Al Jazeera English: The Most Hated Name in News - <AUTHOR> http://www.walrusmagazine.com/print/2009.10-media-the-most-hated-name-in-news/

<comment><USER2> I started watching Al Jazeera a few years back because they were the only news network with a live web broadcast ( <http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/#> ) when I didn't have cable. I pretty much fell in love with it for everything the article points out.

Great journalism, and journalists every where, actual journalists instead of celebrity talking heads. Debates are two people debating instead of yelling. They also don't have that Fox/CNN approach of going out of their way to portray both sides of every story as equal.

The documentaries are top notch too.

I wish I had more to add to the article, other than to say that I hope it does make good inroads to NA without changing.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I'm incredibly excited to have AJE potentially coming to the US. I can't stand to watch the news anymore, it's gotten so bad... I always feel like it's a game of spot-the-partisan-bias.

Now if only there were a way to help them get picked up by a network...

<comment><USER4> I get their channel over the air here in DC. You should check if it's available in your city. Their next major hurdle is to get on cable.

"Al Jazeera English has finally broken into the United States. A non-profit educational broadcaster has agreed to carry it in Washington and twenty other American cities."

<comment><USER3> Ah yeah, sorry, I meant cable. I should check, though, thanks for the reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this disturbing:

"On Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, meanwhile, Sami al-Hajj, a rookie cameraman with the station, was captured in what he believes was a case of mistaken identity (another cameraman named Sami had filmed an interview with bin Laden); he spent six years in Guantánamo before being released in 2008. The forty-year-old Sudanese national, who now walks like an old man, told me he was interrogated more than 300 times -- almost exclusively about Al Jazeera, on whom he was asked to spy."

<comment><USER6> As it should. Some detainees have been held there for over seven years without charges being pressed.

[http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/11/20...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/11/20/guantanamo)

<comment><USER5> I just wonder how many spies the CIA / whoever has working in media organizations, i.e. folks who didn't take the hard way out of Guantanamo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article (quoting Philip Seib):

\---

Comparing it with the American networks "is like comparing The Economist to Newsweek."

\---

That's how I see it pretty much. I had accidentally stumbled on Al Jazeera English while channel surfing. Somehow I had always thought they were some shady, terrorist supported news outlet. I very much surprised at the quality of reporting and investigative journalism. They covered issues that actually matter in the world as opposed to "Tiger Woods has been thinking about a public apology" type crap or "Be afraid of killer fungus from outer space that eats your children" type stuff.

At the same time I don't know why CNN and other American network report junk. Don't they simply report what American public wants to see and hear? Isn't that a commentary on the quality of American viewers? They are in the business of selling the audience to the advertisers.

<comment><USER2> > They covered issues that actually matter in the world as opposed to "Tiger > Woods has been thinking about a public apology" type crap or "Be afraid of > killer fungus from outer space that eats your children" type stuff.

Some one once said that the 24 hour news cycle was the worst thing that ever happened to reporting. I think Al Jazeera works partly because it's unabashedly about the world for the world. They don't need as much filler because there actually is news happening 24/7 if you have a wide enough scope, and they can't use as many country specific celebrity general interest stories because they're even more irrelevant outside the specific country.

Also Al Jazeera is just better, but I think some of that is inherent in their mission statement.

<comment><USER8> CNN started out this way. 24 hour news coverage of international events. Overtime it became more US-centric until it was the same 1 hour news reported 24 times per day.

CNN International is still fantastic. I watched it while in Singapore and was floored by the integrity of the journalists. Then I got back to the US and it was the same fluff pieces from the week before I left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found Al Jazeera was unusual in that after watching it for any length of time I actually felt more knowledgeable for it. In particular their programmes like "Empire" were always educational.

Take this for example. [http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2009/11/20091...](http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2009/11/20091124161117526700.html)

Watching other news stations rarely makes me feel like I've learnt anything. Too many fluff pieces and too many short stories that quickly relay what happened but give you little insight into why. There was a bombing here, there was an accident there, this happened over here, thankyou for watching. Its all reporting and no analysis.

<comment><USER10> _Its all reporting and no analysis_

You have just NAILED exactly the reason I gave up on cable news years ago and now get most of my news from Public Radio. At least MPR has the decency to point out where they may have a conflict of interest with the stories they report on!

It is simply not enough to know that "X" happened. Often, why it happened, and how it can happen again, and what the consequences are is more important than the basic report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It depends on which circles you run in what is the most hated name in news. Among many people I know, that would be Fox News. For at least some, it would be one of the major United States broadcast networks, e.g. CBS or NBC.

<comment><USER12> Among journalists, Fox News is without a doubt the most hated because of how they undermine the very concept of journalism. However among government officials, probably Al Jazeera takes the cake because governments prefer Fox's predictability over investigative journalism any day of the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I watch Al Jazeera English sometimes and IMHO it is better than CNN International and nearly as good as BBC World.

<comment><USER14> A lot of their employees are ex-BBC staff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Al Jazeera and BBC are by far the top two news organisations in the world.

The one common thing they have - independent funding, AJ funded by an oil sheikh and the BBC by the British public. May be that's the way forward , instead of citizen journalism we need citizen funding for news.

<comment><USER16> BBC has government funding. That's not independent.

News reporting can't possibly be completely "unbiased". You have to choose what to focus on and how to report it.

I think the state controlling a big media institution is terrible.

<comment><USER17> Have you ever actually listened to an interview by the BBC of a government minister?

Have a look at this classic:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BklT7Qy07Is>

<comment><USER16> Why do you ask? What's the point?

<comment><USER17> Pretty much every government that has been in power in the UK hates the BBC because they _can't_ control it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "After years of sacrificing qualified reporting staff to the bottom line, and substituting public relations (press releases barely rewritten, press conferences reported verbatim) for costly investigative journalism, the media corporations that, starting in the '90s, convinced regulators that consolidation was essential to their survival have found themselves with little immunity against the financial crisis."

Boy does that ever qualify as a run-on sentence! But it does hit a lot of the points of what's gone wrong with journalism. I have noticed media-criticism is a popular past time on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite, as there's only one independent clause: "the media corporations [...] have found themselves with little immunity against the financial crisis."

But it is an exceedingly complex sentence, with an unusual number of dependent clauses and other things.

<comment><USER18> You're right. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "And what of the assumption that everyone with access to the Internet or a camera phone will fill the gap? "Citizen journalism," he says, "is like citizen dentistry." Without trained journalists expending the time and resources to find out what is going on, the risk in places such as the United States -- where the news can seem like an endless lunatic carnival in which the outside world doesn't exist -- is not only of becoming cut off from reality and developing skewed perceptions."

CNN needs to realize that broadcasting random tweets helps no one.

</comment><comment><USER20> I watch Worldfocus sometimes on PBS and they run Al Jazeera English reports all of the time.

Edit: Looks like Worldfocus stopped airing as of April 2, 2010.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see a single ad on Al Jazeera english website. How do they survive? I know it is funded by a rich seikh.

<comment><USER21> Al-Jazeera English doesn't have ads but Al-Jazeera's Arabic channels do.

Al-Jazeera is about 7-9 TV stations, mobile applications, and websites. I listen to their Arabic podcasts and 90% of them make me fear for their safety. The ungrateful little bastards went on air reporting on the discrepancy between oil exports reported by Qatar (their host nation) and the figures reported by the international markets. Concluding something like 25% was missing from the total!

I was certain I will not see al-Jazeera again, but they went on just fine, back to harassing other governments the very next day.

Their Op-Ed program (in Arabic: "al-itijah al-mu`akis" الاتجاه المعاكس) calls for the overthrow of all the non-democratic regimes in the middle-east, by which it means ALL of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's totally silly, but I love hearing the accents change with each story.

</comment><comment><USER23> It looks like the only way to have good journalism these days is if it's paid out of someones private pocket.

People are assuming American news is bad because of some maliciousness, or incompetence, but actually it seems they just don't have the money.

Anyone know an American Billionaire who might be willing to start (or fund) a news network? Maybe Warren Buffett?

<comment><USER8> American news, internationally, isn't bad. Just the schlock they show in the US is bad. A good American company with good international coverage is CNN International. If you were to watch it you wouldn't believe they share the same name.

