Found a 16y old password protected Zip file with my mIRC logs - <AUTHOR> While checking some really old CDs I found a password protected zip file with my mIRC logs from the year 2000. Since then my passwords changed a few times so I have no idea how many characters or which characters I used to protect the zip file. I already tried to brute force using 4-7 characters but no success. Any ideas to crack this are welcome. <comment><USER2> If it's from 2000 and they were created using WinZip up to v8.0, you can use the Passware Kit and the SureZip recovery as per [http://www.lostpassword.com/attacks.htm#surezip](http://www.lostpassword.com/attacks.htm#surezip)

> SureZip attack decrypts Zip archives created with WinZip version 8.0 and > earlier in less than an hour regardless of password used to protect it. At > least 5 simultaneously encrypted files are required in order to process the > archive. Archives created with WinZip are supported.

I used this when it first came out and even with a 60-char password, if there were more than 5 files it could extract them within an hour (sometimes less than 5 minutes).

</comment><comment><USER3> You have either brute force with more characters or if you have a file in there with a known content there is a known-plaintext attack on zip encryption. I've used it once and it worked nicely but it's rather tricky to find another file with the exact same content for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow! this is a good one! The Zip contains not only the logs but all the files that were part of the mIRC application (executable, config, etc). Maybe I'll try to find some old config files and explore this option.

<comment><USER3> The utility I used is PkCrack: [https://www.unix-ag.uni- kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pkcrack.html](https://www.unix-ag.uni- kl.de/~conrad/krypto/pkcrack.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would research as to what cipher was used in zip files back then and see if it is currently defeatable, like RC4 or AES with bad padding, and then work through the cryptopals.com problems and see if any of this applies to the zip file.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a cryptography guy myself but thanks for the tip - still on time to learn a few things!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was some post about using a CUDA program with your GPU to brute force zip passwords, but can't find anything with a quick google search.

Try this though

[http://www.crark.net/](http://www.crark.net/)

<comment><AUTHOR> will def look at this as it was in my plans to use some aws gpu instances for a couple of days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> fcrackzip?

[https://github.com/hyc/fcrackzip](https://github.com/hyc/fcrackzip)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. that's what I've been using so far but no success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are you going to post what you find?

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure if I will find something that interesting for the cmmunity</comment></comment>


Chadwick Matlin: HuffingtonPost + Facebook is the future of journalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/impressions/2009/08/18/huffington-post-facebook-future-journalism

<comment><USER2> This is retarded. It only discusses the swirling circle jerk of Social Networking LOL Cat viewing.</comment>


Show HN: Explain, teach, present anything, anywhere on any device - <AUTHOR> https://app.ziteboard.com/?shared=7kdAYqF6XJxuAt9Y6

<comment><USER2> Will there be video import?

<comment><AUTHOR> Puffyrice, sure thing. It's already tested and will be published in the coming weeks. Check this unlisted video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FHN7jxDJN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FHN7jxDJN8)</comment></comment>


A border patrol agents reveals what it's like to guard migrant children - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/a-border-patrol-agent-reveals-what-its-really-like-to-guard-migrant-children <comment><USER2> Who are the people who are insisting on these conditions? Why are they not in prison now? Why are we waiting to put them in prison?

Obviously they need their parents, they need more space and they need at least some kind of makeshift one minute shower to get clean.

If they aren't going to do any of that, send them back to Mexico or Honduras. Or maybe just let the community near the border take them in.

But keeping them in those conditions seems like the worst possible option of all. If they are trying to dissuade people from coming, then I think sending them back would be a humanitarian way.

<comment><USER3> > Who are the people who are insisting on these conditions?

Why do you think someone insisting on these conditions? The default state of being without civilization and resources is pretty shitty to begin with - reality insists on that. You need resources to make it less shitty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I would appreciate in a situation like this is more transparency. If there is squalor, make it easy for us to see for ourselves. And if this is something that is being exaggerated make it easy for us to see that too. I tend thing the conditions are not good, but with more information it will allow people to work together to do more to address this issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Trump's Immigration Policy at the Border" Which is exactly like Obama's immigration policy in this specific regard.

<comment><USER6> No[1,2,3], but even if it were, that wouldn't make the policy acceptable.

1\. [https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17488458/obama-immigration- pol...](https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17488458/obama-immigration-policy- family-separation-border)

2\. [https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/19...](https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/19/matt- schlapp/no-donald-trumps-separation-immigrant-families-was/)

3\. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-trump-child- separati...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-trump-child-separation- meme/)

<comment><USER3> [https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal- immigration-e...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration- enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/#slide-1)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is proud of IE7's first year (and many commenters are outraged) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx <comment><USER2> Microsoft's definition of progress is having less bugs than their previous version, but still more than all other competitors.

<comment><USER3> Any proof or evidence of that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone in comments linked to Secunia security bulletins. That's not a perfect metric but it's a pretty good one.</comment></comment></comment>


If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support - <AUTHOR> http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2009/06/if-you-want-to-write-useful-software-you-have-to-do-tech-support.html <comment><USER2> And the corollary, from the customer's perspective: The best possible person to get on the phone is a developer with commit access.

<comment><USER3> I would second your thought. I worked for a enterprise software company that had developers building the product, a maintenance team that fixed bugs and 3 layers of support.

The only people who knew what was going on with a huge product were the developers who actually wrote it. But you had to go thru so many layers to get to the developers, irrespective of silver or gold or platinum support. I would never ever pay for support of another product that comes from a big corporation.

We went opensource with our products and every developer responded directly to questions from customers. It made a big difference to the users.

<comment><USER4> I don't think open source is the particular answer to the problem you state, I think it's an orthogonal issue.

If you have millions of users who want to ask questions (think of supporting Microsoft Office), then direct access to developers is a non-starter.

What I have seen work are rotation programs where developers spend some time as first-line support (maybe 1 week per year). When doing so, they help educate the rest of the support staff, and they get great exposure to real users facing real problems.

<comment><USER2> > What I have seen work are rotation programs where developers spend some time > as first-line support (maybe 1 week per year). When doing so, they help > educate the rest of the support staff, and they get great exposure to real > users facing real problems.

This skirts the real issue, though, which is that the person you get on the line should _have the power_ to fix your problem. Putting developers on first- line support would only help if they were still _developers_ while they worked there, with all the same access privileges and tools available to them.

<comment><USER3> One of the reasons often cited for the structure that existed was 'it would distract developers working on the product from meeting the deliverables'. There is a role for support on a complex product where user errors often are the reason for tech support calls.

However, If you have a problem that requires code fixes, I cannot imagine having to deal with a long line of people who have no power to make those changes.

<comment><USER5> If a lot of users make the same error, then a fix in the code is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really good advice. This was an essential part of developing delicious.

</comment><comment><USER7> If it's for a product you love (and it should be if you're doing a start up), it's not tech support. It doesn't even feel remotley close to tech support. It's just fixing or explaining something that matters a lot to you. Hackers always want to talk about their pet projects... why not make the customer happy while doing it. :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> I love doing tech support on my own sites, anything for one on one feedback with my users is very fun to me. If one user has an issue it's likely affecting others.

On my full time work though I run into the same problems he mentioned and I make a point to asking the requester (of the feature or project) why they want to do it or what the user will get out of it so I can see if there are problem areas or possible improvements as I implement the request. It might irritate the requester but I feel better knowing I've done a little bit more to make a good final result.

