Jeb Bush on Disrupting the Educational Status Quo - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2011/04/20/jeb-bush

<comment><AUTHOR> Although Jeb's a politician, to my knowledge he's not running for anything any more and saw this as a transformational, not political interview.

If I understood him correctly, he's talking not just about school choice, but about dividing up the money spent _per credit_ and then using market forces to create and allocate value directly to the student.

If somebody could pull something like that off, it has the potential to create tons of startups and completely transform education. Whether or not it's all pie-in-the-sky, of course, is a open question. Can you imagine an App store, but solely for education? You could split the problem hundreds of ways, like creating app for just something like High School mathematics? You could even add in proctors and other physical aspects. In addition, using the app store metaphor, people could rate the app, get their money back if not satisfied, or compare test score results.

That would be something in education worth pushing for.

<comment><USER2> "Can you imagine an App store, but solely for education?"

No, actually, I can't. Sentences like "markets work and monopolies resist that" make no sense to me. If markets work, how are there monopolies in the first place, unless monopolies are naturally part of the market? How does the market on its own prevent immoral or illegal activities without oversight? Will education in this manner cause a perception of a zero-sum game, preventing collaboration among teachers working the market in competition for the same money? In what sense are test scores meaningful, and could you put your money into changing the tests? If so, given 100s of tests, which are the most relevant?

How do you measure the value of physical education? Of learning to draw? Of performing in a school play? Of understanding inductive logic? Is it the number of likes vs. dislikes? How do you judge a department head who does a great job in keeping all the teachers working well, but is only an average teacher? Is the solution in that case to take money away from the head, or help get better training as a teacher?

In the app store model, who decides? How do they get this information? How are most not overwhelmed with data, causing analysis lock and/or hitting the paradox of choice, thus leaving it up to highly suspect gut feelings?

<comment><AUTHOR> Turn the analogy around backwards: why does the app store -- the entire concept of making and selling little bits of functionality -- work at all? Doesn't it encourage the perception of a zero-sum game, etc.

Obviously this doesn't happen, so I would be careful to distinguish things that _might_ happen from things that are actually happening. We can sit around for years making up various doomsday scenarios.

Why do monopolies form? Is that your question? Lots of reasons, usually related to the structure of the market itself: use of government regulation, control over information, ownership of tools, etc.

Not sure if the question is really relevant,though. I really wouldn't worry about monopolies versus free markets -- sounds like you're getting hung up on that. How about just trying the idea of a la carte purchasing of educational training? Just like we do with most everything else in life? If I want to learn to scuba dive, or fly airplanes, or learn to speak a language, or become a real-estate agent I easily manage to locate and purchase those items one at a time. Why not the same with drawing, music, being in a play, or any of those other things? Some of these things may require a building and a social experience with lots of other kids, some may not. Opening it up allows for lots of solutions to form, concentrating on what works, not what might or might not sound good in a political speech. The conversation becomes what the exact requirements for an education are, and who gets to decide that, instead of what the _structure_ or the education delivery system is. Isn't that change of dynamics awesome?</comment></comment></comment>


Not All Singletons are Evil - <AUTHOR> http://alexruiz.developerblogs.com/?p=1832

<comment><USER2> Singletons are good when both of the following features are required:

1\. Global access is needed

2\. Only a single instance is allowed

If you don't need both of those, don't use a singleton. If you only need one instance, but there is no important reason to _force_ the limitation of one instance, then don't use a singleton: simply instantiate your class only once. Don't place limitations because you don't need something right now (you may want a second logging system in the future, for example). People don't accidentally make two if statements when they wanted one - you won't accidentally instantiate a second object where you need just one.

So, while you can mitigate the reasons people often say singletons are evil, this is still not a good reason to use them, unless you do, in fact, require both of the properties of singletons.</comment>


What Can Deep Neural Networks Teach Us About Human Thought? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-can-deep-neural-networks-teach-us-about-human-thought?share=1 <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but each of the bullet points in the top answer were known at least 100 years ago and I'm not sure why it got so much recognition.. My take-away being, human thought won't be better understood by transferring research on statistical optimization models back onto popular or even state-of-the-art neuro-philosophical representations of the brain or the mind or the unconscious or the claustrum or the homonculus or the.. etc. . It's going to be as successful and as much a misplacement of resources as that fable of when the farmer asked a king to place a doubling number of grains of wheat on consecutive chessboard tiles..</comment>


How much of the Internet is using QUIC? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apnic.net/2018/05/15/how-much-of-the-internet-is-using-quic/ <comment><USER2> For those curious to try it, you can use QUIC today with Caddy:

        $ caddy -quic

Will enable QUIC where the client supports it. (It's still experimental, obviously.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like this is really "How much of the European Internet is using QUIC?" but still interesting!</comment>


I maintain several OSS projects you may be familiar with, and I'm burned out - <AUTHOR> http://bitprophet.org/blog/2020/07/02/help-wanted/?2 <comment><AUTHOR> > Hi. My name's Jeff, I maintain several OSS projects you may be familiar > with, and I'm burned out.

> I lie awake at night, unable to sleep, crippled by guilt. During the day, > it's anxiety and fear that cripple instead, making the thought of facing the > issue tracker unbearable.

<comment><USER2> I no longer work in Python, otherwise I might volunteer to pitch in. But that's not why I'm replying.

I am replying to say that if your projects are burning you out this badly, then you really ought to step away fora bit. It's okay. You don't owe anyone anything. You can return to them in the future, if you like.</comment></comment>


Massive Government Report Says Climate Is Warming and Humans Are the Cause - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/02/561608576/massive-government-report-says-climate-is-warming-and-humans-are-the-cause <comment><USER3> It's hard enough to know how to approach a tragedy of the commons problem like climate change if everyone could agree that it is a problem, but it's difficult for me to understand why some people will argue that it is in fact happening.

I would be interested in understanding the root cause of why people will disagree about this point.

For example, a conservative friend of mine, who I think is one of the most intelligent people I know, will argue that climate change does not exist.

I've asked him what he makes of e.g. the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere. His response was there are scientists interested in self promotion and are willing to fabricate data, and/or that we can't actually measure CO2 accurately. Those are very unconvincing counterarguments in my view. I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data and seeing that some change is occurring (without even coming to a conclusion about what that change means or what to do about it).

Yet, I have no idea what that root cause could be. Any ideas?

<comment><USER4> There are a number of questions here.

Is CO2 rising? Fairly unequivocally, yes.

Has the planet warmed? Again, faily clearly yes, since pre-industrial times.

Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious.

How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming down to various natural cycles: [https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun- Precludes-Catastrophe-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes- Catastrophe-Independent/dp/1909022241)

Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a warmer climate.

This is actually one of the scarier articles I read recently about why rising CO2 is bad - and it's nothing to do with climate: [https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food- nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients- carbon-dioxide-000511)

<comment><USER5> So basically: I know better than all the scientists that have studied the issue deeply and who keep sounding the alarm more and more urgently.

<comment><USER6> What, exactly, do you want to do about it?

What, exactly, do you want to do about it, that's politically viable?

Should we tell a billion people in China, and another billion in India to shut down their coal-fired plants? Back to the farms and rural poverty?

Do you want to convince rich westerners to stop eating meat in such large quantities? Tell them to stop driving so much?

Both sets of suggestions are politically unpopular positions and forcing them on their respective populations would lead to strife and lives lost far beyond what we'll see with climate change.

We push for incremental changes in the US, but even their proponents admit they won't make much of a difference in a global context.

The Earth is warming. Almost everyone is on board with that now. Absent a global totalitarian government that can constrain carbon emissions by fiat, what can we do that will make a difference?

It seems like the answer is "not much," so the revealed preference of most of the world's citizens seems to be rolling the dice that the change won't be catastrophic, hope for a tech breakthrough that obviates the problem, and assume that we'll deal with the disruptions as they come. It's not an inspiring message, but it's where we're at.

<comment><USER7> Throwing your hands in the air because it's 'too hard' is not an acceptable reaction. What is popular is rarely what is good. I'd venture to suggest that what is popular is often vapid, self-serving and short-sighted.

