Network handover in Google Fi - <AUTHOR> http://nicholasarmstrong.com/2015/08/network-handover-google-fi/ <comment><USER2> "but that doesn't change the fact that Google has produced a service that works, is easy to use, switches quickly between networks,"

I've had what can only be described as a hellish experience with Google's Fi service since I got it. My bugs include but are not limited to:

\- SIM cards randomly not being associate with both networks, the fix for which is clearing the Fi app data, restarting the phone, and then re-running the app. With wifi, which is tricky when your car breaks down on highway 1.

\- Interment and VERY poor data performance, but no interruption in voice service.

\- Data service working fine, but all incoming and outgoing calls failing.

In the support category, Project Fi has also been a nightmare. None of the support staff know what to do when you encounter a problem. They don't know why my account (or my friend's account) are broken. They've suggested (just to me) and had me do the following things:

\- Reboot the phone.

\- Reseat the sim card while the phone is on.

\- Factory reset the phone

\- Factory reset the phone again without the sim card in.

\- Buy a new SIM card. They gave me free shipping, at least?

\- Flash the phone to a version of Shamu that is not compatible with other carriers.

\- Remove all other user accounts from the phone.

I've been repeatedly asking to cancel my service and get my number ported back to google voice, and I've actually had service reps ignore me claiming they want to explain "[their] side of the story." I have a chat transcript explaining that.

And of course, let's not forget the weird callback system bugs. Like last night 4 hours after I scheduled a call they called me 2 times at 1am, and when I asked them not to call me I was told, "If you don't want us calling then don't schedule a service call!" When I said I didn't, they said, "Well that's odd because I see it right here" then hung up on me.

I still have not successfully cancelled my Fi service. The web form version 500s.

I do not think it is very easy to use, or ready. It seems pretty terrible to me.

<comment><USER3> This does not match my experience. I've had Fi for a few months now and I have 0 complaints. I'm in NYC and switched from AT&T, but even when visiting New Hampshire I haven't been affected by dropped calls or bad service.

<comment><USER2> Did you have a pre-existing device, or did you buy a new one.

Most people I've talked to with pre-existing devices have had varying degrees of problems.

<comment><USER3> Yea I bought a Nexus 6 when I signed up. I thought that was the only supported device though.

edit: I also had no previous Google Voice account to transfer FWIW

<comment><USER2> I have no doubts that if you greenfield it, Google has that flow tested.

Many of us had pre-existing 6's and I think most people with troubles are there. Be thankful you haven't had to interact with support. Individually they're all nice and want to help, but collectively they have no agency and minimal education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When Fi was announced they mentioned that public wifi traffic would go through a VPN to google's datacenters. At the time I assumed that they'd just run ALL traffic through the VPN, since that'd make for some very seamless switching. As bad as that would be from a privacy perspective, I trust Google more than T-Mobile or Sprint.

By running everything through the VPN, you'd be able to have TCP connections that didn't break when the network switched, since your device's public IP address would be in a datacenter somewhere.

Also with a VPN you'd be able to send voice traffic over both a carrier connection and the wifi connection at the same time to avoid dropouts.

There is something similar called Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) which uses latency to decide which TCP path to send traffic over.

<comment><USER5> > Also with a VPN you'd be able to send voice traffic over both a carrier > connection and the wifi connection at the same time to avoid dropouts.

Does this double the bandwidth you're using when MPTCP is in effect?

<comment><USER6> It would obviously send the data out twice; but once would be over the cell network and the other time over WiFi. Doing so would also help with the far more common Cell<>WiFi transition cases. However as the phone still only has once Cell radio set it would not help with transition between communication bands or carriers.

Since the accounting that actually matters (to Google) is at the data center and based on the way that peering agreements work, I suspect Google would actually find /incoming/ data to be either unimportant or even a benefit to their overall cost operations based on bringing their usage closer to equal. The consumer would only normally care about the cell min used; unless their local ISPs have zero competition (see 90%+ of America).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub "Given that two different profiles exist on the Fi SIM, the Fi software must have the capability to switch between them. SIM cards are actually little computers, so by developing an application that runs on the SIM card Google could trigger a switch based on any of the information the SIM has access to – the network it is registered on, the receipt of a trigger SMS, or something else.

My guess is that the SIM card contains a small application that can activate a specific profile in response to a command from the Fi software. This profile then remains active until another such command is received. Logically, this makes sense – the algorithms Google will want to use as part of the system are much easier coded as part of an app that can be updated through the Play Store and access any number of data sources; once it decides, it simply instructs the SIM to activate the desired profile."

More likely is that the SIM card just holds a few different profiles and custom software that runs on the baseband processor watches the strength of both networks and sends out of band messages back home to tell recycled Google Voice infrastructure how to find the subscriber. The switchover times you report are consistent with Google's VoIP infrastructure holding a call and silently dialing/connecting it on the other network.

It would be interesting to see if voice handoffs still worked if IP networking was unavailable on the phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> The counterargument to an all-software solution is that if you switch the profile on the Fi phone, it also remains switched if you move the SIM to another device. So however selection was made, it is 'sticky' across devices.

That's why I guessed it was a paired SIM app + intelligent Android app - but I couldn't verify that, so you could be correct.

<comment> a-dub Usually radio stuff happens on a dedicated processor which has limited communication with the application processor that runs Linux/Android/Java/Userland. (think like a modem, in some cases they are literally controlled with serial links and AT like text commands).

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

I believe that profile swaps would be sticky, but actual processing on the SIM is going to be extremely limited and active management of the radios most likely will take place in baseband firmware.

Android talks its baseband processors by interfacing with a daemon called rild (Radio Interface Layer (Library?) daemon) which loads a binary blob library which actually does the talking to the baseband chip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting. This contradicts how Google advertises the service though. They say the transition is seamless. Unless they are playing fast and loose with the definition of seamless, this does not seem to qualify.

According to their website it is expecting signals to slowly get worse and have time to start transitioning before it drops out. A sudden loss of wifi for whatever reason probably confuses it. I would expect walking down the street away from your wifi would cause a smoother tansition.

I also expect those dialer codes are not meant for use during a call, and that is why a transition is queued up.

Have you tried driving from a Sprint deadzone, where you are on TMobile, to a TMobile deadzone where you would have to transition to Sprint? This would show if it can actually transition between the two during a call. Which others seem to say works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Driving between dead zones of opposite carriers is surprisingly difficult to do - would have been a great test, though!

I did test walking down the street away from Wi-Fi - the transition is much smoother, but I was only able to get it down to about 2 seconds or so. And that was when I turned around and ran back toward Wi-Fi when it started to switch, so that the call remained good on Wi-Fi until it actually cut over.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, finding the right dead zones would be pretty hard. Especially if you are somewhere with relatively good signal. Would be a very interested in the results.

Disappointed with that 2 seconds though. I was really hoping for smoother. Though I guess that is why they are still invite only. They are still working on the technology. I was leaning towards getting Fi when the new Nexus comes out, but this makes me think it might not be ready yet.

Thanks for all the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://republicwireless.com](https://republicwireless.com) provides seamless wifi->cell and cell->wifi handover of calls.

<comment><USER9> There is a connection between Google (or is it Alphabet) and Bandwidth.com (the Republic Wireless parent company) that I can't quite figure out. Google Voice is mostly based on Bandwidth.com technology, and Republic Wireless and Google Fi are very similar products. Republic Wireless even claims they are about to release a dual-carrier option like Project Fi which they call Tempo.

It is possible that they are just competing, but it seems like there is more of a link there.

<comment><USER10> Republic Wireless is sticking to Motorola phones, there is that connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure the testing methodology in this article is flawed. Using the manual switching codes (which are NOT recommended by Google) shouldn't be used to evaluate the vast majority of situations. For instance, doing timing on a manual network switch isn't necessarily equivalent to the phone automatically switching. Also, doing a manual switch and then extrapolating that the phone doesn't automatically switch back is not valid.

Basically, you can't test any of the automated functionality using manual codes!

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been keeping track of Google Fi since it was released.

I'm hoping the new Nexus 5 (both LG and Huawei versions) is compatible with Google Fi, although I did call the Fi support number (and talked to a real human) and she said they haven't heard anything about support for the Nexus 5.

Here's hoping.

<comment><USER13> Well of course they haven't heard anything about support for an unreleased device that at this point is only rumours and leaks. Did you really think that a company representative would just up and reveal any information (which they probably wouldn't even know until maybe a week before release when they get training on it) in an official capacity like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another interesting future aspect of HetNet technology [http://www.netmanias.com/en/post/blog/7388/kt-korea-lte-h- lt...](http://www.netmanias.com/en/post/blog/7388/kt-korea-lte-h-lte-u- mwc-2015/netmanias-interview-with-kt-at-mwc-2015-kt-s-demonstrations-of-lte-h- and-lte-u)

What GoFi is doing is actually not at all new and has been around a while (the wifi / LTE hand off) the third provider is always been possible with multiple SIMS which has been around for quite a while.

</comment><comment><USER15> T-Mobile does WiFi to GSM handover now. My phone has been doing it for two years. They have to; T-Mobile coverage has so many holes it would be useless otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting; "Data does not handover between networks" seems to contradict other reports I've seen that the data connection seamlessly hands off.

