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Show HN: Slide Decks from Linux Kernel Tel Aviv Talks - kerneltlv
http://www.slideshare.net/kerneltlv/presentations
======
kerneltlv
Hi HN!
We're a Linux Kernel meetup group based in Tel Aviv, Israel. A new community
(a few months old), our aim is to give people the opportunity to discuss their
Linux work, listen to talks, recruit, get hired and generally feel like a part
of a community that we felt was missing in the Israeli tech landscape.
Please check out our small SlideShare page. We hope the materials our speakers
have produced will find wider appeal.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs, one year on. - sjtgraham
http://www.apple.com/?hn
======
JoeCortopassi
_Yesterday_ : "Apple is a worthless patent troll. All of their 'inventions'
are things that were invented somewhere else. The only thing they did was
patent other people's work, then charge twice as much for it to a bunch of
worthless fan-boys."
_Today_ : "R.I.P. Steve Jobs. He did so much to change the face of technology
forever."
`
Sometimes you have to sit back and appreciate the fickleness of a crowd...
~~~
firefoxman1
If other HNers are like me, this might explain it: I'm not a big fan of Apple.
And lately I think they've become the "Big Brother" they were fighting in the
1984 commercial. However, I'm a _huge_ Steve Jobs fan. He's right up there
with Henry Ford and Fred Harvey on my list.
Just watch this little clip and you can see why I like one and not the other:
<http://www.wimp.com/stevemoment/>
~~~
enjo
I think that Henry Ford is a really good comparison. I _admire_ Henry Ford. He
was a true innovator. He was everything an entrepreneur should strive to be.
Yet he was also incredibly flawed. His shortcomings are well documented. I
still admire, and attempt to emulate, Henry Ford the entrepreneur even if I
don't love the man as a whole.
In the same way I admire Apple (and their embodiment in Steve Jovs) for what
they've done, and in many ways emulate their approach and passion for making
delightful products. Yet I'm wary, and extremely critical, of much of what
they're doing.
I can definitely be both. I want to promote the Apple that makes amazing
products, while quashing the Apple that wants to exert utter control over
everything.
~~~
shinratdr
> I want to promote the Apple that makes amazing products, while quashing the
> Apple that wants to exert utter control over everything.
Which is kind of like wanting to promote water without promoting getting wet.
~~~
pm90
not necessarily. e.g Nokia's Meego platform was open, yet it was extremely
well designed
------
vicapow
People say "Steve wouldn't have done this to maps." but they're wrong. Apple
still has it because they're still willing to piss off their users in the
short term, but for the benefit of the long term. They're the only major
company that sees and understands the innovator's dilemma.
~~~
jonathansizz
No, they're the only major company that has a huge and scarily-loyal fan-base
who are willing to rationalize major screw-ups as some kind of visionary
strategic decision.
And they didn't innovate - they replaced a nicely-functioning product with a
broken imitation.
~~~
endemic
As pointed out by others, the screw-up was not admitting that Apple Maps
launched as an inferior product. The long-term benefits of a homegrown mapping
product were very obvious, such as turn-by-turn and vector tiles.
~~~
clockstrikesten
I see this implied repeatedly by everyone, so could someone explain how
customers on the ground using Apple Maps are somehow providing Apple with any
data that could improve the maps?
~~~
onedognight
For example if you find lots of People driving in a consistent manner on what
is not already a road on your map then it needs to become one. You can do this
ordered by number the number of people per unmapped road segment to have the
most effect.
Another example, if you find that everyone drives off the road in a certain
area then comes back on a little farther down and that no one drives the
intervening segment, then the road probably needs to be adjusted.
------
rodly
A moving tribute and wonderful video in and of itself. I'm far too young (21)
to fully appreciate everything he embodied. His early death really makes you
appreciate the luck of being alive. From the normal to the billionaire
magicians, remember this:
"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is
prepared to die at any time." - Mark Twain
------
digitalengineer
Music by Yo-Yo Ma I think: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn_VBgkPNY>
~~~
thaumaturgy
Yes; it's Bach's Cello Suite #1. You've probably also heard it in Master and
Commander, where it was performed by Yo-yo Ma. It's one of my favorite pieces
of string music.
~~~
philip1209
The piece is the prelude of Bach's first cello suite. The thirty-five other
movements in the Bach cello suites are equally beautiful, but it is mainly
this movement that is played.
While my cello playing was originally inspired by Ma's interpretation of the
cello suites, I now find his rendition of them a bit insipid. I suggest
checking out Pablo Casals' interpretation - he popularized the Bach suites,
and the recordings are beautiful. Rostropovich also played them fairly well.
If I had to pick a Bach cello suite movement for such a video, it would be the
Sarabande from the 6th suite:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3dgACCAzwM>
Edit: I changed my mind, I would go with the Sarabande from the 1st suite:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvOo0cS8w10>
~~~
telemachos
I was lucky enough to hear Rostropovich play the 5th cello suite live once. I
would rank his performance a lot better than "fairly well", but tastes vary.
Another favorite performance of mine for those suites is Anner Bylsma[1]. He
uses a more historically accurate instrument than most modern versions. I
don't necessarily think that makes other versions _bad_ , but it does make his
(or one like it) worth trying.
[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Suites-Cello-
BWV-1007-1012/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Suites-Cello-
BWV-1007-1012/dp/B0000027TV/)
------
amartya916
Scrolling through all the comments, I find that it is impossible to not
encounter cynicism - e.g. Apple is trying to divert from the Maps folly etc. -
in this forum.
This is Apple paying respect and taking a moment to reminisce about Steve ...
it's just a nice, human thing to do.
~~~
Zariel
Even I am a staunch anti Apple proponent but I have to sit back and applaud
what Steve has achieved and what an incredibly visionary and accomplished man
he was, I wish I could live like he had.
The video was a frank reminder that we had lost a great man.
------
seivan
Removing their products from the landing page to pay tribute to Steve.
Would Dell or Samsung do this? Genuine question.
~~~
joering2
First and foremost - they know that it wont stop one person from buying --
eventually, even if, arguendo, it would temporarily stop someone, if they
watch Steve's message they will get the company DNA so sooner or later they
will convert them.
Second, money is not always everything. You know H&N the biggest New York tech
shop -- multiple stores high, automated baskets flying everywhere, a product's
catalog of 1,500 pages, things you can buy there that you didnt know exist.
They always full easily making half a mil in profit a day. You know they close
their doors every single Friday for religious purposes, regardless of what
their customers think.
~~~
tfe
I think you mean B&H?
------
skeptik
You know, I opened Safari this morning and, while I was startled by the music
suddenly blasting through my speakers with no warning, I watched the video
through to the end. It was nice, I enjoyed it.
But EVERY TIME I OPEN A NEW SAFARI WINDOW IT STARTS PLAYING AGAIN. Sound and
everything. Couldn't they have set a cookie for "already watched"?
The annoyance this occasioned was the final push I needed to go into the
preferences and reset my Safari home page from the default Apple page --
actually, I just chose to have new windows open empty -- but Apple has now
lost the chance to advertise to me every time I open a new browser window.
~~~
sswezey
Or you know, you could change your home page...
~~~
aeturnum
I think his point is that apple makes the safari homepage apple.com . They
know that every mac they sell will start there. Despite knowing that, they
don't seem to have thought that users might be annoyed by the video playing
every time. I don't think that really matters, but it's interesting to talk
about.
------
logn
Well, I don't think it's the most fitting tribute to Jobs. It sounds more like
an Apple commercial. Granted, Apple is the sum of his life's work. But a
tribute to someone should be more than that person explaining the greatness of
Apple, it should be someone explaining the greatness of Jobs, IMHO.
~~~
lurker14
It's perfect. What could be a more fitting tribute to Steve Jobs than to put
an elegant facade on someone else's work?
------
codesuela
Direct link to video: [http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-
memoria...](http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial-
us-20121005_r848-9dwc.mov?width=848&height=480)
I used Movie Player to open it (Movie -> open location)
~~~
pooriaazimi
Direct download link: [http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-
memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial-
us-20121005_848x480.mp4) \- 41 MB
(hint: I always download Apple videos (for future reference, and because my
internet connection is really slow) and the trick is to replace
"_r848-9dwc.mov" at the end to "_848x480.mov")
------
netvarun
Page miserably fails to load on Chrome running on Ubuntu
<http://imgur.com/eWREY>
~~~
thejosh
Try the mp4's posted above -
[http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-
memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial-
us-20121005_848x480.mp4).
~~~
hadem
Thank you. The video would not play for me in the browser.
------
TechNewb
Beautiful video. Well made, well executed, and showed how Jobs was a visionary
for Apple and the brand. Love the minimalist presentation of the video, how
the entire homepage is 'whited out' with just a simple video. Amazing
experience, and made me remember some of my favorite Job quotes. Well done
Apple.
------
yanofsky
There's irony in the page using a plug in for the video and SVG to render the
text of Tim Cook's letter, right?
~~~
flatline3
In chrome, I'm seeing a <video> tag, not a plugin.
~~~
yanofsky
I'm getting a quicktime plugin in chrome
------
francov88
Has it already been a year? Jesus...
------
rbanffy
For those having trouble with the video,
[http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-
memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial-
us-20121005_848x480.mp4)
------
ashishb4u
just curious, why is the link "apple.com/?hn" ?
~~~
mparlane
Because the link has been posted before, to get around the duplicate detection
you append meaningless GET params.
~~~
ashishb4u
More because <http://www.apple.com/> did not opened the Tim's note, while
<http://www.apple.com/?hn> did. It seems any random GET param is indeed
meaningful in this case :)
~~~
kalleboo
Works for me without the GET param. Maybe it's just because you're returning
to the page?
------
thebigkick
I'd hate to be the guy to do this but...
I agree, to some extent, with Malcolm Gladwell's take on the Steve Jobs
legacy.
<http://tinyurl.com/br6rl7b>
Still, RIP Steve and thanks for inspiring us.
Sent from my iPhone.
~~~
philwelch
Who's going to remember Malcolm Gladwell in 50 years?
~~~
MartinCron
Unless I'm too senile, I will.
Gladwell's writings are (if nothing else) extremely popular and extremely
enjoyable to read. We remember content from 50 years ago that wasn't half as
good.
------
gcr
Why is there a ?hn link referral tag at the end of the URL?
------
stevewilhelm
There are few founders that are remembered as fondly as Steve after they
retire or pass away: Grove, Gates, Hewlett, Packard come to mind.
Something to think different about.
------
alex1
I think I just found an easter egg in Siri in tribute to Steve:
<http://i.imgur.com/Ptz47.png>
~~~
acangiano
I got it too a while ago. I asked "Is Steve Jobs your father?" and Siri
prompted me with the same page.
------
tlrobinson
How do you fullscreen videos on apple.com?
~~~
jrbj
On OS X or iOS there should be a full-screen button in the upper right corner
of the video player controls.
------
saurabhpalan
Its not about the idea, about the product or about the technology. It was
Steve's unique way to change the way a product is made, to make it intuitive,
elegant and simple which set him apart.
Its not the idea, but implementation of the idea, in the most creative and
beautiful manner, that matters.
------
philip1209
If you click the "x" in the upper-left, there is a message from Tim Cook about
Steve's passing.
------
bborud
To me that was a bit of a special day: on the one-year anniversary of Steve
Jobs' death I get the official notification that I am on the transplant list
for a new kidney. (I also spent that morning on the operating table having a
PD-catheter installed).
------
kine
We miss you, Steve.
------
thejosh
How different will this be from the Kim Jun Il tribute?
~~~
jrockway
Very different. North Korea actually has nuclear weapons for use in their
random "thermonuclear wars".
~~~
CountHackulus
But didn't Steve Jobs threaten to "Go Nuclear" with patents?
~~~
krypes
"Nuclear patent winter is coming" -- House Stallman words
------
pervycreeper
Technology and a focus on the future go hand in hand. I wonder whether Jobs
(at his best) would be dwelling on the past like this (over any event)? What
happens when an army of sheep loses its lion?
Also, while the hockey puck quote in the video could be interpreted as a
hedge/ preemptive rebuttal of the above observation, I don't think it was
meant that way. The tremendous irony there must have escaped quite a few
people, since they ended up running with it.
------
iambvk
I think this is the first time Apple posted a non QuickTime video on their
site. As a Linux user, it felt different :)
~~~
kalininalex
Still QuickTime for me (Chrome on Mac/Lion) and it doesn't work by default
(something with permissions).
------
Zenst
Tasteful, elequent and respectfuly well designed tribute. I'm sure even the
late great Steve Jobs would of approved.
------
jason_slack
I like the way they show the video, "Exit out" In the upper left corner,
anyone know what they use to do this?
------
henna
Why must I watch the tribute every time i open safari? I miss him less each
time...
------
desaiguddu
If you like this video you would like our creation Steve Jobs Timeline as well
- www.nuskhalabs.com and <http://tmblr.co/Zpw4yxUgp9Mi>
------
macarthy12
If you reset safari you get the video. Interesting
~~~
k1ds3ns4t10n
Isn't that just because the default homepage in safari is apple.com?
------
mogrim
Jobs, meh. Hardly up there with Ford or Rolls & Royce, for example. Far more
inspiring, far greater creations, and much more interesting companies.
Still, his products were ever so pretty.
------
timpeterson
this makes me sad
(and that i'm the first one to use the word "sad" in this thread makes me even
more sad)
------
mongol
Is this the beginning of making a legend and a myth out of Steve Jobs? Yes
let's remember him but also let's move on.
------
nicetryguy
* Not using the HTML5 Video Tag
~~~
achal
It's using it on Chrome for me.
------
tambourine_man
No mention of the iPad or OS X.
~~~
podperson
If you had to boil Steve Jobs's biggest contributions down to a minimum, it's:
* the first genuinely usable, affordable GUI (i.e. the Mac)
* the iPod
* the iPhone
I'd say the Apple ][ is debatably on that list (the first personal computer
than "just worked" or something). NeXTStep is a wonderful OS with a lot of
Good Stuff in it but it's a piece of a product. The iPod Touch and iPhone are
fairly obvious evolutions of the iPhone.
The other missing item isn't an Apple product: Pixar.
~~~
spinchange
No question about Apple ][ - That was the first computer schools across the
country (US) started buying en masse.
To my mind, that is the product that really touched off the personal computer
revolution. As you mention, the Mac paradigm shift was about the GUI, Mouse,
and taking what they started with the I and ][ to the next, more refined and
"product-ized" level.
~~~
podperson
I tend to agree with you. (I actually started writing a defense of my initial
position and realized that I was wrong!) I think some would like to dismiss
the Apple ][ as, say, merely being the luckiest of a bunch of similarly
conceived products that came out around the same time (e.g. the Commodore Pet
was announced earlier but delivered later, and the TRS-80 came out slightly
afterwards), but then not only was the Apple ][ more successful, it was also
dramatically superior technically (e.g. its expansion bus allowed for self-
configuring cards that could even slave the computer, which led to products
like the DTACK 68k board that turned a humble Apple ][ into a workstation-
class computer back in 1980.
<http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/>
------
markmm
I bet they wish he could come back, Maps/Siri/lack of innovation on new
products.
~~~
SG-
Everything coming out now went through him, do you think it really takes a
year to develop products? The maps team had been working on the new maps for
years. I guess Apple should have invented warp drive in the last year too.
~~~
markmm
He wouldn't have released it, he will be spinning in his grave right now. They
need to ditch Cook and get someone with a pair of balls.
~~~
bratsche
I think they would have released it. It seems they had little choice. It was
either release it or renegotiate their contract with Google since it is almost
up.
------
eintr
Gross.
------
notlisted
Anything to detract from the disaster that is Apple Maps. If I could I would
undo two things, first revert to iOS5, then bring Jobs back. Ah, the good old
days.
~~~
mratzloff
You would bring back Steve Jobs _second_?
~~~
notlisted
Seriously, downvotes? I was gonna bring him back!
Yeah second, because my immediate problem is getting to my intended
destination tonight and since the upgrade which screwed with my WiFi tethering
and maps that's a problem.
It would take even him more than a couple of hours to fix this. A downgrade I
could do myself, if Apple allowed it that is...
~~~
MartinCron
_my immediate problem is getting to my intended destination tonight_
Just in case you hadn't noticed, complaining about your inability to get to
where you're going with your new maps app looks really whiny and entitled.
Go back just a few short years in human history and we didn't have _any_
smartphones with maps and GPS, and you know what? people actually managed to
find their destinations. Get some perspective.
~~~
notlisted
It worked three weeks ago, now it doesn't. So I miss Jobs.
FYI, I was a participant at the root of that development (drove with GPS on
the roof of a mini cooper in 1992, the company I worked for then, licensed
data to Google Maps for many years). The perspective I have is that there was
no reason to screw with something that worked at the expense of the user.
Still miss jobs.
My wife's Android navigation will do tonight. Her S3 Looks pretty nifty
suddenly.
~~~
MartinCron
I miss Jobs as well. On that we can absolutely agree.
------
bookwormAT
Am I the only one who finds it kind of sick that Apple is squeezing out as
much PR as possible of the death of their former CEO?
Let the man rest in peace.
~~~
recuter
The Apple website is one of the bigger ones - and yet they essentially removed
all of their products from the landing page, if anything I would guess that
there will be a small dip in revenue today for the online store. I disagree
that this is about PR, the people running the company lost their colleague and
probably genuinely miss Steve. A somewhat classy tribute.
It also reminds everybody of their mission, contrast with HP for example who
have lost their way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I met Jack Dorsey in South Park, and all I got was this blog post - cmbaus
http://baus.net/i-met-jack-dorsey/
======
danso
> _It was a different time in the Valley back then, and Williams ended up
> selling Blogger for a paltry sum of $10s of millions to the only company
> with any resources in 2003 — Google._
So AOL was past its peak by then but it still had boatloads of dial-up revenue
coming in at 2003. Hell it still does
[http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/aol-revenue-is-up-
stil...](http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/aol-revenue-is-up-still-gets-
millions-from-dial-up-subscribers_b82251)
~~~
cmbaus
That's true, but the valuations on deals were much lower after the dot com
crash and 9/11\. Flickr I think went for less than $100million at about the
same time, and it was the Instagram of its day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stephen Wolfram Aims to Democratize His Software - prostoalex
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/stephen-wolfram-seeks-to-democratize-his-software/
======
macmac
This is a remarkable change for a man who famously inserted a fairly esoteric
copyright notice in his book "A New Kind of Science":
"Copyright © 2002 by Stephen Wolfram, LLC
...Discoveries and ideas introduced in this book, whether presented at length
or not, and the legal rights and goodwill associated with them, represent
valuable property of Stephen Wolfram, LLC, and when they or work based on them
is described or presented, whether for scholarly purposes or otherwise,
appropriate attribution should be given.
...Illustrations (including tables) may not be reproduced without the prior
written consent of the copyright holder. Most individual illustrations in this
book represent substantial original works in themselves, and their
reproduction is not a fair use... Permission to reproduce illustrations will
normally be granted for scholarly purposes so long as the illustrations are
not modified...[and] are used and explained in an appropriate way... Stephen
Wolfram, LLC is the owner of the full copyright to all illustrations in this
book (except as indicated in the colophon), including...such original elements
as non-obvious choices of rules and initial conditions used to create them."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drug prices to soar nearly 50% over next few years - ourmandave
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dont-expect-prescription-drug-spending-to-fall/
======
cogentleman
Genuinely don't understand how the medical systems in place throughout Europe
are also socialized but so much more stable than ours. Is their quality of
care lower? Fewer patient needs being met? Relative spending higher? It looks
like Americans are moving towards socializing medicine more and more yet the
further we move towards it, it seems like efficiency is only getting worse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leaving “gifts” behind on dedicated server hosts - weinzierl
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/14/flash/
======
wahern
> I don't have an easy solution for this one. Building your own box and doing
> the co-lo thing is just far too annoying for a lot of people.
VPS on Vultr: $2.50/month.
Additional IP address on Vultr: $2.00/month.
Forwarding additional routable IP address to dynamically addressed server with
a 1-line IPSec config on each end: $0.00.
You can of course use OpenVPN or Wireguard instead of IPsec, but it's a little
more complicated as you need to forward the IP across a tunnel with two known
end points[1], which you obviously don't yet have. To get the two known end
points you'd need to establish a privately addressed[2] VPN plus configure
explicit routes to forward the fixed IP over the VPN. With IPSec the initiator
(i.e. the box lacking a fixed external address) can dynamically establish a
tunnel for the additional IP _directly_ , without the indirection.
It's one case (and perhaps the only typical case) where IPSec's flow-based
rather than route-based configuration policies are clearly beneficial.
Otherwise IPSec's flow-based policies are an endless source of confusion as
most people and most systems' network stacks are primarily route based.
[1] Because they use routed-based configuration policies which require, a
priori, having a known end point to route _to_ , as opposed to IPSec's flow-
based policies which can capture a packet and forward to whatever peer (and
whatever IP address) has been most recently authorized (by IKE) to receive it.
[2] Unless you have a whole routable subnet to spare, in which case you
wouldn't even be facing the hosting dilemma.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hints for computer system design (1983) - luu
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/33-Hints/WebPage.html
======
mikebike
Here's a talk he gave on this topic, from 2013: [http://www.heidelberg-
laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-...](http://www.heidelberg-laureate-
forum.org/blog/video/lecture-friday-september-27-butler-w-lampson/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gruveo announces WebRTC Embed API, accepts beta applications - jamix
https://www.gruveo.com/developers/embed-api/
======
arnaudbud
Cool! feel free to post the news on [http://rtc.news](http://rtc.news) ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Robots Learn to Push Heavy Objects with Their Bodies, Just Like You - spectro
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/robots-learn-to-push-heavy-objects-with-their-bodies-just-like-you
======
digikata
"Next, the researchers plan to 'apply the proposed method to other tasks with
whole-body contact,'" \-- robot football league?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop It. Google Won't Buy Twitter. - lotusleaf1987
http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/09/stop_it_google_wont_buy_twitter
======
yhvh
Could someone make all scientific journals free to read, I'm super fucked off
stealing access through various student friends accounts.
~~~
yhvh
I definitely value the fact that approving the content of journals is a costly
business, it's just a frustration of mine. I apologise for the tone.
~~~
mayank
It's a costly business for the people doing the actual reviewing, ie the
scholars who essentially work for free. Academic publishing is, I hope, the
next industry to be reformed by open access web archives, although I'll be the
first to admit that it's a long way away. So I think it's perfectly fine for
you to be "fucked off".
~~~
carbocation
Despite accepting basically everything that is valid science (typically a much
lower bar than is required to publish in most journals), PLOS One has had a
consistently increasing impact factor. In other words, the open access
approach is getting some respect from scientists who produce the original
material.
------
sahaj
google may eventually buy twitter, but they'll wait for the valuation to drop.
twitter is an awesome technology, but i'm not sure how well and how long
someone can monetize it.
~~~
alain94040
Delayed tweets could make money.
[http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/09/30/a-real-business-
mode...](http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/09/30/a-real-business-model-for-
twitter/)
~~~
aberkowitz
Failure of similar idea -
Diggnation used to have a tiered system - subscribe and get everything early,
don't subscribe and wait a day or two. This worked until someone thoughtfully
[and illegally] created a mirror that provided subscriber time access to non
subscribers.
I believe that Diggnation no longer has a subscription service.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists have found a way to help learn skills faster - davidiach
http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-technique-that-helps-you-learn-new-skills-twice-as-fast
======
gwern
If anyone is curious, the psychologists discovered this long ago; it's related
to spaced repetition, but in education & sports & psychology, this is known as
blocking: you get better skill gain by not massing practice on a single skill,
but by regularly rotating through multiple tasks. (So in a baseball study, the
players would rotate through batting, throwing, catching etc, instead of
spending a long time at each activity.)
~~~
jacobolus
This seems to be a different thing than just practicing different activities
related to the same sport. These are two functionally similar activities which
use slightly different muscle patterns to accomplish, so that the trainee is
directly applying their knowledge of the first action to the second, but can’t
just do the precise same motion.
> _“If you make the altered task too different, people do not get the gain we
> observed during reconsolidation. The modification between sessions needs to
> be subtle”_
A better baseball analogy might be practicing catching line drives then
practicing catching popups then practicing catching one-bounce throws then
practicing catching a lobbed egg.
Or maybe practicing batting and then practicing golfing and then practicing
kendo swings.
~~~
walking
If I'm reading the source article correctly (linked below by Perixoog), it
sounds like change was so subtle that the participants themselves weren't even
aware of it:
"Participants were unaware of this manipulation"
"We chose to manipulate sensorimotor variability so that participants were
unaware of the fact that there was any change in the task"
[1]
[http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc...](http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc2.pdf)
So not only are the tasks similar, but they're so similar that participants
weren't consciously aware that they were doing something different. Wacky
They also mention that "participants strengthened skill through the re-
exploration of sensorimotor space."
I wonder how large an exploration of the sensorimotor space could be while
generalizing/improving the original skill. (re batting and kendo). No idea,
but interesting article either way
~~~
kriro
Which makes me wonder if you can apply this as an autodidact. If you know you
have made subtle changes, do the results still hold. I'd guess the answer
would be yes but it could be an interesting problem.
There also might be a delta (variation of the activity) that optimizes the
learning progress. My guess for that would be...change too little and you're
inefficient, change too much and you are inefficient, too.
~~~
walking
This is all speculation, on my part (certainly not an expert in this area)
In the article they say that "Contextual variability can strengthen retention
[15] and generalization of skills", but that they "chose to increase
sensorimotor variability while maintaining constant the original learning
context."
They also mention that "attributing errors to internal sources can strengthen
learning [19, 20] and generalization [21] of motor behavior"
My guess for an autodidact would be how powerful internal attribution is
compared to the change in context and exploration of the sensorimotor space.
Of course, they're probably not discrete, and probably also impact one
another.
Sounds like some really interesting possible implications, and possibilities
for further research. Really makes me want to reread the article and go
through some of the articles they cite
------
bluusteel
I think this is called varied practice and that the idea has been around for
awhile. The book Make It Stick[1] discusses a study that had 8 year olds toss
beanbags at a target. For one group, the distance to the target was varied.
For another, the distance to the target was fixed. At a later time, both
groups were tested and the group that practiced with a variable distance
performed better than the fixed distance group.
[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674729013](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674729013)
------
Perixoog
Current Biology - Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation
12 page pdf:
[http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc...](http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc2.pdf)
~~~
kgarten
Thanks ... it's really bad practice from news articles to not link to the
actual study or cite it. "Scientists found ... " yeah at least they mention
the author and the journal.
------
mdorazio
How would this apply to something like learning to play the piano or guitar?
The examples given for sports training seem practical, but I'm having trouble
envisioning small variations of a similar type for things like instruments.
Maybe varying the size/weight of the piano keys, or fret spacing on a guitar?
~~~
valvar
I'm thinking more along the lines of practicing different scales, arpeggios
and pieces each time, and practicing several different things instead of
repeatedly practicing a single thing. Unfortunately, though, as an amateur
violinist, I can say that this approach is not all that feasible after a
certain level. Varying your warm-ups like what scales, arpeggios and etudes
you play might be a good idea, but in the end the only really effective way of
mastering a piece is to play it over and over, mostly in small sections, until
you get it right. If you just scim over it each time, you're probably going to
let mistakes slip in and ferment. But maybe changing something less related to
the actual activity more in line with what you suggested might also work -
lowering and raising the music stand and piano stool or chair, changing
instruments or location, etc.
~~~
pinkrooftop
If you take the approach of mastering the instrument instead of a piece then
scales, arpeggios, and other building blocks become critical. Almost like
learning improv jazz violin, before taking on a classical piece
~~~
ZenoArrow
Mastering a musical instrument can be broken down into physical skills and
aural skills. Exercises can be useful for physical skills, but aural skills
can be practiced without them. Improvising is about being open to where you
can go, and ear training of various kinds is going to be far more useful for
that than practising the same group of exercises time and time again.
~~~
pinkrooftop
Scales is the key to improv in my experience
~~~
bhrgunatha
Scales are an important and necessary part, but I agree with ZenoArrow -
developing aural skills is the key. It opens up so many possibilities. I
haven't fully mastered those skills yet (still working on them), but learning
just a little is like suddenly having a map while trying to find your way
around a city. Before, you stumble around, stopping to ask for directions and
taking wrong turns. After, you can plan what you want to do much more easily.
------
agumonkey
Random anecdote, take care of your heart. Impaired blood flow will decrease
your skills (be it physical, neurological, intellectual) and your ability to
grow again.
------
pjdorrell
Don't buy your child a bicycle: buy him/her _two_ bicycles.
~~~
hurpAdurp
Instead of the awkward "him/her", try just using "them" to de-genderify your
pronouns.
The slash looks goofy.
~~~
kentosi
Wouldn't that just be grammatically incorrect? Unless you replace "child" with
"children" of course ...
(Australian English speaker here.)
~~~
Natsu
English used to allow 'they' to be singular (Shakespeare used this). Some
people are coming back to it as acceptable as it's easier than the other
solutions.
------
hiphopyo
There's also Donepezil, a drug similar to the one from the movie Limitless
(2011).
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2593268/The-d...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2593268/The-
drug-helps-adults-learn-fast-children.html)
- Donepezil is used to improve memory function in Alzheimer’s patients
- Children learn skills quickly as their brains go through 'critical periods’
- Researchers found donepezil can revert adult brains to these periods
- It increases the 'elasticity' of the brain making it capable of learning rapidly
- Researchers rewired a visually impaired patient’s brain to process images
- The drug works by boosting chemicals in the brain that reduce with age
------
anotheryou
I'd describe at least one of the factors as "play". "Play" to get to know the
system you are trying to learn. This knowledge than helps with the specific
task.
Given the study I assume a different mechanism coming in to play also:
If you try to play a musical piece on an instrument teachers will advise you
to practice as slow as needed, not to make a single mistake, that could end up
being learned.
It's like trying to correct yourself on word you mangled up while speaking,
you'll be so fixated you immediately make the mistake again and again.
This memory effect might have been countered by the variations in the study.
(I posted the same thing elsewhere, but as a comment of the furthest down top-
level comment I doubt it will be seen there)
------
ddingus
I am understanding this to mean the small, but sensible variations, gets at
the dynamics of a task better than mere repetition does.
Instead of learning to correct toward a given nominal, we get a sense of what
nominal is, given an input, essentially.
~~~
anotheryou
I was really missing this from the article. I'd describe it as "play" to get
to know the system you are trying to learn. This knowledge than helps with the
specific task.
Given the study I assume a different mechanism coming in to play also:
If you try to play a musical piece on an instrument teachers will advise you
to practice as slow as needed, not to make a single mistake, that could end up
being learned.
It's like trying to correct yourself on word you mangled up while speaking,
you'll be so fixated you immediately make the mistake again and again.
This memory effect might have been countered by the variations in the study.
~~~
ddingus
Yes, you hit it on the instrument practice.
I struggled with exactly that, and failed on that instrument. Never did quite
get the same thing out of it twice, without a lot of focus on that thing.
Later, with little formal practice, I would play with a different one. Ended
up with some modest skill that remains today.
------
halpme
How would this apply to learning a conceptual topic, as opposed to a physical
skill?
~~~
guimarin
when trying to learn something, engage with it repeatedly on exponential
decay. IE. Index cards. Go through them as many times as it take to learn
whatever you are learning. Then perform a 20-30 minute context switch. do
again. Now wait 1 hour. Do the cards again. Wait 2 hours. Again. Do this until
you review those cards at the week level. You can learn almost anything with
very high recall 6-9 months later with this method.
edit: Sleep is an extremely important component of this. You must be well
rested, and preferably do not ingest significant amounts of alcohol before
sleeping as that will mess up short term to long term memory mapping from
hippo to pfc.
~~~
spangry
I can anecdotally attest to this. When I had a piano recital coming up I used
to practice very intensely, but would 'hit a wall' at some point. When I came
back to it the next day I'd find my playing had improved significantly.
It almost felt like the gains from practising got stored up somewhere while I
was awake, and slowly unspooled while I was sleeping.
~~~
guimarin
this is how short-term -> long-term memory works. You build up 'competence; in
the hippocampus during waking hours, and then when you sleep 'a part' of those
memories are shifted into other areas of the brain so the hippo can be fresh
for the next day. Caveats apply to things sometime take days, don't move, get
erased etc. hippo is very capable so people can operate without sleep for
quite a while but eventually overflowing this buffer/registry causes
insanity/death. hilariously, your long-term appreciation of time is just the
working set in hippo divided by the stored area in long term memory. thus as
you get older time appears to go by faster in the aggregate. experience of
simple in the moment phenomena is controlled elsewhere.
------
etiene
I've known this for over a decade... My piano teacher instructed me to do
that.
To learn any piece by heart, never start at the same measure, play voices
separately, combine different voices, sing together with it, play it backwards
(measure n then measure n-1 + measure n, then measure n-2 + measure n-1 +
measure n...), you can do this with bigger sections as well, change tempo,
etc. I still remember how to play my 4-voice Bach fugue even though I've
stopped playing the piano for years now. I tried this with text and public
speaking too and it works.
I thought this was widely known...?
~~~
gavazzy
Can confirm this is widely known within music pedagogy.
However, quite a few of my peers thought it was "stupid" and just practiced
the same piece over and over, at the same tempo, without ever stopping and
working on the hard parts.
After several years of music, there was a pronounced difference between those
who practiced effectively and those who merely repeated their mistakes.
Perhaps a study like this could convince future students that it's worthwhile.
------
nickpsecurity
This is old news: train your brain guides used to tell people to do this same
stuff. Intuition trainers also did it with simulations and such that varied a
bit. Those doing it knew it worked due to better performance. Published
experiments confirming it is A Good Thing, of course.
------
mavsman
This one weird trick that will make you learn things twice as fast.
------
reed1
That's why polygot programming is better I guess.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My First Year of Coding - jenniferDewalt
http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/81451670618/my-first-year-of-coding
======
enraged_camel
Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com
domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how
to code!"
In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition,
dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to
encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thank you! Learning something new is so intimidating but I really think the
best way to do is to just dive right in. Sure, you'll suck at first but that's
ok. Eventually you'll get better.
~~~
mantazer
I agree 100%. The experience I've gained working on personal projects of my
own has brought me further than working on class assignments. Not being afraid
to fail will take you a long way.
------
sergiotapia
My younger brother went from not knowing what a <p> or <a> tag was to hand-
making this in 2 months: [http://www.midepo.com/products/6150-venta-bolivia-
non-enim-t...](http://www.midepo.com/products/6150-venta-bolivia-non-enim-
totam-doloremque-expedita-et-in)
Responsive, built using Ruby on Rails, bootstrap, jquery, etc.
Any questions he had he could ask me and I would nudge him along, but it was
90% his determination that got him to where he's at now. Having a mentor
helps. I hope at least someone is inspired by jennifer or my brother, it can
be done and an insane amount of time! You just need the cojones.
~~~
m_mueller
@curbenthusiasm: you seem to have been hell banned - I can't figure out why.
edit: Really? Could the downvoter explain to me what's wrong with this
comment? Are we supposed to just leave banned accounts to rot now?
~~~
steveklabnik
Telling people they're hellbanned destroys the purpose of hellbanning.
~~~
m_mueller
Basically it's a system of checks and balances. Hellbanning makes trolling
less efficient while showdead makes it possible to correct mistakes. In the
case here noone could point out to me why he was banned, so I have to assume a
mistake. According to your logic, HN could as well just disable showdead.
~~~
steveklabnik
If I had to guess, it would be due to a new account submitting a YouTube link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=curbenthusiasm](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=curbenthusiasm)
(and yes, I agree, it'd work even better without showdead.)
~~~
pbhjpbhj
>"it'd work even better without showdead" //
What's actually wrong with this persons activity here though - they're
[presumably] new and haven't had chance to learn all about HN yet. Their
questions/comments don't seem so terrible that they should be hellbanned, or
do you disagree.
Presumably what you're saying here is that no-one should have the chance to
warn those who're hellbanned, we should trust the secret machination of HN to
always be right?
~~~
steveklabnik
I actually very often disagree with the secret machinations of HN.
It's not that I agree or disagree with this particular banning, but that in
the aggregate, "you are a new account and you post a link to youtube" is a
pretty good general characteristic. While it's unfortunate that there's
sometimes a false positive, most things that I see explicitly dead deserve to
be.
Besides, it's pretty easy to figure out if you've been hellbanned, and then if
you're real, you can ask dang (I guess, now, eh?) to reverse it. No warnings
needed.
------
readymade
It's worth revisiting the original HN post from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155)
IMHO she deserves kudos not just for accomplishing her goal (which really is
impressive enough on its own) but doing so in the face of a community with
such deeply ingrained sexism that some people thought it "suspicious" at the
outset.
Obviously she's a strong enough person that this kind of stuff didn't derail
her project, but one can only imagine what a different world we'd be in if
projects like these were met with more encouragement and less derision.
Not that the haters are getting any satisfaction today.
~~~
kbajorin
It seems to me encouragement is the dominant response, both here and in the
original post.
My criticism would be that in her post she highlights only the negative
comments she got. When, on the whole, the community votes her posts up and the
top comments are always positive.
~~~
jenniferDewalt
The response from the community has been amazingly and wonderfully supportive.
My comments in the post were mostly a reflection on the weird things people
have said to me personally. For example, I had a close family member look me
dead in the eye and say, "You shouldn't have started this project."
------
mbesto
_" Most importantly, I’ve been able to overcome the fear of being judged.
Whether you are making a piece of artwork, teaching yourself something new or
building a business you’re bound to encounter some negative energy. People
will say some pretty weird or just plain mean things to you when you’re doing
something kind of crazy. Those comments sting a bit, but they’re most
dangerous when you let them feed your self doubt. Battling your own self doubt
is incredibly formidable."_
This is above and beyond, the greatest lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur.
Kudos to you Jennifer for finding the same.
------
jere
Hmm... I read this and wanted more information about what happened in the
_last_ 185 days. There's a link to the YumHacker site but not much context
there. Here's a post explaining it a bit more:
[http://blog.yumhacker.com/post/74733516768/yumhacker-i-
built...](http://blog.yumhacker.com/post/74733516768/yumhacker-i-built-a-
social-network-for-food-and-heres)
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Good point! Thanks for posting the link to the YumHacker blog post. I've added
it to this blog post as well.
------
mb_72
"I’m still dealing with a bit of impostor syndrome and it still sounds weird
when I tell people I’m a software engineer..."
That's because you aren't a software engineer, and if you are saying so then
the feelings of being an impostor are entirely warranted.
'Coding' is one thing, 'engineering' is something different altogether.
I'm afraid this falls into the 'you don't know what you don't know category'.
~~~
motoford
+1
and then there is also that bit about no such thing as a "software engineer" …
~~~
motoford
I love the down votes on this. Must have hurt some feelings.
------
stickperson
I started to learn how to code back in August and got my first job as a
developer at the end of February. I went through a bootcamp and didn't see
anyone besides my girlfriend for 10 weeks.
It's definitely tough not having a mentor, and I struggled a bit for a couple
months after classes trying to figure out what I should spend my time
learning. I still struggle with it when working on personal projects and often
worry I'm not doing things the "best" way.
I sometimes get overwhelmed because there's so much I don't know, and deep
down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS degree. That
being said, I'm very happy where I am and wouldn't change anything.
~~~
ericabiz
> deep down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS
> degree.
I stopped working to write this comment--that's how important it is to me that
you know this is a belief that will only hold you back.
I could cite any one of thousands of articles that talk about dropouts who
made it, but I suspect you know about those articles and it hasn't affected
your belief.
So I'll just say this: If I had graduated with a degree, I would have never
been able to bootstrap a tech company when I was 20 and sell it for over a
million dollars when I was 26.
Don't look at yourself through the eyes of others, because you'll always find
yourself wanting. I'm sitting here about to launch my new company (we're doing
final testing of our new website right now.) I have no idea whether our site
(which is kind of wacky) will convert. I don't know if we'll get any sales.
And I've got everything riding on this company--I've put all my chips in.
There's enough in this world that will kick your ass. People haven't believed
in my companies for the past 13 years I've been running them. People have
laughed in my face, investors have turned me down over and over again,
customers have quit, money has been lost (and, on a brighter note, much money
has been made!)
Sometimes the only thing you can count on is your internal belief that you
WILL make it, no matter what. That's what got me through my last company
during its darkest hours. That's what's getting me through now. Enough people
will throw shit in your face. Don't be one of them. You are better than that.
The world is full of possibilities. Don't count yourself out. Jennifer sure
didn't. ;)
~~~
carrotleads
Now if this is true, that takes lots of balls...
I mean the whole "-I've put all my chips in." burn the boats outlook.
I quit my job to work on my startup ideas but have difficulty throwing all my
savings in. Wife & kids is my excuse.
~~~
ericabiz
> Now if this is true, that takes lots of balls...
Yep, it really is. Not only have I turned down several huge income
opportunities to work on MarketVibe, but I'd also sell just about everything I
have to see this product come to market. We have a true game-changer of a
product, and it's something I really believe in. We also have the right team
to build it--I'm a target customer for this product, which is one reason I
know the market needs it so badly. And it's a nice money-maker (SaaS).
But yeah. If I had to sell my car tomorrow to finance the startup, I'd do it
with zero second thoughts. I'm in this 100%. Otherwise, why run a startup at
all?
~~~
carrotleads
I heard of someone in australia doing something similar its called Newsmaven
but you seem to adding a dynamic conversion form too.
and props for having the balls to go all in. My argument is that all my
savings and assets is not mine. I share it with my family. I can/should only
risk my part of the savings/assets even though I have the right to act
unilaterally.
Some of my problem is having a savings habit and not being a spendy type of
guy. Its an asset as well as I need to learn to loosen up and spend on lot
more needed stuff to make our carrotleads product a success.
------
andygcook
My girlfriend expressed interest in learning to code last weekend. You were my
example of someone she should research and mimic to start off her journey.
What you've accomplished is extremely impressive and serves as a shining
example of how someone can go from knowing morning to developing a true skill.
Job well done!
------
aurumpotest
This is the first I've seen of this project, it looks inspirational. But how
did you choose the projects? I've often wanted to do a small project just for
the sake of making something nice and pretty, and improving my skills at the
same time, but I can never come up with anything. All your ideas are great -
but I can't imagine being able to come up with one a day for 6 months!
Also, how did the project work out time-wise? Were you working at the same
time? Roughly how long did you spend on each site?
Keep up the good work!
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Before I started the 180 project I made a list of every idea I could think of.
Then as the project went along I was often inspired by something I came across
the day before or a new concept I wanted to explore. I had a few moments where
I thought I'd never have a good idea again.
I quit my job last year and have been working on the 180 websites project and
now YumHacker full time. I spent on average 10 hours a day on the 180 project.
------
null_ptr
What do you plan to do next to advance your skills and understanding of
software making? How important was being in the spotlight to motivate you to
go down this path?
~~~
jenniferDewalt
I've been working a website called YumHacker since I've finished the 180
project. It's a restaurant discovery app using Rails as an API on the back end
and Backbone.js on the front end. I learned a lot with the 180 websites
project and working on a full scale app has been really great for taking my
skills to the next level.
Making myself publicly accountable was definitely a great motivator but my
biggest take away was getting over the fear of being wrong/judged.
~~~
jmcgough
I really appreciate you open-sourcing it - I spent some time trying to figure
out how to best integrate RoR and Backbone when I was learning the latter, and
having your source code to poke around at was really helpful.
------
carrotleads
Well I am showing this to my 2 girls.
They have got C++ & Unix books on their shelves but as far as I can tell, it
hardly been read.
Hoping your story gets the ball rolling.
~~~
kirab
Reading some (probably hard technical) books is the hardest way there is to
start this thing. Especially with C++ where it’s hard enough just to see your
results. If you want something to be done, give them something where they can
see their results ASAP. You can of course achieve this with C++, but then you
should get them a working IDE, debugger and maybe some easy graphical library
to play around with.
~~~
carrotleads
actually the idea is not the learn C++ or unix. Most of those books have great
introductory chapters and I am hoping that piques their interest.
As of now they know only the basics of markup language.
------
lowglow
You rock, Jen! You should be super proud of the progress you've made.
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thank you! It's been a crazy awesome year.
------
joshdance
Congratulations. You honestly inspired me. Thank you for sharing.
------
wglb
The 180 sites in 180 days effort and result is simply awesome.
------
NAFV_P
Did anyone notice the cheeky ascii art in the website source?
------
flclny
Congratulations! I've been toying with the idea of getting more serious about
learning how to code, and this is great inspiration. Thanks for sharing!
------
neovive
Very inspiring! Did you compile a list of the resources you used while
learning each of the languages/libraries or was it pretty random?
~~~
jenniferDewalt
I pulled lots of bits and pieces from all over the place but some of the big
helpers have been Stack Overflow, MDN, HTML5 Canvas Tutorials, Rails Tutorial,
GitHub, jQuery docs, and the Rails docs. I read tons of blogs and demos as
well.
------
adamworth2
Jennifer, you're an inspiration. I created an account just to tell you that.
Stay awesome!
------
hpriebe
Congrats! This is such an inspiration. What kind of resources did you use to
learn?
~~~
jenniferDewalt
The internet! I spent most of my time googling, searching Stack Overflow,
reading online demos, tutorials blog post and poring over docs to find the
answers to my questions. There are tons of free resources out there.
------
joshbert
You and your project are truly inspiring. Congratulations on everything!
------
zkirill
Congratulations! YumHacker is coming along nicely!
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks! I'm currently working on v2.0 which I am really excited about.
------
nemasu
This is awesome, good work!
------
columbo
Very impressive, great job
------
mastermindxxx
nice story, but you cant call that "coding". looked at the website and its
sophistication can be compared to a kid practicing how to write the alphabet
in primary school.
in terms of the learning curve this can be pulled off by an above avg 13 year
old in 2 weeks....
Nonetheless women + coding or women + investment banking etc. is the magic
combo that will put you on the front page in these days. talk about gender
equality/survival of the fittest....lol
~~~
aurumpotest
She might not have done the most complicated things in the world - I'm no
expert "coder" but I've done more complex things than her.
BUT I'd bet she's a better "coder" than me. She will be rock solid on all the
basics, so she has a great base to do more complicated things. For the more
complicated things I've done, I was relying heavily on stackoverflow searched
and the like, and although I made complicated things that worked, they were
probably fairly basic mistakes and things that could cause future problems
that Jen wouldn't have made/done.
Too many people these days (me among them) jump in without knowing how to swim
and then struggle to stay afloat. Jen taught herself to swim first.
------
coderbroder
the word coding is so annoying when it's used as a one-fits-all sort of thing,
it's like when people use the word literally instead of figuratively
~~~
HillRat
Well, if you want to get ridiculously technical, we shouldn't use "coding" for
anything higher-level than assembling bytecodes at the machine level. The term
was in common currency at least as early as Wheeler's "The Use of Sub-Routines
in Programming" (1952), while by 1954 the term "automated coding" was being
used to describe the use of higher-level languages such as Hopper's A-2 or
IBM's Speedcode (and, indeed, even basic mnemonic coding and relative/symbolic
address transformations that underlie what we today call "assembly
programming").
As it is, I'm comfortable using the term to denote any activity that
programmatically and logically instructs a computer to take a certain sequence
of actions. C? Coding! Java? Coding! JavaScript? Coding! CSS? Coding! Excel
columns? Coding! Ctrl-h and a regex selector? Coding! It's coding all the way
down!
------
altero
Nothing against Jennifer, her stuff is impressive.
But I find this ridiculous. This is called learning and is done by
thousandth/millions others. Everyone has to overcome their fear of being
judged and stuff. Giving kudos just because of gender just undermines girls to
take on harder challenges in future.
I started coding professionally when I was 17 not to starve, while overcoming
depression and mental illness. My cousin started coding recently, he was born
without hands! Nobody gives a shit because we are men.
~~~
omegant
For me is not interesting because is a woman, it´s interesting because she
made public the process and what she did. That´s very useful to me because I
want to learn, and also I want to be able to point somebody that asks me to an
amazing example. Please tell your learning process if you think you may help
someone due to your special situation.
~~~
altero
I think here website is impressive as bunch of simple puzzles. I teach
programming as a hobby and I may actually use some of that stuff.
I have problem with comments here. Nobody offers any sort of constructive
criticism. We should review source code and give her some advice. Perhaps
recommend a new framework to use, or even completely new direction (NodeJS).
------
marincounty
I think Jennifer is truly inspiring. I wish I thought anyone over 10 years old
using words like yum was still cute though. I'm sorry, but I sat next to a
group of extremely privileged twenty something people last night-- and had to
listen to how yummy their food was, and oh the picture taking. I get it, you
enjoy your food. Just stop describing it in public; some of us just want to
eat. And yes--I do think of all the starving kids whenever I hear yummy out of
privileged people mouths. I'll probally get banned for this post, but it just
might be the best thing anyone has ever done to me.
~~~
jenniferDewalt
Don't worry, I've seen much, much harsher critiques of things on HN. I doubt
you'll get banned. I'll have to keep in mind that the name YumHacker was so
offensive to someone they were compelled to write an off topic rant about it,
though.
~~~
dang
_I 've seen much, much harsher critiques of things on HN._
As have we all. It makes me cringe thinking about it!
_I doubt you 'll get banned._
Your intuition is better than most; that comment has been punished enough.
Things go much better when the community corrects things itself without
moderators intervening. My goal is never to have to do anything. Edit: My
long-term goal. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Future of Web 3.0 According to Yahoo - qhoxie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_the_future_of_web_30.php
======
danielh
It comes down to even more APIs while giving the user control over his data.
So, Web 3.0 == Web 2.0 + Privacy? Sounds more like Web 2.1 to me.
------
abless
Web 3.0 = mobile web
------
saint
Of course this is very interesting, but I guess it is too early to talk about
web 3 (actually this enumeration is strange thing as well). Somehow this lacks
wow moment to be considered as web 3 (or whatever number you want).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Develop a Sense of Scale - nickb
http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-sense-of-scale/
======
mattmaroon
"Bill Gates earned over $3000 per minute [$50/second] since Microsoft was
created. Spending 5 seconds to pick $100 off the floor is literally not a good
use of his time." How does it take 5 seconds to pick a bill up off the floor?
Also, most of his money was made via stock appreciation, so it's not as if he
stops earning when he bends over to pick up a benjy.
~~~
kalid
Yeah, I threw that note in just because that type of comment is fairly
popular. But the time depends on whether he's sitting, standing, how far away
the bill is, impact of context switch, etc.
And yep, it's not like he can't pick up money and think at the same time :).
------
noonespecial
Then again, its a good argument for why "first class" on airliners is
acceptable (socially). If Bill had to sit in coach and eat that food for 16
hours, he might make a bad choice the next day that could quite literally
effect the economy.
He eats bad ham, we get vista! :)
------
Tichy
I wonder how they created pictures of earth from a million light years away?
Are those fantasy pics, or, if they rendered them via computer, did they
really have all the data for all the stars?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chromium/Blink – Intent to Implement: Experimental Framework - lucideer
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/experimentation-dev/GsPtuFt8XqA
======
andrewstuart2
Yikes.
As far as I can tell, the only meaningful thing this adds is the ability to
require developer registration in order to use experimental APIs.
> The ultimate goal is to enable experimentation and iteration on pre-
> standardization APIs, in a way that gathers meaningful feedback, but without
> burn-in of the APIs.
I'm not sure what's broken about the "experimental" label except that it can't
trace usage back to specific developers. If it's experimental, it will
probably break or disappear. "Burn-in" doesn't have to be a problem if you
_actually_ iterate and yank or change stuff. API keys don't solve anything
that code removal doesn't solve (aside from developer tracking).
Want to curb "developer abuse" of vendor prefixes? Remove the API. Train
developers to understand that experimental features are experimental by
actually following through. If you don't want users to think the browser is at
fault, maybe alert the user to that fact. "Oops, looks like this website's
developers were a bit careless with their code. Sorry about that; some people
like to take big risks and it stinks that you the user had to suffer for it."
If you really want to ensure that only specific devs are allowed to use some
features, presumably to limit impact on users and loss of browser market
share, then just ship those devs a custom release. Protect usage of the whole
browser with a key, if you want.
Personally, I'd rather we leave things open to experimentation (with an
established and valid understanding they may break) over locking it down to
devs willing to give you their phone number so you actively approach them for
feedback and turn off the tap on a per-developer basis if you so desire.
~~~
mappu
Something like
-webkit-will-be-removed-on-2015-10-17-border-radius:
~~~
jewel
This is a great solution, in my opinion. Perhaps it could include the browser
version instead:
-chrome-46-faster-font-engine:
This will allow any developer to opt in, with an explicit understanding that
when the next browser version comes out the feature will disappear.
console.warn can be used to give a URL where developers can go to give
feedback.
------
greggman
I'm guessing the problem this is trying to solve
Originally we had prefixed APIs. webkitAudioContext for example. The idea was
the prefix would be removed. Unfortunately the problem was thousands of
websites would use the prefixed API. Now you can't remove the prefixed version
without breaking many many sites. Worse, there's even arguably an incentive
for other browser to add someone else's prefix because they want their browser
to run all those same sites.
So, a couple of years ago the browser vendors all agreed, no more prefixes.
They'll put all the new stuff behind flags that developers can opt into. The
problem with that is no one uses them. The users aren't going to set the flag
so no devs have any reason to try out the APIs. There's no re-world usage to
see that the APIs work, to see what issues come up.
So, there's this one. Select a few special devs, let them use the features,
enable those features for their domain only. Real users get to use the
features with no work on their part. It solves the problem to some extent. The
devs know the feature might not last. They're also signed up to get
notification if the feature is going to change or be removed. And, I guess
their motivation is to one up their competitors.
And that last part is the whole problem with this proposal. Unless any dev can
sign up then only special "chosen" devs get the competitive advantage. That
feels wrong for some reason. I don't have a better solution to suggest though.
edit:
\-- ugh --
I suppose I should have clicked the link which said all of this
[https://infrequently.org/2015/08/doing-science-on-the-
web/](https://infrequently.org/2015/08/doing-science-on-the-web/)
------
thristian
The requirement to register for an API key (presumably with your Google
account) seems a bit weird. Do they expect other browsers to share a Google-
controlled API key service, or do they expect developers to sign up for
multiple developer accounts, or to deal with four radically different systems
for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari?
Last time I heard something like this discussed, one of the suggestions was
"browsers automatically disable support for experimental features on
Tuesdays", which should allow people time to experiment but should prevent
them from depending on it in production. Also, it's a simple rule that can be
shared through the web development community by word-of-mouth[1], and many
browser vendors can share it without having to coordinate infrastructure, etc.
[1]: Obviously this wouldn't be the _only_ way to share it, but when one
developer can turn to another and say 'why doesn't this work' and get a one-
sentence answer that contains an accurate model for predicting future
occurrences, it's a lot more likely for that model to be reliably propagated
via Stack Overflow, Twitter, the random mailing-lists-reformatted-as-web-
forums content farms that crop up in search results, etc.
~~~
scottfr
What is the benefit of something like disabling on Tuesdays?
Isn't it simpler and just as effective to put the feature behind a
configuration flag that is off by default and the user must manually turn on
in the browser preferences? Both Chrome and Firefox already use this
mechanism.
~~~
lucideer
The benefit would be that - assuming the developer is well aware of this
limitation - it would act as a disincentive to push code relying on the
experimental feature to production.
It would however introduce a lot of hassle in testing the feature - being
unable to work on a particular branch for all of every Tuesday. A better
approach might be disabling it for an hour or two daily at 4am local time, or
for 5 minutes per-hour, etc.
~~~
scottfr
Doesn't having to ask your users to go to chrome://flags and click the
"Enable" button next to some very scary looking technical text have the same
effect?
I can't imagine asking users (either public or internal) to do that.
~~~
newjersey
We could just ask IT to set up flags on internal applications/users if there
was a business need...
------
xg15
I like the general idea of this, but I'm bothered by the "slippery slope"
effect this might cause.
Right now, the proposal is to strictly timebox the experiments and to
implement procedures that discourage participants from relying on the
experimental features.
However, timebox or not, what this framework does is to put in place a system
for granting API access based on privilege. Once this system is standardized
and accepted, what keeps it from being abused?
At the simplest, certain experiments could be extended for "infinite" time at
the request of big-name participiants if the features are particularly
valuable. One of the browser vendors could decide to open up registration for
everyone but keep the new feature permanently registration-only. In the most
extreme case, this could cause an "app-storisation" of the web.
Another point that might cause trouble is the current distinction by origin
(and not, say, top-level browsing context). Participiants could "smuggle
features out of the lab" by building a JS library with a hidden iframe and
selling/offering it to third-parties of their choosing.
------
jamesrom
No experimental feature is cool enough to require you:
1. To register
2. To Use an API key
3. To detect support for (and presumably fallback)
4. To provide feedback for
You have a problem with burn-in of your experimental APIs? How about you
semver your APIs and console.warn when it's deprecated.
This problem has been solved many times before.
~~~
ubernostrum
_This problem has been solved many times before._
Not on the Web, it hasn't. Deprecating experimental features and even just
fixing bugs has been difficult to impossible for a long time; "pay the
contractor once to set it up, then leave it unchanged for a decade" is a
depressingly common approach to setting up a site, and leads to angry site
owners and even larger numbers of angry users when suddenly a behavior the
site shouldn't have relied on is changed or removed.
~~~
simoncion
>> This problem has been solved many times before.
> Not on the Web, it hasn't.
The Web doesn't require some radically new way of developing software.
The webdev community appears to be -slowly- realizing that those nerds back in
the 1990's (and 80's and 70's and...) might have _actually_ known a thing or
two about developing software, and are _finally_ learning from some of the
lessons learned way back when. :)
"All" that needs to be done is for the browser makers that matter [0] to agree
to aggressively alter experimental features as needed, remove them whenever
they deem necessary, and _widely_ and _repeatedly_ advertise this policy and
make it abundantly clear. Hell, even _Microsoft_ has the backbone to break
users of undocumented or experimental APIs.
[0] That is, everyone but Apple.
~~~
ubernostrum
_" All" that needs to be done_
"Those nerds" aren't the ones calling the shots. The decisions are being made
by the same people who want the company's original 1970s COBOL application to
keep running until the heat death of the universe. "Those nerds" would rewrite
the thing if they were allowed to, but they're not.
The Web has the same problem with ancient deployments that management thinks
should just keep working unchanged for decades. The problem hasn't been solved
for the Web, and also hasn't been solved in other fields, hence you still see
listings for COBOL programmers.
~~~
simoncion
> The decisions are being made by the same people who want the company's
> original 1970s COBOL application to keep running until the heat death of the
> universe.
Neither Google nor Mozilla have COBOL applications from the 1970's.
Given what I've heard from people who work on Chrome say about the people who
work on MSFT's browser, MSFT has recently _also_ become very interested in
making software development for a web browser easier, better, and safer.
> The Web has the same problem with ancient deployments that management thinks
> should just keep working unchanged for decades.
We're talking about _new_ features marked as _experimental_ and _unstable_ by
the folks who _write_ and _maintain_ the browser that _implements_ that
feature. As I said in a previous comment, even Microsoft has the backbone to
break in-the-field software that makes use of undocumented or experimental
APIs.
We're not talking about changing or removing XMLHttpRequest. We're talking
about changing or removing blink-experimental-webgl-blink-tag-over-web-rtc-
ea59f01.
~~~
ubernostrum
_We 're talking about new features marked as experimental and unstable by the
folks who write and maintain the browser that implements that feature._
And when the manager says "deadline is next week", and the _new_ and
EXPERIMENTAL and _UNSTABLE_ (gasp) feature is the only way to get it done, you
use it.
Now, good luck getting permission to go back and clean up technical debt.
~~~
simoncion
> And when the manager says "deadline is next week", and the new and
> EXPERIMENTAL and UNSTABLE (gasp) feature is the only way to get it done, you
> use it.
I fail to see how a manager's failure to understand that you _cannot_ rely on
features that are subject to _breaking_ change or removal at _any_ time,
without warning is Google's, Microsoft's or Mozilla's problem.
> Now, good luck getting permission to go back and clean up technical debt.
If your site breaks because the experimental feature that your manager forced
you to use was radically changed or removed -as per the widely advertised,
well-known policy regarding experimental features-, and your manager doesn't
give you permission to fix the mess he forced you into, you -as the
programmer- have nothing to worry about. This is clearly a failure of
management. :)
Will that stop this manager from yelling at you? Probably not. Will this stop
you from getting fired? Maybe not. But, seriously: If you get fired because
your manager ignored your expert recommendation that his plan would lead to
disaster, and -a little while later- his plan leads to disaster, you were
working for a _very_ unreasonable boss. It would only be a matter of time
until you were fired for some other equally stupid reason.
