Monsanto ordered to pay $289M damages in Roundup cancer trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45152546 <comment><USER3> They are running a big campaign in favour of glyphosate in Reddit. in Argentina at least. Subreddit admins have cobtacted Reddit to suspend the campaign because of false claims going against the rules.

The campaign also tricks people because they post links to popular media sites. There is more information about this (in Spanish) here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/argentina/comments/95m863/followup_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/argentina/comments/95m863/followup_sobre_contenido_promocionado_en/)

<comment><USER4> They've been running a campaign on reddit for years. They've even had a subreddit where they coordinated, though I can't recall the name. They scan every subreddit for posts about Monsanto, glyphosate, or GMOs, and attack anyone who posts negatively about them. It was always the same people.

Edit: found the subreddit, though it doesn't appear to be as active as it used to be: [https://www.reddit.com/r/GMOFacts/](https://www.reddit.com/r/GMOFacts/)

<comment><USER5> That subreddit appears to be about genetically modified organisms, not glyphosate or other chemicals.

<comment><USER4> Glyphosate and GMOs are very intertwined. Just look at the second story on that subreddit. Monsanto sells GMO modified organisms that are glyphosate resistant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A useful thing to know about this case is that the plaintiff took pains not to base their case on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, but rather of Roundup, which is less than half glyphosate. During their opening statement, any time they referenced a study about about glyphosate, they'd say "but remember that study only looked at glyphosate, not Roundup, and as we all know, more than half of Roundup is other stuff".

They seemed particularly interested in promoting a theory that the surfectant POEA had something to do with the illness.

<comment><USER7> I followed that argument a bit, and what I found was a Seralini study ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756058/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756058/)). He is known for some really bad studies about GMOs, those were simply terrible science and he obviously has an axe to grind.

The POEA experiments in that paper were about exposing cell cultures to different roundup compositions and components. It is not surprising that POEA kills the cells in this kind of experiment as it is a kind of detergent. Human cell cultures have no defense against having their cell membranes disrupted by detergents. Real humans are not cell cultures and can't be easily killed that mechanism. We have skin and other barriers like mucous membranes that protect the cells.

I didn't look much further, but seeing that paper as the first result does make me very skeptical about the idea.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused, are you arguing that cellular changes cannot impact a larger organism because they have too many cells?

<comment><USER9> That's not how I'd interpret this sentence: "We have skin and other barriers that protect the cells." It sounds to me like the author claims that humans have skin, which is true, and that skin forms a barrier that protects internal cells, which is extremely plausible.

<comment><USER10> That's a literal interpretation. A contextual interpretation implies that Roundup cannot cause harm through the observed means because it cannot clear the skin, the latter of which is patently false.

<comment><USER11> No. The contextual interpretation says that the above-mentioned study doesn't prove Roundup is harmful because the same results would be observed with any detergent, to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.

Therefore, Roundup might or might not be harmful, but the study doesn't tell us much about it.

<comment><USER10> > to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.

Right, because _we 're instructed not to consume detergents._ Following this instruction keeps the detergents outside the body.

We _are_ instructed to consume food grown with herbicides such as Roundup, and Roundup is often (if not always) delivered in a sprayed manner with significant aerosolization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Mr Johnson's lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury's verdict showed that the > evidence against the product was "overwhelming".

Uhhh to say that is quite the stretch, a jury of layman should judge the scientific consensus? The referenced International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report is anything but conclusive. That verdict speaks more to the widespread uninformed FUD against GMO.

[https://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/iarcnews/2016/glyphosate...](https://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/iarcnews/2016/glyphosate_IARC2016.php)

<comment><USER13> > the scientific consensus

Uhh. You mean the lack of consensus. Which is bought and paid for by Monsanto. When it comes to their own products, they outspend any independent studies by orders of magnitude in order to create enough noise for there to be a lack of consensus long enough to make a profit. It's straight out of the tobacco industry playbook.

<comment><USER14> Not sure if it causes cancer or not, but this is like a security hole in the scientific process (ie mostly only the company that produces X will fund studies of X). It's interesting to think security holes more generally - <USER2> Szabo got me thinking along these lines with his recent pinned tweet: "Giant companies are the security holes of capitalism. The more centralized industries get, the more they attract socialist political activists. The Bolshevik Revolution was a violent version of this vs. railroad stations, newspapers, etc. Now activism is focused on tech giants."

<comment><USER15> That's one way to look at it. Big companies attract activists and so are a risk for capitalism.

Another way would be that big companies do the most damage to the most people's lives, and are a risk for humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Whether the guilty verdict is ultimately upheld will probably be decided in a higher court. But this company sure has a dubious track record with previous hazardous substances that were in their product line:

> The company once manufactured controversial products such as the insecticide > DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange and recombinant bovine growth hormone.

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

<comment><USER8> A toxic company

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here are transcripts and documents from the case as its progressed of anyone is interested in how the jury was convinced: [https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto- round...](https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup- lawsuit/dewayne-johnson-v-monsanto-company/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting that this happens after Monsanto has been acquired by an EU company. How long have cases like this one been dismissed?

Are there any examples of US court rulings against big American companies with comparable foreign competitors? I mean, rulings affecting only the American company? (putting it at a disadvantage)

The US is becoming a risky market for foreign enterprises, since it has become extremely politicized, like so many corrupt countries around the world.

<comment><USER19> Last year, a jury in California issued an even larger $417-million verdict for a woman with ovarian cancer. Against Johnson & Johnson, an American pharma company. It was about talcum products, that is baby powder.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_%26_Johnson#Baby_powde...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_%26_Johnson#Baby_powder)

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cancer-talc- verd...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cancer-talc- verdict-20170821-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My mom is another one of these stories. I wish I was exaggerating. I bet there's still Round-up in the her garage. I've spent the last 4 years or my life have been devoted to working so I can afford her treatments and keep her around and happy.

Does anyone have any environmental attorneys they've worked with in the past they can recommend?

<comment><USER21> How do you know Round Up caused her cancer?

<comment><USER22> post hoc ergo propter hoc

Background frequency of cancer? Background frequency of owning the most popular weed killer? Expected number of co-incidence?

<comment><USER21> How do you do that on an individual level?

Even people who smoke that get cancer don't know whether it was the smoking or not. Plenty of people who don't smoke get lung cancer too.

I've never seen a cause of cancer determined beyond population analyses or someone having a specific gene where the rate of cancer development is near 100%.

Edit: I should also add extremely rare cancers where people have been exposed to a known causal agent. Like mesothelioma and asbestos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I vaguely remember watching an interview with an exec from Monsanto saying RoundUp was perfectly safe, safe enough to drink. Then immediately refusing to drink it when offered, because of course it's poison.

<comment><USER23> not defending monsanto here, but this particular argument is garbage. your urine is safe to drink - will you do it in front of me on camera right now?

<comment><USER24> For $289 million? ;)

<comment><USER25> I'm cheap, I'd probably do it for $10k (1/4oz)... If it's a recurring deal, I might even do it weekly for $5k each time...

<comment><USER26> I'm imagining you at a party in a smart dinner jacket holding some sort of cocktail.

"So, what do you do for a living?"

<comment><USER25> well, at least I don't work for Facebook or Google ;) /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For some reason discussions about Roundup and glyphosate tend to focus on their carcinogenic properties. However, if you search the scientific literature it appears a stronger case can be made against either based on their endocrine disruptive properties, which appear quite a bit scarier due to observed effects at very low concentrations (lower than regulatory limits).

Since I can't formulate it so succinctly myself and because it answers several questions raised in previous comments here's the abstract of the article "Mesnage, R, Defarge, N, Spiroux de Vendômois, J, Séralini, G.E, Potential toxic effects of glyphosate and its commercial formulations below regulatory limits, Food and Chemical Toxicology (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2015.08.012.", but you will find similarly unsettling abstracts in many articles about this subject.

Abstract Glyphosate-based herbicides (GlyBH), including Roundup, are the most widely used pesticides worldwide. Their uses have increased exponentially since their introduction on the market. Residue levels in food or water, as well as human exposures, are escalating. We have reviewed the toxic effects of GlyBH measured below regulatory limits by evaluating the published literature and regulatory reports. We reveal a coherent body of evidence indicating that GlyBH could be toxic below the regulatory lowest observed adverse effect level for chronic toxic effects. It includes teratogenic, tumorigenic and hepatorenal effects. They could be explained by endocrine disruption and oxidative stress, causing metabolic alterations, depending on dose and exposure time. Some effects were detected in the range of the recommended acceptable daily intake. Toxic effects of commercial formulations can also be explained by GlyBH adjuvants, which have their own toxicity, but also enhance glyphosate toxicity. These challenge the assumption of safety of GlyBH at the levels at which they contaminate food and the environment, albeit these levels may fall below regulatory thresholds. Neurodevelopmental, reproductive, and transgenerational effects of GlyBH must be revisited, since a growing body of knowledge suggests the predominance of endocrine disrupting mechanisms caused by environmentally relevant levels of exposure.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ugh. I was just about to spray weed killer on some spots in my backyard. :) The rain in the east this year has made it impossible to keep up with weeding!

