Google tried to block media coverage of gender discrimination case - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/22/google-gender-discrimination-case-reporting-restricted <comment><USER2> This is clearly a fishing expedition- and I am not surprised that Google objects to the DOJ seeking publicity when they lack evidence as it stands

</comment><comment><USER3> Why theguardian is making a hit-piece of this? This journalism 2017?

<comment><USER4> I don't remember when's the last time I saw a non hit piece article from corporate journalists. The audience demands blood.

<comment><USER5> Yup, Apple, Uber, Facebook, Google, etc.

You really only understand how biased the media is once you've see it happen to your own employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I fail to see what is new or special about this.

EDIT: I mean that all companies will be bothered by the government, regardless of what they allegedly did or didn't do. Prosecutors will go to the press and risk causing extra damage to the reputation of the companies when a company refuses their fishing expedition.

With the current administration, I would just have expected less zeal. But sadly some things never change.

<comment><USER7> Well i'm a bit surprised it was Google. It's something i really expect from Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This stuff is cancer. I think Google made a terrible mistake trying to placate those who want equality of outcome. It's not achievable or even desirable.

In an effort supposedly to combat sexism and racism, discrimination on the basis of gender and ethnicity is now normalized and practically codified. But equality of outcome still proves elusive, as it always will, so people say Google still hasn't gone far enough. It never will be able to satisfy such people.

But I think a huge amount of damage may be done in the process of trying, in the form of making gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc, _more_ important when we want to be making progress toward a world in which those things are not considered very important at all.

<comment><USER9> Another way of looking at it is that efforts at pay equality simply counteract bias built in to the system. Though it's often unspoken, gender/ethnicity/etc. already are hugely important in pay, even if the bias is unconscious.

There could be various reasons women are paid less which, from a business perspective, make some sense, e.g. the likelihood the business will lose its investment in the employee on account of her quitting work to raise children. By pressuring employers to pay women more than they assess them to worth, it may actually discourage employment of women and decrease diversity in the workplace. But surely it's some of both: women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children, AND women are unfairly (if unconsciously) discriminated against by men who assume they're less capable simply because they're women.

I actually feel pretty comfortable with per-job-code on-average pay equality between men and women. I think it's symbolically important, as well as acknowledging that simply having more female voices in the organization has worth in and of itself. But I would hope it could be enforced by social norms rather than requiring onerous government action.

<comment><USER10> "Women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children". Hmmmm....

<comment><USER9> "[T]he gender pay gap only exists for women over 40, suggesting it is less about gender and more about something else entirely. Indeed, women in their twenties currently out-earn men and it is only when they start a family that the pay gap starts to emerge.

"Is this down to nasty employers undervaluing female staff once they've had a baby or to outdated societal expectations that women are the main child carers?

"Or could it just be that many women who become mothers prefer to cut back their hours, work part-time, decline promotions, overtime and travel away from home so that they can see more of their children? Every survey suggests that women are doing this of their own free will but, hey, what do they know?" [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12153967/The- gender...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12153967/The-gender-pay- gap-might-be-unfair-but-its-not-the-fault-of-sexist-employers.html)

It's a fact that only women can bear children. It's also a fact that women (for whatever reasons---not saying it's right or wrong) opt at a higher rate than men to reduce their hours or leave their career after the birth of a child. So, from a business perspective, there _are_ some additional risks associated with employing women that simply don't exist for men.

Women and men are different and in practice deal with parenthood differently as far as work is concerned. If there's ever to be equal pay for equal work, the discussion will have to include the issues as they are in addition to egalitarian ideals.

Also: [http://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/motherhood-penalty- can...](http://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/motherhood-penalty-can-affect- women-who-never-even-have-child-n548511)

<comment><USER10> I just think it is extremely discriminatory to make hiring and salary decisions based on the faulty assumption that all women want to raise children.

<comment><USER9> It is discriminatory and I think it's fair to feel upset at being painted with such a broad brush.

It seems right now that the choice faced by society is framed as binary: should we require equal pay across genders, or should we not? And each of these possibilities has both costs and benefits. Here are some costs and benefits of equal pay worth considering:

Costs: By requiring employers to pay women more than the employers assess to be their worth, fewer women will be employed, this at a time when gender ratios in many professions (especially IT!) are horrendously lopsided. Essentially, equal pay can be implemented as a price floor, meaning that the amount of female employment demanded will be less than it would at the natural equilibrium. Legislating equal pay might change some attitudes, but just entrench others.

Benefits: The women who are working get paid more. Society is seen as more just which likely alleviates angst all around. Women's voices are seen as more valuable because women are paid just as much as men, which disempowers sexists in their discrimination. More women will want to work at the higher price point, giving firms a better pool of applicants to choose from.

Invert these points to get costs/benefits of the status quo.

Both choices seem to incur both notable benefits and substantial costs. Surely there's some third way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Don't allow your evil to make the morning papers" isn't quite as inspiring as their old motto.

</comment><comment><USER12> This thread is full of so many Google employees. Please when you are employed by Google and critical of the DoJ suit or the Guardian article, keep this in mind. I understand HQs desire to fight this and put it under the rug, but at the same time, they should have complied with the records request. Saying, "just trust us, we are google." Isn't Googley. Numbers are Googley. A best faith effort is Googley.

<comment><USER5> I don't work for google. I'm not even a fan of google right now. No, google shouldn't play along. The media surrounding such topics is so biased and self- serving to the agenda a journalist is trying to push that the less you make public the better off you are because you minimize what material you give for journalists writing about these topics to twist in service of furthering their agenda.

<comment><USER12> Google is _very_ committed to gender equality. If there is systematic bias, this would be huge news. The only responsible track to take is to own the narrative and fix it. For whatever reason, some people at Google have played into this by not releasing the numbers initially asked for before the suit.

<comment><USER5> You can be very committed to addressing bias and still go about it your own way without the meddling of armchair quarterbacks and the peanut gallery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Lawless, who is not involved in the Google case, also said the company > should be more transparent about its compensation practices: "If you're > innocent, then you open your records up in such a manner that people can see > that people are being paid equally."

Why do these unrelated lawyers want access to Google's salary band data?

It looks like they're civil rights lawyers; they might want to use it as a tool in their own cases. I wonder why Google's data specifically would help them.

(edit) It's a string attached to government money, not an out-of-the-blue demand for records or a lawsuit on behalf of any particular person:

[https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104)

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's too early, but for the life of me I can't find anywhere in the article where the data will be shared with Lawless and Scwartz. As I read it, the data only goes to DOL and those 2 were just asked for comments. Is is that once Google gives the data to DOL Lawless and Schwartz can then request it (maybe via FOIA)?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you 'spy' on your child's online activities? - <AUTHOR>

This article on QZ [1] argues that safety always trumps privacy when it comes to children's online activity. To ensure safety it mentions an app [2] that monitors all your child's online activity. You can read all chats (sms, social networks) your child is having.
In this interview [3] the co-founder says she's using the app on her 17 year old. My initial reaction was 'wtf'?
Safety is important, but I think this is taking it too far and it's quite creepy. Also is teensafe harvesting all that data and storing it on their servers?
I think it would be better to educate your child about the online world and build trust, so whenever something doesn't seem right your child doesn't feel like (s)he has to hide something from you and can talk to you etc.
I've recommended to my friends to buy a 2nd router just for the kids and use opendns' parental controls (e.g. block adult sites, set time limits for social networks etc).
How do you ensure your kid is safe online or how do you manage their online activities, so they don't waste time and consume crap all the time?
Disclaimer: I'm not a parent
----
[1] http://qz.com/415769/when-it-comes-to-my-teens-online-activity-safety-trumps-privacy-every-time/
[2] http://www.teensafe.com/
[3] https://vimeo.com/121489349 <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

[1] [http://qz.com/415769/when-it-comes-to-my-teens-online- activi...](http://qz.com/415769/when-it-comes-to-my-teens-online-activity- safety-trumps-privacy-every-time/)

[2] [http://www.teensafe.com/](http://www.teensafe.com/)

[3] [https://vimeo.com/121489349](https://vimeo.com/121489349)</comment>


How To Learn Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/how-to-learn-lisp/

<comment><USER2> For everyone (like me) who doesn't know lisp or functional programming yet, I'm gunna have to heavily endorse this (<http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html>) link that the "How To Learn Lisp" article gave. It's the first article that's helped me make sense of all the proselytizing going around about functional programming and continuations and currying and stuff. What it is, why it's useful, and how it's used... all laid out so I could understand it.

It's just a straight up must read.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, it's in the list (although towards the end, maybe I should have put that first).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Probably because there's no free version online and it's a pricey book. I got it for myself for Christmas and it's well worth the price. It's half AI book, half tutorial on Lisp programming and Lisp style. It's a good read with lots of example programs written in good Lisp Style."

I'm sad he described PAIP this way. To me, PAIP isn't even so much about Lisp or AI as it is about how god damn awesome Peter Norvig is. I think my programming became much better after I studied his style.

Bottom line, PAIP makes you a better programmer even if you never intend to use Lisp for anything.

You should learn enough Lisp to read PAIP, in other words.

<comment><USER3> I bought it for myself because none of my family members understood what the heck I was talking about when I said I wanted Peter Norvig for Christmas! I've never enjoyed reading a textbook so much as PAIP and I try to plug it whenever I get a chance. Do you mind if I quote you on my blog?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read a few books now that are recommended for beginners to Lisp. Someone in the comments of pchristensen's blog recommended the book 'Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation'. I flicked through the first few chapters and for what it's worth it seems pretty good. Also 'Successful Lisp' is pretty good too.

Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/>

Successful Lisp: <http://psg.com/~dlamkins/Site/sl.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> why is everyone complaining about Emacs? I was also stubborn at first and refused to learn Emacs because it was 'strange' and 'difficult'.

I used Eclipse and CUSP, it's alright. It could really help you get started. But I wish I had learned Emacs earlier. The only thing I will continue to use Eclipse for is Java programming (which thankfully I don't do much of these days).

<comment><USER3> In the article, I was writing to myself circa 2006, who didn't know anything about anything when it came to Lisp (the whole environment, not just the language). I put off learning emacs for a long time not because it was strange or difficult but because "who cares?". Once I read some things about how emacs was powerful, that it is a good investment, that it's the best editor period for plaintext (most of this came from Yegge), I decided that Emacs fingers were something valuable that I wanted to have now and 10 years from now, and I was willing to work for them. I wrote my cheatsheet and my SLIME screencast reference to try and lower the perceived cost of learning emacs for other potential users. Hopefully better understanding of its power and lower cost of adoption will help more new devs give Emacs a fair shake.

Because emacs is the more powerful long term option, I will continue to make it my primary recommendation. I'll recommend Cusp/Eclipse to those that just don't care about emacs (now or later)

<comment><USER6> I guess I should have been more specific in my comment, I was primarily addressing the commenters to your posts that kept arguing for why new lispers should be pointed to Eclipse/CUSP instead of Emacs.

<comment><USER3> Some people think it's not worth the trouble of learning Emacs, at least not while they're tasting Lisp. If more people had a positive experience while using Lisp, maybe more people would use it. When weighing the costs and benefits of using Lisp, I've never heard anyone say the benefit wasn't great, just that the cost was too high. Costs could include anything from lacking libraries, having to look for libraries, having to use Emacs, no standard implementation, etc. Some people might prefer Eclipse, who knows.

I think they made enough good points that my new policy will be to recommend Emacs, but mention Cusp as an alternative.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a fine policy. I'm curious what the numbers of people that learned Lisp in Eclipse will be 5 years from now.

<comment><USER3> Probably very low. Until the entire environment gets easier, I think most people that successfully learn Lisp will be the most dedicated to it, and if they're that dedicated then they'll want a more powerful editor.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The most popular web sites every year since 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/12/15/from-lycos-to-ask-jeeves-to-facebook-tracking-the-20-most-popular-web-sites-every-year-since-1996/ <comment><USER2> Glam Media? #7 in 2013, on the list since 2008. Never heard of them, and I'm struggling to figure out what their deal is. Seems they've recently raised a series _G_ round of funding, and have an array of web properties that I can't really find a list of, the primary ones being [http://www.glam.com](http://www.glam.com) and [http://www.brash.com](http://www.brash.com), which are shockingly useless marketing vehicles that I really can't believe anyone would visit on a regular basis. Anyone have any insight?

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_Media](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_Media)

<comment><USER2> Not an especially informative wikipedia page as it mostly discusses the company's accomplishments with a bit of a PR flavor. No list of their 'over 4000 blogs and lifestyle websites'. Per the wiki, they've raised over $300 million in venture capital and get hundreds of millions of unique visitors...but it just surprises me that I hadn't heard of them and all the info about them just reads like marketing babble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm genuinely surprised that Yahoo tops Google in 2013 and 2010. Especially considering Android, Gmail etc. proliferation on top of it's domination of search

<comment><USER5> On top of their long list of Yahoo branded services, consider that they own Tumblr and Flickr.

And Gmail is not nearly as dominant outside of the tech industry as it is within. There are many markets where Gmail is beaten by one or more of Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL.

<comment><USER6> This is supposed to be a list of the top "websites". A visit to tumblr.com or to flickr.com should not be counted for yahoo.com. I think the title of the article is probably not accurate.

<comment><USER7> The article says that it's based on comScore, which groups all properties owned by one company under that company. So really "top web companies."

<comment> js-coder Still really surprising for me. I would've thought Google search alone would easily outperform all of Yahoo. And then Google also has YouTube, GMail, Maps etc.

<comment><USER7> I think the comScore data may be biased; IIRC they rely on a toolbar that's installed along with crapware, and so it'll be biased toward users who are willing to put up with crapware.

<comment><USER8> Google Display Network Ad Planner rates Yahoo 3rd [1] (but does not count itself but does include YouTube so ...)

\---- [1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This data is from comScore. Their data source is a panel of users with their toolbar installed. It's shit, to say the least.

<comment><USER10> ComScore data is collected from panels with self-selection bias, but also incorporating significant statistical correction based on random selection panels and demographic data. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComScore#Data_collection_and_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComScore#Data_collection_and_reporting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not clear from the graphic or the article, but the list of top "sites" is actually the top _networks_ \- showing all of the network's sites' traffic is aggregated together. So "Fox" represents traffic from IGN.com and Myspace.com as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> When I started looking through this, I wondered if any of the early-2000s adware platforms would make an appearance... and there it was! Gator at #17 in 2001. I was working at the tech bench at Best Buy in high school and removal of it and the other adware apps of that era must have been 75% of my job.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm rather surprised--which is to say, calling bullshit--that no porn sites (any of the $TUBE network) shows up on this.

<comment><USER14> Probably because most of the data comes from comScore who, like Alexa, gets their data from a self-selected sample size. We're ever going to get truly accurate results this way.

Of course, I'm sure if the NSA put its mind to it (not happening), they could get a fairly accurate readout of the most popular sites for the US...

<comment><USER13> I wonder how you'd collect that...log every DNS lookup at the ISP level? Surely they already do this.

<comment><USER15> Probably count tcp/http connection to sites at ISP? Of course it's not easy or accurate for us. Not NSA ;)

Another option for conspiracy theorists is to just get data from apache logs etc., because, you know, NSA has access to everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tencent, Baidu? This seems to ignore obvious big players.

<comment><USER17> Though probably most exhaustive (which other metric will measure Web stats from Feb. 1996 on?) it looks _very_ US-centric in my view. While US=World in terms on internet coverage early on, it is certainly not true now, and will become ever more untrue in the future.

This list certainly ignores _many_ 'elefants in the room'; those who try to rely solely on it for high-level overview of development of the internet, will have a distorted view. I won't bother listing the others because my view is biased, too, and I'll obviously won't think of many.

Just FYI: Russian Liveinternet counter, unique daily visitors: [http://www.liveinternet.ru/rating/index.html?lang=en](http://www.liveinternet.ru/rating/index.html?lang=en)

<comment><USER6> Elephant #1 is that google.com is clearly #1 and facebook.com is #2. No way yahoo.com is above them in 2013.

<comment><USER18> It's not google.com, facebook.com, and yahoo.com; it's Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. The companies have many different properties.

<comment><USER19> This comment will have to be repeated on this thread about 50x before people realize this.

But I guess you could blame ComScore or Washington Post for not making it obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now we just need a list of the most popular _Internet applications_ of the last 10 - 15 years. I suspect that the web is still the largest non- proprietary application (perhaps followed by email), but it would be nice to see how it compares to the others.

</comment><comment><USER21> Surprised to see Ask still on the list. I haven't personally browsed there since maybe y2k. Not to be facetious, but I imagine a whole segment of users unaware of Google (or DDG, or another sensible modern alternative) and still relying on Ask.

<comment><USER22> The "Ask" toolbar is bundled with a lot of crapware. Could explain the inflated numbers. I doubt any Ask users don't know of Google - more like they don't know how to switch, or don't need/want to.

<comment><USER23> It it was so it wouldn't be a big problem, but in reality it is bundled even with supposedly respectable software:

[https://www.change.org/p/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling- as...](https://www.change.org/p/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-ask-toolbar- with-the-java-installer)

I'm always suprised when I open a browser of some collegues/friends with even moderate computer literacy and see the amount of crap they let automatic installers shovel into their PCs, and how they are mostly not bothered by it.

<comment><USER24> I _really_ don't understand why Oracle, a company that rakes in almost $40 billion a year, is begging for pocket change from Ask Jeeves. Someone please explain this to me.

<comment><USER25> It is there since Sun days, which wasn't raking anything. Also as a division, Java makes almost no revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> CBS, Turner, Weather Co, Comcast NBC, and Gannett are all solidly old media. NBC and CBS got started with radio broadcasts in the 20s! Who says old media can't adapt?

</comment><comment><USER27> Weird that they don't lump together IAC/InterActiveCorp's properties (inc. Ask, Answers & About)

</comment><comment><USER28> Delighted to see Ebay losing out to Amazon, their terrible site design/layout + all sorts of Paypal horror stories must have driven millions of users away

<comment><USER29> As far as innovation is concerned, Ebay and Amazon are two of the most polar opposite companies on the web.

Amazon started as an online book store. They now sell consumer products, media, tablets, payment services, computing services, content production, logistics, supply services, drone deliveries, etc.

On the other hand, Ebay started as an online auction site. Since then, they have... bought the payment processor that most of their customers used.

The only other category leader that has possibly been more stagnant than Ebay is Craigslist.

