Uncle Bob's rant on Jeff and Joel - <AUTHOR> http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/01/31/quality-doesnt-matter-that-much-jeff-and-joel

<comment><USER3> The podcast covers unit testing and code quality at 45 minutes in or so. I haven't listened to the entire podcast, so I may have gotten this wrong, but it seems like Joel and Jeff made only nuanced statements. No unqualified remarks like "testing is bad" were made, I think.

Joel and Jeff mention that code quality doesn't matter much from a _business_ perspective. In Jeff's case - does the code quality of StackOverflow's internals matter? Probably not. There's no critical information there - <USER2> security is not an issue. It makes sense to me that time spent on features is going to be appreciated more by the users than time spent on code quality.

As for the unit tests - I don't think they mean to say that unit testing is a waste of time in general. From what I understand they're saying that unit testing isn't "real actual work". You write unit tests to save yourself debugging and regression testing effort later. If you consider unit tests intrinsically valuable you may end up writing tests for every getter and setter, and that's just a waste of time. They also mention that unit-tests themselves have to be maintained and updated, and if architectural changes break a significant percentage of unit tests then you have to put a lot of effort in fixing your tests.

The .NET framework was even mentioned as an example where high code quality is incredibly important and where all interfaces should be extensively unit- and regression-tested by Microsoft.

> I'm starting to wonder if anyone should be using any of their products.

So happy users of Fogbugz and StackOverflow should leave because Joel and Jeff are too pragmatic?

<comment><USER4> > From what I understand they're saying that unit testing isn't "real actual > work". You write unit tests to save yourself debugging and regression > testing effort later.

This sent off my faulty logical implication detector. Assuming that debugging and regression testing are work, doing something that isn't work right now to avoid having to do something more tedious and time-consuming that is work later on seems like a good trade-off to me. This seems like splitting hairs over the definition of work, and worrying about semantics rather than the end result.

> Joel and Jeff mention that code quality doesn't matter much from a > _business_ perspective.

Yikes. This reasoning scares me. I can understand the business not caring directly about the quality of code, in that people working from that perspective would go in and start doing code reviews. But indirectly the implications are huge, and any business man who would claim not to care about the code base is really saying to me they don't care about the longevity of their business. The success of the business is directly tied to the ability of the developers to continue making things that people want, and this is way easier and faster when they aren't consistently confounded by the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure Uncle Bob is misrepresenting what we actually said, so I transcribed the ten minutes or so from the podcast that he's upset about here, so you can judge for yourself:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/01/31.html>

<comment><USER6> I agree with Joel here: Bob is being unfair. Here's what I heard Jeff and Joel say when I listened to their podcast:

Quality matters, but there are other things that also matter, such as actually getting working code written. Some of us (and I've personally struggled with this for a long time) have a hard time letting go of our quest for perfection and settling for shipping code that's imperfect but works. When Jeff says that "quality just doesn't matter that much," what I took this to mean is: quality matters, but it matters less than we sometimes feel like it does. And that doesn't mean he's condoning writing crappy code; he's simply saying that we tend to overvalue this abstract concept of quality and that can have a crippling effect on our productivity.

Joel focuses on dogmatic adherence to development methodologies/principles as an example, specifically testing. I got the impression that he thinks testing is great and it has its place in the software development ecosystem. It tends to increase software quality and there are certain types of software for which it is really, really important (Jeff mentions framework code as an example). That said, taken to an extreme, testing can get in the way of getting things done... getting working code written and out the door / live on the server / whatever. It can also get in the way of modifying working code, as intentional changes to the way that code works always breaks some percentage of your unit tests, just as a regression will. And while catching unintentional regressions is great (and one of the best reasons you should unit test), constantly having to rewrite your tests every time you change the behavior of an internal class can be a real drag on your productivity. And that can be bad.

The key is to avoid being overly dogmatic in your adherence to development principles. Instead, be pragmatic and find a balance. Test enough to ensure adequate quality (whatever that happens to be for your product), but no more. Otherwise you're just doing yourself (or your employer) a disservice.

<comment><USER4> A couple of points here:

> Quality matters, but there are other things that also matter, such as > actually getting working code written.

"Working code written" is setting a quality bar. Really. I've seen enough code that has omitted the "working" qualifier that I think it is worth making that point. Many developers spend _far_ too much time erring on the side of too little quality. Not developers here, mind you; I suspect that we care enough to tend to err the other direction. I mean the type that Jeff and Joel repeatedly point out who will never visit sites like this or StackOverflow.

> Joel focuses on dogmatic adherence to development methodologies/principles > as an example, specifically testing.

And I think Bob is focusing on people with a complete lack of methodologies and principles. The problem is that they are both talking in greater extremes than are necessary for the sake of emphasizing their point. For what it is worth, I think they are both right, and are violently agreeing on the same gray area.

FWIW, Jeff and Joel strike me as intelligent enough developers that they likely keep their code sufficiently clean without having to consciously remind themselves, or have someone else remind them. Their subconscious quality bar is sufficiently high that they don't have to consciously think about that either. They both seem to have a sense of design that most developers just don't. So does Bob.

I suspect that Bob has worked with or heard of enough developers who don't that he feels compelled to advocate his position with a little more gusto. But both took the other's position as an attack against their own ability or philosophies; this wasn't the point. I think Joel/Jeff were addressing the people who have the tendency to care about what they do, perhaps a little too much at times, and convince them to let go a little bit; Bob is address the people who don't give a crap, and trying to give them a least somewhat of a mental framework to make things that at least kind of work most of the time. The problem is that these people need things told to them dogmatically, to get them out of their comfort zone. That kind of dogmatic advice tends to rub those who think about what we do to begin with the wrong way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Uncle Bob" doesn't provide any really provide proof for his argument any more than Jeff & Joel did. He says "The vast majority of the code I write, I write test first. (And no, Joel, this isn't a waste of my time.)"

But how do you measure wasted time. Or conversely, how do you measure success?

Jeff and Joel have in the past measured success by user base size and profit. "Uncle Bob" doesn't define success or good use of time.

</comment><comment><USER8> #38 was the first podcast I had listened to, and before doing so, I had not heard of Uncle Bob. Now having read his blog post, he comes across as a pretty sour fellow with a bone to pick. As others have pointed out, his nitpicking at this particular statement is not very fair. He also implies that J and J give bad advice and shouldn't be trusted with your business, which just reinforces the idea that they guy maybe just has a chip on his shoulder.

He appears to be selling his services as a consultant, so it makes economic sense for him to belittle his free "competitors" with this sort of nonsense. I don't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree with Joel's position wholeheartedly. I've read Robert Martin's book "Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices". Referring to the book, which demonstrates the SOLID principles, it's not that you can't do it that way and be successful, it's that a pure object oriented approach is not necessarily the best approach to building every kind of application. He says in his book regarding an example implementation of a payroll system, that we are paid to create "behaviors". I disagree. This detailed critique explains it well:

[http://objectmix.com/theory-concepts/10776-critique- robert-c...](http://objectmix.com/theory-concepts/10776-critique-robert-c- martins-agile-principles-patterns-practices.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Bob's discussion of the SOLID principles on Hanselminutes (which is what Jeff and Joel are referencing) was pretty good.

Jeff and Joel started by talking about the Bob interview, but then went on to criticize the dogmatic types more in the abstract than directed at Bob. At least that's how I took it.

Seems like their arguments and rebuttals crossed in the mail. Nothing to see here.</comment>


How to Sell the Problem Before Selling the Solution - <AUTHOR> https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-perfectly-capture-your-customers-need-c924e3209484 <comment><USER2> >To keep reading this story, create a free account.

Uh no thanks.</comment>


On Will Wright's Team, Would You Be a Solvent, or the Glue? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/business/14corner.html <comment><USER2> This is worth its weight in gold. A welcome contrast to the "10 ways to succeed" blogjunk that clogs this area of the the web so badly.

One of the fascinating things about listening to a master speak is how many more subtleties there are.

</comment><comment><USER3> The whole interview is worth reading. It's also worth pointing out that Will has created an environment where people aren't punished for asking each other whether they're wasting time. (For the impatient, search for "Ocean Quigley".)

</comment><comment><USER4> single page [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/business/14corner.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/business/14corner.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)</comment>


White House Bars NYT, CNN, and Politico from Briefing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share <comment><USER3> For anyone who has actually watched these press briefings in their entirety: Does anyone else think these are pretty much the worst way to get to the bottom of issues? Here's how it seems to work:

* The press secretary (or President, or whoever) makes a statement

* He or she chooses a journalist to ask a question

* Journalist asks question

* Press secretary answers question in as much or as little detail as he/she wants

* Press secretary calls another journalist

* This goes on for maybe 20-30 minutes, and it's over.

How does this even help at all? It's not like the press secretary is going to answer a question that he/she doesn't want to answer anyway.

<comment><USER4> These press briefings provide direct, multilateral, and unmoderated access to the Presidential Administration by the Press Corps. They are incredibly important to holding the administration to account for policy.

