Justice Dept. To Take on Affirmative Action in College Admissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-universities.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I hope this isn't too political, but I wonder why "disadvantaged groups" are defined by things like race rather than poor academic performance, poverty, criminal history, mental health, not being interested, not desiring prosperity, etc. There are so many reasons people don't get education and so many ways to slice and dice the population into groups.

<comment><USER3> There are efforts aimed at people whose parents didn't go to college and they don't have anything to do with race. But to answer your question, I think many of the groups that ostensibly were founded to fight racism are more aimed at getting better treatment for their particular race than actually doing away with racism overall. As long as we are trying to treat some people better because of their race, we are necessarily treating other people worse because of their race.

If people want to fight against racism we'd be better off with groups that are fighting against people being treated differently because of their race-- regardless of what race they happen to be. Imagine an organization that is just as upset about Asians needing higher test scores to get into Ivy League schools as they are about a black person being treated worse by the police than someone with lighter skin in the same situation.

<comment><USER4> _I think many of the groups that ostensibly were founded to fight racism are more aimed at getting better treatment for their particular race_

Sure. For instance: the NAACP is actively working to improve conditions for black people. The reason they do that is that as recently as my own birthday (I'm 40), African Americans were actively excluded from American life; for instance, they were redlined out of neighborhoods across Chicago and concentrated into lower-income neighborhoods that were allocated poorer services. And that's just what happened within my lifetime. Go back just a few years earlier and black people couldn't reliably vote, and were beaten and attacked with dogs for marching for their own rights.

It's not surprising that someone without African American heritage would look at this and see only an effort to improve outcomes for black people. Obviously, that's what it is. Also, though, what it is is necessary: a corrective for multiple centuries of --- let's call it what it is, I guess: institutionalized oppression.

<comment><USER3> > Also, though, what it is is necessary: a corrective for multiple centuries > of --- let's call it what it is, I guess: institutionalized oppression.

It sounds you feel that the way to right the wrongs of racism against blacks in the past is to practice racism against other races today. I know you aren't alone in this view, but I disagree for the following reasons:

First of all, if we agree that racism is morally wrong, then I don't see how practicing racism today can be considered a morally right solution to racism in the past.

Second, even if we can morally justify penalizing the descendants of slave owners in order to create benefit for the descendants of slaves, categorizing people based on the color of their skin isn't a good way to do this. There are white people whose lineage had nothing to do with owning slaves and there are people whose African ancestors owned, captured and sold people into slavery.

<comment><USER4> Basically what your argument appears to boil down to is: if white people oppress black people for 2 centuries, leaving them in a state of enduring poverty, it is unfair to correct that in any way, because any such correction would be race-based and thus "racist".

<comment><USER3> I'm all for giving people opportunities to get out of poverty. I do not think such opportunities should be limited to a particular race. Pell Grants are a good example. The grants aren't racist in that everyone can apply. However, the odds of a randomly selected Pell Grant student being black are twice as high as what should be expected if Pell Grants are evenly distributed amoung college students, but it isn't a race-based opportunity. You can give people opportunities to get out of poverty without practicing racism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department's civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times."

The applicants who are most discriminated against are Asian applicants. Asians are basically the Jews of yesteryear when it comes to college admissions.

A common criticism is that Asian applicants "game" the system by getting good grades, scoring well on standardized exams, and loading up on extracurriculars. Compare that with sending your kids to an elite private feeder high school. That's not gaming the system at all /s

Affirmative action in today's implementation is less about equal opportunity and more about equal outcome. I don't even see it as a race thing as even the POC applicants that benefit from these policies are almost always economically advantaged. What we need is economic affirmative action. If you come from property you should get second consideration. Infinitely harder getting good grades while impoverished vs a 4.0 at the local 40k/year private high school Ivy feeder.

<comment><USER6> It may please you to know that there are some coordinated efforts on this front, such as [http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/home/](http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/home/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article takes too long to huff and puff and fluff before it gets to the heart of the matter (and then veering off into tangents shortly thereafter):

 _The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits that flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a "holistic" evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky_.

It would have also behooved a general audience to be given some history: [https://www.britannica.com/event/Bakke- decision](https://www.britannica.com/event/Bakke-decision)

It's not an easy issue.

<comment><USER3> > It's not an easy issue.

It is impossible to provide easier admission to college for one race without making it harder for other races. Treating people differently because they are of a certain race is the definition of racism. That part is simple.

Now there are all kinds of arguments about whether letting in lower scoring students of one race are actually beneficial to their race and there are lots of people arguing that if someone was descended from slaves they should be given preferences that exceed what they would get based on their own skill, but it doesn't change the fact that affirmative action is a way to create a type of racism. People can argue that _this_ type of racism is a good thing, but it is still treating people differently based on their race.

<comment><USER7> Assuming that a merit-based system is appropriate for admissions, can we remove race & name (so race can't be derived) from the admission forms?

Then have a third party verify the student's ranking at how the student performed via local peer group (could be a derivative of their neighborhood, school, county, state, etc).

The local peer group rank calculation could influence the decision without revealing any advantage/disadvantage (perhaps a statistician could discuss the mechanics of how to make this most appropriate)

Example admission summary: Candidate XYZ graduated top 12% from their school, top 10% from their county, and top 24% from their state. Candidate played no sports, but participated in two academic societies, and accumulated 200 hours of volunteer service. The candidate was employed for 3 years before applying for university.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a good way to make sure that admission decisions are not being made based on race. Sadly there are a lot of people who are explicitly trying to make sure that admission IS based on race.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh dear, the NYTimes should have really gone with "anti-white and anti-asian bias" in their title (as mentioned in the article) instead of just anti-white. Otherwise they are somewhat priming their audience. And well, everyone who will only read the title.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think making it about race just creates more division and is really really dumb. Scores should be normalized by income, stability of household, then holistic factors such as extraneous circumstances, health, etc. Race should have no impact except in extraneous circumstances in rare cases

<comment><USER10> > Scores should be normalized by income, stability of household, then holistic > factors such as extraneous circumstances, health, etc.

Why?

<comment><USER11> Opportunity is not even: a classmate prepared for classes by studying the material in the summer. Some classmates took SAT classes. On the flip side, a classmate had trouble studying because he had no quiet place to study at home.

In my college, at least differences in opportunity were somewhat recognized resulting in release of all old tests instead of it being hoarded by HKN, a quiet place to study for everyone, and financial aid so that a student wouldn't have to take basically a full time job to pay for school.

We need to ensure opportunity all along the educational path. The current US system is blindingly obviously tilted.

<comment><USER10> And when I turn in a bad year of work because my two sisters-in-law and their eight children have moved into my home, should my performance review reflect that, or should it be normed for my circumstances?

<comment><USER11> I didn't say anything about norming performance. I just said that there should be equality of opportunity.

Edit: I also said that there isn't equality of opportunity for education in the US.

<comment><USER10> Normalizing test scores is norming performance. They're not different.

<comment><USER11> I didn't say norming test scores either. I said norming opportunity. Quote where I said that.

<comment><USER10> I quoted it in my first comment:

> Scores should be normalized by income, stability of household, then holistic > factors such as extraneous circumstances, health, etc.

Did you want to refer to hypothetical admission scores? There used to be US colleges that admitted on a points system (and some very low-prestige ones still do), but they've stopped doing that since giving objective points based on race was ruled illegal for public schools.

<comment><USER11> That wasn't my post!!!!!! How many times do I have to repeat myself?

<comment><USER10> Fair enough.

You responded to the question "Why should scores be normed?"; I think it's fair to interpret that as providing a reason, in your own mind, that scores should be normed. If you don't want "because" read into your answer to "why?", you need to bring up the fact that your comment is not intended as a response to its parent.

> How many times do I have to repeat myself?

Not as many times as you seem to want to. Why post three separate replies, all saying the same thing, within five minutes of each other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Make higher education a national priority, and free for everyone, and this issue would go away (though systemic racism and class-based oppression would not). There are lots of benefits to having an educated populace.

<comment><USER13> I humbly suggest the opposite.

1\. Stop making a college degree a requirement for relatively pedestrian jobs.

2\. Make education at any level widely available and very cheap or free to those who want it and demonstrate the motivation to perform well in their studies.

Most current education, even that at the high school level, is completely wasted because the participants and their communities simply don't value it (or worse, negatively value it). Note that this disdain for education is largely race-blind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suggest getting rid of anti-discrimination laws completely for things like college admissions. Affirmative action is probably not bad enough to be worth the effort either.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure they'll find a way to screw this up (because it's Trump), but affirmative action does need reform. In its present state, it can theoretically benefit affluent under-represented minorities at the expense of impoverished Midwestern whites (and especially screws over disadvantaged Asian applicants). Affirmative action should be predicated on family income/net worth. As they presently stand, such programs are literally racist.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can they also "take on" legacy admissions? Why should someone get a better chance at going to college because their parents went to the same college?

[http://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/legacy- applicants-h...](http://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/legacy-applicants- have-admissions-advantage/)</comment>


'Fat but fit' may be a myth, researchers say - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/22/fat-but-fit-may-be-a-myth-researcher-say/ <comment><USER2> The WP author here confuses correlation with causation.

