71% of students learn more about IT at home than school - <AUTHOR> http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6066993&navcode=94 <comment><USER2> _In other news, 29% of students are under-educated about IT._

Seriously though, I think it's clear, at least in CS, that if you only do your coursework you'll be left far behind your peers and what employers expect from you. It _has_ to be something you can be passionate about on your own. Getting A's in all your classes but never doing anything outside of them isn't good enough.

<comment><USER3> I have to disagree. Passionate programmers have side projects all the time, school or work. But you can successfully be a completely mediocre (dare I say average?) programmer by just doing your classwork.

The typical Java and .Net business programming jobs out there require people who are absolutely lacking passion, otherwise they couldn't bear the day-to- day tasks. These jobs are not really desirable to good programmers, but they are the majority of opportunities out there.

<comment><USER2> You will never find a above average programmer that _isn't_ in some way passionate about what they do.

And really, "average" isn't really a good word to use here. People are idiots, but technically speaking your average person is of average intelligence. Those of us who consider ourselves to be in a higher tier generally consider "average" to be very sub-par.

<comment><USER3> Point taken, I didn't mean to deride the average person, but my issue was with employers only wanting passionate or above average programmers. _Exceptional_ opportunities want exceptional people. But my point was that most opportunities in our field are not exceptional and that it doesn't take much academic effort or ability to successfully meet their requirements. The student who has a firm grasp of OO concepts and can write a little SQL can handle 90% of the jobs you'll find on Dice/Monster/Craigslist/etc. Business requirements programming just isn't that academically demanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Software as we all know it today is inseparable from the internet. Like a lot of learning or information exchange on the interent, it's largely a peer-to- peer activity (software being the exemplary). Academia is hierarchical and relies on a specialist gathering, filtering and preparing information to disseminate to many. The former is more error-prone but also much faster.

Or another way to look at it: If young John Resig builds a tool that will save you time, should you wait for your professor to learn about it and teach you or learn about it from John himself? I'm not knocking academia (there's a lot of theoretical work going on in CS that's invaluable to the industry), but your professor is professional educator, not a professional programmer, so her needs and your needs (to have the right tools to build things competitively) are not perfectly aligned. In many fields the difference is probably inconsequential, but in something as rapidly changing as software I think it makes all the difference.

I've seen the effects of this lag in a different way living in Thailand. Since most of the developers here do not learn English well enough to work/research in the language, they're ability to learn new technologies is slowed waiting for the handful of bilingual developers that exist to learn them and then blog about them in Thai. The effect is that the technology base here is horribly outdated. New _products_ are built aggressively, but they're almost all built on yesterday's tech. (The formal education system here is notoriously bad, but that's a different story.)

<comment><USER5> Another way to look at this:

If you come to the Thai market with knowledge of technologies that allow you to execute better and faster than the locals, you might have an advantage.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, if you can find people willing to pay above local rates (which are abysmal). I don't ever work locally here but I have a friend that did web dev for years. He just barely made a living and eventually sold him company to pursue other things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have found from my own experience that ICT teaching is quite shoddy, and a waste of time at best. This has been confirmed by accounts from friends and family at other schools.

Most teaching revolves around the ability to use certain microsoft products (Word, Excel, Outlook and Access if you're "lucky"). In some cases, they may even teach you Dreamweaver. I remember one lesson being taught to create websites in Dreamweaver - we were told to use tables to design the website, told off for viewing the HTML or heck, even changing the view mode so that each panel was a window.

I trialled (and have friends and family at different schools that actually did) a GCSE ICT exam, and I was somewhat bemused at a program that simulated XP, in which the purpose was to do a number of tasks (designated by an Outlook lookalike program) such as create a database, write a word document etc. The program would record every mouse click and keystroke, whilst timing how fast you did each task.

It depresses me that that is what people regard as computers in this day and age. The teachers were often primarily of another subject (Art, for example), and refused to teach at a rate faster than "don't you DARE press OK in that alert! Has everyone got that alert? Right! Now press OK!".

I also find this disappointing:

 _"There is confusion between teaching IT, and using IT as part of the learning process," Mr Fish said._

This seems to be very fashionable in many schools across the UK. I have no idea why - is French better taught through the medium of computers? Does the use of interactive whiteboards really increase productivity and ability to learn - or even attentiveness amongst pupils? Certainly Maths and English were not helped by an increase in technology, at least in my opinion. And exactly what are the pupils learning about IT in the process?

When top CS departments across the UK scorn ICT/IT A Levels/GCSEs, and in some cases appear to treat them as anti-requisites (Cambridge list ICT as a soft subject and I remember Oxford jokingly say at an open day that they look at candidates more favourably if they hadn't been taught ICT before), and when they don't appear to be teaching pupils anything that will be much use in the workforce (or rather, stuff that they don't already know that will be any use in the workforce) - what exactly is the point?

<comment><USER7> Pretty much every Uni in the UK, pretty much says when you join Computer Science, forget everything you learned in ICT lessons. I did Btec ND electronic/computer engineering at college, which gained me more respect points with uni profs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I teach ICT courses at the University level and provide tech support for a non-ICT department as well so I see both sides of this. Simply put, no one has frakking clue what they're doing. Many profs are completely clueless in content and instruction while many students have no idea what they don't know. This shouldn't be too surprising since the field is so new. Even the leading tertiary schools are still figuring out their own ICT curriculum. Second tier schools and secondary schools are completely without guidance. ICT needs another decade or two for instruction to catch up.

</comment><comment><USER9> The topic mislead me a little. Of course it's a problem, that the younger generation grows up with something, that is maybe harder to understand for their teachers, because they didn't grow up with it.

On the other hand, learning is something that happens at home, right? School mainly has the reason to help you structure your learning process, help you with finding exercises and good literature, evaluate your process with exams, answer the questions you have and last but not least kick your ass, if you can't motivate yourself. That you learn something while in school is actually not part of the schools description. So I wonder, how much these 29% "school learners" actually know about IT.

What the teachers need is a natural way of using technology in their classes. For that, they themself must start to use it at home. All these "Web2.0 Online Learning Platforms" that are actually just small CMS to download ppts can not really be all that is to it. My mother changed her major a short while ago and started studying to be a teacher for highschool. She actually thinks that these PPT-CMS systems and IRC-in-browser-integration are(!) Web2.0.

</comment><comment><USER10> The title is a little misleading considering the actual title is, "Pupils think they know more than ICT teachers".

<comment><USER11> Seeing as they are 16-18 year olds of course they think they know more about IT...and everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not just IT, but nearly all subjects are actually learned mostly outside school. The exceptions are a few topics such as indoctrination into propaganda, and learning docile obedience to authority, which do happen mostly at school.

Falk and Dierking found that 95% of science education happens outside of school. They also found that American adults have greater scientific literacy than the adults of any other nation. Americans only do worse when they are in state schools. Once they are free from them, they become educated.

[http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/FalkandDierking95perc.pd...](http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/FalkandDierking95perc.pdf)

If one wants a more educated populace, the answer is less school, not more. School makes people ignorant, docile, obedient, and kills their natural curiosity and creativity. Also puts them into crippling debt if they keep on the treadmill too long.

<comment><USER13> When you define words and phrases like "subjects," "docile obedience," "science education," "scientific literacy," "educated," "school," and "ignorant" differently than their common usage (as you have done), it is possible to make an argument that says whatever you want, really.

<comment><USER12> Sorry do you have sources? I posted a citation to a reliable study. Sorry you don't like it. I'm surprised you were able to read it so quickly, you must be a really fast reader.

Here's a column of feedback from readers to the study: [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/getting- science-...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/getting-science- education-right)

I know right, it says "american scientist", based on your comment, that must seem like an oxymoron to you since "everyone knows" americans are stupid and don't do science. I'll be sure to mention that to Neil Armstrong next time I see him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article didn't say where in the education system the surveyed students fell, but as a highschool student in the US I know this is definitely true. The majority of the students who attend the school I go to, which is actually pretty equipped in terms of modern computers, know more than the teachers do about how to use computers (and I'm not talking about updating a status on facebook). Sure, there are outliers, like the few teachers who do program in their spare time, and the few students who don't really know how to do anything with their computers, but my statement stands.

As to learning about IT at school versus at home, I know that _I_ learned more about computers at home but other students really didn't know much about computers until we were lent them by our school and used them in the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER15> _According to figures released by Microsoft, 58 per cent of 16 to 18-year- olds currently in education believe they have a better understanding of IT than those charged with teaching them._

What this actually describes is a lack of respect for instructors who are unable or unwilling to work with students on challenging and difficult problems.

The truth is, most students this age are very good at applying technology but very unsure about creating technology. When you successfully strip away the marketing terms and start going after the actual concepts, it's remarkable how quiet the room gets.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would guess that technically savvy (I mean really savvy) people are much better compensated outside of the education system.

