The Git Revolution Is Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/the-git-revolution-is-here/240009161 <comment><USER2> It is interesting that they mention Perforce releasing a git-compatible frontend/adaptor. I've heard that at least two top-10 code shops (hint: both are in Seattle) built something like this in-house over a year ago since they were unable to switch away from P4 but wanted to placate newer devs that liked git.

<comment><USER3> Many companies I spoke to are stuck with Perforce because its the only version control system that has been proven to scale with thousands of users. Thats not to say Git can't scale but convincing enterprises that Git can scale and showing how they can do it is the next challenge for Git evangelists.

<comment><USER4> I don't think git can scale, at least not currently, to the extent perforce can. There's two main problems holding it back:

\- Storage of database on local drive - the last time I worked with perforce, HEAD alone was 280GB... where would this fit? (there's a presentation about google's use of perforce where they say the metadata alone for their database is >1TB! - so even storing just metadata might not fly)

\- As number of people using database increases, chance of needing to store hand-modified binary files (Office, Photoshop, Maya/Max/XSI/etc.) increases, and advantage to storing non-modified binary files (old builds, tools, etc.) increases. (Storing things in shares on people's PCs, or having two systems, or whatever, just ain't great.) Centralized locking is pretty much essential for such files, but, being centralized, it's hard to support with a distributed system...

The former problem could almost certainly be solved. The latter I'm less sure about. Partly for technical reasons, but partly because the idea that binary files shouldn't be version-controlled is, for some people (and I don't know if the git people are of this mind), a point of inviolable principle.

<comment><USER5> You would be surprised. Git's differential compression is pretty impressive. I worked at an SVN show where HEAD was about 270mb but when I cloned it in Git the bare repo was only 130mb. Git also let's you clone parts of the tree and sections of the history (at least when working with SVN it did).

<comment><USER4> You may be right. My suspicion would be that a lot of the data is not terribly compressible, and that you'd be looking at over 1TB for the repository of a decent-size project. Add one checkout of head on top; add build products to that. Build products mount up surprisingly quickly, with multiple gigabytes of objects and PDBs being common.

1+TB (and git doesn't support partial checkouts) would make it difficult for people to work off a laptop, or use a SSD. Everybody would need 2 2TB drives on the off chance that they might have to work on more than one project at once. Or you'd have to check less stuff into the git repository.

I know people say disk space is cheap; I just don't think it's quite cheap enough yet to piss away to this degree. It's one thing to have a server with masses of storage, I'm just not convinced you can require every client PC to have the same. I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like and occasionally use Git, but I started with Mercurial and still prefer it. Can anyone tell me why/how Git allegedly become way better than Mercurial? I seem to have missed that.

<comment><USER7> I haven't used Mercurial for a while, but on the top of my head:

\- lightweight branches (your branch is just a different head, there is nothing permanent about it)

\- git rebase -i (rewrite your history)

\- git add --patch (add parts of a file to a commit instead of the whole file)

\- the philosophy of preparing the commit by putting the files or portions of files you want to commit in the staging area, as opposed to committing everything per default

I know Mercurial has alternatives to most of these functionalities, through various plugins. But I can't say I found them nearly as usable as Git. And that's saying something considering Git's command line interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case people are wondering what the Perforce front-end/interface to Git was, I believe it's their "Perforce Git Fusion" product: <http://www.perforce.com/git-fusion>

Webinar's next week, and I may sign up to see what this is all about. (Disclaimer: Certified Perforce Admin here, and no, I don't work for Perforce.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been a git super fun for years. But I have to say Hg is much more friendly to newbies. My reason for git's popularity is:

The code is out of the hands of Linux kernel team, so you can believe that git will work well. And the fame of Linus and later github also count.

<comment><USER10> Github attracted a lot of the Ruby developers. They are extremely vocal on the web which I think is what made Github and Git so popular. I personally prefer Hg over Git as well due to friendlier syntax but Git hit it off a lot better w/ that vocal OSX community.

I don't know many people who use Windows that like Git. The ports were buggy for a long time and the best visual tool, SmartGit, isn't free. Mercurial which has TortoiseHg which is excellent but I hear is painful to get running on OSX (maybe this has changed). Mercurial is fairly popular still though. I think a lot of people use it but not many popular articles get written about it the same way it does about Git.

<comment><USER9> Yes, ROR people talked a lot, on web, that also counts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This would be a great story about 3 years ago

</comment><comment><USER12> What is the git front end to perforce they talk about? All I know about is git-p4 (open source python script, still a little buggy last time I checked) and P4-Sandbox, which is supposed to be DCVS type features implemented in perforce.

A real git front end would be awesome!

<comment><USER8> Not sure it's a front-end (looks like it's a Perforce front-end to Git), but I believe it's an interface that makes the two work together: <http://www.perforce.com/git-fusion>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The fact that the project managers and office staff at my workplace are unable to / incapable of using git is a deal-breaker. Git needs serious work in this regard.

<comment><USER14> Shameless plug: <http://gitpilot.com> this is part of the problem that we are trying to solve. We would love more feedback.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what gitpilot does. It's difficult to understand what's happening on the video. Two suggestions: 1. Windows client and 2. screenshots next to each of the six items on the page to demonstrate what you're explaining.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for your feedback. Of all of the market research that I've done so far, it seems that there still isn't a lot of Git developers on Windows. Outside of your own development, are many of your peers using Windows/Git?

Excellent suggestion with the screenshots and the six items.

<comment><USER16> Maybe I'm missing the point, but I'm using this <http://windows.github.com/> and it's pretty good, specifically the shell.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Business Chat – A whole new way to talk to companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/ <comment><USER2> This is a primarily large company focused initiative. You'll need to work with apples partner integration chat providers to build on it. It's invite only at this point.

</comment><comment><USER3> Setting up WhatsApp business is far easier. Cannot work out at all how to use this. Seems if you're a big company dw Apple will come to you.

</comment><comment><USER4> They keep announcing this as if it's a new thing but it has been in beta for a couple of years. If/when they are serious about this being a real communication channel between companies and customers they should provide a simple API and registration process like Twilio.

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea seems cool, but finding information on how to get setup as a company with business chat has proved somewhat elusive for me.</comment>


Naive Realism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)#Consequences <comment><AUTHOR> I have not encountered any other psychology concept that is so ingrained to almost all people.

Literally, think of every discussion you had related to politics.</comment>


'Quarantine fatigue': Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/quarantine-fatigue-researchers-find-more-americans-venturing-out-against-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders/2020/04/25/fa1f01b2-84a3-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html <comment><USER2> Why is anyone surprised?

Quarantine is harmful, and only useful if we're preventing something worse. That's probably the case, broadly — but the policies in other countries raise questions about US policies.

This is compounded by the arbitrary nature of closures, eg public construction and landscaping can continue but private can't. People resent politicians arbitrarily (and self-servingly) picking winners and losers in the economy.

It's further compounded by the fact that leaders haven't announced a clear vision for when this ends. People complied because they cared and wanted to prevent deaths — but now we're in a situation where the workforce is devastated and being hurt by arbitrary requirements, with no clear plan.

Naturally, people aren't just going to sit there hurting — and if leaders don't articulate a clear direction towards fixing things, people will find their own.

<comment><USER3> It's also unclear whether the lockdown is accomplishing anything. We have enormous economic damage, lots of boredom, no dramatic _decrease_ of cases in most places, an unimpressive amount of progress toward herd immunity, and no meaningful increase in testing, prevention, treatment ability, or clever policies from any level of US leadership.

In other words, what have we accomplished by locking everything down? Delaying large numbers of deaths by a few months?

Extending the lockdowns until we maybe have a vaccine in 2021 does not seem like a great idea.

<comment><USER4> > no dramatic decrease of cases in most places

What does that even mean ? It's slowly going down everywhere with serious lockdowns instead of going exponentially up. Anything less than exponential is a _dramatic_ decrease.

<comment><USER5> Exponential growth for a short period is seen in every epidemic, even small ones, because they all follow the same bell-curveish sort of shapes. Having observed that by itself doesn't mean anything - all epidemics grow slowly, then quickly, then slowly again as they approach their natural saturation point, then go into decline.

The idea that COVID-19 would grow exponentially starting from zero until a saturation of 100% was reached was only ever the outcome assumed by simulations, which have - as far as I can tell - a perfect track record of total failure. At least the sort of models created by universities in the modern era do.

To make this clear, the UW model driving much US policy response was updated several times in real time yet despite that managed to make wrong predictions for the exact same day it was updated.

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1247010068148731904?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1247010068148731904?lang=en)

And not just wrong, but reality fell far outside this models own uncertainty bounds too, so according to the modellers observed reality was not just unlikely but almost completely impossible.

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1246465515704463360?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1246465515704463360?lang=en)

(note how wide the uncertainty bounds are, yet that it's still wrong)

More commentary:

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1245416486879051778?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1245416486879051778?lang=en)

[https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1248640413835108355](https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1248640413835108355)

The Imperial model that drove the UK ignored the possibility of hospital capacity increases entirely, and comes from a team that has (as far as I could find out) never successfully predicted an epidemic.