Can the administration spin their own narrative? Sure, but they can't directly control or audit the questions asked.

<comment><USER5> Depends on if they start excluding organizations and lining up softballs from cranks.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly the strategy the WH is starting to employ.

Look at Russian tactics against the press in 2006-2007 and you can predict the WH next move. They are stealing from their playbook.

Revoke. Replace. Erode.

<comment><USER5> Maybe Infowars will get the president on the record about Pizzagate.

<comment><USER7> Alex Jones loves Donald Trump. He's unlikely to hold him to account for anything, except maybe not being paranoid enough, until his audience drops and new ideas come crawling out of whatever hole Alex keeps them in.

I would say he's a joke, but it's way creepier than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm finding I'm having a hard time reconciling the current climate - <USER2> necessarily at his supporters (or the opposite), but just at how polar opposite everyone seems to be on this.

For me, I see these organizations as not treating him poorly, but actually willing to call out things he is not being factual on.

But at the same time, maybe I'm being biased against him.

I want the discourse, but I'm just struggling to understand how the views can be so strongly split from one extreme to the other, and what that means moving forward.

<comment><USER9> In our FPTP voting system, a two party system naturally emerges. And during times of hardship, instead of a middle-ground being found like would occur in a multiparty system, things become even more partisan and contentious. It's a fundamental facet of our political system, and won't ever change by using the political system. The political momentum needed is just too great.

<comment><USER10> If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties move towards the center in general. If a party gets much more extreme than the populace then they will lose easily against an opponent just a little more moderate than them. Trump's views seem a little more extreme than the general populace but if you look at it he didn't even win the popular vote.

<comment><USER11> > If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties > move towards the center in general.

No, it doesn't.

> If a party gets much more extreme than the populace then they will lose > easily against an opponent just a little more moderate than them.

This requires lots of assumptions that may not be true in the real world. First, it assumes a party in power can't shift the electorate by suppressing voting rights of its opponents. Second, it either ignores propensity to vote effects, or assumes a unimodal distribution of preferences so that moderation not only brings you closer to the median voter but also doesn't make people who are closer to your position less likely to vote; whereas a two-party system over time promotes a bimodal distribution where moving away from one of those peaks, even toward the center between them, reduces enthusiasm and votes recieved.) It also ignores communication assymetries and their relation to money, and therefore support from moneyed interests.

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of things to pulls the two parties back out from the middle again and I'm aware that practically it's not like both parties are actually centrist. Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a two party system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system. I honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think that two party systems aren't completely aweful

<comment><USER11> > Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a two party > system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system.

It might result in more centrist _parties_ (though I've never seen a convincing comparativr argument or evidence; median voter theorem is fine and all for the abstract idealized world it applies to but ignores pretty much every significant aspect of real-world political dynamics), but even so it doesn't seem to lead to more centrist _governments_.

> I honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think > that two party systems aren't completely aweful

Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government, and smaller numbers of parties are correlated with poorer proportionality; from the perspective of providing people the government they want, two-party systems turn out to mostly be, empirically, pretty awful, and the US's particular implementation near the bottom of the barrel among established democracies.

<comment><USER12> > Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty > directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government

While dual or multiple parties can affect this, the degree of representation currently in the US is currently more of detriment to finding a middle ground.

The average member of the lower house has around 650K constituents more then any senator did at our founding. The US Constitution was suppose to allow the House to grow and expand as the country did, however Congress passes a law setting the limit of members to the House almost a century ago.

If we multiply the House by 10, each member represents 65K we are still within the Constitution and will get closer to what you are stating then a complete overhaul. This has the effect of give more representation to people and makes it more likely to get to a middle ground. As an example a district votes 60% for one party in the current system results in 40% being unheard. With a 10x, keeping in mind it wouldn't really work entirely we have, 6 members that agree with the 60% and 4 members that agree with the 40%. It's not going to be that exact but hopefully you get the idea. This is going to decrease the power of each member of the lower house to state "Mandate" and force getting closer to middle ground.

In the 60/40 example it is mostly likely gerrymandered or a state with a single member in the House which results in no general election. The district is already assumed to win the general and thus the primary becomes the real election which is nominally 50% of the a general election. So in the current system 30% of the 650K in our example district effectively elect the member to House. Given typical 50% voter turnout we then can say that basically say that about 15% of of a district pick the representation. So in our example 98K are represented fully and 552K people are under represented. By scaling that back we would probably have less gerrymandered districts but even in this extreme we have 10K people vs 55K people and may even be able to increase voter turnout since a vote actually matters at this point. In my district my vote is worthless, I still vote in primary and general, but I live someplace more gerrymandered than the 60/40 it's closer to 80/20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The HN ranking algorithm buried this post really quickly.

Right now it has 466 points, 229 comments, is 1 hour old, and ranked at #32.

For comparision, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13725093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13725093) has 197 points, 39 comments, is 4 hours old, and ranked at #13.

Does anyone know why the ranking algorithm demoted this article and not the other (even though this one is younger and more popular)? I know it applies penalties for certain sites and if an article is deemed "controversial" (more comments than votes), but I don't think either would trigger here.

<comment><USER14> Trump apologists downvoting/flagging. They seem to have infested HN to a greater degree than other tech sites for some reason.

<comment><USER15> Or paid upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Only the AP choose to not attend out of solidarity? Shame on ABC, CBS, and the rest.

<comment><USER17> I don't recall the NYT, CNN or Politico refusing to attend when Obama kicked the Washington Times and NY Post out.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6156794&pag...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6156794&page=1)

Shame on them too?

<comment><USER18> I'll save everyone the click: It's a false equivalence. Three reporters (total) were dropped from a plane flight, once.

Being held here by yummyfajitas as equivalent to barring whole organisations from a press conference.

<comment><USER19> Also this event occurred before Obama was President...

Not only are the practical aspects of the two situations different, but on top of that comparing the official actions of a sitting President versus those of a non-incumbent candidate make it even more falsely equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reporting on this is a bit hazy right now, according to CNN it was not a formal briefing but a "press gaggle" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_gaggle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_gaggle)) and the CNN reporter was barred by a WH staffer because the organization's name "was not on the list" ([http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/24/cnn-blocked- fr...](http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/24/cnn-blocked-from-white- house-press-conference-murray-nr.cnn)).

This is a mostly symbolic gesture (these organizations still have their assigned seats in the room) but is very much against WH press tradition. Coupled with Trump's strong words at the Convention this is a sign for these organizations to tune down their criticism of the President.

</comment><comment><USER21> This country appears to be on a very dangerous path. I don't remotely deny Trump and his administration's responsibility and complicity for taking us down this path, but given how widely understood his issues are within mainstream discourse, I wanted to take a step back and critically look at the not-Trump aspects.

Firstly, Trump needs to be understood in context as the outsider who none of the establishment took seriously, who disrespected everyone and touched every third rail of US politics, who railed against a corrupt system and argued to burn it all down. And 46% of voters bought that and won him 85% of US counties and the presidency.

And ever since, a vast "bipartisan" swath of US media and civic institutions, the deep state and many members of the elites of both political parties have been edging towards outright hysteria, active #Resistance, bureaucratic mutiny and widespread media/celebrity/talking-head delegitimization of Trump's presidency on a level that is utterly unprecedented in modern US history. The level of abject, contemptful hostility from ostensibly "objective" media outlets like the NYT has been breathtaking.

Many, many stories have been exaggerated, slanted and framed in ways that cast Trump as some comic-book villain/Manchurian candidate/Hiter-in-wait beyond any basis in fact or contextualization within existing/recent US policy.

I want to just be clear that I don't support Trump or his policies, I've voted and volunteered for Obama/Bernie and other Democrats, but what I see occurring is a ratcheting up of tensions towards outright war between Trump and the existing establishment of this country. And that in fact is exactly the way Trump actually can justify cutting off media access and purging the ranks of the IC after all the leaks. Bannon and Trump want a war against the establishment, because they know how much of the country is disgusted by the establishment and wants someone to use them as a punching bag.

Trump himself should be like a relatively harmless pathogen within our government's co-equal constitutional immune system - perhaps even an excuse to strengthen legislative and judicial oversight that's been badly lacking in recent years of executive overreach. Instead we're witnessing the fourth estate and military/spook bureaucracy go to war with Trump, which is exactly the sort of non-credible/illegitimate opposition that can enable him to actually consolidate more public support and power.

<comment><USER22> Trump's tactic is clear as it is effective. He behaves exactly as ridiculously as the press makes him out to. The press look like they are exaggerating and making him look bad because if they report true facts, those true facts are so ridiculous that people assume they are the product of bias.

Trump really did say he wanted to murder the children of terrorists. He really did say the press is the enemy of the American people. He really did trash American war heroes who were captured in combat. Et cetera, ad nauseum.

How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it.

