Why You've Never Read "I Have A Dream" - <AUTHOR> http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59684564818/why-youve-never-read-i-have-a-dream <comment><USER2> I have to disagree with part of the premise. While the speech is copyrighted, that might not be the reason most people haven't read or seen the entirety of the speech. If schools really wanted to teach it, it would be well within fair use laws for them to show the whole thing. There are probably a variety of other reasons why you don't see this speech taught in schools.

First one that comes to mind is its length. Unlike the Gettysburg Address, this isn't some short speech that could be easily recited from memory.

Secondly, there is a lot of religious imagery in the speech. I could certainly imagine people objecting to having the speech presented in a secular school.

Finally and probably most importantly, what do speeches really teach us? They aren't particularly valuable outside of context. How many of the speeches listed here ([http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html](http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html)) are really taught in school?

<comment><USER3> > If schools really wanted to teach it, it would be well within fair use laws > for them to show the whole thing.

No, not a chance. Even a few paragraphs would likely get them smashed, especially if they're the most interesting of the speech.

> First one that comes to mind is its length.

Have people stopped studying books or something?

> Secondly, there is a lot of religious imagery in the speech. I could > certainly imagine people objecting to having the speech presented in a > secular school.

I wouldn't.

> Finally and probably most importantly, what do speeches really teach us? > They aren't particularly valuable outside of context.

It's quite obvious that the speech would be put in context by and used within civil rights study.

<comment><USER4> Schools have successfully used copyrighted books all the time in literature classes without problems. You can't run it off yourself on the mimeograph machine but just go buy 30 copies and leave them in the classroom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course they can. That's not the issue. The issue is that textbook publishers cannot (or will not) include the speech in their books, because then they would have to pay royalties (and indirectly pass along those costs to the schools).

Furthermore, use of the video is much more heavily controlled by the King estate.

<comment><USER4> Schoolbooks are full of stuff that is copyrighted. The photos explicitly are.

We still have Norton's Antologies, right? Many of those are 100% filled with copyrighted works they need to pay royalties on. And they do. And everything works out just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The speech is readily found by those who know how to Google. Perhaps more Americans would have read the speech if not for the crazy copyright laws, but I think most people haven't read it simply because most people aren't interested in reading historical speeches.

It's a little off-topic and a little cynical, but I think the larger issue here is that we've watered our teaching of history (and most things) down to soundbites and simple explanations. What we learned about Columbus, MLK, and all the founding fathers were stripped of everything controversial to create flawless heroes with views no PTA member would find offensive.

How many of the influential speeches in history have you read? I think Time's list is a good starting place. These were all inspiring, influential, and are all readily available for free:

[http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/...](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1841228,00.html)

If you have read even half of these, maybe then I'll buy the copyright argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The speech is readily found by those who know how to Google.

Unfortunately, textbook are still a/the standard source of information in most public schools. Yes, this raises separate questions about the way that we structure our education system, but that's not the issue at hand.

The speech is readily found by those willing to go out of their way to look for it, but it is not included in most textbooks, because those publishers would then have to pay royalties to the King estate (and indirectly pass those costs along to the schools).

The video is much harder to find (legally, not illegally!), because the King estate controls it much more tightly.

<comment><USER6> Also, 15 years ago, most people had no idea who Google were, internet adoption was much lower, there was a vast majority of people who didn't even own a computer.

Your points are still very valid, but something as significant as this should never have been copyright-able from day one.

 _Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. ~ Mark Twain_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can read it here [http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

<comment><USER8> And watch it here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs)

Incidentally, please do take the 17 minutes to watch this speech (and perhaps follow along with yread's transcript link). It really is one of the greatest speeches ever given.

<comment><USER9> And keep in mind that MLK was 34 years old when he gave that speech. I'm trying hard not to think about what I was doing at that age...

<comment><USER10> Also keep in mind that the last portion starting with "I have a dream..." and following was all improvised. The original draft didn't include those words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author here makes a good point until he asks his final question. In the case of Dr. Martin Luther King I don't believe copyright would have had any influence on the likelihood of delivering it. The purpose of the speech was selfless and so despite the copyright issue being disappointing it doesn't seem like he would have said "well, since future students won't be able to read the full text of my speech why deliver it?" Though he understood the significance of the march and probably knew his speech was important is there any evidence to suggest he knew how iconic it would become? And even if he did, was he going to forego addressing his audience, the people assembled at the Lincoln Memorial, to make a statement on copyright? It's doubtful. His speech was for the audience there. The fact that it could be reprinted and studied by future generations is just a bonus. The idea that King would be less likely to deliver his speech because of copyright is not realistic.

That said, this also isn't a convincing argument for the abolition of copyright either. I don't know if that was the point though. What this does show is how a copyright can serve the opposite of its intended purpose and hurt society. But for every case like the King speech there are plenty more that are examples of its benefit.

It's disappointing that we do not have free and open access to the I Have a Dream speech but its not a good argument against copyright. Copyright is still an issue that boils down to its use and has to be considered on a case by case basis. I don't think it ever has been all good or all bad and overlooking the vast sea of nuance there doesn't help proponents or opponents of it.

<comment><USER12> > But for every case like the King speech there are plenty more that are > examples of its benefit.

How does extending copyright to 70 years after his death benefit our culture or the dead author? Do you honestly think there is even a single song or piece of literature that was not written because the author was concerned about his grandchildren retaining copyright control over his idea?

I appreciate that you're trying to take a balanced view, but you're missing the point that the laws have extended copyright to such absurd levels that they now damaging the cultural progress they are supposed to promote.

If you don't think this is a real issue, I suggest you read these two other examples of copyright destroying our cultural heritage.

[http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130215archi...](http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130215archives#f3DBKAwelujA9tNFocKQyg)

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/documentaries- old...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/documentaries-old-footage- and-copyright/)

<comment><USER13> > grandchildren retaining copyright control over his idea

You are being conservative. Let's try to visualize a hypothetical example...

Age 25 children are born.

Age 40 write work of art.

Age 50 grand children are born.

Age 75 great grand children are born.

Age 80 dies.

100 years after being born. Great great grand children are born.

125 years after being born. Great great great grand children are born.

150 years after being born. Great great great great grand children are born. Copyright runs out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Heard it during MLK Day on NPR, was absolutely floored.

Also, MLK's comments on the Vietnam War were remarkably prescient, and apply just fine to our terrible wars today.

If you still believe that the USG is not, in places and at times, terribly evil and corrupt, you probably don't know about the USG's efforts to kill MLK: [http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/31/mlk.fbi.conspiracy/](http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/31/mlk.fbi.conspiracy/)

<comment><USER15> It doesn't sound like they tried to kill him. They tried to prove an alignment with the communist party (and failed miserably). I can't believe the FBI honestly thought a note would drive him to suicide.

<comment><USER16> The FBI was doing a whole lot more than trying to link him to the communists. It was standard operation to infiltrate all civil rights groups. I don;t know specifically what they did to King's org, but the Black Panthers were fucked by the FBI. Malcom X's body guard, for example, was an undercover FBI agent. Most of the civil rights groups had undercover FBI inside them, and in high ranking positions.

Yet another example of our government hating our freedoms.... Oh wait, I thought those were the terrorists....

<comment><USER17> Can infiltrating the Black Panthers really be considered "anti-freedoms"? What freedoms, exactly? The freedom to be violent?

<comment><USER18> Agreed, I thought the same way. To quote the Beatles:

 _We all want to change the world / But when you talk about destruction /Don't you know that you can count me out_

 _But when you want money / For people with minds that hate / All I can tell is brother you have to wait_

<comment><USER19> Easy for John Lennon to say as a misogynist white man who had all the money and privilege in the world.

<comment><USER18> I don't know about misogynist but he was white and was rich from his music. Lennon was a peace-loving hippie. The lyrics from 'Revolution' aren't necessarily talking about the Black Panthers, I always felt they were talking to the times and society in general, including government.

Jay-Z is rich now too - can he not have opinions on politics/race/religion or do you also dismiss him as a misogynist black man who had all the money and privilege in the world?

<comment><USER19> John Lennon can't opt out the violence society perpetuates that seeks to uphold whiteness just by writing a song about how he's not into violence. He also can't opt out of the aspects of capitalism that perpetuate racism. That is what I mean about how it is easy for him to write or lyrics like that, he will not feel the full brunt of society's affects because 1) he is a man, 2) because he is white, and 3) because he had tremendous wealth.

> Jay-Z is rich now too - can he not have opinions on politics/race/religion > or do you also dismiss him as a misogynist black man who had all the money > and privilege in the world?

I don't know why you bring up Jay-Z, I never said that any musician can't have an opinion. But it is easy to be about non-violence when you are not yourself the primary target of systemic, state sponsored violence.

<comment><USER20> > hat is what I mean about how it is easy for him to write or lyrics like > that, he will not feel the full brunt of society's affects

Who exactly feels the full brunt of society's effects? This is starting to feel like a no true scotsman argument. I'm betting you can disqualify almost anyone from feeling the _full_ effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And, the U.S. government had to _pay_ the king family $800,000 for the rights to use his copyrighted words on the very statue built to memorialize him.