</comment><comment><USER9> I worked in a place where devs were also top-tier tech support. This worked well, as we got to figure out what the problems were, got to help teach our users the capabilities of the system, and got to look cool when we fixed a problem in 2 minutes. This was for an in-house network appliance, so our users were pretty technical anyway, which definately helped. What did not help tho, was when the help desk got lazy and started directing tickets to us which had no place in our laps. Then it all went down hill.

In short, its balancing act.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious what balance others have struck between development and tech support. I know personally I wouldn't want to be developing something and have to take a support call (or email) every 15 minutes.

My idea would be to rotate who is "on support" every week or two. This would ensure everyone does get time doing support without it becoming a hassle and interruption to getting other things done.

What are your thoughts?

<comment><USER11> You could always force email, like 37Signals.

I don't think there's a one size fits all solution though.

<comment><USER10> Good point, although if I remember correctly 37signals has at least one dedicated support person (possibly more).

<comment><USER11> That's just to answer emails though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Summary: Direct communication with users yields better software. Dedicated tech support often translate poorly from user issues to feature requests.

</comment><comment><USER13> A similar sentiment should be mentioned as a developer looking for feedback from users when you have to deal with your customer's version of "tech support". The managers and tech support people are explaining what they think the problem is that the users are seeing, but when you walk through what the user is actually doing it's usually pretty surprising what you will uncover.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think anyone heavily involved in a not-too-unknown open source project can get this experience, via mailing lists, forums, issue trackers, IRC channels.

<comment><USER15> Depends who your target is. The channels you listed require a bit of tech savvy, my mom is not going to file a bug report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tend to agree, but there are obvious counter examples.

<comment><USER17> Such as...?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Heroku Add-On New Trial Available - <AUTHOR> https://elements.heroku.com/addons/advanced-scheduler <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, happy to announce that the Advanced Scheduler Heroku Add-on has a new trial plan available. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Advanced Scheduler, it's an Heroku Add-on providing powerful and reliable task scheduling as a service. It aims to be as easy to use as Heroku Scheduler, while adding flexibility, reliability and transparency.</comment>


Ask HN: Any designers here in for a rushjob on a fun project ? - <AUTHOR>

I'm busy with something that will hopefully go live tomorrow and make a splash.<p>One problem is I need a logo and a site design, if anybody here feels like doing something inspired then please let me know. <comment><USER2> You don't have a site design for a site that you're launching tomorrow?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what it says doesn't it :) ?

Trust me, not everything can be planned, in this particular case the question whether or not the thing was doable was only apparent today, and six days ago I didn't know I was going to do this at all.

All will be revealed tomorrow.

It's going to be a long night.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Several good designers have responded in the last hour, one is already making a sketch, I think the job will get done, and hopefully in time.

Thanks to everyone that took an interest, HN is quite amazing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make sure you update us, I want to see what it is...

<comment><AUTHOR> send me an email I'll give you a preview

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the preview. I think it will turn out to be time well spent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What happened? Is it `tomorrow' already in your time zone?

<comment><USER6> It's close to 18:00 in his (and my) timezone.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's live:

<http://www.reocities.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is hilarious. I wanna see what it is too.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd really like to see what you're up to!

</comment><comment><USER9> Let us hear how big the splash got.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, for all I know it will be a 'splat'. But it's definitely worth a try.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Integrated chat for your web app - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking for a way to integrate gmail/facebook style chat into our web app.
I've checked out www.cometchat.com which looks promising. Does anyone know of any other existing solutions?
Mind you I'm talking about Gmail/Facebook style chat where push is employed.. not the old school polling chat apps that a lot of 'corporate' sites still use. <comment><USER2> Not really a chat as it is a shoutbox, but I use <http://www.shoutmix.com/> in my facebook apps. Really easy to integrate.

If you want a chat between you and your users, I know that MixPanel (<http://www.mixpanel.com>) is using <http://www.olark.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Inbelieve meebo offers a widget that does just what you want.</comment>


Any word on Profig? Are they still alive? - <AUTHOR>

their URL is 404. Anyone? <comment><USER2> [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/09/yc-backed-virtual-phone- sys...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/09/yc-backed-virtual-phone-system- profig-shuts-down/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks Josh. I missed that.</comment>


Family: Past, Present, and Future - <AUTHOR> https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-and-future.html <comment><USER2> WaitButWhy's two-part series on AI revolution [0] was an insightful primer into the field for me and was one of the core reasons why I chose to do Computer Science in college. Highly recommend it.

[0] [https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revol...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolution-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What I find interesting about the ancestor cone, is that at some point, your ancestors will no longer be homo sapien, at some point they will no longer be recognizably human. At some point, not mammalian. And at some point, just ooze in the primordial swamp. Wow, that would be such awesome infographic to create. Let me think how to visualize that best!

<comment><USER4> Start with an extremely long sheet of paper. Tape it to the wall. Start marking eras. Go from there.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking more of a long infinite scroll on a website :-)

<comment><USER4> Oops. "My age is showing."

We did the paper on the wall with timeline thing while homeschooling. It was an interesting experience.

<comment><USER3> It's a great idea to build the eras out too. I'll track you down in HN when I've managed to do this in the next month or two :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Salaries for software engineers have stagnated - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TrailofPapers/status/1252719532503752704 <comment><USER2> The problem is how you calculate the increase in salaries. For example, how is the salary of different people going up or down. Is the salary right out of college going up? Are only senior engineer salaries stagnate?

I think you really need to look at total compensation to see if that is stagnating, and that can be harder to track. There is a huge part of many companies compensation that includes stock in one form or another (options, stock grants, espp, even 401K match). I think due to the pandemic, that total compensation is likely to go down this year for most people (stock component is worth less), so you can't probably track for this year. You could still try and look at previous years though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I totally get your points. All of the numbers reported in the tweet are total compensation (TC). Obviously there are some problems with TC in that it depends on stock appreciation, and how people report it, but that is the best I could do with the data available.

I also tried to address the different levels by including coefficients for levels in the regression. So if you look at the table at the end, you can see senior engineers made more than SWE 2s. I thought of including interaction terms, but I don't think I had enough data to get reasonable estimates for that, and it would be harder to interpret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And they will start to drop. It's a demand and supply issue. As salaries go up, more people go into the field. As more people go into the field, salaries begin to drop.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's part of why I was looking into this, is I wanted to understand how things might change in the future. I have no special insight on what will happen, but there still seems to be a lack of Senior Data Scientists. Of course, that might change in a few years as people get more experience.</comment></comment>


Installing Adobe AIR 1.5.1 For Linux On Ubuntu 9.04 (i386) - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-adobe-air-1.5.1-for-linux-on-ubuntu-9.04-i386 <comment><USER2> Don't do it! Your Linux was free and nice before. Now it's closed-source Adobe's slave.</comment>


Connect the Dots - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2012/05/connect_the_dots <comment><USER2> Gruber is arguing that AT&T ran an active campaign to steer people away from HTC phones because HTC let hobbyists unlock their phones. That seems unrealistic.</comment>


Programming Language Popularity on GitHub and Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://langpop.corger.nl/

<comment><USER2> Programming Language Popularity on Github and Stackoverflow.

Okay.

There are a lot of funny bits. For example the 'language' 'IO' is tagged quite a lot on stackoverflow. Or was it 'Input / Output'?

