The Container Ship Tourism Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-container-ship-tourism-industry <comment><USER2> I must admit that I've researched this on-and-off for years. Surprisingly, it's reasonably expensive (ie. not inexpensive). That said, the reviews I've read have been nearly universally positive: as the article notes, the crews love interesting company (they spend months on the boat painting from stem-to- stern and you're naturally inclined to discuss the outside world and not- painting-bulkheads).

Boredom: if you step onto a container ship as a guest without at least a month of "work" to do, you're to blame. I admit, I'm uncertain of bandwidth and such; but there is _some_. Download sources before boarding! And I ain't much of a writer, but I might take a whack at writing the Great American [short story] during the journey so that I wasn't bored. Point is: riding a largely automated ship for 2-14 days without a plan is nearly the definition of boredom; plan against boredom!

Having taught myself Ruby on Rails while cruising in Alaska 8 years ago, learning without the internet can be pretty blissful. Just make sure you download the sources first! [Yes, Ruby doesn't need that. I'm looking to learn Rust...]

EDIT: I have no affiliate relationship, but this ([http://www.freightercruises.com/](http://www.freightercruises.com/)) seems pretty solid (e.g. [http://www.freightercruises.com/seaworthy_news_1310.php](http://www.freightercruises.com/seaworthy_news_1310.php)).

<comment><USER3> Realistically, would a satellite internet connection be prohibitively expensive for non-data-heavy browsing for a couple of weeks (meaning no Youtube, just programmer-work related Google/Wikipedia/StackOverflow, etc)?

<comment><USER4> >prohibitively

Yup. According to [http://www.groundcontrol.com/IsatHub.htm](http://www.groundcontrol.com/IsatHub.htm) and [http://www.groundcontrol.com/BGAN_rate_plans.htm](http://www.groundcontrol.com/BGAN_rate_plans.htm) 50mb will cost you around $400. (Just a quick search but when I researched this a little more in depth a few years ago prices weren't too different from that). + the modem which is ~$2000 IIRC.

Of course this is if you would buy the data for yourself. Though quiet a few ships have sat internet installed. The data rates are usually pretty low so it's good enough for email but not for surfing bloated websites like Stackoverflow or Google.

And then there's the alternative of 3G/4G GSM when you're near the shore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually did this, back in 2004 when I was obsessed with "traveling authentically." I sailed from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Cork, Ireland. It took two weeks. I was surprised at how quickly the boredom set in, as there is really nothing whatsoever to do on a boat like this once you've read and watched the few decent books/movies on board. The only scenery that changes on the open ocean is the clouds.

It was cool to interact with the crew but also strange and somewhat depressing as the life of a sailor is really not that great. The average crewman is from a very poor country and they are at sea for most of the year to support families back home that they only get to see for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lots world wide could be fitted with a standard socket so that your container house could be (1) taken from the ship, (2) put on a truck, (3) fitted on to a lot.

Sockets could be stacked to create medium density housing. You could relocate your house to any city on earth with the right socket.

<comment><USER7> Considering how many containers are lost per year (thousands), I wouldn't risk my house on that chance.

EDIT: More like ~546 containers per year from an industry survey, out of 120 million moved in a year. Not quite as good as commercial air flight, but not as bad I was thinking.

<comment><USER8> Thousands out of more than 120 million container trips per year, and the loss of containers was primarily from two large accidents. [http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=17474](http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=17474)

Your container may be safer than your house, and the financial solutions is the same: insure it.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, I stand corrected. The odds aren't too bad in that case. Hell, now I am intrigued by the prospect too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > the typical cost is about $120 a day

I don't want to discourage anyone from traveling on container ships. It sounds like fun to me. Please be aware that some cruiseship travel can cost less (much less?) than $120 a day, and they make your bed everyday amongst many other amenities.

<comment><USER10> I think for most of us here the appeal of booking a container ship route would be the isolation that hypothetically allows for uninterrupted programming plus the romance of the idea. On a cruise ship, you have to deal with personnel and other guests daily. Personnel might constantly be trying to engage you in social activities, you always have to tip everyone, and if you do bring a lot of computer stuff it might get stolen.

But that said, 120/day is _not_ cheap. As a hacker getaway, you can book a hut by a fjord in Norway for far less than that...

<comment><USER11> And the hut by the fjord will have pretty good connectivity too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also recommended if you find the idea intriguing, a long-form narrative article on the subject from last year: [http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/slow- boat-from-china/](http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/slow-boat-from-china/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I spent 6 years traveling full time from 2008-2014. One of the things that I really liked about the way we did it is that there was not tourism involved... we lived in each country as long as a visa would allow. For instance, in Bath UK we got a basement condo in an ancient methodist church that had just been converted to condos for 6 months.

This form of travel- on container ships- will show you a side of the world, the shipping industry, the people who work in it, working ports, etc that you'll never see on a cruise ship. The accommodations and value is probably not competitive with a cruise ship, but the experience is not going to be similar at all.

We spent 2 years in Chile, starting with Startup Chile-- but it really got good when we started making friends with locals.

Tourism is a totally different experience from travel!

</comment><comment><USER14> I crossed the Pacific on a cargo ship last year, 26 days from Japan to Peru, as part of a 3.5-year trip around the world without flying.

I made a video about my cargo ship experience here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj9yA7KjIuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj9yA7KjIuw)

A few quick points:

1\. Yes, it is very expensive to travel by cargo ship. It cost me about $4,500 total. I'm glad I did it as it was a cool experience, but given the cost I'd be hesitant to do it again.

2\. Why is it so expensive? Best I can tell, because the cargo ship companies don't care. Taking passengers isn't their primary business. They're transporting multi-million dollar cargoes, so they probably figure that if they're going to take the odd passenger, they might as well charge a high price to make it worth their while.

3\. For anyone interested in how to go about booking a trip on a cargo ship, I explain how I did it and provide a few links here: www.ndoherty.com/cargo- ship-2/

4\. Perhaps the craziest thing for me was the lack of security on the ship. My bags were never checked at the port in Japan and the captain told me the door code for the bridge within an hour of boarding the vessel. The bag check when I got off the ship in Peru was also half-assed at best.

<comment><USER14> Oh, almost forgot:

5\. There was very limited internet access aboard the ship. We could just send and receive email once or twice per day. That was it. I brought a lot of books with me on the ship and did a lot of writing, so I didn't get bored, but I imagine most people would. I think a few days is plenty of time to spend on such a ship unless you have a plan to make use of all the down-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am _extremely_ intrigued. A few weeks of mostly solitude wherein I can see a few interesting sights, meet a few interesting people, and the whole thing is extremely affordable? This sounds right up my alley. Now, to convince my wife and family…

<comment><USER16> I've been wanting to do this for years, but it's hardly "extremely affordable" – on average, it's anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 per person for a 2-4 week trip.

<comment><USER17> Cruises can be waaay cheaper than that. Six adults from my family recently went on a 9 day cruise that was really nice to the Bahamas, I think the whole thing was under $4000.

<comment><USER16> On a freighter? I'd love to know more.

Or one of those Caribbean leisure cruises? Those are cheap upfront - to get you in the door - relying on in-ship purchases (like alcohol & restaurants) to make the majority of their money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A fun little trip on a related note is the Alaska Ferry (Alaska Marine Highway I think) which leaves Seattle (well, suburb) and spends about 4 days heading up to Alaska. You can sleep on the deck with a sleeping bag (or in a little heated patio) for real cheap and get great views with chances of whales. Cost is similar per day.

Cool little blog link: [http://jackandjilltravel.com/roughing-it-on-the- alaskan-stat...](http://jackandjilltravel.com/roughing-it-on-the-alaskan- state-ferry/)

</comment><comment><USER19> And if you want a bit more luxury and want to be paid for it, cruise ships are hiring IT staff all the time. You could be incredibly under paid but still see the world.

<comment><USER20> If you are into old school and sailing you can also go on a trip with Tres Hombres.

Dont expect any comfort there but it's cheap and a fun.

[http://fairtransport.eu/sail-along/](http://fairtransport.eu/sail-along/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for posting that, that's really interesting. Haven't heard about this one before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A very interesting concept. I like the sea but hate cruising. For me, a cruise is basically a hotel pushed into international waters (or some other legal fiction) for purposes of cheap labour. But a freighter seems a different matter. I'm not saying that they pay people well, but at least taking care of me won't be their primary job. A freighter has a job, it has a purpose for going somewhere beyond labour laws.

And I'd bet good money there is far less risk of norovirus on an freighter than on the floating retirement communities that are modern cruising.

<comment><USER23> > For me, a cruise is basically a hotel pushed into international waters (or > some other legal fiction) for purposes of cheap labour.

It's not a complete free for all once in international waters. The law of the flag the ship sails under (i.e. the jurisdiction where it is registered) applies. However, in practise many ships fly a flag of convenience, e.g. Liberia. The minimum wage in Liberia for unskilled labour is $4/day(!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it support Docker?

