macOS Security and Privacy Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide <comment><USER2> This has popped up a bunch of times before:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=macOS%20Security%20and%20Priva...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=macOS%20Security%20and%20Privacy%20Guide&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

It's not good. See:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17904304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17904304)

<comment><USER3> tptacek's criticisms are quite valid. However, "it's not good" seems oversimplified to me? I found lots of interesting information in this.

For example: information about the activation process for Macs, importance of setting a firmware password, disable some of the Spotlight services, and binary whitelisting through Santa. The repo also has the most comprehensive discussion I've seen about evicting FileVault keys from RAM on sleep: [https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy- Guide/is...](https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy- Guide/issues/124)

Also, I'm not sure if this has been changed more recently than the comment you linked, but it seems like they actually don't recommend AV software anymore: "Therefore, the best anti-virus is Common Sense 2020. See discussion in issue #44."

I grant you that having someone follow this top to bottom might be bad, but to say "it's not good" seems to both lack nuance and also to discard some useful, hard work done in good faith.

<comment><USER2> A guide that can't be used safely by non-specialists while being aimed at them is not a good guide. It is a very simple conclusion with the added benefit of also being almost tautologically true.

The thing probably does contain a bunch of interesting information but it's not good at its stated purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love how this is offered fully in Chinese, and that reminds me of something. Every operating system like macOS has its place, no matter what one's threat model is. Don't just say 'move to Linux if you're really worried about security or privacy'.

Maybe someone in China or another authoritarian regime needs to look less suspicious on the outside by using macOS instead of Linux. For those people, this information is gold.

BTW, this is indeed the famous Github guide many of us have known for years, just now renamed and updated.

2016 HN discussion of it with the old title, 'A practical guide to securing macOS': [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13023823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13023823)

<comment><USER5> > Maybe someone in China or another authoritarian regime needs to look less > suspicious on the outside by using macOS instead of Linux.

There's even an official Chinese Ubuntu spin. You're probably more suspicious with macOS, since these tend to be in the hands of high-profile businessmen and such.

<comment><USER6> In an authoritarian regime everyone with a computer looks suspicious.

<comment><USER7> quite the opposite, in a mass surveillance state anyone without virtual personality fingerprint and tracking data is suspicious

<comment><USER8> How about:

In an authoritarian regime/mass surveillance state everyone is suspicious?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm somewhat surprised that this guide recommends Homebrew. I agree that using a package manager is a good way to keep software updated from a central, trusted repository--always a good thing--but Homebrew makes a number of trade- offs for convenience instead of security. MacPorts has most of the same common packages and doesn't mess up filesystem permissions like Homebrew does. If I remember correctly, the all-inside-the-home-directory technique used in this guide is unsupported by the Homebrew developers as well.

See [https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos- pack...](https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package- managers/) for a more nuanced take on this.

<comment><USER10> > MacPorts has most of the same common packages and doesn't mess up filesystem > permissions like Homebrew does.

This is more a convenience than security question. I understand that Homebrew can install not only open source command-line tools, but also third-party binaries (via `cask`) and Mac App Store apps (via `mas`), and that all three types of software can be installed, updated, or removed via the same `brew` command or synced `Brewfile`.

Does MacPorts offer something similar? In that case, how is its coverage compared to the systems above?

(Context: I'm a long-time Linux user in the process of migrating to macOS.)

<comment><USER9> As I understand it, MacPorts is a fair bit more limited in that regard. For my purposes, I haven't found a need for the ability to install third-party binaries and Mac App Store apps through my package manager, since every third- party binary I have installed includes its own updater and the Mac App Store updates apps as well. I can see how setting up everything in one place could be useful, but I haven't run into a situation where it has been useful in my macOS usage quite yet.

Homebrew and MacPorts are philosophically pretty different from each other and neither can be directly compared to Linux package managers. I think you'll find the solution of MacPorts for OSS command-line tools + Mac App Store for Xcode and other random stuff + third-party installers for things like Sublime Text and Microsoft Office works pretty well in practice, although it's not quite as clean as using one package manager for everything.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for sharing your experience on this :).

> I can see how setting up everything in one place could be useful, but I > haven't run into a situation where it has been useful in my macOS usage > quite yet.

What appeals to me personally is having a list of apps (the "Brewfile"), that I can sync between my work and personal computer via my dotfiles, and let the system mirror what apps are installed on both devices ("brew bundle" installs or uninstalls apps based on that app list). And that if I need to replace my machine, I can just sync my dotfiles to new machine and let Homebrew autorestore apps, including third-party apps and things from App Store.

I've tried some "declarative package managers" before and enjoyed that, so when articles like this [1] said Homebrew can apparently do the same across open-source software, Mac App Store apps, and third-party apps, via a single synced Brewfile, that seemed interesting. The same Brewfile also appears to be usable on Linux for open-source apps (via Linuxbrew).

But I don't yet have any experience with it, so I have no idea how well it works or whether it's worth it. If we disregard third-party apps, do you know if MacPorts has an equivalent to Brewfile?

[1]: [https://openfolder.sh/macos-migrations-with- brewfile](https://openfolder.sh/macos-migrations-with-brewfile)

<comment><USER11> Somewhat, it does have a way of recreating your current setup (generally intended to be used across OS upgrades, but doesn't have to be limited to that usecase): [https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration](https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was looking at Yabai [1] as a window manager and it requires SIP[2] to be disabled for advanced features... Is SIP really needed ? I see that it didn't even exist since "since OS X 10.11 "El Capitan".".

[1] [https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki)

[2] [https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy- Guide#sy...](https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide#system- integrity-protection)

<comment><USER13> Here's an instance of SIP preventing a Chrome update from bricking computers.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/no- it...](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/no-it-wasnt-a- virus-it-was-chrome-that-stopped-macs-from-booting/)

<comment><USER14> Bricking means that the computer is no more useful for computing than a brick (or that you might as well use it as a brick). Don't use it for stuff that can be fixed with software.

<comment><USER15> Where do you draw the line, though? Something that might be a brick to a web developer would probably be perfectly serviceable to me as a firmware engineer

Meanwhile, something that's a brick to me is often perfectly serviceable to someone who can operate a soldering iron

Something that's a brick to a competent hardware tech might still be serviceable to a 3 letter agency

<comment><USER16> If you can still boot a Mac from the recovery partition or an external drive, it's not bricked.

<comment><USER15> It IS bricked if you're a semi-technical Chrome user whose mac is stuck at the question mark screen, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a side note: isn't ChromeOS a _safer_ alternative to macOS in 2020[1]?

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/security-overview)

<comment><USER18> Afaik ChromeOS phones home to Google, so if Google is among your threat model (privacy) it's not good.

Las time I checked, installing ChromiumOS wasn't easy and i'm not even sure there's a "ungoogled" version like there is for the Chromium web browser.

<comment><USER17> I meant, ChromeOS migth be a more _secure_ , not necessarily a more _private_ option.

If macOS had a way higher likehood of zero-day attacks, ChromeOS phoning home wouldn't be the biggest concern to most users.

Because in the first case the threat would be the entire world, and in the second case – only the US government.

<comment><USER19> Secure is a very vague word, I think you're looking for "less hackable by hostile actors" then definitely chromeOS has a smaller footprint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This guide is great. It's a pity there is no easy to use (maybe GUI) tool for the average user go be able to implement a lot of the things mentioned here. There used to a few scripts around but most seem outdated. I'm thinking along the lines of Harden Tools for Windows. Great open source project for someone.

[https://securitywithoutborders.org/tools/hardentools.html](https://securitywithoutborders.org/tools/hardentools.html)

<comment><USER21> [https://objective-see.com](https://objective-see.com) have pretty good security related GUI tools for macOS. Things like ransomware protection, firewalls, task explorers. They also do malware analysis for macOS, definitely an interesting website.

<comment><USER20> Totally I'm a huge fan of the stuff on there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The thing about PRNG "entropy" and when to enable Filevault is almost certainly false, and based on a misconception of how PRNGs work.

Also, recommending libpurple-based IM clients as a security/privacy measure, so you can run OTR over them, is probably a bad idea.

And it recommends Mac antivirus! Do not install antivirus on your Mac.

<comment><USER3> The guide seems to say, "the best anti-virus is Common Sense 2020. See discussion in issue #44." I take this to mean that they recommend common sense instead of anti-virus software.

It does also say, "Anti-virus programs are [...] possibly useful for catching 'garden variety' malware on novice users' Macs", so maybe that's what you disagree with, which is reasonable.

I just wanted to point out that their main recommendation does not, to my reading, suggest to use AV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice guide. I didn't realize the security implications of iOS devices and the Touch Bar (being practically an iOS device itself).

I'd be interested to see an equivalent guide for Android devices. My current suspicion is that I'd be far more alarmed by Android than iOS but it would be nice to verify this.

<comment><USER24> You can pretty much do anything with Android, the same cannot be said about Apple's dictatorship.

