Winds – An Open Source Personalized RSS Reader - <AUTHOR> http://winds.getstream.io/ <comment><USER2> Do people really want recommendations?

I personally want to just have an RSS reader that gives me the articles from the sites I freaking asked for. Not what some service _thinks_ I'll like. Google, Pocket, and other sites are already doing a great job of thumbing through what I read and trying to sneak in their "suggestions": that's the kind of invasive data-combing that I want to avoid.

<comment><USER3> There are a few distinct use cases for RSS readers with _very_ different requirements for automatic filtering.

I use RSS readers to keep up with infrequently-updated fiction and webcomics. In this use case, "suggestions" are worse than useless - if I miss a daily or weekly strip or, worse yet, a chapter being posted, that can cripple my enjoyment of the story. I check my RSS feeds once ever two or three days and read exactly every single post in them, all twenty or forty of them.

There are other people (myself about six years ago, for example) that use their RSS reader as a news firehose. They get a hundred posts an hour and even checking their _titles_ manually would be difficult. In this case suggestions are not just a good idea but actually required.

Personally, I'd like an RSS reader that has a per-feed toggle for automatic filtering. I so far haven't seen that.

<comment><USER4> And even both at the same time. I have a set of comics and low-frequency posting blogs that I want to always read every post, _in order_ , and defer them if I didn't want to read it right now. And then a firehose of other articles that I may or may not be interested in reading and can skim it to see if I want to read it, and then open it in a new tab and continue.

I feel like it's challenging to get both of these use cases in the same app. I could do it in google reader by having categories, but when it closed I switched to Inoreader and it does the "helpful" thing of only showing the last 30 days if you want to read it in chronological order, and used up my mental energy switching and basically just gave up RSS after that and haven't read them in a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry I'm not interested in a Feed Reader that tries to give me suggestions. I like to follow the stuff I like to follow. I do the footwork of finding quality sources by myself.

Maybe I'm not most RSS users in that regard, I'm not sure, haven't done the market research.

It feels to me that suggested sources leads to promoted sources leads to paid content.

<comment><USER6> I'd actually bet this isn't going to be monetized that way since Stream is using the reader to showcase the personalization service they sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not very fond of their "Try it out" feature, which after making me waste time on their "select 3" first step, then proceeds to try and cajole me into giving away my email address.

Wish they posted some screenshots or static pages or something of the sort, so I could take a look and see if I like it more than stringer, which is the current solution I'm using.

<comment><USER8> A little worse than that: Even once you do all that, the feed is empty. It seems to only get stories posted after your account creation, rather than pulling the existing feeds like most RSS readers.

So after doing all this setup, I had to go back to the site later to actually try out how it arranged content.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, a fledged out demo account is a "must have" when showcasing a product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the category of self-hosted stream readers there's also Tiny Tiny RSS [0], which I use and enjoy. It has a nice Android app and pluggable scrapers for extracting webcomic images and full content from summary feeds. Although it's been described as having "the most hostile primary maintainer of a piece of software I've ever encountered", which I experienced a bit of personally last time I tried to contribute upstream.

[0] [https://tt-rss.org](https://tt-rss.org)

<comment><USER11> Did you try out Nextcloud News? [https://github.com/nextcloud/news/#nextcloud- news-app](https://github.com/nextcloud/news/#nextcloud-news-app)

We have a more modern design than Tiny Tiny RSS, are way friendlier, and if you would contribute that'd be majorly awesome! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For work (writer) I go through dozens of feeds every day.

About 90% of what I see is irrelevant, but I need to see it to filter out the relevant data. I'd pay a decent amount for a service that can tailor itself and deliver relevant results without much manual intervention. InoReader and some other RSS readers have decent filtering, but it's all manual.

So this excited me, but without a way to import my existing feeds it's largely useless to me.

<comment><USER13> This is by far the most commonly requested feature. Top of our list for 0.2!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's going to be extremely hard to convert anyone who uses an RSS reader without import functionality.

There is 0% chance that I'm going to switch no matter how good your recommendation algorithm is if I can't also keep up with my current feeds.

<comment><USER15> It wouldn't be so bad if they had like a suggestion box or something at the side with feeds you might like to add.

<comment><USER16> [https://github.com/getstream/Winds/issues](https://github.com/getstream/Winds/issues)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm confused. It looks like this won't work unless you use the stream API, which is (apparently) not open source / self hosted.

The only reasons I can think of to host my own RSS reader are to prevent third party profiling, editorial transparency, and future proofing against the provider shutting down or evolving the service in a way that I don't like. This provides none of those advantages.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER18> Some part of it is open source: [https://github.com/tschellenbach/Stream- Framework](https://github.com/tschellenbach/Stream-Framework)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks really good! The design is fantastic, well done.

My only criticism would be that the Getting Started page is definitely skewed towards a specific segment. Like, how is Sports not an option? Music? I understand that there are only 9 slots in your designs, but please choose some that are more representative of general interests, not just Palo Alto mid-20s coffee shop startup founders.

<comment><USER13> We launched this on Product Hunt yesterday so it's currently tailored to that audience. More topics are coming! Going to need some community help with curating the feeds for those topics though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which features are you looking for in an RSS reader? Some ideas we're discussing for Winds 0.2.0:

      - Secondary links (ie comments link for HNews and Lobsters)
      - Batch OPML import
      - Deploy to Heroku button
      - Follow suggestions (we're working on this)
      - Switching between feeds should be easier
      - Lightweight task queuing system for emails and discover endpoint
      - Keyboard shortcuts (vim style)
      - GraphQL style APIs so you have more flexibility for building your own mobile apps
      - Android & iOS apps
      - Support more sites (RSS data quality is pretty poor and often needs custom logic per site/feed)
      - Search article's you've read using Algolia
      - Folders/Groups
      - Sharing support (e.g. Buffer, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

<comment><USER20> hackuser posted a requirement which has my full support: Since you're doing machine learning, try and apply that to avoid showing me articles with overlapping content. Often quite a few sites I follow will cover the same thing, and obviously, I want to read it only once.

<comment><USER21> To clarify my version of the idea, I would like to see all the articles on the same subject but grouped together, perhaps in a collapsible outline, so I can choose which one or more articles I want to read on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Digg RSS Reader has been unbelievably good. The best thing about it (so far - knock on wood) that they don't tinker or change anything, because everything is working like it should. I don't really see a reason to try anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER23> How are people still launching apps with sign-in over http - jesus christ.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know an RSS feed reader with these features?

1) Deduplication

2) Grouping of articles on the same topic. For example, grouping all articles on Angela Merkel's latest Brexit comments, so I can easily choose one and ignore the rest.

Grouping would make me an order of magnitude more efficient when reading RSS. I'd happily pay $100 for that feature.

Also:

3) Efficiently and automatically manage broken feeds: Automatically retry (over X hours or days), automatically look for a replacement feed, and then let me know which feeds need my attention.

<comment><USER24> I designed one a few years ago, but it was to help the newsroom of a magazine who wanted to publish blog articles every week. You can check it online, it was called "vendredi". It worked well.

<comment><USER21> Could you provide a link? I looked around and couldn't find it. Thanks. I'd love to try it.

<comment><USER24> [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendredi_(hebdomadaire,_2008)](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendredi_\(hebdomadaire,_2008\))

I am afraid there is not much left online now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Github Link: [https://github.com/getstream/winds](https://github.com/getstream/winds)

</comment><comment><USER16> Nick here from GetStream.io (Winds). We didn't expect Winds to see so much traffic today, so we're experiencing temporary downtime. We'll have everything back up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for all of your support!

<comment><USER16> Back up and running smoothly. Sorry for the delay!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can also run it as an OSX app: [https://github.com/GetStream/Winds/tree/master/native](https://github.com/GetStream/Winds/tree/master/native)

</comment><comment><USER25> Our team at Reamaze is all trying Winds right now since seeing on Product Hunt yesterday. Love the machine learning in-progress. I find the content to be curated quite well for my preference. The main issue I'm having is actually adding RSS feeds from sources I read on a daily basis. Not sure what the issue is. Love the two display options since not everything is relevant all the time and it's just easier to go chronological.

<comment><USER13> Just open a ticket on Github with the RSS feeds in question. We'll gladly add support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> since this is built on top of Getstream.io [https://getstream.io/](https://getstream.io/) I guess it follows their pricing structure - [https://getstream.io/pricing/](https://getstream.io/pricing/) free for 3 million updates...

what defines a feed update:

       The number of feed updates depends on how many
       activities you publish via the API and the number of
       users who follow those feeds. If you add an activity to
       a feed that is followed by 50 other feeds, this will
       trigger 51 feed updates.

which sounds to me like if you use them to do stuff you have to control not just your feeds through their api but also your users - otherwise how will they know really how many users following the feeds?

</comment><comment><USER27> The GUI is nice, very well done. It suggested a good website I didn't know, I will give it a try.

The thing I didn't liked is that, if it's supposed to be "learning" how comes I can't load new stories after I'm done with the initial set?