But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying. What will it take for people to accept he's an actual threat to the country? Will he have to grow a tiny mustache before you believe he's Hitler-in-wait? He'll just muddy the waters by explicitly lying and blame media bias no matter how bad the things really are.

Maybe in 4 years when we have an election and he refuses to step down because the election was illegitimate -- he actually won, the media lied about the vote totals, millions of illegal voters tipped the scales -- after having replaced the entire national security/military apparatus with rabid loyalists.

Perhaps a terrorist attack will happen and he'll execute a power grab, declare the courts irrelevant or martial law during these trying times where national security is the utmost concern.

Maybe then people will accept it. Or maybe they'll say "how do we know? There must be something to what he's saying, I'm sure he's not really that sinister. The media is biased too, we had better listen to both sides I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. "

<comment><USER23> > How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody > would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be > unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it. > > But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying

I wonder if the appropriate response can be found in the medium. Use video instead of words. Rather than writing about Trump or quoting him, perhaps we need more video news, showing him saying the things he says. Make the 'story' from the editing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Title is misleading. Press was blocked from a single press briefing. I do not see anything in the article about briefings going forward.

Can someone change the title so it's less sensationalized?

Edit: thanks to the moderator for removing the "s" and making the word "Briefing" singular to accurately reflect the article.

<comment><USER25> I think even a single briefing is a scandal.

Consider the words of Admiral McRaven (who coordinated the raid which took down Osama Bin Ladin):

> Donald Trump's war on media is 'biggest threat to democracy'

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald- trum...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-war- media-press-threat-democracy-navy-seal-osama-bin-laden-william-h-mcraven- operation-a7596856.html)

"He only did it once" is not a valid defense if you consider even doing it once as a fundamental assault on the Fouth Estate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate)

<comment><USER24> I completely agree. My request can be satisfied by simply removing the "s" from "briefings" to make it singular. As far as I know, this has only occurred at a single briefing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> According to The Hill, these organizations were also barred - BBC, Daily Mail, The Hill, Buzzfeed, LA Times

[http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321049-white- hous...](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321049-white-house-hand- picks-select-media-for-briefing)

<comment><USER27> The LA Times?--not exactly a heavy hitter or even terribly liberal.

They must have just banned anybody with the word "Time" in their name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This country has gone mad. The Trump supporters will justify and applaud everything he does while he burns down the world.

Why even pretend we have a democracy anymore? Trump and his WH are busy eroding and suprressing every form of free speech and I can't think of a single thing him or the Republicans stand for that actually helps people.

</comment><comment> nappy-doo Well, I guess it's time to up my subscription level to the NYT.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not only are they barring news agencies they don't like from press briefings, they're bringing in radio talk hosts in the form of submitted video to fill the gap. Completely insane.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all > with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street > Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended.

The sentence is misleading and normalizes something that is very dangerous: The WSJ and Fox absolutely have conservative leanings. IMHO, WSJ, at least their editorial page, and Fox are propaganda outlets. (To be clear, I despise propaganda of all stripes; the conservative side is far more powerful these days - there is no left-wing propaganda outlet with a fraction of the power of Fox and the WSJ (or Rush Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk). Huffington Post is maybe the biggest, but I don't read them enough to know if they qualify as propaganda. Publications like Common Dreams or Tom Paine are laughable as competition.)

<comment><USER31> I am with you on HuffingtonPost but they also have so much fake news on their site that it is hard for me to know which one is Outbrain and which one is HuffPo. I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these practices.

<comment><USER30> > I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these practices.

Propaganda is a very good business - better than the real thing these days. Look at who are the leaders by far on cable and talk radio, and in the business community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is not the action a strong, secure ruler would take. This signals that they're afraid of what they may ask and how their readers may react.

What does this accomplish that ignoring the reporters in question would not?

<comment><USER33> The president is not a "ruler"

<comment><USER34> He thinks of himself a dictator and is banning all of the papers who keep outing his administration scandals and Russia ties.

The more he goes on Twitter blaming the FBI and the NYT of leaking fake info, the more true it most likely is.

He didn't fire Flynn because the NYT pulled some random story out of their ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was going to do a Ask HN, but will jump on this thread. What's the better subscription to get, NYTimes or WSJ?

<comment><USER36> I have a subscription to the WSJ. I also subscribe to The Economist. You can read the NYT for free easily, although if I were willing to spend more money I would gladly support their work, but I already spent over $300 in annual subscriptions.

I also like how the economist and the WSJ apps have weekly and daily editions respectively. The NYT app is one continuously updating feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There was a time not so long ago when part of the argument for why we were better than the Russians was that we had a free press and they didn't.

You might still be able to see Russia from parts of the U.S., but it's getting harder and harder to see the moral high ground from here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This story is being actively buried, fyi. [edit: confirmed that it's being flagged. Guess all is normal.]

<comment><USER38> Do you have a link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does anyone else find this article confusing or misleading?

"Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended."

So, we're the only outlets allowed in the "conservative leaning" ones or the not-so conservative ABC and CBS as well?

<comment><USER40> > Aides to Mr. Spicer only allowed in reporters from a handpicked group of > news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed

from the paragraph before your first quote. My parsing of it is that the hand picked news orgs were breitbart et. al. and the ones that weren't hand picked were still allowed in as long as they were not specifically banned. awkward writing though so who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> GOOD! Maybe the press will start doing their job of digging for truth instead of pandering in order to get "access".

</comment><comment><USER41> Considering NYT, CNN and Politico were all implicated via wikileaks for directly colluding with the Hillary campaign I don't blame Trump one bit. The mainstream media needs to be reigned in an not represent one single political party in this whole current mess, but it's not the government's job to do it.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News > Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. > Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News > also attended.

I wonder if the message conveyed would be different if we rephrase it another way:

> Organizations allowed in included ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and > Bloomberg. Journalists from Breitbart News, the One America News Network, > The Washington Times and Fox News, all with conservative leanings, also > attended.

Also, I think NYT is playing with the word "allow" here. By saying "Organizations allowed in included X, Y, Z. ... A, B, C also attended", this gives the false impression that A, B, C are somewhat "not allowed" by separating the list into "allowed" and "also attended". This is obviously false since they attended it.

<comment><USER43> Congratulations on burying the lede. Nowhere in the article's phrasing is an intent to mislead. It clearly states that some organizations were not allowed to attend --- which is the real story here --- and some were allowed to attend.

Now I wonder, if my aunt had balls, would she be my uncle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there a historic precedent for this?

<comment><USER45> [http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63167-congression...](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63167-congressional- democrats-defend-white-houses-snub-of-fox-news)

It's not a 100% precise match, but I'd look dimly on anyone trying to argue it's completely different somehow. Reverse the affiliations and you'd almost think it was written today. (Almost.)

<comment><USER46> I know many won't actually click through to read the linked article, so I think it's important to cite this here in the comments:

> The effort hasn't been a total blackout; _White House press secretary Robert > Gibbs still calls on Fox News reporter Major Garrett at press briefings_ , > but the Obama White House is clearly targeting the network that it believes > is biased.

> In a weekend interview with The New York Times, White House spokeswoman > Anita Dunn said the administration would "treat them the way we would treat > an opponent."

A similar situation, and not "completely different", but not exactly the same, either.

<comment><USER47> It's not that similar. Fox wasn't barred from the briefings. It's just that folks weren't willing to be personally interviewed by them or go on their panel shows. The latter requires active engagement from the establishment, as people have to do a lot of prep work for interviews; the former is just another reporter in the scrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well done to Time and AP, who skipped in protest.

<comment><USER49> While I agree on the whole solidarity thing, isn't it better to have _more_ news organizations at the press briefings?

<comment><USER50> No, it's better to enforce the norms of a free and antagonistic press.

<comment><USER51> Right, which usually requires press people to show up to do the reporting.

I mean it may not be as much of a requirement now in the age of live TV and internet streaming, but if we're going to argue about norms then certainly the norm of sending reporters to actually report on stuff is kind of important.

<comment><USER52> It requires people to do reporting. It does not require them to show up at a press briefing - that doesn't happen in a lot of countries, or if it does, the press is a mouthpiece for the government to say whatever it wants to say whether true or false.

It's certainly helpful for the White House to distill information into an easy-to-digest press briefing. But the AP, Time, and other barred and protesting organizations are certainly capable of reporting on what actually happens rather than what they're told at a press briefing. Reuters described it aptly here:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-adlertrump- idUSKBN15F276](http://www.reuters.com/article/rpb-adlertrump-idUSKBN15F276)

> Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open > another one.

> Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never > all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we > have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

> Don't take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It's an opportunity > for us to practice the skills we've learned in much tougher places around > the world...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-bars- mu...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-bars-multiple- outlets-receiving-press-briefing-article-1.2981448) non-paywalled link

</comment><comment><USER54> So I can see the rationale for Barring CNN, or more specifically, Jim Acosta from attending Press briefings after his disruption back in January but as for barring the rest, is this really as corrupt as it sounds? Only allow in press who are "Trump friendly".