BTW, CNN International is considered a premium channel that I've only seen carried in major hotels and as a subscription.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Knowtify Hackday – Email Digest for Early Stage Investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.knowtify.io/investor-digest

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a project team Knowtify worked on last Friday. We live blogged the event using Reddit Live. [http://www.knowtify.io/live](http://www.knowtify.io/live)

There are a few ideas behind the live hackday. 1) We wanted to build a product ontop of our API 2) This gave us a better understanding of our app...read more. [http://blog.knowtify.io/post/96460808026/the-gekko-daily- dig...](http://blog.knowtify.io/post/96460808026/the-gekko-daily-digest-the- product-of-knowtify-hack)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think next time it would be great to partner with another small team to get at least 1 more developer involved. That way we could be slightly more ambitious in our scope and give the live blog a little more attention throughout the day.

But overall, it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the next hackday.</comment>


Check the latest global Covid-19 stats right from your menu bar - <AUTHOR> https://pandemicstatsbar.com/ <comment><USER2> This isn't really that helpful since actual numbers arent updated that frequently, you'll get erroneous reads etc. Its also probably actively harmful for your mental health to keep looking at numbers you cant do anything about. To each their own I guess

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I can see this driving some people crazy.</comment></comment>


First Gaming Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.opera.com/gx?ref=producthunt#start <comment><USER2> >Opera GX has in-browser sound effects, composed in collaboration with sound designer Rubén Rincón and the band Berlinist, who recently received a nomination in the BAFTA Games Awards for Gris game original soundtrack. Sound effects can be toggled on and off in the settings.

What does that even mean exactly?

Does that have something to do with gaming?

Free browser VPN, is that a gaming thing too?

Gaming chairs, socks, all sorts of "gaming" things out there that seem just like other products but with a slightly different look and a "gaming" sticker on there.

The pop out video looked neat, at least the idea.

Somewhat related note: If a site is selling me on a browser, but then uses a system to hide the browser scroll bar / implement their own scrolling, man that is weird and irksome.</comment>


OAuth for the Open Web - <AUTHOR> https://aaronparecki.com/2018/07/07/7/oauth-for-the-open-web <comment><USER2> Why not OpenID Connect? Not only does it have discovery for OAuth2 endpoints, it also specifies how to discovery the OIDC endpoint from a bare domain and username via WebFinger. It also has extensions for dynamic client registration, supports flows that work with input-restricted clients, as well as single page apps, and the UserInfo endpoint.

And it's also already implemented and supported in lots of places. There are tools like Dex that offer OIDC and can use "upstream" OIDC providers for the actual user management.

I'm not getting why IndieAuth is needed beyond what OIDC offers?

Also, for those mentioning Persona/BrowserID/Portier, it is an OpenID Connect provider, and I've just recently sent PRs for it and Dex that allow them to work together.

<comment> dane-pgp > Why not OpenID Connect?

Someone asked that in the comments of the article and the author responded with this link:

[https://indieweb.org/indieauth-vs-openid- connect](https://indieweb.org/indieauth-vs-openid-connect)

The answer seems to boil down to IndieAuth being more decentralized.

<comment><USER3> Not at all. The answer is that the guy is pushing for his own product and company.

<comment><USER4> There is no company and product, there is a community and open specifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OAuth 1.0a includes authentication and authorization. OAuth 2.0 is designed for authorization only and could be vulnerable to account takeover/impersonation attacks. MasterCard uses OAuth 1.0a instead of 2.0

[https://developer.mastercard.com/blog/why-mastercard- doesnt-...](https://developer.mastercard.com/blog/why-mastercard-doesnt-use- oauth-20)

<comment><USER6> Given that OAuth 2.0 uses TLS, could you please explain how such an attack could actually be executed?

<comment><USER7> A MITM TLS-busting proxy. Like on many corporate networks and in many country firewalls.

Might seem like a remote chance from a user's point of view, but could be a threat from a payment processor's view, with billions of daily transactions.

Also, easier to prove the integrity of the message when you're handling the authentication piece yourself rather than assuming TLS was correctly enforced end-to-end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to me as just a subset what OpenID Connect is. OIDC is an addition to OAuth2 and supports all mentioned

\- user identity: core user info endpoint

\- discovery: [https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- discovery-1_0.html](https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- discovery-1_0.html)

\- client registration: [https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- registration-1_0.htm...](https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- registration-1_0.html)

And also other features which are important for more complex cases than just simple "login using X" button.

<comment><USER9> The battle between OAuth 1.0a, 2.0, and OIDC is really long and drawn out and doesn't seem to have a clear winner which I think is hurting everyone (though of course some companies are winning because they can support everything and offer that as value).

I sure do wish people would just standardize on OIDC...

<comment><USER10> Google and Microsoft are two big companies supporting OIDC.

<comment><USER11> But not the extensions the GP cites as meaning OIDC solves the same problem. And even if they did, I don't think it allows to isolate your identity from the identity provider you currently use, which seems to be a key aspect of IndieAuth: You can delegate the role of Identity Provider to a third party, but can change that third party, similar to how you could in "original" OpenID.

<comment><USER3> Of course you can isolate the identity from the identify provider. It's fully supported by OIDC. It's a main use case for every website that wants to manage its user accounts.

<comment><USER11> Right, seems I misunderstood it last time I looked at that spec or was misremembering, re-reading it one could of course point to an external service. Is there an actual implementation of that in the wild, that I e.g. could use with my e-mail address at my domain? Even support for discovery at all seemed basically non-existent.

<comment><USER3> It's already available if you use any of the major email provider.

If you want to provide it from your own domain, it's perfectly doable, but it takes a lot of work to setup. This won't be usable from other sites though because they won't trust yoursite.com

Discovery is non existent because it makes zero sense in practice.

<comment><USER11> Ok, so you confirm that while the standards theoretically exist, OpenID Connect doesn't provide those features from OpenID in practice (where they did make sense for some reason?)

You don't need trust to the domain if you just want "an identity" to recognize a user, which is the use case for many services: basically as soon as you allow e-mail + password sign-up, that's the only thing you get. OpenID did the same.

Delegation is helpful exactly because it is somewhat difficult to implement OAuth nicely. OpenID did the same.

Which I guess answers the original question of "why not OpenID Connect" with "because nobody in that ecosystem cares about those features, even if someone at some point wrote down how they can work".

<comment><USER3> I don't understand your complaint. I suspect you have a fundamental misunderstanding of identity management in practice, irrelevant of whether it's implemented with OpenID, OpenID Connect or SAML.

If you want people to register with anything, then just let them register with an arbitrary username and password. You don't even need an email or a domain.

<comment><USER11> I want what OpenID provided me: I give a site a URL to a page I control, and it goes there to figure out what service of my choosing to use to sign me in. I want this to be open, so I don't have to check with each site what whitelist of providers they accept.

I thus do not need to remember/manage a username/password pair per site, and am not tied to a specific service that might die, which was a big problem with the OpenID infrastructure dying bit by bit: those wo didn't use URLs they controlled to delegate lost their ability log in when the provider they used went away.

<comment><USER12> But in practice, OpenID 1/2 were a nightmare.

Most of the implementations were incomplete/broken, everyone wanted to provide OpenID while nobody wanted to consume it, and the few parties that _did_ consume it got left holding the bag when the OPs ripped out support and left users without a way to prove their identity to recover their accounts.

You want at least a weak unilateral arrangement, such as Google or Microsoft or Facebook saying they have no plans to rip the feature out from under you any time soon.

Also, OpenID adoption was never going to happen with users being identified by URLs. No party was going to step up and explain to users why they should go through the effort of learning all this tech to use it vs. using the passwords they were already familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was looking into SAML a while back for a project (preexisting compatibility) and the lack of functional open source IdP's is depressing.

I tried Gluu and it's a RAM hog for what it does (IMO). I took a look at the developer docs and it seems all but impossible to override the password hashing method with your own (query passwords from your own database instead of LDAP hashed) was one use case I was looking into)

Even storing my custom hashes in LDAP would have been acceptable.

<comment><USER3> The product is OpenAM from Forgerock, that is both open source and expensive. [https://www.forgerock.com/](https://www.forgerock.com/)

Gluu is just a facade company that's recompiling it from source and distributing the binaries for free.

It supports pretty much everything you can dream of, including different password hashing and you can write your own plugins to interface with anything you like.

However it's a very complicated product. It's for a large company or a country with a dedicated team to run and customize.