Common Lisp has fewer tags on stackoverflow - maybe because many questions are just tagged 'Lisp'.

'J' has very little lines changed. That could be a good sign, since it is based on APL, which is famous for its one line programs.

Perl6 is at the bottom. Okay.

CSS is now a programming language.

XML is now a programming language.

Self has some tags on Stackoverflow. But mostly in the context of other programming languages, not the programming language Self.

Etc.

This is flawed in so many details.

<comment><USER3> "CSS is now a programming language. XML is now a programming language."

Seconded. Could we please stop call CSS a language. If not, add PDF to the list.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, PDFs actually do contain an embedded programming language in them, a subset of PostScript. [1] PostScript, meanwhile, is actually Turing complete with conditionals and loop structures inside of it. [2] I'd argue that makes PDFs a whole lot more programming language-y than CSS or XML.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Technical_foundations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Technical_foundations)

[2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript#The_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript#The_language)

<comment><USER5> "PDFscript" (as I like to call it) is not Turing complete. It's more similar to SVG in terms of capability. From the PDF spec:

"To simplify the processing of content streams, PDF does not include common programming language features such as procedures, variable, and control constructs."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel that these popularity indices are pretty flawed and most often used as arguments under a confirmation bias. Defining "Popularity" is no good measure in my opinion. This graph just shows that with many lines changed many questions arise, it does not say whether people enjoy doing so. I would be much more interested in spots like "Logos" in the bottom right - 160 Mio Lines changed, only 38 questions of StackOverflow. So what does that mean? Is everything about the language crystal clear? Beat that, JavaScript.

Github is a reliable source but I am not sure whether it is representative. At least it appears to be very popular with web folk. Other sources are missing such as bitbucket, especially since it allows for free of charge private repositories. Like this, the only thing this says is that github use correlates with the lines of JavaScript. Not sure whether this is a good measure for popularity. Much like a kid in kindergarten, who shows up every day and talks to everyone. Yes, his presence correlates with the presence of others, but what if he is just a jerk and nobody really likes him?

<comment><USER7> Fair points.

And of course basing the github measure on lines of code gives quite an unfair advantage to verbose languages like Java.

Perhaps they could look at compression ratios when (say) gzipping a decent sample of each language, and use these to weight the LOC metric?

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely right, I didn't think about this when I wrote my comment. LOC is in itself a very poor metric, therefore "Changed LOC" doesn't improve any interpretation. Including the number and sizes of repos would be better, since LOC pushes verbose languages. Java and C# code usually features a lot of empty or hollow lines (in C# for example, one opens the curly brace for a function in a new line).

I mean, yeah, most of the comments indicate that we agree that this kind of graph or "false statistic" is flawed.

But can we find any value in it? How do we interpret this graph, despite its basic problems? What good stuff can we do with it?

<comment><USER7> A scale for cross-language comparisons seems a hard ask because everyone is implicitly interested in answering different questions. Which languages do people enjoy using the most? Which have the most code "out there" in some setting or other (open source, commerce, in deployment, scripting, ...)? Which have the most engaged and vocal communities? Which have the biggest pool of skilled workers? which will I get the most career benefit from learning?

Perhaps the useful information is more in the correlations between different related metrics, than in drawing up ranked lists (surprise surprise, Java > Haskell!). This graph helps visualise the correlation between these two, which seems significant but far from perfect. Outliers like SQL can then be identified, which point to problems with the metrics (e.g. with SQL, presumably github fails to spot lines of SQL embedded in other langauges).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think language popularity falls into two different categories: (1) languages other people will pay you to work in, and (2) languages that you would work in of your own choice.

For #1, I would measure the frequency that a language appears in job ads.

For #2, I think the trending repositories in Github would be a better metric than commit lines.

<comment><USER9> Good point. If anything, the number of commit lines has as much to do with the verbosity of the language as it does its popularity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hold on a second, so a programming language that is very verbose, and needs lots of assistance to be workable is considered popular?

<comment><USER11> Sure. For some definitions of popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be interesting to see the same data broken down by year. Lua, Clojure, and Go are at about the same position, but I wonder which one is gaining traction. Probably Go.

</comment><comment><USER13> So I have seen many of these kinds of graphs and associated complaints that come with them. Much of the criticism revolves around the usefulness of ``popularity'' as a proxy for other things that we actually care about in programming languages having to do with their immediate usefulness to us. These are all good to discuss, but I think there is a more pressing issue, having to do with the granularity of the sample. I work in an area of scientific computing, and have 1-2 languages at any given time that I work with often, and have familiarity with 3-4 more. However, I have friends that work in slightly different areas of scientific computing that have a different set of languages. Integrating information from these people, I have a rough set of the languages used in my local neighborhood. And I will say there is actually quite a bit of diversity in the neighborhood, even though its all within scientific computing. So who is to say what lies in the realm of friend of a friend of a friend? I don't have a feel for this distribution.

This is where I think integrating these kinds of graphs with a filtration over distances on some network would be highly useful. It is not clear which network(s) would be the best, but there are some clear advantages to going with induced link through github collaborations. What I am suggesting might be more helpful for niche domains than it would be for the ``median'' programmer (if such a thing exists), but who knows, maybe there is some usefulness there too?

</comment><comment><USER14> Dart, CoffeeScript and TypeScript all have +50M lines of code.

It is weird that Dart has 50M LOC when Go only has 100M LOC. My analysis of Dart's popularity suggests that it is actually a lot less than 2x less popular than Go. I though Go was actually 10x more popular that Dart at least.

I wonder how much double counting and so forth (as a result of forks) is present in this analysis. Maybe there is a bias as to what is released publicly to Github versus used in production.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was surprised to see how highly-ranked some of the languages were (like Fortran and R) that I had previously discounted as mostly abandoned in the "github crowd".

Obviously Fortran is used a lot in HPC and numerical routines, but I always figured those were closed-source and rarely updated, with development focusing on their wrappers.

<comment><USER16> Github gets lot of undeserved credit. Most of the code in the world doesn't even know what is Github.

<comment><USER17> Then again, not that much code is aware of version control systems (mostly the code of VCS'es themselves and related tools)

<comment><USER18> He meant "coders". As in: "most coders don't know or use GitHub".

<comment><USER16> thanks, typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is only tangentially related, but I remember seeing a site a few years ago that ranked languages by crowdsourcing about 100 subjective comparisons between different pairs of languages. It made statements like:

        - Programs written in this language tend to work
          correctly the first time they are accepted by the
          compiler
        - The type system in this language helps me to be more
          productive
        - Code written in this language is easy to read and
          understand at a glance
        - I would choose this language to write a desktop GUI
          application in

and asked people to choose which of a pair of languages each statement applied more to. The data could be ranked by language or question, and I found it really useful and discovered a few languages I wouldn't have heard of otherwise. But for the life of me, I can't find the site anymore. Does this ring a bell to anyone?

<comment><USER20> Yes. [http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool](http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool)

<comment><USER19> That's it! Thanks a million :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Github mus-identitifies QT translation files as "TypeScript", assigning all commits on some very active QT projects (like Bitcoin) to that language, which massively inflates the typescript usage on metrics like this.