</comment><comment><USER28> This website has absolutely no information about the product it's trying to display.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a bit too full on for me. I'm currently using feedly at the moment but I'm looking for something I can read without a browser. Does anyone have a recommendation for a battle tested rss reader with a good cli interface?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have actual screenshots? I don't want to put my email address.

<comment><USER31> Looks like there are a few screenshots on the project site:

[https://github.com/GetStream/Winds](https://github.com/GetStream/Winds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It would be nice to be able to try the whole app without signing up with my email. That's what I thought "Try Winds RSS > Clicking 3 feeds > Continue Now" would lead to.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use Feedly pretty much everyday. A recommendation engine for news doesn't really cut it for me. But of course, it would be a good exercise in ML.

</comment><comment><USER30> It says Node 7, is there any feature that you use on Node 7 that is not available in previous versions? Just curious.

</comment><comment><USER34> does it support firefox?</comment>


Why Facebook will never make a significant profit - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/49528 <comment><USER2> I'm old, and I have seen predictions come and go over the years, but this is my prediction about Facebook, and I'm sticking to it: "Facebook will go the way of AOL, still being a factor in the industry years from now, but also serving as an example of a company that could never monetize up to the level of the hype surrounding it."

If I had serious money, and if I thought that the time frame fits the Long Bets website

<http://longbets.org/>

time frames, I would put up this prediction (tightened up for specificity) there. But I actually think that Facebook fulfilling this prediction will be on as short a time frame as AOL's eventual collapse into irrelevance.

AFTER EDIT: A kind and thoughtful reply wrote,

 _Facebook has way better engineers than AOL did, though, and an extremely engineering-oriented culture._

That could be a strength, as you claim, but it could also be a weakness. A great many of my friends and one of my children are strong programmers, and some of those people have strong social skills too. But I would suggest that while Facebook beat MySpace early on by imposing a "house style" on each page, so that the users couldn't make their own pages off-puttingly ugly, Facebook has also muffed more than once meeting user expectations of how their social interactions will proceed in Facebook's mechanized environment, because Facebook engineers thought like engineers rather than like people building social networks. Facebook is not off-putting to me: I use it even way more than I use Hacker News. But I can't figure out any sound way for Facebook to monetize that will not become off-putting, and user exodus can happen very fast once people feel put off enough to leave. I will follow my friends where they go, even if I have both trust and like for Facebook myself.

<comment><USER3> I think Facebook has way better engineers than AOL did, though, and an extremely engineering-oriented culture. The infrastructure they've built up already is also very valuable; only a small handful of companies can match them there. I think those two factors will be their saving grace. Even if FB as a social networking website never becomes highly profitable, their talent and infrastructure should let them easily pivot into other areas and remain relevant. I would never bet against a company that has a few thousand of the best engineers in the industry, and ambitious management.

<comment><USER4> Not just ambitious management, but ambitious management that is not afraid of ignoring the whims of Wall Street Analysts.

I'll always be happy to back companies led by Wall Street defying, long term oriented founding CEOs: Costco, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sheesh, talk about a hostile reading experience. Dismiss the overlay:

      document.getElementById("overlay").style.display="none";

<comment><USER6> It's not just the permanent "loading" overlay that makes it feel hostile. I feel genuinely uncomfortable reading that website; nothing stays still, the content is jammed in the corner and the scrolling physics have been messed with.

It's somehow the epitome of claustrophobic design and interaction.

<comment><USER7> I mechanically translate "qz.com" into "don't even look at it until I hit View->Page Style->No Style". It's still ugly, but at least the content isn't fighting for space with all of that other... what is all of that stuff, anyway?

I wonder if there's a way to make that stick for all pages on a domain. (Firefox)

<comment><USER8> adblock extension goes a long way to fixing that (block by element id) and stylish can solve the rest

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh look! Another website that fails to display properly in the latest Firefox (Firefox 19 beta) and doesn't work that well in opera, but works perfectly in Chrome.

Don't worry web developers, there are no rendering engines out there except for Webkit. We have never had to deal with the fallout of designing sites that only work with one rendering engine before. Continue forward, do not attempt reflection on your practices, and do not attempt cross browser testing. Apple and Google can be trusted for all time.

<comment><USER10> I agree with your point, but I should point out that an increasing number of developers (those in their early-mid twenties and younger) literally never experienced the first browser wars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article feels like it's been written by someone who's never bought advertising before. Anyone in advertising could tell you about FBX.

FBX among other things allows Facebook to offer retargeted ads which have been shown to convert at a significantly higher rater than regular ads. As retargeted ads roll out to more users Facebooks ad revenue will go up with Facebook having to do practically nothing.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Pundits often make the argument that 'surely with all that personal data, Facebook must be able to do something.' A great many startups have launched in the hope that if only they get enough data about their users, they'll find a way to make money from it. But looking at the history of Facebook and related companies like Google, there's little to back that up."

Most pithy way of describing the dangers posed by the advertising industry companies like Facebook and Google.

</comment><comment><USER13> Arrgh. That damned website has such a horrible UI that it renders the page (no pun intended) essentially unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER14> A graph that shows a company "only" makes $5 annually for every user aren't exactly laughable when you have over 1 Billion users, yet the article, in an awfully hand-wavy fashion, brushes over this on its way to concluding that "Facebook hasn't changed much since its founding" (it's "hard to argue," see).

Anybody who dismisses Facebook as a website where you can stalk your college friends would obviously be bearish on Facebook. If you think Graph Search is "just another way to sort your news feeds," then of course you wouldn't expect Facebook to grow. If you don't even mention the fact that Facebook is a platform that is interwoven with every part of the Internet, I wouldn't expect you to understand how Facebook will make money.

<comment><USER15> "Facebook is a platform that is interwoven with every part of the Internet"

That's just not relevant: As soon as FB charges for logins or for using their platform as a user mechanism for their site, there will be a mass exodus.

The reason it is so interwoven is because it is free, and in order to make your argument you have to explain how they can turn a profit from the ubiquity.

<comment><USER14> The point is it's working on an advertising platform that will be just as interwoven. If it converts better and can track readvertising, it will change everything in advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well this site is just awesome, can't even scroll down.

</comment><comment><USER17> Typical tech punditry. Small minded, short sided, and bandwagon hopping. I particularly like the fact that there is a "share this on Facebook" button a the end of the post.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Facebook is a large, inefficient engine for transforming electricity and programmers into a down-market place to sell low-value advertising"

"Low value advertising"? Well, not to my business at least, as it currently represents the second best ranked referring website. Customers who come to my shop always talk about the things we post to our FB web page.

<comment><USER19> Right, things you post to your Facebook page, not ads you are actually buying from Facebook. You get to advertise for free by creating a page for your business and getting people to like it. It has a ton of value for your business, but you're not purchasing anything directly from Facebook.

<comment><USER18> We buy FB ads too. We attack in all fronts to drive traffic to our website.

<comment><USER19> Do your analytics allow you to differentiate traffic driven by your Facebook page vs. Facebook ads? I would be interested to know which was more impactful.

<comment><USER18> We use Facebook's own analytic tools for that. But we don't go down to the very detail of what each number there represents. We work one of two levels above discussing how we are going to invest our online advertising budget across the different websites (facebook, uol.com.br and alikes, and some bridal specific portals). Surprisingly enough, Facebook generates more results than the sum of all the other bridal portals we have our ads on. I'd say 10 times or more of each individual bridal portal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _It's hard to argue that the company has done anything particularly > innovative since its founding; all the updates to Facebook since then come > down to tweaks to the core experience of reading through a stream of updates > from your friends._

This speaks far more to Facebook's ubiquity than it does to Facebook's lack of innovation. Anyone in web tech whose been around and actually remembers what Facebook was like in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 would make such a stupefyingly ignorant comment as this.

</comment><comment><USER21> While I don't think Facebook is all that great of a business model, its financial performance is FAR better than say Amazon.

Over the last 12 months, FB has done $6B in revenues and $500mil in earnings (aka profits). That's a net of 9% or so and is decent but not stellar.

Amazon in contrast has done $61B in revenue but lost $40mil. In it's _best_ quarter, it only showed a net income of 1%.

Honestly, to say that "Facebook will never make a significant profit" is just silly since it's been doing that for a few years now.

<comment><USER22> You can't compare amazon with facebook. Amazon is fundamentally low margin business. FB can at achieve/ maintain profitability levels of high margin google like ad business. Both companies are investing heavily for the future, and that reflects on their bottom line. The more important metric is revenue growth, and unless bottom line is not too red, generally speaking market is only paying attention to the top line growth.

<comment><USER20> Why should social be high margin? How do we know it's not fundamentally low margin like Amazon's business?

This is the disconnect between Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The OA says that Facebook's profits will never be "significant", yet is completely dismissive of the fact that Facebook has claimed more user time than probably any single company's creation in the history of mankind. If they can do this and making 9 or 10 figure profits then I think it's one of the greatest success stories in the history of capitalism. That is, the theory that capitalism is a way of allocating capital to create _value_. Ah but if the investors who bought into Goldman Sachs' hype machine don't see their cash return then Facebook must be nothing more than another failed attempt to create something "significant".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. I simply cannot navigate this site. In Firefox, the content isn't loading. In Chrome, every time Is scroll down the page bounces all over the place. Why in the world would anyone make a site whose focus is articles and content, but make it so difficult to access any of it? So I turned off JavaScript and got this:

>"Your browser doesn't support Javascript or has it disabled. QZ.com works best with Javascript enabled."