If -on the other hand- you commit to doing something that you later find out
is not possible, and you _don 't_ own up to your mistake, whatever fallout
comes from the stupid things you do to cover up your mistake is your own damn
fault.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Investors Must Confront the On-Demand Economy’s Legal Problem - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/12/investors-must-confront-the-on-demand-economys-huge-legal-problem/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
lsiebert
It's not just the On-demand economy, though obviously I can see why tech
crunch would want to draw attention to that aspect. Lots of companies violate
labor laws and classify individuals who they treat as employees as
contractors, because it's cheaper. Per the article, 10% to 40% of payroll
costs are saved. That's a hefty chunk of a lot of a company's expenses.
And that's not considering things like the burdens imposed on society by lost
tax revenue, decreased paying into social security, and health care costs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redis Core Team Update - itamarhaber
https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-core-team-update/
======
antirez
Both Madelyn and Zhao are _terrific_ programmers. In case you wonder, they are
not random people put there for reasons, like for example since Madelyn is a
woman so there was some pressure to add she. She deserves this 100% and is one
of the top Redis contributors of the last times, with deep technical knowledge
in basically every aspect of Redis. The same for Zhao, he is simply
impressive, can track bugs about complex conditions like almost nobody can.
I'm happy to see them aboard. Btw they were both effectively part of the
informal "core team" that was forming spontaneously in the recent times.
~~~
the-dude
As a non-native English speaker, I am always thrown off by the word
_terrific_. It sounds horrible to me, and apparently it can also mean _very
bad_.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrific](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/terrific)
~~~
xeromal
Awesome is a similar word. It used to mean awe-inspiring, but now can simply
describe an enjoyable bowel movement. lol
~~~
bryanlarsen
The original meaning of awful used to be awe-inspiring too. Awesome came about
as a replacement when awful started acquiring significant negative
connotations.
------
derefr
Interesting move, putting “SLA-driven” infrastructure engineers (i.e. people
working at public clouds to deliver Redis-as-a-Service solutions) in charge of
the project. (Not just these two from AWS and Alibaba Cloud, but the rest
being from Redis Labs.)
It seems like, for one reason or another (Redis Labs because they want to sell
their “core plus proprietary modules” service; the clouds because they want to
push you to use their other products for use-cases that fit them better), all
the new leadership has reason to want to _not_ add any more developer-facing
features to Redis Core. I expect the Redis Core you see right now, is the same
Redis Core we’ll have 10 years from now, client-API wise. Redis, as a USP, is
“done.”
Unless, that is, some third-party comes in with their own polished feature PR,
and pushes really hard for it. In other words, Redis is kind of moving to the
Linux kernel model, where “new use-case out of nowhere” features come in
mostly not from internal development, but rather from external contributors
petitioning the core-maintainership priesthood with reasons their patch should
be upstreamed.
Either way, there’ll certainly continue to be plenty of ops-staff-facing
innovations, bug-fixes and polish. That’s what gets this new core team up in
the morning. I’m sure people running Redis in production are happy about that.
~~~
imron
> I’m sure people running Redis in production are happy about that.
I sympathize with the main points you were making, but surely ‘people running
Redis in production’ are the core use case for Redis, so ultimately this move
seems good for the project’s overall direction.
~~~
derefr
Zooming out, there are two kinds of production infra software:
1\. the kind that devops people directly see a need (usually a scaling need)
to integrate it into a stack of _existing production software_ ; where this
integration may or may not require additional development-time work (i.e.
connector glue code in the business layer), but is either way an _ops use-
case_. Examples: any caching layer, any message queue.
2\. the kind that developers integrate with in order to get the _semantic
guarantees_ that particular kind of software offers; and then ops people are
left "holding the bag", needing to deploy that same software (or something
compatible with its wire protocol) in production because that's what the
business logic was written to depend on. Examples: most databases; object
storage; map-reduce workload engines.
Usually, it's pretty clear which bucket a piece of infra software falls
into—either it's developers or ops people that suggest it as a solution, but
rarely is a piece of software equally loved by both.
But Redis straddles the line between these usually-clear clusters of software.
It can be a metrics-reactive "patch" to a running system to get it to scale
better; but it can _also_ be a development-time foundation for business logic,
or a dependency of a library where it was a dev-time foundation for _its_
business logic (e.g. any "background worker" library.)
In other words, Redis Core as a project, serves two masters: it must _both_ be
1\. a stable, scale-multiplying, worry-free daemon you can easily toss into
your existing legacy infra;
2\. a feature-rich "durable data-structure server", allowing developers to
obviate the keeping of durable state in the app layer itself.
The new leadership certainly will care a lot about use-case 1.
I'm pretty sure, though, that the previous leadership (i.e. Antirez) cared
almost exclusively about use-case 2—making developers' lives easier by taking
durable-in-memory-state-management code they were writing, and replacing it
with calls to Redis. That's why we didn't see TLS support and so forth for so
long. Redis wasn't being _built_ for ops people; it was being built for
developers. Code that went into complex deploy-time use-cases, was only ever
added _by Antirez_ as a consequence of systems developed for Redis now
_depending_ on running it in production. (E.g. you don't _scale_ Redis into a
cluster; you _develop for_ the sharding semantics of Redis Cluster, and so
therefore you must deploy Redis Cluster. You _can_ "upgrade to" Redis Cluster
after-the-fact, but it's far harder than just writing your code to be
"cluster-safe" at the start. It's idiomatically a _development-time choice_
you're supposed to be making, knowing the eventual "scaling goal" of your
system.)
Yes, the rest of the core team—mostly ops-focused engineers—gradually accrued
around Antirez. That's why many of these ops-time use-cases _did_ start
getting addressed.
I'm mostly worried that now, with Antrirez out of the picture, the team is
unbalanced in the other direction: there's no one on the core team pushing the
"developer productivity" side of the story.
To me, that laser focus on developer productivity was what made Redis
consistently the infrastructure component I would most want to integrate to
solve a problem, if it offered a solution to that problem. I knew that "the
Redis approach" would always involve just a library import, a connection URL
instantiation, and one or two atomic Redis command calls; whereas other
libraries might require me to write delegate modules, serializers, attach to
special listener modes, etc. _And_ I always knew I could just open redis-cli
and prototype out those same commands against my local zero-initial-config-
required Redis server; where other infra might require me to fiddle with
everything from setting my own compile-time flags, to JVM memory-management,
to Docker image volume mounting, etc.
I really just hope that the new leadership retains enough of the spirit
Antirez has been injecting into Redis, that they'll reject PRs that solve ops
use-cases but come _at the expense of_ developer productivity (e.g. moving to
entirely-async command execution, and then deprecating the text-based Redis
wire protocol because it's hard to integrate its parsing into a Jepsen-correct
threaded execution engine, or something like that.) Such features wouldn't
hurt _cloud deployments_ for _existing Redis users_ at all, but they'd sure
scare away new developers from finding new ways to replace business logic with
Redis.
~~~
imron
This follow up comment was insightful. Thanks.
------
swagonomixxx
What will be interesting to see is how Redis fares without Antirez.
He was the heart and soul of the project.
It also makes me think, what would Linux be when Linus decides to step away? I
kind of don't want to think about it.
Thank you to Antirez for all your hard work on Redis.
~~~
johnfn
One of my favorite bits of trivia: What would Git be like if Linus stepped
away? Oh yeah, he stepped away after a few months and Junio Hamano continued
running it for the next 15 years[1] (!!).
[1]:
[https://github.com/git/git/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/git/git/graphs/contributors)
~~~
sdesol
I'm not sure what your point is. Antirez has been contributing to redis for
over 11 years and accounts for 80% of all its code churn.
[https://imgur.com/RnlzECa](https://imgur.com/RnlzECa)
In just the last 90 days, he accounted for 50% of the code that is being
changed in redis. I'm currently indexing the Git repository, as I'm curious to
see the impact Linus had before he left, but I don't think Linus leaving, is
anything like antirez leaving.
Sorry if this post comes of confrontational, as that is not its intention. I
just don't understand what comparison you are trying to make.
~~~
quietbritishjim
I think they were replying to a different bit of the parent comment than you
seem to think:
> ... what would Linux be when Linus decides to step away?
~~~
swagonomixxx
I think it was a fair reply. Linus's contributions to Git, while basically
100% of the project initially, were not sustained over as long as Antirez's
contributions to Redis.
------
seemslegit
As with Yossi and Oran vis-a-vis Redis labs, it is not clear whether Madelyn
and Zhao are in the core team in their personal capacities or as
representatives of Amazon and Alibaba respectively, we know that Redis labs
reserves the right to name replacements for Yossi and Oran, is the same true
for Madelyn and Zhao and their current employers ?
------
yjftsjthsd-h
So that at least looks like good news. Hope they can make this transition work
smoothly!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Git - Linus is a designer - muriithi
http://www.ivy.fr/blog/index.php/2008/02/25/82-git-linus-is-a-designer
======
fiaz
I've recently switched from SVN to git. The posting mentioned Mercurial, and
I've heard Linus mention Mercurial in his talk at Google. What is the
difference between hg and git?
~~~
dehowell
I can't verify this from experience, but git is probably faster. Git is
written in C and Mercurial is written in Python.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dodgeball dead. - far33d
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/dodgeball/aaaaand-its-dead-255399.php
======
jey
False alarm. Works for me.
------
danw
Still works here, I checked the link when I read it on valley wag :D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Princeton theoretical physicist Steven Gubser has died - tlb
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/08/06/princeton-theoretical-physicist-steven-gubser-outstanding-scholar-string-theory-and
======
ahelwer
Same weekend as Ann Nelson, a physicist at the University of Washington. Both
died in outdoor accidents; Ann stepped on a loose rock while downclimbing a
gulley and that was the ball game.
I am a voracious reader of climbing accident reports and hope his family or
climbing partners decide to publish what happened. All I've read is that his
"rope snapped" which isn't really something that ever happens; cut yes,
snapped no.
~~~
meruru
Climbing sounds like an incredibly dangerous sport. I don't understand how so
many people are willing to do risky things like that.
~~~
unixhero
Because it takes away all your thoughts, and connects you with instant
reality. Plus, it's a fitness activity, it is insanely fun, very social and
gives an intense sense of achievment.
~~~
meruru
That applies to pretty much every sport. Why choose one that puts your life at
risk?
~~~
mtnGoat
You could die at any moment... I know two people that were killed by drink
drivers, during the day, through no fault of their own.
Why not enjoy the things that make feel alive, while you are alive? You might
not be tomorrow.
------
evanb
Last weekend was a terrible weekend for physics. Ann Nelson, an outstanding
physicist at UW, also died in a mountaineering accident.
[https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019080...](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190808a/full/)
~~~
dctoedt
Thanks for that - Nelson's husband's tribute, starting right after the PT
piece, is touching.
------
gbronner
True story: he lived in the same dorm room all four years, and only got 2 A s
as an undergrad; the rest were A+es, which were incredibly hard to get.
Fantastic lecturer, advisor, climbing instructor, and really brilliant person.
Can't believe he's gone.
------
fnordprefect
This is so sad. He was such a lovely and brilliant guy :(
------
sbdmmg
Very sad news. Took one of his graduate courses, he was great.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare co-founder is leaving - tilt
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/04/naveen-selvadurai-foursquare-co-founder-maybe-leaving/
======
LiveTheDream
Strange that the post's title changed from "may be leaving" to "is leaving",
though the content still says he "is likely" leaving. Is it confirmed or just
conjecture?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Why Children Need Chores - prostoalex
http://wsj.com/articles/why-children-need-chores-1426262655
======
kendallpark
> Like a videogame, start small and have young children earn new “levels” of
> responsibilities, like going from sorting clothes to earning the right to
> use the washing machine.
I feel like kids are smarter than this. When my mom made me start doing my own
laundry at age 12 I did not feel like I was winning at life.
> Talk about chores differently. For better cooperation, instead of saying,
> “Do your chores,” Dr. Rende suggests saying, “Let’s do our chores.” This
> underscores that chores are not just a duty but a way of taking care of each
> other.
I completely agree with this. I think this was the biggest piece missing from
the way chores worked in my family. We had a cleaning lady and my mom had her
clean less and less of the house as we got older in order to teach us
responsibility via chores. But it was a very individualized thing and always
felt like an artificially engineered scenario.
~~~
andrewljohnson
Hard to put much past a 12-year old, sounds like your mom started too late :)
My 2-year old loves to "help" sort laundry, and loves to take laundry to the
machine, even when it's clean.
~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I remember begging my mom to let me do dishes when I was 4 years old. She
spent so much time over the sink that I just assumed that it must be fun. I
may have been proven wrong, but it certainly got me in the habit of keeping my
sink empty.
~~~
oh_sigh
Do you really have any insight into what you were thinking when you were 4
years old? I assume you have no idea if you really thought it was "fun", or if
it was just something that people did, and therefore you should mimic it.
~~~
Spooky23
My son is 3, and is at almost all times making the case that he is a "big
boy"... That's a big factor. Fun is always a factor, because kids love to hang
out with the parents.
Besides that, he just wants to help in any way he can. The other day he was
piling laundry into a big dump truck, and rigged it to tow another vehicle to
transport laundry to the room where my wife was folding.
------
wodenokoto
Related to this: in Japan the school children have to clean the class room and
hallways. It's an integrated part of going to school and I think it is
brilliant on so many levels.
Best case, it saves money on staff, teaches children how to clean and how to
be respectful of their environment.
Obviously there are some potential for cruelty, like if you know it's
Hashimoto's turn to clean today and you think he's a wimp, you can save some
dirt somewhere for him to deal with.
I don't think this is a problem in Japan, and regardless, let's be honest:
kids are real assholes sometimes regardless of what you do.
~~~
pcurve
They serve each other food too. Very cute!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7aGHNNpGlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7aGHNNpGlM)
------
RogerL
It's perhaps just due to this being a too brief article, but I don't buy the
science as presented. Correlation is not causation. The children that did
chores at 3-4 may have grown up to have good relationships due to other
factors in the family that also caused chores.
Then the Weissbourd study says nothing about chores. All it reports is the #
of people that valued achievement, happiness, or caring for others more.
I don't know. I'm not arguing for or against chores, but I don't think this
article made a convincing case for its headline.
~~~
parfe
>Correlation is not causation.
Case fucking closed then. I cherish the in depth commentary Hn has to offer
regarding scientific studies
------
brohoolio
Chores definitely helped me appreciate everything my members family did once I
got a little older.
------
cellularmitosis
Leaving this article open causes my computer to do a bunch of writes, once per
second, and it never seems to stop.
What tool(s) can I use to figure out why this page is hitting my hard drive
every second?
(running chrome on windows xp)
~~~
danparsonson
Try the Sysinternals utilities ([https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
gb/sysinternals/](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/)) -
Process Explorer would be a good place to start, and Process Monitor if you're
feeling a bit more adventurous.
edit: I should add that Mark Russinovich, who wrote these tools, has also
blogged a fair bit over the years about using them to solve mysteries such as
yours - e.g.
[http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/10/3...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/10/30/3529266.aspx)
------
fsiefken
There's an android app called choremaster to gamify the chores a bit.
~~~
stevesearer
I feel like my mother did something similar on my brother and I minus the
experience points.
She would write out all of our chores as well as the fun things we would like
to do that day. We would then try to complete chores quickly in order to get
to the fun things we chose. From what I remember, we would even race to see
who could get a better time at emptying all of the trash cans in the house and
things like that.
We also had autonomy in which chores to complete first but she would be sure
to explain to us that if we did all of our fun things first, we would then
have a huge block of chores which would not be fun.
------
Dewie
"Don't be such a Negative Nancy" \- If you hate work and chores yourself, do
you really think your kids are going to develop a better attitude than you?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Power of Mechanical Turk - mittermayr
http://mittermayr.tumblr.com/post/12783989865/the-power-of-mturk
======
antonioe
This is actually in violation with Mturks TOS. You cannot ask for personally
identifiable information. They could ban your Amazon account.
~~~
mittermayr
really? oh man, those TOS are killing me. let me check that... thanks for
telling me!
~~~
pavel_lishin
You could ask people to remove personally identifiable information (names,
phones, etc.) and inform them that if they'd like to upload their full resume,
they're welcome to at the full site.
~~~
mittermayr
yeah, that sounds like a much better approach even. thanks man!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Being gay is no longer a crime in Australia - thisrod
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/sexual-age-of-consent-standardised-to-age-16-by-queensland-government-20160915-grhiby.html
======
flukus
Terrible headline, it should be "Age of consent for anal sex lowered".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OST or Theme Songs Suggestions? - gj0
======
gj0
Here are some from my side :
\- TVF PITCHERES SONG-THE RELEVANT SOUND :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvEG3Ac1qHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvEG3Ac1qHg)
\- Lord of the Rings :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJT12-wrCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJT12-wrCY)
\- Hans Zimmer - Time (Inception) :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k)
\- Interstellar Main Theme - Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDVtMYqUAyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDVtMYqUAyw)
\- IP man :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMk4RP-q6e8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMk4RP-q6e8)
------
johncoltrane
\- The "Esper Edition" of the Blade Runner soundtrack, by Vangelis et al., is
a must:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQFRtbDK9Yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQFRtbDK9Yk)
\- The classic horror movies made by Hammer Films had terrific soundtracks,
James bernard's being my favorites:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isG3-rQqxZA&list=PLs3T-t417Y...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isG3-rQqxZA&list=PLs3T-t417YhSZSUSAIDgcLjvhE4h2n1Vl)
\- David Lynch's Twin Peaks, by Angelo Badalamenti:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbSYAJ9Tvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbSYAJ9Tvw)
\- Everything and anything by Bernard Hermann:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owm8RkA3FtA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owm8RkA3FtA)
\- I'm not sure if it ever received a proper release but the Hannibal TV
show's soundtrack, by Brian Reitzell, is highly regarded for, IMO, good
reasons.
\- David Lynch's Dune, by Toto and Brian Eno:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMnM1Qww2xs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMnM1Qww2xs)
\- Goblin's horror soundtracks:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQejiArD608](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQejiArD608)
\- John Carpenter wrote the soundtrack of most of his films himself. My
personal favorites are The Fog:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKGzUxH9GyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKGzUxH9GyQ)
and Christine:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEwN1-Gaj5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEwN1-Gaj5s)
\- John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, by Michael small:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh8osZAYTjo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh8osZAYTjo)
\- Classic Godzilla soundtracks by Akira Ifukube et al.:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3FnS6lx-
Ds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3FnS6lx-Ds)
\- David Cronenberg's The Naked Lunch, by Howard Shore with Ornette Coleman:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBh_4_i2zLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBh_4_i2zLk)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Schneier on Security : Risks of Cloud Computing - billswift
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/risks_of_cloud.html?nc=11
======
GiraffeNecktie
Actually it's just Schneier providing a link to this New York Times article:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20zittrain.html?_r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20zittrain.html?_r=1)
~~~
benatkin
Yeah, it was a direct copy of the page's title tag. Note to submitters: if the
title tag doesn't make sense for the article, please change it so that it
does.
------
absconditus
Jonathan Zittrain's definition of "the cloud" doesn't seem to be very nuanced.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What’s Wrong with Bayes - luu
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/03/whats-wrong-with-bayes/
======
signalsmith
For me, I really appreciate the Bayesian approach because it makes it very
explicit that you pick a prior.
Perhaps my experience is limited, but every (supposedly non-Bayesian) model
I've used in practice has been possible to re-express using Bayesian terms,
priors and beliefs and so on. Then I get to look at the intitial assumptions
(model/prior) and use suitable human hand-wavey judgement about whether they
make sense.
Bayes is a good way to _update_ models, but if you lose sight of the fact that
the bottom of your chain of deduction was a hand-wavey guess, you're in
trouble.
~~~
eanzenberg
Yeah, no thanks though. I don't want every rando adding "priors" that "feel"
right to their analysis. Frequentist is straight forward. Both can (and are)
abused to prove bias.
~~~
jules
The difference between a frequentist and a Bayesian is that the latter admits
that he picks a prior. A frequentist smushes together (1) the statistical
assumptions (2) the approximations that make the problem computationally
tractable and (3) the mathematical derivations, into one big mess. Just
because you're not stating your assumptions doesn't mean there are none.
Consider maximum likelihood estimation. It is not invariant under coordinate
transformations. So which coordinates you pick is an assumption. In fact, with
Bayesian estimation you can do the same thing: picking a prior is equivalent
to picking the uniform prior in a different coordinate system. So frequentist
estimation does involve picking a prior by picking a coordinate system, even
if the frequentist does not admit this.
Frequentist methods are conceptually anything but straightforward. The
advantage of frequentist methods is that they are computationally tractable.
Usually they are best understood as approximations to Bayesian methods. For
instance, MLE can be viewed as the variational approximation to Bayes where
the family of probability distributions is the family of point masses, and the
prior is uniform.
~~~
Akababa
What do you mean by coordinate transformation? MLE is invariant under
parameter transformations because it's just the argmax of the likelihood.
~~~
knzhou
Adding to the other comments, you still have prior-dependence on a more subtle
level, because it depends on what hypotheses are allowed.
Here's an extreme example. Consider flipping an apparently fair coin and
getting "THHT". The hypothesis that the coin is fair gives this result with
likelihood 1/16\. The hypothesis that a worldwide government conspiracy has
been formed with the sole purpose of ensuring this result... has a likelihood
of 1.
But nobody would ever declare this the MLE, because "government conspiracy"
isn't one of the allowed options. But it isn't precisely because it's
unlikely, i.e. because of your prior. Of course this is an extreme example,
but there are more innocuous prior-based assumptions baked in too.
~~~
closed
Wait, in frequentist statistics getting, say, a p-value of 1 is not a bad
thing--unless you erroneously assume that value is _evidence for your null
hypothesis_.
Consider that if your data generating process really is a fair coin, then the
conspiracy outcome you mention only occurs 1 our of 16 times, so 15 out of 16
times you observe a likelihood of 0. 15 out of 16 times your reject the
conspiracy case.
There is also a tricky component here, because the notion of sample size is
not clearly defined (can we generate multiple 4-tuples of flips, and consider
each one a sample? Is your example really just a funky way of discussing type
II power?)
~~~
knzhou
> Wait, in frequentist statistics getting, say, a p-value of 1 is not a bad
> thing--unless you erroneously assume that value is evidence for your null
> hypothesis.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Suppose you get HHTHT. Then you run the
following statistical test:
Hypothesis: a government conspiracy has been hatched to make you get HHTHT.
Null hypothesis: this is not the case.
The p-value is 1/32, so the null hypothesis is rejected.
This is bad reasoning for two reasons: first the alternative hypothesis is
incredibly unlikely, and second the choice of alternative hypothesis has been
rigged after seeing the data. These are exactly the two reasons so many social
science studies running on frequentist stats have done terribly, and why we
would benefit from Bayesian stats which force you to make these issues
explicit.
~~~
bonoboTP
> The p-value is 1/32, so the null hypothesis is rejected.
No, the p-value is defined as the likelihood of a result _at least as extreme_
as the one we obtained, under the null hypothesis. It's not simply the
likelihood of the particular result you obtained, as that would always be zero
for continuous quantities! (Remember that the p-value's distribution is
_uniform_ over the 0-1 interval under the null, so any criticism that says the
p-value is almost always small just by chance must be wrong somewhere).
So first you need to establish a way to say what result is how extreme. This
is very often trivial and quite objective (the more people cured/made sick,
the more extreme the effect of the drug). For the coin flip case, one way
would be to call results with more imbalanced ratio more extreme. Then in your
3 heads out of 5 case, the (one sided) p-value would be the likelihood of
getting 3, 4 or 5 heads out of 5. You can also come up with a different way to
define what "more extreme" means (and put it forward in a convincing way),
otherwise you can just not talk about p-values. You can keep talking about
likelihoods, but not p-values.
~~~
knzhou
> No, the p-value is defined as the likelihood of a result at least as extreme
> as the one we obtained, under the null hypothesis.
Define for me in an objective way what "at least as extreme" is. Let's say I
think the string "HHTHT" is extremely indicative of conspiracy. Then the
p-value is 1/32 on the measure of "strings of coin flips at least this
extremely indicative of conspiracy".
See, this sounds completely ridiculous, but it's not in principle any
different from what it done in thousands of social science papers a year. All
these supposedly objective procedures have tons of ambiguity. For example:
> For the coin flip case, one way would be to call results with more
> imbalanced ratio more extreme.
Why an imbalanced total ratio? Why not average length of heads? Average number
of occurrences of "HT"? Frequency of alternations between H and T? Average
fraction of times H appears counting only even tosses? Given the combinatorial
explosion of possible criteria, I guarantee you I can find a simple-sounding
criterion on which any desired string of fair tosses gets a low p-value.
~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
>Define for me in an objective way what "at least as extreme" is.
Come up with some one dimensional test statistic T whose distribution D you
know under your null hypothesis. Define a one sided p value for data x as p(t
<= x).
It sounds like your statistic is 0 if the sequence is always "HHTHT" and 1
otherwise? In this case your p value is 1 unless every attempt is "HHTHT" in
which case it's zero, so the test statistic is 0 with probability 1/32^k for k
attempts. The more attempts you do, the smaller p gets if the null is false.
It's working as intended. For this test, a threshold of p=0.05 would be dumb,
but it's always dumb.
It's not an awful test assuming you came up with your test statistic and
"HHTHT" before collecting your data. It meshes with the intuition of betting
your friend "Hey I bet if you flip this coin you'll get HHTHT." If they
proceed to flip it and see HHTHT, they are reasonable to think maybe you know
something they don't.
If you come up with your test statistic after the fact, there's theory around
p hacking to formalize the intuition of why it's not convincing to watch your
friend flip some sequence of coins and then tell them "dude, I totally knew it
was going to be that" after the fact.
~~~
cygaril
A more general method is to use the likelihood ratio, ie the ratio of the
likelihood of an outcome under the alternative hypothesis to its likelihood
under the null hypothesis. And then pick the outcomes which for which this
ratio is highest as the ones which will cause you to reject the null
hypothesis. Equivalently, the p-value is the probability under the null
hypothesis that the likelihood ratio would be at least this large.
This works in the discrete case too, and gives p=1/32 in the original coin
flip case.
~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Is the likelihood ratio test more general? I thought that one of the benefits
of the usual NHST framework was that you only need the distribution of your
stat under the null. With LRT don't you need the distribution under both the
null and the alternative? How do you frame a null of mu = 0 against an
alternative of mu != 0 with x ~ D_mu in this way?
~~~
cygaril
You don't necessarily need the distribution under the alternative to determine
the values for which the likelihood ratio will be highest. In your example,
the tails will be the areas of maximum likelihood for any (symmetric)
alternative.
~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Huh, TIL. Thanks :)
------
abeppu
I feel this post should be considered along with its sibling:
[https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/04/whats-
wron...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/04/whats-wrong-with-
null-hypothesis-significance-testing/)
I think reading either alone is prone to lead readers to a false understanding
of Gelman's perspective.
------
syrrim
If the goal is to avoid bankruptcy, then the probability needs to be
interpreted differently. If you bet the house every time, you're guaranteed to
go bankrupt eventually. Suppose instead you bet half your money on an event of
50% probability. If you take 1:1 odds on this, then when you lose, your money
is divided by 2, but when you win it is only multiplied by 1.5. Your money
will tend to decrease over time. You need to pick odds 1:a such that 1+a/2=2
=> a=2.
We recover our regular betting odds by betting a smaller portion of our money.
If we bet a portion 1/d of our money on an event of probability 1/p, we needs
odds 1:a such that 1+a/d=(d/(d-1))^(p-1). For large enough d we get a=p-1, as
we would expect.
Assume again you're betting half your money each round, but take a probability
of winning of 84%, as in the article. You should take that bet at 1:1.14 odds,
much less than the recommended 1:5 odds.
~~~
ikeboy
This has nothing to do with interpreting probability, but with a utility
function that's not linear in terms of wealth. With decreasing marginal
returns to wealth, the same bet becomes less attractive at lower wealth
levels.
Although this can't fully explain risk aversion, see
[https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.15.1.219](https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.15.1.219)
------
jefft255
In robotics, particularly in bayesian filtering (KFs and so on), I find the
idea of a "prior" solid and I don't see any frequentist alternatives. Your
prior is easy to understand: whatever your posterior for your state was at the
previous timestep, updated using the actions you wanted your robot to
accomplish. Inference is then refining this prior using the observation that
the robot makes.
There's nothing hand-wavy about that; if you do bayesian statistics with bad
priors of course you're going to get bad inference. I guess the author just
warns about being careful about your assumption which is always good.
~~~
skybrian
I'm curious what happens when you reboot your robot. What's the first prior?
~~~
dTal
What do you do when you wake up? Assume you're in the same place as when you
went to sleep. You won't be surprised to find yourself on the other side of
the bed - slightly more surprised to find yourself on the floor, and very
surprised to find yourself in another country. A large belief update is always
a bit of a shock.
------
Majromax
> Example abridged: a draw from N(phi,1) for unknown phi is 1. Bayesian
> reasoning with a uniform prior gives an 86% posterior probability that phi >
> 0
I'm not sure I see the problem here? If it's counterintuitive, it's only
because we treat N(0,1) as _the_ normal distribution, so our true prior is
that if we pick a distribution out of a hat we're more likely to have N(0,1)
than anything else.
Suppose I truly know nothing but what is given in the quote. On the basis of
symmetry, I'd have to conclude that P(phi<0) is the same as P(phi>2). If the
blogger had phrased this as "86% posterior probability that phi < 2", I don't
think it would be so surprising.
In fact, the blogger describes this draw as:
> after seeing an observation that is statistically indistinguishable from
> noise.
which to me presupposes a _great deal_ of information about what 'noise' is
supposed to look like.
------
Akababa
I don't know, this seems to be a really low-effort blog post. The given
example is obviously contrived from the unreasonable improper (-\infty,\infty)
prior and the low \sigma^2=1 likelihood. If it was really "pure noise" then
you'd have \sigma^2=\infty which rightly gives you a flat posterior.
For sure Bayesian gives you more flexibility with your assumptions, so it's
easier to shoot yourself in the foot. But when used correctly it can be more
powerful, and often easier to interpret.
~~~
contravariant
Ironically the article that the example is from offers quite a nice rebuttal:
> None of these examples are meant to shoot down Bayes. Indeed, if posterior
> inferences don’t make sense, that’s another way of saying that we have
> external (prior) information that was not included in the model. (“Doesn’t
> make sense” implies some source of knowledge about which claims make sense
> and which don’t.) When things don’t make sense, it’s time to improve the
> model. Bayes is cool with that.
------
roenxi
There is a certain intellectual laziness in this perspective as might be
expected from a short blog post - obviously Bayes' formula is theoretically
sound because it is trivial to deduce and prove.
So we know that if the conclusion is not acceptable then either the method,
the prior or the evidence is not acceptable. Evidence and method can be ruled
out; so the prior was not reasonable.
Basically, he's saying that he doesn't believe the prior is flat. A reasonable
thing to say too - as he says practically speaking if we suspect the
distribution is probably random noise then the prior is we are probably
looking at noise. So in practice the prior is heavily weighted towards 0. It
isn't intellectually honest to use an uniformed prior unless you think the
probability of a process being statistical noise is almost 0.
~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
>obviously Bayes' formula is theoretically sound because it is trivial to
deduce and prove.
Quantum mechanics doesn't follow the usual probability rules, so you can't
really say "obviously Bayes' formula is theoretically sound." It certainly
seems like Bayes theorem should apply universally but apparently it doesn't.
Or at least, the jury's still out.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_probability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_probability)
------
knzhou
But this isn't actually a criticism of Bayes at all. Yes, the result depends
on your prior. But the result _always_ depends on your preconceptions -- even
in frequentist statistics, where it determines which statistical tests you use
and which hypotheses you test and what p-value cutoff is reasonable. It's
better to have this up front.
Or, you can publish Bayesian update factors, which are prior-independent.
------
j7ake
The example should of course ring caution bells but at least in Bayes you can
figure out why your inference is doing unreasonable things by examining each
of your assumptions. In this case it’s the prior that needs fixing.
Are there alternative methods that are better than the Bayes method for this
toy example?
~~~
TTPrograms
Seriously, as soon as he said "flat prior on theta" I had huge alarm bells go
off. Garbage in garbage out.
------
olooney
Just for context, Andrew Gelman is one of the creators of Stan[1], one of the
most popular probabilistic programming platforms for Bayesian interference. He
has written a popular textbook on Bayesian methods, _Bayesian Data Analysis_
[2].
Everyone hates picking priors in Bayesian analysis. If you pick an informative
prior, you can always be criticized for it (in peer review, for a business
decision, etc.) The usual dodge is to use a non-informative prior (like the
Jeffreys prior[3].) I interpret Gelman's point as saying this can also lead to
bad decisions. Thus, Bayesian analysts must thread the needle between Scyllia
and Charybdis when picking priors. That's certainly a real pain point when
using Bayesian methods.
However, it's pretty much the same pain point as choosing regularization
parameters (or choosing not to use regularization) when doing frequentist
statistics. For example, sklearn was recently criticized for turing on L2
regularization by default which could be viewed as a violation of the
principle of least surprise, as well as causing practical problems when inputs
are not standardized. But leaving regularization turned off is equivalent to
choosing an non-informative or even improper prior. (informally in many cases,
and formally identical for linear regression with normally distributed
errors[4].) So Scyllia and Charybdis still loom on either side.
_My_ problem with Bayesian models, completely unrelated to Gelman's
criticism, is that the partition function is usually intractable and really
only amenable to probabilistic methods (MCMC with NUTS[5], for example.) This
makes them computationally expensive to fit, and this in turn makes them
suitable for (relatively) small data sets. But using a lot more data is the
single best way to allow a model to get more accurate while avoiding over-
fitting! That is why I live with the following contradiction: 1) I believe
Bayesian models have better theoretical foundations, and 2) I almost always
use non-Bayesian methods for practical problems.
[1]: [https://mc-stan.org/](https://mc-stan.org/)
[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Bayesian-Analysis-Chapman-
Statistical...](https://www.amazon.com/Bayesian-Analysis-Chapman-Statistical-
Science/dp/1439840954)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffreys_prior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffreys_prior)
[4]:
[https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/163388/l2-regulari...](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/163388/l2-regularization-
is-equivalent-to-gaussian-prior)
[5]:
[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/nuts...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/nuts.pdf)
~~~
perl4ever
"Everyone hates picking priors in Bayesian analysis."
Everybody hates searching for their keys in the dark.
------
howlin
Bayesian modeling can be very powerful when it works but it can also be
catastrophic when it fails. It helps to think about this in an adversarial
decision theoretic context where you play a prediction game against an
opponent (usually called Nature).
We can think of the game as discovering the best model to explain a set of
observations. The Bayesian believes that Nature picks the true model that
generated the observations by sampling the prior. This is actually a huge
assumption to make, which is why Bayesian methods work so well when the
assumption is close to the truth.
Frequentists make the assumption that Nature chooses the underlying true model
from a set of possible models. Beyond restricting the set of models Nature can
choose from, frequentists make no further assumptions about the selection
process. This is a strictly weaker assumption than the Bayesian makes, which
means frequentist methods will do better when the specified prior grossly
misrepresents Nature's decision making process.
There are even weaker assumptions that can be made about how Nature chooses
the data. Regret-based model inference allows for a more adversarial game with
Nature where the data may not come from the class of models considered at all.
If Nature truly behaves this way, then Bayesian decision making can
catastrophically fail.
~~~
c2471
This ignores the main strength of a Bayesian workflow. You can straight
forwardly quantify the effect of your prior choice on your inference - pick a
different prior; how much does that change the inference, etc etc. A good
Bayesian workflow does not assume a prior to be true; it should be based on
available evidence, and then stressed. To be a bit more concrete, let's say we
wish to model the height of kangaroos. We come up with a model form, say
regression, and a bunch of potential features. If we are Bayesian we might
say; "I think nature prefers simple stable solutions, so I'll put a N(0,d)
prior on my weights. We then compute a posterior and get a range of credible
values. We can then say, "hey, what if I'm wrong and actually it's a student
t, or it's flat prior or X or y or z", and use principled tools like marginal
likelihood to say which family of models works best, do prior posterior
comparisons to see how observations changed our prior etc etc.
If we do this under a frequentist framework we compute the regression
coefficients, and can get some confidence bounds with some appeal to
asymptotics (and nobody I've ever seen actually makes any attempt to validate
these assumptions). And even when we are done, we get a confidence interval
that has such a truly unintuitive definition that almost every person who is
not a stats PhD fundamentally misinterprets.
To say frequentists make less assumptions is not true- they are just less
explicit, and I consider it a strength not a weakness to highlight choices
made by the statistician.
~~~
nazgulnarsil
Right, one should run a sensitivity analysis in general, and your prior is one
of the parameters you definitely check the sensitivity of.
~~~
analog31
As a thought experiment, could you choose priors by setting the derivative of
the solution with respect to the priors equal to zero? This would be the case
of minimal sensitivity.
------
selectionbias
My problem with the 'Bayes=rationality' type of argument is that it ignores
context and isn't really a case for reporting Bayesian vs frequentist
estimates. If I am a researcher publishing results then I have an audience who
interpret my results. If my audience is Bayesian and accept my model then all
I need to do is report sufficient statistics and they can make their own
Bayesian inferences given their priors, or better yet, I can just post my
whole dataset. The very reason we need to report things like credible sets or
confidence intervals rather than just sufficient statistics is because
audiences in the real world want summary stats that they can easily interpret
and are transparent. The best approach to inference is one that is the most
useful to audiences, and that depends on context and practicalities rather
than on some underlying philosophy of subjective vs objective probabilities.
------
metasj
Many analyses of the world aren't bayesian /or/ frequentist, they use much
simpler pattern-matching, with feedback loops that update the approach used as
well as the conclusion. Problems start w/ assuming you have to choose one of
those approaches to estimate the future...
------
ummonk
_> Put a flat prior on theta and you end up with an 84% posterior probability
that theta is greater than 0. Step back a bit, and it’s saying that you’ll
offer 5-to-1 odds that theta>0 after seeing an observation that is
statistically indistinguishable from noise. That can’t make sense. Go around
offering 5:1 bets based on pure noise and you’ll go bankrupt real fast._
If you think it's likely to be pure noise, why the hell would you put a flat
prior on it?
Note also that nonflat priors are implicit in significance testing - e.g. p95
significance is similar to putting a 95% prior on the null hypothesis, and p99
significance is similar to putting a 99% prior on the null hypothesis.
------
pontusrehula
To criticize is easy but it feels incomplete if one doesn't provide any clues
of what the supposedly better alternatives would be.
------
mycall
84% isn't that great for predictions compared to DNNs, RNNs or other modern ML
algorithms.
------
gweinberg
The author has a major fundamental misconception as to how probability works.
If I say "the probability that proposition X is true is 0.5", that means that
based on the information available to me right now it's equally likely likely
to be true as false. That's not even remotely similar to saying I would offer
an even money bet.
~~~
baron_harkonnen
Ignoring the fact that “the author” is one of the most respected statistians
in the world today... there is no debate on how to translate probabilities
into odds:
odds(x) = p(x)/(1-p(x))
Thats the definition of “odds”. so in this case it is quite clear that the
odds for X is 1, implying and even money bet.
------
sunstone
The human brain is the best Bayesian model builder that evolution has yet
devised. A good place to start assessing its weaknesses is to observe your own
brain messing up. This shouldn't be hard to do.
~~~
madhadron
Why do you think that the human brain is Bayesian?
~~~
c2471
I bring out a coin; I tell you nothing, and ask you to guess what the
probability of heads is. What do you guess?
Unless you have reason to believe I am trying to deceive you, it will be able
50% because you have a lot of knowledge from other contexts that tells you
this is true.
The arrow is probably the other way round than you state -the brain probably
isn't Bayesian; being Bayesian is modelled on how humans process and
contextualise decisions.
I'm not even sure how a frequentist would construct a model to estimate an
outcome with no observations.
~~~
madhadron
> I'm not even sure how a frequentist would construct a model to estimate an
> outcome with no observations.
The same way a Bayesian would, since it's a question about probabilities of
hypothetical experiments, not about statistics. Or you go through decision
theory instead of mucking about with half baked ideologies.
> being Bayesian is modelled on how humans process and contextualise
> decisions.
This is false.
------
kylebenzle
A good post, but the TL:DR.
What's wrong with Bayes? Nothing.
~~~
neonate
That is not what the article says.
------
bonoboTP
"Bayesian" is an overloaded term. There's Bayes' theorem/rule, which basically
everyone agrees with, since it's a theorem that's very simple to prove with a
few high school math operations.
Then there is the philosophical Bayesian interpretation of probability, that
claims that probabilities are fundamentally about our own mental state of
belief, as opposed to frequencies at the limit of infinite repetition of some
experiment.
Then there is the Bayesian methods of statistics / machine learning etc, which
are about handling parameters as random variables and the observed data as
fixed, as opposed to assuming that there's one fixed parameter (without a
distribution to talk about) and the data should be modeled as random (from an
oversimplified bird's eye view). And it was also oversold as a miracle cure
for all our problems: for some time, before the deep learning era, you just
_had_ to have "Bayesian" in your ML paper title to make it sexy and
interesting.
Then there is the online Bayesian rationalist community, where Bayes is used
to explain the meaning of life, the universe, it's the great grand explanation
of everything, a self help tool, the key to seeing the light, a semi-religious
experience, the way to enlightenment (they even call it the Way, capitalized -
I guess a Buddhist reference?). As if being Bayesian was this secret club,
that sets you apart from average people, a symbol of belonging to the in-group
etc. [1]
It's important to keep these apart.
[1] For example:
[https://youtu.be/NEqHML98RgU?t=73](https://youtu.be/NEqHML98RgU?t=73) (it's
explicitly not about the math but about self-help and intuition to benefit our
lives etc...)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is the worst thing about Google search? - firatcan
Hey everyone,<p>I hate google search when I am using it for learning a subject. It is hard to find relevant and time worthy resources, because there are a lot of fluff/SEO content out there.<p>I have to open dozens of tabs and check them to find 1 great content. Such a waste of time.<p>What's yours?
======
CM30
The fact the search engine seems to think it knows what you want better than
you do. The amount of times I'll enter a query and get results which have
nothing to do with said query is astounding, especially when the result
crosses out an important word and says it matches one of the others instead.
Or when I enter a phrase and they think it's a typo despite not actually being
one, giving me a whole bunch of irrelevant results related to the 'corrected'
term in the process.
~~~
zzo38computer
I agree; that is one of the problems.
I don't know which problem is "worse", but that is certainly one of them.
Queries don't work properly, due to that.
------
DanBC
Google is pretty good. Here are the things I find frustrating:
1) It tries to guess what I mean, and it's hard to make it change its mind. I
was searching for a specific thing and Google decided I was looking for
clothing brand in this colour. In the past adding or removing words, using the
+ (or "") or - operators would help, but I couldn't find the right combination
this time.
2) Sometimes I want to search for results from a different country in a
different language and I don't know how to do this. Google seems to really
want to only push English language results to me. I don't know if /ncr is
still a thing.
3) There's a bunch of heavily SEO'd content that's sort of okay but not great,
and a bunch of content that's great but hidden.
4) Google really wants you to use natural language queries. So when you're
fault-finding a problem you type a question into the search box. This will
return many people asking that same question, but often they will not have got
an answer. I don't need to be linked to a closed, with no answers, Stack
exchange question, or a forum when OP says "never mind, fixed it" with no more
details.
5) Google has decided to de-prioritise certain types of link. If you search
for torrents Google has chosen to put other stuff in the first few pages. I
think I'd prefer it if they just said "nope, we don't do those links" than
what they do at the moment. Try searching for pirate versions of Pozner and
Dodd's _Cross-Examination Science and Techniques_ and you get a lot of links,
but they're all terrible. They all lead to malware infested sites, or sites
that are part of a weird complicated network that don't provide any content,
but cause you to spend some time finding that out.
------
helph67
It's lack of PRIVACY! Here are some good alternatives IMHO.
[https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)
[https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) (uses Google but
respects privacy) [https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/)
[https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/)
------
downshun
You can't give feedback about the search results.
You can't opt out of advertisement results.
They link you to their amp pages, again, with no choice.
You get news and trending results when you were looking for something more
factual.
You can't give feedback about the search results.
Search results are at the whim of SEO and not usefulness.
Sometimes Clickbait.
Search operators are much less useful than they were before.
Etc..
~~~
firatcan
SEO thing frustrates me, there are too many SEO optimized bullshit content out
there. I am so unhappy that I have to waste a lot of time to dodge from them
while I am trying to learn something. Maybe human and machine partnership can
create better solution.
------
alexmingoia
The interface. I switched to DDG because Google results are large boxes with
pictures that are taxing to scan and take a lot of screen space on mobile.
For learning I don’t go to a general search engine. I search Wikipedia first.
If I’m trying to find a code library I search GitHub first, etc.
~~~
firatcan
DDG have great privacy rules but not so great results on search :( I have
always end up with more irrelevant results while I am using ddg
------
throwaheyy
That it’s turned from a search engine into a shopping portal and there are
certain things you simply can’t search for because Google assumes you must be
going shopping.
~~~
10kresistor
Or because they're censoring search results for one reason or another.
------
10kresistor
9,999,999 results in .0000009 seconds.
Result 1: not even close
Result 2: that's the opposite of what I asked
Result 3: not even close
------
Gustomaximus
The most annoying 'easy' fix is I'd like an easy way to stop domains showing.
I used some extension in the past but it doesn't work now. Would be great if
Google had a drop down next to results saying 'dont show this domain' for
future searches. Probably useful data for their algorithm too.
------
taprun
Mediocre sites aided by purchased links are returned instead of great sites
with excellent content.
~~~
firatcan
Yep, my initial problem was this. For instance, I was trying to learn product
market fit, but the results I found on google was terrible.
------
zzo38computer
Many of these complaints listed here are valid, but another one is that it
executes JavaScript code on the web page to find the text, and I don't want it
to do that.
------
asfarley
The sense that I’m being shielded from dangerous ideas.
~~~
firatcan
What ahaha, do you mean they do sensorship?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal - AndrewBissell
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/court-rules-nsa-phone-snooping-illegal-407727
======
AnonHP
Whenever I see such news and then look around at what they’ve been doing and
continue to do (revealed sometimes in congressional hearings), it seems to me
that the executive and the legislature are truly toothless in the face of
these three-letter agencies. Nothing they say or put forth as law will be
obeyed. So why even have laws then?
Then you also have top representatives from these agencies lying outright in
public hearings with hardly a consequence. There ought to be criminal
proceedings and punishments for this. A resignation here and there isn’t
enough (one way they’d handle that is by joining the privacy sector and
getting back into the game by proxy).
~~~
tialaramex
They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are _at best_ just
theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and
they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would
they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules.
The purpose of such rules _in practice_ is to help the American public to
sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the
scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated
our culture Captain Renault claims to be _shocked_ to discover that the club
is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings.
If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it
mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise
oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress
could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these
agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small
scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge
volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate
with informal requests than with the Department of Justice.
But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks
will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once
in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing
actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a
pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.
~~~
sk5t
> But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid [...]
Are Americans really afraid? Or is it that Americans feel comfort in having
the meanest dog on the block, even if that dog sometimes nips its master?
~~~
StavrosK
When I expressed horror and outrage at the notion that the TSA can go through
your luggage, an American friend told me "well if it keeps us safe...", so I'd
say "afraid".
~~~
vinay427
First of all, it's not at all clear that this implies fear as I understand the
emotion.
More tangentially, as I usually fly outside the US, it's fair to say that this
is far from just an American reality. For example, the Dublin Airport even
explicitly mentions that hold baggage may also be searched by hand on their
website: > "Both your carry-on luggage and check-in baggage will be checked by
means of detection equipment and may also be subject to a hand search." [1]
I have a hard time believing that airports with any restrictions on what
check-in/hold baggage may contain (virtually all of them, if not all) don't
have any provisions for searching bags, although maybe I'm wrong here.
[1] [https://www.dublinairport.com/at-the-
airport/security](https://www.dublinairport.com/at-the-airport/security)
~~~
StavrosK
Maybe they have provisions, but the only time I've had my luggage searched was
in the US.
------
ncmncm
Now, when can we begin prosecuting the instigators? Presumably, after we have
prosecuted those who ordered and participated in torture. (There is no statute
of limitations on torture, is there?)
~~~
37383265253
Why would you prosecute people who were given permission by the relevant
authorities?
>The call-tracking effort began without court authorization under President
George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.<
So the PotUS gave them the authority.
>A similar program was approved by the secretive FISA Court beginning in 2006
and renewed numerous times, but the 9th Circuit panel said those rulings were
legally flawed.<
So in this instance the IC was still operating under the authority of the FISA
court. Whether the court came to the right conclusions or not is irrelevant to
whether or not the agencies were bound to following those conclusions.
>The metadata program was officially shut down in 2015 after Congress passed
the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided a new mechanism where phone providers
retained their data instead of turning it over to the government. The revamped
system appears to have been abandoned by the NSA in 2018 or 2019.<
So the programs being discussed have already been terminated. What more would
you have done? Are we going to prosecute judges for making rulings we disagree
with?
>The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the decision as "a victory for our
privacy rights," though the left-leaning group said it was "disappointed that,
having found the surveillance of Mr. Moalin unlawful, the court declined to
order suppression of the illegally obtained evidence in his case."<
As an aside, it's wildly funny to me that the ACLU won't defend free speech
anymore but they'll defend terrorists and their supporters.
~~~
darkarmani
> As an aside, it's wildly funny to me that the ACLU won't defend free speech
> anymore but they'll defend terrorists and their supporters.
When has the ACLU stopped defending free speech? They defend convicted
terrorists or alleged terrorists?
~~~
koolba
The ACLU’s moral compass needle has been wobbling for a while now, and it
broke off completely after Trump was elected. They realized that they collect
significantly more donations by framing themselves as champion of leftist
ideals rather than the original purpose of defending actual civil liberties.
~~~
freen
I find your lack of evidence unsurprising.
~~~
koolba
[https://fortune.com/2018/07/05/aclu-membership-
growth/](https://fortune.com/2018/07/05/aclu-membership-growth/)
[https://reason.com/2019/04/12/the-aclu-defends-the-rights-
of...](https://reason.com/2019/04/12/the-aclu-defends-the-rights-of-gun-
owner/)
[https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/the-
acl...](https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/the-aclu-loses-
its-way)
~~~
morsch
1: ACLU gained membership after Trump was elected. So?
2: ACLU is not a strong proponent of individual gun ownership, according to
the article this has been true for at least 30 years.
3: Article makes far reaching claim in headline but mostly focuses about a
single issue, the changes to title IX. Clearly the author disagrees with the
ACLU, but the article doesn't give any context on the issue. It's hard to tell
if it really is an uncharacteristic position for them to take. I think the
heritage foundation has hated the ACLU for a very long time, so that's
consistent.
------
dang
We've changed the URL from [https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/united-states-
v-moalin-n...](https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/united-states-v-moalin-
ninth-circuit-opinion) to an article that gives more background. The link to
the decision is an excellent thing to post, but usually it's best as a
supplement to a general article (if one can be found) that establishes
context.
~~~
enjoyyourlife
The article is form [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/court-rules-nsa-
pho...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/court-rules-nsa-phone-
snooping-illegal-407727)
~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from [https://news.yahoo.com/court-rules-nsa-phone-
snooping-181157...](https://news.yahoo.com/court-rules-nsa-phone-
snooping-181157311.html), which links to that. Thanks!
------
Ansil849
This question is meant in good faith, not to be facetious but out of a genuine
lack of understanding: now what?
If this action was ruled illegal, then someone in the chain of command ordered
this illegal action - in other words did something illegal. Is the individual
who ordered the illegal action going to be disciplined? Is anyone?
~~~
Drunk_Engineer
The statute of limitations has expired for prosecuting the person responsible.
[https://sensenbrenner.house.gov/2018/3/james-clapper-not-
cha...](https://sensenbrenner.house.gov/2018/3/james-clapper-not-charged-with-
lying-to-congress)
~~~
Voliokis
Why is there a statute of limitations for government officials? This shouldn't
be a thing when you're entrusted with the responsibilities that you are
concerning an entire country and its citizens.
~~~
vorpalhex
The ability to defend yourself of a charge disappears over time. Evidence
"rots" as weird as that sounds.
~~~
kelnos
Sure, but we've decided that for some crimes (like murder) there is no statute
of limitations, and we have a greater interest in prosecuting those crimes
than in ensuring it's reasonable for a defendant to defend themself many years
later.
I think the same should be true of our civil servants who wield so much power
over the populace.
------
badrabbit
You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law
of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a
guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that
is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it.
The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important
item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who
is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of
the constitution.
~~~
ardy42
> You know what I don't get? There is no penalty for violating the highest law
> of the land (the constitution). How is it anymore than a suggestion or a
> guidline if government officials are not punished for violating it? And that
> is exactly how lae enforcement and intelligence community treat it.
It's because it can't reasonably work like that. At a certain point, defining
punishments is moot, because there's no higher authority to appeal to for
enforcement. If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and
Congress still makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail?
That's nonsense. The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and
procedures that the the country and government have decided to follow
voluntarily, not because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important
> item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government
> who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles
> of the constitution.
That might actually be unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment. Many
violations of the Constitution or Bill of Rights aren't clear until some court
case interprets some action as not being in compliance. Would you have every
county clerk that ever denied a same-sex marriage license or defined
procedures to do so go to jail after _Obergefell v. Hodges_?
~~~
heimatau
> If the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law..." and Congress still
> makes a law, what are you going to do, throw Congress in jail? That's
> nonsense.
Actually, it's nonsense to think anything to the contrary. Either our founding
document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it doesn't. Your outlandish
logic nullifies any power that the government may have over it's people. It
nullifies the social contract.
> The Constitution, for the most part, just states norms and procedures that
> the the country and government have decided to follow voluntarily, not
> because some authority will punish it if it doesn't.
It's not a document of 'norms' and 'procedures'. It's a structure of how our
Republic is built. Either we have a structure or we undermine it. That's
really it, full stop. Amendments are apart of that structure to build or take
away for what that structure is to be. Not 'ought to be' not 'suggested' not
'maybe if you'd like to follow', it's a mutually agreed upon __Law __.
[edited: minor edits for added clarity]
~~~
xxpor
>Either our founding document matters as the backbone of our Laws or it
doesn't.
Nitpick, the constitution isn't a founding document. There was that whole
Articles of Confederation thing.
Congress isn't the final authority of if laws are constitutional or not. The
courts are. Congress and the Supreme Court commonly disagree on the
constitutionality of laws. What you're proposing is essentially a oligarchy
lead by the Supreme Court.
>Your outlandish logic nullifies any power that the government may have over
it's people. It nullifies the social contract.
There is no social contract based on the constitution. It's just that enough
people agree that it has value, so it does. That's not a social contract. No
regular people voted on the Constitution. You don't have the ability to reject
it if you don't agree with it.
~~~
ColanR
> No regular people voted on the Constitution.
Nitpick. The people who were sent as representatives from each state to help
write and ratify the constitution were chosen by the people of that state. So
technically, through representative democracy, the regular people did agree to
the constitution because their representatives agreed on it.
~~~
xxpor
Not the same thing IMO. Ignoring the issue of who was allowed to vote in the
1780s, there's a reason why the House was voted on by the people and the
Senate the state legislatures. They recognized then the two groups have
different interests.
~~~
salawat
State Senators were still voted on by the People, and part of the vote of
confidence for taking part in the State Senate was a recognition of their
capability to choose who represented the State at the National level based on
understanding of the State's business.
To be honest, I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State
Legislature decide. Wasn't alive then though and haven't done the research.
~~~
heimatau
> State Senators were still voted on by the People...I kind of wonder whether
> it was better to let the State Legislature decide.
It seems you don't understand the difference between how the people directly
elected US Senators since 1913 versus a State Republic that was voted on.
These are two very different things. I say very because one is more Democratic
and the other is more Republic. A Republic is an indirect mechanism whereas
Democratic is a direct mechanism.
------
fareesh
In operation crossfire hurricane, the FBI doctored an email and used its
contents as part of an effort to get a FISA warrant to spy on a member of the
incoming administration. This gave them access to listen to conversations of
anyone 2 levels of connection away from the target.
They also withheld exculpatory evidence at the time of requesting the warrant,
and relied on a fictional document paid for by the opposing political party.
This was used as a basis to conduct a 2 year long investigation into collusion
between the campaign and the Russian government, which resulted in the
conviction of Michael Cohen for tax evasion and perjury, and Paul Manafort for
tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy all of which predated the campaign and
had nothing to do with it.
Not only are these agencies spying based on fabricated evidence, they are
using the spying to kick off independent investigations, each of which unveil
various unrelated crimes, which they then prosecute.
The whole system is rotten to its core.
~~~
bosswipe
You present a very one-side of view of that story that has been extremely
muddied by a constant stream of conspiracy theories and misinformation from
everyone including the president. Even though I agree with Trump on some
things and dislike Biden the lying, conspiracy theories and general disrespect
for our democracy is completely disqualifying in my book.
~~~
fareesh
The conspiracy theory is that the agency conspired to do this for political
reasons. Even if you discount that entirely it does not take away from the
fact that this is possible and happened, and that in itself ought to be cause
for concern.
------
LatteLazy
This puts scotus in a difficult position. They've generally refused to hear
national security cases. Now they'll have to...
~~~
fortran77
They don't have to. They can let the lower court's decision stand.
~~~
eganist
The lower court's decision standing enables litigation against the federal
government and the NSA specifically.
~~~
vinay427
Are you implying that you think SCOTUS would consequently feel forced to
overturn the ruling? If so, I don't follow. Wouldn't these subsequent legal
proceedings have their own minutiae that lead courts to make varying
decisions?
------
burtonator
The US congress gave _retroactive_ immunity to AT&T for this so you can't sue
them for actively working with the US government to violate the constitution.
------
vvpan
Pardon Snowden.
~~~
Zenbit_UX
Hard to even pretend he did something wrong after this ruling. The government
was proven to be acting illegally and likely also unconstitutionally, he had a
moral imperative to alert the public.
~~~
dx87
Well, we can't forget that he also took a bunch of information that had
nothing to do with this ruling.
~~~
iratewizard
He learned from his employer to cast a wide net.
~~~
hosteur
And he published none of it. He gave it to a few trusted journalists exactly
to have them sort out what was not deemed in the public interest.
------
btbuildem
So, do they have to delete all the databases now? Or just keep the illegally
collected data all the same?
~~~
lern_too_spel
It was deleted in 2016. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-
termination/nsa-t...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-
termination/nsa-to-shut-down-bulk-phone-surveillance-program-by-sunday-
idUSKBN0TG27120151127)
------
arminiusreturns
For those talking about this subject, I would like to remind you that it is
the surveillance network that is the equivalent of an automated Epstein system
of blackmail. Not only should we reign in the surveillance state, but we need
to remember that to do that we have to stop being so naive and need to
understand that the blackmail system is at play in the legislative. This isn't
just overfocus on re-election, or k-street normal corruption or any of the
normal accusations against congress we have to fight, this is state sponsered
blackmail and worse. To try to fix other issues without adressing the
blackmail one is not going to be a systemic fix. It's a root causal issue.
So, a question of chicken and egg. What do you try to fix first, congress, or
the laws/system? I think congress is the only practical avenue.
------
leeoniya
> But she said even if Moalin and his co-defendants had clear notice of that,
> it wouldn't have helped their defense.
parallel construction is a hell of a thing
------
ineedasername
Unfortunately, this is:
1) Only a 3 judge panel, so their will be an appeal for the full court to here
the case.
2) Not yet over even if the full panel agrees, because then it will be
appealed to the Supreme Court.
So it could still be years before the issue is finally
~~~
dav43
The fact this has taken so long to process - and by all means not complete yet
- doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the system as a whole.
------
jacquesm
Looking forward to a full pardon for Snowden.
------
mLuby
Our society hasn't figured out how to punish organizations, whether
businesses, NGOs, religious groups, or government agencies. Past a certain
level, fines don't cut it—you need existential threats.
We need "prison" more often for misbehaving entities; that is, a prohibition
on operating for the duration of the sentence.