P.S. Not affiliated to any of these companies. I had to do the performance assessment of these products some year ago for a government contract. [https://thehftguy.com/2015/10/14/iam-benchmarks-openam-vs- ws...](https://thehftguy.com/2015/10/14/iam-benchmarks-openam-vs-wshttpso2-vs- simplesamlphp-vs-shibboleth-2/)

<comment><USER14> Gluu isn't based on OpenAM. Gluu is based on a whole bunch of other products (like Shibboleth) but not OpenAM. OpenAM originated from Sun's OpenSSO when Oracle bought Sun and FrogeRock was created. Incidentally this is the same time Gluu was created.

OpenAM is also no longer opensource. The source was closed by Forgerock in the beginning of 2018.

One of the forks that sprung from this source closing is wren:security ( [https://wrensecurity.org](https://wrensecurity.org) ). Disclosure: I work on that project ;-)

<comment><USER3> Good to know. Gluu was built upon and dependent on ForgeRock products last I was working with it. I guess they're having a pretty bad time if ForgeRock pulled the sources.

<comment><USER15> The Gluu Server bundles a fork of OpenDJ 3.0 for persistence, the last open source build. It also supports OpenLDAP, and will soon support Couchbase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Persona ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona)) had it right :(

<comment><USER17> See [https://portier.github.io](https://portier.github.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aaron is one of the cofounders (with Tantek Çelik) of the IndieWeb community.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great, it's de-centralized OAuth. All we need now is a replacement for the hideous URL login prompt. My preference would be for an AccountChooser-style list of accounts you've recently used so you can pick one and sign in—and enter a URL (or email) only if you need to.

<comment><USER20> Unless there's gonna be native browser support, the different websites you visit won't be able to know which accounts you've recently used elsewhere.

<comment> dane-pgp If browsers were to support this, there would be some tricky UI/UX questions about how readily the browser provides information to a new website about accounts you have on other sites.

Such a feature might best be specified as an extension to this API:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Credential_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Credential_Management_API)

which although experimental does have some level of browser support.

<comment><USER12> The web credential API is meant to be an integration point for passwords and AccountChooser in your browser. But I don't know if any other browsers than Chrome plan to implement it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If URLs are to be used for user IDs, it'd make sense to require TLS, so we can remove the scheme from the IDs, so it's more memorable.

Also the mockups are really confusing, you're logging in with a URL, not a "domain". Also, having the example text as "you.domain.com" would confuse users who have "github.com/user", as used in the previous examples.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd have preferred improvements to OAuth, see: [https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to- hell-8eec45...](https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to- hell-8eec45921529) and [https://vimeo.com/52882780](https://vimeo.com/52882780)

</comment><comment><USER22> Here are some thoughts for distributed auth:

[https://github.com/Qbix/auth](https://github.com/Qbix/auth)

<comment><USER17> Too much about what it does, zero about _how_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand why the need for this new protocol; what's missing from OpenID?

<comment><USER20> OpenID doesn't provide API access like OAuth does, does it?

<comment><USER8> What do you mean by API access? OpenID Connect adds more features & standardization to OAuth2. So it supports everything that OAuth2 does.

It all mentioned

\- user identity: core user info endpoint

\- discovery: [https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- discovery-1_0.html](https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- discovery-1_0.html)

\- client registration: [https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- registration-1_0.htm...](https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- registration-1_0.html)

And also other features which are important for more complex cases than just simple "login using X" button.

<comment><USER4> When people talk about just "OpenID", they usually mean the original one, not Connect. The old OpenID did not have the ability to authenticate requests to the domain you signed in with.

OpenID Connect adds lots of bloat, it's very large and complicated. IndieAuth is actually easy to understand and implement.

<comment><USER12> Depends on your point of view. IndieAuth has a bunch of modifications to OAuth2 behaviors that may not be compatible with existing deployments, and requires software to implement things like full HTML parsing libraries to read out link tags. There were many incomplete OpenID 1/2 implementations, and compatibility greatly suffered as a result.

As someone who maintained an OpenID 1/2 OP for a few years, I would much rather implement OpenID Connect Basic Profile than IndieAuth.

IndieAuth, like OpenID 1/2, also assumes the user has a known profile page or even knows what a URL is, which are both statistically unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know that maintaining a OAUth provider is a pain in the ass, not at all doable by anyone.

<comment><USER24> Do you mean to say it is impossible or do you mean something like the more idiomatic "by just anyone"?</comment></comment>


You can't win the game, it exists only to destroy your mind - <AUTHOR> http://entire.spacebar.org <comment><USER2> Tom7 (the author) has done quite a lot of great stuff; his game "T in Y world" [1] is pretty good, and you may also remember him from his programs Learnfun & Playfun, which taught themselves to play Super Mario (and various other NES games) [2].

Do check out more of his work!

[1] [http://tinyworld.spacebar.org/](http://tinyworld.spacebar.org/) [2] [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like the gaming equivalent of an anti-joke. Anti-jokes can be funny because they're not funny in the way you expect. The self-similarity and the structure of the map make it seem like you can achieve something but there's really no goal .. maybe that's really a lot more like most video games than one cares to consider.

All it needs is some soothing bloops and beeps to make it that but more of a non-goal oriented Skinner box - akin to Tetris without the scoring.

</comment><comment><USER4> I played for a minute or two, said "Huh," and closed the tab. Sure feels like I won.

<comment><USER5> What did you win?

<comment><USER6> Did he win not losing? I played this for 6-7 minutes and can no longer do anything but cower in the horribly glorious splendor of the God of recursion. I can feel my mind draining out through my tear ducts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weird stuff starts happening when you try to stack all the squares up against the left wall.

[http://i.imgur.com/kc51uSQ.png](http://i.imgur.com/kc51uSQ.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like I have taken the red pill while watching Inception.

<comment><USER9> Fuck my head is so broken right now. NEVER AGAIN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can never win the game[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_\(mind_game\))

<comment><USER11> I've been winning that game for over a year now. Damn it.

<comment><USER10> You weren't winning, you were just not losing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually I did win the game - we all won the game. It only exists to benefit your mind.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's hard to win the game when you can't determine what the goal is.

<comment><USER14> The goal is right in the title of this page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Said it before, but: if you hold shift, you can navigate the 'map'.

</comment><comment><USER16> Where is the Occulus Rift version?

<comment><USER17> That would be awesome, though I wonder what you can do with a third dimension and additional freedom of movement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The only winning move is not to play." \- WOPR

<comment> at-fates-hands "How about a nice game of chess?"

I thought the computer went by Joshua, since that's what Dr, Falkan referred to it in the last scene of the movie:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s93KC4AGKnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s93KC4AGKnY)

<comment><USER18> I don't think we can conclude any name.

Falken saw the computer as a surrogate for his dead son. In that scene he said "Hello, Joshua" but the screen only shows "Hello". Lightman and Mack never knew the name WOPR, at least not before the military got involved, so the only name they had to go on was the password. I don't think the computer ever mentioned a name for itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i fell into an abyss. I consider that a win.

<comment><USER20> I also was able to "escape" the maze and fall into an abyss. I agree, that is winning :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now this is a vicious one! I love how you can group the blocks one after the other and be all WTF is going on heeeere? Is it me or loops are becoming quite a trend? Yes, Silent Hills teaser, I'm talking about you.

</comment><comment><USER22> I almost won but there are other players that keep getting in my way!

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like we killed it. Site's down. Edit: back up.

</comment><comment><USER24> Accurate description.

</comment><comment><USER25> A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

</comment><comment><USER26> This made me feel quite nauseated!

</comment><comment><USER14> It's been HackerNews'd.

<comment><USER27> Honestly, I still prefer the 'verb' Slashdotted.

So much warmer then DDOS'd.

<comment><USER28> than.

<comment><USER27> I'm going to assume you are a grammar Nazi of the American variety.

thEn is a correct and acceptable spelling in Canada.

###########

As I was typing this up I was looking for references to back up statement. BUT I was wrong. (damn my 4rd grade english teacher!)

I was taught that the two words were grammatically the same it was just a difference in US vs 'British/Canadian' spelling. (i.e. grey vs gray)

So, please ignore my indignant reply. (Which I left in for reference.)

For future versions of myself who will make this mistake again:

THAN = a comparison

Golf balls are smaller THAN bowling balls.

THEN = a statement relating to time.

I went golfing THEN bowling.

[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/than](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/than) [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/then](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/then)

<comment><USER29> I would never trust a 4th grade English teacher for any advice on grammar or spelling.

<comment><USER27> Well, I must admit to the possibility that I just wasn't paying attention and this 'wrong' rule was just shit I made up.

/me has disgraced the entire Canadian education system, or has just highlighted his own ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is pretty trippy, kinda like playing a psychedelic version of Sisyphus.

