16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy? - <AUTHOR> https://namc.in/2018-02-05-plagiarist <comment><USER3> I have a related question. Since when is a 16 year old who makes an app a prodigy? Even if she did write it all by herself?

I was getting paid to make back office software for local businesses at 13 in 1998 with absolutely no help from anyone and no one called me a prodigy. I'm sure tons of NH people have similar stories.

I seem to remember a survey at one point that the average person on HN who actually codes started coding at around 12.

Perhaps we should be teaching young people that coding is an obtainable goal that if you put your mind to it and work hard you can do? Not something you need to be a "prodigy" to do.

<comment><USER4> It's easy enough to write code when you're young, but to write something that is being actively used is impressive.

With that being said, I do find the worship of young people in tech a bit worrying. Over the years I've worked with a handful of talented developers that have started from a very young age, and over the years they become very good at a relatively young age. By the time they reach 20, they're senior- level developers.

That's all well and good, but these youngsters have been praised for years. Once they reach their twenties, they go from being young to being an adult, like everyone else. All of a sudden, the slack they were given to build their career up is gone, and many of them struggle from here onwards. It can be a mixture of being treated differently, or from essentially being jaded about dedicating that many years of their youth to a skill to be building the same old CRUD shit year after year.

<comment><USER5> My brother was a security consultant for a few major websites that you've most likely used yourself at the age of 16, many years ago. He knew more about security at 16 than most developers I work with today. Don't discount someone's knowledge or abilities because of an arbitrary age.

He's still successfully protecting servers from getting hacked today, when pretty much every other server is getting hacked nowadays.

<comment><USER6> Did you reply to the wrong comment? They didn't say anything dismissive, and even expressed the impressiveness of someone writing a usable app at 16.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry."

It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

<comment><USER8> In my experience, "sweetie" is a word older women use condescendingly towards younger men or women.

<comment><USER9> Sexism is not limited to men on the side of who does it (nor on women on the side that is the target).

<comment><USER10> The point is that, in the South, sweetie isn't a gendered term. I'm a man and get called sweetie every day in a non-demeaning sense. When used pejoratively, it's essentially "bless your heart" condensed into a noun.

Interestingly, at least in my area, it's generally only used by women and effeminate gay men. As a result, actually using the term does imply effeminacy, so a straight man using it to insult a woman may be unknowingly implying something about himself which he'd find embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm getting the vibe this person is a complete fraud. It seems likely that somebody is steering her on what to say, how to manage the project, and market herself as the visionary behind it.

Reading through the comments "However her aptitude was pretty poor... I've mentored many kids in my life.

At some point she was unable to even reason out how to convert a string to upper case.

She said... What does this have to do with programming.... I want to build apps.

After that she didn't talk to me much and I didn't bother either."

These aren't really the people we should be lauding or giving a free ticket to MIT. From what I'm reading, she's probably a future successful corporate bullshit artist, but this is not a role model for anyone or a future visionary.

I think it is good things like this get attention - young people should know they're not going to get ahead by stealing credit from others or falsifying their talents.

</comment><comment> j-pb This is advertisement. They use her story to promote the app. Of course she didn't write the thing, no "child prodigy" that "released an app that will change the world" in the last 10 years of apps, did. It's either a political diversity narrative or emotional advertisement for a product.

But yeah, let's all waste our time holding 16 old kids "accountable" for their "unethical" behaviour, like big boy adults do, that'll teach them how to grow up!

<comment><USER12> Yes. "If you manage to get social media on your side by endearing them then you can lie and steal" is the better lesson to teach a 16 year old.

A 16 year old can waste his or her life by this age if he or she does really badly in school or smokes weed and gets caught. I can forgive teens for a lot of silly things like lying, cheating, petty crime, etc. but not doubling down when caught and creating a social media hatemob for someone questioning her.

Also - she is not a kid. There are at least few countries in which a 16 year old can have sex, drive, drink alcohol, join military academy, etc. and at 17 or 18 the list of countries grows to hundreds of entries.

And she is a "prodigy", not any ordinary kid and she defended herself very well (and evidently successfully considering the thread calling her out on reddit got outright removed, not just downvoted) on social media and even called the person claiming she is lying a "jobless disturbed harasser and bully".

She has attended MIT Launch, was intern at Sales force. Along with writing that app she also localized this app to 10 languages (I'm not sure if she did it herself via Google Translate, the way she writes about it is not clear), optimized it for iPhone X, prepared a full release, all within these 2 months while coming across new techniques and concepts and learning them on the fly.

This is all in her medium.com post and if she can do all of that she can get held to the same standard as an adult. And if it's someone just using her persona and doing all this then there is even a bigger problem, bordering on personality theft and fraud.

<comment><USER13> Being a kid is not a boolean value. You don't go from "being a kid" to "not being a kid". It's gradual. Some people are still kids at 19, others are quite mature at 17.

Who knows, maybe her parents are pushing her a lot and she doesn't know how to react.

We should give people the benefit of the doubt when we don't know the full story. She'll be forgiven in 2 months anyways..

<comment><USER12> > Being a kid is not a boolean value. You don't go from "being a kid" to "not > being a kid". It's gradual. Some people are still kids at 19, others are > quite mature at 17.

It actually is boolean for many laws but that's beside the point. Whatever a threshold is a person who makes apps so quickly, calls herself an entrepreneur and a programmer, all while highlighting her young age (ostensibly to show that she is more mature or skilled than others that age) has crossed it.

> Who knows, maybe her parents are pushing her a lot and she doesn't know how > to react.

Then just like with "a team" it's a big issue if her parents pushed her to do it all or did it for her and should not be swept under the rug because it's a woman in tech or a teen.

> We should give people the benefit of the doubt when we don't know the full > story.

Too bad the author of this post doesn't get that. Instead they got called names, accused of bullying and harassment of a teen, accused of driving women out of tech, flagged (here too for a while apparently), and pretty much told to fuck off and die. It's only more ironic that the author is a woman too (which in an ideal world should not matter in the dispute but in USA/tech industry it seems to, although I've seen plenty of woman vs. woman disputes online where one woman will claim the other who criticizes her has "internalized sexism").

> She'll be forgiven in 2 months anyways..

Well yes. No one is going to crucify her for this but plagiarism and being put on a pedestal for things you didn't do are (in theory, apparently it is if you are a woman judging by some of the comments here[0]) not acceptable and can't be revealed and then just defended (not even disputed) by tons of people because the perpetrator is a woman or teen and thus beyond criticism or fair attribution of work.

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307994)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > But after reading her blogpost, her stackoverflow/github history in an > attempt to understand her struggles as a self-taught programmer; I figured > that there was no struggle at all! Self taught programmers are full of > numerous questions, but she didn't seem to have any! Neither is there any > progression of all the tasks she did.

This is just one of possible approaches. For example, I actively ask very rarely, the most you could find on SO would be upvotes to answers.

With this approach, the author would probably conclude I didn't write my weather watchfaces myself, as there are almost no public traces of me doing so. And yet.

[https://apps.garmin.com/en- US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-1...](https://apps.garmin.com/en- US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-120def9f07c4) [https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c...](https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c4c700005b)

<comment><USER15> Well, after a couple years of development, you have the vocabulary & terminology to search for & find your answers.

Starting out, you wouldn't have that.

<comment><USER16> You might have a mentor (eg a parent) to ask instead though. Having no SO profile is _not_ a sign you don't ask questions.

<comment><USER17> this is true of course.

and lots of people don't use github.

they're just a couple of the signs.

i could even let go that she didn't know how to express what the expression was and even not knowing how to make a string uppercase.

they're little signs but they aren't where she was eventually busted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 She may not be good at developing apps but she is good a lying...

> I'm not sure who is the "someone else" here. The app is published from > Ravinder Singh Arora's (my Dad) account. I can't sign up for an Apple > Developer account because I'm <18\. And _I created the app on my own_ :)

[https://medium.com/@harshitaisanerd/im-not-sure-who-is- the-s...](https://medium.com/@harshitaisanerd/im-not-sure-who-is-the-someone- else-here-e03f1e13fa40)

<comment><USER18> This seems to be the part that upset a lot of people including the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not plagiarism, it's a team putting the 16-year-old in front for the media attention. The crypto currency space is full of dodgy stuff, so not surprising.

The author of this post seem to have it out for the girl personally, which is unnecessary.

<comment><USER12> She personally claims to have written it all on her own, in the press release she also says she was intern at Sales force in Bangalore, attended MIT Launch and her profile says she is a "16 year old programmer and entrepreneur" along with a link to "my app".

She also called the person disputing that a jobless disturbed bully, harasser and troll and due to internet "siding with her" the author was met with abuse for "harassing a kid" and insults despite the proof they provided about app possibly being a team work or work of someone else.

And if all her social media posts are "a team" then this is even more unethical.

<comment><USER19> Yes, that's what the current social media climate is like unfortunately. An internet mob harassing someone seems to be the default answer to everything, and each person participating thinks they are fighting for justice or something. I just don't think HN piling on is going to help.

<comment><USER20> So you're saying that we should just let people lie and get away with it? Because right now she's getting away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to say, I found the "story" very leading. A lot of inconclusive evidence labelled a lot stronger than it deserves, especially the "confession".

