How China's Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World's Oceans - <AUTHOR> https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-expanding-fishing-fleet-is-depleting-worlds-oceans <comment><USER2> Anyone else catch this? First:

"The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China's coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000".

Several paragraphs later:

"More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing fleet and released a five-year plan in 2017 that restricts the total number of offshore fishing vessels to under 3,000 by 2021."

Why would you need to announce a plan to reduce your fleet to below 3,000 if it's only "officially" at 2,700? Is this a case of inconsistent propaganda?

<comment><USER3> >Why would you need to announce a plan to reduce your fleet to below 3,000 if it's only "officially" at 2,700? Is this a case of inconsistent propaganda?

That's the thing about lies.

At first glance is the perfect solution, you simply lie and the problem goes away.

The tricky part is when the lies start you add up and you need to keep track of it, and/or when the lie is easily observable.

I think this is a bit of both: they don't even know what they are keeping track of, and the observers see the lies.

Because this isn't the simple case of propaganda when you try to reframe things, this is just made up shit.

Now the true question is: WHY THE HELL DOES CHINA KEEP THIS NARRATIVE FILLED WITH SUCH OBVIOUS LIES?

The answer is: no one does anything about it, neither did anything about it for years! Because of the short term benefits for some western countries.

<comment><USER4> You are basing your entire observation on an inaccurate translation.

<comment><USER3> Eh, my observation is about a recurring behavior from China.

Could it be an inaccurate translation? Yes.

Is China abusing their fishing fleets and actively try to dismiss that? Yes.

Is China actively implicated in lies and deception, and are observed doing it? Yes.

<comment><USER4> Sorry there are a lot of emotions in your comment but very little substance.

>Eh, my observation is about a recurring behavior from China

Can you clarify which behaviour you are referring to? It's been pointed out that the Chinese goal was to stabilize their fishing fleet size to around 3000, which given their normal growth focused policies seemed like some thing worthy of planning. And not propaganda as the parent comment was implying

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Oceanic fishing at this point is basically like hunting gathering at an industrial scale: we just catch whatever we can and who cares if it grows back, not our problem, "nature" will take care of it. The same way we seed, till, etc., we should be doing the same thing with oceans and "hunting" aka fishing should only be allowed as a hobby.

In a somewhat "positive" side effect of what they're doing, traditional Chinese medicine will probably go extinct together will all the fish and animal species they will wipe off the face of the Earth...

<comment><USER6> What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we'll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren't some inanimate object.

<comment><USER7> And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Eating other animals is what got us here. Until we can print actual, chemically identical meat on a conveyor belt, our reliance on animals will continue.

<comment><USER8> > And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Am I? I became 100% vegetarian a year ago. No one around me was vegetarian. I saved money. I never ate so well and I'm in my best physical form ever. What is magical?

<comment><USER9> You need supplements to grow healthily as a vegetarian. For example, it's difficult to get Omega 3, 6 and 9 from plants. You need supplements for that.

Also you've only been vegetarian a year. Being a vegetarian from birth to death without supplements would be much more difficult to do without major deficiencies.

Also vegetarians today have the option of buying food from all over the world, but that wasn't the case for the vast majority of human history.

<comment><USER10> You only need to look at cultures like in India, Taiwan and elsewhere that have large vegetarian population to see that your statement doesn't hold water.

<comment><USER11> You shouldn't point toward us as an example.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6540890](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6540890)

[https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and- nation/malnutr...](https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and- nation/malnutrition-behind-69-per-cent-deaths-among-children-below-5-years-in- india-unicef-report/articleshow/71618288.cms)

Guess where do you get folic acid, b12, etc from?

As a side note, OTC supplements are not as effective. You need prescription supplements if anyone is considering going vegetarian.

<comment><USER12> Guess where animals get their B12 from, supplemented to their feed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the year 1289, King Philip IV of France was worried about fish. "Each and every watershed of our realm," he proclaimed, "large and small, yields nothing due to the evil of fishers." [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/medieval...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/medieval- people-were-already-ruining-fish/589837/)

I've already witnessed the collapse of fishing in the oceans. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery)

<comment><USER14> I'm so bearish on humanity. A future like The Expanse is starting to look optimistic.

<comment> blaser-waffle Humanity isn't the problem, just the number of humans. Historically we had wars and famines and disease to take care of that. Neo-COVID will reduce those numbers.

Or else we learn to manage resource or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related HN thread _Unmasking China 's Invisible Fleet_ [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926128)

</comment><comment><USER16> Commercial scale cell-cultured meat can't arrive soon enough.

<comment><USER17> I worry that once that time arrives the government will force us to consume it by severely taxing actual meat.

<comment><USER6> Great, meat SHOULD cost a fortune. The actual cost of meat is not what you pay for it, the only reason it's even affordable is because the taxpayer shoulders the burden of the farm subsidies. Cut those out and a $5 Big Mac would cost almost $15.

Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x more than it does now.

<comment><USER18> I don't have the numbers in front of me, but this doesn't seem like it could be true. My Dad always raised cattle as a pastime, just a handful, one for meat and sold the rest. Never subsidized, and he usually broke just about even. A big mac has a fifth pound of beef. $75 a pound for ground beef? He'd buy hundreds. So would I, and everyone else. Why bother cutting out steaks, just grind the whole thing down.

So I'm curious where that number comes from.

<comment><USER19> Agricultural subsidies that affect beef, either directly or indirectly, have been in place in the US for almost a century. So either your father is quite old, did not live in the US, or that meat was subsidized.

<comment><USER18> OK, but I'm asking for -how-, truly. My father is getting up there, but still raises cattle to this day. He buys them as calves, and sells them the next year. They mainly eat grass and hay, but admittedly there is -some- corn feed in the winter, which I understand as one source of subsidy, but I can't see it amounting to much in the grand scheme just based on the amount. When selling them, after accounting for initial cost, medicine, and extras, he breaks even. And that's at today's 'cheap' beef prices.

<comment><USER20> Industrial Carrie farming has additional costs. Like wise they need to be transported, butchered, packaged, etc. This adds cost.... Your dad's break even is still losing money for anyone doing this as a business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Overfishing aside I believe cephalopods (such as squid) are expected to thrive relative to other marine creatures - they seem to be well poised to adapt in response to rising ocean acidification/CO2 and decreasing fish stocks

[https://phys.org/news/2019-06-squid- climate.html](https://phys.org/news/2019-06-squid-climate.html) [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/octopuse...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/octopuses- squid-cuttlefish-warming-oceans-climate-change)

</comment><comment><USER22> Being completely ignorant of the fishing industry, these numbers of vessels seem crazy high. I had no idea.

Let's say the Chinese have 15-20,000. What percentage is that of the entire industry? Are there 100,000 distant-water vessels active in the world? Or only 25,000 total?

If the Chinese represent 20% of the world industry, but are trying to feed 18% of the world's population, that doesn't seem outrageous. But if they represent 50% of the world industry, then my eyebrows go up.

At the same time, if the US represents 10% of the industry and 4% of world population, or if UK represents 3% of the industry but <1% of world population, doesn't that make it a bit hard to swallow?

Almost all of the numbers above are made up. I don't know what they really are. That's my point. I'm reluctant to grab my pitchfork with my current level of ignorance.

<comment><USER23> > Let's say the Chinese have 15-20,000. What percentage is that of the entire > industry

For comparison, the 2nd/3rd/4th largest distant-water fleets are Taiwan at around 400 and Japan and S. Korea at around 150-200 [0]. Probably the entire rest of the world accounts for less than 10% of foreign fishing.

[0] [https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file- attachments/St...](https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file- attachments/Stimson%20Distant%20Water%20Fishing%20Report.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are there plans for an international fishing and plastic disposal sanctions? Citizens can justly complain a faraway country is turning their fish rarer and more poisnous.

</comment><comment><USER25> What are they doing with all that squid? If the market price of the squid doesn't cover the cost of extraction, then that must mean there isn't much demand for the product.

<comment><USER26> Is there some kind of subsidy for squid maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is the world just going to have to let China own itself to learn the hard way?

Like, it just seems like a bad news generator and we constantly need to dance around the CCP trying to guide them appropriately with sanctions, and threats and incentives.

I understand depleting the oceans would be catastrophic, but how is this regime ever going to learn? Honest question?

<comment><USER28> > bad news generator

Well someone has to choose what bad news to highlight and how biased to highlight said news. For example, per capita, Taiwan and S.Korea have larger DWF fleets, Taiwan significantly so. Factor in EEZ and you get a good idea of why.

China: 1400m ppl / 3000 dwf fleet / 900,000km2 eez (3.8m with disputes)

Taiwan: 24m / 414 / 90,000km2

Japan: 162m / 162 / 4,500,000km2

S.Korea: 52m / 198 / 300,00km2

Spain: 47m / 65 / 1,000,000km2

[https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file- attachments/St...](https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file- attachments/Stimson%20Distant%20Water%20Fishing%20Report.pdf)

This EEZ map really explains a lot of tensions in these maritime disputes.

[https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7292/10134658063_fca4fc3da2_o...](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7292/10134658063_fca4fc3da2_o.jpg)

<comment><USER23> Except if you even read the first line of the article, China has an unreported additional DWF fleet of another 14,000 vessels.

