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Ask HN: Do you have experience with school bullying? - nsajko In the last hour a few HN threads came to my attention [0][1][2], from which it seems that the overt kind of bullying that is known from movies and television series is actually a real thing. I am talking about repeated physical abuse from peers (but if somebody has deeper insights about bullying in general, I would not mind hearing about that too), because that is the thing that I thought mainly existed on TV.<p>If you have witnessed or, especially, suffered from bullying; I would like to read about it, at what education stage did it happen and where it happened. The last part is because my first thought about the beatings being real was that it is something that is exacerbated in USA schools.<p>As for my own experience (since I am asking others about it, I feel obligated to share my own experience); I was a socially inept introverted kid with little confidence and an outsider who could not really connect with other kids (and quite an annoying little prick, as I understand now), but despite those circumstances I was not repeatedly beaten (although a troublemaking kid that was shortly in my school during the lower education stage once tried to beat me up with two other people from my class, they failed). In high school there was even less bullying.<p>Now, I may have been lucky, it is possible that my schools were uncommonly nice ones in Croatia, and the fact that I was encouraged to stand up to beating attempts (on me or my friends) after reading the "Ender's game" (because of Ender doing the same ...); but really my understanding is that beatings do not happen in Croatian schools as described in those threads. Is it because of the Croatian nondemocratic socialist government heritage? Or is it an European thing? That is why I am asking this question.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212587" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212587</a><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5284664" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5284664</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21447459" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21447459</a> ====== Doxin Bullying is definitely a real thing, but I think limiting your definition of bullying to only physical acts is doing a disservice to the victims. I've been bullied for a long time, and am glad that that's in the past now. I've never been physically harmed, I have no scars or hospital visits or even bruises. I've been affected mentally though. Turns out that being told you're ugly or weird or stupid 15 times a day really takes a toll on your mental health. How are you supposed to be a normal kid if no one will even talk to you? How are you supposed to learn to socialize? How are you supposed to have a positive self-image if you get told you're shit at every turn? How are you supposed to focus on learning if people are constantly trying to get your attention just to say mean things? How are you supposed to play if everyone just runs away from you? Sure the adults tell you you're smart and beautiful and worth having around, but how believable is that when they don't lift a finger to stop the name calling? How are you supposed to lead a normal life if you're carrying all that baggage and there's no one who will help? I've linked the "To this day project" video in the comments of HN often enough when the topic of bullying comes up. For me seeing that video was a real turning point. It was the point where I stopped believing all the things that mean little shits said about me years ago. I still cry when I listen to it every single time. So I'll link it again, in the hopes that it'll help someone else too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY) "I’m not the only kid who grew up this way surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called and we got called them all" \-- Shane Koyczan ~~~ t-h-e-chief Wow. Thanks for sharing Doxin. The 'Shane Koyczan' video is beautiful. I honestly feel that reaching out to someone being bullied is the most selfless act a person can do. I hope that everyone reading this can remember that and one day, when the need arises, can step forward and just be there for another person who needs someone. ~~~ Doxin Thank you for taking the time to have a look. That video is probably the one and only time I've thought "this guy gets it". There's a lot of people in the world unaware of bullying. It gets stereotyped to this thing where people are hung from their underwear in the showers, while that's a thing that happens too I bet, it's not what happens most commonly. Most bullying is invisible. It happens when no one who cares is looking and leaves no physical marks. I just hope to show as many people as possible this video in the hope to create awareness of what bullying is, and not what the media portrays it to be. For those unable to watch the video for whatever reason you can find the text here[0] but it's much more powerful when spoken by the author, You can tell it impacts him deeply to tell these stories. [0] [https://genius.com/Shane-koyczan-to-this-day- annotated](https://genius.com/Shane-koyczan-to-this-day-annotated) ------ packetpirate Yes, throughout High School. At that point I had become socially disconnected and didn't have many friends. There were a few people who stood out from the usual put-downs and idiotic comments. The problem is that even when something physical actually happened, for example, the time when someone sucker punched me in the face at my locker in front of an entire full hallway of students, everyone blamed me because of my size. I'm 6'10" (was probably 6'2" to 6'6" throughout High School) and the school administration always assumed I started it because I was the big and intimidating one. It was to the point where one time, someone who routinely attacked and insulted me actually punched me right in front of the main office, where there were giant bay windows so the secretaries and administrators could see everything. I barely retaliated by pushing him away and the ROTC teacher broke it up, and because the one who attacked me was in ROTC, I was blamed and suspended. There was literally never a single time I was attacked like this that the principal didn't assume I was the cause. I'll admit I was a troublemaker and did a lot of stupid shit in High School, but I never initiated any of the fights I got in or the situations I was put in. The constant put-downs from people and the fact that my home life wasn't much better affected me academically to the point where I stayed back twice and the administration shuffled me off to an alternative school where I didn't actually learn anything of use because they didn't want to deal with me anymore. I was in High School in the mid-2000s and should have graduated 2007, so it's not like this was in the 80s. The administration was just terrible and didn't care. But hey, 10+ years later and I have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and things have gotten a lot better. High School is a temporary, shitty time, and it won't have any bearing on your life afterwards unless you let it. ~~~ nsajko I suppose, based on the term "High school" that you live in the USA? ~~~ mkl "High school" is probably the most common term in English, even for people from non-English-speaking countries (i.e. it gets used as a translation). It's the main term in some other English-speaking countries too, e.g. New Zealand (we also use "secondary school"). Edit: ["High school"] gets me 2.6e9 Google results, and ["secondary school"] only gets 1.9e8. ------ lifeslogit I experienced lots of bullying. It messed me up real good emotionally. It also greatly informed my worldview (for better or for worse). So the details about the bullying: public north-eastern grade & middle school: physical bullying during school hours (punched, shoved, tripped etc). The occasionally roughing up outside (never anything truly violent, just some bruises and black eyes). Teachers always took the "punish both sides". Later on I was lucky to both join a group and endear myself to one of the scariest kids around. This protected me from 80% of instances and things got much better. private all-boys school: more emotional, getting called lots of names, people ignoring you, calling you weird, laughing at you, etc. It made it very tough to be confident and as a result, I spent the first 2 years by myself. What can be learned from these experiences? Confidence and patience are necessary in developing and managing relationships. I heavily discount the ideology of truly being an "individual" when it comes to the perception of your peers. I'd rather have them think of me as your average nice person, and then we can build our relationship past that if the opportunities arise. The current kids have it rough with Social Media, and I would imagine it adds complexity making it more difficult. You are effectively making a bet with your public-facing persona, and some of us bite off more than we can chew. ------ octokatt (In United States, high school, north-east, small town of 25k, early 2000's) Got bullied, was the only girl in computer classes. Cliche, I know, but actually happened. Dead bugs on my notes when I left my desk, awful things direct messaged to my computer, shoved around, had my computer unplugged while trying to work, gum shoved over the lock on my locker... one time a guy wiped his wet hands on me and said "Don't you hate it when you go to the bathroom and get piss all over your hands?" I stood up for myself a lot, but man, the piss on the hands thing made me cry. I did not have friends in those classes. I was singlehandedly the reason why the computer lab got rearranged and policies were updated twice. I still ended up deciding to go for a different major in college because I never wanted to have that happen again. Ended up always being in an IT role anyway because I learned so much from the teacher. He was my favorite, and went to bat for me a couple of times. I still send him Christmas cards, nearly twenty years later, because he was such a good teacher and I still use the stuff he taught. ------ thiago_fm I had to deal with some alpha-kids at school, but at the time, nobody called that bullying. I also never viewed that as a problem, because I was never heavily beaten and I would also hit back, I hit once a kid so hard that I broke his jaw and nobody ever touched a finger on me and I made very lasting friends after that episode. That made me grow as a person as well, but it wasn't very necessary. I'd rather have not went through this. Other kids on my class didn't fight back and have been abused, which is quite bad. School has very similar dynamics to prisons and the earlier a kid finds it out(or has parents that explain to them), the better. I also helped a lot of kids that got bullied on school, but there is much more kids willing to bully than kids willing to help. At least that made me also long-lasting friendships. I think those "bullying" dynamics happen similarly when you become an adult, where police is there to hit minorities and displaced people. Where those alpha-kids with good backgrounds fare very well while bullying employees and doing their own schemes, and when things go south, their banks get bailed out. Meanwhile you as a working class have to keep pushing forward, accepting to do overtime and so on. Getting bullied forever is something humans just accept as a fate. Some kids, just as some adults, really fail to fight back and find their own space in that system and end up in a bad position. I'd say that those who failed to fight back at school also end up failing to fight back as adults. At least in the adult world things are a bit more civilised at a times, which gives the impression "that is just life and it's working as expected". But it is still there. My mother, even though we were very poor, since I was very young, used to tell me how it is important to have an edge/advantage over people and how society is basically made of that. The more I can get away with, the better I'm positioned and that I should pay attention to that and use that to guide me. It took me a while to understand that, but I'm very glad she took the time to teach me that. ~~~ yetihehe > I'd say that those who failed to fight back at school also end up failing to > fight back as adults. I'm just that kind of person, I'm having hard time fighting back, because typically everytime it made situation worse. I can't think of good response in the time where that response is required, and trying to respond just with violence does nothing good. From what I've seen, bullies typically try to anger someone and steer them towards making actions that hurt or disgrace bullied person, sometimes even making them look like original attacker. ~~~ thiago_fm Yep. I wouldn't say you ARE this kind of person, you just need to practice more and understand what works. For instance, I'm no way perfect in that art. But it's a subtle thing that many kids don't even notice that exists... and unfortunately end up being just prey for dominant people. ------ Simulacra Are you kidding? On paper I should have been a school shooter. I was bullied relentlessly on a near-daily basis by other students and even some teachers. Physically assaulted, verbally harassed, things stolen.. they even loosened the lug nuts on my car. I gave up complaining halfway through ninth grade because the only support I got was “move away from people bothering you” and “tell the teacher”. By telling the teacher I became the annoying problem. ~~~ nsajko Which country? ~~~ Simulacra USA ------ cgriswald USA. In Kindergarten I punched a kid on the bus for taking “my seat.” I remember being surprised I had done it. I wasn’t thinking about it or intending to do it. The bus driver wrote me up, and I had a talk with the principal the next day. The talk was confusing for me and I was a “good kid” so it was a little traumatic as well. What I took away from it was that it was never okay to hit. Well, that meant I didn’t hit back, either. I was bullied a little in elementary school after that, always physically; mostly by one guy who was older and bigger by virtue of being held back a year. There was one older girl who tried to verbally bully me when she saw me but I didn’t understand what she was saying so it never really bothered me. Things were really bad in middle school. My parents divorced, which was devastating to me, and I was in a new school district with all new kids. And I didn’t hit back. I was bullied constantly on the bus by a big kid and his toady. I had a few more bullies at school as well, and when I moved again (same district/school) I had bullies in my neighborhood so I got bullied by some of the same kids even away from school. Everything combined put me in a place where standing up for myself wasn’t possible emotionally, and the few times I tried it made things worse. There is a lot of truth to “just standing up for yourself” to end bullying, but that just shifts it onto the next victim; and it wasn’t something that could help me at the time. For no reason I understand, maybe school policy, the bullying stopped being physical in the ninth grade, and for the rest of high school it stopped completely. ------ potta_coffee I was beaten up repeatedly in school. The school did nothing to stop it. This is during 8th and 9th grade. I was also stabbed with some kind of homemade knife, a pen with a nail in the tip. It hurt but the injury wasn't serious. I finally decided that I'd rather go down fighting, and I started beating up my bullies, or at least fighting back. I found that mostly these kinds of people like easy targets, so they started leaving me alone. I haven't been in school for many years, this is in the 90's. I don't know what it's like anymore but I do know there's been an effort to bring more attention to bullying. ------ Jugurtha I mainly learned about it watching Hollywood movies but didn't think it was real at all until recently. There's no bullying theme where I'm from. I'm from Algiers, Algeria and I haven't seen bullying. Kids _do_ fight but it's "organized". They give each other a time and a location after school (no need to involve school staff), other kids cheer the fight, make predictions, and ensure it doesn't go too far. Kids get excited by fights, and when it's done, the opponents dust it off. There is also a break-down after the fight by each kid's friends on what they should have done. _However_ , if the fight is unfair or one of the opponents is too weak for the other, other kids would step up and prevent it from happening. If the stronger kid insists, one or more kids would protect the weaker, and tell the stronger kid to get lost. If not, there's a fight between the stronger kid and the one preventing him from beating the weaker one. There's nothing of the sort of someone repeatedly picking on someone else, humiliating them, taking their food/money, putting them in locker rooms, etc. If a kid did that, they would be beat up usually by some other kid who becomes a sort of body guard. Kids did it for sport but would intervene as soon as something was not "fair" (either one party unwilling to participate or too weak). Even psychological abuse would get stopped by other kids (if a kid mocked another's physique, or economic condition, others would never let it slide and would go to physical violence to correct a perceived tort: like "Call him that one more time and I'll fuck you up" and they did). That's primary school. Fights become rare in middle school and quasi inexistent by high-school. ------ theshrike79 What irks me that physical assaults, when done at school, become "bullying". If something is not OK between adults, it's not OK between children and should be treated accordingly. ------ kstenerud I moved around a lot and as a result was targeted by the bullies at every new school. I learned early (grade 1) that the best way to deal with them was to fight back, quickly, viciously, using every dirty trick you can think of (I almost took one bully's eye out with a rock, for example). It doesn't matter how much of a beating you take in the process, so long as they think twice about trying it again. Bullies look for easy targets, so make yourself as hard as possible, and make sure there are witnesses. Worked every time (6 in total), but it got me into a lot of trouble with teachers and principals who disagreed with my methods. If I were a kid today, I'd be a lot sneakier, because the things I did would get you juvie nowadays. ------ kcmastrpc This is something I need to write about, I was born with a cleft-pallet and was heavily ridiculed and bullied throughout my childhood. This had serious ramifications which prevented me from finishing high school with my class, and I started using drugs and alcohol when I was 14 to cope with the verbal and physical abuse. This was over 20 years ago though and schools today are much better about addressing these issues - however, I am in a much better position mentally to talk about it now. ~~~ aklemm I’m glad you’re out of the woods. Do you think kids can be raised to be strong enough to befriend those with differences rather than pile on and abuse them? I’d like to think yes. ------ kresten With due respect, HN is likely the world's most concentrated nerd community. Nerds are bully targets. Asking such questions here is not going to give a response that is representative of the general community. My guess is that many of the people here on HN got bullied. My kids have been doing boxing since age 5 and are forbidden to stop taking classes. This is specifically so they can deliver hard lessons to the bullies who will appear in teenage years. ~~~ adamredwoods Unless they themselves become the bullies. ------ mantap Yes I was bullied (UK, middle class). The teachers were powerless to do anything if they didn't see, and few bullies are stupid enough to assault you when teachers can see. Nobody _ever_ taught me that I had a right to defend myself. That is what is missing from bullying education. If you have kids, teach them that they have a right to hit back! This was in primary school. By the time I got to secondary school I had learned to fight back and although some bullies tried to mess with me, ultimately they went looking for softer targets. Sadly I later found out that one of my friends was getting very badly bullied in secondary school - tell your kids to tell a reliable friend if they are getting bullied, I would have been able to help if I had known. ~~~ theshrike79 "Never start a fight, but if one starts, don't lose." is what my father taught me when I started getting bullied. Worked both times I was physically bullied, people stopped pretty fast when they saw that I didn't fight "fair", I fought to win. Eyes, ears, genitalia was all fair game from the start with no regard for "fairness". ~~~ me_me_me > "Never start a fight, but if one starts, don't lose." That's really good motto. Don't lose doesn't mean win, just make sure to show you are not a victim and they will have to pay some price for fucking with you. ------ blankton Guy from Germany here. I were with my twin (both guys) in the same class. Im also a Christian who really belives in the Bible (Really rare in my area). In short: I were an outsider (but together with my brother). Nonetheless bullying wasnt really a thing. In the beginning some kids gave it a try, but the achieved nothing. Generally the time was really great, we had a lot of fun. Our class was awesome and stood together. We had the typical Groupes and often little figths, but it never got physical. If a new kid came in class he had some starting problems, but generally new friends were made quickly. Bullying happend, but on a minor scale and never physical, just the stupid stuff kids say if they want to be cool. ------ Normal_gaussian I attended a small primary school (ages 4-11) and witnessed no bullying. Whilst in secondary school (ages 11-16) I witnessed various attempts at bullying of the psychological kind- very little if anything physical. It only came to my attention recently (thanks to a former teacher) that I had avoided bullying because they had "tried" and I didn't realise and didn't care about them, which is a death knell for psychological bullying. Whilst in 'sixth form' (16-18) I observed significant bullying of the TV/film kind. A kid who associated with the "high performing idiots" group was thrown into a hedge outside the school practically every day. The staff were aware but never witnessed it, and the student being assaulted never reported his 'friends'. He was also repeatedly the butt of psychological bullying. In my view this occurred because the school repeatedly failed to disrupt the friendship group that had an unhealthy dynamic. After talking to teachers I found out that a common technique is to ensure the friends aren't in the same classes, and when they are to disrupt their seating. Their friendship should dwindle and they will form relationships with others. In the sixth form case these students had persisted as they were all high achievers - schools are incentivised not to move children out of "top set" classes, and to let them stay together as they were more disruptive to other students apart. ------ psv1 I grew up in eastern Europe in the 90s and 00s - the whole conversation about bullying is really foreign to me and it really stands out how common it seems to be in the US and to a lesser extent in the UK. ~~~ throwmeback So you never ever witnessed bullying while growing up? I doubt it. I also grew up in a post-Iron Curtain country and have a vastly different experience than yours. I was bullied since kindergarten right to the end of my education. I've seen people bullied both in a small city and a bigger one. Both verbally and physically. Most times it were the poorer kids who did it. ~~~ theworld572 No, bullying is just a US (and UK) thing. Everything in the US and UK is bad. Everything in Europe is good. We don't have bullying, or smart phone addiction, or family breakdown, or populist leaders, or racial tensions or drug and alcohol problems. We all live harmoniously in Europe, you guys (Americans) can learn a lot from us. </sarcasticcomment> ------ yulaow Got bullied in high school because I was "the slim tall guy" and because my mother was a teacher in middle school of some of these bullies so they thought they could try their revenge on me. They heavily verbally bullied me but never tried physical contact. Going back I think I would physically react early to stop the abusing because it prolonged for a very long time (3~years, until I was big enough that they probably thought risking my physical reaction would end very very bad for them) As some other users said: teach your kids they have the right to defend themselves. ------ non-entity Dealt with some bullying, always verbal, mostly in elementary school (I was a weird kid, I suspect from lack of socialization) and in middle school, although at that point I start fighting back and ended up getting in lots of trouble and often finding myself at the other end of bullying. High school was different. By high school I just wanted to keep my head down and do what I had to graduate. Didn't have a whole lot of friends, but wasn't bullied either. I was mostly amicable with everyone I interacted with. ------ tmux314 USA "Good" Public Elementary School (ages 6-11): Little to no bullying Small Catholic Middle School (ages 12-14): a decent amount of physical/verbal bullying. I escaped most of it by being a bigger kid. But it definitely seemed like an issue in the Catholic schools in the area (I saw the same pattern at a summer school at another school). "Progressive" Private high school (ages 15-18): Little to no bullying. But lots of pressure to succeed. We had a pretty bad suicide problem, considering the size of the school. ------ mcv I'm not at all surprised that bullying is real. I'm not sure if my own experience counts as bullying; I have been targeted at times: teased, called names, excluded; once even by the guy who I up to that point thought was my best friend. But in my primary school there was also a very awkward boy one year older who was definitely universally bullied, and I regret to admit that I once wrestled him to the ground, which won me some temporary respect from other kids (and private shame later in life). In secondary school, there were two kids who kept picking on me for years, but I eventually learned to ignore then and feel sorry for them. When I was somewhere between 15 and 18, a girl who had been in my class in primary school and apparently knew me as a potential bullying target called me a crybaby out of nowhere, and I was mostly baffled that someone would be so incapable of growing up. I'd grown pretty much immune by that time. But what I often wonder is whether the stereotypical American TV-show bullying is something that really exists: wedgies, stuffing people in lockers, that sort of thing. On American TV, it seems to be the universally accepted standard form of bullying, but it sounds a bit too outlandish to me to be based on anything real. ------ EnderMB I was lucky enough to not suffer much from bullying. I was introverted and nerdy, but I also liked sports and was lucky enough to look athletic enough that people wouldn't start fights with me. I'd get the occasional bit of verbal bullying, but again I've been lucky enough to be able to brush it off and not let it bother me. Sadly, a lot of my friends at the time didn't have the same luck, and I watched a lot of people get picked on for years. Not standing up for them was one of my biggest regrets as a kid, because I watched it destroy some of them. The common stereotype of nerds growing up to be successful and having character, while the bully rots in some run-down area is far from the truth. It might happen, but I've seen plenty of assholes from my school days have decent lives while old friends from school have gone from zero confidence as a kid to zero confidence as an adult. It's one thing that I shared with many of these kids. I had very little confidence in myself as a kid, but thankfully I've managed to find some thanks to a mixture of a decent career, keeping fit, and being involved in combat sports. For the past few years I've done BJJ and some MMA, and despite being an adult that hasn't had a "real fight" since I was a kid, the confidence I feel from being able to defend myself enough to run away/escape is life- changing. It's probably the kind of advice you'd get from a boomer, but I'd recommend enrolling a kid in a combat sport like BJJ or Kickboxing, if not to teach them to fight, then to instil some confidence in their ability to defend themselves from someone attacking them or their friends. Confidence in something/anything is key. ------ 8bitsrule While it's been 20 years since Columbine, I recall that Jon Katz started a discussion on Slashdot that generated thousands of personal reports from across the country (and led him to publish the book 'Voices From the Hellmouth'. The school's state was far from unique (going back a long time before it). I wonder whether that widely-reported tragedy resulted in much change. >"Voices from the Hellmouth is a sensitive and brutally truthful account of the pain and alienation teenagers go through when deemed "different" by their high school classmates. [0] [0] [https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2000042001806pr](https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2000042001806pr) ------ droge (I'm from U.S) I was bullied from 6th grade to 12th grade. I didn't experience physical bullying only mental bullying. Due to anxiety & depression (Diagnosed by psychiatrist), it was reinforced/made worse due to my assumptions. I'd always assume people were thinking a certain way about me, which did make me upset. Throughout school we had all forms of anti-bullying mediums shown/broadcasted throughout the school (On TV's, as well as literature). The only time there was physical bullying was when kids were doing things they weren't supposed to be doing (Going to class, not provoking others, etc). Over the years of being bullied, I've found multiple ways to cope and I "grew thicker skin." One way, was to skip cafeteria and head to the library and read/browse the web. I always thought it was kind of insensitive to tell a victim of bullying to grow thicker skin. This doesn't apply to everyone, but I feel if I wasn't bullied/put through mental torment during school, I would be a lot weaker mentally. It shaped me into becoming a stronger person. Best way to combat verbal bullying is to not show any emotion towards the bully and they won't gain any satisfaction. Plus, it's best not to value what they say if they're just insulting you to insult you. I've felt insulted while in my early teens for constructive criticism, which I should've used to improve myself, instead of ignoring and taking it as an insult. ------ Smithalicious Yes, in elementary school, relentlessly. Lots of verbal abuse, being excluded but also regular physical abuse. Fist fights were a daily occurrence at my elementary school, often to the point of real injury (i.e. bleeding). Fights didn't just involve bullies and people being bullied either. All this was in the Netherlands. Past elementary school I haven't seen much bullying. My elementary school was particularly bad but friends who went to different schools also confirm that this kind of thing wasn't unusual. ------ trumbitta2 I live in Italy. Being a giant all my life (190cm now, 188cm age 16), and a taciturn good boy, I was continuously bullied until say 18 years old. This guy I want to talk about, kept teasing, challenging, bullying me for three years until I just snapped, lost control of my actions, and woke up 10s later holding him by his neck 40cm above the floor against a wall. We became friends a couple hours later. ------ collyw I am curious if there are people who _don 't_ have experience of some sort of school bullying. ------ 0xdead PSA: if your kid is being bullied in school, it is totally OK to knock the shit out of the bully exactly once (after gathering sufficient evidence of bullying). It will resolve 99% of your kid's problems. ~~~ nsajko I hope you meant for your kid to do it ... I imagine parents roughing up minors would have a host of bad results, possibly including prison time? ------ itronitron Really depends on the school, luckily the public high school I attended was high ranking and it was in sort of a company town. Despite that, I recall one week in 9th grade when two upper-class football players tried to shake me down for lunch money several days in a row. Since I played dumb and told them that I brought my lunch (a lie) they lost interest after a few days. I didn't report it, and I'd been exposed to enough stuff in middle school that I didn't dwell on it. ------ senectus1 I used to routinely get beaten up by the Principle of the schools, Jock son. My self defense process was to laugh at him for it. "Just what do you think you're proving beating up a the class nerd?", Are you so insecure that you'd beat me up for talking to your girlfriend?" etc. Probably made things worse for myself but its how i coped. Jokes on him, he grew up to be academically successful (briefly) hit drugs hard then die in a fiery drug fueled car crash in his low 20's. I'm mid 40's decent job, house 2 awesome kids and fantastic wife. ------ berghofian I've been on both sides of bullying. In one context (school), I was somewhat of a bully. I was bigger than the rest of my class, and I often attempted to assert my dominance, usually by making jokes at people's expense. In another context (competitive sports outside of school), I was typically the primary outsider who was bullied in just that manner. I don't know where (or if) to draw a causal line, but I do know that memories of both sides of that equation seem to involve deep-seated insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. ~~~ sys_64738 I remember somebody who hassled me often at high school met me by chance in the pub in later years. I told them what a wanker they were to me at school and this made them agitated. When they asked. What they could do to make amends they didn’t like my verbal response. So suddenly they got aggressive and the aggro started right there. Some never change when they’re mask slips. ------ ivolimmen Dutch guy here. Yes I was bullied in primary school and secondary school but not physical. It was just because I wasn't wearing the "right" shoes, etc. ------ avgeek23 Yes,mostly older kids picked on us younger kids on the bus ride home. My school was pretty strict though so someone was suspended for couple of days from school for such activity. ------ thrwwy13359637 Coming into year 7 I went to school with a bad atmosphere and some really bad people it. Management also had some idea that they'd break up all the prior groups, so I got placed with only one guy that wasn't really a close friend for classes. For the first year it wasn't very personal. Senior students would loudly mock me, and a lot of non-aggressive pupils, usually for some thing to do with personal style or alleged sexual perversion, in front their peers, sometimes someone would sweep my leg, or break stuff, mostly like expensive mechanical pens or textbooks/notebooks. The younger jackasses in my cohort would do things like light spray deodorant on fire and use it as a flamethrower and sweep laser pointers against peoples eyes (and at the time it was still rumored that can give permanent eye injuries). Year 8 I had dirty pond water thrown at me and a classmate by a group of bullies blocking a path. They scattered and ran when I started towards them, but after that it was personal. I guess rumors travel quickly in those circles and I had about a year and a half of personal hell as they marked me (always in groups, the fucking cowards) in recess and lessons with weak teachers. First followup I got soaked through with water the assailant said she'd taken out of the toilet. Not too long after two guys cornered me with a clear aim at breaking my musical instrument and beating me up. They didn't succeed, I evaded, but the ringleader was known to have beaten a guys face bloody against a brick wall, so the threat wasn't idle. In practice the physical violence was limited to getting pushed roughly into lockers and getting hit i the back of my head once when one of them managed to catch me unaware. They broke my vehicles twice, one of them in a way I'm just lucky didn't kill me in a traffic accident. But the constant threat of much worse violence and their ever- present jeering about my alleged sexual deviances, mocking my dialect, calling me crazy, and so on, that really took its toll. I had days when I couldn't hold any food. I'd just throw up frow the stress. As for the crazy, they were just being assholes then, I was simply a sensitive kid with too much belief in pacifism and going through the system. But that one they kind of managed to make come true. I have struggled for decades now with depressions and a sense of hopelessness. I can't connect with friend groups, I've been in to shitty shape to get a partner and I am fighting the suicide impulses less and less for my sake and more for the effects on my relatives. And I won't say the bullying alone did that, but it was an indispensable beginning for it. For your statistics, this was Sweden. ~~~ sbergjohansen I'm really sorry to hear what you had to go through. Thank you for sharing your experience (and to the many others who have written here). I wish you all the best in finding friends and a partner, which you definitely will. Please be good to yourself! Your nuanced writing shows your sensitivity is still there, and that's a good thing. ------ 5456496667 I'm Polish, from a small city of 100 000 people in the north. To me bullying and violence was such an almost everyday occurrence, that I'm surprised that someone could think that bullying is not part of school life. I wouldn't be able to recount how many times I have witnessed bullying. I witnessed bullying of people who were just not good at responding to bullying. That included not only other kids, but teachers as well. One of primary school catechesis teachers (catholic teacher before baptism) was bullied. People would throw paper balls at her, laugh in her face etc. I don't know what happened to her. Then on my very first day of junior high the teacher responsible for my class had a mental breakdown and started to cry because of a conflict with one of girls in the class. She, the teacher, beefed up after that and tried her best to make anything out of the class. I think it was her last class assignment before she retired and I'm really grateful to her for trying. In the same junior high class, bullying didn't spare even "alpha males". One of alpha males and bullies was reduced to an underdog, because he was suspected of cooperating with police. He would be beaten if he tried to wait for classes in physical proximity of a classroom. After some time he was moved to some other school. The same happened to another guy. I was myself on reviving end maybe 4 times. I was humiliated for example by pouring a soda on my head. Although, one time when I was in primary school, it was more an assault with pneumatic rifle than bullying. I had no money, nor anything really valuable, so those two guys stole from me a knoppers (snack- bar)... Brothers of these two guys ended up in the junior high class with me. Twice I ended up being part of a group that was bullying. Once in primary school, I wandered off after school with group of my class mates and they ended up bullying our another class mate. I was never very social so if I recall correctly I didn't even register that we were not just wandering around, but that they were planning a "setup". Another time I was at a birthday party. It was when I was in high school. I more or less knew what could happen, because certain guys were bragging about similar things. What happen was that colleges of my classmate decided to randomly assault pedestrians just for the thrill of it; they were not trying to steal anything from them, they just literally wanted to beat random people for fun. Me and the birthday guy had to force one guy to let this random guy escape. He was kicking that poor guy around head while the guy was on the ground. But again, bullying is not a good term here, it was a brutal assault. The guys should have ended up in prison. I should have reported it to police. But as I wrote, bad things were happening to people who were getting involved with police. Mind you, I don't think I was in bad schools. My primary school was very much an average school. The junior high was in the same building, with the same classrooms, and with the same teachers as the best high school in the city. My high school was not the best, but the third best in the city out of maybe 20 other schools. Although, I think, my junior high class was an exceptionally bad class. ~~~ astrodev I went to a school in south-west Poland. My experiences were not too dissimilar to those described here, so I think this account is entirely plausible. ------ Jemm Yes. Went to a Catholic school. Was horrific and life altering. ------ aklemm I’m afraid to ask, but is it possible this is more common as a U.S. phenomenon? ~~~ throwmeback I have seen and experienced bullying in both small and large cities in Poland. It gets worse every year, especially nowadays with social media. ------ mbubb For me some bullying received and some shitty behaviour intended to secure other than the lowest rung on the dominance hierarchy... I was for the most part withdrawn child through high school... Today I have sons I have watched them go through beginning adolescence. Noted that there is a fair amount of friction that builds up when boys (and sometimes girls) hang out and play. When it is ok we call it "rough housing" when it crosses a line bullying. Even with each other there is a kind of play which starts as a tickle fight and ends up with WWA moves. Aggression is a natural behaviour and in itself is not bad. It seems crucial to focus it and give it an outlet. In their grammar school they would get week long bullying programs but nowhere in that is what to do for exploding energy they feel inside. I thought of BJJ, they idea was if they were going to act like young Randy Coutures they should know how not to hurt each other. It wasn't really for self defense or confidence. After a few years in it I am happy in a number of ways. One is that I followed them in - it looked like so much fun I started about 6 months or so after them. It is not a striking discipline so there are no punches or kicks. It comes out of judo but there is less standing and throwing. And after a good class you feel wrung out. Like most of the muscles in your body have been activated. It's weird to say this but there is something about nonsexual contact with others. It is relaxing. I have noted when I am on the NYC subway after class - I do not mind the jostling and bags jammed in the back quite as much. (A lot of the joke names for BJJ note this: "involuntary couples yoga"; "pajama wrestling"; "the art of folding clothes with people still in them".) You break through a barrier with strangers that you would not normally breach. And afterwards you are not strangers. I think my boys are calmer and more relaxed. Also around girls as there are a few girls in BJJ that can legitimately kick ass. When I watch their classes I see how the teacher actively pushes them to take care of each other. The general idea is you don't hurt your training partners so they will be around tomorrow to do it again. Train hard and safe. It can be done and is a core ethic in BJJ. My younger son came home in tears as he had one ofhis stripes taken off his belt. He was submitting another kid and they refused to tap. My son continued and hurt the kid (luckily nothing broken). Teacher yelled at my son insisting he understand how to stop before the opponent gets hurt. I realized that BJJ might be good for bullies. Not the 0.01% of actual budding psychopaths but the rest of us full of energy needing to be expressed. We think of martial arts for the bullied - and they can be. But something like BJJ might help some folks not be bullies. I would never say "everyone should do BJJ" nor anything for that matter. But I wonder how much excessively bottled aggression and energy could be focused into something like BJJ that teaches you how to express it in a way that is not about humiliation and dominance. BJJ is humbling. There is someone out there that is 50 pounds lighter and a few inches shorter and they can put you in difficult positions. Then you scratch your head and try again and maybe get a little better. These are good lessons for kids to learn. Wish I had learned them. ------ Havoc Yeah, but pretty mild. Left some, but no significant effects. ------ thimkerbell It seems that not everyone grows out of that role. ------ pvaldes Some tried but it didn't went as they expected. ------ Red_Leaves_Flyy I was a victim of many serial bullies, and worse, from grade school through high school. While I experienced numerous traumatic experiences during my early childhood the worst bully was my school. My school refused, repeatedly, to take any action whatsoever against a child in my grade that would reenact or act out in regard to beatings, rapes, and murders, he witnessed in his home country, on me and the other poor souls stuck in the project with this tortured soul. His parents refused to acknowledge his bad behaviors publicly, but in private they would beat him worse than I was beat. When I acted out in school I was put in solitary confinement in a room resembling a prison cell. My memory is foggy but it feels as if I spent more time in that prison than in class. The school couldn't bring themselves to deal with a broken migrant family straight from a war zone. in their weakness they caused immeasurable harm to me. They're lucky my parents moved me to a different district before this kid could kill me. He came close a few times. The next school wasn't any better. Again, there were multiple perpetrators in this time period, but the most egregious was the school and their refusal to clean their house. I experienced years of daily physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of a woman a few years older than me, until again I was moved away from these perpetrators. School social workers dismissed my experiences and blamed me. In late middle school I started acting out in ways that the school could not ignore. I distinctly remember reporting directly to school administration that I was being bullied at recess and being laughed off. The next day I struck the bully. At first the planning officer (detention teacher) was talking expulsion, no tolerance, blah blah blah. When I told him that I reported the bullies behavior the day prior and no action was taken I was let off with a warning. This incident bought me a relatively healthy amount of peace and quiet for the rest of the school year. Though things quickly escalated out of control in high school once I realized I could stop many bullies in their tracks with my greater strength. At the time I didn't realize that these bullies parents could strong arm the administration into overlooking their children's terrible behavior while punishing me. Not long after this all blew up I started filing dozens-hundreds of official reports outlining virtually every abuse I suffered with the help of social workers happy for the hundreds of billable hours and a long list of diagnoses to bill against. Not a single ______* one was investigated by child protective services. Then I finished school and spent years and years bouncing around, vainly looking for community, and a place to heal my wounds and come to terms with what I 've experienced. I'm obviously still pretty raw about these parts of my life, but if I can help shed some light on how shitty it is to grow up with constant abuse, from peers, neglect from caretakers, and parents completely unable to stand up against the organized incompetence of small city education then feel free to ask me questions. I'll put my email in my profile in a bit. Sorry if my thoughts are disjointed or the formatting is bad. On my phone. ------ equalunique I have been the bullied, and the bully, in US elementary schools during the 90s. Never on a consistent basis, like you hear about in US popular culture. All my memories since 3 years old are of feeling like an outsider. Strong cliques were present even in kindergarten. I suppose this is because my elementary school was in a dense neighborhood, so kids from there were more likely to share social bonds both in and out of school. The further away your home was, the more socially disconnected you were, and the outsider feeling was probably a consequence of that. It was always after school, when hordes of kids went mostly unsupervised on the campus, when the bullying happened. I was usually alone. I liked to draw pictures. The bullies called me names, stole my papers and pencils, and hit me when I wouldn't give them away. I had friends at school, but most of them were picked up by their parents soon after school ended. I had to wait on campus in "after school" for hours until one of my parents drove from work to pick me up. Maybe it was my fault for not wanting to join in with the other kids. Maybe it was because my parents told me all the time that I was special that I thought I was better than everyone else, and couldn't waste effort on being with them. Eventually, I figured out that bullies leave you alone when you hit them really, really hard. In halls where no teachers watched, there were fights. By the end of Elementary School, the kids who all bullied me were shorter than me. I began to play rough. I confronted one member of the in-cliques in the middle of the cafeteria, knocked the wind out of him, and just walked away. No one stopped me, and no adults were present to intervene. I wanted people to believe that I was dangerous, and succeeded at that. Some time after that, during after school, there was a kid who seemed smart and interesting to me. Learning about him, he mentioned that it was dangerous to hit him on the head, because he was "epileptic." I had never heard of this "epileptic" thing before. I wondered, what would happen if he was hit on the head? So I hit him. He exclaimed something like "Noooooo! Don't hit my head! Don't do it!" To which I thought, "Hah. You had better try to stop me then." So I hit him again, and again, and again. He didn't do anything to stop me physically, so I kept doing it. After a dozen times, it started to bore me, so I finally left him alone. Later that afternoon, I felt guilty about what I'd done. I don't remember if I apologized to him or not, but I hope I did, because I'm pretty sure this counts as bullying. It's an incredibly intoxicating feeling to put your own amusement above the needs of others, especially when you can justify it. ("Oh, I was just trying to learn about epilepsy, and he's also weird.") Exploiting the perceived weakness of others to be in control of the situation makes you feel powerful, even more so when you've already experienced the same thing the other way around. Becoming comfortable as a dangerous outsider gave me a reputation of being an annoying ass who nobody wanted to be around. Socially, I was stunted, and it's taken a lifetime of personal development to break through some of that. To address your question "Is it because of the Croatian nondemocratic socialist government heritage? Or is it an European thing?" I cannot speak to Croatia, but I did go to the Netherlands for a few summers as a kid. It seemed like the kids on the playgrounds there were consistently mean to me too, and sometimes I would act threateningly to show them that I wasn't to be trifled with.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Rumor: New Mac Mini Coming to Macworld 2009 - raju http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/rumor-new-mac-m.html ====== old-gregg Jesus motherfucking christ... How could I have missed this: <http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/11/apple-adds-copy.html> This makes me want to throw my MBP across the room. ~~~ ROFISH Except that as of right now, it's only for HD content that has been purchased from the iTunes Store. But it's only for specific content from a specific location. A HDCP monitor isn't required for anything else. (I know it's a 'not my problem' issue, but if you want something to happen start blaming Big Content since this is their idea. Do you really think the all the low-level engineers at Apple really want to go through all this effort to benefit the consumer?) ------ inovica I currently use a Mac Mini as a media center with a Panasonic projector. Its a little slow playing HD movies, so I am looking forward to better graphics support. I am concerned though that I might not be able to play iTunes movies via it if they have DRM crippled the display port. ------ tialys The Mac Mini is long overdue for something, but I'd be less surprised to see something in the same ballpark, but new. They've left the mini alone too long for just a simple update. ------ sspencer Kind of interesting, but really it would have been a safe prediction even without the supposed leak. Now if there is a leak concerning the mythical OS X Netbook, I'm all ears... ------ axod Maybe with this update they'll kindly address the following: * When I run front row, and one of my kids accidentally presses a key it doesn't understand, don't exit frontrow!!! How is that a sane decision? I'd expect that sort of idiocy from MS Media center. Not from Apple. * For the love of god please fix the idiotically bad Dolby 5.1 support (Or lack of it). Trying to get 5.1 output is ridiculously hard unless you stuff an actual DVD in the thing. Apart from those 2 issues, I'm pretty pleased with my mac mini, higher resolution output wouldn't hurt, and the wireless keyboard could do with a little trackpad, but can't think of much else. ------ ambulatorybird A better graphics chip and easier user-upgradeability would be nice. Even if they had to make the unit a little taller, it would be a good tradeoff. ------ jimbokun Could be Apple's way of addressing the recession. Give people a viable, lower cost option to continue moving from Windows to Mac. People who were willing to pay for a MacBook to move from Windows to Mac last year might be more price sensitive next year. ------ antidaily And let me guess - comes with Mini DisplayPort. And no new Displays yet (or adaptors). ~~~ markbao The new Mini DisplayPort adapters are insanely expensive. Since I need one for my external monitor as well as presenting on a projector, I dropped a total of $60 on the DVI and VGA adapters. Even worse for those who have to power their 30" screens with $100 adapters. :/ ~~~ wmf At the office we have some new MBPs and old ADC Cinema Displays, so you need a $30 DisplayPort to DVI cable _and_ a $100 DVI to ADC converter. What a pain. ------ tocomment $400 would be a better price point to really get their sales going. ------ sfk Please wake me up when MacBooks start shipping with a matte 4:3 UXGA display. ~~~ MikeCapone Widescreen is here to stay, I'm pretty sure. ~~~ axod Until "Tallscreen" is released in 2015 or so. Now get taller screens! Yes throw away all your existing screens, tall is in, wide is out! buy buy buy! ~~~ wmf I know you're joking, but I've heard that two 24" monitors rotated is a pretty nice setup. Any monitor with a VESA mount (ahem Apple) can be pretty easily rotated. A 1920-pixel-tall screen gives you room for huge editor windows. ~~~ cpr You can buy VESA mounts from Apple for the pre-LED Cinema Displays. Don't know about the LED-based 24" display, but I'd imagine so.