On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://sigwait.tk/~alex/doc/bunz%2Cmercedes__school-will-never-end/ <comment><USER2> I'm halfway through reading this and, and so far, the main argument I'm seeing amounts to this: the use of visual art and attention to design is increasing. Making use of artistry in your products or caring about attractive design is infantilization, since kids also happen to potentially find the art and design nice looking because it's known that kids like pictures and color (and adults should like something else?). He mentions that making things less offputting to use is infantilization.

Does this apply to cars as well? Does adding design elements and any sort of color for reasons other than making it more aerodynamic or road safe equate to infantilization? Does using an automatic over a manual? Does using an auto- starting engine over a wind up engine? Does using a car over your own two legs?

I also find the argument that flat design is childish bizarre. I hate flat design, but it's not any more or less childish than what preceded it. Things can actually be more abstract with heavy reliance on text-only elements and icons without immediately apparent meaning, but the author seems to think that's infantilization, and what preceded was also meant for children, and absolutely anything other than what the status quo was in some undefined point in time is too infantilized.

It seems more that the author has a resistance to change, and framed it as everything new being too immature.

<comment><USER3> No, that's not the argument at all. "Art" and "design" do not imply infantilisation. No one accuses Dieter Rams of being infantile.

Infantilisation in design is specifically signified by cute animal mascots, large flat areas of primary and/or pastel colours, plain undemanding letter forms, use or implication of smiles and other emotional signifiers of friendliness or cuteness, use of relatable cartoons as primary graphics, and generally by aggressive simplification and removal of anything that requires some thought or effort to parse.

The Twitter and Amazon logos are infantile. The General Electric and IBM logos aren't. The Facebook "f" is more or less neutral, but the font chosen for the full "facebook" logotype wouldn't be out of place on the cover of an early reading book.

The point of infantilisation is that it signifies an experience of creativity without actually being creative. Instead of priming the imagination it just slides off it. It's all about locking you into a comfort zone instead of inspiring you to explore outside of it.

<comment><USER2> >The Twitter and Amazon logos are infantile. The General Electric and IBM logos aren't. The Facebook "f" is more or less neutral, but the font chosen for the full "facebook" logotype wouldn't be out of place on the cover of an early reading book.

This seems very culture-specific. Hard, blocky typefaces like in the IBM logo don't scream mature to me--they just are what the main design preference of a bygone era was. The GE logo has squiggles that make it almost cartoonish, but it also clearly looks like something designed a hundred years ago. GE's ads 70 years ago were packed with color and cartoon characters[1], yet today they're held as an example of "mature" while flat design with solid text is immature.

I'm still unconvinced that this is anything more than "Old is good and mature. New design decisions are immature and bad for society." The same arguments were used against people reading books, people watching movies, rock and roll music, and so on. Within those realms, some things are steps back, but it's hard to say that they were regressive for humanity as a whole. Saying choosing a popular font is infantilizing is kind of stretching it. In 40 years, Amazon's current logo will make people think of grandpa's house and the good ol' days. 250 years ago, I'm sure someone was complaining about cursive replacing gothic blackletters being a sign of societal decline.

[1] [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/05/91/9805918dd46921330298...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/05/91/9805918dd46921330298055ba61c6398.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is some interesting stuff there, but the article doesn't really examine its own premises for declaring some styles and designs infantile and others not.

For example "bright colors" are infantile. Is a subway map infantile because it uses simplification and bright colors to communicate complex information clearly? Is a red/yellow/green traffic light infantile, while a grown up traffic light would use say beige/gray/eggshell?

The attitude is a throwback to when GUI's where considered for kids while real men used a green-on-black command line. But now skeuomorphic and "drop shadows" are grown up, while "lighter, brighter and simpler" is infantile? Isn't is just that "new" is infantile?

The article builds a whole societal analysis on these unexamined premises.

<comment><USER5> I dont think author claims bright colors are infantile on themselves. She is claiming that bright colors are used to distract from complexity. That word is always used in conjunction with other words like "patronizing you while hiding it in bright, friendly colours and the technique of infantilization". The bad stuff there is "patronizing" and "infantilization" bright colors just help to hide that.

<comment><USER4> The bright colors and simple shapes in a subway map is not used to "distract from complexity". It is used to present complex information as clearly as usefully as possible. Would it be less patronizing to present subway users with a detailed topographic map?

In any case, using earth-tones or beige or whatever would not convey any more complexity. The author is just _associating_ bright colors with childishness, but does not examine this deeper. Yeah kids like bright colors, so does people making air traffic control systems.

<comment><USER6> I think the idea that this comparison (to color for display of information) is valid in your mind already proves the author's point.

Why should the communication of a corporate brand identity or the consumer interface to its products be using the same tactics as visual display of complex information?

The principles of visual display of complex information also derive from goals about clarity, preventing influence of outliers, neutral colors, etc.

What are those goals for a corporate communication strategy? If you think they are anything other than scary misinformation tactics to maximize profit and brand perception while minimizing the company's bad externalities, you're just fooling yourself.

When the principles of visual display of information are repurposed to optimize profit, minimize negative externalities and control a brand image, infantilization is one of the results.

<comment><USER4> How did you get from "the principles of visual display of information" to "infantilization"? Seriously I don't follow this connection at all.

<comment><USER6> Your question does not make sense. No one is going "from" principles of display of information "to" infantilization. That seems like a deliberate attempt to make it sound complicated by not engaging with what was said and oversimplifying it.

Your earlier comment states that the bright color usage is to present complex information clearly. Ok. So you have introduced the idea that in this situation people are using principles of visual display of information.

Now that we have said that, we must ask why would a company think its branding or consumer interfaces need to use principles that are intended for other goals like sharing scientific results or data.

We know company goals are about maximizing profits and hiding negative externalities, so it's reasonable to believe a corporation would only adopt principles of quantitative display of information for branding and consumer awareness if it serves these purposes.

These purposes are served by oversimplifying the purpose or ethos of the company, so that the brand identity is not associated with negative externalities the company creates. This is textbook infantilization. Present childlike logos, whimsical interfaces with flat colorful designs, simple clean interfaces.

This hides complexity. In the visual display of quantitative information, that's good. In the pushing of a brand identity that's disingenuous and manipulative exactly in the way of inviting the audience to believe a childlike sense of wonder and trustworthiness should be applied.

I think it's really disingenuous that you would require it to be spelled out like this.

<comment><USER4> Obviously brand identity is used to present a positive image of a company, regardless of the particular style. Are intricate "old fashioned" logos (like often seen on luxury brands or financial institutions) less manipulative? Of course not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the subject very interesting, but I feel like the author is undermining the argument with every example.

She (?) appears to consider shadows, 3d and other features of skeuomorphic design to be grown up, while more graphic, iconic flat design is childish.

That is a fairly unique interpretation...

<comment><USER8> How is it "fairly unique"? The author cites several examples of designers and authors contemporary with this change this shift in aesthetics that characterized these designs as child-like. E.g.:

"Already before the change, the graphic designer Peter Saville had described Google's logo as infantile: 'Everything about it is childlike: the colors [sic], the typeface, even the name' (Rawsthorn 2010). The redesign had intensified this. Chris Moran, at that time The Guardian's search engine editorial optimizer, described the new look and feel as a turn towards 'My First Search Engine' (Moran 2010). "

This is hardly a surprising characterization, too. Simple, shadowless shapes that emphasize colours is _exactly_ what children draw.

<comment><USER7> > The author cites several examples of designers and authors contemporary with > this change this shift in aesthetics that characterized these designs as > child-like.

She cites a single person, Chris Moran, from personal communcation. Chris Moran is not a designer, but an editor.

Peter Saville is quoted in an article from _before_ they removed the drop shadow and deemphasized the shading in the logo. It is the author who suggests that reducing the 3-dimensional style of the logo "intensified" its childlike qualities, and not Peter Saville, who had not seen the redesign when he made his comment.

<comment><USER8> The author's interpretation seems to be that the spirit of "child-like playfulness" was already the dominating design paradigm at Google, as characterized by Saville in 2010, and the re-design of the logo was done in this spirit. It's pretty plausible, given that this was the first time Google was changing its logo in ten years.

Edit: FWIW, it's not designs that are just flat that the author considers child-like. It's a design vocabulary that uses flat designs, cartoonish characters (e.g. Octocat), addressing users in a child-like manner that's seen as childish. Flatness is just one element of this vocabulary.

<comment><USER7> To be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that cartoons and vivid color schemes are used more prominently in the digital world, but I think the discussion of skeuomorphism vs flat design is mostly besides the point, and is undermining her argument with unconvincing examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to see this put into words and so well formulated. I agree with the author on many points. We are being talked down to in troves and we seem to accept it as a group.

I've noticed though, that some people like this, when they use some serious software, they will complain that the software didn't do X for them, or didn't remind them of Y, and I've often thought "gee? I'd get fairly offended if it did! I'm a grown up, I want to do that myself. Why do you want to be treated like a child?"

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a good article, but I want to warn the author that the owner of the .tk gtld takes away its "free" domains and redirects them to advertisers when it feels doing so would be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER11> Allegedly the new democratized Internet allows anyone to publish. Yet, if this is true and the goal is to empower users, why are there so many walls around these walled gardens?

