EA's Origin may be glorified spyware, causes mass upset - <AUTHOR> http://www.destructoid.com/ea-s-origin-may-be-glorified-spyware-causes-mass-upset-209745.phtml It's also against german law. The software pictures, cell phone backups etc. and more and reportedly uploads the information to EA.<p>Luckily EA didn't arrive on Linux yet :) <comment><USER2> This sounds like the kind of thing that some MBA came up with;

Suit: "And in the Terms of Service, add some note so that we can use their personal info for marketing."

Cubicle-ee: "That's a little sleezy and sounds like it may backfire.."

Suit: "Nonsense, nobody reads the ToS and everybody is data mining people's personal info these days, they can't get mad at us without getting mad at everyone else too. Look at Google."

<comment><USER3> Why don't you throw lawyers under the bus while you are at it. After all, we know that everybody but coders are looking to screw the customer.

<comment><USER4> Because in most companies, it is the "coders" who are in charge, right?

<comment><USER5> flame/troll bait aside... This was most definitely intentional. EA has demonstrated a lack of giving a shit about customers since Spore and even before that. Spore was a catalyst. They prey on ignorance of users. The truth is by now someone is reading the TOS, and posting about it. The problem is that not everyone reads those posts.

And kids? They don't care about their "privacy" its "gimme mah game!!@?!@!@!@!#%$!" if you disagree with that statement deal with a hormone filled teenager.

Of course those kids who don't get the game will naturally look for hacked alternatives. And this is where EA's lack of understanding of the real world will bite them in the ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know this is off topic, but it really burns me up to see the once mighty Origin Systems relegated to this.

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

<comment><USER7> They got bought out nineteen years ago; it's not the "once mighty Origin Systems," it's a trademark that EA owns becoming attached to a product.

<comment><USER8> Brand Necrophilia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was posted back in August, hasn't EA changed the EULA since then? [http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield-3/news/6331203/...](http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield-3/news/6331203/ea- changes-origin-eula)

<comment><USER10> They only removed parts of it, specifically the parts allowing them to use the information for marketing.

Also the Germans are going nuts about it because they claim the Origin EULA is a violation of privacy laws:

[http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/3477/article/origin-s- inv...](http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/3477/article/origin-s-invasive- eula-could-meet-legal-opposition-in-germany/)

I was under the impression that Steam's anti-cheat bot actually did something similar to this too, scanning running programs to search for aimbots and the like. This might go further though, I have no idea if it scans non-steam folders.

<comment><USER11> I thought most EULAs were ruled invalid in Germany, as you pay for the product before you accept the EULA.

<comment><USER12> While this is technically true, the Origin EULA would be invalid in large parts even if it were accepted before paying. There's a detailed article (in german) here: [http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/battlefield-3/artikel/analyse_...](http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/battlefield-3/artikel/analyse_zur_eula_von_ea_origin,45612,2561554.html)

There's a provision in german law that EULAs may not contain clauses deemed "surprising" or "unexpected". There are multiple paragraphs in the Origin EULA that violate this principle (such as reserving the right to scan all data on your computer).

There's another rule that customers may not be placed at a significant disadvantage if you're dealing with private customers. This rule is violated for example when EA reserves the right to terminate support for the game (rendering it effectively unusable) at any time at their sole discretion.

There's other minor points such as attempting to move eventual lawsuits out of country or reserving the right to unilaterally change the EULA at any time but that's more or less the icing on the cake.

The obvious consensus is that the EULA is invalid in pretty much any given point. Which means that the game is defective and may be returned to the store at any point after buying - a tempting idea actually :)

In other news: EA seems to back off a little [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Electronic-Arts- reagi...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Electronic-Arts-reagiert-auf- Kritik-an-Origin-Nutzungsbedingungen-1369022.html) (german as well)

<comment><USER13> I'm not surprised. But why not use this to your advantage as a campaign? On a given day, everyone buys the game, then goes back and asks for a refund. Get everyone knowledgeable about the law, given them leaflets explaining the law to quote to the store clerks, forms to fill in with details if the clerks don't give the refund. Do this a few times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why I install my games on a separate bootable harddisk, which I only boot when I want to play a game.

<comment><USER15> I do that as well.

Because games are the only reason I'd want to run Windows.

<comment><USER16> My favorite video game is "emacs". If you align all the characters correctly, you can make the computer do some pretty incredible things.

The RMS level is a bitch though.

Edit: I'm not joking about Emacs - sitting down to write some code/create something is what I do for fun.

<comment><USER17> I fed a game of Dwarf Fortress into Perl and my computer became self aware

<comment><USER18> And about fifteen minutes later when the catsplosion hit, really, really slow, right? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I admit I haven't read all the comments here so I apologize if someone else has made the following comment. This story is nonsense.

Install Process Explorer (<http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/sysinternals/bb896653>), launch Process Explorer, install Origin, launch Origin, log in with your username/password. Let Process Explorer run for an hour or so and filter out any results where the Origin directory is being read.

What are you going to find? Nothing.

Most of this outrage is based on a photoshopped screenshot in a BF3 forum, the rest is speculation, not based on fact.

Try the Process Manger experiment for yourself.

<comment><USER20> They may not actually be collecting data right now, but the ToS explicitly grants them the ability to do so at some point in the future.

<comment><USER19> People are freaking out on this like it's already happening. I point out how you can monitor the program and now I'm getting a negative feedback? Fuck this place.

<comment><USER21> The negative feedback is because you called the story nonsense. The _story_ is about the TOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a low-quality submission. It's a two month old, three paragraph blog entry expressing a vague sentiment, with links to low-quality sources.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can this even be legal? I see this is getting more and more common. Something has to be done about it now before every program you install starts calling home with info about your personal files.

Spotify does the same thing. Read the user agreement, in there somewhere theres a line about giving them full right to analyze and track your personal music collection that you have stored locally on your computer. Yes, that means your local mp3-files completely unrelated to the spotify service.

<comment><USER24> There are all kinds of ways this could potentially be invalidated in law, depending on your jurisdiction: privacy laws, computer misuse laws, unfair contract terms protections/limitations on what would be considered reasonable in a contract of adhesion, and indeed the fundamental question of what legal status any given EULA has and whether it is enforceable at all.

Unfortunately, governments seem unwilling to legislate to provide any clarity on EULAs despite their vast scope. Until they do, what we have is a mixed bag of case law, which has little consistency between jurisdictions or even sometimes within the same jurisdiction, and which in any case covers only a tiny number of very specific cases rather than giving much guidance on the broader principles.

I suspect that means if this is going to be struck down, it's going to be in places that have worthwhile privacy laws, which sadly are few and far between in the world today since technology seems to be running at least a decade ahead of the law's ability to deal with its implications, particularly with regard to form contracts and privacy where the increasing dependence on conducting business via automated on-line systems has profound implications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> EAOrigin will not last long. They gained UNLIMITED access to your system without consents, even when they should be scanning theirs own produce instead.

EA must leave PC Marketing at once and stick with Consoles.

By breaching every countries privacy law under false Amerikan Democratic.

Can we say Shitocratic?.

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope the bad Amazon reviews based on Origin, which is just a poor Steam clone, don't deter people from buying Battlefield 3 - it is easily the best PC FPS game there has been for a long time. With a half decent graphics card it's no exaggeration to say the graphics are jaw dropping, and the game play matches it.

Unfortunately if you lose your internet connection mid game, Origin closes the game immediately. You lose all XP/progress you have made in the game since you launched it.

Steam had its share of problems when it launched and it looks like Origin is exactly the same, except the tool isn't there to make our gaming lives better but to stop piracy without giving a crap about the gaming experience.

<comment><USER27> I sure hope it does deter them. To show other publishers that making a neat game does not give them the right to spy on their customers.

<comment><USER28>
        By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree
        that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual
        information, and personally identifiable information, as
        defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and
        individual information with other parties. Valve shall not
        share personally identifiable information with other
        parties, except as described in the policy below.

It doesn't seem like it's much different than Steam. Check out the System Information option from the Help drop-down menu, I don't think it gathers that information by guessing. Steam was also forced onto users with the release of a much-anticipated product -- in Valve's case it was Half Life 2.

<comment><USER29> > But there's a significant difference. Valve's policy is self-restricted to > anything on your PC directly relating to its own products. EA's is so broad > that it gives the publisher permission to scan your entire hard drive, and > report back absolutely anything you may have installed, and indeed when you > may use it, and then pass that information on the third parties.