Nope. Your site worked much better without JavaScript actually. Ugg.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm old enough to remember when people appreciated the great search results of Google, but wondered how they would make money with a search engine. After all, everyone knew search engines didn't make money--that's why Excite and Altavista were pursing content portal strategies.

I don't know how Facebook will make big money, and maybe they don't yet know, but I think it's hard to bet against assets like 1 billion users and more time on site than anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER25> Google users are people who actively searching for answers and information. Hence delivering relevant advertising to them that is addressing their real- time needs is so efficient.

Facebook's users are people who are mostly bored, time wasters and procrastinators. Facebook certainly does better to target ads based on person interests and connections, but facebook's userbase is way more passive and apathic to respond to ads.

<comment><USER26> This makes me wonder : a lot of FB users are always logged in, even when they aren't on FB (to use the like button and other stuff). Shouldn't Facebook be able to offer something like AdSense with much better targeting capabilities ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious to see how facebook's external advertising network plays out. It would have, for example, been silly to judge google's potential profitability before adwords was established. Facebook's data isn't as valuable (from an advertising perspective) as google's, but it still has untapped potential.

</comment><comment><USER28> A title just below that article (if you scroll down) - "Facebook is a goldmine in the making"

</comment><comment><USER29> Facebook has a few things up their sleeve, a version of Adsense could be one. 600 million users check in daily, there's value in that, just need some creativity.

I am not sure if Google is worth a 24PE, their pages are already full of ads. For how will that go? They're begging to be disrupted by a Google without the (current) need to put 5-20 ads before real results. Before you even say it: "Relevant" isn't best

<comment><USER30> I agree, I'm kind of surprised we haven't heard much of anything on the ad network front from FB. I think an Adsense competitor and a Paypal competitor are the two big items they could have.

<comment><USER31> On the paypal competitor front, FB payments (formerly credits) can be used in mobile apps as well as FB platform apps, so the infrastructure is largely in place. That's a tough space though; Google Wallet and Amazon Payments are both more established non-Paypal players already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Omg this is so shortsides that I almost was not going to post.

<comment><USER33> Why do you feel that? What did they miss?</comment></comment>


"The plague-stricken town is the utopia of the perfectly governed city." - <AUTHOR> https://bookworm.club/blog/plague/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting new ideas I got from this passage:

* Pandemics as a major cause of mass surveillance.

* The historical context of festivals. Surely they existed before the plague but I wonder if they became more popular after it. I never thought of festivals as a sort of cathartic release from (and perhaps political rebellion against) shelter-in-place orders.</comment>


Ask HN: State-of-the-art for server rendered webapps (non-SPA)? - <AUTHOR> At my company we have about 80,000+ LoC of AngularJS (v1) in production, which we still actively develop and maintain. We've also dabbled with Angular2/Typescript & Elm for the newer features. However, off-late, I am getting increasingly put-off with the amount of complexity SPAs bring into the stack. Especially for user-interfaces that aren't very interactive (or don't need to maintain a lot of state in the browser).
I remember Rails apps from 5-7 years ago where the entire HTML was rendered by the server. Where required, there was pjax/turbolinks and some hand-written jQuery for client-side validations or show/hide buttons. What is the current state-of-the-art for these kinds of apps?
Think about the billing page of a typical SaaS app [1]. Does it really require to be an SPA communicating with the backend only via APIs? Can't it be made of simple HTML pages that do FORM POSTs? What's the best way to handle the following in 2019 (or 2020!), without resorting to full-fledged SPAs:

  - Showing/hiding UI elements
  - Possible values of one dropdown depending on the value selected in some other dropdown
  - Copying billing address to shipping address
  - Value of a radio button showing/hiding some form fields
  - (I hope you get the point...)
 PS: Having some type-safety would be an added bonus, because I've been recently bitten by the Haskell bug :)
[1] Display list of available plans, let the user pick & configure the plan, make a payment, and move on. Typically it will be used once or twice in a user's lifetime. <comment> open-source-ux Many of the government services available via GOV.UK are designed to be accessible and usable even when JavaScript is disabled. These services are not designed as SPAs (and all the better for it).

For example, here is a demo of an accessible autocomplete drop-down list that uses JavaScript. When JavaScript is disabled, the list becomes a standard HTML drop-down list.

[https://govuk-location-picker-demo.herokuapp.com/](https://govuk-location- picker-demo.herokuapp.com/)

Here is the generic code for the autocomplete on GitHub:

[https://github.com/alphagov/accessible- autocomplete](https://github.com/alphagov/accessible-autocomplete)

And here is a blog post about dealing with a large amount of form inputs:

[https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/08/accessibility-l...](https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/08/accessibility- lessons-dealing-with-a-large-amount-of-form-inputs/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Server side Blazor is pretty interesting, renders everything in type safe .Net on the server then uses websockets to update dom and bridge javascript. Supports client side webassembly execution model too but not stable.

Not exactly lightweight and I guess still a SPA approach but pretty state of the art in server side rendering I would say:

[https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web- apps/blazor](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor)

<comment><USER3> Server Side Blazor looks very interesting and I've been meaning to try it out.

But do you have experience with it to answer the question OP had?

I.e How does it work with Server Side Blazor:

      - Showing/hiding UI elements
      - Possible values of one dropdown depending on the value selected in some other dropdown
      - Copying billing address to shipping address
      - Value of a radio button showing/hiding some form fields
      - (I hope you get the point...)

<comment><USER2> I don't have any experience with it I also keep wanting to try it it out. However the examples in the docs make it pretty clear how to accomplish those things, you have events that trigger a cshtml rerender to update the dom with c# code.

The example on the main page increments a counter using the @onclick event of a button, the @ denotes a server event.

If you ever used webforms back in the day it has some similarities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Python to generate a static Hugo site from a (sort of) CRM API.

Mainly because there's no real API, and there's a just a bunch of scrapers.

The funny upside has been that customers really like the speediness of our "real time inventory" (it's a re-generated Hugo site every 25 minutes).

<comment><USER5> Very similar to something I crafted up back in maybe 2003. The site was slow to load due to a bunch of sql queries on under powered hardware. Updated it to take a "snapshot" of the front page ever 10 minutes and make that the live version. Serving static content was so much better of an experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have a look at Elixir/Phoenix with LiveView. While it's the state of the art, I'm not sure it would suit you better than sprinkling some JS over an otherwise server-rendered page.

<comment><USER7> Actually, for all the requirements listed LiveView is perfect. Interactivity can all be defined server-side without adding any JS; Forms can be validated server side before submission; I assume implementing dynamic forms will be easier to do once on the server side instead of having to do it twice or send a schema over to the FrontEnd. OP should really look into LiveView.</comment></comment>


Applying 5 Whys To Amazon EC2 Outage - <AUTHOR> http://www.somic.org/2012/07/05/applying-5-whys-to-amazon-ec2-outage/

<comment><USER2> " _To me, this outage is the most worrisome of all AWS service disruptions that I know about. In a nutshell:

AWS effectively lost its control plane for entire region as a result of a failure within a single AZ. This was not supposed to be possible._"

I find it funny how we have this assumption that if we don't architect across multiple AZs or regions we shouldn't be surprised when our service goes down because of an AWS failure, but that if we do, we're "pretty safe" -- and then Amazon itself experiences failure spanning AZs from a single-AZ failure.

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe if your application was designed to operate across multiple 'regions' your app would have indeed been safe from this failure.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but then your app needs to communicate across the Internet if you share data across regions. This can be expensive and/or slow and/or unreliable. [http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#how_will_I_be_charged_for_da...](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#how_will_I_be_charged_for_data_transfer)

<comment><USER5> Or not as much: <http://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first why is actually the what, and the last why is unanswered, so there are only 3 whys... kind of disappointing based on the title :(

<comment><USER7> There was 1 what and 5 whys. They last why being unanswered is the whole point of the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > this outage is the most worrisome of all AWS service disruptions that I know > about

I don't think anyone was especially happy with it. I think AWS, as an entity, is probably just as unhappy as its customers.

I was happy with their response, and I was happy with it during the outage last year, too. They're adapting, and I believe they're constantly getting better. It's still a pretty new thing, this utility computing service. You can't reasonably expect them to expect the unexpected. I'm quite sure that even if they didn't apply the "5 whys," or make them publicly available, they are doing something to address the control plane issue.

I'm confident that the service will improve. Some things just need to be battle hardened.

<comment><USER9> The problem I have with the whole thing, is that if you look at their status page they still don't report they had any outage. The worst you will ever see is a yellow triangle with a message of "connectivity issues". Amazon is pathologically obsessed with denying that any outages occur, which is understandable given their business model, but since they do actually have outages, it makes them look scummy.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I think there's a policy problem. If a problem is isolated to a single AZ, you should see a hazard triangle. If the region is affected, it needs to be classified as a service disruption.

