This site is down because the owner stiffed the web designer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nycfreshmarket.com/ <comment> grey-area I'm all for staging payment, and requiring final payment before delivering the goods, or even pursuing clients in the courts if necessary for non-payment (though usually that's fruitless), but when in dispute with a client you should never take retaliatory action like this, because it reflects an intemperance and lack of professionalism which means others will think twice about hiring you even if they have every intention of paying for your work. The same goes for a client not paying - if I hear someone hasn't paid their bills (for whatever reason), I'm then hesitant to work for them in any capacity unless it's a very clear-cut case. News travels quickly in many industries.

If you've already given them all the work without being paid, and with no contract, you have no recourse, but that doesn't mean you should use your technical privileges to try to exact revenge if you still have access to their server. If it's their hosting you're probably on difficult legal ground.

If you have to do this, you chose the wrong client, so tell everyone you know not to work with them, take note of the warning signs you saw and the failures of process that led to this point, and move on.

<comment><USER4> Someone always types up this same response to any incident like this, and it always sounds like exactly what I'd expect to hear from the sort of person who stiffs people.

<comment><USER5> I think this is a common response because it's actually the right choice(s) to make. I mean yes, not getting paid is never fun. There's a video posted in another comment titled "fuck you, pay me" and I think it really addresses this for freelancers. The short version of the video is have a lawyer and write a contract and if they don't pay then enforce the contract. Just my thoughts.

<comment><USER6> For all we know this action may have been part of the contract and the client simply failed to read it, or didn't believe it would happen.

<comment><USER7> Highly unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people are saying that this was the wrong move because it will hurt the designer. Maybe. It's still the right move for other reasons: everyone doing business with these guys now knows they don't pay and to demand payment up front or not work with them at all. There are already mentions of this on consumer reviews [1]. Basically nycfreshmarket is likely to go out of business over this issue as that market is already so cutthroat.

This action is the best action for the community at large - if every designer did this, the world would be a better place and everyone would be sure to pay their designers for work done. Win win situation for everyone involved (besides for crooks).

[1] [http://www.yelp.com/biz/nyc-fresh-market-new- york](http://www.yelp.com/biz/nyc-fresh-market-new-york) [https://www.facebook.com/NYCFreshMarket](https://www.facebook.com/NYCFreshMarket)

<comment><USER9> Let's extrapolate: What if you were thrown out of your apartment if you failed to pay rent, the hospital would make the pacemaker stop working if you didn't pay your bills. Your lawyer would tell your secrets and tell the court you are guilty if you didn't pay his fee. Guys would show up to collect the TV you had failed to pay for. Your citizenship would be revoked if you didn't pay taxes etc. etc, all without the creditor having to go to court first. Oh, and everything would be posted on Facebook, Linkedin etc for your friends to see.

Stopping services and naming and shaming clients who don't / can't pay is a slippery slope and not always civilized. Be happy not all creditors act this way.

<comment><USER10> Wait, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, because just about all those things that you mentioned _actually do happen_.

You DO get evicted if you fail to pay rent. The hospital won't make the pacemaker stop working, but they'll refuse further treatment that might be necessary. The lawyer wouldn't tell all your secrets, but might be asked to help track you down. Repo men DO come and collect your TV if you don't pay for it. Your citizenship won't be revoked if you don't pay your taxes, but you can go to prison, thus having your liberty (arguably the most important part of citizenship) revoked. And most of these things happen in public, for everyone to see.

<comment><USER11> Note that eviction requires the landlord to go to court, not just unilateral action on the part of the landlord. Somehow I doubt this web designer got a court order to allow them to deface their client's page.

Hospitals will not refuse treatment that is necessary to provide life support.

Collections agencies generally operate by sending you mail and calling your phone repeatedly until they get their payment. The contents of your mail and phone calls are generally private.

Note that most of these are private matters, generally considered confidential.

<comment><USER12> > Hospitals will not refuse treatment that is necessary to provide life > support.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22357873/ns/health- health_care/t/f...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22357873/ns/health- health_care/t/family-sues-insurer-who-denied-teen-transplant/)

<comment><USER13> That's not the same thing, now is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is unwise. The main idea is that, as someone suggested in a comment:

      it has a nonzero probability that it will shame somebody
      into paying.

This is in fact quite unlikely. If you believe this, you are not considering _why_ someone isn't paying. In the majority of cases, the reason is _disagreement_. Nothing is going to materially change about a disagreement by taking a website hostage. You are only exacerbating the issue.

The main thing you achieve by something like this is satisfying your personal sense of justice and being judge, jury and executioner to accomplish it. However, that's vigilantism and as in most other examples of that, it is probably illegal.

As a webhoster, you may suspend hosting. As a designer, you may withdraw someone's license to your design. As a hoster and designer, assuming a single contract covering both, suspending hosting is by far the easiest, as the other path requires legal action. However, you should never replace agreed upon content with something that would be defamation if your claim were denied. Just suspend hosting.

<comment><USER15> > In the majority of cases, the reason is...

You are the third person making the same kind of claim. It's not that I disagree, in the majority of the cases, something like that isn't a nice thing to do...

But this is one case, not the majority, we know nothing about it, except that it's in an extreme minority. If for no other reason, because the designer decided to retaliate this way. We are looking at extreme selection bias here, don't shove it under a carpet.

<comment><USER14> You always discuss an issue based on the specific case that raises the issue, but that doesn't mean there is automatically extreme selection bias going on. The relevant facts of a case are rarely unique. I've seen a dozen or so of such cases in the past ten years and I've never heard of a case where this kind of retaliation worked.

If I report that my green car was stolen and claim that a gang stealing green cars is active, then people respond with "That's unlikely, they're probably just stealing every car they can get their hands on". In line with your argument, they should instead say "Wow, a gang stealing green cars, how unlikely. How wonderous I would stumble upon this case of extreme selection bias here on the web".

That is even ignoring the fact that it is probably illegal. You are allowed to end the delivery of a service if the other party effectively cancels a contract, but you are not allowed to keep delivering the service in a way that breaches the contract. You cannot just serve any content you want on their domain (unless this situation was specifically foreseen in the contract).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The definitive advice on the subect, Mike Monteiro's "Fuck You, Pay me!": [http://vimeo.com/22053820](http://vimeo.com/22053820)

<comment><USER17> Love this video!

<comment><USER18> I knew a guy who didn't pay me and who then posted that video to his Facebook wall when he, in turn, didn't get paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know, this is a new site: [https://www.google.com/#q=site:nycfreshmarket.com](https://www.google.com/#q=site:nycfreshmarket.com)

There is no cache, so I think this is an over-reaction at this point by the designer and only discredits their business sense and will most likely result in not getting paid for this job.

The phrase 2 wrongs don't make a right comes to mind. WE already have a legal system in place to handle these issues, no reason to defame on the internet, which is truly a permanent record.

<comment><USER20> The legal system is a realistic option only if there was a written contract in place, which is not always the case.

<comment><USER21> Really? AFAIK in my country (Netherlands), a 'verbal agreement' is also legally binding. Is that different in US? Of course it may be harder to proof, but at the end of a website building job there's often enough paper and email trails to make your case.

<comment><USER19> A verbal (oral) contract is a contract in the US - though very hard to prove. Chain of custody of the code is one way.

Intellectual property rights are all the rage these days and that would mix into this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's why you move the website to the customer's server only _after_ you've been paid in full.

Before that it's only a showcase on the developer's server.