I'd be curious how many readers on this site would even consider a teaching career. Personally, I'd love to teach, but lets face it, the pay just isn't that great.</comment>


Write documentation as tests à la Rust in PHP using Rusty - K-Phoen https://github.com/K-Phoen/Rusty/ <comment><AUTHOR> Doctests were employed in languages far older than Rust, e.g. python and Lua (full disclosure: I wrote doctest.lua), and there are doclets for Javadoc that give it the same functionality.</comment>


Optimizely vulnerability lets you see what sites is testing - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/02/optimizely-vulnerability-lets-you-see-what-other-sites-are-testing/

<comment><USER2> Four days ago they released this feature:

> "Masking Descriptive Names - This option masks the descriptive names for > experiments, variations, audiences, sections, and segments with numerical > IDs."

(From their email to users on June 6th.)

So in case you're worried, this is no longer an issue.</comment>


Lab-Testing Startup UBiome Files for Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://wsj.com/articles/lab-testing-startup-ubiome-files-for-bankruptcy-11567610568?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Maybe Uber and Ubeam will join them.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Ubeam hasn't collapsed already? Maybe they're actually doing top secret government sonar research under the guise of "physically impossible power transmission"</comment></comment>


Maemo Firefox disables Flash - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pavlov.net/2010/01/27/firefox-for-maemo-rc3/

<comment><USER2> I feel like the software Adobe puts out is extraordinarily bad and goes unrepaired. Do others have this impression too? I've never used Photoshop--is it better?

When I was on Windows, I found the Acrobat plugin to be a hog and hated looking at pdf's. On a mac, without Adobe software involved, pdf's are pleasant. Almost nothing makes my Macbook's fan run except Flash. However, YouTube never seems to do this, so is it just that Flash gives developers more rope to hang their apps with?

<comment><USER3> Talking of Photoshop: I couldn't install Photoshop on my Mac because my file system is case sensitive. Needless to say, I have no respect for Adobe.

<comment><USER4> > I couldn't install Photoshop on my Mac because my file system is case > sensitive.

How do you run your Mac off a non-HFS filesystem? I thought Mac OS would only install on an HFS+-formatted drive. (Or maybe you just wanted to install Photoshop on a non-boot disk?)

<comment><USER3> As jacobolus said, you can format HFS+ as case-sensitive when you install OS X. I do this because I need to compile code that assumes a case-sensitive FS (for example, the Haiku OS).

<comment><USER4> Oh, that's interesting --it never occurred to me to do so (although I am sufficiently often bitten by the old `mv a A` pseudo-bug that I think I'll consider it). It's also an interesting reason to do so.

I understand why code might assume a case-sensitive FS, but am puzzled how it might make use of case- _in_ sensitivity. Do you know what happens with the Photoshop installer? Is it doing something silly like `touch a; cp A b`?

<comment><USER3> I read an account of how a guy managed to move his Photoshop installation from a case-insensitive FS to a case-sensitive one. It mostly involved just renaming files, so I don't see why Adobe can't spend a few moments fixing their files.

Link: [http://imaginationunbound.blogspot.com/2007/12/adobe- photosh...](http://imaginationunbound.blogspot.com/2007/12/adobe-photoshop- cs3-on-mac-os-x-case.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think selectively disabling flash is an excellent move. For a lot of people the only flash heavy site they use on their phones is youtube or hulu, so the add-on should be a perfect solution to the piece of crap that the Flash runtime is.

</comment><comment><USER6> They do allow the option to enable flash through the about:config page, they're just disabling it by default. Flash has always been a little shaky on my N810, but it's not really a powerhouse of a device, so I never expected it to handle much more than a youtube video or flash based menus.

<comment><USER7> Considering FF with Flash on Youtube can bring my well-powered linux desktop to it's knees, I'd be floored if any mobile device could handle it in an even remotely reasonable way.

<comment><USER8> N900 can :D

Though this is only due to hardware accelerated video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It should be noted that the default Maemo browser (MicroB), also using the Gecko engine (but presumably older one than the newest Firefox mobile?), has support for Flash by default, at least on the N900 device (I'm not certain about the older ones).

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems like the only mobile device promising flash support now is the Pre... will be watching that one with interest. I suspect its performance won't be fantastic either.

<comment><USER11> <http://www.openscreenproject.org/partners/></comment></comment>


Introducing Brick: Minimal-markup Web Components for Faster App Development - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/08/introducing-brick-minimal-markup-web-components-for-faster-app-development/ <comment><USER2> Why are there always so many negative comments? Does everyone open a new tab, quickly find something to complain about, and then comment here?

Just because you begin a comment with "I don't want to sound negative" does not make your comment any less negative.

If HN is passionate about anything lately, it's been negativity.

Rant aside, Brick is now an option for rapid HTML5 development. Why is this a bad thing? Oh right, it's not.

<comment><USER3> I guess the problem most people see is, why are we making brand new HTML elements for things that are part of HTML5 and or can be done with a simple javascript file.

<x-slider></x-slider> can be replaced by <input type="range"> <x-layout> can be replaced with CSS <x-datepicker> can be replaced with <input type="date">

etc etc...

I just don't see any reason why we need to create a whole new set of HTML elements that are not part of any HTML spec just so you don't need to add a few more characters. And 90% of these are just polyfills which already exist.

If you want a rapid HTML5 development look up Emmet and add bootstrap or some other giant framework. Don't start making brand new HTML elements that have absolutely no meaning unless there is 150kb's of JS to read them.

Me thinks that is what people don't like.

<comment><USER4> What if I wanted to just display a calendar and not a date picker?

<comment><USER3> I see the reason why we would need such things, and I am a massive fan of web components and frameworks like Montage. But I also see the other side, where realistically we are just trying to reinvent a more low level language on the web browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who are wondering why this even exists, it is part of what is being called Web Components. Currently we use libraries and semi-hacky techniques to handle templating and creating private scopes for javascript. Some of the many things web components will let us do is have a true private scope for a component, have built in browser-supported templating, and allow us to separate presentation details from data. Separation of concerns ftw!

The value, to me, is that I can create true modules with html, css, and js that are scoped to ONLY inside the <x-whatever> tag I design (finally my css won't step on other css and I won't have to use unnecessary selectors to ensure that), and it will all be handled by the browser; no libraries needed (if web components becomes standardized of course).

For now, google and mozilla are creating polyfills to add this functionality because they want people to get onboard with the web component thing so that it will drive adoption and a consensus on how it should work in the final spec. I definitely recommend doing some research on the pieces and how they fit together because they are, at the least, intriguing and possibly the somewhat distant future of web application development.

[http://www.polymer-project.org/faq.html](http://www.polymer- project.org/faq.html)

[http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-components- intro-20130606/](http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-components-intro-20130606/)

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/shadowd...](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/shadowdom/)

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/templat...](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/template/)

<comment><USER6> Great explanation of why this is exciting. Separation of js/css/html is great for the top down structure of a project, but a major pain from the bottom up. I can see myself making heavy use of web components to fix that.

Also it will be interesting to see how this shakes up the templating/data binding framework ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One main benefit I can see from Web Components is that it allows you to front- load the implementation code for common components to the browser, which can hypothetically be far better for performance than including custom, non- standard javascript libraries on every website you visit. Since browsers are either bundled with mobile OSs (or they are a big, one-time download), users don't have to deal with the performance cost of rendering Your Custom Component Script for every website they visit. Conceivably we can move towards a mobile web that is highly interactive with very little payload cost in terms of loaded javascript and CSS.

That said, the obvious downside is how customizable and cross-browser these components will eventually be. As your components get more complicated, adding more html attributes to customize your element becomes prohibitively harder. I'm interested to see how they tackle this problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is exactly what I believed web/html should have. I know how to simulate this (re: other comments), this is better imho.

Thank you Mozilla.

BTW, this time next year you will all be use this in Chrome and bitch how IE is not following trends or something :)

<comment><USER9> > Thank you Mozilla.

Don't forget Google either. The Web Components spec [1] was created by Googlers (along with contributions from lots of other people, of course).

[1]: [http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-components- intro-20130606/](http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-components-intro-20130606/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My XML kung-fu is weak... is there a reason that nobody uses a second namespace/schema for this kind of thing (well, other than ASP.Net web forms and we all loved those)? I mean, XML has a painful list of features created to allow for extensibility, seems funny that we don't use them.

<comment><USER11> Because everyone else's kung-fu is weaker and they don't grok xmlns's. The HTML5 WG is anti xml namespaces- too confusing.

<comment><USER10> Really? I picked up xmlns when trying to figure out Microsoft's .NET1.1 XML serializer. In addition to your object's schema, it imports a few extra namespaces for the schema definition language (xsd) and schema instance (xsi) features... in particular you need a schema instance attribute "xsi:type" to resolve type names for polymorphic things.

Used like that, it feels just like importing a library in a programming language - I have a reference up top on the root element saying "this schema has this namespace and this prefix" and then I have attributes and tags with that prefix peppered through my document in addition to my own object schema tags and attributes. I can see how a lot of xmlns features could be really opaque (I don't understand any of them) but in this use case it was pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the more recent discussions on Brick here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223313)

</comment><comment><USER13> I am sure I have seen this before on HN, but I thought there was a good amount of criticism regarding Angular.js and making customized HTML tags. I am sure it is not a new invention in Brick, but is this so different? (I do not know what I am talking about; please feel free to correct if I am wrong).