<comment><USER22> Github uses _linguist_ to identify the codes programming language and unfortunately it's far from perfect - [https://github.com/github/linguist](https://github.com/github/linguist)

There are known issues with distinguishing code between certain languages. For eg. There are issues between Perl & Prolog (and sometimes even Puppet). And up to very recently [1] most Rebol code was identified as R :)

[1] That is until this patch was merged in (although the repos language stats only get updated after a new push happens) - [https://github.com/github/linguist/pull/1005](https://github.com/github/linguist/pull/1005)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not my data or article but for those who want to poke around with it [http://langpop.corger.nl/formatted_data](http://langpop.corger.nl/formatted_data) is the relevant URL.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice work! GitHub should overrate the languages of the cool boys, but underrate expressive languages because less LOC. stack overflow on the other side should overrate day to day work languages but also overrate complicated languages that generate more questions.

At the end of the day there's a clear correlation so I think this graph is a reliable source of information. Is there a way to remove logarithmic scale?.

</comment><comment><USER25> Lines of code changed is confounded by syntactic properties of the languages: For instance, languages that make a lot of use of indentation, like Lisp, will have more changed lines of code but that doesn't necessarily reflect more activity. In Lisp, you often have huge diffs even for minor changes because these minor changes can lead to a change in indentation of many otherwise unaffected lines of code.

</comment><comment><USER26> Intuitively it feels quite accurate. C#, Java, C++, Python, JS cript at the very top. Scala above F#. New entrants not too down in the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER27> I did a analysis of programming languages using github data before: [http://exceedhl.github.io/blog/2013/05/07/programming- langua...](http://exceedhl.github.io/blog/2013/05/07/programming-language- evolution-in-last-year-github-data-challenge/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I was shocked to see Pascal so high on the list. Pascal was the first compiled language I ever used. But I don't even know what development environment you would use for it now.

</comment><comment><USER29> Flag: The data's from Feb 2013, i.e. over a year old, which should be reflected in the title.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is the first accurate programming language popularity chart I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER31> I see Puppet but not Chef. That's something that should be fixed. Then again, this was done in 2013. I bet a fair amount has changed since then.

Also, SLOC for ranking on Github? We don't use that to assess "productivity" for a reason.

<comment><USER18> It might not measure productivity, but it sure gives a hint about how much a language is used.

Sure, a language can be 1/5 as terse as another. But not 1/100 as terse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Obvisouly Java is most popular because it is the _best_ programming language. It got OOP and is on the super fast JVM, nothing can beat it.</comment>


Rental Car IT - as bad as it gets? - <AUTHOR> http://memeagora.blogspot.com/2008/02/rental-car-it.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The deadliest tangles wrapped around a companies Enterprise Systems often result from the structure of the organisation. Individual departments and operational functions depend upon small efficiencies generated by the existing systems. A replacement system might represent a dramatic improvement in overall efficiency but would almost certainly disrupt the existing organisation. Project like that can only be led from the top of an organisation - without that level of leadership the IT function is confined to continuing the development of those small efficiencies to the detriment of the whole.

You see it everywhere I am afraid.

</comment><comment><USER2> This sounds like a good opportunity for a startup. You wouldn't even need to establish a counter at the airport. As a customer, you just check-in via Blackberry, iPhone, or even text message. The shuttle bus swings by to pick you up and you're off.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing. What a fantastic opportunity for somebody to build a centralized, remote system, that's easy to use and offers some really powerful features ("Hi Mr. Jones, would you like the same kind of luxury sedan you rented last time? A local map and directions to some common destinations is already on the front seat for you."), and then sell it to the rental car companies.

Somebody'd better do it, or I will. ;-)

<comment><USER2> Heck, if you can collect the arrival times from the various airlines, you could send a confirmation message a few minutes after the plane lands. Checking in would be as simple as hitting reply.

<comment><USER3> That would require the traveler's flight information, which I wasn't assuming was something the rental software would have access to. However, if the customer wanted to offer it up ... sure!

Higher-end hotels have systems that do this kind of thing already, and there's no reason that rental car companies couldn't also.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you guys develop mental toughness? - <AUTHOR> I recently got done reading David Goggins book Can't Hurt Me where he advocates being uncomfortable as one of the key factors in developing mental toughness but his book was rather focused on how to do this via physical means, what are some tactics you guys use to develop intellectual mental toughness? <comment><USER2> I'll give you the same advice everyone else is, but word it slightly differently, because thinking this way really helped me: Be OK in your own vulnerability.

'Toughness' implies some sort of everything-proof shield that you expose to different stimulus to gain 'immunity' from it. I've seen advice that follows this line of thought: eg you quit bathing for a week and become 'immune' to some specific social judgements, you go to some extreme sport to be 'immune' from the fear associated with it, etc.

The problem with the above is it starts feeding into this weird 'detached, tough guy' persona that cracks as soon as you realize something has gotten to you. You think "oh no, this thing isn't one of the many things I'm immune from!" and will try to counter it with some sort of extreme, tough-guy exposure. Until the next thing gets to you. Etc.

Rather than doing that, you should realize what creates the toughness in the first place: it's being vulnerable (physically, emotionally, intellectually, etc.) and realizing it's an OK state to be in. Even if you're in a vulnerable state, you've "got it", you'll make it out of it, it's not the end of the world, etc.

Now, you can practice this by putting yourself into vulnerable states and showing yourself that you survive them (but you have to remember to let yourself generalize so you don't get stuck in the 'tough guy' mentality I described above) OR you can explore the concept of vulnerability in general and learn to be OK with it. I recommend the latter :)

To that end, I really liked "the gifts of imperfection".

<comment><USER3> I think this is the best advice.

I did not go this route; I developed my own form of mental toughness. I used to be insecure as a kid, and some other kids picked on me, and eventually I learned to not care what other people thought. Especially if their opinion leads them to be negative about vulnerable people, it's their opinion that sucks, not the vulnerable people. So ignore that stupid opinion.

This has worked very well for me, but at the same time, I worry if I'm not too detached from other people, from their emotions, and from my own. My empathy exists mostly on an intellectual level, and not really an emotional level.

So it works, but now that I read your comment, I think it may not be the best outcome. Embracing vulnerability, your own and that of others, sounds like a better idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Practicing MMA (but any single art like Boxing, Wrestling, Muy Thai, etc would work) has definitely boosted my mental toughness. Once you step into a ring with someone who is trying to attack you, and come out okay, you realize you can handle pretty much anything.

Even if you don't spar, simply motivating yourself to go to practice can be tough. If you can walk into a room knowing you're going to be pinned and choked, you can walk into an interview/negotiation/meeting/date no problem.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this 100%. Though I only do grappling and not any striking (BJJ and Submission Wrestling).

When I did my first competition, locking eyes with my opponent knowing he will do everything he can do to choke me, break my joints and knowing I voluntarily put myself there, it changed me :)

I especially like how you frame your last sentence. Since martial arts can sometimes be uncomfortable physically, like you I have noticed is that things that used to be uncomfortable are not as uncomfortable as being pinned down by someone much larger than you. I consciously remind myself of this if I ever feel nervous about something, and it works almost every time.

I've also read the book by Goggins (loved it) and martial arts really build up your "cookie jar".

<comment><USER6> "Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy."

