Show HN: I built a website that simplifies Congress and its activities - <AUTHOR> https://4us.com <comment><USER2> I'm the Legislative Director for a nonprofit and my first observation of this tool is that I have no clue what it does. I just spent five minutes poking around and it's not obvious what this does, or why I would need it. The map populated with dots that did not seem to have function, and the state issues seemed a little off as most state legislatures are now out of sessions.

How does it compare to the free service GovTrack? What about paid services like CQ, BillTrack, and Politico?

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all 4us.com is completely free.

We've been working on this site for the last 2 years and have been funding this entirely from our pockets. If you have some free time on your hands please signup to check out some of the stuff you've been missing out.

The basic idea behind 4us is that you can:

\- Browse all bills, voting records and members of Congress (kind of what GovTrack does)

\- Get notified (email and site notification - facebook style) when there are changes to bills or members of Congress that you follow

\- Discuss each bill in the discussion section

\- Read simplified bills written by us or the users (that should be nonbiased)

\- Join the discussion boards to discuss the latest events and news

\- Vote on bills (similar to Countable)

\- See how your votes align with what your Representative actually voted (for example if I vote on 10 bills and one of my Senators also voted on those 10 bills, then the site will build an approval rating based on those 10 votes compared. The approval rating or compatibility rating (as we also like to call it) will be on a scale from 0 - 100. The more our votes align the higher the approval rating. Which probably means I should vote for them again. The idea is that when we vote for our new Senators and Representatives we usually just vote based on what others think about them or what we hear in the media. This tool will tell you exactly how you should vote).

What we do is we compare your voting habits to your Congressional Representatives' (you can vote on bills the same way as your senator would) and educate yourself on the laws (we try to make the laws as simple as possible to the everyday citizen - by creating simple videos of the bills, finding and posting short summaries and by enabling discussion in the comment section) that affect us all.

It's the only site out there that will tell you how you actually align with your Reps based on how YOU and THEY feel about important bills. While this is still a long-shot to actually try and see some positive changes.. what we do want to do is help you BE BETTER INFORMED.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> have you seen fiscalnote.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will check it out. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you've built a really worthwhile site. I used it for a bit and got good information from it.

Here are a few things that will help it along. Under the house of reps description there should be more info on the rep's district. Where is/what does "Representative from California 37" mean. Searching by zip code would be good. Switching to a wiki back end might help -that way people can help you update the site. There's just too much info to update for a one person or a small group. Also sign-up should be less emphasized. I know you want to get people involved but these days people get turned off if they have to sigh up for a site without clear benefits. I know you can browse the site but without it but it's not clear from the start.

Good job, much fortune.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, I love this project I just dislike how data is presented (although it is a nice interface).

As for the "Representative from California 37" this is your voter sub district or whatever user you selected that was on the map, which brings me to my next point.

Although I think this website is good, it doesn't target any specific users. The immediate information presented to the user such as "Representative from California 37" or popular bills is confusing and I'll make the bet that it scares users away (along with the forced signup if you couldn't find /explore). Instead of a catch all landing page I'd make the /explore more user specific.

Let me paint a picture of how I see this: So you already know where the user is from, when I click "representatives" why aren't I brought to a page with MY representatives, instead I'm brought to a page with a list of people who don't represent me. I should note that the individual representative pages are spot on though I like the collection of twitter, sponsored bills, etc. I think that if people are brought to information about their specific representatives that they are more likely to 'care' about whats happening on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting website with the potential to present a lot of information nicely, but I do not see the "simple" part of it. Everything about the UI and even the stat displays seems confusing to me. Why do I have a 0% compatibility rating with all of my local representatives, who I actually sort of like? I am sure I am misinterpreting these things, but there is no context. Mouse-over explanations for every single datum? Simple to me means about 1/3 as complicated as the site currently is.

Another problem is bill names tells us nothing about what is actually in the bill. How about sorting them based on who sponsored and voted for them? Then we can see highly partisan bills and bills that actually cross the aisle a little. That'd be interesting.

Anyway, I hope some of that is useful. Overall though it is a great "Show HN" site.

</comment><comment><USER7> Forcing a user to sign up before they've seen the content is a big miss. Strongly suggest you rearchitect this and offer sign up once users want to save progress/sign up for notifications.

<comment><USER8> [https://4us.com/Explore](https://4us.com/Explore)

Seems like I can access the content there just fine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great site. I don't mind setting up an account. It was easy enough to link to my Google account and set a less random username. I gave it my address and it linked me to my local elected officials. I went to the bill section and started reading. I have voted on 4 bills. It works better than yelling at the darkness, which is what I was doing before. I thought the gamification angle was pointless but then I earned some points for voting and now I want to be president...

</comment><comment><USER10> A similar service exists for Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom, for those interested: [https://www.theyworkforyou.com](https://www.theyworkforyou.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm trying to find a differentiating factor... it would be really cool if it could somehow intelligently parse the contents of Bills to provide a more useful summary.

For example, the summary of HR 5538[0] offers me no insight as to why the vote was such a party split (Dems against, Reps for). So I started reading the actual bill text, and then gave up because it's long and I have things to do...

0: [https://4us.com/Bills/Details/h-r-5538_congress114](https://4us.com/Bills/Details/h-r-5538_congress114)

<comment><USER12> Sections 431 and 436 are probably some of the key sticking points.

The problem is that you really do need humans with domain experience to explain exactly what a bill will actually do in practice, which is why lobbyists and stakeholders will spend tens of thousands of dollars on niche publications and legislative action services. Technology can make analysis easier, but I think we're a long way from replacing analysts with NLP in this area.

<comment><USER13> > lobbyists and stakeholders will spend tens of thousands of dollars on niche > publications and legislative action services.

There's better value for money in lobbyists drafting the legislation language themselves and contributing to an official's superPAC so they'll drop it into a bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can see the value in the organization of these activities. But without some kind of manual curation into "layman" categories or translations of what these activities are, it's still difficult for me to interpret.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love this. I wanted to build this exact thing a few years ago. Did a little work on it and then saw a squirrel and jumped to the next new shiny thing I saw. Really happy to see that someone else had the same thought and executed it much better than I ever could have hoped to.

</comment><comment><USER16> What is the target demographic?

IMO the UI is too complicated for someone who isn't really dedicated to doing research. Seems like a great research tool for someone who wants to dedicate time to it, but I am unclear if that is the target.

If you're trying to reach the average voter, the UI has to be devastatingly simple - like , no possibility of them putting any real effort in simple.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why do I have to sign up to use it at all? You want people to get involved in the process but you add friction. My guess is, your bounce rate is high.

I'm sure there are plenty of features that require an account - but I'd imagine there are still ways of displaying and sharing the public information you've gathered within your tool without getting people to give you their e-mail address and generate yet another password.

Just think about it - the landing page should say something like "check the voting record of your senator against what you believe in. click your state." \- and then show a map.

With this - you'd at least get ONE click. My guess is now, you miss out a lot because you want people to buy into what you're building without providing ANY value other than "feel good to change government" which as we all know isn't enough to get people to care.

<comment><USER18> I think the problem is the "Get Started" button leads directly to a sign up page.

I'd find it more useful if it used my geolocation to go straight to my representatives. After getting engaged and wanting to follow them, I would then be more inclined to sign up in order to follow updates.

<comment><USER19> Yes I was a little put off by getting asked for that directly

Would be nice if the front page had some more info about what you are trying to do and how why I want to use it (What's in it for me). There is more text explaining the site in the comments thread that I could find on the site.

Would like to have my view of Congress simplified.

I followed H.R. 1301 and your site doesn't have that it passed or what the bill is about. On top of that you have this scary picture of multiple huge dish antennas. I was a home owner and the ham next to me said "Hey, go look up H.R. 1301" and I saw that picture I'd be in a full panic.

