Functional Programming Jargon - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming-jargon <comment><USER2> May be worth to mention a 'Functor' in OCaml is a different kind of beast than the 'Functor' explained in this article (which is ~ the Haskell Functor type- class).

<comment><USER3> And perhaps add something about (OCaml) modules in that case?

The whole list seems to be mostly Haskell-inspired terminology translated to JavaScript(?), so OCaml-style modules and thus functors might make less sense to describe thoroughly. (Even though the OCaml people have a better claim to be using Functor in something resembling its mathematical meaning.)

<comment><USER4> > Even though the OCaml people have a better claim to be using Functor in > something resembling its mathematical meaning.

I think that is not accurate. Haskell's notion of a functor is basically taken from category theory. Same with applicative functor. It is easy to draw commutative diagrams for things like `Maybe` or `Either a` to prove it!

In contrast in OCaml functors are module functions. Do modules form categories? Maybe? I haven't seen anyone talking about category of OCaml modules. Perhaps in some papers. But even if they do I wouldn't call OCaml's claim better. When one says Functor in Haskell it is generally understood as "the category theory thing". When one says functor in OCaml I think most people, myself included, would think "module function", whether it satisfies category-theory requirements or not.

Also, worth pointing out that OCaml too has applicative functors. Those are such functors that when applied to same modules produce same types. Whether that fits with the category-theoretic notion of applicative functor... haven't thought about that! Maybe?

Basically

        module M1 = Make(F)(G)
        module M2 = Make(F)(G)

then if `M1.t` is the same as `M2.t` for some `t` the we have an applicative functor. The other side of the coin are generative functors: each time you apply them they mint new types:

        module M1 = Make(F)(G)()
        module M2 = Make(F)(G)()

Then `M1.t` /= `M2.t`. This has been introduced in OCaml `4.02`

<comment><USER3> Thanks! The main point against Haskell functors being 'proper' is that they only work in the category of 'Hask'.

<comment><USER5> well, there is always: [https://github.com/mikeizbicki/subhask](https://github.com/mikeizbicki/subhask) which provides more flexibility on the categories you are programming in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I assume @hemanth is happy for the project README to appear on the blog of a recruitment agency. Along with the rest of the blogs that seem to be copy pasted from the original location. Should I guess functional-works obtained permission from all the original copyright holders?

<comment><USER7> Original article is here: [https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming- jargon/blo...](https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming- jargon/blob/master/readme.md)

Functional works does not mention the MIT license and thus is allegedly infringing on his copyright.

They link to the original source though. And the author seems to be hemanth himself. So perhaps this is all false alarm.

<comment><AUTHOR> We absolutely receive permission before we publish anything. With final approval coming from the author before anything goes live.

We have a platform that givs visibility to the great work that's being done in the functional space.

<comment><USER8> >We have a platform that givs visibility to the great work that's being done in the functional space.

Wow, that's disingenous. That's nothing like what you do. You have a platform that promotes your brand by copying and pasting other people's content into a worse presentation with your logo in a sticky navbar stuck to the top of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jw- I think the jump from 'Category' to 'Value: Anything that can be assigned to a variable.' was a somewhat jarring change in abstraction level.

Also, trying to explain Monad, Comonad, or Applicative as 'jargon' is probably a step too far IMO. They are not important for getting started with FP, and describing them without their equational properties is kind of meaningless.

That being said I liked alot of the inclusions; partial application, closure, composition. I think the collection is probably slightly guilty of trying to be too clever by including advanced concepts.

<comment><USER9> These terms provide a concise way to communicate more complex concepts in a technical, specialized context: practically the definition of "jargon."

But that's also the reason I agree with you as regards their utility in most programming. Simply knowing the "what" of the definitions is barely a start. Those who know the definitions and are comfortable enough with the material to use them effectively would find little value in lists of this sort. For most (almost all) programming efforts outside a very narrow niche of academic applications it's not even necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Found two bugs with the page (in case a developer is reading this thread)

I clicked on any topic in the list and it just scrolled me to the top of the page. (Mac OS + Chrome latest / Safari latest)

Also if you refresh the page with a url which has a #link in it it will reload with an empty-ish content.

<comment><USER11> Hey, thanks for pointing it out - the first one we're currently looking into as we're using github style markdown, but the second one is fairly new.

We'll launch a new version of the site mid December which will address the current issues. Iterating...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The contents links all go back to the top of the page.

<comment><USER11> we're currently looking into it to fix it(we're using Github style markdown). meanwhile, we'll edit it to serve as a table of contents with no links.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for replying. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Lifting is when you take a value and put it into an object like a functor.

It should probably say:

> Lifting is when you take a function and make a version of it that operates > on functors / applicatives.

<comment><USER14> I don't think this is strictly true. Sure there's liftA2 that does that but as a general concept, you can lift things of various kinds into a monad (or other thing like that). For example, `pure`/`return` (`of` in fantasy-land) lifts a value into an applicative/monad.

I'm not sure if lifting is just application of a coalgebra but I'm still learning too. :)

<comment><USER13> AFAIK lifting is informal and specifically refers to lifting functions. Confusion arises when this is accomplished via Applicative which... erm "lifts" currying itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _" Since these rules govern composition at very abstract level, category > theory is great at uncovering new ways of composing things."_

I understood this much already prior. What I'd like next now are at least a handful (half-dozen-or-so) of concrete and truly compelling examples of such "uncoverings" ;)

OK, 1 or 2 would also be a start

<comment><USER16> Here's a couple:

Monads are so pervasive that multiple languages have determined that they deserve special syntax (see: Haskell's do-notation, OCaml's let-syntax). Those syntaxes play nicely with a ton of seemingly-different types, such as promises, options (maybes/nullables), lists, monadic error handling (either, or_error), etc.

On a similar note, recognizing the structure of monads has in the past allowed me to abstract things in an interesting way. For example, say I have a dict lookup function (takes a key, returns a value) and I want to build a bunch of useful functions on top of that. But we want to use them in many different contexts - the dict might be remote or locally in memory (promises vs. not) and we may or may not be in a test context (monadic vs exception-based error- handling). By recognizing that we can just abstract over monads, we can easily handle these 4 cases (promise, promise+error monad, error monad, unit monad).

<comment> jw- By OCaml's let syntax do you mean this: [https://blog.janestreet.com/let- syntax-and-why-you-should-us...](https://blog.janestreet.com/let-syntax-and- why-you-should-use-it/)?

You can also add F# computation expressions to the list!

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's what I mean by let syntax. The implementation and more description can be found at [https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let](https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let)

I failed to find F# computation expressions, probably because I searched for the word "monad" which they seem to be avoiding, but that's another great example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gotta love it when "Category Theory for Programmers" is provided as a further reading link on a very introductory article.

<comment><USER18> Yes. Although I question the usefulness of this jargon list, I think Bartosz Milewski's CTfP is excellent:

[https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory- for-p...](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- programmers-the-preface/)

<comment><USER19> I bought a physical copy of this recently, it's been great so far, certainly the best introduction to the topic I've read.

<comment><USER20> Where can I order a physical copy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know of similar github repos / websites that describe things (does not have to be fp) by providing code / math examples ?