The longest journey starts with a single step. The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Many hands make light work. There is precedent for accomplishing great things by 'just starting and keeping at it until you get there'. Start local. Start small.

Waiting for a 'tech breakthrough' is akin to waiting for 'the rapture'.

<comment><USER6> It may not be acceptable to you, but it's a decent description of what's happening today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A massive push to clean electricity tech and infrastructure funded by the Federal government may seem expensive, but is SO much cheaper than Climate Change related war+starvation+sea-rise+giant storms.

<comment><USER9> But what if climate change isn't real and all we end up with is a cleaner, healthier and quieter environment to live in? /s

<comment><USER10> If climate change isn't real, there's no good reason for us to cause the unemployment, crime, and suicides that will result from dismantling the main industry of America's 4th largest city (Houston).

<comment><USER11> That's inevitable. Will it be replaced by nuclear or solar is basically the only question.

<comment><USER10> Unless we can mine enough lithium to make grid-scale battery farms viable or can make large-scale flywheels work, both forms have issues with demand response that are currently being solved by natural gas.

<comment><USER11> Or we use electricity to make gas, and then burn the gas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to- gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why wouldn't NPR publish the source report?

<comment><USER13> NPR doesn't have the report, it's not published yet. Considering the OSTP vacancy and the current administration's stance on climate change[1], even the anticipated late 2018 date is doubtful.

 _Alley notes that "there's a little rumbling" among climate scientists who are concerned that the Trump administration will ignore this effort. "I think the authors really are interested in seeing [the report] used wisely by policy makers to help the economy as well as the environment."

The report has been submitted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Trump has yet to choose anyone to run that office; it remains one of the last unfilled senior positions in the White House staff._

[1] [https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news](https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news)

<comment><USER14> If ever there was a case for an anonymous leak - this doesn't even have the downsides of questions of releasing military or intelligence secrecy attached to it. It would likely carry other risks to the leaker though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The scientific method means making a prediction based on a theory and seeing if it matches the observed results.

So honest question - have any predictions from climate science about the change in global temperatures come true? Have what climate scientists said ten years was going to happen in ten years actually happened? Global climate dynamics are very complicated and it's very hard to understand, but real science makes testable predictions and then theories are accepted as 'our best theory at the moment' when the observations match predictions within a small tolerance and the theory is thrown out when it doesn't, regardless of how hard or complicated it is.

</comment><comment><USER16> Every week, I read an article about this, all I say in my head is 'but then what'. Unless there is money bleeding no politicians will take this to rest. It's sad but true and this will keep on continuing.

<comment><USER17> Its a shame you can't pay a "core 80%" set of taxes, then choose what other things your "extra 20%" would go towards. NASA, climate stuff, recycling, bee stuff, extra education... etc

<comment><USER18> I wonder how hard would it be to just start building the infrastructure like this in some sort of 'wikibudget.org' and then using that as political leverage? Everyone who liked the system well enough to participate in it could get behind that, even if their individual allocation preferences did not win out or were different from others'. this might overcome the divide-and-conquer strategy of the polity-industrial complex.

For example, suppose Alice wants to spend less on defense and more on schools; Bob wants to spend less on schools but more on veterans, and Carol hates the F-35 program but likes both schools and veterans. As individuals they might donate to and volunteer for different organizations with different missions, but if they were all able to participate in dividing up an imaginary budget they could work together to get their compromise budget enacted even though they would be doing so for different reasons.

My gut says it would take between 5 and 10 years for such a thing to gain sufficient political momentum to seriously threaten the current system, maybe longer; but then the idea that Wikipedia might become the introductory reference source of choice was once considered laughable too, notwithstanding its current imperfections.

Anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hate the fact that politics intervene, fund or don't fund this kind of stuff and hence interfere with almost every study on this topic.

<comment><USER20> The irony here is that under Scott Pruitt, the EPA is removing any references to climate change from the department. Yet, the same government that gives him the power to do that also made this report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm thinking it's too late for just CO2 reduction alone. We need to get CO2 sequestration going.

<comment><USER22> Not really.

Plant a ton of trees and the CO2 problem solves by itself. The problem stems also from the huge deforestation that has taken place in the last couple of centuries.

<comment><USER23> > Plant a ton of trees and the CO2 problem solves by itself.

Citation? Obviously we're emitting CO2 at some rate E and a ton of trees will sequester that CO2 at another rate S.

But it's not clear that you've measured and compared those two numbers.

<comment><USER22> Here we go [1]:

This has to do with a study about the measurement of the impact deforestation of tropical forests has on global warming.

> How big is three billion tons?

Three billion tons of anything is a lot, but it's hard to grasp just how much — particularly when it's tons of CO2, which we don't have any everyday experience in weighing. One way to look at it is that the average U.S. car emits about 5 tons of CO2 a year from the tailpipe, so three billion tons is the equivalent of 600 million cars — about twice as many as there are in the whole United States. Another way of expressing it is that this is the equivalent of about 13 million railcars full of coal, which would stretch about 125,000 miles (half the distance to the moon). It's also equal to the total emissions from Western Europe, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, all the Scandinavian countries, and Finland.

[1] [http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop- deforest...](http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop- deforestation/deforestation-global-warming-carbon-emissions.html#.Wft_T0xFyHs)

<comment><USER24> Plantation forestry grows about 20 cubic meters per hectare-year [0]. Doug Fir weighs ~600 kg-m3 [1]. 3B US tons / (20x600 kg) per hectare-year = 6,796,166 hectares. Plantation lumber is harvested in 7, 14, and 21 year cuts [0], so to ensure you're always sequestering enough carbon you need 21x6.8 million hectares of new forest to defray the current CO2 production... which is about 551,000 square miles, which is approximately [2] Texas + California + New Mexico... or [3] France + Spain + Italy.

The new forest would still be ~20% of the size of the Amazon rain-forest though [4].

[0]: [https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-pine-trees- grow](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-pine-trees-grow)

[1]: [https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/weigt-wood- d_821.html](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/weigt-wood-d_821.html)

[2]: [https://state.1keydata.com/states-by- size.php](https://state.1keydata.com/states-by-size.php)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area)

[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Given that this starts with 'It is "extremely likely" that human activities...', that is enough for folks and organisations behind pushing that there is no global warming and it's not human's fault if there is. To say "they don't know for sure" and stop reading it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Terrifying if this report has an impact on policy.

Ctrl-f sun

(No matches)

Garbage article with no source

</comment><comment><USER27> Surprised this isn't flagged.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why was this flagged the first time? The number of flagged articles on HN is becoming ridiculous. It's creating a precedent where any group with an extreme opinion can shut down conversation by deciding a topic is 'controversial'.

<comment><USER29> any idea why my comment below is flagged?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> so maybe we should reign in the largest polluter in history? The US Military. As a citizen, I think this is a logical first step. Isn't it fully within the government's control?

<comment><USER30> sorry, but how is the U.S. military the largest polluter in history?

Surely the billions of people using electricity and driving cars and living off of products created with fossil fuels have managed more pollution than a few million in the U.S. military?

<comment><USER31> [https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest- polluter-240876060...](https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest- polluter-2408760609.html)

<comment><USER32> This provides absolutely no basis for comparison, jut a few slightly quantitative anecdotes. I am, without doing any research, supremely confident that US civilians and private industry are far more environmentally destructive than the US military in 2017.

<comment><USER33> "The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg."

[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation- so...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-solutions/us- military-oil-use.html)

<comment><USER29> Scary how ive been censored on here. Flagged, buried, and couldn't answer any comment till now. I'm done with HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've long been on the human-caused GW band wagon - ever since I learned about global warming 10+ years ago.

But the alarmism turned me off to the idea that dramatic legislation is actually needed, or that GW is even all that big of an issue. As far as I can tell unabated GW would never have a big impact on my life [edit:] even if all the change happened within my lifetime.

<comment><USER28> Your children would be so proud.

<comment><USER34> They wont care. It'd be even less noticeable to them than it us for us - <USER2> people that will be alive for most of the changes. Unless someone spends a lot of effort trying to convince them to be mad about it, I don't see them being less happy than we are today because of GW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can we just give Al Gore and his buddies 15 trillions and settle this issue?

