FIFA Officials Arrested on Corruption Charges; Face Extradition to U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/sports/soccer/fifa-officials-face-corruption-charges-in-us.html?_r=0 <comment><USER4> It seems like the DOJ is doing the same thing they would do against a gang; get a few lower-level people to take a plea deal and hand over the kingpin. There's no way Blatter gets through this unscathed.

It will be interesting to see if the World Cup will be moved now; it never made sense to have it in Qatar in the first place (no infrastructure, _incredibly_ hot during the summer, hundreds of migrant workers dying and injured because of the insane conditions they're working under to prepare the stadiums. It's really, really messed up.

I've never seen /r/soccer so happy about _anything_ \- this news has 99%+ upvotes.

<comment><USER5> It'll be the top post ever in /r/soccer in no time, it's already fourth and was only submitted four hours ago.

I truly hope that Blatter is ousted, the Qatar decision is reversed and given to a nation that with a less-appalling human rights record and some actual interest in football. I can't name a single Qatari club or player and know nothing of their league (other than Gabriel Batistuta played there for a year at the end of his career), and I'd consider myself to be someone who knowns a fair bit about football.

<comment><USER6> Apparently, hosting a World Cup has become a net negative to a country. The costs (significant and increasing) go to the government and the profits go to FIFA and the sponsors.

<comment><USER7> Yep, its really sad. It also applies for events like the Olympics, where infrastructure improvements are mandatory, and costs far outweigh any profit they may receive.

<comment><USER8> Counterpoint - the infrastructure stays around. The stadiums get used and re- used, transport improvements benefit locals in perpetuity, tourism/trade brings in money to the economy, not to mention there are general "morale" reasons to host.

These are not profit making events to host, or at least they ought not to be. The benefits are varied and certainly not trivially reducible to profit/loss on the event itself.

<comment><USER9> Lots of stuff built is just a giant money pit and nobody benefit from it after the games.

[http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ghosts-of-olympics- past?...](http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ghosts-of-olympics- past?articleId=USRTR30UOB)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/sochi-olympics-ghost- city-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/sochi-olympics-ghost- city-2014-8?IR=T)

[http://distractify.com/culture/sports/haunting-images-of- aba...](http://distractify.com/culture/sports/haunting-images-of-abandoned- olympic-venues/)

<comment><USER8> Surely that's a question of implementation not inevitability?

<comment><USER10> > Surely that's a question of implementation not inevitability?

Not really. While there might be some cases where some of the infrastructure is something where the operating/maintenance costs would be justified but which didn't get built because of the up-front capital costs, and where hosting a special event which happened to need the same infrastructure might provide an excuse (or an otherwise-unavailable source of funding) for the capital costs, that's rather exceptional. Normally, the most of the infrastructure needed for the event consists of things for which the operations/maintenance costs would not be justified once the event is over.

<comment><USER11> Vancouver 2010 is a _fantastic_ example of just that. Yes, there were some developments which could have gone better (Olympic Village, for one), but some much needed infrastructure and stadium upgrades came out of it:

\- Sea to Sky Highway went from being a ridiculously dangerous road between Vancouver and Whistler to being a pretty good road (still twisty, but there's only so much that can be done about that), and sorely needed these improvements for many, many years without budget for it.

\- Canada Line also received a whole bunch of federal money to get built, probably bringing it ahead of schedule by many years. An airport transit line was badly needed in Vancouver, especially with $40 cab rides to downtown.

\- BC Place's renovations got a major budget boost from the Olympics, allowing it to be turned into a great venue. The pressurized roof was a huge annoyance (air locks, yay! /s) and collapsed on several occasions, so the new retractable roof probably wouldn't have happened without the Olympic money.

\- Cypress Mountain finally got off their ass and built a proper lodge with proper facilities to support the Olympics.

Vancouver also reused a lot of existing stadiums and infrastructure, opting to upgrade rather than build from scratch. It was honestly an example of a really, _really_ well executed Olympics with a lasting legacy. There have been complainers the entire time, but honestly, it made Vancouver a better city. Closing of Granville for theentirety of the games also allowed the city to experiment with closing off city blocks for events, and that now has become a yearly tradition (along with Robson St). On a more sentimental note, it brought the country together in a unified passion which I had not seen before and have not seen since. It was truly a spectacular experience. I like rewatching the closing comments on CTV ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_dndXEGHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_dndXEGHI)) as well as Stephen Brunt's video essay ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8tzP3oeDg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8tzP3oeDg)) every so often to remember that.