<comment><USER22> Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming [https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate- guide/](https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Page doesn't display in Kindernet Exploder. All you see is a header and a footer and no content inbetween.

<comment><USER11> We'll look into it, but can't promise much as we're launching a new version mid December which should be friendlier across more platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Loved the concise explanations of the What. A nice extension of this would be the Why, something I usually struggle to understand. Currying as an example, I'm none the wiser as to why it's a preferable way of composing a function and it's arguments, or when either is applicable.

<comment><USER25> Let's say you have a validation function that matches a string with a given regex, and you need to use that same logic in several places, using a different regex. Currying allows you to write something like this:

validate :: Regex -> String -> T

validate r s = ...

validateIpAddr :: String -> T

validateIpAddr = validate ipRegex

validateZipCode :: String -> T

validateZipCode = validate zipCodeRegex

And so on and so forth. It can reduce boilerplate, and lets you do stuff like map partially applied functions to functors.

<comment><USER26> This doesn't really seem to save you much, since you're going from:

      validate(IpAddr, Regex)

to

      validateIpAddr(Regex)

I have to admit I'm a little fuzzy on why currying is desirable so there's probably something obvious I'm missing.

<comment><USER27> It's `validateIpAddr(String)`: the first argument is fixed. Suppose you have a list of strings, and you want to extract the ones that are IP addresses. Then you can just write

        filter (validate ipRegex) listOfStrings

instead of

        filter validateIpAddr listOfStrings
            where validateIpAddr string = validate ipRegex string

<comment><USER26> Why not just

      map { validate(ipRegex, $) } listOfStrings

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's interesting how simple and understandable now these concepts are with JS. I couldn't imagine a language written in 7 days ending up with ability to handle all this.

<comment><USER29> The original JS borrowed heavily from Scheme (lisp1 + everything evaluatable) and Self (prototype model of inheritance) and then was covered with a bunch of Java-like nonsense, which (IMO) just made things more complex.

There's been a nice functional language buried in JS all this time. It's still buried in there someplace.

<comment><USER30> If you make it through the tooling, clojurescript is magical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anyone have any insight as to why they call `bind/flatmap` `chain` instead of just `flatmap` (given `bind` is already taken in JS)?

<comment><USER32> Presumably because it represents a 'chain' of dependent computations or something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really nice.

Small suggestion: It would be really nice if the table of contents allowed me to click to the section itself.

</comment><comment><USER34> My biggest request would be to add "map" to the list, precisely because it's ambiguous. It could mean:

1) any key/value data structure

2) a hashmap, specifically

3) a function that runs on each element of an array to make a new array

<comment><USER35> Those are all just particular cases of the same concept. A "map", well, maps values in a domain to values in a codomain. A mathematical function is a map. A key/value data structure can be viewed as a partial function on a non contiguous, discrete domain. A hashmap is just an implementation detail of a key/value structure. A map over an array is again just a function mapping an array in one domain to another array in a codomain.

<comment><USER36> While that's true in a sense, I think it sweeps important details under the rug, which confuses things more than it enlightens. You can iterate over the domain of a map data structure, but not (in general) a map function.

For purposes of education and communication, I think it's unfortunate that we use the same name for these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks like the article on Works Hub was copied & pasted from the original source on GitHub, as others have mentioned in subthreads. Would be great if we could update the article link to the primary source to give the many contributors credit.

[https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming- jargon](https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming-jargon)

<comment><AUTHOR> the post is linked back to the original source at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, I saw that and disliked that they copied the entire very long post then buried the attribution in one small line at the very bottom which most people will not read to. Without putting that upfront, the site that copied is playing in a gray area of plagiarism where this is presumed to be original content from the top of the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea - should be moved to the top to avoid confusion. However, all post are approved by the author before they go live so it's really down to the writer to structure the post how they wish.

<comment><USER37> If you are affiliated with the website that republished, it would be great to see clearer upfront indication of reposted content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I know this is off topic, but I _really_ wish pages wouldn't hide content behind JavaScript. The page I see would work just as well as just HTML with a little CSS styling.

<comment><USER39> [https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming- jargon/blo...](https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming- jargon/blob/master/readme.md) (it is original article)

In my other deleted comment I thought only links don't work; but it appears that you see nothing at all with js off.

<comment><USER11> indeed the links to the sections don't work for now and we're looking into it.

regarding the JS stuff, the site is built as an SPA and the blog is only one feature, the others are job postings and a personal dashboard where a signed- in user can pin their favorite jobs to keep them for further reference

It's also built using ClojureScript, Reframe, Clojure & GraphQL plus a revamped version launch is planned for mid-December, so I'm afraid the JS is still going to be there :)

<comment><USER39> Most of us know what it is built with and what is the point of this submission on your side, but thanks for the detailed explanation of your fault :)

<comment><USER11> haha maybe we did get a bit over zealous with the explanation

<comment><USER39> Yeah, when I was young and I found my comments every second under my forums posts too, trying to retain the meaning. That looked silly. There is always something you can learn as you grow up. (No pressure.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Correction: Haskell jargon. The continued conflation of Haskell and functional programming as a whole annoys me greatly. (The majority of functional programming is not statically typed! Clojure and the other lisps are far more widely used than Haskell and the MLs, not even to mention that basically every language has first-class functions now.)

<comment><USER41> "Constant" is a term almost never spoken at Haskell circles, and "referential transparency" appears much more often within lispers and Clojure practitioners than between haskellers.

<comment><USER42> It is a stretch to suggest that Haskellers don't discuss referential transparency as much as Lispers do. It's a fundamentally important concept in writing and reasoning about Haskell programs.

<comment><USER41> There's a large "fish don't talk about the water" effect. When talking about Haskell, people talk about referential transparency, but when writing Haskell, it's very rare.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there companies willing to sponsor visas for interns? - <AUTHOR> Is it highly unlikely or impossible? <comment><USER2> I would guess that would not be very likely, but I'm not sure.

All you would have to prove is that you have a skill set that employers are not able to find in the US. I would guess that would be difficult at the intern level.

For example, if you were really good at Matlab there is always a need for that. (It is taught in universities but the demand is still high).

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the intern and the Visa. Someone coming from Canada who just needs a TN is an easy sell to most companies. Someone who is eligible for an OPT or F1, maybe, really just depends on how much money your C-level likes to throw around. Anything else, probably not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. A J-1 visa is relatively cheap and fast to process.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's specifically for this purpose. Visa details: [http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/intern/](http://j1visa.state.gov/programs/intern/)</comment></comment>


Judge: Not running an ad is an exercise in free speech - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/judge-agrees-broadcasters-have-first-amendment-right-refuse-advertisements-1007317 <comment><USER2> It would be an easier decision if most broadcasters weren't using public property to broadcast with. Long ago it was decided in exchange for the gift of free airwaves they'd accept strict regulation along with the obligation to run "public service" announcements, and to curry favor with powerful politicians.

I say grant the airwaves as property to their current controllers, and stop regulating them altogether. Then it's private property and clearly they can broadcast what they and their customers want. Or they can sell to some data service to use their frequencies for high performance networks. Or find even better uses.

