Docker isn't perfect – Issue #216 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/subuser-security/subuser/issues/216 <comment><USER2> _A number of developers from RedHat were once very involved in the project. However, these developers had a very arrogant attitude towards Docker: They wanted docker changed so that it would follow their design ideas for RHEL and systemd. They often made pull requests with poorly written and undocumented code and then they became very agressive when those pull requests were not accepted, saying "we need this change we will ship a patched version of Docker and cause you problems on RHEL if you don't make this change in master." They were arogant and agressive, when at the same time, they had the choice of working with the Docker developers and writting quality code that could actually be merged._

THIS. It was both amusing and sad to watch this happen time and time again. My favorite is what happened (or, rather, didn't happen) around CoW filesystems and how they decided to just use a FUSE-based one instead.

<comment><USER3> Upvoted because every opportunity for me to vote against RedHat's insistence on the nightmare that is systemd is a good opportunity.

Stop breaking Linux's usefulness as a server OS in a misguided attempt to make it a desktop OS. (see: systemd, networkmanager, etc)

<comment><USER4> Why do you think that systemd is not useful on a server OS?

<comment><USER3> Because it does nothing that anyone in my organization has ever asked for, nor does it do anything that anyone in any organization I've ever worked for has asked for, in 20 years of working on Linux systems.

I've never heard of any problems it solves other than things described in abstract terms that might make sense to a developer but that makes no sense to Operations/DevOps teams.

Nobody likes learning something new for zero benefit. I keep trying, though. But the more I am forced to learn about it, the more arcane it gets. It's not a learning curve, as far as I can tell. It's a learning wall with no payoff. It makes everything we do more difficult, the commands make no sense, and it brings no tangible benefit. It's change for change's sake. It reminds me of DJB's insistence on making logs in hex "just because".

Just a simple example. Why is it "systemctl list-unit-files"? What the hell are unit files? How is this in any way logical? Why is this an argument and not a flag? Why is it that I can use a systemctl command, and it tells me to use the -l flag to view non-ellipsized output, but then when I use the flag, it gives me an arcane error that tells me nothing about what happened? It's the tip of the iceberg in an endless string of junk that simply doesn't make any sense or work properly.

So, I like to vote against it whenever I can, because supporters like to keep insisting that it's the way of the future, and implying anyone who hates it is a luddite.

<comment><USER4> It's hard to argue with someone who claims that systemd has zero benefit.

You claim unit files are confusing. Let's say we took a Windows programmer who was a sophomore in CS but didn't have any Unix or Linux experience, show him both systems. Explain how runlevels are handled in systemd vs sysvinit. Show him a systemd unit file vs the equivalent bash script. Explain how systemd tracks the process tree vs sysvinit pid file hack. You spent five minutes trying to figure out systemctl and declared it terrible. It probably took you more than 5 minutes to find /etc/init.d your first time

<comment><USER3> Perhaps. My complaint is that systemd has not started making any more sense in the year(s) I've been wrestling with it. And it hasn't given me any benefit yet.

To most of us, it's change for change's sake, which makes life worse due to the learning curve. If it made life easier for the average end user or the average sysadmin, it would have more defenders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a good discussion last night at the SF Microservices meetup about how early we are with containerized applications. The company I work for, Giant Swarm, provides a containerized stack solution and we run people through a short survey when they sign up for our shared cluster offering. The survey shows that about 15% of companies (at least for peeps showing up on our site) have some type of containerized application in production. That's not a big number. Yet.

The problem being described in this issue is one person's experience with Docker, but I've heard similar stories from others about similar projects in the past. Looking at you, OpenStack. Yes, things are breaking fast with Docker - I've experienced them myself. Yes, new companies and offerings are joining the ecosystem daily - which can be maddenly confusing for users trying to understand the technologies. This creates a sense of instability when so much is going on at once.

I think the problem is that, when _new ways_ of doing compute things spin up, they become highly disruptive to both the people using older technologies AND the companies developing the new technologies. Given the new way of doing things usually gives an advantage to those using them, the challenge comes from trying to put those technologies into production before they are finished, all the while keeping an eye on shareholder value.

I call this the "problem cloud". It's really a people problem though, so maybe it should be called "problem people". :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is especially complicated in an open source project like Docker. Docker seems to be locked between a rock and a hard place in that:

a - They are post 1.0, and there is an expectation that they won't break compatibility. This has meant a real slow down in development, and it is now very hard to get a pull request through.

b - Docker is totally imature and those pull requests are needed. It is lacking in basic functionality like the ability to mount and unmount volumes at run-time. It is also slow, and suffers from a codebase that was thrown together practially overnight. So it would actually be best if Docker Inc. went back to breaking things and getting things done.

Unfortunately, what seems to be happening is that Docker is failing to not break things and at the same time they are still paralized.

For subuser, there is yet a third problem. And that is that Docker is Docker Inc. And subuser being free software, it's not a nice feeling to know that my project is at the mercy of a single company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > (This is in response to the fact that Docker writes to cgroups, and systemd > would like to be the "sole writter to cgroups" some time in the future.)

"Would like to" understates it a bit:

[http://lwn.net/Articles/555920/](http://lwn.net/Articles/555920/)

The kernel plans on deprecating the API that allows multiple writers to cgroups, thus requiring there to be a sole writer to cgroups. (Also, the systemd developers say this wasn't what they want, it was in response to the decisions the kernel maintainers have made in changing the API.)

<comment><AUTHOR> @cwyers I understand this problem. However, this wasn't an acceptable situation for Docker to be in, because there is seemingly no choice "B" in which Docker comunicates with cgroups in a non-init system specific maner. I accept the concept that this is a hard technical problem, preventing race conditions while allowing more than one program to run on your system (to put it flatly), but tying Docker to systemd just wasn't an acceptable option.

I think that RedHat IS at fault in this, because their design choice of designating systemd as the single writer was extremely anti-standardization. Imagine if KDE wanted to be the single cgroup writter. Would people accept the fact that they would have to use KDE and interface with KDE in order to do containers on Linux? RedHat could have created a service "cgroupwriter" which would have communicated via D-bus or something. A "cgroupwriter" service would be far less divisive because it wouldn't be divisive on other issues such as choice of init system.

<comment><USER7> > I think that RedHat IS at fault in this, because their design choice of > designating systemd as the single writer was extremely anti-standardization. > Imagine if KDE wanted to be the single cgroup writter.

This isn't a very good analogy.

> I think that RedHat IS at fault in this, because their design choice of > designating systemd as the single writer was extremely anti-standardization.

This doesn't make sense. When the changes hits the kernel, all OS maintainers will need to choose a parent process for all cgroup control. Supporting this feature in systemd makes perfect sense and fits very well in the process hierarchy.

> Would people accept the fact that they would have to use KDE and interface > with KDE in order to do containers on Linux?

Users and distributions who do not want to use systemd (their choice!) can use any other init system they want. They are also free to implement any other solution as their cgroup controller. Their situation is not changed one iota by this additional feature in systemd. They would have had to implement a cgroup controller either way.

In short, you are not required to use systemd if they make this choice. You may not have the benefit of someone else implementing the solution for you. But unless you're paying developers for the work, the guarantee of others doing work for you in the way you want them to is never provided.

> RedHat could have created a service "cgroupwriter" which would have > communicated via D-bus or something.

They could have, but it would have added needless complexity. A significant number of tasks systemd needs to perform includes dependencies between cgroups. So mine as well manage it in the init system.

This isn't like a hard dependency on systemd. It just means that someone will need to author other solutions if systemd is not wanted.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Users and distributions who do not want to use systemd (their choice!) can > use any other init system they want. They are also free to implement any > other solution as their cgroup controller. Their situation is not changed > one iota by this additional feature in systemd. They would have had to > implement a cgroup controller either way.

The trouble is, that Docker doesn't get to choose what cgroup controller "everyone" will use, it has to support them all. And the idea of interfacing with systemd on cgroups wasn't very appatizing because it was guaranteed to lead to Docker needing special compat code for whatever non-systemd version of cgroups control came out. While I agree with @cwyers that kicking the RedHat folks out doesn't help, it certainly felt to me like that particular discussion could have been phrased differently so that no conflict was created. For example, if the RedHat folks have said that there is going to be a single writer policy and systemd is a cgroup writer on systemd systems, that would have been far less combative than saying "and systemd is that writer". I know that the distinction is subtle, I'm not sure if I should try to find the origional thread. It was written as comments on diffs in a pull request. It would be therefore rather hard to find, and also I feel a little bad about pulling out exact names of the people involved because I think that the actual people working for RedHat are fine people who I don't want to attack and that this is somehow a problem of RedHat corporate policy and not bad apples.

<comment><USER6> > And the idea of interfacing with systemd on cgroups wasn't very appatizing > because it was guaranteed to lead to Docker needing special compat code for > whatever non-systemd version of cgroups control came out.