For Christ sake, the Earth has been warning before human was here. There are a lot of extra factors that we don't know yet. At the very least, have a debate about it. This is not settled like the government funded research tell you.

If there is a solution, it will not be more government regulations. Just look the past 20 years in the financial markets, how many scandals were there and have SEC and their regulations prevent anything?</comment>


A sequence of lines consecutively traced by 500 individuals - <AUTHOR> http://www.clementvalla.com/index.php?/work/line-trace/

<comment><USER2> This is similar to a cocktail party game I once played.

You get everyone in a circle, and then you choose someone across the circle to look at. Basically, everyone is looking at someone else, and they, in turn are looking at someone else (not you).

Then, you're asked to mimic as exactly as you can the person you are looking at. Everyone starts out standing still.

But soon, funny stuff happens. Little inevitable movements by people are mimicked and magnified as the movements ripple down the chain. Eventually, you get ridiculous huge movements that ripple.

It's a fun game, and I suggest everyone try it out with a group. It's a real life experiment of signal and error amplifications.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there were a couple trolls in that group.

<comment><USER4> I particular liked the guy who just ignored the previous line and drew "-V-"

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I recommend checking out the other pieces on his site---all very beautiful. Several others also build on the theme of turkers interacting with each other, albeit through a limited channel.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll have to admit, slightly more engaging than watching paint dry.

<comment><USER6> Then I would suggest you skip the next Boring Conference: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870339590457602...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bet his inspiration for this was Sol Lewitt, a famous conceptual artist who did the exact same thing.

"His instructions might call for one person to draw an irregular line and for others to attempt to imitate it."

Read more: [http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1859612,00.html...](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1859612,00.html#ixzz1DHVoiWix)

</comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me a little bit of Sketch-a-bit, though it's not the same premise (users modifying other user's sketches, rather than trying to trace them): <http://superfiretruck.com/sketchabit/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Russian telephone.

<comment><USER10> We call it "Chinese whispers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Entropy in action?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps "entropy inaction" would be more fitting.</comment></comment>


PagerDuty raises $27.2M in Series B led by Bessemer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/pagerduty-lands-27-2m-in-series-b-to-continue-mission-to-simplify-it-incident-management/ <comment><USER2> It so happens that we are also hiring a ton! Check us out at [http://www.pagerduty.com/company/work-with- us/](http://www.pagerduty.com/company/work-with-us/) or reach out to me directly if you're interested in working on hard problems with highly available distributed systems (email in profile).

<comment><USER3> Congratulations! PagerDuty has an amazing technical team and their focus on reliability is an inspiration (just see their post on Failure Fridays[1]). Which is super important for when your systems are at the worst and require immediate manual help.

[1] [http://blog.pagerduty.com/2013/11/failure-friday-at- pagerdut...](http://blog.pagerduty.com/2013/11/failure-friday-at-pagerduty/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks Daniel. Here's another peek into the work we've put into building a reliable system - [http://blog.pagerduty.com/2014/04/end-to-end-sms-provider- te...](http://blog.pagerduty.com/2014/04/end-to-end-sms-provider-testing/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great. We use the most primitive part of their functionality which is simply alert the right person through the best channel - whenever a part of our system detects that something is wrong. That's all - but I still love it. Hope they continue improving this - it's not perfect yet.

<comment><USER5> We will continue to keep improving our core functionality, for sure (there are one or two things coming out very soon). With the raise we're hoping to have to make fewer tradeoffs between building X and building Y.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the t-shirt ([http://bit.ly/pagerdutyshirt](http://bit.ly/pagerdutyshirt)) you get with a free trial :-)

<comment><USER7> How do you like ours? [http://stephenherrod.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/runscope_t-...](http://stephenherrod.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/runscope_t- shirt-21.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Trying to crowd in on our announcement, John? :)

On topic: RunScope is not only one of our many many partners, I also use their tools for almost all of my hackdays.

<comment><USER7> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember seeing these guys pitch PagerDuty years ago at a Waterloo StartupCamp (before yc). Awesome to see them go this far!

</comment><comment><USER9> PagerDuty is awesome and so is their android App. We've hooked our entire probing(system test) and code instrumentation through riemann to pagerduty. Each time a developer starts a new branch she can deploy it on the cloud, get into pagerduty console and within a few minutes check if there are any regression failures. Furthermore, production alerts make a "snake attack ssss" notification on my android (which by now everyone recongizes) and if they are not auto-resolved within 10 minutes I get a phone call, and if I don't acknowledge it, another engineer gets a phone call... It took some time to tweak riemann to avoid the pagerduty throttler but now it works great, and makes our product even greater.

I would only wish pagerduty added a regex filter in the incidents view. It would help us alot.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe now their iOS app will show you when you're on-call next without having to jump through hoops..

<comment><USER11> You can pull in an iCal link from the web UI, if you weren't aware. That way, it will nicely with the rest of your calendars in the apps you already use on a regular basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations to them! It's a pretty fantastic tool. We use it for incident management for our customer care department as well as engineering.

But why does the link go to the comments...?

<comment><USER13> Thank you very much! And fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to the PD team. They have a great product and expanding like crazy.

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome! Would be great if they began offering unlimited alerts in some countries other than the US & Canada (the UK would be a good place to start!).

</comment><comment><USER16> I love their product.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats again guys :)

</comment><comment><USER18> The iOS app is the single worst piece of shit app I have ever used. Take a look at VictorOps.

<comment><USER19> Wait till you try the Android app. I have no words.

<comment><USER20> Ryan from the PagerDuty support team here. Have you tried any of the newer versions? They're greatly improved. If you can pass any feedback along to firstname.lastname@example.com it would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER21> Being able to schedule overrides using the app would be awesome.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the feedback. That's definitely on our radar.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The CEO Mark Cuban spoke to doesn't recall what he said - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2008/11/18/sec-p2/

<comment><AUTHOR>
       1) Q- We spoke earlier about you were telling Mr. Cuban in words or substance : "I have confidential information for you".

       A- Right.

       2) Q- Do you recall anything Mr. Cuban said in response or reply to that statement by you ?

       A- No, I do not.

       The SEC knows this-they have the transcript, yet they brought the case anyway. Why? Do they have a different statement from Mr. Faure ?

Thats a valid defense? Really? WTF

<comment><USER2> Yeah, if anything, those answers pique my curiosity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> is he disputing that he knew about the pending event that would cause the stock to drop?

here's the way i look at it: Mr. Cuban wanted to save .0003% of his total net worth by dumping stock on an anonymous unsuspecting buyer who lost 10% of their investment amount in a 24 hour period because s/he did not have the inside information that Mark had and that buyer would most certainly not have bought the stock if s/he did.

it's lousy no matter how you slice it or dice it.

<comment><USER4> Take a step back... big picture here. 750k is a drop in the bucket compared to some of the shenanigans that have been going on. This charge on Cuban is nothing more than a sideshow (think Martha Stewart) to put us under the belief that the SEC has their shit together.

Example: Angelo Mozilo dumped 400 Million dollars of CFC stock onto the market. He knew the shit that was going on... where's the SEC?

<comment><USER5> Ouch. 750k is a drop in the bucket, unless you're a working stiff who bought stock that Cuban was selling fraudulently. Smoody's comment hit me like a punch in the face.

<comment><USER4> It probably wasn't a single working stiff, or a working stiff in general. Sure, people lost money on the other side... and if he did what the SEC alleged, then he should go to jail.

But there are much bigger fish to fry here, but the SEC and CTFC have neither the means nor the competency to do something of value. Instead they go after this petty bullshit which seems to be politically motivated.

<comment><USER5> I agree with what you're saying, but it's good to be reminded of the reason why out-and-out insider trading is illegal; I'd obviously forgotten about the counterparty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is vaksel's second submission this week about Mark Cuban and insider trading. The last one was Mark Cuban's one line response to the insider trading allegations and also pointed to his blog.

Just what, exactly, does Mark Cuban have to do with hackers or HN? Why is this stuff getting voted up? Not to mention, even just from a news standpoint these articles have very little substance to them. Can we give this a rest, please?