Public control of broadcasting is just a hidden tool for our political organizations to maintain their power.

<comment><USER3> Selling part of the spectrum is theft from future generations. At the absolute most there should be leases lasting maybe a decade or two.

<comment><USER2> It's no more theft than allowing you to own the property under your house.

<comment><USER4> Very different "the property under your house" is very tangible discrete thing that you pay to own The airwaves (and the signal being transmitted over it) are nebulous flowing item and giving perpetual ownership rights to what can be delivered on those airwaves is a _very_ powerful right..maybe leasing is the right way

<comment><USER2> They can treated effectively as property and there are good reasons to do so. TV and radio frequencies are losing value for media broadcast, but can't be repurposed for better uses such as competing with cable monopolies in data transfer. Ownership rights would make that feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _InfoStream argued the broadcaster 's refusal was "pretextual," one designed to garner favor from SiriusXM's preferred customers._

God forbid that a business should cater to its best customers. I mean, for shame and all that.

/s

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this imply that adblocking is also free speech

<comment><USER7> That'd be my interpretation...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems the opposite direction in the cake baking decisions that have come up of late.

<comment><USER7> You make a good point. I think the difference is that the cake refusal case is founded on 14th amendment rights, whereas the advertiser can't argue that in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Obligatory [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

"Not listening to my bullshit is violating my free speech rights" actually means "I should be able to force people to listen to my bullshit."

<comment><USER10> This runs a thin line where orders of powers are in play, what has the most power in a certain realm and what conditions are to be followed or met. Are we arguing legality of Freedom of Speech or are we arguing order of power and rights to all irregardless of ownership and power structures?

If it is the former then yes, the law cannot arrest you for speech. If it is the latter, that is harder to ascertain, and I don't think (nor will I assume or paint a broad brush on these individuals) that people mean they want to force people to listen, but they want the same and equal opportunity to voice their opinion.

Having the opportunity is not the same as forcing, and I would never conflate these in my mind.

If we are arguing that America is the originating power structure and the servers are hosted in American soil, does that mean they must follow these bills to rights? Does the rights of those who claim ownership of the servers factor into the equation and do they have authority to govern whether someone should be capable of censorship? What about the network the opinion travels over? What about the country that the opinion comes from? What about...

Many of these cases renders down to ownership case, and Capitalism at times is at disagreement with rights, and in this case, capitalism is what allows these to propagate in a way due to monetary ownership of grounds where opinions are being voiced.

It's a very difficult conversation and road to navigate. It's not as simple as your statement renders.

<comment><USER9> Yes my statement is too simplistic looking at all the issues around free speech. I meant the first amendment in particular and the mistaken belief that "shut up or leave" is a violation of it.

So yeah, I criticized people for mistaking the first amendment to mean their absolute right to free speech all while confusing the terms myself.</comment></comment></comment>


UK government takes step towards modernising copyright - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-takes-important-step-towards-modernising-copyright

<comment> k-mcgrady "The regulations will now be debated in both Houses of Parliament. If the regulations are approved they will come into force on 1 June 2014."

</comment><comment><USER2> But ... What are those steps?</comment>


Pienoon – Multiplayer game where you can throw pies at your friends - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/pienoon

<comment><USER2> This would be a nice facebook game. I had made a similar one called stones and roses long back.

</comment><comment><USER3> The popover 'learn to make games with C++' in the YouTube video is kind of annoying.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool! Did you make this?</comment>


Seattle police use family DNA, latest science to identify killer 52 years later - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/52-years-seattle-woman-killed-police-use-family-dna-latest-science-identify-killer/ <comment><USER2> Getting your DNA sequenced is a bit like letting an app have access to your contacts: in both, your choice has consequences for hundreds of other people. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it's possible to undo the effects of something your friends/family might have done :/

<comment><USER3> That's a good analogy.

At what point does what we're giving up become worth it to solve all these crimes?

I don't have an answer, I'm just wondering.

Obviously solving 1 or 2 crimes isn't worth giving up so much private information. But 10,000? 100,000? Is there even a number?

<comment><USER4> Crime is a declining problem in the U.S. and many other areas. Most of the criminals left have poor impulse control and/or are involved in gangs -- not exactly CSI material. Cops on the beat will do a good job without the fancy lab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been part of the group who got asked to give a DNA sample in the Nicky Verstappen [1] case. This was voluntarily, and I reluctantly did this (for [mostly ethical] reasons which would make this post very long), and had a good discussion about it with the 2 policemen who came to my house to take the sample. The technique used (family DNA) is the same in that case as in the topic we discuss.

Now, I knew I didn't do it, and I knew it would be highly unlikely (but not impossible) that a male member of my family did this (not emotional but practical reasons: my uncle didn't quite live near the region, my father was almost blind and could barely walk, and my cousin was like 10 or so when this happened). So I didn't quite get the point. However, because I volunteered, the police could flag my entire family off the list of suspects. This narrowed the net around the perpetrator.

Thanks to people like me, not to mention the hard work of hundreds of policemen, the case is now solved (or well, to be precise there's a suspect on trial; not yet a convict). Because _there was a match_ with a family member of him. And as you can read at [1] the bird had flown cause it got too hot around him.

I recently got a letter from the government that my DNA got destroyed. Whether you believe that letter or not is up to you; during my interview I had the chance to decide for it to be kept or destroyed after the case was final, and I went with the latter. I'd like to hope my choice is respected by my government.

I get it though that with common law and in the USA you gotta be very careful when talking to the police but my experience in The Netherlands with the police has been positive or in some occurrences neutral at worst. Could be white male privilege though. YMMV.

As for

> If the host is the planet, what is the claim on the other guests to your > body.

On Earth's "body" the other guests are alive; you're dead. They can contribute to the future of planet earth and its inhabitants while your time is done for. So it makes sense that whatever is done with your remains and inheritance goes to the inhabitants, with a (slight) prejudice towards your direct ancestors (family). The good news is, our legal systems have law to provide for such as it is.

As for the other inhabitants in your body, we're at the point where pets have a few rights whereas cattle and such have barely none. Lets not think about the rights of bacteria and parasites and such (they don't even have a CNS to begin with, and while their usefulness is up for debate, they're not exactly a dying breed).

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

<comment><USER6> > I've been part of the group who got asked to give a DNA sample in the Nicky > Verstappen [1] case. This was voluntarily, and I reluctantly did this

Great story and thanks for sharing this. I want to answer why I think this is a bad idea however.

First, I would talk to a legal defense attorney before doing this. A famous video about this topic is here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE).

1) The police might have told you it was for one case but it was for another, as the police can lie.

2) The DNA test itself might give a false positive on you or your family members, putting your family to a harsher scrutiny by the police that would have otherwise, and with more judicial justification. In the investigatory zeal they might find other lesser crimes they might want to prosecute just to not be empty handed. In the U.S., they might have charged a family member on a false positive with a ridiculously overblown crime. People have killed themselves over that prosecutorial technique ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz))

3) The police could fiddle with the samples and plant evidence if they thought you or someone else did it. (Steven Avery case)

4) The lab might fake results if they are in tandem with the DA ([https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/epic-drug-lab- scandal-r...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/epic-drug-lab-scandal- results-more-20-000-convictions-dropped-n747891))

You are gambling with your life and the life of your family members when you make that choice. And if you were so sure a family member of yours did not do it, then the police could have come to the same conclusion on their alibis and physical state of your family members.