Unless Docker is planning to move to running on BSD jails or fork the kernel, they have to do this no matter how unappetizing they find it, once the kernel moves to single writers on cgroups.

<comment><USER8> FreeBSD is working on Docker support: [https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker)

<comment><USER9> Have fun with that. The Linux User Space will not work on a BSD kernel, so you would be forced into a BSD user space.

Now you are back at Square Zero. There is nothing wrong with the BSD, but it's just another different thing to learn and work with. I am skeptical this is the right way of looking at the problem.

Bottom line, the Linux Kernel changed, so Docker has to deal with it.

<comment><USER10> > The Linux User Space will not work on a BSD kernel

That's wrong, more or less. Read about Linux emulation on BSDs. Of course some low-level utilities won't work, but most of userspace does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Docker isn't perfect, but you can't argue with the fact the container ecosystem was rather stagnant until recently.

For years I knew of openvz (weird? needs custom kernel? supported?) and lxc(seems to be low level? how do I get started?) and just used xen/kvm on servers and virtualbox/vagrant locally.

It's funny when Bryan Cantrill talks about how solaris+zones had solid containers years ago.. and he is right, but the end user UX was abysmal [1].

And then docker comes along and shows...

That this can work:

      $ docker run -t -i --rm centos:7 /bin/bash
      [root@2214e639debe /]#

That building containers can be easy using Dockerfiles instead of 'make random changes to this container and then clone it forever'

That with a few cli options you can have persistent volumes and locked down networking.

So, sure, docker may have some issues. In a year we may all be using rkt or rocker or who knows what. But for now, docker is here and people are using it for things.

[1] I ran opensolaris at home for a few years. I think I only ever made 2 zones. I never got patching to work and either had to choose between sparse zone that wouldn't work right or a gigantic full zone that I couldn't manage to patch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to point out, that subuser is not moving away from Docker. It seems pretty clear to me that we don't have any good other options. But the problems that I mentioned remain, and these problems really are causing subuser to break. I guess that's why the title of the bug report is "Docker isn't prefect" rather than "Docker svcks 1111" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't use Docker so I don't know how opinionated this issue is, but it paints a bleak picture of the project.

Breaking stuff after the 1.0 release should generally be reserved for major versions (i.e. 1.0 -> 2.0), and incorrect basic documentation and specs are embarrassing for a project of this size.

Is this just a case where the project has been adopted too soon and developed too fast? It seems like Docker still has maturity issues past version 1.0 (based on a number of other negative responses to the project I've read elsewhere as well).

<comment><USER13> I can clue you in: it's extremely opinionated. After 1.0 there haven't been huge breaking changes.

<comment><USER14> DevOps/Infrastructure guy here at a startup that uses Docker in production. Docker has consistently broken in point releases after 1.0.

"Why yes, I'd absolutely love to use your immature containerization ecosystem to manage mission critical infrastructure".

To be fair, it was my mistake for not pushing back hard against Docker. Lesson learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I got it right, the points made in this article are:

* Docker breaks other software

* Docker breaks it own API at random points between major versions

* Documentation is incorrect

* The project's management is bad at working with the community

I was thinking of trying Docker, but I think I'll stick to LXC for now.

<comment><USER16> It breaks its own api in _minor_ versions, actually. There hasn't been a major version since 1.0.

<comment><USER17> I think that is what the op meant. Between major versions meaning breaking changes happening in updates happening between 1.0 and 2.0 i.e. 1.1, 1.2, etc.

That said.. is Docker using semver? It doesn't look that way so is it written somewhere that this is breaking some standard?

<comment><AUTHOR> @mattkrea honestly, it never occured to me if Docker uses semver. I had simply assumed that it did :P

<comment><USER17> I have to admit my use of Docker is quite a bit different than yours and while I definitely understand the concerns / complaints if they aren't using it can we really be made if there are changes like this?

I only use Docker on AWS Elastic Beanstalk and they only update for security issues most often (Beanstalk is using 1.6 as I type this).

If I recall even the config file format changes between 1.6 and 1.7

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it odd that no one from the company has responded to this in two days? I don't suggest "entertaining" responses. Rather, they could have chosen a particular complaint or two and said, "here's how things will work differently going forward, and here are the new issues in our tracker that reflect this commitment".

It could be that they just haven't seen this. No one was @-ed.

ISTM coreos/rkt may be the way to go for subuser. In my admittedly-shallow tests, it seemed simpler, easier, and better than docker, and it can consume docker files.

<comment><USER19> Don't worry, they'll have a overly-aggressive response soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Escape Docker, board your rkt and blast off for unikernel space. Be sure to avoid the interstellar systemdaemons as they are now sole proprietors of earth bound cgroupings.

In all seriousness I had never heard of Subuser before this thread and it looks very promising.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish the solution suggested would be something else than "Rewrite Docker". [http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> @nikanj, Gnome1 vs Gnome2 vs Gnome3 wasn't about control. "Rewrite Docker" would be a question of control. To some degree, I was publicising this issue in order to gauge intrest in such a break away project, which would solve problems with Docker and take controll away from Docker Inc. I also publicised it, because everyone loves issues like this and there is no such thing as bad press :D</comment></comment>


KotCity – an open-source city simulation game written in Kotlin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kotcity/kotcity <comment><USER2> > if this project gets to a place where it's really awesome but just needs > extra speed we can reach for that C++ or Rust book.

The JVM is fast enough for Minecraft, it should be plenty fast for this. But if you ever do want to compile to native then Kotlin/Native would make a lot more sense than a rewrite in a completely different language.

<comment><USER3> > The JVM is fast enough for Minecraft,

That's debatable, the requirements for running a Minecraft server are quite big for what it does and it's very easy to make it lag.

<comment><USER4> Well, "fast enough" is pretty vague. But bear in mind that Minecraft has never seemed to care about optimisation. For the longest time it was still running Java 7 even when Java 8 with the G1 collector had been out for a long time, and improved performance quite a bit.

HotSpot has a pauseless GC these days from Red Hat and is getting another one developed by the Java team itself, so even Minecraft's very heavy use of GC should be ok (heavy, after the new devs "improved" Notch's code to use objects everywhere instead of passing coordinates in separate parameters).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if you're aware of [http://cityboundsim.com/](http://cityboundsim.com/) ?

They're much further along and it is probably worth combining development resources towards that project instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am aware of it... we have somewhat divergent goals. I seek more of a re- creation of "SC4-style" city simulator, without agents for all traffic and so on. I think the big difference between this game and Citybound is that I'm trying for more of a statistical / stochastic approach vs. an agent based approach. I think the agent-based approach was one of the factors that led to SimCity 2013 not being that fun.

Citybound is aiming more for the Cities: Skylines approach to traffic and simulation.

I'm a big city-builder fan and have tried almost every one I can get my hands on. Among myself and some others, there is the feeling that the SimCity series peaked at SimCity 4 and I'm hoping to recapture that feel. It seems that Citybound is going in a totally different direction, which is fine, but that's not the aim of this project.

I hope to play Citybound when it is released but I do not think this project is redundant.

<comment><USER6> I dig it. What are you guys looking for in dev involvement? How casual can I be and still potentially contribute? I'm an Android dev who has been looking at sinking his teeth into kotlin for a bit now.

<comment><AUTHOR> As casual as you want... this is a side project for all of us. One of our other guys is an Android dev just using this for Kotlin practice. Drop on in, check out our code, suggest ideas, whatever tickles your fancy!

If you want stop by our dev chat channel on [https://gitter.im/kotcity/Lobby](https://gitter.im/kotcity/Lobby) and ask us questions or reply here if that works best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shameless plug: I'm working on a [Text GUI library]([https://github.com/Hexworks/zircon](https://github.com/Hexworks/zircon)) which has the option for isometric projection [like this]([https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/205245036084985857/41...](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/205245036084985857/419246113242218497/GIF.gif)). It is completely decoupled from the backend (the simulation engine in your case) so if you are interested we can work together. I also work in Kotlin and I'm eager to put in some work to create a fun game. It also supports tilesets so you are not stuck with ASCII.

<comment><USER8> Apologies for being a massive dweeb, but i think that's some variety of oblique projection, rather than isometric: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_projection)

<comment><USER7> This is as far as you can get with square based grids. :) We call it "top down isometric".

<comment><USER9> Who's "we"?

<comment><USER7> My team and me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like bad news that the programming language it's written in is one of the main selling points...

<comment><USER11> People don't really need another city sim. But a lot of people want something in Kotlin to mess around with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since Maxis has more or less been gobbled up by EA I don't think we will ever see SimCity4++, so I think we DO need another city sim.

There are a few in the works but I don't think any "carry the torch" of the SC4-style game.