Good luck, I bookmarked it, I'll come back and see if things are any better in a few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bounced the minute I saw the signup form. Why do we have to sign up for this? :(

<comment><AUTHOR> [copy pasting this comment from my other reply]

Actually you can browse the site fully without ever logging in.

Same as with other social sites. You will be able to freely browse it without logging in but taking any action will require you to create an account. You'll be able to find all the bills, reps, comments by users, etc. You only have to signup if you want to follow bills (get updates when they change) or reps (when they sponsor new bills), vote on bills and build your approval rating.

It might be a bit unclear but the top navigation bar will help you browse through the site. Example link for bills [https://4us.com/Bills](https://4us.com/Bills)

We just wanted to have the homepage as a landing page and list what the site does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd prefer to see on the first page exactly what the offer is as a live page, vs some text that explains it and asks for a sign up.

</comment><comment><USER22> For a while I really expected the website to be just a picture of some mess or stupid thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it 4us.com or 4usxus.com? You need to get this straightened out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice work. But unfortunately in the "post factual" world this will be of use to a few people. People care about noise, not facts anymore.

</comment><comment><USER25> Where do you get the data from?

<comment><USER26> Can't speak for the author of this site, but all of the information I've seen on it is freely available on congress.gov or gpo.gov.</comment></comment>


Technology is Heroin - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is_h.php <comment><AUTHOR> This is a long article, but I wrote it based on the conclusions from many HN discussions. I think you guys will like it if you can bear with it, and I'm also really curious as to what your feedback might be.

I never thought when writing programs that I'd have to ask myself "Am I doing good or evil in the world here?" After all, it's just so many bytes, right?

But I'm not so sure about that anymore.

<comment><USER3> Drugs: The one that makes us feel the best wins.

Music: The one that gets noticed over the clutter wins.

Games: The one that's the best at giving us the illusion of social status and accomplishment wins.

None of these things are really competing against each other, because the hook for each is targeting a different need.

And I do think there is a way out. Change our environment so that our lives aren't so hollow and empty. The reason these addictions take hold is because, for example, people are accomplishing absolutely zero in their lives so they need the fake feeling of accomplishment and respect from hitting level 60 in WoW. If we re-engineer society so that people actually have an opportunity to make friends, do productive work, get exercise, etc. these things won't be nearly as dangerous as they are today.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Makes us feel best", "Gets noticed over the clutter", "[Gives] us the illusion of social status"_

Those are the lures that each niche uses, sure, but the result is that we lose time. The result is the problem, not the drug packaging or delivery mechanism.

If anything, that makes it more disturbing: whatever our psychological needs, there's electronic joy out there competing for them.

Not sure how it will play out. I'm an optimist, but after I wrote this it's kind of drug me down. I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow as a species. We always do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man that's some excellent writing. I'm seriously jealous at your ability to write like that, I'll need to practice more :)

I did spot this little HN reference in there:

"Programmers are creating "no procrastinate" options for their web sites in order to help users not spend so much time there."

thanks for all that work!

I agree with your premise that technology is addictive, I think it somehow fits in with our fascination with tools in general. After all humans are 'toolmakers' par excellence, tools mean survival, food and progress, no wonder we should become addicted to them.

Your analog with heroin and the time required to figure out what was happening reminds me of the old story of the frog and the boiling pot: If you put a frog in a pot with hot water it will jump out immediately, but if you slowly raise the temperature the frog won't notice the problem until it is too late to jump out and it perishes.

Not sure if that's a true story but that's how I remember it.

I'm passing your article on to my 15 year old son to read.

</comment><comment><USER5> From the comments:

 _I watched the movie Idiocracy with you and it hit me in the face as to one potential out come for the human race. But talking about the fact that we don't do physical chores that were done a hundred years ago, doesn't make a lot of sense. After all, things have changed. Those chores are no longer an issue._

I just saw Idiocracy yesterday (ironically, I decided it wasn't worth paying attention to so I played it on the top of the screen and coded on the bottom of the screen), and I think that assuming it's a plausible outcome is kind of silly. I doubt Mike Judge, the director, would disagree. Idiocracy is much more a critique of the present than it is of the future.

This was a terrific article, but there're a few fallacies in your argument. The one that most stands out to me is how you talk about music switching from being active to passive, and therefore taking less effort from the listener. You then bring up rock music as an instance of something that provides a big hit rather than focusing on intricacy.

The fallacy is that in the past, most people _didn't_ listen to concerts. There is a long history of minstrel songs: music played in the street, catchy stuff for the public. The average person wouldn't listen to any concert in their lifetime. This is not a new thing. Furthermore, if you look at how many people travel to concert halls to listen to music, I would bet that more people proportionally listen to great pieces of work like Tchaikovsky or Mozart than ever have in the past. If anything, the trend is that once you have _access_ to things easily, you are _more_ willing to put effort into a viewing than you would be if you'd never been before. (I'm going to the Met to see a Tchaikovsky opera two weeks from now; I never would have wanted to if I hadn't torrented 2GB worth of his pieces earlier in the year.)

 _"Don't turn that dial!" has become cliche: whatever you do, keep your eyes peeled on this station._

That ignores the rise in TV that's actively challenging to watch. To bring up the two shows I always bring up, _The Wire_ on HBO and BBC's _The Office_. Neither one is easy and clear-cut. They both attract watchers who are there to be challenged. I've watched the entire Office straight through three times in the way that I reread good books. It's not addictive per se, it's _enriching_.

Your argument about video games make me wonder how avid a gamer you are. I'm not a huge gamer, but the games that I do like are almost always pretty rich in environment. Portal's the cliche in gaming, and that's a game that's clever, well-written, and encourages lateral thinking. My 13-year-old brother, who dislikes most books and isn't a big math kid, got hooked in Portal's advanced challenges, which really are difficult pieces. Then there're RPGs, the best of which are superb storytellers, there are real-time strategy games, there are all sorts of games that encourage you to actively think. You can't play a game and shut off. You need to focus incredibly. My friends that play Counterstrike are the best proof of this: you need to be a special sort of brilliant to play that game well. It's addictive, but only in the way, again, that challenging books or pieces of music are. It's not a "pop" game.

Of course, I would also argue that VG composers are writing the most sophisticated orchestral music of the day. Listen to _Roar of the Earth_ by Ko Otani if you can find sample pieces. It's rich and complex in the way good classical music is. Plus, it's attached to a video game that's pretty stimulating in and of itself - ever played Shadow of the Colossus? It's one of the few video games I will call an exceptional piece of art rather than merely a game.

(Sidebar: World of Warcraft is an exception in that yes, it's focused on addiction rather than active focus. But what a piece of art it is in and of itself! I've never played, I don't want to get hooked, but they made an entire _world_! This is like Tolkien realized. One of my future plans is to make an MMORPG in a much more literary sense, and to create an enormous world that really feels like fantasy - World of Warcraft opened that door for me. It's an incredible achievement in and of itself.)

The Internet is addictive, yes - but in what way is it addictive? My friend and I both competed to parody the 25 Things notes on Facebook yesterday - <USER2> requires some thinking and creative prowess. Meanwhile, while I spend hours a day in front of a computer, I'm constantly reading articles like this one, and writing answer pieces. I participate in debates. And I've found that as a result, in debate-focused classes I'm leagues ahead of classmates. It's entirely because the Internet gets my mind going. The Internet is not passive. It's not like rock music or TV shows or heroin. It's active. You consciously focus on what you're doing.

People are less fit because less tasks require physical labor than ever have before. That's why society is so focused on being thin. Now, staying fit requires conscious effort. It is no _longer_ a passive task. It doesn't happen during the day unless you choose it to. So in a way, it's a reversal of the ideas that you're stating here. (I keep a 30-pound weight on my desk, and I exercise and have my computer read long posts out loud. It's such a wonderful system.)