<comment><USER28> I read the actual study. It counts any vessel that crossed out of Chinese EEZ during the year to be DWF which is a stupid metric. Further Chinese EEZ was undefined which is a gross oversight. Does the count include vessels operating in SCS within China's 9dash bounds? Obviously China wouldn't categorize vessels in her "domestic" waters are DWF. This distinction is as least worth a mentioning but the paper glosses over it entirely. It's typical lazy reporting based on poor research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We need less people in the world. Our only hope to avoid mass human suffering is that as more women get educated and independent they reduce the number of children they'll conceive to 1 or 2.

<comment><USER30> This was Chinese government policy for decades. It _caused_ immense human suffering.

[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/120114/under...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/120114/understanding- chinas-one-child-policy.asp)

Personally, I think people are an asset, not a burden, and the greatest things in the world! That's right, I mean _you_ , dear reader. Straighten that back!

<comment><USER31> Something doesn't ads up. If we are 50 couples, and we all have 2 kids, when the original parents die we are still 100 people. If 50 couples have 1 kid, wen the original parents die, you have half of the population. If they did that for some many years, how come they kept growing?

<comment><USER32> There are several exceptions to the law[0]:

* The couple has just one child, who is handicapped or unable to work because of non-hereditary diseases. * Both parents are only children themselves, and have just one child so far.

* The couple adopted their first child because one of them was diagnosed as infertile.

* The couple remarried but have only one child in total.

* The couple are ethnic minorities who moved to the city from provinces bordering other countries and were given permission from a high-ranking Family Planning office before they moved.

* The husband has brothers, but only one brother is able to give birth, and the others have promised not to adopt.

* The husband is a farmer who married a woman already with a daughter (this only if that husband pledges to care for the woman's parents).

* The couple are rural farmers, in which one spouse is a handicapped soldier with an injury grade B or above or can no longer work.

* The couple are farmers from the deep mountains who only have a daughter, depend on farming and are poor.

* Another exception to the one child policy allowed families in rural areas to have another child if the first child was a girl, in hopes to have a boy as their second child.

[0] [https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c5d870b...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c5d870bb2fc04f328d5e52cc864ff014)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't forget behind China, you got India, SEA, the rest of Africa which will experience a population boom this century. How we going to feed all these people when their living standards go up? We need to get to mars fast.

<comment><USER34> How is making Mars inhabitable easier than fixing the problems here on Earth?

<comment><USER35> The same reason writing a program from scratch is more appealing than the pain of refactoring someone else's code.

<comment><USER36> Ugh my whole job the past few months has been solving problems in other peoples' code, and it's already pretty complicated code. So painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Disappointed in the article. When I saw the Yale domain I thought it would be a research paper or at least something written by an expert on the subject. It appears this is written by a journalist[0] and as typical of things written hy journalists, leaves out crucial details/sources which leaves you with more questions.

> the country's commercial fishermen often serve as de-facto paramilitary > personnel whose activities the Chinese government can frame as private > actions.

???? The article doesn't go any further, but how would you use a bunch of unarmed fishing vessels crewed by "illiterates" (according to the article) for anything resembling a military purpose. Later on it mentions "crowding" but doesn't really go into detail about what that means.

Plus what is a "distant water fishing fleet"? The article gives numbers for overall number of fishing vessels and then "distant water fishing fleet", but only provides context for the later number by saying the US has only 300 such boats in its fleet. If a country with coasts on two oceans only has 300 of these, it has to be some really specific category of boat right? What makes this category important?

And of course there's the framing of the article, the fishing is done by private commercial fishers but apparently their entire country is to blame. I mean you can make some arguments about subsidies but then the article itself acknowledges that other countries also engage in similar level of subsidies.

Also there's this weird fixation on North Korea, where it claims the Chinese fishing fleet is depleting North Korean waters, but doesn't really tell us about whether or not that's done with North Korea's permission. It mentions that it would be technically illegal for NK to sell fishing rights, but that doesn't really bear any significance.

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

<comment><USER15> From the linked Ian Urbina Wikipedia page:

> As a journalist, his investigations typically focus on worker safety and the > environment...

As you point out, Urbina has an undeniable preference for international law, regulation, and treaties pertaining to oceans and fisheries. These sentiments seem to align with the values promoted by the Yale School of the Environment [1]. The article links to an investigative report Urbina did for NBC [2] which describes the evidence.

[1] [https://environment.yale.edu/](https://environment.yale.edu/)

[2] [https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing- fleet...](https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing- fleet/index.html)

<comment><USER37> > As you point out, Urbina has an undeniable preference for international law, > regulation, and treaties pertaining to oceans and fisheries.

He might have an expert level knowledge on the topic, but he is using all the standard tricks journalists use to paint a narrative. Bringing up statistics without context and without defining the thing it's measuring, using technical terminology without explaining what it means, alluding to certain things without elaborating, and citing sources(if at all) in a way such that you have to spend a lot of time hunting down an actual document supporting his claims.

> The article links to an investigative report Urbina did for NBC [2] which > describes the evidence.

evidence of what? I'm not denying that Chinese boats are fishing in North Korea. It still seems weird that in a situation where Chinese boats are fishing in North Korea's waters, the fixation is on sanctions. I can understand this being bad if North Korea doesn't want Chinese boats fishing in their waters but both articles seem to imply that there is implicit approval, in which case who cares? Sanctions are antithetical to free trade and human welfare.</comment></comment></comment>


2/3 of Americans can't name a living scientist - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/SJfTrr5.png

<comment><USER2> Ha!</comment>


Android On Lockdown: AT&T Removes Best Parts of Android from Backflip - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidguys.com/2010/03/08/android-lockdown-att-removes-parts-android-backflip/

<comment><USER2> It should be renamed "Appldroid" and not Android. It's misleading.

<comment><USER3> Does Google place any restrictions on the changes that can be made to a phone and still being able to market it as an Android?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How hard and problematic is it to just install the normal Android OS on phones that come with weird kinds? And does it end up not quite fitting the specific handset as well?

<comment><USER5> it varies by handset. my mytouch 3g took a lengthy process involving 2 microsd cards, a hex editor, submitting some id numbers specific to my phone/microsd cards to some random website and getting emailed a "gold" file, and reflashing various files. my nexus one took all of going into the settings and unlocking it, then reflashing a cyanogen firmware that had been downloaded to the phone.

i would imagine that if at&t is locking down this particular phone, they are (or have instructed motorola to) lock down the firmware reflashing process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, if the best part of Android is the free wheeling, beloved by geeks and not anyone else store, then I am not sure if Android is the competitor I thought it is.

A locked down store is totally what carriers want. They want the revenue stream from selling the apps. That's how the market was _before_ iPhone. So until Google force carriers to have a common store, I see more and more carriers adopt this model.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought the best part of Android was that there is very little oversight as to what you can put out on the Android Market, making secondary markets unneeded.

Although I have had a hard time finding a decent tethering application in the Android Market.. maybe AT&T is afraid that disobey the little rules there are will be bandwidth intensive, threatening their already feeble network?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's a little misleading to judge carriers and phone manufacturers by open source standards. Although open source standards often promote innovation and bring value to the market because of the service oriented industries that pop up based on them I don't see the same kind of thing happening for phones. So tighter control is not necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER9> It is a bad thing, any enterprise that wants to deploy their own android software to device they paid for now has to choose a different carrier than AT and T..

Its why Enterprises do not use iPhone in the first place..

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have some figures about iPhone and Android usage within 'Enterprises'? Please share!

The iPhone can be turned into a boring and controlled device for soul destroying enterprises. Have a read of this:

[http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Gu...](http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf)

And despair that large organisations hire people who can't be trusted with a web browser on their phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They should never have been allowed to sell an Android phone in the first place. They're probably trying to promote their cash cow, the iPhone by crippling Android in the court of public opinion.

<comment><USER11> Allowed by whom? Google went out of their way to give handset makers and carriers almost total control over how they choose to package Android. I suspect we'll see more of this simply because the carriers will want to create a low end SmartPhone market to replace the dumb phones out there. They'll only run a few carrier approved apps and may not have access to the regular Android Market but instead a carrier run market instead.

I know in the on-going Internet race to judgement Android has been anointed the White Knight role but Google's choice to give carriers/handset makers so much control over how Android gets into consumer hands is nothing to be proud of. We shouldn't be cheering on a solution that really isn't nearly as open as people suggest. Even a more legitimate Android phone like the Droid or N1 is crippled from doing wifi tethering unless you root/jailbreak it. Why? Because carriers didn't like it. If we're really looking for a 100% open mobile platform Android isn't really the solution. It's probably the best bet out there today but that should not stop us from pointing out why it's also restrictive.

<comment><USER12> Tethering app was only removed from the US T-Mobile store, it is available everywhere else.

[http://androidcommunity.com/google-allowing-tethering- apps-f...](http://androidcommunity.com/google-allowing-tethering-apps-for-non- t-mobile-users-20090402/)

<comment><USER11> They still do not allow wifi tethering apps unfortunately -- or they are blocked on Sprint (HTC Hero)

<comment><USER12> Yikes, that is quite unfortunate.

Do 3rd party markets apps like Wifi Tether from anda.pk work?

[http://discuss.gdgt.com/htc/hero/support/tethering-with- the-...](http://discuss.gdgt.com/htc/hero/support/tethering-with-the-hero-is- it-possible/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems wrong to do this, but in a related thought, I imagine the people savvy enough to know there are apps outside the market will realize they can also install other ROMs.