SimCity 4 has such staying power, new mods and lots are still being created to this day! It outlived SimCity 2013 by far.

Cities: Skylines, Banished, Citybound are all fun in their own right but I don't see any as a proper continuation of the SimCity series. (ignoring SC2013)

As a bonus you can play around in Kotlin too!

<comment><USER11> What do you think SC4 has that Cities: Skylines etc doesn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FYI: Kot in German = excrements

<comment><USER13> Ha, reminds me of a juice booth/startup the other day at the tech fair named "Suja," which means dirty or obscene in Portuguese!

<comment><USER14> My favorite example is a popular German light bulb brand, Osram, which is also known in Poland. In Polish it means roughly "I'll put my excrement [on it]" :P

<comment><USER15> While we're at it, Italian cooking appliance brand Smeg invokes something quite different in English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a lot of fun to hack around with. I wonder if it can be ported easily to Android.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've taken pains to keep the sim code separate from the view / presentation layer. If you want to jump in and help us make it dual platform we'd be glad to have you.

We are using JavaFX which has some kind of Android support via ([http://gluonhq.com/products/mobile/javafxports/](http://gluonhq.com/products/mobile/javafxports/)) or you could simply just ignore our UI and add a native Android one on top of our simulator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the README: "Happiness (available in separate branch)".

</comment><comment><USER17> nice Kotlin demo! but calling a very basic 80s style simcity clone 'city simulation' is a bit out of time. change title?

<comment><USER15> It may be no Cities: Skylines but it's still a simulation of a city. Seems a fair title to me.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, bizarre criticism. Some of the most intricate games I've played are MUDs over telnet and many of their mechanics have never been matched by modern titles.

Doesn't mean they are less worthy games. The thought almost disgusts me, like only well funded projects can qualify for something as straightforward as a simulation.</comment></comment></comment>


A preview of Go version 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2011/10/preview-of-go-version-1.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a little sad to see that "delete" (a pretty common word) is being used by a builtin that only works on maps and most code doesn't need. I guess it's not a reserved word, so it can still be used, but I was hoping for something a little more elegant. It seems like they would've gone with "del", to match with "cap" and "len".

Also, error.Value doesn't seem much better than os.Error. Every non-trivial program now needs to import "error"; it could almost be implicit. "error.Value" is also longer than os.Error.

Still, a pretty reasonable and good-sounding proposal over all.</comment>


The Cloth Maps of Ultima - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXRioSiPWPc&feature=youtu.be&a <comment><USER2> Full interview with Richard Garriott: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-oM07j4Mys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-oM07j4Mys)</comment>


Ask HN: a better couchsurfing platform? - <AUTHOR> I moved recently in Belgium from Germany. I started using cousurfing (couchsurfing.com) to host people and meet couchsurfers because I live in a small town and it is refreshing to meet with this type of people.
Now, the good:
1. The community is amazing. I just love meeting and talking with these people
2. It gives you the opportunity to find buddies for your trips/visits
3. You build a worldwide net of friends
The bad:
1. The website experience is horrible. The site is down at least daily and it is non responsive most of the time
2. The tools given to screen people are good, but they should be improved. For example, I hosted a guy that left me no reference, this shouldn't happen
3. The community is very young (22-23 ish). Which I think is due to how the community is managed more than "couchsurfing is for young people only".
I start to think that some of this destroying is being done on purpose and that couchsurfing.com will die a slow death. This is a shame, it's a 5M people community. With amazing goals and values, I can't believe we are letting this go to waste.
I propose:
To start the discussion on a better platform (starting from which framework/language/DB to use). This is truly now just a need, a strong need, I have and I see. I am not planning on money, the first driver is really making the world slightly better. But, if you prefer money, I believe these users WANT to pay something for such a service (like ~USD 10 per year), so make your numbers.
My email is in my profile. If you are interested, just drop me a message.
#Edits below (based on comments)
1. Why not Airbnb?
I will tell you why I don't use Airbnb. First, I am hosting people because I enjoy it, because we go out for a drink or, if I am too busy, we have a talk about travelling/world/dreams. Second, because I only offer a bed on the floor, nothing else. With Airbnb the burden for the hosts is bigger (like offering towels, sheets, etc.). Finally, Airbnb is no community: you don't always meet your host; you can't post in their website to find people for a beer; etc. <comment><USER2> > To start the discussion on a better platform (starting from which > framework/language/DB to use)

The tech stack is probably one of the last items that should be discussed. Communities do not die because of the tech stack they use, but because of problems at higher levels.

IMHO a good starting point would be to identify features/processes that will ensure your new community does not suffer from the same problems you have identified with couchsurfing.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, but:

1\. I wanted to make sure I am not just throwing an idea in the wind

2\. The problem with couchsurfing now is mainly the poor website experience. I know this does not depend on the tech stack, but it's good to keep this in mind

As "features", I think those of couchsurfing are OK to start. Later on I think few things could be added:

1\. jobs on the style of WWOOF and Work Away

2\. Reviews, itineraries. Like I have an entire kayak itinerary for 2 rivers and I could put it in there or like where you can rent a kayak for a long trip, etc.

3\. Guides. Like free tour guides, city walks, etc.

<comment><USER3> Can't something like Airbnb already fill this role? I don't know much about couchsurfing in all honesty.

<comment><AUTHOR> I edited my post to answer your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also loved couchsurfing ([http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/cesidio](http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/cesidio)) and wanted to fix couchsurfing creating another product, but I struggle to create interest around it and a viable business model...

[http://beta.minstrels.com/](http://beta.minstrels.com/)

any help or advices would be very helpful. It is built in ruby on rails and uses mongodb as database and deployed on heroku. it is just a prototype at the moment, a working prototype but with fake data in it.

The product is different from couchsurfing in the following things:

1) there are stories that form a user 'travel resume' that help users host real travelers and not just people wanting to get hosted for free

2) there is the concept of 'incentives' so a traveler can increase the chances of being hosted by providing something useful/entertaining to the potential host (small present, cooking a meal, sharing some knowledge on something)

3) there are 2 types of meetings: open meetings (where everyone can participate), close meetings (organizer can approve requests to participate)

</comment><comment><USER5> Most of the couchsurfers I know have switched partially or fully to [http://www.bewelcome.org/](http://www.bewelcome.org/).

Hope this helps :)

<comment><USER6> I was quite active on CS and also joined bewelcome. Bewelcome never seemed to gain the critical mass necessary though - this would be a difficult problem for any new platform.

OP why not approach CS HQ.now that it's been funded maybe you could pitch the idea.

<comment><USER5> Kinda agree with that. Still, it is a sign that creating another CS platform can be difficult, because of the fact that people have to move to a new service.

The big problem of CS currently is that they have done a lot to increase the number of CSers in the community (for $$ reasons). This means that a lot of people subscribers that do not (IMHO) share the same spirit as older members. This is even the reason why bewelcome was created, as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This topic has an easy answer: if you think they need it, just prove it by doing an MVP and leaning the project.

Make a homepage, get some sign ups, see if this is worth.</comment>


Hire HN: experienced guy in symbian (c++ and j2me) is needed - <AUTHOR>

Hi, If you have a proven experience in Symbian, deep understanding of its core services, ready to hack on BT profiles, write VoIP applications, and struggle with SDCards deployment we are looking for you.<p>contact me at email@example.com <comment><USER2> What kind of deal you are offering (equity?, especially high pay?) and can the hired person work remotely?

I know several people with deep experience in Symbian and can ask around. However they are most likely interested only in special kind of deals, not standard Symbian subcontracting work. Also it helps if I know a bit more about what are you doing.

Cheers, Teemu

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for a sub contractor and willing to pay well enough. That is in the US/Western Europe rates.

Work is to be done remotely.

Developer is responsible to get phones and peripherals.

Will explained more on the email.</comment></comment>


Here's what Google's mystery barge is going to look like - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/07/heres-what-googles-mystery-barge-looks-like/ <comment><USER2> Third-hand summary of [http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/11/07/google- barge...](http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/11/07/google-barge- revealed-artistic-structure-with-fish-fins/)</comment>


Enhancing Download Protection in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/08/01/enhancing-download-protection-in-firefox/ <comment><USER2> > The second category, uncommon downloads, covers downloads which may not be > malicious or unwanted but that are simply not commonly downloaded.

> it is possible that you have been tricked into downloading a malicious file > from a phishing site which has not yet been identified as such by the Google > Safe Browsing service.

Does this mean that sites that have some kind of personalized downloads or downloads that are created on the fly (like generated PDFs for example, or watermarked content) will always create a warning for the user on download?

<comment> TD-Linux This only applies to executables I think, as I've never seen the warning on Firefox Nightly.

<comment><USER3> Still something I'd consider an anti-feature, as it both punishes small software authors/projects and creates confusion on new releases even for bigger projects.

