Strapi Beta Is Out - <AUTHOR> https://blog.strapi.io/strapi-beta-is-out/ <comment><USER2> Sofar the best solution for creating quick API's. With support of REST API and GraphQL.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Strapi is an open source headless CMS, like an on-premise Contentful.

I have used it in a couple projects and it is one of the nicest UX/DX I have ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER3> strapi + gatsby is the best!</comment>


Pearson says 3x7x26 is not 546 - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/08/pearsons-wrong-answer-and-why-it-matters-in-the-high-stakes-testing-era

<comment><USER3> I don't care about an answer key being wrong - typographical errors are a fact of life, and as long as they're not too common that's fine. What I care about is teachers using an _answer key_. I never _heard_ of such a thing until I came to the United States. At least in Ireland, where I grew up, teachers are expected to be good enough at the subject they teach to do the damn homework assignments. There are no such things as answer keys for textbook problems.

Every time I bring this up with an American teacher they go into this long litany of how busy they are and how poorly they're paid and so on. I don't give a fuck. If you are using an answer key, you are No Good and I don't take you seriously. I refuse to give a fuck about any of your other problems if your brain is not minimally engaged with the subject material in which you purport to be competent.

<comment><USER4> Teachers in the US regularly work 9-12 hours a day already building lesson plans, actually teaching, dealing with administrativa, etc.

It's common sense to run through a homework assignment to certify the key they're using. But I don't understand how it would be logical to suggest they're no good as teachers unless they spend another 1..n hours a night writing all their assignments by hand and not using prepared material from the books.

<comment><USER3> I don't care any more. If you're using an answer key then you're prioritizing something else over your core task and you don't have a leg to stand on in political terms. I'm very pro public education, and I would like to be pro teachers, but I am simply not going to lend any support to them as long as they rely on a strategy of whining to get what they want. Relying on answer keys is shameful. The implacable opposition to any sort of standardized testing is bullshit. Academic rigor should be teachers' trump card in political negotiations, and yet they keep acting like it's some sort of unwelcome imposition.

I'm well aware of all the pressure on teachers to act as substitute parents, social workers and so on. But none of their input on these subjects has _any value_ when its divorced from a foundation of academic rigor as their first priority. Without that foundation you cannot have any political leverage. American teachers seem to have forgotten this basic political truth. If the general public does not perceive teachers are intellectually competent and engaged, then it is not going to give any weight to those teachers' opinions on other topics. A degree is education is not a substitute for command of the course material, it's a complement to it. If you can't do a problem like 3 x 7 x 26 in your head then you are _innumerate_ and should not be allowed to teach a math class.

<comment><USER4> From the position you've taken here, I'm getting the impression that you haven't taken the time to learn what the job/business of teaching actually requires, and have instead substituted that knowledge with an idealized model of your own design.

Yes, it would be lovely if all primary and secondary school teachers simply walked into the classroom 5 minutes before class like it happens on TV and spate forth a soliloquy of insight and exploration. That fantasy is simply that.

As a side note, on this line of thought, it'd be similarly shameful for a developer or engineer to use 3rd-party libraries, refer to APIs, crib from pattern cookbooks, etc.

I mean, you do rebuild from scratch the functions you need from jQuery, right? It'd be ridiculous to use reuse the work someone else published, after all.

<comment><USER3> Well, you have the wrong impression. I've given extensive thought to this, talked to a lot of teachers, spent many years reading teachers' point of view in essays, articles and so on, and generally bent over backwards to see things their way, even (or maybe especially) on practices or ideas that I find counter-intuitive.It's not that I'm uninformed on the topic; I simply don't agree with you.

Also, I'm not a developer. Even if I was, your analogy would be faulty because I am not suggesting teachers originate all of their teaching materials - <USER2> you well know. I didn't even suggest that teachers should originate all homework assignments. I am fine with using the ones in a textbook in many circumstances.

Instead I specifically singled out the practice of using answer keys. Not only do some teachers just employ them mindlessly and so incorrectly grade students' work, but all the students are aware of the existence of answer keys and their widespread use by teachers. Do you think that makes the students respect teachers more or less? Do you think that might have any effect on classroom discipline?

I find it depressing that your response to the very narrow argument I was making (ie that answer keys were bad, and if you have to rely on them you are probably not competent to teach that subject) has consisted of one rhetorical fallacy after another instead of addressing the basic point. As I pointed out yesterday, the math problem described in the article, which involves multiplying 2 x 7 x 26, is so simple that any numerate person should be able to do it in their head in a few seconds. If someone can sit there grading homework and not notice that the answer key is wrong - because most or all the competent students in the class would have supplied the actually-correct answer, and at some point the teacher should have noticed that that this problem seems to have been generating a disproportionate number of 'wrong' answers - then something is terribly amiss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with her premise. Higher stakes tests presumably have their answer keys reviewed more closely. Multiplication problems in math textbooks appropriately don't have their answer keys reviewed with the same degree of scrutiny. In medical qualification exams, if enough people get an answer wrong, it may be reviewed for an incorrect answer key, or even thrown out for being confusing or ambiguous.</comment>


Mirroring US climate data - <AUTHOR> http://www.climatemirror.org/ <comment><USER2> If you want to help towards archiving climate data and other gov't public datasets, join the ArchiveTeam effort. All you need is to run their ftp-gov- grab script and a bit of bandwidth. VPSs work very well for this sort of thing, so if you have a box lying around, just run the script.

More info at the wiki: [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Ftp- gov](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Ftp-gov)

Ftp-gov-grab: [https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/ftp-gov- grab](https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/ftp-gov-grab)

Join us on IRC: #cheetoflee on freenode

<comment><USER3> Correction: it seems to be #cheetoflee on efnet.org

<comment><USER2> oops, thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another useful tactic is to archive news and commentary (left and right) about current political events, both for accountability and perhaps, to prevent the rewriting of history in the era of "alternative facts".

<comment><USER5> It is not sufficient to have a record of facts when others have alternative facts. To your signed record of facts they would just introduce alternate facts with alternative signatures and claim you had made it up. Normal people don't have the tools or experience to differentiate, and the alternative facts support a story they want to believe, rather than hard truths.

News media won't even mention your so-called 'real facts', facebook and twitter might not let others see them. Before you know it you'll be denounced by your neighbours, work colleagues and friends as a traitor, a madman. You'll lose your job, or your partner will. There may be a show trial and public denunciation. This has all happened before: the USSR, McCarthy.

If you don't want that you need an alternate means of distributing real facts, and countering fake ones. It has to be hosted so deeply in our tech infrastructure that it can't be firewalled or jammed. It needs to be accessible covertly. And it needs to record all the alternative facts too, because they like to change their facts.

Let's call it Samizdat.

<comment><USER6> The US government can't make all of the real scientists out there just disappear. Climate models have an impact on many different fields of research and unless there's a total shutdown of science (which seems absurd) those people and facts will still be there.

There's a portion of the population who's wanted to deny climate change for a long time and I believe they'll accept the alt-facts to justify their position. But I'm skeptical about the efficacy of successfully silencing existing news groups and the majority of scientists.

Has anything like that ever been successful in the connected world? That being said, we do absolutely need to make protect our internet from censorship.

<comment><USER7> Go look at any list of recently-cancelled television shows. You will be shocked at the number of them that you liked, but have now slipped from your mind. Public memory is fickle and it is very possible to remove even widespread facts.

Example: a few years back a uk submarine was stuck high aground. As the tide went out the prop was exposed. I and a billion other people saw it live on bbc news. (Blue poly fins, at least 10 inside a housing). Good luck trying to find that image now. It has been sucessfully removed. The internet isnt the great memory well we all want it to be. With effort, facts can be changed, events scrubbed.

<comment><USER6> > Go look at any list of recently-cancelled television shows. You will be > shocked at the number of them that you liked, but have now slipped from your > mind. Public memory is fickle and it is very possible to remove even > widespread facts.

Change and censorship aren't synonymous and I have no expectation that anything will last forever. But it's easier to ignore and forget about something like a television show than something like global climate change.

My post was in relation to the mass censorship required to create a world like the parent post described.

As for your submarine, that's interesting. Was it this one? [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands- islands-116053...](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands- islands-11605365) I'm not doubting the ability to censor things, especially before they become widespread, but climate change will be much harder because it's already a part of our vocabulary.

<comment><USER7> Id say that mass-censorship isnt the goal. You only have to keep a small mumber of influential americans distracted. That group (the perhaps 25% who have both a vote and money/time to donate), they dictate national policy. Everyone else can scream all they want to no end. The internet allows for such focused censorship.

<comment><USER8> Even fewer if you have a gerrymandered election system. Steve Bannon, now senior advisor to Trump, is on the board of Cambridge Analytica, a company that built (and presumably enabled the exploitation of) psychological profiles to maximize shares/distribution of content on social media, targeting specific geographic clusters:

1: [http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data- cruncher...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers- who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/)

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

3: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google- de...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy- truth-internet-search-facebook)

The Trump campaign paid this group millions of dollars beginning in the summer of 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In torrent form: [http://climatetorrent.com/](http://climatetorrent.com/) Torrents are a great way of maintaining data integrity and allowing future sharing easily.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, is this yours? It would be great if the homepage displayed a short description of the different torrents/datasets, their sizes/contents, and the number of seeders for each. That would greatly help me decide which one(s) to prioritize helping out with, as I don't have resources to keep a copy of it all.