<comment><USER29> Assuming you have a grass lawn, you wouldn't want to spray roundup on a yard regardless as it would kill your grass also and potentially any non weed plants as well. There are other herbicides that grasses can tolerate though. In any cases, whatever you use is probably not a cause for concern if you're following the label directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow. The lawyers have to be celebrating this one.

</comment><comment><USER31> Glyphosate and Roundup are poisons and Monsanto pretty much knows it. Let me give you a few facts and a bit of history to make my case.

There has been a lot of studies about Glyphosate nocivity around the years, but the three most significant are the ones led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The controversy began with a report published by the IARC, an intergovernmental agency under the authority of the WHO of the United Nations. According to this report, the carcinogenicity of Glyphosate is 'probable'.

This result was contradicted in November 2015 by a study published by the EFSA. In the face of uncertainty, many Member States refused to renew the authorization of Glyphosate, which was due to expire on 30 June 2016. Pending a new study, this time by the ECHA, the European Commission has only extended the product's registration until 15 December 2017.

This new study was published in March 2017. Like EFSA, it rejects the potential carcinogenicity of Glyphosate.

However, the potential dangerousness of Glyphosate is not ruled out. But why you asked, my good friend?

As many scientists, NGOs and politicians denounce, the IARC, EFSA and ECHA reports are not comparable. While the first one decides on marketed products, such as Roundup, the other two only study Glyphosate alone, without the adjuvants that reinforce its effects. Moreover, when IARC bases its analysis on public studies, EFSA and ECHA work mainly on data directly transmitted by industry, including Monsanto, which would make their conclusions questionable.

Yes, two of the most cited studies saying Glyphosate and Roundup are safe use data directly gave by Monsanto itself! And wait, there is more...

Christopher Portier, an American scientist, denounces those facts in an open letter sent on 29 May 2017 to Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and relayed by numerous media. "Both EFSA and ECHA have failed to identify all statistically significant cases of increased cancer incidence in rodent studies," he writes. He also states that, using Monsato own data, he has detected "eight cases of significant increase in the incidence of different tumors", which appear in neither of the two publications. Mr Portier therefore 'respectfully' asks EFSA and ECHA to 'conduct their own analysis' and 'amend their conclusions accordingly'. To base his results, the American researcher relied on data used and published by EFSA, which until now had remained confidential.

If you still do not believe that, at least, the precautionary principle should apply here and that both Roundup and Glyphosate should be banned, I don't know what you need.

Sources:

[https://www.touteleurope.eu/actualite/pourquoi-le- Glyphosate...](https://www.touteleurope.eu/actualite/pourquoi-le-Glyphosate- divise-l-europe.html)

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate)

</comment><comment><USER32> (Redacted)

<comment><USER6> That's Dow Forefront, not Roundup. They aren't the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good.

</comment><comment><USER34> that fine is far to cheap

<comment><USER25> not if they have to pay it to everyone who can link their cancer to a Monsanto/Bayer product

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> that fine is far to cheap.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm just happy an average Joe could set precedence for more lawsuits against a scumbag evil corporation that does more harm than good on this planet. About time!</comment>


Large stationary gravity wave in the atmosphere of Venus - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2873.html <comment><USER2> To be clear, this article is about gravity waves ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave)), or ripples at the interface of two media of different densities caused by gravity, such as waves on the ocean or ridges of clouds, not gravitational waves ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave)), the propagating ripples in spacetime.

<comment><USER3> Gravity waves aren't _caused_ by gravity, they are in the _direction_ of the gravitational force.

<comment><USER4> Sure they are. Some of the denser fluid is above the average level of the surface, and gravity pulls it back down again. That's what makes the wave.

<comment><USER3> Gravity is one of several forces that may act on what's going on, but the cause of the wave is the initial perturbation, which isn't gravity. Put another way, if I have a steady-state hydrostatic system, gravity waves won't just spring into existence. You need that initial push.

In this case, the initial push seems to be wind hitting a mountain and being forced up.

<comment><USER5> You need the medium, gravity, and 'push' to get a wave. Calling them <medium>-wave, or 'push'-wave doesn't really tell you anything useful, so they're called gravity-waves. An alternative would have been buoyancy-wave, but apparently this didn't catch on (buoyancy and gravity are really two sides of the same coin, anyway).

<comment><USER6> Buoyancy is related to density, which is independent of gravity. Check: buoyancy can exist in a non-inertial reference frame provided acceleration in a "downward" direction.

Also, you don't need gravity to be the force being acted against in order to form a wave. You can get impact waves in water at 0g because of surface tension.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really something that Akatsuki is doing amazing science after the trials and tribulations that satellite has been through. After failing orbital insertion around Venus, it went five years in heliocentric orbit to reposition itself for insertion around Venus again. The team ended up macguyvering its secondary attitude control jets[1] for a long burn (~20 min) that they weren't designed for, but it worked and allowed for a successful insertion--albeit in a non-ideal orbit with a 9 day period instead of the originally planned 1.25 days.

[1] [https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/12/06/japanese-space- probe-t...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/12/06/japanese-space-probe-to- steer-into-orbit-around-venus/)

<comment><USER8> I think any space-related MacGuyvering should be termed Kerballing.

<comment><USER9> Seconded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fun fact: spiral galaxies' galactic arms are stationary waves. They don't spin like spokes on a wheel. Stars in the arms don't remain in them - every star traverses through the arms and the regions between them [1]. Indeed, correlations have been hypothesised between Earth's extinction events and our Sun's predicted passage through these arms [2].

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Us- jonCLA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Us-jonCLA)

[2] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.4838.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.4838.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> > thick clouds of sulfuric acid

Given how reactive sulfuric acid is, how does this concentration remain stable?

<comment><USER12> Oxygen is one of the most corrosive gases. How do we remain stable? But reducing ourselves to ash...of Hydrogen.

<comment><USER13> How? Lack of activation energy.

And indeed, metabolism is basically catalyzed combustion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The planet Venus is covered by thick clouds of sulfuric acid that move > westwards because the entire upper atmosphere rotates much faster than the > planet itself.

How the hell?! I get that the length of a Venus day is really long (243 Earth days), but why would the wind be rotating in the same direction but faster?

<comment><USER10> And they're speeding up!

"Already travelling at super-hurricane speeds, winds on Venus...accelerated by an astonishing one-third" between 2006 and 2012 [1].

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/06/19/3784975.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/06/19/3784975.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> as someone who isn't a scientist I found this link to be a bit easier to consume: [http://gizmodo.com/an-enormous-atmospheric-anomaly-has- been-...](http://gizmodo.com/an-enormous-atmospheric-anomaly-has-been-spotted- on-ven-1791172483)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is a picture (I think) of this phenomena; it's _much_ larger than I thought!

<comment><USER17> Did you forget to link to the picture?

<comment><USER16> [http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/GW- Venus.j...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/GW-Venus.jpg)

Oops :-(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which of Arthur Clarke stories should I read and why? - <AUTHOR> Hi there! I'm 35 years old and I have yet to read a single story by Arthur Clarke, whom is CONSTANTLY mentioned in comments. The thing is: being a hard-scifi reader, which stories should I read & why? Share away your suggestions please! One-liners synopsis could help :-) <comment><USER2> Was just listening to these the other day. BBC Radio adaptation of five of Clarke's finest. There's a resurgence in "old timey" sci-fi radio plays out there as well. As a new generation discovers what a powerful effect "X-Minus- One" style broadcasts can have on the willing listener ;)

[https://archive.org/details/TheNineBillionNamesOfGodByArthur...](https://archive.org/details/TheNineBillionNamesOfGodByArthurCClarke)</comment>


Revised net censorship bill requires search engines to block sites, too - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/revised-net-censorship-bill-requires-search-engines-to-block-sites-too.ars

<comment><USER2> The idea that we are even considering an internet censorship bill in the United States is appalling; and for IP protection of all issues.

Also, how long will it be after it is enforced that the affected sites start moving to underground networks like I2P?