The whole problem with the AZ thing is that they're geographically congruent. Major weather events are pretty likely to mess you up. Remember the disk latency spikes from that little earthquake?

It costs more, but that they operate properties all over the world, and that they're operable under a common paradigm (for most services), is the truly compelling feature of AWS. I keep my major operation on the east and fail over to the west if there's a significant event. It's a little more labor intensive, but it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"From 8:04pm PDT to 9:10pm PDT, customers were not able to launch new EC2 instances, create EBS volumes, or attach volumes in any Availability Zone in the US-East-1 Region."_

 _"The control planes for EC2 and EBS were significantly impacted by the power failure" in a single AZ."_

neither of these things are reasons for the disruption, but side effects of. not much "why" happening in the article all together.</comment>


How to Build a Raspberry Pi Body Camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/how-to/raspberry-pi-body-camera <comment><USER2> Fantastic idea. But looks too much like a bomb. I love the idea though. Maybe put one on your backpack. It just needs to be less obtrusive, like a usb case.</comment>


Jewish problems - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 <comment><USER2> This reminds me of an interesting story from _Not In My Neighborhood,_ a history of residential and institutional segregation in Baltimore. Baltimore in many ways had three-way segregation -- black, white, and Jewish -- with Realtors for all three communities refusing to show houses in the "wrong" neighborhood to anyone. However, the public school system only had two-way segregation -- black and white, with Jews attending white schools.

Johns Hopkins, then as now an elite institution located in Baltimore, encouraged local kids to apply, and was integrated long before the public schools were. Hopkins never had any kind of restriction on the number of black students, but they _did_ have quotas on the number of Jews. That's because the black school system was bad enough (and blacks generally financially disadvantaged enough) that they knew they'd never have more than about 5 percent or so of their student body being black -- enough to show that they were liberal and enlightened, but not enough to change the character of the student body. But if they let in all the Jews who qualified, the school would be half Jewish, which would be unacceptable, as they'd get a reputation as a "Jewish" school.

This is also one of the reasons for the long-ago heyday of City College in New York: as a public college, they didn't discriminate, and so a lot of Jewish kids who would have otherwise qualified to go to the Ivy League ended up there.

<comment><USER3> I grew up near Baltimore. It wasn't until the mid 50's I believe that Jews were permitted east of Falls Rd. It took my grandmother decades to be able to comfortably go through that area. In fact, when she and her husband bought their first house in woodlawn, the entire neighborhood signed a petition that they did not want any Jews moving in. My grandparents powered through it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whereas in the US the reason that colleges use essay questions is because jews score too highly on the SATs. We can thank Harvard for this, as usual. Gladwell has an essay about this here:

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge)

I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier article that goes into even more detail.

<comment><USER5> Jews had a hard time getting into some Ivy league schools for a stretch, but not colleges in the US in general, c.f. elsewhere on this page.

What is it with you anyway? I found your comment earlier today about "the US does it too!" re the Dalai Lama almost odd enough to comment on but this is the second comment in a row where you found an angle to bash the US. Do you think every negative comment about a country is a secret thumbs up to the US? And you just can't be having that?

<comment><USER6> It was informative. I didn't know the USA put restrictions on what the Dalai Lama would say. For China. I think the average person would be surprised to hear it.

It's like not recognizing Taiwan as a country. Offensive.

<comment><USER7> Taiwan doesn't even technically recognize itself as a country. It's just a part of China ruled by a rival government.

<comment><USER8> Taiwan doesn't recognize itself as a _separate_ country. It recognizes itself as the legitimate government of China.

<comment><USER7> Which, from an objective standpoint, is a rival government.

<comment><USER8> But they do not consider themselves "part" of China. They consider themselves China.

<comment><USER7> But they only actually control part of China, namely Taiwan.

<comment><USER8> Sure. But that's a matter they don't agree with. They believe they run all of China, de jure if not de facto.

In any event, they certainly consider themselves to be a country. A rather large one.

<comment><USER7> No one considers Taiwan a country, aside from a minority party in Taiwan that wants to declare independence from China but doesn't have the balls.

The ROC considers Taiwan part of China. The PRC considers Taiwan part of China. The ROC and PRC are rival governments of this one China. The ROC controls Taiwan and a couple other islands, the PRC controls the rest.

The one thing both states agree on is that Taiwan is not a country; Taiwan is part of China. If you're going to be lazy and sloppy about it, you can call the ROC "Taiwan", but neither side actually sees it that way.

<comment><USER9> This is so far off-base that it's painful to read. I say this as someone who's spent most his adult life in Taiwan and currently lives in Beijing. Most my friends are Taiwanese. I ran a business in Taiwan for years. At one point I even considered applying for citizenship (despite the mandatory military service).

Millions of Taiwanese people consider Taiwan a country. I have yet to meet even one in my generation who believes Taiwan to be a part of China. This really is a case of might vs right.

<comment><USER7> I'm talking about the stated policies of both PRC and ROC governments. The last time there were noises from the ROC side about changing this policy, PRC announced missile tests and military exercises, the US deployed a few aircraft carriers, and everyone decided to live with the status quo after all.

Maybe most Taiwanese people think Taiwan should be an independent country (despite electing the Chinese Nationalist Party to a majority). But by matter of policy and law, it simply isn't. And no one seems willing to change the status quo.

<comment><USER9> I don't mean this to be offensive, but I'm getting the distinct impression that you don't have any familiarity with Taiwanese politics past what you've read in (usually poor) English media coverage.

The 國民黨 (which you call the "Chinese" nationalist party) has been losing support in each election cycle since 2000. Also, I don't think it's an accident that Ma's impressive results in the last presidential election coincided with his abandonment of the 國民黨's usual platform of unification with China. He campaigned almost purely on economic issues. Similarly the legislative victories came on an economic platform.

The guomingdang's victories have put the brakes on a few localization initiatives such as name changes of formerly state-owned businesses (e.g. 中華電信). However, the bulk of pan-green efforts have remained intact. Taiwanese is now taught at elementary school and children are no longer forbidden to speak it. History classes now focus on Taiwanese rather than Chinese history. Identity polls published by the politically-neutral Apple Daily now find a smaller than ever ratio of people consider themselves to be Chinese and a majority consider themselves to be Taiwanese only. This flies directly in the face of your claim that _"No one considers Taiwan a country, aside from a minority party in Taiwan"_.

<comment><USER7> You're probably right. De facto, Taiwan is a separate country right now. But they at least have to maintain the diplomatic fiction of being Chinese.

You're right that I don't read Chinese or Taiwanese, and that I've never been to either country, and the only second-hand knowledge I have of the situation is decades old.

I do know that the pan-blue coalition has abandoned the idea of unification for now. I also understand (if I'm not mistaken) that the pan-green coalition has also abandoned the idea of formally declaring Taiwanese independence. So despite whatever side either party is notionally supposed to be, both sides have accepted the status quo and campaign on how they are to govern Taiwan.

In any case, this is a matter of some interest to me, and I appreciate you sharing all of this. I wonder, is there still an ethnic division between Taiwanese and the descendants of the Chinese that escaped from the mainland?

<comment><USER9> The pan-greens have been pushing ever closer towards independence for as long as I can remember. Obviously, they don't want a war, though. I think that's one of the major reasons why the name changes, proposals for changing the flag and the referendum issue carry such weight.

The referendum is an especially key piece of the strategy. They've been pushing for at least the past 7 years for public referendum on topics that are politically benign, at least on the surface. However, once there is a precedent of a referendum, the possibility exists for private citizens to start collecting the necessary signatures to put independence (or far more likely, baby steps towards independence) to a national vote. This sort of action would be very difficult politically for the PRC to punish.

Thus far, the Guomindang (aka KMT) has defeated referendum attempts by campaigning for a boycott of the referendum. Chen put two issues forward for referendum in 2004 (coinciding with the presidential election he narrowly won against a united Soong-KMT ticket after surviving a gunshot on the eve of the election). Voters agreed with both referendum questions by margins of over 90%, but the result was invalidated due to the final turnout being less than 50%.

To answer your question, I'd say that ethnic divisions between the Min and the mainlanders have died down. The issue is politics more than ethnicity. Traditionally, Hakkas have voted pan-blue, but that's much less consistent than it was before. At this point it's more of a division between the business people, those with ties to China or HK and the more local people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

<comment><USER11> Answering as someone Jewish. . .

Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today and yet there are plenty in this country (the US) that wish everyone "would just speak English". I have plenty of friends whose parents grew up speaking Yiddish in this country.

Likewise, Jews were seen as people with divided loyalties. But this, again, isn't specific to Jews. Kennedy took plenty of hits as people questioned if he'd "just do what the pope told him to do." Were Jews really going to be loyal to the state they lived in? In an era when wars were often fought with what makes today's reasons seem air-tight, would Jews decide to sit on the sidelines (since they weren't really X nationality)? I mean, imagine if the US and Canada got into a war over who could call they're syrup "maple syrup". Would you fight in that? People have fought for some stupid things. Also, during a decent period of time, mercantilism became a big factor in economic thinking. If Jews didn't see a problem with cross-border trade, that was doing economic harm.