<comment><USER4> Browser security and anti-malware in general is increasingly a nightmare for small ISVs that release software that does anything remotely suspicious (eg DLL injection).

As a personal anecdote, my website has been blacklisted multiple times by safebrowsing, downloads have been blocked as "XXX is malicious", multiple AV products have found "malware" in a program that's never even been released before, etc. I have to email 10-20 different anti-virus companies with samples every release and then deal with the ones who want it in a different format or submitted through a web portal instead.

Then we have the problem that contacting any human about safebrowsing false positives is nigh impossible. Take a look at the report right now - [https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagn...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/safebrowsing/diagnostic/?hl=en#url=r1ch.net) \- "Some pages on this website send visitors to dangerous websites. Some pages on this website install malware on visitors' computers." yet it says "Current status: Not dangerous". And Webmaster tools can't seem to find anything specific: [http://i.imgur.com/HzT8xfC.png](http://i.imgur.com/HzT8xfC.png)

<comment><USER5> Given that google has proven pretty indifferent to who its robots run over, one wonders why we should trust them to build self driving cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can see this being useful to the average user who is encouraged to download "video.mp4" from Popular-File-Upload-Site, but thanks to a dark pattern on the website, is presented with a "video.exe" download instead.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course, if you're running Windows 10 and trying to avoid spyware, it's already too late.

<comment><USER8> I don't much like it either, but there's no need to inject anti-Windows propaganda into every single post about everything.

<comment><USER7> There is nothing "anti-Windows" about my post. It isn't a biased take, it's not propaganda, it's just fact.

There is somewhat of a logical inconsistency in trying to avoid spyware on Windows 10 that is hopefully explained by lack of knowledge. The purpose of my post is to inform. Not everyone is aware.

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/2956574/microsoft- subnet...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2956574/microsoft- subnet/windows-10-privacy-spyware-settings-user-agreement.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The one thing I've always wanted is for the browser to automatically verify the file hash if it is provided on the download page .. Any plans in this direction, Mozilla ?

<comment><USER10> What would be the point in that? Security it is not.

<comment><USER9> Ensuring the integrity of the download (especially when served from mirrors) is not valuable? [No snark .. just genuinely curious]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to whitelist certain domains from the safe browsing feature in Firefox?

One of the sites I frequent has all their torrents marked by safe browsing as malware (mistakenly AFAIK), so ideally I'd like to whitelist that one site without opting out of the feature entirely.

<comment><USER12> Not possible. Normal torrent sites work fine and aren't marked, so that's weird. You do get the occasional blacklisting for ads that inject malware. Maybe you're not seeing them due to an Adblocker?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always disable the "Block reported attack sites" and "Block reported web forgeries" protections in the settings... I don't need my browsing history to be sent to yet someone else...

<comment><USER14> But these features don't send your browsing history anywhere. The Firefox safe browsing service downloads a list of bad URLs in form of hashed prefixes from the Google service. Then every page you visit is compared against the downloaded list (offline). If there's a match, Firefox sends the hashed prefix up to Google and downloads a list of all full URLs that match that hashed prefix. There's another offline comparison and if the web page you are visiting still matches, then the page is blocked and the phishing/malware warning is shown. At no point is an actual URL sent to Google or anyone else.

[https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/update- api](https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/update-api)

<comment><USER15> Honest questions:

How could they say "This file is not commonly downloaded" without knowing how often it is downloaded?

If they know how often files are downloaded, where are they receiving that information from?

<comment><USER16> Microsoft introduced a similar feature in 2010. In that scheme, "file identifier" and the signature, if the application is signed, is sent to a cloud service [1][2][3]. Therefore they can track attempts for downloads, without having to know the URL itself.

[1] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/10/13/stranger- dang...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/10/13/stranger-danger- introducing-smartscreen-application-reputation/)

[2] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ieinternals/2011/03/22/ever...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ieinternals/2011/03/22/everything- you-need-to-know-about-authenticode-code-signing/)

[3] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/03/22/smartscreen-a...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/03/22/smartscreen- application-reputation-building-reputation/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how they're gathering that information and using it to alert the user. Is it a checksum of the file that Firefox is comparing to a central database? Or is the check entirely client-side?

<comment><USER12> [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Application_Reputation](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Application_Reputation)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features/Application_Reput...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features/Application_Reputation_Design_Doc)

Local database with whitelists and blacklists, file signature inspection, and remote lookup for files with unknown, unsigned binaries in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yay, another shitty feature to disable in about:config.

Signature based systems are still useless. And you send more data to google!

(Yes, yes they probably download lists and don't directly send the hash. The lists are most likely still sharded enough to get an idea, as it is with the regular safe browsing crap)

<comment><USER19> Useless? Except that they aren't. Because the vast majority of users are only ever downloading very popular things which have already been scanned and confirmed safe. We're edge cases.</comment></comment>


WakeMate - All bugs are fixed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/11/29/all-bugs-are-fixed/

<comment><USER2> I think what they are really trying to say is that all remaining bugs in the system have been reclassified as features.</comment>


BitTorrent Sync - <AUTHOR> http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html <comment><USER2> I'm curious to see whether technologies like BitTorrent Sync (and similar products like Space Monkey) gain traction. One cannot deny the importance of backups, especially as we begin storing decades of our lives (photos, videos, etc) online. On the one hand BitTorrent Sync offers a beautiful vision of purely decentralized backups. On the other hand, it requires a critical mass of users to survive (and the number of users must grow as the amount of data in the system grows).</comment>


Show HN: ShouldBe – Eye-pleasing assertions for complex object graphs in C# - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Martaver/ShouldBe <comment><AUTHOR> This is mainly for any C# coders, so I hope this is the right crowd. I made this package for sanity & brevity when writing assertions about deep, complex object graphs (like big DTOs) and it's been useful enough for us that I thought I'd pay it forward.

Appreciate any comments you guys might have!</comment>


Problem with Amazon SES Undetermined Bounce Status - <AUTHOR> We are using AWS SES for sending emails. We send 10M+ emails per month using SES. For some users we received SQS bounce response status = 'undetermined', sub_status = 'undetermined'. We mark users with bounce status 'undetermined' as hard bounce and don't send them email in future. However we found these emails are valid. Emails should be delivered successfully. We observed this for multiple emails. Question: 1) Why 'undetermined' bounce response is received even for valid emails? 2) Should bounce response with 'undetermined' status be marked as hard bounce? Is the logic correct? SES bounce status & sub status details are in this link: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/notification-contents.html <comment><USER2> Have you looked at the domains that you are seeing undetermined status for, is there a pattern?

We send a reasonably decent amount of email, in general we distribute the emails across multiple ESPs, with a small amount going through SES. One of the easiest ways to figure this out is to trap the entire SMTP conversation and codes. We wrote an internal tool that will send an email and trap the entire SMTP conversation so we can see what is really happening, as not all ESP's correctly categorize things, nor do they let you see the raw SMTP conversation and many times incorrectly configured mail servers cause the problem (even on "big" domains).

In a couple of cases we have found that some domains work better when we send to them using a specific ESP, which is part of the reason we integrated to multiple ESP's. We also built into our system the ability to pin a domain to an ESP, thereby usually increasing our deliverability for clients.

EDIT: And no, I do not believe an undetermined bounce status should be a hard bounce, soft seems more reasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked the domains of emails. There was no specific pattern or for specific domains it's happening.

Do you always mark undetermined bounce status as soft or is there any logic based on counters. e.g. for the same email 1st 3 undetermined responses are soft after that it's hardbounced.

Makes sense?</comment></comment>


Building the same app for iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> http://coovtech.com/posts/nearby-now-for-ios-android/ <comment><USER2> The only way to edit layouts in Android is in xml. No pixel perfect single aspect ratio here. The visual layout tool is a joke and should only be used to quickly see what it might look like on a device of various resolutions. Emphasis on might.

The Android emulator is an embarassment though. Just horrible. The Android x86 project looks promising for a fast virtualized replacement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Important to note is that the Author had taken classes in Java previously, but had no Objective-C experience (his primary language seems to be C#.) Spoiler: the iOS app took 2x as long to build.

<comment><USER4> If I were to guess [wrongly, it turns out], I'd say grokking Interface Builder (or whatever it's called now that it's in Xcode) might have been the issue.

IB seems to be a stumbling block, given how many Mac development newbies post to mailing lists asking how to avoid using it to build interfaces.

Maybe because it doesn't generate code? And sometimes people have difficulty working out how their code relates to the objects in IB, and how you connect the two, and how the objects in a nib communicate to objects in other nibs.

Hell, I've been using IB and Objective-C since 1992, and am still figuring out the new Xcode 4 IB.