Negativity aside, thanks to Mozilla for more cool code. You guys support stuff all over the place web-wise, and whether or not I use it, I appreciate the hell out of your efforts.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think I get the overall idea, but why are we encouraged to write <x-slider> instead of <input type="range">? I know that most of JS ninjas go bezerk at the mere mention of progressive enhancement these days, but in this case it seems the most sensible thing to do, regardless of ideological affiliation. We already have a standard element that is supposed to render a slider, why not just use it and add things to it?

</comment><comment><USER15> It's like ASP.NET's template processor is coming to the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> Web Component is at the same time a bless and a curse for the web. On the blessing way, it will finally allow to build some concise tags without waiting proper standardisation and implementation by the browsers (with various level of success). On the curse side, it's the false promise that those components will be reusable. They are not. Nothing prevent clashes in the names, so you cannot blindly import two different component libraries and use them. There is neither extension points to extend or augment existing component.

Again we are re-inventing the wheel (xml) with some quirks. It looks like people never tried to fix the root cause of the VHS vs BetaMax battle .

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't want to sound negative, but how is that any better than using jQuery UI and similar tools? In other words, what are the advantages of web components over traditional JS+HTML+CSS?

<comment><USER18> 1) Declarative 2) Someone could _finally_ implement something like <grid> to be used instead of hacky
s or old-school
s to get a proper grid layout _quickly_ as it should be. Something that you get in WPF/Silverlight for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's so new and great about it? I built something pretty much exactly like that way back in 2002 (when jQuery et al. weren't invented yet). Heck, I even got a patent for that (my bad; I now firmly believe that software patents are evil).

2004: [http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7458019.html](http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7458019.html) ... 2013: [http://mozilla.github.io/brick/](http://mozilla.github.io/brick/)

Is that progress?

<comment><USER20> It's interesting that you link to your patent but not to the "something pretty much exactly like that". If I am correct in assuming that what you built is a) obsolete now and/or b) proprietary, then the answer to your (rhetorical?) question is: yes, a highly respected open-source organization working on a modern and freely available project (even if it is nearly identical to one of yours from a decade ago) _is_ progress.

<comment><USER19> The concrete implementation of it is contained as open source (not free, but as in "you can look at the source and change it") in a commercial offering, which was the 'normal' back in these days. Yes, it is great that it is made freely available and is backed by an open source organization, no doubt. However, given the amount of time in-between, on a fundamental technical level though it seems slow progress at best.

<comment><USER20> I guess my rebuttal is very schoolyard...so what? I don't really understand the goal of meta-discussions about the speed of progress or lack thereof. This project seems potentially useful in the here and now, which is where we are living.

I didn't mean to imply judgment of the licensing of your software - I think everyone should license whatever they make however they wish - a fully free version of anything is simply more useful to me personally, as someone who isn't a deep-pocketed business, and who enjoys reading code.

<comment><USER19> I'm in full agreement with you and yes, it's a silly discussion. I guess I just wanted to point out that the idea behind it isn't all that original and actually pretty old, it's just that it's now made widely accessible, which IS great. Maybe I should've just kept the whole thing to myself ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A pleasant scenario for web components would be replacing the social media button's script/html injection with a link to the component and a <x-tweet- this>.

</comment><comment><USER18> I want this now: <fluid-grid>...</fluid-grid>.

<comment><USER21> Take a look at <polymer-grid> and <polymer-flex-layout>

[https://github.com/Polymer/polymer- elements/tree/stable/poly...](https://github.com/Polymer/polymer- elements/tree/stable/polymer-grid-layout)

[https://github.com/Polymer/polymer- elements/tree/stable/poly...](https://github.com/Polymer/polymer- elements/tree/stable/polymer-flex-layout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure I get it.. There are already several two way DOM <-> data binding frameworks, e.g. Angular, knockout, ember. What does this do differently? It reads more as a presentation layer thing, but presumably you could do this with one of the above frameworks right now...

Perhaps a walk though of how to build a complete brick would be useful in demonstrating to differences and uses. Does anyone know of one - I couldn't find such a thing in the docs?

<comment><USER23> Hey there! Brick developer here. You can use Brick along side another framework. Because the interface for Brick components is the DOM, they work out-of-the-box with template systems in existing frameworks. We're not trying to replace or re-invent DOM-data binding, in fact, explicitly _not_ doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember early in my HTML writing experience searching high and low for a way to define new elements with behavior defined by CSS and JS, and coming up dry. I could never articulate why I wanted it so badly, but it just felt like the way things should be done.

It's incredible to see that it's finally becoming a reality, and other people are starting to flesh out the justification I never managed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. How does one begin to integrate this type of markup with something like Ember or Angular?

<comment><USER26> That was the first thing I thought about (and came to the HN comments for). I like this conceptually, just want to know how I can meld it with my Angular Directives. They would seem to overlap no?

<comment><USER27> See my post [1] on SO on "Polymer elements (e.g. web components) vs. Angular directives". Essentially, Angular directives allow you to create new elements in HTML. That's done through JavaScript because the proper API primitives haven't existed in the web platform to create components. Now they're getting built in via Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, etc. Frameworks also win because they can leverage these new APIs.

[1]: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18089075/what-is-the- diff...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18089075/what-is-the-difference- between-polymer-elements-and-angularjs-directives)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very nice. This works on my iphone4s. My question is how heavy this is compared to Bootstrap. It looks a little larger: Brick 134K vs. 88K for Bootstrap 2.3.2

</comment><comment><USER29> This feels like JSF Tags all over again.

</comment><comment><USER30> What about the "Don't re-invent the wheel" thingy ?

<comment><USER31> The old wagon wheels don't work so well with the new cars.

<comment><USER30> I think you are referring to "re-make". Re-invent is not re-make. You can re- make, but you shouldn't re-invent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Microsoft had this back in IE 5.5. They were called "behaviors" and you could basically bundle HTML, CSS and JS into one file with a .htc file extension and then use it as a new tag in your document.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff626304(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff626304\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/cc301531.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/cc301531.aspx)

<comment><USER33> Microsoft even ported DirectX to dHTML in IE4~IE6</comment></comment>


China's Rover Reveals Moon's Hidden Depths - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-the-lunar-far-side-chinas-rover-reveals-moons-hidden-depths/ <comment><USER2> "The Chang'e-4 mission appears to have found material excavated from a frozen magma ocean far below the lunar surface"

Rock. They found rock. No need to make water analogies for rock.

<comment><USER3> "Ocean" is a commonly used term for large quantities of liquid. Calling the rock "a frozen magma ocean" is correct and descriptive.

<comment><USER4> There's a specific geological term for that (I forget what it is) but it doesn't sound as impressive as "magma ocean".

All non-sedimentary rock was liquid at some point. They did simply find rock. It just so happens that they think this rock is exposed rock from the mantle. It's not like some volcano farted this out and that's somehow interesting. The word "ocean" also carries a lot of connotations that are not really applicable to a bunch of hot rock that was exposed by an impact. It's not like this was some pool of lava that was sloshing around up there.

<comment><USER5> Metamorphic rock can come from sedimentary rock.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thanks to Wall Street, There May Be Too Many Restaurants - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/business/too-many-restaurants-wall-street.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> I honestly don't know why anyone takes the New York Times seriously anymore. They so obviously have an editorial agenda that even in their ostensibly 'objective' reporting they can't hide it.

Yes, there will always be stories of businesspeople failing to grow businesses, and losing their savings doing so. And the story of investors over-extending into a market is as old as time. One would think that the flow of cheap money from Wall Street to Main Street would be _celebrated._ But, leave it to the NYT to never pass up an opportunity to vilify Wall Street.

Of course, if private investors on Wall Street invested in regional mom-and- pop health-conscious juice bars and eateries and lost their shirts, the headline in the New York Times would be "Wall Street gambles Americans' hard earned retirement savings on uncertain business models."

<comment><USER3> > ...leave it to the NYT to never pass up an opportunity to vilify Wall > Street...

...while endorsing big Wall Street allies like Charles Schumer.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/opinion/endorsements- in-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/opinion/endorsements-in-new-york- and-new-jersey.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh no! Investment in restaurants, which are profitable, will continue until restaurants are no longer profitable to invest in!

<comment><USER5> It's easy to look at the raw numbers analysis and admire the invisible hand of the market guiding the economy down the middle line through an endless trail of pendulum swings. This abstraction ignores the raw human cost. These shifts _ruin_ the people, the actual implementers of the economy.

<comment> racer-v If it were true that people are "ruined" because they were involved in a failed business, capitalism couldn't work. The rule is the same for any system: don't risk more than you can afford to lose. Plenty of people recover from a failed business and either start another or do something else with their lives.

<comment><USER6> >If it were true that people are "ruined" because they were involved in a failed business, capitalism couldn't work.

You must be very young or very naive. People are ruined by failed businesses all the time. The thing you're missing is that the people continuing the churn of business creation are not the same ones who were ruined by it.

If you seriously think there is no human cost when businesses fail you're simply delusional.