</comment><comment><USER55> This is great. More ammunition to build a case against Trump. This type of behavior doesn't benefit him, but scares a lot of independent voters. He will be in for a rude awakening in the next election cycle

</comment><comment><USER56> much ado about nothing. press access has always been limited to a select handful. even making it into the room doesn't guarantee you'll be acknowledged or, if called on, have your question answered.

<comment><USER57> The largest media outlets in the country being denied access to the WH Press Room?

<comment><USER56> at times there is literally one reporter in the room (MLK Bust story). I'm not arguing they should be excluded forever, just think all perspective is lost when dealing with Trump. Somehow CNN being excluded from a gaggle turns into Trump being a dictator at war with the 1st amendment.

Maybe he is, and maybe this is a tiny piece of a multi-year plot. Or maybe not.

<comment><USER57> At times..but that's not what we're talking about. Why should they be excluded at all? Regardless if it's a multi-year plot or just throwing a fit, it's unacceptable. One of factors behind Trump becoming President is how much time the media spent on him because of his unusual campaign style and rhetoric, and now he wants to pick and choose the media allowed to cover him to suit his narrative and it doesn't work that way.

What I don't understand is why so many tolerate his lies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I know this may be a tired question, but why is this falling on the front-page when the points are continuing to increase?

</comment><comment><USER59> This isn't about banning particular media outlets for asking hard questions or being fake news or whatever. This is about setting up the mainstream media as the enemy, and treating them as such. Trump's target is his supporters. "Do you trust me? If you trust me, then you can't trust _them_."

</comment><comment><USER60> Trump thinks he's still on the apprentice...doesn't like a news outlet, "You're fired!"

</comment><comment><USER61> I wrote a snarky if apt comment, but I'll rephrase it seriously.

I hope the resources put in limbo by this can be devoted to investigating and reporting some independent and accurate accounts of what's happening.

Such as, say, refuting every false statement that is coming from the press room podium.

I'd pay for that paper.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now we know which publications we can trust to stand up to the President. Why isn't the WSJ banned?

</comment><comment><USER62> Sounds like he is getting desperate.

</comment><comment><USER63> See 1984, Ministry of Truth. Sadly the novel seems to be a how to manual instead of a warning.

</comment><comment><USER64> I think at this point the White House Correspondents Association should disband, and all reputable outlets should pull their reporters, similar to how a government official might resign in protest of something.

What would we miss? Another story about spin?

</comment><comment><USER65> Well proof will come out in the mid-terms. Do most voters want this kind of leadership or not?

Of course the GOP is going to contract voting rights as much as possible in the interim, so it's going to be a battle.

Liberals don't vote. Will that change?

<comment><USER66> > Liberals don't vote

The Democrats won the popular vote by 3 million votes, so this doesn't seem right. But for some surgical gerrymandering we might not be having a conversation about President Trump at all.

<comment><USER67> > surgical gerrymandering

Also known as "state lines", a great many of which have been in place for over a century.

<comment><USER36> I don't know why you are being downvoted. Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on the presidential election.

<comment><USER11> > Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on > the presidential election.

There are a couple states that assign Presidential electors on a basis of two to the statewide winner plus one to the winner in each Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all, so Congressional districting (including gerrymandering) does have a direct effect on Presidential election s as well as House elections.

<comment><USER36> They have a total of 5 electoral votes. When split the only election where they could have made a difference was in 2000. But yes, in this case it those have a direct effect but a VERY minor effect that has never affected the outcome of an election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Not a Trump supporter in the slightest but after seeing how they mis- characterized Pewdiepie I have to say I have no trust in the media either so do hell with them.

</comment><comment><USER69> Sane media should stop going. No point participating in a charade the administration is directing.

Edit: apparently this is already happening. Time and AP among those who chose not to attend.

Dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER70> But is this literal or serious? /s

</comment><comment><USER71> Just for some perspective, the previous administration was also not great in this regard:

"Obama shuts Fox out of press briefings related to Benghazi" [1]

"The Obama White House went to war against Fox News": Jake Tapper. [2]

"Fishbowl DC has been keeping tabs of which media outlets have been allowed to ask a question at President-elect Barack Obama's five press conferences so far. They report Fox News is 0–5. "Questions instead went to such outlets as ABC, New York Times, CBS, Reuters and the Associated Press."" [3]

"In 2010, President Obama said that Fox News had a point of view which was "ultimately destructive" for America...The University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier tallied up the number of questions each member of the White House press corp had been able to ask during all of Obama's first term press conferences. ABC, CBS, the Associated Press and NBC led the pack, with ABC having been selected for questioning 29 times over 36 solo press conferences. (Overall, reporters have had fewer chances to ask questions than any White House press corps since Ronald Reagan's.)...Fox News, though it has a reach that far outstrips its competitors and sometimes rivals the broadcast networks, was in ninth place on the list, having been called on 14 times...NBC's Chuck Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper (now at CNN) were called on the most of any reporters — they each got 23 chances to question Obama." [4]

"Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy...By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration's chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn...Those reports included a critical segment on the schools safety official Kevin Jennings, with the on- screen headline "School Czar's Past May Be Too Radical"; urgent news coverage of a video showing schoolchildren "singing the praises, quite literally, of the president," which the Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson later called "pure Khmer Rouge stuff"...There followed, beginning in earnest more than two weeks ago, an intensified volley of White House comments describing Fox as "not a news network."...Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the president went public. "What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," he said. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another."..."We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization," said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director." [5]

December 2012: Several journalists reported that MSNBC hosts were meeting privately with President Obama to discuss the impending "fiscal cliff" fight. [6]

March 2015: Politico's media reporter, Hadas Gold, reported that "a group of journalists and columnists," all on the left, met privately with President Obama, but the White House refused to say "who else was at the meeting or what was discussed." [7]

[1] [http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/fox-anchor-team-obama- threatened-...](http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/fox-anchor-team-obama-threatened- benghazi-reporter/)

[2] [http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine- marsh/2017/01/1...](http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine- marsh/2017/01/17/tapper-press-conference-kerfuffle-obama-also-went-war- against)

[3] [https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-shut-out-again-at- obama-p...](https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-shut-out-again-at-obama-press- conference-6d2eb5734390#.t6orlm2qb)

[4] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/obama-fox-news- pres...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/obama-fox-news-press- conferences_n_2495440.html)

[5] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23fox.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/politics/23fox.html)

[6] [http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-hosts-spotted-visiting- obam...](http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-hosts-spotted-visiting-obama-white- house/)

[7] [http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/03/obama-holds- off-...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/03/obama-holds-off-the- record-session-with-columnists-203519)

</comment><comment><USER72> Yes, its an offensive dick-move by Trump but rather than get agitated, I hope that more people will try look behind this.

This has been a relatively slow news week, I get the feeling someone needs a little attention?

<comment><USER73> Im praying for 4 years of slow news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> if we're going to be honest, most are upset because they have an issue with trump to start with. after he was elected Trump did hour-long interviews with 60-minutes, ABC, O-Reily, and Hannity. Where's the outrage over that? Shouldn't equal time have been given to Dateline, CBS, Anderson Cooper, and Van Jones?

Sooner or later there will be a real issue and most of us are going to tune it out because CNN/NYT/Others have treated every day since he took office as the 2nd coming of Hitler and beginning of WW3.

<comment><USER74> Granting long interviews is fundamentally different from access to briefings.

<comment><USER56> agreed. being excluded from one is also different from being excluded from all.

there's also 6+ other news organizations in there -- not all trump friendly. I just don't see how CNN being excluded equates to the end of freedom of the press. The reach of those included is far greater than those explicitly excluded.

<comment><USER74> I don't think it's the end of freedom of the press, but it's a dangerous step towards it. The fact that other groups have more reach doesn't lessen the damage excluding a major news organization just because you don't like what they're reporting. If they're not reporting the truth that's one thing, but this isn't that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Maybe this will send a message to said media outlets to stop making crap up and traffic in real issues with some impartial professional journalism that used to occur in this country.

<comment><USER76> It is absolutely not the place of the president to "send a message" to the press.

<comment><USER77> Whose place is it?

<comment><USER76> The journals' audience and, more generally, the citizens of the country.

A huge pillar of the press in the US is that it keeps the president in check. You can't be the one regulating what keeps you in check. Have you ever heard the phrase "judge, jury and executioner"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Completely unacceptable!

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, the downvotes are rolling in.

<comment><USER78> Please don't do this. It breaks the HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13727131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13727131) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER24> Duly noted. Is there any way to report vote thrashing, or do you have tools to detect it?

<comment><USER78> If you think people are doing something abusive you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll look into it for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> > He has taken to blatantly and explicitly lying about simple verifiable > facts, and doubling down on those lies when challenged.

I'm not saying that's not true (I'm not a Trump supporter), but what sticks out to you as an instance of him doubling down on a lie?

Edit: It's disappointing to be down voted rather than being directly engaged. If you have a beef with what I said, please tell me where I've erred. I would love to change my mind on this topic. This is Hacker News after all, not Reddit.