I am not even sure about stock installs given Apple's poor security record.

<comment><USER10> > You can pretty much do anything with Android, the same cannot be said about > Apple's dictatorship.

The problem is that _app developers_ can also do anything with Android, often against the users' will.

Before I switched to iPhone, my choices for location access on Android apps were basically "access location 24/7", or "no location support at all"; and even that was an improvement upon the earlier "the app will get these permissions, don't install it if you disagree" model. iPhone, in contrast, had a sensible "only access location when the app is open" option. Similarly, uploading a single photo to Facebook on Android required the app to get full access to your whole SD card; on iPhone, I can send a photo without the app getting access to my storage at all (that single photo is copied into the Facebook sandbox by the OS). Perhaps Android has improved since, but so has iOS (see e.g. the feature list for iOS 14).

For some of us, controlling our data without turning the phone into a full- time hobby is more important than having full system access.

> I am not even sure about stock installs given Apple's poor security record.

Do you have a link supporting that Apple's security record is worse than other systems, relative to market share?

As far as I know, the macOS permission system provides better sandboxing than either Windows or Linux by default. (Though if you work for it, you can harden Linux more.)

And although there is a lot of malware for macOS, last I checked nearly all of it was in the form of Trojans and similar vectors, where a user has to download and execute untrusted code. That is an issue on any platform; a user running a malicious bash-script with sudo shouldn't count the same as remote exploits in my opinion.

<comment><USER25> You're correct, both Android and iOS have improved. Both have the features you described today, neither had them several years ago.

<comment><USER10> It's good to hear that Android supports this as well now, but I think you understate the difference in when these features arrived. From a quick search, the location example was fixed in iOS 8 in 2014 [1], and in Android 10 in 2019 [2], putting Apple 5 years ahead of Google on privacy features. Based on the list of privacy features being introduced in iOS 14, my impression is that this is still the case?

[1]: [https://9to5mac.com/2014/06/04/apple-improves-location- servi...](https://9to5mac.com/2014/06/04/apple-improves-location-services-in- ios-8-with-when-in-use-mode-visit-monitoring/)

[2]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_10](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_10)

<comment><USER25> Thanks for looking up the timeline, I was not sure. Also full disk encryption on phones is another thing Apple did way earlier.

I agree it's not exactly apples to Apples. Does Apple still have special permissions for their own apps which allows them to run unobstructed, but other apps need to jump hoops with callbacks and other workarounds?

Are we expecting for Apple to always be 5 years ahead of Google on privacy features? Or did Google shift priorities with Android 10?

Honestly if we're talking about buying an iOS device or an Android device in 2014, I'd lean towards iOS for sure. I don't feel the same way about it today.

<comment><USER10> > Are we expecting for Apple to always be 5 years ahead of Google on privacy > features? Or did Google shift priorities with Android 10?

Good question! My personal impression is that Google, being primarily a tracking company, reluctantly added just enough privacy features for people not to flock to Apple. (I think people have grown more privacy-conscious over the past few years, and Apple has marketed their privacy features heavily.) Links like this [1], listing the iOS 14 privacy features that will arrive in late 2020, appear to still be ahead of what Google has done yet – and e.g. Facebook's reaction to the cross-app tracking block appear to indicate that this isn't something they've encountered from Google.

But being an iPhone user now, I of course notice more easily what's happening in the Apple world than Google world. If you have an overview of new privacy features in Android, which aren't in iOS, I'd be very happy to be proven wrong. I'd love to see a full arms race between Google and Apple on privacy, with both parties introducing novel features.

[1]: [https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-14-privacy/](https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-14-privacy/)

> Does Apple still have special permissions for their own apps which allows > them to run unobstructed, but other apps need to jump hoops with callbacks > and other workarounds?

Unfortunately, yes. There is e.g. no way to get as reliable background sync with things like Nextcloud and Resilio as you do with iCloud, since there's no "run in the background" permission. Not sure about this, but I don't think any other app can take over the lock screen in the same way as Apple Maps. You can't set a default browser than Safari, but I believe this is changing in iOS 14.

While I respect Apple for their stance on privacy and therefore use an iPhone, I do disagree with some of these missing permissions, and hope that a new round of anti-trust investigations may force them to open up on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone knows of a similar collection of tweaks, but for getting performance out of macOS?

Things like disabling Spotlight so it's not indexing node_modules and other folders, or adding tools to the Developer Tools to disable network checks with apple servers when you want to run a binary

<comment><USER27> You can already exclude things from Spotlight's index in System Preferences.

<comment><USER26> I know, i'm doing it. I was saying I would love for a list of tweaks of that nature. Things I don't know about that I could do to improve performance

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> i've increasingly been having issues with hands off![0] on my machine (intermittent high cpu usage, regular kernel panics), and was actually looking at this guide a while back to decide whether i should switch to pf instead[1].

but pf seems to require much more configuration and management. anyone have experience/pointers in this regard?

[0] i used to use little snitch many years ago, but ran into similar issues with it over time (maybe it's better now).

[1] [https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy- Guide#ke...](https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide#kernel- level-packet-filtering)

<comment><USER29> I use Murus to manage pf on a couple of Macs. They also have an application- layer firewall named Vallum. [https://www.murusfirewall.com](https://www.murusfirewall.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Is your adversary a three letter agency (if so, you may want to consider > using OpenBSD instead);

A 3 letter agency won't be stopped by OpenBSD or any other OS.

There is so much security holes in the hardware itself and ultimately they can always "convince" you to release your data.

<comment><USER30> No, you can't stop "an agency" but you can make their job harder and slow them down. Using a hardened O/S is part of the mix but not connecting to the net if you can avoid it is another. A good overview of how to configure you computer for privacy can also be found on episode 177 of Michael Bazzel's "Privacy, Security, and OSINT Podcast":

[https://overcast.fm/+Hbyfl32i0](https://overcast.fm/+Hbyfl32i0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's enough to make one want to switch to OpenBSD or Linux.

<comment><USER10> I think most of that guide would require roughly the same amount of work on Linux though (e.g. setting up firewalls, DNS, VPN, and FDE).

<comment><USER31> Are you kidding? You still have to do work, but a third party doesn't get to decide if you can boot and what image you boot.

> What is particularly worrying about this process is that it is a network- > linked secure boot process where centralized external servers have the power > to dictate what the device should boot.

This is an abomination.

<comment><USER10> Firstly, your quote is about iOS not macOS as far as I can tell, so the competitor here would be Android not OpenBSD.

Secondly, I interpreted your comment as "that list is long enough to make one want to switch to Linux". I then stand by my comment that most of the suggestions on the list require at least the same amount of work on Linux. (Source: I'm a Linux user that has setup things like fscrypt, ufw, openvpn on my devices.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great! Thanks for sharing it. Obviously a labor of love.

</comment><comment><USER33> Should add an explanation for what "sepOS" is.

</comment><comment><USER34> This fails to make much sense overall. My macs only talk to apple when I let them and it was way simpler than this.</comment>


Ask HN: Who here would be interested in a burnout center? - <AUTHOR> I've been on the verge of burnout for a while now and have heard similar complaints from quite a few of my colleagues as well. For me it is because of continual part-time studies, a recent career change, and general life stresses. For my colleagues, most of whom are senior developers, this is due to their careers and work related responsibilities in general.
I'm wondering how prevalent this is and if anyone here would be interested in a kind of burnout recuperation center/getaway/retreat.
This is something I've been giving some thought to and it would involve something similar to the Vipassana Meditation retreats that get posted here at times, except it would be designed and geared to recovery from, and preventing burnout. And you'll be able to talk, of course.
It would involve a structured daily schedule(but not mandatory) of activities, researched and selected based on empirical proof of their benefit towards dealing with stress, burnout and creative blockages. These activities would be daily meditation sessions, light exercise(hiking, yoga, weight training), and a scientifically-designed diet plan to reduce stress and anxiety(in as much as that's possible).
Also, I'm playing with the idea of including a 5-day hike in one of the most beautiful natural parks in the world.
Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions? <comment><USER2> Not trying to be snarky, but perhaps the reason for your burnout is the constant desire to implement/think up of solutions rather than to relax and not think so much?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's my workload(work and studies).

<comment><USER3> also not trying to be starky... but if it's your workload that is burning you out, adding the stress and 'workload' of planning this might be adding more fuel to the fire. Why the need to build more workload into your already overloaded workload? I think AznHisoka is on the right track.

<comment><USER4> As the husband of an event planner, this sounds like OP has decided to start an exciting project without an appreciation of the amount of work involved.

I had burnout problems in college, and OP's excitement about this project sounds very familiar.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Remote companies need *free* white-hat hacker? - <AUTHOR> Im looking to provide my services of white hat hacking to your organization for a few months for free.
Please provide company, and point of contact.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Last month you posted "Ask HN: How to become security researcher?" so do you have experience in that field?