<comment><USER23> I would certainly listen to somebody with "smallscalethief" as nickname, in matters of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Uuuugh.

Link straight from Reddit, and probably an illegal act from the designer. (Sorry but that's probably the law, like it or not)

Much as we all love to string people up, the reality is it's not professional, and probably not good for society.

Where is the proof the designer got stiffed???? The reason everyone loves this is cause we love to string someone up, proof not needed.

Not a healthy way to be.

<comment><USER25> Is this, like, really "illegal" in New York? Are you really sure about that? I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that me that the grocery store has breached the contract and the designer has a number of options available to remedy the situation, including not delivering his part of the agreement. It would be interesting to hear the opinion of someone qualified in New York Contract Law.

<comment><USER26> If it is their server you are definitely committing a CFA to change the content. If it is your server, it's probably fine due to they haven't paid you so they broke whatever contract was in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What the designer did is fine except I would have just put up a "Coming Soon..." instead of directly calling out the owner. It would have the same reaction from the owner because they don't know how to do any of it. And it wouldn't give anyone who visits the immediate knowledge that the designer can and will use their technical powers to embarrass you or your business.

<comment><USER28> This is actually a really sensible middle ground to the (very valid) views around here that this is _a terrible career move to make_.

There's still the legality aspect which concerns me.

<comment> grey-area I think it probably depends whose server the files are hosted on, if they're on the designer's, they could easily just turn off service and be justified, logging in to a client's server to do it without permission is probably crossing a line though.

However hijacking the domain with a message like this is legally risky IMHO, wherever it is hosted, as it could be seen as slander. Good luck to the designer getting paid now - I'd be very surprised if the client did pay up after this.

<comment><USER29> In the US, truth is an absolute defense to the claim of libel, so venue is pretty important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> On a related historical note, this can happen if you don't pay the chiselers building your church: [http://www.holidaycheck.de/data/urlaubsbilder/images/41/1163...](http://www.holidaycheck.de/data/urlaubsbilder/images/41/1163611749.jpg) (part of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_Minster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_Minster)).

</comment><comment><USER31> I can't believe people are defending this. If a brick-and-mortar store has a pay dispute with a contractor, would that contractor have the right to put a giant padlock on the store doors and spray paint a message on the door saying that the store owner didn't pay? Obviously not. How is this any different?

The key thing to keep in mind is the _designer may be wrong_. I'm sure if you ask the store owner they have a totally different story, and it's likely not "We are SUPER EVIL and just stiff people who do good work". Maybe the contractor (onemine.com, if you're curious) tried to bill the store owner more than agreed upon, the store owner refused, and this is the result. Maybe the contractor left out some significant part of the site and the store owner wont pay until completion. Who knows?

The problem here is OneMine has taken all the power in the pay dispute by holding the client's intellectual property hostage until all demands are met. It's at the very least unprofessional, but it becomes defamation very quickly unless OneMine has an absolutely airtight case. There better be exactly zero unfinished products, missed deadlines, rate changes, etc. And it's safe to say with many contract projects this is not the case.

<comment><USER32> It's different because the stiffed party in your example does not own the store being locked and vandalized and cannot take those actions without breaking unrelated laws. That's not the case with IP for which the creator still has clear title and is (presumably) hosting on their own servers.

Seperatly, it's 2013. We are waaaay past the point where intelligent people think that laws pertaining to the ownership of tangible and intangible goods can, do, and should map directly to one another. The differences between these classes of property are not trivial, and neither are the laws and social norms that govern people's treatment of each. Making analogies that ignore these differences is just unhelpful, stupid, and irritating. It's a bit like saying to a judge "I don't see why you're issuing this fine. After all, what I did is perfectly legal in (insert name of foreign country here)."

None of this is to say that connections and parallels can't be drawn between the fields of tangible and intangible goods. It's just to say that doing so in a useful fashion demands acknowledgement of the wide gulfs that separate them, and clear identification of the specific points where they do overlap.

<comment><USER31> So you think onemine.com, and not NYC Fresh Market, has IP rights to nycfreshmarket.com and its website contents, simply because onemine.com was hired as a contract designer?

I would LOVE to see a legal precedent for this claim.

<comment><USER32> Given the petulant tone of your response, I'll leave it to you to do your own research on the basics of copyright law. But I will note that, under the law, the contents are owned by whoever created them. If the client failed to pay for the work, and did not secure a clear transfer of title, ownership of the IP remains with the author. This is Copyright Law 101.

The domain is a seperate matter. Presumably, this could happen because the designer was hosting the site. The owner of the domain is free to host it elsewhere, but would need to populate any sites they publish with content they actually own, and not work stolen from people they didn't pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I remember googling my professor at university one year to find out that he had been criminally convicted for hacking the site of client that never paid him. I would never have guessed otherwise, he was a jovial guy. Screwing people out of money quickly brings out an aggressive response in most.

<comment><USER34> _> an aggressive response in most._

The word you're after is _defensive_. If you've been ripped off, you are _not_ the aggressor.

<comment><USER35> That entirely depends on the action you choose to take after being ripped off. Being ripped off doesn't give you a blank check to do whatever you want. If someone fails to pay you, you can prevent delivery of the service they failed to pay for. Anything beyond that and you are the aggressor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> But will this increase the web designer's chances to get paid? I don't think so.

While it sure provides negative publicity for the store owner, it would probably not further the career of the web designer either.

<comment><USER37> I'm continually fascinated by these comments (there's one on every story like this) that try to second-guess the decision based on no actual information. Doesn't it seem likely that the person who did this is in a better position to judge the potential consequences than you?

Unless OP is right on the threshold of being hard up for work, it makes no real difference to his dealflow, and it has a nonzero probability that it will shame somebody into paying.

<comment><USER38> > Doesn't it seem likely that the person who did this is in a better position > to judge the potential consequences than you?

In fact, no. If there is a dispute and you forego the legal option you might get your ass handed to you. Things like this blow up in the face of the party doing them as often as they lead to some kind of settlement.

The damage to the client could outweigh the amount owed (assuming there is one) very rapidly.

> Unless OP is right on the threshold of being hard up for work, it makes no > real difference to his dealflow, and it has a nonzero probability that it > will shame somebody into paying.

It also has a non-zero probability of him/her being sued for (substantial) damages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Every contractor should secretly applaud this person. Although wrong, events like these, when witnessed, make others who might otherwise not pay reach for the checkbook. "I remember what happened to xyz site when they stiffed their consultant"

<comment><USER40> "But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable,

let's drink their health…

…then meet with them no more."

— V

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I appreciate the designer's frustration, but I've found that in most cases, simply taking the site offline (assuming you host it) is enough to get a call back from the customer. If the customer decides that they'd rather not have a website at all than have the website you built for them, then I think perhaps both parties should cut their losses and move on.

<comment><USER42> Yep, I have had a few clients for minor hosting things not pay, and the most simple way is to revoke access to the content. While putting some snarky comments on the page is funny, just taking it down would generally elicit the same response from a small minded shop keeper. Having dealt with the same stuff, shaming them or poking at their pride instead of having a very basic and honest discussion about consequences when they decide to not pay can lead them to become twice as bullheaded.

I still feel for the dev in this case, because this shit happens way too often in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is this really different from what hosting companies do? Most of them, if you have a bit more traffic than usual and pass the agreed limit, will replace your site with a message and only remove it if you upgrade your plan. Never saw anyone go apeshit on those cases like people are on this one.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is also why you do not let your web designer own and operate your website hosting.