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Changing my operating system - MattBearman http://sivers.org/os ====== jayfuerstenberg Thinking the article was too long, I was searching for mentions of "OSX", "Linux", "Windows" and not finding what I was looking for. Then I noticed he wasn't talking about computer operating systems. ~~~ sivers Sorry about that. Next week I'll post a succinct article about switching to OpenBSD, and I'll title it, "Long interview about life and travel." :-) ~~~ jayfuerstenberg Hahaha. Well I mean too long for me at the moment. I'll certainly give it a good read later when I have time. ------ jonathanwallace 'But that feeling kind of scares me, because it’s like that thing when people get to a certain age and say “This is who I am. This is how I like my eggs. This is where I live.”' This how I've been trying to live my life for the past seven or eight years, by tackling the fear head on. Sometimes I've been successful and other times, not so much. Never settle and never get comfortable. Thanks for the inspiring interview. ------ hbien Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite episodes from that podcast actually aired right after Derek Siver's interview: [http://foolishadventure.com/audio/write-compelling-copy- with...](http://foolishadventure.com/audio/write-compelling-copy-with-joanna- weibe-of-copyhackers-fa133/) It was definitely worth a listen and included a ton of practical tips on copywriting. The one that stuck with me the most was to "steal copy from your potential customers", for example, look up customers' Amazon reviews on your competitors to see how they're describing products. ~~~ Ecio78 She was also interviewed in an episode of TechZing [http://techzinglive.com/page/857/153-tz-interview-joanna- wie...](http://techzinglive.com/page/857/153-tz-interview-joanna-wiebe- copyhackers) a year and a half ago. ------ JacobAldridge I like the analogy (and, of course, the content which has been read and bookmarked!). I'm co-launching a business into this sphere next month, though with a niche focus on young women - not sure how the OS analogy will work but so many other tips are universally applicable. ~~~ jk4930 > focus on young women So you're co-launching a sect and become a sex-guru? ;) No srsly, I've found that many people (not only young women) could need some help to get more self-esteem, curiosity (many are, but they think they're not allowed to be), orientation, focus, can-do mentality, so your business could be helpful. Indirectly I do something similar. I give seminars (as a side business) on business apparel and experienced that the technical stuff (e.g., colour choice or sleeve length) is just a part, attitude is equally (or even more) important. And people (both men and women) often need someone (me in this case) who tells them that they're not that bad, that there are (mostly unwritten or not commonly known) rules out there that can be understood. That a lot of confusion can be reduced often with simple methods (i.e., complex things made simple and applicable). My background in social simulation certainly helps to understand social dynamics and make those rules and how-to procedures minimal and explicit. E.g., parts of my approach are directly transfered from the theory of situated agents, where one is embedded within a (social) context, occupies a (social) position, has goals, which lead to the required actions. Shorter: f(context, position, goals) -> actions. In the case of my seminars, the actions are mostly clothing-related (e.g., dress like co-workers or dress like seniors?). But it's easily extendable. Sorry, you didn't ask for this, I wrote it anyway. :) ------ Nursie I don't really get the whole self-help, personal-development thing, but maybe that's because when life starts to bore me or get stale I change it. The conversation in the article reads like this guy is somewhat manic though. ~~~ keithpeter Transcripts of interviews do _tend_ to read a little over the top, however this chap does seem to have plenty of drive. " _If I say these two sentences. It would let them tell the relatives back in India that their daughter had a proper Muslim wedding. Means nothing to me, it means everything to them. So here we go._ " Hope that one works out OK. ------ dualogy WOW. I'm not usually the type for self-help-guru-personal-development stuff at all -- _really_ \-- but THIS interview knocked me outa my flip-flops. Must- read! Great stuff @sivers, cheers from Phnom Penh :) ------ idle_processor >"Reading lots of books. Lots of non-fiction books. Particularly a lot about psychology, behavioural economics, studies of happiness" Mind sharing your top picks from that crop, sivers? ~~~ autodafe He goes into quite a bit of detail here: <http://sivers.org/book> ~~~ sivers Yep ^ that's the link. Those books are default sorted in order with my top recommendations at the top. A little blurb on each, then detailed notes inside. ~~~ RyanMcGreal If you haven't yet read Steven Pinker's book _The Better Angels of our Nature_ , I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a long read, but the writing is crisp and often hilarious, and I challenge anyone to come away from it without a sizable dent in their worldview. ------ ValentineC So, somewhere around 41:25: (I know that this is Steven Pressfield's concept, but...) what's the difference between 'resistance' and procrastination? Edit: I searched around and, from Pressfield himself: "Procrastination is the most common manifestation of resistance because it's the easiest to rationalize..." Looks like I have three more books to add to my reading list. ------ Nightrider A similar mindhack on how to revert back to your "Last Known Working Configuration": [http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last- kno...](http://zerotosuperhero.com/mindhack/find-your-lifes-last-known- working-configuration/) Its good for uncovering unnoticed strengths and keystone habits. Note: I'm firing up Zero to Superhero again, but excuse the blog as its still under construction. ~~~ graeme Thanks! A good idea, simply expressed. I am way off from my last known working configuration, time to switch back. ~~~ Nightrider Thanks for the kind words Graeme. Much more on the way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Main Linux problems on the desktop, 2015 edition - bpierre http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html ====== realharo Can definitely confirm issues with touchpad drivers. Lack of basic features such as ignoring a thumb that's resting on one of the buttons (which works in Windows) makes using Linux on a laptop a very unpleasant experience.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Where to incorporate free of the US? - geuis Its a hypothetical question, but answers could be helpful to others.<p>I'm a US citizen. Suppose that I wanted to form a company providing a service that the US government conceivably might want access to. What would be some advanced countries (internet access, stable government and society, free market) where I could form a company and be free of US government shennanigans? ====== dragonwriter There aren't any. Your choices are: 1) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, they can hand you an order to give them access and you will face criminal sanctions if you fail to comply (i.e., the US itself), or 2) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, then either you will be the target of efforts to enlist your local government (if that government is one the US government thinks it can influence on the issue) or you become the target of the most powerful national security apparatus on the planet, without even the theoretical restraints that apply to that apparatus when it is operating domestically (i.e., everywhere that isn't the US.) Neither of these can be reasonably described as "free of US government shennanigans" in either the theoretical or the practical sense. ~~~ geuis This is depressing. Welp, looks like space is the place to be. ~~~ krapp If you're interested I know a guy who can get you some real estate on the Moon, cheap. ------ BWStearns You could build the system so that giving information would be useless. This could be achieved (depending on the system) by having users host their data on their own computers, or by using crypto that would render you unable to provide the data (i.e. they have the private key and you cannot provide anything but the ciphertext). That said it would only be as effective as your implementation, so hire (or be) a good crypto guy! ------ ethanazir For patent purposes: and perhaps English language I would look at New Zealand. I don't know the NZ view on National Security though. Singapore is a tax haven but looks real bad if your not very wealthy. Other options I ignored because of language issues or other uncertainties associated with countries like Venezuela.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What are your problems or need in your life - theaktu ====== krapp What are your problems or need in your life 3 points by theaktu 11 hours ago \| flag \| 16 comments Do you have any application or service ideas? 2 points by theaktu 15 hours ago \| flag \| 6 comments What would be your dream application or service? 2 points by theaktu 1 day ago \| flag \| 1 comment What are the problems you face on a daily basis? 1 point by theaktu 1 day ago \| flag \| 3 comments Maybe you should try coming up with your own startup ideas rather than expecting Hacker News to feed them to you. Or at least just keep it to one thread. ~~~ relkor Its not idea farming, it karma farming, and theaktu is not a real person, just a deep neural net that will get some lucky undergrad an A this semester. edit: see how it is improving the title and getting more upvotes? ~~~ coderKen really? cool! ------ miguelrochefort \- I have over 100 different apps on my phone. I have over 1000 online accounts. That's too much to manage. I want just one. \- I want financial independence so that I can stop worrying and start living. \- I want to get rid of all physical possessions. I don't want to own a house, a car, a fridge, food, a phone, clothes. I just want to get these things on demand, as needed. When I no longer need them, they disappear. Basically, I don't want to have to think and worry about stuff that doesn't matter. I want freedom. I want a constant "My mind like water" state. ~~~ kleer001 > I want to get rid of all physical possessions. This is a huge soap box of mine. Transitioning us all from an ownership mentality to an access mentality. It's close to sharing, which is close to socialism and communism which strikes and the fear centers of many a populous. Personally I have tasted of this wonderful world with car sharing. Car2Go namely. So good. Then there's couchSurfing. It's not exactly the same thing, but on the way. I do think that software is getting that way, soon. With the old school dumb terminal philosophy that comes after App-world. We already have it with digital assistants like Siri and Cortana. I can certainly see their functionalities blossoming as the market (and software) gets to know its users a bit better. Food, well, you can just go out to eat. That technology has been around for a long time. Clothes? Maybe thrift stores? The fictional hero Jack Reacher epitomizes your proposal to a tea. ~~~ kashyapc [Sorry for the tangent.] Indeed, it reminded me of Jack Reacher character too. From one of the books, when another character asks Reacher why doesn't he carry spare clothes: "Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.” Thanks to my uncle, who introduced me to Reacher novels about the time I just began university in 2002. It was fun reading about 16 books (meanwhile...needless to say, I'm exactly in the opposite situation of that quote). The nice aspect about Reacher novels: you can pick up any book without regard to order, you won't miss any background context -- each book stands on its own. Certainly worth the read, if only for the vicarious experience. ------ eecks My headphones are too tight so my ears are sore. I want to write a book but never get around to doing it. I have a cold which is really annoying. I know I should go to bed to get some rest but I don't want to. ------ Cypher A Personal knowledge base, where I can collect my resources and organize my thoughts without having to rely on multiple programs. ~~~ iphoneseventeen I use OneNote for this. Android app + desktop app + web app all have similar basic functionality. ~~~ eecks OneNote is a killer app for MS. Nothing comes close (please don't say Evernote) ------ coderKen Really bored at my current day Job, always assigned to do mundane tasks, I feel like my life is wasting away. Am 23 been programming since I was 18. I recently (Last week) got a remote contract gig which I do at night which helps a bit but my day Job is sucking the life out of me, but I can't change it till I find another one. I can feel my passion during the day fading away. ~~~ lastofus Developers are in very high demand. Finding a new job is a pain but very doable. Getting stuck in a rut in life is 100x worse. ~~~ coderKen The thing is I want to work at a smaller startup not another startup-slowly- turning-to-an-organisation ------ jamesdelaneyie Someone keep this cat off my desk and lap somehow. Actually just desk. Lap is ok. ~~~ AnimalMuppet What's the problem with a cat on your desk? Just jugvgvoHWwapo fvvfv GET OFF THE KEYBOARD, YOU STUPID FLEABAG! Anyway, it's really not... HEY, STOP CHEWING ON THAT! As I was saying, just keep a laser pointer on your desk. When the cat gets on the desk, shine it on the wall where the cat can see. Wiggle it a bit. Get the cat to chase it, and use it to lure the cat off the desk back onto the floor. ------ jordsmi I need to be more productive. I currently make a good amount of money doing basically nothing at home, and should be using this time to get some more skills. Instead I just sit around and BS ~~~ lovelearning Sounds like a good problem to have! How do you make money doing nothing? ~~~ jordsmi I own an affiliate network that works with social media influencers. ------ staunch There's no really good way to trade programming time for money. ~~~ lgieron Jobs and contracts are pretty good? ------ imakesnowflakes I want an easy way to test food items that I buy from local shops for harmful levels of toxins/pesticides. ------ bitherd This thread. Thank you, and bless you. Made my day :) ------ DrScump I want a pony. ------ auganov Waking up. ------ yanwen204698 get more done	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
DragonFly BSD, version 5.4, has been released - rudolfwinestock https://www.dragonflybsd.org/release54/ ====== a012 I'd like to see DragonflyBSD and the like are supported on cloud. Maybe it'll help more adoption. ~~~ platform agreed. it would be particulary nice if DragonFly can be provisioned,optionally, as an underlying OS for Postgres, and for general file servers. I, for one, am, slowly studying/investigating if Hammer2 can be used to store and serve (with random access) billions of files (media), instead of using more purpose build' distributed file systems. ------ Crontab Very nice. I've been playing with DF in a virtual machine over the past week and it seems very nice - although I think the Hammer2 command could be more useful. ~~~ 0xdeadb00f HAMMER2 is quite undocumented in comparison to HAMMER 1. Give it some time, it's in the early stages still. ------ pstuart Anybody using Hammer2 in production?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Create DIY tutorials and share them on Pinterest from iPhone - sono_la_gii https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/diy-crafts-editor/id633299638?l=it&ls=1&mt=8 ====== pinakes installing...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Writings of Leslie Lamport - kaymanb https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html ====== ahelwer I actually read through all of these (the summaries, not the papers) in the process of writing the TLA+ wikipedia article. Some favorites: * On the oft-misunderstood significance of the bakery algorithm: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#bakery](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#bakery) * On submitting an algorithm with a bug in it, thus arousing interest in verifying concurrent algorithms (culminating decades later in the development of TLA+): [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#proving](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#proving) * On how nobody has actually read his most famous paper ( _Time, Clocks..._ ): [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks) * Hanging out, drinking beer at Dijkstra's house: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#new-approac...](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#new-approach) * On creating the first (impractical) digital signature algorithm: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#dig-sig](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#dig-sig) * A several-times-rejected paper which then became one of the most cited in the field of temporal logic: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#sometime](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#sometime) * A lifelong source of fascination, the arbiter problem: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#buridan](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#buridan) * The creation of LaTeX: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#latex](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#latex) * On presenting the first paxos paper in an Indiana Jones outfit, to widespread incomprehension: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-pax...](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos) I'll stop here because basically every single summary is fun and worth reading. ------ kaymanb The comments, anecdotes, and historical context he gives the papers are by themselves a great read, especially if you're even somewhat familiar with the results. The comments on #12, which introduces the Bakery Algorithm [1] are a great example of this. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport%27s_bakery_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport%27s_bakery_algorithm) ~~~ emmelaich There are great bits in the papers, too. For instance in the Buridan paper ... > _An empirical absence of dead asses does not invalidate Buridan’s Principle_ ------ mjb "What Good is Temporal Logic?" ([https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#what- good](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#what-good)) is in the running for my favorite CS paper. Well worth reading, and understandable even if you have a passing familiarity with predicate logic. ------ btrettel This page make me want to write some narratives about my own papers. Maybe I wouldn't release the narratives, but Lamport's page made me realize how much detail is lost to time. The context of the papers is interesting and maybe even relevant to the research. ~~~ onemoresoop Interesting how that makes me think of state in programming. Maybe theres a way to encapsulate state in these papers to capture as much as possible from the context. ------ User23 This reminds me very much of the Dijkstra archive[1]. I look forward to reading all of these as I did with those (the Dutch language ones excepted). [1] [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/) ------ redis_mlc If you're more into web design than math, check out that spartan HTML ... it's pre-Geocities, if that's possible. Didn't know that the title element would render fine even inside body! ------ astn-austin Well now here go with the good coffee shop reading! ~~~ mikhailfranco Mathematical papers seem to require coffee for their production [1] and their consumption. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfr%C3%A9d_R%C3%A9nyi#Quotati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfr%C3%A9d_R%C3%A9nyi#Quotations)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I’ve Looked at Airbnb and It’s Way Worse Than You Think - justizin https://medium.com/@sfhousingrightscommittee/an-open-letter-to-airbnb-emey-about-housing-and-prop-f-8d1bfb84356 ====== hitekker Merits of the arguments aside, righteous indignation is one of the worst tones you can choose for a persuasive piece. Edit: Rather than just being snarky ( which I love sometimes ), I found an alternative piece which I find much more compelling/more reasonable in tone: [https://pleblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/i-have-read- prop-f-...](https://pleblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/i-have-read-prop-f-and- it-is-a-perfectly-normal-and-reasonable-piece-of-legislation/) I don't know enough about the whole situation, nor have I read the original proposition so I can't say if this opinion piece is more correct. What I will say is the SF housing market seemed to be in dire straights ( due to government regulation? ) long before AirBnB hit the scene. ------ dreaminvm I would much rather hear from tenants who have been affected by AirBnB evictions and what they are doing to deal with the housing crisis. Too many of these pieces are just blame games that alienate/ignore the people factor. ------ shaftway I feel like there's a massive disconnect between these pieces. 1.) New law/proposition/whatever gets proposed. 2.) Article is published detailing how (1) can be abused. 3.) Article is published detailing why we need (1). I feel like if I was trying to get a law/proposition/whatever passed, my focus would be on these articles and knee-capping them by either amending my whatever to prevent abuse, or point out why those abuses are impossible (not unlikely, im-pos-sible). Until then, all I see is "I want _MY_ problem fixed with my bad solution, and I don't care who it hurts."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Chrome extension to check your history for Cloudflare sites - avinassh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/history-bleed/jpkhbecnecbmngclppiklcjjddhehdce ====== avinassh This is my first Chrome Extension and also first Javascript project. I haven't done anything major with Javascript earlier. The code is open source and I really appreciate if you have any feedback regarding code or functionality. If you have a feature request, then do open a PR. Github link - [https://github.com/avinassh/history- bleed](https://github.com/avinassh/history-bleed)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
President Truman Did Not Understand - sajid http://members.peak.org/~danneng/decision/usnews.html ====== mariuolo One could also argue that Leo Szilard did not grasp the political realities of his time. Whatever the ethical considerations, negotiating with Japan was not an option after the massacres as reported by the US press. Also a demonstration would have been more difficult to frame in terms of "it cost us $2B but we won the war without invading".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter adds clickable stock symbols - mikeevans https://twitter.com/twitter/status/230098997010911233 ====== mooism2 NYSE only? Or does it also link to Tokyo / London / Frankfurt / Hong Kong / etc stocks as well? ~~~ mikeevans Tried it with the Hong Kong exchange, didn't work. I'm guessing it's NYSE only right now.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: New city, freelancer job, how do you make friends and fight loneliness? - yulaow So basically I recently moved to a new city in south eu for a new job but after just some weeks I felt like that place was cancer for my mental health and I quit asap.<p>So ok, that's was a very unlucky event but now I am stuck in this city and at the moment, while evaluating what to do, I am working as a freelancer (via sites like elance).<p>The problem is... I really feel the loneliness of living so totally alone for the first time in my entire life and really don't know what to do.<p>Without a work in a company it is hard for me to make new social relationships and I don't know where to start.<p>Any suggestions or ideas? How did/do you fight loneliness? (NB at least for the next 6 weeks I can't move from this city for economical reasons) ====== thirdtruck There's a worthwhile chance that someone you already know back home has connections with others where you live now. That's how I made such a smooth social transition from one state to another twice in the space of a year: I asked everyone I knew for connections, and someone set me up with an existing gaming group even before I arrived. I had new friends within a week of moving. In the meantime: \+ Check out as many conventions or conferences as you can, but focus on the "hallway track" and the bar (you don't have to drink, either!). \+ Check out Meetup.com or even OkCupid.com (or the EU equivalents). Other people are trying to make new friends through those sites. \+ Chat with the folks where you work. Spend time in a coffee shop or co- working space if you don't already. I made a good friend, for example, out of a totally random Starbucks encounter. Hope that helps! ~~~ yulaow It is ironic, I am in one of the biggest city of this country right now but on Meetup.com I can't find more than 4 - boring - events in the next 30 days Anyway I already planned to join an hackthlon this weekend even if I never tried one and fear to be the "noob of the group" but well, I hope we all started from that position somewhere I have for sure to improve my start-a-discussion-with-strangers skill. ~~~ thirdtruck And it _is_ a skill that you can improve with practice. Good luck! ------ alain94040 I had the same problem a few years ago. I solved it by going to coffee shops to work maybe an hour per day. And in good hacker fashion, I eventually built an app for that, that lets you find "co-lunchers" (check out [http://colunchers.com](http://colunchers.com)). Hope you find it useful. ------ LadyMartel What do you do for fun? I always just go to some meetups related to either my work or my hobbies. I think any sports (hiking, mountain climbing) or artistic endeavors (woodworking, photography) type of hobbies make it really easy to make friends. ~~~ yulaow I was thinking since months to start a yoga course but I fear that in those lessons the "let's socialize" part is not considered a lot in comparison to the physical activity ~~~ LadyMartel Sure there's time to socialize. Waiting for class to start, walking to and from class/etc. You won't know until you try. (And if it doesn't work out then you'll still have done some yoga.) ------ GFischer Others have suggested it, but: \- local groups for your preferred hobby (there are lots of tabletop gaming events, I met some cool people in Europe that way) \- taking classes is a way I've met lots of people. Even if it's short courses \- going to events \- sports and other hobbies - as some mentioned, biking, trekking, climbing, running. In southern Europe there has to be some kind of sports app. Other family members use other kinds of social support: \- couchsurfing (there are local couchsurfing events almost everywhere) \- churches / NGOs / charities / volunteer work ------ lazyfunctor Try to find a co-working space in your area. If not maybe work from a cafe for some time during the day. I was gonna suggest meetup.com but looks like you do not have interesting meetups in your area. Maybe pickup some sport in your free time. Leisure, fitness and socializing all rolled into one. ------ atmosx I'd rather write a blog post and use it as reference. The topic is been discussed in very long detailed on HN, but I'm too lazy t find the link. The only advice I have is: Take haircuts and dancing lessons as often as you can. ~~~ yulaow Well this seems a very simply but effective suggestion I mean, I indeed considered to go to some dancing party (bonus I am still at an age in which I am young enough to be considered a college student) but I feel a bit awkward going there all alone, I would prefer to have with me at least one friend but I have to find one first elsewhere ~~~ atmosx Well, that's the thing with dancing classes: The members of the group ared _forced_ to actively interact with each other. So even if you go alone, you'll need to interact with men and women in your group in one way or another. The haircut is both related to the aesthetics and non-stop-talking mentality most _styling saloons_ have. ------ donotbackup Reading a bunch of Classics always help melt the time away. But also just go to a local bar and socialize with the locals. ------ munimkazia Don't underestimate the old fashioned way of making friends.. Hit the bar, have a few drinks, talk to other people at the bar. ------ thirdtruck It's only been a few days, but has any of the advice so far yielded results? I'm cheering you on. :) ------ ainiriand meetup.com is a good way of finding other people interested in the same things as you are.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open sourcing my workflowy clone - hogu https://eff.iciently.com/blog/opensource.html ====== hogu I don't actually think of this as a workflowy clone, i think of it as an org mode clone, but I think more people know what I mean if I say workflowy	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
DIY: Small $200 linux box - PStamatiou http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/01/25/diy-200-dollar-pc ====== henryw DIY super gamer pc $550: intel p35 mobo $80 e2160 overclocked to 2.7GHz easy on air $80 2GB ddr2 800MHz memory $40 8800GT 512MB video card $220 [[http://www.ncixus.com/products/27328/88YFF6HUFEXX/Galaxy%20T...](http://www.ncixus.com/products/27328/88YFF6HUFEXX/Galaxy%20Technology/)] 250GB hard drive $60 dvdrw $20 case + ps $50 [<http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204947963>] will run cod4 at 1920x1200 max graphics ~~~ rms >e2160 overclocked to 2.7GHz easy on air $80 Wow... that's better than the holy grail of overclocking I remember, a Celeron 300A to 450. I wonder how high they go if you watercool them. ------ PStamatiou downvote me for submitting my own stuff, but I figured you guys might like building a small and cheap linux box. i might even make one just to run apache-top for my server all day and see live hits come in. ------ almost Nice, that's pretty cool. Along with the M2-ATX power supply I think I may have just found the brains to power my robot project (which currently uses the guts of a laptop which seems to be dying) ------ thorax Heh, I saw "DIY: Small $200 lunch box" and I was a bit surprised.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Paris ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PS4 to Discuss and Plan Attacks - bootload http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/ ====== bootload _" With PlayStation 4, it seems likely that simple voice communication could have worked just fine. It’s still difficult for investigators to monitor IP- based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone. In 2010, the FBI pushed for access to all manner of Internet communications, including gaming chat systems."_ Can anyone confirm this? ~~~ NN88 Its been documented that mmorpg's are breeding grounds for illicit activity [http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft- intellig...](http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence- agencies-spied-in-online-games)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nmap 6.40 Released – New scripts, new signatures, better performance - Garbage http://seclists.org/nmap-announce/2013/1 ====== joshbaptiste Wow, introduced to Nmap in 1999 on Slackware Linux 2.2.x , back then we would scour the internet on our providers CIDR range looking for open windows 95/98 shares and boy there were plenty back in the day. Today I mostly use it to find out what ports are listening on a node when not sure what type of OS is on a machine since we run AIX/Linux/HP UX/IBM TPF. Great to see Fydoor still behind his baby, got to try out NCat scripting utilities to improve some network testing bash scripts we have in house.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Statistics for Programmers - semmons I'm trying to learn elementary statistics, but I cannot find a good book (or website) to start with. I tried 'Introductory Statistics with R' but it assumes you already understand basic statistics. Everything that I lookup on Amazon is a textbook and cost an arm and a leg, and I'd rather not shell out for something that I'm not sure about. So tell me, how did you learn statistics and what would you suggest to someone whose been programming for 10+ years but doesn't know what to do with a standard deviation. ====== lambda I tried asking this question on Stack Overflow a couple weeks ago. I got some good answers, though I don't feel like I got one really definitive answer. Anyhow, I'd recommend reading through that thread to see if anything leaps out at you. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2039904/what- statistics-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2039904/what-statistics- should-a-programmer-or-computer-scientist-know) ------ andrewcooke [http://www.amazon.com/Reduction-Error-Analysis-Physical- Scie...](http://www.amazon.com/Reduction-Error-Analysis-Physical- Sciences/dp/0072472278) it's been around for years (i used to own a copy of the original - i see it's been updated) and i doubt the fortran / c++ code will be much use, but it's a simple, clear, introduction to basic statistics (which is why such a slim book costs so much...)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Results of the GitHub Investigation - danielsju6 https://github.com/blog/1823-results-of-the-github-investigation ====== ender7 "We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston- Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually happened. Theresa Preston-Werner's response [2] spends more time avoiding topics than actually covering them. Tom Preston-Werner likewise [3] makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details. I'm sure there are plenty of GitHub employees who have a strong opinion, but enough of them seem to have an ax to grind in one way or another that it's hard to trust that testimony. [1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath- describes...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes- sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/) [2] [https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215](https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215) [3] [http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github- hel...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello- immersive-computing.html) ~~~ tptacek You're right. It will never be clear what actually happened. I think Internet message boards create the perception that outcomes like that are rare. They're not: they're the norm. That's how it's supposed to be. We don't get to know everything and we need to work within the limits of our knowledge. ~~~ ender7 The only problem for GitHub now is finding a way to attract talent. If your best response to "You have a hostile work environment." is "We don't have a _provably illegal_ hostile work environment." then that doesn't inspire great confidence when evaluating it as a place to work. ~~~ nailer If you want to know if GitHub is a hostile work environment according to women who work there, take a poll of current and past female employees, including Horvath. I did. So far it's working out in GitHub's favour. But maybe I missed something, so do your own research. ~~~ sneak [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833) [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528) [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096) ~~~ lawnchair_larry What a drama queen. Hard to take her seriously with these antics. ~~~ zorpner Yes, this is a common rhetorical tactic used to dismiss the opinions of women when they address issues of sexism publicly. Thank you for demonstrating this disingenuous method of discourse so ably. ~~~ lawnchair_larry No, but denouncing everything as sexism is. Her issue is with another woman. That argument doesn't apply here. Unless you're suggesting that both me and the founder's wife are sexist. ------ abalone This anonymous post from an alleged GitHub employee adds some interesting perspective.[1] It alleges Julie Ann Horvath was actually spreading rumors of a personal nature about the founder's wife before any of this. In other words, Horvath was the bully, and she really didn't like having the tables turned on her. If true, this would be a very difficult employee to keep at the company. She should have been fired for inappropriate behavior rather than given an elevated role (which she can now use to bolster her case). Very poor handling and it does suggest a degree of naivety on the part of management. Having said that, the founder's wife also admits that her actions were a role in his departure.[2] It sounds like she had way too much free reign at the company and was making people uncomfortable with her activism around her startup. The fact that she presented herself to Horvath as having a lot of influence and power within the company reflects that. Plus it's a fertile ground for more serious transgressions into company privacy and so forth. Also should've been nipped in the bud early on. [1] [https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e](https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e) [2] [https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215](https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215) ~~~ alelefant This anonymous post is no better than the unsupported claims by Julie. Unsupported claims on top of unsupported claims. ------ cjbprime There appear to have been weirdnesses around the investigation, such as Julie Ann Horvath (and other ex-employees) remaining uncontacted until it was wrapping up: [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/453298152569720832](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/453298152569720832) So I don't know how much stock you can place behind the idea that the investigators GH hired, who did not contact ex-employees competently, found them blameless. The resignation probably speaks for more than the investigation does. ~~~ hntaway An anonymous post on medium by github insiders: [https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e](https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e) Unfortunate that it is anonymous, but it is still worth reading in my opinion. ~~~ bitlord_219 It's telling that nobody would attach their name to the article. Horvath's already publicly laughed it off. ~~~ nailer What was her alternate version of the missing events? It's hard to believe the techCrunch story when it starts so late in the game. If I was in a similar position I'd take it to court, but if for some reason I wanted to do trial by media, I'd be gushing with detail. ------ brandon272 It sounds like Mrs. Preston-Werner was a regular presence at the GitHub office and, according to Horvath, had extensive access to private information throughout GitHub's systems despite the fact that she wasn't an employee. If true, that should certainly be a privacy and security concern to any GitHub customer or user. ~~~ awnird This is incredibly troubling. How can anyone trust GitHub, knowing that non- employees regularly had access to private information? ~~~ onotarti In my experience it is pretty common for people who bring work home with them not to be super-meticulous about preventing access to the content of the work by their families. How many people do you know who sound-proof their home office so their wife can't eavesdrop on their business calls? ~~~ epochwolf I think I should point out this is a fireable offense in a number of companies. I work with sensitive information every day. I'm pretty sure if allowed someone outside the company to use my machine for anything, I would be fired. My dad works for IBM doing mainframe repair and installation. He's seen his coworkers fired for allowing unauthorized individuals to use their company laptops. They've gone even further in the last few years in making unauthorized software a fireable offense. Granted, two data points isn't a lot but there are companies that have enforced policies to prevent sensitive information from leaking. I should also point out both my dad and I do significant amounts of work from home and we are both required by our companies to use full disk encryption. ~~~ danielweber Without going to the extreme of secret+ classifications -- in which case you cannot take things home without a secure home office, and move things between them in secure containers -- I don't think employees are fired for failing to lock their home office against their spouse or soundproofing their office against their spouse. Which is different from saying that the company would fire them if the spouse used their inside-access to harm the company in any way. ------ jfc These memos are often more about what isn't said: > _The investigation found no evidence..._ This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what _GitHub_ didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find other evidence (this is where the comment about the investigators possibly not contacting key people could become important). > _...found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of > sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation_ So their internal investigation didn't find sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation. But did that investigation find other types of harassment or retaliation? > _However, while there may have been no legal wrongdoing_ "May have been none" or "there definitely wasn't any"? And then legal wrongdoing vs. just plain wrongdoing? Disclaimers/"wiggle words" everywhere. > _As to the remaining allegations, the investigation found no evidence of > gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or abuse._ Again, we're seeing the term "gender-based" used as a modifier (also done in P-W's response). This makes it appear as if their attorneys primarily want to remove this controversy from the ambit of gender-based discrimination claims. I'm not saying this memo is worse than any other corporate public statement. But reading carefully, you often find that the statements don't tell you very much, if anything. ~~~ facepalm "This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any." How could you ever claim anything else, though? You can only make a claim about the things you did find (including absence of things), not about things you didn't find, because you can not know about them. This is just another example of human communication depending on goodwill. If some involved parties want to misinterpret everything they hear, there is no way to stop them. I think the emphasis on "gender based" stuff is because that was the gist of Horvath's accusations. ~~~ jfc Again, in my comment I mention that this memo is no different than other corporate statements. My point is that some comments on here say "there is no evidence", which is not what the memo says. Saying you didn't find something isn't the same as saying that something doesn't exist. ~~~ kelnos Right, but there is no actual way that you can say that something doesn't exist; you can't prove a negative. There is absolutely no other wording you can ever use. Pointing that out as some sort of indicator that it's possible that there _is_ some evidence is a little silly, because... well, duh. Ultimately it depends on whether or not you trust the investigator to be thorough, and to be able to ferret out the truth where people lie and omit details. ~~~ chippy The investigator in this case is not about uncovering the truth of everything - it's about investigating this specific case. They do not have an obligation, for example, to mention that they found taxation irregularities during their work. ~~~ kelnos ... what does that have to do with anything? We're not talking about that. ------ ChuckMcM When these things conclude, as this one has, it is useful to check your own response emotion (happiness? sadness? outrage? bitterness?). One of the harder things for me to learn has been to critically evaluate my own judgement. Generally I'm a very rational guy and can give you my reasoning from first principles right up to the claim in question, when its wrong (the claim), I find my tendency is not to listen. My rational brain is invested in learning, my emotional brain is invested in being "right." At the end of the day, neither Tom or Julie work at GitHub any more and what ever they brought to the mix has been lost. They have both made statements of pain and hurt, and their pain has been a burden on their friends as well. Will GitHub be stronger or weaker after this event? Will Julie and Tom? Only time will tell. Perhaps the best that can be said of this affair is that its publicity might help others to recognize the dangers of their behavior earlier before it becomes a problem. ------ chuhnk This has to be an incredibly difficult moment in Tom Preston-Werner's life. Regardless of what may have happened. To build a company from the ground up and then have to walk away from it. I'm sure we all remember GitHub during its infancy and the enthusiasm with which founders worked on it. A hugely successful bootstrapped company. ~~~ kategleason exactly, this is really tragic. ------ chrismonsanto > The investigation found no evidence to support the claims [...] of a sexist > or hostile work environment. So, are they saying that Horvath was lying? I mean, there was a lot of specific stuff she mentioned that seemed inappropriate. I don't want to get into whether the behavior was "sexist" or not, but I think we can all agree that if what she said was true, the work environment was hostile and unprofessional. ~~~ danso I think it's possible that Horvath was right about the poor actions of management, and at the same time, very little of what she alleged seemed to fall into the bounds of gender-based discrimination. A colleague who reverts your commits because you wouldn't date him...that's not gender-based, that's office-romance strife (though obviously, such strife can be exacerbated with a gender imbalance at the company). I'm kind of interested in what happened to _that_ engineer. edit: FYI: her detailed complaint to TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath- describes...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes- sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/) re: The co-worker who couldn't handle being rejected by her: > _The rejection of the other employee led to something of an internal battle > at GitHub. According to Horvath, the engineer, “hurt from my rejection, > started passive-aggressively ripping out my code from projects we had worked > on together without so much as a ping or a comment. I even had to have a few > of his commits reverted. I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up > to find my work gone without any explanation.” The employee in question, > according to Horvath, is both “well-liked at GitHub” and “popular in the > community.”_ _His “behavior towards female employees,” according to Horvath, “especially those he sees as opportunities is disgusting.”_ And there was one more incident that would purportedly fall under sexism: > _Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were > hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did > have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the > hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. > When I brought this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it. > But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was > the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub._ The first one, of course, is bad. And there's possibly a case to be made that if management knew about this engineer and let it slide, well, that does create a hostile environment. Yet I don't think Horvath points out where she complained about this guy's commit-reverting behavior to management. The second thing, about hula-hooping, without context, it doesn't really mean anything beyond what Horvath claims she was able to grok just by stumbling upon the scene. I think during the original HN discussion, a Githubber said that the hula-hooping happened during an in-office party. Either way, hula- hooping and watching said-hula-hooping is hard to claim, on its face, as being gender-discrimination. The other stuff though, about the co-founder unfairly pressuring her partner to resign, and the co-founder's wife claiming to have access to Github employees' private data...Those could be things that the company frowns upon enough to merit a resignation. ~~~ courtneypowell How is a woman who refuses to date another employee considered an "office- romance?" Retaliation as a result of unwanted advances is considered harassment. sexual harassment definition: [http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm) ~~~ danso Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there was an actual romance. I meant that this immature (and shitty) behavior was based in that domain of "romance" (the existence or lack thereof, in this case) and not, from the face of Horvath's description, automatically based on gender-discrimination. From your link: > _Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or > isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it > is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work > environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as > the victim being fired or demoted)._ 1\. Did Horvath provide proof that this immature behavior was more-than- isolated and unpunished? It would be easy for her to, as it would exist in the git logs. But we don't know if it happened dozens of times, or just more than one time. 2\. Reverting commits is still part of an engineer's job. She alleges that the commits were unfair...again, this evidence would exist in the logs. But what if the commits were justifiable, and the engineer was being snippy about it? That doesn't really count as harassment. 3\. Was Horvath retaliated against by management (e.g. fired or demoted) for being angry at her colleague? Her account doesn't claim that. The link you posted says that harassment, and sexual harassment, is illegal...But what Horvath describes is not harassment by the legal definition, because the other engineer could claim that the reverts were part of his job. Again, the commit logs, or even a description of them, are needed to decide whether this constituted harassment beyond a coworker criticizing another. ~~~ dasil003 > _I meant that this immature (and shitty) behavior was based in that domain > of "romance" (the existence or lack thereof, in this case) and not, from the > face of Horvath's description, automatically based on gender- > discrimination._ Don't make up soft weasel words to describe it. It's sexual harassment plain and simple. Also, this bit about classifying it as gender-discrimination seems like pointless hair-splitting. Horvath felt wronged by many things, and she probably felt those things would not have happened if she were a man, and I think that's a fair assumption on her part. I'll leave it to the courts to get into the technical classification of precisely if and how she was wronged. ~~~ gfodor Sorry, reverting someone's commits out of spite because they rejected you is not sexual harassment "plain and simple." Words have meanings. Furthermore it is not "pointless hair-splitting" to say it is not gender discrimination. You clearly have no understanding of what these terms mean and why it's important to not let this type of drama bleed into the wider discussion about systemic gender discrimination in tech. [http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm) "Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general." Harassment of someone who happens to be of the opposite gender does not make it sexual harassment. Harassment of someone for rejecting you romantically does not make it sexual harassment. If someone "feels" they would not have been harassed the same way if they were a man does not make it sexual harassment. (This is clearly false in this case, obviously, because the same thing could have happened if it were an advancement by someone of the same gender.) Reverting someone's commit is not harassment of a "sexual nature" nor does it include commentary on the person's sex or women in general. It has nothing to do with gender or sexual comments, it has to do with an emotional reaction to rejection and an immature pathetic response. ~~~ dasil003 Okay, good point, I stand corrected. ~~~ gfodor major props, a response like this doesn't happen often on the internet ------ samstave I have a question/observation that may be offensive, and it is not meant to be - so pardon my ignorance if this is a misguided perception: When this story first ran and I was reading JA Horvaths tweets in the surrounding days - and reading whatever other articles related to this story were - I got the impression that she didn't necessarily seem like the most easy-going-innocent victim, and I wondered; what if she was actually a difficult to work-with person? This is in no way a defense of any actions of any party, it was just a perception of the language, tone and content of the messages that Mrs. Horvath used gave me the perception that she wouldn't be the most desirable co- worker.... Now, I have nothing to substantiate such an opinion other than the tweets and stories I read just left me with this impression.... So, could it be that while her allegations are true, she is also a participant in the situation whereby she could have been acting poorly/using poor judgement? Finally, I recognize that the actions of the wife of the founder are the most insidious, and a clear cause of concern, assuming they are in fact true... ~~~ jacalata It certainly could be, but in general what she's accusing them of would be wrong regardless of what a terrible person she could be. If someone is a bad employee/co-worker you can fire them, but you can't bully/harass them out of the place. ~~~ samstave True. The weirdest accusation is that toward the wife... That just sounds.... strange. ------ ig1 This statement is pretty terrible. The line "sexual or gender-based harassment" looks like it's been specifically written to exclude other kinds of harassment, especially given that term is used multiple times. Employee harassment of any kind is unacceptable and if they're not willing to admit that it's a problem and act as if it's something that should be brushed under the carpet then it will continue to be a problem. I appreciate that this might turn into a legal case so they're acting to protect themselves, but it would be better if they hadn't put out any statement rather than this weasel worded one. ~~~ dragonwriter > Employee harassment of any kind is unacceptable But generally not illegal except as a form of discrimination on an illegal basis (as in, e.g., sexual harassment.) The line about sexual or gender-based harassment is part of the detail leading up to the general statement of no legal wrongdoing, which is followed by the statement about errors of judgement, etc., that do not rise to the level of legal wrongdoing. Harassment that does not constitute legally-prohibited discrimination would fall into the category of error that they have expressly stated _did_ occur. ------ avenger123 We have a process for all this. It's called the legal system. It's not perfect but it mostly gets the job done. Has Julie Ann Horvath formally sued Github? It's not clear to me that she has. It seems that she may have grounds for some kind of lawsuit. Why hasn't she sued the company (if in fact there is no lawsuit)? This to me is the most important question. At the moment, it seems this is becoming a matter of public opinion. I would rather it be moved over to the legal system where the rules of engagement are much less malleable. ~~~ chippy Quite so, and in most legal cases, both sides tend not to speak openly or publicly until the case has finished. ------ rinon Maybe it's just me, but I don't really think speculating on fights like this from the outside without full and complete information is beneficial, or even sane and rational. Can we just all agree that we don't know the full story here, and that any and all players might be misleading or not telling the whole story publicly? This is an internal issue. The only opinions I am interested in are internal opinions of other github co-workers, and that only if I was interviewing for a position at the company. ~~~ kalleth This is the internet. There is no place here for your logic and reason. ~~~ vectorpush I literally cringe whenever someone posts this hackneyed response. ------ joevandyk Tom Preston-Werner's response: [http://tom.preston- werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...](http://tom.preston- werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello-immersive-computing.html) ~~~ pistle It would be nice to not see the harassment word prefaced with "gender-based." This parsing, by Tom, without fuller disclosure of what mistakes were made leads to the conclusion that there was some form of harassment, but that it wasn't put forth in a manner which legally falls into "gender-based," which would make github and Tom (& family) liable for those actions. I still want to see the dramatization where the guy coder comes in professing his love, gets spurned, then spitefully removes code. Terms like hostile, gender-based, and discrimination all have pretty specific requirements for proof. At least HN an move forward unhappily and pull out the "tragic" word describe everything. I'm not sure we all experienced catharsis, but "tragic" will have to do. ------ sytelus Can anyone tell what exact discrimination Horvath faced? I went through her long interview and I can only read how she "felt" to be in "boys club" as opposed to specific events that can be qualified as discrimination. For example, she says her code was reverted and was apparently blaming that event on her being a women. I can't imagine someone throwing good code away because it was written by a women rather it seems much more likely that her code had issues. Then there is series of rambling for founders wife sitting in front of her every day. That doesn't feel like discrimination either but rather feels like she was not looked upon as desirable employee there at higher level. Overall I got an impression that she was turning whatever bad performance on her part in to case of discrimination. May be I'm missing details but it is very hard to identify events that can actually be qualified as "discrimination" in her long rambling interview. ~~~ malandrew It would be fascinating to see the commit in question. If the commit has technical merit and should not have been reverted, why would you not focus on demonstrating why the technical merit of the commit in question? Claiming that a commit was reverted for personal reasons instead of defending the technical merits of the commit strikes me as naïve. A highly competent person who has produced some work product that was challenged would typically either defend it on merit or assume they might have produced a lesser work and seek to understand why. My experience in all areas of competence I'm familiar with is that histrionics like those observed thus far are often comorbid with demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect in inexperienced individuals. Zed Shaw is one of the few people I can think of that would be a counterpoint to this observation, demonstrating high competence when acting histrionically. You can just look at his contributions to open-source to see how good he is at what he does. JAH's github profile (for an engineer that worked there for a long time) seems conspicuously sparse to me. There really aren't many projects there to demonstrate superior mastery of HTML, CSS or git. [https://github.com/nrrrdcore?tab=repositories](https://github.com/nrrrdcore?tab=repositories) Looking further, like at her blog repo. There are .DS_Store files committed (which would normally be in a local .gitignore or in your home folder .gitignore file) and the first file I clicked on the in CSS folder has Jekyll ruby errors printed to it: [https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/tree/maste...](https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/tree/master/css) (DS_Store file from 2 years ago still there) [https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/blob/maste...](https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/blob/master/css/base.scss) (broken blog post is 6 months old) Assuming this is representative of the quality of her commits, Occam's Razor suggest competence may be the reason for reverting the that css commit. ~~~ jdefarge Exactly! I had the curiosity to check JAH's github profile too, and it raised more suspicious towards her than I had previously imagined. For a fair comparison, let's see a couple of female github repos (both frontend and backend): [https://github.com/pamelafox?tab=repositories](https://github.com/pamelafox?tab=repositories) [https://github.com/kellabyte?tab=repositories](https://github.com/kellabyte?tab=repositories) [https://github.com/gwenshap?tab=repositories](https://github.com/gwenshap?tab=repositories) See? Any of those smart women above has much more quality code in their repos with regular activity, even though not any of them works at github, that is, they push code on their free time. Finally, let's see a repo by another harassed geek girl: [https://github.com/adriarichards?tab=repositories](https://github.com/adriarichards?tab=repositories) Um... I definitely see a pattern here screaming too loud not to take notice. ------ fragmede [http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism- scan...