Linux was first released to the world from here 17.9.1991 - <AUTHOR> http://ftp.funet.fi/ <comment><USER2> I was using Linux before things like Slackware came about, when it was just a boot and a root floppy disk. We had DECstation 3100/5000 machines costing small fortunes, that couldn't reliably write a CD. The small 386 in the corner running "that newfangled thing" was far better at this :)

In my lifetime, I've gone through:

\- building (as in: soldering chips to a motherboard) my own computer at home at age 11*

\- buying an 8-bit Atari and learning about Antic and the 6502

\- eventually getting a "disk drive" which stored an entire 128k

\- moving onto a 32-bit cpu with the Atari ST

\- blowing my student budget for the term on a hard disk, 20MB

\- _finally_ getting connected, at the blazing speed of 2048 baud

\- lather, upgrade, rinse, repeat

\- to where I have a 1gbit internet connection, a 10gbit home network, 100TB of storage locally, and a server rack in the garage with more than 100 "cores" available.

Things have changed so much, so quickly, relatively speaking.

<comment><USER3> What are you doing with 100 cores in your garage?

<comment><USER2> Generally FPGA place and route, and more recently the same for ASICs. I don't recommend making your own ASIC as a hobby. It's damn expensive.

<comment><USER4> You're doing your own ASIC? Very nice. I'd love to talk that over if you'd care to be in touch. (Contact details in profile).

<comment><USER2> I'm ridiculously busy right now, and I don't have the time - sorry. What I will do is point you to the resources I've been using:

[http://opencircuitdesign.com](http://opencircuitdesign.com) is the primary resource, which gives you layout, design, proofing, and setlist generation.

I'm not aiming for anything even remotely state-of-the-art, I'm looking at a 180nm design and even that might be pushing the hobby funds. You can get "shuttle service" at various places to share a wafer, or you can use efabless (link on the magic page above) to do a lot of the work for you, at additional cost.

The guy who for years wrote and maintained Magic (the layout tool) now works for efabless, and he's a great guy - especially if you submit patches to him :)

It's a lot of hard work, you have to worry about all sorts of things you can take for granted in an FPGA (clock routing, i/o bonding and pad designs, oscillators for clock multiplication etc. etc. and yes etc. again). But there's not many people who can say they taught themselves how to make an ASIC :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Those are great pointers!

And yes, many kudos for teaching yourself how to make an ASIC, that is very cool :-)

I have a long way to go to get there.

I've been out of the open source silicon field for a while but want to get back in. My side project is building a small-scale factory for custom ASICs, rather than getting them made in another factory. It's a very interesting problem, and quite different from ASIC design issues since a lot of it is physics, and obviously there are many factors that are different on a small scale.

The goal is an open source silicon service to the extent of making it relatively affordable for others to iterate and reuse designs, in the hope of developing a thriving scene much like happened with open source software, GNU/Linux etc. But it is proving hard to find the time these days. And as you say, it's expensive, no matter how you go about it, even though affordability is a goal of the final service.

Thanks again, and good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Linux kernel has been the greatest example of a global network of programmers contributing in the open and it has shown that open-source software with the GPL works for the contributors and for companies relying on Linux in production environments. I see most of the FAANG companies (Except Apple obviously) have at least contributed in some way, which is interesting to see.

For server-side environments or to some extent Android, I can see those as reasons for companies to contribute patches but I'm not sure for the future of several individual distros which are still floating around today, even when I rarely switch between macOS and Ubuntu these days..

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that even Apple used linux for its production web environments.

<comment><USER5> Well 'using' Linux in production is quite different to actually contributing to the development to it.

From the FAANMG group of companies: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft and Google all have employees signing off patches under their company emails and no-one should be surprised to see no contributions from Apple to the Linux kernel anyway.

<comment><USER7> > no-one should be surprised to see no contributions from Apple to the Linux > kernel anyway

Why not? I know Apple is generally looked as a closed down company, but I'm still surprised that a company with their caliber, capital, resources and engineers can't find the time to help out the community that is helping them.

<comment><USER8> As someone who works for a company where the IP lawyers own your soul and constantly remind you of the fact, I would not be surprised that Apple contributions to the Linux kernel are few and far between.

Don't worry, the Apple thinktroopers will catch up with those people and then they'll probably be free to contribute to any free software they want in their now-limitless leisure time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know why I feel compelled to mention it, but 1791991 is a prime number.

<comment><USER10> I was born 17.09.1990, exactly a year off. I grew up with Linux and am eternally grateful to the "scene" surrounding the magazine CDs with - I don't know - like 17 distros packed in together and endless tutorials on each of them.

It's also amusing how many people - my age or so - use Ubuntu as a daily driver these days that never went through the pain of configuring LILO or Broadcom drivers from source in Slackware ;)

<comment><USER11> > the pain of configuring LILO

LI

<comment><USER12> I once made a patched LILO that would print LOL instead of LIL when the second stage bootloader barfed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember my first Linux distro, Monkey Linux, downloaded from the BBS. It fits on 5 floppy disks, with XFree86. You have to use `arj` to extract it, an alternative to `pkunzip` during that time. ([http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic- linux/distributions/monk...](http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic- linux/distributions/monkey-6.0)).

SuSE invented LiveCD, AFAIR, years before Knoppix claims to be the first LiveCD Linux in the late 90s.

<comment><USER14> _SuSE invented LiveCD, AFAIR, years before Knoppix claims to be the first LiveCD Linux in the late 90s._

Yggdrasil Linux was earlier:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X)

<comment><USER15> Yggdrasil was amazing. It single-handedly helped me sell Linux to many a grizzled greybeard, who couldn't believe that this toy kernel would amount to anything .. all I had to do was boot the CD and show them a working X-terminal a few minutes later, and that was all it took: I spent days copying those CD's for the entire team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We used Linux in a product before it had a network stack. We did need networking, and used KA9Q to do it. We also used rz / sz (zmodem protocol) for file transfer over phone lines. I recently integrated zmodem into an embedded system for firmware updates over a serial port- it's still very useful.

The performance of the floppy drive was terrible at first- a friend of mine and I added buffering, so that it could read a track at a time instead of block at time (which caused it to read only one block per disk rotation).

For the same project my friend created the generic SCSI driver that still exists today. It allowed us to connect a medical film scanner to Linux.

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of quality photos of old maps in one of the links: [http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/geo/carto/maakirjakartat/](http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/geo/carto/maakirjakartat/)

For example a book of old maps dated to 1643.

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought of a fun exercise: Take the original Linux kernel, study it and slowly build upon it without looking at the current Linux kernel.

My thinking is that it could be quite interesting to see how different people evolve the kernel - maybe some interesting ideas result.

<comment><USER19> Where would one find the original kernel?

<comment><USER20> [http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/kernel/Historic/linux-0.01.tar...](http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/kernel/Historic/linux-0.01.tar.gz)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have fond memories of funit.fi, and it wasn't because of the Linux kernels being released there ;-)

<comment><USER22> What was it then? :)

<comment><USER8> ASCII graphics of girls who would probably be pretty chilly dressed like that in the Finnish winter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ah, the memories of ordering distro bundles from cheapbytes and gleefully experimenting in my "test lab" (aka bedroom). It's hard to quantify how liberating the early Linux days felt after a slow and painful indoctrination to computing in the Windows world.

<comment><USER14> When I was 15-16, me and a friend ordered CD-ROMs from CheapBytes and sold them in The Netherlands (with a label applied to cover the CheapBytes branding). Most people didn't have credit cards in the 90s, so this scheme worked well enough to earn us some additional 'pocket money'. The website is forever preserved by Tripod (at some point we stopped, but never removed the website):

[http://linuxlop.tripod.com](http://linuxlop.tripod.com)

We did get some complaints from people who were convinced that selling Linux distributions was illegal ;).

<comment><USER24> _We did get some complaints from people who were convinced that selling Linux distributions was illegal_

I was a C.S. student at UNC-Wilmington when RedHat first launched, and I remember a lot of people were freaked out about that. They were just _howling_ "they're SELLING Linux?!???!" Heh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One of the most interesting folder on Funet archive is mirror of Simtel[0] FTP-serever[1]: there are a lot of very interesting software for various old platforms.

Especially interesting — there are some very cool CAD, GIS and graphics apps or MS-DOS, Windows (from 3.1 to XP).[2]

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

[1] ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Archived/simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/

[2] [https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1240002398577397772](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1240002398577397772)

<comment><USER26> HTTP link to that Simtel mirror:

[https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Simtel/pub/simtelnet/](https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Simtel/pub/simtelnet/)

<comment><USER25> NO! You linked wrong directory!

Here are correct HTTPS link to Simtelnet mirror.[0]

Also just discovered that Simtelnet mirror on Sunet is more complete.[1]

[0] [https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/Archived/simtel.net/pub...](https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/Archived/simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/)

[1] [https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simteln...](https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ah yeah, the good old days. Yggdrasil Linux, Turbo Linux, Slackware, etc. I think I installed my first Linux system in 1996 (maybe 1997) and never looked back. I didn't drop all use of OS/2 and Windows immediately, but by 2001 I had adopted Linux as my fulltime desktop OS and to this day it's all I use, outside of situations ($DAYJOB mostly) where I'm required to use something else.

I wonder if Linus had any idea of the impact his "toy project" would have on the world?

