expect every company to write this sort of policy.

<comment><USER14> The affiliate agreements allow them to further monetize the data by selling access to third parties without fear of getting sued.

Someone who's hired isn't an affiliate, he's an employee.

Generally, the usage of the term "affiliate" (ie., sales affiliate) is a corporatism designed to make a wage slave job sound better than it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's why in my Chrome extension that allows you to discover whether pages have been submitted on reddit as you browse [1], I was cautious with the fact that reddit is sent the URLs over HTTP.

It has a Privacy section in the settings that lets you enable Wait For Click so URLs are only checked upon explicit request. It also lets you exclude domains or URL regular expressions from automatically checking the URL, forcing those to be Wait for Click.

Plus, it comes with smart defaults. Default excluded domains include popular banks, Gmail and Google Docs. Default excluded regular expressions match Google/Yahoo/Bing SERPs and various protocols that you probably don't want checked.

All it takes are some smart defaults and a small amount of development [2], and you can protect your users' privacy. It's worth it.

[1]: [http://kerrick.github.io/Mostly- Harmless](http://kerrick.github.io/Mostly-Harmless)

[2]: [https://github.com/Kerrick/Mostly- Harmless/blob/d61d79aa85a6...](https://github.com/Kerrick/Mostly- Harmless/blob/d61d79aa85a6f2f046d22752c5532081fc7bd9eb/js/common.js#L1009) (20 LOC in my extension)

<comment><USER16> Is there a way of testing for websites' existence on Reddit by a hash?

<comment><USER17> Not sure if reddit supports it, but this is how we did our extension at an old startup I worked for.

We allowed users to share post-it note style comments on web sites with their friends; for example, I could leave you a little note on the hackernews front page, and the next time you go to the site you would see the not sitting on top of it.

In order to do this, we had to check every page you visited to see if there was a slide for you on it. We cared about privacy, so we took a hash of each URL and sent it instead of the URL itself. While we would know what site you are on if we happened to get a hit (i.e. you had a note on the page), we wouldn't know what site you were on if there was no note.

Of course, this was all based on the users trusting us to not change our code. There was nothing preventing us from changing how we sent the URLs. The level of access extensions get is SCARY. I don't think users realize what exactly they are allowing when they install them.

<comment><USER16> Hey, that's awesome! Your design reminds me of "hoodwink'd", which was "underground" in the sense that you had to edit your DNS settings for "hoodwink'd" to work. [http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/2006/01/hoodwinkd.html](http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/2006/01/hoodwinkd.html)

Your site URL hashing system is also pretty close how Goggles works, only instead of notes, you get to draw MS paint-like scribbles. [http://goggles.sneakygcr.net](http://goggles.sneakygcr.net)

Each website is uniquely keyed by a hash of the URL, so Goggles doesn't know the website's URL even if there is a hit. (It does send the page title to the server though because popular sites go on a leaderboard; i'm not so sure about that decision though since it can leak some privacy...)

Browsers are doing a much better job at protecting/restricting bookmarklets than extensions and I wish more of these kinds of notetaking apps/tricks use bookmarklets instead. For example, I just now discovered that Chrome will prevent Goggles from working on certain HTTPS sites like hacker news because it loads javascript from an [http://](http://) URL, which is a great design decision from the Chrome team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's see if we can remember about Amazon doing this kind of shit as well as we remember about Linode's security breaches.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not exactly encouraged by Amazon's "fix": they simply started serving their custom spy instructions over https. It almost tempts me to write a different extension to observe these instructions and then crowd-source a database of them. What nefarious shit are they doing, that justifies this extra layer of indirection?

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone fathom a potentially benign reason Amazon might do this?

<comment><USER21> Read the article. The configuration from amazon is only set up to gather https data on amazon sites. Because the configuration was sent over http, he used a man in the middle attack to change it to a wildcard, and gather all https data.

Amazon wasn't being evil, just incompetent. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity...

<comment><USER22> So logging _every single URL you visit and every search you make on Google_ isn't evil? This is the kind of nasty extension that your browser warns you about when you open a private/incognito window. I realize you were just talking about the HTTPS aspect of it, but your parent asked about the generic "this".

It's pretty clear they "might do this" so they can data-mine your browsing activity, which is now associated with your account, and serve you more targeted ads and product recommendations. So I guess we have to extend your catch-phrase with "...and never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by greed."

<comment><USER11> > every single URL you visit and every search you make on Google isn't evil

No, it's not evil, it's the the point of the extension -- to do product search.

If you don't like the product, you don't have to use it, but you can't say you want it, and then say it's evil for doing exactly what it says on the tin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sadly, Amazon isn't alone in this. There is no secure CSP that Chrome implements for any of its extensions, and they don't require and sort of legitimate oversight, so I would venture to guess that there are at least a few dozen extensions that are just as bad.

We wrote about one, incidentally, a few months ago, that has hundreds of thousands of installs: [https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/blog/building-a- browser-exte...](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/blog/building-a-browser- extension-be-careful-not-t-17787)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd like to snoop on my (self initiated) https traffic so I can write a monitor for a third party web app that is only available over https. In a similar situation but with clear text, I've made use of a perl proxy that generates code mimicking the browser initiated transaction, which can then be lightly modified into a Nagios managed monitor for that kind of transaction.