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scandal- julie-ann-horvath) for a bit of backstory. ------ harrystone His wife says she didn't realize that soliciting contributions from her husband's employees may not be appropriate. She pretty plainly states that it never even entered her mind. That tells me more about the atmosphere there than anything. ~~~ kelnos Yes, I agree, but I'm sympathetic: GH has always pushed the flat-hierarchy, we-are-all-peers attitude. And I think that's cool in theory, but has potentially bad side-effects like this one, where people feel pressured in situations where they viscerally know they are _not_ peers, even if the atmosphere tries to push that idea. ------ doktrin I have not followed this case. However, this just rolled across my FB feed : [http://www.businessinsider.com/julie-ann-horvath-github- hara...](http://www.businessinsider.com/julie-ann-horvath-github-harassment- twitter-2014-4) Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but based on her [JAH] public statements I have a hard time taking her version of events 100% at face value. The drama to fact ratio feels high. > _" Company perks : witch hunts, snow cones and silencing"_ > _" I am not a victim. I'm someone that a company's negligence pushed too > far, for too long. I am living, breathing consequence"_ > _" Leaving GitHub was the best decision of my life"_ > _" Hmm still no mention of the man who bullied me out of our code base > because I _wouldn't_ fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, I guess"_ Is Github _that_ awful? I'm not seeing it. ~~~ abvdasker There's a strong current of spitefulness in those Twitter posts. While I understand that Horvath is clearly livid, and obviously not without some reason, that kind of public vitriol would make me question anyone's rationality. ------ smrtinsert I wonder why his wife had to be at Github at all. I've worked at half a dozen startups now. Never would a spouse of either gender be in the office, and if they happened to maybe communicate with anyone, it was only a quick introduction and then they got out of your way. I would consider it highly inappropriate. ~~~ kfcm I've been in a couple Midwestern start-ups, and founder's spouses (wives, in both cases) often did come into the office. Generally they were going somewhere together, or whatever. Chatted several times, and it was no big thing. When they did ask how things were going business-wise, I got the nod from their husband. Turns out, they were also on the hook (co-signatories) for much of the start-up capital vehicles/loans/lines of credit. Their money on the line, they own the company, IMHO. ------ jpiasetz Julie Ann Horvath has posted a bunch of interesting tweets about it starting here [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458340919721197568](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458340919721197568) ~~~ smtddr Somehow, I don't think she's doing what is in her best interest right now. The guy has resigned and the tech media is totally on this story right now. Any small __preceived__ misstep and she could end up being labeled another "Adria Richards". Also, the question[1] in her current github background appears to represent a suggestive joke that I would have never guessed she'd be comfortable with. Not saying this is any kind of evidence of anything; just interesting that apparently there is a side to her that finds jokes like that funny. [http://i.imgur.com/X8Wdgg0.png](http://i.imgur.com/X8Wdgg0.png) ~~~ rhizome Why, because she's supposed to be sexless before she can be credible in a claim of sexual harassment? ~~~ smtddr I wouldn't have a joke like that on any of my social profiles. If anything, this is in her defense since it's one data-point indicating she's not a stereotypical hyper-feminist-drama-queen _(do these even exist?)_ looking to be offended by the slightest incident. She's easy-going enough to have something like that on her public profile and she __knows__ what people will think of first when they read that. ------ bratao Mrs. Preston-Werner says here ([https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215](https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215) ) that the accusation and reason is that: "We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit." ------ gregimba I don't even know what to make of this. They say there was no evidence but he is still resigning. ~~~ SpikeGronim They say no evidence of illegality, but there is evidence of poor judgement. Without commenting on the specifics of this incident that's a valid reason to fire a CEO/co-founder/exec. I have no particular knowledge of what happened but if GitHub thinks he showed poor judgement then it is reasonable to ask him to resign. ~~~ asuffield For example, if you didn't actually do anything legally wrong, but made it look an awful lot like you did by screwing up and being a dick about it, and you're a company executive, then you can resign or get fired. I suspect that this is not a million miles from what happened here: not actual discrimination, but enough of a blunder to look like it. ------ cheez It doesn't really matter what actually happened. The well has been poisoned so just fire someone and get it over with. Now Github can get back to business. ~~~ ExpiredLink > It doesn't really matter what actually happened. That's the annoying part of the story. ------ thepumpkin1979 [http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github- hel...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello- immersive-computing.html) ------ volune What a crock of shit. People don't typically quit companies they built from the ground up when they have "done nothing wrong". ------ kategleason :( this sucks. Github would not even exist without Tom Preston-Werner and I am really scared to see how it will exist without him. Tragic for all his users. ~~~ pyre > I am really scared to see how it will exist without him Isn't that a _little_ bit extreme? Do all the good things that happen at Github stem directly from Tom Preston-Werner? I can't claim intimate knowledge of Github the company, but I somehow doubt that this is a "Steve Jobs" type situation. ~~~ Maxford_Maxford Come to think, I somehow doubt Steve Jobs was a "Steve Jobs" type situation. ------ desireco42 To me this is lawyer speak for, yes it is true but if we admit, we would be liable. I would expect something like this from Bank of America or some other mega-corp, not github. Only good thing about this is that it is not happening on the front pages of TechCrunch and whatever else blog might be following events like this. ------ calcsam And this is why you need strong/clear HR policies. ~~~ sneak Sure, at their size now. Not before, as policy beyond "use good judgement" at a small company is basically pointless. Your first dozen hires must all be good enough to _write_ such policies... ~~~ drgath FWIW, Github hasn't been a "small company" for quite some time. github.com/about/team says they are currently at 237 employees. ------ ch4s3 >>the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment Isn't that like saying, well the hard proof isn't there but its clear you did do something wrong? ~~~ vezzy-fnord Which is an important distinction to make, especially considering the original allegations were specific. ~~~ ch4s3 I get the distinction, but I guess I'm just skeptical about the attempt at face saving here. ------ mundanevoice If you haven't read already, check this: [https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e](https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e) She did a lot of wrong things: \- Dating a coworker is not one of the best practise. \- gossiping around about your co-workers/founders character is the also not the best thing to do. \- If you write shit code, your code will be removed. She is definitely not known for her coding abilities. She is just a melodrama queen who is bad at heart, opportunist, blackmailed founder to poison the company atmosphere. \- You can create a healthy workspace shouting "Women Women" every time. We work with women too. Our behaviour and respect is based on compassion and professionalism. They are just like any other person in the company. \- The real story must have been that she is a bad/mediocre developer who was being reviewed which didn't turned out pretty well (Obv since she was busy bitching against coworkers). The only good way she had to abuse and insult the company publically , get sympathy and then a Job. She seems to have good PR skills. (Pun intended) Again, here are some of her recent tweets: [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096) [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458345005866696704](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458345005866696704) ------ shiven This is turning into a Soap-Opera-via-Social-Media... What happened to the good old days of people suing for damages in a court of law and moving on? Public _name-and-shame_ has its place in the grand picture of such incidents, but the longer it stretches, relative to time on social media, the more sudsy it turns. ------ omarhegazy This fucking sucks, man. Tom's always seemed like an awesome guy. As always, absolutely overblown PR messes like this are a result of faulty communication. Without proper context or research done about it by Internet warriors frothing at the mouth, a one-off donation ruins Brendan Eich's once rich and successful career. Partly because Internet warriors tend to make emotional judgments before they properly study the evidence and contex and before they think through things, but also because Eich ... never responded. He never let the facts through, never let out an, "Oh, sorry guys. This donation was done because of X and Y and Z (don't support marriage as a whole/don't want government getting it's hands in things/etc.,etc.) and it doesn't reflect my current views on sexual orientation or that people with certain sexual orientations deserve less opportunities.", he never gave proper context and evidence to suggest that he wasn't a bad character. Similarly with this. People are (conveniently?) keeping facts back, giving very vague stories, saying very little with a lot of words, etc., etc. If we are to believe that this thing was a huge misunderstanding and GitHub doesn't employ a bunch of mysognisitic, immature people, why hasn't Tom spoke up? I'm sure that GitHub is internally a lot better than it's image on the Internet right now is -- why doesn't anyone speak up? Or is it really as bad as the Internet's image of it is? ------ ia we have one side of the story, for fuck's sake. the other side--the github side? it's lawyer-speak and completely devoid of anything that addresses the specific accusations. how so many ostensibly smart people can simultaneously lose their ability to think critically is incredible. add the word "gender" to anything and people lose their minds. ------ Ryel To me it sounds more like... We dont have enough evidence to take legal action in this case, but our investigation found out something worse so we would like Tom to resign before it comes out publicly. ------ tqi Slightly off topic: Is there anywhere that offers(for lack of a better term) open source HR policy for small companies to copy? Seems to me writing something like this can be fairly onerous for a small company, especially in terms of legal overhead, but is clearly important. Having a starting point would be very helpful... ------ mariusmg To me it seems Github fired him but allow him to "save face" with the resignation story. ~~~ barce This is pretty much standard procedure. Depending on his contract, it saves github from paying severance. ------ gdonelli It feels unconvincing, and unapologetic. ~~~ ggreer I can't think of much else they could reasonably do in response to these allegations. Tom was a founder, President, and former CEO of GitHub. They effectively fired him. They apologized profusely and laid out specific ways in which they're trying to fix the problem. They hired a new HR head. They're starting to train and educate employees. What else would you have GitHub do? ~~~ gdonelli Agreed. everything is right rationally, in fact I said it "feels". It feels cold. It lacks human touch, in my opinion of course. ------ caio1982 I really don't care about how it's published in the media, I mean, this last episode at least. It was clear since the very beginning when it broke out that it would be dirty, really dirty. It's a shame not only for the people involved but more specially for Github as an ecosystem. Such incredible company bleeding in the media... sad times... and when I say incredible company I don't mean incredibly owned or well run company, you know what I mean. I lost a bit of faith in them today anyway. Sad times... ------ zenbowman It is shortsighted to think there is nothing we can learn from this. There are certainly things we can learn. 1) A good lawyer is worth a 1000 tweets. 2) Getting deeply romantically involved with coworkers carries serious risks, whether or not you believe a company has the right to restrict office romances or not. 3) The fetishization of "we don't have any process!" is a mark of immaturity, not Zen. One would think engineers of all people would understand the importance of formalized process. I don't think anyone walks away a winner here. ------ poissonpie "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper" I think with the amount of coverage this story has gotten, everyone wanted something big to happen. Instead, we just get something mundane in some carefully crafted words that seem designed to give no information whatsoever, while still ensuring nobody can be sued any further. I kind of get the feeling that they are all trying to say "Nothing to see here....move along....cows turn themselves inside out all the time". ------ briantakita Best of luck to everyone involved. Before casting judgement, please remember that everybody makes mistakes. The process of healing involves accepting this reality and recognizing everybody's humanity. In light of this, I would personally be honored to work with someone of Tom Preston-Werner's caliber. I hope he & his wife learn from this experience & grow as people. ------ tdicola So what happens when a founder leaves like this, do they give up their % ownership and the other founders gain what was lost? ~~~ jessaustin I suppose it depends on how the articles of incorporation are written up, but I really doubt it would work _that_ way. It's more likely that the leaving founder will become a sort of silent partner, retaining equity but not managerial input. ------ smrtinsert Also, can they get rid of Gravatar now? ~~~ markjaquith They kind of did. You just start with a Gravatar, but can upload your own image. ------ EGreg "The investigation found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation, or of a sexist or hostile work environment." "We still have work to do" Which is it? A non acknowledgement acknowledgement? ------ thedaveoflife The best thing about this article is that it hopefully signals that we will no longer have to here about this anymore. As much as I love using GitHub, I hate hearing about the internal politics of their executives and engineers. ------ logn This is a misleading title and not the actual title on the page. ------ xrt Think this might make those "Fork me on GitHub" badges a little less popular? I sincerely hope so. ------ lifeisstillgood it's not idea Sunday but: a wearable video recording device that documents everything. It may sound crazy but it would be interesting to me to find out how much of my rather boring life is actionable / illegal or distasteful ~~~ graup Devices like this exist. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelog) [http://getnarrative.com/](http://getnarrative.com/) ------ drunkcatsdgaf Im over using anything with this much drama, I want features, not headline news. ------ pandatigox Weird that just a few months ago, Tom became the first President of Github. ------ rajacombinator What a load. Good luck with your hiring goals for 2014... ------ seanhandley Hope that Julie publishes a detailed account. Sources I've read so far are vague and subjective as to what actually happened. ------ gjvc github is not seeing another penny of my money. ~~~ danielweber Because Tom didn't demand they go balls-to-the-wall fighting what may be an inevitably losing battle to disprove something that isn't disprovable? I don't know what happened, but this outcome might be very much in Tom's well- considered best interests. You are making a no-win situation. _EDIT_ : Heck, I don't even know if you are mad at GitHub for insufficiently defending Tom or insufficiently crucifying him ~~~ steele gjvc is using their small slice of economic leverage to weigh in; the motivations are no one else's business unless gjvc volunteers this. Given the baiting questions you pose, what incentive does gjvc have to address your curiosity? ~~~ danielweber It's not really "weighing in" to send up a confusing signal, despite (especially?) if it's very emphatic. ------ marincounty "Because I would hear ‘We should hire more women!’ on almost a daily basis from the same people who kind of refused to respect me as a peer." I don't know what went on here, but I have heard these words before. And most of the time it has nothing to do with gender. (As to hn deleting comments--I don't understand the moderators. I posted something earlier about the divide between the rich/poor--and claimed something about the lack of modern Horatio Algiers. I guess it really bothers some of the fancy boys? I come back to this site and comments are magically removed. I commented in the article on Lenin. Yes--this is off topic; I'm just curious why whenever I bring up money, and how many rich boys fathers helped them out graetly; I am edited?) ~~~ theorique "We should hire more women", when said to a person of the female sex, does not necessarily or automatically mean, "we should hire _you_ ". ------ andyl Kicked out of his own company - ouch. Taking VC and giving control to outsiders is Russian roulette. Writing and adhering to HR/conflict-of-interest policy is a no-brainer. A board who cared for the interests of its founder would not leave this as a trap for the founder to step in. I note with interest that the other accused was given a promotion. ------ superduper33 "There was no investigation." \- Julie Ann Horvath [https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833) ------ hackaflocka Theresa Preston-Werner's twitter bio reads: "Obsessed with inspiring the tech community to support underfunded nonprofits." Mostly, her own nonprofit, I imagine. ------ hackaflocka 3 recent tweets from the wife that indicate that she might be batshit crazy: TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Apr 10 Best meal I've ever had. @ The Meatball Shop [http://instagram.com/p/moWCO4njNA/](http://instagram.com/p/moWCO4njNA/) TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Apr 10 Building out a team and getting to work with insanely great people makes me the happiest founder ever. TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Mar 27 First time in 2 weeks that I feel like I'm not just performing being excited, but I really am insanely excited to change the world! (people who express themselves with such extreme language, usually are batshit crazy. not taking sides here, the Horvath lady also seems to be batshit crazy from a reading of her tweet stream.) ~~~ fizx > people who express themselves with such extreme language, usually are > batshit crazy Quick question: Would you consider "batshit crazy" extreme language? ~~~ hackaflocka Best, ever, happiest founder ever, changing the WORLD ------ leccine What a surprise. Who thought that there is zero legal ground for her accusations... ------ emocakes github raped me! now lets start the misandric shitstorm. ------ hackaflocka This is what happens when you hire people for their gender (Horvath) or race. Injudiciously applied 'Liberalism' is the core problem here. ------ caiob Are we still on this? ------ leccine GitHub did the right thing and it turns out that Ms. Horvath accusations were without any basis. She not just damaged the gender equality efforts harder for everybody but raised visibility about how hiring females can damage your company's reputation. This is not the right way of fighting for the good case. A good example how to challenge the status quo: [http://qz.com/192071/how-one- college-went-from-10-female-com...](http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went- from-10-female-computer-science-majors-to-40/) I hope more people realize that we need more results and less artificially buffed scandals. ~~~ bitlord_219 How do you suggest she should have responded, rather than calling them out publicly? ~~~ leccine First of all, if you have problem with your employment you sit down with your manager or your peers and talk about it. If you can resolve the case right there great if not, escalate. If you still think that they mistreat you, get a lawyer. Going public with accusations that you can't prove is certainly not the way. Look at her now, you think that there is any company on this planet which is going to risk the same process that was done to Github on a maximum mediocre engineer? I don't think so. This pretty much a lose lose situation as I can see it. Not to mention the post from that anonymous employee who states that in fact Ms. Horvath was starting this entire scandal due to jealousy and trying to undermine other people's reputation. You really think that this is they way to go? ~~~ bitlord_219 When it's the CEO who you have a problem with, how do you escalate beyond him? > Look at her now, you think that there is any company on this planet which is > going to risk the same process that was done to Github on a maximum mediocre > engineer? I don't think so. She already has another job with &yet. I'm curious though, what makes you think she's a "maximum mediocre engineer"? ~~~ leccine Well beyond the CEO is my lawyer and you get gather proof and build a case. She just exploded and left, making accusations nobody can prove. Again, that anonymous post just made it clear that she did not tell half of the story. Just by going through her public gh profile. ------ nhangen Silly thing these gender based politics and acts of political correctness. I can guarandamntee you that if I was Tom and was innocent, mistakes in judgment aside, I would not be resigning from MY COMPANY. Is this the result of new board members coming in post-investment? If so, it's more reason to stay bootstrapped and free. If not, who is there to pressure him other than Chris? Edit: 4 downvotes without a single comment. Tech is really becoming a soup sandwich of misplaced frustration and angst. ~~~ emocakes in regards to misplaced frustration and angst, pretty much, tech is mostly filled with frustrated, unattractive (physical and personality wise) middle aged men, who believe that the only way to find a mate is to swallow this liberal agenda so as to make themselves appear as more of a 'nice guy', and thus in their twisted little heads, becoming more attractive to members of the opposite sex. Typical beta mentality. edit: actually, I should say that tech is not actually like this, its mainly the illusion that reddit and HN present. ~~~ hackaflocka Agree 100%. There are a couple of Betas tweeting her offering to employ her. ------ vpv So, guy who wrote GitHub and a ton of open source stuff is ousted from his own company and sacrificed for a person whos biggest accomplishment in open source is JavaScript for Cats? [https://github.com/nrrrdcore/javascript-for- cats](https://github.com/nrrrdcore/javascript-for-cats) ~~~ bitlord_219 Why do you consider this relevant? ~~~ cpncrunch It would appear to be relevant because she describes herself as an engineer, and because she thought the reverts of her code and bad performance reviews were due to sexism. ~~~ bitlord_219 Are you saying that good engineers can't have a sense of humor? ~~~ cpncrunch No. ------ turar It's interesting how many would still remember the incident in question, if it wasn't brought up like this again. My personal attention span must be pretty short, it took a couple of days for me to stop associating Github with that incident. ------ foohbarbaz What an ugly mess! Somewhat related: I am amazed now much gossiping goes on in an entirely male work group behind other people's backs. Males are definitely worse than females in that regard. I would not be surpised if allegations were true. A bunch if primadonna devs can be nasty to work with. Just stay away and separate work and life. ~~~ sergiotapia Eh no, in my personal experience in a workplace where there are majority women you -will- get cliques and you will hear some nasty rumors go around. Women enjoy spreading gossip and harassing each other. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmlPtRu1SQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmlPtRu1SQ) ------ roryhughes Kicked out of his own company? Reminds me of Apple and SJ... Hopefully Tom will see a great future and make some out of the blue return. ~~~ mtkd First came across Tom's code in the Grit gem (around 2008 possibly). Unfortunately people who can write inspirational and innovative code like that are not always the most perceptive to the complexities and risks of HR in a large organisation. I really hope mojombo gets back to building awesome again ... a VR coding environment - shut up and take my money ... ------ nakedrobot2 I doubt they are publishing the real story, there. What is a fact is that Mr. Preston-Werner is resigning. From there, we may only speculate. If I may speculate, I'd guess that there was some truth to the story told by "the other side", that there was some kind of harassment on the part of this man's wife (who was not employed there). That is all I can really guess. And the only real way to publicly resolve this would be for this man to resign - while he perhaps didn't _personally_ do anything wrong, maybe his wife did, so he was in a sense the fall guy for that. ------ iandanforth This makes me sad. My interpretation of these events was that a toxic employee instigated a witch hunt and was successful. By simple observation of numbers here, you probably disagree with this. But for the few of you that do agree with this point of view, take it as a reminder of the crucial role of hiring. You can easily hire the person who ruins your company's culture and causes your downfall. ~~~ jleader If losing one executive at a 200+ employee company "ruins the company's culture and causes [that company's] downfall", then that company and that executive have been doing it wrong! Regardless of the facts of the case and whatever damage it may have done to GitHub's culture, if this incident and this individual's departure are enough to cause GitHub's ruin and downfall, then that's evidence of an absurdly fragile company and culture. ------ Randgalt Irrationality is sweeping the Tech world. I shudder to think where this will end. ------ danielbraun This is scary. I was just checking out Jekyll and stumbled upon his blog. Then I came here and saw this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Navy warships sustained 50 MPH 44 knots for 4 hours - yu http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SPEEDY_WARSHIP ====== jws Apparently the AP is opting out of the WWW. I just get a page that directs me to their customers. But some googling later: It was 44 knots, into a 30 kt headwind and 6-8 foot seas. The things have both diesel and turbine engines which apparently operate in tandem for top speed. I looked for the fuel burn rate, but only found that sprint range is 1500nm compared to 4300nm at 20kts.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Crypto-Judaism - CameronNemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-Judaism ====== CameronNemo Stumbled across this phenomenon after reading NPR. [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=789864201](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=789864201) ~~~ eesmith In case you want to read some other comments, a version of this story was also discussed here 11 days ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779174) .	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Screencast on writing a ray tracer in Common Lisp - kirubakaran http://home.in.tum.de/~lehmanna/lisp-tutorial.html? ====== jcl I have to ask: Why was this resubmitted? Didn't like the original submitter's choice of title? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398205> ~~~ kirubakaran Yes. I intentionally resubmitted it with a different title, not to karma whore, but as I thought that the other title didn't do any justice. The other submitter was most likely just using the Reddit title. ~~~ henning I support resubmission and clobbering if the improvement in submission title is as noticeable as in this case.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple iMac 21inch or 27 Inch? - cvaidya1986 ====== konradb Is your space constrained such that the 27 inch would not fit? Is your budget constrained such that the 27 inch is too expensive? If neither your space nor your budget is constrained, then go for the 27 inch. ~~~ cvaidya1986 Thank you! The question is does 21.5 inch force more focus, less tabs thus more productivity? ~~~ konradb I've spent multiple years working with an iMac 21 inch, a Macbook Pro 15 inch retina, and a 27" LG Ultrafine 5k (I understand this is the same or similar panel as the iMac 5k 27"). I think if you are optimising for productivity you would want the 27", certainly from my experience. My own opinion, for what it is worth: if you lack focus I think you are better off trying to build good habits or to work on things that interest you. You can just as easily switch to reading HN or reddit on a smaller screen as you can a larger. You can just as easily go fullscreen on a larger display to block out distractions, but you also have more space so you can, if working on UI for example, have the UI in one half and an editor/IDE in the other, which can speed you up. If it is difficult to make yourself do work, you can try to build good habits using apps like Focus to remind you if you tend to go off on reading sprees when working. Good luck! ~~~ cvaidya1986 Amazing advice! Thank you! ------ slipwalker i am currently running an iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2017) and am very pleased with the screen size / resolution. my 2cents are i don't think more screen size ( for the same resolution ) would be any better, i feel it would make me move my neck a bit more over a work day, and with two cervical hernias, it would be uncomfortable. ------ taylodl Not just one but _two_ 27 inch monitors? Why? Save your eyes. Make your text easy to read. Eyestrain goes unnoticed and is the cause of low-grade headaches. My colleagues laugh that they can read my screen from a ways away - exactly! Go big. You won't regret it. ~~~ cvaidya1986 Wow ok! I am halfway there :) ------ Jeremy1026 27", unless you have a reason to not. ------ dman What will you use it for? ~~~ cvaidya1986 Working from home.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
“You're a Dbag.” How Negative Feedback Dramatically Improves Your Personality - samp615 http://www.theantimba.com/this-guy-is-a-douche-the-power-of-negative-feedback/ ====== ForHackernews This is a weird article, because you're talking about the importance of negative feedback to improve your personality, but then you just brush off the negative feedback you got: > The feedback from the Bold Italic article is NOT helpful…those guys are just > a bunch of jerks. Did you, in fact, stop to consider _why_ you come off like a d-bag in that article? Or how being less of a d-bag (or at least disguising it better?) might improve your personality? I'm trying not to be an asshole here, but how about some self-reflection?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Earth may have kept its own water rather than getting it from asteroids - ourmandave http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2015/11/earth-may-have-kept-its-own-water-rather-getting-it-asteroids ====== dang Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/a-new-study-challenges-assumptions- about-...](http://gizmodo.com/a-new-study-challenges-assumptions-about-the- origins-of-1742474825), which points to this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Who are your developer heroes? - tylery Do you have idols you follow? Who and why? ====== jjude Guido of python, primarily for this insight: code is read much more often than it is written. This has improved my coding lot more.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA - ernesto95 https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170420-map-human-history-hidden-in-dna-john-novembre-interview/ ====== a-smith Actually and Factually there are blood tests now that can identify each of the many virus's a individual has been subjected to. Of those 40yrs and older Americans, many of those recorded would be those the USA Gov Bioweapons tests across many USA Metro areas would show up as well, confirming yes you were hit and infected by those USA Gov bioweapons tests that went on for nearly 20yrs subjecting all American citizens to various bioweapons sprays, cultures and virus's.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29th - flueedo https://www.namecheap.com/moveyourdomainday.aspx ====== nextparadigms Namecheap is _really_ taking advantage of Godaddy's misstep. I say good for them! Godaddy deserves whatever is coming at them right now. ~~~ mbrzuzy I was literally thinking the exact same thing. GoDaddy is an already shady company, hopefully they take a big hit from this and change the way they do things. ~~~ rhizome Think bigger: hopefully they declare bankruptcy and no longer have the resources to participate in policy decisions. They should be considered a Corporation Non-Grata. ~~~ betterth Don't get ahead of yourself buddy. GoDaddy is the largest and most wellknown registrar out there. From all accounts, they've lost less since this began than they gain -in a single day-. This isn't affecting their bottom line much at all, it's just affecting their image with the techie/hacker crowd. A vital crowd to have a good image with, but their business is literally built on taking advantage of NON-hackers -- let's be honest, how many people here have ACTUALLY bought anything but a domain from GoDaddy, and MAYBE some cheap/crappy hosting? ~~~ rkalla If you look at this specific moment in time on Tuesday, no it hasn't effected their bottom line _yet_ , but company perception is everything and GoDaddy's company perception has gone from "gray area that some hate and some don't care about" directly into _the RED_. Are any HN'er going to forget this for their next startup? Or their next contract? Or when their buddy asks them to register a domain for them? No, we are all going to remember that as long as we don't use GoDaddy we will be fine. That is going to cost GoDaddy a lot in the years to come. I don't think bankruptcy is around the corner, but I think we'll hear about some down sizing in a couple of years. FWIW, I am thrilled to see the karma fairy show up and pay GoDaddy in full for years of garbage. ~~~ rhizome "Always" and "never" are particularly strong marketing words when uttered by word of mouth. Non-technical people can easily remember never to use GoDaddy, much more than "use any of these X registrars depending on what you need." ~~~ epo Nonsense, non-technical people will be swayed by some initial special offer, as always. This will all be forgotten about by February. GoDaddy will just price themselves to be attractive to the vast majority, i.e. cheapskates. The 'elite' will probably also pile in by rationalising that this must be costing GoDaddy money, so by registering a domain with them they are actually costing them money. Never underestimate the twin forces of "getting a good deal" and geeky self- deception. ------ dmarble I've been with Namecheap for most of my domains for a couple years now. One of the surprisingly awesome extras: _Dynamic DNS_ No more need for DynDNS or another third-party DNS service for this simple but useful feature! Once enabled for a domain, you can simply use an update client to regularly update the IP Namecheap servers point to. See Namecheap's knowledgebase articles to enable and use it: [http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx...](http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/category.aspx/11/dynamic- dns) Update clients: ddclient (unixy) - <http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient> inadyn (unixy) - <http://www.inatech.eu/inadyn/> Namecheap's DNS update client (Windows) - [http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/...](http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/28/11/do- you-provide-any-dynamic-dns-clients) ~~~ 3dFlatLander I'm a big fan of their free e-mail forwarding and customer support (they got a domain back for me that I had let expire out of its grace period). But, I'm surprised so many people tolerated godaddy for this long just because of their control panel. Every time I have to go in there and help a client/friend, I begin to feel like an idiot almost immediately. It's impossible to find anything intuitively and I feel like their design changes every few months. Namecheaps panel isn't pretty by a long shot, but it's so clutter free I just don't care. ~~~ loumf Not to defend them, but GoDaddy's iPad app is pretty good, and I use that rather than their control panel whenever I can. I am fed up with them for other reasons, so this comes at a good time. ------ danieldk That's nice, but it remains to be seen if this is not just cheap (no pun intended) exploitation of sentiments. Some registrars, such as Gandi have always supported various causes (such as EFF, Creative Commons, Debian, etc.). How much does Namecheap donate of regular domain registrations, etc.? What have they done in the past for digital rights? Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent diversion for SOPA supporters. ~~~ pbreit I don't understand the notion that this is somehow a distraction to the real SOPA fight. Maybe I'm alone in this issue having heightened my knowledge, opposition and action against the bill? ~~~ jedbrown Go Daddy is totally insignificant in the scheme of things. The list of SOPO supporters is very deep and monopolizes many industries. Can you work out an effective boycott of all major record and movie producers, all major television networks, publishers (Elsevier, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and various coalitions), pharmaceuticals and beauty products (Pfizer, PhRMA, L'Oreal, Revlon, etc), banking (Visa, MasterCard, American Bankers Association), sports (NFL, MLB), Apple, and Microsoft? [http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...](http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Supporters.pdf) Hurting Go Daddy over this is fine, but I suspect it is inconsequential to whether SOPA passes, and most of the key supporters aren't concerned about boycotts anyway. ~~~ pbreit The point isn't how significant GoDaddy is. The point isn't how much business damage GoDaddy is suffering, if any. The point is about how much awareness this event is raising and how much of an impact it is having on encouraging people to do something (anything) to express opposition to the bill. One example: I had not seen SOPA on the nightly news until now. I don't think this event has been or will be considered "inconsequential". There's a small chance it will be one of the more important events in the opposition. ------ nickpinkston I've used NameCheap ever since I found out how horrid GoDaddy's service and slimy policies were. NameCheap has always answered my noob questions with haste, and I've never had any issues with them. I have no connections with them other than being a happy customer. If I didn't already have all my domains through them, I'd switch them over. ------ jamesbritt I couldn't be bothered waiting. I've some domains due for renewal at the end of the year and decided to beat the holiday rush and just move then all over to namecheap.com. I started the process yesterday afternoon. Still haven't seen anything on the GoDaddy side indicating any pending transfers. I imagine this sort of delay will only be worse come the 29th. Update: just got a slew of form mail from namecheap. Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer. ~~~ Natsu > Apparently every EPP/authorization key code I entered, taken from the list > generated by GoDaddy, is wrong. Now I have to re-do every transfer. They sure have had a lot of funny accidents lately.... ~~~ jamesbritt It _may_ be that I entered the domain and EPP info into the namechaep form with some spaces (foo.com, x$fo!ss) and the namecheap form code was too clueless to realize that no EPP code is going to start with a space. I also discovered that I cannot automatically transfer azhackers.com, apparently because it triggers some "bad, evil, we don't like it" domain name filter. Are they really that upset with Arizona? :) ~~~ lusr I transfer domains regularly between registrars because the transfer costs tend to be cheaper than the renewal costs. I've noticed that the last character of EPP values tend to be minor punctuation ([,.] etc.), which is ignored whenever I double-click to copy & paste. I'd be certain this is intentional since those characters are ALWAYS (20+ domains transferred over a period of months) at the end of the code, although I cannot fathom the purpose since at that point you've already paid for the transfer and aren't going to give up the money you just spent. Anybody know WTF the registrars are playing at? ~~~ jamesbritt _I've noticed that the last character of EPP values tend to be minor punctuation ([,.] etc.), which is ignored whenever I double-click to copy & paste._ I took the CSV exported from GoDaddy, striped it down to multiple lines of domain, EPP domain, EPP domain, EPP .. and pasted that in. That failed. When I removed the space between the comma and the first character of the EPP key, it worked (so far for the few I retried). My guess is that the space confused the form parsing code. Or maybe it was just a glitch. In any event, I've been now moving domains successfully, and in the morning I'll be re-trying the bulk of the remaining names. BTW, in my initial retry attempt I noticed that some domains were being flagged as not transferable, something I didn't catch when i attempted to moe 30 names at once. One name was "questionable", two others were too close to the expiration date. I got in touch with Namecheap support and they arranged to get these names transfered as well. And once all the ducks were in a row I've been getting pretty quick turnaround times from both namecheap and GoDaddy. So, so far so good. ------ juddlyon This incident will in a public relations textbook as a case study in ten years. ------ ck2 Just keep in mind if you transfer to NameCheap - make sure you are happy with their full price for renewals - because you will NEVER get a discount for renewing. They only give new transfers in special pricing. Ironically you'll be able to transfer back to GoDaddy in a year when they make some kind of "come back to us" offer for a few dollars to transfer in. ~~~ pbreit Namecheap's posted renewal rate is less than GoDaddy's. Does GoDaddy discount on renewals? Other registrars? ~~~ rkudeshi Coupons for GoDaddy renewals are generally available if you check RetailMeNot.com or other such sites. The codes tend to change every month/quarter, but I don't think I've ever renewed with them for more than ~$9. ------ abcd_f Can anyone explain why would one want to transfer a domain from one US-based registrar to another given that all recent domain-related issues are US- centered? ~~~ dangrossman Your choice of registrar is completely irrelevant; the registry itself is in the US (Verisign), and the government goes straight to the registry. Unless you plan to abandon the .com/.net/etc extensions, you're under US jurisdiction even if you register the domain in another country. ------ jgeralnik They are being very careful not to mention any specific domain registrars. I wonder who they are talking about... ------ Samuel_Michon I just transferred 20 general TLDs from GoDaddy to Namecheap. I did so based on the positive reviews here on HN, but also because Namecheap has been very verbal during this SOPA ordeal. The SOPAsucks coupon was a nice perk. Too bad Namecheap doesn't do transfers for ccTLDs like .nl and .es. Can anyone suggest a good, affordable registrar with broad ccTLD support and a decent mobile site/app? Preferably an independent company with phone support in the US. (I looked into Hover, but they're owned by Tucows. I also looked into Gandi, but they're based in France.) ------ jeff18 I wish you could just give namecheap your GoDaddy credentials and have them move your domains properly for you. I am definitely not looking forward to figuring out GoDaddy's UI for all my domains. ~~~ Nat0 This handy guide should help you through GoDaddy's maze of a UI. [http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by- step-g...](http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide- to-transfer-domains-out-of-godaddy) ------ aiurtourist I'd like to switch to !GoDaddy, and Namecheap seems popular. Are there any useful pro/cons I should know about Namecheap before switching? ~~~ rhizome One con is that unlike Joker and Gandi (and surely others), Namecheap is located in Los Angeles, CA and is therefore subject to US court judgements, US Internet policy, and US privacy laws (or lack thereof). ~~~ regularfry Isn't part of the whole current kerfuffle that the DoJ considers _any_ Verisign tld under US jurisdiction? ~~~ Natsu And wants a Great Firewall of America to block the sites which aren't under our jurisdiction.... ~~~ rhizome Sure, but why make it easy for them and keep the domains under US jurisdiction where they don't even have to go to GFA lengths? Why keep your domain in a country with poor-to-nonexistent privacy laws? ~~~ Natsu No argument here! Just pointing out that they've got that covered, even if they obviously haven't thought it through. ------ dspillett I'm surprised no other registrars seem to have jumped on this in quite the way NameCheap have. Is it that they feel too small to take the risk of rocking the boat? ~~~ freejack Speaking only for myself, there's only a certain amount of opportunism that I'm comfortable with in piling on when a competitor stumbles, especially when it is rooted in politics. For example, Tucows does a ton of great work to support various causes and we've always (at least as long as I can remember) supported the development of the Open Internet but we've never had a huge animal rights component to our activism, so we didn't feel right adopting an elephant rescue charity for our giving. A few other registrars did, but it just felt weird for us to change our stripes for PR & marketing purposes. Same dynamics at work with this issue (and it is much more of an issue than it is an opportunity). We do a lot of work with a lot of organizations that oppose SOPA and PIPA and similarly stupid bits of law that might destroy or inappropriately restrain the Internet commons and we're going to continue to do that, but to buddy up to the EFF and promise donations based on business volumes just isn't something we're comfortable with. We think our activism can be expressed much more productively. We're continuing to talk about what works best for us and our customers while staying true to our values and we may or may not stay our current course - it is always a live issue, but as one of the largest registrars, I can definitely say that it isn't a case of being too small or not wanting to rock the boat. :-) ------ Tloewald And as a bonus they get to stress test their servers ;-) ------ shawnz I'd like to point out that name.com (my current registrar) has been an EFF donor for some time already -- but I don't know to what extent. ------ arthurgibson Why doesn't NameCheap donate a $1 for every domain moved since 12/22 or last week when all the SOPA issues with Godaddy were presented? ------ Shorel I transfered from Namecheap to SpeedySparrow a couple of months ago. Just consolidating vendors (domain and hosting) to simplify management. ------ openmosix A similar initiative: fightsopa.org will donate 5$ to EFF for each developer solving one coding puzzle ------ gospelwut I recall reading that namecheap stores passwords in plaintext? I'd be interested if this was refuted. In any case, I'd be a bit wary to go along with the bandwagon to this particular registrar without further investigation. ~~~ chrishenn I believe its Hover that you're remembering. [http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords- wit...](http://help.hover.com/2011/07/07/hover-secures-passwords-with-bcrypt- and-enhances-usability-with-identity-verification-tools/) ~~~ freejack That article is horribly outdated. Hover does not store passwords in plaintext. ------ akuchlous <http://byebyegodaddy.com> now points to <http://namecheap.com>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Oversubscribed: A Founder's Guide to Seed Fundraising - maxnuss http://propellerdb.com/oversubscribed/ ====== maxnuss Max (one of the authors) here. This is the book we wish we’d had when we were first raising money for our startups. It starts with the basics—should you even raise money at all?—and goes on to cover preparing your narrative, finding and engaging investors, and actually getting money in the bank. After raising a combined $4M for our seed rounds, Mike and I found ourselves answering the same questions for other founders over and over. While there are some good fundraising resources out there already (we link to many in the book), we realized that there wasn’t a good source for the kind of guidance we’d needed when we were first raising our companies’ rounds. For example, there are lots of great blog posts about setting terms and negotiating with investors. But when we were twenty-somethings outside of Silicon Valley with limited experience and connections, we needed help just figuring out how to even get in touch with angel investors in the first place. Oversubscribed is free through September. We’d love to hear what the HN community thinks, and we’re here to answer questions about the book, our stories, fundraising in general, or anything else you’d like to ask! ------ wilnerm13 Mike (the other author here). It was really fun to combine the non-fiction framework around effectively raising funding with our personal war stories. For example, in the book I dive deep into a story to illustrate that "it's never a done deal until the money is in the bank." One time, and angel investor saw me pitch at a pitch competition and committed to our angel round. I got docs signed and everything, and then spent two months getting other angels committed. I'd waited to get the money in the bank from that first investor, and when I reached back out to get his investment wired, he went completely cold. I ended up having to convince his assistant to schedule a meeting with him in NYC. When I took the bus up to NYC and met with him, he'd basically forgotten what my startup did and made me re-pitch him on the spot and remind him how much he committed investing. That wasn't the end of it though – I ended up having to schedule another meeting like that for the sole purpose of picking up a check when he got too busy to wire the money. You'll find a more thorough explanation of that story (and more) in the book! ------ mful > One mistake founders make is thinking that they need to be finding a lead > investor first. By allocating chunks of your round into portions that are > available for three types of investors — lead VCs, follow VCs, and > angels—you can create a lot more urgency out of the gate ... > If you talk to a VC who says they’d be interested in following if you found > a lead, you should tell them that you have limited spots for follow VCs Really interesting way to create urgency when there may not be any (yet).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is a junior software engineer looked down upon for starting a business? - joneath Hi HN, I am a graduating software engineer that will be launching my own startup soon. What started out as a side project has turned into something I believe other people would use. I have now decided to make it into a business!<p>As a software engineer I want to work for a startup but I am worried that my ambition may be a turn off for companies. Is a junior software engineer that has started a company unattractive to employers or is it a plus? This question can be abstracted to include all engineers/professions.<p>P.S. I wouldn't mind advice on company organization types (LLC, S Corp, C Corp) or anything else relating to starting your own business. ====== hga Echoing the other 2 commentators, especially kls, if this damages your changes at a particular startup "you do not want to work there", just as long as you can convince them you'll be happy to also work for others (in a startup environment) as well as being the top dog. Heck, it's likely to be a mutual learning experience: you and the company you're joining will have things to teach each other. One weird thing I helped a number of startups I worked for was real estate (in their case leasing office space), based on what I had learned while growing up from my father and grandmother. ------ wilhelm Quite the contrary. Having an education and relevant technical experience are all good, but what separates the merely good candidates from the excellent is that the latter have proven that they can get stuff done by their own initiative, that they've actually used their skills for something real. Contributing to an open source project? Excellent. Writing your own research papers and contributing to a standards organization? Wonderful. Running your own business? Perfect. ------ kls Off the cuff, catch all answer, You want to file an S Corp there are tax benefits to doing so. The better answer is talk to a tax professional. As for damaging your ability to find a job, initiative will never hurt you and if it does you do not want to work there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
