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Apple losing its supply chain mojo is a major threat - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-10-23/apple-losing-its-supply-chain-mojo-is-a-major-threat
======
dep_b
If there's anything I'm worried about it's not the supply chain, that's Tim
Cook's speciality. We had similar stories about jet black iPhone 7's last
year. There's always something.
But please get iOS 11 back to iOS 10 in terms of battery performance because
I'm afraid the .1 release this year is not even the one you should go for if
you're conservative with upgrades.
We don't need a yearly release anymore, we need solid upgrades for both macOS
and the mobile OS's. Just release when it's ready.
~~~
rwc
And AirPods, which continue to be limited supply.
~~~
briandear
Really? Just bought some in at the Covent Garden Apple Store London on
Saturday. Saw plenty at the Palo Alto Apple store yesterday. Two weeks ago, at
the Aix-en-Provence Apple store, saw plenty there as well.
Who wants Air Pods and can’t get them? I decided to buy mine and they are
amazing.
~~~
boulos
You seem to have embarked on a world-wide tour of Apple retail stores... What
keeps bringing you in?
~~~
tedunangst
The store is almost always in a high traffic neighborhood you're likely to
visit. If walking by, why not walk in? They're usually interesting from an
architectural design perspective, at least compared to the Hollister store
next door.
------
macintux
This looked suspiciously like a premature verdict with lots of assumptions
based on Apple not doing what an analyst says they should do, but there's no
doubt that Apple's in a tough spot.
They had to offer an expensive phone to get new technology out the door at a
reduced scale from a usual iPhone release, but now they're stuck with only one
supplier who can make quality displays (and of course that supplier is also
their main competition in phone hardware), and if the rumblings about the Face
ID hardware being hard to make reliably in quantities are true, this could be
an epic supply problem (for a company that knows well how painful epic supply
problems are).
And if people really are holding off on an iPhone 8 in hopes of an X, whew.
The good news for Apple is it's highly unlikely someone would go to Android
just because the X is hard to find.
------
empath75
Not being able to produce your incredibly high profit margin product fast
enough to meet demand is an okay problem to have, as long as it doesn’t
persist. AirPods were back ordered for most of a year, but now they’re stocked
in stores.
~~~
stupidcar
I don't know, if I were an Apple investor (I'm not) I might be kind of pissed
that supposed supply chain geniuses missed out on billions in potential sales
because of entirely foreseeable and avoidable difficulties. Are regular
employees whose screw ups cost their employer massive sums given a second
chance? Why do we hold executives to a lower standard of performance than
those below them?
~~~
mcphage
> I might be kind of pissed that supposed supply chain geniuses missed out on
> billions in potential sales because of entirely foreseeable and avoidable
> difficulties.
Do you think someone else at Apple would have done a better job at getting 3rd
party companies to manufacturer their parts faster? Sometimes, things take a
while because they take a while, and burning through managers looking for
someone who can roll out babies in 6 months instead of 9 just means you burned
through all of your good managers.
------
_red
Not related to supply chain, but when my current iPhone 6s is paid off I will
probably look for 6s Plus. The lack of headphone jack really is a deal killer
for me...I have no desire to complicate my life by carrying, charging, and
managing multiple pieces of kit.
The "but it makes the iPhone water resistant" is weak argument that even if
true, could've had a simple manufacturing solution (ie. no need to have the
bore go straight into body of phone where electronics are, have the bore
cylinder sealed with only wiring running to logic board).
Tim Cook, much like Steve Balmer, is a brilliant operations guy that can make
minute adjustments to product lineup to produce all sorts of incremental once-
off sales. However, they both lacked a fundamental "product vision" that
resulted in tactical gains and strategic losses. Apple once again needs a
product visionary.
~~~
origami777
This is where the legend of Steve Jobs is validated. To see the progressive
decline in quality of hardware, software, and overall experience leads one to
believe that yes indeed it was Jobs responsible for what we came to know as
apple quality. It’s sad it’s happenig. Like a slow mo accident. While they’re
focused on selling iCloud my phone storage is magically filling up even when I
delete gigs of data and load nothing more.
~~~
_red
To be honest, I didn't even watch the last product launch. I almost thought it
was a mistake when I checked the website later that day and saw both 8 and X
iPhones? What a way to confuse your market.
Right now on apple.com you can buy the SE, 6, 7, 8, and X from their website.
Talk about a cluttered, friction inducing decision.
~~~
martinp
And this is likely the reason for the reportedly low sales of the 8. I was
surprised when they announced both at the fall event as it seemed obvious the
X would cannibalize sales of the 8.
The iPhone is already a expensive premium phone, why bother with incremental
changes of the 8 when the cool and shiny X is right around the corner.
It's also strange to me how they offer two new phones with different feature
sets. Usually when Apple introduces a new device with a controversial change
(e.g. USB-C only on the 2016 MacBook Pro), they don't offer a updated device
without that change. It can be perceived as a lack of faith in the new
product.
~~~
rz2k
This year seems to have been about price increases across the range of
products. The iPhone X is more expensive, and a lot more expensive than
previous premium iPhones if you get sensible amounts of storage.
The base model of the MacBook Pro is about the same price as the one in 2016,
but it has 128GB rather than 256GB of storage. The 256GB model is now a couple
hundred dollars more expensive than last years.
Who else is able to _increase_ prices in technology? In spite of the
complaints about their products, for people who think they are good enough and
don’t think what competitors have to offer is good enough (in terms of
frustrations rather than in terms of features/price) there aren’t
alternatives, and Apple has a lot of pricing power.
------
Alex3917
I think the reasons the new phones aren't selling is that:
\- Anyone who already has a 6S or later can save money by not buying a new
phone. Before this year, the way phone contracts worked is that you were
paying for a new phone whether you bought one or not, so it would never make
sense not to buy one.
\- No B71 or 4x4 MIMO support, meaning that next year's phones are going to be
the ones you actually want, whereas these phones don't really offer any
advantages over the 6S.
So unless you dropped your phone or something anyway, I don't really see any
compelling reason to upgrade.
~~~
viraptor
> No B71 or 4x4 MIMO support
I'm not sure a statistically relevant number of people care or even know about
those technologies.
~~~
Alex3917
Doesn’t matter. If Tim Cook had come on stage and said that the phones this
year were going to get much better reception, and data speeds would be much
faster, then the phones would be selling. But instead the pitch was that the
graphics chip was 30% better or whatever, which no one cares about.
Just wait until next year, we’ll see more sales after these features are
added.
------
thisisit
This article is badly written and tangential. It starts off with weak monthly
sales charts of TSMC, Hon Hai and Largan Precision before turning to say well
the issue is OLED and Samsung. The same arguments are made again towards the
end of article.
Shortage of OLED has been a known variable for a long time. Back in 2010, I
bought a cheap ZTE phone released in UK as Orange San Francisco. Because of
the OLED shortage, the phone had two variations in UK - the OLED one and TFT
one. People had to look for special serial numbers to get the OLED model.
------
moogly
"Major threat"?
~~~
nihonde
This is just another cycle in the routine where an analyst predicts a dire
outcome for Apple to put some pressure on the share price, so the trading desk
can swoop in for the inevitable pop when the doom-and-gloom prediction turns
out to be completely wrong. Everyone knows that the name of the game is
betting against these dumb reports.
~~~
pducks32
You would make a great Finance reporter or even an economist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Maps up to five times more data efficient than Google Maps - iPhone1
http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/10/01/apple-maps-up-to-five-times-more-data-efficient-than-google-maps/
======
mtgx
The title is a little misleading. It may be more efficient compared to the 5
years old Google Maps app on iOS, but Google Maps for Android has been vector
based since December 16th, 2010, when they launched Google Maps 5.0.
[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-
googl...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-google-
maps-50-for.html)
Also don't forget Apple's Maps retrieve a lot less data than Google Maps,
since they don't actually have that data. Google Maps offers a lot more
information.
~~~
jonursenbach
The title isn't misleading because the test has nothing to do with Android.
They're comparing the two iOS map offerings, not cross-platform.
~~~
recoiledsnake
How would you infer that from the title? Bandwidth used by apps can and is
frequently constant across platforms.
Won't adding a "on iOS" at the end help clarify things?
~~~
jonursenbach
It's assumed. If you can't grasp that, I'm sorry.
~~~
mparlane
In the title two competing products are mentioned. Google Maps and Apple Maps.
The article is comparing iOS Google Maps to iOS Apple Maps. iOS Google Maps is
not the same as the product Google Maps.
If you can't grasp the difference of those two, I'm sorry.
~~~
lostsock
Not to mention the old iOS mapping app was actually written by Apple, it was
only using Google's tiles
------
jtchang
Of course you use less data when you don't need to download anything
important...like oh say, roads, important subway stations, or cities!
~~~
robert_nsu
Yeah, I'd rather wait 5 minutes for correct information instead of waiting 2
minutes for incorrect information.
~~~
Timmy_C
This is a false dichotomy. The data you're getting in iOS is not wholly
incorrect. You're right that there are some big holes. But, in apps like
foursquare, the speed gains are significant. Especially when you just need the
map to find what your geo coordinates are.
------
ftwinnovations
Apple maps has caused me plenty of headaches so far, but hearing this
definitely pleases me. I remember traveling lost in Beijing and just ripping
through my AT&T international data plan using maps to get back to my hotel.
Sure, with Apple maps I won't even _find_ my hotel, but at least I'll do it
five times more efficiently!
~~~
ghshephard
The reports that I've seen suggest Apple has better map tile/POI detail in
China than Google does. China is one of the places that Apple comes out ahead
of Google in terms of Map Data Quality.
------
ghshephard
This would be an assessment over the application and the efficiency of using
vectors - thought it is interesting to hear that the satellite maps show a win
as well.
When I'm traveling internationally, and have roaming disabled, I use Google
Maps in "Standard View" very cautiously - keenly aware of that $0.15/megabyte
charge I'm racking up.
So, for those cities that do have decent road layouts, routing, and POI
information - this actually is a nice little benefit.
------
highwind
Can anyone compare this to the Google Maps on Android? Downloading vector
based map will obviously use less data than raster map image (different one at
different zoom level nonetheless). I don't see how this is much of a news.
~~~
ghshephard
It's news to anyone with an iPhone that has to pay for their data when
downloading maps @ $0.15/megabyte when traveling internationally. I've racked
up $20-$30 just using the maps application on a single trip, so this is
positive news for me.
------
mapgrep
Customer: It's not much of a cheese shop, is it?
Owner: Finest in the district!
Customer: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.
Owner: Well, it's so clean, sir!
Customer: It's certainly uncontaminated by cheese....
<http://www.minderella.com/words/cheeseshop.htm>
------
chaz
Google Maps for Android has an offline cache, which is a huge advantage,
especially for those traveling in subways without a data connection. Would
love to see that show up on iOS.
------
lilc
I find it ironic that Apple is using RPC-encoded Google protocol buffers for
communication in their Maps product.
~~~
sli
I'd like to hear more about that. Care to elaborate?
~~~
lilc
During the last XCode beta, I was playing around with the iPhone simulator and
using a proxy I saw the server would respond to geocoding requests with an
'application/x-protobuf' header. That header has since been removed, but the
data is still encoded the same (comparing the same request before and after).
I was going to try to figure out the RPC encoding method Apple's using, but I
lost motivation after reading that they are rate-limiting the API, making it
less useful to me.
------
DigitalSea
I guess, it's a lot easier to be data efficient... When you have next to no
map data to retrieve in the first place. I am tired of hearing about Apple's
Maps, whether it's good or bad, everyone can agree (even Apple themselves
agree) that the maps application is sub-par and finding nice things to say
about it doesn't change the fact that if you want to get somewhere the new
Apple Maps can only promise to get you within 80km of the location you want to
be in (if you're lucky), not to mention the missing landmarks, weird black and
white colouring of some areas and missing roads.
Let's not detract away from the real problem here. Lets see if Apple Maps are
as data efficient in 5 years when they catch up to half the level that Google
Maps are currently at provided they work day and night to get to that stage.
~~~
zarify
No, but I'm sure we _can_ all agree that map quality and POI quantity/accuracy
will vary significantly by area.
Let's not detract from the real problem here: the lack of sea monsters and
other mythical beasts in all smartphone mapping offerings (sure Google
included them in their 8 bit maps, but they tried to pass that off as a joke).
------
ChrisLTD
That's great, but I'm sure most people would rather spend more data in
exchange for more accurate and complete maps.
Another thing to remember: with LTE larger maps wouldn't even take much longer
to download.
------
lurkinggrue
In other news: Apple Maps missing 5 times the data that Google offers.
------
capo
For the umpteenth time:
_There was never a Google Maps app on the iPhone, there was an Apple app
powered by Google's data_.
The correct way of stating this is that Apple's iOS6 maps app is more data
efficient than previous versions. As for the main reason the current app is
more efficient is that it relies on vector graphics instead of image tiles, a
technique Google have been using on Android for nearly 2 years:
[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-
googl...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-google-
maps-50-for.html)
Another Android maps feature lets users select areas to cache offline, which I
imagine saves even more data (it auto-caches frequented areas):
[http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/06/go-offline-
with-g...](http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/06/go-offline-with-google-
maps-for-android.html)
That feature is also worth mentioning for when Apple duplicates it and some
people try to convince themselves that it was Apple's idea.
~~~
taligent
Calm down. Everyone is just calling it Google Maps out of simplicity.
And yes it is vector on Android which was rumored to be one of the reasons
Apple even started on this whole maps adventure. Because Google wasn't willing
to license the vector data to give Android a competitive advantage.
~~~
capo
I'm just a bit bothered by this phenomena of discovering features on the
iPhone that were present on Android for ages and then attributing them to
Apple: the notifications shade, voice input, voice actions, the ability to
answer phone calls with canned texts, and now maps among many other things.
Many in the press keep omitting the fact that Android did it first, which I
think is important in this climate where Apple is very litigious regarding
this stuff and the press keeps touting their originality while simultaneously
dismissing other innovators.
~~~
taligent
I'm just a bit bothered by this phenomena of discovering features on Android
that were present on Palm phones for ages and then attributing them to
Android: voice input, voice actions, the ability to answer phone calls with
canned texts, and now maps among many other things.
You have heard of Palm, right ?
~~~
zarify
Fairly sure one of my old dumbphones had canned texts for phone calls.
One of the good things about Apple is precisely what lot of people here are
complaining about: they tell you what you can do with your phone and why it's
neat. Samsung have been getting on board wih this of late, with their Apple
mockery ads, where they actually advertise features to the general public.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What happened to Kite? - rhys91
Aside from securities concerns from a few, Kite seemed like a really promising tool that I'd love to include into my workflow. Their blog and Twitter both seem abandoned. Is something still coming?
======
mmutuyu
Also would like to know more. I've been waiting for months to test it out but
never get any more updates.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999) - YeGoblynQueenne
http://www.kibble.net/magic/
======
stephengillie
Some time ago, I tried to recreate a few basic Powershell commands as MTG
cards.[0] Try/Catch [1] is one of my favorites - it's designed to "pre-
counter" counterspells.
[0] [https://imgur.com/a/4sa6v](https://imgur.com/a/4sa6v)
[1] _Reveal 2 cards from your hand. Choose 1 and pay its casting cost, then
cast it as normal. If it fails to resolve, reset the game state to before the
card was cast, then cast the second card as normal._
[https://i.imgur.com/E2cbdEo.png](https://i.imgur.com/E2cbdEo.png)
~~~
kace91
>reset the game state to before the card was cast, then cast the second card
as normal. [https://i.imgur.com/E2cbdEo.png](https://i.imgur.com/E2cbdEo.png)
wouldn't that make the card useless?
play cardA -> get countered ->state reset -> play card B -> B gets countered
(because your opponent recovers the counter and untapped cards, due to the
reset).
~~~
Qworg
State reset isn't the right term. You want something like "Reveal two cards
from your hand. Pay the casting cost for one. If it successfully resolves,
exile the second card. If it does not, put the second card into play as if it
were cast."
~~~
ggggtez
As it turns out, that also doesn't work because you can't just put something
into play or it would skip some triggers and activate others it wouldn't
normally. So the code is statefully different if it's in the "catch" instead
of the "try"
------
shiado
I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was
how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I
even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and
your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game
much more enjoyable and consistent.
~~~
stephengillie
This game mechanic (mana burn) was removed when the rules were refactored
across the past 20 years. Mana (edit:) simply disappears at the end of each
stage.
~~~
BookmarkSaver
He's not talking about mana burn, that was never really a problem except for
extremely niche combo decks. He's talking about when you draw lands/mana
producers for 5 turns in a row after starting with a heavy mana hand. That is
"mana flooding".
~~~
stephengillie
Oh, that's either an issue of an unbalanced deck, or insufficient
randomization.
My best decks started with the "rule of 1/3", and added/trimmed 1-2 lands to
optimize. The "rule of 1/3" is that 1/3 of the deck should be lands, for best
land draw. So a 60 card deck would start with 20 lands, and maybe swap 1-2
forests for elves in an elf deck.
And from a recent card randomizing thread, it takes 7 "riffles" to fully
randomize a deck.
~~~
ufo
20 lands is a little low and is only appropriate if you have a very aggressive
deck, with very few cards costing 3 or more mana.
Conventional wisdom suggests going for around 40% lands. So 24ish lands for 60
card decks, 17ish for a 40 card deck.
~~~
stephengillie
My "blue bertha" decks were 40% to 45% lands. They were usually 100+ cards and
consisted almost exclusively of 6+ casting cost creatures. These were only
used for fun, mostly for other players to test their new decks against, never
in any competition.
Having more than 35% lands leads to the very mana flooding complained about in
the root comment.
~~~
ufo
For a more detailed analysis on land percentages I'd refer to Frank Karsten
(scroll down to the conclusion if you want just the numbers):
[https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-
do-y...](https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-
to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/)
With 35% lands (21/60) you are likely to end up mana-screwed (not enough
lands) unless you build your deck to match the low land count. For a generic
rule of thumb I think it is better to recommend a bit more lands than that.
------
_raoulcousins
For more recent Magic + math writing, see articles by Frank Karsten. Magic the
Gathering Hall of Famer and PhD in game theory.
[https://www.channelfireball.com/tag/frank-karstens-magic-
mat...](https://www.channelfireball.com/tag/frank-karstens-magic-math/)
~~~
ahoy
Karsten made me better at this game, he's a gem.
------
yanowitz
Any discussion of Magic: the Gathering on Hacker News should come with an
ObLink to how it's Turing complete
[https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html](https://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html)
For more accidentally Turing complete systems, see
[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complet...](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html)
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I know this proof but I'm not happy with it. It goes out of its way to setup a
Turing machine (though not a very obvious one) using M:tG cards- however, that
doesn't prove that the M:tG _game_ is Turing-complete. It proves that the
specific cards chosen can be used to create a Turing machine under a subset of
the game's rules, which is not quite the same thing.
For a more complete proof one needs to take into account the fact that the
text printed on existing cards is a derivation from some grammar - the grammar
of the M:tG "ability text" (there is no official name for the game's
language). In other words, the ability text on existing cards is no the whole
ability text language. The complete language is a superset of the strings on
existing cards. To prove the game as Turing complete, one needs to prove this
language is Turing complete- not a subset of its strings.
To give an analogy, think of the game's rules as the JVM, the ability text
grammar as the syntax of the Java language and the actually printed cards as
some arbitrarily chosen set of Java programs. You can perhaps put together a
Turing machine by stitching together those Java programs, but that will not
tell you anything about the Turing completeness of the language itself.
Instead, the straightforward proof is to use the Java syntax to write a Turing
machine and run it on the JVM.
There is, of course a slight problem with taking this approach for M:tG; that
the game's rules are very well defined (there's the Comprehensive Rules that
go a long way towards resolving any ambiguity) but there is no full
specification for the ability text language itself. So the M:tG machine is not
well defined.
Then again, it's easy to derive at least a subset of the rules of ability
text. For instance, if you see a card that says "Destroy target Elf creature",
and you know that "Elf" is a "creature" type, you can substitute "Elf" for any
creature type and generate any number of very probably correct ability text
sentences- "Destroy target Goblin creature", "Destroy target Cat creature",
"Destroy target Pirate creature" etc [1].
In this way it may be possible to generate the appropriate ability text
expressions to construct a Turing machine- and prove that the M:tG game is
Turing-complete.
________________
[1] Actually the ability to generate arbitrarily many well-formed expressions
in a language is a hallmark of Turing-completeness. If we can't assume that
the ability text on existing, printed cards is not the whole language, then
Turing completeness becomes much harder to argue for.
~~~
rcxdude
For most MtG players, the game rules are the sum of the game rules and the set
of cards which are legal to play. Including other potential card text is not
relevant, or at least at that point you are playing an unofficial variant of
the game. Also, I think constructing a turing machine just under the
comprehensive rules with only ability text is a very simple exercise (even
exluding trivial cases like an ability text which simply instructs you to
evaluate a turing machine as part of the execution). You could probably print
a set of cards to make a usable assembly language, no need for any turing
tarpits, which is another reason why no-one is particularly interested in this
interpretation of the question.
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> For most MtG players, the game rules are the sum of the game rules and the
set of cards which are legal to play. Including other potential card text is
not relevant, or at least at that point you are playing an unofficial variant
of the game.
I dont' think there is any other language for which we assume that the only
strings that belong to it are the sum of its printed texts (which in the case
of M:tG ability text are printed cards). I don't see why we should make this
assumption for ability text. That's not how languages work, in general.
Note that all this has nothing to do with "official" status, or the acceptance
of specific strings by players of the game, or anyone. Either ability text is
some unique construct, the likes of which has never been seen before, or it's
a language like any other and it can be analysed in the same way as any other
language.
~~~
rcxdude
Because when you play mtg, you don't manipulate the words on the cards, you
manipulate the cards (well, some cards can manipulate ability text, but not
arbitrarily). They are the fundamental unit of the game, not the ability text
language itself. This does not have a great analogue with other languages.
Anyway, you can analyse the language used to create ability text itself, but I
think this is a far less interesting question.
------
claudiulodro
How is the MTG scene these days? I spent my childhood through high school
obsessively playing the game, reading these sorts of breakdowns, and spending
all my money. Then life got in the way and I haven't played in about 10 years.
I remember Friday Night Magic used to be a wholesome way to spend a Friday
evening, and you got a lot of entertainment for the $5 entry fee.
~~~
brandnewlow
The latest set, Dominaria, is the best in years. Richard Garfield worked on
it.
Magic: Online is slowly being bled out by Wizards in favor of their new
Hearthstone-like digital client.
That said, the best way to play today is Vintage Cube drafts on Cockatrice.
Free. High level of play. The best cards. There’s almost always a game going.
~~~
lvspiff
>> Vintage Cube drafts on Cockatrice
What/where can I find this? never heard of it and never had much fun/luck with
magic online but would love to be able to play online
~~~
brandnewlow
[https://cockatrice.us/](https://cockatrice.us/)
Install. Log on. Make a deck and join a game or jump into a draft. There's two
Dominaria drafts filling up right now. There's no rules engine and it's a bit
janky at first, but you can play magic against a real human 24/7 for free.
~~~
brandnewlow
Also, the cockatrice drafting community relies on opensource apps like
[http://dr4ft.info](http://dr4ft.info) to run the actual drafts. There's
always room for improvement and anyone can host a fork. It'd be great to get
more HNers tinkering with them.
[https://github.com/dr4fters/dr4ft](https://github.com/dr4fters/dr4ft)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Entrepreneurship Programs for Engineers Fail - betocmn
https://hbr.org/2018/05/why-entrepreneurship-programs-for-engineers-fail
======
taneq
> Entrepreneurs are known for their creativity and risk tolerance; engineers,
> mathematicians, and health care workers typically aren’t.
Lost me in the first line:
1) The moment an engineer takes a risk and starts a company we stop calling
them an engineer and start calling them an entrepreneur. If your job title is
"engineer" then you by definition haven't taken that risk, but that doesn't
mean that a lot of entrepreneurs don't come from an engineering background. (I
believe the term hereabouts is 'technical co-founder'.)
2) Creativity is vital to engineering if you're building anything remotely new
or different. Just because the product of that creativity is useful doesn't
mean it isn't creative.
~~~
carlmr
Yeah, 100% agreed. Engineering and CS are way more creative than any business
school will ever understand. Obviously this article wasn't written by someone
who knows what he's talking about.
The risk profile might be a fair point. If you look at engineering and CS
salaries though, it's logical to take less risks. Because the low risk option
pays a lot more than in other fields. This makes any higher risk option
inherently less attractive.
~~~
humanrebar
There's risk in managing an engineering career, though you're correct that
there's a floor on that risk. Engineers, especially early in their careers,
need to manage their personal development. I often talk to developers that
have been writing terrible enterprise products for the same company for a
decade. They're typically underpaid and underqualified to find a better
position elsewhere.
One way to look at that is as poor risk management. Having marketable skills
is mitigating risk that the job pool will not be a good fit for your skills
next time you are looking for a job. Switching jobs periodically is generally
more risk than not, and it's basically required these days since market rates
for good software engineers grows a lot faster than employers are comfortable
with. Most business models do not survive 10%+ growth in payroll every year.
------
spyckie2
Hidden behind an unfair title and a distractingly provocative first line is
actually a research paper, which the article also seems to brush off as not
really important either.
The research paper appears to have interviewed STEM entrepreneur programs
asking about their expectation vs reality for students to participate or enter
into entrepreneurial activities/careers.
After molding the programs to promote entrepreneurship heavily, the response
from the students to be entrepreneurs are underwhelming. The article posits
that the risk taking spirit of entrepreneurship is not easy to teach and
suggests to screen for it when accepting students. It also suggests curriculum
improvements - teach the logistics of how to start a company in one class, and
identifying entrepreneurial opportunities in another. Finally, it suggests
focusing on a few core classes rather than developing many broad classes.
The answer to the title is more on the lines of "because your program can be
run better" than it is "because STEM majors are less risk averse than normal",
as there's no solid evidence presented for the latter other than anecdotal
observation.
You can make the counter-argument that the entire population is risk averse,
not just STEM majors, and it's unknown whether or not STEM majors command a
statistically significant difference when compared to the normal population.
~~~
fergie
Its also reasonable to assume that staff and students who choose to _study_
entrepreneurship are less interested in actually _becoming_ entrepreneurs.
------
montrose
Occam's Razor suggests the reason "entrepreneurship programs" for engineers
fail is not because engineers are too timid, but because all such programs
fail.
The way to learn how to start a startup is by doing it. So the right way to
teach "entrepreneurship," to the extent it can be taught, is something like Y
Combinator, not a college class.
~~~
bjelkeman-again
I am in two minds over this. I skipped college after one year and went
straight into an IT job as a sysadmin. Seven years later I started working for
a startup and then proceeded to do startups ever since.
