Time to fork the FSF - pjhyett
http://larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/time-to-fork-the-fsf/
======
sgentle
I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I
think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know
what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and
publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a
traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the
usefulness of the last 30 years of proprietary tech to make a point has to be
a bit barmy. But who else will make that point? All progress depends on
unreasonable men.

And I agree that it would be helpful to have a moderate voice in Free
Software. I use a Mac - sorry, it's really nice to use and I code a lot. I
like my Kindle - sorry, it's better than the others and I read a lot. I live
and work with proprietary software, but I believe in Free Software too. WebKit
is popular because of Apple and Google. OS X is the most popular BSD, and the
most popular consumer Unix. Non-free and free can and have worked together to
mutual benefit. Is there anyone out there who can help me walk that line? If
Larry is proposing to make that organisation, I would welcome it with open
arms.

But what of this Jobs nonsense? Are we so timid and flammable that we can't
handle a complex opinion that we don't agree with? Can you not accept that
Jobs was a great leader who didn't deserve to die, but that he left a scary,
proprietary footprint all over the mobile and tablet space? "I'm not glad he's
dead, but I'm glad he's gone." is an opinion I don't agree with, but I don't
think it's ludicrous, tactless and heartless.

Not everyone has to respect the things I respect, and feelings don't suddenly
trump debate because of death. Jobs is one of the hacker community's sacred
cows, and we wouldn't accept this level of sanctification on any other topic.
I'm sure when Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama dies, there will be posts saying
"let's not forget that Windows Vista was awful and religion is the other
opiate of Tibet" Will they cause the same outcry?

~~~
jpadvo
The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a
horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration
into humane language of what he said:

"My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart
also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and
inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we
forget the damage that Jobs' work had on the Free Software movement.

His pioneered the software walled garden, which destroys freedom and choice.
And he targeted it at people who would not understand what they were
sacrificing by giving up their freedoms.

We can only hope that his successors make Apple a more free company, or
failing that, are not as effective at spreading it as he was."

Wasn't that better? And it communicated substantively the same thing, but
without all the name calling and the seeming glee over the death of another
human.

Disclaimer: I typed this on my Macbook Air.

Edit: One more thing to add. Saying "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's
gone" is tripe. Being gone is a euphemism for being dead. The reason we mourn
when a loved one dies is _precisely because_ that means they are gone.

Maybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head.
But I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between
the death _and the loss_ of the person they mourn.

~~~
forensic
>horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way.

And?

It's rms. He's the biggest nerd in the world. Nerds are expected to be
horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's
emotions.

This is like being mad that the sky is blue. Pointless outrage.

~~~
DanBC
It's not outrage at Stallman's comments, but asking whether someone who is
horrendously, gratuitously crass, offensive and insensitive of people's
emotions should be "cheerleading" free software.

See also RMS's disappointment at the developer busy with a new child - start
here (<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/36137>)

His inability to understand people is distracting from the aims of FSF.

~~~
alain94040
Indeed:

>It doesn't take special talents to reproduce--even plants can do it. On the
other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill.

~~~
DanBC
That wasn't the first time RMS had said something like that, but to say it to
a fellow dev, when you're asking that person to fix someone else's bug, seems
particularly unaware.

For sure, Asperger's or Autism explains it, but doesn't make it much easier to
deal with.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
It's black humour.

------
bcrescimanno
I tweeted earlier that I see RMS as the Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church)
of Free Software. He may not have started out this way; but these days he's
completely single issue. If you're not doing free software 100% his way; you
not only disagree with him but you are actually evil. Not just free software;
but free software as RMS defines it(see GNU/Linux) or you're wrong. He's so
blinded by his own zealotry that I'd argue that beyond the inner, hard-core
"free software circle, he's seen as much of an embarrassment to the notion of
free software as Phelps and Westboro are likely seen by other Christians.

I've felt this way a long time about RMS; his comment about Steve Jobs's death
was uncalled for--but it really was well-within character. Just like Phelps
and Westboro are expected to show up at soldier's funerals to protest, we've
come to expect this type of shit from RMS--and I agree with the OP that it's
time to stop just accepting it.

[Edit] I want to state that RMS, like everyone, is fully entitled to his
opinion and that opinion carries no more or less weight than my own. Moreover,
you're completely entitled to agree with him. What I do have a problem with is
what the OP described: he doesn't belong at the head of a major organization,
nor does he belong at the apex of the free software movement. Beyond my
earlier described "inner circle," in the past several years, he's done more to
tarnish the image of the free software community than to help it.

~~~
learc83
While I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he
says.

I don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that
he tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes
it or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than
just the condemnation of homosexuality.

I've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a closet extreme
atheist out to discredit theists.

~~~
kristopolous
Some think he's just a novel con-artist:

1\. [http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-
files/gro...](http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-
files/groups/westboro-baptist-church)

2\. <http://kanewj.com/wbc/>

Looks like it equates to fairly decent take-home pay given that he probably
works far less than the 2080 full time hours a year for it.

And remember, it's a church, so it's all tax free.

~~~
cookiecaper
I would say that a very significant contingent of Protestant church men are in
it for the money. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that they're all
sincere -- cons often come with a generous helping of scriptural glaze.

~~~
wanorris
Unless you're working a seriously crazy angle like Phelps, there's generally
more money to be made outside the church than within it. I think most people
who have devoted their lives to a church are either sincere, or they started
out sincere and started working an angle after becoming disillusioned.

------
cookiecaper
OS X would not be possible without RMS.

You have to remember that Stallman was around before Jobs' day -- he was
performing real work at MIT when Apple was initially conceptualized. Stallman
therefore is apparently less vulnerable to the reality distortion field and
does not unduly offer oblations to a guy who was obsessed with shininess at
the expense of hacker culture. Jobs went to lengths on many products to
prevent tinkering in an age when computing was still very open and very
academic, because Jobs didn't want any little peons messing up his perfect
devices. Hence Stallman's quip that Jobs made computers as a jail cool.

If you think about this statement from Stallman's perspective it really makes
a lot of sense, and I think it is ridiculous that the Steve Jobs hero worship
pervades so deeply as to not recognize that Jobs _was_ a control freak even
after Apple products were sold and in the possession of customers, and that
some people, particular contemporaries of Stallman's stripe, may not have been
fond of that. I doubt that the release of the iPhone really did much to
persuade that set of people.

~~~
drivingmenuts
This isn't about OS X. This is about Stallman being effective as the leader of
the FSF, which apparently he feels entitles him to say any damn thing he
wants, regardless of how tasteless it is. That's not the mark of a leader.

That's the mark of a self-inflated ass.

~~~
cookiecaper
I didn't find it tasteless. Is it really such a criminal thing to say that you
are glad Jobs's influence is gone? Can't reasonable people disagree on that
point?

People totally go overboard wrt Steve Jobs, as they do his company, Apple. RMS
comes from a time when computers were generally open for tinkering, and Apple
strove to make its products impenetrable lest Jobs' pain-stakingly "perfected"
designs be gaudied up by consumers. From the original Mac which didn't have
expansion slots to today's iDevices that don't allow the consumer to do so
much as change the battery, Apple has a long history of tight lock down.

Do you not see how an old-school hacker could be disgruntled by that
philosophy? The beliefs and experience of that group runs deep enough that
they are not hoodwinked into deifying Steve Jobs because the iMac is the
sleekest desktop computer around.

~~~
akg0
I don't think it was anywhere near offensive, but once people start loudly
complaining about how offended they are, the conversation inevitably focuses
on their feelings instead of our freedoms.

In the end, they _will_ win. Either RMS will tone down to focus on the "real"
stuff, or he won't, and his influence will wane in favor of more widely-
acceptable voices. In this as in many other parts of life, watered-down
moderates will be the only ones able to maintain relevance, and uncompromising
advocates will be marginalized.

It's just how humans are.

~~~
Rusky
So Steve Jobs was a watered-down moderate?

~~~
akg0
No - my point is that RMS isn't.

~~~
Rusky
I should have been clearer. If it's inevitable that the influence of someone
like RMS will wane because he's an uncompromising advocate, doesn't that
suggest that Steve Jobs' influence would have waned as well?

My point is that someone's relevance depends on much more than if a majority
of people find their views acceptable. Steve Jobs oversaw products that people
loved by uncompromisingly advocating improvements on the status quo in design,
while RMS uncompromisingly advocates something that, for many people in the
world's present state, is impractical.

------
brendoncrawford
Go ahead... fork it. Then what happens?

Will you travel the world tirelessly promoting free software, speaking at
universities and other events for very little money?

Will you maintain a job board, mailing list, hardware database, software
directory, year after year?

Will you find lawyers to donate hundreds of hours to write and revise
licenses?

Will you hire lobbyists to fight software patents?

Will you tirelessly fight the RIAA, day after day?

When you've done all these things, sign me up.

~~~
alecco
And never mind code. This basher is a complete nobody who seems to profit from
open source more than contribute. It's not like the heads of several major FSF
projects are banding a revolt.

The sinister anti-Stallman/GNU sentiment on HN is reaching incredibly high
levels. Luckily it's mostly nobodies like this big mouth bozo.

~~~
potatolicious
While you do have a point, I disagree strongly with the way you've expressed
it. There is no need for name-calling and personal attacks on this board.

Calling someone a "nobody" and a "big mouth bozo" is uncalled for.