‘Super Mario Run’ Underperforming Due to Hefty Price Tag - atalreja https://flipboard.com/@thenewsdesk/technology-shjum1jiz/%E2%80%98super-mario-run%E2%80%99-underperforming-due-to-hefty-price-tag/a-0WFbZ4VxRjqBv2W45VkmfQ%3Aa%3A43591897-4da90f36dd%2Fibtimes.com ====== dvdhnt The article states that Pokémon GO was developed by Nintendo but it was developed by Niantic. Could it be that quality games starring classic and popular characters, at least those not originating from mobile, are just too expensive to produce? It seems that way due to what I perceive as high marketing and licensing fees, an inflated profit expectation on the part of rights-holders, and perhaps even a sense of nostalgia. Personally I want these kinds of games to succeed but I'm also not paying $10 for one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Joins Apple in Push for Tax Holiday - zerostar07 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/google-joins-apple-mobilizing-lobbyists-to-push-for-tax-holiday-on-profits.html ====== iamelgringo Suck it up, boys. Pay your taxes like the rest of us. You're sitting on huge war chests of cash. You can afford to contribute a little bit of that to the common good. US companies in general are sitting on $2Trillion in cash. Productivity is sky high, because of all the lay offs across the economy, and profits are generally up across the board in most sectors of the economy. US companies aren't spending because they don't want to spend. They aren't hiring because they are productive enough and are profitable enough without hiring. They are also scared because of all the uncertainty in the financial sector, not necessarily because of the high taxes. The few people that are actually putting money to work in this economy are angel investors and VC's by giving small engineering teams small amounts of cash as well as leeway to experiment at building interesting products. ~~~ sunsu I don't consider paying taxes to a bloated and inefficient government to be the "common good". ~~~ erikpukinskis Do you ever receive packages from UPS? Do buy food from a grocery store? How do you think those things get paid for? You really think the $2 per pound you pay for tomatoes includes the true cost of growing a tomato and getting it into your car? If so, I've got a bridge you might be interested in... ~~~ kiba Some people are not grateful for the roads that government build, like critics of suburban development, enemies of car culture, etc. ~~~ thematt Please stop promoting this nonsense that our current level of taxation is needed because of infrastructure needs. Transportation accounts for a measly 4% of the federal budget. Most of our tax dollars go towards military and paying for the old people in society, both of which are politically-charged budget items that politicians refuse to address. <http://www.investorguide.com/taxtrackr/> ~~~ lurker19 Lowering taxes does not stop the military. Spending is one side, taxing is the other. Bills that run up must be paid, or war fought over them. The solution to overspending is to find a way to stop the spending. Regarding old people, as a group they worked pretty hard to build the modern world and its conveniences and efficiencies that we enjoy, so I don't mind paying them dividends. ------ vsl2 Given the past experience with the 2004 tax holiday (little economic investment effect), the current proposal should be rejected. And to allow another tax holiday only sets the expectations that additional ones can be lobbyed for in the future, meaning these companies will again hoard foreign profits offshore in hopes of repeating this request again and again and thereby depriving the government of timely tax revenue. This is a quite blatant attempt by these companies to game the tax system for their own (not public) benefit. As others have stated, these companies obviously held the foreign profits abroad hoping to have/create this type of lower tax opportunity to bring back those profits. However, I don't blame these corporations for trying this - corporations' jobs are to make and keep as much money as possible, mostly in response to shareholders' desires for greatest economic returns. Anyone who owns stock in Apple and Google is a part of the reason for this attempt. If this tactic works, the market value of Apple and Google will increase and isn't that what essentially all shareholders want? Frankly, if these companies voluntarily paid all taxes without trying to find ways to minimize them, most shareholders will be furious at management. Government, through its various corporate/tax laws, sets the limitations on what is permissible and not for corporations, and it hopefully tries to do it in the way that maximizes overall public benefit (balance regulation against enough corporate freedom to incentivize economic growth). The problem I see is that special interest groups have disproportionate power through buying influence. In order to prevent recurring instances of this same situations, the government should firmly show that it will not grant tax holidays now or in the future (then maybe companies will bring foreign profits back right away to the US, thereby paying taxes on time and maybe hopefully spurring economic investment). My Conclusion: Companies (at least public companies) aren't wrong to try to maximize their value in every way within the controlled environment created by governments. The government should act in the way to incentive corporate actions in the best interests of the public (whether it be more tax dollars or economic growth or another objective). Just say no to the tax holiday. ~~~ lurker19 The corporations' managers cross the line from self-interested to sociopatgic when they pass from enjoying current laws to lobbying (bribing) for new laws to suit heir interests. ------ gwright I don't know enough about this particular tax rule to say something useful but on the general idea of a 'tax holiday' I do have some thoughts. Ad-hoc government policies are wrong. Tax holidays, cash for clunkers, amnesty for illegal immigrants, tax credits for favored businesses, loan-gurantees for that new stadium or 'preferred' manufacturers (e.g. Solyandra), health care 'waivers' for certain companies, are all examples of ad-hoc government. These sorts of policies shred the idea of equality under the law, encourage rampant lobbying in order to gain 'legal' favors, enable politicians and bureaucrats to wield power preferentially, reduce the predictability of the legal and financial environment (taxes, fees, licenses, etc), and skew economic decisions to fit into legislative time windows. Laws should be uniform and consistent rather than moving targets with varying applicability. ~~~ orijing I totally agree. Not only does it make the tax code much more complicated than it needs to be, but it also discredits the "fairness" of taxes, damaging the very legitimacy of it. ------ lubos yep. don't be evil (but only when it suits us) anyway, this is absolutely unacceptable. those corporations knew what they were doing right from the beginning. they kept their profits overseas and were hoping government will decrease corporate tax at some point. it didn't happen, now they are applying political pressure so they don't have to pay the same tax rate as rest of America. THIS IS BULLSHIT and is not fair to rest of the society. damn you Google, Apple and Cisco ------ adaml_623 Here's a better idea. Google and Apple take their taxes back to the US AND they pay tax on those profits. That would definitely help the economy and the budget. It's so sad that corporations can't seem to actually apply ethical judgements in situations like this. Apparently the shareholders are better served by overseas unrepatriated profits than by actually receiving dividends which have had tax paid on them. And having a national government that can fund the infrastructure for their US offices. (Not a tax laywer so reality may differ from opinion) ~~~ SamReidHughes _That would definitely help the economy and the budget._ And hurt other countries' economies. You have a strange sense of ethics. ~~~ ajays Why should they hurt anyone else? The money's just sitting in a bank somewhere. ------ kalleboo > Though the studies found that money brought home in 2004 ended up benefiting > a narrow set of shareholders, support is growing in Congress for the tax > holiday as companies expand their roster of lobbyists. It's really sad how U.S. government policy is now so openly for sale to the highest bidder. ~~~ mcantelon If what was going on in the US took place in another country we'd call it corruption and bribery, yet we're supposed to accept the current rule by lobbyists and campaign donations as acceptable. It seem inevitable that the increasing economic inequality and lack of real democracy will lead to significant unrest. ------ jimworm The title of the article should be "Google, Apple now powerful enough to hold the entire world to ransom". Given the numbers in the article, that's ~$520 billion of tax revenues they're withholding from the state, and ~$1.5 trillion of liquidity they're withdrawing from Ireland or wherever (someone check the numbers?). The thing going for the US is that it's still a good place to spend that money, otherwise they wouldn't be contemplating repatriation in the first place. Arguably, if these companies steadfastly hold on and do not repatriate their funds without a tax holiday, their shareholders should punish them for only making imaginary money... not that it'll hurt them in a real way. If the US were to grant this tax holiday, they should've set a 0% (or 5.25% or whatever) corporate tax rate to begin with. At least it'll be fair to everyone. ------ wildmXranat How is this idea even on the table considering current deficit budgets. Regular people don't have the luxury of pulling a fast one on the IRS and pay their dues. ------ RexRollman I don't understand why corporations don't have to pay taxes on overseas earnings when US citizens living abroad do. ~~~ sjwright Corporations do have to pay taxes on overseas earnings if they want to bring those earnings back to the US. As far as I'm aware, it's the same for US human citizens. (It's certainly the case for Australian citizens.) ~~~ yardie No, US citizens have to pay taxes while abroad whether or not they are returning to the US with it. In fact, some US citizens who have never lived in the US bur have citizenship through inheritance are having a hard time understanding why they are being taxed by a country they have never lived in. ~~~ jules Does that mean that some people are paying taxes twice, once in the country they're living in and once in the US? ~~~ teejae You kind of pay the maximum of the US and domestic tax rates, after some possible deduction, though not exactly the case given how it gets calculated. But yes, all income worldwide is taxed for US citizens. If you're curious, see: <http://www.irs.gov/publications/p54/index.html> ------ lambdasquirrel I won't rule here on whether corporations are good/bad or if they deserve the profits. I'd just like to posit my analysis of the situation, which is that: 1) It's been well documented in the financial press now that banks and companies are holding more cash than ever. In fact, Apple is holding more on hand than the gov't. 2) This tax break would be a one time infusion. Corporations can't count on it recurring, if say, they wanted to plan on using it to fund operating expenses (e.g. salaries). 3) Historically, older corporations do not hire sizable numbers of workers. To what extent are these the companies with offshore profits? Ignoring any ethical judgements, to say that it will help boost the economy seems dubious to me. Again, ignoring ethical judgements, I think it is fun to consider other consequences, like what effect it may have on corporations' investments on foreign soil. We might not be able to make jobs here, but maybe we could nudge them away from making jobs there? It only works if you think the world economy is not interconnected though. Anyway, my point is that, yes, there are good moral arguments why this push is reprehensible, and people are making interesting points as such here. Going the other way, I'd like to think about what the hardheaded economic realities are (and they certainly are not about direct job creation). What if it merely adds dollars that these corporations could use for other causes, like lobbying? To what extent do we consider these activities to be good or bad? Donations to charity and contributions to PACs are often one-off. One thing that tickles me is that when donations are big, they go into endowments, which are managed by various financial companies. Good for the charities, but it's not that there are other vested interests. ;-) ------ eddieplan9 I am very curious to see what would happen if, instead of a tax holiday, the US Government announces that it would permanently _increase_ the tax from next year. Would that be an alternative way to encourage big corps to bring profit back now? ------ ajays The sad part is: both Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the corporations, and not to the voters. Every law that gets passed has these hidden loopholes and exemptions that benefit a select few corporations. Who puts these loopholes in? This is all done surreptitiously, and I've yet to see any accounting for these loopholes. What we need is a Wiki-like system while drafting legislation, so that every edit can be tracked to the author(s). ------ jshort This is the exact sort of "tax loophole" that should be put to an end. I almost wish someone pushed back by proposing a raise in taxes for such behavior, and maybe next time these big companies would think twice before they tried to avoid paying taxes that everyone else does. ------ jeffool So, if this is the "carrot" to get corporations to repatriate this wealth, (ignoring business as usual), what would the "stick" look like? Maybe a small, token increase? Or some method of increasing the tax rate dependant upon the length of time between the date the money was earned versus payed out as dividends? Surely stockholders wouldn't let companies sit on cash (that would eventually come back here anyway) if that were the case. You wouldn't even have to be successful, just make a boisterous push to ram THAT through Congress. See how quickly these same companies try to get their assets here under the current tax law. ------ rmrm our corporate tax rates as I understand it are second highest in the world. That is offset by the fact that they are riddled with loopholes and deductions. We really need to eliminate special loopholes and deductions and then reduce corporate rates. Having a large spread between US and offshore tax rates obviously gives an incentive for US corps to move factories and such overseas, rather than to export from the US. I don't see any reason to have incentives for that behavior. Reduce all of the paid for deductions and bring rates down. Simplify. ------ nl Wouldn't this be a good thing? The money would come back into the US, and if the tax break isn't given then it won't be coming back. I'm as cynical about corporations as anyone, but in this case.. they use 100% legal means to reduce their tax, behaving exactly how anyone would expect them. Some argue that it is an ethical issue, but that neglects the fact that these companies make a large proportion of their profits offshore, and bringing _that_ money gets taxed too. Ethics in this argument are much more subtle than some would have you believe. ~~~ tomelders They use 100% legal means to keep money off shore. True. But then they ask for a Tax Holiday when that arrangement no longer suits them. One way or another, that money will return to the US, and the tax will be paid accordingly. This will happen over a long period of time. If the US allows this tax holiday to happen, it will be throwing away billions of dollars in the long term with no real short term advantage, whilst sending a very dangerous message to people who use tax avoidance as a long term fiscal strategy. It's corporate Americas job to make try and make the system work for them. It's the governments job to try and make the system work for everyone. ~~~ nl _One way or another, that money will return to the US, and the tax will be paid accordingly._ See, that's where I disagree. All those companies can _easily_ invest that money offshore, either in financial institutions or in building new facilities. Both seem to be worse outcomes for the US than this. To be clear: I don't believe in the "trickle down effect" - I think a progressive system is the only sensible one. _BUT_ I do think _any_ trickle down is better than nothing. _sending a very dangerous message to people who use tax avoidance as a long term fiscal strategy_ It's not tax avoidance, it's tax minimization. There is a _big_ difference. The message I see at the moment is "shift your profits and investment offshore, because it is cheaper". I'm not convinced that is beneficial. _It's the governments job to try and make the system work for everyone._ I agree with this completely. ~~~ lsc >It's not tax avoidance, it's tax minimization. There is a big difference. I thought "Tax avoidance" was the legal term for legally minimizing your tax burden, so "avoidance" and "minimization" would be largely synonymous. "Tax evasion" I thought, was the term for avoiding taxes through illegal means. ------ rockarage There is going to be a rush to judgement, but I'm not convinced that the government is going to use the tax money wisely. There are too many people in the business of defrauding our government, trillions are wasted on wars, and millions on earmarks. The government knows how to bail out wall street, but they can't turn the economy around. Out of all big international corporations in the US, I would argue that Google and Apple are the most socially responsible (apart from privacy concerns). It won't make sense to bring it back to USA so it can sit in bank accounts and accumulate interests, because those funds are currently accumulating interest as we speak. The obvious uses would be for spending, perhaps for acquisition and growth. The money would eventually be taxed. Keeping the Government in the pinch has forced them to crack down on waste and fraud. It would be much harder for them to bail out wall street this time around. ~~~ othermaciej The money wouldn't just be taxed eventually, it would also be taxed immediately, though at a reduced 5.25% rate instead of the usual corporate tax rate. And if a corporation repatriating income uses it to pay dividends, or for share buybacks (resulting in capital gains), this will result in taxable income for the shareholders. ~~~ Retric Shares owned by people outside the US would not pay any capital gain to the US gov on any dividends.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Contributor to Forbes.com on ghostwriting for CEOs - staunch https://medium.com/climate-confidential/content-used-to-be-king-now-its-the-joker-d40703c18c73?source=tw-2671c9e0a999-1401940705981 ====== 001sky _Over the past year, I’ve contributed a half dozen more stories to Forbes.com. Not under my own name, but as a ghost writer for a couple different CEOs. For that work I was paid—no exaggeration— TEN times what Forbes ever paid me to write for its site, but Forbes paid nothing for those pieces. That’s the new media system, with “content” at its core._ Fascinating datapoint.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Website advice on Drilling Down fast... - spoiledtechie The problem I have is I want to drill down very fast for the user in a web based environment.<p>Exp:<p>I have an organization I need to find located in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.<p>If I gave the user a list or a map of countries they can look at, what is the fastest possible method to get to Daytona Beach?<p>I could go USA -> Florida -> Daytona Beach -> Organization. While doing so I create a new page each time. This example can be seen at craigslist.com because thats how they do their drill down.<p>I was sort of thinking like a list on the very left of the screen. The user clicks on the country and a new list gets generated via javascript to the very right of it of states. They then click on a State and a new list then again gets generated to the very right of that with cities. etc...<p>I would love to hear more ideas. I want the fastest user interaction drill down with it being extremely simple for the user.<p>So, what do you think? ====== JayNeely Check out <http://tiddlywiki.com> \- They do dynamic display of content very quickly, very well. You should be able to learn from their approach. ~~~ spoiledtechie Thank you. Not truly what I was looking for but it it def nice.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tracking leaks on NDA beta Xbox 360s by embedding serial number on-screen - danso https://twitter.com/cullend/status/1071884772064944128 ====== wlesieutre Not as subtle, but Star Citizen's NDA test servers have hidden watermarks to track where screenshots come from. Someone pulled up the edges to show one here: [https://i.imgur.com/FXzwlYd.png](https://i.imgur.com/FXzwlYd.png) You still get leaks because people take screenshots for their bug reports, upload them somewhere (even with an unlisted URL) for discussion on the bug reports forum, and then other users under the same NDA can download your screenshots and share them (rather than getting busted for leaking their own). So having a screenshot from a bug report leak isn't necessarily actionable for banning people. But it's still useful to prevent, say, users under NDA streaming the super buggy builds on Twitch. Once they're relatively stable, CIG drops the NDA requirement, opens testing to a wider audience, then eventually push out to the main servers. Doing this with a disguised UI component is a pretty cute implementation. ~~~ hartator As an early backer of Star Citizen, I wish they focus more on making the game instead of chasing down leakers. ~~~ sandworm101 Because SC is not actually a game. It has evolved into a dream business. They are selling dreams. So secrecy is most important, else the glamour collapse. They lost me when they hired Gillian Anderson, but DRM ridiculousness is on the same level. Such things should not be the focus of a studio working to provide an actual game. ~~~ wavefunction I have thought about this and realized I don't have the knowledge of how Gillian Anderson and the other big name actors have been compensated for their involvement to be critical. Maybe the actors receive the rights to their hirez digital scans, for example. Maybe the actors are getting a cut of the eventual 'box office take.' ~~~ wlesieutre The digital scans on their own probably aren't worth much, doing anything with them is a lot of modeling and shader work tied to the game engine. My bet's on good old fashioned money, possibly a cut of Squadron 42 sales, but probably not a cut of the giant pile of crowdfunding. Mark Hamil and John Rhys-Davies might have been an easier sell, having been in Wing Commander. For the rest, maybe they were excited to work on something that hasn't been done before. The quality of the characters shown in the trailer is crazy. ~~~ sandworm101 Such actors do not work for cuts of crowd-funded games. They may get residuals or a share of sales, but they were paid cash for their time. You can hire C and D-list with promises of future pay, but A/B demand money. ~~~ wlesieutre I was thinking more “both” than “only potential future money if we ever finish it” ~~~ krageon A cut of future money means no money. Anyone who is even a bit savvy and carries the kind of clout that comes with a big bank account doesn't need to work for empty promises. If they were promised both, it would be really surprising to me if the immediate money wasn't already enough to pay them for their time. Given that that is the case, "both" suddenly doesn't make sense anymore. ------ iamben Always amused me: Sky used to use a pint glass on subscription sports package for pubs/bars. But some sneaky publicans were sticking pint glass stickers to the corner of their screens to fool inspectors... So now the glass has a different filling depending on the day. ~~~ josu The Spanish football league app turns on the microphone to listen if a game is playing and reports back to La liga with the exact location to find bars and restaurants with pirate broadcasts. [https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/12/spanish-soccer-app- caught-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/12/spanish-soccer-app-caught-using- microphone-and-gps-to-snoop/) ~~~ giobox Wow, surprised this hasn’t generated more coverage. They’ve turned a giant chunk of their userbase, likely completely unknown to a majority of users who understandably won’t read the small print, into snitches/whistleblowers. This presumably also inadvertently returns the home address of anyone opening the app while watching a game in their own living room? Not a huge stretch to move from pursuing public places without the correct licensing to pursuing individuals for pirate streams. > "It also specifies that the feature is only deployed in its Android app." Probably because this nonsense would cause a hellstorm in App Review on iOS. ~~~ dsl > Probably because this nonsense would cause a hellstorm in App Review on iOS. Or because it wouldn't be approved in the first place. Say what you want about walled gardens, but at least someone is policing the ecosystem. ~~~ eneveu I think that's what he meant by "App Review": "App Review - We review all apps and app updates submitted to the App Store in an effort to determine whether they are reliable, perform as expected, and are free of offensive material." [https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/) ------ michaelbuckbee I met a dev who worked at Paypal that was pushing to steganographically add the IP address of the request client to the Paypal logo on every page load. The reasoning being that you could then look at any phishing/scam site that included the logo and find the IP of the perpetrator (presuming a bunch of other things). ~~~ btown While this might catch some folks, many phishing/scam sites can route their requests through residential proxy networks. There are plenty of legitimate networks (e.g. ones that use free VPN offerings as a way to route traffic through your IP) with minimal KYC, and even more illegitimate ones based on botnets. This seems like a lot of engineering for a mitigation that’s easily worked around. ------ avar Related: Anyone else noticed how Google Maps is now doing more subtle watermarking where they embed their logo into Street View images using machine learning, e.g. here: [https://imgur.com/a/0T8wP2u](https://imgur.com/a/0T8wP2u) URL: [https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3730304,4.8793692,3a,68y,194...](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3730304,4.8793692,3a,68y,194.22h,83.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4WICi0WcvZTyKwm8wM3brw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) Edit: Look a the yellow area above the door obscured by the Land Rover. They embedded their logo along the shape & size of an appropriately sized feature on the building, as opposed to somewhere randomly where it would be more visible as it crosses e.g. the boundary between a building and a tree. When I first spotted this I thought Google's logo was actually on that building, but it disappears as you zoom in/out. ~~~ eridius I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be looking for in that image. ~~~ hiccuphippo I didn't noticed it in the imgur link, the image was probably compressed. You can see it in the google maps link. ~~~ eridius Now that I know what to look for, I can see it in your imgur image, but I don't actually see it on the live Google Maps link. I do se a small one overlapping the steering wheel on the car, which doesn't appear to be particularly smart placement. ~~~ bestnameever yeah I only see watermarks if I'm zoomed in all the way and they are way smaller and more transparant than what was in the imgur image. ------ JCharante I'm surprised that so many people are surprised that this was a thing. Ever since I learned that tracking information is present but hidden in an Eve Online alliance's forum[0] for tracking down leakers, I've assumed that anything serious inside or especially outside a video game would have the same resources allocated. [0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1ftvub/pl_forum_waterm...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1ftvub/pl_forum_watermarking_unmasked_and_explained/) ~~~ 15155 Former EVE player (Nulli Secunda) and long-time software engineer. I saw this way back when and now assume any kind of NDA'd or questionable text has uniquely-identifiable unicode replacement character sequences and invisible watermarks. It's just too easy to do. ~~~ Moru Old lexicons had misspelled words put in to catch the copycats. Since they don't have to prove who did the copying it's easy, they just have to prove that the copy is from them. We do something similar to our stuff. No need to prove who did the copying as they publish the stuff on their app/homepage and have exactly the same spelling mistakes as our homepage displays to the ip-numbers we know they are using for harvesting. Document all and send to the lawyers. ------ deogeo Related - printer dots: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code) Great tool to crack down on any clandestine poster campaigns. ~~~ detaro Possibly also helped to find NSA leaker Reality Winner, after the Intercept published good-quality scans of documents she'd printed at work: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Intelligence_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Intelligence_report_leak,_arrest_and_sentencing) ~~~ flukus Conversely, wouldn't this make it incredibly easy to frame someone? ------ boingy they also used a 'zebra' skin on prototype Xbox One consoles to be able to find people who leaked images of the physical console: [https://www.thetechgame.com/News/sid=8160/photos-of-an- xbox-...](https://www.thetechgame.com/News/sid=8160/photos-of-an-xbox-one- zebra-prototype.html) Xbox have a reputation for watermarking things to a large extent to deter leakers. The first ever footage of Halo 4 Multiplayer came courtesy of someone recording it from a terrible camera, played on a CRT television, from a VHS recording, while in a barn. I would link it but it also has obnoxiously loud music playing over the top of it but if you search 'halo 4 barn leak' you will be able to find it. Admittedly I'm sure whoever leaked that went a bit too far for comedic effect ~~~ kweks Zebra skins are also used on prototype cars / unreleased cars - not for traceability, but to obscure their form - very similar to the technique used in WW2 battleships. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage) [https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTv1x...](https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTv1xOaFzir591tHFQeq03b4W35rdvZaV8i0WuD8GOcE5PuA_eX) ~~~ robin_reala Dazzle camo was more of a WW1 thing. ~~~ kweks Thanks for the clarification. I noticed that the Swedish navy still seems to use it ? [https://www-thelocal-se.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1000/s/www.th...](https://www- thelocal- se.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1000/s/www.thelocal.se/userdata/images/article/f135320fc79a7c11e4c2442cd0e02113639cbaf6322a4eb4bf143bdd85ca8449.jpg) ~~~ ranger207 That's splinter camo. Camouflage is used in general to disrupt outlines, but dazzle camouflage specifically used black and white to accomplish that goal. [http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Splinter](http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Splinter) ------ dfxm12 I suppose this is a perfectly cromulent use of "security through obscurity", and an excellent example of steganography. I wonder if anyone thought about those rings or ever noticed they were different machine to machine. ~~~ Someone1234 On a related topic, it would be fun to embed the EURion constellation[0] into random things just so it results in difficult to trace side-effects. For example wear a t-shirt with it printed on, if someone tried to edit CCTV footage or a photo of you, it might error out. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation) ~~~ dsl EURion only works on flat services (photocopiers and scanners). Photoshop detects currency based on a Digimarc watermark, which you can't generate without paying a licensing fee. ~~~ weinzierl > Photoshop detects currency based on a Digimarc watermark, which you can't > generate without paying a licensing fee. You can't generate _your own_ without paying a licensing fee. Nothing[§] prevents you from extracting existing watermarks and applying them to other things. This is called a _copy attack_. There are mitigations[1] but I believe they are not practical for banknotes. I've been told by a Digimarc representative in private conversation about the mentioned paper, that _" The Digimarc for Images solution does not utilize the exact functionality described in the paper [..]"_. This was in 2011, I don't know if things have changed. [§] Ok, nothing technical at least; legally it's a different matter... [1] [https://www.digimarc.com/docs/default-source/technology- reso...](https://www.digimarc.com/docs/default-source/technology- resources/published-technical-papers/commercial- applications/dmrc_image_signatures.pdf) ~~~ dsl The current research in to the Digimarc currency watermark has determined an absolute minimal test case [1], however no one has discovered the exact watermarking mechanism. I was speaking in absolutes because we can't do a copy attack without knowing what features to extract. Someone has enumerated all the detected regions on the 20 pound note [2] if you'd like to take a stab at it! 1\. [https://murdoch.is/projects/currency/cropped.png](https://murdoch.is/projects/currency/cropped.png) 2\. [https://murdoch.is/projects/currency/small_crops.png](https://murdoch.is/projects/currency/small_crops.png) ~~~ ryanlol I don't know anything about Digimarc, but it looks like this tool may allow you to create watermarks as other people using the official digimarc software [https://github.com/flarn2006/DigimarcPIN/](https://github.com/flarn2006/DigimarcPIN/) ------ ocdtrekkie As someone who's been on a few NDA'd betas before... I just don't understand why people leak. Is it the feeling they can break the rules without likely facing truly serious repercussions? (Has anyone ever gone to jail or even been seriously fined for violating a video game NDA?) Is it the notoriety of it? I mean, I won't deny there was a fun factor to having a New York Times reporter beg me to violate a Google NDA once. But even then, I had more fun knowing something the New York Times didn't than breaking my agreement, ruining my personal reputation/credibility as a trustworthy individual, etc. And generally if I have access to these sorts of things, I'm enthusiastic about what the company is doing, and the last thing I'd want to do is sabotage them. ~~~ aaronmdjones NDAs generally fall under civil law, and, with few exceptions (e.g. contempt of court), you can't be incarcerated for civil (rather than criminal) infractions. You can still be fined to high heaven, though, and subject to forfeiture if you can't pay... ~~~ ocdtrekkie Have you ever actually heard of someone being fined over a video game NDA though? Players being banned for violating NDAs in closed testing isn't super uncommon, but I've never seen someone actually taken to court over it. ~~~ aaronmdjones It would be up to the plaintiff (e.g. video game company) to claim monetary damages occurred, and to what extent. I haven't heard of it, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened... the outcomes of many NDA cases are themselves not disclosed. ------ ux This reminds me of [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/09/12/blizzard-watermarking- wow-...](https://www.ghacks.net/2012/09/12/blizzard-watermarking-wow- screenshots/) ------ rixrax Just as a thought experiment - what if they actually never implemented this. But now through this announcement, everyone will think twice before leaking BETA etc. program screenshots and second guess which UI elements might be the ones that are used to identify them. ;-) That said, excellent example of steganography as pointed out by others too! Thumbs up! ~~~ cududa Actually that was a trick they used in Windows 8 betas. They put a weird puzzle watfermark on it, except they were all exactly the same! However I guarantee this was real, but hasn’t been a part of the Xbox experience for yearrrs ~~~ withinrafael How do you guarantee this, Cullen? ~~~ cududa Because Steven has literally talked about this on Twitter. ~~~ withinrafael You guaranteed the Xbox tracking, so I was referring to that. Not the puzzle. ~~~ cortesoft Isn’t his guarantee based on the fact that he was the one who did it? ------ rasz Your (legally purchased/streamed) music is most likely also fingerprinted in a way degrading its fidelity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated) ------ jmkni That's neat. Lots of broadcasters do something similar (display a number on the screen) when they are broadcasting sports events etc to detect streaming. I'd love to know how that works. Presumably they broadcast the same thing to everybody, so is it actually the box/receiver which adds the number to the screen? Does everybody get a unique number, or do groups of people get the same one? ~~~ Maxious Apparently state level actors can defeat the watermarking... > “There’s nothing else like it in the world,” Esteban Israel, beIN’s > executive director of technology, said of beoutQ’s level of sophistication. > “We work with all the top technology vendors, technology developers. We have > our experts, we deploy state of the art technologies and we have not seen > this anywhere else.” [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/sports/bein-sports- qatar-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/sports/bein-sports-qatar- beoutq.html?smid=matthewkeyslive) ~~~ akersten The image of some crack antipiracy team hanging out in a war room is just so ridiculous to me. They say it's an individual subscriber's stream being rebroadcast, who has somehow managed to remove the watermark? Alright, just blank the stream for a few frames for half of your customers while watching the illicit stream. Binary search until you find the culprit subscriber. Even if you had 100 million subscribers it would only take 27 iterations to find. No one is going to mind or probably even notice that their screen flickers a few times. Instead they've put together a team of highly-paid professionals bumbling about that they can't possibly figure out who is behind all this. While it may be slightly more complicated in the real world, I suspect it's simply a case of justifying their own overpaid positions. ------ cbanek "You're giving away all our best tricks" \- Wargames. It's true. And boy did it surprise those leakers who wanted to show off the fancy new UI and the new avatars. ~~~ cududa Hell it surprised half the people internally that got fired using this ~~~ cbanek Well probably all of them - otherwise they would have done it differently! :) ------ Impossible I've worked on AAA games that have had similar watermarks to catch leak sources. ------ bovermyer OK, that's actually pretty cool. ------ reaperducer Movie companies have done this for a long time. I was friends with a movie critic back in VHS days, and the films sent to him to review before their release had a warning and an ID number that popped up every five minutes or so. Strangely, not every film company did it. And it wasn't limited to just the big movie companies. It seemed pretty random. Maybe because a shotgun approach was cheaper. ~~~ dylan604 There's also a forensic watermarking technique used that is invisible to the viewer. It is supposed to survive any kind of transcoding and scaling that might occur. I can't remember the name of it, but we would use it to encode videotape masters as well as for DVD/Blu-ray encodes. Very popular for use in Academy screeners. ~~~ ghostly_s Every new watermarking technique they come up with is discovered and obscured within days each year by the screener leak community. I think it's kind of a sport for them at this point. ~~~ baroffoos If you have 2 leakers they can just run a tool to compare the difference between the file and spot any watermarks. Of course the next level is making the watermark so there is a bit that is unique to 2 users only so you will then know the exact 2 who leaked it. ~~~ crazysim Pretty sure they’ll just start bisecting the screener population down. ------ pragmatick I might be too dumb to use twitter but where does he actually explain what he did? I only see a screenshot and reaction gifs ~~~ pragmatick Turns out, yes, I'm dumb. ------ withinrafael [Edit: Removed all commentary. I'm getting penalized for discourse around an unvalidated claim. I don't want to further affect my standing in the Hacker News community.] ~~~ cududa Hello Raf. Someone in the comments below confirmed it, as well as on twitter :-) As a side note, I don’t see why after not having any substantial interaction in nearly a decade you continue to see the need to follow me around and harass me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Blizzard introduces the Tauren Marine into StarCraft II - lehmannro http://eu.starcraft2.com/features/terran/taurenmarine.xml Blizzard's April Fool 2008 arms the Terrans with these creatures from Azeroth. ====== symbiotic But I don't see the taurens defining feature in any of the moovies! Peanut butter jelly time anyone?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wordpress 3.2 drops support for PHP 4 and MySQL 4 - The_Fox http://wordpress.org/news/2010/07/eol-for-php4-and-mysql4/ ====== woodall This is great news. Many applications stopped supporting PHP4 in 2008, and the last release of MYSQL 4 was in March of 2005. Supporting legacy tech isn't a bad thing, but at some point we have to stop pulling plows with mules. ------ robryan Wonder if this will improve the experience hacking the code to customise things, which has always been very frustrating. ~~~ shod Hacking WordPress is frustrating because it's so poorly engineered, and that won't change for the foreseeable future. It's a sprawling mess of Spaghetti code that's indecipherable without the WordPress Codex and Google Search. But despite all my rage, clients keep asking for it, and it keeps paying my bills. ~~~ pragmar I think you struck on an important point. For clients Wordpress is a godsend. If you quit contracting or the client needs to change developers for one of a thousand reasons there's a massive pool of talent that can step right in and make adjustments. I've taken over Wordpress sites and the learning curve is almost flat (save a few weird plugins). Anyways, it's a whole lot better of a situation for clients, developers and productivity in general than the days when everyone had a custom framework that solved the same basic CMS issue.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to build an autonomous, voice-controlled, face-recognizing drone for $200 - nogaleviner https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/how-to-build-an-autonomous-voice-controlled-face-recognizing-drone-for-200 ====== ge96 What it uses JavaScript? Muy interesante	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Driven to Distraction - embeddedradical http://webnotes.net/?rX8m9P ====== embeddedradical some may find this to be a bad thing for reasons that i have not yet imagined -- but i linked to a highlighted version.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Earth’s carbon dioxide levels reach highest point in 800,000 years - lisper https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8590664-earth-s-carbon-dioxide-levels-reach-highest-point-in-800-000-years/ ====== graeme I thought this bit was interesting: "As a scientist, what concerns me the most is not that we have passed yet another round-number threshold but what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have," Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, tweeted Thursday" We really are going ahead full speed. Global emissions have been rising in recent years, not falling. ~~~ RcouF1uZ4gsC And even countries like Germany who say they take climate change seriously are revising their CO2 goals because they are having trouble meeting them due to their abandonment of nuclear power. [https://euobserver.com/environment/140475](https://euobserver.com/environment/140475) At this point if you are opposing nuclear power, you aren't taking climate change seriously, even if you say you are. ~~~ abenedic I have a feeling that one of the biggest blockers to actually doing something about climate change is how easily the conversation gets derailed. Almost everyone agrees on clean energy, but once you get into specifics people lose their cohesion(people are pro- or anti-nuclear power, or for or against wind energy(birds, off-peak power, etc.)). I think people get too focused on any one particular solution, and cannot see that a mixture of things probably is best. Nuclear for places that can tolerate it plus wind or solar for peak times. Hydro and solar/wind for places that can't. I have heard for years, and at various times expounded myself, of the virtues of nuclear. But the public in most industrialized countries cannot stand the thought of it near them, so looking at a more balanced approach makes sense. ~~~ btrettel > I think people get too focused on any one particular solution, and cannot > see that a mixture of things probably is best. Nuclear for places that can > tolerate it plus wind or solar for peak times. Hydro and solar/wind for > places that can't. I agree that a mixture is necessary. With that being said, the examples you give are entirely technological, which I think is likely insufficient to solve climate change. I think we need a combination of technological, psychological, and political approaches. For example, as a cyclist, I'm continually disappointed by the reasons people tell me they'd never be able to adopt cycling for transportation. I'm told that they wouldn't be able to do X, Y, or Z, or that they'd feel very restricted, etc. But when I tell them that most cyclists do X no problem and they could rent a car if they wanted to do Y and Z (which are done infrequently), they aren't convinced. It seems to me that many people face a false dilemma here because they see cycling as far more difficult than it actually would be. If you design your life to make cycling possible, it's perfectly acceptable, even preferable in my case because I want the exercise. Most people pick where they live based at least in part on their driving commute, so it would only be fair to do the same for a cycling commute. Population reduction is another area which you could mention as part of a combination of solutions. In my experience those conversations are often counterproductive. But it seems clear to me that population can't keep increasing if we only have one planet, and we might prefer to have less people with a higher quality of life. (My views on population ethics are not fully formed for what it's worth.) My view is that climate change is a lost cause, so instead I'm focusing on adaptation to the new normal. ~~~ mandrake-c-papi > My view is that climate change is a lost cause, so instead I'm focusing on > adaptation to the new normal. I hate this attitude. You may be doing everything possible as an individual to prevent further climate change, but the majority of people I hear spouting this attitude do not. It's based on the premise that there will actually be some sort of "new normal" that is worth surviving for. The ongoing impact of our actions is indeterminable - we could end up with something so inconceivably bad that all your adaptation efforts are pointless, or that you simply cannot live a life of any value when compared to the early 21st century. Also, it smacks of "Fck you, I've got mine". You assume that the impact of climate change are survivable, apparent by the fact that you want to focus on adaptation, but this attitude ignores the fact that there are billions of other people on the planet. Maybe climate change can be survived by us in our situation with all our first world advantages, but there are millions, possibly billions, who don't have that choice. Focus on adaptation for all you like, but please don't forget that prevention is greater than cure and that it's not too late. ~~~ zaarn Last time I checked we breezed past the symbolic point-of-no-return at 400 ppm CO2... so it kinda is too late. We can try some damage prevention if you feel like it. ~~~ graeme We might as wel try though. It's possible that if we had a carbon tax someone might come up with: very cheap energy * a somewhat effective way to sequester carbon We'd obviously lose a massive amount of energy putting back all the energy we burned but that would be the price of survival. I don't know if this is possible. But we should at least try. Currently our lack of carbon pricing isn't giving us full incentive to try. ~~~ LifeLiverTransp Well, here is the thing- our cooperate overlords have created the perfect system to shirk regulations by shifting production to whoever is the most desperat. My money is not on goverments or companys here. My money is on some plague drastically reducing the number of humans capable to produce carbon dioxide. It looks containable now, but contain something like Ebola with millions on the move and the UN-Institutions collapsing under this circumstances. You can not enforce quarantine, if a whole country decides to walk. ------ digitalsushi the only thing that stresses me out more than the story, is the likelihood that someone very smart is working on something that will take 99% of us all out in a last ditch effort to save the planet. ~~~ timb07 [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an- incompl...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an-incomplete- timeline-of-what-we-tried) ~~~ digitalsushi That is haunting. ------ Pilfer [http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1...](http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml) On a geologic timescale, CO2 levels were many times higher than they are today. >In very general terms, long-term reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 levels going back in time show that 500 million years ago atmospheric CO2 was some 20 times higher than present values. It dropped, then rose again some 200 million years ago to 4-5 times present levels--a period that saw the rise of giant fern forests--and then continued a slow decline until recent pre-industrial time. CO2 levels over the past ~5 million years are at the lowest point in over 200 million years. On a geological timescale, CO2 levels are _returning_ to normal, not going away from it. ~~~ thaumaturgy Okay, this comes up sometimes in climate-related topics, usually because of a combination of misunderstanding and a need to be the clever contrarian that's thought of something nobody else has. The question isn't whether Earth will survive these CO2 levels. Earth will (probably) be just fine. It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life. The question isn't necessarily even whether humans will survive much higher CO2 levels. We're resourceful, we have the ability to shape our environment. Some people will survive. The question is how much we're going to enjoy all of the adverse effects of this global climate change. It is going to cause or contribute to a lot of natural disasters: hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme storms, droughts, flooding, massive wildfires. There are going to be migrations. Wars. There are some solid arguments that climate change contributed to the Syrian civil war [1]. Many species are going to disappear as they fail to adapt quickly enough to the changing environment; it will take much longer for new species to take their place. We will see, for example, an environment with fewer butterflies and more mosquitoes -- many more. Nobody is going to get out of this unscathed. It's going to cause widespread political and economic instability and unrest. Even if you manage to find yourself a nice little spot untouched by the most direct effects of climate change, it's going to cause enough suffering in enough other parts of our globally interconnected human society that you'll see the costs somewhere. The US spent a record $306 billion on disaster response last year. Where do you think that money comes from? [1]: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change- ha...