Finally: things have always devoted people's lives like this. If I wasn't constantly on the Internet, I would be writing in a notebook, or practicing an instrument. That's not heroin, is it? That's an exercise in creativity. Think of it like that: anything worth doing is worth devoting time to. And most of society will always ignore those opportunities for wasted time. That's nothing new. It's a part of human nature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Thanks for that.

I won't get into a long discussion -- HN seems to frown on these in-depth things. I'd like to point out that to a casual observer you sound like our Civil War vet talking about how much better his life is now that he's hooked on dope.

I did some investigations into MMORPGs a year or so ago. The _average_ WoW player spends a little more than 35 hours per week online playing the game. That's about as much as a full-time job. The virtual goods industry alone -- that's goods that are purely digital -- is in the billions.

Perhaps there are these great mental exercises that make us all the equivalent of digital Mozarts or something. The external evidence is lacking -- there's not some huge increase in SAT scores or math prodigies among video game players. At the very least to an outside observer it seems that there is a huge amount of time and energy being spent in something with no physical results. Except, of course, the usual results of spending 40 hours a week sitting on a couch plugged into a LCD eating Fritos. At the very least, it's completely unprecendented that so many people would spend so much time in sedentary, er, contemplation.

Great comment.

<comment><USER6> _The average WoW player spends a little more than 35 hours per week online playing the game._

Do you have a source for that? According to this article, Nielson has it at less than 15 hours per week. Still a huge amount of time, mind you.

[http://www.tvturnoff.org/index.php?option=com_content&ta...](http://www.tvturnoff.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=21)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't dig it up easily.

Gartner expects 80% of internet users will be involved in an online world by 20011 [http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503861&format=prin...](http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503861&format=print)

Chinese Gold Farmers, a significant population of WoW, play an average of 12-14 hours per day [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/20/virtual-goods-the- next-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/20/virtual-goods-the-next-big- business-model/)

I might be able to find the original for the 35-hour quote. If it's bugging you, email me and I'll take some extra time to dig it up.

<comment><USER5> Gold Farmers are kind of the exception - and they use WoW as a business, so arguably they're not wasting time.

I would bet against Gartner aggressively. They don't understand the technologies they're talking about. Virtual worlds have less to offer than people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _But hey -- it's not like TV gave you the shakes, or made you sick or killed you._

It does, just slower.

(Great essay, Daniel. If you write code as well as you write prose, you are a hacker's hacker.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Edw.

Somebody posted it over on reddit and you should see some of the comments. Makes me sound like some guy living in a cave eating twigs and berries. I wonder how much of the response to an article comes from situational cues -- knowing the author, being part of a community and such -- and how much is actually predicated on how good the article is?

The guy who submitted in on reddit had a really low score. I'm assuming he's not one of the "in crowd" over there. It would be interesting to wait a month or two and then have a high-profile person over there submit the same article to see if the reaction would be different. I'm betting it would be.

Hey. Still working on my hacking skills. Been slinging code for 20 years and I don't think I'll ever reach uber-coder status like some of the other guys on here.

<comment><USER7> Negative feedback on reddit is like getting fired by Henry Ford: a badge of honor.

Not sure if I liked your essay so much because or who you are of if I agreed with it so much.

More likely, it stands on its own merit. You made an argument, used metaphor in a way that a fellow hacker could truly appreciate, and while you were at it, taught a little bit when we weren't looking. People like you, pg, Joel, etc. are using blog to breathe new life into an old artform, the essay. Keep up the great work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article says: _Help is on the way, however. The American Civil War saw the first use of morphine for pain relief. It's impossible to overstate what a difference it made. The opiates were truly miracle drugs._

This is a really remarkable level of historical inaccuracy. To quote from [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=46725...](http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=46725&pageindex=1) :

 _There is general agreement that the Sumerians, who inhabited what is today Iraq, cultivated poppies and isolated opium from their seed capsules at the end of the third millenium [sic] B.C. They called opium "gil," the word for joy, and the poppy "hul gil," plant of joy. It appears that opium spread from Sumeria to the remainder of the old world._

 _At first opium may have been employed as a euphoriant in religious rituals, taken by mouth or inhaled from heated vessels (4). Knowledge of its use may initially have been confined to priests representing gods who sealed the sick and gods of death as well. It was given along with hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death, and it came to be used medicinally. The Ebers Papyrus (ca. 1500 B.C.), for example, includes the following description of a "remedy to prevent excessive crying of children" (see ref. 2, p. 35): "Špenn, the grains of the špenn (poppy)-plant, with excretions of flies found on the wall, strained to a pulp, passed through a sieve and administered on four successive days. The crying will stop at once." This remedy and others containing opium (such as spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium used to relieve pain during surgery) were dangerous because they varied in potency and rate of absorbance. Consequently, many physicians were wary of using them._

...

 _In 1806, Sertürner (8, 9) isolated the active ingredient in opium and named it morphine..._

The same paragraph of the "Technology is Heroin" article also makes the error of calling cocaine an opiate.

<comment><AUTHOR> History of Drug Use and Drug Users in the United States. <http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/gen003.htm> Halfway down the page, the section is titled "Opiates: The New Nineteenth Century Habit" Also "Opium in the Civil War: Marching Through the Opium Fog" <http://www.4thus.com/opium>

Obviously opiates were around before then. Geesh. They were natural substances. The point of that section is about the social evolution of drugs.

And yes, Cocaine is not an opiate. It made a better example -- the available graphics were better -- so it was used. It was an editorial decision. It's an essay, not a science book.

The article is about the social parallels that led to drugs being severely restricted and how it compares/contrasts with modern entertainment technology taking more and more of our time and energy. Counter-arguments based against this thesis are welcome. (speaking as the author)

Your comment looks a bit like nit-picking, at least to me.

<comment><USER8> Well, I've read through your essay somewhat more tolerantly. It seems to be a fairly vague assertion that "addictive" "technology" will have a deleterious effect on the lives of many people by virtue of taking more and more of their time and "energy" (I assume you mean attention), wound around with a lot of nicely-told stories, which (as I noted previously, and you acknowledge above) are retold there without any concern for accuracy.

It seems that if you were interested in whether "addictive" "technology" would have a good or bad effect on people's lives, you could start by being more specific about the technology; there isn't much sensible that you can say about a category that encompasses the phonograph, Facebook, SMS, and a lot of etc. Then you could examine what effect it actually has on people's lives: does it make them more social or less social? Does it make them better informed or worse informed? Does it make them more or less likely to marry, or to stay married? Does it make them richer or poorer? Does it make their governments more or less accountable?

You wouldn't necessarily have to go out and interview people yourself. The Pew Internet and American Life project has already done quite a bit of quantitative research along these lines. danah boyd has done a lot of peer- reviewed qualitative research along these lines. I haven't read it all but the things I have read don't really seem to support your thesis, although it is hard to tell because it is so vague.

Nice stories and pictures, though, as long as nobody reads them and thinks they're true.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure you understand how to critique an essay.

There's a premise, a thesis, and examples. You can take issue with any of these. For instance, you can claim the examples don't support the thesis. Or you can say the thesis doesn't follow from the premise. Or you can claim the premise is incorrect. etc

Instead you seem to make your comment personal "Nice stories and pictures, though, as long as nobody reads them and thinks they're true." You also assume the thesis "interested in whether addictive technology would have a good or bad effect" -- by definition addictive things have a deleterious effect. Then you run along the lines of the productive, good uses of technology, which was never in question and doesn't have an impact on the argument in question.