<comment><USER30> Craigslist at least didn't make huge efforts to lower the quality of their site over the years. Ebay went from useful to garbage almost entirely by choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember first seeing a Yahoo TV commercial. Was like, Yahoo is big enough to have a TV commercial?!!

<comment><USER32> Yahoo owns $34B of Ali Baba, which is doing crazy well right now and taking Yahoo up with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _> Mostly, however, the list is garbage nonsense like "GNN" and "Teleport," which we don't even know what they are._

Funny. Just before opening the page I was thinking about how high GNN would feature on the list. The web site is actually still the first entry on the Wikipedia GNN page.

<comment><USER34> That sentence from the article is - on several levels - a sad reflection on the "garbage nonsense" standards of drafting and editing within the clickbait- generating arm of the Washington Post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> WTF is doing AOL in the top list nowadays? Genuine question.

<comment><USER36> Huffington Post

<comment><USER37> TechCrunch

<comment><USER38> Engadget

<comment><USER35> I must be seriously underestimating the pageviews of those websites then :)

<comment><USER39> AOL.com is still a top ~100 property in the US. Not sure why, maybe sponsored starting homepages, people checking old email accounts, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't buy it. MSN.com? Really? It looks like IE users that never changed the default home page. That doesn't mean the website is popular.

<comment><USER41> Lots of sites have subcontracted Bing search and Bing maps. They would point back to MSN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> In some ways this is deceptive in a smartphone world, if you consider all the networked Apps that also vie for "connected" screen time.

<comment><USER43> App actions can still count as "pageviews" in a comscore world. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics but I've heard of it being reported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Way back in 1996, our ISP was named Teleport.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yahoo the most popular, AOL 5th and Glam Media 7th in 2013? There's something fishy about these rankings.

<comment><USER46> Yahoo owns Tumblr and Flickr as well as its core company doing fine.

AOL owns Tech Crunch and Huffington post.. As well as their core business remains profitable (2.3 billion in revenue last year).

Google is only largely popular with the <30 age demo and the tech centric crowd. You have to remember your social circle isn't always representative of the country.

<comment><USER47> Google search is so popular it's a verb amongst almost any age group, at least in the west.

I'm still struggling to believe that Yahoo beats Google even with this somewhat nebulous "web properties" definition. Does Yahoo.com (including, say, news and weather?) + Tumblr + Flickr really get more traffic than Google.com + Google Maps + YouTube?

<comment><USER8> ComScore's numbers reflect unique visitors and not visits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ach, Lycos! From Lycos, to Facebook.

The perspective is welcome, and reassuring. Fake, probably. But that's your washingtonpost.com

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER49> internet porn was centralized enough in 1996 to be only year that it made top 20??

<comment><USER22> Possibly. I would guess however that it's more of a problem with how data is reported. Here's what comScore has to say about their methodology:

"This approach (comScore) combines person-level measurement from the 2 million person comScore global panel with census informed tonnage of consumption to account for 100 percent of a property's audience."

[https://www.google.com/search?q=comscore+methodology](https://www.google.com/search?q=comscore+methodology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This list is completely bias, there is no way that Facebook is behind Microsoft in 2013.

Something that looks more real:

[http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US](http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US)

<comment><USER51> Bing is behind the german version of Google globally...

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just shows how terrible comscore is at measuring.

</comment><comment><USER53> i'm confused. what/why is gannett (in 2013)?

<comment><USER54> Gannett is a large media holding company. They own/license a number of news stations, but more importantly, own USA Today.

<comment><USER17> Do they count visitors to their actual website? I think not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Search is still #1.

</comment><comment><USER56> agreed completely.

<comment><USER57> Fascinating.</comment></comment>


Composing Reactive Animations (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://conal.net/fran/tutorial.htm

<comment><USER2> If this style of programming interests you check out Elm [1], a functional language made for the web that uses this FRP style. The creator was recently hired by Prezi to work on Elm full time [2].

[1]: [http://elm-lang.org/](http://elm-lang.org/) [2]: [http://engineering.prezi.com/blog/2013/05/21/elm-at- prezi/](http://engineering.prezi.com/blog/2013/05/21/elm-at-prezi/)</comment>


Suicide prevention hotline to have three-digit number for emergencies - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/12/988-suicide-prevention-number-fcc-approval/4411812002/ <comment><AUTHOR> Previously on _Hacker News_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20714571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20714571)</comment>


Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-technicians-helped-african-governments-spy-on-political-opponents-11565793017?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Huawei will likely become the main competition for NSO group and companies like it, but that's the least of the worlds worries.

Governments with resource wealth don't need large public services that would operate a sophisticated intelligence service, so they outsource it. So far these governments have been doing point targeting against dissidents w/ mercenary surveillance companies, but it's possible these companies are about to be steamrolled by one that implements their products as a free feature of their entire infrastructure.

The bargain will be, we'll support your campaign/coup and modernize your infrastructure for your people, while giving you intel we collect on your dissidents and opposition. Then, once Huawei infrastructure is ensconced, no government will get into power who does not have support from China. A very "harmonious," cycle. Want be be elected again? Secure our rights to extract rare earth minerals. Etc.

The company is a projection of Chinese state power, not unlike western telcoms with 5EYES and the ITU has been. The difference is the Party lacks the sentimentality of western countries when it comes to issues of total surveillance and intervention to maintain control. (Albeit, we have never been above supporting butchers either, so YMMV.)

My prediction is that once the Huawei gear is in place, a country's political class will turn to face east on policy and resource questions. It's pure leverage. Western tech companies can't make the same promises to those governments either. It's not like Google can promise to prop up the next Idi Amin, but Huawei doesn't have that constraint. So far, the world has been content to deal with the devil it knows.

Anyway, I'd say this article is an anecdote of a larger geopolitical shift. Containing Huawei should be a national security priority for everyone, but tbh, it's looking more and more like our respective mere leviathans have become oversized, slow moving prey for their hydra.

<comment><USER3> In Serbia it was primarily Israelis who sold all of the surveillance tech to the government, and now China seems to be pushing everyone else out of the market. It really makes a very little difference to common people, one foreign actor or the other, none of the sides is really altruistic in that game...

<comment><USER4> I think this is the real problem: China/Huawei are pushing their competition out of the "support an (oppressive) regime" business. They become the go-to partner for regimes that historically relied on western or middle-eastern partners maintaining their authority.

<comment><USER5> Maybe merely a quality choice! If you want to buy a nice car, you go for a German brand, if you want fine wine, go French, if you want software, go American, if you want an orwellian mass surveillance system, you go with the country which speciality it is!

<comment><USER4> > if you want an orwellian mass surveillance system

I think this misses the point. Countries like US or Israel are perfectly capable [0][1][2] of offering such systems. And they do because it gives them another solid "string" attached to the regime receiving it. Their problem is that now the string (and all the knowledge, power, influence that come with it) could go to China. Hence the campaign to discredit them simply by suggesting this behavior is limited to them. Putting the facts in perspective would undermine this.

[0] [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE- israel...](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel-s- cyber-spy-industry-aids-dictators-hunt-dissidents-and-gays-1.6573027)

[1] [https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/report-saudi- arabia...](https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/report-saudi-arabia-used- israeli-tech-to-try-and-track-dissident-in-canada-1.6517064)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/17/how-us- sur...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/17/how-us-surveillance- technology-is-propping-up-authoritarian-regimes/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TDLR; Company owned by oppressive regime helps other oppressive regimes prosper in exchange for unfetted access to the countries resources.

There is news here. But its not about spying.

[https://greenworldwarriors.com/2019/03/06/ugandas-main- asset...](https://greenworldwarriors.com/2019/03/06/ugandas-main-assets-taken- over-huge-unpaid-chinese-loans-and-dept/)

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2134438/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2134438/chinas- fishing-industry-dwarfs-rest-worlds-study-suggests)

<comment><USER7> Shocking that Israel barely gets a mention in this article (you know, the actual supplier of the surveillance tech used).

So we just ignore that Israeli companies sell spy tech to every corrupt government on the planet and instead focus on demonizing Huawei giving Africans cheap 5G?

Trade war inspired reporting, not surprising coming from the Murdoch rag WSJ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >A pop star turned political sensation, Bobi Wine, had returned from Washington with U.S. backing for his opposition movement, and Uganda's cyber- surveillance unit had strict orders to intercept his encrypted communications, using the broad powers of a 2010 law that gives the government the ability "to secure its multidimensional interests."

I suspect that most countries would try to intercept the communications of an opposition candidate that was openly backed by a foreign power.

<comment><USER9> The assumption of the author and many people or even majority is that backing by USA is not only legitimate, it's also morally superior.

<comment><USER10> The obvious ethical territory here isn't particularly difficult: deploring both the US action (in this case political interference) and the Huawei/CCP interference (political interference via an attack on civil liberties).

Commentators who are only interested in critiquing rival states ought to be viewed as discrediting themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mobile networks can be considered strategic infrastructure. Normally US State Department would be working closely with US companies to push back against Huawei with all kinds of political tie-ins and perks.

Except that the US is not in the market. US based mobile network infrastructure assets (Lucent Technologies and Motorola's wireless network infrastructure business) were sold to Europeans long time ago. Both of them are part of Nokia today. Nokia and Ericsson compete without government support against China backed Huawei and ZTE.