Both obesity _and_ fitness response to cardio (e.g. measured by VO2Max) have genetic factors (many obese people are genetically low-responders to cardio). See the recent University of Bath study for details.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was a never a truth to begin with, really. Even the original study was rather controversial in its results. Fat but 'fit' is a transitory state between healthy weight and fit or obesity and unfit; eventually all that weight will catch up with you.</comment>


Ready For a Reddit Replacement? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/business/hubski-reddit-mark-katakowski/ <comment><USER2> All these news discussion sites (Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN, hell even 4chan) started out very good when the communities were small and then they grew to massive size and lost their personalities, got more generalized, were gamed more frequently, succumbed to group think, and had a bazillion other problems related to their popularity and size.

Reddit can somewhat mitigate this with subreddits and MeFi can slow the process by charging a fee. Perhaps their downfall is still inevitable.

His comments about reddit's recent mood swings, however, don't mean much. That type of thing has been happening every few weeks for a couple years now. The reddit community is always in a huff about something.

Maybe this idea (Google circles for news aggregators?) will help. Or maybe we should just abandon this discussion model all together.

<comment><USER3> I don't think abandoning the discussion model is the right answer, I think it just needs to get better. All of these communities seem to follow a simple principle: they grow in size until their ability to self-filter, self- organize, and maintain community valuse is compromised by a volume of traffic or overall size of membership larger than they are capable of handling. The latest batch of discussion sites and tools (reddit, news.yc, digg, /., etc.) are simply the latest and best models of a continuously growing and improving application space.

I think the only way for a "community" to exist long term in this space is to either continue advancing the state of it's filtering tools in order to handle the increased load, or not, and let it naturally degrade back into a smaller community and just exist at the level that it is capable of filtering (though this is not as simple as a community capable of holding X users will always have X users -- momentum and network effects are definitely important here).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason I like reddit is because of the subreddits. There are, however, really great communities for discussing something really niche outside of reddit. Some of which have bigger communities with even better contributors than reddit.

The problem is that they are using rather primitive forum systems like phpBB and the like.

After using reddit, phpBB is like going to the stone age, imagine if hacker news was on a simple forum system like that.

I know reddit is an aggregator site, but I think they are the strongest competitor to forums, think about it: how hard is it get the gist of a discussion on one of those forums, where you have to scroll through tens of pages on a really popular topic.

my point is: why doesn't reddit create a product that will allow any site to to have their own subreddit style page completely autonomous of reddit.com?

<comment><USER5> Do they have to create a "product"? Reddit is open source, and you can download it if you like, from <http://code.reddit.com/> . You could literally build what you are describing on the Reddit platform right now.

<comment><USER6> Apparently RedditOSS is in shambles, and very difficult to get working. They were looking to address that with the new hires, however.

<comment><USER7> Have you checked recently? I'm familiar with the sentiments you're echoing but I think they're beginning to address this issue. The GitHub repo is seeing some activity at the very least.

<comment><USER6> The last I knew of it, there was a post on HN. I later asked hueypriest if their new hires would be trying to fix up redditOSS, and he said it was one of their priorities. This was a couple months ago (if not more), so it's entirely possible that they've done significant work on it. If that's the case, I suspect we'll see a blog post before too long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _On Hubski, user follow one another, rather than communities, as they do on Reddit. Instead of voting a post up and down, you simply share it. That propagates it to your readers; the more people share it, the hotter that post becomes._

sounds like he has created Twitter.

<comment><USER9> But with threading, and without artificial length constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Sub-reddits are genius, building all these amazing sub communities. This is a big step back, their answer to the 'supposed' decline in Reddit is let's just make a clone, why? Because it'll have less users. Let's say it did hugely well, it'd be a vicious circle leading to everyone moving to another clone.

<comment><USER11> Sure it will be a vicious cycle. Same thing with fashions and popular hangouts. It's human nature, and somehow peoe make money in those businesses :-)

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters- ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door- heal-or-die.html)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for posting this, it's been a while since I've read it. One of the best things he's written. IMO, this is the real solution to the slashdot / digg / reddit /HN problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always think it's ridiculous when I hear "It's the new reddit" and then see what basically amounts to a Wordpress blog layout. Reddit, digg, HN were all partly successful because of their layout, not in spite of it. I don't want to scroll past the meta of every article today just to see what you have; I want a _list_ of what's happening that is sorted/controlled by the community. And the less images, the better. I like reddit in that I can turn off the images so that I can fit 17-20 article headlines on a page w/o scrolling.

Ugh.

<comment><USER14> I would say that HN is successful _in spite_ of its layout.

<comment><USER15> I think it's perfect. It's easy to see if there are any new posts (and it's clear which ones you have visited).

It's also not going to attract much attention if you have it open at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No social platform is going to disrupt the existing systems until they decouple content and organization. The main issue is that we assume that all 'upvotes' are equal. If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like in Twitter), as opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a shift away from the cycle of bread and circuses.

Hubski may be doing that but only implementing this one graph node deep and only having one default category for information, will probably not create a vibrant and diverse community.

<comment><USER17> >If a user can select who is in their filter layer (like in Twitter), as opposed to selecting content (a subreddit), there will be a shift away from the cycle of bread and circuses.

Are you sure this isn't already happening to some degree? What reaches the front page of my account is different from what reaches the front page with cookies cleared. I suspect reddit is already using AI algorithms to filter out what is relevant based on who I upvote, the subreddits I visit, who I interact with, etc...

<comment><USER18> When you're logged in the front page only shows you the content from the reddits you're subscribed to, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool, but he's solving an imagined problem.

<comment><USER20> So was Twitter, and Blogger before that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> reddit is almost entirely in existence due to its community/userbase. it's all it had when digg imploded, and it's pulled them through from dark to the traffic heights they are at now.

thing missing from reddit, despite the forum-like discussion thread part, is that it isn't social. it doesn't promote following users or anything of that nature or has little of those features (one thing that digg has/had)

thing is, currently, the way reddit is/is going -- there's not much that needs to be changed. it covers alot of use cases for alot of its userbase (i.e. I use it solely for submission and upvoting/link popularity tracking, and hardly for anything discussion/forum related)

</comment><comment><USER22> Unlike many of you here, I am a reddit late adopter. I first joined HN (like 3 years back), there were plethora of good posts so I never explored more. I never heard much about reddit for 1 year I think. Then there was this major discussion about how reddit is not relevant enough these days, that put me off reddit altogether. Then about 6 months back (I think) a good man posted a long discussion about how subreddits are the best things about reddit. I thought I would go and check. I made my account in March I think and randomly searched for subreddits. That makes me perhaps the latest adopter here. And I must tell you, I like those subreddits much better than HN now. There are many reasons for that but first remember, to each his own okey. So no need to flame me about my opinions and choices.

1\. Its actually more relevant. I have many interests but CS is not a prominent one. There are some good intellectual discussions here but most of them are about highly technical stuff I cannot understand or comment on. I am a Electronics major so I like /r/ece and /r/electronics. They are smart people and have great discussions. Sure I do not comment much there. But still the comments are more valuable than the post itself (just like HN). Apart from that there are subreddits about prowrestling which of course will never be mentioned here. So I find subreddits are actually more relevant to my life.

2\. They are smart people. Contrary to popular beliefs, not every redditor is abour lolcats. Most of the people I interact with on reddit are very smart. Not only in technical subreddits but reddits like r/SquaredCircle/ and /r/prowrestling see very interesting discussions. Pro wrestling is a technical thing and they do justice to it even while comparing thoughts about story lines.

3\. I like the light hearted part. I don't know about you but people here are very focused on their work perhaps. Some light hearted comments (even if they are witty or clever jokes) will get downvoted and fade into the background (literally). To some extent these things are permissible in subreddits. I like that. I am not in the mood for a fierce discussion every time. Many times comment section can be clearly divided into two parts, relevant discussions and witty comments. The latter will fade into the background here. Also due to this, nobody rides high horses there. People on HN are many a times guilty of that. Like in the recent discussions about game industry and endeavors like facebook and 4chan where people think that intellect is wasted on such things. Why would you judge what people want to do for there whole life? I wouldn't and I don't like people who do.

4\. New subreddits come up when I like. I am going to join either ai-class or ml-class (dammit I need to decide), subreddits of both are available. Isn't that fantastic?

So this is why I like reddit more than HN now. Sorry if this hurts anyone's feelings but that is how it is.

<comment><USER23> > this is why I like reddit more than HN now. Sorry if this hurts anyone's > feelings but that is how it is.

I do not think they are comparable at all. Maybe we could compare r/technology to HN, but the idea of the subreddits is exactly to cover a wide breadth of topics.

I also love some subreddits and almost never look at the most visited ones (pics, lol, games, etc).

The only thing that is missing for me is a way to "weight" each subreddit so that they higher preference to the stories in the homepage. This is because there are subreddits that only get one or two links every day, and due to the slow amount of subscribers, they get low votes. I'd like to be able to prioritize these in some way so that they get at the top of my front-page. Or better yet, let an algorithm calculate the "importance" of the thread based on the share of upvotes to subreddit subscribers.