Just to be clear:

Premise: society has a difficult time dealing with technologies that have mixed effects and can lead to addictive behaviors. Especially when such conditions have not been seen before

Thesis: Modern technology is evolving to actively take more and more of our time and make us happy, which to some degree is the same thing that drugs do (except drugs are inert while technology is ever-evolving)

Examples: (of society having a hard time) drug prohibition in the late 19th century. (of technology actively competing for time) phonograph, television, video games, internet, MMORPGS

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate your reading the essay this time instead of just commenting without reading it. I think we're done here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read

As far as I am aware measurable intelligence is increasing. I would also think that the internet has lead to a general increase in reading and intellectual thought.

</comment><comment><USER10> And what does it matter? If technology manages to solve scarcity people won't have to do any chores any more. If it doesn't we'll cope or die off. Either way being a luddite apologist doesn't really help anyone.

<comment><USER11> _If technology manages to solve scarcity_

When has it ever failed to do so? <http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource>

_people won't have to do any chores any more._

<http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm>

 _"So how do I earn the credits?" I asked.

"Earn?" Linda asked back.

"No no no..." said Cynthia.

"Do you give me a job? The reason I am here is because I have no job," I said.

"No. You see, it's all free. By being a shareholder, you already own your share of the resources. The robots make products from the free resources you and everyone else already owns. There is no forced labor like there is in America. You do what you want, and you get 1,000 credits per week. We are all on an endless vacation."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, now that's a really fantastic post. Make me want to shut down my computer and do some yoga. I think my computer use is giving me a chronic cough, too. I don't smoke or drink ever.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not that technology is heroin, it's that _heroin is technology_. And technology cuts both ways.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wonder what pg thinks of the article. There are some clear parallels with his "Disconnecting distraction" (although that was more prescriptive and didn't indict technology as...directly). Plus the author mentions the "noprocrast" option on HN.

</comment><comment><USER15> False analogy: Heroin does not have significant positive side-effects (at least not in a monetary sense). Ie. it cannot make you more productive. Technology on the other hand does.

<comment><USER16> In the article, he mentions examples of positive effects of opiates, particularly surgical anesthesia (via morphine, although ether and nitrous oxide were initially used). Heroin was also used as an antitussive, etc. Other solutions with less serious side-effects were later found, of course, but at the time, they really saved lives. Major surgery without anesthesia was a terrifying ordeal, and, before antibiotics, many conditions meant surgery or death.

Some technology makes me more productive (refrigerators, text editors, bicycles, vaccines), and some makes me less (Flash games, irc, hacker news). Others have a mixed effect (cell phones, books). Technology takes many forms, and it's hard to generalize about them all in any sound way.

<comment><USER5> Does Hacker News absolutely make you less productive? Yeah, you're not getting work done right now, but you're debating people, you're teaching yourself to write out good arguments, and you're reading a ton of articles, some of which are bound to fascinate or teach you.

<comment><USER16> I actually would have put it in the mixed column, but I added that later and didn't move it. I run across some interesting things on the side, but at the same time, I have many, many books I've been meaning to read, etc., and I also know all too well where this comic is coming from: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are to many words to explain that every attempt to escape from so-called reality will cause a big problem, and digital illusions produces the same effect.It seems like the problem is in choosing wrong direction. One probably should spent ones resources (ones time at first) to discover beauties of this world. Illusions are very limited because of limits of ones mind. BTW, The Matrix movie was released almost 10 years ago. =)

</comment><comment><USER18> All of this begs the question: What is the meaning of life?

If you think of it, everything people do is quite remarkably purposeless.

Why does life exist?

Why do you exist???????</comment>


Elon Musk sub 'impractical', won't be used - <AUTHOR> http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2018/07/10/elon-musk-sub-impractical-wont-be-used/ <comment><USER2> It is possible to both do good and generate positive PR.

If he was getting in the way or come uninvited would be one thing, but other than that nothing wrong with an extra option.

Rich and well known people can't win really. They get criticised for helping and also criticised for not bailing out bad government policy.

<comment><USER3> > Rich and well known people can't win really

Counter-argument: they are already winning, and will continue to win until the day they die. I think the obscenely rich can cope with a small ding to the ego every now and then.

<comment><USER4> Don't treat people differently based on their financial situation

<comment><USER5> But think of the mega-ultra-rich billionaire's feelings!

<comment><USER6> "Billionaires are people, too. We are leaders in technology, in industry, in finance. Look at history. Do you know who else vilified a tiny minority of financiers and progressive thinkers called the Jews?"

~ Gavin Belson

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On one hand it's nice to see the valley: 'let's solve this' attitude. On the other hand, it's common to see them blinded by hubris, resulting in problem solving approaches divorced from reality.

<comment><USER8> Weird to see comments like this. Elon Musk was asked to help, he agreed to come there and now people talk about "hubris" as if he had tried to force his help on them?

Can't famous people even help kids stuck in a cave without someone criticizing them for it?

<comment><USER9> >Can't famous people even help kids stuck in a cave without someone criticizing them for it?

Yes, easily:

1\. Don't press release (or tweet); treat what you are doing with confidentiality.

2\. Actually help in a way that's helpful.

Here's a good example [http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/15/george-michael- secretly...](http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/15/george-michael-secretly- donated-500000-to-hiv-aids-charity/)

<comment><USER8> 1) If someone is helping, I don't give a ---- what they say about it. Actions speak louder than words. People criticizing Musk probably haven't lifted a finger themselves to help the kids.

2) How do you know if Musk's help wasn't helpful? Do you work at the rescue site?

<comment><USER10> I think the criticism of Musk is exactly that the words spoke louder than the actions.

Very few of the people criticising Musk had the ability to do anything to help the kids. He is in a rare situation to have the flexibility and resources to make significant financial and/or logistical contributions to literally any cause he notices. In this case, he did it in the most self-aggrandizing way possible, while appearing to make no actual contribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well I feel embarrassed for him. I genuinely think he wanted to help.

I guess it's like automated cars maybe? It'd save million's of lives but we're so stuck on validating that it might not come in time.

<comment><USER12> He did nothing to be embarrassed about. He tried hard to quickly help out, using his own resources, asking nothing in return. They started getting kids out suddenly (after they already started on the sub), to take advantage of the lower water levels.

I see nothing here that would embarrass him. He tried to do a kind thing. His speed about it wasn't anything he had control over. To be honest though, they built that thing fast as hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some comments I have read throughout the internet, tweets, etc, suggest that he was too slow to react and that they had over half the kids out already etc.

Reminder that he started this when they were expecting them to be stuck there possibly MONTHS. The rescue in action now was executed quite quickly and surprisingly (to me), as they had said it could be a long term ordeal. The sub too, was designed it to fit in the narrowest parts of the tunnel as well.

I think it's admirable he quickly got this put together and tested, and flew it over to them as fast as he could.

Likewise, he was respectful and didn't take too much of their time or resources when visiting.

I think he tried to do the right thing. He gave them an option that they didn't have previously. If it's not used, so be it. If they had no other options, then they would have another.

<comment><USER13> > and didn't take too much of their time or resources when visiting

No, why would he. He got what he wanted already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It might have been useful. A week ago they were talking about the boys being trapped for months. He'll get stick of course, but people suggested he might be able to help and that's why he got involved.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure most divers agreed it was way too dangerous. If there's barely space in the cave for an adult diver then there's no space for a submarine.

<comment><USER14> _... no space for a submarine._

Recent tweet from Musk on this subject: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016686032907931656](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016686032907931656)

 _Moreover, based on extensive cave video review & discussion with several divers who know journey, SpaceX engineering is absolutely certain that mini- sub can do entire journey_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just couldn't understand why he thinks the container should be made of hard metal. Sure maybe the current equipment like dry suit + full face mask has limitations. But shouldn't the natural path be building on top of that? Why is a hard long object that can't bend to fit through some narrow gaps, don't have power and don't use the power of the human it contains, and much heavier, be their go to solution?