Besides any "I'm looking for a job" questions are basically job ads and should go into the monthly threads [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)</comment>


Ask HN: Did anyone else get their Peek? - <AUTHOR>

I got email about three weeks ago saying "your peek is shipping in the next 2 days".  Nothing has arrived and there is no activity on the shipping label.<p>I was fortunate enough to get on the list for one, I'm curious what happened.  Has anyone received one? <comment><USER2> Yes, I just received one yesterday. I got the same email from Amol on Feb 14th, noting that it was being shipped in the next 2 days. It's possible that yours in in transit I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yup, got mine a few weeks back. Must've been part of the first batch--I responded very quickly.</comment>


Viaweb FAQ (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/vwfaq.html <comment><USER3> > _What database did you use? We didn 't use one. We just stored everything in > files. The Unix file system is pretty good at not losing your data, [...] It > is a common mistake to think of Web-based apps as interfaces to databases > ..._

This. I mean URLs were designed to encode Unix file names. Today you'd probably say 'it's a common mistake to think of Web-based apps as interfaces to "REST APIs"'.

Now the question of all questions is why viaweb was recreated in a non-LISP language (though probably discussed to death here) ...

<comment><USER4> The unix file system _is_ a database, just not a particularly capable one. It is a hierarchical key-value database, with the file/directory name being the key. If your data fits that schema you're golden, otherwise not so much.

<comment><USER3> True, but a bit reductionist. A Unix file system also gives certain guarantees. For example, you can atomically rename a complete directory tree while client program keep accessing the "old" ones, you have a large choice of excellent SCMs for tracking files, can have networked and/or distributed file systems, uniform permissions or ACLs ... all of which come in handy if you're running a web server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> We didn't use one. We just stored everything in files

Meaning what? What kind of file formats? What did you query the data with, etc?

>> It turned out the Yahoo accounting department used Oracle.

I remember reading some Oracle advertisement (PC Magazine circa 2001) where a company like Amazon switched to them 'in one day'. It was probably the marketing department or something.

<comment><USER6> If it's anything like Hacker News, the way it works is as follows:

1\. on startup, load all items into memory from the files.

2\. whenever an item is changed, save it to disk.

In modern times, you can store each item as a separate .json file, for example.

With this technique, there is no risk of data corruption. There is a risk of inconsistency; e.g. if I remember correctly, when you upvote an item, the vote is saved to disk, then the author's karma is incremented, and finally the author's profile is saved to disk. If the webserver dies between saving the vote and saving the karma count, the karma will no longer be the proper value. Stuff like that. Such things tend not to matter if you design it carefully, though.

EDIT: I was curious what the order of operations was, so I pulled up HN's old source code:

            (unless (or (author user i)
                        (and (is ip i!ip) (~editor user))
                        (is i!type 'pollopt))
              (++ (karma i!by) (case dir up 1 down -1))
              (save-prof i!by))
            (wipe (comment-cache* i!id)))
          (push vote i!votes)
          (save-item i)
          (push (list (seconds) i!id i!by (sitename i!url) dir)
                (uvar user votes))
          (= ((votes* user) i!id) vote)
          (save-votes user)
          (zap [firstn votewindow* _] (uvar user votes))
          (save-prof user)
          (push (cons i!id vote) recent-votes*))))

The user's karma is incremented / decremented, then the user's profile is saved; the vote is added to an item's votes, then the item is saved; the vote is stored in the global votes table, then the votes table is saved; the vote is added to the user's "votes" list, then the user's profile is saved.

<comment><USER7> Do all servers share a file system, or is there some sort of copying done in the background?

<comment><USER8> As far as I remember HN runs on a single core of a single server. I wonder whether this has changed more recently, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It is a common mistake to think of Web-based apps as interfaces to > databases. Desktop apps aren't just interfaces to databases; why should Web- > based apps be any different? The hard part is not where you store the data, > but what the software does.

There's an alternate take on this point. Maybe the mistake is to _not_ think of desktop apps as interfaces to databases (regardless of what the software actually does).

</comment><comment><USER10> Is one process per user still viable? It sounds like it would not scale / not work well with cloud deployments.

<comment><USER7> Not viable for handling many users at once on a single unix box, no. Context switching between the processes starts to dominate your time. It's an old- school approach that is really tidy at relatively low concurrency.

In the early 2000s, this area was sometimes called the "C10k problem" - <USER2> you handle 10,000 concurrent connections on one machine? See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C10k_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C10k_problem)

These days, most servers can blow way past that, even into millions, but none - that I am aware - do that with a process-per-connection model.

<comment><USER3> It depends. If you're caching ("weakly" eg with revalidating If-Modified-Since against mtime, or even "strongly" eg aggressively), which you should, you're creating processes only for a small fraction of requests. Remaining major overhead is reparsing dynamic language backend code, which you can further reduce by using native code.

<comment><USER7> The cache is served by an HTTP server still, though. What you are describing is a sort of hybrid, where most requests are handled in threads (either OS or green threads) but a small fraction get their own process. I think I agree that that could work, but it sounds a bit different from creating a process per connection.

I don't think parsing code is the major overhead. Its not really about starting the processes so much as switching between them when concurrently handling a bunch of requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any old screenshots around; what the editor or backend interface for a Viaweb user looked like?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> the faq reads like an essay on minimalism and first-principles thinking</comment>


What Happens When a State Is Run by Movie Stars? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/what-happens-when-a-state-is-run-by-movie-stars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

<comment><USER2> The movie-star to politics transition pretty much is run from late 60s and mid 80s. The two storied legends are MGR in Tamil Nadu and NTR in Andhra Pradesh. J. Jayalalitha was protege of MGR and she took over after a internal struggle after MGR's death. The present day India does have its movie-star to Politican transition most of them are topped off at the most as MPs or MLAs, many tried but nobody ever reached the zenith like MGR, Jayalalitha and NTR.

Movie stars in India esp. South tend to be super duper populists and when Movies were the only medium of entertainment (they still are primary) they wear their movie character out into the real world when they transform into Politicians.

The results are mediocre, but this transition brought a Personality Cult or should I say exaggerated that mentality, pretty much each politician in India who is running for Chief Minster or Prime Minister runs as if they are the "Savior" who will turn the 70 years mis-rule on the head.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3703](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=3703) Possibly related.

</comment><comment><USER4> I 100% thought this was going to be a conservative hit piece about Hollywood/California. tl;dr: it's not.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean "conservative hit piece?" Would you have used the term "liberal hit piece"!if the publication were Motherjones or MSNBC? Your comment reveals a lack of objectivity.

<comment><USER6> The publication doesn't even have to be taken into account. The movie stars bit of the title makes one think California, and the 'what happens' gives a slight negative implication when combined with movie stars (at least that was my initial perception). Thus the title appeared to be casting California in a negative light. Being California leans liberal, a negative article reviewing the state would likely have a conservative lean to it. Thus the description can lead to the assumption without even needing to see the source of the article.

<comment><USER7> There are at least two California's, the liberal one we all see and live in on the coast and the more agricultural and conservative interior which we don't hear about so much.

<comment><USER8> ... because nobody lives there.

<comment><USER7> Nah... I think it's more because they don't have much access to media. They are a sizable portion of the pop. But like most minorities, they are underrepresented in popular culture and zeitgeist.

For most intents and purposes they are a "forgotten backwater".

<comment><USER8> Do you think they are really under-represented, or simply proportionally represented? 3/4ths of Californians live in on of the three big coastal metropolitan areas. The other quarter of the people are spread out over an area as large as Spain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Karunanidhi promised free televisions for all. He won, and a freebie arms > race commenced. Since Jayalalithaa resumed office in 2011, she has given > away or heavily subsidized laptops, saris, fans, rice, cows, goats, food > processors and bicycles, and branded all of it with her face and the name > Amma

I know this is going to be downvoted to hell and back, but that's OK, somebody has to say these things so you kids learn to think for yourselves rather than be captive to the indoctrination you were subjected to in school.

That, the quote above, is the left wing's preferred approach to amassing votes everywhere in the world. From Argentina through the US and on to India. Give shit away to buy votes. In places like Argentina and India it migt have taken the form of blenders and bikes. In places like the US it feels a bit more sophisticated but it is the same thing: pander to unions and minorities. And, just like in India and Argentina, the masses respond with votes. Once in office the politicians drop their "little people" supporters on their heads and proceed to enrich themselves.

The right wing has it's own set of issues, including seeing everything through the eyes of religious fanaticism of varying degrees. Which easily buys the votes of the religious masses.

Politics is such a mess. It is probably one of the lowest forms of the human condition. It causes those in the game to have to devolve into despicable beings for the all-mighty vote. Sick.

Think Libertarian.

Wake Up!

<comment><USER10> The tech workers who make up the majority of my friends and acquaintances are heavily left-leaning. What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support?