So currently Valve uses that clause mainly to scan for cheats and hacks; EA goes way beyond.

[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/24/eas-origin- eula-p...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/24/eas-origin-eula-proves- even-more-sinister/)

<comment><USER28> EA also updated Origin's EULA after that article was posted:

[http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/26/ea-revises-origin-eula- dat...](http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/26/ea-revises-origin-eula-data- collection-is-still-in-collection/)

<comment><USER30> But not the Privacy Policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> best quote ever = "Reddit, known for its anger over everything..."

<comment><USER32> Also doesn't help in this case that reddit loves steam and hates ea and origin.

And the article is 2 months old, what's up with that? Is this the most sensational article that can be found when searching for 'origin spyware'?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://s1.directupload.net/file/d/2691/fglehhsj_jpg.htm> <http://i44.tinypic.com/2lc8q37.jpg> Many upset people discuss their experiences and view in Amazon. [http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-3-Pc/product- reviews/B002I...](http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-3-Pc/product- reviews/B002I0HJZO/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending)

</comment><comment><USER33> For all their bullshit, EA has a point about Steam. I hope they get them to change their mind about in-app purchases.</comment>


World's Fastest Pitch – Supersonic Baseball Cannon - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqidD7kVnxY <comment><USER2> This was one of the most amazing YouTube videos I've ever seen! I've been subscribed to Destin's channel for a long time, and he never disappoints!</comment>


Dealing with Apple ACPI issues - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29954.html

<comment><USER2> I was kinda hoping we'd get away from these kind of woes with the transition from BIOS to (U)EFI. Apparently that is not the case.

<comment><USER3> This is related to ACPI, not BIOS/UEFI.</comment></comment>


Hacker News and Community Saved Our Company - <AUTHOR> http://arcticstartup.com/article/how-to-rise-from-ashes-relaunching-arcticstartup-website/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original HN post: [http://arcticstartup.com/2012/11/01/its-a-magical-world- out-...](http://arcticstartup.com/2012/11/01/its-a-magical-world-out-there- hobbes-ol-buddy-lets-go-exploring)

My name is Dmitri Sarle and I wanted to thank the Hacker News community for helping us save ArcticStarup.

Few years back, it was announced on HN that we are shutting down. Yet, thanks to the visibility (we were the top post for the day), we received hundreds of e-mails of support and eventually kept it alive.

After three hard years - we are a team of thirteen people (in the article it says 12, but I just sent a contract to the thirteenth), growing fast and finding new opportunities.

Thanks a lot. Feel free to ask me anything.

<comment><USER2> The discussion of the shutdown announcement is at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726684)

Curious for your opinion regarding why that is articstartup's most popular post.</comment></comment>


Strange and maddening rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/23/strange-and-maddening-rules/ <comment><USER2> This is why I quit stackoverflow. I'm a top 2% but there became a point where people seemed to care more about the correctness of the information repository than they did about helping people.

It changed from a community vibe into a library and then mods started to stamp on some very good questions that people asked and closed them as duplicates (linking to a slightly different question) or as "too open-ended" or "off- topic". They gave those mods carte-blanche to enforce their way of viewing the site, of data and people and then meta.overflow adopted a hostile culture to shame people who questioned this world-view.

I really like that site but ended up hating it. My 2% rep is also a lie. I got so much from simple answers and so little from much more complicated ones.

<comment><USER3> I wonder whether instead of closing topics as "off-topic", "duplicate" or "whatever", which can obviously be perceived as negative to someone, might it be a better alternative to do the opposite? Instead of blacklisting "bad" questions as "off-topic", how about whitelisting "good" questions?

If Stackoverflow wants to build this library, let mods and enthusiasts decide whether a question is worth indexing, and let the questions that would otherwise be closed as duplicate or off-topic be as they are. Perhaps replace "duplicate" with "related to indexed question #XXXXXX"?

It would certainly take a while to restructure SO like this, but with enough effort and time, lower-quality questions simply won't show up in searches unless there really isn't a better related question available.

<comment><USER4> This is a really good point - people seem to get hung up about questions being closed, even though "closed as duplicate" is a win since it means somebody _already_ answered your question. If you just called it "promoted to FAQ" or something...

<comment><USER5> > even though "closed as duplicate" is a win since it means somebody already > answered your question.

That's only a win if the duplicate is real. Sometimes questions are closed when they aren't really duplicates.

<comment><USER4> Yes that is bad. You can vote to reopen if you have enough rep.

<comment><USER6> > _if you have enough rep._

This is a substantial part of the fighting over the site, though - there are lengthy guides to picking up enough Stack Overflow rep to render the site usable.

I usually see this dismissed with "just help some people and ask some good questions, you'll be there in no time", but when I talk to friends who are getting a self-taught start with programming, I consistently hear a different story. They're getting questions closed as dupes, either because they aren't experienced enough to recognize duplicate questions with different terms or because mods are squelching their genuinely novel questions. And they're new, so they can't answer hard questions - and the easy ones don't produce rep because they're inevitably closed, removing all the payouts for answering them.

I understand the logic behind the rep gating system, it's not a bad idea. But it's just fuel on the fire when things go wrong, and they go wrong a _lot_ in the form of wrongly closed questions.

<comment><USER4> Yes it is hard to ask good questions, especially when you are just starting with a technology and lack the proper terminology and mental model - which is the phase where you need to ask the most questions!

<comment><USER6> Yeah - I don't mean to imply this is all Stack Overflow's problem! I think more could be done, but the 'unknown unknowns' situations is really hard to provide support for with anything short of sitting down one-on-one and working through the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm happy to see Spolsky blogging again. Everyone should read his old stuff; most of it is spot on. I was young in my career when I found his blog; right around the dot bomb. His posts are very thoughtful and insigntful. They should be required reading for any programming manager, team lead, or developer.

Joel, if you are reading this, it's difficult to find your archives on your new site.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Good greats for anybody; excellent for people newer to software development (including managers, leads, and other non-programmers). On his website [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/) scroll down to "Reading Lists"; he has a link to his archives, as well as top reading lists by topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > To novices, the long bureaucratic rigmarole associated with asking your > first question on Stack Overflow can feel either completely unnecessary, or > just plain weird.

I just think of SO as being "read-only." It might as well be Encyclopedia Brittannica for all I know.

I also think of the errors I read in SO as being part of that immutable encyclopedia. The only alternative is to spend time trying to correct an error which led me down this rabbit hole:

1\. Realize that the site makes you jump through all kinds of hoops just to respond to a (wrong) answer or comment on a question.

2\. Spend a total of 45 minutes researching and emailing two people who already are SO members. Sending them a link to the SO page that has a clearly wrong statement, and politely asking them to add a comment or whatever to make it clear that the statement is wrong.

Ironically, that wrong statement was about one of the old string-handling functions in the C standard library. So while the old usenet might have gotten a cranky response from a C Jedi who knows all the answers, it is prohibitively expensive to even provide the right answer on SO.

Luckily SO has enough correct information on it that treating it like an immutable datastore still has great benefit.

<comment><USER10> I think, given that SO has become an encylopedia, it needs editors in addition to moderators. My one contribution to stack overflow was a comment on a question about a strange TLS problem, where I explained what was happening, and mentioned it was worked around in the latest OpenSSL and linked to the diff where my workaround had been accepted. Then a few weeks or so later I got a message that I needed to fix my comment because something. I was motivated to fix the problem in openssl, and to respond back to help any other people who run into this, but I'm not motivated enough to fix my comment to follow community rules.

<comment><USER11> There are editors. Any user with something like 2000 rep can edit any question or answer. I do it all the time. There's even a queue of questions that have been flagged in need of editing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find that a lot of askers on SO are really in need of a consultation with a _tutor_ or _technical mentor_ , not a singular answer. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but to me, really poor SO questions often look like opportunities - what if the asker was open to a 30 minute chat with someone knowledgeable that could totally illuminate things and set them on the right path, but there's just no forum for accomplishing that (or they don't know about it)?

Is there any site/service out there that facilitates this? Paid, unpaid, whatever, I'm just curious if anyone in the HN community has done something like this, on either side (as either the tutor, or the tutored).

