Fairly Unremarkable Backgrounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigcontrarian.com/2010/07/02/fairly-unremarkable-backgrounds/

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I'd want to work for someone who didn't understand the difference between computer science and programming.

It really is like the difference between a degree in physics and being a car mechanic. You can be a great car mechanic without a degree in physics, but the intent of the physics degree isn't to create great car mechanics.

I was probably a better C programmer at age 15 than most professional programmers I've run across in my career. With that said I didn't know about the Halting problem nor the Chomsky Hierarchy nor even things like amortized cost nor really any asymptotic complexity analysis. Do any of those things help me at my day job... maybe a little, but not much. Certainly I'd be better served reading the .NET Fx docs or Java docs or some JQuery books. But that's not why I got a degree in CS.

<comment><USER4> _It really is like the difference between a degree in physics and being a car mechanic. You can be a great car mechanic without a degree in physics, but the intent of the physics degree isn't to create great car mechanics._

But in the case of programming, it's the opposite. Computer Science is a _subset_ of what you need to know to be a programmer.

<comment><USER5> I'm missing your point. Physics is also a _subset_ of what you need to know to be a mechanic.

<comment><USER6> Do you need to understand what a metric tensor is in order to be a mechanic?

<comment><USER7> Frankly I don't think either of them have taken CS, and have no idea what the word subset means.

Though I think pwim may have been pointing that out. There are elements of each discipline that overlap, but you don't need to know any of the physics/mechanics pieces that overlap to get a degree in one, and the same is true of CS/programming.

In fact, you can be an excellent programmer and know no CS, be an excellent mechanic and know no physics, and even be an excellent computer scientist and know nothing that would serve you in a modern programming job. (Obviously you could probably figure it out, but a code monkey would do just as well as some computer scientists.)

But fundamentally they serve different purposes. It's almost conceivable someone could prove P=NP without writing a line of code. Though decreasingly so as computers become so ubiquitous.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, one of the most brilliant theoretical computer scientists I know only recently wrote his first computer program. Another very well- known,although now deceased, theoretical computer scientist didn't even use a computer. He would have his secretary print his emails and he would handwrite replies and give them to his secretary. Not sure how he wrote his papers, as he was prolific in his prime... maybe the typewriter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I frequently hear that, at the very least, a degree shows that you can finish something. If it's true that smart hackers can give themselves a better-than- university education for the price of the books alone, and they discover this fact early in their college careers, wouldn't finishing actually be a negative indication -- a susceptibility to sunk costs? I know the case can be made that college's _real_ education is social, but it seems like you could get that part cheaper by hanging out around other hackers.

<comment><USER6> In hindsight, the biggest benefit for me, from going to college was not the CS program. It was that the CS program actually had some really good hackers-- still to date the friendliest and smartest lot of hackers I'd met outside a few particularly good Haskell meetups. So it's not mutually exclusive.

The second biggest benefit was that I was introduced to psychology as a science, and not some pseudo-intellectual horsing around as it was made out to be in high school. Ditto for economics. Taken together with the other cultural studies I dropped in on, it was something that's been fairly difficult to replicate now that I'm out of school. I'm actively trying to recreate at least some part of that experience now (using technology of course ;).

The clincher is that my alumni meetups have been nowhere near as enlightening as college was. I sometimes wonder if some people took boring pills during graduation, or if it really was the diversity that brought it out in people.

In all, college is what you make of it, just like real life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked with people who made a big deal about not having a degree. I've also worked with people who made a big deal about their degree. Neither were as good as they imagined themselves to be.

</comment><comment><USER10> formal education isn't for everyone. that said, what I look for when hiring people is their independent drive. What have they built on their own for fun. Also how they solve problems. These are things that show their true character and aren't really taught in school (basic processes and theories are, but not the creative spirit).

the whole argument about whether or not school is necessary is ridiculous. each case has its own variables. the zoho case he references, they setup their own academy to TRAIN their people to work the way they needed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Someone who hires programmers told me that university vs. self-educated were pretty indistinguishable, except for algorithmic problems - which over came up very rarely.

Fred Brooks claimed that education and training for programmers was extremely beneficial - but he was writing in a time when many programmers were writing operating systems and compilers. Additionally, structured programming (ie. without gotos) was a (relatively) new idea. Therefore, I tend to think that today, when the vast majority of programming tasks aren't nearly so difficult and our tools have improved so much, and good practices are generally known, that programming is much easier, and training isn't nearly as important as it was.

Even for creating new ideas and tools (eg. Thompson's regex search; pagerank), it's more a matter of being super-smart, IMHO. Of course, it helps if you know the basis of the idea (eg. what a regular expression is). If you want to _prove_ those ideas, however, I think academic training is very helpful - <USER2> in mathematics, not computer science.

<comment><USER12> _except for algorithmic problems - which over came up very rarely_

I'd say that depends on what problem one is working on. I see algorithmic problems come up all the time, and I occasionally see a total failure on an algorithmic issue among the (largely college-educated) people I work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think degrees reduce your hiring risk somewhat, at the cost of possibly missing some real gems who dropped out for various reasons. You can achieve the same thing by only hiring people to do X who have done X at their last two jobs. It's a low risk, low reward approach to building a team.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd hire people who studied Computer Engineering. Ask the average programmer how data moved around on the motherboard, or what exactly a processor does and he has next to no idea. Computer engineers learn the fundamentals, while computer scientists learn the abstractions.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most employers (here in the UK anyway) put a lot of weighting on education as a barrier to entry.

A lot of the time it's a formal requirement to a job application.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure what's the point of this posting. Having a degree is just one data point. Usually people that make a big deal about success without a degree are those successful people that don't have one.

</comment><comment><USER17> i have a ged in computer science.

//hs dropouts represent!</comment>


Show HN: A simple game that uses EmberJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thecodejack/emberjs-zatacka-game

<comment><AUTHOR> I dropped learning EmberJS before i started it a month back mainly coz of the complexity. But this guy uses EmberJS for this game. He also provided a reference to BackboneJS game. After going through both codes realised, EmberJS is quite good and better if you really get the understanding.</comment>


The Genius: Mike Burrows' self-effacing journey through Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/group/gpj/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/60

<comment><USER2> this article sure spends a lot of words discussing physical appearance, clothing, food, and weather. i wish i lived in a world where people focussed on more interesting things.</comment>


Google twists the knife, asks for sanctions against Oracle attorney - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/following-courtroom-win-google-wants-sanctions-against-oracle-lawyer/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it is Google twisting the knife. Google is just trying to fix the damage done by the knife Oracle's lawyer stuck in their back in disclosing the magnitude of their deal with Apple.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Civil litigation works on the principle that finding out the truth is what really matters, and has all sorts of stern features like discovery, who's nastiness is mitigated by rules, like not discussing on open court trade secrets (well, absent winning a procedural fight to allow such disclosure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really happy that the lawyer mentioned those figures. We (the public) depend on bits and pieces like this to find out how the world works. So much of our everyday life is governed by the secret internal policies of giant corporations, and secret deals between them.

I fully understand that private companies have a right to keep things secret. But I also believe that people should have a right to know about the things that affect them. And somehow I think it's important to know that the default search engine on my phone might not only be there because its the best one, but because they pay the most.

I hope more lawyers start mentioning random tidbits like this...

<comment><USER5> Careful what you wish for. Not being able to keep trade secrets is why many toxic trade agreements and patents happened, which ultimately keep the big players big and the small players small.

And does it really help you to know that there's a deal between Google and Apple? It was already public knowledge that Google payed a lot of money to Mozilla for making the default in Firefox. Did you think Apple did it for free or something?

And how exactly does that influence your choices as a customer? Does that make their search engine worse somehow?

I doubt that it can make a difference for a majority of people. For one because it's not newsworthy, I mean, a majority of people don't care about privacy either, let alone worrying about having their choices influenced. But also because Google's search engine is objectively the best search engine and disbelievers should simply try local searches in Europe for a taste of the huge margin of how Google's search beats its competition. And the same can be said of Google Maps actually. Maybe they've integrated it with Waze or something, but it's really smart about traffic and alternative routes lately, not to mention that it's the only one that can keep up with the one-way streets in my city. Apple might have rolled their own solution, but it really sucks by comparison. And the iPhone owners in my city install Google Maps anyway.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that most "trade secrets" aren't actually about avoiding unfair competition, but more about preventing customers from finding out how the sausage is made.

All the industry insiders probably know how much the licensing fees are; it's the public that they don't want to find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple treats confidentiality very seriously. Google has to do what Apple's would do, to demonstrate they are a reliable partner.

</comment><comment><USER7> IANAL but I would be surprised if the judge grants significant sanctions over such a minor legal error. Google hasn't shown any specific monetary damages from the disclosure of their contractual terms with Apple. (I am happy that Google won the main case.)

<comment><USER8> Samsung or all other mobile companies now know 1. how much Google pays Apple. 2. How much profit Google makes on mobile search. It will make negotiations harder for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oracle lawyer deserves it, a poor lawyer.

As I think I can easily prove Andorid is a copy of Java.

<comment><AUTHOR> And how, exactly, can it "easily" prove that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "Look at the extraordinary magnitude of commerciality here,"

Can't say that in front of the children.

