Ask HN: CRM for small business selling physical products? - <AUTHOR> We have ~7 sales people and ~1 marketer, selling physical products. We use G suite.<p>Anyone with a similar team size using a CRM they'd recommend? <comment><USER2> Have you heard / looked into Pipedrive?

[https://pipedrive.com](https://pipedrive.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have. it looks fairly simple to use and it's one of the options we're considering.

however, if someone has first-hand experience with pipedrive or any of it's competitors, that would be valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.erpnext.com](http://www.erpnext.com)

We're 100% Open Source

</comment><comment><USER4> NetHunt is designed for G Suite. Can show you how it would be best to organize your sales with it on a demo. [https://nethunt.com](https://nethunt.com)</comment>


Renewed concerns about security of President communications - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/phone-logs-in-impeachment-report-renew-concern-about-security-of-trump-communications/2019/12/05/2066fbf4-16fe-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html <comment><USER2> the washington post is biased and they lie alot.

[https://townhall.com/columnists/mattbarber/2016/08/07/why- th...](https://townhall.com/columnists/mattbarber/2016/08/07/why-the- washington-post-has-no-credibility-n2202573)

[https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-washington-posts- anti-...](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-washington-posts-anti-sanders- bias-is-irrefutable/)

[https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the- washington...](https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-washington- post-takes-anti-trump-bias-to-a-new-level/)</comment>


Sass vs. SCSS: Which Syntax is Better? - <AUTHOR> http://thesassway.com/articles/sass-vs-scss-which-syntax-is-better

<comment><USER2> Neither; I used to use SCSS, but have moved on to LESS (<http://lesscss.org/>).

One thing that always annoyed me with SCSS is having to explicitly tag classes with the `@mixin` keyword before being able to use them elsewhere as a mixin. LESS doesn't make you do that.

<comment><USER3> the @mixin delineation is quite deliberate. See Nathan Weizenbaum's comment at the bottom of: <http://nex-3.com/posts/83-sass-and-less#comments>

Also, one of the most powerful features of Sass today is @extend, which is something that Less definitely does not have: [http://sass- lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_REFERENCE.html#ex...](http://sass- lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_REFERENCE.html#extend)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info. I actually do very little with CSS (should have mentioned that / written with a more ignorant slant); in fact the _only_ reason that I started using Less is because of that simple mixin feature.

I can definitely now see that Sass/SCSS is where it's at if one needs to do anything non-trivial with CSS. Guess I should really get back to using it over Less, as the basic syntax is almost identical anyhow.

<comment><USER3> Check out Compass when you get a chance and prepare to have your mind blown: <http://compass-style.org/>

As far as Sass vs. Less goes, I think it's great that both projects exist and are being improved and adopted at such a rapid pace.

Less certainly borrowed some early ideas from Sass, and in turn SCSS syntax almost certainly exists because of Less.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How can we improve news readers and news feeds? - <AUTHOR> Is reading news on Facebook, Twitter, or news apps like Google News a good experience?
If not, what is the most frustrating part about using these apps/services to read news?
I'm trying to figure out ways to use natural language processing to improve how we read news. <comment><USER2> No, they are terrible experiences. The most frustrating part is that I'm not in control of what I read.

I use feedbin to aggregate RSS feeds. I control what I read. If someone I follow publishes something, it's in my feed, in fucking chronological order.

There are no ads, no algorithms, no NLP, no comments, and no pop-ups demanding my email to continue reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> No.

The fact of the state of journalism of "if it bleeds it leads". I don't want Debbie Downer OR Pollyanna news. I want realistic news. But that has never sold well so nobody writes it.

Best of luck. Maybe aim for unbiased and/or balanced sentiments in the article?

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't read my news there. I much prefer a simple HTML layout, with the topic story as the subject, a little blurb underneath, then I can click into the article if I want to.</comment>


List of APIs - <AUTHOR> http://rpicard.github.com/awesome-api/

<comment><USER2> What's your purpose with that? I think creating such a list is pretty difficult since everyone's needs are quite different.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just a place to start when trying to come up with ideas for a weekend project.</comment></comment>


Apple removes 'Web Sharing' from Mountain Lion Disappoints Web Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.the4cast.com/apple/apple-removes-web-sharing-option-from-mountain-lion-disappoints-web-developers/ <comment><USER2> I don't know anyone who uses it, so I'm just not sure how this is a disappointment to anyone. Seems like trying to make a big deal out of Apple removing something nobody used. Also Apache is still installed on the machine, so you can run it if you want. It's just not push button.

<comment><USER3> Right. I actually did use it sometimes, so it's not quite true that nobody used it. No typical user used it, certainly. If Apache is still installed, though, any "web developer" worth his or her salt should be able to handle "sudo apachectl start" and "sudo apachectl stop".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I gave up using the Apple supplied Apache a while back. It became difficult to accommodate the diverse collection of server configurations I have to support and Vagrant + Puppet handles that very nicely. For those who have more modest needs, MAMP will probably suffice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brett Terpstra has a great post on how to do this in Mountain Lion: [http://brettterpstra.com/fixing-virtual-hosts-and-web- sharin...](http://brettterpstra.com/fixing-virtual-hosts-and-web-sharing-in- mountain-lion/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like this shouldn't be a particularly big deal now that OS X Server is a $20 download from the Mac App Store.</comment>


False SCMP Story on Chinese Technology Hikvision NYC AI - <AUTHOR> https://ipvm.com/reports/hikvision-scmp <comment><USER2> I can't stand crappy reporting. The only effective way crappy reporting can be exposed is through other reporters. Unfortunately, the consolidation of news companies results in less competition and less overwatch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sigh. But Ipvm? Would anyone notice?</comment>


Am I crazy to switch from Software to Finance? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in NYC and I do design, dev, and marketing for a software company. I have non-liquid options and a decent salary (call it $140K).
In NYC suburbs, with my current family situation (I'll spare details) I need more monthly income.
Assuming I want to max out short-term cash, should I:
* Shop for another full-time software job (how much higher can I get?!)
* Start doing freelance software dev/design consulting
* Try to get a banking job
(A few of the guys I ride the train with are making 3-4X my comp in hedge funds and i-banking, which is why that's on the list.) <comment><USER2> I've worked in banking and finance since college (three years now) and my advice: avoid banking/finance like the plague. Sure there's potentially more money to be made in banking/finance, but it comes at a cost. There's "no free lunch" as they say. I'm desperately looking to do the opposite: move from finance/banking into software development (specifically mobile and web). And in doing so I want to avoid working for any bank/finance company ever again. Just my two cents.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, why ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> NYC is a nice market for freelancing. Compounding some extra income on top of your current salary (in a field you already specialize in) seems like the path of least resistance.