There would have been a bunch of things that would have been very valuable to
learn in school to be a better entrepreneur, but I think I haven’t really seen
programmes that take the right approach. Successful entrepreneurs don’t
generally set out to be teachers. I don’t think I would enjoy it. Advising
startups, maybe that would be better. Which brings us to something like YC.
------
rmason
Kind of amazing to me how history goes in cycles. When I started as an
entrepreneur in the nineties it was much easier for an MBA to raise venture
capital than an engineer. If by some chance a coder did raise money he'd be
replaced by an MBA the second he found a repeatable business model.
But after the crash the VC's figured out they got better results mentoring a
founding engineer to become a CEO than going the MBA route. Now for some
reason Harvard wants to reverse this trend? Doesn't make any sense at all to
me.
~~~
kchoudhu
Why would this be surprising? Harvard mints MBAs, and those MBAs donate money
to Harvard when they hit it big.
Obviously Harvard is going to do its level best to make sure its graduates
have the whip hand in industry.
~~~
QML
The starkest contrast between the CS building and the business school on
campus isn't the way students dress or the conversations they have -- its how
much their alumni donate. And let me say, CS does not match up in that regard.
------
jadedhacker
Do you really want the people building your bridges to have the same attitude
as a FB executive? Move fast and break things indeed.
It's really not at all clear that entrepreneurial value creation is anything
other than finding ways to bilk people out of money while the sciences and
technical arts have a long tradition of slow methodical work that leads to
transformations in the underlying substrate of society.
Operationalizing these techniques is important, but let's say you trust in
markets to take obvious opportunities and run with them. The entrepreneurs are
essentially interchangeable parts, one of them will win. Much like how little
we care about whether one news organization is an hour ahead of another, do we
care that one company is slightly faster than another at cornering the market?
Not really, except as sport.
------
neokantian
I do not think it is just engineers. Anybody raised for 15 years being told
what to work on by their teachers, is not easily going to set his own goals.
He has been conditioned to waiting for someone else to do that.
The ones more likely to overcome this bias, are students who have a close
relationship with an entrepreneurial parent or other role model. They may pick
up the mentality of setting their own goals.
Furthermore, their peers may not be entrepreneurial either.
They also need to get used to the idea that there rarely definite yes/no
answers to business questions. Real-life questions do not often come out of a
book.
------
tlb
Although I have an engineering degree, I don't fit the stereotype described. I
only like to work on things where the outcome is uncertain.
I believe you can't change that characteristic of people much. Rather than
trying to teach people who aren't entrepreneurial to be entrepreneurial, it's
probably better to teach tech skills to entrepreneurial people.
------
triviatise
Im skeptical that risk tolerance has much to do with entrepreneurship. I think
a better factor is the desire to do any crap boring job that needs to be done
even if you dont want to do it and to keep going in the face of setbacks and
failures.
I realized as a developer Im virtually 100% certain of solving any technical
problem. As a manager or an entrepreneur there are many problems, such as
people problems or market problems, where you simply cant solve it. Often
times you might have solved it but you cant be sure.
Also engineering has lots of fun purely intellectual logic and technical
problems to solve. Building a business has lots of pure grind problems that
dont take much intellectual horsepower but require lots of emotional fortitude
and the ability to constantly switch from boring task to boring task, or to do
the same boring task over and over.
Running payroll every two weeks, balancing books, opening mail, going to
networking meetings, kissing up to people, training people, interviewing
people, walking around and just talking to the team, talking to vendors,
reviewing customer/vendor/employee contracts etc etc.
With regard to failures. Here are some of mine: having a star performer leave,
laying people off during a recession at christmas, not being sure you can make
payroll, losing a big client, having to fire a good friend.
------
seem_2211
Nothing more entertaining than hearing business professors tout
entrepreneurship when they've by and large spent their entire lives living and
working in bureaucratic institutions. Business theory and business practice
are a world apart. Look at these two authors for example, they wrote a good
article, but they've both been business school professors for 7 and 10 years
respectively.
That said, I had one lecturer who 'got it' and was the reason I studied
communications as an undergraduate. I believe he wrote the second half of the
course in the break between the semester halves (apparently lecturers are
supposed to do that about 1 year in advance). I learnt more from him than
almost every other business professor, mostly due to the fact he just didn't
really care about the bureaucracy of the management school (I believe he had
tenure). I asked him one day what he studied for his PhD and it turns out he
studied 19th Century Scottish Poetry.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. The guy was a total liability from
every box you can check. But that's why he was good.
------
tim333
>Blended entrepreneurial programs (BEPs) are attempting to answer this need by
merging university-level entrepreneurial education with discipline-focused
degrees in STEAM fields.
I was involved in some business education from the engineering department and
it was pretty bad. Mostly academics talking about so and so's theory of the
firm and no real business experience whatsoever.
------
jonex
I thought they were talking about preparing engineers for starting companies.
In that analysis I think it makes sense that risk aversion is a factor,
although, considering the odds of 90% failure* that are often reported, I'm
not sure that we should talk about risk as much as lack of opportunity
seeking.
It's no surprise that many engineers, often looking forward to a prosperous
career, don't see a need to seek opportunities with relatively low chances for
an upside. This can't be compared to the fact that an engineer designing a
bridge has to be very careful.
Then I read the last line: "BEPs that successfully match students’
entrepreneurial attributes and development stand to help meet firms’
increasing demand for entrepreneurial graduates." And I'm no longer sure what
they mean, do they see entrepreneurship as just another MBA, but for risk
takers?
* Even if compensating for some factors can make this less, you are in general more likely to fail than succeed with starting a company.
------
aaavl2821
I started an entrepreneurship program for life sci PhDs after seeing the
shortfalls of existing programs and agree with a few points of this, namely
that these programs should expose students to entrepreneurship but not force
it on them -- not everyone wants to do a startup, and that opportunity
recognition as a skill can be detached from entrepreneurship more broadly
However, at least in biotech a big reason for students disillusionment is that
the programs aren't that great -- if the teachers don't have experience
starting biotech companies, it's really hard to teach students what a good
opportunity looks like or how to run a startup
------
watwut
> In addition, we found that students who had enrolled in BEPs sometimes had
> little interest in pursuing entrepreneurial ventures. For example, a
> doctoral student in a pharmacy BEP said that while she had initially been
> attracted to the entrepreneurial nature of the program, her final enrollment
> decision came down to more practical matters such as financial aid,
> proximity to home, and the program’s strong record of job placement.
A student attracted to entrepreneurship eventually made decision based on
practical rational consideration and that is somehow framed as bad?
------
tonyedgecombe
>Entrepreneurs are known for their creativity and risk tolerance
I wonder about the idea that entrepreneurs are more risk tolerant. I've known
quite a few over the years and the all seem fairly conservative in their
decisions. Personally I'm not very risk tolerant at all.
------
dctoedt
I wonder if I'm the only one irked by the arts crowd's efforts to skim off
STEM-education funding by claiming it should be STEAM.
------
iovrthoughtthis
I'll let you know how it goes.
I'm starting a new one with my students.
~~~
sus_007
Mind sharing what's it about, at least ? :D
------
rumcajz
Not sure this world needs any more risk taking.
------
aj7
I can simplify things. Entrepreneurship is about MAKING MONEY. Pure and
simple. It’s not about ANYTHING else. It’s not about accuracy, elegance of
design, creativity, new science, perfecting things, or any other boring
nonsense. It’s about MAKING MONEY. As such, a certain innate greed enters the
picture. The entrepreneur wishes to be rich, not right. So entrepreneurship is
a personality, not a skill. Certainly you could teach useful things to budding
entrepreneurs, but not entrepreneurship.
~~~
neokantian
Entrepreneurship is always about achieving a non-financial goal. "The best
furniture in the world", "A PC on every desk", and so on.
Making money is just a speculative side effect of doing something right.
Worse, in that context, running after money pretty much is the best guarantee
not to make any.
Just think of it. A customer will not hand over his money to you, just because
you run so hard after it. He will give money because he also believes that
your furniture is the best in the world.
The situation is obviously different for an established corporation. They are
not about producing the best furniture in the world, but about maximally
milking their existing cash cow in the furniture industry. So, yes, for them
the bottom line is everything.
Still, corporations also die with their cash cow. Bottom-line milking only
works for a while. It will work, until it doesn't anymore.
~~~
mlboss
All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second. Making the best
furniture or PC does not make it a successful business. You have to do it with
within budget, you have to take care of sales/marketing, smooch the investors,
motivate employees, risk you health/relationships. No body takes so much pain
without a financial reward.
~~~
neokantian
> All businesses are about money. Everything else comes second.
That does not explain why Facebook did not make money for the first nine years
(2004-2012) of their existence. They were not worried about that. It also does
not explain why Amazon still does not seek to make one dollar in profits.
Amazon has not made profits for almost 20 years. Jef Bezos is simply not
interested in that.
Both examples still utterly destroyed their merely profit-seeking competitors.
Successful entrepreneurs (Such as e.g. Steve Jobs) are evangelical. They
staunchly believe in something. They also manage to convert staff and users to
their belief by successfully evangelizing their views.
A mere money grubber will never succeed in doing that.
What is the mere money grubber going to tell the world? That he wants money
and that the world should give him money? Seriously, what would be the message
of a money grubber? Why would anybody believe him? They obviously won't.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: cashay.me – translating time at work to cost of items - jsomau
http://www.cashay.me/
Just a toy I put together while learning AngularJS.
======
jsomau
This is a toy I put together while learning AngularJS.
The idea: People struggle to associate the time spent behind their desk with
the money that gets deposited in their account. Subsequently, they often make
rash purchasing decisions.
In case it wasn't clear how to make it work:
1. Enter your salary (don't worry - not tracked)
2. Notice the counter has started
3. When you reach $1, the boxes on the right will light up
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Profits = Freedom - whyleym
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2223-profits-freedom
======
pchristensen
This is typical of what drives me crazy about 37signals. They say several
things that are true but then claim that there's a causal relationship between
them.
Take this post.
Premise: Profits = Freedom.
Results:
Company runs without debt: unrelated to profits. Profitable companies can use
debt as a tool, and they cite their lack of credit history as causing a
problem! Debt free is not the same as profitable.
We trust our employees: this has everything to do with hiring and nothing to
do with profitability. They can offer the benefits they list _because they're
profitable_ , but profit doesn't make them trust their employees.
We speak our minds: this is because they have controlling interest in the
company, not because they don't have debt. Again, no relation.
This would be confusing as hell for someone that tried to build their business
based on the advice in this post.
~~~
FreeRadical
The 37signals posts often seem rushed.
~~~
aswanson
Probably busy counting profits.
~~~
orblivion
Or not worry about losing a little profit here and there for speaking their
mind.
------
Periodic
I found it amusing that the <title> of the page is:
Profits = Freedom - (37signals)
Which is the same as saying:
Profits + 37signals = Freedom
Doesn't sound very helpful to us who don't have 37signals.
~~~
alexkay
Could be fixed by using an —
------
smakz
Rather fluffy article but one point I'd like to raise is that it is odd for a
consistently profitable company to avoid debt.
Debt can be a good thing, it can help finance growth or reduce monthly costs
to increase cash flow. For the same reasons there could be justifiably good
financial reason to get a mortgage even though you could pay for the house in
cash, relating to tax benefits and other incentives.
Once you are consistently profitable, or have a high paying job that affords
significant personal cash flow, you might be inclined to forgo all debt
entirely, but on the other hand once you are in this scenario you are the
least likely to default on a debt and have the capacity to take bigger risks
by borrowing without ruining either your credit or causing an immense about of
stress.
It's great I guess that they don't take the debt approach, but it's not
necessarily a positive thing, and I bet I could look at their financial
statements and see tons of opportunity to leverage debt that would free up
cash flow so they could be making better use of their capital.
~~~
portman
>> _"it is odd for a consistently profitable company to avoid debt"_
It's also probably not true, unless 37Signals uses their debit card for every
random purchase they make.
A credit card is a perfect example of why debt is not categorically bad. If
you pay off the debt within 30 days, you have a 0% interest rate. You also
probably earned some kind of rebate, airmiles, or loyalty points. And you
probably saved time over trying to pay for the product using cash or check.
Purchasing with a credit card is a small example of how intelligent use of
debt can be a wise business decision.
------
bonsaitree
I think the main issues here are ones of capital scale and efficiency. I
believe 37Signals' tenets work well for low headcount, extremely capital-
efficient businesses such as software development, hedge fund management, or
specialty insurance.
Unfortunately, there are many enterprises (drug research, agriculture,
smelting, office construction, theme parks, waste processing, private space
exploration, etc.) which are fundamentally dependent on large amounts of
capital both during the start-up phase as well as to ensure daily continuity
of operations.
Most of these capital intensive business also demand a reasonably large staff
to support these daily workflows.
With a larger staff comes the increasing probability that one bad apple will
be hired. Just one bad apple can bring an entire enterprise down without a
reasonable set of security and trust-limiting thresholds on capital
expenditures and workflow control. The Union Carbide chemical spill in Bhopal
and the Barings bank collapse come immediately to mind.
A prominent COO once told me that for every 100 hires, he expected to pick-up
1 bad apple every 2 years. In his context a "bad apple" was someone whom, over
time, would repeatedly and deliberately attempt to criminally defraud,
sabotage, or publicly discredit the company.
With those odds, basic human nature, and capital-intensive business economics,
it's not hard to see why these enterprise's mores on debt and individual trust
run counter to 37Signals' philosophy.
------
gridspy
I read this as - "If you want real freedom, you don't just want to run a
company, you want to run a PROFITABLE company"
The point being that running Twitter isn't freedom until Twitter doesn't need
to constantly ask others to pay the bills.
~~~
_delirium
You need more than _just_ profits, though; you also need all the equity. If
you run a profitable company but are beholden to investors, you still don't
have complete freedom, though they might give you more leeway than if you were
losing money.
------
InclinedPlane
Only on the web is completely stone sober run of the mill stock business
advice considered revolutionary and "out there". 37signals' advice is pretty
straightforward: build something worthwhile, charge money for it, make a
profit, grow based on your profit not on some hypothetical ideal, etc. Mundane
business advice in any other industry.
~~~
axod
There are millions of web businesses making extremely big profits - from
advertising, leadgen, and even a few like 37signals from subscriptions
37s advice about charging is still quite a niche model for the web though. But
I'll resist the temptation to start another 'get users to pay' vs 'advertising
debate.
Grow based on your profit isn't really 'run of the mill stock business advice'
though. Some businesses take time to build. Some require a few years
investment. Some can be profitable straight away. One size doesn't fit all.
If you want the lowest risk sure fire way to make money online though, it's
certainly "Find a niche" -> "Create useful content" -> "Promote" -> "Monetize
through advertising".
The other thing is that in the several autobiographies I've read, people who
create really cool stuff - for example Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Duncan
Bannatyne... They're _always_ in debt. They're always running from one thing
to the next by the skin of their teeth trying to get the next thing financed.
Investing all their profit and more into building and growing. But they're
also workaholics as well. So what do they know ;)
~~~
dirkstoop
I'd say the more sure-fire way is: “Create something useful” -> “Charge for
it”.
Now there's always the risk that nobody wants what you made (see fendale's
comment), but lets assume for a sec that that's hard either way. Here's a very
dry analysis of the path to money for both:
Advertising model:
\- Create something useful
\- Find an audience
\- Find advertisers
\- Get advertisers to pay you
Product model:
\- Create something useful
\- Find an audience
\- Get audience to pay you
That's at least one less step in the ‘product model’. You can even argue that
to properly execute the advertising model you'll actually need one more step
in between: “Create an ad placement strategy” (“Create” as in “design and
implement” in all cases here).
Getting money from the people who experience the value of the “useful thing”
sounds a lot more direct (and more efficient, which correlates to a better
return) than getting the people who value the attention of the people who
value the “useful thing” to pay you.
I don't have any first-hand experience with the ad-supported model, but I
seriously question whether it's a/the sure-fire way of making money online.
~~~
axod
Problem is, people expect things to be free. By restricting yourself only to
people willing to pay money, you've cut out most of the internet population.
You might be restricting yourself to a small business.
There's also a heap of other reasons... for example, if you create X, and sell
it to users, you're only selling one thing. By advertising other peoples
products, you can be selling 1,000 different things. The chances of success
are vastly increased. Also, if you sell directly, your users are likely only
to purchase once from you. If you run advertising, they are more likely to
generate continuous revenue for you, from multiple products.
~~~
gnaritas
> Problem is, people expect things to be free.
Businesses don't.
> By restricting yourself only to people willing to pay money, you've cut out
> most of the internet population.
No, you've cut out freeloaders who expect something for nothing, people you
generally don't want anyway. This isn't cutting people out, it's filtering out
bad prospects. People who want stuff free are the worst customers, I'd much
prefer those who are willing to pay for something they find valuable to them.
You can avoid a lot of scaling problems by only focusing on paying customers
and there's no shortage of paying customers if you build something of real
value.
~~~
axod
If you want to do business to business, then sure. Personally I don't
particularly enjoy that.
Also the point about 'avoiding scaling problems' is sort of funny. You can
certainly avoid scaling problems if you don't try and grow big.
~~~
gnaritas
Growing big and growing profitable are entirely different things. If you get
profitable without getting big you do gain the benefit of not being forced to
scale on borrowed money. The goal of business isn't to be big, it's to make
money.
~~~
axod
Getting profitable is easy. It's the getting big bit which is hard.
The fact is, it's often easier especially online, to solve the hard problem
(get big) first. Once you've done that getting profitable is a walk in the
park.
~~~
gnaritas
> Getting profitable is easy. It's the getting big bit which is hard.
Exactly my point, and since the point of most business is to make money that
should be the obvious first goal. Getting big is for dreamers, it's a lottery,
getting profitable is the sensible goal. Get big later, or risk failing
chasing wild dreams.
------
mark_l_watson
Right on. Surprised to hear the criticisms in these comments since this seems
like such basic advice: don't have debt, work in a context of trust, and the
desire to have everyone do good work.
Not having debt is fundamental for real freedom. Not having debt is worth
giving up some material crap for.
Trust people. Make adjustments on an individual basis if it is ever necessary.
We all want to do good work that has a positive effect on the world and make
money to support people we love. Try to set up an environment so people can do
their best work.
------
skmurphy
From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171567> by redorb in response an
earlier 37signals post at <http://37signals.com/svn/posts/979-quit-your-job>
"Life is too short to work at a job you hate,
but everyone has to do something someone else is willing to pay
them for." Sid Emmert
------
andrewcooke
i'm curious no-one here (or in the article) name checks amartya sen -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen>
the concept of "feedom" (and the idea that being able to maximise it is a good
thing) is very similar to his "capabilities" -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach>
------
lionheart
Lack of debt might be good, but lack of credit history is bad.
As an individual, even if you don't ever want to get into debt and pay for all
your purchases up-front, you have to make an effort to build your credit
history. If you don't have a good one a lot of things completely unrelated to
debt become a lot harder in our society.
Same thing applies to companies. Possibly even more.
~~~
ThomPete
This of course assume that credit history is both good and the only way to do
it.
In Denmark it's the other way around. You don't get a credit history you get
marked as a bad payer. In other words you are not forced to take on debt to
show that you can pay your rent instead you are checked to see if you are a
bad payer.
I have lived in the US and had to build a credit history to rent a flat. I
never understood why this is good for anyone but the banks.
~~~
patio11
Thom, you are collateral damage from a rational decision that an American with
no history has something to hide. Their defaults are _measurably_
stratospheric compared to folks with positive history. There are nondefault
risks such as property damage or running a meth lab, which will cost the
landlord five figures to clean if it does not raze the property. Apologies for
the inconvenience.
~~~
ThomPete
You take the system that you know and assume that this is the only way to do
it.
I have just explained how it can also be done and is done and run perfectly
well.
Make of it as you want.
------
tmsh
Perhaps one assumption in this business philosophy is that you have to be
really clear to everyone about why they're being given certain liberties and
why it's important.
The only way I could see people not 'acting like adults' is if they think that
by extension certain other things are allowed, which aren't -- by virtue of
not being mutually beneficial. DHH and Jason Fried are pretty forceful
personalities. It's hard to imagine them not being clear about why they're
managing the way they do.
Would it ever backfire without clear, forceful personalities guiding it?
Refreshing to hear about anyway. Investment in the confidence of employees via
trusting them seems like always a good investment.
And ditto what other people have said here about the advice being somewhat
basic. But on the other hand, the investment strategies of say Warren Buffett
are incredibly basic as well. Basic != overvalue
------
jswinghammer
I enjoyed this article and because I know David reads this I wanted to suggest
the book "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises. It seems like his discussion of
profits in that book might be pretty interesting with your line of thought.
I saw in an interview that John Mackey of Whole Foods got a lot out of reading
it for what's that worth.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Action>
------
anigbrowl
This is so obvious as to be trite.
_It’s these supposedly crazy things that make me not want to give up
37signals for anything._
I'm guessing a sufficiently large buyout offer will change your mind on that
right quick.
------
mattew
I love this snippet from the comments, referring to the fact that 37signals is
beholden to their customers.
"Everyone has a boss. There is no escape."
~~~
tjogin
Their customers don't all want the same thing, so they can't "do what their
customers want", even if they wanted to.
What they can't do is only whatever would cause _massive_ amounts of customers
to stop using their products.
------
paraschopra
How can they manage to get so many upvotes in a post with essentially no
content?
I am absolutely baffled.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitLab 8.11.2 released - dwaxe
https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/25/gitlab-8-dot-11-dot-2-released/
======
owaislone
The progress GitLab is making is great but lately it feels like HN frontpage
is a GitLab release announcement page. It would make much more sense to see
announcement on HN about some very useful or ground breaking changes instead
of links to every single changelog.
~~~
sytse
Although I'm grateful that dwaxe is a fan of GitLab I agree that this is not
frontpage worthy. Maybe our just released CD tutorial isn't either but I
thought it was nice [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/26/ci-deployment-and-
enviro...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/08/26/ci-deployment-and-
environments/)
For the upcoming stuff that might be frontpage worthy:
\- Review apps [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/20255](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20255)
\- Cycle analytics [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/21170](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/21170)
\- Merge request version [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/13570](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/13570)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How bad is it to use a self-signed SSL certificate? - mark_l_watson
I have a few "information only" (i.e., no customer data stored, no user logins) for almost 20 years that I just added HTTPS support for.<p>I did this after reading the EFF's "Join us on June 5th to Reset the Net" article and the two linked articles at the bottom of the page.<p>If any accesses my sites with HTTPS, they have to look at my certificate and OK it. A pain.<p>Ask HN: How bad is it to use a self signed SSL certificate?<p>Also, suggestions for the cheapest/easiest ways to get signed certificates?<p>BTW, I used this article for configuring nginx for SSL: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-multiple-ssl-certificates-on-one-ip-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-12-04
======
ctz
If you are careful when generating your certificate (that is, careful to
generate a subject certificate, and not a CA certificate) and _can reliably
distribute your certificate to all clients you are interested in_ , then self-
signed certificates are usually _much better than the public CA system_.
But actually achieving the pre-distribution step is pretty hard, and basically
impossible over the internet. You can achieve it pretty well in a business
setting, where you can push your certificates to all the clients through AD,
MDM, or similar.
Sidenote: You should also take this opportunity to appreciate how dismally
mis-designed web transport security is:
* Cleartext, unauthenticated: just works, no warnings.
* Encrypted, unauthenticated: THE SKY IS FALLING.
* Encrypted, authenticated: little padlock.
~~~
tptacek
A site claiming to offer cryptographic security when it is in fact not is, in
reality, worse than a site that simply doesn't offer cryptographic security.
Both those sites --- the SSL site and the non-SSL site --- aren't offering
security. But only one of them is also being deceptive about it.
However, you'll get no argument from me if you constrain your argument about
dismal mis-design to browser UI/UX. The browser UX design for TLS security
hasn't meaningfully changed since Netscape.
~~~
mindslight
Unauthenticated SSL does provide security against _passive attackers_ , which
is what mass surveillance in developed countries is. If the NSA ever insists
on widespread MITM of connections, we have much bigger problems.
I agree the UI needs to be properly worked out so that eg a bank can't be
downgraded to an unauthenticated certificate.
~~~
chimeracoder
I don't understand why they don't just use different colors for self-signed
SSL connections.
CA-signed: Green lockpad
Self-signed: Yellow lockpad, with question mark superimposed over it
Regular HTTP: Orange, no lockpad (insecure)
Invalid or revoked cert: Red, "stay away" displayed within <blink> tags.
The current UI that most browsers present implies that self-signed
certificates are _worse_ ("scarier") than regular HTTP, which is not true.
~~~
mindslight
Well, it's not really a continuum. 'There should be only one mode, secure' and
all that - asking users to make ad-hoc security assessments is generally a bad
idea. In an ideal world, plaintext HTTP wouldn't exist and everyone would have
a key delegated by their domain registrar.
No lock would suffice for unauthenticated https; those that find the
distinction meaningful can investigate the URL. But then you still risk
someone bookmarking [https://example.com](https://example.com) and suffering a
downgrade attack from not paying attention to color changes.
The best way forward is probably the creation of a new protocol designator
(httpz or something) that is SSL using the SSH key model. But there's no
impetus to do this as it's easy enough to pay the CA tax and be on your way
with unquestioned "full security".
------
Yaa101
Depends what you want, if you want trust that you can only grant yourself,
then go for self signed, especially internal projects.
If you want exposure of your certificates to common browsers and don't want to
raise warnings in them, go for cert authorities.
But remember Snowden, certificate authorities are less trustfull than you can
trust yourself.
~~~
ds9
This is the right answer and it's too bad it was way down the page (I
upvoted).
For your situation, mark_I_watson, probably get a cert from a CA, the cheap
"domain only" variety where you can verify your site to the CA simply by
putting a file in the web root directory.
I say this assuming the content is whatever you were already displaying to the
world without encryption - therefore low-security. The cert allows you to put
meaningful authentication on your site (otherwise passwords go in plaintext,
for example).
For a medium security level, sufficient for online money transactions, you
would have to get a higher-assurance type of cert - this requires more money,
sending business and personal ID documents to verify your business to the CA,
etc..
For really secret communications - getting into a degree of NSA-proofing -
among other things you have to avoid involving a CA, and preferably make
browser certificates for trusted clients, to spare them the warnings that
browsers throw up on non-CA server certificates. This is unsuitable for
(legal) commerce (commercial payment processors would reject your business),
and still vulnerable to metadata collection (unless you put it on TOR or
equivalent), and still vulnerable to state coercion of private keys or forced
code-trojaning.
Note that the third solution requires that your clients have a means of
verifying that the site is yours rather than an imposter - you avoid a CA
having the power to enable some other site to impersonate yours, but trusted
users must have a basis for trust by a "side channel" such as knowing you
personally, you being their employer, or reputation of your digital signature
over time.