<comment><USER17> Remember he didn't have the luxury of time here. He'd have surely designed something better if he had the chance to design, manufacture, and test it from the ground-up, but I doubt there was enough time to do such a thing. He probably tried to do the best with whatever he had at the time, on the off chance it'd still be useful. So he took the pre-designed parts of his Falcon rocket that could be useful and tried to use those.

Also see this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17496684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17496684)

<comment><USER18> This is another reason why people like me are skeptic about that whole "submarine" thing. Taking "pre-designed parts of his Falcon rocket" is ... also a bit ridiculous.

If I were do design a rescue capsule getting a stainless steel pipe and welding a flange to it or anything would be the least of my worries. You can get stuff like that off-the-shelf with same-day delivery.

But surely a submarine made from Falcon parts makes for a nice myth or headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Musk is a "technology can save problems"-guy and his team got something done in a short amount of time.

With all his involvements in the past years he likes to tackle complicated technical problems (SpaceX) or use modern technology to disrupt a segment (Tesla/Powergrid/Hyperloop).

</comment><comment><USER18> Literal money quote: "Anuphong said the two spoke about helping the remaining people out of the cave. He said Prayuth encouraged Musk to invest in the country's Eastern Economic Corridor. Musk then said he would return to Thailand in the future."

</comment><comment><USER20> What procedure do they actually use? I'd guess SEALs allready have standard procedures for transpoting persons under water in difficult circumstances. Secret procedures probably, so we might never know exactly how they do it.

</comment><comment><USER21> The people who like Musk will say he is doing good trying to help even if they can't/won't use what he offers.

The people who dislike Musk will say he is using this awful event for PR and such.

<comment><USER22> As it is with every politically charged event.

The truth in this case, and most similar cases, is "it's probabaly a little bit of both".

Its a joke to think elon is the pure saint many hope him to be. It's also a joke to think that he's just a rich selfish big-egoed businessman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Although I see the hubris point of view people here have, if oxygen dipped or some other catastrophy and someone fell unconscious, they could have been in a situation where this contraption was Useful.

People like to jump to black and white but maybe it's shades of grey, some hubris and also a chance of being genuinely helpful.

</comment><comment><USER24> local Australian media is saying that the report that the kids cant swim was wildly inaccurate, they even showed photos of the kids swimming with their friends.

The "sub" was never really needed... but good on him anyway.

</comment><comment> jf- I'm torn on whether this was a publicity stunt or not. If it was, it's an amazingly transparent one. That almost makes me think it was sincere, but absurd. I don't see how Musk et al score points either way.

<comment><USER25> I think it's sincere and well intentioned 'here's a difficult, interesting problem, lets put my big brain to work on out-of-the-box solutions'.

There _is_ touch of hubris, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interestingly I can't find the 'impractical' quote. Just found this one:

> His equipment is technologically complex and advanced, but we cannot bring > it into the cave for this mission

<comment><USER27> A simpler one: «we cannot bring it into the cave»

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just at the basic level of what the experience for these boys would have been like, sealed in a metal cylinder and towed through the cave system for hours - it seems a greater feat of endurance for them than being lead out - particularly with how traumatised by darkness and claustrophobia they must already be.

<comment><USER29> The boys were extremely weak and unhealthy. The trek was demanding and risky for experienced, healthy and prepared divers; there was a lot of doubt as to whether the boys would be able to make such an arduous journey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is the best outcome for Musk, as he gets the positive PR (and bolsters his supposed "Iron Man" image), but bears none of the risk of his half-baked idea failing and killing someone.

More generally, one should be wary of capitalists claiming they can solve all of your problems. They're likely just in it for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER18> From the pictures I don't see how the "submarine" could have worked, when they say the cave is so narrow in places that you need to take off the scuba to get through. Also probably not cylindrical.

<comment><USER31> Actually it is kind of cylindrical:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qySXPJ2WE&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qySXPJ2WE&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER18> The cave, not the submarine.</comment></comment></comment>


The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/22/mitra-zoho-india-tech-inter-cx_sm_0222mitra.html

<comment><USER2> This Princeton U alumni page [http://www.ee.princeton.edu/people/alumni/iss/?id=77bc6af36d...](http://www.ee.princeton.edu/people/alumni/iss/?id=77bc6af36de29b9fcc86e64ae1273c10) has a nice write up on some of his other efforts like jambav.com and his efforts to improve higher education in India. I've been following Sridhar's blog for quite some time since his adventnet days. What I like about him, other than the fact the we both went to the same high school :-), is the fact that his talent and energy is directed at solving some of the local business/social needs and thus creating unique products and a whole new cycle of innovation.</comment>


Python and the Real-time Web - <AUTHOR> http://mrjoes.github.io/2013/06/21/python-realtime.html

<comment><USER2> Nice, thorough article. Kudos for showing all the alternatives. That said, I think you had a strong preference for one, and that shone through. For example:

With greenlets, you say: Why is greenlets are great? Because they allow writing asynchronous code in synchronous fashion. They allow using existing, synchronous libraries asynchronously. Context switching magic is hidden by greenlet implementation.

Greenlets don't magically make synchronous libraries asynchronous! That's gevent! Greenlets are just the coroutines. Plus, you're forgetting that "magically" making sync libraries async doesn't actually work in plenty of cases, and the way that it works generally involves monkeypatching half the IO bits in the standard library!

Also, there's a bit of a false dichotomy. You claim that there's two options: coroutines or callbacks. That might be true, but then you need to keep in mind that callbacks doesn't necessarily mean something-looking-like-the-Tornado- callback-demo-code. That mind seem like a nitpicky implementation detail, but that's the sort of thing that lets Twisted do inlineCallbacks (where you write generators instead of coroutines) or Corotwine (a third party package where you get actual coroutines) or geventreactor (a third party package where the event loop is done by gevent -- since the other way around isn't actually supported).

The inline callbacks equivalent, given the same API, would be something along the lines of:

        data = yield get_more_data()
        return make_response(data)

The twisted equivalent of this wouldn't even look like data = yield get_more_data(); Twisted's API calls you when there's data, so it looks even simpler:

def dataReceived(self, data): return make_response(data)

Also, txsockjs now integrates great with the Twisted Resource API, so it will live neatly side by side with existing web stuff you're serving from twisted, which _can_ include e.g. WSGI apps (since twisted comes with a wsgi server :))

I have prepared a talk that deals with Twisted Mixing, which I hope to submit to PyCon. The work in progress is here: [https://chiselapp.com/user/lvh/repository/TwistedMixing/inde...](https://chiselapp.com/user/lvh/repository/TwistedMixing/index)

I'd love to have a cogent argument for the things you didn't like about Twisted, but two out of three appear to be more or less the same thing ("complex", "hard to learn"), and, on top of that, subjective. I'm sorry you had a hard time. It shouldn't have been. If you have any specific issues, I would like to address them. I'm assuming that by "not PEP-8" you mean mostly "uses camelCase", in which case I'll give the usual apologist answer:

\- Twisted predates PEP-8's recommendation of snake_case ;-) \- It's actually PEP-8 compliant: the PEP says to do what the code around you does, and something about consistency being a hobgoblin ;-)

Also, you mention that you can run Twisted on Tornado, but not Cyclone. Is there a particular reason for that? From all points I can tell, they get you the same result (mixing Twisted and Tornado code), but the reactor that ships with Tornado just gives you fewer event loop options (and generally inferior ones).

Disclaimer: I'm a twisted dev. Can you tell? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Greenlets don't magically make synchronous libraries asynchronous! That's > gevent!

That's right - I wrote that they allow writing code in synchronous fashion and I didn't say that it happens automagically though.

> That might be true, but then you need to keep in mind that callbacks doesn't > necessarily mean something-looking-like-the-Tornado-callback-demo-code.

Yep, I also provided how Futures and generator-based coroutines can be built on top of the callbacks.

Just in case, Tornado supports both out of the box.