The reality of a lot of app development now is that you can go a long way by not doing very much. Ok, so the git graph shows another developer committed many more lines: since when have we, as an industry, taken KLOC as a serious measure of anything?? Those lines of code could well be XML UI structures or a bunch of config spat out from an IDE.

Is she an amazing developer? No, she admits as much - she claims 10k lines of code, a bunch of which may have been StackOverflow'd, and she doesn't claim experience. She says she has trouble with Python.

Such a big deal over such a minor thing.

<comment><USER22> I actually have the entire source code so I have enough evidence. Obviously I can't reveal it since it would be illegal.

But she gave it to me of her own free will, and if you think 10000 lines can be SO'd then you live in a bubble

<comment><USER23> If you want us to believe you without giving any proof you'll have to give us more evidence. Why did she give you the (incriminating) source? Why can't you reveal it? What in said source code convinces you she didn't write it?

<comment><USER22> You can see in the conversation screenshot that she uploaded code on Google drive at my request - my only intention was to review the code. Yes she trusted me that much - in fact there are a lot of peoples code I have reviewed and fixed.

The code is too complicated for a beginner to have written. There are generator expressions, lambdas and what not in there.

I could go ahead and post the previous conversations where I was struggling to get basic programming concepts into her head, but shes already gone rabid in trying to discredit me. More material from my side will make her react even more extremely.

My biggest question and open challenge to her is this:

If she wrote all of it -

1) Show us the git log

2) If she insists aviral corrected and merged the code himself, show us the original fragments of code she sent, or show us the mails containing fragments of code if she emailed it to him.

If aviral was really a mentor, why would he use this crude method of collaboration, he'd explain how to use git and github to her to raise pull requests, commit code and so on.

Even the most pleb developer uses github and manages to commit code and so forth to it in a few days. Just look at the number of git repos with hello world like code in them.

I'm sure she'll come up with some excuse why the above is impossible like "we deleted intermediate stuff and mails", or "I dont know how to use git", or whatever hamstering.

I saw bullshit I called it. The burden of proof is on her. I have much more to lose by lying than she does. I have a life, a career and people will surely take the word of a teenage girl over a man in his 30s. She could instantly destroy all my credibility and reputation by showing proof.

In the unlikely event that she can provide proof that can convince without doubt, then I'll eat my words. If she can't then its her word against mine - <USER2> have nothing to lose or gain by her rise or fall, I don't even own Macs, iPhones or do mobile development.

I have no motivation to lie. I've built apps all my life. She has every motivation to - this is her ticket to getting into the USA.

Also what about the guy who was told directly by aviral that aviral developed the app for a small sum of money under an NDA?

Aviral has even tweeted something to the effect of "I lost respect for this guy who made a private conversation public". That's damning evidence.

<comment><USER24> > The burden of proof is on her.

The burden of proof is normally on the person making the accusation. All you've offered is your opinion: "there's no way she could have written it" and some hearsay.

If I accuse you of being a fraud should you have to prove that you're not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, I was always a bit skeptic about this from the beginning. Already after reading her medium article I was convinced there is something fishy going on. Here I was putting together a simple web app after months of cramming textbooks & video tutorial series (as a 19 years old) & there she was winning acclaim for her fake commitment.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would like thank this 'namc' for putting in the journalistic-legwork to get us all closer to the truth. And also letting us draw our own conclusions.

I think what's upsetting to me is not really this case in particular, but that I couldn't imagine any reputable tech journalism organization being able or willing to publish an expose like this. So cheers to all you HN citizen journalist digging into the commits and asset names to give us an idea what's behind the Press Release.

</comment><comment><USER27> > but coding =! app development

That's a pretty funny typo from someone defending themselves against accusations of not knowing how to program.

</comment><comment><USER28> This reads a lot like an attack. Yes its clear they did not program their app 100% themselves. I fail to see how it's such a big deal. Especially one that requires posts on multiple platforms targeting her.

The other developers seem happy for her to take the credit, presumably as its good for marketing. Who is this really hurting?

<comment><USER12> When someone very prominently says they made an app, someone else says they didn't and the first person responds with calling them jobless, disturbed and a harasser then the gloves are off. And it hardly reads like an attack to me anyway, there are no insults, no ill wishes to her career or life, it's just very firm.

<comment><USER28> > the first person responds with calling them jobless, disturbed and a > harasser then the gloves are off

Well that reaction seems to have come after they were harrassed, called a dumb kid, and a lying piece of shit[1]. This is a 16 year old, they're going to make mistakes. This level of hate for something very minor is really out of proportion.

They did after all contribute at least partly towards the app, so it's more of an exaggeration than an all out lie.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/jFbQR](https://imgur.com/a/jFbQR)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd like to weigh in on this as a 16 year old. By no means am I an experienced programmer [1], but I feel as if I am learning all that I can. Sure, stackoverflow and Google are there to help, but I make sure that I understand whatever I write.

This girl is using her age as a marketing tactic, and I understand the point of the author, but this post goes too far. Instead of pointing out her faults by making a big deal on his blog, the author should reach out to her and explain his opinion in a mature manner. I don't think it is right to expose someone publicly just for making a mistake.

[1]: [https://shamdasani.org](https://shamdasani.org)

</comment><comment><USER30> Who cares? Even if she is a fraud, the result of pointing this out is only going to give her more support and attention.

The only reason young or female developers get weird media attention is because the same companies who abuse visas and get convicted of wage fixing are trying to get more cheap labor. They pour money and volunteers into charities and media; offers dwindle.

</comment><comment><USER31> This happens a lot in India. There's a fraud by the name Ankit Fadia, who still sells plagiarised material and holds hands on 'ethical hacking' conferences.

<comment><USER32> Well, at least Wikipedia is up to date [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> She may be a plagiarist, but that doesn't mean the author of this post isn't also a bully who should be likewise questioned. There are extremists on both sides, the truth is in the middle, etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why is this story flagged? It somehow proves the author's point.

<comment><USER35> It feels a bit like witch hunting and it is probably the reason it got removed from reddit. Anyway "X got removed so X is true" is a slippery slope if not outright false.

<comment><USER34> It was enough to answer just like she did here: [https://imgur.com/0ihzIzy](https://imgur.com/0ihzIzy) Personally I believe her explanations, but then it doesn't look like she was really writing everything on her own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I once read that a big problem in the industry are already established women.

There seems to be the tendency to think "If I did it in the harsh world, why should anyone have it easier than me?"

</comment><comment><USER37> "There is no storyboard, lol. For any iOS dev who is just starting out, making an application without storyboards is just unbelievable."

When i was 17, for the 2nd iOS app i launched on the app store, i made the GUI programatically. It was a simple app and trying to combine story boards with code just confused me.

I haven't investigated this app at all, but seriously? I stopped reading after that gross speculation.

<comment><USER38> Me too. I don't and never have used a storyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm concerned with the parenting thats at play here! "Giving credit where due" is something so simple yet hugely absent in this incident!

</comment><comment><USER39> I could understand if the App did something amazing, but it's just a basic Crypto tracking app - there are thousands of these already on the App Store. I'm sure she did work on it to some extent, it's nothing spectacular. Looks like a fairly basic 'follow the tutorial' first App, but maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER25> It's not about the complexity of the app that bothers me, it's the praise she is getting from people for falsely claiming that she solely developed the app with negligible help from other devs which turns out to be completely untrue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, this article is reminiscent of that other one a few months ago about that Chinese lady who made maker videos of herself doing 3D printing and soldering, and getting accused of fraud because she was a woman.

Are you a "prodigy" for building an app? No. But you don't deserve accusations backed by opinion and no evidence either.

</comment><comment><USER40> >> he "allowed her" to call the app hers, given certain "circumstances".

Is this the actual quote? It sounds as though we're meant to read more into it. The real author could well be a parent, but I guess we're meant to read that it's a suitor.

<comment><USER41> The "real" author was a contractor--it's common to see app development contracted out on UpWork. I wouldn't read much into the wording since he's not a native English speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's a 16 year old girl that programmed an app, of course you're going to have a shitstorm when you deconstruct the truth of the matter.

Good post though, I love people who exposes frauds.

</comment><comment><USER43> Cut the witch-hunt

</comment><comment><USER44> So what? Apple is selling other people's work as their own since decades.

</comment><comment><USER45> Whatever the truth is, this is a terrible write-up. I'm surprised it's getting such traction because the "evidence" against her is pretty flimsy or non- existent.

> I used a spare iPhone to get the app, and then used > [https://github.com/BishopFox/bfdecrypt](https://github.com/BishopFox/bfdecrypt) > and > [https://github.com/BishopFox/bfinject](https://github.com/BishopFox/bfinject) > to decrypt the app .

>Here are a few things I found :

>No, she did not code the app as she claims. In her defense, she has help from a few people, but I would call that bluff, given that help construed of over ~~50%~~ 90% of git commits.

What? You can't get the git history by decrypting an app binary.

The post shows a screenshot of a private git repo's commit history but no explanation of how it was obtained.

The 16-year old girl claims ([https://i.imgur.com/TQzc6TW.png](https://i.imgur.com/TQzc6TW.png)) that the other author has a high number of commits because he was committing code on her behalf because she didn't have a Github subscription for private repos. Fishy because that's a weird workflow, but not beyond a reasonable doubt.