<comment><USER7> I think you are reading the comment too literally. It's a generalism. If (everyone) were ruined by a failed business, capitalism wouldn't work (the way it currently does).

Theoretically, if you fail at business, you are allowed to try again and again until you succeed. The consequence of repeated failure isn't so harsh that it's a once in a life-time shot.

<comment><USER8> Very theoretically. Typically a medium or small business owner is bankrupt forever.

This is why people gamble with VC money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing how basically all of these restaurants are complete crap. NYC is the only place I can travel and daily eat as healthy as if I am at home.

<comment><USER3> You can get salads, grilled meats, vegetable platters, etc. in any city. Just to pick one off the top of my head, Corner Bakery Cafe has healthy options and plenty of locations:

"The cafe has 192 locations nationwide, including in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Tampa Bay and Buffalo metropolitan areas, as well as in Northern California, Mississippi, New Jersey, Virginia, Savannah, East Texas, the Rio Grande Valley areas, and a location in Carmel"

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

Likewise, Panera has lots of salads and half sandwiches available and 2,000 locations.

Maybe they're "crap" to you? But most people don't eat as well as that, on average, quality-wise.

<comment><USER10> The food quality is trash. You get salads that are palatable because they're dowsed in dressing and stacked with croutons. By grilled meats I'm assuming you mean the ocean water brined grilled chicken that somehow manages to be as cardiac arrest worthy as a fried chicken sandwich while maintaining the texture of a hockey puck? These places suck. It's because the people who make the food don't care about making food and the owners only care about margins.

<comment><USER3> I'm not talking about Wendy's salads. I'm talking about casual-to-upscale places that feature salad like Just Salad, La Madeleine, Pret A Manger, Sweet Tomato (Souplantation), Chopt, Salad Works, Souper Salad, etc. And that's not even getting into the fast-casual sandwich places like McAlister's Deli.

If all that's not fresh and healthy enough, it's not hard to pick up an (unsauced) grilled chicken breast at a BBQ place and some fresh veggies at the grocery store.

I mean, maybe you have especially refined taste, but _all_ those places aren't unpalatable to the median person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why people take on a franchise, it appears to be the worst of both worlds to me.

<comment><USER12> When talking about high-quality franchises, it's a useful vehicle for people whose talent is in recruiting/managing a low-skill workforce and promoting a business within their community. Also, high-net worth people looking for stable businesses. I get how it could seem terribly boring to a creative person, but it seems to function a bit like an annuity.

This article is a good overview of who franchises appeal to (and why): [https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the- secret-w...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the-secret-world- dunkin-donuts-franchise-kings/pb2UmxauJrZv08wcBig6CO/story.html)

This class of trade is impressive because you need to have several million dollars of liquid wealth to get started. There's a whole other class of franchises which are basically built to bilk the aspiring middle class and charge $30-100K for nebulous advice and marked-up equipment but provide almost no national brand appeal or product development. E.g. almost every frozen yogurt franchise that has sprung up in the last 5-10 years.

<comment><USER13> i've anecdotally heard the frozen yogurt places were very popular for investor visas. open up, get citizenship, close, sell equipment [https://www.visafranchise.com/blog/eb-5-l-1-e-2-visas- obtain...](https://www.visafranchise.com/blog/eb-5-l-1-e-2-visas-obtain- investor-visa-franchising/)

<comment><USER12> That makes SO much sense. There were a dozen places operating within 30mins of my small NH town — seemed ludicrous from a business POV, but totally normal in your formulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think any of this is new. My dad owned a restaurant over thirty years ago and has talked bad about them (as business investments) ever since. Restaurants have a number of characteristics that indicate they should be poor investments vs other types of small businesses. Here's a few, none of which require wall street's involvement:

-They're cool. Who doesn't want to own one? I'd love to own a bar if I thought I could make money in the game. -They're visible. Everyone eats at restaurants, and in fact, a lot of people sit around in restaurants talking about what sort of business to start. -They have good perks. Free beer anyone? -They're familiar. I mean, things turn out pretty good when I BBQ, right? -They're (relatively) cheap to get into. If the minimum is $100k instead of $1M, you'll have more competition.

When it comes to small business, look for the opposite of all of those. The more obscure, boring and downright unappealing the better.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ha, this is the same story as the pre-Depression-era farmers who mortgaged their farms. Our food providers are burying themselves in debt to create our food, and banks are laughing all the way to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> But how else will we create new 'up and coming' neighborhoods to increase the price of mortgages?

</comment><comment><USER17> So.... we're in a food bubble?</comment>


Yahoo announces plans to kill off Maps, Pipes, GeoPlanet and more - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/04/yahoo-announces-plans-to-kill-maps-pipes-geoplanet-and-placespotter-apis-and-market-specific-properties/

<comment><USER2> I find Pipes extremely useful, are there any alternatives or FOSS?</comment>


On Political Correctness – William Deresiewicz - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/on-political-correctness/# <comment><USER2> _> ... That, by the way, is why liberal students (and liberals in general) are so bad at defending their own positions. They never have to, so they never learn to._

Yep. The left no longer tries to persuade through reason. (Actually, they haven't for decades.) They've progressed through name-calling (RACIST!) to internet rage mobs, and finally to literal, rampaging violent mobs.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/06/liberal- int...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/06/liberal-intolerance- revives-as-charles-murray-is-chased-from-middlebury-college.html)</comment>


Advertisers Protest Microsoft's IE10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/30-advertisers-write-letter-of-protest-to-microsoft-over-ie10-2012-10 <comment><USER2> I'm finding it very hard to feel any sympathy for these advertisers.</comment>


-2000 Lines Of Code - <AUTHOR> http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt&sub=HN0

<comment><USER2> And the beautiful thing is that we can see actual results of Bill Atkinson's philosophy. You can download the source of both MacPaint and QuickDraw from <http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/macpaint/>.

It's in Pascal and 68k assembly, and I find it quite beautiful. Especially the Pascal code, as it is broken up into clear, concise functions so it is easy to understand what is going on.

<comment><USER3> Todays codecheckers would complain, that this class (sic) has far too many methods. Please break it up into smaller units ;o).

<comment><USER4> The entirety of MacPaint's Pascal code is smaller than _one_ of the dozens of "business logic" classes in a project I worked on recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In software I have noticed that the best coders spend a lot of time removing code and the worst coders keep piling crud on top of crud on top of crud.

CSS seems to be really bad for this, but that might be because the frontend coders I have met are crappy. Rather than decrease the padding they'll ADD more css to move all of the elements, then they end up with !important rules everywhere.

I've been doing frontend web coding for more than 5 years now, and I have only had to use !important probably 3 or 4 times, and only them it was to overwrite things in stylesheets that we had no control over.

<comment><USER6> _In software I have noticed that the best coders spend a lot of time removing code and the worst coders keep piling crud on top of crud on top of crud._

This is natural, if you think about it. Let's say we have a body of code which fails for an edge case. Without understanding the code too deeply, most programmers can find a way of hacking in special handling for the edge case. This process can repeat for quite some time before a codebase collapses under its own weight.

It takes significantly more brainpower to re-analyze the entire problem and come up with a coherent, elegant solution for the expanded problem definition.

<comment><USER7> And the thing is, bolting in some code that handles a single edge case most likely takes significantly less time and effort than rethinking the whole approach. And, when you're facing only a single small problem to deal with and don't have reasons to expect that more are coming, would it be justified to redesign a big pile of code just because of a minor issue?

<comment><USER6> "It depends" :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My proudest commits are the ones that are never made, because I figured out how to avoid writing the code in the first place.

This is a skill, and I've been consciously working to improve it. I think the key questions are "Do I really need to write this now?" and "Is there a simpler problem I should be solving instead?"

</comment><comment><USER9> IMHO:

Having a high sloc number isn't necessarily good. Nor is having a low one.

Coding for readability and performance often results in fewer lines of code, but that's not a two-way street; coding specifically in order to reduce sloc doesn't magically make your code quicker or more readable.

<comment><USER10> There is no correlation between line count and code quality.

<comment><USER11> I suspect that if someone could come up with a reasonable way to single out confounding variables, there would prove to be an inverse correlation between SLOC per function point and code quality.

My rationales:

\- More SLOC means more places for a bug to hide.

\- More SLOC means more logic to have to reason about.

\- More repetition leads to more SLOC.

\- More repetition increases the chance that a bug can be fixed in one spot but not in others.

\- More repetition increases the chance for regression bugs resulting from updates not being fully propagated

Anecdotally, on my team it seems that we tend to have the least quality issues in the stuff that's written by folks who produce the most factored code.

<comment><USER12> \- Fewer SLOC means less code to compile and execute.

\- Fewer SLOC means more code fits on one page.

\- Fewer SLOC means it may be easier to explain/document/remember what it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always feel a little glow of pride when I check in a commit and see a net negative lines of code in the diff.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reading folklore.org I always think that it would be so nice to have a similar site about the development of the original iPhone and iPhone OS.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately back then Apple was the epitome of the hacker-friendly, open culture company (waving a pirate flag on the building!) and nowadays they're the epitome of close-minded, control-freak behemoth, alas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> reminds me of Bob Jenkins' (of hash function fame) comments on his resume [1]:

IBM (1988) ... The existing code tended to shrink when I edited it. I wrote a total of minus 5000 lines of code that summer.