Real diseases don't play out like unending exponential growth until the whole world is infected - they go into decline far before that.

Quite why this is so is unknown. The dark secret of epidemiology is nobody really understands viral spread. Every model is wrong and nobody can explain why. Germ theory must have a major gap, so what is it? My guess is a combination of much higher asymptomatic spread than currently understood (asymptomatic infection not being a phenomenon that's really been investigated much as only academic modellers care about it), and perhaps some forms of natural immunity to viruses that aren't based on antibodies.

Whatever the cause, it'd be wrong to compare the observed outcomes vs the predictions from models that are known to be completely useless and say, there's been a decrease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway2020-1 Note that the data is from cubeiq - featured in a rogues' gallery of firms in the long tail of firms monetizing personal information

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location- data-privacy-apps.html)

We need this data now, but let's also not forget this area needs regulation (that among other things will give teeth to violations of "but it's all encrypted/anonymized!" claims)

<comment><USER6> Tech giant briar patch. You want the gov to decide what can be remembered a-la GDPR? Maybe some Article13 after?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141283)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072801)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481197)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249878)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815778)

The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is particularly frustrating to witness in Australia, where we have all but eliminated covid-19, but there is no political will to eliminate it entirely. Had we closed hairdressers, building sites and takeaway restaurants a month ago, we would be looking at zeroes for daily infection.

While many places in the world cannot yet justify the costs of elimination, a country like Australia, bordered by water, could have reached the goal before fatigue set in. As it is, I am resigned to awful subsequent waves culminating in the so-called herd immunity goal.

<comment><USER8> Highly suggest you read this before chasing an impossible ideal:

[https://www.scmp.com/week- asia/opinion/article/3081110/coron...](https://www.scmp.com/week- asia/opinion/article/3081110/coronavirus-lockdown-vaccine-herd-immunity-can- there-be-winning)

<comment><USER9> All these scenarios seem to completely disregard the eventual availability of pharmacological treatment for the disease, which may improve (little or much, we'll see from the trials, no miracles though) the clinical management and thus the pressure on the hospitals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like nonsense. People in big cities rarely go less than a mile. Many are now starting to venture out into forests and similar safe areas for the first time.

On the other hand, a one-mile track in Wisconsin or Montana might be an evening drive.

<comment><USER11> >forests or similar safe areas

Unfortunately walking trails were not built for social distancing.

<comment><USER10> Which is a great reason to stay off the beaten trail.

<comment><USER12> It really isn't though... Leave some nature for everyone else and stay on the trail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We really have trouble learning lessons as a species. 1919 is calling.

<comment><USER6> We achieved better results than _every_ pre-peak prediction. What do you measure?

<comment><USER14> I saw plenty of predictions this was just another flu and thus no big deal. Wuhan contained it early so total infections would be kept low etc.

If anything I am shocked how accurate many epidemiology predictions where.

<comment><USER6> Obviously, I'm talking about professional predictions. If for some reason you care about armchair predictions, it's going to be 10 to 1 in the "way worse" range for a random sample here.

Which accurate pre-peak predictions are you referring to?

<comment><USER14> I am talking about predictions from politicians not random people online. Professional predictions had huge error bars around various levels of response and tended to be surprisingly accurate IMO.

Hell the stock market still seems to think it's no big deal.

<comment><USER6> Which professional pre-peak predictions were surprisingly accurate?

<comment><USER14> Those underpinning the 'flatten the curve' projections and causing everything to shutdown for one. With exponential growth before a shutdown and flat growth during it.

There where plenty of different models based on different government responses, and they generally hold up well.

<comment><USER6> Like this one?

[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/s...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial- college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI- modelling-16-03-2020.pdf)

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html)

Is 1.1M is "holding up well"?

<comment><USER14> Yep, I suggest you read it.

 _Suppression. Here the aim is to reduce the reproduction number (the average number of secondary cases each case generates), R, to below 1 and hence to reduce case numbers to low levels or (as for SARS or Ebola) eliminate human- to-human transmission. The main challenge of this approach is that NPIs (and drugs, if available) need to be maintained – at least intermittently - for as long as the virus is circulating in the human population, or until a vaccine becomes available. In the 3 case of COVID-19, it will be at least a 12-18 months before a vaccine is available . Furthermore, there is no guarantee that initial vaccines will have high efficacy._

That's the current UK strategy and they don't have exponential growth.

<comment><USER6> Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? It would be more useful than cheap shots. The paragraph you quoted is unrelated to the prediction.

p16: "In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US."

We achieved better results than the best case estimate for the US in that paper, and not by a little.

<comment><USER14> The prediction is not based on suppression but mitigation, thus we are outside the model.

But for now _suppression_ is holding steady in the US and UK. With current rates projected out for 18 months being lower than the predicted mitigation strategy.

That said, there seems to be significant pressure to reopen, so we are likely to experience the mitigation strategy starting in a few months.

<comment><USER6> Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? Which professional pre-peak US prediction did you find suprisingly accurate? Clearly it's not this one.

<comment><USER14> Suppression can limit spread to an arbitrarily small number depending on when it's implemented. They correctly stated it's capable of stopping exponential growth and that each mitigation or suppression strategy's effectiveness depends on when it's implemented. So, if we started a week earlier the daily death toll would be ~1/10th as large.

That prediction exactly matches observed outcomes. Do you expect them to predict our public policy and it's date of implication?

<comment><USER6> There are no studies that I am aware of that predicted the exceptional outcome the US has had as far as total deaths. If there are, please link to them. The study that you think is suprisingly accurate, has a minimum number of 1.1M dead if we implemented "case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly" in the US, which is a reasonable approximation of what we did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


No face masks so California's farmworkers are left unprotected - <AUTHOR> https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2020/03/farmworkers-unprotected-face-masks-coronavirus/ <comment><AUTHOR> [..] The mask shortage may leave farmworkers vulnerable to the airborne fungus that causes Valley Fever, Coccidioides immitis. The disease's symptoms are similar to the flu, including fatigue, shortness of breath, fever and sometimes lethal lung problems.

Unlike the flu, however, Valley Fever attacks the weakest part of the body. While most people who inhale the fungus may simply think they have a cold, in others, the effects can last a lifetime, and result in death or amputation.

It's not just Valley Fever. Dr. John Balmes, a professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco, said farmworkers can be bombarded by dust and dirt while sowing, tending, picking and packing produce, and the particles can be dangerous to their health, setting off asthma attacks and irritating airways.

Many field laborers prefer to put on N95 or dust masks when heading out to work in the open, exposed to the elements. According to Balmes, N95 masks protect against vapor particles, such as sulphur, a common fungicide applied by farmworkers, or Coccidioides. Dust masks only protect against larger particles and simply guard against irritation of the throat and airways.

Now, however, many say they have switched to bandannas, which Balmes said offer little-to-no protection.

"That exposure can trigger an asthma attack, even if it's not diesel or infectious particles, just plain soil," said Balmes, who also is a professor of environmental sciences at UC Berkeley and a co-investigator on the CHAMACOS study, a long-term research project that investigates the impact of pesticides on children in the Salinas Valley.[..]</comment>


Ask HN: What are various options for mobile web app development? - <AUTHOR>

What are various options available for developing mobile web applications using standard HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript? <comment><USER2> MoSync.com is one.</comment>


Facing fury over 'fake websites,' Grubhub says restaurants have it wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-grubhub-cybersquatting-20190702-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter <comment><USER2> > The second item in terms of service signed by restaurant owners states that > Grubhub "may create, maintain and operate a microsite ("MS") and obtain the > URL for such MS on restaurant's behalf."

I would not have realized that "obtain the URL" meant "purchase a domain name" if I read this.

<comment><USER3> What else would it mean that would not include the possibility to purchase a domain name for this purpose?

<comment><USER4> Put yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment...

You're a mom and pop restaurant owner. Maybe new to the country. You put all your savings into this. Now you're making your delicious family recipes and people are enjoying them. And paying you! And hopefully coming back for more.

You're barely making ends meet, but you hope the business will grow from word of mouth.

Now a delivery service comes along. You know your margins will be low on those orders after their cut, but hey, it keeps you busy and maybe you can hire another cook.

Pop quiz! What's a "microsite", and what's a "URL"? You may have heard of one of those things, but what is the other? Something from Microsoft?

Nonetheless, you need the business, and you sign up because you have a customer waiting for dinner and you have to get back to cooking.

<comment><USER3> So you need the business, don't have time to get into the details, have a company that takes care of those details for you, brings you an additional volume of orders that you seek, takes the commission they earned and you agreed to, and turns over the domain upon demand.

It sounds like a nearly ideal business arrangement to me. I'd be far more troubled about the burying of positive reviews for people who refused to pay for advertising than I am for someone living up to the letter (and I believe the spirit) of the agreement with respect to microsites and domain/URLs.

<comment><USER5> What is a microsite?