Even if you believe non of that is "likely to happen" there is a risk you are taking in exchange for a very small benefit (feeling good about assisting in a real investigation). And I assure you that if you had asked that, in exchange for the dna sample, your family and yourself have absolute criminal immunity for any case not related to the Nicky Verstappen, no DA would have signed off on that.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your interesting reply as well. I recommend Americans to read it thoroughly.

> A famous video about this topic is here > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE).

Yes, I know that video. I've seen it more than once. Its very interesting, and I've seen other videos by ACLU on the matter as well. These videos though are all about the US of A which isn't the country where I live. All your examples are also from the USA. My comment is _not about the USA_ (which kinda makes it off-topic in this thread). I can't comment about the legal system in the USA; I'm far too clueless about it.

> 1) The police might have told you it was for one case but it was for > another, as the police can lie.

True, but I'm not afraid for such. I mean, of course I did a few naughty things in my youth (like running around with a replica plastic colt .45 which had these plastic arrows. I bought it when I was like 3 or 4 in Spain _crickets_ ) but there's also statute of limitations.

I myself was part of the target group. And as much as I said it to be unlikely male family members were involved, I could not be sure. Now I am 100% sure.

 _If_ the government wants to screw me over, they easily can. They easily can break in my house and plant some evidence in it, or on my computer. Locks aren't hard to pick, for starters. They can MITM my phone as well. What they cannot do is request my data at Facebook, cause I don't have such.

I'm also a father. If my kid was raped and murdered when she was to be 12, I'd want to see the person who did this behind bars (well, if not something else, but lets not get into that, cause that's why its good that I am not the judge on my own case, and why it is good that we _have_ a legal system). Not just for my partner or my loved ones or myself; I don't wish the pain I'd endure as a father on _any_ parent. So I want this perpetrator to be stopped. Family DNA is very costly procedure, so the police only resort to it when all other leads have come to a dead end.

I mean, to me, if I'd die today, that'd be less worse than seeing my (only) kid die. I had my father die a few years ago, I don't think I'll ever fully recuperate over that. But my child, my offspring, is -for me- almost the most important living organism on this planet. (Except for the planet itself.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > She was able to match a palm print recovered from the elevator control > panel, and lifted during initial crime scene processing, to those taken from > Wypych in 1971 when he was arrested for larceny, SPD said.

So, why didn't they attempt this kind of matching in the first place? Much easier than DNA.

<comment><USER8> > _why didn 't they attempt this kind of matching in the first place?_

There is no palm print database.

<comment><USER9> But there was reason to suspect him, so could they not have looked at the evidence from his other crimes?

<comment><USER10> That crime was several years later.

<comment><USER9> Yes. I guess the earlier case was cold. The link was there to find, but they only found it much later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The use of DNA in ways not anticipated by _informed_ [1] consent is wrong.

1 = Not just a signature on the form. But a real understanding of what we're going to use it for.

<comment><USER12> Even with a warrant?

<comment><USER11> How well were the participants informed about how warrants would be used to access their information?

<comment><USER12> The state has decided that you don't need to be informed in advance that a warrant will let them search through your things. The whole point of a warrant is that it lets them search. "I didn't know they could look inside my bag" isn't a legal defense.

<comment><USER11> You're talking about _malum prohibitum_ and I'm talking about _malum in se_.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand. Are you saying that it's wrong for the state to grant search warrants in the course of investigating murders? Because it seems to me that the alternative is that then all one needs to do to never be convicted of a crime is to just not consent to being investigated. So which is the lesser problem, invading privacy with a warrant or never being able to prosecute any crimes?

<comment><USER11> Are you replying with questions that imply I said something that I never said?

 _Edit_ : At the time of my reply, the prior post read (in its entirety): _I don 't understand. Are you saying that it's wrong for the state to grant search warrants in the course of investigating murders?_

I won't be replying to further posts in this thread.

<comment><USER13> His first question was "even with a warrant?" Which you replied to with another question. As I see it he's asking you to clarify your initial statement. No need to get all defensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are further implications.

For example, since WWII, there have been huge efforts to identify and locate war criminals. So now, where there's DNA evidence, that could continue, even though such criminals had died. And in future wars, combatants will perhaps make efforts to retain DNA evidence.

Having war be less anonymous is arguably a great thing.

<comment><USER15> There have been efforts to identify and locate "war criminals" of one side. No effort has been made to identify, locate and charge war criminals of the other side ( which has far more war criminals if we are being honest ).

<comment><USER14> I was aiming for neutrality.

But yes, you're probably right. Although I'm not sure which "other side" you mean. And still, none of that is relevant to the point about anonymity of war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Voluntarily shared third party info isn't private (at least under the law). This may actually end up being a good thing long term for healthcare.

<comment><USER17> A decade or two (probably less) and health insurance will plug your details into some shared DNA database and automatically disqualify you because your genetics predispose you to a laundry list of conditions, not worth the risk. Or, we will cover you but not for these genetic disorders as they are considered "preexisting conditions".

<comment><USER18> Affordable Care Act does not allow for discrimination based on pre existing conditions in the US.

<comment><USER19> GINA also forbids the use of genetic information in health insurance and employment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From a behavioral perspective it is odd that a guy would do this and then stop doing it.

<comment><USER21> The "serial killers never stop" is a myth. In fact it's pretty common. Life happens to even the worst people, and they are unable to carry out their previous hobbies... In this car being murder.

<comment><USER20> Source?

Once you cross the bridge for "your thing", it feels to good to stop. Be it murder, rape or sex with minors. This is actually one of the reasons why it is so important to catch a criminal. Not to punish for previous crimes but to prevent new ones.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/health/serial-killers- gol...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/health/serial-killers-golden- state.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it disconcerting that someone's remains would be violated due to being a murder suspect. This is one of many reasons to have your remains cremated, I suppose. It also avoids wasting space in a graveyard and whatnot.

I'm beginning to seriously hear people discuss that it's perfectly okay to use DNA people submit in these ways and even that it would be okay for the government to collect trash and other things that would contain DNA to add people to databases. Such arguments are usually emotional and follow the ''If just one person is saved'' trope.

This is rather harrowing, don't you agree?

<comment><USER23> If you're dead, what do you care what happens to your remains?

I see no problem with exhuming a corpse to solve a murder case as long as there's probable cause and a warrant, which there was here.

<comment><USER24> > If you're dead, what do you care what happens to your remains?

Because our society believes in body autonomy, to the point that it won't use your body's organs to save other human beings, without your express consent.

Your body is your property, and it takes a damn good reason for someone else to access your property, contrary to your will.

<comment><USER25> > it won't use your body's organs to save other human beings, without your > express consent

No longer true here in NL:

[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/14/health/new-dutch-law- orga...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/14/health/new-dutch-law-organ-donors- bn-intl/index.html)

<comment><USER6> I blame the Predictably Irrational guy for making opt out so popular world- wide.