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the- syrian-war/) ~~~ Pilfer >It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life. This isn't common knowledge _at all_ among non-scientists. Most people have no clue that CO2 levels were many times higher than today, and that earth and the ecosystem in general were just fine. Scientists may be aware of this fact, but why don't they inform the general public of this? Take the submitted article for example. Instead of publishing an article stating, "CO2 levels are higher than 800,000 years ago; but are likely lower than they were at any point from 20-200 million years ago" they only leave in the scary, doomsaying first part and neglect to inform the second part. It is the equivalent of looking at a 24 hour geological clock and only telling people about the past minute while neglecting datapoints from minutes or hours ago. Why aren't scientists informing the public of the historical data? I understand why the climate change community may not want to bring up this point (it detracts from other issues) but people should be aware of this fact. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels. >The question isn't whether [X], it's whether [Y]. I am paraphrasing, but that's largely what your comment is saying. The article premise and its title, is about [X], where [X] is CO2 levels. It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic. _Edit: I don 't want to reply to several comments, so I'll respond here._ Why do I believe the discussion should inform people about historical CO2 levels? Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040. The incentives to cut emissions are just not there. Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource. The current projections I have seen predict 500ppm by 2050, and likely 600ppm by 2100. Given those numbers, I ask myself the question, how likely is it that humanity will face extinction in the next century? How should I interpret these numbers? Given the geological data, I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity. ~~~ Jweb_Guru The sun is also measurably brighter and hotter than it was when CO2 levels were significantly higher, meaning we should expect greenhouse effects to be more severe. CO2 levels aren't the only thing that contribute to climate. Additionally, while in the past the levels have been much higher, the _rate_ of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift in the geological record-- it's the sudden change that has many people worried. ~~~ Pilfer I did not bring global temperatures into the discussion as I don't believe they pose as serious a threat as increased CO2 levels. Wikipedia has a nice graph showing estimated global average temperatures over time [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.svg) . _Please note the log-time scale_. The graph shows that between 10-250 million years ago, global temperatures were 1-12° C higher than they are today. Given that current projections, which include the 2% relative gain in solar irradiance, expect 3-4°C warming by 2100, the geologic temperature record suggests such increases are not detrimental to life on earth. Let us recall that life was thriving during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when temperatures were 5-10°C higher and CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. Global temperatures today are actually _lower_ than than average, on a geological timescale. >the rate of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift No, you can't conclude this. You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less than 200 years. The geologic record is not detailed enough to make such a claim. It is unknowable if there was a series of major volcanic eruptions that caused CO2 levels to rise rapidly. And sudden change has always been a part of climate and evolution. Rapid change can occur in just a few decades. For example, the Sahara wasn't even a desert 10,000 years ago. Also see punctuated equilibrium. ~~~ zaarn > You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history > where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less > than 200 years That assumes the CO2 is also gone just as quickly. But I doubt that would happen unless you can show a natural process that could not only increase the CO2 level by 150ppm but also decrease it by 150ppm just as quickly. ------ xupybd Do we have a good grasp on what that means? I'm not trying to deny climate change but if I'm honest I don't know what it means for the carbon dioxide levels to by the highest in 800,000 years. Is the temperature response linear? Are there other dangers involved in changing the composition of our atmosphere? Is the response likely to self regulate or avalanche out of control? Is being the highest in 800,000 actually a significant point or is it just a bad sign? ~~~ zaarn Answers in order: We dont' know. 5 times. The rapid and huge increase in CO2 is to my knowledge unprecedented. We did have similar CO2 levels in the past but never in such a rapid incline, only after thousands if not millions of years time for everything else to respond. We could be causing a The-Day-After-Tomorrow-Scenario. Or something like 2012. Or Mad Max. We simply don't know but considering the parts we do know, it's likely that whatever happens is not good. A 400ppm Level of CO2 was considered a symbolic point of no return and we have passed it a while ago. ------ shmerl Is there a way to build a closed loop system that would suck CO2 and make methane from it for example? Methane can be used for further energy production but again with closed loop, capturing all produced CO2. ~~~ ars > and make methane from it That part's easy. Where's your energy source? The whole issue is not Co2, it's energy. ~~~ shmerl _> That part's easy. Where's your energy source?_ Solar + methane itself fed back into the loop. ~~~ ars If you have solar power, why are you reforming Co2? Just use the solar power directly and don't emit the Co2 in the first place. ~~~ shmerl You aren't controlling all emissions. ~~~ ars If there's enough power (solar or otherwise) there won't _be_ any emissions. ------ rocky1138 On an unrelated note, I'm impressed that the Waterloo Record's webiste is surviving the HN hug.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Red vs Green: The Musical, A Startup Odyssey - aaronblohowiak http://aaronblohowiak.com/red-vs-green-the-musical-a-startup-odyssey ====== juiceandjuice Thought this would be a musical about the Red Green show... I'm so disappointed. ------ heat_miser My shell doesn't support color ;-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jfxr: A browser tool to create sound effects for games - rinesh http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/ ====== boomlinde I've seen SFXR before, and while I can see the point of using these tools for things like prototypes or quick game jam entries, I am absolutely appalled when the sounds end up in otherwise high quality titles. Why ruin a good, otherwise beautiful game with these unimaginative sound effects? My issue is not as much that the sound effects are cheap or boring as the fact that I can immediately tell where they come from, and that it could easily have been avoided by paying a sound designer an almost negligible amount of money to make sounds that somewhat fit the theme of the game in a more profound sense. ~~~ TheZenPsycho The original motivation for SFXR is the number of games produced that were simply _silent_. SFXR changed that to not silent. It sounds cheap to say this, I'll admit. But if you want a better world you've got to make the tools that make that better world really easy to make, which is what sfxr is or was. Maybe we address this by making a tool that makes better sounds than sfxr. On the other hand, maybe we address this by making a tool that makes it really easy for game devs to work with sound designers. ~~~ boomlinde _> The original motivation for SFXR is the number of games produced that were simply silent. SFXR changed that to not silent._ Sure, it lowers the barrier of entry when it comes to sound design. I think it has worked well for a few games, and as I said it makes perfect sense for something like ludum dare or just prototyping. But when you want to polish your game and have a vision and/or a budget of any sort, I don't see how the sfxr sound effects aren't the first thing to go. Sfxr makes it all a lot simpler, but it sometimes strikes me as arrogant to use it for an otherwise polished product, since in my mind it means that these game developers don't recognize that it isn't trivial to create a good set of sound effects. +1 on creating a tool that makes collaboration easier. I have a friend who does this professionally, and the process usually involves manual revisioning by renaming files or timestamped folder names and moving them to dropbox. The last project I saw him work on actually had an in-house tool to manage volume levels and delay times, though. ~~~ TheZenPsycho sometimes the barrier to entry is simply _not knowing_ anyone you can ask. I'd almost suggest something _like_ 99 designs but, the problem with that site is it significantly devalues the work of artists. I would hope that any tool that surfaces for this niche is more respectful to the craft than that. ------ thisjepisje I remember another tool like this, for 8-bit/lofi sound fx. [http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/](http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/) Given the title they might be related? ~~~ TheZenPsycho it started out with sfxr [1] then the clones started the mac clone cfxr [2] the flash clone, you linked to. the fork of that, called bfxr [3] the ios port [4] the (much better, in my opinion than OP), js port [5] sfxr.js [6] sfmaker [7] and I'm sure there's a handful of others. I think I'm missing one js clone- along with a number of game engine libraries designed to accept the source parameters for a sfxr sound or bfxr sound and generate them in real time in the game as opposed to storing a wav. The opportunities for this genre of program are opening up now that the webaudio api is just starting to mature (though it has a fair way to go). SFXR gives you a very very basic array of synthesis techniques. There's a lot more that is possible here- Plus the whole field of FM synthesis techniques (think genesis/megadrive era sound effects), game engine libraries are yet to be addressed in the browser, as the tech making that possible is still just around the corner in the next browser releases. [1]: [http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) [2]: [http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr](http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr) [3]: [http://www.bfxr.net](http://www.bfxr.net) [4]: [https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sfxr/id349840825?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sfxr/id349840825?mt=8) [5]: [http://github.grumdrig.com/jsfxr/](http://github.grumdrig.com/jsfxr/) [6]: [http://humphd.github.io/sfxr.js/](http://humphd.github.io/sfxr.js/) [7]: [http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/757-sfmaker- html5-sound-e...](http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/757-sfmaker-html5-sound- effect-generator/) ------ dm2 How would I make a bell sound? (I know nothing about audio) Can audio / sounds be copyrighted? ~~~ DanBC The closest I got, and it's terrible. http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#{"_version":1,"_name":"Powerup 16","_locked":[],"sampleRate":44100,"attack":0,"sustain":0.29,"sustainPunch":0,"decay":0.95,"tremoloDepth":0,"tremoloFrequency":1,"frequency":1600,"frequencySweep":0,"frequencyDeltaSweep":100,"repeatFrequency":9.4,"frequencyJump1Onset":40,"frequencyJump1Amount":0,"frequencyJump2Onset":66,"frequencyJump2Amount":0,"harmonics":3,"harmonicsFalloff":0.5,"waveform":"sine","interpolateNoise":true,"vibratoDepth":0,"vibratoFrequency":427,"squareDuty":100,"squareDutySweep":0,"flangerOffset":33,"flangerOffsetSweep":-2,"bitCrush":16,"bitCrushSweep":0,"lowPassCutoff":22050,"lowPassCutoffSweep":0,"highPassCutoff":0,"highPassCutoffSweep":0,"compression":1,"normalization":true,"amplification":100} (Yes, that is one huge URL) EDIT: I put the URL in a CODE tag. That fixes the broken page, but breaks the URLification. ~~~ nvader Just played around with it a little more, came up with this: http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#{"_version":1,"_name":"Powerup 16","_locked":[],"sampleRate":44100,"attack":0,"sustain":0.29,"sustainPunch":0,"decay":0.95,"tremoloDepth":0,"tremoloFrequency":1,"frequency":510,"frequencySweep":0,"frequencyDeltaSweep":100,"repeatFrequency":8.7,"frequencyJump1Onset":40,"frequencyJump1Amount":0,"frequencyJump2Onset":66,"frequencyJump2Amount":0,"harmonics":5,"harmonicsFalloff":0.06,"waveform":"sine","interpolateNoise":true,"vibratoDepth":140,"vibratoFrequency":427,"squareDuty":100,"squareDutySweep":0,"flangerOffset":33,"flangerOffsetSweep":-2,"bitCrush":16,"bitCrushSweep":0,"lowPassCutoff":10100,"lowPassCutoffSweep":0,"highPassCutoff":0,"highPassCutoffSweep":0,"compression":1,"normalization":true,"amplification":100} I was going for a tolling kind of bell.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When will we start paying for Facebook friends? - terpua http://www.xobni.com/blog/2007/08/28/when-will-we-start-paying-for-facebook-friends/ ====== aston The one huge problem with Facebook identity that carries over into things like using it for a reputation system, etc. is that each person only has one identity. The immediate consequence is that I can't simultaneously maintain a profile on Facebook that makes me look cool to my friends and responsible to company recruiters. The long term consequence is that without a significant change in information management, Facebook won't be able to be an adequate identity (or reputation) provider, since people rely on the fact that their eBay self is not the same as their Facebook self is not the same as their Valleywag self is not the same as .... ~~~ mdakin It would be interesting to know how many users would vote with their feet based on this point. Trying to "solve" this multiple identity problem is complex both from a personal as well as a technical perspective. I suspect most people neither want nor need this additional complexity. The people who really "need" it (i.e. those who are irresponsible maniacs but do not wish to appear as such) would not really benefit from it anyway. The thing about irresponsible maniacs is that if you sit down and talk to them for an hour (the typical duration of a corporate job interview) you can detect that either they are a maniac or that they have something to hide. Either way it's a no-hire. There is no need to dig through Facebook or Google to detect this sort of personality. ~~~ nostrademons Many people already "solve" it by maintaining different accounts on different social networks. I use LiveJournal for keeping up with my HP fandom friends, planWorld for my Amherst friends, FaceBook for high school friends, and I've switched between C2/L:tU/Reddit/News.YC for programming/professional acquaintances. My identity in each is recognizable, but subtly different, since I'm writing for different audiences. There's some cross-talk - many of my younger HP fandom friends found me on FaceBook, one of my Amherst friends found me on Reddit, and one of my middle school (!) friends found me on C2. But social relationships are sustained by groups, not individuals, so even if they find me they tend to lose interest in what I'm doing. ~~~ mdakin Using different services/accounts to narrowcast specific segments of your life to specific groups of people is a traditional use of social networking tools. But this story is not about using social networking tools in traditional ways. The author is positing an emergence of new uses of social networking tools based on the reputations of the individuals within the network. If FB or some other service manages to be both big and a true business ecosystem new forms of business will emerge based on the reputations of the individuals within the network. These forms of business have the potential to attract a much larger segment of society to the social networks. My point is that within the context of such a reputation-based, socially- oriented, business-friendly ecosystem people will prefer to have a single identity/reputation to manage. Simplicity will win over complexity when "typical people" are involved. And the ultimate winner will cater well to typical people rather than technical people or the users of the first N generations of social networking tools. ------ nanijoe I am usually something of a Xobni fan, but this facebook 'praise and adoration' is a little over the top. I see a place for charging people to 'follow your lead' or take your advice based on your community reputation, but the article should have talked about this in a broader perspective .There are several reasons why this would be hard to implement within a facebook context AND absolutely no reason why it cannot be done by someone else. ~~~ srini Facebook seems to have entered the Google/Microsoft/Apple pantheon - write an article about it and you get guaranteed blog traffic. ~~~ brezina Indeed, the first lesson of marketing: no one wants to write about all of our little startups, but they are starving for material about Facebook/Google/American Idol/etc. The same thing happened with our "email me instead" facebook app. Writers needed a contrarian voice for their stories about the facebook love-fest; we represented discontent with facebook messaging and this put Xobni in stories from Australia and Germany as well as Venture Beat, CNet, and Gigaom. Today's example from Techcrunch: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/03/powerset-parses-miss- so...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/03/powerset-parses-miss-south- carolina/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Flash installer: You may have to temporarily disable your antivirus software. - senthilnayagam http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ ====== jameswyse I think it's time to permanently disable my flash software.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple working on 3D Mac OS X user interface (images) - twampss http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/12/11/apple_working_on_3d_mac_os_x_user_interface_images.html ====== frig 3d isn't how to think about the interface outlined there. Basically, apple is investigating making multitouch part of the "normal" os x interface. A touch interface has to overcome the fact that fingers aren't good for precise pointing, and thus a lot of tasks that are tedious-but-doable with a mouse (like positioning windows, or using pulldown menus, or clicking small icons) become hugely painful with a finger. It's pretty obvious what a good touch interface for os x would have to be like: \- the app is designed with full-screen mode in mind \- the app's primary content area fits in one central area \- the tools and so on are in sidebars-and-bottom-bars ...and the app would avoid: \- overlapping windows (either within the app, or between apps) or floating palettes \- lots of little icons or finely-detailed controls In other world: every app would look like iphoto or ical or itunes. A "2.5d" interface like in this patent makes a lot of sense: each open app is in its own "slice", and you navigate forwards and backwards through the slices using some multi-finger gestures. The edge of the screen is used to show contextual information about what's currently open, and provides cues as to how to navigate to different items (eg: is that photo "behind me" or "in front of me"?). In a touch-heavy environment the gimmicky 3d interfaces from the past all of a sudden become potentially a lot more helpful. You'll notice apple's been working on possible solutions to making a touch interface usable for a long time: \- a lot of the expose tools make more sense as ways to easily navigate between windows with a finger (eg: hit the expose key, see all open windows in miniature, then touch the one you want to maximize...) \- dashboard makes a lot of sense in a touch context, as a way of easily pulling down some lightweight apps without disturbing your current ui arrangement \- spaces makes a lot of sense in a touch context: each collection of screen layouts in its own little slice that's given a spatial location, and so not only do you not destroy a layout by bringing a different app to the top, you also give spatial cues as to where your other open programs are ------ DLWormwood I find it curious that the menu bar in these patent example images is no longer pinned to an edge of the "screen." The major historical justification for the Mac OS X having a single global menu bar was to exploit Fitt's Law by giving the menu bar an effective "infinite" height. Unless there is a pointing device that handles 3-D positioning or otherwise provides some feedback or scroll dampening when traversing a corner of this "virtual room," Apple may as just as well give up and pin menus with each window like all the more recent GUIs do... ~~~ anewaccountname That was part of the justification. The other part is you get duplicate clutter all over the screen. 15 instances of "File, View, Preferences, Help" spammed all over your screen instead of one. When you almost never use a menu if the window doesn't already have focus. ~~~ DLWormwood I agree with that. (I'm a long time Mac user all the way back to the 68k era.) It's just that ever since Steve's return, there seems to be a subtle disregard for the history of the platform and a willing forgetfulness of the R&D effort expended by the company over the last few decades... ~~~ unalone How so? I've only started following Apple in the last few years; my first Mac ran Leopard. Were there anything big that disregard previous usability, beyond the reflecting dock? ~~~ DLWormwood I know this is a late response, (I only just found it on my comments page) but major usability loss occured with the introduction of the "non-spatial" Finder with OS X. This guy summarizes things much better than I ever could... <http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/that_finder_thing> ------ iigs If I was a betting person I would bet against this interface becoming commonplace as it is shown right now. It seems driven by appearance and not functionality. You don't gain much from this that you don't get from having a MDI window tiled against a bunch of toolbars. The idea of having toolbar items pinned to the "wall" is interesting, but in general I'd think it would just perspective- distort the icons used on the boxes/buttons. Despite the obvious/intuitive feeling that if 2D is good, 3D is better, I think as long as we're viewing the desktop through a single 2D viewport there's really very little advantage to this. On the other hand, as multiple displays are becoming more common, there might be an advantage to building an internal 3d model of a desktop and creating multiple viewports into this space with the LCDs. I don't think the Apple model shown in the link really aligns with that at this point, however. ~~~ Haskell As multitouch screens becomes more common, users will want an experience more familiar with the real world because the interface becomes more concrete. And 3D interfaces, even inside a 2D screen, could improve the illusion of that concreteness. ------ lacker Recall that Apple hid a lot of their iPod interface patents, like the scroll wheel, in a patent application for an "advanced TV remote controller". I wouldn't be surprised to see this turn up not in a 3D OS X but in a different device. ~~~ jwilliams I'm surprised... Ideally you like your patent to be broad as possible, but still very much around a particular target. I'd have thought mixing up you applications/claims like that would have done more harm than good. ------ kingsley2 <strike>Simpsons</strike> Microsoft did it: (pdf) [http://research.microsoft.com/users/kenh/papers/TaskGallery....](http://research.microsoft.com/users/kenh/papers/TaskGallery.pdf) It even looks almost exactly the same. ------ speek The only way that more-than-2-dimensional UIs will work will be if there's an extra dimension _only_ for each of the elements ("in-and-out" for the window stack, etc)... otherwise people will get frustrated with mousing... Don't even get me started on 3D mice... ------ rbanffy The very day Apple demos its first 3D environment, Microsoft will announce that Windows n+1 will sport a 3D user environment. Of course, it will never, ever, ship, but will prevent some 'softies from considering the switch. ~~~ LogicHoleFlaw One week later, the Linux enthusiasts demo their new 4-d UI, which features window placement on the surface of a hypercube. The system mostly works, but has a bad habit of turning your browser inside-out. ~~~ thalur As long as you can remember which dimension you left that important document in... ~~~ twampss And Apple's Time Machine software will be replaced with a real DeLorean. ------ pxlpshr <fanboy> This is why I love APPLE!!!!!!!! </fanboy> But seriously, so impressive... I can't wait. This type of innovation and Apple's ability to bring it to the consumer market justifies a closed hardware platform, IMO. We don't need 30 million configurations, we're over that period as hardware is now a commodity. "If you want to build great software, control the hardware." ~~~ whacked_new Various similar concepts have been explored. <http://bumptop.com/> ~~~ pxlpshr Apple is the most secretive company in the world and have no need to publish unpractical prototypes on YouTube, lol. I assure you, they've been exploring alternative interfaces for quite sometime... their entire history encompasses the user experience. ~~~ surfmike I work at BumpTop. BumpTop may have started as a research prototype of course, but it's very much a real product by now, with Windows as the first platform. You can see users' screenshots on Flickr (<http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=bumptop>) and <http://customize.org/bumptop>, and sign up to get in line for an invite at <http://bumptop.com>. ~~~ surfmike Also check out a video of BumpTop a few versions ago: <http://bumptop.com/help> ------ serhei I foresee more of this ([http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Thoughts/sidedock-2007-...](http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Thoughts/sidedock-2007-08-29-16-00.html)) kind of awfulness mixed in with the whizzy 3D desktop. ------ nebula Is there any evidence suggesting that Apple is actually working to implement this UI into OS X? I don't think filing for a patent necessarily means betting on it big time. ~~~ jwilliams Some of these metaphors are already in use for things like Time Machine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
BBC: ISPs Should Assume VPN Users Are Pirates - michel-slm http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/08/2348240/bbc-isps-should-assume-vpn-users-are-pirates ====== michel-slm Shows that you can be relatively exemplary in one regard (relative independence from the government) and yet fail in another. Unless they have a scheme for allowing BBC licence payers who happen to be traveling overseas to get access to content, I don't see how they can brand all VPN users as pirates.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Download Google webfonts on the Linux desktop - somecoder https://github.com/andrewsomething/typecatcher ====== somecoder I was unaware Typecatcher was available on GitHub until just recently. I wrote a blog post about it in 2014, wasn't on GitHub then: [https://longren.io/install-all-google-web-fonts-on-ubuntu- ea...](https://longren.io/install-all-google-web-fonts-on-ubuntu-easily/) I've always found it very useful and is not widely known about, apparently.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do YOU make money from open source projects? - hunt I am not looking for tips, I am just genuinely interested in what methods people use- Flattr, Gittip etc. ====== adzicg By running a service - a lot of software today isn't valuable because of the product, but because of the service it provides. Facebook, Twitter or Drobox software is not particularly difficult to clone - many companies built clones. What sets the popular sites apart from clones is the service they provide (community, reach, availability, easy access). I guess that's one of the failures of G+ - the software was there, but the service wasn't. Our code is in the open[1], and anyone could install it and run it, but there is a convenient web site[2] out there that lets people get the service easily without bothering with an install. We make money from subscription fees for higher capacity. [1] - [http://github.com/mindmup](http://github.com/mindmup) [2] - [http://www.mindmup.com](http://www.mindmup.com) ~~~ hunt This is how I envisage what I would call "public facing" (websites etc) open source projects making money. Do you think this idea of trying to provide the best form of service translates to applications, through regular updates and support for users? ~~~ adzicg many opensource application developers make money from selling auxiliary services (eg premium support) or training workshops around their products. this is particularly a good idea if your target market are developers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
About that audition project - mseebach https://ma.rtinseeba.ch/about-that-audition-project/ ====== agox I don't think a week-long project means a 40 hour project, as the author suggests. In my experience, a week-long audition project has been typically a 5-8 hour project, something I can knock out in a few evenings. Additionally, it's always been a toy example, typically in the vein of "read some input from a file and do something with it". It can almost always be knocked out with the standard libraries for any given language. ------ saching90 When there are bigger corporate hiring en mass then something like audition project might be unfeasible but serves as a very good measure when hiring in startups.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
IBrothers Grimm: The eBook is dead, long live the eBook - yu http://recombu.com/news/ibrothers-grimm-the-ebook-is-dead-long-live-the-ebook_M11639.html ====== mikecane I hope people notice this and vote it up. A great success story. (Usual disclaimer: I'm not part of it.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Massive new data set suggests economic inequality is about to get even worse - clumsysmurf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/04/massive-new-data-set-suggests-inequality-is-about-to-get-even-worse ====== jldugger It'd be nice if the article this news story bases it's premise around ([https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=%22...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=%22the+rate+of+return+on+everything%22&oq=the)) wasn't a non-peer reviewed working paper that self-cited unpublished research. ~~~ rwnspace That would be far too close to careful journalism in the empirical tradition. Can't you see we're in the middle of a culture war, and we need articles on the front-line every 24 hours? ------ xbmcuser I don't see how income inequality can change without higher taxes on the rich. The middle class earns 10 spends 10. The rich earn 100 spends 20 is taxed 20 invests the remaining 60. So next year middle class earns the same 10 the rich earn 100+investment returns. Add inflation and the middle class each year looses purchasing power and more wealth shifts to upper class. It's simple math and the way the tax systems in most of the world work is not going to change. ~~~ WalterBright The middle class is quite capable of investing in the stock market. 50% of Americans own stock. ~~~ c256 This story suggests (to me) that number is high, rapidly decreasing, and somewhat misleading, since it includes people with any level of 401k/similar. What’s your source? [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-few-millennials- invest...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-few-millennials-invest-in- the-stock-market-2016-7) ~~~ WalterBright I read in the Seattle Times recently, sorry I don't remember the particular article. The figure did include indirect investments, such as via pension plans. ------ phs318u I’ve often wondered when the cognitive dissonance between belief in the promise of achievable prosperity, and the reality of a vanishingly small chance of achieving it, would become too much to bear for an armed and increasingly dispossessed populace. ~~~ WalterBright With a hundred bucks anyone can start an investment program in stocks. In contrast, I saw on the news the other day that the average lottery ticket "investor" puts in $250/yr, and lottery investors skew heavily towards lower income people. $100 in the S&P 500 last January would be worth $120 today. And low income people are pretty much exempt from capital gains taxes. The democratization of the ability to invest in companies like Microsoft and Amazon is one of the great opportunities that exist in America today. ~~~ rdlecler1 And given that these people are willing to invest in lottery tickets, what's the odds that they'll make good stock market investors? ~~~ WalterBright Given that monkeys randomly throwing darts seem to do better than professionals, I'd say the odds are very good they'll do better than the lottery. The ROI (Return On Investment) for lottery tickets is negative 53%. [https://www.theawl.com/2012/02/how-much-can-you-expect- as-a-...](https://www.theawl.com/2012/02/how-much-can-you-expect-as-a-return- on-that-2-powerball-ticket/) ------ almost_usual >if you were a typical investor I’m not sure what “typical investor” means in this context. Shoveling money away in a diversified account and never touching it? Investment practices aren’t static and have changed quite a bit over the time measured. Even if investment practices were static you still need to factor in human emotion to investing. It’s easy in retrospect to see “If I kept my money in a diversified market I would have received +x% over y time”. But humans don’t think this way. Day to day events have much more influence on how someone makes a decision than long term forecasts. The Great Depression wasn’t just a slow down to our economy, many people believed capitalism was coming to an end. This happened weeks after one of the strongest bull market periods in United States history. If you were to travel back in time and tell someone on Black Tuesday “don’t worry, use dollar cost averaging and you’ll be rich in 90 years” they would think you were insane. This research also fails to recognize most millionaires in that time period were immigrants from poor families. Their frugality and tolerance for high risk entrepreneurial activities is what made them wealthy to begin with. Trustfund children rarely make as much as their parents. They settle for low risk careers like “doctor” or “lawyer” which pay high salaries but do not generate large sums of wealth. They also tend to be UAWs (Under Accumulator of Wealth). “A $250,000 per year doctor is an "Under Accumulator of Wealth" if his/her net worth is less than the product of their age and one tenth of his/her realized pretax income.” - The Millionaire Next Door ------ walterkobayashi And Republicans want to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. ~~~ WalterBright Lowering corporate tax rates helps stock values, and 50% of Americans own stock directly or indirectly (via pension plans). ~~~ rdlecler1 What about the other half? ~~~ WalterBright It was in reply to the person who implied breaks were only for millionaires and billionaires, unless one believes that 50% of Americans are millioniares. See my other post in this thread on this topic about the democratization of stock investing in America. Of course, one must also choose to invest in stocks as opposed to, say, lottery tickets. ------ supreme_sublime I still fail to see how "economic inequality" is a bad thing. If you accept that we will never be equal (aka aren't a communist) then the question becomes, what is a "good" level of inequality? How do you determine that? Does inequality increasing actually mean anything? I'd argue inequality is quite meaningless. Especially on a national basis. Everyone can be equally poor, what good did lower inequality do then? Why focus on inequality instead of something like poverty? As Louis CK tells his daughter in an episode of Louis "The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtxuy- GJwCo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtxuy-GJwCo) ~~~ dragonwriter > I still fail to see how "economic inequality" is a bad thing. It's a bad thing because it is an objective fact that it is a source of human suffering. You might have a moral or aesthetic preference that humans _should not_ respond to inequality that way, but that is no more meaningful than a belief that they should not adversely react to oxygen deprivation. ~~~ supreme_sublime Is it? I would love to see the proof of that. Afghanistan has one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world. So inequality doesn't seem to be their problem. ~~~ dragonwriter You can look at the large body of work in the field of relative deprivation then; there's strong evidence that it is a powerful factor for most in developed countries, and it some evidence that it also is outside of the worst-off in less developed countries, but the poorest in LDCs seem to have absolute deprivation dominant as a source of disutility. (The research on LDCs is thinner and more recent, as historically most of the work has been done in relatively developed countries.) ~~~ supreme_sublime Sounds like envy to me. Which doesn't really seem like something we as a society should cater to. Instead people should learn to either be happy with what they have, or actively attempt to make steps to improve their life. There is no option to take from others for your own benefit or the supposed benefit of others, as that is theft. But let's say that's just not how the world is, envy is certainly a very real human emotion. What level of inequality is necessary to cause broad social unrest? Do we have anything close to a situation like in Venezuela? It is really cool how you are telling me to do the legwork and make your argument for you. Definitely productive. ~~~ dragonwriter > Sounds like envy to me. Which doesn't really seem like something we as a > society should cater to. I'll repeat what i said before, anticipating exactly this line: You might have a moral or aesthetic preference that humans should not respond to inequality that way, but that is no more meaningful than a belief that they should not adversely react to oxygen deprivation. > It is really cool how you are telling me to do the legwork and make your > argument for you. If you need a simple starting point that is freely available online, _Income Satisfaction and Relative Deprivation: An Empirical Link_ , D’Ambrosio, C. & Frick, J.R. Soc Indic Res (2007) 81: 497. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Conchita_DAmbrosio/publ...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Conchita_DAmbrosio/publication/225714229_Income_Satisfaction_and_Relative_Deprivation_An_Empirical_Link/links/57557c6208ae10c72b66a279.pdf) But it's a big area of research, and if you are genuinely unfamiliar with it and concerned at all with economic development and related public policy, you are going to want to spend some time with the area ------ dawhizkid Can't say I'm surprised...my amateur investor tip is to buy stocks that cater to the emerging poor or super rich and short or avoid anything in between. There's a reason Dollar General has been rallying ($DG)... I'm long CVS ($CVS) for the same reason...especially after having bought Aetna I predict their "Minute Clinic" concept will cater to the emerging poor that will become increasingly sensitive to rising healthcare costs for acute care at traditional urgent care/hospital settings... ------ thisisit I guess this is one way to summarize the idiom - It takes money to make money. ------ cryoshon okay, silicon valley: disrupt income inequality. find a way to get rich by un- riching the rich. ~~~ trappist See this is the sort of comment that makes me feel like people get upset about economic inequality, rather than poverty, because poverty truly is not what they see as the problem. ~~~ uoaei The money has to come from somewhere! And all the wealth generation attributed to government practices goes by far into pockets of the rich. Reducing income inequality is the only trickle-down economics that works.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Saudi Cables - tosh https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/ ====== greenyoda Note: These were published in 2015. Here are a couple of articles from the time that discuss the content: [https://shadowproof.com/2015/06/23/the-saudi-cables- revelati...](https://shadowproof.com/2015/06/23/the-saudi-cables-revelations- from-iraq-yemen-somalia-lebanon-sudan-egypt/) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/21/saudi- arabia-i...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/21/saudi-arabia- ignore-wikileaks-release)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Matrix.org 2018 year in review - Arathorn https://matrix.org/blog/2018/12/25/the-2018-matrix-holiday-special/ ====== Arathorn This is a massive post (I didn’t have time to write a short one so I wrote a long one), but there’s some vital stuff buried in it for those interested in Matrix, including: * Details for testing the redesign of Riot ([https://riot.im/experimental](https://riot.im/experimental)) * A teaser of fan-out routing * The potential roadmap options for 2019 * The endgame for E2E encryption, Matrix 1.0 and a whole lot more. Any questions welcome :) ~~~ sandGorgon Are you planning to reduce the number of brand names that you operate ? Vector.im vs Riot.im vs Modular.im ? The FAQ of modular.im asks you to accept a TOS from riot.im . The website demo is on riot.im, but the hosted product is modular.im . And when you write in to modular.im support, you get a reply from an @matrix.org person. Jobs are applied for on vector.im ...however riot.im twitter page says "formerly vector.im". Modular.im (your hosted slack alternative) page has NO feature list. People are expected to go to riot.im to understand features and play with the demo. In fact your hosted product modular.im has no links to even download the mobile/desktop clients. People get surprised when I tell them about riot/matrix having a hosted slack alternative that is significantly cheaper and is open-source+E2E. I believe one of the reasons is that have 4 websites rather than one. Not sure why this situation exists. It doesn't help when making a case for it in the community or company. Gitlab does this well. Please fix. I don't think you should be uncomfortable with the idea of mixing your open- source products with closed source code (for e.g. modular.im migration tools are closed source) - confusion is the bigger problem. You made the right choice in focusing on Synapse and letting Dendrite stall. You can build one reference implementation well and let others do as they please. You should do the same on the desktop client. ~~~ Arathorn Gitlab is a single company who makes a single product. Matrix is a protocol with a whole ecosystem. You simply can’t compare them like for like - a better comparison would be Matrix and Git... where nobody is surprised that a multitude of different companies exist within the Git ecosystem (Gitlab, Github, Gitkraken, etc) - some of which are multiple products with different names built by the same company (Github and VS Code for instance), and some of which have a different corporate name. For Matrix, the naming is actually pretty simple: Matrix is a protocol curated by the Matrix.org Foundation. Riot is a matrix client (which is just one of many in the Matrix ecosystem, hence not calling it “Matrix client” for the same reason that Firefox isn’t called “Web browser”. Modular is a matrix hosting service, which can support any Matrix client, and isn’t tied specifically to Riot, and should be one of many in future, hence not calling it “Matrix Hosting Services”, just as AWS don’t call themselves “Web Services”. As it happens, Riot and Modular are made by a startup called New Vector, which also hires most of the core Matrix team. We don’t expect anyone to know the name New Vector though, any more that we expect people to know that Slack’s legal entity was called Tiny Speck for years. It generally only comes up when hiring. So: yes, it’s surprising that there are 4 brands flying around here - and many many more if you consider the wider Matrix ecosystem of clients and servers etc. But it is completely inevitable. This is the primary difference between Matrix and (say) Rocket.Chat or Mattermost or Slack or Discord. The power and flexibility of an open ecosystem comes at the expense of needing to give the different parts different names, just like the Web does. ~~~ sandGorgon If you look at Gitlab, the _intent_ is similar to yours and is no different. Just that the brand is managed much better. For example, Runner is an open source project that is used to run CI jobs. [https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/](https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/) . Omnibus is packaging tool ([https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/README.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/README.html)) and Gitlab is the git tool itself. If you peek at the top right corner of the documentation site, you will see these three big headings. Here are your gitlab clients - [https://about.gitlab.com/partners/](https://about.gitlab.com/partners/) (including all the native apps) Gitlab CE is the open source software. This is similar to you having riot. Gitlab.com is the hosting service - similar to you having modular. There is no difference in intent or licensing... im talking about brand. For the end-user, the benefit in incalculable - one website (and Google search keyword) to find out all the options and all the information. I send people to Gitlab.com if they want to run it themselves OR if they want to buy the hosting service. In fact, Gitlab had org vs com domains for open source vs paid software .. when they then merged ([https://about.gitlab.com/2014/03/07/moved-to-dot- com/](https://about.gitlab.com/2014/03/07/moved-to-dot-com/)) There is no reason for you to identify Vector.im as separate from Riot.im as separate from Modular.im . For me as an end-user, it doesnt matter - Riot.im could have a link to download and a link to host and a link for about us. It is not about inevitability - you are outwardly branding stuff separately that is not needed and can be unified under a single umbrella to reduce confusion. ~~~ detaro The intent is different. Gitlab wants to distribute and sell one unified thing, Matrix wants it to be clear the pieces are just that: pieces you can interchange with others. It's not important to how Gitlab represents itself to the outside that you maybe could replace Omnibus or the Runner with other software, for Matrix it's important. ~~~ sandGorgon There is only one piece of software that is componentized and named here - riot.im which is a client. Your argument is a straw man argument because I don't see websites for Synapse or Dendrite..which is their core server. That is still part of matrix.org . Vector is the name of their company and modular is the name of their hosting service. So the argument about representation doesn't stand. The brand theory still holds. ------ gfodor Matrix is a really exciting project. It's really great that an open and decentralize alternative has a viable shot to mainstream adoption for this generation of communication platforms -- something that never materialized in Facebook's rise to dominance. One thing about this roadmap post that is confusing to me is that the mobile client work, specifically iOS, seems under-prioritized. I'm assuming the focus on UX the last half of the year has been intended to put matrix in a position to compete with the mainstream apps for adoption, so having solid mobile UX seems just as important. Is there a reason matrix expects users to be desktop- centric or that the mobile UX is already good enough to compete with Slack, Discord, etc? ~~~ Arathorn The main reason for mobile being underprioritised is that many of the mobile devs (who are based in Rennes in France) are doubletiming with helping the French government project and so are quite stretched for time. Also, for better or worse, we have entirely separate codebases currently on Web, iOS and Android. The reason we do this is to ensure that other app developers can use the same proper native matrix SDK in their apps rather than be forced to use a device abstraction approach like React Native. However, it means that typically the web SDK leads the way (as it’s the easiest test bed for new features, and several of the core spec team work on Riot/Web, so new stuff happens there). However, we’re starting to see the balance shift: the new Android SDK and app is more advanced than the JS SDK, and we might even experiment with using Kotlin Native as a way to share that code to other platforms. Eitherway: we’re aware that mobile needs more love and investment and we’re trying to fix it :) ~~~ solarkraft > ensure that other app developers can use the same proper native matrix SDK > in their apps rather than be forced to use a device abstraction approach > like React Native Thank you! ~~~ Arathorn :) just hope it's worth the tripled effort of us having to build and maintain matrix-{react,js}-sdk, matrix-ios-sdk and matrix-android-sdk versus writing once and running everywhere... ;) ------ vertex-four What this post doesn’t mention is the failure to tackle a fairly significant problem[0] leading to Matrix bridges being banned from at least one major irc network (hackint) and a number of irc channels elsewhere. If you were thinking of using Matrix because you thought it might allow you to access all your old chat systems as well, think again. [0] The Matrix bridge model fundamentally doesn’t map to how IRC works in reality, and causes massive headaches for IRC network and channel operators. ~~~ floatboth Matrix works great with Freenode. What exactly is the problem? How does it not map? I authenticated with my freenode nick/password, and it's acting as a regular bouncer pretty much… ~~~ vertex-four There’s a number of larger channels which have banned Matrix users, and various smaller channels I’m in have been considering banning them due to the privacy concerns of Matrix.org (based in the U.K., iirc, and potentially subject to an easy court order requiring them to release their data) keeping a full, eternal log of all communications in any irc channel where a Matrix user has joined. Freenode is also not the entirety of IRC. ~~~ Arathorn The main reason why some channels have banned Matrix in the past was instability in the bridge causing occasional netsplit style behaviour where all the Matrix users would bulk-part and bulk-join. Since stability was fixed earlier this year, it should no longer be a concern. In terms of privacy concerns: yes, Matrix.org is currently provided by a UK legal entity, just as many IRC servers are too. But if you want privacy from a malicious server admin or government or whoever then you should be using end- to-end encryption, and you shouldn't be using IRC. I'm not sure the legal jurisdiction makes much difference (unless the UK outlaws E2E, which then becomes a whole new can of worms). If you're worried about the fact that Matrix rooms contain scrollback, then it's (again) unfortunate that nobody has cared enough about this to file a bug on [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice- irc/issues](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues) to request configurable retention per bridge. Meanwhile, [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- doc/issues/447](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/447) i s the general spec issue if you'd like to upvote or comment on it. But in the end, Matrix is FOSS, and we kinda hope that folks will contribute stuff like this that we simply haven't got to yet. ~~~ vertex-four It is, in general, not a concern of IRC users that Matrix is broken past what they need to do to protect themselves from it, and attempting to fob Matrix development off on them is really not on. While I agree that many communications should go over e2e chat, there are a number of low-real-risk channels on IRC that occasionally discuss drugs and similar, and adding the additional risk vector that ten years down the line some prosecutor decides to dig the logs up through Matrix.org when everyone else has long since lost them isn’t really cool. My understanding from last time I went through the codebase is that logs will not be deleted even if all Matrix users leave the room. ~~~ Arathorn > attempting to fob Matrix development off on them is really not on. My point is that if you have requirements for a bridge (eg configurable scrollback retention), you should submit a feature req to let us know about it at the time rather than ragequitting and telling people that matrix is broken. Anyway, point taken that we need to make scrollback retention configurable (whether for bridging or in general); have bumped it up the todo list. ------ stevenicr Still excited about matrix and riot and similar... Still need to have methods for moderators and admins to have permissions to view details about other people in the chat rooms. Things like ip address, server they are federated from(?), client used, etc. Having run public chat rooms for more than a decade, I've found the need to give some people moderator powers to inspect suspicious users, log info, and ban via subnets and cidr being very important to lessen the flow of many issues. It only takes one troll to ruin your chat room, and that troll can connect from dozens of ips from dozens of vpns in little time. The more info we can provide to a few trusted people, the easier it is to detect these things and ban people / networks. I know this is not a magic pill to fix all the problems with all the people. A combo method with things like having regular users move to a room that takes a certain level to join, and only gaining access to those levels if you've been a known member for x months for example can make a big difference in situations like that as well. Other moderation tools would be nice too, but without the ip info and such the others are moot in my experiences. ~~~ Arathorn We do have this API already actually: [https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/blob/master/docs/admin...](https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/blob/master/docs/admin_api/user_admin_api.rst), but it needs UI hooked up to it (and it should probably be in the spec rather than synapse- specific). Agreed that we need more moderation toolsnin general though; we’re working on it. ------ xvilka So far the biggest problem in my opinion is lack of native clients (and servers). The official client is Electron-based, and official server is written in Python. It might be good for prototyping, but hardly convenient for real users due to speed and memory constraints. I hope they will focus more on Dendrite[1] (server in Go) and Nheko[2] (client in Qt) instead of wasting time with Electron. [1] [https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite](https://github.com/matrix- org/dendrite) [2] [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html) ~~~ Evidlo Nheko is not currently maintained. See Fractal [https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/fractal](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/fractal). ~~~ mixedCase That is unfortunately a GNOME application, meaning it uses the Gtk and follows GNOME's HIG thus looking extremely out of place on Windows and MacOS and somewhat out of place on other Linux desktops (assuming Gtk3+ is themed to match the rest of the system, which doesn't help it fit very well anyway). While I'm sure it's a great option for people using GNOME-based desktops, I don't think it'd be a good idea to bet on Fractal as _the_ Matrix native client, I don't think its authors see it that way either. ------ detaro Is there a working matrix-IRC bridge for the other way around than usual - to use an IRC client with Matrix? ~~~ Arathorn there have been three attempts at this: PTO, matrix-ircd and most recently [https://github.com/nilsding/AgentSmith](https://github.com/nilsding/AgentSmith). PTO is abandoned; matrix-ircd ([https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- ircd](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ircd)) works but needs contributions and polish to be useful; AgentSmith is brand new and looks promising but haven’t tried it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Artisanal pencil sharpening - zafka http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/08/david-rees-artisanal-pencil-sharpening.html ====== silvertab Well, I guess that's one way to earn a living! I was convinced it would be about this guy however: [http://oddstuffmagazine.com/extraordinary-art-on-pencil- tips...](http://oddstuffmagazine.com/extraordinary-art-on-pencil-tips-by- dalton-ghetti.html) ~~~ Chirono That is incredible.... And he does it without any sort of magnifying glass. Wow. ------ mmagin [http://www.amazon.com/Authenticity-Hoax-Lost-Finding- Ourselv...](http://www.amazon.com/Authenticity-Hoax-Lost-Finding- Ourselves/dp/006125133X) ~~~ mechanical_fish Yes, but not only is the performance art version funnier, but I might get a pencil out of it. Of course, knowing me I will promptly break the pencil and then I'll be heartbroken. What I need to do is go into business selling inert-gas-filled hand-blown glass ampules to store your artisanally-sharpened pencil in, so that it retains its sharpness until long after you are dead. I am an authentic solid state physicist with an authentic lab coat and goggles, after all, so I have ample qualifications in scientific pencil preservation. ------ Groxx > _... the more I thought about it, the more I was like, 'If I could figure > out how to get paid to sharpen pencils, I would be happy.' So I decided to > become an artisanal pencil sharpener."