</comment><comment><USER25> My uncle did a few cruises around the world on cargo ships, it always seemed like a great way to see the world on the relative cheap. Of course, he was a retired, single, Army officer, so taking the months such a voyage required was more practical for him than most.</comment>


Apple's Russian iTunes launch plagued with "pornography bug" - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2012/12/05/nsfw-apples-russian-itunes-launch-plagued-with-bug-displaying-escortpornography-sites/

<comment><USER2> You'd think they'd have the sense to use something like "example.com", which could never possibly have such content.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe apple.com, worst case you get some self promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not a bug, it's a feature.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Update: most likely, the problem arises because of links: the people > responsible for iTunes, put the "temporary" link type xx.xx.xx. That's just > such a site exists, and, as we have seen today, has nothing to do with the > ideals of the company.Waiting for the fix._

This is certainly a new hallmark of lorem-ipsum-dummy-code-type error.

<comment><USER2> The actual site in question seems to be <http://xxx.xxx/> (NSFW, obviously)

<comment><USER6> Aren't there standards for this kind of thing? When you want a placeholder domain?

e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.example> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.invalid>

<comment><USER7> I personally use example.invalid. It's immediately obvious that it's an example and invalid :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to work for a startup that used acmecorp.com in all their demos and all over the documentation. It turned out the company behind the domain name didn't really appreciate getting dozens upon dozens of "confirm your registration" emails... but they did say we weren't the only offenders.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ironic that our iOS app got rejected today for "mature themes".

<comment><USER10> What is your app?

<comment><USER11> I bet it's some kind of portal that aggregates other content that you're not directly responsible for.

<comment><USER12> Reddit-apps are allowed.

<comment><USER13> Links only to reddit, which doesn't host mature content (just links to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apple had another similar issue with itunes searches that they just recently fixed -- searches for taboo words returning a lot of results:

[http://blog.appstorerankings.net/blog/2012/10/28/itunes- sear...](http://blog.appstorerankings.net/blog/2012/10/28/itunes-search- results-for-taboo-words-disney-and-other-big-apps/)

</comment><comment><USER15> They didn't test it before deployment?!

</comment><comment><USER16> pics or it didn't happen</comment>


Dividing equity - <AUTHOR>

A couple friends and I have just started to move past the ideas stage of our start-up and are getting to the point where we are trying to allocate ownership in the company. At this point in time, valuing our company seems quite arbitrary, but this is the ownership structure we have discussed:
                  Founder 1: 20%
                  Founder 2: 20%
                  Founder 3: 20%
                  Investor 1: $5000 for 2.5%
                  Investor 2: $10,000 for 5%
                  Remaining 32.5% : Options pool This gives our start-up an initial valuation of $200,000. Is this number too high, too low, or about right? <comment><USER2> The option pool is on the large side. The valuation is low unless the investors are supplying more than money.

<comment><AUTHOR> My investors are only giving me money. From your comment, it sounds like I should give the investors less ownership and the founders more ownership so that the valuation is higher and the options pool is smaller. That being said, what is a rough estimate of how big my valuation should be and how small/large my options pool should be? I know this process is important, but at this stage, it seems rather arbitrary. Any advice is welcome!

<comment><USER2> 200k is low as seed valuations go, but it's impossible to say what yours should be without knowing the startup. Option pools are ordinarily around 20%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That options pool is ridiculously huge.</comment>


Ask HN: How to stop Google SERP url redirect tracking? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I used to use http://18.104.22.168/search?query=keyword with javascript disabled to stop Google from tracking my clicks in the search result page, now Google renderes ALL links as a redirect link on server to track my clicks, it's dangerous and may cause me to click phishing sites as there it's not obvious URL in the status bar now.
How do I disable it while using Google anonymousely?
I don't want to use userscript trick. Google kept change its page format all the time so the userscripts fails sooner or later.
DDG is OK for the moment but still lacks content in minor non-English languages, so I still have to use Google. <comment><USER2> The basis of your question is untrue. The links on the page are direct links to the sites; what's shown in the status bar is where you'll be taken to when you click. The redirect is added through JavaScript on the onmousedown event. You can disable it by disabling JavaScript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry but no, this is today's upgrade in Google, I think. Try this in your shell

        curl --header "User-Agent: " "http://184.108.40.206/search?gbv=1&tbo=1&as_qdr=all&hl=en&num=50&q=keyword"

You can see all links are wrapped with `href="/url?q=`

Yes, it was used to be wrapped by javascript.

<comment><USER2> When I access that exact URL on a real browser, I get normal direct links.

        <a href="https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/" class=l onmousedown="return ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's when you allow Javascript in your browser

If you don't allow javascript on this domain, the redirect is wrapped on Google server.

I will not trust Google Search running Javascript

Edit: Turns out Google will do a javascript redirect on the first tracked page, then the second page will display every links without wrapped. If this is not evil, I don't know what is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Firefox Google Search link fix add-on seems to do a decent job.</comment>


Amazon Wins Approval to Test Delivery Drones Outdoors - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/technology/amazon-wins-approval-to-test-delivery-drones-outdoors.html

<comment><USER2> How will delivery work if it is illegal to fly drones over bystanders?

Another win for the corporate lobby, meanwhile start-ups can throw another idea in the trashcan or risk fines and possible jail time.</comment>


My brilliant team working idea - <AUTHOR>

Each member of the team has a USB 'sweet dispenser' connected to their computer (this would need to be invented, but sounds like a brilliant Arduino project).
When you feel another team mate has done something good or worthy, you can hit a button which gives them a sweet!
...but of course, you can not give yourself a sweet!
Genius! <comment><USER2> Thanks for reminding me why I don't want to work for most startups.

How about sweet you say "Way to go Bro!"? and why use an arduino at all? Waste of resources just stick with a small lightweight digital program to 'send' a sweet (or Way to go Bro!) to them directly.

The software program was a semi-serious suggestion.</comment>


Quote Meritocracy Unquote - <AUTHOR> http://braythwayt.com/2013/04/01/quote-metritocracy-unquote.html <comment><USER2> The word "meritocracy" comes from a satire, _The Rise of the Meritocracy_. It would be as if people were using the word "doublethink" like it was a great idea.

The author's point is that social class is now guarded through education, and the most successful people give their children the best education. There is no longer the opportunity to work your way up from the mail room to the CEO chair. All the positions above a certain grade need a college degree, and often an advanced degree. Unlike the old aristocracies, there's no _noblesse oblige_ ; those at the bottom deserve to be there.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment>

One of the great things about computer programming (and the open culture of programming as it is now) is that we can achieve merit _outside_ of an institutionalized system.

Edit - I didn't expect this to be the topvoted comment... so just to restate, even programming isn't perfect here. There are still many filters and barriers. I think raganwald's point is that our filters are often sufficient to exclude vast swathes of deserving people, if we robotically look only for certain kinds of objective merit.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Those at the bottom deserve to be there._

I didn't put this in the article, but a few hours later I think this is an interesting point, thank you.

If the post's proposition is correct and that "meritocracy" is all about minimal false positives, then we can also agree that there are people at the bottom who are qualified, but that's a cost of setting up a system optimized for minimizing false positives.

I know from many discussions about interviewing that this is one of the major families of strategy: It's better to miss out on a few good people than it is to mistakenly hire a bad one, so there's a real emphasis on only hiring perfect "A"s. Which means that you'll miss a few As and lots of B+ people.

This isn't a problem until people start assuming that anyone who wasn't hired is terrible or doesn't deserve to work. I'm trying to avoid controversy, so I'll return to the straw man scenario of the post: It's as if the Lisp people said, "If Python was any good than there'd be Python people on the schedule."

<comment><USER3> > This isn't a problem until people start assuming that anyone who wasn't > hired is terrible or doesn't deserve to work.

This, indeed, is where things get very dicey. Meritocracy tends to converge on winner-takes-all markets, which result in an extreme inequality of outcomes and all the socioeconomic harms that entails.

<comment><USER4> How does meritocracy converge to winner-take-all?

<comment><USER5> Why wouldn't it? In terms of pure merit, NOBODY deserves ANY prize except THE single best competitor.

Physical limits and other regulations even things out but, particularly in computer and digital products and services, physical limitations are less and less important.

<comment><USER4> _In terms of pure merit, NOBODY deserves ANY prize except THE single best competitor._

Could you explain this claim?

<comment><USER6> He's saying in an absolute meritocracy, things are only awarded by merit. Given the choice between awarding a contract to company A or company B, once A has already shown to have more merit than B, all future work would logically go to A, and B would die out.

Presuming that A doesn't do something to demonstrate they don't deserve merit any longer, why would you ever go with a proven inferior (B) option, or an option that is unproven altogether (C)? Hence, a trend toward a single dominating entity.