~~~
alecco
He is extremely agressive and out of place, calling for a split on a major
organization he didn't help in any meaningful way and feeding the hate
[sentiments of a particular faction of _users_ ] against it. Also,

      > I’m really tired of having to make excuses for Stallman
      > when he goes off half-cocked like this, which is why I’m
      > no longer a FSF member.

~~~
uxp
> He is extremely agressive and out of place, calling for a split on a major
> organization he didn't help in any meaningful way

He was a member, and while his member number (5030) isn't low enough to argue
that he helped found the movement, he did explain that he has advocated on
behalf of the FSF for quite some time. I too think his post was a step too far
in the wrong direction, but saying that regular supporters of the FSF, long
time contributors and everyday members don't "help in any meaningful way" to
the FSF is a tad bit disingenuous.

------
keyist
RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to
gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes
page. He did nothing to publicize it.

He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was
posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed,
but it got no special treatment).

If some major sites hadn't picked up on it and provided the publicity, most
readers would never know. So RMS wrote a politically incorrect opinion on his
personal page. Can we move on now?

~~~
ugh
Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.

~~~
vacri
What an excellent way to make your point: with an ad hominem attack!

~~~
ugh
I think I’m justified in saying that someone is clueless about communication
if that person honestly believes that a statement by a very public
spokesperson in any public place – no matter how obscure – will or should
remain obscure.

That’s not how communication works. Sorry.

I thought that was sort of implied by my comment, no need to explicitly say
it, because it’s so damn obvious. But I’m sorry if you though that my comment
was nothing but an attack.

~~~
vacri
I understood what you meant, I just found it ironic in the extreme that you
chose to complain about poor communication by genuinely using poor
communication, especially given the context of the thread.

You've been commenting that Stallman should have deported himself better, and
yet you break out with a comment like that yourself.

~~~
ugh
My argument doesn’t require me to lead by example. I’m some random commenter.

And since you understood me perfectly well there doesn’t seem to be a problem
in this specific case.

~~~
vacri
Understanding you perfectly well isn't the issue at point, it's the manner of
how you present yourself - witness all the crap in this thread about RMS from
those people who now accept that he didn't wish Jobs dead, but still say he
should have been more polite about it. You don't have much of a credible leg
to stand on if you don't engage in that which you request of others.

Edit: changed 'moral' to 'credible' to avoid semantic bickering about the
loaded word.

~~~
ugh
Morals? I think I have been talking squarely about effective communication,
not morals.

------
BigCanOfTuna
Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess
to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software
available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit
why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

~~~
leot
Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more
hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more
positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD.

(I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands --
but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is
responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS _isn't_ responsible for
Android.)

~~~
marshray
_Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did._

You do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for
most of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS
personally wrote.

The GPL license that, again, RMS personally wrote covers the kernel of the
Android system. "Great software" that's in "more hands" than Jobs' devices.

Jobs was a slick businessman like Gates. RMS wrote fucking GCC.

Guess who's contribution I value more.

~~~
leot
That RMS wrote the GPL, or extended LLNL's Pastel compiler into GCC, does not
endow him with responsibility for the success of all free software. Do you
_really_ think, given the influence of academia, that there would be no FOSS-
equivalent compiler available but for RMS's efforts?

Jobs _is_ responsible for Apple's success. For repeatedly creating devices
that have disrupted industries. RMS deserves credit for his contributions, but
it is not all-thanks-to-him that we have FOSS.

Yes Apple's software has been closed. But has this been at the expense of
FOSS, as RMS claims?

Has Apple actively tried to subvert the GPL by lobbying governments to avoid
FOSS? Has Jobs publicly whined about the GPL? Has he engaged in OOXML-esque
bad-faith efforts to keep data formats proprietary?

~~~
alecco
Keep moving the point of the conversation to fit your anti-Stallman flaming.

~~~
leot
The point was that RMS is wrong when he asserts[1] that Apple and Jobs have
hurt the development of free software.

[1] RMS: " _we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's
computing_ "

~~~
marshray
My understanding is that Apple restricts the applications that it "allows" to
run on users' iOS devices to the point that programming language interpreters
were effectively banned until about a year ago, now they're merely severely
restricted. Users of iOS devices are effectively prevented from running GPL
apps because of the restrictions Apple is putting on other peoples' code on
users' devices.

It's not just against the development of Stallman's brand of Free Software.

It's an attack on _all_ software developers.

~~~
rimantas

      > It's an attack on all software developers.

I am a software developer and I don't think I am under any attack. Heck they
gave me one more platform to develop for. And there is lots of open source
code written for it already.

~~~
burgerbrain
Stockholm syndrome.

------
zalew
so... it's perfectly ok to publish tons of linkbaits about 'how steve jobs
changed my life' even if they are vague and repetitive boring opinions, but
nobody can state his negative views on this occasion. gimme a break. death is
sad, but it's good that there are people who had decided to stay out of this
bubble.

~~~
andrewljohnson
Here, I'll let someone with much more eloquence than me explain to you why
Stallman's diatribe is poorly wrought.

 _If Stallman had to make a statement emphasizing his dislike of Jobs'
influence, he could still have done so respectfully. Consider this; "I didn't
share Steve Jobs' vision of computing, and I wish he'd chosen to embrace free
software. I'm very sorry that he's gone and we've lost the opportunity to have
that conversation. My sympathies are with his family at this time." There's no
need to pretend that Stallman liked Jobs, but his post is contemptible._

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-
found...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-fsf-founder-
richard-stallm.php)

~~~
_delirium
It _was_ posted on his personal "politics" mini-blog, which consists of
basically _nothing but_ 2-3-line annoyed and not very nuanced statements on
various topics. People who read it expect what they get there, and most people
don't read it. Here's an example the quality of political cartoons you can
also expect...: <http://stallman.org/images/cartoon-6.jpg>

As can be seen from the Update to that linked article, I think a big part of
the problem is that these Web 2.0 "journalists" don't read, so in a game of
telephone it's been turned into "FSF head Richard Stallman issues press
release saying Jobs sux". If we're going to do that, you could manufacture
about 300 scandals from his blog; "FSF head Richard Stallman equates U.S.
President to Saddam Hussein!", etc.

Maybe it's still contemptible as it stands, but I think people are either
missing or deliberately ignoring the context when evaluating it. I take his
"politics" ticker as closer to an IRC chat than a place for carefully thought
out statements (that's what his Essays are for). I _like_ that in geek culture
we don't have this weird demand for people to be 24/7 ensconced in a
professional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or politician, but allow people
like RMS, ESR, and Theo de Raadt to have crazy personal opinions. (Heck, Jobs
had some pretty offensive and harmful opinions about science and alternative
medicine, and we allowed that.)

Honestly I'm more offended by this level of shameless profiteering with Steve-
Jobs-death linkbait. Huffington Post, for example, shat out _188 separate_
Steve-Jobs-death posts within 24 hours:
[http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-...](http://exploreto.tumblr.com/post/11114571981/huffingtonpost-
com-188-articles-on-steve-jobs-death)

~~~
sabat
Stallman has made himself a public figure, and is a spokesman. Even on a
"personal" blog, he has a responsibility to be tactful and not to make angry,
hurtful, and unnecessary comments.

~~~
_delirium
I guess that's an idea I fundamentally disagree with, and even find a bit
offensive. As I said above:

 _I like that in geek culture we don't have this weird demand for people to be
24/7 ensconced in a professional PR-oriented persona, like a CEO or
politician..._

If people are pulling things out of a personal blog and broadcasting it across
the web in sensational terms, I blame the yellow journalists more than him. I
might still disagree with him, but I don't blame him out of context of his
blog, as some kind of always-on spokesperson.

Plus, it's not like he hasn't telegraphed, _for almost 30 years_ , that he
doesn't plan to be that kind of PR-oriented spokesperson, so one can hardly be
shocked about it in 2011.

------
loup-vaillant
This is a common pattern: (i) someone famous dies, (ii) someone else says
something bad about that celebrity, (iii) everyone else is scandalized. Thou
shalt not bash the dead.

Now, I don't think Stallman's lines were _gratuitously_ offensive. He was
merely clear and concise. He spent no word on niceness, but he spent no word
on rudeness either. And by the way, he is factually correct: Jobs _was_ "the
pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed [among other things] to
sever fools from their freedom" (or, if not _the_ pioneer, at least the most
effective apologist).

Now should he have just shut up? Probably not. Every one now is praising Jobs,
and that may trigger even more sales for the iPhone and the iPad. Praise Jobs,
and soon you will praise Apple's most locked down products. At least a word of
caution is needed.

Now I do understand that Stallman knows next to nothing about how not to
trigger bad feelings. I do understand that he should work on that. But please,
don't be offended by something that most probably wasn't intended to be
offensive.

------
24bit
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The
round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the
people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones
who do!

~~~
sabat
Note that this does not begin, "Here's the the assholes, the heartless, the
tactless, the people who think they are above the rest of humankind, who
always know better than everyone else, who must teach us how to think."

RMS has done some admirable things, but he's in dire need of some mental help.
Seriously.

------
fletcher
What Stallman said is just, analytically speaking:

1) I don't like when people die.

2) But this happened to Steve Jobs, unfortunately.

3) However from my point of view he was doing so much damage to the world of
software that this is a good thing. Not the fact he died but the fact that we
no longer have his influence.

Note: I don't agree. But I don't think it should be a problem to say the
above.

It is like if you are the leader of a movement against the practice of killing
whales, and there is one guy that kills 100,000 whales every year. If he dies
you can legitimately say: "I'm sorry he died, but this is a good thing for
whales".

He used the wrong words, the wrong time, and so forth, but the concept is
nothing of extraordinary from his point of view. It is important to have the
freedom of saying what we want.