"But what about all the people who will be unemployed?" Exactly, that's part
of the incentive not to mess up.
"You can't shut down the NSA for a year, what about the commies and the
terrorists?" Yes that would be bad, so make sure it won't happen. #Incentives
_Nothing_ is too big to fail.
~~~
Thorentis
Shutting down the NSA isn't the answer. We do need those orgs to keep
operating for good reasons. Otherwise somebody who dislikes those orgs or has
a grudge can shut the whole thing down by breaking the law (imagine a foreign
agent playing the "long-con" and doing this).
The answer, as others have already said, is imprisonment of commanding
officiers, supervisors, senators in charge of oversight committees, etc. Hold
the people that make decisions accountable. Don't hold the entry-level
engineers who had a family to feed accountable. Hold the people calling the
shots accountable. 10 years in prison is a pretty good incentive for those in
charge to make sure what they and their employees are doing is legal.
~~~
mLuby
The org must be accountable for its actions (or inactions). It's the org's
responsibility to make sure its agents don't mess up when acting under its
authority. Hire employees who are trustworthy and competent, fire those who
aren't, and provide training and oversight to ensure compliance. That's a
reasonable minimum bar.
Separately, if a person breaks a law, they should be punished for that.
And remember, judgements incorporate circumstances and intentions when
determining punishments. So a small non-profit that was trying its best but
was still hacked by a nation-state would probably get a lighter punishment,
just as accidental manslaughter usually receives a lighter sentence than pre-
meditated murder.
~~~
Thorentis
An org is made up of people. You can't punish an org without punishing people.
So you have to decide who to punish. Do you punish the entire population by
removing an org that is there to protect them? Or do you punish the
individuals inside and outside of the org that are responsible for making
those bad decisions?
~~~
mLuby
You have it backwards: the entire population is punishing the org for failing
to protect them.
And yes, that hurts the population a little bit, just as imprisoning
individuals hurts civic society and the economy.
To mangle a great line: we are entitled to rise and sleep under the blanket of
the very freedom the NSA provides _AND_ question the manner in which they
provide it.
~~~
Thorentis
You cannot punish an org without punishing people. An org is not something
with feelings and isn't sentient. The people within it are. To punish the org,
you need to punish the people that make the decisions inside it. Shutting down
the entire organisation doesn't hold anybody personally accountable. They'll
just go and get jobs elsewhere. It is a silly concept.
------
theflyy
But its affect our privacy too.
[https://www.theflyy.com/blog/how-appbrowzer-hit-1-lac-
downlo...](https://www.theflyy.com/blog/how-appbrowzer-hit-1-lac-downloads-
in-24-hours/)
------
ab_testing
Isn't the 9th circuit the court where most of the liberal judges sit. This
decision can as well go to the Supreme Court and get overturned.
~~~
topspin
The 9th is being flipped or has already flipped[1], depending on whom you ask.
Trump has made 10 appointment to the 9th.
[1] Trump has flipped the 9th Circuit
[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-22/trump-
co...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-22/trump-conservative-
judges-9th-circuit)
------
JoshTko
What are we spying for? Rouge states trying to disrupt our elections? Rising
boldness of home grown militias?
------
tehjoker
Lol, they only make rulings like this after the act was already committed and
the NSA already stopped using phone metadata so nothing material changes. Even
the people imprisoned over the phone data, we are assured that it was so minor
and insignificant nothing important about their case should change.
Make no mistake, this is just a way for the intelligence services to pretend
as though there's some kind of legality and court oversight to what they are
doing.
------
brokenmachine
So we can presume that all the bosses who authorized this illegal activity
will go to jail?
Lol jk.
------
m0zg
Can we put James Clapper in prison now, pls? Or is he still untouchable?
~~~
throw51319
What did he do?
~~~
m0zg
Ordered this bulk collection, then lied under oath that it wasn't happening.
Would get away with it, too, if it wasn't for Snowden.
~~~
throw51319
Does bulk/metadata analysis even count though? It's not like somebody is
personally going through your data. It's just a system that can infer the few
records that are of interest.
I'd rather have that, and allow us to stay protected against terrorists or
spies from China/Russia... than play by some arbitrary rules and then get
destroyed one day.
~~~
m0zg
> stay protected against terrorists or spies from China/Russia
That's not what it's being used for. It's a flagrant violation of the 4th
amendment. Whatever remains of it today, anyway. You don't get to do what
amounts to a search without a court order with US citizens.
------
Ice_cream_suit
When the President is protecting war criminals, anything goes....
------
tmnvix
Are the records still accessible by the NSA?
------
jxramos
It wasn't illegal, it was prelegal ;-)
------
mikewarot
Prediction: In the next few days, the NSA/FBI use their trove of data to track
down all of Antifa, and make arrests. It lets the Democrats off the hook, lets
Trump say "law and order", lets the NSA keep it's toys, and the risk of civil
war drops a bit, increasing National Security.
They could even frame Iran or North Korea in the process. Bonus points for the
Military Industrial Complex.
------
jimbob45
The real lesson of the Nazis should have been that secret police forces
inevitably lead to corruption, even when they’re made with the best
intentions. The #1 best method of preventing the Holocaust would have been
better government oversight and transparency.
I’m fine with record collection if it works. The secret courts enabling these
secret agencies only help hide bad actors and must be abolished.
------
variadico
surprised-pikachu.jpg
------
george120
The National Security Agency program that swept up details on billions of
Americans' phone calls was illegal and possibly unconstitutional, a federal
appeals court ruled Wednesday.
However, the unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
said the role the so-called telephone metadata program played in a criminal
terror-fundraising case against four Somali immigrants was so minor that it
did not undermine their convictions.
[https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/10-Most-Important-SEO-
St...](https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/06/10-Most-Important-SEO-
Strategies.html?m=1)
------
nowandlater
“Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
... and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This document matters. It’s a fucking miracle it even exists — still.
~~~
ghayes
This ruling is much more likely to be related to the 4th Amendment search and
seizure clause or the 14th Amendment Due Process clause.
------
ed25519FUUU
Now do illegal unmaskings of US citizens[1]!
Question for everyone: in October 2016 the head of the NSA did an audit on
unaskings. What percentage do you think were illegal?
> _One paragraph in the report states that ??% of the Section 704 and 705(b)
> FISA searches made during this time were non-compliant with applicable laws
> and therefore criminal._
Take a guess before you click this [2] link and find out.
I challenge you to even find a mainstream news article about this. It's
extremely hard, by design. Let's put aside politics and hold the intelligence
agencies accountable.
1\. [https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-
sc...](https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-
scandals/line-between-lawful-unmasking-and-political-spying-and) 2\.
[https://www.usapoliticstoday.org/fisa-court-
ruling-85-obamas...](https://www.usapoliticstoday.org/fisa-court-
ruling-85-obamas-fbi/)
~~~
ciarannolan
> Let's put aside politics and hold the intelligence agencies accountable.
Lol.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You can’t “turn off the borrow checker” in Rust - ngaut
https://words.steveklabnik.com/you-can-t-turn-off-the-borrow-checker-in-rust
======
kibwen
I think there's mental mismatch between groups of people who talk about
"turning off the borrow checker". The borrow checker is a tool to validate
references. Sometimes people using references in Rust might feel like the
borrow checker makes using references too cumbersome in a certain situation,
so they switch to using a tool other than references (Rc, indexes into a Vec,
etc). But this isn't bypassing the borrow checker; it's bypassing references
themselves. The same phenomenon happens in C++; if references start to be a
pain, you might switch to using something else (shared_ptr, indexes into a
vector, etc.).
When this happens in C++, we don't call this "bypassing the borrow checker".
You don't need a borrow checker to know that references aren't always the
right tool for a given job. It's the same in Rust.
~~~
steveklabnik
Yup. Part of why I wrote this post is for exactly this reason. This phrase is
used colloquially, but I think it misleads a lot of people on how Rust
actually works.
------
kbwt
I thought this was going to be a response to Jonathan Blow's video about how
doing your own memory management is effectively turning off the borrow
checker:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk)
The takeaway being that the borrow checker doesn't magically prevent the use-
after-free class of bugs. Although you will never experience a segmentation
fault in safe Rust, the bug is still there and your program keeps running in
an invalid state. The symptoms are changed, but no less dangerous.
To make the problem even more obvious, think of allocating a large array to be
used as a heap and handing out indices to implement your own malloc. You have
bounds checking to prevent indexing outside the bounds of the heap, but it
doesn't really help when the elements have logically different lifetimes and
occupy different parts of the array. I don't think this is a contrived example
either. A less obvious version of this can easily creep into large or complex
systems, as evidenced by the Entity Component System in Rust example.
~~~
sdegutis
So it’s the difference between crash early (C) and don’t crash but run wrong
(Rust), inherent by design in the main selling point of Rust (borrow checker)?
~~~
gliptic
Why is everyone assuming C is "crash early" as opposed to "undefined behaviour
will crash if you're lucky and cause RCE in the worst case, or any weird thing
in between". The selling point of the borrow checker (at least one of them) is
that it doesn't allow undefined behaviour unless you explicitly enable unsafe
operations. If there was a way to detect UB and predictably crash in a
performant way, you could probably implement that in Rust as well. In fact,
that's often what is done with generational indexes and similar.
------
twarge
As a non-coder (physicist) writing Rust, the thing that really stuck me was
that the time between _successful compile_ and flawless operation was
significantly shorter than the C and Python I write. Furthermore, this
difference when writing anything _threaded_ is simply breathtaking. Im my
experience there are simply fewer corner cases that the Rust compiler lets
through.
~~~
blueprint
I think that makes you a coder :)
------
orf
> This means that we can combine it with Option<T>, and the option will use
> the null case for None:
This sounds interesting, can anyone elaborate on this?
~~~
kibwen
One of the design goals of Option is to be a library-level replacement for the
language-level null value found in languages like C. Furthermore, one of the
design goals for Rust itself is to have its abstractions be zero-overhead.
With a naive implementation of Option, these goals would be in opposition.
To illustrate why these goals would be in opposition, look at a trivial
example of a tagged union (enum) in Rust:
enum Foo {
Bar(i32),
Qux(u32)
}
At runtime, any value of type Foo will _either_ be in the Bar state, _or_ it
will be in the Qux state. Both Bar and Qux hold types that are 32 bits in
size, and since only one of those states can be active at a time, we know that
Foo only needs 32 bits of storage to satisfy both these states. But
additionally, it needs _extra_ storage to store the runtime information
telling us _which_ state it's currently in. The smallest "extra" amount of
storage that can be added to a type is 8 bits, so we would expect every value
of type Foo to be 40 bits in size at runtime. In fact it's larger, due to
alignment and padding, so Foo will be 64 bits in size at runtime.
Let's bring it back around to Option, which is an enum that looks like this:
enum Option<T> {
Some(T),
None
}
A null pointer in C will be the same size as a non-null pointer in C: 64 bits,
assuming a 64-bit platform. A Rust reference would also be 64 bits, and these
cannot be null. If we were to try to use Option on a reference to "opt-in" to
nullability, what size would that "nullable reference" be _assuming a naive
implementation of Option_? Well, firstly we'd need storage for the value of
the reference itself (64 bits), and then, as per above, we'd need our "extra"
storage to tell us at runtime whether our Option is a Some or a None. And
again, because of alignment and padding, this would theoretically result in a
type that is 128 bits in size in total, which is real shame since in theory
distinguishing between two states only takes a single bit of storage. Overall
this would be a performance regression from C, where nullability does not
impose any space overhead.
Fortunately, Rust's implementation is not naive. Remember: Rust references
cannot be null. That means that the Rust compiler knows that any type that is
a reference will _not_ contain a value that is all zeroes at runtime. Rust
leverages this knowledge for optimization: for any Option containing a
reference, only a single pointer-sized piece of memory is needed, and the None
case will be represented by a value of all zeroes. This means that the Option
is now a zero-overhead abstraction for this use case, because Option<&Foo>
will be the same size as &Foo.
And this smart logic isn't hardcoded for the Option enum. Any enum, written by
anyone, can automatically benefit from the ability to "hide" the enum tag in
such "uninhabited" values. The OP's example of NonNull<T> is, like references,
an example of of a type that has an uninhabited value that permits this
optimization. Others include the NonZeroU8 type and its friends, where
Option<NonZeroU8> will be the same size as a standard u8, though which give up
the ability to represent zero (in the future this may be extended to allow
arbitrary user-defined types which can make whatever values they want act as
uninhabited for the purposes of enum size optimization, but it will take some
work to get there).
~~~
tlb
Is it possible for Rust to store this in 64 bits?
enum Boxed<T>
Number(double),
Some(T)
}
ie, a type which can either be a double or a pointer by encoding the pointer
as invalid (NaN) floating point numbers? Many JS engines use this trick.
~~~
lachlan-sneff
No, because NaN is a valid floating point number in rust.
~~~
alkonaut
There really should be a ”normal” f32 and f64 type with guarantees for non-
NaN, similar to the nonzero integers. More importantly than size, these floats
would be totally ordered unlike the partially ordered regular ieee floats.
Edit: turns out these exist in various forms e.g “noisy float”
------
jononor
My TLDR/alternate title: "unsafe Rust retains most safety benefits of Rust
(including the borrow checker)"
------
shawn
Note that you can drop down to unsafe C-style code in Rust. [https://doc.rust-
lang.org/stable/nomicon/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/nomicon/)
Anyone who claims Rust is simple should ensure they thoroughly understand that
book.
Another way to "turn off" the borrow checker is to write a scripting language
that compiles to Rust which automatically annotates all variables with the
longest lifetime possible, and spits out mutable references depending on
whether you actually mutate anything.
There's also RefCell, which lets you defer borrow checking till runtime. It's
handy for pretending like your references are immutable.
~~~
kibwen
I don't think that anyone's claiming that Rust is objectively a simple
language. Simpler than some other languages, certainly, but it's a medium-
sized language at best.
Furthermore, unsafe code gives new users a firm boundary of complexity that
can be ignored. New to Rust? Don't use the unsafe keyword. Using the unsafe
keyword? Read the nomicon first. It's quite useful for onboarding to know that
all the C-style UB shenanigans are behind a gate that can be ignored until
you're comfortable with the rest of the language.
------
mlevental
not that steve isn't correct but Rc and Arc effectively (in exchange for
runtime overhead) "turn off" the borrow checker. i'm sure i'll get yelled but
it's just this week i had the borrow checker yelling at me for something and i
realized that the appropriate thing to do was use Arc (yes of course i'm not
advocating for ref counting instead of being more precise).
~~~
masklinn
Rc and Arc are about (shared) ownership not borrowing. If they're turning off
anything, it's ownership. Borrowing works the same way as ever.
In fact that's an advantage of Rust here: because of the borrow checker you
can _safely_ get a reference to an Rc's contents and hand it off to something
without having to alter the refcount, so you get significantly less refcount
traffic than in other languages where such a thing is unsafe (or not under
your control). That's especially important for Arc.
It also provides for nice _safe_ optimisations like "move out of this Rc if
I'm the only owner" (Rc/Arc::try_unwrap).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Deploy ChicagoBoss applications on Heroku. Easy and free hosting. - cstar
https://github.com/cstar/heroku-buildpack-chicagoboss
======
cstar
The tutorial (<http://www.chicagoboss.org/tutorial.pdf>) is running on heroku
here : <http://calm-peak-8284.herokuapp.com/greeting/list>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The byte order fallacy - enneff
http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallacy.html
======
astrange
His point is that instead of byte swapping input, we should always use single-
byte load operations because "it works for him."
But Plan9 is not a system known for its graphics, and I think performance
would seriously suffer if everyone had to program like that. Being able to
load a pixel as an int is the reason 32-bit RGB is used more often as a pixel
format than 24-bit.
Of course it might not matter as much these days, GCC and LLVM can optimize
his code sequences into bswap instructions automatically. And SIMD/shader code
don't have endian portability problems I know of, if only because SIMD is
already not portable.
~~~
perfunctory
> I think performance would seriously suffer
Evidence please.
~~~
xpaulbettsx
On modern CPUs, a byte load/store is really an integer (i.e. 32-bit/64-bit
depending on arch) load/store that is rigged to only affect the target byte.
On IA64 and PPC, it would just SIGBUS out (as it probably should on x86/amd64
too, but they kept it for compat reasons)
~~~
astrange
Desktop PPC CPUs (when there were such things) allowed misaligned memory
operations with some performance penalty.[1]
x86 practically offers it for free in newer architectures (Sandy Bridge, Ivy
Bridge and Bulldozer).[2]
[1] <https://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/ve/g5.html>
[2] <http://agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf> (check MOVDQU timings)
~~~
chmike
AFIK ARM processors don't support misaligned word access. AFIK misaligned word
access is twice slower than aligned word access (requires 2 reads). So I don't
understand "offers it for free". But this is still twice faster than the
example code. Note that endianess and word alignment are two distinct
problems.
The point made by the author addresses this issue from a different angle.
As the author say, programmers should always write endianess neutral code
unless it is impossible which is generally at the interfaces, where data is
read and written (I/O) by the program. If the code is correctly and
intelligently optimized so that marshaling is done once, then the byte
swapping may generally be expected to be a low frequency operation. In this
case the most simple and portable code should be favored.
Trying to optimize this operation by word read and byte swapping provides an
insignificant optimization with a higher cost on code portability and
maintainability. The author is right on this.
Though it is also true that in some cases, the operation frequency is very
high (i.e. reading million pixel values of an image). For these use cases, the
programming overhead of using highly optimized code is perfectly justified.
But then don't use half backed optimizations. Try to align data on words
(twice faster), read by word (four time faster) and use byte swapping machine
instruction available on the target CPU instead of the proposed shifts and bit
masks.
My opinion is that good languages should provide optimized data marshaling
functions in their library so that the code can be optimal and portable at the
same time.
~~~
mansr
ARM supports unaligned memory accesses since v6. In most modern
implementations, unaligned accesses falling entirely within a 16-byte aligned
block have no penalty at all, while crossing 16-byte boundaries does impose a
cost. If the locations of unaligned accesses are randomly distributed, this
cost is still cheaper on average than accessing a byte at a time.
------
mrmekon
I agree with his suggestion that most code manipulating byte order is
incorrect or unneeded. Within your application's logic, everything should
already be uniform.
I agree slightly less with "computer's byte order doesn't matter",
differentiated from peripheral and data stream byte order... that's the same
friggin thing. It matters that you treat your inputs and outputs correctly,
and how you do that depends on your computer's byte order, so they computer's
byte order _does_ matter. Just not so much during the data processing stage.
But mostly, I'm just saddened that every post about C now has a "only people
who do [X thing that requires C] do that, and you're probably not one of them,
so you should do that!" Maybe there's just a huge disconnect between people-
who-blog and people-who-write-low-level-code, but most of the software guys I
know have worked professionally on microcontrollers, DSPs, operating systems,
or compilers within the last 5 years, and I'm working on a compiler for a DSP
right now (and I expect byte-order to matter).
~~~
oh_sigh
No offense brother, but Rob Pike shits all over you and any of your "software
guys". The man is a living legend. This is not to say that he can't be wrong,
but to call him just a "person who blogs" only shows how little you know.
~~~
varikin
Or it just shows that not everyone looks at the about me on every blog to see
that Rob is Rob Pike.
~~~
oh_sigh
How does that make it any better? If the name on the blog is what makes you
think a post is shit or gold, then you are probably not a very good critical
thinker.
------
adrianmsmith
I wish there were, in C, some equivalent of "struct" but where you could
specify
\- The byte order / endianness
\- The alignment of variables
\- The exact width of variables (32-bits, 64-bits)
"struct" is great for what it was designed for, storing your internal data
structures in a way efficient for the machine.
But everyone abuses structs and tries to read external data sources e.g. files
using them. They might hack it to work on their own machine, then as soon as a
machine of the other endianness comes along, hacks and #ifdefs appear, then
machines with ints of different widths come along....
Of course these people are using structs "wrong", like the author of the
article suggests. But nevertheless, the fact that people are using structs
"wrong" suggests there is a need for something that provides what people are
trying to use structs for.
~~~
ge0rg
Yeah, C is really missing a way to serialize/deserialize data from raw
memory/sockets into structs usable by your code. The least insane way, libpack
[1] requires replicating the data format definition three times:
* define the struct with all elements
* define a string for the binary representation
* call fpack/funpack with the string and all the struct elements as parameters...
Unfortunately, fixing this either requires some kind of black X-macro [2]
magic or another template language used to write the specification and to
generate the three above-mentioned representations from it...
[1] <http://www.leonerd.org.uk/code/libpack/intro.html>
[2] <http://drdobbs.com/184401387>
~~~
masklinn
> or another template language
Surely this could be handled via simple syntactic extensions to the struct
specification (with everything wrapped into an ungodly macro from hell) in
order to define the mapping between the struct itself and libpack's format
string, no?
~~~
ge0rg
The problem is that you need to replicate the struct entries in the
pack/unpack calls as well, which is only possible in plain C by using
X-Macros.
It might be possible to construct a macro that creates both the struct and the
format string, though.
~~~
masklinn
> The problem is that you need to replicate the struct entries in the
> pack/unpack calls as well
Don't you only need the (generated) format string? Ideally, the macro could
generate some wrapper function of some sort as well, which would unpack, fill
and return an instance of the struct.
------
dlsym
The author claims that byte swapping code \- _"depends on integers being 32
bits long, or requires more #ifdefs to pick a 32-bit integer type."_
True. But you might consider using inttypes.h which defines some pretty useful
things like uint32_t (an unsigned 32 bit wide integer for example).
\- _"may be a little faster on little-endian machines, but not much, and it's
slower on big-endian machines."_
In fact swapping the byte order is _one_ CPU instruction. You can for example
use some inline assembly to optimize your code. (If your compiler fails to
recognize this pattern.)
uint32_t byte_swap( uint32_t x )
{
asm( "bswap %0"
: "=g"(x)
: "0"(x)
);
return x;
}
Just my two cents...
~~~
masklinn
> In fact swapping the byte order is _one_ CPU instruction.
That's one _machine_ instruction, I'm pretty sure it's more than one microcode
instruction ;)
~~~
dfox
Swapping bits around is operation that is essentially free in hardware. It's
just wires.
~~~
ableal
Most hardware is just wires. Especially since transistors shrunk down to
nearly nothing.
Still, the layout of something like a barrel shifter (e.g.
[http://www.erc.msstate.edu/mpl/distributions/scmos/images/bs...](http://www.erc.msstate.edu/mpl/distributions/scmos/images/bshift.gif)
, from a casual search) takes its space on die, much like an adder or
multiplier. It's all wires _and switches_.
------
bluesmoon
I noticed ifdefs like this when I inherited some C code back in 2001. I'd
always worked on x86 systems, so never really encountered machines with
different byte orders. The code was fugly, and I didn't like it, so I studied
it some and it hit me that it didn't matter what the byte order was. If I
constructed a 32 bit int and assigned it to a 32 bit int, the compiler would
take care of the byte order. All I needed to know was the byte order of the
network protocol we were using.
Tested new code on my x86 box and it worked. Then just committed to
sourceforge CVS and told the rest of the world to test. It worked. My code
looked a lot like Rob's.
------
yason
The smallest questions always cause the most heated debate.
It doesn't really matter much how the possible byte order swap is done: what
matters that these ifdefs aren't littered around the code and byte-order
swapping is limited to the lowest level where data is actually read from an
external source.
I would personally go with his byte array reads as it's less confusing but I
would still wrap the functionality inside inlined functions like these:
uint32_t inline read_be32 (void*);
uint32_t inline read_le32 (void*);
And then use these whenever reading 32-bit integers from big-endian or little-
endian data source.
~~~
alexchamberlain
I've tried to tackle this issue at <https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-
order>.
~~~
dchest
You did this to prove Pike's argument, didn't you?
_Whenever I see code that asks what the native byte order is, the odds are
about a hundred to one the code is either wrong or misguided._
[https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-
order/commit/b804361...](https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-
order/commit/b804361636f9233a6c9b0b38b04ceef98f3e8faa#L0L64)
~~~
alexchamberlain
Well caught!
------
tytso
Rob Pike was specifically talking about binary streams. There are many cases
where you can make simplifying assumptions in the name of speed; this is quite
common in the Linux Kernel, where (a) lots of code uses it, so optimizing for
every last bit of CPU efficiency is important, and (b) we need to know a lot
about the CPU architecture anyway, so it's anything _but_ portable code. (Of
course, we do create abstractions to hide this away from the programmer ---
i.e., macros such as le32_to_cpu(x) and cpu_to_le32(x), and we mark structure
members with __le32 instead of __u32 where it matters, so we can use static
code analysis techniques to catch where we might have missed a le32_to_cpu
conversion or vice versa.)
What are some of the assumptions which Linux makes? For one, that there is a
32-bit type available to the compiler. For just about all modern CPU
architectures where you might want to run Linux, this is true. This means that
we can define a typedef for __u32, and it means that we can declare C
structures where we can use a structure layout that represents the on-the-wire
or on-the-disk format without needing to do a pull the bytes, one at a time,
off the wire decoding stream. It also means that the on-the-wire or on-disk
structures can be designed to be such that integers can be well aligned such
that on all modern architectures such that we don't have to worry about
unaligned 32-bit or 64-bit accesses.
And it's not just Linux which does this. The TCP/IP headers are designed the
same way, and I guarantee you that networking code that might need to work at
10 Gbps isn't pulling off the IP headers one byte at a time and shifting them
8 bits at a time, to decode the IP header fields. No, they're dropping the
incoming packet on an aligned buffer, and then using direct access to the
structures using primitives such as htonl(). (It also means that at least for
the forseeable future, CPU architectures will be influenced by the
implementation and design choices of such minor technologies such as TCP/IP
and the Linux kernel, so it's a fair bet that no matter what, there will
always be a native 32-bit type, for which 4-byte aligned access will be fast.)
The original TCP/IP designers and implementors knew what they were doing, and
having worked with some of them, I have at least as much respect, if not more
so, than Rob Pike...
------
ableal
It's by Rob Pike. Not a wise choice of target to nitpick. When he says "I
guarantee that [...]", I'm inclined to take his word for it.
Nice piece, clearing up a cobweb in a poorly lighted corner. And teaches (with
code example) what one really needs to know about handling byte order in data
streams.
------
premchai21
I wish I had time to write a more thorough response right now, but I just did
a short test with Debian sid and its GCC 4.6.3 on a modern Xeon machine under
Xen (so, not the best performance testing device, so take this with some
salt).
At -O9, the compiler optimizes a masks-and-shifts swap of a uint64_t into a
bswapq instruction identical to the one emitted by the GCC-specific
__builtin_bswap64; this can be coupled with an initial memcpy into a temporary
uint64_t. Loading individual bytes and shifting them in emits a pile of
instructions that take up 16 times as much code space and ~35% runtime penalty
(2.7 s versus 2 s). This is measured in a loop decoding a big-endian integer
into a native uint64_t and writing it to a volatile extern uint64_t global,
2^30 iterations, function called through a function pointer.
Aligned versus unaligned pointers seem to make no real difference on this CPU,
using a static __attribute__((aligned(8))) uint8_t[16] and offsets of 0
(aligned) and 5 (unaligned) from the start of the array.
I also tried a function with the explicit cast-shift-or that uses an initial
memcpy into a local uint8_t[8] in case the compiler was doing something
strange with regard to memory read fault ordering as compared to the explicit
memcpy in the two bswapq-generating versions. This resulted in some very
"interesting" code that shoves the local array into a register and then very
roughly masks and shifts all the bits around, at about a 100% penalty from the
bswapq functions. :-(
If anyone's interested in the details, reply and I'll try to put them
somewhere accessible, though it may take a little while.
~~~
figglesonrails
This isn't surprising. If the set the AC bit on x86, then it will disallow
unaligned accesses and you'll be operating in an environment more similar to
RISC machines. In order to allow such a thing to succeed, GCC can't produce a
32-bit read from char* address since the alignment is only guaranteed to be 1
(i.e. no alignment) and this would trigger SIGBUS. Thus, in order to get a
32-bit read, you must deref a 32-bit variable, not 4x 8-bit ones. This makes
even more sense on RISC systems where this "optimization" would be a tragic
bug you'd want to work around in your compiler. See my post with the x86
assembly output confirming your general results.
------
huhtenberg
Rant-y. I don't like that.
> _The byte order of the computer doesn't matter much at all except to
> compiler writers and the like_
Binary protocol parsing is one area that relies heavily on byte ordering,
_struct_ packaging and alignment. Tangentially, binary _file_ parsing that is
optimized for speed will have the same dependency. In fact, anything that
deals with fast processing of the off-the-wire data will want to know about
the byte order.
------
kstenerud
Actually it's kind of funny... I recently wrote a base64 encoder/decoder that
makes use of native endian order to build 16-bit unsigned int based lookup
tables that map to the correct byte sequence in memory regardless of native
endianness.
Looking up a 16-bit int rather than 2 chars, and outputting as a 32-bit int
rather than 4 chars yields a nice performance boost at the cost of possibly
not being portable for some more esoteric architectures that don't have a 16
and 32-bit unsigned int type.
So while he's right that 99% of the time you shouldn't be fiddling with byte
order, it still pays to know how to wield such a tool, and it's most
definitely not just for compiler writers.
------
GoSailTheC
CPU byte order definitely matters to device drivers read/writing across the
I/O bus: they must perform wide aligned reads and writes using single CPU
loads and stores. Rob's approach simply won't work there. Similarly, OS-bypass
networking and video, which expose hardware device interfaces in user space,
require CPU-endian aware libraries.
That said, use Rob's portable approach anytime you don't have a compelling
reason not to, if only to not have to worry about alignment and portability.
Doing otherwise is premature optimization and a maintenance headache.
------
TwoBit
There's one and only one reason we write code the way he says not to:
performance. Working with words instead of byte munging makes a huge
performance difference. And in game development performance beats most other
reasoning, especially when we are talking about loading tens of thousands of
these on startup. And besides, all our code is wrapped in calls to inline
functions named uint32_t FromBigEndian(...) anyway, so it's actually cleaner
than what he proposes.
------
sparkie
One fallacy is that you need to ever manually convert byte order yourself in
the way the article suggests. Most systems have something that'll do it for
you - eg, htonl, ntohl.
~~~
ArchD
I don't know why you got downvoted. Your idea is valid and people may not have
realized that htonl has friends an relatives that totally make the issue of
the article moot.
#define _BSD_SOURCE /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
#include <endian.h>
uint16_t htobe16(uint16_t host_16bits);
uint16_t htole16(uint16_t host_16bits);
uint16_t be16toh(uint16_t big_endian_16bits);
uint16_t le16toh(uint16_t little_endian_16bits);
uint32_t htobe32(uint32_t host_32bits);
uint32_t htole32(uint32_t host_32bits);
uint32_t be32toh(uint32_t big_endian_32bits);
uint32_t le32toh(uint32_t little_endian_32bits);
uint64_t htobe64(uint64_t host_64bits);
uint64_t htole64(uint64_t host_64bits);
uint64_t be64toh(uint64_t big_endian_64bits);
uint64_t le64toh(uint64_t little_endian_64bits);
~~~
alexchamberlain
Where are these defined?
~~~
gkelly
I found them, on ubuntu, in:
/usr/include/endian.h
------
mcculley
I think this is mostly correct. Certainly when dealing with streams, it makes
code more straightforward to just deal with a byte at a time. But grepping
over some old code to see where I've used WORDS_BIGENDIAN, I see cases where I
defined a typedef struct for a memory mapped binary data format. That is one
place where you would sacrifice performance and clarity by dealing with bytes.
------
haberman
I prefer the code snippet:
memcpy(&i, data, sizeof(i));
i = le32toh(i); // Or whichever function is correct.
This is easier to read and requires less smarts from the compiler to do the
right thing efficiency-wise.
------
gaius
LSB-MSB enables certain useful addressing modes in the 6502, e.g. fast access
to the zero page. Therefore _IMHO_ little-endian is better. I'm not really
interested in 16-bit and above :-)
------
duaneb
Of all the things to quibble about, he chooses the 0.01% of binary I/O that's
write once, test once.
------
coffeeaddicted
But now he needs 2 variables, i and data, while otherwise I can just read in i
and swap it afterward on a big-endian machine (assuming I read in little-
endian certainly).
~~~
alexchamberlain
Multiple variables shouldn't be scary. Storing the same data multiple times
is... You just need to use pointers. See
<https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-order>.
~~~
coffeeaddicted
You realize your code is littered with just those defines which the article
wrote are not necessary at all? You are exactly proving my point, you don't
need a second variable in the case where you don't need to switch bytes when
you use a define. And the trick is to use the define only after you already
have the value already in the integer. In his solution you would need the data
pointer which you have put into the define _always_.
~~~
alexchamberlain
They are necessary to provide optimal code without relying on the optimiser.
------
skrebbel
> _byte order doesn't matter._
> _Let's say your data stream has a little-endian-encoded 32-bit integer.
> Here's how to extract it (assuming unsigned bytes):_
i = (data[0]<<0) | (data[1]<<8) | (data[2]<<16) | (data[3]<<24);
Wait, if byte order doesn't matter, why do I need to do byte-level array
lookups when i'm processing a stream of integers? Oh yeah, because byte order
_does_ matter. If byte order wouldn't matter (say, if all computers were
32-bit, had the same byte order and the same endianness), I could just cast
the stream to int* and be done with it. I can't, because of _byte order_. It
_matters_.
Whether you deal with it using byte-array lookups and math or #ifdefs and
bitmasks, well, whatever rocks your boat man! Good that you're taking it into
account, because byte order matters!
~~~
msbarnett
Did you bother to read the article? He writes that _native_ byte order doesn't
matter, not, as you botched the quote "byte order doesn't matter".
The byte order of the input data _obviously_ matters, and nothing you've said
here disagrees with anything he wrote.
~~~
demallien
I think that skrebel is trying to say that doing as the article suggests comes
with an unnecessary performance penalty hit if your CPU has the same
endianness as the data stream.
~~~
fpgeek
Why should there be a any performance penalty? A good compiler (and I've
worked with at least one that could) would know the machine's endianness and
could optimize away that sequence of selections, shifts and ors when it isn't
needed.
~~~
alexchamberlain
Ok, but the performance penalty is then at compile time...
~~~
alexchamberlain
Lots of downvotes... Do you disagree? If so, why? Or do you think it is
insignificant?
I've sat and watch C++ compile for 5 hours... Compile time performance is
important too!
------
alexchamberlain
There are a lot of errors in this article and the code therein.
i = *((int*)data);
#ifdef BIG_ENDIAN
/* swap the bytes */
i = ((i&0xFF)<<24) | (((i>>8)&0xFF)<<16) | (((i>>16)&0xFF)<<8) | (((i>>24)&0xFF)<<0);
#endif
This should use uint32_t, it is the best way of getting a platform independent
unsigned 32-bit integer, which is what you want here.
_It's more code._
Couple more lines of C, yes. No more at the machine level.
_It assumes integers are addressible at any byte offset; on some machines
that's not true._
Not sure about this one...
_It depends on integers being 32 bits long, or requires more #ifdefs to pick
a 32-bit integer type._
This is caused by bad code - see above.
_It may be a little faster on little-endian machines, but not much, and it's
slower on big-endian machines._
It is faster on a LE machine, but not slower on a BE machine - the same code
can be used and it's a compile time #ifdef.
_If you're using a little-endian machine when you write this, there's no way
to test the big-endian code._
Test on a BE machine?
_It swaps the bytes, a sure sign of trouble (see below)._
No actual facts here...
As pointed out by another commentor, this can be optimised out by the compiler
on many platforms.
~~~
dfox
The point is, when you use explicit shifting of bytes you have same code that
works independently of endianity, the fact that compiler is probably going to
generate exactly same code seems to me like good argument to go with the more
readable choice (ie. explicit shifts), also variant proposed by article is
actually portable C, anything involving casting arrays of one type to arrays
of another incompatible type is not.
No modern architecture can access arbitrarily aligned words in memory directly
(presence of caches modifies things slightly, but shifts the problem from data
bus width to cache line width as unaligned word can still span two cache
lines). There are generally two solutions to this: disallow that at CPU level
(and handle that by raising SIGBUS), emulate it in hardware by doing two
memory accesses for one load or store (which involves significant additional
complexity), Intel invented third solution in i386: OS can select between
these two behaviors.
~~~
alexchamberlain
I would argue we, as a community, need to write a portable, yet optimised,
byte order convertors. htobe, htole, htobel, htolel, htobell, htolell, and
vice versa.
~~~
dfox
Converting byte order of integer is mostly pointless operation (which is what
the article tries to say), what is needed is portable, yet optimized way to
build/parse portable binary structures. In my opinion there are two reasons
why too much optimization in this is complete waste of time:
1) Even if compilers are not able to optimize manual conversion of integer
to/from discrete bytes into same code as word sized access with optional byte
order swap, it's mostly irrelevant, as there aren't going to be any
significant difference in performance between one four byte access and four
one byte accesses (as in both cases you end up with same number of actual
memory transactions, which is the slow part, due to caches)
2) when you are handling portable binary representation of something, it's
always connected to some IO, which is slow already so any performance boost
that you get from microoptimalization like this is completely negligible.
I tend to just hand write few lines of C to pack/unpack integers explicitly
when needed as it seems to me as the most productive thing you can do.
By the way all the big endian <-> little endian functions you propose boil
down to two implementations for each size of operand: no-op and mirroring of
all bytes, both of which are mostly trivial.
What is really missing is portable and efficient way to encode floating point
numbers, as there is no portable way to find out their endianity and in
floating point case it's more complex than just big vs. little endian.
~~~
alexchamberlain
It's the boiling down that people get confused with... I've started an
implementation at <https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-order>.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Warhol’s Bleak Prophecy - well_i_never
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/andy-warhol-pop-art-whitney/576412/
======
kirsebaer
Not mentioned at all in this article: Warhol was a devoted Catholic his entire
life.
"He attended Mass almost daily. Other days he would just slip into St Vincent
Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, drop into the back pew and pray. He spent his
Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters volunteering at a soup kitchen, and
befriended the homeless and poor whom he served. He put his nephew through
seminary. Though openly gay, he endeavoured to remain celibate throughout his
life."
At Warhol's funeral a friend spoke of Warhol’s “secret piety”, which
“inevitably changes our perception of an artist who fooled the world into
believing his only obsessions were money, fame and glamour, and that he was
cool to the point of callousness. Never take Andy at face value.”
[https://catholicherald.co.uk/issues/february-9th-2018/andy-w...](https://catholicherald.co.uk/issues/february-9th-2018/andy-
warhols-devotion-was-almost-surreal/)
~~~
wisdomoftheages
This is only partially true; he was devoutly Catholic, but he also had
numerous male sexual partners.
~~~
scottlocklin
Mel Gibson cheated on his wife. Still pretty Catholic!
~~~
wisdomoftheages
No doubt he was an extremely serious and devout Catholic. That's why I want to
push back against 'catholicherald' propaganda that being a good Catholic
requires you to either heterosexual or celibate.
~~~
scottlocklin
IMO it is a peculiar sort of Americanization that Catholic = Catholic Saint.
------
technobabble
Did anybody else get a "looks like you are offline" error message when trying
to access the article?
------
kaycebasques
What’s a good introduction to Warhol?
~~~
zachrose
Look around for an exhibition of his work. It can make a big difference to see
his prints and paintings at full size and in person. Also, he made so many
different kinds of work that are so different than the iconic images that he’s
most known for. (Silver Clouds is a personal fav.)
------
mirimir
tl;dr - "Neoliberalism is simply Warholism as a theory of governance."
But do read it. Searching for "prophecy" will bring no joy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No such thing as “real programming” (2015) - yumaikas
http://www.brightball.com/development/no-such-thing-as-real-programming
======
lxe
When I first entered the workforce I started off doing embedded Linux
programming. Device drivers, kernel hacks, small systems with limited
resources, FPGAs, etc... This was difficult, and posed lots of challenges.
I ended up jumping all the way to the other end of the "stack" \-- web front-
ends. Webdev has been a side-hobby of a sort for quite a while, and I pretty
much expected it to be a lot simpler than the low level systems programming
that I've been doing.
I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can
without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and
oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level"
programming fields.
I think the entire notion that one type of programming is more "real" than
others comes from lack of perspective. Once you dive deep into more than one
development layer, use case, architecture, language, or community, you realize
that the challenges each one faces are as varied, unique, and interesting as
the rest of them.
~~~
pjc50
I've done most of the spectrum from Perl webdev to chip design, with a good
chunk of embedded C and C++ in the middle. I basically agree, and I think
there's roughly these types of challenge:
\- Inadequate or high-effort tools. This is half the challenge of the embedded
world, and the cause of "I've destroyed my tools with my tools!"
[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf)
\- Complicated business requirements ("do this every second Tuesday if there
is an R in the month, but not if the customer is using the US VAT system and
not if the product is a type of cake")
\- Critical system requirements (remember, using Java to control your nuclear
reactor violates the license). People working in this environment can easily
get elitist about it, until you look at their code and find Toyota spaghetti.
\- Problems that require Actual Maths or Actual CS, with known solutions. Rare
in the webdev world until someone remembers about ACID; more common in the
embedded world if you need control systems.
\- Problems with unknown solutions. Actually extremely rare; often the first
line of attack involves Matlab or Excel or some other "not real programming"
technique. Often the smart domain experts you need to solve the problem are
not also very good at software engineering.
IME the first two take up 80-90% of the working day. The third is only
applicable to some industries.
Different people are better at different types of challenge. This doesn't
matter unless you're trying to construct some sort of total ordering over
human beings in order to feel better about yourself.
~~~
sklogic
Funny. Most of my career was about problems with no known solutions. I wonder
why people keep calling them "rare". After all, why even bother solving a
solved problen?
And yes, most useful prototyping tools for me were far from C++ and alike - I
used Maxima, Mathematica, various Lisps with tons of batteries. Also not a
"real programming".
~~~
ownagefool
So there's two things:
#1 Just because you're constantly tackling interesting problems doesn't mean
they're super common. Most of us seem to be working on an application meeting
some trivial business need.
#2 Just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean the answer doesn't
exist. The world of development is filled with 20 somethings getting paid huge
sums of money to learn and deliver something completely alike to all the other
things they think are really different.
You probably fit into one of these categories, if it's the first then
congrats, because that sounds like an interesting life.
~~~
sklogic
> doesn't mean they're super common
I still cannot understand what justifies re-solving a solved problem over and
over again? Solved once? Automate it.
> Most of us seem to be working on an application meeting some trivial
> business need.
OP says it's somehow "not trivial". For some weird reasons.
Anyway, if the workflow is trivial, if required components are standard, if no
customisation is required - it does not need any _engineering_ at all. List
those initial requirements, infer the implementation automatically. It is hard
to comprehend why the CRUD world is so reluctant to do such an easy thing.
> doesn't mean the answer doesn't exist
It may exist in some highly secretive labs, but in most cases it cannot be
found in any of the papers or preprints.
~~~
ownagefool
So just because something is trivial doesn't mean that it doesn't require time
to implement the rules. You can be entering a bunch of convulted rules into a
GUI based system or you can be writing them in code.
I largely actually prefer the code way, believing it's much more flexible,
sane and safer. However, the problem is the average person who understands
these rules is scared of the code, and the average coder is much more
interested in solving a lot of inconsequential problems.
This makes it much harder to pay someone in who's just going to sit down and
churn out your CRUD and when folks find these guys, they're either keeping
them happy or think they're easily replaceable and will have a fall later on.
I'm doing devops at a big org at the moment. They have several dev teams
working on bespoke low-traffic resource managment applications. Most of these
have 5 developers, devops, delivery manager, user researcher, designer in
addition of going view a technical review process, pen testing, performance
review, and functional testing.
Basic math suggests that's going to come out at about £350,000 per project
over 3 months. A million quid later, they've all passed reviews without any of
these so called highly technical people realising they're dealing with a
common problem and that they're developing 3 of them. Also they're all shit
because they're done by MEAN stack tech hipsters who haven't quite realise
they're leaking important data.
~~~
sklogic
> You can be entering a bunch of convulted rules into a GUI based system or
> you can be writing them in code.
There are more options than just these two. The best way is to write your
rules in a nice, readable, dense DSL, designed specifically for that domain
experts who know the rules but are afraid of code. And such a DSL can be very
much free form and forgiving, helping a lot along the way, so the experts
won't need much assistance.
With such an approach, developers (i.e., those who are not afraid of code) are
either not needed or only concerned with maintaining this DSL, while the
experts can code their rules directly. It eliminates unnecessary elements of a
chain, and cuts costs quite significantly.
------
fallous
When I'm engaged in rapid prototyping or testing an idea, I almost exclusively
rely on the stack I'm familiar with that fits the problem domain. But I don't
consider that "real code" given the very nature of what I'm doing and the
understanding that once the problem has a solution, that solution can be
applied to whatever stack BEST fits the situation.
The author seems to engage in the same behavior, but conflates the "get things
done fast" with the production solution.
If you're a good programmer and your preferred tool is PHP, then you're
engaged in "real programming." If you insist on using PHP as a deployment
solution because it's what you're familiar with rather than because it is an
appropriate/optimal solution to the problem then you're engaged in laziness.
A good programmer can adapt their mental models and adopt the tools necessary
for the problem domain. A bad one always has an excuse for why their comfort
justifies tool choice.
~~~
dietrichepp
I'd like to use a broad definition of "appropriate/optimal". I could imagine
PHP being optimal only because you already have PHP talent in house.
~~~
fallous
Yes, if PHP is appropriate to the task at hand AND you have an existing set of
PHP talent in-house then it would be hard to argue that isn't an optimal
solution.
However, if PHP is not appropriate, that in-house PHP talent does not change
the fact that PHP is the wrong tool.
------
captn3m0
This hits home for me. I started web development in PHP, went up and down the
ladder a lot, but still continue to do PHP (Mostly Laravel these days).
However, I am fascinated by the web in general and all the abstractions that
make it stand up. More specifically, things like REST, HTTP, sessions, and all
the web APIs that you consider for granted on the browser. Even things like
CORS.
The nice thing about PHP is that it lets you play with these abstractions
_even when you are starting out_. For eg, a redirect in ruby/sinatra would be
`redirect [https://google.com`](https://google.com`), but stock PHP would want
you to use the header("Location:
[https://google.com");](https://google.com"\);) variant[0]. PHP doesn't
abstract out the web, but lets you build on top of it. Its close enough to C
so you know what is happening and how things are working (or atleast its
easier to figure out), and still dynamic enough to get shit done.
There are problems with PHP's design, sure. But these are getting fewer and
fewer with things like PHP7/Composer and the entire ecosystem still evolving.
And believe it or not: there are problems with _every programming language_.
Just pick the right tool for the job, will you.
[0]: I know comparing sinatra to PHP isn't ideal, but I am yet to see anyone
code in pure CGI in Ruby.
~~~
lucideer
Your observation on abstraction is interesting. I've always considered PHP to
be quite the opposite.
e.g. Going from PHP to NodeJS, NodeJS is a lot more direct and less abstracted
(handling the request directly, reading the request data incrementally and
handling reader state, setting headers and then explicitly writing to the
buffer, handling connection state, etc.) - note I do mean NodeJS here, not
something like Express
another e.g. PSR-7 I find is, counterintuitively, actually much less
abstracted than raw PHP built-ins as it goes out if it's way to map the
interfaces to the stack as intended, rather than completely arbitrary weird
abstractions. Like the retrieval of query parameters being entirely separate
and unrelated to retrieval of the body payload, whereas PHP tends to sort of
conflate these things in $_GET/$_POST/$_REQUEST and then doesn't really have
obvious intuitive handling of non-x-form-url-encoded payloads. And don't get
me started on query string array handling.
I do completely agree with the article though, and I still use PHP a lot.
Voluntarily.
But I just found your specific observation surprising.
~~~
captn3m0
Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams.
However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without
something like Express and just use http.createServer.
The PHP abstractions are not always clear as you rightly point out (REQUEST =
GET+POST+COOKIE...), but they are vastly different "magic" that you see in the
Ruby land, for eg where you would rarely be ever thinking about cookies at
all.
------
0xcde4c3db
The term "full-stack" has related problems. Most people, regardless of where
they center their expertise, have some idea of a layer of the stack beyond
which is Somebody Else's Problem.
~~~
lowglow
Can confirm, am fullstack: Physical layer is someone else's problem.
~~~
Cyph0n
Actually, even the three layers above that are likely someone else's problem
(data link,network, and transport). Full-stack usually means knowledge of the
application layer i.e. HTTP and client side.
~~~
ownagefool
Honestly, I think that's extremely cheeky usage of the term. I'm of the
opinion that you should be able to:-
\- talk to a datacentre, get servers, switches, power, network racked and
ready to go.
\- Do the devops to configure this infrastructure. \- Understand data-layer
requirements and generally host and manage a CP or AP system.
\- Write the apps that'll live on these servers.
\- Implement resonable caching to scale.
\- Write the frontend code to implement a design to connect to these systems.
\- Have enough knowledge to profile and debug the performance bottlenecks of
such systems.
At about that point, you can start to consider yourselve "full stack". Now
some could argue that you don't need rack the system or do the devops, but if
you don't understand what you're hosting on, how are you ever going to debug
an issue that outwith your application?
------
xjay
Alan Kay: "It turns out there was this term called 'coding' back when I
started, and the term called 'programming'.
So a programmer actually wrote flowcharts. That was the high-level language
used back then. These flowcharts would work on any computer, and what a coder
was, was a human compiler for those flowcharts."
Alan Kay @ SAP:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c)
The quote is from the last few minutes, before the video cuts off.
~~~
epalmer
I still diagram flowcharts. Usually to convey to one of my internal customers
how we envision interfacing with a 3rd party system or solving some complex
business logic.
I diagram a lot of things. Mostly for my benefit. I have struggled over the
years with what symbol do I use for X but now I just pick a rectangle or
predefined process rectangle and label it well. Diagramming helps me get my
internal thoughts out and makes the systems I write better and less error
prone.
~~~
xjay
This was also a point brought up in a recent talk [1] on software engineering,
and what has happened since the "software crisis" was recognized in 1968.
The speaker, Mary Shaw, talks about Design Guidance, and how a decision chart
is "a better organization of a body of design decision knowledge" [starts
27:40] and how we still, desperately, need something like that, and that there
aren't any better ways to communicate such knowledge, that the speaker is
aware of, than "this ancient chart."
(UML is mentioned later, but under the context that it is dying, which was
probably a good thing.)
[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8)
------
xjay
Programming is ultimately about systems.
There's a recent talk [1] by Mary Shaw from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU).
It's about what has happened since the NATO conference in 1968 (dubbed the
Software Crisis), and what engineering means in software engineering.
According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million
"casual" programmers, and ~2.5 million highly trained software engineers, and
there's a need to get more programmers into the engineering aspects.
[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8)
There's a link to the slides in the description of the video.
~~~
morgante
> According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million
> "casual" programmers
I don't believe that statistic for a second, unless we're using some
convoluted definition of "programmers" which includes anyone who can open
Microsoft Word.
That would mean half the labor force can program. Ludicrous.
Looking at the slides[1], I'm pretty sure you interpreted that wrong. There
are 90M end users of software, not 90M "casual" programmers.
[1] [http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-
amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KE...](http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-
amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KEYNOTEProgressTowardAnEngineeringDisciplineOfSoftware.pdf)
~~~
xjay
I'll correct some things: 1) The speaker said projection, not survey. 2) I
interchanged "developers" and "programmers" at the top of the slide, but the
speaker lumps "programming like things" into the 90M "end users," which among
others include pretty much all the web people (scripting languages, database
interfacing, web server security, etc).
Please see the relevant part at 49:50 [1], but I'll bring it in next.
The speaker pretty much defines "end users"/casual developers as people who do
programming like things; "There are something like 90M people out there who
are doing 'programming like things'; they are building databases, they are
building spreadsheets, they are using _scripting languages_ , they are
building _sophisticated websites_ \--what are we doing to help them?"
It's a broad category, but I think the confusion is that programming is not
simply about writing code, it also includes the overall architecture, and
design of a system.
So what I get from this is that end users means anyone who didn't go through
the academic channels to learn the engineering aspects, and that's who they
need to reach. The speaker had a link to their software engineering programs
at CMU [2] in an earlier slide.
Also, see the context in view of the stackoverlow survey--which doesn't add up
if you look at the numbers, but the speaker explains it's because some people
reported in more than once.--It sought to be an example of how "end users" end
up doing "programming like things."
[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8)
[2] Software Engineering Masters Programs [http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-
engineering/](http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/)
------
nickpsecurity
This article links to this powerful story that's worth a read and has some
life lessons in it:
[http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-
to-...](http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-
brightball-for-hire)
In gratitude, I'm going to be a nice guy that avoids the PHP vs "real"
languages part of the discussion. :)
~~~
brightball
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
I wrote that up mostly as an explanation for a lot of local people who'd asked
me for the whole story over the years.
~~~
nickpsecurity
If I remember & stabilize my own situation, I plan to eventually ask you for
that story you hinted at that few would believe. I have a few of my own like
that which made me say agnostic rather than atheist. It was like...
something... was making possibilities connect.
Another time, though. :)
~~~
brightball
Another time
------
falcolas
If web developers think they have it bad for being razzed about not being real
programmers, they should talk to SDET folks.
------
jpswade
When I started out with PHP (cica 2000) it was just another scripting language
to make stuff happen on web pages and it was easier to work with than perl.
In 2003, Rasmus who created PHP said: "I have absolutely no idea how to write
a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way".
PHP has since been developed into a fully fledged programming language
borrowing many of its traits from Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl.
Now at PHP7, having two major versions since 2000, I can say with some
confidence that PHP is a "real programming" language.
~~~
sklogic
PHP became a barely passable language only after HHVM was created. Before that
it only had totally pathetic implementations.
Edit: do downvoters really think the original PHP implementation was not a
pile of crap?!? Amusing!
------
finishingmove
This article is just common sense. In every area there are people who pursue
excellence and people who are slackers. People who look hard for optimal
solutions given the constraints, and people who try to sell whatever they
write as "smart solutions".
Web development is very transparent and in the spotlight these days, so it's
exposed to a lot of criticism. I wonder how many cases of "smart programming"
do we have in C code-bases around the world...
~~~
sklogic
Just take a look at Toyota scandal. There is a same bunch of slackers in
embedded, not any different from that pathetic lot that gave PHP a bad karma.
------
iolothebard
What works is what's "real". I don't care if you're building in php, .net,
ruby, or anything else. All that matters is does it work for the user.
Selling software for my own companies for almost two decades, wait, exactly
two decades, I've never had a SINGLE customer ask me "what language is this
programmed in".
The closest you'd get is anyone running a non standard OS (anything besides
Windows).
------
CM30
As someone who does a lot of basic PHP development and makes various sites
with WordPress, I think the key point people seem to forget in this debate is
that most projects are simple by nature, at least on a technical level.
I mean sure, making a WordPress site with themes and plugins is not as
complicated as coding a web app in Node.js or whatever, but the majority of
business sites don't really need much in the way of complexity. Just a few
pages that the client can add content to and maybe a blog on the site that
might send the content to social media sites upon being posted. In those
cases, why not use WordPress or another simple CMS system?
On another note, this is also kind of the reason I haven't really gotten the
chance to use much in the way of the latest or fanciest technology. Because
every idea I get turns out to be one that doesn't need it.
------
davidspiess
I had the same crisis two years ago. I was on vacation and couldn't stand the
thought going back to work doing the same odd and boring CMS PHP stuff i used
to code day in and day out. My girlfriend left me at the same time, so i
decided to make a move. I quit the job, i thougt i was good at, and went to a
company which programmed mostly in C# and F#. It was challenging, but at the
same time so satisfying to be excited again. I learned about functional
programming, looked beyond the horizon of my save little PHP and JS world. I
never looked bad to my old me and my old job. Stay curious and if the moment
comes you feel stuck, move on to something similar but yet unknown and
challenging.
------
mattvanhorn
Real programming ended with Mel.
~~~
jeff_marshall
Tell that to the people who debug new CSP/BSPs using binary search on "which
line did the boot sequence make it to" using GPIO to an LED.
Thankfully, most of us don't spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing
these days (even in the embedded world).
I also feel for anyone who ends up using an upside-down air can to debug
shoddy solder joints on a BGA device ;)
~~~
njharman
Be enlightened [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-
mel.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html)
------
EugeneOZ
Author is mixing programming for money and programming for enjoying of
algorithms, optimizations and little part of science inside.
------
brightball
Did not expect to see this post making HN this morning. Thanks!
------
bcarlyle
People like building their own solutions because it is way more fun then just
installing Wordpress and adding some plugins. But sometimes Wordpress is more
effective.
I've learned a lot about programming from a friend I worked on a startup with.
But the business part suffered since the focus was on coding instead of the
experience for the end user.
I have friends who are brilliant programmers who made excellent startup
employees and friends who know little about programming who are excellent
startup founders. I’m not even sure the best programmers make the best startup
founders. A friend of mine was amazed when I showed him how to view source
code on a website. His startup just raised a million dollars.
I think this has to do with the fact that people who don't program can't focus
on the code. They focus on solving the problem.
Sometimes the right solution might be to build my own solutions but since
thousands of people are constantly telling me that I'm not a real programmer I
doubt my own ability to do it.
People complaining that web developers aren't real programmers keeps web
developers from learning programming. The thought that web developers aren't
programmers paradoxically keeps me from becoming "a real programmer".
Because my work doesn't count as real programming I have to start every new
"real programming" challenge thinking that I don't really know what I'm doing.
This creates doubt that limits my ability.
I feel confident in my ability to build what I want on the web but I'm
actively doubting if I'm a real programmer.
Most of the web development work I do involves building interactive programs
for helping people cope with mental health problems. My clients only care if I
solve their problems. Previously we had a super advanced custom built system
that was a mess to deal with. I recently switched back to Wordpress because it
is way more effective.
I also think another reason developers don't like Wordpress is that it levels
the playing field between people who can and can't program. Suddenly anyone
can do what it took you years to learn.
People telling me I can't program because I work on the web makes me a
shittier programmer because it makes me nervous when I write code that is
logical. It is harder for me mentally to write javascript for my application
then for writing the css or html and it's not because the logic is harder. It
is because I mentally fear that I don't know how to program because the
internet keeps telling me I can't. But every time I do it it turns out that I
can.
I can feel it in my body when I switch to the js file in Atom. The feeling is
fear.
I don't have it for: setting up a new ubuntu server, building a responsive
website, styling with css or working with Wordpress because I know this is web
development.
I can't mentally figure out what to think about building apps in swift. There
is a lot of logic so that is technically "real programming" but there is a lot
of styling so that is technically not programming. So I guess I have a
moderate fear for it.
My point is that this isn't about the fact that it is harder to write logic
then html or css. This is about my own fear. And the idea that web developers
can't code makes it worse.
I actually wrote something related to this on my website.
[https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-
throu...](https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-through-
software-not-code/)
------
fit2rule
Real programming is anything you do in order to achieve the godlike state of a
user, using the computer, to do something.
Anything.
------
JohnLeTigre
If I remember correctly, Real Programmers use FORTRAN and Quiche Eaters use
PASCAL
------
tluyben2
I guess people generally call 'real programming' something that isn't
connecting up CRUD forms/pages. And although I would not call it 'real
programming' as a term, I do not see that kind of thing as a challenge or
interesting at all. I have made / helped make 1000s of sites over the years
(in many different technologies and CMS's) and most of them are just
incredibly boring and require no kind of programming skills really. So in that
sense they are not 'real programming'. If you can install WP, Google CSS
changes for the theme you buy or get from the designer and then Google the
plugins + few lines of code changes to make it work then that is not 'real
programming' in a sense. But it does pay the bills and it pays them well.
I am not sure about other countries, but in NL and DE, for _big_ companies, I
see the complex & inflexible (Java) Enterprise CMS software being replaced by
WP. Often not openly and company wide, but departmentally for sure. We get
asked to consume the content in the 'big corporate' CMS via a webservice or
even scraping and when that's done and the WP site runs and can be used to run
that part of the site, they ask corporate hosting to do some proxy passing and
rewriting. To illustrate (I cannot name names ...), let's say you have an
international online retailer and the ECMS contains a different site per
country like:
[https://retailer.com/nl/..](https://retailer.com/nl/..).
[https://retailer.com/de/..](https://retailer.com/de/..). etc for all
countries they are in.
Then the NL dep asks us to recreate their /nl/ site in WP with the content
from the ECMS and then they proxypass/rewrite /nl/ to the new server which
contains the WP installation.