Oracle (1989-2006) Oracle's code (C and PL/SQL) is very good. It usually didn't shrink when I edited it.

[1] <http://burtleburtle.net/bob/other/resume3.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> I studied art in college, and one of my professors once said, "when drawing, you should use your eraser as often as your charcoal."

That's always stood out for me, and whenever I hear that Bill Atkinson story, I'm reminded of it.

</comment><comment><USER18> this was submitted yesterday under a different title, why did you repost it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Was it? I usually see things like that. Do you have an ID so I can check? Thanks.

(pause)

I've just done a search and I can't find it. Are you sure?

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=folklore.or...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=folklore.org&sortby=create_ts+desc)

Doesn't seem to turn up anything. Do you remember what the other title was?

<comment><USER18> ALl I remember was that in parenthese he had (folklore) and something else. I don't know, it seems to be gone now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, we're making progress. Someone bothered to put "repost" in the title.

The next step is to not submit the article at all. Then we will be truly enlightened.

<comment><USER19> Seriously, who goes to a news website to read old stories? I've read this at least twice before. Why do people upvote this garbage?

<comment><USER20> An attempt at an earnest reply-- I've been reading HN for about a year (this is my first comment). Speaking as someone trying to tackle the impossibly massive field of "doing things on computers" by myself, I deeply appreciate that this isn't simply a "news website," and that the community raises issues that didn't just pop up in the last couple weeks. I've learned so much from articles that have been posted before that I never would have discovered otherwise, and I'm always a little bit disappointed when I see replies like this one. I understand concern about rapid reposts, but this was posted two years ago and then one year ago. The vitriol is completely unwarranted. Not all of us are seasoned veterans with knowledge going back decades or years or even months, no matter how much we probably wish that wasn't the case!</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon hired private detectives to spy on injured worker - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/22/amaz-d22.html <comment><USER2> Former Workers Comp claim examiner here.

Every Workers' compensation insurance company hires private investigators to make sure the person is really injured and not working another job while collecting. Sounds like the private investigative company overstepped their bounds by physically assaulting the worker, but otherwise this is SOP.

Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn't tell the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick who's footing the bill.

<comment><USER3> > _Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums > for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn 't tell > the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick > who's footing the bill._

The most anyone can really expect of them is that they consider other providers, or hold their existing providers to a higher standard; and that is almost certainly what they are going to do.

<comment><USER2> I mean with all this publicity they will probably be switching providers or sending in a complaint to Sedgewick, but they aren't micromanaging carpal tunnel workers comp claims that make up 1/100000th of their revenue.

<comment><USER4> When they were choosing a claims management provider, they surely took care to choose one that aligns with their values. So this at least reflects poorly on Amazon's choices at that time.

<comment><USER5> You expect Amazon to interview insurance companies and reject any which answer in the affirmative to "do you follow industry standards with regard to investigating claims"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the optics aren't great, I think this is the kind of thing we just have to accept as a society without single-payer healthcare. There's a huge amount of worker's comp fraud. Without some pushback in the system, there would be a lot more. And worker's comp insurance is already very expensive (at least, here in CA).

Also: We're getting just one side of the story here.

<comment><USER7> Can you cite your claim that there is a huge amount of worker's comp fraud? I'd like to see the data. Specifically the amount of claims that end up fradulent.

<comment><USER6> Simply googling "workers comp fraud statistics", the first hit says 1-2% of all claims are fraudulent.

You can detect the disease by looking for the antibodies. As the top commenter (former examiner) pointed out, it's common for insurers to hire private detectives to investigate claims. That's a large expense that they wouldn't undertake without a good economic reason.

<comment><USER7> First off, I am tired of people using the 'just Google it' argument. That is not a replacement for citations when someone asks you to see data and I insist that you and anyone using that argument stop. Google tailors searches based on the user, location etc and without actual citations it is incredibly difficult to assess the credibility of one's argument. If you had the time to Google your own claim, then you had the opportunity to actually cite them in your response.

And second, 1-2% is such a low amount according to your claims that I absolutely do not believe it warrents invading someone's privacy and harassing them, full stop.

<comment><USER6> I thought the general level of workers comp fraud was well understood, and it doesn't take much googling to find it.

It sounds like the point of controversy is not sourcing, but the 1-2% figure.

That 1-2% figure is the level of fraud _given the current amount of privacy invasion and harassment_ , including the story as posted. Less harassment, more fraud; more harassment, less fraud. "full stop"

If you think 1-2% is insignificant, I don't know what to say. By comparison, 0.037% of card-present transactions were fraudulent in 2012. That number was alarming enough it inspired switching all of our (USA) infrastructure to a chip-based system, and even that is generally not thought adequate. 1-2% is a large amount of fraud. If you have that amount of fraud on your merchant account, banks will generally shut you down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get this complains about amazon warehouse work. When I was a teenager I used to work in alaska fish factory, with much much much stricter and harder schedules and rules that the article describes. If you plan to work in a warehouse - why are you surprized that you are required to lift heavy boxes and work long hours. Maybe someone can enlighten me why is this so blown out of proportion

<comment><USER9> I don't get it either. In a past life I was sold to work in a factory in London for basically no pay at 80 hours a week. It's like human standards of living go up over time or something.

Joking aside, it's probably a good sign that what once was normal isn't. Eventually robots will be doing all the lifting and we will look back and shake our heads at how much intellectual capacity we had tied up lifting boxes.

<comment><USER8> I agree with that, but I don't understand why such a big focus is on Amazon. It's not like they are the only ones with this type of working conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > you are moving up and down the ladder picking 380 items per hour for 10 > hours

A picker is expected to pick an item every 9-10 seconds for 10 hours?

<comment><USER11> Pretty much, one of the things about working at a place like that is you have ZERO value as a human, your prior experience, educational level, none of that matters.

You're expected to be a literal human robot, a mindless cog in a machine and the picking rates reflect that. It's basically a living nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is it that every single article about abused Amazon warehouse workers includes a GoFundMe link?

<comment><USER12> Because America. In some other countries it would be perceived as government failure that needs fixing when an individual has to go beg for charity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another entire class of issues that would not exist if we had proper healthcare in this country. I bet Amazon loves its home state of Washington where the state does this dirty work for them at the expense of taxpayers, leaving workers with no care unless they are willing to spend thousands and years on worker's comp cases. That's despite being required by law to pay into a fund that cannot be used. These entities should be ashamed of themselves and we should be ashamed as a country for treating our hard working citizens this way. Just goes to show you, hard work for others is far from a virtue but only something to be done to keep from starving. In America anyway, hard work mostly does not pay off.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not saying that this is not true, but "World Socialist Website" is a website with content created to promote socialist agenda on behalf of a group of socialist parties.

Again, I'm not discrediting them, but it's good to know that there's an implicit bias and agenda on this type of content.

Same goes for the majority of the mainstream media. I wish someone would build a Chrome Extension that could reveal potential biases based on political donations, affiliations, and known shareholders, in relation to the media website you're visiting. It would add a lot of context and allow people to have more criteria to evaluate the media they consume.

<comment><USER15> Thats interesting.

Most non-mainstream media makes you dive through the 501-C##'s papers, ICANN whois records, etc to find out whose voice you're hearing. And then you gotta dig like a shameless conspiracy theorist to find out what that means about what you're reading.

Socialist media tells you who/what it is. Right there in the title.

Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

<comment><USER16> > Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

As somebody who spent part of my life in a socialist country, there are millions of reasons to distrust socialists. The Party's (under socialism, you always know which one is The Party because all others are banned) press is usually a non-ending stream of lies. Of course, the fact that all socialist press I've had experience with were complete liars does not mean that this one, which I never read before, is, but at least there's a cause for caution.

Especially as we didn't hear the other side at all - once, in the press, there was a rule to try and get opposite's site take on the matter, but of course the revolutionaries don't have much need for rules, do they?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article has mysteriously vanished from the front page in record time. Vouch for articles?</comment>


Resurrect the dead pool & free the code - <AUTHOR> http://www.thewavingcat.com/2008/12/05/resurrect-the-dead-pool-free-the-code/ <comment><USER2> Good idea... I'm considering open-sourcing the app that I've been working on and now (more than likely) abandoning.</comment>


Yeah It - <AUTHOR> http://www.yeahit.com

<comment><USER2> Tried to search for C# and got no results :(

<comment><AUTHOR> you could try "c sharp"</comment></comment>


Why 'home server' products from Microsoft, Apple, et al are doomed - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/12/home-server-your-pocket

<comment><USER2> interesting analysis

</comment><comment><USER3> great article</comment>


Ask HN: Is it reasonable for a web service to go down because of high load? - <AUTHOR>

Today there is a window of 1 hour (extended to 3 hours) to pre-order the OnePlus One phone.
Their servers were OK just until the pre-orders started, then their whole website went down, then their login service went down, then the preorder they were showing didn't load from DB half of the time and lastly, confirming the order through PayPal gives an error.
I understand that they are under heavy load but:
1) They knew the exact time when there will be heavy load.
2) They could have done load testing.
AFAIK they also have their own servers instead of using some kind of PaaS (or IaaS) that scales instantly.
Do you think that today it is still reasonable for web services to go down because of high load? It is OK for a blog hosted on DigitalOcean to go down if it went viral unexpectedly but what about online shops that knew exactly when the spike in usage will be? <comment><USER2> Any site that has a pre-planned launch and reasonable expectation of traffic should load test to a factor somewhere above their expectations (2x, 4x whatever).