</comment><comment><USER30> actually there's a _YouWin_ [1] function.

[1] [http://entire.spacebar.org/entire.js](http://entire.spacebar.org/entire.js)

<comment><USER31> It's not much of a win screen :)

[https://i.imgur.com/m62RePh.png](https://i.imgur.com/m62RePh.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Keep going left and jump. Freedom.

</comment><comment><USER33> a thing of beauty, love the potential for team work.

</comment><comment><USER34> SO trippy.

</comment><comment><USER35> cool

</comment><comment><USER36> Win vs Beat

A lot of people fall into this trap.

When someone beats me at a game, they most likely say "I've won you." as oppose to "I've beaten you." The former implies I'm the prize.

I've fallen into this trap myself plenty of times and do wonder if messages like "You win ...." enforces this mistake.

<comment><USER37> Not only do I fail to see the relevance to this link, but I've never heard anyone say "I've won you" in my life, and I doubt I ever will, because that is a stupid thing to say.

<comment><USER38> I just suppose English is not his native language. There might be languages where someone says "I've won you"

<comment><USER39> Like when they auction off dates with fire fighters.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the Why Matters - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thallukrish/why-the-why-matters-d7b8170b5a2c <comment><USER2> I really like this line of thinking. But also I have noticed that schools do not teach our children enough of any particular skill to be competent. It is true that to achieve mastery one must see more broadly. But I think also that to achieve mastery one must have achieved competence. One must have obtained a cup to empty, in Zen parlance. Before we can forget the details, we must learn them. Before we can overcome our preconceptions, we must form them.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm not mistaken, the Waldorf schools (based on the concepts of Rudolf Steiner) are doing somewhat more in this direction. I've never been to one, so this is second hand knowledge, but as far as I'm aware, they're stronger on _why_ , i.e. doing a land measurement/cartography project to learn and use relevant math etc.</comment>


An Atheist Defends Religion - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/understandings-epiphanies/2bed2dd4ed78

<comment><USER2> Part I: The value offered by religion has absolutely no bearing on the truthfulness of the religion. Charitable acts or creating a sense of community by Mormons, Scientologists, or Christians do not mean that Joseph Smith found those gold plates, the character Xenu ever existed, or that Jesus was the son of God. It is possible to have communities without worshiping invisible beings who may or may not answer prayers. In big bold letters, the author states that "God makes people happier by providing answers." If we look at the happiest countries in the world ([http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/earth- institute-world...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/earth-institute- world-happiness-rankings/)), we see countries with large atheist populations at the top of the list...every single year. He references a "shitload of evidence", but I wonder if he's ever taken a look at crime statistics around the world. Even if he looks at just the United States, he would find higher rates of crime in states where religiosity is highest. Religion does not seem to be a barrier to immoral actions nor is it a panacea for happiness. Perhaps we have different meanings for "shitload of evidence."

Part II: This is the classic strawman section. I actually agree with the author that many of the examples given in most debates are evidence of the evil of men, but he fails to recognize that religion has historically provided cover for those actions. Slavery has historically enjoyed such cover. Misogony and homophobia have luxuriated and continue to luxuriate under such religious cover.

I'm quite familiar with the problem of evil and the author did absolutely nothing to negate this. If God knows that evil is happening every minute of the day, He either can do nothing to prevent it or doesn't care to. As Sam Harris points out, God is therefore either impotent or evil. Every day I hear from religious people who claim that God helped them in some manner. They regularly give Him praise for things that He does on their behalf. I find this to be narcissistic, callous, and completely immoral when I consider that at least a dozen children under the age of 5 will have died during the course of you reading my remarks here. They and their parents will beseech Heaven for food and water and this same God who answers frivolous prayers somehow finds these starving children unworthy. There is nothing humble about this line of thinking.

I fail to see how the fact that our holy texts (regardless of how they have been translated or cobbled together) have frequently been shown to be incorrect is a flawed argument. An omniscient being should be able to explain in unambiguous terms what it expects. No holy book fits that description. Whether it is stopping the planetary motion of either our sun or our planet for 24 hours to allow Joshua to finish his battle (Bible - Joshua 10:13) or Muhammad splitting the moon (Qur'an - 54:1-2), these are cosmological claims being made by our religions. I fail to see how my inability to read it in Arabic somehow makes this scientifically possible.

If there is a conflict between religion and science, I get the feeling that the author feels it's ok to reject the scientific account. The problem I have with this is that unlike religion, science is not subjective. It has been the most consistently reliable way for us to determine fact from fiction. When a religious person disputes evolution in favor of creationism or asserts the historicity of a prophet flying to Heaven on a winged horse, those are anti- scientific views. Plain and simple.

Part III: This section basically deals with the author's desire to treat other peoples' beliefs as sacred. As H. L. Mencken said, "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." What the author fails to understand is that beliefs directly influence our actions. If the creator of the universe commands us to kill people for imaginary crimes like witchcraft, should we respect that belief (FYI - witch burnings still happen in places like Kenya)? If someone wants a religious belief like creationism taught alongside evolution in our classrooms, is the appropriate response one of tolerance? Unlike Jesus, I don't think we should enact thought-crime legislation, but if religious people cannot keep their unsubstantiated beliefs in check, we must oblige them to.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd prefer this discussion continue on this site rather than the other, if you've no preference. ;)

>The value offered by religion has absolutely no bearing on the truthfulness of the religion I don't disagree, but I argue that the value it offers is more important than the absolute truth of every ideology. Faith, by definition, transcends evidence. If that's not OK with you that's fine, but I also doubt that every word you've ever uttered was the complete and total truth. Also if you can causally link those statistics, I'd love to read it. But from where I'm sitting, I see only correlation.

The fact that religion has been used to cover atrocities does not mean either that they were caused by religion nor that they would not have happened without religion. As evidence I point to atrocities divorced of religion.

I am not fit to debate the problem of evil, but my point again is that this isn't a silver bullet for atheism. There are faiths or interpretations of faith that circumvent the issue entirely, so I don't view it as an overly effective argument.

I can't debate the aspects of the qur'an because I, you know, respect others' beliefs, but for the Biblical aspect I'll quote something that another commenter on hn brought up:

>Joseph Campbell: "These bits of information from ancient times [myths], which have to do with the themes that have supported man's life, built civilizations, informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage. And if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way you have to work it out yourself. " >See [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html) Very few people read the Bible literally. To pretend that they do is the essence of strawmanning.

>I get the feeling that the author feels it's ok to reject the scientific account N-no? Why would I think that. I don't defend people who deny scientific fact. But again, it's fallacious to think that that represents the whole, or even the majority, of religious folk.

>Unlike Jesus, I don't think we should enact thought-crime legislation Tipping your hand a little bit there. I don't ever remember Jesus saying "Let's not let others have freedom of thought."

Again, I DO NOT advocate ignoring science for the sake of religion. I never said that, and your and others' persistent insinuation that I am saying this is exactly the sort of behaviour that motivated me to write that in the first place.

<comment><USER2> When you say "the value it offers is more important than the absolute truth of every ideology", that is a subjective statement that could quite possibly be impossible to quantify. You can argue it all you like, but in the end you're stating your opinion. That's not an objective statement. How do you know that the value is greater than the harm?

I do take issue with your statement that "Faith, by definition, transcends evidence." A quick glance at Dictionary.com gives me a different definition that states faith is "belief that is not based on proof". If faith, by your definition, somehow transcends evidence, why should I respect that? In what other area of our discourse is it not only permissible but actually desirable to believe something strongly either in the absence of or in direct refutation of evidence?

I agreed with you on the evil of men, but the point I was trying to make is that religion does not seem to be a barrier to atrocities. A glance through the pages of history is all that's needed to demonstrate this. Even the pope in 2000 gave a mea culpa on atrocities committed by the Church in the course of two millenia.

I found the passage from Campbell to be entertaining. Frankly, it's white noise. What I find interesting about this and the suggestion that we shouldn't read these texts literally is that you have somehow stumbled upon the "correct" interpretation. Of course the universe wasn't created in six days. Of course the sun didn't stand still in the sky for 24 hours. Of course God didn't drown the entire world in a massive flood. Of course Jonah didn't actually stay in the belly of a large fish. Are you saying that people throughout history have never taken these stories literally or treated them as historical facts? The truth is that as our knowledge of the world has advanced, we now treat these stories as parables and metaphors. Allow me to quote my earlier statement: "An omniscient being should be able to explain in unambiguous terms what it expects. No holy book fits that description."