>2\. They are smart people. Contrary to popular beliefs, not every redditor is abour lolcats

I think the correct way to put it is that _there are_ smart people. However, right now the majority of them are in different subreddits.

>3\. I like the light hearted part. I don't know about you but people here are very focused on their work perhaps. Some light hearted comments (even if they are witty or clever jokes) will get downvoted and fade into the background (literally).

Well, I love the serious nature of HN. In some way it is like the old time Usenet discussions. The only thing I do not like about HN is the heavy nit- picking. But I can live with that in exchange of the really interesting discussion. I came here after leaving Slashdot, due to the decline in quality (there is so much Technology Politics I can stand).

>I am going to join either ai-class or ml-class (dammit I need to decide), subreddits of both are available. Isn't that fantastic?

Yes! this is the great value of reddit. IMO It is like a new type of Usenet. BTW, If you have taken an AI class, I would recommend you to go for that, as I am sure you are going to "touch" ML themes on that. Otherwise, if you are specifically interested in ML then go for it :)

<comment><USER22> _The only thing that is missing for me is a way to "weight" each subreddit so that they higher preference to the stories in the homepage. This is because there are subreddits that only get one or two links every day, and due to the slow amount of subscribers, they get low votes. I'd like to be able to prioritize these in some way so that they get at the top of my front-page. Or better yet, let an algorithm calculate the "importance" of the thread based on the share of upvotes to subreddit subscribers._

That is something someone should work on, instead of making a new social aggregation site. The new site will be good for one or two years, then it will hit mainstream and lolcats will ensue. I have heard many people say that if you want to determine how popular one social site is then you just have to calculate the number of mames per post in the public or most general stream.

 _Well, I love the serious nature of HN_

I never said subreddits are not serious. Most of the posts portray the same quality as HN (many a times even more than HN IMHO, maybe there is a section common between the two sites). The problem is, HN is never not serious. That does not seem right to me. I must be able to joke about my work. We also don't have to be judgmental about other people's work. Its one thing to criticize someone's library because it has a badly designed API and it is quite other thing to tell game programmers they are wasting their talent in their own selected job.

 _I think the correct way to put it is that there are smart people. However, right now the majority of them are in different subreddits._

The correct way to put it is, that if you cannot find smart people on reddit, you are looking in the wrong subreddit. Of course you are not going to find smart people on every damn reddit. After all reddit is a general purpose site and thus many people are not what you would consider "smart". Damn, there are people who come to reddit "just to have a good time". Fools they are. Internet is all about having intelligent discussions dammit ;)

 _I do not think they are comparable at all. Maybe we could compare r/technology to HN, but the idea of the subreddits is exactly to cover a wide breadth of topics._

I posted it here because I have read many, many times that HN is much better than reddit. That reddit is soon gonna die or something equivalent. No hard feelings, but I despise such proclamations if not the people who make them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reddit is all about its community - you cannot defeat it with just features alone.

And if you've figured out how to reliably build a community from scratch on the internet, well, there's a few billion dollars in it for you...

<comment><USER25> Reddit is most certainly having its own Eternal September.

I can not say I like that community much at all anymore

<comment><USER24> IMO it's all in the moderation. Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the lowest common denominator rise to the top, which oddly enough is not what most users want to see.

I'm imagining right now a Reddit with Slashdot's moderation system... but, I continue dreaming.

<comment><USER26> > Reddit's very rudimentary up/downvote system, well, sucks. It lets the > lowest common denominator rise to the top,

Which is why Hubski's solution is interesting. You're recognizing the quality of the content does not really lie in a singular post or link, but with the poster, in a general sense. There are certainly certain posters on Reddit who I know I can always look to for good content, -makes sense to have your feed populated by good content providers rather than up-votes from the crowd.

<comment><USER23> >You're recognizing the quality of the content does not really lie in a singular post or link, but with the poster, in a general sense.

Correct me if I am wrong but, isn't that how Digg used to work? I remember there were these few prominent accounts that had a lot of posts "promoted" and made the site worthless when they started posting crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Site needs some work, right now it feels more like HN (Similar visual style aside), just one big spread of submissions.

As mentioned, the great part of reddit is sub-reddits, Hubski needs some sort of greater way to sort out and separate content. The proposed following users doesn't seem prominent enough to me yet, though maybe this will change as the site grows.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds just like Google+.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always wondered why these aggregation sites need up and down voting at all. Can't we just compare the number of times the link has been displayed to users with the number of clicks on the link?

<comment><USER30> This would measure the popularity of titles/headlines (and maybe domain names) but not of content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find there's nothing wrong with the open source platform, just a problem with a few of the popular pages. There's no reason to ditch the reddit platform altogether.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ready for needing glasses? This site requires superhuman vision to be able to read size 4 font!

</comment><comment><USER33> Hubski looks to me more like a HN clone and less like a Reddit replacement.

</comment><comment><USER34> Reddit's beauty is in sub-reddits. Don't like the front page? Just unsubscribe from it, and subscribe to whatever you like.

[http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of- re...](http://forhiremedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/map-of-reddit.jpg)

<comment><USER35> The downside is that if a particularly good post in your favourite subreddit hits the front page the Visigoths are going to come in and leave stupid comments one way or another. /r/AskReddit is incredible because of its judicious moderation, but the same can't be said for /r/programming or /r/technology, for example.

What reddit really needs is a ranking engine recommending users, submissions and comments to you based on the users you've friended and the comments and submissions you've upvoted. Just take a quick approximation of PCA/SVD/eigenvalue/tachyon-polarity and let the users see if they like it.

EDIT: Another simple idea is ranking comment trees by their first few comments instead of ranking them just by their first comment. I'm going to read the immediate replies of the top post either way, and I'd rather get three or four good comments than one great comment and two or three crappy replies to it.

<comment><USER34>
        What reddit really needs is a ranking engine
        recommending users, submissions and comments
        to you based on the users you've friended and
        the comments and submissions you've upvoted.

Do you realize the insane amount of calculations that would take?

For each pageview you would have to find all stories in that subreddit, find all the authors, find all stories you ever voted on, find all the users you are friends with, and somehow rank all this shit.

It will cost millions of dollars a month in CPU time just to run something on the scale of reddit.

<comment><USER36> how is it much different from the ranking engines netflix and amazon use?

<comment><USER34> You can calculate the "weight" of the movie for a given user once. The number of movies is very low, compared to the number of stories on reddit.

Whatever that guy is proposing is an insanely complex dynamic system.

I'm not saying it's not doable, I'm just saying it's very expensive.

<comment><USER37> It might be less complicated then you'd expect (at least one way of doing it): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering>

The core idea is linear regression.

Here's Google's service: <http://code.google.com/apis/predict/>. Here's a commercial API service: <http://www.directededge.com/>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Give users a basic IQ and personality test. Provide different content based upon where they fall.

<comment><USER39> What does IQ have to do with content?

Steven Hawking could enjoy lolcats and your garbage man might be an ardent reader of philosophy. Stereotyping based on IQ or profession is fairly stupid. Smart people can like dumb things and dumb people can enjoy intellectual pursuits. If you want to pigeon hole people into categories go back to a high school cafeteria.

<comment><USER40> Is it even possible to have a dumb person who enjoys truly intellectual pursuits? I'm not outright stating its impossible, but I'd like to see a plausible scenario.

<comment><USER41> You'll have to define 'dumb' and 'truly intellectual' first. One might define a 'dumb' person as one who is incapable of enjoying 'truly intellectual pursuits' (whatever that means). In this case, no it's not possible but it's also pretty meaningless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microservices – Demo Project in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/umermansoor/microservices <comment><USER2> Number 1 problem with microservices here:

[https://github.com/umermansoor/microservices/blob/master/ser...](https://github.com/umermansoor/microservices/blob/master/services/user.py#L64)

N+1 HTTP requests. Ouch. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do a database join?

<comment><USER3> There's a lot of benefits to this approach over a database join if you have async IO. Specifically, sharding becomes trivial and you can cache each movie individually, so if one movie changes you don't need to invalidate the cache for all of them.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it might make sense if you're Facebook or Amazon to do this stuff. For the rest of us, a single (reasonably optimised) database can scale up to thousands of hits per second. Probably more.

Also there's another downside to this approach: you lose the ability to do atomic transactions on the application's data.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if you ever need to shard, you can no longer assume you can do atomic transactions anyway, which means you need to rewrite a lot of stuff.

By designing in this way, your scaling problems change from "the entire app fell over" to "the movie service fell over", which really helps with availability.

Not that there aren't disadvantages with microservices (overhead, distributed tracing, etc), I just think app architecture isn't one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This shows a few of the drawbacks of microservices one of which is memory. This project used about 15mb per python instance = 60mb total when the entire stack is launched.

Once you load a few largish python libraries like sqlalchemy you can get up to 100mb per instance x 4 = 400mb.

What would be interesting is a framework that allows you to run the entire microservice stack in a single interpreter (shouldn't be hard with flask blueprints) and break off the subapps as necessary when the need arises.