Those of us who are interested in Mark Cuban and insider trading can go to his blog on our own without having these off topic posts plastered all over the front page.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps because Cuban is a fairly prominent angel investor within the community?

Just because it's not relevant to you, doesn't mean it isn't interesting and relevant to the rest of us. If no one found it interesting, then it wouldn't get voted up.

<comment><USER8> I found the article interesting, but didn't really understand why it should be on HN.

Is an article supposed to be relevant to hackers or entrepreneurs simply because it is written by an angel investor? By this logic, why not just automatically post every article Cuban has ever written?

<comment><USER9> That's basically what has happened. Most of the articles are interesting, but these essentially content free posts about his legal battle really aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the comments on Cuban's blog said something that piqued my interest, yet I haven't seen an adequate response to:

"So the allegation in paragraph 14 of the SEC's Complaint that "Cuban agreed that he would keep whatever information the CEO intended to share with him confidential" is untrue? If so, the SEC would be in violation of FRCP 11(b)(3). This is especially true since a duty of confidentiality is an essential element of either a 17(a) or 10(b) claim under the Exchange Act"

</comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in submitting and reading more financially related news, there's always nickb's new forum:

www.newmogul.com</comment>


Tesla's Debt Price Is Deteriorating - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/03/20/1521544062000/Tesla-s-debt-price-is-deteriorating--Update-/ <comment><USER2> Car companies don't build cars, they build factories - the cars are just a side effect. Designing the car is (comparatively) easy - building them at scale and turning a profit is a miracle.

I'm sure Tesla knows that, the fans seem not to.</comment>


Ask HN: How to open source the code but not the branding? - <AUTHOR> I have a website that I am building for a "personal side project that may someday make money".  I have the code for the website on Github, because right now there isn't that anything groundbreaking or new about the website code.
I want to license it to be as permissible as possible (I usually do MIT), but I do not want to somehow give away the "branding" of the name.  I own the domain name.
How do I license the site code as "free to use and change for your own use as long as you don't attempt to impersonate the original owner"? <comment><USER2> I believe the Apache license is what you want (so long as you trademark the branding).

</comment><comment><USER3> File a trademark application. It's a couple hundred bucks.</comment>


Ask HN: How many folks use Jersey for agile development? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering if any folks out there use the Java-based Jersey for agile development. If so, I'd love to see some examples of your work and hear why you chose to use Jersey instead of, well, anything else. <comment><USER2> What...is...that?</comment>


Your app is an onion: Why software projects spiral out of control - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/your-app-is-an-onion-why-software-projects-spiral-out-of-control-bb9247d9bdbd <comment><USER2> You hit the nail on the head. What we need are more technical UX or a great team of UX and devs working together to achieve this properly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The complexity isn't the problem, though. The problem is the way we choose to uncover it.</comment>


How Sheryl Sandberg and Getty Are Making Stock Photos Less Sexist - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-11/how-sheryl-sandberg-and-getty-are-making-stock-photos-less-sexist

<comment><USER2> I wish you all could read Swedish. Genusfotografen is an excellent Swedish blog about sexism in commercial photography. Perhaps it works translated...

[http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gen...](http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.genusfotografen.se%2F&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=UTF-8)

</comment><comment><USER3> <sarcasm>Sheryl Sandberg is fixing stock imagery! Finally. A bold bastion of sexual equality!</sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER4> Good - whether or not you believe that it's a social problem, stock photos of women are appallingly bad.</comment>


Emu craze gone, but stories remain - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/7ce46704cd176d61dbdb3b870384fca9 <comment><AUTHOR> More[1]:

> _In Grayson County, near Sherman on the Oklahoma-Texas border, authorities > finally had to hire an official emu wrangler last summer. ¶ "We sent out our > cowboys after the first emu, and that emu whipped our cowboys pretty bad," > Chief Deputy Waldrip said. "The cowboys said, 'We quit.' We realized right > quick we weren't set up to deal with this."_

1\. "Texans unnerved by roaming emus". [https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs- xpm-1998-02-15-19980460...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs- xpm-1998-02-15-1998046051-story.html)</comment>


Korean Classrooms will have Robot Teachers by 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://crenk.com/korean-classrooms-will-have-robot-teachers-by-2012/

<comment><USER2> Japanese researchers have introduced similar gimmicks (see [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4z3cs4Ocug&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4z3cs4Ocug&feature=player_embedded)). In my opinion, the technology today is no match for a real human teacher in terms of educational outcomes and cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, sounds like it will enable parents to spy on their kids at school.</comment>


The Bitter Lesson of Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/07/bitter-lesson-machine-learning.html <comment><USER2> Please refer this article on Machine) Learning</comment>


Bandit Algorithms for Recommendation Systems - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.richrelevance.com/bandits-recommendation-systems/

<comment><USER2> I've been studying a handful of these bandit algorithms for a while now (with some technical expositions on my own blog [1, 2]), and my PhD advisor has done a lot of work on improving the theoretical guarantees for various settings.

But the more I read about bandit algorithms the more I think they're not enough. In particular, they don't take into account natural things we have in practice: similarities in the structure of the actions, correlations in rewards across rounds, and the ability to precompute without measuring your regret against the results.

There are some new research directions that do each of these, though. People are now starting to impose metrics on the actions so that "closer" actions have more correlated rewards. They have also been doing a lot of work on "contextual bandits" in which every round comes paired with a context (i.e. browser type, information about past searches, etc), and relationships among the contexts can be leveraged. And finally, there is a model of "pure exploration," in which you're given some fixed (but unknown) amount of time to prepare, and the recommender you come up with when that period ends is judged into the future of how it would perform.

I don't have a lot of intuition about which algorithms/settings are the best for which situations, but if you're interested in this kind of thing you check out the work of John Langford, Peter Auer, Sebastien Bubeck, and the many others in this field.

[1]: [http://jeremykun.com/2013/10/28/optimism-in-the-face-of- unce...](http://jeremykun.com/2013/10/28/optimism-in-the-face-of-uncertainty- the-ucb1-algorithm/) [2]: [http://jeremykun.com/2013/11/08/adversarial- bandits-and-the-...](http://jeremykun.com/2013/11/08/adversarial-bandits-and- the-exp3-algorithm/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. The third blog post in this series will discuss linear contextual bandits, for which I used Langford's VW.

It does a huge amount better.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, in general, the contextual bandit approach seems to be a better strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No love for Thompson Sampling?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is blog post 1 out of 3. The second is all about Thompson Sampling, and should be coming out on Friday =)</comment></comment>


ModularGrid - <AUTHOR> https://www.modulargrid.net/ <comment><USER2> A little weird to see it here, but ModularGrid is the best thing to happen to the modular synth community since transistors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not take a more flexible approach, and use a computer instead?

<comment><USER4> UI, immediacy, chaos/entropy, and compatibility/flexibility.

The UI of a modular is great. There is (generally, a few digital modules have menus/modes) only one function per knob/button/jack. Everything is pretty obvious as to its function. The workflow _feels_ creative, in a way that programming CSound or MAX/MSP never did to me. I sit at a computer ~8+ hours a day coding as-is, do I really want to do that for my instrument? I generally just set ProTools to start recording, and then turn off my monitor and ignore the computer.

Immediacy of modular synths is amazing. The sound you have now _is_ now, once you unpatch or turn knobs you aren't getting it back. Even if you take photos, you're unlikely to get it back again. That's part of the great part. It isn't a preset that you're using. You're using something that you put together. For live performance, this adds a really neat aspect of danger. Is there really much danger (aside from a system crash) of hitting 'play' in Ableton? No. But the modular can do all sorts of stupid things, which leads me to my next point.

The chaos and entropy in these systems is great. Sometimes you use patch cords that are too long and get some crosstalk/resistance that you weren't accounting for. Sometimes there's noise. Sometimes things skip and don't play in 4/4 as you were expecting (I had a weird clocking issue/ghost in the machine last week, that caused it to basically make its own drum fills... without any unit dedicated to that). For creativity, this is like a drug. The sound you're making will almost certainly not be the sound anyone else is using- period. That's pretty damn cool.