When we read in the Hadith (which has equal canonical authority to the Qur'an) that the appropriate punishment for apostasy is death, are we to believe that this is simply a metaphor? Are we taking it too literal? I contend that it's either the will of God or it isn't. Perhaps Christianity is easier to discuss for you. In the Christian faith, I can assure you that men like St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine had read Jesus' teachings in the New Testament along with God's Old Testament commands to suffer not a witch to live, and they found it completely appropriate to kill women for this imaginary crime. If you're saying that God never meant Exodus 22:18 to be taken literally, congratulations - because you've been able to correctly interpret this ancient text in a way that some of the most venerated religious leaders could not. Kudos to you.

I don't understand your "tipping your hand" comment, but I can address the gist of your argument. Just because you don't ever remember Jesus enacting thought-crime legislation doesn't negate my argument. Read the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus says that not just the physical act of adultery is against the law, but that the thoughts leading up to it are just as immoral and against the law, that is the very essence of thought-crime legislation. No?

Having read your opinions and responded to them, I am inclined to agree with an earlier poster who doubted your atheistic standing. "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm disinclined to continue responding if you continue _BELIEVING_ that I am lying to you about the _FACT_ that I am an atheist, that I have no religion, that I don't believe in God. If you presume that I am so wrong on every point that I don't even know my own religious beliefs, is there even any point for me to continue this discussion?

I love discussing these sorts of issues because I loving finding a point on which we can agree, even if we just agree that it's a difference of opinion. But I'm not convinced that it'd be worth either of our times to continue if that goal is impossible.

<comment><USER3> If you really are an atheist you've taken this whole idea of "open-mindedness" way too far and let a slough of nonsense overwhelm your rational sensibilities. Stop trying to be "ok" with everyone and everything. It's foolishness. There are truly fucked up people in this world with truly fucked up beliefs. You don't need to be "ok" with them. You need to confront them and help educate them. Fight ignorance, don't condone it. Help make the world a better place. If you have nothing to say in response to divinedefault, fine. But there's no reason to storm off in a huff and refuse further dialogue because he questions the authenticity of some of your claims. I doubted them too. Be a man. Deal with it. Get over it. Continue the dialogue if you can. If you can't, keep processing what he's said. He took a lot of time and spent a lot of effort replying to your blog post. You owe him more than this "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANYMORE" nonsense.

<comment><USER2> Each of my arguments is clearly outlined in the aptly titled book "The Divine Default".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first comment here (as an Atheist) would have to do with the fact that:

If you believe in the Christian "creation" story you don't believe that the world is 4.5 billion (give or take a few hundred) years old. This would be a fairly significant problem for someone calling himself or herself a scientist yet while being a religious person.

The bigger thing for me is that I see no facts surrounding it. So, I see people that I know taking this on faith and that, to me, is a fundamental flaw in their thinking.

I think most people out there understand why religion exists and I agree with many of your points here but I still believe that it is fundamentally wrong.

Humans used to believe lightning and fire was caused by a god until we understood what actually caused it. Give it a few thousands years and I think we'll be much further along.

This is not to say that I go out of my way to attack it but I surely will fight if someone presses it on me.

<comment><USER5> But you don't have to believe in the literal Christian creation story 7000 years ago. Most lines of Christian thought allowed for non-literal accounts as far back as the first century A.D.

<comment><USER4> Believe me I'm aware of that. I always sort of felt that picking and choosing the parts of a religion in which you believe is almost worst, however.

<comment><USER6> The Hebrew term "Yom" translated "day" is mentioned before the sun and moon.

Also, there's an unspecified amount of time between Genesis 1:1, when "God created the heavens and the earth" and 1:2, which says "But the earth became waste and emptiness."

These two clues tell me the text is not meant to offer any information about dates and times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This post is absurd. People attack religion "to feel superior than others and therefore feel better about themselves"? What about the fact that religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity? What about the "minor" fact that the religious majority control politically the largest superpower in the world? What about the fact that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? What about the fact that religion encourages ignorance and complacency and opposes the idea of self reliance? What about the fact that it lacks any form of empirical evidence despite making claims to?

But I'm supposed to forget about all of that because of "community". It's somehow a GOOD thing that ignorant birds of a feather flock together? It's somehow a GOOD thing that the scientifically illiterate majority control the public policy of the largest superpower in the world?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because it "makes them happy"? That their ignorance is bliss? That simpleminded people don't suffer existential angst? That having a book that makes up answers to all of life's questions instead of providing anything remotely approaching anything empirical is somehow "comforting"?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because religion has been around since all of recorded human history.. and that that is somehow significant?

Go ahead max, dismiss the critics by forgetting that the Crusades was entirely motivated by religion, dismiss the philosophical problem of evil because you think you've found a satisfactory answer to it, dismiss the fact that the Bible is riddled with factual and historical inaccuracies, dismiss religion's blatant disregard for Science Fact because "people are inconsistent about their beliefs all the time" (because that's such a good reason). ...and by all means, continue making spectacularly ignorant blog posts and don't both enabling comments because, heaven forbid, someone might call you out on your nonsense and set you straight.

Stay in school, Max, and keep thinking through these things. You've got a ways to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know your first name, but I'll call you Alex (al1x ~= alix ~= Alex). Thanks for responding Alex. I'm glad that you have. You've brought up a number of points which I'd like to address.

1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of proportion. In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first paragraph. I struggled with getting the right balance between outside sources and personal stream of my own thoughts, but I think if you're going to categorise faith as an existential threat to humanity you're going to need to prove it a little bit more than just, you know, fearmongering.

2) If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you. To me, the happiest people have always been in a supportive group, generally focused around central beliefs. Whether it's groups of coders hanging out after work or weeaboos watching new animes together, a community seems a core component of happiness, and I view more people having a deep, personal happiness as more important than crushing faith. Then again, I don't see religion as a threat to the human race, so if you can prove (or argue compellingly) for your first point, I may have to reconsider this one.

3) Everybody always says that The Crusades were entirely motivated by religion. That is foolish; I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every war has ever been fought: for power. But in this war, one of the parties was behind a flag of religious righteousness. I will again point to the fact that a bunch of people have killed, many, many more people in cases entirely devoid of religious ideologies. How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn.

4) I didn't disable comments. I don't know if Medium has comments, but this is the correct forum for airing comments; that's why I posted it to hn in the first place. I've also written about the folly of allowing comments, but given your reception to this piece, I'm hesitant to link something else that might raise your blood pressure even further.

Regards, -max golden

<comment><USER3> > 1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very > future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of > proportion.

You must not live in the US, must not be aware of how religion influences scientific research, and must not pay much attention to the news.

> In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first > paragraph. ...fearmongering.

This is so typical of HN. Disagree? No problem. Dismiss everything said with a "citation needed". Your entire blog post was an uncited claim. But I'm not going to even bother making that a point of contention. This game is juvenile, especially on matters of common knowledge. Only a jackass walks around saying "citation needed" to every claim someone makes. Re: fearmongering, is this some kind of joke? Are you really questioning that the religious majority controls politically the United States? Are you really questioning that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? Do you really think the ideas behind the second coming of Christ encourage self reliance as opposed to say extreme apathy, since their Lord and Savior will soon descend from heaven to judge, condemn, and then magically fix all the problems of the world for us, creating an eternal paradise for all believers? Are you really unaware of the common objection to climate change among Christians in America that climate change is bogus because "God wouldn't let that happen"? Do you really contest my assertion that religion lacks empirical evidence? Have you yourself seen signs, wonders, and miracles on the order of Biblical proportions? Do you often see water turned to wine, great waters parted on command, the sick healed and the dead raised? Because those are the claims of Christianity.

> If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you

I never said community wasn't a great thing, I only said, in so many words, that a community based on ignorance and nonsense is not a net "good". Do you argue that the "community" created around Hitler's ideologies was a net "good"? That's absurd. Not everything that unites is good.

> I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every > war has ever been fought: for power

Right. Except, of course, that you're wrong.

> How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did > a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it > still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn.

Do you really think it somehow makes what happened during the Crusades any better? Your point is completely irrelevant. If religion did not exist those tens of millions of people would not have been killed. That's the only thing that matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "But ultimately, I feel, there is no satisfying answer to this question outside of religions."

*in regards to the "What is our purpose" question.