You would need a way of managing the current endpoints for each service vs a requests.get('[http://localhost:ARBITRARY_PORT'](http://localhost:ARBITRARY_PORT')) in the code, but if done correctly would make managing a cluster much simpler.

Does anyone know if such a thing exists?

<comment><AUTHOR> > What would be interesting is a framework that allows you to run the entire > microservice stack in a single interpreter (shouldn't be hard with flask > blueprints) and break off the subapps as necessary when the need arises.

The idea behind microservices is to have small services running on their own processes and communicating using a light-weight mechanism. This means you could write a service in Java, another in Python, Node.js etc. (i.e. pick the most appropriate language for the task)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing I really want to see is how a good authentication and authorization system works, for both the user-facing services and interservice calls. I've looked around a bit and never found a resource that addresses that important problem.

<comment><USER4> You wouldn't want authorization for internal interservice calls, way too much overhead and a firewall is more secure.

<comment><USER6> Firewall != AAA != encrypted transport

They have different usages; I wouldn't say one is more secure than the other.

<comment><USER4> For interservice calls a firewall is much more secure than any auth system, way less vectors of attack. Encrypted transport on public networks should be a given anyway, although if you have a private network then that is unnecessary also.

The only place auth is needed is for services that interact with users, and that works well in the microservice philosophy having an auth service which talks to all services as in user <-> service <-> auth

You can scale the auth system indirectly to the other services, and since auth is required almost everywhere means that you'll have a large part of your resources devoted to that.

Where it gets interesting is when you use external microservices for auth like stormpath - is it a good idea to talk to that directly, or use a mediation auth service of your own - I usually prefer the 2nd method since while there is an extra hop - it makes the api more static and allows you to swap out what your app uses for auth much more easily.

<comment><USER6> I disagree.

Given what we now know post Snowden, it's certainly advisable to encrypt internal transports whenever possible.

As an additional example, lots of people tend to mistake MPLS as being encrypted as opposed to just being a private network so it's definitely advisable to make sure traffic is encrypted whenever possible inside or out.

<comment><USER4> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't Microservices a fancy new term for SOA?

The positioning machine in action...

</comment><comment><USER8> ``` Requirements

Python 2.7 ```

oh sad day :(

<comment><USER9> Flask works just fine on 3.5 so you could easily update any breaking differences in this demo repo.</comment></comment>


Best way to publish an e-mail address without being attacked by spammers? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4794286/whats-the-best-way-to-present-an-e-mail-address-on-my-website-without-being-atta

<comment><USER2> [http://superuser.com/questions/235937/does-email-address- obf...](http://superuser.com/questions/235937/does-email-address-obfuscation- actually-work/235965#235965)

This is linked in the top-rated comment there and actually shows methods along with amounts of spam received per method. I was surprised because I usually use entity replacement and haven't received any spam yet, so I thought it was safe!</comment>


Kotlin – making a natural and fearless high scale transition - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/kotlin-making-a-natural-and-fearless-high-scale-transition-b7a12e51ebca <comment><AUTHOR> I personally believe it is not just hype — it's a transition that feels only natural from both a technical and a management perspective</comment>


Looking for HTML5 Nirvana - <AUTHOR> http://www.copperykeenclaws.com/looking-for-html5-nirvana/

<comment><USER2> Why does this get upvoted ?

If anything, all the author expresses is the disappointment of his own expectations while not adding anything constructive.

Looking at the screenshots what he wants to achieve is perfectly doable cross browser but as per the author admission he's not much of a front-end guy.

Shots point to here > <http://bigmath.herokuapp.com/> which is offline.

<comment><USER3> That's his point..if someone can't write and position two characters of text and have it be cross platform easily, the HTML platform itself has failed.

I had a similar thought like the author recently. Flash could have been awesome with a smaller runtime, 3D sooner, progressive rendering of content (text and images getting loaded in like in the browser instead of loading bars) Who would still use HTML? There would be no upside at all, Flash has always had better tools.

<comment><USER4> Despite being one of the first true ubiquitous computing platforms, becoming the main format of communication for the planet, HTML(s/the web) failed because someone couldnt read a CSS tutorial?

The authors example is terrible, that is an easy layout to do crossbrowser, HTML and CSS do have massive deficiencies in easily creating layouts, but so do most GUI toolkits, and compared to the other factors involved in the success of the web, fiddling around with css a little longer is a price well worth paying, for the majority at least

<comment><USER5> I agree, I have no idea why he can't center content horizontally unless he's making a mistake.

However, those deficiencies you mentioned are only "well worth it" because it's our only option. It's this complacent attitude that helped generate a need for a plug-in. HTML and CSS are still tedious to use and often times requires hacks to work in specific browsers. Why? We shouldn't need a mess of frameworks on top of frameworks to fix these "massive deficiencies", it's simply not good enough.

<comment><USER6> I deal with HTML and CSS everyday so I'm probably biased but for me all these cross-browser compatibility problems related to rendering stuff are grossly exaggerated. Aside from IE6 (which, I believe, _should_ not be supported anymore) supporting everything else is relatively easy. IE7 usually needs a couple of "zoom: 100%" here and there; IE8 handles CSS2 quite nicely (it passed Acid 2 after all); IE9 is on the same level as Firefox 3.6 - which is quite great. CSS3 stuff is a bit tricky sometimes, especially if you're going for a pixel-perfect cross-browser compatibility. However, it's hard to expect that older browsers would support technology from the future. Flash 8 don't support Flash 11 features either. Still, in browsers the new stuff could be quite easily 'emulated' with filters, JS or ready-made solutions (PIE CSS), etc.

Latest Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome and IE10 - the bunch that supports both HTML5 and CSS3 from the start - are totally painless. That's the "HTML5 nirvana", IMHO. To be honest, breaking the compatibility between these the way the author did is quite an achievement - I really would like to see his code. Probably a quick and simple CSS Reset would solve these issues. Author's mistake is more probable though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He should really include a link to a "demo", so we can see what exactly he is doing there.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, it might not be standards compliant HTML in which case it's not the browser's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree I should have left a demo up- I had decided I should just start over so I took some screenshots for reference then scraped it. Later as an after- thought, I decided to write it up. I didn't really expect this much interest- I'll try to get it back up tonight.

The exercise was a little more than straight-up horizontal centering. It was to take two numbers randomly generated with possibly different number of digits, center them together along with an operator as a block, but right- align the text within. Also a text input field was put below. The line above the input field is just a simple border.

For reference, the CSS tutorial I looked at was [http://www.noobcube.com/tutorials/html-css/horizontal-and- ve...](http://www.noobcube.com/tutorials/html-css/horizontal-and-vertical- centering-using-css-a-beginners-guide-/), but I didn't add the IE elements because I thought it was only necessary for IE 6 and 7, not 9.

So the horizonal alignment problem in IE is probably because I used display:block. But why don't the numbers line up the same in chrome and firefox? What's up with the field border being all over the place? My point is not that I know html and css well, which I clearly don't, or that this stuff is impossible. It's that even with the latest browsers and techniques, it's still easy to get very different displays. I just didn't expect that, given the huge hype surrounding html5 and css3.

<comment><USER6> The tutorial you've mentioned overcomplicate things a bit and uses tables for layout, which is a total no-go. However, even as a regular HTML5 defender I have to admit centering stuff in HTML/CSS in not exactly a trivial task. It's not very tough either, just not something that most of the 'newcomers' could solve in a minute. You can look up my solution here: <http://garbiak.com/demos/hn/>

Without seeing your code it's hard to tell what exactly gone wrong, however such huge level of browser inconsistency is indeed worrisome. Never believed HTML5 would solve these kind of issues completely but the differences shouldn't be that huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dear Author ( Author == OP in this case),

Can you please share markup/css you were using?

<comment><AUTHOR> I put the site back online at <http://bigmath.herokuapp.com/>.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The site is back online at <http://bigmath.herokuapp.com/>.

</comment><comment><USER10> > does HTML5 support true cross-browser compatibility?

Well, as the HTML5 specification is not complete yet... the answer is quite obvious: No.</comment>


Tile Studio: development utility for graphics of tile-based games - <AUTHOR> http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> I was always under the impression this program was a level editor made primarily for use with for the author's Clean Game Library [1], a game engine for a functional programming language named Clean [2]. I haven't used either, but maybe people into functional programming will be interested in studying a working game engine made in a functional programming language back in 1999? [3]

As for interesting features the program offers on its own… it has a pretty decent integrated graphic editor for tilemaps [4], and uses a template language for defining the output format instead of providing a generic parsable file format [5]. It also appears to abstract away layers by making each tile in your map consist of a "front," "middle," and "back" tile [6]. In general, it seems like a more old-school version of Tiled, and may be useful for people developing for/on older systems that want a very lightweight tilemap editor.

For people used to programs like Tiled, though, there's probably no compelling reason to switch to this tool. The lack of a working undo function in the map editor could be a dealbreaker, for one.