Why? Because WP allows, for 'low cost' and 'no _real_ programming' to add all
the features they want and to allow workflow-free fast updates when they have
a special or deals or contest or whatever specific to that country. Not to
mention people understand how to use it right away; no courses needed. With
the ECMS that all runs via the head office and that workflow is too hard to
change so this is much cheaper/easier. Sometimes they don't even really notify
the head office but just do it on their own servers. This same thing happens
in many companies / institutions that have many 'sub-sites' managed by
different regions/countries/verticals.
It works, it makes clients happy and the fact I don't like WP (at all) and the
fact I find this kind of thing rather boring not to create code (like you
would in Django or Ruby) is not really interesting; the average 'corporate' WP
site we deliver has 1 custom WP file with functions the guys who set
everything up and integrate the design reuse and (rarely) append.
I would say that if I was to name something real or not real programming, this
would be it. And yet it makes a lot of money and, more importantly, it makes
clients happy & productive without extremely long processes of implementation.
Edit: Other than that I agree with the article; it is a matter of taste
though. Like said I would not call these things 'real or non-real (fake)'
programming but I do choose to not do most of this work myself as I like
embedded and native mobile work better. That keeps clients happy too anyway.
~~~
Joeri
As you have to be cleverer to debug a piece of code than to write it there is
a case to be made that production grade code should be rather boring to write,
so as to remain maintainable.
~~~
CM30
This is why WordPress recommends a few things that annoy a lot of programmers,
like using the longer if/while/foreach syntax and mixing PHP with HTML code.
It's not elegant, but it's a lot more readable for people who haven't actually
programmed much before. So that people whose knowledge of web coding is mostly
HTML and CSS related can figure out what to edit without programming expertise
or even syntax highlighting.
It's also one of the reasons WordPress (and quite a few other CMS systems that
are sometimes looked down upon in the development world) caught on... because
they were easy to modify and mess around with for people withot prior
programming experience.
------
crispyambulance
Your idealism is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.
There's plenty of work for everyone. No need to call what other people do
"trivial" or demean them for not "automating" something after having done it
once.
FWIW, automating something can easily be a job orders of magnitude more
difficult than doing the original job. It might require capabilities and
resources which far exceed what is available at the organization.
Moreover, automation is a complicated continuum of solutions. If you're
talking about REAL WORLD computing problems more complex than can be handled
by a bash script, NO, you don't automate after solving a problem once.
~~~
sklogic
I am talking about things being repeated over and over again, far more than
just a couple of times.
And the only thing organisations are lacking is sanity. The rest _is_ trivial,
proven many times. I will regard all of them as lowly and stupid, because this
is what they are.
See my rant elsewhere in this thread - this stupid world is full of examples
of idiots in charge.
Are you trying to convince me that the morons who designed Oyster are not
morons and I should not judge them? No way. They are scum. Should not I judge
the deranged NHS bosses? No way! I'd be delighted to see them beheaded, no
less. Their incompetence cost human lives.
And I hate it when people are trying to play down the stupidity of others. In
my book there is no sin worse than stupidity and incompetence.
Won't you deny that most of the idiots out there cannot code at all, although
they call themselves "developers"?
See even the high profile apps for Android for example. Say, "BBC News".
Millions had been spent on it. And this shit locks when internet connection is
lost. Don't the retards who wrote it commute on a tube? Don't they know how to
code asynchronous UIs?
And don't let me even start ranting about the British Gas "Hive" thingy.
The spread of the ignorance and stupidity in this world is unforgivable. And I
won't ever be polite to the stupid and ignorant. They're worthless and they
deserve the most harsh criticism possible.
~~~
ownagefool
So out of interests, what's so wrong with Oyster in 2016?
~~~
sklogic
E.g., if you wave in first, read that your balance is low, and then go to a
ticket machine to top up, it will be counted as a maximum fare travel. Still
the case, after so many years.
Those retards did not even think that ticket machines may be available beyond
the oyster barriers, but this is very common on many suburban rail stations.
And if they were not such scumbags, they did not even have to _think_ about
all that at all. There are trivial formal methods to analyse _all_ possible
workflows. The fact they were oblivious of such methods is unforgivable. The
incompetent uneducated retards should never be allower anywhere near any
technology.
------
dschiptsov
Tell that to Linus.)
~~~
dschiptsov
I see. To be able to write world-class kernel code (or projects like nginx) a
programmer must posses at least practical knowledge of advanced data-
structures and algorithms (including implementation details), machine
architectures and automata theory (FSMs for protocols) - subjects about which
typical PHP/JS coder have no idea. That's why they are so sure that there is
nothing beyond their amazing coding skills out there.
------
sklogic
All your web stuff is not a real programming. Not because it is "easier" or
"less valuable" than, say, aerospace or automotive, but because you're doing
it wrong. Among all things, the entire web stack of technologies is the most
horribly overengineered one.
Most of the frightingly hard problems you're solving should have never existed
in the first place. And yes, web devs, it is _your_ fault, your collective
responsibility. Web could have been nice. You screwed it.
~~~
mikegioia
Is this sarcasm or just ignorance?
~~~
sklogic
If you do not think that all that web stack is horribly overengineered, then
you know nothing about engineering at all. If you do not see dozens of ways it
could have been orders of magnitude simpler without surrendering any
functionality, you know nothing about engineering at all.
~~~
mikegioia
This is from _your_ comment history:
I have to admit that I did not do any web development
...
I also know about it from interaction with frontend
developers themselves and from toying around it
Do you believe that people who have never done something are capable of
understanding it well enough to have the abrasive and ignorantly arrogant
stance as your own? You either do and are ignorant, or you don't and are a
hypocrite.
~~~
sklogic
I am an engineer. I do not need years of experience in a technology to assess
it. And, btw., you may not know what my "toying around" really means in terms
of depth and exposure.
So no, it is _your_ astonishing ignorance here. You should stop pointless
personal attacks and provide only rational, technical arguments. This thread
is already such a code monkey circlejerk that there is no value in adding
anything to it.
~~~
mikegioia
How about you take your own advice then? Just because I and millions of others
don't think the web is "horribly overengineered", doesn't mean I "don't know
anything about engineering".
~~~
sklogic
No, it means exactly this. You know absolutely nothing about engineering, and
you keep proving it. As well as millions of other similarly under-educated
semi-programmers.
Know why? Because there is no place for democracy in science. It does not
matter how many people believe in some crap. As long as _objective_ criteria
exist, as long as a _formal_ proof is possible, any number of millions can
believe in whatever they fancy, and nobody should care about their idiotic
fantasies.
And it is dead easy to prove that something is overengineered. You may not
know it, with such a background, but _complexity_ is a well defined,
objective, measurable thing. If you're curious, look up what an "Algorithmic
information theory" is.
An existence of a formally simpler model with a more flexible functionality is
a very clear evidence that the other, more complex system is overengineered.
Just compare something like Tcl/Tk with your awful web stack.
And should I go into Javascript, the heart of your entire stack? This is
pretty much my speciality, I am a PL specialist, so you cannot accuse me of an
ignorance here. It is very easy to prove how bad Javascipt is, how horribly it
is designed from all the PL-theoretic points of view.
------
kalzium
omg I know I'll be down voted for this but... ugh, this guy hasn't gotten
anything and it's so super sad. I've a similar background like him, but I
kinda felt embarassed reading his post. Mannnnn... you can argue all day long
what programming is about and go crey crey on forums and write stupid blog
posts... but WHY the hell waste time with that if you could build something
awesome in the meantime with all the things that you know and all the tools
that you got - like argh come back when you build something awesome I dunno...
:/
~~~
kalzium
I'm sorry I was half asleep and drunk. I have no idea what I was talking
about.
~~~
brightball
Accepted :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook asks DEA to stop impersonating people - sp332
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1336541-facebook-letter-to-dea.html
======
devbootcamp
This is done on LinkedIn by LEO also. Fun stuff :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Progress Towards Mammalian Whole-Brain Cellular Connectomics - brainrecon
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnana.2016.00062/pdf
======
gwern
A better link would be
[http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnana.2016.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnana.2016.00062/full)
------
thatcat
returns access denied
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Ok, I want to create a site this weekend, which framework/platform/tech? - drudru11
Ok, I want to create a working site this weekend. A minimum viable product. I have a few ideas, but they could all be done as a simple web app in front of a mongo database. No need for comet or exotic stuff. I want to write the least amount of code, deployment headache, etc.<p>which tech/platform/framework should I use?<p>It should have the concept of users and authentication already built-in
(facebook connect)
It should have an admin interface to the persistent objects in the system<p>I'll start with two extremes:
Is node.js ready yet?
Should I just install wordpress?
======
rhizome
Whatever you already know.
------
jerf
rhizome's correct. It will take more than a weekend with any tech platform to
get to the point that you know enough to deploy an app in a week.
That said, with those rather sketchy specs, and no specification of what you
already know, Django's on the short list, thanks to its rather nice and
integrated admin interface.
For the MVP, if you're serious about the weekend timeframe, I'd suggest
_considering_ just sticking with Django's default SQL DB integration and where
you see fit, slam some JSON blobs into the database and call it a day. I do
mean "considering", it could go either way, but on that timeframe the extra
several hours it could take to get something else running starts becoming
significant percentages.
If you're willing to loosen up on the time frame a lot of other stuff becomes
viable, but in terms of slamming it out now it's going to be difficult to
_beat_ Django... tie it, perhaps, but not beat it.
You should probably help us out by telling us what you already know at least a
little, in terms of languages at the very least.
~~~
drudru11
Hi,
Yeah, you are right. I thought I would ask since I'm always on the lookout for
a fresh magic bullet :-)
I know Ruby/Rails, PHP, Python, Javascript, Java, Scala, Clojure, C, and C++.
All languages require an investment in some kind of framework in order to pull
off a real site.
As bad as it sounds, I'll probably just go with PHP and mongo for now because
I already have an easy setup for that.
------
sktrdie
How about App Engine + JavaScript with ApeJS:
<https://github.com/lmatteis/apejs/>
------
pizza
Bottle + MongoDB + Google App Engine works for me.
~~~
drudru11
how do you run mongodb on GAE?
~~~
clyfe
Maybe he uses a third party ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Mindfulness Conspiracy - Osiris30
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality
======
lubujackson
There are some fudgy leaps of logic here, trying to make sweeping insights but
it is just undermining the whole thing for me. Like: "The ideological message
is that if you cannot alter the circumstances causing distress, you can change
your reactions to your circumstances. In some ways, this can be helpful, since
many things are not in our control. But to abandon all efforts to fix them
seems excessive."
Who is saying "abandon all efforts" to fix things? That is a total strawman
argument. Mindfulness is fine and helpful for fixing exactly the issues we
face in the world - I don't see how being stressed or overwhelmed helps anyone
improve things. Mindfulness is meant to give you space to make useful actions
rather than spin in place. Yes, the wheels of capitalism have inflated and
twisted the concept for profit, but it is quite a stretch to say it is some
sort of opiate for the masses to keep us docile.
If the Titanic is sinking, telling people to keep freaking out probably isn't
the best way to save lives. "Stay calm" doesn't solve things either, but I
feel like it gives you a better chance to find a raft, yes?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should You Tell the World How Much Money You Make? - 1PlayerOne
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/business/salary-transparency-ask-a-manager.html
======
ergothus
I worked in a state govt office in Virginia some years ago and the local paper
did a FOIA request for everyone's salaries in the state...and published an
online database of the upper 50%.
[http://data.richmond.com/salaries/](http://data.richmond.com/salaries/)
My coworkers, by-and-large, were furious. I found it really helpful. I found
out where I was relative to my peers (I was only behind by a few hundred
bucks/year - we were all basically equal if we had the same title, except for
one guy that had abused the state 10% raise when switching departments). One
guy in our DBA/Ops team discovered he was getting a relatively paltry amount
while his peers were all getting 6 digits (which was all on the bosses - his
peers were also bothered by this). One or two people had very questionably
high salaries and were suddenly held by others to be delivering at that level.
Mostly, though, it calmed people down about salary differences.
Honestly, it was awkward for some people, but honestly I think the benefits
outweighed the costs, at least within the office. Much of my coworkers'
outrage was about people OUTSIDE the office finding their salaries, such as
friends, family, neighbors, people wanting money, etc.
~~~
Consultant32452
I prefer the way my current employer handles it. They publish a service where
you can search by your job title and region. It tells you what the max and min
for current employees. I don't care to know what any particular person makes,
but I like knowing where I am in the range.
~~~
chucksmash
That's a great way to handle it, especially if the job titles are at least
somewhat stratified.
Don't think it'd be that useful at a "we don't do seniority rituals, everybody
is a software engineer" type place, where you just see you're in a band from
$60k-$480k. If the bucket is large, distribution information would be more
useful.
------
Zaheer
[https://www.Levels.fyi](https://www.Levels.fyi) started very similar to the
'Ask a Manager' survey in the article. We had a Google Form / Spreadsheet to
collect salaries in tech. In fact, they still underpin our UI today. We've had
folks mention that our data is more accurate than Glassdoor, etc. We're
working on several features to ensure our data continues to remain accurate,
fresh and easy to analyze. Ping me at my email in profile if you have
feedback!
------
pavlov
In Nordic countries, everyone's tax return bottom line is public information.
You can look up your neighbour or co-worker or the average celebrity if you
want to know how much income and capital gains they reported. Societies
haven't yet collapsed from unbridled jealousy.
Meanwhile in America the topic is taboo. Apparently you can get five years of
jail for leaking someone's tax information — in the same country where
personal information privacy barely exists otherwise. Strange.
------
arcticbull
There's already a huge database of your coworkers' salaries, assuming you work
with any H-1B visa holders
([https://h1bsalary.online](https://h1bsalary.online)). I seem to recall the
government had a portal you can search by name too.
------
hn_throwaway_99
There are lots of comments to this effect in the NYTimes article, but large
swaths of the population already have their salary data public: many (most?)
public sector workers' salary is public knowledge, oftentimes searchable on a
website, military pay grades are public, highly paid executives report most of
their compensation in SEC docs, etc.
Thus, I don't really buy the myriad of reasons presented here for why this is
such a bad idea.
~~~
ip26
Perhaps the strongest argument against is basically that if you're the only
one telling, you are at a disadvantage. It's a prisoner's dilemma.
By comparison, in the public sector & military, _everyone 's_ is public, and
on top of that there is no salary negotiation.
~~~
astura
... there is salary negotiation in the public sector ...
And even if every pay grade was fixed, a salary negotiation can take the form
of "I deserve to be moved to a higher pay grade because XYZ." People don't get
promoted on a fixed schedule.
------
dahart
> There is no law that stops employees from sharing salary information, but
> myths persist at many workplaces that sharing is forbidden
This is failing to address the scenario where not sharing salary is company
policy and/or part of the employment agreement or contract. If my personal
experience is any indicator, I would speculate that this is quite common at
large companies.
And, I don't know, having other people share their salary information is good
for me, but sharing mine can certainly be used against me in a variety of
subtle ways. People are consciously and unconsciously judgemental by nature.
Sometimes I have a relatively good deal and I know it, so sometimes I don't
want to share salary because I know it would only make other people feel bad.
Sometimes I don't want to know that someone makes more than me because it
would make me feel bad, when ultimately it doesn't matter.
I am genuinely interested in the idea of sharing, but I really want some
stronger reasons of why it's to my actual personal benefit today to share that
information, assuming my employment agreement allows it. I didn't see any in
this article.
~~~
astura
It's against the law to prevent employees from disclosing and discussing
salary. The The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 protects employees rights
to discuss conditions of employment, which, obviously includes salary.
[https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/nlrb#t38n3180](https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/nlrb#t38n3180)
Adults can absolutely handle _fair_ pay discrepancies without "feeling bad,"
and if they can't then they are so immature that I doubt they'd otherwise make
a good employee. It works plenty fine in many industries where salary is
public information and even in whole countries where salary is public.
~~~
dahart
Indeed, but I've seen & had plenty of contracts that state what they want and
then at the end have a clause disclaiming anything that conflicts with
existing laws. It's then the onus of the employee to figure out their actual
rights.
BTW I realize I may have some of my experience with contract work mixed into
my fallible memory. But, that's another reasonable point here, more people are
turning into independent contractors, and they're not subject to employee
rights protection, it's perfectly legal to have a compensation non-disclosure
in a work-for-hire contract.
> Adults can absolutely handle fair pay discrepancies without "feeling bad,"
> and if they can't then they are so immature that I doubt they'd otherwise
> make a good employee.
I think this might be too dismissive and perhaps over-simplified. Everybody,
including "adults" wants fairness in their life. Most people don't know what
actually constitutes the range of "fair" pay even within their own company,
and there are often situations - it is _very_ common - where someone is paid
more or less than others not due to experience or skill but due to
circumstances, timings, negotiating power, specialized company requirements,
and a variety of other things.
Still, even if sharing didn't cause me any large problems, why is it in my
interest to share?
------
Havoc
Within the office...most people know/can guess each other's fairly accurately.
I stopped talking to family about it though. Different countries and CoL means
my raises end up being more than their total package. So discussing that leads
to nothing wholesome. Instead I try to silently absorb more of the family
costs than proportionate.
------
blhack
It depends on who you’re telling. People treat you differently when they find
out how much money you make, both on the upper and lower ends.
------
waterside81
The government of Ontario releases the salaries of all public employees every
year if they make over 100k. So called sunshine list
[https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-
disclosure](https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure)
~~~
username223
Isn't this true for all provinces? A friend of mine is a government medical
researcher in Alberta, so he makes good money, but is hardly what I would call
"rich," at least not in the SV sense. Still, his salary is posted online.
I think this goes overboard: a min/mean/median/max for each job title would be
good enough to know where I stand in a salary negotiation. I also like Ms.
Zaloom's idea from the article to share salaries among close friends and
family.
------
Hoasi
It's not as easy a question as it sounds. Sharing this information within a
company usually means trouble. So it doesn't look like a good idea to share it
with society at large. At the same time, honesty and transparency is the best
policy... Privacy, security, and psychological issues are at stake when it
comes to money.
> the gig economy has made salary comparing a near necessity for many.
Obviously, most freelancers would love if this information was public. If
rates are public, you know where you are standing and where to start if you
want to provide a service. That is not exactly the same as telling how much
money one makes—one can only infer so much. Despite this, most freelancers are
still secretive about their rate—as if this was always an advantage.
~~~
zwkrt
I think the reasons it causes trouble in the workplace and more generally are
exactly why it should be shared with everyone. Sharing salaries/wages is only
an issue if the wages themselves cannot be justified. The issue is that very
few people's wages CAN be justified (either in terms of scalar dollar amount
or in relation to the value one produces), and sharing incomes just shines
light on the ugly reality that income disparity is mostly senseless. I think a
lot of societal problems would be solved if we all had a sign over our head
showing stats about how much we make and how we spend that money.
------
jvalencia
It seems to me like there's a potentially privacy sensitive way to share the
information. For any role with more than N employees, the mean and standard
deviation are published: simple, equitable, and private.
------
max76
Knowing other people's salaries gives you a stronger negotiating position.
Other people knowing your salary gives you a weaker negotiating position.
Should you tell the world how much money you make? Are you altruistic?
~~~
joe_the_user
Employees at a workplace knowing each others' salaries puts them in a better
position in bargaining with management but it also makes it harder for
management to selectively give certain employees higher salaries - because the
employees are talented or because the management happens to want to keep said
(maybe talented) employees or because management just like certain employees
or because management just wants bargain each employee down to minimum
management thinks they'll take.
So the question is what situation would someone think better serves their
interests? Of course, whether one person describing their salary would evoke
reciprocity or not is a question, whether another person would tell the truth
is a question.
~~~
kradroy
I'm normally fine with employees sharing their salary info. Since I'm a
manager of individual contributors I can't do much myself in granting
compensation changes. I can make recommendations, but I'm not the final
approver.
That being said - if an employee were to come to me and say "I want $X because
so-and-so (or 'others on the team') are making that much", I would deny their
request outright. That's a childish way to ask for a raise. It doesn't
highlight what you're bringing to the team; only what you want to take from
it.
------
czbond
Are sites likes Glassdoor (for most companies), Linkedin jobs (with salary
ranges), and tech (levelsfyi, etc) already doing this in an anonymous way?
~~~
Zaheer
Yup, we recently added salary ranges on levels.fyi as well. Would love
feedback on presentation format and other other graphs folks would find
useful:
[https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html](https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html)
------
xfitm3
You should talk to colleagues about salaries, but avoid telling friends,
family, and the general public.
------
2sk21
This is a real eye-opener - tech salaries seem ridiculously high compared to
what most people make.
------
JohnFen
I'm not going to tell the world how much I make. That seems foolish. I don't
mind sharing it with family, friends, and coworkers, though.
------
verttii
Here in Finland all personal tax records are public so we don't even need to
contemplate on this question.
------
malux85
Absolutely not.
~~~
EGreg
Why not
~~~
segmondy
Why don't you tell us how much you make?
People get killed in some places for $100. $1000 is enough to kidnapped in
some places. Besides if people know how much you make, you will get custom
pricing. Do you know there are countries that have 2 menus, one for foreigners
and one for locals? Because they foreigners make much money so are charged
higher prices?
~~~
r3bl
Well it's a good thing that this article talks about sharing salary info
_between colleagues_ , and makes no arguments for "telling the world" other
than in the clickbaity title.
That's why it ends with a question mark, so that it makes the title not-
technically-incorrect (author is "just asking a question"), while driving the
engagements that have nothing to do with its content.
------
EGreg
Absolutely yes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple slips below $600 in first trading day after exec shakeup - uladzislau
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542903-37/apple-shares-drop-below-$600-in-first-trading-day-after-exec-ousters/
======
stcredzero
This demonstrates the difference that contextual knowledge makes. Exec ousters
are generally a decent indicator to sell. However, those of us who have been
following Apple will know that these particular decisions were good, leaving
Apple with a cohesive "four man band."
Information asymmetry. It's what makes markets interesting and how people make
lots of money.
~~~
chollida1
I'm going to have to partially disagree with this.
I agree there is definitely information asymmetry going on. However, usually a
movement in a stocks price is lead by institutional money. This is for the
most part what every hedge fund competes on, a competitive advantage.
If you think that your observation has escaped institutional investors eyes
then I'd disagree with you. I'm completely biased as I'm in the industry but I
think most people would be very surprised by just how much the average hedge
funder knows about the companies they have positions in.
There were rumors circulating a couple days before the announcement that this
was coming.
~~~
cremnob
I'm also in finance. I'm constantly amused by comments on HN that dismiss
"Wall Street" and the investor class in general as being stupid when they show
a poor understanding of markets themselves.
~~~
stcredzero
I don't play the market, but years ago, I got to watch a coworker of mine walk
all over you guys with the Rambus stock. He made a ton of money and knew when
to get out by actually understanding the industry.
------
justin0469
IMO, Apple has lost it's touch just as they almost won me over along with
thousands of Android fan boys with the iPhone 5. I bought the latest 13"
MacBook Air the day it came out. I was impressed by the form factor but that's
about it. The stability and smoothness everyone used to rave about just isn't
there. I refuse to upgrade to their latest OS.
That's not to say Apple is disappearing anytime soon, but I think they have
lost their touch. I believe it will be a slow but steady decline in value,
down to a more Google-like share price.
~~~
kalid
I don't know about losing its touch, but wanted to offer some corrections re:
"I believe it will be a slow but steady decline in value, down to a more
Google-like share price."
1) Comparing share prices between companies doesn't make sense (the share
price is total value / total number of shares, the latter can change). That
said, GOOG's current share price (~670) is higher than AAPL's current price,
and near its all time high (~700).
2) If you meant to compare total values, that Apple should be worth as much as
Google... Apple is over twice Google's total value (550B to 220B) so that'd be
an enormous decline in value.
3) If you meant to compare relative value (price/performance), Apple is
actually a better "deal" for investors in that its P/E is around 14, the
market average, while Google's is 21. 14 dollars in Apple will create $1 in
earnings, but 21 dollars in Google is required to do the same.
~~~
justin0469
Fair enough :) Bad example with the Google share price and point taken with
value / # of shares. You are correct with #3. I know Apple is worth is
significantly higher than Google, I just think that gap will close (Google
will raise, Apple will lower) over a long period of time - as in years. Could
be totally wrong, it's just something I could see happening.
~~~
kalid
No worries :). I've been playing with stocks lately so am aware of a lot of
potential misconceptions [esp. around the raw share price, vs. market cap and
P/E being indicators of value].
Apple very well could depreciate in value if their earnings slip. That would
put its P/E in the bottom half of the S&P 500 (historically Apple's P/E has
been around 15, it's around ~14 now).
------
Tyrannosaurs
Apple's movement over the past three months has been an exaggerated version of
the NASDAQ or the Dow, up a bit around September, down to it's levels of about
three months ago.
In Apple's case that peak coincided with the my hyped iPhone 5 launch which
might explain some of the exaggeration.
There are many many people who understand the market better than I do but to
me at least this is a complete non-story.
~~~
robinjfisher
Agreed.
_Over the last year, Apple's share price has swung widely from $363.32 to
$705.07._
Surely a more accurate statement would be that the share price has increased
dramatically. _Swung widely_ implies ups and downs.
The current dip is similar to one seen in April and its share price is still
markedly up YoY.
~~~
corin_
Currently it's hovering around $600, this is $105.07 lower than the high and
$236.68 higher than the low. Sure, "swung" may lack the implication that
overall the price has been going up, so it's not the complete story, but I
think it's fair to say there have been pretty wild ups and downs.
------
nicholassmith
I think these articles need to come with the caveat of "markets move and
shift". I'm sure no one at Apple is panicking, it's easy to be lured into
watching the share prices as a statistic of success but Apple has enough cash
in stockpile that their share price isn't overly important, unless you're a
shareholder.
If it dropped 20% in a day I think it'd be safe to say there was a loss of
investor confidence.
------
seunosewa
I think the share price drop has more to do with Google's Nexus device
announcement.
~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I think it's 2% which is basically within the range of what might be seen as
noise (and now on the way back up).
It's the market being the market and fluctuating in the way things do when you
give a bunch of people a load of money and tell them to buy and sell things
they don't understand.
Some of the people selling might be thinking about the Nexus (though I think
very few), some might be thinking about the execs, some might have just hit
the wrong key but most of it is just stuff that we'll never understand and in
the long term almost certainly means nothing.
Looking at the market over short periods is a route to madness.
------
snowwrestler
P/E is below 14 for an innovative technology company whose products are
selling out worldwide. Sounds like a buy situation to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Codewars - exolxe
http://Codewars.com
======
mhoad
Reading through some of the comments here I feel like you just posted a video
series of running over cats in your SUV to Reddit.
Personally, I love it, I think its great, has a slick feel and experience to
it. The site wasn't as responsive as you might hope but to be fair you are
currently on the front page of HN so I am willing to let that slide.
Looks like a ton of hard work went into this and I think it comes across
really well!
~~~
glennos
I'd second that. Great site! Not understanding the reported concerns regarding
OAuth, usability, etc. Works for me.
Only problem I'm hitting is 500 errors, which I assume is because the server
is getting smashed. Good problem to have!
~~~
exolxe
Really appreciate the balanced perspective. We're a very small team and we're
constantly improving, so it's great to hear supportive feedback.
And yea, we've gotten crazy traffic, so the 500s/speed are load issues that we
just pushed a fix for.
~~~
halflings
Hi exolxe,
I'm working on an open-source framework for code challenge web apps, so I'm
really happy to see such a website done right :-) !
Sent you a mail asking for some help, hope you'll find time to answer.
Good luck !
------
majika
For the privacy-conscientious user, your site provides one of the worst
experiences I've ever seen.
To get anything to work, I had to allow scripts from www.codewars.com,
push.codewars.com, two CloudFlare domains, AND platform.twitter.com. While my
usual process to get JS-heavy web apps to work is load scripts from the domain
itself, plus any standard CDN domains (like CloudFlare), your site does not
work without widgets.js from Twitter, which is pretty crazy.
You depend on three different CloudFlare subdomains - one of which serves a
tracking script, _on top of_ you trying to load tracking scripts from
MixPanel, Google Analytics, Rollbar, Intercom, Twitter and Facebook. I only
loaded what I had to, but I think it's safe to assume that you would have
pushed more domains on to me had I loaded everything.
Edit: the complaints in the two paragraphs below are invalid (can't
strikethrough on HN) - I mistook the authentication form as requesting my
GitHub credentials, whereas the "GitHub" title is a link to GitHub's oauth
page, and they also provide the option for creating a CodeWars account without
linking your GitHub. The visual distinction between these two authentication
mechanisms is near-invisible on my laptop's monitor. Anyway, according to
guptaneil (below), they will still require you to create an account with them
after linking your GitHub, so don't bother.
-Normally I would just dismiss such a privacy-flippant site as yours, but what pushed me to make a comment is that you prompted me to type in my GitHub password on your site, on a form with an action against your server. This is absolutely horrendous. You should only input your GitHub password on pages at, and send it to, servers at [https://*.github.com](https://*.github.com). I can only feel sorry for all the users who have fallen for this. I feel worse for those users without NoScript, who have unknowingly typed their GitHub password into a tab with scripts from about 10 different companies running - do you trust all of them to not log your password? Even the analytics companies?-
-I've flagged this post, and for anyone who typed their GitHub credentials into this site, I'd recommend you reset your password.-
~~~
tlrobinson
Maybe you should go full rms and only access the web via email.
I can't believe this is the top comment.
~~~
sneak
Stop setting up this dichotomy. It's not all or nothing.
There are reasonable amounts of external javascript to load, and there are
unreasonable amounts. Please study the difference.
------
winslow
Was anyone else put off by the link github/enlist to continue after only two
brainteasers? I felt like I was just starting to get really engaged in using
the site and enjoying it, to only have a "paywall type obstacle" in the way
and take away my good vibe feeling. Maybe rephrasing enlist to something like
login to track your progress would be better?
~~~
exolxe
Thanks for the feedback winslow - we didn't mean to dampen your vibe. The idea
is as the challenges get harder we want to make sure you get ones you care
about (interest area, difficulty) - that's a good idea on rephrasing it, we
could make that more apparent and give more challenges before requiring
signup.
Critique really helps us improve, we love hearing it, everyone should feel
free to reach out: [email protected]
~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
A bit more feedback:
In chrome 32.0.1700.77, clicking join did nothing, it only scrolled to the top
of the page.
Also, I'd love to see a quick video introduction. I like the concept.
~~~
erik14th
Same here. Some points:
\- Navigation feels weird.
\- The main call to action should be "Try Codewars" instead of "Join Codewars"
so it'd feel like "no compromise just try it", also it'd be clearer that you
can actually try it out before signing up. I agree that the teaser should be
longer than the 2 small exercises.
\- The webcam in the monitor kinda creeps me out and draws my attention away
from the important stuff.
~~~
exolxe
Good point on the text - we'll make an update... The landing page navigation?
The webcam comment had me laughing for a few minutes. Never really noticed,
but it's an easy fix.
~~~
erik14th
Yep the landing page navigation, I actually didn't notice there was more to it
than the landing page. I felt kinda lost in the landing page cause there's no
much else than the "Join us" thing. I'm a programmer, my eyes have been
trained to ignore marketing copy and search for code examples and
documentation.
------
sandrae
I just finished the Javascript and JQuery course at codecademy.com three weeks
ago and since then I take challenges at coderbyte.com to continue learning.
So I was very interested in your site and signed up. Here are some of my first
observations and comparisons:
\- codecademy.com lists lots of males and females from young to old, from
different countries with all kind of professions on their Success Stories
pages. I felt very welcome their site. The name of your site and the constant
use of the word Kata indicate to me that your audience are young males. As a
woman in my thirties I don't feel I fit on your site. It seems a bit to
aggressive to me.
\- The second Javascript problem description was not very good. The second
problem basically says "Something is wrong - correct it". I like clearer
instructions like "write a function to reverse a string".
\- Compared to codecademy.com the site took longer to check my code.
\- I have no problem giving my e-mail address to anybody that provides a
service I want to try. I like to get the onboarding mails from codecademy.com
and think they should send out more because they are motivating. So I think
that it is good that you are asking for my e-mail address and I hope you make
good use of it by sending me interesting stuff. If not, I just filter you with
a click.
I'm going to spend some time on your site. If you want further feedback, just
send me a message.
~~~
angrycoder
Just curious, why does the word kata turn you off because you are female?
As someone who has studied martial arts for five years, there have been plenty
of female students and the vast majority of the people I study with are well
into their 30s.
~~~
dusklight
I don't think the word "kata" by itself is masculine or aggressive but the
site is called codeWARs, and they call signing up "enlisting" so ..
~~~
hobs
So they better change their entire branding!
------
stevenbrianhall
I can't recommend Codewars highly enough as a way to sharpen your skills. It's
like a slightly more verbose, prettier Project Euler.
They currently support CoffeeScript, Javascript, and Ruby, but are working on
supporting a ton more. Definitely worth investigating.
~~~
exolxe
This is awesome Steven - appreciate the support!
------
moron4hire
No! You may not have my email address after two woefully simple problems! I
don't need you sending me emails every day, "You forgot to come to
Codewars.com in the last 2 hours, why aren't you spending your entire life on
this site?!"
~~~
primitivesuave
I doubt _anyone_ , not even LinkedIn, would market their site that
aggressively.
~~~
moron4hire
it's called hyperbole
~~~
exolxe
It's all good - we may open it beyond members eventually. The main reason for
email right now is to foster a quality community... Just so you know we have
strict no-emails-every-2-hours policy.
------
jmtame
Cool idea. The Ruby code takes a long time to evaluate - even though I passed
the first two challenges without any issues, this would frustrate me if I were
a beginner. Why not use a Ruby REPL? Looks like you're evaluating the code
server side.
~~~
exolxe
Thanks and good catch. We do execute the code submissions on our own servers,
partially so that we can prevent cheating and make sure all solutions are
legit (the solutions list users see after finishing each challenge provides
some of the site's greatest value)... though second is because we plan to
eventually support full environments (challenges that utilize libraries,
frameworks, etc.).
The speed issue is optimization on our part, we boosted the servers so it
should be a lot quicker now
~~~
philippotto
You could make a first evaluation on the client so that the user gets quick
feedback whether his solution is right. To validate that the user didn't
cheat, you can make a second evaluation (server sided). The user shouldn't be
forced to wait for the server sided evaluation. Instead he should be able to
solve the next task immediately.
But nevertheless: Great idea with a lot of potential! Maybe you can give more
detailed compile errors, if the user wrote incorrect code.
~~~
gizzlon
If you do implement this, you can also avoid validating every submission
server-side. It should be enough to check a random sample. If you suspect
someone, you can start checking them more aggressively.
If you want to get serious, there's actually a lot of research into cheating
prevention :)
------
mgadams3
Saw you guys demo at a meet-up at Carbon5 almost a year ago, cool to see your
progress since then. I actually use the site regularly, nice work, especially
with the way your hide the spoilers so you can't just cheat if you get stuck.
~~~
exolxe
No way, this brings back some good memories. Glad you're using it regularly!
------
JacobJans
I love it! I'm a self-taught programmer, mostly working alone on my own
projects. This is a great way to expand my knowledge and have fun at the same
time. I particularly like seeing the other solutions after I've come up with
my own.
Thank you!
------
OverZealous
This is a very fun way to learn and get better. It's still in a very active
development stage, so things go up-and-down regularly (which sucks when you
want to get your fix), but it's mostly been awesome while I've used it the
last few months or so.
If you do try it out, one of the best parts is adding your own "kata" —
basically the games or tests. You will learn a lot by writing them (the
community is very active in helping users improve description text and test
cases). And there's nothing like seeing someone come in and absolutely blast
your best effort out of the water with something even more amazing.
------
damiongrimfield
The site looks great! I only have one comment: it'd be nice to get an idea of
which solution is the most efficient, and it'd be REALLY nice to be able to
sort solutions by speed.
~~~
exolxe
Awesome suggestion, that's actually one of our next features - stay tuned!
------
xixixao
The dashboard UI is pretty confusing, I switched to Chrome because I thought
it was broken in Firefox, and in Chrome the "preview" (now I know it is a
preview) has shadow on the bottom. It wasn't at all clear to me that clicking
'Train' would start the exercise with that preview. Otherwise, massive kudos,
I hope you upgrade to CodeMirror 4 with multiple cursors and improve the
CoffeeScript highlighting (I really feel Ace is more ready for what you're
doing). All the best!
------
ycmike
This feels like the Codecademy for programming gangsters.
------
davidddavidson
The name is pretty similar to CodeCombat
([http://www.codecombat.com](http://www.codecombat.com)) and I'm not clear on
how this site is better than Codeacademy
([http://www.codecademy.com/](http://www.codecademy.com/)). There are already
a bunch of programming koans/katas available on the internet.
~~~
shintoist
"The reason Google seemed a bad idea was that there were already lots of
search engines and there didn't seem to be room for another." \- Paul Graham
"It already exists" is a terrible reason not to do something
~~~
davidddavidson
The difference is that Google had a clear unique value proposition that was to
provide search results (and only search results) back extremely quickly and
were highly relevant when they other players were focused on creating "web
portals" and did not focus attention on search.
With CodeCombat and Codeacademy there UVP is very obvious (make learning to
code a game and teach to code online resp.) and had not previously been done.
With this site I don't understand what the UVP is (social programming
challenges?) that hasn't been already by something like TopCoder, Sphere
Online Judge, etc.
~~~
jhoffner
"Achieve mastery through challenge" is the tagline. The idea here is to push
yourself to solve problems you may have not attempted before, and to learn
from others by seeing how they solved theirs. I've have personally learned a
lot from seeing how other people solve problems, I even learned a lot from
creative uses of solving "Hello World" which was a bit of a surprise.
In short: Codecademy is meant for those who want to learn programming.
Codewars is for existing programmers who want to get better at programming.
------
elwell
can't wait for Clojure support
~~~
exolxe
Glad to hear it, it's in the works - we're just deciding the order to launch
them, so the voting feedback on next languages really helps us
~~~
tommmmmm
I'd also like to see Clojure or ClojureScript support. It would bring me back
a lot more often.
------
terabytest
I was pretty taken by this site, I did the teasers, signed up, selected my
skills and interests but then when I wanted to continue I started getting 500
errors. I had to leave quick so I didn't try to find a way around but I would
have had some fun if it wasn't because of that. Haven't managed to actually
use the site.
~~~
exolxe
We got hit with pretty heavy traffic, the load was causing the 500s and we've
pushed a fix for it - it's ready to go, so come back and check it out!
------
j45
Great idea -- interested to hear more about how you're handing all the
syntaxes, a combination of JVM and other things?
------
robin_garnham
Couple of bits of feedback
\- Server was unreachable when I tried to submit an answer, and the submit
button was then permanently disabled \- Not sure if my sign-in with Github was
successful, it just shows login still \- Now getting 'The code does not
execute properly. Try to figure out why.' and there is no code in the box to
enter
------
codonaut
This is really cool-- but I get so many "Submission timed out" errors that I
can't even do a problem...
------
tbirdz
Just wondering about how you are doing or going to do your sandboxing for
languages like c, c++, etc. If you are running arbitrary code from the user on
the server, it could be risky I would imagine, so I am wondering what steps
you take to make sure the user won't do anything nasty?
~~~
ssully
I would be pretty interested in this as well. I imagine that they only have a
loose idea at this point, if at all. If the list of "coming soon languages" is
any indication of priority, c and c++ are at the bottom of the pack.
~~~
exolxe
Great questions guys - we use locked-down language sandboxes on our own
servers right now (github.com/codewars) for JS and Ruby. Then we're developing
a Docker/LXC based server sandbox that will allow us to safely run each code
submission in any language in its own container... Another OSS option out
there is: [http://eval.so/](http://eval.so/)
~~~
biot
Also take a look at ZeroVM: [http://zerovm.org/](http://zerovm.org/)
------
binofbread
I would love to sign up, but when I click to create an account, I get
redirected to the home page.
~~~
exolxe
The sign in we have there is just for current users. To sign up just take the
challenges on the homepage - Good luck!
~~~
binofbread
I see. It was very confusing to click "Sign In" then click "Don't have an
account? Enlist Now." and be redirected to the home page. Looks cool though,
thanks.
Edit: I now see the intended flow, but there was no indication that I had to
complete the first 2 levels to be able to sign up.
------
Xymak1y
I ran into some bugs when testing, such as:
[http://imgur.com/B0VVnmn](http://imgur.com/B0VVnmn)
The test will pass but I can't submit it, because the test doesn't pass. Meh.
~~~
joshschreuder
That test doesn't pass for me in Chrome console.
I think it's because your isNaN check shortcircuits the other checks as you're
checking if the array element is NaN. Is that what you meant to do?
Also when you recursively call `numbers(args)` your `[].slice` will put your
array inside another array.
------
jaredandrews
FYI none of the buttons seem to be working on the homepage in Firefox OS X. On
Safari the formatting on the homepage is all off. Pretty cool nonetheless, I
plan on trying this out more later today!
~~~
exolxe
Sorry to hear that - we've done testing on Firefox/Safari and haven't gotten
that, though definitely want to fix it up... Good luck getting into it later,
and if you could help us debug just shoot me an email [email protected].
Thanks!
------
epicureanideal
I like the concept, but I don't see how I can currently compete with other
coders on these problems. If I could pair up with a friend and do these
challenges I would enjoy it more.
------
codygman
I voted for Haskell to be included and plan on joining when it's added :)
Edit: Though, it's not beyond the realm of possibility I'll give in and sign-
up once there is python support.
~~~
Thirdegree
Those were my two votes as well. The site looks like a ton of fun, can't wait
for try it.
------
drivingmissm
This is awesome! You should seriously add PHP. Our community is probably the
largest and has many inexperienced programmers who would really benefit from
Codewars.
------
carise
Is there a way to go back to Katas that I've started working on, but haven't
completed? (Or is that something I shouldn't be doing?)
~~~
exolxe
Right now we save all your progress on the kata, though you need to find it
again by searching/list view... We're pushing a "favorites" list soon that
will allow you to earmark them for later.
~~~
carise
thanks!
------
derekchiang
I didn't expect much but ended up pretty impressed by the site. It's
beautifully designed and the flow is very natural. Lots of kudos!
------
deevus
Is the scoring only based on time-taken and LOC? The top script that I looked
at was more like code-golf. Is that the aim?
~~~
chilldream
The scoring is based on upvotes from other users. This often does translate to
the "top answers" being dubious one-liners.
~~~
exolxe
To start upvotes from the community was the best way to do it - though soon
enough we'll be benchmarking solutions so you can order them by execution
time.
------
mattholtom
Very cool, one of those sites you can very easily spend a 1/2 hour on without
realizing it...
------
antonius
Awesome. Can't wait till more languages become available.
------
iamwithnail
MOAR (some) PYTHON.
~~~
nilkn
Indeed, I'd be all over this if it had Python support currently.
~~~
exolxe
It's our next one - we're getting close to launching it, if you drop your
email in the voting, we'll make sure to let you know!
~~~
iamwithnail
Already done!
------
blakerson
I'm having fun with this. Thanks for sharing.
------
friendzis
Big plus for making tab work in editor
------
vdimarco
R isn't in the roadmap?
------
elwell
GitHub Sign In is a plus
~~~
elwell
However, did not work when pressing Sign In and going through that process. I
came back to homepage with no difference.
~~~
elwell
It only worked once I went through the few questions on the homepage, and then
it was a single click to connect my GitHub account. Finally, logged in now.
------
ninjac0der
Outstanding user experience throughout the account setup, I will continue
playing with this as it's quite enjoyable so far. Thanks for sharing.
#edit it's kind of sad (and telling) to see the complexity and cleverness in
the higher ranked solutions.
#edit2 rampant regex solutions, nested returns, oh my.
------
it_learnses
github sign in doesn't actually seem to sign me in.
~~~
ogreyonder
Yeah, I was confused about this too. They hook up your github then...don't
even use it?
------
it_learnses
once I link to my github, why do I need to select a username, password and
email to enlist?
~~~
exolxe
Yea right now it's not a full github sign-in, but allows us to let you auto-
signin when you return. We still need to other info to create the account.
~~~
it_learnses
why though? you've verified me via github. should simplify the process.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
5G: EE launches UK's next-generation mobile network - jfk13
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48458280
======
jfk13
And for a followup, see "Live BBC broadcast over 5G network on launch day
fails"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051345))
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms - rms
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/16/AR2007121601900_pf.html
======
trekker7
you can't fuck with nature, not this much...
------
maxwell
Biohacking.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Retention of early Slashdot users - _delirium
http://www.kmjn.org/notes/early_slashdot_users.html
======
davidu
I'm one of those early users (uid == 18). I find the site too hard to navigate
these days. I don't know where to click or how to filter it back to just the
nerdy stuff. I guess I deserve my uid==18 since I feel like an old fogey
saying that. :-)
~~~
aerique
I'm not quite sure how or why I stopped reading Slashdot. I think it happened
gradually possibly due to MMO addiction and getting my first full time job as
a wage slave. Then I met my girlfriend and got two kids which all ate into
internet time.
After I got back into the more social side of the net I gravitated towards HN
and Reddit. I did check Slashdot once or twice but I preffered the cleaner
presentation of the former two sites.
(uid 206)
------
ben1040
I can only speak for myself but I stopped obsessively checking Slashdot (which
had been a habit since 1998) around mid-late 2006 when Digg/Reddit had started
getting momentum and interesting stuff was showing up sooner there since
content wasn't curated.
Now I look at Slashdot maybe once a week, and I never read or participate in
the comment threads -- because a given story on Slashdot likely showed up on
HN three days prior and had a more interesting discussion then.
~~~
garyrichardson
My slashdot OCD ended when I found google reader. I still have Slashdot in my
feed. By the time the slashdot story shows up, I've already read the source,
hacker news comments and probably some other blogs I follow commenting on the
story.
Plus, to follow any links in story blurb you have to click through to
slashdot, which is highly annoying.
~~~
golgo13
Does anyone else remember the hatred toward the old editor michael ? What was
the deal with that? Also, doesn't it just seem off having the facebook and
twitter buttons under the summary? Is it just me? UID = 597418.
~~~
garyrichardson
just catching up on my comments.. UID 6588. A friend of mine had the fortune
of getting UID 1234.
It's awesome that so many people can remember their UID's, even a decade
later.. Goes to show you how important Slashdot was.
------
jinushaun
I stopped reading Slashdot as much because the curated nature of the site
meant that stories showed up and were discussed on Digg and Reddit DAYS before
they showed up on Slashdot. So Slashdot content felt old.
However, I find the discussion better on Slashdot due to their complex rating
system, which is why I still visit Slashdot. Up and down votes are too
simplistic and you get a lot of bad comments bubbling up or being buried for
seemling no good reason. That's why I stopped reading Digg and Reddit.
Interesting, informative, off-topic, flamebait, etc... More sites need to
adopt Slashdot's rating system.
------
yardie
I guess its just the way of the world. I've long used Slashdot but after a
while the trolls start to take over and the conversation goes from informative
to herpderp gradually. I've seen this happen to Digg, Fark, and k5.
Recently, it's also started happening on reddit. I would go there for the
interesting articles but the frontpage is loaded with shitty fake AMAs,
slanted political blogs, or stupid pictures. I could filter this stuff out,
but then that would defeat the purpose of having community driven content.
Just remember, reddit didn't kill Digg and blogs didn't kill Slashdot. Digg
was killed by the trolls in its membership. And Slashdot was killed by the
latent racism/nationalism/sexism in some of its posts (if you ever read some
of the comments concerning H1B, outsourcing, etc. it was fucking scary). I
stopped visiting because the level of dialog dropped through the floor.
Also, this occasionally happens to HN, but I believe the community has been
much better at keeping these shenanigans at bay. Unless the comments are well
managed and moderated then they shouldn't have a problem keeping traffic up.
But like anything in life, people move on and eventually it will happen here
too.
------
flomo
Slashdot didn't originally have user registration, you just typed your nick in
a field when posting a comment. They were already quite popular when they
begin to require logins, and IIRC the <4 digit UIDs were consumed within a
week or two. It would probably be a better metric to check UIDs under 20K or
so.
All this talk of early slashdot reminded me that (for some reason) my account
had unlimited moderation points back in the old days.
------
gaius
I'm a low-4-digit (or was, 1359) and left because the blogging system was just
so bad. I think less that 1/4 of the screen you got for your own content.
That was the final straw, it had been an echo chamber for a while on the main
board by that point, you know, every other comment seemed to be "Micro$oft is
EVIL!!!!!", rather than the semi-intelligent debate I'm sure it used to have.
------
linker3000
I'm a mid-stream adopter (uid == 626634) and I took Rob's departure to get
around to removing /. from my bookmarks - something I'd been thinking about
doing for some time. The main reasons for cutting the cord are that other
sites (ie: HN) tend to list important/useful tech stories first and have a
better signal-to-noise ratio in their comment threads.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Hologram Shows How Space Could Pop into Existence - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/75/story/a-hologram-shows-how-space-could-pop-into-existence
======
t0mbstone
"What if the whole universe was just a hologram?"
Well, a hologram is a photograph of an interference pattern which, when
suitably illuminated, produces a three-dimensional image.
Confusing the universe with a hologram is like confusing a photo of a car with
an actual car.
Pretty impressive that these "scientists" have been researching this topic for
over 10 years. Must be nice to have that kind of funding for researching dumb
ideas.
~~~
coralreef
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpDHn8viX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpDHn8viX8)
~~~
bentona
What an amazing video, enough technical detail while maintaining high-level
concepts - thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why do prime numbers make these spirals? - dsr12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK32jo7i5LQ
======
Mageek
Such an amazing video. Really interesting how the primes and the spirals are
actually (basically) unrelated, but how it nevertheless leads to an
interesting concept on the distribution of primes. Love the visualizations.
------
zachguo
duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21207690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21207690)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I got bad news about my housemate - hack_hacker
I got bad news about housemate it's related to his work stress. Any advice for me please ?? News below is encoded due to its sensitive nature. Please only decode only if you are mentally strong.<p>bXkgaG91c2VtYXRlIGNvbW1pdHRlZCBzdWljaWRlIGxhc3QgbmlnaHQgOiggaXTigJlzIGhhcmQgdG8ga25vdyB3aHkuIGFwcGFyZW50IHJlYXNvbiBpcyB0aGF0IGhlIHdhcyBzdHJlc3NlZCBmcm9tIHdvcmtpbmcgZXZlcnlkYXkgZm9yIGxhc3QgNCB5ZWFycy4gSSBndWVzcyB0aGlzIGEgcmVtaW5kZXIgZm9yIGFsbCBvZiB1cyB0aGF0IHdlIG5lZWQgdG8gbG9vayBhZnRlciBvdXIgbWVudGFsIGhlYWx0aCBhbmQgc2VlayBoZWxwIGlmIHlvdSBhcmUgc3RyZXNzZWQuCg==
======
minds-matter
I’m sorry to hear this. You’ll quite likely have lots of questions, and there
may well be few answers.
In Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), we use the acronym ALGEE in supporting
people: \- Assess \- Listen non judgementally \- Give encouragement and
support \- Encourage professional support \- Encourage self-help and other
support
You can apply this to self-care as well.
I’d encourage you to be aware of your feelings and emotions over the next few
weeks and months. Assess what you are feeling. You can find thoughts re-emerge
at odd moments, and your emotions changing. That’s normal and OK.
Finding someone who will listen, without judging you or your housemate, is
important. They don’t need to be trained, but they do need to listen without
bringing themselves and their feelings and views into the conversation.
In the UK there are organisations such as Samaritans and Shout 85258 (Crisis
Text Line in USA) with people trained in how to listen, email or message as
support, particularly for those in crisis, but also for those who need someone
to listen. There are also specialist support groups for those who have
experienced bereavement by suicide such as
[https://uksobs.org/](https://uksobs.org/) who also provide guidance on
support after suicide [https://uksobs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Support-
after-...](https://uksobs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Support-after-
Suicide-Booklet-V5-10-2019.pdf). See what is available where you are.
Depending on how you are doing, you may need or want to get other professional
support.
Be kind to yourself.
~~~
hack_hacker
Thanks for your write up. I will definitely check out precessional help if I
need to.
~~~
minds-matter
You’re welcome.
------
ericol
As already stated, it's not your fault, and honestly the tip of the iceberg of
this problem is that such illnesses are not even considered as such by society
at large.
My eldest daughter, that is an incredible bright and intelligent person was
just where you are early January this year with her partner.
I eventually got tired of telling people that he was sick, that he was not to
blame for his actions. And even rationalizing this is very difficult to not
feel otherwise.
Stay strong, seek company, don't blame yourself.
~~~
hack_hacker
Thanks very much. My cyondolesenes to your daughter, hope she is in well place
now.
~~~
ericol
Thanks. She's a strong woman as well and, as devastating as these events are
she's moving forward with her life, up to the point that she is planning to
move to Germany in a few months.
Have a nice day.
------
Trasmatta
Echoing those saying it wasn't your fault. Don't be afraid to reach out and
see a therapist yourself, as this can be a traumatic experience.
------
Ice_cream_suit
See a psychologist and get help for yourself and
------
throwaway180118
Hey OP. If you return to this thread, know that I'm thinking of you.
------
scg
Please take care of yourself. It's not your fault.
------
krpovmu
Hard so hard
------
grayneckbeard96
My condolences to you and their friends and family.
What a shame and a total waste; it takes away a person's every future
possibility.
Things are very rarely ever _that bad._
No job is worth it.
No circumstances are worth it.
No relationship is worth it.
No property is worth it.
No funk is worth it.
Progressive incurable/debilitating conditions _maybe._
When someone is depressed, they tend to experience one or more of these
changes:
\- Cognitive distortions (including over-catastrophizing and assuming the
worst) - Miscalibrated/misinterpreted orders-of-magnitude about how good or
bad things seem. Inflict a mild setback on someone who is depressed, it can
seem life-ending to them. (Ask me how I know.)
\- All-or-nothing (black & white) thinking - Little nuance. Also, tends to
lack a sense of humor and be dramatic as well.
\- Hyper-vigilance / paranoia - Anxious all the time. Easily startled. "That
shadow over there might get me." "There's snipers on that roof over there, I
know it."
\- Less situational awareness
\- Looking at the ground more
\- Less eye-contact with others
\- Avoiding social interactions
\- Less time outdoors during the daytime
\- Sleeping more
\- Sleep pattern disturbances
\- Sensitivities to light/sound
\- Eating less or more (losing/gaining weight)
\- Unhealthy diet
\- Wearing darker clothes
\- Less attention to appearance/grooming
\- Not exercising
Life ProTip(TM): When life seems down, get a pet (if you can properly house,
water, feed, groom, and meet their attention and veterinary needs. And be sure
you know how much time, money and work you're getting into... and puppies and
cats like to chew and explore.)
Between the ages of about 8 and 27, I vividly-fantasized about self-
termination quite often in a myriad of methods.
~~~
fdsgnr0g90n0fw
>No job is worth it.
I suspect that may be because you have something else in your life that you
value. Thing is there's plenty of people that have no friends, no family, no
possession. Nothing to value other then little meager work they do.
Take that away, and what would someone like that have left?
------
Nextgrid
Decoded version (trigger warning, it talks about suicide):
> my housemate committed suicide last night :( it’s hard to know why. apparent
> reason is that he was stressed from working everyday for last 4 years. I
> guess this a reminder for all of us that we need to look after our mental
> health and seek help if you are stressed.
~~~
rckoepke
I don't feel this is appropriate. For whatever reason, the OP specifically
encoded it to bypass text searches of archived pages. Most of the people here
can identify and decode base64, or at least OP intended the message for those
who could.
I don't understand why OP chose to provide his message this way but I think
it's good to respect his wishes here while he's processing the event. He put a
certain amount of trust into the community and it's possible that having
community members post the plaintext like this would give him additional
regret.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Lazy Evaluation Really Means - r4vik
http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/07/09/what-it-means-to-be-lazy.html?utm_source=hackernews
======
Shivetya
I am not so sure the example provided helps me understand its real use. To me
his example resembles something the compiler would handle by filtering out
code that is never used. I suppose that the example could be more complete
with a conditional use of F3 later on, implying if the condition is not met
then C={F3 30} would be skipped.
Appreciate the article, confused me at least which means I will probably look
into such ideas more even if in my field I will never use them
------
tel
I really appreciate this thorough book review. I've had CTM for a while but
never understood whether it was sufficiently valuable to read. I'm still
uncertain, but I understand at a much greater depth what I might learn.
------
rocky1138
OT: I love the design and layout of this blog.
------
Zaephyr
Yea, I obviously put too much effort in to investigating this issue.
------
morgante
I was hoping to find out whether I'm actually as lazy as I thought... :(
~~~
jpdoctor
I clicked for the same reason.
Might be worth changing the HN title to be more descriptive. My suggestion:
"What Lazy Evaluation Really Means"
Yes I know it undoes the cutsie title, but he's just going to deliver a bunch
of bandwidth, get no ad clicks, and waste a bunch of people's time.
~~~
mrbbk
> he's just going to deliver a bunch of bandwidth, get no ad clicks, and waste
> a bunch of people's time.
Precisely how I would evaluate this comment!
~~~
jamesbritt
I'm not sure if you're being self-referential or not.
~~~
foobarbazqux
If you need to know that for this particular argument, I guess you'll have to
wait for him to return. I can't make promises on his behalf though.
~~~
jamesbritt
I'll have to leave a callback then.
------
chaddeshon
I was excited to read the article, but it was really long. Seemed like it
might take a lot of work to read.
~~~
mrbbk
Not bad, not bad.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US Centcom Twitter Account 'hacked by Islamic State' - oulipian
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30785232
======
ChuckMcM
That pretty much defines "awkward" right there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spiekermann on Typography - colinprince
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://spiekermann.com/typografie-im-lokalfernsehen/&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhhNZVucPwcTb5VvRfYckLaFbapWfw
======
colinprince
Original:
<http://spiekermann.com/typografie-im-lokalfernsehen/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Salesforce embraces standards with new Lightning Web Components - jlward4th
https://medium.com/@ccoenraets/salesforce-embraces-standards-with-new-lightning-web-components-ddbff8f0669b
======
edwin_hustle
Great to see a big company adopting web standards.
------
m1117
ES6 -- great!!!
~~~
elfogris
ES7+ :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Now for My Next Trick, I'll Turn Brand into Cash - raju
http://www.sarahlacy.com/sarahlacy/2009/01/why-brand-doesn.html
======
jamesbritt
I've been enjoying the ideas put forth in Branding Only Works On Cattle
<http://www.baskinbrand.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ways to break your systems code using volatile (2010) - leafario2
https://blog.regehr.org/archives/28
======
raphlinus
This should say 2010. I believe much of it is out of date, as C11 _does_ have
a memory model, and _does_ provide both atomics and barriers. Many, if not
most, uses of volatile should probably be replaced by atomics.
[https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/atomic](https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/atomic)
~~~
icedchai
Many projects are stuck in C99, or even C89...
~~~
BubRoss
And many projects aren't. It is still better to label a title correctly.
------
aidenn0
In terms of "Using volatile too much" I found a comment along the lines of
"Not sure why this has to be volatile, but it doesn't work without it" and the
answer was "There is a race condition and volatile slows down one path enough
to make it go away."
Yuck.
------
alain94040
You really should just use volatile for device drivers when accessing IO space
with side-effects. Do not use volatile to build your own synchronization
primitives.
~~~
ridiculous_fish
What do you think about signal handlers?
Atomics may be implemented with locks, which makes them unsuitable for signal
handlers. The only guaranteed lock-free type is `std::atomic_flag` which is
not very useful.
`volatile sig_atomic_t` still seems like the better choice for signals.
~~~
gpderetta
If the architecture is so broken that atomic load and stores need to use
locks, I can't see how would sig_atomic_t would ever be implementable.
------
dahfizz
I think the title and parts of the article are misleading. Using volatile will
_never_ make a correct program incorrect. It cannot "break" a correct
implementation.
It should not be overused, because as the article mentions it makes for slower
and more confusing code, but it's not quite something to be afraid of either.
It is slower to use volatile, and bad form
------
burfog
That note at the end about Linux is missing a link to the
Documentation/volatile-considered-harmful.txt document. Basically, don't use
volatile. Here, with your choice of formatting:
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/volatile-
considered-harmful.rst)
[https://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/volatile-
consi...](https://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/volatile-considered-
harmful.txt)
[https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/volatile-
cons...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/volatile-considered-
harmful.html)
~~~
User23
Neat how inline assembly is one of the valid use cases. I'm given to
understand that essential parts of the Linux kernel can't actually be
implemented in pure C and that some assembly is required.