Huawei is most likely government owned/controlled enterprise:

Balding, Christopher and Clarke, Donald C., Who Owns Huawei? (April 17, 2019). Available at SSRN: [https://ssrn.com/abstract=3372669](https://ssrn.com/abstract=3372669) or [http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372669](http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372669)

<comment><USER12> No, there's no indication whatsoever that Huawei is government-owned. Stop spreading FUD. There are plenty of state-owned enterprises in China, but Huawei isn't one of them.

<comment><USER13> That is what is some times called "Not readily believable" Huawei certainly isn't a worker coop as it claims.

<comment><USER12> The objection in the article is that the workers don't directly own shares. It's still a company in which workers vote and share in the profits. They just can't sell their stake on the market.

<comment><USER13> Still not a coop one member one vote is the rule

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Reg nails this: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/huawei_uganda_repor...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/huawei_uganda_report/)

<comment><USER15> That was fantastic, thanks. I feel that would have made a better HN submission itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mobile infrastructure provider are almost always delivering tech to monitor phone locations and communications. It is not unreasonable to expect them to support of such equipment. What would you do if your job is to support the sold and euphemistically called 'lawful interception gateway' in a place with loose laws? This is mostly dual use tech.

<comment><USER11> Wassenaar Agreement has export controls on surveillance tools but it's very loose and not legally binding. China is not a member.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems these activities were conducted without Huawei corporate being aware or involved. Still an embarrassing compliance failure on their part.

<comment><USER18> I'm sure huawei corporate is correcting the issue right now. /s

But who do you think trained the ugandan cyber-surveillance team in the first place?

You can piece it together from the article: They had pegasus and were trained by the israeli company (probably not an advanced version... the one that just parses unencrypted comms). But they even said it was simplistic and needed/wanted more. Of course Huawei trained them. When they were unable to "punch" through with the "pegasus-style" spyware themselves, they strolled up to their teachers and said help us senpai.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it was an ex-Cisco employee? They helped China in the first place and the Huawei hardware is almost the same.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest- attempt-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt- dodge-responsibility-facilitating-human-rights-abuses-export)

I don't know if the Chinese firewall has been upgraded to Chinese hardware or if it is still running on US hardware. This kind of hardware often last for 10+ years so I would not be surprised if the hardware is still mostly from Cisco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if things would be different if this individual was using, say, Signal, Conversations.im with omemo enabled, Briar, Wire, Threema, or other related e2ee enabled application. WhatsApp et al just have less security overall.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's their corporate culture slogan, "Be evil"?

<comment><USER22> Speak no evil

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought it was facebook who helped cambridge analytica,

</comment><comment><USER24> The best way to stop companies doing unethical things like this is to vote with your wallet, buy your stuff elsewhere. Use a good online list to pre- screen companies before you buy from them like [https://www.ethical.org.au/3.4.2/get-informed/boycotts- criti...](https://www.ethical.org.au/3.4.2/get-informed/boycotts-criticisms/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why do startups end up becoming 'corporate-like' - <AUTHOR> I have always been fascinated by the idea of (tech) startups. I always felt that startups are not just some other apples, but are a different fruit altogether. And one of the primary attractions in them is the culture- a bit informal, and yet hyper-productive; personal, and yet respectful; transparent and quite flat and approachable.
I get the point that if the startup goes on to expand like crazy and new people keep coming in (and leaving), there would emerge things like hierarchy, pointy-haired bosses, management and HR and what not.
What I don't get it is that why would startups with <10-15 employees and over years in operation would want to behave like a BIG company. I have encountered startups where there would be management, useless meeting, artificial hierarchy, etc. when there seems to be no such need. To satisfy my curiosity, I'd ask the 'individuals' of the startup individually, and none would seem to like it or knows why 'they' are doing it, and yet they do it. Why does it happen then? Do startups feel good by mimicking big corporation cultures? <comment><USER2> Because people discover their own limitations sooner or later.

They don't have the time, they don't have enough skill, the problem is something they haven't dealt with before etc etc.

Once you get to that stage, the door opens automatically and corporate robots and corporate culture enter the story.

Stick this on a fridge - No one really wants to deal with shit forever. Especially after it hits the fan again and again and again.

After you learn that you can hire someone else to do it then there is no turning back.

Oh thats the 3rd employee having some psychological issue above my pay grade to deal with, well time to a hire a HR person for baby sitting duties. Oh the product team is doing a great job but not generating any revenue but you like them all and don't know how to tell them to work on shit, time to hire someone else who has no problem doing it. Oh these sales deals need someone to pander and sit the whole day outside the offices of douchebags well time to hire a "proper" sales team. Ooh man we paid the govt 200K extra in taxes cause we didnt know about clause 18 on page 4300, time to hire a "serious" accountant from a slightly larger firm to keep the books, who will then tell you things need to get more corporate around here or he will quit. And you sigh and say okay Bob you win.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Stick this on a fridge - No one really wants to deal with shit forever. > Especially after it hits the fan again and again and again. I will :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen the non-corporate culture last, so it is not guaranteed that small companies will go this route. So I suspect it is simply a lack of management expertise. As a company grows, even a small one, they hit pain points. If they don't know how to resolve those pains, they seek help. And most of the management help you'll find is how to manage large companies, so that is what they hear, and that is what they follow.

</comment><comment><USER4> > _culture- a bit informal, and yet hyper-productive; personal, and yet > respectful; transparent and quite flat and approachable_

This is a very rosy view of startup culture. I've rarely encountered a culture like this in 20 years of building and consulting for startups.

In fact, startups are often the least transparent organizations because they have no legal obligation to publish financial information.

> _What I don 't get it is that why would startups with <10-15 employees and > over years in operation would want to behave like a BIG company. I have > encountered startups where there would be management, useless meeting, > artificial hierarchy, etc._

This happens for lots of reasons. Here are a few:

(0. Many of these things -- management, meetings, hierarchies -- are not _categorically_ useless. They're tools that can be misused.)

1\. People with big-company backgrounds join the team and reproduce what they find familiar.

2\. Structure, predictability, and repeatability become increasingly important as a startup scales. People address this by defining processes, which may be inefficient (or may not -- it depends on how good the managers are).

3\. When managers don't know how to solve a problem, they look at how other companies solved it. Sometimes they get it wrong. Agile is a great example: at one point, it helped a few companies, and then everyone adopted it without understanding how/why to adapt it to their own purposes. This resulted in lots of waste and a backlash against Agile.

4\. Investors sometimes become armchair managers and will push startup leadership to build these processes.

5\. Employees demand them. A lot of people do not enjoy flat hierarchies, 100% autonomous (meeting-less) work, or having no title. Titles in particular can be as valuable to people as a big raise in salary.</comment>


The Productivity Myth  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/05/the_productivity_myth.html

<comment><USER2> "Americans already put in more hours than workers in any country in the world..."

ORLY?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Differences_among_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Differences_among_countries_and_recent_trends)

"By far, workers in South Korea have the longest work hours among OECD countries. The average South Korean works 2,390 hours each year, according to the OECD. This is over 400 hours longer than the next longest-working country and 34% more hours than the average in the United States."

<comment><USER3> Well, but that's per capita. That doesn't say anything about the average hours per worker, because we don't know (or at least _I_ don't know) the relative figures for actual employment.

<comment><USER2> "Well, but that's per capita. That doesn't say anything about the average hours per worker..."

True, but presumably the author's claim is based on reports such as this one, where the figures are also per capita:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/439595.stm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Occam's razor says the increase in productivity happened because when companies had to make cuts during the recession, they cut the least promising projects.

<comment><USER5> Indeed there are many potential reasons why productivity may not have declined in direct proportion to hours work. Less tiredness, more content workers, elimination of wasteful activities, firing the least productive people, even the good old Hawthorne effect. The article jumps straight in and goes for fear though, without anything to really back that up. It may be true, but it's a rather bold assertion to stand alone.

I'd like to see it taken a step further though - hours shouldn't be the measure of worth, sure - that they are is mainly because they're easier to measure than most other things. Value is good, but I'd like to see things be even more holistic. Happiness is almost impossible to measure, but worth a go. I'd love to see a company come out and say "This quarter we produced just as much as last quarter, but by working 5 hours less a week! Now our staff go home an hour earlier and spend time with their kids/pets/wii, and we can still afford to pay them well and make enough to re-invest in the company - happiness is up!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Americans already put in more hours than workers in any country in the > world - and that doesn't include the uncounted shadow work that technology > makes possible after the regular workday ends._

No, not really. Outsourcing firms in India often keep people at work for ten to twelve hours at a stretch, and they don't even bother to cover it up. I think the reason nobody makes a noise about it is that these sweatshops often hire freshers, who don't know any better.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tony Schwartz turned around my attitude towards productivity around in an instant some 2 years or so ago, when i saw him as a guest speaker at Eben Pagan's 2007 "Get Altitude" event. It was an awe inspiring speech, and really, truly resonated with me.

Unfortunately, i'd be violating copyright if i uploaded it, but if anyone can get hold of it legitimately, i highly recommend it. Its the best 1hr you're ever going to see on managing your energy and productivity.

I'm hoping to read his book soon too.

<comment><USER8> Is this it? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luMpyS3mmLY>

<comment><USER7> Yes, thats the one!!

I didnt know someone uploaded it to YouTube. I've searched for it on there many times!

Good find!

Let me know what you think!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a great article on HN a while back about how employees only do 2 hours of real, actual work per day:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781182>

p.s. I found this quickly and easily thanks to the Search link below (yay!). I like this feature, even though some don't see the point.