If you've got the background, programming black boxes for hedge funds is not a bad gig. Also, Bloomberg is recruiting devs in your area hard right now, the last I heard they were offering about $220 base for guys to build their new HFT-related products. (That's word of mouth from a recruiter). You can see lots of their open positions here: [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/company/bloomberg](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/company/bloomberg)

Genius.com claims to be the best paying startup in your area. They're actively recruiting for full stack guys right now and pay upwards of $230k [https://angel.co/genius/jobs/36568-full-stack- developer](https://angel.co/genius/jobs/36568-full-stack-developer)

But also, couldn't you dip your toe into finance little by little? Go out and get your Series 7 done, etc, and then figure out if you actually want to do it.

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with the tone of your post at all, but I had one comment:

I'm not sure the series 7 is a good representation of the industry. Unless muni bonds excite you, that exam is questionable in value except in the areas where they stress suitability of investments for clients. (I like that the exam focuses on clients a lot; I think it actually helps with developing a customer-centric mindset.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends upon your priorities. You don't explain why you need to max out short- term cash. Generally doing anything just because it makes more money is a Faustian deal of the first order. Of course, there are some people who are in banking because they truly believe in some aspect of it. Then there are others who get trapped by the lavish lifestyle and find it increasingly hard to leave.

Have you considered taking a careful look around you and find a hair on fire problem that you could solve and enjoy doing so? Taking a longer term view, where you balance all aspects of your life tends to be a more satisfying approach.</comment>


Varnish: Notes from the Architect - <AUTHOR> http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/wiki/ArchitectNotes <comment><USER2>
      Does Varnish require the system to have a C compiler?

      Yes. The VCL compiler generates C source as output, and
      uses the systems C-compiler to compile that into a shared
      library. If there is no C compiler, Varnish will not work.

This terrifies me.</comment>


A way to develop software with Nix - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shajra/example-nix <comment><USER2> From my point of view, Nix is a knee-jerk reaction to lack of using linker map files to produce shared object libraries which contain versioned API interfaces, like all the traditional UNIX operating systems do it (for example, illumos based ones like SmartOS).

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the GNU link editor, ld(1), also supports linker map files. Instead of tending to the symptom, why not fix the root cause by using linker map files when linking to declare interfaces and their versions?

As for explicit dependencies, the find dependencies script in RPM should be fixed instead re-inventing yet another packaging subsystem, again trying to fix the symptom rather than the root cause.

This all starkly reminds me of the 2nd system effect and design from "The Mythical Man Month".</comment>


Welcome to the Era of Fake Products - <AUTHOR> https://thewirecutter.com/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/ <comment><USER2> Amazon products are barely more official than eBay at this point. I tell my wife to never buy soaps, makeup, or anything liquid-based from amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon will delete your review if you mention that the product is fake/counterfeit; they don't give a shit because $$$$$.

</comment><comment><USER4> That site is absolute garbage. Only a third of the screen is actually used to display content. The rest is a (non-compliant) GDPR "consent" prompt and then a shit-letter signup prompt.</comment>


The way Americans pay for college is a mess. Here's how to fix it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2212534/ <comment><USER2> I agree whole heartedly (trust me on this) but even if it is a better system it will never be implemented.

Be a cold day in H*ll when it is

I am depressed to pay for college :/

<comment><USER3> Why?

The HELP system (renamed from HECS just for the hell of a 'fitting' acronym) in Australia works great.</comment></comment>


Assange 'to leave' Ecuador embassy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28834849

<comment><USER2> There's been so much misinformation in this case that it's apalling. The actual case file can be obtained here: [http://www.magasinetparagraf.se/bilden/forundersokningen- avs...](http://www.magasinetparagraf.se/bilden/forundersokningen-avseende- assange?file=files/content/bilden/forundersokningen-avseende- assange/AssangeSexAllegations.pdf)

Note that it is (naturally) in Swedish, however I will translate the actual allegation (under the title 'Övergreppet') here below, english is not my native tongue so if anyone else who knows swedish have any remarks on the translation, be kind to let me know:

Sexual Assault

They were sitting in bed talking and he took off her clothes. They had sex again and she realised that he had only put the condom over the tip of his penis, but she let it pass.

They went to sleep and she awoke with the sensation of him entering her. She immediately asked 'Are you wearing anything?' and he replied 'You'.

She told him 'You better not have HIV' and he replied 'Of course not'. She felt it was too late, he was already in her so she let him continue, she was too tired to tell him once more, she had been nagging him about using a condom all night.

She never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he did not say when he would but he did. A lot leaked out of her afterwards.

She told him 'What if I get pregnant?'. He answered that Sweden is a good place to have kids. She jokingly told him that if she became pregnant he would have to pay her student loans.

On the train to Enköping he had told her that he had slept in Anna Ardins bed after a party. She asked if he had sex with Anna but he said Anna liked girls, that she was a lesbian.

Now she knows that he did the same thing with Anna. She asked him about how many he has had sex with, he responded that he didn't keep count. He said that he had HIV tested himself 3 months earlier and that he had sex with a woman after that and that she was tested and not positive.

She said sarcastic things to him in a joking tone, she believes that she was trying to de-dramatize what had happened, he in turn did not seem to care. When he was told the size of her student loans he said that if he was to pay her loans then she would have to give birth to a baby.

They joked that the child would be named Afghanistan. He also said that he ought to keep abortion-pills with him that would in reality be sugar-pills.