([http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/08/maya- angelou-u...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/08/maya-angelou- upset-over-mlk-memorial-inscription/))

<comment><USER22> Can someone please explain this? Do his children depend on the royalties for income?

<comment><USER23> No. Profits made from royalties go primarily into funding The King Center. [http://www.thekingcenter.org/](http://www.thekingcenter.org/)

<comment><USER24> And who works for the King Center? MLK's kids.

So yes, royalties go to the King Center, which at least in part, go to his children, including MLK III.

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

<comment><USER25> And this is bad...how? They are working to further MLK's goals.

<comment><USER26> I haven't seen anything that they've done of recent merit in the news lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The counter argument, though, is "How many people have read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address"?

Many know "Four score and seven years ago", but how many know "we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground"?

I think this says more about our "sound-bite" culture than how protective the family is of the audio.

<comment><USER28> >The counter argument, though, is "How many >people have read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address"?

Your counter-argument was about as valid as saying "How many people have needed freedom?"

In any case, your counter-argument seems unrelated to the OP's post... Whether or not people would read or listen to the entire speech, the OP was arguing that copyright laws are impeding the creation of new content, the consumption of existing, important content and society's understanding of itself.

>I think this says more about our "sound-bite" culture than >how protective the family is of the audio.

Ironically, your comment represents the 'sound-bite' culture quite effectively.

<comment><USER27> Why are you making this about me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "I Have A Dream" shows the heights of humanity, and its copyright status shows the pettiness of humanity.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+have+a+dream&p...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+have+a+dream&page=&utm_source=opensearch)

thank god for those who don't respect overzealous copyright holders.

<comment><USER31> Indeed, YouTube was my first answer to this.

We need more Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X for the issues of today (regulatory capture and the shredded constitution, political campaign finance, income/opportunity inequality being the main meta-issues), I think, rather than more MLK.

<comment><USER32> You're saying we need more people who physically harm others?

<comment><USER31> Without the threat of someone more extreme, I don't believe someone like MLK can be terribly effective. I also don't think someone like MLK can work in a repressive regime which isn't generally subject to public will, or when trying to enforce human rights which are constitutionally protected, strongly wanted by a small affected population, but meaningless to the greater population.

I can't see 50-80 year old non-technical voters caring about key escrow or mandatory data retention, even though it's an infringement of 1A/2A/4A/5A/6A/14A/+.

(It's not violence per se, it's extremism. RMS is a copyright extremist, and that makes things easier for people like Lessig I think. Gilmore is a fly- without-papers extremist, etc.)

<comment><USER33> _Crypto as a 2nd Ammendment issue_

That's why I like you rdl; munitions are munitions.

<comment><USER31> "Bombes not bombs!" (or Bombs not Bombes, I guess). RKB Bombes? Ban the Bombe?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> King himself sued people over the copyright. We need to be careful not to revise history and turn people who did great things into saints.

<comment><AUTHOR> > We need to be careful not to revise history and turn people who did great > things into saints.

That's true. I should have cut the last paragraph before posting, but now that it's out there and people have read it, I think it's best to let it stand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This completely ignores that companies will sell, and edit, popular public domain works for a profit, if they can.

It was initially a defensive copyright by the King, Jr. estate. Fox Records started selling records of the speech in 1968 [1]. And, CBS was rebroadcasting the speech for commercial purposes [2]. Only later did his family more strictly control the work and likeness of King, Jr. Otherwise, we might have seen the Dr. King, Jr. version of the Obama-hitler posters of 2008, or his face on a box of children's cereal.

[1] [http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/mlk_spee...](http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/mlk_speech/)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_J...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc).

<comment><USER36> Given the technology of the era, how else where people supposed to gain access to it? And so what if they made a profit doing it, so long as other companies or individuals had the right to distribute it also. In the end more copies would have been distributed and listened to.

And as for the "MLK-Hitler poster" argument, that would be fair use and wouldn't be stopped by copyright.

<comment><USER35> > And as for the "MLK-Hitler poster" argument, that would be fair use

Selling MLK-Hitler posters would not count as fair use. That was the point I was making.

<comment><USER37> Are you serious? I'm fairly sure you're protected by the first amendment for selling MLK-Hitler posters. In fact, you can Google for those items now. Here's one:

[http://www.redbubble.com/people/artofmewa/works/8484381-the-...](http://www.redbubble.com/people/artofmewa/works/8484381-the- thin-line-of-choices-martin-luther-king-and-hitler?p=t-shirt)

<comment><USER35> Their existence only proves they haven't been sued yet. But, you have a good point. Perhaps I am mixing Trademark, and Right of Publicity, with Copyright. All of them apply in this case, and have been used in the past to prevent the unauthorized use of MLK's image and works.

<comment><USER38> As a public figure, MLK ('s estate) has greatly reduced right of publicity, so I'm not sure how you think that would come into this. You are allowed to criticize celebrities. Even in California, MLK's personality rights wouldn't survive his death anyway.

As for Trademark... what is the trademark here, and how would anyone be confused by an MLK-Hitler poster? I don't think anyone is going to buy an MLK- Hitler poster thinking that they are getting MLK-brand doughnuts (or even MLK- Hitler brand doughnuts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Here's a good summary of the copyright issue: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/wp/2013/08/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer- sheet/wp/2013/08/27/i-have-a-dream-speech-still-private-property/)

<comment><USER40> Interestingly it mentions that _King himself_ was involved in suing people for selling videos of his speech, showing that the final lines of the blog article are wrong - he actually did enjoy the protections that copyright law offered him.

<comment><USER41> Did he also sue people who weren't profiting from his speech?

I think those are very different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Actually, I _have_ read "I Have a Dream". In school. In multiple classes, at multiple schools, in different parts of the U.S. We also watched the video of the speech in class.

Copyright law isn't preventing the material from being taught. Teachers don't actually _care_ about such restrictions. They ignore them and teach it anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Teachers don't actually care about such restrictions.

No, but textbook publishers do. The current state of affairs means that very few textbooks include the speech, because textbooks are sold commercially.

Agreed, teachers are notorious for ignoring copyright (I've seen them photograph entire books for us in teaching), but that's a separate matter. IMHO, the solution to broken uses of copyright isn't to say, "let's just ignore it", even if that does have a desirable effect.

<comment><USER43> I know that McDougal includes it in their teachings. Here's the lesson plan that I learned off of and that is still taught now: [http://www.classzone.com/books/language_of_lit_gr07/page_bui...](http://www.classzone.com/books/language_of_lit_gr07/page_build.cfm?content=sl_dream_u2&u=2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > ... the two other people who wrote it (and likely wrote most of it).

For what it's worth, when MLK noticed he was failing to engage the audience, he went off-script and improvised a large portion of the speech.

<comment><AUTHOR> All the more reason for people to watch the video (which is much more heavily controlled by the King estate) than to rely on the printed text!

<comment><USER44> Most text copies you find are transcripts of what he actually said, not the script he was reading. It's easy to tell the difference, because the phrase "I have a dream" isn't in the script he was reading!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> the part that disgusts me is that the estate was paid seven hundred thousand dollars to use the words on the monument erected in his honor. I posted this the other day from an article in the Washington Times, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6290716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6290716) which leads to [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see- or-h...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see-or-hear-the- i-have-a-dream- speech/2013/08/27/09d2a07a-0e66-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html)

I know copyright and such laws have their place, but when it comes down to it, this estate is just greedy above all else.

<comment><USER46> Not to excuse that, but if you give the average person a lever they can pull to cause $700k to get airdropped into their hands, I think the vast majority would. From a policy perspective, maybe we should rethink that lever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> From someone (not me) who's dealt with publishing excerpts in a book, at least one major publisher's lawyers have decided that the text of the speech was indeed a "public performance" \- given in a public place, and broadcast on public radio - and therefore not under copyright. The King family are apparently notoriously insistent on high royalties for any use of the estate's copyrighted works, but they seem to only have a firm lock on the video recordings.

(Of course, this may be something that has yet to be tested in court, so Don't Try This At Home unless you have the money for a large lawsuit.)

</comment><comment><USER48> I read the entirety in college. It was in a textbook I used to own. That in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which is also very much worth reading (found here: [http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...](http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html) )

<comment><USER49> I remember reading that about a year ago though Letters of Note (which is often excellent), and being absolutely _blown away_ by how eloquent King was. It was an amazing letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> National Archives... Seemed pretty freely available to me

[http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER51> I remember hearing the story of how the text was written and at the last minute, as copies were being made, the lawyer for King added the Circle C and copyright info. Apparently the King family has benefitted financially by that last minute addition.

Frankly, I can't imagine a better way to reward Dr. King, and his family, for such an amazing event and turning point in our history.

It's not like the money is going to AT&T or Microsoft.

<comment><USER52> Unless copyright law has changed since then, the circle c doesn't matter. The way copyright works in the US, the rights to any creative work are automatically reserved for the author.

<comment><USER53> Yes, this aspect of copyright law has changed since the Sixties. The circled-C symbol (or the equivalent words) were required before 1989:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Cop...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Copyright_notices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> On the Media did a great story on this [1]. If you've got 13 minutes to spare, they discuss the copyright issue and the actual construction and delivery of the speech itself.

