How to Build a 'Paywall' That Doesn't Break the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/how-to-build-a-paywall-that-doesnt-break-the-web/243039/

<comment><USER2> Any site that asks me to share _before_ I've viewed gets a big fuck you from me and I'll just leave. It's ridiculous and completely ignores the point of sharing. I don't see the cover of a film and say "Hey friend, you should watch [film], it's awesome!"... because how can I know it's Awesome? I haven't seen it. The same goes for any sort of web content, I am not sharing content unless I _enjoy_ it and I can't know that before I have viewed it.

<comment><USER3> This is very similar to the Groupon model... you get a deal (or a thing) while being being motivated to spread the word. Not 'sharing' so much as promoting. You're being inconvenienced (paying) and it allows you to edit the text.. so you can just say.. "I'm tweeting this page so I can read it rather than pay them. Sorry." I don't know. Not sure if this is the final iteration but very cool that they're trying to figure out how to put value on content other than banner ads. Hope they figure it out.

<comment><USER4> There's an "ignore" button. :)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's nice too. So after we've donated does it remember us?

<comment><USER4> Sure does. (In fact, we're implementing some extra features for those who choose to pay.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We tried to make this fun. Some of the hidden features that I think are pretty cool include the way you can bypass the nagwall with the Konami code, and, of course, the nagwhal: <http://two.longshotmag.com/404>

<comment><USER6> I poked around, but couldn't find any articles behind the nagwall. Any chance you could let us know where we can see it working?

Great concept, by the way.

<comment><USER7> The nagwall isn't in every story, but it is on many. Here's one: <http://two.longshotmag.com/story/money-tank>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or you can just turn javascript off and you don't get the nagwall either.

<comment><USER7> Certainly! We weren't paranoid about security. Though you could certainly imagine a system where the content is only loaded after a JS event + cookie combination of a kind.

<comment><USER9> What about search engines or text-mode browsers without javascript?

<comment><USER7> They won't see the nagwall. We only had 48 hours :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will be interesting to see what the percentage of visitors is that end up paying to not see this wall. I see a lot of parallels with donationware, and all evidence from that indicates it's not possible to live off just donations.

So I hope there will be a followup.

</comment><comment><USER11> I disagree with the title. You are breaking the web. Or you're not. Either way, it would have to be an odd definition of _breaking the web_ if going from a standard paywall to your paywall changed the status of whether or not it's breaking the web.

</comment><comment><USER12> Internet accessible.</comment>


The Zen of GUI Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mgold/ZenGUIProgramming03122008231252PM/ZenGUIProgramming.aspx <comment><USER2> I'm more of a Holub disciple myself. "[http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2004/jw-0102-toolbo...](http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2004/jw-0102-toolbox.html?page=1)" discusses MVC in particular.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every single piece of MFC code I've had to maintain, both at my previous job and now during my occasional consulting work, has suffered from this problem really really badly. There is no excuse to mix presentation with logic. As far as I can tell, MVC is one of those extremely rare design patterns that isn't some overhyped OO klutz, and really is worth it.

The article itself is so-so.

</comment><comment><USER4> But sometimes the GUI implements part (or just possible all) of the functionality. A clever GUI design can simplify a complex user operation to the point where the "back end" is left to just read and write data.

It's not all about writing API's although (to be fair) this post makes some valid points.</comment>


Lodsys comments on iOS patent infringement, receives hate mail, death threats - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/16/lodsys-comments-on-ios-patent-infringement-receives-hate-mail/ <comment><USER2> Can't make it as an ambulance chaser? Buy some patents and go sue people over stupid 'inventions.' Easy. Shoulda be a lawyer, son.</comment>


Ask HN: Which countries rank best investment for internet freedom and privacy?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of choosing where to locate services[1] for my start up. I would like to select locations and services that reflect my core values of internet freedom and privacy.
I would appreciate if others, having stepped through this process, can provide insight.
Thanks.
[1] I need web application, database, and email hosting services. Price and Convenience are secondary to core values listed above, however I do need control over my application and database technology stacks. <comment><USER2> I think this may be of help:

[http://heatmap.forrestertools.com/](http://heatmap.forrestertools.com/)

<comment><USER3> Found it amusing that the US had no exlamation icon over it :)</comment></comment>


The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-battle-over-bilingualism/462114/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Another example of the reproducibility problem in psych studies. I really think every study should be registered ahead of time. Negative and mixed results are just as important.

</comment><comment><USER3> OK. So there is no executive function advantage. But so far no one has seen a disadvantage either. Right? Since no one would argue that knowing an extra language is not useful, I wonder why this "bitterness" matters.

<comment><USER4> >Since no one would argue that knowing an extra language is not useful,

Why would no one argue that? If I am a person from Kansas I am never going to run into anyone who doesn't speak English. Where is the usefulness in learning any other language?

<comment><USER5> I have a friend in Kansas who runs a store and is learning some Spanish. It seems to be helpful with communicating with some of her customers.

It's been a few years since I last visited the US, but I remember being surprised at the number of Spanish billboards I saw and stores with signs saying "Se habla Español" across the states I visited.

<comment><USER6> Spanish is becoming more and more prevalent in the US. There are some places where speaking English is in the minority, especially in the Southwest.

I don't have a problem with it, except I took French and Japanese in school, not Spanish, so I only recognize a few dozen of the most common Spanish words and phrases.

And I can't keep up the language learning habit as an adult, as my Duolingo profile will attest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Being bilingual helped me understand English grammar in a way I wouldn't have otherwise. It also helped my writing skills immensely (IMO). Taking college junior/senior level French literature classes was extraordinarily difficult but rewarding. I did more work for my one French class than I did for five junior/senior level business classes (Finance/Accounting/MIS). It's why I eventually stopped, that and I realized I don't like evaluating literature in English, much less French (they didn't have business language classes at my Uni in the 1990s).

</comment><comment><USER8> Sadly, this article seems like a twisted joke. Nearly every single non-"modern world" human with working legs speaks\spoke multiple languages, since in every direction you can find another potentially highly varied society living there. Primates have immense curiosity, and we generally like to socialize, even beyond our own familiar communities (innately at least). This inherently puts us among diverse environments, speakers, and interesting cultures (barring any violent opposition to free movement).

What would language skills have anything to do with this non-existent "executive system" anyway? (tfa mentions someone's guess about picking which language to use in any given moment.. something I've only ever seen novices and newcomers struggle with briefly, and only in conversation, not at all with internal dialogue.) I only resort to language when I need high level processing; and then having many angles of analysis can help enormously. When I need to focus on something, I do it as I envisioned or practiced and with kinaesthetic feedback (what other way is there?); language and other analytical tools inherently go another direction than working with my material environment. Fundamentally, these psychologists' messy model of language's relationship to localized brain functions in top-down systems falls flat on its face with this "executive function" concept mixing focus and inhibitory control with (yet another overly broad concept) "problem solving", which they then hold up as a sacrificial cost to something great.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think there is an elephant in the room here. There is no easy way to have a control subject.

Each person they test has a unique set of abilities and intelligence level.

My children are bilingual, and I know many other families that have children who are being brought up in a bilingual environment.

I have an example of a bilingual child that didn't say anything almost at all until they were 2.5 years old. My daughter has language skills that are advanced for her age in comparison to her monolingual peers of the same age. But she is just bright (parental bias I know). My younger son appears to be improving even faster, but then he has a bilingual older sibling, so that isn't a surprise.

The point is that it all depends on the person, as to how well they can adapt to a bilingual upbringing. They are so many factors involved, that it becomes impossible to categorically compare one person against another. Apples to oranges, every single time.

<comment><USER10> My son is growing up bilingual. It's natural since mother and father have different first languages. I've been amazed since age 4 how easily he switches between the two languages. I'll be talking to him in English and he will turn to his mother and repeat the whole conversation in his other language without missing a beat. He is also picking up Mandarin from watching videos on YouTube.

I have no way of knowing if his "executive function" (ok, I'll go with that term) is better because of it. But learning to speak more than one language appears to be very easy for kids.

<comment><USER7> From my understanding it's not the learning that's easier, it's the fact that the brain tunes itself to the local languages by a certain (early) age. I'd love to learn tonal languages but I have an extraordinarily hard time with them (Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese). I've learned French, German, Italian and Spanish with very little difficulty.