His phone rang and he had a meeting with Aftonbladet (swedish newspaper) on tuesday at 12. She explained that he would not make it to that meeting, so he pushed his whole schedule ahead by one hour.

After that he rode a bicycle with her on the back down to the train station. She paid his ticket to Stockholm. Before they separated he told her to keep her phone on. She asked if he was going to call and he said he would.

She took the bike home, showered and changed sheets. Since she didn't make it in time for work she called in sick and stayed home. She wanted to clean up and wash everything. There was semen on the sheets and she thought it was disgusting. She also went by the drugstore and bought 'dagenefterpiller' (abortion pills).

After she had discussed with her friends she realized that she had been the victim of a crime. She went to Danderyd hospital and from there to Södersjukhuset (another hospital). There she was examined and also tested using a so called 'rape-kit'.

<comment><USER3> Truth @ [http://justice4assange.com/extraditing- assange.html](http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The one thing spy agencies are still really good at is getting people into compromising situations. It's not hard to get someone drunk and find attractive people to hook them up with. If they're married that's all you have to do. That's how they've recruited, blackmailed, and discredited people for 60+ years.

The guy lived 40 years with no sex charges and then immediately after pissing off the most powerful agencies in the world he's got two strange ones. It's possible he made criminal mistakes but even if so it's likely he was being manipulated. He easily could have been drugged without his knowledge.

<comment><USER5> He could also just have used his fame to end up in bed with two women and maybe, Swedish women are not as easily intimidated by exterior circumstances (the public shame associated with a rape case etc.) as others. It has been reported before that Assange is not exactly an easy character. It's possible that it's a set up, it's also possible that he's at the same time a person that made an important move with wikileaks and an asshole that coerced two women to have sex with him. It's just something that the courts will have to clear up.

On a related note: It don't believe punishment for the charges brought against him is not severe enough to really warrant such a move from the side of the spy agencies. The damage had already been done, bringing the allegations against him in a public court in Sweden might retroactively damage Assanges credentials a little, but the documents stood quite well on their own and the expected punishment is somewhere between a couple of years on parol and a low prison sentence in a Swedish prison. I just don't buy that. It's not worth the effort.

<comment><USER6> A lot of maybes and no proof. If the women had been sexually assaulted, and if these assumptions are to be taken seriously (e.g. that they are not easily intimidated by exterior circumstances) then much of what happened after the alleged rape would make no sense whatsoever (their friendly behaviour, their tweets, their comments with other friends/witnesses). In fact, there is so much that has been put into question that it's ridiculous how the swedish government even took the case seriously.

And let's all remember that he hasn't been charged with rape and he's only wanted for questioning. I believe that this is what they are saying because it's impossible to justify any other stance based on the lack of evidence...

<comment><USER7> _let 's all remember that he hasn't been charged with rape_

This has been discussed over and over again. Under the procedures and terminology used in Swedish law a person cannot be charged until he's been placed in custody and formally questioned. He his however "på sannolika skäl misstänkt för brott" which is basically means that the court believes there is enough evidence to make it worthwhile to charge the person and bring him to trial.

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no requirement for custody before questioning and Sweden along with other European nations have a frequent history of using remote questioning via video conference or telephone. The prosecutor in this case has just refused to do that, for no legally stated reason except further slurs such as she considers him a 'flight risk' (even though he _received permission_ to leave Sweden, and the case has _already_ been thrown out of court once, and at this point it's blatantly clear that it's a politically motivated case with no chance of a fair trial). The prosecutor is, in fact, in breach of Sweden's own rules which require a speedy and fair trial with the minimum assertion of guilt on the party being questioned.

<comment><USER8> You're wrong.

"Questioning" is an awkward translation and does not mean what you think it means.

It has been debated to death in all those Assange threads.

Please read the article in New Statesman that another poster helpfully linked to somewhere in this thread.

<comment><USER3> I note that you have a personal interest in Sweden and are German. I am glad that you are able to tell me about what questioning means in English. Thanks for telling me I'm wrong, and to go and look up why. That was really useful and added a lot to the conversation.

Unfortunately, the New Statesman article you point at is an extremely well refuted one. To summarize (someone else's words, not mine): _Even though Assange has broken no international law in seeking asylum from Ecuador, some, including New Statesman columnist David Allen Green, have portrayed him as a fugitive on the run._

In fact, on Feb 13, 2013 Justice for Assange published an in-depth analysis entitled "Extraditing Assange: Why The New Statesman is wrong about Julian Assange". It fully addresses many false claims surrounding Julian Assange's case, including those perpetuated by New Stateman's David Allen Green. This comes as Mr Assange had his 800th day detained without charge.

I wonder if you will read it?

[http://justice4assange.com/extraditing- assange.html](http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I support Assange 100%. The harassment of him for his involvement in wikileaks was completely inappropriate, especially considering that the Guardian and New York Times worked with him on this and would be similarly culpable if there were any culpability; digging around in his sexual history was a pathetic thing to do -- if you try hard enough you would, for a substantial percentage of people (especially successful men), be able to find someone who will make a negative sexual accusation against them, especially if there are inducements to do so; and the general critiques of his character as "arrogant" etc are similarly irrelevant, and also superficial and childish.

<comment><USER10> It wasn't his "sexual history", he sexually assaulted two women (and his lawyer admitted it - what he did was a clear breach of consent).

I'm not surprised one of the women backed down, they were both being harassed by idiots online for months.

<comment><USER11> Point of clarification: What Assange's lawyer did was describe the alleged acts. He was trying to argue that, _if the complaint was true_ , it wasn't technically rape under UK law. Unfortunately for Assange, it was very clearly rape under UK law, and the court so ruled.

"Emmerson went on to provide accounts of the two encounters in question which granted — at least for the purposes of today's hearing — the validity of Assange's accusers' central claims [...] Emmerson is not vouching for the accuracy of these accounts but merely offering them as summaries of the charges against his client."

His lawyer was being quite careful not to say "yeah, my client had sex with a sleeping woman without her consent, but it's okay!", he was saying "if the complaint is true, and he did these things, it would still be okay". Which is lucky for Assange, because the court has ruled that it really would not be okay. :)

Source: [http://studentactivism.net/2011/07/12/assange-lawyer- concede...](http://studentactivism.net/2011/07/12/assange-lawyer-concedes/)

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty crappy source.