</comment><comment><USER27> I remember buying "Linux - unleashing the workstation in your PC" circa '94 which had the tag line "friends don't let friends use DOS !". I was quite stunned at how much better it was than DOS/Windows at the time. I've been a Linux user ever since!

<comment><USER28> The disk distributed with that book was linux universe. For me, it was the first easy to use linux distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> These specs, and runs over HTTP.. and is likely written in VIM, in unformatted HTML.

> It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory and > 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage. > It has a 2 x 25Gbit/s connection to the Funet > backbone.

</comment><comment><USER30> Got my first copy of Linux (Debian Potato!) in early 2002. I'd known about it for years thanks to second-hand computer magazines and the excellent (in retrospect) ZDTV, and it definitely lived up to the hype.

<comment><USER31> ZDTV was amazing. First I learned about Linux was from "The ScreenSavers". Loved that show.

I think my first functioning Linux install was Debian Sarge in maybe 2005. I remember the first time I got it to boot and it was just the command line that I had working, but it felt like freaking magic.

Those were the days too of Compiz and all that fun. It was mind blowing to realize that there was an alternative to Windows that not only looked fancier but had free access to things like compilers and interpreters. Definitely started me down the path to my current programming career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is cool. I remember my first distro was Mint like most. My story if curious: [https://craignuzzo.tech/my-linux-life- journey/](https://craignuzzo.tech/my-linux-life-journey/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm wondering why they need "dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory" to serve FTP?

<comment><USER34> FTP is not the only service provided, see [http://ftp.funet.fi/README](http://ftp.funet.fi/README)

<comment><USER35> Also see [1]

Very old (inter)network, also ran an IRC server back in the days. IRCnet IIRC

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> what does 17.9.1991 mean? Can I suggest people stop coming up with their novel date formatting schemes and use a standard that universally makes sense? ISO 8601 is worth looking at:

[https://xkcd.com/1179/](https://xkcd.com/1179/)

<comment><USER37> It's hardly novel. This ordering goes back centuries, and is used by the majority of the world.

The ISO standard is great for data exchange, but it's unlikely to change how dates are normally spoken and casually written.

<comment><USER38> You're technically correct. However, to a large number of people it not only appears novel, it is ambiguous for ~40% of dates of the year with their native format (MM/DD/YYYY). Even if it's convenient for the majority, it may cause so much friction for the minority that it's not worth using anymore.

My native format is mdy but I dislike it almost as much as dmy.

<comment><USER38> edit is not working. I meant my native format is mdy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ISRO to launch record 104 satellites on Feb 15 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaumudi.com/innerpage1.php?newsid=87911 <comment><USER3> I am interested to know how all those payload are mounted on PSLV's payload adapter. Cartosat 2 Series is the primary payload, and remaining 103 satellites are co-passengers.

Usually, PSLV mission brochures used to depict how payloads are mounted on its payload adapter. However, it isn't shown this time.

a) Cartosat 2 Series - primary payload.

b) 88xDove (88x3U CubeSats) - 22 QuadPack[1] deployers.

c) 8xLEMUR (8x3U CubeSats) - 2 QuadPack deployers.

d) BGUSat (3U CubeSat), PEASSS (3U CubeSat), DIDO-2 (3U CubeSat), Al-Farabi-1 (2U CubeSat), and Nayif-1 (1U CubeSat) - 1 QuadPack deployer.

e) INS-1A and INS-1B are not in CubeSat format. So, they need to be mounted separately on payload adapter.

So, we have a primary payload + 25 QuadPack deployers + 2 nano-sats. Hopefully we'll get some info during mission live broadcast on how these payloads are mounted on PSLV.

[1] [http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0...](http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&article=3161&context=smallsat&type=additional)

<comment><USER4> Plenty of photos at: [https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/02/14/indian-rocket-set- to-p...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/02/14/indian-rocket-set-to- place-104-satellites-in-orbit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 88 of these are Planet Labs's Dove satellites, which are 4kg, 3U (10x10x30cm) satellites. From what I understand, the goal of these is to image the entire earth every day at 3-5 meter resolution.

<comment><USER6> Surely the usa military or intelligence wouldn't be happy with that, right? Who would have access to this information?

<comment><USER7> The US has surprisingly few restrictions on satellite imagery until you get below ~50cm resolution. Beyond a short list of nations/groups that the US has strict export controls with (e.g. N. Korea), there aren't any restrictions at all on who can be sold imagery. Other countries (e.g. Canada) actually have considerably more restrictions on collecting and selling imagery.

<comment><USER8> Is the resolution of commercial imaging products limited right now by law or tech?

<comment><USER9> It was law until recently. WorldView-3 could image at a higher resolution than it was allowed to sell when first launched.

[http://blog.digitalglobe.com/news/resolutionrestrictionslift...](http://blog.digitalglobe.com/news/resolutionrestrictionslifted/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone with understanding of satellite launches explain to a layman how the satellites get into their respective orbits when launched together like this?

<comment><USER5> Well, most of the satellites will want to be in about the same orbit - <USER2> fairly common sun-synchronous orbit, that passes over the same spot on earth every day. They probably want to spread the satellites out over the orbit, though.

I'm not sure if randomness would be enough to do this, but if not, they could probably control things a little bit, at least for the Dove satellites (88 of them). Since the Dove satellites can point themselves to take pictures, my guess is that they can also choose to point themselves either perpendicular or parallel to the orbital direction. Since there's a little bit of atmosphere left up there, over time that should be enough to intentionally spread the satellites out.

This is just a guess, but I know similar techniques have been used in the past on satellites that were out of fuel - for example, Skylab.

<comment><USER11> This is exactly what is done to spread the satellites in their orbits.

[https://support.planet.com/hc/en- us/articles/212641458-How-d...](https://support.planet.com/hc/en- us/articles/212641458-How-do-you-spread-your-satellites-out-after-launch-)

This paper covers diff drag in more detail. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03270](https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03270)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ISRO 2016-2017 budget is approximately $1.1 billion USD [1]. The national budget is about $301 billion USD [2]. That means that ISRO constitutes approximately 0.37%.

[1]: [http://www.isro.gov.in/budget-glance](http://www.isro.gov.in/budget- glance)

[2]: [http://indiabudget.nic.in/glance.asp](http://indiabudget.nic.in/glance.asp)

<comment><USER5> For comparison, NASA is about 0.5% of the US budget. At the height of spending on Apollo in 1966, it was 4.4%.

<comment><USER13> Does that include entitlements?

<comment><USER14> Entitlements come directly out of payroll taxes, so it's not a legitimate comparison. You'd want to compare defense spending, as that is the largest spending item that comes from federal income tax receipts.

<comment><USER15> > _Entitlements come directly out of payroll taxes_

When the latter fail to cover the former, those entitlements will be paid out of income taxes.

I don't think it's honest to lump out a preferred pool of spending like that. I could similarly claim all spending linked to corporate and capital gains taxes not be counted as part of the budget.

<comment><USER14> I mean, we could argue about this all day, no (although, the income is separated logically, which is why I made my argument in parent comment; it would take Congressional effort to spend payroll tax income on non-entitlement spending)? Sure, federal tax receipts will be used to replenish social security and Medicare, but I'm fine with that. We can afford to cut defense spending back, as we spend more than the next 8 countries combined. That's our own money being squandered.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jan/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military- next-8-nations-combi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Payloads:

Cartosat-2 Series

INS-1A

INS-1B

88xDove

8xLEMUR

BGUSat

Al-Farabi-1

PEASS

DIDO-2

Nayif-1

Mission page: [http://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series-s...](http://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series- satellite)

Brochure: [http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series- satellite/...](http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series- satellite/pslv-c37-brochure)

</comment><comment><USER16> ABCD here, wish I could work for ISRO. Would gladly move to a country where I don't even speak the language and get 10% salary.

<comment><USER17> Your loyalty should lie with the United States, not the nation of your ancestors. This sort of ancestral-country-patriotism is not good. Let me quote Theodore Roosevelt:

 _" There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German- Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic … There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else."_ Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American)

<comment><USER16> Why can't someone sympathize and be well-wisher for the nation of their ancestors?

<comment><USER4> No reason why not -- those words were written the last time the US was having a huge backlash against immigrants. In that case it was a backlash against Catholics, and Europeans who weren't as white as Northern Europeans.

Today, being a hyphenated American is no big deal.

<comment><USER16> The playbook remains the same, no matter how stale.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns - <AUTHOR> https://axisofeasy.com/aoe/amazon-spikes-book-on-covid-19-and-lockdowns-only-official-sources-permitted/ <comment><USER2> Official sources are continuing to mess up, and causing more destruction than this book ever could. The Lancet is about as official as it gets: [https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/article/s0140673620313246](https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/article/s0140673620313246)

<comment><USER3> _Official sources are continuing to mess up_

It's a new disease. That's why it has the word "novel" in its name. People are working on it. Mistakes will always happen when dealing with unknowns, until they're known. The difference is that The Lancet will be fixed, and isn't making mistakes maliciously.

 _causing more destruction than this book ever could_

Not provable hyperbole.