In reality, I think things are more nuanced, of course. No one awards purely on merit, as you also have timing, capacity, and costs to balance. I'm not really aware of any market that you could consider a -true- meritocracy to the extent of the GP comment. And maybe I misread the comment altogether, but that is my understanding.

<comment><USER5> You read it correctly, thanks a lot of clarifying my terse comment. Naturally, no market is going to behave perfectly like this, but I think it's important to understand where the natural tendency points to, and what kind of elements will alleviate, smooth or otherwise disrupt the absolute winner-takes-all nature. If you are going to say deliver a new product, you need to understand that unless your product has something superior to the competition or you can subvert the meritocratic dynamics (say, through marketing & PR), it will likely die because there's no reason NOT to choose a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > They have one test, the market has another.

This is actually one of the biggest things I appreciate from studying Marx: the reminder that 'use-value'[1] and 'exchange-value'[2] are two, separate things, and while I generally want things based on how I can use them, the market doesn't care about that at all.

Startups would be wise to heed Marx's words here, and remember this difference. Your job as a startup is to make money, which means producing something that has a high exchange-value. Don't let your own notions of use- value blind you to what the market cares about: exchange value. How many times have I said "That idea is stupid, I'd never use that" and then it became a smashing, overnight success? Too many to count.

1: Basically, "how useful is this thing to me?" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_value>

2: Basically, "how much could I sell this for?" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_value>

<comment><USER8> >Don't let your own notions of use-value blind you to what the market cares about: exchange value.

This has been the key lesson of my career as a programmer and entrepreneur. Reading Marx made me a better capitalist.

I tell people that ask for book recommendations to read Marx all the time and they sneer at me even though they know I'm not a Marxist.

<comment><USER9> I have no clue how people who don't understand Marxian political economy can understand things like the huge dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and then the crash. Or the (sub-prime) real estate bubble. Or how the finance sector is growing, in GDP percentage wise and in power, relative to the economy which produces real commodities.

Then again, according to polls (and my experience), the majority of Americans believe "every word of the Bible is literally accurate", and that "the Virgin birth, the angelic proclamation to the shepherds, the Star of Bethlehem, and the Wise Men from the East" are "historically accurate". Over 70% believe in "God, Heaven, the resurrection of Christ, survival of the soul after death, miracles, the virgin birth, the devil and hell". If blindness to the way the world really works is so overwhelming with these fantasies, expecting people to understand how wealthy people discretely work the economic system is way, way beyond most people.

<comment><USER10> > Then again, (...) [o]ver 70% [of Americans] believe in "God, Heaven, the > resurrection of Christ, survival of the soul after death, miracles, the > virgin birth, the devil and hell". If blindness to the way the world really > works is so overwhelming with these fantasies, (...)

There is a way to phrase this sentiment without alienating quite as many decent people. Try to find it next time.

(I, too, am an atheist; but I don't see a need to enforce atheism on HN.)

<comment><USER11> I personally do not really mind "alienating" the "earth is 5,000 years old" crowd by not respecting their complete and total disrespect for science and logic.

If your wife told you that she was pregnant, but it wasn't your kid--would you believe her if she said the sperm just sort of came out of nowhere? Or would you say that it's not how conception (or marital faithfulness) actually works?

(note: that's a general non-specific "your" up there, which does not refer to an actual wife, who if you have one I do not mean to in any way impugn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something relevant to note, is that YC's two biggest successes got into YC at least in part because of personal relationships.

IIRC, Dropbox was recommended by former roommates and friends from MIT (Xobni guys?). Airbnb was recommended by Michael Seibel from Justin.tv, perhaps others.

In both cases it's possible that YC wouldn't have interviewed or perhaps accepted one or both of these companies if not for those recommendations.

Or perhaps wouldn't have accepted Dropbox without the MIT credentials.

Based on the stories the founders tell, YC was very skeptical of both ideas (but it's probably hard for them to judge).

The next question I think of is whether Airbnb would have succeeded without YC. I suspect not. As good as those guys were at staying alive even they had limits, which they seemed in danger of reaching at that point.

Dropbox had a better chance probably, since it was already very well received, but maybe they would have fumbled it without the YC help. Certainly they wouldn't have done quite as well.

If personal connections was the thing that pushed some of YC's big successes over the application/interview acceptance hurdle it's fair to conclude that they've probably missed out on some others that didn't have those connections.

<comment><USER13> Even in a meritocracy, those making the decisions need some way to both gather and screen candidates. Properly utilized personal relationships (as opposed to nepotism style situations) can be a good way to do both.

Maybe Dropbox and Airbnb wouldn't have succeeded without those recommendations, but those recommendations could certainly have led to a MORE merit based process. When it comes to judging quality, it can sometime be hard to beat a personal opinion from someone you trust. That may narrow the field a little bit (nobody has personally experienced all the alternatives) but it may also improve your decision.

<comment><USER14> But it also leaves a whole lot of merit on the floor with the demerits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A very thoughtful post. I especially like the discussion of the difference between sensitivity and specificity

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

(the post uses other words) or in other words the difference between type I and type II errors.

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

There are so many interesting ways to think about this. Some of us may have Venn diagrams in our minds' eyes, thinking about the set of {all highly competent programmers} and {speakers invited to programming conferences} and just how those sets overlap.

Of course the important policy point here is that we have no idea how much more flourishing of human developed talent there could be if only all young learners had full opportunity to develop their abilities. I think there are probably a lot of diamonds in the rough in communities all over the world that never get picked up, much less polished. Programming communities can thrive by being welcoming to people who are other than the usual suspects just like current programmers. Props to the author for reminding us not to neglect anyone.

<comment><USER16> "Of course the important policy point here is that we have no idea how much more flourishing of human developed talent there could be if only all young learners had full opportunity to develop their abilities."

This is a very positive way of looking at this. I would argue that we have a fairly good sense of how much more (a lot) and that this informs the tendency for entrenched meritocracies to restrict access rather than open the floodgates, so to speak. People are generally overprotective of their position or status, the past and what they have built for themselves.

I wholly agree that "communities can thrive", and I believe gain a lot more, by being open and welcoming to people not (just) on the basis of merit, but on the basis of curiosity / interest / engagement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of a good talk by Alain de Botton highlighting the nasty side of believing we live in a meritocracy whilst ignoring the role of chance.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_ph...](http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html)

<comment><USER18> That's a great talk. Meritocracy doesn't really exist, but it's good to strive for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The main problem, as Hayek pointed out, is that folk confuse _value_ and _virtue_.

Value is an economic thing. Virtue is a social or emotional thing.

Hayek argued quite comprehensively that value does not flow to the virtuous or vice versa. They are entirely unrelated. Moreover, attempts to align the two fatally break the mechanism which allows value to be created in the first place.

People _want_ value and virtue to go together. But they needn't. And they can't be _made_ to.

</comment><comment><USER20> Meritocracies are great sometimes but they have the nasty side affect of promoting people into jobs they suck at. Just because you're the best at being an individual contributor, it doesn't mean you're going to be a good manager, and being a good manager doesn't mean you're going to be a good executive or entrepreneur. In organizations that value meritocracies absolutely, you end up losing your best people if they don't scale.

<comment><USER21> This is known as the Peter Principle. But, I would think a meritocracy would strive to test for, or respond to, promotions into levels of incompetence by pushing the person back down into a role where merit is higher than other available candidates.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> First of all, I absolutely agree with the general sentiment of this article. And I don't mean to nitpick, but I just want to point out something about this bit:

 _But we don't ask why they know their stuff. How did they get into a good university?_

Depending on exactly how you define "good university", I contend that the importance of this may be overstated. For the sake of argument, let's go with the idea that to many people "a good university" means "Ivy League". IF you take that premise, it makes sense to look at where a number of high-level leaders, like, say, the CEOs of the S&P 500 companies, went to college. Luckily, that's been analyzed:

[http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2005_CEO_...](http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2005_CEO_Study_JS.pdf)

Now, as you might expect, a number of Ivy League schools _are_ very well represented. But, equally important is this:

The University of Wisconsin is tied with Harvard for the largest percentage of S&P 500 CEOs, at 3%. This is above Princeton, Stanford and Yale. And the University of Texas is right in there at 2% as well. Now this is not to say that UW or UT are "bad" schools, but are they what most people are talking about when they talk about the whole elite / non-elite dichotomy?

Another tidbit: If you look at only the CEOs of the top 100 out of the S&P 500, four schools are tied for "most well represented". Those four are Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and, wait for it... The University of North Carolina, all with 3% each.

For what it's worth, it appears that it can at least be said that going to a reasonably well regarded State school is borderline just as helpful as going to an Ivy League school, if you plan to be the CEO of an S&P 500 firm.

Of course, this all _totally_ overlooking the fact that "CEOs of S&P 500 firms" is a ridiculously small and overly restrictive set to represent "being successful and a respected business leader" in any sense. If you're the guy who owns 6 McDonalds locations in your local small town area, or runs the most successful car dealership in a given area, you're pretty damn successful and - at least in a local sense - well regarded. And I expect you'll find plenty of those folks who went to schools most of us have never heard of, or didn't go to school at all.