This has always been why I've been guilty of treating religious folk like special needs children on occasion. I don't think that religion's answer for that question is any more satisfying than ignorance. It feels like a huge life shortcut that doesn't help with the problem. Any time the answer is "Because God", it just means that the buck stops there, and no more thought occurs. How are we ever going to answer any of these important questions if we never devote time to thinking about them?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a more than valid point. If you allow your faith to stifle scientific thought, you are at fault. But I truly feel that there are questions that tear at the heart of a person, like "what is my purpose" that no amount of science can answer. If you're able to answer that question internally, that's wonderful, but not everybody can. I think that if we can get past this question, we can get onto more important ones (or at least ones we are better equipped to answer).

In essence, though, you are correct: a person who allows their beliefs to stifle acquisition of further knowledge is not a person deserving of respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I commend you. Thank you for the large-minded, logical, and compassionate analysis.

I get what divinedefault meant about thought crimes. I think (s)he refers to Jesus' bit about lust in the heart being equal to adultery, and calling someone a fool being equal to murder. I think Jesus was pointing out that there are crimes in everyone's thoughts. He was talking to ultra-religious law-keeping bigots who thought they were better than everybody.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reasonable article. In support:

Joseph Campbell: "These bits of information from ancient times [myths], which have to do with the themes that have supported man's life, built civilizations, informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage. And if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way you have to work it out yourself. "

See [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html)

<comment><USER9> Came here to reference Campbell as well.. Campbell said the problem is that most people don't know what a metaphor is. Myth is metaphor -- so they don't understand it. Theists read the bible and say this is literally true. Atheists read it and say this is false, it's a lie. Agnostics read it and say, not sure.. But the transcendent perspective is to see that "God" is a Myth, not a lie. God is a myth that represents the unknowable ground of your being, and the religions are a mythology designed to aid your ego on it's journey of self discovery and guide society. Myth is a mirror for the ego with a schedule on it - it shows you where you are. The literalists will be hard pressed to have the spiritual salvation they seek without knowing what a metaphor is -- they will be stuck looking outside themselves when the God they seek is within -- the mythologies are designed to help find it.</comment></comment>


Facebook is a capitalism problem, not a Mark Zuckerberg problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/10/18563895/facebook-chris-hughes-mark-zuckerberg-break-up-monopoly <comment><USER2> Mark Zuckerberg is an adult responsible for his own decisions in life, including those which enable Facebook to violate our privacy or other bad behavior, as its leader. "If it wasn't Zuckerberg running the largest network, it would be someone else, and that person might well be worse." \- yes but it IS Zuckerberg doing it and he IS responsible for his actions. Externalizing responsibility unto "capitalism" is what has enabled his wrong-doing for this long in the first place!</comment>


Makepad, 2D CAD Livecoding for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://makepad.github.io/makepad/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand this at all - what is it? You are right in your comments at the start of main.rs: it does scroll smoothly. But then what? All you apparently are able to do is open up - for viewing only - a bunch of source files.

I visited the GitHub page and after going through the _very long_ readme I still don't understand what this is. Best I can get to is that you're making a CAD program with Rust as a scripting language. Is that right?

I guess more concrete feedback would be, text doesn't render nicely (at least on Mac OS). No anti-aliasing.

<comment> pedantic-fool They developed a cross platform editor using webGL, when taregeting web/WASM, targeting Metal for macOS, and OpenGL otherwise. That's pretty neat. See [https://github.com/makepad/makepad](https://github.com/makepad/makepad) for a closer explanation.

<comment><USER2> Thanks - I had read that readme but it only clicked after your explanation (doesn't say much about my intelligence...)

So yeah that's not nothing :)</comment></comment></comment>


Bower: A package manager for the web, from Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.github.com/bower/# <comment><USER2> An unopinionated approach like Bower is probably what the (client-side) JavaScript ecosystem needs, but all the same, what's lacking here is a philosophy.

What I mean: if I'm just using jQuery and two or three other JavaScript libraries, downloading those manually isn't a big ordeal, they're single files, already minified for my convenience, available on a public CDN if I want to use that in production, they usually have no dependencies themselves and I'm only inclined to update them to newer version if something doesn't work, which is hardly ever. All of these things make package management for the server a godsend but package management for the client sort of... meh.

Ender, on the other hand (and for all its flaws) does a good job of explaining how you can use it to approach libraries for the client more like you'd approach them on the server: tiny packages that do one thing well and that don't reinvent the wheel but where applicable build on existing libraries. Now that sounds like something I can get behind.

Similarly, if you read TJ Holowaychuk's ideas on package management in the browser (linked to by kreutz below, or at <http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/27984551477/components>) then you start to get an idea of, yeah, maybe it'd be cool to have these packages that are little bundles of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and together they make up a single interface element or something of the sort -- included in your project as- needed. Fascinating.

Bower, by comparison, sounds like "a thing that downloads things for me." It might just be the copy (rather than the idea) and maybe it's the tool we need to do what someone like TJ envisions, but it's not clicking for me right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone think this can finally be the tool to bring sane package management to client side JavaScript development? I'm hesitant to use any of the existing tools because none of them support all the libraries I use, so I'd end up doing stuff manually anyway, and I don't have any confidence that any of them will keep working in the long term.

<comment><USER4> No. If anything, it will probably just get even more fragmented before the situation gets better. As we understand the features and architectures of package management systems better it becomes even easier to write package managers. This is a good thing long-term because we can more thoroughly explore the solution space before settling on a few "winners". However, at the same time package repositories are fundamentally a network effects problem because packages depend upon other packages, so the repository with the most packages offers the most benefit for each additional package because new packages can build on everything that already exists instead of bundling that functionality themselves.

The reason why I am skeptical of new entrants into the javascript package management arena is that there is already a package manager with over 14k packages and a vibrant community that is producing packages at a very high rate: npm. npm might not be the best package manager as-is for browser development, but tools like browserify (disclaimer: I wrote browserify), ender, or many others can let your browser code use much of the value that has already been created for npm, even though npm is primarily about node.js packages. A surprising number of modules written for node will just work in tools like browserify.

Any upstart package systems would be wise to have a clear and simple path for unlocking the value created in the node community because there is too much value being created in npm to ignore. Whether that path involves adding fields to the package.json, tools to bridge the gap between package repositories, fancy in-browser trickery or compile steps remains an open question but it would be really pointless to require people to publish their modules that they've already put on npm to buy in to yet another package system, especially since there seems to be a new package manager every month lately.

<comment><USER5> I really like browserify, but what do you see as the drawbacks and challenges to get more adoption, especially among non-Node.js developers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't it extend package.json instead of using a separate file? Something like

        "clientDependencies": [...]

would be nice - most projects I work on these days already have a package.json file.

The ./components path could be configurable too.

<comment><USER7> Other package managers seem to be pulling this off just fine. I am happy to go either way though:

<http://git.io/_ZWfVA#configuration-file>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So first I can install node and npm through my system package managed, then I can install bower through the node package manager, then I can finally install libraries with the bower package manager.

Something is wrong here.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the system package manager is trying to do too much.

<comment><USER7> ✓

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        $ bower lookup jquery
        jquery git://github.com/components/jquery.git

Web link: <https://github.com/component/jquery>

Since there's no authentication, the bower jquery package will always point to this url, which is not officially associated with jquery.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the web URL you're looking for is <https://github.com/components/jquery> (note the "components" vs "component"), which does seem to be officially associated based on the members of the "components" organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> NPM already provides this functionality and Isaacs has said that people should use NPM for client-side packages.

<comment><USER13> I'd definitely defend bower here, there's no reason to use npm for this, it just makes things confusing and ambiguous, and leads to stupid suffices or prefixes like the several "-component" modules I have

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing how timing (and luck?) matters on whether a submission gets to the top or not.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487221>

Also of note: the algorithm to check URL was already submitted is easily fooled.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. I was disappointed that the two prior submissions by other folks (the other was of the direct repository page) both had 0 comments. Figured I would resubmit it anyway during a more active time, given that it's genuinely worthy of discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The site itself doesn't give much of the introduction or what Bower is all about. Github page is much better - <https://github.com/twitter/bower>

<comment><USER16> I thought so too but then scrolled down more — the design of the page made me think it was just a splash but there's tons of details underneath the big header. :/

<comment><USER17> I didn't even realize this until I saw your comment. Definitely could use a "scroll for more" or an arrow or _something_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Relevant: <http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/27984551477/components>

</comment><comment><USER19> I think I'll stick with wget and git clone for this. Feels kind of unnecessary to use a external tool for something this simple.