<comment><USER2> It is ridiculous to assume that one group making mistakes is always operating in good faith, while another group making mistakes is always operating in bad faith. It is even more ridiculous to _censor_ one group because of this assumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like the rejection email was from Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). So Amazon isn't refusing to sell the book, just refusing to publish it, from my understanding. That seems like a much less significant issue if that is the case - there are lots of alternative publishers to Amazon, so it is less concerning if they have more strict standards, since you could just go through another publisher and sell on Amazon through them.

</comment><comment><USER5> After a half hour long conversation with my neighbor last week of him trying to convince me that Bill Gates is behind coronavirus, please, for the love of our future, continue banning information that is blatantly put up on a bad faith basis.

It's exhausting to see my mom and dad succumb to a new conspiracy every other day. I don't see how else we can curb this other than for the tech companies to start aggressively moderating, just like how HN is moderated.

<comment><USER6> Wow...just wow. The only way to deal with people having bad ideas is censorship? Seriously?

What about improving education, building functional (and trusted) institutions, and having more independent (non-profit driven) media?

It really bothers me that there is a group of people begging for corporate overloads to control and think for the population. Its literally the opposite of everything this country stands for.

<comment><USER7> > What about improving education, building functional (and trusted) > institutions, and having more independent (non-profit driven) media?

They do not work, because the time and cost to create and widely disseminate falsehoods is much less than the time and cost to refute those falsehoods.

See "Firehose of falsehood" [1], which is an apt name for what happens now thanks to the internet and social media greatly lowering the barriers to getting information widely distributed.

As RAND researchers put it, "Don't expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth."

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

<comment><USER8> > _They do not work, because the time and cost to create and widely > disseminate falsehoods is much less than the time and cost to refute those > falsehoods._

It's not about countering falsehoods, it's about giving people the tools to think critically and not be duped by falsehoods in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Don't they already have those tools readily available?

People don't believe QAnon, or that Bill Gates created COVID-19 as part of his secret plan to implant chips in everybody, or that 5G towers caused COVID-19, or that the earth is flat, etc., because they do not have access to the tools to find and critically evaluate the refutations of those idiotic beliefs.

All the necessary tools are readily available on the internet. But using them takes more effort than they want to put in. And if they do put in the effort to think critically about something they saw on social media, there are dozens more to take its place.

The falsehoods can be designed to be entertaining and to appeal to the fears and prejudices of their targets. This makes it easy for someone to get into it because they can start out just for the entertainment. They aren't going to seek out opposing views and critical evaluate them at that point because it is just entertainment. Somewhere along the line, it changes from being just entertainment to something they actually believe in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am all for private businesses' right to censor their platforms as they please. But let's consider why they do so. Amazon and others aren't banning "covid dissidents" because they are worried about people's health nor is it because of some evil conspiracy. The reason is simple and obvious: because they've determined it to be the best course of action PR-wise. Or in other words, it's because what the public wants.

And _that_ is where it stars to rub me very, very wrong way. Just think about it. Not only the average Joe knows exactly how this totally novel global problem with a shit ton of unknown variables should be handled (that's par the course). But he's so certain of his knowledge that he wants anyone trying to voice a different opinion to get the treatment that was previously reserved only for obvious dangerous crazies like the nazis. To me this is the empirical proof that the slippery slope does exist, unfolding before our eyes.

<comment> _-o-_ And how average Joes form opinions on complex subjects? They don't.

Opinions are hammered into general public by a limited number of major media platforms or independent influences.

<comment><USER10> There is this logical error that comes with elitism. People are generally simple, therefore must have been manipulated by a much smarter "center".

But what if opinions on complex subjects are instead formed as an emergent phenomena of interactions of many humans?

It reminds me of Cartesian theatre, the idea that there has to be a central place in the brain where "real decisions are made".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The book is back on amazon as of now [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089P216NP/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089P216NP/)

<comment><USER12> I wonder if this will be noted on the easy blog or on hacker news. It seems that people are too caught up being outraged to notice. Comments made here three hours ago about the book now being available on Amazon are buried under piles of diatribes. Let's not let the truth get in the way of a good sanctimonious rant.

<comment><USER13> Amazon's ban is a problem even if they reversed it due to publicity. It means that this is going on even when you don't hear about it.

<comment><USER12> Does stating that they will not offer for sale amount to a ban?

I wonder if Amazon would have reversed their original decision on more detailed review, without the publicity you speak of. Are we sure that the blog post or this discourse are the causes that effected the book being offered for sale in the end?

I would have read the blog post and HN comments with less skepticism if there was evidence that Amazon had continued to refuse to sell the book after multiple submissions and signs of human / managerial interaction in the process on their part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > and he's even a Twitter blue check.

This line made me laugh. As if a Twitter blue check means anything at all. Even used "even".

Regarding the "censorship", I'm not sure why anyone thinks Amazon as a _publisher_ should just publish anything. They are not even close to being a monopoly and there are a million other channels to publish.

</comment><comment><USER15> Big Streisand effect on this one, I followed him in the past and noticed his Twitter has exploded in followers/attention since Amazon censored his book.

I decided to read the book to see why it was so threatening and worthy of Amazon crossing into such a dangerous line into censorship. And it was mostly a milquetoast glorified blog post.

I also watched that stupid Plandemic video, which I never would have otherwise, when I heard Google was deleting it from peoples _private_ data backups.

Getting banned like this is a great way to get promotion.

<comment><USER16> Top of the linked article says:

> _the bootlickers on Hackernews_

I skimmed and found a lot of inflammatory phrasing, so that was the end of it for me.

<comment><USER15> I was referring to the book author: [https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1268529570480824320](https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1268529570480824320)

I didn't read the post in question since I knew the gist already.

<comment><USER16> Ah, apologies :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Declining to sell a book in a store isn't "censorship". The author could easily host the book on their own website. If the government forces them to take it down, then it's censorship.

<comment><USER18> This is technically incorrect. You might argue that censorship is commonly understood to mean specifically government censorship. But censorship by itself does not have to refer to the actions of the state.

<comment><USER19> You have it completely backwards :)

It's is technically correct. Legally and conceptually censorship is defined only as censorship done by the government.

Censorship is commonly understood to mean any kind of censoring or removing of content.

<comment><USER20> Google Dictionary agrees with you, but Merriam-Webster, Brittanica and Wikipedia disagree.

<comment><USER21> Even the Google dictionary result doesn't say it's exclusive to governmental action

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are worried about a private company "censoring" your speech, you should take this as a sign that you've allowed said company to get far too big. Restricting private speech by increasing the reach of government to limit it will only backfire in the end if your goal is freedom of speech.

The right approach for free speech is smaller companies AND smaller government.

<comment><USER23> > _If you are worried about a private company "censoring" your speech, you > should take this as a sign that you've allowed said company to get far too > big._

That makes sense, but what if many private companies agree to censor something? It doesn't have to be a shady deal in a smoke filled room, maybe just everyone depends on advertisers, and advertisers don't want to be associated with some message.

I think the right way is creating and popularizing spaces for speech that don't lend themselves to censorship, but somehow mitigate the problems of non- censorship, such as astroturfing. The internet is a wonderful foundation for such spaces, we're very lucky, but there's a lot of work to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder why he hasn't used his freedom of speech to make the text of his pamphlet freely available on his own website, instead of depending on a publisher to carry it.

Granted, it would be harder to _monetize_ this speech, that way. He'd have to find a payment provider, take payments directly, et cetera. But I don't see why those ancillaries should detract from upholding a principle that clearly means so much to him.

<comment><USER25> He's not asking a lot of money for it, and he put in the work. People still gotta eat man. Maybe not this guy with his backing and work and I'm sure he has plenty of money, but to answer your point, other people who have been censored have released their materials for free. Take for example the book "Nobody Died at Sandyhook"

<comment><USER24> I mean, that guy ended up getting paid -$450,000, so... [https://kutv.com/news/nation-world/nobody-died-at-sandy- hook...](https://kutv.com/news/nation-world/nobody-died-at-sandy-hook-author- must-pay-victims-dad-450000-jury-says)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Just a note that the book in question has been re-published: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089P216NP/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089P216NP/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Most things we consider "true" today were considered "false" right before they became "true".

We're just not great at being selective when discarding things, so it's best to keep them around.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do find it odd, looking back at the short history of the world dealing with covid, that there has been no (that I'm aware of) institutional strategy in combating a "novel" virus with a "novel" therapy (ie the off-label use of existing pharmaceuticals) and the MSM is and has been poised to attack that strategy and the small-scale, uncoordinated efforts when they discover them happening.

If Covid-19 were a movie, the hero would have stumbled across a clever combination of generic drugs that would turn the tide of global death. But here in reality, any such efforts are vilified and attacked for no coherent (but seemingly organized) reason.

</comment><comment><USER28> First they came for controversial right wing views... then they came for Covid "disinformation"...

Putting the joke aside, I really think we are starting to see that once this door opens, it will only get worse. The pressure will increase to ban books and it will happen, whether or not it's controversial or disinformation or whatever.

I can only hope this will be enough of a market opportunity that someone else can build a business to rival things like amazon.