Anyway, just something to throw out there. I certainly wouldn't mean to _discourage_ anyone from going to Stanford, Yale, Harvard or Princeton if they want to and have the opportunity. But the poor sap left to attend UNC, UT, UVA, UW, UM, etc., certainly should not feel like they've been consigned to the dustbin just because they did not go to an Ivy.

<comment><USER10> This is bad statistics. You're cherry-picking the state schools to consider (plus what Evbn said). The S&P 500 has ~500 CEOs, so some random deviation is to be expected.

(This is purely a methodological comment; I haven't looked at any data either way. I agree, at least, that going to a state school _should_ not mean that your life is over.)

<comment><USER23> I think the point was; one can cherry-pick with deviation, as they are not _that_ far apart. The parent contends the overstated-ness, not that they are equal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A meritocratic society is a lot of meritocracies chained together, themselves needing to merit success. Each one can only work with their own inputs, and so rely on the outputs of the other organizations. If these organizations do not extend deeply and broadly enough back, then at some point the inputs of an organization won't be the ones that should be there. This needs to go back to families at some point. In a meritocracy, mothers and fathers have an obligation to ensure that the potential of their children is developed and expressed through participation in society. I believe the failure of so many parents to do this is responsible for the ineffectiveness of our supposedly meritous systems, organizations and industries.

<comment><USER25> While parents do, of course, have a huge impact on their children, I think it's overly simplistic to lay the ultimate responsibility at their feet. As raganwald points out (in the other direction), when there are feedback loops at play, the system can re-enforce other traits than you might hope for. Parents with no education in nutrition or no real supermarkets in their neighborhood can't be expected to feed their children well. A father in prison will have highly limited influence on his children. A teenage girl with limited access to contraceptives or abortion (or sex education) may end up a mother well before she's financially, emotionally, or intellectually prepared to perform that job well. Low-income, blue-collar communities may have perverse incentives to tie their children to their existing social and economic status, and resent and resist "modern society" in it's various guises.

Which is to say, I don't think you can approach this from a purely reductionist viewpoint. Yes, a given institution is limited to a degree by its inputs, but it's also the case that each component has the potential to make improvements, even if marginal.

<comment><USER24> I didn't mean to say only one is responsible; this is in the context of raganwald's essay about how quality meritocracies (presumably not needing much improvement) don't choose the best because they only maximize their inputs and don't necessarily work with all of those with the most potential. So I wrote about improving the inputs by examining the prior systems.

What I completely missed, and what you alluded to by mentioning people in prison, with bad parents, and so on, is that the present generation of families also have inputs -- the systems that they went through (education, military, commerce, etc.) and their own parents. The issues we have today are partly the results of mistakes made by parents living a hundred, five hundred, even a thousand years ago.

It's a depressing thought when expressed that way, but on the bright side, if we do as well as we can given our limited inputs today, we at least give the next generation of parents, teachers and employers a chance to do better than we could possibly have done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra The thing described in the article is what I would call "pull meritocracy". You have a pool of candidates and you pull well-educated, predictable, safe ones from there. Leaving behind both privileged but not able and able but not predictable people.

The ideal would be "push meritocracy", where able people push themself into the system and are able to reach their potential by exercising their ability. There are also multiple ways to do it (starting up, corporate/government ladder, non-commercial projects) so they don't get derailed over some personality quirk.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think you should turn up the contrast on your blog a little. This isn't very readable: <http://goput.it/kag.png> Edit: It's fixed, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER27> The essay hits on the right notion but I think needs to be expanded further. Bottom line is that the most important quality of a leader is that people will follow them. While the individual is a significant factor in this, context/circumstance are also important. Often the ideal combination of leadership "merit" might not reside in a person who is of particularly great "merit" outside of a particular leadership role (though it is pretty rare in someone who is absolutely useless outside of the role).

Also note that it is people _will_ follow them; it's about the future and therefore speculative. No amount of examination can confidently predict who will speculatively be best able to lead.

A "meritocracy" therefore is founded on the notion that the intellectual talent and past accomplishments can confidently predict leadership ability for a context that we can't entirely predict... Yeah, when you got that nailed down, let me know. ;-)

At best a "meritocracy" functions by making an educated guess, based on past evidence, who is best able to fulfill a role, regardless of whether that person's currently role is being fulfilled with any degree of merit. In short: it is undeniably imperfect, though one case make a case it does at least as good a job of selecting candidates as any other mechanism... with the possible exception of a democracy (it's kind of hard to beat working off who the electronic says they'll follow). But more than that, it has a problem: people like meritocracies because they feel like whomever is in charge has "earned" the right to be there by virtue of having the best record of _past_ accomplishment... despite the fact that a well functioning meritocracy would select based on the expected record of _future_ accomplishment, not on the record of _past_ accomplishment.

This subtle difference eventually leads to disappointment, disillusionment, and cynicism, which is undermines the integrity of the leadership of an organization, if not the organization as a whole. In short: even assuming you overcame the issues of observability raised by the article, a utopian meritocracy might not be the utopia imagined by its subjects, which can lead to an unstable society...

</comment><comment><USER28> Donald Trump is NOT successful investing in real estate. His projects go bankrupt left and right and his net return overall has been abysmal when compared to others who really _are_ great investors.

Trump is good at two things: image and self-promotion.

</comment><comment><USER29> The article has some good points. However, it loses a lot of credit by waving off Donald Trump's successes as being the result of a monetary investment not accessible to the many. Trump's real success comes from the education available to him via his father and his father's company, also not accessible to the many - but how many children have successful businessmen birthed who never surpassed or even matched their forebears the way Donald Trump did Fred Trump? While he did have an advantage starting out, Trump succeeded on his merits far more than most children of the wealthy and successful do.

<comment><USER30> I think you've totally missed the point of the article. It's not saying Trump is bad at real estate, but rather that there might be a million people who are even more talented at it, but will never discover that fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The "Outliers" argument. The only way for a meritocratic system to work is by creating an absolutely level starting plane for all competitors. Which is in itself somewhat ironic because meritocracy reminds of capitalism (indirectly, I admit) while the level playing field requirement suggests a socialistic-ish system.

</comment><comment><USER32> This situation is very acute in "top tier" firms such as the management consulting big 4. The hiring process is designed to avoid false positives at all costs, even the cost of rejecting extremely good candidates.

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't the universe by default a meritocracy? Millions of years of evolution proves this... And society can either have policies that work against this default meritocracy or with it to speed it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> One humbling thing I try to remember, is that before an asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, mammals were no bigger than a field mouse and our warm-bloodedness was specialized for hunting insects at night. Then this lucky strike caused a huge climate change, and those dinosaurs that hand't evolved warm feathers died off, and we were in the right place at the right time.

The day before the asteroid strike, we had zero merit.

Now, this is a narrative with many factual errors, but I like to remind myself that we happen to have been doing well for the last 100,000 years or so, but it's the blink of an eye and who knows what will happen next?

<comment><USER33> I didn't necessarily mean millions of years of evolution for humans (have we even been around for that long?). I meant evolution (the concept) as evidence that only those who deserve to live, live. Merit is a fundamental rule of the universe and that you _have_ to be meritocratic. Anything but meritocracy is foolish and will ensure your demise and irrelevance. It's not one of many strategies you can use, it's the only strategy. It is a practice fundamental to survival just like breathing or procreating or being fit.

Because it's fundamental, meritocracy should call for both minimizing false positives and negatives, as both work towards increasing survivability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The tl;dr at the bottom is elegant. I might start doing that.

<comment><USER35> In the old days that's what we used to call a summary. If you like that sort of thing and think you might like to do it yourself, reading up on how to write essays and the like will be very informative.

<comment><USER34> I'm not talking about the summary itself, I'm more referring to the way it sits on the page:

"Broadly speaking:" Blockquote Italics Line underneath

The summary is also well written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> After reading the article , uncomfortable thoughts began to float into my consciousness . A sense of unease at having to confront the hypocrite within .

We as a species have progressed so far and have built up such complex societies that life seems far removed the Darwinian struggles of the jungle . Perhaps stemming from an innate sense of fairness or hoping to maximise societal potential we try and impose our own mechanisms on top of this existential struggle . Any measure that is at odds with this underlying abstraction is doomed to fail . So we must try and allocate resources and authority to those who can best use it .

The ideal system would be where no person has any right to complain about his situation as he has been given what he rightly deserved . How deserving he is depends on his merit which actually depends on the resources the very system gave him in the first place . So meritocracy has to go back all the way back to the beginnings of society and maybe even deeper. But people would still be unequal .