I think it's ironic that you go through this (IMO justified) rant about how awful politics is, and then immediately turn around and propose your own political philosophy as the answer. Sorry, but libertarianism is still politics. I'm sure you have plenty of answers about how that's not true and your way is inherently different from all the others, but they all say that.

<comment><USER11> "What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support?"

Moral authority over conservatives, and cleansing of the sins of racism and other -isms and damage against Mother Earth by voting properly (and possibly some targeted donations).

I'm not sure how to do a good Google search for this but you can find some science on how people who perform token acts of environmentalism or race consciousness then often account to themselves some "moral capital" which they immediately spend, e.g. "Yeah, I flew to the mountains to ski but I recycle my trash so it all works out."

Conservatives are of course selling purity (a concept that actually goes quite deep; google "disgust" for some recent and fascinating research on this human characteristic) and tradition, and feeding into outrage about various changes going on.

Libertarianism (disclaimer: I mostly identify here) sells on the idea of secret understandings that few people have, invoking the ancient "mystery religion" [1] psychological programs that are actually surprisingly absent in the modern world. Many variants also have more than a whiff of "if we just did this ONE THING all our problems would be solved", offering an appealing unified theory of why everything sucks so hard that has the advantage of near- unfalsifiability since the realistic chances of any major libertarian polity rapidly approaches zero as its size grows, while being very appealing simplified. (See also gold-buggery... "one simple thing" that would fix our whole economy.)

All the political positions are selling emotional appeals.

Oh, and in the middle of this tumult there's some policy things too, but who really votes for those? Policies are tied together in really weird ways, and there is a far greater of cohesion of beliefs into "blocs" than you'd expect with a naive model of beliefs. Either our understanding of human psychology is still really limited and there's some good reason that the various beliefs are tied together, "team" voting is vastly disproportional in power vs. what it theoretically should be, or some combination of both, as I could argue both pretty well with various science results that have been coming out over the past 10 years.

[1]: This is a technical term, BTW; you may have a fun time googling it if you've never heard of it before.

<comment><USER12> Best political comment I've ever read on this site. Gets to the heart of what our politics are really about.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm Done Developing for Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://restrictionisexpression.com/post/26144987502/im-done-developing-for-twitter <comment><USER2> What surprises me is not that a platform provider will do things in its own interests, it's that people keep falling for it.

Seriously.

This isn't new eg [1].

Also, I don't really buy into the argument that these third-party providers is what made Twitter popular. IMHO Twitter made Twitter popular and the devs just followed the money.

[1]: [http://gigaom.com/2011/06/07/fred-wilson-to-devs-expect- plat...](http://gigaom.com/2011/06/07/fred-wilson-to-devs-expect-platform- owners-to-work-against-you/)

<comment><USER3> Humans have extremely high tolerance to abuse. Many businesses have this as their main pillar. Adobe famously continues to release worse and worse experiences with their products, and still have a popular costumer base. The masses simply have very low quality standards.

<comment><USER4> > _Adobe famously continues to release worse and worse experiences with their > products, and still have a popular costumer base._

Famously? Really? As in "some random non professional designers/adobe users complained on the intertubes".

Care to mention how, say, Photoshop, Premmiere or Lightroom CS6 are worse than previous versions? All have been praised as substantial updates.

Bonus points for not using non-technical catch-all words like "bloated".

I would aldo like to hear about the worthy replacement, with feature parity to those products.

Abode products, due to the custom UI, have some odd look&feel issues in some controls. They also have bugs like any program has (far less than most, though, especially considering scope and complexity).

That said, they are the industry leading products, with no substitution that has the same breadth for professional wokflows. So, no, its not about "tolerance", its about being the "best game in town".

People jumped ship from Quark to inDesign in a heartbeat, when the option emerged.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. My wife uses Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and is moving to Lightroom now, professionally, and loves Adobe's products. Oh, I'm sure she has her gripes about certain things, but they work great. There are other products. She used Aperture for a while (and still does, as I mentioned, she's moving to Lightroom), but if you heard her tell it, it wasn't because Aperture was better, it was just that she ended up learning that first. They are, in essence, the same.

And when they are basically the same, the one that fits in with the entire suite of applications she uses is one she will want to use more often.

Adobe does not begin with PDF's and end with Flash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in 2009, I was doing a lot of social network research with the Web Ecology Project (<http://www.webecologyproject.org/>).

Among other things, we captured a 100% set of tweets surrounding the election in Iran in 09, and released a paper on them. It was interesting, because it ended up all being a bit of a precursor to the Arab Spring and many current events in the middle east today.

I loved doing it. The API team was responsive, and although we were never able to get full Firehose (despite offerring large amount of money) we were able to easily play with and access a lot of data.

Much/all of that has changed. The API has gotten really complex to work with. The terms of service are no longer friendly. Getting whitelisted accounts for standard API calls is impossible, and overall feeling like we have any influence or use to Twitter is dwindling.

Whereas at one point I felt it was a joy to work with, now I feel its impossible. Getting the data to study is impossible (or expensive, since a few companies control the firehose), and there's the constant feeling of getting shut down at any moment. Plus, there's just too much data to grab given the clunky methods you have to use to do it. I'd kill for a hard drive of the 'network graph' with diffs over time. As-is, its impossible to answer certain academic questions.

To a certain degree, while Twitter is used far more now than in 2009, it feels boring, obvious and less important to me. So at the end of the day, nothing of value was lost, but I do miss it as it was interesting at one point.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was kind of hoping Dorsey coming back to Twitter would have put an end to or at least subdued their hostility to their developer community, but it doesn't appear to be the case. Their new proprietary attachments are even more concerning than this.

Costolo and Ev are dickish enough you expect crap from them, but Dorsey used to have some hacker cool. I wonder if either Dorsey doesn't have enough power to swing Twitter back to being open and cool again, or if he's drunk the rich and famous Koolaid to the point he just wants to cash out in a big IPO and doesn't care about the things he used to care about.

Regrettably companies trying to squeeze enough revenue out of "free" Internet services to have a successful IPO are pretty much compelled to be complete dicks, so its probably gonna happen.

It just kind of sucks that Twitter is the absolute coolest news stream there is, there aren't any good replacements and you KNOW they are going to totally wreck it by the time they IPO or within a year of going public and we are going to all have to start over on some new "never heard of" clone. Then repeat cycle endlessly every few years. Dave Winer will keep shouting to use RSS but RSS completely sucks by comparison.

As an aside a few days ago I read New Yorker and some other mags were getting weary of letting Flipbook scrape their content and were going to just put a lead in and link users to their main web site through flipbook instead. I'm thinking, wow that's what Twitter was already doing. I totally never understood what Flipbook offered to justify the hype. A good Twitter stream in a good client is infinitely better.

<comment><USER8> You should try google+. I like it better than twitter and I use it primarily as a news stream.

The only reason I don't use it more regularly is that they don't have a proper API yet and therefore have no apps for my blackberry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to play devil's advocate for a moment...

The first app created a layer between twitter and its users which meant that stripping ads would be trivial & likely universal (they don't put ads in 3rd party app streams _yet_ but should they chose to this would stop them) and you could be harvesting the analytics and user metainfo that twitter wants to sell for ad-targeting against what they probably consider "their" content. I can see how they would take exception to a service that allows users to _fully_ control their interaction with twitter; it could seem too much like "handing the keys over" to a third party.

TweetFavor (ironically) seems that it would worsen the signal to noise ratio that Proxlet aimed to improve. Friends turning themselves into voluntary zombies in a twitter spam botnet? I know it's not actually that bad but I can see why twitter would want to cut this off.

None of this excuses the manner with which twitter did what they did, and like I said, "Devil's Advocate," neither of the apps were _that_ bad, but it's not unfathomable to me why twitter would have a problem with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Proxlet never made any attempt to block ads (they didn't even exist when we built it!) That said, it's really no different than a normal 3rd party app which could do the same thing. Again, my beef was the manner in which they shut it down abruptly stranding users.

TweetFavor just supports an existing pattern "hey dude, can you tweet this for me?" And permission had to be given per-tweet request, there was no mass zombification. You'd pledge individual tweets. Once again, no reason as to why it was shut down, and certainly no one used it before making the call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Moral of the story: be-wary of developing applications with dependency to a platform_

Yep. Or at least "be-wary of developing applications with dependency to a platform unless you control it, it's easily replicable, or you have a legally binding SLA in place with the provider."

We're seeing more and more of this kind of thing, and people need to realize that you can't build something sustainable by relying on the happenstance goodwill of some arbitrary API provider.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for this. It's not anecdotal to simply say "don't rely on platforms". Be weary of platforms that are free. They do have risks. It's important to understand those risks before thinking you've just hit a gold mine.

<comment><USER12> I'd say avoid platforms that lock you in to that vendor, free or not. I've read of paid accounts being shut down just as unceremoniously. Or prices were increased 10X. Even when not locked in, one should be ready enough to move to another vendor without too much problem.