<comment><USER80> Start here: [http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald- trump/stateme...](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald- trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/)

How about:

* Lying about his past opposition to the Iraq war

* Lying about Russia only hacking the DNC (they hacked the RNC too, or at least tried to, but didn't release anything)

* Lying about the size of the crowd at his inauguration

* Lying about his "historic" electoral win (it wasn't)

* Lying about the election being rigged against him (before the election)

* Lying about the state of African American communities

* Lying about inner-city crime rates

* Lying about Obama and Clinton literally "founding" ISIS

* Lying about Ted Cruz's father being involved in the JFK assassination

* Lying about his charitable donations and activities

* Lying about his inability to release his tax returns because of an ongoing IRS audit

* Lying about his association with David Duke and the white national movement

* Lying about his history and relationship with Vladimir Putin

That's just a taste. I could go on.

<comment><USER81> Shame on you. You don't like his politics, fine, but cut the propaganda.

> Lying about his past support for the Iraq war

Go watch his Howard Stern interview yourself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OU_Vrb_QXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OU_Vrb_QXo). Listen at how indecisive he is for that question compared to the rest of the interview. It's wishy washy. It's hesitant. It's not a statement of support to call someone a liar over, unless you have an agenda.

<comment><USER80> "I was totally against the war in Iraq." — Donald Trump on NBC News in 2016[0]

That's a lie, and one he's repeated often. Wishy-washy, hesitant support for a thing is not the same as being totally against a thing. His assertion that he was in opposition to it from the very beginning is a deliberate, egregious misrepresentation of his past views intended to convey authority on a subject that he simply does not possess.

I'll update the wording of my initial point to be more clear, since you have my original wording quoted here for posterity.

0\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/wp/2016/09/07/th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/wp/2016/09/07/the-first-hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-showdown- of-2016-annotated/)

<comment><USER81> "Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have. - Trump in Esquire 2004

<comment><USER80> Sure. A lot of people were against it after it started, especially when it began to go south. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about statements like this:

"[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on 8-Sep-2016[0]

Considering that the vote was on 11-Oct-2002, and we have audio of Trump expressing hesitant, wishy-washy support for the war on 11-Sep-2002, that is almost certainly not true.

0\. [https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-10/ap-...](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-10/ap- fact-check-trumps-false-claim-of-opposing-the-iraq-war)

<comment><USER81> You're trying to put his statement into a different context now. I thought we were talking about him saying that he was totally against the war in Iraq, which he was. So we agree that wasn't a lie.

> "[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a > vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on September 8th, > 2016[0]

You can't disprove a hypothetical situation that never happened to call him a liar. Who knows what he would have done if he had been in congress instead of a businessman. It's clear though he was questioning it publicly as early as 2003 in the Cavuto interview, which was before the war started, and came out totally against it publicly in 2004 less than a year after it started. Who knows what he was saying privately before that. You don't know. This isn't grounds to call him a liar.

<comment><USER82> Being against the war after it started is utterly irrelevant.

If you remove that from your defense of him, there is nothing left.

He was weakly in support of the war before it started. That is a fact.

When he says he was against the way, he says it to differentiate himself from the people who voted for it.

When he does that, he is lying.

There is no evidence whatever to support any other conclusion. Anything that comes from after the war was in progress is of no relevance.

<comment><USER81> This is actually a great example of how modern day propaganda works. One tactic to discredit someone is to combine two true statements by them that look similar to create a false statement. Case in point:

Claim 1: Trump says he was against the war before it started. In the Cavuto interview he's questioning the war, and he says he used to argue with Sean Hannity about it. Sean Hannity backed this up. There's no reason to doubt this.

Claim 2: Trump says he's different from his opponents because he came out strongly against the war before anyone else did. That's a fact and there's plenty of evidence.

Then comes the spin. The media will mix the two statements together to say Trump said he came out strongly against the war _before_ it started. They'll use this to call him a liar. Try to find me one example of him saying he came out strongly against the war before it started. You can't, because he never did.

This is why people don't trust the media.

<comment><USER82> Nope.

Claiming he was against the war, _after it started_ is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how many times you act as though it is.

One person saying they had a private argument with him before the war is also irrelevant. How many other people had private arguments but didn't express these reservations publicly?

If Trump was against the war before it started and had been brave enough to say so there would be evidence.

There is not. You can support Trump without having to be his propaganda ministry. The man makes false statements.

<comment><USER81> When did Hillary come out against the war?

<comment><USER82> Irrelevant.

Hillary has nothing to do with Trump's lies. And no failure of hers excuses him of anything.

It looks like you can't defend him anymore.

<comment><USER81> Seems my point flew over your head again. You keep calling things irrelevant that you don't like. I'm done.

<comment><USER82> No - you tried to make this about Hilary - when it isn't - it's just about Trump lying.

If you seriously don't see Trump lying, it probably is better for you to bow out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I just can't get worked up about this. Had these "news" organizations been doing their jobs I might be more concerned. As it stands this is just elevating one group of propaganda orgs over others.

The difference between what Trump has done here and what prior administrations did is the publicity and brazen transparency around it. I find it amusing that people think this is somehow a terrible, ominous event. This is a trifling thing compared to the egregious ethical violations and corruption, especially around information dissemination through the press, that has existed in this institution for decades.

The most interesting and concerning thing about it is the apparent weight given to these briefings. Except in very rare circumstances (e.g. killing of OBL, some attack like 9/11), these things are basically just PR displays by the administration. They serve no _newsworthy_ purpose.

<comment><USER84> what job are they not doing?

<comment><USER83> They have only just started being critical of an administration. Prior to Trump they basically played the "access" game: they would eschew doing genuinely tough journalistic investigation in exchange for having access to high profile politicians in interviews and other situations. This isn't a liberal or conservative thing (I'm far to the left of this country's mainstream). Even the stuff they're going after Trump for is shallow obvious things, mainly because of the shallow obvious ways that Trump lies and otherwise acts poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Ya, well the press's treatment of Trump has been a bit one sided. And well out of proportion to his actual comments and deeds.

You might not like Trump, and you might have good reasons but the above is true all the same. And, he is sitting president of the USA right now, irrespective of how you feel about him, his platforms and his supporters.

The amount of vitriol involving Trump is ridiculous. It really is. I'm not saying Trump has good manners (because he doesn't) but the press hasn't been many steps behind in utter nastiness. And they have, in most cases, stopped even pretending to be objective. It's gotten where I can't even watch or read the news anymore. It's just irrational nastiness from one side or the other with zero nuance.

I don't know where this all ends if we stay on the trajectory. Gang warfare and cutting off heads maybe. Seems the veneer of civilization indeed might be pretty thin. Maybe we might have to relearn the hard way about the things we take for granted in the social order.

<comment><USER86> > It's just irrational nastiness

Can you point out any significant press coverage of Trump's nastiness that qualifies as "irrational"?

If the press reports on Trump's nastiness, does that make the press nasty?

<comment><USER85> "Can you point out any significant press coverage of Trump's nastiness that qualifies as "irrational"?"

Sure but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER86> Seems like substantiating your allegation would increase the likelihood of being taken seriously -- or proven wrong, of course, which is what I'll assume you are as long as you are unwilling to prove it.

 _" As appealing as it might be for some people to believe your comment it doesn't pass the basic sniff test."_

\- mythrwy, 13 days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620408)

<comment><USER85> Thanks for going back through my old comments. I love it when people take me seriously enough to investigate.

You aren't going to be able to "prove me wrong" because what we are talking about here is largely a matter of nuance and opinion. Or manifest and obvious fact if you'd rather see it like that. I know what facts I see. Feel free to register your disagreement.

<comment><USER34> Look everyone understands Trump hates newspapers that call him out on his lies which is why he banned them, it is pretty straightforward.

Hence that whole Flynn thing. Or did Trump fire a guy over a fake story?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Designing for the Ideal - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtraction.com/2013/04/11/designing-for-the-ideal

<comment><AUTHOR> As the submitter of this article, I should stay on-topic, but as an aside — I find it fascinating that this article shows screen shots of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome's new-tab pages with a "grid of favorite sites" interface, and _not_ Opera's, even though Opera _invented_ this interface (as "Speed Dial").

I'm not sure if there is a deeper lesson in this observation than the obvious one about market share yielding mindshare or the truth that good design can make an impact even if it doesn't lead to "success" for the innovating party (in this case, Opera).

Opera's implementation is worth looking at for a comparison. Unlike Chrome, Opera allows you to manually set and order pages in Speed Dial. (Less of an echo chamber and more of a designed starting place.) It also literally lets you use numbers on your keyboard to navigate to your favorite sites.</comment>


The Dark Art of Interrogation (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/302791/?resubmit=hn&single_page=true <comment><USER2> The article is dated back to October 2003 it would have been nice to mention it in the title.

And it's basically an apology for torture (as long as it's done by the "good" guys).