<comment><USER10> Same for me with tonal language. At first I couldn't even hear the tones when given examples of 3 Thai words with the same spelling but different tones and hence different meanings. Eventually I got it and do pretty well now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like an interesting study also. Bilingual skills enhance stroke recovery, study finds: [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east- fife-3487...](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east- fife-34879608)

</comment><comment><USER12> I especially like the comment that picks up the information from the article that psychological experiments in general (one might say science studies in general) have to be reviewed for reproducibility. The article cites some good sources on that issue. "But ultimately, this isn't about whether it's better to know more languages or not. It's about how science is done, and what counts as decent evidence. It's about the role of outsiders, and whether they're best-placed to see through the biases that permeate a field, or incapable of judging it on technical grounds. And it's about how researchers negotiate disagreements of opinion."

For bilingualism as such, I'll mention that my list of languages learned as second languages (I'm a native speaker of General American English who grew up in the United States) is on my Hacker News user profile. My wife (from Taiwan) and I were quite consistent about bringing up our oldest son (born in the United States, brought up partly in Taiwan) as a bilingual native speaker of Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) and English. Some of my younger children are less completely bilingual, but all are comfortable with the project of studying other modern languages. Taiwan's history since World War II is quite interesting, because after the Republic of China Nationalist Party of China (KMT) regime regained control of Taiwan at the end of the war, the school policy was that school lessons all had to be taught in Mandarin. But the local people in Taiwan mostly spoke Taiwanese (my wife's native language) or Hakka, cognate but not mutually intelligible Sinitic languages. So the whole postwar generation went to school, from first grade on, entirely in a foreign language. My wife grew up speaking Taiwanese at home and Mandarin at school (pupils were fined if they spoke the wrong language at school) and she now habitually speaks to her older siblings in Mandarin, even though her whole family in that generation are native speakers of Taiwanese. Some of our nieces in Taiwan, essentially all from Taiwanese or half-Taiwanese families, are more proficient in Mandarin than in Taiwanese. The KMT regime succeeded in switching the majority language in Taiwan (also through control of radio broadcasting and movie production in the days of the former dictatorship) and the school pupils learned a lot even when Taiwan was dirt poor despite going to school in a foreign language. And the level of knowledge of English over there is pretty high too--my wife began study of English as a compulsory school lesson at the beginning of junior high, and I think English is now a primary school subject. So bilingualism is perfectly doable, if a country puts its mind to bilingualism. Even language change is possible in just two generations.

</comment><comment><USER13> Being bilingual is just another proxy for a middle class or higher upbringing.

<comment><USER14> > Being bilingual is just another proxy for a middle class or higher > upbringing.

... or you could be raised by immigrants who continue to speak their mother tongue at home while the children learn English (or whatever else is the primary language) via TV/School/Public. There's nothing higher upbringing about retaining your parents' culture. If anything, it's more associated with lower class families.

<comment><USER13> Amongst immigrant families, yes. It's different with groups that have been here several generations.

<comment><USER15> ...but if you're going to say that selecting for bilingualism is actually selecting for affluence, you can't ignore a huge population that is bilingual and not affluent.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We scientists must rise up to prevent the climate crisis. Words aren't enough - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/06/scientists-climate-crisis-activism-extinction-rebellion <comment><USER2> I think one reason that a lot of the public doesn't believe in climate change is that those that say they do don't really _act_ like they do. Disrupting commerce and traffic and forcing the police to arrest you- that's putting your money where your mouth is, whether you agree with it or not you have to give them that. It's consistency.

</comment><comment><USER3> None of this "resistance" is doing anything to fight global warming. We already have plenty of editorials abstractly saying we need to do something; a million more won't help.

We need to build a cheap way to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That way we can stop global warming without requiring global agreement. Global political agreement to slow down consumption will just never happen.

<comment><USER2> This is a problem which is uniquely difficult to engineer your way out of, since any such machine requires energy to run, and where are you going to get that energy without burning carbon?

<comment><USER4> Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear.

<comment><USER2> Good answers.

But.. that only makes sense if you've already replaced fossil fuels with carbon free energy everywhere else (with rare exceptions such as maybe air travel). Otherwise you're wasting energy by converting carbon to co2 and then using _more_ energy to convert it back to carbon.

So the first step is still a carbon free economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too little, too late</comment>


WebGL, What is it and How Can I Use it?  - <AUTHOR> http://bjartr.blogspot.com/2009/10/webgl-what-is-it-and-how-can-i-use-it_04.html

<comment><USER2> AS one of the few people that will admit to using VRML, I was with a start-up that did just that web 3D back in 99. Anyway we where rather successful and where bought out by a larger company. Our bread and butter was simulation but we started doing collaborative battlefield orchestration with VRML, HTML, JavaScript, Java and on and on. Anyway, I was a doubting Thomas about web 3D until I saw this stuff. it was amazing. Being able to have executive command distribute command to the (non web) simulators nd visualize the troops (tanks, planes) through a feed back to VRML was amazing. Anyway, I see some key areas where web 3D would obviosly be very useful. One is obviously military simulation the second is just as obvious games. But I also see some verticals tht could use it. Take car repair manuals (I have wanted to do a start-up doing just this, but it takes an angel just to finance the prototype). I think a web 3d app that could show disassemble and assembly of automotive repairs would be a great use of web 3D. A user could watch it from any angle. As well, integrating it into a parts ordering system would create one of the most interactive purchasing systems for this vertical. As a user goes through the process of watching a repair, they could identify the part needed, right click on it and order it. Needless to sy I see a lot of potential for web 3D.</comment>


The non-linearity of productivity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kenperlin.com/?p=18993 <comment><USER2> There's feeling like you're getting things done because you're on a coding roll, and then there's feeling like you're getting very little done because you're still organising the project in your mind.

I don't think the two can be separated. Being stuck and being moving are dependent on each other.

A lot of the time I'm frustrated because I haven't quite figured out how the code should look. It takes a long time, a lot of chopping and changing, before you come upon a structure that you feel comfortable building on.

When you do get to that point though, it feels easy. Everything you write makes sense in terms of your new structure, and there aren't so many awkward kludges. The only thing is this period can be brief, because when you're fast, you get to the next problem sooner. You'll find higher and higher levels at which to view your code, and at each level you'll need to do some organising.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. And I'm increasingly tending to think that the stuck-thinking-about- the-tricky-stuff phase is the part of the game I find most satisfying.

A lot of textbook management techniques seem hellbent on trying to force steady productivity instead of punctuated equilibrium. Not the recipe for a satisfying environment.

<comment><USER4> I once had a manager ask me to email him a progress report every day; and every hour or two, he'd make a point of interrupting me to ask me "so how's <current_task> going?"

Sounds like something straight of office space, but that was my life for a while. Least productive job I've ever had because of that (well, and the myriad other little toxic/passive aggressive behaviors he had).

He had a Stanford MBA too, which convinced me of how useless MBAs must be. Because if you make it through one of the top programs in "business administration" in the world and still manage like that, you might as well have an MD from Harvard and still believe bloodletting is a viable treatment for illnesses.

<comment><USER3> _I once had a manager ask me to email him a progress report every day;_

This seems to have become very nearly normalised in the guise of daily stand ups. Some would argue it's less intrusive if it's for "the team" rather than for an individual manager, but I'm not convinced myself.

 _and every hour or two, he 'd make a point of interrupting me to ask me "so how's <current_task> going?"_

Similarly, in environments where tasks are getting broken down into tickets that are only expected to take a few hours, there's a similar level of oversight (although hopefully a bit less disruptive than hourly shoulder-taps, I agree).

<comment><USER5> I worked for a startup that grew up around me. We started without any project managers and such and they got introduced as the team grew and grew. I would just make tasks like "figure out how to do X", "look into this framework Y", "write a really good SO post for the bug we came across in library Z" . Worked fine, tho the PM for my project was sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For me, productivity is 90% about existing in a time and place without blockers. You can have all the right ideas (and even the least productive people I know are full of great ideas) but a single blocker can take your productivity from 100 to 0 indefinitely.

* For programming, this can be knowing a language very well, having smart coworkers who can help with issues, and a plan of how your software will look in the end.

* For getting in shape it can be living near your gym and going to bed at 10:30 instead of 11.

* For writing it can be about turning off message notifications and keeping an outline to prevent writer's block (honestly I'm still working on this one).

I can go on, but this realization has been tremendously useful to me, and lets me exist in "10x productivity mode" many times longer than in the past. While I don't agree with his politics, I strongly believe Scott Adams' ideas around systems vs goals is the right way of thinking of life. You shouldn't expend energy achieving specific goals, you should set your life up so it takes minimal effort to be productive and live a good life. [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964992706/goals-vs- systems](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964992706/goals-vs-systems)

<comment><USER7> Incidentally, have you seen Scott Adams' girlfriend? He's definitely doing _something_ right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've struggled with this question lately. However, I think our definition of 'productivity' needs more refinement.