[1] [http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/jan/13/dr-martin-luther- king-...](http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/jan/13/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and- public-imagination/)

</comment><comment><USER55> I love how you equate "access" with "reading". Especially given the highly rhetoric tone of the speech, reading it to me would just be doing the whole thing a disservice. A good chunk of what makes that speech successful is his awesome use of rhetoric and repitition to get his point across. It's a really dumbass comparison but IMO Chris Rock does the same thing, he'll repeat a concept over and over to the audience in between doing jokes about the concept. I think these are two sides to the same coin, rhetoric goes a LONG way when convincing others that your words are truth in public.

We studied this speech in my high school, as well as speeches by FDR and John F. Kennedy (sidenote: why are all great public speakers referred to by the initials that make up their name? MLK, FDR, JFK, etc.). We studied the speech to learn more about rhetoric and how an orator can twist common words into powerful devices for convincing you to believe in their ideas.

Oh and by the way? __we read it too __. This was to emphasize how much more powerful the speech is when SPOKEN rather than read. It 's really not that fun to read, the sentences are so repetitive, short and simple that it's hard to believe an educated man wrote them, but that is of course the purpose of such speeches...you speak them in such a way that the simple becomes complex and weak words become powerful.

</comment><comment><USER56> We actually read the full speech in school and watched the youtube video. We got it as a copy from a textbook called "Speeches that changed the world" by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

You can get the ebook from the google play store. From the free sample it seems like they got permission to reproduce copyrigth material from The Estate of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

[https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=jPArcMn728kC](https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=jPArcMn728kC)

</comment><comment><USER57> I've seen and read the entire speech dozens of times: In school, I distinctly remember being given the entire speech transcription and talking about it as a class on more than one occasion. In elementary school, we would have an actor come on our "morning announcements" and re-enact the speech each year. One teacher showed it to us on YouTube in it's entirety.

Is my experience really that unusual?

<comment><USER58> Yes. This is unusual. I went to 4 elementary schools. My wife is a elementary school teacher and has taught at around 5 of them and none did this.

I am curious how old you are if you saw a Youtube video in your class in elementary school.

<comment><USER57> I was jumping around chronologically, the video was shown by a teacher I had in high school. That wasn't clear, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> There was a move earlier in the year on "Internet Freedom Day' for everyone to share the video of the speech, anywhere they could, in defiance of the copyright. Not sure what traction there was. [http://boingboing.net/2013/01/18/its-internet-freedom-day- ti...](http://boingboing.net/2013/01/18/its-internet-freedom-day-ti.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> 150 used, starting at $0.65 - I don't really think this material is that difficult to acquire.

[http://www.amazon.com/Have-Dream-Writings-Speeches- Anniversa...](http://www.amazon.com/Have-Dream-Writings-Speeches- Anniversary/dp/0062505521)

""I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World," by Martin Luther King, Jr., is a fine collection of texts by this important figure. The book has been edited by James M. Washington. Coming in at less than 300 pages, this is a concise but meaty book. Washington includes King's most important texts: the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"; the "I Have a Dream" speech; his Nobel Prize acceptance speech; "My Trip to the Land of Gandhi"; "A Time to Break Silence," his 1967 speech criticizing the United States war in Vietnam, and more. These writings and speeches cover King's great themes: nonviolent resistance, the African-American civil rights movement, etc."

</comment><comment><USER61> My retort:

[http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html](http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html)

[http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/national/i-have-a-dream- speech...](http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/national/i-have-a-dream-speech-full- text-martin-luther-king-jrs-words-on-aug-28-1963)

</comment><comment><USER62> I remember watching it on some encyclopedia product that came loaded on my HP back sometime around '95\. They also had presidential speeches and the Hindenburg crash among other events. I thought I was the coolest kid ever to have access to such historical information at my home; that so much data could be stored on a simple CD.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is a much, much better article on the same subject: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see- or-h...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see-or-hear-the- i-have-a-dream- speech/2013/08/27/09d2a07a-0e66-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER64> It's interesting the version from the US National Archives ([http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)) has (top of page 5) different wording to the speech (IIRC)

      My own little children ... shall be judged not by the color of their skin

Vs

      My four small children ... shall not be judged by ...

"Shall be judged not" is the speech and just the memory with its crackling soundtrack gets me. It's odd how even with a prepared speech he still belted out a better version on the day.

Edit: oh yes - anyone wanting to improve their accent before the next YC interviews could do a lot lot worse than have MLK playing through their headphones each day. Learn from the very best.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm feeling a little evil now...

I have a dream. I dreamed with some bad guys writting with a felt-tip the complete speech in several walls in your cities, in a corner next of your schools. Ten point size is okay much more should be excessive.

Then the good people; lawyers and copyright holders came to delete the illegal speechs from the walls, restoring the law and the order.

This could be and extremely interesting social experiment, maybe even a piece of performance art.

If there is a "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day", a "Mother's Day, a "World Sparrow day" and a day to play with rubber bats, candies and pumpkins; why not a "Everybody writes a famous speech day that changes our country for good it the corner of his/her street, in a paper airplane or in a ballon"?

Could make a really beautiful local holiday...

</comment><comment><USER66> Yet Fox News published it not two days ago:

[http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/27/transcript-martin- luthe...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/27/transcript-martin-luther-king- jr-have-dream-speech/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Chances are they had to pay for it, since that probably did not fall under "fair use" (they are a commercial entity, using the speech as part of their commercial purposes).

Unfortunately, the same can be said about textbook publishers, and most of them _don 't_ pay for it.

Worse, the video is much more heavily controlled by the King estate than the printed text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This was done intentionally by MLK with the proceeds used for good works last time I looked into it. So, amusingly, articles like this are kind of written out of ignorance as to the speech itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This was done intentionally by MLK with the proceeds used for good works > last time I looked into it.

Irrespective of this, it reduces the number of textbooks that can publish the text of the speech to (almost) zero, since most publishers can't afford it.

This is a value judgement and therefore subjective, but I don't believe it's worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Second result on google: [http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER69> I don't know about you all, but public school did an abysmal job of teaching me any US history post-WWII. It's like nothing has happened in this country since the women's suffrage movement, with WWII a hasty footnote. Honestly, I think the politics were too hot to handle through the 1980s, when cultural divides arout Vietnam were very fresh, and those from King's time still not too distant. What is being taught in high school nowadays?

<comment><USER70> I actually think this has more to do with the textbook authors not thinking of those time periods as "history" but as "current events" somehow and hence not feeling like a "history" book needs to include them. If you were in school about 15-20 years ago, and the textbooks were about 15 years old (pretty common), and the authors were in their 40s or 50s when writing them, then events of 60-65 years ago, so the late 40s and early 50s, would have corresponded to their teenage years...

Once you get into the 70s or 80s, it's not just the textbook authors who think that way but also most of the teachers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Let's not beat about the bush: the King Estate is a bunch of dumbasses and if they want Dr Martin Luther King to be forgotten, they are doing a great job.

</comment><comment><USER72> I watched this speech near every MLK day in the US while I was growing up, I remember sitting there not understanding it as I was in grammar school.

We watched it on a large TV set that they rolled in on a cart. Granted I was in a 99% white school at the time, but the school was not for the rich - however they bought the necessary footage (I assume now, no idea).

I distinctly remember Dr. King's voice, I will not forget it.

</comment><comment><USER73> In 9th grade I memorized and delivered the _I Have a Dream_ speech for my English Honors program. I memorized it by reading it over and over again and I also found an audio recording that I burned onto a CD and listened to 10 times every night. It took me 16 minutes to deliver the whole speech (in costume). I have no idea where I found the audio recording now, although NPR sounds right.

<comment><USER74> I did the exact same thing. The teacher offered it as a way to move up a whole letter grade.

Our textbook had the whole thing printed, but I also found it online at the time. Also downloaded the audio, though I'm not sure where from, since YouTube wasn't around then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Apparently the Churchill estate is also very aggressive about royalties for speeches and written works by Winston Churchill: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/16193821734/church...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130118/16193821734/churchills- heirs-seek-to-lose-future-charging-biographer-to-quote-his-words.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER74> In high school I memorized the entire speech word for word to move my grade from a B to an A. I've read it many, many, many times.

</comment><comment><USER76> Video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs)

Text: [http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

WUT!

</comment><comment><USER77> 'I Have a Dream' \- Martin Luther King Jr. (audio only): [http://fora.tv/1963/08/28/I_Have_a_Dream_Martin_Luther_King_...](http://fora.tv/1963/08/28/I_Have_a_Dream_Martin_Luther_King_Jr_audio_only)

</comment><comment><USER78> We've read the speech in school in Germany. Not from a textbook, but simply a copied text, from the internet I presume. Was that illegal? I think every class did. A relative who was a few years behind me also read it, with a different teacher.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure of international copyright status, but probably it was legal.

The main casualty of the copyright status is that _textbooks_ cannot reproduce it freely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Prediction: major copyright holder will buy the rights and then license them liberally to get rid of this embarrassing poster child for copyright reform.

Actually scratch that, it's not a prediction. It would be smart, but it probably won't happen.