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant to, but forgot it, I'm afraid.</comment></comment>


Rust 0.5 released - <AUTHOR> https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2012-December/002787.html <comment><USER2> 0.5 was a rather smaller release than previous ones, due to Niko being distracted by RiverTrail[1] and ParallelJS[2] and Graydon being distracted by setting up the new Buildbot infrastructure as well as relicensing the compiler.[3] There have been some big changes (most for the better, IMO), but there's still a rather lot of half-finished things floating around. All the same caveats of past releases apply: work in progress; use at your own risk; the language _will_ continue to change; code that you write now _will_ break in subsequent releases.

0.6 should be a rather exciting cycle though. I'm hopeful that a lot of the semantic cleanup will be more-or-less complete. Also, they're getting a new but temporary full-time developer in the form of John Clements,[4] who's taking a sabbatical from his university position to work on Rust.

[1] <https://github.com/RiverTrail/RiverTrail/wiki>

[2] [http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2012/12/05/self...](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2012/12/05/self- hosted-parallel-js/)

[3] <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.rust.devel/2593>

[4] <http://www.brinckerhoff.org/clements/>

<comment><USER3> "code that you write now will break in subsequent releases."

It's not that bad; we're trying to be mostly backwards compatible from here on out. I was hoping that 0.5 would be the backwards-compatible release; it's not, mostly due to the name resolution changes that still aren't done, but it's close. It should not be much work to upgrade your code from 0.5 to 0.6, much less than 0.3 to 0.4 or 0.4 to 0.5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've really become quite a Rust fanboy, although I haven't written tons of code in it.

IMO, it's considerably more accessible than Haskell or a ML-family. I'm not precisely sure why, but it seems to "make sense" in a very straightforward way. Some of it I think is lessons-learned from older languages, some of it might be the syntax, some of it just might be mental fit.

Certainly - and this is a _huge_ deal - I could realistically see using Rust in an enterprise scenario where we don't null pointer exceptions but we do want type safety yet we don't want to buy into Java or go full functional programmer with Haskell. Of course that's a few years out, _but_ , but but! That's cool!

I look forward to using this latest version and working away on writing Rust at home. :-)

<comment><USER5> > I've really become quite a Rust fanboy, although I haven't written tons of > code in it.

As someone who's been meaning to try it out for a while, I have a couple of questions for you.

First, how did you get started? I found the tutorial decent, but after reading through it, I didn't feel like I could quite jump in and start writing code. By contrast, I never actually read the Go spec/tutorials; I did a brief run through the sample web application and was able to write everything else right away (filling in from the documentation as needed, of course).

Second, how did you come to understand the memory model? I consider myself more familiar in both functional programming and memory management than average, but I found the memory model to be a bit of a conceptual hurdle (even though I'm attracted to the approach on a philosophical level). Having such a unique memory model makes it a little tough to simply get started writing code right away.

Finally, how do you find the libraries in different areas? Web applications? Scientific computation? This isn't really an across-the-board question, since certain areas will probably be more complete than others, but what kind of applications are currently easiest to write in Rust when getting started?

 __EDIT __: I understand they're different languages with different goals, but I'm comparing everything to Go just because they're both emerging languages that I started to try to pick up around the same time. I found Go much easier to get going with (no pun intended), but I'm looking to catch up with Rust as well.

<comment><USER4> \- I don't have a good answer for you about how I started, I just got the compiler running and started writing code. A BST, as it so happened.

\- I don't claim to understand the memory model entirely, but I think I have a grasp on it. This is due to my knowing C++ and having a grasp of the lambda calculus.

WRT libraries, it's not a mature language. It's not going to have the tens of thousands of libraries like Perl. I would recommend writing applications that fall into a functional programming/low level area, but that's just me. There's Servo, a research web browser.

Finally, I don't recommend comparing Rust with Go. Two languages and two different design goals. A better compare would be with D or OCaml.

<comment><USER6> How is D or OCaml more Rust-like than Go? Can you explain?

<comment><USER4> Rust is basically ML + C's lovechild. Sophisticated type inference, mostly pure variables, pattern matching lambda functions, a few other FP goodies. But it's also a fairly clean imperative language if you care to use it like that. Generics, mutable variables, {}; syntax, pointers, etc. Also, more fundamentally, I see D, OCaml, and Rust as occupying a "let's be clean" kind of space.

I see Go as occupying a "let's be scruffy" space; not really pushing the language state of the art, focused on industrial work; it's like a type-safer & compiled python, afaict. It doesn't really strive to push the state of the art, it seeks to solidify certain well-known taken ground in programming language design, and to be really focused on that.

I'm not going to apply a "better" metric, I don't think that's appropriate because they are occupying different areas in the design space with different goals. If they were posed as straight-up competitors, then it'd be appropriate to measure them against each other.

<comment><USER6> I'll have to check Rust then, seems interesting. Although I see Go as a clean language: A "better" C and D as a "cleaner C++".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd hoped that rust would have a lot of powerful tools for typing and exposing invariants and contracts— tools to help create provably reliable software. As sexy as new programming tools are, the big problem in software today is that we simply can't manage the complexity of it and as a result _everything_ is full of bugs and unintended behavior. Addon layers like ACSL are hard to use and messy because they work at odds with the language, instead, e.g. of being integrated with the typesystem.

I was hopeful that rust could really advance the art here in the context of practically usable systems (vs academic toys) and I suppose it does, but it also lost features for formal analysis between versions and as its now becoming stable I suppose they won't return.

<comment><USER3> I assume you're referring to typestate. One of the reasons that typestate was removed is that practically everything you can do with typestate can be done with session types instead. Constraints can be modeled as unique types with a trusted transition function from state to state. The unique type system used for memory management in Rust nicely doubles as a session type system. This is actually done today with the pipes compiler—it uses unique types to statically ensure that you can't violate a communications protocol, just as typestate can.

One of our focuses for 1.0 is on aggressively pruning features that overlap, to reduce language complexity and to avoid committing ourselves to language features we might not need. However, future versions of the language might add more static analyses as they prove useful.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any code examples of where this is used that I can look at?

Like nullc my interest is in the area of types being used to enforce contracts and safetly (hence my interest in the ATS language).

Typesafe was my initial interest in Rust and I'd love to see examples of how this is being approached in Rust as it is now.

<comment><USER3> Probably the best place to look at the moment is this presentation: [https://air.mozilla.org/intern-presentation-message- passing-...](https://air.mozilla.org/intern-presentation-message-passing-in- rust/)

<comment><USER7> Perhaps I missed where it was explained— but I don't see how rust enforces the type predicates (e.g. acquire vs wait state) there without typestate.

<comment><USER3> Say I have a protocol that transitions from A -> B -> C. Since the pipes compiler creates the only constructor for type B, there's no way for you to construct a value of type B (in the safe language) without giving up your one value of type A. The uniqueness typing system prevents you from copying your single value of A, and you must surrender all your references to it at the time you transition to state B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a little rusty but I did read the 0.4 docs before and gave the language a try, I'll dive into 0.5 again this weekend, I am a little confused by something however. What's going on with strings? When I last looked, a lot of the string operations worked with a specific pointer sigil[1]. If I'm using managed boxes, and the methods take and return unique boxes, is it because I'm using the wrong sigil for the job or should I expect to be able to use managed strings?

Is this just me misunderstanding the memory model or is this something that just hasn't been straightened our yet? I'm pretty confused about this in particular, as I thought I understood the point of the different sigils pretty well, but the way the library is written makes me wonder. This applies to things other than strings I guess, but strings seem like a good example.

[1]: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libcore/str....](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libcore/str.rs#L197)

<comment><USER10> It's not your misunderstanding, there is just very little library suport for managed vectors (and strings). For quite a while managed vectors did not exist, so owned vectors are everywhere.

The semantics of managed vectors and owned vectors are quite different and unifying the library code so that managed vectors are more accessible will be a challenge. It is a widely-felt problem though and some folks have ideas for solutions.

For now, it is best to use owned vectors, but there are two modules, `core::at_vec` and `core::at_str` that can help you if you need them.

<comment><USER9> Ah ok, brilliant. This was my main reason for not trying to play with Rust a little more. I thought it was something I just didn't understand. Just out of interest, is there anywhere I can have a look to see what kind of solutions have been suggested?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think once rust stabilizes a little more, its going to be a excellent language. The real big thing is going to be stand alone rust programs. I know they have two tickets open ,but I would love to be able to write rust programs that don't require the core library to run.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yay, item macros. Means top-level elements can now dynamically created. Also another big change is "auto-move" where you don't have to write move everywhere.

Also the repl is nice. I think having this and having Rust bootstrapped give it a leg up on Go.

<comment><USER13> I was not aware Rust had macros. Does that mean one can write lispy things like the "with-*" macros ?

Sorry, I'm afraid I'm confessing my affair with Emacs but I swore I'd leave her behind...