<comment><USER5> Xcode 4 does a nice job of pointing out objects you may have forgotten to wire-up in IB. Prior to that, I struggled with IB. I realize now there is a cadence to it. Declare, synthesize, wire-up, implement delegate methods. Forget a step and your on StackOverflow face-palming.

I tried to get into iOS about 3.5 years ago. I failed miserably. IB was a big part of that...

Trying to get two objects to line-up horizontally with the designer in Eclipse... Well, it makes me want to punch something.</comment></comment></comment>


2017 California Self-Driving Car Report: Waymo and GM Lead - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16956902/california-dmv-self-driving-car-disengagement-2017 <comment><USER2> Waymo and GM were leading last years as well. Though last year nobody else had accomplished much of anything. Now we've got a bunch of companies who have overcome the initial hurdles and are demonstrating basic competence on public roads. Zoox is really interesting, they only got going on public roads with one vehicle late August (7 by the end of November) has shown remarkable performance given how early in the game it is for them.</comment>


Inclusiveness in Language for Outsiders Looking In - <AUTHOR> https://ferd.ca/inclusiveness-in-language-for-outsiders-looking-in.html <comment><USER2> I disagree with the author and don't accept these proposals as means of fighting racism/prejudice. In my country, we have our own discussion around gendered language and people suggest using gender neutral terms. People talk about framing and how it can reinforce prejudice. Framing is the source and justification for this activism.

Ironically you proclaim to be the master of the unwashed in-eloquent slaves, that should use your idea of language and worse, your diagnosis about the mental orientation of your lab rats. The backlash is predictable and in my opinion justified and correct.

French isn't a regulated language. There are institutions which define what is considered correct, but it has to be accepted by those that speak it. There is history about that. Someone who speaks English should know about it actually. Tangential political activism here is rightfully condemned, but we see this in a lot of countries.

> Generally, people are forgiving

Heh... where? On Twitter?

> That second option is where things usually go bad. If someone tells you > something you did was hurtful and you just tell them to get over themselves, > this is where reciprocity ends. There is no need to respect you since you > felt no need to respect them either.

Would you please give me all your money? Seriously, don't lie to yourself.

> The problem is not being ignorant of the potential harmfulness of words, > it's doubling down when you learn about it.

I learned nothing from this honestly. Tell people to deal with their "micro- offenses" and you would really help them cope with difficulties in their lives. Maybe that is something you could learn.

> But if you're part of a demographic that is targeted by hate groups, a lot > of your existence is spent being aware of dog-whistles about you

I am. As you might guess from my post, I prefer spending 1000 years in a free speech place with all offenses the universe can muster than 5 minutes in a sanctimonious environment where academics without significant life experience dictate the allowed vocabulary. Free speech and equality before the law are rights minorities fought with a lot of blood. Not going to throw that away because some failed parenting.

Now you learned that and you can delete your article.

<comment><USER3> You're free to disagree with the author, but this:

>Now you learned that and you can delete your article.

is just rudely dismissive, and not part of good-faith debate.

<comment><USER2> It is not a good faith-debate to me at all. From the article:

There are only a few ways to react:

\- Agree to make the changes

\- Double-down on keeping the text as is, and dismiss the request as unreasonable</comment></comment></comment>


Why the Government Never Gets Tech Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Outsourcing a project that level of complexity is never going to end well. The only way to consistently produce good, highly complex software is to have stakeholders closely involved in every step of the process. You simply aren't going to get that level of involvement when you pass off development to contractors.

<comment><USER3> Ah, but the stakeholders, CMS on up to the White House, _were_ "closely involved in every step of the process", e.g. CMS was the integrator (now replaced with contractor QSSI).

Unfortunately incompetent at that role/a bit too close, e.g. issuing change orders right through the week before launch, or ... well, I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader why they delayed doing their integration testing till 1, maybe 2 weeks before launch, and then ignored that the tests failed hard....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting article but it doesn't really address the key issue. The reason government IT doesn't get tech right is not because they don't use Agile. The problem is much bigger than just switching to user stories.

<comment><USER5> "The president should use the power of the White House to end all large information technology purchases, and instead give his administration's accomplished technologists the ability to work with agencies to make the right decisions, increase adoption of modern, incremental software development practices, like a popular one called Agile, already used in the private sector, and work with the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration to make it easy for small businesses to contract with the government." > "use Agile"</comment></comment>


Why Trello failed to build a $1B business - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/why-trello-failed-to-build-a-1-billion-business-e1579511d5dc <comment><USER3> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839738)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, missed that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From an internal rate of return standpoint, Trello may have come pretty close to the value of a $1billion company to its founders and employees because it only took one round of funding - $10 million for non-controlling interest [1] - and existed at $450 million. So the pool of money for common stockholders was $225 million or more.

[1]: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2014/07/24/trello- inc/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2014/07/24/trello-inc/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the title of the article is misleading, it should have highlighted the strategy part of growing a business (as in the article) instead of the focus on the valuation. We are probably missing the intention of the founders when they started. Anyone should be happy with such an income, no question about that I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > From the article: "We see Trello as a feature, not a product."

That's pretty much the answer. In this case it wasn't a horizontal/vertical issue, simply that the feature was easily added by other, more comprehensive platforms.

<comment><USER7> I agree with this. Trello could have added a lot more features, gone for Enterprise, but it would then have no longer been Trello.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel this focus on valuations, and saying that Trello "failed" just because a bunch of people who were not involved with the company at all thought they should have hit a different number is truly bad for our industry. There is zero reason to use the words "fail" and Trello in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. And yet, here we are.

We need to move away from the growth at all costs mindset, and go back to focusing on building world class products. It is perfectly ok to slow down once in a while, and not just chase the next quarter's numbers.

Trello was a success, and we should celebrate what they did. Not deride them because they didn't live up to some VC's hyper-inflated expectations.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty insane to use the word "fail" in the same sentence with Trello. Is "Why Amazon failed to build a 10 trillion dollar business" next?

<comment><USER10> Agreed. It's a very skewed perspective that treats $425 million as a failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to know how many $1B businesses has the author built.

<comment><USER12> This is unfairly dismissive. The author recognizes Trello's success [0] and is sharing his thoughts. Is there something in particular he said that you disagree with?

[0]

>Hindsight, of course, is 20/20\. While I've spent most of this post talking about Trello's missed opportunity, we shouldn't forget that building a SaaS business that's worth over $10M, let alone one that's worth $425M, is a huge accomplishment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >It looked a lot like a whiteboard with sticky notes translated into a web browser and an iPhone App.

That's pretty much it. It was an insanely easy idea to copy, you can already do it with sticky notes if you work in an office. I don't really think you can improve the service beyond that; It's a note tracker, it tracks notes.

<comment><USER14> I've said this on HN before. But this is what I love about Trello - <USER2> resisted the urge to do more than just reproduce the sticky note/whiteboard experience digitally. I've used other products that could be described as "copies" that tried to "enhance" that experience, even slightly, with additional functionality that ended up detracting from the core product. It seems like that was a harder balance to hit than it might look.

<comment><USER15> The thing is that it is so limited, that you'll move away from it sooner or later when you need more structure. I've used it in a significant capacity in 4 teams, and we always ended up migrating to another tool, once it was clear which other tool would fit the needs of the team the best. Sure, that's good for you as user to have an early-stage playground, but probably bad for Trello.

<comment><USER16> I have to use Jira at work, and cannot tell you how much happier I'd be if we could move to Trello.

<comment><USER17> The grass is always greener. Trello is so awful as a bug/issue tracker I'd love to be using JIRA.

<comment><USER16> In Jira you can't even read the issue because half of the screen is occupied with navs or borders.

This is more or less how it looks on a full-screen Retina 15" Macbook Pro: [http://pcgen.org/autobuilds/pcgen- docs/images/jira/jira_04.p...](http://pcgen.org/autobuilds/pcgen- docs/images/jira/jira_04.png)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell's Gmail Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john-podesta-and-colin-powells-gmail-accounts?trk_source=homepage-lede <comment><AUTHOR> It's too late to brag about predicting it now, but it was too obvious back then to be worth bragging about: of course GMail didn't get hacked. Why would any hacker attempt that when phishing is so straightforward and as cost-free as a Nigerian prince scam?

That said, I don't fault Podesta or Gen. Powell for failing to catch a phishing attack. Even though the phisher slaughtered the spelling of "Mountain" and "Amphitheater", most people don't read that boilerplate text [0]. In terms of the quality of the fake email...unless you are routinely receiving transactional email from Google, you're not going to notice the sloppiness of the CSS and typography.

What does tick me off is that Podesta has already been hacked [1] since Wikileaks has been dumping his emails. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Podesta's email fuckup made Clinton's campaign much harder (or, at least annoying). OK, if we can't expect our senior statespersons to understand the Internet and URLs and etc., can't we at least expect them to have hired reliable tech folk and to follow their advice? -- e.g. Let me set up 2-factor authentication for you.