_ Talk about meeting your goals. Congrats to him for making his life happier, that's one hell of a risky job idea. ------ pkulak Did the Onion get a new domain? ~~~ pbhjpbhj The image with the yellow pencils shows really badly sharpened pencils IMO. I hand sharpen pencils (with compacted ceramic glazes in place of "lead") with a craft knife and get a better tip than that. No, I'm not even joking. ------ diziet This is so post post modern.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers - vellum http://firstround.com/article/How-Medium-is-building-a-new-kind-of-company-with-no-managers# ====== HarryHirsch It all sounds quite like Wikipedia, which has its official hierarchy of admins, and then its informal hierarchy of admins with clout. Despite its advertised openness ("the encyclopedia anyone can contribute to") a lot of stuff over there runs through back channels; _that is by design_. The project has a reputation of being poorly run. Run for the hills!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I made a website that rates the latest movies by analyzing social media - buzzscale http://www.buzzscale.com Let me know what you think. I'd like to expand it to more data sources and also start analyzing other products such as tv shows, books, video games, phones, cars etc... ====== basseq Interesting idea; I'd be interested to see a full correlation between Buzzscale scores and other ratings sites (IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes). Based on a quick analysis of the top movies on the front page (vs. Rotten Tomatoes user ratings) it seems to be pretty well correlated. It seems to do a bad job identifying "eh" movies (e.g., Gangster Squad: BS-80 RT-64 and Hansel & Gretel: BS-76 RT-64). Buzzscale scores also seem to be more uniform in nature: pretty much everything is 70-85. Any thoughts on "ratings effects"? E.g., proportionality to either gush about a movie or pan it, exclusively? Lack of nuanced reviews? (No one goes on Twitter to say, "It was whatever.") ~~~ joshuahedlund It does seem like "gushers" and "panners" tend to overcrowd reviews, but I was curious enough to do a quick Twitter search. About half of these results are "ok" tweets about movies/TV shows, so maybe there _are_ enough people going to Twitter to say "whatever": <https://twitter.com/search?q=watched%20was%20ok> ------ gsharma Looks interesting. fflick.com did this sometime back and were acquired by Google. A feature suggestion - "Enter your email to get weekly notification for movies with more than 80 buzzscore" (where 80 is editable.) An extension to this could be email me movies that are popular for their comedy, acting or the story. ------ adventured Look good, but it needs to assess sentiment rather than just buzz (and it needs to grade buzz a lot better). Gangster Squad for example has a 80 buzz score, but it got between terrible and mediocre reviews. Django has an 85 buzz score, but got almost universally great reviews. Django will make roughly 4 to 5 times as much money as Gangster Squad, and was just about blanket everywhere in the media 24/7, so it's very unlikely Ganster has anywhere close to as much actual buzz as Django. ~~~ F_J_H You're right, but your comment made me think of something Andy Warhol once said: _"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches"_ ------ examancer I am not sure if this site provides an accurate aggregate view of public opinion on movies, but if it does then I have no desire to know what the public likes. I also don't know how this is better than other "what does everyone think?" ratings available on IMDB or rotten tomatoes. The real beauty of all the social data now available is that a service like this could theoretically provide ratings based on the sentiment of people who's opinions _I_ follow or who are have similar tastes to me. I don't care how much the average person loves Pitch Perfect, its just not something want on my list of potential movies. If I were matched through my social iterations to people who's ratings are relevant that would likely be obvious. I love seeing new software in this space and I hope you develop it further, but you're going to need to dive much deeper into the social data available if you want to really make a disruption. ~~~ ArnoVanLumig I had an idea about this recently, and would love for someone to further develop it. I already implemented a proof of concept, but won't have time to build it to a complete product any time soon. The (simplified) idea for recommending movies was: 1\. Crawl a torrent site (say, the pirate bay) for as many torrents you can find. Extract the title, description, magnet link and category for each torrent. 2\. Use the DHT network to find out which IP addresses are downloading what torrents 3\. Use these (torrent, ip) tuples to build a recommendation based on "People who download X also download Y" This way you can try to find movies that are liked (or actually, downloaded) by people with similar taste to you. The quality of this recommender is quite impressive in my opinion. Email me at arno at vanlumig dot com if you want to see the proof of concept, I won't post a link here because the performance is quite bad and I'm sure the server won't be able to handle any significant load. I will make the data (torrent metadata and data about who downloaded what) available as soon as I've anonymised the IP addresses, also mail me if you're interested in that data. ------ eranation Looks great, and useful, wanted to share, but you are missing open graph tags so facebook share just includes your link, please add meta tags / og tags (like description, title, image etc) to make easy sharing, this is pretty important... see here for more details: <http://ogp.me> ------ cpeterso I haven't seen Billy Crystal's _Parental Guidance_ , but I am surprised that the film is ranked #8 for "Best Special Effects". ------ mr12 You should also display the avg. buzz per week for lets say the first 5 weeks. You could also display how many weeks movies held a certain buzz level (i.e. 5000 mentions). It seems the way it is currently movies that have been out longer are going to have a higher buzz than the brand spanking new releases. ------ engtech It seems to me that what you are measuring is how well marketed a movie is, not how good it is on any scale. Interesting point, compare your results against box office results. Also: the hottest and sexiest movies #6: Ice Age??? :) <http://www.buzzscale.com/?page_id=4134#62458> ------ mfonda This looks like a great way to find movies. I was a bit confused at first about what the different colors (blue, red, grey) meant. After looking at the markup I came to the conclusion that blue meant positive and red meant negative. A bit later I found the explanation hidden behind the "Click to Learn More". There's no visual indication that this is a link, so I found it easy to miss. Perhaps it would be good to move the explanations somewhere not hidden behind a click, or make the place to click more obvious. ~~~ benesch I'd also recommend choosing different colors. When scanning the list, I want the hottest movies to jump out, while the less-good movies fade into oblivion. As it stands now, red is the dominating color, and my eyes are naturally drawn to the _worst_ movies. If you want to stick with the blue, I'd recommend the same dark blue for "hot" movies, a lighter blue for mediocre movies, and the gray for the worst movies. Nice idea, though; seems to work impressively well. ------ pknerd Care to share technical implementation? ------ mathemagical I feel like I've read the comment I'm about to make somewhere else about something, so this isn't necessarily my original idea: the buzz is from social media currently, yes? And it works as a great indicator after the movie comes out, as people are tweeting/facebooking/etc. about it. But what happens in a little while when the "buzz" dies down? Or is the idea to just give you a quick glimpse of currently releasing movies, and not to be a ranking database of all movies ever made. ------ weareconvo Just FYI, you're violating Twitter's API display guidelines. <https://dev.twitter.com/docs/embedded-tweets> ~~~ diziet I'm curious, what Twitter display guidelines is the author breaking? ~~~ weareconvo When you display a tweet embedded in your page, you have to display it exactly as they do, which takes up a truly ridiculous amount of space and is intentionally prohibitive. And as a sidenote, Twitter would very much prefer if the API would just disappear, as they get non-linear benefits from users going to twitter.com instead of accessing its services through a third party. Internally, it is spoken of as a liability. ~~~ itsprofitbaron _Internally, it is spoken of as a liability_ I doubt that their API is spoken of as a liability internally because, if it was spoken of as a liability then Twitter.com itself is a liability. Why? Twitter.com itself is powered by their API[1] [1] [http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/09/tech-behind-new- twitt...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/09/tech-behind-new- twittercom.html) ~~~ weareconvo It is spoken of internally as a liability, and the executives want nothing more than to get rid of it for many reasons, not the least of which being their current investors care only about user numbers, and don't seem to count third-party users. Trust me on this. ------ mikeleeorg Nice! I just had a conversation with a friend about what new game he should play. Perhaps a nice extension of your platform is to get social media buzz ratings for games. ~~~ buzzscale I want to do this if I am successful in marketing this website and people enjoy using it. Once I've perfected the scoring algorithm, classification, website design/UI and data sourcing (to incorporate reviews & forums), I plan on expanding to video games, tv shows and books. Eventually it would be cool to do stuff like material goods (cellphones, appliances, etc...) so that consumers have another users to leverage when trying to find something to buy. Imagine being able to compare cars based on what people are writing across the web about the cars durability, performance, comfort when shopping for a car! But right now I'm working on the website by myself and have a ton of work to do. ------ redspark This is great. My wife and I are always trying to decide what is worth watching on Amazon, Netflix, etc. Added to my bookmarks. ~~~ cpeterso You might like Rotten Tomatoes' RSS feeds for new and "Certified Fresh" DVD releases: <https://www.rottentomatoes.com/help_desk/syndication_rss.php> ------ carlsednaoui Nice! I've been wanting to do something similar for a while but have been busy working on other side projects, glad you got to ship it! Out of curiosity, what apis are you using? ~~~ buzzscale I use the rotten tomatoes API to get the movies and automatically create them as blogs in Wordpress using the wordpress xmlrpc interface. I use the Clarabridge API for classification and sentiment. Facebook's graph search API & Twitter API for the data. And duct tape to hold it all together :). ~~~ carlsednaoui hahaha love it! Just like Macgyver :) ------ cocoflunchy This is great. Already bookmarked. One little thing though: please add the fullscreen button on these trailers, it would be much more enjoyable to watch them. ------ readme Excellent idea. I'm already telling people about it. ------ gpmcadam Great job. Any plans to open it up as a web API? ------ helloamar Awesome idea, the best place to know the best movies.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Simple apply/filter/reduce package in Go - fosforsvenne https://github.com/robpike/filter ====== inglor I don't get why someone would rather write a for loop than use declarative data syntax. If I want to get the names of all administrators doing `users.Where(user => user.isAdmin()).Select(user => user.Name)` is so much nicer than using a for loop - or maybe he's suggesting we start writing FOR loops instead of SQL for our databases too? ~~~ bunderbunder In most languages, the for loop ends up being faster. Sometimes noticeably so. Me, I generally start with declarative syntax, but the profiler frequently tells me to go back and change it. Being a systems programmer, wonder if it's easier for him to just use the for loop as a default. Performance demands are always high in systems programming (because there'll be a whole stack of additional software standing on top of your code and depending on it for performance), so one might end up needing to use for loops often enough that it's easier to just use them all the time for consistency's sake. ~~~ pcwalton > In most languages, the for loop ends up being faster. Sometimes noticeably > so. Me, I generally start with declarative syntax, but the profiler > frequently tells me to go back and change it. The optimization techniques to make higher-order functions compile down into the same code as a for loop are well-known. All you have to do is inline, constant propagate, and maybe SROA. Every optimizing compiler I know of, even JavaScript, has no problem doing this. ~~~ Veedrac FWIW, PyPy has a hard time with this since Python's iterators are really heavyweight. ------ pmahoney This isn't "reduce" as I know it. It requires the user function return the same data type as contained by the slice. Furthermore, for a slice of size 1, it simply returns that single element. case 1: return in.Index(0) ... if !goodFunc(fn, elemType, elemType, elemType) { ... panic } So I could not, for example, reduce a slice of numbers into a struct of (min,max,mean). ~~~ ryanthejuggler The "official" way to do this is map, then reduce. The way reduce is meant to be used exactly matches this implementation. Consider that you have a large quantity of numbers that you want to get the min, max, mean for. If you write something like the following: function minMaxMean(list) { return list.reduce(function(lastState, n) { var min = lastState.min, max = lastState.max, sum = lastState.sum, count = lastState.count; if(n < min) min = n; if(n > max) max = n; sum += n; count += 1; return { min: min, max: max, sum: sum, count: count } }, {min: Infinity, max: -Infinity, sum: 0, count: 0}); } ...then you're assuming that the reduce function will run _once_ , over a _single_ list of numbers, _in order_ from left to right. However, if you implement it as the following: function minMaxMean(list) { return list.map(function(n){ return { min: n, max: n, sum: n, count: 1 } }).reduce(function(a, b) { return { min: (a.min < b.min ? a.min : b.min), max: (a.max > b.max ? a.max : b.max), sum: a.sum + b.sum, count: a.count + b.count } }); } ... _then_ you can distribute this out across multiple threads/machines/etc, update it when new data comes in, reduce in any order. ~~~ espadrine There are many cases of elegantly using reduce() with a different return type than the list's item type. Here is a JS function which computes the combined length of all strings in a list: stringsLen = (strings) => strings.reduce((acc, item) => acc += item.length, 0); stringsLen(['hello', 'world']) //> 10 Sure, you can argue that this works, but it misses the point. stringsLen = (strings) => strings.map(s => s.length).reduce((acc, n) => acc += n, 0); stringsLen(['hello', 'world']) ------ EugeneOZ With so many "interface{}"s Go looks more like weakly-typed. "Apply takes a slice of type []T and a function of type func(T) T" And after that golang.org docs are saying "We don't feel an urgency for them" about generics"... ~~~ NateDad He does say "don't do this" and that's exactly one of the reasons why... because you lose compile-time type safety (it's still type safe at runtime, though). All the reflection is bound to be slow, as well. ~~~ EugeneOZ My point is not to say "look, this code is dirty". My point is "look, he use generics in comments, __in his mind __, so it 's natural thing and obviously should exist in Go". Only this. ------ kyrra To see the docs, use godoc.org, copy/paste the full URL for the repo into the search, and you get this[0]. Nicer way to see the API for the package. [0] [http://godoc.org/robpike.io/filter](http://godoc.org/robpike.io/filter) ------ falcolas But you can't write generic functions in Go! Oh, wait. He just did. As a caveat to my exasperated sarcasm, I do realize he's using reflection to identify and type the data at runtime, as opposed to compile time as with C++ templating, but this is kind of generalization is still quite useful when writing general purpose library code. Personally, I'd not be inclined to use this either, the number of times I've actually had to write generic code using reflect in my time writing Go could be counted with one finger. I do appreciate that it's there, however, since it is what allows the JSON library to do its magic. ~~~ hyperpape This only handles functions of type a -> a -> a ([https://github.com/robpike/filter/blob/master/reduce.go](https://github.com/robpike/filter/blob/master/reduce.go)), whereas a generic reduce takes functions of type a -> a -> b. So this is certainly not proof that you can write generics in go. See also pmahoney's comment in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9315721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9315721). ~~~ epidemian Minor nitpick: a generic reduce should take functions of type a -> b -> a, where a is the type of the reduced values, and b is the type of the elements in the sequence to be reduced. ~~~ hyperpape Ah, of course.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: SEO beginners (similar to Hartl for Rails) guide for engineers? - pzaich Finding a good, reputable and up-to-date high level overview of best practices when it comes to optimizing for web crawlers has been difficult to find. Is there a Hartl Tutorial for SEO? ====== ASquare As good as they come: [http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to- seo](http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo) Also: [http://bugherd.com/blog/get-started-on-search-engine- optimis...](http://bugherd.com/blog/get-started-on-search-engine-optimisation) ------ jlteran This is a good 3-part SEO guide for beginners. [http://www.mediawizardz.com/blog/seo-essentials- part-1-inter...](http://www.mediawizardz.com/blog/seo-essentials- part-1-internet-technology) ------ taprun I made a list of some useful free tools: [http://taprun.com/guides/seo/](http://taprun.com/guides/seo/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
No Stack Startups - gwintrob http://blog.aweissman.com/2015/05/no-stack-startups.html ====== akkartik So, was Meerkat a "no-stack startup" that was forced by Twitter to grow a stack? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9503722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9503722)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Ever wonder when the last time a particular date fell on a certain day? - polysaturate http://whendidthat.date/ ====== polysaturate I was thinking about this one day for too long and decided to turn it into a quick tool.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Functional Programming Went Mainstream Years Ago - llimllib http://prog21.dadgum.com/31.html ====== iigs _Fold and map are beautiful, but they work just as well in the guise of a foreach loop._ It's hard to argue with the foundation of the article -- namely that for any novel programming paradigm we've seen implementation of key features in a lot of modern languages, but if this statement holds you could easily say "foreach loops are beautiful, but they work just as well in the guise of an array and an iterative loop in assembly." It's true they produce equivalent results, but the nice thing about (perhaps the whole point of?) higher level languages is that they provide the compiler/interpreter with more clues about the intent of the code, and the compiler can do smarter things because of it. With map, and i assume fold, you could (in theory) replace the uniprocessor foreach style implementation with a multicore friendly version or even a hadoop/google mapreduce style cluster-aware implementation. If the code was initially in foreach style it would seemingly only be possible if the compiler was smart enough to ensure that there was no access outside of the foreach code block. I suspect that the premise is right -- that the functional languages of today are probably not going to ever win out over the popular languages of today -- but I think the popular languages of today are going to have to evolve a lot to become the popular languages of the multi-core tomorrow, and a lot of that evolution will come from these functional languages. ~~~ gaius Exactly. And not only does map() imply that you can extract as much parallelism as possible, it also means you can access the memory in the most efficient way possible rather than implicitly sorting into the order of the loop counter. ------ systems I have some issues with the term Functional Programming, the term is supposed to mean a set of programming languages features and how to program with them. The set of features (first order functions, automatic memory managment, elaborate data types) have been as the article suggest available in many programming languages that are not advertised as functional programming languages, such as Perl, Javascript and Groovy The how-to part is well, to me, a lot less obvious, the most common thing you hear, is you create code or functions with no side effect, why is this good, is not always explained, again the obvious benefit will be is you get a clearer API, but still this is highly subjective and debate-able. In conclusion, I think the term functional programming is not representative of a clear set of benefits, and that moving the discussion to more concrete terms such as closures, first class functions, object primitives is better ~~~ rkts I agree. As with "OOP," the term "functional programming" is too broad to be the subject of a meaningful discussion about language design. It's better to break the term down into its sub-concepts, which are often independent of each other. I question whether the notion of "programming paradigms" should exist. The more powerful a language is, the less I seem to notice paradigms in my code. I can't point to a piece of Lisp code and say, "this code is functional," or "this code is imperative," or whatever. I just use the tools that are most appropriate for what I'm trying to do. Paradigms are like design patterns in this respect; they only seem to arise in languages whose weaknesses force you to write code a certain way. I think "multi-paradigm" languages like Lisp and OCaml would be better described as "no paradigm," and this is how languages ought to be. ------ rtf I'm still waiting on the type system.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Git in six hundred words - bootload http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/introducing-gitlet ====== bdevine This points to [http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/introducing- gitlet](http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/introducing-gitlet), not [http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred- words](http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wal-Mart Suspends a Controversial Shoplifting Punishment - ourmandave https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/wal-mart-suspends-a-controversial-shoplifting-punishment/ar-BBH7s4z ====== barsonme Would this be as controversial if they money went to a third-party (i.e., not a Wal-Mart-run) charity? The idea is something good—keeping low-level, non-violent offenders out of the legal system and saving taxpayer dollars. But it does seem to fit the bill for extortion: Wal-Mart protecting the shoplifter from the government in exchange for money. I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds? ~~~ shkkmo > I wonder if there's a way to get the best of both worlds? A non-profit first-offender education program funded by the police department and/or stores that doesn't require payment by participants would not be extortion and would have the same positive effects without the same incentives for abuse. ~~~ dotancohen Why was this insightful comment downvoted? ~~~ barsonme You are aware what website you're on, right? ;) ~~~ dotancohen Certainly not that one with stuff that matters! ------ ourmandave At a lot of big retailers try to make you sign a "confession" whether they call the police or not. Later you get a letter from a law firm demanding hundreds of dollars or they'll take you to small claims to recoup their cost for "investigative expenses". With the promise that the amount will go up if you don't settle. This is completely separate from any criminal charges and paying them doesn't effect any outcome of that at all. But if you don't know that you're likely to pay to get them to "drop the charges". [http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay- secu...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/retailers-demand-shoplifters-pay-security- costs-1.912834) ------ username223 > ...allegations by a woman who said a security guard at a Goodwill store in > Orange, Calif., threatened her with jail unless she paid $500 for the > education program,... The woman, Debra Black, left the store without paying > for a $2 purse she had placed on the arm of her wheelchair while she was > browsing and forgotten about,... Jesus. I was just reading about this somewhere else, and the deal is basically that suspected shoplifters are locked in a room, given misleading information, and pressured to sign a confession which will be used against them if they later have second thoughts about paying $500 to the "education" company. These companies make payday lenders look good. ~~~ bsder > the deal is basically that suspected shoplifters are locked in a room I find this difficult to believe in the case of places like WalMart and Target with phalanxes of lawyers. Goodwill ... I could believe might not be quite so competent. Target, for example, won't even let their security people so much as _touch_ someone who is literally walking out of the store with something like a stolen TV. The possibility of getting countersued is so high that it isn't worth it. The simply follow them with a camera to their car and record everything and later turn it over to the authorities if they decide to pursue. I imagine that with facial recognition, what's going to happen is these people will get blacklisted from the stores and flagged if they try to reappear. ------ im3w1l I thought "extortion" (ask for money and threat of legal action) was how settlements were supposed to work. Will this set a precedent and have broader consequences? ~~~ jessriedel Settlements are for civil cases, not criminal. This was demanding money in exchange for not revealing evidence of a crime to authorities, which is extortion. It would be perfectly legal for Walmart to settle with the shoplifter under an agreement to not _sue_ them. Criminal cases are the state vs. the citizen, whereas civil cases are citizen vs. citizen. (The same action can result in both types of cases.) You're not supposed to profit by inhibiting the state from prosecuting. ~~~ Houshalter That's an interesting legal difference, but what's the moral difference? "Pay me to drop the lawsuit" and "pay me to drop the charges" feel like pretty much the same thing to me. ~~~ umanwizard Because the state has an interest in punishing criminals whether the victim wants them to be punished or not. ~~~ Dylan16807 In theory, but it's hard to punish a criminal in a minor crime when the victim doesn't want to cooperate. So the end result again feels pretty similar. ~~~ will_hughes Change the values there a bit and see how you still feel. Walmart won't report you to the police if you agree to \- pay them $5000? \- undertake a voluntary 'community service program' at a Walmart designated location (store cleaner on the shift nobody wants at Walmart) for 20 hours per week for 12 months Remember, that one conviction for minor shoplifting could permanently impact your life. Eg: limiting job opportunities, places you can live, whether you get to see your children in a custody dispute, whether you are entitled to vote or stand for election. If Walmart knew someone had virtually no other option, they could press their unfair advantage. ~~~ Dylan16807 A civil suit could easily be $5000, so what's the big difference? And minor shoplifting is not a felony. I'm not sure you understand my point. I'm not saying the extortion is a good idea, I'm saying it's not all that different from civil not-extortion tactics. ------ downandout This would likely be legal if they took a different approach. They can't say "pay us or we will report you to the police," because that is textbook extortion. However, that doesn't need to be said. Shoplifters know what the worst case is. They could simply say "you have the option to sign this civil agreement, which includes fees that you must pay and a non-disclosure agreement - we will not disclose the existence of this matter to anyone outside of Wal-Mart". Lawyers do this in civil negotiations all the time, with the _implied_ threat of criminal prosecution without the _actual_ threat. I also find it ironic and somewhat disturbing that prosecutors are mentioned throughout the article essentially saying that the State should have a monopoly on extortion because of the legal protections afforded to criminal defendants. Legal protections in the US are only as good as the lawyer you can afford to hire, and if you're shoplifting from Wal-Mart, the odds that you can afford a decent attorney are about zero. A cynical person might say that perhaps prosecutors are making such a big deal about this because a decrease in shoplifting calls will result in less work, overtime pay, etc. for police, jail/prison guards, probation officers, prosecutors, etc. They don't want to stop feeding the monster. ~~~ konschubert > with the implied threat of criminal prosecution without the actual threat. I wonder how much difference this really makes. A stronly implied threat might be just as much a threat as an actal threat. Law isn't maths, after all. ~~~ downandout They can go pretty far with it. I've seen attorneys actually say "if you don't pay us, we will file a lawsuit detailing all of your illegal actions, and that will be a matter of public record that may open you up to other kinds of actions by various agencies". In that instance, the person being threatened filed a police report for extortion against the attorney involved, and...it went nowhere. So they can get their point across and the law seems to be OK with it. ~~~ bb88 This might be just a case where the law hasn't caught up with what the lawyers are doing. Extortion is "Pay me ${X} or I do ${Y}". "Pay me $10,000 or I release these naughty images of you on the internet." is extortion. "Pay me $1,000, or I will foreclose on your property" is not, because likely you signed a contract agreeing to such a scenario. Now "Pay me $500, or I'll file a police report..." is extortion (at least according to here: [https://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal- law/violent_cri...](https://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal- law/violent_crimes/extortion.htm) ) Even though you may have broken the law, the extortion of money to prevent the police report is still illegal. ------ justboxing > Shoplifting suspects at stores that use Corrective Education are shown a > video and given 72 hours to decide whether to enter the program. The video > describes a six-to-eight-hour online course that promises to explain “why > you make decisions that are harmful or illegal” and teach “life skills.” 6-to-8 gours sounds ridiculously long / excessive. "Life skills", really? I smell a scam here, some "educational company" partnered with them and sell them pay-per-participant exhorbitant fees for watching their "video course". ------ crispytx "violates state extortion laws." That's great. Hope they lock up those criminals in suits. Our country has a bad problem with letting guys in suits break the law as long as they do so while working for a corporation. ------ drewmol I'm on the fence. It's always interesting when a victim has a say in wether a crime gets prosecuted, which often leads to a situation where said victim may use that power to encourage an outcome that is preferable to both them and the perpetrator than letting the justice system handle it in typical fashion. I'd prefer if home break-ins don't get handled in a "Pay me $x and watch this video or we'll be forced to prosecute" BC while that may be better for both parties, it's likely worse for the rest of society. Not sure how I feel about petty theft being handled this way. ~~~ bb88 You have a good point on the home breakins. But I think it's the way Walmart is doing it that's the problem. Walmart should just get one choice, either a criminal charge or a civil agreement. They can't be allowed to threaten both. ~~~ drewmol Hmmm... I don't know how it should be handled, but trying to prevent Walmart from taking this couse of action seems like it would be difficult to enforce within the constrainst of our legal system. Maybe a blanket policy that if you attempt to blackmail/extort/coerse someone into participating in some arrangement of alternative justice (outside the legal system) by using the threat of prosecution, you lose your legal standing as a victim, and therefore your ability to enforce prosecution? Let's say I was raped, and then attempt to extort money from the rapist in leiu of filing charges, I certainly think I would lose some credibility as a victim, and it's unfair to society who deserves knowledge of the potential threat, at minimum. It's important to recognize that the law someone violates is a crime against society as a whole, not just a crime against the particular victim. In this situation, the law is against shoplifting in general (society as a whole can be the victim), not against shoplifting FROM Walmart, so we should be careful to not let Walmart deprive society of our ability to enforce the agreed upon consequences. ------ danschumann K.. So on one hand, security guards are going mad with power, and not wise about it, threatening people and basically shaking them down. On the other hand, if there was a real educational program that worked, and it was only used on actual criminals, it could provide competition to the state's very bad recidivism rate. I think rehabilitation is one of the hardest things you can do, since you almost have to care about someone more than they care about themselves. It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president. ~~~ adventured > It's why I wish Tony Robbins would run for president. When he isn't busy pushing real-estate bubble investing in Canada and other shady financial ideas. Whatever Robbins was 20 years ago, he isn't that any longer. I suspect he simply acquired the desire to make a lot more money with his platform, which lured him into becoming a financial guru. Lately he has been talking about Bitcoin, because he's now Mr Investing Guru. ~~~ danschumann His book Money: Master the Game was really good. His in-person stuff can be really expensive. Hopefully he doesn't end up like Jim Rohn, who was great, but then spent his golden years at herbalife. Jim Rohn's early stuff was so great though.. yea.. I haven't seen Tony totally sell out though, hopefully he doesn't. Where does Robbins push bubble investing in Canada? ------ menacingly My opinion hinges on how sleazy the conversations are in those rooms. On the surface, it's a cool idea to give shoplifters an option before you involve the police. You can't ensure that the sell is universally honest, so it's always going to have that risk. Then again, from my understanding it's not as if the police are either, so I guess any public conversation about innovative solutions to deal with common minor crime is good. ------ holografix I wonder if there's someone in Walmart, an accountant of sorts, who sits down and runs a report on all the money they made from desperate people shoplifting stuff on a yearly basis. Prob the same person who looked at that 0.01% of revenue been squandered away by shoplifters and thought: What if we made that a source of revenue? Where would this perverse incentive lead? Using commonly stolen goods as lure, maybe in a spot of the store where there's a false sense of privacy then waiting for the perp at the outside and saying: "Surprise, pay us $300 for that $100 dollar thing you were going to stole or you go to jail!" Boggles the mind ------ bahmboo 1 - making companies pay for their own property security. good. 2 - having those programs pay for themselves (so they aren't cut and put back on society). good. 3 - coercing people in a compromised state for profit. not good. 4 - Room for improvement. Yes. ------ bsder The fact that these programs even exist is a gigantic indictment of our justice system ... ------ scoggs I'd think so long as the government got their tax portion of the money paid to Walmart / Corrective Education Co. and Turning Point Justice by offenders that they wouldn't care? ------ trav4225 Mercy == hate, apparently. ~~~ QAPereo I’d hate to trust in the mercy of WalMart. ~~~ trav4225 then let them bring charges. :-) no one's being forced to do a single thing here. it's a fake injustice. ~~~ QAPereo Of course the typical Walmart shoplifter will be educated about the law and have ready access to legal advice. /s Edit: To Rowdown... Even better HN could charge a fee for throwaways and donate the proceeds to legal aid funds. You’d be doing a lot of good. ~~~ trav4225 I hear ya. I just see that angle (education) as being a tangential issue. If Walmart's purpose here is indeed to exploit people's ignorance rather than to give them a second chance, then I'm with you 100%. :) ------ gumby > officials questioned the legality of asking people for money under threat of > criminal sanctions Thank goodness -- the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence. You can argue as to how effective that is (I believe it's commonly believed to be ineffective, though for reasons that are polar opposites depending on political views). ~~~ gumby Holy cow, -1 points. I'm not complaining, just amazed there are enough people who really think private sector criminal enforcement† is a good idea. No thanks, the word for that is "vigilanteism". I am concerned that there is a privatized legal system and glad that at least Wal Mart has stopped. †(private sector _civil_ resolution --arbitration -- is often a good idea when there is not a huge power imbalance)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
U.S. Military Warns of German Copyright Troll Attacks - sdoering http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-military-warns-of-german-copyright-troll-attacks-131209/ ====== salient Hey, stealing is stealing. Right US government? I guess they don't like it much when they are on the other side of a copyright trial. So why does Obama keep pushing for stricter and longer copyright laws in the TPP treaty then?!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hungary: Ban on living in public areas taking effect - DyslexicAtheist https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hungary-ban-living-public-areas-taking-effect-58490044 ====== anoncoward111 Ah yes, PM Orban is such an amazing freedom fighter against the big bad European Union, and now he can go to war against his own constituents as well. Long live King Orban!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
That Whining Sound You Hear Is The Death Wheeze Of Newspapers - vaksel http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/07/that-whining-sound-you-hear-is-the-death-wheeze-of-newspapers/ ====== justindz I'm kind of curious how many people would pay a monthly or annual subscription fee for a "newspaper" that came out in electronic and/or premium print format only to subscribers, published an edition whenever the hell it had enough to publish it and contained hardcore journalism geared towards ending waste, fraud and abuse and informing the public of bad actors. It would be pirated, but the pirates would always get it a little bit later and the print copy would be ad free. Some kind of premium channel blog service would let subscribers follow the work of the journalist, side notes, follow-up ideas, etc. up to the point where it's not compromising the integrity of the work. Something like that. I'm eager for any ideas people have that will get the civic activism back in newspapers and kick the cruft out. I don't think they actually need to come out on a fixed schedule and I really don't think they need to cover lifestyle, sports and other things the way they do now. They need to focus on stuff that's not easily duplicated and they need to take their time really kicking some ass. The Internet can pick stuff up from there and expand the impact. ------ pj People don't like their labor going to someone else's profit. ------ firebug Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - Paul Graham - July 2008 <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> "#3: New news. As Marc Andreessen points out, newspapers are in trouble. The problem is not merely that they've been slow to adapt to the web. It's more serious than that: their problems are due to deep structural flaws that are exposed now that they have competitors. When the only sources of news were the wire services and a few big papers, it was enough to keep writing stories about how the president met with someone and they each said conventional things written in advance by their staffs. Readers were never that interested, but they were willing to consider this news when there were no alternatives. " ~~~ pclark I wonder how many news related startups applied.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GCP - cp with a progress bar - dannyrosen http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/03/gcp-command-line-file-copy-ubuntu-linux/ Nifty, lightweight copy tool. Completely replace cp with: alias cp="/usr/bin/gcp" ====== Game_Ender For single files or monitoring other pipe based operations (like network transfers) pv [1] is also a useful tool. 1 - [http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml](http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml) ~~~ baiitsu Using pv: gcp() { cat "$1" \| pv \| cat > "$2" } ~~~ gcmalloc useless use of cat pv < "$1" > "$2" ~~~ nitrogen Even if the _cat_ at the beginning of a pipe isn't strictly necessary, it still helps readability to have everything flowing from left to right. ~~~ emillon I also advocate this "useless" use of cat, but you can write the redirection before the command: <"$1" pv >"$2" ------ coherentpony The 'g' prefix is a bad idea. On BSD systems that prefix is used to refer to binaries in the GNU toolset. ~~~ theOnliest I'd recommend "pcp," for "progress copy"...I'd use it for the name alone! ------ _JamesA_ Why? rsync does all of this and a whole lot more. ~~~ protomyth He didn't want all the complication of rsync, he just wanted something simple with a progress bar. Rsync isn't really that simple. Sure, he could of wrote a shell script on top of rsync, but he probably learned a lot more from this. ~~~ fragmede For local copies, rsync with a progress meter is as simple as rsync --progress <source> <destination> ~~~ johnchristopher I usually use it like this for local copy: rsync -rvh --progress <source> <destination> ~~~ elementai Oh-my-zsh has a plugin 'cp' which is basically an alias: alias cpv="rsync -poghb --backup-dir=/tmp/rsync -e /dev/null --progress --" ------ mhugo This one is also pretty clever (based on catching the write() syscall with strace) : [https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a- prog...](https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/can-you-get-cp-to-give-a-progress-bar- like-wget) ~~~ lamby Thanks. ------ ck2 I think someone made a patch which works with the original gnu coreutils Oh here it is [http://beatex.org/web/advancedcopy.html](http://beatex.org/web/advancedcopy.html) ------ Zecc This seems relevant: [http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4553/copy-a- file-...](http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4553/copy-a-file-using- dd-and-watch-its-progress) dd does not show a progress bar, unfortunately but it does report its progress. ------ joelthelion Shouldn't cp have "-h" (human readable) flag that does exactly that? ~~~ icebraining _UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful_ : [http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/) ~~~ joelthelion That's not an argument. There's no reason why cp shouldn't report progress if you want to. Not one. ------ 2bluesc SCP works locally too and has a progress bar. ~~~ rquirk scp just falls back to cp when copying locally, so doesn't show any progress bar. ------ k_bx If you use oh-my-zsh, gcp is binded to "git cherry-pick" (with auto-completion etc.), so I did: sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gcp /usr/local/bin/cp_ ------ vikas0380 A good alternative to cp.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask PG: Can we see karma on Ask HN comments? - ibejoeb I didn't have too much of a position on the karma display matter, but today as I browse the Ask HNs I realize that many comments are modded up and down based on factuality of the response. In this context, karma counts. I realize that this is not Quora or SO, but sometimes this is great community to field certain questions. ====== adrianwaj So whatever happens, I'd prefer is the underlying html didn't change, so as not to throw off parsing efforts. Perhaps there can be a display:none.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You and Your Research - raganwald http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/04/you-and-your-research.html ====== dmolnar I've heard many people quote Hamming about "work only on important problems," but fewer seem to notice the caveat he has in the talk: "We didn't work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It's not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack." This makes the notion of "important problem" specific to you. In other words, dependent on your particular skills and interests, not on some external measure of worth. So even if you are working on something more "modest," say, what scat tells us about migration patterns of bobcats, that still counts as an "important problem" since you have an attack and can solve it. Under this reading, Hamming's advice is close to the other famous nugget, "do only what only you can do" (Dijkstra). That is never the way I see it being used in conversation, however. Usually I see it in the context of encouraging people to work on some Big Problem that may not be a good fit for their skills and interest -- which is one of the quickest ways to encourage failure. ------ neilk I like Hamming's challenge, but I read this quote yesterday, and I think it might be more insightful: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -- Howard Thurman ------ raffi I get annoyed reading fluff like this. I used to work as a researcher and noticed a lemming like tendency for scientists to flock to the same stuff. It usually isn't until someone discovers something potentially disruptive (or the people who have money latch onto new buzz words) that the flocking changes. I can agree that each field has problems of interest. I'm a computer scientist but I have no interest in trying to solve P=NP. Sure the prominent problems of interest would have useful results to society if solved. However, who is to say that new problems of interest or mental shifts aren't out there. Beckoning to be found. Stretching the field (or individual researcher) is valuable. ~~~ raganwald I don't get annoyed reading responses like yours, nor am I nettled my the thought that my post was fluff. Of course it is fluff. Possibly even chaff or lint. That being said, I am not clear on what you are saying about trying to solve P=NP. While this is important, there are a lot of important things to solve and nowhere in my post or in Hamming's original discussion is there the suggestion that importance is judged by popularity. I think it is entirely possible for a lone researcher to work on something that does not interest anyone else, and should you ask why she has chosen that work, she answers that it is an important open problem in the field. So I am suggesting that a dedication to working on important open problems is not necessarily equivalent to following everyone else. People who lie to follow, follow. People who like solitude and adventure strike out in new directions. Either way, the questions retain their importance, IMO. ~~~ raffi I read the post as "what are the important problems? Go solve them!" for some value of important problems. I further read this as the value of important problems is defined by others. I filled in my own blanks there (most likely). Although I think I saw something about "problems of my field" that helped me reach this conclusion. I'm just making sure those who strike out in new directions are represented. ~~~ raganwald * I'm just making sure those who strike out in new directions are represented.* Strongly agree. Miles Davis revolutionalized Jazz five times. Four of those times, he walked away from what he himself had popularized to strike out in a new direction. ------ grandalf This is an insightful post. Sometimes people let themselves off the hook. Defining which problem is the "most important" is a bit tough, but whatever problem you are working on ought to be very important to you. So in a sense, the point is to avoid just working for a paycheck and try to do something that means something to you. ------ edw519 This reminds me of the first pg essay I ever read, "Good and Bad Procrastination," which also references Richard Hamming. This essay directed me to his site, and eventually here. <http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html> I like pg's treatment a little more. He distills it down to one sentence, "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?" This single sentence has pretty much directed much of my work since then. It's so simple it's almost counter-intuitive. I have designed systems to sort "problems" by descending value and taught my users to just work on #1 until it's fixed. But it wasn't until reading pg's corollary to Hamming's work that I did it myself. Thanks for reminding me. ~~~ ivankirigin It isn't counter intuitive. It's just poor education that tells people the goal is to complete the standard education process, not to use your education toward some end. I get the impression lots of people don't do self examination much for the most important questions about satisfying work and things that make you happy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are some missing Rust libraries? - alongub ====== fsloth For me it's not that Rust would be missing libraries but that I'm too of a bash noob to get those libraries to build on windows/msys2. The rust wrapper to stb_image is one such example. ------ wtf_is_up [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Pro...