<comment><USER9> I don't know who is behind this, I just saw it on /r/DataHoarder

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can I be the first to claim that the people running the mirror are changing the data for their own nefarious purposes?

Not that I believe this or anything, but come on - you know that accusation is going to go around. It might make sense to use a remote server to timestamp files as they're uploaded, or something like that.

<comment><USER12> When there is a broad consensus across the scientific community about climate change, does it even matter at this point if the data has been changed? The U.S isn't the only country that collects this data. So even if changed, it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER13> _> When there is a broad consensus across the scientific community about climate change, does it even matter at this point if the data has been changed?_

It does if the data that was changed is the data that was used to support the consensus.

More generally, _all_ data collected by research that is funded by taxpayers should be collected, cryptographically signed and verified, and archived where any taxpayer can see it. I have never understood why that is not already standard operating procedure.

<comment><USER14> Usually around IP incentives as part of the grant, in order to further entice applicants. This is taken further by pressure from educational institutions and their researchers to file for patents against said research.

I'm not saying it's right, and agree with you. But often there's a lot of entropy with the status quo, and to the seated incumbents in a space.

<comment><USER15> Does this carry over to federal agencies as well? I know the state of access to journals and papers published by universities is a shitshow but don't know how it is at the government level.

<comment><USER14> A lot of government research is completed by universities and private companies under grant programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having backups is obviously always a good idea but that aside, how likely is it, that mirroring this data is actually necessary? There are obviously at least some people believing that it is necessary but then there are always people convinced that the most silly things are necessary. I am really unable to tell whether this is more of an overreaction or an urgent necessity, especially as someone not living in the US. Is the future just [perceived as] so unpredictable, that better safe than sorry is the right mindset?

<comment><USER17> I'd like to discuss a slightly different issue here.

Aren't there already a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles on the issue of climate change? Why is it still necessary to store the presumably raw data?

Even my high school geography notes have an abundance of information on the issue of climate change (for and against). So I doubt if this is necessary at all.

<comment><USER18> That is a bit like asking what you need source code for after having compiled the binary program.

Just like you have new versions of a program building on changes to source code, you can run newer and improved analysis on the scientific data (whether to see if you get the same result, a new additional insight or whatever).

Journal papers are often no better than having the binary (or perhaps more accurately the stdout dump of running the binary...)

<comment><USER17> Ah. Never thought of it that way, makes perfect sense. Thanks for the analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sincerely dismayed that this is necessary.

<comment><USER20> It's not.

<comment><USER21> Not _yet_.

<comment><USER20> Not ever. There's no plausible scenario that I can see under which this data might be irrecoverably lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Feels like the most important things people with some spare cash can do to help this project is help them raise money to host the mirrored climate science data on online.net: [https://www.generosity.com/volunteer- fundraising/climate-mir...](https://www.generosity.com/volunteer- fundraising/climate-mirror-back-up-climate-data)

</comment><comment><USER23> I heard that Trump has given NOAA 100 days to justify their existence, or face heavy cuts. Does anyone know the details?

Here is the closest article I could find: [http://www.salon.com/2016/11/23/politicizing-climate- change-...](http://www.salon.com/2016/11/23/politicizing-climate-change- donald-trumps-budget-could-cut-climate-funding-for-nasa-other-federal- departments/)

<comment><USER24> Why shouldn't government agencies have to justify their budgets and operations periodically?

<comment><USER25> How about when they submit a budget, rather than as a focused witch hunt?

Of course, its not like this political atmosphere would listen to any budget justifications. It's all theater now, it doesn't matter what actual justifications there are, what actual facts there are, or what things actually look like when you spend the time to dive into them. What matters these days is a small number of opinion-makers feel in their hearts, and what they tell their followers to feel with quick one-sentence justifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > We are working to set up a secure and completely anonymous file deposit > system for the future.

Provide a mailing address to which to send hard drives.

<comment><USER27> Good idea, I posted it to their web form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome. Is there the same thing but for all public datasets? I saw recently someone showed a federal site had put up a (hastily hacked in) link to download all data on the day of the inauguration. I bet there are a lot of federal employees who would like a well-resourced site to upload to.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this project collaborating with Archive Team? They have quite a lot of experience with this sort of scraping+archiving project (e.g. Geocities, Google Reader, Coursera, etc.).

[http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's great to see their efforts. What are you doing? What am I doing? Reading about it isn't nearly enough.

</comment><comment><USER30> It would be a good use of IPFS to mirror this data into that network.

</comment><comment><USER31> This would be perfect for IPFS I think.

</comment><comment><USER32> As much as I maintain a skeptical attitude to all sides of this scientific (and political) issue, I absolutely support the effort to keep the data available to the public. Science cannot move forward without the data (and metadata) available for everyone. Even more generally, society would suffer if it is not available.

(When I say "metadata", I refer to the data sources, methods of the data acquisition and so on. When a scientific field is politicised it is not only hard to trust the models but even the data, so I think the metadata are very important, if they are available.)

</comment><comment><USER33> Alternative facts will push us to find a way to discontinue them.

What is left to do to have truly open computation? * somewhat-to completely free computational power?: CircleCI, Travis CI, whatever * open source repositories to run code from?: Github hooks and others * trusting trust? * open hardware? * decentralized websites?

</comment><comment><USER34> Might be a use case for [https://datproject.org](https://datproject.org).

<comment><USER35> Or git-annex / git LFS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there a publicly-available blockchain specifically for checksums of journalism and research?

</comment><comment><USER37> Slightly off-topic, but my guess is that the next 4 years will be the _golden age_ of privacy (in general), file-sharing and maybe even distributed web & federated services - for the US _at least_.

<comment><USER38> Do you mean the golden age of private infrastructure, or the golden age of folks combatting a non-private infrastructure? Because from my point of view, privacy in the US is only going to continue to get worse (and that's not even necessarily a dig at the current administration).

<comment><USER37> What I mean is (I guess) people will be seriously considering their privacy - especially online/digital one.

<comment><USER39> Yup. I already formatted/reinstalled everything.. beefed up the encryption usage.. pretty much changed to a whitelist of domains on my tomato router and got me some OTP/U2F devices.. need to switch to Tor for browsing though.. and what else would people recommend?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So now we have complete polarisation.

Left leaning people will not accept any science generated under a Right leaning government

and as we already know Right leaning people find it hard to trust the science coming from a Left leaning government.

<comment><USER41> Eh, no. This isn't about not accepting scientific output under a Republican president – science was well received under Bush, as I recall, and will continue to be under Trump.

This is about the fear of _losing_ scientific data that has already been produced.

<comment><USER40> On the surface it is about preventing deletion.

But the subtext is that any 'discoveries' or 'corrections' will be rejected out of hand.

The prime ones being the recent corrections to the land temperature record that cooled the 1930s and 1940s and heated 2009 onwards yielding a steady linear increase graphic.

When those corrections are placed under the microscope and likely reversed, what will the reaction be ? Scientific shills of the Republicans are making up Alternative Facts... here is our precious archived dataset that true believers can reference.

<comment><USER42> No, this is complete FUD, and disingenuous at best. What people who care are worried about is a repeat of what happened in Canada under the Harper government where the data was simply not available at all.

[edit] the difference is that it's not the administration or even the EPA that is putting it's reputation on the line if the data was manipulated, but the individual scientists themselves. No one with any sense believes that a scientist is going to fall on their sword and ruin their career just to make up some BS talking point that Trump can run with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Although NoScript and uBlock Origin show nothing being blocked, I still end up with a blank page when trying to view this site. Maybe it's a Pale Moon thing.

<comment><USER44> Me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> While I appreciate the sentiment, I think this whole notion of an AntiScience threat due to the new administration is a bit sensationalized.

</comment><comment><USER46> Surprised there's no comment here regarding the claim that using Dropbox is anonymous...</comment>


When "Dumb Pipes" Get Too Smart - <AUTHOR> http://www.saurik.com/id/14 <comment><USER2> I have 10ms ping to news.ycombinator.com, and 100ms ping to www.amazon.com. Yet time to first byte is 20% faster to www.amazon.com. What actually happens is my PC connects to Cloudflare, witch in turn connects to HN. This is an unnecessary step, and is highly over-rated.

<comment><USER3> It's needed because CDNs are presently 'protection rackets' for the Internet.

Instead of having a mechanism by which a website under attack (or simply un- monitored heavy load) from a host or number of hosts can direct the ISPs of those hosts to not send it traffic the CDNs instead use the present lopsided nature of peering agreements to simply sink the hits.

In the above mentioned solution either the direct ISP would filter out the requests before they hit a higher tier ISP/backbone, or an ISP that does not provide said filtering would (possibly blacklisting the entire client ISP for sufficient bad behavior).