<comment><USER17> He's testing with manual switch codes :)

Expecting the manual switch codes to work exactly the same way as the software is .... strange.

<comment><USER11> Technically UNDOCUMENTED manual switch codes! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised that (it seems) google isn't using Multipath TCP to carry the VPN traffic to google. This would allow it to switch seamlessly between LTE and Wifi and in theory even LTE and LTE while maintaining the VPN connection and thus the call.

In fact, Apple uses this tech for Siri to reduce latency on voice queries.

<comment><AUTHOR> (author here) I didn't have a chance to test how the VPN works, but even if they were using MPTCP the switch wouldn't necessarily be seamless.

Especially how they are using it now - which hands over a Wi-Fi call (which is data) - to a cellular voice call (not data). It's a subtle point, but calls over cellular are not data, so they are not using TCP/UDP/MPTCP/etc.

<comment><USER5> > but calls over cellular are not data

Does this change with VoLTE?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - with VoLTE, calls are also data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you tested HO between Sprint network and WiFi ?

As per our understanding Sprint doesn't have VoLTE network so if Handoff is supported means Project Fi is VoIP.

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember having UMA on a T-Mobile BlackBerry (8800, I think) and the call handoff from WiFi to mobile really was seamless, no gaps at all. This was in 2007, by the way.</comment>


Do we really need another programming language? - <AUTHOR> http://paulbutler.org/archives/do-we-really-need-another-programming-language/

<comment><USER2>
      > ... until programming languages reach the
      > expressiveness of written English, I'll keep
      > welcoming them.

English is so inherently ambiguous that you are really asking about legally expanded, lawyerese, and not English. And that's going to be several times longer than the source code.

I agree there's space for improving languages, I believe Google's new "Go" probably isn't that big a step, but I think asking for the "expressiveness of English" is dangerous nonsense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. You're right; when I did the experiment myself (once with a Haskell program, once with a C++ one), the results definitely looked like lawyerese. Surprisingly, though, they were still shorter than the program. Maybe that just means I'm a bad Haskell/C++ coder, but I don't think that's all of it.

One point that I may not have properly gotten across is that I'm not suggesting that programming languages should approach English in form. I was just trying to establish English as a lower bound for the amount of information required to communicate an idea. (It's not even a lower bound, since English is fairly redundant, but it's an upper bound on the lower bound if you know what I mean)

If I said "until programming languages reach the information density of written English", do you think that would make more sense?

<comment><USER2> I don't have time to write an essay about this now, and I'm not sure I'd be the right person to do so anyway, but here are some thoughts I believe to be relevant.

Real Information Theory, as opposed to Data Transmission Theory, has to take into account the receiver. The transmitter has to have a model of the receiver, and then devise the data that will transform the receiver according to the intent of the transmitter.

For example, if you're a mathematician and I talk about the topological space obtained by gluing the edge of a mobious strip to the edge of a disk being the same topological space obtained by identifying antipodal points of S^2, you'll know what I mean. If not, I have to explain further.

Similarly, a computer program can start with a top level description of your intent, and a competent programmer can then complete the steps.

But a computer is not a programmer. When you describe your algorithm in sufficient detail for a programmer, you haven't given enough information for someone who isn't a programmer. A non-programmer will look at what you've written and then say "How do I do that?" Thus you need further instructions.

So you might say "We sort this vector of numbers by picking one at random, scanning down the vector to separate into those that are smaller, equal and larger, then recurse." and a sufficiently skilled programmer who's never met the Quicksort can now implement it.

But there are details missing.

You programs should (perhaps) be arranged so that the main routine is sufficient for a very skilled programmer to complete. Each routine called then is sufficient for a slightly less skilled programmer to complete, and recurse.

The problem is that the terminating case is the computer, and not a programmer, or even a person. Thus the terminating case is a long way down.

Perhaps there is a language design that will bring the terminating case higher.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, but it seems these are practical limitations, not theoretical ones.

The nice thing about the terminating case being a computer, though, is that it's a moving target (Moore's law, etc.). At the extreme case, a compiler could model every molecule in a human brain and use the simulated intelligence to convert the description into a language that it can compile.

I would be crazy to expect that any time soon, but I think it shows that in theory we can do better than existing programming languages do.

By the way, I re-worded the last sentence to "as long as programming languages are less expressive than written English, I'll keep welcoming them.", because I don't think it's inevitable that programming languages can become as expressive as natural languages. I do think that as long as they aren't, we can do better.

<comment><USER3> In my opinion expressiveness doesn't exist objectively. With that motivation for language design (achieving the expressiveness of English), I'm afraid you're running to a self-centered opinion; it is expressive only for those who have learned it since childs. The hierarchy of programming languages derives from the fact that expanding those languages is a lot of work (reimplementing the parser), in comparison with a natural one (metaphors, or neologisms). That's why, I think, a more general language (LISP, Smalltalk) is better. They don't give you expressiveness, which is only given by semantics, but at least they don't narrow those semantics. In comparison, English is a very ambiguous language which seems more expressive because it's semantics are huge. Which leads to the problem that, even if you built an artificial brain, you'd have to teach that brain ontology. Ultimately, the problem's root is not found within programming languages, but is an inertia to extend those which exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There will always be a need for better programming languages, with the current situation making new languages more important than ever. We have computers we can't completely utilize at the moment and they're becoming more parallelized (and thus more difficult to work with, using current tools) by the second.

Despite the progress that's been made, computing is still a very young field and there's a whole lot of room to grow. We need better languages, better compiler technology, better kernels, better paradigms for handling tasks (processes and threads don't cut it), and above all else, we need new ideas.

If people aren't experimenting with new ideas, we won't move forward. While most of the implementations (literal implementations or specific language designs) will fail, the good ideas will carry on and support the next generation. We should all welcome innovation in this space, even if we don't like what's being created.

<comment><USER5> Yes, we should continue producing programming languages, but the danger with a programming language from Google is that they have such a reputation that other programming languages that might be superior could be overlooked in favor of the trendy option.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to take the optimistic view here. Sure, Google has muscle. But so did IBM, and where is PL/I today?

<comment><USER7> There is a PL/I plug in for eclipse and there are people working on a compiler, I wouldn't count it out just yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Now compare your description to the program's source code. The source code is almost certainly several times longer, less intuitive, and less descriptive._

I tried this with a short Lisp program a few years ago and found it to be false. I may have been too detailed in my descriptions with the English version, but I don't think so. Evolved[0] languages for human communication are notoriously imprecise.

The "plain English" translation of a legal document will be much shorter than the original as well. Such language isn't used in legal documents because lawyers can and will argue over the interpretation. To make programming like everyday English, the runtime would have to sort out the ambiguities. I think that would require human-like AI.

Given human-like AI, much of what we do as programmers could be done by the AI instead. A non-programmer could simply ask the AI to create the program or provide certain kinds of output. Even in a situation like that, I suspect there would still be a demand for human programmers who could more precisely communicate their intentions to computers, if only for the purpose of creating better AIs[1].

[0]That means pretty much any language people actually speak. I'm not sure if it's true for designed languages like Esperanto.

[1]It might be a good idea to restrict AIs from certain kinds of self- modification or from creating new AIs. I think we've all seen that movie.

</comment><comment> st-keller Of course we need a new programming language - but i don't think we need GO. Here's my personal whishlist: * Concurrency as default (i don't want to express explicitly which parts of my porogram can run in parallel). * I want my programs to be able to run backwards natively (not that kind that MS pseudo backwards-debugging feature crap). i personally call this feature an "entropy- shield" * a really pure functional language (not that "pure functional" languages that allow and than try to monad away "non-functional functions" Such a language has to be completely time-agnostic - that means it will never "run" a program. But - as always - nobody will know what i'm taking about ;-)

<comment><USER9> About 90% of the time in the better Smalltalk implementations, you can tell the debugger to forget the last few stack frames, or jump back to the "start" of the current one. Nearly unfettered replay-ability is almost as good as stepping backwards.

<comment> st-keller I agree - If you're focused on debugging. But there's much more to that. "Running backwards" is not "replay". Running backwards a clock-program will result in hands turning anti-clockwise. Not mentioned the possibilities you can do, if program-speed can be set beetween 100% and -100%. I think most people think about that as they do with nearly every true innovation: "What schould that be good for?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we do. As PG says, programming languages are not born equal.

Different languages have different strengths and weaknesses. Some are particularly good at number crunching, others make working with text easy. Some provide rich, powerful type systems, others go for minimalism. Some languages are designed to enforce OO, others build on list/stack/tree data structures. Some go for functional purity, others are based on logic proving, others still are based on the flow of data instead of the application of functions. Some languages promote stacked hierarchial components, others promote flat hierarchies instead.

Until we find that sweet spot, where all these different features are combined in a powerful, expressive, yet simple way, we will need to continue experimenting with new programming languages. As we gain experience in writing different kinds of software and solving different kinds of problems, we can model programming languages around these tasks to simplify them and build abstractions upon them.