I personally find it abhorrent. I used to be an organ donor before they made it opt-out in argentina: after that in protest I took myself out.

<comment><USER26> Can you elaborate about this? I can't really see reasons for outside of superstition and clinging to false hopes to be against it being opt out; and even on an opt out system, I find that doctors still "request" the permissions to the family because no one wants to deal with unnecessary legal trouble.

Even following the anti authoritarian reasoning, which I'm kind of fond, I find it silly to worry about this, with all the stuff the state decides over your life.

<comment><USER6> It reverts the burden of proof. It is now on you and your family to prove otherwise.

> I find that doctors still "request" the permissions to the family because no > one wants to deal with unnecessary legal trouble.

Until they don't need to. In argentina for example, the legal requirement of getting consent from family members was lifted with the introduction of the opt-out. Funny thing about the opt-out, its an online registration!

I've seen opt-out described as a "libertarian paternalism" proposal to say that you have the liberty to choose anything but that there is an opinionated default. I find such reasoning to always lead to a death by a thousand cuts: if every single policy was implemented opt-out, you would definitely be able to manipulate the population into something.

> with all the stuff the state decides over your life.

I worry about any of them. And I don't find it comforting at all to argue that because individual liberties are breached many times, whats does one more stripe do to the tiger.

<comment><USER23> There's always an opinionated default about everything. Having the default be no organ donation is as much a decision of the state as having the default be the opposite.

<comment><USER6> I think I understand the general point, but in this particular case the default is obviously you can't mess with a dead body.

You can't go to a cemetery and dig up corpses because "they didn't opt-out of grave-robbery". I would say that the body naturally falls under the concept of private property, which is why it is heinous to desecrate bodies and their belongings when people die.

What's crazy to me is that this problem looks so easy to resolve: if you want organ donors, pay for them. A form of reverse insurance: that will get you people in.

<comment><USER23> What makes it obvious? Just because it has usually been done that way in the past?

Paying for organ donors comes with a host of problems. It's far from easy.

<comment><USER6> Because you wouldn't take things from a corpse in any other situation, as it is considered unsacred (disrespectful to the body) and robbery (say, take the shoes & wallet of a recently diseased person).

> Paying for organ donors comes with a host of problems. It's far from easy.

Nobel prizes have been awarded on one solution to this problem alone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Buried in there:

"Do you realize, for example, that when you upload your DNA, you're potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family?" Elizabeth Joh, a UC Davis law professor who studies the Fourth Amendment and technology, told the magazine.

<comment><USER28> I can inform on a serial killer in my family even if I didn't know they were a serial killer?

Shut up and take my DNA.

<comment><USER29> Bold of you to assume this will only ever be used to hunt serial killers.

<comment><USER28> It could also be used to hunt for deadbeat fathers, or rapists who didn't murder anyone, or...

Why exactly am I supposed to be opposed to this? Your feelings and inchoate fears?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Quelle surprise.. another military/police type.. just like EAR/ONS... Seems like we could save some time and just check dna against known mil/police dna first.

<comment><USER31> I agree. If you're going to be a police officer we should use all means necessary to ensure you're not a rapist/murderer. Seems like a low bar to me.</comment></comment>


How to Succeed? Make Employees Happy - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818183,00.html

<comment><USER2> Has anyone seen any data to back this up? This seems like the sort of assertion that would be quantifiable - Every company seems to have its own internal satisfaction surveys; and external sources have been doing employee happiness surveys for years.

<comment><USER3> In my opinion, if you're making employees fill out surveys about their happiness, you're doing it wrong. What's needed is a culture where employees don't just follow policy but help shape it as well. Contributions met with positive feedback beget more contribution, and everyone feels as though they have a say in how things are done.

Of course, not every idea is good. Instead of ignoring or dismissing the idea, explain its flaws and ask them to present a revised idea that addresses those points.

<comment><USER2> I didn't do a good job making my point. I'm not interested in having my employees fill out surveys at all. I'm curious as to whether or not someone has actually done any studies with regards to the claim that happy employees equates to successful companies.

If a correlation can be made, then it validates the foosball tables and Wii that seem to be ubiquitous in startups these days.

Otherwise, it seems like the article is saying "these two guys have successful companies because their employees are happy"; versus the conventional wisdom that successful companies tend to have happier employees than unsuccessful ones. In other words, correlation does not equal causality.

<comment><USER4> Zappos. They focus on making both employees and customers extremely happy, at all costs.

Apple. They focus on making a majority of their customers happy. They don't seem to do anything remarkable for their employees, however.

Microsoft. They don't understand how to make their customers happy, nor do they know how to make their employees happy.

All three of these companies are successful. There's a continuum of success, and how far you get down that continuum depends on many variables. In the end, it's a matter of business philosophy and focusing on what the business does best.

When business people say that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, I always cringe. Businesses exist to make something people want, and then to receive money in exchange for making or doing it. The point of a corporation is to make the most awesome "something," such that lots of people pay you for it. Simple.

To make the most awesome "something," you have to focus on what that something is. Whole Foods is a retailer, so their employees interact directly with their customers. In Whole Foods case, the "something" they provide is a point of distribution of goods. Making their employees happy will have a direct, positive impact on the quality of the customer experience in the store. But this is not really quantifiable because you can't have a before/after controlled study. The happiness that Whole Foods tries to instill in its employees permeates the culture of the company; it's how they do business. They can't simply turn off their company happiness meter and see if profits drop.

You can, however, compare Whole Foods to the other health food stores that don't focus on employee happiness... and the results are obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the link to the full interview:

[http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/06/former_house...](http://time- blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/06/former_housemates_john_mackey.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> "That's a little like saying the purpose of religion isn't to achieve salvation" -- more quality journalism from Time</comment>


The Mac App Store effect in graphs: an hour by hour look at new Evernote signups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evernote.com/2011/01/07/mac-app-store-more-than-doubles-new-users/

<comment><USER2> That is pretty impressive to me, since it is 40,000 new users and not existing users.</comment>


Ted Nelson's published papers on computers and interaction, 1965 to 1977 - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/SelectedPapers1977 <comment><USER2> [copied from another HN posting linking to the same collection of papers, which did not get upvoted]

A worthy collection. Theodor "Ted" Nelson's ideas have played a significant role in shaping the course of computing and thought. His self-published books (Computer Lib and Literary Machines) are still goldmines of information and understanding. His papers, some of which appear in this collection, show a deep understanding of computation that, even today, seems revolutionary.