<comment><USER14> Installing ROMs is not trivial unless the handset manufacturer wants it to be. Look at the Archos device, for example.

<comment><USER12> It really depends on the carrier. I've had great luck rooting the G1, MyTouch, and N1.

N1 is the easiest of the bunch.

<comment><USER15> Being that all three of those phones are made by HTC, I think jrockway's point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great... they turned their Android phone into an iPhone. Might as well just buy the real thing if you are going to AT&T for the network. (And why would you do that?)

</comment><comment><USER9> It really sucks from a developer perspective in that one of the major differences between iphone and android is that you could download an apk from non market sources and now they remove that choice from users grasp.

<comment><USER11> It also sucks for developers that Motorola is still actively releasing new Android devices with such dated hardware. This is basically a glorified G1 (~500Mhz CPU, 256MB RAM) I'm not sure how that's going to play when we're very likely to see 1.5Ghz multi core CPUs with 4x+ as much RAM being released _this year_ That's quite a big gap in specs between the low end and high end for brand new devices that are going to be in use 2 years from now and beyond.</comment></comment>


We already use Wi-Fi more than cellular; Why not continue the trend? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/10/we-already-use-wi-fi-more-than-cellular-why-not-continue-the-trend/

<comment><AUTHOR> The takeaway ...

"Unlicensed spectrum is already the way the world is heading. Instead of trying to overcome their dependence on Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies, Thanki said, carriers and regulators need to embrace them."</comment>


The Miraculous Face Transplant of Richard Norris - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201408/richard-norris <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how to read this article. It reads like it's almost attacking Richard at some points, then others the author feels sorry for him.

<comment><USER3> Attacking is probably the wrong word. It's likely frustration and disappointment.

I get the feeling that the patient and his mother can't really grasp what's going on in their lives, and it makes me wonder whether he was chosen because they knew he was going to be a low-impact first trial patient - in the knowledge that if anything went wrong he and his family wouldn't have the faculties (neither intellectually nor financially) to cause trouble.

Maybe I'm projecting, but I recognize this "vagueness" the author describes from certain patients back when I was a med student, it's not really a great sign if you need people to manage their illness. Getting accurate information from them is difficult and compliance is an issue - just as it's being described in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _They covered the mirrors in the house so Richard wouldn 't have to look at his hideous face._

So it doesn't only happen in horror movies!

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053459/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053459/)

</comment><comment><USER5> One page [http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201408/richard- no...](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201408/richard- norris?currentPage=all)</comment>


How fab.com gained 20,000 pre-launch signups in 10 days  - <AUTHOR>

How fab.com gained 20,000 pre-launch signups in 10 days (without any TC or HN stories)
We studied launchrock and other such viral invite engines, but decided to build our own.
We built a simple landing page at http://fab.com which contains pretty imagery of the types of products that will be on our site, with only 1 simple sentence explaining what we'll do, and only 1 call to action:  request an invite.
Once user requests an invite, we introduce them to our viral invite process for "priority access."  Priority Access (first allowed in once we open the doors) is based on number of friends invited, PLUS we created 4 levels of priority access, rewarding people who invite more friends with actual cash credits towards future use of the site.
We built in simple shares for Twitter and Facebook, as well as gmail, ymail, AOL, hotmail, bulk invites.
We started off with our own employees' contacts and then purchased a small amount of highly targeted FB ads to people in our target demo.
We A/B tested several variants of the site, including placement of open boxes for users to enter email addresses manually vs. prompting them to invite from their address books and FB/twitter (address books far outperformed).
FYI.  So far, more than 20k people have signed up pre-launch and of the thousands they've invited by email, 16k have yet to signup.
FYI 2.  More than 2000 signups have invited more than 5 people each.
FYI 3.  So far the top sources of new users are: 1.  User-to-user email invites 2.  Facebook Shares 3.  Twitter tweets
FB and Twitter are just about even though in terms of resulting in signups. <comment><AUTHOR> Some more interesting data here. 12% of subscribers invite their email contacts, and on average they invite more than 10 people each.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can you please explain how your cash credits will work: What's the dollar amount for each credit? How much initial investment did you put into this account to fund the cash credits? Moving forward, will your profits cover all the cash credits and/or will it be covered from your own pockets?

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the data, Jason. It continues to surprise me how many people primarily use email to invite their friends. I remember reading an article from AddThis (or maybe it was ShareThis) reporting that email also dominated as the most used channel.

(Sorry, I couldn't find the original source)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey Jason,

I remember your name from back when you were working in the employment industry (I worked for a competitor back then.) Glad to see you have a new concept and it's starting off well.

Thanks for sharing what you've learned so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What was the CPC and CPA (i.e. cost per registration) with your Facebook advertising?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. We've experimented with more than 300 different ad variations and targets on Facebook. We've achieved best-case $1.5/subscriber and we accepted ads that achieved $3.5 or less per subscriber. We eliminated more than 290 ads that did not achieve our 1.5 to 3.5 / acquisition goal.

We found that the factors that mattered most for achieving our ad goals on facebook were: 1\. Targeting to users with specific likes/interests. 2\. The imagery in the ads

FYI. Google ads have achieved best-case $7/subscriber so we stopped using them.

<comment><USER5> Wow, can you share any more information about the successful versus unsuccessful ads? Creating 300 ads seems like an awfully large time investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work, and thank you for sharing! Design execution is excellent, hope you dont mind if i borrow some ideas. The cash incentive is a nice touch to reward your champions.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did you directly invite your old userbase? If so, any idea what percentage converted and what number of new people they invited?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are directly inviting our old userbase but those numbers are not included here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats. How long did you have the old design up before the revamp (and success)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. This has all developed in the past 10 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Prior to that, fab.com was an entirely different business/website with marginal traffic. The numbers below are of new users only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> how much traffic did you get before the new landing page?

<comment><AUTHOR> No significant traffic before the new landing page.

<comment><USER9> wow thats cool. can you put your email in your profile? i have a couple extra questions if you don't mind

<comment><AUTHOR> done. email@example.com too if you don't find it there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good luck and have even more sign ups.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice work guys, and thanks for posting the results and what you've learned.</comment>


Global economy has no substitute for falling dollar - <AUTHOR> http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6888848.ece

<comment><USER2> Currency is like stock in a nation. We always talk about the falling dollar, but what we are _really_ talking about is the decline of the American empire; decline of trust, decline of confidence, decline of a prosperous future, decline of value _for the world_ created from within America and exported to other nations.

Our economy for the past decade or so has been directed internally. We are only thinking of ourselves. We are building guns for our wars and no butter for our neighbors. We are spending millions and billions of dollars on entertainment in the form of sports stadiums and franchises that only americans care about. We are not spending money on education for our creative future generations who will find and solve problems for the world.

We are not talking about a decline in the dollar, we are talking about a decline in the faith that those who control the value of the dollar are acting in the best interest of the nation over the best interest of a relative few who provide no value to anyone but themselves and their close friends.

<comment><USER3> > We are spending millions and billions of dollars on entertainment in the > form of sports stadiums and franchises that only americans care about.

<http://www.newsweek.com/id/177422>

> Regarding business, the answer is yes. The Bureau of Economic Analysis > reports that between 1986 and 2005, foreign sales of U.S. motion-picture and > video products rose from $1.91 billion to $10.4 billion (in 2005 dollars)—an > increase of 444 percent. As Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture > Association says, "Among all the sectors of the U.S. economy, our industry > is the only one that generates a positive balance of trade in every country > in which it does business." The same is true for the TV and music > industries, and the reach is far greater when piracy is figured in.

I rather wonder how much the figures increase when all entertainment is included (sports, video games, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a substitute for the falling dollar: hydrocarbons.

Here is an interesting thought experiment to try:

1) The Dow Jones Industry Average (aka "the Dow") is a weighted average of the aggregate value of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the United States. In other words, think of the Dow as answering this question: "How many dollars does it take for me to buy a piece of the most valuable corporations in the United States?"

2) Now, try this: draw a graph of the Dow denominated not in dollars, but in barrels of oil.

3) In other words, answer this question: "how many barrels of oil does it take to buy a piece of the most valuable publicly-traded corporations in the United States?" (Also, try this for Gold -- "how many ounces of Gold does it take to buy a unit of the Dow?")

4) Answer this question for: (1) the present day, (2) 1999 -- the peak of the dot-com bubble, (3) 1980 -- the depths of the pre-Reagan recession, (4) 1933 -- the depths of the "Great Depression", (5) 1972 -- the aftermath of Johnson's "great society" and the Vietnam war.

5) Notice anything interesting?

6) This explains why may cash-rich entities, such as the sovereign wealth fund of China, are trading their dollars for stakes in petroleum producing properties. This asset allocation provides two benefits: (1) protection of their principal, (2) a steady cash-flow of fiat currency with which to acquire more properties, and/or finance liabilities.

7) Every time the Obama administration runs a deficit of US dollars and calls on the treasury and/or fed to increase the supply of dollars (and to consequently decrease the value of dollars in _your_ pocket), think of it as a wealth transfer to people in the Oil and Gas business; As well as to those who have the resources, connections, and know-how to allocate capital to the hydrocarbons industry.