<comment><USER12> You don't let your designer host so you can stiff them?

No, this is why you pay your web designer for their work.

<comment><USER44> One has nothing to do with the other.

If they haven't paid you and you happen to own and operate it, just turn it off completely, there is no professional middle ground.

If a mechanic fixes your car and you don't pay them, in many places have have the right to seize your car until you pay. But they do not have the right to tamper with your brakes or spray paint "pay me" on your windshield.

<comment><USER45> They're free to park it by the road with a big sign on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Years ago when I did freelance work writing software for custom phone systems, I had a shady client up in Marin. Suspecting they would not pay, I slipped a feature into the system where if I did not dial in and punch in a secret code within 90 days, it would stop functioning and display a cryptic "database error".

Sure enough, the client didn't pay, and right on schedule, I got a customer support call mentioning the database error. I told them "actually it's working perfectly, you didn't pay your bill".

I later found out they went through several other developers and then went out of business. I am sympathetic to small businesses that have money problem, but some people are simply shady and must be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is indeed a bad career move. Not because it's unprofessional, but because that pin sitting on top of the sheet of paper rather than indented into it shows a lack of attention to detail and poor design.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm going to start using this as a remedy in contracts, if for no other reason than to put a stopper in all these "unprofessional response" replies.

</comment><comment><USER49> The response is unprofessional juvenile in that it publicly calls out and shames the customer. He should just take the site down until payment is received.

</comment><comment><USER50> We do enjoy our public shaming, don't we!

</comment><comment><USER51> After a WHOIS, it looks like the domain was registered by Onemine - and this is the most likely candidate for who registered it: [http://www.onemine.com/](http://www.onemine.com/)

My guess is, they still own the hosting and server space for the domain too.

</comment><comment><USER52> An alternative is - from the commencement of the project - to have a watermark or other visual design element present which makes the site unusable to the client but still allows them to evaluate the work.

</comment><comment><USER53> this has been up for a long time

</comment><comment><USER54> Also the page contains the cloaked text (in yellow on a yellow background) : "This store owner is dishonest. Please Read."

Defamation lawsuit waiting to happen.

</comment><comment><USER55> I agree that this is not the best option. Shaming the client does far more damage to both parties. I feel the designer's pain but public humiliation is not the answer. I think this also gives new or future freelancers/entrepreneurs the wrong idea. This happens rarely. If it happens too often, then it's probably your fault as much as the client's.

I ran a web shop for small businesses ($500K - $10M/yr revenues) in NYC for about 8 years with many clients (good and bad) and faced non-payment issues only a handful of times. Here is my take on it:

\- Always get enough money from the client to cover your break even hourly rate for the entire project. Don't do payment terms without a deposit - <USER2> it's a seemingly great client and your cash flow positive.

\- Keep your margins healthy. The tighter the margins, the harder it is to be civil when these situations come up.

\- When a customer does not pay, I give them more time and payment options first. I have even gone as far as extending more services to clients I believe are good people on credit if the issue has to do with business being slow. This has built some great long term clients.

\- 99.9% of the time, if your work causes a positive effect on someones business, they will always pay and never let you go. (They may not show it, but prompt payment and consistent work is the stamp of approval)

\- When a client does not pay and you have exhausted your process of collections, I put their old site up. If they did not have a site before, I put up a splash page with logo, phone numbers and contact form. Simple and classy. It takes 5 minutes. Most times if they had the money they would pay - so wish them the best of luck. It's usually always about money.

\- If you have a simple contract, you can always take them to court and you will almost always win or they will settle. I always do it myself, no lawyer. I always choose to not take down the site when I have a contract, I prefer the judgement or settlement if it goes that far.

\- Make sure the project has the potential of being successful. I am always approached with bad ideas and although they are willing to pay, successful projects pay off in multiples over the long term. It's not up to me to tell someone their idea sucks, but I do believe that if they are not willing to take some basic advice - there is a higher risk of issues. If not payment, satisfaction.

I hope this didn't run too long, but bottom line, this type of publicity is not positive and as stated above, these things happen, rarely. Build a process to handle these issues and focus on finding better clients ALWAYS - <USER3> chasing bad ones.

</comment><comment><USER56> Congrats, you've probably just did the owner of NYC Fresh Market a huge favor by giving this place some attention. Good publicity or bad publicity, by shining a spotlight on this establishment in HN you might convince some NYC HN locals to check it out.

</comment><comment><USER57> Immature response that only makes the designer seem unprofessional.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is brilliant marketing regardless of the negative press

</comment><comment><USER59> Professional, very professional.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm assuming the designer doesn't own the website domain. This is like breaking into someone's property, and saying that you won't leave until a demand is met. He should really consult a lawyer before he gets criminally prosecuted.

<comment><USER19> Agreed on the ransom, moreover - they gave the site to the owner on good faith that they would get paid, now they are complaining that they were fooled.</comment></comment>


Remote-Powered Developer Tools - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/intelligent-productivity-and-collaboration-from-anywhere/ <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that the new VS Code Remote Development extensions are not open source, which means that it is impossible for the community to fix bugs, and add new platforms/environments/features, or see the code that's running in their environment without reverse engineering.

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_why-arent- the...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_why-arent-the-remote- development-extensions-or-their-components-open-source)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing that out.

(Also odd formulation of the question: "Why aren't the open soure? - We made the decision to keep them closed source." The actual answer is to the next question: "we may provide premium developer services.")

<comment><USER4> After embracing open source, they appear to now be extending it...

<comment><USER5> _After embracing open source, they appear to now be extending it..._

This is an add-on to Microsoft's open source editor... Is your concern that Microsoft has embraced VS Code, is now extending it, and has the sinister end goal of exterminating VS Code?

<comment><USER6> What happens is they extinguish the competing alternative open source products, by taking mindshare and users from them.

Then once the alternatives are no longer so viable, they use their dominant market share to their advantage and the detriment of users.

It's what google has done with Android, Chrome, Gmail.

<comment><USER5> _What happens is they extinguish the competing alternative open source products, by taking mindshare and users from them._

Oh my.

That's called "competition".

You are mis-construing EEE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting development since there is already a multitude of online IDE's that are based on Visual Studio Code:

\- StackBlitz: [https://stackblitz.com/](https://stackblitz.com/)

\- Theia: [https://www.theia-ide.org/](https://www.theia-ide.org/)

\- Coder: [https://coder.com/](https://coder.com/)

Overall, this is a prime example of one of the synergies that Microsoft was able to create from the GitHub acquisition which was the missing puzzle piece. Microsoft now has control over a complete software development pipeline: a development platform (Windows), an IDE (vscode, vs), a code versioning host (GitHub), continuous integration (Azure Pipeline), deployment (Azure).

If Microsoft can leverage its control over this complete chain to make the whole experience integrated and effortless as it's doing with Visual Studio Online here, it could well take over the market, especially in corporate environments.

<comment><USER8> GitLab's web IDE is also based on a Visual Studio Code component, the Monaco Editor [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/)

The VS Code Remote Development extensions look nice too but are not open source [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19841089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19841089)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey all! I'm the author of this post, and lead the PM team at Microsoft behind IntelliCode, Live Share, and the cloud-based remote development capabilities described in this article. We're looking forward to working with developers, and learning how to further support teams who are looking to up-level their productivity and embrace further workplace flexibility (yay for remote development!). In the meantime, feel free to ask me anything!

<comment> core-questions What's the situations going to be like for third-party addons for this? My company has need of an online IDE for our end users to code against, and obviously writing our own seems like too gargantuan of a task that will likely result in sub-par outcomes.