~~~
dvanduzer
Could you elaborate on what you find meaningful about the authentication a CA
provides?
Another neat trick is creating your own CA, and putting your root into the
local trust stores of client nodes that you care about. (Be sure to
permanently airgap your root key, and create intermediate signers.)
~~~
ds9
I meant that sending logon + password is somewhat pointless if it's plaintext
over the internet, while if you have some encryption going on, someone
intercepting the data in transit would have a harder time using it to trick
the client or the server. In that sense authentication is more meaningful with
a certificate -- even though using a CA still allows interception by a
government actor. It narrows the range of those who can "break" the attempted
security.
~~~
dvanduzer
Well, a self-signed certificate still offers that encryption.
None of my arguments about X.509 / CAs are about government actors in
particular, though. There are enough root CAs trusted by the major browser
vendors that breaches can (and have) happened with minimal resource
expenditure.
------
Spittie
[https://www.startssl.com/](https://www.startssl.com/) gives out free SSL
certificates. Just don't expect much on their part, given it's free. For
example, they refused to reissue certificates for free after Heartbleed. Also
you can't use them on commercial sites.
otherwise [https://www.gogetssl.com/](https://www.gogetssl.com/) is probably
as cheap as it gets.
~~~
digitalchaos
If you read startssl'a justification on the free cert, you'll see that they
charge in relation to the time they need to spend. A low level 1 year cert
involves no human time. They don't have fully automated systems for
revokes/reissues, so it's pretty lame for people to complain about them
charging for it.
~~~
Silhouette
That's perfectly fair and reasonable from a commercial perspective.
From a security perspective, however, I think you need to meet some minimum
standards to remain credible as a CA, and I think at least being willing to
revoke certificates that may have been compromised for free and very quickly
is one of those standards.
I find it difficult to support retaining StartSSL certificates as trusted-by-
default in browsers given their response to Heartbleed and the consequent
relatively high probability that any certificate ultimately depending on them
has been compromised.
~~~
digitalchaos
That's understandable and probably a good reason for startssl to build an
automated revoke tool, for the sake of keeping their name healthy. However, I
would be way more concerned about a company unwilling to pay a trivial amount
of money to revoke a cert that was compromises due to their own choice in how
they used it. The best CA in the world won't fix bad security incident
handling of another company.
Sure, most of the complaining was due to the entitlement, but I'd be
interested in a list of all the companies that complained about this and/or
failed to pay for a revoke.
~~~
MichaelGG
I'm surprised it's not a requirement of being a CA. Further speaks to the
apparently weak standards the browsers have.
------
blumentopf
If your zones are signed with DNSSEC, just add a TLSA record for the self-
signed certificates to the zones. Clients with DANE [1] support will then
recognize that the self-signed certificates are valid.
Of course, very few clients support DANE as of yet. Nevertheless, that is the
most modern solution and you'll spur adoption of DNSSEC and DANE if you offer
it to clients.
[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698)
~~~
Osmium
Off-topic, but speaking of spurring adoption of DNSSEC: does anyone know of
any good (dumbed-down) guides on setting up DNSSEC on personal domains / using
dnssec-keygen? I keep seeing it mentioned in HN threads as a Good Thing, and I
know my registrar supports it, but they have a big warning:
"It is strongly recommended that you do not enable this option unless you have
a good understanding of what it is and does: you could easily make your domain
name inoperative."
which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, especially since most small website
owners (such as myself) really don't have a good understanding of it!
~~~
chimeracoder
> I keep seeing it mentioned in HN threads as a Good Thing,
Opinions on DNSSEC are... mixed, to say the least:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571937)
As a small website owner, are you using TLS? That's the biggest single thing
you should be doing - don't worry about DNSSEC.
This depends on what you mean by "small", but IMHO, you don't need DNSSEC.
Depending on how small/important your website is, you probably don't even need
to bother with DNSCurve either, though you might like to for the fun of it.
~~~
Osmium
Thanks for the link; that's actually very informative. My interest in DNSSEC
came from reading that it provided a mechanism to securely transmit SSH host
key fingerprints, though I'm not sure if there's a better way of doing that.
> As a small website owner, are you using TLS?
Yes, but I don't require it. Just a free certificate from StartSSL.
------
anu_gupta
One thing that always confuses me is the plethora of options for buying SSL
certificates.
I understand the difference between a single domain and wildcard SSL. But, as
an example, what's the difference between Positive SSL and Essential SSL (2
types of SSL certs sold by Namecheap) - Essential being about 3x the price.
~~~
logn
I think at some point I contacted support about that. It generally comes down
to one of a few issues:
compatibility (mobile, different browsers, etc)
steps taken to verify (via phone, email, fax, proof of business registration,
etc)
insurance (they'll offer various amounts of payment in liability insurance)
------
cjbprime
It's terrible, because Man-In-The-Middle attacks are trivial and automatable.
namecheap.com sells PositiveSSL certs for $9/year -- that's pretty cheap and
easy.
~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks. I needed some encouragement. I will buy two PositiveSSL certificates
today.
~~~
nmb
You might be able to use StartSSL's free one:
[https://www.startssl.com/](https://www.startssl.com/)
~~~
kamaln7
Just keep in mind that Class 1 (free) certificates are for non-commercial
sites only.
~~~
pyvek
Also, StartSSL's certs don't work on android (you get cert not trusted error)
for some reason.
~~~
dvanduzer
I haven't checked any recent Android trust stores, but this _might_ be due to
a lack of an intermediate certificate.
The vast majority of modern browsers know how to find intermediate
certificates online. Android's browser doesn't, for whatever reason. You have
to bundle it on your web server.
~~~
pyvek
That was the problem. Works well on my android now. Thanks!
------
revelation
TLS means Transport Layer Security, and people would do good to remember it
was not invented to be used in the HTTPs browser webserver configuration
exclusively. For that particular application though, it doesn't make sense to
use a self-signed certificate as you can't control the client side and modern
browsers will raise hell.
There are however many applications where a self-signed certificate (chain) is
perfectly fine and even preferred. Think of mobile apps where you have control
over how certificate validation is done on the client-side.
------
lsh123
Self-signed cert is probably a bad idea in pretty much all cases. But
implementing your own CA is a different story. And the answer to your question
for your own CA is the usual - "it depends" :)
For an external web application/web service/API/... it is pretty bad. Users
will run into certificate errors with their browsers or the code. Some will be
smart enough but many will be scared away. Not good for your growth plans :)
For an enterprise web apps it is a completely different game. Pretty much you
MUST setup your own CA (for example, it would allow you to spy on your
employees - if you are paranoid about leaking secrets to competitors or
press). The usability issue is not a problem since the laptop/desktop will be
configured by the IT team anyway and they can setup the trusted certs along
the way.
Lastly, for your internal mid-tier services (you are following SOA, right?)
having your own CA would allow you to create as many certs as needed fast and
"for free". Thus, you can easily implement cert based authentication and
separate roles for different mid-tier/backend services. By implementing the
usual security measures to protect private keys (including root CA keys), you
actually get a much better security than using one "real" cert for everything.
Again, configuration should not be a big deal since you are controlling
internal services and network anyway.
------
PhantomGremlin
Anyone interested in how certificates work in "the real world" should install
Certificate Patrol (I think it's only for Firefox).
You will quickly learn that certificates are 99% noise. Here are some
observations:
1) ad sites present certificates, constantly changing. I don't care about
them, but at the moment there is no way to tell Certificate Patrol to
completely ignore certificates from a domain. The vast majority of
certificates presented to a browser are from ad sites.
2) major websites use a plethora of constantly changing certificates. Quite
often even the root signing certificate changes. Certificates change in days
or weeks, not months or years as might be expected by simply looking at
validity dates.
3) Some commenter [1] linked to an mitm paper written by Facebook people. It's
enlightening. The paper also makes the point that while a certificate
identifies a website, it doesn't identify a browser. So, even ignoring all the
possible firewall MITM and malware, how can a website be sure that a _user_ is
who he says he is? Only half the problem is solved unless the user presents a
certificate to the website. Most aren't set up for that.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826420)
------
MyDogHasFleas
I don't know why you're bothering with SSL at all. Your use case is that your
site is informational, it's intended to be open to anyone, there is no
personal/customer information on it, and there's no authentication (everyone
is anonymous).
All adding HTTPS support will do is make it marginally harder for someone to
spoof your site.
And why is NSA surveillance a concern? Your site is wide open for anyone to
see, with or without HTTPS.
~~~
simon_vetter
By sending data in plain text, your users are revealing their intent to
retrieve the content hosted on the site, even though that content is public.
That in itself may be considered a breach of privacy, as it exposes your users
to passive capture and profiling.
Also, accessing the content you are hosting might be considered legal in some
countries but illegal in others, regardless of if it is public or not.
~~~
MyDogHasFleas
Good points, but I would argue that HTTPS provides little protection against
this kind of access tracking.
Even if the site is HTTPS protected, a surveillance actor on the net would
still be able to read the entire site, maybe to determine if the site has
content worthy of tracking those who access it.
And, surveillance would still reveal that your IP address is accessing the
site, and thus triggering something.
What HTTPS would protect is the specific URL path you are going after on the
site, because that's in the HTTP GET which is part of the encrypted data
traffic.
I guess you could say that maybe the site has some pages that are more
sensitive than others, and revealing the exact URL paths you are accessing
might set off a surveillance trigger that would otherwise not be noticed. But,
the site in question is probably not like that.
------
binarymax
As others have said - don't use a self-signed cert. When you do settle on a CA
and config your SSL - this tool from SSL labs will really help. I used it
today to identify and resolve a chaining issue. It makes sure you've done
everything correctly.
[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html)
------
gmuslera
Certificates not just encrypt communication, they also tell that the site is
really the one you think.
In that sense self-signed certificates are mainly useful for small amount of
people when you have another way to validate that the certificate is valid
(i.e. installing it in person in the intended client devices). Else anyone
could just create another certificate with the same human readable info.
There are some free or cheap enough certificates around that are already
suggested, and other ways to validate certificates that may be useful even for
self-signed ones, like [http://convergence.io/](http://convergence.io/)
------
dombili
I'm not a tech savvy person (at least around here) but I used Gandi to
purchase my certificate. I paid 12 bucks and it was extremely easy to
implement it. To give you an idea, I didn't even know how to enable access to
my site without entering "www." in front of my URL. But getting the
certificate and implementing it was so easy that I was actually surprised once
my SSL was active. I was expecting to run into a couple of problems as I
usually do when I deal with these sort of thing.
I'm using SSL for my personal website and it's not a commercial website.
~~~
tombrossman
I've got a couple at Gandi too, and I was pleased at how easy it was to set
up. I used the free first year (included with a domain name purchase) but then
went looking for the cheapest I could find.
[https://cheapsslsecurity.com/](https://cheapsslsecurity.com/) sold me a
simple domain validated cert for $19.96/5 years. That's the lowest I've seen
but it looks like they raised their prices slightly since then.
~~~
dombili
Honestly, I don't mind that Gandi isn't offering the cheapest option out
there. My domain and my host are from Gandi, so it was a no brainer for me to
get my certificate from Gandi. I didn't even check the alternatives. If it was
a hefty price, say, like $50/yr instead of $12, I'd have probably looked for
other alternatives but I'm happy with them so far and I like to reward
companies that serves me well as a customer.
------
dk8996
We just went through this process at my startup. The gist of it is that if you
self sign your certificate the user will get a warning say "do you trust this
site? yes or no" \-- this will lead to alot of people leaving. The best option
is to get a cheap signed SSL certificate, godaddy has them for like 70$ a
year. You can probably shop around a get them for cheaper. Moreover, if your
using AWS, consider letting ELB (elastic load balancer) handle the HTTPS.
------
benatkin
You should quit using them if anyone other than you ever needs to open the
page in a browser. The warnings will never be good enough for partial clicking
through of them. If a user (even a technical one) gets talked into clicking
through an SSL error, it is likely that they have been talked into a bad
habit.
------
herf
It used to be pretty easy to install a self-signed certificate from the
browser. Now it seems quite a bit harder--e.g., in Chrome you seem to have to
export it to a file, I think? And in IE people say they can't even _inspect_ a
bad certificate, because the UI hides it entirely.
------
jeffmould
If money is short at the time you can also get a 90-day free SSL from Comodo.
Good for testing and getting SSL setup or if you are tight on funds at the
time it can get you started until you have the cash on hand to purchase the
certificate.
------
mark_l_watson
I posted this Ask HN earlier today. Thanks for the useful comments.
I have decided to not use a self signed cert.
Another question: any comments on CloudFlare's auto SSL support on paid plans?
$20/month does not seem too much for CDN and SSL support.
~~~
mark_l_watson
EDIT: I did go with CloudFlare: works great, and my site is loading faster.
Seems worth $20/month.
------
pbreit
They are pretty bad from a user perspective. Some of the browser UIs make it
very scary looking to continue, if you can even figure out how.
If, as you say, just an information site, I would get rid of them immediately.
------
ChrisAntaki
It's good, because you have control over the certificate creation, and never
have to share your private key.
The one catch is, as you noticed, the key has to be distributed. Depending on
your goals, and your audience, this might be impractical, or within the realm
of reason.
Here's a link that goes into more detail.
[https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-
group/entry/self_sign...](https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-
group/entry/self_signed_certificates_for_a)
~~~
ckuehl
> It's good, because you have control over the certificate creation, and never
> have to share your private key.
You will never have to share your private key when getting a certificate from
a proper CA, either.
~~~
dvanduzer
This is true, but you wouldn't believe the system-as-practiced by most large
IT departments.
edit: small IT departments, too. nobody really pays attention as long as the
lock icon is green.
~~~
yaur
Can't speak to the state of this on Linux, but on Windows/IIS if you "just
follow the wizard" and send the generated file to your CA it will not include
the key.
~~~
dvanduzer
My remark wasn't about the software tools, it was about the human processes
around them. There are major knowledge gaps in every organization I've ever
interacted with (hundreds) that use certificates.
For example: How do you get the private key to a _second_ IIS server, if you
are doing poor man's DNS load balancing with the same hostname?
------
jbrooksuk
Is it worth adding HTTPS when you're running an internal app?
------
markgamache1
YOU ARE DESTROYING THE INTERNET
Training users, who have no way to properly asses this risk, to click OK to
the SSL error, is like Jim Jones's practice runs drinking the Koolaide.
Firefox had it right when the briefly made it impossible to OK the use of
misconfigured SSL.
Most IT people don't understand the risk of self-signed certs. We can't expect
users to make good choices here.
~~~
romanovcode
It's still more secure than plain-text http tho.
~~~
MichaelGG
Since there's no way to distinguish MITM and an unverified certificate, it can
make people think they are secure when they are not. That's not "more secure".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OCaml 4.06.0 Released - aw1621107
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2017-11/msg00005.html
======
aw1621107
Saw this on /r/programming and was intrigued by comments from
/u/subtly_homoerotic discussing multi-processing vs multi-threading on *nix.
That's well outside my realm of expertise, so I'm curious what you guys have
to say about how correct the claims are (in addition to stuff about OCaml/its
evolution/etc.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Findima: The first Iranian “crowdfunded” gadget - mohisanisel
By lifting the sanctions against Iran, this question came to the minds of the technology lovers that what is going on the Iranian technology market? Which kind of facilities exists that could provide a good groundwork for cooperation/investment?
Hearing this news that a creative project has managed to provide his required capital in Kickstarter may not look so bizarre. But in a country like Iran that crowdfunding is only a three-year-old subject and has started from donation and charity projects, the fact that a project on the domain of Internet of things absorbs his capital in this way and thinks about mass production simultaneously is a big achievement. Findima is a gadget that helps people to not lose their belongings simply by sending alarms to their cell phones. The young generation in Iran is remarkably creative. Nowadays, the disappearing of the borders as a result of the global village has enabled few Iranian to stand out at management level among tech giants. Due to the imposed economic sanctions on Iran, the young generation inside Iran faced with many restrictions which did not give the opportunity to mobilize their ideas.
Along all these years, only a few projects from Iran had this opportunity to be supported by gigantic companies. Findima is one of these pioneer projects with a restrictive access to devices and foreign platforms, which the completion of their entire project is their own work; however, their access may seem so simple for you. What distinguishes Findima from similar projects in Iran is providing its required budget through an Iranian platform called 2nate by crowdfunding (http://2n8.ir/Zd). The story of Findima, has inspired this hope in Iranian technology market that not only their creativeness, knowledge and expertise of the Iranian young generation in international firms can be used but also if they would be given a chance, they are capable of presenting their products with remarkable qualities to compete in international markets.
======
mohisanisel
U can see Findima fundraising page here: [http://2n8.ir/Zd](http://2n8.ir/Zd)
or visit 2nate.com (The crowdfunding platform)
~~~
brudgers
I can't help but think that a blog post about crowdfunding in Iran and how it
differs from what is typical in other places might make interesting reading. I
mean for US residents [and perhaps those of other countries], there may be
legal complications when sending money to Iran [which is not to imply anything
about whether there should be complications].
Anyway, Good luck.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Js-joda – Immutable date and time library for JavaScript - joekrie
https://github.com/js-joda/js-joda
======
niftich
This is inspired by both Threeten [1] and Joda-Time [2], which are well-
engineered Java libraries for date/time concepts.
I have often wished for that API to be available in other environments, so
this is definitely a welcome addition to JS.
Note that the authors of the library are confused -- Threeten-(backport) and
Joda-Time are different libraries with different behaviors, and one isn't an
"aka." for another. However, Joda-Time's author went on to develop Threeten
based on lessons learned, and this library purports to be a JS port of
Threeten-Backport.
[1]
[https://github.com/ThreeTen/threetenbp](https://github.com/ThreeTen/threetenbp)
[2] [http://www.joda.org/joda-time/](http://www.joda.org/joda-time/)
~~~
joekrie
I started using JS-Joda because I've had a good experience with Noda Time [1],
which started a a port of Joda-Time to .NET
[1] [http://nodatime.org/](http://nodatime.org/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most used words in programming languages - Walkman
https://anvaka.github.io/common-words/#?lang=py
======
Noughmad
In most languages, the top words are self/this and function/def. On the other
hand, in Go, the most common word is "err", and "if err != nil" are three of
the top four words. I really wonder how big part of the code in Go is just
propagating errors.
~~~
fagnerbrack
"err". Because "error" is too hard to type, right?
~~~
stirner
No, because error variables have extremely limited scope and the length of a
variable name should be proportional to its scope.
~~~
kbart
Heh, I always use longer name variables for broader scope somewhat naturally,
but only after reading your comment _realized_ that.
~~~
adtac
if theErrorReturnedByThePreviousFunction != nil {
panic(theErrorReturnedByThePreviousFunction)
}
~~~
kps
A real brogrammer can write COBOL in any language.
------
nonsince
Lots of uses of "the" in C++ code, massively skewed by giant projects that
have the massive section of boilerplate copyright info in a comment at the top
of every single file. I didn't realise until I looked at this, but although
that's really common to see in C, C++, and Java you barely ever see it in the
languages that I spend time in (Rust, Haskell, C#, Python, various flavours of
Lisp, JavaScript).
~~~
adrianN
Wait another fifteen to twenty years or so until Python and Javascript are
"enterprise ready" and this will change.
~~~
TorKlingberg
At least nobody is keeping a revision history at the top of the file any more.
~~~
adrianN
You'd be surprised...
------
chriswarbo
Would be nice to see Haskell included; would ".", "$", "<$>", "<*>", ">>=",
etc. count as words? ;)
Made even better by the use of the language's logo as the word clouds shape;
the Haskell logo is ">λ=" [https://www.haskell.org/static/img/haskell-
logo.svg](https://www.haskell.org/static/img/haskell-logo.svg)
~~~
anvaka
Added: [https://anvaka.github.io/common-
words/#?lang=hs](https://anvaka.github.io/common-words/#?lang=hs)
Unfortunately the symbols will not show up, because I'm ignoring them:
[https://github.com/anvaka/common-words/blob/master/data-
extr...](https://github.com/anvaka/common-words/blob/master/data-
extract/ignore/index.js#L4)
~~~
chriswarbo
> Added: [https://anvaka.github.io/common-
> words/#?lang=hs](https://anvaka.github.io/common-words/#?lang=hs)
> Unfortunately the symbols will not show up, because I'm ignoring them
Makes sense. I notice that some funky unicode stuff has still managed to come
out quite high, e.g. ⊇ ("superset of or equal to") :)
------
TuringTest
The layout algorithm for the word cloud is awesome! How is it made?
~~~
sambeau
Unfortunately it's not using size as a metric like mouse word clouds. This
confused me at first. Look at the size of 'err' in the go layout.
~~~
anvaka
It uses it as long as there is enough space. Once it fails to find a rectangle
to fit a new word, it tries to reduce the size of the word.
In general, word clouds are bad for comparing sizes. For that reason I used
plain list in the sidebar on the left (or at the bottom if you are on mobile)
------
ddavis
The slow adoption of modern C++ is very apparent. Some things not event
listed: forward, unique_ptr, shared_ptr, tuple, constexptr. nullptr is much
lower than NULL and move is quite low. These features are now 6+ years old! ;)
~~~
mschuetz
Smart pointers realy need a native way to be specified, similar to how we use
& to declare references and * for pointers. Filling your code with
shared_ptr<Something> and the likes is just not going to win the majority
over, even if it's useful.
~~~
johannes1234321
A common way is having a "using FooPtr = shared_ptr<Foo>" somewhere and then
only use FooPtr. This also reduces the occurrences in that word cloud.
~~~
ddavis
> This also reduces the occurrences in that word cloud
Ah, yes, very good point.
------
kosma
This might just be my Python upbringing, but... am I the only one to be
troubled by Go's single-letter words? I've always found Go code very hard to
read because it isn't self-descriptive at all.
~~~
Walkman
When you have a strong static type system like Go has, you don't need
descriptive names that much, because even single letter variable names are
evident, because the declarations are there, close to the variable names. It
needs a bit of getting used to if you only programmed dynamic or scripting
languages.
~~~
masklinn
> you don't need descriptive names that much, because even single letter
> variable names are evident
That's an annoying lie, and makes codebases in languages with genuinely strong
static type systems (e.g. Haskell) much harder to read than necessary.
Hell C#'s type system is stronger than Go's, yet there is no such prevalence
of meaningless variable names (first one comes in at #23, Go has 7 single-
letter variable names in the top 23)
~~~
bnegreve
Still, I think GP's comment is interesting. I do agree that type name and
variable/argument name can be redundant in statically typed languages, such as
c++ or java. (I've never used Go)
For example,
int getAge(Person p);
is clear enough, whereas
int getAge(Person person) ;
is redundant.
Haskell does type inference, so even if types are static they are not
explicit. That's why you still need explicit variable names.
~~~
msluyter
I think that depends on the length getAge(). If it's 3 lines, 'p' probably is
fine. If it's 200 -- which, perhaps it shouldn't be but that's another issue
-- then person is probably a better choice because you may lose the original
context as you scan the method.
Also in Java if you use intellij then you'll probably get 'person' as an
autocomplete, which actually makes it roughly as easy to type out as 'p', (and
a better choice if your entire team has standardized on intellij.)
------
dustinmoris
I am quite surprised that "self" is so much more used than the next word in
the list "if". I know many languages where "self" is not a keyword at all, but
I cannot think of a single language where "if" is not a keyword.
EDIT: Ops, I missed that there is a language filter. Ignore my comment :)
~~~
goatlover
I don't think if is a keyword in Smalltalk. IO might not have it either.
~~~
masklinn
> I don't think if is a keyword in Smalltalk.
It's so not a keyword it doesn't even exist. At least in the Smalltalks I've
used, they provided ifTrue: and ifFalse: (and compositions thereof).
------
ape4
Besides "return", C/C++ doesn't have a particular word that stands out.
Probably because you just write write things. eg you don't put "function" in
front of a function.
~~~
mojuba
Yes, I also thought that a list for each language shows exactly what's wrong
with that language. For some it's self/this, Java is import and return, etc.
for C++ there's no clear winner, because it is minimalistic by nature (mostly
due to C heritage of course).
~~~
kibwen
_> for C++ there's no clear winner, because it is minimalistic by nature_
I presume I'm missing the sarcasm here...
------
macygray
Cool stats about Java. "import" is the most frequently used word. It looks
like everything is already exist in Java, so just import all the things, some
clue code and you are done.
~~~
gravypod
Then why isn't this the case for python. It's as equally as kitchen sink,
right?
~~~
the_duke
Java doesn't have syntax for importing more than one member of a package in
one statement.
Either you import a single member, or all with *.
Combine that with IDEs that auto-create the import statement, and there you
go.
~~~
the_duke
I just remembered: also, each class in Java has to be in it's separate file.
That might very well be the biggest factor.
------
mschuetz
The world would be a much better place if self(Python) and this(Javascript ES6
classes) were implicit.
~~~
donatj
I disagree heartedly. Implicit code leads to easy to write hard to read. I'd
much rather have where you are getting a value from be very explicit to not
cause hard to see bugs as well as making the code easier to understand from a
fragment.
~~~
mschuetz
I find it unnecessarely bloats code and in most cases makes it harder to read
due to redundant text, e.g.
# 1
def length(self):
return math.sqrt(self.x*self.x + self.y*self.y + self.z*self.z)
# 2
def length(self):
return math.sqrt(self.x**2 + self.y**2 + self.z**2)
# 3
def length():
return math.sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z)
I prefer version 3 by far. Unfortunately, Javascript decided to take the same
path with ES6 classes which forces you to use this in the body. Fortunately,
it does not force you to use this in the argument list.
~~~
lojack
I think that goes against the python dogma of "Explicit is better than
implicit." In #1 and #2 there is no question about where 'x' comes from, while
in #3 it could be a class variable or a global variable or from just about
anywhere.
~~~
blauditore
Huh, I experience python as quite the opposite of "Explicit is better than
implicit":
\- No static types
\- A variable might belong to the scope of a method, object or class,
depending on where it was first set and changed afterwards
\- Implicit execution of code on import of a module (__init__.py, including
parent packages)
\- Any object is truthy or falsey, i.e. conditional statements don't require
an explicit boolean
~~~
sweeneyrod
You can get the "Python dogma" with `import this`. "Explicit is better than
implicit" is part of it, but so is "practicality beats purity" (and "There
should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it, although that
way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch").
------
mpjme
This would improve a lot if they filtered out comments.
~~~
chriswarbo
Really? I think it's interesting to see "TODO" feature quite prominently in
Python, for example :)
~~~
imron
Perhaps both?
I also think filtering out comments would improve it - especially because so
many source files include a copyright statement at the top, and the same
licenses (MIT, GPL, Apache, etc) are found repeated in many different files
and it distorts the results somewhat.
