Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally <comment><USER2> The idea of this being an engineered virus wittingly unleashed on the world by some malevolent Party conspirators strains credulity--the notion is preposterous, especially from a country as obsessed with internal stability as China.

However, the Wuhan pathogen research laboratory is still a worthy source to consider relating to this virus. Accidents DO happen, and China has a history of making mistakes leading to dangerous pathogens escaping their labs.

In 2004, SARS escaped a BS-3 lab in Beijing, infecting several and killing at least one:

" In April 2004, China reported a case of SARS in a nurse who had cared for a researcher at the Chinese National Institute of Virology. While ill, the researcher had traveled twice by train from Beijing to Anhui province, where she was nursed by her mother, a physician, who fell ill and died. The nurse in turn infected five third-generation cases, causing no deaths.

Subsequent investigation uncovered three unrelated laboratory infections in different researchers at the NIV. At least of two primary patients had never worked with live SARS virus. Many shortcomings in biosecurity were found at the NIV, and the specific cause of the outbreak was traced to an inadequately inactivated preparation of SARS virus that was used in general (that is, not biosecure) laboratory areas, including one where the primary cases worked. It had not been tested to confirm its safety after inactivation, as it should have been."

[https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous- viruses-c...](https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/how-dangerous-viruses- could-escape-from-laboratories.html)

Were a lab accident the source of this outbreak, you can bet your last dollar that the CCP would go to extreme lengths to hide that fact.

<comment><USER3> Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested after we received a sample and sequenced it (~36 hours), I think it is possible (possible! not likely!) that we engineered it _, and they paid a researcher to give them a copy.

_ * Some pretty heavy researchers in the US say that it (the virus) was not human-engineered. I find their reasoning spurious, but they know more than I do.

<comment><USER4> > Given the rapidity with which the Harvard chemical-biologist was arrested > after we received a sample and sequenced it

I'd love to read more. Do you have a link?

<comment><USER5> I think this might be the official US Justice Department link. It's long, but worth reading the whole thing since it is primary source and not some newspaper summary:

[https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university- professor-...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor- and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related)

 _" The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University's Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People's Republic of China."_

...

 _" Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a "Strategic Scientist" at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China's Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017. China's Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China's scientific development, economic prosperity and national security."_

<comment><USER6> Viruses are not Lieber's field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The market resides in the heart of the city so it could be that there was some other route of transmission through carriers without symptoms, animals etc.

To claim that this came from a lab certain requires more evidence than its mere existence. The whole RNA sequence is available online and so far no expert to my knowledge has claimed it looks synthetic.

<comment><USER8> Parts of the HIV virus have been identified in it: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf+html)

"Our analysis of the spike glycoprotein of 2019-nCoV revealed several interesting findings: First, we identified 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein that are not present in any other coronavirus reported till date. To our surprise, all the 4 inserts in the 2019-nCoV mapped to It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jan. 31, 2020; doi: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871](http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871). The copyright holder for this short segments of amino acids in the HIV-1 gp120 and Gag among all annotated virus proteins in the NCBI database. This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the 2019- nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag is unlikely to be fortuitous."

[https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/122330594672370...](https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1223305946723704832)

<comment><USER9> Other people have written about the HIV-lookalike segment mentioned in that paper and believe it is likely due to chance [https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/122336155449582387...](https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1223361554495823872)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30260-9/fulltext)

Quote: 75 815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. The epidemic doubling time was 6·4 days. We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.

<comment><USER11> To my layman's ears, some of the conclusions in the cited Lancet article sound chilling, e.g. "...given the substantial volume of case importation from Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple major Chinese cities. Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing 2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020."

Any comments on the soundness of the methodology used?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace"

How do they know, when its know that the virus can be spread before symptoms kick in? ([https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus- asympt...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic- spread-study/index.html))

</comment><comment><USER13> > "The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that > marketplace," Lucey asserts.

What's the original source for the "Wuhan seafood market" hypothesis?

<comment><USER14> Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution better.

<comment><USER15> Have they seen this strain among animal populations? It seems logical to establish that animal populations can carry it, and in doing so it should be traceable there.

It seems in the avian flu they had established very early on the lineage of it. It seems very unlikely that they will not be able to identify patient zero.

There was a very far out article on zerohedge (not making any claims as to the legitimacy of the article or the publication) which had some interesting references about recent coronavirus research in facilities outside of China. I wouldn't normally promote it but there are some interesting references in there. [https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal- coron...](https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus- canada-and-weaponize-it)

<comment><USER16> This coronavirus is close to some found in bats and 80% similar to SARS which came from bats through civets. Wouldn't expect exact strain to be found in wild cause have to mutate to jump to humans. The question is how got to humans from bats since don't think was direct connection. One paper suggested snakes but others don't think that is likely.

[https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu- theo...](https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theory/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've more faith in the bat origin theory than the others so far.

Don't know if the science is solid, but given how riddled bats are with all kinds of nasty stuff, you probably don't want to be eating that unless you're particularly keen on developing an exotic disease.

<comment><USER18> You can still have a man-made virus with the original source being bats.

[https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made- coronavi...](https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus- triggers-debate-34502)

If you're interested in the open speculation, this guy does a pretty good breakdown of all the talking points:

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1221990534643929089.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The cognitive dissonance you feel between what a government says and what the truth is often the first sign that the government is authoritarian.

<comment> rkuykendall-com This is the FIRST sign that the Chinese government is authoritarian??

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking- in-f...](https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-lurking-in-feces-may- reveal-hidden-risk-of-spread-11580556507678.html)

"The initial focus of case detection was on patients with pneumonia, but we now understand that some patients can present with gastrointestinal symptoms,"

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah I have a hard time believing it has been definitively proven that the market was the source of the virus. Wouldn't that mean they have the carcass of whatever animal transmitted the virus in their possession? And did the first person known to have contracted it actually say they went there?

<comment><USER22> Why would they have a carcass of something someone ate at least a week before they got sick they caught the virus?

<comment><USER23> That's exactly the point of the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not a fan of this title. It's verbose without being explicit. Should be "Wuhan seafood may not be source of coronavirus outbreak". Everyone already knows it's a novel virus spreading globally, just call it by its name.

<comment><USER25> Its name is novel coronavirus or more specifically "2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)". There are many coronaviruses that just cause colds. There's also SARS, MERS, and now nCoV that are a lot more deadly.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for that clarification! I think the title makes more sense if you know about the novel prefix (which I didn't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu6R79FIzZo) This guy's insight and references seem very interesting. Yes, this is a single persons opinion on this.

</comment><comment><USER26> the video of oriental people eating bat soup was taken in a restaurant in micronesia

</comment><comment><USER27> I hate to ask again, but why is this submission _also_ getting heavily penalized?

It seems like maybe all 2019-nCoV posts are getting penalized by mod(s) silently? Because this one and the last one an hour ago are. [0]

I am not making any statements about whether that is sensible or not - but why not comment on why, like you've so often done in other cases?

0\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205338)

<comment><USER28> Major ongoing stories, especially sensational ones like a new epidemic, lead to tons of copycat and follow-up posts. In order for the front page not to fill up with coronavirus stories, or some other sensation du jour, we try to downweight follow-up posts unless there is significant new information. Otherwise the threads fill up with repetition of what's already been said, wild speculation, or both.

We hit on the "significant new information" test after the Snowden storm of 2013, when users justly complained that the front page had become inundated with too many articles that added nothing substantial and were just triggering repeat threads. As a discussion becomes repetitive, it also tends to become wilder and more flame-prone—as if the mind has to resort to that to amuse itself, since there's nothing new to sink its teeth into.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow- up&sort=byDate&type=comment)

Since HN's organizing value is intellectual curiosity, repetition and groundless speculation are among the things most to be avoided here. That's why we moderate that way.

<comment><USER29> Excellent reasoning. Thank you very much for your work of keeping this place sane!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This conspiracy idea is quite far fetched. And it was probably spread as fake news, by someone with a political agenda to smear the reputation of China worldwide. (And if you've been watching closely, this is a very well funded campaign, that has been very active for the past 3 years.)

But let's try to think this through.

If they (China) were researching it, then it is possible that this could've accidentally escaped the lab. Although that is some serious professional incompetence. And if they are intelligent and skilled enough to work with dangerous diseases, then I'm sure they have proper containment and stringent decontamination processes in place.

However, if this was a bioweapon, then a few arguments fall apart.

(1) If they engineered it, then they should've had the genome already. Instead, they had to capture the strain, and sequence its genome, and it took them three weeks to complete the sequencing. And then, they shared it with the world, the CDC, the WHO, in order to help foreign countries contain it.