~~~
gurkendoktor
Nobody wants to take this freedom away, but it hurts the cause he is supposed
to advance, and that's what the posting is saying.

I can't see how mentioning human life and software licensing in the same
sentence is ever a good idea if there is a chance that interested non-nerds
are reading up on your ideals.

------
tommorris
Wait, isn't there a whole stack of organisations that support FLOSS or the
same sort of values as openness that the FSF support other than the FSF
already?

Off the top of my head: Apache Software Foundation, OSI, GNOME Foundation,
Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Python Software Foundation, Open
Knowledge Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, Software in the Public
Interest, Wikimedia Foundation.

If you feel like you want to throw money, power or sexual favours to the open
source community, there are plenty of ways to do it that don't involve RMS or
the FSF. Or you could just find some free/open source script or app or library
you use and like and chuck the creator $20 and a nice email saying "I really
like your code, go buy yourself a pizza and a beer on me".

------
tzury
I fully understand this Larry, and think FSF would have been doing much better
if there was someone else at its cockpit.

RMS is a fanatic about free software, like ultra religious people are to their
religion.

For instance, for me, being free, means, at first and above all, being free to
choose. Being able to install _proprietary nVidia driver_ which does not crash
my linux box every half a day, and have this driver built and available for me
in my linux distro repository.

Years ago, RMS was a guest of honor in IBM Tel Aviv. These were the days,
Linux was something left-field, obscure, that no one wanted to know or hear
about it. There were hundreds of developers in the hall who came to hear about
the "Gnu/Linux thing" from the Freedom Guru.

All of a sudden, in the middle of his lecture, out of any imaginable context,
RMS took of his left shoe, and then the sack, and start rubbing his toes with
his fingers while preaching about free software.

Yes, imagine that, a man is playing with his barefoot on a stage, would you
remember anything he said? Would you listen to anything he has to say? Or
would your brain being busy understanding and categorizing the extraordinary
show you are in?

(Those were not the days of youtube and smartphone, I bet if that would have
been happening these days, this was the most viewed video on youtube amongst
hackers.)

It is sad, but successful open source project does not seemed to get along
with RMS at all, see Ubuntu/Canonical as a good example.

------
chanon
I agree with this comment by "tom robinson" in the blog post:

 _To those saying you agree with what RMS wrote: that’s fine, but irrelevant.
As a spokesman for FSF he shouldn’t be pandering to his already devout
followers, he should be trying to convince others that the ideals of the FSF
are worth pursuing, and he’s been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job of that
lately.

Silly campaigns of immature puns, lashing out at people who don’t say
“GNU/Linux”, insulting a recently deceased man who much of the world admires,
and making otherwise inappropriate remarks on a regular basis is an excellent
way to alienate the people you’re trying to win over.

How have these tactics been working out for FSF? I don’t have stats, but
anecdotally most new open source projects I come across have rejected the GPL
licenses for BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.

Now imagine what FSF could accomplish if they had a spokesman with the skills
of Steve Jobs_

------
skrebbel
I'm sorry, but - what a nutcase. Silently accepts Stallman's years of nasty
comments, cynical attitudes, world-wide conspiracy theories and downright
condescension all through. Then Stallman says something unfriendly about
god^H^H^H Jobs, and he resigns. Oh, come on.

------
mrb
I think RMS's statement is completely misinterpreted. Don't forget the first
part of the sentence: "I'm not glad he's dead", which literally means RMS is
_not_ glad that Jobs died!

"I'm glad he's gone" is only a complaint towards Jobs' influence on personal
computing. You may disagree with RMS (I certainly do), and it is certainly an
inappropriate comment to make at this time, but this is nothing to make a
drama of RMS' comment... Geez people!

------
gfodor
All you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about
RMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing,
at best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think
deeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.

~~~
cookiecaper
I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.

~~~
jwhite
I upvoted you to encourage you to tell us why you downvoted it.

~~~
cookiecaper
I downvoted it because it's incredibly presumptive. OP posits that "at worst,
[Jobs] would have said nothing..." apparently on nothing but his assumption
that Steve Jobs would never do a controversial thing, or a thing that the OP
thought was tasteless.

Unless OP is a close friend of Steve Jobs and knew him well on a personal
level, this is completely baseless speculation based on OP's general good
feelings for Apple and the assumption that because Apple products make him
feel good, Steve Jobs would never say something rude after a colleague died.

None of these people know Jobs and yet they assume he's some super great dude.
Making such assumptions about the CEO's personal character based on your
affinity for the products of that CEO's company is very juvenile, yet it's
irritatingly common.

~~~
gfodor
Its not hard to imagine that Jobs would react much the way most of his own
rivals have reacted, the way normal decent human beings do, with class and
respect. My post was less about guessing something about Steve Jobs's
character and more about letting readers reflect upon just how abnormal and
deranged RMS's comments are compared to any others.

------
Fice
As I said already, today's hacker culture is crippled. So called "hackers"
here have lost their principles, forgotten the value of freedom, worship the
wrong idols. How come an entrepreneur be a hero much more important than any
of the researchers who pioneered the modern computer technology? How can the
man who worked against the values and principles of the hacker ethic be an
idol for so many hackers? There is no real hacker community here on HN, only a
flock of spineless ship.

~~~
burgerbrain
The title "Hacker News" is a lure designed to draw more people in. It would be
best if this place went back to it's old and far more honest name "Startup
News".

------
RexRollman
After reading this, all I can say is that some people are too sensitive.

~~~
daedhel
Or are opportunistic assholes who capitalize on any occasion.

------
josephg
I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely
honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation _do_ ?

Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful
_without_ opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both
as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before
opensource software is good, but consistently opensource implementations
eventually outpace their proprietary counterparts. We saw this trend first
with UNIX -> Linux. Today, just reading this webpage I'm using Chrome
(Chromium + WebKit) which communicates via POSIX to the BSD network stack in
my kernel (Darwin). The browser has been compiled with either GCC or LLVM.
Hackernews is probably hosted on nginx / apache behind varnish or something,
running on linux.

In short, I feel like the opensource movement has already won. Aside from
RMS's crusade against software patents, how is the FSF still relevant?

~~~
tlrobinson
They've won that battle, but not the war. Servers, databases, frameworks,
languages, etc are often open source, but the majority of applications are
not.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
That's the problem, you're the problem if you refuse to accept that the best
solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed
software as well as use open software. The idea that this is a war is exactly
why RMS is wrong. The idea that we must win it and we must make everyone use
the new hot open license is wrong.

The idea should be to encourage people to use open licenses, and to promote
the good of open licenses, not declare war on everything and become some
bitter asshole neckbeard when you see guys like Jobs doing well with a
slightly different approach.

The FSF doesn't do much. They're little more than negative campaigners
"Windows 7 Sins" etc. I'm not sure what its purpose or real world effect is
other than to scare middle management from FOSS as much as possible. Stick vs
Carrot. FSF is all stick and people have noticed.

~~~
kragen
> the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial
> closed software as well as use open software.

The "freedom" you're describing involves government-granted monopolies
enforced by pervasive surveillance, unannounced office raids to audit
licenses, serial numbers to ensure trackability of all CD-R media, and
prosecution of people for disabling malicious software running on their own
computers. Certainly it's a kind of freedom; but can't we do better?

Stallman had a slightly different viewpoint about that "freedom":

The "freedom to choose a license" which denies others essential freedoms is
not really a freedom. It is a form of power, of domination over others. Your
description makes it sound like a matter of individual freedom by obscuring
the presence of the others in the situation.

The GPL is designed to protect the essential freedoms for everyone, by denying
anyone the power to take them away.

(He wrote that in 1999, but I imagine he still feels the same way.)

------
motters
Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree
with his concern overall. Software should serve the user in accordance with
the ideal of individual empowerment with technology and not become a sort of
jail controlled by a central authority that you have to struggle to break out
of. The problem of impersonal computing is by no means isolated to Apple
though.

~~~
narag
_Although Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his statement I agree
with his concern overall_.

That seems oddly similar to my tl;dr from the article: "Although I agree with
his concern overall, Stallman didn't use a great deal of tact in his
statement".

------
aaronbrethorst
Emacs Virgin thing: [http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-
richard-...](http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-
stallman.html)

~~~
groovy2shoes
This is the first I've heard of this incident, and I find the comments on that
post shocking. That so many people can take RMS's side on that issue is
appalling.

------
thu
Stallman didn't say he's glad Steve Jobs died. I understand he's glad that
Steve's influence on computing stop, as that influence is driving computing in
a closed ecosystem.

You can take it in a non-emotional way. A is, in your opinion, a bad thing. If
A stops, you're glad. If A stops because of a sad B event, you can be both
glad for A to end, and sad for B to occur.

------
poink
This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA. People don't devote their
lives to marginalized causes without either having or picking up a twinge of
zealotry. If you want those people to stand up for causes you mutually believe
in, you have to take the bad with the good.

RMS might not be the best possible Free Software advocate, but I'm glad
someone's doing it, and nobody else seems to be volunteering for the job.

~~~
ceejayoz
> This is kind of like wanting a "toned down" PETA.

Is that so horrible a thing? It seems to me groups like the Humane Society
have done a lot more for animal welfare than PETA.

------
_delirium
If you want an advocacy organization with a better ear for public
sensibilities and business, that's what the Open Source Initiative was
designed for, wasn't it? Why not join them instead of starting yet another
organization?