</comment><comment><USER80> His speech is featured at least once a year (and it was on a few nights ago) on NPR on KUOW.

His Massey Lectures are also publicly available: [http://www.prx.org/series/31037](http://www.prx.org/series/31037)

</comment><comment><USER81> Image not available pending copyright permission

[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/h?ammem/mcc:@field(DOCID...](http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/h?ammem/mcc:@field\(DOCID+@lit\(mcc/029\)))

</comment><comment><USER82> Those in the UK can listen to the speech, in full, for free on iPlayer. It's not Kings original recording but it's respoken by notable civil rights personalities. Just look for I Have A Dream on iPlayer, BBC Radio 4

</comment><comment><USER83> [http://www.ibtimes.com/i-have-dream-speech-full- transcript-v...](http://www.ibtimes.com/i-have-dream-speech-full-transcript- video-read-dr-martin-luther-king-jrs-1963-speech-its-50th)

</comment><comment><USER84> The full text of the speech is in the National Archives: [http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER85> I both read and heard the speech entirely in high school back in the 80s. We spent something like 2-3 days on it and MLK's life during that period.

Is the author (and submitter, who's the same person) working off a false premise?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Is the author (and submitter, who's the same person) working off a false > premise?

A large portion of this was affected by a lawsuit from 1999, so keep that in mind[0][1]

Also, students today are not prevented from _reading_ the speech; however, the teacher must find a copy online and print it out and distribute it to the students - the point is that most _textbooks_ will not be able to publish/include it.

As for the video recording, yes that's been much more heavily restricted.

[0][http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/194_F3d_1211.htm](http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/194_F3d_1211.htm) [1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_J...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Throughout my college years, I had a poster with his entire speech on one of my walls. Unfortunately, tape is not good to posters so I don't have it anymore. I also had John Lennon's Imagine as poster.

</comment><comment><USER87> Maybe I'm the exception, but I never experienced anything but easy access to the speech. A few months ago I googled it and got the full text and great YouTube video taping of it. No issues.

</comment><comment><USER88> But... It's here? [http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream- speech.pdf](http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER89> It's on YouTube, although I don't know if it's complete:

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

</comment><comment><USER90> Can we officially retire this discussion, apres anniversary?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3474526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3474526)

</comment><comment><USER91> It is on spotify: [http://open.spotify.com/track/2jtvgfG4XLPmr0BR6p1mk5](http://open.spotify.com/track/2jtvgfG4XLPmr0BR6p1mk5)

</comment><comment><USER92> I own a German biography of Martin Luther King by Frederik Hetmann (1979), which includes a German translation of the speech.

I'm sure the translation is copyrighted under German law.

</comment><comment><USER58> >ask the people sitting near you if they've ever heard the >opening lines:

>"I am happy to join with you today..."

If you are a Michael Jackson fan this was included on the song History.

</comment><comment><USER93> Isn't the real problem the whole concept of for-profit textbooks? Without that, we, and our children could read and study these magnificent words.

</comment><comment><USER94> Ah yes, I love it when "Hacker News readers" becomes a thing. Just like, "Redditors have pointed out via YouTube comments..."

</comment><comment><USER95> It was in my 8th grade textbook. I remember because I got 50 pts "extra credit" for memorizing it...and the Gettysburg Address too.

</comment><comment><USER96> Copyrighted by EMI/Sony: [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/copyright-king-why- the-i-ha...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/copyright-king-why-the-i-have-a- dream-speech-still-isn-t-free)

There is some effort to make it public (as it should be): [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/internet-activists-are- wagi...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/internet-activists-are-waging-a- guerrilla-war-to-free-martin-luther-king-from-copyright)

</comment><comment><USER97> My English textbook in high school had the text of the speech, and on MLK day we watched a portion of the video.

</comment><comment><USER98> That's the secondary reason. Real reason: because I'm too lazy, and frankly don't really care.

</comment><comment><USER99> FWIW everyone in my school in Germany read the entire speech in English class.

</comment><comment><USER100> Actually, it was printed in full yesterday in the Dutch newspaper NRC Next.

</comment><comment><USER101> Totally agree.

</comment><comment><USER102> false. did a paper on it in college.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is one of the most widely circulated speeches on the internet. If you Google "I Have A Dream Speech", you'll get the pdf, origial text and full video.

What a stupid post.

<comment><USER12> I can also Google "Man of Steel (2013) torrent" and download a copy in minutes. That doesn't make it legal. Likewise, you can't stream or show "I Have A Dream Speech" or "Man of Steel" to an audience without violating copyright laws.

The real stupidity are our laws extending copyright to 70 years after death, so backwards that many people just chose to ignore them.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Search engine for blogs? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in getting search results from only blogs. Is there a search engine for blogs, or a clever Google method to perform this? <comment><USER2> There was.

[https://searchengineland.com/rip-technorati-blog-search- rank...](https://searchengineland.com/rip-technorati-blog-search-rankings- popular-blog-tools-sunset-195186)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040727005046/http://www.techno...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040727005046/http://www.technorati.com)</comment>


Reading a large codebase - <AUTHOR>

I have been learning python from a couple of books and now I want to make a step up to reading code. However, when I encounter a big application like django, I cant seem to make much sense of the code. My question is what does one do when one encounters a large codebase and wants to make sense of it? <comment><USER2> I think this SO thread might be useful to you: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/215076/whats-the-best- way...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/215076/whats-the-best-way-to- become-familiar-with-a-large-codebase)

</comment><comment><USER3> Episode 148 of Software Engineering Radio may be helpful.

[http://www.se-radio.net/2009/11/episode-148-software- archaeo...](http://www.se-radio.net/2009/11/episode-148-software-archaeology- with-dave-thomas/)</comment>


Web Startup Summer Camp for Students & New Entrepreneurs  - <AUTHOR> http://summercamp.carsonified.com/

<comment><USER2> I dont mean to be harsh, but apart from the Future of...events, what startups of Carsonified's have been a real success?

<comment><USER3> is selling a startup for "low six figures" not impressive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think his point was "other than the one success [which might have been a lucky fluke]", what success have these guys actually done?</comment>


Why does anyone still use Eclipse? - <AUTHOR>

Why does anyone still use eclipse? It's the most tedious, slow, unusable piece of software that makes java a pain to use. <comment><USER2> In a word, Android. Google pretty much requires one to use Eclipse in order to develop Android software. Obviously one can struggle to get around this assumption, but the adjustments required take more effort than using Eclipse, granted its many limitations.

<comment><USER3> Google has switched to Idea with Android Studio: [http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html](http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html)

<comment><USER4> "Obviously one can struggle to get around this assumption"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because it "just works" and no other platform has yet convinced me that it is sufficiently better to justify the investment of time and energy which would be required to switch.

Take Netbeans - I've tried it, and it's nice enough. But it never wowed me as being so much better that I could justify throwing away all the accumulated knowledge and experience of dealing with Eclipse that I've built up over the years.

IntelliJ? For years was purely a closed-source, proprietary program which completely ruled it out from the get-to. Now, they have some kinda open- source'ish "community edition" or something, but I still think of their outfit as being largely a vendor of proprietary crap, which diminishes my interest in investing time there.

And outside of Eclipse, Netbeans, and IntelliJ, what is there in the Java world?

Sure, Eclipse has its flaws, and performance has always been one, but, for my purposes anyway, it remains "good enough".

<comment><USER6> This is the exact reason I still use eclipse too. Another point you didn't mention is that there are a lot of other products built on eclipse. For example, in high school, when I did FIRST robotics, the IDE we used for programming the microcontrollers, WindRiver, was/is built on eclipse. Knowing eclipse before I got to that stage was incredibly useful and really helped my productivity. Eclipse is also "vulnerable" to the fact that nearly everyone has at least tried it and has some idea of how to use it, which when choosing an IDE for group projects tends to swing the balance in its favor since fewer people have to learn a new environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're a polyglot/polyplatform developer then eclipse based IDE's are awesome. You can drop an eclipse into a directory, untar it, and run it... and toss it away later if you want. Titanium Studio, SpringSource Tool Suite, and, of course, basic Eclipse are all versions of Eclipse. I don't pay a cent, and can make my way through several projects with the same IDE skill set as they all use variations of the same commands. I don't have to deal with annoying and expensive licensing issues. The IDE is free, and the plugins I choose are also usually free. By free, I mean free in all senses. If I want to get someone going on my project, they can download an Eclipse based IDE and get rolling without paying a cent. As a final bonus, most tutorials reference Eclipsed based IDE's... not a paid IDE.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am an android developer with low-end hardware(2gb ram and core 2 due cpu). I can do every work in eclipse with ease.

But when i tried IntelliJ-based android studio, it pretty much stucked in every five minutes and even crashed a lot. after struggling for 2-3 weeks i went back to eclipse.

and it still works great.

</comment><comment><USER9> Eclipse works fine on my Acer Aspire Netbook. I agree it could be better but it's essentially a very capable and adaptable piece of software that's available for free.

<comment><USER10> IntelliJ is a significantly lesser resource hog. I need 3 gigs with eclipse but only 1 with intellij in ram, and cpu utilization is way better in IntelliJ.