For comparison, the CDC took over 2 months to sequence the Ebola virus. The Chinese sequenced this virus in 3 weeks. Granted, technology and techniques improved in the intervening years.

So that begs the question: If this was a bioweapon, then why would they quickly share its genome with the world? Why not just keep it for themselves, while they work out some cure, and let the rest of the world flounder and die off?

Their strength comes from their economic engine, and their exports to the world. They can't make things for foreign markets, if those other countries are dying from some bioweapon that was unleashed on the world.

(2) If this was a bioweapon, and then they 'accidentally' released it on themselves, which makes no sense, then what is the goal? Because the economic fallout from this thing will cause billions in economic damages. As well as potentially causing social instability, for a country that prizes stability over all else. And the political fallout will be even higher.

(3) The Chinese are not suicidal. They were attacked with biological and chemical warfare by the Japanese in the 1930s. They were threatened with nuclear annihilation by MacArthur (to drop 50 atomic bombs) during the Korean War in the 1950s, and were also likely subjected to biological warfare too. The rest of the Western world prefers to ignore this, but they can never forget, because their people actually died from biological warfare.

So given all that, they have first hand experience of what biological warfare will do. So if they are researching bioweapons, then I'm pretty certain that they will have stringent procedures in place to contain it.

(4) And then there is the most logical argument, that this is a very poor bioweapon.

The goal of a bioweapon is to maximize immediate casualties, while minimizing uncontrollable transmissions to others. Basically, there is no point in using a weapon, if it ends up killing yourself.

<comment><USER31> China is, contrary to what media might want you to believe, not a sinister empire of evil. They are, however, a culture with a strict requirement to save your face at all cost.

Following Hanlon's Razor, never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. IF, and that's a big if, this virus was somehow bio-engineered, the most probable explanation is that it escaped from the adjacent lab due to humans making mistakes. Now what do you do in that situation? A virus you're legitimately researching escapes from a state sponsored lab. You try to cover it up, of course, which isn't even hard because it might have developed in nearby bats anyway. That way, nobody looses their face and you can try to fight the virus with everyone else.

That is an easier and more logical explanation than some "bioweapon".

<comment><USER32> I wouldn't even call this a Chinese trait exclusively. It's definitely more pronounced there, but when didn't governments and companies all over the world lie about mishaps until it wasn't possible to hide the truth anymore? Look back no further than Iran shooting down that plane. That thing was crystal clear, yet they tried to deny it at first. The difference is that the Chinese government _can_ mostly hide the truth when it comes to their own citizens though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There is a recently opened P4 biolab in Wuhan within miles of the seafood market in question, with researchers who have recently been working with and publishing on the topic of Corona viruses, including research on human transmission. Not to be sensationalist, and personally I think the title is alarmist, but are a number of suspicious elements to this story that are worth examining:

[https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov- part...](https://medium.com/@siradrianbond/coronavirus-2019-ncov- part-1-d6a338eed7c5)

<comment><USER34> Medium account was suspended...

<comment><USER33> [https://archive.is/kMl5m](https://archive.is/kMl5m)

<comment><USER35> Did anyone check out the claim that the address of the Wuhan Lab was moved in google maps?

<comment><USER35> [https://goo.gl/maps/mt1nrMnP6A8QAXpn9](https://goo.gl/maps/mt1nrMnP6A8QAXpn9)

Looks like it's in both places but wasn't "moved" like in that link

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love laughing at conspiracy theories like the fake moon landing, the flat earth theory, and ancient astronauts built the pyramids, but this insinuation is a step too far.

</comment><comment><USER36> Claiming that this is a synthetic virus is pretty much the height of racism and is deeply unscientific. I hope sciencemag rescinds this story after the backlash.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag"

[https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30....](https://biorxiv-cache.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/2020.01.30.927871.full.pdf)

> [ABSTRACT] _We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 > novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. > We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the > 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino > acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in > the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being > discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the > 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding > site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have > identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of > HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown > insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of > this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus._

<comment><USER38> This is laughable.

Table 1 shows four alignments. The first two are only six contiguous residues, so can easily happen by chance. Three has multiple mistmatches as well as the gap (red). Four has an even larger gap to get the alignment.

Take any two viruses and there's a decent likelihood of finding similar alignments.

<comment><USER39> Thanks honestly reassuring.

\- Some layman.

<comment><USER40> They don't appear to even be matching entire sequences. An analogy might be "these two web pages both contain <div>*</div>! oh no!" while completely disregarding everything in the middle.

<comment><USER39> If it's as bad as it sounds, would this be a neophyte mistake or deliberate conspiracy mongering?

<comment><USER40> I don't know, nor am I in a position to really have an opinion on this, but it might even be as small of a reason as "hey I want to get published"

The PDF itself is MS Word, has numerous typos/little care (words like 'alingment'), random font changes back and forth between Times New Roman and the default MS Word font (Calibri?))

For HIV related fearmongering about "well, why would they know to treat it with HIV meds??", people are looking at this already because previous SARS-CoV has previous investigation with HIV medication, it is not unique to nCOV: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985565](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14985565), [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15144898](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15144898), [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14519691](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14519691) \- these are from 2003-2006.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Virus's mutate and with how climate change is affecting everything; wouldn't it be tragically ironic if climate change accelerated how fast the common cold (for example) mutates

Great and informative article unlike my comment

<comment><USER42> There are several links between climate change (of any origin) and the spread of pathogens. Not mutation rate that I know of, but the ability to break out of existing 'reserve' locations which persistently harbor them into areas where they're not normally found.

Case in point: the plague. Still very much alive in some areas of Asia and Africa, and localized outbreaks still occur today. But displacement of carriers species (e.g. rats) from those areas to others due to various climate-shift-induced pressures (such as too much or too little food, or human intrusion) can trigger outbreaks far and wide. The original plague period and spread was in many ways a perfect storm of factors but a re-occurrence is feasible (albeit today's improved knowledge of the cause, hygiene and containment measures should prevent it reaching anything like the scale once seen).

Another example: A few years back Myrtle Rust made its way over to NZ for the first recorded time, and one theory of how it got here was being carried on unusually warm/humid air currents from Australia which allowed it, as a kind of mold, to survive the journey.

Another vector: Melting permafrost releasing preserved pathogens to which today's populations (human and otherwise) have no immunity is another 'fun' climate change scenario. I find that one less plausible mostly because it would require human intrusion or some other means of transmission from the thawing site to hosts. But eh, maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> News at 7:00 the first African AIDS carrier may have not had sex with a monkey.

We really need to upvote this old racist meme?

It's from poor people. Poor people who live amongst wild animals. Aka farmers. It came from a rural location. Ie from a bat shitting on their rice while it dries.

Does noone get what the meme about lightning deaths reducing each year means? It's about with wealth, nature has less of a catastrophic effect on our lives in part because people move to cities.</comment>


Supplements for brain health show no benefit – a neurologist explains new study - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/supplements-for-brain-health-show-no-benefit-a-neurologist-explains-a-new-study-118977 <comment><USER2> I don't buy it. They cannot test every substance in existence.</comment>


DebateGraph - <AUTHOR> http://debategraph.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just thought this was a really interesting one (featured on BBC news website, due to it's use in visualising the "Gaza debate")

Inspires ideas of using it to view wiki and commons data in a "UML" format.</comment>


Ask HN: Funding websites with CPU-based cryptocurrency mining? - <AUTHOR> Reading reports about Pirate Bay and Showtime "forcing visitors to mine cryptocurrency for them",[0] I was initially shocked. But upon reflection, I believe that CPU-based cryptocurrency mining could be a viable alternative to tracking and ads for website funding.
From a privacy perspective, CPU load is clearly better than tracking. From a usability perspective, sluggishness from CPU load is arguably better than distraction from ads. There would also be less network load, which would especially benefit low-bandwidth users. And by the way, this would not involve persistent malware, and mining would end when users left websites.
Many have proposed micropayments as an alternative funding source for websites. I've often suggested cryptocurrency-based micropayments, with provisions for anonymity. With CPU-based mining, there's no added privacy loss. And it's a lot simpler, in that users don't need to buy tokens, manage accounts, etc.
It'd also be better from an equity perspective, I think. Even if micropayments for website use were low, they'd be a greater burden on people with less money. But everyone browsing has a requisite device. However, devices with weaker CPUs would need to work harder, and requisite mining might take longer, so there is some inequity.
What am I missing? Could this actually be a viable alternative to ads?
0) https://www.rt.com/news/404820-piratebay-showtime-cryptocurrency-mining/ <comment><USER2> The question is: how much money can you really make that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no clue. But Coinhive (source of the Showtime code) seems to think that it's worth it.[0] For Showtime, maybe someone was just going for coolness.