~~~
gonzo
No. OSI was Eric's attempt to hijack the work of RMS. Eric is no better than,
and in many ways, much worse than, RMS.

~~~
kragen
That's more or less how Stallman saw it, but the other dozen or so free-
software luminaries that Raymond brought onboard from the beginning didn't see
it that way. Stallman was literally the only one on the original Cc: list that
opposed the new "open source" movement.

------
fmadot
I won't say I am supporting RMS or not. Actually I think Jobs was a man with
great talent, but I don't like him. I think most of you overreacted on "I'm
not glad he's dead, I'm glad he's gone". RMS expressed clearly that he don't
agree with the achievements that Jobs reached in his short life. This is a
personal opinion. You can't force everyone to agree with what Jobs has done.
After all RMS said "I'm not glad he's gone." That's enough. I think there is
nothing to argue for.

------
Sandman
While most of the commenters here discuss what Stallman said and what he
actualy meant, whether it was distasteful or not, and whether Jobs was a
modern day messiah who single-handedly changed the world we live in or just a
smart business man with a very good sense of choosing the right people to
create the products that he envisioned, I'd like to take a minute to think
about what is actually proposed in this article - the forking of FSF. It's
quite obvious from the article that the reason the author suggests something
like that is not because his views on software freedom somehow differ than
those of Stallman, but because he has issues with Stallman himself, or more
precisely, with his publicly expressed opinions. He feels that they hurt FSF
and free software in general. Isn't then the solution to the problem to,
through some electoral process, replace Stallman and put a new figure at the
head of FSF? Somebody more tactful, more careful about how they say what they
mean (if that's truly the kind of a person memebers of FSF would like to see
in charge)? Starting a new foundation with exactly the same goals as FSF, just
because you don't like Stallman's public statements, seems pointless to me.

------
nohat
RMS and Jobs seem very similar to me. Both were monomaniacal perfectionists.
Both were undiplomatic and unwilling to compromise or cater to unbelievers.

------
Tichy
I have never heard of Larry, so my guess would be: chance that Larry will
found and lead the FFSF (Forked Free Software Foundation) = 0%

------
tbourdon
Much worse will be written about RMS when he dies and many will applaud what
is written, never mind their contributions to technology had the same scale of
impact on society... It's all in the perspective.

------
endgame
Oh, give it a rest already. rms was actually pretty tactful. Did people
actually read what he wrote?

> Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people
> guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs'
> malign influence on people's computing.

------
AmazingBytecode
I support open source on a pragmatic level as a way for people to share code
so that they no longer have to "re-invent the wheel". Because of this I feel
like it's petty and counter-productive for the FSF to refuse to share their
"free" software with people because of the way that those people want to use
the software. Truly free software should be released to the public without
limitations on how and where it should be used.

To clarify: I know that my preferred model ignores the scummy/greedy
tendencies of people to leech off work that others have done. However, I'd
like for people to think of open source software as a gift given with no
strings attached.

------
spitfire
In the marketplace of ideas Stallman has a simple remedy for his woes with
Apple. Make better software than them.

Go on Richard, I dare you to.

~~~
Produce
He already does. The only difference in the perceived quality is the learning
curve. Learn the *nix way and you will be enlightened. Learn the Apple way and
you will remain ignorant (but have lots of time for shopping, cos math is so
boring, right?).

~~~
rimantas
Apple way? You mean the one where OS _is_ unix? The one which comes with perl,
php, python, ruby, etc? The one which comes with fee Grapher app?

~~~
Produce
That's like saying that Android preaches the nix way because it runs a Linux
kernel. This is obviously false since the interface presented to the user
pushes a completely different way of working and thinking. Using any of the
listed software requires knowing what you're doing. It's the same situation on
Linux and Windows, you can install PHP or Python all the same and need the
equivalent amount of knowledge to do so. If you seriously can't see the 'Apple
way' then take another look at their whole business model, which is making
things simple enough for people with little training to use. The nix way
consists of understanding how the system works, which is in direct opposition
to the Apple way.

------
daedhel
So it's time to fork the FSF because this guy does not agree with one comment
RMS did?

How is this not overreacting in the first place...

~~~
vacri
To be fair, the author does state it's a 'straw that broke the camel's back'
scenario; the punctuation at the end of a long line of disliked behaviour, not
just one comment.

------
sharmajai
Fuck you RMS. I have been and still am a staunch believer in open source, but
when I read comments like this from the person who's motto once was that
everybody writing software should contribute the source back to the community,
not because it delivers better software (due to the more eyeballs resulting in
fewer bugs), but because it results in moving software forward quickly by
virtue of helping each other out, I agree with the OP, it's time for a change.

Let me tell you something, free software or not, it was Steve Jobs, who told
us what forward direction for software actually means, first by making GUI
mainstream, then by making capacitive touch mainstream, and lastly by defining
what a tablet form factor should and should not be.

If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom, I can argue the exact
opposite, it was Steve who taught us ways to make technology more accessible
by making groundbreaking innovations in user interfaces, which enables the non
geeks of the world to use computers in the first place, I am pretty sure those
users will feel more trapped in the command line interface that you envisioned
for them, than they feel by not having access to the source of the painting
app they have fun playing with on their ipad.

So if you cannot come out the frog hole that you have created for yourself,
and give credit where it's due, then maybe you should shut the fuck up.

~~~
DanBC
>If you think Steve's products hamper your freedom

Try and explain how to boot a MacBookPro from USB stick to someone, and
compare that to booting almost any other computer.

Or explain how to dual boot a Mac with OSX and Linux, vs anything else with
Windows and Linux.

~~~
astrodust
Try and explain how to restore a MacBook from back-ups over the phone to a
frantic parent who's just lost their hard drive.

I did that. It took two minutes. It worked flawlessly.

Sometimes to gain more command over your technology you have to give up some
theoretical freedom, but that's freedom you'd never have been able to
exercise.

An F-16 pilot would find the controls in a typical car so disappointing.
Where's the lever to adjust the fuel/air mixture? The GPS waypoints? The brake
bias dial? The air pressure indicator? The temperature of the tires? All of
these things are theoretically important to driving, but they're not of any
concern to someone simply trying to get from point A to point B.

That's all most people using computers are trying to do.

~~~
DanBC
Sure, there are a lot of important benefits to having firm design choices made
by someone, rather than just not ever making the decision and cramming a
million options into a multi-tab options dialog (or a config file). I own (and
use every day) a mac. I've recommend mac to everyone I know, fo rthe reasons
you mention.

But you can't have it both ways - not having those options available means
you're not as free to use your machine as you are with other OSs. Trivial eg:
OS X windowing behaves a certain way. You want to maximise a window? You
can't, unless you know some secret trick. You want to tile windows? You can't,
unless you install some 3rd party software. These aren't power-user functions.

~~~
astrodust
Maximizing windows _a certain way_ and tiling windows is something only very
few people need. You're presuming they're problems because you have
expectations that the software behaves in ways that it does not.

People without any expectations do not have the same problems.

So many technical people see the "App Store" as something that limits choice.
Consumers see it as freedom, since they are free to install anything they find
without fear that it will wreck their system or actually be a trojan.

Just as you'd see using a wheel-chair as something that's severely limiting,
the same thing for someone with no legs it's freedom to get around
independently.

What Apple's products tend to do is trade one kind of freedom for another.
They don't eliminate or reduce freedom, they transform the essential nature of
it.

Some people might be justified in complaining about how it limits the freedom
they need, but they're probably trying to use a product for a purpose it was
not intended for.

~~~
prodigal_erik
> trying to use a product for a purpose it was not intended for

Good for them. Using things in novel unanticipated ways is toolmaking, quite
literally what makes us human. I suspect people who surround themselves with
appliances which resist tinkering are harming themselves through learned
helplessness.

~~~
astrodust
I respect hackers, yet I don't want to have to endure someone whinging about
how their washing machine doesn't also do dishes like the 1920 model did.

------
the_mat
Many of the comments following that story are deranged, and I mean that in the
strongest sense of the word. "Software extremists" like that really exist?
There are people who honestly think Steve Jobs was evil? And most
disturbingly, there are people who will flat out bash on the reputation of
someone who so recently died? Wow. Just wow.

------
jwr
RMS deserves praise for starting the Free Software movement, but he has been a
liability to it for quite some time now. Leaders that start movements are not
always fit to lead them when movements grow.

And before you protest — have you met the man in person? If you haven't, you
won't understand.

------
ubasu
Relevant pg essay?

<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

------
5hoom
Stallman & Jobs are both giant figures in the tech world to anyone who knows
their history. I would also imagine that anyone who has followed Richard
Stallman over the years would be surprised if he hadn't made a statement like
this.

He is an outspoken & tireless champion of an incredibly worthy cause he
believes is greater than himself (and c'mon, the guys hacking skills are
legendary).

Steve Jobs was a uniquely amazing entrepreneur & visionary leader. His impact
on the way people everywhere use technology is both profound & undeniable.

Both men are worthy of the deepest respect IMHO, even if their goals were in
conflict.

------
Jarred
I agree with forking the FSF, but not just having someone whose nice is
necessary. It needs to be led by someone who gives a damn about user
experience. This is an issue with not all open source applications, but many.
It is getting better, but I still prefer Windows or OS X to using Gnome, KDE.
I've never needed to use any of the bundled software with Ubuntu (except the
settings apps, gedit, and Firefox). It can't just be about open-source
alternatives, because most people don't care if something is open or closed
source, they care if it gets the job done well.

------
chanux
Jobs loved what he did and believed in it. RMS certainly is same.

I respect Jobs for `the inspiration` while I respect RMS for what `he offered
to the world`.

------
kragen
Other related thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085417>

------
epo
RMS is clearly on the autistic spectrum, probably far enough on it to be
regarded as having a 'learning difficulty' in the rather twee PC UK-ism.

There is IMHO, an interesting litmus test where people who share his
monomaniacal obsession, or think it 'reasonable', probably have the same
issue.