[1] [http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php](http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php)

[2] [http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean](http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean)

[3] [http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/](http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/)

[4] [http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html](http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html)

[5] [http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD](http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD)

[6] [http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor](http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor)

</comment><comment><USER3> See also [http://www.mapeditor.org/](http://www.mapeditor.org/) which is another good software in that space.

<comment><USER4> Yea my first thought was "is this any better/worse than Tiled?" If you are a Unity user you should also check out Tiled 2 Unity: [http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity](http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity)

<comment><USER5> I maintain a library for Tiled in the Monkey X language. [https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled](https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember watching Notch do a ludum dare and actually use paint.NET as his level editor.

Each color can be set to a tile, and you can read in the bitmap easily to load a level. A fun way to quickly crank out maps.

<comment><USER7> Similarly, I once made a game with vector-based levels and just used Inkscape as the editor.

<comment><USER8> This might be the perfect application of Inkscape. As programmer, you can edit XML model and add data to your objects. You can also write Python plugins to integrate into your asset pipeline.

I used it to draw art which was converted to bitmaps, define polygon shapes for Box2D bodies, define joints between shapes (rope/spring/hinge), select static/dynamic properties, assign mass/restitution/friction...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use Tile Studio as my only sprite and map editor for 2D platformer development (first in C, then C++, now Lua/Love). The ability to define my own output format instead of having to deal with somebody else's XML is a killer feature for me - a primary reason I've previously tried and discarded Tiled.

<comment><USER10> You can define your own output format? Hot damn, I'm sold. It took a long time to get Tiled parsed, especially since I needed additional features it didn't have.

And that was years ago, so I wasn't looking forward to going through that process again.

I wish more software in general allowed you to freely define your output format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish there was strong, open source html5 tile editor

<comment><USER12> I think that one could possible evolve from [http://www.piskelapp.com/](http://www.piskelapp.com/) in near future; piskel already has a simple "Seamless drawing mode" option and developer seems to be open for ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always use pyxeledit, cheap, professional, and works on mac and PC, and great for animations

pyxeledit.com/

<comment><USER8> PyxelEdit is really good for creating graphics (sprites and spritesheets). It's so simple and intuitive, makes it easy to focus on art and stay creative. It can be used for making maps, but it's hard to compete with TilEd, which supports hex maps, vector zones for triggers and other meta-data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He also worked on this [http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article- Old_School_Color_C...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article- Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is that correct: September 26, 2012 last update?

<comment><USER16> If it ain't broke, don't fix it

<comment><USER17> If i̶t̶ ̶a̶i̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶ it's on Sourceforge, don't fix it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Related 2D art tool on HN 3 years ago: Sprite Lamp

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691)

edit: semi-freshly re-written in C++ according to the blog

</comment><comment><USER19> It boggles me that a project hosted on SourceForge that hasn't been updated in 3 years and is in no way relevant lands on the front page of Hacker News...

<comment><USER20> I upvote lots of articles for the comments, to keep a reference.

(A good way to find the best open source product for X in the world is probably to post a link to a bad product for X here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> ...But is it better than Tiled and Aseprite?

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice. Works on the Mac via Wine.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have little trust in anything from SourceForge, it may look good but it's tainted by being on SourceForge so I wont touch it. Sorry

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and- fut...](https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future- plans/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the link, I am glad they are turning it around.</comment></comment></comment>


Hockneyfyme – Twitterbot to stylize your photos - <AUTHOR>

Give a David Hockney style photo collage effect to your photos by tweeting the photo and mention @hockneyfyme <comment><USER2> For HN it's usually better to submit the URL ( [http://www.hockneyfy.me/](http://www.hockneyfy.me/) ) with a title but without a comment. You may get some comments about the UI. For example, I'd like that you provide a test image, so I don't have to think where in my HD I have an image to submit to test the configuration options.

And it would be much better to submit a "how we made this"/"how this work" technical page. For example, which program are you using for the graphical part (Imagemagic/GIMP/custom C program/ ...)?</comment>


Microsoft Mocks Apple on iBooks Author EULA - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/21/microsoft-mocks-apples-ibooks-author-policies-on-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Yes, mocking some (perfectly reasonable for a task-specific tool that is even offered for free and it's specifically called _iBooks_ Author) restriction imposed by Apple will totally make Microsoft cool again with the hip programming crowd.

Oh, and the "If you write a novel in Word, we promise not to take a 30% cut" tweet.

Maybe because you _already_ got from $80-$300 from me for Word and the gang, geniuses. And maybe because you offer Word as general purpose text editor, not something to prepare stuff for a specific service.</comment>


Ask HN: I want to create a clone of a popular software, should I? - <AUTHOR> As the title says, I think I could create a pretty decent applicant tracking system. Think Lever, Workable, etc.
I think I could get some good the features within two weeks.
What are the pros / cons of doing this? Any suggestions?
Should I start selling it before building it?
Do you think there is a lacking feature?
Should I target big corp or small startups? <comment><USER2> If it a side project and the intent is education / experience (for you) first and foremost then have at it.

Selling it before you start building it.... I'm not sure you want the customers reckless enough to buy something sight unseen.

When I worked in networking the customers who bought a bunch of equipment without thinking much were support nightmares as they always deployed the wrong hardware in the wrong place and now it "didn't work".

But if you are going to do this I'd appreciate it if you could hard code some magic words that would get me a job...

<comment><AUTHOR> if(user.name == duxup) {

        hires[0] = user;
        return;

}

Yes, i've built a number of projects. Maybe this can teach me something about searching across documents (pdf) and stuff.

Do you think there is space in the market? What are your favourite features of the products? (this questions goes for you and anyone who reads this)

<comment><USER2> That market is not my area of expertise at all, but best of luck to you. If you've got time... never hurts to have something show off even if it doesn't work out, but it also sounds like you're quite capable / would have plenty of that ;)

Great username by the way.</comment></comment></comment>


What is ICO? A killer and definitive explanation - <AUTHOR> http://icoclap.com/blog/ico-killer-definitive-explaination/ <comment><USER2> Flagged: Poorly written SPAM.</comment>


Why *real developers* should hate PHP! - <AUTHOR> http://www.borfast.com/blog/i-hate-php

<comment><USER2> "Real developers" are too busy developing to complain about why X language sucks for Y reasons. There are many tools available to us developers. Use the ones you see fit and forget wasting time blasting other developers for using tools you don't like.

<comment><USER3> This. A million times this.

I've used other languages, I've done C# development, I've done Python development... but I currently do PHP development, and you know what? It's fine.

As long as _you_ follow good practices and use things in a way that doesn't make your life unpleasant, then all is well and you can get on with your day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> here we go again. PHP powers 244M sites which is 80% of the net. who cares if it sucks.</comment>


The Internet Archive is trying to raise funds to buy 3 petabytes of storage - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/16/the-internet-archive-is-trying-to-raise-enough-funds-to-buy-3-petabytes-of-storage-in-17-days/

<comment><USER2> I really admire what the Internet Archive does, and I'd be very willing to donate to them, but for one caveat: IA's robots.txt policy retroactively applies the _current_ robots.txt on a particular domain to the entire archive of previous captures for that domain. This means that if a website goes offline, and an unrelated third party later acquires the domain, and uses a new, restrictive robots.txt, then the _older_ site is no longer accessible in the archive.

I know this may seem somewhat trivial, but I've run into this problem more than once, and I find that it undermines the value of the archive: if you're trying to preserve history, making that preservation contingent on the the state of things in the present defeats your purpose.

I'd much rather see them adopt a more sensible policy of obeying whatever robots.txt is contemporaneous to each particular site capture.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to the donation page: <https://archive.org/donate/>

<comment><USER4> And in case you're interested of the hardware, here's some details: <http://archive.org/web/petabox.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They also take donations in bitcoin. (something that python.org and the EFF can learn from)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you donate to them through JustGive, be aware that after donating to the IA last year, I received over the last few months several spammy e-mails asking me to give to other unrelated charities.

</comment><comment><USER7> It might be worth mentioning that this is part of an offer to match donations 3-for-1 until December 31st.

</comment><comment><USER8> Relevant discussion on the same topic from last week: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4901148>

A worthy and commendable initiative. Chipped in what I could.

I had meant to follow this up last week, but it slipped my mind. So, thanks for posting this again. :-]

</comment><comment><USER9> I always marvel in a service that could easily monetize their product or traffic but chooses instead to essentially beg for funds. Or even possibly charge for tiered access to the archives (something I would pay for).

<comment><USER10> Really? You "marvel" that Wikipedia doesn't charge for access? I hope I never become as "business cynical" as some people here.

<comment><USER9> "You "marvel" that Wikipedia doesn't charge for access?"

I'm not talking about Wikipedia nor did I mention them. My comment is directed toward internet archive a different situation.

<comment><USER10> > _I always marvel in a service that could easily monetize their product or > traffic but chooses instead to essentially beg for funds._

Describes Wikipedia word-for-word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Things to donate to:

Starving children. Orphans. Awareness about preventable disease. The environment. Human rights. Animal rights.

Things NOT to donate to:

Obscure copyright theft.

<comment><USER11> Archive.org often archives internet harassment. What a pain it is for the victims. The people at Archive.org know this happens but don't say anything about it. So, let's add harassment to the copyright theft.