<comment><USER4> > Instead of having a mechanism by which a website under attack ... from a > host or number of hosts can direct the ISPs of those hosts to not send it > traffic

How is this any different? You're putting the responsibility of being internet police on the ISP's, which have shown their either do not want that responsibility, or will abuse that responsibility.

Not to mention, this would go squarely against the notion of ISP's as "dumb pipes".

<comment><USER5> I'd _like_ to see ISPs doing better policing of their customers: disconnecting (and prosecuting) spammers, blocking users infected with malware until they get clean, and so on. I'd like a world in which I can reasonably expect to react to spam by tracking down where it came from and getting the spammer removed from the Internet.

abuse@ ought to function and produce a rapid response.

(That doesn't mean we shouldn't have anonymous, untrackable services as well, but using such services means you have to put up with spam too. When you have a service like email, with all the tracking information readily available in the headers, it shouldn't be as near-impossible as it currently is to get something done with that information.)

<comment><USER6> The problem is there are two sources of spam.

The first is large networks that tolerate spam, and those are irrelevant because their IP blocks are already on every blacklist in the world.

The second is compromised machines, which are the real problem because they're ephemeral. Spammers can compromise a hundred new machines a week. You can't fix them or block them faster than they compromise new ones. The only solution to that is to improve computer security so they don't get compromised to begin with, which has nothing to do with ISPs.

Removing people from the internet is never the answer, both because it's too broad (should the spammers not be able to go to the government's website to pay their taxes?), and because the nominal current source of the spam isn't actually where the spammer connects to the internet anyway.

The better solution if you can actually find a real life spammer is to impose a fine on them that exceeds the profits of spamming.

<comment><USER7> Wait, why can't you block spammers as fast as they are created? If your computer is compromised, it seems fine to disconnect it, or at least severely rate limit uploading until you fix the problem. Its the responsibility of the internet user to keep their computer in working order.

Really, if your computer is spamming someone, even if you aren't aware of it, you are harming them, and ignorance shouldn't be protection. Maybe fines and jail are a bit too severe, but rate limiting and possible disconnection are more then fair.

<comment><USER8> So if Joe Shmo's router is compromised, then the ISP turns it off. How then is Joe supposed to learn that he's compromised by looking up symptoms, or download an antivirus to clean it up?

It's a pretty solution to the problem in theory, but when you actually apply it, it doesn't quite work out as well.

<comment> jon-wood My ISP actually did once cut me off when one of the machines on the network was compromised by malware. I called up their support line and they told me what had happened, I fixed it, and all was well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Cloudflare likes to look triumphant.

Yeah absolutely this. They spin everything they do as some kind of heroic "for the people!" decision even when it's just about cutting costs or not having to solve "hard" problems. One example are DNS "any" queries. Cloudflare just decided to toss standards out because they aren't up to conforming to them. As far as I'm concerned, this Cloudbleed thing is karma, and nobody should believe anything Cloudflare says about itself.

<comment><USER10> To be honest though, ANY is mostly used for reflection/amplification attacks or to scrape domain records. Sure there are legitimate uses for them but I can't think of many that need to happen over the internet vs. only allowing that from specific trusted parties. And yes I'm aware that it can be useful as a debugging tool. There are also ISP recursors that don't allow ANY queries through for similar reasons so relying on it will cause trouble for some and there are other broken implementations in the wild. Though ANY can be useful it shouldn't be assumed that it'll work.

What I'm thinking they could've done in the case of ANY is to respond with truncated and switch to TCP mode at which point it becomes harder to do the spoofing dance and (ab)use ANY as a DNS amplification attack to DDoS a target. Unfortunately that does put an extra cost on the DNS server which might also be undesirable. However that would've probably been a worthwhile tradeoff.

There's an IETF draft that attempts to provide some guidance in the area of the ANY query: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-refuse- any-04](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-refuse-any-04)

<comment><USER9> Well, two out of the three people proposing that document work for Cloudflare. The other works for Dyn. It's clear what their motivation is. And this is _not_ the first time they've filed a document just like that, and it will expire this year just like it has in the past. That document is bullshit. It's trying to now change the standard _after_ they've already broken their DNS implementations.

<comment><USER11> Your comment doesn't address ANY of the arguments you're replying to. Are ANY queries typically used outside of attacks, scraping, or diagnosis? Is there a reason they need to be served over UDP?

> Well, two out of the three people proposing that document work for > Cloudflare. The other works for Dyn.

Two companies that have some experience with dealing with DNS attacks. Their motivation may be self-serving, but they're not the ones doing the attacking.

<comment><USER9> No, they're the ones tossing the standard and then trying to retroactively change it. Cloudflare sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lovely bit of debugging in this article, I really enjoyed it! Somehow a task that would be grueling to do myself is so much more enjoyable when read about.

</comment><comment><USER13> We need to switch dump pipes to be dumb content-addressable p2p pipes with maidsafe, ipfs, dat, or anything like that, and most problems that CDNs are trying to solve would disapear.

<comment><USER14> At least until someone finds a collision in the hashing algorithm used for the content addresses...

<comment><USER15> Crypto agility is a thing :)

<comment><USER14> Somebody needs to inform Linus. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has the WebCore scheduler improved since?

<comment><USER17> The bug is in bad js authored by CF hammering ticks/event-loop.

WebCore is doing what it's told, just just being told very stupid things (very, very quickly)

<comment><USER18> > The bug is in bad js authored by CF

No, the bug is definitely in the browser. Web code is untrusted and should not be able to adversely affect the browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, there was (I hope not "is"... I am having a difficult time remembering the sequence of events involving this bug and what I might have done on the WebKit side) definitely a bug in the browser, but just to be explicit: there was also a bug in the JavaScript (the array returned as object with no length, causing the code to loop), and managing to deploy a change that managed to DoS tons of deployed browsers and somehow not noticing and then not really caring afterwards was extremely careless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fakecall: helping polite introverts stay productive - <AUTHOR> http://www.fakecall.net/ <comment><USER2> This

> DELETE <http://api.fakecall.net/v1/account/(your> number)

does this

> This really deletes your account and leaves no trace. We use "rm -rf > /path/to/1234567890" (really).

Really hope they don't allow a number like "../*"

<comment><USER3> (I'm the author). The number is put through a regex first and only digits are allowed.

<comment><USER4> Any chance of seeing some of the source, or maybe just a quick technical blurb on what kind of things you've used and how?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry to sound harsh, but this seems really silly to me (the concept, not the code which I'm not competent to comment on).

Be human, tell other people to fuck off when they are bothering you. End of story.

I find the lack of verbal communication skills among programmers/techies their biggest disability. Learn to talk to other people, you might notice the world will become a much easier place to function in.

Disclaimer: I was super-shy when I was younger, so I know what I'm talking about. I never went to these kinds of lengths to avoid talking to people though, this is crazy.

<comment><USER6> Yes, thank you. Hiding behind silly web apps doesn't help anyone.

BUT, "telling people to fuck off" isn't much better. A polite "hey, I'm trying to get some stuff done, I'll be with you soon" is sufficient.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was clear that it was an exaggeration, perhaps it would be clearer if I had used quotes. A polite "sorry man, I have things to do" will suffice.

<comment><USER7> I think you're all missing the point. Its purpose is not to be a commentary on/solution for programmer archetypes, it's just a technological proof of concept. A concept which uses said archetype as an example use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The cow-orkers bit is somewhat off-putting, but this service looks very useful.

15 years ago, I used a service like this (PC->modem programmed to call my pager) when I was dating... if the date was going well, I would tell my date "Oh, that was work, but I'm going to ignore them" and if it wasn't, it was my "exit call" and I aborted the date.

I imagine this kind of service can be useful in many situations, combine with a fake contact detail on your smartphone and it can seem like your CEO/Wife/etc is calling and you get an option to cut short meetings.

However, these days an SMS or email can provide almost as much excuse so it's not as critical to get a call for interruption purposes.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is cool. I developed a Voice Call reminder iPhone app - <http://JustRemindIt.com>. When I developed it, its soul purpose was to send Voice Call reminders to anyone. I didn't think too much at that time for what else people can use this app.

Couple customers sent me feedback email saying that this app is really cool as it helps them to get out of a boring meeting. They simply schedule a Voice Call reminder to themselves. And my app does the reliable job of calling them. When phone rings, they just walk out of a meeting without faking much :).

Couple of people said they use it as a "Future Voice Mail" service. Send real message to someone, not just "reminding" specific.

I guess use case mentioned in this article could be another use case for my app :).

</comment><comment><USER10> Neat.

"Use at your own risk. I can't afford a lawyer, so don't do anything stupid with this, please." is a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice idea. I may have use for that. Does it work internationally? I'm in Europe :/

Another important thing:

 _> All passwords are hashed with SHA256 before storage_

SHA256 is NOT suitable to hash passwords. In this case it's rather unimportant, because only phone numbers are stored, but SHA/MD5 et al. are often used when security matters too. So, use bcrypt: <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually, a better use case is probably hot girls at bars who don't want to be hit on. They could have an app on their phone that tells this script to call them in 1,5 or 10 minutes.