0) [https://coin-hive.com/](https://coin-hive.com/)</comment></comment>


How not to loose motivation about a side project? - <AUTHOR>

I always loose motivation about side projects.How to solve this problem ? <comment><USER2> I find it hard to lose motivation with beeminder (<https://www.beeminder.com/>) kicking my ass.

I used to have a lot of trouble.

</comment><comment><USER3> Put it out into the wild as soon as possible, and get some users/customers. Then there always be some rush, that keeps you motivated.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should always loose your motivation. That is no problem. Go wild!

Wait, did you mean "lose"?</comment>


ConductR: Typesafe's move in lightweight containers and distributed clusters - <AUTHOR> http://virtuslab.com/blog/conductr-typesafes-move-in-lightweight-containers-and-age-of-distributed-clusters/

<comment><USER2> I like the some of the ideas in ConductR, but reading about this stuff is a little concerning. It seems like a standalone clusterization solution, despite their claims about "oh, it works with your current stuff"\--well, no, my current stuff is Mesos, and it can do everything ConductR does and doesn't need you to "own my cloud" or whatever is behind this. (I don't want or need Mesosphere "owning my cloud", either, but I also don't have to deal with them and Mesos itself is independent enough to work with.)

As a platform/infrastructure architect, I'm worried by the co-opting of generally cooperative software tools around deployment and system management by would-be, venture-backed conquerors. None of these companies--ConductR, Docker, CoreOS, Mesosphere, Atlas--feel like they're about doing the right thing for the consumer (the consuming enterprise), it's about planting one's flag and getting one's pound of flesh out of them. You must buy into _our_ universe, so that you will never leave. Cooperation is a better long-term solution than conquest. Conquerors eventually lose, but they hurt a lot of people in the process.

I have this terrible feeling that we're fucking all this up, and I don't know how to fix it.

<comment><USER3> An alternative you might consider is Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry is a full-featured PaaS for which the IP belongs to a foundation.

Votes are given out according to contributions, so currently Pivotal and IBM are the leaders on it. The current board has representatives from Pivotal, IBM, EMC, HP, VMWare, Intel, SAP, ActiveState and Swisscom. The Cloud Foundry Foundation's operations and admin are handled by the Linux Foundation, funded by 40-something corporate members.

You can play with a full Cloud Foundry system by signing up to Pivotal Web Services[1] or IBM BlueMix[2]. Or you can play with the developer-friendly core component, Lattice[3].

Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal Labs and for a while I worked on secondment to the CF Buildpacks team. I'm a one-eyed fanboy, so YMMV.

[1] [http://run.pivotal.io/](http://run.pivotal.io/)

[2] [https://console.ng.bluemix.net/](https://console.ng.bluemix.net/)

[3] [http://lattice.cf](http://lattice.cf)

<comment><USER2> Huh, so this is a new one on me. I'm not a big fan of PaaS solutions (IaaS is fine, though), but looking at this--you know, Lattice itself seems really cool. It seems like a good compromise between Mesos's (unnecessary, for the 90% case) complexity and flexibility and freedom. I think I'll be giving this a solid look. Thank you for the pointer. :)

<comment><USER3> Any time. We're really good at explaining to F1000s why they need to switch to using a PaaS. But we suck at making ordinary devs aware of all the cool stuff we're up to.

I like the work that my peers do, so I take every opportunity to spruik it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adblock Plus, scourge of websites, seeks industry deal - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/adblock-plus-scourge-websites-seeks-industry-deal-054819346.html;_ylt=AwrC1CnQVLdWzlQAWc_QtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByNXM5bzY5BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg-- <comment><USER2> I thought ABP was the yesterday's news of ad blocking. The memory footprint problem alone was enough to get me to switch to µBlock, let alone shenanigans like this.

<comment><USER3> To you and I and the majority of readers here - yes. But to the average internet user Adblock plus is by far and large the most popular.

<comment><USER4> The average internet user doesn't use any adblock. Those that use ABP will swiftly find and change to the alternative the moment they start noticing ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this business model plain extortion? If you want to create an open- source adblocker, fine. That's your rights to publish that software, and it's within the rights of users to run that software.

But requesting money for making modifications against the interest of users to the default settings of that software is just sleazy; I can't think of anything that would make this sleaze illegal, but it's still no good.

<comment><USER6> Yup. The problem with "solving" ad blocking is that it isn't lucrative. Ad blockers are trivial to create, but very difficult to monetize. These guys are as much scumbags as shady advertisers who bombard you with terrible ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I find most distressing about all the debate re ad-blocking is the built- in assumption that advertising is the only way we could possibly fund content creation on the web: that it all just comes down to compromising on what the "acceptable" level of advertising is.

I don't accept that premise. The debate should be framed as "Adverting: is it good or bad?" but somehow we let it slide into "Advertising: should it be extremely obnoxious or slightly less obnoxious?"

Advertising changed the web, it made it worse in most ways -- it encourages a constant stream of low-value content that serves as a framing device for banner slots. If advertising magically disappeared one day, I think nearly all kinds of website would be able to find a revenue model that works (in most cases it would boil down to "make less content, of higher value, that people would actually be willing to pay for.")

The only types of sites that literally could not survive without an advertising-based revenue model are the clickbait listicle aggregators of other peoples' content. Which, yeah, I'm kind of okay with. People would still find their way to their memes and cat videos, they'd just do it on a hobbyist level. Ultimately we'd all, publishers and end users alike, be better off without ads.

</comment><comment><USER8> The very minute Adblock plus is compromised I will switch adblockers. Thankfully everything is done client side and its relatively trivial to create blockers.

<comment><USER9> Well, if that minute ever comes, consider uBlock Origin. Easier to use, and without that whole speed penalty on the browser that ABP has.

I heard that Firefox improved ABP performance in the meantime, but I've never had a reason to switch back to software that whitelists some ads. uBlock is also available for Chrome.

<comment><USER10> Just switched to uBlock because of this article, thanks.

<comment><USER11> Also note that there's a difference between uBlock and uBlock Origins.

<comment><USER12> Mind elaborating on the differences please? They just look like two different addons from different developers to me.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ub...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought they already had a whitelist?! Or was this AdBlock (without the plus)?

Well, I don't used it anymore, switched to µBlock Origin. Brave seems to be a nice alternative too. I read it is much snappier and has adblocking built in.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is like if Mozilla forced Google to pay them if they wanted to keep adsense ads showing.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just use FlashBlock and a Chrome extension that stops html5 vids from autoplaying (and disconnect to limit tracking). Can't say I've even really thought about the ads that do appear.</comment>


The Privacy Threat from Always-On Microphones Like the Amazon Echo - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/privacy-threat-always-microphones-amazon-echo <comment><USER2> When visiting the residence of a user of such devices, how should a privacy conscious person approach the thorny issue of desiring one's voice not to be recorded and transmitted?

</comment><comment><USER3> In 2020 we'll all be talking like gangsters. The G's have been privacy conscience for centuries which is why their language evolves at such a high rate.

For the record "Alexa turn off" and "Alexa stop listening" were NOPs on my Echo. But you can shout "Alexa ping" and "Alexa hello" to test if it is in the room.

</comment><comment><USER4> Buyers of such devices don't seem to care.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless it affects them directly, just like how tobacco smokers don't see any immediate bad effects from smoking. But they know somewhere down the line something awful will happen.</comment></comment>


Instant Edit - Type anything - <AUTHOR> http://instantedit.github.io/ <comment><USER2> So it's contenteditable, except with a twist! It now comes with Google Analytics tracking!

</comment><comment><USER3> Can this not be achieved by just using a contenteditable attribute?

Edit: I'm an idiot, just looked at source.

<comment><USER4> I just went through exactly this train of thought, except I caught myself before posting :)

Honestly, I have no idea why this is on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty cool, can you add a instantedit.github.io/blank.html so that I don't have to delete everything when I come back?

</comment><comment><USER6> Hook it up to firebase, make it a live collaborative document.

 _then_ you've got something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> was posted a gazillion times before but there's always a new opportunity to do it again. paste this in your browser: data:text/html,<body contenteditable style="font-size:2em;font-family: monospace;line-height:1.4;max- width:60em;margin:0 auto;padding:4em;">

</comment><comment><USER8> use of contenteditable is worth its own project and newsworthy?