Naked figures, eww, yucky.

<comment><USER11> I agree it shouldn't be a secret. However it isn't a level playing field if some companies have secrets and other's don't.

If all agreements between public companies and other entities had to be public then the playing field would be more level and the figures in this case would have already been public.

<comment><USER10> > some companies have secrets and other's don't.

The big companies (and TLAs) have good intelligence, as shown.

Small businesses and the public ... well, tough luck.

Dump a ton of bricks on the clumsy oaf that blew the gaff.

<comment><USER12> > _The big companies (and TLAs) have good intelligence, as shown._

They don't have "good intelligence". They had access to Google's confidential information specifically for the purposes of discovery in this trial. That's why Google is asking for sanctions. They basically abused the discovery process and revealed privileged data that they should not have.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The book that defined modern campaign reporting (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46906.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Richard Cramer has just died ([http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/richard-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/richard- ben-cramer/266915/)). This article seemed more fitting to post.</comment>


Ask HN: What are people's preferred project management tools? - <AUTHOR> I'm loving the simplicity of Quip and the more visual card-based flow of Trello. Any other winners out there people love? <comment><USER2> For personal projects, Trello or Asana are about right in terms of complexity.

For organizations larger than about 3 people and engineering teams larger than 2 people I strongly prefer to track software work to be done in something explicitly designed as a bug database, with visible and short numeric identifiers for work items and a strong preference for a Kanban view. Jira is almost perfect for this, though it's a misery to configure, a little bit overkill for teams at the smaller end of this scale, and its few shortcomings are very short indeed. Phabricator will also do in a pinch. Pivotal is nice in principle but lacks sorting and filtering features that make the backlog possible to manage.

Getting non-technical people to look at the issue tracker on a regular basis is crucial but nearly impossible. I'm still waiting for someone to build an awesome integration between JIRA and Trello or asana.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've found complexity and/or/aka too many features discourage adoption, this was particular painful when a previous company I pushed to purchase Axosoft quickly abandoned it - nobody (including me eventually) could be bother using it. Hence easy to use, easy to get going, 'where 90% is intuitive' tools like Trello and Basecamp, arguably deficient in many formal project management areas, continue to attract and maintain customers. Combined with skype, hipchat or private slack for realtime communication seems to solve most of the headaches. A client recently added freshdesk to the mix too, again for 90% its intuitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> The simpler tools definitely encourage adoption. On a larger project I work on, we use Rally - most abominable platform I've had the displeasure of using - solely because the project manager is able to assign "points" to user stories, which translate to hours of work per story. Hence, when a dev is at x number of points, s/he's at y% capacity for that sprint. We tried Jira but without being able to assign capacity, ruled it out. I've heard good things about Basecamp...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've spent the last couple months working on RowStack ([http://rowstack.com](http://rowstack.com)). It's still in beta, but we're working hard on it, and looking for feedback. Let me know what you think (matt at rowstack.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Relevant article I just read: [https://inbound.org/discuss/hacking-reddit-to- find-killer-co...](https://inbound.org/discuss/hacking-reddit-to-find-killer- content-marketing-ideas)

</comment><comment><USER6> Asana and Basecamp are the one's I use the most.

</comment><comment><USER7> you can try out Pivot tracker or Trello</comment>


IPad 2 screen, fresh from China - <AUTHOR> http://www.9to5mac.com/50297/exclusive-ipad-2-screen-fresh-from-china

<comment><USER2> Does this belong on HN? The post doesn't bring much to community, except some more gossip over what the iPad2 will be. I would expect to find such news on Gizmodo, not HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is quite fun how little of a shit chinese factories give about the intellectual property issues surrounding the components they produce.

Must be a headache if you're selling the products, but it's entertaining/money-saving for the rest of us.

<comment><USER4> That's an LG Philips (Korean) product that anyone can buy. They said they "believe" it's going to be in the new iPad.

Talking shit on China sure is fun though.

<comment><USER3> I'm not talking shit about chinese or korean people. I'm talking shit about chinese manufacturers.

Why do you think so many fake consumer electronics items are so accurate? Hint: factory owners and engineers are susceptible to inventives.

In this case I am talking about the privileged knowledge that this particular LG component is part of a new apple product. This was almost certainly protected by an NDA, which was broken by someone involved in the ipad manufacturing process. I wouldn't be surprised if apple gossip bloggers are bribing foxconn employees or something like that.

<comment><USER4> Americans can't break NDAs? I mean come on they left an iPhone 4 prototype in a fucking _bar_ in PA.

<comment><USER5> Yes, because accidentally leaving a prototype at a bar is equivalent to deliberately breaking an NDA for the purposes of making a quick buck.

<comment><USER4> You are speculating. My example was to prove that information leaks for a variety of reasons. You on the other hand are working with a foregone conclusion based on prejudice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The power of ignoring mainstream news - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/31582795753/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-news <comment><USER2> I found that when I let mainstream news go and tried to stay informed via social media, blogs, and Reddit, I _felt_ informed.

Then I got a Kindle and tried a mainstream newspaper subscription.

I quickly noticed that the newspaper often disagreed with what I'd "learn" from Reddit and blogs, and upon further investigation the newspaper was almost always correct. Apparently the Reddit circle jerk is not as good at news as professional journalists.

<comment><USER3> Eh, as much as I want to agree with you (and I do, reddit is a cesspool at times) you still can't argue with this: [http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/trapwire/since1...](http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/trapwire/since1851/articles/) and this: <http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/flame>

Trapwire: funded by rich people who don't want to get noticed Flame: software showing off the usa's capability for cryptovirology and basically saying our most public stuff beats your best secret shit

<comment><USER4> You can't argue with that because that isn't an argument.

Most companies are funded by rich people.

Who knows whether Trapwire "wants to get noticed"? They sell to giant organizations, not to the public.

Most of what you know about Trapwire probably comes via Stratfor thirdhand via Wikileaks by way of Reddit. Think about that again: your information started at _Stratfor_. It was then spun by _Wikileaks_. And then it was analyzed by _Reddit_. And you trust it more than the NYT.

And all the while, Trapwire had a _web page_ describing all this stuff.

One reason why the NYT and WaPo and WSJ and Al Jazeera are so much better than Reddit at conveying the news is that they have something to lose when they get the story wrong. All of them trade on reputations that took decades to build. You can literally feel this in action as you race to start typing about how the NYT got Iraq wrong. Notice how you can't say that about any story on Reddit, because it's a howling mob of random people?

(FWIW: There are great comments on Reddit; their highs are higher than HN's highs, by a lot.)

<comment><USER3> Hmm...

You make fair points, but what I'm trying to say is that I don't trust NYT because of stuff like this: <http://www.salon.com/2010/10/24/assange_2/>

Out of all those organizations you listed, the only one I trust atm is Washing Post for reporting on the USA gov because they published this: <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/>

I agree, reddit usually has stupid shit second-hand, is run by a publishing corporation, and has numerous terrible mods, but at least alternative opinions have a chance of influencing the claim of an article.

<comment><USER4> You don't trust the New York Times because Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece for _Salon_ calling them Nixonian?

That piece is too inflammatory for me to take seriously. The New York Times wrote a _hit piece_ on someone? A _scurrilous hit piece filled with every possible rumor_? Really? Every one of them, you say?

When you write something like that, you'd better be able to back it up with something more than moral support from Daniel Ellsberg.

You can't say you're a serious consumer of the news if you select the publications you trust based on whether they support your pet causes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life. Their signal to noise ratio is definitely lower, and is not compensated by the higher amount of info they pile up.

Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are probably not quenching their thirst in that way.

<comment><USER6> And you're posting this to a social site :)

<comment><USER5> Don't get me wrong, HN is my go-to source for interesting stuff to read. But it turns out the best ones link to "mainstream news sites".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the problem that the OP blog points out is that mainstream news dish out bad news that encourage an exaggerated and wraped fearful worldview. For example, when a mass murder incident happens, people talk a lot about gun violence and how it's gripping the country and we should do something about it. Of course, they forgot that 40K people die in car accidents, 600K more die of heart disease and about 500K more die of cancer each year. A mass murderer is essentially an amateur when they are compared to inanimate or impersonal killers like cells going out of control or high blood pressure.

People aren't going to stop talking about these incidents and they aren't going to stop being terribly uninformed with just this blog post. What they need is some sort of media campaign to inform them of the real risk of dying and what they really need to fear.

This is what I called "fear inoculation", a term I coined at [http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts#fear- inocula...](http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts#fear-inoculation)

In essence, fear inoculation is basically protection against memes that promote irrational fear of certain things like terrorist incidents and airplane crash.

<comment><USER8> You are aware that gun deaths are on course to exceed auto deaths this year? While the gov. has spent billions over decades to prevent auto deaths, cancer deaths, etc., effectively $0 have been spent to study and prevent gun deaths; how is it irrational to be concerned about that?

<comment><USER7> Gun death looks like a proximate cause. Guns are tools for suicide, or for killing people who you don't like. If you want to reduce gun related death, you should look into suicide research and criminology/sociology research. You could ban guns, but it's likely that people will kill each other with something else. There's no shortage of methods on way to kill somebody.