[0] [http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content- images/contentima...](http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content- images/contentimage/38680/1476913065736588.png)

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/john-podesta- twitter-...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/john-podesta-twitter-hack- hillary-clinton/)</comment>


Learn to code in less than 5 months, get hired, and have fun along the way - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andreineagoie/learn-coding-in-less-than-5-months-get-hired-and-have-fun-along-the-way-f8b9ce1a4e7e#.i69djkon2 <comment><USER2> > 2\. Demand for people with this skill must be higher than the supply.

This point goes against all of his other points. A skill that takes six months to get extremely good at is going to be commoditized in short order. So, it seems like a mistake to bank on this kind of knowledge being relevant in 40 years.

Honestly though, I am starting to feel like a fool for completing a CS degree. While I have a great career, most of the what I learned was useless. Back in 2012, I couldn't get a job doing machine learning because nobody wanted people with those skills, and the few companies that did looked for Ph.Ds. So even though I could build do cool stuff with ML in plain Octave, I couldn't get a job in the field.

Today, all you need to do is to break into the field is read a few books and learn a tool. The skill has been completely commoditized, rendering all that I work I did moot. Then again, at least now I sort of have a job in the field.

<comment><USER3> I'm a self-taught programmer and I'm considering getting a CS degree. I can do quite a bit, but I don't see any storied jobs open to people with only a few months of training. Is the demand really that high? Am I looking in the wrong place? I'm motivated to get the degree because I actually want to learn the material though, not just because I want to make money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi RUG3Y. From my experience, there are a ton of jobs for the skill-set I have mentioned above in my article. There will be more jobs in metropolitan areas than rural, but you can also find remote friendly workplaces. I've mentioned some places to check out in the article.

As for CS degree I don't have one so you will have to speak with someone that does. In my opinion there is no better learning than when you are employed and working in teams so I prefer that method for practicality purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to teach programming to students and really enjoyed that novice people learn how to program. But when I read things such as how someone got a high paying programming job with only 5 months of learning, I can't stop thinking about an old saying in the stock markets that goes something like "when your taxi driver starts giving you tips on which stocks to buy, sell it all and leave the stock market asap"..

I don't know if it is me and I'm too stupid that I've done 12 of higher level studies (5 BSc + 2 MSc + 5 PhD) when 5 months were enough, or if I'm targeting the wrong subfield. If we look carefully, all this "boom" with shitty software practices and instability is on web development and front end tools, and this is what most of these "5 month" learners are targeting. Similarly to the taxi driver above, I guess I should leave the web development job market asap..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi jventura, I completely agree with you with the exception of one axiom: efficiency is more important than time spent when learning. If you read the article, I only mention the best way to get your first programming job with the least amount of friction. It takes years and years to truly develop your skills, but I have met many people that get discouraged because of the little progress they seem to be making when they are starting off (especially when they don't come from a computer science background like yourself). I wanted to write this article to show someone how it might be done in order to get those positive reinforcements as soon as possible so they become good developers in the future and they want to put in those years of practice (but efficiently) to get truly proficient.

<comment><USER4> Hi evantai, please don't get me wrong as I'm really glad that you could figure out a better deal for you.

My comment should be seen more as a kind-of rant because, in one hand, there's lots of instability on the web dev subfield, on the other hand, there's too much people without real skills entering the job market and these things are interconnected. On a final note, my comment only shows to me that I should think about moving along to another CS subfield, as web dev is currently too "hot" and plagued by low quality tooling and practices.

All in all, it is me that is wrong, not you, as I've probably lost too much time learning only to be doing web dev.. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does "code" mean to a person who doesn't know data structures or algorithms? This man says he's a "software developer". What does that mean if all you know is JS and Angular? Web Apps?

I'm a web developer WITHOUT a CS degree, but with many years of JS etc. experience... what can I do to transition into the role of "software developer", which undoubtedly comes with a higher salary??

</comment><comment><USER6> Kudos on trying something new.

However, please realize that it's a bit naive to think that you get extremely good at anything non-trivial in 6 months.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_\(book\))

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think you can get good at anything non-trivial. I think you can become average. That's why I recommended in the article to start working in teams and on real projects. That's when the real growth happens, and that's why you want to get hired as soon as possible. From there, you're on equal footing with everyone else and the rest is ambition.</comment></comment>


Guide to making money in open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand <comment><USER2> Dual licensing is missing?

<comment><USER3> Yep, that is listed as the first item on the comprehensive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open- sourc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open- source_software)</comment></comment>


China top target for computer attacks - <AUTHOR> http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20081103/tc_afp/uschinaitinternetsoftwarecrime_081103212216 <comment><AUTHOR> An alternate reason for why the US gets so many attacks from China - b/c lots of the botnet zombies are in China.</comment>


The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles from Mom - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html <comment><USER2> I shudder when I think about the strain that will be placed on millenials when we inevitably become our parents' safety net. It's a perfect storm: a housing bubble that will pop when everyone tries to sell their house at the same time, unreliable pensions, non-existant retirement savings, high levels of undischargable student debt, and dwindling job prospects for young people.

It's not going to be pretty.

<comment><USER3> The children will likely end up moving into their parents' homes and paying off their parents' medical bills with reverse mortgages leaving the once young at mid-life or later with nothing to inherit and no job prospects in these areas typically away from major metro (and increasingly, employment- availability) areas. This will leave most Americans in the positions before WW2 about given there will be few assets in the hands of most Americans again.

I'm seeing housing prices in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas dropping as lack of viable jobs in these areas combined with crushing commutes to cities makes these locations terrible for those still needing to work. There's an alarming number of people I've heard of commuting from West Virginia into DC and from Richmond into DC enduring 3+ hour commutes as cities that used to be self- sustained economies now become suburbs of the largest cities, and the trend is going to continue with a few deviants that buck the trend like remote workers or homesteaders.

Where I live, the local economy is driven by two demographics - tourists and local retirees sprinkled with some of the wealthiest households in the US living here part time to avoid paying state income taxes. Much of the US is eerily similar to this pattern and it's extremely depressing to think of a way out of the spiral where almost all of our money will go into paying outrageous mortgages / rent with lower-paying jobs and the few in the middle class are in finance, tech, or healthcare.

<comment><USER4> Whats even more fun is there other major problems approaching on roughly the same timeline...

\- Less developed nations will be transitioning to a population crunch (WSJ 2050) with huge ramifications on global economics/politics

\- fossil fuels (especially oil) reaching depletion or becoming too expensive to extract

\- climate change impact in full swing, serious disruption to even domestic agriculture

\- Ubiquitous AI, and all the associated social unrest of a deprecated generation of workers

Ultimately there's just too many people. Society doesn't need 8 billion humans anymore, the US doesn't even need 300 million... Arguably what youre describing is an emergent solution to that problem. Now we've reached the point where the next generation will need to support their parent's slow death instead of raising the next generation of children... That's going to wreck society's ownership of the future in a big way.

(Mobile, excuse the poor formating)

<comment><USER5> Right, the issue of overpopulation is huge. It's going to need a different kind of society with very different values than the ones we have today. Capitalism can't grow like it has been once we realize the issue of overpop and work to reduce it. We have a crazy new world coming. And the transition has be fast.

<comment><USER6> Or alternatively human ingenuity adapts and overcomes - Malthusians have been consistently proved wrong in their constant cries of overpopulation. There is still plenty of land, plenty of ability to grow food to feed us and plenty of advances being made in areas which will allow that to increase. We've already seen a vast decrease in the number of people living on less than $1 a day across the world enabling many countries to start reaping a demographic dividend.

If the pessimists can quote fossil fuel depletion then surely I can optimistically promote fusion, carbon capture etc. Capitalism has been one of the greatest success stories of humanity.

<comment><USER7> I never understood how one could embrace prophecies of doom in this day and age. We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down yet.

<comment><USER8> _" We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down yet."_

If by "we", you mean "citizens in the most prosperous cities of the world", then yes.

If you mean "people in most of the USA", then I have some news for you: the train's wheels are locked, and sparks are flying while everything skids to a stop. It's absolutely shocking how much of the country has declined in prosperity in my lifetime. The smaller cities near where I grew up -- places that were thriving small towns as recently as the 1980s -- are nearly all trapped in downward spirals of poverty, debt and addiction.

If you mean "the citizens of this planet", well...for most people, the train never left the station. Even in modern "success stories" like China, you don't have to try very hard to find appalling levels of poverty and despair. A few have become incredibly wealthy, but mostly, people are struggling to keep up. In the third-world? Forget it. Yeah, people can pay for cellphones now, while they're dying of preventable diseases due to filthy water.