There is a substitute for dollars, it's just not available to the average person -- whose net work will be steadily eroded, in real terms, as the U.S. continues to run deficits to finance: (1) two wars, (2) "universal health care", (3) "clean energy" subsidies

Every time you read a dollar-denominated figure, convert that to barrels of oil. It's a fascinating exercise -- especially when you have some historical perspective on this metric.

The thing with oil is that you can only consume what you have. Unfortunately, that is not true with dollars -- trillions of them have been created out of thin air over the past year.

Here's a radical idea: What if there were a country who pegged it's currency not to the dollar, or to gold, but rather to oil?

<comment><USER5> _Here's a radical idea: What if there were a country who pegged it's currency not to the dollar, or to gold, but rather to oil?_

An interesting idea, but would probably get awkward in the mid-to-long term. Oil is a consumable resource with a finite (and dwindling) supply. At some point in the relatively near future, the price of oil is likely to gradually become completely unhinged from its historical value (in the sense of value as wealth, not cost).

You'd get some of the same effect in a more stable manner if you instead pegged a currency by energy production capacity of an arbitrary consumable resource. For instance, something like "one zorkmid shall equal the average cost in consumed resources to produce twenty kWh of power from a power plant generating at least one gigawatt" or "one zorkmid shall equal the cost in consumed resources to drive at 50mph for one hour in a standard four-passenger vehicle".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
       Meanwhile, the Chinese are unlikely
       to allow their currency to appreciate in value

Why? Seems like a completely baseless assumption. When US consumption is on the rocks, the only engine of growth for China is its own huge domestic market. Strengthening domestic currency will stimulate consumer boom and turn China from pure exporter into a most attractive market in the world, similar to what US has been for most of 20th century. This turnaround will not happen overnight, but it will eventually happen.

<comment><USER7>
        Why?

If they let the dollar go, it won't just slide, it'll collapse. It'll be game over for the dollar. The leadership will lose staggering amounts face over all these savings they've accrued in this rotten dollar. This will undermine their attempts to push further towards a market economy but - something they can be more fearful of - it will threaten the stability of the state.

In the west we can have an economic collapse, and the government is thrown out, and things shake but we swap in a new political class and get back to work. China doesn't have pressure valves, and they're an already unwieldy nation - lots of ethnic groups, many of which don't want to be part of China, a culture of corruption, a huge wealth gap. They have a further problem in that there are examples of small nations of Chinese doing very well without being part of a juggernaut state - Taiwan, but Singapore and the legacy of Hong Kong/Macau in their own way also.

As in the west, the Chinese leaders are using stimulus to procrastinate. But the stakes are much higher. The USD situation is like cancer for the Chinese. The only play I can see out of their situation will be to force an arrangement where they could get their holdings of USD reinterpreted into a more trustworthy store of value.

<comment><USER6> I would not overestimate importance of the dollar for the Chinese. Those dollar holdings are a simple by-product of past currency interventions, a way to park those dollars bought from exporters of electronic goods etc, not a conscious choice to invest some 'savings' in the US. Also, China's trade with US is less than its combined trade with countries of Pacific Region.

Also, I would not agree with your characterisation of China and its regime. Its current government has been doing wonders lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and cases of corruption unfortunately happen everywhere -- from Chicago to Shanghai. They do have a bit different social organization, but its current modification seems to work for them for the past thirty years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Competitive devaluations seems similar to competitive tariffs in that both favor export over import through a zero-sum action (someone loses for you to 'win') that harms other nations.

The only way out may be to grow the economy.

Time to fund lots and lots of startups in hopes some find a value-producing and demand-inducing advance.

</comment><comment><USER9> That article is full of baseless opinion masquerading as fact. 'Eurocrats are secretly pleased with the Euro strength'? Which 'Eurocrat'? What did they say?

The fact is nobody knows what is going to happen but people shouldn't blindly assume the USD is going to stay the global reserve currency.

No currency has ever lasted the test of time, and paper-based currencies are lucky if they make a couple of hundred years.

All this started nearly 40 years ago when Nixon dropped the gold standard. People predicted it back then, but they couldn't be sure of the timeline. The same stays true today ; it's going to happen (failure of USD as a global currency) but nobody knows when.</comment>


Revolution in the Resale of Digital Books and Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/technology/revolution-in-the-resale-of-digital-books-and-music.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Wow. It's hard to see how the court wouldn't rule to allow that.

If it has an impact as severe as some people claim, it'll force authors to find new business models. And maybe that'll hasten the end of the copyright madness at last.</comment>


Ask HN: What Tech Startup Law Book can you recommend? - <AUTHOR>

What books do you recommend that go in depth into Startup Law specifically for tech?
So far, I have found:
Lifecycle of a Technology Company: Step-by-Step Legal Background and Practical Guide from Startup to Sale
http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycle-Technology-Company-Step-Step/dp/0470223928 <comment><USER2> This is an area in which I have been interested, both as a startup law practitioner and as someone who has thought about doing my own entry in this field (I have toyed with the beginnings of this on my firm's website with a "Startup Law 101 Series").

Here are a few of the good resources in this area:

1\. The Miller book mentioned in OP ( _Lifecycle of a Technology Company_ ) is actually quite good, with a strong focus on Delaware law. This work had its genesis in a multi-volume work prepared by lawyers at Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, PC, a prominent Massachusetts firm. As written originally by multiple lawyers, it was accurate, in-depth, and pedantic. When repackaged for Wiley as the _Lifecycle_ book, it was much streamlined and became eminently more readable. Lots of good detail here - very helpful for entrepreneurs.

2\. Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchey, _The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law_ \- Ms. Bagley is a former Bingham McCutchen partner who went on to gain distinction at Harvard Business School. Mr. Dauchey is a partner at Cooley Godward in Palo Alto and a veteran startup lawyer. This work is also done with excellence and covers the range of issues faced by a typical "emerging company," including most of the basic IP issues faced by a tech company.

3\. Jack S. Levin and Martin Ginsburg, _Structuring Venture Capital, Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Transactions_ is by far the best technical treatment of the corporate startup issues - written for lawyers, it is a highly readable resource for the intelligent layman and Jack Levin (of Kirkland & Ellis) is nothing short of a genius in his field. If you want to dig deep into how deals and company structures work (including superb treatment of tax issues, which are quite important in this field), this is by far the best resource extant.

4\. Joseph Bartlett, _Fundamentals of Venture Capital_ is a book with a slightly misleading title owing to marketing reasons. The book was originally put out by Mr. Bartlett (lately of Morrison & Foerster) in the late 1980s with a fuller treatment of the broad range of startup issues but later shortened to its current format - while dealing with venture capital, it gives a very concise and helpful rundown of the range of legal issues faced by every startup, with excellent overviews of the key issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very very very much, excellent synopsis and reviews. I think Ill start with 1 and 3 first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> smarter ventures was a good introduction into the company creation / funding process, from a legal perspective.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Ventures-Survivors- Venture-C...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Ventures-Survivors-Venture- Capital/dp/0273654039)</comment>


Remind HN: AWS Free Usage Tier Begins Today. - <AUTHOR>

Will you be porting your apps? I am wondering how this will affect developer friendly hosts like Linode. <comment><USER2> Related reminder: AWS free Data Transfer In has ended effective today (unless it gets extended again).

</comment><comment><USER3> More info: <http://aws.amazon.com/free>

</comment><comment><USER4> >I am wondering how this will affect developer friendly hosts like Linode.

I don't know... but I got a whole lot of signups after posting on the other thread about this, so I suspect it will have less of an impact than I originally feared.

<comment><USER5> I use prgmr & slicehost and just signed up for aws.

I intend to use s3 to lighten up to load on my bandwidth limits by hosting the largest static files (media files in my case) there, but plan on remaining with the VPSs for all the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get in on this. I signed up for an AWS account right after micro instances launched. Yet, when I looked at them I realized they weren't as cheap as I initially thought (I had assumed the reserved instance fee covered you as your entire cost for the whole year). I didn't ever use it, but doing so made me ineligible for this. Emailed amazon twice. Very strict on brand new accounts only.

</comment><comment><USER7> I will test and try Fedora 14 <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_14_on_EC2> :D. My first _cloud_ experience. Thanks HN for the reminder.

</comment><comment><USER8> My fear is more how this will affect others already on AWS. More network latency issues? More EBS latency?

Even though it is small, a large number of small users could only add to the problems others are feeling.

<comment><USER9> Are you unhappy with AWS? I was considering switching to them, should I rethink that?

<comment><USER8> AWS is great if you're small to medium sized. Once you reach a point though, scaling in AWS is difficult.

Scaling a database in AWS is difficult, no matter if it is relational or NoSQL. We see boxes with hardly any load get 50% IO wait time and stay there for 20 mins. Try and scale anything when you get that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not porting existing apps, but I'm using this as an opportunity to start a new one on a fresh system with a ton of tools available.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone suggest a good AMI to start off with?

<comment><USER12> Here's my take on an Ubuntu 10.4 AMI that fits in the free 10GB EBS allowance.

<http://guru.gg/aether/ubuntu-10-4-amazon-aws-free-tier/>

tl;dr The default AMI's for Ubuntu take 15GB which will cost you $0.50 a month. This is a quick hack to get down to 10GB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be great to have my own Linux box always available from anywhere without having to have an extra tower under my desk, but I can't let myself get hooked on it. Even a micro instance, after the free year runs out, costs a decent chunk of change. (Not expensive, just more than I'm willing to pay for a box for flights of fancy)

<comment><USER10> You're not going to find much cheaper than $14.60 (the price of keeping a micro instance running for a month.) Rackspace Cloud's 256MB RAM instance is $10.95, and there are probably a few random VPS providers here and there with cheaper servers.