Anyway, do you have a citation? I have mine, which is <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'ignorance is bliss'.

go ahead, tune out the news. please stop voting though, democracy relies on the informed voter. and good luck in the capitalist economy, that one relies on information as well.

as this is hn, let's focus on the founder's perspective. if you have no clue about what's going on in the world, how can you compete within it? if you have no clue about your target group's current situation? pick anything, like healthcare - great opportunities, but good luck not staying informed.

back to the general reason why this terrible advice: being ignorant makes you a terrible citizen. it is already bad in the US, if you're only watching tv news you're already clueless about the world. whenever i am in the us i am amazed about the lack of true world news - CNN International is a very different channel than CNN.

as a voter it is your frickin responsibility to stay informed. your worldview baffles me.

<comment><USER10> Baffled because you think that "the news" == keeping informed. The two have little to do with each other. If you want to learn something, turn off the idiot box and pick up a book.

<comment><USER11> Books, by and large, are useless in keeping up on current events. The news, despite all it's faults, is current - which is what's meant by "informed" in this context.

That's not to say that you shouldn't read books nor that the news is the best way to stay informed, but saying that reading books is the best way to stay on top of current issues is provably wrong.

<comment><USER10> No, keeping "informed" is not about knowing what happened in the last hour, or a sting of unrelated events over five years.

It is about the larger movements that shape humanity. These aren't discussed in any meaningful way on the TV news except at the fringe. Books, and long- form magazines are accessible, concentrated stores of knowledge, and you won't have to waste time on daily gossip, which is useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is the kernel of good advice in this post: consuming news can be addicting, can create a negative worldview, and might not provide the informational content you think it may.

However, the author then makes a series of suggestions for all the things you should be doing with your time, such as: (a) playing videogames; (b) mentoring other startup founders; (c) building your own startup; (d) writing on your blog; (e) going to the gym.

All of these suggestions for what you should be doing with your time are... surprise, surprise... things that the author does with his time, instead of reading the news.

The reflection I got out of this post was perhaps the opposite of intended: I need to stop reading HN!

<comment><USER13> This makes me wonder: which is more valuable? writing blog posts or reading actual news?

<comment><USER14> Depends on the goal. The answer is neither and both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I understand a healthy media diet but as an able/concerned/voting citizen, I cannot justify abstaining from news* entirely.

*News being defined as important information about important events. (Not TMZ, GMA, opinion columns/shows, etc.)

<comment><USER16> Do you think news is the best channel to make an informed voting choice? It could be argued either way, but it's certainly not clear.

In Switzerland, the best source of info is usually the documentation that comes with the voting papers. News is just noise and opinion.

<comment><USER15> We have decent documentation provided here, too (at least in CO). I'm unsure if it's ample enough to make a completely informed decision.

Some issues demand more cultural/social context, "the full story" as it were. I think this context is probably best created by discourse and debate, but can also be augmented with news.

Of course, this leads to another media/news issue in the Internet Age: consumption bias -- only reading/watching media you agree with.

I try to maintain moderation and balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I agree with this, because it's something I've done for a while, but for different reasons (primarily to do with mental health).

But as an addendum to that it's also important to know and accept that, as a result, you are more ignorant. This isn't a _bad_ thing, for as long as you know that you're willingly less informed. As stated, this is the opportunity cost for pursuing things more important to you.

As an aside, I'd like to recommend Flat Earth News[0] to anyone who wants a journalist's insight into how the news isn't always truthful.

As another one, I saw a comment saying Americans are how they are because they _don't_ watch the news. I disagree. Watching the news does not make you culturally sensitive.

[0] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning- Distor...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning- Distortion/dp/0701181451)

</comment><comment><USER18> Did you stop absorbing news altogether or you just stopped looking at mainstream news? What is your definition of mainstream news?

I think it is reasonable to be an observer of your local news - the news which affects your immediate environment - otherwise rest of the long distance news is irrelevant so I am in agreement.

</comment><comment><USER19> My personal, ad-hoc strategy for keeping up with news (aside from HN):

* Glance Newspaper headlines on the metro or at newsstands.

* Every quarter or so, pick up a copies of The Economist and New Scientist.

* Hit wikipedia for an intro to issues/subjects that I find interesting.

* Track down books/papers on anything that I want to delve deeper into.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll just share my news diet and what I think of each of them. I take all news with a grain of salt and try to mix it up. I think it's a mistake to just give up news altogether though.

HN: interesting technical pieces occasionally and good coverage of tech industry but is often an echo chamber (granted one I agree with) and features a lot of fluff pieces written by bloggers lacking original thought and research skills

WSJ: good coverage of business but features a world-view that's almost completely obsessed with money and right-wing ideology, yet the pieces are still thoughtful and original

NYTimes: I occasionally read to find out about world events since they have great breadth and coverage

Local papers: generally a crap-hole of AP content and crime reports but is useful for sports and city council/schools coverage

Slashdot: for teh lulz. but these people share my outrage at government intrusion in our lives so I like reading up

Facebook: I have good friends who link to good stories in publications I would otherwise never read

NPR/public radio: insightful and original story ideas, but they're very much into intellectual naval gazing

AM conservative radio: they're entertaining, and I enjoy hearing their take on recent events which often have a lot of valid points. at least they wear their bias on their sleeves even if it gets in the way of legitimate reporting/analysis

Local TV news: completely pointless and depressing recap of local crime and fluff pieces. useful in the event of local severe weather. decent sports interviews but mostly resorts to flimsy soundbites

Daily Show: you can always count on Jon to call people out on their BS and point out absurdities

Google News: extremely useful for getting up to speed on what's happening but is often trapped in a monotonous cycle of iPhone news, 'radical' health discoveries which are overblown, violence in foreign countries, and gaffe- centric political reporting

Twitter: I follow over a 1000 people so it's like sifting through a pile of periodicals in the bathroom which sometimes turns up some good finds but is mostly just perfume ads

</comment><comment><USER14> This is terrible advice and not something I think people should be recommending to others. I love Joel's posts enough to subscribe to the rss feed (which I have never done for any site ever) but this post is something I strongly disagree with for many good reasons.

The idea he puts forth is incredibly naive and has not been taken to its natural conclusion. He talks about the negative side of keeping up with the news while ignoring the many positives.

He puts forth a simple solution to a complex problem. The solution he comes up with is naive and extreme. The problem seems to be that news being biased and overwhelmingly negative puts a damper on your mood. It can also harm productivity when becoming too engrossed in it and when the news stirs up strong emotions. His point is valid but his solution is extreme.

I think it's this kind of attitude that is making Americans stupid when it comes to civics. People in this country (the US) have no clue what's going on in the world or domestically because they either don't follow the news at all or because all they can process at any given moment is some asinine sound bite that barely comes close to touching on the substance of an issue.

Following news isn't harming anyone's mental well being. _Not following the news_ is what causes harm. We pay a price for ignorance and the bill is about due. Following the news keeps you informed, it expands your world beyond the narrow little bubble most people live in, and it makes you an informed citizen which then gives you the tools to make smart decisions and, if you're an entrepreneur especially, gives you insight into where your next opportunity may come from.

While Joel's points about the detrimental effect the news can have and the problems with the media itself are pretty valid, tuning out is the wrong solution. The real solution is to be aware that what you see and hear is often biased. Being aware of the business side of the news will make you a better, more informed consumer of news thus making any news you consume more valuable and often actionable.

Now, if watching the news and reading mainstream news outlets creates anxiety for you then you probably have to brush up on your skills as a consumer of news. You don't need to watch 8hours of CNN or read the newspaper cover to cover to be informed. Consuming mainstream news reasonably shouldnt be detrimental in any way to you.

Furthermore, the fact that he singles out "mainstream" news makes me worry. It implies that news sources outside of the mainstream are somehow better or more true. This is not the case. Many of these news sources outside the mainstream like the brag about how they are the only ones with the balls to report the "truth". Whenever anyone appoints themselves the authority on truth it's time to be skeptical. Everyone has an agenda and while mainstream news may have some major problems with bias and conflicts of interest, it doesn't mean they are completely without any credibility news outside the mainstream can be just as bad if not worse than mainstream news. These organizations often push a very biased agenda or peddle ridiculous conspiracy theories while claiming to be sources of truth. Many times both the conspiracy theories and extreme bias go together in a news outlet beyond the mainstream in an effort to push some agenda. I used to be a believer in "truth" and conspiracy theories (often being unable to tell the difference). Now I understand that truth is not always so clear cut. There are degrees of truth.

The best thing to do is not to ignore mainstream news but embrace it. Embrace it with a healthy amount of skepticism and logic. It will expose you to new ideas and keep you up on what's going on in the world. So long as you consume it smartly you won't have a problem.

This whole post seems to be born out of a non-problem. I mean it's a problem but a problem born out of going to extremes. I happen to be keeping up with the news and in particular the US presidential election. It sometimes makes me angry but not to the point of disrupting my life in any way at all. It doesn't keep me from being productive. I listen to the radio as I drive to the train and sometimes read a paper on the train itself. Thoughts of the news don't distract me at work or socially. And when I see or hear nonsense I can tell its nonsense and go on with my day.