<comment><USER13> There's an app in the App Store called "Fake Call" that does exactly that. It shows a perfectly mocked-up phone call animation, complete with contact photo and custom ringtone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This could be really useful one day and I love the idea of providing a REST api instead of a UI! Are you going to add support for european numbers (or would you open-source the code)?

<comment><USER3> Twilio just launched in Europe a couple of weeks ago I think; I need to get myself a Euro number and make a few code adjustments. Gimme a week or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is incredible.

I created an account for myself and my non-technical office mate and created a page hosted internally we've bookmarked. Now if someone walks in to chat about something trivial and one of us wants to keep working, we have a little button to push that sends the request and redirects back to the previous page.

Thanks for this!

<comment><USER3> If you run OS X, look for my little applescript on the main page that you can bind to a keystroke. _Very_ handy! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brilliant. I don't work with cow-orkers, but I'll keep this for friends who do. Congrats on a nice app. :D

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I submitted this to hn earlier this summer, but must have hit the wrong time of day or something because it just languished. I don't think I got more than one karma point from it. The irony is that this coverage has only given me real karma points, and no hn karma (pg's URL de-duplication tester doesn't go back in time far enough) :)

<comment><USER16> To be honest, I went digging through the "New" tab and found your app. There's a nonzero chance I helped you get to the front page. :P

Anyway, good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What sorts of things does Steve say? It would be nice if I could pass a string for him to pronounce.

<comment><USER3> Steve is pretty boring, but I have Big Plans to make his conversation a little more... customizable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had the idea to do something like this a while ago. I then googled it and turns out there were already a number of services doing this, though none here in Japan. Unfortunately Twilio is not available here yet. I wonder if there's another way of doing it cheap.

I never thought of using with coworkers though. In that case I'd simply tell them I'm busy with something important. My idea was for dates and other social situations where you need an excuse to "escape".

</comment><comment><USER19> I like it. I can think of many situations where this would be a handy tool. Part of me wishes it was a simple app that would allow me to simply type a couple of numbers in and begin using it. However, I can also see that if it became too easy to use and too widely available, people might get wise to it. Then, you'd have those "cow-orkers" stopping by your office to show you this cool new app that fakes calls.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would a polite introvert pick up their cell phone whilst talking to another individual?

<comment><USER21> If it's supposedly a work-related phone call, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since when is it polite to lie? I think that's _very_ impolite.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use <http://www.phonemyphone.com/> . It doesn't have an API but it does what I need.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice. I once developed an ad-hoc version of something like this (it had "call at time X" functionality) to page me out of meetings...the next logical step would have been to tie into my appointment calendar, so that scheduled meetings automatically triggered the page request.</comment>


Geeksphone launches the first multi OS smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.geeksphone.com/

<comment><USER2> This may be a little OT... but if you want to win me over on a geek focused device... i.e. power users... 3000mAh battery minimum. I know it's not the core intent but personally that grabs my attention as a power user just as much.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking someone should make a black and white android smartphone if it helps the battery to last longer. I would take half a week of battery over a color screen but I'm probably the minority.

<comment><USER4> You mean like this one: [http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/yotaphone-e-ink- smartphon...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/yotaphone-e-ink-smartphone- hands-on/) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll have my phone soon, the thing just left spain last night.

I'm very excited to have it in my hands and helping me hack on FoxOS after what feels like a year of delays since the peak+

</comment><comment><USER6> I just bought one and I'm excited. As a developer it is wonderful to have one device 2 operating systems for test my apps. About dual boot there is nothing clear. Any idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dual boot is very difficult to achieve. On the Revolution you are able to switch from one OS to another but you can't select which OS you want to use while booting

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I played with this phone days ago and it's amazing, really fast. Android and FirefoxOS works smoothly. I would even say it surpasses the Nexus 4 performance!

<comment><AUTHOR> They say the performance is between a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 5

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Okay, but does the baseband processor have direct memory access to the system RAM? If so, it is useless from a security standpoint.

<comment><USER9> What phones have been made without that handicap? Honest question, I really have no idea.

The second question would be if there are any genuinely secure mobile OSes such that it really makes a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me, or is there no LTE support here? Seems like a largish oversight.

<comment><USER11> It's a $300 phone, and between licensing and the actual hardware, LTE is very expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks interesting, but I think they should have focused more on the spec.

Although, I definitely like the SDcard slot and real buttons rather than stupid onscreen ones.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone shed some light, I've never heard of Geeksphone.

Can you use Android, and iOS and Windows 8 on it? If so I can see why people would want to buy one.

<comment><USER14> You probably can't use any proprietary OS on it: Apple certainly would never license iOS, and I doubt W8 would either.

Android, Ubuntu Mobile, Firefox OS, Meego, Tizen are more likely candidates.

<comment><USER15> Windows 8 runs on commodity x86 hardware. Assuming there's driver support, it should work.

<comment><USER16> Can you buy a licence to run it legally though?

<comment><USER17> Windows 8? Yeah. You can't buy Windows Phone 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aren't these the guys that produced the Peak+ etc? I can't seem to locate those devices on their site anymore

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't sell their previous smartphones anymore, they are focused on the Geeksphone Revolution

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not really true. I know quite a few devices in industry currently sold that support Windows CE or Android as desired.

</comment><comment><USER16> What, only one SIM slot, really?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if they'll ship the US. I've wanted an Atom SoC phone for a while

<comment><USER21> I don't know if calling it a SoC is right. It's a CPU and GPU on one chip, but far from what the Qualcomm ones offer (for now).

<comment><USER20> All of the recent Atom brand chips for mobile deployment are SoCs. There's a CPU, a GPU and a shared memory package on the same silicone. Intel calls it a SoC themselves [1]

[1]: [http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/01/10/intel- raises-bar-on-smartphones-tablets-and-ultrabook-devices)

         Onstage was the world's first public demonstration of the forthcoming 32nm Intel Atom SoC for tablets and hybrids running on Microsoft* Windows* 8, codenamed "Clover Trail."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its an Atom processor? Does that mean it can run any x86 OS?

<comment><USER22> It's one of the Atom SoCs which Intel doesn't seem to have a public datasheet on. From what I know they're almost but not quite like a regular PC --- they're missing some bits that wouldn't really be necessary on a phone.

<comment><USER12> For half a second there, I thought you said "almost, but not quite, completely unlike a regular PC" and almost laughed out loud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool!

</comment><comment><USER24> Total entropy, like the 20 variants of linux that cant establish a wifi connection.

Please save me from your tower of phone-babble. I dont care, and Im not going to spend time in your insane bouncy house of doom.

Fuck off.</comment>


When Facebook goes down, an economy goes with it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265002/facebook-instagram-outage-ad-revenue-lost <comment><USER2> I've yet to see any stats from companies I work with that are heavily invested in Facebook who aren't just lying to themselves in meetings. The stats seem suspiciously off and their media content get almost zero interaction despite millions of followers. Which seems normal these days as Facebook and Twitter attempt to stay relevant.

But if all your chips are in Facebook, you've built a pretty weak business model. It's been about 2 years since I've been on Facebook, and I didn't even know about the outage until I went to a meeting with a client and they were all freaking out.

<comment><USER3> The majority of marketing/ad teams nowadays are performance based. It is trivial to see what your approximate ROI is for FB ad spend. Source: I have been part of marketing teams at many venture backed and public companies and seen the data myself.

<comment><USER4> Do FB give you data for the controll group, target demographic FB users that did not see the add? Ie. whats the difference in ROI for 0$ and $$$?

<comment><USER3> It's even simpler than that. At the most basic, just count how many people convert on your site that entered the site with FB as the referrer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "an economy"

I think maybe "a market" maybe works better here?

I get there's a thing happening here but if they're not spending that money on Facebook, can they spend it elsewhere? Or won't folks spending it because of facebook ads just spend that money elsewhere?

<comment><USER6> They use the example of one company that lost revenue, which implies a market, but the underlying idea is that a lot of companies from many markets depend on this ad channel. Hence, an economy.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I don't think I thought of it that way as far as definitions go. Interesting, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> oh boo fucking hoo. companies paying tens of thousands of dollars to shove their ads in your face were unable to shove their ads in your face for a few hours. how tragic.

<comment><USER8> It also brought down Khan Academy's login system because they support Facebook logins and apparently never expected that to go down.

<comment><USER9> That's awesome! Facebook login is cancer and should die.

<comment><USER10> Facebook login has value for many people. It certainly makes it easier to create new accounts and then log into 3rd party websites.

<comment><USER11> If it went down, it may create much more value for many more people! =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Impressive that they are selling $8-10k/day in false eyelashes ($12/piece) and meme products ($9.99, $29.99).

</comment><comment><USER13> Relying on Facebook for a sizeable part of your business is rather foolish.