<comment><USER12> This is exactly what I'm talking about – Vancouver 2010, or Kiel+Munich 1972 are perfect examples for reusing existing infrastructure and upgrading it.

Even London 2012 was a great example – reusing infrastructure, upgrading it, etc is a good way to do it.

Another good idea: One of the recent UEFA cups was hosted by two countries together (actually, several of them were). Which is another good idea, several less developed countries working together to still get the profit off of the games, but sharing the costs.

<comment><USER13> So that's about .. once or twice per century?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In case one wonders why the United States is enforcing this:

"U.S. investigators got help from Chuck Blazer, the longtime general secretary of the confederation, the New York Daily News reported in November. Blazer wore a hidden recording device in a keychain to meetings with soccer officials at the London Olympics and elsewhere, the paper said. The IRS had leverage over Blazer: He hadn't paid taxes on millions of income for more than a decade, according to the paper.

...

The choice of Qatar for the 2022 tournament angered many nations, and the U.S. in particular. The U.S. was beaten in a final vote run-off with the emirate after rival offers from Australia, South Korea and Japan had been eliminated in previous rounds. Former President Bill Clinton led a U.S. group that traveled to Zurich to make a final pitch to voters."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-27/u-s- starts...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-27/u-s-starts-world- cup-bribery-sweep-as-swiss-police-raid-hotel)

<comment><USER15> > The investigation into Blazer's tax affairs turned up some choice claims > about his lifestyle - including the revelation that Concacaf paid $18,000 a > month for his Trump Towers apartment, and another $6,000 a month for a > second Trump Towers flat, used mainly by his cats.

[http://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2015/may/27/fifa- of...](http://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2015/may/27/fifa-officials- arrested-on-corruption-charges-live)

<comment><USER16> The source NY Daily News stories has more detail: [http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer/soccer-rat-ex-u- s-s...](http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer/soccer-rat-ex-u-s-soccer- exec-chuck-blazer-fbi-informant-article-1.1995761)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. I'm impressed and somewhat surprised that the U.S. would be the entity to enforce this given the relative lack of presence FIFA has in the U.S.

Maybe it's because the U.S. lost the world cup (as in hosting privileges)?

<comment><USER18> I'm disgusted that the Swiss let this thing go on for so long and still give FIFA non-profit status.

<comment><USER19> Not just FIFA, the IOC aren't exactly squeaky clean either

<comment><USER20> Certainly, but the Olympics is something of a 20th century anachronism, celebrating a bunch of sports that few people have any genuine interest in. It is slowly becoming little more than a sports-themed fireworks roadshow.

FIFA controls the most popular and most profitable sport in the world. Period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Okay, I'll ask it: why does it take the U.S. to get involved in fighting corruption against an almost entirely non-U.S. organization that governs a sport that's not very popular here? Why isn't this happening in Europe or Central/South America where the impact is more immediate?

<comment><USER22> Contrary to popular opinion, FIFA does quite a bit of revenue in the US, and the Concacaf has been ground zero for much of the corruption issues. In many cases, money is being issued from US banks to be used in the laundering and corruption.

And the US may be the one country where FIFA doesn't have enough pull to graft their way around the problem.

There was a great documentary a few years ago about the US links...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> According to the _Economist_ , the 2018 and 2022 WC allocations are being investigated too:

[http://www.economist.com/news/business-and- finance/21652222-...](http://www.economist.com/news/business-and- finance/21652222-officials-world-footballs-governing-body-have-been-arrested- american-instigation)

>America's actions could force other countries to investigate FIFA more bravely. Indeed, that may already be happening. In what appears to be a separate case, Swiss officers raided FIFA's headquarters in Zurich, seized electronic records and said they had opened criminal proceedings against "persons unknown on suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering in connection with the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 football World Cups". According to reports, 10 FIFA members who participated in the vote for those competitions are to be questioned by police.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not in time to prevent the nonsense of the Qatar world cup (nor to save the lives of the migrant workers being sacrificed to consummate that nonsense)

<comment><USER25> What makes you say that? I think this actually puts a large cloud over the Qatar world cup.