The entire experience, from the first days when I got triangled by girls half my size (choking my ego as much as choking my body), to competition days, with pressure passers and crazy leglock guys... It absolutely changed me - for the better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go meta. for love, health and existential fears it won't necessarily help, but everything else can't be _that_ important.

trying to take a step back is helpful to find solutions and underlying problems anyways.

for "interpersonal hardening" it helps to understand why others act the way they do (for negative behavior it's usually fear once you dig deep enough)

for myself I approach it slightly different: I don't fight my feelings, even if it needs secretly shedding a tear at home. only after having dealt with the emotions I can again take a step back, analyse causes and consider actions.

and lastly: find someone to talk to. this could even be an anonymous internet friend, if you are not comfortable sharing things with someone close by. they can assure you you are not alone and automatically have a healthy outside perspective.

edit: and I actively avoid unnecessary social stress (toxic people, unhealthy hierarchies or simply the social pressure in some sorts of group work if not worth the pain (playing in a lovely band: yes! half assing a shared side project you are not really on to: no!))

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not about what you can resist, it's about what you have the capacity to endure.

One tactic that helps me through the tough bits are to think of a time that's been harder/more painful/tougher and remind myself: "I've already been through worse before, and from this point forward it will only get better"

Another thing I do to try to support myself is to switch what I'm doing. Sometimes we get stuck in a rut like a car spinning our wheels in the mud - spending a lot of energy but not making and progress. Maybe it's time to step out of the car and put some branches down, or take a different tactic. If you ever feel like you're just spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere, switch up your approach! Even if progress is slow, your energy isn't wasted and you don't sit there an anguish waiting for _something_ (anything) to happen to save you from it.

Another thing you can do to get a thicker skin (toward what others say) is to hop on IRC, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Slack, or Discord, or wherever people go to be snippy and nasty to each other. It won't be long before some trolls or malicious actors come along and try to get under your skin. Don't let them. Every time it happens it's easier to do!

</comment><comment><USER9> Learn Stoicism.

My favorite classic is Enchiridion by Epictetus and Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. For a more modern approach: The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Burkman

PD:I compiled a list of quotes from the best books [http://arandomquote.com/categories/stoic/](http://arandomquote.com/categories/stoic/)

<comment><USER10> Meditations by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is a must read as well. Another addition to your modern approach recommendation of the stoicism theme is Ryan Holiday's Ego is the Enemy.

PS - There's a really captivating lecture on stoicism in the context of the life of Marcus Aurelius [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5897dMWJiSM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5897dMWJiSM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some ways of putting psychological stress on yourself:

\- Public speaking

\- Taking on leadership roles

\- Do things that are counter to your personality. Eg, if you're shy, force yourself to talk to strangers on the street

\- Put yourself in situations where you will probably face rejection

\- Do things that will make you stick out. Eg: showing up at work one day in a suit when everyone else is wearing t-shirts. Or vice-versa

\- Take a flight to a random foreign country where you don't know the local language, and where most people don't know English. No hotel reservations in advance, no laptop, no smartphone, minimal budget. Figure out how to survive, have fun, and visit the city's major landmarks over the following 5 days. Bonus points if it's a developing country

Not that I'm particularly recommending all of the above. But they will certainly put you in an psychologically "uncomfortable" spot and help expand your comfort zone.

<comment><USER12> _\- Take a flight to a random foreign country where you don 't know the local language, and where most people don't know English. No hotel reservations in advance, no laptop, no smartphone, minimal budget. Figure out how to survive and visit the city's major landmarks over the following 5 days. Bonus points if it's a developing country_

This could result in you being more than just _psychologically_ uncomfortable. Tourists are, broadly speaking, expected to have hotel rooms booked; showing up at immigration without any advance plans is a good way to be denied entry to some countries. (Yes, even countries you don't need a visa to visit: Border officials can deny you entry on the basis of "this person's story doesn't add up".)

<comment><USER13> Yes on the visa point - can't be totally random. The rest you can.

I'm about to embark on a 3 week trip through south east asia. Aside from my liveaboard where I'll be living on a boat and diving (which I have to book in advance), I haven't booked a single accommodation. It can be done; hostels all the way.

<comment><USER3> I did it with my wife when we visited Croatia ages ago. We only planned the flight there (to Split) and the flight back (from Zagreb), and we had to figure out how where to sleep and how to get everywhere. We visited the big island at the coast near Split, we visited Dubrovnic, the big nature park in the middle of the country. It was great. Not hard to do at all.

Though I expect some places outside Europe it might get a bit harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Read one book. Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', concentrating on all of the various ways he portrays righteousness.

He helps you see what's right in front of you, namely that people do wrong things not because they are evil or bad, but because they are weak.

Once you understand people as inherently weak, that they do stupid shit because they are essentially helpless, not because they're bad or evil or cruel, it becomes so much easier to forgive.

Mental toughness is all about forgiving and forgetting, and you learn to forgive only by accepting that people are weak, that people are essentially incapable of doing what's right.

Here one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"She is so unhappy! Ah, how unhappy! She believes there must be righteousness everywhere. She expects it. She doesn't see that it's impossible for people to be righteous and she is angry at it."

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how much difference physical stress Vs mental stress it makes. Stress is stress. Anxiety (mental stress) causes physical symptoms. The will to continue in physical endeavours is through changing the mind and being determined to continue. Mind over matter. This want to stop doing physical stuff comes from the mind. So improving the mental toughness comes from repetitively attempting to breach this barrier.

Goggins even says stuff in his interviews with Joe Rogan that indicate that he would agree. Most people stop physical activity not when the body is exhausted but when the brain thinks the body is done. When Jesse Itzler interviewed with Joe Rogan about Goggins, he said Goggins thought people only did 40% of what they were capable of until they changed their mind.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry for the bit unedited/rough comment but I don't have too much time so I'm typing pretty fast.

(1) Learning how to program

(2) Hacking hardware

(3) Learning Andy McKee Rylynn on guitar while only knowing Wonderwall (there's a YouTube tutorial).

(4) Breathing/anapana/'basic'/the-first-meditation-beginners learn meditation and Tonglen (see the book search inside yourself for instructions) meditation [1].

(5) In general: by bootcamping yourself. Also known as being woefully underprepared and then just do it for 8 to 16 hours per day (the hours depend on how the rest of your life balance is, your health must be ok).

I wasn't talented at hardware hacking and hated programming when I started with it. It was my curiosity that said: can't you learn to like it? You can create awesome things with it!

Curiosity + the promise of creating awesome things + observing myself and being rational on how to influence myself = learning how to program despite hating it initially.

But in general: focus a lot on what you're doing and focus as deep as you possibly can and do that for as long as possible. This state is in some was easier to get into if you're doing a topic that seems super hard for you to learn and that you don't know a lot about.

For physical toughness: learn the Wim Hof Method -- adrenaline whenever you want it. I'm pretty sure that will help for developing physical toughness.

[1] In my experiene the following meditations don't develop mental toughness, they only develop empathy or a form of emotional intelligence: Vipassana/body scan/mindfulness, loving kindness keditation/metta (yes the same metta as my username implies).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a ton for the reply! I was definitely thinking along the lines of a bootstrap workshop!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Get married and divorce a couple of times.

<comment><USER18> It can be torture:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyakoiU0zA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyakoiU0zA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I shot skeet competitively when I was younger. I competed at a high level. Unlike many other sports where competitors affect your play, the only reason you fail in skeet is because of you. The target will fly the same. The gun and ammunition will perform.

The outcome of any one event is Boolean: you hit the target or you miss. Feedback is instant.

You have to learn to put your mind into the zone. You do that through repetition. While competing, if you worry about your competitor, or the next shot, or how you look, you will miss. Coincidentally, you learn to turn off your brain from trying too hard. A relaxed brain and body are quicker to react, and more powerful.