<comment><USER14> Oh, there is cheaper. E.g. thrustvps.com starts at $5.95 for 512MB. Naturally the number of use-cases where it would make sense to give up the stability of amazon/rackspace in exchange for a saved $5/mo is rather limited.

<comment><USER15> I've had really good luck with thrustvps so far. I found them from lowendbox.com and got 15% off the already-absurd prices forever, so I'm paying $5.06/month for a 512MB box.

It's OpenVZ instead of Xen, but I don't really care; I wouldn't really be taking advantage of Xen anyway. (And they have Xen for a couple bucks a month more.)

I have no idea how its performance compares to Linode, AWS, etc, but stability has been fine so far, after 3 months. I kind of expected to have downtime by now since it's so cheap, but pingdom tells me there's been none.

If you're looking for a cheap VPS so you can run relatively unimportant things (ie. not your startup, unless it's just a side project that isn't bringing you any money yet), it's a good choice.

<comment><USER16> I had some pretty bad luck when I signed up a couple weeks ago. The node I was on was very unstable. Fortunately they are pretty responsive and have moved me to a stable node in a different DC. The new node is way more solid.

As for cost, it's pretty cheap - $7.95 for a 512MB Xen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"This project violates the MIT license of Gemstash" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver/issues/36#issuecomment-324503159 <comment><USER2> So, speaking for Google (for once): We're on it (and about to post a response), but a number of us have looked at this, and having trouble finding any actual code in common between the repos at all (let alone any where the license was changed).

I can find parts that depend on the gemstash project being installed, but nothing that appears to actually have been taken from the gemstash project .

I'd someone here sees some, i'd really appreciate letting us know (here, or email me at dannyb@google) so we can go fix it.

<comment><USER3> Nothing to find as far as i can see. All that's done is import a gem like anyone would who's project who depends on an external gem. Mr. Indirect seems to have had a bad day, take it easy :)] Edit: Seems more just a google criticaster [https://indirect.tumblr.com/post/164152747613/so-ive-been- th...](https://indirect.tumblr.com/post/164152747613/so-ive-been-thinking- about-this-google-manifesto)

<comment><USER4> That's not the same @indirect.

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/indirect](https://github.com/indirect) links to [http://arko.net/](http://arko.net/), which links to [http://indirect.tumblr.com/](http://indirect.tumblr.com/).

<comment><USER4> Ah, I stand corrected, looks like the blog belongs to him, but the article itself was written by someone else (@williampietri).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From what I see, google-cloud-gemserver uses gemstash[1] but does not include its source. Am I somehow misunderstanding the accusation "You forked this repo from the Gemstash repo"?

[1]: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserver/blob/d42da74fa9c1f139d49198d1ac38ebec20317063/Gemfile)

<comment><USER7> I'm on mobile so reading the code is hard, but after digging through much of both repos, this doesn't look like a fork at all. I see some code that _looks_ like it's from gemstash, but that's far different than a fork -- not better, just significantly different, as evidenced by the comments here suggesting malice and license stripping.

Is the allegation that it was forked and then more than half of gemstash deleted? Seriously, read the code, even the gem architecture is different. "I found some gemstash code which btw is MIT and can be embedded all day long" does not deserve lawyer threats, and I say that disliking Google.

More embarrassed for the issue author here, who went straight for an outrage jugular without understanding the entire situation, and probably submitted this thread to HN too.

<comment><USER8> sillsm just responded:

Hi Andre, I'm Max from Google's open source office.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We've stared at both repos, and we're having trouble finding any actual copy/pasted code between them.

We don't strip license headers or change code licenses intentionally. We always aim to respect open source licenses. If we made a mistake here, please help us fix it.

It looks like GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver depends on gemstash existing, but we can't find any copied code. It doesn't appear to be a fork.

We'd really appreciate it if you could give us pointers to the code you think was copied from your project, so we can fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a teachable moment for a young student. Let's avoid crucifying them.

We've all made mistakes, most of us were just fortunate enough that it didn't end up as the top link in Hacker News.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, blame should be placed on whoever did the code review, but this is probably something the intern learned/got away with in school.

<comment><USER11> Yes. I don't know what the rules for making code public are at Google, but where I work we are incredibly cautious.

I would have thought Google would have been far more cautious.

<comment><USER12> If you look at the repo it's not clear at all if there is an issue. It's certainly not a fork of a repo. It actually includes gemstash as a dependency [1] which is a really weird thing to do if it was actually a copy of gemstash.

[https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserver/blob/master/Gemfile)

If there is a lack of caution I think it's on @indirect's side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the primary beefs from the person filing the issue seems to be that the project in question (google-cloud-gemserver) is not also licensed as MIT:

> As I'm sure you're aware, the MIT license [...] does not allow you to change > the license.

This demonstrates a poor understanding of licensing. The MIT license is a permissive license, not a reciprocal ("viral") one. I.e., you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects themselves are not licensed as MIT.

This wouldn't look so silly if it weren't the case that:

1\. The MIT license text's brevity is very to-the-point

2\. It goes further than similar licenses (e.g., ISC, BSD) and explicitly names sublicensing when enumerating its (inexhaustive) list of permissable uses

3\. The other software project in question is licensed under Apache License version 2.0, which is more or less functionally equivalent to MIT, modulo some patent termination stuff.

EDIT to everyone commenting about "relicensed MIT files", and "changing the license": Stop that.

If you mean that it's required to reproduce the text of the license and the copyright notice somewhere in the end result (a la Firefox's about:license), then say that. This conversation would go a lot smoother that way instead of you endlessly repeating about a "license change". Say what you mean.

<comment><USER14> > This demonstrates a poor understanding of licensing.

It doesn't; while the MIT is a permissive license, that doesn't mean that it lets you change the license.

> you're free to incorporate it into other projects even when those projects > themselves are not licensed as MIT.

This is true, but you still have to follow its terms, just like any other license.

(I have not actually looked at the repo or investigated the details in this specific case.)

<comment><USER13> I don't know what "MIT [doesn't let] you change the license" is supposed to mean.

The original project is licensed under MIT. The Google project said to incorporate that code is licensed under Apache 2.0. This is permitted by the terms of the MIT license.

If there is any wrongdoing here, it looks like a failure to `git add ./NOTICES.txt`, and that's as simple as the remedy to it would be, too.

<comment><USER15> The problem is not that the project is Apache licensed, it's that (according to TFA anyway) the project relicensed MIT files as Apache 2 and removed attribution, both of which are verboten.

You can have MIT-licensed files in an Apache-licensed project, you can not strip out their original licenses and put yours instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Stealing software from a non-profit that you refuse to support, even though > you depend on the work it does, is extremely not cool.

If this truely was an intern who did this, "you refuse to support" and "you depend on the work it does" are kind of stretches.

Obviously stripping the crediting and copyright details is an incredibly poor decision, but not like this intern has any part of Google's decision to support Ruby Together or not.

<comment><USER17> The intern represents Google in all regards and actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author of Gemstash is clearly trying to wring as much outrage from this as he possibly can. This is blatantly NOT a fork, it's a wrapper. On Twitter he's stepped down from the "fork" accusation and downgraded it to "he used our README", but seems to be enjoying the attention too much to amend his original complaint.

<comment><USER19> The READMEs are very different

<comment><USER18> I agree. The guy's accusation doesn't make sense on a number of levels. I'm just quoting him, not endorsing him: [https://twitter.com/indirect/status/900461424865980416](https://twitter.com/indirect/status/900461424865980416)

<comment><USER20> And finally he confesses that there is nothing wrong!

[https://twitter.com/indirect/status/900525357459161088](https://twitter.com/indirect/status/900525357459161088)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of people are talking about this being a teachable moment. I suppose that's true. [EDIT: or is it? This intern probably didn't do anything wrong? Rest of comment relevant to discussion more than the link.]

But I've managed someone who took code from the internet (multiple files, a whole sub-project, really) and tried to pass it off as their own. I pointed out they left the license info at the top of the files, and so it was pretty easy to tell it violated the license terms. I got push-back about it, saying they just wanted to deliver the feature (the code didn't do that, but whatever). I said I was glad the code didn't get deployed, and said we could work on requirements so a clean room implementation could be done. So far, yes, teachable.

Then he committed the same code with the license information removed.

Then I fired him.

There's simply no other way to handle these situations. It's unprofessional in the extreme to plagiarize, and is a lawsuit magnet to boot.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well this is a bit awkward. It doesn't seem to be a fork at all. or share any code with gemstash.

<comment><USER23> Also it was posted to HN by an obvious throwaway account. Oh the drama...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is up with the tone of that post? It seems that this is his first attempt of contacting them and yet words like "lawyers" and "super gross" are brought up.

<comment><USER25> Yes, they clearly came with pitchforks ready, probably from feeling burned by GCP ("GCP has repeatedly declined to support Ruby Together in the work [...]").

It also doesn't seem clear that the code was forked at all, making this whole exercise pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The last comment on the issue tracker is:

"Hi Andre, I'm Max from Google's open source office.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We've stared at both repos, and we're having trouble finding any actual copy/pasted code between them.