This post is a recipe for ignorance. If you plan to live a monastic life or a certain lifestyle that allows you to get away with being uninformed then this is good advice. But for the vast majority of us living modern lives trying to get by in this world, it's a shortcut to happiness that has a price.

<comment><USER21> "Not following the news is what causes harm." - I totally agree with Joel here, and disagree with you. I've spent the last 5 years pretty much a news junkie. I spent 2-3 hours a day, equally split between the NYT, WSJ, Economist, and weekends spent listening to NPR.

What I've realized is that, in general, I'm not better informed about the world, but I am more indoctrinated into the Left Wing (NYT), Right Wing (WSJ) and Intellectual-conservative-laissez-faire-right (Economist) world views.

I guess for a more complete picture of the opposing world view philosophies, I could add BBC, al jazeera and CSMonitor to my mix - but these outlets don't inform, they promote their world views and, more importantly, pander to the desires of their audience. Suggesting the news is a way of getting unbiased knowledge of the world is like saying the Supreme Court of the United States makes judgements based on law.

You want to get an unbiased view of the world? Go out, and see it with your own two eyes, smell it with your nose, touch it with your hands.

I don't believe, after spending the last years comparing and contrasting the WSJs/NYTs takes on stories (often comedic in their different perspectives) that I'm any better informed about the world than if I had just watched the Daily Show, or even, god forbid, tuned into CNN/Fox News.

The one exception, that I've found, is Nate Silver's column - <http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/>. I'm not sure what worldview he is promoting, other than "Math is cool" - and I do tend to trust it with regards to what's happening in term of Polling data regarding the US election.

Other than that, though, I appreciated and agree with pretty much everything Joel wrote in his post.

<comment><USER14> I made it a point to make sure I mentioned that all news is biased. I meter said otherwise. But bias is not a bad thing like everyone wants to make us think. Sometimes bias is good. Not all opinions are created equal and this whole idea of two differing opinions both having equal merit is bullshit. Sometimes one opinion has merit and the other is just bullshit. I embrace bias.

You called yourself a news junkie. That right there is the problem. Being a news junkie is just as unhealthy as completely ignoring the media.

Watching the Daily Show is no different than consuming news from any other mainstream outlet. It may be satire but it's still news and it's still mainstream.

I don't know how you can say you're not better informed. If you consume news from anywhere at all then you're infinitely more informed than anyone who goes along with Joel's no-news-consumption advice.

I feel like you didn't read what I wrote because I do address some of what you say in my comment. I don't blame you though, I didn't realize it was such a long comment when I wrote it.

<comment><USER21> I actually did take the time to read your 852 word, eleven paragraph missive.

The part that you didn't capture, is that, by and large, listening to the "news" is not actionable, and mostly serves the purposes of indoctrination, and entertainment. There is also a difference between having a bias towards the truth, and just being biased. Saying "Man landed on the moon" is biased towards the truth. Saying "Science is a solution to many of our problems" is just bias. (albeit one that I have)

If something's really important, you'll hear about it (I would call that important subset of events the news, as opposed to the "news"). I fully support Joel's "Just turn it off and make better use of your time" position - you (and your community/country) will be better served.

Also - don't get me wrong, there is a difference between broadly educated, and well read (which I strongly, strongly support) - and being up to date on the "news" - which I see minimal value in.

<comment><USER14> Then maybe we're thinking about different versions of what the news is. Telling people to shut off the news is destructive because the news is not all indoctrination and entertainment. I'm not an idiot. I know what the news is in that sense. But when you put out a broad call to shut it all off that means shutting out the good stuff too. The better solution I'm talking about is knowing how to tell the difference. If you can do that and be informed with the news that's worth consuming that infinitely better than tuning out completely which is what Joel calls for. Maybe he didn't mean it like that but when you have an audience that large you have to assume most of the audience will take it as its written which, if they do, will lead them down an ignorant anti-intellectual path. We don't need anymore anti-intellectuals in this world (especially in the US where it's recently become cool to be an idiot and somehow being elite is a bad thing).

<comment><USER10> Your concerns seem well-intentioned but they miss the point of the post. The knuckle-draggers you worry about aren't searching out blog posts looking for reasons to stop participating. The fact of the matter is that it has been shown that people who watch TV news know less (or more false things) than those who do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Not only is watching news going to put an out of proportion amount of negative thoughts in your mind, which will affect what you can achieve, it is also valuable time where there are many amazing and meaningful things you could be doing"

Well let's add to this then. What about time wasted sitting in synagogue or church saying the same prayers over and over again? To me that's even a bigger waste of time. What if people got together and actually learned something during that time (if together) or on their own. To me at least the sermons were always interesting (ymmv of course) but they were mainly filed under "entertainment" value.

That said there is a value to main stream news depending on what your business or product is. It is important to have the beat on what others are watching and thinking to me it does have value. Some people say "who cares what the WSJ or NYT thinks"? But the truth is others care and carry that info out to people and it's a good idea to know what others are going to believe and think. That doesn't mean that you have to watch mainstream everyday, but I wouldn't go as far as saying the right approach is to stop watching TV totally as Joel says he has done. Or reading mainstream news.

</comment><comment><USER23> The more mainstream news is, the easier it will reach you, whatever you do, whether you spend time looking for it or not. That's kind of obvious, in hindsight, that's why it's called mainstream. Consequently, watching and reading news is useless, since you will always find someone eager to talk to you about the important stuff, and you can always double check the facts afterwards.

Reading already curated sources of info, preferably quite a few of them, coming from varied backgrounds, and doing a more focused research afterwards if it seems worth it, beats mainstream news most of the time.

And by curated, I mean low volume sources. My rule of thumb is that if an rss feed (which is where most of my news comes from) gets more than four or five updates a week, it's probably not worth it (or I subscribed to it because it's a type of noise that I like, but it's still noise).

</comment><comment><USER24> I feel the same way about the information that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. He is right, in the sense that much of it is very negative, though I also feel some of it is information that everyone should know. With that in mind, I would like to know where everyone goes for their information. It seems that alot of the information and news that everyone should know, be it positive or negative, is very difficult to find. This raises the question, how do we get this information into the mainstream media? The biggest problem for me is the lack of control, users have over the information that they are presented with. Even Google is able to show us the content they want us to see, or think we want to see. I think that this control is really destroying our ability to change as personalities in the online and offline world.

</comment><comment><USER25> I stopped following the TV news years ago and almost never browse news websites. I use my social feeds (Twitter, HN, Facebook) and the Reddit frontpage as a high-pass filter for what news events I might care about digging more into. This cuts out almost all "X is bad for you!" scaremongering and celebrity nonsense (which I have almost a separate filter for mentally). When something like the recent anti-Islam movie fiasco happens I hear about it and dig in more. It's very freeing not to have to hear distorted stories about how everything's going to hell.

Right now the local mayoral election has made me pay more attention to the local news and I almost always regret that additional noise, even though the local organization I use (The Voice of San Diego) is about as good at journalism as I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER26> As I get older, I've grown to understand that you can't ignore news and media completely, you just need to filter it to the point that you can make it useful for your needs. Like any other media, 99.99 percent of news is crap. Between smart phone apps and RSS feeds I can limit my "daily consumption" to what I want and need with a modest amount of ads and fluff taking up my time. But periodically I hit the browser or the library and get caught up on subjects that may require deeper knowledge. The best source of links to a broad spectrum of media I have found is here: <http://www.insideautomotive.com/sources.htm>

</comment><comment><USER27> A year or two ago I read Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Work Week. Most of the advice in the book did not pertain to me, but one tidbit of knowledge that I gain is that you can save time by simply ignoring the news. Most of us are not in the position to change anything, and much of the news does not pertain directly to us. The benefit from being informed often not great than the cost of losing the time needed to read/watch the news.

I tried to find some quotes from the book, but the best I could find was only this article: [http://www.evomend.net/en/tim-ferriss-4-hour- workweek-3-5-le...](http://www.evomend.net/en/tim-ferriss-4-hour- workweek-3-5-less-more-elimination)

</comment><comment><USER28> I've stopped going Reddit, for a similar effect.

<comment><USER29> I keep Redditing, but unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits, and subscribe to TrueReddit, TrueAtheism, and whatever else holds my interest.

<comment><USER30> I pruned my subscription lists too, and now it's as if it's frozen. Beside those 2 you mentioned what else is time worthy ?

<comment><USER29> Well, what are your interests?

<comment><USER30> let's not try to fit my bubble, throw me anything

<comment><USER29> TrueAtheism, DebateReligion, MensRights, TrueGaming, AskScience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Facebook and Twitter is mainstream on its own.

</comment><comment><USER32> I agree with Joel here. He echos a similar post written a while back that asks an interesting question.

If you did not know Barack Obama was the president of the United States, would your life be affected?

For me, the answer is no. You?

</comment><comment><USER33> The last time I saw any mainstream news that wasn't part of a youtube joke clip or actually important enough to make it to news sites like slashdot was... well... I think this one time in 5th grade around 1991 I was forced to read a news article of my choice to write an essay about. I don't remember what it was about or anything though these days.