>There is no storyboard, lol. For any iOS dev who is just starting out, making an application without storyboards is just unbelievable.

Maybe this is lost on me because I'm not an iOS developer, but is the author just accusing the girl of poor technique? That seems to _support_ the case that she's an amateur developer.

>So we did a grep for `com` on strings in the decrypted app, you will notice that on line 929 there is a mention of library which does not exist, and so I'm inclined to believe, this is who probably the author of original code is.

A non-existent library created the app? What is this evidence of?

>Upon reaching out to the the dev in question, he went to the extent of saying that he "allowed her" to call the app hers, given certain "circumstances". Fair enough, we don't see him bagging MIT scholarships, or all the accolades the girl is receiving for her app. Let's pass on some appreciation to the so- called-mentor?

Why are we not seeing proof that this conversation occurred?

>Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because ~~sweetie~~, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry.

Addressing another developer as "sweetie" is deeply unprofessional. This whole sentence was dripping with obnoxious arrogance. This is the "investigator" we're taking at their word?

In case the author changes the post, this is the version that I'm commenting on: [https://archive.fo/9Jw4R](https://archive.fo/9Jw4R)

<comment><USER46> Apple's IDE has a visual way to generate UI related code, but you can do it manually. Beginners tend to use the UI WYSIWYG tools to build apps - AFAIK.

Maybe they mean a fake domain for the name of your libs: com.monkeybuttskunkworks.libs.cryptopricer

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is this flagged?

<comment><USER47> Is flagging on HN distinguishable from overpowered downvote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is this flagged? How can we request unflagging?

Is it all about censorship of harsh truths?

<comment><USER48> Members may flag submissions due to the resulting discussion on HN as much as the submission itself: the sets of topics that are interesting and topics that can be constructively discusses on HN are not identical. Both are important to keep HN interesting. FWIW, it's not flagged at the time I'm writing this comment.

<comment><USER47> Quality of HN commentary is down and the flagging epidemic is part of it.

The problem is sinking and killing discussions that already got going. A minority of selfish users gets to _demolish_ collaborative work that other users _already invested in._

The incentives are for lower effort from commenters. A downward spiral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> That post looks so immature.. who the f __* cares who created an app at the end of the day ?

If you think it's the fact that she's young that made the app famous, then create a false young persona and the same with your own app instead. Only stupid people would care about who built it instead of the actual quality of the app.

I've lost time even reading even the title of this post.

#firstworldproblems

<comment><USER50> You've been posting a lot of uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, which violates the guidelines. Could you please (re-)read them and stop?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The author of the article comes across poorly here - this is nothing more than bullying and harassment of the app developer, just because they didn't meet the exacting standards of this critic.

So the app developer had some mentorship, and probably copied and pasted a handful of code snippets she didn't have a deep understanding of. So what? That doesn't justify this completely over the top reaction.

</comment><comment><USER52> Young women interested in programming rare enough, let her get some help, let her have all the praise, that's okay. In years to come she'll hopefully stick to the field and that's what is important. Not that she wrote 100% of her app.

What we must never forget, writing the code is just the small part, marketing and selling software is the bigger challenge. She's obviously good at that and will prevail no matter what the nit-pickers say.

<comment><USER53> No, it's not ok, because as the original author highlights, such frauds diminish genuinely working women in tech (as is the author). For the same reason we don't give medals to the sportsmen that are caught cheating.

<comment><USER43> Yes, it is okay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a 16 year old male who has spent years and years hard at work, learning JavaScript and Rust, it really saddens me that people like this get the praise. There are lots of us working hard and putting in the hours, because we are intelligent enough to know that apps are a moonshot and not a key to success. I am all for gender equality, but it's blatant that the fact that the "developer" here is female has blown the actual achievement out of proportion. Maybe I should just get 'the change'. Maybe that's the key to success.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm sorry but the author is indeed a bully. I get the point why it may be unethical to copy and claim it's someone's own work but afaik the "real" coders were alright with this.

The author tries with all effort to proof that this kid can't Code by saying how experienced he is and that he was also smart when he was her age. For me this sounds like being very jealous and frustrated.

<comment><USER56> The author is women. And this just seems to be case where family 'helps' kid to chart their independent path. It is pretty common and I have known many people who would hire some contractors to write some mobile apps that can be used to garnish resume for college admissions etc.

People have been doing it forever but with help of social media they can generate lot of support and sympathy also if they fit in right slot of identity politics.

<comment><USER43> So what the author is a woman?</comment></comment></comment>


How Much Time Is Spent at Traffic Signals? - <AUTHOR> https://transportist.org/2018/03/06/how-much-time-is-spent-at-traffic-signals/ <comment><USER2> I started my business ([https://roadometry.com](https://roadometry.com)) to solve this problem. In my opinion, the main issue is the lack of good measurement systems for traffic; most cities only monitor a small fraction of their traffic in real-time.

To waste less time at traffic signals, we really need something more like a vision-based system at every controlled intersection. Then timing can be coordinated on a second-by-second level rather than simply re-tuning every few months, or relying on very rough heuristics.

My system currently requires a desktop with a high-end GPU, but I'm looking at different options for porting this to a low-power architecture for a solar installation.

<comment><USER3> Intersection control with cameras has been around for a while. Depending on the site conditions, it can be less expensive or more accurate to put a camera up on the signal pole looking across the intersection than a sensor loop in the roadway.

Power is not a huge concern, because most intersections are served by utility power. In most places, utility power runs along the roads, and where that's not true, there's often not enough traffic to need a signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Not Just Bikes Youtube channel has a nice video on Dutch traffic light coordination.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4&t=312s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4&t=312s)</comment>


People's sense of control over actions is reduced when angry or afraid: study - <AUTHOR> https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/04/30/peoples-sense-of-control-over-their-actions-is-reduced-at-a-fundamental-level-when-theyre-angry-or-afraid/ <comment><USER2> Anger is such an interesting experience in that (if this study is correct) we tend to actually lose agency while angry, but internally I think we actually believe we have dramatically increased agency in the moment. That's part of what makes anger so dangerous. We're basically at maximum stupid while angry. Do you ever get angry and suddenly feel a loss for words? Difficulty articulating arguments? Resorting to less effective and more hurtful strategies? Regretting it later? Anger, for the most part, is useless in most modern human interactions. I think it's the sort of thing that's good at convincing a brain that horrible acts are justifiable in the moment, such was killing in war or serious altercations. Anger and fear both seem like tools for survival in a world most of us no longer live in.

As for the ethical aspect... I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life, although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and fight these bullies. The best advice anyone ever gave me (Thanks Mr. McAneny) was that we aren't a tool of our anger, but instead, it's a tool of our creation. We're responsible for what we do with our anger, even if we're not the instigators. Anger typically leads to brutal solutions, both emotionally and physically, and it's so rare that this is necessary or remotely helpful. That really stuck with me.

I grew up with so many people telling me to use my anger against the bullies, and I think that reflects our cultural belief (or desire to believe) that our anger is justified, and what we do when we're angry is as well. I believe the truth is that it's almost never the correct response. The adults and peers around me who told me to embrace my anger probably didn't have a good understanding of why they believed that or perpetuated that belief.

All that is to say: We should stop believing in our anger so much, and start being responsible for what we do when we're angry. That seems like the most ethical solution.

<comment><USER3> Ive read some of the book "The Art of Empathy", in which the author describes anger as "the prideful sentry." I like this way of thinking about it.

Clearly, any emotion when taken to the extreme is bad, and anger is perhaps the most obvious example -- yet I would hesitate to call its existence useless, even in a modern context. Anger & pride both have functions as "alarm systems" for circumstances which would be detrimental to certain things we value.

EDIT: I now realize that your original comment was not presenting such a black-and-white view of the subject as I originally perceived. Keeping my comment above in tact for historical purposes

<comment><USER2> I agree. No emotion or sensation is 'useless', because they all serve to tell us about what's going on inside and around us. I suppose that's the key here. We can listen to anger and fear all day, but we don't have to connect that high-charge wire to whatever machine it's telling us to. It's really important to observe the feelings and not let it get out of control. It's also critical to understand why the feeling came, how it developed, and what it means about ourselves. I think those two parts are often ignored.

The same can even be said for attraction which can lead to crazy infatuation, or the desire to relax which can lead to chronically getting nothing done. Mostly these are very positive thoughts and feelings in moderation, so it's also difficult to observe and reconsider in the moment. Fear and anger are very important as well, but the product of both can be devastating when unregulated.

This is hard to teach to kids. I have kids, and one of them actually gets angry far too easily - maybe even more than I did as a kid. Trying to explain the idea of being responsible for what his anger leads to feels like a Sisyphean task at times. It's so important to me though to have them understand that ultimately, they decide how they react to what happens to them or around them. And of course the same applies to all those other feelings. People are complicated.

<comment><USER4> > It's really important to observe the feelings and not let it get out of > control. It's also critical to understand why the feeling came, how it > developed, and what it means about ourselves.