<comment><USER3> That's sufficient, really. China's firewall can be penetrated, it's just too much of a bother for the average citizen - which suffices to maintain stability.

<comment><USER4> This is not China. This is the free world. How many tweets would there be, facebook pages, articles, etc.

We, unlike china, have the right to speak freely.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to see the arguments for a bill like this. What exactly can they say that prevents it from infringing on the basic rights listed in the Bill of Rights

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The other shoe drops:

"Last week, when the Department of Homeland Security leaned on Mozilla to remove a Firefox add-on making it simple to bypass domain name seizures, we wondered at the request. After all, the add-on only made it easier to do a simple Google search, and we wondered "what the next logical step in this progression will be: requiring search engines to stop returning results for seized domain names?" Turns out that's exactly what's being contemplated."</comment>


Are There Barbarians at the Gates of Science? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/are-there-barbarians-at-the-gates-of-science <comment><USER2> The piece seemed kinda disingenuous to me. Although everything said was kept very general and abstract, the author seemed to obviously have many specific events of "barbarism" in mind. The following section was bristling with thinly-veiled anger:

> This self-driven accumulation of "knowledge" has created a healthy dose of > skepticism among the public toward facts and arguments, as well as a more > intense public engagement. Some speak of the modern citizen as a "proto- > scientist," emulating, no doubt incompletely, some of the well-established > practices of academia. It is no longer enough for experts to argue by means > of what mathematicians fondly call "proof by intimidation." The authority of > science has been eroded by these public debates, a subject that deserves a > separate discussion. One of the immediate consequences is that the > scientific community will have to spend much more time engaging with policy > makers and the public, not only communicating the products of research, but > also the scientific method itself.

These are some pretty harsh accusations, suggesting that everyone falls either "for" or "against" science, assuming that it has a unified thrust and direction. The accusations are cushioned and a bit removed though, like a dog- whistle.

I decided to check out the guy's twitter, and it turns out he's a super fan of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, which makes me wonder if the "barbarians" that he's referring to in very vague terms are religious people, "Bell Curve"-naysayers, social justice people, and the like.

Kind of a weird post, simultaneously trying to sketch out a distant, objective, apolitical high-ground perspective, while being clearly driven by it, and unwilling to be upfront about such incidents.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could anybody find the argument? I couldn't.</comment>


Has open source lost its idealism? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/223349/remembering-promise-floss

<comment><USER2> great article</comment>


8 Potential Replacements for Steve Jobs at Apple  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1719458/who-could-replace-steve-jobs-at-apple

<comment><USER2> After Forstall, this degrades into possibly the worst list ever. Papermaster? No. There was a reason he was let go/resigned. Schmidt? Are you serious?</comment>


Ask HN: Best alternative to LG 27inch 5K monitors? - <AUTHOR> Anyone have a suitable alternative (larger) to the LG 27" 5K monitors?
I want to move to a single larger monitor, but I do not want to give up my current screen quality.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Samsung 4K Monitor..I've found some of them on Amazon at around 300-350€</comment>


Why I Won't Switch To Go from Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://notduncansmith.github.io/blog/why-i-wont-switch-to-go

<comment><USER2> The first three complaints addressed are far too common for how ridiculous and unfounded they are, and it's nice to see them addressed head-on.

The fourth is simply confusing. If you're not sharing code between the client and the server, you're missing something big (though he does say it might just be the projects he's on).

Modern business software is faced with two competing forces: bulletproof integrity and responsive interaction. Making your application bulletproof requires that business rules are evaluated on the server, but making it responsive requires those same rules to be evaluated on the client. Think about credit card validation: it's infuriating to wait for a round-trip to the server just to discover you've mistyped your number, but that doesn't mean the server can simply trust the client.

At the moment Node.js + browser JavaScript provides the only solution I know which allows you to write your business rules once and only once. Anything else is crufty.

<comment><USER3> What about Clojure and ClojureScript? There's also Opa. And Ur/Web, which reached a stable state, based on a growing user base of three use cases ;)

Then there are Seaside inspired frameworks, which generate client JS for the user. There is at least one framework like this for Python and I'm sure there are other for other languages.

JS remains the most well known and supported solution, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I really like JavaScript" might be a compelling personal narrative, but it makes a pretty uninteresting submission to Hacker News :(

</comment><comment><USER5> As a web developer the number #1 argument I use against those who say, why not a language like Go or Ruby is simple: I use Javascript on the front-end, why not the backend as well? Being able to handle everything from authentication to view rendering using the one language is a powerful thing.

As for the last paragraph in the article, Go in my opinion is already pretty popular. It might not be mainstream like Node.js, but it has a pretty loyal following. As always, the language isn't going to determine how successful something is.

Look at Facebook, the worlds most popular website was built in PHP. Building it in a language like Ruby or Python wouldn't have made a difference to how successful it is.

Use whatever language you feel comfortable using, don't just use a language because everyone else is frothing at the mouth about it. I can't stress this enough, use whatever language you feel comfortable using and know the best.

<comment><USER6> Everything is a nail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The second half reads a lot like "I can write everything in Javascript so why would I need another language"

</comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, does a context switch exist for switching between frontend JS and backend Go? I am not trying to tout my own horn here, but I don't have problems with that.

And this is coming from someone who has used Node.js for multiple startups in the past 2.5 years.

<comment><USER9> I believe the author meant between frameworks, patterns and compilation styles. To a lesser extent syntax (that's probably the most visible but least painful).

To be honest, I'm not sure what that point was about I still feel a context switch going from server side node js in my apis and apps to client side angular / backbone. They are just different beasts.

Unless he does a lot of the node in the browser thing?

I dont know how you would avoid the context switch. There is, I guess, a chance the author is seeing that as an obvious but actually nonissue stemming from his other complaint (which I agree with) the tool chain.

The npm and friends tool chain is absolutely bliss to work with from a web developers point of view. While it is all doable with other more traditional build tools like ant or make there is something awesome about every part of your stack being in a single scripting language.

While right tool for the right job is still valid its amazing what has been accomplished in the ecosystem against all odds from javascripts initial debut..

<comment><USER10> Author here.

> I believe the author meant between frameworks, patterns and compilation > styles. To a lesser extent syntax (that's probably the most visible but > least painful).

Spot on.

> To be honest, I'm not sure what that point was about I still feel a context > switch going from server side node js in my apis and apps to client side > angular / backbone.

That's not a point I was trying to make, perhaps I wasn't clear. The context- switching I was talking about wanting to avoid was Go (or some other language) and Javascript, and the fact that my tooling is JS means I'm gonna be switching all the more often. I don't really have a problem switching between client and server-side JS.

In fact, context-switching isn't that hard for me, but being able to avoid it is a nice bonus that comes with what happens to be my favorite stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honest question. Why do people write posts like these?

<comment><USER10> Author here. I originally wrote this as a comment in a Reddit thread, and decided to put it on my blog because I felt like having more than one post (might actually start blogging regularly again).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> javascript is not perfectly readable. For all the same reasons that other languages with poorly integrated async features are. Ahem C#, etc...

<comment><USER3> From the article: "Promises, 'nuff said."

There are two schools of thought here. One says that concurrent programming is actually an optimization and that the language and frameworks should make it as transparent as possible. The other says that concurrent programming is fundamentally different from sequential programming and it should look differently, too.

Out of curiosity, which language you think gets concurrency right? My personal favourites are Erlang, Io and Clojure, but even there concurrency is _not_ completely transparent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Different needs call for different stacks. We've moved a lot of our systems to node.js for reasons outlined in this article but at the same time Go makes more sense for mission critical infrastructure at scale where performance matters.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious as to what toolchain he thinks he needs? I write Go all day. I don't have a "toolchain" unless you count version control and go build/go get.

<comment><USER10> As a full-stack web developer, I rely heavily on gulp and Bower (as mentioned in the article), as well as a few other small utilities. I know I wouldn't _have_ to give those up by switching to Go, but at that point, if every dev on the project already needs to have Node installed, why not just use Node?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love Java and I use GWT so I avoid context switching to Javascript and plus it came out of Google like Go, so it's pretty rad.</comment>


The New Approach That Could Sink Floating Point Computation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/07/08/new-approach-could-sink-floating-point-computation/ <comment><USER2> Request: Rename title to "Posit as a IEEE float alternative" as it's more descriptive and less click baity as the original article title.