Currently I'm working on a new startup which tries to tackle a rather hard problem (a generic document parser for invoices). Sometimes I'm stuck for days on a particular problem, and I feel like I'm not productive at all, I just stare at a blinking cursor all day. However, in my head I'm constantly working on the problem, and one could say that the moments where I don't write code are actually the most productive, even though it does not feel that way. It's rather counter intuitive.

So I don't think there really isn't a pattern in actual productivity (at least not in my case), although there might be a pattern in how productive you feel.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be cool if invoices had a spec (xml or json) with specific fields that had specific meaning and then we could use something like CSS to make them "pretty" and branded.

This would save from having to parse anything.

To create a bill-of-materials you simply would attach a bunch of invoices from a bunch of vendors. There are jobs out there of people who fetch invoices and then transform them into in-house systems all manually.

<comment><USER8> This XML spec does exist, it's called UBL. However adoption of this is slow and still quite uncertain. As always, many companies try to make money by creating their own flavour and trying to license it (unfortunate with success) and of course all these competing standards are not compatible with each other.

Since digital bookkeeping is ubiquitous nowadays, one could argue that invoicing is simply about sharing digital transactions between systems, and should not need to be 'pretty' or human readable at all.

I'm trying to bridge this gap, and I know that given enough time, my service will become obsolete.

But I'm goign higly off-topic now ;-)

<comment><USER10> "my service will become obsolete"

I don't think you need to worry for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I notice the ebb and flow of productivity as well. Ken uses the term fallow period. I like the reproduction analogy. New ideas, skills, or domain knowledge are like the sperm that finds its place in the egg which I think of as the existing stable but receptive body of knowledge and skills.

There is often excitement at the beginning "I have this new skill!" However, the new skill or knowledge hasn't really integrated with the existing body of knowledge yet. Then often it seems that there needs to be a gestation period. You have the sense that connections are forming and something new is forming that is the combination of the new and the old.

And, then it feels like I am ready to pour it out. Whether it is writing an article, preparing a speech or coding up that feature or application. When that happens it feels like the "Flow." But I understand that the gestation period was just as important if much less visible and seemingly unproductive.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just feeling productive doesn't mean you are productive and conversely not feeling productive doesn't mean you are not productive. How do you measure a software developer's productivity? It's very difficult. Reducing the build time might not seem very "productive" but the value it produces over a long time might be higher than any feature or clever code you'd write at this moment.

You can feel like you're producing great code but the proof is in the pudding. It might all need to be thrown away and rewritten.

Value also depends on other factors. Maybe if you spent more time with the junior in the next cube to ensure his piece turns out good the product would actually be successful. You wrote all that good code and the project was cancelled, what was your real productivity?

I go through periods where I don't feel like doing anything and then I go through periods where I have a burning desire to build stuff. Different ideas are in different phases in my mind, some are in long term hibernation, some are ready to execute.

EDIT: I know people who create a lot of code. Even good code. The problem is sometimes we didn't actually need that code at all. Very smart people, wrote a ton of good code, with no leverage. So step #1 in being "productive" is knowing where to put your efforts. I say software engineering is all about leverage, when you have leverage a little bit of code will move the world. With no leverage you can write all the code you want.

<comment><USER13> I think there's even another layer that goes with writing code that gets thrown away. Sometimes I end up doing that, but through that I gain knowledge of the problem that I probably couldn't have effectively gained any other way. Should that time spent still be labeled "unproductive"?

<comment><USER12> Maybe you could have gained the knowledge in other ways? It's hard to tell. It's possible this was absolutely necessary. It's possible a chat with another engineer would have allowed you to get on the right path right away. Who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lately it's been important for me to think of myself like an elextric motor, two modes:

DRIVE - electrons in, mechanical energy out

REGEN - mechanical energy in, electrons out

Except in your brain it's a little harder to label the i/o... it's something like

CONTROL - cortical activation in, perceptual changes in the world out

SUBMISSION - percepts from the world in, cortical activation out

Just like a vehicle, you stop functioning if you stay too much in one mode or the other. And ironically, I find I achieve maximum control when I cycle back and forth in even measure.

As for long term projects, I find I need to do this cycling at all time scales. Hour, day, week, month, year. It's the cycling back and forth that flushes out nonsense and keeps your finger on a degree of incontrovertible reality.

The trouble is, I often lose track of where I am supposed to be in all these cycles. I am working on software to try to help. Encourage some harmonics.

</comment><comment><USER15> while in the "Zone", you lose the ability to reflect on the things you are writing - long trip often results in complete bullshit. Which you can discover only upon waking up. Then you get stunned and paralyzed. Sometimes it's a good idea to just throw away the whole thing and start from scratch. I found experimentally that it's good idea to set time limits for your "productivity periods", and keep them rather short.

</comment><comment><USER16> Everything is easy once you know how. So everything you do breaks down into two phases: learning how, and doing it. During the first phase you feel very unproductive because there are no externally visible results and during the second phase you feel very productive because there are.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've also been digging into its non-linearity, getting a lot out of this book at the moment: [https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Performance-Elevate-Burnout- Scie...](https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Performance-Elevate-Burnout- Science/dp/162336793X)

<comment><USER18> I'm curious about this book. Can you give me one small example of something in this book that helped you?

<comment><USER17> Sure. It suggests a way to reframe how I think about stress. Not as something harmful to be minimized, but as something that I should intentionally cultivate through activities that are a progression of just-manageable challenges in my chosen endeavor. With each challenge immediately followed by a period of rest that's designed and experienced with just as much intention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that the "feelings of being or not being productive" are often fairly disconnected from the actual levels of productivity.

I do agree that productivity itself exhibits complex patterns, especially with relation to time. These patterns can vary significantly from person to person and over time, though.

I've had inklings of some of own trends for some time now, but it's still pretty fuzzy. I expect to slowly learn more through patient, dispassionate self-observation over the coming years and decades, to the best of my ability. It's tricky stuff, but very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> Productivity is mostly linear for me, judging from non-test lines of code in my commit history. About 36 net lines/hour whether the language is Haskell, C++, or Javascript, or whether it's 3 hours or 14.

There is some variance: Test code increases the ratio, UI code increases the ratio, and debugging lowers the ratio. But it's either wildly off being one of these, or 36-40 lines/hour.

<comment><USER21> N lines/hours is a useless metric unless you strictly only do coding to the spec in greenfield projects. E.g. compare using a code generator producing 20k LOC in a millisecond with modifying an undocumented legacy system, where every slight change to the system's incoherent logic might blow up the hole thing.

<comment><USER12> It's a useless metric in any project. A million line code base can have a lot of value or negative value. If you wrote that at 10 lines/hour your productivity is anything between -X$/hour and +Z$/hour. What does productivity mean in software engineering? Not # of lines of code produced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some would think when we are trying stuff or planning for a project is not getting things done,but the act of planing the right path could get you to point B faster than if you just heads down code and feel productive.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, productivity is IS a function of cognitive states. The nonlinearity could be tied to neurotransmitter activity/concentration such as dopamine, or perhaps cortisol level.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know it's an open door, but when I saw this title and the associated domain I immediately thought "hm, yeah, wow, my productivity is pretty much Perlin noise indeed"

</comment><comment><USER25> Fun short writing. I like it.</comment>


AskHN: Current state of cross-platform mobile development? - <AUTHOR>

How do current tools for multi-platform development compare?
Which tools are available and where's the biggest community?
I'm interested in building a relatively simple app that should run on as many devices as possible. The app shouldn't rely on any of the phone's sensors. I'm especially interested in creating a good User Experience but since iOS, Android and all the other platforms behave quite differently I feel like this can be a deal breaker.
Please share your insights, experience, links and knowledge about developing one app for multiple mobile devices! <comment><USER2> Adobe AIR works great, has support for some phone features build in, all others can be added using native extensions.

Skinning can be done very well, and the app could also run in the browser via flash.

The bad part is, AIR is relativly slow on older mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> If idiomatic and flawless user experience is important, but you still want to at least re-use your business logic then your best bet is Xamarin.</comment>


Don't hide or disable menu items - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/01.html

<comment><USER2> That works for some applications, but applying that to Photoshop would ruin it. There's too many operations that can't be done at any time, and it's usually obvious why. Unless you're in Indexed Color mode. Maybe it would be better to gray them out but leave a reason available (tooltip or click).</comment>


First Person Plural - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities <comment><USER2> _Such contradictions arise all the time. If you ask people which makes them happier, work or vacation, they will remind you that they work for money and spend the money on vacations. But if you give them a beeper that goes off at random times, and ask them to record their activity and mood each time they hear a beep, you'll likely find that they are happier at work._

Hey, I'd be pissed off too if my vacation was randomly interrupted by beeps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always thought the essential internal dichotomy was between maximizing mate selection and maximizing offspring survival. the urge to maximize mate selection carries with it many anti-social behaviors, while the urge to maximize offspring survival requires cooperation with the group. the history of governance has been the history of conflict over how far to the "left" or "right" the social contract should fall. To the left lies collectivism (offspring survival), to the right lies individualism (mate selection).