~~~
Narishma
Isn't that the case for most (all?) operating systems?
------
SAI_Peregrinus
The entire section on declarations can also be fixed by always binding type
modifiers and quantifiers to the left. Rewriting the examples:
int* p; // pointer to int
int volatile* p_to_vol; // pointer to volatile int
int* volatile vol_p; // volatile pointer to int
int volatile* volatile vol_p_to_vol; // volatile pointer to volatile int
This method always starts with the most basic type, then adds modifiers
sequentially. The modifier binds to everything left of it.
------
klingonopera
> "Side note: although at first glance this code looks like it fails to account for the case where TCNT1 overflows from 65535 to 0 during the timing run, it actually works properly for all durations between 0 and 65535 ticks."
From example 1, ignoring device and setup-specifics what to do when TCNT1
overflows, it actually works properly for _all_ ticks, both "first" and
"second" are unsigned (therefore behaviour is defined), and the delta between
them both is always between 0 and 65535, no matter what values they may have,
and also correct in all cases.
E.g.:
timeDelta = timeStampNow - timeStampLast = 0 - 65535 = 1
~~~
tntn
But if the duration is > 65535 ticks, the calculated duration will be wrong,
no? There is no mechanism to count how many times TCNT1 overflows, so it will
be incorrect if the duration of what you are timing exceeds 65535 ticks.
~~~
klingonopera
That is correct, yes. I had erroneously understood that the author meant "all
durations between 0 and 65535 ticks" as "any duration between the device's 0th
and 65535th tick", my bad... Also makes this entire thread obsolete, but FWIW,
one shouldn't be attempting to measure a duration that can't even be contained
in the variable's bit width. Some workarounds would be to add more bits, slow
down the tickrate or add overflow counters.
------
legohead
I've never had to use volatile in code. This was all very interesting!
For issue #5, a possible solution not mentioned could be to write inline
assembly, no? It would keep the array non-volatile and should be portable.
~~~
kelnos
Inline assembly is basically the definition of non-portable.
------
loeg
volatile should only be used for accessing MMIO registers in device drivers;
that's it.
~~~
ridiculous_fish
There's definitely more uses. For example, shared memory between processes:
you should mark it volatile.
C++ atomics are no good here, because they are not guaranteed to be lock free
or address free.
~~~
loeg
Shared memory is way outside the scope of standard C or C++. It's
implementation-defined. It's inconsistent to insist on the weakest definition
of atomics allowed by the C/C++ standard(s) and simultaneous invoke one of the
weirdest implementation-defined mechanisms defined by POSIX. If your
implementation provides shared memory of some kind, it's up to your
implementation to define some sort of reasonable semantics.
In POSIX' case, it's up to POSIX operating systems to define reasonable
semantics on the memory, using constructs like PTHREAD_PROCESS_SHARED and
"robust" pthread mutexes.
------
kaetemi
Volatile seems quite sufficient for a PleaseExitThread boolean.
------
flafla2
Edit: Looks like the slides had an inaccuracy (see replies). Huh, looks like I
learned something today :)
I think a good way of summarizing volatile is this slide from my parallel
architectures class [1]:
> Class exercise: describe everything that might occur during the
> execution of this statement
> volatile int x = 10
>
> 1. Write to memory
>
> Now describe everything that might occur during the execution of
> this statement
> int x = 10
>
> 1. Virtual address to physical address conversion (TLB lookup)
> 2. TLB miss
> 3. TLB update (might involve OS)
> 4. OS may need to swap in page to get the appropriate page
> table (load from disk to physical address)
> 5. Cache lookup (tag check)
> 6. Determine line not in cache (need to generate BusRdX)
> 7. Arbitrate for bus
> 8. Win bus, place address, command on bus
> 9. All caches perform snoop (e.g., invalidate their local
> copies of the relevant line)
> 10. Another cache or memory decides it must respond (let’s
> assume it’s memory)
> 11. Memory request sent to memory controller
> 12. Memory controller is itself a scheduler
> 13. Memory controller checks active row in DRAM row buffer.
> (May > need to activate new DRAM row. Let’s assume it does.)
> 14. DRAM reads values into row buffer
> 15. Memory arbitrates for data bus
> 16. Memory wins bus
> 17. Memory puts data on bus
> 18. Requesting cache grabs data, updates cache line and tags,
> moves line into exclusive state
> 19. Processor is notified data exists
> 20. Instruction proceeds
> * This list is certainly not complete, it’s just
> what I came up with off the top of my head.
It's also worth mentioning that this assumes a uniprocessor model, so out-of-
order execution is still possible which leads to complications in any sort of
multithreaded or networked system (See #5, 6, 7, 8 in the OP article).
I think a lot of the confusion stems from the illusion that a uniprocessor +
in-order execution model implies to programmers who have never dealt with
system-level code. I think in the future, performant software will require a
bit more understanding of the underlying hardware on the part of your average
software developer -- especially when you care about any sort of parallelism.
It doesn't help that almost all common CS curriculum ignores parallelism until
the 3rd year or more.
[1]
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~418/lectures/12_snoopimpl.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~418/lectures/12_snoopimpl.pdf)
\- the last 2 slides
~~~
tempguy9999
I don't get this, most likely due to my ignorance, but I thought volatile
doesn't necessarily force anything to RAM, it can just push it out so cache
coherence handles the rest, between cores (and perhaps peripherals). MESI can
do the work without actually hitting memory.
if you want to force actually to ram then perhaps you'd need a memory barrier.
This is not my area though. Wrong? Right?
~~~
spc476
What happens with this code?
volatile int x;
int y;
int z;
x = 10;
x = 20;
y = x;
z = x;
Answer:
the constant 10 is written to x
the constant 20 is written to x
the contents of x is read and written into y
the contents of x is read and written into z
Now, what happens with this code?
int x;
int y;
int z;
x = 10;
x = 20;
y = x;
z = x;
One answer is the same as the above. Another valid answer is:
the constant 20 is written to x
the constant 20 is written to y
the constant 20 is written to z
Why? Because x is not used between the two assignments, so the first will
never be seen. Also, x is not used between it's assignment and the assignment
to y, so the compiler can do constant propagation.
All volatile does it tell the compiler "all writes _must_ happen, and no
caching of reads".
~~~
tempguy9999
Understood but we're talking about different things I think (though this is
very much not my area).
You're saying volatile is acting as a kind of memory barrier instruction _for
the compiler_ \- got it. But I'm saying I understand that at the CPU level,
just considering x86 instructions, writes don't have to be forced to RAM,
despite a common assumption that they are; they can remain in caches. See
johntb86's reply confirming this.
------
nullwasamistake
Ironically volatile is just as bad in Java for different reasons. Frequently
used for "lock free" synchronization, its usually actually worse than using
locks because it can't be cached between cores. The variable is always loaded
from main memory, which is usually much worse than holding a lock mutex in
registers.
~~~
the8472
The standard pattern for working with atomics in java (volatiles are of
limited use without atomic field updaters or varhandles) is to read it into a
local variable, operate on that and only write it back to the volatile once
you're done.
That has many benefits, among them the ability to store its value in
registers.
~~~
nullwasamistake
For primitives Java uses special CPU instructions. In the Atomic* package.
It's not recommended for plain objects.
------
tus87
Err...volatile just tells the compiler not to cache the value in a register,
that's it. If you don't understand volatile you really, really are not the
kind of programmer who should even think about using it.
~~~
empiricus
This is my understanding of volatile as well: volatile just forces read/write
to memory. What a read/write to memory entails is a different story. What
happens with no volatile is again another story. If my understanding is wrong,
someone please enlighten me.
~~~
moefh
"Forcing read/write to memory" is very different from "not caching the value
in a register". Optimizations can involve not just caching values in
registers, but also reordering operations, calculating things at compile-time
and so on.
For a trivial example, see this code:
int f() {
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) sum += i;
return sum;
}
As you can see from [1], a smart compiler will calculate the sum at compile
time and make the function simply return the resulting number (i.e., no loop
is generated).
If you make "sum" volatile, the compiler is forced to do the loop[2].
[1] [https://godbolt.org/z/3sX5mU](https://godbolt.org/z/3sX5mU)
[2] [https://godbolt.org/z/F5CiDJ](https://godbolt.org/z/F5CiDJ)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zune HD features Apple should steal - newacc
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10363037-27.html
======
jsz0
The problem with wireless sync is you still have to plug in the device to
charge it -- especially after using wifi to transfer gigabytes of data to the
device. I can see how it would have some value for quick top off syncs but I
imagine from Apple's perspective wireless syncing is going to cause more of a
negative outcome to their users (battery drain, multiple syncing procedures
for software updates, etc) People are buying iPods, and other Apple devices,
because of the elegant simplicity. That may impose limitations to some folks
but of course there's plenty of good non-Apple alternatives.
~~~
lurkinggrue
They just need an inductive charger like the Palm Pre.
------
jrwoodruff
A great deal? At 14.99 a month? So I spend $180 for a year of service, and at
the end of the year I have... oh, nothing. I'll buy 180 songs from iTunes, so
someday my kid can listen to my old skool Modest Mouse tracks, thank-you-very-
much.
~~~
prospero
In a year, do you only listen to 180 new songs? Do you know which songs those
will be ahead of time? Subscription is about discovering music, not owning it.
For people who value that, it's a very useful and fairly priced service.
~~~
dbz
And I believe the article writer talked about ripping some of the songs? With
that mentality it is a dream come true- no?
------
jrockway
Wireless sync is a good feature.
The other problems can be solved by allowing third-party apps. (But not the
way Apple does it with the iTouch/iPhone; those third-party apps don't let you
do anything interesting.)
I am looking very forward to Archos' Android-based media player. Currently
looks rough around the edges, but it has great potential.
~~~
dbz
I like the idea, yes- but I am worried about the part of "syncing even when
the app isn't open on the computer" (not an exact quote)
That sounds like a HUGE security risk
~~~
jrockway
I think with bluetooth-style "pairing" (key exchange) this is fine. If you
break AES, you can download my music collection -- seems fair to me.
------
mikeryan
The features for Zune Pass seem to already be covered by apps like Pandora and
Rhapsody.
But some of these features would be nice to have.
------
wglb
I thought we weren't going to do any of N things articles anymore.
On the other hand, if Apple takes his advice, perhaps they will increase their
market share over zune.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oxford Scholar: Facebook Won't Widen Your Social Circle - rvcamo
http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/07/18/oxford-scholar-facebook-wont-widen-your-social-circle/
======
sp332
Facebook is about mapping your social connections for advertising purposes.
It's not about helping you have a more successful social life.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within 2 yrs say Harvard scientists - petethomas
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/02/16/harvard-scientists-pledge-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-extinction/
======
mc32
It's pretty cool that they might be able to bring something like a mammoth, or
rather mammoth-elephant hybrid to life, but I'd rather see them use this
technique to preserve highly endangered species, rather than something for
which there is no natural habitat --that is, if released into the wild, the
perturbations might lead to unintended consequences in other species as it has
not existed in nature for thousands of years.
But if we must, I'd like to see the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon and the
Tasmanian tiger.
~~~
na85
The capability of being able to "respawn" extinct species is rather important,
though, since we may be causing a mass extinction event via human-induced
climate change. At some distant future date, it may be possible to revert much
of the damage we're currently causing to the Earth.
It seems frivolous and silly, but I think this is actually very important
research. You can't store species the way you can store seeds the way they're
doing in Norway.
~~~
frr149
I agree this is vital and fascinating, but maybe we should get the Elephant
out of the danger zone.
I wonder if we'll ever bring back Neanderthals too.
~~~
mc32
>I wonder if we'll ever bring back Neanderthals too.
No, not while we all live on one Earth. We can't even coexist peacefully with
our same species, can you imagine having another apex species we'd see as
direct competition not only to resources, but to our pre-eminence?
The alternative to bring them to life for scientific research would be an
ethical non-starter.
------
strongai
"Actually,it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits."
Big difference.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Know any solid but affordable freelance mobile developers? - mayava
I'm a designer looking for help implementing some simple app ideas. All the flows and UI are done and pixel perfect. Just checking in with the HN community to see if you have any recommendations for solid but affordable iOS and Android developers who speak great English and have built several stable apps in the past. Ideally looking for a rate around $100 / hr or lower. Happy with remote / overseas or with a firm or an individual, as long as they have good references and track records
======
phlipmode
Hey,
feel free to contact me. I am currently searching for a project, would be cool
to have a chat with you about yours. More details via mail or skype. just send
me a mail to " info (.at.) pd-ic (.dot.) com ". Feel free to send me your
contact over skype if you like, or i will reply via mail asap.
talk to you soon,
bye phlipmode
------
kissmd
you can try technicalcapital.eu
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement - nols
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-why-we-must-rethink-solitary-confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html
======
ThomPete
Coming from Denmark where life is max 16 years and where people rarely go to
jail just because society does not know what else to do with you and then
moving to the US, the justice system when it comes to petty crimes, always
seemed very draconian and counter productive.
For most people — just the mere notion of being in conflict with the law — is
enough to send chills down their back. How sad that something that could have
been used to actually function as a mild punishment ends up completely
destroying a life and the potential of being part of society.
In a hundred years from now people are going to look back at things like the
war on drugs as one of the most barbaric, absurd and useless pieces of
legislation ever to have been implemented. A war which ended up destroying
more lifes than it saved.
I for one applaud Obama for finally taking a stanse against this unnecessarily
strict legislation and hoping that normal otherwise law abiding citizens wont
get their lifes completely destroyed for things anyone could have done. I love
the US but the legislation I could certainly do without.
~~~
lfjmfkekdk
"In a hundred years from now people are going to look back at things like the
war on drugs as one of the most barbaric, absurd and useless pieces of
legislation ever to have been implemented."
How do you explain the rampant crack cocaine drug wars in New York and Miami
in the 1980s that killed far more Americans than they do today? You're
probably too young to realize how bad New York and Miami were before the war
on drugs. How do you explain how Asia has even more "draconian" drug laws than
the USA and yet crime is a fraction of ours?
~~~
LordKano
_How do you explain the rampant cocaine drug wars in New York and Miami in the
1980s that killed far more Americans than they do today?_
Easy, the War on Drugs began in the early 70s.
The murders and general lawlessness that you reference from the 80s are a
direct result of the War on Drugs.
~~~
lfjmfkekdk
The crack epidemic had its origins in the 1970s and became widespread in the
1980s[1]. Crack was finally targeted in 1986 with laws that heavily punished
crack dealers. This happened after crack became widespread throughout major
American cities.[2]
"The murders and general lawlessness that you reference from the 80s are a
direct result of the War on Drugs."
Where were the "murders and general lawlessness" in other countries that had
even more expansive Wars on Drugs, like Singapore or Taiwan? America's War on
Drugs is relatively mild compared to these countries that sentence drug
traffickers to death.
[1] [http://www.crack-facts.org/historyofcrack.html](http://www.crack-
facts.org/historyofcrack.html) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic#History)
~~~
facetube
Executing people for nonviolent drug offences is barbaric. Under no
circumstances should atrocities like that be held up as an example for others.
------
IIAOPSW
If I had to characterize Mr. Obama's administration, I'd say he all too often
says exactly the right things (and maybe even believes them) but the
implementations (if any) leave an endless amount to be desired.
But this, like everything the last 8 years, will come out to little more than
an eloquent WashPos article. Thanks Obama.
Edit: TIL the president cannot pardon state level crimes. oops
~~~
drinchev
This is so true.
I still remember the debate about Guantanamo Bay detention camp and how he
wanted to completely close it, but nothing actually happened. [1] I don't know
which one is worse : Holding prisoners without a charge for decades or holding
criminals in solitary confinement.
1 :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#Obama.27s_attempt_to_close_the_camp)
~~~
mikeash
Nothing happened because it's not the President's decision alone. He tried,
met with huge opposition from Congress, and couldn't make it happen.
Part of the problem is that people don't understand the President's powers and
expect more from him than he can deliver.
The other part of the problem is that the President himself seems to like
promising more than he can actually deliver. He doesn't say "I'll try to close
Guantanamo, but Congress really wants to keep it open and it's ultimately up
to them." He just says, "I'll close it" and then, oops, can't.
------
chishaku
The story of Kalief Browder is heartbreaking.
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-
law](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law)
[http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-
browder-1993-...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-
browder-1993-2015)
~~~
themartorana
What a terrible story. And it's one of thousands of others that never get
told. Just... You said it. Heartbreaking.
------
jMyles
Far too little and probably too late.
Come on Mr. President - you had the past 8 years to visit jails and prisons,
to make sweeping changes to the Federal Prison System, and to push for
legislation to seriously curtail solitary confinement, for children and adults
alike, throughout the state systems.
This may serve as a bit of notoriety on your legacy, for the position you take
here will surely only gain traction and be looked upon as utterly obvious, but
it does little to help those poor souls suffering needlessly and alone
tonight.
~~~
martythemaniak
What does "too late" mean? He should not have done it because it did not come
sooner? It's past some deadline and it can't/shouldn't happen?
~~~
givehimagun
'Too late' is only the first question.
Arguments like too little and 8 years to make sweeping changes - those
arguments are far too myopic and cynical to be considered sound arguments.
Instead of isolated criticism, jMyles, tell me your ideas...how would you have
done better. Issue identification is worthless to me.
~~~
jMyles
* An executive order, on day one of the presidency, prohibiting solitary confinement of children. This is a no-brainer.
* The commission of a study, on day one of the presidency, to study solitary confinement across the country. This is a no-brainer.
* An executive order, within the first year, walking solitary back to the limitations it had in decades past.
* A conference of US attorneys, headed by the attorney general, to come to a policy regarding sentencing guidelines.
* In the first year of the presidency, introduction and advocacy of legislation to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all or nearly all nonviolent offenses.
None of these are controversial - every single one of these steps has vocal
support from at least one member of both parties in both houses of congress.
There are many more steps that might actually take a small amount of political
capital, and they too are worth doing.
But a single directive in year 8 of the presidency? There are children who
have been languishing in solitary for _years_ while this guy waited to release
this statement.
------
busterarm
Chelsea Manning very publicly spent 10 months in solitary confinement and the
President didn't say anything then...
~~~
pluma
But everybody knows it's okay to do bad things as long as you do them to evil
people. And Manning is a traitor and thus obviously evil.
/s
------
S_A_P
I see some good points and bad points in this article. I applaud the president
for looking into an issue that is traditionally ignored by leaders in the US-
the effects of our prison system on the population. I wish he hadnt stopped at
solitary confinement. Our entire prison system and matrix of crime->sentencing
needs to have a complete overhaul to remove the drug bias on sentences. Repeat
violent offenders need to be kept off the streets. Drug users need help, not
incarceration.
I also wish he hadn't taken credit for reducing crime. I think that this has
almost nothing to do with the president. Its very easy to cherry pick the
statistics you like and claim responsibility. Would he also like to take
responsibility for the continuing/increase in violence against citizens by the
police? The violations of civil liberties? Anyway, I hope that this starts
building momentum that we need to change our prison system. I think some of
the policing issues will start to work themselves out as different socio
economic groups see that cops aren't there to harass and arrest, and that drug
users may be able to get help.
~~~
coldpie
> I applaud the president for looking into an issue that is traditionally
> ignored by leaders in the US- the effects of our prison system on the
> population. I wish he hadnt stopped at solitary confinement.
I agree. Criminal justice reform is a primary plank of Clinton's platform, and
Sanders strongly supports the discussion as well. I don't think we've seen
this kind of focus in recent memory. I think this is going to be a growing
issue in coming years, as access to information about our justice system
becomes more democratized due to things like cell phones and Internet literacy
giving more avenues for spreading experiences and information to people who
previously didn't have them.
------
corywatilo
> As president, my most important job is to keep the American people safe
The author, er, the President is incorrect. His most important job is to
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. He says
this constantly, and, politics aside, it is important for every American to
remember what the actual duty of the President is, as affirmed when sworn into
office.
Side note: Why is this on HN?
~~~
akiselev
Because according to the guidelines:
》 On-Topic: _Anything that good hackers would find interesting._ That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
_(Emphasis mine)_
If it's on the front page, enough people have found it interesting and within
the guidelines.
~~~
ojbyrne
More concretely, The US Prison System is clearly broken and doing great harm.
It's an obvious opportunity for making things better, which can lead to
entrepreneurial opportunities.
~~~
lowmagnet
I don't know about that. Thus far, those "entrepreneurial opportunities" have
lead toward more incarceration, not less. For-profit prisons have contracts
that guarantee a certain level of incarceration, resulting in occupancy of the
prisons they run. This is definitely one of those things that I'd much rather
not be in the hands of entrepreneurial entities.
~~~
mikeash
Here's a counterexample:
[https://pigeon.ly](https://pigeon.ly)
They're focused on making it easier and cheaper to communicate with inmates,
who often suffer from ridiculous price gouging for things like phone calls.
It's pretty small potatoes compared to private prisons, but it's something.
------
drinchev
There is a guy that is in solitary confinement since 1983 [1]. I was shocked
when I read about him. It's a fascinating story, nevertheless so shameful for
the society.
23 hours a day in a room for more than 30 years. :(
1 :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Silverstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Silverstein)
2 :
[https://thomassilverstein.wordpress.com/](https://thomassilverstein.wordpress.com/)
~~~
emptybits
Thanks for the Thomas Silverstein fact. TIL. The "other side" does explain
their rationale, valid or not:
> "When an inmate kills a guard, he must be punished," a Bureau of Prisons
> official told author Pete Earley. "We can’t execute Silverstein, so we have
> no choice but to make his life a living hell. Otherwise other inmates will
> kill guards too. There has to be some supreme punishment. Every convict
> knows what Silverstein is going through. We want them to realize that if
> they cross the same line that he did, they will pay a heavy price."
The solitary confinement practice needs a spotlight on it. A long-term "no
human contact" order seems like torture. I'm glad Obama recognizes the risk of
this in juveniles at least.
~~~
mason240
That seems like a very appropriate response to someone with a history of
killing others.
~~~
pluma
They're not doing it to stop him from killing others. They're doing it to make
him an example so others don't kill guards.
The quote pretty much straight up says that it's an intentional cruel
punishment to deter others from doing the same.
------
blfr
Jimmy Carter 2.0: after decades in power, now he wants to rethink policy.
Maybe tomorrow he will condemn extrajudicial executions? Or Guantanamo? And
sky's the limit once he's out of office.
It's one thing that politicians try this but why do people, even smart people,
buy it?
~~~
skj
Decades in power?
~~~
blfr
Obama has been holding various public offices since 1997, Carter between '63
and '80.
------
haberman
It is so hard for me to imagine that socializing with hardened criminals (and
being subject to violence at their hands) could be better for me
psychologically than being alone. In some ways, that makes solitary even more
scary to know that this is true.
~~~
o0o0_ooo
It's not true. Most people in prison, even some murderers, are not as inhuman
as you might believe.
~~~
mason240
Would want to share a cell with someone who has history of hurting or killing
others?
~~~
vkou
Solitary confinement is not 'not having a cellmate'. Solitary confinement is
being locked in a tiny concrete cell, with no bars, no windows, and no chance
to speak with another human being. Indefinitely.
~~~
mason240
So the answer is yes, you would like to share a cell and living space with
someone who has a history of hurting or killing those around him.
------
Pietertje
The example he gives is heartbreaking, however the solution he poses is only
treating, in this particular case, symptons of two other issues:
Why does it take 2 years to stand trial for a petty crime? Why is the accused
sent to prison while awaiting trial for a petty crime?
Edit: added 'in this particular case'
~~~
qrendel
I'm not familiar with this particular case, but there are people who get
completely lost in the Rikers island prison system.
This actually almost happened to me, though not at Rikers island: I was
arrested under a false accusation of a crime I didn't commit, and while I was
supposed to have been released after an hour, there was some mess up where
they thought I'd already been released and so kept me in there for around an
extra 12 hours. It only even got fixed that fast because my lawyer made a huge
deal out of it.
Now imagine the same thing happening, but without a good advocate on your
side, in a much larger prison, and ongoing for years or decades instead of
just half a day.
------
runarb
The article has:
_16-year-old named Kalief Browder from the Bronx was accused of stealing a
backpack_
_" stealing a backpack"_ doesn't sound so bad, but in the newyorker[0] ha is
out on parole and _" charged with robbery, grand larceny, and assault"_.
Robbery and assault by someone out on parole are a fare way from stealing a
backpack.
I totally agree that the use of solitary confinement is probably to widely
used and the story of Kalief Browder is sad, but after reading a bit more
about it I feel a little bit tricked by this story. I wish the journalist cold
better lay out the whole premises at the start, so I can easier make up my own
opinion.
0: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-
law](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law)
------
DanielBMarkham
I'm with the president on this. Sure wish he'd actually do something, though.
As an example of what he could do, there are a few folks from both parties who
share agreement that the prison system needs reform. It wouldn't have been too
difficult to have co-wrote this piece with them. Heck, then at the end we
could have read about the actual legislation sponsored, instead of him just
hoping somebody, somewhere will send some to him.
Perhaps this president has a different idea of his job than I do. He seems
very interested in pretending to be outside the system, dispassionately
analyzing it, announcing where we've all failed and where we might do better.
This is a great skill for a candidate, and it'll probably serve him well after
he leaves the job, but right now? Might be better to do less preaching and a
little more compromising. Perhaps I'm being too tough on him. Don't know.
Apologies if that's the case. I do note that observers from both parties have
described him as being distant and disengaged.
This reminds me of the question researchers asked many years ago. Doctor A
comes in and takes his time with you, he's polite and interested. Doctor B is
gruff and rushed, doing only as little as he thinks necessary to get the work
done. Which is the better doctor?
The answer is, of course, you don't know. Without seeing results, all you can
really comment on is style. Ideally you'd want a doctor that had both
technical and interpersonal competence. But without taking a hard look at what
kinds of results occur, all a layman can do is comment on the stylistic nature
of what they've observed.
So it is here. This is a very-well written piece. My intent here is not to
criticize the president or play politics, simply to point out that the tech
community has a _lot_ of issues we care about, no matter what our party is.
And there are a ton of folks who can make a good case for one thing or
another. It's important that we sort out folks who can make a great speech but
get little done from those who might not be able to put seven words together
-- and could actually implement the changes we have to have.
~~~
MrZongle2
_" Sure wish he'd actually do something, though."_
...kind of sums up most of his presidency, doesn't it?
------
grandalf
After nearly 8 years of drone strikes and escalation of many of Bush's worst
human rights abuses, we get this kind of insulting and silly propaganda,
intended to help create the impression that Obama was a humanitarian.
We should all be insulted by this...
------
jqm
Not only is the criminal justice system abusive (a problem itself) it plain
isn't working.
The thing is... there are some extremely bad people in the system who know the
ins and outs and consider prison just another place to abuse others while
being taken care of.
We have too many laws. We spend to much time worrying about little stuff and
not enough about big stuff. My personal opinion (I realize this is not likely
to be a popular one) is that we need to stop locking people up for little
things and return to public hanging for big things. Smoking crack might be
stupid but is it really a crime?
On the other hand someone brutally killing a child for fun doesn't deserve to
even breathe our air. Something like this is beyond rehabilitation. It is
broken. Put an end to it without delay and return the raw material to the
earth. But don't monkey around with solitary confinement. It is inhumane and
in my opinion probably more so than hanging.
~~~
tempestn
I don't agree with capital punishment at all, for a number of reasons that I
won't get into here, but I can at least see a reasonable case being made for
it. But _public hanging_? In what way could that possibly be good for society?
If regular capital punishment doesn't work as a deterrent, I can't imagine
that making it public would do much better.
Although after seeing public hangings the will for capital punishment in
general would probably drop sharply, so maybe that would be a benefit.
Seriously though, the idea of public hangings is barbaric.
I don't disagree with you as far as not locking people up for things like drug
use though.
~~~
jqm
And how is what we are doing now not barbaric? Which is actually more
barbaric? It turns out people sometimes see the barbarism in others while
missing their own.
There is a reason public executions happened for so long (and still happen in
vast swaths of the world). Partially to serve as warning and as a deterrent
and maybe partially so society feels they are participating in punishment (or
revenge if you prefer). Is it effective? I would assume to some extent.
Maybe we need to revisit some of the concepts of public shame (ok..maybe old
school hanging is a bit extreme.. but jut to throw ideas around) rather than
hiding offenders behind bars at the hands of sadistic guards and fellow
inmates in some grey bureaucracy. Which is my estimation not only doesn't
really work but is even more barbaric.
------
mgleason_3
Did anyone else notice the parts about 2 years for stealing a backpack or
violence at the hands of the guards?
Maybe solitary isn't the problem?
------
mceoin
Completely off topic, but I was surprised that this article has ads.
Presumably WashPo cashed in nicely on this little spoke.
------
digi_owl
The level of jingoism and lack of nuance and long term perspective in here is
worrying.
------
vox_mollis
What we _really_ need to rethink is imprisonment in general. The elimination
of corporal punishment has led to this state of affairs. Nothing is more cruel
and unusual than stealing a person's _time_. Whip wounds heal. And oftentimes,
the violence experienced inside is worse than a whipping.
~~~
xutopia
No... just no!!!
Physical harm has lasting consequences on vulnerable people. Some people have
anxiety lasting a lifetime because they were subjected to corporal punishment
as a child!
~~~
saint_fiasco
To be fair, you should compare corporal punishment against imprisonment, not
against nothing.
Corporal punishments has long lasting consequences, but so does imprisonment.
------
tempodox
Will he be able to actually do something or will they all block each other so
nothing changes? Won't the Tea Party find out that less solitary confinement
will utterly destroy the U.S. and make it totally Un-American?
------
rogersmith
"i order drone strikes on innocent civilians on a weekly basis but i think the
way we treat criminals in the US is inhumane"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Analysis of GPS logs uncovers multimillion $ NYC cab scam - MykalMorton
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/city-cabbies-gouge-passengers-out-of-millions-agency-finds/?hp
======
oldgregg
And we all wondered why they so adamantly opposed having GPS installed...
~~~
sliverstorm
No. No, we didn't wonder. We knew and they knew.
~~~
andrewcooke
i don't see how that makes sense. the fraction of drivers doing this,
according to the report, is small. so if there was a popular objection then it
must also have included people (a majority) who don't do this.
perhaps people simply value privacy, even while doing their job.
[also - note how the bad behaviour of a minority is being used to justify the
loss of privacy by the majority; this happens again and again]
~~~
jfager
Why would a cab driver have an expectation that his location be private when
driving people around in a cab? That makes no sense.
~~~
andrewcooke
you really think the customer knowing a driver's location, or someone seeing
them go past on the street, is the same as a centralised record?
~~~
jfager
Not at all, when did I say that? I said it makes no sense to think a cab
driver has any reasonable expectation that the location of his cab would be
private in any sense when it's in service and carrying passengers.
As a frequent cab rider, I'm happy to know that the location of the stranger's
car that I just jumped into is tracked and recorded at all times.
Why do you think this information should be kept private?
~~~
nitrogen
_Why do you think this information should be kept private?_
Maybe because, as with the demise Netflix Prize, the data can be correlated
with some other dataset to identify individuals who ride in the cabs.
------
ghshephard
As one who has taken taxis on a daily to weekly basis for the last ten years,
I've never understood how on earth a Taxi Driver can pull scams on their
passengers. I flag locally, call for a pickup, as well as take cabs from
airports.
I've done this thousands of times in ten years.
In _all_ of that time, the closest I've seen to an errant fare (keeping in
mind, I make the same trip hundreds of times with dozens of taxis drivers, as
well as having Google Maps give me detailed distance information) is low tire
pressure on a Taxi that took what should have been a $35 taxi fare to $38.
It's amazing how little the "waiting time" charge varies a ride taken at a
particular time. It's usually within 30-50 cents on a $40 ride at most.
I've never had a taxi driver try and determine if I was a "regular" or "out of
towner" - and I rarely do more than just give them an address.
So I find it, based on my own experiences, very, very hard to believe that
Taxi Drivers are engaging in any kind of widespread scam - unless they pull it
on the blatant foreigners.
If I ever had a Taxi driver charge me the wrong rate, I wouldn't even dispute
it with him, I'd just call their administrative oversight (which, in most
cities, is the local police) and let them deal with it.
So, as much as people want to suggest "GPS Logs" are uncovering something -
I'd have to suggest that by and large there is nothing to uncover. I'd be
interested in seeing further details on these taxi drivers who have supposedly
overcharged 100s of times - People like me would have flipped and/or called
the police if they tried it even _once_ on us.
Color me dubious.
~~~
lionhearted
Compare:
"Hey driver, 30th and 3rd please."
"Hi, umm, do we want to go the Empire State Building next? Umm, okay, yeah,
Empire State Building please." -> Flip into doubletime.
------
spuz
Well who didn't see that one coming?
~~~
Jim72
The overcharged customers, of course... all 1.8 million of them.
Pity, as the meter in a cab is clearly visible and the regulations are posted
for the passenger to see.
------
gyardley
When I hop into a cab in NYC, I generally spend a lot more than the $4.55 this
article implies the average fare should be - since $4.55 is the average
overcharge, and since the overcharged rate is double.
If this was just user error I'd expect the overcharge to be near the average
fare - looks to me like the cabbies are deliberately ripping off people who
want to go just a short distance, probably out of irritation.
~~~
lionhearted
Wouldn't the $4.55 over just be metered distance? You also pay a flat fee when
you get in, pay when the cab is idling, and pay for any tolls you pass - those
wouldn't be effected. It's been a while since I was in New York though, and I
usually tried to avoid cabs.
~~~
gyardley
Yes, this is all true. Didn't add it because I didn't think it modified my
point much.
------
Mz
_The scam was primarily perpetrated by a small number of drivers, with 3,000
of them overcharging more than 100 times, the agency said.
While the 1.8 million overcharged trips is a large number, it represents only
0.5 percent of the 361 million taxi trips taken during the 26-month period the
agency studied._
Given the tiny percentage, I think calling it a "scam" is a bit over the top.
Who doesn't make an occasional mistake?
\-------
_A single cabby was accused this month of overcharging passengers a total of
$40,000._
On the other hand, this was probably not a mistake. But in many cases, I would
guess it was an innocent mistake.
~~~
jonknee
The "innocent mistake" primarily consisted of a small number of drivers who
did it more than 100 times... That's pretty telling. If it was a mistake why
did they do it over 100 times?
The rules are pretty simple and no cabbie mistakenly thinks they are in
Westchester when they are on Park Ave. It's quite obviously a scam, but not
one that all NYC cabbies perpetrated.
~~~
Mz
I already acknowledged that some cases are pretty clearly not just human
error. And I haven't really been to New York (drove through there on the way
to the Boston area once), so I don't really know firsthand. However, the
cliche is that New York cabbies are typically foreign and speak poor English.
So I have a little difficulty thinking that they all are perfectly clear about
every detail of their jobs and there are no mistakes rooted in language
barrier/cultural barrier/just not knowing the geography as well as a native of
the area likely would.
~~~
illumen
This is no where near as big a problem these days with navigation systems. Of
course, good cab drivers with the 'knowledge' will beat the navigation system
ones a lot. At least now the bad cab drivers get you there now. Without having
to spend 10 minutes reading a map.
~~~
Mz
Hey, I am all for GPS navigation and the like. I have a certificate in GIS.
:-D
(Not that it's done my career any good...at least not yet.)
------
RK
Who will write an android/iphone app for passengers to double check this?
Edit: Looks like they already exist:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+taxi+meter+app>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you keep a physical community alive? - 2rsf
I'm a test lead in a medium large financial organization. As part of adopting SAFE (yes, i know...) and the Spotify model I am reviving a professional community under the COP or Guild hats respectively.<p>We have the basics- an ongoing leaders community, organizational support is expected, shared interest and problems to solve but somehow when I examine our history (and to be honest of other places as well) it seems that communities tend to be short lived.<p>I would appreciate any inputs or experience about keeping communities alive and bubbly over long periods.<p>This discussion [1] about online communities has some good tips, i wonder if virtual communities are that different than the ones in the real world<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21812442
======
humbledstone
At a previous employer, my dev team was pretty anti-social and we were in the
basement of the building with a floor that was under construction between us
and the rest of the company. I noticed most of the company had no clue who
were on the dev team or what we did. So I set up a weekly lunch where we would
play board games while playing. This helped us get to know others within the
company, and made us feel like part of a larger community. I am not sure if
this is what you are looking for, but I was surprised by the results. They
continue to do this even while I am no longer working there.
~~~
2rsf
Everything goes, thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Inexpensive 800 number solutions like Twilio? - ericb
I'm looking at twilio for an 800 number solution currently. I would also consider easy to configure voice mailboxes with 800 numbers.<p>Can anyone here give me their experience with twilio? For people with 800 numbers, do you find it helps with credibility? If you have any other recommendations for this type of service, I'm all ears.
======
fjcatwo
In this page you can find Toll free numbers from $2.oo / month and $2.oo setup
fee <http://www.toll-free800.com>
~~~
ericb
This looks excellent. Do you use them?
~~~
fjcatwo
I do . I have 2 toll freenumbers there
------
_pius
Twilio is sweet. Very easy to use, great documentation, and most importantly a
well-designed API.
------
fjcatwo
I do, have 2 toll free numbers there
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Secret UFO files? In Canada the truth is out there – online and searchable - aspenmayer
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/07/27/secret-ufo-files-in-canada-the-truth-is-out-there-online-and-searchable.html
======
aspenmayer
The database:
[https://www.bac-
lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/unusual/ufo/Pages/def...](https://www.bac-
lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/unusual/ufo/Pages/default.aspx)
For those who have trouble with the link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200730060029/https://www.thest...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200730060029/https://www.thestar.com/amp/news/canada/2020/07/27/secret-
ufo-files-in-canada-the-truth-is-out-there-online-and-searchable.html)
------
Stierlitz
Why would these highly technically advanced space aliens travel here in their
space ships, only to buzz secret US air bases?
If the US airforce now has access to such technology then why are they still
using ignited distillate of petroleum to power their aircraft.
------
RikNieu
Wasn't there supposed to be a senate briefing about UFOs this week?
~~~
aspenmayer
Yeah, I think they even mentioned that in the article. I guess Canada wanted
to capitalize on the attention on the issue and make some hay for themselves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: UI Widget to access graphically represented data - mikemajzoub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkXgcS6kT4U&feature=youtu.be
======
mikemajzoub
Hi HN,
I'm exploring a UI idea, and I'm posting it here in search of some critique
and feedback. I'll jot down a few stringths and weaknesses I'm thinking of so
far. I'd love your input.
Here's the youtube demo link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkXgcS6kT4U&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkXgcS6kT4U&feature=youtu.be)
Here's the github repo:
[https://github.com/mikemajzoub/ResponsiveGrow](https://github.com/mikemajzoub/ResponsiveGrow)
Abstract Use Case: Allow the user fast access to any data containing a
uniquely identifiable graphical ID (badge, emoji, profile picture, color in
palette, etc.). As user moves around grid, views details of current node in
top part of screen.
Strengths: 1\. A common solution to represent such sets if data is generally a
scrolling UITableView (iOS) or ListView (Android). This is inefficient because
it requires time and energy for the user to discover off-screen options. 2\.
Its simplicity lends it to be memorable and learnable.
Weaknesses: 1\. As the size of the set grows, the node's graphical IDs
decrease in size, detail, and as an extension, recognizability. In the demo
video, that's a 15x15 grid, which I felt was really pushing the set size
limits... but then again on a UITableView or ListView, representing 225
elements would be a nightmare too. I'm a little conflicted on this point -
would love some feedback here.
2\. I'm currently losing screen space at the bottom and edges of the screen so
that the margin can accomodate for the growing of the squares near it. One
potential solution is removing the margin entirely, and then shifting the
entire grid in the opposite direction of the currently selected area, because
if the user is in the lower left corner, she probably doesn't care if the
upper right corner slides off-screen momentarily, does she? Do you think this
is a viable option?
3\. I'm still conflicted on how to allow the user to select the data. "On
release" seems like a potential option, but this means the user will have to
drag all the way off the grid if she chooses not to select anything. Perhaps
this challenge presents an argument for keeping the margins, so that at any
moment, the user is within screenWidth/2 distance from the "do not select"
area. Another potential solution would be to allow for a hole in the middle of
the grid, which means that the user would always be within screenWidth/4 from
the "do not select" area, but this cuts into the amount of data that can be
represented on screen, so I am not in love with it. I welcome (and beg for)
any ideas here...
Thanks for your thoughts and feedback - I'm still very much in the early
stages of this idea, but I think it has some interesting potential and wish to
keep exploring and evolving it.
In peace, Mike
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Royalties from Writing a Hit Song with Justin Bieber - microtherion
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/10/03/hit-song-justin-bieber-royalties/
======
peapicker
If each radio spin at 347,820 spins hit 10,000 radio listeners average (a
Denver hit station has about ~250,000 weekly listeners, a popular rush
hour/drive time show with mixed talk/music format has ~80,000 listeners) ,
then the $53,000 was at a rate of 0.00001524 dollars per listener.
If Pandora paid that, his royalty would have been $582.55...
So it looks like the industry from a streaming point of view assumes about
20,000 radio listeners per play on the radio.
This might even average correctly across the US market.
~~~
sidlls
Aren't royalties paid per play (i.e. spin)? The rate for the radio is about
$0.14 per play (53/347), in that case. Stations have no way of knowing how
many listeners actually heard the song. They can estimate with ratings
services, but not get exact numbers like say Spotify.
~~~
CobrastanJorji
Right. But the point is that it's sort of weird to directly compare album
sales, radio plays, and online streaming view count. Those are fundamentally
different both in terms of audience size and income potential.
------
look_lookatme
> How will I be able to support my gift?
In the end what we are seeing is that that golden era of creators making a
living (and much much more) was an anomaly. Control of new types of
distribution created scarcity and new forms of expression and shifting norms
jacked up demand. But now distribution is free, instant and global. Demand has
flatlined and production has exploded.
The hard question a creator needs to ask themselves now is not "how do I get
paid for what my art is worth?", but instead "was my art ever worth much to
begin with?"
~~~
Applejinx
If even people reaching a truly stupidly huge number of people don't get even
close to making a living (I get more than that off a few hundred people on
Patreon for the work that I do), in a situation where those operating the
streaming services are renting out entire floors of office buildings in
Manhattan, your question is disingenuous.
Just because some of us are eking out a sort of existence in the new era
doesn't make it a functional system.
I would be perfectly happy to see it become 'this is the Star Trek future,
your entire compensation is the satisfaction of a job well done and being
personally liked for what you've created', if our world operated on some sort
of UBI and we didn't have to have our performance linked to survival at all.
Under those circumstances, things naturally shift down the Maslow hierarchy of
needs, and people take for granted that they'll live, and get desperate for
validation and popularity, that being what they lack. I have NO problem with a
world that completely unlinks money from performance, because I'm not a free-
market capitalist type demanding that financial reward behave like a
'meritocracy'.
Self-evidently it doesn't anyway, so literally nothing of value is lost.
BUT, we have that completely decoupled world and yet demand that people pay
for even the most frugal living with money they got somebody to give them, in
a world where people simply can't and don't do that anymore.
Silicon Valley clever-boffins: come up with some disruptive alternative really
fast. We don't have time to mess around, and what these songwriters face is
the same fate waiting for all of us, in turn, including you. How about
abolishing money and replacing it entirely with 'likes'?
~~~
NathanKP
The problem is the middlemen and the way the revenue is distributed through
them.
Someone who produces and uploads their own video that reaches a stupidly huge
number of people will make bank guaranteed, just like someone who is reaching
their audience directly through Patreon.
On average you should be able to get $5-$10 per 1000 YouTube video views if it
is on your own monetized channel. So that 35 million views probably generated
around $245,000 dollars for someone.
Probably most of it ended up in the hands of the record label that owns the
YouTube account, and by the time they finished taking their cut the final $200
made it back to the song writer.
My point is that new methods of distribution flattens the distribution and
gives you the potential to make much more money if you spend the time to build
your own thing rather than going with a record label.
~~~
jasode
_> On average you should be able to get $5-$10 per 1000 YouTube video views if
it is on your own monetized channel. So that 35 million views probably
generated around $245,000 dollars for someone._
Not disputing your numbers but just putting it out there that Hank Green
estimated $2-per-1000.[1] That calculates 35m views to be ~$70k.
Google also recently changed its engagement algorithms and everybody's views
and monetization went way down. I'm not sure what the latest 2017 cpm
estimates would be. That Hank Green estimate was from 2015.
[1]
[https://medium.com/@hankgreen/the-1-000-cpm-f92717506a4b](https://medium.com/@hankgreen/the-1-000-cpm-f92717506a4b)
~~~
NathanKP
From what I heard it is/was $5-$10 per 1000 if your video is eligible for the
high value video pre-roll ads. If you only get text AdSense ads then it is
about $1 per 1000.
Either way, my point is that a 35 million view YouTube video generates a lot
more than $200 dollars for someone. Even if you take the minimum of $1 per
1000 you are still looking at $35,000 of ad revenue. That ad money must be
going somewhere, even if creators don't get it. So YouTube isn't to blame, its
the people who are skimming off so much money that only $200 is left for the
writer
------
realthings
Get with the times! The way people consume music has radically changed. The
music gold rush is over. The simple fact is people listen to music on YouTube
and Spotify now. Music is also absurdly high in supply because everyone wants
to be a musician. Guess what that does to the value? That's right, music is
cheap because it isn't worth much.
Whenever I see people complain about this, I just feel sorry for them. The
world changes, and there are winners and losers because of the change.
It's so strange to me how people think the world owes them something. The
value of objectively looking at the market is so underrated.
~~~
jbergens
On the other hand there is money in music, and it could and should increase.
When you have 1 billion people paying $10 / month you have $12 billion per
year to split between the artists, songwriters, record companies and
distributors. That might still be lower than before but it is some money.
~~~
vkou
Fortunately for Hacker News, most of that economic windfall goes to middlemen.
~~~
tormeh
Unfortunately, it goes to the labels. The streaming services aren't rolling in
the dough.
~~~
vkou
It also goes to the engineers working on the services. $200,000-$300,000/year
to a senior, even if the service itself is losing money (And when it goes
bust, you can always find another job.)
~~~
romwell
I feel like this irony is horribly lost on about half of the commenters here.
Creator's job is seen as worthless, but the deliveryman's job value is
indisputable.
And yet if Spotify were to pay its engineers scraps, I doubt the voices here
would be as supportive.
The only reason the engineers are paid as much is because the companies can't
get away with paying less. And just because they can get away with paying
musicians less, doesn't mean the musicians should "get with the times". I am
not saying every musician should be a millionaire, but there are plenty who
collectively carry the multi-billion dollar industry on their backs, but get
scraps in return.
On a more general note, when a vulnerable part of the population gets shafted,
they shouldn't "get with the times" either. It's a sign of our failure as a
society.
I guess it is not surprising that people in a capitalistic society think that
the value of an activity lies in how much _profit_ it can generate _to the
performer_ of that activity. I guess it's beyond reasonable to expect people
to think of _externalities_ and understand them. I guess it's not at all
surprising that a bunch of people who claim to be in STEM have a collective
amnesia when it comes to understanding that M in STEM is an art akin to music,
but with laughable ROI and a far more limited audience (and the number of
corporations that hire mathematicians to do mathematics in the entire world is
probably... 5? Go on ArXiV and see how many math papers there are by people
outside academia, i.e. are the product of the "free" market system).
None of that is surprising. But that doesn't make victim-blaming any less
tiring to see.
~~~
realthings
Actually, the musicians don't carry the industry. Even if Taylor Swift died
tomorrow, and all of her music was erased from history, the music industry
wouldn't be threatened even slightly. There is a virtually endless supply of
musicians.
Society hasn't failed either. Society is made up of individuals. If the
individual wants to stream music instead of buying a CD, and if that means
less money for the musician, then the only choice is to adapt as a musician or
"get a job".
I say all of this as a musician myself. I realized all of this the hard way.
Just about everything in the world that can be bought or sold is valued based
on perception, which means anything can be worth millions tomorrow or squat.
Nothing is permanent. We're all gamblers in a huge game of perceived value,
and technology only makes it more crazy.
------
capkutay
Everyone knows that songwriters do not make their money off royalties. They
make their money off charging pop stars hourly to write music with them.
The same way performing artists don't make money off their albums, they make
money by touring and increasing their brand reach as an artist.
Music industry is not about creating IP, the same way the tech industry is not
about creating IP. Making things and making money are two separate, yet
intertwined tasks.
~~~
thomastjeffery
> is not about creating IP
I wish more people would come to terms with that. Protecting "IP" should not
be the focus, but for many it is, so we have Copyright, DRM, etc.
------
southphillyman
My grandfather had a single hit song over 50 years ago and he still lives
comfortably off accumulated royalties and other proceeds in 2017. Those days
are long gone. In this current system artists can still become millionaires
via concert and show money. It's the writers and producers who are getting
shafted since they depend mostly on royalities and points.
What I find intriguing are the genres where producers are arguably MORE
important than the artist (think trap music). Some producers in that space are
circumventing this problem by starting their own labels and signing artists
under them. This is essentially what Mike Will Made It has done with Rae
Sremmurd. As the music industry evolves, people participating in it have to
continually think outside the box and innovate to maintain revenue streams.
~~~
thebiglebrewski
"Santa's Super Sleigh"?
~~~
southphillyman
No but my user name is a big hint. Artist who grew up in South Philly 50-60
years ago and had a hit song so big he still lives off the royalties
today.....
~~~
sulam
Chubby Checker?!
~~~
culot
I don't know that Chubby Checker did so well. I saw him at a county fair 25
years ago. He was performing in a tent the size of a large restroom, with only
two rows of benches, at about 2pm. There may have been only 3-4 people there
altogether.
------
nfriedly
Yea... I think the system is rubbish, but I don't really feel very sorry for
someone earning $149k from lyrics they wrote 3 years ago.
Edit: _helped_ write - per wgj there were 5 authors on that song -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15419567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15419567)
~~~
bm1362
I believe that was a total? I didn't read it as just for this year.
~~~
nfriedly
That could be, but it seems like he's being well compensated for his effort
either way.
~~~
JustSomeNobody
Is he? Is he being compensated well when looked at relative to what others
have made off of it? It would be interesting to see those numbers.
~~~
pwinnski
Just consider it flat out: Pick something you did three years ago. Let's say
it took you a day, or a week, or a a good chunk of a month, off and on. With
no followup work after that, what's a "reasonable" rate of return for that
effort?
I make a good hourly rate, but at the end of each hour, my earning from that
hour is done, and none of my hours have every billed at $149k.
------
sxates
Everyone is very focused on the contrast between the Radio royalties and the
Streaming royalties - but we all skipped right past that first item: $149,000
in royalties for writing a song (just the first 3 years).
That's a lot of money - more than most people make in 2-3 years - for what
probably amounted to a few weeks of work. And we're supposed to feel sorry for
him because he couldn't retire on it? Seems to me if he got 1 of these per
year he'd be pretty set.
~~~
vkou
Writing a top hit song is a 'few weeks of work' as much as writing a program
is 'hitting the 'submit' button in your source control system.'
You don't get paid for all the non-hit songs you wrote.
~~~
pwinnski
I get paid the same for all the code I write, but none of it ever has any
chance at all of still paying me three years later. None of it. Ever.
------
dna_polymerase
Wait for GANs and Style Transfer. Your "blessing" will evaporate as soon as
the first Machine Learned Song hits Billboard 100.
~~~
bitL
RNNs are pretty close already:
[https://soundcloud.com/reivalk/basic-rnn-joplin-example-
over...](https://soundcloud.com/reivalk/basic-rnn-joplin-example-overfitting)
~~~
shmed
The title point out that it's "overfitted". Basically the AI just reproduced
almost the exact song that it was fitted with. It's basically a failed
experiment where the machine didn't learn how to make music, but insted just
repeated the note that it was taught. Not the best example to show case what
RNN can do for music.
------
itsdrewmiller
I can't say I've done a lot of research on this dispute, but so far I side
with the streaming services since they aren't constantly conflating completely
different numbers to try to trick readers. "Spin" is a radio term that isn't
used in streaming, for good reason; it's just not the same thing at all.
------
excalibur
In the absence of significant income from album sales, artists can make a
respectable living through touring and merchandising. This path isn't going to
work for songwriters. They need to find a different funding model. Perhaps
bill artists by the hour? Probably a flat-rate contract for x dollars per song
would be more feasible.
~~~
saaaaaam
Famous artists can yes. If you are a semi-known band with four people playing
a twenty date tour playing 400 capacity venues with two local support acts
you're probably not making so much.
That's 8,000 people who care enough to come out and see you. So let's say at
least 100,000 people need to like you enough that they would at least consider
buying the ticket.
$4000 dollars gross in ticket sales per night, 30% to the promoter. $2800
left. If you get 50% of that with 25% to each support act then after
commissions to booking agent and manager you're left with maybe $950. You need
to pay travel and accommodation costs out of that, and possibly a tour
manager. For a four piece band plus tour manager you probably need $30 a head
per diem for incidentals of living in the road. Add in food - another $30 per
head and you've got $650 left. Hotel rooms aren't cheap. travel isn't cheap.
Sure you can sell 25 t-shirts a night at $20 each and make $15 a shirt. And
throw in some CDs - maybe 30 at $10 a pop... you maybe net another $600 a
night.
$1250 a day for your hotels and travel for 5 people - maybe you have $600 left
after these costs. Oh and you have to pay your tour manager...
Each of the people in the band makes... what - $100 per show?
Can artists really make that respectable a living from touring and merch?
Sure, scale this up, play bigger venues - 2,000 capacity. But then your costs
increase - people want a more impressive show, not just spit and sawdust. You
need a set, lighting design, all the rest of it.
------
greedo
I've got a relative in the music/movie business. He was pretty successful at
both, most people in the US over 40 would probably recognize him. He and his
family live well, but he still tours; usually small venues, travels by tour
bus instead of fancy planes. Small crew, just a manager, sound guy and his
wife. I figure he might pull $5K a stop, maybe 2x that depending on the size
of the venue. Not bad, but not FU money. He still acts in movies, even some
that have not held up well over time. I doubt he makes a ton with those roles
either. But he still does them. My mom asked why he still does it, at his age;
he replied, "I've got kids to put through school."
I saw him perform for the first time in 40 years, and realized how much he
lied to my mom. On stage, he was (as the kids these days say) lit. He clearly
loved the music (he still writes and performs new material), but the light in
his eyes showed that what he really loved was performing and sharing his music
with the audience.
Most musicians can't count on a career lasting 50+ years. The era of singles
is gone, and performances are where the next generation will have to make
their living.
------
ilamont
This is a story about middlemen.
30 years ago, the supply chain for recorded music went something like this:
creator -> music label & radio -> retailers -> audience
Now it's something like this:
creator -> (label) -> digital platform -> audience
Huge power is concentrated in the platforms, which essentially combine
curation, distribution, sales, and marketing. They control pricing. They
control the playlists. They control the relationship with audiences and
_understand_ them far more than record retailers or radio ever did.
Labels now provide questionable value -- I would expect that some platforms
may start to move into that area, in order to guarantee exclusivity, which is
one of the few ways for labels to establish competitive differentiation. This
is already happening in other media, such as books (ex: Amazon-owned book
labels signing top authors or strong up-and-comers) as well as Amazon video
and Netflix funding promising scripts and creative teams.
What can artists do? They have a few cards to play. One of them is
exclusivity. Another is the ability to build their own connections with
audiences (often using free or low-cost communications platforms). And
dedicated audiences will do what is asked of them, within reason.
Some also perform, which is one of the few areas to make money these days. But
platforms are also horning in on that pot. Ticketmaster is ruthless when it
comes to manipulating pricing and forcing artists to play by its rules.
If I were an up-and-coming artist, I would concentrate not on becoming a
"star" but rather making music that both you and your audiences can love, and
building indestructible bonds with audiences that they will follow you no
matter where you go, whether it's jumping platforms, going on tour, buying new
march, or taking part in other activities that respect their love for the
music while helping you make a living.
~~~
konschubert
I'm worried about platforms moving into label territory too much because as
soon as label start seeing them as competitors, they'll start rolling their
own platforms and then we get that fragmentation which we know from video.
------
mfoy_
I can't speak as to the other platforms, but spotify's revenue sharing model
really sucks for small artists.
For example, if someone signs up for Spotify to listen to _exclusively_ songs
by one artist, that artist is not getting that user's monthly fee... they're
probably getting a couple pennies tops, if that.
~~~
dkrich
But why should they get most of the monthly fee? Spotify offers the ability
for that user to listen to that artist plus a million others and thus carries
the overhead required to create a platform for that artist to publish in the
first place. This seems a bit like saying that I as a taxpayer should only
have to pay for the public services that I, at this point in time, take
advantage of.
~~~
mfoy_
That's why Spotify takes its cut, no?
Comparing listening to different artists to funding multiple agencies with tax
dollars isn't a valid comparison.
It's like saying that when I buy my favourite brand of ice cream at the store,
that the other ice cream brands will get a cut simply for gracing the shelves.
~~~
dkrich
No, it's like saying that when you buy your favorite brand of ice cream at the
store the grocery store keeps most of the profit because without the store the
ice cream manufacturer wouldn't have a place to sell to the masses.
If said artist is in such high demand, then he or she can go make their own
streaming platform, charge $10/month, and keep 100%. Obviously that isn't the
case, so they must get some utility out of using the Spotify platform.
~~~
mfoy_
No... you're missing the point entirely The store is Spotify. The brands are
artists.
If I buy brand A, the store gets a cut, and brand A gets a cut. Brand B gets
nothing.
With Spotify, if I listen to Repartee, Justin Bieber is still getting some of
my money.
~~~
dkrich
Saying Justin Bieber gets some of your money isn't really the whole story.
Justin Bieber's songs are streamed billions of times a year, so his music
accounts for a very significant percentage of total streams, and consequently
use of the Spotify platform. Thus, he is bringing an outsized amount of value
to Spotify, so he rightly is deserving of more money.
Again, Repartee is free to pull their songs and sell them directly to you if
they think that will bring them more fans and more money. It's kind of funny
for two consenting parties who both use a platform to complain that the
platform is treating them unfairly.
~~~
nicpottier
Are you sure you are understanding the argument being made here?
I think the argument, which is fair, is that it is very weird that if I pay
Spotify $10 a month and listen exclusively to a single artist, that artist may
get a penny from me and Justin Bieber may get $3 from me, despite me never
listening to a single track from him.
Nobody is arguing Spotify can take it's 20% or whatever, people are just
arguing that the calculation Spotify uses to distribute the monthly royalties
severely penalizes small artists. (because it looks in aggregate across all
listeners instead of divvying per user)
------
pragmar
There are some interesting points in the article's comment thread.
>>> Amir Epstein - Money for big hits is in streaming on DSP’s. Spotify pays
$7,000 per million streams. That may sound like nothing, but when artists like
JB get 100,000,000 streams (that’s a conservative number) that’s $700,000. And
then there’s apple itunes, which pays around the same, and google play which
pays a little more. And if you are lucky and getting decent numbers on Tidal,
it pays $23,000USD per million. Not too shabby
>>> Anonymous (response) - That Spotify money you just referenced $7,000 per 1
million streams goes to whoever owns the MASTER. Typically the record company,
NOT the songwriters. Do your homework
There is a pot of money out there, but you're unlikely to see it unless you're
the one writing the record contracts.
------
StringyBob
I pay GBP10 a month for Spotify. I've never listened to Justin Bieber on
Spotify, but lots of other people (who don't pay) do.
As a percentage of my cash, how much goes to Justin Bieber vs how much to the
bands I've actually listened to who have many less total plays?
Or - do neither of them get anything?
~~~
alehul
The other comment was correct that most of the pooled money will go to Bieber,
however I feel there's a better way to frame it.
Economically speaking, you can imagine if Spotify had 100 users paying 10 GBP
each; 99 listened exclusively to Justin Bieber, and 1 to 'Band.' All users
listen to music in equal frequency. Though 99% of the pooled money — and if
divvied up equally, 99% of 'Band' fan's money — goes to Justin Bieber, 'Band'
fan's listening weight results in ~10 GBP of the total pool being pulled
towards 'Band.' So, in effect, all of 'Band' fan's money could be classified
as going towards 'Band.'
Also, as a couple side notes in Spotify's revenue structure:
1\. 70% goes to artists, 30% goes to Spotify.