<comment><USER20> or even apt-cache search jquery

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's different about this than the official component project?

<https://github.com/component/component>

<https://github.com/component/spec/wiki>

Bower seems like a blatant ripoff. Twitter Engineering doesn't even mention the component project or spec on the Bower page at all...

<comment><USER22> The difference is that the component project depends on Github. Bower is much more low-level and unopinionated. All you need is a Git path.

<comment><USER21> That's because without using GitHub, Bower's packages aren't namespaced. This was something discussed at length on the component spec github.

It sure feels like Twitter is avoiding giving credit where credit is due. No links to the component.json spec or any mention of TJ Holowaychuk's component feels smarmy to me.

<comment><USER23> His name is listed in the README. I think the next level of recognition would have been for him to contribute code, and for whatever reason, that didn't happen. It could be because TJ is busy doing other things, because development was closed, or because they disagreed on things, or a combination of reasons.

I looked at the source and found that the initial public commit contains 79 files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> at least building failed <http://travis-ci.org/#!/twitter/bower>

<comment><USER7> The build is failing because there are a lot of moving parts at this early stage regarding the internals; however, the basics from a usage standpoint work just fine right now.

In other words, the build failing is not ideal; but don't get too hung up on it right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Trying to get back onto the developer world's good side?

<comment><USER26> As part of the 99% of developers who work for other people, I resent troll- bait comments like this.

Twitter, in addition to being a genuinely interesting social phenomenon, has always posed technical challenges that were sufficiently interesting to attract some top-notch people. Give them the respect of judging them by their technical work, and not their employer's latest unpopular business decision.</comment></comment>


Building Backbone.js apps with Backlift part 2: Collections and Forms - <AUTHOR> http://gun.io/blog/Building-Backbone.js-apps-with-Backlift-part-2-Collections-and-Forms/

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: Sorry about the broken link to the example app. I let the gun.io guys know. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

<comment><USER2> Could you please make your part 1 link more prominent? Like, as in "above the article in its own font" prominent?</comment></comment>


Supreme Court of Florida to use Zoom to hear upcoming arguments in two cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article242001946.html <comment><AUTHOR> I think it's great that people are exploring software solutions to hopefully slow the spread of COVID19. That said, why would a court of law use Zoom for this... Are IT people not paying attention to the fact that Zoom is a Chinese company with major security and privacy issues?</comment>


Ask HN: What does your Rust toolchain / IDE look like? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I know I've gotten bitten before by go Makefiles, and took me a few projects to get things sorted overall - So I wanted to do this differently about Rust, by getting feedback and looking at some good templates and tooling options first. Have any suggestions?</comment>


Application vs Database Programming - <AUTHOR> http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2012/02/application-vs-database-programming.html <comment><USER2> SQL Databases are quite a lot like front-wheel drive cars on icy roads, you don't get a lot of warning before everything goes bad. The biggest problem is a query that finally exceeds what can be cached. You can go from less than a second to multiple minutes per query. It is much like the problem of doing high performance calculations where you want to use the CPU cache very efficiently and not have a cache miss.

Worse is when some optimizers suddenly switch plans to something that is inefficient. Sybase had a really bad habit of this with big datasets.

Sadly, a lot of the problem comes down to schema design. A lot of designs are just fine retrieving one item and its attributes from the database, but get into trouble when you try to retrieve a group of items with the same attribute from a database. Status reports (e.g. how many unpaid invoices do we have?) tend to sniff these problems out. I generally follow the rule "if a single attribute on an item is important to know, then knowing all of the items with that attribute is going to come up and should be designed for".

</comment><comment><USER3> Asking as someone who works mostly with relational DBs, where do nonrelational databases fit along this spectrum ? If you're dealing with a large dataset in Cassandra or MongoDB, do you think in terms of instructions or sets, or somewhere in between (or something else entirely) ? My understanding is that if you need to extract a dataset according to complex criteria you'd be using something like map/reduce...or perhaps you'd be organizing the data on the persistence side to produce that query naturally.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly correct.

If you're working with a pure key-value store, the only query you have is get(), plus maybe a scan over all keys. Stores like Cassandra give a little more structure to the data (column families, supercolumns, etc.) and you can use that to make certain types of queries simpler, but there's still nothing like the algebra that comes with relational DBs. Anything other than the most primitive logic is going to have to be written in client-side code, which is why you see things like MapReduce used to filter down large data sets or other complex client-side transformations.

The advantage of writing on the client is that you get to use whatever the hell programming paradigm you like: pretty much any language that can deal with a hashmap can deal with NoSQL. (That's true of relational DBs, of course, since you don't _have_ to write complex queries; but if you're not taking advantage of the relational structure, NoSQL tends to be easier / faster.)

<comment><USER3> Right, this is actually what I was getting at, without even being conscious of it when I asked that. Part of the appeal of NoSQL is that programmers _don't_ need to learn a different paradigm of thinking other than the usual imperative model.

I'm not sure if I like that rationale for using NoSQL. Strikes me as being lazy up front. Or maybe you don't really need ad-hoc queries.

<comment><USER5> As a fan of Codd/Date/Pascal, relational algebra, and ACID, I used to feel the same about NoSQL, but have since come to appreciate it as an option. Schemaless is nicer for exploratory programming with frequent data model changes, for one example.

Here's a good article on NoSQL data modeling that covers it better, along with some good discussion in the comments:

[http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/nosql-data- mo...](http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/nosql-data-modeling- techniques/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, I had this conversation with one of my professors the other day. I've never written straight SQL--only used ORM. He showed us a giant SQL query and my first question was "do people really write it this way, instead of building up from intermediate results?" It doesn't look maintainable. He said yes, and that the SQL programmers are proud of writing huge queries. The query engine will optimize the hell out of it, so it's the right thing to do.

<comment><USER7> SQL is just like any other language. If you're new to it then sure it's going to look strange. But a large well-designed query can be _many_ times faster than "building up from intermediate results". Your procedural code is off in another process from the SQL server, maybe even in another server across the country. Pulling the intermediate results back and forth between them is expensive.

ORM is great when a database is being used as a simple program data persistence layer, but if you limit yourself to that then you might as well use a NoSQL solution.

<comment><USER8> The more I've worked with SQL, the more I'm starting to question this idea that huge elegant queries are any good. I used to almost be fanatical about only returning exactly the information I needed from the DB.

They are such a nightmare to read, there's no exposure to them in the code that your IDE can make sense of, if there's a performance problem it's almost always down to one of those huge queries and in the end most software I work with the DB engine is either on the same box or on the same network so pushing across more rows to process in the app in a far more generic way doesn't cause the sort of latency problems you describe (seems a pretty rare config imo).

So I disagree.

Also I disagree with your admittedly fairly throw away comment about ORM & NoSQL. Even if it is just a data persistence layer bunging everything in a NoSQL solution is usually going to be the wrong call in the long run. If you're dealing with data it almost always pays off to keep it in a relational structure because if the app/business is a success someone will invariably start wanting to use the data in other ways. I think NoSQL is good for a very small subset of data storage problems, I want to use it, but have yet to have had a reason to.

<comment><USER9> You make good points, but I'm not entirely sure that the possibility of someday needing to do analytics on the data precludes one from using NoSQL now. I've heard/read about a good deal of large scale sites running on NoSQL alongside a relational database setup for reporting. Seems like it's not that big a deal to move some of that data into a SQL store if/when it becomes necessary? If NoSQL gets you the simplicity and performance characteristics you want, maybe it's a premature optimization to limit your options based on hypothetical future scenarios. I could see it from either perspective.

<comment><USER8> I'm challenging the idea that if you're just using an ORM for persisting objects you're probably doing it wrong.

For the vast set of programming problems having that user table that's relationally linked to a person table that's relationally linked to a company table that's relationally linked to, etc. gives you far more flexibility than having to start dealing with getting objects out of a key-value pair store and manually piecing together complex relationships just to add a simple page to the client's admin page to say how many people have setup their account properly (as a random real-world example where the admin emails their staff and they setup their own user details).

Once you get past the basic CRUD of a problem and start having to use the data for functionality, basically past anything more than a toy program, the relational model through an ORM is going to be much simpler than a NoSQL solution.