> The twisted equivalent of this wouldn't even look like data = yield > get_more_data(); Twisted's API calls you when there's data, so it looks even > simpler

Very similar to some Tornado API too - method of a class that gets called when something happens. For example, sockjs-tornado follows this convention.

> \- Twisted predates PEP-8's recommendation of snake_case ;-)

Yes, I'm aware of it, but before I started playing with asynchronous libraries, I had some Python experience and got used to underscore naming convention. While it is easy to switch between both, I'd prefer consistent code style. Especially when I mix typical Flask Web application with real-time portion in same application.

No doubt, Twisted is mature and featureful framework. When I was investigating different options, Twisted was first one I tried. However, I also tried Tornado and found it easier to start with. And because Tornado worked for me, I decided to stick to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the blog post format better than a Google Hangout. When there's a conversation, unless (or perhaps even if) it's heavily moderated, things get lost in the noise.

I was really confused about the word "polyfill," which the author used without explanation. Since I've written code to render filled polygons before (concavity is a fun corner case), I assumed this was what it was referring to, and I was really confused about how that's even remotely relevant. Wikipedia finally straightened me out [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyfill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyfill)

<comment><USER4> When did "polyfill" replace "shim," I wonder?

<comment><USER5> I think of "polyfill" as filling many different holes to make it so you can forget about the different cases (browser compatabilities in this case). A polyfill pours concrete over a bumpy surface and makes its smooth. "Shim", to me, is essentially synonymous with monkey patch, i.e. something you shove in there to make something work- shoving a folded napkin under a table leg to make it flat is shimmy to me.

<comment><USER6> > I think of "polyfill" as filling many different holes to make it so you can > forget about the different cases (browser compatabilities in this case). A > polyfill pours concrete over a bumpy surface and makes its smooth.

Kind of like a façade then[1]? A shim would probably be synonymous with an (very informal) adapter.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm working on porting a node/websockets game I wrote to python using the twisted websockets branch. (not integrated in core yet but fully functional so far)

Instead of using socketio I rewrote the client side code in pure js. It was not difficult at all, and nearly all browsers support websockets now anyway.

Anyway - if you've written a twisted server before then writing a websocket backend is trivial, and the frontend is not much more difficult. I might do a full writeup when the project is complete.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow this is an incredible wealth of information in regards to the Real-time Web. I recommend anyone read this regardless of whether you use Python or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> I haven't read the whole post yet, but is the author saying that a WSGI+Gevent is better at real-time than Tornado alone?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just sharing my personal experience with both. And no, I prefer Flask (WSGI) and Tornado working side by side, in separate processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a Ruby programmer, I face the same sad state of affairs in Ruby frameworks unfortunately.

Nice writeup about all the alternative, well done.

</comment><comment><USER5> After stumbling around this problem for ~6 months, making half-solutions, this is such a great article. Thank you!!!</comment>


Payment Processing Landscape in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.epseelon.com/2013/04/17/payment-processing-landscape-in-europe/

<comment><AUTHOR> MangoPay has just joined the game (<http://www.mangopay.com/>) and I updated the post accordingly.</comment>


Show HN: WriteNext – The writing application that boosts your writing - <AUTHOR> https://www.writenext.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've built WriteNext because I wanted to start writing a book and I couldn't find a good writing application for it. I tried Google Docs and Notes, but I am already using them for other purposes and it was a bit distracting with all the buttons and other options. Also, I couldn't find the right motivation, so we designed WriteNext to include notifications and badges to keep writers engaged.

I would love to hear your feedback on it! Thanks!</comment>


Oracle Cloud Dedicated Customer Regions (AWS/Azure comparison starts 6:22) - <AUTHOR> https://www.oracle.com/corporate/events/live/new-autonomous-services/?bcid=6170019844001 <comment><AUTHOR> Product Page - [https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-at-customer/dedicated- reg...](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-at-customer/dedicated-region/)

Announcement - [https://www.oracle.com/news/connect/announcing-dedicated- reg...](https://www.oracle.com/news/connect/announcing-dedicated-region-cloud- at-customer.html)

Nomura Research Institute (NRI) Announcement - [https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-nri- ded...](https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-nri-dedicated- customer-070820.html)

Disclosure: I work at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

</comment><comment><USER2> Remember kids: Oracle has no customers, only hostages!</comment>


Google Music shutdown starts this month, music deleted in December - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/google-music-shutdown-starts-this-month-music-deleted-in-december/ <comment><USER2> YouTube Music is _such_ complete trash I'm planning on canceling my subscription altogether and going to Spotify. It uses YouTube videos to back up your song library which means, in my experience:

1) streams are of FAR lower and more variable quality

2) Some of the weird and wonderful music that was on Google Music is nonexistent on YouTube

3) COPYRIGHT STRIKES from YouTube videos apply to your music library(!?)

The whole transition is a horrible idea, and I wish they would have canned it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Google curse.

Starting or joining new teams and inventing products "resolving" the exact same problem in order to get noticed and climb the corporate ladder to a Google Fellowship.

How about fixing the stuff you got ???.

<comment><USER4> It's not a good advert for their services, and won't encourage anyone to buy into anything new they create if they just keep closing down services, including paid-for services. You just can't trust them to keep the service running.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I am still miffed over Google Reader :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For someone that was using GMusic as an online store of my own digitalised albums, what would be the alternative, to have something distributed that could stream across device?

<comment><USER6> You could host Plex on a raspberry pi in your house. Or you could house it on paid for servers like aws.

[https://www.plex.tv/en-gb/your-media/music/](https://www.plex.tv/en-gb/your- media/music/)

<comment><USER7> Plex on AWS? ehhh

<comment><USER3> I would not do that ... DMCA takedowns galore !!!!!

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't worry about that, but the million dollar bandwidth and storage bills.

It's a bit like using Fiji water for your toilets and paying $5 per flush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surprise, surprise, another Google service bites the dust!

<comment><USER9> But YouTube Music totally won't tho!

<comment><USER3> Just wait until we get Google One Music in 2023 ... it will be so much better !!!!.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am planning on cancelling our family plan too. Most of tracks that I have listened are falling victims to a "loudness war". I guess they have re-encoded all of them with new settings. Now it is much more loud on YM to the point that I cannot make it lower - it is minimum settings on each possible volume control. I value my hearing more.

Also, all these little notes that I have put on some tracks here and there will be gone.

Someone in a high ranks of Google should take a clue, and once and for all say "stop it" with this "old bad, new good" madness. I have had quite a confidence loss in Google as a brand after Google Reader's demise, and nothing so far has improved it. Pixel 4 discontinued after 9 months?

Their brand lost so much confidence, that this is now to the point that at couple of different meetings over new tech directions, one of the common points brought against GCP and Go was that "This tech is from Google. We don't know if we can put a 10 years plan based on these technologies, given the Google's graveyard expansion rate".

<comment><USER11> I don't think the Pixel 4 is relevant here. They discontinued it, but they're still supporting it for 3 years just as if they'd kept producing it.

The standard Google shutdown gives you maybe a monta to rescue all your data before it vanishes into the abyss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I cancelled my subscription and switched to Spotify about a month ago. YT Music is absolute trash and they should feel bad for even trying to migrate users to it.

Spotify isn't bad, overall. The curated playlists seem better than Google's, and the auto-generated ones (Daily Mixes, Weekly Discover, etc) are solid. Music availability seems to be about the same, although I'm not into super obscure stuff so YMMV. The UI is a bit worse (can't scroll back in the currently playing playlist, Car Mode is really bad), and default streaming quality is subpar (but can be fixed in settings). I like the frictionless switching to different devices. Overall I'm happy.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was wondering when this would happen. YouTube Music sucks so bad. They mix in all of my liked videos w/ into my music. Just because I upvoted Baby Shark Dance [1] doesn't mean I want it in my effin' music rotation.