2\. Over 70% of Spotify users become paying subscribers iirc, so there's not
much of a problem with listening weight being pulled by free users.
~~~
benjaminjackman
>Economically speaking, you can imagine if Spotify had 100 users paying 10 GBP
each; 99 listened exclusively to Justin Bieber, and 1 to 'Band.' _All users
listen to music in equal frequency._ [emphasis mine]
Well obviously not all users listen to music at the same frequency (which i
know you are likely well aware). What is the reason that they don't just take
each users $10 then dole that out only according to the songs that person
listened to. So if the user listened to one artist the entire month, then that
one artist get's the full portion of the $10 that is given to artists.
That will help with the situation where: 1\. Someone else listens to bieber on
repeat 24/7 (why should that affect where another's $10 goes) skewing the
sample massively towards that artist.
2\. In terms of free users, segment them off and pool the ad revenue again
boxed on a per user basis.
~~~
alehul
I completely agree with this solution being ideal, but I think it's a matter
of engineering effort and memory. It's not worth the time investment to build
a system more complex, and it's a lot easier memory-wise to just pool it all
together for allocation.
------
owly
Wow. The amount of hate in the comments is amazing. Eveyone knows best! I know
many artists who complain about their low streaming royalties turn around and
listen to music on Youtube, Pandora, Etc. HYPOCRITES. Do you really care about
directly supporting your favorite artists and encouraging the work of upcoming
acts? Then buy their music on BandCamp, go to shows and buy t-shirts/merch.
------
andybak
In case anyone wants to glorify the "good old days":
[http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17](http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17)
------
briandoll
On this theme, now is a good time to re-read the incredible letter Steve
Albini wrote to Nirvana about potentially producing In Utero, which includes
his perspective on royalties, etc.
[https://consequenceofsound.net/2013/09/read-steve-albinis-
pr...](https://consequenceofsound.net/2013/09/read-steve-albinis-proposal-to-
produce-nirvanas-in-utero/)
------
joshuaheard
The guy wrote a song. It took him, what, a month? For that he earned $150,000?
Annualized, that's almost $2 million. I don't see the problem here.
~~~
konschubert
The problem is that writing a hit song is not something he can do every month.
It's like finding a nugget of gold. It still has to fund the operation.
~~~
joshuaheard
His pay probably lasts as long as that song was popular.
------
majani
As with any article about music finances, it misses one crucial detail:
elaborating how the money is split between every single entity in the value
chain. There's plenty of YouTubers who make orders of magnitude more money on
the same amount of views. I feel it's probably largely due to the fact that
youtubers usually only split the cash two ways between the star and the editor
------
_kulte
I don't understand, so Bieber made $596,000 (assuming he owned the other 80%)
from this song? No way, it would seem like?
~~~
zaroth
There are actually a completely different set of royalties payed to the
performer vs. the songwriter.
~~~
wgj
Rodney Jerkins is only one of five writers on the song:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Long_as_You_Love_Me_(Justin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Long_as_You_Love_Me_\(Justin_Bieber_song\))
Bieber also has songwriting credit. If the royalty was divided evenly, Bieber
would also get 20%. However, it isn't required to divide evenly, and
songwriter royalties can be negotiated myriad different ways.
------
danjoc
I have similar feelings. My gift generates millions for someone else. I take
home above median income, but I'm not getting rich. I'm working toward a plan.
I wonder what his plan is?
It's interesting watching this comment section fill with bickering over what
commenters think he deserves.
~~~
darkdreams
Seconded. I think the software industry is an example where the "creators"
just get a salary.If you are lucky or an early stage employee, you may get
some equity. Software that we write creates billions for corporations but we
never get a share. Question: Why do musicians & "creative" people get
royalties for what they do and not others? If value creation is the argument,
I would argue we are also creating value. I am not asking to be mean, but I am
curious.
~~~
sfifs
It's the risk tolerance intersecting with demand-supply. If you join a startup
where you are willing to be underpaid in return for equity which could make
you rich at a small probability, you're in a entertainment industry model.
However if you want a salary and comfortable living, you take a salary and
don't get a shot at wealth. You could refuse to work on such terms but your
company could persumably hire someone else who won't refuse since the supply
of risk averse individuals significantly exceeds those who take risk..
------
tstubben
They are talking about songwriting royalties which are easily less then 5% of
the royalties paid out by streaming companies. The vast majority of the
royalty goes to the recording artist and their label in this case Justin
Bieber.
~~~
lukeh
Right, this is an important point which appears to be have been missed
elsewhere in this thread (and was probably assumed knowledge in the original
link).
------
x0x0
Obviously the streaming numbers are minuscule, but if people bought CDs, they
can play it unlimited times for a fixed rate. Streaming does substitute with
radio and purchased music, but more the latter.
Expecting radio rates for something that primarily substitutes for purchased
CDs is ludicrous. It would have been more interesting (to me) if the article
had compared the youtube/pandora payments with the equivalent CD purchases.
Also, this is what google and apple want to do to all of us. Make your
complements cheap to enhance your value. Hence the plummeting value of
software on their platforms. Apple is busying crying crocodile tears about the
difficulty of making a living on the ios platform. They're not gonna care
unless and until it damages their platform.
~~~
sbuttgereit
Your first point regarding how streaming cannibalizes CD I think is pretty
spot on. Radio play for record companies and artists was a way to entice
listeners to buy the record/cassette/CD/etc. and depending on where you sat in
the payout chain, you really didn't expect money from radio... often times you
paid to have your record played on radio
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola)
... and there were creative ways around the laws after they were created). But
radio didn't play what you wanted when you wanted (that took buying records),
radio played what they wanted when they wanted.
Streaming upends that. I don't buy records anymore, I pay a streaming
subscription. I get pretty much anything I want whenever I want on demand. I
have access to a much larger catalog than I would if I bought everything
individually and I'm probably spending on-par with what I did in the old days.
(I use to get a lot a free CDs and such because I worked for a record store
chain in the 90's, but even so, I have access to a larger catalog today). The
fact that I can get the vast majority of what I want means that those few hold
out artists that I would like to listen to, but can't because they refuse to
play the game (with good reason), simply don't get listened to... I have other
choices.
I can't comment on the other issues you raise.
------
mfoy_
Well, I thought this was going to be about JB screwing over a writer... so at
least it wasn't that. Pretty low numbers though. I wonder what Spotify would
have looked like if it were on the list...
~~~
trgv
To some degree that is what happened, though I'm sure he was screwed by a
lawyer rather than the artist himself.
When they offered this songwriter some % of song royalties, they knew ahead of
time that it wasn't going to be a whole lot of money.
Solution? Songwriters need a new metric to charge by.
One problem, though, is that perhaps songwriting isn't actually worth that
much. When you look at a performer like Justin Beiber, how much of his income
depends on specific songs that he's putting out? I'm not sure, but I don't
necessarily think it's a large amount.
~~~
conductr
If writers are so opinionated about their works value, they just need to
charge a fixed price. The allure of the possibility of writing a song once and
having potentially massive perpetual income is why they like these royalty
deals (and why said lawyer knew it was a good deal). But that's more of a
lottery ticket in todays music industry. However, if you assign a price to
your work you will quickly know what it's worth.
------
juancn
You want to know how many spins a day some of my code does?
~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Actually yes please...
I would love to see that math worked out with someone who has written a
popular program/website.
------
rasz
Judging by YouTube alone he wasnt paid 20%, but rather 0.01-0.5% of real
royalties.
------
saaaaaam
The revenues from live when you write or co-write for a globally recognised
artist who tours will always be more lucrative for songwriters than the
revenues from recordings. This is because (generally speaking) the revenues
for live for songwriters come as a split of box office - and live performance
is generally going to gross a lot more than recording for an artist of that
stature.
For example, in the UK, PRS takes 3% of box office, and that is then paid out
to songwriters based on duration of performance. So for example, if someone
sells 1000 tickets at 10 each, there is £300 to be paid to PRS. If there are
three acts playing and they each play 30 minutes, songwriters get £3.34 per
minute. So if two songwriters co-write a song and agree a 60/40 split and that
song is 4 minutes 30 seconds one songwriter would get £9.02 from this show and
the other would get £6.01.
Bieber played six dates at the O2 in London - capacity 20,000 - and tickets
seem to have been around the £45 mark. Let's assume he pretty much sold out -
so those six dates grossed £5.4m
Assuming he did a 20 song set (so maybe 75 minutes duration for songs, with
two support acts each playing 30 minutes - total duration 135 minutes) then
the songwriters (for both Bieber and support acts) are getting £1200 per
minute of performance across that segment of the tour. So actually, if you are
the support act and you are a singer-songwriter playing 30 minutes support to
Bieber, you're going to walk away with your live appearance fees plus £36k in
songwriter royalties.
Streaming revenue splits between labels and songwriters (or sound recording
copyright royalties, and publishing mechanical royalties) are based on old
record label models, where the label invested a large amount of money to
record, manufacture and market product; because of this, they took the lion's
share of revenues from record music sales. It's easy to argue that things have
changed, but equally, generally speaking a songwriter needs an artist to
perform and record the song - and the artist probably needs a label (or
someone with some money) to market that song and help it generate the maximum
revenues. Songwriters still benefit, because they get MORE revenues than they
would have done otherwise. A great song is nothing unless someone records it
and performs it.
So the problem is not necessarily with Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and all of
these other companies - they are following models which by-and-large have been
dictated to them by labels - you can't operate a music streaming platform
without songs to play, and you can't play songs without obtaining permission
to use the recording, and the recording copyright - and thus that permission -
is controlled by record labels rather than songwriters.
The scale of the market is completely different. Bieber's 2016 world tour
apparently grossed $250m in ticket sales - if we stick (for ease) with the UK
model for compensating songwriters for live performance, this tour generated
$7.5m in revenues for songwriters. Let's say that across the whole tour -
including Bieber songs, numerous co-writes, and support acts - there were 250
songwriters involved. Assuming everyone's song was performed for roughly the
same duration then each songwriter should have walked away with about $37,500.
Not bad.
The problem is not streaming - it's people crafting flawed narrative that is
based around "my song got streamed a billion times and all I got was this
lousy t-shirt" but at the same time ignoring the completely different scales
of revenue for live performance vs recording. Bieber has 32 million monthly
listeners on Spotify. Assuming that they each listen to an average of 8 tracks
a month (for a total of roughly 250m streams) then his label is generating
maybe around $1.25m in recording revenues. The songwriters will be getting a
fraction of that - and each individual songwriter will get a proportion of
that fraction, based on how much their song is listened to. If his most
popular song gets 50% of streaming activity, second most popular 25%, third
most popular 10%... and his tenth most popular gets 1% then that track is only
generating the label $12,500 a month - and maybe $2,500 for the song writer -
but it's still getting 2.5m streams a month. If the writer has a 20% share of
the song, then they are getting $500 - over a year (all things remaining
equal) then maybe they get $6,000 for 30m streams.
If that song was played on every date of a Bieber tour as part of a 20 song,
75 minute set, on a tour where headliner is performing 60% of the total
duration, then based on the UK model for songwriter performance royalties the
writer of that song would be getting $225,000.
If someone has a 20% share of that song they are getting $45,000.
------
rurban
At least we know why Google earns so much. They don't pay any royalties,
rather keep everything to themselves. Interesting business concept.
~~~
civilian
I don't think they're keeping everything for themselves. I think they're
actually not taking in that much money from Youtube ads / youtube red.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do microservices just shift complexity from app to ops? - quezzle
======
joeblow9999
no. so-called 'microservice architectures' increase the complexity of the
platform in terms of ops AND the code
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Perl is not Dead, it is a Dead End - brunov
https://speakerdeck.com/stevan_little/perl-is-not-dead-it-is-a-dead-end
======
nmcfarl
This is worth reading, in spite of it's inflammatory title, as it's really
about a new project: moe ( <https://github.com/stevan/moe> ) an "ultra-modern
perl 5" written in Scala.
~~~
hoola
Some of the problems that the author mentions in Perl5 are actual problems in
Scala, for example the compiler and interpreter latency or start up time, the
complexity of the language, the philosophy TIMTOWTDI and the bigger one is
that other languages are getting better and better. Why just not to translate
the philosophy of Perl to Scala, that is write a book translating the most
common idioms of Perl to Scala. Good programmers could learn the Perl-Scala
way in days, the real thing to realize is that today there is no single
solution, you must master several programming languages, no one size fit for
all problems.
~~~
lazyjones
I mostly agree and believe that before another abomination loosely based on
Perl is written in Scala, people should learn Scala. However, Scala's syntax
is also quite complicated, Scala code is often hard to read (far too much
TIMTOWTDI there as well), so personally I favour Go as a modern alternative to
Perl.
------
fusiongyro
The author doesn't make the case all that strongly. Despite the quantity of
words there isn't a lot of content backing them up. Mostly "fun" quotes an in-
joke references I don't get, which he seems to bemoan early in the
presentation but lapses into about halfway through.
Perl 5 never struck me as something one would set out to acquire from scratch.
Perl 6 does, but there are fresher faces and I wouldn't predict it becoming a
major force anytime soon.
------
idm
great slides; I read the whole thing. This is a very interesting project, too.
I left perl around the time of Moose because I was desperate for a sane OO
system. I'd love to see this succeed.
------
cmccabe
If "Perl is a dead end" (his words, not mine), then why not switch to another
similar language like Python or Ruby?
I guess I don't understand why this guy wants to create yet another
programming language. He spends his entire slide deck complaining about how
bad Perl is, without ever discussing the obvious possibility of... just using
another language. Is there anything good about Perl 5 that other languages
haven't already copied? If there is, what is it? I am not trying to be
facetious here-- just curious.
~~~
draegtun
_> If "Perl is a dead end" (his words, not mine), then why not switch to
another similar language like Python or Ruby?_
Because a lot of the points given also apply to Python & Ruby.
_> I guess I don't understand why this guy wants to create yet another
programming language._
He isn't. It looks like he's creating an improved / cleaned-up perl5 running
on a new VM. Think of it as perl6 if the perl6 moniker hadn't already been
taken!
EDIT - Hopefully clearer analogy... the project is a mixture of python2 ->
python3 (language cleanup) + MRI -> YARV (new compiler & VM).
_> Is there anything good about Perl 5 that other languages haven't already
copied? If there is, what is it?_
The author of the talk (Stevan Little) is the creator of Moose
(<http://moose.perl.org>). I think what he maybe striving for is a Moose
implemented on a modern future proofed VM (full threading/multiprocessing,
etc).
The question you may want to ask is why? By sounds of this talk it appears
that his p5-mop proposal/work (<https://github.com/stevan/p5-mop>), which was
originally mooted for perl 5.16, as probably been _blocked_ by the Perl core
team (p5p). It's a shame if that is what's happened :(
~~~
cmccabe
_Because a lot of the points given also apply to Python & Ruby._
Like what, exactly? He even has a slide which says this about Node.js: "there
is no problem." If there is no problem, then what is he trying to solve by
creating a new language? I am confused.
_The author of the talk (Stevan Little) is the creator of Moose
(<http://moose.perl.org>). I think what he maybe striving for is a Moose
implemented on a modern future proofed VM (full threading/multiprocessing,
etc)._
Moose is cool and all, but it basically just brings Perl up to the same level
of functionality that other languages like Python and Ruby have right out of
the box. Using the JVM seems like a particularly unfortunate choice since it
has such a long start-up time and traditionally Perl scripts were for quick
and dirty jobs.
~~~
draegtun
_> Like what, exactly?..._
Threading / Multicore processing. This is the 800 pound gorilla sitting in all
programming language camps.
_> Moose is cool and all, but it basically just brings Perl up to the same
level of functionality that other languages like Python and Ruby_
Nope... Moose brings Perl up to the CLOS (Lisp) level of OO which is _beyond_
what you get with Python & Ruby.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal - jkopelman
http://firstround.com/article/the-trick-max-levchin-used-to-hire-the-best-engineers-at-PayPal
======
npalli
How long is Max Levchin going to milk the Paypal story. For crying out loud,
it was 12 years ago - an eternity in the industry. How come all these great
ideas didn't work for the next 12 years he has been trying to build other
companies.
~~~
andyjsong
He's trying: <https://affirm.com/jobs>
~~~
npalli
Interesting, thanks. I thought Max Levchin was trying to get you pregnant.
Just announced yesterday at D11.
[http://allthingsd.com/20130529/max-levchins-new-plan-to-
get-...](http://allthingsd.com/20130529/max-levchins-new-plan-to-get-you-
pregnant-and-improve-health-care-in-the-process/)
~~~
minimaxir
Pregnancy or e-payment. Clearly it's a 50/50 hedge bet.
------
smacktoward
So all the best engineers on the market just happened to have gone to school
with Levchin, and all the best business types on the market just happened to
have gone to school with Peter Thiel.
What an amazing coincidence!
~~~
samfisher83
Well they did go to Stanford and UIUC. Arguably the best school for business
and the birthplace of the browser, and one of the best comp sci schools in the
country.
I think the point is that he hired people he knew.
~~~
sjg007
this is what they call meritocracy.
~~~
omonra
If you could show that either university is not meritocratic in their
application process, you would have a point.
~~~
sjg007
[http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Meritocracy-Classics-
Organization...](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Meritocracy-Classics-Organization-
Management/dp/1560007044)
~~~
omonra
Thank you - I had a look at the book description and I don't see how it makes
your point (regardless of whether the author is an authority on the subject)
------
jtbigwoo
> diversity of thought slows you down
What a fascinating idea. I suppose if you don't know whether you're going the
right direction you might as well try to get there as fast a possible.
I worked for a while with a bunch of former video game developers at a non-
game company. They got an amazing amount of work done, but they also just did
what they wanted without discussing it. They just assumed that everybody would
naturally agree with them so they didn't see any problem with sending a note
to the rest of the team that said, "We've changed the signature of most of the
UI method calls. The build now has 5,000 errors. Please make changes to your
code."
~~~
jfarmer
Given the PayPal story, which started with the company being encryption
software to beam money between Palm Pilots, that couldn't possibly be what Max
meant. They definitely didn't "know whether [they were] going in the right
direction."
What he means, I think, is that at an early stage startup the cost of
coordination is very high. When you have 5 people working together you almost
want a hive mind. If part of everyone's mutual understanding includes how,
when, and why to change course then the cost of potentially sticking with the
wrong thing for too long is far outweighed by the cost of coordination.
Your example is the opposite of what I take him to mean, viz., in a small team
where everyone understands _how_ to operate independently and has a deep,
mutual understanding then nobody's going to introduce a breaking change that
leaves the other 4 people flat footed at a critical time.
~~~
aswanson
He's putting his own cognitive narrative on a singular event. A few things
change (they dont connect with elon, they dont give up on the palm pilot as a
focus, etc) and the story ends radically different, to negative effect. Truth
is, sometimes, if you bust your ass in the right place at the right time, shit
goes marvelously to your favor. Or not. Either way.
------
cascas
"Hire everyone you know at Stanford." NEAT TRICK. Also "ignore diversity of
thought," and apparently diversity of almost everything else. Absolutely
stupid.
~~~
newnewnew
Is there any value in diversity for its own sake?
If I'm trying to build a rocket to go to Mars, give me the best people, not
the people that would look best in a university recruiting photograph.
~~~
crazygringo
There is. But racial diversity has nothing to do with it.
The more diverse the backgrounds and thought patterns are of people on a team,
the more likely they'll think of and consider solutions and paths that might
not have been considered otherwise -- or see pitfalls in them.
If you're building a rocket to go to Mars, you absolutely want as much
diversity in your engineering backgrounds as possible (assuming everyone
already meets the engineering requirements in the first place).
~~~
newnewnew
Have you ever worked with someone that really gets the way you think? It's
refreshing. The communication overhead is very low.
It seems I spend a great deal of my time trying to communicate things I
already know with people of "diverse" thinking styles.
Don't worry about people being robotic clones of each other. It almost never
happens. There is diversity enough without seeking out more blatant diversity.
~~~
wavefunction
I've learned an awful lot from people who think very differently than me. They
make me reconsider my assumptions and quite often lead to a better solution.
------
caycep
"strongest technical teams in silicon valley history"?
So much for the guys who invented the silicon transistor, the microprocessor.
the Macintosh team must have been small fries.
------
jurassic
TLDR: Cronyism works well if all your college bros are top talent.
~~~
spinlock
OR: survivorship bias lets you make all sorts of unfounded claims.
~~~
rhizome
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
------
general_failure
This is one of those 'success has many parents'. Most of these stories are
semi-made up after success.
~~~
jacques_chester
Success is like failure: it only exists backwards in time.
Generally we take a hammer and beat the messy chaos of reality until it
resembles the monomyth.
------
aswanson
190+ IQ's. Now I understand why slide was such a triumph in the myspace
Picfeed Battle of 2006.
------
lumens
Seems like a number of comments are missing the good here. A quick summary of
my takeaways:
\- Ability to leverage talent to speedy outcomes _is_ the competitive
advantage of startups. Lean heavily on this.
\- Startups habitually underestimate their ability to attract top talent.
Don’t submit to this line of thinking, or at minimum work to prove your
hypothesis of impossibility.
\- One should be ruthless in early shaping of company culture. Certain things
are absolutely necessary to get right -- this is one.
\- The things that scare away second tier talent can actually attract top tier
people. Like focusing product development on your ideal user, one should focus
hiring energies on ideal hires.
~~~
alan_cx
All of which is summed up by the comments about people from one particular
university.
Point by point: Easy to leverage people you went to uni with Easy to attract
top talent, if you went to uni with it Ruthless? If you mean selecting from a
single know talent pool, sure. You'll probably scare away 2nd tier talent, if
you a already populated with your mates from a top uni.
OK, those are bitter and twisted replies, but being British, I know all about
closed shop universities and mates giving mates jobs. Old School Tie we call
it. Have a look at our government....
------
jacques_chester
"One crazy trick. HR managers hate him!"
Let's stop looking for crazy tricks. Generally, there aren't any.
Some stuff is simple, some stuff is complicated.
------
brryant
There are no tricks in this story, just a philosophy that he believed in, and
strictly adhered to.
------
thelarry
What is paypay? Am I the only one that noticed that?
~~~
wyclif
No, I'm a proofreader. I wondered the same thing.
------
pinaceae
this thing worked _once_ for him. that's not a valid sample. all these great
stories out of startups that were plain lucky to be in the right place in the
right time. it wasn't technology that made paypal big - who gives a shit how
they hired coders?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Desperate Plea for a Free Software Alternative to Aspera (2018) - fanf2
https://www.ccdatalab.org/blog/a-desperate-plea-for-a-free-software-alternative-to-aspera
======
ncmncm
Ex Aspera Dev here. I did the encryption and early parallel work.
There is a lot of good science behind fasp. An advantage it has over IETF
protocols is that both ends trust one another. Another advantage, until
recently, was out-of-order delivery.
The protocol totally ignores drops, for flow control. Instead, it measures
change in transit time. The receiver knows, the sender needs to know, but the
useful lifetime of the measurement is less than the transit time. This should
make an engineer think "control theory!", and did. So, the receiver reports a
stream of transit time samples back to the sender, which feeds them into a
predictor, which controls transmission rate. Simple, in principle, but the
wide Internet is full of surprises.
If you think this wouldn't be able to go a thousand times faster than TCP, you
have never tried moving a file to China or India over TCP. :-) (Customers used
to report 5% drop rates.) Drops and high RTT are devastating to traditional
TCP throughput on high-packet-rate routes; read about "slow-start" sometime,
and do the math. Problem is that for untrusted peers, drops are the only
trustworthy signal of congestion. Recent improvements where routers tag
packets to say "I was really, really tempted to drop this!" help some.
Torrents get the out-of-order delivery and the lower sensitivity to drops, but
its blocks are too big.. Others commented that opening lots of connections
gets around some TCP bottlenecks, but that helps much only when the drop rate
isn't too high (i.e. not to India or China).
~~~
eps
Rate control sounds nearly identical to TCP Vegas then, no?
But out of order delivery and (I'm guessing) out of order retransmits appear
to be unique to fasp. What did you mean about these being unique "until
recently"? [edit - nevermind, saw below you were referring to sack]
PS. I remember looking at fasp ~10 years ago and it looked like a fantastic
tech. Someone's taking things that many people only talked about and putting
them into a product that really worked well. Cutting edge stuff. A job like -
a dream for many :)
~~~
ncmncm
No, quite different from Vegas, if the graphs are to be believed. What I would
see on real trans-oceanic links was a sub-second ramp up to a flat, stable
rate, and stepwise rate changes during the session as other flows started and
stopped, with no visible oscillation.
(I am looking at [https://blog.apnic.net/2017/05/09/bbr-new-kid-tcp-
block/](https://blog.apnic.net/2017/05/09/bbr-new-kid-tcp-block/) .)
Fasp does not rely on RTT ACK timing, which is very noisy, but only outgoing
delays.
The routers are applying their own algorithms to simulate sane queue timing,
but they are doing all kinds of crazy shit under the hood to get better link
performance. The queues, IOW, are a fiction provided to the endpoints to
simplify their job and generate understandable, thus tunable full-route
dynamics.
But the ACKs get completely different treatment, because traditionally nothing
cared about ACK timing.
So, "onset of queuing", e.g., is pretty meaningless in practice, and fasp
makes no attempt to detect it.
------
phonon
Have you tried [https://github.com/openrq-
team/OpenRQ](https://github.com/openrq-team/OpenRQ) or
[https://github.com/harmony-one/go-raptorq](https://github.com/harmony-one/go-
raptorq) or
[https://github.com/cberner/raptorq](https://github.com/cberner/raptorq) (the
last seems to have excellent decoding/encoding performance)?
(Raptor codes (a type of FEC) can essentially transfer over UDP at the
_underlying line rate, even if packet drop is high_. In other words, if it is
a 1 gbit/s link, with 5% packet loss, you will be able to send over 900
mbits/s without needing any TCP features). This is also helps high latency
scenarios, as you don't need test/back off how much data to send...you just
send as much Raptor encoded data as you want down the pipe, and as long as you
send enough recovery packets with it, you will be able to reconstruct the
original flawlessly).
(Also see
[https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10066600](https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10066600)
[http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~pooja/HowUseRaptorQ.pdf](http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~pooja/HowUseRaptorQ.pdf)
[https://a1f9fb7d-b120-4c73-98e3-5cdb4ec8a2ab.filesusr.com/ug...](https://a1f9fb7d-b120-4c73-98e3-5cdb4ec8a2ab.filesusr.com/ugd/4c5b11_93bc499bed254bf29057bfb5f8c44867.pdf)
[https://youtu.be/bYPbat-FFTo](https://youtu.be/bYPbat-FFTo)
[https://github.com/mk-fg/python-libraptorq](https://github.com/mk-fg/python-
libraptorq))
~~~
Scaevolus
You don't need 5% packet loss on a high latency 1Gbps link to trash
performance. Even .1% packet loss is enough to cut throughput massively on
long fat networks (LFNs).
Erasure coding helps, but it demands much more CPU than simply having a very
wide window for retransmits. For bulk data transfer of files, retransmitting
any part of a 1GB window is trivial.
~~~
traverseda
You mean with raptorQ 5% loss trashes performance by more than 5%?
~~~
phonon
No, the overhead is fairly minimal. A 5% packet loss (which is very bad) on a
gigabit link where the sender is thousands of miles away might have an
effective throughput of 930 mbits per second with RaptorQ. With regular TCP
you would get only a few megabits/s, as it would back down until the loss rate
was nearly zero.
------
ovidiul
This looks interesting as well as it's developed at CERN and uses plain tcp
protocol [https://github.com/fast-data-transfer/fdt](https://github.com/fast-
data-transfer/fdt)
~~~
YarickR2
Second this. When we needed to deal with somewhat similar issues (quickly
transfer multi-gigabyte archives over massively unreliable link) , we ended up
with FDT ; it can be easily scripted , and transfers data between two hosts
(without using a network of torrent peers) at that hosts' link speed. Used it
to transfer builds between US and Russia, and Russia and China .
~~~
branzo
+1
Used fdt to transfer a 6TB archive out of AWS very smoothly at full speed.
------
justinsaccount
The 'proof' shown that aspera is 200x faster shows an ETA of 2:15 compared to
00:09. First of all, this is 15x faster, not 200.
I tried downloading the file using axel -n 32, and it took 1:28, which is only
9x slower. Curious though, when it started out with all threads running it was
transferring data at 29594.2KB/s and hit 50% after only a few seconds, but by
the end with only a few threads left running it was only doing 5625.8KB/s.
It looks like the performance varies a lot, possibly due to multiple
interfaces or wan links being used.. or issues with their server.
Using axel -n 64 over http I was able to fetch it in 50s, which is only 5x
slower, and most of that time was spent from 98 to 100% as the last few
connections finally finished.
A smarter client that more aggressively re-fetched chunks being downloaded
over slow connections would likely match the same performance.
~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, and one window shows speeds in MB/s and the other in Mbps (a 10x
difference in units right there).
~~~
justinsaccount
ah, I bet they missed that which is how they ended up with 200x instead of
under 20x
------
KaiserPro
Ex Aspera user here.
I worked in VFX, so I've been using aspera since before it was owned by IBM.
Depending on what line speed you have, but for a gig link we made a simple
protocol using parallel TCP streams.
Basically, it chunked up the large file into configurable sized chunks, and
assigned a chunk to each stream.
Another stream passed the metadata.
This has all the advantage of TCP, with less of the drawbacks of a custom UDP
protocol.
For transferring files from london to SF we were getting 800mbit/s over a 1
gig link.
------
grizzles
Why not use torrents over wireguard? From an engineering perspective I'd
personally be hard pressed to come up with a more optimal solution for private
big data transfer.
If Aspera is as good as the parent suggests it's probably because they are
operating a bittorrent-like network of geo-distributed peers. It would be very
cheap to emulate that using cloud computing providers, especially if you are
discarding the data after transfer.
~~~
KaiserPro
Aspera uses multiple UDP streams to push data.
The special sauce is measuring the packet loss quickly enough to make sure
your not over saturating the link
Apart from that, its a fairly simple protocol.
~~~
ncmncm
Aspera only uses multiple UDP streams if the line rate is too fast for one
sending process to keep up. Very often the actual bottleneck is the receiving
storage backend.
It absolutely does not measure packet loss at all. The only response to a
dropped packet is to request a re-send.
The protocol is simple but depends on very smart sending rate control. Much of
the complexity of the current version is to perform well when the receiver has
a slow disk, or the link goes through a satellite.
------
john_moscow
Honestly speaking, a good way to solve this is not trivial. You would need to:
1\. Measure the existing performance on specific data sets.
2\. Understand how many of the bottlenecks come from the network latency vs.
I/O limits vs. CPU bottlenecks (if using compression).
3\. See if any domain-specific compression is needed.
4\. Document the typical use cases. Understand why the current solution sucks
(e.g. requires redundant user actions). Write down user interaction scenarios.
Design the UI to be as efficient as possible for those scenarios.
This is a non-trivial amount of work that would require a lot of back-and-
forth interaction and on-the-go requirement changes and I don't think it's
entirely honest to ask someone to do this work for free in the name of cancer
research (after all, you are not donating most of your paycheck to charities,
are you?). If the existing solution by IBM sucks, how about making a Request
For Proposal [0] and seeing if smaller software vendors could offer something
better given that you are actually willing to pay for the work?
P.S. A student/hobbyist can probably whip out some sort of a parallel TCP-like
thing with a large window for free, but you would get the same performance by
just cranking up the TCP window size via sysctl and using multiple HTTP
threads (htcat was suggested earlier in the comments).
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_proposal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_proposal)
------
yoz-y
Way back when I had a problem on my network that was capping the FTP/SFTP
speeds to about a fifth of my download speed. Torrents worked fine. To fix my
problem I have cobbled up an extremely hacky solution which consisted of
opening several listening sockets, ssh-ing to the remote machine and net-
catting the file by chunks in several processes in parallel. It actually
worked. The code is here [https://github.com/jlegeny/blazing-
speed](https://github.com/jlegeny/blazing-speed) more for archiving purposes
than to be used by anybody for anything.
------
mattbillenstein
I benchmarked Aspera against alternatives for getting data from on-prem
storage into the cloud (google cloud storage) a year or two ago on a 10Gbps
link.
Aspera was faster on a single stream, but if you have a lot of files to move
around (you usually do) you can just multiplex a bunch of tcp streams to get
the same throughput.
So like in the example on their page, if you have 20 wget's hitting their ftp
and there are no other bottlenecks, the throughput will be similar to using
Aspera - and you have just a greater variety of free tooling for tcp based
those protocols...
~~~
ncmncm
Sending on lots of TCP streams can get you to 80% line utilization if the drop
rate is good and low. That's often good enough. On some lines, with the
"wrong" number of TCP connections, the rate will oscillate, and you will be
lucky to get 50%. Tuning that is a black art some people enjoy.
~~~
mattbillenstein
Yeah, I was probably working in an environment with pretty low packet loss.
Looking at the problem holistically - if you're going to spend money on Aspera
to fix situations with high packet loss, maybe you're better off spending
money on a higher quality connection and using tcp.
------
01CGAT
FTR, they say: "As you can see, the ascp client performs over 200x faster than
FTP, and can download the whole file in 9 seconds. It’s pretty magical." But
the example shows MB/s vs Mb/s. It's not over 200x times faster, but about 17
times faster.
------
zxcvbn4038
I feel the author’s pain - Aspera is a clunky 90s styled Ruby on Rails app
that is about the most cloud unfriendly piece of software I’ve encountered,
I’d love an alternative.
I honestly don’t care about about their proprietary UDP protocol, it’s nothing
special, just another way to copy bits onto a wire. Dime a dozen.
The true value of Aspera is they provide an integrated browser plug-in that
lets the technically challenged reliably upload large files. If the transfer
is interrupted or either side changes addresses it deals with it gracefully.
It’s also a bridge to AWS S3.
I spent some time looking for a replacement and while there are numerous
download managers that facilitate people downloading large files, I couldn’t
find any upload managers with the same level of integration and polish.
About the closet thing I could find is Cyberduck, but it’s not integrated with
the web browser, not as easy for technically challenged people to use, and
there is no support (community support but seems really hit and miss). However
it does make good use of Amazon’s multiple upload api and will happily fill
whatever wire it’s connected to.
Torrent software has largely the same pros and cons Cyberduck does.
------
dgemm
I have seen this software before. I suppose the speed boost results from using
multiple parallel connections, meaning it could make better use of aggregate
links and multipath networks? Is there anything else to it?
~~~
mattrp
It does what it says and it’s expensive. There’s a couple of commercial
packages like this - two that come to mind are vcinity and Signiant. A
solution can be made but every time I look at the market you find very few
customers with a real need to move terabytes that can’t solve their problem
with a snowball-style solution. Those that do usually also have the economics
to justify a commercial package.
~~~
ncmncm
Don't know about vcinity, but Signiant was always a marketing-heavy,
engineering-light organization. Their focus was on user convenience features,
and they almost ignored actual transit engineering.
------
dboreham
A proprietary protocol that somehow facilities throughout orders of magnitude
than non proprietary alternatives. I call BS.
~~~
sansnomme
If they are like Riot and have their own fiber, it is not unlikely. There are
tons of boring optimizations open source software also won't bother with
without significant sponsorship (some could be specific to a particular file
format). If you look at most network (and also video) protocols, they are
accumulations of decades of improvements rather than neural network style
overnight breakthroughs.
~~~
big_chungus
Do you know of any resources where I can learn more about these boring
optimizations?
~~~
SaxonRobber
MIT open courseware has a course on Performance Engineering which details some
of the types of low level optimizations that can be done. It requires a lot of
measuring and problem specific solutions.
~~~
brians
I’ve helped with that course in the past. It’s awesome. It’s completely
unrelated to WAN networking. I found the IETF groups working on these problems
more helpful.
~~~
big_chungus
Thanks. Any specific recommendations for someone fairly new to low-level
networking? IETF docs can be a little dense :)
------
danbmil99
Question at the meta-level: what software/platforms are producing, analyzing,
modifying & consuming this data?
Is it possible some legacy systems that produce and consume these massive
files on-site would more sensibly run in the cloud, directly & selectively
accessing the data chunks they need over fast backbone connections?
Also, is there any room for an rsync type approach, sending compressed deltas
rather than naively sending huge files that may be redundant?
Not to say disintermediating a BigCO expensive patented vendor-locked-in MLPOS
(Market Leading Piece Of Shit) doesn't sound exciting -- it does. I'm just
curious and a bit skeptical that it is always necessary to mass-copy all this
data over and over.
~~~
rcthompson
The systems that produce massive DNA sequence files are machines reading the
sequences of actual physical DNA molecules. The cloud can't sequence DNA, as
far as I know.
~~~
ncmncm
Most DNA sequences are only slightly different from sequences you already
have. There ought to be mature differs by now that would enable you to send
just differences. If not, there is a huge opportunity for somebody.
~~~
rcthompson
Sure, you can compress the sequences by diffing against the published genome
sequence, and many tools exist to do just that. But that alone maxes out at
50% compression, because the other half of the file is the quality scores that
quantify the confidence level of each base call, for which there is no
reference. Of course there are patterns in the quality scores, and you can
compress these as well using the usual techniques for general compression, but
it's going to limit how much you can compress without information loss. In
addition, the sequencer assigns an unique ID to each sequence read. It's often
ok to discard this information, but occasionally you need it in order to trace
a specific problematic sequence through the entire analysis pipeline. So if
you want lossless compression, you have to compress these as well. They should
be rather compressible, since they are typically a prefix global to the file
followed by a number that increments by 1 for each sequence. But for a general
compressor you can't just automatically _assume_ that, because according to
the (lack of a) file format spec, each ID could be anything as long as they're
unique within the file. So if you want guaranteed lossless compression of any
FASTQ file, your compressor needs to be sufficiently general.
Beyond that, compression of sequences by encoding only the differences from a
specific reference sequence somewhat ties you down to using a specific
reference, since that reference sequence is required for decompression. This
is inconvenient because the reference sequence for a species is updated over
time, and if you want to use the new reference, you'll need to decompress with
the old reference and then re-compress with the new one. Do you want to do
that for all your data, every time the reference is updated? Reference-based
compression also means the compressed files are no longer self-contained,
which may not be acceptable for certain use cases.
None of these issues are fundamentally impossible to address, but the point is
that it's not nearly as simple as it sounds, and anything fancy you do to try
and compress a sequence file will generally impose some additional
requirements on what the receiver needs to do in order to read the file. And
many receivers are not very technically inclined researchers whose plates are
already full of other things they need to be doing besides figuring out how to
decompress your new unfamiliar sequence compression format,
~~~
ncmncm
Thank you for this enlightening explanation. I should have guessed that it,
like most things, is not as easy as it looks.
------
ewwhite
I've used UDT via UDR for rsync optimization and transfers over high-latency
links: [https://github.com/LabAdvComp/UDR](https://github.com/LabAdvComp/UDR)
~~~
patelh
Nice! Thanks for the info.
------
aamargulies
Try looking at bbcp perhaps?
[http://pcbunn.cithep.caltech.edu/bbcp/using_bbcp.htm](http://pcbunn.cithep.caltech.edu/bbcp/using_bbcp.htm)
~~~
dnautics
bbcp doesn't work so well for some reason. Where I used to work we had a
senior dev that claimed that he could just repurpose bbcp for this. Then he
gave up and wrote something custom in c++. Then he rewrote it in go, but used
(among other things) non-multithreadsafe primitives, then when asked to make
it encrypted, he used epoll with tls (which is apparently not a thing in go? I
don't know). I told him he should just use DTLS or hell even a one-time-pad
encrypted UDP stream with backpressure management, but he didn't listen to me.
Then he rewrote it in C++ again and then went back to the go version. When I
left the company, it still wasn't working.
Also, this senior dev never wrote unit tests.
On the other hand, maybe bbcp will work, and the senior dev just didn't know
what he was doing. There was another senior dev who, seeing what was coming
down the pike, left his job, and on his way out he was like, "yeah you can do
it with bbcp, just you gotta tweak your tcp congestion rules on all the hops
(which we _could_ do, but is probably not an option for OP)"
~~~
na85
>On the other hand, maybe bbcp will work, and the senior dev just didn't know
what he was doing
I mean... based on your description it sure sounds like he didn't know what he
was doing.
~~~
dnautics
Well yeah but the competent dev would have told you that it wouldn't work for
OP.
------
TNick
In the past I see that Tsunami, UDT, or GridFTP were suggested. Any results?
~~~
fanf2
Yes, I got a similar list in response to my link on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1210858696558944256](https://twitter.com/fanf/status/1210858696558944256)
But it looks like GridFTP and Globus are basically dead
[https://opensciencegrid.org/technology/policy/gridftp-gsi-
mi...](https://opensciencegrid.org/technology/policy/gridftp-gsi-migration/)
Tsunami sounds good but maybe needs some updating? I haven’t looked closely...
~~~
reidacdc
Globus is definitely not dead[1], it has an active community with strong
uptake in the Materials Science world (where I work), among others. The Globus
folks have a repo for many popular Linux distros, it's reasonably
straightforward to get started. (I'm a user of it, not a developer or
necessarily an advocate.)
It's not free for "managed" (Enterprise) applications, though, which is what
the OP seems to be looking for, and I'm not sure it's the best choice for
high-speed.
Something that I think _is_ free is the CERN FTS [2], which can use a GridFTP
back-end, so possibly you can roll your own high-speed big-data infrastructure
that way.
[1] [https://www.globus.org](https://www.globus.org) [2]
[https://fts.web.cern.ch/](https://fts.web.cern.ch/)
~~~
CaliforniaKarl
I concur that Globus is definitely not dead! We're transferring 10s to 100s of
TB per month with it. Globus is continuing to maintain GridFTP for this
purpose, as part of Globus Connect Server and Globus Connect Personal, and it
will happily saturate a multi-Gbps link.
And personally, I'd like to see more people getting a Globus subscription.
It's cost-effective when compared to tools like Aspera, and helps fund the
development of Globus software and features.
------
saagarjha
> Aspera is owned by IBM - does their client spy on what else is running on my
> system and report it back to their headquarters as business intelligence? If
> asked, would they share this information with the government? Without the
> source code, it’s impossible to tell!
I mean, with some reverse engineering, mentioned later in the post, it’s
really not.
------
quasarj
My group is about to start using Aspera as well.. I too wish there was a good
alternative I could suggest to my bosses. And I'm still skeptical of their
claims... but I haven't gotten to test it over an actual bad link yet (over a
good link it does nothing, which a simple test will prove).
~~~
CaliforniaKarl
I don't know what your needs are, but Globus might be a good alternative.
[https://www.globus.org](https://www.globus.org)
It's being run out of UChicago, and I know they have at least one large
company using them. Feel free to reach out to the Globus team, or shoot me an
email!
------
sgt101
There are other wan accelerators out there - like Riverbed.
But, I think Aspera uses some specialized compression for genomics data, and
genomics compression is not easy.
My suggestion would be to talk to the telco that provides your wan. If you are
using a direct internet connection my suggestion would be : don't.
~~~
wtracy
The author is discussing intercontinental data transfers. Not many
organizations have a WAN that can cross oceans without hitting the internet.
~~~
moonbug
almost all HE and research institutions participate in nrens which provide
3xacrly those peerings
~~~
ncmncm
Yes, but that typically takes government cooperation, and you still don't get
better latency -- even if you have neutrinos.
~~~
sgt101
It doesn't, it takes buying access to a link.
Latency isn't the problem here - it's throughput.
~~~
ncmncm
Oh, how nice it would be to live in such a simple world.
Latency turns out to have a very great deal to do with how hard it is to get
the nominal throughput you pay for.
------
binarnosp
What about UDT [1]? Several open source libraries exist already.
[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP-
based_Data_Transfer_Protoc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP-
based_Data_Transfer_Protocol)
------
edwintorok
Would QUIC or TCP with BBR congestion control help?
~~~
compressedgas
TCP with PCC, even? I don't know how BBR compares with PCC.
Previously
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381480)
(2014)
------
TheNetEffect
Another commercial alternative is M-Strean - non proprietary TCP based
parallel streaming.
Limited to work with CIFS / SMB / NFS and S3 compatible / OpenStack Swift
compatible / Ceph / Azure storage.
Commercial model is server based with no additional bandwidth charges .
Data stored in a non proprietary fashion so bi-modal access to data possible.
Not sure if it is working with QUIC or not as it is mentioned in blog posts.
Seems heavily focused on the media and entertainment industry.
[https://storagemadeeasy.com/M-Stream/](https://storagemadeeasy.com/M-Stream/)
------
electrum
Facebook open sourced WDT, which seems to have the same goals:
[https://github.com/facebook/wdt](https://github.com/facebook/wdt)
------
telendram
Beyond more profound changes to the underlying transport protocol, bandwidth
acceleration can be provide through a combination with fast compression.
A good setup here would be to pipe data to `tar`, then `zstd`, then
`ssh`/`scp`, and do the reverse on the receiver side.
From an end-user standpoint, all this could be abstracted away if one could
get `wget` (named in the article) to support zstd compression natively, which
is possible since zstd is also a web compression standard.
Such compression support is, by the way, available in `wget2`.
------
gnufx
There's a meta answer about the general approach to such problems: Ask what
other research areas must have tackled it, and then find out what they do. The
obvious answer in this case is HEP, which would lead to some of the tools
mentioned. (There's also [https://www.psc.edu/index.php/hpn-
ssh](https://www.psc.edu/index.php/hpn-ssh) but I don't know how it compares.)
It's unfortunate how many researchers don't do such research...
------
tonyg
I wonder why something like
[https://github.com/htcat/htcat](https://github.com/htcat/htcat) doesn't fit
the bill.
------
TNick
If you think about giving zmq a go, take a look at my library, here [1], [2].
Maybe we can talk about compiling a test to see how it compares?
[1] [https://pypi.org/project/p2p0mq/](https://pypi.org/project/p2p0mq/)
[2]
[https://p2p0mq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://p2p0mq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
~~~
Supermancho
ZMQ is too unreliable at transferring data which is a fraction of the stated
use-case. Streaming realtime data, ZMQ had problems dropping data
unpredictably under load testing, so ZMQ never made it out of testing for us.
The protocol is too naive.
------
lazylizard
I think this lists some
alternatives...[https://www.chpc.utah.edu/documentation/data_services.php](https://www.chpc.utah.edu/documentation/data_services.php)
I'm curious. How fast are these compared to netcat/socat/mbuffer?
~~~
tyingq
It mentions rclone with the parallel option of "\--transfers=N". I wonder how
well that does.
------
xxgrinlobs
Try NKN (New Kind of Network) for this task
[https://medium.com/nknetwork/nkn-file-transfer-high-
throughp...](https://medium.com/nknetwork/nkn-file-transfer-high-throughput-
file-transfer-using-nkn-client-21d261d87658)
------
randall
Dat isn't designed for speed, but I think academic data is it's primary goal,
so modifying it for speed seems within its charter.
[https://www.datprotocol.com/](https://www.datprotocol.com/)
------
catalogia
> _We’d have to fly all over the world with suitcases full of harddrives to be
> able to collect our data!_
The postal system or commercial courier services seem like better options than
buying plane tickets..
------
killjoywashere
How about mpscp from Sandia?
[https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1146079](https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1146079)
------
01CGAT
Maybe OpenVPN + UDPspeeder could do something:
[https://github.com/wangyu-/UDPspeeder](https://github.com/wangyu-/UDPspeeder)
------
richardji
I wonder how will aria2 stack up if you use it instead of wget?
[https://aria2.github.io/](https://aria2.github.io/)
------
moonbug
gridftp's the tool to use, and Globus makes it easy.
------
krisoft
Looks like the plea has been up since a while. Does anyone know if they had
any progress on the problem? Is the problem still standing?
------
danbmil99
Btw attempted to contact you at the email you put on your page. Interested in
talking about this project.
------
unixhero
Can they not leverage torrents for this purpose?
------
amelius
Question: if everybody used Aspera (instead of conventional transfer methods),
would that negatively impact internet speeds overall?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: If a previous startup failed with your same idea, is that a bad sign? - johndoe786
The app we are currently wanting to develop has competitors, but none of them have any traction on the app store. Hardly any downloads or reviews.<p>Is this a sign that no one wants this type of app or is this a sign that they failed due to not enough people knowing it exists (bad marketing)?<p>Also, what percent of a startups (let's say app company) success is reliant on marketing?
======
skyyler
> Is this a sign that no one wants this type of app or is this a sign that
> they failed due to not enough people knowing it exists (bad marketing)?
You tell us. This is your niche, you should get to know it better than any of
us do. Use the apps, see if they have issues. See if there is interest for a
better app than what currently exists.
~~~
jeffmould
Was about to say almost the same thing. Without knowing the market, the app,
the competition, the question can't be answered correctly. However, I would
not take that one or two apps failed as a definitive sign there is no market.
There could have been other forces at play such as timing, budget, quality of
app, marketing, etc.. that all resulted in their failure.
As for the second question as to what percent of an app startup's success is
tied to marketing? The answer would be 100%. That marketing can be as simple
as telling your circle of friends and convincing them to tell their friends,
but it has to start somewhere. A basic website, reaching out to
bloggers/reporters, telling friends and family, that is all marketing. Without
some form of marketing it will never succeed because nobody will ever hear
about your app.
------
evm9
There are many, many reasons that a startup may have failed (or is failing)
and there still may be a product-market fit.
Some products & markets require you to go out and get users more than others,
and they may not have done that.
It's on a case by case basis, just be sure to get validation for your project.
Make sure that you're making something people actually want, and if they want
it, how much they will pay for it. Can't stress it enough how important it is
to go out and talk to potential customers, ideally hundreds, and figure out if
they'll pay and tell their friends about it.
Marketing is important -- having a good landing/marketing page, getting press,
etc. But at the end of the day the product is what will create retention.
Looks get the first date, but your personality is what will get you the 8th
date.
------
Mz
We can't really answer this question for you. You might spend some time
reading startup post mortems. They typically include some analysis. Then, in
cases where they get real discussion here, read the discussion. Don't assume
that the people who failed know all the reasons they failed.
Edison made thousands of light bulbs that didn't work before finally making
one that did work. There are a great many ways to fail. Their failure does not
necessarily indicate anything about the odds of your product. It depends on a
great many factors. Given that you have not linked to your thing or theirs and
haven't even told us generally what you are making, this question is just way
too vague. And perhaps that is part of your problem generally.
------
rl3
> _Also, what percent of a startups (let 's say app company) success is
> reliant on marketing?_
This really depends on the vertical. Generally speaking, the less reliant on
paid marketing you are, the better. Truly excellent apps market themselves. If
you're entering into a niche vertical however, having to deal with marketing
will probably be an unavoidable fact of life.
As far as competitors, it's almost always a bad idea to fret over the
competition even if they're established. In this case they clearly aren't, so
your only worry is whether to take heed of the fact that all of your potential
competitors are basically dead on arrival.
As the other comments say, this really boils down to your judgement. Check out
the other apps yourself, see how similar they are to your own execution ideas.
If they're identical, you may have a problem.
------
bobby_9x
I think the bigger issue is just relying on an app. Most apps are a few
dollars. You will not be able to sustain a steady paycheck with this kind of
business model.
Apps should be a freebie (not literally free in all cases, but cheap) that is
merely a hook/marketing channel for your business.
------
ironmantra
Does your app do something useful or is it a game? If it does something
useful, do you or your company find it useful? Do you use it? Have you found
earlyvangelists? Why do they like your product better than the competition? I
put together this free risk calculator
[http://stts.us/StartupRiskCalculator](http://stts.us/StartupRiskCalculator)
that asks you to rate 9 strategic risk factors. The accompanying article
explains each in more detail. The above questions focus on the first and most
important factor, but the other 8 may be of use as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Revolution Can’t Come to North Korea - adampludwig70
http://techonomy.com/2012/11/why-revolution-cant-come-to-north-korea/
======
shin_lao
Right. Because no country ever had a revolution before Twitter and Facebook
existed.
~~~
crusso
The problem is that the government has access to near modern levels of
communication and military equipment, but there's no equalizer on the peoples'
side.
The power and ability gap between the Government and the People in North Korea
is probably the largest that has existed in history.
~~~
shin_lao
The asymmetry always existed. Weapons, education, means of transportation...
~~~
crusso
Never to this level of disparity.
This is satellites and fighter jets vs bows and arrows stuff.
------
thejf
Indeed, would the French revolution have even happened without all the bad
press the royal family got from Marie Antoinette's tweets and the subsequent
flashmob at La Bastille? And the American revolution's well-attended "Boston
Tea Party" Facebook event?
~~~
acuozzo
It might not have happened if the French government used a modern (2012)
system of surveillance utilizing both technology and social networks; filled
labor camps with dissenting individuals and their entire respective families;
and regularly executed anyone attempting to escape. France __never__ got as
bad as North Korea is today.
The author did focus too much on the enabling power of the WWW, but don't
dismiss the plight of the North Korean people because of his mistake(s).
------
mml
Nit: The entirety of the Korean peninsula is referred to as the "Hermit
Kingdom", dating back to the Joseon dynasty.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit_kingdom>
This error is a stupid example, but the entirety of this post is a bit
breathless.
~~~
acuozzo
I think the term more accurately describes the north nowadays, so why not use
it?
The DPRK deserves to be ridiculed.
------
mikeash
No insight, no new information, not worth the time it takes to read.
~~~
acuozzo
This might be true if you're Lieutenant Commander Data, but both I and others
believe that reframing ``old'' information often results in something of
value. If it makes you think differently (or think at all!), then it's most
certainly ``worth the time it takes to read''.
~~~
mikeash
That is why I led with "no insight". If it was an insightful analysis of
existing information, that would be great, but it's not.
------
maeon3
prisoners stuck in prison. can't get out because the guards are immoral
totalitarian rulers and will do anything to preserve their prison. Giving them
internet may be a mistake. they will use it to rule with a unobtanium fist
rather than an iron fist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Designing a RESTful Web Application - RyanMcGreal
http://quandyfactory.com/blog/65/designing_a_restful_web_application
======
troels
"This collision between the inclination to regard PUT as creating and POST as
updating is a significant source of confusion about how to well-design a
RESTful system, and deserves more attention."
I like this text for explicitly bringing this problem up.
------
fi0660
Roy would probably replace occurrences of the word RESTful with RPC in the
article:
[http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-
hyperte...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-
driven)
------
danielharan
A nit: "XML is a framework". format != framework
------
mattmcknight
"For example, if you want to add the ability to create an article, it might be
tempting to create a URI called /create_article/. This is wrong, because it
conflates the object (the resource) and the action (creation)."
So what URL do I use if I want to search articles? What if I want to approve
articles? The simple CRUD perspective has fallen apart for me pretty quickly
in practice- I need more than 6 verbs (adding HTTP OPTIONS and HEAD in there).
I think HATEOAS is a pretty good approach, but there still seems to be a lot
of noun-ification going on in RESTful apps just to stick with the style. (e.g,
PUT //article/1234/approval used when disapproving an article)
~~~
carpo
I've always thought that the URL to use when searching articles is the same
you would use when retrieving a collection of articles, just with the search
terms or filters included as parameters, ie, /articles?q=terms
Approving articles could be as simple as posting TRUE to the "approved"
attribute of an article, ie, /articles/1234/approved
You just need to make sure that every resource that can be modified or
retrieved has a URL.
~~~
jamesbritt
Or treat search as a first-class resource.
~~~
RyanMcGreal
I wonder if it makes more sense to treat search as a first class _method_ ,
i.e. issue an HTTP SEARCH request against a resource.
~~~
DougWebb
That could be done; WebDAV introduced several new methods to HTTP. The
drawback is that your clients lose the ability to use standard HTTP libraries
to talk to your service because you're using a non-standard set of methods.
The 'Uniform' in URI and URL doesn't just apply to the resource identifiers;
in a RESTful system the methods and representations both need to be uniform as
well. That allows general-purpose clients to be able to interact with the
service, and that was what made the web take off when earlier FTP and Gopher
systems did not.
------
BerislavLopac
It's fascinating how we're just starting to use HTTP as it was designed,
nearly twenty years later... :)
------
DougWebb
Regarding response data formats, xhtml has the advantage of being both html (a
format browsers know how to handle) and xml (a format that is well structured
and parsable.)
Semantically, xhtml can represent all of the same data structures/types as
JSON: lists are UL elements, dictionaries are OL elements, numbers, strings,
and booleans are really just strings in both, objects are really just
dictionaries, and nulls in xhtml can be a special string as in JSON or an
empty element.
In both cases, the client has to either already know about the data structure
and how to navigate it, or can treat it generically. XHTML has an advantage
here; every data item can be labeled with an id or class attribute to make it
easier to find. You can't do that in JSON unless everything is a dictionary
value.
For methods, browsers support GET and POST, and they can simulate PUT with
upload controls. For DELETE, the common approach is to use POST with
_method=DELETE as a parameter. That's easy to adjust in your service as the
request comes in so most of your service doesn't have to know about it.
Browsers are also pretty good about sending other headers, particularly the
ones that have to do with caching. That'll force you to deal with them, which
is a good thing.
Ideally, you'll want to just generate a data structure internally, and use the
Accept request header to determine whether to send a text/json or text/html
response. That way clients that want JSON can ask for and get it, while
generic clients (eg: browsers) will get something they can handle. You'll also
be generating the xhtml programatically, which will help to keep it uniform
and predictably structured.
~~~
rimantas
>xhtml has the advantage of being both html
>(a format browsers know how to handle) and
>xml (a format that is well structured and parsable.)
And where is the advantage in that over JSON? It's just a Javascript object
and browsers know very well how to handle it. That's the point.
>Semantically, xhtml can represent all of
>the same data structures/types as JSON
XHTML has HTML semantics, i.e. it's intended to be used to mark the _structure
of the text_. It has no advantage for a general purpose data exchange.
>dictionaries are OL elements
Nope. Or did you think about DL/DT/DD? Still nope.
>numbers, strings, and booleans are really just strings in both
Nope. In JSON only strings are strings. Numbers, booleans and null are
Javascript numbers, booleans and null.
>objects are really just dictionaries
Objects are objects. Entire JSON response is an object, you can assign it to
variable and use straight away.
>and nulls in xhtml can be a special string as in JSON or an empty element.
As I said, nulls in JSON are Javascript nulls, not "some special string".
>In both cases, the client has to either already know about
>the data structure and how to navigate it, or can treat it
>generically. XHTML has an advantage here; every data item
>can be labeled with an id or class attribute to make it
>easier to find. You can't do that in JSON unless everything
>is a dictionary value.
Uhm. If we are talking about data in key-value then JSON has a _huge_
advantage there. Not only you _can_ do it in JSON, but you do exactly that and
with very little overhead—that's exactly what makes JSON so attractive and
popular.
var article = {"title":"Adventures in JSON land", "authors":[{"name":"Jane
Doe"}], "published":false, "tags":["JSON", "Javascript", "data format"]}.
That's it. Want to access your data? It's right there:
article.title -> "Adventures in JSON land"
article.authors[0].name -> "Jane Doe"
article.tags.length -> 3
Now do the same in XHTML and you will have much better understanding what
advantages of JSON are.
~~~
DougWebb
The advantage of XHTML over JSON is that you don't need a specialized client
to work with it. You can use the browser, which is a general-purpose client,
and that will benefit you hugely during development and testing. There's a
whole world of tools for testing web pages, both browser-based and library-
based, and all of that can be used with your service if you use xhtml
representations.
>Nope. In JSON only strings are strings. Numbers, booleans and null are Javascript numbers, booleans and null.
I assume you've looked at a JSON message. On the wire, it's all strings. Null
is represented by the four characters n, u, l, and l. It's the message parser
that turns that into a real null, and an XML parser can do that too.
I'm not saying that JSON doesn't have an advantage when your client language
is javascript, but even in javascript the best-practice is to use a real
parser for JSON rather than just eval. If you've got to use a real parser
anyway, you can also use the xml parser that's built into the browser.
Combined with a library like jQuery which gives you xpath-like retrieval it's
pretty easy:
<div id="article">
<dl>
<dt>Title: </dt><dd id="title">Adventures in JSON land</dd>
<dt>Authors: </dt><dd id="authors">
<ul>
<li class="name">Jane Doe</li>
</ul>
</dd>
<dt>Published:</dt><dd id="published">false</dd>
<dt>Tags:</dt><dd id="tags">
<ul>
<li class="tag">JSON</li>
<li class="tag">Javascript</li>
<li class="tag">data format</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
Retrieve that into msg, and then:
$("#title", msg) -> "Adventures in JSON land"
$("#authors:first .name", msg) -> "Jane Doe"
$("#tags li", msg).length -> 3
To be fair, an extra step is needed for turning true, false, and null into
real boolean and null values. That's a solvable problem, and so is turning the
xhtml into a javascript object just like the JSON parser does if that's what
you want.