More informed parties with more understanding of the case, such as Eva Joly, one of the most famous lawyers in Europe, is on Assange's side, and described the Swedish 'minor rape' charges IIRC as being extremely particular to Sweden and nothing like rape as other countries see it, in fact they should not be called rape.

She felt so strongly about the improper handling of the case that she went to Sweden visit the prosecutor to point out the tools available for moving the case forward, but Marianne Ny refused to meet with her.

Similarly, "feminist icon Naomi Wolf" in a "debate with Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action & the Media on Democracy Now!" Wolf defended Assange as a victim of political persecution:

 _"If you are going to take the issue of rape seriously," Wolf said, "the person who is engaging in what he thinks is consensual sex has to be told, 'I don't want this' and again and again and again these women did not say, 'this is not consensual.' Assange was shocked when these were brought up as complaints because he had no idea that this was not a consensual situation."_

I trust these people, with respect and hard won reputations to uphold, far more than some student website.

<comment><USER12> England has a variety of sexual offences laws. Even what he is alledged to have done is not rape under English law it is a serious offence under similar laws.

Here's the definition of rape: [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1)

<comment><USER11> According to the UK courts, it actually precisely rape: [http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2011/5.html](http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2011/5.html)

Basically, rape is defined as penetration, without consent, and without a reasonable belief in consent. Someone who is sleeping cannot consent, and you cannot therefore have a reasonable belief in that person's consent (if you're aware they're asleep, at any rate). Thus under UK law, an allegation of penetration of a sleeping person is an allegation of rape.

(The law is the same in most US states, Canada, Australia, Scotland, NZ, and many, but not all, European countries. Even places where it doesn't count as rape, it's generally a serious crime. In Germany that would amount to an allegation of "abuse of persons unable to resist", which can carry a stiff penalty.)

<comment><USER3> Untrue. This assertion is based on conflating the European Arrest Warrant (issued post-haste with probable US involvement) with inflated accusations with no grounding in evidence with the actual reality of the case. See [http://justice4assange.com/extraditing- assange.html#ALLEGATI...](http://justice4assange.com/extraditing- assange.html#ALLEGATIONS) for an explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unless he can be smuggled out or airlifted, I can't see how he's going to avoid being arrested by the cops waiting for him. If he's planning to hand himself in, why not do it straight away?

<comment><USER6> They're probably in talks with the relevant UK government institutions. They talk about a new climate, and that "the plan is for him to leave as soon as the UK government decides to honour its obligations in relation to international agreements and calls off the siege outside - it's as simple as that."

<comment><USER14> What's there to talk about? He's wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations. He doesn't get to have "talks" about that. He's not the messiah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't say where he is going to go. It seems to be a plea for support rather than a bone fide plan. Can't imagine being constrained to the same place for 2 years, horrible stuff.

<comment><USER11> > Can't imagine being constrained to the same place for 2 years, horrible > stuff.

Yep. A lot like prison, in fact. Which raises an interesting question: As this drags on, at _some_ point wouldn't it have been easier for him to cooperate, go to Sweden, and take his lumps? He could just about be out on parole by now; instead he still has it hanging over his head.

The whole thing seems very short sighted; the UK and Sweden aren't going to just get bored. Is he hoping to drag things out until he dies, or what?

<comment><USER16> It wasn't going to Sweden and taking his 'lumps' that Assange was afraid of, it was being extradited to the US under a to-be-unveiled charge sprung after being moved to Sweden. Assange (rightly or wrongly) believed strongly that the chances of Sweden doing such an extradition were more likely than the UK doing something similar. There is a lot of stuff about the rape charges that is fairly suspicious, I'm not sure if the risk of extradition today is as large as it was back when this all went down and maybe that figures into Assange's decision to exit the embassy now.

If he goes to Sweden (which I would consider highly likely if he in fact does exit the embassy and gets apprehended by the UK authorities) I suspect the chances of him doing any significant jail time as a result of the case there are slim, so then the only thing that he should still be worried about is eventual extradition to the US on charges still to be brought, but the spotlight will be very much on Sweden pulling any fast ones in the extradition process there.

Time will tell.

<comment><USER11> > it was being extradited to the US under a to-be-unveiled charge sprung after > being moved to Sweden.

That's entirely impossible under EU law. If extradited to UK to Sweden, he can _ONLY_ be extradited from Sweden with the consent of the UK.

Scenario A: The UK would agree (in which case, he didn't need to be extradited to Sweden, as he was already in UK custody).

Scenario B: The UK would not agree (in which case, he cannot be extradited from Sweden).

Nobody has ever been able to outline any way in which being extradited to Sweden could have increased his risk of being extradited to the US. If the US even wanted him; the UK is well known for rolling over to US extradition requests, and _he was in UK custody for an extended period of time_. The obvious conclusion is that the US is not especially eager to get their hands on him, since they didn't _actually try_.

"Any extradition from Sweden to the United States would actually be more difficult. [...] there is no evidence whatsoever that the United Kingdom would not swiftly comply with any extradition request from the United States [...] the best opportunity for the United States for Assange to be extradited is whilst he is in the United Kingdom."

Source: [http://www.newstatesman.com/david-allen- green/2012/08/legal-...](http://www.newstatesman.com/david-allen- green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition)

<comment><USER17> The last time the CIA picked up targets in Sweden it was a quick job with an unmarked private jet headed for Egypt.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html)

Highly illegal, and had our foreign minister not been murdered, she would have been held accountable as there was a huge outrage over the whole debacle. To me this says two things: 1) "the law" didn't mean much last time, so Assange is right to be careful 2) his public profile together with the last incident in fresh memory means he is probably at very little risk to be treated illegally in Sweden, especially as elections are coming up in September.

My guess: he'll go to Sweden, he'll be questioned by police, then let go. Seeing as he spent a couple of years hiding to avoid this, he will probably find this surprising, and no one else will.