</comment><comment><USER3> More comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20388029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20388029)</comment>


Ad Buyers Should Rethink Facebook Spending, Says Media Matters for America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ad-buyers-should-rethink-facebook-spending-says-media-watchdog <comment><USER2> Personally, I think the assertion that $100K in ads (paid for by Russians or not) swayed the last general election is simultaneously the best and worst thing for Facebook. It's the best PR in the sense that the story is out there that ad spends on FB are SO massively effective that otherwise smart people can be convinced to elect an orange-skinned baffoon as President -- imagine what it could do for your brand/company? And it's the worst possible story to have out there because it invites investigation which, under scrutiny, will show that ads on Facebook are like ads anywhere else online: almost completely useless. And Facebook is caught in a position of not being able to deny the "$100k in Russian ads" story because that would crater whatever confidence there is in the effectiveness of marketing on FB.

No wonder Zuckerberg looks like he's permanently in a cold sweat when he's in DC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this comment. It really summed up a lot of my disparate musings on this topic in an nicely structured succinct complete thought.

The word _almost_ in your sentence about ads being " _almost_ completely useless" is maybe deserving of a bit more exploration. Ads work, but I think it's in the same way that placebos work. Brand exposure is the big thing that good ads do well and bad ads do less well. If you write off all ads, you'll still be surrounded by ads and brands, just with even less awareness about the context of either. Maybe that is better for the buyer but it seems perhaps even better for the seller. They lose on targeting info but gain leverage in the transaction due to buyer ignorance about the market for that good and the seller's relative brand proposition.

Then again, most ads aren't that informative for purchasing decisions. They are an emotional appeal for most ads. Perhaps that is why people care to see Facebook change. Facebook knows which ads you linger on or interact with. This data and it's value to Facebook and its advertising partners is the real that reason Zuckerberg is trying not to end the party yet. The data is probably worth more than the money at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those who have trouble with the link:

[https://archive.is/E3cu3](https://archive.is/E3cu3)

Original title lacked context. It was:

Ad Buyers Should Rethink Facebook Spending, Says Media Watchdog</comment>


How to improve my genius android app? - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.pinenuts.memipo.german.basic

<comment><AUTHOR> The app itself is not Genius but the technique used to memorize information is very effective.</comment>


Exposing high-end poker cheating devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.slideshare.net/elie-bursztein/cheating-at-poker-james-bond-style <comment><AUTHOR> I thought i was posting the other article, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769819) for which these are the slides. Cut and paste error, but it seems one or two people find it useful. Happy to have it deleted if too redundant.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you (in)validate new ideas efficiently? - <AUTHOR> I have a number of different ideas that could be potential new ventures or projects. In the past I have not done a good job of validating ideas up front before running off to build things. The result has been the creation of neat portfolio pieces but no product/market fit.
My goal is to test a number of different ideas before starting work this time. One of the methods for validation that I would like to use is to build a landing page and purchase advertisements to gauge interest.
Do you have any suggestions for products or workflows that would help to make this type of testing more efficient?
Also, I would love to hear any experience around the topic of validating ideas.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Depends on the ideas. Personally, I always feel it is better to go talk to people in person (ideally) about the idea. Gauging interest in person or at least over the phone is a much better indicator of real interest than a signup form online.

Even if the product is going to be marketed and sold completely online, meeting people in person who would be target audience customers lets you get better data and validate the idea further than just a signup form. e.g. you can ask follow up questions, ask people questions around functionality etc. Also this method lets you find out how you find the right target audience, as in where online would you find them looking for your service, what keywords would matter to them, what media platforms do they pay attention too...

From there you can tweak the idea and if it seems promising then publish a landing page, start collecting more contact info and trying to convert some of those into commitments.

<comment><AUTHOR> But face-to-face interactions are _scaaaary_ !? :)

I do a lot of talking to friends/family about ideas but I need to get out there and identify people that are actually in the target audience of the product.

<comment><USER2> Totally, and talking to friends and family helps, but they are the least critical (typically) of your ideas because they want to be supportive. So finding people that are really the target audience and talking with them is critical.

Personally, I find it is always hardest to start the first few conversations for any new project, but after that it seems to get easier for me. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Davis. I received the suggestion today to actually try to get people to pay you up front for the product you are going to build. That was pretty interesting. Seems to scratch my itch for some real objective (in)validation and also prevents me from writing a bunch of unnecessary code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's the $64,000 question, isn't it? I'd also like to hear how people approach this issue. I can't speak from experience, but I read a couple of interesting ideas somewhere. One was to embed yourself in a forum related to your idea and start messaging people, asking if they'd be interested in something that does what your idea would theoretically do. There's a fine line to walk, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was mainly thinking about the specific task of validating through ads and landing pages. Tracking interest/conersions that way. In order to do that you want to be able to test lots of ideas without re-writing lots of code.

I know there are lots of solutions out there like: instapage, unbounce, etc.

I tried instapage but I had a huge amount of trouble getting it pointed at a custom domain. I eventually gave up and decided it would be easier for me to just develop a re-usable landing page framework in rails and deploy it to different custom domains using heroku.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As you mentioned, most people will jump right in and build a landing page / MVP to see if there's any interest, but that's a time-consuming process and I wouldn't spend any more time than necessary on something that you don't know is actually viable.

Still, you of course have to find out if there are potential customers for your idea. I'm using the following validation process to see if a certain target audience is interested in my idea:

1\. I start by actually writing down the problem I'm trying to solve and my solution. A lot of ideas may sound awesome while they're in your head, but seem ridiculous once you transform it from an abstract concept into 2–3 sentences.

2\. I then create a questionnaire based on my idea. I'm trying to ask pointed questions where the result will actually help my decision-making process, such as "How often are you facing this problem" rather than "Have you ever faced this problem". You can use tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform to publish your survey.

3\. Lastly, I'll try to identify people who are in my target audience. This is tricky, and taking shortcuts like emailing the survey link to your friends doesn't work - there's something called "Interviewer bias", which says that your friends will rate your ideas more favorably than the general public. It's also to be expected that your friends aren't actually in your target audience for your proposed idea.

Because I've been through this process so many times, I created IdeaCheck.io[0], where we generate a questionnaire based on your idea and use a panel of respondents to gather direct feedback from your actual target audience. You can read more about IdeaCheck in my Indie Hackers interview[1].

[0] [https://ideacheck.io](https://ideacheck.io)

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/ideacheck- io](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/ideacheck-io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, thanks! I'll check out ideacheck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Go talk to potential customers in person.

You might feel uncomfortable doing that, and there are usually two reasons: 1\. You're new to doing this 2\. You haven't prepared enough

You probably haven't prepared enough. You should have a hypothesis of why they're the target customer, what value they're getting out of it, and what pain point it solves. You should research to know if there are other products that fit the bill or that they use. You should understand how they make money and how your product fits into their bottom line.

If this is helpful ping me and I can send you more details about my process for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ibash, I'll send you a message. Although another commenter requested more details as well. Maybe you can post more here? :)</comment></comment>


Systemd programming, 30 months later - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/701549/ <comment><USER2> I've basically decided systemd isn't for me and have uninstalled it from my systems. The last straw for me was a recent security issue:

[https://www.agwa.name/blog/post/how_to_crash_systemd_in_one_...](https://www.agwa.name/blog/post/how_to_crash_systemd_in_one_tweet)

Which made me re-evaluate systemd. Fundamentally creating a monolithic tool to take over from many small single purpose tools seems counter to the UNIX philosophy, and makes it harder to hack on my (mostly desktop/laptop) systems.

<comment><USER3> So, what do you use instead?

<comment><USER4> I use OpenRC on my servers, systemd on my desktop/productive-mode laptop.

On some servers I use s6 toolset. Those are nice. OpenRC is nice. It gets the work done, its so small, its easy to do things with it, and it has less problems than systemd - which I experience on the desktop. Example, started using networkd for managing networks, because hey why not, and NetworkManager is shit, I had gotten tired of typing wpa-supplicant and dhcpcd commands manually. But then, systemd apparantly takes control over the networking subsystem not only the network interfaces - it changes sysctl flags and doesnt delete after itself when asked to stop - it leaves any addresses and other configuration changes it had done. What!?

edit: As all things, systemd-networkd has its place, its just not on a developers laptop, maybe it would be great to have in some kind of cloud environment where you have to configure hordes of machines and virtual machines in them, with networking and networking subsystem configured correctly. Then its nice to have a "do-it-all" tool, but then you should also probably swallow the rest of RedHats output, such as Ansible and look at Project Atomic.

<comment><USER5> Alpine Linux uses OpenRC too, the linux preference for Docker these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A article about programming to systemd and how it helped the various distributions turned into HN emotional responses to bash systemd.