Spotify is annoying because the radio stations are garbage & I can't (or haven't yet figured out how to) downvote music.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w)

</comment><comment><USER14> An example of yet another service (Songza) that was great, acquired by google and then sent to the grave.</comment>


Git 2.0 release notes - <AUTHOR> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/RelNotes/2.0.0.txt <comment><USER2> I like a lot of these things for sure. The only thing that I really wish they'd do that I've seen no sign they plan to is move git-subtree from contrib into the main distribution. It's such a useful thing.

<comment><USER3> I agree! Overall I truly prefer git subtree over submodules. I've noticed that most devs seem to have strong opinions one way or another.

Perhaps git subtree just seems so good because submodules are so clunky. If only someone would invent a "best of both worlds".

<comment><USER4> >I've noticed that most devs seem to have strong opinions one way or another.

I've personally noticed that most devs don't have an opinion either way since they don't use subtrees nor submodules.

I don't know what subtrees offer but using submodules has been very pleasant once you know how they work. For example if you version control your .vim I think that adding submodules for extensions is way better than cloning them inside your .vim.

I look forward to having the opportunity to use subtrees.

<comment><USER5> Subtrees interact with history in a much more obvious, configurable, and automatic way. The most obvious win is never having to run `git submodule update`. The better control over history is the bigger, but less obvious win. Since you have some experience using submodules for your .vim, maybe try switching to subtrees and see what you think. I like the Atlassian blog post[0] about them for getting started.

[0]: [http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/alternatives-to-git- submo...](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/alternatives-to-git-submodule- git-subtree/)

<comment><USER6> For me the the most obvious win is still being able to merge, move forward in time, move backward in time, rebase, etc. Everything that makes Git great.

Once you have submodules in your repo, all that becomes heinous. PLUS everything you mentioned...

Sure, if you don't use those features, then submodules would probably work fine. But then why not just use Dropbox?

<comment><USER5> Yep, I think a good way to put it is that subtrees are (or feel like) far more "first class" \- you can do all the normal stuff with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any intention among the Git developers to ever make --recursive a default option for git clone? (This is an option that causes git clone to recursively clone any submodules as well as the top-level repo.)

Sure, arguably there are fundamental issues with submodules that you won't ever solve, and some people might prefer subtree to become the default. (I won't get into that argument here as there is another thread addressing that topic.)

But the fact still stands that a lot of the ugliness of submodules comes from the fact that the UI forces users to learn a whole extra set of commands, while the regular commands are largely oblivious to the existence of submodule. If I make a Git repo with submodules, I can't just pass a link to my Git-novice friends and have them clone it, because the UI for submodules is separate from the main Git UI. Arguably, for users who don't need to actually touch the submodule, the fact that the submodule is there should be invisible from the perspective of the UI. Although Git has been gradually getting closer to this being true, it is not currently the case (clone being an example of one command which is not aware of submodules by default).

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me or "simple semantics" is not at all simple? Compare with:

        hg push -- pushes everything to "default push location"
        hg push -r . -- pushes currently checked out branch
        hg push -r foo where -- pushes foo to where

<comment><USER9> When you say "the currently checked out branch", do you mean the current branch, bookmark, head, local branch or mutable branch? Or maybe you are referring to the current phase, or a secret changeset?

"Mercurial is so much simpler than git" is only true for one reason: You prefer mercurial and dislike git, and so you look for flaws in git while glossing over flaws in mercurial.

<comment><USER10> You just need to visualize the tree, and that's it. `hg push -r .` will push checked out changeset and all its ancestors.

Mercurial tracks changesets. Git guys are inventing all kings of weird entities. Local branch? Mutable branch? Do these kind of things have separate sets of semantics in the git world?

In mercurial, branch is just a constant name for a group of changesets. Bookmark is just a temporary pointer to the changeset. Head is a changeset (that have no successors). Phase is information about whether it is safe to modify changeset. Mercurial is indeed a lot simpler.

<comment><USER11> All branches can change, and are mutable in that regard (altough commits can't change).

Local branch == Bookmark with unpushed changesets

All branches and commits/changesets are treated equal.

Yeah. In mercurial you have Branches and Bookmarks. In git you just have branches. Head is the current checked out commit/changeset. Git doesn't allow you to alter commits, only branches, so every modification in Git is inherently safe.

<comment><USER12> Also, mercurial has mq, which adds a whole extra layer of complexity. Instead of making safe commits, you continually update ("refresh") a set of patch files. Each time you refresh you lose all the history (as if you exclusively used git commit --amend for work in progress). In order to solve this someone got the idea that the patch queue itself could be versioned by creating a second repository that you would commit each revision of the patches to. Unsurprisingly it turns out that two repos are not better than one and doing "simple" things (moving a patch queue between two clones of the same remote) requires fiddly manual operations.

Mercurial has some neat features, but this idea that it's always easy to use and git is always hard to use simply isn't true.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, mq is needed only for very few specialised needs (apart from strip, maybe). Most hg users can get by just fine with never enabling it at all.

<comment><USER14> For years the Hg community proclaimed it was the answer to git rebase. Might be time for a concerted doc push to get those references updated with pointers to the rebase extension instead.

<comment><USER15> Because it was the answer originally (it's wiki page appeared in 2005, rebase appeared in 2008). Then rebase became the better answer. What proclaimed answer are you referring to here? On their GitConcepts[0] page, it says "hg rebase" or "hg histedit" should be used to do "git rebase" type operations. The only time they recommend MQ is if you want the index or the "git am" type command.

And as anton_gogolev mentioned, ChangesetEvolution[1] will probably help augment HistEdit and Rebase for a number of operations. It will allow pushable history rewriting.

[0] [http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/GitConcepts](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/GitConcepts)

[1] [http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ChangesetEvolution](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ChangesetEvolution)

<comment><USER14> > What proclaimed answer are you referring to here?

You answered that in your first paragraph: for many years, the first time people looked at Mercurial the answer for that class of problems was mq. The problem now is that it's still easy to find stale internal documentation, old blog posts, etc. which haven't been updated with the new recommendations. I thought that it might be worth having a small campaign to encourage people to update old wikis, contact blog authors, etc. when they find those recommendations and suggest a simple "this is no longer recommended – see …" update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this released already or are those just preliminary release notes?

<comment><USER17> The current version is still 1.9, but it shouldn't take long for 2.0 to be the official stable release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Minor feature that's really nice: the pull.ff config setting. I had made an alias for doing that manually, now I can start actually using git pull again.

<comment><USER19> Haha, me too, my lovely "git pfo" will have to go… Maybe.

The problem with git is that new options aren't simply ignored by old git versions, meaning that if you synchronize your gitconfig as part of your dotfiles, then the machines that have old git versions will start spitting error messages at every command for options specific to new versions. I learned that painfully with push.default=simple.

<comment><USER20> For `push.default`, older versions understood `push.default` but only later was the `simple` mode added.

For `pull.ff`, old versions will simply ignore the setting. I know because I wrote the patch ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "git push -f" will no longer ruin days (as badly)

<comment><USER22> ... due to force pushing _multiple_ branches?

<comment><USER21> I've seen someone do it. If your workflow is 'git push -f feature' after rebasing, instead of 'git push feature -f', you can tap enter and break the world.

<comment><USER22> It really blows my mind that you say those two aren't equivalent. I now must read the man pages...

Edit did you mean to say (plus)feature or is something ruining the formatting? That seems to be how to specify only one branch. Yuck.

I'm lucky I haven't run into this, I guess, because I set my push default to simple a long time ago, so long ago I can't even remember why.

<comment><USER21> The two are equivalent if you type them in full, but if you stop one before typing the feature branch name, you've broken everything.

git push -f (enter) => Death to all branches. git push feature -f => Can only ever force push the feature branch

No matter when you press enter in the second line, intentionally or accidentally, you can't break all branches.