<comment><USER13> Well, if you're paying, you should at least have some sort of contractual protection. If you don't, you're just a wallet to them, not a valued customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A group of us developed an app for published research work that used the streaming API within academia. The amount of hoops we had to jump through for the necessary access was absurd. It's as if the attitude is "it's a privilege for you to use this API", as opposed to making it a viable platform.

</comment><comment><USER15> They used to say this about Microsoft. [http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace)

Now it can apply to any company that provides developers an API.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, I don't think there's any kind of "social contract" with web services providing APIs. Just as the exploitation of crowdsourced data is now common practice (including personal data), most organizations provide APIs only as long as they find free access in their own interest. There's little loyalty or feeling that they owe users anything, at all.

<comment><USER17> In my most cynical moments, I think the business plan is to provide an API, let it boost your services usage via 3rd party labor, get successful, then buy what you want and lockout the rest.

<comment><USER18> That's not in any way cynical; that's business.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it is a good long term business plan. I believe you should "dance with the one that brought you".

If this is all about advertising or branding, it is just sad and it makes it harder for the people who actually care about their developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amateur question here. How does Twitter stop your app? Do they block your IP from accessing their API?

<comment><AUTHOR> In order to interact with their API, you need a security token. They revoke the rights on that token, and the API rejects your requests.

<comment><USER20> And to put a finer point on it, tokenized APIs are basically whitelists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> and today they post this [https://dev.twitter.com/blog/delivering-consistent- twitter-e...](https://dev.twitter.com/blog/delivering-consistent-twitter- experience)

<comment><USER20> Yet you'll notice that the only features they mention that people might build upon are all features based upon contributions to Twitter itself, in the form of either content (posting proxies) or analytic data ('like' buttons, embeds). Consumption is left entirely out of the mix.

<comment><USER7> Yea, they want developers to develop content for them, and they want developers to develop traffic for them. They absolutely dont want developers to develop interesting clients and apps using for their message bus. Their guidelines on displaying tweets are getting so restrictive its pointless to develop anything resembling a client. Twitter has also proved to be spectacularly bad at building clients themselves. I haven't been able to stand any of the many iterations of their web site and their best client efforts were just bought from the 3rd party developer community and then mangled.

Twitter should seriously consider just shutting down their API to third party developers and restrict it entirely to their clients and widgets.

It would be a lot more intellectually honest thing to do versus just slowly and continuously stangling their developer community in their quest for revenue. If they just shut off the API then everyone would get the kick in the pants they need to move on to something new.

The Internet community desperately needs to figure out a way to build an open message bus + identity system + open API + server farm + spam killers using a foundation along the lines of Wikipedia.

Letting one for profit company control the Internet's message bus has proven to be a truly horrible idea. Going back to RSS and a totally decentralized system not good either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why open source triumphs in platform spaces: if your business relies on another company's intellectual property it can be destroyed at any time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sad and disheartening. As someone who also hacks together the occasional twitter app/hybrid, I wonder if this sentiment is widespread/growing?

</comment><comment><USER24> What Twitter is doing is extremely damaging to developers and the perception of APIs. But let's not bundle all APIs as terrible. The Twilio's, Stripe's and other progressive APIs know how to treat devs and respect them. We just need to make sure we are equally vocal about the good and the bad in the space.

<comment><USER25> The difference between Twitter and Twilio or Stripe is that Twitter has a product that exists outside their API. In the case of Stripe or Twilio their API is their product, the dynamic between developers and the Twitter vs. Twilio is going to be far different.

<comment><USER24> Agreed, but this distinction isn't made when bashing API opportunities. The haters on this thread and others state developers are fools for depending on APIs...not just APIs who have products that exist outside their APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you base your app on 3rd party APIs, and charge users for using your app, don't you have any liability in case the API shuts you off? Would a TOS clause with something like "We will not be held responsible if our service providers cease to function. Also no refunds." give any protection?

</comment><comment><USER27> A company you did not pay and do not help generate revenue (doesn't one of them actually reduce ad impressions?) arbitrarily disconnected you from using their server resources? Crazy talk...

<comment><USER28> > do not help generate revenue

That isn't true. API apps drive engagement which helps retention to grow their platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That is a horrible domain name. It's almost as bad as Experts Exchange before they hyphenated it...

</comment><comment><USER30> While you're at it, never commit your data to any proprietary application.

There, that's what 40 years taught me.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not to mention the insanely low rate limits...

</comment><comment><USER32> Twitter gained a lot of popularity on the back of a vibrant third party ecosystem. Now that they're established, it seems that the have deemed those same third party developers a threat and have turned on them. Just another example of why basing your company on someone else's platform is a bad idea.

<comment><USER33> The problem is: will we have real APIs in the future? because these APIs are a kind of scam.

<comment><USER34> Perhaps they should be renamed to SPI - Service Programming Interface.

An API somewhat gives the impression of a programming interface that will execute valid instructions unconditionally and reliably. An SPI is different because it can fail, not because of a technical error, but because a human, for grins or otherwise, decided to cause the failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _Moral of the story: be-wary of developing applications with dependency to a > platform._

I've come to the conclusion that this belongs in the category of "Make regular backups" and "Use unique passwords and a password manager".

Everyone knows they should, and yet so many people refuse to accept that it could happen to them. I don't know if it's hubris or arrogance. How many times has this lesson been displayed in the last week on HN, let alone the last 4 years. iOS, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Twitter, often Facebook.

Not me! My app is too {small, unique, creative} to be a problem.

<comment><USER36> Sort of. Writing a program is usually a fun endeavor. Having the platform owner come and stomp on you, regardless of how much right they have to do it, is still a pretty shitty thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Exactly the reason why I am so paranoid about third party APIs. I even asked this over a HN post here but did not get much response.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4162370>

</comment><comment><USER38> i'm done developing for SHINE</comment>


Dongle Jokes - <AUTHOR> http://pan.sx/Dongle_Jokes.html

<comment><USER2> For sexual harassment to occur, the offended party can be harassed merely by overhearing 2 other people discuss what a 4th person did to a 5th. And the 4th and 5th people be the harassers.

This is common sexual harassment policy, and if she found the concept of a "dongle" offensive for ANY REASON, then she must be accommodated, as part of the policy.

<comment><USER3> Is that based on fact, or opinion?

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a European definition to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pertaining to the forking comments, I was once in Adria's shoes. While riding the school bus in high school some younger kids kept yelling a stupid phrase and then would burst out with laughter. "Fire in the hole!" I got tired of it so I pulled a passive aggressive move a just blew up at them. I had misinterpreted it to be something sexual and so I assumed they were laughing at something they also didn't understand. I yelled at them and then asked them if they knew what they were talking about... Long story short. I got in trouble for sexual harassment. I felt awful for my behavior and apologized to the kids after I realized I acted improperly too.

In response to the dongle comments. Referring to parts you don't have would be much worse as then you are/can only judge others. Referring to a part you have can be judging yourself, but not always. Regardless, "private conversations" in public spaces where it is reasonable to believe others can hear are not protected private conversations and anything discussed should take into consideration what/how others might hear them. If they were in the hallway between sessions talking and Adria was just walking by it would be slightly different. If they were in a room by themselves... thats a private conversation. However, they were sitting in a room with others sitting nearby that could hear them. Regardless of what they were saying they were being disrespectful by distracting other attendees.

My point? 1) Be careful not to be the one incorrectly applying sexual context to overheard words or conversations. 2) be cognizant of your surroundings and aware of how your conversation could be perceived in public settings. 3) be respectful.

<comment><USER4> This is key! [https://github.com/python/pycon-code-of- conduct/commit/500a3...](https://github.com/python/pycon-code-of- conduct/commit/500a3d25c27065598002f7c999de3fdfb7ab18b1)</comment></comment>


Husband of NSA-leak reporter held under U.K. terror law - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news/story/2013/08/18/nsa-leak-reporter-greenwald-partner-detained-london-airport.html

<comment><USER2> How can one compare government to mafia? What is wrong with you people? Mafia doesn't waste your time by conscripting you to be a part time accountant before you pay it. Mafia doesn't hold elections among those who pay it, pretending that they serve their interests. Mafia doesn't start massive wars where thousands of innocent people die. Comparing government to mafia is disgraceful to mafia.

<comment><USER3> This is funny, but state vs mafia comparisons are not new. In many ways the state is simply the most successful mafia organisation within a given region.</comment></comment>


Young voters wanted Brexit the least – and will have to live with it the longest - <AUTHOR> http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/young-voters-wanted-brexit-least-8271517 <comment><USER2> People seem to think this vote is the final word but my understanding is that it isn't legally binding and the final decision is up to elected politicians. That's why you saw the prime minister say he would resign. He supported staying and by him resigning new elections will be held.

<comment><USER3> Yes that's right. It's not legally binding and the whole exit process only starts when the government invokes article 50 of the EU treaty, which is the exit process and lasts 2 years.