<comment><USER11> There is something weird with Eclipse on your setup. I just checked mine and it takes 0.5. I normally keep three eclipse instances open (I switch projects and do not care about closing them) and they do not take much memory.

<comment><USER12> Definitely something strange there. I'm using IBM RAD (Proprietary Eclipse with tons of custom plugins) at work and it's about 650-ish MB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neither idea nor netbeans seem to have killer feature that would motivating me to move. I know eclipse too well, I am used some its plugins and I can write my own plugins and use some of those.

Netbeans was too slow last time I tried and Eclipse is not unstable for me.

If I would work with android, I would switch to IntelliJ. I heard that one is better and Android plugin for Eclipse is horrible.

<comment><USER13> Netbeans performance was for most of its history a step better than Eclipse. But I can recall a time when neither would run worth a damn and Visual Studio and Visual J++ was the best Java implementation and toolchain.

NetBeans also behaves like a GUI is supposed to. I wish the Android SDK was built on NetBeans. But with Google and Oracle being at loggerheads, it ain't going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why do you care? Seriously. This sort of question has all the intellectual gravitas of the vi v. emacs wars.

</comment><comment><USER12> It works fine for me. So does Netbeans. Haven't tried IntellyJ, but it will probably work fine too.

</comment><comment><USER15> The ecommerce platform I work with, Demandware, makes its Eclipse plugin a critical part of the workflow. I don't really mind, seeing as how I've used Eclipse (or variants thereof) just about every day of my career.

If I write some Java on my own, I go Netbeans.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been using the community edition of IntelliJ for years now, primarily for Android work. I can't imagine switching back to Eclipse, and the switch to IntelliJ was not at all difficult. The Android plugin for IntelliJ does a lot for you.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not that bad actually. The refactoring tools are pretty good, and other things like CTRL-Shift-T to open any file by name are nice too. Sometimes it throws a small to medium sized wrench into my spokes, but that's pretty rare.

</comment><comment><USER18> what do you suggest instead?

jGrasp wont install on my linux machines for some reason and I have never had anyone propose anything else.

(i'm an entry level java student)

<comment><USER19> Netbeans, Idea, Bluejay

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We still haven't migrated to IntelliJ. No other reason, though IntelliJ is expensive. What are the alternatives? Netbeans doesn't support aspectj.

</comment><comment><USER20> Because it's free. Or they learned it over the years (and began with it, because it's free). IntelliJ is only $199, yet "professional" developers insist on using Eclipse. Like, $199 is too much to spend on your craft.

Screw FizzBuzz...the first question on an interview should be: Do you use Eclipse? That speaks volumes, far more than a silly set of "if" statements and making use of the modulus operator.

</comment><comment><USER21> CDT c++ for linux, free java IDE its slow but no alternative i wish someone did java IDE build with c++

</comment><comment><USER22> I only use eclipse for APIs that only have an eclipse release/build/plugin.

</comment><comment><USER23> XText and DSLs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tedious: Yes. It thinks it is a platform. It thinks users care about its architecture, which is over-engineered. It has it's own package manager. It is tedious.

Slow: Buy a new computer. With memory. Sheesh.

Unusable: Well, it can be used. But it is a travesty of a GUI. A GUI should offer only valid operations. Eclipse lets, nay offers, nay presents on a silver platter just a click away the opportunity to do senseless destructive things. Thousands of them for every one sensible right thing you can do. It is my nominee for Least Discoverable Human Interface.

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

I use Eclipse. I don't find Android Studio to be materially better. I am constantly offended by Eclipse being the most rule-breaking in-a-bad-way GUI ever. If it didn't have great refactoring (that works about 80% of the way when Android XML files are involved) and pretty good code completion and documentation pop-ups I would be more motivated to replace it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly how I feel. Frustrated that it's easy to ruin an entire project just by one mistaken click of the mouse.</comment></comment>


Confirmed: OnLive's assets sold to another company - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/17/confirmed-onlives-assets-sold-to-another-company/

<comment><USER2> Sad really. This reads like a legal maneuver to escape prior financial obligations. Fire everyone, sell the assets to a new company, have that company re-hire the staff (if they are stupid enough to work there) and then negotiate new contracts with various vendors until you are up and running. Meanwhile creditors, investors, and disgruntled employees are left to sue an empty husk of a corporation with no assets.

It will be interesting to see the ramifications on Perlman's career. In a valley that embraces shooting high and missing, this doesn't feel very 'gentlemanly' if you will.

<comment><USER3> I think that depends on if the investors were screwed or not. If they made out, I'm betting it will have no negative effect on him. No one will care if he screwed all his employees if he made someone money. Sad but true.

<comment><USER4> If so, the laws need to change. There is no reason why this type of behavior should be condoned. Employees have a right to be legally protected from these shenanigans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So does this confirm that it was mostly done to get back potential equity? If so how many of the employees are likely to go back?

Or was this done because they ran out of money and it's the only thing to do so most probably will? Except why fire them and do all that song and dance?

Also I like how the staff is all fired and some rehired but the service remains operating....

<comment><USER6> Well, nothing says the service must shutdown when the people who built it are screwed by the CEO/VCs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the company was sold for less than the investments (or not a lot more) and the employees really were fired, it likely represented no loss for the employees and perhaps a way to sweeten the deal for the acquirers. The employees don't see a loss, because their stock wouldn't pay out until after the investors got theirs (which may be at a minimum multiple). The acquirer has less risk because they can weed out anybody they don't want to bring along and the firing risk went to a defunct company.

<comment><USER8> If nobody loses anything in this transaction, why go to the trouble of incorporating a new entity?

At the very least, the employees lost something: their job. However, in the US, that may not be a good reason for this maneuver either, as employers often/typically can fire personnel at will.

So, there either must be something else, or the 'firing risks' are larger than I think they could be. Either case, I guess they will be sailing close to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance#United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance#United_States).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Two line ruby quine - <AUTHOR>

Thought you might like this. This Ruby program makes an exact copy of itself.
c = "File.open('new.rb', 'w') {|f| f.write('c = ' + c.inspect + '\neval c') }"
eval c <comment><USER2> I think the use of eval is thought of as cheating. Also I seem to remember writing to files is also cheating?

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure about fixing the eval part, but reading the source code is usually thought of as cheating. However, that's not what this is doing. It could easily be changed to:

c = "puts('c = ' + c.inspect + '\neval c')" eval c</comment></comment>


How quantum computing could wreak havoc on cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/04/14/quantum-computing-wreak-havoc-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> The scope is too small here. QC will wreak havoc on online banking, telecommunications and everything else that depends on unhardened classical cryptography.</comment>


20M trees around the globe by January first, 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://teamtrees.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found that so cool. I had to post it. Check the youtube video here .. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why not potato plants? How about a briar patch or mulberry bushes?

Why is this good if we're disrupting the natural ecosystem that is already there?</comment>


Histography – 14B Years of History in an Interactive Timeline - <AUTHOR> http://histography.io/ <comment><USER2> freakingly awesome</comment>


Ask: What do you use for source code spell checker - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in spell checking string literals and comments of a fair number of programs, spanning several programming languages.
Are there any tools that you have found work.
I happen to be using Linux, but would as well be interested in solutions for other operating systems. <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/yaur/SpellUnit](https://github.com/yaur/SpellUnit) Is something I wrote for C#.

It currently only has support for literals passed in to exception constructors (I common pattern in the code base I care about) and strings passed in to attributes that get bubbled up as API documentation. I'm working on more complex stack modeling stuff (using Mono.Cecil if your interested) to find literals passed into an arbitrary named function (e.g. log messages and functions that display in the UI) when I'm not busy with other stuff.

With somewhere between 500K and 1M LOC there is no practical way to spell check everything. There are just to many connection strings, regexs, format strings, etc to spell check every literal. If you add in comments you also need to worry about jargon that won't be in a standard dictionary. That is why I personally picked very narrow checking instead of the broad checking that is trivial available as an FXCOP rule.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use RubyMine, which highlight spelling mistakes in string literals, variables, function names etc...

</comment><comment><USER4> Emacs has `M-x ispell-comments-and-strings`, via ispell, which is all I've used in the past.</comment>


Best way to learn Chinese ( Mandarin ) - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone suggest the cheapest and the quickest way to start learning conversational Chinese online? <comment><USER2> I suggest Chinesepod. The service is relatively cheap, there are a ton of resources for learning there and the podcasts are generally much more interesting than Pimsleur and other methods. I signed up for Chinesepod a little bit before I took a college class for Mandarin and I believed Chinesepod to be better for learning the vocab and characters. The college class was obviously better for pronunciation and real conversation because we had a great instructor and podcasts don't give feedback. You could supplement Chinesepod with remote conversations and tutors though. I believe they also have a network for this sort of thing. It's the cheapest option I know of.

If you have no funds at all, then you could probably find people willing to have conversation with you for free through the net and teach you some things in exchange for you offering the same with English.

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 For the recommendation of Chinesepod. Dimsum <http://www.mandarintools.com/dimsum.html> is pretty good for translation and the like. The other thing to do is install QQ and talk to Chinese students and the like.