<comment><USER3> [https://www.google.com/search?q=microsite](https://www.google.com/search?q=microsite)

A small website, often targeted to a specific marketing channel or campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be honest, not a great look from Matt. It's entirely possible that a lot of this was a misunderstanding, since microsites is literally a product feature that GrubHub sales folks use to sell to restaurant owners (among several, several other features that GrubHub provides).

One could imagine that this was mainly a communication error, and it could've been fixed by updating GrubHub's sales processes.

But Matt saying that restaurants have it wrong? It's just... not a smart thing to do. GrubHub has a symbiotic relationship with restaurant owners, and they gain nothing from insulting restaurant owners.

<comment><USER7> They might have not-insignificant potential revenue losses if they have to remove these micro-sites.

<comment> munk-a Welp, it appears they have not-insignificant PR backlash from handling this so poorly. If a restaurant owner wants the domain for their website it'd probably be a real PR win for grubhub to just transfer ownership.

<comment><USER8> The article says they hand over ownership on demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> GrubHub says that restaurants have it wrong by citing fine print.

Restaurants want first right of refusal over the use of their brand, not default opt-in by a third party buried in legalspeak.

GrubHub is trying to reframe this issue in legalistic terms, to distract from their failure to collect explicit opt-ins from every restaurant they've used in this manner.

It's unfortunate that the headline enables that change in perception by readers.

<comment><USER10> The article says they turned over the domain to the restaurant on their request. Also it sounds like this is not just fine print; they advertise this service as part of their offering to businesses. Finally, if you are running a business, you cannot plead ignorance on the fine print. You need to read contracts that you sign, or pay a professional to do so.

<comment><USER9> The issue here is _not_ "were they authorized to do this?". They were. The issue here is that their actions indicate that they cannot be trusted.

Do they require the business owner check a box "Yes" or "No" and initial next to the clause where the business owner authorizes GrubHub to operate their brand without further consent? No, they don't. That they do not implies to business owners that they cannot trust GrubHub.

That they refuse to notify business owners when they register a domain using their brand implies to business owners that they cannot trust GrubHub.

That their response summarizes as "you signed a multi-page contract that permitted us to do this without notification to you when we do, stop whining about it" implies to business owners that they cannot trust GrubHub.

This is why they are so desperate to shift the framing of the argument from "GrubHub broke trust" to "GrubHub was legally authorized to act this way". They aren't willing to change their behavior, and so instead they simply try to reframe the news with a press statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://archive.is/iIu9L](http://archive.is/iIu9L)

</comment><comment><USER12> Short form: the restaurants didn't read the TOS, and they have been treated with more consideration than that document requires. GrubHub has done nothing wrong, and even went out of its way to do the right thing.

<comment><USER13> Go and ask the nearest 10 local-business restaurant owners what the sentence:

> "may create, maintain and operate a microsite ("MS") and obtain the URL for > such MS on restaurant's behalf."

means. I can guarantee most of them will have no idea what that means. Even if they knew what a "microsite" was, that could mean so many different things anyways.

And before you say "then they should have asked a lawyer," 1) yes, but there may not be many lawyers who'd know what that meant either, and 2) there's no way restaurant owners could get that removed from the contract, so they'd basically have to sign anyways or remove a source of revenue.

The point being, there's a wide gulf between "it was in the TOS" and "The owners were aware and happy with what was happening"

<comment><USER14> Here's a crazy idea - they could literally have just e-mailed grubhub asking "Hey, I'm reading through the contract you sent me, could you elaborate on clause X"

<comment><USER15> Would they have responded? I can't think of a single time when I had any chance to negotiate a TOS.

Besides, even if they changed the onboarding process into an old-style contract negotiation, constantly having to deal with the devil, weeding out his sly contractual tricks, is a cost that can add up in terms of stress and man-hours. Most people would rather just choose business partners that aren't trying to trick them.

<comment><USER14> We're not talking about negotiating, not at all. You can absoluutely ask them what they mean by a clause and then chose not to sign. I find it kind of funny that people in this comment thread seem to think that Grubhub is something unique as if Uber hasn't been pushing their drivers into poverty for years now. Yes, the terms of the contract are likely to be onerous, that's kind of what these rent-seeking business models are all about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We need proverbs because they reflect who we are - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161117-we-need-proverbs-because-they-reflect-who-we-are <comment><AUTHOR> > Finding out exactly where in the past a proverb emerged is a tough task, > akin to looking for a needle not just in a haystack

Most people are unaware that the needle in question is a six foot iron pole used to pin the haystack together when built - not the sewing needle you see depicted in the stock photos when you try and find an image of one.

<comment> happy-go-lucky You mean the central pole around which hay is built in stacks?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's two of us, 5,999,999,998 to go

<comment> happy-go-lucky :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Brief Explanation of Microsoft's Anti-Google Patent FUD - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110805154137803

<comment><USER3> _"If Google doesn't have enough money to buy up patents, who does? Twice it has tried and been outbid, not by a single competitor but by a group of them joining together. In fact, that's where, to me, the real antitrust issue surfaces, that by joining together to squeeze Google out of two auctions, Google's competitors appear to have been plotting against it in ways that really must invite scrutiny, which, by all reports is now happening again."_

I think this is the main point of this story and this whole issue, and that's what Google wanted to show us. If Google can't even get patents to protect themselves, because all the others keep banding together and not letting them win any auction, then something is very wrong here.

You may say, yeah but then why doesn't Android have its own patents? Well, I don't think it would've been possible for them to get that many patents in this short amount of time, and I don't think it would've been possible for Apple either.

Look at Apple, they are winning with patents _not_ related to smartphones. If Apple wasn't this 30 year old computer company, their patent chest would've probably been close to zero, and a lot of these companies would've come after them, too.

Here's a look at the _mobile_ patents everyone has. You can see Google is not in top 10, but take a closer look - neither is Apple.

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-biggest-ip-war- ches...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-biggest-ip-war- chests-08042011-gfx.html)

So what would've happened if Apple didn't have any of their computers patents from before, and they actually were a new smartphone company? They would've probably gotten sued into oblivion as well, especially since they seem to make a lot of money from iPhones. Their handful of mobile patents would've meant nothing in the face of the mobile patent war chest of Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft, HP(Palm patents) and Motorola.

You can't create something as complex as a smartphone and a smartphone OS today, without infringing a _ton_ of patents. So if a new mobile company can be crushed because others have more patents than them, then what does that say about the patent system? It says the patent system does nothing to protect and encourage innovation, but it lets the big incumbent companies crush the new guys with their large patent war chests. It's bad enough when it's just one of them, it's much worse when they all join together against that company.

If you can't build anything complex, without being a 10+ year old company (in _that_ market) and not having thousands of patents - then something is very wrong with the patent system that was supposed to help start-ups and innovation. I think they all know this, but since they know they have the upper hand with current broken system, they will fight to _maintain_ the current system.

<comment><USER4> > _"If Google can't even get patents to protect themselves, because all the > others keep banding together and not letting them win any auction, then > something is very wrong here."_

There may be more than one thing wrong, and one of those things is Google may not be appropriately organized to operate in some of the markets it has chosen to enter - e.g. the mobile phone industry. Their corporate strategy for the search and advertising services upon which the company was built is centered around trade secrets - and that makes a lot of sense given the sausage factory model upon which they have built those services.

Unfortunately for Google, telecommunications doesn't work that way and never has - that's why Nortel had such a big patent portfolio and why Bell Labs did things like patent Shockley's work on the transistor. This is why it takes longer for more mature companies to bring competitive products to a new market segment - e.g. HP felt it prudent to acquire WebOS before head to head competition with the iPad and Microsoft's WP7 doesn't look and feel like iOS.

In a nutshell, Google's problem is that in the telecommunications industry, they did not innovate through a traditional R&D process. Instead, they appear to have rushed the development of Android without proper due diligence in order to be first to market with (operational and technical merits of Android aside) what could be called an "iPhone knockoff". Now that lack of due diligence is coming back to bite them.

<speculation>Could it be that senior Google leadership's fascination with the Sidekick which led to Android lead developer Andy Rubin's being brought onboard led to the damn the torpedoes approach to IP surrounding Android? And could it be that the patents upon which Microsoft's license strategy for Android is base came from their acquisition of Rubin's former startup, Danger, which he left in order to found Android? </speculation>

<comment><USER5> What should they have done differently? Wait 10 years until they amass their own patent portfolio? Android could have been less similar to iPhone, but up against tens of thousands of bogus patents, would that really make a difference? Anything that was competitive would have provoked an attack.

Frankly, it _should_ be ok to enter the market the way Google did.

<comment><USER4> Irrespective of should or shouldn't, it isn't. And Google knows it now, and should have known it then. They could have licensed the relevant patents - after all, that appears to be what Apple did in the case of Loadsys and the reason they are not being sued, and it appears to be what Microsoft did with portions of the Nortel portfolio which is why they were concerned enough to participate in its purchase.