~~~
anvaka
The copyrights are filtered out, because indeed there was a lot of them.
------
donatj
I think it speaks well towards the ferocity and forced completeness of Go's
error handling that err is the most used word.
~~~
di4na
I would say it shows that this is a place where the compiler could help :D
~~~
Klathmon
As much as I hate all the typing I do for error checking in go, I just don't
think a compiler can handle errors that well on their own yet.
The explicitness of go's error handling forces you to handle every error
specifically. There isn't a chance (for the most part) that you'll get an
error from deep in the program that you can't easily handle.
Forcing you to handle them everywhere and anywhere forces error handling to be
a part of your architecture.
~~~
di4na
Erlang took this other way around by designing a system that enable you to not
handle all these errors.
I am more from this school of designing a system around the reality insteas of
trying to patch it everywhere, praying we have enough fabrics to catch it all.
But it would meam rethinking how we build stuff. That was not at all a goal of
Go.
------
cpsempek
I do appreciate this, but word clouds really are a terrible visualization
method for text data. With regard to the python example, I cannot grasp at all
if the frequency of self and None are similar or drastically different. The
table on the value is more informative and less likely to misread.
------
enitihas
Looking at Scala, the difference between val and var is huge, with val being
at 2nd, and var at 38.
~~~
virtualwhys
Usage of `var` as idomatic Scala is an oft used trolling mechanism.
I wonder what percentage of `_` usage is value/type discarding in pattern
matching and type signatures vs. function application.
Would be nice to somehow ditch `case`:
adt match {
Foo(x) if cond x => ...
Bar(x) => ...
}
pairs.map{ (a,b) =>
...
}
------
Walkman
One can make very interesting conclusions based on purely this. Examples:
\- Python developers does not follow Clean Code (ala Uncle Bob) as much as
Ruby , because if statement is more frequent than def and return.
\- Ruby makes it possible to write in a much more functional style than
Python. OR Ruby developers like to develop more in a functional style than
Python developers.
\- People don't really care about good variable names ("a" is a terrible
variable name in scripting languages like JS and Python, still top 11)
\- PHP developers might practice "return early" in functions (more return than
function keywords) OR their functions just do too much :)
~~~
dagw
_\- Ruby makes it possible to write in a much more functional style than
Python. OR Ruby developers like to develop more in a functional style than
Python developers._
I instinctively think you might be right (at least with your second
statement), but what are you using as your metric here?
~~~
smnplk
I am not sure if ruby devs like to do much functional style, the parent
mentioned Uncle Bob and his influence on Ruby community with Clean coders. I
think they are more into OO.
------
Insanity
I was really amused by the logos / names in the word clouds. Nice project!
~~~
anvaka
Thank you :)
------
pcwalton
The Rust compiler seems somewhat overrepresented in this data set. I see
"ccx", "fcx", and "CrateContext", which are only used in the Rust compiler
itself.
------
questerzen
It is probably a sign of a good language that the words used most should be
similar in frequency to their use in pseudo code. When words like "end"
(Ruby), "self" (Python), "import" (Java), "err"/"error" (Go and Node) are
over-represented, it's likely a sign that the language is introducing
accidental complexity. By this metric Swift looks astonishingly sane.
------
realworldview
It would be interesting to see the frequency of words found in comments—TODO,
FIXME, LATER, OMG—foreach language too.
~~~
the_duke
Also, there is the glorious phrase "Should never happen", with 24 million
results on Github:
[https://github.com/search?q=should+never+happen&ref=simplese...](https://github.com/search?q=should+never+happen&ref=simplesearch&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93)
~~~
bpicolo
Perfect time to throw an UnreachableCode exception or something, hah
------
cven714
Pretty cool! Some unexpected results, or at least not what I guessed.
"summary" as the top for C#, "SELECT" all the way down at #43 for SQL, "err"
as the top for Go (I'm sure that will spawn some pleasant discussion).
~~~
pepve
I think for SQL their sample includes just ".sql" files, which tend to contain
schema definitions and data dumps, hence CREATE and INSERT. Most of it not
handwritten also.
~~~
cr0sh
I was surprised by the SQL thing too; your explanation makes perfect sense!
------
cr0sh
This is pretty neat! I was surprised to see that for SQL, SELECT was so far
down the list.
I also wonder what the criteria is for which languages to analyze? There are a
few other languages I would like to see, but maybe on github they aren't well
represented...
~~~
anvaka
Thanks!
I'm using file extension to differentiate between extensions.
You can request other languages here: [https://github.com/anvaka/common-
words/issues/4](https://github.com/anvaka/common-words/issues/4)
As long as language's extension is unique, I think I can make a visualization
of it.
------
HissingSound
Good site.
What did you use to get and analyze code and how much code did you analyze?
I thought about something like this but about variables, methods e.t.c. most
used words or even variables name generator based on markov-chain.
~~~
Matumio
[https://github.com/anvaka/common-words#how-was-the-data-
coll...](https://github.com/anvaka/common-words#how-was-the-data-collected)
------
imron
This is really nifty, unfortunately it includes comments and so with thousands
of files all including copyright notices, 'the' is the 3rd most popular word
in c++ files.
~~~
anvaka
I tried to exclude copyright lines as much as I could. I used "license
markers" for that, but I might have missed something.
Here is more information about it: [https://github.com/anvaka/common-
words#how](https://github.com/anvaka/common-words#how)
~~~
imron
That's good to hear. I didn't look in to it in too much depth, I just thought
it was strange that 'the' was so high for c++ so clicked on it to see example
usage and got things like:
** use the contact form at http://qt.digia.co/contact-us.
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
* This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
// with this library; see the file COPYING3. If not see
So assumed licenses had not been excluded.
Having a brief look at the source, I think with the licence marking approach
it's still leaving in quite a few lines from each licence (see above for
examples).
------
igravious
Contrary to popular opinion neither `s' nor `t' are words. At least not in
English anyway. :/ Or do they mean that these characters appeared as variable
names?
------
smnplk
I totally expected "should" to be at the top in ruby. Code bases with 2:1 or
even more test code to implementation code ratio = standard.
------
tomw1808
So happy I couldn't find "goto" :)
~~~
Matumio
You wish. It's #325 after you switch to cpp.
------
mi_lk
Well, Lua's word list starts with index 0...
------
xyclos
anyone else find it at all ironic that the <em>least</em> common word in JS
appears to be "validate"?
------
traviswingo
Where do the language files get pulled from? GitHub API or web scraping? Or is
it not file parsing and some other method?
Super rad project :)
~~~
anvaka
Thanks! The data comes form GitHub snapshot, stored on BigQuery. Here is more
details about it: [https://github.com/anvaka/common-
words#how](https://github.com/anvaka/common-words#how)
------
Dowwie
I don't know whether I could believe this study as "foo" and "bar" aren't on
the list.
~~~
qarioz
Well I will slay my developers before they put the metasyntactic variables on
master. I allow i to pass though. Go to j and you have O(n^2) and I will slay
them again.
------
d--b
summary is the most used word in C#! Only from comments! Amazing. EDIT: it
looks like this is reading files that are common to all projects... which is
why the sentence "// The following GUID is for the ID of the typelib if this
project is exposed to COM" appears 459k times!
~~~
masklinn
> EDIT: it looks like this is reading files that are common to all projects…
Yeah, autogenerated files/comments feature extremely prominently e.g. the top
two items for "should" in Ruby are autogenerated Rails comments.
------
woliveirajr
Java: funny to see that "if" is used a lot to point to "visit oracle.com
_if_..."
------
adrianlmm
Interesting that for Ruby the most used word is "option", is not even a Ruby
but a Rails word.
------
alexwebb2
Interesting that in JS, `let` is ranked 536, far lower than I expected.
------
lgessler
Is anyone investigating how well these numbers fit a Zipf distribution?
------
oblib
"that didn't work"
------
AznHisoka
Word clouds may look cool but they are horrible for conveying information.
this should have been just a simple ordered list.
~~~
xyclos
There is an ordered list on the page. If you're on a phone you can tap "show
list" on the bottom.
------
singularity2001
django > try (20 vs 21) try again
~~~
Ensorceled
In my django projects, I have many lines like:
from django.<path> import <stuff>
for every try block.
------
bryanrasmussen
this study is worthless without a section on frequency of swearwords and
virulence of same.
------
pomber
and the most used word in .cs files is "summary"
------
fagnerbrack
A lot of meaningful and legible words out there
/s
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
People try to do right by each other, no matter the motivation, study finds - pseudolus
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-people.html
======
leto_ii
> "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even
> exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others,"
> Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and
> throughout all of nature."
I find this concluding remark really amusing. Even after performing the
experiment, the researcher still can't really fathom the possibility that his
views should be reassessed.
If this behavior is present in humans and many other species, couldn't it
simply be that in a more sophisticated way it actually increases fitness?
Faced with these observations, shouldn't you maybe reassess your ideas about
evolution?
~~~
anoplus
Doesn't seem perplexing to me either. Humans are tribal and their survival
depends on teamwork of about ~100 people or so. This is natural on intimate
scale.
What perplexing is to think about how humans can cooperate effectively on a
scale of billion people to solve humanity biggest problems.
As we can see, empathy for humans outside of the tribe is limited and so
different gangs fight each other, let alone different countries.
Maybe we can think about techniques to create empathy among strangers.
~~~
z3t4
I think its in the human nature that we form groups and fight each other, heck
we do it for fun too in games. For all humans on the planet to come together
we would need a common opponent.
~~~
082349872349872
sars-cov-2?
------
mensetmanusman
It depends on who the stranger is.
My grandma grew up on the fjords of Norway on an island with a population of
~100.
The island was split with a very large hill that separate the east from the
west. On the west were the fishers, and on the east were the farmers.
Each side was taught to look down on and distrust the other side...
Humans are very tribal, and for most people, if a stranger looks like they
could join the tribe, they might be offered help.
My black cousin in the military still gets pulled over by police all the time.
When they want to search his vehicle, he is smart enough to ask for a warrant,
after which they use the tactic ‘Lower your voice!’ to escalate.
~~~
jonahbenton
Upvote 1000 times. There's always an "other".
------
corin_
How do you get people into a trial like this without the bias of either
"people kind enough to spend time helping research" or "people who need money
enough that being a paid test subject is worth their time"?
Might not matter for something like a vaccine trial, but for this?
~~~
bonoboTP
My harsh and honest opinion is that this kind of research is useless and is
mostly a waste of resources and most likely serves other motives than we may
think (narratives, signaling etc).
All experiments with virtual money, with artificial lab setups, with people
knowing they are in an experiment are very very biased.
Even if being mean would gain you some money in an artificial experiment,
there are other social factors that can counteract this, including pleasing
the experiment designers, thinking of yourself as a good person. People
probably introspect more in these observed scenarios etc.
You know all those people writing their bachelor and master theses based on
questionnaires filled out by random recruits from social media for the chance
of winning a gift card? I see tons of those. Are they rigorous and valuable
research? Unlikely, but at least they don't get into the press.
We keep falling for this stuff even after the replication crisis, because
science is used by the masses as a replacement of the priesthood. People in
labcoats must say to us with jargon that compassion is good. We are too afraid
of and are still recovering from the shock of the early and crude
interpretation of the Darwinian theory. So we crave the "people are good after
all" message and when there is demand there will be supply.
~~~
inawaytho999
At the same time, billions of people don’t kill the randos they chance upon
most days.
How we annotate reality with numbers matters. I feel like your trying to find
too specific a claim about reality, not the researchers
You’re isolating these headlines to make them useless.
There’s also tons of rhetoric others, outside your filter bubble, encounter
about the end is nigh, send in the troops!
Not every piece of information that we like to share has to be in service of
you, 1 in 7 billion
The study itself is more novel and creates more discourse than your comment.
Which is a bigger waste of resources? People trying to learn data driven
research and habit?
Or your being pedantic about the value as if to dissuade others from such
mechanics unless they’re chasing a result you agree with
Yet we seem to spend little time calling for HN to disable comments to avoid
the descent into entitled whining about others not achieving what you want,
dad
~~~
bonoboTP
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I'll try to be better in the future. I wanted
to point out how "scientific research proves people are good after all" type
headlines and the foundational problems of psychology as a discipline
(including the replication crisis, the shobby practices and huge leaps of
conclusion) and the societal need for a calming authority interact.
50 years ago it was all about seeing how we all carry evil within and need to
overcome it (Zimbardo, Milgram), today we want to hear "we are fundamentally
good". Of course this research is about one specific thing but people don't
read it for that reason, just like people don't read many special niche
articles usually. This is about us and we seek it out and nod along to these
pop sci articles just like people nodded along to a beautiful preach ("of how
true were the words of the Father Smith this Sunday"). And I'm not saying
science is just another religion, obviously not. But we as a society want it
to take on that role.
The issue is best analyzed from the side of why there is so much demand. The
question of how the researchers conducted the study is secondary. It's way
beyond pedantism on the methodology or trying to say people are bad.
I guess if the above sounds really foreign to you it may take some amount of
reading to get a grip on these ideas, which won't fit in this comment. I'm not
saying I'm definitely right, but it's at least useful to look at it from this
angle.
------
scribu
Title of the paper: "The robustness of reciprocity: Experimental evidence that
each form of reciprocity is robust to the presence of other forms of
reciprocity"
I think the interesting point about this paper isn't the conclusion, which is
unsurprising, but rather the methods used for confirming it (They use linear
mixed models, which I hadn't encountered before).
------
djyaz1200
Human morals/behavior aren't like a fractal that's the same at every level.
Let's see a study like this where much larger amounts are in play.
As a young adult, my dad warned me that people are basically honorable up to
about $10K. In practice, I've found everyone's threshold is different and
fluctuates greatly with their individual situation and the broader economic
situation. For example, right now I'm seeing otherwise successful and decent
folks do really ugly things over 4 figure money.
~~~
jstarfish
> As a young adult, my dad warned me that people are basically honorable up to
> about $10K.
No way. $10k is the lower boundary to litigation being worth anybody's time.
If somebody is going to defraud you, it's going to be for an amount less than
$10k.
Amounts of money higher than that may entice people into doing things they
otherwise wouldn't, sure, but there I'd submit that they were never honorable
in the first place if they can be bought for the right price.
------
marcus_holmes
This matches my experience.
I've practised "paying it forward" and the rewards have been incredible. I've
got way more back than I ever gave. People are always ready to be nice to each
other, but sometimes wary of strangers.
I've seen the other side of it, too. Where people approach situations with a
"what's in it for me" attitude, and get nowhere. Their fear of getting ripped
off, or "losing" in the interaction, stops them from being trusted.
~~~
crawfordcomeaux
I wonder if my experiences match yours because I'm white.
~~~
082349872349872
I once lived in a bilingual area in the States. Depending upon how I was
dressed, I would be greeted in either english or spanish[1] when walking into
a shop. My experience was that people were more helpful (to the extent of
addressing me as "paisano") in spanish. I suspect this is because when I was
greeted in english, I was being greeted as an out-group[2] member.
[1] hypothesis: if you have never learned to code-switch, you are probably a
member of a preferred group.
[2] not necessarily due to being classified as anglophone, more likely due to
being classified as tourist.
------
stormdennis
Read something once about the best way to interact with other humans. It
boiled down to, you can scratch someone's back once but you don't scratch it
again until they've scratched yours. If someone does it to you first be sure
to pay them back.
~~~
gowld
It's called "tit-for-tat" in th literature.
~~~
mindcrime
Yep. As I recall, the origin of this idea comes from a series of competitions
arranged by Robert Axelrod[1], where people submitted algorithms to
participate in an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma[2] situation. Tit-for-tat was
one of the simplest algorithms submitted, but yet it won the contest.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Axelrod)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)
------
stretchwithme
I would say people freely give who feel that they gain from the community far
more than they give. And they do right by others when they feel the community
is doing right by them.
And this is not PER INTERACTION but over the long haul.
People that are not connected to their community strongly, meaning they don't
have mutliple adults protecting, disciplining and sustaining them, aren't as
likely to do right by others or give freely.
Sons without fathers living in the home are far more likely to have behavioral
problems. I think we grow into our social hierarchy or we seek to establish a
new one that competes and clashes with the existing one.
Unfortunately, the trend more and more across most groups is single parent
families.
------
qwertox
There are people who have learned that being kind and generous attracts
people, and once they have got them close to them, they start to use or abuse
them, push them to feed their ego with praise and have them work for them to
live a comfortable life.
The discussions with strangers with their narcissistic self-praises give them
all the kick they desire to feel in their life. Nothing matters more to them.
------
spodek
How do they factor in context and framing?
\- The oceans are filling with plastic so people with perfectly good tap water
can drink bottled water
\- Sea levels rising so people in deserts can cool their homes and offices to
60
\- Aquifers drain for golf courses in the desert
\- Sweatshops, data breaches, 9/11, etc
I'm sure terrorists feel they are doing right by someone when they blow
something up, but even the most zealous must realize not everyone agrees with
them.
~~~
barrkel
Prices don't expose moral costs, so market exchange removes this function
talked about in the article.
~~~
amiga_500
Being priced out is having the choice removed from you. This is about making
the moral choice.
People know plastic bottles pollute, yet westerners continue to buy. Flint
residents have an excuse. Most do not.
~~~
wolfram74
You say including the ethical cost in the price removes the burden of choice,
but I say excluding the cost in the price removes information for the
consumer.
I feel like the lucky 10000[1] also applies to bad things as well. I remember
in high school having a conversation about teen pregnancy with classmates that
wanted to go into medicine and they didn't realize that sex education in some
school districts was so poor that some teenagers literally didn't know that
sex made babies. Not a huge amount, but more than 0%.
[1][https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
~~~
amiga_500
Sure, in many cases. I'd love to see externalities included in the price. But
this is about people "doing the right thing". People know plastic bottles
pollute. They know big cars pollute. Yet they buy them. Because many people do
not do the right thing.
~~~
ardy42
> People know plastic bottles pollute. They know big cars pollute. Yet they
> buy them.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. If you think global warming is a hoax and
your city has no air quality problems, do you know big cars pollute? Do you
know your plastic bottles pollute, if you always put them in a recycle bin
(and never check to see what happens to the contents of those bins)?
~~~
amiga_500
Yes to both questions. Recycling isn't magic. It takes energy. People know big
cars pollute. They don't care.
~~~
ardy42
> Recycling isn't magic. It takes energy.
It does, but the question is do "people" know that. I'd wager a good chunk of
them haven't spent a second thinking about it. It's easier and happier to pat
yourself for dropping your waste into the "right" bin and move on.
> People know big cars pollute. They don't care.
I don't think it's that simple. I think there's a strong consensus that
"pollution" is bad, so resistance morphs into a denial that a particular thing
is a pollutant. Restricting the discussion to CO2 for simplicity: if someone
thinks global warming is a hoax, they'd deny that their car pollutes the air
because they "know" CO2 doesn't cause any harm.
~~~
amiga_500
loads of middle class people have huge cars. they know. they don't believe in
the trash USA global warming as conspiracy thing.
and they don't care.
------
readingnews
These people do not live where I live. Of course, my observation is a singular
data point, but speaking with colleagues through the years, it seems everyone
in this area is of the "I will help you, but what is in it for me" philosophy.
I wonder where they picked these participants from.
~~~
arethuza
Where do you live?
~~~
throwaway0a5e
In my experience people's willingness to be kind is correlated more strongly
with having shared problems that nearly nobody is exempt from. Some
combination of an oppressive climate and limited local wealth seems to be the
ticket for maximizing people's willingness to help each other out.
------
foooobaba
There is a class which is behavioral evolution from stanford which covers
these topics. There are other frameworks to look at it from like individual
selection theory (try to make sure your dna survives) kin selection (your
family shares your dna so try to pass that on as well, even if you sacrifice
yourself). There are even more ways to look but I’m too much of noob to
elaborate on them. But bottom line some behaviors might not help you and your
dna but similar enough dna for you to want to sacrifice yourself. Robert
Sapolsky is the professor and you can find the lectures on youtube, highly
recommend all though i only finished 4 of them so far.
------
fallingfrog
On the other side, if you want to know when people are going to be selfish and
harmful towards one another, look for the situation where they have
unaccountable power over another without consequences. Every time.
There is a reason that the stereotype exists of the mad king or queen yelling
“ off with their heads!” or feeling a pea under 18 mattresses or otherwise
acting like a spoiled toddler. It’s the same reason that police walk around
beating peaceful protesters and acting shocked and indignant that anyone would
object. That’s what power turns a person into.
------
Luc
Lot's of mention of 'in the real world...', only to find they organized a
contrived online game to 'prove' their argument.
------
aaron695
I've just read the 'Media' version of the 'study'
But yes, humans are intrinsically social.
But what's actually matters is how much.
Bending over once a year to pick up rubbish vs spending a day.
What we need it know is how to maximise it in more cases (for good or evil)
these studies are more about clicks. You barely know what's going on when the
cost is so low.
------
have_faith
Is there not a consideration for the act being beneficial for the group
(species) and that considerations have been elevated beyond either of the
individuals concerns subconsciously? Ants are the obvious comparison, being
very quick to sacrifice themselves to maintain a path to food for the group.
------
teekert
Nice book on this subject: [0]
[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/12/humankind-a-
ho...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/12/humankind-a-hopeful-
history-by-rutger-bregman-review)
------
LatteLazy
I think an underappreciated factor in the drake equation is whether an
intelligent species is able to form and maintain societies. For all our issues
as a species, we're surprisingly good at forming everything from tribes to
nations...
~~~
neutronicus
One wonders whether the fierce individualism of the Octopus saved us from
being hunted to extinction
~~~
LatteLazy
Humans are interesting because we're one of the few semi-social animals. If
you're tribe/village is whipped out, you'll die soon too. But just because
your group flourishes doesn't mean your genes will even be passed on (like
they would in an ant colony). So we have all these behaviours (like empathy
and cooperation) but they're finely balanced and complex (unlike an ant that
will die for the colony without hesitation). The lack of top down control and
the requirement for cooperation means communication abilities are vital and
have to be complex and suddenly you have a brain that needs to simulate other
brains (empathy) and consciousness is born.
------
collyw
Reminds me of how some newspaper explained that "Covid showed us how unselfish
we were all being" or something to that effect. They conveniently missed the
part when everyone was hoarding toilet paper at the start of the crisis.
~~~
mensetmanusman
Our community has little free libraries on the sidewalks, many of them had
toilet paper in them at the time.
~~~
52-6F-62
Ha. That was also happening here.
We never saw a drastic shortage, though. The store was empty or had limited
supplies for a week or two then they brought in a large shipment and everybody
cooled off.
------
neilwilson
It's a pity they didn't go to the next stage.
Does doing others a favour build up 'social assets' you can call in? Are
people in your debt? For how long?
You could even call it testing the MacGyver Principle. How many favours can
you pull in?
------
question11
They don't outline how they removed culture from the study.
Maybe this applies only to people in Ohio? Or maybe those nice canadians next
door?
------
tw000001
>For this study, which was done online, participants had to decide how much of
a 10-point endowment to give to other people. The points had monetary value to
the participants; giving cost them something.
Totally contrived study which completely ignores culture. Growing up in a
shitty area in NYC for example will teach you that plenty of people are all
too eager to act selfishly even when it is trivial to be considerate.
Soft sciences are a joke and they erode layman credibility in hard sciences.
------
kingkawn
Hilarious how much effort has to go into is realizing how absurd the dogma of
the individual actor is
------
executive
People want to help each other when they shoot each other in the face?
~~~
dathinab
People shooting each other in the face comes normally hand in hand with a form
of dehumanisation.
For example instead of thinking about humans which protests they think about
rioters. Or they see certain kinds of humans depending on skin color or
religion or similar as less "human" as some form of "malformed product of
nature" and other bs*. This circumvents any instinctual natural protections
humans have against harming each other. Oh and for example in case of
companies humans (employees) tend to be reduced to a tool costing some money
and giving something back. Similar thinks often apply to many politicians.
~~~
vitorbaptistaa
This. There is an amazing Black Mirror episode that treads on this subject:
Men Against Fire (S03E05) [1]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire)
------
dntbnmpls
What a misleading title.
Apparently there are 4 motivators to benefit others.
One: The recipient of a kindness is inclined to do something nice for the
giver in return.
Two: A person is motivated to do something nice to someone that she saw be
generous to a third person.
Three: A person is likely to do good in the presence of people in their
network who might reward their generosity.
Four: A person is likely to "pay it forward" to someone else if someone has
done something nice for her.
They did a online "study" where they mixed and matched the motivators to see
how it affected people's "giving" ( points tied to money ). It's hard to tell
from the article, but the assumption was that #1 would dominate people's
motivation to give ( return the favor ), but the "study" showed that all 4
motivations and all the permutations still influenced the giving.
So people do "right by each other" given these 4 motivators which ultimately
is selfish because they all imply you have gotten something already or you
hope to gain something by "doing right".
> "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even
> exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others,"
> Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and
> throughout all of nature."
I can't believe that a "scientist" would even say such nonsense. It isn't
evolutionarily perplexing at all. We see it throughout all of nature because
it doesn't decrease your fitness on behalf of others. Social networking and
cooperation isn't evolutionarily perplexing.
~~~
gwd
> Apparently there are 4 motivators to benefit others.
The article says "Scientists previously had determined that four motivators
influenced people to behave in a way that benefited other people."
But that completely leaves out the fact that, you know, sometimes helping
other people _feels good_. Why do people watch a sunset? Why do they listen to
music? Why do people do exercises or read books, or have sex? The most basic
reason for anything is that it gives people pleasure.
Now, you can come up with some kind of evolutionary reason _why those
activities are pleasurable_ , but given that helping other people can be
pleasurable, you don't need to come up with any deep psychological reason
beyond that.
And really, from a moral point of view, the purpose of social reward / shame
mechanisms is to get you to to act in a caring way towards other people, _so
that_ you experience the pleasure of doing so, and then start doing it for its
own sake.
The best sort of person, after all, isn't the person who helps someone else
for social status, or because they're afraid of retribution, or looking for a
payback later. The best sort of person is the person who genuinely enjoys
seeing someone else happy.
~~~
dntbnmpls
> The article says "Scientists previously had determined that four motivators
> influenced people to behave in a way that benefited other people."
I know. That's why I listed the 4 that was mentioned in the article.
The rest of your comment has nothing to do with my comment or the article so
I'll just ignore it. Pleasure, morality and best person are really
philosophical questions better left to another thread.
------
dirtybirdnj
I completely reject this idea, it's 100% antithetical to the experience I've
had in life. People are inherently bad and lack ethics until educated or
exposed to it in a group setting. Even then a decent majority of people will
continue to adopt a selfish mindset.
I'd posit that as you become wealthier and more successful, your capacity to
practice empathy and "doing the right thing" significantly diminishes quickly
to a zero sum. You cannot manage above N number "other people" you don't see
and interact with in person without mentally converting them into a resource
or a number.