<comment><USER18> Off the top of my head, I would guess that out of UK, Sweden and Ecuador, the latter presents by far the most suitable venue for extraordinary rendition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Julian: They have been trying to take you down at every step alone the way. Now that they've broken you down, you should take them down with you.

Distribute the insurance file passwords before you exit the embassy!

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't believe how much misinformation exists in this thread. The facts are available: (0) Everyone knows who he pissed off and how dirty they play (1) The police transcripts were leaked almost immediately, which you can read to get a strong sense of what is going on. (2) The extremely dodgy circumstances around how the women actually got to the police have been published (one of them, who previously worked for a CIA-linked company, took the other one) (3) The extremely dodgy circumstances around how the police interviews were conducted ("we'll write down what we think you're saying" instead of "we'll record what you're saying") (4) The express wishes of the woman in question (re: "I don't want any of this disclosed", "I don't want to press any charges") were ignored by the police (5) The woman who took the other woman to the police knew the police officer in question (6) The case was totally thrown out of court (7) The case was replaced in court partly due to the involvement of a lawyer who is also a politician (8) Leading human rights organizations, EU lawyers, Sweden's own bar association and similar elevated persons have united against the handling of the case. (9) Assange got explicit permission to leave Sweden before doing so (10) The prosecutor in the case has neither interviewed him remotely nor explained why she doesn't do so, except to suggest he's guilty until proven innocent - ie. should be in Sweden when questioned - so he can be locked up! (11) Politicians and the prosecution have commented extensively in the media - so far that the head of the Swedish bar association and numerous retired lawyers in Sweden called the case a "circus" \- thus precluding a fair trial.

This is character assassination, pure and simple. Trial by media. There are of course still more points, these are just off the top of my head. I saw the sorry state of his Wikipedia article and took it upon myself to introduce some of the facts, so became familiar with some of them. If anyone still thinks it's a legitimate case at this point, I'm sorry, but they're just goddamn stupid.

More info @ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange)

</comment><comment><USER20> I still think being extradited for questioning is ridiculous

</comment><comment><USER20> I really hope Sweden hands him over to the US, it will be a legacy they wont ever escape.

<comment><USER21> For what? Treason? He is not a US citizen.</comment></comment>


Tweeting on behalf of users is bad - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/4218760

<comment><USER2> > I am not putting the blame on Prismatic, but on this crazy system that > allows machines to post on my behalf.

I would put blame on Prismatic for sure.

It makes sense for Twitter to offer an API for me to authorize a third party application to access my Twitter account to post. This is how we have various twitter applications that post on our behalf. But we are in control of it. Popular Twitter apps on the iPhone for example are used for posting and managing accounts and are in control of the user. Because this API has a useful, valid and ethical use, the blame can not be on Twitter for offering a sensible functionality that benefits users.

What this article describes though is an unethical practice of misusing Twitter's API, and abusing Twitter's auxilliary function as an identity platform, in order to hijack random users' accounts and impersonate them for the purposes of pushing unwanted advertisements towards fourth parties (their friends and subscribers) under false pretenses.

The practice is clearly wrong, clearly fraudulent, and should be illegal, under legal principles banning impersonation for fraudulent purposes. It is a serious crime that should be punished not just with fines but with prison time, as identity theft normally is. The fraudulent purpose of this practice is inherent in posting on one's behalf without the person wanting or intending that, regardless of whether the hapless and naive users were tricked with a confusing and opaque 20 page long dubiously valid click-through legal contract.

Whether it is illegal or not, it is unethical. Companies that indulge in such fraudulent practices, regardless of the desirability of their products, should be permanently shunned in order to punish unethical practices when there exists a castrated corporate controlled legislature and judiciary that is unable to properly regulate companies engaging in fraud.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a simpler way to put this.

Don't put words in my mouth. Ever. If you try, I will hate you. Even if you think that I have given you permission, I will hate you if I do not get a chance to review and approve those words. Because it is my mouth that they will appear to come from. And I value my reputation.

</comment><comment><USER4> _"We don't tweet on behalf of our users."_

Then why do they explicitly ask for permission to do so when authorizing to your twitter account?

I'd be a bit harder on Prismatic than Julien... their entire service is based on trusting them with your social network data. This is a pretty serious violation of that trust.

<comment><USER5> Really wonder about people who see this and still click through:

       This application will be able to:

       * Read Tweets from your timeline.
       * See who you follow, and follow new people.
       * Update your profile.
       * Post Tweets for you.

This sort of intrusive access is really not even necessary, is it?

New people: DM the user that you think this is a good person to follow. (Link to some samples that triggered the recommendation would be nice.)

Profile: can't even imagine what/why of this one, but again a private DM with "suggest you use this profile because of ..." is perfectly serviceable.

Tweet on my behalf: No thank you.

<comment><USER6> Whenever I see requirements like that it almost always changes my mind about the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prismatic are doing something wrong with the way they message the sender or the recipient because when I clicked a button saying 'invite these friends' I didn't realize it was going to Tweet them all DMs. I got about 10 messages varying from "have you been hacked" to "don't spam me".

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree this is a huge problem today. A classic symptom of wanting to see short-term gains (a jump in sign ups when auto-posting is pushed live) with no regard for long-term effect of a bad user experience.

Luckily good sites don't do this and I do like that social media permissions are evolving. For example, usually when I authorize an app with Facebook, I can separately choose to connect and who sees anything they post (which I have defaulting to no one). I hope that trend continues on all fronts.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wouldn't have taken this as lightly as he has. I mean 100s of tweets in a short while is not just a simple coding error. It was built in. Jullien is right, great product don't need to auto-tweet to grow

<comment><USER10> it's not a bug, its a setting. it's just evidently poorly designed. :\ we're fixing it.

<comment><USER2> You are very persistent in defending unethical behavior. This is not uncommon among startups, the various companies that were stealing users Address Book a few months ago were likewise claiming both "everybody else does it" and "there's nothing wrong with this, we are justified".

You should not be impersonating people, it's unethical, and should be a felony when done without consent for monetary gain.

That you feel it is justified shows you are currently in a state of delusion, blinded to ethics and respect for your customers.