I leaned mental toughness through a game with small Boolean feedback, which rewards focus and rejects excessive effort. It is like instant feedback on meditation.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really recommend "The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" by Paul Zeitz, who coached the winning USA team in the International Math Olympiad: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/593458.The_Art_and_Craft...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/593458.The_Art_and_Craft_of_Problem_Solving)

One of the things he focuses on is repeatedly challenging yourself with problems you don't know how to solve, and to stick with them and keep trying different angles and approaches. Even if you don't make progress, you'll be conditioning yourself to tolerate longer periods spent working the problem without a payoff.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why would you want to develop "intellectual mental toughness", how do you define it?

Edit:

Okay googling a bit, I think mental toughness is an incredibly poor name for the concept. I'm this close to put that "mental toughness" name into the "toxic masculinity" box.

My advice would be don't be afraid to make mistakes, and be kind to yourself when you make some. I've noticed that when facing failure the best pattern would be to pardon yourself and allow yourself to learn from it. Take a step back.

</comment><comment><USER22> Practice identifying the ego underlying your rationale and the way you interact with people. The more you're able to confront and abandon, the mentally-tougher you'll be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice man! Means a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Learn and practice meditation. It's the only way. I can highly recommend the book Mental Resilience: The Power of Clarity [1] by Kamal Sarma It comes with a CD (yes they still make those) to help you early on with some guided meditations while you build up.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Resilience-Clarity-Develop- War...](https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Resilience-Clarity-Develop- Warrior/dp/1577316258)

<comment><USER24> +1 for your post. I DID do a double take on the author's name though. I read it Kama Sutra at first..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In my experience, learning to tolerate physical discomfort translates pretty well to mental resilience as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> I do the things that scare the shit out of me consistently. The things that you wouldn't even consider an option and that many people might consider impossible. When things get really hard, I lean into the pain. Sometimes the pain will be overwhelming, but it will pass. Eventually you'll get used to the pain and things will get boring, you'll plateau, and then you pick the next mountain that scares the shit out of you to start the cycle all over again.

I think life might be a little like a video game. You need to make sure you conquer all your base mountains first- things like good mental health (stoicism), physical health, and healthy relationships. If those 3 are covered you can bounce back from anything. At least from my experience and my experience includes 2 suicide attempts, starting my own business, and surviving a bunch of bad stuff.

It is really really easy to develop mental toughness from physical exercise. The two go hand in hand. You can't push your body without pushing your mind. Many physical boundaries are mental boundaries. Physical exercise is the easiest way to challenge your mental boundaries if you can.

I love long-distance running. It's an easy way to see and test your boundaries and get fit at the same time. Once you hit your redline or hell when you're running- being able to push through hell and finish is key. Slowly and surely you'll be able to run through longer distances of hell. Remembering that pain, knowing that you can meet your boundaries and surpass them, can help you deal with almost everything. It's a confidence-builder. It translates to mental toughness- doing the things and confronting your personal demons, each personal demon you conquer brings you to a bigger demon, but all the small demons you conquered along the way become your allies.

Whenever I face a tough situation, it's like lol this is nothing compared to the shit I've been through. Or almost like an anime cliche, I've conquered everything that I've come up against so far, I'm not quitting now.

What doesn't kill you, literally makes you stronger. Do all the things that you irrationally think might kill you or that makes you figuratively want to die when you think about it. Your "I'd rather die than do x, y, and z".

In my experience, the figurative dying in "I'd rather die" often feels like failing. So die/fail often. I don't know if you ever get used to it, but you start to like it after a while. It feels like progress. Growth pains that you lean into I guess.

</comment><comment><USER27> Definitely an out there response, but recreational drugs take you to a place where you build up different views on how 'everything' works. Really gives you a different perspective on what is "difficult" in life.

Oh, and meditation and video games surely.

</comment><comment><USER28> What makes you think that mental fortitude is not required for physical toughness? You got it backwards, it's the mind that says the body to quit.

Do harder things progressively. Personally I recommend a certain style of Chan meditation, but its not easy to stick to its training plan. To bootstrap, the easy way is to do it in group so you don't quit - MMA, stoicism whatever is OK but there is much more to mental toughness than that imho.

</comment><comment><USER29> I suppose you want mental toughness because you want to achieve some task that requires mental toughness.

So, develop mental toughness by trying to achieve said task.

</comment><comment><USER30> different things work for different people, but personally I do hard drugs

</comment><comment><USER31> Exposure to uncomfortable situations works, but you need to do it properly.

Some people find a cognitive behaviour therapy model useful.

</comment><comment><USER32> For what purpose? If you want to learn how to cope with having your work rejected, become an author.

</comment><comment> who-knows95 i must say i am a advocate of physical suffering for developing "toughness" but, not because i'm a masochist, loving the pain of walking or suffering through cold.

the mental toughness comes from a need to ignore physical pain and drive through to the end, as you have no other choice.

in simple terms it's "drive or die".

i'm also a follower of stoic ideology, if you look into that, you can read the thoughts of many great men, but they all suffered.

i'm not sure if i can help with intellectual mental toughness, but i assume this means mental toughness without physical suffering?

</comment><comment><USER33> Why is this a goal? Perhaps consider instead increasing your ability to have empathy, as toughness implies lack of caring about what is happening around you.

</comment><comment><USER34> Learn to be comfortable being alone

</comment><comment><USER35> I've always been a fan of deliberate asceticism and the mantra "let me suffer or let me die"

</comment><comment><USER36> grow up in a third world country

<comment><AUTHOR> On that i do have a head start I'm Indian

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> BJJ (especially sparring) and running (nearly) every morning.

</comment><comment><USER38> Become an entrepreneur. It's MMA for the mind.

</comment><comment><USER39> Play some Dota 2.

</comment><comment><USER40> have a cold shower every day! (not in the tropics - I mean in places where a cold shower is genuinely uncomfortable)

meditation

<comment><USER41> been doing this for past 10 days or so.... I can't exactly say what is better but I feel like I am overall 10-20% better than before. With meditation I do wim-hof breathing for 20minutes every morning

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Mediation can teach you this.

</comment><comment><USER43> Having Asian parents.

</comment><comment><USER44> Listen to Jocko Willink all day...

</comment><comment><USER45> Protect yourself from

       Machiavellianism(manipulate/deceive others)
       Psychopathy(lack of remorse/empathy)
       Sadism(pleasure in suffering of others)
       Narcissism(egotism/self-obsession)

</comment><comment><USER46> Read the Stoics. Take up an endurance sport.

What is mental toughness? It is perspective and belief to step back and realise that the suffering is only temporary and will ultimately be worth having endured.

</comment><comment><USER47> Let's say mental toughness = mental harm/abuse resitance.

Maybe it's similar to how we develop drug resistance. By exposing yourself to difficult situation which are challenging for your mind, you might develop mental toughness.