<comment><USER13> Very good point. Best thing you can do on SO is starting a chat with the user I think, or sometimes you can give a 'teach a man how to fish'-style answer where you don't just give a code-only answer (i.e. how), or maybe don't even give a complete direct answer at all, but explain the bigger picture (i.e. why). Problem with the latter approach is that if the OP doesn't leave any comment you don't really know if it helped at all, whereas chat is more direct. But if you do get a 'well now I learned something' type of comment there's a good chance it actually helped the OP becoming more knowledgeable.

<comment><USER14> > Problem with the latter approach is that if the OP doesn't leave any comment > you don't really know if it helped at all

I have thought before that somehow responding to people's answers should be mandatory to get them, but I have yet to figure out a good scheme for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> , with this in mind, to read Jon Skeet's checklist for writing the perfect question.[...] Sadly, not everybody finds his checklist. Maybe they found it and they don't care. They're having an urgent problem with code; they heard that Stack Overflow could help them; and they don't have time to read some nerd's complicated protocol for requesting help._

As to the Jon Skeet checklist[1] that Spolsky linked, is there any reason why those questions can't be part of the UI when posting a question?

The data entry for those fields can even be _optional_ instead of mandatory. The incentive for filling them out is to boost the likelihood of the question getting visibility and getting answered. An analogy is "SEO" Search Engine Optimization and "pagerank". If you want your question to bubble up to the top of the answerers' queue, boost the "effort score" by answering those Jon Skeet questions. Any drawbacks for this?

[1] [https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2012/11/24/stack-overflow- quest...](https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2012/11/24/stack-overflow-question- checklist/)

<comment><USER16> This seems like an absolute no brainer great idea to me. I've often wondered why moderators don't do the same on subreddits....how often when you're doing a search do you see results with useless titles like "Need help!" or "What should I do here!!??".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> SO has never quite cracked the "be nice" rule. You can still get some pretty nasty feedback on your questions, and I completely understand why some beginners would be put off.

Its also worth noting that the top result for a software question in Google often takes you to a SO question that is "closed as off-topic" or "marked as duplicate".

I have a lot of sympathy with Joel's view that you should mercilessly enforce standards, but some of the "SO approved" moderation and feedback is not just rude, its actually wrong and unhelpful in the wider scheme of things.

<comment><USER4> If the question is "marked as duplicate" then there is always a link to the duplicate, where the question is hopefully answered. I think it is a good thing that the same question has answers in a single place. But of course there is a grey zone when it is not _exactly_ the same question.

As for off-topic questions, this is annoying, but I also think it is necessary for any useful site to maintain a focus. For example, StackOverflow does not allow requests for software recommendations even though this a frequent kind of question. But it is not a good fit for the format of the site since you often cannot say a recommendation is the "correct" one.

<comment><USER18> If the linked question does not answer the new question, then it isn't a grey area, and it isn't a duplicate. This seems to happen too often.

<comment><USER19> In defence of this, one can still vote to reopen a question. If enough people did this maybe it would help with the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It isn't just novices. I've been programming for 30 years, and I wouldn't dream of asking a question on SO, because I simply don't loathe myself that much. I've seen this before with Wikipedia. SO culture gives me the expectation that odds are asking my question will be a waste of my time.

<comment><USER20> [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

I don't have a rubber duck near me, but I (sometimes) find it helpful, when I code and hit a wall, to 'talk to myself' (out loud). For someone who's been coding 30 years (you), you have practiced this enough to be able to debug easily (and silently:).

For newbie coders (me)(not sarcastically) sometimes this helps.

Oh, and SO is a great tool/forum, a true gift with many-many positive and helpful people.

<comment><USER18> I do appreciate that SO does help beginners. This is part of an ongoing recent discussion that has been critical of where SO fails. I am far from convinced that SO's culture is really some deliberate Miyagi-style ruse intended to teach you that you had the power inside you all along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I hate the most about StackOveflow is people continuously questioning the poster's motive instead of answering the question.

That often means that if the answer doesn't involve glittering golden code seeping perfection, people won't bother and will just answer: "Don't do that."

<comment><USER13> In all honesty, quite often the people are right.

I've seen _so many_ questions where the poster comes in and already 'solved' part of the problem by making false assumptions (note: this can be by accident, it's normal for novices and even more advanced programmers to have a lack of diagnostic insight) and then asks 'I want to do this, how do I do this?' which is at that point simply the wrong question.

Practical analogy to one particular style of questions: I have a lamp and a switch, and I don't see any light when I toggle the switch and I go to SO to ask how to replace the lamp. SO people could of course come up with a perfectly valid and acceptable answer and leave it as-is. But SO people might know better and realize such answer might not fix the actual problem, which could be a myriad of other things (no power, no wires, switch broken, I'm blind, ....).

<comment><USER22> It's highly presumptious to assume you know better than the person asking. You might, but you might not. The fact that SO serves as a collection of programming knowledge, you _do not_ know better than everyone who will ever search for that question even if you do actually know better than the OP who actually asked the first time.

It would be fine to help with all these other possibilites but part of your answer should... actually answer the question that was asked, as it was asked and not doing so should result in a servere punishement.

<comment><USER4> > It's highly presumptious to assume you know better than the person asking.

But SO is a QA site - you are only supposed to answer if you indeed know better than the person asking!

I acknowledge there is a grey area with the so called XY question, where the questioner ask about one thing but actually want to achieve something different. But in such cases the correct approach is, in my opinion, to help the OP solve the actual problem they have, not lead them down the wrong path.

<comment><USER23> I think part of the point here is that you are not just answering OP's question, which may or may not be an example of an XY problem. You're also answering everyone who searches answers using similar terms to those the OP used.

For example, let's say the title of the question is, "How do I reformat my hard drive on linux?" and the body of the question is "I accidentally screwed up my upgrade of Ubuntu by <doing XYZ> and now it won't boot. Can I reformat the hard drive and install again so I can boot?" If your answer is "Are you sure you need to reformat? Have you tried <solution to XYZ>?" then you may be solving OP's root problem but you will be making a useless landing page for anyone searching "How do I reformat a hard drive on linux?"

<comment><USER4> That is a good point and not easily solvable. I think the best approach is the OP updating the question title and text to reflect the actual problem they need a solution for, eg. <Ubuntu will not boot after doing XYZ.>

I _don 't_ think it is helpful to answer the literal question rather than the actual problem, since this is optimizing for a hypothetical future reader at the expense of the actual person having a problem. After all, the future reader might _also_ have the same problem as the current user.

<comment><USER22> >since this is optimizing for a hypothetical future reader at the expense of the actual person having a problem

Which is fine because there are N potential future readers but only one OP.

<comment><USER4> I don't agree with this line of thinking. Helping the user at hand means you help at least one person, and probably others which might have the same problem. This is the purpose of the site! The OP is supposed to select one of the answers as "accepted", if the answer solved their problem.

You suggest answering "the wrong question" would help _more_ users in the future. I don't see why that would be likely.

N could be less than 1

<comment><USER22> Again, you're assuming the question is "wrong". But how likely is it that every single person who asks that question is wrong? With your line of thinking you help the OP and anyone who gets in the exact same situation as the OP but no one who actually needs the answer to the question that was asked.

If you're worried about it then just answer exactly what was ask _and_ follow your strategy. But please don't simply do your strategy because it's a real pain for those of us who end up having to move off the beaten path from time to time.

<comment><USER4> I should not have used the word "wrong", of course someone would nitpick that. I mean the Y in an XY question.

My point is just you should try help the person at hand with their actual problem, the X, and then clarify the question title to reflect the problem they need help with. It is easy to see if an answer have solved the actual problem - the OP selects the answer as "accepted".

If another person have a different problem which happen to be Y they will ask that as a question and get help for that. Everybody is happy.

I get really miffed when I see someone answering the literal question even when it is clear that the OP have a different problem and is just not knowledgeable enough to put it in the technically correct terms. I guess it is an effect of the education system when people think it is better to provide a useless but technically correct answer, than actually help people who have a problem.

Answering both X and Y is fine of course, and probably the preferred.

<comment><USER22> >and then clarify the question title to reflect the problem they need help with.

How many times have you seen that happen? Further that only occurs in an XY situation where the question was wrong. I've been hit by cases where the answer was "don't do that because it's bad". Well, I know that and I know _why_ it's bad but I also know that I have to do it anyway. What now? You couldn't change the question in that case because they asked what they meant, they were just told that they were wrong (and _they_ were).