Could we instead make some kind of first-class addon for VS Code Online, and funnel users into setting that up instead?

<comment><USER9> Enabling the ecosystem is a big focus for us moving forward, so I'd love to chat further about your scenario and requirements. Feel free to ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can setup a quick call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an "oldtimer", I tried out AWS Cloud9 and other cloud based IDEs and came away deeply unimpressed . However my frame of reference was to my experience with my heavily customized IDEs.

However, my daughter's classroom uses only online IDEs. I think they got used to this style of IDEs when they got started with Scratch programming in elementary school. These kids are much more comfortable and productive on the online IDEs than my generation. They also share a lot and are more socially engaged while coding than I ever was.

So Kudos to all Cloud IDEs; I am not sure I will ever appreciate you but my kids sure will .

<comment><USER11> Can I ask what city or school district your child goes to school in that they have programming classes in elementary school?

<comment><USER10> Toronto Here is a summary : [https://sites.google.com/a/tdsb.on.ca/coding-in- the-elementa...](https://sites.google.com/a/tdsb.on.ca/coding-in-the- elementary-grades/tdsb-coding-continuum)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not surprised given VSCode's legacy as Monaco.

Will be interesting to see how the (at least) two companies offering hosted VSCode will respond.

[https://coder.com/](https://coder.com/)

[https://stackblitz.com/](https://stackblitz.com/)

(Used inline in the documentation for LitElement/Polymer: [https://lit- element.polymer-project.org/](https://lit-element.polymer-project.org/))

</comment><comment><USER13> But then they'll learn that I only debug with print statements.

<comment><USER9> That's OK! That's how _many_ devs do their debugging. We don't want to change your workflow, we just want to make it simpler to setup and accessible from anywhere :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can see more developers adopting a cloud-based IDE. There may be desktop apps, which will be Electron or PWAs (if the APIs ever evolve enough), but the environment will be fully remote. The benefit is all the set up will already be done: the IDE will provide all the same code formatting, linting, dev sandbox, environment configuration, debugging profiles. No set up of any tooling to make this work. New employees can be more productive from day one. If your environment gets fubar'd just reset it instead spending the day unbreaking your machine. The company will be able to limit bike shedding by having all the same formatting and linting rules pre-setup. Code interviews will be easier to conduct.

It's already being done to a limited degree by companies such as repl.it. Once it is customized per enterprise customer, that's when it will really take off. Microsoft seems to be in a good position to lead that.

<comment><USER15> > Once it is customized per enterprise customer, that's when it will really > take off. Microsoft seems to be in a good position to lead that.

I think RedHat is way ahead on that front with Eclipse Che.

<comment><USER16> Has Eclipse gotten any better for languages not named "Java"? I tried it for a while for C development (maybe 8 years ago?) and it was terrible. As in "I don't even know where to start fixing this" terrible.

<comment><USER15> > Has Eclipse gotten any better for languages not named "Java"?

I don't know, but Eclipse Che isn't Eclipse in the same way VS Code/Online isn't Visual Studio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The articles mentions this at the end, but Coder offers a remote VS Code environment:

[https://coder.com/](https://coder.com/) [https://github.com/cdr/code- server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)

Anyone have experience with it?

<comment><USER18> I use it in our lab, and it works very well. However, there's no multi-user support. So anyone who connects to the server gets served the editor with the same workspace.

That being said, I think they have the multi-user support in the roadmap.

<comment><USER19> Interesting. You might want to try gitpod.io to have multi-user support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Haven't tried it but this seems useful. I know Google has something similar they use a lot internally. I guess one common use case for this is when you have code you need to run on a remote server but you want a nice development experience like you're developing locally (sometimes I see developers open an IDE on a remote server which is too slow). A better solution is working locally and having all changes sync automatically to the remote server. (yes yes I know, you can use vim or emacs...). If there are MS people here I'd be interested to hear their thoughts on this.

<comment><USER9> Check out [https://aka.ms/vsfutures](https://aka.ms/vsfutures). In addition to Visual Studio Online (the web companion editor), we're also building tools to allow developing against remote machines from Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code as well. In the case of the desktop clients, editing would actually happen locally, and synced with the remote environment. That way you have low latency editing + multi-machine portability and anywhere access.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, Visual Studio Online? AKA Azure DevOps a few months ago? Surprised someone decided to pick the same name up that quickly. The name makes a lot more sense applied to this team, though :)

n.b.: MS employee, interned under the org f.k.a VSO a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very nice - moves in this direction will give more developers the ability to use lower-end computers like Chromebooks to do just about everything.

<comment><USER23> Is the editor/IDE really the limitation? If anything web-technology-based IDEs are usually the ones wasting resources nowadays, my long-lived emacs session running the SLIME environment to interact with common lisp uses a meager (by modern standards) 110MB of RAM. I used a very similar setup 15 years ago on a computer with 512MB of RAM and a single-core 1.5GHz CPU.

You can already develop very comfortably on a chromebook if you're willing to forsake the bloat of the web. Actually if I can trust Wikipedia a modern Chromebook outperforms my main desktop machine a decade ago. Putting everything in the cloud doesn't strike me as a great step forward, although it could have its uses.

<comment><USER22> Well, you might be biased by the fact that you are fluent in emacs and/or vim. 90+% of modern programmers use heavier IDE's in their work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if this will have Visual Studio's Go To Implementation feature. If so, I really hope this gets fully integrated in Azure DevOps repos.

It's a great experience right now, but I pretty often end up pulling the repository down just for Go To Implementation.

<comment><USER25> Yes, it will. It's nice to see someone appreciates that feature (as the person that spent 1 month making sure it worked well for the PR scenario).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> FWIW, I wrote a small script for remote dev called duplexrsync, love it so far. [https://github.com/francoisp/DuplexRsync](https://github.com/francoisp/DuplexRsync) Haven't tested on win10 yet but it should work, no language limitations and it's 150 lines of open source MIT bash. EDIT: il someone tests this on win10's Ubuntu sidecar thing before me, and if there's a glitch besides the calls to homebrew that can be made optional, please send a PR! Cheers and the peace be with you!

</comment><comment><USER27> Been using it every day at work for 4 years. Never even noticed the name change to "Azure DevOps".

Has anyone here ever used an online IDE, for anything other than very small tasks?

<comment><USER28> This is actually a new product using the old product name.

<comment><USER29> Yes. The product/service now known as Azure DevOps was originally called the Team Foundation Service, then Visual Studio Online, then Visual Studio Team Services, and now it's Azure DevOps. This Visual Studio Online is a new product/service.

<comment><USER28> One of these years they'll get the name right! I typically refer to it as "Whatever they're calling VSTS this week"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone know if there will be an on-premises option for this? I'd love to have this but for various reasons we'd have to run it off our own servers.

<comment><USER31> Seeing as Visual Studio Code was created with web technologies, this shouldn't be too difficult for a motivated individual to recreate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just tried Live Share within VSCode the other day with a friend who lives in Hawaii -- It worked flawlessly after I worked around the issues signing in.

<comment><USER9> I'm sooo glad to hear that! Don't hesitate to let us know how we can improve the product further, and also let us know if the direction we're going resonates with you.

<comment><USER33> :+1: for live share from me too. It worked really well when we used it within NZ and then back to the main office in the UK. It's been really useful for helping some of the guys back there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Remote work is here to stay, and love it when more companies and software products join in and start contributing to making it easier to work this way.