<comment><USER26> It won't change anything for the Nepalese workers down there though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This aweseome news. Can we do the IOC next?

<comment><USER27> Right after we fix the NFL and MLB.

<comment><USER16> Are they that bad? I'm in the UK but I always thought they were fairly legit, if not very competent.

<comment><USER27> It was kind of tongue in cheek. The NFL and MLB are no where near as bad as FIFA or the IOC, although they affect me more since they're sports I watch, and they're also a little more in our court since they're actually American organizations. In terms of overall human rights and corruption, FIFA and IOC rate much higher. The only people really hurt by the actions of the NFL are the players.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like the FA/Premier League that controls football (soccer) over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Blatter is coming under pressure to resign, but he's still the favourite to win a 5th term in office as president of FIFA...

[http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32891267](http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32891267)

The guy was pretty unpopular when he appeared at the Asian Cup Final - <USER2> by just about everyone in the stadium.

<comment><USER18> Blatter can't show his face anymore even in some of the most nobel restaurants in Zürich because other guests will heckle him.

He needs to go and so does the non-profit status of FIFA.

<comment><USER29> For Swiss people, Blatter is a kind of reason to be ashamed. Funny fact: every single time I am abroad and someone reminds me we have Blatter, I freak out...

I hope he will get caught if he's involved and that his face will disappear forever from the football world. That sport is amazing, but in the last (almost) 20 years, it has been ruled by a man with a dubious integrity.

<comment><USER30> > Funny fact: every single time I am abroad and someone reminds me we have > Blatter, I freak out...

Pardon my ignorance, but why would this make you actually freak out? Are you related? I'm not trying to be obtuse, it just doesn't make sense to me.

<comment><USER29> Because this implies that every Swiss citizen is like him... that is usually what they try to say/joke about...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My understanding is that FIFA can ban countries from the organization for whatever reasons it sees fit. This probably cost the US any future world cups for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER32> Why do you think the US cares?

For FIFA, the US is the single largest source of television audience and therefore advertising revenue.

For the US, on the other hand, soccer is just one of many sports. In fact, the US is one of very few countries where soccer is not _the_ sport.

Americans are nowhere near as desperate for soccer as FIFA is desperate for American money.

<comment><USER33> > For FIFA, the US is the single largest source of television audience and > therefore advertising revenue.

Are you for real? This statement is so ridiculous that I don't even know where to start. You do realize football is by a huge margin, the most popular sports on this planet, right?

<comment><USER34> This article talks about the last world cup final:

[http://www.espnfc.com/fifa-world-cup/story/1950567/world- cup...](http://www.espnfc.com/fifa-world-cup/story/1950567/world-cup-final- most-watched-soccer-game-in-us-history-more-than-26-million-viewers)

The US had 43.8 million people watching the final (in English and Spanish). Germany (who was in the final) had 34.65 million people watching. Even if Argentina had ever single person in their country watching, they'd only have 42.6 million people watching (wiki estimate). Granted Brazil almost definitely has higher viewership, but the US is definitely one of the largest.

<comment><USER33> I don't get the point, those are hardly the only countries watch world cup. For a event like world cup final, it's the single most important match in 4 years. It won't just attract fans from the countries that are in the final.

For example, the 2006 world cup attracted 4 billion viewers from China, and their team was not even playing.[1]

[1] [http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/ffprojects/ip-401_...](http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/ffprojects/ip-401_06e_tv_2658.pdf)

<comment><USER35> > 4 billion viewers from China

Something suspicious about that...

<comment><USER33> How so? When you count viewership, of course they will combine number of viewers from each match, considering most of the viewers will tune in for just a few matches. This is common sense, I don't think there is anything suspicious about that.

<comment><USER33> Seriously? Down-voted for explaining my point? This place is as pathetic as reddit.

<comment><USER36> 4 billion viewers is a lot different to 4 billion views

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One thing I don't get is why this form of corruption is illegal. FIFA is a sort of international club, right? If I make an international group for the placement of Tiddlywinks world cups, and I make some internal rules for it, why does the state care how the politics turns out? Is it illegal to bribe someone making some private decision?