Honestly though, the cheapest way would be get a job in China, get yourself a Chinese girlfriend/boyfriend and don't hang out with expats. Pick somewhere other then Shanghai or Beijing, (Haerbin is a good choice) and immerse yourself in the culture. Also you need to accept you wont be fluent unless you do this for 5 years+

Why cheapest? Well its pretty cheap to live in China. You spend more money in any western country living then you would in a smaller city in China, and you can dedicate yourself to learning the language.</comment>


Why HPE Abandoned Quantum Computing Research - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/04/17/why-hpe-has-abandoned-quantum-computing-research/ <comment><USER2> Hi, What is your source? I'm interested to investigate... ;-)</comment>


Report: 74% of Billionaire wealth comes from rent-seeking - <AUTHOR> https://shadowproof.com/2016/03/27/report-74-of-billionaire-wealth-from-rent-seeking/ <comment><USER2> "those heavily reliant on the state, like oil, gas and mining, gambling, or forestry, and industries that involve a lot of imperfect information and market failures, like finance, IT, and the music and fashion industry."

So NONE of the billionaires in those industries create any value? I just don't agree.

How about the hundreds of thousands of people that are now employed as a result of this 'rent-seeking' behavior?</comment>


Folks On Student Visas Leave Comment About Your Burning Start Up Urge! - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I want to find out if we are the only ones, or if we have company. Basically myself and a couple of my friends are itching start up. We can't quiet sleep! We see the products out there, and we get a funny feeling, we feel we can do a LOT better. But we are International Grad Students, on student visas. We cannot drop out, even if we want to.( Visa becomes invalid, Currently there are no start up visas :)) Oh, if only Paul Graham were president!. I felt so jealous when octopart posted about his/her dropping out of grad school. We have come to the point, where we are trying to moonlight it. But as moon- lighters know, sometimes it is very hard. Are there more people like us? Leave a comment as to how you deal with it (tips!) Or just leave us a comment!

<comment><USER2> Sorry, can't be president (born in England). But as far as I know there is no reason you can't start a company on a student visa. You can't be hired by someone else's company, but you don't have to be a US citizen or resident to own a company based in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh We can definitely own a company alright! But the problem is with time/mind space. Currently my entire spring break is dedicated (to pretending) to study for my Qualifier exams! I am hoping it will be better once I finish the requirements and start on the thesis. But it has to be moonlighting I guess, the visa has us cornered.

<comment><USER2> At Viaweb, two of the three main hackers (Robert and Trevor) were in grad school the whole time and actually got their degrees. In fact, Trevor got his a day or so before the Yahoo deal closed, and was the subject of Viaweb's last press release:

http://www.paulgraham.com/tlbphd.html

I believe some cofounders can still be in grad school, as long as at least one isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on a startup on the side, and during the day I work with a couple of really amazing programmers on H1 visas. We get along great, I asked them to help, and before they started working my co-founder suggested we ask a lawyer, just in case.

We called the Murthy law firm (http://www.murthy.com/consult.html - experts in immigration law) for a free consultation and unfortunately were told that not only could my coworkers not work for us unless they A) got an additional H1 Visa and B) were paid market rates but that they even came by and made the coffee on a regular basis they could be endangering their Visa status. We would have to actually put them on the payroll, which in our case would mean actually having a payroll.

Now, that is probably a bit alarmist but its the kind of thing that might scare off investors in the future. The sad part is that these guys would do amazing things for the startup. They have tons of free time, are absolutely the best programmers I've ever worked with and alot of fun as well.

So I'm no lawyer, just thought I'd share the bit of info I got on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been on an H1-B visa for two years, and have been doing a startup on the side for a year. If there are no more delays, I'll get my Green Card in about three months.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to have an H1-B visa as well soon (currently on TN). I was under the impression that you're not allowed to work for any other company or start your own while you have an H1-B/TN. Is that true?

<comment><USER4> You're allowed to start, and own, a company while on an H1-B. You're allowed to work for it too, so long as you continue to also work for the company that sponsors your H1-B.

You are not allowed to pay yourself anything from the new company while on an H1-B.

If one of your co-founders, or investors, is a US citizen you *might* be able to arrange a transfer of the H1-B to the new company. This is difficult and expensive though (at least we found it so). I decided it was more sensible for me to just wait for the Green Card.

<comment><USER5> "You are not allowed to pay yourself anything from the new company while on an H1-B."

What about any revenues that your new company might make? Sorry if that is a stupid question, I have done almost no research into this issue yet.

<comment><USER4> As far as I know these revenues have to remain the property of your new company (you can leave the money in the bank, or the company can spend it on something). You certainly cannot pay yourself a salary using them.

<comment><USER5> So essentially what you're saying is that any assets that the company makes cannot be transferred to me until I am an American citizen? I wonder what the consequences would be if I am an H1-B holder and revenues from moonlighting grew to a point where I could quit my day job.

Since I am a Canadian, I also wonder if it would be easier to just incorporate in Canada instead - this does not seem optimal either, as Canadian taxes are incredibly high, and the fact that I own a company there would mean that I would not be able to maintain non-residency status (and thus am not exempt from Canadian taxes) =(

<comment><USER6> I don't know if the visa thing messes it up, but as a generic Canadian you can own American companies with no issues. I believe the issue is in you paying yourself a salary or the like from the corp. However you should be able to collect dividends just fine. It's been a while since I looked into it for myself, so don't trust me on this. Personally I ended up going for a private Alberta named limited corporation for several reasons.

The tax rate starts at 16% if you're poor poor poor like me and maxes at 33% or so total for both federal and provincial. Check into the US corporate tax rates. If I remember doing my research right, you might be better off being a Canadian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was on a student visa and then said goodbye to school after 1 year (in ESL school) and 3 months (college). I would have continued school if I had the fund while I work on my startup. If you still want to be able to see your family and visit your home country, the best way is to moonlight it. It is very hard but you gotta do what you gotta do. ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel you, i really feel you. I have been sitting on 3 implemented ideas, one of which is really good. Working on a 4th idea. Hoping that once the green card gets through, I can break out, start a company and hit the road. on reading this discussion here and this one here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40253>, I did what I could, I blogged about it :)

Here it is: [http://crunchnot.blogspot.com/2007/08/capitalism-and-road- to...](http://crunchnot.blogspot.com/2007/08/capitalism-and-road-to-green- card-for.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> You can own a business on an H1-B visa - I would talk to an immigration lawyer if I were you. I'm in the states on an L1-A right now which allowed me to bypass the PERM process and qualify for my green card under the EB1 classification; the waiting list under this class is only ~8 months. L1's are bit more expensive, but if you're in a hurry they're worth looking into.

<comment><USER10> Is a H1-B a student visa, or a work visa? And how are they awarded?

<comment><AUTHOR> H1-B is a work visa, Usually if you get a job in the states, the company sponcers you, as in pays fees to the govt, and agrees that they will pay you well so that you do not become a liability for the govt.Usually it is given for 2 years, after which you have to renew it which is a mess of a hell. Don't get me started on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you know any concrete case of people on Student Visa (F-1) that joined Y Combinator? What type of visa do they have? What are the options?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm on my OPT (Optional Practical Training), can I start a startup and basically sponsor myself for an H1-B?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think this will be possible. But the best people to ask about this would be the folks at the International Student Center at your university.( As it turns out they are the ones who do the processing for the OPT in my university, so they know everything! )</comment></comment>


Question about sched_yield() (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0206.2/0334.html <comment><AUTHOR> I find myself searching for this Linux kernel mailing list thread about once a year, when I need to reason through what, exactly, sched_yield is supposed to mean, and currently accomplishes. The root problem seems to be some people want it to mean "I am not doing useful work, please schedule someone else and deprioritize me", yet others want it to mean "I am voluntarily allowing others to be scheduled now so that I can get more slices in the future".

The conclusion I've gathered is that do _not_ use it in a busy-wait loop, as it has the opposite effect of what you would want there. Perhaps an even more important conclusion is that sched_yield is confusing, there is significant disagreement over what it should mean, so don't use it.</comment>


Do you use code completion and to what extent? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Back in the days of good old Delphi IDE I found some cool addon which had some very cool feature. It was using machine learning to detect some repetitive actions. Like when I get code:

      var poo =
        [1,
         2,
         3,
         4];

and I start changing 1 to '1', 2 -> '2', then the addon all of sudden suggest me completion of other two cells.

It was amazing, too bad this feature did not come back in any of modern IDEs.

I love IntelliJ autocompletion while writing Java code, it increases my productivity so much that I can't imagine coding without it, however it could be better, always:)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are planning to start work on implementing code-completion and intellisense but would like to get a feel for how useful the average dev finds this much revered IDE feature.

Do you have ideas for better ways it could be implemented beyond the current approach (which is really a holdover from an earlier era)?

<comment><USER3> you mean like typing prop and hitting tab?