So yeah, last time I saw a paper was 1991. Last time I saw a news TV thing was probably mid 90s as well, but I don't remember it since I have literally never seen a full news hour or however long it goes.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've come across this while building the feed list for <http://skimfeed.com>.

To keep signal to noise as high as possible, I've had to remove all regular news sources from the site (CNN, MSNBC...). They're time wasting, regurgitated junk adding little to no value to readers lives.

At the same time, I think ignoring mainstream news completely is not the solution, it's nice to know what the masses are consuming and it keeps you up on trends.

Conclusion? everything in moderation.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think news and several other activites can be grouped under the "will this have made any impact in my life within 5 years?" good procrastination umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER36> I strongly agree. I became happier once I stopped following whatever mainstream news channels. I consume new things via social circles (no G+ pun intended), meaning there's a sifter of curators picking stuff for me. I'm aware of the fact that this can put you in some sort of tunnelvision, but you can prevent that by sticking your head out now and then to sniff something new.

</comment><comment><USER37> I do not mean to disagree with the OP, but here's a thought:

What would happen if we required someone like Warren Buffet to ignore the news?

What if he was prohibited from reading a single newspaper?

What would happen?

I know many people who read multiple newspapers every day, without fail. If they were not allowed access to the news, I think their ability to function in their chosen profession would be severely impacted.

<comment><USER38> There are by and large two types of stories in newspapers. Stories that appeal to emotion and stories that relate to data.

From my experience in newsrooms, stories that are primarily emotional are dealt with by Journalists nearly exclusively, they require strong story telling and usually invasive interviewing and exposure.

Stories from data tend to be collected by outside interests and presented to newspapers. Journalists can then spin stories from the data, or if they are writing for a financial publication typically highlight the most salient points for consumption. Occasionally, and far more infrequently than in the past, the media institution will collect a survey themselves or crunch the numbers, and this is almost always pseudo-scientific.

Ultimately journalists rarely improve this data other than to make it more gossip worthy. There is a huge amount of data presented every day, from pr firms, from foundations and from public bodies, and all of it wants to be read.

Warren Buffet might prefer to read it in the New York Times, but with a strong and deep twitter feed almost anyone can now be as informed as the average news room (there are exceptions to this, on the other hand, reading those same newspapers cover to cover is also a good way to fill your head with soporific twaddle)

While I don't agree with the original article, as I think many publications offer some well reasoned analysis and challenging opinions, social media is more than enough to stay as well informed as anyone, though it remains more difficult to navigate.

On the other hand, imagine if Warren Buffet were only allowed to get his information from cable news. That would be frightening.

<comment><USER37> Interesting comment. PR may see social media as a threat, for exactly the reason you've mentioned. "Well-informed" is relative I think to what you're doing. For example, someone doing hard science research in a lab may only need access to scientific journals. She needs to keep pace with what is published in her area of research only; she could be oblivious to what's happening in the world and still be effective in her job. But from what I know of Buffet, I think he needs access to what journalists are saying. Again, it matter what you're trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all." \- GK Chesterton...in the 1920's.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good news come from being close to the source while having means of integrating the knowledge. For programming topics I found irc channels and conferences are hard to beat. Unless you work in interesting companies.

</comment><comment><USER40> I feel like i wrote this article! i stopped watching news/ propaganda/pr for a year and a half and i can't believe i wasted my time back then!

<comment><USER41> Ditto, but I did it back around 2008. Most of the articles I read are less on current events than they are on subjects that lean towards timeless ideas, concepts and theories. Plus I already have tons of interests (mostly humanities) and that keeps my plate full. Recently, I also started 'printing as PDF' any articles I want to read later and putting them in a folder on my desktop.

Being aware of what constitutes propaganda/pr allows me to watch some mainstream films and TV shows while not being as brain-washed as someone who watched them 'to relax'/unfiltered. Being a person who likes to think and analyze, I can relax/rest when I sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's not only a problem of negativity though. It's also about churnalism, which compromises the integrity of a lot of mainstream news.

</comment><comment><USER43> There is one really big problem with social news: Filter Bubbles.

<http://dontbubble.us/>

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm down to a few minutes of Google News per day, but that's hard to break.

</comment><comment><USER45> There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to- date. I lived in a chronic apprehension lest I might, so to speak, miss the last bus, and so find myself stranded and benighted, in a desert of demodedness, while others, more nimble than myself, had already climbed on board, taken their tickets and set out toward those bright but, alas, ever receding goals of Modernity and Sophistication. Now, however, I have grown shameless, I have lost my fears. I can watch unmoved the departure of the last social-cultural bus—the innumerable last buses, which are starting at every instant in all the world's capitals. I make no effort to board them, and when the noise of each departure has died down, "Thank goodness!" is what I say to myself in the solitude. I find nowadays that I simply don't want to be up-to- date. I have lost all desire to see and do the things, the seeing and doing of which entitle a man to regard himself as superiorly knowing, sophisticated, unprovincial; I have lost all desire to frequent the places and people that a man simply must frequent, if he is not to be regarded as a poor creature hopelessly out of the swim. "Be up-to-date!" is the categorical imperative of those who scramble for the last bus. But it is an imperative whose cogency I refuse to admit. When it is a question of doing something which I regard as a duty I am as ready as anyone else to put up with discomfort. But being up-to- date and in the swim has ceased, so far as I am concerned, to be a duty. Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else's categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called "life" which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to "see"; I keep out of range of the "art" they think is so vitally necessary to "keep up with"; I flee from those "good times" in the "having" of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.

From "Silence is Golden" by Aldous Huxley

</comment><comment><USER46> News is sensationalized, augmented, agendized, skewed, propaganda, entertainmentized garbage.

Could not agree with the author more. Only pay attention to "the news" if you spend the necessary time online researching and finding out each real/complete story (facts and both sides of the story). Otherwise how can you not help being persuaded and shaped by the mainstream media?</comment>


Ask HN: How does your code review process work? - <AUTHOR> We have about 15 developers working in permeable sub-teams, each merging one PR on average per day. When a PR is created, it needs to be CRed by at least one other developer, and developers should look at each others' work while they are waiting for their PR to be looked at. <comment><USER2> Morning routine: check email, check list of open PRs that I should review, respond to comments on my pending PRs, if any, and merge my own approved PRs.

Reviewing work by dev A: change looks good, but what is this condition for, given this other condition elsewhere? what does the alternative really mean? ask a couple of questions, request elaboration on a comment because we both know why it's there since we talked about it but the maintenance team won't have that context. Review responses to Qs in A's older PRs; looks great, approve.

PR from dev B: oh god, why write a two-line wrapper for a standard POSIX function and try to make a Linux-based app look like this is running on Windows? Check comments, oh god they all say "tbd". Request that new identifiers include some vowels, like regular English words; point out team's coding standard we all agreed to at the beginning of the project. Review responses to comments on B's older PRs; ah yes, he refuses to make any improvements and adds comments full of typos; hah, B also introduced the same typo in a previously correctly named variable; insist on improvements.

PR from dev C: that's weird, I don't get how that would work, let's compile it. Right, it doesn't even compile. Hmmm, two new classes, without comments, what are those for? right, they're imported but not actually used anywhere. What problem is this PR solving? no idea, everything is named aThing, ThingStorage, and FutureUse. Review responses on Cs older PRs; hmmm, no actual responses, just saying "will change in another PR". Wince, shrug, write a note to escalate to team lead at the end of the week, again.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is it you want to know?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just the mechanics of how you, as a company, structure your code review process to ensure code quality without zapping developers of the time they need to spend writing code.</comment></comment>


SWAT Team Detains Popular Gamer Who Was Live-Streaming 'Counter-Strike' - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/swat-team-detains-popular-gamer-who-was-live-streaming-counter-strike/ <comment><USER2> Given that this could have easily resulted in a death, calling it a "prank" and suggesting that "Whomever instigated the swatting should be ashamed of themselves" seems the wrong of language for what is a pretty serious crime.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. How about, "Whoever committed this crime should go to prison"?

I also object to the headline. It makes it sound like the police raided and arrested him for playing games.

<comment><USER4> you are probably right. it's a crime to abuse civil servants but wow what timing. right when the US is in the middle of a militarisation of police debate centered in part around abusive use of SWAT everywhere. In the end though this particular use illustrates that not all police are animals. Of course, Kootra is white. Just sayin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This kind of thing is just unnacceptable in a free nation.

We're not peons to be treated like animals. "Get on the fucking ground", "Don't you fucking move" ... these aren't the commands of an officer sworn to protect the citizens, these are the commands of a power-driven, egomaniacal, paramilitary police force who continue to abuse their power and assault private citizens without due cause and without repercussion. A phone call does not warrant that response.

Police are thugs, SWAT is worse. Its a shame we've come to this as a country, and nobody seems to care.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention that, after he complied with no signs of resistance, he still gets a boot in the back from these thugs. The guy even jumps off his back foot a couple times, just to make sure his entire body weight is on him. Good thing he could hear them over the headphones, or he'd have likely been shot in the back. That's the price you pay for not resisting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how it is a police force could be talked into doing something likes this in the course of a prank. You would hope they would do at minimum a cursory amount of investigation before taking measures like this.