The World Wide Web is an imperfect implementation of his conceptual model of a world in which information is completely intertwingled. His concept of transcopyright provide a workable solution to the question of who owns what in a digital world. And he is the man who invented the hyperlink.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ted Nelson is a genuine visionary, the real deal. He sees things that others do not see (and won't for another decade or two). He knows what is important (or will be important) and can be irascibly stubborn when explaining what he wants (needs) to fulfill his vision. He gets impatient trying to bend reality to fulfill the vision of his personal distortion field. He is difficult and charming. He is persistent. He creates language and words like "hyperlink", "intertwingle" and "transclusion" as he tries to explain to mere mortals his ideas. He writes well. And, more often than not, his vision is correct. Ted deserves more recognition, perhaps even a Turing Award.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _It was this book that persuaded John Walker, founder of Autodesk, to back > the Xanadu® project in 1988._

…for four years, before Autodesk gave up:

> […] _Come 1992, the "resources of Autodesk" were still funding "talent of > the Xanadu team" which had not, as of that date, produced anything remotely > like a production prototype—in fact, nothing as impressive as the 88.1x > prototype which existed before Autodesk invested in Xanadu. On August 21, > 1992 Autodesk decided to pull the plug and give its interest in Xanadu back > to the Xanadudes._

(Quoted from footnote linked from this page: [https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/e5/chapter2_64.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/e5/chapter2_64.html))

<comment><USER4> Ted gives a great overview of his life and work at [0]. In this, he ascribes the demotion/firing of Xu88's project lead Roger Gregory as the reason it failed to come fruition, and takes credit for the "regrettable" part he played in this.

The whole talk is a wonderful high-level overview from Ted's perspective, which is so often warped and misrepresented. Though he admits that he has, at times, been "overwhelmed by bitterness", he doesn't seem to harbor any lasting hostility or malice to anyone, and continues to work on seeing his vision come to life. He identifies many of the mistakes he's made, identifying multiple critical junctures in which Xanadu may have taken off if he had done something better.

Strongly recommended, and I'm grateful that he recorded this historical treasure. Far more valuable and significant than any "incredible journey" post-mortem.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM- SGlGs?t=1700](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmfjM-SGlGs?t=1700) [timestamped to Autodesk discussion for relevance; watch the whole thing]

<comment><USER5> " _I didn 't do any one main thing, but I thought of a lot of things first, inspired a lot of people and coined a lot of words that people use, invented a few things not well known, and kept telling people about a great new world that I thought was coming_"

Thanks for that link, most interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ted Nelson has some novel ideas. But I can't help to think that the failure of the mass adoption of his ideas stems from him being too greedy. If he had open sourced the code he wrote for Xanadu, if he had even published specs of a simple Xanadu system free of copyright he could've brought us a better hypertext.

The idea that data should consist of small addressable chunks, with each chunk having relations with other data actually makes a lot of sense.

We are thinking of data linearly, you start from byte 1 to end. Even if you copy the file or make minor changes the OS considers it another file. You make a reference to a movie, a novel etc., if you do not explicitly add the reference no one knows. Then we end up in piles and piles of data we cannot process. We have to rely on proprietary search engines, we have to rely on our browser history and our memory.

And with the latest shiniest web apps that fully render in JS we can't even get addressable future-proof links. Try to access a news page from 10 years ago, most likely the link won't work. Archive.org helps in that regard. But things could've been easier.

We have all these resources at hand, we could implement the idea of transclusion even if it is only limited to our domain. Information-heavy sites such as Wikipedia, C2-wiki etc. would greatly benefit from it.

It's true that we need a new way to look at data. It is not pen and paper anymore, we need to be able to go beyond searching. Even now, most of the world uses plain-old PDF, which is an image of a printable paper. We can use animations, videos, sound, interactivity in our content, but mostly we don't.

Ted Nelson thinks this is caused by the invention of the GUI (or PUI -Parc user interface- as he calls it) in Xerox Parc. They needed to show their managers something they could make sense of. So they created the desktop. Here is your trash-bin, here is your notepad, here are your documents (e.g Postscript/PDF). It is _just_ like your physical desk.

But it is not your physical desk, what you have in front of you is a _computer_. We teach hours and hours of hand-writing to hour children, but only very few countries teach touch-typing. The old generation either doesn't understand or doesn't want kids to utilize their full potential with computers. Fortunately kids learn on their own, build their own online communities, so there is hope. Any kid that can get his/her hands on Computer Lib/Dream Machines won't be able to believe the idea that computers are only good for showing us an enhanced simulation of a work-desk.

<comment><USER7> Open Source is a contemporary invention introduce by Eric S. Raymond in 1997, so any failure of Ted to utilise it is a bit unfair as he was living in a different era. For me the key take away from Ted is the democratisation of computer use, without Ted there is a very real chance we never would have had fully functioning stand alone PC's, it was Teds discussions with Bill Lower at IBM that persuaded them there would be a personal computer market, and that as a creative media tool, it would find a home in every house, thanks Ted :) Imagine a world like now, except we only ever got dumb terminals to connect into Facebook, etc, sure 98% of the world might not notice the difference, but the flexible computing power in the hands of the 2% has massive potential, as the open source movement has adequately demonstrated!

<comment><USER8> Eh, bsd is a bit older than that. Raymond certainly caught the buzzword wave with "the Cathedral and the Bazaar" \- but he wrote it after Gnu was started, which enabled Torvalds to write/release Linux etc. Raymond offered an explanation of how Free software could be subsumed by business.

If just some of Nelson's books had seen wider distribution, that might have helped a lot. It's easy to link to Fielding's thesis, because it's online:

[http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm](http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm)

And I actually think some of Nelson's ideas form a fine counter to Fielding's "sales pitch" for REST. REST is all about achieving high performance alongside correctness in distributed document/media systems. But as Fielding details in his introduction: there are other architectures that make more sense for what is effectively distributed computing: when you need features beyond what REST can efficiently support.

I believe Nelson had some compelling arguments for why we might want _more_. And if the contemporary Web is any indication, he was right. There's a place for REST-style hypertext, and there's a place for richer hypermedia.

I get as angry as the next grumpy old person when a simple Web page is turned into a single-page application for no gain and considerable pain; but I also see that there are things we need beyond simple hypertext (which we've tried to fill with: excel macros with floppies as the transport medium, java applets, active-x, flash...).

And there's the question of naming/cataloging. It's doubtful DNS is the best we can do.

<comment><USER7> "... all versions of BSD incorporated proprietary AT&T Unix code and were, therefore, subject to an AT&T software license. Source code licenses had become very expensive and several outside parties had expressed interest in a separate release of the networking code, which had been developed entirely outside AT&T and would not be subject to the licensing requirement. This led to Networking Release 1 (Net/1), which was made available to non-licensees of AT&T code and was freely redistributable under the terms of the BSD license. It was released in June 1989."

That's still 15 years after Computer Lib was published so...

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

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I mostly took issue with the bit about Raymond - not the idea that demanding that someone who saw micro-transactions and copyright as a means to fund authors and artist of the future should _also_ cone up with the idea of Copyleft is a little unreasonable.

Still, Nelson have had year's to reconsider - and I'd be happy if they at least could've done some reasonably priced reprints - ebooks.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I should have made the "Open Source" point clearer, I know there's a lot of history there and I am largely ignorant of it, the gist of it was that it's not fair to think anyone sitting around in 1970 would automatically assume there would be an army of programmers willing and able to work for free, it still surprises me.

Which books are you looking for, Lulu.com has a few reprints, [https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=Ted+Nelson&type...](https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=Ted+Nelson&type=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Obligatory reading: [https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/](https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/).

Xanadu is a story of building castles in the air for thirty years; a project so disconnected from reality and the collaborators so obsessed with perfection that they didn't ship the first version until when the Internet had already reached a critical mass.