In this light Platos solution of the noble lie dosent seem so unfair . From Wikipedia :

 _Plato presented the Noble Lie (gennaion pseudos, γενναῖον ψεῦδος) in a fictional tale, wherein Socrates provides the origin of the three social classes who compose the republic proposed by Plato; Socrates speaks of a socially stratified society, wherein the populace are told "a sort of Phoenician tale":_

 _"The earth, as being their mother, delivered them, and now, as if their land were their mother and their nurse, they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack, and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth. . . While all of you, in the city, are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet god, in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule, mingled gold in their generation, for which reason they are the most precious — but in the helpers, silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And, as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds, it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son, and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire, and that the rest would, in like manner, be born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else are they to be such careful guardians, and so intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out among the artisans or the farmers. And again, if from these there is born a son with unexpected gold or silver in his composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of guardian, some to the assistanceship, alleging that there is an oracle that the city shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian."_

 _The fictional Socrates, created by Plato, proposes and claims that if the people believed "this myth . . . it would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another.This is his noble lie: "a contrivance for one of those falsehoods that come into being in case of need, of which we were just now talking, some noble one. . . ."_

A meritocracy is just a more sophisticated and more fair version of the noble lie where we substitute "merit" instead of a metal without being aware that merit might also be related to being born in a certain class.

Then there is the ascertaining "responsibility" or "credit" . The author seems to be differentiating between the two definitions on the basis of how much credit(right to be smug?) the victors in a meritocracy can take for their sucess. Then we disappear down a philosophical wormhole into the land of determinism , nature vs nurture etc . I try resolve this by consoling myself that maybe this meritocratic victory isnt really a victory . Maybe the theory that some people are higher and up and some people are lower down isnt applicable to ranking human beings . Its like asking whether the lion is the meritocratic victor in the jungle foodchain and the rest of the animals are the losers . Its one giant interdependent chain in which everything has its place .

<comment><USER30> Out of curiosity, why do you put a space before the period at the end of your sentences? It makes them hard to read, and confuses word-wrap.

<comment><USER36> Some habits die hard. I'll avoid it in future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the example about programming languages and speakers can also be extended to gender and race.

</comment><comment><USER38> Meritocracy is a bit childish.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is a strawman argument. Forget about Donald Trump as some model of success. Despite his head start he almost went bankrupt - twice. He is much less respected as a real estate developer in the world of real estate than you think. His success has been in PR and celebrity. There are thousands real estate investors who actually are good at it and started with nothing (e.g. Sam Zell).

Don't like "meritocracy" then how how should we choose our leaders?

<comment><AUTHOR> Who said that I didn't like Meritocracy? I said that when we use the word, we should all be on the same page as to what it actually means.

<comment><USER39> If this was just a post on language I think I totally agree - it is a tricky word to define. And I hope you saw the comment above on the ironic origin of the word.

However I got the impression from several things in your post that you don't like the commonly held ideal of choosing leaders based on merit (i.e. meritocracy):

(1) Donald Trump is somehow an example of it at work (see my comments about him above).

(2) It discriminates against those from disadvantaged backgrounds who likely will accumulate less "merit". BTW - I agree this is a problem with both "meritocracy" and the world generally and should be adressed in various ways.

(3) It somehow implies to "some people" that "none of the people in positions of authority are bozos".

(4) Meritocracy does not "minimizing false negatives".

You seem to be against the ideal not just that particular definition. The only positive thing you say is that it is better than "picking leaders at random or having some dictator appoint his drinking buddies".

Do you like the idea of making choices based on merit? You seem to be both criticizing it as a goal and saying that it is not practical.

I get the sense you would prefer making decisions based on some sense of "justice" rather than "merit".

BTW - Love your many great posts on development. Thanks you very much. I feel awkward debating a hero.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is a post about the word "meritocracy" meaning many things to many people, and not being very useful for certain types of discussion.

If two people understand each other and agree to disagree, fine. But recently, I've seen a lot of online arguments about these kinds of things, where I get the impression that there are two reasonable people talking past each other without really understanding each other.

I think that meritocracy is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of equality of opportunity. Given a pool of candidates, we should pick the best ones (eliminate false positives). AND, we should invest as much as we can reasonably afford to ensure that we get people with good potential into the pool (eliminate false negatives).

My overall view is that we're going to go into a serious economic struggle in the next twenty years, and like any sports team, scouting is as important as coaching :-)

<comment><USER39> Then I think I misunderstood the point your post - I hope you can see how it could happen. And I am probably yet another example of exactly what you were trying to warn against - people on the Internet talking past one another.

I think we actually agree overall. Leaders should be chosen as best we can by merit and we should seek to expand the pool as best we can.

This brings up another idea I wonder about: If choosing leaders is so hard can we somehow reduce our dependence on them? Put another way can we move to a more emergent approach to organizing ourselves rather than depending some "leader" to decide how we should be organized?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As somebody who has pondered this problem over a while. You can give different names to this problem. You could also look at this from a Karma perspective.

You could also question this in very different ways.

I've tried to study this problem in many ways. To an extent I can tell you karma works in very mysterious ways, its slow and there are simply too many factors which are often unknown to us to make a judgement on why a person does or doesn't deserve X in life.

Let me explain with an example. Somebody you know didn't study well in college, he is also not known to be very brilliant either. You are a super genius and you get into Google, he attempts every job interview and fails. But finally makes it to a start up as a very low level employee doing some menial job. You both go on to live life as usual. You assume his career his over. Now something strange happens, in the start up the guy is pushed, is put under tough demanding deadlines. Now the guy who wasn't good with books and exams suddenly discovers despite all that. He has something in himself to 'get things done'. The start up becomes a hit, he climbs the ladder pretty quickly ends up making a lot of money.

You might ponder how this idiot got so successful, though he wasn't good with books and exams. How come he made it that big without knowing even 10% of what you know?

Karma/meritocracy works in its own ways. You don't know how hard the other guy is working, you don't what is valuable to the world or why it is valuable, you don't know how much taking a risk pays off when done properly, you don't know many million things about the other guy to come to any logical conclusion. There are simply too many unknowns to ask 'If it is fair'?

The world is actually fair, in its own way. You simply don't have enough data to decide if the world was fair to somebody or not. Or many times you are jealous or biased or whatever.

Ultimately karma works. It actually does.

<comment><USER41> > Ultimately karma works. It actually does.

What is that, your opinion? What is that based on? Does it apply to the kid who got caught selling pot for the third time, because he didn't know what else to do with his life, because he grew up in a place and a family where no one gave him any other choices, and is now spending the rest of it in prison?

Here's my opinion: Karma works sometimes. And other times people are crushed by the ugliness in this world.

<comment><USER40> Yes its my opinion.

Karma works because people judge what is fair based on their opinion and not on facts, simply because too many facts are unknown to take a decision.

>>And other times people are crushed by the ugliness in this world.

Yes this is true, but if you are going to keep talking why you will fail regardless how hard you work. You will always find enough reasons why you shouldn't try because you will fail anyway. Thereby you will never try, somebody else sure will. And by the virtue of merely being there will win. And then thereby simply going into this deeper cycle of victim hood.</comment></comment></comment>


The Day the C++ Standard Library Died - <AUTHOR> https://cor3ntin.github.io/posts/abi/ <comment><USER2> Lotta doom and gloom, but nothing to it, really.

A lot of people think that names of existing library stuff are magical. Any better stuff _has to_ have the same names as the old stuff, so we _have to_ break ABI so new better stuff can keep all the same names.

But the names we have are not magical. New stuff can have new names (or same names, in a new namespace). Then the old names won't be _magical_ anymore, they'll just be _old_. We've seen it already, with old (monadic) lock_guard and new (variadic) scoped_lock. Agonized hand-wringing, and then, in the end, just no big deal.

We might also end up with a second build target for our favored OSes, on top of the i32 and x64 ones we have now, to get an option for better performance and some new runtime choices. It will probably happen first in embedded ARM, with several choices competing, and then one of them could take hold in more mainstream environments. Again, no big deal.

Don't get involved in the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, and you will hardly notice it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It'd take an ABI break to implement, but wouldn't using inline namespaces under std mean backward compatiblity is possible in the future? You could have std::cpp20::string, for example, which is in an inline namespace std::cpp20. The older versions could be in std::cpp17 etc. In fact, this could be done without an ABI break if new versions of symbols are in sub-namespaces from the get-go, and the versions in std:: are deprecated, I.e std::containers::map vs std::map

<comment><USER4> Overload-set nightmare to add new names for everything.

<comment><USER3> That's sorta the price to pay for having multiple versions of symbols. I'd take having overloads where needed for older ABI versions over linker errors. Also, I imagine you wouldn't necessarily need overloads for all versions unless there were API differences or you explicitly needed to support multiple ABIs. Most of the time you could probably just use the name without qualifying the inline namespace. Conversions in the library could also help, especially if the compiler can see through them to optimize them away/do them at compile- time. The main issue I can see is header files actually, since even if your library was built using the std::v2::blah types, anyone that includes the header referring to std::blah could potentially get a different version. Modules do solve this, though, as long as your module interface is built as the same version of the library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can think of some automated fixes to the ABI problem. I'm sure others can too and also why they'd be rejected.