The motivation to do the right thing drops out when you don't need societal /
communal acceptance and validation of yourself and your actions.
When you're rich enough to not give a fuck, fuck em. I got mine.
Pretty sure this is what's destroying America.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet - ohjeez
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-the-teen-hackers-who-transformed-th-1770977586
======
fallingfrog
I found this quote pretty poignant: "When I went to Santa Monica to meet Bill,
I was pretty sure I’d hear a story about how the FBI had ruined his life. But
I left believing that it hadn’t. The world ruined Bill’s life—a world that
couldn’t quite find a place for his particular talents, faults, and petty
mistakes." Makes you a little more sympathetic to homeless people, doesn't it?
I mean, I could have easily ended up in his position with just little less
luck or different choices. And I think it's totally true that there are some
people that just don't fit in to our current social/economic system, and that
really isn't their fault.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which games do you prefer? - King_mansur
======
Espionage724
MMORPGs (Guild Wars 2, OSRS), ARPGs (Diablo III, Path of Exile), and music
games (DDR, SDVX, pop'n, etc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Plan to replicate 50 high-impact cancer papers shrinks to just 18 - nonbel
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/plan-replicate-50-high-impact-cancer-papers-shrinks-just-18
======
sytelus
Every academic cries about this but no one wants to accept an _obvious_
solution: Add reprodicibility criteria for peer review. Right now even Tier 1
conferences do not have this criteria in their peer review system. The
reviewer simply can't reject paper because authors didn't provided
reproducibility information!
This is truely a plague in research right now. I've came across quite a few
instances where authors told me that their experiments weren't reproducible
even for them! They do not note this in paper because ultimately everyone
needs to show some result for the funding they received (i.e. "published
paper"). They obviously never want to share any code, data files, hardware
etc. On one instance, author wrote me back that they can't share code with me
because they lost all the code because their hard drive crashed!
Reproducibility is a fundamental tenant of doing scientific work and this is
actively and completely ignored in current peer review system.
I think conference chairs needs to take stand on this. We get now 4X to 8X
papers in tier 1 conferences. Reproducibility could be a great filter when
area chairs are scrambling to find reasons to reject papers. Sure, there will
be papers where very specialized hardware or internal infrastructure of 10,000
computers were used. But those papers would be great for Tier 2 conferences.
~~~
ThePhysicist
I think this is a great idea at least for fields where reproducibility is
comparatively easy to achieve, e.g. computer science: Include your data, code
and run environment (using a suitable technology) with the paper to give
reviewers a chance to "play" with your experiments (if they actually have the
time for this).
In other fields such as experimental physics or biology it might be more
difficult to achieve the same effect though, as experiments are quite hard to
repeat in general: For example, in my former field (experimental quantum
computing), building the setup and fabricating the sample required for a given
experiment could take years of effort, making it almost impossible to "just"
reproduce someone's work for the sake of verification.
That said, in experimental quantum physics the exciting results tended to get
replicated within a couple of years by different teams anyway, not because
these teams wanted to verify the results but rather because they wanted to
build their own experiments on top of them (I imagine this is similar in other
fields). Another natural way of exchanging knowledge and improving
reproducibility was via the exchange of PostDocs and PhD students: If you do
good work in one group, another group will usually be very eager to give you a
position so that you can help them to set up the experiments there as well.
I'd even argue that this is one of the main mode of knowledge dissemination in
experimental science today, as most research papers are just extremely hard to
reproduce without the specific -and often not encoded- knowledge of the
individuals that ran the experiments.
I'm not sure though if it is practical to document everything in a research
paper in such a way so that any person can reproduce a given experiment, as
many of the techniques are very specialized and a lot of the equipment in the
labs (at least in physics) like sample holders, electronics, chip design
templates and fabrication recipes is custom-built, so documenting down to the
last detail would take years of effort.
That's why (IMHO) written PhD theses are so important, because that's kind of
the only place where you can write 200-400 pages about your work, and where
you can include minute details such as your chip fabrication recipe, a
description of your custom-built measurement software and a detailed summary
of the experimental techniques used in your work. In that sense, PhD theses
are probably more important to reproducibility than short papers.
~~~
dekhn
Your description of experimental quantum physics exactly matches the work done
in state of the art biology. It basically takes 10-20 years of training and
excellent brains to reproduce your competitor's paper in a way that lets you
build on top of it. Many people who complain that papers aren't reproducible
just don't have the skill to move the state of the art, because it's become so
esoteric and challenging to run the critical experiments.
I used to be a "everything must be replicable by even the simplest of people"
person, but I changed to "for progress to be made there must be <X> competent
people who can reproduce challenging experiments and run new ones".
~~~
BoiledCabbage
> because it's become so esoteric and challenging to run the critical
> experiments.
Maybe more people would be able to run the experiments if papers detailed how
to do so. The knowledge would no longer be esoteric.
------
buchanae
I have been working on reproducing computational biology papers from the
cancer field lately. I am very frustrated. When the inputs and outputs are
machine-readable data, there's no excuse for not making your work
reproducible, in my opinion. Often the problem is plain laziness and
disorganization.
One major problem is that there's not much real incentive to make your work
reproducible. Money granting organizations favor researchers breaking new and
exciting ground, not those rehashing an already published method. Publishers
don't require reproducible methods, and reviewers don't have the time, desire,
nor expertise to do an in-depth methods review.
Wet lab experiments are 1-2 orders of magnitude more expensive and difficult
to reproduce, that's true, but we're not even getting the basics right!
~~~
buchanae
And another thing! Why should a project be done when it gets published?! What
kind of software project would make one release and call it good forever?
Nonsense.
~~~
fmap
In an ideal world you would be right, but that's not how the funding
structures for academic research are set up.
Think of a research lab as a company that gets paid per prototype and then has
to market the concept for the next prototype in an infinite loop. If you can't
package up what you're doing into a sequence of small prototypes then you're
not getting paid.
~~~
ajuc
The requirement for publishing in a scientific journalshould be opensourcing
all the code used.
You can't expect the results to be reproductible 20 years later otherways.
~~~
skummetmaelk
20 year old code that has not been maintained most likely would not run on a
modern system anyway, unless it is extremely simple.
~~~
azernik
Research labs operate on a very slow tech upgrade cycle anyway; since code is
handed down from assistant to post-doc to grad student, complete rewrites
would take up a significant fraction of a person's time at any given lab, and
so codebases are often as long-lived as the labs in which they live. We're
talking decades-old FORTRAN here. Running twenty-year-old software is a
barrier for some labs, but not all.
~~~
_Wintermute
My experience is the opposite, that a lot of labs are running R code that
won't work 6 months later, and no one actually recorded the package version
numbers that were used.
~~~
azernik
TBF, the experience I have is with physics and mechanical/civil engineering
labs, where there historically hasn't been much of a reliance on R. And in any
case said experience is several years out of date.
Speaking of, I haven't played with R - what are its standard methods for
handling dependencies? I'm particularly enamored of the pip and npm way of
doing it, where you create a version-controlled artifact (requirements.txt and
packages.json, respectively) that defines your dependencies. Does R not have a
similar system, or do people just not use it?
~~~
_Wintermute
R isn't fantastic for handling dependencies. If your code is bundled up as a
package then you can specify version numbers for your dependencies, but I
don't know of any equivalent to `pip freeze` to actually list these.
Installing anything other than the latest version of a package is a bit of a
pain, and setting up environments for separate projects is pretty much unheard
of.
I'm a bit bitter about the whole "writing reproducible code in R", as I'm
currently wasting a lot of time trying to get R code I wrote at the start of
my PhD to run again now I'm writing up.
~~~
nonbel
Theres tools for this:
[https://rstudio.github.io/packrat/](https://rstudio.github.io/packrat/)
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43018752/version-
control...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43018752/version-control-
alternatives-to-packrat)
------
gnusci
This is a well known problem of scientific publications now-a-days:
[https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-
on...](https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-
reproducibility-1.19970)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis)
Papers have become a target for success, so scientist need publications for
better status and remuneration:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-
rev...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-reviewed-
papers-go-global)
A new scientific "mafia" is in place around the world:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-
ch...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-chinas-cash-
for-publication-policy/) [https://retractionwatch.com/2017/08/10/paid-publish-
not-just...](https://retractionwatch.com/2017/08/10/paid-publish-not-just-
china/)
So papers have become a good business, no the way to disseminate outstanding
research results.
~~~
lsh
> So papers have become a good business, no the way to disseminate outstanding
> research results.
That's awfully cynical and over-broad, but I agree to a point. Greedy and
unscrupulous publishers are part of the problem, but so are lax or
unprincipled scientists eager for prestige and a career-making publication in
a top tier journal. It's an unfortunate chicken-and-egg cycle now with no easy
way to cut it. Perhaps more emphasis on replication post-publication? Perhaps
a reputation system for unethical publishers or scientists?
~~~
timr
_" Greedy and unscrupulous publishers are part of the problem, but so are lax
or unprincipled scientists eager for prestige and a career-making publication
in a top tier journal."_
That's just incredibly unfair. There are some fields and methodologies where
p-hacking and cherry-picking have been a problem, but the _primary_ reason
that papers aren't reproducible is just noise and basic statistics.
As a scientist, you control for what you can think of, but there are often way
too many variables to control completely, and it's probable that you miss
some. Those variables come to light when someone else tries to work with your
method and can't reproduce it locally. However, _real scientists_ don't stop
and accuse the original authors of being "unprincipled" \-- nine-point-nine
times out of ten, they work with the original authors to discover the
discrepancies.
It isn't surprising at all to actual, working scientists that most papers are
impossible to reproduce from a clean room, using only the original paper. It's
the expected state of affairs when you're working with imperfect, noisy
techniques, and trying tease out subtle phenomena.
~~~
michaelt
There are some fields and methodologies where p-hacking
and cherry-picking have been a problem, but the primary
reason that papers aren't reproducible is just noise and
basic statistics.
It's possible to imagine a version of academia where results that can be
attributed to noise don't get published.
~~~
wyattpeak
Is it? That doesn't seem at all obvious to me. In fact it seems decidedly
impossible.
Almost any result could in principle be attributable to noise; where are you
planning to source all of the funding to run large enough studies to minimise
that? And no matter how large your experiments or how many you run, you're
still going to end up with some published results attributable to noise since,
as GP says, that's the nature of statistics. By its nature, you cannot tell
whether a result is noise. You only have odds.
I'm not saying there aren't problems with reproducability in many fields, but
to suggest that you can eliminate it entirely is naive.
No, not naive - wrong.
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Almost any result could in principle be attributable to noise; where are
> you planning to source all of the funding to run large enough studies to
> minimise that? By its nature, you cannot tell whether a result is noise. You
> only have odds._
Well, with a single paper the odds indeed are that it's noise. That's why we
need reproduction. Now of course a paper needs to be published for it to be
replicated later. But the paper (and/or supplemental material) should contain
_all possible things_ the research team can think of that are relevant to
reproducing it - otherwise it's setting itself up to be unverifiable in
practice. Papers that are unverifiable in practice should not be publishable
at all, because a) they won't be reproduced and thus it'll be forever
indistinguishable from noise, and b) there's no way to determine whether it's
real research, or a cleverly crafted bullshit.
~~~
wyattpeak
I don't disagree with any of that, although I'd stick a big _citation needed_
on the implicit suggestion that there's a large group of scientists who aren't
making a good-faith effort to ensure that their successors will have the
information they need to reproduce (that is, after all, what a paper is).
My issue is the flippant and silly claim that "[i]t's possible to imagine a
version of academia where results that can be attributed to noise don't get
published".
~~~
saalweachter
I think this is actually something that can be experimentally examined.
Take a sampling of a large number of papers, give them some sort of rating
based on whether they provide enough information to reproduce, how clear their
experimental and analytical methodology was, whether their primary data and
scripts are available, etc, and then look at that rating versus their
citations.
Hopefully, better papers get more attention and more citations.
(And yeah, "peer review" as it is done before a paper is published is not
supposed to establish a paper as _correct_ , it is supposed to validate it as
_interesting_. Poor peer review ultimately makes a journal uninteresting,
which means it might as well not exist.)
~~~
wyattpeak
That sounds like a very interesting idea. At the least, it would be
interesting see the major classes of reproducibility problems. And there may
well be a lot of low-hanging fruit, as the comments on this page suggest about
data corpuses in computational fields.
------
kayhi
I wrote my concerns about replicating these studies a couple of years ago [1].
In short, most papers don't have enough details to allow for a third party to
replicate them.
Problem areas include detailed protocols and reagents used. If you don't what
someone did exactly and what they used then replicating it is going to be very
difficult.
[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scientific-reproducibility-
re...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scientific-reproducibility-reagent-
variability-sean-seaver/)
~~~
drb91
> If you don't what someone did exactly and what they used then replicating it
> is going to be very difficult.
Why do journals accept these papers? If you can just make shit up, it kind of
makes the whole value of a paid journal moot. What value do they add if not
reviewing the damn paper?
~~~
karthikb
What is repeatability? 10% of the time? 50% of the time? 99% of the time?
99.9999% of the time?
Even medications made in high volume processes have rejected units (and
sometimes, batches). Process drifted, machine failed, raw ingredients had some
issue.
A scientific paper at the very early stage is meant to show that something is
possible if the conditions are _just right_. It may be actually outside the
capability of the lab to document (or measure, or even know) every variable
that makes up these conditions. One of the reasons there is such a chasm
between lab and practice is that as people dive in for deeper review and
productization, they find the process is too finicky, the applicability too
narrow, etc. But the scientific paper is the first step in this process of
discovery.
That said, it's critical that authors document whatever they _do_ know or have
control over. Electronic publishing, tools like Github, etc, all make the
barrier for disclosure much lower.
~~~
stonemetal
Given that P <= 0.05 is the usual standard, I would hazard that if it can't be
reproduced at least 95% of the time then you miscalculated P.
~~~
kgwgk
This is no what a p-value means.
~~~
stonemetal
It isn't but it kind of is. It is a 95% chance that you should reject the null
hypothesis. For example if we flip a coin a 5 times and get heads every time
that gives you a p value .03 for rejecting the null hypothesis that the coin
is fair. If I run the five coin flip experiment a 100 times and never once
reproduce a significant result is it because gee science is hard, or is it
because you hit one of those 3% of cases. The same goes for real science if
you can't reproduce it more often than not then you might be close but you
haven't figured it out yet.
~~~
kgwgk
Ok, so we can agree that if you got positive a result with p<0.05 and you
repeat the experiment 100 times you expect to reproduce a positive result
(i.e. getting a new p-value below 0.05)
a) if the null hypothesis is true, 5 times
b) if the null hypothesis is not true, anywhere between 0 and 100 times
(depending on what is the true alternative)
This is quite different from your previous assertion that the expected number
of successful replications would be 95 out of 100.
------
Palomides
>says total costs for the 18 completed studies averaged about $60,000,
including two high-priced
that seems really cheap to me based on my brief experience with lab research.
replicating 18 studies is a great achievement.
~~~
jonlucc
It's not terrible for in vitro studies, but that would be a stretch for in
vivo studies at a CRO, especially for oncology, where lots of studies require
tumor grafts. It's not my area, but I think those mice can run $1000 and up
per animal. The cheap, more common strains are ~$25 each. I haven't looked at
the papers they're trying to replicate, but in my lab, it's not unusual to
have 60 mice in a study, so you can see how just getting animals into your
facility can be expensive.
~~~
dingo_bat
$1000 per mouse? Seems really expensive.
~~~
amelius
Annual cost of small mammal ownership: $300
Source:
[https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-1166&y=-2798&z=5](https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-1166&y=-2798&z=5)
Add to that expenses for the experiment, and $1000 seems not far fetched.
~~~
mattkrause
That’s for a pet.
While labs have huge economies of scale—-I worked somewhere with a quarter
million mice—-the mice aren’t just random field mice. Some of the genetically
engineered ones are hundreds of dollars a pair (and possibly more if custom,
raised under unusual conditions, etc). Xenografts need skilled labor and very
clean conditions for the immunocompromised mice. $1000 seems a little high,
but not much, especially if the work isn’t being done by an underpaid grad
student.
------
DoctorOetker
For the price of 10% of subsidy, you could sponsor reproducing ~10% of
discoveries (proportional to the subsidy they took). Just some simple public
provably random commitment protocol.
While you are doing the experiment, everyone knows theres a 10% probability of
eventually being selected, so healthy pressure to make sure everything is
properly documented, and everyone looks out to detect fraud by collaborators.
I don't see the problem, unless its the 10% price hike... if 10% is too much,
just do 90% of the usual number of projects. I'd prefer 10% less projects if
it ensures much higher reproducibility rates...
~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
I don’t understand your math. Typically, for one paper, if you’re trying to
reproduce the experiment (rather than just the analysis) the cost is closer to
110% because, for many researchers, their papers build off of their previous
papers so they already have expertise with a particular assay, protocol,
technology, etc.
~~~
DoctorOetker
The math stays the same, even if the numbers change: with your number of 110%
of the original project price for reproduction by others we get the following
price hike 110% * 1/10 = 11%
big deal, 11% more expensive science, but 1 out of 10 results get reproduced,
stoichiocratically, so you don't know if it will be reproduced until after
publication...
Also: your comment about reproducibility details being scattered over the
previous work of the original authors... as I said, in a world where we use my
system, you are incentivized to put all details for reproduction within the
paper, since you wouldn't want to risk possible reproduction by others to fail
simply because they didn't read your previous papers...
------
lsh
A direct link to the results:
[https://elifesciences.org/collections/9b1e83d1/reproducibili...](https://elifesciences.org/collections/9b1e83d1/reproducibility-
project-cancer-biology)
There have been several news items on Hacker News recently about academic
publishing, reproducibility in general and pre-print servers and I would love
it if eLife got some more attention, for better or worse, for the excellent
work they are doing and helping to fund.
To those biology researchers in the comments, please submit your work! even
failed results! Even if it's software heavy. Editors are listening closely to
your feedback.
edit: disclosure, I work for eLife
~~~
chmaynard
Does eLife have an RSS feed? I can't find one listed on your website.
~~~
rossmounce
Yes, various RSS feeds.
Alert options explained here:
[https://elifesciences.org/alerts](https://elifesciences.org/alerts)
early versions:
[https://elifesciences.org/rss/ahead.xml](https://elifesciences.org/rss/ahead.xml)
final published versions:
[https://elifesciences.org/rss/recent.xml](https://elifesciences.org/rss/recent.xml)
------
textmode
There is an unwritten rule in biology that if you publish a paper that refers
to uses of certain reagents that are not commercially available, then you are
obligated to provide those reagents to other investigators who read the paper
and request them. There can also be an expected obligation that the other
researchers will share any data they generate using the reagents with the
original authors.
Outside of biology, I have seen many "academic" papers published on computer-
related topics that refer to software programs developed by the papers'
authors that are crucial to the research but not publicly available. Is there
any similar unwritten rule to that in biology where another researcher reading
these papers can request a copy of these programs from the authors?
Obviously, in many cases other researchers cannot replicate and verify
findings without access to the same research tools used in the published
papers.
~~~
your-nanny
I've frequently asked for researchers code. most are excited someone is
interested in their work, if a little nervous, or embarrassed by their coding
umm style (neuroscience)
------
Alex3917
> organizers realized they needed more information and materials from the
> original authors;
Then the study already isn't replicable by definition, so why waste time
asking the original authors? Just mark it down as 'not replicable' and move
on.
~~~
jonlucc
I'm not so sure this is the right way to go about it. They give the example of
cell densities, but there are also tons of things that just are never reported
in in vivo papers, including the light cycle in animal rooms (mice and rats
are nocturnal, so some labs make their rooms dark during the day), the
preparation of treatment compounds, information about animal ages, handling
procedures, etc. In addition, many papers have length limits, so you can only
include so much.
~~~
Alex3917
Sure, all of which make the research non replicable. That stuff is all
important, you can't just discount it because it's the norm not to include it.
~~~
flukus
They should be replicable despite a lot of that, if they aren't then then the
original study is garbage.
~~~
Alex3917
Getting the same result doesn’t mean a study is replicable or a result is
reproduceable. If you don’t use the same methodology it’s meaningless.
~~~
irq11
No.
Nobody ever reproduces papers exactly, because you can’t. There are too many
variables, and even though you try to control as many as possible, you can
still be blindsided by the random variate that you didn’t anticipate.
Scientific results that are robust to random variation are the important ones.
The ones that can only be reproduced exactly as specified are most likely to
be “meaningless”.
------
nonbel
I was mentioning this in another thread and came across the new info I hadn't
heard about yet. Here are some previous articles about this:
March 2012:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a](https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a)
June 2015:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411)
Dec 2015: [https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-
project-s...](https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-
scales-back-ambitions-1.18938)
Jan 2017: [https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-
project-r...](https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-
releases-first-results-1.21304)
------
rrock
Wait, they thought they could replicate 50 papers at the cost of $25k each,
and all in the span of one year?
Not a chance. I don’t think these guys have any idea what they’re doing. I
feel sorry for the funders.
~~~
LyndsySimon
They thought that because they’d already done 100 in another field:
[https://osf.io/ezcuj/](https://osf.io/ezcuj/)
I worked there for three years :)
~~~
rrock
I'm going to guess that psychology research is far less expensive. To give you
a sense of perspective here, $25k will get you something like 4 months of a
full time employee at the "fresh out of college" experience level, including
benefits and research consumables. That also assumes that you have all of the
equipment in place.
If all there doing is running a few western blots, because that's all they can
do on this budget, well then ok. But I'll venture to guess that that's a far
cry from reproducing the most important results in these papers.
~~~
LyndsySimon
As far as I know, the problem wasn't primarily one of underestimating cost or
effort - it was one of funding. The non-profit that did this has downsized
quite a bit since the RP:CB began and has been seeking other funders.
------
adiusmus
Initiate Rant.
Most science isn’t.
Most of it is a set of nearly fanatical beliefs about reality only vaguely
related to facts agreed through consensus by authority. Look at how strongly
doctors fought against germ theory. They saw no reason to wash their hands for
delivering a new born after having spent their morning cutting open cadavers.
Their response was anything but scientific even in the face of easily tested
claims and results.
If research can’t be reproduced it’s just a story with interesting data. I
doubt most scientists using statistics would be able to provide the alpha / p
value / confidence interval etc for their hypothesis.
When the bar is set so low should we be surprised by low quality?
Rant complete.
Initiate beer.
~~~
southern_cross
Hand washing may still be a problem. I saw a blurb recently which stated that
when doctors know that they're being monitored for using proper hand washing
protocols, compliance was near the top end of the scale. But when they thought
they were no longer being watched, compliance fell by something like two-
thirds. So in other words, doctors (and no doubt others) probably still aren't
anywhere close to doing it right.
~~~
Engineering-MD
That would be because “doing it right” is completely over the top. You are
suppose to wash your hands before and after each patient interaction, which
includes touching their notes, or coming into a patient environment without
touching anything. This is impractical, as it would slow everything down so
much, and would make carrying anything impossible, not to mention the negative
impact of doctor-patient interactions. It also doesn’t match how patients then
move around, touching objects around hospital and nullify the whole process.
Doctors and nurses tend to common sense check when a hand wash/alcohol gel is
needed, which I think is a good thing. I think some go too far the other way,
but there will always be variation.
~~~
fabricexpert
How can you common sense check when handwashing is required? You can't see
germs, it's not possible.
The handwashing protocol is there to stop people getting sick, circumventing
it because you're a doctor and you know better is not going to help.
~~~
adiusmus
Commonsense is easy to develop. Just invite anyone who doesn’t believe in
germs/handwashing to eat a meal using a public toilet seat as a plate.
It’s amazing how real something becomes when beliefs intersect with
consequences, especially those involving self-preservation.
------
fabian2k
One big issue with making papers reproducible is that the incentives to do
that simply don't exist in many cases. It is often not rewarded if you put
additional effort there, and usually also not punished even if you don't do
the minimum the journals require in their official rules.
The official rules are slowly changing, and the funding agencies tend to
require that scientists make raw data available, and put effort into making
their experiments reproducible. But the reality is changing much more slowly
than the rules.
~~~
danieltillett
Actually the incentives encourage non-reproducibility. Any effort put into
reproducibility increases the chance that the results won't be publishable.
The worst outcome is not publishing crap, it is not publishing at all. This
needs to change.
------
timr
Please don't ignore this very important quote from the article:
_" In fact, many of the initial 50 papers have been confirmed by other
groups, as some of the RP:CB’s critics have pointed out."_
This article is staying assiduously neutral, but one perfectly valid
interpretation is that _the original initiative was flawed_ in a way that was
predicted by the initiative's critics. Science is _routinely_ reproduced --
just not by labs working in isolation, using publications as clean-room
instruction books. This is the sort of thing that _programmers_ believe about
science, not something that scientists believe themselves.
There are a great many serious, legitimate scientists who believe that this
"reproducibility crisis" is verging on irrational, and it's important to
consider their arguments. It's particularly scary to me that so many comments
here are dovetailing with the sort of nonsense you encounter on anti-vax and
global warming denial forums. We're literally gaslighting the process that has
done more to advance society than any other in human history:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/115/20/5042](http://www.pnas.org/content/115/20/5042)
_" The discovery that an experiment does not replicate is not a lack of
success but an opportunity. Many of the current concerns about reproducibility
overlook the dynamic, iterative nature of the process of discovery where
discordant results are essential to producing more integrated accounts and
(eventually) translation. A failure to reproduce is only the first step in
scientific inquiry. In many ways, how science responds to these failures is
what determines whether it succeeds."_
~~~
southern_cross
And the attitude being described above seems to me to border on religious
"just trust us" dogma. I mean, one of the big things that's supposed to
distinguish real science from pseudoscience and such is the ability to fairly
easily and routinely reproduce its results. And if that's not happening, and
in fact it's being actively discouraged, then that's a real problem!
_" In fact, many of the initial 50 papers have been confirmed by other
groups, as some of the RP:CB’s critics have pointed out."_
I don't know that I would be willing to take a statement like that at face
value. I once read of a scientist who claimed that there was absolutely no
need to try and independently reproduce his work, since it was being routinely
reproduced in college labs everywhere as part of other experiments - or
something like that. To me that meant that it should then be trivial to
reproduce these results when attempted by trained professionals who were
specifically trying to do that very thing. So why the reluctance to allow that
to happen?
~~~
timr
_" And the attitude being described above seems to me to border on religious
"just trust us" dogma. I mean, one of the big things that's supposed to
distinguish real science from pseudoscience and such is the ability to fairly
easily and routinely reproduce its results."_
Nowhere is it written that you should be able to "easily and routinely"
reproduce a scientific result. It's damned hard for skilled scientists to
reproduce most scientific results. And yes, it's utterly impossible for
amateurs. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but it's the truth.