I like systemd and it has helped Linux advance. init was a mess and no one still has come with a golden response that shows the world how anything would be better then systemd.

systemd answered a difficult question and hopefully we willsee more similar advancements shortly for Linux.

<comment><USER7> Personally, I would have been ecstatic to see systemd if it hadn't have been tied directly to GNOME and thereby installed by every distribution that wanted to include GNOME. My main gripe with systemd is that every other system the main author of systemd has written has made my computer inoperable time and time again. I would have liked to have a choice of using systemd or waiting until I saw it become mature enough that I trusted it.

I just didn't want to be forced to use it in case history repeated itself. Opting out of systemd is ridiculously difficult due to that GNOME tie-in. It's one of the most important parts of my system.

I still would prefer not to have systemd, but I will admit that it works reasonably well for my purposes. I'm pretty upset about how it all went down, but that's life in the fast lane I guess. Where are the days when everybody ignored Linux? I should move to BSD ;-)

<comment><USER8> The Gnome developers were asking for _years_ for someone to step in and maintain ConsoleKit. Nobody did and there wasn't any hope somebody would.

So they took plan B and used logind, which is part of systemd. People are still free to develop shims that would work with other init systems - but so far nobody is willing to do that.

<comment><USER9> And the one supposed to maintain ConsoleKit, who abandoned it, was... a certain Lennart Poettering.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it was all part of his evil plan to.. write what he thought a better overall system would be, and give it to the community for free?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another nice video discussing the current limitations of using systemd user sessions for starting up desktop environments (=user session) is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq18daxTkLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq18daxTkLA)

On July Martin Pitt already started to discuss some of the difficulties on systemd-devel mailing list: [https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd- devel/2016-Ju...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd- devel/2016-July/037017.html)

During the systemd conference they've been working to create a good solution for this.

<comment><USER12> So effectively a doubling down on the cockup that is systemd login sessions...

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825394](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825394)

Gotta go faster faster faster...

<comment><USER11> They're making it work in practice. That's quite different from "doubling down on a cockup". There's various bits which do not work in the current design, so they have to change things until it does. This effort is being driven not by a systemd developer, but someone working for Canonical.

These user sessions have existed for various years. Now they're ensuring it'll work for graphical sessions. How is this fast?

<comment><USER13> Not really. "Making it work in practice" is a perfect recipe for creating a cockup. It is a perfect illustration of how software engineering isn't.

Do you really want a real, professional engineer to use the strategy "I don't need verified designs, I'll just make it work in practice" when building a bridge or railway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh wow, I didn't know about `systemctl mask`. I've been fighting with a computer that takes forever to boot because of nfs, even though I do not want nfs enabled. I was trying to use `systemctl disable` to no avail, but `mask` looks like it'll actually do the trick.

<comment><USER15> Could you elaborate on why `systemctl disable` was not working? I do not uderstand the difference between mask and disable.

<comment><USER8> 'disable' can still start the service, if another service claims it as a dependency. It will not start the service, if it is the last one in the dependency chain.

'mask' will not start the service, not even as a dependency to another service; instead it will rather let the dependent service fail to start.

<comment><USER16> That would surprise me at some point. Kind of counter intuitive. Good to know, thanks for the info.

<comment><USER17> Difficulty of naming in software. If they'd named it "block" instead of "mask", perhaps it'd be clearer?

<comment><USER13> In everyday usage, "disabled" is stronger than "masked". It is indeed surprising that masking is a stronger operation than disabling. It would be clearer if the systemd operation names were reversed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think systemd the init should be separated from the rest of it. This will allow it be more easily managed, secured, developed and be replaceable by other inits thus retaining one of the most important aspects of Linux and prevent any single entity beyond the kernel from gaining too much influence.

The functionality that creates these deeper tie ins to Gnome, udev and others today prevent other inits from working for instance with Gnome. Now they want to add a kernel bus. This will make it extremely difficult to replace systemd. Can any supporter of open source and Linux really support this?

A init is a critical subsystem and should have limited scope that is clearly defined, be thorougly tested for that scope and released. Continuously developing and adding features to it does not make for a stable experience. Debian Jessie is now on a outdated version of systemd 2.15 while Systemd is at 2.31.

Things like predictable network names are ironically named as now they are not predictable to end users and scripts that work across systems. Things like eth0, eth1, wlan0 abstract the underlying hardware. If your solution cannot even abstract it and retains the arcane bus names and makes it difficult to even read let alone work with the interface name how is it a solution.

Things like binary logging may be important to a small subset of users and they should have an option to enable it. But why should it be imposed on everyone by default? The technical debt of niche cases should go to those who want it.

<comment><USER12> If you want just the init and accompanying ini-files, perhaps give Nosh a look?

[https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd- devel/2016-Ju...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd- devel/2016-July/037017.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I increasingly get the feeling that systemd is the maven of Linux administration.

<comment><USER20> Could you give examples of some of the difficulties people experience using maven to someone who is not a Java veteran?

<comment><USER21> Basically, when something goes wrong, it offers no help in what went wrong. It's a nice idea with a terrible implementation.

<comment><USER22> Also, a lot of things that were trivial before will now have a long series of dependencies.

<comment><USER23> Heh. To each their own.

I prefer having my dependencies listed in version control, automatically downloaded, having a tool that can tell me why dependency x is pulled in etc etc.

<comment><USER22> Sure, this is all fine when things work correctly. So far, I actually agree with you.

But once in a while something in the long chain of dependencies fails and after days of debugging you start thinking you should just have downloaded the *.jar files and copied them to libs/ manually.

I think people (in general and not only limited to software development) should strive to minimize dependencies. Otherwise things like this can happen: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510)

<comment><USER23> > But once in a while something in the long chain of dependencies fails and > after days of debugging you start thinking you should just have downloaded > the *.jar files and copied them to libs/ manually.

Can't you just check the difference between the last working and the first broken one? If necessary just unpack the last working jar/zip/war side-by-side the first broken and diff them.

> I think people (in general and not only limited to software development) > should strive to minimize dependencies.

Here we totally agree. When I started at my current place we had a mix of spring, javaee, hibernate and whatnot. The size is currently down by almost 70% although a lot of that was also unused resources.

My goal is just using javaee + a couple of utilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On Desktop and servers I had to reluctantly use systemd as-is, no time to replace it basically. never enjoyed it really.

On embedded linux I make, I use everything else but systemd.

I still worry that over time systemd will be integrated so deeply into linux that it will be impossible to remove and also leave no chances for alternatives and if its monolithic approach will be wrong then it will be too late.

Or maybe systemd wants to be everything, to make even linux obsolete

<comment><USER24> I moved all my servers to BSD. Servers do not need udev gnome or many of the other things systemd has hooked into.

I have an ubuntu laptop which requires a reboot every so often for a reason I have yet to figure out.

I am not sure about the linux communities direction after the recent drive to systemd containers and other complex methods of doing things which should be simple.

<comment><USER5> After debian switched to systemd I indeed started to check BSDs again for servers, but have yet to migrate.

<comment><USER25> Same here, except I first burned myself with full disk encrypted ZFS, just to learn I'm doing it the wrong way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've not looked closely at systemd yet, but my initial attempts with using sysctl on a test ubuntu 16.04 server, seems to reflect my experience with usage of svcadm in solaris/illumos, where the latter requires XML manifest instead of a "simple" script.

Is this an apt comparison for systemd, or is it way better/worse (I'm not an expert, so I'll leave the qualitative opinions to others!) than that?

<comment><USER27> Well, in most (older) init systems, boot scripts were shell scripts and you could do anything if you knew how, including shooting yourself in the foot. Great flexibility, great responsibility.

In systemd, services are described in a simple file with a few keywords, and systemd tries to do all the magic itself, in a way replacing the scripting part and all the possible code paths that could be gotten that way.

So if something in the system's boot or a process' start-up procedure doesn't work now, it's systemd's fault and not yours or whoever wrote the shell scripts in other init systems; and if the simple configuration file is not complex enough to do something you could do easily with a shell script, than it's also systemd's fault for being too simple.

I'm an old-timer and I like shell scripting, but also think systemd makes writing service files easier and has benefits such as built-in support for cgroups, security features (user/group, chroot, ...) and mini-services like basic ntp server. There were some bugs when distributions started to include it by default some years back, but I haven't had any problems lately.