<comment><AUTHOR> yep along those lines...basically the stuff in eclipse, netbeans, visual studio...etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Code completion is a godsend.</comment>


Ask HN: How many Dynos does your Heroku app use? - <AUTHOR>

I host all of my Rails apps on Heroku, and they all perform well on 1 Dyno. I'm curious to know what some of you have found to be the needed number of Dynos for your apps - many of which I'm sure are more intensive than mine.<p>If you can, some details about your Dyno usage and app load would be interesting to know too. <comment><USER2> You might've already seen this, but if not, this is pretty interesting to see: <http://success.heroku.com/>

Click on the "Read Success Story" links for each app. It shows how many web dynos, worker dynos, and what add-ons and database are being used. Might also provide some information in the actual "story" regarding traffic and what not.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not the Dyno cost that will hurt, the database cost is the one where you will end up paying for an intensive site generally.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All of my apps get minor traffic only. The most popular one gets less than 1000 unique visitors per day and runs on 1 Dyno.</comment>


Andela Is Building Africa's Tech Ecosystem–and Is Assessing 130k Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/andela-is-building-africas-tech-ecosystem <comment><USER2> This is no different to Codility or Hackerrank which both do the same automated assessments that this also provides. I'm afraid that this is yet another useless screening tool that unrealistically judges engineers based on 1 - 2 hour long programming sessions which doesn't help in finding qualified candidates.

I'd rather just stick to asking candidates about their open-source patches / contributions to large projects to cut the 80% of those who don't make it, than to use these tools which are a waste of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried Qualified? We've very specifically built a tool that addresses the myriad of issues many developers have with automated coding skills tests that only test algorithmic skills. More on that here: [https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/why-developers-hate- codi...](https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/why-developers-hate-coding- skills-tests).

We'd welcome the opportunity to show you the product—I bet we can change your tune.</comment></comment>


Derivatives Really Aren't Very Scary - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704852004575258782019263898.html

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also worth pointing out that when all the institutions that had Lehman Brother CDS exposure got together to settle it, after canceling out the huge notational figure dropped to only $5.2 billion in real money changing hands.

ADDED: here's one item I found discussing the details of all this: [http://www.glgroup.com/News/Lehman-CDS- Settlement-%E2%80%93-...](http://www.glgroup.com/News/Lehman-CDS- Settlement-%E2%80%93-The-Dog-that-Didnt-Bark--28832.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is anecdotal at best

<comment><AUTHOR> And your point is?

We're comparing confident "The Sky Is Falling!" predictions, which among other things led to real legislation such as the Volker proposal or whatever, which was discussed in a recent HN thread, with the actual reality of how derivatives as used by people with a clue haven't resulted in the end of the world.

With this sort of thing, you _can_ test propositions, but only anecdotally. We don't have multiple Earths/economies where we can set one aside as a control and play with the rules in the others.

In another comparison, which you'll find repeated in less dramatic form elsewhere (e.g. the sewer mess in a Mississippi? county), the oh so wise political class which so many insist must police this instruments of the devil show they're not exactly fit for the task.

To tie that back together with the Volker proposal, which proposes to forbid banks, companies that own banks, etc. from investing in/using/whatever these and a variety of other "dangerous" instruments somehow made an exception for those sold by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac....</comment></comment>


Why Brilliant Girls Tend to Favor Non-Stem Careers - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers <comment><USER2> equal opportunity vs equal outcome is such a hard thing to analyze that every time I hear it I'm glad I only have to debug machines and not society</comment>


The Hardest Working People on the Planet - <AUTHOR> http://jonbischke.com/2009/12/30/hardest-working-people-on-the-planet/ <comment><USER4> One of the biggest surprises for me when I went to work for a big corp was that people didn't actually work harder in startups than in large corporations. Perhaps there's a bit of sample bias; people at Google tend to work harder than at other big companies, at least according to my Noogler classmates who used to work at Adobe and Intuit. But I know people at Yahoo and IBM that work even harder than I do at Google, and I work about as hard at Google as when I was working with a YC startup. And yet they at IBM accomplish far less than we do at Google, and we at Google (on a person-for-person basis) accomplish far less than the average successful YC startup.

I've been trying to put my finger on why that is, and I think it all comes down to misallocation of resources. Over time, work becomes focused inwards at a large corporation, dedicated to supporting the inner world of the corporation instead of the outer world of the market. Without market discipline, decisions get made that seem logical to the decision-maker but are actually very pessimal from an efficiency standpoint. Some team might create an API that's a continual tax on its users, but without the ability to bypass it and use or write an alternative, there's no way around it. Or some VP may make a decision that seems sensible at a time, but mortgages future development, and without the ability for that initial project to fail and get completely reverted, you'll never arrive at the optimal solution.

Working hard is generally a necessary but not sufficient condition for success, and it's nowhere near a straight-line correlation. Far more important is to pay attention to _what_ you're working on, and make sure that it's actually important. You can't succeed with zero hard work, but you can get much farther with a little smarts and little hard work than with a lot of hard work.

<comment><USER5>
           It is exceedingly easy to work hard at a big corporation. The goals set out are generally clear, and if you finish early there are always plenty of other projects. I'll liken it to an all you can eat buffet, you can always take more once you've finished what's on your plate.

           The difference in working at a startup is that you must create those tasks that need doing. You can't grab them from an already pre-existing forumla. Simply put, you've got to plan and cook your dinner, and if you're still hungry, you've got to plan and cook more.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure this distinction holds either. At Google, I'm given a fairly vaguely-specified task ("Provide this benefit for users") and then told to do what it takes to make it happen. It's not unlike launching a product in a startup, because, well, it is launching a product. I've heard this is pretty much Google's _definition_ of a senior software engineer - one who can take a vaguely specified user requirement and then make it happen.

There's a fair amount of gruntwork at a startup that's pretty obvious too, eg. when I was doing mine, I had to do all the server admin. This falls out naturally from actually having servers that need to stay up. I'd say that probably 80% of startup work is gruntwork, which isn't all that different from a job description in a big company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it's where and when I grew up, but no job that largely involves sitting in front of a computer and occasionally talking with (or at) people really strikes me as "hard work" (even if you add copious quanitities of long-haul travel).

The farmers and fishermen I knew growing up worked _incredibly_ hard but I honestly don't remember a _single_ one of them telling anyone about how hard they work. However, having worked on farms and (briefly) on a North Sea trawler when I was a student I can honestly say nothing you can do inside in the nice and warm can possibly come close - remember that the guys running farms and fishing trawlers are running businesses as well, usually on pretty damned low margins or unpredictable cashflow.

Edit: Not sure which "personalities" I'd have on a "working hard" list - <USER2> it would probably include this chap:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes>

<comment><USER7> I absolutely agree with you. This is no hard work at all. Hard work is doing physical labor for 16 hours a day so that you can't think anymore of what the words "hard work" even mean. Everything else is just eyewashing to feel a little better.

The "hard work" is a mantra repeated over and over and over especially by entrepreneurs to a point that I really get sick of it. Entrepreneurs love that phrase and love the idea to think about themselves of being hard-working.

Truth is, you don't need to be hard-working to be successful. Not at all. If you "work hard" (in the wishy-washy terms of how entrepreneurs use that phrase), you're doing it wrong.

Edit: I want to add that we all should be glad that none of us really has to work hard to get decent money in the bank account. We should appreciate every day that our lives are so comfortable and that we have so much money that we aren't required to do the really hard work like our ancestors had to do. As long as everybody has the self-delusion of being hard-working, we can't appreciate the comfort we have and pay some true respect to the people who can't have the same wealth and comfort.

<comment><USER8> I disagree - I did plenty of the 16-hour days of picking things up and putting them down before moving onto the white collar developer world, and I'll tell you -- there are plenty of days where this work is a lot harder.

Harder on the body? On my back? No. More stressful? Harder on my mind, my life, and relationships? YES. Not every day, but we all know about _those_ days.

What constitutes "hard work" is different for everyone. I think the linked blog entry is mixing "hard work" with "lots of work", which is simply not the same.

<comment><USER4> I like to think of "risk" and "work" as being orthogonal dimensions. Risk is uncertainty, when you don't know how what you're doing will turn out. Work is putting in the hours, being able to concentrate on a goal for long stretches of time.

We get paid for doing things that other people don't want to do. It turns out that most people would rather work hard than take on additional risk; they at least know what to do when they work hard, and what they'll get for it. That means that taking on risk can be very professionally lucrative, but the problem is then you have to deal with uncertainty constantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bad title... What about people working in African mines where they work long hours performing heavy physical labor under dangerous conditions. Even risking their health. Just to survive and give food to their families.

There are dozens of these answers where this kind of 'slave' labor is still going on.

So stop tooting the horn of those hard working entrepreneurs (I'm one of them). And please try not to offend other people with these kinds of titles and articles.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. People who have to walk miles a day just for fresh water. They deserve our respect

<comment><USER11> Let's all give ourselves a pat on the back for respecting those people.

<comment><USER9> Smurk reply just to shrug off the fact you are only looking to your own bellybutton.

<comment><USER11> You don't know me at all; how can you make that claim? I don't think that's at all true about me. I spend a lot of effort involved in improving the emotional welfare of other people.

Moreover, I think it's ridiculous to commend and "respect" villagers for having to endure unnecessary hardships; it's as if the commender attains a stance of moral superiority for valuing "what really matters". It's not clear to me that:

1) Living rurally is actually net worse for a human being

2) If living rurally is indeed net worse for a human being, that commending and respecting them is a good thing - perhaps such a situation should be held in contempt in order to promote a more radical advance in technology

3) I think effort and willpower deserve respect -- merely having to endure hardship, while unfortunate, is not necessarily worthy of my respect.