Flexibility/compatibility. Voltage is voltage. If you don't care about tracking pitches to a 12-tone scale, then there are practically no limits to what units will work together. A modular from the 70's can patch in with my current eurorack, and also my Minimoog Voyager- your software from 1970's probably doesn't work great with your iPad. My modular has stuff from around a dozen makers, and I have another dozen guitar pedals, mini synths, and such that also can deal with control voltage stuff. I can make little Arduino toys trivially that will work with it as well. I don't have to deal with different plugin formats, outdated systems (Protools TDM anyone?), inter-system issues, etc. It just works and that's pretty amazing.

Of course, I do have a computer hooked up to my recording gear, but it rarely gets used until I really have the idea ready to go. I'm thinking of getting an 8-track tape machine so I can remove the computer entirely.

<comment> max-a What genre do you produce? Mind sharing some works?

<comment><USER4> [https://soundcloud.com/tibbon/sets/eurorack- modular](https://soundcloud.com/tibbon/sets/eurorack-modular)

Mostly just weird noisy stuff. I gravitate toward industrial things, and I'm working on a grand album slowly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a bloody, logistical nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_e673d64d9b00162b973518a0dd0f1ccf <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that they almost omitted the point of mine warfare.

Sea mines were historically the most efficient marine weapon ever, and Taiwan has enough of them to use them for months.

Allegedly, they also have a stash of domestically developed "smart mines," and that will complicate things even further for the PLA.

</comment><comment><USER3> Logistical is the least of the issues, the effect on world financial markets would be astounding. Besides the human cost the repercussions to the world would be generational.

Which would be worse, an EU and USA that do nothing in the face of it or do something because of it. The world is boxed and so it really comes down to China deciding if the cost in lives and to their economy is worth it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Given the crucial role of the fleet in PLA's invasion plan, I am surprised Taiwan only has two submarines. I would have assumed it would spend a lot of energy torpedoing the incoming PLA's fleet.

<comment><USER5> Purely thinking out loud, Taiwan doesn't need submarines to deny use of the Taiwan Strait to PRC's surface fleet. Minefields can do the job over a much wider area and much more cheaply. Modern mines can sit passively for extended periods of time and the expensive ones effectively are torpedo launchers.

They also have a stock of land-launched (and truck-launched) anti-ship missiles, the range of which exceeds the width of the Strait. The "only" issue there comes in lighting up the incoming PRC vessels to direct the missiles at them, but that's a different problem of detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> And of course someone flagged this good article. The pro-China narrative on HN is real.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another article, referencing a book, that argues that it is not a foregone conclusion:

* [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-with-china/)

<comment><USER8> It sounds like the best case scenario for Taiwan _winning_ such an invasion would be an almost complete devastation of the island.

<comment><USER7> For Taiwan, "winning" may simply entail not-losing. They simply may try to exact a really high price for any invader to make them think twice.

If it is known that they are willing to burn everything to the ground rather than letting anyone else have it, then adversaries may not think it's worth the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

History shows that dictators run on a different logic.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if you could drop a few nuclear bombs of small yields to encourage surrender? Obviously its been done in history, but while it might work, the fallout could drift back to China and the political fallout might make the whole thing backfire.

<comment><USER11> The importance of the bomb is actually not clear[1][2], which is not that surprising considering the US had already been almost wiping out Japanese cites for quite a while before they hit Hiroshima.

[1] [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to- us...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-use-the-bomb- a-consensus-view/) [2] [http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there- alterna...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives- to-the-atomic-bombings/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> good pragmatic view, interesting read.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but I would have liked some more commentary about the fact that China doesn't have adequate resources for an invasion (not enough paras or landing vessels).

Naively this seems like a purely political choice, expressing an unwillingness to invade Taiwan (right now). I wonder if this is part of fundamental view on the use of force offensively or just result of economic realities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Offtopic: am I mistaken in thinking that comma shouldn't be in the title?

<comment><USER14> Depends on if you want "bloody" to act as an adverb modifying "logistical" (no comma) or adjective modifying "nightmare" (comma).

<comment><USER13> I was thinking more because 'logistical nightmare' seems like a compound noun rather than logistical being just an adjective

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think China wants to invade Taiwan. They think long term. It's inevitable that Taiwan reunifies with China eventually as the us continues to withdraw from the world and the mainland economy improves and Taiwan and mainland economic ties grow. Eventually it will get to the point that Taiwanese economic leaders insist on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Every decade, and it's been several now, the proportion between the population that considers itself Chinese-Taiwanese versus only Taiwanese shifts closer to only Taiwanese. It is 'inevitable' as well that as more generations live and work in a de facto independent nation, 'reunification' becomes an impossible objective for the mainland, unless force is used.

No need to look farther than the Sunflower movement when the previous Taiwanese president ( from the KMT ) tried to build stronger economic ties with China. The young movement _literally_ occupied government, and on the next election the DPP swept to power.

Edit : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement)

<comment><USER15> Here's some evidence backing your claim: [https://theasiadialogue.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/fig1....](https://theasiadialogue.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/fig1.png)

It's hard to look at that chart and argue in good faith that reunification is somehow inevitable. We don't even have to go into the obvious cultural differences that exist between a successful, progressive (in an Asian context) democracy and a repressive single-party state.

<comment><AUTHOR> > evidence...

It seems so obvious to anyone in touch with Taiwanese society it didn't occur to me the need to provide it, my mistake.

[http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/28/20...](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/28/2003647291)

Identifying as a Taiwanese only does NOT equal support for independence, by the way. Things are not that simple.

And beyond issues of identity, the vast majority of Taiwanese, however they identify themselves, overwhelmingly support the 'status quo', meaning no declaration of independence, no reunification. No one wants war, which seems assured with either of those two options.

Edit : Just seeing now that the article claims 51% for independence, but that can't be right, maybe a typo, both independence and reunification are always on the extremes, shifting anywhere from 10 to 25%, and status quo is consistently the preferred option by far.

<comment><USER16> As an outsider, what's the difference between the status quo and independence? The status quo is that Taiwan has its own government, miltary, economy and diplomatic relations: is independence just about making a political declaration and changing the name of the state?

<comment><AUTHOR> Short answer, a declaration of independence means war with China.

The status quo allows for what are effectively two separate nations to keep face and avoid disaster -- for both. It is a unique and somewhat absurd state of affairs for sure.

Long answer is... Long. Probably reading on the history of China and what happened after the Communists won the war and the KMT retreated to Taiwan would be a good starting point to understand what's going on with Taiwan today.

( Edit : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263049) )

Also, no country in the world can have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan if they have them with China. ( Most do unofficially. ) Taiwan is consistently blocked by China from international organizations starting with the UN, etc. Not everything is as it should be in a 'truly' independent nation, with the status quo. A declaration of independence would therefore also affect every other country and the international order of things.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kroki – Convert plain text diagrams to images - <AUTHOR> https://kroki.io/ <comment><USER2> This tool seems to unify a bunch of text-to-diagram tools into one, which is a great idea. It's funny to see them all united, since I recently went on a binge trying out all those text-to-diagram tools for a project. My use case: writing articles on DSP including block diagrams [1].

I wanted to write the articles in Markdown and include the diagrams in there, so text-to-diagram tools seemed ideal. Turns out most of them give ridiculous layouts as soon as you have loops, with limited options to correct this. Other are based on ASCII art, so you control the overall layout, but the result usually has massive, awkward padding between everything. And then there's the holy grail, LaTeX with TikZ/PSTricks, which can give perfect results, but the time investment was a little discouraging. Result: I ended up making the diagrams with a good old SVG editor.

[1]: [https://www.osar.fr/notes/waveguides/](https://www.osar.fr/notes/waveguides/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks so much for your comment. I've just read (and played around with) your waveguide synthesis article, which led me down the rabbit hole of Sporth, ChucK, Soundpipe and now I find myself really excited looking over the contents of the "Physical Audio Signal Processing" book. I am going to learn a lot of new stuff today, thanks!