Personally, I don't think our search for the ultimate language will end until we can find a nice balance between imperative and dataflow programming languages, since they seem to be the two most fundamentally different paradigms, yet some problems are better expressed in one and others in the other. (Eg, imperative is very good at expressing purely mathematical concepts as well as imposing order on computation, while dataflow is great at highly concurrent processing - until we can merge the two, I believe we will always have problems)

So yes, we do need more programming languages. Hopefully some day someone will create a multi-paradigm langauge which manages to gracefully balance the various pros and cons. Unfortunately, I think it could be a long while yet, before an _ultimate_ language is created.

</comment><comment><USER11> Writing a program is maybe 10% what you want it to do, and 90% telling the computer how to do it. So I think the question of when we won't need another programming language can be answered as: when the default programming language of the day has libraries and/or syntax that grow to include every "how" that's been done before. This way you only have to specify the "what" unless you're doing something nobody's figured out how to do.

So I guess my idea of the limit programming language/environment would be that it's automatic (or at least trivially easy) to make 90% of every new program into a gem, and then automatic/trivial to find the gem that does exactly what you need, as well as to debug it. (maybe rubygems are already this good, i haven't looked into them).

</comment><comment><USER12> The question of "Do we really need another programming language?" is one that comes up time and time again. The answer is often one of the following:

* No - We have languages that are turing-complete so new languages have no benefit.

* Yes - New languages can take trends that make their way into other languages in the form of libraries and built them directly into the language, making the source code cleaner.

* Yes - New hardware (cf. multi-processors) enables new features which can't be exploited by older languages.

* No - New languages segment the population, meaning we keep re-inventing the wheel by writing the same libraries over and over again.

</comment><comment><USER9> Definition of a "Gentleman Computer Scientist":

        A man who knows how to write a new programming language
        But then doesn't!

Definitions applying to the female gender left to other posters.

</comment><comment><USER13> What about looking at the situation from Google's point of view?

You need your engineering staff to use a language like Python instead of C or C++ for multiple reasons. C's too dangerous and C++ is too slow and full of traps. But Python doesn't compile efficiently into native code (forget Swallow for now).

My hunch is that Google will move their internal staff to coding in this language for newer projects, and not really care who else out there is using it.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Do we really need another programming language?

Certainly.

Just not another 1970s abomination which firmly traps programmers into the compile-pray-debug cycle.

<comment><USER15> I swear, someone at Google could fart and somebody would write a press release about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Adapt or die</comment>


Josh Tetrick's food revolution: saving the world one egg at a time - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/20/josh-tetrick-hampton-creek-food-revolution-saving-the-world-one-egg-at-a-time <comment><USER2> I want to like this idea. I agree that the world's food supply is a critical issue. But I'm just not agreeing with some of the underlying assumptions.

Are eggs really the problem we need to be solving? Sure, commercial chickens farms are scary. But locally sourced eggs / backyard chickens makes more sense to me than commercially produced egg substitutes.

After all, how are those peas being produced? Is it a large monoculture operation, involving massive amount of chemicals and fertilizer? Or is it sustainable and organic? Can the operation scale if it becomes as successful as the current industry leaders?

To be fair, a brief article probably can't get into enough depth to answer those questions - maybe these guys have good answers. I'm just a bigger proponent of the local food movement vs. a new take on commercial operations.

<comment><USER3> The energy input for animal products is higher across the board than for plant products [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/webber-more- effici...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/webber-more-efficient- foods-less-waste/) . Even if you grow the chickens better way, you still need to grow the feed, so you are back to the original problem. If the chicken feed can be grown in a good way, then so can the peas probably.

So -- just moving from eggs to a plant based substitute, changing nothing else about the agricultural process, would reduce any negative consequences of farming.

<comment><USER2> We feed our chickens our kitchen scraps and leftovers. We also house them under our apple trees so they can catch any windfall and eat any bugs or rodents that arrive. We move the straw out of the rabbit runs and put it into a container in the chicken run, so the chickens also pick the seeds and bugs out of there, too, and start the composting process so all that material can get recycled. They also fertilize our apple trees with their waste, and the compost that comes out of this process is used in our gardens.

So the chickens pretty much take care of themselves... lets talk the next step up - the rabbits. They feed on the grass and other plants that grow in our fields, as we move their mobile runs around the property. We also provide them with straw and alfalfa that has been locally grown. (We do buy that from one of our neighbors.)

So yes, we do feed our animals - but a lot less than one might think, and most of it comes from our own land. We take advantage of materials that would otherwise be waste, and use them to have a more sustainable operation. It will always be true that the same amount of resources could produce more plants (if your gardens grow perfectly)... that math is inarguable. But if you build a full ecosystem around your animals, you can do fairly well.

<comment><USER4> How much land are you using to produce food for how many people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since moving to Switzerland I've learned how much better the basic old- fashioned foodstuffs are. Mayo made with egg, oil, vinegar, lemon, and mustard. No preservatives. Bread made the day you eat it, no preservatives. Amazing cheese. Amazing, but expensive, meat. The same ingredients in the u.s. are disgusting - flavorless chicken and pork, sour beef, horrible bread...

This stuff that's popular in s.f. right now seems like a step backwards to 1950s 'high-tech' food. First slurm or whatever that gray goop was, and now mayonnaise made with peas. Yeah, sounds great.

Edit: wanted to mention the sausage/salami too. Sausage made with raw pork and non pasteurized is just incredible. They've been making it this way for a thousand years. There no need to pasteurize it. Sausage in the u.s. is a pale comparison.

And also the flour is different here too - gives better croissants and bread.

<comment><USER6> > The same ingredients in the u.s. are disgusting - flavorless chicken and > pork, sour beef, horrible bread...

Of course. Most of the mass produced stuff is horrible. Think about pork for example. They even put on the "other white meat" branding. Pork isn't supposed to be white. Now if you want to say that about a lot of the beautiful heirloom-y meats and produce in the farmers markets in the US, you're absolutely incorrect.

> This stuff that's popular in s.f. right now seems like a step backwards to > 1950s 'high-tech' food. First slurm or whatever that gray goop was, and now > mayonnaise made with peas. Yeah, sounds great.

Actually, the just mayo is fairly decent. I make my own mayo most of the time, but I can see where they're coming from with it. It's got some nice acidity and is smooth like homemade. They're also having some of the best chefs in the world working with the stuff to make sure it's up there from a quality perspective. Also, they're trying to attack things from a sustainability perspective which is pretty interesting. Is it worth it that the 6 eggs you used to make mayo cost around 300 gallons of water to make? Combine that with the fact that most factory farmed eggs taste horrible to begin with. I'm happy some place is looking at the quality _and_ sustainability.

<comment><USER7> Where does the 50 gallons of water/egg figure come from?

I've got chickens, they don't drink that much water and they don't eat that much food.

<comment><USER6> I've seen numbers from 30 to 120. I think GRACE says 53 per egg. American water says 120. Orange county water says 36 gallons, etc. It's all over the board and it depends what they're including. For straight up water, I've heard an individual hen is probably a bit less than a pint of water per day. They then start including things like how much water is used to grow the grain they feed the birds (about a half cup day per). It all depends on what's _actually_ included (as well as things like egg laying / lifetimes (hens don't get into the thick of it until probably around 6 months in)).

Unfortunately I've never been able to find a _real_ number which is indicative of the food cycle, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During US Pres. Campaign - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ <comment><AUTHOR> "in 2010, Assange vowed to publish documents on any institution that resisted oversight... "We don't have targets," Assange said at the time."

But by 2016, WikiLeaks had switched course, focusing almost exclusively on Clinton and her campaign.

Approached later that year by the same source about data from an American security company, WikiLeaks again turned down the leak. "Is there an election angle? We're not doing anything until after the election unless its [sic] fast or election related," WikiLeaks wrote. "We don't have the resources."

Anything not connected to the election would be "diversionary," WikiLeaks wrote.</comment>


Analyze un-instrumented ELF core files for leaks, memory growth and corruption - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vmware/chap#readme <comment><USER2> [http://search.cpan.org/~gnb/Devel- Plumber-0.3.4/lib/Devel/Pl...](http://search.cpan.org/~gnb/Devel- Plumber-0.3.4/lib/Devel/Plumber.pm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Any pointers about the approach used by this tool to catch leaks?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are giving a presentation at ACCU 2017 tomorrow. [0] I will find out and report back. :)

[0] [https://conference.accu.org/site/stories/2017/sessions.html#...](https://conference.accu.org/site/stories/2017/sessions.html#Xah64Amemoryanalyzerforuninstrumentedcores)

(Apparently chap was previously called ah64)</comment></comment>


High-Availability Clustering in the Open Source Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://alteeve.ca/w/History_of_HA_Clustering

<comment><USER2> I get their perspective, but it seems narrow to fail to mention anything in the Hadoop ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think Hadoop has much to do with core Linux HA...</comment></comment>


Technology Review: Offline Web Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=emerging08&id=20245&a=

<comment><USER2> My experience with AIR (mostly twitter clients) has been that the app in use sticks out like a sore thumb and never feels quite right, be it on Windows or Mac OS X.

I hope later versions/apps look and feel more like desktop apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Adobe seems to have reinvented client/server. Congrats.</comment>


Website Screenshot Of Every Two-letter Domain - <AUTHOR> https://linkpeek.com/blog/website-screenshot-of-every-two-letter-domain.html <comment><USER2> Surprise, surprise. No one is doing anything useful with the majority of them, just like many other potentially useful domain names online.