<comment><USER4> You forget about your own survival. You simply will die from hunger if you won't go hunting. Mating and children was always a second priority.

The most essential dichotomy is between leisure and running for _your_ life, I think.

<comment><USER3> wrong. the only reason to survive is to mate and ensure offspring survival. if personal survival was maximized by evolution why don't we all live to be 900?

<comment><USER2> Not to contradict your point, but I think there are other reasons we don't live to be 900. A human with a 900-year lifespan would be able to reproduce many more times than a human with a 90-year lifespan, so if a 900-year lifespan were easy to evolve then we would have done it by now.

<comment><USER3> I think there is probably some range of possible lifespans given our architecture. It just so happened that longer ones weren't increasing reproductive fitness (probably for several interrelated reasons) so it was never selected for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: author defines a "self" as something with a fixed, consistent set of desires; observes that people have changing, inconsistent sets of desires; concludes that people are made of "many different selves." What an insight.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Some of my colleagues at Yale have developed an online service whereby you set a goal and agree to put up a certain amount of money to try to ensure that you meet it. If you succeed, you pay nothing; if you fail, the money is given to charity—or, in a clever twist, to an organization you oppose."

Anybody have an URL?

<comment><USER7> <https://www.stickk.com/login.php> i think

<comment><USER6> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Definitely something to think about.

The article's amazingly well-written. Smooth to read, but communicates a huge amount of information with a minimum of fluff. I want more journalism like this.

<comment><USER9> _I want more journalism like this_

The author is a professor of psychology at Yale. It's sad to say it, but he'd be wasted as a journalist.

<comment><USER10> If anything, this proves the point of the grandparent post. Having more professors write magazine articles would elevate journalism, not degrade it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> very interesting article. it definitely gave me a new perspective about thinking about the mind.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article. The notion of "short-term self" vs. "long-term self", the self which wants to blow the pay cheque on booze, and the self which wants to save some of it for a rainy day, explains much internal conflict. My complaint though is it presents the "multiple selves" idea as in some way different from Freud's "superego. vs. ego. vs. id" model. I do not believe these are contradictory. The "short-term self" can be part of the id, I would think. The "long-term self" can be manifestations of the ego or the super-ego, it seems. The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. However in some cases, the "multiple selves" model can be used to enhance the Freudian model. To me, just as a layman's opinion, it seems the Freudian model might be like Newtonian gravity - works in most situations, except in "corner cases" like the orbit of Mercury, where we need general relativity. Similarly, the Freudian "id/ego/superego" model of personality should still work in most cases, but there might be "corner cases" where a more complex "multiple selves" model might come in handy. By the way Robert Louis Stevenson in 'Jeckyl and Hyde' comes to this same model himself. Dr. Henry Jeckyl at last realizes that in each man there are many men, not just two.

<comment><USER13> " The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. "

Is there any actual evidence, any reproducible tests to validate Freud's conjectures about the mind?

(For that matter, has any of Freud's work been scientifically validated?)

<comment><USER14> Freud hasn't really been taken seriously in the psychological community since the middle of the 20th century. The only place where psychoanalysis still has much credibility is among a subset of literary theorists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What an Awful Ending and what an awful article in general. Ok, Ok, I might get voted down but common I can express opinions without being hated?

He says that it should not be a democracy, nor should it be a dictatorship, so what should it be then?

He states that the long-term self is wiser, but also that the short-term self might be wiser, so which should we listen to?

He misses the point completely of the Miligram Experiment and of the "other" experiments of such kind, I presume Zimbardo. If anything they show that the self is a continual construction, not a rigid personality which exists consistently, but that personality is fluid, it changes, it is made on the spot.

It is an interesting read somewhat, but it is a prime example of everything that is wrong with psychology.</comment>


Torrentz.eu Search Engine Mysteriously Shuts Down - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/torrentz-eu-search-engine-mysteriously-shuts-down-506993.shtml <comment> thomas-b tl;dr:

The page is mentioning: `Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines`

and when trying to search: `Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.`

Hard to think it's not related with the recent push on kat. And as always something else we replace it before we have the time to realize.</comment>


Show HN: Serveo–Expose local servers using only SSH - <AUTHOR> https://serveo.net <comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by [https://medium.com/@shazow/ssh-how-does-it- even-9e43586e4ffc](https://medium.com/@shazow/ssh-how-does-it- even-9e43586e4ffc) and ngrok, I made this SSH server that assigns a public url for each remote port forwarding request you make. Start a web server on 8080, then try this:

ssh -R 80:localhost:8080 serveo.net

It's an attempt to make port forwarding as easy as ngrok or localtunnel, but using the SSH client you already have.

Also includes HTTP inspection and replay like ngrok.

<comment><USER2> very cool. Any plans to open source the code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The site is using Let's Encrypt for https. Currently there is a hard limit of 2000 subdomains per week, meaning there will be at most 2000 simultaneous connections!

It seems that Wildcard support is coming Jan 2018.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can only get certificates for up to 2000 new subdomains per week, but you can renew many more than that, so I can work my up to a few tens of thousands of subdomains if needed.

From [https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate- limits/](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/):

"The main limit is Certificates per Registered Domain (20 per week)...

"If you have a lot of subdomains, you may want to combine them into a single certificate, up to a limit of 100 Names per Certificate. Combined with the above limit, that means you can issue certificates containing up to 2,000 unique subdomains per week...

"To make sure you can always renew your certificates when you need to, we have a Renewal Exemption to the Certificates per Registered Domain limit. Even if you've hit the limit for the week, you can still issue new certificates that count as renewals...

"Note that the Renewal Exemption also means you can gradually increase the number of certificates available to your subdomains. You can issue 20 certificates in week 1, 20 more certificates in week 2, and so on, while not interfering with renewals of existing certificates."

A wildcard certificate would be far more convenient! I'm looking forward to that.

<comment><USER4> I would highly recommend talking to LetsEncrypt staff, since those limits are there to mainly prevent abuse; and they have been quite forthcoming with raising them or even lifting them completely in some cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, good to know. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks interesting. Somehow it would not work on a image file.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've noticed occasional hiccups too, but it usually works on photos! Consider it alpha quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great job! Have you considered adding HTTPS support?

<comment><AUTHOR> The public Serveo web server supports HTTPS. You'll get a URL like [https://exussum.serveo.net](https://exussum.serveo.net).

Do you mean something like [https://ngrok.com/docs#tls](https://ngrok.com/docs#tls), so TLS isn't terminated until it reaches the user's machine? Should be doable; haven't considered it yet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like it!

Edit: How about support for HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the stock Go HTTP and TLS stack. When I connect with Chrome, I see HTTP/2 and TLS 1.2, which is the version Go implements according to [https://golang.org/pkg/crypto/tls/](https://golang.org/pkg/crypto/tls/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> would you consider open sourcing this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, someday. It would probably take me 15 or 20 hours to get something published on GitHub. I'll get around to it eventually!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot see a privacy policy, or any statement regarding the handling of the data flowing through this tool, nor any code which could be audited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! HTTP requests and responses are retained in the program's memory for the duration of an SSH session, then forgotten on SSH disconnect. IP addresses are logged on SSH connect. I'll add a statement to the website and the tool's help message.</comment></comment>


Gamer steals from virtual world to pay real debts - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE56141L20090702

<comment><USER2> EVE Online fascinates me. A few years ago there was a news story when SomethingAwful's in game group decided to infiltrate one of the biggest corporations in the game, and then at a signal all their sleeper agents basically stole the company's entire inventory.

I don't think that stuff got cashed out, but this isn't the first time something like this has happened in the game.

<comment><USER3> The Mittani is the spymaster of Goonfleet the corporation you are referring to. He writes a weekly article about EVE that you will probably find interesting. [http://www.tentonhammer.com/search/node/sins+of+a+solar+spym...](http://www.tentonhammer.com/search/node/sins+of+a+solar+spymaster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I covered this a bit on the GameRates blog today([http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/global_recession__virtua...](http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/global_recession__virtual_crime_eve_bank_heist)).

With Eve these matters are a bit confusing as you can "role-play" a morally bankrupt character or a thief and such behavior is at times semi-encouraged in the game. Players known this when they sign up for the game. However, when you use your trust within the community to steal from a player-formed bank and then use the proceeds for real life gain it seems to cross an ethical boundary.