<comment><USER8> Imagine you called up to report a genuine crime taking place, and the dispatcher's reaction was 'oh really, that doesn't sound very convincing.' You'd be furious, and rightly so. If the caller's location is spoofed, which is not hard to do, and the caller has minimal acting skills, then the police would be remiss not to act on it.

I really do not care for the prevalence of SWAT teams in the US, but then I don't care for the ease with which criminals can heavily arm themselves either.

<comment><USER9> I'm willing to bet more people are harmed by SWAT teams than by heavily armed criminals using the same class of gear.

A patrolman would've been more than sufficient for this.

EDIT:

Just to make this painfully obvious...had he turned around quickly with a mouse in his hand, they quite possibly could have drilled him. Is that sort of risk really something we're okay with?

EDIT 2:

For the downvoters--notice that I said "same class of gear". How many criminals are actually busted carrying fully-automatic MP5s, assault rifles, shotguns, and body armor?

<comment><USER8> I'm not making an argument for SWAT teams, just about the difficulty of evaluating false reports of a serious crime.

 _A patrolman would 've been more than sufficient for this._

That sort of depends on what report was made in the 911 call(s), doesn't it? I mean, we know now it was just one guy playing videogames at home, but you can't just call 911 and ask for them to send a SWAT team somewhere. Presumably the dispatchers were led to believe that something much more dangerous was taking place.

<comment><USER10> That's the whole thing really. 911 responders have to make decisions with out being able to know the outcome ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm with the folks who are wondering at the police response. Aren't they trained to assess a situation? There is only one person in the room - which is an office and he's playing on the computer. Is their only training to throw people on the ground and pin them? Aren't they trained to simply ask questions and judge from body language and emotions whether this person is up to something, is armed or acting strange vs just a bystander.

I think this video is very disturbing. It shows we have incompetent police. We need to train them better. It's very easy to take a bunch of hefty fellows and give them guns and show them how to shoot people.

It takes more time to train them to assess situations, and approach people with dignity and respect. I think we should spend this time.

</comment><comment><USER12> It always bugs me when police turn off cameras in situations like this. How is it not evidence tampering?

<comment><USER13> Evidence tampering refers to manipulating evidence once it has been collected not while it is being created.

<comment><USER14> That's 'collected' only in the sense that the evidence has come into existence and legal proceedings have become a possibility. Speaking only for the US and as far as I'm aware, it isn't necessary for the evidence to actually be in the possession of any legal authority or for any legal proceedings to be underway.

Deleting incriminating emails in contemplation of future investigation is tampering with evidence, for example. I won't comment on police video recordings - knowledge and intent play a significant role in whether or not a crime has occurred, here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love hearing "THE TERRORISTS WIN" from the game audio during this. Apropos.

<comment><USER9> Payday would've been funnier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The victim has an incredible amount of sangfroid. I'm amazed that he wasn't freaking out in an obvious way. His follow-up tweet is a bit understated as well.

<comment><USER17> He was a white male. These things tend towards non-fatal resolutions when this is the case.

<comment><USER10> Well not freaking out helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is an audio[1] that appears to be a recording of the perpetrators of this "swatting." Twitter handles[2][3] go along with it.

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

[2]: [https://twitter.com/ScrewPain](https://twitter.com/ScrewPain)

[3]: [https://twitter.com/spiky](https://twitter.com/spiky)</comment>


Carp, a compiled Lisp with type inference and a borrow checker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.veitheller.de/Carp.html <comment><USER2> Others might be interested in Henry Baker's Lively Linear Lisp

[0] HN Discussion. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14248419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14248419)

[1] [http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LinearLisp.html](http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/LinearLisp.html)

<comment><USER3> Loved that article, made me realize a lot of things about ... lots of things.

<comment><USER2> That bibliography is amazing. The best papers also have great bibliographies where I can dive in and learn mind altering ideas. Boring papers have boring bibliographies that just echo a list of the big papers in a field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really want to like Carp but I somehow feel that the Rusty memory model does not fit the Lisp philosophy... all the borrowing story comes from a basis mutability.

I wish for something more Clojurish based on immutable data. Then one can exploit the power of inferred type linearity/affinity to transparently build safe "transients" and other cool stuff. Maybe some day I should write such Lisp myself on top of my C++ immutable data structures [1] :-)

[1] [https://github.com/arximboldi/immer](https://github.com/arximboldi/immer)

<comment><USER5> One of the good LISP's back in the day was PreScheme that let it finally be a C alternative efficiency-wise. It was also used in first, verified LISP. Such a style might also be good for bootstrapping or just making more flexible ways to code C.

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

Looking at PreScheme, Carp doing a C alternative safe without a GC is a nice evolution of these LISP's. Next cool possibility: use a Rust-like LISP with an OS project like Mezzano on lowest-level stuff. Might even start with Redox OS just LISPifying its parts for a kernel and shell to start with.

<comment><USER6> > Next cool possibility: use a Rust-like LISP

Why do you want a Rust with Lisp syntax? I don't see the benefits of such a "Lisp" if you take the core benefits of metaprogramming at runtime away which depends on the equality of code and data.

Safe software can also be written in other languages than Rust. Ada is still industry standard of safe programming today. Even Lisp can be used to write safe software since Lisp's memory management takes care of possible pointer problems.

Rust shines in the field where Mozilla developed it for -- safe Internet browsers. However, safe Internet browsers could also be written in Ada and Lisp. The Lisp version would just not be as performant as Ada's and Rust's.

<comment><USER5> "Rust-like LISP"

The phrase was ambiguous. I meant a LISP w/ safe, memory model like Carp. There's already LISP's in the past and present for OS's. There's also projects that restrict the power of languages to get better efficiency in low-level work. So, more of the latter with Rust's memory model might be advantageous. The former with their flexibility could be built on top of that same language with a low-latency GC for anything done dynamically or which the analyzer just couldn't handle enough to know safety. Might lead to a great performance boost on top of safety benefits.

"Safe software can also be written in other languages than Rust. Ada is still industry standard of safe programming today."

You're right that Ada was a language systematically designed for safety that people could be using right now. I gave them some resources on that here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771552)

The problem: Ada does _not_ have temporal safety or flexible support for race- free concurrency. The first part in Ada doesn't exist at all: they have to do unsafe deallocation when their tricks like memory pools aren't enough. The second, Ravenscar, is like a tome in its restrictions compared to the basic rules of the borrow-checker in Rust. Rust smashes Ada so hard on "safety without GC concept" that I told Yannick McCoy at AdaCore to get someone on achieving parity pronto. For SPARK if nothing else since it would have provably-safe sequential procedures whose composition was also safe w/ Rust's method. That would be _awesome_ for projects such as IRONSIDES DNS.

"Rust shines in the field where Mozilla developed it for -- safe Internet browsers."

Rust shines anywhere you want safe, systems code without a GC and with concurrency. That's it's main selling point, not language design. There's tons of applications for that as the huge ecosystem is showing us replacing all sorts of components in other languages with safe, fast alternatives. Redox OS did an OS in it. In high-assurance sector, Robigalia was wrapping seL4 so one can have safe apps in Rust on a formally-verified, separation kernel. bluejekyll upthread wrote a DNS server (TrustDNS) in it. Rust can do about anything an analyzable subset of C can do.

"The Lisp version would just not be as performant as Ada's and Rust's."

This is correct. My recommendation to use one close to the metal like PreScheme with Rust-style safety that outputs C for LLVM attempts to address that. All the macros apply until the resulting code is straight-forward. The translation should be straight-forward to C where LLVM does the heavy lifting. One might also use techniques from projects such as Chicken Scheme, a whole- program optimizer, and/or a super-optimizer. The speed differences might be so minimal that nobody even cares. They already are for several LISP's on most applications but I'm talking system code.

<comment><USER6> > My recommendation to use one close to the metal like PreScheme with Rust- > style safety that outputs C for LLVM attempts to address that.

Wouldn't it be easier to develop a very basic OS core in Rust, and a simple Lisp 1.5 interpreter written in Rust as foundation for a full blown Lisp?

<comment><USER7> No, because PreScheme is still a Lisp like language, whereas Rust would be bringing something else into the table as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From their github ([https://github.com/carp- lang/Carp](https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp))

The key features of Carp are the following:

\- Automatic and deterministic memory management (no garbage collector or VM)

\- Inferred static types for great speed and reliability

\- Ownership tracking enables a functional programming style while still using mutation of cache friendly data structures under the hood

\- No hidden performance penalties – allocation and copying is explicit

\- Straight-forward integration with existing C code

<comment><USER9> This actually sounds like exactly what I've been wanting! I use Clojure and it's great, but I've been wanting to use something to interop with some C++ code but while I like C++ more than most, I'd rather write in Clojure (or something like it). Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Carp compiles to C...It also likely doesn't matter much, because chances are > your machine has a C compiler.

Whether or not I can compile the code is only one of the many concerns to consider when picking between C and LLVM.

<comment><USER11> That's quite true, but from the users perspective, it mostly doesn't matter, at least in my mind. For people interested in the internals—which is an increasing amount of the user base—, and the people working on the compiler, it most definitely is a concern.