<comment><USER14> It's not about relying, it's about what works. A lot of companies advertise across Google, Facebook, television, radio, podcasts etc, but Facebook is frequently the best ROI for reasons that are entirely beyond an individual company's control. For some markets, there is simply no better ad platform than Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In parts of the developing world, Facebook is used sort of like Craigslist to connect buyers and sellers, with the prospective client's friends list acting as a reputation system. Instead of this person to person bartering system, the developed world relies on advertisements and influencers for commerce. There's a Bloomberg article that goes deeper into this but I can't find it right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are we even going to get a post-mortem on this? It seems substantial enough to warrant explanation, but they're usually a lot quicker than this...

</comment><comment><USER17> What about the economical gains from employees not wasting time on Facebook or otherwise doing something else more meaningful?

<comment><USER18> Serious question - is this still a thing? I've only seen one, older, relative use Facebook in that way in the last few years. Do people really still use it as a distraction at work? The quality of content is so terrible I can't stand scrolling for very long.

<comment><USER17> Yeup. I walk through the cube farm here every now and then and I see people with FB on their screens. I'm sure there's things they could be doing other than perusing the feed (like messaging, event planning, etc.)...

I also work in a meeting heavy culture where people will be on Instagram scrolling their feed while someone is talking on a conference call....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are things that shouldn't be sold and ways that things shouldn't be sold. A better market for false eyelashes shouldn't come at the cost of the many abominations that Facebook has introduced into your world.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like 'to big to fall' which to me is one more reason to let it go down.

<comment><USER21> Would you say the same thing about say, the electrical grid?

<comment><USER20> The electric grid is a public service. In Europe the actual wires are owned and maintained by a state company. Private companies compete by 'delivering' the actual energy.

Lets imagine the wires and delivering is all in the hands of one profit maximizing company. Because of their monopoly they increase prices every year, offer services like TV for free (to kill TV companies) and then start selling TV as well.

So yes, FB should really go down and be replaced with something else. Maybe governement owned infrastructure. They could then see everything, a difficult privacy problem, but I am pretty sure they do now already anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pretty interesting headline considering a lot of talk lately about breaking up Big Tech.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good.</comment>


What it's like to be a woman on the internet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/newco/what-its-like-to-be-a-woman-on-the-internet-55f7e6d5044c <comment><USER2> Stuff like this makes me wonder: why not just get off Twitter? It strikes me as odd that people still willingly participate in that.

I'm serious: can anything good come from exposing yourself like that and making yourself vulnerable? There is an unlimited number of trolls and a limited amount of nerves to deal with them.</comment>


Self siphoning beads (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQJBBklpQQ <comment><USER2> There's a great follow-on video showing the effect in slow motion: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukMId5fIi0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukMId5fIi0)

What that video sadly did not include was high-speed footage from the beginning of the experiment, showing how the chain goes from its rest state hanging over the lip of the beaker to forming the stable loop.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is slo-mo video of a stationary "shock wave" in the chain as it spirals out of the container:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukMId5fIi0#t=2m40s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukMId5fIi0#t=2m40s)</comment>


Lamenting the Loss of Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/2086/Lamenting-The-Loss-of-Reddit.aspx

<comment><USER2> I agree that the main page of reddit has become pretty lame. However, I think that subreddits are still a good place to visit: <http://programming.reddit.com/> or <http://joel.reddit.com/>.

I think if they had more subreddits it would help but a lot of people do not seem to know about them. I've heard many people complain about the same issue that did not know the existence of these subreddits.

<comment><USER3> Apparently the subreddit idea is gonna be taken to the next level when they release the new reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> There needs to be dynamic subreddit creation with distinct moderation systems for each. This would allow the creation of sub-communities, much as you see w/ the programming reddit.

I think this needs to be thought about more as community creation, not just news aggregation.

<comment><USER3> <http://blog.reddit.com/2007/07/new-reddit-on-horizon.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> very cool. let's keep our fingers crossed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most news aggregation is a waste of time for readers. But I used to enjoy reddit much more than I do now. Another commenter's point about subreddits is totally right. I have so much fatigue when it comes to politics, that I just can't read reddit anymore.

Pictures of cats are ok though. My googleReader LOL folder is pretty big :)

</comment><comment><USER5> reddit and digg, et al have often been called democratizing sites -- it seems like the tragedy of democracy in general also applies to these sites. Initially, the smartest people understand how different and better the system is than what's out there. As more people catch on, the quality decreases since new users aren't quite as interested in new, big ideas (and appear to be content with pictures of cats).

Once the quality of content slips a little, the early adopters leave and find a better place for content and a downward spiral begins. (see also: wikipedia circa 2004, US politics, etc)

I know for myself that Startup News has helped fill the void of interesting content I used to consistently get from reddit. Anyone know of new sites out there that might be more like old-fashioned reddit?

<comment><USER6> Somewhat self-serving, but I've launched a new social news site focused on business topics:

<http://www.DailyHub.com>

The content is good and the traffic is steadily growing.

<comment><USER5> Good -- now you just need to keep it from growing once it reaches a certain optimal zone :-)

<comment><USER6> Good point. We've already taken measures to ensure that:

1\. Define a specific audience (business geeks)

2\. Weight different users differently (so new users don't have the same authority as the regulars)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps it is true that profitability and quality content correlate inversely?

<comment><AUTHOR> perhaps clearer if I wrote 'profitability and the quality of the content'

<comment><USER7> I find it interesting that the degeneration of these sites into 'mob rule' is the exact thing the founders of the constitution anticipated and put safeguards in place against. Who said,'The best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average person'? Maybe we can find some answers in the philosophy of government...

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently Winston Churchill.

<comment><USER8> Although the sentiment goes back to Cicero.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kite – Artificial pair programmer - <AUTHOR> https://kite.com/#signup <comment><USER2> This is cool! Going to try it out.</comment>


Headed to Mars? Pack Some Aerogel–You Know, for Terraforming - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/headed-to-mars-pack-some-aerogelyou-know-for-terraforming/ <comment><USER2> What about a law book? marslegalcode.org</comment>


Ask HN: Want to grab a coffee in SF? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm the founder (and developer) of howareyou.com, I'm going to be in SF for the next week omw to Seattle (originally from UK); catching up with some friends and would love to meet-up with startups, anyone from HN or who is interested in the digital healthcare space! I'm available on firstname.lastname@example.com and 4152007801 – Thank you <comment><AUTHOR> clickable <https://www.howareyou.com></comment>


Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/science/fossil-teeth-put-humans-in-europe-earlier-than-thought.html?src=recg <comment><USER2> One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how different the geography of the UK and North Sea areas was in the fairly recent past - Doggerland, Viking Bergen island... the latter possibly washed away in the huge tsunami that hit the North Sea 8200BP:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Bergen_Island>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide>

[Edit: And all of this is a huge amount of time _after_ the archeological finds of the actual article!]

</comment><comment><USER3> If I remember correctly from the BBC article I read on it, it's not "earlier than thought", but earlier than we had proof for. Other non-human remains have already placed humans in Europe around that time.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I find most interesting about this, is that the bones were originally thought to have come from Neanderthals. Now that they've been proven to be human, doubt has been cast on the assumption that Neanderthals shared some of the modern cultural traits of humans.

<comment><USER5> A book has been written arguing that Neanderthals were far more ape like than modern humans.

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


I'm Not "Black Enough" for Inc. Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://facesoffounders.org/im-not-black-enough-for-inc-magazine-337569d54a6b <comment><USER3> There's something that always bothers me when someone sees a statistic that says "Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate, 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and whites at 9.9 percent." and flips it to say "almost 75% of blacks are not poor!"

Yes, that's true, but if I were to go further and look at the source he cited's fact sheet on African Americans then I'd see some interesting factoids about wealth. For instance:

> In 2010, the median wealth, or net worth, for black families was $4,900, > compared to median wealth for whites of $97,000.

> Blacks are nearly twice as likely as whites to have zero or negative net > worth—33.9 percent compared to 18.6 percent.

So yes, we can say "nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor" but that doesn't really work as a jumping off point for any argument about black wealth, at least in my opinion.

It looks to me like this guy has taken his suburban upper class experience (he called his living situation "Huxtable-esque") and assumed that all black people who are living above the poverty line are somehow doing just as well as he is. Therefore the media is going out of its way to find the "archetypal" black entrepreneur who comes from that ~25% of blacks who grew up in poverty. I don't really buy that argument, especially because being above the poverty line doesn't really speak to matters of wealth, class, and social mobility.

I'm not saying any of this to diminish his success, I'm happy he's made it, but I think he's failed to recognize his (sadly) exceptional situation that doesn't really speak for the rest of the 75%.

EDIT: cleaned up some grammar.

<comment><USER4> > It looks to me like this guy ... assumed that all black people

Thus is the heart of the matter - in reverse. I'm not trying to be pointed, but there is no other way to say it, so here it is: it is you who have assumed, not the author. This extrapolation of the one to the many is at the heart of modern identity politics. It is the core of what the article gets at - to be identified as a thing you have to fit the stereotype. And anything the one does is instantly assumed to be a comment on the many or, in some cases, the all, and any way the one varies from the many doesn't change the definition, it is merely discarded.

I despair at this, I really do. Why do we breakdown the individual homo sapiens in a story to their base elements of race, gender, sexuality, religion, rather than celebrate their unqiueness?