</comment><comment><USER48> Living in China.</comment>


What skill has the highest chance of enabling you to be self-employed? - <AUTHOR> If you are starting from zero, what skill (technical or non-technical) would give someone the highest chance of becoming self-employed in the shortest time period (e.g. doesn't require 10 years of training to even get started)?
Looking for skills obviously that maximise income, flexibility and location independence.
Of course programming is an obvious answer - but can we be more specific? :) <comment><USER2> In my opinion, the main your skill is a belief in your business. Because this skill is the best to push you to go every time you encounter troubles. I don't talk about technical skills because today they are not important to start a profitable business. I mean such type of business as a marketplace. Have you ever thought about starting with this business model? Roobykon blog contains useful news and tips for an e-commerce business. I recommend that you read this: [https://roobykon.com/blog/categories/marketplaces](https://roobykon.com/blog/categories/marketplaces)</comment>


New Alternative to Bitcoin Uses Negligible Energy - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/computing/software/bitcoin-alternative <comment><USER2> Like many such approaches I see little discussion here of resistance to sophisticated Sybil attacks.</comment>


BlackBerry 10 hands-on (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/19/blackberry-10-hands-on-video/ <comment><USER2> I'm starting to wonder what there devs have been doing as that seems to me like a tablet operating based windowing system on a phone. This being born out by the indication of non full screen windowed app's with desktop like icons in the background. Though they could be fat wigets.

But as they said - it is early days and it is just to say app switching and the keyboard and the camera app aspects are final. Though I would of expected alot more to be finalised at this stage if they are to have a stable/full release product.

I hope they pull something off, but they realy still need to cater for the actual keyboard devotee's.

Also a phone with a good battery life is a big factor in business usage and in that alot of people like the older blackberry's and nokia's, they did well and still do.

I hope they manage to keep going and pull a little out of the bag.

So will wait until it is released and then see how it goes. QNX is a good platform and alas have been poor at marketing themself and pandering to the wrong markets with half products for a few years now.

So it is to the moon or bust, I hope they reach the moon, I hope.</comment>


England's Last Gasp of Empire - ezequiel-garzon http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/opinion/englands-last-gasp-of-empire.html <comment><AUTHOR> In the year 2100, 15 years after I am dead based on my life expectancy.

less than 10% of the world would be of american and European decent.

50% would be Asian and 40% would be African.

When I first heard it, it took me some time to think about what that means.

Think about what history books would read like in the year 2150. It would be sort of surprising to them that that the world was so eurocentric - they would prolly all be of same skin color and of a darker shade. The anti-immigration stance that is becoming so mainstream must feel to them similar to what reading about slavery feels to us.

There is also something much more profound, when we view historical data about dinosaurs or other species we always look at statistics of their representation - essentially out of factors that is outside their control, their is a peaceful extinction of the European gene pool, so you really cannot fault the reactionary response to it. Extinction is also the wrong word to use here, genetically the best features would get absorbed by the human species of all 'race'. Its inevitable but the recent surge in immigration is making people deal with that fact in a very direct way.

The world has always had less Europeans and people of white color skin then other shades, if you took every person in the world and randomly changed their location, it would be a huge shock to most white people that they are surrounded by non-white people. For everyone else seeing an extra white person a year is not as shocking.

The thing that is happening in england is also happening in america but its not as bad because of the sheer size of america.

In England a change in demographics is a lot more noticeable - either it be age, ethnicity, language or religion.

<comment><USER2> Whites are now a minority in children under five years of age in the United States. Given the prevailing worldwide tower-of-Babel Zeitgeist, there is _no_ reason why the same will not be true in Britain.

Hundreds of generations to build a civilization. A decade or two to squander it away. Disinheritance.

<comment><USER3> How is a civilization being 'squandered'?

<comment><USER2> Is a civilization an organic expression of a people? If so, the answer should be self evident. If not, what is civilization?

<comment><USER4> Is a people defined by its skin color? And is it static? Or is a people defined by the people born into and absorbed into the community?

Is a people genetics, or principles?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with the assertion that the UK has been an empire of any kind since roughly the end of World War II. I agree in part with the article's core assertion, that the UK's days as a major influence on the global political and financial stages are now over.

However, I think this has been a gradual process. I think it has to do less with an internal dissolution of British society's pillars (though I think that is happening), and more with a lack of understanding of just what kind of weight Britain has to throw around. Put simply: Britain is not as important as it thinks it is, and the EU is much more important than people think it is. Britain needs the EU more than the EU needs it.

That's not an easy thing to accept. Who among us wants to be told "you don't matter like you think you do?" Imagine an American's reaction to being told that.

But it's a lesson the UK needs to learn, and fast, if it's to keep its economy and quality of life.

<comment><USER6> > I disagree with the assertion that the UK has been an empire of any kind > since roughly the end of World War II.

British troops were still hanging, shooting, and torturing people in Asia and African territories 15 years after World War II, all in order to maintain control over colonies.

<comment><USER2> Given the present state of Africa since decolonization, Africans should in truth be praying for the return of the British justice which ( briefly ) enabled civilization to spring forth on the Dark Continent. A British managerial class and Anglo colonies would be a blessing for the average African.

<comment><USER7> I see /pol/ has invaded HackerNews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an Englishman I have first hand knowledge of the country and much of its history. So I can see the article is not very accurate and very simplistic.

Great Britain was the pre-eminent 'empire' in economic, political and military power up until about the first world war. The military power was based mainly on naval superiority for protecting our overseas empire with a mediocre army. But from that point onwards it was in decline. We did not realise it until the second world war when the full industrial power of the United Status make itself felt. Winston Churchill may have sat with Roosevelt and Stalin but even he know that we was the junior partner in the talks.

Even after WW2 we had an outsized political influence because of our special relationship with the USA and influence with many ex-colonies. The UN security council was setup with five permanent seats, the five countries that at the time had nuclear weapons (USA, Russia, China, France, UK). Obviously the UK is not likely to vote itself off of that council and they have veto power.

The Brexit vote is based purely on the issue of immigration. Part of being in the UN is that all people from the EU countries can travel and work freely within any of the countries. Given that English is a very popular second language in the poorer countries you can see that many of them come to the UK to try for a better life. I would do the same in their position. Imagine if the USA joined in union with Mexico and part of that meant the border between USA and Mexico was completely open. Do you think there might be a large number of people moving to America and do you think that would cause stress on the education, health system and resentment from the local population? I think it would and so it has with the UK population. Add on top that the British have never really liked the Europeans very much and that much of the EU is actually controlled by a German/French power block and you have plenty of people who want out.

<comment><USER9> > Obviously the UK is not likely to vote itself off of that council and they > have veto power.

As we are seeing with Brexit, formalities are not going to matter much if willingness to collaborate vanishes: the fact that the UK has veto power "on paper" in the Security Council is an anachronism which, if not voluntarily relinquished, will have no effective practical value. There are lots of ways that the other powers can "convince" the UK to not use its veto power.

The obvious fact is that it is not fair that a nation with such a small weight in population terms has so much power in one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

The same applies to France, but I have already heard that France is willing to cede its seat to the EU.

The core of the problem, anyhow, is that the Security Council, as it is structured now, has no legitimization: it must be reformed so that the interests of a wider share of humankind are taken into account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or the author is just building a narrative and not bringing any fact ?

Of course, it is fashionable to bash Leave voters as primarily racists. But HN has recently published several articles that have much more nuanced analysis and certainly better explanation for similar movements across the whole Western World.

The only real point in the article is that there have been some racist violence, but really not that much.

This article really sound like a sore remain voter demonising a bit the other side. If the author need to let off some steam he should talk instead about how the appalling level of the debate during the campaign and how its success opens the door wide for a new generation of unashamed propaganda driven politic.

<comment><USER11> I didn't get that from the article at all.