The design elements the author observes are only a symptom of the theme of centralization. The unwashed masses will be given information technology, but only as much as they need.

Where there are walls, there are gates and gatekeepers. It isn't enough to have an infantile design. Condescending 'fact checks' from trusted sources and manually ranked search results are there to keep the children from going astray. After all, you can't be trusted to examine and digest information without some parental guidance.

For severe offenders who peddle wrong-think, deplatforming is an option. Of course those who have been banished from the grace of the walled garden can always set up their own website. Users need only enter the URL.

Again, we've seen the minimization of the address bar as unfriendly and overly complex by Chrome. Better to turn everything into a Google search. Google will help you arrive at the safest destination.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmmm... design fashions change over time and are also affected by technological limitations.

I'm the beginning we had text only terminals. Font designs were about it.

Business machines stayed that way for quite a while.

8 bit machines came along and allowed a rudimentary windowing environment. The "desktop" metaphor with its "files" was extremely popular and arguably very successful.

Roll on 16 and 32 bit machines and the windows and Mac "desktop" windowing systems added some colour but no whimsy.

Macs got some smiles. Good god - it's the end of grown ups.

iPhones (not iPads as the article asserts) introduced a heavily skeumorphic interface for two reasons: it was technologically possible on that platform and it was a design that someone with enough influence had chosen.

No surprises there: a wildly successful product that introduced a new design idea sparked a new fashion in UI design.

But skeumorphism in web design turned out to be less than great for reasons presented in the article.

So we retreat from skeumorphism and end up with: flat and colourful. UX (not just UI) experts discover that fast-loading and simple to comprehend websites convert to more sales and more profit.

Simple and easy is king on the web for obvious reasons.

If simple and easy looks like infantile there's an excellent reason: it's because they share many things. But not all.

Online gambling and share trading platforms my look infantile because they want to be appealing but they are fundamentally not infantile.

It's easy enough to make a point if one only presents facts that support it. So much is skipped in this article that I feel like it might well be possible to cherry-pick enough opposing examples to argue exactly the opposite.

<comment><AUTHOR> here's an example:

        https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/curate-a-collection/api-reference/get-collections-entries

scroll to the very end of the page, where twitter cheerfully asks "Was this document helpful?"

why did they choose a happy/sad face, instead of, I don't know, regular buttons?

who's the indented audience of that page? kids? I think not. It's probably a 30-something year old grumpy, bearded guy, yet...

<comment><USER13> Same reason that people don't put in a new traffic light and decide to replace the lights with a door that opens to show a reddish apple, a peach, a bonsai tree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author seems to have a very narrow view on how adults can / should communicate, almost a child's view of an adult "Grown ups should be boring and convoluted"

The British Legion example they give is odd, they have an interactive story that explains what the British Legion is about on their website. Seems fair enough to me, but the author has a problem with it? I don't get it.

People like consuming information in story form, should stories be reserved for kids?

The web is an interactive medium should we not make things interactive unless they are for kids?

I don't get it.

I see a lot of people with this narrow view point, people who get upset at south park because it's a cartoon or GTA because it's a video game.

</comment><comment><USER15> That reminds me of when a new scrum master joined the company and he was setting up meetings as "games". One time he was throwing around a ball and only the person who held the ball was allowed to speak. Everyone was looking at each other like WTF is this... It's clear to me that the scrum master was training us to become docile office cattle; making us receptive to the increasingly rigorous daily prodding and milking at the hands of our corporate masters.

I quit the company not long after.

</comment><comment><USER16> An interesting article.

It seems to neglect the implications that UI infantilization has for trust between the user and what is being used. If the UI is presented as toy-like, and the user goes into play mode, how does this shape their willingness to trust the thing being used (and so, the company providing it).

I suspect that engendering trust in the user is a big motivator here these days.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the childish design serves another purpose: to make the user feel safe about how their data is stored and used (whether this is justified or not).

</comment><comment><USER18> This really strikes a chord with me, so many things just feels patronizing these days. Is brutalism a reaction to this trend of infantilization?

</comment><comment><USER19> There were a lot of words in small text and no pictures so I didn't read it.

</comment><comment><USER20> The google logo.

</comment><comment><USER15> Something else that freaks me out is when I went to a sports club once and the trainer was telling people what movement to make every 10 seconds or so... It just doesn't feel right that I'm paying someone to boss me around. I'm pretty sure that this kind of activity in the long term makes people more docile and compliant and is bad for them.</comment>


TIL Why There Are No Non-Stop Flights from SFO to National Airport - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hipmunk.com/why-its-hard-to-get-a-convenient-flight-to-ne

<comment><USER2> TIL == Today I Learned

Trying to sneak Reddit terminology onto HN, Alexis? :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Force of habit. Hmm, it's not long now until HN Gonewild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any chance that there is data to show whether they were right? I mean, I strongly suspect that there isn't. But I'd be interested if there is either way.

<comment><USER4> Right about what? That more people fly out of Dulles because they can't get a direct flight out of National? Seems pretty obvious.

<comment><USER3> No, whether they were right that the airport would fail due to lack of custom without intervention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was also a perimeter rule governing flights at Dallas Love Field after DFW was built. A compromise was reached a few years ago. Here's an article from the Dallas Morning News summarizing the effects of the change: [http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-l...](http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN- lovefield_30bus.ART.State.Edition2.42566ed.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Dallas has the same issue with DFW and Love Field.

<comment><USER7> The Wright Amendment [1] is a slightly different issue. IIRC the plan was to end all scheduled passenger service at Love Field when DFW opened. Southwest was started after the initial agreement and fought the restriction. Since then the Wright Amendment has been steadily relaxed, and it will be repealed completely in 2014. Additionally Southwest is not allowed to fly from DFW because of the agreement to end the Wright Amendment.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Amendment>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. I always heard it was because they didn't want the really big (loud) international planes flying in urban airspace.

Regardless, a variety of people (particularly congresscritters) have been trying for years to get that restriction lifted.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure about the original reasoning, but I'm sure that's why some people still support the restriction. Or, at least, that's what they claim.

Seems like if noise is the problem, then noise is what is what you should regulate. The exact same plane that today flies from DCA to Houston could just as well fly to Seattle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meh. Flying into Baltimore is usually cheaper anyway, and DC area public transit is fantastic. (Well, compared to Ohio.)

<comment><USER4> Public transit from BWI means, you either have to take Amtrak, MARC (only on weekdays), or a bus to the Metro (which can take 45-60 minutes during rush hour).

If you're flying from Ohio, it will probably take you longer to get from BWI to your destination in DC than from Ohio to BWI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I often train into the BWI Amtrak station, so if you happen to ever see a tall white guy with a reddit/breadpig/YC/threadless shirt (I don't have a lot of diversity) -- say hi!

And then we can lament the often crappy service together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <side note>

Kinda ironic you can't get to the Colbert rally by flying into the airport named after the individual who fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, de- certified their union, and banned them from their profession for life.

<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12292.html>

<comment><USER4> If it makes you feel any better the airport was named after George Washington first and pretty much everyone who lives in DC calls it "National"</comment></comment>


The Little Prover - <AUTHOR> http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-prover <comment><USER2> I've had the pleasure of reading a pre-release version of this book and enjoyed it immensely [1]. Yes, it's true most of us will probably never need to write mathematically-provable software [2] but it's still good to know WHY we don't do this for our day-to-day programming, by getting a feel for just how challenging it is to do this.

However, I'm no expert on writing provably-true software, so take my opinion with a grain of salt... you may want to wait for reviews from experts in this field who can compare this book to other alternatives.

[1] Note that the "Little X" series of books have a peculiar style and may not be to everyone's taste. I'm speaking as someone who enjoyed all of the previous books in this series immensely.

[2] Although programmatic proofs may start becoming more mainstream in the future: For instance, with "smart contracts" they may play a major role, and are already planned as a feature for the ethereum solidity smart contract language... Not surprisingly, if you are handling currency in a contract, people like to know things like "There is no scenario in which the other party can run away with all my money".

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like it's an introduction to by-hand proofs about software, rather than to software-assisted proofs. That's a shame—I got very excited at the thought of a 'Little X' take on proof assistants!

<comment><USER4> My girlfriend and I are starting to play around with proof assistants (avoiding the coq joke as best I can...) and it would be great to have something like this to go along with that endeavour.

<comment><USER5> Which proof assistants did you play with? Why are avoiding coq?

<comment><USER3> I think WaxProlix ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553471)) was avoiding puerile jokes _about_ (a homonym for) Coq, not avoiding Coq itself.

<comment><USER4> Yes, exactly, especially in the context of "my girlfriend and I", "playing with", etc. Low-(brow|hanging fruit), even for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading this news while self-studying and enjoying the "Software Foundations" [1] course is so sweet.

[1] [http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/index.html](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Omg omg omg. I haven't been this excited about a book release for a long time. I just preordered this book. I can't wait to go through it cover to cover.

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh hey, they're writing a PLT Group rival to _Software Foundations_ and _Certified Programming with Dependent Types_.

</comment><comment><USER8> To me it's like Star Wars VII.

</comment><comment><USER9> I worked out every problem in The Little Schemer back in 2000 with only a C++ programming and no computer science background. It was very approachable and my only source of joy in a nightmarish academic setting.