I remember how pissed I was in 1998 when I tried to register my first website and found most names were squatted already. Truth be told, I'm still bitter at domain squatters.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's frustrating. There's a domain that I wanted, and the guy who's got it has been squatting on it for years and years. So I contacted him about it about 3 years ago and he said:

"Thank you for your interest. The web site is under extensive development and is not for sale. Only a (1) public company or (2) private company with sales in excess of $5B would be considered."

First of all, that website looks the same now as it did 10 years ago. So I'm not sure what "extensive development" means. And second of all, why would it be any of his concern whether my company is public or makes $5B in sales?

That really rubbed me the wrong way. I'd rather just get back a ridiculous number that I'm obviously not going to pay.

<comment><USER4> If it's a good domain, you're certainly not the only one who contacted him about the domain just out of curiosity. He's getting a lot of emails about it.

If he did what you suggest and replied to everyone with a ridiculous price -- "Hi, USD 20 million, ok?" \-- then he'd just get a second wave of emails from people trying to haggle:

"That's outrageous! The domain is worth $100k maximum. I'll pay you $2k and give you 0.1% equity in my awesome startup. Deal?"

And if he doesn't reply to that, then the person will send another email with the worthless offer slightly tweaked, and so on... So he's better off setting a precondition that prevents the pointless replies, basically "I'll talk to you only if you have a legal department with more than 20 people."

<comment><USER3> It's honestly not _that_ good of a domain though. I don't think it's worth $100k. Maybe $10k, although I'm not about to spend that much on a domain (but maybe someone will).

Anyway, good luck to him. I hope when he is ready to sell his domain there is someone looking to buy it for the kind of money he's expecting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to be a product/design guy at CNET in their games division. My team was working on one of the biggest initiatives for the company, launching a new site with a pretty small team of engineers (think it was 6, we had no editorial team, just some recent hires for data entry). In any case, we'd been working on it for 5 months or so, really grueling work, but we were young and excited about building something with so much potential. One month before the actual launch someone came up to me and said, "hey, we need you to move the launch date up two weeks". The reason was pretty boring, the usual executive needs it for X, and as you'd imagine nobody was very excited about it. So all the engineers are stuck in a cramp little meeting room bitching about how many extra hours we'd have to put in to get it done.

Eventually I laughed and said "Well, no one in this room will ever work on a two-letter domain again. That's probably reason enough. At least we get to say we launched one."

8 years later I still think about that day. I've had a pretty wild career, but yep, I doubt I'll ever get to build another TV.com.

Anyways, that's my tiny anecdote about a two letter domain! Worked with a lot of good people on it and still work with some of them. It's a pretty different site now, but right out of the gate it was huge and had tons and tons of community contributions to its episode guides, storing everything in a nice structured data style. These days all I think is... man, we could have done so much more with it (we should have put an API out for the data at least). From what I understand, Google's sidebar related data search results have slowly been biting at into the traffic of large wiki repositories like TV.com and IMDB over the past couple years.

<comment><USER6> I bet tvrage.com (started in june 2005) eventually stole a lot of traffic from tv.com, i have vague memories of a redesign by tv.com which broke old links, and was not very usable.

<comment><USER5> tvrage at least as I remember it was built from a crawl from tv.com data. But yeah, I left the product 6 months after launch and since then it's been in a dozen different hands and a bunch of redesigns, most moving the focus towards quick news and away from the wiki. Such is the way of the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Huh, apparently c4.com resolves to 127.0.0.1. Also they're running the screenshotting stuff on the same server that serves their site.

<comment><USER8> Also, running a query on localhost returns an nginx banner

<comment><USER9> That would depend on the server you have installed on localhost

<comment><USER8> no I mean if you run a query via their site for 'localhost' they take a snapshot of localhost, their own server.

As in: [https://linkpeek.com/api/v1?uri=localhost&apikey=iq5czcxcj&t...](https://linkpeek.com/api/v1?uri=localhost&apikey=iq5czcxcj&token=d9f279b0aa29893db91e11b826d8d914&size=420x200)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the Admin is here, The very bottom ones (00.com, for example) should display upwards on hover, not downwards below the footer where it can't be seen.

</comment><comment><USER11> This doesn't list all possible two-letter domains, just the .com's. There are others, such as uc.edu, ti.org, and 13.tv.

<comment><USER12> Yep, I thought I was going to find my own domain here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't like how the popup after you hover on a link covers the links horizontally to the right. It forces you to move the mouse away, wait for the popup to dismiss, and then move the mouse over the next link. Maybe move the popups below the current row of links.

<comment><USER14> Like how lnkvu.com works?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can view the image of one, then subsequent hovers don't load

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing how 80% is crap.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that true in general, 80% of tv is crap, 80% of photography, 80% of twitter/tumblr is crap, 80% of music is crap (country!), 80% of every human endeavor is crap.

<comment><USER18> Indeed: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Incredible how many of these are not being utilized

</comment><comment><USER20> There are some weird and strangely compelling sites on that list. I went on a very strange journey through some of those sites, and I found a chat room evidently operated by some secretive domain-squatting millionaire filled with a motley crew of famous shock site operators and random bored folks stumbling across two-letter domains.

The internet still manages to surprise me sometimes.

<comment><USER21> [http://99.com](http://99.com) ?

<comment><USER20> Yep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once looked at do.com a few years back. It was owned by Microsoft, and I thought they wont release that domain unless you pay them a hefty amount of money.

Someone apparently did. Unless...

<comment><USER23> Salesforce did.

[http://www.thedomains.com/2012/03/15/salesforce-acquires- ano...](http://www.thedomains.com/2012/03/15/salesforce-acquires-another- great-domain-and-launches-site-com-today/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Much like when I go hunting for a good .com for a new project, it's mildly depressing to see how many of those two letter domains are rather going to waste.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> follow up post- Firework Project Screenshot evert two-letter Domain: [http://linkpeek.com/blog/firework-project-screenshot- every-t...](http://linkpeek.com/blog/firework-project-screenshot-every-two- letter-domain.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's actually only two-letter (and digit) _.com_ domains.

</comment><comment><USER26> Any rules against punctuation in a 2-character domain?

<comment><USER27> A domain name component can't start or end with a dash, so it's effectively disallowed.</comment></comment>


Netlify's AWS Lambda functions bring the back end to your front end workflow - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/blog/2018/03/20/netlifys-aws-lambda-functions-bring-the-backend-to-your-frontend-workflow/ <comment><USER3> I quite like the idea of keeping the website as static as possible - <USER2> reduces the attack surface and plays nice with CDNs and you only do dynamic stuff ad-hoc...

<comment><USER4> I love the idea. Eliminating state where you can is a great strategy for making code as well as infrastructure more robust and I usually only see people mention the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me or does the pricing for form submissions seem, very very (like outrageously) expensive?</comment>


Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/13/18308652/katie-bouman-black-hole-science-internet <comment><USER2> Reposting my comment from another story that didn't get traction (edit: thar was quickly flagged off the front page, as this one is now as well):

It should be noted that this community here was among the worst in this regard.

This isn't about measuring the exact contribution she may or may not have made to the project. It's that there are limitless stories of "meet the man behind <x>" where that question just never crosses anyone's mind. See "The Man Behind Windows PowerShell" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15250349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15250349)

Yet for her ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086)), the discussion was easily dominated by attempts to tear her down, a few defenders, and entirely transparent attempts to differentiate her case from all the others that avoid the obvious reason.

<comment><USER3> I'm far from an expert on either of these topics but just looking at your links, one main difference is that the "man behind Windows PowerShell" was the Chief Architect of the project. Katie Bouman (per a ten second Google search) seems to have been a contributor to the black hole project.

When I looked at the PowerShell thread, the top five threads were people hating on PowerShell, followed by one person who liked it. In general, I think comments tend to be biased towards people with a disagreement with the main article. If you agreed with it entirely, you'd just upvote and move on. If you're leaving a comment you probably have an objection or qualification you want to make. In the PowerShell example the qualification was how much people hate PowerShell. In the Bouman example it's arguing over the phrase "woman behind".

Here's a counter example about "The woman behind two men and a truck" [1]. None of the top level comments seem to be complaining about her not being the only one to contribute to the company etcetera. As far as I can tell with a bit of research, she really is the woman behind the company (the founder), the PowerShell guy really was the Chief Architect, and Bouman really was a contributor but not the lead or central figure behind the black hole effort. So, I'm not persuaded this is evidence of a misogynistic attitude at HackerNews. I think it can be true that women face sexist attitudes in the sciences, that mean people are being mean to Bouman online, and that Bouman can be incorrectly described as the "woman behind black hole pictures".

1 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164620)

<comment><USER4> As a thought experiment, if you believe Bouman can't be described as 'the woman behind the black hole pictures', then can you describe for me what contributions she made?

<comment><USER3> As I mentioned I am not especially familiar with Katie Bouman or the black hole project and everything I'm writing is just from a few seconds of google searching. Based on that, I would say that Bouman was a scientist, mathematician, and programmer who worked on the project.