I had a 23andme DNA test years ago, and I shared my racial profile (X% Scndanavian, y% norther european etc) and someone made a comment about the last line: "100% 5thaccount - you are 100% you". I still think about that comment a lot. These elements that make us up don't define us, as we are not the sum of these elements the way water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. We are our own selves, who are more than, or sometimes less than, the sum of these things. Rather than reduce our experiences to the net sum of these simple elements, I think we should praise the unique - an unique implies not generalisable to the many or all - outcomes we each create.

<comment><USER5> We can still "celebrate uniqueness" while acknowledging that how we're treated by society is in large part determined by what groups we happen to belong to.

For example: if you're black, you will likely receive a longer prison sentence than a white person who commits a similar crime[1]. Full stop. You're your own self, you can't be reduced to the sum of your race/gender/etc, and yet on solely on the basis of your skin color you'll be given a more severe punishment.

The "but everyone's their own person" critique of identity politics doesn't hold water because regardless of whether or not I bucket myself, society will still bucket me and treat me thusly.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324432004578304...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324432004578304463789858002)

<comment><USER6> > The "but everyone's their own person" critique of identity politics doesn't > hold water because regardless of whether or not I bucket myself, society > will still bucket me and treat me thusly.

Yes, but _everyone_ is being bucketed by society. By their gender, skin color, age, height, hair type, personality type, on and on and on—there are so many buckets that eventually you reach the level of the individual. Everyone is in their own bucket.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps I am misunderstanding you and you are responding to a particular point, but the buckets are not equal! Your 'bucket' is not just based on your unique identity but on social categorizations which influence others and their (and their government's) policy that can have decades, and even centuries long influences on you and groups of people.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to delegate my response: [https://youtu.be/aDRgMUoEvcg?t=2445](https://youtu.be/aDRgMUoEvcg?t=2445)

Highly recommend the whole thing, but 40:45 to ~46:00 is, to your point, the most eloquent argument I've ever heard about this topic.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for your response.

I watched that section, and I offer a rebuttal.

My summary:The speaker here argues that post-modernism's great illogical flaw is that it invites all individuals to assign themselves labels of victimhood, and argues that if one were fair and listened to everybody, everybody is a victim.

Firstly, that argument doesn't appear very insightful - the individual's narcissism is incompatible with fairness. On a separate note, the speaker uses self-identifying label as a call for victimhood when many individuals (which is the perspective he is using) would never see it that way, so he is revealing a prejudice about the labels he is referencing. Either not self- aware or a deliberate choice.

But that's not the point here - this argument has it backwards. It's not about a black person saying 'I am disadvantaged because I am black'. It is about statistical facts showing that black people are disadvantaged, and historical laws showing that this is due to decades of policy and laws which were a result of another bucket of people (whites) saying, 'These people are black, let's disadvantage them'.

The segueway about LGBTQIAK label is I think parallel/tangential to this and is itself super interesting with a whole bunch of complications that societies have to unravel, but let's not conflate the two, because they are not analogous.

edit:grammar and clarity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The guy doesn't fit the narrative that's currently oh-so-trendy, thus he is not deemed valuable to the media. Makes you realize how much intentional selective bias there is in these publications' portrayals of the world.

"Can we cause outrage with this? Nope? Ok, discard this dude, find someone who supports our hypothesis so we get more page views"

Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there. They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, this article is on HN because it fits an other narrative. There is never just one "the narrative". There are always two or more competing narratives and people publish, share and upvote stories that fit the one they prefer.

<comment><USER10> If I had to make an overly broad generalization of the HN readership, people reading links here are _more willing than the average person_ to read an article that disagrees with their preconceived stereotypes and worldview. Whereas mass market media (the magazine Inc, etc) is going in the opposite direction from that.

<comment><USER11> Maybe on which programming language or framework is best. Most articles regarding race/gender discrimination even if they directly involve major tech firms are flagged and downvoted by large portions of the community. If they survive the initial wave, the top comments are usually pretty dismissive

<comment><USER12> Large businesses being evil is a very common narrative and a lame cliche really.

So if HN is downvoting, it's probably because educated people are not liking being played by a tired narrative.

Major tech firm is worse with race/gender discrimination than the community at large? Please, ever worked blue collar and seen their hiring practices?

They are dismissive for a reason.

If the tech community wants to set a good example, great. Being played to feel like they are worse than society... to smart for that narrative.

<comment><USER11> If there is an issue it only matters if it's extremely egregious and the worst example?

<comment><USER12> No. Not at all.

As long as it is reported as such. Which it is not. Hence my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 67% of black kids have a single parent so if you randomly picked a black person they would likely have been raised by a single parent home. He states that he came from a dual parent household from the suburbs. So he isn't an average black person just from statistical point of view. He got really lucky. I think if you give black kids two parents some money and a good school they would probably do as well as everyone else.

<comment><USER14> That 67% number seemed shocking so I tried to dig up a source. Only found this:

[http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children- in-...](http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single- parent-families-by)

And it says: "In this definition, single-parent families may include cohabiting couples ..."

So it may not be quite that bad - co-habiting couples sharing children are not a particular risk setup even if they are not married. Where I live - <USER2> Europe - they are entirely normal.

But what is the proportion of kids, and black kids, actually living with just one parent in the US?

<comment><USER15> From what I have read, the norm for the Black community in the U.S. is that the baby's daddy leaves the picture and mom gets involved with someone else because young Black males are the "last hired, first fired" and also much more likely to spend time in prison than any other demographic in the U.S. So what happens is that many young Black males are not in a position to actually support their children. When "the bum" father who "won't"/can't support the baby exits the picture and mom gets a new boyfriend, since the baby is not his child, anything he does for the baby is viewed as generosity and expression of good character.

(Edit: Since you are European, let me explain that this is due to systemic racism and the fact that welfare only pays if you are an unwed mother. So very poor women cannot get married, because they would lose their welfare benefits. This is a horrible thing warping the Black community in directions that Whites then condemn as "immoral" behavior. I have known a White welfare mom who would not marry the father of her kids because he was an unemployed alcoholic and her Catholic mother was incredibly condemning of this, but a) her psycho bitch mother is part of why she was in this mess and b) her psycho bitch mother was not in any position to make sure the kids ate if her daughter lost her welfare benefits. There is a reason we have a saying about how you need to be able to afford middle class morality. Further, the U.S. has a terrible track record compared to Europe in areas such as paid maternity leave...etc. The U.S. is one of the richest countries in the world and most of our children are growing up in poverty because we have very serious issues. This is in no way like YOUR experience.)

Furthermore, from what I have read, the Black community in the U.S. is as resilient as it is because they brought a matrilineal orientation with them from Africa: Like a pride of lions, it is female blood relatives that are the backbone of the family for Black Americans. This helps them survive in the face of high unemployment and high incarceration rates, much of it completely unjust.

For example, see: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick- hamilto...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilton- jailhouse-lawyer)

There is also this (NSFW) piece about discrimination in the fashion industry:

[http://globalnews.ca/news/3115014/black-mirror-project- highl...](http://globalnews.ca/news/3115014/black-mirror-project-highlights- lack-of-diversity-in-the-fashion-industry/)

Having said all that, I am very sympathetic to the author of this piece. I am female and I get a lot of flack from other women, apparently for failing to be as crapped on by men as they are and for failing to be as bitter about my life as a woman as they are -- at least, that seems to be the gist of it, as best I can tell. And when I try to talk about what I think works and is effective, the most common response is to accuse me of blaming the victim for telling women what they can do to try to handle life as a woman more effectively, in spite of the assholes in the world.

I find it enormously frustrating. Like "Do you actually want a fucking solution? Or do you just _like_ being a victim and want someone to validate that it isn't possible to have anything better?"

I spend a lot of time wondering why the fuck I bother trying to be helpful to people. I spend a lot of time wondering if I need to just quit trying to be helpful and just focus on figuring out how to solve my own financial problems, and to hell with the rest of the world because it sure as hell does not give a flying fuck about me, so why should I give a flying fuck about it, only to be kicked in the teeth for it?

And I say that (about my own life experience) to say this:

Yes, the Black community in the U.S. has real and serious problems. This man's experience is not the norm. But I think he has a valid criticism of the media here. Blacks routinely complain that they are underrepresented in media and they lack good role models because of racism by Whites who control so much media, yet he can't get his story published in a major Black medium because it isn't enough of a sob story. I think that is a completely legitimate thing to point out as something very wrong with the system.

<comment><USER16> Re: your aside about your personal experience, I've heard it called "engineer's disease" to hear a person complaining about something in their lives and respond by trying to offer a solution. For many people, commiserating about bad experiences is mostly a bonding exercise, and your main job is just to listen and empathize. If you immediately jump into problem-solving mode, even though you're trying to help it can feel hostile.

You may already know that, but since it's not a thing I ever would have figured out on my own, I thought it was worth mentioning.

(Hey, I just noticed: I'm a black man posting my experience in the comments to an article about a black man's experience, but my only comment is unsolicited advice to a woman about how not to offer unsolicited advice to women. My irony detector just crashed.)