I am looking forward to this book with the same degree of enthusiasm :)!

</comment><comment><USER10> I know nothing about the subject, but I love this series. Going to drop by MIT Press when I get the chance and pick it up.

<comment><USER11> Note the target release is in July, lest you be disappointed this weekend. Not that the MIT Press shop could actually be disappointing...

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sparing me from being dumb and going into the store tonight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I see the table of contents anywhere ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there an ebook version somewhere?</comment>


Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surgeons-23b0e2cf6d52#.8v2rgscza <comment><USER2> This is the sort of sophmoric 'conventional wisdom 2.0' that's no more effective than the conventional wisdom it aims to replace. The thesis is basically, "most people think / act / look like X, therefore the opposite is more valuable."

That guy who looks and sounds like a doctor may have paid his own way through college. Maybe he went to speech therapy to overcome a stutter. Maybe he works out regularly and follows a good diet because he truly believes in the advantages of a healthy lifestyle and he knows how hard it is for his patients to do the same.

The point is, the vast majority of the time we don't have any way of judging how much a person has had to overcome just by looking at their appearance. It's not that we're drawing the wrong conclusion from the metric, it's the metric itself that's broken.

<comment><USER3> > it's the metric itself that's broken.

That's the point. When a metric is broken, you can exploit its defects.

Let's say you have two surgeons applying for a job. One has the image down, one does not. Both have a 90% success rate in their surgery. The one with the better image will get hired more often. The one with the bad image will have to be better at his job (95% success rate) to get hired as often.

When you have a highly overvalued attribute, that attribute becomes an indicator of overvaluation. Meaning, it's a negative indicator of true value. The article applies this rule to "image".

If I told you that startups with a name that started with an "S" got 10x the early valuation compared to other companies, would you ever invest in a company that started with an "S"? Hopefully not. The startup may be good, but the odds are lower it would ever live up to its hype.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you in theory, but in real life there is nothing that is that quantifiable. What you are proposing is similar to video game stats -- if a character has 10 points to allocate, putting some in charisma necessarily means taking some out of intelligence.

In real life, I have no way of knowing which doctor is better at his job. The only metric I have to go off of is the degree and board certifications, and yet this article discounts those entirely in favor of the other guy. To use bedside manner as a metric instead of appearance, most of the brusque, rude doctors I know are just jerks, not real-life versions of Dr. House.

Adjusting for the relaxed standards of computer programming, proportionally I know just as many mediocre unconventional ones as I do mediocre conventional ones. The comments in this very thread suggest that the one with the worse image will get closer attention by many (though obviously not all) hiring managers just because of his/her appearance. So why should I believe the unkempt programmer was hired because he was more talented, and not because some other person just _assumed_ he was?

<comment><USER3> > What you are proposing is similar to video game stats -- if a character has > 10 points to allocate, putting some in charisma necessarily means taking > some out of intelligence.

It seems similar, but it's really not the same. There's a comment in this thread suggesting if a surgeon spends more time fitting in, that means they have less time and energy to spend on being a surgeon. I totally disagree with this.

I don't believe there's some finite amount of energy (that you could call willpower or character points) that's somewhat consistent across people and you only get to spend in certain ways.

To keep overusing the surgeon analogy: let's pretend New York surgeons suck compared to Boston surgeons. For every measurable metric, Boston surgeons are better on average. Everyone knows this. Accent becomes a reasonable indicator of skill.

You go to a top-tier hospital in a different state. Everyone there is great at their job. You meet two doctors. One has a Boston accent (indicator of skill) and one has a New York accent (indicator of lower skill).

The suggestion of this article is to look at the New York doctor and think "What's so great about this guy that even while walking around with something that every single person is going to judge him for, he still made it all the way to a top-tier hospital? He must be damn good at his job to make it this far."

An attribute can be an indicator of value. But, if it is overvalued, it becomes an indicator of overvaluation.

When people are discriminated against but still successful, the discrimination criteria becomes an indicator of skill.

Shit, call it the Jackie Robinson Effect. When no one wants you around, when you don't look the part, you have to be damn good at your job to keep it.

I'm guessing here, but I'd bet money that in the first few years of desegregating baseball, the average black player in the MLB was way better than the average white player. They had to be amazing to get a spot. Being black in the MLB was an indicator of value. Now that those pressures aren't the same, I'd bet they're equivalent and being black in the MLB isn't an indicator of skill.

<comment><USER4> Clearly, I cannot choose the wine in front of me.

But you would have counted on this, so I cannot choose the wine in front of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My eyes started to glaze over this piece, but dating a surgeon really opened my eyes to their very exclusive profession.

First of all - forget about the tech industry, surgeons are overwhelmingly male. It's obviously a tough path to get there, and takes a huge toll on you when you get there (eg., their divorce rate is pretty high). This made me realize simply the scenario of Gray's Anatomy - some hospital with like eight female surgeons - is ridiculous.

Now, all doctors have a God complex, but the surgeons take the cake. They deal with tons of death and save countless lives. My gf fiercely defended this - her point was you want a surgeon who doesn't think twice about huge terrible bloody trauma, people freaking out and intense pressure. You want a surgeon who will be bold, roll the dice and do what needs to be done. I've helped build pretty important systems that affect many lives, but certainly nothing close to that kind of immediacy.

Finally, and this is going totally off topic now, but I also saw how terribly confusing the state of American health costs are. We lived in a big city, and doctors did rotations among the hospitals in the area. The _same_ doctors would be doing the _same_ procedures and patients in different hospitals would be billed hugely different amounts. Of course that has many secondary impacts; maybe you get a nicer facility, a room to yourself, certainly (and maybe as importantly) the demeanor of the nurses attending you would be much nicer.

<comment><USER6> I do not want a bold surgeon.

I want a surgeon who is well-trained, well-rested, aware of and working within her circle of competence, working with a communicative support team, and using a clear defense-in-depth strategy against error. In such an environment, doing what needs to be done is more certain.

<comment><USER7> Surgery, or _cutting other people open deliberately_ is instinctively difficult for people, even after they rationally evaluated that it 'needs to be done'.

Being able to bring oneself do X is not the same as knowing X needs to be done.

In that case, a quality like 'boldness' might help the surgeon execute successfully, rather than shrink away instinctively, if you define 'boldness' as being willing to make on-the-fly, risky, life-changing decisions when the need calls for it and then follow through. Most people are either not able to do this well, or deliberately choose _not_ to work in an environment where it is called for.

This same sort of calculus weighs in any profession that is in same way already inherently unpleasant, such as being a soldier, a fireman, or a spy.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. The hesitant feeling goes away in first year anatomy. Many doctors do not become surgeons because they prefer another field, don't have the scores, don't have the personality that gets recommendations from surgery preceptors, don't want the long residency with bad hours, or were simply unlucky and didn't match.

<comment><USER9> "The hesitant feeling goes away in first year anatomy. "

Surely 'first year anatomy' is not the same thing as a bloody mess on the table, alarms going off, a frantic staff, and someone about to die in front of you unless you _do something_ that happens to be fairly close to _the right thing_.

I didn't study medicine, but I was in the Army, and I confess that a degree of slightly irrational hubris is necessary in some situations.

Surely, we would all prefer our surgeons to be calm, team-oriented and thoughtful in front of us, but I think the situational dynamics just don't apply well to that. Also, people can be all of those things and 'bold'.

Admittedly, 'bold' may not be the right word.

If there is a word for someone who can be called upon to think clearly and 'do what is necessary' in a complex, high-stress scenario ... well than that.

<comment><USER8> In the army, any combat staff with a rank of sergeant or better should have what it takes to be calm in that situation. That's why there are residencies. One of my mentors would chuckle during an intense situation and say "pit sweat!" Another would say "all bleeding stops eventually...". With students, the nurses are often keeping it cool until the student calms down. Many people can learn to stay calm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Somehow I thought this was going to be more like the barber question.

" _There are only two barbers in town. One is neatly trimmed, smooth shaven, professional, and is sweeping up after his last customer. The other has a wild appearance, terribly-cut hair, his shop is messy and has no customers. Which do you go to?_ "

I wasn't quite sure how it would work with surgeons, though... " _One has perfectly-sutured incisions all over his body, the other has organs flopping out..._ "

</comment><comment><USER11> I think a better real world example than the hypothetical surgeons is seen in sports. Look at the first several players break the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Of course you have Jackie Robinson as the first. But among the next few after him were Ernie Banks and Willie Mays. There was a decent bet that if you saw a black ball player in the early to mid 1950s he was an all time great simply because they were the only ones who could overcome the racism that was keeping others out.

</comment><comment><USER12> I totally agree with the core sentiment here, but I'm not sure this long- winded and moderately pretentious rant conveys much beyond "don't judge a book by it's cover." I would encourage others to skip the long read.

<comment><USER13> It conveys more than "don't judge a book by its cover." It is making the stronger point that not only are people who are unkempt in their appearance just as likely to be good at their job, they're more likely to be good at their job. He explains a model that this prediction falls out of: where there is competition between professionals and they can either get their status through expertise, superficial preening, or some combination thereof. Most people think those two traits go hand in hand but he's making the point that due to competition they might be anti-correlated.