<comment><USER38> They are a business and are thus regulated by relevant laws. In this case FIFA is also a monopoly. Imagine if comcast started forcing Tier3 or someone else to pay bribes to get to their customers (heh). This is basically equivalent to that. Tier3 could sue if it was done off the books (re: bribes) and the IRS would go after the corp for tax evasion if they didn't report the bribe income. Not sure how this case will proceed, but my bet is that some of the charges will relate to tax evasion. Taking bribes is also likely only part of the story.

<comment><USER12> So, you mean, like Verizon did with Netflix?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just to make the farce complete, FIFA and Qatar donated to the Clinton Foundation [https://www.clintonfoundation.org/contributors?category=%245...](https://www.clintonfoundation.org/contributors?category=%2450%2C001%20to%20%24100%2C000&page=2)

as well as this: [http://www.fifa.com/sustainability/news/y=2010/m=9/news=fifa...](http://www.fifa.com/sustainability/news/y=2010/m=9/news=fifa- the-clinton-global-initiative-1306614.html) [http://sportanddev.org/en/connect/userprofile.cfm?894/FIFA-J...](http://sportanddev.org/en/connect/userprofile.cfm?894/FIFA- Joins-Clinton-Global-Initiative-CGI)

</comment><comment><USER40> I had to look up the definition of "genuflect":

"Lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect."

<comment><USER41> Literally, flexing (-flect) your _genu_ (latin for knee, "genou" in French).

So, to kneel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The indictment is available here: [https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nyed/370520/1-0.h...](https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/nyed/370520/1-0.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> White House makes the first step towards enforcing mass boycott of the Russian World Cup as punishment for flexing its muscles in its old spheres of influence.

I'm all for dismantling and/or restructuring FIFA, but the timing is rather opportune.

<comment><USER44> "Flexing its muscles in its old spheres of influence" is an interesting way to say, "invading and taking over another country."

<comment><USER45> You mean like what the US, UK and Australia did to Iraq. What punitive action did these countries face for their actions?

Yes, really the whole thing makes perfect sense when viewed from an "Old Order" vs "New Order" perspective.

<comment><USER10> A lot of the same people (including in the US) who aren't happy with what Russia did in Ukraine at the time it occurred also opposed what the US did in Iraq at the time _that_ occurred.

<comment><USER43> Nobody gives a shit what the "people" think. r/worldnews isn't going to change foreign policy with outrage and opinions (Russian or US).

The more meaningful point to be taken from this event is that US government can and will use its influence over public and private institutions (banks, sporting organizations, other governments) to pressure Russia (and possibly other BRIC nations) into abandoning their economic and strategic interests.

This is dangerous because there is no chance in hell of Russia abandoning those interests over a soccer tournament (no matter how unfair/undeserved those interests seem to an average Redditor trolling /r/worldnews from their mom's basement in Illinois).

I feel that there are significant powers in Washington who sense that NATO and US's days of being able to violate international law on a whim and without repercussions are numbered and the only way to extend that immunity is by raising the Iron Curtain once more.

<comment><USER10> > Nobody gives a shit what the "people" think.

The effort governments (among others) put into propaganda demonstrate that this is not true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There was an interesting documentary/research episode two days ago on the Belgium "information" channel, Telefacts.

It mentioned adding slavery to Russian laws for building the stadiums ( the FIFA law - [http://www.ituc-csi.org/new-fifa-laws-strip-world- cup](http://www.ituc-csi.org/new-fifa-laws-strip-world-cup) ) , Fifa - <USER3> only wanted to use someone's "name" for "cleaning up FIFA from the inside" ( she quitted her fictional job at Fifa), the return of someone who has been trialed for bribery - he laughed with it in an interview, bribery from Qatar and Russia for holding FIFA, people/women who have been threathened for accusing the FIFA of "actions against human rights", ... The list is long :)

Blatter, the president of the FIFA, likes to brag. He said: "i'm the only person who can travel without official notification, who gets received by the president of that country."