<comment><USER2> That's great to hear and exactly why the article exists. I'd say the DAFX papers are the best rabbit hole in this field: [http://ant-s4.unibw- hamburg.de/dafx/paper-archive/search.php...](http://ant-s4.unibw- hamburg.de/dafx/paper-archive/search.php?q=)

(And this is not entirely derailing the thread, since many of these papers are full of block diagrams, and a tool to generate nice DSP diagrams from text would be pretty useful)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is neat! I might actually be using this soon.

On a related note, CS professor John Regehr recently collected a bunch of ASCII-art diagrams from various source code into a blog post [0]. (The relation is that I had initially thought Kroki would be for things like this due to a faulty assumption of what the title meant by "plain text diagrams".)

[0] [https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1653](https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1653)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing this blog post. Svgbob is doing a pretty good job at converting those diagrams:

[https://demo.kroki.io/svgbob/svg/eNrFlEtvgkAQx-_9FBNPGqJiHxc...](https://demo.kroki.io/svgbob/svg/eNrFlEtvgkAQx-_9FBNPGqJiHxcPJsX0QOIjUeql6WGFtW4LLGGXJjZ8-O6uKEIQ1IqdAwkw89_fPHYA2jXaHRwxaxNgMP0VDT3ECfXBcKn9BU3LNFowQhsacRhSn3HkcyZUaoU8Srm3xnT5iW3-9g5NLsmJIIelRG419j6zxVil1bRdxJjyaTWqtYV1K35nRLSiHLRsRM5HywjEqgGmAQElPsdh- jHjc- gR10AAILrLI5b7mHlNPeohcLH_wddlBCuCXUe_IoEoax9A7-8OU_NUGDFIgDqdTgJ0zRr0FAGLAhwm8-qwbcQgVwNVgkm7d22Ce0lAvMDFHha3HHhIxFMRnHDMgcuDFEJhiDaAt2JqeM8Xeky6QqxnY_Qy75pjK4k7U-hJCrEA2wS55Ac7oMNlQulQ7qfgIqGFGrhvEvIIueBhvqYKSis4saStcTVaXHSVDlepOZlbs9ehZU4ncp96yF4TH4NNHZxbl2UglbtyISZW5JxLWY5xjrB0T5yCULorS-w0glMESnfl7QjSbXo7gl3cQCnJIdLhLAL4K0E-l91t-C8CWYOibX0JwS_DGMg0)

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, that's super cool! I'll have to tell John about that! I know he posted a follow-up tweet where he was playing with converting them using another tool, I think [0]. Neat stuff for sure.

[0] [http://buttersquid.ink](http://buttersquid.ink)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a cool service, congratulations for shipping!

Reading through the docs I stumbled upon "All the code is available on GitHub and our goal is to provide Kroki as a free service.". There has been definitely a good amount of work spent to build it, and there will be ongoing maintenance and infrastructure costs. Maybe I'm too naive, but how does the Kroki team plan to make the product financially sustainable?

<comment><USER7> From their install page : "Kroki is available as a Self-Managed instance. We are also actively looking for sponsors to provide Kroki as a free service."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related: [http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/](http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER9> Also: [https://github.com/knsv/mermaid](https://github.com/knsv/mermaid)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks really neat! This integrated with something like [https://hackmd.io/](https://hackmd.io/) would be really great for technical writing . It could also be great for auto-generating docs or the like, so it's great to have this be standalone.

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks awesome, essentially like pandoc for diagrams. Looking forward to checking it out!

</comment><comment><USER12> You could create images from graphviz for quite long time. [http://www.webgraphviz.com/](http://www.webgraphviz.com/)

<comment><USER5> That's true but Kroki is not limited to GraphViz. We support more than a dozen diagram libraries: [https://kroki.io/#support](https://kroki.io/#support)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are they easily embeddable, eg, on GitHub?

<comment><USER14> relatively... you can make a base64 encoding of the graph and have a png link like [https://demo.kroki.io/graphviz/png/eNpLyUwvSizIUHBXqPZIzcnJ1...](https://demo.kroki.io/graphviz/png/eNpLyUwvSizIUHBXqPZIzcnJ17ULzy_KSanlAgB1EAjQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Asciidoc plugin? Like PlantUML?

<comment><USER5> It's planned! I'm the lead developer of Asciidoctor.js so it's definitely one of my goal to make Kroki available as an Asciidoctor extension :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow!! Great tool for product managers as well.</comment>


Mongoclient – Cross platform featured mongodb management tool, free, open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rsercano/mongoclient <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Graeat, but can I change the title :/</comment></comment>


We Finally Have Long-Term Data on an Intermittent Fasting Diet - <AUTHOR> http://vitals.lifehacker.com/we-finally-have-long-term-data-on-an-intermittent-fasti-1794877196 <comment><USER2> [http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2623528)

I give the reporting an "eh" grade, but it's also the paper's fault.

Here's my TL;DR:

Long-term = 1 year.

Sample size: 100 (includes control groups)

Main metric: Weight loss. (Did measure other stuff, which is neat)

Main confounding factors: People did not follow instructions; people may have not been unhealthy enough / the right kind of unhealthy; 26%-38% dropout rate, "Participants in the alternate-day fasting group ate more than prescribed on fast days, and less than prescribed on feast days"

Other main issue: Original theory was not that alternate-day fasting would be more effective (in terms of weightloss), but that it would be easier for the participants to maintain than normal caloric restriction. (This would, presumably, correlate with more weightloss).

I did not do a close read of this paper.</comment>


Hardest sell: Nuclear waste needs good home - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35096566 <comment><USER2> My dad (high energy physicist) was big on the idea of dumping the nasty stuff deep in abandoned salt mines where the Earth naturally squishes the barrels over long periods of time and essentially re-integrates it into the ground. Of course, human stupidity led to it's political downfall. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does one write that many words about radioactive waste without mentioning MSR's?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fqB6p9pgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fqB6p9pgM)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVCaUonrbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVCaUonrbE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rL08J7fDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rL08J7fDA)</comment>


Looking at the Airbnb, Eventbrite, Uber and Istockphoto Referral Programs - <AUTHOR> http://ssqt.ch/1yKeHuW

<comment><AUTHOR> No referral program is ever perfect.

There's always room for improvement just like there is with any other marketing channel.

Do you test different versions of your Landing Pages? Email Campaigns?

Of course you do!

So why do referral programs not get the same attention?

Usually the top two reasons for this is the programs are hard-coded into the system or don't have analytics built-in.

That's why one of our core objectives is to teach everyone how to properly think about referral programs. Nothing gets us more fired up than finding a referral program that could be doing better.

So in this post we're back to doing what we do best. Showing you some examples of referral programs so you can get a better idea of what we're talking about.

Read more: [http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/4-best-examples- customer-r...](http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/4-best-examples-customer- referral-programs/)</comment>


Microsoft now credits maker of AppGet but offers no apology - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-credits-maker-of-package-manager-it-copied-for-windows-10-but-offers-no-apology/ <comment><USER2> Cross-posted from another thread that is now buried:[0]

The "Andrew" in question who courted Keivan (AppGet's dev) is Andrew Clinick. He wrote a blog post in response to this a few days ago:

[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install- le...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-learning/)

Still seems pretty tone-deaf to me - obviously MS seems to be in the legal clear, but the moral high ground and lots of dev goodwill has been lost.

It also damages the ability for devs to informally meet and chat with PMs at larger companies everywhere - adds a lot of mistrust to the eco-system.

This is not that MS came up with their own package manager. It's the entire song-and-dance routine that was conducted about potentially hiring Keivan, and then ghosting the engineer whose open-source product you were simultaneously cloning.

Of course, people will forget, but many will still remember. This is still a net-negative all-around when it didn't need to be.

 __Edit, this ZDNet article adds no new information and nothing has changed since the other articles have come out, but I guess it 's good that more places are covering it to signal boost this properly.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23375624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23375624)

<comment><USER3> I have a different reading of this. I think this is them doing the best they can within the limits set by microsoft's legal department. They cannot legally admit they looked at his code and copied the structure, because that opens them up to a copyright suit. In the blog post it seems they went as far as they could: admitting to being influenced by the ideas, without having actually copied any of the code.