You just described Emotional intelligence, which I gained by practising Yoga, meditation and stoicism. I used to be neurotic and my anxieties ruled me. I didn't get angry often but when I did it was explosive. People were often surprised cause they never thought I could be like that. Three years ago, burnt out, feeling empty and seeking purpose, I quit working and began searching. Trust me when I say that I had no idea what I was searching for. I just needed to search for 'meaning' and purpose. It led me to yoga and meditation and my life began to change. I started to gain Emotional intelligence and better control of my nerves. It was like I was born again. My anger outbursts slowly disappead. I able to observe About a year after I began yoga and meditation, I got a copy of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and I got even better. After 3 years I went back to work.

I practice yoga and meditation with my kid. It was hard at first, but I tried to make it fun for her. Now she enjoys it. I teach her about Emotional intelligence and read the daily Stoic with her when I can. She loves Epictetus :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed."

—Disney's FROZEN (2013)

<comment><USER6> I thought that it was a fact that has been known for much much longer then that (like almost forever)....

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Posted title is clickbait. Actual title: "People's Sense of Control Over Their Actions Is Reduced At A Fundamental Level When They're Angry Or Afraid."

What the article actually says is that when people are angry or afraid, they don't believe as strongly that their actions are within their control. This seems like one of those "well, duh" kind of studies, but it's pretty interesting, because it lends credence to the "crime of passion" defense in law.

<comment><USER8> > they don't believe

More specifically, they act in a manner of not believing rather than merely stating as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the first paragraph: "...they often say that... they didn't feel responsible for those actions – they "lost control".... In the UK, under certain circumstances, a person accused of murder can even claim that this "loss of control" led to them killing their victim. If successful, this defence can reduce charges to manslaughter."

I am surprised at this line defense (not a lawyer, of course).

At the risk of creating a falsely binary division, either we are (at least most of the time) responsible adults or we are not. If we are, then we are responsible for our actions - even if our faculties are temporarily impaired, at least by virtue of actions we took. For example, driving while under the influence.

If we are not, then why do we have other privileges, such as voting, being able to care for children, etc?

Of course, there are middle grounds of various kinds and the law must find and work with these. Any sort of diminished capacity defence, e.g., by virtue of illness (e.g., depression), by virtue of mental disability, etc.

It seems to me that these middle grounds arise because there are discernible pathologies that give rise to diminished capacity. That seems reasonable.

Where the UK defence seems odd, seems to fly in the face of responsibility, is that there is no pathology. Someone got angry and lost control.

But anger is a choice. With the possible exception of the immature, of the previously mentioned disabled, and of cases involving actual physical contact (where someone isn't respecting your boundaries and your expressed wish that they back off), we choose anger as our response. It can be very hard to control this choice, but we are choosing to allow anger to rise.

Once we make that choice, we are responsible for what comes next. IM(NS)HO. YMMV. IANAL. Etc.

<comment><USER10> Isn't there a distinction between manslaughter and a premeditated murder in most jurisdictions? Where I'm from, impulsively killing someone in a burst of anger ("a crime of passion") is definitely different from a cold-blooded murder in the eyes of the law.

<comment><USER11> In the US, premeditation is the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder.

Manslaughter is a lesser offense, for when there was no intent of homicide but the perpetrator is nonetheless responsible: say someone decides to juggle axes on a balcony and drops one on someone's head.

<comment><USER10> Ah, right. Mixed up the terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a cyclist. This study might explain the sheer number of drivers who tell me that they passed me dangerously because I gave them "no choice".

When stopped at stoplights, I've told some of these drivers that they always can choose to wait until a safe time to pass, but many drivers scoff at this as if it's not a realistic option. Perhaps 95% of the time when I'm riding a driver wouldn't have to wait more than 30 seconds. (Maybe longer for other cyclists since I try to minimize this.) The fact that I so frequently catch up with these drivers at stop lights should be a clue to them that I often do not slow them down (i.e., stoplights are the bottleneck), but in my experience mentioning that tends to make an already angry driver angrier.

So far I don't think I've made much progress convincing dangerous drivers to drive better by talking to them, but I now have a much better understanding of their concerns.

<comment><USER13> If you are from US, I'm guessing the real problem is that most of those drivers never take the bicycle, and so have no clue of what it feels like.

I had the reverse. I drove my bike a lot when I was a teenager. Once I started driving at 18, I realized I did a lot of dangerous things with my bike.

The best thing is such situation is let the other person experience what it's like.

I'm guessing you also drive a car, so you know both situations. But from what I can tell, US drivers have no real experience with riding bicycles in traffic. And the times I was in US, I certainly don't want to ride a bike on most of those roads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just sense of control or actual control reduced? E.g. I generally am very mindful, calm and kind person but I can remember a couple of times in my life when I was driven so mad (e.g. when guys were bullying me at school I could go "berserk" and attack) or so scared (e.g. I once walked a bad city district at night alone and 2 zombies approached, kind of junkies perhaps, looked like real ghouls, so I ran away) that I was acting unconsciously and impulsively. From the consciousness point of view it felt like it was turned off and I wasn't in control any more, like in a non-lucid dream.

</comment><comment><USER15> Now take 2 parts mass media profit seeking, incomplete information, and an fear inducing event and stir them together. It's no wonder we panic and go to war so easily.

</comment><comment><USER16> From William S. Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_ :

> I am never here …. Never that is fully in possession, but somehow in a > position to forestall ill-advised moves…. Patrolling is, in fact, my > principal occupation….. No matter how tight Security, I am always somewhere > Outside giving orders and Inside this strait jacket of jelly that gives and > stretches but always reforms ahead of every movement, thought, impulse, > stamped with the seal of alien inspection….

[http://www.madnessandliterature.org/literature.php?id=26&res...](http://www.madnessandliterature.org/literature.php?id=26&resultpage=1)

The "alien inspection" reference is about Scientology, I think.

<comment><USER17> I wonder what reduced William S. Burroughs' sense of control over his actions that one time when he accidentally murdered his wife.

<comment><USER16> Alcohol, probably. Maybe also/or heroin. And he'd just returned from South America, where he'd been chasing (unsuccessfully, I've read) some young guy. And where he did, I gather, ayahuasca, maybe a few times. So he was probably crazier than usual.

But anyway, it was indeed horrible that he shot his wife. But for whatever it's worth, it was a formative event in his career as a writer. As I recall, he credited it as _the_ formative event in his career.

And to your point, it was arguably one of the things that he had in mind when writing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In Buddhism anger is one of the five poisons. It clouds your ability to see the world as it is so you actions probably won't be wise.

</comment><comment><USER19> When you're stuck in your amygdala, you kinda necessarily can't be operating from your cortices.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've always thought that anger was a direct result of being afraid. When we are afraid we have a number of feelings that are put forth as a result. Depending on why we are afraid we then use anger as a tool to get past the situation.

Also once we feel threaten and afraid we immediately fall into protection mode where our innate behavior is exhibited. You can think of our 4-5-year-old self as a sample. Things like selfishness, anger and doing what we can to get the upper hand, starts to be seen in us.

If you think about it, it takes a lot of years of teaching by society and parents to keeps us from being selfish, angry and whatever basic instincts we have. But even with that, we all fall into those modes when threaten and we are afraid.

<comment><USER21> russia is indeed a scarey place to live

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Advertisers have exploited this particular bit of knowledge since the 30's of the previous century.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you pay attention to how you perform - it's obvious, you don't need the studies, lol. We perform at our best in most pleasant states of your mind.

</comment><comment><USER24> Since neither the article nor the comments have mentioned game theory, I will mention it.

A game-theoretic _threat_ is a statement that, if you do something that hurts me (and might benefit you), then I will do a thing that hurts both of us. It's clear why "hurting you" is a critical part of the threatened action; the reason "hurting me" is included is that if it benefited me, then we'd assume I would do it anyway. The puzzle of the threat is then, how can I convince you I'll do something that will hurt me? Well, if I could modify my brain such that I will be determined to do something violent to you even at great risk to myself, that would be a great solution. _Anger_ is an emotion that does exactly this. Even better, if it is generally understood that any violations of my body (or whatever I want to protect) will trigger an anger response in me, then I don't have to make specific statements towards people I come across.

One can imagine variations on this: (a) if you know someone else has an anger response, and you want to do something that you're worried might trigger it, then maybe you can do a light-touched version of it and see if you can detect the beginnings of their anger response; (b) if you get into fights too often, you might give a "warning" (growl) response first.

It's interesting to think how these things might have evolved, because there are two sides to them. Anger is useless—counterproductive, in fact—if no one else understands before they act that you might become angry. And if anger doesn't exist, then detecting anger wouldn't be a useful trait. What came first, then? I would guess that some animals evolved a fight-or-flight response to deal with predators (because that increases survival chances), and the triggering mechanism was probably clumsy enough that it happened in non- life-threatening scenarios and caused needless violence (with negative expected value to all parties), and _that_ led to animals either being able to see the early stages of fight-or-flight, or having a sense of what will trigger fight-or-flight and avoiding doing those things (unless they plan to win the fight). (The fight-or-flight response is probably reasonably obvious to observe—muscles tensing, freezing or making sudden movements, etc.—so at least predators should have gotten good at noticing it, to become more efficient.)