With Android Google stepped into a mature market for the first time and appears to have committed rookie errors - it's not the stuff in the Nortel or Novell portfolios which is generating income for Microsoft - and a lot of Microsoft's patents were created through old fashioned in-house R&D - <USER2> the sort of innovation which should be protected.

<cynical_speculation>It may have been in Google's interest to turn Andorid into Open Source in October of 2008 due to the liability incurred when Microsoft acquired Danger's patent portfolio earlier in the year. Particularly in light of Google's antipatent corporate culture and Andy Rubin's role in creating Google's phone software.</cynical_speculation>

<comment><USER6> _...a lot of Microsoft's patents were created through old fashioned in-house R &D - exactly the sort of innovation which should be protected._

 _Only_ if that "innovation" is actually novel, non-obvious, specific, and useful, and certainly not for 20 years (roughly 13 generations in tech years).

 _It may have been in Google's interest to turn Andorid into Open Source in October of 2008 due to the liability incurred when Microsoft acquired Danger's patent portfolio earlier in the year._

If Android was always based on the Linux kernel, then they probably had an open source plan from the beginning.

Edit: _With Android Google stepped into a mature market for the first time and appears to have committed rookie errors_

This sounds like code for "Google stepped into our territory and didn't pay its protection money."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting how people are choosing to first pick what company they want to be right, and then bending things to suit their desired reality.

Why can't people just say - Here's a situation and a company that I think is the Do'est No'est Evil'est company of all time is being a sore loser.

Google bid on the patents and it lost. It's a bit ridiculous to now claim some sort of divine right to be above patent law.

Also, FYI, google has a patent on their doodles. It's the height of hypocrisy to claim that patents for telecom technology aren't fair and at the same time patent a set of doodles.

<comment><USER8> Im not choosing the company I want to be right, I am choosing the opinion. _Any_ company that argues against software patents is on my side. _Any_ company that argues for them, or uses them offensively, is on the other side.

When Microsoft argued against patents, they were on my side. When they use them against other companies, they are on the other side.

Honestly, I dont care a whit what the company is, software patents are bad and if they want me on their side, they will say so, loudly.

<comment><USER9> This time Microsoft was on your side, as they've banded with several other companies in order to buy Novell (and Nortel) patents cheaply, making sure that patent trolls won't acquire the patents and minimalising their effect on the industry (assuming that the new patents would then be only used for "defense", as there is no reason to think otherwise).

The plan would have worked, if not for Google which made the price of patents skyrocket.

<comment><USER8> I dont really care much who owns those patents to be honest, I care about those companies who consistently, loudly and vocally oppose software patents.

To me, this argument looks like: <some stuff I dont care about in the slightest> Google: Software patents are bad and are going to be used against us.

That puts me, in this fight, squarely on the side of google.

But I am not fussy, if Microsoft comes out again and vocally declaims the evil of software patents, they can be on my side again as well.

What I _really_ want to see is large software companies consistently and actively working against software patents in every direction, putting the patents they control into a pool that everyone can join on the agreement that they never sue anyone for patent infringement, and giving everyone in the pool equal ownership of the patents in there. While also working to lobby for overriding reform of the patent system.

 _that_ would be a good start, and I dont see anyone doing it at the moment.

So really, sod them all.

<comment><USER10> _I care about those companies who consistently, loudly and vocally oppose software patents._

That's not Google. They tried to play the game just like the others. The protesting seems to have started after they lost.

<comment><USER11> Google isn't extracting patent licensing fees from anyone, nor are they a part of pools that do so like MPEG LA.

Until they do so, Google is playing the game honorably, because they have no choice - they are not playing the game just like the others.

<comment><USER12> Just a novice posting...if Google isn't extracting patent licensing fees from anyone, is it because it chooses to do so or is it because it wants to but can't, owing to a lack of patents?

I don't know enough to take sides, but I do know that non-specific software patents are 24-carat BS as 'defensive use' is super subjective. I just think that Google could and should have stayed away from Nortel bidding, or at least voiced concern _before_ losing out to a consortium. That ways, it could have avoided the 'sore loser' argument entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a very odd article to say the least.

Why is it disturbing that Google is unable to buy these patents? These patents were sold to the highest bidder and the bidders were approved by the gov't.

How are MS, Apple & Oracle unpatriotic in bidding against Google for patents? Last time I checked Google, Apple & MS all have their cash in tax havens overseas. That, to me, sounds unpatriotic.

Why are these three companies specifically to blame for the bogus patents that are thrown out in court? This seems to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the USPTO for even validating them. There are also the claims that were found valid in the courts. Are they bogus as well?

Has Apple or MS sued OHA members with these purchased patents? I realize the situation with Oracle is far more in the gray but it seems Apple has sued with patents they applied for and used in their products. Why should Google have the benefit of purchasing patents to leverage against Apple & Microsoft's own patents?

<comment><USER14> Microsoft has previously been accused of "misusing patents to further an anticompetitive scheme against Android". Here's a link to the relevant article on groklaw:

<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110427052238659>

Disregarding your comments on patriotism and the USPTO (which I don't fully disagree with), the disturbing part about Google being unable to buy these patents, is that they appear to have been actively collaborated against in the auctions. Not being able to build a substantial patent portfolio denies them the ability to countersue in response to frivolous patent threats against Android, which I assume is a large part of why Google was willing to bid so highly for them.

Personally the part of the recent auction I found most disturbing was that the patents weren't sold to the highest bidder, they were sold to a conglomeration of bidders, some of which had already tapped out. To make a parallel with an art auction, it would be like half of the bidding floor banding together simply to ensure that another promiment bidder _didn't_ get the piece. Possibly a valid action, but possibly anticompetitive, depending on the situation.

<comment><USER15> "To make a parallel with an art auction, it would be like half of the bidding floor banding together simply to ensure that another promiment bidder didn't get the piece."

Except that the "another prominent bidder" was invited to join the party but the bidder refused. If groups were forming, they were forming. If Google did not want to join, they did not want to join. But if they want to complain about others forming groups when it's legal - I'm not sure if one should have sympathy for them.

<comment><USER16> (The argument that I am going to make, has been posted a lot of times before - we need a way to merge threads)

1\. You are confusing deals - Novell and Nortel

2\. Actually it was (Google + Intel) vs Apple et al.

3\. There is no sense - no profit for Google to be a part of bidding group that consists of competitors who are suing Google for IP infringement. Firstly, the deals were not discussed, so we can only guess what MS et al. were offering. So if I were to make a guess, MS et al. would have offered shared usage of Novell patents with (zero or minimal) licensing of IPs with guarantee of no lawsuits. Google would have required these patents, not because it wanted to build products relating to them but because they can be used to defend against other companies when they bring lawsuits on Google. These other companies are MS et al. So being in the same bidding group G to bid for patent set X as the company that wants to (counter-)sue other companies in G using the IPs in X would be illegal because of the contract. Hence, a useless deal for Google.

<comment><USER15> The scenario described in point number three is possible, it is also possible that MS and Google could have negotiated a cross-licencing deal of sorts to help their Bing and Android businesses. So we just don't know.

<comment><USER16> But there still are Appl et al. involved in the group. Additionally, I don't believe that such a deal would benefit MS. They are earning more from Android than Windows Mobile!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tremendous amount of deliberate misdirection in this piece. Some of it isn't even masked. "What does Google's note mean? Let's let them translate using their after-the-fact interpretation tailored for this current fight..." How does that clarify anything?

And this gem:

 _And if you look at the mobile litigation going on as we speak, ask yourself: who is suing and who is being sued? Does it look coordinated to you? It does to me. It's always the same direction. Android gets sued. Sometimes it's the vendors. Sometimes it's Google._

So either the author is completely unaware of the field being written about, or the author is lying.

<comment><USER18> How is the second claim inaccurate? I'm aware of a few retaliatory counter- suits but none that were initiated from the Android side.

<comment><USER17> Vivid picture of this so called "coordination" showing that claim is complete B.S.:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/floorsixtyfour/5061246255/>

So "does it look coordinated to you?" On the contrary, it's chaos, but Google wanted in, really badly. Well, this isn't their daddy's monopoly, and it's not all about them.

(Also, in general, the newcomer doesn't assert patents against the old guard. It's not a conspiracy -- Google just got here last.)

Google, to fix this, stop whining about a few players amassing more toys at 5x the estimate when you only bid 4x the estimate, and do something about disarming the weapons instead.

Don't like "bogus" patents because they were invented before you thought of making a phone and you didn't get them for pi? Boo hoo.

Don't like patents at all? Great, let's go there.

<comment><USER19> The existence of hundreds of suits doesn't do anything against the claim that Android and Google are being effectively picked on by Apple and Microsoft and when they go in together to keep Google/Android from having leverage against such suits... Or do you still feel that my description is a mischaracterization of the events surrounding the sale of both the Novell and Nortel patents?

How many arrows are coming out of Google's bubble on that diagram?

<comment><USER17> > _"when they go in together to keep Google"_

Don't see any arrows out of Microsoft or Apple at Google either. Google's failed bid doesn't make them the center of the universe.