Also, notice that I recommended the service be able to produce BOTH json and
xhtml. Special-purpose clients can use the json representation, and general-
purpose clients can use the xhtml representation. That gives you the best of
both worlds, and the code that produces either/or from an internal data
structure is easy and small so it's not likely to introduce inconsistencies
between the two representations.
------
rmk
I'm thinking of forwarding this link to my boss, so that he can get a quick
tour of REST :) Thanks!
------
jsharpe
another nit: GET requests _are_ idempotent, but that's a necessary, not
sufficient, condition. You should just say they have no side effects.
~~~
_sh
And another: PUT is conceptually closer to 'replace' than 'update'. To me,
'update' implies a delta, as in SQL.
------
RyanMcGreal
Thanks to danielharan, jsharpe and _sh for helpfully picking nits with the
entry. I've updated it to reflect your observations.
------
nkohari
The author seems to get confused himself about PUT vs. POST. At one point he
says POST is used to create resources, and at another point he says PUT
matches up roughly with SQL's INSERT (ignoring idempotence).
~~~
RyanMcGreal
> It's tempting to assume that the HTTP verbs line up nicely with the SQL CRUD
> verbs: [...] They're superficially similar but they're not identical, and
> treating them as such leads to this kind of gotcha.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Now is the Time to be Afriad - mattmireles
https://mattmireles.com/be-afraid/
======
kaazhan
There is some truth in it : The US (or most of the european) healthcare is not
able to handle the number of cases there will be. There will be a lot of
deads.
The truth stops there, the rest is "science" fiction. It would be true if the
lethality was over 5%, which is just not possible (lethality is not yet known
exactly, but will probably be between 0.6% and 3%, probably around 1%.
There is no need to be afraid, however this is still a really dangerous virus
and thousands of peoples will die in each countries.
------
empiricallytrue
Starts speculative, gets fantastical, ends up deeply paranoid.
~~~
DyslexicAtheist
which part did you feel was _fantastical_ or _deeply paranoid_?
I'm actually terrified by doing the math with the most conservative, best case
outcome: under that I will
a) be dead,
b) know somebody who has died,
c) many in my surrounding will struggle because of the socio-economic effects
and lack the reserves to deal with the primary effects (emotional) and
secondary effects (emotional and financial)
... also a/b/c are in no way mutually exclusive
~~~
kaazhan
\- If you have no breathe/heart chronic problems, and you are under 40 y/o,
your death chance, IN CASE YOU DO HAVE the coronavirus, is below 1%. \- There
will not be a strong economic impact that will stop globalisation. Maybe there
will be economics short term changes. Maybe there will be important. But what
is said here is apocaliptic. You should read about the SRAS (15 times more
deadly, less infectious), or about ebola (40-80 times more deadly, less
infectious).
ebola, SRASS, H1N1, H1Z1, mad cow, all of thoses deases have killed a lot of
peoples. Not in EU nor US. only poor non-white people have died. Everybody is
really afraid by this one only because rich countries will have to do
something, not just watch poor black people die on TV. ebola killed 11k
peoples during 2014-2016.
The only really special thing is that you've between 2 and 14 days, if you
caught coronavirus, during which you are infectious. the dease have strong
contagious capabilities because of that. But that's clearly not the most
dangerous thing humanity faced, far from that. I would be more concerned about
risks of economic crisis or civil war than this end-of-the-world-special-
flu...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sweden leads the race to become cashless society - eplanit
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/04/sweden-cashless-society-cards-phone-apps-leading-europe
======
sheraz
House of cards. Cashless societies mean:
the unbanked are further isolated and prevented from engaging in commerce.
Older generations are left behind. Just trying to switch bankid login from old
phone to new phone is a PITA, and I'm tech savvy.
Lack of anonymous transactions means that my banks know about my vices such as
gambling, porn, or strippers.
Cascading failures - payment network crashes means no one can authorize
traction means long lines at registers. Everywhere.
Just lending money to someone requires a smartphones and apps (swish in
Sweden) and bankid (see above)
Battery dead on phone? Sorry, I can't loan you 500kr. (You can still receive
on dead battery).
Now, I will be the first to admit that when all the boxes are checked it works
pretty well. Swish is amazing.
However, what concerns me is the blind faith people have in this huge tech
stack. There is so much that goes into facilitating the purchase of a candy
bar from a vending machine. It is an all or nothing scenario. Either it works
100% or you can't use the chip in your card in the terminal to connect to the
network to the bank to verify funds available to authorize purchase of said
candy bar.
Thankfully there is still cash which in my opinion really greases the wheels
of everyday commerce.
~~~
powertower
One of the primary reasons for the push for cash-less societies is for the
government being able to put a negative-interest rate on personal savings (for
economic and social reasons - none of which are good).
This can't happen if you can take cash out (and to a lesser degree if you can
buy gold/silver).
~~~
andres_kytt
Government does not meddle with interest rates. Not here, at least
~~~
sheraz
I don't think that is correct.
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11895084/How-
Sw...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11895084/How-Swedens-
negative-interest-rates-experiment-has-turned-economics-on-its-head.html)
------
superkuh
In a cashless society all transactions are controlled and monitored by third
parties. There is no potential for individual volition except at the whim of
those controlling the systems. Cryptocurrencies will mitigate this slightly
but the loss of cash is going to be a huge blow to the individual.
~~~
andres_kytt
I find this approach really curious. All the transactions can be monitored by
third parties anyway as all the pos systems are networked and subject to even
lesser legal scrutiny than banks. Random adverisers can and do build
comprehensive profiles. A company is us claims to have full profiles of all
Americans. And yet, if there's a chance a citizen might benefit either via
less hassle as in the cash case or via better gov services, everybody goes
"but think of the privacy". As a result, societies get downsides of both:
there is no privacy whatsoever but no value generated for the citizen.
~~~
mrec
I think GP's point _re_ cash was just that cash transactions are typically
anonymous. Obviously you _can_ get around that by e.g. matching up till
receipts against video surveillance and facial recognition tech, but I'm not
aware that that happens routinely, so in practice you probably have a fair
degree of privacy.
~~~
andres_kytt
Cash transactions are anonymous only if most transactions are cash. I take x
eur from the bank and give them to you. You put x eur to the bank. That's
linkable. And the people sign up to all sorts of savings cards en masse making
their transactions at the till completely traceable. It is not about what
happens routinely, it is about what can happen. Banks don't give a damn about
your transaction history as long as you account balance adds up and neither
does the government. With cash, there is an illusion of anonymity. Without
cash you actually know what happens.
~~~
mrec
You're right, it's partially linkable, but only partially. If I take out cash
from the bank and buy something in a shop, it'll get mixed in with all the
cash from everybody else buying things there (which obscures the exact
purchase) and for smaller denominations there's a nonzero chance that they
might get given out again in change before being banked (which makes it hard
to prove _any_ purchase). Until tills start scanning and reporting banknote
numbers there's still far more anonymity than you get with digital.
Savings cards I wouldn't touch with a bargepole; I don't imagine anyone who
gives two hoots about privacy would.
------
marssaxman
Why on earth is this considered a _good_ thing? Haven't we learned anything
about mass surveillance in the last five years?
~~~
fpoling
I do not worry about mass surveillance that much. With all the cameras
anonymity of cache quickly disappears in any case.
What really bad is when a police or any arbitrary guy representing a state can
order to freeze all the cards and bank accounts for an individual. This is
already happening in Russia and is used not only against political activists
but sometime against arbitrary persons through police bribes by their enemies.
If a person does not have savings in cash, he or she may loose access to all
his money in a moment and it takes often weeks to fight those illegal freezing
orders. One can literally starve while doing that.
~~~
andres_kytt
And when you have cash, a single robbery can destroy your life savings. Or
police can come and seize your money. There was someone in the thread amazed
about the trust people put in the complex stack. I'm amazed the trust people
put in the ordinary paper-based process. A computer cannot be bribed and
leaves a cryptograhic audit trail and does not burn but for some reason a
stack of papers under my matress is more trustworthy. There is a lot of
irrationality around the topic. I don't know who's right but very clearly it
is to an extent about fear of unknown.
------
stenl
I live in Stockholm and haven't used cash for several years. I have no cash on
me ever, no coins, nothing. It's liberating. I get very annoyed when
travelling and I rediscover the cash-based society and the need to always
predict how much cash to carry.
~~~
driverdan
I find the opposite is true, that cash is liberating.
1\. I always know how much cash in in my pocket. I typically carry $30-50
which is plenty for everyday transactions.
2\. It's easy to budget with cash. You can never spend more than what you
have.
3\. I don't have to worry about paying off card balances.
4\. The chances of getting a credit / debit card stolen are a lot higher than
having my cash stolen, eliminating the hassle of replacing cards.
5\. I support my community by eliminating the overhead of accepting cards.
6\. I can easily pay individuals instantly without having to worry about what
service to use or delays in transferring from my bank to theirs.
7\. I maintain my privacy.
I'm not even considering the downsides of using a phone for payments (lost /
stolen / broken / dead battery / borked update / bad UIs).
All that said I use a mix of cash and cards. Cards do have a lot of consumer
advantages (cash back, disputing transactions, etc). Don't pretend that
they're far superior to cash though. Both have their advantages and
disadvantages. The loss of privacy is a HUGE problem with electronic payments.
~~~
stenl
I agree on the loss of privacy, a big drawback of (current) cards.
As for your other points: Swedes use nearly exclusively debit cards directly
linked to an account (so no bills to pay, no interest, no risk of spending
more than you have). We all have apps to monitor our account balance.
For P2P payments we use Swish, an app linked to your bank account and your
phone number. It lets you pay instantly to anyone with a phone number and it's
"free" but of course locks you in to your bank. The UI is decent.
As for "supporting your community by eliminating overhead" I think the
overhead is higher for cash, and many businesses seem to prefer cards (many
now, like banks, are cash-free). Also, eliminating cash has the advantage of
making it harder for businesses to avoid paying taxes.
I also agree that paying with your phone sounds worse than using a card (which
takes seconds and never runs out of batteries), but maybe you get your privacy
back?
------
towb
As I see it, this has the potential of being a disaster for certain groups of
people in the society. Old and poor. And there are no free solutions, you have
to spend to spend. The old paypal tax but on every purchase you do. There are
problems with this that has to be solved before it's implemented but aren't
yet there for the early adopters, which may then leave too many people behind.
These are some of my concerns, but what do I know...
~~~
StavrosK
Yep, in a cashless society, everything is 3% more expensive.
~~~
kristofferR
That's not really true. The average fee in Sweden is closer to 1% than 3%, and
handling cash is really expensive. Realistically a cashless society should
save money.
~~~
colejohnson66
Well yes, it saves people time (and time is money), but it's a trade off and
sometimes ends up costing more than it saves.
If your kid wants to buy something, normally you just give them cash and they
can't spend anything more. If you give them your card, now they can spend as
much as they want ($1000 on Clash of Clans for example). While there are
solutions such as giving your kid their own card you transfer the money to,
it's a lot more effort than just pulling out a $5, and I'm sure many parents
would forgo that route and just hand the kid their card.
What do you do when you want to buy something anonymously? Normally, you'd
just pay with cash. Want to donate to Wikileaks without anyone knowing? Use a
money order. In a cashless society, you can't do it as simple as that. You
need to purchase prepaid debit cards (which costs time). And if the prepaids
can be linked with the purchaser, then you'd need to spend even more time
buying bitcoins, tossing them in a tumbler, then buying prepaid debit cards. A
lot of extra work compared to just using cash or money order.
So yes, a cashless saves time, but it also costs time in other areas. Has
Sweden found a balance? Doubt it.
------
skocznymroczny
Which is pretty much proportional to the adoption of negative interest rates,
which wouldn't really be possible on such scale without eliminating physical
cash.
------
polotics
This is obviously all wonderfully modern and the wave of the future and all
that. Yeah Sweden!!! Totally lagom :-)
What the article fails to mention is that the swedish central bank has been
able to implement an extremely aggressive negative interest rates policy
thanks to The Cashless.
So if you like your savings eaten away by government mandated fiat (see what I
just did there?) then of course be all plasticky and virtual.
This ends in hyperinflation as well as taxation cat-and-mouse games between
governments and alternative currencies.
------
swiley
I would understand the excitement for this if there where some fairly
decentralized payment protocol so any single third party would not have the
final say in wether or not you could buy/sell something and/or those rights
where protected by law, but neither of those are true.
------
fpoling
In Norway I know only a single shop that still does not accept cards, perhaps
on principle. Even farmers selling fruits and vegetables often have a card
reader.
However many shops accept only cards from Norway that are connected to the
BankAccept system which are significantly cheaper for a shop to accept than
credit cards.
Also as a sign of times street musicians sometimes write their phone number
for Vipps, a local payment system that allows to send money just by knowing a
phone number.
Still the country is far from cachless judging by the number of professional
beggars in big cities. Somehow they make a living so people still curry coins.
~~~
RivieraKid
Wow, that's interesting, I'm a big fan of card payments because tap to pay is
super convenient (most places in Prague have card readers) but what annoys me
is the Visa / MasterCard duopoly. Because this means that a fraction of every
payment goes to an American company - it's not a competetive market so they
have a sizeable profit margin. It's cool that you have a local alternative, I
wish we had that too or at least more than 2 competitors to push profits down,
so that card payments don't leak money out of the economy.
~~~
fpoling
There is still a problem as shops do not pass savings from using a local
payment system to the customer. As some banks started to offer cash-back cards
that return up to 1% of payments back, as a customer I have more insensitive
to use cache-back credit card than a local one.
------
brainpool
I live in Sweden and have not visited an ATM for months. Even public toilets
have a card reader attached.
I would like to have a way to easily display the balance of the card though,
or just the last few expenses, preferably on the card it self.
~~~
CuriousSkeptic
Not affiliated, by I liked this [https://plastc.com/](https://plastc.com/)
------
kristofferR
How am I, for example, supposed to pay my Swedish festival buddies for small
stuff like a meal or a few beers if cash is banned? Swish, the popular person-
to-person payment app in Sweden, only work for Swedes.
------
CuriousSkeptic
The local public service news did a piece on this a while ago and the biggest
problem they could envisage was the usability problems. Which is kind of sad,
I'm sure most usability issues can be solved one way or the other.
Heres one thing that really should have more focus, remember when visa and
mastercard decided to kill allofmp3?
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/19/allofmp3_attacks_vis...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/19/allofmp3_attacks_visa_and_mastercard/)
------
dijit
Ehhhhhh I think Britain is closer. Contactless payment methods are
significantly more common in London. (In fact you'd be hard pressed to say a
business which doesn't accept contactless /and/ Apple Pay)
I live in Sweden and there are places that won't take VISA- and banks only
give out mastercards which cost the consumer monthly. Not to mention the fact
that contactless and Apple Pay are nowhere to be found.
Maybe it's different in Stockholm but in Malmö you can definitely see a
negative disparity when compared to Britain.
~~~
K0nserv
I moved from Stockholm to Edinburgh about a year ago and I definitely use cash
a lot more here. Sure contactless is more widespread, but a lot of places
don't accept cards or have a minimum spend amount for card transactions.
When I lived in Stockholm I believe I went 6 months without handling any cash,
here I can barely last a day without it.
~~~
sandstrom
Same, I cannot remember when I used cash the last time, but I think it's more
than 9 months ago.
------
gremlinsinc
What happens when power grids fail, or if war ever breaks out in Europe and
internet banking fails as a result? --- At least with cash you can still get
the staples at the store.
~~~
CuriousSkeptic
I guess what would happen is that people will invent new cash as needed.
Cigarettes being the classic example.
------
jakeogh
An important goal along the way to chipping the subjects.
------
bjornsing
The busses have refused cash for years now, mostly for security reasons. But
the other day one of my favorite cafés also declined the kingly payment
method. A good sign indeed. :) A perhaps even better one is that one of the
lunch places I go to no-longer requires my pin code when I pay by card. :D
Progress! :)
~~~
miend
It sounds downright Orwellian. The government, its banks, payment processors
all having the ability to instantly lock you out of the economy and watch your
every transaction, leaving you totally out of options should you get on their
bad side?
That just sounds like another building block in the surveillance Panopticon,
psychological assurance that you'll never become dissentious because your
continued existence in the economy essentially depends upon the state's grace.
It changes the way people act, and even the way they think. It's the
disturbing new reality that Snowden, Greenwald, et al. have sought to do
something about, and here Swedes seem to be embracing it openly.
It sure sounds like this service could offer some great conveniences to daily
living, but is it worth such a heavy price? The erosion of the will to
dissent, and the power of the individual over their own lives? Are these an
acceptable trade for the comfort of never having to see a coin again?
~~~
bjornsing
> The erosion of the will to dissent, and the power of the individual over
> their own lives
We Swedes are way past that. We live as humble subjects of our government,
cuddled from cradle to grave, bowing to their authority much as we once bowed
to the king. :P
But every four years the people is abolished and the government choses a new
one, so it's still a democracy! ;P
~~~
bjornsing
I'm only half joking here, and I'm definitely not saying you're wrong. Just
trying to explain why we Swedes probably don't think about the cashless
society in the same way as americans do.
And by the way, most of my friends would probably describe me as "a borderline
libertarian" (by Swedish standards), "fixated" on individual liberties and
similar.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
57 Buffalo Police Resign from Riot Unit in Protest of Officers' Suspension - mehrdadn
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/05/57-buffalo-police-resign-from-riot-unit-in-protest-of-officers-suspension/#576a5d31473e
======
badRNG
>the top message on the Buffalo's police union webpage read: "These guys did
nothing but do what they were ordered to do. This is disgusting !!!”
The "just following orders" defense isn't one that's held up well
historically. The crux of the argument is whether he was pushed or tripped,
not whether or not they were following orders. Check the video below and
formulate your own opinion:
CW: violence, gore
[https://youtu.be/QFeewU0HhNE?t=20](https://youtu.be/QFeewU0HhNE?t=20)
Also take note of his ears after he falls
------
chillacy
These recent events have really highlighted to me the fact that police lack
accountability. It all folds into a bigger picture of policing (civil
forfeiture, no knock warrent-less raids, etc) and a contentious history of
policing minorities.
Just in the past few weeks I've seen so many instances of inappropriate
escalation in force, all from police officers loaded up in armor, against
unarmed people [1][2].
I know policing is hard, but I expect much more from people we give the power
of state-sanctioned violence to.
[1] Man prone on the ground being pepper sprayed for the fun of it
[https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/gvtnhz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/gvtnhz/press_being_pepper_sprayed_while_prone_on_the/)
[2] Officer grabs a pink umbrella, tear gas and flashbangs ensue
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/)
------
karlh
To me, the appalling part was not the shove, it was likely unnecessary but I
do not think the officer intended to put him in the hospital. The appalling
part is the deliberate lack of any help once he was down and obviously
seriously injured. An officer who started to help was dragged away by his
colleague. These officers did not live up to their oath and duty, not because
he was shoved but because he was abandoned instead of receiving first aid. The
fact that "EMTs are coming" does not relieve one of a responsibility to help
an injured person. That is pathetic.
And certainly badRNG is correct that "I vas chust followink orders" is a very
bad look. In addition, I doubt the orders were to leave seriously injured
fellow-citizens bleeding on the ground.
------
garlicGum
The officer should be arrested. If a normal citizen was caught on video doing
the same thing they would be in jail that night.
It is sickening police can get away with whatever they want.
I think it is time to bring in the coast guard!
------
mindslight
Contrary to the popular narrative, apparently it is very easy to remove
corrupt cops. Give out a few slaps on the wrist, and 57 more simply get rid of
themselves!
~~~
garlicGum
They are still on the force. The union said they aren’t going to pay their
legal fees for the protests so 57 officers quit the emergency response team.
They are still being paid to terrorize people.
------
tootahe45
Seems like the loss of balance and fall was out of their control, and it's
almost like raising your hands toward their weapons was a bad idea. Given the
nature of the injury, it was the right thing to wait for a medical
professional to attend to the man rather than providing aid.
I don't get the outrage over this incident, personally. Reporting has been
getting extremely sensational and I think cops should just do themselves a
favor and stop turning up to work for 2 weeks to let the narrative reverse
itself.
~~~
justin66
Please stop parroting stupid stuff you've heard on the radio or on Fox News.
Anyone can watch the incident, someone shared the link on youtube in another
comment.
> Seems like the loss of balance and fall was out of their control
They pushed him and caused him to fall over backwards.
> raising your hands toward their weapons
He's got stuff in both his hands and he's very clearly not trying to take
their weapons away. His hands are roughly at the same height as their
"weapons," yes.
Yours is a rhetorically sneaky way of suggesting it was reasonable for them to
believe he was reaching for their batons. It's similar to the way LA cops used
to murder unarmed people and suggest that they were "reaching for their
waistband." Literally anyone whose arms are of normal length is at any given
time "reaching for their waistband" if their hands aren't on their heads.
Don't be this dishonest, it's pathetic.
~~~
sfj
> He's got stuff in both his hands and he's very clearly not trying to take
> their weapons away. His hands are roughly at the same height as their
> "weapons," yes.
They've got a fraction of a second to decide whether someone is a threat or
not. That's why there is procedure when someone runs up on them, regardless if
there is “stuff” in his hands or not.
~~~
justin66
> They've got a fraction of a second to decide whether someone is a threat or
> not.
A fraction of a second? They weren't piloting an F-14 in Top Gun or something,
there was a visibly unarmed elderly guy shuffling towards them alone on the
sidewalk. It was literally the opposite of a situation that demanded split-
second decision making.
As with the grandparent comment, I question whether you even watched the video
of the incident or if you are just repeating some stupid stuff you heard about
the incident.
~~~
sfj
> They weren't piloting an F-14 in Top Gun or something, there was a visibly
> unarmed elderly guy shuffling towards them alone on the sidewalk. It was
> literally the opposite of a situation that demanded split-second decision
> making.
Yea, life isn't a movie, don't you know? Regardless of how old he was, or how
harmless he was trying to look, he could still be a threat.
> As with the grandparent comment, I question whether you even watched the
> video of the incident or if you are just repeating some stupid stuff you
> heard about the incident.
Yea, I did, several times. It looked weird to me. The push wasn't enough to
knock him over.
I also just found out there is some evidence this was a staged event, complete
with fake blood.
[https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/did_an_aged_act...](https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/did_an_aged_activist_set_up_the_buffalo_police.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TDD is Behavior Specification - kevingoslar
http://blog.originate.com/blog/2014/02/20/tdd-is-bs
======
JanezStupar
I had a very similar outlook.
However since I have been doing a lot of development for cloud platforms
(Google App Engine for instance), I have realized that without tests you don't
really have a sane way of debugging and verifying your code.
And since I always write a lot of code during my work (testing stuff out in
python shell) I have realized how wasteful my previous approach was.
If I had written that code into a file and added a couple of assertions I
would have a nice test suite.
However I still believe that on should not overdo tests from the get go. Write
the tests for common cases, then add regression tests as bugs pop up here and
there.
That gives the best ROI IMHO.
Edit: I have to confess that indeed I have read the TLDR; then the first
paragraph and then I was already writing a comment here.
For the record I think that cargo cultists are going to be cargo culting no
matter how we call this or that.
~~~
bentona
If you actually read the article, I think you'll find yourself on the same
page as the author.
------
JesseObrien
> Asking people to write tests before they write code is like asking them to
> test-drive a new car before it even exists. This isn’t possible.
This is an incredibly bad analogy that really doesn't stand up. You _can_
write tests before you write the implementation of them, to define how you
want the end result of your program's interfaces to look. The rest of the
article arguing the semantics behind calling them _tests_ or _specifications_
doesn't add anything but confusion to the testing discussion.
This:
> Calling tests specifications makes the concept more intuitively available in
> several ways.
Is entirely subjective.
~~~
kevingoslar
The point of the article is that you actually write specifications, and just
call them "tests". Which is confusing. "Testing" means measuring or checking
the quality of something.
~~~
mitchty
Well you're testing your specifications that you write later.
I think this is just semantic fencing to be honest.
------
charlieflowers
Isn't this basically what Dan North and Chelimsky said when they started the
BDD movement? Is TFA intended to be merely a restatement of the BDD concept
from circa 2007? Or is it saying something more that I overlooked?
~~~
dragonwriter
No, BDD was an adaptation of TDD to be something different, this is just an
explanation of TDD to people who don't understand what TDD _is_ , and don't
understand how you can test code before you build it (which, obviously, TDD
doesn't do -- it builds executable specifications for what a unit of code will
do before its built.)
BDD is similar, but focuses on higher levels units of change that TDD does,
and focuses on accessibility of the specifications to customers / analysts.
~~~
charlieflowers
Well, I'm not trying to snark ... I just don't see the distinction. When BDD
first came out, it was based on the premise that, yes, we're really just doing
the same thing as TDD, but we're using better words. We use "spec" instead of
"test," for example. And merely the act of using more precise words has a deep
effect on how we think, and therefore that alone is worthy enough of a basis
to launch a new movement called "BDD."
I liked TFA for its clarity and I believe it is accurate. But it still feels
to me like it articulates the same thing I read when BDD was new. I wonder if
possibly the author has rediscovered, independently, the same thing that
motivated the launch of BDD in the first place.
~~~
dragonwriter
> When BDD first came out, it was based on the premise that, yes, we're really
> just doing the same thing as TDD, but we're using better words. We use
> "spec" instead of "test," for example.
BDD is a higher level framework (focussed on acceptance test rather than unit
test) and addresses relationships in a broader scope (customer to dev team)
than TDD tends to. Its not just a rephrasing, its a further development.
BDD also focussed on _how_ tests should be _expressed_ based on the
combination idea of being executable specs and the idea that that
analysts/customers should be involved in, at least, reviewing them.
So, some of the things in the article here might be related to the thinking at
the roots of BDD (heck, it even uses the word "behavior driven design"), but
its making points about TDD that are outside of what BDD is focussed on.
------
joevandyk
In a nutshell, he's saying to call it "specification driven development",
since you are writing specifications for the code before it exists.
~~~
codr
Which seems useless to me.. it's still the same idea, the same thing.
~~~
kevingoslar
Yeah, but using the right terminology makes the concept more self-describing
and therefore more accessible.
~~~
JanezStupar
I was around when the term TDD first appeared. And I don't think that
originally it meant anything more than what you are proposing.
But then some dudes came along and said: "This is awesome, lets make it
better!"
And before one could blink, a concept of 100% coverage was born. From there on
everything went full retard.
~~~
jarhart
I completely agree that TDD originally meant that, and still does. The problem
is too many developers don't bother to learn what TDD really means and
immediately think of it as a testing methodology because the first word is
"test". Maybe changing the language can change the focus to where it was
supposed to be from the beginning.
------
jarhart
I'm often frustrated with developers looking at the term "test-driven
development", focusing on the word "test", and thinking of TDD as a testing
process instead of a development process. The BDD movement made some progress
on this front, but it still seems to be a problem. Maybe calling it
"specification-driven development" is the next step.
------
a3voices
TDD is a great way to take the fun out of software development.
~~~
mpweiher
Au contraire: it makes software development a lot _more_ fun, at least in my
experience.
However, it back-loads the fun. With usual coding, the fun part is at the very
start, you get to see something very quickly. But then the debugging starts,
at least if there is any complexity involved, and the fun quickly wears off.
You'll figure it out eventually, but by that time you are worn and tired.
With TDD, the not-quite-as-much fun part is front-loaded: you have to really
think about what you are trying to do, almost always start with non-GUI code
so there are no quick-wins to show off. However, once the you get all the
tests to pass you are done and can check in and/or go home on a high note.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The IPO is dying – Marc Andreessen explains why - ascertain
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-andreessen-explains-why
======
wpietri
I have enormous respect for Andreessen when he's talking on topics of his
expertise, as in the first half of the article. And it's not just his talk,
either; A16Z is a deeply impressive operation. But so far I find his take on
Piketty shallow and unpersuasive; it strikes me more as the view that is
convenient for him to have, rather than one of deep study and experience. I'd
rather he stuck to what he knows.
~~~
reason
I follow Andreessen and a few of the other a16z folks on twitter, and every
day they are tweetstorming what appear to be very insightful opinions and
predictions on a whole slew of industries. And then I wonder if these guys are
actually orders of magnitudes more intelligent than me and others, and have
truly valid and well thought-out opinions, or if a good amount of what they
say is nothing more than speculative bullshit that's hardly contested due to
their reputation and success.
I've got enormous respect for them, too, but I'm beginning to think that the
breadth and depth of expertise and foresight they display shouldn't be taken
too seriously.
~~~
beachstartup
no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial wisdom,
than you or i or the next guy, but the billions of dollars at his command to
assist in manifesting his will helps quite a bit.
and so does being at the nexus of the tech industry and seeing the entire
ecosystem from the inside-out, "behind the curtain" so to speak. they have a
lot of insider information, not the least of which is basically every single
pitch that comes across every other VC's desk in town, and the actual
financial health of funded companies operating in the marketplace. they all
share information, that's why they don't sign NDAs.
~~~
tonetheman
> no doubt andreessen is smarter, both in raw intelligence and financial
> wisdom, than you or i or the next guy
Nope nope nope. Money does not make you instantly smarter than everyone else.
Not sure why this is my craw... but everytime I see andreessen mentioned I
always end up thinking of the crazy "Snowden is a traitor" bit. ah well.
------
rayiner
Here's an interesting presentation with some statistics:
[http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acsec/acsec-090712-ritter-s...](http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acsec/acsec-090712-ritter-
slides.pdf). Here's the associated paper:
[http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12092/Where%20Have_Apri...](http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12092/Where%20Have_April_3_2012.pdf).
Section 6-7 of the paper are most relevant. Section 6 analyzes the question of
whether SOX is causing a decrease in IPO's using estimations of SOX compliance
costs. It concludes that: "[w]e find the effect of paying the compliance cost
on the profitability for small firms to be limited." They also look at whether
SOX compliance is driving U.S. companies to other countries that don't have
such a regulatory regime: "[i]f SOX is an important reason for why companies,
especially small companies, are not listing in the U.S., we might observe many
U.S. companies going public abroad." They do not find that effect to exist.
They present the alternative hypothesis: that there is an increasing benefit
to being part of a large firm (being acquired via M&A) than there is to being
a small, independent public firm (doing an IPO). They analyze this hypothesis
in section 7, by looking at the post-IPO behavior of companies. They
hypothesize that if the burden of regulation is the driving force, we might
see many companies go private after IPO-ing. Alternative, if it's the
increased advantages of scale, we will see companies be acquired post-IPO.
They find evidence of an increasing number of companies being acquired within
three years of an IPO.
They conclude: "We posit that there has been a fundamental change in many
sectors of the economy whereby the importance of bringing products to market
quickly has increased. This hypothesized change has resulted in lower profits
for independent small companies relative to the potential profits generated as
part of a larger organization that can realize economies of scope and rapidly
expand production. If this explanation is correct, fewer firms are going
public and staying independent because value is being created in a sale to a
strategic buyer in the same or related industry."
~~~
tptacek
This is why so many networking companies sell to Cisco, and why Cisco's
business strategy depends so much on M&A: Cisco's great asset isn't IOS, but
instead that it runs one of the world's most powerful enterprise sales
operations. If you sell network equipment, the basic concept of comparative
advantage almost guarantees that Cisco can do a better job extracting value
from it than you can.
~~~
larrys
"If you sell network equipment, the basic concept of comparative advantage
almost guarantees that Cisco can do a better job extracting value from it than
you can."
Doesn't take into account branding, sales, and marketing of a new organization
which are always able to drive business purchases. Even in face of a
formidable competitor.
Of course if you want to look at things at a point in time you could also be
correct. But roll back to when Cisco started and see if there were companies
that also had "one of the world's most powerful enterprise sales operations"
that lost out to someone else. Like Cisco.
So while you could be correct it's also possible that "many networking
companies sell to Cisco," because it's a "pay window".
After all wouldn't that be one of the reasons that you sold your company?
~~~
tptacek
Not so much, no.
------
credo
Marc Andreessen is being true to form when he attacks regulations, attacks
Piketty and suggests that IPOs will flourish if we remove (what he describes
as) "burdensome" regulations, "Regulation Fair Disclosure" etc.
However, he seems to be totally glossing over the fact that IPO regulations
have already been weakened in recent years. This has resulted in less
transparency and increased secrecy and that is exactly what people like
Andreessen have been asking for.
It is questionable whether this increased secrecy actually benefits the
economy or the average investor (of course, it is clear that the lack of
transparency does benefit powerful interests in the country and that is why a
bipartisan majority in our dysfunctional congress was able to miraculously
come together and pass a bill to reduce regulations and cut down on IPO
transparency). [http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/the-
twitter-i...](http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/the-twitter-i-p-
o-investor-beware/) touched on this topic in the context of Twitter's IPO.
------
lifeisstillgood
""" It's technically illegal to manipulate the market. But there are hardly
ever any cases [enforcing these laws]. Basically the hedge funds run
absolutely wild and do whatever they want."""
There's your problem right there. There is a great TED podcast from one of the
regulators on savings and loans ("how to rob a bank from the inside") that
said basically "we failed to stop either crash but we jailed 9,000 people the
last time - this time not one got prosecuted."
I think we have lost our willingness to prosecute big business. I mean Madoff
was prosecuted because he was just nakedly fraudulent, but an entire industry
pretended liars loans was just a phrase.
So, want a better stock market, want smaller IPOs, want stronger financial
system. Hire cops and let them do their work. We don't prevent murder or
robbery - we prosecute it. Same here.
~~~
sbierwagen
I mean Madoff was prosecuted because he was just nakedly
fraudulent
Close, but not quite.
[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html)
Here's a "class struggle" example: name one Wall Street type
who went to jail post 2008, everyone picks Bernie Madoff. Now
name one person you know who was harmed by Bernie Madoff.
That's weird.
Note he didn't cause the crash, his criminal
empire was a "victim" of the crash. What got him jailed was
stealing from the wrong people-- that the media coded as either
"celebrities" or "pension funds".
~~~
nevilledavis
Dear Reader, 30th June 2014
It is true that Madoff did not cause the 2008 crash but don't tell me that the
public at large do not know one or some of the hundreds of thousands of
VICTIMS from the fallout of the 2008 crash, which Bernie Madoff, Allen
Stanford and other fraudulent financial institutions and bankers were party
to. As usual the media looks after itself scandalising the truth to sell copy.
As a Madoff class action lead plaintiff these past 5 years who has followed
most aspects of Madoff related litigation together with cause and effect, I
know that it is a misrepresentation to promote the idea that only celebrities
or pension funds were defrauded. Indeed pension funds were attracted to Madoff
and Madoff related investment schemes as their track record was in fact
conservative, showing a consistent modest profit over a long period of time.
To wrongly believe that individuals where not harmed is because the silent
majority do not have the money to hire lawyers to fight their case. Many of
the INDIRECT VICTIMS were pensioners like myself, having worked hard all their
lives in order to provide for themselves and their families and then duped by
bankers and unscrupulous financial institutions who had jumped on the Madoff
money making merry-go-round. The US Justice Department has received over
51,700 Claims from 119 countries for more than $40 Billion US dollars. When
you understand that Irvin Picard the Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L.
Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS)has distributed nearly $10 Billions to
Madoff Direct Victims and taken nearly $1 Billion in expenses and legal fees
and that there are still claims for over $40 Billions from INDIRECT VICTIMS
outstanding, gives one an understanding of the enormity of the crime and the
complicity and involvement of the 'Established Financial Institutions' For
verification check the Madoff related web sites.
[http://www.madofftrustee.com](http://www.madofftrustee.com)
[http://www.madoffvictimfund.com](http://www.madoffvictimfund.com) Sincerely
NevilleSeymourDavis [email protected]
~~~
nevilledavis
Correction: The figure quoted for distribution from the Madoff trustee. It
should have read that the Madoff trustee has recovered nearly $10 Billions and
distributed over $5 Billions. [email protected]
------
mr_luc
I'd love to ask Andreessen, (or anyone here, really) a question informed by a
book on pg's reading list:
I, too, am dubious about Pikkety's thesis. But I'd like to call out a
distinction between the concentration of wealth, and the static nature of the
oligarchy. One will continue to happen, the other Pikkety could be dead wrong
about.
Andreessen says (paraphrasing) in the interview, 'Pikkety says wealth and
oligarchies will happen, but look at the Forbes 400 and you see lots of churn,
where is this supposed stability that will happen with rich people cementing
their gains'.
It's true that Pikkety presents a view of social mobility becoming
increasingly static, and reverting to a supposed historical norm.
But one lovely book I have pg to thank for reading, "The World We Have Lost",
talks about how things were in England according to an analysis of actual data
(county records etc). One chapter, 'The One-Class Society' ('gentlemen' were
the class, the only class that mattered), speaks of how there actually _was_ a
large amount of 'churn' in the gentleman class -- even outside of cities and
the merchant classes, it was possible for a father to become a substantial
yoeman, and his heir to become a gentleman. Families went up, families went
down.
But despite a certain amount of mobility being possible, all effective wealth
and power that mattered was still very concentrated, as it has been for much
of recorded human history, for many reasons.
This was momentarily interrupted by the usefulness of humans as wet robots
that were briefly able to exert the political and economic leverage necessary
to drive hard collective bargains about their compensation.
That was temporary. (Offshore wet robots, and eventually dry robots, taking
the place of the less-needed troublemakers).
Wealth, even if mobile, will inevitably become more concentrated due simply to
better technology and efficiency -- how can this not be so? It seems self-
evident.
So, I guess the question is:
If technology magnifies individual differences in productivity, and if we
accept as a given that attempting to tax away the resulting fruits of that
productivity is on the whole economically injurious to an economy, how can
wealth not become more concentrated over time?
(Yes, of course, there will be churn and disruption, and wealth will change
hands. Even as it did among the gentleman class in England in the 1500s;
families came up and families went down. But because of technological
magnification of productivity it should tend to go to fewer people. This just
seems like a natural law.)
~~~
DenisM
>and if we accept as a given that attempting to tax away the resulting fruits
of that productivity is on the whole economically injurious to an economy
I wouldn't accept that.
Obviously 100% confiscatory tax rates would remove personal motivation. But
there is a great deal of room below 100%, that would both allow for
redistribution of wealth and for plentiful motivation for the overachievers.
Consider a scheme where typical capitalist is 100 richer than typical worker -
still plenty of room for motivation, don't you think?
Besides that, inheritance tax does a lot to redistribute wealth, without
necessarily destroying the motivation.
Another thing I can imagine is that wealthy individual will have to spend the
money he made, or have it taxed heavily. All the lavish consumption is still a
good motivator for working hard and getting rich, but without as much long
term inequality.
Bottom line is that motivating best performers is not necessarily incompatible
with redistribution.
~~~
lisper
> there is a great deal of room below 100%, that would both allow for
> redistribution of wealth and for plentiful motivation for the overachievers
Indeed. The _lowest_ top marginal tax rate in the U.S. between 1940 and 1980
was 70%, and it went as high as 90%. That didn't exactly kill innovation or
growth.
~~~
ScottBurson
No, it didn't, did it?
It always amuses me to reflect that the time that we were most afraid of
communism was also the time that we were closest to accepting it, at least if
the marginal tax rates are any indication.
Anyway I don't think I could support 90% or even 70%, but I could definitely
get behind 50%.
~~~
mr_luc
I agree with the gist of these comments; all I meant by that bit put that bit
was to make the argument about the inevitability of inequality's increase a
more conservative one. It seems obvious (to me) that redistribution, maybe in
the form of basic income, is an inevitable result of this 'natural law' of
increasing inequality.
That said: people did not pay those rates in the 50s[1]:
The Internal Revenue Service reckoned that the effective rate of tax in
1954 for top earners was actually 70 percent.
Or lower. Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, has
shown that a more comprehensive interpretation of income that
includes capital gains suggests the real effective tax rate for millionaires
was 49 percent in 1953. The effective rate dropped throughout the
decade, reaching 31 percent by 1960. That 31 percent is just slightly
higher than the 29 percent level a Congressional Budget Office report
figures the average effective tax for the top quintile will be in 2014.
\---
[1]
[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-f...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-
fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare)
~~~
ScottBurson
Just to be clear, lisper and I were talking about _marginal_ tax rates, not
overal effective rates. Only for the very highest earners does the effective
rate approach the top marginal rate.
------
tptacek
Is it just a little disingenuous to suggest that the public is prevented from
enjoying the benefit of company growth because they aren't allowed to invest
in venture capital funds? They can't, of course. But they can invest in other
vehicles that can.
Individual investors can't _directly_ benefit from Facebook's appreciation the
way they could Microsoft's. But their retirement fund sure can.
Meanwhile, there's probably a strong case to be made that in the large,
individual investors _shouldn 't try_ to hit these kinds of home runs, because
they're outgunned by institutional investors and they don't have the capacity
to diversify as well as institutional investors can.
~~~
gaadd33
Are there many funds from Vanguard or Fidelity that are regular participants
in Series D/E rounds of funding? Or do you mean that an entity like CALPERS
can invest some amount in the various VC funds? In the latter case, I think
its been shown that VC as an asset class (invested in that manner)
significantly underperforms the public market.
~~~
tptacek
Not only _can_ pension funds like CalPERS invest in VC firms, but they do,
often by design --- they have asset class requirements that militate for VC.
Entities like CalPERS are actually one of the engines behind VC funds.
------
justin66
There are a few genuinely odd statements about the stock market, including
pretty much all the bits that involve the word "growth." I wonder if he knows
about the Fama-French model and that value usually performs much better for
investors. Maybe acknowledging that would mean acknowledging that for a while
there, valuations were just nutty.
I never know what to make of that kind of complaining about shorts.
The "The returns degrade down to S&P 500 levels" statement about investment
managers was strange. Often those guys don't match S&P 500 returns and so that
level wouldn't be a degradation...
The whole thing has a feel that makes me wonder if he was misquoted or
something.
------
drawkbox
He does make excellent points about the public market, it is in a tough spot
and something does have to be done. SOX was a nightmare reaction in the wrong
direction and we can see the effects a decade later. Crowdfunding might even
be a side effect of this sideways investment market.
Maybe the stock market needs more risk tiers with differing levels of
regulation, even a growth market where regulations are relaxed for smaller
companies, essentially private investment open to public. One size fits all of
the public market will regulate all the growth out, it is not even really an
option for small-medium business to even try anymore like he says.
------
mjburgess
He blames the SOX act for decreasing the number of IPOs but they were already
down from 100s/year in the 80s to 80 in 2001 (before sox) and this trend
continued. He seems to be performing the slight-of-hand anti-regulatory BS
that accompanies the right these days: "over here there is a problem - over
there is some regulation; wink wink nudge nudge".
~~~
frandroid
Are you seriously taking the post-dotcom-bubble crash as the boundary to
compare the 80s to?
I still agree with you, even with your own sleight of hand. :)
~~~
mjburgess
No, just two end points to draw a negative correlation between that keeps
going today. It isnt hilly. So the introduction of SOX as an explanation for
decreasing IPOs is BS.
------
mmaunder
Whether or not you agree with Marc, I'm always impressed at how persuasive he
is and I come away with new data and new additions to my reading list.
He talks about the drop in the number of US public companies being caused by
the lack of new IPO's. It's also fueled by private equity delisting public
companies, Dell being a prime example in October of last year.
The benefits of staying private are not just due to the onerous regulatory
requirements. Delisting has tax benefits. It also concentrates ownership and
provides flexibility in executive compensation - and both of these resolve
some conflicts of interest between public investors and the exec team.
Staying private or going private also provides you with defensibility against
takeover - one less thing for the exec team to worry about so they can get on
with the job.
There's also less transparency in the organization which can give you a
competitive advantage.
------
mfringel
In general, predictions from influential people can be translated as "My life
will get a whole lot more convenient if x happens."
~~~
muzz
Agreed. Not sure why more people don't question when someone says something
will benefit the "middle class" are they just saying that out of their own
self-interest?
------
masterjack
These are some great points about the challenges of going public, but I wonder
how much of it is just a deliberate logical decision to reap the most
benefits. There's an incredible amount of capital flowing around (to the
extent that in many cases it doesn't seem to be the limiting factor as in
classical economic theory. And remember when YC decided to decrease the
investment for practicality reasons?) so why would you IPO as Facebook at 1B
when you get both more attractive private offers and also you can get enough
new investment until the IPO value is at 100B.
------
dreamfactory2
Erm, he is claiming that companies don't go public due to unchecked market
rigging and that somehow regulation rather than lack of it is to blame - the
doublethink is strong in this one.
And I've no idea why somebody who is in investment wouldn't be well aware that
secular bear markets are typically longer than 10 years
([http://www.tradingonlinemarkets.com/Articles/Trend_Following...](http://www.tradingonlinemarkets.com/Articles/Trend_Following_Strategies/History_of_Stock_Market_Cycles.htm)).
He seems to be a complete buffoon from this interview.
~~~
ScottBurson
He is arguing that the force of that regulation falls unfairly on public
companies, against whom it can be enforced effectively, and not on individuals
starting rumors, who are numerous and hard to track down. That's not a silly
claim.
~~~
dreamfactory2
The problem he is talking about is market manipulation. Let's be clear,
disclosure is precisely to prevent market rigging by insider trading and
indirection (as the notion of a free market depends on all participants having
equal information). He's in fact advocating going back to an insider's club
and trying to dress it up as the opposite. I don't know if he's just stupid or
he thinks the readers are.
------
adventured
Some data points for the discussion.
There were more IPOs in the first quarter of 2014, than in the first quarter
of 1999 (which makes sense given the market highs):
[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-ipos-partying-like-
its-1...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-ipos-partying-like-
its-1999-again-2014-04-02)
And this year is tracking to be the best year since 1999 / 2000:
[http://www.renaissancecapital.com/ipohome/press/ipopricings....](http://www.renaissancecapital.com/ipohome/press/ipopricings.aspx)
------
al2o3cr
"It suggests you're going to have a gigantic productivity boom. Isn't that the
world we want to live in?"
Depends. If the future is like the last 30 years, we'll see another
"productivity boom" but zero rise in real wages.
~~~
ArkyBeagle
There were rises in real wages from 1980 until 2000 - but they weren't in all
the places they were looked for. You had large populations of high-wage
earners wiped out - steel, autos, that sort of thing.
In 1980, being an IT worker was basically a $10 an hour job.
~~~
frandroid
Yeah, that person was talking about the sum total of real wages, and you're
talking about a sector by sector comparison...
~~~
ArkyBeagle
How would you go about even comparing them, really?
~~~
_delirium
Often what people quote is the median real wage, across the whole economy.
There are other measures as well, but it's one fairly simple one that gives a
trend for whether the middle portion of the workforce is seeing wage growth.
Rather than looking at wage changes within sectors, shifts between sectors,
etc., it just looks at the aggregate end result: do all these changes add up
to the the 50th-percentile American wage earner getting more or less money?
~~~
ArkyBeagle
That is indeed one way. I am just unsure it's all that meaningful.
------
betadreamer
I wished these articles concentrated more on the solution. It is easy to say
what is not working. He mentions that public company is not going to grow as
much, but then where should we put our retirement money in?
~~~
ahomescu1
I think he hints at the solution: reduce regulation (he names Sarbanes-Oxley
as one problem).
~~~
api
If we did that, wouldn't people just run more Enron-type scams?
Fraudsters and con men have been engaged in a Red Queen's race against
investor intelligence and government regulation since there has been
economies.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis)
These regulations might be messy but they contain valuable information that
has been learned from this arms race. They're patches to try to prevent the
same thing from happening again. It's much like computer security, where OSes
and network protocols are constantly patched or re-engineered to be resistant
to newer attacks. "Attacks only get better."
It may however be possible to improve Sarbox by reducing its complexity,
thereby reducing the complexity tax that harms smaller companies and
discourages growth IPOs.
~~~
ahomescu1
> They're patches to try to prevent the same thing from happening again.
Prevention by regulation IMHO creates as many problems as it solves because it
punishes everyone involved, not just the guilty. I'm more in favor of
prosecution (for fraud or insider trading, for example) as a method of
prevention (where you just get punished for breaking the law after the fact).
~~~
rayiner
The problem is that there is little will to prosecute people when things go
really wrong. In terms of domestic politics, Arthur Andersen-ing a company and
putting thousands of people out of work is untenable. And in a globalized
economy, you don't want to develop the reputation of being the country that
puts rich people in jail.
~~~
ahomescu1
> And in a globalized economy, you don't want to develop the reputation of
> being the country that puts rich people in jail.
If they've broken the law and are found guilty, that's exactly what you want
(rule of law, equality before the law and all that). Otherwise, I agree with
you.
~~~
rayiner
The problem is that "[i]f they've broken the law" is not such a clear-cut
question. Sometimes it is (WorldCom), sometimes it isn't (Qwest):
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-10-ceos-in-prison-whyd-
they-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-10-ceos-in-prison-whyd-they-do-it).
This is especially true with white collar crime, where the difference between
legal and illegal activity often revolves around intent. There is definitely
the potential for the government to use white collar laws to keep meddlesome
rich people in line.
~~~
ahomescu1
In the US, isn't that what a jury is supposed to decide? In other places, it's
the judge's decision.
~~~
rayiner
Sure, but a jury trial is in itself a pretty disruptive thing. And it's very
easy to bias juries against rich people, for obvious reasons. Even if the
person is acquitted, it can be an effective way of keeping people in line.
Consider the investigation of Mark Cuban for insider trading, which didn't
even result in an indictment or prosecution. I don't think it was politically
motivated, but the mere possibility of that made a lot of people nervous.
------
bsaul
Maybe someone who's read piketty book can explain something to me ? From what
i've read, It claims that wealth growth is superior to economic growth, in the
long term. But how can this be possible, since wealth growth is a part of
economic growth ?
I mean, if a big family own a lot of real estates, and that real estate gains
value, then doesn't this increase of value also makes the general economy grow
as well ?
It can't be as trivial, so there's probably something i'm missing in the
definitions. Anyone ?
~~~
kjjw
What is economic growth here?
Piketty discussed the return on capital versus earnings. He doesn't claim one
is superior to the other, or even that in the long run one will certainly
trump the other. He simply argues based on the evidence that it is likely that
in the long run, because it appears that the long trend is negligible economic
and demographic growth, there is no intrinsic law within capitalism that
ensures capital returns will not become so important that inequality can reach
massive levels.
------
lifeisstillgood
There is a good LSE podcast of a Pikkety lecture - hard to follow in his
accent but interesting. Anyway, he mentions Europe has the greatest
accumulation of wealth yet, but does not mention the massive tax windfall that
will be inheritance tax after the baby boomer generation pass on - it may be
that instead of using income tax to adjust inequality we simply uE inheritance
tax to redistribute the wealth
"each generation should earn their own way" could be Pikkety new and less
attractive call to arms
------
trhway
Today's late stages financing rounds eclipse IPOs of yesterday's. One reason
is inflation - more than 2 times during the last 10 years. Another is that the
game has moved one step upstream. In the first boom people inside were caching
in at the IPO thus leaving IPO buyers to hold the bug. These buyers think that
they have learned the lesson and now they are getting in at the late stages
before IPO - thus letting the inside people to cache in and leave these buyers
to hold the bug.
------
cyphunk
Marc Andreesson, the same person that believes Snowden is a traitor. Just cant
get past his logic
------
ahomescu1
My favorite part (pure gold): _This is so powerful in the conventional wisdom
right now. I love the Daily Show like everyone else does. But literally [Jon
Stewart 's] answer to every issue is Congress should pass a law. [People think
you can] solve any problem by passing enough laws._
~~~
muzz
People generally applaud things they already agree with, be it Jon Stewart's
audience or Marc Andreessen's.
~~~
ahomescu1
I don't get your point. The relevant part of that quote is _[People think you
can] solve any problem by passing enough laws_ , not the Jon Stewart
reference. You can be a member of both audiences.
Edit: I think this is an interesting discussion well worth having. From my
experience talking to people, many believe that if government introduces
exactly the right laws, we'll wind up with a utopia, which is IMHO very naive.
Very few people consider the drawbacks and unintended consequences of each
law.
------
powera
This is a bit of a flippant dismissal, but the interview reads as if it's Mitt
Romney answering the questions, not someone in the tech community.
~~~
_delirium
It's been many years since Andreessen's day-to-day concerns have been tech-
related, rather than finance-related. Not too surprising he would have
opinions common among people in the finance sector, considering that's what he
lives and breathes (this doesn't mean they're right or wrong, just that they
are unsurprising for someone coming from finance culture).
It probably doesn't help that he's in business and daily contact with Ben
Horowitz, who is even more sucked into the norms of that culture (check out
the comments on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642)).
~~~
dgreensp
Can you give examples of which opinions you consider "finance sector norms"
rather than a more neutral or individual viewpoint?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: Capistrano help w/ sudo - halbertn
Hello All,
I'm at my wits end here...
I'm using capistrano 2.1.
I'm overwriting the finalize_update task in my deploy script to run sudo so that I can perform some misc linux calls. Here's a sample call:<p><pre><code> task :finalize_update, :except => { :no_release => true } do
# chown the new directory to apache:apache
run "sudo -p 'sudo password:' chown -R apache:apache #{latest_release}"
end
</code></pre>
I do see the 'sudo password:' prompt, however anything I type appears on the terminal and hitting enter doesn't send my password over. Prior to the sudo call, when I'm prompted for a password, I don't see my character inputs on the screen, typical of entering passwords in linux terminal,...so it appears that the sudo password prompt is broken. Is there a setting that I have not configured properly?<p>I've been searching google, and part of the new features for capistraion 2.1 is that it recognizes the '-p' option on sudo. As quoted:<p>Use sudo -p switch to set sudo password prompt to something predictable.<p>I don't understand this statement. What password prompt is "something predictable"?<p>Thanks for any help!
======
halbertn
Thanks guys! I figured it out. Instead of using 'run sudo...', I can use the
helper function 'sudo' directly. Now the password prompts work correctly.
------
lsc
the best way to do it would be to change you sudoers config so your task can
do that without a password
run visudo and add the following line:
[user] ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/bin/chown /path/to/apache
/path/to/apache should be the directory above your latest_release dir so you
can avoid a wildcard
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No More Records - mblakele
http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2013/12/120313-no-more-records.html
======
mblakele
Anyone who has studied the history of the music industry is familiar with the
strike and how it disrupted the industry. But David Byrne's interpretation is
worth reading.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Things I Love About You: San Francisco Edition - noahrsg
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e3a07f716c27
======
nextstep
Everything seems great when you compare it to some place worse. That's why you
won't find many transplants from big cities in SF, but instead lots of people
from tiny Midwestern and Southern towns that moved to SF for work. So of
course everyone in SF thinks the city is amazing; for most people there, it's
the best place they've ever lived.
Try living in New York or LA, or even a smaller city like
Boston/Seattle/Portland/Austin, and suddenly SF seems like an over-hyped
bubble full of insecure people.
Regarding the "maker culture," I feel like I heard this myth a lot. In my
view, SF's culture is becoming the boring valley office park culture. SF is
packed with 20-30 y.o. single white and Asian males. Not the cool, eclectic
city it was once know for, SF now feels awkward and boring. And again the most
frustrating part of that is everyone is convinced they're living in Paris, but
better cause "we're all entrepreneurs!! Looks how smart we all are!"
The comments about public transportation are laughable. SF is a joke. Even if
you include the whole Bay Area's mediocre train systems, SF is a poor example
of public transportation, even for the US. The BART makes one pass through a
single corridor of the city and stops running at midnight.
Other cities around the size of SF: Indianapolis, IN. Fort Worth, TX.
Columbus, OH. Charlotte, NC. And a lot of these cities have comparable (i.e.
not very good) public transit systems.
------
mobiplayer
I've never been to San Francisco and I wish I could eventually live there,
but...
Saying that San Fracisco transportation are top notch compared to South
America is not going to help make SF look good. How much you pay in taxes and
for a Muni or BART ticket there? What are the expectations regarding
transportation for some living and working in SF?
And I'll may be too used to Europe, but some place that it's three hours from
my home is not "close". Hell, I drive 30 minutes each day to work and no
everybody tells me I live too far away from the office...
In any case, SF looks like an amazing city to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bots kept winning T-Mobile’s promotional contests - mjs33
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/16/bots-kept-winning-t-mobiles-promotional-contests.html
======
luminadiffusion
These were developed and run by a company called PrizeLogic out of AZ. They
had to keep costs down, so they mostly used new programmers. It is not
surprising to me that this is the result.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can foreign tech companies win in China? - endswapper
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/28/can-foreign-tech-companies-win-in-china/
======
endswapper
My takeaway from this is to treat China like a partner not an opportunity.
"China is not easy. It’s tough for everyone, no matter if one is foreign or
not." Experiences will vary greatly between individuals, but in China there is
this extra component that is often called regulation, but it's more than that.
I think of it more as a helicopter parent that is always quantifying,
evaluating and adjusting.
By making China a partner those evaluations and adjustments should suit your
mutual objectives as opposed to presenting deliberate obstacles.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
5 Cool Unix Hacks - danielrm26
http://nathanleclaire.com/blog/2013/10/27/5-cool-unix-hacks-for-fun-and-productivity#22blAbh
======
plus9z
In regard to the first tip, I use `git add -i` even more often, because it
gives you an interactive prompt that asks you which files you want to add to a
commit (i.e. you don't have to type out the whole filename(s) each time).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Actix project postmortem - dabj
https://github.com/actix/actix-web
======
tsukurimashou
"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project
anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README.
This just screwed me over big time."
[https://github.com/actix/actix-
web/issues/1#issuecomment-575...](https://github.com/actix/actix-
web/issues/1#issuecomment-575611050)
These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed
everything.
More details / discussion here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/actixnet_unsou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/actixnet_unsoundness_patch_is_boring/)
~~~
teddyh
> _These kind of entitled attitude_
If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable
project – professional behavior is _exactly what you implicitly promise and
signed up for_. If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason),
then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current
and future users.
It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making reasonable
expectations based on promises implicitly made by the the project as it is
presented.
~~~
Macha
Or to put it another way:
As an open source maintainer, you're perfectly entitled to just walk away. Hit
that archive button on github so nothing new can come from the repo, and enjoy
your life. Nobody could fault on you that. People would prefer you work out a
clean transition to a new maintainer, but you have no obligation to do so.
Deleting the repos is the equivalent of setting the house on fire on the way
out (especially when they're under their own org). Unlike in reality, it turns
out it's totally permitted, but people will still view it as a dick move.
~~~
z0mbie42
The repo has not been deleted! [https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-
web](https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web)
~~~
Nullabillity
From the bottom of the postmortem repo:
> At the moment I am planing to make repos private and then delete them (will
> remove benchmarks as well), unless others suggest better ideas.
~~~
LoSboccacc
so it's not deleted. it's the last call for all the people that wanted to
profit from his work to take up the mantle and drive the project
something anyone can do right now, I would add
but people just prefer directing the guy work
------
StavrosK
Whatever drawbacks Actix may have had, this entitlement has gone too far.
There is no defensible reason to tell someone "never write Rust again" because
you don't like the code they're making available to you. We need something to
remind us that we should be civil and grateful for FOSS contributions.
I recently saw a talk by Atwood about good discourse and how you should remind
people of your values before they write their comment, which I think applies
here. I'm going to make a single-page website reminding people that FOSS
maintainers are volunteers performing a service to everyone else, and that we
should keep that in mind.
If nothing else, it'll be an easy think to link people to in my issues
sometimes.
EDIT: It's going to go up on
[https://www.osscoc.com/](https://www.osscoc.com/)
~~~
smashedtoatoms
"We need something to remind us that we should be civil and grateful for FOSS
contributions."
You mean like having the legitimate risk that maintainers will take their ball
and go home when people are cruel and others stand around and let it happen?
This is everyone's fault who didn't dogpile the people who were being
terrible. We all need to be calling out people being horrible, and provide a
little emotional support to maintainers. We worry too much about the feelings
of people who contribute nothing, and not enough about the people who build
the things upon which we rely.
~~~
StavrosK
No, I mean something less remote and which looks less like a random act of
God, something that people can read before engaging in discussion and not
easily dismiss because "it probably won't happen". We need to raise the level
of discourse across the board, not just prevent the most egregious of
negativity.
I want people to enter the discussion with the mindset "this is a volunteer
effort so I will aim to be productive in my disagreement", rather than "fuck
this guy".