There are many things in life that you routinely accept on authority: When you
fly in a plane, that it isn't going to crash into the earth. When you turn on
the tap, that clean, safe water comes out. When you go to your doctor, that
she is prescribing you medication that will help you, not hurt you. When you
vaccinate your children, that you are protecting them from horrible diseases.
I'm sorry that it bothers you, but "science" is just one more thing in the
world that you're going to have to accept, because nobody -- scientist or
otherwise -- can independently verify all of human knowledge.
If it makes you feel better, you can look around, realize that we're no
starving from famine, or dying from minor cuts, or poisoning ourselves with
lead, or dying of Polio or Smallpox, and you can try to convince yourself that
in the long run, the _method works_. Because _that 's_ the argument you're
missing. You don't have to take my word for it, or anyone else's. It's a
system. The system works. You just don't fully understand _why_ it works, and
you're not willing to read when a group of scientists write a long article
that tries to explain it to you. Because you'd rather believe that explanation
is "dogma".
_" I don't know that I would be willing to take a statement like that at face
value."_
Nobody is stopping you from digging into it. If you're really so bothered by
it, I encourage you to follow up.
_" So why the reluctance to allow that to happen?"_
There is no reluctance, whatsoever. Nobody is trying to stop these people.
They're just beginning to realize that their approach is a lot damned harder
than they originally expected, and those of us who _knew it would be_ are
pointing it out.
~~~
southern_cross
I understand where you're coming from here so I don't want to belabor the
point, but what you're actually describing is more of a faith-based system
rather than one based on science! And I for one am simply no longer willing to
take most of what (for example) shows up in the peer-reviewed literature these
days based primarily on faith, and I haven't been for several decades now. The
fact that you and so many others seem so readily willing to do so makes me
seriously question your critical thinking skills.
And I don't blindly trust that "the system works" really at all to the extent
that's so it often claimed to. An awful lot of what gets published these days
tends to just not hold up to close scrutiny, and often what appears to be
groundbreaking research may just kind of up and disappear with no further
trace soon enough, without ever directly or even indirectly leading to a
practical new product or a new drug or whatever. I understand that this kind
of thing is going to happen, and it may happen quite a bit if you're doing
_really_ groundbreaking stuff, but in general this should probably be more the
exception than the rule.
But yes, I do understand how the _method_ works, and how the system that's
supposedly based on that method works (when it actually does work), and also
when it doesn't work and why, and what the motivations might be to try and
pretend that it works even in situations when it actually doesn't. And rather
than blindly defend it, maybe you try a bit harder to understand how it
actually "works", too.
------
atdt
Why, apart from expedience, do designers of experiments share an institutional
affiliation with the experimenters themselves? I wonder what would happen if
the two groups were far apart, and if communication between them restricted to
the transmission of an experimental protocol and the reception of raw
observations.
~~~
nonbel
This is a really good idea. I bet it is not as hard as some of the "real
scientists" claim.
------
Avshalom
turns out we can't raise the money to replicate researchers who barely had the
money to do what they did.
~~~
nonbel
I'd honestly say if the study isn't worth replicating then don't fund it to
begin with. Its like funding it enough to get some animals or cells into your
lab but then not enough for gloves and pipets and computers.
~~~
Avshalom
That sounds great in abstract but every study is subject to that logic,
including studies studying studies. Which means that every study should be
matched by an infinite regression of studies, which is untenable to put it
mildly and mathematically fucking ridiculous to put it conservatively.
~~~
nonbel
There is no infinite regression, what are you talking about?
Its that at least two groups try to measure the same thing under the same
conditions (as similar as you can get them).
~~~
Avshalom
how do you know that those two groups aren't collaborating for the same
result? Or biased in the same direction of the result?
you don't. You either add a 3rd party (4th... 5th...6th... Xth)or accept the
conclusion. If you add a third party how do you know they are trust worthy:
infinite regression.
~~~
nonbel
Its not about perfection, its about taking the simple, common sense, and time-
tested precautions that gave us the technological marvels we enjoy today.
But of course the more independent, even adversarial, the two groups are the
better. Like in this story it mentions the "critics" of this project claim
other labs (their friends?) have already replicated these studies, apparently
using the super secret protocol they couldn't explain to this group.
I'd compare it to using sms 2FA. Is it perfect, no. But it is far, far better
than no 2FA at all. And there's nothing stopping you from putting your banking
app on the same phone you use for 2FA.
------
doener
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17662185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17662185)
~~~
jwilk
(same article, 0 comments)
------
anticensor
It turned out remaining 32 are unworthy to replicate.
------
Gatsky
Replicating cancer papers: This is one of those ideas which although pointless
and impractical, is seemingly impossible to criticize.
Now the leaders of this project are basically saying - we can't do difficult
experiments, and can't replicate studies which have already been replicated by
others.
What have we learned exactly, except that experimental biology is difficult?
~~~
pietroglyph
> pointless and impractical
These papers underlie a lot of modern research and treatments. If they aren't
reproducible, the papers' results, and other papers that use their results
come into question. This is a serious, documented problem [0].
> What have we learned exactly, except that experimental biology is difficult?
The problem wasn't that the project couldn't do difficult experiments, it was
that not enough information was provided by the original papers. _That 's_
what we learned here.
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis)
~~~
Gatsky
I disagree with your characterisation of the problem and the proposed
solution.
Cancer research is not an edifice constructed on foundational results. It is
not like physics in this regard, where for example, accurate calculation of
the gravitational constant is vitally important, and over time repeat
measurements are generally more precise but not wildly different, or do not
dispute the importance of the gravitational constant.
Take one of the papers they reproduced - Transcriptional amplification in
tumor cells with elevated c-Myc. This is an interesting result conducted in
highly contrived experimental conditions. Nobody is going to base their
career, a drug development program, treat a patient or even start a PhD based
on this result alone. I say this is a translational cancer scientist and
medical oncologist. The contribution of this paper is to our knowledge of the
biology of Myc, which has a multitude of actions which are context dependent.
Myc is studied in a variety of different ways using many different methods. If
this paper were being repeated today, the technologies and techniques would be
quite different. The result of this paper is not plugged into the central
dogma of cancer biology, setting us down an erroneous path for the next
thousand years. So to return to my original question, what have we learned in
trying to replicate this study, that we didn't already know? The money would
have been better spent on orthogonal validation/extension of the result using
modern techniques - another name for this is 'science'. The replication crisis
suggests that this routine extension/validation process is somehow less
important than going back and repeating the original experiment, which is I
think a complete misunderstanding. You also seem to be saying that we should
ask researchers to document in excruciating detail all experimental conditions
such that a pastry chef or meteorologist could walk into a lab and
successfully reproduce the experiment - this is an impossibly high bar to set
for scientists who are already working under very difficult conditions, and is
not the solution.
~~~
nonbel
>"what have we learned in trying to replicate this study, that we didn't
already know?"
It sounds like you think it doesn't matter if that result was published vs
"Transcriptional amplification in tumor cells with depressed c-Myc".
If I misread that title replace it with whatever is the opposite result in
this case. Anyway, like I said elsewhere if it isn't worth trying to
replicate, then the original study should have never been funded. How many of
these studies just exist as a "jobs program"?
It sounds like you think it is most of them, in which case great. We can then
easily cut out 90% plus of funding current going towards jobs program stuff
and devote it to the <10% that is worthwhile...
~~~
Gatsky
The effects of Myc have been tested in many different ways since that study.
Just type Myc and transcription into pubmed and you can see for yourself.
I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by making outlandish comments
about cutting funding or jobs programs (the idea that cancer research is a
jobs program is utterly hilarious!!), but it doesn't really seem you read my
comment.
~~~
nonbel
I don't see whats confused you about my post.
If no one cares whether the authors got it all wrong and "Transcriptional
amplification in tumor cells with _elevated_ c-Myc under conditions xyz"
should actually be "Transcriptional amplification in tumor cells with
_depressed_ c-Myc under conditions xyz", then why was this funded?
If someone does care then it should be replicated.
~~~
Gatsky
> If someone does care then it should be replicated.
It is tested in other forms, but isn't generally replicated in the sense you
seem to think is paramount. Nor should it be. I'll give you a silly example -
would you support a project to go back and replicate electromagnetism
experiments performed at the start of the century? Say we do repeat Millikan's
oil drop experiment and get a different result (which is actually what
happened) - does this mean there is a reproducibility crisis in physics? If we
don't repeat the exact experiment, does that mean that Millikan shouldn't have
received funding? Why is it that replicating the result the way Millikan did
it more useful than doing other related experiments with more sophisticated or
different apparatus? The latter is actually MORE useful.
~~~
nonbel
>"would you support a project to go back and replicate electromagnetism
experiments performed at the start of the century?"
Yes, of course! That is a great idea. Everyone should be doing this experiment
in high school or undergrad science class by now. In fact that seems to be a
thing:
[https://hepweb.ucsd.edu/2dl/pasco/Millikans%20Oil%20Drop%20M...](https://hepweb.ucsd.edu/2dl/pasco/Millikans%20Oil%20Drop%20Manual%20\(AP-8210\).pdf)
[https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/EXP18%20millikan.pdf](https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/EXP18%20millikan.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday - sir_kitty
http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush?page=full
======
rayiner
> After waiting twenty minutes, we are ushered into a room upstairs. A woman
> from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us
> to write 8:30. “I know you were told to be here at 8:15,” she says,
> anticipating a protest that never comes, “but that was just to make sure you
> got here early.” And, like that, fifteen minutes are lopped from our
> paycheck. It’s a small but important lesson in what it means to be a
> “flexible” worker.
> But there are significant challenges to organizing the industry. “Because of
> the temp nature of work, it’s very easy for a worker who speaks out to be
> retaliated against,” says Palma. “They might not be called back to work the
> following day, or have their hours decreased.” That’s exactly what happened
> to Rodriguez, according to the WWU. After he spoke to the media and
> participated in strikes over unsafe workplace conditions—leading Cal/OSHA to
> fine the warehouse nearly $30,000—he was fired earlier this year. Federal
> charges have been filed against the company, alleging retaliation, and an
> investigation is under way.
I'm not a fan of labor unions, but I'm not sure what else can be done about
this sort of thing. Litigation can only tackle small parts of the problem, and
class action settlements leave the lawyers as the only winners. Fines are
never high enough to disincentivize the activity. There's a high chance of not
getting caught, and even when you do get caught the fine is barely higher than
the cost of complying in the first place. Maybe a punishment of public
floggings for executives at companies who violate labor laws?[1]
[1] There's a lot of Singapore worship among certain circles, so they
shouldn't mind adopting some of their customs:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore).
~~~
kefka
Unfortunately, the power is in the hands of the temp workers.... if they all
stick together. If they all collectively demanded better working conditions
and better pay, they could succeed. After all, the work won't get done if they
don't do it. Management certainly isn't going to dirty their hands in this
kind of job.
And after all what we see, it really is have-nots (proletariat) versus the
haves(capitalists/managers).
~~~
nsxwolf
Or be replaced by robots. All I could think of reading that is why they
haven't figured out how to fold and tape a cardboard box with a robot yet.
They should get on that, and then those people won't have to be subjected to
those conditions anymore.
~~~
eplanit
Agreed. The automobile manufacturers were very successful in improving quality
and efficiency via robotics, and were also encouraged to do so by enormous
drags from labor unions. Warehouses have also increased automation, but
clearly they can improve more. Beyond the warehouse, I'm eager to see their
deployment in retail stores and fast-food. Consumers will benefit from
efficiencies, and the unhappy workers will be free to find jobs more to their
liking.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Keep in mind, a negative income tax/minimum basic income plan only has
problems passing until a majority of the population can't find work. History
has taught us the results of "Let them eat cake".
------
yetanotherphd
I don't see a big issue here.
It's not the fault of the industry that certain kinds of labor are cheap. In
fact it's nobody's fault, it's just the nature of the market.
The only kinds of response to this situation that make sense are to increase
welfare (and reduce the barriers/conditions to obtaining it) and decrease
taxes for people on low incomes. Anything else misses the essence of the
problem, which is that a large number of people, for whatever reasons, do not
produce enough value to earn a decent wage.
Enforcing various laws might help too, but given that all manual work is by
nature dangerous, it's not clear that this industry is especially bad.
------
thrill
This is easier to read: [http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-
crush?page=f...](http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-
crush?page=full)
~~~
sir_kitty
oh most definitely - thanks!
------
rjohnk
Every year the same article. No one is forced to work at a temp agency or
retail. If it sucks so much, find a different job.
Yes, yes, I know, it's not that easy. But it actually is.
~~~
EliRivers
_But it actually is._
Hell yeah. Get off your lazy ass, and go spend tens of thousands of dollars
getting an education that makes you employable (just put aside for the moment
the fact that your years of compulsory education left you good for nothing
better than packing boxes). It's that easy, everyone. Economy down? Well maybe
you should invest massively in industry and spark a boom so there are more
jobs. If you aren't doing that, you're just not trying.
~~~
abduhl
Why don't they just move into the tech industry, an industry filled with those
that proclaim the worthlessness of a degree and a low barrier to entry?
Or are they not fit for tech? Is there something that sets them apart and
makes them lesser than your typical dot commer?
------
RestlessMind
I guess this is how seeds of a revolution are sown.
I know that no system is perfect. And that capitalism* is better than many
others which have been tried so far. But if enough people are frustrated with
the given system, all it needs is a trigger to vent out that frustration.
* I guess main problem with capitalism is inheritance. When everyone is on equal footing, a "loser" may not mind the "winner" getting rich either through hard work, or even through occasional luck. But after 3-4 generations, when children of rich parents have inherent advantages (education, connections etc) which are extremely hard to overcome, this system starts becoming unstable.
------
powertower
If you think Capitalism is bad, just try Socialism. Instead of making X amount
of people miserable, it makes almost everyone miserable.
The world is not perfect, there is no utopia, and whatever you might think,
Capitalism is about as good of product/market fit (human-nature/society-type
fit) as you can get in a world that's not based on small hunter/gatherer
groups.
It's also keeps us in a state of competition, which is the driving force for
innovation and progress like nothing else is.
But don't believe me, just check how all the previous Marxsist and Socialist
societies in history turned out.
~~~
mcv
The balance is of course somewhere in the middle. The good parts of capitalism
with the good parts of socialism. You get a much nicer society than with
either one t the extreme.
~~~
ahomescu1
How do you get just the good parts of X (for any X), without the bad parts? In
most cases, you just get X as a package.
~~~
mcv
Sometimes, but not in this case. Plenty of northern European countries (Sweden
is a popular example) mix the good bits of capitalism and socialism just fine,
while avoiding the worst excesses. It's not perfect, but they're certainly on
a much more productive path than either socialist or capitalist extremists.
------
iamn
This whole schpiel just made me keep thinking: "I wonder how these people will
feel when robots replace them in these kinds of jobs"...
~~~
toomuchtodo
Something along the lines of, "Who do we lynch first? The robotics? Or the
owner?"
------
obsession
This is so horrifying to read. Is there anything we can do to help?
~~~
meritt
Amazon acquired Kiva Systems to employ robots [1] to replace people for these
various tasks. Although taking away a viable source of income for low-income
earners during the holiday season probably isn't viewed as "help" by most of
them.
[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs)
------
knowitall
Perhaps Amazon could add a checkbox to the shopping cart: [] pay 10% more that
will go directly into the pockets of the packers.
I wouldn't even mind a picture gallery of everybody who handled my package.
~~~
SilasX
Unfortunately, the theory of tax/cost incidence shows what can go wrong with
this: since it results in above-market effective wages, that simply
intensifies the competition for those positions, probably to the point that
workers will offer to do them for less than the current wage Amazon is paying,
since they know they'll still make the same from such donations.
Here's a discussion that covered the question in the context of allowing
people to tip McDonald's cashiers directly, but the same analysis applies:
[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/08/what_if_tipping_...](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/08/what_if_tipping_1.html)
"Who benefits" is determined by the shape of the supply/demand curves, not who
is being handed the dollars.
~~~
yetanotherphd
Nice point. Even if the money did get to the workers, I don't see why most
people would really want to do this, since is equivalent to donating $10 to
people who happen to be working that particular job. Wouldn't most people
rather donate that money to a charity, whose recipients are presumable more
needy than people who at least have jobs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Best-Paying Internships in America - dpflan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-02/these-are-the-best-paying-internships-in-america
======
tikhonj
The data here is only for large companies. I happen to know what a couple of
medium-sized quantitative trading firms (Jane Street and DE Shaw) pay interns,
and it's meaningfully higher (10–12k/month), although it might even out if you
consider the housing allowance Facebook et al provide.
------
geebee
Interesting that they never mention law firms. Summer associates at top law
firms generally earn the prorated salary for a first year associate, which can
be easily in excess of $15,000 a month.
I'm bringing this up because it is important, when we're discussing
"shortages" of engineers, to keep in mind the kind of options highly educated
people have available to them in the US.
Yes, law requires a graduate degree and passing the bar, but many of these
interns at tech companies have graduate degrees, and the undergraduate prep
for a STEM degree is considerably more rigorous than the typical poli-sci or
economics taken by pre-law types (yes, Econ takes a bit more math, but not
typically on a level of what is demanded of STEM majors).
Generally speaking, Law school isn't a great idea, but for the top students at
the top schools, it remains extremely lucrative. It really makes no sense to
compare the top CS and Engineering majors at top schools to some average
salary. You need to look at what the options are in other fields for elite
students.
Once you do, it is pretty clear why people with choice often decide to do
something other than STEM, and why a bit part of the appeal of work visas such
as the H1B is that they create a pool of workers who aren't allowed this free
choice. Without that crutch for employers, I suspect salaries in tech would
rise. And keep in mind, it wouldn't require denying talented immigrants entry
to the US, all we'd have to do is let these talented immigrants make the
decision about what to study and where to work for themselves. No more
allowing Silicon Valley employers to dictate these choices for them.
------
dikdik
Jesus Christ, I need to get out of life sciences. What a fucking mistake that
was.
~~~
jensvdh
It's all about Cost of Living. A $150k base salary really doesn't get you much
more than an average-ish life in San Francisco.
~~~
pmiller2
You can do better if you move to the East Bay and cut your rent in half.
~~~
closeparen
Nothing like a daily BART ride to scare you off of working in the Bay Area.
Especially one deep enough into the East Bay (with a long enough bus ride to
the station) to cut the rent in half.
An hour each way (20 minutes for first and last mile, 40 minute train ride)
will save you _maybe_ 30%.
------
prezjordan
Some more numbers here:
[https://twitter.com/rodneyfolz/status/724787290824798209](https://twitter.com/rodneyfolz/status/724787290824798209)
Two Sigma at the top with $10.4k/mo + $5k relocation + $5k housing.
------
oluckyman
Gotta be Axe Capital, surely.
------
eiliant
Pretty sure IB pays significantly more, though they work a lot more hours
~~~
ice109
also summer internships at v250 law firms are prorated first year associate
salaries
~~~
siegel
And summer associate positions are a slightly more professional version of
summer camp. But I guess the firms make it back when you come back as a
regular associate...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: ShareQuick – Send stuff from your desktop browser to mobile apps - karanrajpal
http://share-quick.com/?ref=shn
======
dmlittle
This is pretty much the same as DeskConnect for Android but as a Chrome
Extension [http://deskconnect.com/](http://deskconnect.com/)
~~~
karanrajpal
It does offer some of the same features, but Deskconnect is just for iOS and
Mac specifically.
ShareQuick works with any desktop OS that has the Chrome browser, and it works
with Android.
------
Nainaa
Definitely more useful than Pushbullet. I'm a big whatsapp sharer, and often
see a lot of pictures online i'd love sharing on whatsapp to discuss.
~~~
karanrajpal
We are glad you liked it! Our aim was to simplify things even further :)
------
rahimnathwani
This is really nice. It's very easy to set up, and it just works!
(BTW I'm not sure why the Android app requires access to see who is in my
circles.)
~~~
karanrajpal
Glad you liked it! We will be fixing that with the next update :)
------
FF76
This is essentially what I use PushBullet for. I'll definitely give it a try.
Thanks!
~~~
karanrajpal
The difference is that you can directly choose a specific app to share stuff
with. Thanks for trying!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Haskell Problems for a New Decade - psibi
http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/decade.html
======
siraben
Most undergraduates take a compiler course in which they implement
C, Java or Scheme. I have yet to see a course at any university,
however, in which Haskell is used as the project language. [...] The
closest project I’ve seen to this is a minimal Haskell dialect
called duet.
Ben Lynn has been working on such a Haskell compiler[0], self-hosting and with
IO too. It's a little unusual in its approach to compilation (targets
combinatory logic and executes via graph reduction), but it's a great example
nonetheless, from which one could build an undergraduate course.
Code generation is a difficult issue, compiling a lazy functional language to
assembly could easily fill up two semesters of classes alone.
The VM in C is really small and the compiler can be built up incrementally[1].
[0] [https://github.com/blynn/compiler](https://github.com/blynn/compiler)
[1]
[https://crypto.stanford.edu/~blynn/compiler/quest.html](https://crypto.stanford.edu/~blynn/compiler/quest.html)
~~~
omaranto
> Most undergraduates take a compiler course in which they implement C, Java
> or Scheme.
Is that true? I thought those compiler courses typically implemented some toy
language.
Maybe "in" is misplaced and the following was meant instead?
"Most undergraduates take a compiler course which they implement in C, Java or
Scheme."
~~~
leetcrew
I think you're essentially right, but the "toy language" is often a subset of
some real language. in my compilers course it was a subset of pascal, which
targeted a very friendly IR. there's no inherent reason why the same couldn't
be done for a subset of C, Java, or Scheme. in particular, Scheme has a
relatively simple syntax to parse. C is fairly difficult to parse, not sure to
what degree the grammar can be simplified by removing features.
------
pron
This post highlights my biggest problem with the language: it's about the
_how_ , not about the _why_. For example, dependent types. They add
significant complexity to the language and are intended to help with
correctness. But are they an effective way to achieve it compared to
alternatives? The fact that even current formal verification _research_ is
mostly looking elsewhere seems to suggest that the answer is likely negative,
so why focus on them now? Or algebraic effects, about which the article says,
"These effect-system libraries may help to achieve a boilerplate-free nirvana
of tracking algebraic effects at much more granular levels." But is that even
a worthwhile goal? Why is it nirvana to more easily do something that might
not be worth doing at all?
Researchers who study some technique X ask themselves how best to use X to do
Y, and publish a series of papers on the subject, but practitioners don't care
about the answer to that question because they don't care about that question
at all. They want to know how best to do Y, period. One could say that every
language, once designed, is committed to some techniques that it tries to
employ in full effect. But any product made for practical use should at least
strive to begin with the _why_ rather than the how, both in its original
design and throughout its evolution. I work with designers of a popular
programming language, and I see them spending literally years first trying to
answer the why or the what before getting to the how. So either Haskell is a
language intended as a research tool for those studying some particular
techniques -- which is a _very_ worthy goal but not one that helps me achieve
mine -- or it's intended to provide entertainment for practitioners who are
particularly drawn to its style. Either way, it's not a language that's
designed to solve a problem for practitioners (and if it is, it doesn't seem
that testing whether it actually does so successfully is a priority).
I think it's important to have languages for language research, but if that's
what they are, don't try to present them as something else. And BTW, at ~0.06%
of US market share -- less than Clojure, Elixir, Rust and Fortran, about the
same as Erlang and Delphi, and slightly more than Lisp, F# and Elm -- and
little or no growth ([https://www.hiringlab.org/2019/11/19/todays-top-tech-
skills/](https://www.hiringlab.org/2019/11/19/todays-top-tech-skills/)), I
wouldn't call Haskell a "popular language," as this post does, just yet.
~~~
pjmlp
Which is why although I see these kind of languages quite relevant to advance
the state of the art, the industry belongs to impure multi-paradigm languages.
Like Brian Goetz puts it, it is not FP vs OOP, rather combining FP and OOP,
using the best of each to solve different kinds of problems with the same
tool.
~~~
hopia
I'm not so sure a multi-paradigm language is truly the ideal alternative.
Languages that brag being multi-paradigm, such as Python or Javascript, in the
end offer very few facilities for actual functional programming. It just
doesn't feel idiomatic with them.
FP and OOP are both well tested design patterns. Mixing them up in an
incoherent way just makes the whole software architecture somewhat
unpredictable.
~~~
mumblemumble
One could perhaps draw a distinction between languages that were designed from
the ground up as multiparadigm, such as OCaml, and languages that originally
targeted one paradigm and then became multiparadigm by katamari-ing up a bunch
of extra features, as Python did.
FWIW, I also don't know that Python officially conceives of itself as
multiparadigm so much as as a procedural language with classes. Kids these
days forget that higher-order programming has a long history in procedural
programming, too. ALGOL was doing it in the 1960s, after lisp but a good
decade before Backus published _Can Programming Be Liberated from the von
Neumann Style?_.
~~~
TheAsprngHacker
For what it's worth, despite the O in OCaml, in practice the object layer
isn't used that often. However, that's because the ML module system serves
many of the same use cases that objects and classes do in other languages.
People do use objects in OCaml occasionally if they need the dynamic dispatch.
I'd say that OCaml blends imperative and functional programming cohesively and
fairly equally, though.
------
mlthoughts2018
> “ Many of the large tech companies are investing in alternative languages
> such as Swift and Julia in order to build the next iterations of these
> libraries because of the hard limitations of CPython.”
I would be interested in evidence of this. I work at a big tech company in ML
and scientific computing, and have close peers and friends in similar
leadership roles of this tech in other big companies, FAANG, finance, biotech,
large cloud providers, etc.
I am only hearing about the adoption of CPython skyrocketing and continued
investment in tools like numba, llvm-lite and Cython. At none of these
companies have I heard any interest in Julia, Swift or Rust development for
these use cases, and have heard many, many arguments for why Python wins the
trade-offs discussion against those options.
In fact, two places I used to work for (one a heavy Haskell shop and one a
heavy Scala shop) are moving away from those languages and _to_ Python, for
all kinds of reasons related to fundamental limitations of static typing and
enforced (rather than provisioned) safety.
I mean, Haskell & Scala are great languages and so are Julia & Swift. But even
though in some esoteric corners people have started to disprefer Python, it’s
super unrealistic to suggest there’s large movement away from it. Rather
there’s a large move _to_ it.
It reminds me of the Alex Martelli quote from Python Interviews,
> “Eventually we bought that little start-up and we found out how 20
> developers ran circles around our hundreds of great developers. The solution
> was very simple! Those 20 guys were using Python. We were using C++. So that
> was YouTube and still is.”