Apple learned a couple years earlier it's an arms race after they got hit from all sides. Lucky for them, they'd been doing handheld R&D for over two decades, and were able to fight back.

Despite its investment in Intellectual Ventures, Google hasn't stockpiled enough relevant ammo yet. They were trying hard to get some, to play the cold war detente licensing game the way the others were playing it long before Google or even Apple showed up, but 4x didn't beat 5x, and now they're trying PR as a tactic.

And yes, the existence of 50 arrows pointing at _not_ Google compared to 3 at Google (from companies not shipping phones) _does_ do something against the claim Google is being picked on.

<comment><USER19> >Don't see any arrows out of Microsoft or Apple at Google either.

And that's a fault of the image. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any suits levied by Google in relation to Android.

>Despite its investment in Intellectual Ventures, Google hasn't stockpiled enough relevant ammo yet. They were trying hard to get some, to play the cold war detente licensing game the way the others were playing it long before Google or even Apple showed up, but 4x didn't beat 5x, and now they're trying PR as a tactic.

I don't understand. If you grant that Google was trying to buy the patents defensively, then what is your problem with their "PR as a tactic", it fits perfectly in with their story. They wanted to buy the patents so that they would have leverage to protect themselves and HTC/Samsung/Moto who have been sued and are paying out to Apple and Microsoft. It didn't work so their only remaining stance is to argue that the system is wrong. The fact that they tried to excel or protect their interests, considering that their partners are _very currently and very really having to pay out to Microsoft_ , doesn't seem to damage their stance in my opinion. The act of defensively buying patents and calling the system broken are not mutually exclusive.

>And yes, the existence of 50 arrows pointing at not Google compared to 3 at Google (from companies not shipping phones) does do something against the claim Google is being picked on.

I've not seen anyone claiming that "everyone who's not Google" is teaming up against Google. But I and others are suggesting that Apple and Microsoft collaborating to buy patents that would prevent HTC from having to give Microsoft $5 for every handset sold... is at least cause for suspicion of collusion.

<comment><USER17> Look at that picture again. If you're in the middle of that, you try to spend the least amount possible that results in detente. No conspiracy needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How does she conclude Google tried to buy the Novell patents? I don't see that stated or implied in anything Google or Microsoft said.

If Google is so pure and innocent, why do they invest in Intellectual Ventures?

<comment><USER21> In response, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel tweeted, "Google says we bought NOVELL patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no."

<comment><USER19> That's mentioned in the article and has been posted several times. Even that tweet doesn't imply that Google actively vied for the patents, though, in my opinion, that's a pretty fair assumption.

This thread features a wider breadth of discussion about that particular tweet, in case you or anyone else might have missed it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2844722>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So Apple and MS are anticompetitive?

Isn't Google being anticompetitive by effectively dumping the Android phones to the world markets (and then boasting how many copies are activated each day?) Google has played this game of offering "free" services and this worked for them well in terms of crushing smaller companies who just did not have resources to fire back. But this is not the case with big guys like Apple and Microsoft. Google was very naive thinking it will flood the market with cheap Android phones and Apple will just sit and watch. Google can expect to make money off ads, but Apple cannot. So they use patents to make it more difficult for Google to do what they want. Very simple.

In other industries there are anti-dumping laws and regulations, because dumping is considered an illegal way to kill competition. Google has been doing this for years, because their primary source of revenue is ads. To be honest, I don't have much sympathy to Google, not in this case.

<comment><USER23> Your problem as a consumer is that someone's actively innovating 50% of the cellphone experience for free (hardware is not in Google's control)?

I am really confused how giving something for free went from being nice to "anticompetitive jerk".

Are you saying that you will reject a product because it is free?

edit : wrong punctuation used

<comment><USER22> Oh so Google is offering stuff free because it's being nice! Very funny. I guess MS was also then being nice by offering IE for free to everyone? They did it because they were nice, not because they wanted to have everyone who offered non-free alternatives marginalized and killed, right?

<comment><USER23> As a consumer I don't mind free stuff. Engaging legislation so you can keep charging for something that is free sounds wrong to me (from a consumer perspective).

I mean no one complains about WalMart right ? It is convenient and people have to muster some other kinds of emotion to be against it (patriotism, low wages and exploitation etc).

<comment><USER22> I am glad you brought Walmart as an example. We soon will have a country full of Walmarts where local stores have no place, which looks the same everywhere you go. Walmart after Walmart. It's all cheap there!

Similarly we just may soon have a country when Google is the only software company to work for. Because everyone believes all software should be free and ad-based, and because Google is dominating the ads business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Exactly. What good are patents for deterring suits if those suing you have a license to them too?

</comment><comment><USER4> > _"It's always the same direction. Android gets sued. Sometimes it's the > vendors. Sometimes it's Google."_

It could be a vast secret illegal conspiracy against Google. It could also be that Android infringed on a lot of IP during the damn the torpedoes rush to be the first iPhone competitor. Analysis using Occam's razor and an understanding of human nature is left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER25> That's entirely possible. Then again, I can't imagine a single non-trivial piece of software that doesn't end up stepping on IP toes left and right. If you take a look at some of the overly broad patents many companies have been granted over the years, you can't help but violate them, even when writing trivial algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great article. Some of the better analysis I've read so far

</comment><comment><USER27> thanks for brining clarity to this situation. why does microsoft consistently belittle the general public by making misleading statements? they are just dishonest people who bash others as a way of furthering their own products. i have grown increasingly anti-microsoft as a result, to the point where i refuse to buy their software or products, and discourage anyone else from doing so.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where would we be if Tim Berners Lee had patented http ?

Google need to win the 'make patents irrelevant' battle not the 'my bullshit patent portfolio is larger than your bullshit patent portfolio' battle.</comment>


[Livestream] Match 3 – Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo - <AUTHOR> https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=qUAmTYHEyM8 <comment><USER2> Make sure you watch the pre-game interview with the AlphaGo engineer. There were a few interesting bits: A) A pure neural approach, with _zero_ lookahead, can achieve amateur dan status, and B) they are considering an AlphaGo trained against self play but no book of human games. It would be fascinating to see what it would come up with.</comment>


Web Audio Arpeggiator - <AUTHOR> http://arpeggiator.desandro.com/ <comment><USER3> Another site added to my "list of websites to show to the kids I teach when they need something bright and shiny to take their attention for a few minutes".

Loads of fun to be had there, and shows the potential of this - <USER2> iphoneseventeen says, there future of this kind of thing could be incredible. One day, all DAWs will be in a browser tab.

<comment><USER4> How old are your kids? Share the list pretty please!

<comment><USER5> That's not specifically a DAW but here is a web based music sheet editor I'm making with some friends. [https://flat.io](https://flat.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for wasting my afternoon- I mean that as a compliment-- I totally spent over an hour toiling around with it and looking over the source. To much fun- I should be working.

I recently have started buying equipment etc for sequencing- I used to track (fast tracker) when I was younger and havn't played around with in over a decade-- Oh the good old days when mp3s took 40+min to download from IRC and midi's would not cut it...

By the way little tip- Firefox (at least my version) will lock the notes in play if you hit alt or ctl on a hotkey -- risky though- make sure you use use ctrl+shit for w- and don't just do ctrl-w... fyi.

Finally I am not hating that my laptop has a touch screen, I can adjust the bars while holding down notes :) (Generally I dislike the touchscreen (I'm sure it works fun if you're running an OS that is built around it but, people always touch it and clicks on shit).

Thanks buddy! Great little webapp!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome, just spent 5 minutes making trance

</comment><comment><USER8> Go Web Audio!!! I'd like to make a DAW, with something like VST Plugins, but one way to mix all these awesome web audio websites together. Like a tab mixer or something...

<comment><USER9> That'd be cool, I wonder how it'd handle multiple oscillators though. Also given how huge raw audio files are, wouldn't a totally web-based DAW be seriously bottle-necked by connection speed?

<comment><USER10> WebAudio can handle as many oscillators as the underlying machine will allow (can compute).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty neat! Simple and easy to get going. Might be useful for practicing guitar scales, too :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. The educational value of a site like this is enormous. Are there any more out there?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is fun. Does anyone know of any other good free browser-based DAWs like this one?

<comment><USER14> Audio Tool has some nice features: [https://www.audiotool.com](https://www.audiotool.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Suffers from some kind of audio corruption on Firefox for Windows.

<comment><USER16> Also on Safari for OS X. Lots of crackly noises.</comment></comment>


US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies - <AUTHOR> https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-portman-introduce-resolution-to-maintain-senates-constitutional-responsibilities-and-allow-remote-voting-during-national-emergencies <comment><USER3> Oh, I thought the headline meant remote voting for, you know, voters, not Senators, and was very surprised to see an R next to one of the sponsor's names. The bill's just to let the Senate vote remotely. I'd imagine most of the interesting nuance is about "presence" and quorum-making. This is not about expanding remote/by-mail voting in elections, which Republicans have generally been strongly against, including and especially since the Covid-19 crisis started.