~~~
smashedtoatoms
Ahh, yes. That would be fantastic.
------
fraktl
Open source maintainers have a hard time - especially when they're under
criticism and receive zero positive vibes. Author mentions it, here's the
excerpt:
_Be a maintainer of large open source project is not a fun task. You alway
face with rude and hate, everyone knows better how to build software, nobody
wants to do home work and read docs and think a bit and very few provide any
help._
This a big problem with open source - I, as a programmer, like when someone
commends me. It might be childish, but if I invest a few days into code and
someone finds it useful - I would love to hear it, it would make the day for
me. Instead, I had similar experience like the author of actix - hatred,
rudeness and a lot of people who don't read the docs, they merely expect
everything to work if they drop the library into their project.
Sadly, we're way too negative and don't appreciate OSS maintainers. This trend
should change. It's sad to see yet another project go because author was
mentally drained due to negativity. We should take care of our own "brothers
in arms" (we all write code or deal with tech, don't we?).
I haven't used Actix-web, but I can sympathize with the author. Keep your head
up, recharge your batteries and remain creative. Good luck with your future
products!
~~~
kmike84
A data point: I've been involved in Open Source for 10+ years, developing
projects myself, helping to maintain very popular projects, contributing, and
I don't see a trend like this. I've interacted with hundreds of people over
the years, and the vibes are overwhelmingly positive; I haven't noticed any
hatred or rudeness towards myself. I can't think of a single time interaction
with OSS people afected me negatively, but there were a lot of positive (or
neutral) interactions.
Over time projects I'm contributing to were changing, and so I was exposed to
several different communities (Python web development, data science, web
scraping), and all of them turn out to be awesome. Maybe that's just luck, but
not all OSS maintainers have it hard - no idea why :)
+1 to recharge the batteries!
------
thrownaway954
I use to do a TON of open source back in the day. i quit cause of the same
reason, people suck and feel they are entitled.
i couldn't count how many times someone would yell, kick and scream about an
issue they were having and demand that i fix it right away (ain't gonna happen
dude). i finally got to the point where i told people that i would only
participate in pull requests and nothing else. you could still file issues,
but i wasn't gonna even look at them. if you wanted something fixed, open a
pull request and i will help you fix it but i'm not wasting my time with an
issue that i didn't personally have an investment in. was i being a jerk for
doing that? maybe, but my own personal serenity was worth more to me than
pleasing you.
i think every open source author starts out with this fire in their heart to
make the software world a better place for everyone only to get beaten down by
every moron out there. when you are getting paid to do something, you put up
with the idiots in your life (how many of us are still at the job that pays
well, but HATE the people there?), but when you are doing it on your own time
and not being compensated for it, what's the point?
i applaud this dude for doing what he did. i hope his actions has put the
people using his project in a position of panic to the point where they
reflect on how they treat people and participate in the open source community.
pain is the only way we learn and change things about ourselves. i hope the
people who caused the author to quit open source change the way they treat
people in the future.
~~~
CapmCrackaWaka
Maybe it's because I work on more niche projects, but every time someone
contacted me about an issue in one of my repos they were always exceedingly
apologetic about "bothering me". My projects only have ~400 downloads per
month, so I'm sure it's a matter of sample size. If anything, working through
issues with the community has made me enjoy the work more.
~~~
jopsen
Yeah, it's important to remember that most of the time people are very nice.
Of course there are "problem kids" out there who screamd about an opinion they
disagree with or tries flirt with female contributors on IRC..
Having co-workers, a code of conduct, and a community organizer you can
escalate to can help a lot.
------
CDSlice
For context, this comes after yet another unsoundness bug has been found in
Actix-web. Normally people in the Rust community don't get very worked up over
these because we know that everyone makes mistakes, but the Actix project has
had a consistent history of introducing unsoundness through the use of unsafe
for dubious reasons like nebulous performance increases or bypassing Rust's
safety guarantees (which is what this last one was about). Furthermore, when
someone raised this issue and provided a patch to fix it the actix-web
maintainer called the patch "boring"[1]. He also censored comments that talked
about the unsoundness and eventually deleted the entire issue. This sort of
behavior should not be acceptable from any open source maintainer that runs
such a large, foundational part of the ecosystem.
[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200116203731/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200116203731/https://github.com/actix/actix-
net/issues/83)
~~~
jmiskovic
I completely disagree with your last sentence. Think of actix-web as a gift to
the world (and judging by its popularity, a very nice gift). Being verbally
abused by vocal majority of freeloaders would drive anyone furious.
I think I understand your perspective, though. It would benefit the community
to have projects of great importance properly maintained. How to ensure it?
Well, by paying people to do it, not necessary developers but active project
mantainers. Only then you are entitled to complain about somebody doing a
lousy job. To sponsor it, introduce micro-transactions for dependencies.
~~~
CDSlice
Obviously being vocally abused is not OK no matter what the victim has done.
This is a big problem and I think Steve's article that is currently on the top
page of HN gives a good overview of that part of the situation.
My problem with viewing all open source as a gift to the world, take it or
leave it, is that when people create open source packages, market them as
being ready for production use and as the best option for said production use,
and then act unprofessionally towards security issues and reject patches that
fix the security issues for no reason other than being "boring" and "not
creative enough" people should be able to call them out on it as unacceptable
behavior for an open source maintainer. If actix didn't claim to be production
ready and instead stated that it was an experimental code base designed to
advance the state of the art in web server performance I wouldn't have a
problem with how it was managed. However, once you claim that something is
production ready I think you need to be ready to take responsibility for it.
~~~
howeyc
I strongly disagree, with extreme passion.
They could have marketed it as the greatest gift to humanity for all I care.
It's your responsibility to handle your use of code. Sure, you may find
issue's in your dependencies, and you're welcome to submit a bug or provide a
fix, but if you expect anything more than the code as it is, it's still your
problem how to deal with it.
The entitlement is astounding. A person providing free code doesn't owe you
anything or "need to take responsibility" or whatever else you may want.
~~~
temac
While that's true, expecting bad maintainership to not have any effect and
third parties not discussing about the quality of the software is also
delusion. (And in practice, maintainers maintain, and I'm glad they do,
because otherwise e.g. Linux distro would be complete absolute crap.)
What is also a in the realm of possibilities is that a project gets a bad
reputation and for indirect effects or others, dies. That happened here.
However, in the effects we saw here, while the people proposing patches and
debating in a civil way about technical flaws (or at the very least widely
perceived as such) were fine, the brigading was absolutely inexcusable, as
well as the unproductive/nasty comments.
------
gfodor
I’m not sure why people are so fork-shy. Forking is the greatest gift of open
source. It’s basically the point and the core of what it means to have
software freedom. I think the anxiety around forking is unwarranted,
especially in scenarios where the author clearly has divergent goals and
values from a large number of people.
It seems the forest has been lost from the trees: exercise your freedom, fork,
and let diversity lead to longevity. I think a lot of the aversion is because
forking and fragmentation is messy. It doesn’t surprise me that the Rust
community in particular would abhor such disorder :) (see the JS community for
a counter example.) But such disorder is a key element of so many good human
systems, like democracy and free markets. Better to embrace them and relish
the freedom they bring, than dive deep into conflict with others only due to
imagined chains binding you together, chains deliberately lacking due to the
selfless altruism of the project creators who bound their work to a free
software license, to whom you should be thankful, not resentful.
~~~
okareaman
This whole issue is confusing to me. It's like no one ever heard of fork. It's
hardly mentioned in the comments. The author owes people what they paid him to
do, which is nothing. If he wants to go unsafe and fast that's his business. I
don't have to ride with him. I can make a copy of his car for free and drive
it the way I want.
I think this is a case of the end justifies the means. The end: get the
maintainer to change his code the way I want. The means: bully and abuse him
to force him into it because that sometimes works.
~~~
gfodor
At some point open source got morphed into being about free as in beer and
gratis volunteer work by generous souls. But its origin and what the licenses
themselves are about are _freedom to read_ and _freedom to modify_. The
entitlement that has crept in and the social contracts that seem to have
formed around expectations for people writing Free code are concerning.
Shame on people who forget this, and demand more than those freedoms from
authors who so generously grant them to others. Based upon what I’ve read, I
would have checked out from this project as the author well before they did
given the harassment they’ve apparently been getting for not merging PRs into
their repo.
------
toyg
I'll save this link for the next time someone tries to argue that the Rust
community is somehow "more welcoming" than some other X community.
All internet-based communities contain some assholes. All of them. Sadly some
maintainers don't seem to have the werewithal to tell them to go away. I mean,
when you get "asked to change coding style", it's the time to put the
banhammer down, because there is no way to please these people without
humiliating yourself.
~~~
lifthrasiir
> I'll save this link for the next time someone tries to argue that the Rust
> community is somehow "more welcoming" than some other X community.
It's deeply disappointing to see this outcome (and r/rust is literally divided
into two halves on this drama at least for now, ugh), but I believe it is the
statement about the _average_ atmosphere. Not that I have an argument for or
against the refined statement, but it doesn't automatically get rejected with
a single counterexample.
~~~
toyg
Nah, it's just the usual delusion of small-but-growing communities. The Python
community was great in 2001, a bit less so these days. The Lisp community was
probably great at some point in the '70s too. It's just that, with size, the
likelihood of attracting undesirable elements inevitably grows until their
presence simply cannot be denied. At that point, you either deploy heavy-
handed moderation and get branded "unwelcoming" by the assholes, or leave it
free for all and get branded "unwelcoming" by the most sensitive not-assholes.
Then someone or something will spawn a new community, and the cycle will
repeat itself.
This process is basically inevitable, and it has been observed in internet
communities for so long that it's basically a science by now. It's just the
nature of the (human) beast.
~~~
lifthrasiir
Of course I don't disagree to you, I too think that that reputation is
extremely hard to retain. However:
1\. It seems that there are/were some language communities noted for their
relatively more welcoming atmosphere. If small communities are usually great
until it aren't, why don't we see many such communities? There seems to be
some truth in this (albeit ultimately fragile) reputation.
2\. For this reason, in order to claim that some community is no longer what
it used to be, you need multiple anecdotes at the very least.
~~~
toyg
If a small community is great and the tool they push is valid, it will grow
until it's not great anymore. Try mentioning any tool that has grown in
popularity, stood the test of time, and still has an exemplary community.
If a small community is great but the tool is not particularly good, they will
stay small and simply get ignored. That's the average scenario for most
languages not pushed by a wealthy vendor: you just don't hear about them
because you don't need the tool.
_> you need multiple anecdotes at the very least._
Meh, this is just the first of many to come, if Rust is to keep growing in
popularity. It's on the same trajectory as Go, just a bit behind because it
got usable a few years later.
~~~
lifthrasiir
> Meh, this is just the first of many to come, if Rust is to keep growing in
> popularity. It's on the same trajectory as Go, just a bit behind because it
> got usable a few years later.
If you originally meant that the Rust community is _on the way of_ becoming
less welcoming, well that works for me.
------
dhbradshaw
What he created and did was and is amazing.
He wouldn't have had the attention or the criticism that he got if it hadn't
been so impressive. I think when something's good enough, people may actually
criticize more freely. Some of that is because the project becomes worth the
scrutiny. But some of it is also a status thing. If your work is good enough
to give you a high enough status, you change categories a bit in peoples
minds. They start to criticize you in the way that they'd criticize other
entities that seem strong enough that they don't need to be protected any
more.
I hope that the actix ecosystem can stick around and keep moving forward. But
even if not, I think fafhrd91 made impressive contributions and I'm glad to
have used and learned from his work.
~~~
guscost
Agreed, nice work fafhrd91!
-from another impressed but silent user of your project
------
Dowwie
I've been using actix-web for my work for some time, contributing however I
can while learning Rust and myriad other subjects. This was the _third_ major
public event involving controversial design and implementation decisions. A
great number of people in the Rust community have refused to accept that not
everyone subscribes to their ideology about use of unsafe. They've repeatedly
tried to impose their values and priorities upon someone who has been more
than capable, if not more capable, of reasoning about legitimate issues and
risks and who has his own priorities. The author has not been kind towards
those who challenge his decisions, and this has not helped him navigate social
issues. It's not just that he struggles with English but has a very different
value system and set of priorities than those who he's had to interact with.
Further, these contributions weren't from neutral parties but rather a group
of long-term adversaries who have taken it upon themselves to hold Nikolay
accountable for having differences. They blog, they control the narrative in
message forums, they basically do everything in their power to cancel Nikolay
and his tremendous work, shaping the public narrative as one that suits their
goals.
It took great strength to go as far as Nikolay did in spite of these
challenges. I understand why he doesn't want to participate in this culture
any longer. It comes at a great cost. Unfortunately, the actix projects and
its author are not the only ones who have been targeted for having
differences. The next example is Ferrous Systems, who have authored a new
ecosystem for asynchronous development. The team has been attacked in all
sorts of ways and are going to great lengths defending themselves and to help
shape the public narrative. Eventually, they will tire from constantly
defending their decisions. Some will lose their patience and tempers will
flare. Then, an angry mob will re-emerge and do everything in its power to
cancel the momentum of their work and attack the reputations of the authors.
I don't know whether this social behavior will change without the culture
changing as well. It requires a respect for viewpoint diversity and acceptance
of people unlike ourselves, not just in gender orientation but in opinions and
values. It includes tolerating disrespect and leaving people alone rather than
trying to destroy them. I doubt these social issues are unique to the Rust
community. Cancel culture seems to exist in all shapes. We aren't better for
it.
~~~
lidHanteyk
I wonder to what degree the entire incident happened because Rust has unsafe-
blocks.
~~~
Matthias247
There are only 2 outcomes for Rust not having unsafe blocks:
1\. Everything would be unsafe. Same as C/ C++
2\. You could not use it to write real software, because not all constructs
are expressible in safe code. The std lib requires unsafe to a bigger extend.
Talking to the OS does the same.
Unsafe blocks are required to write software. And they are good, because they
minimize the amount of code which can not be automatically audited by the
compiler.
Unfortunately unsafe blocks seem to get more and more misused as a metric
around the quality of software. Which is certainly not their intention.
------
christiansakai
I am a Rust beginner, and have made a few small projects with Actix Web. Actix
Web is the only framework I use in Rust and spent some time learning about it.
During that learning process, the docs constantly get updated but there are
examples in the repo. Sometimes there aren't examples and I go to their chat
room and ask the maintainer directly, and to my surprise, he always answered
my question.
He is a busy guy with a life that already put immense effort to create this
library and helping people to use it. He is free to do whatever he wants.
People who complained, did they even give him thanks? Or donating coffee
money? Grow up and stop spending your SWE salary for your vices.
~~~
xtf
Tried to write it down and help to enhance the documentation, or written an
own documentation? So that reoccurring questions could be reduced.
~~~
christiansakai
During that time the actix web library was planning to do some breaking
changes because of 1.0 target
------
capableweb
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
This is part of the MIT license. Many other open source and free software
licenses contain the same thing. It's simple, people provide software they
write in their free time or "sponsored" by their company, in return they get
nothing and you should expect nothing more than the piece of code that gets
published.
People have started assuming that free and open source software is not "true"
open source if you don't build a community around your project, gain a
following and can take advantage in it professionally somehow.
It's a shame, as it puts a lot of pressure on people, instead of all of us
just sharing code because we love coding and want to share it with everyone
who also loves it.
~~~
geofft
The MIT license isn't the only thing Actix wrote. They also wrote this:
[https://actix.rs/community/](https://actix.rs/community/)
> _Community: The best things in life are to be shared_
> _Join us - Want to talk to others about questions? The actix gitter channel
> or reddit community are your best starting point._
> _If you think you found a bug it 's best to go to the github directly. There
> are two repositories that you might want to report against. actix for issues
> with the actor framework or actix-web for the high level web framework._
> _We 're a welcoming community so don't be afraid to engage. Interactions are
> governed by our code of conduct._
I agree with you that projects aren't required to do this. (And I also agree
that developers often feel pressured to build up a community for their
project.) But still - that's what they wrote.
~~~
capableweb
True, they did write that. But taking into consideration the license open
source and free software is usually licensed under, they are free that change
those opinions at any time, and you cannot blame them for it.
If you had a contract with the project, I would understand the frustration.
But since it's published on a "NO-WARRANTY" and no promises basis, the persons
opinion can change at any time, and that's perfectly fine.
So maybe today I feel like, yeah, my open source project should have a
community! So I publicly write that. But then 6 months later I change my mind
and stop trying. This is also perfectly fine. Annoying, sure, but if you want
to avoid that, start making contracts with the libraries that you include in
your projects.
~~~
geofft
I'd like to live in a world where, if I tell you something, you can take my
word for it and you don't demand a contract for it.
Also, those words are _still_ on the website. If the author is no longer
interested in bug reports - which is absolutely the author's right, to be
clear, and does not make them a bad person - they ought to at least change the
language on the website to make it clear. Otherwise the language encourages
people to waste their time, which is pretty rude.
------
mrunkel
Removing the repos seems to be a bit much especially since he is planning on
making them private and then deleting them.
Why not just leave them in place if you're burned out and see if anyone is
willing to take over maintainership.
Given, I don't know the history, but I always feel a bit of pain when code
gets lost or destroyed in the heat of the moment.
~~~
robin_reala
They have been moved to his personal account for the time being:
[https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web](https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web)
[https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-net](https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-net)
------
dyeje
The entitlement in this thread is astounding. Don't like how the project is
maintained? Fork it. If you don't have anything nice to say to the person who
gave you the code _for free_, then just don't say anything at all.
~~~
Hello71
This argument confuses and saddens me. If I give away free food which I and
others know to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens, is it wrong for them
to criticize it? What if I don't know, but I obtain it from a supplier which
is known to persistently sell contaminated food? What if I put up a sign in
very small print saying that the food comes with no warranty whatsoever and
all consumers eat it at their own risk? What if I put up a large sign? What if
instead of pathogens, I intentionally add lead-based decorations on the basis
that they look and taste good, even if they may be slightly carcinogenic if
consumed? What if I clearly state that the decorations must be removed before
eating? At what point do I acquire moral culpability for the harms suffered by
my customers? These sorts of comments seem to imply that there is no problem
with me doing any of this, as long as the food is provided for free and
consumers have the choice to not take the food. I would vehemently disagree
with that claim. Uninformed choice is not a true choice, and even informed
choice cannot excuse certain foreseeable harms.
~~~
kelnos
That is an entirely specious analogy. This code will not cause someone to get
sick or die. And "contaminated" vs. "not contaminated" is a binary result for
food -- one is the case and one is not the case. With code, there's nearly
always room for reasonable disagreement as to what is the right/good or
wrong/bad way to do things, and often people argue over two (or more)
perfectly fine ways of doing things that just come down to a matter of style.
~~~
smt88
I'm not sure if this will change your mind, but in the Rust world, there's a
concept of "unsafe" code that can lead to vulnerabilities.
The difference here is that a code consumer can check a Rust project for
unsafe code, whereas a food consumer cannot check for unsafe contaminants.
~~~
phkahler
If it's OK to demand a project use only Rust and not unsafe Rust, then it must
be OK to bitch at every C or C++ project and demand they rewrite in Rust. If
that sounds absurd, that's because it's supposed to.
~~~
smt88
That's not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
From what I can tell, actix was using unsafe code to improve benchmark
performance, not because safe code was extra work. That's fine, but it was
misleadingly marketed as more than a toy project, and it shouldn't have been.
Further, rewriting a project is very different from just making different
coding decisions when maintaining an existing project.
I still think the actix critics are showing how irresponsible _they_ are for
blindly using a library without researching it well.
------
mfer
Being a maintainer on a popular open source project can be hard. You put
expectations on yourself, others put expectations on you, people complain,
people trash talk you because they think they can do it better, and so much
more.
I think this highlights that maintainers need support systems to help with
this. We can use GitHub features to mute or block people. We can have CoCs and
try to avoid people who cause issues. But, they still happen and maintainers
need help. Someone to talk to, people who have been there, support groups,
strategies, and sometimes sabbaticals.
I feel for this guy and hope some time away will help him personally.
------
mwcampbell
We did this to him. [1] We drove him to burn-out. We should reflect on that
and make sure we don't ever do that again to any open-source maintainer. And
we should pay more of them for their work.
[1]: Including me, as I contributed to a comment thread here about cheating on
benchmarks.
------
ww520
Good for him to make a stand!
I can completely understand how he felt. Similar things happened to my open
source projects, admittedly at a smaller scale. Users became so entitled to
open source software and became hostile. Well, i nipped the problems at the
bud by moving the projects off open source license. There were a few people
crying foul and vowed not to use it. Fine. I respected their choices, and
let's move our separate way.
There're requests to open source and hand the projects to someone else. No. I
want to maintain control of the project development and direction, like
directors wanting to maintain artistic control over their movies. If someone
is so fired up, they can always write their own open source software.
~~~
AzzieElbab
would you have declined a patch that fixes a real problem because it is
boring? i do not really get that kind of thinking either. personally i would
have accepted it and replaced with something clever latter on
~~~
ww520
Yes, I would. Because that patch is a "style" patch. It's not important in the
author's roadmap for the project.
People ask for different things and think their things are the most important,
and when they don't get their way, screaming and kicking to force them in.
They can always fork it or create a separate project if it's so important.
~~~
AzzieElbab
I wrote "fixes a problem" explicitly. How is that a "style" patch?
~~~
ww520
Some people treat style as a problem. In the context of “boring” conversation
the problem was the unsafe usage. How’s that not style?
------
yongjik
An argument could be made both ways, but I wish people stopped quoting
licenses to resolve social issues.
For example, the license does not forbid the user of the software from
INSINUATING THAT THE AUTHOR OF THE SOFTWARE IS INCOMPETENT, OR UNFIT TO AUTHOR
ANY SOFTWARE, EITHER IN A PARTICULAR LANGUAGE OF THEIR CHOICE, OR IN GENERAL.
So one can almost say that anyone who's doing it is exercising their right
granted by license.
...But that kind of argument is not really helpful, isn't it? The question is
whether some behavior is socially acceptable. License doesn't enter the
question.
(BTW, of course I don't support the kind of behavior I endorsed(?) above.)
~~~
growse
> ...But that kind of argument is not really helpful, isn't it? The question
> is whether some behavior is socially acceptable. License doesn't enter the
> question.
> (BTW, of course I don't support the kind of behavior I endorsed(?) above.)
Let's say someone wants to release some open source software to the world. But
they also want to retain the right to remove their currently published copy at
any point, their right to reject patches and generally do what they like
without being slurred and berated by everyone else.
Aside from adding a plaintext file alongside the code that explicitly says
(sometimes in capital letters!) that the code is supplied with no warranty or
obligation, explicitly or implied, what should they do?
Isn't it clearly the case that the license explicitly states the social
contract?
------
brobdingnagians
Closed source is more fun to develop. You get full control over your code, you
just have to meet the needs of people who think it is worth enough to pay for
it, you can code in whatever eccentric manner you want, and you get to keep
the nice wads of cash if it becomes successful. If security is a problem, then
the people with wads of cash will leave, but at least there is some incentive
there.
------
gameswithgo
I would advise people who decide to embark on large, hard projects like this
to stop making them free. Make the source open if you want, but charge money.
Either for the product, or for support requests, something. This not only
filters out entitled assholes, but it gets you money, money that you can maybe
use to pay people to help, or at least to buy a beer.
~~~
bob1029
This is an unfortunate conclusion that I also arrived at after much
consideration. I have a proposed dream project in front of me that would take
at least 2000 hours to reach MVP. Do I just give it away for free on GitHub
under MIT? I spent over a decade honing the skills that allow me to even
engage with such a difficult objective. Why should I just give it all away
unfettered? What alternative approaches exist in which I share these wonderful
new ideas openly and also somehow reap the benefits?
I feel that for certain projects like vendor API integration libraries,
opening up the source for all to use freely is the best path. But for others,
where years of intellectual property and personal development exist
predominantly within the code itself... I think I want to keep this kind of
code to myself for now.
------
cttet
I wish that the author have read this "The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan
Czaplicki
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA)
~~~
jlengrand
I thought about exactly that as well :).
------
3jckd
Asking for a friend - could someone explain what happened there? The README
doc is quite vague - it is more of a personal justification than a rationale
(to me).
~~~
stefan_
It seems like the overarching issue is that Rust is a house of cards. They
added unsafe like Java has null. My favorite part is that you can declare a
crate to forbid unsafe, but that then doesn't have to hold for it's
dependencies.
The obvious implementation is for unsafe to be infectious like const. You have
unsafe code, your crate is unsafe. You depend on an unsafe crate, your crate
becomes unsafe.
~~~
cesarb
> The obvious implementation is for unsafe to be infectious like const. You
> have unsafe code, your crate is unsafe. You depend on an unsafe crate, your
> crate becomes unsafe.
That would mean _everything_ is unsafe, since every crate depends on _core_
(or on _std_ which depends on _core_ ), which has "unsafe" code.
The design of "unsafe" in Rust, instead, is to allow building safe
abstractions on top of unsafe code (or be able to clearly mark when the
abstraction itself is unsafe). That way, for instance, users of `Vec::push` do
not have to worry that it uses uninitialized memory (which is unsafe).
------
droitbutch
Concerning is what message this sends to other OSS developers. One goes into
F/OSS knowing full well there will be little rewards financially - but facing
harassment or attacks on their reputation cannot encourage future projects.
------
arh68
Is it too late to set up a SafeActix project, let him keep the Actix name &
creative control, and resolve things semi-positively? Seems like the community
mistook it as an effort to build something safe, and it was a thousand cuts of
misconceptions/asks. Maybe open an issue and give them a week to decide/vote a
new name. I don't think there's an _obligation_ per se, it would just be
better.
------
stackzero
Poor guy, writing code for fun and maintaining an OSS project long term aren't
the same thing. Nor do they require the same skill set.
With abit of elbow grease we can pick the project up again, "reputational
damage" is not the end
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_recovery_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_recovery_paradox)
------
zelon88
To me, this displays a deep misunderstanding of FOSS on the part of this
projects maintainer. He wants to create a project, promote that project to the
top of it's field, and completely ignore the perception of his userbase. Then
he fell back on "it's my code I'll do what I want with it." That would be
fine, but he "sold" people on this code with the understanding that we were
all going to take it to it's maximum potential. This was marketed as something
which would solve specific needs better than similar products. Most people can
handle regression and bugs and regular ongoing refactors as everyone struggles
to bring this same piece of code to the next level. What people, especially
the dev community, cannot overcome is when they are told that a project has a
direction that it clearly doesn't have. If this maintainer had no intention of
accepting feedback from his users there should have been a clear indication of
that somewhere in the docs.
If you never reconcile your reasoning and expectations with your community
then they will deduce reasoning and expectations that you never implied. This
maintainer wanted to produce a popular piece of software not to contribute to
the Rust community, or because he wanted to make lives easier. This isn't the
attitude of someone who is trying to improve his skills or challenge his
knowledge of Rust. He obviously didn't do it to get rich. I believe he made
actix-web to get famous. He wanted blind recognition for being selfless. He
wanted a community of docile dependents who sit up late on GH hitting the
refresh button waiting for his next push. He seems to have only wanted to make
a product that people revered. When that didn't happen because he never
reconciled his goals with the communities expectations he took his ball and
went home. "What??? No fame? No glory? Criticism!?!? Fine, no soup for you."
------
polskibus
Is this the same actix that won recent Techempower benchmarks? What a pity!
~~~
therockhead
Yes.
------
rehasu
The very normal path of growing up as a leader:
1\. people are good -> trying to do something good
2\. doing good -> realizing many people are not good
3\. stop doing good thing, start being frustrated
4\. realizing one doesn't need to let people pull oneself down -> start doing
good again
5\. helping others to do good things and surviving the first shock of being
visible
6\. $$$
------
fenwick67
Similar burnout happened with Ecstatic, a very popular Node.js static file
serving library.
[https://github.com/jfhbrook/node-
ecstatic/issues/259](https://github.com/jfhbrook/node-ecstatic/issues/259)
------
Steve0
It should be noted that the code wasn't deleted, but forked to his private
repo, where it's still open for anyone to use, download, fork, ...
------
gtirloni
if the issues are so bad and the author doesn't want to fix them, just fork it
and avoid all the arguments that won't lead anywhere.
------
pauldix
Sad to see this. I'm using Actix in a new project and have been watching the
project for a while. Guess I'll be refactoring to use Hyper. If I were farther
along I'd probably try to take ownership, but it doesn't make sense given that
it's only around 40 LOC in my project that depend on Actix at this point so
switching out to another framework is more straightforward than taking
ownership of a codebase I don't know.
I understand fafhrd91's (the maintainer) frustration, but it would have been
much better to just abandon the project and throw it up for some other
volunteer to come in and take it over. Then the project can live on and he can
bask in any success it has in the years down the road. Instead, it's a
complete mess where all the good work and good will has been undone in a
single move.
I've abandoned multiple OSS projects over the years and let other maintainers
come in and take them over. Now over 10 years later I can still say I created
that project that still gets used because other people have seen value in
continuing to contribute and maintain it.
------
didibus
Reminds me of this "Open Source is Not About You":
[https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...](https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9)
------
sergiotapia
Agree 100% with the maintainer, read some of the comments on /r/rust and on
Github, I haven't seen a more rude sanctimonious community in my 12 years
programming. Holy shit!
Rustaceans my ass! From now on Rudeaceans.
~~~
stjohnswarts
Check out their official channels. Anything on reddit is going to be toxic
unless it is highly curated by the subreddit mods. That's just the reality of
reddit.
------
qwerty456127
People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments
they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful
information with a quick glance, extract it if it does and ignore the rest.
People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable, and there are people
who do it in the streets and there are people who shit in comments/messages.
Why take them serious?
~~~
arcatek
> I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out
> rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the
> fact our service failed to suit their specific needs).
This isn't at all the same thing. You were paid to do your job, and at the end
of the day you could just joke about those weirdos.
When working on an open-source project, everything becomes much more personal
because your motivation is fuelled by your own personal attachement to the
project. Imagine you're helping elderly people cross the street every day, and
every once in a while they yell at you for not doing it better, whatever that
means. At some point is it still worth it?
And of course you can't just put that behind you once you're back home,
because this abuse happens at home. I remember this time where someone
literally told me to kill myself while I was fixing a bug - at midnight - in a
project I handle. Or the time I woke up only to see that during the night
someone public had decided to openly send me literal fuck emojis on Twitter to
right a perceived wrong. Good times.
So yeah - building a shell is the right solution, but it's hard and we really
shouldn't have to deal with that in the first place.
~~~
qwerty456127
I get you point, it makes sense, but I feel like I personally have already
grown over that and everybody can: just know what are doing the job for. Are
you helping the elderly to get their gratitude? No, just because I'm doing the
right thing and I know some of them are jerks because loosing their sanity to
Alzheimer's and because of hard life they had. Are you maintaining a free
project for users' gratitude? No, I do because it's fun, because it expands my
experience, fulfills my own needs, improves my CV and because I'm glad if
somebody can use it for good. Never expect a reward if it's not guaranteed in
the first place.
------
jxramos
Is this sort of action unprecedented?
------
jaimex2
What was Actix-web?
~~~
beatgammit
A web server built on an actor framework and probably the fastest Rust web
server out there for many use cases.
I used it because it was easy to fill my niche case (TCP + UDP + WebSockets +
HTTP interfaces to the same thing) as well as my boring CRUD apps, and it
worked on stable Rust since a long time ago.
The author got a lot of flack for using "unsafe", then fixed most uses of
"unsafe" and it has become something of a meme now. Unfortunately, there's an
odd, almost religious crusade against unsafe in the Rust community, especially
by those who don't really understand the ramifications of using unsafe
incorrectly or how to tell whether unsafe is being used correctly.
It's a cool project and I have loved using it. I'm probably going to use
something else unless someone steps up with a commitment to maintaining a
fork.
~~~
jaimex2
Thanks for the explanation.
It's funny to see history repeat itself with "Unsafe" hooks. JAVA has a number
of projects which also do this for speed and it always freaks people out.
------
tus88
The open source equivalent of the rage-quit hehe.
------
m4r35n357
I don't get it. This is a Git project. So did none of these people actually
bother to clone it?
Probably easier to just rely on binaries . . . suckers!
~~~
beatgammit
There are plenty of repository clones, that's not the issue. The issue is that
people want to contribute back to the same repository so you don't have to
figure out which project is the just up to date. When a project like this goes
away, it takes some time for everyone to figure out which fork is actually
being maintained properly.
The best course of action, IMO, is to state that you're stepping away, perhaps
indefinitely, and ask if anyone wants to be added as an admin to take over.
That's not _required_ , but it's a nice thing to do.
I'm sad about this on a lot of levels, any I hope the maintainer does what I'd
like, but if not, I'll just wait a few months and see how the dust settles.
For now, I'll probably go back to investigating other projects.
~~~
m4r35n357
The Linux kernel has no central repository, they use email & stuff. I believe
that is what the author of Git intended.
~~~
cesarb
> The Linux kernel has no central repository
It does have a central repository, it's this one:
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git)
------
zozbot234
In case you're directly impacted by this,
[https://www.arewewebyet.org/topics/frameworks/](https://www.arewewebyet.org/topics/frameworks/)
provides a list of web development frameworks for use with Rust. Just pick one
with a less cowboy-coding oriented attitude than Actix-web, and you should be
OK.
------
Fellshard
Like it or not, it's best to view this incident as having direct parallels to
the NPM left-pad incident.
Ignoring the specifics of what led up to this for the moment, observe that a
single person was able to completely annihilate an entire dependency's source.
I think one of the primary requisites to reliable FOSS development and
adoption will need to be tooling that maintains immutable records to the best
of its ability, so that prior artifacts cannot be revoked; you publish code as
FOSS, it is with the clear understanding that you have disposed of your
authority to revoke it.
There are cases where something may need to be revoked, but make it a multi-
layer process at that point, not a single button and one man's whim.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wildbit launches dploy.io: Ship code from GitHub, Bitbucket, anywhere - dsabanin
http://wildbit.com/blog/2013/09/17/dploy-io-our-third-product
======
dsabanin
I'm a developer who has brought this to life. If anyone has any questions,
I'll be glad to answer.
~~~
vigeek
Hello kind sir, can you please explain to me quantitative computing?
~~~
dsabanin
[http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-
App...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-
Edition/dp/1558605967)
You're welcome.
------
joelle
Congrats guys! Looks like a really, really sweet product! We'll definitely
check it out :)
------
mechanize
Excited!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Over 20 percent of Harvard undergrads do not intend to enroll in Fall 2020 - hhs
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/8/7/harvard-coronavirus-fall-enrollment-numbers/
======
uberman
This is going to be common across almost all institutions.
If you have family that are entering college this fall that had hoped to
attend a more prestigious college or university or who thought a prestigious
college was out of reach and did not apply to one, or perhaps even thought
that college in general was out of reach then please take a moment to re-
evaluate things.
I _strongly_ recommend that they reach out to the admissions departments on
their wish list. With foreign enrollment curtailed and domestic enrollment way
down and seeking to deffer, institutions are scrambling for students and this
is a once in a century opportunity. Remember that many institutions will be
offering online classes and extra safety measures this fall so it might be the
case that in-person instruction is very limited.
I am in the business of prepping, coaching and helping to place the children
of the affluent into the top 100 colleges and universities. I was talking a
few weeks back with a director of admissions for a masters program with
incoming enrollment off 50% as a result of a lack of foreign applicants. They
told me they would probably "do whatever they needed to do to accept a
domestic applicant at this point". I have never seen an opportunity like this
before. I only with my own kids were old enough to take advantage of this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
addict – the Python dict with attribute access is now in v2 - mewwts
https://github.com/mewwts/addict/releases/tag/v2.0.0
======
brudgers
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)
~~~
mewwts
Good point which I missed. I think this upgrade is substantial enough to be a
'Show HN'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Turducken model of why programming is hard to learn - nreece
http://imprompt.us/2007/turducken/
======
ubudesign
if the person you are teaching has a more mathematical background, then you
will not have that much problem getting them used to functions calling self,
and loops inside other loops, etc. The trick would be to reduce functions into
smaller more elegant segments. And if they are not, have them take some math
classes or teach them about project management :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Noobs-Term – A cross-platform terminal configuration for everyone - aaronkjones
https://noobs-term.com/#/
======
Pawamoy
I'm currently building a list of resources that I want to use to customize my
terminal and improve my productivity. This is definitely something I will dig
into. Thank you for sharing!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Junior Full Stack Dev from PhD? - thorowwwwwaway
I am planning on defending my thesis in a STEM field at the University of Michigan this year (advisor is very flexible with timing) and trying to figure out what comes next. I am considering doing a full stack boot camp (such as app academy). I have some programming experience from the PhD work (python, matlab, and some C), but no full stack experience. I would also like to stay in Michigan for at least a few years while my wife finishes her professional degree.<p>Questions:<p>- Will the PhD be a detriment for looking for a junior dev job?<p>- How hard are junior dev roles to come by? A lot of the local job openings want a few years experience.
======
jki275
If you have a Ph.D in STEM, why would you not be applying for senior scientist
roles?
You're far overqualified, and at the same time nearly unqualified, for a
junior developer role. That doesn't mean you can't get hired, but it's going
to be harder than applying to something your academics highly qualify you for.
Find a role where you can advise junior developers -- I work with multiple
scientists with advanced degrees, they code some but their real role is to
make sure we know what we're coding up and why.
------
davismwfl
The PhD shouldn't be a cause any issues, just show it is recent. The fact it
isn't in engineering/comp sci won't help you get in the door but it shows you
can complete a difficult task. I'd highlight on your cover letter how you feel
your experience with your PhD work is relevant in terms of software to where
you are applying.
It will probably be harder for you than some others, but I don't think if you
are decent skillset wise where you'll have major issues. I'd look for jobs
where you are sending your resume not to HR but to the hiring manager directly
ideally. HR is a filter, and it is hard for them to know what is valuable or
not and so they use things like the lack of a degree or relevant work
experience as the first filter, understandably. Hence getting directly to a
hiring manager will be better.
Also, you might ask some of your professors that may have contacts within the
field or maybe they can refer you to a CS dept prof that can help you. Getting
a warm intro to a company wouldn't hurt you. A little networking could go a
long way here.
------
jppope
I agree with jki275, you should be able to find gigs that pay better which
leverage your existing experience AND will give you time to up your
engineering skills
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple takes on German café over logo - jamesbritt
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8858333/Apple-takes-on-German-cafe-over-logo.html
======
jamesbritt
#apfelkind has become a hashtag of interest on G+, too.
<https://plus.google.com/u/1/s/%23apfelkind>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dream Homes from the Past Century - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190521-10-dream-homes-from-the-past-century
======
freetime2
Recently my idea of a dream house would something in the traditional Japanese
style with wood, tatami, shoji, and a beautiful garden. I remember being
really blown away by the Nomura house [1] in Kanazawa many years ago.
Of course I would probably want to update it with better insulation, air
conditioning, and more glass/screens to let me enjoy the views of the garden
while keeping the bugs out.
The best part is you don’t even need to break the bank to get something like
that. An old abandoned Japanese folk house can be purchased for next to
nothing and completely renovated for less than the cost of a 1 bedroom condo
in the Bay Area. [2]
[1] [https://www.kanazawastation.com/nomura-samurai-house-
garden/](https://www.kanazawastation.com/nomura-samurai-house-garden/)
[2]
[https://www.rakusumu.com/sale/detail/00166-200049](https://www.rakusumu.com/sale/detail/00166-200049)
~~~
seanmcdirmid
A lot of those homes are difficult to retrofit with decent heating and
insulation. I had a friend thattried this with an old Beijing hutong whose
bones simply weren’t designed for central heating. You can put in something,
but it will be expensive and/or ineffective.
~~~
082349872349872
炬燵 are a thing
~~~
elric
True. It's long been my opinion that it's more efficient to heat a person (or
a couple of persons) than to heat an entire home, most of which is empty at
any given time. A kotatsu fits that bill rather nicely.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Kotatsus are limited: they are ok if you are idle, but they don’t warm your
hands if you want to get work done on a laptop. I can never get anything done
MIL’s apartment in southern China in the winter (southern China gets no
central heating, and it still gets cold).
~~~
carapace
Put a lump of butter in your tea. Sure it's gross but you'll be warm. ;-)
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Doesn’t stop your hands from freezing.
~~~
carapace
It suspect it would (unless you have circulation issues in your hands or
something.) Your body burns the extra fat and whatnot to keep your core temp
up. At least that's the theory I was told. I was camping in the mountains and
too cold at night when a friend told me about this. We used hot chocolate, a
cup after dinner with a tablespoon of butter in it. Sure enough, I was roasty
toasty all night.
I'm not sure it would stop your hands from freezing but it might be worth a
try.
------
symmitchry
Part of me loves architecture and seeing these amazing homes. Sadly, a bigger
part of me cannot afford a 1 bedroom condo.
In my old age, my lower middle class 'lot in life' prevents me from really
enjoying luxurious things.
~~~
082349872349872
Brits in the Austen period distinguished between attributes, acquisitions, and
accomplishments. The first are things one is born with and keep until death,
such as eye colour. The second are things one has bought and may sell. The
last are things one has done, or has learned how to do. You may not be able to
acquire instances of 'architecture porn', but you can enjoy them (and may even
be able to rent them), and very little keeps you from accomplishing things.
~~~
switch11
this is so true
------
dafoex
A lot of these are too form over function for my tastes. They are very
interesting to look at for the most part, but I'm not sure I'd like to live in
a glass cube with everything on show, or in a brutalist mountain of concrete.
The one I would pick, however, is the "teletubby house" at the bottom of the
article. It looks small, but strikes a good balance between art and
practicality, to my mind.
------
fullito
My biggest worry is, when i finaly have the money and the ground to build my
dream, that i'm not allowed to due to building restrictions :(...
Germany is densily populated and you can get a house + ground with 2-5 acres
for 200-500.000k but they are all in the so called 'outter area' and
apparently we don't want that. You have strict building restrictions. you
can't just tear it down and rebiuld it (what you often need to to be able to
build their at all. Your dream house will not be the original 0815 building)
Anyway, while i have a ton of ideas, my main motivation is to create spaces
and design a house around it.
That spot where you gonna watch movies, the wind and rain protected outdoor
place to watch the rain, the office which allows me to look out, feel the wind
and having enough shade that my screen is usefull, the gaming room, they day
bedroom, bright, with a great view and the tea room. Something like when Dr.
Strange was finding that teacher there was a very beautiful japanese style
empty square room with openings to every side and curtains.
Aaaand a Workshop, hobby room with big window to the north, solar power,
additional water reserve and a storehouse for gworing your own food.
All of that should be in a layout with optimizes sun exposure. And it has
either stacks of wood outside the window with slits high enough that you can
look out but the sun doesn't annoy you or other high quality automatic
blindes.
Modern, pratical, sustainable (also cheap to maintain).
Basically to build my dream house, i just need luck, time and money. Luck for
the location and building regulations, Time to think that through and money.
I think i watched too much BBCs Grand Designs
~~~
ido
google is telling me an acre is a bit more than 4000 square meter...You need
8000-20,000 square meter plot for your house & yard or am I reading something
wrongly?
The house my father was born in (& my grandmother still lived in till shortly
before she died) was on a ~2500 square meter plot that seemed _huge_ to me, so
much that when my father & uncle sold the property 4 more houses were built on
the same plot.
From what you wrote above your house would comfortably fit in a 1000 square
meter plot with enough room for a yard around it.
~~~
TylerE
Very large yards make for good neighbors.
~~~
ecpottinger
And lets you do things without bothering them either.
------
soneca
First I was surprised to see how modern were these houses from the _”past
century”_. Then I realized that the past century is no longer the 19th
century, as it was while I was growing up and got used to the term.
~~~
cheesecracker
Same here. I was actually hoping to see lots of outdated dreams, like "look
what they thought would be cool, but turned out to be completely impractical".
Also, all such posts miss location. What good is a cool house, if the next
supermarket is 50 miles away?
~~~
ghaff
50 miles is not really all that far, especially if there are closer markets
that aren't full-blown supermarkets. Under the right circumstances--and
assuming Internet etc.--I would certainly consider living 50 miles from a
supermarket.
~~~
mod
I agree, and I live something like 40 miles from a walmart.
We do have a local grocery closer, it's about a 30 minute drive.
We strive to produce a lot of our own food, and that which we do not produce,
we buy in bulk. We make a trip to the grocery every couple of weeks, primarily
for things that perish quickly--produce in the winter (when we are not
producing it in our garden), milk, etc.
Internet isn't great, but it can stream a few TVs worth of netflix, so it's
not terrible either.
With 40 acres, mostly of hardwood forest I can romp around in--I love it
there, truly.
------
jhoechtl
I lived for 10 years in a very transparent house. Loved it for two years. The
lack of privacy and the need of shade from sunlight=heat inside made me finall
move to a more closed construction.
~~~
6510
haha, that transparent bedroom.
------
WalterBright
I hate to say it, but the Desert House looks like the restroom building at the
local park here.
I like the other houses :-)
~~~
ethbro
Beware anytime an architect says "subvert" with a gleam in their eyes...
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Is it just me or does anybody else think that the Desert House, United States
looks a lot like a rest stop bathroom?
~~~
tlack
Definitely an odd exterior aesthetic but it's a lot more rational on the
inside: [https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jim-jennings-
sli...](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jim-jennings-
slideshow-092009)
~~~
ViViDboarder
Interesting interior design too with the open area and the gap window at
ceiling level going around the whole home. I guess there’s not much of a view
and likely a lot of solar heat, so the configuration makes sense.
------
mjevans
I dislike how much glass is used in many of these houses. I imagine they let a
LOT of ambient noise and heat inside.
~~~
nullc
You can build windows that have sound attenuation greater than common wall
construction.
My office at home has a series of 62"x80" windows effectively forming the
walls on two sides of four sides, and smaller windows covering on one side. I
had the windows built as 3/16"-PVB_laminate-1/4"-1/2"_gap-1/4". The lamination
and the different thicknesses detune the panes, and the large mass provides a
lot of attenuation.
You can hardly hear someone standing outside yelling. People often comment how
quiet it is after they step inside and close the door.
[It also helps that I don't have any computers in the room-- just
display/keyboard and long fiber displayport cables to a rack in another room.]
These windows aren't particularly exotic... basically just the minimum you
might to do design for a lot of attenuation.
Here is a comparison chart (from a quick google):
[http://girardglass.com/uploads/stc_rating_chart.pdf](http://girardglass.com/uploads/stc_rating_chart.pdf)
Similarly for thermal insulating properties. Modern coatings can reject an
enormous amount of heat-- enough that in some designs its preferable to us
less effective coatings because the windows face the morning sun and the heat
gain is beneficial.
~~~
teruakohatu
Can you explain what "3/16"-PVB_laminate-1/4"-1/2"_gap-1/4" means? Is that
four layers of glass?
~~~
nullc
3/16" glass then a layer of PVB laminate then a layer of 1/4" class then a
1/2" sealed space of air then 1/4" glass.
So two glass panes, which are different thicknesses, one which is comprised of
a laminate sandwich.
------
pkamb
I'd love a service that surfaced "architecturally desirable" homes for sale in
your area, at various price points.
This is a hard criteria to define. But I know it when I see it. Some
combination of materials, craftsmanship, age, and design. Not necessarily
location or price.
It's very hard to filter for using Redfin or Zillow. I wish there was an MLS
site that showed you 50+ listing thumbnails on a single page and allowed you
to click through on any that caught your eye.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
100% agree. I usually search Zillow with “modern” or “contemporary” or
“architect”, which usually means 5-10% will actually be interesting houses. It
seems the vast majority of even extremely expensive homes are completely
devoid of any sense of design beyond “however the other McMansions look”.
~~~
mod
Perhaps this has something to do with location, as well.
The town my business is located in (American South) has a great, long history.
Many, many homes are now over 100 years old. A lot of them are very large, and
have exquisite crafstmanship oozing everywhere--for me, that's primarily
woodwork. Exposed beams, winding staircases, etc.
Anyway there's a couple hundred of those here, I think.
There are also a ton of more modern (1970s-era) homes that were definitely
swanky at the time, but now are really lackluster. They just look dated, while
the 100-year-old homes look magnificent.
------
FreeBricklayer
Are these dream homes or architecturally interesting homes? I would certainly
not want to live in one of those homes.
~~~
freetime2
Definitely “dream” in the not-your-home-in-reality sense. My assumption is
that the people who can afford to build houses like this do so as second (or
third, etc) homes, and live in something much more practical as their “daily
driver”.
------
SirLJ
If I am on a small budget, would build something like this:
[https://www.calearth.org/tour](https://www.calearth.org/tour)
[https://www.calearth.org/alumni-projects2](https://www.calearth.org/alumni-
projects2)
If the budget is unlimited, would probably buy a castle in south of France or
something...
------
msh
Reminds me of this good blog post on how social behaviors drive architecture
of our homes: [https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2019/04/archite...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2019/04/architecture-and-the-house-of-.html)
------
zuhayeer
Also check out [https://www.dwell.com/](https://www.dwell.com/) – sort of like
a Dribbble for homes
There's something really inspiring about nice architecture and interior
designs
------
dghughes
A few of the homes have many glass walls where do you plug in things? Seems
very impractical.
~~~
brewdad
Power outlets built into the floor, most likely.
------
sdan
Chilean house is literally just some glass and wood. Scary to think how people
sleep in that.
~~~
twalla
I imagine being on a lot large enough or remote enough that you have no
visible neighbors probably helps.
~~~
ghaff
Yeah, as long as you have isolation there's no reason to keep people from
being able to see in the house.
That said, that design doesn't seem super practical and the photographs
probably wouldn't look nearly as nice once all the electrical cords and
general clutter is out. And I imagine it doesn't offer a lot of separation for
visiting family, etc.
The Graham House looks like it has lots of glass while still having some
separation between parts of the house.
------
baybal2
It's 2020, and most Chinese still don't believe that most of Americans are
living in wooden houses.
------
LockAndLol
Really nice to know that I'd have to work till I'm 60 to afford a house like
that without taking on serious debt. What a time to be alive. I'm so grateful.
~~~
anm89
The horror of having to settle for having all your needs met and living
without insane luxury. Poor you.
These houses would have been unaffordable to almost everyone at any time I'm
history and two hundred years ago no amount of wealth could have bought you
them at all. So what again is special about being alive now?
~~~
Aeolun
What is special about now is that you can have a simple house now, and have it
be the envy of a kings’ from 200 years ago.
The sheer comfort of living in a modern house is insane, regardless of the
size.
~~~
sgt101
Add a decent modern mattress and a 60" TV connected to Netflix and bring the
billionaire envy 150 years forward?
~~~
owenversteeg
Not the mattress. High quality handmade horsehair mattresses are what the
absolute richest of the rich have slept on for hundreds of years and continue
to do today in 2020. There's a reason they go for $100k, I've tried them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Intel Iris Xe Graphics, Next-Gen GPU Powering Tiger Lake CPUs Spotted - rbanffy
https://wccftech.com/intel-iris-xe-graphics-next-gen-gpu-for-tiger-lake-cpus/
======
PaulHoule
... And it can just about handle wolf3d but it struggles to play doom.
American car manufacturers abandon their failed small car brands, I can't get
why Intel still keeps the Iris and Atom brands around.
~~~
imtringued
According to random internet rumors it should have roughly the same
performance as the integrated GPU in the 4700U which handles Doom at reduced
settings poorly but it is definitively playable [0]. To be fair Doom actually
takes advantage of all 8 cores of the Ryzen. It's very possible that the Intel
CPU won't keep up and bottleneck the GPU.
[0] [https://youtu.be/nERBxhAUMYA](https://youtu.be/nERBxhAUMYA)
If you are truly talking about the Doom from 1993 then I think your joke is in
poor taste because that game doesn't even need a GPU and can run on very old
computers. Here is your answer: iGPUs are absolutely necessary for laptops and
other mobile devices when your TDP budget is 15W-28W for CPU and GPU combined.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reddit Declares Itself a ‘Government’ - eplanit
http://betabeat.com/2014/09/reddit-declares-itself-a-government/
======
paulhauggis
yes, another government that actively squashes anything pro-religious, pro-
capitalistic, and the community regularly takes part in witch hunts that many
times lead to people getting hurt, fired, or both.
I also question the median age of the community. I once saw a multi-thread
discussion (with lots of comments) arguing that a 13 year old has plenty of
life experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1000Memories (YC S10): The Internet Adds New Dimension to Grieving Process - Bretthuneycutt
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_16278589?IADID=Search-www.siliconvalley.com-www.siliconvalley.com&nclick_check=1
======
oscilloscope
I don't like the emphasis these companies place on "forever". To me, the
tragic part about death on the internet is how confusing and muddled the
_event_ of death is. We leave behind aliases and loose ends in several
different communities. We die in the middle of a rapidly accelerating digital
life process.
Facebook et al. will have to develop serious policies of death eventually.
Someday a third of their users will be dead-- someday the _majority_ of
Facebook users may be dead. I think there's space for a web service that lets
you compose your last words on these platforms, to be delivered
programmatically through APIs and other means in the event of your death. Last
emails, submissions, status updates, etc. A "Goodbye World" script, so to
speak. To depart deliberately, gracefully (or maybe, explosively!) from our
many virtual lives.
------
Tycho
It's an interesting thought how mourners may want to continually visit the
webspace (Facebook page etc) of the deceased, while blocking it from the
broader public. Perhaps people will start consciously creating 'dead-space'
online to leave behind when they die. I imagine things like 2nd Life already
encountered this (I recall a moving story about a terminally ill mother who
left behind Harvest Moon presents for her kids, who didn't realize till later
cause they'd stopped playing the game), but it could go even further. It could
become a custom to create a sort of online world and fill it with things that
are quintessentially _you_ , and then after you die loved ones can access it
(and maybe interact) as a memorial.
~~~
aquadoctorbob
Here's a link to the moving story you're thinking of:
[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/11/animalc...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/11/animalcrossing.jpg)
------
waderoush
That's a nice piece by the Merc -- glad they discovered you guys! Congrats
Brett. It's just too bad so many journalists start by default with the "how
this new thing is NOT Facebook" angle. I'm guilty of it myself, of course.
~~~
Bretthuneycutt
thanks, wade!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The age of loneliness is killing us - kareemm
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us
======
_rpd
> British children no longer aspire to be train drivers or nurses – more than
> a fifth say they “just want to be rich”
British socialism is the least comprehensible of all socialisms.
------
zafka
Simply delightful!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Next-Gen iPhone to include significant camera improvements - ironeus
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/52422
======
keltex
Next generation device X to have improved feature Y.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How essential is Maths? - jackson_1
I'm in my final year of studying computer science/programming in university. I'm pretty good at programming, infact I'm one of the top in my class. However, I struggle with my math classes, barely passing each semester. Is this odd, to be good at programming but be useless at maths?
What worries me the most is what I've read about applying for programming positions in places like Google and Microsoft, where they ask you a random math question. I know that I'd panic and just fail on the spot...
edit: Thanks for all the tips and advice. I was only using Google and Microsoft as an example, since everyone knows them. Oh and for all the redditors commenting about 'Maths' vs 'Math', I'm not from the US and was unaware that it had a different spelling over there. Perhaps I should forget the MATHS and take up English asap!
======
adamwulf
How do we report spam users?
jackson_1 seems to be both "final year of studying computer science" and "So
I'm a 3rd year electrical engineering student"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825550))
the text from both of those questions mentions reddit, and can be googled and
traced to ~2010...
------
ralmeida
Depends a little: essencial _for what_?
Also, "math" is a very, very broad term. What comes to your mind when you
think of "math"? Arithmeric operations? Being good at mental calculations at
the supermarket? High-school-level math? Calculus? Discrete math? Abstract
algebra? The answer to this question alone may point out the fact that you
struggle with a specific branch of math, not with math as a whole.
That being said, I don't think it's _essential_ for _most_ coding/software
engineering work. There are some exceptions, though:
\- Real Computer _Science_ work. Think research-level position in the
industry.
\- Systems that rely on math properties to work (math is tangential). For a
simple example, consider implementing the compare() method for a custom class.
That may require some basic understanding of abstract-ish algebra to ensure
that the semantic conditions (the ones your compiler can't check via static
analysis), for example.
\- Systems that are built around (or almost around) a math concept: machine
learning, 3D graphics programming, Monoids for big data calculations, Monads
for functional programming, etc.
Except for heavier research work, I don't think you absolutely need a _prior_
"ability" with math to learn the concepts required to work even with
mathematically-inclined systems. You may need to work harder on getting your
head around certain concepts, though.
------
Jugurtha
1 - You shouldn't take English. "Math" is U.S. English. "Maths" is British
English for Mathematics. The French also write "Maths" for "Mathématiques". In
Arabic, it's رياضيات. A plural in every one of those languages.
I use U.S. English, but I mostly write "Maths". Here's for the nit-pick.
Nobody can accuse you of sucking at English since the British, you know, the
people who spoke English first, write it that way.
2 - How essential?
I don't know and it depends. I personally do Maths for several reasons:
* Fun. I enjoy it. I find it beautiful on the rare occasions I understand it, so it's a glimpse of what lies ahead and motivates me to keep at it despite being inept. It's something I'll keep doing until I die.
* Preemptive measure to understand things in the future so that I don't have to worry about the Maths aspect of a hypothetical topic. I'm comforted in this logic because it has helped me in the past in finding solutions (for instance, Taylor series to simplify modulation in a transistor circuit).
* Some topics require a certain sophistication: I had courses in Control Systems (continuous and discrete) and there's a bunch of topics like Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman, stability, optimal control, etc) that, if you want to understand, require a certain toolbox. You can get by without having that toolbox but you'd only be good at blindly _applying_ formulas and computing results, basically what a computer can do better than you.
That's only my naive opinion. I don't even have a job so what do I know.
------
distantfog
Do you plan to apply to Google or Microsoft? There are literally thousands of
companies that aren't Google or Microsoft. And most of those companies don't
have every "programmer" and their brother applying to them. I don't think you
should be too worried about math. Assuming you can count, add, divide, etc.
Unless you are creating advanced algorithms that have never been created
before (i.e. Cryptography).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Washington State Lawmakers Scramble to Exempt Themselves from Public Records - DubiousPusher
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/without-debate-state-senate-approves-open-records-bill-that-keeps-many-lawmakers-records-closed/
======
mrguyorama
Another instance of State legislatures ignoring their constituents' wishes and
covering their asses. Remember this next time you end up in the voting booth.
State, county, local positions
They _matter_
~~~
dmitrygr
Yes, but look at the vote counts. Both of the major parties did this. So not
only do we have an uphill battle convincing people to vote in local elections,
but we then have yet another hill to climb - convincing them to vote for third
parties, something that most people in USA believe to be a waste of a vote.
~~~
mrguyorama
You don't need a third party to vote out a shitty republican or democrat. I
firmly believe there can be valuable politicians in both parties.
~~~
dmitrygr
I would love to believe that too. Please show me one in California
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Sokoban levels design programming contest - _yosefk
http://sokoban-gild.com
======
adultSwim
I'm curious about the backstory to this contest. Who is running it and why?
Group of puzzle enthusiasts banding together to push the envelope? Tech
startup wanting to off-load design work for a future game?
~~~
dgreensp
It's a puzzle enthusiast named Gil, from the looks of it. There's a tradition
of running these for fun.
~~~
adultSwim
That's awesome.
------
HAL9OOO
I'm not planning on entering the contest, but for curiosity's sake i'm curious
what algorithms might be core to implementing Sokoban? +/-'s Just for my
knowledge, I'm also curious how all these puzzle apps get their levels
designed. Is someone hand designing them? Are they procedurally generated and
if so how can you prove that their is a solution/it's a fun puzzle?
------
cousin_it
No pictures?
~~~
dalke
I presume this gives the submitters a chance to improve their submissions
without the other competitors appropriating ideas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New XPS 15 and 17 inch launch imminent - heinzemann
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2020/05/10/15-inch-dell-xps-15-9500-2020-and-17-inch-xps-17-9700-imminent-could-put-hurt-on-16-inch-macbook-pro/
======
heinzemann
According to Forbes, launch of the new developer-nirvana laptops from Dell is
imminent!
~~~
ranc1d
I'm a long time MBP Pro user but definitely will be switching next time I'm
upgrading.
------
heinzemann
if you're a non-MS developer, you'd need to first install a proper OS on it of
course. Long time MBP user, switched to XPS 5 years ago. Haven't looked back
since.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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