Personally I'm surprised people are so scared of ABI breakages when the author correctly points out most code relying on stable ABIs when the language does not guarantee one is probably faulty. I guess the lesson here is not to ever buy into a dependency without getting a license to the source to recompile it in the future.

But I get it. There's way too many shared libraries that link against libc++.so out there that will never be recompiled and the source is unavailable. The fixes are probably going to be ugly and have some cost.

</comment><comment><USER6> This may be a naive question from someone outside of the ecosystem, but what is the purpose of ABI compatibility for an open-source library? Why not recompile the standard lib as a part of your own binary? Is it shipped by the OS as a DLL for sharing purposes?

<comment><USER3> That's pretty much the issue; linking against libraries you can't/don't want to rebuild that may have been built with different versions of those symbols. The standard library is shipped as a DLL/shared object on pretty much every OS.</comment></comment>


Firefox will support H264 and MP3 decoding with OS codecs - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/fb14de8b9ad84e15#

<comment><USER3> From the article:

"There is really no justification to stop our users from using system decoders already on the device"

Mozilla just spent two years telling everyone that they were not going to do this, and posting justifications as for why not. To me this is a serious blow to their credibility.

Examples:

[http://robert.ocallahan.org/2009/06/directshow-and- platform-...](http://robert.ocallahan.org/2009/06/directshow-and-platform- media_23.html)

[http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/01/video-freedom-and- mozill...](http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/01/video-freedom-and- mozilla_23.html) ("Mozilla should pick up and use H.264 codecs that are already installed on the user's system.")

<comment><AUTHOR> _Mozilla just spent two years telling everyone that they were not going to do this, and posting justifications as for why not. To me this is a serious blow to their credibility._

They fought 2 years for getting patent-free video recognized, probably at the cost of some of their userbase, and a lot of anger from web-developers who saw their lives complicated.

Today, they seem to be reconsidering their position because they think it's a lost fight.

How is this a blow to their credibility? What should they have done? Instantly bend over next time? Stubbornly refuse to reconsider and lose the best hope for a truly free phone OS because nobody would want to use it?

If you lose a war, it's never pretty. Kudos to Mozilla for taking a hard stance against patented standards for as long as they could. They deserve credit for that.

<comment><USER3> > How is this a blow to their credibility?

Because he's not saying "we tried, but it didn't work out in the end". He's saying there is no justification not to use available platform decoders. Yet they were not shy to provide them in the past. He's not addressing why those are no longer relevant arguments.

Obviously the real reason they're doing this now is because on their new mobile platform, the Gecko runtime is all there is, and without it supporting H.264 playback, the platform would be considered incomplete at launch more so than their desktop browser is for not supporting it. I get the motivation. I'm not saying it's wrong - I don't agree with it, but that's not the point here. The point is how bad it makes Mozilla look to change their stance so willy- nilly.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Yet they were not shy to provide them in the past._

The reasons are still there - it's even pointed out in the parent discussion that they're still a problem on Windows. One main difference is that Windows 7 is an order of magnitude more widespread now than it was 2 years ago - <USER2> those posts you refer to were written.

And as you already admitted - they're doing this on mobile first. There's no guarantee yet it turns out to be actually feasible on desktop _if those same arguments can't be properly addressed_.

<comment><USER3> But the Windows problems aren't the only justifications they published back then. In the second linked post O'Callahan writes:

"It pushes the software freedom issues from the browser (where we have leverage to possibly change the codec situation) to the platform (where there is no such leverage). You still can't have a completely free software Web client stack."

Given that it strikes me as ironic that Mozilla is now building a platform - i.e. a platform where they definitely have leverage - that is going to support H.264.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're giving the mostly-dead WebM the coup de grace in order to give the newborn B2G a chance to succeed.

That isn't irony. It's at worst pragmatism, and at best not being stupid to continue a lost fight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No. There is no plan to support H264.

Seriously - there is not decision been taken here. This is just a discussion about gecko on Android, and the implication for Desktop.

Saying "Firefox will support H264 and MP3 decoding with OS codecs" is just speculation.

Edit: to be clear: I am saying that there's no plan to support H264 on _Firefox Desktop_.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Saying "Firefox will support H264 and MP3 decoding with OS codecs" is just speculation._

Quoting directly from the link:

 _Initially this will be enabled on Gonk (B2G). In a few weeks we will add support for Android as well. We will support encoding any video/audio format that is supported by existing decoders present on the system, including H.264 and MP3._

Of course it's possible that the bug doesn't land. But calling this speculation? Please.

<comment><USER4> I was talking about Firefox Desktop.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be an interesting position for Mozilla to take, to capitulate on this issue on Mozilla's very own platform (B2G) and the fastest growing mobile platform Mozilla is currently active on (Android), yet not do so on the platform where the largest current userbase lies.

I do not see what benefits it could have.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Kinda of an uncomfortable position here. Let's see how this evolves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So they're now just using OS codecs which is exactly what they refused to do when they made a big fuss about H264 patents a while back?

<comment><AUTHOR> To me this looks like a capitulation, probably brought on by the following factors:

* Chrome was supposed to drop H264 support a >1 year ago in favor of WebM. It never happened.

* The spread of H264 video wasn't slowed down by Mozilla's stance.

* Firefox users were effectively forced to install Flash (a far more closed solution) to view videos.

* The split in HTML5 video support (Firefox and Opera being the lone holdouts with no H264 support) weakened HTML5 compared to alternatives.

* Flash is going away on Mobile devices, which mean that Firefox Mobile users had no way to view videos. This is why it's going into B2G + Android first.

<comment><USER6> You don't remember what the original argumentation was. Firefox is free, Mozilla can't afford the patent licensing, that's all. If you own a h.264 license and want to use it with your software, feel free. By buying a phone or windows 7 you get the license to use a h.264 codec. Microsoft already brought support to Firefox ( [http://www.osnews.com/story/24137/Microsoft_Brings_H264_to_F...](http://www.osnews.com/story/24137/Microsoft_Brings_H264_to_Firefox_on_Windows_7) ), now it's happening on Android. It's one thing to promote open standards - that's great and Firefox is doing that with WebM - but it's another thing to completely disregard existing capabilities and put the user back in the stone age of the internet.

<comment><USER7> > You don't remember what the original argumentation was. Firefox is free, > Mozilla can't afford the patent licensing, that's all.

IIRC, there were other reasons not to support using the OS codecs. H264 license fees are not an issue when you just use the codecs the OS provides, as they are already covered by the OS or codec vendor. With all the Google millions that Firefox gets each year, the license fee should not really be a problem anyway.

What I understand from it, is that it would take a lot of effort to use system codecs for different video formats, while still providing the complete set of HTML5 video functions for every format.

I never really bought this argument since IE, Safari and Chrome appear to handle this just fine, if you have Perian installed for example, you can even play HTML5 WebM directly from Safari. So I think we can safely conclude there were no other arguments for Mozilla's decision not to support H264 through system codecs, besides ideological ones.

Personally, I think this is great news. Everyone should just stop complaining about the supposed H264 patent issues, standardize on it, and move on. The patents have never been a problem and they never will, you only need to pay license fees if you make money off of H264, in which case you should just pay up, technology like this doesn't fall from trees. The moment WebM/VP8 would gain any traction at all on the internet, it would prove to be a patent minefield just like H264, as you simply cannot make a modern video codec without violating any patents these days.

<comment><USER8> Even if you accept the MPEG-LA's assurances that there are no practical issues with H.264 decoders (and it is worth noting that the terms for decoders almost certainly wouldn't be as generous as they currently are without the pressure created by WebM), that was never the fundamental problem.

The real issue with the H.264 patents and why it is anathema to any libre ecosystem is the impact of the H.264 patents on video creation, encoding and distribution. Here's a thorough discussion of the issues (created by someone who actually took a substantial amount of time to talk to a representative of the MPEG-LA for clarification):

[http://www.librevideo.org/blog/2010/06/14/mpeg-la-answers- so...](http://www.librevideo.org/blog/2010/06/14/mpeg-la-answers-some- questions-about-avch-264-licensing/)

To me, this is a key conclusion:

"Related to point #2, it may not be possible to release an H.264-encoded video under, for example, a Creative Commons license that allows commercial usage. More precisely, should you release your H.264-encoded content under such a license, it would not be legally usable under such a license. This cuts out a large portion of options related to how you may share your creative content."

I find the idea that we should standardize on a video codec with that sort of usage restriction completely incomprehensible. I just do not understand how people can accept a data format whose licensing doesn't just constrain people who produce encoders, decoders and other related tools and technology, but also constrains end users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to be clear - this is on Android, at least to start with. Whether it gets opened up to work with Windows later is an open question.