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Protocol) Specifically SNMPv3 ~~~ misframer Thanks. I wrote a partial implementation in Go [0] and I think a Rust version would help me learn Rust, and hopefully contribute to the ecosystem. [0] [https://github.com/PreetamJinka/snmp](https://github.com/PreetamJinka/snmp) ~~~ wtf_is_up Oh, that's great. I've been hoping for a nice Go implementation as well. Right now, I use net-snmp, which is featureful, but the API(s) are very poorly designed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy - DvdGiessen https://www.protocol.com/mozilla-plan-fix-internet-privacy ====== walrus01 Firefox on Android has become my go to choice now, because it supports the full set of desktop firefox plugins, including the essential ublock origin. I can't even imagine mobile browsing without full adblock functionality anymore. ~~~ cobalt60 AdguardHome/PiHole on DoT/DoH? Android 9+ supports private DNS. ~~~ zaarn DNS blockers don't block all ads, uBlock on top is very effective. ------ ilitirit > Mozilla lost the browser wars Honest question... who did they lose to? Google Chrome? For me personally, Firefox has been better than Chrome for several years now. The only reason I still load up Chrome is when I want to stream to my Chromecast. ~~~ nathanyukai Yes, statistically the majority of people are using Chrome ~~~ mirthandmadness The majority of people are not digitally literate enough to care about what they're using. How do people preserve social justice if they're not aware that it is being violated in the first place? Who would deliberately step sideways and do something that requires effort when they have no incentive to? Most people just do what is convenient, without bothering to think twice about it. ~~~ AnIdiotOnTheNet "People made a different decision than I did, therefore those people must be ignorant." ~~~ rcMgD2BwE72F Google used a lot of its gigantic resources and ad spaces to advertise Chrome everywhere. It's been installed and enabled by default on most mobile devices for years. Google paid software publishers to have Chrome distributed through other software installs (it also bundled it with its own software like Picasa and Google Earth). It also paid my local (state-owned) public transport operator to display gigantic banners in my train station. It organized events in my work community to promote its software and services, including Chrome of course. For years, its search engine told me to install Chrome every time I access google.com from another browser. Google stills serves old and ugly results page when I do search from Firefox (e.g no chart shown when searching from Firefox, although every other financial websites is able to perfectly display their stock charts in non-Chrome browsers). They've even been fined billions(!) of EUR for illegal practices involving the distribution of Chrome)[0]. People may have made different decisions to chose their browser for good reasons, but Google also built a monopoly for very good reasons, too. Users were and are still constantly pushed and incentivized to use Chrome, because of extensive, multi-year PR campaign, digital and outdoor ads, but also technical tricks. [0] [https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_4581) ------ mehdix As a FF user I'll also share my experience. Since Firefox switched to Quantum, I am exclusively using it on my work, home and portable computers. Chromium on my Arch Laptop was buggy, had a memory leak, and would consume all my 16G of RAM after keeping tabs open for a while. Firefox solved that for me. With uBlock, Privacy Badger, Cookie AutoDelete and FF's built-in blocker I have a functional defense-line against privacy violating practices (not totally immune against fingerprinting yet). The reader mode helps me to get rid of the clutter and read the text, very happy with that. I also use Firefox and Firefox Preview on Android. The latter is specially superior in performance and has less bugs. For example on Firefox Android I had non-finishing download bars, not any more in the Preview. The performance is obviously superior. Nighly builds support uBlock now. The "Send Tab" feature is also very practical (I have a FF account for syncing purposes). I send tabs to my other devices which helps me to follow things on my other machines and also to memorize things by seeing them in a short while on another machine. There are two things about FF that I dislike. First thing is the massive amount of outdated articles and ancient support tickets online. Good luck with searching for a technical solution for a FF problem! Next thing is the source code. I have compiled it many times in order to fix a niche bug. I even bought a better PC to compile it faster. This aside, it is hard to understand the code. There are zillions of moving pieces, and ad-hoc bug fixing is not an option. You have to follow things for weeks if not months to get to the right information. This probably can be improved by better docs explaining the code to contributors and new comers. Overall I'm happy with it. Moreover, it is important to have alternatives otherwise we might lose the open web as we know it. Edit: add paragraphs ~~~ rbritton Another FF plugin you might like is Multi-Account Containers [0]. It lets you isolate one or more websites from others to minimize their tracking ability. [0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi- account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account- containers/) ------ ocdtrekkie The aforementioned Facebook Container was an excellent step, but if they really were serious about fixing Internet privacy regardless of their financial backers, they'd ship an official Google Container as well. (A third party developer ships one as a fork of Facebook Container, but it'd be far preferable for a Mozilla shipped one.) They capitalized on the Cambridge Analytica scandal with the launch of that extension, but won't follow up with the Google equivalent. The code is already written, I just think they are still too scared to ship an extension that works against their primary sponsor. ~~~ zzzcpan That's the problem with Mozilla's privacy propaganda, their funding depends on violating privacy, so they can only talk and pretend, but not actually do anything about it. Which makes them look bad, dishonest and fake, when they are talking about privacy. ~~~ wayneftw You’re not allowed to say anything bad about Firefox or Mozilla around these parts without being heavily censored in case you hadn’t noticed :) ~~~ JohnFen Sure you are. I often criticize both. But what you have to say needs to be based in something resembling actual fact, and it helps a lot if you avoid stating opinion as fact. It also helps to be even-handed and call out when Mozilla and/or Firefox does something right as well as when they do something wrong. ~~~ wayneftw No, this is incorrect. I was down-towned for simply pointing out that Firefox nags you to sign in. I detailed each UI measure they took. Nothing but pure facts that are easily verifiable. ~~~ JohnFen My comment was tailored toward blowski's remark at the top of this thread, not anything you said. I'm not sure what comment you're talking about, so I can't speak to that. ------ RabbiPires All this talk about openness and freedom, and Mozilla's builds still ship with the proprietary Pocket extension by default. I really hope they don't have to rely on the revenue from Pocket at some point. Not only that, but it also connects to Google's SafeBrowsing servers. Is that required by their search engine contract with Google? Shouldn't be turned on by default. ~~~ thawaway1837 You know they own Pocket right? Pocket is basically their version of Read Later, etc...And it’s completely optional whether you want to use it or not. So I’m not sure I understand this complaint. Mozilla’s first integration of Pocket was poorly done, and rightfully raised complaints. But since they have purchased it, a lot of those complaints have been resolved. ~~~ groovybits << it also connects to Google's SafeBrowsing servers. >> As a privacy enthusiast, what's wrong with Google's SafeBrowsing service? It provides protection from low-hanging fruit with anonymized data (hashes of URLs). ~~~ heartbeats It's not very anonymized. Google already has a list of URLs, so they can just hash them all and see what matches. And if they have URL 1, 2, and 4, odds are they can interpolate to find out what #3 is. ~~~ tialaramex > so they can just hash them all and see what matches Matches _what_ ? Firefox doesn't send hashes to Google Safe Browsing. This would not only be a privacy problem it would also make the browser much too slow. Instead Firefox periodically downloads a summary of what might be unsafe, and then it compares hashes to that summary. If there's a match in the summary (rare but it happens) it fetches more detailed parts of the total Safe Browsing map to make a decision. As a rule of thumb I'd say when a person complains about Safe Browsing without any clue how it actually works I'm confident they're exactly the type of "power user" who most needs Safe Browsing to keep them out of trouble because they're falsely confident in their own abilities. ~~~ throwaway2048 It does however request hash prefixes, then google sends to the client all bad URLs that match, that is what can be brute forced with relative ease, if you already have a stream of previous they are visiting (via google analytics, google captcha, and other matched hashes). Especially if you know most every URL on the internet already. (hash them, then look it up in a table). Anonymization is a very tricky subject, and there is a lot of techniques that get trumpeted but are absolutely not effective assuming a bad faith actor. ~~~ tialaramex > It does however request hash prefixes, then google sends to the client all > bad URLs that match IF the prefix is a match, which is relatively unusual then the browser requests the full list for that prefix. But also, no, Google just sends back a list of full hashes and not URLs. > that is what can be brute forced with relative ease OK. 1f6866 is a hash prefix, quick "brute force" it with this supposed relative ease, what am I looking at? How about 0aebaf? Ah, trick question, that's just noise stirred in automatically by Firefox (yes their implementation silently does this, typically the noise drowns out signal by a ratio of 4:1 but it's configurable). Or wait, maybe the first one was noise and this isn't. Google neither knows nor cares. Still, you'll just use "relative ease" to brute force every 24-bit number and then er, more brute force to figure out which ones are bogus. You can do the same with my phone number. One of the digits is a "five" \- quick, brute force the whole number and tell me what it is to show how great "brute force" is at hand-waving impossible problems! > if you already have a stream of previous they are visiting I know this trick. Hey, pick a number, then add two to that number, then take away the number you first thought of. The number you're now thinking of is two - tada! Yes, if I know where you are then I can "magically" tell where you are using seemingly unrelated information, by simply discarding it and already knowing where you are. But this "technique" works perfectly well without Safe Browsing and so it has no bearing on whether Safe Browsing is in fact safe. > Anonymization is a very tricky subject Brain surgery is also a tricky subject. But Google's Safe Browsing project doesn't do Brain surgery either. ------ CivBase > Baker wrote on Mozilla's blog that in the last decade, the world had seen > "the power of the internet used to magnify divisiveness, incite violence, > promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Baker then > added four new manifesto principles calling for equality, discourse and > diversity online in an addendum called "Pledge for a Healthy Internet." "Equality, discourse, and diversity" are the very principles that enable people to "magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Any attempt to promote freedom of expression while simultaneously silencing the worst of humanity is inherently at odds. Hatred is a naturally occuring phenomina, not a learned behavior. You can't just quarantine it to make it go away. That only makes it worse. The internet is not a breeding ground for hatred. It's just a reflection of how bad we can really be. ------ DrScientist Ex-Mozillian Brendan Eich agrees that privacy is the battle for the future [http://www.brave.com](http://www.brave.com) The question is - do you need to re-write the internet economy as Brave are trying to to achieve it, and not just block trackers? The third element is that governments are becoming addicted to the vast trove of information gathered - will they be willing to give that up if a technical/business model solution takes off. Interesting times. ~~~ catalogia I want no part of Brave's weird cryptoish scheme. I know the feature is opt- in, but I don't see the point in supporting an organization unable to find a source of revenue I find agreeable. Even something as simple and obnoxious as donation nagging, like Wikipedia, seems preferable to what Brave has proposed. ~~~ prepend It’s not perfect, but I like it better than the alternatives (selling user data, non profit). Technically the browser is nice, but there’s something nice about a for profit org whose incentives are aligned with mine. For now, I use a FireFox for similar reasons, but I like Brave’s mode for the web better than the “bad ad” model that google and Facebook push. I used to like Opera for similar reasons. ~~~ hvis What could one find disgreeable in a company being a non-profit? ~~~ luckylion In a "we depend on the biggest enemy of privacy for funding" kind of way? ~~~ hvis Being a non-profit doesn't imply any of that. And nobody has ever demonstrated that this ostensible "dependence" has any adverse effects on Mozilla's policy. ~~~ luckylion It's hard to demonstrate anything if you don't have a control group and can't turn the thing in question on and off. Conflicts of interest are real, you don't need to demonstrate that they are, though it's not clear how much they sway Mozilla's decisions. And you're right, the non-profit-status doesn't imply that, they could just as well do the same as a commercial enterprise. It would be more obvious that way. Would Mozilla make the step to ship an adblocker with Firefox? It would certainly be what their users want (the most popular extension by far being uBlock Origin), but it would pretty much decrease their worth to Google to zero, hence kill the funding. And there's your conflict of interest. ~~~ hvis It's a difficult problem. Unless a majority-marketshare browser does that as well (and we know that Chrome certainly won't), a lot of websites might choose to block all Firefox users instead. And perhaps you and I know how to disable an ad blocker selectively. An average user might simply see problems with websites and uninstall Firefox as "not working", tanking its marketshare even more. So Google doesn't necessarily factor into that decision, really. ~~~ luckylion True, though I think that would be a short (and just!) war that would get us to a much better place: hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities. It very much could lead to the opposite too. "Oh hey, the web works when you're using Firefox". My mother has become a missionary (for adblockers, not firefox) since she's once witnessed how websites look on a friend's PC. She told her "I think your computer is broken", which lead to confusion & a presentation on my mother's PC... which lead to them calling me asking how to make her friend's PC do that too. It might, ironically, also be a great signal for Google's bots. I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock, and even "hey, please turn adblock on" is a strong signal for me that it's SEO content and I should go on looking for something else. ~~~ hvis > hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger > printing opportunities There are other (maybe a bit more complex) ways to tell what browser you're using, and whether you block ads. > I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock ...yet. This is starting to change, and a lot of websites still have ads as their main source of revenue. Either that, or subscriptions, and the latter (for online newspapers, for example) is taking off very slowly. Again, our usage patterns are in the minority, so whatever tough choices we might want to make are not necessarily to everyone's benefit right now. At least in theory, I support the Better Ads initiative by Adblock Plus. Even though I've mostly been using uBlock Origin lately... ~~~ luckylion > There are other (maybe a bit more complex) ways to tell what browser you're > using, and whether you block ads. Yes, and doing so will escalate the arms race. I believe that browsers will come out as the winners, and that's a good thing for privacy. > This is starting to change, and a lot of websites still have ads as their > main source of revenue. Sure, but then again, most sites I see on a daily basis in Google are pure shit - made only to display ads, with the same content that is also on a million other pages, slightly rewritten so Google considers it unique. Nothing of value will be lost if the all burn up and go away. I'm sure you're right, there will be unforeseen consequences, but I feel like appeasing the adtech industry by not stopping their surveillance is not going to be helpful. Better Ads focuses only on perception: A flashy, dumb static banner is bad, a stalking text-ad that sends information back to its creepy owner where it is then correlated with MasterCard payment data, your location, the interests of your friends etc and saves all of that into a shadowy profile that follows you around is fine, because it's text only and is labeled "advertisement". I can't decide whether it was just an extortionist cash-grab or a smart way to redirect the attention from the actual problem to the surface problem ("it's bright, and it's animated"). ~~~ hvis > believe that browsers will come out as the winners, and that's a good thing > for privacy Even if I agree with you on the rest, we're back to Firefox not having a majority marketshare. Mozilla _could_ make a choice to only serve our particular niche, to the exclusion of less-technical users, but I don't think it's a good choice for it, or for the whole web. ------ gfody Using uMatrix really raised my awareness of how bad things are - spyTech is utterly everywhere. I still take the time to micromanage my matrix every time I encounter a new site and it’s ridiculous how long it can take to get a random infested page back to an acceptable level of usability. ~~~ nsomaru uMatrix is better than nothing but I want more micromanagement. I want to be able to block on a per script basis because some sites will load 49 scripts from some other domain and only 1 or 2 will actually be needed to make the page work properly. ~~~ gfody agree, I'd love to see uMatrix get more sophisticated.. there are already a lot of sites that simply cannot be fixed ------ badrabbit Can they focus on making it perform as well as Chrome? I mean, I support their efforts and all but I am forced to use a chrome based browser because FF has poor windows/sso integration and absolutley horrible memory management. A tab of any tool's webui that does a lot of work with a lot of data will not only bring firefox to a halt but the entire system. I can at least try to use it for soft workloads but you never know when visiting the wrong page will cause this issue again. Why can't it manage it's impact on the rest of the system? My job performance would tank dramarically if I used firefox exclusively! Why can't they work to make it better than Chrome? They were throwing Rust at it a few years ago,so what happened? Do they just not test against the right sites? I mean, the mozilla foundation is not poor. They have money. Is it just politics or do they think getting gmail and youtube to work is all that is needed? I am only saying all this because i like firefox. Mozilla needs a wake up call. Do they not get the problems at hand or do they not care or do they lack some resource or motivation? I mean I will be happy to even buy a license for firefox if they get it to even come close to Chrome's performance. Maybe they have too many well intended fanboy's cheeeing them on? ~~~ justinph Maybe this is a windows thing? I use Firefox on MacOS and it is more performant than Chrome. I rarely have to restart Firefox. Chrome needs a restart at least twice a day (I use Chrome for google hangouts a lot). This changed recently with Firefox Quantum, which was v69 or v70. I noticed a significant speedup at that point. ~~~ rebelwebmaster Firefox switched to CoreAnimation in v70, which made a big difference. [https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically- red...](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-reduced- power-usage-in-firefox-70-on-macos-with-core-animation/) ------ kup0 I'm finally back to Firefox for good. Feels good to be _home_. I keep 'Edge-ium' around if I encounter any rare use cases that necessitate it, but that's relatively rare ------ mark_l_watson I liked the wrap up where the position is that it is OK when other browsers adopt some of Mozilla’s privacy features. I just about exclusively use FireFox with nine containers on my Linux and macOS laptops. Being able to segregate data is a game changer. On my iOS devices, I feel stuck with Safari since other browsers sit on top of Safari. I appreciate the privacy features in Safari but still feel the need to frequently remove all cookies and use private tabs when using sites like FaceBook. I just wrote about this yesterday [https://mark- watson.blogspot.com/2020/02/protecting-oneself-...](https://mark- watson.blogspot.com/2020/02/protecting-oneself-from-surveillance.html) Because I like to sometimes use my Chromebook, I am stuck using the Chrome web browser. Deleting all cookies frequently helps. ~~~ move-on-by Private tabs are the only way I use Safari. I found that I rarely use websites that I need to be logged in to, as those type of services generally have an App that I'm already using. For the odd case where I need to login, with my password vault, its only a couple extra clicks. ~~~ mark_l_watson +1 that is excellent advice. When non-tech friends ask how much of a hassle it is deleting all cookies, I point out that the passwords are saved and reliving in is quick. All private tabs is obviously better, and I will do that more often. ------ h91wka It's funny how Mozilla preaches privacy, but if you open `about:config' and count 1) parameters that include word "telemetry" 2) everything that looks like a unique token 3) "mozilla.org" URLs you'll see that the sum is steadily going up with every release. It leaves me under impression that Mozilla is trying to follow Facebook and Google. Lately they removed setting to use a custom page for the new tabs, leaving only choice between blank page and Mozilla-provided "interest based" homepage. I am still using it as the main browser, though, as "lesser evil", but discrepancy between Mozilla's slogans and actual features is pretty chilling. ~~~ jfk13 telemetry ≠ tracking ~~~ throwaway2048 Telemetry is absolutely a polite word for tracking. It is fundamentally about sending information about your system, your usecase, your software and your data to a remote party (usually without notification). Calling it anything except tracking is super bullshitty. ~~~ phases Sponsoring a child through World Vision India is one of the best, motivating and compensating approaches to support youngsters. You'll be doing significantly more than assisting with meeting youngsters' fundamental needs – you'll be assisting with equiping them forever. By achieving enduring change in your supported kid's locale, you'll likewise be improving the lives of numerous other defenseless youngsters to Child Ngos child sponsorship is probably the most ideal approaches to give kids better lives and prospects of. At the point when you support a youngster, you will get photo of your supported kid, data about your kid, kid's family and network, yearly report showing the advancement of your kid, World Vision India's magazine Jeevan Sparsh and a chance to blessing, compose or visit your supported kid. [https://www.worldvision.in](https://www.worldvision.in) ------ dependenttypes How ironic. Firefox is the browser that calls home the most on the first run [https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480) They also disabled the ability for extensions to work on mozilla pages and things like about:addons by default, where mozilla uses google analytics. They add new tracking crap on the browser in every release, so you are at a loss what to disable first in about:config as the online guides tend to get outdated easily. > that's good for trolls and surveillance organizations and violent groups Only "surveillance organizations" is relevant to privacy. The others make me think of centralisation and censorship. The only real way to browse privately is to use a browser with javascript disabled and only a subset of css enabled over tor/isp. (but then you have to deal with cloudflare and broken sites) ~~~ jamienicol What is the relevance of "number of calls home on first run"? Surely the contents of said calls, and over an extended time period, is a much more important measurement? ~~~ dependenttypes I think that the number of calls home on first run is more important because you don't get an option to disable them. ------ davidy123 The concept of the browser is a universal vehicle for information. One of the greatest breakthroughs for browsers, aside from increasing front end application rendering and interactivity, is extensions. They put the user as the primary, where they can access, control, organize the information accessed as they wish using extensions. Of course, there is a wild west aspect to this, and over time extension facilities are becoming closer to app stores, with ratings and permissions being primary. Chrome has had some of the best support for extensions, making it easy to create them and offering most features through them, which is one reason I use it instead of Firefox day to day. But no browser properly supports extensions on mobile. Chrome just doesn't, the Kiwi fork is supposed to but in my experience doesn't really, Firefox says they will but the signals are it will only be select extensions, at least for now. Extensions are one of the best markers and facilities of a free, user first web, that isn't just about accessing opaque, absolutely controlled services, where hobbyists and principled organizations can work directly in the space of privacy and trust as information is processed, so I hope they pick up some priority. ~~~ dexen _> Firefox says they will [properly support extensions on mobile]_ The most relevant extension - uBlock Origin - works just fine on mobile Firefox. It's a real game changer, especially with screen real estate and energy usage being quite important on mobile. That extension alone is why I have and use Firefox on mobile phones (aside of the usual compatibility testing on other browsers for certain web projects). ------ jeffrufino Brilliant, I'll be moving to Firefox. ------ us000538 Specifically for mobile divices mozilla's performance is too good you can feel it just try to open blogger html codes in crome it will hang but for mozilla it's fine [https://www.boringworld.org](https://www.boringworld.org) ------ mariushn I'd love to have a Gmail-like alternative, both with a Mozilla domain (personal) and custom domains (business), for a small yearly subscription. Maybe have ad-supported as an alternative. ------ SergeAx The momemt Google pull the plug for Ublock Origin and other similar plugins - we'll see how "Mozilla lost the browser wars". ------ wnevets The moment ublock origin is limited or broken in chrome is the moment I abandon chrome completely and switch to firefox full time. ------ tonfreed > namedropping Cambridge Analytica And opinion discarded ------ einpoklum Mozilla destroyed their own platform - by removing its most significant feature, which was deep extensibility, instead of fixing it to keep that feature. > That's how Mozilla works: slowly, collaboratively, trying to speak for > everyone. I don't remember Mozilla works collaboratively. By the way - remind me where they publish their income sources again? > "the power of the internet used to magnify divisiveness, incite violence, > promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Yeah, well, so has the printing press. When someone suggests we should keep a "healty press", that's oligarchic censorship. Reminds me of the US Comics Code. > Mozilla has spent the last several years fighting harder and louder than > ever for the future of the internet. Must not have been loud enough, because I believe few people have noticed this. > the company's vision of a more user-centric, privacy-conscious web. "user-centric" web? Don't know what that means. It's like "reader-centric books". As for privacy - when something like uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger is installed by default, and when TOR is an easily-accessible option, and when Mozilla funds some TOR endpoint routers (in countries outside US reach of course), then we'll talk. > But what if people could also use them to keep Facebook from snooping as > they traveled the web? If Facebook was prevented from snooping entirely, that would not be that much of an issue. > Firefox has long held the not-entirely-flattering distinction of being the > most popular browser not made by a huge corporation It's bankrolled by huge corporations. IIRC it was mostly Google for a while. Also, see below about their new VP. I am reminded how Mozilla had, for years, neglected its email client in favor of the browser, thus effectively helping to promote webmail, stored and spied on by these corporations. It certainly did nothing to promote end-to-end encryption of email, which has been quite possible with Thunderbird, and would have prevented (some of the) spying on users. > So far, Firefox has blocked 1.6 trillion tracking requests That means it doesn't block most tracking requests. > Alan Davidson ... new VP of policy ... has been working ... at Google and > then as President Barack Obama's director of digital economy So one of the top people at the spying-B-us corporation and the "can't have privacy and security" administration is the new VP who'll help protect us from his former colleagues and bosses? Uh-huh. ------ throwaway8291 I'm using Firefox for years, after Chrome started to ask me for a login (at around version 40). Never looked back. One day I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%, which surprised me - as I thought many people would understand the implications and directions. Maybe I'm too optimistic. Update: Loved chrome, used it for years, I also love most Chrome engineering and all the innovation they added to the field - it's just good to have alternatives. ~~~ avian > I'm using Firefox for years, after Chrome started to ask me for a login It's funny because Firefox has been pushing their login thing pretty hard (the yellow "oh no" exclamation mark icon if you're not logged in, the account icon that keeps placing itself back onto my toolbar, occasional full-page ad/nag screen, ...). ~~~ blackearl I've never seen the exclamation mark and I'm never signed in on my work computer. Meanwhile, Chrome signs you into the browser profile if you sign into any Google site and it's opt-out. ~~~ wayneftw They've got it plastered around the UI. It's the very top menu item. It's also in the Pocket address bar button right under where they advertise to you to "Sign up for Pocket. It's freeeeeee!" Not only that, but on new installs and after some updates Firefox nags you to sign up whenever it can, for instance when you log into a website - right after you save the password it will show some animated crap in the address bar to nag you to "Sign in to sync..." I just opened Firefox (on Linux no less) to confirm every single one of these things. Chrome (my default browser) actually nags me less and in less annoying ways. ~~~ dao- > Chrome (my default browser) actually nags me less and in less annoying ways. Because they just log you in without asking, as noted in the comment you're replying to. It also has more severe implications in Chrome privacy-wise, directly linking your Chrome profile with all kinds of other privacy-sensitive Google services. Since Google is in the business of making money from the data they have on you (and hence collects as much as it can), I'd be much more concerned about this than I am about my Firefox account. ~~~ wayneftw I opted out of that once in Chrome and I never saw it again. I see no way to opt out of all the nags Firefox gives me. ------ cousin_it 1) Thirteen banner ads, most of them animated 2) Tracking from Google and Facebook 3) Cookie warning with no way to opt out 4) You can only opt out if you live in California: > _Opting out of the sharing of your personal information by Protocol with > marketers: Please send an email to [email protected] with the following > information: -Name -Email -Confirmation of California residency_ ~~~ tclover I often forget how does the internet look like without the adblocker ~~~ hobofan Not using a dedicated ad blocker (just Firefox) and the article looks very clean to me. ------ inviromentalist If anyone can figure out why Firefox doesn't work on my computer, let me know. It's at least 30 times slower than chrome. So somethings wrong Right? ~~~ jeltz Yeah, that is not normal at all. Firefox should be about as fast as Chrome on most workloads. ------ fmajid Their shabby treatment of Brendan Eich discredits their self-proclaimed commitment to diversity and open discourse. ------ arkitaip Maybe the ultimate move would be to create a Tor alternative that goes beyond slapping on some privacy on the pig that has become the Internet. ~~~ OmarShehata Why would that be better than current solutions, which at best users don't really notice when they work, and at worse dislike because they make many things less convenient? > Making private browsing more private was a success, which is to say less > data was collected and users didn't notice the difference. > The same trackers, though, help users log into sites and pay for goods, and > blocking them would break the internet for lots of users. ------ beardedman I've been using Brave these days. Really like it. IMO: Firefox doesn't seem to know what sort of company they are anymore. Their product arsenal is expanding, yet core features of their flagship product is still stuck in the 2000's. ~~~ jeltz How is Firefox stuck in the 2000s? They recently switched to an entirely new modern renderer, switched to a modern fast layout engine and implement new web strandards very quickly, sometimes faster than Chrome. ~~~ beardedman I said core features, not the entire browser. Their bookmark manager hasn't changed for many many years. ------ heartbeats If they want to do something, there's a simple three-step plan. 1) block all ads, by default 2) do not unblock Google's ads, 3) receive Adblock Plus-style bribes from Yandex or whoever to whitelist them, provided they don't harm privacy This would kill several birds in one stone. First, break Mozilla free of Google funding. Second, hurt Google. Third, increase Firefox' market share. Fourth, help users' privacy. As things stand today, Mozilla just exist so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly. Follow the money - who pays? (A: Google pays nearly all of their budget, and they have next to no rainy day fund) ~~~ ComodoHacker >from Yandex or whoever to whitelist them, provided they don't harm privacy I doubt you can find one that doesn't harm privacy. And particulary Yandex will raise other concerns. ~~~ move-on-by Seriously, why would anyone trust the Russian controlled Yandex any more then Google? Might as well be advocating for Baidu as well. ~~~ ComodoHacker On the other hand, there aren't many Yandex served ads in US, so most people won't care. ------ ecmascript Mozilla essentially did a "get woke, go broke". They fired Brendan for ridicolous reasons, they focused on products that were useless and were really focused on spreading propaganda for woke causes. I still use Firefox everyday since it's the best browser for linux but I also use Brave. Mozilla as a company in my eyes are a bit lost and they need more focus on their technology. It seems like they have realized this in the last two years or so and I hope that trend will continue. Firefox is awesome, focus on privacy is awesome. MDN is awesome. If they need money from other sources than Google, why not create some kind of subscription service for their MDN docs? There is a bunch of things they actually need to fix like lack of PWA support in firefox (still) which is pretty bad that they don't have that enabled by default. Focus on what matters, no one cares about your woke politics in the long run. ~~~ Angostura > hey fired Brendan for ridicolous reasons Marriage equality isn't a particularly ridiculous reason. ~~~ ecmascript So because you're a CEO you can't believe whatever you want in your spare time? Or does the same rules apply for everyone that works at Mozilla? If so, how the fuck does anyone know what is a fireable opinion? It's not like he used company resources to promote his beliefs or enforced his beliefs on others. What Mozilla did to Brendan is essentially to enforce thought crime on their own staff. It's kind of hard to take them seriously when they say they value integrity after that. This idea of an outrage culture is what makes Mozilla go down the shitter. No one cares about that shit except a very small minority in SF. It's not like Google or most other for-profit company cares about marriage inequality either. Just because they don't explicitly say it out loud doesn't mean they care. They care about profits and market dominance only. If Google would make more money being anti same sex marriage, then they would most likely oppose same sex marriage and spend a lot of money on lobbying for the opposing view. I'm certain that firing Brendan was probably one of the worst decisions Mozilla has taken so far. I trust Brave and Brendan far more on privacy issue since they only care about that and don't shove woke politics onto my face. I'm convinced that Brave will be larger than Firefox in market share sooner rather than later mostly because of this reason alone. ~~~ Angostura > So because you're a CEO you can't believe whatever you want in your spare > time? Clearly, if you a CEO and publicly supporting causes, your support for those causes will have an impact on the reputation of the organisation. Now, I sure you can think of examples of more extreme spare-time beliefs that you might think _were_ incompatible with being CEO, so its a question of where you particularly draw the line. (Or perhaps you can't and you think that any extreme free-time campaigning is fine). FWIW, I'm not in San Francisco. Now Mozilla has, whether you like it or not decided to build its brand values and ethos around equality and inclusivity - it is written all through its positioning and marketing material. Similarly Apple pitched privacy. If it was discovered that Tim Cook had a part time gig with Cambridge Analytica etc. I doubt he would last that long. Regarding Google et al: > Just because they don't explicitly say it out loud doesn't mean they care. That's correct they don't say it out loud, they don't explicity campaign on the issue and their CEO doesn't donate money towards it. > I trust Brave and Brendan far more on privacy issue since they only care > about that and don't shove woke politics onto my face. If Brendan started donating to an organisation campaigning to give law enforcement and marketing companies access to your personal data, do you think it would be compatible with his position at Brave? Bear in mind that, apparently when it comes to privacy, very few people care about that shit (as can be seen from Chrome's market share) and there is good money to be made selling data. ~~~ ecmascript > Now Mozilla has, whether you like it or not decided to build its brand > values and ethos around equality and inclusivity Yes I know, this is why I use Brave and why Mozilla is not relevant anymore. At my company we don't really make a lot of effort to test that our product works in Firefox anymore because they have such a low market share. I am basically the only one wanting to fully support firefox, testing every feature in it, but even I am having a hard time defending that position when Mozilla as a company is being so incredible short-sighted and pushes bullshit. Their wokeness killed Firefox and I'm very upset about that. I hate the people who ruined Mozilla which was for the longest time the only sane option in the browser market. I believe they will sooner or later discontinue Firefox unless something extraordinary happens because they won't have enough users to support it. > If Brendan started donating to an organisation campaigning to give law > enforcement and marketing companies access to your personal data, do you > think it would be compatible with his position at Brave? No I don't think so. But his beliefs in that theoretical case woule oppose what the product Brave is all about. Supporting same sex marriage or not has nothing to do with browsers, the internet or even technology. It's just an unpolular opinion that get you fired for the same company that pretend they value privacy, freedom and integrity. Which to me is now just bullshit I do not believe. In fact there is even evidence to support it, they are sending data to google even when you start a private tab in firefox so evidently they give away data to the same tech giants they claim to oppose. ~~~ Angostura I’d love to see your worked examples of why having brand values based around inclusivity has lead to a drop in market share. Do you have any evidence for that? Or are you assuming that Brendan’s superior execution skills would have avoided it? ~~~ ecmascript It's easy, people don't like getting politics shoved in their faces when they're using some product that has nothing to do with poltiics. Especially when they disagree with the message. Of course, in the Mozilla case it's more than their pander to wokeness that made them become unrelevant. It's their focus on shitty products that no one asked for or wanted. For example, Pocket. Such a waste of money, I'm sure they have some users and so on but come on. There is no way of donating to the development of Firefox. You can only donate to Mozilla and the money won't be used for development but rather for pushing woke politics. They have used a lot of money afaik on that purpose alone. To be more inclusive, which basically translates to excluding white men (because that is what it's always about). But if you want some concrete list, check this one out: [https://www.oneangrygamer.net/get-woke-go-broke-the- master-l...](https://www.oneangrygamer.net/get-woke-go-broke-the-master-list/) I'm sure Brendan wouldn't have spent millions on shit products and woke politics but rather to have improved on the core products and stuff like privacy which people actually care about. This is why Brave will be bigger than Firefox in the long run, because they care about what actually matters. Which is the product they offer. ~~~ Angostura > It's easy, people don't like getting politics shoved in their faces when > they're using some product How many people using Firefox do you think have even _heard_ of Brendan? Not many, I'd wager. The community who contribute? robably significantly more. I love this bit: "I'm sure Brendan wouldn't have spent millions on shit products and woke politics" How much did they spend on 'woke politics'?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A new blockchain cypherpunk media project - aseoconnor http://Cellarius.network ====== j4pe Looks rad. Can't wait to see what the narrative looks like!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hack your Own Web Project ? SQL Injection - sinu9i http://9lessons.blogspot.com/2008/12/sql-injection.html SQL Injection ====== hs another reason not to use sql	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Pavlovian Response To Seeing Birthday Announcements On Facebook - there http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110826/01140715696/pavlovian-response-to-seeing-birthday-announcements-facebook.shtml ====== AdamTReineke I set my birthday to April 1, 1911 on March 31st, making April Fools Day my 100th birthday. However, when Facebook hid my age and just said "Today is your birthday" I was disappointed and changed it back.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Leaf POS - Increase in smartphone usage vs tablet and desktop - jchernan http://leaf.me/blog/mobile-is-the-future-and-the-future-is-here-part-2.html?utm_source=Leaf+SMB+Blog&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=Leaf+Twitter ====== ajsbacon I think it's pretty sweet to see your work on responsive design doing well. People put a lot of work in things like responsiveness and UI design and most of the time don't get to see any data supporting their hard work.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why boycotting Whole Foods is Stupid - Anon84 http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2009/why-boycotting-whole-foods-is-stupid/ ====== tjic I read a quote somewhere (forget where) saying "folks in favor of universal healthcare keep saying 'lets have a debate'. OK, then Mackey's editorial was a PERFECT example of having a debate ... and he's getting castigated for it. This shows that folks in favor of government run healthcare are not really interested in a debate - they are interested in complete victory, with zero dissent. It's an ideology, not a rational position." I 100% agree. ~~~ dtf He starts his article with a line from Maggie Thatcher on socialism. Not a subtle way to tee off a debate - he may as well have dropped in a couple of references to the Third Reich while he was at it. Maybe he does raise a few interesting points, but he then completely loses it by claiming that it's plant-based nutrition (organic, no doubt) that we all need rather than doctors and medicine. It's a perfect "qu'ils mangent de la brioche" moment that shows the man has zero clue what he's talking about. This isn't a cogent argument against healthcare reform that needs defending as free-speech-under-attack; it's just a public relations facepalm of the first degree. The boycotts _are_ stupid, but that's just stupidity responding to stupidity. ~~~ tjic > _He starts his article with a line from Maggie Thatcher on socialism. Not a > subtle way to tee off a debate - he may as well have dropped in a couple of > references to the Third Reich while he was at it._ Thatcher presided over a country with socialized health care and heavily unionized coal mining, and complained about them. In the US, we are now debating having the government run the health sector. I.e. "socialism". I don't think that a criticism of socialized healthcare from someone who's been there is quite the same thing as "referencing the third Reich". ~~~ mighty To my knowledge, the Thatcher quote has nothing to do with their health care system, and it would appear she was an advocate of the NHS, not an opponent. From [http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp...](http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108256) _Our stewardship of the public finances has been better than that of any Government for nearly 50 years. It has enabled us to repay debt and cut taxes. The resulting success of the private sector has generated the wealth and revenues which pay for better social services—to double the amount being spent to help the disabled, to give extra help to war widows, and vastly to increase spending on the national health service. More than 1 million more patients are being treated each year and there are 8,000 more doctors and 53,000 more nurses to treat them. That is the record of eleven and a half years of Conservative Government and Conservative principles. All these are grounds for congratulation, not censure, least of all from the Leader of the Opposition, who has no alternative policies._ ------ stuff4ben Incredibly well said. Reminds me of one of my favorite movie quotes, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours." \- The American President (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112346/>) ~~~ smakz I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. [might not be Voltaire] ~~~ mighty I'm sorry, but the idea that the boycott is somehow threatening freedom of speech is utterly absurd. > A boycott is a ban and bans on other people’s opinions are stupid and > childish. I don't know if this was a massive logical slip-up on Berkun's part or what, but: nobody's banning Mackey's opinion. As far as I'm aware, copies of the Wall Street Journal containing that article are not being burned, nor is the website being hacked to prevent anyone from reading it. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with guaranteeing that people should keep patronizing your business if you say something that rankles them. ~~~ smakz Absolutely and I agree. I don't usually post ambiguous quotes but the grandparent reminded me of that quote which I liked. I'd also say banning whole foods is somewhat analogous to people who are 'banning' non-organic products by shopping at whole foods in the first place. They are speaking with their dollars about a position they are against (genetically engineered products). If Whole Foods the company has a culture/leadership which is against health care reform, people are certainly free and rational to ban Whole Foods if they feel strongly about the issue. ~~~ mighty Voted you back up. Fwiw, I was trying to respond to the general sentiment that this was a free speech issue, and the quote made for a good place to do so. Thanks for clarifying your stance. In retrospect, I should have used less strong language--"utterly absurd" wasn't necessary, as I can see how one might regard it a free speech issue. ------ ZeroGravitas _"If I were to boycott Whole Foods or critique Mackey it’d be for poor or manipulative timing, and not much else."_ Maybe that's enough? I'm not big on boycotts, but rich business people pissing off their core constituents by opposing reforms they seek and offering fringe ideas as alternatives right in the middle of a big debate about a fundamental part of society just seems dumb. I thought we were pro dumb actions having consequences round here. ~~~ wolfish I disagree that expressing a well thought out opinion on an important social issue is a dumb action. ~~~ gloob Clearly the market disagrees with you. ~~~ wolfish I'm not sure if you're referring to the boycotters or HN. But I'd hardly call a vocal minority "the market." The lines in the Whole Foods a couple blocks from my apartment seem to be just as long as ever. ~~~ gloob In which case they're hardly infringing on his freedom of speech, now are they? I am, incidentally, quite serious: I can't see how "The boycotters are a meaningful threat to freedom of speech," and "The boycotters have negligible impact on the real world," are anything but mutually exclusive. ~~~ wolfish I've never said either of those things. The first one is absurd. ------ mdasen The Whole Foods CEO wasn't just having opinions. He was actively opining (which spell check assures me is a word) that we shouldn't have a public health care system. Why should advertisers not advertise on Glen Beck's show? For those who don't know, Beck opined on his show that President Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. . . I'm not saying he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist." That's an opinion as well. Beck's opinion is, to most, more inflammatory than Mackey's, but that can make Mackey's all the more dangerous (if you're someone who would like to see public healthcare). The fact is that Mackey seems to be a liberal of sorts (in fact, Whole Foods offers health insurance to their employees) and an at least somewhat successful business person (I don't actually know enough about Whole Foods, but they don't seem to be going bankrupt). So, his words are quite a threat to the agenda of those who would like to see a public health plan. And his words have that much more power because they're coming from someone who seems to have liberal leanings and is running a business that _does_ provide health care to their employees. If someone is advocating for the opposite of what you would like, should you not take that into consideration? We vote with our feet every day. He took action against public health care in trying to change people's opinions through his piece. I know many who stopped buying CDs because of the RIAA's positions. I will grant that his piece was a lot more thoughtful and measured than many have passed on, but this is an issue that is very contentious and many people feel (I'm not making any judgement here) that his words contribute to a negative impact on the possibility of a public health plan and that the lack of such a plan will have a negative impact on their life. As such, they don't want to spend their money at his business. ~~~ jobeirne "So, his words are quite a threat" I resent your use of the word "threat" in this context; a threat implies the pending use of force to harm. Are you sure that you want to equate a man expressing his opinion publicly to the promise of inflicting pain? ~~~ nonrecursive That's not the only meaning: "a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger". There are economic threats (the threat of bankruptcy), social threats (blackmail), etc. etc. I think what's important here is that the boycotters perceive the Whole Foods CEO's opining as an actual threat. In the "battle" for ideas, it makes sense that you wouldn't actively support your opposition. ~~~ jobeirne Even so, the word has a devious connotation. There is nothing devious about open speech. ~~~ nonrecursive I'm curious: what word would you use? ~~~ jobeirne "So, his words are quite a _challenge_ to the agenda of those who would like to see a public health plan." ------ jswinghammer I totally agree that this boycott business is nonsense. I don't understand why some people seem to believe that everyone has to agree with you. Is the case for health care reform so weak that people need to jump on anyone who dissents? Mackey doesn't even draw a salary so by boycotting Whole Foods it isn't affecting him directly. He's a libertarian sort of guy but that's nothing new. I shop at Whole Foods every week and have no plans to stop that any time soon. My wife and I joke that we should be spending more there now that some people are boycotting. ~~~ jz I've shopped at Whole Foods once or twice in the past and came to the conclusion that it was a bit pricey. I just started shopping at Whole Foods again to help negate the boycott. I also plan on buying a Ford the next time I need a car. I've always bought GM/Chrysler, but Ford has earned my respect by refusing the government bailout. ~~~ hughprime I, likewise, am planning to shop at Whole Foods more frequently now. Actually, one of the reasons I didn't shop at Whole Foods before was that it was always too crowded. Maybe it'll be easier to find a parking space from now on. (It helps that my local branch is in Berkeley.) ------ jobeirne If anything, a rabid boycotting effort seems detrimental to the case of reformists; fear-mongering and verbal abuse simply because a man authors an eloquent article stating his opinions? That sounds scary to me. Besides, Mackey's stance has been empirically expressed for a long time now; just examining the way he handles health care internally, with his own employees, should tell much of what he believes in. To rifle and shout for blood now, just because he's released a minor articulation of something he's been advocating a while now, would seem sort of silly on the part of conscious Whole Foods consumers. ------ martythemaniak This seems to be news to many people, but "free speech" does not mean others have to listen to you, agree with you, or least of all financially support you. The guy delivered a big Fuck You to his customers - the same people who are responsible for him having a stronger voice than an ordinary person. Now he has to pay the price for his stupidity, and they are absolutely right to boycott WF. ~~~ jz Did you even read the article? I was unable to find even one instance where he was sticking it to his customers. All his points had everything to do with changes to the health care system, but with a minimal (if any) increase in the deficit. ~~~ ezy Did you? Read it again. It's missing the point and excessively patronizing. He _is_ sticking it to his customers, you just aren't reading critically. To his credit, he's been consistent -- I found articles about the WF health plan from way back where he is equally patronizing about how his employees chose the "Suck Less" health care plan by vote. Gee, thanks. :-) Lets take some choice quotes: Covering the naive, self-serving bases we have: "Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover", "Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year." Incredibly naive. Just astoundingly so. Also, note the complete lack of concern for the _patients_ in this triangle. Or at least the ones who may not have the privilege of working at WholeFoods. And under the WTF category: "Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation [for people with no insurance]". Does _anyone_ think this proposal is actually legitimate? This is the most intelligence insulting bit of ass-covering I've ever seen. But it doesn't end there. He references an article in Investor's business daily which is basically full of lies (look up the rebuttals -- it's quite humorous) And I _love_ this one. Note the pre-built conclusion: "Why would [Can,UK employees] want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"?" Well, fucking duh, they don't need high deductable insurance from WholeFoods, and they want access to extra benefits in _some_ form. But, he's smart, he knew this already... He just didn't choose to phrase it that way.. for our beenfit, of course. :-) And we have the patronizing implication in: "Unfortunately many of our health- care problems are self-inflicted:". If that isn't a huge fuck you, I have no idea what is. ~~~ pbhjpbhj Two points: 1) "voluntary, tax deductible, donation" presumably means one can donate charitably to an individual who needs a medical intervention of some sort, eg pay for your brothers kidney operation tax free - what's your objection to this sort of thing? Your vitriol is obscuring your message. 2) "many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted:", they are though aren't they? No where near all of them, but certainly many (I'm in the UK, perhaps people [contrary to all media reports] look after themselves better in the USA?). ~~~ ezy Admittedly I was peeved when I read it, but you have to consider the reality, rather than the ideal. You can already deduct medical expenses and charitable donations in the US, and "donating" to family members is ripe for tax fraud. It's just not realistic. But igoring that, the thrust of that part of the op-ep was that this would _pay for all those who can't afford insurance_ is absolutely ridiculous -- basically just, like I said, dumb and really naive. As for the second, while it may be true that "many" problems are self- inflicted in a technical sense, that rather vague statement is not the point. The point is what it implies. It implies that if everyone just ate their greens, we'd see less of a problem. Not only is it basically wrong (look up the stats). It's insulting because you're implicitly blaming a significant ("many") part of the healthcare problem on the people who... seek out healthcare. This is, again, stupid, and not the debate -- WHile people could take better care of themselves, they aren't ruining the system with hangnails and type 2 diabetes caused by Twinkies. That just isn't happening the way he implies. What we are talking about is a significant class of people who _do not seek out healthcare_ because they cannot afford it. ------ noodle what is a boycott but an expression of opinion? i'm not sure how the author would reconcile the fact that the CEO of a company should have the right to express his opinion via the editorial but the consumers should not be able to express their opinion by not doing business with the company (how else will the average joe on the street be able to actually have any direct effect on or interaction with a CEO?). ~~~ pyre Yea. The article seems more to the effect of "Your political opinions are stupid, therefore your actions to express those opinions are stupid as well" and venturing into "your opinions are so stupid that you don't have a right to express them" territory. ------ hughprime Out of curiosity, can anyone point me at some well-argued articles offering a refutation of Mackey's original editorial? Alternatively, bonus points if you can find me someone supporting boycotting Whole Foods who ridiculed the boycotting of the Dixie Chicks. Or vice versa. ~~~ pyre The boycotting of the Dixie Chicks was more ridiculous, in my opinion... By a couple of orders of magnitude. ~~~ hughprime Uh huh. How so, exactly? ~~~ pyre Because there was a larger portion of the population that agreed with it. Not to mention that in this case, we're talking about the CEO of a company that has built itself on an image. Not only that, the company targets a certain demographic, and the majority of that demographic (at least on the surface) believes in government healthcare. For the CEO to come out and say something like this, it's almost an expected response. The Dixie Chicks on the other hand have a wider audience, and prior to them actually saying it, I wouldn't have necessarily expected such a response from the general public or their fans. Not only that it was all over in the media with lots of 'media personalities' jumping on the 'trash the Dixie Chicks for ratings' bandwagon. ------ evanjacobs As far as the (stock) markets are concerned, Mackey's opinion piece doesn't seem to have affected the value of WFMI. After a brief dip, the value of WFMI has steadily increased during the past week: <http://bit.ly/4BCUjh> ------ eli People are just unhappy that Whole Foods' senior management doesn't jive with the company's careful constructed image. Of course, I think I'd starve to death if I boycotted all the stores that don't support my politics. ~~~ viggity I would die of boredom if I didn't watch movies made by people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. ------ justin_vanw Ok, the article seems to miss something. The whole foods ceo is in the newspaper because he is the CEO of whole foods, not because he has all these interesting things to say. Since his ability to push his opinions through the newspaper is predicated on his position at that corporation, he is writing as 'the CEO of whole foods', not merely as a citizen. That they point out who he is adds to this, since not only is he only invited because of his job title, but the newspaper is also using the title to add weight and authority. If the employees of a company offend you the best and really only way to influence them is to stop giving that company your money. Really, as a practical matter, no CEO of any company should be out there publicly talking about their personal political views. In fact, it is odd that the company didn't have a written policy preventing employees from using their affiliation with the company in this way. If the guy who makes sandwiches started endorsing panini grills, and the ads used the Whole Foods name, they would be shut down. It is just obvious that the sandwich guy can't use the company's trademarks to push his personal agenda, and neither should the CEO be allowed to. ~~~ tc You may not be aware, but John Mackey _founded_ Whole Foods (in his garage, no less) in 1978. His identity is naturally rather intertwined with his company. ------ ranprieur Both sides on this issue are failing to understand the vast potential power of the tool of the boycott. It doesn't matter whether Mackey's argument was reasonable. People are fired up and motivated, and that energy can be tapped to influence Whole Foods, and then influence another company, and another. The more we use the muscle, the stronger it gets. What the boycotters don't understand is that you get nowhere if a bunch of disconnected individuals just stop buying something because they're angry. It only works if you make specific well-publicized demands, continue the boycott until the demands are met, and then end it. A boycott without demands is tactically pathetic. It's a bit late now, but the boycotters could have demanded, for example, that Whole Foods publicly support a single-payer system. ------ pyre I'd like to take a second to remind folks that _this_ is the reason that companies want to have access to your facebook pages, have you sign away your right to blog in public, etc. While it's obviously a bit different for a CEO (being more in the public eye, and seen as the 'face' of the company), HR and legal departments are worried about similar backlashes from comments made by 'grunt-level' (or even mid- level) employees. This is obviously a flawed assumption, because the people at the top of the company have a higher chance of garnering public outrage against a company, yet they are the ones with the most leverage to say 'screw you' to such policies that would limit their free speech and (at least try to) negotiate them out of any contracts. ------ doki_pen It seems to me that boycot is perfect way to censor people. I find nothing wrong with it. There are social consequences to what you say. This is the way it should be. Government cencorship, on the other hand... ------ mcantelon Also stupid is screwing your shareholders by pissing off your company's customers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