<comment><USER9> Better enabling remote work is one of our team's primary points of focus. Between Live Share ([https://aka.ms/vsls-why](https://aka.ms/vsls-why)) and these new remote development capabilities, we hope that we can contribute to making things easier, productive and more enjoyable for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I _think_ I used this as an intern at Microsoft in 2016. Can anyone at MS confirm that this has been live internally for a few years?

I only ever used it to take a peek at repositories before cloning them locally. It had a fair amount of navigation features builtin, like Go To Declaration, but was not a Visual Studio replacement (like the article says).

<comment><USER36> No - you're thinking the other Visual Studio Online which is now called Azure DevOps. It's "just" a source repository explorer with CI functionality.

<comment><USER35> Good to know, thank you! Too many products named Visual Studio :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I guess this explains why they renamed the previous Visual Studio Online to Azure DevOps...

</comment><comment><USER38> On trying to connect my Win10 VSCode Insiders build using this to a MacOS it says "Can't connect to mac: unreachable or not Linux x86_64 (Darwin x86_64)".

Is this limited to only Linux and MacOS being the host via OpenSSH here?

<comment><USER39> Yes, at the moment only Linux is supported for the server. But please upvote the relevant issues so we know which other platforms people are most interested in running Code server on: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- remote-release/issues/24](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-remote- release/issues/24)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the info - I think I would personally be much more interested in trying out VSCode as my main editor if I knew I could also SSH Remote to MacOS as well as Docker containers and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think there's a typo, I think "Not that long ago, Visual Studio Code was Microsoft's hub for all things DevOps, before DevOps was a buzzword." is meant to say "Visual Studio Online".

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this literally the same code that runs in the main Electron app just on the server?

I assume about 20% of it is going to have to be custom of course but still .. re-using a lot of the same code on the desktop is nice.

<comment><USER9> Yep! We want the experience between the web and desktop to feel cohesive and immediately familiar (not to mention extension interop). So it only made sense to share as much of the code as possible, to ensure we can provide the best developer experience!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Will this only work on Chromium since VSCode/Electrum are based on it?

<comment><USER43> "any device with a web browser" is what they said.

<comment><USER44> Scott Hanselman demoed it on an iPad Pro, so iOS Safari is definitely covered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What's the license on this tool for anyone who's in the preview? Such things can often contain ugly things about irrevocable worldwide licenses to do as the host pleases.

</comment><comment><USER46> the next step is ofcourse running an IDE remotely from a running program itself that can self modify. Like Nightlight for Clojure:[https://github.com/oakes/Nightlight](https://github.com/oakes/Nightlight)

my dream would be basically nightlight, but if the ide itself could self modify kinda like Emacs. Basically Emacs in Clojure that you could embed in applications or have applications run from it (the two would be equivalent)

</comment><comment><USER47> What is Microsoft's motivation for putting so much effort into VSCode? I don't understand the business of this particular product, and it makes me kind of uneasy.

<comment><USER48> A) Visual Studio Code is OSS, so anyone can come help microsoft improve it, which in turn helps out their commercial Visual Studio Project

B) Gaining developer mindshare is very powerful. If you want another example of how powerful this is, just look at the dominance of Windows XP and Windows 7 in the developer market, which in turn, made a huge proliferation of software available for the windows eco system. They are basically getting developers to dogfood the OS and developer tools for them.

3) Microsoft can learn from how people use visual code and make the developer experience overall much more pleasant for their azure integrations. You get enough developers telling the C-Suite how awesome Azure is, pretty soon you are going to have companies switching off AWS to Azure because "it integrates so well with all the developer tooling I am already using"(<\--- Which would be VS Code.)

<comment><USER25> VSCode was also born cross-platform, which enables developers that didn't consider Visual Studio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jo-wol So now you can't disable their "analytics".

</comment><comment><USER49> So... where does that leave CodeSandbox / StackBlitz?

</comment><comment><USER50> Is there any way to run Atom in a browser?

I know this question sounds silly since it's basically a browser, but that it actually is similar to c9.

<comment><USER12> Serious question: Why prefer Atom over VSCode?

From my evaluations early on in both they seemed like the same thing but VSCode had more features _(esp. built-in terminal)_ and performed significantly better.

I'm sure that there's been a lot of progress in the years since, but I haven't kept up.

I could see not trusting Microsoft with an open source project, but now that they own Github they have two open source Electron-based code editors, and I can't imagine that's going to last for long. So really I'd be more concerned for the long term health of Atom than VSCode.

<comment><USER50> Good question!

I prefer Atom because I use it since the early days and I am so used to it. The whole workflow is super awesome and everything is simple and clean. I don't have any performance problems nowadays (this was a big problem years ago) so I have zero complaints.

It's hard to switch, I tried VSCode, don't like it and have no reason to switch because _for me_ Atom just works and I love it.

<comment><USER12> I totally understand not wanting to switch. Just curious if there was anything cool I was missing out on.

Glad to hear the performance now is better now than it was back then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Nice! This already kicks Cloud9's butt.

</comment><comment><USER52> What benefits does this provide to flat-out installing VSCode? I'm not seeing any here..

<comment><USER53> The article said that it wasn't intended to replace VS Code... it was more for quick edits or reviews, for example if you aren't on your main dev machine.

<comment><USER9> Yep that's correct. We're making the desktop clients remote-capable, and the providing the web editor as a "companion" experience. We want to enable devs to use the right tool for the right job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This has more or less been available for Azure Web Apps for a while now, it works great

</comment><comment><USER55> Similar to gitpod.io but that one is faster to spin up, at least for OSS

</comment><comment><USER56> So basically, you can run Visual Studio Code in the browser you already have instead of installing a private browser to run it in?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This might be a better link with more info (source): [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/intelligent- prod...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/intelligent-productivity- and-collaboration-from-anywhere/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the link! That post explains the broader context of work that our team is working on to improve developer productivity moving forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! I love the work the VS team is doing inside of MS Would like to see things like this, remote code, etc. open sourced though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> good! now they will have my code

<comment><USER58> If you use Github, they already do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> RIP CodeAnywhere

[http://codeanywhere.com](http://codeanywhere.com)

<comment><USER60> I really don't think this will kill us :) Nothing has yet, and we have never been stronger. But thanks!</comment></comment>


The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude-posture-photo-scandal.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> This story comes up every now and then; I have a hard time seeing it as a "scandal". It's nothing more than a piece of historical anatomical pseudoscience that happens to tickle the salacious fancies of puritan America with the proximity of "nudity" and the names of recognizable celebrities.

Might as well be phrenology otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Taking nude photos of an entire generation of college freshmen (without proper consent) is not scandalous?

Sure, it's not at the level of secret Plutonium injection, but still...

<comment><USER4> Nonsense. All were essentially volunteers. Nobody held a gun to their head; they just put it on a schedule, and the freshmen lined up to comply.

Its actually amusing; these captains of industry were such sheep when they were young. Makes you wonder when they grew a backbone, if at all.

<comment><USER3> Seriously? "Nobody held a gun to their head" is your criterion? For guys and gals fresh out of high school?

Will you also tell me that employees can't sue for unpaid overtime, hazardous work environment, sexual harassment etc. because nobody held a gun and they could always quit? Such sheep, those common workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a vague feeling of reading this on the new york times website years ago, it was a huge article. Looks like this is a reblogging?

Yup, from 1995: [http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy- lea...](http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude- posture-photo-scandal.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

<comment><USER6> This is the longest "Repost!" comment that I have yet seen.