Per Wikipedia

Bouman - She researches computational methods for imaging, and was a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team that captured the first image of a black hole

Snover - Jeffrey Snover is a Microsoft Technical Fellow, PowerShell Chief Architect, and the Chief Architect for the Azure Infrastructure and Management group which includes Azure Stack, System Center and Operations Management Suite. Snover is the inventor of Windows PowerShell

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

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

From these two excerpts alone it sounds more correct to say that Snover was the "Man behind" PowerShell than Bouman was the "Woman behind" the black hole pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Highlighting the achievements of a brilliant, enthusiastic scientist does not diminish the contributions of the other 214 people who worked on the project, either. "

That is, in my experience, untrue, if it is highlighted in a way that unjustly lifts one contribution above all others.

Does not tend to make collaborators happy. Since there is no money involved (as in, no big salary increases), academics (being one myself) are incredibly petty about these things, and bitter feuds are fought about small points of recognition.

For example, another female collaborator of hers was actually the one to point out that Katie Bouman's algorithm was not the one used for the image, as pointed out by the NYT:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman- blac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black- hole.html)

<comment><USER6> I've read the following in a newspaper article:

"[...]30 of the 200 scientists were responsible for the image processing. There were four algorithms developed in parallel to transform the telescope data into pictures, one of them developed by Bouman during her Phd at MIT[...]"

The gist was that she's a great researcher, but not a hero or the face of the project, as she was presented.

Frankly, it looks like the media screwed up in their attempt to transform her into the face of women in science and turned her into a target of harassment. I've seen e.g. an article from a major publication titled "Without this woman, there would be no picture of the black hole". She seems to be a very competent researcher and had an important contribution. Saying that would have been accurate, fairer and would have prevented the malicious gossip, I assume.

<comment><USER7> I mostly feel bad for her. She didn't try to claim that fame, others did it for her and she's the one to suffer the backlash.

I saw an article with the same title on futurism [0] and didn't really question it at first. Perhaps there were others who saw similar things, but as they learned more about the story they felt like they had been lied to.

[0] [https://futurism.com/the-byte/first-black-hole-image- katie-b...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/first-black-hole-image-katie-bouman)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know I am gonna get down-voted to hell for this but here goes nothing:

Am I the only one who was born and used the internet early enough to understand how it actually works? It´s like suddenly everyone is talking about trolls as if it´s some massive internet problem when in actuality trolling is as old if not older than the internet itself. The mere fact that people are complaining about trolls is in itself mind-boggling to me.

People are assholes. You give them the ability to be anonymous and they will take advantage of it. In fact, most of you have probably at one point done something that would be considered trolling. So why the heck is everyone so outraged at the existence of trolls? like really?! How thin skinned do you have to be that some mean comments on the internet aimed to piss you off actually do work? Man I miss the old days when people didn´t associate their online @mynameisabcdef with their actual offline worth and self-esteem.

The less you separate your online life from your offline one, the more you´ll get hurt. Get off the internet, take a walk and if you want to have a proper discussion, seek a forum where people talk seriously. There web is a much bigger space than the cesspool that is Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It´s as if some people live and die by what is said on Twitter these days. In my book that´s nothing short of insanity.

I get that people want the problem fixed. I really do. But you are up against human nature. If you think you´re going to beat that by pointing fingers and getting angry, then you don´t really understand the problem.

She did something amazing and no matter what, no amount of trolls can take that away from her. Simple as that. And if trolls can actually take that away from her then what she did was probably not so great after all. Let the work speak for itself rather than worrying about what some schmuck on twitter said

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder sometimes if writing articles "Trolls did thing trolls are known for doing" is incidentally giving the trolls exactly what they want.

<comment><USER2> No, it's letting them know they stand outside what's considered polite company.

Rereading the discussion about her, this community is among those standing to learn something by considering how she is being treated differently than any man ever featured in such stories.

<comment><USER10> I find it useful to have a handle on which subjects are currently triggering outbursts. Makes it easier to spot when some other discussion might be heading (or, sometimes, being steered...) in the direction of derailment, I think, if I feel like I have an idea of the current themes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can this not be viewed as a call for the media to more accurately report stories? I think people are just tired of massive media outlets manufacturing the news instead of reporting it. This was obviously a team effort but a single individual got put on a pedestal because it fit with a larger narrative.

People are mad and tired of it. Why don't we step back and look at the bigger picture and listen to what people are complaining about instead of just admonishing them.

<comment><USER12> No because their concerns are transparent misogyny - if they wanted actual coverage they would shame them with a complete list of contributors and snark that "an additional kilobyte or printed page isn't that expensive!". Sadly so many choose to be outraged over irrelevant bullshit instead of something which remotely matters.

<comment><USER13> Fact-finding is not misogyny. And the facts in this case are that Bouman's algorithm was not used in the black hole image that is being hailed as a scientific milestone. She had other contributions here (see [https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/111651854732747571...](https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/1116518547327475712) which credits her with writing the testing framework), but what was pitched in news headlines about her role/contributions was explicitly false. Pointing out the truth is not misogyny.

<comment><USER4> People pointing out that Andrew Chael was far more important because he had '850k lines of code written' making her contributions worthless was not pointing out the truth. It was explicitly about tearing down her contributions.

<comment><USER13> I agree, that particular argument was meaningless (since lines of code is not everything) and wrong (since a lot of those 850K lines were data). I agree some people behind that line of argument might have been looking to tear her down, and that the impulse to do so may have been rooted in misogyny.

That said, I also think it's not everyone, and that some who were examining the code base were just on a fact-finding mission given that this story was seemingly everywhere online and something felt off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused by all the comments here attacking those who viewed this entire story with skepticism, considering the skeptics were ultimately _correct_. See [https://twitter.com/SaraIssaoun/status/1116304522660519936](https://twitter.com/SaraIssaoun/status/1116304522660519936)

> There are more of us. Katie's algorithm, despite the media's stance, was not > used to produce this image. There were three algorithms used and combined to > form the final image, and a team of 40 scientists part of that aspect of the > project (including myself and more women).

Katie Bouman's algorithm was not even used in the construction of the final image. If that's not an indictment of modern journalism, I don't know what is. Even the New York Times has published a story corroborating all this, and as far as I can tell they were one of the few journalistic outlets that did not publish a prior story pushing the narrative of the single female scientist solving this problem: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie- bouman-blac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black- hole.html)

> While she led the development of an algorithm to take a picture of a black > hole, an effort that was the subject of a TED Talk she gave in 2016, her > colleagues said that technique was not ultimately used to create this > particular image.

Ultimately, this fiasco is a textbook example of news media and social media spinning up a manufactured, hyped-up story to push a certain narrative. Virtually every news outlet was publishing the same story emphasizing how a singular female scientist was behind this effort. Bouman herself was even quoted in some of these articles as saying it was a team effort, by the way, so none of this is her fault. But news media and ideologues on Twitter pushed a gender-centric narrative nonetheless, and in doing so, overtly politicized the story.

For example, take a look at the Washington Post's article on this story. Initially it was titled "Katie Bouman, #womeninstem star, created algorithm [...]". You can still see this title in Google search results ([https://www.google.com/search?q=katie+bouman%2C+%23womeninst...](https://www.google.com/search?q=katie+bouman%2C+%23womeninstem+star)). Now the story has been revised to "Katie Bouman helped the world see a black hole. Fans want 'a rightful seat in history' for her." [https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/11/katie- boum...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/11/katie-bouman- helped-world-see-black-hole-fans-want-rightful-seat-history-her/)

Given how ubiquitous this story was for those 1-2 days, I think it makes sense that people would also examine the details critically, and also question if they were the victim of media manipulation pushing some ideological narrative. And as I stated at the very beginning, they were ultimately correct.

</comment><comment><USER14> I knew exactly which one it was in particular before clicking. There's a deep rot in the online culture.

<comment><USER15> This isn't "online" culture, it is simply culture. There has always been a horrible group of folks in culture: What we find acceptable changes over time.

<comment><USER16> This kind of horrible is limited to online culture, though. People don't troll when talking face to face. If they did, everybody would see they were assholes, and they would suddenly find that nobody wanted to hang out with them anymore.

<comment><USER15> The US constitution declared slaves as 3/5th of a person. Women couldn't do much without a man until recently. We've tortured folks and the Holocaust was a thing. The crusades were a thing.

On a lesser note, people gossip. They'll have "private" conversations about you while they know you can hear. Stop talking to folks because they think you are lesbian.

People are horrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel bad for all the people that have nothing better to do than sit around and dig into someone's life and harass them because a picture was posted of them working on a project.

I feel worse for the people they're harassing, but fuck they must have bleak meaningless lives if they choose to spend their time harassing scientists over a photograph.

I mean the thought behind it from the actual team was probably something like 'Hey we're getting the image loaded, we should get a picture of this'

That's what it looks like in the caption for the tweet. It mostly looks like her name's mentioned because she's in the picture. It refers to her as Researcher.

How is anything about that unreasonable or giving her credit for everything?

Why would people interpret it this way?

I mean i'm pretty the more imporant part of that picture was the image of the black hole being loaded for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm so sick of this MSM/social media fueled gender shit flinging. She herself never claimed she did all the work, the MSM did.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. This is the media setting the stage for a fight among people and then reporting on that fight for more revenue. Then acting shocked that the fight is even happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for saying something that is clearly preposterous.

Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved.

Media reports the backlash. They get tons of clicks for that too.

Summary: media wins. Everybody else loses.

<comment><USER2> Care to find any example among the myriad of "meet the man behind..." stories where the same thing happened?

<comment><USER21> Sure, there are several famous examples that everyone is aware of.

Steve Jobs with the iPhone or iPod. Elon Musk with both SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff Bezos with AWS and Amazon's success generally.

In every thread (or media article) in which those people are given opulent credit for the thing in question, it's persistently pointed out that in fact the teams, designers, employees, engineers, leadership, etc. behind those things deserve enormous credit, while the famous person at the front is getting the credit as a visionary genius. Why? Because it sells better to put Bezos on the cover (with his head in a box).

State in an HN thread that Elon Musk founded Tesla sometime, see what response you get 100% of the time. I've been watching that specific response play out over and over for the better part of a decade here as one example. Musk persistently gets given overwhelming credit by the media, and he persistently gets torn down for it.

You also constantly see it when it comes to team efforts generally to take this further. For example when NASA and ESA work on something together and then NASA gets blanket credit. The more famous team will get the overwhelming credit, because it sells. That last part is what it's all about.

<comment><USER13> While I think it is important to recognize that Jobs/Musk/Bezos all had large organizations working on things they are often credited with, I think it is more reasonable to credit them in this way because they were explicitly the leaders and founders of their companies. They envisioned, created, and led the organizations that produced all those products.

I don't think that is an apples-to-apples comparison with this story. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a collaboration between numerous organizations (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope#Collab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope#Collaboration)) and it does have a leadership team (see [https://eventhorizontelescope.org/organization](https://eventhorizontelescope.org/organization)). But in this story, we did not discuss the leaders of this effort. We discussed one contributing engineer/scientist who was elevated above the rest, when her algorithm was not even used in the production of the final image (which is the underlying scientific milestone that is being recognized here).

I find it bizarre because from all that I've seen, Bouman was not in a leadership position but was a peer-contributor alongside many others. Her contributions matter, and are important (as credited by Andrew Chael), but it is bizarre to recognize her alone and not everyone else who is on equal footing in terms of their contribution (or even greater footing, for those who came up with the algorithms that _were_ used for the final image).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Habit:A pure FP with Intersection of low-level problems and high-level paradigms - <AUTHOR> http://habit-lang.org <comment><USER2> Where's the content? The landing page is just that, a landing page.</comment>


Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets - <AUTHOR> http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/data-scraping-wikipedia-with-google-spreadsheets/ <comment><USER2> "So to recap, we have scraped some data from a wikipedia page into a Google spreadsheet using the =importHTML formula, published a handful of rows from the table as CSV, consumed the CSV in a Yahoo pipe and created a geocoded KML feed from it, and then displayed it in a Yahoo map."

Hilarious!

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic. Such a cleaner method than copy-pasting table data from web pages into excel to visualize and manipulate it, which I've done countless times doing market research.

</comment><comment><USER4> My BSc dissertation was on a simplified English dialect (language) which can be translated into triplets (or data items) while still being readable as English. However, I never really finished the editor it required which hooked up to a parser to show you the triplets as you type.

Also, I'm bad at getting traction on my ideas.

</comment><comment><USER5> Or you could just use DBpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/About>

<comment><USER6> the purpose isn't to show getting data from wikipedia. this can be done with any html table

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bravo! One of the most useful submissions to HN in a while. This is the kind of thing that gives my faith in tech a little boost - "throwing sheep at your friends on facebook" or cute productivity apps that reduce your productivity are not.

</comment><comment><USER8> does any one know of a way to incorporate google spreadsheets with ajax rendered table data?</comment>


'If It's Not Broke, Break It' – The Animation of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse - <AUTHOR> https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/if-its-not-broke-break-it-sony-imageworks-renegade-approach-to-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-167321.html <comment><AUTHOR> (Note: Original title was too long, so I had to crop it)

Very cool article about how traditional animation and cartooning techniques were combined with computer animation to create a really uniquely stylized film.</comment>


Book: Turning the Flywheel - <AUTHOR> https://feld.com/archives/2019/09/book-turning-the-flywheel.html <comment><USER2> Reads like they are trying for perpetual motion... but eventually prices can go no lower

<comment><AUTHOR> Quality can go up though. So effective price can go down.</comment></comment>


Meet the dogs of Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/d8j6je99gnx65bk?ref_=doa_red <comment><AUTHOR> Just discovered this (maybe I am late to the party) that an invalid product page link takes you to the page which offers to take you back to the home page or to this page, i.e. the dogs of Amazon. To try it out, use this [1].

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/abc/dp/123](https://www.amazon.com/abc/dp/123)

</comment><comment><USER2> This has been posted before:

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590204)

2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12093432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12093432)</comment>


Los Angeles to Use Body Scanners at Transit Hubs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/us/los-angeles-metro-body-scanners.html <comment><USER3> > "We're looking for explosive vests, we're looking for assault rifles. We're > not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don't have the ability to > inflict mass casualties."

What, like a handgun? Size doesn't matter. Plus, you don't really need an x-ray machine to see if somebody's carrying a rifle.

> "Any surveillance we can get these days is better than none,"

I think that's a really dangerous mindset. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, to be hearing it from so many people these days.

On top of that, I'm really peeved about the quotes and anecdotes that they included in their article. Every single "average joe" who they chose to quote in this article is in support of the scanners. They barely mention the privacy concerns except when the folks involved are making empty promises that we have nothing to be concerned about. Again, disappointed but not surprised to see this sort of "journalism" in the mainstream.

<comment><USER4> > _What, like a handgun? Size doesn 't matter._

No, but magazine capacity tends to.

edit: my point is that you can do a lot more damage with a rifle with a big magazine than you can with a handgun. I can't tell if I'm confused reading the replies, or replies are confused reading my comment.

<comment><USER5> What about knives? Vehicles? Rocks? This is a slippery ass slope. I'm not a gun guy, but I am wise enough to know that there is ZERO logic behind believing "they'll only regulate this, not that."

<comment><USER4> You bring up valid concerns, but knives are already effectively illegal - <USER2> police in New York have _a lot_ of leeway in deciding what constitutes a "gravity knife".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _"Most people won't even know they're being scanned, so there's no risk of > them missing their train service on a daily basis," he said._

This technology has been in development for 15 years, and the latest and greatest is point and shoot scanning as people walk by.

So in 10-20 years, are these built into the wall at the top of the escalator leading into every major metro station in the world? Plugged into an AI for analysis? Dispatching drones to contain perceived threats?

I think this is one of the absolute least effective ways to be spending public safety dollars, is it not?

<comment><USER7> > I think this is one of the absolute least effective ways to be spending > public safety dollars, is it not?

The scenario you described sounds like an _incredibly_ effective and efficient way to spend public safety dollars, given two things:

1\. The technology works.

2\. You don't care about privacy.

<comment><USER8> Well that and cancer, lot's and lot's of cancer.

<comment><USER9> That was my first thought too. But there is this quote:

> The software can detect hidden objects using technology that examines the > naturally occurring waves produced by a person's body. The technology does > not emit radiation, officials added.

<comment><USER10> In other words, people can still freak out over "cancer!" but it's just from the non-stop onslaught of harmless wifi and cell and radio and satellite frequencies that penetrate some and reflect some. Plus probably some infrared for the "emitted by the person" bit specifically. Passive signal analysis can be very revealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

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

<comment><USER12> Typically international airports were considered to be "4A-free zones" because they weren't considered "US Soil".

Then it started happening for domestic flights (Surveillance state thanks you, 9/11 terrorists!), and now bus/train stations.

Boiling the frog...

<comment><USER13> Devil's advocate: You are being searched/scanned before you get on someone else's property (i.e., an airplane). I understand that the government is running this (TSA), but I imagine if the airports/airlines were running it we would think about it differently.

<comment><USER14> They used to. And we did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand what the point of continuing to escalate this is....

People are just driving cars and trucks into crowds. Shooting up random places. They're not wearing explosive vests.

<comment><USER13> I'm wondering how much the companies who make these things lobby/donate to Congress. I think these scanner technologies are good for two applications: medicine and surveillance. I imagine the medical field is already saturated, but if you get governments to mandate them you are opening up new markets to sell your technology.

But to play devil's advocate, people are wearing bomb vests. See the attempted bombing underground at the subway/Port Authority bus terminal in NYC last December (it's mentioned in the article).

<comment><USER14> A lazy search brought this, which may help/has more known sources linked: [https://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/3938-...](https://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/3938-getting- rich-from-the-tsa-naked-body-scanners)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The public is too willing to give up freedom when threats to safety are invented, and then "prevented".

<comment><USER17> Bill Burr says the easiest way to get Americans to give up their rights is through fear or free t-shirts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > can detect suspicious items from 30 feet away and can scan more than 2,000 > passengers per hour.

wait, what? 2000 passengers? That's it? This is either useless or very heavy racial profiling can be expected or both.