~~~
DanBC
UK (at least, England, I have no idea what Wales or Scotland do) "Learning
disability" is related to IQ. Autism and Asperger's syndrome do sometimes lead
to a "Special Educational Need" (SEN). This isn't just language; there's some
access to medical services stuff involved.

~~~
epo
Thanks for that correction.

------
abrimo
I've attended one of Stallman's talks and it was more of a comedy than
anything else. I don't actually take him seriously, he did some great work in
the past but the world has moved on.

------
December
I'm so tired of political correctness and "sexism" posts. At times half of
this site seems to consist of posts made by people offended by something.

------
mtraven
Didn't this fork happen quite some time ago? <http://www.opensource.org/> And
for pretty much the exact same reasons being given now?

Although some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be
associated with as RMS.

------
goodweeds
If it were RMS who had died, I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said.

------
BasDirks
Stallman is a degenerate.

------
dbbo
At the risk of getting repetitive: I think rms was speaking strictly from a
utilitarian perspective-- that is, Jobs' absence is overall a good thing for
the FOSS movement (even though that might not actually be true, unless Cook is
more committed to FOSS than Jobs). I can see how some find his statement
tactless, but I'm not offended by it because Jobs was not an important person
in my life. That doesn't mean that his life had no value, but his life wasn't
more valuable to me than the life of any of the thousands of people who die
every day from preventable causes. I honestly don't understand why so many
people claim to be sad because Jobs is gone. Why did they feel so connected to
a CEO? Steve Jobs was not your uncle. You have no rational reason to be upset
over his death, and especially over what a coot like rms says about him. If
you're upset enough to "fork the FSF" you're probably suffering from some
illusory feeling of connectedness towards Jobs. I don't agree with a lot of
what the FSF says, but one single comment made by one single guy is not going
to make me turn my back on the whole organization. I will no longer be reading
Larry's blog if he thinks this kind of flighty and ostentatious display of
disapproval is warranted.

~~~
EiZei
Strictly from an utilitarian perspective RMS should keep his big fat mouth
shut when someone -especially somebody as popular as Jobs - dies.

~~~
dbbo
I don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional
rights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or
alienating his opinions are.

~~~
cyrus_
Come on, no one is saying he shouldn't have the right to express his opinion,
just that he could have worded them in a way that didn't make people cringe.

~~~
dbbo
Could you give an example of what he could have said to express the same idea
at this time _without_ offending people?

------
maximusprime
Best way to deal with extreme fundamentalists is to ignore them.

He's a joke.

------
Uhhrrr
I have to flag this for being utterly asinine. If you're really a "free
software guy", RMS's statement should not even partially raise an eyebrow.

------
coldnose
And today is the day /usr/bin/gcc changes from "deprecated" to "deleted". I'm
glad something finally pushed me over that hump.

<http://clang.llvm.org/>

------
jsilence
In other news: Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That
Killed One Man

[http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-
thankf...](http://www.theonion.com/video/autistic-reporter-train-thankfully-
unharmed-in-cra,20098/)

------
mkup
I think RMS is doing perfect trolling to get more attention to his
GNU/FSF/commie stuff.

The net effect is the people talking about RMS, about FSF and GNU. More people
get to know about this stuff, more people get involved.

Just a little trolling replaces zillions of bucks spent on advertising, PR
etc. Commies don't have money to pay, so they must troll.

\---

Just don't spread this hype and don't feed the troll.

~~~
wazoox
> _GNU/FSF/commie stuff._

Bingo, you've just made some tasteless, insulting passing remark. Some sort of
reverse-Godwin point. So much for not feeding the trolls.


Bill Gates: Textbooks are becoming obsolete - sumitsrivastava
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter#ALChapter8
======
waste_monk
I greatly prefer text to video and/or interactive elements for learning.

The pacing of video content tends to be much slower than I'm capable of taking
in, so watching lectures becomes a frustrating exercise. I usually watch the
videos at 1.5 speed or just read the transcript, if it's available. And
interactive elements are usually so clumsy to use that they become worthless.

I also don't want my learning materials spying on me and reporting back about
my progress. That's just creepy, and is one more step in the march towards
making the world a particularly dreary cyberpunk dystopia.

I think the problem is that most textbooks these days are hot garbage -
instead of building a professional library, you end up with irrelevant dead
weights. I have textbooks from back at University which I still refer to today
(data structures and similar topics), but most modern textbooks seem to really
focus in on particular technologies and frameworks, which become useless in
just a few short years.

------
vertline3
I find textbooks painful, but I also think I grow the most when reading them.
This is because textbooks are organized, the material often goes into more
depth than a blog post, and most importantly for me, I can be away from
electronic distractions.

------
ksec
May be, but Textbooks provide a single purpose usage that doesn't distract you
in ways in the back of you mind you know what these iPad could do ( Gaming,
Youtube ) etc.....

------
rezahandzalah
The title is somewhat misrepresenting. Textbooks as _teaching means_ are
becoming obsolete.

------
maceurt
Textbooks will always be relevant as long as states use standardized testing.


Regex Edit Distance - psygnisfive
http://languagengine.co/blog/regex-edit-distance/
======
psygnisfive
The general idea here is that you can calculate not only whether or not a
string matches a regex, but if it doesn't match, precisely by how much (in the
minimal case).


Property manager application - panbhatt
I have created a property manager application, whose aim is to manage the properties for the project for multiple environments / releases.
Complete appliation is deployed on HEROKU at
https://vast-cliffs-8955.herokuapp.com/#/
Project Detail is available at :
https://github.com/panbhatt/propserv er
Clients are available in :
Java
NodeJS
======
DrScump
you might get more response as a "Show HN" posting

~~~
panbhatt
Thanks. i m trying that.


Do you still read Slashdot? - kashif

======
SwellJoe
I started reading Slashdot when it was Chips and Dips...but I had completely
discontinued Slashdot for about two years and reddit took its place. Now that
reddit has declined from a "have to read nearly every link on the page" to
"maybe two or three articles per day" habit, I find myself going back to
slashdot at least once every couple of days.

I read news.YC more often than either now...but the volume here is still low
enough to where it's not a problem. I drop in more than I need to (I'll come
back not really expecting anything new) kind of as a nervous tick while I'm
waiting on software to build or virtual machine images to copy (I manage our
apt/yum software repositories, and do all of the QC testing, so I twiddle my
thumbs more than I'd like).

Lately, there's a lot more of that, as may be seen in my ridiculous increase
in comment volume this week...I'm kind of embarrassed looking over it
now...because I'm in the midst of rolling out a new version of our installer--
so lots of testing and packaging. I need to find something more productive to
turn into a nervous tick. Blogging, or smoking crack or something.

------
epi0Bauqu
Nope. I haven't for several years now.

------
bootload
_"... Do you still read Slashdot? ..."_

Started reading in '96, uid of 2774 and I used to read it as much as I read
hacknews.yc but stopped after ads started appearing and the sig/noise became
unbearable ~ <http://slashdot.org/~goon>

------
redsymbol
I've made several unsuccessful attempts over the years to go more than a few
days without reading slashdot :)

I still read it almost every day, at least to check what the stories are. For
a while, about eight months ago, I found myself going to it less, in favor of
the main reddit page. Now that www.reddit.com has... evolved, I start a lot of
my free-range browsing time from programming.reddit.com and slashdot (as well
as news.yc, suddenly).

The firehose is intriguing. Good to see Malda et al. continuing to experiment
with novel approaches (and it IS novel - it's not a straight digg/reddit
clone, as some opine). Will be interesting to see how that plays out.

------
rams
My slashdot visits have become rather infrequent over the last couple of
years.To be honest neither reddit nor news.yc still get the kind of quality
comments/analysis that a lot of the slashdotter comments >= 3 provide.
programming.reddit.com is better. Add to that humour - there used to be a
couple of sites that collected humorous comments from slashdot. You can't
build a community overnight - it takes years; something that most people don't
want to hear. I know for a fact that a lot of older hackers hang out on
slashdot - that could account for the more insightful comments and great sense
of humour. The trick is to experiment with the filters.

------
inklesspen
Every day, man. Beats the hell out of reddit and digg. Sure, there's a lot of
pointless articles there, but at least I don't have to see tracksuitceo
articles every day there, either.

------
Kaizyn
Slashdot is useful in that it aggregates content differently than do
reddit/digg. As such, you find stories there selected by the editors that the
rabid mob at reddit would otherwise ignore. Also, because the comments are
moderated and scored, I find them to be fairly useful when viewed at a high
enough filtering threshold.

------
abarrera
I read it daily, but it's true it's value has been declining with time. If you
read many feeds, you'll keep getting duplicated news with a one day delay in
Slashdot. Of course, comment reading is a no-no except you are really, really
interested, in which case I only read top score comments from the first page.

------
pramodbiligiri
Not as much as I used to. programming.reddit and news.yc have replaced it
almost entirely. Whenever I check Slashdot nowadays I feel the stories are too
political and trollish. Is it just me or has the comments quality on Slashdot
actually declined significantly in the last year or so?

------
cdr
About the only time I read it anymore is when something else links to a post
there.

The editors are Slashdot's twist on tech news, but the editors are almost
uniformly awful. The stories they break are consistently days behind
Digg/Reddit, and of no better quality.

------
pg
I check occasionally but often I find nothing worth clicking on. The range of
stories seems narrower now than it was a few years ago. It seems like they
reacted to the arrival of digg and reddit by deciding to focus on their core
competency, new OS releases.

------
Alex3917
It's still my homepage out of loyalty but I rarely actually read it. How
messed up is that?

------
ryanpc
Yes. The commentary on /. tends to have an infinitely higher quality than
found elsewhere (particularly digg.) Digg and Reddit are great for breaking
news, but when I'm looking for an interesting (quality) discussion /. can
rarely be beat.

------
staunch
Daily from around 1997 until 2004 or so, since then maybe a few times a year.

------
sandoh
I also used to read it a couple times a day. Now I scan it maybe once in a
while.

They don't break any stories to me anymore, it is always a delayed link to
something I already read in reddit / digg yc.