It pointed out how modern immigration was a large aberration from Britain's history and also why it lead to such a large reaction. That hardly seems like demonizing the leave side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had a strange preoccupation lately with the concept of "empire collapse" \- the point at which a once stable empire's governance over it's people begins to fail, and eventually ceases to be able to manage it's territory, until it ultimately dissipates into a number of warring factions and/or outside influencers.

Originally I was attracted to the topic because the ascent of populist outsider candidates to power in the USA was similar to symptoms of political stress in historic empire systems. But after watching Brexit unfold so suddenly, it's become pretty clear to watch history in realtime, the United Kingdom is truly the empire in the very last stages of collapse to follow.

One thing the author of this article kind of misses out on however, is that empires don't just open the doors to immigration for no reason. Usually immigrants are brought in from the frontiers to act as a labor source when the native population becomes majority upper and middle class - too educated and wealthy to keep doing manual labor. This of course leads to accusations of a "foreign invasion", but the foreign labor is necessary to keep the wheels of commerce moving and everything just starts going to hell from there. It's really not an uncommon problem in history. The "barbarians" of Rome were

</comment><comment><USER2> If an empire was ever in need of dying it would surely be the West's anti- nationalist media cartels. Perhaps the shuttering of the New York Times would be a good start.

</comment><comment><USER13> Having unelected bureaucrats from other countries making the rules under which your citizens live seems the opposite of "empire".

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Having the world's "professional" media editorialized by a handful of cartels/syndicates seems closer to an actual "empire" than Great Britain choosing to disentangle itself from the unaccountable bureaucracy that is the EU.

Perhaps the true solution to "empire" in this day and age is to allow the public to directly elect the editorialists of said media cartels/syndicates, or, to use antitrust laws to break up trans-national media cartels. Either way, expect a large portion of the New-York-Times-reading population to prefer a rarefied panel of "experts" telling them why the British are idiots for preferring local rule over the de facto borderless globalist utopia ( for every nation other than Israel ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh for goodness sakes.</comment>


"It could be the biggest IPO in the history of capitalism" - <AUTHOR> http://iamnotacodemonkey.com/post/16207998847/this-may-be-the-most-painful-appeal-i-have-ever

<comment><USER2> The letter mentions www.molbin.com, looking at the About page shows this is definitely the same zealous person: <http://molbin.com/about.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> The letter is impossible to read. When clicking give a direct link.</comment>


What Are the Odds That a Given Cow Will Make It to the Super Bowl? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/what-are-the-odds-that-a-given-cow-will-make-it-to-the-super-bowl/

<comment><USER2>
      66200000 / 17420000 * 20 = 76

This article is only true if every cow hide's resultant balls are sent to the exact same place. The superbowl could very well choose 76 different cowhide donors.

      76 / 66200000 = 1 / 871 052.6

If that were the case, the odds would be (go figure) about 20x better of being chosen.

I bet the true probability is somewhere in between

<comment><USER3> Also not all cows slaughtered provide leather. Usually leather cows are kept in pins without barbed wire to provide better quality leather. That would narrow it down even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or did they miscalculate the odds here by trying to tell a story? It seems the only things that matter are:

      # of cows slaughtered annually: 66.2M / 1.99 =  33,266,331.7
      # of footballs made per cow: 20
      # of footballs used in the Super Bowl: 76
      # of cows required to make the SB balls: 76 / 20 = 3.8
      Odds a randomly slaughtered cow becomes a SB football = 33,266,331.7 / 3.8 = 1 in 8,754,297.82

What am I missing?

<comment><USER2> They're talking about the probability of _any_ cow being a super bowl football. Not of any slaughtered cow.

The fact that half of call cows get slaughtered is pretty irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related:

"... Thus there is a 1.8% chance that none of the molecules you are (still) holding in your lungs came from Caesar's last breath. And there is a 98.2% chance that at least one of the molecules in your lungs came from Caesar's last breath."

\--John Allen Paulos, _Innumeracy_ (1988) [1]

[1] [http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001392.htm...](http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/001392.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Becoming a Better Programmer - <AUTHOR>

I feel strongly that one of the best methods to become a better programmer is to learn new programming languages (http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2009/05/pearls-from-multiple-languages.html). I was reading on of EWD's letters last night and came across this:<p>"I often feel that the American programmer would profit more from learning, say, Latin than from learning yet another programming language." (PDF http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF)<p>That got me asking two questions: First, would Latin (or Japanese or Spanish...) make me a better programmer? Second, what would this community (with so many people who are better programmers than I am) think is the best way to become a better programmer? <comment><USER2> Alan Perlis said "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." The whole point of learning a new computer language is to change the way you structure your thoughts and to give you a new mental vocabulary for expressing ideas. I believe a similar argument can be made for human languages, and I think that's probably what EWD was getting at.

I was, at one point, fluent in Latin (that is, could converse with a knowledgeable speaker at full speed), and I believe that my knowledge of Latin had a profound effect on the way my brain analyzes languages. I'm sure that, if I learned Japanese or another language that is drastically different from English, it would have a similar effect. Would it directly make me a better programmer? Probably not. Would it make me a smarter human being? Probably so, and in doing so, it could have an indirect effect on my programming skills.

</comment><comment><USER3> Knowing Java and picking up C# doesn't have a major impact on your ability to express yourself. Knowing Java and picking up Lisp stretches you further, but you can only learn Lisp once. That is to say after you have experienced several different programming paradigms, you get less from learning yet another paradigm X language. Human languages have the same ability to impact the way you think.

What do I think is the best way to become a better programmer? Well learning new programming paradigms is good, it adds breadth to your knowledge. Building apps in specific topics is important it adds depth to your knowledge. That is to say a shallow but wide box is OK and a narrow but deep box is OK, but the biggest box is both wide and deep.</comment>


Why ONLYOFFICE is a better alternative to LibreOffice - <AUTHOR> https://jatan.blog/2020/04/18/onlyoffice-better-than-libreoffice/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21883302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21883302)

</comment><comment><USER3> As long as it is not free software, as Libreoffice is, I don't need to even read about it. It does not matter how well or nicely some software is working, if it is not ethical to use it. Using yet another software and potentially file format coming along with it, potentially creating another network effect to use non-free software? No thanks. And if it uses open document standard, why make use of non-free where Libreoffice works just well?

<comment><USER4> ONLYOFFICE is free and open source.

<comment><USER3> > Now I know a lot of FOSS enthusiasts will be unhappy about the idealistic > part of the recommendation, but hear me out.

Then what is the author talking about? Why would anyone be unhappy about the "idealistic" part then? I stopped reading after that, concluding, that it probably was not free software and that's what the author was relating to. Further reading though reveals, that the author does not know what they are talking about actually:

> My ideals for FOSS dwindled swiftly when I had to make something work in the > real world. Not everyone can use everything truly FOSS all the time.

Sounds rather like a justification to "just in this one case use non-free software", but wait for it ...

> At least ONLYOFFICE is open source (AGPL-3.0, specifically) and not > proprietary like Microsoft Office.

Great! Another one of those people, who fail to acknowledge free software and just label everything "open source" or just don't know the difference. Sorry, we do not need this to promote actually free software. Wrong-labeling something and in that way ascribing quality work to another set of ideals (or the lack of such) does not help.

So after reading, I still don't get the initial statement about the "idealistic part", as it really seems to be free (not only open) software.</comment></comment></comment>