If they really want to fix this, they need to pay AppGet's author some money, and get something in writing so they are legally protected from copyright suits. I assume they're negotiating this right now, and that once this deal is done there will be another blog post that is more genuine.

They really messed this up because it would have been cheap to get something in writing before releasing WinGet. Someone at microsoft legal dropped the ball.

<comment><USER4> I'm mean I know it would be nice to toss him some money. And it sucks when companies ghost people. But really isn't the point of open source that everyone can do what they want with the code? And if you're not distributing the actual code, why do you owe them anything?

If I gave credit to everyone who influenced the code I write, the file would be huge. Does the world have enough disk drives to hold all the credit where credit is due?

<comment><USER5> > why do you owe them anything?

decency, morals, thoughtfulness, that kind of thing

> If I gave credit to everyone who influenced the code I write...

They directly ripped it off.

Big companies will try not to pay even when they have money. To not even give the minimum of non-monetary credit is even less reason for me ever to release code under a "what's mine is yours licence".

<comment><USER6> > They directly ripped it off.

No, they used some very common and unoriginal ideas that were implemented in AppGet.

Can you point out exactly what was "ripped off" here?

\- [https://github.com/microsoft/winget- cli](https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli)

\- [https://github.com/appget/appget](https://github.com/appget/appget)

They're not even written in the same language. And everything done in AppGet has been done before. _Yawn_

> Big companies will try not to pay even when they have money.

I will try not to pay, even when I have money. I think this applies to most people. Who wants to pays for something that's already free? I'm not running a fuckin charity over here.

> To not even give the minimum of non-monetary credit...

They've given it.

 _However, I wonder if during all of this Keivan has credited Microsoft for all of the open source tools, services and frameworks that he 's used in his other work???_

<comment><USER5> > Can you point out exactly what was "ripped off" here?

from his blog

"When I showed it to my wife, the first thing she said was, "They Called it WinGet? are you serious!?" I didn't even have to explain to her how the core mechanics, terminology, the manifest format and structure, even the package repository's folder structure, are very _inspired_ by AppGet."

> I will try not to pay, even when I have money

Then people like you will kill off exactly the things they leech off, by pissing off those people who made them from their goodwill.

> However, I wonder if during all of this Andrew has credited Microsoft for > all of the open source tools, services and frameworks that he's used in his > other work???

I don't know, has he? Why raise the question instead of answering it.

You're curiously willing to defend microsoft.

<comment><USER7> > are very inspired by AppGet.

This is "ripping off" now? Maybe they did steal it wholesale, maybe not, but I haven't seen any evidence (nay, even allegations) of it.

<comment><USER5> > nay, even allegations

The allegation is right there. His blog. Which I quoted from. But didn't link to, so sorry, here it is [https://keivan.io/the-day-appget- died/](https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/)

<comment><USER7> inspiration != theft

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'He went for an interview at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters in December, which apparently "went well", but Andrew didn't inform him he would not get the job at Microsoft until six months later – on the day before the WinGet preview would be unveiled at Build 2020. '

This is bullshit. Keep him quiet with the hope of a job (embrace) until they release their version (extend, extinguish). Changing CEOs doesn't change everyone who works there.

<comment><USER9> Can we please stop trying to slide in an EEE reference everytime something comes up about MS?

You have clearly embraced EEE, but now you are extending it way past what it actually means, and if people like you continue you will extinguish it because it will not mean anything anymore.

Please don't EEE EEE.

<comment><USER10> We can stop talking about EEE when Microsoft stop practicing it. This time is just with regard to a community instead of a particular software product. WinGet is the "Extend" step where they overtake AppGet in usage and probably in package registrations until AppGet withers and eventually Extinguishes itself.

<comment><USER9> That's not remotely what EEE is about, which is my point.

EEE refers to a specific business practice that is not related to this story at all.

You can use other words in the language to convey that this particular move from MS is a dick move without having to use EEE. And reserve talking about EEE when it is actually relevant.

Using it all the time just completly dilute it until it becomes totally meaningless.

<comment><USER10> How is it not? WinGet : AppGet :: MSJVM : HotSpot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me the worst thing about this entire fiasco is really Microsoft's brazen unapologetic predator behaviour.

They've invited Keivan to their headquarters with a bait, giving him the wrong impression that they wanted to help him with the project when really they wanted to extract valuable information from his experience. He's been working on AppGet for a while, ran into issues, thought about problems which users are having, dealt with certain challenges and iterated until he got to a certain understanding/vision of his product. This is all very very valuable information not published anywhere in an open source thoughts database. It's just the experience and knowledge that only lives in Keivan's head and Microsoft knew that they had to bait him with some false promises and hopes in order to get access to that information which he might otherwise not have shared with a competitor. Also they didn't forget about Keivan. They knew what they were doing. At the beginning of the process someone put in their calendar to contact him the day before BUILD 2020 to send him this email, which is why he got the email the day before the announcement of WinGet. This was no coincidence.

That is fraud in my opinion. Who cares about his source code, they stole much more valuable stuff from him. Anyone who doesn't see that is ignorant or blind.

Keivan should take legal action.

<comment><USER12> What legal action, though? That is, what did Microsoft do that violates the law? I don't see anything. The code is open source, so I believe they're in the clear there. And I don't think they had a contract with Keivan, so I don't see any breach of contract disputes. To be clear, I think Microsoft acted unethically. But I don't see any obvious violation of the law.

<comment><USER10> I don't need a legal basis to be able to find Microsoft's actions reprehensible here.

<comment><USER12> I agree. But the person I'm responding to was advocating for legal action. Unfortunately, I don't see what legal action to take.

<comment><USER11> If something feels incredibly wrong, there's a good chance that it is wrong. If something is wrong, there's a good chance that a good lawyer will find some legal basis on which they could seek for damages.

> Unfortunately, I don't see what legal action to take

Good for you. Someone else might still feel differently and want to check with a legal advisor to explore their options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Taking the dude's work that he licensed them to take (via Apache 2.0) is one thing. Giving him false hope about a future job prospect is another.

<comment><USER14> Yes that was really low scam artist type behaviour. Still, on the bright side, the more profitable MS are, the more money for Bill and Melinda's good causes

<comment><USER15> Yeah if someone scam you $10 but give $0.001 to charity I guess it's a brighter side than if they kept everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems more in the realm of poorly managed expectations and less intentional and malicious copying. After reading his original blog post[0] I felt like they were originally interested in acquiring his software, but decided to go in a different direction with it and just weren't transparent about that decision at the time. It's not like they had to talk to him, the code is literally open sourced.

There's definitely things to gain from talking to the author of the project, but seems a bit reaching to suggest they wouldn't have been able to do what they did without talking to him. And it seems like a particularly pessimistic read to assume they were just lying to him outright to pull from his experience. Very little to gain from being a shark in this scenario, tons to (potentially) gain from acquiring an existing package manager. Gotta follow the incentives.

It's also worth mentioning that he mentioned the name similarity in his post in this way:

> When I showed it to my wife, the first thing she said was, "They Called it > WinGet? are you serious!?" I didn't even have to explain to her how the core > mechanics, terminology, the manifest format and structure, even the package > repository's folder structure, are very inspired by AppGet.

He did not go on to mention that his own name was (nearly certainly) inspired by apt-get (stylized as AptGet on Ubuntu[1]). Implying he was the originator of the name [X]Get for a package manager seems aggressively dishonest, to the point that it throws his entire side of the argument into question for me.

I haven't looked thoroughly into the code, but this feels like someone who was expecting something to come out of his hard work and is (understandably) bummed it will now likely amount to nothing. I have trouble putting much blame on Microsoft for that.

[0][https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/](https://keivan.io/the-day-appget- died/)

[1][https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet)

<comment><USER17> It may also serve as a warning to other developers to beware the big MS's practices

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am curious: why would I want to use AppGet or WinGet instead of Chocolatey?

And is the assertion that Microsoft took code from AppGet as part of WinGet? The fact that the word "copied" is in quotes makes me wonder what the beef is... and did anyone ask the APT team if they feel ripped off by the existence of Windows package managers?

<comment><USER19> WinGet is written in c++ and a AppGet is written in c# so the code isn't copied.