>I get really miffed when I see someone answering the literal question even when it is clear that the OP have a different problem

And I get just as miffed when they don't because of all the times I get burned by people behaving as you want and then I can't get that same answer answered and have to go through even more pain (it was painful enough to be forced into the situation) to figure it out for myself. I have basically no karma on SO because when I get some I use it to vote down such people.

>Answering both X and Y is fine of course, and probably the preferred.

Here we can agree.

<comment><USER4> Good point. If they really asked what they want (it wasn't an XY question), I don't think "don't do that because it is bad" should be accepted as an answer, since it isn't, and it doesn't help.

It is the OP which decides what it the accepted answer though, but the community should not upvote unhelpful answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> SO has long been the butt of jokes about over-moderation. Any arbitrary SO link found in the wild is 90% likely to be closed for some reason or another, even though it probably solves the problemn you ended up on that page to solve.

It's hard to read from this blog post, but if fixing this is one of the forthcoming changes I think it's a good move.

<comment><USER4> Can you link to a few examples? (I sometimes moderate on SO, so would like to learn from previous mistakes.)

<comment><USER25> Anytime a question that has interesting or thoughtful replies is closed, it does a disservice to the community and content of the site. It's something moderators don't seem to agree with the users about.

Here are a few of _many_ , _many_ examples:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2847655/find-threads- run...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2847655/find-threads-running-for- a-particular-process-in-linux)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150404191857/http://stackoverf...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150404191857/http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/using- sun-misc-unsafe-in-real-world)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/why-does-sun- mis...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574241/why-does-sun-misc-unsafe- exist-and-how-can-it-be-used-in-the-real-world)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/961942/what-is-the- worst...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/961942/what-is-the-worst- programming-language-you-ever-worked-with)

I'm sure mods can explain why those don't fit on the site but closing them makes people not want to use SO and develop a negative opinion of the moderation team.

<comment><USER4> SO have a very well-defined purpose: To answer practical questions about software development - questions which have answers. The site is not a good fit for open-ended discussions - the UI is not designed for this. How would you select the "accepted answer" in a questions like "what is the worst language you have ever worked with?" What is the actual problem in search of a solution here? Upvote/downvote is supposed to indicate "helpful"/"not helpful" \- how would you determine this for such a question?

Think of it in unix philosophy - a site which does one thing and does it well. If you need something different, use another site which does that thing well.

And what is lost by pushing general discussions to sites like HN or Reddit which is much more suited for such discussions?

<comment><USER25> Users don't care about any of that. They look at the answers on those questions and think "wow this is great content!" then they get mad when mods shut down the discussion.

It's important to remember that users don't care what SO's purpose is, they care about their experience with the service and for a lot of people that experience is extremely negative.

I think it would be in SO's best interest to actual listen to the complaints people have instead of just saying "you're not using the site right". People wanting to use a product is a privilege that is best not taken for granted. After all, the customer is always right.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps - and I don't se the benefit of all decisions, like pushing system admin and database admin questions to separate sites. But I do think the overall perceived value of the site would decrease if general discussions, joke threads and unfocused flamewars were allowed to run wild. The basic premise of SO is that "it answers your question", and I believe it does this extremely well. I remember a time before SO.

But that is a decision for the owner of the site - Joel Spolsky I guess? Don't blame the mods for keeping the site at the intended focus.

There are also frequently users complaining about HN not allowing joke- threads. Clearly those users are not served well by HN and have a bad experience here - but would it improve the site to cater to them? Are all customers always right?

<comment><USER25> There might be some users wanting joke threads on HN but there's a massive number of people who feel closed questions on SO are a problem. It's a very well known issue in our industry.

> Don't blame the mods for keeping the site at the intended focus.

For better or for worse, the users are going to blame the mods for this since they're the ones closing the questions.

<comment><USER4> Questions are closed by voting just as they can be reopened by voting. You do need a certain level of rep to vote either way. So the closing and reopening trends for better or worse reflects the community using SO, not just some cabal of mods.

A closed question only needs 5 votes to reopen, if I remember correctly. So if there are massive amounts of people who wants a question reopened it should be possible.

Not disputing some people are overzealously closing qestions, and this problem should be addressed - just saying it is just as easy to vote against closing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's worth noting that Spolsky lost the "How do you move the turtle in LOGO" philosophical debate. [1] Atwood won and thus people get an excuse to treat people badly. Particularly relevant is that people get an excuse to treat new comers particularly badly. Sure, there's a scale at which aggressively closing questions is administratively necessary. [python] or [android] are at that scale. But the small corners of StackExchange are often dominated by Usenet behaviors because such behaviors are sanctioned from on high. Policies that encourage treating people badly are established by fix or sixteen votes on the related Meta site. And blessed in the moderator discussions as site wide policies based on the administrative needs of tags like [php] on StackOverflow.

A lot of StackExchange is similar to comp.lang.c did in the Usenet era. As in the days of the Usenet, They tolerate and encourage those behaviors. I think there's a critical lower bound and a maximum upper bound for the number of users. The topic has to be big enough that there is a steady stream of new questions and small enough that regulars talking among themselves is a meaningful percentage of the activity.

[1]: The discussion from 2009 in SO Podcast #58 (under the old numbering system): [https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/18/podcast-58/](https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/18/podcast-58/)

<comment><USER2> The question in question [1] was closed as "not a real question" and then further "locked".

[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move- th...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the-turtle- in-logo)

<comment><USER26> As Spolsky describes in the recent article, the question was seen as problematic by Atwood because it didn't reflect enough research. Atwood even deleted it in 2011.[1] A moderator later restored for historical relevance. But the site's policies reflect a lot more of Atwood's personality than Spolsky's...most unfortunately.

[1] See revision 16 [https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions](https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For anyone that clicked through to his 1988 question on comp.lang.c ... what was causing what he was happening? I'm assuming something with an old version of gcc, but I can't reprocue it- I get the correct result using both cc and gcc.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.lang.c/spols...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.lang.c/spolsky%7Csort:date/comp.lang.c/BKhAacGNtZI/GLSW- QG_O3MJ)

Are you allowed to use getchar() twice? (seems like a silly question? read on!)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- kangaroo% cat test.c #include <stdio.h>

main() { int c; c=getchar(); putchar(c); c=getchar(); putchar(c); putchar('\n'); } kangaroo% gcc test.c kangaroo% echo "Hi" | a.out H^@ kangaroo% cc test.c kangaroo% echo "Hi" | a.out Hi \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- Anybody know what's going on?

<comment><USER28> It looks like for some reason GCC is returning EOF from the second getchar() call and his terminal is rendering it as ^@.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _> we could improve the prompts we provide on the "Ask Question" page, and we could provide more tools for community moderation of comments where the snark currently runs unchecked._

Here's an idea: On the ask question page, have a checkbox for "Help me ask my question". Check that, and the question temporarily goes into a separate corral where helpers can edit or refine the question. These self-selected subset of the Stack Overflow community help get the question ready before it goes "public" to the larger SO world.

<comment><USER30> There is already a review system in place. The problem is that there is almost no incentive to participate in it since you get no rep from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The absolute best quote in the OP:

These questions feel like showing up on a medical website and saying something like __"I think my kidney has been hurting. How can I remove it?" __

<comment><USER32> >> These questions feel like showing up on a medical website and saying something like "I think my kidney has been hurting. How can I remove it?"

While I laughed at this example for a few seconds, I also think this is a question that needs to be answered.

While we'd like to think that everyone who uses the Internet has a basic level of intelligence and a grasp of common sense, this is often not true.

Having a real expert answering this question properly (in simple, non- patronizing language) could prevent someone who may not be thinking rationally/logically from doing something incredibly stupid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ask anything optimization or performance related and you get a string of "premature optimization", "let the compiler to it", or "use this library" comments.

One of SO's biggest problems is the mod thinking they know better than the people asking and over-aggressively closing things down.

And given a number of ways to ask the same question, they will often get closed down in not in the exact right form:

\- How do I do X in my programming language? \- Is there a library to do X in my programming language? \- What is the best library to do X in my programming language?

While the three questions are slightly different, they will result in about the same answers. I see no reason to close any of them down since they all imply each other.

Or the huge issues with decade old answers still coming up when they no longer apply to recent software versions.