<comment><USER9> Oh, and of course you need that google analytics stuff in there.</comment></comment>


The Amazing Money Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance

<comment><USER2> Here's a link to the first page of the article (instead of the third page): <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance></comment>


Show HN: Upsite – Muxtape for websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.upsite.io/ <comment><USER2> _Muxtape is a currently inactive website that allows bands to promote their music and users to discover artists. Muxtape allows bands to upload music they own for free streaming to fans, on the bands profile and as an embeddable player, as well as configure profiles with images, videos, and a show calendar._ \--- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muxtape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muxtape)</comment>


The compiler flag that time forgot - <AUTHOR> http://www.mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2013/10/19/no-cpp-precomp-the-compiler-flag-that-time-forgot/ <comment><USER2> This kind of stuff is so common.

For example closing
 with HTML, or using HTML comment marks with Javascript in SCRIPT tags.

People just copy what other people have done, without trying to understand each part of it, so you have stuff that is just blindly copied from person to person to person until someone finally stops and says "What does this actually do?"

<comment><USER3> That closing slash was never really required. Sure your xhtml won't validate, but it probably wasn't going to anyway. xhtml was recommended in my formative years and I never really broke that habit. I still think input, img, br 'look better' this way. If I am not mistaken, it's not even that it's wrong. I suppose it's a waste of bytes though.

<comment><USER2> When I see programmers add useless things that do nothing I wonder about their level of knowledge. Do they know it does nothing and are adding it for looks? Or are they poor programmers who can only program by copy paste?

Some things are obviously looks (useful looks, but still not required) - indents in C, or semi-colon in Javascript.

Other things are not. You say that the slash is just for the look, but since that's a rare position, I would advise not doing that - it makes you look bad to other programmers. Especially because unlike my other examples the slash has no useful purpose at all.

<comment><USER4> > semi-colon in Javascript.

Nitpick, but that is required. The heuristic that places it for you is meant as an aide if you accidentally forget to add it. And it's not always right.

Linters will also flag your code when you don't include semicolons.

As for
 vs.
. I personally prefer
 because of consistency. Just like I'd write , <link .. /> and so on.

<comment><USER2> You should not write  or <link /> either - so yes consistency, just not in the way you said.

And the one tag that has to be closed with no content:  can't be self closed anyway.

Self closing tags have no place in HTML.

<comment><USER5> The HTML5 spec has two things: an XML serialization specification, and a detailed non-XML parsing specification that makes the parser safely accept the evil slash on void elements like BR and IMG. Bonus: it also accepts the alternate spelling of the name of the IMG element.

A style guide, of course, could ban using IMAGE as the name of the IMG element or any other infelicity, whether it is legal or merely tolerated.

<comment><USER6> _the alternate spelling of the name of the IMG element_

I remember that jumped out at me when I read the HTML5 parsing spec, and I had no success whatsoever finding more information about it (try Googling "<image>"); do you have any links on how it came into existence? Or even better, a site that actually does this?

<comment><USER5> Fhars has the numbers involved, and you can search the mailing list on this. What I remember is, Ian Hixie was spec editor and was then working at Google. He would do bigtable queries over "all the HTML pages in the world" in some sense, and find out things like that so many million pages had IMAGE tags. So he would float to the list that it should be handled as a matter of robustness. And most of the time those queries would be inspired by someone's suggestion, although I think he had gone ahead and tabulated a frequency table. This way you could judge whether potential new element names would clash with mistakes authors were already making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related: Poul-Henning Kamp's "A Generation Lost in the Bazaar"[1] and the discussion of it on HN [2][3].

1\. [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188)

3\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8812724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8812724)

<comment><USER8> Irresistible:

"That is the sorry reality of the bazaar Raymond praised in his book: a pile of old festering hacks, endlessly copied and pasted by a clueless generation of IT "professionals" who wouldn't recognize sound IT architecture if you hit them over the head with it. It is hard to believe today, but under this embarrassing mess lies the ruins of the beautiful cathedral of Unix, deservedly famous for its simplicity of design, its economy of features, and its elegance of execution. (Sic transit gloria mundi, etc.)"

<comment><USER9> The real problem is that in "business" instead of the bazaar, you often don't have the time to design something the "right" way because of "business requirements," so you end up in the same mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Blast from the past. I remember being so thrilled when gcc finally added support for precompiled headers. The compile times for the program went from hours to minutes on the same hardware.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Now that GCC 4.8 builds on Tiger

People are still using OS X 10.4? I thought I was the only one. (Tiger still boots the Classic Environment on PPC Macs.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Blast from the past. I remember being taught to include that in 2001

</comment><comment><USER13> What would have made the error pop up, I wonder? It's interesting that it didn't show up in gcc-4.0, and I doubt she requested that flag personally...

<comment><USER14> The ncurses makefiles probably sends the flag to GCC when building on OS X, and while gcc-4.0 ignored this flag, gcc-4.8 gives an error.</comment></comment>


Peer-to-peer cloud gaming on machines located in your neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://vectordash.com/edge <comment><USER2> sadly the early access signup isnt working, i just get "an error occurred" which is a shame as i recently got a similar service called LiquidSky which does a similar thing except it has centralized servers and it almost manages to be perfect save for a few occasional dropouts that wouldnt bother me too much in a single player game, sadly though im playing overwatch and that bit of lag can be the difference between dead and alive, this may just be good enough to use problem free

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears there was an error with the form with some browsers, so I switched over to a Google Form which can be found here: [https://goo.gl/forms/k8eEWqAIe68GcBrs1](https://goo.gl/forms/k8eEWqAIe68GcBrs1)

<comment><USER2> actually i worked it out, you had to sign up for the standard vectordash core account then submit your email for the edge early access

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, thanks for the heads up, it should be fixed now!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Be a Boat Lifter: A Rising Tide that Lifts Everyone Around You - <AUTHOR> https://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2019/12/day-7-be-boat-lifter-rising-tide-that.html <comment><USER2> Too bad for people most don't subscribe to altruism.

<comment><USER3> My co-worker does. He's awesome. (boss too)

<comment><USER2> Glad to hear that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "a sinking ship raises all boats"

Humor aside, I prefer to subscribe to the Harry Potter ear worm and make sure everyone is aware of it and is comfortable to reach out at any time:

"Help will always be given at Hogwarts, Harry, to those who ask for it"</comment>


Cxx2rs – A rust-binding generator for C/C++ files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/manuels/cxx2rs

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully this will make writing arduino code in rust an easy possibility.</comment>


Why Innocent People Plead Guilty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ <comment><USER3> I'm a high school teacher, and we are looking at bringing restorative justice practices into our district. Just starting to dig into the restorative justice framework gives us a stronger way to think about dealing with discipline within a school system.

As I start to have deeper conversations with people well versed in restorative justice, I'm starting to hear really concrete ideas and practices for reforming our justice system in the US.

Edit: To clarify, restorative justice avoids the punitive approach to dealing with crime. Instead, it asks what harm has been done to what relationships when a crime has been committed. The first goal is then to work to restore those relationships. This is an incredibly valuable perspective in schools, where relationships are central to so much of what should be happening in a learning environment. It's a pretty good lens for examining situations in the larger community as well.

One resource, from a school-based perspective: [http://www.healthiersf.org/RestorativePractices/](http://www.healthiersf.org/RestorativePractices/)

And a more general perspective: [http://www.restorativejustice.org/](http://www.restorativejustice.org/)

<comment><USER4> I hope you succeed in changing the system. School for most kids is "prison- lite". Like if you don't show up on time for roll call, you get punished by being held in recess or forced to pick up garbage around the school.

And this is not some third world school I am talking about. This is schools in cupertino, one of the wealthiest and most "progressive" areas in the world.

[http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pd...](http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf)

> Years ago, five friends and a I were put in charge of a 150 rowdy fifth- > graders for a long weekend up in Canada. It was almost impossible to be > heard over the din—until I stumbled onto the solution. All we had to say > was, "points will be deducted," and compliance appeared. There weren't any > points and there wasn't any prize, but merely the threat of lost points was > sufficient.

<comment><USER5> >School for most kids is "prison-lite".

The parallels are numerous. You are legally compelled show up under threat of violence (although usually targeted at the child's parents, in the form of being arrested). You are not free to leave when you desire. You lose certain basic human rights while you are there (e.g. [1,2,3,4]). You are subject to the arbitrary authority of non-elected persons. Until recently, you were subject to physical violence at the hands of these persons. Social cliques and violence are relatively common. In many situations, self-expression, experimentation, and curiosity is discouraged.

I know, as a child, public school left a bad taste in my mouth for some of these reasons.

[1] Board of Education of Independent School District #92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls

[2] Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser

[3] New Jersey v. T.L.O.

[4] Morse v. Frederick

<comment><USER6> At least there's one good thing about it: it's a great motivator to work hard and get rich if one is planning on having kids, in order to avoid sending them to public school.

<comment><USER6> N.b. to downvoters: The parent comment was a possibly poor attempt at irony. I don't actually think there's anything good about US public schools.