I've debated before over the justification for real money trade ([http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/debate_over_the_justifca...](http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/debate_over_the_justifcation_and_legality_of_rmt)) and compared the "War on Gold Farming" to the "War on Drugs" ([http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/the_war_on_drugs__the_wa...](http://www.gamerates.com/posts/show/the_war_on_drugs__the_war_on_virtual_currency)), but all of those arguments required that the RMT/gold farming be a sort of "victimless crime" which would not hurt the game or community anymore than if you choose to play extra hours instead of outsourcing that boring playtime to China (boring repetitive gameplay is at anything a game flaw in MMO's as it's expensive to make original unique gameplay that can keep players busy for months/years; and very cheap to make them replay the same event hundreds of times aka "farming").

It seems the thief made the common mistake that just because you are anonymous and online that it is somehow OK to cheat and steal. I mean how many of you have had someone try to cheat you out of something online, but doubt the same person would ever be so brazen in person? It didn't seem like the theif was "role-playing" to enhance the wild-wild-west-in-space nature of the game either. He stole virtual money from a bank he was entrusted with (that players had spent a great deal of time acquiring and valued) and then sold it to a website that spams virtual currency ads to pay some bills.

It is one thing to outsource boring parts of the game to another to player for you, and another to steal from your fellow players and then sell the proceeds to pay your personal bills. If the player who did this was fine with his actions, he should have publicly released his name. However, hiding behind anonymity shows he's probably not that comfortable with his actions "role- play" be dammed.

I know if I ran a google search of his name and this was the top story that came up I'd have reserves about hiring him.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the story about China banning gold farming. It's such a gray area because you have this virtual play money affecting the real money supply. It's almost like counterfeiting because of it's potential deflationary effects, but it doesn't fall under the law as such yet. I wonder how this will play out in years to come.

<comment><USER6> How would that work, though? So to counterfeit money, one could just take two people and make them sell air to each other?

Or is it because the virtual currency becomes real currency as soon as there is an exchange rate? Then it depends on the economics of the virtual world (there isn't always an infinite supply of virtual money).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first thought was he could have stopped playing video games hours a day and got a part time job to cover his debts but I'll admit his scheme seems to have worked pretty well. Someday an MMO maker is going to see the opportunity here and allow players to cash in items/gold for real life currency.

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember mentioning to my friend in 2000 that you could "Mine gold in an imaginary world" [Ultima Online] and he said it was the best job title ever.

Then history caught up with me in about 2003 and suddenly it was big news.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds as if he got away with it and doesn't even have regrets.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The only thing about what he did that was against the T&C of Eve was converting his credits to real money.

Eve online is modeled after a frontier, and as such, many things that are strictly banned in other MMOs are actually encouraged in Eve. If you manage to gain the trust and passwords of someone high up in some alliance, and transfer all his assets to yourself, it's considered good intrigue and gameplay by CCP.

<comment><USER9> There's an entire bounty system set up in game, if you've got a problem with someone you either deal with it yourself or pay someone stronger to deal with it for you. It's a very simple system, and I'm unsure why so many people are using the 'banks' in game, because it's essentially handing money over to someone who can now buy an unstoppable ship.

Personally my 'bank' account was collecting ores in secure stations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is such OLD NEWS. I remember reading about this WEEKS ago.

Not to be a snob or anything, but it's funny how long it takes the "real media" to cover a story like this.

<comment><USER10> Curious as to why I got modded down to hell. It's an interesting aspect of the story that nobody's covering - the fact that while newsworthy, traditional media took forever to address it.

<comment><USER11> if you had used the same tone in your first comment that you are using here, you likely wouldn't have been voted down.

now that you've restated it in a calm way, i can see that you might have a point. but your first comment reads like a flame. your own noise drowned out your signal.

<comment><USER10> A good point and an excellent reason to quit commenting pre-coffee.

Lesson learned.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building - <AUTHOR> https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/ <comment><USER2> On one hand this is criminal, stupid, and potentially dangerous behavior. If someone were directly exposed in such a way that they inhaled or swallowed some of the material their exposure could be very damaging. On the other hand this article uses a lot of comparisons between allowed safe exposure and this exposure, without an absolute metric to work with. From the picture with the estimated doses you'd get, were not talking about anything visitors should be concerned about.

If you were in direct contact with the contents of a bucket for an hour your total dose would be 8.2mSv. A more realistic hour in contact with the exterior of one of the buckets yields 2.8mSv. At five feet away from a bucket you'd get... nothing st all. For a visitor, this is not a problem although it's also not ideal. You're getting the equivalent of a full-body CT scan in the former case, but I somehow doubt anyone opened these buckets up and hugged the contents for an hour.

For reference 50mSv is the _yearly_ acceptable exposure for nuclear plant workers, and someone working at this museum could have easily exceeded that _if_ the contents of a bucket were disseminated in some way. In the absence of the contents being inhaled or eaten though, this isn't a health risk. Stupid though... really stupid.

<comment><USER3> Before you get on your high horse, you should realize that this is unlikely to be a real emergency. Uranium ore is around an order of magnitude more radioactive than bananas. These officials appear to be overreacting and you seem to be going along with it without evidence. Chemical hazards are much more of a concern if it's not encased in a sealed exhibit. That to me is "really stupid."

<comment><USER2> I don't think you actually read what I wrote, because you're more or less just repeating my point while telling me to "get off my high horse." I'd suggest responding to what people actually said, especially if you're going to be rude to make your "point."

For your reference:

 _From the picture with the estimated doses you'd get, were not talking about anything visitors should be concerned about... In the absence of the contents being inhaled or eaten though, this isn't a health risk. Stupid though... really stupid._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused. If the stuff in the buckets really was just uranium ore, even if it was really rich, then the only significant radiation was alpha, which would be completely undetectable (and not hazardous) outside the buckets. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> Uranium decays to radium which decays to radon, a gas. The real danger to uranium ore is inhaling radon. Also, the staff should be much more concerned than any tourist. The tourist angle seems sensationalistic, and a lost opportunity for informing the public about the dangers of radon.

unitednuclear.com sells uranium ore in addition to more exciting radioactive elements, and they have (had?) a page somewhere describing the need for good ventilation anywhere you store more than a small sample of ore.

EDIT: Maybe I was thinking of the product page for their radon gas detector, [http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&pr...](http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=523)

      We purchased one of these detectors for ourselves and put in
      in the room where we stored our Uranium ore samples. The
      device indicated over 100 pCi/L ! For reference, the average
      indoor reading is 2pCi/L... at a reading of 100 pCi/L,
      immediate evacuation is called for.

      ...

      Since we do sell Uranium ore samples, it's important that we
      stress a point. Collecting and storing a few Uranium ore
      samples is not going to create dangerous levels of Radon gas
      in your home. However, if you are and avid collector, and
      you have several pounds of Uranium ore in your home, you'd
      should consider buying one.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thank you. I didn't know radon was created that quickly.

The article mentions that the ore was discovered by chance by a young man with a geiger counter. Maybe it was the actually the radon he detected?

<comment><USER5> The decay chain to radon is slow, but the ore itself already has plenty of the intermediate products, including significant amounts of the immediate precursor radium, as its been sitting around for billions of years. AFAIU most of the measurable radiation from uranium ore comes from radium decay, so, yes, I assume what he was detecting was the decay chain starting from radium to radon.

The half-life of radon is very short (a few days), but that's part of what makes it so dangerous, along with being a gas and the fact that radon decay is itself highly energetic regardless of the half-life.

You can see the decay chain here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238#Radium_series_(or_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238#Radium_series_\(or_uranium_series\)) The whole radon decay chain (radon->polonium->lead) happens quickly and is the most energetic part of the uranium decay chain. And because you can easily inhale radon, it can all occur inside your lungs where even alpha particles (especially alpha particles, actually) can damage cells. Basically, a lot of energy released in a very short amount of time within unprotected tissue. So while uranium ore may emit only a tiny amount of radon, radon itself is nasty enough that you can inadvertently go from harmless to potentially harmful by storing more than a handful of uranium ore in a confined space.

I'm not doing the actual science justice and perhaps mincing terminology (not my field), but that decay table should speak for itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If uranium ore is only 10x as radioactive as bananas, then could you make bombs from 10x the fruit? Seems easier than mining.