For Christians, "you've heard the good news and yet you still reject Christ?!?" This is one of the more simplistic ones. People have killed (and continue to do so) for religious reasons. Jews were especially problematic for Christianity. Here you have the predecessor religion co-existing. If they thrive more than the Christians, does G-d like them better than the Christians? And there's plenty of "they killed Christ" to go around.

Jews are, in some ways, refugees. I mean, there was an ancient state that existed and then diaspora as the Jews had to leave their homeland. First, people often don't like immigrants. How much scapegoating happens even today around immigrants and crime, jobs, culture, etc.? Heck, even things like sexuality come into play. In a lot of anti-Semitic literature, Jews were portrayed as ultra-sexual in the same "hide your daughters" way that can happen with African Americans today. Second, people really don't like refugees. I mean, these are people coming with nothing. These aren't university trained computer programmers coming over like H1-B visa getters. These are people who have it really hard.

Beyond that, someone like Dawkins might point out that we try to propel our genes and like genes forward. A decent amount of history looks like people trying to force their culture, their nationality, and their genes forward through history. Jews were a different group. If you're under the impression that wealth cannot be created, then any wealth that Jews get is wealth that people like you don't have. So, it becomes competitive in that sense and people try to propel people like them forward through history.

I guess I'll also touch on the fact that diaspora Judaism somewhat flies in the face of nationalism. I mean, if you're big into patriotism and nationalism, then the state should be the citizen's first priority, right? I think a lot of us now see the state as a tool meant to make our lives more stable and just. We don't live for the glory of our country. Our country is meant to help us have better lives. When we serve our country, it's to enhance the lives of the people and increase justice, not to enhance the country (although they sometimes go hand in hand). This is a big shift in modern thought (at least to me). But diaspora Judaism can fly in the face of "commitment to your country should take precedence over commitment to something else". I mean, to us it might sound ridiculous to say that your country should matter more than your morality - and I mean secular morality here. But in a Europe coming out of feudalism where they were trying to define national loyalties and borders, worried about losing territory to the neighboring country, worried about all sorts of things that look foolish from a modern perspective, well, if Jews weren't going to care if they were Polish or Russian, that was a huge problem. Frankly, this is one of the reasons that Jews came to America. While America has its nationalism, it's pluralistic, and it's often based off good governance and democratic principles more than the history of most places.

Jews could also be insular. Kosher dietary laws meant that they didn't eat with non-Jews and that they bought their food from within the community. Again, it's easy to see how something like "those assholes won't buy meat from me saying my meat isn't clean!" turns into anti-semitism in the way rumors spread. Before cars, towns were organized for churches or shuls to be within walking distance which means segregation.

Heck, even looking at the Harvard example, you see a private club that had a certain culture that was losing that culture. No longer would Harvard be almost all Wasp. I mean, they and their forefathers had put their money and effort into it. Shouldn't their progeny and the progeny of their religion and culture get the benefits of it? I'm not saying you should agree with that logic, but it is logic that is often used. I mean, there are people who don't want this country to become Spanish speaking or bi-lingual. Whether someone is the first person someplace or not, people and culture become entrenched and people don't want to see that culture change away from them. Heck, how much complaining do some people do that a lot of advertisements don't say "Merry Christmas"? Harvard was created by Wasps and now it was benefitting Jews and turning more Jewish. The identity of the institution was changing.

It isn't that the hatred is that different from a lot of other ethnic hatred. A lot of it can be seen in a lot of the other ethno-religious hatred that has existed in the world. It's that the Jews hit a lot of different sore points in human history. There was religion, there was national identity, there was immigrant status, there was language, there was hope of another homeland, their was separateness/insular-ness, etc.

I come from the point of view that nationalism is a bit outdated. People deserve to be justly governed in ways that make their lives better and that they should be allowed to choose how to live their lives in a way that makes them happy (clearly with restrictions on things that cannot be abided like murder). But providing good, just governance isn't why Europe has so many countries. Good governance and happy lives for citizens isn't why England subjugated Wales. Justice isn't what drove the Reconquista of Spain. Power, control, and the perpetuation of one's genes, culture, language, and religion have been a driving force in human history.

I, for one, am happy that we at least see such injustice and hatred as a bad thing these days. I'm not sure if you were looking for an answer like this. I didn't mean for it to be long like this. Hatred can be a bit hard to wrap one's head around (at least for me) and yet it's defined a lot of human history. I can't imagine someone hating me without knowing me. I don't understand it. I'm nice (honest)! Yet, even without understanding it, I know there are people who wish I didn't exist who don't even know me. It's actually quite an odd feeling.

<comment><USER12> Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is.

If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews dominate banking and media (I assume this is accepted as fact and not conspiracy theory), industries that get little love these days.

<comment><USER13> Again this is more complicated than just that. The great bulk of responses and opposition to Zionist and Israeli policies comes from the Arab and Muslim world.

Since this opposition is shared by many westerners, I think a lot of westerners assume that it is shared based on similar reasoning. Human rights, international law, national freedoms. But the reality is that a substantial portions is nationalist/religious/xenophobic/nationalistic/scapegoating.

Belief in arab countries that Israel was behind 9-11 or some other local event (eg shark attacks in egypt)* is very common. Lots of easily verifiable made up stories are common knowledge. A lot of the old anti-semetic propoganda is distributed in the greater Muslim world via mainstream local media (I saw an article about the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a Czarist propoganda document that has a special place in most Jews consciousness, discussed in an Indonesian magazine. It's also in the Hamas charter document* _.

A lot of the complaints that are interpreted as objections to human rights violations or similar are (when seen in context) really objections to non Muslim rule in 'Muslim Lands' (as opposed to lands where muslims live) or various conspiracy delusions.

I'm not trying to justify Israeli policy. I think it's immoral and stupid. But the type of objection to it do not make me think that changing policy will result in substantial changes in attitude, though they might provide an incremental improvement.

_ [http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-...](http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-4bab-84ee-c72a5845f2a8) * *<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter>

<comment><USER14> Extreme forms of Antisemitism existed long before even Muhammad was born. You are probably referring to the outcome of a half a century long conflict. Yes there is a lot of anti-Jew factor in the Muslim world(I am a Muslim my self).

But there is also a lot of anti-Muslim factor widely prevalent in the west too! Every bit of people on this earth have suffered with that problem. The Muslim world looks at these problems from their own view. Think of it this way, there was no signs of Israel in the Arab world around a century back, the settlements start. There are splinter groups. Slowly albeit steadily a vast majority of the native population was displaced to settle new set of people. A new nation is declared, backed by most powerful nations on earth. What was your country yesterday is not today and you are mercilessly kicked out. Now what sins did the natives do to deserve that? On top of loosing their lands, there is huge under development and humiliation since decades. How do you expect them to react?

To quote Ben Gurion himself:

 _I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out._

\- <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion>

Tomorrow if some state like California is invaded by some one, existing citizens of the state thrown out. How will those people react. Will they laughingly walk out of their homes, stay in tents and welcome the invaders with Garlands? And business goes around normal?

There isn't a community on earth today which is different than any other community. People everywhere are just the same. When these sort of things happen friction is but natural but to take place.

All nations and their people on earth or same, Jews, Muslims and Christians. No one is different. Now there is also a clash of cultures. Others like their culture as much as you like yours. To assume everybody must follow your way of life is unacceptable to any community on earth.

I come from a nation(India) which hasn't attacked/invaded any country in thousands of years. We even got our freedom through complete non-violence. For thousands of years we absorbed other religions, cultures and languages and their people with open arms. Tolerance is not everybody's cup of tea.

Friction will remain, the way out is tolerance and respect for others.

<comment><USER13> Like I said, I have no wish to justify Israeli policies and there are many genuine reasons to object to them. History I don't even think it's possible to justify.

I was commenting though on different types of objection though. Objections based on delusions, nationalism and religion. Jews absolutely do not have a monopoly over these. Anti-muslim sentiment in the Europe is largely xenophobia and in the US its mostly nationalism. These (as I'm pretty sure you agree by reading what you wrote).

But the scale and flavour of some of the delusions directed at Israel from what are in the Muslim world, non marginal sources are uncommonly fantastic. I participated in a Syrian-Israeli dialogue once where we answer each others' objections to peace. We found that the majority of Syrians believe that the stripes on Israel's flag represent the sea and the euphrates, Israel's ambition to conquer all of modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. They referenced a nonexistent map in the Israeli Parliament, nonexistent speeches by early leaders, etc. These were not hawks by any means. They doctors and engineers and teachers that wanted peace and were actively pursuing it. They basically wanted a guarantee that Israel will give up these ambitions. All fantasy.

There are some insane surveys from various countries (Egypt, most commonly) about what the average person believes.