I don't know what research has been done on the evolutionary origins of anger. But it makes so much game-theoretic _sense_ —and I have the impression that mammals in general have an anger response; quick googling gives mixed results about reptiles—that I'm very confident that what we would call anger evolved because it was useful for backing up an implicit threat of "don't violate my body or other things important to me, or else I will become violent". Yet I didn't see any discussion of evolution or game theory in either the article or the study. Those would seem to be important for forming hypotheses and interpreting results.

Anyway, for the threat to work, the "I will become violent" must be a strong compulsion (taking away the choice to not carry out the threat) and/or value- adjustment (so carrying out the threat now looks like the best thing to do). Either might subjectively feel like a loss of control, or not. Given that evolution has successfully implemented this feature, the subjective feeling seems like an implementation detail to me—maybe useful in learning to manage your own anger response.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's about energy. Anger and fear boost energy temporarily, probably evolved for survival. That's all there is to it, something to do with motivation. For example, when in anger you won't procrastinate which otherwise would be almost impossible to beat.

<comment><USER26> More than that. Limiting sensory inputs -- eliminating distractions -- can also be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an illusion. Thus, my emotional state tends to rarely get angry compared to when I thought free will was a possibility. Since understanding there isn't any control over anything makes me realize what can a person reasonably blame others or themselves if nobody has any choice over how they came to be or act. I don't necessarily gain control but I'm more functioning in society than before. That's typically the goal for everyone because than we have a better living experience.

<comment><USER28> Why even bother trying to explain something to others if free will is an illusion? What are you relying on to persuade them if they don't have a mind capable of understanding you?

<comment><USER29> It's not like they had a choice…

<comment><USER30> Indeed. Even if you don't believe in it at a philosophical level, you don't exactly have any choice in the matter. We all _behave_ as if we have free will -- the only alternative would be to just stop doing anything (e.g. being catatonic).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Be careful when you buy from Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://seliger.com/2017/01/09/tools-continued-careful-buy-amazon/ <comment><USER2> IMHO Amazon is diluting its brand by allowing third parties to sell items in its website.

It is not rare that non-techie people buy stuff from third party sellers believing they buy from Amazon.

<comment><USER3> I'm find it less of a value, too. I increasingly find better prices elsewhere, partially because I really don't want to join Prime. After browsing Amazon first, I bought a postal scale on eBay, and a refurbished laptop on Newegg.

<comment><USER2> Yeap! If you can't trust the seller, why not go directly to eBay?

The other day we received a parcel from Ukraine. When I openned it my wife said "I don't understand, why is it from Ukraine? I ordered it from Amazon!"

Since then, I cancelled all my family's Amazon accounts and ask everybody to send me links to the stuff they want and I order them for them.

Having third party sellers is the equivalent to Macy's allowing shady street sellers selling counterfeit perfumes in their store. Completely stupid idea if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who just bought a bunch of life-or-death climbing gear from Amazon, the idea of counterfeit goods is terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER5> We order a lot from Amazon, have Prime, etc., but my impression is that there's been a noticeable decline in the quality of their services over the last couple of years. It's impossible to find what I want anymore unless I know exactly what I'm looking for, and I hear more and more cautionary tales like this. The speed of delivery has increased impressively, sure, and I've been happy with some of the returns I've dealt with, but more and more often they seem like a delivery service than a shopping outlet. It seems like I'm buying directly from manufacturers more often, as I feel more confident in what I'm getting, and the shipping usually isn't too different.

<comment><USER6> Several times this past year, the Prime delivery date, stated to me while checking out, was missed. One time, for a birthday present, I paid extra for next-day delivery; they missed that date.

More frequently, I receive very poorly packed boxes. Items bouncing around the box with no or "token" packing material. One package came with all but one of the air pockets, used to provide cushioning, deflated. A substantial, hardcover book was packed together with some loose, higher quality mechanical pencils having unretracted/unretractable lead sleeves, with no padding or protection whatsoever. They were all just swimming around a relatively oversized box. (The product pages for the pencils gave no clue that I noticed that they would come in loose form, unpackaged save for being in small polyethylene bags.)

I don't order that much from Amazon/Prime, so this represented a significant fraction of my total activity with them.

For me, negative change has gone further than the un-differentiation of their catalogue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basically, China.

In circa 2012, Amazon, likely bowing to monsterous bribes and other pressures, allowed China to list items as 3rd party. In the 4 years since, counterfiets have increased by around 70%.

It will be the death of them. But hey, Bezos has his rocket ships, right?

</comment><comment><USER8> Just threw out an amp I bought on Amazon, that was really from a third party. It done died young. Not the only loss I've had, so I rarely buy third items (that they don't send out) from them now.</comment>


Not Hotdog App - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/not-hotdog/id1212457521?mt=8 <comment><USER3> Ha didn't expect this to end up here. If anyone is interested, I'm working on a blogpost explaining how we built the app in detail… It uses embedded TensorFlow on device (better availability, better speed, better privacy, $0 cost), with a custom neural net inspired by last month's MobileNets paper, built & trained with Keras. It was loads of fun to build :)

<comment><USER4> Is there a reason you didn't release on Android? The app was even demoed on a Pixel.

<comment><USER5> It was written in Objective C?

<comment><USER3> It's actually written in React Native with a fair bit of C++ (TensorFlow), and some Objective-C++ to glue the two. One cool thing we added on top of React Native was a hack to let us inject new versions of our deep learning model on the fly without going through an App Store review. If you thought injecting JavaScript to change the behavior of your app was cool, you need to try injecting neural nets, it's quite a feeling :D

<comment><USER6> This looks great, haha! Shame I can't access it from the UK.

It would be really interesting to read more about your thoughts on working with RN and C++ and perhaps how you did some of it. I'm currently doing the same (but with a C++ audio engine rather than image processing stuff) and I think it's an incredibly powerful combination - but I do feel like I'm making up some interop patterns as I go and there might be better ways, so would love to hear how other people use it!

Broadly, I've created a "repository" singleton that stores a reference to both the React Native module instance (which gets set when I call its setup method from JS) and the C++ main class instance (which gets set when it starts up), so they can get a handle on each other (I bet there are better ways to do this, but I'm new to C++/ObjC and couldn't work out a better way to get a reference to the RN module).

I'm then using RCT_EXPORT_METHOD to provide hooks for JS to call into C++ via an ObjC bridge (in an RCT_EXPORT_MODULE class), and using the event emitter to communicate back to JS (so the C++ can get the RN module instance from the singleton and call methods which emit events).

I've not done anything that really pushes the bridge performance to a point where I've seen any noticeable latency/slow down caused by the interop - <USER2> you had any issues here?

Like I say, I'm finding a really cool way to build apps that need the power of native code but still with the ease of RN as the GUI and some logic, and I actually quite like the separation it enforces with the communication boundary.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you're further ahead than I was with the React Native part! Not Hotdog is very simple so I just wrote a simple Native module around my TensorFlow code and let the chips fall where they may performance-wise. The snap/analyze/display sequence is slow enough that I don't need to worry about fps or anything like that. As much as I enjoyed using RN for this app, I would probably move to native code if I needed to be able to tune performance.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain to a noob how you wrote the Native module around TensorFlow? My main area of focus is in python, but I feel hindered when I think I'm ready to start developing for mobile apps. I'm looking into RN, but still not sure how that plays with TF and other python modules.

<comment><USER3> It was honestly just maybe 10 lines of code, but I was very confused about it before I got it done. The message passing is a bit counterintuitive at first. I'll try to share example code in my blogpost!

<comment><USER7> awesome, what's your blog?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone keen to learn more about object detection (and deep learning in general), I just finished working through an excellent free MOOC taught by Jeremy Howard (former chief scientist at Kaggle) - you basically learn how to fine-tune a convolutional neural network with your own data (e.g. hotdog vs not hotdog) in lesson 2!

[http://course.fast.ai/lessons/lesson2.html](http://course.fast.ai/lessons/lesson2.html)

<comment><USER3> I can't recommend that course enough! I attended it in person and got a lot out of it. Jeremy & Rachel were also enormously kind & helpful outside of class.

<comment><USER8> Ah so jealous! How was part 2?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always find it strange when apps like this are made unavailable in certain countries (in this case, the UK).

Video, I understand. From a consumer perspective it's crappy, but I do understand that licensing agreements for video are generally geographically restricted. But an app that goes along with a TV show? I can't see Sky (the UK network broadcasting Silicon Valley and most other HBO shows right now) distributing Not Hotdog.

It would be fun to play with it while the novelty is still fresh.

<comment><USER10> My guess is they don't want to put in the lawyer work to figure out if they can. I imagine HBO has to heavily vet things like this, unlike small startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Craziest thing - it works! Just detected a hotdog (off a photo). Machine learning has really come far, that this can be done for a joke app is really cool.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hm, is this an officially licensed HBO marketing stunt? Or does SeeFood Technologies Inc. actually exist as a corporation?

If not, I'm curious what the legal ramifications are of doing business as a corporation that does not exist.

<comment><USER13> The term you're looking for is "Fictitious Business Name," or "Trade Name."

Generally, the legal ramifications are a requirement to register the name and pay a small fee. In Santa Clara it costs $40 to register a fictitious business name with the county and the registration is good for five years: [https://www.sccgov.org/sites/rec/Fictitious%20Business%20Nam...](https://www.sccgov.org/sites/rec/Fictitious%20Business%20Names/Pages/Fictitious- Business-Name-Filings.aspx)

It's really not a big deal.