<comment><USER7> Is it a repost if it was before a substantial number of readers were born??

<comment><USER8> A substantials number of HN readers are under 18?

Now I _really_ feel old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This deep underlying assumption that nudity = scandal is amusing. I'm Australian, and I thought my culture was pretty similar to the US in a lot of ways, but the puritanical terror of nudity that pervades ever word of the article seems very odd indeed to me.

<comment><USER9> For the benefit of those who have not read the 1995 article all the way through to the end:

"As I thumbed rapidly through box after box to confirm that the entries described in the Finder's Aid were actually there, I tried to glance at only the faces. It was a decision that paid off, because it was in them that a crucial difference between the men and the women revealed itself. For the most part, the men looked diffident, oblivious. That's not surprising considering that men of that era were accustomed to undressing for draft physicals and athletic-squad weigh-ins.

"But the faces of the women were another story. I was surprised at how many looked deeply unhappy, as if pained at being subjected to this procedure. On the faces of quite a few I saw what looked like grimaces, reflecting pronounced discomfort, perhaps even anger."

<comment><USER10> That quite well illustrates the unacknowledged privilege of women at that time. The men were so accustomed to being denied privacy, either by cultural norms at the time, or by force by the government, that being forced to undress and be photographed was nothing unusual to them. Women, on the other hand, considered this an affront, because they were not subject to either of these. Thank you for pointing this out.

<comment><USER8> Or you could see it entirely the other way. In fact, I'm rather surprised that you saw it as you do. I guess it takes all sorts to make a world.

<comment><USER10> What is the "other way"?

<comment><USER8> That women, far from having extra privilege in this area, felt extremely threatened at being made to be naked, knowing that this level of vulnerability had no upside for them. Whereas men had no particular concern, because their photos would not likely be misused.

Frankly, the suggestion that women have more power in this sort of situation is so wrong-headed that I honestly can't imagine how anyone familiar with Western culture could come up with it.

<comment><USER10> What was the upside for men?

<comment><USER8> They were doing what they were told, and would therefore get whatever benefits obedience brings.

Whereas the women now had:

\- a bunch of male scientists leering at them [1];

\- some photos in the hands of those scientists that could be embarrassing;

\- the possibility of those photos being stolen and distributed;

\- a strong sense that they have no right to privacy or dignity in the highly male-dominated Ivy League world.

That last one would count as an educational bonus, at least.

[1] I'm only guessing that the scientists were male here, but I think it's a safe bet. Even nowadays, but more so then.

<comment><USER10> So if it was such a bad idea for the women, why did they do it?

When it is better for men to do what they are told than otherwise, you classify it as a benefit. When it is better for women to do what they are told than otherwise, you call it oppression. I'm trying to draw attention to this double standard.

To be clear: neither the men nor women gained directly from having their photographs taken.

<comment><USER8> I don't honestly believe it's possible for someone to ask questions like that without a malicious purpose, so I shall refrain from engaging you henceforth. I pray that the women in your life, if you have any, can see what you are -- but I'm fairly sure it's obvious, so I'm not worried.

<comment><USER10> My purpose is to get people to question feminism and see outside a very narrow worldview in which women are always victims. In your case, I have failed. And the way you make this argument personal is really pathetic, although not surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >But if you ever see a black and white nude photograph like this floating around at a flea market, you know what to do.

maybe I missed this part. what do I do?

<comment><USER12> Check to see if it's Hillary Clinton.

Also, why are we linking to this blogspam rather than the original?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did the title, _and_ the link just change?

<comment><USER14> Looks like it.

In this case, it makes complete sense. The original was intentionally inflammatory leading with a line about nude pictures of Hilary Clinton, and was based on the NYT article to begin with.

<comment><USER15> Except that now the comments here make no sense at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So in lamenting this weird, invasive study, the author decides to publish several of the nude photographs? How unnecessary was that?

<comment><USER17> Fox News and other agencies do the same thing any time they're reporting that something controversial or offensive took place. It's not because they actually consider it bad, it's that they know it's inflammatory and gets viewership.

<comment><USER18> What does Fox News have to do with anything?

<comment><USER17> Are you kidding? My response was 2 sentences about how I've seen them especially, and TV news in general, replay things they were saying were so "edgy" for TV, _on TV_. Just like the re-distribution of these images in an article about how inappropriate the taking of these images was. I don't know how to explain that more clearly?

<comment><USER19> From my initial reading of your comment, I thought you were defending the posting the photos on the grounds that FoxNews does it too. That is an excuse (a bad one), not justification.

It seems that wasn't what you meant. Maybe you would like to rephrase?

<comment><USER20> He was providing the reason for why the authors would have published the photos (by using Fox News as an example), not defending or justifying their having done so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if anyone actually refused to strip for the researchers, and if so, what the consequences were.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not exactly strange. We still employ people to stare at nudes at the new airport scanners after all.

<comment><USER23> We do not: [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/tsa-completely- remo...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/tsa-completely-removed-full- body-scanners-rep-article-1.1360143)

<comment><USER24> So the machine takes the same picture, but simply pre-processes it into a cartoon image using "Advanced Imaging Technology" (now there's a hilarious non-description) before throwing it up on the monitor? Where do the originals go? Do they ever get audited or offloaded for quality control purposes--how else can they expect to be sure the algorithm works?

The news reports on this switch are all over the place in terms of quality, and you happened to pick one of the worse ones. I'm not the only one asking these questions: [http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/29/travel/tsa- backscatter](http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/29/travel/tsa-backscatter)

 _" We'd like to see clearer rules about the collection of the images," Rotenberg said. "Are they deleted? Are they saved? Is some analysis being done and can they be linked to passengers?"_

Not to mention the enormous waste of money it must have been to install and then remove the old machines. And what now happens to all the pictures they took, which are probably accumulating dust on some DHS subcontractor's hard disk somewhere in America?

<comment><USER25> I have no idea how it is actually implemented, but it seems like it could be implemented in a perfectly acceptable way.

The first step is to define what acceptable is. As I do not understand why nudity is unacceptable in the first place, I will not attempt to do so, and will instead employ the time honored tradition of hand waving.

In the new system, a reasonable implementation would be to discard the original image imidietly. Quality control can be done by putting the machine into debug mode and using consenting individuals as test subjects (or seeing if the cartoon image detects when the target things are present). There is also no guaranteed that the old pictures were ever stored. Although in both cases, I suspect they would store the data, in some form, for at least the short term to assist in a post-hoc analysis if their is a security failure.

Also, I think it was a software update only, the machines are still the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, why are you publishing the photos?

</comment><comment><USER27> Note: article is NSFW.

<comment><USER28> ...in America.

<comment><USER29> Not even most places in America. This is not obscene in any way, there's just a bit of nudity.

<comment><USER30> So you'd be fine with co-workers seeing that on your screen?

<comment><USER31> During lunch time? Yes, I would be absolutely fine.

During working hours: no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting how the word "nude" boosts posts to the top of the social hierarchy on HN, Reddit and YouTube, among other sites, even in cases when the content would be otherwise irrelevant or uninteresting to the communities.

<comment><USER33> > It's interesting how the word "nude" boosts posts to the top

We're mammals. Despite our large cerebrums and ability for abstract reasoning, we're still primates. Of course we're drawn to sex, food, and emotion.

I think it's more interesting that we're _surprised_ by this. Sure, it's good to try to overcome your bestial nature, but pretending it isn't there at all seems a bit silly.