[EDIT] correction: it's not a bill, either, it's (as the headline correctly notes) a resolution to change Senate rules.

<comment><USER4> I used to be wowed by this kind of hypocrisy, but lately I've concluded that these things are happening so frequently because the voters have proved to them sufficiently that they will take no heed provided it "hurts the other team."

Everything on the news looks ironic now because the political class has realized there's almost no limit to what they can get away with.

<comment><USER5> >Everything on the news looks ironic

I was born and grew up in Scotland. I remember the first time I watched Fox News after moving to the states - for almost fifteen minutes I _genuinely_ thought I was watching some (honestly pretty funny) satire.

<comment><USER6> I get really frustrated when people only mention Fox News and not CNN/MSNBC in the same sentence. There are people on Fox who are good, I.E. Chris Wallace. I mean he's my only example, but Jon Stewart did a skit with him and the quote that got me was, "how many times have you seen your show on my show?" It was a nod to the fact that Chris Wallace does actual news not opinion pieces. I'd actually say he's better and less opinionated than Don Lemon (CNN).

This is not me defending FOX. It's more of me railing against other forms of news that I also don't like but sometimes get a presumed pass. I see them as the opposite side of the coin.

EDIT: I know this is going to get down-voted. But if you disagree I'd really like to know why. I am someone who listens to others, and am curious why you disagree with this sentiment.

<comment><USER5> > I get really frustrated when people only mention Fox News and not CNN/MSNBC > in the same sentence.

I was sharing a personal anecdote of something that happened to me. Why would I add "CNN/MSNBC" to the sentence when I didn't watch those channels?

Nowadays, outside of a couple of notable exceptions (Fareed Zakaria's GPS and Perhaps one or two others) all of the stations are absolute total garbage. They are only worth watching when a live, raw feed of a major event is occurring and I turn it off when the commentary starts.

<comment><USER6> >I was sharing a personal anecdote of something that happened to me.

Fair enough. I infrequently get situations where I have to watch Fox/CNN or at least it's on in the background. But I find them both to be aggravating in similar ways.

I comment because a lot of people use this to justify their side by attacking the other. I've been leaning into other sources a lot. I find Bloomberg still has issues but I like them more.

<comment><USER5> My current "quick" source of news is NPR's five minute reports that get updated many times per day, I mostly listen on Amazon's Alexa while I make coffee.

The BBC also has a similar short "headlines" podcast that is worth listening to that is updated hourly.

For long-form stuff, I find a lot of the finance-focused news sources to be about the most reliable/ spin-minimizing. Stuff like The Economist, the Wall Street Journal and Marketplace (NPR) generally get the facts correct and are generally fairly clear when expressing an opinion versus stating a face. Their biases (e.g. The Economist is pro-free market) are clearly stated up-front.

Le Monde Diplomatique is a solid addition, as is the English version of Al Jazeera (the Arabic version is supposedly much more biased but I can't confirm that).

Der Speigel is good but I rarely read it. Kommersant.ru is also decent (I use Google Translate). Again, even in. countries with authoritarian regimes, the ruling-classes need a way to roughly understand what is going on and usually this means the financial publications are closer to "the truth" than other sources.

Channel Four news from the UK is a solid TV News show, with journalists that hammer home on tough questions, but I haven't watched it regularly for a decade and it may have changed a lot.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your input! I'll try some of these.

Also, I just saw Fareed Zakaria the between your first comment and today interviewing Bill Gates. It was really well done. A great recommendation. I remember seeing him before but he hadn't registered as an individual to watch out for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Senate is a deliberative body, and its primary work requires _debate_. Already too much gets done behind closed doors and outside the public eye. Dispensing with even the pretense of open debate is somewhat concerning.

<comment><USER8> Can someone point to any concrete results of debate on the Senate floor from anytime in the last 20 years or so? I am genuinely asking, because it seems to me that the value of debate on the floor is like you said only pretense at this point. Mandating that pretense and in turn making the Senate slower to react in an emergency seems like an actively harmful requirement.

<comment><USER9> It's not exactly a pretense, but rather it's playing to the audience, which is the country and the rest of the world. It's theatrics, not intended to sway the lawmakers themselves, who in general are not persuadable by their colleagues.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, lawmakers are horse trading and calling in favors to get their pet projects passed.

This is pretty much how Congress has worked for the past 100 years or so.

<comment><USER10> This was true in the 19th century as well.

<comment><USER8> I am reminded of this historical document [1] (A real source [2]). This private horsetrading likely has and will always be part of any legislative body.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySzEXKUSZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySzEXKUSZw)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They're making sure they can vote... but yet no one has worked to make sure all of the American people can vote safely (Read also: mail in ballots for everyone).

<comment><USER12> A lot of states already do it. I think all we need to do is get the POTUS to publicly shame any remaining holdouts. It's not _that_ expensive, so it wouldn't likely present a hardship for states to implement, so a little push in the right direction may be enough.

<comment><USER13> POTUS and the GOP are against it because opening up voting access means they lose elections

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off topic since this is about senators, but to nip a possible related thread in the bud, an important reason why remote voting for citizens is a bad idea is that it can enable massive scale vote manipulation through schemes to buy or otherwise influence votes.

In the privacy of one's home, outside a controlled voting booth, the problem is exacerbated, counterintuitively. A voter at home or in another uncontrolled setting could follow instructions for how to vote and then use a camera, or witnesses who are in on the scheme, to prove that they had voted a certain way, at the behest of others. In a traditional voting booth situation, where nobody else can see or verify how you voted, this kind of manipulation is not so easy to do on a mass scale.

<comment><USER3> Has this happened with members of the military or in states that already allow vote-by-mail? If not, why not?

<comment><USER15> Probably not, but mainly due to scale. The number of people who vote remotely is so few that the amount of fraud you can get through without being detected makes it not worth the effort.

<comment><USER16> Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah conduct their elections entirely by mail. This covers perhaps 10+ million registered voters.

At what level would you consider the scale sufficient for these effects to appear?

<comment><USER15> Three of those four state are reliably blue. The real reward is for swing states.

<comment><USER17> (I assume you were picking OR, HI, WA, and CO, not UT.)

EDIT: parent has been edited since I posted to say "Three of those four state are..." rather than "Four states that are..."

Half of Colorado's Congressional delegation is Republican and Clinton won the state in 2016 only by a bare plurality (48% to 43%).

(UT of course is quite solidly Republican.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know this is talking about Senator voting, but I feel like it is time for states to seriously adopt mail-in voting like Oregon (and other states). We have to assume that there could be a shelter-in-place order in the future during the beginning of November. Better to prepare now rather than to scramble for a solution at the last minute.

<comment><USER15> How do we do remote voting securely? The moment you move from a tiny minority voting by mail to the overwhelming majority voting by mail, the payoff for corrupting that process goes up dramatically.

<comment><USER19> Is there some part of the way states that already do it are doing it that you take umbrage with?

<comment><USER20> Scenario:

I'm living in a household with three roommates, unrelated to me. Maybe they're not granted the right to vote.

The mail-in ballot arrives and is completed by one other than myself, without my knowledge.

How do you prevent this?

Signing the envelope that you return the ballot in would further de-anonymize the vote.

I'm asking not out of snarkiness but because I don't know.

<comment><USER21> What? Signatures are and remain the best way to verify a ballot. It seems you are stuck in digital, the real world is analog, always will be.

<comment><USER20> If I go to a voting location I can sign a voter roll and establish my presence as a voter, I sign the roll and I get a ballot in exchange (in my jurisdiction).

This ballot is then filled in and anonymously submitted into whatever box or diebold machine.

With mail-in, a signature is attached to the ballot, which is a different situation. I'm missing something.

<comment><USER18> You are missing something. The envelope comes in. A person checks that the signature on the envelope matches that of the person the ballot belongs to. If they match, the envelope is opened and the interior sealed envelope is removed. This interior sealed envelope contains no identifying information. That interior sealed envelope is mixed in with all the rest of the interior sealed envelopes (hundreds of thousands to millions of envelopes) so there is no way to identify which ballot belongs to whom. Then the interior sealed envelopes are opened, the ballots are extracted and scanned. All of this is overseen by observers and you can go and watch it if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know that the actual text goes into a bit more detail about when this should be allowed, but it's kind of important to remember that strictly speaking, "During National Emergencies" is "all the time" due to the fact that there are, at the current moment, 34 active National Emergencies.

source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States)

</comment><comment><USER23> @dang could we update this very misleading headline to "US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Senate Voting During Emergencies"?

<comment><USER24> Just one person, but I didn't find this "very misleading". On first read of the title I assumed it was allowing senators to vote on senate votes remotely. Neither the current title nor your proposed title is the original I currently see on the article and I could imagine the title being improved, but I think it's unfair to characterize it as "very misleading".