Regarding this particular article, I anecdotally heard of a case where a Boston company took on summer interns and had a pretty, shall we say, 'flexible' work arrangement that allowed the students to socialise to their hearts content but also get the required work done. The deal was that they had X amount of work to do by Friday each week, but _it didn't matter when or what days they turned up, as long as the work got done by the Friday deadline_.

So, on a Tuesday and Wednesday each week, the students were monsters of productivity, getting five days of work hammered out in two (long) days. From Thursday to Sunday/Monday they emptied their wallets into the many fine watering-holes around Boston.

There's a lesson to be learned here I think. If I were an employer, I'd like to think I'd be able to take a ballsy approach like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading in a book "exposing" management consulting business practices that one major firm of consultants (known as "The Butchers") always recommended the same thing to companies: sack 25% of your workforce, regardless of the real problems the company had, the answer was always the same (of course, as they were being paid to come up with this answer they pretended to do a lot of detailed analysis to justify this conclusion).

This actually worked - for most companies (especially ones addicated to management consultants) you _can_ sack 25% of the workforce and see immediate gains in profitability - which the consultants can then use as references to get more victims/clients. Of course, in the long term this does a lot of damage to companies but as long as the short term figures look good nobody really cares.

The book is:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scandalous-Management- Consul...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-off-Scandalous-Management-Consulting- Machine/dp/1872188060)

</comment><comment><USER11> When France implemented 35 hour work weeks, their productivity actually went up.

<comment><USER12> And so did their unemployment. Paradoxical, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I heard about how productivity was up on npr the other day, my first thought is that research and development are probably just on the decrease.

And even if you could determine that R&D are down, you don't know if that just isn't a good development. Maybe a lot of dumb ideas were being developed before.

This does point out how much information is lost when you look at things in the aggregate.

People talk about public health rather than the health of individuals. Maybe its this sort of thinking that leads to the world of Logan's Run. "see how remarkably healthy our population is? our policies are a success!"</comment>


I Use Gmail. Can my employer still wipe my phone? - <AUTHOR>

Basically, this is a question in response to this article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304027204579335033824665964<p>I know that if you configure your device to use MS Exchange, then the server admin can wipe your phone (source: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/11/23/2050239/when-your-company-remote-wipes-your-personal-phone). What about when you use the Gmail app? <comment><USER2> If you don't setup ActiveSync, and _only_ use the Gmail App, your employer cannot wipe your phone via the Gmail App.

On Android, if they require you to use Google Apps Device Policy[1] to log into your account on your phone, then it's possible they can wipe your phone - but it tells you that when you register with the app.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.enterprise.dmagent)

</comment><comment><USER3> Better hope you don't have it set to 'delete from server.'</comment>


Caddy: HTTP/2 web server with support for let's encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://caddyserver.com/blog/lets-encrypt-progress-report <comment><USER2> Caddy is great, some other nice plugins I came across while testing it:

\- A built-in static site generator [https://caddyserver.com/docs/templates](https://caddyserver.com/docs/templates) and integration with Hugo [https://caddyserver.com/docs/hugo](https://caddyserver.com/docs/hugo)

\- "Caddy can pipe stdin and stdout from any program to WebSocket clients." [https://caddyserver.com/docs/websocket](https://caddyserver.com/docs/websocket)

\- Site search engine which indexes your html/markdown files [https://caddyserver.com/docs/search](https://caddyserver.com/docs/search) e This seems ideal for simple static sites such as for an OSS project website or blog.</comment>


Legendary phreaker John Draper / Captain Crunch needs our help - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I believe a lot of people can relate to the legend, John Draper - Captain Crunch. He's being really ill lately and has undergone multiple surgeries! His insurance is almost gone and they won't cover the cost of post op medication, which ran out a week ago.
Please everyone, let's try to help him! The campaign has been verified by John himself https://twitter.com/jdcrunchman
About John from Wikipedia:
"John Thomas Draper (born 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap'n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a legendary figure within the computer programming world and the hacker and security community. Draper has long maintained a nomadic lifestyle;[1] as of May 2013, he resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.[2]"
It's not much he needs, and it would be wonderful if anyone can help!
BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29381279
Thank you! Bellow is the fundraiser:
https://www.qikfunder.com/crowdfund/help-john-draper-captain-crunch <comment><USER2> Oh man, when I lived in Los Angeles, John used to come to the monthly Santa Monica Django meetups. He even came to a few of the Pyladies events put on by the wonderful Daniel Greenfield and Audrey Greenfield (Roy at the time).

He was a bit surly, but great people, and an inspiration for a generation of phreakers. I started out blue boxing with an acoustic coupler a loooooong time ago.

Contributor++

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to disrespect, but at 71 isn't he on Medicare? That and co-insurance won't cover his medical treatments?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, his insurance is almost gone. He didn't have much employment all his life, but he is looking for part time job now...

<comment><USER4> From what I can tell, Medicare doesn't run out, and its benefits are not contingent on employment history.

It doesn't sound like he's hospitalized right now. (Medicare covers 90 days of hospitalization per benefit period, with a lifetime reserve of 60 days that does run out.)

<comment><USER5> > From what I can tell, Medicare doesn't run out, and its benefits are not > contingent on employment history.

That's true AFAIK. The campaign is supposed to deal with his after- hospitalization expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Guys sorry, first time poster here... Links aren't directly linked. Here: [https://www.qikfunder.com/crowdfund/help-john-draper- captain...](https://www.qikfunder.com/crowdfund/help-john-draper-captain- crunch)

<comment><USER6> Did you set up the campaign?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't, but John confirmed the campaign here: [https://twitter.com/jdcrunchman/status/515163649175203841](https://twitter.com/jdcrunchman/status/515163649175203841)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip; donated. This guy was my heroes' hero, around the time when I found my first copy of 2600.

</comment><comment><USER8> not able to contribute at this time but I upvoted and shared to as many people as I could. I remember reading about him 20+ years ago and being very inspired. looks like they will make the goal, very nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Captain Crunch - any paypal account we can send to?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can pay via paypal on this fundraiser. John will get the money, he confirmed it by twitter and email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This qikfunder does not make it easy to donate.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.qikfunder.com/paypal/?action=contrib&projID=49&f...](https://www.qikfunder.com/paypal/?action=contrib&projID=49&fundAmt=1.00)</comment></comment>


Epic Google+ Fail & why randomly sharing entire +1'ed (liked) post of a friend. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/106420735876542072423/posts/ZLAy8jyGDzg

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the content of the post and afterwards, the content of the G+ +1 auto share and my brief editorial:

Thank you Google Plus for including this in my stream without my consent. At least it wasn't a nude like it was yesterday. This is not something I wouldn't have pop up in my stream in the middle of the afternoon with visitors in the house. I also find it degrading. And no, this isn't a forced post by my wife. Although if you keep putting sexually explicit posts in my stream, it could cause problems.

Auto Shared: Large Blue Meme stating: Women wake up yawning and men wake up with erections. Coincidence?

Editorial: I get to choose where I put the people I follow. Sometimes I follow someone because they may develop or have an interest in Linux. Maybe the Banjo. Could be health or news.

Grant it, not everyone will post on one subject. I don't. If someone comes up with content I might not share their view, maybe Adult related, politics, Gaming, etc, I can choose to put them in a circle or list (if on Facebook) that doesn't show up on my desktop or workstation. I have to manually go to that circle or list to view the content.

Google's new random "your Friend +1 this" puts the entire post on the home screen. This can cause many problems if certain materials pop up at the wrong "real life" social time. Dinner with the family and kids, mother in law, in the case of the large busted women from Thursday.

Not allowing the Home screen to filter these out is just wrong and an Epic fail for G+ at this time.</comment>


Google exec to Facebook: Uh, your users aren't really shoppers - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57435551-93/google-exec-to-facebook-uh-your-users-arent-really-shoppers/

<comment><USER2> If I were FB, my retort to google would be "people just use you for navigation".

Google doesn't do much for you to generate _new_ consumer interest and awareness of your product -- that's a key marketing problem.</comment>


Verizon is doing away with contracts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/7/9116493/verizon-is-doing-away-with-contracts

<comment><USER2> I just want to say, them charging more for smartphones and then again for data is nonsense, if they aren't subsidizing the phones themselves, then there is no rational reason why a smartphone would seek a premium. It is just double- dipping. And tablets costing $10/month while smart watches are "only" $5 a month is again nonsensical and one doesn't cost more than the other, and they aren't offering more value either.

Now that they're no longer subsidizing phones, it is easy to see just how horribly expensive cellular service is in the US. Their cheapest smartphone plan is $20 + $30 a month plus a million little fees and charges. That gets you 1GB of data, unlimited calls and text.

That's £32.27. 1 GB of data is only £12 (4G speeds) on GiffGaff in the UK, with 500 minutes calls/unlimited texts. If you have £32 to spend you can get 5GB of 4G data and 5K minutes of calls if you wish.

I like T-Mobile the most out of the big three in the US, but even T-Mobile charges $50/month starting rate for a smartphone. Now, yes, you get some cool value adds with T-Mobile (Canada/Mexico calling, free music streaming, basic international data/texts, and so on) but still, the US remains a very expensive place to own a cellphone.