Once seeing an interesting Java question answered by Gosling himself, I made a suggestion on Meta to highlight answers by notable people. I thought it would be very interesting. Wow! Was ever a bad idea. Meta is even worse and nastier than SO regular. It seemed like the mods were fighting to be the biggest on the site and didn't want anybody to outshine them.

Joel doesn't seem to want to understand the SO has large problems for many user types, and it needs more than just a little lipstick.

</comment><comment><USER30> I see a lot of people complaining about SO because of duplicates, barriers, etc but it seems that none of those people actually read the article.

You have to go through all these hoops because you can't force your way through this learning process the same way as you can't have 9 women give birth to a baby in 1 month.

Contributing to SO is a journey and the milestone system is geared towards helping people through it.

You have to admit that nothing is perfect and complaining won't help.

Criticizing something is easy but I see close to zero suggestions for improvement.

Just ask yourself whether you can do better than Joel and the others or at least give some suggestions for improvement.

 _Disclaimer:_ I'm also one of those 2% people and I also see problems but I think that it is not that serious as some people claim it to be.

</comment><comment><USER34> Every HN conversation about Stack Overflow is full of carping, so I feel obliged to say: I love Stack Overflow. It has saved me days of work, and I've really enjoyed helping people when I could. It was a revolution, and I would hate to return to the days of searching old phpbb forums for help (and if I was really desperate creating yet another account to ask something myself).

I've been on the site since the beginning, although my participation waxes and wanes. I often only check the "bounty" tab for tags I care about, since those tend to be better-asked questions. That's one way to engage off-and-on without much effort.

When I do look through the non-bounty questions, I find a lot of beginners. Some questions are so badly-asked I won't engage, but a lot of questions show someone trying who is just not yet knowledgeable enough to know the right approach, or even how to ask for help. I feel like those are the most fun to answer. I could probably mark them all as duplicates somehow, but where is the fun in that? I'd rather offer an answer tailored to their own situation, possibly with links to other SO answers that elaborate on relevant (not "duplicate") topics.

Joel's post here actually sounds less hard-line against duplicates than the Stack Overflow conventional wisdom. It sound like what he really cares about is whether the asker is trying. Personally I have never marked a question as a duplicate, because there is usually some room to explain how that other question applies to the asker's situation.

With Rust I've been on the other side of that exchange, too. That is really the only region of Stack Overflow where I've seen the pedantry and unhelpfulness that others complain about---mostly from one person actually. And I wonder how many people have given up on Rust because of bad experiences there.

What looks like a duplicate to an experienced developer may seem totally unrelated to a beginner. When your question is marked as a duplicate you get this sinking feeling of hopelessness, like someone is saying, "I can see the problem, but I won't tell you, and I'll make sure no one else sees your question either. Good bye!" Knowing what it feels like makes me even more inclined to answer every question in its uniqueness. And it is very rewarding to help someone out of their bind!

Another fun question is the "Something is failing and I don't know why" type. If you have a lot of experience with that tech, you might be able to recognize the problem or guess it from little information. These questions are like fun puzzles, and they let you show off a bit of "magic".

Anyway, every time I see a HN post about Stack Overflow, I want to write this comment. Joel, Jeff, and everyone else there: thank you so much for a huge gift to developers everywhere!

<comment><USER35> > With Rust I've been on the other side of that exchange, too. That is really > the only region of Stack Overflow where I've seen the pedantry and > unhelpfulness that others complain about---mostly from one person actually. > And I wonder how many people have given up on Rust because of bad > experiences there.

You're not wrong! I almost gave up on learning Rust when I saw all the belittling answers on Stack Overflow. It particularly seemed common to see SO pages of the form:

\- Q: How do I do [thing X that Rust doesn't do well yet] in Rust?

\- A: You're doing it wrong! Write better code! You're only trying to do X because you're sloppy.

And then thing X would actually become possible in Rust, because the language keeps getting better, but the SO page would remain, implying that only bad programmers do this thing that works in Rust and that you want to do.

Fortunately, I've realized that this guy on SO doesn't represent the Rust community. The community on Reddit is pretty good, and on the Gitter, there are people who are happy to answer even simple questions that have been asked before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Closed as duplicate" is such a frustrating experience with SO, especially since the canonical answer for the original post so often has so little to do with the supposed "duplicate" post, other than a superficial similarity in how the question is posed.

E.g.:

Q1: I'm trying to do _x_ and it isn't working. A1: You're missing a comma in the list on line 7.

Q2: I'm trying to do _x_ (and I've checked all of my commas), and it isn't working. A2: Closed as duplicate of Q1.

</comment><comment><USER37> "And programming is hard enough; we should see our mission as making it easier."

Programming is _complicated_ enough, and we should see our mission as making it _simpler_. That would benefit everyone, not just newcomers.

I see the eventual harshness and gatekeeping in every forum (not just Usenet and SO) as the inevitable consequence of accidental complexity. We've got 173 layers between what we want to accomplish and what we have to type on on the keyboard today, and that naturally leads to ultra-specialization and Barton's "high priests".

I don't think I can describe the modern web stack with a straight face. It's become its own parody of software development. I no longer think I understand how to stay secure on the modern internet, except by mindlessly following "best practices" I've been told. Complexity has a real cost for everyone.

To change the background color on my C=64, you had to consult a memory map -- but there weren't dozens of other abstraction layers to think about, so even my parents weren't afraid to crack open the book and help. Abstraction is a necessary tool, but a lot of the layers we've got today are just plain bad, and exist mostly by historical accident.

You either have to study the archaeology of all your software and hardware, or you have to memorize bizarre cargo cult rituals and recite them back without understanding why. The root cause can't be solved with a Q&A website, no matter how much you tweak the phrasing of the form fields.

</comment><comment><USER38> > The average programmer, in the world, has been helped by Stack Overflow 340 > times.

That seems low, to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER39> " _What did we think of newbie questions?_ "

That's the wrong question. (Hah!) A better one: What do you think about complicated, difficult questions?

Answer: apparently, not much.

</comment><comment><USER40> >The average programmer, in the world, has been helped by Stack Overflow 340 times.

Seems suspiciously low to me, I suppose that's not counting page views.

</comment><comment><USER41> I notice a lot of people talking about moderation on SO. It reminds me of the moderation on HN. It's all focused on one of two things: being "nice", or being "interesting". Which is really bizarre. It's not reasonable to expect people to act in an artificial way. People are emotional, and usually not all that smart or interesting. We're monkeys with hats. Just because you can train a monkey to paint a picture does not mean it won't fling poo at you.

SO wants to keep _some_ beginner questions, but also keep the really complicated questions, and you have to do some homework, but really most questions are okay, and you shouldn't ask a question again, and you have to be _nice_ , ... These are so many subjective rules that serve to make everything "look" a certain way. It's almost like playing a game. Ah, you didn't say please and thank you! You lose five points. In a world where not everyone agrees with you or behaves the way you want, I wonder what the goal of this particular game is?

I guess what I'm driving at is how thinking you can just make up a list of rules of how humans should behave and expect it to go okay, is maybe not the best idea. It's like expecting that you can write some shell scripts that tell a computer how to work, and it will always work that way. Bad news: computers don't always follow simple rules, and neither do humans. Moderators are the equivalent of health checks that go around restarting things that died. That may be fine for your massively scaled enterprise application, but humans have something computer programs don't have: feelings.

Which brings up a completely unrelated question: In the future, when computers have emotions, will server automation be considered equivalent to chicken farms? Yes, we're killing all these living creatures after they have a meager existence in cramped spaces, but have you tasted this amazing chicken cordon bleu?

(Inb4 flagged for "incendiary topic: animal rights")

</comment><comment><USER39> Tl;dr: a question/answer forum is a poor way to build a reference library.

</comment><comment><USER42> Open source StackOverflow, Joel. Let us fix it!

</comment><comment><USER43> That post could have been much shorter. The picture of the San Francisco waterfront didn't help.</comment>


Why I'm Excited About Native CSS Variables - <AUTHOR> http://philipwalton.com/articles/why-im-excited-about-native-css-variables/ <comment><USER2> > In fact, I think it's confusing to call them variables at all. They're > actually CSS properties, which gives them an entirely different set of > capabilities and allows them to solve an entirely different set of problems.