<comment><USER7> Even better, If you can turn potasium into uranium you will be rich (or killed, or both), but this is bananas.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find results removed from Google under 'right to be forgotten'? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm a journalist looking for a way to identify results removed under EU law. I'd like a big set of pages to search/analyse.
I'm struggling to get my head around how to do this. If anyone has ideas, I'm all ears! <comment><USER3> To the best of my knowledge: you cannot. (I'm an EU-based SEO. I don't know everything, but i might be a good source.) Most of the search queries that contain human names will be marked as "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe." no matter wether a removal really happened or not.

Afais this is the "best" data you get from Google for this topic: [https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europepri...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/)

When you look at the other transparency reports you'll notice that you're able to search through other types of removed results (e.g. copyright violations), but that this is not possible in the right to be forgotten area.

[Edit] But you could ask any big newspaper Website for help. They receive a notice in their Search Console when a result is taken down.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't that be in opposition to the spirit of the law, if they just moved the removed results to a second search engine?

<comment><USER5> E.g. BBC publishes/used to publish the list of their pages that were removed from Google search results for this reason:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d765aa8-600b-4f...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/1d765aa8-600b-4f32-b110-d02fbf7fd379)

Not sure if there's any more recent version of that page.

<comment><USER6> There is: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8f2dd88f-db8a-46...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8f2dd88f-db8a-4683-acbb- cc3b1124c4ad)

<comment><USER7> That's really interesting that they publish that information.

The top of the list is [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6965657.stm;](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6965657.stm;) presumably any of the people mentioned, including in the comments, might be responsible for the right-to-be-forgotten request to Google.

What's more curious, to me, is that several of the BBC's list are references to a series of articles on 3 students, eg [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3500850.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3500850.stm).

Now if you Google any of those 3 students, [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"nikki+ho...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"nikki+holman") then that page, that BBC say is hidden in Google SERPs, appears?? Did someone mess up. Google does say " _Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe._ ", however.

Similarly, this page [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4747988.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4747988.stm) is listed on that BBC page, but searching the main name and "BBC" brings up that same page as the first result; again the " _Some results may have been removed [...]_ " text is given.

Bit weird?

<comment><USER8> I'm all for the freedom of speech in the American sense of the phrase (probably in the extreme considering many of the comments _here_ ). However, I don't think that means we should always exercise that right; this is where I think norms shine. I'm actually uncomfortable with you collating/ summarizing this data such as you have (though I'd never want to try and legally prevent it; it's your choice).

I think some of us that have had the foresight to prevent such things as in the OP from ever possibly being an issue in our lives might forget the rational decisions made in ignorance or a moment of exuberance (i.e haste).

Still, the internet is global and laws are regional, so ineffective legislation is a waste of time.

[Not going to get into P2P tech that is still un-censorable]

<comment><USER7> >I'm actually uncomfortable with you collating/ summarizing this data such as you have //

I hesitated, the BBC page will be an ocean of views compared to the puddle of view this thread gets ... I didn't follow the details for other posts, concerning crimes. The cited post looks like it was probably to hide what's essentially normal student behaviours (though one can't be sure). At least there's nothing intrinsic that seems worthy of censoring.

What it does shine a light on for me is how very bland information about us that we share might become a source of regret later in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, I want to shine a light on results wrongly removed: cases where freedom of expression, and the public interest in remembering, outweighs the right to be forgotten.

<comment><USER9> So, articles where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

<comment><USER10> Sounds a bit like fascism to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You're looking for Lumen[0] (formerly, Chilling Effects)

From Wikipedia[1]:

> The archive got a boost when Google began submitting its notices in 2002. > Google began to do so in response to the publicity generated when the Church > of Scientology convinced Google to remove references and links to an anti- > Scientology web site, Operation Clambake, in April 2002.

[0] [https://lumendatabase.org/](https://lumendatabase.org/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(website)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_\(website\))

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europepri...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/faq/?hl=en#provide_detailed_stats)

> _Can you provide more detailed statistics about the nature of these requests > and removals?_

> _We have provided statistics about the scale of our delisting > process—updated daily—since October 2014 in this Transparency Report and > have added anonymised examples of delisting decisions to provide color. > Additional data on common material factors is available for download here. > We continue to explore ways to provide more transparency into delisting > decisions in an operationally efficient manner and with due regard to the > sensitive and private nature of the requests._

</comment><comment><USER13> Please use the data that you gather responsibly.

There are some people who abuse the system (who I hope you identify), and also some people who really should have the right to be forgotten.

As far as I can tell, using a US based VPN/proxy does not censor results - <USER2> least, it does not show the message.

Therefore, you just need to cross-reference the results from different geographic regions. However, it will be difficult to tell whether a certain result is missing due to censorship, or the fact that result rankings are slightly different for different countries.

Once you find a "suspicious" result, I guess you could try searching direct quotes from the article - If it doesn't show up in those results, then it's probably censored.

This process will need to be automated, if you want to check every name.

<comment><USER14> > Once you find a "suspicious" result, I guess you could try searching direct > quotes from the article

I believe google only removes the results from searches for the specific name. The page can still show up if you search for something else.

Other than that: +1 for your request for responsibility. I disagree with the court ruling, but having the right to publish some information doesn't always mean it's a good idea.

Google has details on a few specific requests. They include "high-ranking corrupt politician" (not removed) as well as "stalking victim's home address" (removed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Put some contact info in your hacker news profile.

I can help you with this, email me

</comment><comment><USER16> Honestly, I don't understand how anybody can honestly think that there can or should be a "right to be forgotten." These laws are an abomination of freedom of information and are incredibly naive.

<comment><USER17> Before the Internet, people eventually forgot what mistakes you made in the past. If there were records, not everyone had access to them and they eventually expired.

Don't you see the problem when every mistake you ever made, or even wrongfully made accusations against you, can be found by anyone, indefinitely, by simply entering your name into a search engine?

Let's say there is a nude picture of you on the Internet, or something else that is embarrassing to you. It can be found by anyone by entering your name into Google. You can't do anything about it. It keeps you from getting that job you want, from now till the end of your life. Because of that one mistake you made years ago. How would you like that?

I'm also critical of these laws because they can be abused, but in general, I support the idea that some information should expire from the collective memory eventually.

<comment><USER18> It also allows every critical statement about anyone to be erased from the internet.

This effectively kills freedom of speech.

I'd rather have some embarrassing photos around.

<comment><USER19> Well, here in Italy, a girl just committed suicide because of some revenge hard video that was published 2 years ago and that became very famous (meme- level famous, including people printing t-shirts, etc.). She tried to escape for 2 years, including trying to change her name. Eventually, she just couldn't handle it anymore.

I'd rather lose some accountability of past critical statements.

<comment><USER18> What do you mean by "some"?

What past critical statements are immune to this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can search for phrases such as "Unfortunately, the page we linked to was removed because of EU law". This will not give you the page itself though.

</comment><comment><USER21> How about: don't? Your time to report on it was when it was online. If someone has something removed under a right to be forgotten, reporting on that pretty much violates that right, no?

<comment><USER12> The right to be forgotten is not a global right. OP could be from a country where courts have not made that ruling.

<comment><USER21> I'm speaking more to the ethics than the legal technicalities.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't call it a technicality. It's a very difficult issue that could have far-reaching effects on technology and information systems. Currently, many media outlets and Google choose to publish and link to copious amounts of disturbing information and images regarding the Tiananmen Square protests, despite the government of the world's most populous country arguing it to be taboo. I doubt those invested in the issue think that publishing on the topic involves mere legal technicalities.

That said, the EU's right to be forgotten applies to search engines. Not to anyone else. That's why, as someone posted elsewhere, the BBC is able to publish a list of links that have been blacklisted by Google because of the ruling.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crushed Dreams and College Decisions - <AUTHOR> http://throwww.com/a/758

<comment><USER2> Funny this got posted. These same thoughts have been passing through my mind for the past few days. I'm also a senior and have been getting decision letters over the past few months. I also got accepted to many great schools but the best ones (my dream schools) sent me that same letter.

The same feeling is also present for me. After years of taking a very hard class load and working hard on college applications, it is heart crushing to get that letter telling you that you aren't good enough. It's funny that they always make sure to say 'We had so many good applicants that we had to reject many quality applicants' but it just feels like I'm not good enough.

I know I'm using that feeling as motivation in the future to push myself harder than other students from more elite schools to prove to them, and to myself really, that I am good enough. It's a tough feeling to get over but it'll get better, I know it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Server is down, full text:_

As the arrival of decision letters starts to taper off, most of my friends have a good idea of where they're going next year. Some were lucky enough to have gotten into their dream schools, others were accepted by a slew of equally amazing colleges (though perhaps not their first choice), and a few were rejected to all but a handful of great schools. We should all 'be happy', our friends, family, and counselors tell us; the hardest part of senior year is over and now remains the _best_ months of high school. But 'great' is a very subjective word and some people are inevitably disappointed. I'm not discounting any of the students who got into their top choices: I believe that they're all deserve it 100%, but I'm sad that my top choices don't feel the same about me.