The described technique looks like it might get me some of the way there, but it's kind of a square peg to my round hole. My google/stackoverflow searches aren't getting me very far; I found a reference to jmeter acting as an https client proxying http, but that looks like a similarly deep hole. Maybe it's easier than it looks; I don't know.

I'm no browser expert, but I'm not particularly afraid of javascript.

Advice?

</comment><comment><USER25> Stupid questions:

1) Would a plugin such as Disconnect.me stop this from happening? (Yes, I am aware of the irony...)

2) What's the best way for a non-technical person to monitor traffic to ensure that plugins are not "phoning home"?

<comment><USER26> I'm one of the Disconnect devs and these definitely aren't stupid questions:

1\. Unlike that other "privacy" _cough_ extension, Disconnect doesn't send any data (user or otherwise) to Disconnect servers. In other words, Disconnect doesn't output user data that can be intercepted by a MITM attack. Disconnect does grab a config file on startup ([https://disconnect.me/help#syncing](https://disconnect.me/help#syncing)), but unlike in the Amazon case, the file is both transferred over HTTPS and encrypted (with the Stanford Javascript Crypto Library). Also unlike in the Amazon case, the file has a limited functional scope (which third-party sites to block) so is less susceptible to being rewritten in an abusive way.

2\. One of our other Chrome extensions, Collusion for Chrome, will actually show you requests that are coming from other extensions. The more technical approach, which isn't that hard and I'd like to see more people try, is to run a packet sniffer (recommended: [http://www.wireshark.org/](http://www.wireshark.org/)) or proxy server (recommended: [http://www.charlesproxy.com/](http://www.charlesproxy.com/)).

<comment><USER27> > encrypted (with the Stanford Javascript Crypto Library)

TLS already encrypts. What threat model prompted your decision to use JavaScript cryptography?

<comment><USER26> This: [http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/ssl-and-the-future-of- authe...](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/ssl-and-the-future-of- authenticity/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So can I buy hiybbprqag on Amazon now?

</comment><comment><USER28> So if the user has Javascript disabled, what happens then?

It seems so many exploits rely on Javascript.

Would a user ever be willing to sacrafice a little "user experience" (accomplished with Javascript) for protection against easy exploits?

Is that question ever left to the user?

Not if a website provides Javascript-free means of interacting with it; and demands that the user enable Javascript (=you "must" enable Javascript to use this site).

<comment><USER29> In this case it doesn't matter too much if you disable javascript because extensions are still working. The disable javascript option disables only the script in website contents not in extensions. So it will disabled scripts injected into the pages but scripts in extensions are still working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Before you install the extension you agree that it will "Access data on all websites" here is a discussion on that issue [http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/tqwFMlk...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/tqwFMlkbdS0)

</comment><comment><USER31> Why is this a big surprise? I'm sure that you would find similar features on the eBay extension or any other 3rd party online store. The problem is really in how the permissions are displayed and users are so willing to give full access to their browser through extensions.

</comment><comment><USER32> The extension is available in the official Chrome Web Store. Apparently, Google doesn't verify extensions for malicious behavior – or maybe such behavior is even desired …

</comment><comment><USER33> Try PriceDrop instead to follow Amazon product prices: [http://pricedrop.stuffstuff.org](http://pricedrop.stuffstuff.org) . It's not evil.

</comment><comment><USER34> So, it's like Lumi, but for shopping?

</comment><comment><USER35> wow, i'm shocked that amazon would stoop so low. what's next, the yahoo toolbar stops being a convenient and secure way to search the web and gets into the spyware business?

</comment><comment><USER36> This is exactly the reason why I came up with Signy. The only secure 1 click login button that gives you total privacy. [http://signy.launchrock.com/](http://signy.launchrock.com/)

<comment><USER37> FYI your comment, as written, sounds extremely spammy.</comment></comment>


JavaScript Trickshot: E4X - <AUTHOR> http://ilker.de/javascript-trickshot-e4x

<comment><USER2> > Oh, E4X is an official ECMA Standard, by the way.

I just noticed in passing this comment on MDN:

"Note: for each...in is part of the ECMA-357 (E4X) standard, which is not widely supported by non-Mozilla browsers, not part of the ECMAScript standard."

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Statem...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/for_each...in)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading the E4X spec, it says the XML stuff will be folded into future standards. That obviously has not come to pass. I'm guessing JSON is the reason.

</comment><comment><USER4> I never saw the advantage over parsing a string, like toXML('<foo><bar/></foo>').</comment>


Ask HN: Potential Startup Internship? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, Lucky enough to intern at a big tech this summer and going into my junior year. Instead of returning, I am considering changing it up and looking for a small(er) startup experience for next summer. What should I look for / What should I keep in mind? <comment><USER2> I think it depends a lot upon the internship.

What domain are you looking for? Software? Marketing? Biz dev?

Are you limiting to start ups or just small companies? What is your definition of "start up"?

What are you hoping to get out of it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on what you want to do, a big name on your CV will open more doors, but at a startup you will be looking at different problems.

</comment><comment> rooam-dev Do you think they will have time for you? I mean, to mentor you.</comment>


Setting up MySQL replication without the downtime - <AUTHOR> http://plusbryan.com/mysql-replication-without-downtime

<comment><USER2> It's way faster to use Innobackupex from Percona. It's a free script.</comment>