</comment><comment><USER47> For those of you who, like me, don't know much about the background and context, Bloomberg Business recently did an in-depth piece on Blatter and his ascension: [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-sepp-blatter- fifa/](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-sepp-blatter-fifa/)

<comment><USER48> For those of you who don't like reading, John Oliver did a fantastic segment on FIFA: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> If American law enforcement authorities have some balls why don't they go after their corrupt bankers? Their bankers have been engaged in criminality upon criminality upon criminality and all they have to is pay some fines which are minuscule in comparison to the amount they robbed, in return for charges being dropped, and admission by the prosecuting authorities of no wrong doing.

This is how spineless these European countries are. United Kingdom you know who I'm talking about. And it looks like Switzerland has also joined the list. Some of you European countries are so despicably shameful.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can anyone explain the jurisdiction?

<comment><USER10> The charges allege a conspiracy involving (among others) US persons (individuals and corporations), making extensive use of US financial institutions, and obstruction of justice relating to US law enforcement investigation related to that conspiracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Teachers, bikers, and now FIFA - we have no problem throwing the hammer at these folks but the criminals that threaten the world economy get a free pass.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's time to see a serious person leading FIFA. I hope that Blatter get's arrested or that looses the elections.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm incredibly excited that finally these problems are being addressed, but I'm not sure if this is relevant to HN.

</comment><comment><USER54> This time USA has my support to be the world police! Fuck Blatter!

</comment><comment><USER55> WTF? am I still at HN?

</comment><comment><USER56> These are "FIFA Officials" in the same way that the representatives countries send to the UN are "UN Officials", or US Congressfolk are "US Officials". They aren't people who actually do the work at FIFA.

$150 million over 20 years for sports rights in Latin America seems to indicate pretty slim margins. I wonder what the deal was with bribes and kickbacks over the selection of the host country for the 2010 World Cup (i.e. South Africa)?

The defendants who have copped pleas are convicted of the made-up 'crimes' of e.g. "wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and the structuring of financial transactions". [http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nine-fifa- officials-and-five-c...](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nine-fifa-officials- and-five-corporate-executives-indicted-racketeering-conspiracy-and)

No doubt terrible things go on among the members and their representatives at FIFA (as they do at the UN). Perhaps someone could explain how to organise an international federation that prevents corruption in its member (i.e. owner) organisations.

<comment><USER57> I don't quite understand how money laundering and fraud are "made up crimes". IMO they are very real crimes. If the convictions are wrong (i.e. not based on evidence), then say so, but claiming that crimes are "made up" is weasel language.

<comment><USER56> Money laundering is a recent invention as a crime. None of the actions involved are actually criminal in themselves, it's just that they (supposedly) make it harder for the authorities to detect something they might want to be obvious, to assist in the War on Drugs, or tax avoidance, or (more recently) terrorism.

As to "fraud", I actually referred to "wire fraud conspiracy", which is, more or less, once having had some sort of agreement (tacit or otherwise) to do something with a dishonest intention where a telephone was involved in some way or other. Note that you don't actually have to have followed through on that intention for the "crime" to have been committed.

These defendants plead guilty, so the convictions are no doubt correct. And no doubt many millions of bribes were paid. But I think a degree of skepticism about prosecutorial conduct is appropriate no matter what the supposed target of the prosecution.

<comment><USER57> Well, "recent" is relative. Modern money laundering procedures started to develop in 1920's and 1930's; the proceeds of crime were hidden with banking schemes, and Meyer Lansky eventually even bought a Swiss bank to help do it for the American mob.

But I would guess that already ancient Chinese criminal gangs did something similar, to make the proceeds of illegal activities appear legal.

<comment><USER56> Money laundering is old. Money laundering being its own stand-alone crime is recent.

(And part of the modern trend of criminalizing the living of one's life in a way not maximally transparent to the government.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Question: Computing Messages per Second - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to rationalize this in my head, any help is welcome.
"1 million individuals, each participate in 3 text message conversations per hour.
Each text message conversation involves 6 text messages over a 300 second (5 minute) period.
You are designing a system to handle this load. What is the number of text messages per second being generated, why?"
Here's my reckoning

    1 million x 3 text conversations/hour x 1/3600 x 6 messages per second
 But, that doesn't reflect the fact that each exchange lasts 5 minutes and therefore each text conversation only produces 1 text message per minute. <comment><USER2> To me, the interesting part is the "why?" with an implied "do you think the system won't fall over?" In the real world, the system design should provide capacity based on a statistical analysis of the independent events.