Yes, I did get into a couple of great schools, and I am truly honored and grateful to be accepted by them. But at the same time, I am utterly heartbroken that after years of pushing myself to excel academically and pouring my heart into the application essays, the response is still: 'Dear [x], I am very sorry to let you know that we are unable to offer you admission to [x]'. And I feel so, so guilty for feeling like this, as if I'm jilting my accepted schools and betraying my friends who try to cheer me up.

There's also regret. Maybe I should've written about different topics, maybe I should've applied to more schools, maybe I should've gotten more/other recommendations. And while it's very appealing to just blame the system for my failures (ahem _College Confidential_ ), I know that it's really no one's fault but my own. So there's an unhealthy amount of anger, bitterness, and disappointment directed at myself right now. Summed together, all of this is strangely numbing and emotionally exhausting.

But there is always some hope, even if we do have to trudge through this unpleasantness. It's quite honestly pointless to continue feeling this bad. Rejection and failure is a part of life, and even though my lifelong dreams were crushed over the course of two days, I have to accept that and find new ones. I know that I will eventually be happy and successful at a school that accepts me, despite all the inevitable sad laughter in the coming days.

Now I just need to believe that.</comment>


A New Kind of Science: A 15-Year View - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/a-new-kind-of-science-a-15-year-view-4f5668abe54f <comment><USER3> I haven't read the book, but I've dipped into it. Some of the ideas are interesting; ideas that I was acquainted with through Wolfram's papers before the book appeared. From critical examinations published by others, I've gleaned two things: the book contains one new theorem, apparently discovered by one of Wolfram's collaborators; and, there are no successful predictions in the book. To the extent that it's supposed to be "science", 15 years later one might hope to see the author saying something like, "Here is my NKS prediction of <whatever>, and this experiment confirms it," or "this experiment contradicts my prediction." Even the latter case would show an attempt to do science. So I'm intensely interested in knowing, from people who have been following this, are there any testable predictions from this NKS, have the experiments been done, and what were the results? Because this new article (I couldn't get through it, I confess) seems to be just more handwaving, and Wolfram talking about how important his insights just have to be.

EDIT: I meant to add that it's very nice that the book is now free, in any case.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the choice of title was a bad move on Wolfram's part? Your argument makes sense; it doesn't predict anything, or show any hint of science. Based on what I recall of the book (I did read it - everything except the appendix/notes), and what I've read of this new article (I didn't finish it - I will read it in full at a later point, though), it can't predict anything.

What I mean is that these simple rule programs can't be run any faster than the universe in which they are running. So you can't say "I predict this simple rule set will eventually draw a butterfly" (or whatever) - because you couldn't run it long enough for that to occur.

In a way, it's a simulation (or emulation) problem; just as you need a more powerful computer to run software to emulate a system in real time, provided that system is less powerful - you would need to do the same in order to run these simple programs. In essence, since the theory espoused in NKS (more or less - at least, that is what I got out of it - and maybe I am wrong) is that the universe at its base level (quarks? dunno) is composed and operates and creates based on these simple rules, in order to go faster than our universe (and catch up), you'd have to have a more powerful system than whatever the universe is running on (conjecture, I know - and Wolfram noted this as well IIRC).

So right now - just like if you were wanting to emulate a PS4 on a contemporary PC - the only way you can do it is non-realtime; you have to be satisfied at running the system at a slower rate. What is interesting about this - and this is pure speculation - let's say you are running "rule 30" on a computer, and unknown to you, it is actually computing a new universe (that is, simulating it) - to you, it is happening much more slowly than realtime - but to anyone "inside" that universe, they can't relatively know that they are running slower - their sense of "time" is "normal"...

I'd like to encourage you to read the book in full and maybe this new article as well. Yes - it's a real long slog. And maybe it is nothing more than a giant ego stroke on the part of Wolfram; I don't really know what to think about it anymore. But you might walk away (to get some aspirin for your headache?) with something to think about and ponder - even if it is completely wrong, or you think so, or whatever - simply reading it and understanding it might lead you to your own discoveries and ideas.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting point of view. I've never heard this work described that way before. If that's the correct interpretation, though, (and I think you've implicitly acknowledged this), the NKS work is, perhaps, some kind of metaphysical speculation, with some demonstrations to support it -- but not any kind of science, since, as you say, it can't predict anything. Also, in that case, it would be unfair to demand that it produce a prediction, of course.

<comment><USER5> >I've never heard this work described that way before.

One way to summarize the thesis of book would be to say: Historically, we've analyzed natural phenomena and tried to fit equations to the data. But Nature may be doing something analagous to running simple programs instead of solving equations. What are the implications of this? Complexity and "randomness" comes about from the "programs", not from their initial inputs/conditions. And predicting behavior of programs is harder than predicting behavior of systems of equations, which sucks.

>but not any kind of science

I think many people who aren't familiar with the book are thinking that "a new kind of science" means "a new branch of science" like we have physics, chemistry, biology, and now this new "computery" science. But the book is actually about looking at nature with the new perspective of "programs", that previous generations of people didn't have a reference frame for. And some of things that we think are "complex" might actually be following simple rules (or can better be modeled as such).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone who has actually read NKS comment on the value of its contents?

I've seen a lot of criticism[0], most concerning being the lack of mathematical rigor in the work[1]. Seems damning considering the author's background in math.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Receptio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Reception) [1]: [http://crd-legacy.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/dhb- wolfram.pd...](http://crd-legacy.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/dhb-wolfram.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I found it to be a very interesting book. The criticisms basically boil down into three categories:

\- I don't like Stephen Wolfram and his personal style offends me.

\- This isn't new material because there were academic papers that covered some of this material scattered throughout the literature.

\- Stephen should have been more generous in giving credit to previous work.

...If nothing else, get a copy to look at all the great pictures, and ignore the text if it bothers you.

>most concerning being the lack of mathematical rigor in the work

This book is about how very very simple programs can end up producing complex results. You can easily write the program for simulating the cellular automata in any programming language and check that you get the same picture as shown in the book. You don't have to accept anyone's philosophy of math and their opinions on the Axiom of Choice when it comes to uncountable infinities. It is completely formal. In fact, the best reason for getting the book is to encourage you to write tiny little programs to see the results for yourself.

[http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Mathematical_rigor](http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Mathematical_rigor)

<comment><USER7> My primary criticism with the book is that it repeatedly unto belaboring the point claims to be "a new kind of science", when in fact it turns out it's merely a somewhat interesting tour of some corners of recreational mathematics that has had zero impact on the world and will likely continue to have zero impact on the world.

As a book of recreational mathematics it's pretty fun. As a "New Kind Of Science" it's atrocious.

<comment><USER5> >As a "New Kind Of Science" it's atrocious.

Investigating nature starting with the premise that the "laws" may be imperative procedures instead of pure functions doesn't seem orthodox (for 2002), so isn't that "new"?

<comment><USER7> It hasn't produced any fruit.

And especially from a retrospective perspective, the importance of that can't be understated.

I'm not enough of a mathematician to be able to do this myself, but intuitively I expect that there must be some way to measure the chaoticness of a program-type mathematical system, the degree to which small perturbations in the input produce large changes in the output. We are familiar with this in practice in the programming world in the difference between languages like J or a fluffier language like Java. Within the domain of legal programs, perturbations in the original symbol stream are more likely to have larger effects on programs in J than in Java. My personal feeling, after watching people sort of screw around with CAs for the last many years (only recently unsubscribed from /r/cellular_automata) is that CA are simply too chaotic to be useful for any non-trivial purpose; the task of establishing correlation between a real physical outcome and a CA is too difficult, and then even if you do, the task of understanding the CA itself is still itself quite large! It just isn't a useful way of modeling the world. Or, if you prefer, the problem isn't that CAs are too _simple_ to model things with, the problem is that in general they are too _complex_. Either a CA is degenerately simple or impossibly chaotic and there just isn't enough in between. The same characteristics that makes it fun to watch a CA explode from a very small seed into a complex diagram that is still somehow obviously structured in strangely complex ways makes it impossible to actually make them do anything you want to do.

Go look at the Turing machine implemented in Life. Look at the sheer _size_ of the thing. It's a bit of a cheat because it is simulating something else that we already have models for, but... could you imagine trying to understand the behavior of Turing Machines through the lens of that Life model?