P.S. As a friendly FYI, "Smurk" is not a word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't inspiring, this is neurotic.

Mental illness is no way to live.

And for every captain of industry who worked 24/7, there are plenty who relax, enjoy life, and still manage to move mountains.

<comment><USER13> Depends what you enjoy. Some people would rather work than relax. I've had colleagues that hang about at work for a little longer to avoid the drudgery of home life - or rather the hand over to the next shift.

That said - I do agree with you that a lot of these people are neurotic. Not all work is equal - some of it in my opinion is a waste of time - and it just keeps people off the streets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Let's do the math. If you worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, > you'd still be two hours short of 100 hours.

... and you'd never see your children.

<comment><USER15> Yeah. This glorification of absurd hours is not a good thing I think. A balanced life is important. Perhaps a few people can handle these kinds of hours their whole life but most can't. It leads to burn out, stress, depression, breaks up marriages and alienates children, all of which have a very negative long term impact on society as a whole.

<comment><USER16> I'm often struck by how many great/successful people destroyed their own families to get there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      Y'all don't know my struggle
      Y'all can't match my hustle
      You can't catch my hustle
      You can't fathom my love dude
      Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers
      That's a different world like Kree Summers
      I deserve to do these numbers

      - Kanye West, Spaceship

</comment><comment><USER18> I loved this article, truly inspirational, specially the last one, and there is only one possible explanation for all these(and all the other hard working people in the world):

Passion.

If there is something that you love, whatever it is, from your work to your family, you would do almost anything. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think the author misses any of the points that have been brought up as critiques of the article. He says in the second paragraph that "hard work is completely irrelevant is you're not working smart and being productive." Also, "hard work is also counter-productive if you're sacrificing your health to an extreme degree and if the increase in quantity of hours worked is leading to a decrease in your creativity."

I think the best summary of the article is a quote from the quote of Seth Godin: "[Hard work] begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with."

This article is not about physical labor or spinning your wheels without making progress. It's not about burning yourself out. It's about doing the shit that other people don't want to do. It's what Paul Graham was getting at when he wrote, "If you have two choices, choose the harder." It's what Thomas Edison was getting at when he said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

There are people who sit around on HN or Reddit all day not doing anything productive. Actually focusing on work for long periods of time is hard. There are anecdotal statistics that the average 40-hour-a-week worker works 1.5 hours a day. Hard work means working all 8.

</comment><comment><USER20> Get shit done, don't work hard. Hard work mean nothing, especially if it described as not having free time.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't mean 'nothing'. Hard work is sometimes needed. But I do agree with you that it's usually more important to work smart than to work hard. Pick your battles carefully and such... Mindlessly working hard without a good idea doesn't get you anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "From my perspective, humans are learning machines, as evidenced by the totality of human output."

While I think I agree with you, this argument is not very strong imo - <USER3> takes only a very small amount of people ('outliers' or 'abnormals' if you want) to think of new things that are then implemented by all the others. And this even includes much 'research' that is being done today - you only need 1 guy to drive a lab of 50 who do the things this one guy has imagined. And yet those 50 are also called 'researchers', and are already considered at the 'extreme' end of the curve of people able to self-mobilize.

</comment><comment><USER23> Work smarter not harder.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, this (article) seems to be totally at odds with the hacker ethic, expressed variously as:

Jon Bentley in Programming Pearls: Column 2.5 "Aha! Algorithms" "Good hackers are a little bit lazy: they sit back and wait for an insight rather than rushing forward with their first idea. That must, of course, be balanced with initiative to code at the proper time. The real skill, though, is knowing the proper time. That judgment comes only with the experience of solving problems and reflecting on their solutions."

Larry Wall in "Three virtues of a programmer" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_program...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_programmer) "1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer."

John D Cook in "Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity?" [http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/12/23/why-programmers- are...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/12/23/why-programmers-are-not-paid- in-proportion-to-their-productivity/) "Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code. They may realize the problem they're being asked to solve doesn't need to be solved, that the client doesn't actually want what they're asking for. They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their problem. They may cheat. But just when they are being their most productive, nobody says "Wow! You were just 100x more productive than if you'd done this the hard way. You deserve a raise." At best they say "Good idea!" and go on. It may take a while to realize that someone routinely comes up with such time-saving insights. Or to put it negatively, it may take a long time to realize that others are programming with sound and fury but producing nothing."

<comment><USER25> None of these quotes prove your point that the article is "at odds with the hacker ethic". They just prove that you should think (which is also hard work) about what to do instead of just doing whatever comes to you first. Why is that not hard work?

"They may know where to find reusable or re-editable code that solves their problem.": and how do they know that? Probably because they work hard at keeping up with the newest technological developments in different fields...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As I read this, I am reminded of a thought that occurred to me this weekend: work is what you have to do, passion is what you want to do. Also, I don't think I would claim that anyone who is working 100 hours a week is living. Work to live, not live to work.

</comment><comment><USER27> This was posted as a comment by Ryan Willis, but is probably worth watching: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k74r1aoMc0>

</comment><comment><USER28> I would add Madonna, Oprah, Obama, and doctors to that list.

<comment><USER16> Reminds me of how many greats expired when they stopped their "thing". Stanley Kubric died within a week of finishing post-production on Eyes Wide Shut. Charles Schultz ended Peanuts after exactly 50 years, and expired a week later.

This alongside others who quit, sometimes repeatedly, only to return. Anthony Hopkins has sworn off acting several times. Berkley Breathed can't quit Opus after ending 3+ comic strip series.

The article used the slang term "anorak" to describe Eminem - someone who is utterly focused on one activity. Attempts to engage them in any other activity (save perhaps basic family functions) fail. Eminem has rapped about often shunning the indulgences of rockstardom in favor of locking himself in a bathroom stall or dank stairwell just to scribble lyrics in a ratty notebook.

They're great because it's all they do and all they can do, and greatness is a natural consequence. Take it away, and they either fight to resume it or expire in emptiness.

<comment><USER29> Why must they expire?

It is strange to think that a man, like any other man, so becomes singular in life and work in that work is his life and life is his work, to the point that such a massive passion grows for what they do that nothing else has any meaning.

That probably is simply because of a turn in life they made. If they are smart enough to be basically performing functioning humans, then the end of it would be a shock to the system, but which can be overcomed. So why must they expire?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thanks a lot for posting this wonderful article. Very very inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER31> _The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours._

I always lose interest when I read something like that. The last time I experienced this flow state was in college (or just after), when I was still coding entirely within a domain that I knew. Once I got into the real world, things got hard, domains changed with every assignment, and flow state became impossible.

<comment><USER12> True and a bit tragic.

I think a lot of nerds grow up, and get careers in technology, hoping they can spend their lives in that flow state.

But it's just almost never practical. Probably one of the only ways to do it now is open-source stuff, or by becoming an extreme specialist and working in a big corporation that shields you and accommodates you. In both cases you're probably taking a pay cut.

<comment><USER21> The pay cut isn't that much of a problem, compared to many other jobs being a software engineer is lucrative in any case.

I've found that you can train yourself to get 'into that flow state' even with things that sometimes get a little bit less interesting. It does take a lot of willpower and self-convincing that it's worth it.</comment></comment></comment>


Any IT managers in companies would like to help a startup with their expertise? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You really should specify what type of help you are looking for. Also, start your title with Ask HN:

<comment><AUTHOR> We would like to have a skype interview with that person :)

Sorry for not clarifying, didn't want to overload the title..

I will adapt the title now. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Pumping the Primes - <AUTHOR> http://bit-player.org/2015/pumping-the-primes

<comment><USER2> For the clojure people:

      (let [gcd (fn [x y]
    	      (if (pos? y)
    		  (recur y (mod x y))
    		x))]
      (->> [2 7 1]
        (iterate (fn [[n a]]
    		 (let [g (gcd n a)]
    		   [(inc n) (+ a g) g])))
        (filter (comp #(< 1 %) last))
        (take 20)))

I would format it better if I knew how to.

Anyway, the last element of each vector (that is, the g) in the resulting sequence is always a prime.

<comment><USER2> Regarding run time, you can see there is no free lunch:

The first twenty elements are returned in 4msecs. The first 200 are still running (> 2 hours already).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I looked up Matt Frank (mentioned in the article) and I see that he's now working in Finance. Surprise, surprise! :D</comment>


Show HN: Worldwide Netflix and Spotify Price Comparison - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestreamingindex.com/ <comment><USER2> I really like the idea! The NorthVPN screenshot is a bit to dark and you could invest a bit more love into the design. (Maybe a bit more like:[https://themacindex.com/](https://themacindex.com/))

<comment><AUTHOR> My project is pretty much a shameless ripoff of ^W^W^W^W heavily inspired by The Mac Index. :D Yep, I'll see how much traffic it gets and then work on the design some more. Right now it's mostly Bulma ([https://bulma.io/](https://bulma.io/)) default styles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow that is quiet useful. Thank you</comment>