Fortunately, it is unlikely that all users will have three consecutive five minute conversations each starting at the same time. However, it is equally unlikely that the conversations will be evenly distributed. It is unlikely but less so that over time the worst case will be close to equally distributed because text conversations often spike around external events...the interesting answers to the question describe engineering judgments.

From the perspective of taking the question seriously, it is worth pointing out that it is slightly underspecified. Are conversations only between two parties or is group text possible?

Anyway, to me the question is interesting as a scheduling problem. The way I would search for an answer is by modeling it rather than intuition because scheduling problems are in NP.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your math is correct. The 5 minute period doesn't matter in the calculation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but why? Isn't it a material fact that the 5 messages aren't all exchanged in (say) 1ms?</comment></comment>


Performance metrics for web apps - <AUTHOR> https://blog.superhuman.com/performance-metrics-for-blazingly-fast-web-apps-ec12efa26bcb <comment><USER2> This is a great article, walks through a bunch of complications with measuring web performance.

Summary:

1\. Use performance.now(), which has 0.1ms resolution and is monotonic, instead of new Date() which has 1ms resolution and can decrease if machine time changes

2\. Check for document.hidden and the 'visibilitychange' event

3\. Use event.timeStamp for start time (when measuring responsiveness to an event)

4\. Use the parameter that requestAnimationFrame() passes to callbacks to include time running framework code

5\. You can nest requestAnimationFrame() to include Layout and Paint time, but that limits precision to 16ms so they didn't

6\. Instead of percentiles, count % of events under a target like 100ms, it's more user-centric: instead of "how fast/slow is my app" it tells you "how often do users experience slowness"

7\. Chart the counts at multiple targets in an percent stacked area chart

One weird thing to me about items 5 and 6—why not both? Why not have a chart including and a chart excluding Layout and Paint time, so you know if you're doing bad CSS or something that's introducing an expensive repaint? Why not have a stacked line chart with percentiles alongside the percent stacked area chart?

<comment><USER3> > _performance.now(), which has 0.1ms resolution and is monotonic_

Not so much anymore.

MDN says: "The timestamp is not actually high-resolution. To mitigate security threats such as Spectre, browsers currently round the results to varying degrees. (Firefox started rounding to 1 millisecond in Firefox 60.) Some browsers may also slightly randomize the timestamp. The precision may improve again in future releases; browser developers are still investigating these timing attacks and how best to mitigate them."

<comment><USER4> Not only to mitigate timing attacks, but also to limit fingerprinting by data- harvesting entities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions "new Date()" as the alternative to the performance API. Unless you're supporting IE8 you should prefer Date.now(), which saves you the object instantiation if you're just reading out ms.

Also, performance.now (and the date methods) have their precision hamstrung in some browsers for privacy and Spectre mitigation.

Of course, for perf use the dedicated APIs. Just don't expect microsecond resolution to be accurate.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious how they do competitive analysis. They want to be faster than gmail but how do they measure? I tried to take a high-speed video of gmail navigating from thread list to thread but it was not conclusive. Gmail collects a ton of client-side timing data and I wonder if anyone has ever just intercepted that.

<comment><USER7> It is unlikely the performance can be your long term selling point, when you do not own the full stack. They still have to interact with gmail through an API, while gmail app itself can process everything server-side. I think there is a place for $50/month email, but you need to own the entire stack, not just build a fancy email client.

<comment><USER8> Email is beautifully asynchronous so the time spent interacting with the underlying API is not important unless it's horrifically sabotaged for third party clients.

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely correct, which is why the bulk of Gmail's client code is dedicated to hiding latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The visibility stuff is good. They forgot to mention that when the tab is hidden or not currently focused, the browser doesn't fire requestAnimationFrames because it's good for battery life.

Also he lost me at don't measure layout and paint. That's like the #1 reason why UI is slow. Layout and paint is a very compute intensive task. Deffo you should measure both but you can get huge gains by optimizing how many dom nodes browser has to deal with so layout and paint is efficient.

V8 won't bat an eye to go through a million items in an array and do a filter map operation on them. Rendering a million things in a browser is a different ball game.

I've spent many years of my life optimizing UI perf. I have to give the Chrome devtools team massive kudos for building a great performance analyzing tool.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article suggests not instrumenting layout and paint, though it does mention the double rAF option.