<comment><USER14> It's also a model supported only by anecdote.

<comment><USER15> And then even anecdotally counters his own point by saying Trump's behavior as president is somehow to his credit. As if it's all a matter of theatrics and perception, and not what he's actually done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People who don't "look" like typical programmers always deserve a second look.

This is the one hiring maxim which has never steered me wrong, and also provided a very diverse (and really fun!) development team. :)

<comment><USER9> That's odd, because I always thought developers should look a little 'off'.

I generally dress well. Like a business guy. To overcome prejudice, I would wear sandals to my interviews.

I wouldn't care to get a job in software today, but being a little older, and dressing the way I do, I doubt anyone would overlook their conventions and hire me!

But I'm grateful you're doing it.

Maybe you have some devs that look like bankers on your team?

<comment><USER16> No bankers, but we do have a rather dapper gentleman pushing (over?) sixty. One of my strongest leads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A counter argument is that someone who looks more like a surgeon cares more about his profession, pays more attention to details, and is therefore more likely to do a good job.

Either way it's completely anecdotal. I would venture to say there's no correlation between how someone looks and how someone performs.

<comment><USER18> It takes creativity and effort to look the part. It takes creativity and effort to be normal. Which means _less_ creativity has been applied elsewhere like to something important.

<comment><USER17> Yeah but on a scale of "1 to Surgeon" how much creativity is really traded off in how someone dresses?

14 years of schooling vs 30 min on the internet?

I'd say the effort trade off is statistically insignificant.

<comment><USER18> Good point. However cargo-culting other surgeons subtly and fashionably and well enough to fool promotion committees into overlooking mediocre performance might take more creativity than you think. For one thing surgeons are intelligent, status-oriented, complicated creatures. It's not just about picking the right clothing. Not giving the game away by your demeanour may require that you fool _yourself_ too. Such narcissism might take a herculean effort to maintain because your ideas about yourself are connected to other, more objective, ideas. You might have to organise professional conferences and get involved in _politics_ , which always take a psychological toll. If your attention is on the wrong things this could indicate that privately you don't believe your surgical performance is up to much or that it can be improved. Which may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _You don't create a firm by creating a firm; nor do you do science by doing science._

I read this as Paul Graham's point that startups should not "play house". They're both saying that creating a company isn't about getting funding, hiring people, having a website and a logo, etc. It's about making something that people want, which can start in any number of ways that might not look like a company.

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe that unprofessional looking doctor is actually the son of a rich benefactor and got the job because of his connections.

Maybe he kept with appearances until he got tenure and now he's slacking because no one can fire him.

Maybe the hospital was short on staff and took anyone willing to apply at the time.

Or a hundred other reasons why, if you can choose a doctor, do research on them, if you dont have time, pick one by virtue of conversation, if you can't do either, you are just trying to make a pattern out of randomness.

</comment><comment><USER21> The (capitalized) word "Lindy" appears exactly twice in this piece:

"The idea is Lindy compatible."

"In any activity, hidden details are only revealed via Lindy-style experience."

Having read the whole piece and done some web searches I still have no idea what this could possibly mean.

<comment><USER22> Taleb is likely referring to the Lindy effect, which he also referenced in his book, The Black Swan.

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

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the pointer, but the passages in this piece still make no sense even in that context.

<comment><USER23> Here's my best effort at explaining:

The Lindy effect describes cases in which real-life outcomes get better as one progresses down the "bad odds axis". For example, a 95-year-old selected at random from the general population might have a higher likelihood of being alive one year from now than an 80-year-old selected at random -- e.g., due to fact that living 95-year-olds tend to be people with good genetics who make healthy life decisions [0].

Taleb is somewhat sloppily trying to tie this phenomenon to the broad assertion that the relative aptitude of two given individuals at any given pursuit is often counterintuitive to first impressions. This ties into Taleb's favorite argument, which he predictably makes in a slightly different way with each new book or essay: what is often rewarded by society / companies / etc is the appearance of being good at something, rather than actually being good at it, and the pursuit of being perceived as good at something is not only not helpful to being better at it, but often actively counterproductive to said task....but if you ignore people's perceptions about what it means to be excellent, and "put skin in the game" by focusing on being excellent rather than cultivating that perception, you will be less susceptible to unforeseen bad events ("black swans").

[0] This very well may not be statistically true, just trying to put forth an illustrative example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My only rebuttal to this somewhat rambling piece is that my heart surgeon looked and acted very much like I expected a heart surgeon to look and act, and he did a great job. I found out later that he's one of the top-rated cardiac surgeons in the US, and that many cardiac surgeons come to this hospital just to study under him.

But in support of the thesis, this _hospital_ is not located where one might expect one of the top three heart hospitals to be located.

</comment><comment><USER25> You shouldn't judge a surgeon on looks at all. There are actual surgical stats you can use to judge surgeons.

</comment><comment><USER26> A brain surgeon is like a hairdresser because there are only so many heads you can work on over a lifetime using only your own two hands.

Only some surgeons can be full time lifesavers, some hairdressers however can be full time media production savers.

Either way, for someone in the top performance bracket who is truly saving the day with each head they work on, more energy professionally devoted to clients which would otherwise be expended on their own superficial appearance and gratuitious recognition-seeking can only be a good thing for the clients themselves.

The best could possibly be expected to not appear very much like the well- known Hollywood stereotypes or not be fashionable themselves at all very often.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity: [http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45809](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45809)

</comment><comment><USER28> What immediately jumps out at me is that both hypothetical surgeons described are men; patients consistently assume that my wife (neurosurgeon) is a nurse, and that the tall man in his 50's (a PA) is the surgeon. She doesn't even bother correcting them most of the time, it's not worth the effort.

I would say that if you have no other information, pick the female (and preferably minority) surgeon. I know a lot of excellent white male surgeons, but within my circle of acquaintances, a randomly selected woman is unquestionably a better option than a randomly selected man.

</comment><comment><USER29> Let's all start with the assumption that both of the surgeons are men, shall we?

I don't mean to be flip. This is an article about assumptions and yet it makes one it shouldn't.

</comment><comment><USER30> This kind of reasoning is valid in an idealistic, meritocratic society where the standing of a doctor is mostly established by track record and skills. In a corrupt society or a hospital with an unethical management, this may simply not be the case.

</comment><comment><USER31> After just having Doogie Howser as an orhtopeadic surgeon I would take him again. For the simple reason of high tech recency. So what his hair was not perfect

</comment><comment><USER32> edit: lmao

<comment><USER23> Taleb wrote the article</comment></comment>


Latis – Smart Notifications for Apps - <AUTHOR> http://latis.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi All, I'm the founder of Latis. I would really appreciate any feedback/thoughts.

<comment><USER2> Awesome that you're using Roost! Founder of Roost here, feel free to reach out if you ever have questions on our side of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I'm glad you like it. I will take you up on that and get you on email.

As you can tell we are adding an intelligence layer above notification providers. That will certainly help reduce the friction in on-boarding for co's like roost. Much like Segment.io did for analytics companies.

Having a closer integration with you guys would be a great benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> azza-bazoo I love services for app notifications but despair that there are so many -- having a management layer on top of all of them sounds awesome!

<comment><USER3> Our thoughts too! Thanks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great and solves a real problem with mobile notifications

<comment><USER3> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Scrum Made Zero Sense for My Young Startup. So I Designed an Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/scrum-startup-alternative <comment> throwaway-15520 Maybe I'm just unlucky, or it's a case of No True Scotsman, but I've yet to experience a good working Scrum environment that doesn't devolve into micromanagement, meeting hell and cargo-cult behaviors. I've seen it kill all the initiative, enthusiasm and curiosity in a developer team. Pre-Scrum, a developer might look at some code, think "hey, I'll spend a bit of time optimizing that, looks like it needs some tuning", maybe have a quick chat with their lead and/or teammates, and get on with it. Now it's "I'll have to make a card, which will probably be a spike, put it in the backlog, wait for it to be groomed, and maybe we'll get round to it in Sprint 12 this year". That becomes too much effort, so they don't bother. This is classic bureaucracy as a cudgel : make the form-filling and meetings exercise so burdensome ordinary people just give up, and the bureaucrats win because they thrive on the form-filling and meetings.

Scrum - as I've seen it practiced in the wild - seems to go against the entire spirit of agile and developer empowerment, and even calling it "agile" is pure gaslighting, but at the same time the arrival of Scrum is the signal that the company you work for is no longer the fun, challenging little startup you joined, but is now pulling on the big-boy enterprise pants. That may or may not be a good thing for the company as a whole, but as a developer it's the signal that you either should buckle up and prepare to be a more secure but unhappier cog in the new beaucratic machine, or move on to greener pastures. Because Scrum is just that: it's a tool for to corral your unruly startup weirdos into a growing "serious" enterprise organization, and to push out the ones who can't or won't comply. People just make the naive mistake of thinking it's about increasing productivity and efficiency.

<comment><USER2> For most engineers scrum is a non-technical PMI trained PMP Scrum Master asking the team if they are going to check-in their coding tasks by Friday.

Because traditional management techniques are primarily date driven, scrum easily devolves into little satisfying deadlines where the primary goal is to check something in by the date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Amplified learning is critical for a startup because you are searching for value in dark space. To find value you have to package up attempts and fire them into the dark space to see if anything hits.