We don't strip license headers or change code licenses intentionally. We always aim to respect open source licenses. If we made a mistake here, please help us fix it.

It looks like GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver depends on gemstash existing, but we can't find any copied code. It doesn't appear to be a fork.

We'd really appreciate it if you could give us pointers to the code you think was copied from your project, so we can fix it."

Whoever used a throwaway account to get this onto the front page of HN, less than an hour after that issue was posted on GitHub: that was an irresponsible and wrong thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER27> How does he know that it was forked from Gemstash? I don't find the code similar aside from it using Gemstash as a dependency in a lot of places.

<comment><USER28> From what I can tell, it looks like Gemstash was used as a reference to build google-cloud-gemserver. There are certainly pattern similarities, but a lot of the codebase has been rewritten. The foundational structure is definitely very similar, but the code within it is different.

 _Edit >> Adding References (Excuse my formatting.)_

gemstash.rb

* [https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/lib/gemstash...](https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/lib/gemstash.rb)

* [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver/blob/master/lib/google/cloud/gemserver.rb)

version.rb

* [https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/lib/gemstash...](https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/lib/gemstash/version.rb)

* [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver/blob/master/lib/google/cloud/gemserver/version.rb)

setup

* [https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/bin/setup](https://github.com/bundler/gemstash/blob/master/bin/setup)

* [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-gemserver/blob/master/bin/setup)

Just a few examples of similarities. The file location is identical as well.

<comment><USER29> With the exception of the setup bit, the rest of those links are totally standard Ruby gem setup.

<comment><USER30> That's bundler boilerplate, totally verbatim:

[https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/t...](https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/templates/newgem/bin/setup.tt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Title should be changed, its unclear if the license was actually violated, all that has happened is that the author of gemstash has claimed that is the case.

</comment><comment><USER32> It looks like more of an ignorant / stupid mistake than anything else.

<comment><USER33> I'd be willing to believe that removal of a license file could be accidental. However, what is being discussed here is wholesale replacement of a license notice in multiple files, which is much harder for me to believe is a mistake made out of ignorance or stupidity.

<comment><USER11> I could easily see someone who hasn't actually read the license and not knowing anything about software licenses other than that he needs Googles doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This appears to be a wrapper around gemstash, not a fork and relicense.

[https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserve...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud- gemserver/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=gemstash&type=)

</comment><comment><USER35> HN Editors should revise the headline since it seems far from established fact that the intern violated the MIT license.

If it actually turns out that the intern did't violate the MIT license after all (as some seem to suggest), he should retain an attorney for having his reputation smeared.

</comment><comment><USER36> Intern made a stupid mistake. Nothing new. Move along.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't know much Ruby, but it looks like gemstash is merely a dependency of this, and this repo isn't a fork.

</comment><comment><USER38> Looking at the two repos it's not clear to me whether it's even a fork or not. The issue owner didn't state which files he thinks are forked from the Gemstash repo. Also, MIT license is a permissive license and does allow sub- licensing, so his comment that you cannot change the license is not entirely correct. However the intern should have kept the original MIT license along with the Apache license, adding a note that MIT license only applies to specific portion of the project (that is, if he forked that repository in the first place..)

</comment><comment><USER39> At the time of writing, this post title is clickbaity and presumes guilt without any actual evidence. This is not what I want to see on hacker news.

</comment><comment> surrey-fringe I don't think I would hang out with Andre Arko.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think the tone of the message is unnecessarily harsh. Nobody got hurt and you didn't loose any money on this, so chill out.

</comment><comment><USER41> Undoubtedly a very bad thing to do from the intern, however I feel that if we treated this correctly we could open a debate and encourage GCP to add support. Let's not forget that this can likely ruin someone's career. It's a stupid intern mistake, let's try to get something good out of it.

</comment><comment><USER42> >Stealing software from a non-profit that you refuse to support, even though you depend on the work it does, is extremely not cool.

A bit emotional, aren't we? If the intern did wrong, you already have the high ground without arguments like this.

</comment><comment><USER43> When I read this issue I think it just reflects poorly on the author of the issue. I see no reason to assume ill will. Notification of violating the license is definitely needed, but the tone of the issue is uncalled for.

</comment><comment><USER44> What would you call what actually happened here? Whitelabeling? It doesn't appear to be a license violation since no code from the other project is included here, but I presume this repo basically wraps Gemstash's functionality, and doesn't really mention (outside of the code itself) that that is what it is doing.

It may not be a license violation, but "Google Cloud Gemserver", if it is functionally similar to Gemstash's own functionality, sounds like a rebranding, which... feels uncomfortable?

</comment><comment><USER45> This looks more like a case of Google hate more than a MIT license violation. I've looked at the repos and as others mention, the project is not a fork but a wrapper and they share no code. Others have also mentioned that the author of the issue has made clear his dislike for Google. Combined with the throwaway account posting to HN 30 mins after, this smells fishy.

</comment><comment><USER46> It doesn't look like the guy copied code. I can't see where the google guy copied code.

</comment><comment><USER47> Where do we see that it was an intern ?

<comment><USER48> There's only one contributor to the repo, Arham Ahmed, arhamahmed, Computer Engineering Student (BASc) 2019 at @uWaterloo

<comment><USER17> 2019?

<comment><USER49> Date of expected graduation, probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This should probably be re-titled now that it's been resolved. @dang is this possible?

</comment><comment><USER51> The original code and license was still there on GitHub (albeit in a different project). So in legal terms, is there even an issue?

In other words, does the law make a distinction between a git repo and a website like GitHub?

</comment><comment><USER52> Title is misleading. Doubt OP (using a throwaway account) even read the comments; great work.

</comment><comment><USER53> Did anyone actually read the issue comments? Or just the headline?

</comment><comment><USER54> Plot twist: this is actually all staged by Google to get some attention to their project.

</comment><comment><USER55> I bet his manager did not emphasize the importance of licensing external codes, although this kind of licensing issue must have been covered during some orientations at google.

</comment><comment><USER56> So, it seems there is way more backstory to this than the issue spells out (or only starts to). Can anyone provide a bit more context? Was this done in a backhanded, malicious way? Did Google tell their intern to start this project, or is it his side project? I mean, it's not cool either way, just curious.

<comment><USER57> >Can anyone provide a bit more context? Was this done in a backhanded, malicious way?

according to the complaint he removed the existing licenses and replaced them with apache. That sounds kinda sneaky

<comment><USER58> > according to the complaint he removed the existing licenses and replaced > them with apache. That sounds kinda sneaky

That can't be the whole of it, though, right? Because the MIT license allows relicensing. For example, I can redistribute an MIT-licensed project as part of a GPL-licensed one, although I do still have to include the original MIT license as part of the project, even if the whole project is redistributed under different terms.

It's not really the right way to handle a relicensing, but to be quite honest, it's easy to make minor technical mistakes with free software licensing even if you're acting in good faith and trying to do something that is ultimately permitted by the license

Heck, even the term "MIT license" is technically not recommended by the FSF, as it's ambiguous (they recommend the unambiguous and equivalent term "X11 license")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> That is not cool. Respect the licence the original author used or just stay the f __* away.</comment>


Finding the best Wifi channel on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://osxdaily.com/2013/12/11/find-best-wi-fi-channel-wireless-tool-mac/

<comment><USER2> the process is a tiny bit different in yosemite, but I had no idea this existed and it is great.</comment>


Amazon S3 file system with improved caching: the itch I scratched over Christmas - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/russross/s3fslite

<comment><USER2> This project has one of the best READMEs I've seen in recent days of looking at a lot of open source code. Good overview, well written.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. This looks like a real version of the Ruby fusefs I wrote to grok all of the s3organizer vs. s3sync vs. whatever schemes for differentiating files vs. directories in S3:

<http://github.com/stephenh/s3fsr>

Given I used Ruby's fusefs, nothing is streamed, and its single threaded, limitations I assume this C++ implementation doesn't have to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would it be possible to reuse an existing HTTP caching solution like squid or nginx for the caching since s3 exposes a REST api?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure it would interact nicely with the request authentication system that S3 uses.

I think a generic cache layer would be a better solution. A bit of googling turns up fuse-cache, which sounds like about the right thing (although I haven't actually examined it in detail), or fs-cache, which also sounds like a discrete cache layer to be added to any file system. Basically, you mount it, and it passes requests through to any other mount (like s3fslite) while adding an on-disk cache layer.

I haven't tested any of these, but that seems like an approach worth pursuing.

\- Russ

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice! I was rather disappointed with the FuseOverAmazon version I tried a couple of months ago. I will definitely give this a try. Thanks for the great documentation on how to use it as well.

Great job!

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat! Rather than having to issue a find, perhaps a background task that primes the cache as soon as you mount?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hesitant to automatically fire off that many requests, especially when they may not end up being necessary. If you are using the same machine and preserving the cache, it will already be primed each time you mount the bucket, except the first time (or any time you delete the cache database file).

Using find is just a trick I used whenever I'd corrupt the cache or change the DB schema while developing it, and then wanted to go in and test it again interactively.

I should probably mention that reducing the number of requests was one of my primary goals. The first time I played with s3fs (the one I forked), my bill for the month was roughly 10% storage and bandwidth, and 90% requests (or was it 20/80?).

Anyway, thanks for the feedback; I do appreciate it!