<comment><USER12> Thank you, that's a pleasant surprise! Cheap and painless enough that it makes me want to try my hand at an ARG with fake corporations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still sad they weren't allowed to release the fully functional bro app that got created.

<comment><USER15> I am a consultant for the show. I actually saw it!

<comment><USER14> Yeah, same here :) It was actually pretty well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hail Eris! This app may be very useful to Discordians, because of the Original Snub and the Five Commandmends of the Pentabarf: [http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/11.php](http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/11.php)

</comment><comment><USER17> US only, welcome to the "global system of interconnected computer networks". Hope Richard's P2P-internet will work better :)

<comment><USER3> Yup sorry about that, the app is available only in the US (& Canada) due to some legal restrictions we couldn't avoid. FWIW I also worked about on Richard's New Internet concept for this season so I definitely hear ya ;)

<comment><USER18> Can you please enlighten us as to what kind of legal restrictions apply here? It is always interesting to see how these «little» legal details get in the way of running software.

Congrats for getting the app out!

<comment><USER19> Could it be that the app is using HTTPS? iTunesConnect has all these crazy questions with very little guidance about encryption and export compliance if you say you do use HTTPS.

<comment><USER20> Guys, we have HTTPS in the rest of the world now!

But seriously, the iTunes connect question specifically excludes stuff like HTTPS using the regular libraries, which is just as well as otherwise pretty much every app would be affected. Legal issue is probably boring IP rights stuff.

<comment><USER19> It's not that easy. Even the first question in iTunesConnect explicitly states you must answer "yes" even if you just make use of the built-in HTTPS libraries in the OS. If you start digging into the various guidelines you open a can of worms of recursive cross-references between documents and sections. Nowhere have I seen a statement that says "if you just use os HTTPS, you don't have to do anything". At the very least you may have to consider if you have to submit various annual self-classification reports.

For an app like this I could easily see a serious company deciding to skip the hassle and CYA, instead of potentially taking on a huge legal risk. Would you, as a regular worker-bee developer, be OK with personally signing off and accepting a legal risk on behalf of a large company without involving expensive lawyers to evaluate the validity of your opinion on this legalese? Would that be a responsible action to take?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a reason this is not released globally, but only in the US? I am not on the US App Store, so cannot see this app.

</comment><comment><USER22> I had an idea for an app that would tell you if what you are about to eat is helthful or not. Basically all it has to do is determine the ratio of green to brown color. Obviously it would not really work (purple carrots, spaghetti squash), but would be a nice novelty thing nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if it's able to tell the difference between hot dogs and well-shaven, tanned legs.

</comment><comment><USER24> Make available in Norway stores please! I want to be able to know what I am eating...

</comment><comment><USER25> Will it be released world wide

<comment><USER26> I second this, world wide release would be nice. It's a shame how many "locale neutral" apps end up walled in on the US app store.

Is there any specific reason why this happens, just seems to me like you get worse reach and no benefits? Especially for a marketing stunt like this.

<comment><USER27> Crypto export restrictions, I believe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My faith in the internet is restored. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER29> DANM! I wanted to start learning NN and write an app after watching the Silicon Valley episode. You beat me to it. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why wasn't it called "Hotdog or Not" ? to avoid copyright infringement ?

<comment><USER31> They own the copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jian Yang was demoing the app on a Pixel. Looks like Apple negotiated another exclusivity deal ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> Thought a hamburger was a hotdog btw

</comment><comment><USER33> I hear UploadVR loves it and is considering an acquihire.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is related to a TV show.

Maybe this comment thread could use a link to a video clip of the show.

Maybe this comment thread could use a link to a video clip of the app in use, since it doesn't work on most devices.</comment>


How to Get Internship in Software Companies - <AUTHOR> http://abhishekdesai.com/how-to-get-internship-in-software-companies

<comment><USER2> I wonder why a bogus post full of false claims is even posted on HN.

> He is in 5th semester which means he hardly knows anything about computer > science or programming languages till now.

To quote Linus, "Numbers talk, Bullshit walks"

Checkout this: <http://www.spoj.pl/ranks/countries/>

FYI, Programming language is taught in first semester. There are assignments, mini-projects etc which has to be done in a _programming language_.

>Clueless students go around searching for companies on their own and with the help of their parents, relatives. And that is where this vicious cycle of "Pulling the strings" starts.

Companies visit the campus and hire for internship. How do one intern at companies like Google, Facebook by "pulling strings" I wonder.

>99% of Indian Engineering students do not know anything about FTP till they graduate from computer science.

Many colleges have centralized repository for software hosted on FTP. (including mine: <http://www.iiita.ac.in/> )

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I have offended an IITan. I should have mentioned in my post that I am not talking about IITs here. Sorry my mistake. But this is a truth at least in most Engineering Colleges in my state Gujarat.</comment></comment>


Extensions to the xterm protocol - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/blob/master/protocol-extensions.asciidoc <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting! I'd be keen to know about the performance implications of "full mode" \-- I'm often on an older laptop where keyboard latency is noticeable in terminal applications. Would full mode improve the situation at all, if adopted by the terminal emulator and the application?

<comment><USER2> So I looked into kitty a bit more. Kitty is heavy. It seems to use 2-3x as much CPU for my benchmark task (scrolling around a big text file in an editor) compared with VTE-based terminal emulators, and 5-6x as much as urxvt. Everybody's got different priorities, but for me I'll stick with urxvt and save my battery.

<comment><AUTHOR> > kitty is heavy […]

Please file a bug report: [https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues](https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues)

Kitty aims to offload rendering to the GPU so if your CPU is being hammered that might indicate a problem either in Kitty or the GLFW library. The author is very quick to respond to such bug reports.

<comment><USER2> Will do -- I certainly appreciate the effort it must take to write a new terminal emulator, and I'm intrigued by the new ideas kitty brings to the table. I'd like to help it be a program I can use.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UBS sues Nasdaq over $357 million IPO loss - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ubs-profits-disappoint-amid-loss-on-facebook-ipo-2012-07-31-14854710

<comment><USER2> If you take a look at the UBS quarterly report, you can read the specifics of their claim (quoted below and available in full on the UBS website). Essentially, the bank asserts that NASDAQ initiated buy requests multiple times. Had Facebook stock sky-rocketed, as anticipated, I wonder if we would have ever heard a word of this?

"Due to multiple operational failures by NASDAQ, UBS's pre-market orders were not confirmed for several hours after the stock had commenced trading. As a result of system protocols that we had designed to ensure our clients' orders were filled consistent with regulatory guidelines and our own standards, orders were entered multiple times before the necessary confirmations from NASDAQ were received and our systems were able to process them. NASDAQ ultimately filled all of these orders, exposing UBS to far more shares than our clients had ordered. UBS's loss resulted from NASDAQ's multiple failures to carry out its obligations, including both opening the Facebook stock for trading and not halting trading in the stock during the day. We will take appropriate legal action against NASDAQ to address its gross mishandling of the offering and its substantial failures to perform its duties."

<comment><USER3> The order workflow is generally like so:

1) Client sends order to market.

2) Market acknowledges it has received the order, sending back the market- generated order ID.

3) The market tries to fill the order (takes from 1ms to a day, depending on the type of order). When the order is filled, the client is informed.

4) At any time before the order is filled, the client can cancel it.

Perhaps during NASDAQ's issues the acknowledgements (step 2) were not sent and UBS didn't have the IDs of the orders they wanted to cancel.

<comment><USER4> The real problem, according to UBS, is that in absence of an acknowledgement they sent extra orders. UBS improperly acted. The first rule when you set up risk limits is to consider both actual position (acknowledged) and theoretical position (assuming all orders are filled). Standard risk controls would have prevented this.

<comment><USER5> Yeah this seems like a baseless claim to me. I work on these kinds of applications and we always assume that an order is eligible to execute from when it's sent until the exchange confirms it has been canceled/deleted. This is pretty standard and it's surprising that a big bank would have such an obvious hole in their risk system, and disappointing that they would then fail to take responsibility for their own mistake.

<comment><USER6> I think the standard IPO buying strategy for a large institution like UBS is to make many large buy requests to make absolutely sure that all the brokers that want stock get it, then cancel when enough orders are fulfilled.

Since interest was very high on the FB IPO, the assumption would be that it would be fairly hard to actually get stock. So the bank would make a lot of requests, on the hope that a certain percentage would be fulfilled immediately(say 30-40%), after which they could cancel the remaining orders.

Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case, because a LOT of FB stock was released to the market. Add to that that NASDAQ(as UBS contends) did not give a confirmation ID to UBS, and it's pretty easy to see why this happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _UBS sues Nasdaq and Facebook over $357 million IPO loss_

The article doesn't mention anything about UBS suing Facebook, only Nasdaq. Can you update the title to take this into account?

Edit: title now updated, thanks! :)

<comment><USER8> right, specifically "to address its gross mishandling of the offering and its substantial failures to perform its duties".

does anyone know what they could possibly have in mind?