<comment><USER25> I don't really think it's unfair. It's obviously not "very misleading" on purpose, but it's a little silly to look at the title "Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting" during a time when there is a lot of worry and argument about the ability of citizens to vote remotely and _not_ assume most people will think they're talking about citizen votes. Hell, even if it weren't a currently relevant topic, I'm confident most people would _still_ assume "voting" refers to the thing people do at the ballot boxes. That's just the default meaning of the word when the topic is US politics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised that contingency plans weren't already in place and just needed to be activated. I mean, this is the government that has plans for when and where the President and VP can go together, succession, bombers in the air continuously, remote launch authorization, where to move the President in the case of attack... Seems odd that there weren't contingency plans for what Congress operation...

</comment><comment><USER27> I am deeply concerned about the security of any online voting system for anyone. It can be done securely, but I have zero confidence in the IT ability of our government to actually achieve security. The past record of pathetic electronic voting machine security speaks to this.

<comment><USER20> How can it be done securely? Just curious about the updated models

<comment><USER27> Secure cryptography, paper trail, and 2FA would be a start. So far most US voting machines have been laughably pathetic, like security on par with a mom and pop store and their MS Access database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No. If they want to lord it over the average American let them sacrifice a little comfort. The can always wear masks and face shields to block their pompous speechifying from causing illness. If doctors and nurses risk their lives to save people, why can't wealthy Senators risk a little to save/help the country. They could even put little booths around each desk like Costco does their checkout stands or meet in some larger space. Leaving them home to ignore the country and spend all their timer raising money is not what we elected them to do.

</comment><comment><USER29> I know nothing about the Senate resolutions process, but this seems to fall in the same ballpark as "bill proposal". Most proposed bills never go anywhere, so we usually treat them as off topic. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20bills&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment><comment><USER30> Ah yes... "Remote voting for me, but not for thee."

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm against this resolution, because it opens up the possibility of senate voter fraud.

What's to stop dead senators from voting? Or senators from voting twice? This may even make it possible for former felons in the senate to vote!

<comment> munk-a I'm personally concerned that someone might vote in the US senate and then proceed to mosey on up to Canada and cast a vote in the House of Commons - <USER2> can we prevent politicians from voting multiple times in separate districts or governing bodies?

(Edit, just for clarity, /s on the above statement)

<comment><USER32> both your comment and the parent comment needs a /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://youtu.be/FFag42JZBwc](https://youtu.be/FFag42JZBwc)

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting that I cannot access this link over TOR unless the exit router is based in the US.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is dangerous as it allows faking parliamentary motions and casting fake votes.

</comment><comment><USER36> But what about the potential for fraud!

</comment><comment><USER37> I have never seen a compelling argument for why this should not be allowed.

<comment><USER38> There are ~243 years of experience built in to making the government function as intended. Changing the implementation of the key function of one of the critical components must be done with great care.

How does debate work? How is a quorum decided? How long will members have to vote? How are their votes authenticated? etc.

Done wrong, votes in Congress could be perceived as sneaky and illegitimate, and legitimacy is critical. Members take advantage of procedural details all the time. When procedures are new or ill-defined, there are going to be lots of loopholes.

<comment><USER39> > How does debate work?

Roberts rules with a chairperson (current procedure) seems to translate nicely to a moderated web cast

> How is a quorum decided?

Is there a reason why taking roll by video and voice doesn't work in a video conference any less than it does in person?

> How long will members have to vote?

We don't have to change this with video conference software either

> How are their votes authenticated?

With the exception of deep fakes, video and voice confirmation.

Surely, in a world where each representative could feasible allocate fiber installation to their house, they can whitelist IPs; if not much cheaper options such as VPNs and secure factors.

> Congress could be perceived as sneaky and illegitimate, and legitimacy is > critical

Why wouldn't (non classified) meetings be broadcast on CSpan? (Requiring HD Video and HD Voice seems like a no brainer for transparency)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I fear that if we do this, and Trump wins again, people will not trust the outcome of the election... I'm not quite sure what happens to this country, if people don't think the elections are legitimate. We almost ran into it with Kerry Vs Bush. But people's feelings are amplified when it comes to Trump.

<comment><USER3> This is just for Senators. Not citizens voting in elections. The headline makes this seem more important than it is. It's still notable, but _far_ less so than allowing/mandating universal vote-by-mail (like several states already do, plus members of the military everywhere), which would be widely expected to swing elections heavily "blue".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When was the last time a candidate represented your views?

Does voting matter any more?

<comment><USER42> Voting will only really get power to the people when we implement a system that works. The best option out there is STAR Voting [https://www.starvoting.us/](https://www.starvoting.us/) and online polls at [https://star.vote/](https://star.vote/)

As long as we have choose-one voting, it will devolve to two dominant parties that do not need to care about most voters' interests.

<comment><USER43> I've never heard of STAR, but I'm not immediately convinced it's the best option. It would be interesting to see actual data comparing it to other voting methods (e.g. [1], not the table on the STAR website).

I'm partial to ranked choice voting for most local elections and House elections, because you can do some interesting things with proportional representation.

[1] [http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/](http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/)

[2] [https://www.fairvote.org/fair_rep_in_congress#what_does_the_...](https://www.fairvote.org/fair_rep_in_congress#what_does_the_fair_representation_act_do)

<comment><USER42> Variants of STAR voting can do Proportion Representation. There's no need to stick to Ranked Choice just for that.

The best research out there indicates STAR as the best, and it works best by that simulation you describe as well.

Here's some references:

The exact same approach as your first link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FXLQoLDBA)

[https://electionscience.github.io/vse- sim/VSE/](https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/)

[https://paretoman.github.io/ballot/newer.html](https://paretoman.github.io/ballot/newer.html)

The only Ranked Choice approach anyone is promoting is Instant Runoff which _discards_ preference votes relatively arbitrarily. Your second choice vote __never counts __if they happen to get eliminated in an earlier round than your first choice.

If you have trouble following how IRV unfairly counts votes and even leads to bad outcomes, this simple demonstration may help make it clear: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q10TsLw_3YI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q10TsLw_3YI)

Now, there are some options like Ranked Pairs that are at least arguably okay, but that's far more complex to understand and to tabulate and nobody is actually promoting it in real use.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Man says Tesla Autopilot saved his life by driving him to the hospital - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/05/man-says-tesla-autopilot-saved-his-life-by-driving-him-to-the-hospital.html <comment><USER2> "saved his life" kind of implies that there was no other viable option to get to the hospital, like calling an ambulance.

And what a tragic story it would have been if he had become unconscious along the way, the car stopping somewhere on the side of the road and it takes too long to find and help him.

<comment><USER3> I know Tesla is a premium car but...image if the masses had access to an autopilot like this, or better. Many can't afford the ambulance costs. Autopilot can change this excessive cost on the market.

<comment><USER4> Better yet, image if masses had free access to ambulances! Oh wait, this is the case in most 1st world countries...

<comment><USER5> Free? No, of course not. You pay for them as part of your taxes. It isn't any cheaper to pay a bunch of government bureaucrats who use what's left to provide ambulance service than to just pay the ambulance myself.

<comment><USER6> I pay taxes but for ambulance I paid around $750 for a ~8 mile trip. I think everyone.has to pay for an ambulance. Not sure about senior citizens

<comment><USER5> So if you paid more taxes and the ambulance was "free", how is that better?

<comment><USER7> You pay while you are able to earn. The service is free when you are unable to earn.

This form of socialist self insurance is much more efficient than a bunch of private ambulance companies selling subscriptions (aka "ambulance insurance").

<comment><USER5> In most places in the US ambulance service is contracted out by the local government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is that good PR though? Now impaired people with Teslas are going to be trying to drive themselves home or to hospitals, with potential disastruous consequences.

"He's having a heart attack, should we call an ambulance? Nah, shove him in his Tesla and set a route for the hospital, they'll sort it out there".

<comment><USER9> Just like we now rely on babies to call 911 for emergencies since we heard about one successfully doing it once.

Seriously, this is the worst kind of strawman, pretending reading about a single case of something will change how people behave in an emergency.

<comment><USER10> I'd like to hear the rationale of the people who downvote this comment. This comment looks correct to me.

The main characteristic of established protocols in the event of an emergency are that they are supposed to be reliable and not require complex computation on the part of the user.

I doubt any sane person (simple metric: those who would call the ambulance instead of driving the person to the hospital in current times), would be more likely to use the autopilot feature instead of calling an ambulance.

Yes there will always be dumb people till posterity, but to claim people are more likely to abuse the feature than current rates is nonsense.

<comment><USER8> I think in general anything slightly negative about Tesla or Elon Musk related has a good chance of getting downvoted on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love the PR machine here ... though i'm not saying this didn't happen or isn't real, but it's a way better story line then Telsa's AutoPilot kills driver, as happened in Florida.

<comment><USER12> Plus, hospitals are not really drive-in. You get much, much better safety of you're driven in by an emergency vehicle, who books the doctors upon approach, gets priority lanes and who can open the gates. Driving in and having to explain yourself at the reception is another story.

<comment><USER13> Uh... I don't know what hospitals you've been going to. A few years back I brought a friend with a perforated ulcer to the ER. They had her under the care of nursing in about sixty seconds.