Fire the value attempt when it is ready, not when some artificial sprint interval finishes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Love 'searching for value in dark place.' great point.</comment></comment>


Consumer debt is not your friend - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/consumer-debt-is-not-your-friend.html <comment><USER2> I wish I had read something like that years ago.</comment>


Yarn Package Download is down - <AUTHOR> https://yarnpkg.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Which makes me wonder, why do they use their own domain instead of relying on npm?</comment>


Ask YC: How will you solve the problem of climate change? - <AUTHOR>

Don't ask me <comment><USER2> There is something like a 90% chance of getting a cap-and-trade system passed within the next two months. McCain-Warner is going up for vote in a couple of months, and if it passes then Bush is going to be under a lot of pressure to sign it since A) McCain is the Republican nominee and B) both Obama and Cinton have their own versions of a cap-and-trade system. This bill isn't perfect, but it's a pretty good start toward fixing the problem. If it doesn't get passed in two months then almost certainly it will in another year, or failing that, Obama's bill will.

It's gotten to the point where even many of the major industrial companies in the US support a cap-and-trade system. Risk costs serious money for entrepreneurs. When taking out a loan on these billion-dollar power plants their weighted average cost of capital goes up a lot since they know there are going to be new rules in place but they don't know what the rules will be. It's actually better for these companies to get the rules in place ASAP because their cost of capital goes down so they get a much better return on their investments. That's partially why Duke and Alcoa and Caterpillar and Dupont and all these companies are lobbying for cap-and-trade.

I think we are going to see more progress on this issue than anyone can possibly imagine within the next couple of years. Once a cap-and-trade system is put in place, expect solar photovoltaic to achieve price parity with coal within 24 months.

</comment><comment><USER3> With a solution that passes a cost-benefit analysis. None of the most popular proposals do. Seriously.

<comment><USER4> Efficient markets will weed out ideas that fail this analysis in time.

Incentives like the Automotive X-Prize will accelerate this process, leading to solutions that are smart for the planet and smart investments, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Help make the most enjoyable kind of life less dependent on stuff, space and transport by returning centeredness to urban existence.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe the single biggest problem is that planes fligh so high they are burning Ozone which has 2 parts oxygen rather then flying lower. Since the engines run better burning ozone rather then just plain oxygen that we breath they save money flying higher and will keep doing so.

[http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg14219232.100-saving-...](http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg14219232.100-saving- ozone-with-a-nogo-zone-jumbo-jets-are-spending-moretime-in-the-stratosphere- than-previously-realised-and-their-emissions-aredamaging-the-ozone-layer- should-flights-in-the-stratosphere-be-banned.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> The one that is caused by aliens? ([http://www.crichton-official.com/speech- alienscauseglobalwar...](http://www.crichton-official.com/speech- alienscauseglobalwarming.html))

Learn, ignore politics, care about real issues that affect you and people that you know.

</comment><comment><USER8> Paint all roads white.

<comment><USER9> Major urban areas, such as London, can be three degrees centigrade warmer than the surrounding region partly due to dark synthetic surfaces which absorb extra energy. Dark tarmac roads cover a significant proportion of urban areas and therefore contribute significantly to this effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wait around for the end of the current interglacial period?

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Global warming will be defeated by incremental increases in efficiency across the board.... think of it as the death of a thousand cuts.

Everything from better internal combustion engines, electric motors, improved solar energy technology, carbon capture to my affliction, aerodynamic drag, will make "small" but significant progress.

Combined, those incremental advances will add up to a serious threat to the threat of climate change.

</comment><comment><USER11> Massive decrease of earth's human population. Biological, Nuclear or Nano, pick your delivery method ... Stop worrying and learn to love the extinction event.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just thinking, we are told oil, gas etc. are running out and also that these items are causing global warming. Now I reckon that all the economical carbon in fossil fuels is going to be used up and is going into the atmosphere anyway so is it not just a question of timing?

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill If you mean "global warming", don't worry, it will be discredited soon enough, (for those who don't already know it is a pile of crap, and I mean that in the most rigorous mathematical sense).

I don't fear "climate change" as in most temperate zones climate changes every 6 months, just as it has for thousands of years.

<comment><USER13> How do you discredit global warming mathematically?

<comment> patrickg-zill You examine the current mathematical climate models and determine their limitations in terms of available CPU power, RAM, disk on even the largest supercomputers.

Then you take into account the lack of any accurate model at all being available for the operation of the seas and oceans - we don't have an accurate mathematical model for even the Gulf Stream, for instance; much less the rest of the world.

Then you realize that all prediction models are so error-prone due to the above that they cannot be relied upon with a reasonable degree of certainty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a resident of one of our lovely northern states recently digging out of a cold winter into a colder spring, my only concern is that by the time it gets notably warmer , I'll be long dead.

</comment><comment><USER15> How will I solve it? Persuade the government to force every citizen to live in grass huts and ride horses to work. Or electric scooters.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fly ice in from asteroids and dump them in the ocean. And they say you don't learn anything from television.

</comment><comment><USER17> Number crunching with Google Earth to find the best places to be in in the future.

<comment><USER18> why is this getting voted down? I think speculating on which real estate is going to be the future tropical beaches is valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> what climate problem?

</comment><comment><USER20> Ice cubes. Lots of them.

</comment><comment><USER21> The singularity and nanobots will take care of that for us.

</comment><comment><USER22> Solve it? Why do that when we could ignore it and go away?

<http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html>

 _Note: This is an April Fool's Joke._</comment>


The Year in Math and Computer Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantas-year-in-math-and-computer-science-2019-20191223/ <comment><USER2> To me, the big question is what do we mean when we say "quantum computer". This is a thick stew mixing together complex math -- and computer algorithms and architectures. It's like a trifecta.

When Google comes out and announced "quantum supremacy" only to get pushback from other quantum teams suggests we still don't even know what we're trying to build.

<comment><USER3> I think everyone knows what we want to build (A large-scale quantum error corrected device that we can run shors algorithm, etc on). But we are nowhere remotely near that so we have to argue over much less impressive milestones (not that what google did isn't impressive, it is. Just far off from our quantum dreams)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The part about replacing sets with categories is inaccurate. Some people are talking about categorical foundations, but as far as I know, most work is aimed at HoTT and/or (infinity-)groupoids. Thid is of course not divorced from category theory but the focus is important.</comment>


'Almost all' Pakistani banks hacked in security breach - <AUTHOR> https://www.dawn.com/news/1443970/almost-all-pakistani-banks-hacked-in-security-breach-says-fia-cybercrime-head <comment><AUTHOR> Comment from me: a few years ago, all banks in Pakistan were ordered to install a state developed "front-end" for banking software in order to connect it to national biometric database (in Pakistan, a big portion of ATMs have biometric authentication.) The flaw is rumoured to be a banal SQL injection in that piece of software.</comment>


Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/working-from-home-in-covid-era-means-three-more-hours-on-the-job <comment><USER2> For those who have children, and who now have to care for those children (who are now home from school all day) and work, I can see it. But for everyone else? Why would the pandemic make people work _longer_? Why blame the boss sending you emails on Easter Sunday and expecting an immediate response on the pandemic, rather than on the boss having lost any sense of the employees having time away from work?

I mean, I suppose that work-from-home made it easier for the boss to lose the distinction between "employees are at work" and "employees are not at work", but that's really the boss's pushiness finding an excuse. The conclusion may be that, if you're going to work remotely, your boss's character and personality matters even more.</comment>


C++11 compiler support shootout: Visual Studio, GCC, Clang, Intel - <AUTHOR> http://cpprocks.com/c11-compiler-support-shootout-visual-studio-gcc-clang-intel/ <comment><USER2> > It looks like GCC is overtaking Clang as the compiler with the best C++11 > support

There seems to be a myth going around that Clang has or had better C++11 support. Apparently when the author did his last shootout Clang had a slight edge over GCC, but over the long run GCC has had the better support most of the time. I started using C++11 (or C++0x as it was still called) in February 2011 and at that time GCC 4.5 had significantly better support than Clang.

Not to denigrate Clang's other qualities - I wanted Clang's better error messages but had to stick with GCC to get the C++0x support I needed.

<comment><USER3> GCC 4.8 has caret-denoted column information for errors and warnings.

<comment><USER2> That's awesome. I'm glad to see that the healthy competition is making GCC improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> C++11 rocks and I think Bjarne was right in saying that it feels like a new language. This isn't your grand-daddy's C++. It's certainly worth considering for your next project and valuable to learn if only to make you a better programmer.

<comment><USER5> See, the funny thing is, you're still going to be interfacing with your grand- daddy's C++, and _his_ daddy's C. And you'll be adding cruft for your grandki --ah, who am I kidding, hopefully they'll be using Ruby.

EDIT: Downvote all you want--you know it's true. It is seldom you'll get to write a new C++ project from scratch, totally, using only standard libraries.

<comment><USER6> /me goes off to play with his new C++11 project.

<comment><USER5> Anything interesting?

<comment><USER6> Not yet. :-)

It's stuff like <https://github.com/marshray/qak> in which I indulge my impulse to recreate the universe from scratch in C++11 on the weekends so I don't act foolishly during the week.