If they were smart (any of them) they'd only charge a setup fee for tablets/laptops/smart watches/etc and then after that keeping the devices on the network is "free" indefinitely and they just charge you data usage. This encourages more data usage on the network, which is a much safer long term prospect than scaring people into adding their devices due to the silly monthly fees.

I'm not going to go to the hassle of adding my tablet just for a short vacation, but if it was on the network indefinitely, I am going to enable the 3G/4G modem and use it for that vacation. Their supposed greed ($5/month, etc) is actually costing them more money than it makes them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Source:

[https://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2015/08/simplif...](https://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2015/08/simplified- data-choices-match-customer-lifestyles.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this basically the More Everything plan? Line access fees plus data buckets aren't new here. The lack of a two year agreement is new though.

I wonder if the whole "we'll buy out your plan for you to switch" thing is the big motivator for this. By killing off contracts, these carriers end their need to buy out each others' ETFs and such.</comment>


Hackers wanted - <AUTHOR> http://www.pocketuni.net/

I feel tied to finish those stupid things. Could anybody help me ? <comment><USER2> lol</comment>


Flannery O'Connor Didn't Care If You Liked Her Work - <AUTHOR> https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/flannery-oconnor-didnt-care-if-you-liked-her-work/#.Xvn5txvapco.hackernews <comment><USER2> I was introduced to Flannery O'Connor 40 years ago by a black literature professor teaching a class of mostly male (I think we had one female in the class of ~50), mostly white engineering students who were mostly indifferent to the subject at hand. I have to admit, going in I was one of those engineering students who wasn't super excited to have to take a literature class. But then he had us read some of O'Connor's stories and discuss them. I was hooked. And I could also see what he was doing. He was trying to wake us up to our white privilege indirectly by letting Flannery do the talking. I could see that it made some of my fellow white male classmates a bit uncomfortable. Even a bit angry in some cases. He'd always say in this sonorous, deep voice "Gentlemen, in this class we're trying to see beyond the mundane issues of life." (with emphasis on "mundannnne") I ended up really enjoying that class. It couldn't have been easy to be a black adjunct professor of literature in an engineering school at that time. In a lot of ways I got the impression that he seemed to think we were shallow - and at that time and at our age (18, 19) we definitely were - and he was trying to expose us to stories that would shake us up some.

I felt not a little conflicted when I learned recently that the writer of these stories which seemed to be critiquing racism in very strong terms herself held racist views. Now we need to wrestle with that and this essay seems helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminded me of someone recently asking on Reddit for advice on making videos for YouTube. They had been at it for a few weeks and only had a handful of YouTube subscribers to show for it. They wanted to give up.

The thing I always remind folks of in that situation is that to succeed at many things, particularly creative things like YouTube and writing, you have to do it for intrinsic reasons. You want the writing or videos out there because somehow the act of putting them together and publishing satisfies you even if not another single person was there to see it.

I think it applies really well in entrepreneurship. It's not a strict rule obviously. There's people making stuff for other people all the time. But one of the best ways to stick through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship is to be working on something that has that intrinsic satisfaction. You're the best user. Even if no one buys the thing, at least you have a piece of kit that fixes some need you have.

<comment><USER4> > They had been at it for a few weeks and only had a handful of YouTube > subscribers to show for it. ... you have to do it for intrinsic reasons

You're at odds with the passive income crowd. lol.

FYI: an escort created a channel, put up some informative videos, then gave up. A year later she happens across her old channel, which grew to about 20,000 subscribers on autopilot, then rapidly to 100,000 after some more videos. (100,000 is the threshold of a lifestyle business if you're monetized, with 1 million being a career.)</comment></comment>


GTA 5 modders claim Take-Two sent private investigators to their home - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/gta-5-modders-claim-take-two-sent-private-investigators-to-their-home/ <comment><USER2> I'm really bummed out that GTA-V's biz model isn't aligned with the goals of the modding community because the engine and content are just so damn good. The game world is the perfect platform for some excellent modded content that would have the potential to sell copies of the game years and years after release.</comment>


Ask HN: Rumble Bars & Music Test Link? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: Read article while back on road test site that played song (Beethoven?) when vehicles ride over rumble bars on that stretch of highway. Link lost & quick web search didn't yield anything - anyone have link to related article in their personal link stores / wiki? <comment><AUTHOR> Japan (1) - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juy2-DyI5EE> Japan (2) - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLBOWO0s0bU> William Tell Overture (U.S.) - <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122469915344259035.html></comment>


Meatless burger's "heme" is safe to eat, regulators say - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/impossible-burgers-key-ingredient-wins-fda-approval/ <comment><USER2> Cant wait to try it unfortunately it will probably be a few years before I get a chance in NZ, maybe they should licence it out to one of the big chains and speed up the adoption?

<comment><USER3> On the bright side, if people are found to get cancer from eating these things for 5 years, you'll probably have dodged a bullet.</comment></comment>


Grown in Detroit, but not in the ground: The next evolution of urban agriculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/indoorurbanagriculture052014.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that there are more experiments in urban agriculture being run in Detroit than anywhere else in the world.

[http://www.michigandaily.com/news/urban-farmings-growing- pop...](http://www.michigandaily.com/news/urban-farmings-growing-popularity- draws-university-students)

Shrimp anyone? [http://ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/22324-u-m- student-...](http://ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/22324-u-m-student- growing-seafood-in-vacant-detroit-house)

<comment><USER2> It is a really interesting outcome of the property value inversion there. Historically the margins on farming have been so low that you need massive scale to even come close to achieving profitability, and the capital cost of land generally rules out anything close to a major city.

But when land is available very inexpensively, the savings in transportation can be a bigger factor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Add in the fact that Detroit has been a food desert. Lots of young engineers moving downtown and not a single supermarket in the city until the past year.

There are thousands of empty buildings and enough raw land to fuel dozens of farms as soon as the blighted houses are torn down. What has held up farming efforts is Michigan's right to farm law which never anticipated the rise of urban farms when it was written.

[http://www.michigan.gov/mdard/0,4610,7-125-1599_1605---,00.h...](http://www.michigan.gov/mdard/0,4610,7-125-1599_1605---,00.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> this is happening in newark too: [http://aerofarms.com/](http://aerofarms.com/)

my basic understanding is that a few decades of marijuana grow ops funded most of the r&d, but the breakthroughs (mostly cost) in LED lighting of the last ~5 years have made it commercially viable at dollars an ounce (to weed's tens/hundreds).

</comment><comment><USER4> "'We will need 0.6 gallons of water to grow one head of lettuce in this process,' says Adams. 'In California and Arizona, where most lettuce in the U.S. comes from, it takes 365 gallons of water to grow a single head.'"

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting, especially the water usage.

However, I'm curious to know what the electrical cost is. I know LEDs have to help with efficiency, but is it still enough?</comment>


Hybridizer: High-Performance C# on GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/hybridizer-csharp/ <comment><USER2> I've had to grab my throwaway a/c just because I've worked on this. I've used this framework in a commercial settings, in finance where it is gaining popularity. Have had to work through the bugs, been through several upgrade iterations.

When it works. It works. When it fails you're in for a world of pain. A lot is going on behind the scenes. The data structures, classes need special annotations to carefully translate the c# structures into something that cuda understands. You have to pay special attention to your object hierarchy, you have to be aware of all C# keywords that are supported and not supported. The fields in your class may be misaligned by a few bytes of the wrong annotation is used.

Don't get me started on cuda pointers - you're not shielded from this. My experience with this has put me off cuda frameworks in general.

You're better off learning cuda or hiring a cuda Dev than investing heavily in stacks like this.

My background is in HPC in finance.

<comment><USER3> Why would someone use C# in the first place? It seems to me that any advantage from the environment has gets lost by trying to make it work on a GPU.

<comment><USER4> I was going to say something similar to this. Usually such abstractions are leaky. I don't know the target market for this product. The one's who know CUDA will just use C++. The one's who know C++ won't use this. The one's who do not know CUDA will probably not use this because they will need to learn CUDA first anyway.

(Same story with those C# to Javascript compilers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some interesting stuff in the .NET-on-hardware space, CUDAfy [1] has been around for a while and I recently stumbled upon Hastlayer [2].

[1] [https://cudafy.codeplex.com/](https://cudafy.codeplex.com/)

[2] [https://hastlayer.com/](https://hastlayer.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also Alea GPU [1]

[1] [http://www.aleagpu.com/release/3_0_4/doc/introduction.html](http://www.aleagpu.com/release/3_0_4/doc/introduction.html)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, would be great with some comparison to Alea ... optimally a point-to- point comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ctrl-f for "garbage", "memory", or "allocate", and find nothing.

Am I to assume the point here is to allow the C# programmer to run tight loops of parallel numerical code on the GPU, with minimal adaptation?

They support virtual functions, though.

Neat project either way, but the scope isn't clear.

<comment><USER8> You also don't realy allocate in C or C++ GPU code, beyond what is done before calling it, setting up buffers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this solve some of the core problems with GPU programming, such the difficulty of writing reusable code without significant performance overhead (via nested parallelism or fusion), or the need to follow some potentially awkward rules for performance reasons (struct-of-arrays and coalesced memory access patterns?).

I mean, it is surely nice to easily launch a bunch of threads within a single- source program, but there are already plenty of C++ libraries that let you do this, and it has not really led to an explosion of making efficient GPU programming accessible to the layman.