\- Russ

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this use http to upload everything to S3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it does. Adding https as an option is something I'll probably look into.

edit: It uses libcurl for transfers, and libcurl supports https, so getting a secure connection is as simple as adding the option:

        url=https://s3.amazonaws.com

at mount time.

I've added that to the README file.</comment></comment>


MacOS 10.14 deprecates OpenGL and OpenCL - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/macos/whats-new#deprecationofopenglandopencl <comment><USER2> This thread seems similar to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17231593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17231593), which was closed an hour ago as "dupe".

Main discussion seems to be at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17231442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17231442).

<comment><USER3> We've merged this into the one previously marked [dupe] and un-duped it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What does this mean for WebGL support on Mac?</comment>


Ash HN: How much would you pay for.? - <AUTHOR> I'm building an app to give designers, developers, marketers or anyone the ability to create a directory scaffold for their project whatever that could be. I'm looking into monetising it by selling a long term subscription as there are running costs with the settings for the "templates" being saved in the cloud and wondered what people would think is a fair price on a monthly, annual or perpetual basis? <comment><USER2> Put 4 class of prices:

\- free (with watermark/no cloud storage/whatever restrictions) \- minimum (2-5€/month) \- advanced (10-15/month) \- enterprise (on number of clients)

For sure you can get as much as possible and later you might adjust those classes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, makes perfect sense; not sure of what other features to add right now so might base it on number of seats to suit other organisations more.</comment></comment>


A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ <comment><USER2> I came to submit this and someone beat me to it. I am blown away by the visuals for this page. You can think you're pretty clever or creative and then you see something awesome like this and...sigh.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really nice web page, it uses integrated visualizations to great effect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Phenomenal ... I learned a lot. I wish this were voted higher</comment>


Show HN: UI components for you and I – Farhad Ghayour - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FarhadG/ui-react <comment><AUTHOR> Just released by Farhad Ghayour; #JSChannel 2017 Conference.

<comment><USER2> 'Show HN' is a place for people to post their own work. Regular hacker news submissions are where to post when showing Hacker News someone else's work.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Validate my startup idea for a personal knowledge store - <AUTHOR> Hi, i'm thinking about developing a personal knowledge store,
where you can simply send a link, text, images, youtube url ...
and it will get indexed with additional metadata extracted
from the source. Then it'll allow the user to fuzzy search the
store including the metadata.
example 1:
you send a link to an article:
- article's title gets indexed
- article's content gets indexed
- article's machine extracted meaning/tags get indexed
example 2:
you send an imdb link to a film:
- film metadata is extracted (author, score ..), indexed
and so on for any kind of knowledge you want to store.
Then you can search and match into everything that it's indexed. Every stored information will have a custom view attached allowing the
user to interact with it.
(example, set that you have seen a film inserted or add a score.)
Would you pay for something like that? If so how much? <comment><USER2> Sounds like evernote. Which I use for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for commenting, the main difference would be that in evernote you have to structure your knowledge manually, by tagging, creating notebooks & co, here i'm proposing something that extracts info from every link/text you send. If you want to create a movie database, in evernote, you would have to manually insert every movie info you want to store and choose a sensible structure on how to store this data, with my idea you would just insert the link and all the extra data would be extracted and indexed allowing you then to search and create views.</comment></comment>


Human beings are born with numbers in the brain  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12847128 <comment><USER2> _In one test Charles was shown a pair of digits and asked to name the larger number. The bigger the gap, the faster most people can do this: they say "nine" faster when shown 9 and 2 than when shown 9 and 7. But with Charles, the reverse was the case—and the researchers could see why. Rather than telling the answer directly, he was counting on from one number (on his fingers) until he got to the other, which meant he must have started at the smaller, or he got to ten, in which case he must have started at the bigger. Most strikingly, he lacked the fundamental numerical ability possessed by most newborns: being able to tell the number of objects in a small group simply by looking. When asked how many dots were on a sheet of paper, he counted on his fingers—even when there were only two.

Charles's deficit, though severe, seemed to affect his numerical abilities alone. Numerical deficits in people of otherwise normal abilities can be even more striking in cases of brain damage. Lisa Cipolotti, a neuropsychologist, studied a Signora Gaddi, who used to run a hotel and keep its accounts. After a stroke she could find the number of things in a small group only by counting—when asked how many arms a crucifix had, she got Dr Cipolotti to hold out her arms so she could count them. Signora Gaddi's problems seemed to affect only numbers. She could still read, speak and reason, remember historical and geographical facts, and order objects by their physical size.

In fact, Signora Gaddi's difficulties went even deeper than Charles's. The stroke which damaged her innate understanding of small numbers also robbed her of the entire numerical edifice built on that foundation. For her, numbers stopped at four. When asked to count up from one, she got to four and no further. If there were more than four dots on a page she could not count them. She could not say how old she was or how many days were in a week, or even tell the time._

Scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article includes the interesting comment that a fairly eminent geometrician had little number sense of the kind described in the article. One of the wonderful things about mathematics is that it combines reasoning about discrete, countable things, that is numbers, with reasoning about shapes, that is geometry. An especially good book about both aspects of mathematics is John Stillwell's Numbers and Geometry.

[http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/038...](http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/0387982892/)

I'll quote a bit of Stillwell's preface to give the flavor of the book:

"What should every aspiring mathematician know? The answer for most of the 20th century has been: calculus. . . . Mathematics today is . . . much more than calculus; and the calculus now taught is, sadly, much less than it used to be. Little by little, calculus has been deprived of the algebra, geometry, and logic it needs to sustain it, until many institutions have had to put it on high-tech life-support systems. A subject struggling to survive is hardly a good introduction to the vigor of real mathematics.

". . . . In the current situation, we need to revive not only calculus, but also algebra, geometry, and the whole idea that mathematics is a rigorous, cumulative discipline in which each mathematician stands on the shoulders of giants.

"The best way to teach real mathematics, I believe, is to start deeper down, with the elementary ideas of number and space. Everyone concedes that these are fundamental, but they have been scandalously neglected, perhaps in the naive belief that anyone learning calculus has outgrown them. In fact, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry can never be outgrown, and the most rewarding path to higher mathematics sustains their development alongside the 'advanced' branches such as calculus. Also, by maintaining ties between these disciplines, it is possible to present a more unified view of mathematics, yet at the same time to include more spice and variety."

A more controversial, and plenty spicy, comment on the algebraic approach to mathematics as contrasted with the geometric approach to mathematics is Paul Halmos's article, "Applied Mathematics Is Bad Mathematics,"

[http://books.google.com/books?id=rQ6FAAAAIAAJ&q=Halmos+A...](http://books.google.com/books?id=rQ6FAAAAIAAJ&q=Halmos+Applied+Mathematics+Is+Bad+Mathematics&dq=Halmos+Applied+Mathematics+Is+Bad+Mathematics&ei=DKJaSZT8F5GoM8mguN8B&client=firefox-a&pgis=1)

(that's not a full-text view of the article)

which I disagree with, as maybe Halmos intended his provocative title to be disagreed with.

<comment><USER4> Meta-comment: Could we please fix the quoted-text-not-wrapping 'problem' on this site? I hate having to scroll x,000 pixels to read a comment just because someone is using <pre> or whatever it is.

FF3 on OS X.

<comment><USER5> It's intentional; people just abuse it (myself included).

Indented text is intended to display code, which should not be wrapped by the browser's width.

It's up to the poster to format their text accordingly.

<comment><USER6> In that case, we need

        overflow: auto;

<comment><USER7> I think it's there but doesn't work with FF3.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't _seem_ to be: <http://ycombinator.com/news.css>

Although if they're serving a custom .css file to my Firefox 3 that doesn't include that precisely because it doesn't work, I wouldn't know. wget got the same pre stuff in the last two lines, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Phr33 st00f pl0x - <AUTHOR> http://protolif.com/blog/2013/6/5/phr33-st00f-pl0x

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I know where to start.

Firstly, _"Lots of well-meaning people in the tech industry are giving free things to girls."_ I don't think this stretches to giving unqualified non- programmers programming jobs (which is the inference I'm taking from the piece). I also don't think it's as industry-destroying as OP suggests. I _do_ believe that there's a possibility that some companies try harder to find qualified women so that it's more likely that a less qualified man gets pushed out, but that's not at all the same as "free stuff".

Secondly, programming _is_ difficult. I went to school to learn how to do it, even though I started way back in my teens. Lots of other folk on here went to school for it too. Like any skilled technical job, you wouldn't expect to pick your way through the minefield of complex concepts, principles, and fundamentals and just whack away at tools until you get what you want. It's _hard_ , so anyone who blames some arbitrary selection criteria because they're underqualified should look at the underqualified bit before the other criteria.

It's hard knowing that you're not good enough to follow your dream. The solution is to _get better_ , not blame someone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I want to deny opportunities to others in order to preserve my own advantage"

<comment><USER4> "I don't want to provide extras to others as that would devalue their accomplishments, hence supporting prejudice"

<comment><USER3> I'm not at all a fan of positive discrimination.

However, the author is saying that we shouldn't give out any opportunities because programming is supposed to be hard.

I see that as equivalent to saying programming should be restricted to the wealthiest, most privileged of society: those who can afford to take the risk and time and expense of overcoming any inherent obstacles.

The latter case is absolutely worse.