<comment><USER7> > I don't actually think there's anything good about US public schools.

It's a good thing no one here actually went to one isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The real problem is that we allow the prosecuting attorney to "strike" possible jurors from the juror pool.

The _defense_ should get this advantage, but the prosecution should not. If the prosecution has to stack the jury to get a conviction, it doesn't have a proper case.

Another problem is that the prosecution is looking for easily influenced jurors rather than diligent ones.

Once had a hung jury on this where one juror was voting guilty and wouldn't budge. Our take: "Look, yes, he is guilty of possession. He had the drugs. _BUT THAT 'S NOT WHAT HE'S CHARGED WITH_. He's charged with conspiracy and he wasn't even in the country at the time the conspiracy was supposedly discussed. The government _HASN 'T PROVED ITS CASE_."

Nope. Guilty. Won't budge. And she was a grand juror. So much for the safety check of a grand jury. Sigh.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how allowing prosecutors to strike jurors has anything at all to do with the problem. Prosecutors (and defense attorneys) only get a small number of peremptory strikes. They can strike more, but they have to give the judge an acceptable reason. A prosecutor cannot "stack the jury" via peremptory strikes.

You are essentially proposing that juries be selected by the defense. That would not result in impartial juries. It would result in juries that are prejudiced in favor of the defendant.

The real problem is mandatory minimum sentences.

<comment><USER8> > It would result in juries that are prejudiced in favor of the defendant.

Um, yes, exactly. As opposed to now where the jury is prejudiced against the defense. Most jurors believe that you are guilty by virtue of being in the defendant chair; that needs some counteraction.

The government _already_ has all the advantages--reports, police, enormous resources, and the charging authority.

Giving the defense a prejudiced jury would be a good starting point for counterbalance.

And, I don't think you would find the juries being that prejudiced at the end of the day, anyway. Most people are far too docile and believe the prosecution without any level of skepticism.

<comment><USER10> I see what you're saying, but I think it lacks perspective. Yes. the government has a lot of advantages, such as the ones you list. But remember that

a) A criminal jury verdict has to be unanimous. So the "defense's" jurors have to vote to convict along with the "government's." This is clearly designed to benefit the defense.to

b) The "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof. Defendant friendly, to say the least.

c) Jurors are notoriously unpredictable. I don't know of any lawyer (and I know a _lot_ of lawyers), whether a defense attorney or prosecutor, who would tell you that they can reliably predict what any given juror will do. The best you can do is ask questions like "do you think that anyone convicted of a crime is probably guilty" or "would you feel comfortable sending someone to jail" and remove the jurors who give the "wrong" answers to those questions. And note that these would typically be "strikes for cause," and therefore don't count against either side's total number of peremptory strikes.

<comment><USER11> Item A is not precisely accurate communication, because it is _not_ voting in the sense of other voting. A criminal jury verdict has to be unanimous, but we send them to a sealed room and tell them 'Come back when you have a unanimous verdict.', rather than "Oh, you voted and disagreed? Well, Not Guilty then."

There is a strong understanding among the populace that a jury is a majoritarian body, that unanimity is a legal fiction, and that juries which can't effectively suppress dissenting opinions are _failures_ in their social function, and we demand both extended "deliberation", and a _completely new trial_ to correct their issue.

We even reinforce this understanding in caselaw; A last-ditch effort to un-"hang" a jury is termed an Allen Charge, which is apparently when the judge instructs the jury's minority vote that their position isn't reasonable while glaring at them menacingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mandatory minimums seems rather cruel. In my country - Denmark - sentences are usually limited to 15 years (life in prison, actually means that after 16 years, your case will be reheard by the judicial system; in serious crimes, these verdicts are usually predictable (i.e. keeping the convicted in prison)).

The fact that a state can demand a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for selling heroin is outrageous. That's not to say, that there aren't convictions here that don't have the appearance of mandatory minimums, but not by law, merely by practice.

(Also, I find no evidence to suggest that mandatory minimums have done anything to reduce crime in the US.)

<comment><USER13> You are correct - but the US system is different. The main goal of Denmark's prison system is likely centered around making sure people are reformed when they get out. The loss of freedom itself is the main punishment. The US system focuses much less on reforming people, but instead focuses on punishment. Loss of freedom isn't enough.

Mandatory minimums do have cruel outcomes: Usually the minimums were put in place as a political ploy (we'll make sure those bad people get put away for a long time - to keep your kids safe at night). I'm pretty sure that evidence doesnt' exist - any that does is likely against mandatory minimums.

<comment><USER12> So the only reason mandatory minimums are not unconstitutional is because of the word 'and'? I guess you can then make any cruel punishment constitutional by making it usual.

<comment><USER13> Heh. Unfortunately it is more complicated than that. I think the line includes cruelty along with the 'and' to attempt to put some sort of limits on punishment and to make sure the punishments matches what society knows as 'uncruel', though in practice it doesn't work out as well as imagined.

I'm not sure if anyone has appealed mandatory minimums on the basis that they are cruel and unusual punishment: They probably have research to back up their claim. This is probably the true reason they aren't unconstitutional - <USER2> you have to appeal and sue (sometimes pretty far) to try to get those turned over. The other option is for the public to pressure legislature into changing the laws, and considering the current climate in Washington, I doubt that is going to happen soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my view the right to a jury trial doesn't just protect the innocent, but provides the system with much needed oversight. In a trial, the prosecution has to make its case, not just before the judge and jury, but in principle, before the entire public. And the public gets to see the quality of the evidence being presented.

Bypassing the trial lets the prosecution work in darkness, and darkness invites corruption or incompetency, even if only in the name of getting the job done more efficiently.

I'm thinking out loud here, but maybe the problem isn't the plea bargain, but the pleading process itself. It might be less subject to abuse if the prosecution had to present its evidence before the court and in public, and if the judge could reject the plea and compel a trial.

<comment><USER15> Motions can be passed prior to trial to question the validity of certain charges.

The problem is there are a lot of federal judges who let prosecutors continually change the charges, change the rational for the charges, add on whole new charges in an attempt to force a plea bargin etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've studied quite a bit of criminal justice and constitutional law, but one thing that still eludes my understanding is the incentive structure.

Why do prosecutors seek to put innocent people in prison? What's in it for them?

<comment><USER17> Your question presumes that prosecutors are looking for the truth, right and wrong, innocence and guilt.

They are not.

Their job is to prosecute. Hence we've seen terrible stories about people prosecuted and jailed for years because prosecutors knowingly refuse to turn over exonerating evidence.

Judges are also part of this problem. They are paid by government. Their instructions (Rules of Criminal and Civil Procedure) come from government. They have often worked as prosecutors for the government. So their loyalty is to the government. We don't have an independent judiciary. It's been wholly captured by the government.

Getting to the question as to why the innocent plead guilty, when you're faced with the cost of an attorney it's often cheaper and easier to take a plea than to fight. The stress, emotional and mental toll of a legal fight are horrendous. And there is very little guarantee that a defendant will win.

The deck is stacked against you when you go to court. Prosecutors and judges are not there to have a colloquy about the law, the facts, the issues of the case, nor to debate the motivation and intent of the defendant. The prosecutor is there to win. The judge is there to ensure that the well-oiled machine keeps running and that jurors deliver the needed verdict.

<comment><USER18> >Your question presumes that prosecutors are looking for the truth, right and wrong, innocence and guilt.

>They are not.

>Their job is to prosecute

That's not entirely true. Their job (or at least their office's job) is also to decide when and where to seek prosecution. In theory, determining truth and innocence is a significant part of their job.

The trouble is when that runs up against a politicized, failure intolerant culture that would much rather reward a prosecutor with a strong string of wins (however questionable their methods) over one with the courage to simply present the best case they have and let the jury decide on the facts like they are supposed to.

<comment><USER19> > Their job (or at least their office's job) is also to decide when and where > to seek prosecution. In theory, determining truth and innocence is a > significant part of their job.

There are a couple of problems with this:

1\. When everyone is guilty of something, prosecutorial discretion is a disaster, not a desirable feature of the system. It's nothing other than the power to bankrupt and/or imprison whoever you don't like.

2\. They don't do things by assessing truth and innocence. When my great- grandfather's mind went, some member of another branch of the family got appointed conservator of his estate, and proceeded to embezzle over $600K in "gifts" to herself and her family. My mother discovered this by coincidence, assembled a huge pile of damning evidence, and went to a prosecutor, who said he wouldn't bother charging her because she was a middle-aged woman and getting a conviction would be almost impossible.