<comment><USER10> If you want composable kernels in a high level language, I can really recommend [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/accelerate](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/accelerate)

with the CUDA backend: [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/accelerate-llvm- ptx](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/accelerate-llvm-ptx)

See [http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929/ch06.htm...](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929/ch06.html) for a great introduction

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks really neat, its a pity that you are hardware-locked so its not usable to general apps like games.

<comment><USER12> What would the use case for games be? We already have plenty of graphics libraries which abstract the GPU from the developer (kinda sorta). This is for number crunching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any good library for matrix and linear algebraic operations ?

I would be interested in anything that can serve as good building block material that has a good set of primitives built in.

<comment><USER8> Yes, IMSL Numerical Libraries have good .NET support.

[https://www.roguewave.com/products-services/imsl- numerical-l...](https://www.roguewave.com/products-services/imsl-numerical- libraries)

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Good to know. Seems closed source (nothing wrong there, just fyi for others)</comment></comment></comment>


The Snowdenites Are Winning - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/edward_snowden_citizenfour_the_former_contractor_sparked_a_movement_that.single.html

<comment><USER2> Definitely worth a read, if only to exercise your logical facilities. The author of the article treats dragnet surveillance as some kind of lawful, ethically-neutral policy outgrowth, something that society and take or leave as it desires, with no real bad outcomes either way.

A bizarre viewpoint, given the historical motivation behind most episodes of mass surveillance, and what governments do with a trove of information like that.

Articles like this are come from the graveyard of he said/she said faux objective journalism. Read it and scoff.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author is a conservative pundit. I think it's interesting if our political opponents think we're winning.</comment></comment>


When Feature Flags Go Wrong (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/articles/feature-flags-gone-wrong <comment><USER2> Feature flags can be dangerous because even an extra boolean flag (on/off) means doubling all the possible configuration states. With just 10 flags you'd have 1024 different combinations. Do you test all of them?

Sure, in practice not all features interact (so you can be sure on module A in the backend is orthogonal to changing color of the UI buttons), but sometimes you can't be sure and feature combinations and interactions never tested will appear in production and break unexpectedly.

One common thing I noticed is that feature A and feature B are both tested by toggling one on, doing a test, toggling it off. The test passes, everything looks good, product is shipped. Customer then turns A and B feature on and product goes up in flames.

I like the idea of auditing configuration changes (not just features others config options as well). I had implemented that across a few products and it saved the day during debugging. For example we noticed customer has been toggling feature combinations we never tested, or they reported "product stopped working" but looking at the they've been tweaking the hell out of it, which made it stop working as we had configured it.

<comment><USER3> Could you tell us more about how you did your auditing? Did you add more logging?

<comment><USER2> Yap it was done using the logging facility with a separate rotation, log forwarding rules, and such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once worked on a project where the feature flagging utility code was named FeatureMasking.IsSuppressed("feature name"), which would lead one to wonder whether it was the feature or the masking which was suppressed.

Worse, rather than cleanly blocking off full sections of code, it was common to find feature flag checking embedded within multiline expressions like

if (a>b) && c.IsNotEmpty && FeatureMasking.IsSuppressed("whatever") && d <= e ...</comment>


Ask HN: Finding ethical work - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for advice on finding work as an experienced web developer in small or mid-sized companies or non-profits focused in ethical areas such as education, healthcare, or clean energy. I'll refer to such an organization here as a "QO", for Qualified Organization. I don't mean to offend anyone working for non-QOs.
I have credible education, work experience and open source participation. I'm not working now, and my situation is stable so I can take some time to look. I don't need much money, just enough to afford a small apartment, basic necessities, some savings, and small luxuries. I'm willing to relocate to certain U.S. cities or work remotely.
I've gotten some positive response but no offers or paid work. I've applied to over fifty places in the past six months, not all of them QOs, which is more than nothing but I feel like that number should be in the hundreds. I don't want to stay where I am now so local networking would not be very helpful. My main job sites are http://www.idealist.org, https://whoishiring.io (WIH), and the monthly HN hiring posts. I know that WIH aggregates from HN but I like going through the HN posts anyway. Idealist is focused on QOs but not technical work. WIH and HN are focused on technical work but not QOs. The signal-to-noise ratio on Indeed is low and I rarely look there, and I assume it's the same for other big job sites like Dice.
I'm open to freelancing. I would be fine with making sites for truly charitable QOs for free or token payment. Is there a site that connects developers to QOs to do this sort of work? I also eventually need work that will pay enough to live on.
Any advice appreciated. I've left out specific information so the discussion is generally useful and less blatantly about hiring me personally, but I can add an email address to my profile if anyone wants to talk about specific work or just wants to chat privately. <comment><USER2> If you look _really_ closely, a lot of what we do today (even things that _seem_ ethical) is highly unethical.

After pondering this for months, the only thing I'm coming up with is dropping out and going full-Amish.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that most things are both good and bad, especially in the modern interconnected world.

There are three ways that a person can live: live and work normally, live and work dedicated to some purpose, or withdraw from society. In religious terms these groups correspond to the laity, the clergy, and hermits, but secular society can divide this way too. These groups depend on each other, and each of them can do good, and I think it's a mistake to say one is absolutely better or worse than the others.

Nevertheless some people are better suited to one group over the others. If you think one group is better for you, then you should move into it. That doesn't mean the people in the other groups are doing things wrong though, they're just doing things differently from you.

Suppose you're a person with the skills to work at Google for a lot of money. Google is ethically complicated, but they do some good things for sure. You could work for them, make a lot of money, live moderately, pay your taxes, take care of a family, and donate to charity.

You could also work for much less money for some organization that only does good. You're definitely making things better at work, but you have less of your own resources to put toward taxes, family, and charity, and you're consuming the taxes and charity that the first person paid.

Or, you could withdraw almost entirely from society, live some place extremely cheap, do some freelance technical work for a few hours a week or maybe become a short-order cook at a truck stop. You're not really making things better on any large scale, but you're not making things worse either, and at least you aren't consuming resources. You're also free to write or make art that inspires and leads the first person to donate and the second person to work under their market value.

All of these are good options, you just need to find the one that is the best fit for you.

<comment><USER2> For the hypothetical Google route, the thing about most (successful) businesses is that if you're making a dollar, they're at least making two. If Google is "ethically complicated," it is unlikely that your personal charity will offset their "complication".

With do-goodering, changes in perspective and nth-order effects can turn that into a brimming cup of regret overnight.

If you just want to live small and and have a positive impact, how about working in a library? They've got those everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's true that if a company is successful then you will make them two dollars for every dollar you get. I think many large companies are profitable due to rent-seeking or externalizing costs, and the marginal gain from the N-thousandth employee is negative, but they can't lay off employees or even stop hiring because of legal or political reasons. If you get a job with one of these companies, then you are wasting their money, which is a good thing to do against an evil company.

Noam Chomsky has been repeatedly asked whether capitalism is a good thing after all because the average quality of life has improved under it. His reply is that average quality of life improved under slavery too, but that's not a justification for slavery. You can see him discuss this at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QAqU2KpaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QAqU2KpaY).

You and I are having the reverse conversation, which is whether it's better to participate in a harmful system for the sake of making any progress, or better to opt out entirely. Actually, because humanity is currently headed off a cliff due to climate change and the worldwide rise of authoritarian governments, the choice is between participating in the harmful system or allowing large-scale catastrophe.

I agree that libraries fit the criteria I laid out, but I guess that like other do-good organizations, they are poorly funded and have a glut of trained specialists and willing volunteers. It's a sign of our dysfunctional times that the more directly helpful an organization or job is, the less well funded it will be.

<comment><USER2> Even lame old IBM is making $244,447 in _profit_ per employee according to this BI article: [http://www.businessinsider.com/top-tech-companies-revenue- pe...](http://www.businessinsider.com/top-tech-companies-revenue-per- employee-2015-10/#12-ibm-244447-per-employee-1)

If we safely assume that IBM has a lot of unproductive admin staff who are collecting paychecks to surf Facebook all day, a competent and motivated developer is actually bringing a lot more than $244,447 in additional profits to the table.

That, and most "QOs" I've encountered are fronts/whitewash/greenwash/etc for larger and more malevolent concerns.

Without a major streak of luck, I think living small and setting a good example is the best any of us can reliably do.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article you linked is about revenue, not profits, but that doesn't really matter for the argument.

I don't think you can divide $X revenue by N employees and say that therefore there must be some employee pulling in at least $X/N revenue, or at least say that in a way that matters. Imagine a hypothetical tech startup with $1 billion revenue and 10 employees. Is one developer there necessarily bringing in at least $100 million? Would you hire that developer for $50 million and consider it a deal? What if most of that $1 billion came from a single government contract with a serious conflict of interest?

Anyway I think that working for a large organization at a big salary and coming out morally ahead is theoretically possible but very difficult. I don't think I'm cut out for it, myself.

<comment><USER3> I will suggest you figure out what you think makes a net positive contribution to the world and go do that. Go create that thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are sites that focus on both, for instance... [https://www.nten.org/jobs/](https://www.nten.org/jobs/)

<comment><USER5> Nten is great.

One thing to understand about nonprofits is that although most now recognize that they now need tech, they (rightly) do not generally consider it part of their core mission.