<comment><USER11> Nowhere does he say that it's justified. Cut the man some slack.

My interpretation from reading this whole thread, the associated article, and some comments is that there's an option for users to invite their Twitter followers/share activity, but the messaging around it is unclear or something (maybe a bug?) so people didn't realize they were doing it. And now it's being fixed.

That's hardly intentional unethical behavior. Saying someone is "in a state of delusion, blinded to ethics and respect" is WAY out of line for someone whose product had either a UX or technical bug, who apologized for it, and who is now trying to fix it.

<comment><USER2> I actually read his Twitter feed before posting. It was massively vandalized by Prismatic, who was clearly impersonating him.

The claimed bug is that the were not clear in getting permissions. That is completely irrelevant to the core of the principle here. _They are fraudulently impersonating him, using his own account._ That is a fact and it is a verifiable fact.

Given that you feel motivated to justify it, I have added your company Clever to my list of dodgy companies I will have nothing to do with. Thank you for informing me of your questionable ethics.

<comment><USER11> To quote The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

You say that both me and the guy from Prismatic are trying to "justify" his actions, but that's completely false. Nowhere did I say that doing something like that was acceptable behavior, nor did he. I agree that impersonating a user and posting to their social media accounts without their approval is unethical and immoral.

However, he said that it was an accident, a bug - that the intended behavior was not this unethical and immoral action, but something else entirely. You proceeded to accuse him of justifying it and being "in a state of delusion, blinded to ethics and respect".

And now you said that same thing to me, more or less.

If anyone here has questionable ethics, it's you. You COMPLTELY MADE UP these actions of other people, MALICIOUSLY, and used it to libel them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually federation would be really cool to implement features like last.fm scrobblings on Twitter. You could just go to @user/music and see all the scrobblings without actually spamming all my followers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hate those tweets, that's why I check <http://mypermissions.org> periodically...

And for Facebook I use <https://mypermissions.com/> which emails me each time I connect with an app through FB.

</comment><comment><USER14> I got bit by this today too. It tweets a link to every article you read by _default_. Big WTF.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand.

Don't you have to explicitly allow an app/site to post tweets on your behalf? Why not simply refuse to allow it? I see no reason a service has to rely on this permission, and if they do it's a great reason not to use it. What am I missing?

<comment><USER10> yes you have to explicitly check this setting. but to be fair, it's on us to make the UX flows extraordinarily clear for such a hot-button social feature. we obviously need to redesign this and it sticks that we've caused a few users to spam a bunch of friends unintentionally. :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone please tell fllwrs.com this

<comment><USER9> Why'd you want to know who unfollowed you?

<comment><USER16> Not sure, but for some reason there are a few friends who feel compelled to pollute my twitter stream from this app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What kind of tweets were they?

<comment><USER4> Hundred of tweets of the form "I'm enjoying <username>'s recommendations on @Prismatic" on his behalf. So basically all of his followers got spammed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

<comment><USER10> We're working on a grid for publishing actions from one service (Prismatic) to the other services that you connect. It's tricky and probably not a great behavior to broadcast these actions to twitter where there are no aggregations, like there are on facebook. publishing recommended actions to facebook makes a lot more sense - i do it myself - because they roll up into aggregations we've implemented and don't spam newsfeeds. it's probably fair to say this is not a great setting for twitter period until they start to evolve in this direction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bayesian Generative Adversarial Networks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andrewgordonwilson/bayesgan/ <comment><USER2> Student enrolled in his Bayesian Machine Learning class ORIE 6741. The formulation of adding bayesian inference to deep learning can be applied to CNN's as well. I plan on using his work on Stochastic Gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo to do Bayesian Inference on Image Segmentation as well. For more interest, check out this blog, super interesting: [http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/yarin.gal/website/blog_3d801aa...](http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/yarin.gal/website/blog_3d801aa532c1ce.html)

<comment><USER3> I'd like to flag up this paper on HMC and minibatch inference: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.01510v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.01510v1). It seems that SGHMC might not always behave as well as you might like.

I should say this isn't to pour cold water on the idea of Bayesian deep learning - I think it's an extremely sensible idea and undoubtedly a good direction for research, but just wanted to caution that this particular MCMC method might have subtle flaws.

<comment><USER4> I wished more academic papers would have a "Limitations" section. Often it is so hard to tell what these are, e.g.: Does it scale well? How much faster/slower is it than other methods? Does it converge reliably?

<comment><USER5> No incentive for such a thing.

<comment><USER4> Neither is there for reproducible code, but now there are artificial incentives such as the Reproduction Challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a super quick (non-expert) explanation of a Generative Adversarial Network, you essentially have 2 models that are pitted against each other:

1\. A generator ANN creates synthetic examples 2\. A evaluator ANN indicates how "realistic" the examples are

The generator uses the evaluator output to incrementally improve it's synthesis.

<comment><USER7> And for Bayesian GAN, you have a model that generates those two models that are pitted against each other.

<comment><USER8> What does it do with the models? So it samples a probability distribution, by training GANs, but how does it evaluate the points? (Which GAN is better?)

Even after looking at the readme, I don't understand how it works. Could you explain it a bit, please?

<comment><USER7> If you read the paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.09558](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.09558), in section 2.1, it defines two conditional posteriors for the parameters of the generator and discriminator. Then, classical GAN is just a maximum likelihood estimate (or, a MAP estimate with uniform prior) of the parameters.

Next, the paper said: how about sampling the whole posterior distribution instead of finding only one point of maximum likelihood as classical GANs do. This is the point where the famous Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms become useful. They use something called _stochastic gradient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo_ , basically, it is a random walk algorithm, at each step, you follow a _noisy_ gradient, as a result, you converge to the posterior distribution instead of a local minima as gradient descent does.

The paper claims that sampling the whole posterior helps to resolve problems with classical GANs. IMHO, this isn't a surprise claim, this is exactly what is good about Bayesian statistics.