My mother ended up suing, and on advice of counsel settled for the documented value stolen, rather than the full legal liability (which is a multiple of the losses). The theory there, as I recall, was "judges hate it when you go to trial even after being offered a settlement, so you should take the settlement".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> NB: the author, Jed Rakoff, is a prominent federal judge in New York City.

</comment><comment><USER21> We should make the maximum sentence that can be sought at trial a small multiple of the minimum sentence. So the defendant is looking at a tradeoff of at most a year in jail vs. three years in jail.

Giving defendants a choice between a certain year in jail if they plead guilty or 15 years in jail if they're convicted, it becomes basically right for them to accept the former just from a risk management perspective.

Playing a game of high-stakes poker with your freedom on the line makes a mockery of the very concept of justice.

</comment><comment><USER22> This article is pretty much dead-on. Our laws have become more broad with absurdly high maximum penalties, and this extorts guilty pleas. For example, an internet merchant accused of failing to deliver 10 $200 orders could be charged with 10 counts of Wire Fraud and face a potential sentence of 300 years in prison (up to 30 years per count). Thus, when this hypothetical web merchant is offered a deal for 6 months, he will take it, regardless of whether he may have won at trial or not.

The system is designed to extort guilty pleas. The statistics are pretty straightforward: if you are standing in court facing charges, you've already lost. You just may not know it yet.

</comment><comment><USER23> In a way this seems like just another example corporate culture seep into our government. The prosecutors are gaming the system HARD and completely against the spirit of the system, but it's legal so it's OKAY. Meta justice.

I know somebody who had some charges brought against them about 10 years ago. It was a he-said/she-said and the state had no real evidence. From the get go they were trying to get a plea bargain. The accuser even recanted, signing a witnessed statement to the effect that they lied about the whole thing. Still, they pressed forward. Delaying meetings, pushing out dates, and generally drawing the whole thing out. They waited until the very day the statute of limitation ran out to close the case. I've seen first hand how much leverage they have over people. These types of charges, even pending, can completely wreck your life. And the stress. I remember everyone saying he should take the plea bargain, but I agreed that if he was innocent he had a duty to tell them to stuff it and hold out. Justice, pride; I GOT it. We were young. Now though, at 30.. If I were in a similar situation I'm just not sure what I would do.

</comment><comment><USER24> History rhymes: see this article on self-incrimination under the threat of torture.

[http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...](http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=crosskey_lectures)

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Excellent read. Perhaps submit that paper directly to HN?

<comment><USER24> Feel free. :) It's probably been submitted already; I think I got it from an HN thread on Aaron Swartz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The end was interesting. Particularly the part that begins as follows:

> I am driven, in the end, to advocate what a few jurisdictions, notably > Connecticut and Florida, have begun experimenting with: involving judges in > the plea-bargaining process.

Worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER27> I did because I was offered a plea for no time (other than the night I had already spent in jail), no fine, and it would be expunged from my record in two years. At least, that's what the public defender told me during the single minute I spoke to him while walking down the hallway to court.

It didn't matter any more that I hadn't done anything (not just anything wrong, but _anything_ \- I had been arrested while sitting on the sidewalk talking to friends) the important thing was being free from a potential three year sentence for 'criminal trespassing' at 18.

</comment><comment><USER28> Some background on the author: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff)

</comment><comment><USER29> Will making prosecutors accountable for wrongful conviction keep them in check?</comment>


Ask HN: Reverse engineer NLP/machine reading job application text engines? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Huh?</comment>


How to Use Parameters in sp_execute_external_script - <AUTHOR> http://www.nielsberglund.com/2018/03/11/microsoft-sql-server-r-services-sp-execute-external-script-ii/ <comment><AUTHOR> A lowdown of sp_execute_external_script and its @params and @parameter1 parameters, using Process Monitor and WireShark</comment>


Alan Kay on the Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/doc_kay_oop_en

<comment><USER2> A lot of the recent trend towards OOP-bashing comes from bad implementations of OOP, just as bashing design patterns is more to do with badly thought out architectures and overuse of those patterns.

In fact, the origins of OOP are basically what we would now call microservice architecture (CSP-inspired languages like Go being a specialisation of this). Each service can be as stateless or as stateful as it needs to be (without shared state) and services should be loosely coupled.

That's quite different to most large-scale OOP architectures, but it is possible to code in that style in any OOP language.

Heavy reliance on inheritance for code reuse is a whole problem class in itself that again has little to do with OOP and lots to do with the influence of C++.

<comment><USER3> In sports, training coaches sometimes forbid to use some play element. In OOP classes there should be an assignment to design a system without inheritance. Just to show what is most important in OOP.

<comment><USER4> How would you design something like :

Person --> Full Time Employee --> Manager

Person --> Contract Employee

Without inheritance assuming that salary calculation is the only thing which differentiates them.

<comment><USER5> Something like...

       Person HAS A IEmploymentRelationship
       ContractEmployment IMPLEMENTS IEmploymentRelationship
       FullTimeEmployment IMPLEMENTS IEmploymentRelationship
       FullTimeEmployment HAS A IDirectReport
       Manager HAS A Person
       Manager IMPLEMENTS IDirectReport

And then salary() is a polymorphic function declared by the IEmploymentRelationship interface, where FullTimeEmployment instances use the manager somehow, and ContractEmployment doesn't.

You can even put some sugar on that by having a salary() function on Person that calls the salary() function on its IEmploymentRelationship—but I wouldn't, for the same reason I wouldn't denormalize a relational database.

<comment><USER4> Got it. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them."

Such a pity that this filtered essence about OOP was lost on me during formative years of learning OO-programming; for no fault of mine! It took me half a decade into professional programming in Java to realize the importance of these key concepts.

And the worse part is that most of the books/blogs start OO programming tutorial with examples that try to literally model the problem state using Objects (e.g., "Animals", "Shapes" etc.,).

I guess tutorials, classes just focus on these key goals and show how concepts such as "polymorphism", "inheritance" etc., are work towards achieving (or not) them. What generally happens is that one is taught about all these peripheral concepts and students are left to wonder the problems they are trying to solve.

<comment><USER7> Those examples worked really badly for me too. It wasn't until about a year after I got my first paycheck for writing code that I made this switch in my mind. My thought process started out something along the lines of "ok, i just need to get all these things in line... somehow... and then I can accomplish the goal". However at some point I realized, I did some similar things quite often, and I needed to make some piece of code kind of generic. My mindset kind of changed dramatically. Instead of thinking about how I could make something work, I started to think of how I'd like the API to look. How could I make the code reusable. I thought about the perspective of another dev using the code rather than the goal itself, since that eventually became the easy part.

Once you start thinking in terms of the API, and how you can design it so someone with minimal documentation could still use it (though you still document it!) you start wanting to hide the implementation etc, and all the other OOP ideas fall into place.

of course, I don't think it's something that can be taught. It's an evolution. When you first start programming, everything is unknown, so you don't have the brain power to focus on design. When you learn more, and you free up brain power you can start concentrating on these other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things."

Bam. That is it right there. Java really messed this up.

Strong static typing and OO is an abomination.

<comment><USER9> So what specifically about __OO __gets so much better as soon as you take types away? Can you give a specific improvement?

<comment><USER10> Ability to change or replace object instances (maybe with instances of different types) on the fly could be an example. In general, you can design incredibly dynamic and reconfigurable systems. Whether you want to or not, and at what level should you stop doing it, is certainly a good debate to have.

<comment><USER11> If the system you are building makes sense, there is probably a reasonable type system that shows it to be well typed.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, "makes sense" and "reasonable" would be criteria involved in the debated I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Towards the end:

      But just to show
      how stubbornly an idea can hang on, all through the seventies and
      eighties, there were many people who tried to get by with "Remote
      Procedure Call" instead of thinking about objects and messages. Sic
      transit gloria mundi.

Can somebody explain to me what distinction he's drawing here? What's the issue with RPC that's solved by Objects+Messages?

<comment><USER13> A remote procedure call blocks on the response, ensuring the system is only as strong as its weakest link. If every object communicates asynchronously with every other object, using messages instead of shared memory (hence avoiding locking issues), the design by necessity evolves in ways which becomes more robust and easy to scale. Synchronous RPC calls encourage unscalable and unreliable architectures.

<comment><USER14> All remote calls must have a timeout. The lack of timeouts in certain RPC implementations was an implementation weakness, not a conceptual one.

[Edit: I've removed most of my original comment since it pertained to messaging between machines, rather than within an application.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what he thinks of Erlang, as it's very much about message passing, hiding of process state, and late binding. Of course, this is built at a higher level and it's not turtles all the way down: you don't send messages to numbers to do basic math.

<comment><USER16> He will be here: [http://www.erlang-factory.com/sfbay2015](http://www.erlang- factory.com/sfbay2015) . Hopefully he will share his thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> @previously (1272 days ago) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628897)

</comment><comment><USER18> > I wanted to get rid of data.