Cameron (the PM) talked about not invoking article 50 straight away, so maybe there's a glimmer of hope for us that voted to stay in that we still have time for further discussions.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this totally anti-democracy? Despite it not being legally binding, it seems totally in contrary to the people's will. I don't understand positively talking about going opposite of what people voted for.

It seems especially odd since it's usually the Leave side that's accused of being fascist.

Or is the idea to do more polling until a favourable outcome is received?

<comment><USER5> voted for by a 4% margin. don't kid yourself about what democracy actually represents - it's not a united will.

i wonder how many of those 4% will even be alive + not senile by the time this plays out.

<comment><USER6> They already appear to be senile..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea : weigting votes based on the age of the voter. (on decisions that have long term consequences)

Obviously this is not a solution. People will say it's unfair. Others will try to influence the younger voters like never before. etc.

Anyone else have any other intersting ideas for this problem?

<comment><USER8> You could also make the counterargument that older voters are wiser and have more experience and can make more sound decisions about the future of their country and should therefore have a heavier influence.

I personally think you should be able to vote on an issue in proportion to how much you care about it, but I'm not sure about the best way to go about that. One idea I've read about is to sell votes starting at $1 and the price of your next vote (you can vote as many times as you want) increases by the square of the total votes purchased (i.e. $1, $4, $9...) so that by the 100th vote you'd have to spend $10,000. But that wouldn't be a popular idea as it allows the mega rich to buy lots of votes.

<comment><USER9> You can do something similar with voting "credits" instead of cash, everyone gets 100 and they can use them to vote on the things they want

I've done this to help elicit requirements from stakeholders and it works really well

<comment><USER10> This is really interesting. I do fear it'll cause exhaustion techniques.

This may not happen in isolated experiments, but if you build a political system on that concept, let it run for decades, in a world where a political decision can shift tens of billions of dollars (e.g. a fiscal change for banks, an environmental law for the dairy industry, etc), you'll see the system get gamed.

e.g. say I propose 100 bs bills to repeal gay marriage and abortion rights. I expect to lose, but opponents expend all their credits. Then I propose a law banning muslims and mexicans and put all my credits behind it. The end result is they get to keep what they had, status quo, and I get to pass something ridiculous.

Of course it works both ways, but my point is that you're creating a system where volume of bills is a strategy. And strategic, efficient use of credits, starts to matter. Such that I may choose NOT to vote for something I care about, because that credit has a premium on an even more important bill I fear might be proposed, which I absolutely have to put my weight behind. And an incentive not to vote doesn't sound like a system we should work towards.

At the end of the day, making something scarce like you propose does two things; 1) it makes things more efficient and meaningful, you don't play around with scarce things. That's great. But 2) It puts a cap on it, it's limited in amount, and in the context of exercising your vote, voicing your opinion, that's probably not something we should cap for people.

We already have this with financing campaigns (credits being money, which is both scarce and to some extent capped for campaign contributions), but I don't think it's ultimately (although super interesting) the right thing to do for the actual act of voting.

<comment><USER11> Definitely interesting.

The particular strategy that you propose for gaming the system assumes that voting events are scattered throughout a term (I assume there is some period or term after which everyone's 100 votes are replenished?) rather than all being on the same day. If this is the case then another problem is the privacy issue that arises when the state has to track how many votes each citizen has left.

Both problems are solved if there is a single event each term, where you get a single ballot containing all the questions for that term and get to fill in at most N bubbles on the ballot, with zero or more for each question.

Such a system probably still has undesirable properties, though I'm struggling to contrive a good example of one at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The assumption here is that the Brexit will be bad for the UK. What if it winds up being good for the UK? The EU has had some serious near-meltdowns. In particular the issue with Greek bailouts and the conflict with germany comes to mind. Why would you want to be part of an organization where you could wind up being the next germany - let alone an organization where there's a structure where 1) such an irresponsible mismanagement of funds is not firewalled and 2) a tax compliant region (like the UK or Germany) has to pay for the sins of a country where paying taxes is a joke?

<comment><USER13> How's the pound doing? How's the FTSE 100? How's the FTSE 250?

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/24/ftse-100-an...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/24/ftse-100-and- sterling-plunge-on-brexit-panic)

[https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=ftse+250](https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=ftse+250)

<comment><USER12> Markets are not generally logical, but definitely not in the short term. Currently they're running high on emotion. We shall see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The last time there was a referendum on EU membership was in 1975, and the result was overwhelmingly in favour of staying in, so many of those older voters who voted for Brexit must have changed their minds.

<comment><USER15> Well, it wasn't the EU right? It was the European Communities (EC), aka "Common market". This was a pretty different and more modest institution back in '75, I think.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The next generation can try to rejoin if the situation in the future changes significantly. Just not anytime soon.

<comment><USER17> So if you are 20, then this decision is going to affect you for the most of your working life, and you can't change it for at least a couple decades? What sort of solution is this?

<comment><USER16> It's not a solution, just an observation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do wonder if it is because they have not settled in, with a family, a house, and enough debt to last a lifetime and a half.

<comment><USER4> Or they aren't old enough to be cynical yet? I'm 34 now and very pleased to see this change. Yet 10 years ago I was opposite.

And on immigration -- the big topic -- as I see more an more things happen, I grow more and more skeptical that countries can sustain huge influxes while maintaining standards. I find this is true, even though I've been directly hurt by immigration law (my wife was denied US status and overstayed a bit; my daughter was indirectly killed by us having to go back to a bad country with poor healthcare). So I'd benefit personally from lax immigration laws, yet I can see it not working out overall.

Younger people seem more optimistic and more likely to find these views to be "bigoted" or terrible. I made the same accusations at that age.

Edit: If we want to help people in countries that are not doing well (many of them), importing people wholesale isn't the approach. Otherwise we'd just move everyone to the US and immediately solve world war, hunger, etc.

If they're not running their own countries well, then better countries should step in and run it for them. If your neighbor comes over claiming his house is too dirty to live in, you should go over and help him clean, not give him your room. National pride aside, I'd bet a lot of countries would welcome becoming a UK, Canada, US, or EU colony. It's not like it's a rule that colonies have to be exploitative.

<comment><USER19> The only problem is that a de-facto condition of being part of the EEA (free access to the single market) is the acceptance of unlimited immigration from/to the EU.

<comment><USER4> Everything is negotiable. Maybe it won't be complete free access, but I find it unlikely they can't work out something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did this link get so many upvotes because we want the same ageism that's in tech to be in politics and government?

</comment><comment><USER21> that's how rule of majority is. slightly more than half wanted it and now everybody has to take it.

<comment><USER22> That point was debated a bit around the Quebec independence referendum as well. Is a 51% vote enough of a mandate to leave? If so, would a 51% vote in the other direction a few years later be enough of a mandate to _rejoin_? You have a weird unstable situation if support really is close to exactly evenly divided, and stays that way. The pure majoritarian outcome would be that you oscillate between trying to leave and trying to join every few years, vaguely like what happened in Greece 100 years ago when they voted in a referendum to abolish, then reinstate, then abolish, then reinstate the monarchy, the pro- and anti-monarchist forces holding a new referendum every time it looked like public opinion was trending back in their direction. In practice it seems then the really big power comes in choosing when/whether to hold a referendum, e.g. if the Quebec referendum had come out 51-49% in favor of leave, independent Quebec would probably avoid as much as possible allowing a "rejoin Canada" referendum to ever be held, lest it come out 51-49% in the other direction.

Probably some mathematical voting theory person has formalized this kind of question in terms of something like sampling and stable outcomes, but I'm not quite sure what keywords to look for there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice spin in the title, under the huge assumption that voting preferences stay fixed over a lifetime. Or we could simply read the results as a confirmation to the old adage:

"If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain."

Young voters will grow old, get wiser, and possibly want Brexit more than they did in their youth.

Now get off my lawn.

</comment><comment><USER25> There was a huge propaganda machine going on targeted to the youth to tell how awesome the EU is. I dont think taking this numbers now says actually that much.</comment>


Some evidence on multi-word passphrases - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/03/07/some-evidence-on-multi-word-passphrases/ <comment><USER2> The real problem of passwords in general is the complete lack of a standard to what a password can be. Basically every service with a login reinvents the whole damn thing with completely arbitrary rules that are incompatible with each other. Minimun and maximun length, case-sensitivity, digits, letters, special characters, spaces.

Ok, after reading a lot about passwords I decide that I'm gonna go with a condensed passphrase more than 10 characters long and with a couple service- contextual caharcters in the end. That oughta keep me safe right? Well, except I have to pick a 6-8 length password that MUST have a number AND a capitalized letter in it!

<comment><USER3> Silent truncation is another gotcha. They drop everything after character 8 (so it fits in the database?). Then they change the schema, and stop truncating at 8 characters, but only on some forms. Oh, the joy.

<comment><USER4> MSN and Hotmail used, and maybe still do this, after 14 characters.