Optimism is one thing, but it takes a Silicon Valley (aka Leibnitzian) view of the world to claim that this is a "golden age". Mostly, a select group of people are getting richer, while everyone else stagnates (or just barely inches forward).

<comment><USER9> > Mostly, a select group of people are getting richer, while everyone else > stagnates.

Actually this isn't true. Middle classes in the developed world are doing poorly relative to the richest in the developed world, but global poverty is on a steep decline.

Throughout the developing world, economic development is pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty at breakneck speed. Check out some of the data here, for starters: [http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and- distribution-of-pr...](http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution- of-prosperity/world-poverty/)

<comment><USER8> _" Middle classes in the developed world are doing poorly relative to the richest in the developed world"_

This, I believe. Part of the driving force of the trends in global poverty is globalization. And despite what I said earlier about middle-class America, I don't necessarily cry for the loss of overall wealth in this country, if it means greater equity for the rest of the world (I just wish the richest people in the world were paying a greater share).

 _" global poverty is on a steep decline."_

This is _highly_ debatable. The data you linked to seems to be mostly based on the World Bank data -- a single, rarely modified, global metric of $1.25 (now $1.90) a day, using self-reported statistics. Meanwhile, regional context is critical -- for example, sub-saharan Africa has actually seen _increases_ in poverty. In India and China, there's good reason to believe that wealth inequality is _increasing_ [1]:

 _" the benefits of economic growth in many developing countries often accrue to the rich. In India and China, inequality has been increasing in recent years. From 1981 to 2010, the average poor person in sub-Saharan Africa saw no increase in their income even as economies expanded. Because there is no household data since 2012, it is impossible to know if these trends towards greater inequality have since changed."_

Meanwhile, the metric itself is questionable (ibid):

 _" Someone living today at the new poverty line does not necessarily enjoy the same standard of living as someone at the old line did in the past, however....Looking at national price indices rather than PPPs, half of the world's population live in countries in which $1.90 buys you less now than $1.25 did back in 2005, according to a paper released this week by Sanjay Reddy of the New School for Social Research in New York."_

Even the _World Bank itself_ acknowledges that poverty is on the increase in sub-saharan Africa (a region, which, by the way, has over a billion people, or 1/7th of the world's current population) [2]:

 _" However, despite its falling poverty rates, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world for which the number of poor individuals has risen steadily and dramatically between 1981 and 2010. There are more than twice as many extremely poor people living in SSA today (414 million) than there were three decades ago (205 million). As a result, while the extreme poor in SSA represented only 11 percent of the world's total in 1981, they now account for more than a third of the world's extreme poor. India contributes another third (up from 22 percent in 1981) and China comes next, contributing 13 percent (down from 43 percent in 1981)."_

In other words: it's great that more people are self-reporting as living on more than this bottom-of-the-barrel income metric, but it isn't really a counter-argument to my point, except to say that we've made the absolute _poorest of the poor_ a bit less poor. Maybe. And mostly in China.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/finance- economics/21673530-num...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance- economics/21673530-number-poor-people-declining-data-are-fuzzy-tricky-work- measuring-falling)

[2] [http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2013/04/17/re...](http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- release/2013/04/17/remarkable-declines-in-global-poverty-but-major-challenges- remain)

<comment><USER6> We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a massive achievement. The crucial thing about that being less poor is that they are then not in subsistence mode and able to consider things like educating their children, engaging in capitalism, i.e. economic activity which can increase their wealth further rather than merely trying to stay alive.

Your quotes highlighting the problems of SSA move quickly into using percentages of an overall number that has decreased - it acknowledges that in all other regions in the world poverty has fallen dramatically, especially in China where their middle class is now around 340 million.

<comment><USER8> _" We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a massive achievement."_

That's a pretty meaningless claim. Again, the data you're leaning on to say that is using an exceptionally low bar, and it doesn't really take into account regional economic differences. The whole reason the World Bank had to raise it to $1.90 a day from $1.25 a day was because in many parts of the developing world, $1.90 a day _buys you less_ than $1.25 did at the start of the measurements!

More importantly, $1.91 a day still makes for a pretty miserable life anywhere in the world. You're not magically on a trajectory to the middle class. You may be dying of waterborne illnesses and malnutrition, but you're not absolutely poor by World Bank standards!

The claim that there are far fewer poor people from 1820 to present is more reasonable, but the problem there is that the gains mostly came from things like "industrialization", which were big, one-time gains that, again, accrued mainly to the winners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is terribly, painfully ironic. It's arguing that Americans are living closer to home in order to support their aging elders.

18 Miles is not close!!! That's a commute. You have to commute to see your mother, or for her to see her grandchildren. I haven't traveled far and wide. But based on the few places I have been this is bizarre and unhealthy. In West Africa, parents either live with you or a few doors down. A few miles away at most, always within walking distance. I think this is the broad case across the planet and in human history. I also think it's way healthier.

<comment><USER11> 18 miles is nothing in American driving culture. 18 miles is very close if most of that is highway.

<comment><USER12> A lot of people in the US commute two or three times that far _every day_ for work.

18 miles could just be living in the next town over from your parents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is surprising to me. I would guess that close to 50% of my friends and acquaintances are in the top 5%, and the overwhelming majority are 70-75% percentile or higher.

I guess that just goes to show you how skewed from the averages the set of people you know and interact with can be.

<comment><USER14> I guess this should not be too surprising.

People of the same socioeconomic group tend to associate with each other, because of work, similar interests, etc. This is basically a clustering effect.

In terms of living distance from parents, if you live in an area where people tend to flock to (because that's where the jobs are, or other reasons), then it's further likely your friends will be in the same boat as you.

More reasons why anecdotes don't necessarily match the overall population statistics.

* Note: Massive generalizations in my above statements.

<comment><USER5> And of course it's not surprising among people who post on Hacker News that they would be among the top 5%. It's just that having friends only in your socioeconomic level will put you in a bubble regardless of how much reading you do about the poverty of others. The level of empathy for others can really only exist if you have personal connections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm 2000 miles from my Mom, yet here I am with my three kids & wife for Christmas.

Happy holidays everyone!

<comment><USER16> Merry Christmas to you and your family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's really sad that it is such a stigma in this country for the family to stick together. One can be successful AND BE PART of a loving, nurturing, close family.

<comment><USER18> There isn't exactly a stigma regarding living in close proximity to your family. The thing is that previous generations fled the cities for the suburbs (partly because of racism), and since then we've realized suburbs are awful places and people are starting to move back. Most people's parents live in the suburbs, so if you want to live in a city you can't live nearby.

<comment><USER19> Why are suburbs awful places? I'd much rather live in a small city or large town with suburban-like neighborhoods than the over-priced and tiny apartments of a large city. 80K here is like 120K in a metro area, and I don't have to pay for parking or take public transportation.

<comment><USER20> And city dwellers don't have to pay for a car.

<comment><USER21> In most cities, they probably do or have fairly restricted ability to get around. NYC or even SF aren't typical of the US as a whole.

<comment><USER20> Zipcar, Car2Go, and Uber have done a lot to alleviate that. Car ownership is definitely not needed in Seattle, Portland, NYC, SF, and probably many other cities. In the rest of the US, most exceptions are because the US doesn't do cities well, largely due to the perception in the mid-to-late 20th century that white people had abandoned the cities and left them to black people, and America doesn't care about black people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't very surprising to me. 18 miles away on average is probably significantly farther away than the rest of the world

</comment><comment><USER23> This thought consumes me a lot. Being an only child who has a mother that is 3,000 miles away and a father that is 2,000 miles away.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have comparable numbers for other countries?

<comment><USER24> German study on european countries: [http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/CPoS/ar...](http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/CPoS/article/download/44/130)

No need to understand German: Scroll to page 14 (of PDF). For Germany about 42% of the adult children live either at their parents ("Koresidenz") or within 5km of their parents. European average is 45%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I married my college gf, whose parents live more than 9K miles from mine. This does indeed complicate life now that we have children, and as both sets of parents age.

</comment><comment><USER26> A tipical Italian lives in the other room :-/

</comment><comment><USER27> I would like to see data on living close to your entire family and longevity, depression, "happiness."

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess I am typical now, I used to be a state or two away but I am within that limit expressed in the article now. My siblings are on the other side of the country.

What I find more interesting is how many people don't move far from where they are born and even more who never travel outside of their state.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not that much different from Serbians :) who would have thought.</comment>


Afghanistan Loses 42k Troops in Crackdown on 'Ghost Soldiers' - <AUTHOR> https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/02/afghanistan-loses-42000-troops-crackdown-ghost-soldiers.html <comment><USER2> Total Afghan troops are supposedly in the 300 to 400k range. So that's a pretty significant ~10+% fudge.

Somewhat surprised it wasn't expected and prepared for. Guessing there was some financial reward for recruitment targets. People optimize whatever you reward them for.