What exactly does he mean by that? How does one get rid of data?

> The B5000 almost did this via its almost unbelievable HW architecture.

I've heard about the B5000 numerous times here on HN. What was so fantastic about it?

<comment><USER19> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems#B5000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems#B5000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >My math background made me realize that each object could have several algebras associated with it, and there could be families of these algebras

Could someone explain what he meant here?

<comment><USER21> For example an automobile can be thought of as an emitter of pollution, if your problem concerns pollution, or, it can be thought of as a particle, if your problem concerns traffic congestion.

The auto "fits" into each of these different problem domains.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the reply, but I'm still not seeing the connection to algebra?

<comment><USER22> He means "algebra" in the "universal algebra" sense of the word: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_algebra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_algebra)

That probay doesn't clarify the connection, but at least you'll be pointed in the right direction! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why Alan Kay came up with object-oriented:

 _I wanted to get rid of data._

 _I didn 't understand the monster LISP idea of tangible metalanguage then_

<comment><USER24> He said he did understand before he created Smalltalk.

<comment><USER23> Can you point to the sentence where he said that?

<comment><USER24> First sentence of the next paragraph.

<comment><USER23> Thanks. I still find it fascinating people do good work without fully understanding an area. It's as if you're not supposed to. I wonder if this could be used as a guiding principle in making things.

If what you are working on originally looks understandable, you should be alarmed.

<comment><USER25> I presume by 'understanding an area' you mean being familiar with established abstract models of that area? I think that often in practical conditions the abstract models are not the area under work. They are the _mapping_ of the area to some formal system. And that the 'area' under question - whatever it may be - can be mapped to an infinite amount of formal systems. For lots of practical purposes, there is some 'obvious' algebra of a thing one wants to do - in these instances all that is needed is an individual who can map the problem to any logically coherent structure, even just a private one in their head, and a willingness to solve the problem - and great stuff can ne done without a literature review. Sometimes the establishes models are really, really good since they either simplify a messy looking problem and/or point out to some not so obvious aspects of a system at which point an expert in the field can have an advantage over the clever layman. I think sometimes the knowledge of existing formal models can make a person blind to certain facets of the system they are working with.

Also, if one approaches a thing by a burning desire just to implement one single thing on top of it they will probably have an internal model that is very much focused on the problem they are solving.This practical need can induce them to create a new formal model or just sidestep lots of non-issues that would be a burden to deal with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Apple Didn't Use Sapphire for iPhone Screens - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3377972/why-apple-didnt-use-sapphire-iphone-screens/ <comment><USER2> I don't agree on most of these reasons. Light transmission is really good on sapphire, so not a great difference with glass.

I believe the number 1 reason is:

1- They want to test it first.

Apple always do tests, but most of the people do not realize it. For example, do people realize that before making the Ipad big screen they tested it in the magic touchpad?.

Between the Iphone and the Ipad there is a huge size gap that means lots of problems when you do things in the millions, so they added a glass screen to millions of laptops touchpads.

They got lots of useful information from service repairs, and they did hide their testing in front of their competitors eyes without them realizing.

Competitors used plastic in their touchpads. When they could connect the dots(it they did at all), it was too late, Apple was years ahead.

If they start selling their watches in the millions, and I think they will, mass producing sapphire will make cost plumb.

There will be testing early at a scale that nobody had done before. I worked for a company that manufactured sapphire glass for the military. We made very expensive SINGLE units for equipment like cameras, and it was only for the exterior side.

If a market is created, innovation will come. What we did was very expensive and we did not care about price.

We did work that was so "last century", like creating huge blocks like stones, then cutting and polishing it.

I am certain that a better method, more energy efficient like growing crystals in molds, is possible, but it needs to have demand in order to justify the investment.

<comment><USER3> Apple has been testing sapphire. It has been in the cover for the camera since the iPhone 5 over two years ago. What is interesting is that they have gone back to glass for the lens cover in the new phones. My wife had a problem with her iPhone 5 shortly after purchase. After she dropped it on the floor (not especially hard) photos had these small, magenta flecks that no amount of cleaning could get rid of. Apple swapped it out no problem, but when I first heard that they moved back to glass for the new camera in the 6 series, I wondered if they decided that sapphire just wasn't going to work for this use case.

I suspect, they've learned quite a bit from the sapphire cover on the camera, hence their comfort in deploying it to the higher end watch models.

<comment><USER4> They have not gone back to glass

> Sapphire crystal lens cover [all iPhone models]

[http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/](http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also consider how thick the crystal on a watch is vs how thick the glass on a phone is.

Personally, I'd rather have "the new iPhone 6: exactly as thick as the last one, but now it lasts 2 days on a charge"

<comment><USER6> I would be absurdly happy to find a phone like a Note 3/4 that's 2x as thick and has 2-3x as much battery. Not that the Note has poor battery life (it easily last a full 12-16 hours of pretty heavy usage).

I really don't care much about thinness in phones, but I do care about having a forever battery and I'd happily trade 3mm of pocket space for it.

<comment><USER7> If you really don't care about size there are plenty of options, especially for phones like the Note3 with replaceable backs[1].Even for the iPhone you can buy a wrap around case that embeds a battery.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Hyperion-Extended-Compatible- Internati...](http://www.amazon.com/Hyperion-Extended-Compatible- International-Warranty/dp/B00DH0L5ZO)

<comment><USER6> Yeah absolutely, but I wish it was just part of the phone model.

A Note 3 with the pack you linked to could _easily_ do 2 full days of medium to heavy usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the answer to this is that Apple bought half a billion dollars of saphire for the high-end Watch models, and never intended it to go towards the iPhone. That's why it didn't end up in the phones.

It might also be a partial explanation for not launching the watch yet, they're simply waiting for enough yield to manufacture launch inventory.

</comment><comment><USER8> This video explains the reasons quite well. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQbu_BsZ9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQbu_BsZ9o)

Althought saphire is in fact stronger, it is it's lack of flexibility and absorption properties that don't make it as viable for phone use.

<comment><USER9> Why did they buy a plant in Arizona then?

<comment><USER10> They're using it on the watch.

>On most Apple Watch models, the display is laminated to a machined and polished single crystal of sapphire.

[http://www.apple.com/watch/technology/](http://www.apple.com/watch/technology/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This "leak" was pretty convincing when i saw it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R0_FJ4r73s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R0_FJ4r73s)

Is there some trickery, or is gorilla glass as tough as nails like this now?

<comment><USER12> Smartphone glass always has been that flexible and strong, Corning have had various videos demonstrating that online for a while.

His follow up video was only a few days later, after people pointed this out to him, and fairly convincingly showed that this was just a newer generation of glass.

<comment><USER13> That follow-up video is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ANcWQEUI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ANcWQEUI8) Pretty interesting (and painful) watching the effects of sandpaper on screens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The report they allude to as being "not true" is here: [http://wallstreetforensics.com/sapphire-screens-miss- apple-i...](http://wallstreetforensics.com/sapphire-screens-miss-apple- iphone-6-launch-weeks/)

"By the way, some reports stated that up until a few weeks before the iPhone announcement, Apple was going to use sapphire but dropped it because of yield issues. This is not true."

</comment><comment><USER15> Only the cost reason makes sense to me. Surely the other reasons (such as transmitivity of Saphire) would have been investigated before putting down .5 billion dollars on the counter. The cost, on the other hand, can be passed down to the consumer, when in leading position.

<comment><USER16> It's not that they're not making any use of sapphire. The screen on the Watch and the Touch ID sensors on iPhones are still sapphire.

<comment><USER17> And the camera lens cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FYI, as reported on Last Week Tonight, Time had merged its editorial and advertising groups, and is going forward as a content marketing company, not a news reporting company.

</comment><comment><USER19> As much as I would love for Apple to find the "perfect" glass that would require blunt force impact from a sledgehammer before it would crack, I wonder if their efforts would be better spent figuring out a way to make the glass more easily and more affordably replaced. An implementation that would almost render the screen disposable (but still as durable or very close to as durable as it is today).

<comment><USER20> My friend replaces iPhone screens and back glass all the time. I think he charges people 20-30$ cad to cover the cost of the parts. Takes him less than 10 minutes.

Most screens come with the kit of tools you need for the tiny screws and to pop off the ribbon cable connectors.

I think that is pretty quick easy and cheap. I feel bad for people who go to Genius Bar to have this done for $150.

<comment><USER21> If he's only charging $20-30, he's only replacing the glass. The Genius Bar is probably replacing the screen and glass since that's an easier procedure for them than just the glass.