<comment><USER9> Is it fair to presume that we'll next see a variational inference approach to this, with faster but slightly less optimal results?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool! Can't wait to try this with BEGAN! I am curious if this could model some probabilistic decision making as well outside usual image/video application, like with complicated/unknown (inverse) reinforcement learning policies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.</comment>


FTC thinks smartphones are too expensive - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/iphones-too-expensive-qualcomm-ftc/#M10MxKewCmqd <comment><USER2> The title is incorrect and misleading: the FTC has no problem with smartphone prices, they have only filed an antitrust suit against Qualcomm for taking advantage "of a non-competitive marketplace to overcharge Apple and other smartphone makers for use of its chips, technology, and intellectual property". Furthermore, the article says that 2018 iPhones were not made with Qualcomm chips, meaning that Qualcomm's chip pricing is not the cause of high smartphone prices at all.</comment>


Google To 'Investigate' Bringing Chrome to Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.omgchrome.com/google-chrome-windows-phone-8-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> Google bug ticket: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=153802](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=153802)

Reported by joesix...@gmail.com, Oct 3, 2012 Chrome Version: tbd OS Version: Windows Phone 8

What steps will reproduce the problem? 1\. Buy WP8 phone at some time in the near future 2\. Search WP store for Chrome 3\. Not found</comment>


Reflections on Apocalyptic Science Fiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefaza.com/reflections-on-apocalyptic-science-fiction/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone, I wrote the essay above. Would love to know what you think. Feel free to critique it.</comment>


Not everything has to have sensors and 3D chips to be creative technology - <AUTHOR> http://soviethardball.com/2011/04/making-real-life-easier/

<comment><USER2> So, this is less of an observation and discussion about the perception that technology has to have a certain set of trendy doodads (for instance, it seems _every_ startup has to deal with mobile or social networking or else it's insta-fail). Instead, it's more a very short two paragraph advertisement for a service that has absolutely nothing to do with the summary line.</comment>


Ask HN: Who's offering internships? - <AUTHOR>

We have been seeing some "Who's hiring?" posts creep up over the last couple months, but I am willing to bet that there are a significant amount of students who read HN that are looking for internships for the summer or fall (including myself) and these threads haven't directly addressed their needs.
Please include contact information, location, and anything else that a student should know when applying.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I found <http://startuply.com> useful. I found my summer internship through there.

Also <http://jobs.mashable.com> and <http://crunchboard.com/jobs/>

</comment><comment><USER3> RethinkDB says they're looking for intern(s): <http://www.rethinkdb.com/jobs/>

(I don't work there, but I think they're great people working on interesting stuff, so if you have the right skills I'd certainly recommend applying.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Citrix in Cambridge, UK, is offering internships. We work on hardware virtualization. Our software is open source.

Drop me an email (email@example.com), if you are interested in more details. (Sorry, it's too late at the moment for me to write more.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Palantir Tech in Palo Alto: <http://www.palantirtech.com/careers/positions>

</comment><comment><USER6> For this summer? Don't wait until the last minute or anything dude. Seriously, any corporation looking to hire lots of technical interns filled their quotas two, three, more months ago.

<comment><USER7> Luckily, this community isn't oriented toward corporations.

However, this is probably true to a lesser degree for start-ups as well.</comment></comment>


Aerospike, once open-source, deleted GitHub repo and pushed a restricted version - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-server <comment><USER2> Sounds just like [Emby nowadays] ([https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3075](https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3075)) .

The main issue is not how hard they worked and how they need to sustain themselves.

The point is that these people are scamsters who think the GPL and other FOSS licenses are cheap ways of getting users and debugging info.

If they were so sure of their efforts they should have raised startup funding and been proprietary to start with.

These guys ought to be sued and cast out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting a database off the ground as a sustainable business is incredibly hard work. As someone who works on similar problems I have massive amounts of respect for people who try to build a database related business knowing the huge odds they are against.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly, but when you go commercial, should you go up to the point to sabotage the open-source edition and actually intentionally break features that are working and delete all history so nobody can retrieve it ?

<comment><USER4> I would suspect there were likely copies of the old code.

If you are sufficiently affected by the change, perhaps you would be well- served to track one down and maintain a fork?

<comment><USER5> It looks as though they completely nuked the old Github project -- including any issues or pull requests associated with it -- and replaced it with a new project with no history. That's kind of a kick in the balls for anyone who was trying to get involved in their development process. Or, hell, anyone who was trying to debug an issue they were having.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> According to release notes:

New Features [AER-5817] - (DEPLOYMENT) Introduced maximum cluster size of 8, introduced maximum of 2 namespaces.

[AER-5818] - (CLUSTERING) Rack-aware is now an enterprise feature.

and the old version disappeared

</comment><comment><USER6> That'sa huge dick move... Is there anything stopping contributors from taking their local repo, uploading at and continuing from there?</comment>


'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker' - chris-at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/to_read_this_page_please_turn_off_your_ad_blocker/ <comment><AUTHOR> What I think I'm starting to understand is that ads have their own infrastructure and they can be blocked as such. In this infrastructure is data mining/trading, user profiling, and ad bidding. I find all of this disgusting. The kind of ads I don't mind are not noticed by adblocking. That is product mention and product placement on a site that the content provider puts there. Is it too much for content providers and advertisers to put something in place that isn't this cluterfuck bot that throttles the web?

</comment><comment><USER2> I recently started running an ad blocker again, after a number of years without one. Why? Because an advert was using so much CPU that it was interfering with my browsing in other tabs and running down my laptop battery.

This is a problem across web design. Web developers seem to have forgotten (or have slowly been forgetting for years) that huge amounts of javascript has a noticeable impact on the users computer. If I don't intentionally stop javascript executing on some pages the resulting CPU usage will drain my battery in half the normal time.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like an odd business decision to make every pageview begin with the equivalent of "Are you sure you _really_ want to view our content?"</comment>


The Man Who Quit Money: An Interview with Daniel Suelo - <AUTHOR> http://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-man-who-quit-money-an-interview-with-daniel-suelo/

<comment><USER2> This reads a lot less like a scathing critique of modernity as it does yet another affluent Westerner looking for self-actualization by excoriating everything that made him rich and idle. He thinks he's not rich and idle any more just because he gave away his life savings?