I've been porting it to the limitations of MSVC 2012 and looking at implementing a lightweight Node.js-like IO system in C++11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A bit off-topic, but since I discovered Intel's compiler years ago, I've been wondering why I, the generic desktop programmer, would want to pay for a compiler when the free ones are pretty damn good. I can think of only a small set of use cases where the CPU manufacturer might know the best optimization for some code that's heavily utilized in compute-intensive projects, but that seems like a small market.

<comment><USER8> Intel's compiler generates code that runs twice as fast. Speed should really have been in the list.

On that note, the whole list looks like it was written from the point of view of gcc. Features on other compilers that vary from gcc are given 'partial' credit, since I guess they do it differently and different is bad. And extensions in other compilers are not mentioned at all.

It looks like the 'shootout' was done by standing in gcc's corner and taking pot-shots at everybody else in the room.

<comment><USER9> Only in relatively rare cases where ICC can auto vectorization and gcc can't. Otherwise, very comparable on 64-bit: <http://willus.com/ccomp_benchmark2.shtml?p17>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently wrote an entity-component framework [1] for C++ using a bunch of C++11 and it was really quite enjoyable. At the time, VC++ didn't support variadic templates which was a bummer, but they've since released a feature pack with it. It's great to see adoption coming along so quickly.

[1] <https://github.com/alecthomas/entityx>

<comment><USER11> What new parts of C++ did you appreciate the most?

<comment><USER12> Not the OP, but I'm going to put my vote down for a simple and comparatively less discussed feature: initializer lists. Declarative programming is a huge win, and being able to declare objects just like you do "static data" is a huge readability win.

Other stuff is mostly about fixing bugs in the standard (<cough> rvalue references </cough>), cleaning up the syntax (auto) or providing new syntax for useful but comparatively rare operations (lambdas). That's all good, but initializer lists can change the paradigm of how the code is presented, and that's better.

<comment><USER13> "useful but comparatively rare operations (lambdas)"

I think it is rare just because people is not used to it, once they discover the flexibility of lambdas functions you would start seeing them more often (even abuse of them)

I am remaking a event system that I did for a turn based card game and the use of lambdas is just so natural that I realized now how painful and weak was the previous code.

<comment><USER12> Lambda functions are just syntax, they aren't "flexible" in any meaningful way I can see. And I argue that they certainly are rare -- virtually all major languages (other than C and C++03) have some form of straightforward anonymous function with some form of local scope closure (and to be clear: C++11's implementation of that bit is sort of a mess!).

Other than node.js, virtually none of them make regular use of them. When they do, it's mostly just to have a convenient way of passing a callback.

Lambda's are good. But as implemented in C++11 they really don't do anything to change the nature of the code being written. On the other hand, proper use of initializers _does_ , by virtue of _not_ having to write a thousand setXXX() functions, etc...

<comment><USER11> For me, the lack of lamba functions meant I was less likely to use many of the algorithms from the standard library. In general, you want to provide a functor to such functions, and it doesn't make sense to define a class, overload operator(), and get the member variables and instantiations to line up when you could just write a for loop. With lambdas, the compiler will do that boiler plate for me.

(Yes, I say "will" - I'm not yet working on something that lets me use C++11 features. Sigh.)

<comment><USER14> This is what a like about C++11, it feels a safer language and lets me do lots of functional style programming.

Sadly I am stuck in JVM/.NET on the day job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> GCC guys have been on a tear getting the support built in, but it's nice to see Microsoft is slowly catching up as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shame about C99 support. I'm afraid to even ask about C11.

<comment><USER14> C99 is probably going to be the last C standard most commercial compiler vendors will care about.

On the desktop and server the world is moving from C to C++/Objective-C, with C still being very important in the embedded space.

Microsoft's official position is C++ is the future and C is legacy on Windows platforms.

Even the two most important open source C and C++ compilers are now both written in C++, although given their open source nature, I expect they to keep on supporting C contrary to the commercial vendors.

<comment><USER17> C11 language support seems to be complete since GCC 4.7.

<comment><USER14> My main point was about commercial compiler vendors.

<comment><USER17> Intel's C compiler also claims to support most of C11, as, apparently, does Clang. That covers the popular Unix compilers. Microsoft seems to be the big outlier, but they don't even care about C99.

I admit, though, I have no idea what commercial compilers are popular in the Windows world. I am under the impression that you either used Intel's compiler, Microsoft's compiler, or a free port of the Unix toolchain, but I don't really do Windows development.

<comment><USER14> You left out all the big commercial UNIX vendors, embedded market, real time operating systems, HPC and game development.

<comment><USER17> HPC is usually one of IBM XLC, Intel ICC, or GCC. All of them support most or all of the C11 language features.

For commercial unixes, it's hard to find documentation on C versions supported by Oracle Solaris Studio, but it was last released in 2011. HPUX ACC was last released in 2010, so I would be very surprised if it supported the 2011 C standard already. That doesn't meant it won't, but it does mean that it moves slowly. Not surprising, since large unix vendors operate in a market where stability is valued above most other things. IBM XLC already supports C11.

The embedded market tends to use GCC, from what I can tell, although it may vary widely by company. ArmCC _is_ around, but the last major looks like it was in 2011 (minor updates since). I don't know what future versions will bring, but I'd be surprised if they don't at least end up supporting the memory model and atomics. These are /useful/ when writing embedded code.

RTOS development is pretty much the same situation as embedded.

From what I understand, game development usually isn't done in C, but I'd be very curious to know how the compilers there differ from compilers used for normal desktop applications. Which ones are normally used for game development?

EDIT: And, apparently, Microsoft is going to be adding _some_ C11 features to C, as well as most of C99, because it will be piggybacking off the C++11 updates. So even the company that said it was ignoring anything newer than C90 is adding C11 features. That was a surprise to me.

Perhaps you could list some widely used compilers that have said they will not be moving towards C11 support?

<comment><USER18>
      For commercial unixes, it's hard to find documentation on C versions supported by Oracle Solaris Studio, but it was last released in 2011. HPUX ACC was last released in 2010, so I would be very surprised if it supported the 2011 C standard already. That doesn't meant it won't, but it does mean that it moves slowly. Not surprising, since large unix vendors operate in a market where stability is valued above most other things. IBM XLC already supports C11.

While it's true the last release was in Dec. 2011, Solaris Studio receives updates and fixes (just as Visual Studio, etc.) do between releases that may contain significant improvements.

As for standards conformance, I "googled" it:

      http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24457_01/html/E21990/bjabb.html

C11 and C++11 support are not yet available in any form, although the Solaris Studio compiler is one of the few that actually has _full_ C99 compliance (yes, even those annoying floating point pragamas).

Support for C++11 is planned though:

      https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=10730210

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is it that Microsoft seems to lag so far behind? Don't they have lots of funds and competent programmers to take the lead? Or is it simply not a priority?

<comment><USER20> On the MSVC blog, there's a post announcing C++11 support in VS2012. The comments, of course, are filled with angry devs posting about what a joke the initial VS2012 support is.

Buried in those comments is one from a MS dev who claims that he is the _only_ guy working on the standard library implementation. Kinda sad, really.

<comment><USER21> _Buried in those comments is one from a MS dev who claims that he is the only guy working on the standard library implementation._

Doesn't Microsoft license its standard library from Dinkumware?

<http://dinkumware.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I'm also going to omit Intel's library from this comparison.

Without a reason?

<comment><USER23> With icc you usually use libstdc++ (mac/linux) or the MSVC C++ libraries (windows).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hope they'd not break <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Template_Library> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_%28C%2B%2B_libraries%29> based applications

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder why libstdc++ development is so slow. Regex support has been missing since TR1.

<comment><USER10> I can't be sure, but the fact that libstdc++ is ABI incompatible with the current stdlib probably doesn't help adoption and thus usage and testing. If you want to use libstdc++ _every_ dependency must also be compiled against it, including any system packages.

<comment><USER26> libstdc++ != libc++

libstdc++ is gcc's C++ stdlib; libc++ is clang's (although clang can used libstdc++). libc++ supports all of C++11, although there's still some bugs. libc++ is ABI incompatible with libstdc++, but it's explicitly designed to support using both libstdc++ and libc++ within the same program, so that's often not a program.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, rereading my post I realise I omitted some text (I was on my phone), and shouldn't have said "ABI incompatible". What I meant to say was that the C++11 versions of both libstdc++ [1] and libc++ [2] are effectively incompatible with the C++98 version of libstdc++. The main point still stands: you effectively can not link against libraries using different versions of the C++ standard unless you're very lucky.

[1] <http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Cxx11AbiCompatibility> [2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12542971/using-libstdc- co...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12542971/using-libstdc-compiled- libraries-with-clang-stdlib-libc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27>
        s/Yes/✔/g
        s/No/✘/g
        s/Partial/∂/g
        s/Don't know/?/g</comment>


Optics and Regex: Greater than the sum of their parts - <AUTHOR> https://chrispenner.ca/posts/lens-regex-pcre <comment><USER2> For pattern matching and search-and-replace in Haskell, some people might prefer monadic parsers to regular expressions. This library has a similar set of capabilities:

[https://github.com/jamesdbrock/replace- megaparsec](https://github.com/jamesdbrock/replace-megaparsec)

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate to be That Guy, but I found the massive overuse of exclamation points to be very distracting. I'm not quite at the level of those people who claim that using exclamation points is like laughing at your own jokes, but they should not be a default punctuation choice.