However, it doesn't mean that you will catch all scenarios that may take down a service etc. Or even the SWAG was anywhere near right, maybe they tested to 2x their expectations but received 10x and didn't have enough capacity to support it.

Also in some cases I have seen enterprises not tell the technology people until a week or so before the date. They have a marketing team update the website but never bother to tell the infrastructure people and sometimes it is too late by the time they find out to do anything. Or the tech team is told or finds out and then is told not to spend hours on testing the site or fixing any issues, which I have seen too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it "ok"? Who's to say.

Does it happen? Yes. Does it happen a lot, to a variety of companies? Yes.

I think the interesting question is how. How does a company perform so spectacularly in difficult areas (product development, viral marketing, etc) and yet fail at problems that are (arguably) easily solvable for anyone who takes the time to research them?

I mean: these guys built a phone that is being compared to the flagship models of billion dollar companies. They're not morons. They're highly technical and highly competent. So why is building for web-scale such a LOW PRIORITY?

Maybe someone with experience in this kind of business could shed some light here. I'm really curious as who what their rationale might look like internally.

<comment><USER4> Free advertisement (people talk about it, and the phone is so good the website can't even handle the demand), and it doesn't matter since minions will still crawl to buy one asap.

Why spend money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the load is caused by people actually wanting to buy a item from you like a Phone, or people wanting to use your product like Netflix, gMail etc, then downtime is a serious problem as your losing sales and/or damaging the product.

Even more so if it was a date and time publicly stated by the company, they should've put even more testing and preparation into it.

However if it's something like a side company blog which has got popular then it's not 'critical' to have it up all of the time, but they should certainly try to as it doesn't help the company image.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of an interesting story. Someone I know was considering buying Google during the online IPO sale. The website was very laggy and barely worked, so he decided not to buy the stock. "If they can't handle this issue, how could they be a good web company?" Of course my friend was wrong. And it's easier now to scale than it was several years ago. But it's an interesting story. It's not always easy to anticipate what is necessary to scale or what load will be like.

</comment><comment><USER7> I set an alarm at 4AM NZ for the OnePlus preorder, it was a huge pain in the ass. They were running Magento (!) on what appeared to be AWS and expecting Cloudflare to magically pick up all the slack. Guess they never heard of load testing (or at least a static PayPal cart as a bulletproof failsafe).

Apparently they also had a bunch of staff in the office at the time; wonder if they at least attempted to spin up a few more servers and increase the DB instance size?

</comment><comment><USER8> In current times if a site was expecting high load or large amounts of traffic, it would be a bad idea NOT to have it behind a well configured load balancer and tested to a scale beyond what you expect. A simple python web API can handle 3k requests per second on a fairly average server, so either your software choice or production method would need analysing if you are worried about downtime at high usage.

</comment><comment><USER9> These people thought a lot about the "look" of the site, but not about the engineering or being effective at e-commerce.

For instance, they use PayPal as a payment system which is the worst choice possible in terms of user experience, particularly now when there are things like Stripe and Square.

Although the images are luscious, they take a long time to load, and if you try to read the "normal" size text, you'll find it hard because of poor contrast against the background and actually defective layout that causes text to overlap.

</comment><comment><USER10> It might be that they are running on a shoestring budget and don't have the resources to maintain a high availability web service yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> Obviously it's not reasonable. If downtime means significant loss of revenue, then the engineers need to account for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is happening now a days!! [http://supremeinv.com/](http://supremeinv.com/)</comment>


Why Your Doctor Never Sees You on Time - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@saagrawa/the-googol-reasons-your-doctor-never-sees-you-on-time-958fb25d58da <comment><USER2> Yes, in a way that is correct from a high-level understanding. However, there are nuanced pieces to the problem that requires data science such as the randomness of each process - patients and doctors are not widgets and they vary in behavior significantly. In a manufacturing plant, each process has the exact same duration every time but in a hospital setting, the same process can be different for Patient A vs Patient B due to a variety of reasons. In fact even in manufacturing facilities, they are starting to use big data and advanced data science themselves to solve their operational problems and get smarter at forecasting, predicting, etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes the raw data required is completely independent of any PII and fully HIPAA compliant. So for example a hospital using Epic or Cerner or other EMR scheduling and just provide a clean list of historical appointment times and lengths, no names or dates or other such data needed. So the approach is fully HIPPA compliant requiring no sensitive patient info needed. The data set is used to forecast future volumes and apply operational constraints (nurse / doctor / waiting room schedules) to create optimized templates for furture appointments

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand how solving this particular problem is different from solving say, the scheduling of production at a manufacturing plant or at a custom fabricator. It's been a while since I went through queuing theory and simulation but it seems more of a straightforward statistics and operations problem rather than something to be solved with "big data". It seems like this has been solved in other industries, so isn't it just a matter of applying the expertise in manufacturing and applying it to hospitals?

</comment><comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone else remembers seeing docs ten years ago? Twenty? Thirty or more?

I have this suspicion things are worse than they used to be--for example, being unable to even schedule an appointment for a physical without health insurance--but that's just my own perspective.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am literally reading this in the waiting room right now haha how ironic!! Great article!

</comment><comment><USER6> How do privacy laws like HIPPA impact this approach? Can all of the raw data needed to make this work be accessed or is some of it held back by privacy laws?

</comment><comment><USER7> A clear reason why hospitals need to hire more data scientists--when will they realize their old school methods just aren't sustainable anymore?

</comment><comment><USER8> 24 points in 10 minutes?

If you're asking people to upvote, don't.</comment>


Fight back visual builders with code - <AUTHOR> https://www.glue.codes/ <comment><USER2> Why would I want to use a product specific IDE? Do you support vim keybindings? All of the VS plugins I use?

How would I work on both cliet / server code at the same time?</comment>


Bit.ly is Harmful to Your Reputation - <AUTHOR> http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2010/04/bitly-is-harmful-to-your-reputation.html <comment><USER2> Firstly, the hypocrisy of a URL shortener blocking another URL shortener's links because they can't be verified is hilarious. Secondly, if a person goes as far as to shorten every link they copy from their browser _and_ use a Twitter client that shortens all links regardless of length, I hardly think they have much room to complain about the system they're fully backing.

What did she expect to happen? That Bitly would concern themselves with her reputation? If you want a URL shortener who cares, your only option is to run your own. Bitly's only concern is for their business, nothing more.

<comment><USER3> The blogger reports that bit.ly updated their page, to explain why a link may be disallowed. He doesn't accept their explanation, but it does make a lot of sense:

      - Some URL-shorteners re-use their links, so bit.ly can't
        guarantee the validity of this link.
      - Some URL-shorteners allow their links to be edited,
        so bit.ly can't tell where this link will lead you.
      - Spam and malware is very often propagated by exploiting
        these loopholes, neither of which bit.ly allows for

<comment><USER4> It makes some shallow sense, but on deeper investigation it's anti-competitive bullshit that is not much better than the scams they claim to be protecting you against.

Think about it, since when is bit.ly the arbiter of link safety? Does bit.ly provide you a guarantee that they will not ever link to malware? Of course not! They could not afford the liability on that. Anyone could post a malicious link anywhere. Any page can set up a 301 redirect any time. People can post malware links anywhere any time.

What's going on here is that bit.ly is breaking links arbitrarily, and doing it to third parties without their consent or even knowledge. It might be possible that a credible legal case could be mounted against bit.ly on this basis. Quite simply, it is neither their right nor their responsibility to be the link police of the internet, and it also is far from within their power. These guys are overstepping in a major way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about putting some of the blame on Tweetdeck? Shouldn't "short enough" links be allowed to stay intact?

<comment><USER6> Yes, they should. But what's worse? Software that people don't even pay for being stupid in a fairly minor way, or bit.ly being anticompetitive and severely hurting its users in the process? He was focusing on the major issue.

<comment><USER5> I agree that bit.ly aren't being cool about this, clearly they should fix it.

On the other hand, you could say that Tweetdeck is actually being stupid in a pretty major way. I have a hard time imagining this scenario occuring without the help of Tweetdeck, or other lazily written convenience shortener functions.

<comment><USER7> In Tweetdeck, when you paste in the URL, you can see it turn into a bitly URL. It's not as if you don't know that's what's going to be posted.

There is a checkbox next to where you compose your tweet for "Auto Shorten URLs" that you can uncheck to disable this behavior. It's right there in plain sight, not buried inside preference dialogs.