I think his complaint is they copied the functional interface.

<comment><USER20> That's no crime. If developers wouldn't be allowed to do that we'd have a major crisis on our hands.

The worst infringement as far as I'm concerned is that MS tricked him into giving up all his secrets before they implemented it themselves.

If Microsoft ever came to talk to me about one of my projects the only thing I'd tell them is: "How much?" (are you willing to pay for it).

<comment><USER21> What secrets? The code is open source. They were probably planning to hire him as well, something just happened in the meantime before he started so it didn't work out.

It's a shitty situation for him, but that's just life. Sometimes it sucks.

<comment><USER17> His future plans that he disclosed at MS. They made the guy think MS would hire him then they didnt even bother to show him the finger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Actual link to the statement: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install- le...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-learning/)

</comment><comment><USER23> "We will be open sourcing our service code into our our WinGet repository on GitHub so that we can work together with Keivan and others to enable a better WinGet repository listing service."

People who decide to "work together" should carefully read and understand the terms under which they're doing so:

[https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft- contribution-...](https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution- license-agreement.pdf)

<comment><USER24> Yes, "work together" means you work for free for Microsoft. Nothing more.

Because you sign your code over to them, they are free to CLOSE SOURCE future versions at ANY TIME.

Sure, you could attempt to fork, but the platform is proprietary and can lock you out (very likely in this case for "user security"). They are the biggest company in the world (by market cap) and those deep pockets mean they can outspend you until you go under or fall too far behind. It wouldn't be the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe I'm old school, but I think an apology should use the word apologize in it.

This is a "thank you", not an apology. But, at least it is better that what they did last week.

<comment><USER26> Not sure if it applies here, but I've read before that is common practice for companies to never admit errors or apologizing because it could be used against them in court as if they were admitting some wrongdoing.

<comment><USER27> IANAL. I found an interesting article [1], "Legal Consequences of Apologizing", which says:

> Usually, apologies are admissible into evidence. Admissability into evidence > does not necessarily mean useful as evidence of guilt. Since an apology > usually can be admitted into evidence, and because some plaintiffs choose to > understand an apology as an admission of guilt, it seems safest not to > apologize. Case law suggests, however, that courts do not see it this way. > Judges and juries seem to like apologies and treat them favorably. Often, an > apology does nothing to satisfy the plaintiff's burden of proof. In some > proceedings, an apology can be a mitigating factor, and the lack of an > apology can be an aggravating factor.

and concludes:

> This article illustrates that judges and juries understand that expression > of sympathy, regret, remorse and apology are not necessarily admissions of > responsibility or liability. This serves the public interest because such > expressions have the potential to reduce the number of lawsuits, rather than > attract litigation. When someone goes to court armed only with an apology, > they may find that it does nothing to satisfy the elements of the case they > need to prove. Additional evidence is required, almost as if the apology did > not exist.

Cool.

[1]: [https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1313&context=jdr)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's unfortunate to hear all of this from Beige's perspective. But the optimist in me thinks this is probably just a big company focusing on a release and putting everything else on the back-burner. That doesn't make it right, but I want to think this isn't an example of how Microsoft wants to treat the community moving forward. I think AppGet, an officially supported package manager, _should_ be a core feature. It needed to happen one way or another.

But the lack of UI to browse/search I think is too lacking so I put this up a few days ago: [https://wingetit.com](https://wingetit.com) \-- I imagine Microsoft is going to copy/replace this soon, but I won't mind.

</comment><comment><USER29> It sounds like an apology to me. What's missing, just the words "I'm sorry?"

<comment><USER30> Sounds like an apology. That's ok, I suppose. But I'd personally also love to see Microsoft _pay_ Keivan for his contribution. It needn't be huge sums but something. No, not because it's the moral thing to do, but for the sake of Microsoft's GitHub and their open source community strategy itself. Keivan's project is _exactly_ the type of projects Microsoft wants to encourage from their GitHub & open source endeavours for the eventual benefit of Microsoft. Paying Keivan something for his contribution to WinGet will really incentivise others to want to contribute to the ecosystem.

<comment><USER31> Then Google should pay Oracle for using the Java API :')

<comment><USER32> Did Google ask over Oracle engineers for job interviews just to pick their brains on Java?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Original source was posted to HN a few days ago:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367153)

It likely got no views because the title is worded in such a way as to avoid the actual topic at hand. Given how it's written, my gut is that it was titled to avoid being picked up, so I'm glad a news source caught wind and is calling them out with an appropriate title.

</comment><comment><USER34> There message sounds like a clear apology, unless the poster is hoping to hear the actual words "I'm sorry". They screw uped and came clean, even though like in most cases takes trending on Hacker News to get that resolution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the message itself was okay and posted the article as it shows at least some action since the previous Hacker News discussion. I didn't want to edit the article's title though, beyond cutting the words "for Windows 10" to make it fit.

<comment><USER35> You did the right thing, the source article just has a dreadful title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there a way to protest this?

Perhaps devs should upload every package with a readme that includes a reminder for developers, something like:

"This package is dedicated to Keivan Beigi. Read more about what Microsoft did to Kevin here: thankyoukevin.com"

Any better ideas?

<comment><USER37> Yes. Stop using Windows. Contribute to FOSS alternatives. License your code GPL3. Don't ask someone else to change. Be the change.

<comment><USER38> Economy of scale means freeloaders are too expensive a burden, preventing keeping up with closed source, for projects of unbounded complexity, like OS ecosystems. Sad but true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anyone know why Microsoft implemented their package manager in C++ and not C#?

<comment><USER40> Probably because of startup time and size. Powershell faces these same problems.

<comment><USER41> I would rather guess because "that was the team/persons favorite tool to do the job".

In most areas tool choices are less about objective benefits and more based on familiarity/popularity/etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Any apology would pretty much be "we're sorry we got caught".

</comment><comment><USER43> They could at least send him a new Surface Pro

<comment><USER44> I thought they offered me Azure credit? Maybe he preferred that.

<comment><USER45> They offered, but they didn't even come through on that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333070)

<comment><USER44> Ohh that's not cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Based on what I read, I'm guessing Andrew initially thought Keivan was someone worth working with because of AppGet. But then something during the interview started rubbing Andrew the wrong way. Maybe it was the way Keivan talked or how he dressed. So he started ghosting Keivan and things got more awkward. Maybe this worked for Andrew in the office, but that's not how things work between a company and its community.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is nuts. Why not send the guy a $10-50K check (or to a nonprofit of his choosing) as a bounty/thank-you/we-love-open-spource-PR thing?

It would be one thing if there were trying to to hide it with closed source, but this was stupidly evil out in the open.

<comment><USER47> My assumption is a program manager can relatively easily write a letter thanking someone for their insight and work, but that a significant amount of paperwork is entailed in sending someone a big check. It really depends what level this issue has made it up to for Microsoft. Did Satya hear about this? If the answer's no, money probably is hard to just disburse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "We contribute to open source now, everything is fair game"

</comment><comment><USER49> Embrace, extend, extinguish?

</comment><comment><USER50> Why anyone works with or supports Microsoft beyond corporate IT at this point is completely beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER51> License is Apache 2.0 which does not require acknowledgment. I'm always surprised when open source project creators are complaining about a legal move made by a company related to their project: they allowed it in the first place. If they wanted more, like citation or financial advantage, they had the choice to force interested parties to comply by choosing another license. Betting on companies goodwill is risky...

<comment><USER52> There's a difference between ethical and legal. You can do a lot of things that don't break any law but make you a terrible human being.

Of course you can copy someone's design and not acknowledge it unless it's patented. You're going to be a dick then, not a criminal.

<comment><USER53> Is it really being a dick when someone explicitly, through choice of a license, allows it? What is this post from Microsoft except an explicit and public thank you? Which seems like it should certainly appease the "not a dick" criteria to me...

<comment><USER54> If that's all they did it wouldn't be so bad. However, they also discussed the project, future improvements, etc with the strong implication that they would hire him or pay for his work so far. This could have been well intentioned but you can't tell from the outside and people tend to default to assuming bad things about actions taken by large companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>