Be careful skipping this! It is trivially easy to regress layout perf with CSS property changes and if you're not instrumenting layout you might not catch it. I've personally fixed 300ms P90 regressions from thrashing layout on a button click.

</comment><comment><USER10> Like the article in general, but it would be even better if basic conditions like cpu governor, fixed clock frequencies and so on would be mentioned. This is especially important for comparable results ;-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I missing something obvious, or couldn't they have calculated "percentage less than 100ms" if they were able to calculate percentiles? Rather than collecting just the 100ms figure?

</comment><comment><USER12> Something I encourage teams to do is keep in mind "when to stop" optimizing. Otherwise you can spend forever trying to squeeze another tiny improvement that at the end of the day isnt going to ever have any kind of return on investment.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fastmail is pretty snappy for me. Why else would I want to switch to Superhuman besides a snappy experience?

Also I mostly use mail via IMAP using the iOS mail app, in which case the web client is entirely irrelevant.

<comment><USER14> Might as well use this downvoted thread for my little hobby horse as well: I was done with Fastmail when I realized they recycle email addresses if you stop paying.

They should either lock access to the account until you buy a new subscription (which seems obvious, just hold the account hostage), or lock the account forever if they don't want to store/recv messages for inactive accounts.

Every email startup should learn from this.

<comment><USER15> This is also true of every personal domain used for email. While it's not great from Fastmail, it's no less secure in that respect than a custom domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _______Breaking news_ __ __ __Computer Scientists over at Stanford have discovered that web apps are inherently slow as fuck. Studies show that if your software projects ' are performance critical, you should definitely avoid that many layers of GUI complexity and memory consumption.

<comment><USER17> So is building native mobile a better experience as far as response time is concerned?

<comment><USER16> I think React Native is a great solution for small developers because they reduce the man power required for cross compatibility.

To answer your question, it depends on the type of response time you're asking. If you mean simply button click event fire type responses, then yes native app development is superior. But like I stated if you wa t your app to be truly write once run anywhere, JS web apps are the way to go.....these days at least.

That being said, I only had one go at React and another brief stint with Android app development. I found them both to be complete messes. Maybe I'm so used to my last job doing C# Winforms, but I haven't found a more comfortable experience.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Recommend Against Hackety Hack - <AUTHOR> http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2012/12/27/why-i-recommend-against-hackety-hack/ <comment><USER2> Hackety Hack maintainer here!

Two things:

1\. As popular as Hackety Hack is/was, I have pretty much been the sole maintainer for the past few years. This is really, really hard. Like, "reverse engineer a website from the app's API" hard. "Spend 6 months trying to get it to compile" hard. "Deal with thousands of lines of uncommented C written by someone who specifically enjoyed obscurity" hard.

2\. Technical debt due to Shoes (the GUI toolkit Hackety is built on top of, see above comments about difficulty) has led to a few people re-writing Shoes from scratch[1]. It is relatively active. Hackety development is on a moratorium until that work is done.

3\. I volunteer with CodeNow[2], and we teach using Hackety to high school kids. They generally find it to be pretty awesome.

It is no secret that Hackety is not as active as I'd like it to be. Getting help is hard. I've asked for it a few times, and nobody (relatively speaking) wants to, so here we are. I will help anyone help me in any way they can.

1: <https://github.com/shoes/shoes4> 2: <http://codenow.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. I have to ask, wouldn't it have just been a lot easier to start from scratch with Shoes, but also start over with Hackety Hack?

I'm not familiar with the implementation of Shoes, but couldn't you write a wrapper for an existing GUI toolkit that just had a simplified API?

Or, since so much of Hackety Hack's GUI looks and acts like a web page, just implement Hackety Hack as an offline web app, where the typed Ruby code is just piped to the interpreter running on the box, and the results are returned as HTML displayed in the browser? It seems like a lot of work is reinventing basic things (text editor, GUI toolkits, etc.)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you got it figured out. Why don't you take care of it for him?

<comment><USER4> coz he's writing many more books related to programming for beginners, unlike you who's just got snarkiness and nothing else going for him/her

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My son was 8 when I got him into HacketyHack, he loved it and made many little desktop apps using HH and it's shoes interface. His favorite apps where ones where the user was asked questions and things happened depending on what the user said. He loved showing friends and relatives.