<comment><USER28> One of the problems with systemd seems to be that it makes init scripts _look_ simpler by spreading their complexity across multiple files all over the filesystem instead. The unit file systemd proponents were showing off as an example a few years back certainly looked simple compared to the init script it replaced... until you realise that its functionality had actually been split across several unit files and a bunch of shell scripts that they called. Look at this article and just count number of moving parts involved in getting NFS working with systemd too. Multiple service, target and socket unit files with the same name but subtly different behaviour, multi-hundred-line shell scripts in a directory most people won't even realise exists modifying some of them at runtime, ... In non-systemd init systems that'd all probably be one init script, and the fact that it was all in one place would sure make it look more complex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just write one systemd script to start supervisord and ignore the rest of it basically...

</comment><comment><USER30> Very interesting for developpers, but I am still searching for a documentation about systemd and nfs for non expert users.

<comment><USER31> The Arch Linux wiki has good documentation on Systemd: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd)

<comment><USER32> I just switched to Arch recently, and only then became aware of systemd. I have to say (as an init scripting noob) that I appreciate how systemd scripts seem more naturally organised than init.d scripts.

Having dependencies specified explicitly helps me to understand how the system works much more easily than cryptic directories full of numbered init scripts ever have.

<comment><USER33> Same as you, recent Arch switcher. I've never been a professional sysadmin, just my home network. I've been enjoying systemd from a noob/amateur perspective.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to show people when they say "Show me some cool things on Linux" - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I run Archlinux (and xmonad) and sometimes when I am just sitting with my laptop people see my tiled windows or terminal or emacs or something and will say something like "Oh that's so cool! Show me something else!
This throws me off a little. This is what I have done in the past:
1. xcalib -i -a
2. xrandr -o left. One time when I did this two people started clapping.
3. ncmpcpp. People like the "rainbow music player" and its lyrics mode.
4. Sometimes out of boredom I will even do "dmesg". This always makes people go "oooh".
Could you tell me of other visually appealing little utilities in Linux? I don't use a desktop environment and don't want to install one. I hate compiz. No K-stuff either please.
Thanks,
xoxa <comment><USER2> I like aafire and sl a lot.

<https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=12473>

</comment><comment><USER3> using the * modifier in commands always impressed my windows friends. "Want to remove only the black and white photos from a folder? rm -f _-bw_ "

<comment><USER3> apparently putting text between * s will make the text italic. Learn something everyday.</comment></comment>


It's Time for Direct Metal 3D-Printing - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2016/05/19/its-time-for-direct-metal-3d-printing/ <comment><USER2> If you're going to do FDM using metal, wouldn't a chamber filled with argon or some other inert gas, with a CNC positionable MIG/TIG head work as well?

For that matter, what if you just dispensed with the chamber, and mounted a standard MIG/TIG head with argon gas shield onto a cartesian gantry?

What do you gain by the complexity of using electron beams and high vacuum systems. I should also note that this complex system would be far out of the range of most DIY makers (the vacuum pump alone is something not easily acquired) - while either of the earlier suggestions could probably be cobbled together by someone who already owns a CNC plasma cutter table and a MIG/TIG setup, if they wanted to...

For that matter - I'm going to have to mention this to my friend; he already has most of the stuff to do this kind of thing (he has a CNC plasma cutter table, and a couple wire-feed MIG welders).

</comment><comment><USER3> Yaknow, one of these would be handy to have on a moon colony where there's lots of free vacuum around. OR an asteroid where there's less than 1/6 gravity.

Andy Weir, call your office...</comment>


Should GitHub Implement a Downvote/Flag System? - <AUTHOR> I propose that GitHub introduces a feature that lets users either down vote, or flag a repo.
The reason is because there's many repos that exist that are no longer maintained but this isn't made known to the user viewing the repo.
This a problem for high starred repos that are linked from other places on the web and continue to get traffic, and clones.
It's not always possible to see if a repo is no longer maintained by looking at things like last commit, or issues. This doesn't indicate a repo is no longer maintained or neglected. There's also a demographic that consume repos but don't necessary understand much about GitHub, or how it works (I've worked with them!).
This is a problem for user who clone and invest any amount of time into using something they don't know is no longer maintained.
For example, I had to submit a pull request on the Compass CSS framework to make users known it was depreciated. It wasn't listed anywhere on the repo, and was still being used. Issues were still being fired but left most unanswered at the time.
I'm not sure how this could be implemented to avoid competition abuse. But i feel it's something GitHub should consider.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Any developer with some decent skill will look at time of last commit and/or number of unanswered issues.

No. We don't need a more prominent way to express negative feelings about a repo.

<comment><USER3> Maybe an "active" flag in the search results would be useful? It would be based on the frequency of commits and the date of the last commit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Downvotes are toxic. Let's not Reddit-ify the internet any more than it has been. Stars, and clones are good enough to see if a repo is any good. Now... arguably we should have more insight into how many people have "liked" the repo in the last month... that'd be useful.

Check the issue log... see what activity has been going on lately. Lots of issues, and lots of issues closed... that's probably a good thing. Lots of issues, and no issues closed... that's not great. No issues created recently... forget it, it's dead.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you care about it being maintained, you should invest the time to check if it is. Maintained code can be crap, unmaintained code can be perfectly usable.

I wish clear markings for the project status were more common, and maybe standardized as a feature in Github, but I'm not sure any mechanism that reminds of "punishment" for the author is a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would resist any features which have the effect of punishing people for the very real constraints of maintaining OSS work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Right because if there's one thing we know, it's that people voting on things online will be objective.

</comment><comment><USER8> Terrible idea - it will bring all the negativity and toxicity of StackOverflow.</comment>


Topsy Search Launches: ReTweets Are The New Currency Of The Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/26/topsy-search-launches-retweets-are-the-new-currency-of-the-web/

<comment><USER2> Topsy is only useful if you are looking for content that people are talking about _right now_. My average Google search isn't "blog", "quantum mechanics" or "ubuntu". If I was looking for information on those topics, I would first check Wikipedia and follow the external links from there. My regular Google search is something along the lines of "sony ericsson f305 maximum application size", "parkour new delhi" or "nsstring url encoding" (this is from my search history).

Google gave me satisfactory results for all 3 of those queries. Let's do a comparison.

(Note: DDG is DuckDuckGo)

</comment><comment>====

Term: "sony ericsson f305 maximum application size"

* Topsy: No results.

* DDG: The 5th result gave me my answer.

* Google: The second result gave me my answer.

* Cuil: 1 result, no answer.

</comment><comment>====

Term: "parkour new delhi"

* Topsy: No results.

* DDG: Many results with links to parkour groups across New Delhi. The second result (Parkour India) was the best result.

* Google: Many results with links to parkour groups across New Delhi, but I found several irrelevant results mixed with the ones I was looking for. Again, Parkour India got 2nd place.

* Cuil: Most of the results were random blogs about parkour, most of them not Indian. The Parkour India group on Ning got the second place.

</comment><comment>====

Term: "nsstring url encoding"

* Topsy: No results.

* DDG: The top result was from Apple's documentation, followed by a few mailing list discussions on the topic and two blog posts. Except the last 2 results, all of the results were right on target.

* Google: Got some of the same results, but shuffled around and mixed with _many_ irrelevant results. Moreover, Apple's documentation was at the bottom of the page.

* Cuil: Several mailing list results, very few were relevant. I found my answer, though.

</comment><comment>====

So, Topsy is useful only if you want to know what's hot right now, Google and DuckDuckGo return nearly the same results, but with DuckDuckGo having relevant results closer to the top of the page and Cuil is pretty much useless.

(I always mess up formatting. What does HN use and where do I learn how to use it?)

</comment><comment><USER3> While its a nifty service, Topsy seems to be 'static' search for Twitter - another version of "<search terms> site:twitter.com" (especially when you consider Google's time-range search options). A lot of people seem to be linking to tweets on blogs and forums, and the 'old-fashioned' currency of these links seems to be missing in Topsy (and present in the Google version). This omission could be an issue for their ranking algos when linking to tweets becomes more common.

If I were the Topsy team, I would also worry about Twitter adding a static option to their own search. Unless of course I am hoping to go the Summize route.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some features of currency you may be familiar with:

Stores value.

Can be exchanged for goods and services.

Generally accepted as a common means of payment.

ReTweets look like they're zero for three. On the other hand, links, which were previously identified as a currency of the web, stack up pretty well -- they get more valuable over time for SEO purposes, and for the right ones people will pay actual dollars, yen, or what have you. (Does that make currency the new currency of the web?)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it depends on what you're trying to search for. If you're interested in what stories Twitter users consider important it could be helpful. If you want to see what actions people are taking on Twitter in response to a particular story, it could be helpful. Otherwise, good old Google News is likely to provide better links to more relevant content.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the smell of hype in the morning.