<comment><USER10> One place I can see this being an issue for users is debugging. I haven't tried Carp so I don't know how much of a practical issue this is. But if what is actually being compiled is a C program, how do I tie issues in the compiled C program all the way back to my source in Carp?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The borrow checker is _the_ reason to use Rust, in spite of its annoyances (clunky syntax, limited type inference, non-interactive programming, long compilation times, etc.), so it's always nice to see someone trying to provide the upsides of Rust without the downsides.

That being said, your website is disappointingly terse regarding how Carp recovers the advantages of Rust in the context of a Lisp derivative. What makes this particularly suspicious is the fact that, in the past, Lisp programmers have claimed to recover the advantages of other statically typed languages in a Lisp setting, but there have always been huge caveats, like "the system can be very easily circumvented, reducing the benefits of static typing to nothing".

The main reason why I feel confident that Rust is a safe language isn't just the fact that rustc seems to catch many bugs in practice. That alone wouldn't distinguish it from the countless static analysis tools for C and C++ that have existed for decades. The main reason why, at least in my opinion, Rust is such a trustworthy language in spite of its ginormous complexity, is the fact that its core developers, in particular Niko Matsakis, do a terrific job of communicating the process by which Rust's features are conceived and designed. When you read Matsakis' blog [0], it becomes patently clear that Rust's developers take into account the kind of corner cases that in many other languages are only discovered months or years after the feature has been implemented [1][2].

Other languages that inspire similar confidence in me are:

(0) Standard ML. It has a formal proof of type safety.

(1) Pony. It has a formal proof of type safety.

(2) Haskell, _as specified in the Haskell Report_ (i.e., without the crazy GHC-specific language extensions), because its type system is similar to Standard ML's, and there are no reasons to believe the differences introduce any type safety holes.

(3) OCaml, _again without the crazy extensions_ (GADTs, first-class modules, etc.), for more or less the same reasons as Haskell.

Links:

[0] [http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/](http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/)

[1] [http://joyoftypes.blogspot.pe/2012/08/generalizednewtypederi...](http://joyoftypes.blogspot.pe/2012/08/generalizednewtypederiving- is.html)

[2] [http://io.livecode.ch/learn/namin/unsound](http://io.livecode.ch/learn/namin/unsound)

<comment><USER13> > in the past, Lisp programmers have claimed to recover the advantages of > other statically typed languages in a Lisp setting, but there have always > been huge caveats, like "the system can be very easily circumvented, > reducing the benefits of static typing to nothing".

It seems to me that the benefits of static typing only apply to accidental mistakes (e.g. using a pointer to a character as though it were an integer, or a pointer to a struct, or whatever), and thus that a system with deliberately- circumventable static typing is just fine.

<comment><USER12> > It seems to me that the benefits of static typing only apply to accidental > mistakes (e.g. using a pointer to a character as though it were an integer, > or a pointer to a struct, or whatever), and thus that a system with > deliberately-circumventable static typing is just fine.

Static typing is useful to enforce the integrity of abstractions across large systems. For instance, using (language-enforced) abstract data types, you can confidently say that a 50 KLOC program won't destroy the invariants of a complicated data structure, because the only place where this could hypothetically happen is a 1500 LOC module, and these 1500 LOC have been verified to the death. Elsewhere, the internal representation of this data structure isn't accessible. Before anyone claims this can be done using object-orientation: No. Object-orientation allows the creation of ill-behaved impostors that are indistinguishable from well-behaved objects unless you use expensive dynamic checks or even more expensive whole-program (and hence non- modular) analyses.

Static typing is also useful to enforce the exhaustiveness of case analyses. Disregarding memory safety issues, which are largely a nonproblem in high- level languages, the vast majority of bugs in computer programs arises from failing to identify corner cases or fully comprehend their complexity. Algebraic data types allow you to substitute ad hoc case analyses with induction on datatypes, for which mechanical exhaustiveness checks are possible, and, in fact, actually performed in practice.

Static typing is also useful as an aid to program verification. Program properties of interest can be classified in two groups: safety properties and liveness properties. Safety properties assert that "bad states are never reached", and are largely covered by type soundness (for non-abstract types) and type abstraction a.k.a. parametricity (for abstract types). Liveness properties assert that "good states are eventually reached", and, while types provide less support for verifying liveness properties than safety ones, at least induction on datatypes provides a easy-to-use tool to verify that non- concurrent (but possibly parallel) algorithms will terminate.

All of these benefits fly out of the window if static typing can be circumvented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why nobody said one word about Shen Language[1].

[1] [http://www.shenlanguage.org/](http://www.shenlanguage.org/)

</comment><comment><USER15> So, Chicken Scheme[0] with a borrow checker?

[0] [https://www.call-cc.org](https://www.call-cc.org)

<comment><USER16> But without dynamic typing and Cheney on the MTA and with a completely different way of managing memory.

And not a scheme.

<comment><USER15> Scheme _is_ a lisp, and I'm pretty confident that two of the biggest selling points of lisp are dynamic typing and a strong distaste for (if not an outright prohibition of) mutation.

Put it as a question because if you take those two things away, wouldn't it just be Rust with parenthesis?

<comment><USER17> The selling point of lisp is macros, and macros alone. Different dialects will have different characteristics: Common Lisp is dynamically typed and usually makes heavy use of mutation, others like Lux are purely functional and statically typed.

> _wouldn 't it just be Rust with parenthesis?_

That's pretty much what it is.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but will macros retain their power in a statically typed environment?

<comment><USER18> They work pretty well in Crystal[1]. Some things are certainly a bit harder than they are in lisp/scheme but you can get a lot done with them. In crystal this is (in my experience) due to the lack of reflection support, and thus the ability to call dynamical looked up methods. Add that in and i'm pretty sure you'd remove >=90% of the current limitations, but even without that, you can get a lot done.

[1]: [https://crystal-lang.org/](https://crystal-lang.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it really interesting, and I would definitely like to try it out (the article is great by the way) I am not that good at C or Haskell, so that would be a great way to improve on this too, and that would be my main objective actually. So noob question : how would I go adding some C networking libs to Carp ? Should I directly call the code from Carp (and is that possible at the time) or should I embed it in the language core and go the haskell route ? I am new to this but would really love to embark into the adventure, for learning purpose.

</comment><comment><USER20> It seemed they don't distinguish between mutable and immutable references (?). Does Carp not handle the issue of shared mutability, eg. iterator invalidation, like Rust?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, not at the moment. Overall the type system is less expressive but also less dependent on annotations. Differentiating between immutable and mutable refs is probably coming though, it's a useful distinction for sure.

<comment><USER21> Is there a documentation about the type system somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Add an interface to Caffe or Torch and this could be even cooler. I wanna try this out. Looks like a better prescheme from s48.org

</comment><comment><USER23> Very excited about Carp. In general I like the simplicity of Lisp but ironically I'm not a fan of dynamic typing. Carp may be a real innovation. A bit surprised though that the Carp C runtime functions are not namespaced. With names like `IO_println` there's a risk of clashes. Unless the compiler is doing some tricks to hide names?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "IO_" part is the namespace, so no clashes!

<comment><USER23> It's not enough :-) Ask the OCaml folks, they're going through this pain right now because their stdlib modules are called `Array`, `List`, and so on. They're planning to put them all under `Stdlib`, so e.g. `Stdlib.Array` and so on, but it's going to be a big effort with a lot of pain.

The main problem will arise when users create their own libraries; suppose some people create a `Option` libraries and then later you want to add a standard option type to Carp, it will be painful. Better to namespace your stuff under `Carp` from the beginning, so e.g. `Carp_IO_println`, `Carp_Option_map`, and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure to think about this more before stabilising the modules.

<comment><USER24> I wonder how this compares to the Python ecosystem, whose standard library is also quite large. (Anyone remembers their famous "batteries-included" mantra?)

Python 2 didn't have a stdlib namespace, or "package" in Python speak. But when they created their clean-slate approach with Python 3, they also decided not to introduce a stdlib package. External Python packages just avoid the stdlib package names, and everything seems fine.

So, is there something in the Python language that makes the missing?

Or is it just the Python community which doesn't care about (or plays down) this issue?

<comment><USER25> As a Python programmer, I would consider code which shadows the names of built-ins to be poorly written although it's permissible in small scopes (e.g., a single block).

OTOH, for extending / wrapping there is a builtins module, which I think is what you suggest: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/builtins.html#module- built...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/builtins.html#module-builtins)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Clojure + Rust => Carp?

<comment><USER27> It sounds like arrays are mutable in Carp, so it doesn't feel like Clojure to me.

As far as I understand, Clojure is also not big on macros, while Carp appears to be.

<comment><USER26> Aye, that's the one big disappointment. Maybe the first pet project is an implementation of Clojure's immutable collections.

<comment><USER28> Immutable collections don't play well with non-GC memory management.

<comment><USER29> Exactly. Someone who doesn't see the value in a GC-less language is not going to see the value here.

I personally think "functional persistent" data structures, as a language default, trade a lot of runtime performance in order to achieve some guarantees like thread-safety and functions not having side effects. Every mutation to every array or dictionary is treated like a transaction in a MVCC database, with the garbage collector in charge of cleaning up the records of every past version that wasn't actually necessary to keep around, because no multiversion concurrency was actually necessary in that case. I encourage languages to experiment with other methods of achieving similar benefits.