</comment><comment><USER10> This will surely help MPEG LA make their encumbered codec a standard for publishing video on the web. I would rather use a browser that does not support non-free codecs.

<comment><USER11> Is there a remotely modern video codec that isn't encumbered? Just because it is offered up as free software or open source doesn't mean that someone else's patent doesn't already cover it.

I have no faith that WebM is non-encumbered. The real issue is our patent system, not codecs.

<comment><USER10> The patent system is so that almost every non-trivial software can be considered encumbered. Yet the chances of being sued successfully are different. Why will MPEG LA need to push their codec if they could profit from selling patent licenses to WebM users?

I suspect that the real motivation of the H.264 supporters is that the patent encumbered codec will allow content providers and proprietary software vendors to control who is allowed to produce video playback software (at least, they could make it impossible for free software to support the codec), and impose mandatory content protection. That will make the content industry giants closer to their ultimate goal of eliminating all the culture they do not control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If they're going to do this, they should still not support AAC in html5 audio tags, even if they support it in video tags when bundled with H.264.

With MP3 and Vorbis (with Opus a potential new entrant) you already have wide compatibility (everyone that supports AAC supports mp3 too) and top quality covered and mp3 patents expire a lot sooner than AAC. Ubuntu also has a free (as in beer) mp3 decoder available.

I'm all for pragmatism, but there's still utility and principle in avoiding unnecessary reliance on patented codecs where possible.

</comment><comment><USER13> > For the desktop, this could be problematic. While Windows 7 does provide > access to an already installed and licensed h.264 codec, Windows XP does > not. If we simply enable system codecs where available, how will Web > developers know when they can and cannot count on system codecs?

Isn't the whole point of the <source> tag to solve this very issue?

<comment><USER8> <source> lets you serve different formats of the same audio/video object to accommodate the different formats your users may need. However, <source> doesn't do anything to help you figure out which formats you need to serve to cover your user base, which is the problem being referenced here, I believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory (only) this doesn't help web designers much, as they still need to keep supporting the same formats.

In practice, web designers already seem to use H264 exclusively, so at the very least Firefox users won't have to install Flash to see videos.

<comment><USER8> Ironically, I've been pretty happy that Firefox on Android has been raising a video-viewing Intent, since I like the option to use one of my locally- installed video players. I hope they'll keep an option to do that even after they've integrated support for system codecs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how hostile people will be once the H.264 patents expire. (Remember GIF hate?) It will happen within most of our lifetimes.

<comment><USER15> They won't all expire until around the end of 2017, according to this: <http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/>

<comment><USER16> wait, did the grandparent originally say something about MP3?

h264's last patent will expire in november 2027 (or september 2028, but I think there's some technicality that makes that one not count) according to [http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_pat...](http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_patents)

That's a really long time from now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 2 years ago, while working at a SoC vendor, they were explicitely taking into account WebM support for their next generations of chips: not having hardware decoding for a major web codec would be a great failure: with Google + Mozilla + Opera we could see almost 1 billion users affected by this. This is a make or break to have design wins.

A SoC lifecycle can take 5 years to materialize in customer shipping hardware. Yet Mozilla is giving up before collecting the fruit of their previous policy (no system codec).

That's a shame.

<comment><AUTHOR> What good is WebM support in the SoC, or what effect does it have, if there is zero content out there using it anyway? If WebM video would be popular by _any_ measure, this wouldn't have happened.

Note that there _are_ SoC already out there that support VP8/WebM. As far as I know Tegra 2 is one of them. What does it change? Nothing. All those chips support H264 as well. So H264 is what content producers use.

<comment><USER17> There _is_ content. Youtube has started pushing html5+webm videos to modern webrowsers without flash installed. This includes Android 4.0+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lovely way to admit being wrong while still remaining slightly user-hostile.

<comment><USER19> Wrong in what?

<comment><USER20> Wrong about thinking they could do the right thing and get away with it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stratego > So true :)</comment>


TJ Rodgers - High Technology Innovation: Free Markets or Government Subsidies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cypress.com/?rID=34993

<comment><AUTHOR> I was re-reading PG's Five Founders (<http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html>) and noticed that the TJ Rodgers link was stale. In any case, it might be good to have a new discussion about the man since there are many newbies.</comment>


Firefox Developer Edition 38: 64-bits and more - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/03/firefox-developer-edition-38-64-bits-and-more/ <comment><USER2> From the changelog:

> _autocomplete=off is no longer supported for username /password fields_

As far as I can recall, autocomplete=off was originally added specifically for username and password fields, so somebody who nicked your laptop couldn't go to your bank's website and have your username and password filled in.

As a power user I find autocomplete=off pretty annoying, but I've got ways to work around it. I'm very curious what the rationale for this change is.

<comment><USER3> Lots of great discussion in the bug:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=956906](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=956906)

<comment><USER4> quote near end for the many people who won't read the thread:

        - This change makes it so that `autocomplete=off` does not stop the Password Manager from working. Normal form autofill can be disabled as usual.
        - The password manager *always* prompts if it wants to save a password. Passwords are not saved without permission from the user.
        - We are the third browser to implement this change, after IE and Chrome.

More clarification: password type input elements already never autofill/autocomplete like other input elements do. autocomplete=off on password type input elements just makes password managers not work (until this change). Other input elements still honor autocomplete=off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 64-bit Windows builds, finally! This is great news. The rate of (virtual) OOM crashes on Windows is pretty high because a 32-bit address space just isn't enough for many workloads these days, and 64-bit builds solves that problem definitely.

<comment><USER6> What? You are using more than 3.5GB of memory for your browser? I consider myself a heavy user with 20-30 tabs open at any one time. I used to have a 2GB memory usage with Adblock Plus and since switching to uBlock it averages 0.6GB of RAM.

64bit will open more address space but it has proven in the past to slow the browser down, the wider memory pointer size has a detrimental effect, Waterfox is Firefox recompiled as 64bit and other compiler optimisations: [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2185649/applications/fas...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2185649/applications/fast- firefox-faceoff--nightly-vs--pale-moon-vs--waterfox.html)

Not everything should be 64bit.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I regularly hit 3gb+ even with uBlock. Counting, I have about 30 loaded tabs right now (it's usually more like 100+ when I'm in the middle of doing something), a few hundred unloaded, and 1800 MB RAM used. The tabs tend to pile up when the browser eventually crashes...

This is with tree style tabs, which makes browsing so much more efficient for me that Firefox is the only viable option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is much needed for us at [http://Clara.io](http://Clara.io). We have for the last 8 months been detecting when users who are using 32 bit desktop browsers and have been putting up in-app warnings directing people to upgrade to 64 bit versions.

Our forum post about the issue:

[http://forum.clara.io/t/information-on-64-bit-web- browsers/9...](http://forum.clara.io/t/information-on-64-bit-web-browsers/979)

<comment><USER9> Do you have any stats on people who went away and installed a 64 bit browser? clara.io's audience would be highly technical but I don't think you'd get away with asking many people to install a new browser these days.

<comment><USER8> We don't force them. We just recommend it for best experiences. It really does make a difference.

We have google analytics but I am unsure if it tracks this automatically. We do not manually track it I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nifty, but unfortunately we're still kinda limited to 32-bit addressing in typed arrays. It'd be nice if JS had an actual integer type that went up to 64 bits.

<comment><USER11> 32-bit is enough for a 4GB typed array, which doesn't seem too bad. I imagine eventually it will be limiting, but not in the near future.

<comment><USER12> 32-bits should be enough for everyone!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself ;) (and I know your "not in the near future" makes the comparison incorrect anyhow)

<comment><USER13> Thing is it's easy to need more than XX bits of stuff _total_ , it's a lot rarer to want that in a single array in a high level language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 64-bit Windows builds of Firefox have been available for quite a while from the Waterfox Project:

[https://www.waterfoxproject.org](https://www.waterfoxproject.org)

<comment><USER15> On the same note, it's worth mentioning Palemoon: [http://www.palemoon.org/](http://www.palemoon.org/)

<comment><USER16> No one should use Pale moon, its just a fork of an older Firefox build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mikko-apo Chrome displays if the browser is 64bit in its about box, but for Firefox that information is a bit harder to find out.

It's in about:buildconfig

</comment><comment><USER17> From the comments, if you've got the 32bit version installed and want to install the 64bit version (basically, it's not an update from one to the other):

– Uninstall Win32 – Don't remove your profile – Install Win64 (it's a full installer vs. a update)

</comment><comment><USER18> I just want a browser that runs on Android with developer tools built in.

</comment><comment><USER19> Been using 64 bit Nightly builds (from Mozilla) for years. Not sure why this is news.

<comment><USER20> Win64 builds have not been available in channels beyond Nightly until now. That's why it is news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _If you haven't downloaded the Developer Edition browser yet, it's a fine time to give it a try. Here's why:_

Aha, so where can I try that Unreal Engine 4 demo myself?