Americans can be delusionaly racist and nationalistic to. But, you can't sell the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from Iran or anything like that.

<comment><USER14> _But, you can't sell the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from Iran or anything like that._

You can't sell that kind of an Idea to any people in any part of the world. But you see you can always tell there are Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and go and invade them. Virtually tear their national infrastructure to shreds. Scare away investors and prospective companies from investing and forbid any sane economic growth in the foreseeable future. _And Americans did buy that idea_. Although no WMD's were found in Iraq. Do you still expect Iraq and their neighbors not to have sane opinions about America.

Now come to think of it. Iran has been repeatedly harping that they have no intentions of producing nuclear weapons. What guarantees do we have from the US that they are right and Iran is wrong. After all there wasn't a shred of truth Iraq WMD thing. Why should they even trust you?

I am not blaming Americans for this. But if you repeatedly demonize a set of people no matter who they are, after a some time no matter how absurd the argument vast majority of people will begin to believe in those lies. That's how Hitler managed to commit and get support to committing worst genocides in human history.

People in the arab world, heck every in the world are just like Americans. They have families, every day lives to live and businesses to run. Just like you.

<comment><USER13> I absolutely didn't mean to make this personal. But the reality is that you can sell stories like this in Egypt.

 _"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea) to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm," South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha was quoted as saying by state news site egynews.net…._ [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/uk-egypt-shark- idUK...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/uk-egypt-shark- idUKTRE6B52OE20101206)

This is a single example and a relatively lighthearted one. The protocols (because of their history) is less funny but more mainstream.

There is a difference between that and false (or falsified) intelligence about the nuclear capabilities of Iraq or Iran (which is trying hard to convince the world it is trying to build them), two countries that are/were constantly on the brink of war with very dangerous powers. One is similar to 'She's a witch' and the other is like 'She's a criminal.' Both may be false but they are not the same.

I have no personal dislike for Arabs or Muslims. I know many and have had great friendships. I also do not really consider myself Jewish, or that my Judaism isn't very important to me.

<comment><USER14> There is no reason for me to take it personal. _I am Indian, not an arab_. By ethnic origins I might have Hindu ancestors.

My point was people are every where the same. Jews or other wise. The problem exists because of massive trust deficit due to a long chain of history of events. We need tolerance from both the parties if they want to leave in peace. And lets hope they are sensible enough to realize that.

I am great admirer of all cultures. I would love to visit Israel some day learn and experience Jewish culture to the fullest

<comment><USER13> I guess personal is the wrong word. It's just that what I said amounts to a criticism of elements in certain cultures, that's something people take personally.

We are, of course, the same. Nationality, ethnicity and the rest are made up. But.. so is money. Imaginary things still have an effect as long as people believe in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _...these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is > difficult to find._

Like the place to view the problems, for me at least: PDF <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556v1>

<comment><USER16> ... also available as the link titled 'PDF' under 'Download' on the right hand side of the page.

<comment><USER17> I visit arXiv maybe five times a year, and every time I do the same "where the hell is the link" search. The problem is that the box with downloads appears to be part of the page chrome, not part of this particular entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a Jewish American, the biggest question I have is "How does any college/institution know that I (or my children) are Jewish?"

We don't have a particularly Jewish last name, have some Irish mixed in with an Eastern European background, etc - without putting "Fluent in Yiddish" and "President of Temple Beth Sholom" on a resume, I don't see how anyone would ever pick us out from the crowd as being Jewish.

I can see how it would be easier to discriminate based on race, country of origin, or gender, than religion, that's all.

<comment><USER19> In the USSR, everyone had their ethnic identity listed on their government- issued identification.

<comment><USER20> This is true, its the infamous "Fifth point" on many different IDs (they had a system internal passports to keep people in check). It was really easy for any official to discriminate if he wanted to and hard not to when its the policy.

The USSR wasn't "politically correct" in the modern Western view of the word. The party line and the state policies were fact in fact sometimes wildly discriminatory.

Those ethnic issues are a big reason USSR broke up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yep, that is why my family moved to the US from Russia. My mom wanted to be a doctor, but wasn't accepted to medical school even though she got straight As and was completely qualified. They just said they can't accept her because she's Jewish, and there is nothing she could do about it. I'm really glad I got to grow up here in America.

<comment><USER22> Here's a nice article about Grigori Perelman, Fields medal winner, solver of the Poincare conjecture, and mathematical genius/recluse.

Perelman came up in the Soviet system in the 1980s, when the discriminatory practice you mention was in force:

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he- conq...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he-conquered- the-conjecture/)

Relevant quote:

"For a Jewish boy [sic] gifted in mathematics to be admitted to a university, there were three possibilities: hope you were one of the two Jews accepted at Leningrad University every year; go somewhere with less draconian admission policies; or make it onto the Soviet team for the International Mathematical Olympiad, which guaranteed admission to Leningrad University. Perelman decided to try out for the team."

<comment><USER23> Moral questions aside, I wonder if forcing entire ethnic groups to "perform for the country" in order to earn social status is really that bad. A lot of countries have done it across the centuries (Rome, France, UK, Arabs... and more recently US and USSR); they were usually successful in "extracting value" from those groups in the short term, while in the long term fostering a sense of belonging to a non-discriminatory ideal of citizenship.

Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews, but then they produced a Perelman.

<comment><USER24> > Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews, > but then they produced a Perelman.

It may well have been less "produced a Perelman" than "one Perelman out of hundreds snuck through".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> FWIW the Jew discrimination in Moscow State University was non-existent by early 90s, and likely even earlier than that. I had a well over a dozen Jew friends join Math dept - basically every one who applied - around that time, with no fuss whatsoever. This was an attribute of earlier times, 50s through 70s.

Secondly, to those asking who did they know who was a Jew and who wasn't. First of all, the nationality was in a passport - the primary ID issued to everyone over 16 years of age. Secondly, they looked at the last name. Thirdly, to those trying to evade this sort of filtering through changing the last name, they asked for _mother's maiden name_ \- which is as conniving as it is clever. Fourthly, they just looked at the person. It was an oral exam after all.

<comment><USER26> > FWIW the Jew discrimination in Moscow State University was non-existent by > early 90s, and likely even earlier than that.

Quite possibly because all the Jews left by that point? That was around the collapse of the USSR, when the borders opened up. My family and quite a few others just left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just want to say something about the math problems: I'm living in Romania, somehow closer to Rusia. Anyway, in Highschool I took private math lessons from an over 70 years old math teacher - man, he was so good at finding solutions to similar problems with those in the url. Sometimes the quickest solution is to construct your own function. I do enjoy the time when I had to solve problems like those, it is quite a creative process.

</comment><comment><USER28> sounds like a similar (although at least a little bit more achievable) to the "White Australia Policy" that was once one in place, where a language exam was given to 'undesirables' in a language that it was clear the person wishing to emigrate to Australia could not speak.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> I once had a question on a first year calculus exam that broke down to problem 17. It took a while to figure it out, but the exam got bell curved up by almost 50% in the end.

</comment><comment><USER30> When they say 'oral exams', are the applicants expected to shoot out an answer without actually looking at the problem or writing a solution? And if that's the case, how much time would they get to solve these problems mentally? I can't imagine being able to solve any of these without a pen and paper. I would assume that unless you already know the answer, there isn't a way for an 'unwanted' applicant to be able to do so either.

<comment><USER31> No - an oral exam in this context is more like a programming interview. You get a board and chalk, and you solve the problem on the board in front of the teacher, explaining what you're doing along the way. This is opposed to a "normal" exam where you have your pen and paper and a pre-set amount of time to struggle with the problem on your own.

<comment><USER32> It's actualy the latter, followed by the former -- on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Were these questions for entrance from high school or a bachelors program?

If the latter, many (say half) of them are acceptable, but if the former then none of them are.

<comment><USER34> These were for university. This sort of addresses your point:

 _Now, after thirty years, these problems seem easier. Mostly, this is because the ideas of how to solve these problems have spread and are now a part of the standard set of ideas. Thirty years ago these problems were harder to solve and, in addition, the students were given these problems one after another until they failed one of them, at which point they were given a failing mark._

<comment><USER35> I agree that the problems have gotten much simpler - several of these remind me a lot of the difficulty I saw on the AIME back in 10th-12th grade. I mean, that's still pretty advanced relatively speaking, but certainly doable by tens of thousands of high school aged students each year.

And then there's two levels of competition past that I never made it to... just 1... damn... question... short...

<comment><USER36> _And then there's two levels of competition past that I never made it to... just 1... damn... question... short..._

I got a perfect score on the AIME in 1998, but they didn't let Canadians write the USAMO back then. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Makes an interesting read.

Does anybody know what kind of repository Cornell is there running? The paper seems a bit odd structured and I don't really see that as an open-access publication(lack of DOIs). Or is this just a working paper repository?

<comment><USER38> It's the arXiv, a fairly well-known open-access repository. It contains a mix of unpublished drafts / working papers, preprints of papers at various stages in the submission/review process, and manuscript versions of published journal articles.

More: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've just browsed the pdf and problem 2 is my favorite.