I just don't get how this statement makes sense:

 _ORM is great when a database is being used as a simple program data persistence layer, but if you limit yourself to that then you might as well use a NoSQL solution_

I wouldn't because as soon as you start adding fairly simple functionality the NoSQL solution would rapidly become a nightmare. To me NoSQL would be the go to solution if I had a few very basic data structures that I had to do a lot of work on, not the opposite as dmethvin suggests, lots of different objects with simple operations.

In concrete examples, Google, NoSQL, Instagram, probably NoSQL, something like Freckle (Time Tracking), SQL, Salesforce, SQL all the way.

But as I said I've not had a project or personal project yet where I've gone 'Aha, now is the time! NoSQL here I come!' so push back if I'm doing it wrong!

<comment><USER7> It sounds like we are agreeing then. If you are using the data for ad-hoc reporting via a SQL query tool for example, you're not just using your database as a simple program data persistence layer.

If you're not careful though, your program-oriented database won't be very useful outside the realm of the program. As an example, I worked on a database where they persisted a good chunk of data in each record as a JSON string. They did it because they didn't want the hassle of updating the database schema. It worked fine for their needs inside the program, but it was kind of hard to do an ad-hoc query on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really hard to say what the performance issue was here, but my experience is that SQL servers do a really good job of handling data sets if you use them correctly. If the problem was a "cache miss" it might mean that one or more tables needs proper indexes for example. Or, if the code involves a cursor and a code loop, that is a very bad sign.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem was that I was doing it as follows:

insert/insert/update. Wash rinse repeat.

The better way to do it (which solved the problem was:

Insert a bunch of rows, insert a bunch of rows, update a bunch of rows, no repeating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't agree at all that this phenomenon is restricted to database programming. Thinking in terms of higher-level operations is always more readable and often more efficient (the logical conclusion being things like Haksell and Prolog where there aren't really operations at all).

For example, to find the common elements in two lists, you could use a for loop, or you could follow the OP's advice and use set operations to do something like:

        set(list1).intersection(set(list2))

<comment><USER11> Yes, I often use clojure.set's relational operators. (select, project, join, etc.) Because it's common to deal with sequences of tuple-ish data.

It's natural, once you lose this limiting notion of "objects" which aren't represented in a generic way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Always test your data operations on data volumes (and user load) that mirror what you expect to see in production.

This is important across the entirety of your dev stack.

<comment><USER13> One of the biggest problems in database operations is that there are many potential query plans for a given query, but finding the optimal one can be difficult. More so, which query plan is optimal varies depending on table size.

If you let the DB pick its own query plan all the time you can end up with inconsistent performance, often by an order of magnitude or more. However, if you turn on query plan stability (every query after the first one will have the same plan) then you can end up with a state where the query plan doesn't change as the data change, which can lead to serious performance issues as a table's size grows (if your table starts out small, the DB may choose a full table scan, which is very fast, but will bog down extremely when the table grows to thousands or millions of row).

In short, performance is a hard problem, and if anything the tools for analyzing and optimizing performance for DB operations are well behind the state of the art for compiled code, for example.

<comment><USER14> Oracle is pretty smart about this, if a new plan is slower than the previous one, it seamlessly flips back.

<comment><USER15> JIT compilers have been doing hotspot recompilation for a while now. Is there a reason why databases haven't adopted the same techniques? Is there some barrier to caching multiple query plans optimized for different load scenarios?

<comment><USER14> What do you mean by "load scenario"? The only thing that should affect the plan is the characteristics of the underlying data (e.g. do we expect to return so many rows that we should full-scan anyway, or can we use an index).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Developer discovers there's a difference between the declarative paradigm and the imperative paradigm, writes blog post, news at 11.

Snark aside, you can take the author's advice too far in the other direction as well. Relational algebra is all fine on paper, but relational integrity, foreign keys, strict normalization and n-way joins are horrible for performance. At the end of the day, the declarative SQL you write has to translate to a bunch of bulk reads from a hard drive somewhere, and you really need to understand execution plans as well if you want any sort of performance.

<comment><USER17> THIS. I was going to write the same thing. It's really about declarative/functional programming vs. imperative/procedural programming.

He's right though that as you work with more and more data, the impact of making the traditional imperative/procedural mistakes because a real problem.</comment></comment>


How Facebook Copes with 300 Million Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23508/?a=f <comment><USER2> A question that's been on my mind: Why did Facebook scale so well and Twitter scale so poorly? Is there really any way to learn how to cope with huge load before you actually hit the point where you need it?

<comment><USER3> From the article it sounds like Facebook made a huge investment in people to build the bespoke (software) infrastructure that they needed. eg. A bespoke in-memory database, their "own storage system called Haystack that's completely built on top of commodity hardware", etc.

Facebook have an order of magnitude more employees than Twitter which probably makes those kind of bespoke uber-scaling advancements feasible.

<comment><USER4> _A bespoke in-memory database,_

They use memcached with some nasty kernel hacks.

(Caused some friction when they forked an old version, added new code which was then suddenly unleashed on the community without warning. Each new feature then had to be manually added to the current version)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such an awful problem to have. I feel horrible for the employees there. =)</comment>


Fortnite Introduces Direct Payment Option on iOS Despite AppStore Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/13/fornite-adds-direct-payment-option-on-ios/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see Epic taking this stance. I'd wonder how they'd feel if companies simply started to not follow the Unreal Engine licensing terms because they're big enough to get away with it.

<comment><USER3> I think the difference is most don't view Ubisoft's agreements as a monopolistic racket

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24143346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24143346)</comment>


Ask HN: How do brands work? - <AUTHOR>

How does branding work?  Especially for us mathematically minded folks.<p>What do normal everyday people see in brands?  What is brand loyalty and how does that work?  Are brands basically a way to let people be lazy by outsourcing their thinking? <comment><USER2> I don't believe brands are a method to 'outsource' thinking. I don't think it has anything to do with thinking.

Think of it more as a way of identifying with something, and letting others make assumptions about who you are based on what you identify with.

I'm not mathematically inclined, but let's take deep technology as an example, as hopefully we have that as a common thread here on hn.

Note: These are all going to be stereotypes, that goes with branding.

Some people identify themselves as iOS developers. They write Objective-C, and will tell you how it is the best platform with users spending the most dollars, etc. etc. They'll tell you they'd never program for Android because javas is too verbose, the platform is fragmented, etc.etc.

An android dev will tell you that they love open-source (a stretch, but just go with it for now). They believe they are serving the largest market, they have the freedom to build the apps as they like and can do things that can't be done on the competitors platforms.

Then you've got the web people. Maybe a Ruby on Rails dev, they'll talk about the speed of quick iteration cycles, simple MVC code, write-once-run-anywhere (stretch your imagination just a bit).

If we look at these as brands, you start to get a picture of what each of these people might be like outside of just this mode of thinking. You have a stereotype of what that person is, what they believe, how they would behave.

This is essentially what the brand is doing for the person.

If I were identified with Ferrari as a brand, you'd have a very different image of me, and me of myself, than if I identified with Smart cars, or Tesla.

Somebody who shops at safeway identifies with food in a different way than somebody identifies with Trader Joe's, Whole Foods or your local farmers market.

It's basically a short-cut for somebody to label themselves, or project to others what they stand for.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Are brands basically a way to let people be lazy by outsourcing their thinking?"

I think not. Brands as I see them are much about experience and expectations. Myself; I am loyal to a handful of brands. Call me a Nike AF1 sneakerhead or a apple fanboy. But what it comes down to for me is the experience that these brands deliver; and I know what to expect from them.

With that said I believe that brands are built over time on customer interaction and the value provided.

</comment><comment><USER4> i've got some thoughts around brands.

I believe, one of the big parts of getting a customer is the trust factor. If you don't trust a vendor, there is no way that you will fork over cash.

So how do we overcome the trust factor. If we are dealing in person, the vendor talks to the potential customer face to face and builds rapport. In this scenario, a new customer is created because they have grown to trust the vendor personally.

If the face the customer is talking to changes, then the trust needs to be re- established. ( eg new management or sales person )

I think a brand works the same way. Instead of growing to trust a person, you grow to trust the company/brand. The initial marketing of the brand is how the potential customer grows to trust the vendor and then after each successful purchase, the trust is reinforced.

it is easy to buy a bottle of coke, because you trust that you will get what you expect at a price you expect, you trust that is what will happen. It is hard to buy a bottle of "john smiths elixir" because you dont know or trust them. john smith has to convince you about himself and the elixir before you will buy ( for the majority of cases )

</comment><comment><USER5> This answered this question for the mathematician in me:

       http://www.economist.com/node/771049

The Economist in 2001.</comment>