Ways of supporting people into the industry need to be found (ideally, equally), rather than complaining about and pissing on existing efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh goody, yet another man's opinion on the REAL problem women face that just so happens to align exactly with the status quo.

<comment><USER6> You're denying a man to have an opinion about sexism? That's sexism! (obviously joking)</comment></comment>


Our culture has two types of forgetting - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/68/context/how-well-forget-john-lennon <comment><USER3> > We forget Elvis because the Beatles came up [..]

This is how everyone perceives it, but is it true? The Beatles were active from 1960 until their break-up in 1970 while Elvis worked from 1953 until his death in 1977. His international hit _" In the Ghetto"_ was released in 1969, a time when the Beatles were already divided and their break-up was imminent. In reality the Beatles and Elvis were very much contemporaries.

And as an aside: It always amused me that Tarentino got that right in the _" Beatles people vs Elvis people"_ scene. Beatles and Stones are compared all the time because they are perceived to be from the same generation. Except for the Tarentino scene I have never heard a comparison like that between the Beatles and Elvis - it is always just Elvis before, Beatles after.

<comment><USER4> The Beatles absolutely replaced Elvis as "The Biggest Thing in America" in the early 60s. Yes he had successes and large shows after that, but there is also something that he lost while he was making all those stupid movies.

<comment><USER5> Elvis lost relevance with youth culture, gained weight and became a parody of himself. He was a one-trick pony (a white artist making the style of black music acceptable for a primarily white audience in a segregationist culture,) but inevitably rock as a genre and American culture as a whole evolved beyond his capabilities.

The Beatles, meanwhile, were constantly evolving and their style changed with the times, so they were able to stick around a bit longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm impressed by the numerous times the person being interviewed says "I don't know." Refreshing and reflects and intellectual humility that allows folks like him to uncover unique perspectives.

</comment><comment><USER7> A few years back, there was an interesting Chuck Klosterman article about cultural memory: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/which-rock- star-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/which-rock-star-will- historians-of-the-future-remember.html)

> I imagine a college classroom in 300 years, in which a hip instructor is > leading a tutorial filled with students. These students relate to rock music > with no more fluency than they do the music of Mesopotamia: It's a style > they've learned to recognize, but just barely (and only because they've > taken this specific class). Nobody in the room can name more than two rock > songs, except the professor. He explains the sonic structure of rock, its > origins, the way it served as cultural currency and how it shaped and > defined three generations of a global superpower. He shows the class a > photo, or perhaps a hologram, of an artist who has been intentionally > selected to epitomize the entire concept. For these future students, that > singular image defines what rock was.

> So what's the image?

</comment><comment><USER8> >I don't think we're amusing ourselves to death. I'm not like that much of a pessimist. I do think life is also about enjoying the ride, not just about doing important things.

>And new mediums like TikTok, a kind of Twitter for videos, are great for creative expression. People are doing amazing little performance skits on TikTok.

Tiktok I see is just another trend, like Vines, Yikyak, possibly even Snapchat in the near future.

There are already plenty of platforms for creative expression, the problem is that young people cannot afford to express themselves, whether it's the digital paper trail that comes back to haunt them, being buried beneath other 'shock' and clickbait content, and the real-life pressures and expectations.

You don't see any social or political commentary on these platforms unless it's the latest "beef" between internet personalities. This is all for our amusement and docile nature.

<comment><USER9> >Yikyak

Funny, I had completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it even though it was popular at my university.

In relation to trends, TikTok itself only became popular in the West when it merged with musical.ly, a very similar app.

Those annoying YouTube ads for TikTok you might see replaced musical.ly ads. I remember wondering if they were the same product rebranded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know this is a shallow remark and the song was only used as an example but the forgetting of _Imagine_ can not happen fast enough, in my opinion. It cheered me to know that there are people unfamiliar with it. Which I guess speaks to the benefits of forgetting.

<comment><USER11> While I believe in free expression, I also believe the internet should show a human-like characteristic to forget i.e. old items, news, etc., non-scientific news and such should slowly decay in relevance and drift downward in indexing, so that that idiotic tweet and that drunken spouting off by Jill ten years ago doesn't haunt her as if she did it just yesterday.

People make mistakes, we are fallible. Unless it's a felony, these things should not haunt people who have learned and matured enough to have not made the mistakes recently (and thus recorded/indexed and available)

<comment><USER12> > People make mistakes, we are fallible. Unless it's a felony, these things > should not haunt people who have learned and matured enough to have not made > the mistakes recently.

Do you have a personal philosophical justification for stating that a felony _should_ continue to haunt people who have learned and matured enough not to do them again? If so, why? (or is this more of a practical "well we don't have a chance in Hell of getting the Justice system on board to forget felonies" type of exclusion)

<comment><USER13> There is no getting past rape, murder, or kidnapping. Those crimes change who you are. There should be a social stigma attached to being a rapist, a murderer, or a kidnapper, even if the felon feels bad about it afterwards.

In other words, the defining characteristic of a felony is that it's the kind of crime that's so serious that it can't just be forgotten and moved past. Sadly our legislatures are rather daft sometimes, so many lesser crimes are legally classified as felonies.

<comment><USER14> _> the defining characteristic of a felony_

I thought the defining characteristic was the extent to which it is pursued and punished by the law. Off the top of my head I can think of one or two felonious charges that at least "arguably" don't satisfy your definition.

Law often follows morality but one should be wary of mistaking them for the same thing.

EDIT sorry I read through your comment again and realised you pretty much end up in agreement, though we perhaps start at different points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If "Imagine" and other caltural icons are decaying, then "Forrest Gump" should display exponential decay.

Enjoy if you still "get it". It's a "classic": [https://youtu.be/rLDy4Glw9cY](https://youtu.be/rLDy4Glw9cY)

<comment><USER14> Looking at that clip, it's remarkable that Forest Gump isn't just a nostalgia flick but a special effects tour de force... there's very definitely some showboating going on at the start with Lennon ducking in and around Forest. Perhaps the trained eye can discern subtle lighting glitches that give the game away but in the 90s this was mind-blowing.

<comment><USER16> the video was great - still seems to hold up ok, maybe because it was showing something which already looked dated at the time. the voicework got me - <USER2> just a few words in a wrong accent bugs me with beatles stuff :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Imagine" was performed at the 2012 Olympic closing ceremony, so at least 10% of people on Earth this decade have heard it, whether they remember or not.

</comment><comment><USER18> I still think that Coldplay is going to be forgotten way faster than Lennon though.

</comment><comment><USER19> > What happened is the people who collected Elvis memorabilia started to die. > Their families were stuck with all of this Elvis stuff and trying to sell > it. But all of the people who were buyers were also dying.

I see this happening with collector cars, too. The interest in Model T's has really dissipated, and the muscle cars are starting to fade, too.

<comment><USER20> The market price of classic muscle cars is everything but fading.

<comment><USER19> There's little interest in them with young people. It's all old people now.

<comment><USER20> The fast and furious franchise was all about old people, and mostly watched by old people I guess?

<comment><USER19> In the first one, the only muscle car appeared briefly and then was promptly destroyed. The cars used in it were much newer.

I didn't watch the later ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I call it the cultural event horizon.

</comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me a lot of the following xkcd comic: [https://xkcd.com/1262/](https://xkcd.com/1262/)</comment>


Ask HN: What to Realistically Expect from Schools? - <AUTHOR> I hear a lot of debate about how broken the schooling system is and how it needs to get better, however, when you get into the nitty-gritty of things, it seems like the expectations are all over the place. A lot of parents just want the school to do the parenting.
As a parent of 2, I have thought about this long and hard but I am yet to come up with a concrete set of realistic expectations from the current schooling system. My perspective is, if I know what to expect, I would be better prepared to fill the gaps.
What is your expectation from the current schooling system? <comment><USER2> I don't think the schooling system does this, but I think a schooling system should instill in the students a desire to learn and the tools to be able to learn what they want to learn. Some of these tools would be the learning how to be determined and persistent when something is difficult. I also think literacy is highly important, to be able to read and actually understand what you're reading. This will help you refine your thinking as language and thought is connected, it will help in all areas of learning as you often read to learn. Literacy will also help you be able to express yourself, which is important. To be able to express your thoughts with clarity so you're able to contribute your ideas and thoughts effectively.</comment>


Rowhammer, Xcode, and the future of application distribution - <AUTHOR> https://dirk.to/blog/2015/03/11/rowhammer-xcode-future-of-application-distribution.html

<comment><USER2> Url changed from [https://lobste.rs/s/4zroys/rowhammer_xcode_and_the_future_of...](https://lobste.rs/s/4zroys/rowhammer_xcode_and_the_future_of_application_distribution), which points to this.</comment>


Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared of Capitalism, Not Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-hawking-capitalism-robots_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15?ir=Technology&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067 <comment><USER2> There's a theory that poor countries discovering oil tend to get less democratic and more corrupt since the elite doesn't need most of the citizens for wealth extraction anymore - they just need to have enough mercenaries to guard the oil fields.

</comment><comment><USER3> Capitalism actively promotes greed and for some reason our minds have been set to take this as a good thing. I love Propaganda</comment>


7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution (Google Talk) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvOHEA_xd2A#t=2m16s

<comment><USER2> Better to describe it as a Google Lecture, because otherwise it sounds like you are talking about the Google Talk service.

<comment><USER3> Google TechTalk</comment></comment>