<comment><AUTHOR> at about $300 a month [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army- desertio...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army- desertions/desertions-deplete-afghan-forces-adding-to-security-worries- idUSKCN0UW1K3) . Plus equipment, food supplies etc that can be sold on the black market. Some generals must be very rich.

This is a well known and common trick in corrupt countries. Usually the no- show employees keep half or whatever agreed to and hand the rest.

<comment><USER2> That's on top of any reward for meeting targets... Given the dire need, with US withdrawals, I suspect the meeting target rewards weren't trivial.

<comment><AUTHOR> No personal knowledge but I'd be surprised if they didn't protect drug shipments as well in exchange for cash. Probably thousands of Afghani leaders have milked the war to make millions and even hundreds of millions. USA spent hundreds of billions to trillions...

<comment><USER2> It's a sort of hustler's paradise I imagine. Probably makes the _" War Dogs"_ movie look amatuerish in retrospect. Or perhaps _" American Gangster"_ is a more apt reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [ I am not a General or Diplomat]

I think ISAF should look to the Northern Alliance for more responsibility. The South detests them but less than the Americans.

Like the Kurds they have a bit more get up and go about them. They keep their region safe, encourage foreign involvement and contribute to the ANAs recruitment.

It's in their best interests that the Taliban don't expand.

<comment><USER4> > Like the Kurds they have a bit more get up and go about them.

The idea that "Kurds"[0] are somehow more motivated or more trustworthy is literally just racist State-sponsored propaganda that has been used and abused by all sides, including from other Kurds, for various reasons over the last 150 years.

Rather than picking and choosing arbitrary, loosely aligned militias to control regions, the US needs to take a more holistic view towards the region and stop participating in the Saudi-Iranian proxy war if it wants to resolve the situation.

[0] I'm putting the word in quotation marks because they are a group of 40 million people with differing religions, alliances, identities, political views and geographical locations around the world

<comment><USER5> > The idea that "Kurds"[0] are somehow more motivated or more trustworthy is > literally just racist State-sponsored propaganda.

Kurds aren't a race. Giving special credit to a group of people because of their different culture (even agreeing with you that in this case it seems propaganda), is not necessarily racist.

<comment><USER6> They are a distinct ethnic group, which we usually call a race. Seeing as race is a fundamentally arbitrary distinction, I don't see why using it in this way can be called wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Grigori Perelman solved one of math's greatest mysteries - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@phacks/how-grigori-perelman-solved-one-of-maths-greatest-mystery-89426275cb7 <comment><USER2> This is not quite complete as far as explaining the reasons why he didn't accept.

The key quote can be found in the New Yorker article

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold- destin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny)

(someone else already posted it):

        As for Yau, Perelman said, "I can't say I'm outraged.
        Other people do worse. Of course, there are many
        mathematicians who are more or less honest. But
        almost all of them are conformists. They are more
        or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not
        honest."

He was disillusioned with the mathematics community not just with Cao and Zhu's dishonesty. It was more crushing and dissapointing that others didn't rise up to speak against it.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested there is a good Russian documentary on Perelman's life: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng1W2KUHI2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng1W2KUHI2s)

</comment><comment><USER4> The New Yorker also published an excellent piece on Perelman and the solving of the Poincaré back in 2006: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold- destin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny)

It's interesting to see the political implications behind breakthroughs like this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is some info and a great explanatory video for William Thurston's geometrization conjecture, which laid down some of the work for the proof: [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/bill- thurston/](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/bill-thurston/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know how he makes a living?

<comment><USER7> In America, you live off the fat of the land.

In Soviet Russia, the fat of the land lives off you.

<comment><USER8> In Soviet Russia joke downvotes you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> really great article - i had read a lot about him before and never come across the fact that he was jewish and didnt believe anti-Semitism existed.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like to read more, I highly recommend "Perfect Rigour: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century" by Masha Gessen. I mainly refered to this book while writing this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He solved the Poincaré Conjecture in 7 years. It has been nearly 13 years since.. wonder what he will do next!

<comment><USER3> It is perhaps unfortunate, but it is possible that Poincare will be the biggest and final work of Perelman. He has shut down his professional connections, and it is rumored that he has simply burned out. I hope to be wrong. Either way he is a remarkable person, and will be remembered.

<comment><USER11> It might be he is burned out with all the politics surrounding the claim of his work but not with the work in general. People who enjoy doing something rarely get burned out doing it lifelong.

From the newyorker article linked by deuill:

        The prospect of being awarded a Fields Medal had forced
        him to make a complete break with his profession. "As
         long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice," Perelman
        explained. "Either to make some ugly thing"—a fuss about
       the math community's lack of integrity—"or, if I didn't do
         this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I
        become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and
        say nothing. That is why I had to quit." We asked
        Perelman whether, by refusing the Fields and withdrawing
        from his profession, he was eliminating any possibility
        of influencing the discipline. "I am not a politician!"
        he replied, angrily.

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold- destin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> good guy, doesn't give a shit about the corpo-academic kleptocracy. For the love of math, that is all.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra "Stekhlov Institute"

It should be "Steklov Institute" because there's no х to be found in "Стеклов".

<comment><USER13> The author managed to get the name of the prize wrong in the title, as well.

Specifically: the apostrophe doesn't mean "LOOK OUT HERE COMES AN `S'!".

<comment><AUTHOR> Author speaking, I corrected those typos, thanks. I'm French, hence the quite frequent mistakes. As for the "'s" thingy, I did laugh out loud on your comment.

<comment><USER13> Now I feel like a huge grouch. Thanks for taking it well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A quibble with the author's impression of peer review:

 _As we know, the process of submitting to a scientific journal has, besides the diffusion of one's results to the community, the aim of verifying those results. Here, such an approach was made impossible by Perelman, so some independent groups of scholars set at the highly difficult task to understand, complete, verify, and explain his work._

Peer review does not "verify results"; peer review is there to make sure there are no serious and obvious flaws. Duplication of studies and collection of additional data / use of other techniques is what verifies results.

It is possible Perelman's papers received a more rigorous review because they were not peer reviewed – giving people incentive to dig into the details, perhaps more than they would have if the papers had appeared in a journal. But, given the signficance of the problem he was attacking, I suspect the papers not being in a peer-reviewed journal made little difference, in terms of how much effort was expended to check his proofs.

<comment><USER15> > Peer review does not "verify results"; peer review is there to make sure > there are no serious and obvious flaws. Duplication of studies and > collection of additional data / use of other techniques is what verifies > results.

What you're saying is true of Science than Math. There's a fundamental difference between Math research and Science research. Math research doesn't involve hypothesis and verification through experimentation. Perelman's paper is purely logical it starts with axioms and derives its conclusions from them. For research like that peer review is actually where you verify results.

<comment><USER16> Quoting from [http://www.lib.uni-bonn.de/PhiMSAMP/Data/Book/PhiMSAMP- bk_Ge...](http://www.lib.uni-bonn.de/PhiMSAMP/Data/Book/PhiMSAMP- bk_GeistLoeweVanKerkhove.pdf) :

> Mathematicians disagree about the amount of detail checking that has to be > done by the referees. While some (few) mathematicians think that checking > the correctness of the proofs is the main task of the referee, others > disagree with this and consider mathematical correctness the problem of the > author rather than that of the referee.

It later quotes an editor:

> There are situations where almost nothing needs be checked (e.g., the > results come from a seminar where the results were checked, or I see the > paper is not too good and then it is useless to check details, or the author > is well-known and it is his concern to submit a correct paper). There are > situations when I insist to check all the procedures (e.g., when it concerns > good results from a less known author).

See how it's assumed that the author's reputation is used as a proxy for the quality of the paper?

It also quotes an opinion piece by Nathanson:

> Many great and important theorems don't actually have proofs. They have > sketches of proofs, outlines of arguments, hints and intuitions that were > obvious to the author (at least, at the time of writing) and that, > hopefully, are understood and believed by some part of the mathematical > community. But the community itself is tiny. In most fields of mathematics > there are few experts. [. . .] In every field, there are `bosses' who > proclaim the correctness or incorrectness of a new result, and its > importance or unimportance. Sometimes they disagree, like gang leaders > fighting over turf. In any case, there is a web of semi-proved theorems > throughout mathematics.

and it reports questionnaire results sent to math journal editors asking if they require verification of all of the proof, or only partial verification: "six editors thought that the referee should check all proofs in detail; five thought that the referee should check some proofs in detail", and one of he six actually commented "but to be reasonable, I am happy when I find a referee doing [the latter]."

These comments seem to contradict the statement that "peer review is actually where you verify results".

Also, not all non-math/science papers involve "verification through experimentation." It's hard to verify through experiment a report of the neutrino interactions observed from supernova 1987A.</comment></comment></comment>