<comment><USER40> At least when I was studying there (late 90-s), all entrance exam problems were supposed to be solved without any calculus. The motivation given was that algebra and geometry give enough variety of material for hard and beautiful problems and high school calculus is a joke so they would have to teach it again from scratch.

<comment><USER41> This problem can be done without any derivatives, actually. First observe that since (x-y)^2=(y-x)^2, we have |F(x)-F(y)|<=(x-y)^2. Given x and y with y>x, divide up the interval between them into x_0=x, x_1, x_2, ..., x_n=y evenly spaced. Then applying the observation above and the triangle inequality, since F(y)-F(x) is the sum of the F(x_(i+1))-F(x_i), we have |F(y)-F(x)|<=n*((x-y)/n)^2=(x-y)^2/n. Since n can be arbitrarily large, |F(y)-F(x)| is smaller than any positive number and hence 0, so F(y)=F(x).

Note that 2 here can be replaced with any number greater than 1; this is actually a well-known fact, that any Hölder-continuous function on the reals with exponent greater than 1 is constant. But I suppose it would not be well- known to high-school students! To be honest, I mostly only know it because of the old legend about the student who... well, here's a link: [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53122/mathematical- urban-l...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53122/mathematical-urban- legends/53127#53127)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here's a "Russian" problem: find the largest projection on the plane of a box with sides a, b, c.

<comment><USER42> Well, I don't care about my math rep so... I don't get it.

You've listed 3 sides of a box. Does that mean that the "fourth" side is part of one of those 3 sides so a = b = c? Or are you asking for the orientation and relative length of the 3 sides such that the fourth side would maximize the area of the box?

<comment><USER43> I think the question is asking something akin to "You have a box with width a, height b, and length c. What's the biggest shadow you can make?"

For example, if you think of the sun straight overhead, then the shadow will have area a*b. But if the sun moves over, then the shadow will grow by inclusion of some of the height of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Truly remarkable.. and chilling.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't understand how these problems would be harder for Jews than anyone else. It's controversial in my opinion to claim that educated Jews are worse at these based on their ethnicity.

edit: wow people responded too quickly, sorry if it was to something I edited out

<comment><USER46> This was a set of problems only given to Jewish candidates.

<comment><USER47> I had the very same doubt the author of the comment you replied to seems to have had. What confused me is that I thought that the 'directioning' these problems to Jewish people was an implicit scheme.

After all, simply directing the questions to Jewish candidates is discrimination too start with. They took so much care in finding a set of problems they could justify as not discriminative that I though they had developed a clever scheme to implicitly direct the questions.

I mean, the university prepared itself to answer "But the problems aren't hard, check out the solution!" when asked "Why did you give hard problems to Jews?". I would simply ask "Why didn't you give everybody the same set of problems?". What I don't get from having skimmed over the paper and comments is how they prepared to the latter question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> <http://www.jewfaq.org/origins.htm>

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd pack my bags and go so quickly, so whose loss would be it be? Then as a non-Jew, I think I'd do the same.

<comment><USER50> Haha, you think it was that easy to emigrate from the USSR, especially for Jewish men and women? There's a reason people didn't, and it isn't because everyone thought they were better off staying.

<comment><USER51> Actually, it was easier to emigrate from the USSR for Jewish men and women than for the rest of the nation due to refugee programs that US offers for minorities suffering persecution. I think other countries offer those two.

I am one of the people whose parents emigrated in 2004 as Christian refugees, btw. They had to prove they suffered from religious persecution (bible raids, not getting into colleges, etc).

The whole 'give me your poor and hungry' thing never really went away ;-)

<comment><USER24> > Actually, it was easier to emigrate from the USSR for Jewish men and women > than for the rest of the nation due to refugee programs that US offers for > minorities suffering persecution.

I don't think that made it any easier getting _out_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This thread prove only one thing: you can be sound and logical Hacker News reader, but once the topic is Jews and/or Israel - you become irrational and brain-washed.

Mdasen's comment is the only smart reply on this thread.

</comment><comment><USER48> There are ~50 mutually exclusive religions in this world. It is prudent to create 50 independent states for these people. [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Religious_wri...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Religious_writings)

<comment><USER53> And have ~50² religious wars in the process? No, thanks.</comment></comment>


My 2013 Resolution: Removing Java from My Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/data-security/my-2013-resolution-removing-java-from-my-computers.html

<comment><USER2> argh, yet another person writing "java" when they're really thinking of "the java browser plugin"... ><

</comment><comment><USER3> So this one is going to remove Java from her own computers because other people don't update theirs?</comment>


Ask HN: Any event sourcing systems that use source files for persistence? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking about event sourcing while also trying to whittle down the number of languages in play in my stack.
It occurred to me that if you're doing event sourcing, you could just persist actual source code that replays the log, i.e. just dump something like this to the filesystem and keep appending to it:

    createUser("firstname.lastname@example.com", "dj85jig")
    createUser("email@example.com", "b85kee6")
    befriend("dj85jig", "b85kee6")
 It seems like people usually persist to a traditional database, which gets you acces to that whole ecosystem of tools. But source files seem like a natural fit for event sourcing and I'm curious if there are examples of this approach in use? Cautionary tales? <comment><USER2> Is the aim to do event sourcing for later data analysis or to actually base your app's business logic off of the events?

I have some experience with using events to construct the final state for data analysis. (If you didn't mean for data analysis, just ignore this comment) The problem with trying to reconstruct data at some final state based on events is that the meaning of the events change over time. For instance, createUser might do one thing in January, then something slightly different in April (e.g. sets a default value to be 10 instead of 5). It becomes a nightmare to try to get the final table to be accurate, and if you try, your reconstruction script ends up with a bunch of if/then cases based on the history of the program generating the events.

You still probably want to log the events, but it looks like you are hoping to recreate the users table based on your createUsers history, which would run into the problem I mentioned above.

If you do log data straight to files, you can always analyze it with something like Splunk or Kibana (and if you use Kibana, you probably just log the events with the ELK stack). Still, it's way easier to analyze data with a relational database because of the tools built around SQL, and it's already familiar to analysts whereas Splunk's proprietary language is something they'd have to learn.

If you end up using SQL, I suggest [https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/](https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/) for the data warehouse, and [http://DataDuckETL.com/](http://DataDuckETL.com/) for getting the data into Redshift.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've done something similar where we log requests along with parameters to a sql table. One thing to beware is to make sure you're not logging passwords, credit card info, ssns or other types of pii.</comment>


Grindr removes ethnicity filters in solidarity with Black Lives Matter - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/1/21277315/grindr-ethnicity-filter-update-black-lives-matter-movement-protest <comment><USER2> Just because the filter was removed doesn't mean that people won't continue to discriminate based on race... People have sexual preferences whether you like it or not.

Also, by this logic, it's sexist that they're discriminating against women in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> So having a personal preference for the people you hook up with is now considered racist?

This is the problem. It has nothing to do with equal rights any longer. It's about forcing your beliefs onto me and then attempting to call me a racist when I disagree.

<comment><USER4> I think the point they're making is that if you're filtering an entire group based on something that they cannot (and should not have to) change that's kind of stupid.

Having a preference is not the same as would never date/bone this race, regardless of any other facts about them.

Think of it this way, now you're open to a whole new world of rejection! :)

<comment><USER3> "Having a preference is not the same as would never date/bone this race, regardless of any other facts about them."

It might be. I know many African Americans that will not date someone that is not African american.

It's a personal preference. Sure, you can just pick out the people you don't like, but I see this as the same as a dating company only have hetero couples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somehow, this doesn't strike me as the kind of change black people were really asking for for. Then again, who am I to speak for black Grindr users (grindees?)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can you still filter by sex? That sounds a bit sexist.</comment>


Akka.NET – One Year Later - <AUTHOR> http://petabridge.com/blog/akkadotnet-one-year-later/ <comment><USER2> Can any F# users help me understand why you would use this over the stock MailboxProcessor?

<comment><USER3> Distributed; knowledge reusable in Akka.JVM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish someone would pay those guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> We (Petabridge) are going to be offering paid training and professional services around Akka.NET. Revenue from that will be used to fund the continued development of Akka.NET OSS, in particular the heavy stuff like Akka.Cluster and ClusterSharding.

<comment><USER4> I guess Pluralsight might be interested in a series later on. Sounds similar to what NServiceBus is doing, but unfortunately NServiceBus is a bit of an endemic.</comment></comment></comment>


Let's discuss the source for the GPLed parts of Tesla cars - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla-owners/ <comment><USER2> Some time ago there was a story about how BMW sent a DVD to a guy who asked for the GPL software in his i3 (BMW's electric car)[1]. It was also discussed on HN [2].

[1] [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/03/bmw-are-complying-with- the-...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/03/bmw-are-complying-with-the-gpl/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11384968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11384968)

<comment><USER3> It looks like BMW is not in compliance. As far as I can tell, no one has done a complete corresponding source (CCS) check on that code like we did for Tesla: [https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/ccs- review/2018-Ma...](https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/ccs- review/2018-May/000000.html)

A brief look at the code BMW provided suggests they haven't provided any information on how to build or install the code, both of which are required by the GPL.