<comment><USER29> That will be terribly difficult given that payment processors are also on this ideological censorship train. I think there might be a valid argument as to a single seller refusing to sell something, but once you get three credit card companies towing that line, that's pretty much unavoidable unless you go to crypto (which eliminates most customers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's a lot of issues at play here- what constitutes censorship, the monopolistic power of big tech platforms, how to address misinformation. I suspect the root cause is that we live in an extremely segmented information society now, modern life is incredibly complex and self-filtered information bubbles very easy to fall into. Echoing some of the comments, the Streisand effect will only disseminate misinfo and disinfo further, and create a martyr effect that self-defeatingly amplifies the power of the content being suppressed.* But there's really no other good options either. We live in an age where one set of facts will only be countered by a different set of opposing facts, a different list of footnotes and sources, all tailored for that opposite opinion. No one really has time to check all of the links anymore. So much of society simply rests on blind faith on one's own set of experts and gurus. The polarized environment renders your opposite experts into dupes, liars, or agents of shadowy powers, worthy of the worst insults. "Education" doesn't really help fight misconception or conspiracy theories because any inconvenient fact is easily rejected as propaganda by your enemies.

* Though not in all cases. In some cases de-platforming has been very effective [https://mashable.com/article/milo-yiannopoulos-deplatforming...](https://mashable.com/article/milo-yiannopoulos-deplatforming-alex-jones/)

How does this apply to tech specifically? Amidst this climate of post-truth and truthiness, the big tech platforms have become de facto gatekeepers, guardians of public truth. Something they neither are capable of being, nor should they be. In a healthy civilization, the government, businesses, _and_ civil society should all have roles to play in promoting harmony and fostering understanding. But we've somehow let the infection of division and ignorance take root, so here we are.

On the flip side, something I was thinking about regarding the recent Facebook/Twitter controversies and policing or not policing the president's speech: how is it really different from '90s AOL chat rooms or '00s vBulletin message boards having TOS that forbid certain types of inflammatory, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content? Why was everyone fine with those supposedly "anti-free speech" or "unconstitutional" policies in past decades? Was it simply a matter of scale? Those platforms and online communities were smaller so fewer people got mad about them? Because for a long time, people posting on the internet simply accepted that there is no absolute free speech anywhere, even if they hated the mods.

</comment><comment><USER31> This use of the verb 'spike' does not conform to any definition I found in the dictionary. Is it commonly used this way?

<comment><USER3> Yes. It's very common, especially in publishing and media circles. It's also in the dictionary that's built-in to macOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's a difference between censorship and a book publisher deciding they don't want to publish or sell a book.

This appears to be a case of the later. He's free to print and distribute his book, but no private company is under any obligation to help him in that endeavor.

<comment><USER33> Once they publisher reaches near monopoly status this is censorship.

<comment><USER34> What? I'd be shocked if Amazon even published a majority of books sold. There is no way they are monopoly or even close. I looked and couldn't find reliable stats on it. Does anyone else have any?

<comment><USER20> A majority by number of unique titles, or by sales volume? I would not be surprised to see Amazon publishing a very large fraction of 'long-tail' (almost self-published) books, and these likely make up a large fraction of all titles published.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > So as a libertarian, it pains me to say, I would encourage and welcome anti- > trust investigations into big tech platforms such as Amazon, Google, > Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple.

What you mean to say is you're not a libertarian.

You have a relationship with Amazon which previously consisted of voluntary, mutually beneficial exchanges. Amazon determined the exchanges were no longer beneficial and elected to stop. You wanted to continue, and so you invite the full might of government to threaten to destroy Amazon (but not actually destroy them cause then you wouldn't get what you want.) You pull in Facebook and Google and try to make a larger argument to obfuscate the fact that you are a very unprincipled libertarian.

</comment><comment><USER36> If they start censoring dinosaur porn, _then_ I'll really be pissed.

</comment><comment><USER37> amazon has already been banning anti vax books for a little while

</comment><comment><USER38> I honestly can't see the censorship happening here; I can only see the book has been rejected for self-publishing on KDP and an author with a clear political agenda is using this thing, negligible per-se, to push it even further.

For example, on his twitter feed he writes in response to another user with the nickname "Libraries Aren't Neutral": "Do you think non-leftist patrons have a place on your library?".

This is to me the hallmark of a person in bad faith that is using a minor nuisance (just use another publisher!) to push ideas to a group of persons that will stop to first impressions and shout censorship.

The remark on "libraries not neutral = libraries leftist" is also terrible:

\- even if a leftist librarian decides not to sell your book, you have all right-wing librarians that will sell you, so why the fuss?

\- it creates the strange association "left = lockdown : right = freedom"; this ignores lots of things, like how Sweden, a social democracy often the target of attacks from this political side, had pretty good results with no lockdown; or how in many countries, after initial disagreements, both political parts convened on the necessity of the lockdown because the situation granted it, but they were also quick to raise it when possible.

The one thing I have no respect for is the fact that these persons screaming censorship ignore that serious debate around lockdown measures is effectively happening, far from their cospirationist pamphlets; it's a measure with an heavy toll on economics and physical an emotional well-being of the population, and everyone would hate to enforce it again; however, at least here in Italy, we have the feeling things would have gotten terribly dire were it not for the 2 months of lock-down; we had now 30 days of reopenings, with only a few cautions like using masks in closed spaces, and the situation seems mostly in control.

Of course it's only a feeling: at the moment nobody I know of has proof that the lockdown was the only way to stop contagion; but I can't avoid being extremely skeptical of the raising movement of people absolutely certain that lockdown is a no-go in every circumstance, because I have absolutely no idea how they got the data and the insight to come to this conclusion so quickly when many are still counting bodies.

</comment><comment><USER39> Never thought we'd see wide support for book restriction or censorship again. Are people not reading history or considering the second order effects? Heck, you don't even have to go back that far. Just look how badly "official sources" handled Covid-19.

For example, remember what the official word was, even despite being a self- contradiction: masks don't work, but save them for health workers. You may say that's a noble lie, but it destroys credibility and covers for the fact officials failed to prepare for the known threat of pandemics.

<comment><USER40> > Remember what the official word was for all too long: masks don't work, but > save them for health workers.

Who said masks don't work? What I recall people saying is:

* most masks provide marginal protection to the wearer

* the masks that provide effective protection should be saved for those in situations where they need them (and can be knowledgeably used)

* most people probably don't need those masks

There's a worthwhile criticism in noting some seem to have taken longer to get on board with the idea that marginally effective masks (a) reduce spread and (b) are a low-cost intervention, but people who are going to make that criticism probably should doing it from a standpoint where they're asking themselves why _they_ flattened the above multi-point conception into "masks don't work."

And if this is all about using the initial misunderstanding as a jumping off point to the difficulty of getting non-trivial information out to the public, that actually underscores the importance of curation.

> Does no one read history or think about second order effects?

Are you suggesting that this is _the_ milestone of history where someone decided not to publish or distribute material because they thought it was irresponsible?

Because I'd bet that's happened before, even inside societies that cultivate robust discourse. Maybe even a lot.

Who is thinking about the second order effects of a no-responsibility no- curation approach?

<comment><USER41> The CDC and WHO both at various times recommended against the general public wearing masks.

[https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/13/21214114/media- coronavi...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/13/21214114/media-coronavirus- pandemic-coverage-cdc-should-you-wear-masks)

This advice was wrong. It is not just sick people that benefit from wearing masks. It is not true that people are flattening that into "masks don't work". Masks don't work was repeated many, many times by these organizations.

Here's an example:

[https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news- perspective/2020/04/commenta...](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news- perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data)

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who- masks-r...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks- recommendation-trnd/index.html)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-need-for-healthy- peop...](https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-need-for-healthy-people-to- wear-face-masks-2020-4)

Let's not practice revisionist history here. These organizations were dead wrong, and it had severe consequences for the spread of infection.

<comment><USER42> At least two of those links had nuanced reasons that matched the parent's remarks. One even literately had a three point explanation:

* There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission

* Their use may result in those wearing the masks to relax other distancing efforts because they have a sense of protection

* We need to preserve the supply of surgical masks for at-risk healthcare workers.

<comment><USER43> > There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of > SARS-CoV-2 transmission

It's a disease spread by exhaled droplets. How the heck could masks _not_ work? Why has common sense, as an acceptable way to obtain knowledge, died in the general public?

<comment><USER42> I am always amused at how effective the _There is no scientific evidence_ line is. That just means it has not been studied. No one has studied masks on this specific strain? It's new for crying out loud.

<comment><USER44> There is a lot of work on respiratory viruses and masks, and none of the RCTs can find a benefit of wearing masks.

> No one has studied masks on this specific strain? It's new for crying out > loud.

Yes they have. Here's one where they take four patients who have covid-19 and fit them with masks and ask them to cough onto petri dishes. They find covid outside the masks.

[https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342](https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342)

<comment><USER42> It is interesting that the cotton masks were more effective than the surgical mask:

>The median viral loads after coughs without a mask, with a surgical mask, and with a cotton mask were 2.56 log copies/mL, 2.42 log copies/mL, and 1.85 log copies/mL, respectively

My point was that if the statement read _Scientific evidence shows masks are not effective_ it would means something. The lack of evidence showing effectiveness does not disprove effectiveness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Whether you agree or not with the content of the book, censorship is pretty much always wrong. If we censored all history about the Nazi's and their ideology, we'd never be able to learn to avoid such atrocities.

</comment><comment><USER46> We should remember Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems:

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

</comment><comment><USER47> Most people here on HackerNews are smart, educated, intelligent (probably in the upper IQ percentile) and perfectly able to decide for themselves what is good and bad.