HH had been abandoned since before _why disappeared. I have to acknowledge Steve and his happy band for recovering the project and getting it to a version 1.0

I don't know the full back story but shoes on which HH is based had many issues as a code base, also HH was originally designed so it would run on PC/Mac/Linux. As a cross platform desktop software the project is in need of more badass devs who are not afraid to do local Dev work on different os's.

My son has learnt a lot of code since he stared with HH and we found he then easily transitioned to Sublime plus shoes but if there were some more HH modules (and greater windows stability), I know even today he'd be keen to jump on there.

<comment><USER2> Glad to hear it. Thanks. :) I've heard of a few 7 or 8 year olds going through it, I'm glad I managed to make it accessible for them too (even with a little help, I'm sure.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Almost every item of 'suckery' listed is something that can be fixed or rather, finished. And it's OS.

<comment><USER2> This is true, and I'd be willing to help anyone that wants to help me do it.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what kind of help you need but am sending you an email offering my services (if I can even provide any).

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I just sent you one back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Spent last year learning to code. I had the same problem with Hackity Hack, it really didn't teach me anything. It was a huge handholding operation.

I did Team Treehouse last month and it was infinitely better. This is no criticism of Steve, who is clearly working hard, but just a realistic view of what tools you should consider if you want to learn to program.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I actually consider 'a huge handholding operation' to be a big compliment: that's the point of a tool like this. You obviously didn't need handholding, but many do: they're my market. I'm glad Treehouse was able to help you. Keep building cool stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Watch _why talk about Hackety Hack.

[http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/_why-aa- jonathan-g...](http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/_why-aa-jonathan- gillette/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Teaching kids Ruby? What happened to dreams? Do we want our kids engineering the next mobile dating platform for the enterprise? We should be teaching them OpenGL, C++, or maybe javascript.

<comment><USER11> Teach kids Ruby and if they are interested they will learn other languages later. Ruby (before you go on to rails) is very flexible in its use and good to branch from. C++, javascript, and opengl have very particular use cases, which is fine if you know thats you want to do, but pointless if you just want to learn generalised programming concepts...

If you want to go lower-level better to learn some assembly (or at least C) instead...

<comment><USER12> Might I suggest Python instead? It's more immediately useful to kids interested in the sciences.

<comment><USER13> Let's do both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This shameless post alongside its comments is the reason I and others have left OSS.

</comment><comment><USER15> For a beginner, you need to check out www.codehs.com -- we've made it really easy to get started and a ton of fun to learn.

Plus, students all get access to and personalized help from tutors whenever they ask a question or submit their code.

<comment><USER16> CodeHS looks pretty good; logo-esque from first glance. I see a problem though...

As a parent having tried everything I can find (logo, scratch, hackety hack, invent with python, straight PHP programming etc. etc.) to teach my kids (currently 9 & 6) programming, the #1 problem is the medium is wrong: sitting still in front of a computer for more than 15 minutes is diametrically opposed to their natural behaviour.

The best approach I've found, which also makes a great party game is "How to train your robot" -> <http://drtechniko.com/2012/04/09/how-to-train-your- robot/> . It works well because there are no computers involved.

Cargobot on the iPad also works pretty well, although largely because it's an iPad

Also recently had success with <http://popapp.in> plus UI stencils although this is more design / hypermedia than programming</comment></comment>


Michael Lewis on Daniel Kahneman, the Father of Behavioral Economics - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112.print%22

<comment><USER2> This was linked several hours earlier; <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219240></comment>


Is it possible to be too 'nice' for your own good? - happy-go-lucky https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-to-be-too-nice-for-your-own-good-72343 <comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

If your interest and solicitation are not being reciprocated, doubling down on them is the wrong thing to do.

Speaking from experience.

And, if and as you do, you should stop to truly and, as clearly as possible, question your own motivations.

"Nice" can be a nuanced term, with circumstances open to more than one interpretation. From another person's perspective, you may not be being "nice" at all -- depending on their experience and desires.

P.S. And some people are just self-serving assholes. At least, in the here and now that you have to deal with.

Cooperation takes the willingness of both parties.</comment>