<comment><USER8> I think most people want long URLs to be shortened, but don't want short URLs to be re-shortened. But there's no checkbox for that.

<comment><USER9> Do people want long URLs to be shortened if they fit in the tweet? I don't know if that's true...

<comment><USER8> I would be happy with shortening any time when the short URL is not longer than the original...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While the author has a right to be upset, her attitude toward the support staff — who likely have no control over the situation — is disgusting. ("Your apology is worthless", "Your refusal to check the link", etc. from the email conversation, and the ensuing comments on the blog post.)

<comment><USER11> Seriously. I've found it's easier to make someone do something when you don't have your teeth clenched at first, looking to attack. If she approached that with a "Could you help me figure out..." or "I think you should probably fix..." attitude, instead of a "screw you" one, she probably would have received a similarly gracious response.

<comment><USER12> Did you read the email exchange she posted? Her original email was polite, her first response was a little clipped but not yet angry, and it wasn't until bit.ly had blown her off _twice_ that she started with the attacky language.

<comment><USER11> Re-read. You're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _What do you think happens when you click it and report a mistake? Do they check the link and remove the flag if the site is ok?

No, they don't. They told me to make a new bit.ly link and give it out to people, as if that would undo the damage that was done_

Uhm. Reminds me of Yelp.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to agree with the author, this is ridiculous. They even do this to tinyurl:

<http://bit.ly/cGLU0o>

Tinyurl was without a doubt bit.ly's #1 competitor, especially when their service launched, and they know you can't edit a tinyurl. Seems like a pretty convenient time for an URL shortener to suddenly get preachy about the dangers of URL shorteners.

</comment><comment><USER15> Todd from bit.ly here.

From day one, we've prized security, transparency, reliability, and openness at bit.ly. Along the way, we've made a number of product decisions based on those tenets. Among those are link permanence (link destinations don't change once created), the avoidance of anything that interferes with user experience (we've never framed, nor will we), and a dedicated focus on spam and malware detection, so that our users can click on bit.ly links with a high degree of confidence.

We take our responsibility as internet citizens seriously, and you'll see this exhibited even in the small details of the ways in which we manage flagged links (you'll notice we never actually disable a redirect, and at most simply insert an interstitial which retains the end destination link).

In the course of analyzing content for spam, malware, and phishing attacks, we rely on a number of systems, both internal and external. Over the course of the past year, a number of spammers have attempted to use various levels of indirection through redirectors (some of which are reconfigurable), in order to obfuscate and cloak their efforts. In fact, the bulk of shortens to bit.ly coming through other URL shorteners have tended to be attempts to spam the system. While our crawlers do of course follow links through redirections, the inclusion of modifiable redirects in the stream, and our analysis of the preponderance of spam attempts via these vectors have made it necessary and appropriate in some cases to block the URL shorteners.

Just to reiterate, the only goal is and always has been to protect the end user clicking on bit.ly links, regardless of the link source. Given that multiple layer wrapping of URL redirectors tends to be an edge case based on inappropriate API usage, confused users, or in the preponderance of cases, attempts to spam, we think this has been a fair approach. As such, you'll note that we did in fact update our interstitial warning pages with language better reflecting the reasoning behind the status. We're happy to see a healthy, vibrant, shortening ecosystem, and have no intention whatsoever to put a damper on other sites in the space.

Some have suggested we simply not shorten URLs already pointing to 3rd party short URLs. While this is a potential possibility, our API responses and the innumerable clients and scripts that use these methods aren't currently designed with this state in mind. Consequently, any changes would have to be carefully considered.

As with any product, bit.ly is a work in progress, and we're always interested in finding ways to best serve our users, while maintaining the integrity and openness of the product.

<comment><USER4> That's well-written PR Todd, but the bottom line is this: your false positives are doing potentially severe damage to third parties. These are people who aren't even using your service.

When these things happen you need a way to fix them quickly, or you will find yourselves in legal hot water sooner or later.

Also, I might suggest to you that you have neither the power nor the authority to be the link police on the internet. What you're doing is engaging in an arms race that A) is impossible to win, and B) has numerous innocent bystanders.

I've never really been one to decry the dangers of link shorteners, but this is a great example of how a link shortener—even with a team of stand-up ethical guys behind it—can be bad for the internet.

We've been thinking about signing up for bit.ly pro, and I have to say this throws a wet blanket over the whole thing.

<comment><USER13> _We've been thinking about signing up for bit.ly pro, and I have to say this throws a wet blanket over the whole thing._

whitelabel shouldn't be nearly as bad - as long as you control the domain name you can always take your ball and go home.

<comment><USER4> Yes, definitely whitelabel was already a requirement for us.

My comment was more about the moral aspect though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm having a really hard time believing the scenario where a user follows a shortened link in a re-tweet, sees the bit.ly warming page, assumes that the original author is trying to spread malicious stuff (and that the re-tweeter, whom this user is following and supposedly trusts, is supporting this malicious stuff), and starts telling other people about how untrustworthy the original poster is.

In reality, they'd probably close the page, maybe make a reply tweet confused about the warning, and _go on with their life._

</comment><comment><USER17> Gee, how about we stop acting like we need to limit things to 140 characters? This isn't SMS you know. We do have the bandwidth to actually exchange useful information and real URLs. Twitter, bit.ly, et. al. are all pretty damn silly.

Even back in the days of 300bd modems and BBS's we weren't this dumb.

<comment><USER18> Twitter is still fully usable via SMS and that's both useful and unique.

<comment><USER19> Are there any handsets in use out there that support SMS and don't support Concatenated SMS? This is a serious question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What Twitter needs is to remove the 140 character limitation. Nobody uses SMS anymore, especially when the content contains URLs to non-mobile-friendly sites.

<comment><USER11> I think that would completely go against the concept of Twitter: short-form communication.

<comment><USER20> They could detect URLs and not count them towards the total message length.

<comment><USER21> This is the immediate thought one gets, I can guarantee you that Twitter considered this. It surprises me that parent was deemed insightful.

Should what parent suggests be announced I expect it would be in place for about six minutes (+/- 5) before we'd see the first Tweet with the actual message in the form of a URL.

      http://example.com/Hi_this_is_a_tweet ...

And as someone else stated, long messages are clearly against Twitter's concept/principles/idea/whatever.

The interesting part about this is that instead of URL shorteners we'd end up with domains that would just act as decoders of the link you clicked on. Good or bad, who knows.

And while we're at it, let's think of the next step: It wouldn't be long before someone implemented a packer/cruncher on these messages to be able to squeeze them into a 140 character limit so that it can fit into an SMS. Then we'd realize that this is a remarkably stupid thing to do and start sending un-shortened links to blog posts again. Profit!

<comment><USER19> _It surprises me that parent was deemed insightful._

This isn't Slashdot. There is no "Insightful". Only upvotes.

 _<http://example.com/Hi_this_is_a_tweet*>

Eveyone's not going to do that on a regular basis, and Twitter can cap messages at ~1000 characters to prevent egregious abuse and maintain accessibility to SMS users.

_It wouldn't be long before someone implemented a packer/cruncher on these messages to be able to squeeze them into a 140 character limit so that it can fit into an SMS.*

Nobody gives a shit about SMS outside of SMS. What _might_ result is that type of service as part of the SMS gateway, which is exactly what Twitter should have done to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does SMS have to display the href? Could Twitter just replace all URL's with the word 'link' and show the real URL on hover, thereby doing away with URL shorteners altogether?

<comment><USER5> Hover doesn't work well with touch based interaction, which is all the rave these days, I hear. I like the idea of showing them separately somehow, though.

<comment><USER23> It only has to display 'link' in SMS. I don't necessarily think that it _has_ to still say 'link' outside of SMS. It makes more sense to just strip the links when going through the SMS gateway, and count all URLs as 4 characters in the '140 characters' limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've contacted bit.ly about this issue 4 months ago. Got the same answer - "Page is under review". Maybe its an indirect attack to the competitors?

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately, offering itself as the best alternative to protecting links when setting a warning page for already shortened links doesn't seem very "indirect".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So their spam detection system isn't as good as at should be. Give them a break. People spreading malware use url shorteners all the time, and I'd bet some automated system just got tripped up here.

(malice -> incompetence etc.)

I'm happy bitly is at least working on spam.

</comment><comment><USER27> Isn't the problem bigger than a small number of people not paying attention to their Twitter client re-shortening links when it's not necessary? Aren't people intentionally re-shortening links they get from others, so that they can track their own reach/influence? If I have a big following and I re- shorten your link, I can then go to Bit.ly or (anywhere else I have an account) and exactly measure how that link was spread across the net, regardless of whether any RTs mention me. "I'll take your short link and raise you my own..."

</comment><comment><USER28> That seems rather stupid. How is url-shortening a already url-shortened url a security threat?

<comment><USER29> Extra cloaking for malicious links? Bit.ly can't exactly check the original site to see if it's OK if it's hidden behind a funky redirection layer. I think that bit.ly was reasonable to have an interstitial, although maybe they should be more open about why and how to remove it.

<comment><USER30> It's a standard http 301 redirect, not a "funky redirection layer".