<comment><USER10> We should probably also link to Nelson's response [1] to what he termed a hatchet job.

That said, it seems to me that the response is fairly nit-picky. You'd think that the Xanadu guys could put together an unoptimized demo of what their vision was using modern tech to brute-force things that would have had to be finessed. I understand they did release a demo a number of years ago, but I could never get it to work.

[1] Errors in "The Curse of Xanadu," by Gary Wolf: [http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com....](http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com.au:80/ararat)

<comment><USER11> That's an addendum to his letter to Wired [http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.k...](http://web.archive.org/web/20001101230424/http://www2.educ.ksu.edu/Faculty/McGrathD/Fall99/NelsonLtr.htm) , which is where the weightier issues tend are set out, by and large. Some of the complaints are indeed small, but I'm sure Nelson would point out that there are quite a lot of them and they seem intended to make him look bad.

It's clear that there are indeed some serious issues with the Wired story. For example if you read point 3 of the Wired letter, "Transclusion Misstated", it's evident that Ted Nelson understood content-addressable networking long before eg. Bittorrent came about. Gary Wolf, though, apparently didn't quite get content-addressable networking even after researching Xanadu, meeting with Nelson himself, and writing a feature article about Xanadu for Wired; but he pronounced confidently about it in the article anyway.

<comment><USER10> I think the addendum you linked to is a refinement of the response I linked to. I haven't read the addendum thoroughly yet (I hadn't seen it before), but it seems to be much better than the one I cited. For one thing, he defers nit- picking in favour of going straight into the more important stuff.

<comment><USER11> The letter to Wired was the main response, the 'Errors in "The Curse of Xanadu"' document was the detailed addendum to that which (I'm 98% sure) was the target of the now-dead [http://xanadu.net/wolfsbane](http://xanadu.net/wolfsbane) link (yes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is Ted Nelson generally seen as the _inventor_ of hypertext? Vannevar Bush's _As We May Think_ was published in 1945, but it seems that his descriptions of what would later be called hypertext were too general for him to be seen as the 'inventor of hypertext'.

<comment><USER8> If nothing else, he did coin the term.

<comment><USER7> Bush's key message was 'Augmenting Intellect', so personally his angle for me was intellectual and very educationally driven, Ted'd vision was far more inclusive of the wider world of media in general, for pleasure and education, and for me reflects more clearly a vision of what we have now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I watched several of his YouTube videos. I wish I had a colleague, a boss, a mentor, a neighbour or a grandpa like him. May he find peace and satisfaction in the thought in his old age that he could be so humane, inspiring and loveable in a time when we are so obsessed with machines.

</comment><comment><USER8> BTW, if the handle is to be trusted, I think it's really cool to see original authors embracing free and open platforms like archive.org :

[https://archive.org/details/@tednelson](https://archive.org/details/@tednelson)

Even if the hypertext is inferior, and there are no transitive, diminishing microtransactions automatically compensate authors in the case of content transclusion...

Now, I just whish the books were available in a digital format at a reasonable promise[ed: reasonable price, lol. But in this case "reasonable promise" works too]. I remember my university library had a single, battered copy of "Computer Lib" \- that probably none of the students who were studying "information science" " (as opposed to computer science) had heard of...

</comment><comment><USER14> What an incredible genius.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ted's problem is that he _still_ thinks his specs are perfect (" _close your eyes_ " line from a few days ago).

The specs are _never_ perfect, and are almost guaranteed to be wrong prior to any sort of half-functional implementation. IETF is living proof of that.

If he would have gotten down into the bullpen with his programmers to iron out the day-to-day wrinkles, he probably would have succeeded.

<comment><USER4> I get the impression that he wouldn't mind the implementation details so much if the fundamental concepts were working. As many others have stated, Ted isn't a programmer anyway, so he is not likely to be overly concerned about the intricacies of the implementation as much as he just wants to ensure that the system is functionally appropriate.

Two-way hyperlinks and an integrated core of micropayments and publication have yet to be realized in a substantially useful way. Ted absolutely bears a lot of the responsibility for this, as he's been given resources to build such a system multiple times -- but that speaks to his project management capabilities, which are a different matter.

My read is that Ted isn't nitpicking the details. It's not that the same goals are being accomplished in some less-than-perfect way. The key point of contention appears to be that major portions of the vision are still on the table with no widespread practical or workable implementation, not because the technology is incapable, but merely because people don't understand either the original concepts enumerated as hypertext themselves, or don't see any value in them. Perhaps there isn't value, I don't know. But Ted clearly thinks there is, and is frustrated by a world that is humming along without these components that he's been trying to extoll for 50+ years.

It also must really chafe to have people hijack the terminology that originally encompasses a broad concept, and pretend like some vague, minimal similarity in an otherwise-adulterated system is the full realization of said concept. I sympathize greatly with Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, and other visionaries who've had their concepts co-opted and misrepresented by profiteers, much to the detriment of the world as a whole.

<comment><USER15> He designed a system that, to this day, is still more in the realm of science than engineering. Systems are _full_ of nth-order effects that have to be discovered and worked around in some practical way.

From what I've read of the Autodesk days, he wasn't even on site. Whether he's a programmer or not is immaterial. You've got to birth your own baby. That's just how it works.

<comment><USER16> When I first met Ted, ca. 1991 or 1992, he was indeed doing most of the Xanadu work on his houseboat in Sausalito. But Autodesk was also in Sausalito, just down the road, so Ted was definitely in the neighborhood, if not exactly in the building.

There was some amount of coding happening at the houseboat, though I have a vague recollection (which may be wrong) that Roger Gregory might have done much of his work offsite -- at his house? -- and then come to the houseboat for meetings.

I saw Ted perhaps a year later and it was definitely in his office at the Autodesk facility. He had quite a nice lab there, and an assistant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Android VPNs Use "Dangerous" Permissions (Read_phone_state) etc. - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/some-android-vpn-apps-request-access-to-sensitive-permissions-they-dont-need/ <comment><USER2> I'm using VPN Secure. It shows 2 dangerous Permission. One of the permissions they are asking is android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE - Why on earth would they want that permission :(

I'm going to write them an email for clarification.

Thanks for sharing this research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Crazy stuff. It's interesting how much unnecessary permissions Hola requires. So much for "free" VPN?

</comment><comment><USER4> tigerVPN seems very shady - WRITE_SYSTEM and READ_LOGS. TigerVPN claims to protect your "privacy" on their sales page. Seriously? Hotspot Shield and Betternet seem very sketchy too.</comment>


3 Studies Refute Idea That Exposure to Sexy Centerfolds Harms Mens Relationships - <AUTHOR> http://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2016/11/30/3-studies-refute-idea-that-exposure-to-sexy-centerfolds-harms-mens-relationships <comment><USER2> Was there really an expectation contrary to this outside radfem circles?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Color me suprised by this.</comment>


Show HN: AdSentence, competition PPC monitoring for AdWord - <AUTHOR> https://AdSentence.io is a spy tool gives you all of the data you need to understand your competitors' Adwords strategy. Our unique analysis tool lets you see how your competitors are advertising to any local market in the world (and every US market) so you can beat them at their own game. Now you have the data to compete and win your local Adwords market. <comment><USER2> Site isn't loading for me. What makes this better than all the tools that are currently in the market? Where do you get your data from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noticing it, it was down for 45 min.