HackerNews moderations and moderators are this suppressing speech of these people and imho this is anti free speech.

Can we start a petition for banning moderation on this website please.

<comment><USER36> I'll accept snark, but grammar, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've noticed the group that has the significant dislike and distrust of authority figures, and tech companies in general, are the same people who more than happy at giving them carte blanche, gleefully encouraging these sorts of censorship systems.

The basic idea puts an incredible amount of trust in authority figures with systems that have almost no appeals process or transparency - unless of course you happen to be popular enough or stir up enough noise on the internet to get internet gatekeepers attention.

Merely debating whether it's good or bad to be censoring misinformation, while simultaneously glossing over the means, processes, and people being employed to enforce these broad post at megacorps is a giant disingenuous waste of time and riddled with contradictions.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we have another Erlang Day? - <AUTHOR> I'm getting tired of the politics on HN lately. TSA talk is everywhere. I can't get away from it, and it certainly doesn't help that I've been in an airport six times this month. Admittedly, I've fueled the fire on HN with my own submissions/comments, and I'm sorry about that.
That being said: I have no idea how Erlang Days happen, or if they're even asked for, but now seems like a good time to have one.
So, hows about it? Erlang Day? <comment><USER2> The issue with news sites and voted articles, is any political leanings on the board quickly causes an unbearable echo chamber (digg).

Precisely because those TSA/XXX-ray articles get voted up is why it's useless for them to be here. All we're doing is repeatedly polling the same people whom all agree with you. Do you think Napolitano reads hacker news? Unless we are going to form a "Hackers Political Party" we aren't accomplishing anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only way to improve Hacker News is to submit more and upvote interesting stuff. If the TSA material is interesting enough to people on here to make the front page, then submit something more interesting and people will upvote it.

FWIW I don't mind technical stories about the scanners, but the political side of things doesn't directly affect me, nor a significant number of the 5.7 billion other people who are not in the United States. That's why I've been trying to post every day here in the hope that it will give others better things to read.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not normally one to argue in favor of HN as a political venue, but I'm not up for Erlang Day. Changing the subject is exactly what the police state wants.

They institute some bogus rule. We grumble. They hold firm until a shiny object comes along to distract everyone. Then the bogus rule becomes the new normal. Nine years and a few dozen iterations later, here we are.

So you can try to change the subject, yet again, if you want. But don't expect help from me. I'm fed up. I'm done with my apolitical pose on this issue.

There is going to have to be a _continuous_ , _consistent_ effort to turn back the police-state tide. Civil disobedience, letters to people in power, and an unrelenting focus on getting things changed. It will be uncomfortable, it will be boring, it will be quite tedious, it will probably come through on HN no matter what anyone does, and it will be better than the alternative.

But if the greater HN community decides to retreat into Erlang and pretend it will all go away by itself, well, enjoy that. I'll go somewhere else for a while. Big internet out there.

</comment><comment><USER5> Btw wtf is with TSA, mean how did it make its way here? What's hackish in it?

It's a common practice that if you have some hot social topic you come to the pub to talk it over. Not to spam every possible internet place with what's actually the buzz in _your_ country.

<comment><USER4> _What's hackish in it?_

God, as a physicist I _wish_ the answer to this weren't incredibly obvious to me: Technologists built all those body scanners. My former colleagues built 'em. Their effort to market their handiwork is a major reason why this storm got started.

It's downright embarrassing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't mind the discussion if there were something more to it. This is, or should be, a community of driven and "tech-savvy" people. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention but I don't see any "Show HN: GropeStoryShare.com" or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about lambda calculus day instead?

<comment><USER8> Scheme on the iPad!

[http://www.speakipad.com/ipad-apps/pixie-scheme-iii- educatio...](http://www.speakipad.com/ipad-apps/pixie-scheme-iii-education)

<comment><USER7> actually installed that earlier, little annoyed that it doesn't work as a repl. At the same time I kind of dig the "smalltalk" "inspect/do it" approach. Probably a good compromise though for working on larger functions considering you can't really save/load files (though you can save the "world" as a whole just not "save as" to have many different worlds.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Scala day instead, please?</comment>


Daily Routine of a 4 Hour Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.jayonsoftware.com/home/2012/1/9/daily-routine-of-a-4-hour-programmer.html

<comment><USER2> > I have found that if I work for four continuous hours, I can deliver not > just 4 times but 8 to 16 times that amount of work.

I'd be interesting in hearing how he measures productivity. Volume is not necessarily equal to quality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am pretty impressed with this post. While, it looks like Jay just started this blog, the style is engaging and I am tempted to give his methods a try. I am not sure if I can beat down my self-diagnosed ADHD enough though:)

</comment><comment><USER4> >My wife is a doctor

If mine were a doctor, I'd be lazier too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I will be doing more post now that my blog seem to have a lot of traction. Jay</comment>


Ask HN: Would you start a new project in Grails in 2015? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Grails 2 or Grails 3 ? Grails 3 at 130Mb bundling all of Gradle now as well as Groovy and Spring seems more like a integrated consulting product than a web framework. Better to have lightweight technologies that can be quickly glued together with a scripting language. Wasn't Groovy such a scripting language before its ex-Agile consultants changed their tune and started bundling it all together with a G2One/OCI sales pitch?</comment>


Halolife (YC W16) Brings Transparency and Ease to the Process of Planning a Funeral - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/halolife-yc-w16-brings-transparency-and-ease-to-the-process-of-planning-a-funeral <comment><USER2> Both my cofounder and I have experienced the pain of losing a loved one first hand. We are excited about using technology and our passion for online marketplaces to redefine how we deal with death.</comment>


Ask HN: Feeback for my startup, ParkGrades.com - <AUTHOR> http://parkgrades.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We just launched last month and the feedback from users has been great.

Would appreciate any constructive feedback, especially on: _Homepage Design_ Review format (e.g., <http://http://www.parkgrades.com/parks/scottsdale-ranch- park>) *Anything else that jumps out at you...</comment>


Show HN: Everydev, a job board for inclusive companies - <AUTHOR> https://everydev.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I built this site because I wanted a place for underrepresented developers to be able to find jobs at companies that care about inclusivity and diversity.

The vision behind Everydev is that instead of choosing a company based on perks like ping pong or office kegs, job hunters can choose jobs based on what actually matters to them. Everydev serves as a collection of companies with thoughtful policies like gender neutral bathrooms or paid parental leave.

Anyways, I'm happy to discuss the website/tech behind it (it's a Vue app with a Sinatra backend).

</comment><comment><USER2> Great-looking site =) And a very timely service in the wake of the recent string of controversies at Uber and other tech companies!</comment>


Show HN: Computation at Compile-Time now free online - <AUTHOR> http://billsix.github.io/bug.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

The book is about augmenting the Gambit Scheme compiler with the code which it is compiling, thus treating the compiler as an interpreter. Testing dominates the compile-time computation, as each procedure in the book is collocated with tests for that procedure. Should any test fail, the library fails to compile, like a type error in a statically-typed language.

<comment><USER2> also one link causes https issues, but can be read through the WaybackMachine

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151012023906/http://mercure.ir...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151012023906/http://mercure.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit- list/2012-April/005917.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will update

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks very nice. I've recently written a bunch of Racket, which also encourages tests to be written alongside definitions, although they're not run as part of compilation. However, I've actually ended up with similar functionality, by packaging these scripts using Nix and having a dependency which runs the test suite and aborts on failure.

It's nice to see more investigations going on into the nuances of programming "stages", rather than the usual compile vs interpret dogma.

Another approach which seems similar in spirit is Zig's use of compile-time execution [http://ziglang.org](http://ziglang.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like an interesting idea. Reminds me a little of doctests in Python. This can also be applied to languages and compilers that do not allow the tests to run at compile time by wrapping the tests in #If DEBUG ... #End If or whatever the construct is in the language to compile the tests in debug mode only. Or define a special symbol WITHTESTS.

Then at least your tests will be close by the code that they are testing and they won't affect the size of the delivered binary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reference on doctests.

I encourage the collocation of tests with procedures in every language, but I personally doubt the efficacy of pound defines.

Assert macros are great, but how can a programmer guarantee that they are ever even invoked?

"mo' tests mo' problems" -Sean 'puff daddy" Combs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coming from things like Babel I was really amazed what the OCaml compiler could do at compile time.

<comment><AUTHOR> With Gambit and libbug (my book), any computation can be done at compile time, including state and I/O :-)

<comment><USER5> Impossible O:

<comment><AUTHOR> Not impossible, I do it in the book. I write both macro definitions and namespace declarations to file during compile time! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Record every day of 2013 with iOS App - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moment-montage/id505392782?ls=1&mt=8 Example of a montage can be found at http://momentmontage.me
I started developing this in January when I saw a video of a girl who recorded a video everyday of 2011 and I wanted to make one myself, but thought the editing would become too tedious and annoying.
So, I made an app that completely automates the process, you record a clip every single day (or more than one per day, this was a popular feature request which you can see in the example URL), put some music from your iTunes library and you can upload it to Facebook straight from the app, or to your camera roll so you can do anything you want to the video.
Hope you guys like it, it was ten months in the making. <comment><AUTHOR> Example of a montage can be found at <http://momentmontage.me>

I started developing this in January when I saw a video of a girl who recorded a video everyday of 2011 and I wanted to make one myself, but thought the editing would become too tedious and annoying. So, I made an app that completely automates the process, you record a clip every single day (or more than one per day, this was a popular feature request which you can see in the example URL), put some music from your iTunes library and you can upload it to Facebook straight from the app, or to your camera roll so you can do anything you want to the video.