I think this is the problem people have with them - they don't try to be a good solution to the problem people actually have. A better designed solution would have the most common case simple and elegant, and more esoteric use- cases, like the ones they are trying to solve, may have esoteric solutions like the proposed one.

<comment><USER3> CSS Variables have been in Firefox for a year and a half now, and I've been using them in my own projects for at least a year, while I'm producing the thing in the first place—then when I have it as I like it, if it's not purely for me, I rewrite it for inferior browsers (though I believe I could use something like PostCSS instead; I just haven't).

They really are a _marvellous_ thing; my favourite example would be the construction of truly responsive interfaces, tweaked for optimality at many levels and continuous, rather than just things with three or four breakpoints; with preprocessors, it's tedious and painful; with CSS variables it's _easy_ and _obvious_ —it pushes you in a direction that is _so much easier to make_.

In essence, they are solving a substantially different set of problems, but one that is more useful and more general; the sorts of things people did with preprocessor variables can normally be done in better ways with CSS Variables; it helps guide you to a better position.

<comment><USER4> > They really are a marvellous thing; my favourite example would be the > construction of truly responsive interfaces, tweaked for optimality at many > levels and continuous, rather than just things with three or four > breakpoints; with preprocessors, it's tedious and painful;

Anything with preprocessors is tedious and painful, yet I've been hand-writing fluidly responsive layouts for years without predefined 'breakpoint' jumps in the design. What is it about CSS variables that allowed you to change your style?

<comment><USER5> By using percentage values?

<comment><USER4> Are you asking me if I use percentage values to do fluidly responsive designs? There's definitely some of that but most of the time it's even simpler than that - just defining a max width or height on something and letting things expand to fill their containers. Then you only have a few big containers in the entire layout to worry about :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I am most excited about is manipulating these using javascript, which is also something you cannot do with a CSS processor because the values are baked into the CSS.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand that use case. If you're happy using a JS value to update a style, what's wrong with just updating the style in JS? If you're concerned about performance then you can obviously do things like debouncing anything that changes the style, or you could use a MediaQueryListListener to fire an event your JS listens to when a user crosses over a media query breakpoint.

While it'll be fun to manipulate CSS properties using JS values, it doesn't seem necessary.

<comment><USER8> It seems like this would let you update lots of styles simultaneously, without having to keep track of exactly which styles they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author lists all the ways CSS variables are better than preprocessor variables. But that is the same reason that the design is flawed.

JavaScript has shown us the value of designing new features in a way that they can be polyfilled or emulated via a preprocessor, so that features can gain adoption without developers having to wait for older browsers to die.

CSS variables were overdesigned in a way that makes this upgrade path impossible.

<comment><USER10> Polymer partially polyfills CSS Custom Properties: [https://www.polymer- project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling.ht...](https://www.polymer- project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling.html#xscope-styling-details)

Also, for what it's worth, not all new JavaScript features are polyfill-able. Proxies, for example, are impossible to polyfill, should they not have been added? WeakMaps are also only partially polyfill-able, are they overdesigned too?

<comment><USER9> I believe that where possible it makes sense to follow what is already happening in the wider open source ecosystem, rather than trying to design a solution from scratch.

There is a huge demand for constants/variables in CSS, as well as a widespread use of preprocessors. The CSS variable spec does bring a lot of interesting ideas to the table, but it does so at the expense of ignoring how people are shipping code today.

Designing a solution that can be dropped into an existing pipeline can be valuable even if doesn't introduce any new concepts or features. For example Promises in JS are pretty simple and just replicate the functionality of existing libraries, but they normalized existing patterns and made it possible to trust that third party code would have consistent behavior. That was a huge boost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These look neat. I wonder what they will be like to debug. I spend a lot of my job fixing problems that the designers have left in the CSS, like "Why on this page is the button margin 2em, but on all the other pages it's 1.5em." I guess with variables thrown into the mix, it'll make this debugging harder.

<comment><USER3> Why harder? Surely if people actually use them, you'll at least have labels attached to things—semantic labels, hopefully, rather than simple and opaque values?

(I wish people would use `calc()` too where appropriate.)

<comment><USER11> I wonder what the css insight would show? Both the computed value and variable name?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai CSS should have just been a functional programming language to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER12> I quite like the example of styling buttons in the header using a more component-like architecture, this could lead to some interesting developments. I look forward to seeing this progress.

</comment><comment><USER13> Being able to manipulate these from JS would be great. Then compile-to-js languages (Clojurescript & Elm) can use their (better) programming model for styles as well.

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for a way to use JavaScript variables directly in CSS styles there is an Element Query polyfill that includes that feature: [http://codepen.io/tomhodgins/pen/MKWOWW](http://codepen.io/tomhodgins/pen/MKWOWW)

You can reference one line of JS in your CSS style, and the returned value is what is output in your CSS at the time the (responsive) style applies. This value can be a Js variable set elsewhere on the page, the output of a function, or a string or single line of JavaScript that is evaluated in-place.

The var() feature is new and only in the v1.0.0 branch right now, but to read about the other features of this plugin check out [https://github.com/eqcss/eqcss](https://github.com/eqcss/eqcss) and [http://elementqueries.com](http://elementqueries.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is amazing that there has been so much resistance to this sort of thing.

<comment><USER10> Indeed! That's why I wrote the article :)

<comment><USER15> Debating the syntax is not the same as resisting the feature.

<comment><USER10> I don't see a lot of "debating" going on. If you want to point me to some constructive debates, that would be nice.

<comment><USER10> > I guess that depends on how you define debate. I'm referring to that the > proposal is made and some people show their distaste for part of what is > proposed. Those that made the proposal respond. I see no resistance to the > feature being introduced in that, just disagreement on a part of the > proposal.

Just to be clear, neither I nor Addy Osmani proposed CSS Custom Properties. We're just excited about the feature and sharing it with others. So when people respond negatively to us, it doesn't feel like debating.

The time for debating was when it was being discussed in the working group; before it was implemented in three different browsers.

<comment><USER15> I realized the difference, which is why I edited and added in those that support the proposal. Weird that your response is listed underneath the post you are quoting.

So, you should be immune to a negative response when you publicly state your support for a feature? People don't like how the feature is implemented and say as much. Like I said, it depends on how you define debate and I guess it doesn't match your definition. That's fine with me. But that doesn't mean I don't get to refer to it as a debate. I see it as a debate and if you disagree, that's fine with me as well.

People did debate during the proposal and as such things usually go, people will continue to do so. People had similar issues with flex and gradients. Note that the syntax for those were altered after they were implemented into browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this mean we can now also use expressions such as (pseudocode) "height: (x+1-y)px"?

<comment><USER17> Should be possible using `calc()`.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/CSS/calc](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/CSS/calc)</comment></comment>


Google's unorthodox press release raises questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/googles-unorthodox-press-release-raises-questions/article1536213/

<comment><USER2> "However, some worry that this trend may harm individual and less- sophisticated investors who cannot access the blogs and websites as quickly as professionals. Others worry that not everyone will get the information."

Putting the stuff on a public website with a simple url makes it HARDER for non-professionals to access? Someone clue me in to their reasoning as to why.

<comment><USER3> Maybe these non-professionals are getting their information from portals that only show press releases and MSM stories.

<comment><USER4> Well that an the fact that if you're an analyst covering 100 stocks you now are responsible for monitoring 100 different sources!

<comment><USER5> market opportunity

<comment><USER6> You can flip to Bloomberg in two years if you're good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If receiving investment information via blog is a problem for you, maybe you shouldn't be inventing in _google_. As Warren Buffett says: invest in what you know.

<comment><USER8> Warren Buffet is a full time investor, so that's a viable strategy for him. For most people "invest in what you know" is equivalent to "invest in the industry you work in" which is a bad strategy. Much better is to invest in low-cost index funds, a strategy that could be summed up as "don't know what you're investing in."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"Google's unorthodox press release raises questions"_

Newspapers afraid of change, read all about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is it Google's responsibility to keep PR news wires in business?

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe Google did it to know who is reading their quarterly results, what portion they read exactly and what they do with the information.

They would have no way of knowing that if they just send it out as an press release.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hate PR newswires with a passion. Die. Die. Die.

<comment><USER13> +1. Most of them have a rather hazy idea of what they are doing and are stuck in the last century technology-wise. Example: at least one wire releases time- critical information in HTML with multimegabyte (yes, megabyte) stylesheets which are delivered inline. And they won't change the format.