</comment><comment><USER7> What does the real-time mean here?

</comment><comment><USER8> Not compelling.

</comment><comment><USER9> Results are not bad at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> No they are not.

<comment><USER11> I love it when I find a comment that is word for word what I was thinking when I read the title!</comment></comment>


Show HN: hackathon for introverts - <AUTHOR> http://hackalone.org <comment><USER2> I tend to dislike the idea of labeling introverts and generalizing them.

I used to be solidly in that introvert group, accepting that it was completely fine to want to be alone, that it was who I was and that I should be proud of it.

I went through a huge shift in college (one of the reasons I believe college is a great experience) and now I'm far more extroverted than I used to be, truly a sea change.

I believe that this change has been incredibly positive for me, and I wish I hadn't held myself back so much by being too complacent with my personality.

You are who you are, and you shouldn't hate yourself or do anything harmful to your self confidence, but don't be afraid of change either! And for pete's sake, don't pigeon-hole yourself into a category just because you think you fit it. Over your life, you will change more than you know, and hopefully for the better—there's no reason to limit yourself.

So my recommendation is to collaborate as much as possible, go outside your comfort zone, break the barriers that make you cringe, and learn from it to grow as a person and as a coder.

<comment><USER3> You may be conflating shyness, social intelligence and introversion. Just for clarity, here are some definitions which I don't assume everyone knows.

Shyness "is the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness experienced when a person is in proximity to, approaching, or being approached by other people, especially in new situations or with unfamiliar people"[0]

Social Intelligence "describes the exclusively human capacity to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments"[1]

Introversion is "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life".[2]

When I was younger, I was told that all of these things were the same , and I was very confused. While I felt more connected to my inner world than the outer world, I had no problem dealing with situations (such as parties, events, etc) where I met a large number of people. I wouldn't actively seek these types of encounters out, but would navigate them (often with compliments) when they came up. However, afterwords I would feel physically and mentally exhausted. Only later in life did I learn a more nuanced view about introversion/extroversion that dealt with which situations one finds more or less rewarding.

I personally find small teams, often just me, highly rewarding and engaging. Afterwards I feel mentally recharged, and can continue such encounters for very long amounts of time. Conversely, I find that large groups are very draining, and I have to take more time to recharge.

I would generally rank in the middle-lower levels in shyness. I don't actively seek out encounters with strangers, but I do not feel a high level of apprehension or awkwardness. For social IQ, I'd rate myself as average. I can talk someone's ear off, understand empathy, and social situations do not generally throw me off balance. However, for introversion I'm near the top. Given any particular situation, I would prefer to be alone or in small groups, even to point of possible negative social/group consequences (which I generally understand and accept as the cost of the trade-off).

So while I agree with you that some introverts are pigeon-holing themselves, there are people, like myself, who value their introversion and do not feel that it is a limitation.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyness> [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_IQ> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introversion>

Edit: Typos

<comment><USER4> Thanks for these definitions. In a post on Hackalone, I had incorrectly lumped together "antisocial" and "introverted" as synonyms. Your definitions (and a comment from a reader) clearly highlighted my error.

Irony: I'd classify myself as introverted and antisocial. But not anymore. Now I'm just introverted ;)

<comment><USER5> Unless you have a tendency to commit criminal acts or something against society, which is the definition of antisocial, the appropiate word you are looking for is asocial.

<comment><AUTHOR> @victorhn is right, the two words are often confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We host a ton of hackathons. And at every event, there are inevitably developers who prefer to work on their own, rather than joining teams. Their creations are often on par with the team driven projects. But they're still (pun intended) odd person out.

Love the idea of getting a bunch of these solo hackers together in the same room to see what they can accomplish.

<comment><USER6> We've been doing this for a few weeks, and it's super fun. Want to get some more people together and do them on a regular basis.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, use command `shit HN says` to hear shit hacker news says. There are a bunch of other commands as well not listed in help.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip- that was pretty entertaining. Love the design and attention to detail...up arrow repeats last command. It's a refreshing departure from typical info sites and aimed well at the target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea. Any chance of getting information on the next event? The "next event" listed was apparently for 3am this morning (which I would have been up for).

<comment><AUTHOR> You can schedule them yourself. Try the 'start event' command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "4. Only one guy to a each hack"

Oh, okay then.

<comment><USER9> They're using the non-gendered form of "guy".

<comment><USER10> and I believe this is becoming more common.. i believe the gendered-ness of "guy" also has a regional component to it, but I have no hard data to back that claim up. I agree with the other poster that using more descriptive "contributor" avoids gender issues altogether..

Edit: after doing some more thinking/research, I now believe that the non- gendered form is "guys", but that is still gender-biased: if you were in a room and said "can all the guys sit on this side of the room?" the women would likely not move to that side of the room. Similarly, if you were describing a robbery and you said "a short guy with a purple hood", it would not be ambiguous that you were talking about a male robber.

<comment><USER11> > if you were in a room and said "can all the guys sit on this side of the > room?"

Interesting. What would happen if you said "can all you guys sit on this side of the room?"

I agree that other words avoid this problem and are more descriptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apparently it's aimed at introverts with Twitter accounts. I can't imagine something less attractive to an introvert than broadcasting your life publicly.

<comment><USER13> Moreover, why would a bunch of introverts want to get together for this? Why would they want to make presentations about what they've done? I'm all for clever ideas but there's so many social elements to this I don't see why I'd do this if I'm not doing hackathons. If you're not social, you're not social-- the end.

<comment><USER14> In a similar fashion to a few comments above, you may be conflating shyness for introversion. One can be introverted and social at the same time. Presentations specifically are a very different form of social interaction than ad-hoc interaction with large groups; one involves speaking _to_ people while the other involves speaking _with_ people. For example, I rank pretty high on the "I" side of the MBTI[1] but I enjoy giving presentations and speeches and I'm even a member of a Toastmasters club [2]. Given the choice of presenting organized information to a group versus chatting up a bunch of partygoers, I will almost always choose the former.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator>

[2] <http://www.toastmasters.org/>

Edit: clarity

<comment><USER13> I think it's pretty amusing that you've decided to interpret a mass of comments from people who find this idea ridiculous as an opportunity to educate us all about the distinction between introversion and shyness. Clearly if this distinction is meaningful, this idea will be a big hit. When it instead falters, will you consider the possibility that perhaps you're just unusual, rather than that we are all uneducated?

<comment><USER15> aashay is hardly the first person to decide the distinction is meaningful:

<https://www.google.com/search?q=shyness+vs.+introversion>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love love LOVE the terminal emulation idea for an informative website. I had fun just poking around with the commands, and I got my information on what it was and how everything goes sooo much faster than clicking through links. Bravo on UX for this site!

<comment><USER11> I loved the UX too.

The output of help re-flows when the window is re-sized. But the output of other 'commands' didn't reflow. I'm not sure if that's a feature or not.

But it's a really nice way to present information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It says the next event is in Portland, OR at 03:00 on 11/5 however it is currently 09:00 on 11/5 there. Assuming it's the local time zone, the event should be an old event. There aren't any time zones that would fit either, must be a bug.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there designers who prefer to work alone as well? I would love to see a hackathon-y mechanism for putting introvert/solo coders together with introvert/solo designers, like a development-oriented Chatroulette.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hackalones aren't specific to coders, you can design hack as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love this idea!

I could never attend a "normal" hackathon because, while I really enjoy being sociable and interacting with others, I struggle with my focus. I need quiet and solitude to really get any coding done.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is cool.

font-weight: bold;

would increase readability.

</comment><comment><USER21> How do I join a hackalone?

Very nice interface.

<comment><USER6> You can make your own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> the competitor in me wants there to be a winner! adorable idea though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice hack, but what is the point? How is this useful?

<comment><AUTHOR> To learn and become a better programmer but with: No teams, no stress, no conflict resolution.</comment></comment>


Laddering a Chimney (Fred Dibnah) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA <comment><AUTHOR> This video shows traditional techniques to attach a ladder to a tall chimney. It comes in two parts. I'm not sure when this was filmed, but some time in the 1990s would be about right.

I'm glad these traditional techniques have been preserved in film, especially with commentary from the expert. But I'm also glad that we don't use these techniques anymore and are much safer.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for beta testers for marketing software - <AUTHOR> http://orchestrahq.com <comment><USER2> Hey, what exactly does your marketing software do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially, allows you to track complete visitor activity, conduct email marketing campaigns, create forms and store contact information.