<comment><USER9> There were severe technical problems in Nasdaq's trading system during the IPO:

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/06/nasdaq- outlines...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/06/nasdaq- outlines-40m-fund-for-facebook-ipo-glitches/)

<comment><USER10> Aren't these sort of things covered in 'I have read and understood the Term and conditions' & then click on 'I agree'.

<comment><USER11> No, these are the things covered by the litigation specialists at corporate law firms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What they should actually do is fire the bozos handling client orders in their wealth management group.

Having built multiple systems for automated trading and traded manually, it's really trading systems 101 to know that unacknowledged orders should be treated as live until you know otherwise and should never be repeated. Second, when you connect to Nasdaq via FIX or their proprietary protocol, one of the parameters you are allowed to specify is and ACK timeout. So if the exchange was getting around to acknowledging an order with a client timestamp that is more than ACK timeout old it is auto-cancelled. It seems from talking to multiple people that multiple firms including UBS hadn't set an ack timeout at all.

<comment><USER13> Oh and that will get 357 million back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Until a few weeks before the offering, FB was going to price at $28 per share. Why is anyone surprised that the $38 price had no support?

<comment><USER11> This isn't about the support level of Facebook's share price. UBS claims that NASDAQ was de facto dysfunctional. Too many buy orders were triggered, cancellations not being fulfilled and so on.

<comment><USER14> True, but the implication was that a lot of their FB activity was executed by their traders on behalf of their (now unhappy) clients. It's my opinion that this lawsuit wouldn't be happening if FB's stock was at $50.

<comment><USER15> Ofcourse it wouldn't be happening then, nobody would have had taken any damage if the FB stock had stayed or risen.

UBS would just have sold off the excess of shares it had received, perhaps at a profit. Perhaps just warning NASDAQ of their reckless technical situation.

That doesn't mean that there for some reason this lawsuit isn't justified. NASDAQ made UBS take a risk they did not want to take.

<comment><USER4> UBS was rendered an undue risk when the first order didn't acknowledge. Sending future orders was UBS mistake, despite the eventual performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone shed some light onto how common of an occurrence this is? It seems like the world of finance is frequented by trigger-happy lawyers and that this might be a commonplace occurrence.

<comment><USER17> IANAL...

It's pretty common, I can recall lots of these cases around IPOs that didn't sky rocket as planned.

This one may be a little more unique because NASDAQ seems to have had actual technical issues with the IPOD. Given the current stock proceed of FB though, I'm curious how their argument is framed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A bank sues stock marked over some number fluctuation caused by social network and all that produces millions of profits for the lawyers :) . If I would be more naive I'd say "Let them all burn down". But since all that translates to billions of real money and can possibly harm entire countries in some cases (like the LIBOR scandal) we can only watch and wonder how did we come here...

</comment><comment><USER19> They need to fire the employees who thought investing in Facebook was a good idea in the first place.

<comment><USER20> they were client orders. their clients wanted to buy FB

<comment><USER19> Yep "including clients of our wealth management businesses."

The people running the UBS wealth management business need to be terminated. This is most likely the catalyst for why UBS is actually suing. Rest of the "clients" who did no research and just bought into the hype are just along in the lawsuit for the ride.

<comment><USER20> >> This is most likely the catalyst for why UBS is actually suing

unlikely. from their quarterly report " NASDAQ ultimately filled all of these orders, exposing UBS to far more shares than our clients had ordered".

their clients ordered X shares of FB. UBS sent out 5 * X shares (or something like that). they sent out extra orders because NASDAQ wasn't sending acknowledgements for the initial orders. so UBS had to liquidate 4 * X shares at a loss, because the price took a dive. the loss from liquidation is why they sued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure NASDAQ has their asses covered with armor-clad underwear so thick that a bunker buster penetrator missile will feel impotent.

That said, time to load up the popcorn machine.</comment>


Computers as Invisible as the Air - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/weekinreview/05markoff.html

<comment><USER2> "In other words, the only thing that will change about computing is the shape of the tail fins."

This article seems geared toward older people, explaining things that frighten and confuse them in terms they can easily understand.

Nothing new or interesting here.</comment>


Ask HN: Platform/Framework for a small, secure Site? - <AUTHOR> Id like to implement a simple checkout, connecting to a payment gateway. The checkout flow is bespoke, perhaps 2 screens where a user selects some variables related to their purchase, during it there will be calls to a backend API. There will be a redirect to an EPG and redirect back post payment. There is no user-authentication (sign-in etc) required as the initial request will be validated as originating from a trusted source.
Does anyone have any recommendations on a language, framework or platform that:
- Has a good degree of out of the box security to ease OWASP compliance
- Requires minimal maintenance from a security standpoint. Eg doesn't use a whole host of third party packages.
- Is able to be deployed on Heroku, or hosted on a third party service with a CDN that covers asia.
- Isnt a single page app or part of a big e-comm framework
Sorry - a pretty niche request - suggestions / pointers are much appreciated :) <comment><USER2> I've been using Elixir/Phoenix for a while now and only have good things to say about it. I deploy on gigalixir.com, but Heroku works also. I'm the founder of gigalixir.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could take a look at my framework which I initially posted to HN recently here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16743476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16743476)

I'd be more than happy in assisting you how to use it.

<comment><USER3> For Heroku deployment you could take a look at this: [https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/vibed/deploy-on- heroku](https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/vibed/deploy-on-heroku)

I'd have to add Heroku deployment to the actual documentation though.

<comment><USER3> Heroku deployment has been added now [http://diamondmvc.org/tutorials/deployment#deploying-with- he...](http://diamondmvc.org/tutorials/deployment#deploying-with-heroku)</comment></comment></comment>


Pg_pathman 1.0.0: table partitioning for postgres - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_pathman <comment><USER2> This is very nice, another way is to do the partition in the query yourself by using different databases/tables based on eg. a hashed userid. This works well and cross-platform if you have very isolated data for inserts/deletes/indexes (KISS). But this solution seems neat, I'm pretty sure it will solve someones problem.</comment>


Warcraft: Skies of Azeroth – 360 video - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_J8k43gUhY

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know what makes this "video" tick?

I have a couple of ideas but I prefer informed answers over my guesswork.

<comment><USER2> If you want more than just an idea, download the video with e.g. youtube-dl and see what it looks like in its unprojected form.

Example screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/z2fwIzJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/z2fwIzJ.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Interesting..

So if I'm understanding correctly it's doing a spherical projection onto a plane, we get to navigate that plane, and every snippet of that plane- projection we see is being projected back into 3D somehow?

It can't actually reconstruct the 3D environment from the projection, so what's actually happening there at the end?

<comment><USER2> I'm no expert on this topic, but browsing [http://paulbourke.net/geometry/transformationprojection/](http://paulbourke.net/geometry/transformationprojection/) this seems a lot like an "equirectangular projection" (purely visually), which according to [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CylindricalEquidistantProjectio...](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CylindricalEquidistantProjection.html) can be inverted.

So if we navigate the plane with the projection of the sphere on it and apply the reverse transform to the snippet we're viewing (genuine question: what form and size would the snippet need to have?) it seems we would get the effect of being inside the sphere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know the form and size of the snippet, I'm assuming it's rectangular because I don't see a reason for it not to be..

I think We're still having an issue at the poles: If you take a rectangular snippet out of the image you've uploaded which its topmost edge coincides with the topmost part of the image, what can we expect the transformation to yield?

They might be dealing with edge cases behind the scenes in some way. Mathematically speaking there can't be a way to fully invert a transformation from 3D to 2D, so I guess they settled for something that they can still work around.

In any case even though I'd like to know the exact details, at this point my curiosity seems to be satiated.

Thanks for the friendly conversation. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Retrospective funnel analysis for Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.funnelplus.com/blog/2013/08/22/whats-funnelplus-for-then/

<comment><USER2> Retrospective funnels has always been a pain for GA. I usually dump everything in Excel so this could save some time.

I noticed on the home page when I click "Try it now" it says "Thanks, We'll be in touch shortly." You might want to link that to the open account frame.... unless I missed something.

Looks like a nice tool. A San Miguel was deserved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Can you believe I submitted this to Hacker News with a broken sign up button?

Should be fixed now and take you to [http://reports.funnelplus.com/login#reg_form](http://reports.funnelplus.com/login#reg_form)

Would you mind retrying? :)

<comment><USER2> It's working... but I assume you know that by now.</comment></comment></comment>


Show OS X notifications when long running command finishes - <AUTHOR> http://frantic.im/notify-on-completion <comment><USER2> A much lower-effort solution, if you can hear: "some_command; say 'done'". (Replace 'say' with 'espeak' on Linux.)

I personally went kinda crazy in this direction, and made 'judge some_command', which, depending on exit status, runs either 'yay' or 'boom', themselves custom commands which play clapping or explosion sounds.

So I can do 'judge run_tests' or 'run_tests; judge' and hear what happened. (The latter form is nice if I realize after the command started that I want notification - I just type it and hit enter while waiting for the first command to finish.)

[https://github.com/nathanl/.dotfiles/blob/64b0ae9e53c0bbf9c5...](https://github.com/nathanl/.dotfiles/blob/64b0ae9e53c0bbf9c5b6b162754237251cedbac4/zsh/aliases#L65-L91)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also noti ([https://github.com/variadico/noti](https://github.com/variadico/noti)), which I use. Just add noti to the beginning of a command you run (i.e. "noti eb deploy"), and you'll get a notification when it finishes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a bell character in my prompt and my terminals (on osx and Linux) configured to do visual signaling on bell instead of making noise. This works even with remote hosts and uniformly across platforms.