Another interesting thing to look at is the way people sometimes try to incorporate CAs into video games. It turns out they are very, very hard to tame into anything useful, without a lot of work spent constraining them down to something tractable. Or, in other words, by stripping out all their power just so they might do something slightly predictable.

Turing machines are a much better model of computation than CAs are of very many other real processes, and in practice, Turing machines are _still_ virtually useless, useful only for the theoretical pleasingness of the UTM and the resulting mathematical theorems, but not something we use on a day-to-day basis. Lambda calculus is way more useful, and even more useful than that is just the adhoc models we tend to use day-by-day that may lack nice mathematical properties but actually resemble the machines we work with. CAs have an even larger gap between their sheer mathematical perversity on the one hand, and any useful application on the other.

<comment><USER4> > It hasn't produced any fruit.

This as well is a good argument against the book. The fact that there doesn't appear to be anything brought forth in other fields, or in the same field of work as the book doesn't bode well for it.

Then again, there have been many time in history where something was written or put down, which wasn't known or seen to be relevant, workable, or whatnot, until many decades or centuries had passed. I'm not saying this book is a case of that, only that it might be. We don't really know, and can't if or until it happens, of course.

<comment><USER5> Re: Fruitfulness. For the general thesis of "computation" vs. "equations" as the "new kind of science", it is not like Stephen is the lone practitioner...

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time- blowup...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for- an-averaged-three-dimensional-navier-stokes-equation/)

...(skip down to the last paragraph).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regarding criticisms of this book...

When this book came out, I purchased a copy, determined to read it; I was successful in reading it, minus the appendix and notes section (which is printed so small, that if expanded to the size of the font used in the book, would probably create at least one or more books of the same length - <USER2> thing is insanely dense - but at least it isn't a "House of Leaves").

I only ran into one issue - on the first copy of the book I purchased: So far into the book (I don't recall how much offhand) the text repeated or did something weird; basically I had purchased a copy of the book that was bound improperly or something. I kept that copy, and purchased another.

Anyhow - what I constantly see in reviews of this book (then and now) is the criticism that what Wolfram wrote wasn't original, or "new", and that it was "egotistical" of the author to publish it.

What I've never understood though, is that the Wolfram constantly asserts that what he is writing isn't anything original or new - that it all existed before. I mean, I recall reading this kind of language seemingly on every other page. But I don't think I've seen a critical review that has mentioned this?

At this point, 15 years later (has it really been that long?) - I'm not sure what to think of the work. Based on the first few comments here, it still seems to be something that raises the hackles of people. Maybe it's deserving of the criticism? Or maybe it's one of those texts that needs to age a bit more before we see it for what it is?

Whatever - I enjoyed reading it, as difficult a read it was, I still found it fascinating and curious.

</comment><comment><USER8> Every mention of Stephen Wolfram's ego-trip of a book deserves a link to Cosma Shalizi's epic take-down of a review ("A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity"):

[http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/](http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/)

(EDIT) The gist: "As the saying goes, there is much here that is new and true, but what is true is not new, and what is new is not true; and some of it is even old and false, or at least utterly unsupported."

<comment><USER9> _Let me try to sum up. On the one hand, we have a large number of true but commonplace ideas, especially about how simple rules can lead to complex outcomes, and about the virtues of toy models. On the other hand, we have a large mass of dubious speculations (many of them also unoriginal). We have, finally, a single new result of mathematical importance, which is not actually the author 's. Everything is presented as the inspired fruit of a lonely genius, delivering startling insights in isolation from a blinkered and philistine scientific community. We have been this way before._

I had no idea this review existed, but it captures many of my reactions to the book when I first tried to read it many years ago. I distinctly remember the lack of discussion of previous work, lack of specific citations to the academic literature, and the garbled way in which scientific fields I had some knowledge of were explained. The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before.

<comment><USER10> > _The book seemed to take pains to make it appear as if the author were > inventing something the likes of which the world had never seen before._

A "new kind of science", perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of one of the most hilarious reviews I have read on Amazon. For some reasone it has disappreared, but it found it's way in this collection:

[http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html](http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/ANKOS_humor.html)

It's called "A New Kind of Review".

<comment><USER12> For posterity:

A New Kind of Review by "a reader"

I can only imagine how fortunate you must feel to be reading my review. This review is the product of my lifetime of experience in meeting important people and thinking deep thoughts. This is a new kind of review, and will no doubt influence the way you think about the world around you and the way you think of yourself.

 _Bigger than infinity_ Although my review deserves thousands of pages to articulate, I am limiting many of my deeper thoughts to only single characters. I encourage readers of my review to dedicate the many years required to fully absorb the significance of what I am writing here. Fortunately, we live in exactly the time when my review can be widely disseminated by "internet" technology and stored on "digital media", allowing current and future scholars to delve more deeply into my original and insightful use of commas, numbers, and letters.

 _My place in history_ My review allows, for the first time, a complete and total understanding not only of this but _every single_ book ever written. I call this "the principle of book equivalence." Future generations will decide the relative merits of this review compared with, for example, the works of Shakespeare. This effort will open new realms of scholarship.

 _More about me_ I first began writing reviews as a small child, where my talent was clearly apparent to those around me, including my mother. She preserved my early writings which, although simpler in structure, portend elements of my current style. I include one of them below (which I call review 30) to indicate the scholarly pedigree of the document now in your hands or on your screen or committed to your memory:

 _" The guy who wrote the book is also the publisher of the book. I guess he's the only person smart enough to understand what's in it. When I'm older I too will use a vanity press. Then I can write all the pages I want."..._

It is staggering to contemplate that all the great works of literature can be derived from the letters I use in writing this review. I am pleased to have shared them with you, and hereby grant you the liberty to use up to twenty (20) of them consecutively without attribution. Any use of additional characters in print must acknowledge this review as source material since it contains, implicitly or explicitly, all future written documents.</comment></comment>


6 Awesome Free/Open Source Software For Web Developers and Web Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.totally-hardware.co.uk/6-awesome-free-open-source-software-for-web-developers-and-web-designers/ <comment><USER2> not bad... I like kdevelop on linux tbh... NetBeans is kinda cool though.</comment>


Idea Feedback Request: Classifieds for your building - <AUTHOR>

Would anyone get any value out of "classifieds for you building" - i.e. a craigslist with location-scope specific to your office or apartment tower?
The premise behind this is that many of us share space with thousands of people every day - most of the stuff I've sold on kijiji/craigslist/wherever I could have easily sold to someone that I could have met in the lobby of my office tower, as opposed to driving all over town, etc.
Anyway, I can't tell if this concept is useful, or useless.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I can think of two situations in the last few weeks that could have used something like this. I just switched from Sprint to T-Mobile, so I got rid of some CDMA stuff like an Airave (mini cell tower that plugs into a broadband router). I sold it on eBay and took a hit on free shipping, but there is more than likely at least one other person in my condo complex with Sprint and bad reception who could have bought it and saved both of us on shipping, PayPal, and eBay fees. The other situation was at my new job. The armrest on my office chair broke, so I bought a new chair. Unbeknownst to me, the business downstairs moved out and they left a bunch of equipment behind. It wasn't until a few days ago that the new tenants started moving in, and I saw them hauling away the unwanted office equipment. I asked about it, and they said we could take anything we wanted before it went on the truck. If only the last company had offered before I bought my chair.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right - those are exactly the sort of face-palm moments that happen to me all the time. Seems like transacting ultra-locally would take a bunch of friction out of the process.

Gaining critical mass, such that connections like the examples you shared could actually be made, would be an interesting communication challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem may be that it would only be scalable within Urban areas. Often on Craigslist I'm faced with the problem that I can't post to specific communities or locale's within a city such as Westside, downtown, or a housing development.

</comment><comment><USER4> MANY people have tried this. It sounds nice in theory but it just doesn't work. I actually had an idea like this before and researched competitors. None of them caught on. Yet it's a startup that people try over and over and over again hoping it's some undiscovered market.

To most people, hyperlocal = less impact + less audience + less circulation + less reach. People don't want "hyperlocal" they want "giant stage", lots of reach, huge audience. Sure, dealing with people closer to you is better. But what people really want is just Craiglist with a "sort by closeness" filter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank-you for the insightful response - craigslist w/ a closeness filter is a good way of thinking about it.</comment></comment>


Asparagus - <AUTHOR> http://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/10-surprising-facts-asparagus/

<comment><USER2> They left out an important interesting fact about asparagus...

It is a fern.

<comment><USER3> They are not a kind of "fern" (Pteridophyta) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern) . Asparagus are a kind of "flowering plant" (Angiosperm) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant) .

More info: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagus)

<comment><USER2> You are right!

I was told once asparagus is a fern and always believed it.</comment></comment></comment>