Whether he wants to believe it or not, he's the beneficiary of modern largesse. He doesn't take government handouts or whatever, but the only reason he can have the sorts of thoughts he's having about nature and religion is because he was a Western-style education and enough free time to develop a philosophy. He can dumpster dive, he can spend time on the Internet and at the library figuring out how to live off grid. It's easy to take for granted the careful, focused effort of millions of people over thousands of years to give him all of this. The knowledge he finds in the library isn't cheap, even though he's not paying for it.

Because I guarantee you, off-grid living wouldn't be nearly as much fun without it.

I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world.

<comment><USER3> > I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing > that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, > earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in > the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally > superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that > brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world.

This is such a great statement. These articles when they come around make finance, business, and work seem like such an "evil" thing, and should be beneath people. But god forbid you tell them how dumpster diving and just being a vagabond can also be a burden to everyone else in society.

<comment><USER4> He's only a burden in as much as the fall in his personal consumption reduces the overall demand for things he might have purchased. In other words, its no sweat off of anyone's brow. Being individually resourceful doesn't increase the burden on anyone else.

<comment><USER2> It's wasted potential. The modern world and all its conveniences and all its resources didn't just come about. It was built up, out of nothing, by people who saw how shitty the world looked then and wanted to live in a better one. A better world is not being built by dumpster divers. It's certainly not being built by dumpster divers managing to convince other people that dumpster diving is somehow noble.

Every age had its dumpster divers, its people who, rather than to throw their weight behind efforts to create better institutions, to better understand the world around them, decided a better world wasn't worth the hassle. That this world, with all these things that all their ancestors spent their lives building, is stupid and should be renounced. These people are absolutely a burden, and should not be listened to.

It made sense in a weird sort of way when the Jains were doing it, religious renunciation is sometimes the _only_ way you can make a political statement without getting killed, but it didn't take long until they had made their point but kept on doing it after it stopped actually being noble.

Yes, there's a lot of crappy things about the world. Roll up your sleeves and help fix them!

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be so quick to cast anyone off, especially someone who undertakes personal initiatives such as this to ensure their own survival. The "economy" might suffer if more people adopted this attitude, but its hardly the end of the world. It is not our position to judge if this person's potential is wasted or not, you can't really be any more subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting read. I'm reminded of Chris McCandless [1] of Into The Wild fame. I was so inspired by Chris' story I quit my job, sold all my stuff and spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I made a trip to the now infamous bus in Alaska [2] during my trip.

While Chris and myself have never gone moneyless like the article, I find myself tending towards that every day. I now hunt all my own meat and fish, grow as much of my own vegetables as I can, work on my own car and bike, etc. etc. I try hard to not pay for anything I can do for myself.

I'm also once again disillusioned with work and consumption, so in a couple of months I'm heading out to drive around Africa for a couple of years, then all going well I'll drive Europe->SE Asia.

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

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus](http://theroadchoseme.com/the- magic-bus)

<comment><USER6> Perhaps this is overly prying, but do you have a family?

<comment><USER5> No wife or children, no.

That being said, I met tons of people on the road traveling with their family for extended periods of time - tons of tons of people are driving around the world with kids. I had a pizza on the streets of Cartegena, Colombia with one French family and one of the kids said "We hate homeschooling..... we love worldschooling!"

Friends of mine paused their trip for a few months while they had a baby in Santiago, Chile, then kept driving :)

<comment><USER6> Interesting! I've always wondered how people managed to have families while traveling the world.

I very much prefer to travel alone, because being stuck miles from home with an unhappy partner is a special kind of hell. It can also be quite lonely to be alone on the road though.

Good luck in your travels!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Money only exists because two or more people believe that it does."

Er.. I get the point he's trying to make here, but I think what he's not seeing is that currencies basically spontaneously emerge out of the necessity of conducting trade. So, sure, you can try to pretend the construct doesn't exist, but you're just closing your eyes to the problem because you don't happen to like it.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a source for that? The origins of money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah"

\- Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities.

"scavenges roadkill"

\- Which exists because people built roads and people drive there.

"pulls food from dumpsters"

\- Which exists because people built the dumpsters and throw food into it.

"sometimes fed by friends and strangers"

\- No comments.

The headline should be: "The Man Who Quit Money But Depends On It".

<comment><USER10> I actually read [the first third of] the book "The Man Who Quit Money." He only accepts what is freely given as long as there are no strings attached. For example, he doesn't take from soup kitchens because the workers there are required to do it as part of their jobs. I'm not sure what part of that you think he's ignoring. He's not trying to live as if the rest of the world doesn't exist, but to prevent others from controlling him via money and vice versa.

<comment><USER9> So he didn't quit money, he quit being controlled by money. But still relies on people who make money to survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "When I left home for college, I studied other religions and found that all the world's major religions teach giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward. If all the separated witnesses are saying the same thing, it must be true."

That's kind of...simplistic.

<comment><USER12> The important truths are all very very simple.

"He who works for the fruits of his labor is a miser." ~Krishna, in The Gita

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mr. Suelo is certainly free to pursue his own happiness in whatever way he wishes to. But his personal decisions do not provide a compelling template for changes to any significant fraction of the population. We can't all -- we can't even 1% of us -- live in caves and eat roadkill. Heck, my wife and I can't do that if we want to have our daughter and not face, say, greater than 10% risk that my wife will die in the process.

And the rest of what he's saying seems to be, "Just treat each other like you would family; do things for no reward and take what you need." That's not a novel approach. It doesn't scale up well. The major experiments with trying to scale it up resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people in the 20th Century.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wouldn't want to be a dumpster diver anymore than the next person but I applaud this person for actually having a view outside of rampant consumerism and following through on it.

<comment><USER15> Meh, Ted Kaczynski went farther.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do people in these situations deal with the government? Obamacare has mandates and one commenter mentioned a minimal existence with a motor vehicle, which means license, insurance, inspection and registration requirements. All requiring money which means some source of income.

In some places living completely off grid is illegal - you are required to be connected and pay for utilities.

<comment><USER17> If you make less than $9,500/year you're exempt from the Obamacare penalty.</comment></comment>