<comment><USER4> > I hate to be That Guy, but I found the massive overuse of exclamation points > to be very distracting.… [Exclamation points] should not be a default > punctuation choice.

I think that's overstating it quite a bit. There's one exclamation point in the first four paragraphs. The frequency picks up a bit after that, but I'd hardly call them the default punctuation choice.

<comment><USER5> > The frequency picks up a bit after that

" _Hopefully you learned something! Did you know I 'm currently writing a book? It's all about Lenses and Optics! It takes you all the way from beginner to optics-wizard and it's currently in early access! Consider supporting it, and more posts like this one by pledging on my Patreon page!_"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And people were asking what good parameterizing over all instances of Functor or Applicative can do.</comment>


Terminator: a terminal on steroids - <AUTHOR> http://gnometerminator.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html <comment><USER2> Best Terminal ever. Using it since years <3</comment>


How Was This Recursive Image Made? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kubuntugutsy1.png

<comment><USER2> Take a screenshot of the the original Kubuntu wikipedia page. Scale a copy of the screenshot down to the size of the picture area on the wikipedia article. Take a screenshot of the result; scale a copy of the result down until it's the size of the picture within the picture in the screenshot. At that point, it's probably indistinguishable -- you can't see enough of the 4th picture to even recognize the color of the KDE desktop. This is no fun at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew it was faked because it was only uploaded once. However, it immediately made me laugh because it implied the impossible. Judging by the quantity of blue in the middle, I'd say that resizing was only done three times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Time and patience.

Also, it's not totally recursive since the top level is different from subsequent levels.

</comment><comment><USER4> you can do this easily enough with websnapr as well</comment>


Meplazumab treats Covid-19 pneumonia in a clinical trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.20040691v1 <comment><USER2> This is great news. Although the study only had 28 subjects, the findings are pretty strong. The article has not been peer-reviewed, so we should be cautious about these findings.

This source [1] mentions some controversy about a claim in this article:

"The virus uses angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as its main route into the host, but their claim that the viral spike protein – which binds ACE2 – can also interact with CD147 is controversial."

[1] [https://www.bioworld.com/articles/433822-genentech-moves- act...](https://www.bioworld.com/articles/433822-genentech-moves-actemra-into- phase-iii-covid-19-trial)</comment>


Clinton ran own computer system for her official emails - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-ran-own-computer-system-121721814.html <comment><USER2> So, anyone with a brain realizes this is a political hit job leading up to the 2016 presidential election. So the promotion of this story has very few honest brokers involved & a lot of partisan motivation.

But I am genuinely curious about this. It doesn't seem like wrongdoing per se, or even anything unethical. But I don't like the trend of losing documents from the historical record. And I think that (while her email security is probably better than State Dept. as a whole) it probably would have been better as the leader to hold herself to the same standards as everyone in the organization as a general principle.

Curious to hear if anyone here has .gov experience and can give useful insight into the story.

<comment><USER3> This is reporting. Fox News is the only media outlet that has any significant share of the audience in America that would even remotely consider expending an ounce of resources trying to keep a liberal democrat out of office.

If you don't believe that, then you are probably a liberal democrat.

So, to call this news story about a politician acting in a premeditated, unscrupulous/unethical manner a "hit job" shows your deep political bias.

To turn it around, would you feel it was a "hit job" if a politician whose ideas and agendas you disagree with, set up an outside email server for the express purpose of discussing official government business so that it wouldn't/couldn't be easily tracked? I don't think you would.

<comment><USER2> I find your response a bit insulting and presumptuous.

I'm sufficiently well developed to separate my feelings about a politician from their political party, and in turn from my own feelings about an abstract ethical scenario. And none of this is to say anything about my political beliefs, which are personal and none of anyones beeswax.

This isn't abstract either, as some other poster mentioned, this is widespread, bipartisan behavior. I think that if there is evidence of malfeasance, then they should be required to produce their email (privately served or not) via subpoena. I can see the loophole about having people policing their own email archiving, but I honestly _do not know_ if that is illegal, hence why I asked if any experts here knew if this violated any laws or policies.

EDIT: also, you assume this is sourced from a conservative or Republican group? Primaries happen before generals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surely, this must have been common knowledge at the State Dept. Wouldn't they have noticed that her emails came from a domain that wasn't dos.gov? And if she was communicating with other State Department officials, wouldn't the emails they received from her at their dos.gov email be part of the public record anyway, defeating the purpose of running your own server?

<comment><USER5> Her emails may have looked like they did come from dos.gov. It's trivial to spoof a From header.

<comment><USER2> Hah! Try spoofing an email to a recipient in the State Dept and tell me how it works out :)

<comment><USER5> Find me someone in the State Department willing to be the recipient and I will happily conduct this experiment. Why do you think it would be any harder to spoof an email to the State Dept than anywhere else?

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework)

<comment><USER7> [http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3astate.gov&r...](http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3astate.gov&run..).

"No SPF records found"

Looks pretty spoofable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm okay if she ran Postfix. If she ran Sendmail, I have issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> Was the server actually at her house or was the domain name just registered with that as an address? Neither option seems even slightly damning.

<comment><USER10> Almost certainly the domain registration.

> Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton's $1.7 million home on Old > House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her > email server since August 2010.

Does that sound like the information you get from running whois on an IP address or on a domain name?

> Clinton's private email server was reconfigured again to use a Denver-based > commercial email provider, MX Logic

How the fuck would anybody know how her private server was reconfigured unless they're talking about mx records?

<comment><USER11> It's just poor reporting. I think they're misunderstanding their sources. I agree with you that the source is DNS, and they mean, "her email domain" was reconfigured, rather than her server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an archive of domain mx records out there? That would seem to clear up exactly where her email was hosted.

Edit: the current mx records are below:

       ;; ANSWER SECTION:
       clintonemail.com.       5495    IN      MX      10 clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogic.net.
       clintonemail.com.       5495    IN      MX      10 clintonemail.com.inbound10.mxlogicmx.net.

<comment><USER13> Having her email rely on Mexico's DNS servers doesn't seem like a terribly good idea.

<comment><USER14> The MX in this case refers to mail exchanger rather than Mexico.

<comment><USER13> I was referring to the mx, not the MX, but you're right -- those records were truncated for some reason. It's actually mxlogicmx.com.

(There is a mail provider using the mx domain, though. I don't recall its name.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From what I have read so far there doesn't appear to be any evidence whatsoever that the server was hosted in her actual home. And that certainly would be a strange, strange thing to do. All it would take is an ice storm in Westchester to put her ability to read and send emails out of commission.

Ockham's razor tells me it's more likely the media is speculating based on a whois record or similar. Scanning the existing comments I don't see anything more definitive than that. Is there any actual reason to think the email server was physically in suburban NY?

<comment><USER12> See my post below. The mx records point to mxlogic, which provides email filtering services, not hosting (as far as I can tell). It looks like she may have indeed run her own email server.

<comment><USER15> Right, I don't find it implausible at all that she ran her own email server, by some definition of that expression. I do, however, find it at least somewhat implausible that said server was in a residential home in Westchester NY.

More to the point I don't see any evidence at all that it was physically there besides speculation. If there is such evidence (like IP addresses or similar) floating around, that would be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty interesting that it's being run from her own house. I guess if anyone has any idea about how the NSA operates, it would be her.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really hate the fact that this is a technical discussion or its an attack on her or a smear campaign.

The underlying fact is, she broke the LAW. That means she should be dragged through the punishment of the law.

Stop supporting her or making excuses. The society of today really stops caring so much about the rule of law, but rather what they have for an opinion. But I ask you if you if murder is against the law, do you support it?

We shouldn't be supporting this either way. It was plainly against the law and she broke that law. If you have a problem with it, then change the law. Stop sticking up for someone that blatantly broke the law.

<comment><USER18> What law did she break?

I don't say that as support, I just haven't seen any clear explanation of that yet.

<comment><USER17> Ask Google..

[http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/did- hilla...](http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/did-hillary- clinton-break-federal-laws-email)

<comment><USER18> Your link says _Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have violated federal records laws by using a personal email account for all of her work messages, the New York Times reported on..._ and goes on to quote some speculation from unnamed experts.

You said _It was plainly against the law and she broke that law._

I was hoping you could explain more than the press articles have been, because you made it sound like you could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tried sending an email to that domain to see if it would bounce back, but it didn't. I was hoping to get the server's IP address.

Looks like bouncebacks were working yesterday, but have been disabled: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-03/hdr22clintonemailco...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-03/hdr22clintonemailcom- how-romanian-hacker-exposed-hillary-clintons-secret-email-life)

Edit:

I tried to telnet to the server:

       telnet clintonemail.com 25
       Trying 22.214.171.124...
       telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

Where is that IP address? British Virgin Islands: [http://www.ip- address.org/lookup/ip-locator.php?track=208.91...](http://www.ip- address.org/lookup/ip-locator.php?track=188.8.131.52)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll probably get down voted for this, so be it. I worked in the Clinton whitehouse in the mid-90s. Every time you sent an email, which was on a cluster of VAX servers, you got a full screen notification about the presidential records act, and you had to agree affirmatively if something was, or was not an official record. If you said no, it still got archived, it just got flagged so a FoIA might not be valid against your email. We simply backed everything up to tape, and sent it to NARA. My first week there we got subpeoneDed. I remember being asked to volunteer to go up to greenbelt Maryland to help restore tapes for records requests.