~~~
logicchains
I work in HFT and now use Julia for all my research, and a couple of my
colleagues now do too. Personally I'd rather retire and farm goats than go
back to having to write Python professionally: there's just soo much that can
go wrong that doesn't happen in a typed language, so much unnecessary stuff
you have to keep in your head when coding. It also seems incredibly
counterproductive to use a language that's 100x slower than necessary just
because it's the only language some people know; the difference in research
speed between having to wait one second for a result and ten minutes is
massive.
Of course, HFT is a somewhat different usecase than pure ML, as we work with
data in a format that's rarely seen elsewhere (high-frequency orderbook tick
data). Python's probably less painful for working with data for which somebody
else has already written a C/C++ library with a nice API, as then you don't
need to write your own C/C++ library and interface with it. My choice is
either: write Python, and the research will take 100x longer, write Python and
C++, and the development will take 2-4 times longer, or write Julia, and get
similar performance to C++ with even faster development time than Python.
~~~
twic
Is it just performance that puts you off Python? If so, did you try writing a
native extension to accelerate it?
Where i work, we also have analysis work which involves sequentially reading
gigabytes of binary data. We came up with a workflow where a tool written in
Java runs a daily job to parse the raw data and write a simplified, fixed-
width binary version of it, then we have a small Python C extension which can
read that format. We can push a bit of filtering down into the C as well.
This has worked out pretty well! We get to write all the tricky parsing in a
fast, typesafe language, we get to write the ever-changing analytics scripts
in Python, and we only had to write a small amount of C, which is mostly I/O
and VM API glue.
The Java and C parts were both written by an intern in a month or two. He's a
sharp guy, admittedly, but if an intern can do it, i bet an HFT developer
could too.
~~~
logicchains
>Is it just performance that puts you off Python? If so, did you try writing a
native extension to accelerate it?
This is what I did originally, but it was way slower to have to write and
maintain C++ and a Python interface for it than to just write Julia.
Particularly because the some of the business/trading logic basically has to
be in the native layer (can't backtest a HFT algo without running it on HFT
data, and that volume of high frequency tick data is too slow to process in
pure Python).
------
anentropic
> If you look at the top 100 packages on Hackage, around a third of them have
> proper documentation showing the simple use cases for the library.
This is still very very poor, and one of the biggest problems faced by
newcomers to the language (speaking as one myself...)
~~~
platz
Which library in the top 100 that you used had documentation (or lack thereof)
that wasn't sufficient to understand how to accomplish the task at hand?
~~~
weavie
Some of the libraries need you to click into the docs for specific modules to
get the full documentation for them. This confused me when I first set out.
eg. Postgres Simple. This is the page you get to at first when you search for
it:
[https://www.stackage.org/lts-14.21/package/postgresql-
simple...](https://www.stackage.org/lts-14.21/package/postgresql-simple-0.6.2)
It looks like there is no documentation, just a list of modules.
Clicking on the Database.PostgreSQL.Simple module gets you to the docs:
[https://www.stackage.org/haddock/lts-14.21/postgresql-
simple...](https://www.stackage.org/haddock/lts-14.21/postgresql-
simple-0.6.2/Database-PostgreSQL-Simple.html)
~~~
whateveracct
This is pretty standard practice. The landing page for a package is never
where examples live (except for the README). Haddocks are used for examples &
tutorials, and the top-level module or a documentation-only module ending in
".Tutorial" are often provided.
~~~
weavie
Sure. It just took a bit of getting used to, but could be the reason why a lot
of casual developers looking at the language have the impression that the
documentation is poor.
~~~
whateveracct
That's fair I guess but if someone just looks at a single landing page and
draws a conclusion without even clicking around idk what to say
------
eli_gottlieb
I'm going to give the same Haskell hot-take I gave on Twitter while at NeurIPS
in December: the problem with Haskell is that you can port the awesome parts
of pure, compositional abstractions over to Python, far more quickly than you
can port really good domain-specific libraries and applications over to
Haskell. My experience was that porting some nice ADT-based machinery to
Python, using an available ADT library, took roughly one weekend, whereas
porting the major domain-specific package I needed from Python to Haskell
would take months to years.
I love Haskell. I prefer to use Haskell when I can. Haskell is a language in
which I can Achieve Enlightenment. But apparently, God help me if I need to do
some heavy graph processing or CUDA numerics in Haskell.
~~~
ashilfarahmand
So, uh, I was looking through past threads (this one in particular
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578769))
and I came across your comment:
"I might be spat at or beaten up in the street for being Jewish - that happens
in Brooklyn or LA anyway these days."
And I was wondering, how has it been for Jews in the US in the past few years
up till now? When did things start to get noticeably worse?
I know about the rising Anti-Semitism and the particular incident in NY about
a month ago.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
If you want to talk about that, you should contact me privately. I don't want
to derail a nice thread.
~~~
ashilfarahmand
I'm totally fine doing that but I don't know how. Can we private message?
~~~
eli_gottlieb
My profile on here links to my Github Pages site, which has an email address
on it.
------
mark_l_watson
Great forward thinking wish list!
I have a strange relationship with Haskell. I love Haskell repl driven
development of pure code for playing with algorithms and ideas. I use Haskell
in this use case much like I use Common Lisp and Scheme languages. However, I
am not very good at writing impure code and the interfaces between pure and
impure code. To put it more plainly, I enjoy the language and I am productive,
but I suffer sometimes figuring out other people’s Haskell code.
------
socialdemocrat
Despite the positive tone, what really struck me in this article was that they
struggle with getting people to work on the compiler because it is too
complex.
It just confirms my main criticism against advance statically typed languages:
They are simply too complex.
It is why I have more faith in languages like Julia, because you can achieve a
tremendous amounts of power, expressiveness and performance in a relatively
simple language.
Dynamic typing gives you simplicity in the type system which is impossible to
achieve with static type checking.
Long term this has profound implications. People can keep hacking on and
expanding Julia because they can wrap their head around the language. You
don't need to be Einstein to grok it.
I think you may also see Clojure overtake Scala for the same reason. The
simplicity of Clojure may in the long run overtake Scala although Scala
benefits a lot from similarity to Java at a superficial level.
~~~
Random_ernest
> I think you may also see Clojure overtake Scala for the same reason. The
> simplicity of Clojure may in the long run overtake Scala although Scala
> benefits a lot from similarity to Java at a superficial level.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Scala overtake Clojure some years ago as
the second most popular language on the JVM (second to Java ofc). From my
point of view it rarely happens that these trends reverse.
Scala has the advantage that it allows OOP or Functional Programming, which
Clojure does not.
But I do get your point about simplicity. I tried 3 times to learn functional
programming by learning Haskell and it never clicked. Then I learned Clojure
and who would have thought, functional programming is actually not as hard as
Haskell makes it out to be.
~~~
EdwardDiego
I work in a JVM shop and I don't see Clojure making much head way. Unlike say,
Apache Spark, there's no killer app (datomic notwithstanding) that requires
Clojure over Scala.
Scala also offer the advantage of static type checking, and a less alien
syntax. Yeah, I know Clojure is just s-expressions, but all the brackets don't
help its uptake.
Oh, and Clojure stack traces make Scala stack traces look positively brief and
informative.
~~~
lonelappde
Scala's syntax for (generic) type declarations is super alien, and you can't
avoid it because it's a big part of why you'd use Scala in the first place.
------
coolplants
Big issue with Haskell adoption is the number of hoops you have to jump
through to write efficient code in it. Haskell abstracts away the idea of a
procedural VM implementing the code underneath, but you often need that
exposed to finagle your code into a form that’s efficient.
Haskell programming ethos is opposed to that, the language wants people to
focus on the semantics of computation not the method. Yet we must be able to
specify computation method if we want our programs to operate efficiently.
The truth is that the Haskell compiler will never be able to automatically
translate idiomatic Haskell code into something that’s competitive with C in
the common case. once you start finagling your haskell code to compete with C
you’ve negated the point of using Haskell to begin with.
~~~
the_af
> _The truth is that the Haskell compiler will never be able to automatically
> translate idiomatic Haskell code into something that’s competitive with C in
> the common case._
Is this something you have experience with, or are you just theorizing? I know
there are pitfalls to Haskell development, but to assert that "the common
case" has uncompetitive performance seems wrong to me.
My problem with this kind of assertions is that often -- not saying it's your
case, that's why I'm asking -- they come from people who _imagine_ how it must
be (or read it in a blog), often coming from a place of never really having
tried to solve something with the language, and this sadly percolates into
popular wisdom ("Haskell is not good for this or that"). Something similar
happened to Java's allegedly "poor" performance, way past the point Java
software sometimes outperformed C in many areas.
~~~
jerf
I think it's a common problem with almost all, if not all, languages that come
to us out of the 1990s that they are fundamentally built on the presumption
that "someday" compilers may save us. Well, "someday" is pretty much here, and
they've all failed, as far as I'm concerned. (If you're happy with 10x-slower-
than-C and substantial memory eaten to get even that fast, YMMV, but it's not
what was hoped for. No sarcasm on that, BTW; sometimes that's suitable, just
like sometimes 50x-slower-than-C is suitable. But it's not what was hoped
for.)
Haskell can do some pretty tricks with specific code if you tickle it right,
but if you just write general, normal code, it's faster than Python (a low
bar, Python _qua_ Python is nearly the slowest language in anything like
common use) but not a generally "fast" language. "Someday" is here; if it's
not "generally C-fast" today, I see no particular reason to believe it will be
in the future either, especially since GHC seems to have spent a great deal of
its design budget.
It would be interesting to see someone's take on Haskell, but where they write
the language from the very beginning to be a high-performance language.
There's probably multiple points in this design space that would be possible.
Arguably Rust is nearly one of them, and getting even closer in the next few
years.
~~~
tjalfi
You might be interested in Cliff Click’s aa[0].
It’s still under development but intended to be a high performance functional
language.
The author has substantial experience in JITs and compilers.
[0] [https://github.com/cliffclick/aa](https://github.com/cliffclick/aa)
------
thrower123
Haskell's main problem is that it is over-zealous, and built on axioms that
make it a poor fit for real people writing real code. Everything else flows
from that core issue. Functional purity and lazy evaluation are interesting,
but when you can't toss a printf debug or log statement into a function
without changing function signatures all the way up, it's not going to be
popular.
Pragmatic, sloppy languages will always be more popular, because they are more
forgiving.
~~~
cosmic_quanta
To be fair, you can printf debug anywhere (Debug.Trace module). I'm the "print
to debug" kind of guy, and I can debug in Haskell just like in Python using
this.
I think the issue you have stems from the fact that people can't transfer the
knowledge from C/C++/Python/wtv _directly_. One of the standard way to build
programs in Haskell (mtl-style) allows you to perform IO actions almost
anywhere, provided you're willing to play with monads. But this is so
different from anything most people have ever seen that I understand why it
can be frustrating.
~~~
thrower123
Any idea when this was added? I am relatively certain that it was not possible
in Haskell 98, and admittedly most of my Haskell experience is a decade old.
I have picked up three well-regarded Haskell books over the past decade trying
to get back into the language, and don't recall any mention of this
capability.
That's another issue, the dearth of anything like tutorials or books on how to
do something practical with Haskell, rather than the whirlwind tour of
language features. I keep being told that serious software is being built in
Haskell, but the knowledge of how to get from university-grade code to
production-grade code is an unmarked wilderness that everyone must apparently
navigate on their own.
~~~
vilhelm_s
Looking back on historical GHC releases, the earliest one available on the web
page is version 0.29, released in July 1995, and it already has the trace
function. I would guess has been there for a long time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Sales List – A curated list of tools and resources for salespeople - vincenzor
https://saleslist.co/
======
kelkes
Saleslist without stuff made by Steli Efti is no saleslist :)
------
vincenzor
Hi all,
A little side project. I would love to get your feedback on this.
Thx!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Peter Thiel Met with the Racist Fringe as He Went All in on Trump - minimaxir
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support
======
abvdasker
At a certain point you have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that Thiel
is apparently a cryptofascist. I wonder if this will hurt the reputation of
Founders Fund and his other ventures or whether the Valley will continue to
pretend that this is not a problem.
~~~
xenospn
Seems that Thiel is to HN what Trump is to middle America. Blind, cult-like
admiration for someone who is basically a terrible human being. I never
understood either one.
------
consumer451
I’ve heard people say, oh we have Thiel on the board to have a diverse set of
views.
Please describe to me the beliefs of the person who would balance Thiel’s? I
don’t see it.
~~~
luckydata
any normal person that's not a nazi I suppose. In my mind being associated
with Thiel should be seen as a serious stain on someone's reputation, here
people band it around as a badge of honor. Needless to say, I'm not impressed.
------
noxer
Why is this on HH? Its literally buzzfeednews.
~~~
enraged_camel
Buzzfeed started out as a purely clickbait outlet, but they made a stunning
transformation into a very successful investigative journalism outlet.
Also, this is on HN probably because it's about someone who is very
influential in tech circles.
------
grandpoobah
oh cool, another place for me to be bombarded with politics.
~~~
grey-area
Sometimes, to remain human, you have to pick a side.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to handle angel investor interest? - 100-xyz
Our product has entered the launch stage and we are doing a kickstarter. I had asked a bunch of people for feedback before going live.<p>One of them has expressed interest in being an angel investor. I had never given any thought to this.<p>How do I handle this? Do they take a percent of company for the money. Is there a contract similar to YC? Is there anything I should look out for?<p>Here's the link that created this (not meant to be a plug)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/100-xyz/298281515?ref=578000&token=e80d409c<p>Thanks
======
gus_massa
The owners of the site have some "standard" agreements. Perhaps one of them,
may be useful
[https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/](https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing Fedora 21 - dysoco
http://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-21/
======
iamtew
Looks like the blog is having some issues coping with the traffic, according
to Matthew Miller (from reddit):
> The blog where we are hosting the annoucement doesn't have enough juice.
> Working on it, but in the meantime, if you're hitting server errors, go
> directly to [http://getfedora.org](http://getfedora.org)
From here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2orc6e/its_here_annou...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2orc6e/its_here_announcing_fedora_21/cmprurz)
------
tflink
If you're having trouble getting to fedoramagazine.org, you can see almost the
same content (albeit in a more plaintext form) in the fedora user list
archives:
[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2014-Decembe...](https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2014-December/455921.html)
------
Zash
404?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It's 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning – Ted Chiang - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/opinion/ted-chiang-future-genetic-engineering.html
======
neilv
> _In a society increasingly obsessed with credentials, being genetically
> engineered is like having an Ivy-League M.B.A.: It is a marker of status
> that makes a candidate a safe bet for hiring, rather than an indicator of
> actual competence._
Not specific to fancy MBA programs, but sometimes credentials means more than
a safe bet, but also a fraternity or cabal.
Imagine that, by default, there's a level playing field for everyone, but a
subgroup of people collude to trade favors amongst themselves. That group will
have an advantage over everyone outside the group who are playing by the
egalitarian rules.
~~~
RhysU
Imagine that, by default, there's a level playing field for everyone, but a
subgroup of people share some common background and therefore they can form
trusted connections amongst themselves at lower cost vs the overhead to
establish such connections between any two parties who don't know each other
from Adam. I claim this not nefarious situation is indistinguishable from your
sinister finger pointing.
~~~
neilv
How do you mean "trust"? Possibilities include:
1\. Trust that the person is capable at particular things. (This you might get
from credentials, which perhaps also defines a group, and accomplishments.)
2\. Trust that the person is truthful with you, and will honor agreements with
you. (This you might get from their reputation within your network/group.)
3\. Trust that the person will give preferential treatment to you/group, and
that they do this _because_ there is mutual advantage to a subgroup doing
that, separate from trust in ability and honesty. (Maybe sometimes this is
called loyalty to the group, though you might say you trust in their loyalty.
Or maybe it's merely understood.)
I'm pretty sure I've seen #3 happen in business/opportunities, read about it
in news, and heard people talk firsthand about it, in ways not always covered
by #1 and #2.
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>Yet we continue to ignore this because it runs counter to one of the founding
myths of this nation: that anyone who is smart and hardworking can get ahead.
Our lack of hereditary titles has made it easy for people to dismiss the
importance of family wealth and claim that everyone who is successful has
earned it.
Who your parents are has always mattered. Parents being able to give their
children an advantage in the world is, in general, a good thing. Even the
preamble to the Constitution of the United States talks about securing the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
It is human nature to want to work hard to better your offspring. It is one of
the main motivating factors for many people. Any attempt to remove this
advantage is bound to fail.
We need to stop looking at individual opportunity as much as look at the
bigger generational picture. As many have pointed out rags to riches in a
single generation is very rare. However, rags to riches in 2 or 3 generations
is not uncommon (see especially the experience with Asian immigrants). We need
it so that anyone who is smart and hard working can end up better off than
their parents, and ensure a better starting position for their own kids who if
they are also smart and hard working end up even better.
Any Procrustean policy of trying to make it irrelevant who your parents are is
always going to end in frustration.
~~~
ergothus
One change I'd like to see is in the opposite direction: We (U.S. society)
should stop assuming that someone who has wealth is automatically more
meritorious than someone without. We've taken the concept that "someone who is
smart and hard working CAN improve their situation" and flipped it to be
"someone in an improved situation MUST be smart and hard working".
We should also watch out for what we consider "smart". Someone that is a
complete manipulative and exploitative jerk can leverage that to become quite
wealthy. They will defend it as "smart", and perhaps it is, but if don't
consider that behavior valuable, we should stop pretending the wealthy cases
are exceptions.
And of course, to agree with some of your points, we shouldn't toss the baby
with the bathwater, nor paint with too wide of a brush. That said, the
American narrative and American reality are somewhat dramatically out of sync
right now, so some adjustment seems prudent. When the U.S., champion of socio-
economic mobility, is ranked rather poorly at the same compared to other
developed nations, we become delusional hypocrites, not champions.
------
goldemerald
This article isn't too surprising. Modern studies only find a small positive
connection between IQ and lifetime success (0.25 correlation). Even so, there
is no single element predictor that can better measure success compared to IQ.
I would hope that by 2059, social scientists can find an accurate way to
determine how being rich contributes to "winning".
~~~
yocheckit
Do they? My experience reading them doesn't indicate that at all, IQ is
enormously important in determining lifetime success it's just there are
different plateaus.
Once you achieve a certain IQ threshold (be it 115, 130, 145, whatever) then
other factors play a bigger role but before you hit that threshold your
outcomes statistically will be much worse than even the lowest performers who
do make the cutoff.
------
chr1
This assumes that applying edits is hard and expensive while finding what to
edit is easy and can be done without multiyear tests. But the reality is
exactly the opposite.
More likely outcome is that genetic editing companies will be paying poor
people to be able to test effectiveness of therapies on their children, and
instead of direct payments will use long term contracts taking percentage from
the child's future income.
And if you think this business model is immoral and horrible, notice that this
is the business model governments are meant to perform with taxes and social
payments, they just fail miserably because of their monopoly.
------
StavrosK
I watched a very interesting TED talk related to this the other day. The
premise is the question "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?". The
answer won't surprise you if I tell you the answer will surprise you.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU)
~~~
wolco
Define rich.
~~~
StavrosK
He does.
------
katabasis
The way things seem to be heading, I'm afraid we're going to have much bigger
problems by 2059 to worry about.
~~~
politician
Unless the rich are going to start building domed cities for themselves, they
might be better off making their designer children smaller, vegan, and
tolerant of lower levels of oxygen.
~~~
aeternus
How about robot children: \- No oxygen required \- No food required \- Can be
made quite small \- 50% lower chance of uprising when compared to humans
~~~
chr1
"No food required" is quite nice. Technology for full robots may require quite
some time, but before that it is probably possible to create artificial
stomach that can replace your stomach and gut, and instead of eating 3 times a
day and going to toilet you simply could replace a bottle once a week.
------
germinalphrase
Thank you.
~~~
RandomBacon
I clicked on the "web" link under the title and opened it in a private tab,
which loaded Google search results, then I clicked on the NYT link and it
worked.
Edit: the site reloaded to cut the article then say I'm in Private mode and to
log in. I just went back, opened the NYT result again, and stoped loading the
page once the text appeared.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looking at Python for commercial apps but there are problems with packaging - darreld
I'm researching using Python for commercial desktop applications but deployment
seems problematic. I'm trying to decide if I'm looking at the wrong technology?<p>I love the language and I can see how productive I would be in it but I really need to be
able to produce clean .exe files to deliver, and I would like for the solution to be cross-platform.
I will be using Python 3.6+ and wxpython. cx_Freeze doesn't do single file exe's. Pyinstaller
doesn't seem to play well with Python3 (maybe I'm doing it wrong). py2exe doesn't work for me either.<p>I'm sure there are a lot of very smart people working on this so it must be a hard problem which
I would certainly be willing to help with but I'm wondering if I'm picking the wrong technology.<p>Alternatively I would use JavaFX, which would be fine, just not quite as productive.
======
mnai
Try GUI2Exe, it worked for me pretty well, and as GUI it didn't require to
learn all tools command line switches
[https://code.google.com/archive/p/gui2exe/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/gui2exe/)
[https://launchpad.net/gui2exe](https://launchpad.net/gui2exe)
Another great product by Andrea Gavana
~~~
dagw
Last commit seems to be from 2012 though.
------
memracom
You could take a look at a small project that I did a few years ago to create
a portable CPython build for Linux.
[https://github.com/wavetossed/pybuild](https://github.com/wavetossed/pybuild)
The basic idea was to make a CPython binary that did not use any system
libraries. Instead, all dynamic linking was to local files within the
directory tree of the application. That way you could zip up (or tar up) a
directory tree containing this portable Python, its binary libraries and any
Python modules/libraries that you needed. The result was a self=contained app
that could be copied to any Linux server, unpacked and executed. No
prerequisites on the server except a new enough Linux kernel because the Linux
ABI changed at some point around 10 years ago or so.
By updating the build script in the Github repo, you could update this to a
newer version of Python 3.
To make a Windows binary doing the same thing would require a reasonable
amount of knowledge about object files, linking, and Windows DLLs. It might be
easier to use the MINGW GCC compiler rather than Microsoft, so consider that
possibility. First thing to do is to understand how the CPython binary on
Windows works and loads DLLs before actually executing Python code. The key is
to intercept this process so that you have total control over all object files
and do not rely on anything else being preinstalled on the target system.
------
milesvp
I think you named the ones I used a few years ago. cx_freeze and py2exe both
had issues. I was using 2.7 at the time, and I managed to get something
deployable that didn't require installing system libs, but wasn't a single
file either.
Python is my goto language for fast development, but it's always felt a little
clunky in windows. You may also need to consider gui issues. we ended up using
pyqt, and it didn't quite feel like a windows app either.
You may want to consider, and I hate to say this, javascript for your
language. The app we built had pdf libs we needed in python and not in
javascript so a browser based solution wasn't available to us at the time. But
being able to host the app is generally considered the easiest way to get
cross platform these days.
------
dagw
There is also Briefcase,
[https://pybee.org/project/projects/tools/briefcase/](https://pybee.org/project/projects/tools/briefcase/)
But last time I looked at it it was very much a work in progress.
------
tyingq
Pyinstaller mentions that one of the maintainers does paid support. You
mentioned it was commercial software, so perhaps just paying an expert to get
things going makes sense.
------
bonhardcomp
The outlook is much better in 2017 than it was just a few years ago. Another
+1 for PyQt. I wanted a native Mac look and you can get get pretty darn close
with Qt. I've also used PyInstaller, which is superbly well documented.
------
testino
Py2exe with python 2.7 is ised for rcam-pro
[http://www.vintech.bg](http://www.vintech.bg)
------
Petrakis
I think you should check Visual Studio with C# and .NET
Thats what I would use (If target machines are windows)
I still havent tried Net core on Unix machines so I cant say much.
If you pack it into exe you lose the cross-platform thing, so you might aswell
use any other language.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Larry Page's question in USENET about a "web robot" he was making (1996) - cryptoz
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO05LIU/ushhUIQQ-ogJ
======
dhaneshnm
A relic indeed :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EU warn pesticides are far more dangerous than was thought - vixen99
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/02/organic-foods-backed-landmark-report-warning-pesticides-far/
======
dazc
Article can be read here: [https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-
telegraph/20170603/...](https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-
telegraph/20170603/281492161280120)
I think it's this report from 2016
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/58192...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/581922/EPRS_STU\(2016\)581922_EN.pdf)
~~~
lumberjack
From the report, it's not just pesticides but anything that contains
organophosphates which includes herbicides as well including the very infamous
Monsanto herbicide.
------
sunflowershine
I found another academic paper Neurobehavioural effects of developmental
toxicity
Lancet Neurology
"Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development,
and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested
for developmental neurotoxicity. "
"Acute pesticide poisoning occurs frequently in children worldwide, and
subclinical pesticide toxicity is also widespread. Clinical data suggest that
acute pesticide poisoning during childhood might lead to lasting
neurobehavioural deficits"
[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-44...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422\(13\)70278-3/fulltext?_eventId=login)
------
AHatLikeThat
The complete article is paywalled, but what is available gives no citation. I
could find no recent pesticides report on the EU website.
I am pro-organics, but I question the veracity of the telegraph's article. At
the least, I think this post should be linked to the actual EU report, if one
does exist.
~~~
ciconia
DO you really need proof that poison is bad for you?
~~~
gonvaled
What is poison?
Water is poison: drinking 50 liters in 1 minute will kill you.
~~~
qubex
I guess that a 'poison' is a chemical that kills by biological effects...
drinking fifty litres of water in a minute will kill you by mechanical means,
which is kind of beside the point... the element iron is also a lethal if five
hundred kilograms collide with you at a hundred metres per second, but you
haven't been 'poisoned'.
~~~
gonvaled
My point is that _anything_ is poison, depending on dosage. Even water, the
basis of terrestian life, although I know I am stretching the analogy there.
But yes, water will destroy your cellular membranes if exposed to it in big
quantities for a long time. Those are chemical (biological) effects.
~~~
qubex
(I'm just picking your brain because now I'm curious.)
How about a noble gas? Presumably those are chemically inert enough to not
cause anything chemical/biological at all?
~~~
gonvaled
Nature does not care about our definitions, and properties are usually on a
gray scale, not black-white. Inert gas have very low reactivity [1], but they
can still react:
> Nonetheless, low reactivity—instead of no reactivity, as had formerly been
> thought—characterizes the rare gases. One of the factors governing the
> reactivity of an element is its electron configuration, and the electrons of
> the noble gases are arranged in such a way as to discourage bonding with
> other elements.
That said, I would probably classify noble gases as perfectly safe, since
damage from exposure to them will more likely come from mechanical
interactions, and not biological / chemical.