~~~
0123456789
> "They don't break any stories to me anymore"

Care to explain why breaking news stories are relevant at all? I don't see
their point.

------
aaroneous
I used to read it multiple times a day. Now I read it every few days. News.YC
has replaced /. (and Digg too) as my source for interesting articles and
relevant commentary.

------
prakash
Haven't read slashdot in years. neither do I read digg. prog.reddit sometimes.
YC News everyday.

The million $ question is when do I move away from YC News, and when?

------
michaelneale
Once a day. Given up on reddit and digg. Now its news.YC and Slashdot. I
really need to work out a better way to get "local" news - I feel really out
of touch at times.

------
ks
I get all my news through my RSS reader. If it doesn't have RSS (or Atom) it
doesn't exist :-)

So I look at the headlines and reads at least one article a day

------
trekker7
Absolutely. I still find a lot of interesting things there, and the comments
are really great. I especially like the comment tags (informative, funny,
etc.).

------
piers
I get the daily email. Occasionally there are a couple of things that I've
missed from the day before, but I agree. It's not as "breaking" as it used to
be.

------
mynameishere
Never did. Whenever I looked at it, it just felt like a bunch of Microsoft-
haters resentful of the fact that they still lived in their mom's house.

------
forgotmylastone
Yes, but only in the following way: sorted by highest score, -2 funny
modifier, and with a plugin to allow thread collapsing.

------
steve
I stopped for a while when reddit was at its peak, but now I'm back to
slashdot every once in a while.

------
nrohan
Once in 1 or 2 days to check if there is anything interesting. No regrets if
I'm not able to visit!

------
mdakin
I scan the stories using a once-a-day RSS update but I never bother with the
comments.

------
randallsquared
A coupla times a week. Back around 1999, I was there multiple times a day.

------
rms
Yes, but I mostly just scan the links, I click a link less than once a day.

------
0123456789
Once a day for the headlines and insightful or interesting comments.

------
ashu
somewhat regularly, with comments having score 5 only.

------
awt
No. Security + Copyright Law = BORING

------
henning
no.

gave up on reddit, too, which now consists mostly of iran conspiracy theories.

------
kashif
I do.


Public API vs Open API - apievangelist
http://www.apivoice.com/2012/05/30/public-api-vs-open-api/index.php#.T8Z9FCB0IvI.hackernews
======
jack-r-abbit
I was hoping for more substance. The title implies the article would
compare/contrast Public vs Open for APIs. But it doesn't really do that. There
is a bullet list of "what makes an open API?" but not one of "what makes a
public API?". Some examples of each with reasons why it they fall into the
category they do would be nice as well.


Show HN: Stream music between iPhones - ludite313
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id914026908?ls=1&mt=8

======
dang
You guys... I realize it can be frustrating to try to get your stuff attention
on Hacker News, but trust me, this is definitely not the way to do it.

------
DSBOX
Yes.

------
NolanZunder
Does it work for Android?

------
blue4berryB
Awesome.

------
comeon331
Is this much better than airplay?

------
streaking314
Seems to work well when the app is open, what about background modes?


Ask HN: Why has visual programming not caught on? - jshharlow
It seems like the concept of visual based programming (think visual basic, or drag/drop components that make code...) keeps on reappearing, do other hacker news visitors ever think it will truly succeed? It always seems to be limited imho, but the idea never seems to die, wondering what others think...
======
nostrademons
It already has succeeded in one very limited area: GUI component layout.
People use XCode/Netbeans Matisse/DreamWeaver all the time to build their UIs.

It fails in other areas because code is remarkably info-dense, and if you
split that out into individual components, it takes a huge amount of screen
space and visual manipulation for even simple subroutines. I encourage you to
take a simple function and draw out the parse tree for it. It's surprisingly
large, with lots of different node types all strung together in unusual ways.
Think about how much people complain about the parentheses in Lisp; now
imagine that each set of parentheses is a box on screen.

~~~
david927
GUI layout is not programming; it's GUI layout. (Or, more concretely: it's
specifying a dataset.)

When software construction is finally "solved", visual representations and
interfaces will be common. Our current mechanisms are simply too crude,
lacking sufficient methods of abstraction, to work well. In fact, they do the
opposite and point out what deep flaws exist in the current state of the art.

~~~
nostrademons
HTML, CSS, XML, SQL, JSON, YAML, and other configuration languages are also
not programming; they're specifying a dataset. I can basically guarantee that
any large project will have large quantities of them, though, and that code
will have bugs.

For that matter, Lisp is not programming; it's specifying a dataset. Except,
well, it actually is programming, because you can execute that dataset. When
you push it far enough, the distinction between code and data disappears.

This is probably an indication that software construction will never be
"solved": once an acceptable representation has been found for one level of
complexity, someone will quickly build on that and take it to the _next_ level
of complexity, and then the abstractions will once again prove inadequate.

~~~
david927
If I draw a picture, did I program? Are artists programmers? What if I try to
execute that binary of a digital image? I would say: no to the first, yes to
the last. I think it's a big difference: the aesthetic and basic syntax
qualities of markup, the completeness of a list of invitations to a party, and
executable code.

To me, HTML, CSS, XML, etc. are not code and do not have real bugs; they have
design flaws and syntax flaws, just as a picture may need more red or blue.
(But note that I'm not sure there's a right answer here, and I certainly
respect you and your opinion.)

I also think that it's not about abstractions but better abstraction
_mechanisms_ which work to reduce complexity at any level. It may get more
complex, but you can manage that complexity much more skillfully. I am
absolutely confident that we can find better abstraction mechanisms.

------
kanzenryu
[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-
Friendly_System...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-
Friendly_System.aspx)

~~~
jshharlow
Very nice :-)

------
CyberFonic
We find visual based programming in the form of CAD used in construction,
aviation, semiconductors, etc. They are big complex programs and, of course,
expensive. If you can use visual tools to layout billions of transistors, then
you could use it to write programs. But ... the techniques for moving between
levels of abstraction in software haven't been understood yet. Systems like
Scratch and Alice provide visual programming, but quickly become tedious for
all but the simplest programs because they don't allow us to introduce
multiple levels of abstraction. The CAD systems used for semiconductor design
encompass hundreds of different views, each for addressing specific
engineering issues.

There is quite a lot of research going on with visual programming, but the
return on effort in most cases is most discouraging.

~~~
ippisl
Doesn't the reason you use visual representations in CAD, construction ,
aviation and layout is to be close to the domain ? i.e. visual objects.

A second reason is that higher level languages for mechanical design hasn't
been successful. my guess it's because mechanical objects are very cost
sensitive, so people use low level tools, similar to embedded developers using
c+asm.

On the other hand , if you look at fpga and chip design , where complexity has
exploded and transistors price really plummeted , you see a move to higher and
higher level textual languages, from the schematic systems used in the past.

Another interesting use case for visual languages is visual domain specific
languages. metacase has some success with this. my guess is that visual
languages can be much easier for domain experts to use and understand, in some
cases.

------
_0ffh
Because it is a crock of shite, that's why. Ask anyone who ever used an actual
(general-purpose) "visual programming system" for any (nontrivial) real life
task. I have extensive experience in one, and a little in another, and both
suck balls. The problem is that, while the diagrams you are constructing might
look fancy and intuitive to a layperson (i.e. your pointy haired boss), they
do usually not help you to structure the complexity of the task at hand in any
meaningful way. Usually, they make everything worse. Having said that, there
is a rather big exception: Domain specific visual programming systems, if they
are well designed and the problem domain lends itself to it, can be quite
useful.

~~~
actionbrandon
I think this is part of it. The people who would have to write/design the
visual programming system think that it is for losers and are thus not
interested in working on it. Most hardcore coders I have met are quite proud
of their chops and kind of brush off those who can't cut it (which is fine
imo).

------
jdietrich
Syntax is the easy part. The hard bit is abstraction, as proved by
FizzBuzz[1]. The core syntax of a language like Ruby or Python can be learned
in a couple of hours. Learning to write useful, maintainable software takes
years.

How do you create an intuitive, visual representation of recursion? Iteration
over an array? The task isn't creating a visual representation of current
programming paradigms, it's creating a whole new conceptual approach. I'm not
sure that such a thing is even possible.