You'll also be able to create personalized forms, landing pages, and emails.</comment></comment>


Amazon hiring head of newly-formed mortgage lending division - <AUTHOR> https://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/42706-amazon-hiring-head-of-newly-formed-mortgage-lending-division <comment><USER2> Angelo Mozilo might be looking for a job.</comment>


Linux lessons for Hadoop doubters - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/01/hadoop_will_only_get_bigger/

<comment><USER2> I'm not entirely sure the point the author is trying to make. As an honest question as someone who's not even played with it, why would hadoop ever get past 1% or probably even 0.01%? Doesn't it have a very specific use case?

Is he only talking about penetration in the BigData market? If not, why would it ever supplant RDBMS or NoSQL datastores?

<comment><USER3> Hadoop is the first NoSQL datastore to reach a level of maturity and big-name support that many enterprises insist on. In these companies the only thing for it to supplant is traditional relational databases, and the advantages there should be obvious.

<comment><USER2> I don't see any obvious advantages of NoSQL in most enterprise apps. Although it's such a fuzzy term these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll go on the record ansd Say Hadoop won't ever make it past the 1% , but rather we will take the lessons learned from Hadoop and create a better and more usefull system. You can see this already with Pig and Hive. People are learning from the shortcommings of hadoop and building on top of it to try and make it usefull. Once the right mix of frustration and technical skill gets together they will evolve the system to make it usefull. That is when you will see it get enterprise traction.

<comment><USER5> I work regularly with Hadoop users and I there is rarely talks of "shortcomings" of Hadoop. More often than not, rather than Hadoop not giving enough to the user, the user is not giving enough to Hadoop. Once users start understanding the power of the platform, they start to do some really incredible things.

Hive and Pig are just applications that interface with Hadoop, although they could be classified as "SQL" or "PigLatin" to Java Map/Reduce, they are also more than that. For example, Hive has a shared metastore so you can treat Hadoop kind of like a shared RDBMS that allows you to map schemas after the data has already been transformed.

Most the people I talk to, especially on here, are still pretty wet behind the ears when it comes to Hadoop. It's a very daunting technology, but I can assure you there is nothing but progress and innovation in the community.

<comment><USER4> I agree that this is a new and daunting technology, but its also technically grounded at this point. I think the problems people have with it ( extensive knowledge needed to use it ) will be fixed iteravly, but will need a major change to the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Linux and Hadoop are not analogous. I've used Linux since the pre-1.0 days and been building distributed computing and database platforms since before Hadoop existed; I've seen both of these ecosystems grow from the inside.

Linux won the server wars because it rapidly iterated and evolved in a time when a free UNIX-like operating system was desperately needed. In the early days of the Internet, no operating system was ready to be a heavy duty Internet server OS. FreeBSD, started from a stronger position than Linux but development was carefully controlled by academic purists. Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" was about these two communities.

Operating systems, like Linux, tend toward natural monopolies. It is extraordinarily expensive to build a competitor. Linux was the most agile and rapidly evolving competitor in an early market that was poorly served by incumbents. While it took the rest of the world years to notice, it was obvious by the mid 1990s that Linux was on a trajectory to take over that market, not because it was good (back then, it wasn't) but because it rapidly evolved in response to user needs.

Hadoop is more like MySQL than Linux. It provided a very early option in a market devoid of options. Technically the implementation is poor and the details of these choices are exposed to users as features and interface. This makes it difficult to evolve the core because it pisses off the early users who have become used to the way it works. Linux had the advantage that it copied a good design (UNIX), which allowed it to iterate the core without breaking too much for users. Over the long term, these poor technical choices early on limit the ability to grow because fixing them alienates the users. MySQL had a strong run of dominance, particularly in the early days, but the inability to easily evolve into a robust and full-featured system allowed PostgreSQL to eventually relegate it to relatively niche use cases that can be easily replaced by other bits of technology (like NoSQL data stores).

Hadoop has one other quality that makes it fundamentally different than Linux. It is a relatively simple system that can easily be functionally copied. Making a Hadoop-like clone using alternative tool sets is not a big task. While very popular, it would not require an extraordinary investment to produce an alternative that is obviously superior.

Some form of Hadoop will be with us for a long time. It will always have a use case. But unlike Linux (and more like MySQL), it will ultimately be marginalized by its many manifest technical weaknesses. Not only is it easy to build a significantly better "Hadoop" than the free Hadoop -- many companies already have -- but there are some very important distributed computing technologies and features which Hadoop does not have and which would be difficult to implement on that platform even if customers want them. The larger NoSQL and distributed computing space is evolving very rapidly with many potential alternatives.

The only lessons for Hadoop from the history of Linux and open source generally is that it is in a ripe position to be marginalized over the long term. I've seen this hype cycle many times for products in similar positions. I remember, for example, when Perl was _the_ programming language of the Web. Perl quickly dominated a void in the market at the time but where is it today?</comment>


Five Things to Keep In Mind Before You Start Your Own Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneurshipsecret.com/five-things-to-keep-in-mind-before-you-start-your-own-business/

<comment><USER2> This is the only thing you should keep in mind: the more naive and ignorant you are, the better!</comment>


Chrome Music Lab - <AUTHOR> https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com <comment><USER2> Disable ad-blocker if you have one.</comment>


Intel Announces High Failure Rate of Server-Grade Atom CPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-failure-atom-processor,33538.html <comment><AUTHOR> C-series Atom processors have a clock-signal generator failure after 18 months of runtime. Many Cisco products are affected [1] as well as other vendors. I personally have a SuperMicro C2758 board which will need to be replaced.

Intel errata now available here [2], search for AVR54.

[1]: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/03/cisco_clock_compone...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/03/cisco_clock_component_may_fail/) [2]: [http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification- updates/atom-c2000-family-spec-update.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: What state of mind are you in while programming? - <AUTHOR>

I often think of myself as being bad at it. I keep telling myself that I am not good enough, and I don't know enough languages. This has actually helped me spread from HTML and CSS to JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. <comment><USER2> ...what?

Being overly critical of yourself is not only no fun, it's also not particularly effective. Sounds like if you constantly reinforce that you're not good enough, you will lose confidence and motivation to continue.

I'm thinking an easy reframe of this is competing with your past self. See if you can do better than you did yesterday, even by 1%. A 1% improvement every day leads to a doubling in 71 days.

<comment><USER3> I agree 100%. This is why I keep all my crappy old code... to see how far I've come. Sustained practice makes a big difference in a short time, but you don't always see the progress unless you've got old code to compare with.

<comment><USER2> Nice! And easy enough to do with git or a similar CVS. Just check out your code from a year ago and see how you've improved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you ever taken a programming class? Self-directed learning is great but there's something assuring about taking a class that thoroughly and systematically treats a subject. You walk away without the worry of holes in your knowledge.</comment>


Memefy This – The Chrome Extension that makes memes online instantly - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/memefy-this/iohemjpgjkgkfgfpiglpfpcclogkelcf <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys!

I'm one of those guys who love sharing and making memes. I've used many tools for making memes online. But none of them was able to make memes instantly like an Instagram story. So, I've finally made a product which solves the problem.

This chrome-extension helps you making instant memes online and making our lives easier.

All you have to follow the four basic steps: 1\. Right-click select 'Memefy This Image' option on any image file present on the website, 2\. Add some text at the top and bottom, 3\. Change size and position of your texts, and 4\. Download your generated meme.

That's it, folks!

Hope this application saves your precious time and encourages in making more memes.

If you find it useful (I bet you will :P), show your support by all means: \- Share this app on all social platforms as much as possible. \- Follow @MemefyThis on Twitter for more updates and share your memes created from my app. \- Send feedbacks/suggestions with love or hate by tweeting to yours truly @CreativeBakchod on Twitter a.k.a The Savior Meme-Maker.

Moreover, this is an open-source project. You can contribute on Github: [https://github.com/AshBardhan/memefy- this](https://github.com/AshBardhan/memefy-this)

Very excited to read suggestions, comments, feature requests. Do share your memes generated from this extension. :)</comment>


Airbnb plans public listing in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-ipo/airbnb-plans-public-listing-in-2020-idUSKBN1W41Z7 <comment><USER2> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21016724)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unload while you can I guess, right?

How many US cities/states/landlords no longer allow their properties to be used for Airbnb?

<comment><USER4> A fair number, but this often doesn't stop people from ignoring this rule, listing their properties under hidden addresses etc. I would say 90%+ of the AirBnBs I've stayed at are in buildings that have banned them (especially in large cities, like Toronto)

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a pretty bad foundation for a business model to me.</comment></comment></comment>