<comment><USER17> For many kinds of people, working together is also a bonding exercise. Maybe we should also appreciate that instead of calling it a disease.

<comment><USER16> Huh, I expected the playfulness of the term would come through. Sorry about that.

This was a term coined by engineers to explain why the behavior that seemed, and still seems, so obviously right to a certain kind of brain can be so unwelcome in general.

<comment><USER17> I didn't mean my response to come across so personal and pointed. Apologies.

I was pushing back against the wider phenomenon of telling people to clam up and stay disengaged when confronted with pain or discomfort in the people they care about. It's (perhaps ironically) a very narrow perspective that undermines people accepting and understanding one another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I want to point out a couple things from the article:

> In fact, nearly 75% of Blacks are not poor.

~75% of African Americans live above the poverty line, however ~45% of young African American children live below the poverty line.

Also African Americans are the largest ethnic group living in poverty.

Poor in this case is defined as $22,314 for a family of four. Where do the numbers go if you raise that to $37,000 for a family of four, which is still arguably not a lot of money.

While I understand the basis of the authors argument, I did find that 75% statistic to be misleading.

<comment><USER19> It's not as misleading as you suggest. I read that statistic and thought to myself "I would've assumed it was closer to 50%". He's challenging the popular notion in white America's mind that _most blacks are poor_. He's not wrong either in restating the figure to emphasize the non-poverty percentage, or in his assessment that Inc. magazine is only interested in furthering the notion that most blacks are poor.

The statistic (even as you restated it) supports his general thesis of the perceptions of black people that media outlets want to promulgate really well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The culture has an ideology about race which is shared and fed by the media. It's almost a nostalgia for the sixties where people want to pin halos on themselves by pretending its the 60s and that they are fighting against segregated buses etc.

The demand for stories which fit this narrative outstrip the supply. The same thing can be seen with various 'hate crimes' which are eventually revealed as hoaxes. The media - and the public - are strangely desperate for this bigoted world to exist - because they can feel more noble fighting it.

I'm guessing it has something to do with all the ideological refugees, in academia and the media, from the 60s and 70s who are fighting battles that are long over.

<comment><USER21> Not sure how you can say this when a literal white supremacist just literally murdered a random black man in New York because he was black. Is that a hoax in your view?

<comment> angry-hacker Statistically this event is irrelevant, it doesn't happen often and black person is more likely to die because of anything else, most likely because of another fellow black person. Stop fearmongering.

<comment><USER21> You could say the same thing about terrorist attacks. The effect of hate crimes goes far beyond the deaths of the individuals involved.

The suggestion that we shouldn't worry about hate crimes until they're a leading cause of death for members of minority groups presumably doesn't deserve a response. Even in the Jim Crow south, it's not as if a majority of black people died from being lynched.

It's quite silly to suggest that I'm 'fearmongering' merely by referencing something that's already all over the news. I don't think my mention of this incident deep within an HN thread is likely to cause anyone to be more frightened than they already are.

<comment> angry-hacker It's no better than stormfront users spamming the stats about blacks in prison, black on white rape and crime etc.

As I said, statistically this event is irrelevant and doesn't add anything to discussion.

<comment><USER21> Saying that I'm no better than white supremacists on the basis of my fairly anodyne comments is pretty clearly crossing the line.

I hope that you are not being sincere.

In any case, as I already addressed your point about "statistical significance", it appears that you have nothing further to contribute to the discussion.

<comment> angry-hacker Don't put words in my mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Inc Magazine is very identity politics, very much written by privileged Silicon Valley kids with preconceived notions of diversity. I gave up reading it a long while ago and I'm as liberal-left as they come.

<comment><USER22> ...ok, I goofed. Getting confused between Inc and Mic (three letters, two of which are I and C, very similar logos). Apologies, please ignore above comment.

<comment><USER3> The weird thing about Mic.com though, now that I'm thinking about it, is they have the best breaking news app I've ever used on iOS. It literally exists in the notifications so when something happens you can read the story from the notifications screen and be done with it. I wish more media companies would offer that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow - here's what I found most telling about the article: The top Highlight was this:

"The real problems are things like unanimous votes at Venture Capital firms. There is always someone who "can't get comfortable" with the Black guy's deal. It's grey, and blurred, and subtle, and can always be substantiated by some facts."

And the rest of the paragraph is:

"And though this type of discrimination exists, it certainly does not leave Black entrepreneurs completely under funded and out in the cold. For example, Black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the country — outpacing all other startups by six times the national average. This is significant, yet woefully under reported."

So the thing people want to highlight in his article are the _only two sentences which fit the narrative he 's trying to counter._ SMH...

<comment><USER24> Conversely, this article is one of the thousands written by black entrepreneurs that this website has chosen to upvote.

<comment><USER25> This is a great point that challenges the views I brought to this thread with me.

<comment><USER24> I don't think there's a different comment that you could have made that would make me happier. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If the people from the magazine really threw away all their work because the guy wasn't the "archetypal Black entrepreneur to hang the story around".... that's quite sad?

I mean, they have a journalist shadow the guy for two months, and then they decide that the material doesn't fit their story and they toss it?

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Do the research first, write the story afterwards?

I worry that a lot of journalism really suffers from this. The magazine has an idea what kind of story they want to write, and then they look for sources / people / material that corroborates their story.

That won't lead to stories representative of the real world...

<comment><USER27> The magazine has an idea of what kind of story their audience wants to read, and then they look for sources / people / material that would work for that. If some story represents the real world but isn't particularly interesting for their audience, then there's no place for it in the magazine; just as the classic example of why "dog bites man" isn't a good story but "man bites dog" is, _exactly_ because it's not representative of the real world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or other entertainer.

2) I grew up in a prosperous white neighbourhood and spent a lot of time at University of Toronto, as a kid. My dad was a math-teacher and programmer. I recently met a developer -- a young woman of colour at a conference, who came from a stereotypical deprived background. I could barely understand her experiences or the language she used about identity, inclusion, and diversity, because I have never felt excluded. Ambitious, envious at times, but never excluded.

3) I've just realised in the last few months that it's probably harder to be a woman in tech, of whatever skin shade, than to be a 6'3" half-black guy from a scholarly middle-class background. As far as I can tell I've faced no discrimination. I've been sexually harassed once, but it started as a joke and the woman had no power over me. One time outlier. Caveat: I have not sought VC funding, nor have I progressed to leadership roles in someone else's organisation.

4) At one small company I worked at, we were approached to do a TV segment. Two of the four founders are white Africans. The reporter seemed really intent on pushing a rags-to-riches story. The guys had to keep reminding her that they had started the company from their basement while they both had well- paying jobs. They were the sons of a professor. This was really eye-opening with regards to reporters pursuing pre-conceived narratives.

<comment><USER29> > 1) Silly black-person. In the US, "black" means "loser", so if you are > successful, you are ipso facto not black. Uh, unless you're an athlete, or > other entertainer.

I an not from the US, but I guess the impression that in the US _race_ is a proxy for talking about _class_. The latter word is such a taboo as much as anything coming from Marxism or economic left. You even go to say "losers" instead of working class, which is so insulting.

This keeps the left running in circles in identity issues. And keeps the poor fighting against each other (see poor whites supporting Trump).

<comment><USER28> You raise some valid points, but as recently as 60 years ago (in living memory) there were laws on the books that ensured that blacks were on-average a lower class.

Race, specifically African American race is tied to class in the US in ways that it's not in other countries.

<comment><USER29> I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Inarguably the best reply: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com/please-dont-use- supposition-o...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/please-dont-use-supposition- or-create-fake-news-on-a-serious-subject-regarding-tech-media-racism- ceea96c8876b)

<comment><USER31> Is it? It doesn't seem to address any of the points in the original article - it just repeats the accusation that he is, indeed, "not black enough".

<comment><USER30> No, it's because it explains how he is misusing the term "not Black enough" (used originally for dealing with colorism in the Black community) and accuses him instead of being a boring person. I can't call him out on the former but the latter I wholeheartedly agree with.

If a journalist wants to write a story about overcoming adversity and you respond that you haven't had any adversity to overcome, if they reject you it's pretty silly to complain about it and also pretty plainly because you're too privileged to understand why this is important and his reaction makes it pretty clear that he is indeed too privileged to understand why talking about adversity is critical to overcoming it. (Also mentioned in the reply)

<comment><USER31> It is not clear to me that the magazine was actually explicitly trying to write a story about adversity, or whether they are just trying to write a story about being black, and _implied_ that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication). Indeed, it does seem to be more of the latter, at least if his words are taken at face value:

"I was approached by Inc. Magazine for a feature on the life of a successful Black entrepreneur."

<comment><USER30> >and implied that this should include adversity (which is what the Brian had a problem with, if it's a racially-based implication)

What, so we're not allowed to imply that racism exists anymore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems like society works like a pendulum.

People spend decades fighting discrimination based on race. But, in the end, their focus on race makes it a defining characteristic.

We try and fix one imbalance, and end up just shifting it around. Still I guess we're better off today than in the 1960's.

<comment><USER33> When and where has race not been a defining characteristic?