<comment><USER2> Rust's macros are generally Scheme-like (macro-by-example), although it's not exactly the same since Rust obviously doesn't use S-expressions. See <http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/0.5/tutorial-macros.html> for a little more info on Rust's macros system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you still need to compile all of LLVM? I tried to install Rust a few days ago and came back to my computer using gigabytes of swap space, which I assume is due to LLVM.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, for the moment it still uses a custom LLVM, so the first compile is still a pain (though LLVM does build in parallel really well with -j8). I really hope that the Rust devs make it a priority to upstream their LLVM customizations, especially if they hope to be pegged to a stable LLVM release by Rust 1.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the intended audience for this language?

"[Rust] supports a mixture of imperative procedural, concurrent actor, object- oriented and pure functional styles. Rust also supports generic programming and metaprogramming, in both static and dynamic styles."

IMO, Rust tries too much (norrowed pointers, managed boxes, owned closures, ...). I am convinced that the language(s) of the future will be simple and safe.

<comment><USER16> If I understand correctly, they are aiming at things that usualy get built with C++ nowadays. Its hard to get a sinple and elegant language here because a big part of the appeal is having very tight control over memory layout, execution order, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Really glad to see the REPL!

<comment><USER18> I wonder whether anyone here knows how it is meant to work.

All my inputs fail with the following message:

> rust: task failed at 'no mode for lval', > /home/tyl/files/cloud/rust/rust-0.5/src/librustc/middle/liveness.rs:1573

<comment><USER3> Just fixed this. I'll see if we can push out a Rust 0.5.1.

<comment><USER18> Yay! Thanks ☺

This can, incidentally, be a great start for a tool like Why the Lucky Stiff's "Try Ruby in Your Browser" [1].

s/Ruby/Rust/

      [1]: http://tryruby.org

<comment><USER2> Incidentally to your incidentalism, I'm looking forward to the day when we can run Rust directly in a browser via Emscripten:

<https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/2235>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How is rust compared to Go?

<comment><USER20> I love both. If you are writing a production app today, I would strongly recommend Go. However, if you want to write an app that you want to take over the world with in a year or so, I would strongly recommend coding it in Rust.

Go is a beautifully minimal language and very easy to learn. Rust isn't quite as productive, but it won't be too foreign for most coders either — unlike the Erlangs and Haskells of this world. And whilst I've never missed generics in Go, I've already found them useful in Rust.

Rust's memory model takes a bit of time to understand, but it provides a lot more power and flexibility than Go is ever likely to. To get the same kind of fine-grained memory management in Go, you have to manually allocate and manage []byte slices. Not only does this get tedious, but you end up losing most of the benefits of static typing as well.

Rust is also exciting due to the lower-level nature of tasks (the unit of concurrency in Rust). Goroutines are awesome, but you are at the mercy of Go's runtime/scheduler. In Rust, the potential is there to even do interesting things like dynamically load new tasks at runtime — opening up possibilities like Erlang's hot swapping so that code can be changed without ever stopping the system.

However, despite the awesomeness of the language, Rust suffers from a terrible standard library at the moment. Even when Go was first released in 2009, it had a really impressive standard library. And, today, thanks to having superstar hackers like agl and bradfitz on its team, Go has some of the highest quality libraries around — especially in crypto, networking, http, etc. In comparison, Rust's standard library is rather poor with little attention having been paid to API design.

Rust also suffers in comparison to Go with regards tooling support. The 'go' command-line tool is awesome. I've not had a single dispute over style guides due to 'go fmt' and 'go doc'. The 'go fix' command really helped in auto- updating my Go code as the language evolved. The 'go build' tool saves me from having to write build scripts and Makefiles. And Go's (non-existent) package management system is absolutely brilliant — just 'go get github.com/user/repo'!

But, neither problems — quality of the standard library or tooling — are intractable in Rust. In fact, now that the language is starting to stabilise, I am highly confident that a lot of love and attention will be given to both of those issues. This is also an area where we, the community, can also help out a lot. Myself, I've slowly started working on a port of the 'go' tool called rusty:

* <https://github.com/tav/rusty>

And, having found the Rust developer community to be extremely friendly on #rust on irc.mozilla.org, I'm pretty sure they would be happy to have other interesting hackers join in too!

<comment><USER21> Go has a great standard library in terms of breadth. The quality of the standard library varies between packages though.

I wouldn't say they're higher quality than comparable Scala/Java libraries, but I guess that's subjective.

Still love Go though, but really looking forward to a production ready Rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have you stopped using git tags for releases? (I haven't updated the repo in quite a while, and `git tag` gives me all releases up to 0.3.)

<comment><USER22> Github still seems to show tags on the releases: <https://github.com/mozilla/rust/tags>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Huge congrats guys! I admit I'm still trying to figure out the nuances, but I really like a lot of the ideas in the language. :)

</comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Where can I find binaries for 32-bit Ubuntu 12.10? Or a VM image? Will the Windows binary work in Wine?

<comment><USER24> You can grab 64-bit linux binaries compiled on Debian from <http://mcpherrin.ca/code/mozilla/rust-0.5-binary.tar.bz2>

I don't know if that's helpful for you. I'll look into packaging stuff too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Critique my landing page, is it clear what I'm offering? - <AUTHOR> I've just soft-launched my MVP and desperately need some feedback.
https://zlappo.com
Is the messaging clear? Any part that you find confusing? <comment><USER2> The messaging was clear. I believe I have a good grasp of what your service does.

The look of the website suggests it's a paid service but I don't see pricing anywhere. It has a "get started free" call to action, but for all I know that means "free trial". If it's a free service, you should say so and explain how you're able to offer it for free; if it's (going to be?) paid, you should also say so even if you haven't decided on the exact pricing.

Since it's a tool for Twitter that will require access to one's account, why do we need to create yet another account to use your service? At the very least there should be the _option_ to register/login via Twitter oauth.

There's no information on the website if Javascript is disabled. The page is so simple, it could be just HTML and CSS.

The chat widget is annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks a lot for the feedback. I decided to hide pricing for now until the user signs up. Pricing then shows up. I agree it's a little cagey for now. Any reason to display pricing publicly?

As for creating a separate account, eventually the tool will evolve into something beyond just Twitter. Maybe Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, to become like Hootsuite.

The chat widget is just the fastest implementation of a "contact us" that I can implement on short notice.

Thanks for all your feedback, really appreciate it!

<comment><USER2> > I decided to hide pricing for now until the user signs up. Pricing then > shows up. (…) Any reason to display pricing publicly?

I'm not going to sign up and give you my email address without knowing if I'm willing to pay whatever you're asking for the service. By hiding your price, you're guaranteeing I'll never be a customer because I won't even take the first step.

> The chat widget is just the fastest implementation of a "contact us" that I > can implement on short notice.

An email form (or just an email address) is easier. Anecdotally, every comment I ever read on those chat widgets was negative.

<comment><AUTHOR> All right, I've added the pricing page. I'll probably add a native contact form too, just got to build it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pay $100.000 if you link to Saygent's website - <AUTHOR> Just stumbled across some TOS craziness on Saygent's website. Can't link to it directly because according to their TOS I would be liable to pay them $100.000 in damages.
Here is a workaround: - google Saygent (hope that Google got their permission) - visit their site and click on Legal at the bottom to open the TOS - check out the "HYPERLINKING TO SITE, CO-BRANDING, "FRAMING" AND REFERENCING SITE PROHIBITED" paragraph
C'mon guys, you're a SV startup, not Associated Press!!! <comment><USER2> Check out the following condition:

"In no case shall the viewer, visitor, member, subscriber or customer have the right to go to court or have a jury trial."

Just because you say I can't, doesn't make it so.

I do like that the fact that they haven't stated that if one part of the contract is made invalid then the rest of the contract that is enforcable will remain valid.

Whoever wrote up this legalese has missed something important, but included something ridiculous. Whoops!

 _P.S._ Oh, and I also like they have included most of an episode of Seinfeld above their legal policy. Copyright violation, anyone? The irony...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm Dane from Saygent. Thanks for catching this! We now have a fine calculator to help web goers better understand our fee/fine structure.

<http://saygent.com/fine_calculator>

<comment><USER4> The fiverr part was a joke, right?

<comment><USER3> No. Fiverr is a great service but it probably shouldn't be used for important things like TOS. #IANAL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone should make a javascript plugin to remove any results for sites with such terms from the search results Google and DuckDuckGo provide. That way we can be safe from finding these sites and mistakingly linking to one of them :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://saygent.com/> \- sue me.

<comment><USER7> funny. I just made a submission doing exactly what you did :) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4120492>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read the title as $100.00 because it had a decimal and I'm American.

Looking at the TOS it appears to be $100,000.00 which is quite a bit bigger than I thought from the headline.

<comment><USER9> Yay, you're American. Most of the world isn't.

<comment><USER10> You know, it's not just Americans who use dots for decimal points. New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, and a whole lot of other countries use that format too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> olog-hai It's not just Saygent.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22no+one+may+hyperlink+this+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22no+one+may+hyperlink+this+site%22)

And it's not a recent phenomenon.