[1] [http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-
dev...](http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-
who-grok-coding/)

------
hrasm
A visual language called G exists. It is forms the backbone of LabVIEW (a
product of National Instruments [NI]). You could use it like any other
programming language to solve problems. IMHO it is quite powerful. However,
LabVIEW's real strength lies in providing an easy interface for data
acquisition from cards, again by NI, specifically built for the purpose.
LabVIEW is pretty much ubuquitous in university labs.

Edit: There is also Agilent VEE.

------
dumbphone
I like the idea of using a web-based interface for tasks that are normally
done in framework code: Altering data structure/models, etc. Drupal already
has this (CCK), but it's not exactly a lean/small framework, so it's not the
ideal solution unless you actually need the CMS feature (the ability for non-
techies to edit content on the website).

Anyway, I think a framework that includes a web-based data handling thing
might be a success.

------
extension
The same reason visual writing hasn't caught on. Our brains are wired for
textual language. It's generally hard to express highly abstract ideas with
just pictures.

~~~
bartonfink
The Egyptians would like to disagree with you. The Chinese, Japanese and other
ideographic cultures are right behind them in line.

~~~
extension
Ideographic writing is still sequential text.

~~~
bartonfink
In the same sense that picture books are sequential text.

~~~
extension
I've never seen a visual programming system that was anything like a picture
book. Rather, every one that I've seen uses some sort of graph visualized in
two or occasionally three dimensions.

In contrast, every natural language that I've seen, along with every remotely
successful programming language, uses a one dimensional sequence of words
and/or symbols with an implicit grammatical structure. That is probably no
coincidence.


Strangers with Similar Names Meet Through Emails Sent to the Wrong Address - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/strangers-with-similar-names-meet-through-emails-sent-to-the-wrong-address
======
JoshTriplett
My email is firstname at firstname lastname dot org. I always read that to
people very carefully, sometimes spelling it out, and over the phone I
generally have someone read it back to me to make sure. And despite that, I've
had regular conversations with the person who has firstname at lastname dot
org and is forwarding me a bit of misdirected mail.


Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science - zsupalla
https://medium.com/@zsupalla/processed-meats-as-bad-as-cigarettes-bad-reporting-on-good-science-ac43a97be603
======
dspillett
My first thought was that the report is only talking about rectal and colon
cancers, so yes diet might affect them as much as (or even more than) smoking.

But that really isn't even close to to being a good comparison when discussing
overall effect of risk factors: talking about the effect of smoking while only
counting damage to the bottom end of the digestive system is like talking
about the effect of drink driving while only counting uni-cyclists.

So the reporting is _massively_ misleading, the inference that the risks
caused by smoking and those caused by eating processed meats are even of the
same order of magnitude is simply wrong. I shall have to read the actual
report to get any real meaning from it.

~~~
tkyjonathan
Sorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get
agreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label
processed meats as carcinogens.

Btw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get
some sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast).

I can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more
than a decade.

~~~
AlisdairO
You haven't established that cancer in meat eaters is largely caused by eating
meat, whereas it is quite clear that overall cancer rate drastically increases
in smokers.

In fact, while vegetarian diets do reduce the risk of cancer, the difference
is by comparison modest - the overall risk of cancer in vegetarians is ~10%
lower.

~~~
tkyjonathan
That isn't true. There are causal links between meat and cancer. You have:
IGF1, saturated fat, sulphar-based animo acids like methionine, mycobacterial
load, oxidative stress, purification in the intestine and more recently, that
nuXX sugar found in protein.

~~~
AlisdairO
Did you read my comment?

I didn't deny causal links between meat and cancer. I denied that the causal
links between meat and cancer caused anything close to as much additional
total cancer risk as smoking does. That's a viewpoint that is supported by any
credible source you care to name.

------
cperciva
Also worth noting: The same "known carcinogens" list also includes birth
control pills and sunlight.

Not all carcinogens should be avoided.

~~~
Chlorus
And sure enough, the formally-respectable tabloid known as Ars takes the bait:
[http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/its-official-bacon-
ho...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/its-official-bacon-hot-dogs-
other-processed-red-meat-cause-cancer/)

~~~
DanBC
You've misunderstand the submission.

The quality of the evidence is very good - now we are sure that eating red
meat and processed meat increases the risk of cancer, although that risk is
still very small. We are now as sure of that as we are that smoking causes
cancer, although the risks from smoking are very much greater.

The Ars head line is accurate. The second and third paragraphs are clear and
easy to understand and accurate.

> Today, in a sizzling announcement, the International Agency for Research on
> Cancer (IARC) officially marked processed meat, such as bacon, hot dogs, and
> sausages, as “carcinogenic to humans,” a “group 1” designation. The agency,
> an arm of the World Health Organization, also classified red meat, such as
> beef, pork, and lamb, as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a “group 2A”
> grade.

> (The group designations refer to the confidence health experts have in the
> link between the meats and cancer; it does not refer to the potency of the
> meats’ cancer-causing abilities.)

~~~
Chlorus
I understand now, thank you.

------
moskie
The first line of the Guardian's article is:

"Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer,
the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in
the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco."

Is that correct? If the WHO did indeed put these all into the same category,
then I'm not sure this article is at fault. Should the author of this post
instead take issue with how the WHO categorized these things?

------
batbomb
For processed (cured) meats, they must assuredly mean sodium nitrite (which
sodium nitrate turns in to) and/or salt is known carcinogens. In which case,
it should be "sodium nitrite known to cause cancer".

Also, people should know that even "no nitrates/nitrites added" doesn't mean
devoid of nitrates or nitrites, because most companies add tons of celery
salt, and, for the most part, you end up with an equivalent amount of sodium
nitrite in your processed/cured meats.

[http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/the-no-nitrites-added-
hoax/](http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/the-no-nitrites-added-hoax/)

~~~
johansch
The term "processed food" seems so overloaded that it's largely pointless.

Nevertheless, this page seems to explain its popular usage well, while adding
some much needed sanity:

[http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/what-are-
processed...](http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/goodfood/pages/what-are-processed-
foods.aspx)

------
anunderachiever
"Processed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on
sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes
colorectal cancer."

[http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf)

and here you find tobacco:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinogens)

So processed meat IS ranking next to tobacco according to IARC.

~~~
icebraining
The groups have nothing to do with "ranking", they're based on the amount of
evidence that we have for the link. From the IARC's FAQ:

> The classification indicates the weight of the evidence as to whether an
> agent is capable of causing cancer (technically called “hazard”), _but it
> does not measure the likelihood that cancer will occur (technically called
> “risk”) as a result of exposure to the agent._

(Emphasis theirs)

[http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/News/Q&A_ENG.pdf](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/News/Q&A_ENG.pdf)

------
6t6t6
What apparently a lot of people fails to understand is that the IARC list
reflects is how sure we are that a substance is carcinogenic, but not how much
it raises the risk of cancer.

So we can equally be sure that plutonium and bacon are a risk for health. But
we also know that eating plutonium is more dangerous than bacon.

------
vldr
Any thoughts on

[http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/10/world-health-
organisation...](http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/10/world-health-organisation-
meat-cancer/)

?

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451259).

------
XzetaU8
"The Nitrate and Nitrite Myth: Another Reason Not To Fear Bacon"

[http://chriskresser.com/the-nitrate-and-nitrite-myth-
another...](http://chriskresser.com/the-nitrate-and-nitrite-myth-another-
reason-not-to-fear-bacon/)

------
debacle
Bad reporting but good traffic.

------
anunderachiever
Kinda funny how hard some people try to reject a finding which is as well
supported as it is obvious ... red meat is bad. Same logic applies here as
with cigarettes - _you_ decide if you want to take the risk.

Beyond your personal consequences - meat and dairy industry is also directly
destructive to the environment and society on a global level
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/)).

[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anature.com+%22red+meat%22](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anature.com+%22red+meat%22)

~~~
morley
That has little to do with the linked article, which is only rejecting the
bombastic headlines comparing the two.

~~~
anunderachiever
Is it really _that_ bombastic? Lot of people are smoking and will readily
justify it with anecdotal evidance proving that smoking isn't really _that_
bad at all - "you know there was this 105 year old Japanese guy and they asked
him how he got that old and he said he stopped smoking at the age of 99 ..."

Furthermore - people need those "comparisons" \- only few will change their
behavior based on purely statistical reasoning.

~~~
DanBC
The WHO report tells us that the quality of the evidence is very good, which
is why red meat and processed red meat have this new classification.

It doesn't talk about how strong the cancer-causing effects of red meat and
processed meat are. They are nothing like as risky as cigarettes. We know that
cigarettes are very harmful.


Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle with the Feds - gok
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/
======
zadkey
"Since March 2018, federal prosecutors have seized more than $100 million in
cash, real estate, and other assets from Lacey and Larkin. The strategy is
simple: No money? No lawyers. QED.

The asset freezes raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions.
Generally speaking, federal prosecutors are permitted to freeze a defendant’s
assets based on probable cause alone, even before the defendant has a chance
to challenge the government’s case in court. But regular forfeiture rules do
not apply in cases involving forums for speech—newspapers, films, books,
magazines, websites. The US Supreme Court has decreed that when the government
seizes these expressive materials, or the proceeds derived from them, it must
immediately hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the seizure is
valid.

But the Backpage defendants have a problem: So far, they can’t get a court to
hear their claims. Since last summer, the Justice Department appears to have
been playing a clever shell game. They’ve brought cases against the Backpage
defendants in two federal districts—civil seizures in Los Angeles, criminal
matters in Phoenix—and they’re making the defendants spend what money they
have left chasing Uncle Sam from place to place. So far, judges in both
districts have agreed with the government’s suggestion that they should defer
to each other, effectively denying the defendants a forum to challenge the
asset freezes. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear
arguments in the case in July."