</comment><comment><USER19> Enjoy your big government people. The best part is, your hard-earned tax dollars go towards these transit hubs that you now can no longer use if you don't review to give up your Constitutional rights.

</comment><comment><USER20> wearing a stiff jacket or carrying a backpack full of groceries on public transit? ...

prepare to add 30 minutes each way as you're flagged for "secondary screening"

driving your 300hp, 3 ton SUV with 70 cubic feet cargo space full of whatever? ...

all good. free parking at your destination.

</comment><comment><USER21> The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not to be screened won't be able to ride on the subway.

<comment><USER22> >The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not to be screened won't be able to ride on the subway.

Which, roughly, is not very different from saying:

Ticket payment is voluntary but customers who choose not to pay the ticket won't be able to ride on the subway.

<comment><USER23> It's altogether worse than that because at the very least most city dwellers are being taxed to support these transit services. They can't exactly opt out of supporting it.

<comment><USER24> Not to mention that someone who does not want to be screened is more than welcome to buy a ticket, but then not be able to use the ticket unless they "volunteer" to be screened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "Most people won't even know they're being scanned, so there's no risk of > them missing their train service on a daily basis," Dave Sotero, a spokesman > for the L.A. Metro, said.

> "Most people won't even know they're being scanned ..."

> "Someone has to intervene, stop that person and check out what's going on > ... That causes delay, and it also causes a sense of invasiveness among the > passengers."

The problems with searching random people, including large numbers of them, is not the delay or "sense of invasiveness", but the article doesn't address privacy issues. It presents only one side and that is based on quotes from random pedestrians, not evidence or serious analysis.

It also accepts without question statements such as the following, which are worthless assurances. Even if accurate, they can change their practices at any time.

> "We're looking for explosive vests, we're looking for assault rifles. We're > not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don't have the ability to > inflict mass casualties."

Finally, the article uses many statements that sound like they were written by the PR team (as do the quotes from bystanders):

> They use technology that examines the naturally occurring waves produced by > a person's body

> the devices themselves resemble the sort of black laminate cases that > musicians lug around on tour, not upright metal detectors

</comment><comment><USER4> > _They use technology that examines the naturally occurring waves produced by > a person's body. The technology, manufactured by Thruvision, does not emit > radiation, officials added._

The second most interesting thing this article could cover, and they barely give it a paragraph lifted from a sales brochure.

</comment><comment><USER26> We used to have clear guardrails in the U.S. where the government and others could not go. They couldn't decide to use your house for soldier's quarters, they couldn't rifle through your private papers, they couldn't hold you without charges, and so on.

Now there are so many "well, unless you're talking about this other stuff" exceptions that I am unclear: just how much invasion of privacy is enough to ensure the public safety? Random strip searches okay? Maybe we could tap into the cameras and listening devices we've already convinced people to install in their houses. After all, why not? Privacy is dead, right?

My point is that I don't understand where any of this stops, if ever. I am not an unintelligent person, and it looks to me like the world governments are in this to produce absolute security at any cost, hell with consent of the governed. When I grew up, I used to know that the cops couldn't do certain things to you (Well, legally anyway). I have no idea what any of those things are any more.

The country can't function like this. It's not a matter of civil libertarians or any of that. Governments structured like this simply cannot continue to rule over a long period of time. You can dial up the security as high as you want over a generation or two, but long-term it doesn't work. You end up putting the people running the security state in charge of everybody else -- and they're not so stupid they don't eventually figure that out.

<comment><USER27> Problem is, they _do_ have consent of the governed. That's the problem. We could collectively put an end to this madness if we wanted.

<comment><USER14> But revolting/protesting is A Bad Thing™.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure this will devolve into trolling for petty crime and dragnet surveillance. The dude who carries a gun because he has to carry a ton of cash to fill up ATMs (edit: we're talking about the ATM at the hole in the wall convenience store, or the smoke shop, not the bank) will be arrested (I'm sure they'll take the cash too) but no terrorists will be caught. Unless they've got detection, assessment and response down to a few minutes or less this wouldn't even stop a suicide bomber or gunman unless they can't be bothered to take an uber to their target, that's assuming the system detects most threats in the first place. I don't see how this defends against bombs in luggage or rolling toolboxes/cases.

<comment><USER29> "The dude who carries a gun because he has to carry a ton of cash to fill up ATMs will be arrested"

Those people don't take the subway. They drive in armored cars.

<comment><USER30> They do. Since recreational weed was legalized I've seen a lot of off-duty armed security using public transit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> nobody asked for this. nobody wanted this. there has not been a specific threat against their transit system. people don't consent to these searches.

one more step along the road of having no rights when participating in public life. we are far, far down that road already. now, you wont even have the right to protection from unreasonable searches. the fourth amendment has been moribund for a while now.

this is totalitarianism.

<comment><USER32> And i wonder who owns equity in the vendors providing these solutions hehehe

<comment><USER14> Or maybe it was the underwear bomber. Not sure. Point stands regardless which one, and I'm on mobile. You'll find it, if you're interested and look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> AFAIK, the scanners are passive. They use an IR camera, and combine the image with a visual-light camera. It doesn't sound too invasive.

</comment><comment><USER34> Under what terms does the government get to decide to deliberately strike me with ionizing radiation while I'm making use of my fundamental right to travel?

<comment><USER35> At what point did they imply ionizing radiation? This is THz scanning, e.g. very-far IR camera(s) just looking and using the fact that humans are lights at these wavelengths.</comment></comment>


How much should you pay an executive in a startup company?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2009/05/01/how-much-should-you-pay-an-executive-in-a-startup-company/ <comment><USER2> I'm guessing thats for late stage "startups" with millions in revenue, since I don't see anyone taking those numbers for an early stage company

        * CEO 5.40%
        * President/COO 2.58%
        * CFO 1.01%
        * Head of Technology/CTO 1.19%
        * Head of Engineering 1.32%
        * Head of Sales 1.20%
        * Head of Marketing 0.91%
        * Head of Business Development 1.23%
        * Head of Human Resources 0.24%
        * Head of Professional Services 0.60%

<comment><USER3> That adds up to a pool of roughly 20% for management. That's the venture- backed world for you. Try taking 3 rounds and see where it leaves your equity!

More telling are the equity stats by founder status (more detail in the post on mean and median, but here's the range):

Non-founder CEO: 3.9%-6.5% Founder CEO: 8.3%-30%

These figures might strike you as low, but if you take a look at the salaries these people pay themselves, it starts to make sense:

Non-founder CEO: $205-$260 Founder CEO: $162-$229

As the CEO of a venture backed company, it seems you're not always in it for the equity... (more details of massive bonuses in the report too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think if you were still considered a startup your executive should only _want_ to get paid enough to cover living expenses plus maybe a little more if you have revenue. Assuming they have a share in the company. After that are you even considered a startup?

</comment><comment><USER5> You shouldn't have executives in your startup.

<comment><USER6> Not even to raise your Series A?

<comment><USER7> Most YC companies have raised their Series A with the founders. Founders often transition to fine executives.</comment></comment></comment>


Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill  - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080620/sc_livescience/sarcasmseenasevolutionarysurvivalskill

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha! I _knew_ there was a scientific basis for using all those <sarcasm> and </sarcasm> tags here at hn.</comment>


Can you feed cats and dogs a vegan diet? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200304-can-you-feed-cats-and-dogs-a-vegan-diet <comment><AUTHOR> >>It has been calculated that beef cattle need 8g of feed in order to grow 1g of protein – whereas insects only need 2g to create 1g of protein.

That's impressive, I wonder if we can add more insects to our diets, or is too far from western culture?

<comment><USER2> I've seen cricket protein bars and powder around so I assume it might be palatable to the west when "hidden" in processed food. I end up wondering with this though is it not more effecient just to get protein from the raw feed in these cases? Why eat the cricket if you can eat the soy or whatever it's fed with?

<comment><USER3> Because the meat tastes better, and the animals are more than a transfer system, they transform their intake into proteins you cannot find in plants

My guidelines have been to acknowledge our biological evolution as much as I can

\- omnivore \- squatty potty \- lots of time walking</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Go version of Stroustrup's classic C++ desk calculator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/glxxyz/snippets/blob/master/calculator/dc.go <comment><AUTHOR> While I'm learning go I decided as an exercise to implement go versions of a few programming greatest hits. This one is Bjarne Stroustrup's simple and elegant interactive calculator, from The C++ Programming Language. I've made as few changes as possible other than conforming to go conventions.

Try it out at [https://repl.it/@glxxyz/BrokenVirtualRoot](https://repl.it/@glxxyz/BrokenVirtualRoot)

The C++ original is here if you want to compare them side by side: [http://www.stroustrup.com/dc.c](http://www.stroustrup.com/dc.c)</comment>


Ask HN: Dressing Up for a Job Interview? - <AUTHOR> I haven't interviewed in about 10 years (IIRC).
I have an interview with a bank for a developer position. It's 2 hours both personal and technical interview combined.
I don't own a pair of slacks or a tie. I can go buy clothes to wear but is this really required now-a-days?
Can I just go in a "dressier" pair of jeans and a button down or sweater?
Or is the interview process still a dress up event? <comment><USER2> Just ask the recruiter outright the expected style. They want you to be hired so will happily give you everything they can for you to be successful!