Thus instead of keeping someone on staff, they outsource technical work to agencies. (Just as they outsource other important but non-core functions, such as developing, printing, and sending all that snail mail spam they send every winter.) There are even a few agencies that specialize in tech work for nonprofits. Other organizations use services that offer a hosted CMS and fundraising database and other tools in a single package along with high-touch customer service. Small nonprofits may hire freelancers to manage their website for a few hours per month, and try to run their own email campaigns.

Larger organizations will often have someone in house whose job is to plan and manage their digital presence and campaigns. That person is generally a tech- savvy layperson. Their job is mostly to communicate between internal stakeholders and the external providers.

Other organizations may be data-heavy. They may have a DBA/analyst on staff to handle data management and reporting.

A very small subset of nonprofits see technology as core to their mission. These are probably the ones you're looking for. Just keep in mind that many of these are relatively new kids on the block, so to speak. Few of them have the resources to hire more than one or two technologists, thus those people are of necessity very broad generalists.

A subset of well-funded major institutions have decided that data or technology is part of their core mission or need internal tooling beyond classic IT desktop and network provisioning. Institutions of higher education come to mind. So does the NYPL, which has all sorts of fun digital initiatives.

Another possibility you might consider would be government sector work. There are hundreds of federal agencies that need everything from websites to data management to payroll systems, and a few doing fun things with open data. There are also state and local agencies - from transit to child welfare agencies - that need similar things on a smaller scale; some of which are doing very good things, and whose efficiency you might help improve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your analysis of small non-profits matches my experience both searching and applying. I'll add that even the tech agencies that serve these non-profits want people with a specific set of relatively old skills, as HN would think of them, that are still really well-known. Wordpress and Drupal are popular. I guess this is doubly true for the non-profits themselves, which have more specific needs and less flexibility.

Some government work is fine. I'm avoiding any federal work under the incoming political leadership, but that's a complex situation and reasonable people can disagree. Most state or city government work is fine with me, but I want to relocate and I assume these places aren't interested in hiring remotely. Moving to a large state capital might be a good idea if I decide to move without something lined up.

My technical background is a little scattered, so while I'm a good developer in a general way, I'm unlikely to be the first choice if an organization needs a specialist in any specific thing. I suppose anyone hiring me remotely needs to either be confident in their ability to assess general technical aptitude, or large enough that they can afford to be wrong, neither of which correspond well to the places where I'm applying.

<comment><USER5> Being a generalist will likely serve you well applying to small agencies and organizations. You may have more trouble with larger agencies/orgs and government due to the way their hiring processes work. Unless there are one or two things you'd be willing to focus on for a couple years and can tailor your resume to.

Good on you for pursuing this, and good luck!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Real-Time Web Collaborative Code Editing - <AUTHOR> http://cocode.io

<comment><AUTHOR> We're glad to announce cocode.io beta (<http://cocode.io>), our vision of collaborative real-time code editing. It provides a collaborative but not disorderly concurrent editing, integrated with GitHub and your development environment (using a simple http API). For more info please visit <http://cocode.io/beta/about/>

In our company we love to share our coding sessions on cocode.io. We started cocode.io as an experimental tool for our team and we implemented the features we'd like to use. Now we'll be pleased to know if these features are interesting for you too. Your feedback is very important for us and we'd like to know which key features could induce you to prefer it against other similar services (etherpad, stypi and many others).

We're looking forward for beta users. Feel free to request an invite!</comment>


Guesswork (Apple, Netbook, Tablet, Gaming) - barry-cotter http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/guesswork.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think this makes any sense for Apple (though it might for some other companies).

The fundamental flaw is that people are already paying Apple quite tidy sums for something that does the same task as a netbook. (I subscribe to the notion that _net_ books should be permanently net-connected, so I'm talking iPhone, not iPod Touch).

All the keyboard shenanigans doesn't sound like Apple at all, particularly when you consider that they could have done exactly this with the iPhone but haven't. In fact it seems they may have gone out of their way to stop bluetooth keyboards (or alternative text entry devices) from working with the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't agree with the gaming part. Pc/console grade games are not going run that well in a tablet.

Even my new Macbook doesn't run World of Warcraft well enough for me to care playing it. MMO:s are usually very high cpu/memory intensive games.

There could be some simpler games, similar to iPhone ones but I don't think a tablet is going to be a major gaming platform anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> A hypothetical tablet would offer performance more in-line with a game console than a laptop (with comparable specs). The hardware configuration would be fixed and code would be purpose-built for it.

Though I do agree that his 'gaming as killer app' thought is off. Gaming would be _big_, just as it is on the iphone. But it's a different type of gaming and it's not going to overshadow the popularity of simply more-comfortable computing everywhere you don't have a proper desk.

I do agree with the other commentor that there's no way a physical keyboard or haptic nonsense goes in. They're going to sell it as something that is 'entirely new'. Not an ipod, not a laptop -- certainly not a netbook. (It's clear they think that whole device class is stigmatized.)

They _may_ allow their bluetooth keyboard to work with it, but it'd be an optional peripheral at best. I'd be surprised if there was even a kick-stand in the core product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was already expecting to see such tablet (basically a bigger iPod Touch) when the iPhone 3GS came out.

And I completely agree that it makes much more sense than a Netbook for Apple.</comment>


Yavide, a Modern C/C++ IDE - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JBakamovic/yavide <comment><USER2> This is just vim with NerdTree, YouCompleteMe, and a few other plugin, presumably with some extra configuration to make the integration better. It lacks refactoring tools which I think are crucial for an IDE to have otherwise it's just a supped up editor.

That being said very few C++ IDE's have advanced refactoring due to the scourge that is the C Preprocessor. This also why most people, like myself, stick with Vim for C/C++ development.

<comment><USER3> i was considering writing an IDE, could you please explain what refactoring tools are necessary/lacking from any ides that are not Visual studio

<comment><USER4> Visual Studio with VAX ([http://www.wholetomato.com/features/default.asp](http://www.wholetomato.com/features/default.asp)) is more than sufficient. The general objection to it historically has been "it's not free", but Visual Studio Code is Electron.io/node based, free, works on 3 of the major platforms, MSFT is in the process of enabling first-party support for using LLVM (I'm not sure if this is for the "Code" version of the traditional executable base --which is also available for free in the "Express" mind you) so that excuse isn't really valid anymore. If you're writing C# and not C++, then Resharper from IntelliJ is going to do you better probably. Speaking of which, JetBrain's CLion is way better than VIM w/r/t refactoring, intellisense, auto-complete, etc, not too surprising really since that's what they're famous for. Refactoring C in general is really trivial compared to the template messes I'd imagine a compiler would struggle with though. I'm not sure if they have a community edition but they offer 30 day trials IIRC and probably student discounts if you're not yet employed.

<comment><USER5> Refactoring features presented on their web are the same as features in eclipse CDT which is free and runs almost everywhere. Visual studio code is just configurable editor not IDE. In my opinion atom or sublime are better choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a stand-alone IDE:

> _This open-source project is about making a fully-fledged and modern IDE > built on top of popular Vim editor._

Was about to try it out until I read that. I've poured quite a bit of time into customizing Emacs and building muscle memory for it (a few years by my count), so it's probably not cost-effective for me to switch to Vim for something like this.

<comment><USER4> I've spent more than half a decade in each, vim has better navigation (being able to do something like `2bcw' or :1,$s/foo/bar/ or even just straight up hjkl makes quick edits far superior - one could say it's a better editor, because it is. hell, it was based on 'ed'). Emacs is the better integrated- development environment (ecosystem and able to customize to you hearts content.. eventually you'll run into a VIMscript wall and want to shoot yourself), especially now that emacs24,25 + ELPA + Marmalade make it about 20 minutes to go from a fresh install of any OS to 'productive'.

VIMs worth learning just so you see the other side of the fence, but if your goal is just productivity, CLion does everything that that VIM configuration does and more (and there are GNU/Emacs key-bindings).

<comment><USER6> I've spent about half a decade in each too. And, not to get into an "editor war", but I disagree that Vim is the "better" editor, for the exact same reason you think it is better. While I'm coding, I would rather press down a lot of times than press "7j" and try to either guess or count how many lines I need to jump downward. On my best Vim days, I spent more brain power than I'd have liked in just figuring out the most efficient or shortest command combinations to type to do what I'm trying. Whereas in Emacs, I just reuse the same keys and have no problem repeating them. In your example of "2bcw" I would do "M-b M-b M-d" and that's simpler and more automatic for me -- I don't have to think about it one bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've tried some clang based plugins for Vim but none of them work that well.

I think it would be a good idea to take components from a full open source IDE such as Qtcreator and make them CLI friendly.

That way you could get all of the features of an IDE working on the command line properly.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious what problems you had with YCM? My experience is the exact opposite: YCM has been frickin amazing, even on large projects like clang and llvm.

<comment><USER7> The fundamental issue I had with it was that it required the project to have no compile time errors to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The use of the word "modern" in a title is a red flag to me. It isn't going to be modern forever, whatever modern actually means.

<comment><USER10> _whatever modern actually means._

Following whatever trend is fashionable at the moment, most likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At first glance it looks like a plugin bundle, you could reach a similar setup by installing components manually , I wonder how easy you can add/remove features or extend my with additional vim plugins.

</comment><comment><USER12> Damn, I would love a sublimetext plugin like this

</comment><comment><USER13> I would try it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Aw. It looks like it needs X. That's a shame.</comment>