<http://boingboing.net/2007/02/01/fruitbat-grounded-be.html>

<comment><USER11> It seems to be some cookie cutter legal template: [https://www.google.nl/search?q=%22Unless%20expressly%20autho...](https://www.google.nl/search?q=%22Unless%20expressly%20authorized%20by%20website,%20no%20one%20may%20hyperlink%20this%20site,%20or%20portions%20thereof,%20\(including,%20but%20not%20limited%20to,%20logotypes,%20trademarks,%20branding%20or%20copyrighted%20material\)%20to%20theirs%20for%20any%20reason.%20Further,%20you%20are%20not%20allowed%20to%20reference%20the%20URL%20\(website%20address\)%20of%20this%20website%20in%20any%20commercial%20or%20non- commercial%20media%20without%20express%20permission,%20nor%20are%20you%20allowed%20to%20frame%20the%20site.%20You%20specifically%20agree%20to%20cooperate%20with%20the%20Website%20to%20remove%20or%20de- activate%20any%20such%20activities%20and%20be%20liable%20for%20all%20damages.%20You%20hereby%20agree%20to%20liquidated%20damages%20of%20US$100,000.00%20plus%20costs%20and%20actual%20damages%20for%20violating%20this%20provision.%22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even more fun: [https://www.google.com/?q=link:www.saygent.com#hl=en&out...](https://www.google.com/?q=link:www.saygent.com#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy- ab&q=link:www.saygent.com&oq=link:www.saygent.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=hp.3...0.0.0.35220.127.116.11.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0.dF681jkLwCU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=fb4c575ddcccef5a&biw=1220&bih=903)

(It seems to have gotten harder to link to Google results pages. I tried to cut it down but kept getting a link to the main search page with my query filled in.)

<comment><USER13> I ran into that problem a few weeks ago. After a fair amount of tinkering, I found that this:

        https://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.saygent.com

Works the way you want it to. You just need to add search before the `?` and you should be good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you view my webpage, you are required to mail me 20 BLTs and a pony, and to invoke the sun-god Ra successfully, bringing fertility to the Nile.

This is not subject to arbitration by the courts of human law.

</comment><comment><USER15> Even assuming that this kind of TOS is valid, the damages clause is not likely to hold in court. For a clause like that to be valid, it must (1) be a reasonable estimate of the likely actual damages for violating the contract, and (2) actual damages must be difficult to determine so that agreeing to a fixed amount in the contact will save significant effort at trial.

Neither of these applies here. It is hard to see how most links could cause anywhere near $100k in damages. Worst case would be a link that results in a DOS from heavy traffic, but the actual damages from that are not too hard to figure out--overage charges from their hosting company, plus costs of overtime for hourly employees who have to deal with the DOS, plus profits attributable to the business they normally would have gotten during the downtime.

</comment><comment><USER16> Saygent has responded and there's a new discussion thread at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4121750>.

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe I haven't had my coffee yet, but why wouldn't they want people to link to their site? That's the point of the Web.

<comment><USER18> inverse psychology? I don't know...

<comment><USER19> While it could be reverse psychology to troll HNers to linking their site, it's also bad publicity among hackers, and the argument breaks Occam's razor.

<comment><USER20> I believe Hanlon's razor more closely explains this site's actions.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why any one would do put any restriction on linking to their site.

I can understand banning linking to certain sites _from_ their site, but the other direction? It's a bit like paying for billboards and painting them and then covering them up.

Can anyone explain why _any_ party would think it is a good idea to have policies that will reduce the possibility of news sites/random blogs/whatever linking to them and so reduce their page views?

(And thinking that they can get people to pay for the "privilege" of directing possible customers their way?)

<comment><USER22> If you get a spammy link farm to link to a website, Google will drop their rankings. So, some people do this to their competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just use bit.ly and let them deal with it.

Not that I believe for a minute that this would ever hold up in court. And how many people would go read the TOS before posting about the site if they found it interesting. I was on their site for about 30 seconds and didn't find it at all interesting (sorry).

Next addition to the TOS will prohibit standing next to their company's sign and pointing to it with your index finger.

</comment><comment><USER23> it is legal to say

"BY VIEWING, VISITING, USING, OR INTERACTING WITH WWW.SAYGENT.COM OR WITH ANY BANNER, POP-UP, OR ADVERTISING THAT APPEARS ON IT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO ALL THE PROVISIONS OF THIS TERMS OF USE POLICY AND THE PRIVACY POLICY OF WWW.SAYGENT.COM."

am i forced to search for the tos every time i use a website or they must get my acceptance to the terms before viewing the site?

<comment><USER24> Website terms are routinely held to be enforceable even if you never clicked the link to read them, IF:

1) There has been constructive notice that terms exist. If the only link to them is buried in a footer you never have to scroll to, then you can argue there was no such notice. That's why so many forms have the "by purchasing you agree to our terms" type text in the form; if you're filling out the form you can't argue you never saw the link.

2) The terms are reasonable.

For example: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/browserwrapped- te...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/01/browserwrapped-terms-of-use- still-enforceable-says-court/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is slightly off topic, but did anyone else have a completely different idea of what they thought this company did based on their name? Never-the- less, it's an interesting concept.

With in regardless to their TOS, I would imagine it's best to do as they wish, and give them no further press by linking to their homepage.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure where to file this: Viral add campaign for Saygent or bored lawyers writing a TOS.

In either case, Saygent just won... oh I'll show YOU Saygent, I hope you like being on the front page of EVERYWHERE!

</comment><comment><USER27> There is no "I agree" button, no way to indicate consent. A reasonable person linking to the site might not even notice that these terms were in place, so they can't be binding.

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks like it was removed, because I can't find it.

They still have something in there about damages for $100k, but that pertains to "using" the content of the site.

</comment><comment><USER29> In a similar vein, I've heard of people claiming to charge per spam email received, is there any precedent of someone successfully claiming there?

</comment><comment><USER30> This is clearly to give them a defense against their competitors link farming them to SEO oblivion. But it seems so arrogant.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they removed the controversial paragraph from their TOS. Great to see the common sense prevail.

</comment><comment><USER31> I guess they haven't thought of dying of oblivion if no one is allowed (freely) to link to their site.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn I haven't heard of this company before. Is this exceptionally out of character for them?

</comment><comment><USER32> i am going to add "please go hyperlink this site" to my startup's terms

</comment><comment><USER33> GOOGLE is linking to Saygent's website...

so Saygent is going to sue google???

<comment><USER24> That's not how contracts work; just because you CAN sue someone doesn't mean you MUST. Nor does not enforcing against one party mean they can't against another.</comment></comment>


Dynamic Everything Else - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/182.html <comment><USER2> Hmm, I regularly used things like code injection and/or edit and continue in Visual Studio to dynamically change the UI code. There were limits, but it worked great for doing things like incrementally changing the positions of elements, turning on/off OpenGL states, and the like. If you made enough changes in a single run it would eventually give up and force you to recompile, but by and large it was pretty seamless. It was great for things that did not require reasoned thought, but required experimentation (what does OpenGL do if I set X to Y). All my work these days is algorithmic, so I am not entirely sure what state of the art is, but it couldn't have gotten worse, could it?

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the sentiment. The swing over to statically typed high- performance languages have come at the expense of being able to experiment and play with a system.

<comment><USER4> And the "high-performance" only really matters in inner loops. There's no reason why a programming language/development platform can't offer the best of both worlds: the ability to write fast code where it matters (perhaps using type hints, etc.) and the ability to modify and redefine things at runtime. As long as you don't use those "dynamic" features in your inner loops, you are fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see Objective-Smalltalk become reality: [http://objective.st/](http://objective.st/)</comment>


Exploring Performance of Etcd, Zookeeper and Consul Key-value stores (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/performance-of-etcd.html <comment><AUTHOR> In performance terms, etcd seems better than Zookeeper and Consul pretty much across the board - is anyone aware of more recent benchmarks?

 _Edit_

I found similar benchmarks from 2018:

[https://github.com/etcd-io/dbtester/tree/master/test- results...](https://github.com/etcd-io/dbtester/tree/master/test- results/2018Q1-02-etcd-zookeeper-consul)</comment>


US gov't taps the Machine to beat China to exascale supercomputing - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/us-doe-the-machine-exascale-supercomputer/ <comment><USER2> > HPE says it has developed software tools that can actually use this huge > pool of memory, to derive intelligence or scientific insight from huge data > sets—every post on Facebook; the entirety of the Web; the health data of > every human on Earth; that kind of thing. Check out this quote from CTO Mark > Potter, who apparently thinks HPE's tech can save humankind: "We believe > Memory-Driven Computing is the solution to move the technology industry > forward in a way that can enable advancements across all aspects of society.

This could be a leap forward for humanity, or it could result in 1984. More likely, the memristor will remain for a while where it always has - in the lab.</comment>