It's an interesting service and it should be done by a responsible and legal commercial entity.

Feel free to down vote me, but, every dollar you spend on Archive.org could've gone to a worthy cause and helped someone. What a shame.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: which is the best flash video player? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
We ve been using flow player (http://flowplayer.org) on our site http://seenreport.com to  play videos for quite some time now. The performance has been quite satisfactory, but I just want to make sure we are using the best available option before we buy the license.
Is there any other flash video player available to run online videos or should I just got for the flow player? <comment><USER2> JW FLV Player.

<http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/>

It's the one you see a lot of sites using.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mean <http://flowplayer.org>. In my personal opinion flowplayer is excellent. It has the most extensive customization and API of any of the available flash players. Especially if you're using their most recent 3.x version. Furthermore, they have an excellent set of documentation and examples.

</comment><comment><USER4> JW player works well for playing videos, but if you plan on using the plugins be aware that many of them conflict. <http://corp.kaltura.com/> is another option.</comment>


CloudMagic Brings Fast Search-As-You-Type To Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/cloudmagic/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of those people whose Google Apps account takes 15-30 seconds to return a result when I search for something. It drives me nuts.

I just installed CloudMagic and it's amazing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't it sad that adding fast search to someone else's email client has been a valid product niche for _years_? Shouldn't people know by now that email clients need this feature? And now the cycle continues, but with extra irony since it's Google ( _Google!_ ) who got it wrong.

<comment><USER4> _since it's Google (Google!) who got it wrong._

Amen!

This is just wrong on so many levels.

I also find it funny how nobody seems to be concerned about giving their mail password to them.

<comment><USER5> You don't give your password to them...It's stored on your hard-drive (and so is the search index). They just didn't communicate that clearly. You can find a lot more information regarding Cloud Magic here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJjztU- TjcU&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJjztU- TjcU&feature=player_embedded)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Product of the Trimester for me. I think the nicest feature, besides the speed (Yes I consider speed a feature), is the ability to preview the result on a panel. I love it when a company attacks one specific problem and does a great job at fixing it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is the Linux support?</comment>


Analysis Ties Hacking of Bezos' Phone to Saudi Leader's Account - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/technology/bezos-phone-hacking.html <comment><USER2> yesterday's comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22111560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22111560)</comment>


The nanolight revolution is coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/the-nanolight-revolution-is-coming-1.19482 <comment><USER2> First time ever that a science article contains glowy multicoloured bottles that are actually pertinent.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Now, however, other types of nanolight are on the rise. Some have a rare > ability to absorb lots of low-energy photons and combine the energy into a > handful of high-energy photons

Doesn't it violate the second law of thermodynamics?

<comment><USER4> Adding two 1 eV photons in a two-photon upconverter does not give you a single 2 eV photon. Some of the energy of the upconverted photons is lost as heat, so thermodynamically it's okay.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are right. Each of these nanoparticles should also radiate heat radiation or heat the environment near it in other way, but it is not clear from the citation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aww, I was hoping 'nanolight' referred to sub-microlight human-carrying aircraft...

</comment><comment><USER6> You don't want to be injecting this into creatures you want living very long: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_poisoning)

If this really is a revolution, it makes me wonder if it will lead to environmental/social impacts like leaded gasoline.

<comment><USER7> addressed in the article.

<comment><USER6> i missed that part, thanks</comment></comment></comment>


Functional data structures in JavaScript with Mori - <AUTHOR> http://sitr.us/2013/11/04/functional-data-structures.html <comment><AUTHOR> One nifty thing not covered here is that Mori also has an extremely efficient O(1) thaw to get a mutable copy of an immutable value and a O(1) freeze to get a persistent value from a mutable data structure (transient).

The performance of a transient vector is shockingly close to using a JavaScript array under Google V8 for adding new elements:

[http://github.com/swannodette/mori#efficient- freezethaw](http://github.com/swannodette/mori#efficient-freezethaw)

</comment><comment><USER2> Of course it is obligatory to mention the classic: Okasaki's "Purely Functional Datastructures" book.

[http://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris- Oka...](http://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris- Okasaki/dp/0521663504)

Also check out this link for additional data structures worked on since then or simply not included in the book:

[http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1539/whats- new-i...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1539/whats-new-in- purely-functional-data-structures-since-okasaki)

<comment><AUTHOR> A minor nit, most of the data structures provided through Mori via ClojureScript are not based heavily on Okasaki's work, rather they are based on Bagwell's paper on mutable Ideal Hash Trees [http://lampwww.epfl.ch/papers/idealhashtrees.pdf](http://lampwww.epfl.ch/papers/idealhashtrees.pdf) and Rich Hickey's efficient immutable implementations in Java for Clojure

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great. I never understood why underscore/lo-dash doesn't have a `conj` or a `concat`.

JavaScript's `push` mutates data which you'd think you'd want to avoid if you're using a functional library like underscore/lo-dash.

`concat` makes sense to leave out when you consider that arrays already have a `concat` function. But if that's the reasoning, why did underscore/lo-dash include `size` and `max` and all those other things that already exist?

<comment><USER4> One thing I never understood about - awful generalization - "real" functional languages is their fascination with terrible naming. What I mean is things like `car`, `cdr`, `conj` - words that are impossible to understand if you don't already know what they mean.

<comment><USER5> That's only lisp and particularly faithful derivatives (unfortunately including clojure). Haskell uses more natural names - head, tail, last.

<comment><USER6> Even most Lisps have first/rest as synonyms of car/cdr (dating back to some very old Lisps, and mandated by the Common Lisp standard). They just don't seem to have culturally caught on as idiomatic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like that the article calls then "functional data structures". Every time I call them by their real name (persistent data structures), _at least_ one person will get confused and think I'm talking about serialization to disk.

<comment><USER8> Is is possible to construct a persistent data structure that is not referentially transparent? I suspect the answer is yes, depending on how you define side effects (example: a persistent array that logs operations).

Which would mean "functional" is a more general adjective than "persistent" since it includes both persistence and referential transparency.

Wikipedia[1] claims "There also exist persistent data structures which use destructible operations, making them impossible to implement efficiently in purely functional languages"

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

<comment><USER7> "Persistent" is but a bullet point on Clojure's own explanation of its data strucures, so I suppose we as a community should follow in the official docs' footsteps :)

[http://clojure.org/data_structures](http://clojure.org/data_structures)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IIUC they pulled out clojure's clojurescript projected core structures so you can use it ~pojo ?

Recenlty I saw [https://github.com/harukizaemon/hamster](https://github.com/harukizaemon/hamster) , similarly immutable, structure sharing, persistent data structures

It's becoming mainstream ...

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a current build anywhere or do I have to build it myself?

<comment><USER11> Install the npm package, mori. You can require it in a NodeJS project, or grab the file mori.js from the installed package and drop it in a web browser.</comment></comment>


Samsung Launches Galaxy S20 Tactical Edition for Department of Defense - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-launches-galaxy-s20-tactical-edition-for-department-of-defense/ <comment><AUTHOR> 'Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today introduced the Samsung Galaxy S20 Tactical Edition (TE), a mission-ready smartphone solution tailored to the unique needs of operators in the federal government and Department of Defense (DoD). With a highly customized software and feature set, the Galaxy S20 TE can operate seamlessly with a range of existing peripherals and supports the requirements of tactical and classified applications, especially those designed to help operators navigate complex terrain, expansive distances, and the potential loss of communication with command units. Galaxy S20 TE also introduces DualDAR architecture, which delivers two layers of data encryption based on the NSA standards to secure up to top-secret level data for classified missions.' [1]

[1] [https://news.samsung.com/us/galaxy-s20-tactical-edition- next...](https://news.samsung.com/us/galaxy-s20-tactical-edition-next- generation-tactical-mobility-enterprise/)</comment>


Lost Inventions - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_inventions <comment><USER2> Suppose we recover "Greek Fire" (as an example, any of the inventions could be used). Since Intellectual Property is so very important, who gets the rights to it? It seems unfair to the descendants of the original inventor, who had the seminal moment of conception, to give any money to someone who merely re- discovers a concept known to exist, just not ever written down.</comment>


The Catch-22 of Building a Business on Apple's APIs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.astropad.com/the-catch-22-of-apple-apis/ <comment><USER2> How is this a catch-22 situation?

It is some kind of dilemma, sure, because you have to decide between making your life easier by using powerful and convenient platform-exclusive APIs or staying more independent by trying to use as much generic, cross-platform foundations as possible, even though this makes your job more difficult and consumes more effort.

But it is by no means some kind of contraption from which there is no possible escape route - which is what a catch-22 entails, as far as I understand it. It's an engineering trade-off, just like all those other trade-offs that we as engineers have to evaluate and eventually decide about all the time.

It seems to me like someone wanted to use the well-known "catch-22" moniker as a catchphrase (pun intended) here ;-)

<comment><USER3> I suppose it is a catch 22 because there are plenty of apps/businesses out there that would not be able to exist were it not for the apple ecosystem.

Usually demonstrated by the fact that for their specific functionality, they require a native app, and their identical Android application makes almost no money compared to the iOS app.