This kind of tactic definitely rubs me the wrong way. I am not saying that
backpage should exist.

But I don't buy into ends justify the means arguments for the way the
government is going about it.

------
tptacek
I don't understand the thru-line of this Wired story. It effectively concedes
the government's case: Backpage built a system that coached users to post
trafficking ads without setting off its controls. If you posted an ad
containing “lolita,” “rape,” “fresh,” or “little girl” (the article's
examples), the system would _alert the user_ so they could use different
terms, and then _accept their new ad_.

There's lots not to like about SESTA, but the Backpage people weren't (AFAIK)
charged under SESTA.

Why am I meant to care about the Backpage owner's colorful history? Isn't the
important thing I actually need to know to understand what happened here
buried towards the bottom of this story, in a couple paragraphs discussing
what they were actually charged with? Agree or disagree with the prosecution,
but _that 's the story_.

I feel like people on message boards are sold on a narrative about how child
sex trafficking never happens, which is easy when it's an abstraction. But it
does happen.

A middle aged man I briefly worked with, and that a friend of mine worked
_for_ \--- Peter Privateeer, the former CEO of a company called Reflex
Security --- just finished serving 12 years in prison for buying a 14 year old
girl. The pimp who sold her had been holding her at gunpoint and forcing her
to "service" his customers. Where did the pimp meet the CEO? On Backpage. The
girl cost $600.

The ads for teenaged children Backpage was handling were real. Not all of
them, I'm sure. But it was really happening. And Backpage _helped it happen_.

Should a safe online market for sex workers exist? Perhaps. But we should be
able to at least agree that the people who operate it should take their
responsibility as a steward of the public safety seriously. That's not
Backpage. Backpage did did at least as much to set back the cause of
safeguarding sex workers than any misguided lawmaker.

~~~
mindgam3
Thank you for stating this so clearly. Something always seemed off to me about
the argument that punishing Backpage was going to backfire because all it
would do drive exploitation and child abuse more underground. This claim would
have merit if Backpage hadn’t been explicitly enabling a market for this
terrible stuff via those keyword suggestions. I’m not going to shed any tears
for the poor site owners having to face penalties for this.

~~~
adisinom
At least according to the article it was a keyword ban, not keyword
suggestions. To my reading the intent of the ban is to (1) avoid the
appearance of carrying advertisements of sex with children and (2) discourage
such advertisements.

The critical view is that this is intended to help child traffickers write
clandestine ads so they can continue using the platform however that seems
unlikely. The problem with any keyword-based filter is false-positives such as
kink content. Such filters operating opaquely and dropping bans in other
contexts such as banking and copyright draw deserved criticism. We should be
no less critical here.

~~~
mindgam3
I need to dig up my original source, but my understanding from when this news
first broke has been that the implementation was somewhat less innocent than a
simple keyword ban and involved some kind of suggestions or workarounds for
banned keywords. I’ll try to find something concrete to back this up.

------
devoply
Someone must not have hired a lobbying team and lined some pockets in
Washington.

Also the crooked US justice system, you don't have the right to defend
yourself using your own money:

> The asset freezes raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions.
> Generally speaking, federal prosecutors are permitted to freeze a
> defendant’s assets based on probable cause alone, even before the defendant
> has a chance to challenge the government’s case in court. But regular
> forfeiture rules do not apply in cases involving forums for
> speech—newspapers, films, books, magazines, websites. The US Supreme Court
> has decreed that when the government seizes these expressive materials, or
> the proceeds derived from them, it must immediately hold an evidentiary
> hearing to determine whether the seizure is valid.

> But the Backpage defendants have a problem: So far, they can’t get a court
> to hear their claims. Since last summer, the Justice Department appears to
> have been playing a clever shell game. They’ve brought cases against the
> Backpage defendants in two federal districts—civil seizures in Los Angeles,
> criminal matters in Phoenix—and they’re making the defendants spend what
> money they have left chasing Uncle Sam from place to place. So far, judges
> in both districts have agreed with the government’s suggestion that they
> should defer to each other, effectively denying the defendants a forum to
> challenge the asset freezes. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
> will hear arguments in the case in July...

------
module0000
Well, if you take away a website were bad things happen, all the bad guys will
magically disappear...right?

I enjoyed the article, a good read. I hate the topic; government overreach.

------
kilo_bravo_3
Anyone who sits down and reads the Senate report (not mentioned in the article
until about 75% of the way though) and is still on the side of Backpage.com is
probably a monster.

The report makes no allegation not directly derived from internal company
policies, documents, emails, and sworn employee testimony.

Backpage.com was an active participant in human trafficking.

~~~
monksy
The only thing that is supporting the human trafficking "industry" (let's face
it.. it's organized and it's filling a demand in the market) is having that
kind of work made illegal. It forces the demand and supply into the black
market.

There is and always has been a demand and (willing and consenting) supply for
those services. The best you can do is to put in a framework in which they can
do so legally and safely. It's not going to knock out all trafficking. But
when you have a superior service that's legal, safe and reliable. You're going
to lose the financial benefit of running it on the black market. (Also you'll
end up having an entire framework to deal with crimes related to the work
[i.e. abuse, violence related, etc])

~~~
anbop
So the solution to trafficked 14 year olds is to legalize 14 year old
prostitutes?

~~~
skinnymuch
No. Is there a good reason we don’t have a well regulated set of laws and
enforcement for legal sex work for people 18 (or 21) and up?

~~~
anbop
Because legalizing sex work has empirically not reduced the amount of sex
trafficking / nonconsensual sex work that occurs. That’s what happened in
Amsterdam and why they reduced the size of their brothel economy.

~~~
msla
Take as an axiom that you cannot meaningfully reduce the demand for
prostitution.

Given that axiom, I find it very hard to believe that legal sex work which is
closely monitored for any signs of human trafficking would have the same
amount of that associated with it as illegal prostitution which is impossible
to monitor meaningfully. I suspect the amount of sex trafficking associated
with illegal prostitution is grossly underestimated.

~~~
anbop
You absolutely can reduce the demand for anything by making it more costly.
Prostitution is far more prevalent where it less costly in dollars and
punishment (e.g. Canada vs USA) You can’t just assert a falsehood as
axiomatic.

~~~
msla
> You absolutely can reduce the demand for anything by making it more costly.
> Prostitution is far more prevalent where it less costly in dollars and
> punishment (e.g. Canada vs USA) You can’t just assert a falsehood as
> axiomatic.

 _Meaningfully_ reduce. The only meaningful reduction is to near zero, the
point where human trafficking becomes impossible to profit from. That doesn't
seem to be the case even in the USA.

~~~
anbop
The only meaningful reduction is to near zero? Reducing human trafficking by
50% is not a meaningful reduction?

~~~
msla
Reducing prostitution by 50% wouldn't reduce human trafficking the same
amount, but thanks for equivocating!

------
JamesBarney
For those who are interested, this reply all goes into the effects of
backpage's closure on sex workers.

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho97/119-no-
more-s...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho97/119-no-more-safe-
harbor)

~~~
scarface74
I’ve listened to the episode before, but after reading the Wired article and
seeing the comments here, the Reply All episode now feels very one sided. I
don’t remember them mentioning the underage aspect.

~~~
JamesBarney
Yeah but I also don't think the question "is Carl Ferrer a scumbag?" and "was
the closing of Backpage good for sex workers and at risk youth" have to have
the same answer.

The wired article talks about culpability and most focuses on the first
question where as the reply all seemed to exclusively focus on the second.

~~~
scarface74
There are two parts to your second question.

Was Backpage good for _adult_ sex workers. Yes. Also, I don’t think
prostitution between consenting adults should be illegal.

Did Backpage facilitate child trafficking- Yes. Anything that makes that
harder is a win. Backpage _should_ have worked with police to help catch the
adults who were selling kids for sex.

I haven’t heard about any of the well known porn sites getting in trouble for
kiddy porn. So obviously it is possible to run an adult oriented site without
exploiting kids.

~~~
JamesBarney
From the little I've researched into it, it seems like there is more teen
prostitution that is due to coercion from circumstance as opposed to force.
Basically kids who ran away from or don't have a home and are trying to
survive as opposed to trafficking at gun point.(which has been incredibly hard
to find numbers for). And it seems like backpage made it safer for the former
and but increased the risk of the latter.

Here's the wikipedia page that goes into some details.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_the_United_States#Commercial_sexual_exploitation_of_children)

~~~
scarface74
I left off something Backpage should have both helped police catch adults
pumping out kids _and_ worked with agencies to help the kids who were involved
with prostitution whether they were forced or not.

------
upofadown
>“I could make arrests off Craigslist 24 hours a day, but to what end? ... "

Well, enforcing the law is actually the job of law enforcement. It sounds like
the ultimate goal is to keep the bad stuff where the general public can't see
it.


NextGuide iPad app adds Amazon, gestures and more - jtoeman
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/12/nextguide-ipad-update-amazon-gestures/

======
markdrocker
Nice addition of Amazon content!

------
KThornton
Beautiful app!

~~~
jtoeman
thanks, let us know if you have any suggestions or other feedback!

------
jaxxie
good way to discover shows!


Uber poaches 40 people from 'partner' Carnegie Mellon - amalantony06
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-mellon-in-robotics-2015-05-31-14103924

======
dylanjermiah
"40 people voluntarily leave CMU to join Uber"