If you do find or receive source code from other car manufacturers, please try to build it before concluding that they are compliant. If you have trouble, please report this issue to us at [https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft- compliance/#reporting](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft- compliance/#reporting) and we'll do our best to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chucked over an email.

Not sure if this is specifically relevant, but just in case, I have a (minor) commit in BusyBox which is licensed under GPLv2.

I'd love to have Tesla send me my source. ;)

<comment><USER5> Maybe a silly question, but if I run a for profit SaaS and I package my software with my business logic up in a linux container which uses alpine as a base (which uses busybox), am I required to release the code for my business?

<comment><USER6> That's the difference between GPL and AGPL. GPL only requires source distribution if you distribute binaries, not if you run your binaries on your own server responding to requests from users. AGPL requires source distribution for any network-accessible service.

(Unsurprisingly, there was a very very strict rule against using, coming within 100 meters of, looking funnily at, or even thinking in a passing way of any AGPL source internally when I was at a particular large internet company that was otherwise pretty open-source-friendly...)

<comment><USER7> The AGPL requires you to provide source to "all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network."

If I have a factory, and my line workers use terminals that talks to my central server, do I have to provide them with a copy of my source code?

If I own a store that has price scanners that check a central database, do I have to make source code available to all customers?

If I have an airline that contains in-flight entertainment units, do I have to provide source code to every passenger?

<comment><USER8> > If I have a factory, and my line workers use terminals that talks to my > central server, do I have to provide them with a copy of my source code?

No, and the FAQ for AGPL ([http://www.affero.org/oagf.html](http://www.affero.org/oagf.html)) explains that AGPL and GPL works identical in this matter. Organization that just makes the copies for itself is not distributing, and as such not bound by the conditions for distributing ([https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.en.html#InternalDistrib...](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.en.html#InternalDistribution)).

> If I own a store that has price scanners that check a central database

> If I have an airline that contains in-flight entertainment units

Grey zones. It depend on copyright law. All interaction with copyrighted material is not distribution. I can look at a building without the architect being owned money. I should be able to sleep in a hotel without the architect having a copyright claim. Can I take a photo? That is debated. Can I buy and sell the building? maybe.

I would personally think that a price scanner is not conveying the work of internal workings of the store, but a agpl game in an in-flight entertainment units is conveying copies of the art to passengers just like a movie.

Ask a lawyer and the answer should be "it depend", just like any other legal area which does not have clear bright lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anybody emailed Musk directly about this? As somebody who made his money on the back of the tech industry he should get the need to give back.

<comment><USER10> ??? Most people who make money on the back of X do not feel the need to give back, and most people who diligently give back do not make Musk levels of money, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honest question: if someone modifies the software of their car, will it still be street-legal?

<comment><USER12> Why not? What's wrong with modifying your infotainment system for example?

People can put random android radios into their cars, and nobody cares. And code quality will probably be quite atrocious.

<comment><USER13> > Why not? What's wrong with modifying your infotainment system for example?

A lot of infotainment systems lock out some features when the car is moving. For example, watching a DVD on the dashboard screen of a moving car is not normally possible. People share workarounds for that kind of thing on car enthusiast forums.

If someone removed restrictions from their infotainment system, and they were involved in an accident while using that system, it might come up if the matter went to court.

<comment><USER14> It might, yes, but that doesn't mean that making that modification is illegal (it's not).

It could be brought up in court as piece of a larger effort to show negligence or actual lawbreaking.

For instance, in my state it's entirely legal to have a video system that is capable of showing video that is visible to the driver, but it's entirely illegal to use that system in a way that makes the video visible to the driver. So while having the system installed is legal, it could also be a piece of a larger collection of evidence showing wrongdoing.

<comment><USER15> > It might, yes, but that doesn't mean that making that modification is > illegal (it's not).

 _Using_ the modified device where the public vehicle code applies might be, even if making the modification, alone, is not strictly illegal. (For instance use of the device so modified would be illegal on a public road in California, where it would violate the screen use law, which only allows screen use if it has a lockout of all but specified allowed functions while the vehicle is moving. Note that under the text, even if only the functions permitted while a vehicle is in operation are actually _used_ , it would still violate the law to use the device if the lockout was disabled so that it was _possible_ to use other functions.) Cal. Vehicle Code § 27602.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, this is par for the course for any large public "tech" company. Releasing their source proactively isn't a source of profit so it is simply not done until people have to beg for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> When will you be able to hack your car to get better performance? EVs kinda take the hotrodding fun out of cars. Being able to play with the software would bring a part of it back.

<comment><USER18> With EV's you can also light your battery on fire with incorrect software mods.

<comment><USER19> As a former gearhead I can say with authority that fires are not a new hazard for the hot-rodding community.

I do think the electrocution risk is significantly higher though.

Spilling gasoline on your hands and clothes while sloppily pulling off a fuel rail or fuel pump was benign. Spilling electricity all over you while sloppily removing and handling a large cumbersome massive battery pack with whatever improvised tools you had on hand sounds like an easy way to be killed.

<comment><USER20> I mean, maybe. I've seen accidents fiddling with conversion EVs 15 years ago, and you could say the same thing. Drop a wrench onto a battery pack and you no longer own a wrench, but bare skin contact with a few hundred volt pack isn't instant death.

I wonder if oily rags are more dangerous than both.

<comment><USER19> > I wonder if oily rags are more dangerous than both.

Maybe if your vehicle uses Linseed oil...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> GPL is transitive, so does that mean all software in the Tesla becomes GPL? If not, please explain. GPL has no linkage/classpath exception.

<comment><USER22> Software that isn't linked with GPL sources probably isn't GPL. If it's just the linux kernel and busybox, then probably all the interesting userspace software isn't GPL since it wouldn't be linked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just curious what prohibits Tesla to stop shipping updates for owners who will demand sources?

<comment><USER24> A judge can order Tesla to stop distributing GPL'ed code. Which means they couldn't sell Teslas with it or ship firmware updates to anyone with it.

Source: [https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/](https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/)

Relevant part:

> You do have a choice under the GPL: you can stop using the stolen code and > write your own, or you can decide you'd rather release under the GPL. But > the choice is yours. If you say "I choose neither," the court can impose an > injunction to stop you from further distribution, but it won't order your > code released under the GPL. Your code remains yours, as you can see, even > in a worst case scenario.

Well really the whole article is relevant. It points out that the GPL is a license to use the GPL'ed code. If Tesla violates the conditions of that license, they can lose the right to use that code as a result. IANAL though.

<comment><USER25> I think the question is rather if Tesla is allowed to provide source for current version you have (therefore complying with the GPL), but also refuse to ship any further updates to you as well.

As you'd no longer receive the new binaries, you'd also no longer be entitled to the new sources per the GPL. This would leave Tesla with a large deterrent against people asking for sources.

<comment><USER26> My guess is that imposing a punishment for exercising your right to the source code wouldn't hold up:

"You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License."

Also, once any person has the source code they explicitly have the right to distribute it. So even if the punishment was imposed, it would only apply to the first person (who could then e.g. upload it to GitHub for everyone else). Maybe someone with a written-off Tesla would do that?

<comment><USER27> It's not really punishment. You're not guaranteed updates when you buy the car.

<comment> crooked-v "You'll get X in future updates" is usually a prominent part of Tesla's marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Even with source how does one relink their GPL'ed code and replace the Tesla binaries?

<comment><USER4> Does the car have any GPLv3 software or only GPLv2? The article mentions busybox and linux which are both GPLv2 only.

<comment><USER28> So. GPL2 requires that you can replace the open source portions with your own changes.

<comment><USER29> Really? The GPLv3 was released in response to TiVoization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is why the GPL is toxic. If you include it your software someone can request your source code and then compile it and release it for free.

<comment><USER31> They can only request the source code if you give them the binary.

So sell them the binary and relax.

<comment><USER27> Does that mean if Tesla charged $1 for the software on their cars, they wouldn't need to give their source code?

<comment><USER4> They need to give the source code to the recipients of the binaries who are then free to release the source code (or not) as they see fit.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This will probably get downvoted, but this kind of thing is why companies avoid the GPL. There will be people inside the company saying they would not be having these issues if they'd have used a BSD based OS (like Sony, Apple, etc) or a completely closed source OS.

<comment><USER33> Are you really sympathizing with companies on this one? It's not like how the GPL works is a mystery. If you use the code, you release the source. It's not fucking rocket science.

And even if it was, Elon's companies have some experience with rocket science.

<comment><USER34> I really think you win the internet for the day with that last phrase :)</comment></comment></comment>


Militarist: Bunker-busing bombs vs "smart concrete" - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21548918

<comment><USER2> What kind of twisted journalism is this? It reads like a article about new building materials to which they later attached some bullshit about bunkerbusting to leech of the anti-iran fear mongering machine solely because some of the scientists working on better concrete are from or in Iran.

We all should be glad that there are new building materials that could protect us from US terror bombings in the future.</comment>