Generally tidy dressing, no matter what you wear, and grooming will give a good impression.

Dress expectations is a good marker for you too; if they expect full suit, and all your interviewers wear ties, what read does that give you on their culture?

Finally; overdressing can only ever give an impression of eagerness (vs underdressing which can set you back) so err on the side of caution.

Ultimately, any good company should care more about your skills than your clothes....

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought skills over dress too. I could ask the HR department as they called me, it's not through a recruiter.

<comment><USER2> HR will be the same; they want you to know what you need to be successful :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Channels to Venture Capital - <AUTHOR>

Two part question. How are you deciding what VC's to pitch? How are you getting an introduction so they listen to your pitch? <comment><USER2> 1\. <http://ycombinator.com/topvcs.html>

2\. Find the shortest path in your network of friends to someone who is a founder or early employee at one of their portfolio companies, and ask them to introduce you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bootstrap yourself until they come knocking on _your_ door.</comment>


Three hundred and sixty years of United States caselaw - <AUTHOR> https://case.law/ <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm a developer on this project. Happy to answer questions for the next hour or so, and I'll check back tomorrow as well.

This is a first public release and the Harvard Library Innovation Lab is a small team, so please look at the site as just the beginning! In particular we're starting by targeting developers with an API and bulk data downloads. More user friendly features like a front-end browser, PDF scans, ngram browser, etc. are on the roadmap, but we're hoping other developers will step in and build some great tools as well.

<comment><USER3> If the project is truly "free" \- build it in a way that can be passed down through generations: easily indexed with semantic data and without proprietary logins or fiddle-some navigation. archive.org would be a good long term home or some other long lasting and perpetually funded service, beyond what Harvard would spend its billions of alumni bucks on.

<comment><USER4> No kidding. After looking at this project for a bit longer, I'm _much less_ optimistic about this project. Frankly, it really depresses me that they require research agreements to download all information.

Developers of this project: _Please_ make the information freely available in a way that doesn't require agreements with a giant for-profit company.

For now, I'm convinced that this project is nothing more than a veiled advertisement for lexis nexis.

<comment><USER5> My reading of this is that it's something they're contractually bound to for the near term but not forever:

> Access limitations on full text and bulk data are a component of Harvard's > collaboration agreement with Ravel Law, Inc. (now part of Lexis-Nexis). > These limitations will end, at the latest, in March of 2024.

Hopefully this means no logins, also, but that's less clear.

The blame on this should really fall on the courts that allow private companies to paywall access to the rule of law. At least some states have started to do it right:

> Once a jurisdiction transitions from print-first publishing to digital-first > publishing, these limitations cease. Thus far, Illinois and Arkansas have > made this important and positive shift and, as a result, all historical > cases from these jurisdictions are freely available to the public without > restriction. We hope many other jurisdictions will follow their example > soon.

<comment><USER2> > Hopefully this means no logins, also, but that's less clear.

The only things we have behind logins are what we are contractually required to, yes. This gets pretty fine-grained -- if you do a logged-out search across jurisdictions, requesting full text, the json contains error fields for the specific fields we aren't allowed to share without a login yet.

<comment><USER5> Awesome, thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is caselaw data an artifact originating from the public dollars which funded the whole show to begin with?

Why isn't this data available for free to any American Citizen who pays taxes? In the form of a torrent, the distribution cost is negligible. A reasonable duplication fee seemed reasonable back when replicating vast amounts of information involved massive amounts of paper and toner. But today.. I don't understand.

I'm curious enough to have asked this same question on Quora [0].

YMMV.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-can-LexisNexis-own- the-...](https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-can-LexisNexis-own-the-data- originating-from-the-publicly-funded-legal-system)

<comment><USER2> Caselaw data is public domain, but it's very expensive to digitize -- partly because it's mostly stored on paper, and partly because it's mixed together with copyrighted material.

For this project we had to scan 40,000 volumes of caselaw. We used a high speed scanner at the Harvard Law Library, and went through about 40 million pages at a rate of 500,000 pages a week over a couple of years. The pages then had to be redacted of copyrighted material like headnotes inserted by private publishers, since courts typically don't publish the cases themselves, and those redactions had to be checked by humans.

That work was funded by a startup, Ravel, which is why we ended up with temporary limits on commercial use of the data. No later than March 2024, however, it will all be fully available for bulk download by anyone in the world. If necessary we'll set up a torrent. :)

(Hopefully earlier! For any state that starts officially publishing its caselaw in digital form, we can immediately release their caselaw back to the beginning, as we have already for Illinois and Arkansas.)

<comment><USER7> One note that seems relevant to the grandparent comment, Ravel is now owned by LexisNexis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Case Law" has a specific meaning for those of us who are not versed in the jargon:

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

</comment><comment><USER9> The Norwegian equivalent of this project, got sued for copyright infringement of supreme court verdicts: [http://www.wiumlie.no/2018/rettspraksis/10-22-returns](http://www.wiumlie.no/2018/rettspraksis/10-22-returns)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's the release! [https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2018/10/29/caselaw- access-p...](https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2018/10/29/caselaw-access- project-cap-launches-api-and-bulk-data-service/)

</comment><comment><USER11> "The agreement with our project partner, Ravel, requires us to limit access to the full text of cases to no more than 500 cases per person, per day. This limitation does not apply to researchers who agree to certain restrictions on use and redistribution. Nor does this restriction apply to cases issued in jurisdictions that make their newly issued cases freely available online in an authoritative, citable, machine-readable format. We call these whitelisted jurisdictions. Currently, Illinois and Arkansas are the only whitelisted jurisdictions."

TLDR: 500 cases per day, but looks like you can buy access from Ravel [1].

[https://home.ravellaw.com/](https://home.ravellaw.com/)

<comment><USER12> Yep— Ravel will absolutely negotiate commercial licenses. No later than 2024, the entire corpus will be available for free for all use cases, including commercial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Needs a simple JavaScript or similar client (REPL?) baked into the page.

API appears powerful, but lots of free alternatives that don't require a comfort level with shell scripting or REST calls.

<comment><USER14> I'm not aware of a free alternative for _all_ US published caselaw. Could you cite?

<comment><USER13> google.com/scholar

I also really like casemine.com.

I have no idea how incomplete those archives are but I doubt they're missing much I'd be looking for.

<comment><USER14> Well, google scholar certainly does not have all published opinions, far from it. It is not an adequate research tool, just a starting point. I'm not familiar with casemine, will check it out.

EDIT: casemine appears to be neither free, nor to have all published US decisions as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Consider github.

German and French law is already there.

[https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze](https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze)

[https://github.com/steeve/france.code- civil](https://github.com/steeve/france.code-civil)

</comment><comment><USER4> If the creators are listening in - do you have any plans to include the text of the court docs as well?

<comment><USER2> The full text of the cases is available. For example, here is a query for the full text of Illinois cases, which are available without a login:

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?jurisdiction=ill&full_case=tr...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?jurisdiction=ill&full_case=true&page_size=1)

Full text for cases other than Illinois and Arkansas is limited to 500 cases per person per day, which is why we don't include it in API results by default.

<comment><USER4> Gotcha! I've been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks for making it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do you have or know of, anything like this for federal courts (bankruptcy, district, appellate, supreme) ?

<comment><USER17> project member here ... this site includes access to federal cases, e.g. [https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?cite=&name_abbreviation=&juri...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?cite=&name_abbreviation=&jurisdiction=us&reporter=&decision_date_min=1900-01-01&decision_date_max=2000-12-31&docket_number=&court=&search=&full_case=&body_format=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always wondered if any of the cases directly contradict each other.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can you elaborate on the notion of US case law, before the US existed? I don't mean this to be snarky, I assume this was intentional. Is this referring to cases prior to the US's founding, that the US then adopted as relevant legal precedent?

<comment><USER2> Good question! This refers to caselaw from courts that predate the United States, such as Maryland and Massachusetts:

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/)

State courts didn't come into existence with the US Constitution -- the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, for example, dates back to 1692, and those precedents are still "good" in some sense though unlikely to be cited.

We don't have English precedents, unfortunately, as guessed by some sibling comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mnn 360 years of United States coleslaw.

<comment><USER21> "Coleslaw" is an anglicization of the Dutch "koolsla" or cabbage salad. Its existence in the US would likely date back to the first Dutch colony in North America: New Netherland, which was first settled in the 1620s. As such, American coleslaw has a history of roughly 390 years and antedates American caselaw by a few decades.

<comment><USER2> You got me curious -- our first case with the modern term "coleslaw" is from 1935, in Rhode Island, and begins ominously with "The plaintiff in this case was injured by swallowing two small pieces of wire concealed in an order of beef stew, bread and coleslaw which she had purchased and was eating at defendant's lunch counter."

[https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?search=coleslaw&full_case=tru...](https://api.case.law/v1/cases/?search=coleslaw&full_case=true)

Apologies that the link requires a login to view the full text, and for various other shortcomings in the current browsing experience. Also apologies to anyone who actually reads the coleslaw case -- caselaw is a scary place.

<comment><USER22> Coleslaw caselaw could go on Bob Loblaw's law blog.</comment></comment></comment></comment>