<comment><USER5> My bank does it after 6! It even reminds you that it is 6 chars max on the login page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everybody is dancing around reality: passwords are incompatible with the average person. The best passwords are almost always difficult to memorize and once they are memorized it is costly for us to change them. It's an ill- fitting solution to a social problem.

<comment><USER7> That's why password managers are so useful. For every service a user can use a different strong password, but for the user there is only one password.

Of course, password managers have their weaknesses (a compromised system will often give access to all accounts, rather than just a few), but it is far more secure than having people using the same trivial password for every service.

<comment><USER8> Also, if you forget your password to the password manager... :)

<comment><USER9> It is a single password/pass phrase. This makes it simple to manage.

You can easily create a simple paper and geographically-redundant system (e.g. using a one-time pad) that means you can keep the passphrase in the open, for example, in your wallet or purse.

Password managers are the only way to go and eventually all password/passphrase users realise this because they end-up emulating these systems anyway (e.g. using extemely poor entropy additions to their existing passwords for different applications).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This doesn't actually surprise me. If you consider the role of random brute forcing via dictionary attacks is to locate the appropriate order of _tokens_ that work together to create a coherent meaning you're essentially not providing any more security with more words. A "Password" is a phrase composed of tokens that are the alphabet, numbers, symbols. A "Passphrase" is composed of tokens that are known english words. By taking the corpus search method to determine natural phrases they're essentially trying to identify the total breadth of 2+ token combinations that make up the english language.

This does break down like they said when you stop using coherent meanings. A passphrase that is HorseQuoteBulb would be hard to guess in comparison to HorsesEatHay or something of the same style.

The same goes for passwords: while it may be easy to guess a password as " _phrase_ " it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to randomly attempt guesses at " _7_-Az!e_ ".

Eventually I think we'll all be forced to use two factor authentication for added security. Here the user is mostly safe from their own ignorance where the danger of having credentials stolen is more prominent in the form of Man in the Middle attacks.

</comment><comment><USER11> As with normal passwords, you will have people completely disregarding any advice on how a password should look like. People will just slowly learn that having a faulty security system on the web is the same as it is in real life. You don't put a curtain as your front door, and you shouldn't put "Harry Potter" as your passphrase, especially if you are holding a wand in your Facebook photo.

In my case, I use multi-word passphrases with words from a obscure dialect of a tiny European country's language. Being a dialect I grew up with, it has the benefit of being easy to remember, and the obscureness of it means the phrases itself are more or less a random string of characters to any brute-force attack. Not exactly a "best practice" for anyone but myself, but I'm happy with it :).

</comment><comment><USER12> diceware is very good for these sort of passwords. I have no affiliation, but would use it for passphrases if I needed to. <http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting read.. Assuming people would choose random words in their passphrases always seemed too simplistic and naive.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't even have to be random, simply choosing "SimplyChoosing" or "AssumingPeople" is way more secure than "ManchesterUnited" or "HarryPotter", but still people are creatures of habit.

<comment><USER13> True, but when calculating entropy people often assumes random choice of words

<comment><USER15> The system can let the user choose from a selection of random passphrases.

<comment><USER14> massive reduction in entropy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hedge fund firms accused of cheating sue Kentucky pension agency over fraud suit - <AUTHOR> https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article229144859.html <comment><USER2> Jesus 12% of required funding. That alone makes this seem more like an attempt by KRS to escape blame for criminal mismanagement and misrepresentation to public employees. Not that hedge funds are angels or anything.

In general makes a case against pensions too. So often they are borrowed against and screw younger people over. At least with my retirement, its in an account that only I control. Of course with the concomitant risk. But I know and accept that risk. Most public employees just think there is no risk to their pension until it is too late.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on failing company - <AUTHOR> I'm an early engineer at a company that is on it's way down. I'm still getting paid, haven't lost any benefits, perks, or salary, am comfortable, and likely would be one of the last to be let go due to seniority, knowledge, and contribution ability. The company is in an interesting position where the tech is solid, there's good market traction, but it's unlikely a cash infusion will happen or the company will continue to exist on it's own.<p>I feel like I've hit a wall at this company in my personal growth and trying to figure out what to do. At this point I've vested over 3/4 of my options, it's unlikely I'll be getting a raise/promotion, and wondering if it's worth sticking it out to the end or moving on? I would assume it's likely the company will be purchased by someone else in the industry and either the products will get folded in or the company will continue operating under the ownership of the new company. I know that if a purchase happens my cut from the options probably wouldn't be that much but is there the possibility for handcuffs that would be worth it based on my position on the engineering team or other reasons to stick it out? I would estimate the timing to be 4-6 months max. <comment><USER2> I've been where you are, at a failing company and not knowing what to do.

In my case the company failed, my options where worthless and I ended up moving to another company and that one failed with in a year and my severance pay was a company lunch. It all worked out. I got a new job and things are ok.

My advice, save as much money as you can and look for a new position. Don't be in a hurry to accept a new job without some research but don't wait. Try to make the new job a step up or something that gives you joy. Even if you have to take a small pay cut. Lateral moves won't cut it in IT. Eventually your age will show and tech companies don't want to hire old people unless they are in management or can guide the company into profit and growth. If you've been in tech for a while you've seen this. I don't have to prove it. It's all over the place. Look at your company which way does the average employee age skew? It's not toward the fifties.

Don't feel bad. Over the years I've learned a company is not a family. It's a TEAM and the company's needs comes first. You have to look at in similar terms so your needs come first.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like this has been a positive experience in general. You may want to consider how leaving would affect your personal and professional relationships. Sticking it out, and perhaps being a valuable member of a transition team, is good experience. Additionally, that narrative is great when interviewing for your next position.

4-6 months is not a long time.

For contrast, someone else asked something similar, but with a much different context. I commented here as well: Ask HN: "Should I leave my startup?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12382772)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've worked in 5 different companies that slowly winked out, liquidated and became a zombie, downsized (closed office), sold the product I was rebuilding, and bled people and funds. If you're thinking about the company in relation to you. My friend's wife was employee #3 and had shares in that company (it's more than 6 years old), when the company got bought out, she got less than a year's worth of salary. So having shares doesn't give that much benefit. You already have a stake in the company, if it got bought out, you get some money from it, but it's not as rosy as they want you to think. Consider that company shares are Hail Mary's, if it takes off, you're good, but don't count on it.

If you think they won't lay you off, Just think that it's a business, if it thinks that you cost more than it's worth in the long term (they might stop development and try to sell as is) they'll lay you off. There are many cheaper replacements in India vying for your job.

4-6 months is quite short (if you consider the standard 3 months to find another job), I would suggest that you start notifying your networks that you're looking because you don't want to be in the position of not having work while interviewing, it takes a toll on your morale and it'll show in the interview.

The purpose of your job search is to open your options and have a safety net. You don't have to accept offers, but if you do get an one, that's when you decide whether to cross the bridge or not.

</comment><comment><USER5> Start getting prepared for something new, but don't quit just yet.

Try and find time for some side projects in areas that you're interested in working on for your next job, and post them to github. Write a blog post or two about the experience. Brush up your linkedin. Update or create a portfolio.

"Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity" \- the preparation part is your responsibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I've been doing and trying to work on as much of my own stuff as I can while still meeting my work obligations. I spent the past 3 year sacrificing my own projects as well as a lot of my personal life to ensure the success of this company and it's nice to be able to get some of that back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > wondering if it's worth sticking it out to the end or moving on?

Everything grows or it dies. If your personal growth is stifled move-on. Decide to end the suffering. End it now, that will give you freedom. The options were always lotto tickets.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can ask yourself one question: Is there any chance you'll regret not having went on sooner? Forget the benefits for a moment and think hard at where you want to be in 4-6 months, would you rather continue your growth now or then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Up until hitting the wall I've been pretty happy. I've worked on interesting problems, enjoyed the work, had good co-workers mostly, lot's of freedom, felt like I've had a positive impact, and grown a lot. I've been on the lookout for next opportunities essentially since I started but really haven't found something I've wanted to do more. It's just that at this point it's pretty clear there isn't a long future.

<comment><USER8> 4 months is very short time.</comment></comment></comment>


Delivery to Mr Assange - follow a package to Julian Assange in real-time - <AUTHOR> http://bitnik.org/assange/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure sending parcels to an embassy which has an X-Ray representation that could potentially by the same as a bomb or similar is a really good idea, and isn't any kind of risk at all ...</comment>


Surgical Strikes: First Major Use of Cartosat Images for Army - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Surgical-Strikes-First-major-use-of-Cartosat-images-for-Army/articleshow/54596113.cms <comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartosat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartosat)

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised the article talks about dual-use since at least 2005 but the wikipedia article read "[the satellites] were specifically launched for Earth's resource management and monitoring." and only mentions "strategic" usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> By the _Indian_ army. Other militaries have been using satellite footage for decades.</comment>


Men wanted for hazardous journey: AdGrok (YC S10) is hiring. - <AUTHOR> http://adgrok.com/men-wanted-for-hazardous-journey

<comment><USER2> BTW, thanks for not using that "no comments" "YC company hiring" thing. It's really annoying not to let people discuss or ask questions about the opportunity in question.