Not saying all apps are like that. But there are quite a few that for whatever reason, only make money on iOS.

<comment><USER4> > there are plenty of apps/businesses out there that would not be able to > exist were it not for the apple ecosystem

That's not a catch-22. A catch-22 [0] is when you have contradictory requirements that are all needed but eliminate each other [Wiki example: How can I get any experience until I get a job that gives me experience?]. A hard choice or a single choice aren't a catch-22.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_\(logic\))

<comment><USER5> The phrase they were looking for was faustian bargain, although even then, Apple's APIs are not all or nothing (but if you use some, maybe just use them all cuz youre stuck either way?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Using an iPad as a Cintiq-like touchscreen for macOS is a feature that I've wanted for years as something that should "just work" out of the box as a built-in feature. I've been greatly dissatisfied with third-party solutions and their annoying drawbacks such as subscription pricing (AstroPad, Duet), hardware dongles (Luna), and a generally poor user experience (all of them.)

Sidecar is a breath of fresh air, and I hope Apple will extend it to work from Mac to Mac, much like the old Target Display mode which was unfortunately dropped from the iMac 5K. Note that iPads/iPhones have also been able to send video _to_ macOS via QuickTime Player for years, but it is a bit clunky if you just want to use the Mac display as a mirrored iOS display.

<comment><USER7> > the old Target Display mode which was unfortunately dropped from the iMac 5K

FWIW: It was dropped from that model because (at the time) there was no way to drive a monitor that large over DisplayPort. DisplayPort 1.3 would have supported it, but that was only announced a month or so before the iMac 5K came out -- the hardware was finalized long before that.

It is disappointing that Apple hasn't added Target Display Mode back to newer models, though.

<comment><USER8> Had Target Display mode still been a thing i'm sure many would've bought a 5k iMac to use only as a dumb display.

<comment><USER9> People downvoting this probably don't know how hard 5k displays were to come by in the past (and still are occasionally).

<comment><USER10> And still only one reputable company sells them - LG. Dell and HP got out of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am so sick of their whining. What they "created" - a method of using the iPad as a second display - was done by an app that was introduced in 2010 less than 3 months after the iPad was introduced.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/turn-your-ipad-into-a-second- monit...](https://www.cnet.com/news/turn-your-ipad-into-a-second-monitor/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The article mentioned adopting Swift for core algo would tie you into Apple eco, as Swift is not "cross-platform". Swift however is open source and cross platform, just not well supported in other platform. Wondering if adopting Flutter and Dart will end you up in the same boat? Well Flutter is cross platform, but that cross platform support is dependent on how Google wants to support it. You cant just port it into let say a new watch platform or Raspberry Pi or Huawei's HongMengOS. Maybe the best route, as in the article, is to use a really cross platform languages C, C++, Rust for product core, and then layer it with the native UI code. Anyone has any idea if this is how Adobe develop their products?

<comment><USER12> According to Stroustrup[1], Adobe builds everything in C++. Perhaps they add some C# shim for Windows and Objective-C (or even Swift) for Mac.

A great advantage of choosing C++ as a core language is that the language (albeit syntactically/semantically a monstrosity to many) still evolves while receiving feedback from industry (i.e., features are there because complex software needs it). There's the Standard C++ Foundation [2], where big players like Google, Microsoft, Nvidia have a say.

[1] [http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html](http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html)

[2] [https://isocpp.org/about](https://isocpp.org/about)

<comment><USER13> Adobe is also old, as software vendors go. I have no knowledge of their internal workings but it wouldn't surprise me if they still have some code in a product that predates the existence of C# or Apple's adoption of Objective C. They also have a need for algorithmic speed, and C++ has long been a prime tool for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the article makes some good points, it conflates the variety of distinct components that comprise a truly sherlock-proof product/application/codebase.

Better to build full native but rely on cross-platform architecture, design patterns, common backend/infrastructure, etc than settle for hypebeast cross- platform abstraction magic with dependencies on overburdened and leaky by definition integrations back to native SDK. The former yields all the proven benefits of native apps and strong platform vendor support with a contingency plan if said ecosystem launches a competing product. The latter leads to a world of hurt.

Specifically, the article misses the mark wrt Swift. Swift is open source and truly cross-platform. SwiftNIO, Tensorflow, and the server-side Swift projects are a great example of how far one can go assuming a willingness to invest in the language completely devoid of any Apple API involvement.

It truly seems like the next major breakthrough would be if SwiftUI could (relatively easily) be implemented for desktop Windows or *nix. Sure, the article notes people tried the same thing with GNUStep or WinObjC, but you were always truly tied to or ended up missing Cocoa, Foundation, and the Obj-C runtime. Conversely & ironically, swift-evolution, spm, and many of the most "Swifty" parts of the Swift ecosystem come to the other toolchains long before they make it into an annual Xcode release.

<comment><USER6> I agree that having the core application logic be cross-platform but customizing the app with first-class native support for each platform usually yields a superior user experience, particularly for desktop and productivity applications; even other software such as utilities or development tools can become more pleasant and useful if they are delivered with a first-class platform-native interface as well as well-integrated native functionality.

Even things like games can work better when they take advantage of platform- native APIs (e.g. directx on windows, metal on iOS/macOS), so either using a game engine that is well specialized for multiple platforms or using the underlying APIs directly is likely to yield better performance and playability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A subscription iOS app that doesn't have it's own subscription backend > server

Subscription pricing was (and is) a major turn-off for me, particularly for something like AstroPad, which simply allows you to use the iPad as a touchscreen display for macOS.

<comment><USER15> If it "simply" allows you a feature that you want and that did not exist otherwise - and there doesn't seem to be anything remotely simple about it (wireless, low-latency, filtering the input noise, etc) - it seems only normal to pay for it...A one-time fee would be nicer, for sure, as I'm sure AstroPad wouldn't mind - but if you're battling API changes with every OS revision, and trying to provide a product that Apple can cripple any day (like they did with Sidecar), you're primarily forced to go subscription route by Apple to ensure survival...

<comment><USER16> I think the problem here is that software should not be "as a service". Once a platform starts down the "evergreen" route they stop caring about breaking backward compatibility and then everyone else has to churn along with them. It creates a huge amount of busywork for everyone.

<comment><USER10> So should Apple have kept the silicon required to support 32 bit apps in their ARM chips forever?

How long should they keep backwards compatibility in watchOS - which is very resource constrained? Going back further - should they never have dropped 68K support? PPC support from MacOS?

Even Microsoft dropped 16 bit support from the 64 bit version of Windows. Before someone posts "proof" that you can still run 16 bit apps on Windows, please read the part about "the 64 bit version of Windows".

<comment><USER17> > So should Apple have kept the silicon required to support 32 bit apps in > their ARM chips forever?

Yes. That is why x86 became so successful and why Windows is so much loved by big corporations. Microsoft and Intel care(d) _a lot_ about backwards compatibility - even desktop applications that were released 20 years ago usually work on today's Windows/PCs.

> Even Microsoft dropped 16 bit support from the 64 bit version of Windows.

Only in the 64 bit versions of Windows. Microsoft still sells 32 bit versions of Windows 10 if you want. In the 32 bit versions, 16 bit applications were supported for a long after. I admit that I have not tested whether 16 bit applications still run under the current 32 bit version of Windows 10 - but I consider it as plausible.

<comment><USER10> _Yes. That is why x86 became so successful and why Windows is so much loved by big corporations._

So instead of using the die space saved by removing 32 bit support and using it for some combination of increasing performance, improving battery life, decreasing die size etc they should have left it and suffered? How well is Intel's backwards compatibility strategy working on mobile where they are basically non existent?

Also, Apple sells more devices with ARM chips than all of personal computer manufacturers combined, the performance of their ARM chips is competitive with Intel's chips except for the server chips and they use less power. It doesn't seem to be a winning strategy to keep backwards compatibility forever.

So backwards compatibility hasn't exactly helped Intel in mobile - which is a much larger market than the desktop/server market. Even there PC manufacturers are trying to move to ARM for price performance and energy savings.

Yes, Microsoft still sells 32 bit Windows. But it can't take advantage of modern processors - and by "modern" I mean even my circa 2009 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell with 8Gb of RAM (running 64 bit Windows 10) that served as my Plex server until earlier this year.

How has backwards compatibility helped MS? Apple was able to port their core OS to 128Mb RAM/400Mhz iPhone back in 2007. Since then, they've ported it to everything from watches, tablets, and set top boxes. Microsoft has tried and failed in each of those markets.

<comment><USER18> How did you get that Intel and Microsoft failed in mobile "markets" because they had backwards compatibility with 32-bit and 16-bit apps? (I'm thinking you might not know the difference between RISC and CISC --hint: one is not better. than the other.)

> So instead of using the die space saved by removing 32 bit support and using > it for some combination of increasing performance, improving battery life, > decreasing die size etc they should have left it and suffered?

Removing the 32-bit instructions/registers isn't what achieves the performance and battery life improvements, those come from eliminating the RAM, cache- misses and context-switches dedicated to the 32-bit apps and that can be more than offset by not activating the 32-bit environment at all, unless it is actually needed by the user for legacy compatibility.