<comment><USER34> Probably most places, for most of human history, given the lack of travel.

Not that they didn't find other reasons to dislike their fellow humans.

<comment><USER24> A lot of genocides have been committed between races that, particularly from an outsider's view, are quite racially similar and nearby.

For example: Hutu/Tutsi, Serbians/Croatians

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problem is not only prejudice, it's journalism: journalists write stories first, and then go look for "facts" to support or illustrate their narrative.

<comment><USER36> Yes, journalism is just stage writing where the play is strung together by selectively taking quotes from people and putting them out of context into a sequential order that makes it look as if it were caused by a preconceived narrative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Read about black Trump supporters' experiences in "coming out". As soon as you slightly deviate from the media's narrative about how a black person should be, you run a high risk of being ostracized and verbally abused. The media don't want stories about self-made successful black people, the want stories about how the establishment helps black people being successful (preventing them from their inevitable fate of becoming drug addicts and criminals).

Look at how Ben Carson has been treated by the Democrats and main stream media since he joined the Trump administration.

</comment><comment><USER38> > We are facial recognition for .com's, as opposed to .gov's.

WTF does that mean?

<comment><USER3> Corporate surveillance is ok, government surveillance is not ok, I'd imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's a shame. It's not just narrative that's important, and well-off African-Americans can still be impacted by the effects of systemic bias.

<comment><USER40> If he feels he didn't suffer for being black, why should he get any preferential story treatment from Inc. over anybody else who didn't suffer for their race or background? His point is very poorly argued.

<comment><USER41> If they're presenting the truth, they should be looking at what many types of black people are doing in multiple places with what results. If something made many succeed, then that should become part of a Reality-Based Narrative. If there's racism holding them back, there should be evidence of that. Any personality traits or tactics that successful ones use would be game. And so on.

A media group only interested in evidence for one hypothesis while suppressing counter-evidence is showing its bias in favor of promoting that hypothesis even if it's incorrect. They're lying for ratings/revenue. Typical in media with biases/narratives varying based on their customers' demographic.

<comment><USER40> Nonsense. Inc. wasn't writing an academic article about race and entrepreneurship. They were specifically looking for a feel good rags to riches story to highlight. He didn't fit the story that they want to tell, so he has no more reason to complain than you do as an upper middle class or wealthy white man.

<comment><USER41> That's another one. The narratives blend in his case where they expected him to start in one then end up in another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What is the difference between the adverb 'black' (or its US synonym 'African American' when used for skin colour) and the capitalised adverb 'Black' used here?

<comment><USER36> They are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I love Brian Brackeen. Very smart guy!

</comment><comment><USER44> So how do I share this with my black friends that feel the same way, without offending them?

</comment><comment><USER45> This sort of "all blacks must be poor and perpetually victims of racism" narrative was exploited very well during the Democratic Primary by the Hillary campaign. And then Trump happened. It was and is shameful.

And yet, the fact is that among those 75% of blacks who aren't poor, a much higher ratio of them as compared with whites (even poorer whites) will fall victim to a great many life-impacting negatives, from poorer quality of treatment by medical professionals to discrimination in finance. The difference is definitely related to racism.

Also, his anecdote certainly isn't typical for poor folks or black folks, and especially not poor black folks. Overall he has a decent point regarding the "poor, racism beaten" stereotype, but it's not very well argued, in my view.

<comment><USER46> I think that there's an argument to be made that Hillary didn't rally the Black vote well enough, because she assumed that it would transfer to her as part of a new permanent Democratic majority instead of being an artifact of enthusiasm for the first Black president. In other words, she took them for granted. I didn't see much pandering from her at all. The most shameful race- related story of the Democratic side was when Bernie was libeled as a racist by Black activists with thinly disguised connections to the Clinton campaign.

Hillary made strategic missteps, I don't think that portraying Blacks as victims was one of them.

Your point may be that the Democrats have played this game too long and turned off working-class whites, creating an opening for a populist, politically incorrect Republican who only has to agree to keep his hands off of Social Security and Medicare and he's "liberal enough." I think there's some truth to that.

<comment><USER45> Hillary didn't rally the black vote well enough during the general, but that's one failing among many of hers as a candidate in that election. I was referring specifically to the campaign for the nomination, in which she and her campaign successfully cast Bernie as a racist, as you note, and did so in part by portraying him as though he thought poverty caused racism _instead of_ racism contributing to the poverty of black folks. There were other factors at play (e.g. Lewis' remarks about not remembering seeing Bernie around during civil rights protests and activities), but those are separte, if related, issues.

But, yes, you are also spot on regarding the Democrats' malfeasance in "play[ing] this game too long," too.

<comment><USER3> Even during the democratic primary there's not much of a case to be made that her campaign sought to portray Sanders as a racist. We even have emails that show her campaign's strategy was largely focused on wooing over black leaders during the primary[1]. Also, several staff members from Sanders' campaign admitted they did not do a lot to appeal to black voters, having already assumed they were in the bag for Clinton[2]. She drew comparisons between her own campaign's efforts at outreach and his[3], comparisons which have been proven to be true. Saying she cast Sanders as "racist" is both misleading and ignores the fact that his outreach to black voters was provably lackluster.

[1] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-w...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct- wikileaks-emails-clinton-black-voters-20161022-story.html)

[2] [http://fusion.net/story/323539/how-bernie-sanders-lost- black...](http://fusion.net/story/323539/how-bernie-sanders-lost-black- voters/)

[3] [https://secure.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton- sp...](https://secure.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-speech- racism-harlem-219311)

<comment><USER45> None of these things contradicts what I wrote or supports your assertion.

<comment><USER3> Then prove to me she was casting Sanders as a racist.

Show me how Sanders' campaign was not lackluster when wooing black voters.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing FunctionConf, a serverless conference: Amsterdam, 15-16 June 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://functionconf.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> FunctionConf is a new conference on serverless architectures and platforms like Amazon Lambda, Cloud Functions, Azure Functions and OpenWhisk. Amsterdam, 15-16 June 2017. Call for speakers now open at [https://functionconf.io/call- for-speakers](https://functionconf.io/call-for-speakers)</comment>


Ask HN: I casually came up with chained unary operators, do you like them? - <AUTHOR> Working on a simple virtual machine and a new programming language, I have discovered that the interpreter I have developed can read chained unary operators nominally.
It seems a useful side effect...
$a = 0
print ++$a++
# Prints "1" and sets a = 2 in memory
$a = 1
print --$a++
# Prints "0" and sets a = 1 in memory
$a = 0
print ++++$a
# Prints "2" and sets a = 2 in memory
$a = 0
print $a++++
# Prints "0" and sets a = 2 in memory
$a = 10
print ++$a----
# Prints "11" and sets a = 9 in memory
$a = 10
print ++--$a----++
# Prints "10" and sets a = 9 in memory <comment><USER2> I feel like when someone has to count plus signs to see what the code is doing it's a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a fan of ++a and similar code golf constructs. I really only use a++ for loops. I like to keep code simple and readable. Well done on writing an interpreter though. It's not easy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally prefer that these operations be kept separate for clarity. An extra line is justified.

</comment><comment><USER5> $a = 2 $b = </comment><comment>-$a

What does $b equal? More importantly, how is this sane? I just wrote it and I'm not quite so myself without taking my time and separating the dashes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminded me of this: [https://www.ioccc.org/](https://www.ioccc.org/)

<comment><USER7> Reminded me of [http://www.eelis.net/C++/analogliterals.xhtml](http://www.eelis.net/C++/analogliterals.xhtml), which starts with

      unsigned int a = 4;
      unsigned int b = I</comment></comment><comment>---I;
      assert( a == b );

Moves on to 2D:

      unsigned int c = ( o-----o
                         |     !
                         !     !
                         !     !
                         o-----o ).area;

      assert( c == (I-----I) * (I</comment><comment>-I) );

and puts the cherry on the cake with 3D literals:

      assert( top( o</comment><comment>-o
                   |L       \
                   | L       \
                   |  o</comment><comment>-o
                   |  !       !
                   !  !       !
                   o  |       !
                    L |       !
                     L|       !
                      o</comment><comment>-o ) == ( o</comment><comment>-o
                                       |       !
                                       !       !
                                       o</comment><comment>-o ) );

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of good ol' APL.</comment>


Facebook admits its third-party developers have mishandled private data - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/article/Facebook-admits-its-thirdparty-developers-have-mishandled-private-data/1287428665

<comment><AUTHOR> This is in the headlines a but it seems to be there's more to it than the headline.

I mean, what does "pass" even mean here? As I remember, the UID is what you use to get all the rest of a user's information. How could you not pass it within your application and how is passing the information bad if you already have it.

I'm equally unsure why this a privacy violation. It seems more like a "we want to pretend this info is private even if it's publicly searchable" kind of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK,

This [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/10/lates...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/10/latest_facebook_privacy- news_s.html) gives some more background.</comment></comment>


Could he apply to YC?: South Carolina scientist works to grow meat in lab - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110130/sc_nm/us_food_meat_laboratory_feature#

<comment><USER2> YC is not built for what he is trying to do</comment>