<comment><USER25> We seem to be the only mammals that are particularly attracted to nudity. As far as I can tell, no other mammal even notices when one of their species is naked.

<comment><USER34> How can they? Do any other animals have a concept of clothing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> When I hopefully will be 70 one day, I wonder if i would actually like to see such photos of me. I think I might. "Once I was young, and I looked so awesome. Oh, those were the days..."

</comment><comment><USER36> Why am I not surprised that Paglia loves this stuff? Wherever there's a well- bred controversy, she's in the thick to concern-troll with grotesque absurd sophistries.

</comment><comment><USER37> From the article: _" No written permission of any kind was ever given by the students."_

What's the statute of limitations on something like this? I'm guessing since this occurred so long ago, nothing can be done.

<comment> at-fates-hands It usually varies by state law. Here's some good information: [http://www.photoattorney.com/2009/07/q-statute-of- limitation...](http://www.photoattorney.com/2009/07/q-statute-of-limitations- for-use-of.html)

"Because copyrights are governed by federal law, there is only one statute of limitations for copyright claims. Copyright infringement claims are rights of the copyright owner of the photograph and have a three-year statute of limitations from the date of the infringement. See 17 USC 507(b). Some courts start counting the three years when you had a reasonable chance to discover the infringement."

<comment><USER38> The subjects of the photos wouldn't have a copyright claim on the photos, as they did not take them (the university did, and would own the copyright). I'm sure there's other laws at play though, such as personality rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I just the whole article and now I wonder what happened to these photos and with this long article a reader would expect to see some photos... any source on this?

</comment><comment><USER40> This thread is all too interesting. I found myself revisiting the dictionary for definitions of words I never knew.Everyday I learn something new from HN

</comment><comment><USER41> "Take off your clothes."

 _slap_ "No!"

"I am an authority figure. I have <good> reasons."

"Oh, well then that's fine."

 _strips_

Humans. We're funny sometimes.

Repeat ad nauseum.</comment>


230+ Tools for Running a Business Online - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/08/09/online-business/

<comment><USER2> Wow! My startup is one of those! It's under Conferences, Presentations & Meetings...

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen It's scary, though...just think of the market shrinkage.</comment>


In bid for credibility, largest Bitcoin exchange moves to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/in-bid-for-credibility-largest-bitcoin-exchange-moves-to-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Sorry for the total sidetrack but I laughed out loud at this title.

Maybe its just my New England sensibilities (read: frugality) talking, but I sometimes refer to Silicon Valley as "the land where money is make-believe". I'm referring to the (perceived) bubble of course, but also my (perceived) view of the conspicuous consumption that seems much more pronounced over there than around here, perhaps as a result of VC money.

I swear walking around some places I didn't see a car that was made between the years 1960 to 2005. They all looked either vintage or brand new.

Not that it's a bad thing, I'm sure people have a great time and get things done, etc, but my mind translates the title as "In a bid for credibility, largest make-believe currency exchange moves to the land where money is make- believe".

I mean is there a place in the U.S. where the cultural perception is that people take large sums of money less seriously?

(Maybe D.C.)

<comment><USER3> The US Dollar is a make-believe currency. It only ever has as much value as we believe it has.

<comment><USER4> Taxes are paid in dollars. You can see dollars as some sort of collective hallucination if you want, but that fact ultimately keeps them grounded.

<comment><USER5> I think the parent's point stands: the dollar (or any currency for that matter) is artificial. The government merely "declares" it has value, hence making it "make-believe". In the hypothetical scenario where it ends up suffering from hyperinflation, it would lose all its make-believe value, just the way the Zimbabwean dollar died.

<comment><USER6> Can people pay there taxes in bitcoins ? ( it's a question).

<comment><USER7> Of course not. I couldn't use USD to pay my taxes either, because I'm Canadian. I _could_ earn money in any currency I choose, including BTC, and exchange them for any other currency I choose, including USD or CAD.

Why does the currency any given person pays their taxes in matter?

<comment><USER8> Not sure if this is true in Canada, but in the US at least, employers are required to pay you in USD (at least up to the minimum wage). And, if someone offers to pay you in CND for your work in Canada, you can't refuse them, even if you'd rather be paid in BTC.

Sure, you can exchange USD, CND and BTC as much as you wish, but the point is that, within Canada, you can be certain that you can always pay and be paid in CND -- which can't be said for any other currency.

<comment><USER7> My business can accept any currency I want it to. It's true that if I had employees I would have to pay them in local currency. I'm not sure how any of this is relevant to BTC's "relevance" as a currency--it doesn't need the support of a nation-state for it to be a valuable medium of exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're super excited about this move; as some HN'ers know, I've put a few years into figuring out how to work with Gox. I'll dig up my old post and link to it here.

<comment><USER9> 808 days ago, I wrote up some thoughts on Gox. Wow, it's been a fun two years!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998899>

<comment><USER10> Haha, blast from the past, I remember reading that. First, congrats! Second, has anything significantly changed since you wrote that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real news here is the (promised) partnership with Silicon Valley Bank.

</comment><comment><USER12> Somehow moving to a location further from the reach of the US government would give me more confidence.

Kim dotcom's case shows the US willing to even break it's own laws to stop things it doesn't like. I suspect Bitcoin isn't a target currently but why bet that the situation won't change. The US arguably will a significant incentive do things to protect its currency if Bitcoin truly becomes an alternative currency.

<comment><USER13> Only matter is you are from the US. Moving this closer to the US only works for regulating it within US borders, as a peer-2-peer currency there is very little the US could do to affect it globally. In addition this may actually strengthen the currency, as big players get involved and tie up money in BTC then they are more likely to want (and be able) to get the US Govt on side when discussing BTC. This affects the global exchange rate and strengthens the currency outside of the US as people become less worried by ridiculous laws designed to hinder or stop bitcoin's progress.</comment></comment>


Doubts raised about CRISPR gene-editing study in human embryos - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/doubts-raised-about-gene-editing-study-in-human-embryos-1.22547 <comment><USER2> In summary, there are questions about one particular study out of Portland, with some plausible explanations for why the results/interpretation of this study were incorrect. This is not a concern about the utility / potential / feasibility of CRISPR itself but rather a critique of data interpretation and techniques by a specific study in human gametes.

The buried lead for me in this story is the use of pre-publishing services that are allowing this open review of biological papers without the delays traditionally associated with publishing. My understanding is that other fields like mathematics and CS have been doing this for a while, but to my knowledge, this is a fairly new phenomenon in medical biosci. (It's been a while since I've been through the publishing process).

<comment><USER3> >'Instead, the male gene copied the healthy sequence from the female gene. The authors don't know why it happened. [...] "We were so surprised that we just couldn't get this template that we made to be used," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health and Science University and senior author of the study. "It was very new and unusual."' [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/science/gene-editing- huma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/science/gene-editing-human- embryos.html)

>"We did not find any evidence of HDR using exogenous ssODN, suggesting that HDR is guided exclusively by the wild-type maternal allele." [https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nat...](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature23305.html)

I really don't see why this is so hard to understand. You added an enzyme that damages the DNA when it contains a certain sequence. The cells containing that sequence died more often, leaving behind a larger proportion of the ones without (it started out at ~50/50 in this case). This technique will _always_ be doing this selection process to some extent (imo it could account for the majority of published "edits").

<comment><USER4> I haven't read the original study... However, I suspect that selective lethality of targeted cells would not account for this outcome. The process involves a single cell at the outset.