> Apple was able to port their core OS to 128Mb RAM/400Mhz iPhone back in 2007

Note that MS ported their core to a 4Mb RAM 36MHz Velo-1 back in 1997 and many Chinese manufacturers make low power chips like that (for DVD players, TV sets, etc.) that ship with operating systems that have exactly the same APIs (knock offs) of Win16 and Win32.

> 2007\. Since then, they've ported it to everything from watches, tablets, > and set top boxes. Microsoft has tried and failed in each of those markets.

You might want to look into Xbox, Surface, Foldable Surface the old Casio watch and what kind of boat anchor Apple's Darwin has been for realtime embedded devices like Apple Watch.

<comment><USER10> _How did you get that Intel and Microsoft failed in mobile "markets" because they had backwards compatibility with 32-bit and 16-bit apps? (I'm thinking you might not know the difference between RISC and CISC --hint: one is not better. than the other.)_

Apple was able to _successfully_ port the Core of MacOS to phones and other products - MS not so much.

I didn't say anything about RISC vs CISC, but Intel has had to throw a lot more money at the x86 architecture to achieve performance while keeping backwards compatibility and they have not been able to make a chip that was suitable for mobile.

 _Removing the 32-bit instructions /registers isn't what achieves the performance and battery life improvements, those come from eliminating the RAM, cache-misses and context-switches dedicated to the 32-bit apps and that can be more than offset by not activating the 32-bit environment at all, unless it is actually needed by the user for legacy compatibility._

That's also logically not true. How can it not be a win to being able to remove entire parts of the chip dedicated to 32 bit instructions?

 _Note that MS ported their core to a 4Mb RAM 36MHz Velo-1 back in 1997 and many Chinese manufacturers make low power chips like that (for DVD players, TV sets, etc.) that ship with operating systems that have exactly the same APIs (knock offs) of Win16 and Win32._

How did that work out in the market? Also in 1997, there was a lot less cruft in Windows than a decade later.

And the XBox hasn't exactly been a success in terms of either profitability or units shipped compared to mobile. Microsoft is busy fighting the last war. The "foldable surface" is vapor ware, the x86 based surface still has horrible performance and battery life compared to ARM tablets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A good reminder. It holds true with any vendor.</comment>


Padpaw Group Text API - <AUTHOR> http://padpaw.net/api

<comment><AUTHOR> Padpaw, Inc. <[http://padpaw.net>](http://padpaw.net>); is pleased to announce our Beta API for adding group text messaging to your web site or social network.The API is perfect for social networking sites that want to quickly add text messaging capabilities to their services without the long implementation of getting a short code, working with an aggregator, or getting a campaign approved.

Text messaging to groups can be challenging. While it's straight forward to send a single message to an individual from your web site, managing group communications are more complex. Padpaw is offering this capability which has been developed and tested with real live groups.

The text messaging service consists of a REST API to Padpaw's messaging server which allows for a quick integration. Individuals and companies wishing to use the API will need to register with Padpaw to obtain an API key. You can find out more information, including documentation at our web site:

<[http://padpaw.net/api/>](http://padpaw.net/api/>);

Future API releases will incorporate other Padpaw features such as event RSVP, sign-ups, and polls.

The service is in Beta and we're looking forward to you trying it and giving us your feedback. During our limited Beta program, you can use the messaging system to up to 200 messages. Pricing for our production version of the service will be announced later.</comment>


The Case of the Supersized Shebang: Kernel Regression from a Series of Errors - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/779997/4ba4c2d19b81f0c6/ <comment><USER2> > And yes, it's sad that people apparently had cases that depended on this odd > behavior, [Linus]

That strikes my ear as very odd. I suggest twenty years ago, perl taking devops by storm, that sentiment would have been nuts. So what's changed?

An increased emphasis on security (so a characterization of "corrupt" vs "truncated"). A shift in development focus away from shell level. What else?

So a preference now for say a better foundation, better low-level glue for other tooling (where the action is), "crippled but dependably strict". Over say more usable, shell as a hands-on abstraction level, "here's a workaround for yet another bit of unix brokenness so you can better build with it".

Curious. That's a fun aspect of history we don't teach well. All the things, which if you were dropped back in time, you'd do a double-take of "Wait, WAT?!?"</comment>


Show HN : YCrejects.org - <AUTHOR> http://ycrejects.org YCrejects.org is made of 12 completely fake steps to recovery, specially tailored to help the startup founders currently suffering a YC rejection. <comment><USER2> "YCrejects.org is made of 12 completely fake steps to recovery,"

Where are the 12 steps? Or is what makes them fake the fact that they don't exist? Could this be a lesson in not shipping?

Nice design though!</comment>


Xkcd: Good Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.xkcd.com/844/ <comment><USER2> There is no such thing as good code (yet). Any code is a compromise between idealistic, natural language and realistic, machine language. Between fantasy and matter.</comment>


Blockchain Based Tendering Framework – A Step Towards Open Governance - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.05844 <comment><USER2> What part of the Tender process gets more open with this proposal? From a quick glance the paper, I fail to see why one would use a blockchain and smart contracts here.

<comment><USER3> It enables the creators to Get Rich Quick selling worthless internet tokens to rubes who buy into the hype.

Once you realize that every one of these blockchain projects is driven by greed and the desire to Get Rich Quick, it all kinda makes sense.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that pretty much all business though.

<comment><USER5> Yes. However, few businesses rely as much on the ignorance of their customer base as much as blockchain.

Basically, someone figured out the internet/tech MLM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with public contracts imho. is the mechanical decision making leading to selection of a bid that is not economical. The shortfall is then made up by the selected contractor via delays, changes and substandard delivery. An alternative scenario is collusion by contractors increasing the lowest bid. Unless transparency across the whole lifecycle of projects is increased and with it accountability for in-time and up-to-standards delivery not much will change.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see more systems of government/law use a github style system where you can plainly read, comment, and propose changes to documents. Maybe a combination of the two.

<comment><USER8> In theory that sounds good, in practice how do you avoid it becoming an unusable mess? This would basically be a repo with millions of potential contributors.

<comment><USER2> same way you do it with code. using a platform that allows others to see changes does not mean its open posting, nor does it mean every proposed changes gets merged.

<comment><USER9> except people have vested interest in not keeping it very open and potential contributors also have vested interests. I don't think 'blockchain' adds value here

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of this article: [https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from- joshdata/so-you-...](https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so- you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597)

</comment><comment><USER11> democracy.earth has already implemented most of the things mentioned on the paper.</comment>


Day 01 — The State of Perl 6 in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/day-01-the-state-of-perl-6-in-2013/ <comment><USER2> > 2013 will be remembered as the year that brought proper concurrency support.

> But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Haha, good one.</comment>


How to Lose 100 Pounds - <AUTHOR> http://jamesgolick.com/2012/7/7/how-to-lose-100-pounds.html

<comment><USER2> What's wrong with aspartame? I consume that every day and am a lot skinnier than most people.

<comment><USER3> Your body reacts to the sweetness and produces insulin, which when not paired with actual sugars, turns into fat. This is known as "Insulin Resistance" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance>)

<comment><USER4> Honestly curious here, why is stevia excluded from the list in the article? It would seem to fall under the same process and cause equal amount of harm? Or is it the naturalistic fallacy at work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops - meant to reply here. [http://www.livestrong.com/article/536467-does- stevia-affect-...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/536467-does-stevia- affect-insulin/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> James, what challenges (psychological or physiological) did you experience when you started eating meat again? As a vegetarian of 13 years, I have trouble finding low-carb options but I don't think I could eat meat again.</comment>


On the block: squeezedbooks.com - <AUTHOR> http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/07/01/on-the-block-squeezedbooks-com <comment><AUTHOR> People seem to like the site, but I've set myself the challenge of working on stuff that has a direct revenue model - I provide a service, you pay me - rather than advertisements. It's tough, because my instincts are to just go build something cool, and then worry about money.</comment>


Why we're making our product roadmap public - <AUTHOR> https://kilometer.io/blog/why-we-are-making-public-our-product-roadmap/ <comment><USER2> One of the games that I've played and been involved with, DUST 514, started making their roadmap public over a year ago via a Trello board, and it had a huge impact with the players. The same company, CCP, has just announced that their roadmap for EVE: Valkyrie is public as well.

If you're committed to your customers, there's really no downside to doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> So true, we're looking forward to this new open channel of communication with our community. I truly believe it can benefit both our community and our product.</comment></comment>


2018 Midterm Challengers - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2067/ <comment><USER2> Is it ok to discuss politics here?

I'm a pretty big liberal myself but Beto's chances in Texas seem smaller than the size of his name implies. The polls have actually never had him higher than Cruz. At the bottom, it also says advice factored into this so maybe that was what made such a big factor?

<comment><USER3> > I'm a pretty big liberal myself but Beto's chances in Texas seem smaller > than the size of his name implies.

It's smaller than a some names for lower offices, and the size of name reflects (as stated at the top) a combination of chance of winning _and_ level of office.</comment></comment>