One Bitcoin Group Now Controls 51% of Total Mining Power - StephenFalken http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184427-one-bitcoin-group-now-controls-51-of-total-mining-power-threatening-entire-currencys-safety ====== timrosenblatt This is a great writeup. It's not as FUD-y as other's I've seen. [https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/06/13/centralized- mining/](https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/06/13/centralized-mining/) is another good read. Where OP's link is more technical, this BCF link factors in the other side of things -- what would happen if someone actually did take advantage of this vulnerability. ~~~ StephenFalken Thanks for sharing that interesting link. He has a good point and ends with a wise standing: _However, this is a good time to re-iterate my standard disclaimers: Bitcoin is still a work in progress, and you should only risk time or money on it that you can afford to lose. Mining centralization is one of several potential risks; read Jim Harper’s excellent Risk Management Study for a clear-headed assessment of risks and consequences._	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ubuntu vs Android Tablets, Smartphones: Canonical's Secret Weapon - stevewillensky http://thevarguy.com/mobile-device-management-software-solutions/ubuntu-vs-android-tablets-smartphones-canonicals-secret- ====== mtgx Why does Ubuntu have to "beat" Android? Besides the fact that it won't have even a remote chance to do that other than gaining a few percentage points, what Ubuntu Touch really needs to beat is WP8, and occupy that "3rd platform" spot, and also position itself as a better alternative to a PC OS than Windows 8 and its successors are.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Think Visually Using Visual Analogies - gsempe http://anna.vc/post/112863438962/how-to-think-using-visual-analogies ====== Palomides I think there's some very interesting stuff here, but I feel like it could be developed more and presented more effectively. nitpick: I like how the image of three gears shows them meshed in a way that makes any motion impossible. ~~~ krock Another nitpick is the image labelled 'universe' which is clearly a solar system. ~~~ JadeNB Although, to be fair, it's hard to know what would be a meaningful visual shortcut for 'universe'. Mostly black (or, I suppose, #FFF8E7 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte) )) space with a light pixel or two? ------ mattwar Isn't this exactly a terrible example of conveying information, but a good example of conveying common conception? Ie: ...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: If you can buy only one book, which one you'll buy? - nerder92 I'm looking for something that can help me be more convincing and effective in public speaking as well as raising my level of influence with co-workers.<p>If you can buy only one which one you will get? ====== IloveHN84 The Art of Making Friends, from Carnegie Mellon ------ joeblow9999 1984	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to reach initial users for a shopping related app? - bhootai ====== webtechgal How about 1. Google AdWords/AdMob 2. Fb Ads 3. SEO (obviously, 1. and 2. provide instant gratification while 3. would be a slow starter).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
YouTube set to lose $470 million this year - nreece http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technology/profits-down-the-youtube/2009/04/09/1239223029927.html ====== tumult Not exactly a great article. Random analyst quoted by newspaper pulls some number out of thin air. How does he know how well YouTube is performing? In fact, can you even _quantify_ how well YouTube is performing? It's like a part of our culture now. And Google, a corporation, runs it. I imagine he's generating that number by estimating how much bandwidth YouTube is pushing, and then how much it costs to serve it? Guess what: Google owns a large chunk of the pipes that carry the data. They pay a lot (I remember YouTube Live was done partially through Akamai, due to the huge incidental load) but it's not what normal people have to pay to host stuff through, say, Amazon S3 or whatever. Right now, I don't think the dollars in/out of YouTube is terribly relevant. Then again, I'm probably about as well connected to Google as this random analyst, so whatever :) I don't know jack ~~~ kierank Yep, see my post here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546303> That analysts report is rubbish with numbers plucked out of thin air. ------ brent That is $661 AUD, not USD. It should be $470 USD although I'm sure the margin of error on the calculation is probably so large it doesn't matter. ------ TweedHeads FUD, propaganda, pay-per-post, I hope HNers learn how to spot them and fight them. In every piece of FUD, check who is attacked and who benefits from that attack. In my five years analyzing and studying FUD, I can attest most of the time it comes from redmond. Few companies spend as much money as the one in redmond in faux journalism and propaganda.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Can You Trademark a Color? - dean http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/12/can-you-trademark-a-color/ ====== ltamake Anyone remember that time T-Mobile tried to get Engadget Mobile to change their colours? [http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/31/deutsche-telekom-t- mobile...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/31/deutsche-telekom-t-mobile- demands-engadget-mobile-discontinue/) [http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/01/painting-the-town- magenta...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/01/painting-the-town-magenta/) ------ zachrose See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue> ~~~ intlkleinblue I'd be careful. That wiki mentions nothing about me being trademarked (although it did before) and has suspect sources cited at the bottom. The IP status of Intl Klein Blue is not very clear from my personal research into the matter. ~~~ LearnYouALisp Created 117 days ago! o_o ~~~ intlkleinblue This is not a novelty account. ~~~ zachrose Wow. Email me? [email protected] ------ tzs Yes. See the case of In re Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., 774 F.2d 1116 (Fed. Cir. 1985). Here's a copy of the decision: [http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/774/774.F2d.1116.84-...](http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/774/774.F2d.1116.84-1416.html) ~~~ wisty The difference being, coloring fiberglass insulation serves to identify its brand, and _serves no other purpose_. Red soled shoes are arguably better looking, which is a functional purpose of shoes. So you shouldn't be able to trademark them. Trademarks should only prevent people passing off goods as yours, not copying your function. Similarly, Apple shouldn't be able to trademark Aluminium notebooks, or single button phones, as they have a functional purpose. Of course, their is a question as to whether aesthetics is a function, and whether restrictions on aesthetics will limit the function of competitors' offerings. In fiberglass insulation, I doubt it. High-heels, maybe. ~~~ delinka I'd have argued that the red soles were indeed intended to be for identification only. Anything else is a function of people's perceptions (e.g. beauty is in the eye of the beholder.) Lest we argue that red soles are aesthetically functional as well, regardless of the designer's intent, let's consider the possible repercussions of pink insulation when applied inside transparent walls. Or perhaps the calming effect the color has on installers. Now, the pink is functional. Does that make it less able to be protected? I really think it goes back to the intent of the creator/designer/architect of the product. The designer of the shoes seems to have argued the aesthetic qualities of the color on the sole and therefore nullified his ability to claim the use of color was not "functional." If he'd held out with the argument that his intent was identity, he may have won. ------ callmeed When I worked at UPS, they told us the company had a trademark on "Pullman Brown". Not sure if that's actually true or not (can't find reliable info with a quick search). ~~~ colanderman It is true according to my IP instructor. UPS has a trademark on the color in the context of delivery services, it being strongly associated with their brand. ------ nmcfarl According to this article YSL made a pair of completely red heel, top and bottom, which is what landed them in this lawsuit. [http://www.inquisitr.com/133848/louboutin-battle-yves- saint-...](http://www.inquisitr.com/133848/louboutin-battle-yves-saint- laurent-red-soles/) This use of red seems very different from contrasting soles - and having a trademark that blocks red high heels seems a bit overreaching to me. ------ hm2k "lastminute.com", "lastminute" and the colour magenta are all trade marks owned by Last Minute Network Limited and/or its group companies. The T-MOBILE acoustic logo, and the color magenta are registered and/or unregistered trademarks of Deutsche Telekom AG in the US and/or other countries ------ _Mark On the Australian ANZ Bank page : <http://www.anz.com.au> The footer contains the text "ANZ's colour blue is a trade mark of ANZ." The actual web site contains multiple blues, so I am wondering which exact one they have trademarked? ------ stretchwithme I would say no. How is a color original when stars have been making it for eons? ~~~ nickmain Originality only applies to patents. ------ zalthor I remember Cadbury (the chocolate company) tried to trademark the color purple. I think they failed at it because “purple” apparently wasn't a clear and concise description of the trademark. ------ atacrawl "Color Pink® and Pink Nitrile® are registered Trademarks of Colur World, LLC." You can find that disclaimer on any site containing mentions of pink nitrile gloves for use in hospitals. ------ tobylane You shouldn't be able to trademark colours, but a specific colour on a specific area of a specific item (red soled shoes), that others copy purely so customers are confused about the brand image, does sound more like what is needed. ~~~ colanderman Read the article. This is almost exactly how the US trademark system works. ------ iwwr Is it a (hyper)intelligent shade of the color blue? ------ hackermom Pantone seems to think you can: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone#Intellectual_property> ~~~ nickmain It looks like they are asserting copyright, not trademarks. ------ maeon3 Yes you should be able to trademark colors. Also, people should be allowed to trademark specific tones, like middle 'C' on the piano. I bought that one, you can't use it. ~~~ colanderman You think you're being clever and sarcastic: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_chimes>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
In response to: " Is it okay to kill cyclists" - fumar http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2013/11/shafted-again.html ====== jonchang This is a somewhat extreme overreaction to a level-headed opinion piece in the New York Times that has a linkbait headline, as is typical of journalism these days. I encourage you to read the full article and judge for yourself. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok- to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to-kill- cyclists.html?pagewanted=all) ~~~ __--__ To be fair, it's the Bike Snob. Hysterical Overreaction is his writing style and has been for years. ------ zevyoura > When I'm in Midtown or some other place where I'm "sharing the road" (that's > cute) and thousands of two-ton 350 horsepower motor vehicles are bearing > down on me because they're driven by people whose only priority is getting > to the Midtown Tunnel or the 59th Street bridge as quickly as possible, you > can be damn well sure I'll do whatever the hell I need to do in order to get > a head start on these homicidal mutherfuckers, and that includes running the > light if I deem it safer to do so I'm not a regular cyclist, so maybe I'm just confused, but under what circumstances would it be safer to run a red light? "Get a head start" implies to me that they're starting to cross the intersection while cross traffic still has the right of way, which seems far more dangerous. ~~~ stolio Traffic lights are designed to group cars together, but if you're willing to run (all of) them you get to ride in between the packs of cars where you only have to worry about cross-traffic at intersection and the occasional pedestrian. It's so much nicer for everybody involved, I can't get up to speed like a car can at a red light so if I wait there suddenly I'll have a line of cars behind me who may make questionable passes at the first opportunity. I think anything that reduces my proximity to 2-ton hunks of metal on the street is a good thing. In some states it's legal for cyclists to treat stop lights as stop signs and stop signs as yield signs because A) it's so much easier for us to stop B) we can hear our surroundings so we generally have a good idea if an intersection is safe to cross _before_ getting visual confirmation and C) the amount of danger we expose others to is small compared to vehicles (person + 30 lbs. bike vs. person + 3,500 lbs. car) ~~~ dman As a pedestrian in Manhattan it's really hard for me to model in my head what a person on a bicycle going to do. What is the protocol for cyclists and red lights - are they supposed to stop like other vehicles? Do people crossing the street with a walk sign have right of way? Can they take free left turns if no cars are at the intersection? ~~~ stolio I don't live in as big a city as Manhattan so I can't really say, I've seen videos of some insane bike riding in NYC. Can't believe how some of them ride. I do think cyclists sometimes fail to give pedestrians the respect they deserve, we have to remember that pedestrian's relationship with us mirrors our relationship with cars _. I personally try not to come within 5 feet of pedestrians, unless they 're standing in a bike lane or something like that. _ in the sense that we're bigger and faster, but the extent of the danger isn't even close ------ cup This goes beyond cyclist / motorist behaviour. If you really prove deeply you can extract a classical attitude and behaviour seen between a semi-homogeneous majority class and its minority coutnerpart. By that I mean, in this case we have motorists upset at cylists because they feel that cyclists in some way conflict with their beliefs / way of life (that I can drive on the road with other automobiles and not worry about cyclists or that my behaviour may harm others). I suspect though that at the heart of the matter motorists are upset because it exposes just how poor some people are when it comes to driving and how driving isnt a right nor a privlidge but a skill which requires practice and training. I mean the same thing can be seen in other conflicts between major groups and minorities. Cars and motorcycles. Post colonial naturalised citizens vs. indigenous people. Middle class vs. Poor. Police vs. 'inner city youth'. I mean is the issue really that cyclists might do something wrong or that cyclists expose just how bad drivers are at driving and how arrogant individuals try to blame others for their mistakes under the guise of 'being impartial'? Im rambling now but theres a point in there somewhere. ~~~ jinushaun On the flip side, it also exposes how shitty assholes a lot of cyclists are. I've been involved in enough group bike rides to know that most of the time, the cyclist started it. Asshole cyclists are probably also asshole drivers and asshole pedestrians.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video] - tommywilliams https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/26/man-flies-over-south-africa-in-a-chair-tied-to-helium-balloons-video ====== jimmies Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we've been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload. For kids, this is a great inspiration and educational opportunity, especially for those who are interested in technology and programming. We used Arduinos and Raspberry pis in many components of the payload, from the tracker to the data logger. They get to program and control the behavior then test the hard/software so I personally think it's a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of "doing crazy stuff" kids are interested in. For adults, it involves many fun aspects too. Specifically for geeks, the best feature is the optimization of weight, reliability, and features for the payload. Some people did get crazy with party balloons that carry impossibly light and efficient payloads that last for over a year with full tracking and sensory information. It can get surprisingly technical when you want to communicate with the payload reliably from the ground (over the radio wave). You'd be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn't know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you'd think - what's so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don't appreciate enough is how advanced and amazing our cellular network is. When you have cellular communication, you have everything, the economy of scale is real and it works. With (amateur) radio, it's a different story: Many times we'd had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn't do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I've grown to be much more sympathetic to people who have to work with that vast amount of distance, space, and power envelop when it comes to tracking some flying object on the sky, let alone on/under the sea. As a side note, I can't imagine launching such a huge object such as yourself tied to a cluster of balloons to the sky could be something the authority is too fond of. ~~~ asfdsfggtfd Are there any safety issues with this? Air traffic control? What if balloon bursts and payload falls to earth. What are the rules on launches? ~~~ jimmies It will surely burst when it reaches about 100k ft. We attach a parachute to the payload to make it descend gradually. Other than that, there is no control over where it's going to land. However, because the payloads are small styrofoam boxes, they don't pose a very serious danger in the rare case that they land on roads. Flight predictors are really surprisingly good at simulating where the payloads will land, so it's usually not a huge surprise. We'd rather be safe than sorry. So far, nothing really bad has been reported in the HAB community. It will leave a bad stint if something blows up on someone's face. Regarding authority, we often file a NOTAM-Notice to Airmen ([https://sites.google.com/a/mtlsd.net/citizen- science/ib1/not...](https://sites.google.com/a/mtlsd.net/citizen- science/ib1/notam)). ------ royale93 The original is Larry Walters, of course. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters) ~~~ ChuckMcM Indeed. I am always amazed that they don't pass out when they cross 15,000'. ~~~ abcd_f Who are "they" exactly? ~~~ icebraining I assume they are "the people who makes these flights". ~~~ eps Well, smarty pants, who are these numerous persons who flew in their lawn chairs strapped to helium balloons to 15K feet? There must be heaps of them since they manage to keep ChuckMcM in a state of constant amazement. ~~~ ChuckMcM If you followed the Wikipedia link there were 5 imitators listed, and the current story makes 6. These are the ones that got enough coverage to warrant an entry. I know personally an EMT who responded to a call of one person who tried this over Lake Tahoe and "crashed" into the lake, but it wasn't in the papers or in the Wikipedia article. ~~~ eps And only two reached 15K altitude, so your original comment rings hollow as there's basically no basis for being "always amazed" at this fact. ~~~ ChuckMcM So do you have a problem with me or with the grammar? If its me my email is in my profile and I'm always ready to listen to feedback. If its the grammar, my amazement comes from not one story of someone trying this stunt including extra oxygen. Many of the stories include the notion of a pellet gun to shoot individual balloons for altitude control. That sets up an additional failure mode where you pass out from lack of oxygen before you can shoot a balloon. That people fail to consider and plan for the failure modes of this stunt _is_ always amazing to me. ------ fauria I know that man, he's Tom Morgan, founder of a company called The Adventurists. They are probably best known for organizing the Mongol Rally and the Rickshaw Run, among other charity rallies. I participated in the Mongol Rally 2009 and for me was the experience of a lifetime. This is their website if you are interested in learning more about them: [https://www.theadventurists.com](https://www.theadventurists.com) ~~~ Fuddh I participated this summer and I would agree - it’s an amazing experience. The fact that the Adventurists still have a very personal approach with everyone taking part even though there were over 300 teams this summer is testament to how cool those guys are! ------ nhoven How does he safely maintain altitude? The helium balloons will expand as he rises (due to the lower pressure at higher altitudes), eventually popping. It's how weather balloons descend. Is he counting on a slow descent after some initial fraction of the balloons pop? That's quite a bet. ------ markvdb I don't want to be a party pooper, but... Helium is scarce enough to stop using it for this kind of purposes. [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24903034](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24903034) ~~~ sparkzilla Crisis averted: [https://www.livescience.com/60607-helium-reserve- discovered-...](https://www.livescience.com/60607-helium-reserve-discovered- in-tanzania-photos.html) ~~~ amelius Sounds like Tanzania soon has a monopoly position. ------ baldfat this isn't inspired by the movie "Up." July 2, 1982 Larry Walters tied his lawn chair to balloons and carried an air pistol to shoot balloons to control the amount of lift. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters) When he landed his quote to the press before his arrest was: "It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm." This is called Cluster Ballooning: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_ballooning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_ballooning) Guinness Book of World Records even has a category. I told my Dad I wanted to do it and he almost grounded me right then and there. ------ fiatjaf In 2008 a brazilian priest did the same in Santa Catarina. No one has ever saw him again after the launch. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli) ~~~ veidr Well, not to get too macabre, but people eventually did see (part of) his _body_ , found floating in the ocean a few months later. ~~~ dogruck Also don’t want to mock the dead, but this note made me shake my head: > His training for the stunt included jungle survival and mountain climbing > courses, but apparently did not include instruction on use of his GPS - in a > telephone call he made during the flight, he stated that if someone could > just explain how to use his GPS he could relay his position to rescuers. ------ doxcf434 What could possibly go wrong? ~~~ andremat Well, a Brazilian priest attempted a similar feat in 2008[1]. He won the 2008 Darwin Award for it [2]. [1] [https://gizmodo.com/5022283/sad-ending-flying-priest- found-d...](https://gizmodo.com/5022283/sad-ending-flying-priest-found-dead- in-the-atlantic-god-positioning-system-still-missing) [2] [http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008-16.html](http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008-16.html) ~~~ aaron695 > Darwin Award Making fun of people dying. Fucking sick stuff. It's also logically crap. Often it's people (as in this case) doing things outside the normal. Things as hackers we should celebrate. It's also often people in extreme poverty just trying to make a living, aka the fucking sick part that we as rich educated people make fun of cause we don't have to do dirty things like recycle metal from unexploded ordnances cause rich. ~~~ knodi123 Hey, tell me about it. There was a tragic accident at my school, when a structure collapsed and killed several students, because it had insufficient engineering oversight. But, eh, Darwin Awards had to make a joke, so they collectively gave it to all the victims, who were getting up at the crack of dawn to volunteer on a group project, and following all the safety rules they were given. ~~~ seszett That's weird because it directly contradicts most rules of Darwin Awards, that the people must be mature (well I don't know what kind of school it was), that they must be the ones responsible for their death (from what you say, the engineering is what killed students later) and that it must be because of "extraordinary misjudgment" on the part of the people both responsible and victims (who are supposed to be the same). Can you link to your story on their website in order to contact them and withdraw the award since it breaks the rules? ~~~ knodi123 I dug into it a bit further, and apparently the story is that the Darwin Awards used to be more crowd-sourced, but as a direct result of the incident I'm referring to, they instituted heavy moderation and apologized for any distress caused by their seeming approval of a tasteless article. So it's a little more forgivable than I realized. My opinion gelled back when the story was still in progress, but I didn't hear about the conclusion. If you want to read the details, just google "aggie bonfire", or "darwin award aggie bonfire". ------ pzivkovic I so want to do this :) ~~~ Keyframe Do it then!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What may be the world’s first cybernetic hate crime - JL2010 http://io9.com/5926587/what-may-be-the-worlds-first-cybernetic-hate-crime-unfolds-in-french-mcdonalds ====== JL2010 (victim) Prof. Steve Mann's blog post of the incident: [http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/2012/07/physical-assault-by- mcdona...](http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds- for.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sanctioned DPRK vessels resume sailing with AIS switched off to avoid detection - okket http://www.voakorea.com/a/3329348.html ====== Gys In Korean... DPRK = the Democratic People's Republic of Korea = North Korea	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Go vs. Swift vs. C++ microbenchmark - monort http://lionet.livejournal.com/137511.html ====== campoy I don't care about micro benchmarks ... but if you're gonna do one, make sure your code is decent. By replacing the Go slice declarations (var x[]int64) with (x := make([]int64, 0, 1000000)) you'll get an algorithm that in my iMac runs much faster: \- your version: 4.93s user 0.28s system 165% cpu 3.151 total \- my version: 1.93s user 0.04s system 168% cpu 1.165 total EDIT: I'm sure this happens with all the examples, and that's exactly my point. What is this exactly microbenchmarking? Bad programs? ~~~ masklinn (Re)allocating arrays/vectors seems to be pretty much the whole point, otherwise both Swift and C++ could not only preallocate (reserve), but they could use iterators and elide all allocation instead, and then you'd get something along the lines of this: > rustc -O test.rs -o test_rs > time ./test_rs 9999010000 0.54 real 0.53 user 0.00 sys here's TFA's C++ version by comparison: > time ./test_cpp 9999010000 3.17 real 2.29 user 0.86 sys ~~~ campoy I totally agree with you on this. The code for all three languages is clearly not optimal. I wonder how much of this performance difference is C++ being very good at optimizing your code rather than the runtime being more performant. I don't have any numbers, but I _feel_ like that's not a negligible factor. ~~~ masklinn > I totally agree with you on this. The code for all three languages is > clearly not optimal. That's not really my point. My point's we have no idea what TFA is trying to do or see[0], so you may be able to say "this is stupid and nonsensical" because it is[1], but you can't say "I've got a better version" then provide something with a completely different behaviour. [0] most likely they just threw some shit at the wall, ended up with relatively long runtimes and called that a benchmark [1] or maybe not, maybe it's a reduction of actual workload in the system doing computation based on some sort of dynamic number of items so you can't preallocate the intermediate storage and the point's to compare reallocation overhead[2] [2] not very likely though, considering you never need the array in the first place as you're just summing each item with the previous one, then summing every 100 item of that… anyway ~~~ jasode _> , but you can say ""_ I'm guessing you meant to type, " _but you can 't say_" ~~~ masklinn Correct guess. Fixed. ------ DannyBee Oh microbenchmarks. All of this is going to be optimized away by a sufficiently smart compiler or a compiler you tell you want to spend lots of time optimizing. In general: don't write microbenchmarks where the results can be easily statically evaluated by the compiler, unless you are testing whether the compiler can statically evaluate it (this is a reasonable thing to want to know of course, but it's not a test of the language). There are also languages which will pretty much not bother to do a lot of the the actual work, like haskell. (Note: In this case, the the C++ compiler being used actually knows all the recurrences involved, but decides it's too expensive to statically calculate the final result of sum. GCC would do the same.) ~~~ 21 Doesn't the std::vector calls mess things up? Now the compiler has to track those as well, they involve the allocator which calls into the OS. So for the compiler to be able to statically compute the result it would need to know that the std::vector stuff doesn't have side effects. Of course, the compiler could have special knowledge of std::vector, like for example in general it has about memcpy. ~~~ DannyBee "So for the compiler to be able to statically compute the result it would need to know that the std::vector stuff doesn't have side effects. " It can know this the same way it knows about memcpy. Most of them have library call info for things that have standardized guarantees. Even if it didn't, it knows what malloc does, it knows this variable never escapes, and ... ------ justinsb As far as micro-benchmarks go, this one is particularly egregious. It is likely completely dominated by the array reallocation. So a runtime that - say - chooses to preallocate an array at size 1000000, or to go to 1000000 at first resize would win at this benchmark. More realistically, a runtime that conserves memory by reallocating arrays with a 1.5x factor vs a 2x factor will appear slower. It's exactly because you don't want to rely on the runtime making the right call for your use-case that you preallocate arrays where it makes a difference (i.e. where you're appending a million items). And 99% of the time you're doing less than 100 items, and so the array reallocation behavior just doesn't matter. ------ stepanhruda Concurrency model will be a big focus for Swift 4. (Swift is currently v2.2, the focus of v3 is to stabilize the ABI.) ------ 0x434D53 So what's the conclusion of this besides some useless numbers? ------ jsksma2 > "But it adds some checks and GC, so Swift also exhibits a serious slowdown, > though well within 2x of C++." Swift does not employ GC, it uses ARC. While that may be a form of GC, it doesn't suffer from the same "slowdown" that GC would in this context because ARC is doing exactly what your base case (C++) does at run-time (ARC is a compile-time tool). I think if you're going to be doing benchmarks, you should have basic knowledge on how each system works first. ------ chvid I really think this is mostly just testing how well the list/vector/array class is handling being asked to expand itself by one element a million times. ------ rurban If you want to compare fast languages, you need to compare C++ with rust and pony, not swift and go. ~~~ pjmlp And include multiple implementations of each one, as that is what really counts. ------ jbeja What's the point, seriously? ------ autoreleasepool FYI, unary operators and C-style for loops have been depreciated in Swift. ------ oussama-gmd Where is Rust :) ~~~ jbeja In academia. ~~~ bluejekyll This is totally unfair. We're looking at using Rust for production workloads and cross system development. ------ zeckalpha And Haskell, in the comments. ------ marvel_boy I'd love to see Erlang here. Anyway Swift performance is impressive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Henry Heinz used ketchup to improve food safety - rfreytag https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/02/how-henry-heinz-used-ketchup-to-improve-food-safety/ ====== jacquesm There are a number of possible origins for the name, not just the Chinese one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Etymology) This article is a nice study in regulatory capture. ------ neonate [http://archive.md/51kkA](http://archive.md/51kkA) ------ mmmBacon We think we invented startups and startup mentality but you can read about how someone like Heinz hustled and did things others didn’t; preservative free ketchup, clear pickled goods. Sounds trivial to us today but in context these ideas were pretty revolutionary. ------ dr_dshiv Good example of how good regulation is good for capitalism. ~~~ duelingjello “Protections” is a more concrete word indicating benefit rather than derisive “regulations,” which implies costs, burdens and barriers without a clear benefit. Paraphrasing an idiom from potentially-dangerous industries: _Safety protection rules and laws are almost always written in blood._ ~~~ evgen No, that is only the case if you start from a particular viewpoint that is popular among right-wing Americans and almost no one else. From the perspective of first-world countries regulations are rules that we apply to processes where the dangers and externalities are diffuse enough that one or more parties may seek to ignore them for short-term gain; protection is the consequent of regulation, they are not simply synonyms. ------ arkades Even with the Web link, all I get is a “subscriber exclusive” splash page. ------ hayksaakian Is this a "submarine piece"? It reads less like a documentary and more like a biography [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html) ~~~ graeme I don't think so. The article _openly_ says it's adapted from the book. It's just marketing. Submarines were hidden. This was in the article: "ESSAY DRAWN FROM THE POISON SQUAD BY DEBORAH BLUM, PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN PRESS, AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN PUBLISHING GROUP, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, LLC. COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY DEBORAH BLUM." ------ kresten I find it disturbing how long ketchup lasts. It’s not natural. ~~~ imglorp It kind of is natural: tomatoes, vinegar, and salt all have anti-microbial properties. The rest of the ingredients are sugars and flavors. No preservatives needed, in this product at least (Heinz). [https://edrugsearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/heinz- ket...](https://edrugsearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/heinz-ketchup- ingredient-label.png) ~~~ NikolaeVarius sugar also has anti-microbial properties ~~~ Scoundreller At high enough concentrations. But that's true of anything. Having a lot of salt or sugar (or any small molecule really) in something makes it impossible for cells to retain enough water to function. Which is why your sauce/jam doesn't go bad (except at the top, where a layer of condensed water doesn't have the high concentration of sugar or salt).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Merkle Patricia Tree - jc123 https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-Patricia-Tree ====== shin_lao This should mention that the purpose of a Merkle Patricia Tree is to permit safe and fast comparison of large blocks of data. A Merkle Patricia Tree isn't faster than a regular Patricia tree because of the added hashing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why aren't there different articles for hacker and cracker in Wikipedia? - adamcanady It just seems like that distinction is made a lot here, yet they're homogeneous on Wikipedia. ====== 27182818284 The majority of the population doesn't care and Wikipedia tends to reflect the popular views. Pro-life used to mean pro-health care, free student lunch, etc, but converted over time to be largely (exclusively?) about abortions in the public conversation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Division of labor is the meaning of life - hhs https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/capitalism-division-labor-economy-life-society/ ====== ddingus Oh hell no. Division of labor can be reframed as people working together toward a common goal: That is to experience, love, live, laugh, play, build, understand, and have all that endure. We all find our niche, we all work in roughly the same ways, and most importantly, we all share basic ignorance. Understanding, shared over time helps. And understanding is hard to secure, but once we have it, sharing it is a huge resource. The list of things we actually know is damn small too. The unknowns are profound. Some fill them with religion. Some just deal, and I am one of those. Want answers, but operate without them well enough. There is no referee we can work with. There is no one else, just us. We may learn differently, and perhaps soon too. Who knows? Honestly, it is flat out amazing that we are here, and with the animals too. Despite that, this same ignorance drives people in bent, painful ways. We shit where we eat. We kill one another, and use a considerable amount of our understanding to do it too. We reproduce like weeds. And only some of us seek to understand US, our nature. Many do not, or are more concerned with legacies, Marks on the world, winning whatever game we play. We are not here very long either. And, our current understanding does little to suggest otherwise. One time through. The only time. As I continue my journey, I find experiences, the joy of conversation and just how little, if anything we can know of one another, not to mention this awesome world we live in. So damn suggestive. Any one of us gets just a taste of what "real" is. I know I am not spending my time here as my nature would have me do. And I know that is due to small numbers of us who do not have their priorities in order, nor perspective inclusive enough for that to happen. And we are all young for a time to help others, build that which keeps risk at bay, to reproduce, to help others who are old, broken, fallen, as will happen to nearly all of us, should we not be snuffed out early. I have no hard answers to purpose of life. None of us do. But I can say it does not all boil down to money, labor. Labor and resources matter, and we must do and use them to endure. But there is much more, each of us a story, each of us connected to others, young and old, near and now far. While some of us want bigger better things, and that is good, part of our nature, we often forget what we need and where we live as if the human cost associated with those failures is somehow OK. It is absolutely not. None of us are fundementally better than the others are. Not in the basic sense of being. We may arrive here with gifts, and we may not. And that changes nothing about being, and what that means. Those gifts can empower us, entertain, bring understanding and all manner of bounty. Even the least of us matters. Just beings here, alone, ignorant in so many ways. Clumsy too. Every one of us is alive, present, deserving to be, do, play, laugh, love, be loved, to matter. Perhaps more time spent getting to understand ourselves, others would see better priorities than what we struggle with now. It is a very slow process. Slow enough, almost slow enough to forget it is even there. But it is, and to deny it is to deny ourselves, feign knowing, a folly that has costs difficult to describe, costs that accrue each day, costs that do not appear on a balance sheet. ------ soniman "Capitalism is boring,” said the founding father of National Review, William F. Buckley. “Devoting your life to it,” as conservatives do, “is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.”	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
European Commission: have your say on geo-blocking and online platforms - open-source-ux http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5704_en.htm ====== vjoshi In a sentence ... price discrimination over the world wide web defeats the purpose of the world wide web ...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HTML5 Fractal Pong - hammock http://rkive.org/stuff/frong/ ====== afhof I was surprised to see that IE9 had better performance than either FF 10 or Chrome 18. Anyone else seeing this?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Computer Programming (First Time Programming) - cjc18 Hi Computer Software Developers<p>I have been getting into programming for the past few months however school has got in the way. I was wondering if anyone has any links or pdf files that I could use to help me with computer programming. It helps me if the words are color coordinated.Which language would be the best to learn if I am going to college and wanting to be a Software developer?<p>IN COLOR PLEASE!!!!!!<p>Thanks! ====== devmonk Scribd has a number of books (not downloadable, but just as useful). If you're visual, check out the "Head First" titles. [http://www.scribd.com/search?cat=redesign&q=programming+...](http://www.scribd.com/search?cat=redesign&q=programming+OR+%22head+first%22&x=0&y=0) Or use google. [http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Apdf+inurl%3Aprogrammi...](http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Apdf+inurl%3Aprogramming#q=ext:pdf+$inurl:programming+OR+inurl:java+OR+inurl:c%2B%2B+OR+inurl:php+OR+inurl:python+OR+inurl:ruby+OR+inurl:perl$+AND+$inurl:learn$) And there are torrents, etc. Or, just buy it from Amazon, BookPool (well that _used_ to be a better deal years ago), etc. (Don't do anything illegal. Pay for what you read, otherwise good authors won't write anymore.) ~~~ cjc18 I totally agree with you, I always pay what the authors want for the books that they write. I am a visual learner so thanks! ------ cjc18 Which language would be the best to learn if I am going to college and wanting to be a Software Developer? ~~~ flatline Honestly, it doesn't matter. Pick something and stick with it for a little while when you first get started. Everything you learn will transfer to other languages in some way. In college you will generally have to use a number of languages. My recommendation would be Python: <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
R Markdown – Dynamic documents, presentations and reports for R - michaelsbradley http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ ====== minimaxir R Markdown is very powerful. That being said, I still find myself using Jupyter notebooks instead due to first-class language kernel support of non-R languages (which was not the case at Rmarkdown's launch, when Jupyter was still IPython), and GitHub integration for rendering notebooks. The dynamic aspect of Rmarkdown is done through HTMLWidgets, which also works with Jupyter notebooks too. (But not via the GitHub integration mentioned earlier.) ~~~ nicolewhite I've almost fully switched from Jupyter to RMarkdown after discovering RMarkdown supports Python. And about publishing / rendering, do you not like RPubs? ~~~ geomark As well as a number of other rather useful languages [1]. Now days I use RMarkdown even for experiments because it's nice to document my line of thinking as I write the code and get a nicely formatted output when I'm finished. [1] [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/engines/](http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/engines/) ------ mistercow This sounds a lot like how literature coffeescript works.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
9 Ways to make your Business Website more Lead - Friendly - earlbarter https://news.ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html ====== meltbuzz They say that for some, the fastest way to make it in the music industry is to sleep your way to the [http://www.meltbuzz.com/2014/09/porn-hub-to-launch- music-rec...](http://www.meltbuzz.com/2014/09/porn-hub-to-launch-music- recording.html) ------ bigbenbusiness In a world where everyone is busy, even something as serious as a job interview can easily become a wasted endeavor. Phone interviews are often considered as nothing more than a simple piece of the screening process and every Onsite interview more or less reflecting a marathon endeavor, its a wonder we ever take the plunge to apply in the first place! Often the interview process is just as painful for the person on the other end or sitting across the table from you. There are just so many things that are frustrating about the interview process! Enter EzInterview, an application that provides the ultimate in interview flexibility. Create an interview at anytime and connect from any computer using Chrome or Firefox! When in the interview one can join with video & audio chat, interactively walk through a problem using the WhiteBoard or write out or code a problem using the new interactive text editor! Through the use of the latest in technologies such as WebRTC, Socket.IO, Django, and Node.js we believe we can find that sweet spot of the flexibility of a phone interview combined with the seriousness of an Onsite one	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Youtube is down. 500 Internal server error - alsmirn 500 Internal Server Error<p>Sorry, something went wrong.<p>A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.<p>If you see them, show them this information: Y3wfubpVZkG5DhE8BQWQ_FJeIFFmu-WxzMlFaNAwTNReOI3luroQ-NEHgnBi 7jXX7U8-Sme7GJL8cBo7E7dwvAu5blxCuIjPqLuVWCv0YNRzuJgYj8U0vpNT ====== zegmas Seems like it's fixed now ------ doubt_me It was down for a solid 10 minutes a week or so ago. ------ yiedyie Had this too ------ sixQuarks it's down again right now ------ fogonthedowns who cares	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bash Initialisation Files - ColinWright http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/BashInitialisationFiles.html?HN0811 ====== ColinWright Prompted to submit this because of this item: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4369485> ------ hythloday This is a great start but I'd love to know e.g. exactly what qualifies as a login shell and what calls the shell with these various arguments. ~~~ mikelward Any shell started with a minus as the first character of argv[0] is a login shell e.g. "-bash" is a login shell. Many things start your shell this way: * the "login" command e.g. logging on an a virtual console * "su -" * "sshd" e.g. ssh <hostname> * xterms, depending on the settings e.g. the original xterm if you run "xterm -ls" or you run "xterm" with "xtermloginShell: true" in your ".Xdefaults" or ".Xresources" some X initialization scripts, e.g. when logging in to a "Default" session via gdm or kdm (how exactly this works depends on your distribution some explicitly source .profile instead) With "bash" you can also manually create a login shell using "bash -l" or "bash --login". ~~~ ralph Also sudo. $ sudo -i # tr \\0 \\n </proc/$$/cmdline -bash # ------ gosub It would be very cool if there was a similar graph for the entire boot process: from grub to init to rc.d/systemd to login to bash. ~~~ planckscnst You can use systemctl dot It shows the dependency graph of your unit files. ~~~ keeperofdakeys It should be noted this is for systems that use Systemd, which as far as I'm aware of, is only Fedora at this stage. ~~~ mrud OpenSuse also ships with systemd per default. Other distributions like Arch or Debian support systemd as well. <http://www.bootchart.org/> is also quite interesting to understand the boot process better and profile it. ~~~ keeperofdakeys Ah, I had a suspicion OpenSuse would, as it follows Fedora quite closely. Bootchart is also quite interesting. ------ rbanffy I'm with Henry Spencer on this. "Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." ------ sciurus If you want to understand this more, read "Bash Startup Files" and "Interactive Shells" from the Bash Reference Manual. [http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Bash- St...](http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Bash-Startup- Files) [http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Interac...](http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Interactive- Shells) ------ Kenan So where does Git Bash for Windows fall into here?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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