There are not many services that offer same service that we do. advantages: 1\. You can show ads in more than 98,000 markets in Adwords, 55000 in US alone. No one can have all of the data for all of the markets, if they are scrapping they are getting the result for where their servers are, not where your market is. for example if you are a flower shop in NY, you don't care what ads are showing in SF. We don't have much data already, but we start collecting it for you once you give us a keyword and location.

2\. We are showing all the copies of all the ads showing for any keyword/location not seen that anywhere else.

there are more, check out our sample report and you can see what kind of data we provide. Or you can create login with any google account(free trial, no credit card needed!) and put in some keyword/location and see for yourself.

We scrap the data every hour.

<comment><USER2> Did have one thought: maybe see if you can compare landing pages - can you find out if they have an A/B test running - multiple landing pages, what parameters and tracking do they do?

<comment><AUTHOR> that is very interesting idea, I definitely can have their landing pages and already has their URLs, but how to show that data? A different image for each hour? I can show unique landing pages so you can look at detect if they are doing A/B testing or not. Tracking might be doable too, but again problem is data presentation. Do you mean url parameters? I already have that data, how to present it?

I agree with you that price is the most important data, but as you said I don't think there is a reliable way of getting that!

How useful you find this service as is?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Helps in Search for Aviator - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Steve-Fossett-Google.html?ex=1346817600&en=f24ea536f8fccb0f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> Not much news since Thursday but this status update just in: [http://news.aol.com/story/_a/few-signs-of-hope-as-search- for...](http://news.aol.com/story/_a/few-signs-of-hope-as-search-for- missing/n20070908044709990001)</comment>


'Folksonomy' takes power from expert librarians - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8dbc800c-8cd7-11dc-aa10-0000779fd2ac.html

<comment><USER2> www.collectbritain.co.uk is a very cool website</comment>


Electric meat (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/electric-meat/

<comment><USER2> Suppose that instead the shock was intense enough to kill half the chimps and wasn't turned off. Now the chimp that "gets out there and grabs it" causes many deaths.

The real moral here should be the importance of passing down the reasoning behind certain actions. Information would allow future chimps to weigh the risk/benefit of touching the electric meat.

</comment><comment><USER3> similar [http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg](http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg)

<comment><USER4> The OP links to a page that includes this.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The linkedin Killer - <AUTHOR> http://jizie.com

<comment><USER2> For those who saw this, ignored it or didn't find why it might be compelling, check out the founders profile on Jizie. [http://www.jizie.com/users/rbatista](http://www.jizie.com/users/rbatista)

Richard! Put that link on your homepage. Show people what they'll see using the site. Goddamnit man! It's beautiful!

I still have no idea why I'd use it, but at least now I can see the quality of build you can put out. This is the stuff that gets people interested.

Re-do your homepage. Put a big link that shows people what their profile would look like. Or put the profile up somewhere.

From your homepage, I had no idea if after creating an account I'd just be sent to a 'coming' soon link or something, because you never said what it did.

The thing you should be putting into your homepage (some of which you can take as a lesson in marketing), 'show your work, don't just talk about it'.

Also, I found a bit of a bug. Clicking on one of your links in your portfolio, results in an image that is stretched, but then clicking the back button fixes it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Did you consider the implication of creating a professional network and calling it 'Jizie'? You've got huge mountains ahead of you, I think you should reconsider the name.

The landing page is nice, but you haven't given me a compelling reason to give it a go, and you haven't made it easy for me to join.

Have you considered starting with a niche? Some friends started theloop.com.au, which is a LinkedIn for creatives, and they've been quite successful with it.

When LinkedIn started, it was so early, that I suspect they were targetting IT people, and they grew from there.

I think in order to get any traction, you'll at the VERY least need to tell people what they are signing up for. You haven't done that at all on your homepage. "The only professional network with a VOICE" means nothing to me.

<comment><USER3> There _is_ an About page, which is somehow more confusing than having nothing at all: [http://www.jizie.com/home/about](http://www.jizie.com/home/about)

<comment><AUTHOR> can you tell me a little more about whats confusing besides the grammar and spelling would love some feed back.

<comment><USER2> Well, you recognize that the spelling and grammar are messed, fix it! You know what they say about execution. Spelling and grammar are part of that.

Your 'about' page still says nothing about what the user should expect when they are logged into the site. All you tell is about why you had the idea, which quite frankly doesn't make a ton of sense to me, and then that "Linkedin.com is the myspace of our generation and jizie.com is the facebook".

HOW! WHAT! You've given people absolutely nothing with regards to what the site will do. Even if you just give one or two examples of how your (hopefully soon to be renamed) site is different. What will it allow you to do.

I see in another thread that you responded that 'without a co-founder...'. Please don't make excuses. There are tons of people who have built successful sites without co-founders. I'm sure there are also lots of people who grew up in 'bad neighbourhoods', just as there are people in technology who grew up in the farming communities where they didn't have access to a technology community.

I know I'm sounding like a downer but I want you to get a bit angry and realize you need to up your game. You've made it further than most have, just by building something and releasing it. It's a sad statement of our industry full of dreamers, but it's the truth. So give yourself a small pat on the back. Then look at the road ahead, and how long and hard it is. Take one step, then another, stay focused, and keep going.

Congratulations. All your hard work to get to this point is nothing in comparison to what you've got ahead of you. (That's a compliment, though I know it doesn't sound like one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everything pedalpete[0] said, and a few more things. It's hard to say some of this without sounding condescending - it isn't. Please take it at face value.

You need to spell and grammar check your work. I applaud what you've done, and you've clearly worked hard in difficult circumstances and have done well. I will spell and grammar check up to 1000 words for you for free, just to help, no obligation.

I also didn't know why I should give you my email address, and I nearly just closed without looking further. I saw the "About" link only at the last moment - you need to give me more.

Good luck.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037218)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks your right the spelling and grammar needs work. I am working on that right now as we speak. I am working on providing a better experience but since currently it's only me and no co founder. It's hard to do everything just wanted to show the site to get some feed back

<comment><USER4> I appreciate that, and wish you the best. Kudos for something something up and running. Your challenges are to get traction, and to make a good and memorable impression.

You need more of a hook to get people to sign up - currently I don't know what the benefit would be, and what you'll do with my data. That's a killer combination (in a bad sense).

And you really do need to change the name. Something short, catchy, and meaningless will do well enough if marketted strongly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jizie? How'd you come up with this name? It's absurd.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find the name great because it's easy to remember. and un forgettable

<comment><USER5> as a bonus, you can turn it into a pr0n site if this fails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lmao that is so true</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Genetic and drug treatment protects both muscle and bone mass in mice in space - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/08/910776985/drug-that-bulked-up-mice-in-space-might-someday-help-astronauts-make-long-voyage <comment><AUTHOR> >Targeting myostatin/activin A protects against skeletal muscle and bone loss during spaceflight

[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/01/2014716117](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/01/2014716117)</comment>