I think limiting side effects and shared mutable state is very important, but at a local level, imperative code that mutates a data structure is highly readable and performant. Certain algorithms practically require it. Certain hardware practically requires it.

Functional languages let you think in terms of abstract "compound values," but in practice these are backed by tons of little heap-allocated objects, partly so that lots of sharing can be done when the data structure is copied on every change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As a Perl programmer, that name confuses me slightly.

<comment><USER31> ## confusing indeed ... || croak "Wrong language!";

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This project looks really good. I would love to have a clojure inspired lisp that's fast and doesn't require the JVM.

<comment><USER2> You might try Avian or Multi-OS Engine for embedding a JVM within your program.

[0] [https://github.com/ReadyTalk/avian](https://github.com/ReadyTalk/avian)

[1] [https://software.intel.com/en-us/multi-os- engine](https://software.intel.com/en-us/multi-os-engine)

<comment><USER7> Or even one of the commercial JDKs with AOT native code compiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I realize that almost every language could be described as a subset of C++, but I read articles like this and think...

Deterministic language that has type inference, C interop, and uses ownership to govern object lifetimes? We have that. It's C++11. auto with std::unique_ptr and std::move().

Only slightly serious. ;-)

<comment><USER2> So Carp could compile to that subset of C++. But C++11 isn't _just_ that. It is all of C++11.

C++ would even more successful if it was easy to make a proper subset of it.

<comment><USER34> That's what the GSL was supposed to be

[https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL](https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL)

It seemed really cool. All compile time checks. I have no idea why it didn't take off

<comment><USER7> Sure it did.

Some of the new C++17 library updates come from there, and both clang and VC++ implement those static checks.

<comment><USER34> I've only have a pretty basic understanding of how it works, but I thought the checks didn't rely on the compiler. They're special templates that fail when their conditions aren't met

And when I say it didn't take off - I mean that I haven't come across a single large project that has take up using the GSL. Hope I'm wrong - maybe I just haven't looked in the right place?

<comment><USER7> No, GSL is a kind of stop-gap solution, until standard catches on.

For example _std::string_view_ and ongoing design on _std::array_view_ are based on _gsl::span_. The _gsl::byte_ is also no longer needed on C++17 thanks to _std::byte_ as yet another example.

The GSL asserts are there until code contracts[0] get into the standard.

The magical types like _gsl::owner_ allow clang-tidy and VC++ checkers to apply a Rust-like memory tracking usage.

Kate Gregory did a presentation at CppCon 2017.

"10 Core Guidelines You Need to Start Using Now"

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

As for not taking off, being initially a Microsoft proposal, it is surely used by Office and Windows teams, specially given they already use SDL (Security Definition Language) macros as well.

[0] [http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p054...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p0542r0.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does Carp support ADTs or pattern matching? I couldn't see anything in the documentation.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm curious about the borrow checker, is this Rust invention or did a similar concept exist elsewhere in some other language(s)?

Can anyone recommend any resources specifically on the idea of the borrow checker?

<comment><USER37> [https://forge.rust-lang.org/bibliography.html](https://forge.rust- lang.org/bibliography.html) has links to previous work we built upon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> How does dynamic memory work in this language?

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks really good. Might give it a shot. What's the concurrency story?

<comment><USER11> None at the moment, to my knowledge. High on the list of priorities, but it's not far enough along, I fear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been waiting for a non-Clojure lisp to make some headway. Immutability is mostly a fad: look at how incredibly complicated Clojure's implementation is. It's not worth sacrificing elegance just to attract the true believers.

<comment><USER41> Honest question: is immutability complicated in Clojure because it's hard, or because it's running in a virtual machine with no meaningful support for it?

The Erlang VM has immutability deeply baked in, and it just works(™).

<comment><USER42> Erlang is typically used for problem domains (eg. fault-tolerant servers, network brokers & routers, message queues) where immutability fits the problem domain pretty well. If you want fault tolerance, you typically need to store all your state externally anyway so you can replicate it, and make all your logic stateless so you can restart & re-run it if a node fails.

There are some problem domains - eg. GUI software, web browsers, simulations, many of the more complicated parsing, data extraction, or graph-traversal algorithms - that are inherently mutable, and Erlang is not used very much in these domains. C++ still rules the roost there, even though many of its practitioners hate its shortcomings.

<comment><USER7> > C++ still rules the roost there, even though many of its practitioners hate > its shortcomings.

The solution has been to move it down the stack, as visible on all Apple, Google and Microsoft OSes, even on Qt.

It is there, making full use of the hardware in all performance critical code, but then the actual GUI code gets written in something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Since this is about a pre-alpha language, it would be helpful for future web searchers to have a date in the title.

<comment><USER44> Sorry to be a little off topic but I think search engines should penalize material that is not clearly marked with date of creation.

<comment><USER41> I've seen academic papers with no date and it _drives me crazy_. I'm sure there's some reason for it related to the publication process but can be hard to vet a paper without knowing more about the context in which it was written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Nim [https://nim-lang.org](https://nim-lang.org) is programmable as well, more mature, and multiple memory management models are coming out.

<comment><USER46> When you say 'mature' has the compiler stopped crashing all the time?</comment></comment>


I can help you realize your startup idea - <AUTHOR> http://twoinacrowd.com/dates/i-can-help-you-realize-your-startup-idea

<comment><USER2> So, he's been coding since he was 15? So that's what, -3 years, cause he definitely looks about 12 in that picture.

<comment><USER3> Totally a dick thing to say someone who just built something and put something out into the world. Adds no value to the conversation...

...man that sucks. I hate crap like this.

Anyways, Van - I like your site, but you might want to make your value proposition more clear.

"Make new friends, meet old ones, do something fun together" - doing what?

Those are good benefits. But what exactly is the service? Why should the unfamiliar visitor try it out?

Maybe something like, "Use our simple FREE service to make a connection with someone with the same interests in your hometown. Takes 27 seconds to fill out - CLICK HERE TO SEE A DEMO"

I don't know. Something like that. Stronger reason to use the service, more explanation, more call to action. Definitely have analytics, and maybe split- test different variants? Right now I don't know what the site does exactly without diving in, so grabbing someone by the hand right away and making it easy might be good.

"The best FREE way to get a meetup with an old friend, new friend, or date in your city - CLICK HERE to see how it works" - something like that? Play around with it, a stronger call to action and more description might help. Good luck and best wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice idea, simple to use, and I'm hoping to see people setup events in the bay area!

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent way to connect--simple, useful, and convenient.</comment>


Jesse Livermore's Trading Rules (1940) - <AUTHOR>

Jesse Livermore's Trading Rules (written in 1940)
1. Nothing new ever occurs in the business of speculating in stock and commodities.
2. Money cannot be consistently made trading every day or every week during the year.
3. Don't trust your own opinion or back your judgment until the action of the market itself confirms your opinion.
4. Markets are never wrong – opinions often are.
5. The real money made in speculating has been in commitments showing a profit right from the start.
6. As long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits.
7. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.
8. The money lost by speculation alone is small compared with the gigantic sums lost by so-called investors who have let their investments ride.
9. Never buy a stock because it has a big decline from its previous high.
10. Never sell a stock because it seems high-priced.
11. I become a buyer as a stock makes a new high on its movement after having had a normal reaction.
12. Never average losses.
13. The human side of every person is the greatest enemy of the average speculator.
14. Wishful thinking must be banished.
15. Big movements take time to develop.
16. It is not good to be too curious about all the reason behind price movements.
17. It is much easier to watch a few than many.
18. If you cannot make money out of the leading active issues, you are not going to make money out of the market as a whole.
19. The leaders of today may not be the leaders of two years from now.
20. Do not become completely bearish or bullish on the whole market because one stock in some particular group has plainly reversed its course from the general trend.
21. Few people ever make money on tips.  Beware of inside information.  If there was easy money lying around, no one would be forcing it into your pocket <comment><USER2> Easier said than done, as Livermore himself knew too well <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore></comment>


News Corp. Q4: MySpace Profits Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/news-corp-q4-as-promised-decent-except-for-tv-which-is-terrible-nws-

<comment><AUTHOR> Anybody know what "new features and costs associated with the startup of new ventures" means?</comment>


Decentralized orchestration tool Antitude announced PipelineConf 2014 in London - <AUTHOR> http://continuousdelivery.uglyduckling.nl/continuous-delivery/antitude-the-future-of-web-application-architecture-announced-at-pipeline-conf-2014/

<comment><USER2> This seems pretty crazy, does anyone know much about it? is it a proof of concept or actually designed to be used in production?

<comment><USER3> More run-of-the-mill than tech from the future IMHO. All of the major players already have similar tech in-house, although most of them pre-date docker so they use different container systems.

<comment><USER4> Hi, one of the antitude devs here.

I really don't think it's very run of the mill. We tried to take decentralisation as far as we could, which I don't think many other architectures do. We also tried to make it simple to deploy and put together new web apps.

The code we have is very much a prototype that just about manages to convey where we are hoping to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is Antitude going to be a commercial software?

<comment><USER4> Not clear at the moment. We're open to suggestions and partnerships!</comment></comment>