Hope you guys like it, it was ten months in the making.</comment>


Show HN: Gittle - Pythonic Git for Humans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FriendCode/gittle

<comment><USER2> Pretty neat, and I especially like that your submission title has meaning.

Have you considered adding a command to start a REPL? So if you ran "gittle" from the command line, you'd get something like the usual Python REPL + "from gittle import *", plus tidbits to make that interaction more pleasant.</comment>


OneName: The Decentralized Whitepages For Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.onename.io

<comment><USER2> How do you log in after your profile has been created?</comment>


Ask HN: What websites do you check each morning? - <AUTHOR> I usually come to work 15-20 mins early and start by bringing up 7 or so tabs in my browser. I'll browse for 10mins or so save any longer article I'm interested in for later.<p>What websites do you check every day? <comment><USER2> [1]The Morning Paper by Adrian Colyer.

Nothing beats this blog. My Computer Science knowledge has improved by leaps & bounds because of this one website alone. University education has failed me, I sometimes wonder! Adrian Colyer is a machine, though lately he has toned it down. 3-4 review/ week.

[2] arXiv

Only the Hardware Architecture and Emerging Technologies part.

[1] → [https://blog.acolyer.org/](https://blog.acolyer.org/)

[2] → [https://arxiv.org/list/cs.AR/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.AR/recent) || [https://arxiv.org/list/cs.ET/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.ET/recent)

PS → Not only brightens my morning, but brightens my day :)

</comment><comment><USER3> HN, Twitter, Tildes, BBC News, The Guardian and then The Telegraph (these two to try to balance each of them out a bit), The Q Community[1], if I'm in a good mood Reddit but I'm doing that less and hoping Tildes takes off. Then there's a bunch of stuff that I'm ploughing through at the moment, so lots of inquiries into patient safety or culture of NHS trusts and effective corporate boards. So, lots of stuff from NHS England, NHS Improvement, and on the gov.uk site. And then I'll have a look at Bailii to see if there are any recent useful cases about English benefits or family law.

I used to listen to a lot of radio, and I haven't for some time, and I'm going to start doing that a lot more.

[1] It's a QI in health thing I'm involved in. [https://q.health.org.uk/](https://q.health.org.uk/)

<comment><USER4> Where is "tildes" \- I've not heard of that.

<comment><USER5> [https://blog.tildes.net/announcing- tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes)

It's in private alpha now, but if you're interested, just send me an email to the address in the blog post and I'll give you an invite (offer's open to anyone else as well).

<comment><USER6> I'll pile on if that's alright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HN, TechMeme, Google News, Drudge (like it or not, he helps set the agenda for the national conversation), NYT/WP, Real Clear Politics, MacRumors, scan Reddit for interesting topics, though hasn't been sticky for me as late, BBC News.

HN is probably the best at finding new and interesting stuff- though the main feed has been low volume lately- the 'new' feed is actually fertile ground if you scan through quickly.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. arxiv 2\. nytimes [trying to quit] 3\. reddit [trying to quit] 4\. hackernews [trying to quit]

tbh I really like trying to minimize my browsing in the morning.

<comment><USER9> How do you read through arxiv? I haven't see their equivalent of "popular" articles, which makes it really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff

<comment><USER8> [https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/recent)

from there I look for papers

1\. Immediately relevant to my current interests 2\. by people I who know write good papers.

For chaff-vs-wheat some of my friends use arxiv sanity?

to find popular articles I go to -google scholar page of someone well known for a topic and look at their highly cited papers -look at citations of highly cited papers

edit: just a warning-short term popularity of a scientific paper is almost surely not a good indicator of long term value.

<comment><USER2> Thats how I operate too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used to always visit techmeme but it became almost exclusively focused on google Apple amazon Microsoft Facebook Netflix. I'm going to go have a look right now to see if that's still true.

</comment><comment><USER11> My Morning/Afternoon is usually this:

0\. Compiled Security Alert RSS Feeds

1\. Hacker News

2\. Tech Dirt

3\. AWS - What's new

4\. Muck Rock

5\. Pen Test Blog

6\. dev.to

7\. cso online

8\. One random choice from my local news sites.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google News, Hacker News, Local TV News, Local Print News

</comment><comment><USER13> Skimfeed and Reddit.

<comment><USER9> Not HN though, right?

<comment><USER13> Surprisingly no! Not for a few months, the content here (HN) just isn't what it used to be and i've easily replaced it with Skimfeed and selected Subreddits.

I check here maybe once a week now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Skimfeed 2\. CNN

</comment><comment><USER15> Analytics platforms for web properties I manage.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google analytics gmail serpbook alexa

</comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Hacker News 2\. Hacker Day 3\. News

</comment><comment><USER18> bemaniso.ws reddit.com youtube.com (my subscriptions) ebay.com stackoverflow.com siliconera.com

<comment><USER19> > bemaniso.ws

is there a way to get in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> HN, Twitter, Seeking Alpha

</comment><comment><USER21> I do something similar. Every day at breakfast I skim over:

0 Google News

1 TheVerge

2 TechCrunch

3 Twitter

4 r/bapcsales

5 MarketWatch

6 dilbert

</comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Hacker News

2\. Reddit /r/programming

3\. Indiehackers

4\. Twitter

5\. NYTimes

</comment><comment><USER23> 1.V2EX[1]

[1] www.v2ex.com

</comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Scary Go Round

2\. Facebook

3\. Reddit

4\. Hacker News

5\. Google News

</comment><comment><USER25> 1\. Google

2\. HN</comment>


In Pursuit of Production Minimalism - grey-area https://brandur.org/minimalism <comment><USER2> Fwiw, the SR-71 was not engineering excellence. It was slapped together to do what needed to be done. It literally leaked jet fuel onto the ground when it wasn't in the air, in order to allow the metal body panels to literally stretch and close gaps in its skin when it was in flight (because physics). The air frame couldn't handle a takeoff with a full fuel tank, so it had to be filled up right after taking off. 90% of the parts manufactured didn't work. It was difficult to maintain and eventually developed a "speedy" one-week turn-around time to get it to fly again after a mission, assuming a base had the specialized tools and support staff to do so.

The SR-71 is an example of how the sheer will to get something done can indeed accomplish great feats, if at great cost and complexity. It's also an example of how innovation is no guarantee of success; since the Blackbird was retired, we still have no airplane as fast as one built in the 1960's.

A great plane is just what it needs to be. It may not be the most minimal it could be, but it will be the most effective. Another example, the A-10 Warthog, is not "minimal", but it is an amazing plane.

I think to get the best result based on the desired outcome, you have to pursue craftsmanship and excellence through continuous education, practice, and improvement, and not worry how it looks so much as how well it works. Complexity is a sin, except when it is necessary.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't disagree with you more. I am presuming you have neither read the history of SR-71, nor have a good understanding of the trade of engineering. I am ex-Lockeed employee and even though SR-71 was a distant historical project when I was working there, there were internal discussions about the engineering excellence behind the plane's performance. I worked in stress analysis team where we frequently joked about how we don't need to deal with thermal expansion like in the SR-71.

You can choose to call it "Slapped together" and brush over the sheer ingenuity of the technologies that made SR-71 successful, or you could try to read up on the insane amounts of __engineering excellence__ that took to make it achieve its mission as a recon aircraft. Its mission wasn't to be a commercial aircraft, its mission was to go as high, far and fast as possible - Reconnaissance and to return safely by literally outrunning missiles. Therefore, refueling and leaking fuel are appropriate trade-offs.

Skunkworks engineers were perfectly aware of the trade offs you mention - <AUTHOR> is integral to __any__ engineering discipline from semiconductor to aviation. That __does not__ imply the lack of engineering excellence.

Leaking fuel is __the__ most popular fact about the SR-71. But you omit or you are unaware of the ingenuity that went into making the Ramjet engine, material science, hypersonic regime that was completely new and nothing had flown at that speeds before, etc...there is just so much to say, I am having a hard time coherently replying :-) I apologize if my response was a bit harsh - I am just passionate about this topic!

<comment><USER2> If we're defining "engineering excellence" as the craziest, most amazing thing you can possibly build, then the SR-71 absolutely qualifies. So do top fuel dragsters (though obviously the SR-71 was way more difficult to achieve).

What I meant by "not engineering excellence" was in relation to the original post, comparing how to manage production servers with the SR-71. Nobody should regularly operate their servers like an SR-71 or top fuel dragster. It's great to fly really really fast, but most people should probably not be doing that, because it requires making exceptions like leaking fuel. You actually want to run your server like a big slow complicated comfortable redundant jumbo jet on autopilot.

Hopefully you get my meaning. I apologize if I made their accomplishments seem minor. I meant no insult against the Skunkworks engineers or the SR-71, and your response was not harsh at all.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the SR-71 was a remarkable achievement. Ben Rich's book about the Skunk Works describes the project. It's amazing that thing ever worked. It's not, however, engineering minimalism. It's money is no object R&D. There are many exotic technologies used in the SR-71 never seen before in aviation and seldom used again. Large parts made of Invar, a zero expansion alloy normally used only for watch springs, for example. The price of all this was a high-cost, high-maintenance aircraft.