<comment><USER20> I think the screen is one unit and you can't just replace the glass on the screen. It is a very quick procedure for my friend too. A couple of screws and a ribbon connector and away you go.

The parts are cheap on eBay. So far the $3 battery has been a dud though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I maintain that the sapphire screen rumors were patently ridiculous to anyone with a basic understanding of materials science.

The only people who took these rumors seriously were pundits who started and then perpetuated (and now, continue to discuss) the idea.

<comment><USER23> I had assumed that the sapphire screens would have a thin film of sapphire and be made primarily from glass or plastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My own experience with the iphone 5 has been pretty good as far as durability is concerned. I live dangerously i guess... in that i never really saw the point in buying a super thin phone then throwing a thick case on it, so I have no case.

I've dropped my phone numerous times, but I have dropped it twice onto concrete, once with considerable force. So far, no cracks! Just one data point, but also demonstrating that what we have now isn't terrible.

</comment><comment><USER25> I keep hearing that Sapphire is the next hardest gem after diamond by these sapphire screen manufacturers. But isn't moissanite harder than sapphire?

<comment><USER26> Yes, moissanite is a 9.25-9.5 on the Mohs scale, whereas Sapphire is only a 9.

Moissanite doesn't really occur naturally on Earth though (although it is believed to form around carbon-rich stars).

<comment><USER25> But there are plenty of other materials that do not form naturally that we make use of in devices.

It seems misleading to call sapphire "THE" hardest next to diamond when there is another harder material that we can produce using a similar processes.

<comment><USER27> It isnt misleading since because it doesn't occur, it isn't something you need to worry about scratching your phone. If people start wearing rings made of it or if artificial beaches start using it as sand, your point will rise above pedantism :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So I'm curious don't these same arguments apply to the Apple Watch screen? I guess the tradeoff is people are more likely to smash a watch face?

<comment><USER29> The cheap 349 USD versions will not have sapphire glass, just the premium watches. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch#Collection_comparis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch#Collection_comparison)

So be prepared to spend 1000+ USD if you want sapphire glass. Apple's days of pandering to peasants are over, it seems.

<comment><USER30> Apple has always, always had price delineation across the range. They've also probably sat down and looked at expected use-cases for their Watch product range, the Sport doesn't receive a Sapphire display which could be price motivated as well but as the above article says the Sapphire is likely to be _more_ effected by drops or impacts. If you're engaged in a sport there's a higher chance of catching the screen than if you're just wandering around, which makes sense to be have a screen that's more impact resistant.

<comment><USER31> > Apple has always, always had price delineation across the range.

They're likely to be considerably starker with this range than anything they've ever made before.

<comment><USER30> That still doesn't justify 'Apple's days of pandering to peasants are over' though. There's going to be a low end, a mid-range and an ultra-high end. I personally think the Watch & Support will be reasonably close in price, and the Edition will be incredibly expensive due to materials cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very interesting about the density and energy impacts on sapphire vs glass. In a watch context (where the chance of dropping is less than the chance of scratching the face) the use of sapphire presents some additional challenges for battery life. If the Apple Watch intends to use sapphire, this might play into some of the rumours that release has been delayed because of battery life concerns.

</comment><comment><USER33> Smartphone category is barely competitive. It is a basic economic law of luxury products: as long as there are people willing to pay - the price will increase. 25% increase in price can cause 20% decrease in sales and still result in the same net income.

</comment><comment><USER34> Amusing that the author leads with a reference to his own incorrect prediction and then follows up with the sage advice that "all of us need to be more careful before jumping to conclusions in areas like this."

</comment><comment><USER35> Will be interesting if the 6s (or whatever) comes out next year goes for the sapphire screen and introduces the apple watch style 'force touch' capability

</comment><comment><USER36> As an off-topic comment, when did time.com switch to such an obnoxious layout? Taking two inches off the side and an inch off the top is absolutely ridiculous.

<comment><USER37> Obnoxious is putting it kindly when I can't even seem to be able to scroll down to read the entire article.

EDIT: Apparently it's happening to me when I zoom at all on the page in Chrome, I'm surprised no one else has complained.

</comment></comment><comment> jay-saint Am I the only one who thinks that Corning sponsored this piece?

</comment><comment><USER38> There is a bit of a negative reinforcement recursion going on in the industry, and this is a great example of it.

Make lots of pieces claiming sources and reasons for why Apple is going to do something big and new and innovative. Endless pageviews, speculation, etc.

Apple releases a very nice, but completely traditional and incremental upgrade.

Make lots of pieces explaining why Apple not doing those things you previously said they would do is actually best, because of contrived justifications and reasons. Tonnes of pageviews and links.

Rinse repeat. This has happened with every Apple release this decade.

</comment><comment><USER39> With all the downsides to sapphire (cost, thickness, light transmission), you start wondering if the previous iPhones were using this material just as a marketing point and not because there was an actual benefit to the users.

<comment><USER40> They've been using it on the camera lenses and the surface of the fingerprint sensor, not on the display.

In both of those applications, scratch resistance is extremely important. Also, those are both small, which makes them cheaper and easier to engineer, as well as less likely to shatter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> jeez, I don't care at all about that.

what a tale for such a irrelevant detail. iPhone users are such a category of people of their own, talking about iPhone rumors and truths is like new ways to make conversations.

do you know you can have a smartphone that has the same functionalities, for one tenth of the price ? how is that not news ?

<comment><USER42> What an irrelevant comment about such AN irrelevant detail.

<comment><USER41> irrelevancy pile up !</comment></comment></comment>


How Do You Look When Merging Fails - <AUTHOR> http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/when-merging-fails/

<comment><USER2> Hilarious. This should be built-in to all of those error-reporting systems that software developers use so they can really feel their users' pain when something in their software breaks :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing. I was expecting some theoretical dissertation about productivity and coding and instead, got a heaping spoonful of awesome.

<comment><USER4> No, you got the tech equivalent of a lolcat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like how you can tweak the timing of the camera with the EMOTIONAL_SLUGGISHNESS_RATE

<comment><USER6> This was my first thought before I looked at the code. The constant name is perfect and intuitive. Great work.

<comment><USER7> _The constant name is perfect and intuitive_

I might have gone with DELAY_BETWEEN_DETECTION_AND_PICTURE, because it describes what the constant is used for and does not describe it as a "rate", which suggests some sort of x / t measurement where t is a unit of time.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but it wouldn't have made me laugh...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OS X users can use this instead if you install "isightcapture" (available through MacPorts: "sudo port install isightcapture")

        def grab_image(fname):
          os.system("isightcapture "+fname)

Anyone know how to do the same for git? AFAIK the merge hook isn't run if the merge fails.

</comment><comment><USER9> Haha, and the picture comment by his daughter :-D ("you look soo silly") _g_

</comment><comment><USER10> This guys projects are worth checking out too.[1]

If it does everything claimed (not tried it out yet) Crunchy Frog [2] looks prettyy useful.

1\. <http://andialbrecht.wordpress.com/projects/>

2\. <http://code.google.com/p/crunchyfrog/>

</comment><comment> brown9-2 At first I started thinking "well this sounds kind of silly" ... and then I scrolled down far enough to see his results and saw the perfect expression of what it feels like when this happens!

</comment><comment><USER11> Too bad this wasn't hooked up to a hashtag when it twitters so that we can search for them.

<comment><USER12> You could just search for the message itself ('Another merge failed.').

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't code naked!

<comment><USER14> I also thought the straight to Twitpic feature could lead to some embarrassing moments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Genius. Just genius. I wonder if you could do something similar, with a picture on every check-in to indicate code quality...

</comment><comment><USER16> If only I used HG. If someone made this for darcs it would be a movie of watching a merge fail though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hilarious! I laughed out loud more at this than anything else online I've seen in the last year. Imagine hooking it up to a mic to also snap a pic when a certain volume threshold is exceeded; i.e. when you curse at your computer.

</comment><comment><USER18> I cant find any documentation on installing CVTypes, could someone who knows some python help me out? I would love to play around with this and share it on github.

<comment><USER19> You have to download and install openCV =>

svn co <https://code.ros.org/svn/opencv/trunk/opencv>

<http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/PythonInterface>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just sent that to our team that is getting used to using Git/Github as opposed to msft VSS and were just asking about merging fails. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Ouch. I was expecting something about corporate image after a failed merger/acquisition, but I was pleasantly surprised.

</comment><comment><USER22> Someone should commit an equivalent patch to Subversion and have it auto-email their developer mailing list.

<comment><USER22> * Subversion's developer mailing list, that is:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's just beautiful. Thanks for making my afternoon!

</comment><comment><USER24> Love it. Love it. Love it.</comment>