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, that is pretty cool. At what point is a browser indistinguishable from an emulated virtual computer?

<comment><USER23> I'm still rather incredulous about the whole idea. I think to myself, if this is the best way to do things, we must be missing something.

Though, I can't put my finger on why JVM seems reasonable while BrowserVM doesn't.

<comment><USER24> I think it's a matter of design. The Smalltalk integrated environment feels completely right and was designed wonderfully with that intent in mind.

The JVM, likewise, has had a consistent and clear scope throughout.

Browsers are still not fully scoped out. From year to year, it varies what webapps can do and what the norm is. Furthermore, it was not originally designed with this usecase in mind. All those contribute to it feeling a lot more awkward for this purpose than other, better designed, solutions.

Also, JVM/Pharo have significantly smaller scopes which helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> BTW, fixing open source JITs to support Windows x64 SEH properly is on my wishlist for MS Open Tech.

</comment><comment><USER26> Was Firefox for Linux x64?

<comment><USER27> Firefox has been available both as 32-bit and 64-bit on Linux for a long time.

Quoting myself ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629233)):

\----

From what I have read, for software which wasn't originally developed for Windows, especially if the code base is old enough, porting to 64-bit is harder on Windows than on other systems.

The problem is that, while the Unix-based world went the LP64 way (int is 32-bit, long and pointers are 64-bit), Windows went the LLP64 way (int and long are 32-bit, pointers are 64-bit). A lot of Unix programmers tended to behave as if "long" was the largest native type ("long long" on 32-bit uses a pair of registers). They have to scrub their whole code base for things like assuming an object's size or array index will always fit on a "long".

\----

For Firefox, there's the additional problem of plugins. For a long time, plugins on Windows have been 32-bit, and also for a long time, plugins for Firefox on Windows (and other operating systems) were in-process, so it wasn't possible to use a 32-bit plugin with a 64-bit browser.

Nowadays, not only can Firefox use a separate process for plugins, but also the whole idea of browser plugins seems to be dying, so it's less of a problem.

<comment><USER28> the whole LP64 vs LLP64 'issue' is a massive red herring.

even in the most despicable code bases this is relatively quick and easy to 'fix', its just one of those things that on the face of it looks like a lot of work, and is genuinely a brainless chore of find and replace with care.

its worth doing right anyway for plenty of reasons beyond portability, like readability and maintainability.

using long on its own imo is a code smell. except for android (and maybe linux, i can't remember otoh) long long is 64-bit and int is 32. but more generally you can macro it away or use some standard size type header and do the replacements to fix it.

the real problems i've seen with 64-bit portability are from bad serialisation code, where struct padding breaks things, and hacks that rely on pointer casts to ints etc. those are less easy because you can't find/replace them and so it requires thought, not just care, to remove those issues safely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now, there's no limit to how much memory the browser can consume.

I hope this doesn't turn into a license to bloat.

</comment><comment><USER30> 2 years 3 mons 11 days

[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/22/mozilla-quietly- kills-...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/22/mozilla-quietly-kills- firefox-64-bit-for-windows-despite-an-alleged-50-of-testers-using-it/)

<comment><USER13> [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/12/22/mozilla-backpedals- on-...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/12/22/mozilla-backpedals-on- firefox-64-bit-for-windows-will-keep-nightly-builds-coming-after-all/)

Didn't happen. And support and stability has been growing.</comment></comment>


Solid in Java: Liskov Substitution Principle - <AUTHOR> https://puradawid.pro/java/solid-in-test-automation-liskov-substiitution-principle.html <comment><USER2> Around 2013 I wasted a whole year trying to understand OOP. C2Wiki anyone? OOP multiplies delivery times by 50 with pointless data bureaucracy and people wonder why 80% of programming projects are never delivered.

If you are forced to use OOP, just use one method for every class. This is the function object pattern and you get Liskov Substitution and all the great SOLID principles for free.

Dependency injection? How about using the service locator.

I think objects make sense as data containers, where data is centralized within the app and you just have all the data access methods in one place but for everyday design ... it's the wrong abstraction. A majority of daily code deals with data transformations and workflows and functions are the best fit for that.

<comment><USER3> > A majority of daily code deals with data transformations

I think you confuse _your_ job with what everyone else does.

Do some people mostly work with data transformations? yes they do.

But do some people mostly work with system programming? yes they do.

But do some people mostly work with creating user interfaces? yes they do.

But do some people mostly work with network programming? yes they do.

<comment><USER2> "Object Oriented design is the Roman Numerals of Computing" \- Rob Pike

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well it would have been nice if he stated his interpretation of the Liskov Substitution Principle. The way i understood it best was here [1].

A subclass should behave in a way that it never cause problems when it is used instead of the base class.

In concrete terms:

* No new exceptions are allowed to be thrown, unless they are subtypes of the exception thrown by the base class

* Preconditions cannot be strengthend by the subtype

* Postconditions cannot be weakened by the subtype

For me it is really the focus of using inheritance only if you want substitutability. Otherwise go with composition.

=== [1] [https://youtu.be/8ZJ8BVlDIQ4?t=1762](https://youtu.be/8ZJ8BVlDIQ4?t=1762)

</comment><comment><USER5> I explained Liskov substitution like this:

Nicholas Cage is an actor, Tom Hanks is an actor however you can't substitute a Nic Cage performance for a Tom Hanks performance. Therefore Nic Cage is a Liskov Substitution Violation.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do with the latest.dev domain? - <AUTHOR> I bought latest.dev last year. What do you think I should do with it? (I'm going about this Vidalya Onions style.)
My general idea is to consolidate the places you need to go to find the latest dev-related things, whether that's third party API changes, package updates, language updates, etc. It could be also salaries in your area, job postings, etc. But I don't know exactly what to do or where to start, and I figured I might get some good feedback from HN readers on what they would expect/hope to find from that domain, as well as what pains you experience trying to "keep up" with the latest.
Also, I'm a web dev so things are frequently changing in my field, curious if the need is felt beyond that. <comment> another-dave Somewhere to find the latest "best practice" way of doing things (obviously need some way to sort subjectivity there though!)

For example, looking at Android there are a load of blog posts, docs and libraries but lots are irrelevant now if coming at it fresh in 2020 — it's hard to tell which are obsolete unless you've got all the historic background though.

Was thinking something à la Stack Overflow / Reddit voting might be enough to keep the best practices fresh. It's the type of thing you'd think they _could_ cover but would likely get closed as "resource requests" there unfortunately.

Feels like a missing piece of the puzzle for me in modern web-dev, especially when moving between fields.

(EDIT: typos / formatting / clarity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting -- your comment makes me realize "latest" has many different meanings. "Latest best practice" has a different time scale than, say, "latest Tweet" \-- it could be as of 2015 this is the best way to do this, and it still is.

I agree with the help this would offer changing in changing contexts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> A "twitter-like" platform, where projects (individuals, and/or companies) can announce/share their latest projects, features, releases, without the whole twitter bullshit.

As a user, I can follow news related to projects/other users.

As a project owner, I can build a following.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that sounds like a good and useful idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could just feature "latest" products from aws, azure, gcloud, ibm, paperspace, linode, alibaba and other cloud saas and isv's

They change so fast with new offerings all the time. Would be nice to have one central clearinghouse. Minimal interface, sans javascript and marketing cruft

Best of luck ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree this would be helpful, particularly the minimal interface. Do you think it would be best to have the companies provide the info directly, or to have a community source the info, or to do it internally?

<comment><USER5> I really like this idea, would be cool if there were also examples and maybe implementations and awesome lists to tie into different ones...like for instance Rekog listing could have api's, sdk's, etc and other resources to use just that type... EBS could have tutorials, code snippets etc maybe on using terraform/etc --bonus points if people could create some sort of 'cart' of services they need, and see price estimates for different tiers so they could also price which cloud service is going to be cheaper for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe something rss driven?

Given Name it basically has to be live and rss seems like best fit

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see what you're saying, there seems to be some debate about whether RSS is alive or dead, though. Even if it is, your point that RSS seems like a good fit means just finding a good fit in what the existing options are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Make it display the name of the latest JavaScript framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha valuable in and of itself! It will need to be a socket connection for real-time updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You could create some kind of news blog and include the "latest" from 10 years ago, so we can also think which ones got traction...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not what I was expecting, but this would be interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A show-case for little-known or new open-source projects that gives them a little attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting -- I was thinking of the big name projects that a lot of people use, but this would be helpful too. Thanks for your perspective.</comment></comment>


Zipper merging may be frustrating, but it works - <AUTHOR> http://driving.ca/auto-news/news/zipper-merging-may-be-frustrating-but-it-works <comment><USER2> I would say that this should be taught in driver education courses, but seeing as Maryland has removed even parallel parking from their test I have very little hope left.</comment>