A good plane to look at for production minimalism is the Boeing 747. A huge aircraft even today, it was designed as a commercial product to be produced in quantity and used intensively over a long life. About 1500 were built and many are still flying after 40 years. It's reliable, maintainable, safe, and profitable.

It's not exotic. There are some new things in it, but not that many. It's mostly upgrades to technologies known at the time. Better flight controls, better navigation, better autopilot, better hydraulics, better tires, better engines, etc. But little that hadn't flown before at smaller scale. The emphasis was on eliminating the weak points during design. The B-747 has four hydraulic systems, for redundancy.

It's worthwhile for people in software to read the pilot's manual for a large commercial jetliner.[1] They're not that complicated. If operating your system is more complicated than a jetliner, you're probably doing something wrong.

[1] [http://www.aviationforall.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/AOM...](http://www.aviationforall.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/AOM_727_200_Sim_Copy.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the thrust, but these need more nuance:

> Avoid custom technology. Software that you write is software that you have > to maintain. Forever. Don't succumb to NIH when there's a well supported > public solution that fits just as well (or even almost as well).

Software you run is software you have to maintain; until you can burn it in the fires of Mordor. If there's a public solution that is a good fit for your problem, and was built along the same lines you would build it, then that's great; but if it's a great fit for the problem and also pulls in 70 dependencies and updates three times a week, that's probably not worth the integration mess.

> Use services. Software that you install is software that you have to > operate. From the moment it's activated, someone will be taking regular time > out of their schedule to perform maintenance, troubleshoot problems, and > install upgrades. Don't succumb to NHH (not hosted here) when there's a > public service available that will do the job better.

You don't need to host everything, but you better have a backup plan when the service you depend on decides that they're no longer going to provide the service. Chances are, you're going to need to debug the service too, sooner or later, and it's harder to debug a black box. That said, it's great when you can lean on a rock solid service to do things that are important, but not a 'core competency'

<comment><USER6> The whole fallacy of slopping together a bunch of open source stuff and not bothering to understand any of it is a house of cards waiting to fall down.

It's far better if you have the time and resources to develop your own software from as low a level as possible. Each layer of abstraction that you can shed is an opportunity to tailor your solution more closely to your problem and to have expertise in-house. Big tech companies know this and it's why they do a lot of stuff in-house. The key is in knowing what to develop in- house and what to punt on, and when.

<comment><USER7> That's why I fab my own chips!

<comment><USER6> If I had unlimited time and resources that's exactly what I'd do. Big companies often have both so that's exactly what they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rule of thumb that I go by is that in order to add a new technology to a stack it can't just represent an incremental improvement: it needs to be a 2x improvement in productivity or (even better) it needs to make it possible to build something that isn't possible to build without it.

The cost of introducing new technology (in terms of training, tooling and now- you-have-two) is so high that it's just not worth it if it will only incrementally improve how things work at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article mentions Clarence "Kelly" Johnson. If you don't know who he is and care to learn more about one of the best engineers that ever lived (SR-71 is his work), check out his book: [https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-More-Than- Share-All/dp/08747449...](https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-More-Than-Share- All/dp/0874744911)

His second in command at Lockheed, a man named Ben Rich also wrote a very good book: [https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/...](https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/dp/0316743003/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=24ZEA753MP8VAPZAA7KC)

<comment><USER10> > (SR-71 is his work)

One unfortunate trait of the original Lockheed Skunkworks culture was to make Kelly Johnson (brilliant as he was) _the only face_ of the organization. As just one such example, many know of the clever inlet system on the A-12/SR-71, but it, like many things Skunkworks in the pre-Rich era, is incorrectly ascribed to Johnson. The real person who deserves the credit as the chief for that system is David H. Campbell, but how many people know his name?

<comment><USER11> The form of the T-38 was apparently determined by Lee Begin at Northrop. Who, you ask? Well, good luck finding information about him on the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These are not bad. But "Use services" seems like a recipe for long term pain. It's an external dependency you can't control. I would prefer to use the external service to learn what you really need and then try to insource it again.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great article, classic comment section:

Half of people arguing about the plane analogy

Other half arguing about jQuery

</comment><comment><USER14> Minimizing what code you own is a naive optimization. When you consider the liabilities that third-party library and service dependencies introduce it becomes quite attractive to build your own minimal systems. I'm not sure when programmers became so averse to writing simple code. But leftpad was just the beginning.

<comment><USER15> >I'm not sure when programmers became so averse to writing simple code.

I know everyone likes to spend a day writing a date/time library, but when you need to develop a full stack app. You just dont have time to do everything from scratch.

These are decisions you have to make.

<comment><USER16> > date/time library

> leftpad

Yes, there is a difference between these.

<comment><USER17> There's also a difference between "we have a dependency on this versioned library that we have archived and deployed" and "we have a dependency on this library which we refer to dynamically at run-time".

But the second one gets you closer to the mythical perfection called "serverless" because it uses so many different servers you can't keep track of them all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The list of suggestions do not match the headlines.

Introducing new technologies to replace old ones, preferring services to local hosting - I just do not agree!

I use the oldest technology I can get away with, and host everything on dedicated servers as it is often more performant and cheaper.

Simplicity needs bounds. The suggestion of reuse also needs that: If you end up storing binary content on SQL to avoid having to roll a file hosting, you are taking the simplicity mantra too far.

<comment><USER19> I really enjoy old, stable tools that are maintained and made incrementally better, day by day. Postgres is one example, Elixir is another (which doesn't re-invent the Erlang VM, but builds on top of it).

I also really like hosted cloud services, but they need to be replaceable with little to no effort. For instance, I don't want a new NoSQL platform, I want high-availability, managed, on-the-fly-scalable Postgres.

<comment><USER20> Unfashionable I know but I feel strongly like this about Java.

We chose Java maybe 2 decades ago when it was newly minted.

Some decent swathes of code written back then are still running in production.

Its enormously satisfying looking at anything in your stack which has really stood the test of time.

I harbour similar feelings about the Oracle DB but I'm a little more conflicted there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking at the SR-71, despite all its engineering "flaws" (documented excellently in a sibling comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675996)), I wonder...

Have we really progressed technologically, as in, _doing the impossible_ , since the late 1960s?

The Blackbird is still the fastest jet in the world more than fifty years later.

I'm not even sure we could return to the Moon successfully on the first try if we tried.

<comment><USER22> Making a plane faster is only one dimension for optimization and it's not actually a goal in itself. It sacrifices other goals. Nobody has done better because they are optimizing for something else.

The purpose of the SR-71 was reconnaissance. Do you really think the U.S. military hasn't gotten better at that, using drones and/or satellites?

<comment><USER23> SR-71 was meant to be flying over USSR and China. Few existing USAF drones would have survived 20 minutes there even in 1960s.

But sat reconnaissance have certainly got a lot better to the point of rendering the bird obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting how often good-sounding advice is contradictory.

The article advocates standardization. Using fewer programming languages means fewer toolchains to maintain and less fragmentation of engineering knowledge.

On the other hand, the frequent advice that we should "use the correct tool for the job" suggests being familiar with a lot of different, specialist tools. More programming languages?

I guess it all depends. Knowing when to make a move versus when to do the opposite comes down to taste and experience.

</comment><comment><USER24> I really like managed app hosting like AppEngine and Heroku. I have spent decades doing what we now call devops, or 'you build it then you own it.'

Now I like to save my time for other things. AppEngine wins on cost while Heroku wins in that if you use standard things like Postgres, Kafka, etc. it is not too bad moving to your own dedicated services.

Edit: I also like the article's advice on minimizing the number of components in systems. Using Postgres as a 'Swiss Army Knife' for information storage is a good start.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Use services. Software that you install is software that you have to > operate.

On the other hand, a software that you use as a service is a software you do not control. Therefore whether to use services depends on how mission critical the software/functionality is to the whole system.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you remove everything that doesn't break the widget then everything left is functional. Pursing minimalism equals pursuing function. Therefore engineering equals applying minimalism to technology.

<comment><USER27> That "doesn't break" needs an "under which conditions" clause. A lot of complexity arises from having to handle the imperfections of the environment.

But I agree with the general idea. Good design usually arises after a worse, messy and more complex early design is produced, analyzed and _simplified away_ , often radically. Coming to simplicity by a shorter route is very rare.

<comment><USER28> Yes. "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." \- St Aubrey(?)

<comment><USER27> Antoine de St Exupery; quoted in the article :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fantastic suggestions.

Not only does having fewer technologies in your stack mean there're fewer to maintain, it also means they're used more so your devs are more expert at them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Some good architecture related quotes here. Added to [http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

</comment><comment><USER31> "It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove." \- Antoine de Saint

<comment><USER32> Though less literally accurate, I prefer the translation:

> Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when > there is nothing left to take away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great article. I always tell to my clients: Software projects are cheap, the expensive is the never endless Maintenance.</comment>


Re: Modeling a Wealth Tax - <AUTHOR> https://blog.libove.org/posts/wealth-tax/ <comment><USER2> This posting doesn't address the compelling argument that people will go out- of-state and do whatever they can to avoid this tax, especially in our tech industry which is very rapidly become a remote-first one, even for startup founders (many YC companies of yesteryear were remote/distributed even!).