<comment><USER3> They started with 70 cells, 54 made it to 4-8 cell stage, and 36 of these were wild type (figure 2): [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7668/fig_tab/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7668/fig_tab/nature23305_ST2.html)

In other words they started out with ~35/70 wt cells, and ended with 36/54\. All 36 contained the WT sequence (rather than mutant) and not the template they tried to introduce. It is just as if the process killed ~16/35 mutants.

<comment><USER4> I've now scanned the original article.

As I understand, they injected ova with the CRISPR/CAS9 plasmids and then fertilized them with mutant sperm. The goal was to see if they could achieve CRISPR-mediated repair of the mutant allele provided by the sperm, guided by the genomic sequence of the wild-type ova allele.

My knowledge of CRISPR doesn't extent to knowing whether this is a smart idea or not... Though it seems to be an issue raised by Robin Lovell-Badge in the OP:

>"Robin Lovell-Badge, a developmental biologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, says that it is possible that there is a "novel or unsuspected" biological mechanism at work in the very early human embryo that could explain how Mitalipov's team corrected the embryos' genomes in the manner claimed."

They appear to claim that they achieved somewhat mixed results, i.e. the repair of sperm-derived allele guided by the ova-derived allele was not 100% efficient.

>Among 54 CRISPR–Cas9-injected embryos, 36 (66.7%) were uniformly homozygous for the wild-type allele with each blastomere containing MYBPC3WT/WT, while 18 (33.3%) were uniform or mosaic heterozygous (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 3). In this group of 18, 5 embryos were uniformly heterozygous with each blastomere containing the intact wild-type and intact mutant allele (MYBPC3WT/∆GAGT) and 13 were mosaic,"

It doesn't appear (to me) that selective lethality would account for this data.

I would need to spend more time with the manuscript than I have right now to be more definitive, though...

<comment><USER3> > "It doesn't appear (to me) that selective lethality would account for this > data."

Please go into more detail about what selective lethality is not explaining. Under that explanation

1) They started with ~35 wild type and ~35 mutant.

2) The treatment killed about half the mutants (but no/few wt) via inducing toxic double stranded breaks.

3) They end up with the original ~35 wt plus ~16 mutants, thus increasing the proportion of wt.

Regarding heterozygosity:

4) In some of the surviving mutants the cas9 damaged the DNA during the 2-cell phase or later, thus knocking out the mutant allele in some cells but not others.

As I said, I do not see what is difficult to understand. It seems to me guaranteed that a process like this accounts for at least some of the "editing" (ie, it is impossible to not be happening at all). Really, it is only a matter of what percent of the results are due to this.

<comment><USER4> It isn't clear to me where you're getting these numbers from... where do you find 35 WT and 35 mutant? Could you point me to the data for WT vs mutant embryos in this experiment?

Edit: in case you're referring to the table you linked to, the top line is unmanipulated embryos, and the second and third to experimental embryos, control and test. The survival rate of the second two lines is reported as similar.

<comment><USER3> The man who donated the sperm was heterozygous, which would mean about half the sperm would contain the mutant. You can also see this in their figure 2:

>"Sequencing of 83 individual blastomeres collected from 19 control embryos revealed that 9 (47.4%) were homozygous wild type (MYBPC3WT/WT) and 10 (52.6%) were heterozygous, carrying the wild-type maternal and mutant paternal alleles (MYBPC3WT/ΔGAGT) (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 2). This distribution was expected and confirms that the heterozygous patient sperm sample contained equal numbers of wild-type and mutant spermatozoa with similar motility and fertilization efficiency."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Start building real-time apps with these Firebase templates and components - <AUTHOR> https://www.noodl.io/market/search/Firebase <comment><AUTHOR> Most examples also include Ionic apps</comment>


The Risks of Distributing Risk - <AUTHOR> https://themargins.substack.com/p/the-risk-of-distributing-risk <comment><USER2> I definitely can see how Lambda school is now incentivized to generate as many ISAs as they can, and that price discovery in the ISA market (and other somewhat opaque or difficult to model debt markets) can be tricky, but shouldn't Lambda be incentivized to produce excellent graduates because that increases the credit rating (so to speak) of their ISAs and in turn the market value? I would think that ISAs of notoriously bad programs would sell for pennies on the dollar, while ISAs for a highly regarded program might be as good as cash (probably not that good, but you get the drift). I would think at some point that it would be easier to produce one good graduate than 10 or 100 terrible ones (even a terrible program probably has a decent amount of overhead per graduate to market to and find them, enroll them, instruct them, test them, etc.).

<comment><USER3> this is kind of the perfect example - in theory, the secondary market should correctly price the ISAs based on the quality of the students being graduated.

But there is a significant lag built in on the pricing. It would probably be a few cycles of students, and you wouldn't even know they're not getting good jobs for a number of months if not years. Especially given Austen's kind of a celeb, Lambda could raised a few bigger and bigger rounds in that time period - and their numbers would look fantastic to potential investors with the cash coming in up front. If they played it right, they could maybe even IPO before those secondary ISAs ever get properly priced. Financial innovation at its finest!

<comment><USER4> > "... would probably be a few cycles of students ..."

This sort of delay would be priced in by the person buying the ISAs from Lambda.

I agree with the grand-parent post. Lambda school definitely has skin in the game. If they want to continue operating (i.e., sell the next batch of ISAs onward to investors) then they need to have students who get high paying jobs.</comment></comment></comment>


The Tink landing page just launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.tink.global <comment><USER2> Can you tell us more about the project and the current status?</comment>


Skripal Poisoning Suspect's Passport Data Shows Link to Security Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/14/skripal-poisoning-suspects-passport-data-shows-link-security-services/ <comment><USER2> The (London) Times was reporting today that even some official Russian government spokespeople have been less than supportive of these guys and their stories, eg leaving open questions about their credibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm truly disgusted by this. Russia can simply assassinate someone on UK soil and literally _nothing_ happens but some stern words. Utterly utterly appalling.

</comment><comment><USER4> The link is clear. The question is what will the UK do about it? Punishment for these individuals is largely irrelevant because their identity is known and they will probably never leave Russia again.

</comment><comment><USER5> How did Bellingcat obtain those passport application files?

<comment><USER6> And furthermore, are these files authentic? I would not be surprised by the conclusion this suggests but lets deal with hard evidence and not intuition.</comment></comment>


Text + Image + CSS3 = Crazy Delicious - <AUTHOR> http://metaatem.net/highlite/?text=Dee%20Ah%20Double%20Gee%21%20&image=http%3A%2F%2Fdigg.com%2Fimg%2Flittle-digg.gif&colors=128&width=80 <comment><USER2> How about this: [http://metaatem.net/highlite/?text=Make+something+people+wan...](http://metaatem.net/highlite/?text=Make+something+people+want%21.&image=http%3A%2F%2Fycombinator.com%2Fimages%2Fy18.gif&colors=128&width=80) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, that was pretty slick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was sick! Lets invent _cough_ situations _cough_ in which this would be useful....I can already think of 2 off the top of my head ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow... that was awesome!

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool. This would be a great way to hide your email from bots, yet make it easy to read for humans. Until the bots wise up, that is.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER7> beautiful.

Creativity + simple tools (for hackers atleast) = Genius

</comment><comment><USER8> Crazy awesome!</comment>


How to answer the phone - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/how-to-answer-t.html

<comment><USER2> As much as I dislike talking to my clients on the phone (which means I'm not 'working') they really do like talking to me, and it usually means they buy more services and pay up for services they've already bought.</comment>