<comment><USER3> But then again, most of the comments here don't have a whole lot to do with the job.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, they're not really making the best use of the opportunity:-/

<comment><USER4> If you found this such a great opportunity, wouldn't you be happy you had less competition for it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the people getting caught up with the sensitivity of what is a pretty beautifully relevant reference wouldn't be a very good personality fit for working at AdGrok anyway. So it's a doubly good title - it's a great metaphor for a startup, and it performs the same filtering function that the original ad did. Brilliant.

<comment><USER6> I think the people getting caught up with the sensitivity... wouldn't be a great fit for being allowed on the internet.

I guess we can all see now why most job postings have comments disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe consider mentioning where you are? It took some googling to find out that SOMA is apparently somewhere in San Fransisco.

</comment><comment><USER8> "This isn't some BS social media thing that injects dancing pigs into your Facebook newsfeed."

Lol. Great help wanted ad. They should all be like this.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this is definitely one of the better help wanted ads, but it is a blatant rip-of.

Or Scott has joined y combinator, which would be even more awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand why they feel morally superior to people creating games. Have we devolved to the point where search engine marketing is considered so prestigious an occupation that its practitioners feel they are able to make jokes about others?

<comment><USER11> One big difference is a direct revenue model, making something that creates direct value for clients is vastly different to making something cool and trying to figure out a revenue model later. Not to say that either type can both be a success and failure, just in this case it's much easier to monetize the customers you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Why join the navy, when you can come be a pirate like us?" - probably one of the best lines I've heard in a while.

<comment><USER13> That's a variant of a quote by Steve jobs <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs>

<comment><USER4> So is there anything both original _and_ clever in this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you have a problem with the title of this job post, then chances are you're not fit for the company, or most young startups for that matter.

<comment><USER4> So, you're saying that the fact they rephrased the headline means that they aren't fit?

Or is it that they might be more reasonable than defenders of the headline engaging in silly chest-pounding about "sensitive" people?

<comment><USER14> Not much to say really; I've got work to get to. I'm sure there are plenty of others in this thread who are more than willing to discuss the supposed intentions behind this implicitly sexist job posting that has seemed to generate so much nonsensical noise to where the posters themselves changed it, giving the children the pacifier they so desperately wanted.

Edit: children, and men, and women.

<comment><USER4> You're too busy to say anything, so instead 70 words to try to tout your supposed superiority over the people you disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dude, my literacy is pretty up there, and I didn't recognize the quote. I don't know that it would really tarnish its historical relevance to write "Men (or women) wanted for hazardous journey: AdGrok (YC S10) is hiring".

If their Steve Jobs quote is eligible for paraphrasing in order to seem original, I don't know why an old newspaper clipping isn't in order to seem like an equal-opportunity employer.

<comment><USER16> Its a historical quote from Ernest Shackleton when he was recruiting the crew for infamous 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with ads in London newspapers that read:

 _MEN WANTED: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton._

I very highly recommend the book - [http://www.amazon.com/Endurance- Shackletons-Incredible-Alfre...](http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons- Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/078670621X)

<comment><USER15> Yes, clearly we've all realized this by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to think that programmers were smart because we could talk to machines.

The shallowness of a lot of the posts on this emotional and contentious topic reinforce what I've learned since: on average programmers are not that smart, which is why they need to talk to simple machines.

Basically, try to discuss something that ends in "ism", and otherwise reasonable people go all ape-shit.

<comment><USER4> Well, yes - programmers are human.

The terrible thing to me is that this discussion is _better_ than I'd see in non-programmer circles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's really unfortunate that this poorly-chosen title overshadows an otherwise very attractive job posting. Sexism is still sexism, whether or not it's from 1914. -female and feminist programmer here.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sexist!

Just kidding...people are too sensitive.

<http://www.antarctic-circle.org/advert.htm>

<comment><USER20> Well, call me too sensitive then: it is sexist.

If they need to explicitly mention that "women are welcome" in a footnote, that pretty much confirms that their choice of headline is saying that women are somewhat less than welcome.

I don't see why being too sensitive is seen as somehow worse in the startup/developer community than being too insensitive.

You'd think it would be smarter to err in the other direction...

<comment><USER19> Their choice of headline is a reference to a historical document from almost a century ago. Would it be better if we: a) rewrite history, or b) never reference it?

<comment><USER20> They chose the headline; I did not -- and it seems pretty clear from more than just the headline that the AdGrok folks value anti-PC posturing quite highly.

If it were me choosing the headline, and I had a desire to reference Shackleton's journey, what's wrong with "Wanted for hazardous journey: [...]"?

<comment><USER19> First, point to anything else in that blog post that indicates any kind of "anti-PC posturing". Specifically anything that reveals any kind of gender bias. I'm guessing that you can't without revealing some gender biases of your own, but try me.

Second, there's a difference between "anti-PC" and anti-equality.

For example, I can say "fuck political correctness" because I think running around mincing your words in a (pointless and futile) attempt to avoid offending anyone is cowardly, but that doesn't mean that I hate minorities or am against equality. It just means that I think "political correctness" is stupid. If you're offended by my opinions, that's _really_ not my problem; it's yours.

<comment><USER20> > # Tell jokes that would make sailors blush

Not specific gender bias, but we can both agree it's likely.

> For example, I can say "fuck political correctness"

Sure you can, just like every other startup/developer type has said ten thousand times -- hell, you aren't even the first in this thread.

Isn't there room for a more nuanced view?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let's say, for the sake of devil's advocacy, the historical quote was "Women wanted for hazardous journey". If the ad had used that as its headline, would you males feel encouraged to apply?

<comment><USER22> It depends, in this alternate history has women been used as a common word to mean person of either sex? If it has, like man has in this history, then I would not be discouraged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have used AdGrok to some degree, and while I have no interest in applying for the job, I can express my confidence in their can-do attitude and sense of humor. To the Pole!

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice, but you'd be much better off with "Good men and women wanted for hazardous journey."

There may be statistically fewer women in tech, but you'll never hear from them with a title like that!

<comment><AUTHOR> The headliner is an apocryphal quote from Ernest Shackleton, leader of a doomed but famous Antarctic expedition in 1914.

Nothing about the current state of tech was implied, nor about our desired employee pool. Obviously we welcome one and all.

<comment><USER25> Don't think it's obvious, if you just look at the headline. Is the integrity of the quote more important than looking non-biased against women programmers?

<comment><USER26> I usually come out pretty strongly against programmer-culture misogyny, however subtle, but here we're talking about a pretty famous quotation and I would answer to your question, "yes". There's a difference between sexism and historically-weighted badassness.

One could argue there's a literacy-filter being applied here more than a gender-filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't think of a better ad to attract the people needed for a startup. Kudos for keeping it real, honest and to the point. Wish you the very best.

</comment><comment><USER28> US citizens only?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd consider anybody. We have one non-US citizen founder right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This looks like an awesome offer, too bad I still have a year and a half of school left. Interested in an intern? :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting -- cool job post.

What I would really like to see, although of course you may not want to disclose this, is what sort of projects this person would work on in the first couple of months.

For everybody else, I spent 2 years working on SEM and I think AdGrok is a great product, fwiw. See eg Clickable or KeyMetric as competitors; Clickable is self serve SEM on GYM, at least when I interviewed there. This is a much better interface and helps solve the biggest problem for small business sem, which isn't technical but is convincing people of value and helping nontechnical people use SEM without burning through too much money on account managers.

Too bad I hate writing web apps, because this looks like an awesome opportunity.

Are you planning on setting up call fowarding ala clickable / yodle / reachlocal? Overlaying that information would be awesome, though it's a huge pita...

</comment><comment><USER31> I support this headline. I'm sure these men would hire a female capable of providing the talent they require, and of fitting in with the culture of their workplace. I long to escape to such a place that doesn't cater to people looking for a reason to be offended, when no offense is warranted or intended.</comment>


EU warns climate change could wipe out crop production in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/18/eu-warns-climate-change-could-wipe-out-crop-production-in-europe <comment><USER2> I really hate it when climate change studies get reported with hyperbolic fearmongering like this - it undermines the entire movement because people can say, "look, you said cities would be underwater by now and everything looks fine!"

Here's the actual finding:

"yields of non-irrigated crops like wheat, corn and sugar beet are projected to decrease in southern Europe by up to 50 % by 2050"

Irrigated crops will not be hit overly hard, and crop yields in Northern Europe will actually increase. It's also worth noting that Southern Europe doesn't actually produce all that much in terms of non-irrigated crops [1].

[1] [https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda- esmis/files/...](https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda- esmis/files/5q47rn72z/0g354t050/r494vz32w/production.pdf)</comment>