There is absolutely no way she or anyone else that worked woth here didnt know your needed to archive emails. Subpoenas happened regularly, and everyone knew Emails = record. Years later after I left I landed a contract with a government contractor to recover thse tapes, against federal lawsuits, emails are records and the courts want them. Par for the course. I'd argue the Clinton whitehouse was the first administration to truly face electronic records retention effects with the courts. Nixon maybe being the first with audio tapes, the clintons got email Subpeonas.

So when I hear she was running her own email server and staying outside federal records retention requirements, I both nodded knowingly that I would expect nothing less from the wife of a man that learned first hand: keep no records, and then shook my head ruefully knowingly why she did it:

Keep no records.

When public leaders avoid record keeping requirements, this prevents public scrutiny, and that means they no longer work for you because they aren't accountable to you. Maybe you agree with her, but you'll never know what she did in your name. Hillary knew what she was doing. I have no doubt of this, as I said I would expect nothing less. I would be shocked if she didn't do this. Stunned really. I'm still paranoid about what I put in written form (text, email, etc.) to this day.

This was calculated, to keep her unaccountable and off the record.

</comment><comment><USER20> Without government resources, it's hard to imagine this server could be secured, copying the data to two private companies creates much more exposure.

The rule of security is to make the attack more expensive than it's worth to your adversary. How much are the U.S. Secretary of State's emails worth? Certainly they are worth billions, and I'd guess even trillions of dollars; the information could make existential differences, for example to security of entire nations. In addition, the money you could make with foreknowledge of U.S. policies, for example in oil markets, seems astronomical.

I expect that foriegn intelligence services, with billions in reources and highly skilled personnel, had access to her mail. I expect some private interests also did.

<comment><USER4> It seems the objection to this practice is that government email is supposed to be insecure by design in that anyone should be able to access it by making a FOIA request. To me, that seems kind of silly. I can imagine there a lot of legitimate reasons the Secretary of State would not want their email to be publicly accessible.

<comment><USER20> > It seems the objection to this practice is that government email is supposed > to be insecure by design in that anyone should be able to access it by > making a FOIA request. To me, that seems kind of silly. I can imagine there > a lot of legitimate reasons the Secretary of State would not want their > email to be publicly accessible.

Security doesn't mean everything is inaccessible, it means you control who, when, and where the data can be utilized. Obviously not all of the Secretary of State's email should be publicly accessible, but 1) the law as implemented by the government, and not a private individual, should control access, 2) someone needs to ensure control is maintained and prevent unauthorized access, and a private individual probably doesn't have the resources to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was interviewed by NewsRadio 106.7 about this about an hour ago. The podcast will be online here in a couple hours: [http://michaelgraham.com](http://michaelgraham.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> If Clinton can run her own email server, why are so many people allergic to running their own servers? (PS, hope she had a business internet connection so she wasn't violating ToS)

<comment><USER11> Clinton employs a large staff of people, some of whom are apparently email experts. I think that probably helps to reduce the allergy symptoms.

<comment><USER23> No, because it's a violation of the law. The federal government is supposed to keep records of everything they do, for several reasons :

1) they are accountable to the people. Granted this is a principle. At some point in the future, everything the federal government did will become open knowledge.

2) It must be possible to get them in front of the justice system. This is a basic principle of a separation-of-powers democracy. The justice system is, by law, entitled to access any and all documents, emails, everything any agency has (just so we're clear : not talking about the judge down the street, although they have some access, but the supreme court has full, unquestionable, access)

3) FOIA (freedom of information act). Citizens and others can petition the justice system to make government documents public. Unless the justice system and the federal government agree something can not be made public, it is made public.

This is extremely prominently mentioned on every computer system anywhere near the federal government. Record keeping requirements this, email archival that.

Ms. Hillary Clinton did not miss these requirements. She knowingly violated the law and conducted official government business in an illegal manner. Ms. Clinton knowingly, and with the aid of dozens of people working for her on the public's dime violated the law. In theory the minimum punishment for this is to become unelectable for 5 years, but "somehow" I doubt that will happen. Also there seems little doubt that the emails she will make public will be a filtered version of the original.

This is comparable to fraud (though technically not fraud) : if you did this as a CEO of a publicly traded company, it would be considered fraud, and you could very well go to jail for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I want to be mad that a high-profile public servant created and used an email capability that allowed her to skirt record laws if ever challenged.

But... it's a really good idea. Hell, I used to run my own back in the day before my ISP started prohibiting it (around 2003ish?)

So I'm conflicted.

<comment><USER25> I left a personal email and webserver running in my parents shed for a few years on an old debian box. It was useful, I keep meaning to set up another one.

Personally I think that it is great that a high profile public servant went and ran their own personal server from their house.

It suggests a level of competency and it encourages other people to try and set up their own servers from home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not excusing the behavior, but it's not new: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy)

</comment><comment><USER27> *Hillary

<comment><USER28> Whoever is the most relevant gets the shorter name, in a kind of Huffman-like coding. If you say "Bush" now, people think you mean the 43rd president, even though earlier they would have thought of the 41st president.

<comment><USER29> But the headline should differentiate because there are more than one Clinton in the public sphere. "H. Clinton" would have been enough.

<comment><USER10> "her" wasn't a sufficient clue?

<comment><USER29> I don't think Her was in the headline at the time. I think it was just something a la "Clinton ran email server from home" or something.

<comment><USER28> I think you're right. Here's the old one [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_CLINTON_E...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_CLINTON_EMAILS_HOMEBREW_SERVER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-03-04-03-15-48) and the newer one [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_CLINTON_E...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_CLINTON_EMAILS_SERVER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-03-04-08-09-46)

<comment><USER10> damn impermanence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are we supposed to pretend the NSA doesn't exist and Hillary Clinton has a bunch of emails the government doesn't know about?

<comment> o0-0o The problem is not that the government doesn't know about them, it's that the PEOPLE don't know about them.

<comment><USER30> But if the emails were sent from the government's servers the people still wouldn't know about them.

<comment><USER31> But you could (in theory), request them under a FIOA

<comment><USER32> I don't see a reason that you would be detered from submitting the same FIOA request for these emails. I expect the likelihood of getting a response and a set of documents sent to you would be the same as it would be if her emails were hosted through the Department of State's mail server.

<comment><USER31> Because it's on a private server, not a government operated one. Gives her legal coverage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Police believe Grayshift has a workaround for Apple's new USB Restricted Mode - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pavwzv/cops-are-confident-iphone-hackers-have-found-a-workaround-to-apples-new-security-feature <comment><USER2> Why doesn't Apple dig deep into their warchest and either acquire Grayshift, or pay off one of their engineers to spill the beans?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really curious how one goes about "future proofing" an external cable connecting to a device via a usb port gated from inside of the device. Voltage? Frequency? Fantasy?

</comment><comment><USER4> For better or for worse, articles like this and the leaking of information from Grayshift gives Apple a lot of smoke to follow. If you're trying to figure out how an attacker is getting into a system and you've cut off one major vector, that's good. But if the attacker then comes out and says that they're unaffected by that vector cutoff, it signals that was the wrong vector to block off.

It's an interesting cat and mouse game, but I have a feeling that the cat will win. Apple can "go nuclear" and do something like remove wired data connectivity all together, for example. Low level boot firmware doesn't need to change all that often — getting it "right" means that they won't need to worry about it for a long time.

Apple loves showing off their investment to privacy as of late. It's very tempting from Apple's perspective to invest a lot of time and money in keeping attackers out now, more than ever.

</comment><comment><USER5> How is it not DMCA violation?

<comment><USER6> Two reasons I see:

1) Nobody guards the guards

2) Being anywhere in the process of enforcing the DMCA on law enforcement will end your career (well, maybe with the exception of the secretary and the janitor). You can only cross the blue line once.

<comment><USER7> Grayshift isn't law enforcement though, they're a private company that is creating DMCA violating products. Apple has every right to sue them, and hopefully recover some compensation for how they have sullied Apple's brand.

<comment><USER8> As much as I hate the DMCA, I think this is the perfect suit with only upside:

1\. Apple loses. DMCA is weakened for legitimate security research. Yay

2\. Apple wins. My security in my person and belongings is strengthened against unlawful interference. Yay

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't scenario 2 potentially strengthen DMCA and make it more difficult to do legitimate security research in the future? That's quite a big downside.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but the obvious bounce back would be amendments called for by police to the law. Which puts us back in scenario 1</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A comparison of SPDY and HTTP performance - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=170059

<comment><USER2> When you consider that SPDY is encrypted, the correct comparison is with https.

The fact that SPDY has performance close to http, while being encrypted on top of it, says that it is a worthwhile improvement.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft probably wants to downplay SPDY so they can promote their "improved" version.</comment></comment>