<comment><USER14> What on earth goes into a stylesheet to make it that big? Are they bundling an entire media package, complete with high-res images as data: URIs?

<comment><USER13> That would actually make some twisted kind of sense, I guess. These guys are using an HTML generator that produces things like this:

.g { MARGIN: 72pt 90pt; size: 595.3pt 841.9pt }

P.a { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; LETTER-SPACING: 0.5pt }

TABLE.t { BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; MARGIN-LEFT: -5.4pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse }

... oodles of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It sure was a great way to attact investitors to Google's site. More of a way to market a google product (<http://investor.google.com/>), than anything else. Conventional media may not like it, but that is understandable, as the product marketed by google competes with such conventional media (without charging for it).

<comment><USER16> It's not a Google "product", just a site. It's "Google Investor Relations".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So now the wires stop charging for distribution and start charging for syndication... simples.

</comment><comment><USER18> using their buying power to break monopolies of useless companies. Nice.

Wish i had the power to do this to my ISP.</comment>


How WebMynd (W08) decided to remove a feature – the 'Ask Twitter' case study - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webmynd.com/2009/03/31/how-webmynd-decided-to-remove-a-feature-–-the-'ask-twitter'-case-study/

<comment><USER2> It's great to see companies talk about the features they remove in addition to the ones they add; thanks Amir!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This totally demonstrates what iteration is all about to me. It's as important to remove features as it is to add new ones, and to do so guided by the data.

</comment><comment><USER3> A bit out of topic, but the main reason I never really got into using webmynd is that it forces me to allow third party cookies... And I've never really liked allowing advertisement companies to give me cookies...

If there was a way to selectively allow third party cookies to trusted websites I'd be a happy camper though...</comment>


Solving Exercism Problems – Learn with Peers - <AUTHOR> http://exercism.io/ <comment><USER2> I've been using the site extensively for the past six months or so. I have about a dozen Python exercises complete, one C++, and about a half-dozen Common Lisp and OCaml exercises to boot.

Some languages get more reviews than others. The big problem is taking the time to review other peoples' code. There isn't a lot of reward for doing that. Solving the challenges and receiving a comment or two is far more rewarding... so it tends to be pretty one-sided in the less-populated corners of the site. The Common Lisp group has been the most vocal for me so far followed by Python.

It's worth mentioning that the project is open source and you can contribute features on github (or add requests to the growing queue)[0].

It's a useful tool for dipping your toes in a new language if you're an experienced programmer. Code reviews are essential for learning the in-grained idioms and conventions of a language that make things easier. I think there's a lot of potential in a site like this if it were able to attract more users and reward reviewers.

[0] [https://github.com/exercism/exercism.io](https://github.com/exercism/exercism.io)

<comment><USER3> I think it depends on how you frame it. Personally, reviewing other people's code on exercism can be an invaluable chance to practice giving feedback on code. I've yet to find a better mechanism for practicing code reviews - and it something that even senior developers can benefit from.

Excerism is a great way to practice giving polite and thoughtful feedback to a captive newbie. I've gotten more practice at code reviews in 15 minutes a day on Exercism than I could have in several weeks at work.

<comment><USER2> Too true! It's a valuable exercise and worth investing in. My observation was simply that the mechanics of submitting code and reviewing it have different, unequal reward mechanisms at present.

There doesn't appear to be a way for users to provide feedback to reviewers on whether they're being helpful besides leaving a comment. It might also be worthwhile to collect karma for taking the time to give a thoughtful review.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel it would be better if the website has a few examples of how people are using it. Also there should be a way to anonymously post code and get feed back.

<comment><USER5> I'm using it for the Common Lisp exercises. The command line client is nice, keeping you from having to upload your code through a browser or copy pasting.

Basically you are given a set of unit tests and you have to make them pass, so it's good practice for TDD without havingto write the tests. The exercises so far are pretty basic being <10 liners, but it's a fun way to practice your coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it's just me, but WOW those red/purples are hard to look at.

Maybe it would be better if they were not quite so intense/vibrant?

</comment><comment><USER7> This site has been in beta since it launched (I first heard about it at Lone Star Ruby 2013)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is fantastic! If I'm helping out with a conference (djangocon) is there a way we could hold an event using this as part of it?</comment>


Research finds Stockholm's congestion pricing may have reduced childhood asthma - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidescience.org/news/driving-fee-rolls-back-asthma-attacks-stockholm <comment><USER2> At the risk of being downvoted, I would like to raise a topic for deliberation-

Why are some acts (driving and polluting) penalized, but other acts that also cause harm (especially to children) are not penalized?

Driving and pollution are low hanging fruit, but what about polluting water supplies? Trash, sewage, dumping, antibiotics and pesticides in food sources....

Surely all of these things are dangerous to everyones health, especially children.

Should we have facial recognition software for people walking around with bags near water sources at certain hours of the day?

<comment><USER3> This is called "Whataboutism" and when you bounce to it you have already given up on your main argument.

Some acts are penalized before others because the negative externality is easy to identify, some are penalized before other problems because the agent of negative externality is easy to identify and tax, and some are penalized before other problems because those pushing for the penalty have a better PR machine or more political muscle.

None of these conditions means that there are not other negative externalities that need to be prevented or taxed/penalized, nor does it mean that some contrived dystopian solution is a likely consequence of our desire to prevent these other negative externalities.

<comment><USER2> That's fine, I agree with your assessment, even though you are implying that by raising a question, I have somehow lost an argument :)

You say that "those pushing for the penalty have better PR/political muscle", and you imply that they have more muscle than groups pushing for other penalties, or maybe even against penalties.

What I would like to point out is, we are assuming that the majority of citizens of Stockholm or Singapore or etc have clearly voted in favor of this execution of public policy, because if they didn't, they would just leave or rebel or something.

But in reality, I dare say that all over the globe, small elite groups of people are paid exorbitant sums of money to come up with these laws and carry them out. They then use cherry-picked statistics to justify the existence of the program (and then attack any naysayers as wanting to live in polluted dystopian hell holes like some stereotypical example of a Chinese city).

Would you agree then, that certain groups being able to penalize other people for the supposed "crime of driving" is not the most optimal and equitable way to balance negative externalities?

Perhaps it should be the burden of other people to deal with the negative externalities of something reasonable to expect in city living, like air pollution?

<comment><USER3> > That's fine, I agree with your assessment, even though you are implying that > by raising a question, I have somehow lost an argument :)

I am not implying it, I am stating it outright. Your "argument" here is so tissue-paper thin as to boggle the mind and it is not even worth wasting time doing a point-by-point refutation.

It is the burden of "other people" to deal with the negative externalities of driving, specifically those "other people" who decide to get in a car and drive. Don't like it? Drive somewhere else.

<comment><USER2> For a very long time after cars were invented, the burden was actually the reverse of what you describe.

It used to be, "you don't like cars driving near you? Live somewhere else."

And it seems most people were fine with that, choosing to move to rural areas, where there were still cars, just less of them.

This localized tax is palatable to me because it is local and not national. But, it is still worth pointing out that the people who penalize behavior by taxing certain daily activities... may more so be in it for the money than for the social good.

If you disagree, that's fine. But when people are dying and having negative quality of living for so many more serious reasons, taxing congestion with a complex technological system is, in my opinion, deck chairs on the Titanic.

I hope that those who are greatly affected by it choose to move and bring their value elsewhere that welcomes them. Maybe Stockholm will feel their absence, maybe not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just for the record, the Stockholm congestion tax is only one - actually one of the least advanced - ERP systems implemented around the world, probably the Singapore one being the most advanced (and soon to be replaced by a "second generation" system):

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

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

<comment><USER2> It is very advanced at dealing with the negative externalities its own system creates ;)

The gantries cause drivers to congest other roads, to stop in the middle of the road near the turn of the hour to try to lower the fee required... I'm sure there's billing errors.

In Singapore, we call it "Every Road- Pay".

Sure we have low income taxes, but this is a less than desirable way to make up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apart from the political issues, I want to point out that air pollution can be objectively measured, but the connection with childhood asthma can only be conjecture for lack of rigorous scientific controls -- it's a correlation, not an established cause/effect relationship.

I point this out because of the depressing regularity with which I see a raw correlation presented as though it represents a linked cause/effect relationship without the source meeting his scientific burden of evidence.