<comment><USER22> Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the "add" is more inclusive by default. But does this mean that "add -p" also can add untracked files? (If not, it seems inconsistent to me.)

<comment><USER24> Like it says in the man page, git add -p "effectively runs add --interactive, but bypasses the initial command menu and directly jumps to the patch subcommand". Interactive mode does support adding untracked files.

<comment><USER23> Not what I'm asking. "add -p" will offer deletions, but it should also offer to add untracked files, essentially showing a diff with all lines added (with an empty file as the base).

"add -p --all some_untracked_file" does nothing, "\--interactive" does something completely different; a menu system, not a "yes/no/etc." patch prompt.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Huffman: I screwed up and I want Reddit to trust me again - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/12/12/13910334/steve-huffman-reddit-donald-trump-pizzagate-harassment <comment><USER2> When you violate someone's trust you should not want them to immediately trust you again. You can hope for it, but you should not try to make them trust you.

Here's what you should want:

1) Their actual safety. Not that they trust you, but that you actually don't hurt them again. This should be your top priority.

2) They feel comfortable with the amount of distance between you and them. This doesn't require them trusting you, this requires them to have agency to put up a wall between you so that they _feel_ safe.

3) They don't trust you too much too soon. You have shown that you are dangerous to them, and so you should desire them to only trust you as far as it is safe to. If they trust you too much, that puts you in a dangerous place where both of you could get hurt again.

From there, trust can come again, at its own pace. But that's entirely up to your reliability and their comfort. You shouldn't rush it. You shouldn't agitate for it. You should just make sure #1-3 happen and then it's just a waiting game.

Having people distrust you is not something to be ashamed of. Distrust is a critical tool for safety. No matter who you are, there are lots of situations where you shouldn't be trusted. That's good. If someone is wary of you, you should be grateful. They are helping you both stay safe. You should not hope to be universally trusted. You should hope to be trusted with the responsibilities you are ready for.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe that he'll do everything possible to stop this from happening again. However, Pandora's box has been opened, redditors will be conscious of the non-zero chance that any given comment has been altered.

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be a nice first step to resign or take a lesser position. Yes, that sounds harsh. However, he's the CEO.

If he's editing posts without permission his promise never to do so again himself is pretty meaningless. He's the CEO of a company whose staff he must hold accountable to shareholders and the public. Is he in a position to hold employees accountable for doing this in the future?

He should be replaced as CEO and take a position that while it may make business decisions clearly is barred from access to the data. Then the company should appoint a Chief Ethics Officer or Chief Integrity Officer or something whose job is to make sure things like that don't happen at any level of the organization.

This is a bigger disaster than just deleting posts outright. It's dishonest. It's disloyal to the site membership. It represents the shareholders and advertisers poorly. Just about the worst violation one can imagine on a social interaction site is to falsify another person's words.

</comment><comment><USER5> He will never be trusted again. The only way he as an individual can bring trust back to Reddit is to step down as CEO and resign in disgrace. Only then will people begin to believe that he feels remorse for his actions.</comment>


Show HN: McPiper – monitor Gitlab CI/CD pipelines from macOS status bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.mcpiper.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hacker News,

I'm Oleg, maker of McPiper. I've built it to help me monitor GitLab pipelines. While coding I don't look at my emails and I was missing failed pipeline notifications.

McPiper is macOS app that lives in the status bar and when a pipeline fails it will highlight it in red and will show the notification.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

I also plan to add GitHub Actions soon. Let me know if you like to see any other CI / CD tool.</comment>


10 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know – And When to Use Them - <AUTHOR> http://professorjake.com/10-algorithms-every-programmer-should-know-and-when-to-use-them/ <comment><USER2> All already implemented by bazillions of libraries.

Sure you need to know when to use them but not how they works or how they are implemented as long as someone who specialize in this field already checked them.

And if one day you need to use/modify/adapt one of those or even another algo you can still learn it at that time.

EDIT: I'm starting to think I misunderstood you and that you basically said that you should just know of their existence and use ?

</comment><comment><USER3> And something please for programmers over the age of 12.</comment>


Study: Most Auto Execs Not Ready for Industry's Coming Tech Changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/detroit/2015/03/11/study-most-auto-execs-not-ready-for-industrys-coming-tech-changes/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this might seem like preaching to the choir on HN. But living in Michigan I see this close up and it's not pretty.

The Big 3 were blindsided by the Japanese in the seventies and laughed at licensing Tesla's stuff because everyone knew the future of auto propulsion was the hydrogen fuel cells that they were developing in their labs.

Most are still in denial that the center for auto technology has shifted from Detroit to the Silicon Valley.</comment>


A tale of the unending hunt for dark matter - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/dark-matter-worth-searching-for-null-results <comment><USER2> Dark matter/energy always sounds like a restatement of aether - unknowable and unreachable, conceived to fill gaps in the knowledge of the period. I'm probably wrong, but the parallels are strong.

<comment><USER3> My instinct says this as well. "My equation isn't balancing, there must be something sitting on the seesaw!"

<comment><USER4> It's more like, my equations that work for everything else don't match what we observe in a few cases. But if there's something sitting on the seesaw that I can't see then it works everywhere. And there being a particle (or particles) that doesn't interact with the EM force is a testable theory. We've used particle accelerators to continually exclude areas of energy that the particles themselves would exist in, and eventually we're going to detect everything that we've predicted with the standard model or we'll find something new in an area that we didn't predict and start to know where things are actually wrong. Either in the particle side of things, or possibly the gravitational side of things. We know there's something missing or wrong between the two of them but they appear to work correctly for every case that we've found a way to test for so far, even if they don't seem to be possible to merge together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _This is the epic tale of the unending hunt for dark matter ... Despite huge > pots of money being poured since the 1970s into dark matter experiments on, > under or above Earth, despite endless late nights spent doing calculations, > and despite plenty of media coverage, researchers keep getting nowhere_

It's ridiculous to refer to about 50 years of work so far as an "unending" hunt, and it's a sign of the very short-term thinking of our age.

<comment><USER6> Well we've found a lot of other things in that same timespan, for reference.

<comment><USER5> And a lot of things took much longer, thus my statement.

Also, just because something's been going on for some amount of time says nothing about how much longer it might take to get the answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Forgive my utter ignorance but, what if black holes are not "holes" but solid spheres of massive density? There you may have your dark matter to boot.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002102723.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002102723.htm)

"Based on a statistical analysis of 740 of the brightest supernovas discovered as of 2014, and the fact that none of them appear to be magnified or brightened by hidden black hole "gravitational lenses," the researchers concluded that primordial black holes can make up no more than about 40 percent of the dark matter in the universe. Primordial black holes could only have been created within the first milliseconds of the Big Bang as regions of the universe with a concentrated mass tens or hundreds of times that of the sun collapsed into objects a hundred kilometers across."

"An as-yet unpublished reanalysis by the same team using an updated list of 1,048 supernovas cuts the limit in half, to a maximum of about 23 percent, further slamming the door on the dark matter-black hole proposal."

<comment><USER7> So, how dense you think the black hole at the center of the milky way is? Twice the whole galaxy at least? Or just a tiny fraction?

<comment><USER9> If you really meant dense then you have to rememberer that the average density of a black hole enjoys an inverse proportionality to its volume. In other words a supermassive black hole is far less dense on average than a much smaller hole. However it is still far far denser than a whole galaxy, which is mostly empty space and diffuse dust.

I don't think you meant dense though, I think you meant mass, because that's sort of how your post seems to be phrased. The answer then is that it is a minute fraction of the mass of the galaxy. Sag A* is about 4 million solar masses, and the Milky Way has 250 billion stars, many of which are far more massive than Sol. Even ignoring other objects like stellar remnants and nebulae, the mass of the central black hole is negligable on the scale of the whole galaxy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>