Raise taxes on earned income, don't steal from peoples' pockets. And prove to us that the tax revenue will be utilized efficiently first.

California needs affordable housing, functioning public transit, reasonably priced healthcare and pharmaceuticals, competitive public education, etc. I'm not convinced that we necessarily need to raise our already-high taxes in order to have these either (we should scrutinize and hold people accountable for current budget inefficiencies). Even still, a lot of these issues can be tackled via changes in policy, or can be better implemented in the private sector.

Footnote: I'm far from having any kind of wealth.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another is the assumption most founders are in their 20's. versus 40,50,60s where compounding over 5,10 20 yrs isn't nearly as big of an impact.</comment>


Disqus now integrates with Google Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disqus.com/post/4046609482/google-accounts

<comment><USER2> This is excellent news. It makes me significantly more likely to use disqus for my own projects.

<comment><USER3> It is indeed. Now if only Google Accounts would integrate with Google Accounts, everything would be spiffing.

</cheapshot>

<comment><USER4> Cheap but warranted. Because I use Google Analytics, my GAFYD account is in "migration limbo" and I can't use some newer Google services like the Android Web-Market-to-Phone installation feature, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the design of their signup page; I just implemented signon with Google, Yahoo, and Facebook yesterday for a web app: fairly easy to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great is Disqus could have more uptime. I've had issues using them on different sites over the last six months or so.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you identify things worth to write about in your blog? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Look at what you're searching on Google. From time to time there's a problem for which you can't find a solution with a single search, and you have to combine results from 2+ searches.

Title: your ideal search, that failed to produce results. Body: your solution.

These are generally helpful, SEO-friendly, and fast to write posts, say 30min-1h after you have your solution. It's a good "trick" to exercise your writing and grow your blog quickly.

These are some examples I experimented with (2016):

\- A Quick Demo of Apache Beam with Docker, ~11k views

[https://medium.com/@0x0ece/a-quick-demo-of-apache-beam- with-...](https://medium.com/@0x0ece/a-quick-demo-of-apache-beam-with-docker- da98b99a502a)

\- Read Offset Checkpoint Stored in Kafka, ~3k views

[https://medium.com/@0x0ece/read-offset-checkpoint-stored- in-...](https://medium.com/@0x0ece/read-offset-checkpoint-stored-in-kafka- aa093b60a98)

\- Installing Apache Airflow on CentOS 7, ~8k views (surprisingly 2y after this is still receiving 10-50 views week over week)

[https://medium.com/@0x0ece/installing-apache-airflow-on- cent...](https://medium.com/@0x0ece/installing-apache-airflow-on- centos-7-750c77b7aa35)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very nice, specific advise. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I noticed years ago that I didn't have as much insight as other people who were much more close to the problems I was interested in. Even on non- technical topics, there was this realization I was just more noise in a sea of noise.

So, ultimately, write if you want to write. But, ... be comfortable with the fact that you might just be noise. :-) If you find an audience, they will tell you what they find valuable or make requests on their own.

</comment><comment><USER4> My work has a pretty strict Internet filter in place, but Wikipedia is fair game. I hop around random articles while my project builds, and I save things that interest me. Then I write about them later. No focus on technology or any specific area, just general trivia and curiosities. That's "worth" enough to me to keep motivation and interest up. [http://chrisgermano.dev](http://chrisgermano.dev) if you're interested. I have about 100 Wikipedia pages on my to-write list, and 3-4 posts in progress.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem, I think, is in the question "worth". To me, it refers to a topic or idea that I would enjoy writing about, but one that others would also enjoy reading about. What's the point of writing if nobody reads any of it? I like to use Google Adwords' keyword ideas tool to find ideas that people seek out, then I pick and choose what I like. This is a great method especially if your blog is concerned with SEO and getting search engine traffic.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on the topic of the blog I choose to write. The things which I going to write must be like an answer to my selected topic or question.

</comment><comment><USER7> I typically write about things I'm learning about as a way to solidify my own knowledge. That or I write about something I wish I had known recently.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have started to treat my blog as a journal. So now I don't need to make sure if the topic is worth.</comment>


How HTTPS works – Explained in layman terms - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@animeshgaitonde/how-https-works-part-1-building-blocks-64f9915b1f39 <comment><USER2> A random hacker is not likely to intercept your HTTP message. They would need to be on the way between your browser and the target site.

A more realistic case is an enterprise network or an ISP.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. My ISP is doing exactly that. HTML pages over HTTP are injected with some javascript code. Sadly, it's the only ISP available in the entire country.

<comment><USER2> A solution is to go through a VPN, they will see a steady stream of encrypted data.

<comment><USER4> It's just pushing the problem. Now you need to trust the VPN.

<comment><USER5> Right, but when it comes to VPN, as oppose to ISP, you have hundreds of choices, so you can pick one that you can trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some minor points. I've not seen HTTPS written as HTTPs before. It stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, and is not the plural of HTTP (one HTTP, two HTTPs, three HTTPs, etc.).

The proper name for certificates is TLS certificates, even though many people still use the word SSL for it (which refers to a deprecated protocol that's not used anymore). It's fine to use SSL, but omitting TLS isn't a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack. I will rectify HTTPS to HTTPs. While writing I had the same doubt.

It's TLS certificate now. In the next article, I'll be adding a small note on the history of SSL to TLS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi there. The image named 'Asymmetric Key encryption' seems wrong. You may want to fix it.

Eg. Contradicts with wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public- key_cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Buddy. I have corrected it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to clarify, encryption happens with the public key and decryption with the private.

<comment><USER9> This probably doesn't help because in practice that's not how it's done at all.

For a modern HTTPS connection what happens is that two participants use a Key Agreement process which results in them both knowing a random secret that nobody else knows. This secret is _ephemeral_ which means once the connection closes they'll both forget what it was.

They both use this shared secret to choose the same several _symmetric_ keys and use those keys to encrypt (and decrypt) the actual HTTP traffic.

For HTTPS in particular the main asymmetric cryptography is used for signatures, proof that this is really news.ycombinator.com for example. Your web browser doesn't encrypt messages to news.ycombinator.com but after Key Agreement happens the server will send a message proving it participated in this agreement you've just done, signed using its private key, and your browser uses the public key to check that this is a genuine signature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If trying to speak to the layperson I think lines like this can be misleading:

"When you are sending a message over HTTP, anyone on the network can see what message is being sent. Further, anyone can intercept the message, modify it and send it to the server."

To me a network is a graph of clients and servers and peers. Ie. Nodes on your graph that your message doesn't visit. The above sentence suggests that those peer nodes can somehow grab your message on its way and modify it, even if your message isn't routing through that node.

Or maybe that is actually the case?

<comment><USER6> Peer nodes on a local network can see all messages, even those not addressed to them, since the common model is broadcasting packets and selectively processing them on each client and ignoring packets intended for others (in promiscuous mode, one can capture packets in the local network from all devices, but those packets may or may not contain encrypted data). I'm not sure about modifying the read packets and sending them across though — that would require a more sophisticated attack on the gateway or router and the sending device, in my understanding, which means it's no longer a peer but an interceptor sitting in between.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't a packet be destined from router to only one client having the internal IP address of that client? In this case other peers on the same network won't know if any communication happened between the router and that peer. Same for when a node sends packets to the gateway.

<comment><USER6> No, that's not how local networks work. Whether wired Ethernet or wireless with WiFi/Bluetooth, every packet sent from one device or from the router/gateway is seen by every other device in the same network (the same router or gateway boundary). By default, devices choose to act only on the packets addressed to them, and ignore the others. This is why using HTTP (not HTTPS) on a public WiFi network is a risk because everyone else around, if they want to, can sniff and read all the packets and know what exactly you're up to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is amazing to me that the air India website doesn't use https. What is going on there?

<comment><USER13> It looks like the site is just static content. The login/register form goes off to a different domain which is TLS secured.

<comment><USER14> But the attacker could alter the static site to use HTTP on the login/register form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why should the layman care about how HTTPS works ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is not for the layman but for beginners who are interested in knowing the internals of HTTPS. The explanation is in layman terms. You can find plenty of literature on https online but it's not necessary you would grasp everything in a blink of an eye.

<comment><USER15> Let's be honest here, the article is to demonstrate that you have some grasp of how https works.

In particular the statement "They confirm the identity of the certificate owner & provide proof that a certificate is valid. " is dangerously misleading for the "layman" as the basic HTTPS certificate issuance does not involve any sort of owner identity confirmation, just that whoever requested the certificate had control of the DNS record for that domain at the time of the request.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'll find ways to simplify this & explain it in lucid terms so that readers don't find it difficult to comprehend.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Actresses, Business Leaders, Wealthy Parents Charged in U.S. College Entry Fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admissions-cheating-scandal.html <comment><USER2> > Wanda M. Austin [interim president of the University of Southern California] > said she did not believe that admissions officers were aware of the scheme > or took part in it, and she described the university as a victim.

Stay tuned for the next phase of the investigation, which will uncover any collusion by university employees who knew about this fraud and did nothing. Hint to investigators: follow the money.</comment>


Huawei phone users left exposed by Android block - <AUTHOR> https://techerati.com/news-hub/huawei-google-trump-security-android/ <comment><USER2> Let the FUD continues...

This is really an all-out campaign to destroy Chinese tech.</comment>