<comment><USER6> There is essentially zero doubt about the causative link at this point. Some studies will never be run because they would be deeply unethical, so we satisfy significance through a preponderance of correlation:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192198/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192198/)

<comment><USER5> > There is essentially zero doubt about the causative link at this point.

Science isn't based on hand-waving -- falsifiable empirical evidence is required. Any number of assumptions like this have fallen by the wayside over the decades, undermined by overlooked correlations that weren't included in the original analysis.

The scientific bottom line is easy to state -- is the assumption falsifiable using empirical evidence? If this condition cannot be met, it's not science.

Related: [https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37](https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37)

> Some studies will never be run because they would be deeply unethical ...

That cannot be offered as an argument to justify dispensing with scientific discipline. It's as simple as that.

> ... so we satisfy significance through a preponderance of correlation ...

Yes, but that is not science, it's politics or numerology. Using the method you just described, I can prove that there's a connection -- a "link" \-- between sour cream sales and motorbike accidents:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2640550/Does-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2640550/Does- sour-cream-cause-bike-accidents-No-looks-like-does-Graphs-reveal-statistics- produce-false-connections.html)

But, as is often said, correlation is not causation.

Does this mean I can claim there's no connection (or a poor connection) between childhood asthma and air pollution? No, for the same reason that you cannot say there is -- it's not scientific.

I ask that you think about your position. If we allow public policy to be guided by the kind of pseudoscience you're advocating, if we dispense with the falsifiability criterion, then religious beliefs can substitute for science, and Creationism can be taught as science in public-school science classrooms.

<comment><USER7> Can you name one source of pollution suspected of causing health issues, that meets the criterion of falsifiability from evidence? It seems to me that as soon as behaviour X is suspected of killing people, it becomes unethical to do a controlled study that forces some people to live under X. So we're always at the mercy of spurious correlations.

Consider cigarettes --- has there been a 40-year controlled study on smoking? Yet, at some point, the observational evidence starts to pile up and one has to make decisions based on that.

<comment><USER5> > Can you name one source of pollution suspected of causing health issues, > that meets the criterion of falsifiability from evidence?

Certainly -- I can name a dozen, each of them demonstrated using scientific methods. Asbestos. Ionizing radiation. Sunlight. Tobacco. And so forth. Each of these can be shown to cause health issues _in vitro_ as well as _in vivo_ \-- using properly designed, scientific animal studies.

> So we're always at the mercy of spurious correlations.

Not for a scientifically educated population, which -- if it existed -- would reject this sort of pseudoscience.

A recent example of a shaky correlation that will doubtless shape public policy is this one:

Link: [https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/01/shootings- us-s...](https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/01/shootings-us-schools- link-unemployment/)

Title: "Shootings in U.S. schools are _linked_ to increased unemployment"

Quote: "A rigorous Northwestern University study of a quarter-century of data has found that economic insecurity _is related to_ the rate of gun violence at K-12 and postsecondary schools in the United States. _When it becomes more difficult for people coming out of school to find jobs, the rate of gun violence at schools increases._ " (Emphasis added.)

Note the terms/phrases "linked", "is related to" and the tendentious final sentence that tries to nail a nonexistent cause-effect relationship.

Obviously the original study cannot support this conclusion -- it reports a correlation, not a link, not a cause followed by an effect.

This is a practice called "data mining" \-- underemployed researchers look for correlations between things, then publish papers describing the correlations, usually but not always with appropriate disclaimers ("Correlation is not causation, much more research is needed"), but irresponsible journalists then turn correlations into cause-effect relationships, as in this case.

In popular articles like this one, the word "linked" is often used to magically turn a correlation into a cause-effect relationship, because it means two things are bound together and move as one. Coincidences become pseudoscience.

> Consider cigarettes ...

Not a good example for your viewpoint. Rigorous, double-blind _falsifiable_ animal studies demonstrate the carcinogenic properties of cigarettes.

> Yet, at some point, the observational evidence starts to pile up and one has > to make decisions based on that.

Are you arguing that we should do without science? Without the benefit of science, the U.S. concluded that Eastern Europeans were less intelligent than others, and a resulting changed immigration policy condemned a huge number of Jews and others to death during the Nazi era. Later, more objective intelligence tests came to the opposite conclusion, and Mr. Yerkes, the responsible psychologist, wrote a confessional _mea culpa_ that nearly no one read. This is just one example, there are many.

When we do without science, we should at least acknowledge that we're doing without science, and show an appropriate amount of skepticism about the conclusions we draw.

<comment><USER7> _Certainly -- I can name a dozen, each of them demonstrated using scientific methods. Asbestos. Ionizing radiation. Sunlight. Tobacco. And so forth. Each of these can be shown to cause health issues in vitro as well as in vivo -- using properly designed, scientific animal studies._

Right, but then you're still assuming that whatever you've demonstrated on animals will hold on a human population. If that were always true, we would never bother doing studies on humans at all.

 _Science isn 't based on hand-waving -- falsifiable empirical evidence is required. Any number of assumptions like this have fallen by the wayside over the decades, undermined by overlooked correlations that weren't included in the original analysis._

You have to make assumptions to reach a conclusion. "Humans are similar to animals" is one, and "There is no other cause that can reasonably explain this observational evidence" is another. I fully agree that observational data is often abused to reach sensational conclusions, but IMO when it is done correctly, it is a vital ingredient of modern science. Pearl's book on causality is basically devoted to this topic.

<comment><USER5> > You have to make assumptions to reach a conclusion.

Science isn't about assumptions, it's about evidence. People make assumptions every day, that's unavoidable, but we should be alert to the fact that it's not science, and be appropriately skeptical. We need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. That's all I'm saying.

Apropos: [https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37](https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Question to Libertarians... Is this statism? Or legitimate penalties for externalities? Kinda hard for all those parents of kids with asthma to sue all those drivers and manufacturers after the fact. Isn't this reported result a benefit that wouldn't have arisen in a purely anarcho capitalist society?

<comment><USER9> > Is this statism?

No, this is maximizing net freedom. Pollution infringes on the rights of others... a libertarian solution would have been more efficient and penalized the source on a consumption basis (gasoline tax), but the incentive would be similar.

Here's a libertarian-ish analysis on the formerly proposed Washington state carbon tax: [http://www.leolinsky.com/2016/11/06/carbon-tax- initiative-73...](http://www.leolinsky.com/2016/11/06/carbon-tax- initiative-732/)

I hope to erase a lot of extremist misunderstandings about freedom (as defined by the broadly interpretable nonaggression principle), because I think a lot of those on HN who currently identify with the Democratic Party would find they actually have more in common with independent, moderate libertarians (or even the LP) than they realize.

<comment><USER10> Sweden already has a high petrol and diesel tax. 1L of petrol is $1.61, compared to about $0.56 in the USA.

That tax doesn't take account of where the fuel is used. The pollution caused by a long journey through the countryside is less damaging than driving within a city.

Additionally, reducing congestion improves journey times for other road users. How much should that be worth?

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

<comment><USER11> I learned recently that Finland is contemplating removing tax on both gasoline and cars (including the purchase of cars) and replacing it with a tax on distance driven, using some kind of mandatory installed device.

<comment><USER12> That was indeed the suggestion of one of the government ministers, but the proposal caused a media storm and was withdrawn within a week.

<comment><USER11> Oh right, I didn't know that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just yesterday it was decided to fund a new subway line by dramatically increasing the congestion pricing. Hopefully that will decrease traffic further. With the public transportation system in Stockholm most people really have no business driving through town.</comment>


Bruno Maisonnier moves on from Aldebaran - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/bruno-maisonnier-moves-on-from-aldebaran/

<comment><USER2> Big thanks to Bruno for making beautiful humanoid robots.</comment>


Calling all YC S18 applicants - <AUTHOR> Let's share some info to date. How many views you got from SF on your YC app video? Our team got 5 for now<p>Also, are views are really an indicator of strong interest from YC app reviewers?  Were there ever apps that got in with 0 views? <comment><USER2> We have unlisted our video on YouTube so that we could see how people are viewing the YC app video via YouTube Analytics. Interestingly I cannot track any view from US.

(P.S. We are from India and all the views from Youtube Analytics are from India)

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on whether your vid was unlisted - ours was public and we got 450 views so we can't really see through the noise.

I would think a video without a view isn't a good sign but I'm not sure how it all works.</comment>