</comment><comment><USER5> Left as an exercise for the reader: learn how to do this in bash, decide what to name the script file, figure out what the PS1 line does, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER6> how would this work with terminal instead of iterm2?</comment>


Anybody have any recommends for PCAnywhere-type services? - <AUTHOR>

I thought there was a YC company that did that sort of thing, but at any rate, anybody have any preferred services?  VNC might also be acceptable (I've used TightVNC elsewhere before).  Assume Windows on both ends.<p>*Edit: Oh...and on the cheap, preferably, but not to the extreme that it's at the expense of quality / security. <comment><USER2> RDP is actually a little better than VNC if you are using windows (imo)

personally, I do everything in Linux in a shell. The only GUI I use on a regular basis is the web browser. With SSH, unless your connection is just horrible, it's difficult to tell if you are working locally or on a box hundreds of miles away. But if you want a GUI, that doesn't help you. Use RDP.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.copilot.com> from Fog Creek Software works well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do you need a service? Just asking, but it seems like if you're mildly technically oriented and have control of the endpoint machines, then VLC or RDP is going to be cheap (free) and as good or better than any hosted application.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could be right; I'm just asking for people's personal, specific preferences (e.g., exactly which VNC?). There's far too many different options out there to try them all, so I was hoping to get some names that people have found they like.

<comment><USER4> Which do you want, a paid service, or a screen/keyboard protocol/program ala VNC?

They're kind of 2 different approaches. If you own and control both endpoints, then VNC or RDP is likely the better way to go. If you're trying to connect to various end-point PCs that move around a lot and don't want to deal with firewall issues, then things like Go To My PC or copilot are going to be better, but the two approaches aren't really competitive, they solve different problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I control one endpoint (the 'server' / computer being connected to), and to some reasonable extent, can dictate how the other end is setup. To the extent that it matters to me, both approaches solve the same problem, that is, I need to allow somebody to use a computer here in BFE while they are in a different part of country as if they were sitting right here. I want whatever works best, preferably free or cheap; I don't care if it's web-based, VNC-based, or RDP-based. I'm comfortable working with any of those - _I'm only wondering if there is a shiny bit of software, of any of those types, hiding somewhere out there that I haven't heard of, which other people have found to be particularly nice to use_.

At any rate...this post isn't really getting me anywhere. :P Outside of copilot, nobody has even said a specific piece of software to use (except one for mac, which isn't terribly useful).

<comment><USER4> When I was forced to deal with Windows boxes (heh), the built-in RDP was rock- solid and worked great. If you own the server, I wouldn't pay for anything different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> for osx, jollyfastvnc is the only game in town

<http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html></comment>


Linode promo code for 1GB plan - <AUTHOR>

Use promo code LINODE10 to get $10 credit and try 1GB plan for free (1 month). Sign up here : http://bit.ly/1i4w02g (includes referral tag) <comment><AUTHOR> signup link (clickable) : [http://bit.ly/1i4w02g](http://bit.ly/1i4w02g)</comment>


Swype hits Play Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/swype-finally-rolls-out-of-beta-hits-the-google-play-store-for-0-99/

<comment><USER2> It's about time! Swype is about the only thing I missed from my old Samsung phone when I switched to the Nexus 4 (I was too lazy to go find the beta). The AOSP gesture keyboard is okay, but Swype is much faster imo.</comment>


Dad says Google Maps shows son's dead body - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/tech/web/google-maps-dead-body/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 <comment><USER2> Given Google blurs peoples faces, I suspect they are quite happy to blur / remove dead bodies.

So not sure what the real issue is here?

Has he actually asked for it to be removed?

<comment><USER3> Current first line:

"Google says it will replace a Google Maps image after a California father complained it shows the body of his teen-age son, who was shot to death in 2009."

EDIT: To remove my own snark as I realized the article was updated. Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty amazing that something like this is basically a statistical certainty with the amount of imagery we generate of the world.

<comment><USER5> i would say "rather unamazing"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that a popular place for bodies? I swear I can see a body at street level here: [https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-12...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d-122.36136!3d37.952679!2m2!1f153.52!2f83.12!4f17.39!2m7!1e1!2m2!1sPPglZN1tBgX5S7ZIu1dLSQ!2e0!5m2!1sPPglZN1tBgX5S7ZIu1dLSQ!2e0&fid=5)

<comment><USER7> The area appears to have a high murder rate, as mentioned in some other news articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the goal is to prevent people from seeing the image, why go to the local news? Now that the story has been picked up by online media, it will go viral.

<comment><USER9> I doubt he cares about other people seeing it. I think he just wants to be able to use Google Maps in his home town without stumbling on his son's corpse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Had the satellite flown over earlier this headline might have said 'google maps helps solve murder case'

so sad.

</comment><comment><USER11> So, has Google actually refused to remove the image? Or just not moved fast enough?

<comment><USER12> "Barrera said he plans to formally complain to Google and to lobby state lawmakers for their help in removing the image."

Don't believe he's actually asked Google yet to take it down.

<comment><USER13> Yet he's talked to CNN. I'm willing to bet the causality here went the other way. The reporter got a tip about a murder scene (or whatever it was) on google maps, did a little digging to figure out who it was, called the folks involved, and ran with the first lede that would draw links.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but the article does say he discovered it.

"Jose Barrera, of Richmond, California, said he discovered the image, visible on Google Maps' satellite view feature, last week."

[Edit] Video says learned of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to live in this area several years ago. It's really quite a rough area with plenty of shootings and stray bullets to go around. These stories cropped up all the time. I remember discovering at one point that the crime in Richmond was worse than Compton. Not sure if it's still true or not.

<comment><USER15> Some stats: [http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/richmond/crime/](http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/richmond/crime/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Super sad situation, but this is a classic Streisand effect in the making. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

<comment><USER17> It sounds like the father's reason for requesting the removal is that it causes him grief, not that he wants fewer people to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really sad picture. I hope google removes it.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a little south of the marker on the map in the article, but it is still on Google Maps.

<comment><USER20> It's been blurred out now ([http://imgur.com/1GcROpY](http://imgur.com/1GcROpY)).

Also, the new maps interface is very unintuitive. I remember there used to be an option to create a shortlink to an exact coordinate: I can't figure out where that is now. There is a 'Save' button, but I think that just saves it to my local machine. How do I share a location?

<comment><USER21> that blurry square isn't it, if you travel south for about half a block, you'll see a police car, follow that road forward a bit, and you can see a body, and north of that in the field there is a group of law enforcement.

slightly gruesome screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/bnyNZq5.png](http://i.imgur.com/bnyNZq5.png)

<comment><USER22> Very sad. The world is a very big place though, this kind of stuff is bound to come up. I do hope the Maps folks take some action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I understand the sentiment of the father.. I think it is appropriate for Google to remove it..

</comment><comment><USER24> Very sad. I feel for the father.</comment>


Atom 1.13 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.atom.io/2017/01/10/atom-1-13.html <comment><USER2> I love Atom, and use it as my main editor, but it's many times slower than Sublime Text.

I hope but doubt Electron will ever get near native in terms of performance.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious if you have tried VSCode? It seems significantly faster than Atom and is built on Electron (and I think an Atom base).

<comment><USER4> Microsoft has an _extraordinary_ amount of in-house talent when it comes to IDEs and performance, and it shows in VSCode.

The difference in responsiveness between the two editors is stark and it's a primary reason I never use Atom anymore (though the increasingly sophisticated intellisense and integrated CLI tools is what's kept me in VSCode).

<comment><USER5> Omg these three comments are the same in every atom release. It's not a bad thing, just funny. 1. Atom is slow. 2. Have you tried VS Code? 3. Microsoft has a small but effective team developing VS Code, well done to them.

<comment><USER6> Every frigging time. This pattern never ceases to amaze me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how noticeable the recent performance improvements really are.

I have been on VSCode for a while but might give Atom a try for a change, and see how much it has evolved.

<comment><USER8> Stick with VSCode. It's better in my experience.

<comment><USER9> I prefer VSC too, but no harm in trying out the improvements in Atom.

There's one feature/plugin in Atom that I wish VSC had, which is browser-plus. I haven't found anything comparable in VSC, which is a shame as it'd be useful when iterating through website designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Large File Performance graph suggests that it will open a 7MB file in 300ms~350ms yet it still opens a 7MB utf-8 encoded file in 6000ms.

<comment><USER11> Is this on 1.14-beta0? If so, please open an issue. We now do a lot of text layout computation lazily, but currently, it's very easy for a third-party package to accidentally force the entire text layout to be computed immediately via an API call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, Atom isn't the greatest across a number of performance metrics, but if my experience it irresplacable for:

1\. markdown support is top notch

2\. proto-repl[1] in clojure is amazing and only available on Atom.

[1] [https://atom.io/packages/proto-repl](https://atom.io/packages/proto-repl)

</comment><comment><USER13> is it faster than VSCode now?

<comment><USER14> Unlikely, especially with plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> VSCode all the way</comment>