<comment><USER14> You brought your friend, ie she was escorted. In the tesla case we're assuming you are in a condition to open the car door and walk in the ER and then explain your medical emergency...

<comment><USER5> I'm picturing someone expiring in his car outside the hospital because nobody was around to get him into the ER. The ambulance crew does more than just _drive_ \- otherwise you might as well take a taxi.

<comment><USER15> Even a taxi driver could make sure the patient can exit the car.

I'm picturing an unconcious guy arriving in a car and expiring in the car outside the hospital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And then people wonder how the misconception that "autopilot" can drive itself arises.

<comment><USER17> > misconception that "autopilot" can drive itself arises.

Probably from autopilots in planes which drive themselves.

<comment><USER18> But... they really don't. There is a lot of things that will make the auto pilot disengage and you will always need to change the programming enroute.

<comment><USER19> This! The autopilot on a plane is nothing like a self-driving car. It's mostly cruise-control in an environment where a collision with another vehicle is much, much less likely than an automobile on an undivided highway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found a better link: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/07/autopilot-in-tesla- model-x...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/07/autopilot-in-tesla-model-x- helps-driver-get-safely-to-a-hospital/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Okay, I'm confused. Is this car's autopilot not just "follow the vehicle in front of me, possibly steering a bit to stay in the lane"?

Most commenters here are commenting like you give it the destination and it drives you, but, as far as I know, the car does no such thing. Title should be changed "Tesla saved man's life by keeping him from crashing when he couldn't drive well", but that's not as inviting.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, in the article he said the hospital was near the freeway exit and he drove manually the rest of the way, which kinda makes the story a bit less dramatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What if he had died en route? Would the car have come to a safe stop?

<comment><USER23> Likely. The car occasionally asks the driver to place their hands on the steering wheel, based on conditions and the car's evaluation of its own ability to handle them. If you don't obey after some warnings, then the car will put on the hazard lights and brake to a stop. Not very safe on a busy road, but safer than an incapacitated driver heading off into the woods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think a more fitting headline would be "man endangers fellow traffic participants by using a beta 'autopilot' feature while not paying attention to traffic conditions".

</comment><comment><USER25> Not really</comment>


Show HN: Blinkist – Hacking the way we read books, now on Android - <AUTHOR> http://blinkist.com/android

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys!

We're excited to launch Blinkist for Android today. I'm Niklas, head of the Product team of Blinkist. Ask me anything, I'd be very happy to have your feedbacks!

A little bit about Blinkist: we create thoughtfully-designed book summaries for the digital age, like the modern CliffsNotes for avid readers and lifelong learners. With the app you can read the key takeaways from Business Adventures, Thinking, Fast and Slow, or The Greatest Show On Earth in a short 15-minute read.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey Niklas.

Interesting service. I can see this being useful for people who use public transportation every day. But I drive to work. So I guess it's not for me then.</comment>


Ask HN: Events in the near future that can crash Bitcoin's value? - <AUTHOR>

What events in the near future might take place and cause the Bitcoin value to crash? Planning to buy me some, but right now, the price is too high. Or is the only way up right now, really? <comment><USER2> The biggest risks are these:

1\. Strong U.S. or Chinese regulation

2\. An irreversible, fatal flaw in the Bitcoin protocol is discovered

3\. A competing cryptocurrency, or other emerging form of money, manages to outpace it in growth and steal its thunder

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that Bitcoin will have a hard time recovering in the first two scenarios, yes? And I looked at the other cryptocurrencies but I'm not sure they're gaining any traction. If they do, however, why can't they just co- exist with Bitcoin without necessarily harming its value?

<comment><USER2> > It seems that Bitcoin will have a hard time recovering in the first two > scenarios, yes

It would recover if it is regulated, but it would take longer. It would be adopted in countries that don't regulate it so much. The chance of a fatal flaw in the Bitcoin protocol is pretty low at this point.

> And I looked at the other cryptocurrencies but I'm not sure they're gaining > any traction. If they do, however, why can't they just co-exist with Bitcoin > without necessarily harming its value?

I agree, and in this scenario it's likely they would coexist (or even bolster each other's value)

I forgot to mention another possibility, which I'm sure has already happened many times. A large holder of BTC could suddenly crash the market. But the market recovers from this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> if more people try to sell bitcoins than want to buy them, the price will decline. possibly rapidly.</comment>


Google, LinkedIn and Other Tech Firms Send Employees into New York Classrooms - <AUTHOR> https://www.techtalentpipeline.nyc/tech-in-residence-corps <comment><AUTHOR> NYC Tech Professonals interested in joining the Corps, feel free to shoot me a message.</comment>


Swift 2.1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.russbishop.net/swift-2-1 <comment><USER2> Wake me up when they open source it like they said they were going to. Proprietary languages are evil acts of lock-in committed against unwary junior developers. Swift is a great language, but I'd really like my skills to be somewhat transportable.

<comment><USER3> >Swift is a great language, but I'd really like my skills to be somewhat transportable.

Huh?

<comment><USER4> I think OP is talking about multi platform code. Swift isn't "write once compile anywhere" like C or C++. This is also the reason I haven't used it yet, although I read the swift book and I'm looking forward to multiplatform capabilities (if that were to happen)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a good set of changes.

A question for the more switched-on among us: has there been any word on when Swift 2 will be open-sourced?

<comment><USER6> Author here; my understanding is the compiler team is hard at work doing some necessary house cleaning and reworking. It is something they've wanted to do for some time.

No official word from Apple though.

<comment><USER7> Chris Lattner said on reddit that they're on track to deliver when they originally promised, by the end of the year.

<comment><USER2> Link?

<comment><USER8> [https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/3kbjjn/so_swift_isnt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/3kbjjn/so_swift_isnt_open_source_yet_then/)

<comment><USER2> Ah good news. Hopefully there is a standards track for it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple is evolving Swift quite fast. It's a great language. I like that they adopted Go's _ to ignore unused variables. Xcode 7 also recommends where to change var's to let's where you don't mutate the value after initial assignment.

Anyway, let's hope the developer community jumps onboard for the ride. For anyone interested in learning Swift, I've accumulated just under 1800 Swift urls in the past 15 months:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

<comment><USER10> Actually, some of those features are still buggy when operating to Obj-C land :)

          //Warning if you don't use let :-)
          let array = NSMutableArray(capacity: 50)
          array.addObject(notification)

I am aware that the let essentially means I can't reassign the variable, and does not have anything to do with the mutability of the class. Since it's a class and not a struct.

However, what I am saying is that Apple needs to somehow add the keywords to the container classes imported from Cocoa, this is manually I guess.

I wonder if adding a mutating keyword on the declaration would help

        public mutable func addObject(anObject: AnyObject) mutable

That way that should throw a warning on a let usage. But that keyword only exists on Swift. They would have to go through all of them like they did with nullable keyword.

If you're wondering why I am using CFArray -> performance. Structs are pretty slow since you'd have to copy it from the dictionary to mutate and then insert into the dictionary again.

Though, those numbers were with Swift 1. Will try with Swift 2 again, but given the nature of immutability, I suspect it will still be slower.

Now that I think about it. I might make my own generic structs that uses NSArray/NSDictionary internally. Though I wonder if you can pass structs by reference instead of copy, that would be more useful.

<comment><USER6> Remember that Swift collection types have the _semantics_ of copy-on-write. Under the hood they actually only copy if the collection is non-uniquely referenced.

An Array<T> is a struct but uses a storage reference type under the covers. In theory the standard library is actually free to make common slices of arrays share storage so pure additions don't even require copying but I have no idea if it is actually implemented that way (neither String nor Array guarantee contiguous storage)

<comment><USER11> It definitely changes how a developer works in a language if they know they can depend on this kind of implementation. In Clojure, knowing up front that all data structures have shared persistence allows you to do things that you'd never consider in a language where this wasn't guaranteed.

I think Swift could greatly enhance its power in the functional paradigm if indeed it did what you describe, but also making this clearly known to everyone who uses it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone knows of a safe way to use Selector in Swift. I am not a fan of using string though.

<comment><USER13> I've been experimenting with python scripts in my build process to create structs of static strings for Apple APIs that require strings (ex: Storyboard filenames/identifiers, Core Data entity/properties, Image filenames) for compile time safety.

I haven't done selectors yet partially because I use relatively few of them and partially because parsing code is slightly harder than file system walks and xml parsing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Swift is a language designed from its core to build apps that work well for Apple hardware. I understand why developers gag at its quirky paradigms, but at the end of the day, if you play by the rules, you end up with an extremely valuable product. The positives outweigh the negatives, open source or not.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that it's actually very unlikely you'll wind up with a valuable product. The odds of getting on a user's home screen get longer every day and if you're not on the home screen you might as well not be on the phone at all.

I would like to see Swift eventually become a general purpose programming language useful outside of Apple's niche but it's got enough baggage from its ties to UIKit & ObjC I'm not sure how likely this is to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >String interpolation now allows string literals.

But do editors highlight this properly? (JOE 4.1 does).</comment>