        /Users/sjs % curl -i http://xrl.in/33qj
        HTTP/1.1 301 Permanent Redirect
        Date: Sun, 09 May 2010 00:38:19 GMT
        Server: Apache
        Location: http://www.donationcoder.com/CodingSnacks/index.php
        Content-Length: 0
        Content-Type: text/html

<comment><USER31> Right, but the problem is this scenario:

Bit.ly see's your xrl.in and does a request. They find 301 and the location at donationcoder.com. They conclude "this site is ok". Later, the xrl.in url is changed to <malware link>.

They aren't going to do a request to every url they're linking to on every click, obviously. So they'd only get the one chance.

Now, I'm not actually sure that xrl.in lets you change links after shortening. The point is that bit.ly doesn't know either.

<comment><USER32> Bit.ly could check a link to no_malware_here.com, which thereafter adds a 301 that redirects to your_computer_now_has_aids.com.

I think it is misleading to display that message based on the possibility of a redirection. Any page can do that, not just xrl.in.

<comment><USER31> I think that's the point. They check for a redirection and show an interstitial. They've white-listed a few other shortener services (the ones they know are redirecting to actual sites and presumably do their own redirection checks on)... but as far as I understand it any url that you try to shorten that does an immediate 301 gets the interstitial first.

If they let urls with redirects on them they can inadvertently bit.ly link directly to a malware site. They don't want to do that at all and take measures to prevent it. Checking urls against malware lists and not allowing redirects are just a couple, I'm sure there are more.

As for being misleading in the interstitial itself... I don't think so. They've updated it to be more clear about the issues with this link:

* Some URL-shorteners re-use their links, so bit.ly can't guarantee the validity of this link.

* Some URL-shorteners allow their links to be edited, so bit.ly can't tell where this link will lead you.

* Spam and malware is very often propagated by exploiting these loopholes, neither of which bit.ly allows for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> She forgot #3: Just use one of the whitelisted shorteners she mentioned further up in the article, e.g. goo.gl.

<comment><USER34> <http://goo.gl/>

"Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use."

<comment><USER35> It is interesting to note that common users can easily use goo.gl by using google toolbar's share function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I solve this problem by not clicking on shortened URLs. At all. If you want me to click on something, send me the full link. If it's too long for Twitter, find me on GChat or send me an email.

</comment><comment><USER37> So? Run your own blog with your own rss feeds and stop using twitter.

<comment><USER25> Not very feasible for the most part. I don't use twitter, but it does have a large following. This is somewhat along the lines of saying "So? Stop using facebook", although I understand where you're coming from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My takeaway is to make sure I'm using the most popular shortener (aka bit.ly)</comment>


A Guided Tour through the Fundamentals of Git - <AUTHOR> http://gitimmersion.com

<comment><USER2> How about instead of downloading a zip file I git clone the tutorial files from github (doesn't have to be github obviously but a git server of some kind). Seems like the natural way to go considering the topic.

<comment><USER3> :) That's what I did in my git Workshop for beginners. <https://github.com/kuahyeow/git-workshop>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nicely designed.

Regarding the table of contents, it took a while to realize the text was clickable. Also I would prefer the arrows to show __what __they go to. For example "up next: Checking Status"

I don't know whether that would break the design, but it makes it more usable in a motivating sort of way, "oh boy committing is next!"

All in all, I agree with the learn by doing, so very nice job and thanks for all the good work!

<comment><USER5> I agree on all parts - a clickable 'up next' link on the top right, and also a clickable 'previously you learned' link on the top left. Wording should change to fit the layout, of course.

Also some sort of hint that the ToC is clickable, I didn't realize that at first either.

Also, it strikes me that the entire guide should be put on GitHub - did I miss somewhere where it says it is?

All in all this is a great resource along the lines of <http://hginit.com/> \- which is useful, because the mostly brain-dead students at my university tend to take FOREVER to learn DVCSs. I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain that you really only need to 'git clone' once unless you are checking to make sure you got everything 'right' with the push.

Now instead I'll just point people at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found it really annoying that hitting 'l' or the right arrow took me to the next page; among other things, that meant that when I hit Ctrl-L to get to my address bar and copy the link, it advanced to the next page.

A better interface for reading this tutorial: [http://www.comic- rocket.com/go?uri=http%3A//gitimmersion.com...](http://www.comic- rocket.com/go?uri=http%3A//gitimmersion.com/lab_01.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems to leave out some important information. Eg. It refers to HEAD many times, but never seems to explain what this is? I can find out what this is easily enough elsewhere, but from my immersion so far I feel that it should be explained.

I really like the site though and have bookmarked it for later, and I will definitely try out the rest of it. Well done and thanks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome intro! Guide looks amazing! Just a a few small things: the Install Git on Windows button on the home page should point to <http://msysgit.github.com/> directly. Msysgit also comes with a GUI (that I personally appreciate that one more than tortoisegit).

</comment><comment><USER9> I love how this doesn't just stop with the basics. It keeps going and builds up to some really great specifics.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very nice, though I would appreciate a clear "Next" button somewhere, and the table of content seems empty.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is what I used to learn and get started with Git. Helped me out tremendously.

If you have never used Git before or any source control, so a complete beginner it gets you up and running quickly.

I would love one of these expanded on for using and contributing to on Github.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the one that helped me starting with git.

</comment><comment><USER13> It looks great but can someone give me a reason to learn this instead of just using the GUI?

<comment><USER14> CLI is a first-class citizen, the GUI isn't.

So when new features come out they will be on the CLI first.

<comment><USER15> I'll add that with the GUI you don't know exactly what GUI menus correspond to what Git commands, and therefore you can't be sure exactly what the behavior will be when you click that button.

Frankly, after you've used git regularly for a week, you'll find that there are two or three commands that you use constantly and never have to think about, and a small set of other commands that you'll have to look up the first half dozen times you use them.

Don't worry, git documentation is quite good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> really great. Anything like this for SVN?

</comment><comment><USER17> I highly recommend biting the bullet and reading through Pro Git by Scott Chacon (from Github).

<http://progit.org/book/>

It's about 200 pages but it really, really helped me internalize how git works. Each git feature/command is explained with a use case and a clear illustration of what's going on.

The online version is free and it's available as a PDF, epub, and mobi.

<comment><USER18> > The online version is free and it's available as a PDF, epub, and mobi.

To disambiguate: ebook versions are _also free_ (at least as of 2 minutes ago!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Stopped at 2 since it showed no mention as to why i should set those values.

Also because on Android there was no way to continue past that page

<comment><USER20> My reaction was: what havoc is this going to do? and spent 20 minutes learning what the issues were. The manual at <http://gitmanual.org/git-config.html> doesn't say what the default is, but I feel safe in assuming the default is not to tamper with the original files. The git author's reputation inspires trust :-).</comment></comment>


Microsoft's continuing efforts to be cool - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/microsofts-continuing-efforts-to-be-cool/ <comment><USER2> This needs to be tagged as being an article dating to (2015).</comment>


Google Latitude lands in iTunes App Store, for good this time - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/13/google-latitude-lands-in-itunes-app-store-for-good-this-time/ <comment><USER2> Previous submissions, same story, different source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000127>

Out of interest, my browser reported that it downloaded 448 images to render this page. That feels ... excessive.</comment>


The Senate Should Not Confirm Kavanaugh. Signed, 1,000+ Law Professors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-law-professors-letter.html <comment><USER2> Wonder if this every happened before. There was time for people to respond before the final senate vote maybe, which is not that common, but usually people going up to be one of the supremes don't get that kind of questioning, and also are more composed. Even the ABA rescinded their support. I feel sorry for Kavanaugh a little bit - his whole life he's probably been going for it. Suppose you are a cs researcher and you are about to be elected to the national academy of engineering or get the turing award or something and then all this stuff comes out that you thought was dead and buried forever.

But I can't lose sight of the impact of his testifying the second time. The clear disqualifying action was lying under oath about his life, getting crazy upset, and then making allegations about a conspiracy against him - we can't have someone on the supreme court who does that kind of stuff. We'll never know if the claimed rapes and other actions against him when he was young were true (but I guess I believe them), but it's his in-court actions that settle it.

<comment><USER3> That letter seemed almost content-free, and I'm surprised that they didn't try to make a stronger argument.

I would be interested in knowing what his specific lie under oath was. (Apparently his accusers have been caught in several.)

<comment><USER2> I don't want to get political, but I think the thing they think he lied about was his description of his college years wasn't honest, it was apparently very dishonest. According to many reports but not from him, including from his roommate, he was drinking a lot, got into fight drunk, didn't remember things afterwards, and was kind of rude and ugly when drunk. He wasn't just lifting weights and doing service work to help people. It's hard to know what to think of the accusations of terrible behavior toward women when he was probably drunk, because he might not remember the details when he blacked out. But it's the other things, lying about his lifestyle. It's not the lifestyle itself (I used to drink a lot in college like a lot of people that age), it's lying about it under oath.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the answer. Back when it happened, I didn't think Bill Clinton's lying about having sex with his intern ought to be actionable, or even something people should care about. Guess I feel the same way about this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>