[1] [http://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-
technology/chemistry...](http://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-
technology/chemistry/compounds-and-elements/noble-gases)
------
sunflowershine
And I found one report from EU website
Human health implications of organic food and organic agriculture
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/58192...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/581922/EPRS_STU\(2016\)581922_EN.pdf)
p.29 In order to assess the potential health risk for consumers associated
with exposure to dietary pesticides, epidemiological studies of sensitive
health outcomes and their links to exposure measures have to be relied on. The
main focus so far has been on cognitive deficits in children in relation to
their mother’s exposure level to organophosphate insecticides during
pregnancy. This line of research is highly appropriate given the known
neurotoxicity of many pesticides in laboratory animal models [162] and the
substantial vulnerability of the human brain during early development [180].
Most of the human studies have been carried out in the US and have focused on
assessing brain functions in children with different levels of prenatal
organophosphate exposure. In a longitudinal birth cohort study among
farmworkers in California (the CHAMACOS cohort), maternal urinary
concentrations of organophosphate metabolites in pregnancy are associated with
abnormal reflexes in neonates [181], adverse mental development at two years
of age [182], attention problems at three and a half and five years [183], and
poorer intellectual development at seven years [184]. In accordance with this,
a birth cohort study from New York reported impaired cognitive development at
the ages 12 and 24 months and six to nine years related to maternal urine
concentrations of organophosphates in pregnancy [185]. In another New York
inner-city birth cohort, concentration of the organophosphate chlorpyrifos in
umbilical cord blood has been found to be associated with delayed psychomotor
and mental development in children in the first three years of life [186],
poorer working memory and full-scale IQ at seven years of age [187],
structural changes, including decreased cortical thickness, in the brain of
the children at school age [188], and mild to moderate tremor in the arms at
11 years of age [189]. Based on these studies, chlorpyrifos has recently been
categorised as a human developmental neurotoxicant [190]. Several reviews of
neurodevelopmental effects of organophosphate insecticides in humans have been
conducted and most of them conclude that exposure during pregnancy, at levels
found among groups of the general population, may have negative effects on
children’s neurodevelopment [191-193]. A few reviews find the evidence for
such effects less convincing [194, 195]. The discrepancy in conclusions is
probably related to the large variability in study designs and the
methodologies used to assess exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes across
studies, as well as differences in the procedure used for including studies in
the reviews.
------
sunflowershine
You can find the complete article here [https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-
daily-telegraph/20170603/...](https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-
telegraph/20170603/281492161280120)
And I copy and paste it below Pesticides in food may damage the brain • The
Daily Telegraph • 3 Jun 2017 • By Laura Donnelly Mr Varadkar did not win the
bulk of Fine Gael’s membership but was backed by 51 council members and 73 of
the party’s MPS CONSUMERS should consider going organic because pesticides on
foods are far more dangerous than was thought, causing damage to the human
brain, a study suggests. The research, published by the European Parliament,
warns of the “very high costs” of current levels of exposure to pesticides –
especially for children and pregnant women. It could result in new limits on
pesticide levels or changes to the labelling of foodstuffs under EU laws which
require the UK to review its policies by next year. The study suggests that
the damage caused by pesticides across the EU amounts to at least £125billion
a year, based on the loss of lifetime income from such damage. The report
warns of increasing evidence that residues from insecticides are damaging the
brain, and reducing the IQ of the population. And it raises concerns that the
chemicals could also cause cancer and damage to the reproductive system. The
research, commissioned by the European Parliament, is a review of scientific
evidence about the impact of organic food on human health. It says previous
attempts to assess the impact of pesticides have disregarded too much of the
research, raising concerns that regulation of insecticides has been
inadequate. The study was carried out by the parliament’s Scientific Foresight
Unit, led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Scientists. “At least 100
different pesticides are known to cause adverse neurological effects in
adults, and all of these substances must therefore be suspected of being
capable of damaging developing brains as well,” the report states. “Such
adverse effects are likely to be lasting and one main outcome is cognitive
deficits, often expressed in terms of losses of IQ points. “The combined
evidence suggests that current exposures to certain pesticides in the EU may
cost at least €125 billion per year, as calculated from the loss of lifetime
income due to the lower IQS associated with prenatal exposure.” It goes on to
describe the calculation as “almost certainly an underestimate” as it does not
consider the possible contribution made by pesticides to conditions such as
Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer. The researchers
recommend limiting exposure to non-organic fruit and vegetables – and say
particular care should be taken by pregnant women and children. “The evidence
reviewed in this report shows that a decreased exposure from the general
population is desirable from a human health perspective, in light of the
findings from epidemiological studies that indicate very high costs of current
levels of pesticide exposures,” the report says. Previous attempts to assess
the risks have not taken proper account of epidemiological studies, which look
at the health of whole populations, instead of limiting themselves to
scientific trials, it suggests. “Of major concern, these risk assessments
disregard evidence from epidemiological studies that show negative effects of
low-level exposure to organophosphate insecticides on children’s cognitive
development,” it states. And it raises concerns that risk assessment of
pesticides is inadequate, failing to examine any increased risk of cancer, as
well as impacts on the body’s hormones and nervous system. Lead author,
Assistant Professor Axel Mie, said: “Several practices in organic agriculture,
in particular the low use of pesticides and antibiotics, offer benefits for
human health.” Under an EU directive, member states are required to publish a
national plan to reduce risks from pesticides every five years, with the UK
required to update its restrictions by 2018. US studies have shown women’s
exposure to pesticides during pregnancy were associated with negative impacts
on their children’s IQ and neurobehavioural development. Dr Chris Hartfield,
of the National Farmers’ Union, said: “Pesticides are among the most
stringently regulated products in the world. This European Parliament report
makes it quite clear that our understanding in these areas is limited, the
evidence is not conclusive.”
------
singularity2001
Without any specific proof it is now consensus here™ that pesticides are the
main culprit that almost everyone has allergies now and most bees are dead.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Is a Black Hole, Sucking the Fun Out of the Universe - et1337
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/neil-degrasse-tyson-black-hole-sucking-fun-universe/
======
brudgers
Original blog post before Wired picked it up and added tweets to make it real
journalism:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330297)
------
ethanbond
Huh, I've never really been able to articulate why I dislike Tyson – this
nails it.
It's such a shame when people compare him to Sagan. Two different playing
fields, and this is why.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If iPhone 5 Looks Like This, Apple Maybe Screwed - frankphilips
http://www.businessinsider.com/if-the-iphone-5-really-looks-like-this-apple-may-be-screwed-2012-7
======
shadesandcolour
Please, the day that Apple loses market share because the phone looks the same
as the old phone is the day pigs fly. The phone will sell. Personally I love
the newer design. Sales of the iPhone 4 and the 4S have shown that the form
factor works. There's no need to fix what isn't broken. Other companies don't
realize that and they spend their time coming out with phone after phone every
three months. Since all phones do "the same thing" according to the article
there is no need to focus on the aesthetics. What matters is the ecosystem and
the software now. Get with the times.
Also if one more journalist proves that they can't even keep up with the
number of iPhones that have been released and calls it the iPhone 5 again...
------
Starmie
It's gotten to the point where the iPhone is essentially unexciting. When it
came out it seemed innovative and interesting, but it has become the "default"
phone that we expect to emerge from any buzzing pocket. The Galaxy, on the
other hand, looks absolutely beautiful, in a shocking way. The first time one
of my friends pulled it out, I was immediately compelled to ask what it was
and how he liked it. That doesn't make it a superior product, of course, but
there is a lot to be said for that moment of, "Ooh, shiny phone."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A tale of two decompilers - rockybernstein
The last 3 years or so I've been working on a decompiler, and it is like a compiler in complexity, engineering, and testing. But different.<p>In https://github.com/rocky/python-uncompyle6/wiki/pycdc-compared-with-uncompyle6 I compare two Python decompilers which I submit for your review. Of course, since I am working on one, I am not impartial. So I rely on others here to set the story straight.
======
gus_massa
Try submitting again the URL without text. "self" submission have penalty
here, so it's more difficult that they get traction.
If you wish, after submitting you can add a comment like "Author here. I have
been working in this for 3 years. I'm happy to answer any question."
(Also, in the text I prefer when there are 3 or 4 subtitles that split the
text in the main parts.)
~~~
rockybernstein
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not sure I understand the part about the text
in 3 or 4 subtitles. You mean section headings on the wiki page, right?
If that's what you meant that is done now. Yes, I think that helps.
~~~
gus_massa
Yes, section heading or something like that, like the ones you added.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Turning the Ship - karjaluoto
http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/turning-the-ship/
======
karjaluoto
If you run a services-based design shop—and want to instead make products—the
transition is something to consider carefully. Here’s a recollection about how
I once bungled it completely, and how you can avoid those mistakes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++” - ingve
http://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-time-needed-to-write-effective.html
======
mpu
Is this guy actually writing C++ programs in the wild? He often presents
himself as an apostle in the C++ church, but, I am always surprised that he
does not seem to apply his guidelines into any practical project of his.
As a programmer, I'm suspicious when people have opinions and give advice but
never showed me more than snippets of code. Like a master tailor that wouldn't
sew. How come he gets that much recognition and respect?
I would be much more inclined into accepting advice from someone like, say,
Carmack, that has successful projects in C++ under his belt. (Many people
consider Doom 3's code beautiful C++, yet, the choices made there are very
controversial, and far from "modern".)
I also put Bjarne Stroustrup in the same category.
What do you think?
~~~
mikekchar
His webpage: [http://www.aristeia.com/](http://www.aristeia.com/) indicates
that he has been a programmer since 1972. Even if he has been doing
training/consulting for a couple of decades, that leaves a lot of time to get
the basics down. I've never met him, though I have browsed one of his books
once.
My own personal feeling is that books like these can be invaluable for people
starting out in the industry. It gives you a reference point to relate to. If
he can explain things well and people can understand his writing, then it can
be useful even if the person isn't the best living coder on earth.
At some point in your development, you need to branch out from what people are
saying in books and start to form your own opinions. You have to start
questioning what the "experts" are saying and try to experiment with other
techniques. It is frustrating when people hang on to certain ideas just
because a famous author said it. Sometimes it holds us back. It doesn't make
their contribution any less valuable, though, because at least newbies are
getting to a certain level due to the well written books.
~~~
jlarocco
I largely agree with you, BUT, this version of Effective C++ was less opinion
and style oriented and more a guide to avoiding easy to make mistakes with
some of the new C++11 and C++14 features. Not following many of the guidelines
will result in incorrect and broken code.
My recollection of the older books is that they covered "best practices," and
ignoring them may have been bad style, but the code would still be technically
correct. Quite a few are still style issues, but it's important to recognize
the difference before deciding to ignore them :-)
------
blt
I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book
that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch
out!"
for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is
too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.
~~~
angersock
Everything else _isn 't_ too slow, though, especially if you hit any
meaningful IO.
~~~
unstabilo
Or if you use clever algorithms. I don't have benchmarks at hand, but I
suspect that an FFT in Python is faster than a naive Fourier transform in C.
~~~
easytiger
Err, why?
~~~
chris_b
Because the FFT in python is almost certainly implemented in C, and probably
more cleverly done than a naive FFT that I/you/someone would whip up as part
of a C program.
~~~
easytiger
Is this a joke? Something written with the same algorithm in c will be faster
than python. Why not use someone elses non naive FFT impl in c then as well?
~~~
rprospero
I think the argument isn't that Python code out performs C code, it's that
code written by mediocre Python programmers often outperforms code written by
mediocre C programmers. C code is fast enough the mediocre programmers get
used to letting the language bail them out. Python programmers know that their
language is slow and that they have to work around it.
I've encountered this several times in my own career. A co-worker who writes
in C will be implementing a process in parallel with my Python implementation.
A week later, my O(N) Python code is outperforming my colleagues O(N^3) C
code, since I chose a more complex algorithm which is trickier to get right.
The C programmer then re-implements my method in C, which would completely
trounce my own code, except I've spent that time leaning on BLAS and LAPACK,
speeding up my operations again. The C programmer then starts using fast
libraries instead of her own code, again beating my old source, only to find
that I've now pushed a good chunk of the processing onto the GPU.
Eventually, I will run out of tricks. The final draft of the C code will
trounce the final draft of my Python code. However, during most of the
creation process, my Python usually out performs their C. Also, a truly
talented C programmer would write my colleague's final draft as her first
draft, negating every advantage that I had in the process. However, that's not
a situation that I'm likely to run into, because places hiring truly talented
programmers aren't likely to be hiring me.
~~~
easytiger
Makes literally no sense. The c developer would simply use the same c/fortran
library the python implementation is based on. You are creating a false
dichotomy for the sake of it.
~~~
rprospero
The c developer _should_ use the same c/fortran library that the python
implementation is based on. A _good_ C developer _would_ use that library. In
my experience, mediocre C developers will _not_ use that library and will
implement their own, naive version.
~~~
easytiger
This has not been my experience.
------
misiti3780
All of his books are great - especially the one on STL. Herb Sutter wrote some
great C++ books also. On a side note, based on that picture of him sitting at
this desk, he is still using iPod V1
~~~
quotemstr
Sutter's written that we should use "async" everywhere (even though
conventional threads have numerous advantages) and that we should use "auto"
everywhere (even to the point of writing "auto x = int{5}" instead of "int x =
5" and "auto foo() -> void" instead of "void foo()"). I'd take his advise with
a grain of salt.
------
curiouslurker
I wonder how long it took Kernighan and Ritchie to write 'The C Programming
Language'? Amazon says the 2nd edition (1988) is 272 pages long but looking
back, it felt like it was 80 pages :) Going by the OP's math (of the language
creator being twice as productive) prolly 4 months?
~~~
TylerE
Remember that that's inluding like 60 pages of what are basically printed man
pages.
~~~
unwind
When K&R was written, it's not a given that the man pages for C functions
already existed, is it?
~~~
Sanddancer
They were, albeit potentially more terse than is available now. System III's
functions section was pretty full by 1983 even [1].
[1] [http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-
bin/utree.pl?file=pdp11v/usr/man/...](http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-
bin/utree.pl?file=pdp11v/usr/man/u_man/man3)
~~~
dagw
_System III 's functions section was pretty full by 1983_
K&R was published in 1978
------
oskarth
This is interesting, but the hours are vastly overestimated, at least compared
to similar metrics (e.g. from the deliberate practice and expertise
literature):
_If we figure a 40-hour work week... it wasn 't my only activity. Let's knock
that number down by 20% to account for my occasionally having to spend time on
other things._
There's no way anyone spends 40 or even 30 hours a week _writing_. Most
authors spend something like 3-4 hours a day writing - and that's a good day!
See for example the chapter on writers in Cambridge Expertise Performance
Handbook ([http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-
Handbo...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbooks-
Psychology/dp/0521600812)).
In general this type of reasoning (40h work week => time for 40h of writing)
makes time estimates troublesome in my opinion. Another example is people who
claim to write code for 40, 60 or even 80 hours a week. A look at actual
RescueTime data gives a sober picture:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=209195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=209195)
Of course, you could claim a lot of the work happens in breaks, and I would
agree. But then the actual weekly number for our most beloved artists,
programmers, and scientists is more like 24*7, literally. In that case, it
makes more sense to talk about it in on the timescale of days, weeks, months
or years.
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I find the hours amazing. My understanding is that a typical tech publishing
cycle is three months for a first draft, with an SD of around 1.5 months, and
a page count of 300-600. Not infrequently the book will be a side project and
not the author's main gig.
E.g. When iPhone OS (as it was) first appeared, in-depth guides like Erica
Sadun's were on the shelves almost as soon as it was released.
Even if some of those authors had limited distribution beta versions, they
still worked their way through all the new features of the OS, wrote and
tested sample code, and wrote all the content in a couple of months.
I understand Meyers wants to make sure the content represents industry
practice, and that takes longer than just cranking out some code and making
sure it works.
But even so - that's still a surprisingly long time for a tech book.
------
ternaryoperator
When I track my time scrupulously, the results are significantly different
than what I thought they would be and also quite different from what, several
weeks removed, I remembered re the project.
So, when I read an article that does back of the envelope calculations on time
spent, based on rough estimates (20% on other projects, etc.), I find myself
suspicious of the computed results.
------
kenrikm
With the amount of time invested into writing the book it would be interesting
to see what type of financial return he was able to get for it. Certainly I
would hope he was able to make as much as if he were working in private
industry for the same amount of time. (though somehow I doubt this is the
case)
~~~
InclinedPlane
To within a disturbingly accurate margin of error I can tell you right now his
financial return for this book: zero dollars.
There isn't enough money in tech books for writers to rely on it as a day job.
At best it'll get you noticed and make other jobs or speaking engagements
easier to get.
~~~
ipsin
I am inclined to disbelieve you.
I could agree that tech writing in general doesn't pay well, but this is an
author who has sold over 150,000 physical copies, in addition to whatever
virtual sales (like mine) he's had. Even if his take is 10% for a $30 book,
that's still respectable income.
~~~
InclinedPlane
I had no idea where you came up with the "150,000 copies" figure but then I
ended up seeing the same thing listed on a page about "More Effective C++",
which has been in print for 2 decades. Even if he received $3-4 per copy sold
for all those books, that's over a 20 year timespan, that only works out to
$20k or so a year, although he does have other books. It's possible that Scott
Meyers might be a sufficiently popular author to be able to support himself
just on book income at a level comparable to having a decent day job, but at
best it's a very close thing and even so he would be one of the extremely rare
few who could do so.
------
mikekchar
Very interesting to reflect on the amount of time needed to write a technical
book on a programming language. If I compare that to amount of time taken to
write code (and forgive me for the horrible KLOC metric), I think one could
easily average about 300 lines of good C++ code (including tests) per day on a
new project -- probably more if you are working alone, but let's keep it
conservative. So about 37.5 lines per hour * 1350 hours = ~50KLOC. Say half of
it is tests, so that's a medium sized app.
I don't know why, but writing a book seems waaay more effort than churning out
~25 KLOC of tested C++. I guess it is what you are used to...
* 300 lines per day is what I averaged over a multi-year period when I was a C++ programmer. But that was more than a decade ago, so I'm guessing it would take less lines of code with "Effective Modern C++" ;-) (and yes, I measured it for interest sake...)
~~~
munificent
> I don't know why, but writing a book seems waaay more effort than churning
> out ~25 KLOC of tested C++.
It is. I wrote a programming book, and the code for each chapter was always a
breeze compared to writing the prose.
I rationalize it by thinking of English as a programming language. It has a
fantastically complex syntax and semantics, tons of undefined behavior, and a
few billion interpreters out there, each with a large number of quirks and
bugs.
Writing a program in English that does the more or less correct thing on all
of those interpreters ain't easy.
~~~
greggman
I'm actually finding it hard because I feel like I need to re-write all the
old chapters each time I write a new one.
The problem is as I go from A to B to C when I get to D I realize I really
want the code to be in a different shape. But to do that I either need to make
a C' where I take a timeout to explain why I'm refactoring the code before I
move on to D. Or, I need to go re-write A, B, and C so they fit directly into
D.
Making C` sucks because it's irrelevant to whatever the topic is. But re-
writing is also a ton of work.
You could argue I should start at Z and work backward but I'm writing as I go
so I don't know what Z is yet.
------
istvan__
Could somebody redpill me on why something like D
([http://dlang.org/](http://dlang.org/)) is not a better alternative to C++.
Is that the library support or what exactly makes C++ still a better option in
2015? I am not sure what is the best alternative to C++.
~~~
vitaut
When you develop something you consider not only the features of the language
itself, but also the availability of libraries in this particular language.
There is a large amount of high-quality C++ libraries and C++ can consume C
libraries seamlessly. In most other languages you need to write often unsafe
bindings to connect to C.
D simply doesn't have enough libraries to make it a viable choice except maybe
for some niche area. For example, there are only 6k D repos on GitHub
([https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=language%3AD&type...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=language%3AD&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults))
compared with 340k C++ repos. Also any high-performance code (at least in the
area I'm working) is written in C++ or, sometimes, in C.
~~~
istvan__
Thanks for the answer this is exactly what I was looking for. It seems that
C++ is in a sweet spot and it is going to be hard to challenge its position.
------
blaenk
I actually finished this book today. It's a great resource on the various
pitfalls and good practices that are present in C++11/C++14, and they are
presented in a very readable format that really lends itself to referencing
later on. I highly recommend it.
------
bankim
I've read couple of Effective C++ series books by him and I've found Effective
STL to be the most useful book for my day-to-day C++ programming at work.
------
shmerl
It's a must have book.
------
greg7mdp
Love the book!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CurrentC: The Big Retailers’ Clunky Attempt to Kill Apple Pay and Credit Card Fees - ryan_j_naughton
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/25/currentc/
======
zaroth
This is so bad it makes me angry, so I'm sorry for ranting, but, seriously
WTF? Did Walmart just think, 'Blast those Visa and Mastercard scum with their
excessive fees! Lets create our own eWallet and save that 2%...'
He also that found that its Terms Of Service leaves high
liability for fraud to the user if someone else is able to get
access to a user’s phone and make CurrentC payments.
Wait, what? What do you mean consumers don't want to be on the hook for the
full charges if their phone/wallet is stolen and nobody at Best Buy cared to
check ID on that $10,000 electronics purchase? But sure glad we're saving
those interchange fees though.
I'm pretty sure they didn't actually _intend_ for this to be a badly timed
Aprils fools joke, but come on. QR code based, no fraud protection, built in
spyware, loose integration with any kind of platform security, collecting
health information. Introducing CurrentC -- all the safety of carrying your
entire bank account balance in large bills in your pocket, all the privacy of
HTTP over Verizon LTE.
It's so easy to use, just unlock your phone, open the app, click to active the
QR scanner, hope that it scans (but don't worry you can type in the QR data by
hand if you need to). The bit about paying at the gas pump had me facepalming
like Picard.
I can't even imagine how much they would have to pay me to use this. They take
away my free 30+ days of float, my fraud protection, take away the firewall
between my bank account and the world. Take away the chargeback defense
against a misbehaving merchant. Not to mention a dozen other perks of credit
cards, like the cash back rewards, purchase protection / extended warranty,
price protection, etc.
I guess Apple couldn't have asked for a better counterpoint to demonstrate the
difference between building a product to serve your customers versus building
a product to serve yourself. Apple is trying to make credit cards more secure
and more convenient, building on top of the existing system, and rent-seeking
to the tune of whatever costs they can wring out of the system. Kudos and good
luck to them. This CurrentC abomination on the other hand... how did this even
see the light of beta?
Edit: In a few months the credit card networks will start to see the
difference in fraud and chargeback levels for Apple Pay purchases. I'm really
interested to see if there's a significant difference, and what implications
that holds for merchants which don't adopt or actively block Apple Pay.
~~~
hayksaakian
Here is some perspective: Walmart's margins are approx. 3% according to [1]
\- most if not all of their income comes from transactions/sales. \- some
significant % of their transactions are paid with credit cards.
With those two things in mind, 2% of a retail transaction might mean a lot
more than you think.
Do _I_ think it's a good idea? no.
Do I think a WalMart executive walked through the same chain of logic and
found an extra billion? probably.
[1]
[http://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin](http://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin)
~~~
TheCoelacanth
It's obvious what retailers get out of it. Credit card fees are a significant
amount of money to them.
It's not obvious is what consumers get out of it. What incentive do customers
have to use this form of payment? After taking credit card rewards into
account, credit cards fees end up making everything <1% more expensive for
consumers. That's a small price to pay for the consumer protections that you
would give up by using CurrentC instead of a credit card.
~~~
hayksaakian
oh, it's clearly anti-consumer
they're just banking on the idea that they will make more money saving
transaction fees than losing some customers because of incompatible payment
methods.
------
nlh
What a disastrously bad user experience.
But I have to say, I feel sympathy for the guys who designed it. Just like the
conventional wisdom tech entrepreneurs are taught -- "take a problem you
encounter in your daily life, solve it, build the solution, and sell it" \--
this seems like the same thing happening on the corporate side.
Mike Cook and the retailers have a problem -- they don't like paying 1.5-3% to
the credit card companies. And I can't blame them -- there's a huge financial
incentive to solve problems like that, and if you're the guy who saved WalMart
2% a year, well, you're getting a big bonus, massive internal recognition, and
likely a nice promotion. So I commend this group of retailers for trying to
solve a problem they have.
But - man, what a terrible solution. And they've made the huge (and common,
and classic) mistake of thinking that by solving THEIR problem, they're also
solving our problem. The thing is, we love our credit cards, and now we're
loving ApplePay (which genuinely improves on the credit card experience), but
there seems to be very little to love about CurrentC.
~~~
monksy
Why would I care about Apple Pay? I love my credit card. It rewards me for
using it. Besides, if you ever lose or damage your phone, you're screwed.
~~~
kenrikm
Apple Pay is just a wrapper on your credit cards - if you damage or lose your
phone you still have those dinosaur plastic cards to fall back on.
~~~
monksy
Oh ok, well thats kinda convenient. I thought it was trying to go the way of a
phone as credit card approach. Oh well, I'm not invested in the Apple
landscape so I didn't care to learn anything about it.
------
shalmanese
CurrentC has no chance of catching on because it's not CurrentC vs Apple Pay,
it's CurrentC vs legacy credit cards.
From a user's perspective, the current user experience around credit cards is
pretty good. You get a tangible, color coded interface and a tactile
interaction mechanism. Swipes work pretty reliably and the time it takes to
pull out a credit card is very small.
When you're competing with a solution like this, even minor differences in UX
can be dealbreakers. One thing I didn't see much talk about with the iPhone 6
launch was that Apple were the first phone makers (AFAICT) who managed to put
NFC on the edge of a device rather than the center. I've tried paying with
Google Wallet before and mashing a giant phone against a tiny contactless
reader was error prone, frustrating and made you feel like a dork doing it. I
tried it 2 or 3 times and then went back to credit cards.
I can't imagine how much worse this CurrentC solution is going to be in real
life and how hard it will fail.
~~~
stephen_g
The other thing is that if retailers disable the NFC reader then contactless
cards won't work...
I'm not sure what adoption is like in the US, but in Australia pretty much
every single plastic credit card (and Visa/MasterCard debit) supports
contactless payments, which is an awesome user experience. You literally just
pull out the card and touch it to the machine, and some places it's approved
in less than a second.
It only works for payments under $100 (for security reasons) - otherwise you
chip and pin.
I don't see CurrenC being able to compete with that, chip and pin, or Apple
pay...
~~~
martingordon
Contactless was a thing here in the US, but at least in my experience, it's
going away. I've had a few credit cards replaced over the past couple of
months (one Chase, one Amex) and while they've gained an EMV chip, they've
also lost contactless functionality (which went by Blink and ExpressPay
respectively).
~~~
stephen_g
That's interesting, because in Australia they're really popular and both EMV
and PayPass/PayWave came in at the same time and use the same chip in the
card. You can actually see the RFID antenna terminating in the EMV chip in one
of my cards which is semi-transparent.
------
coleca
CurrentC is doomed. The premise is that retailers will leverage the ACH rails
to bypass the fees charged by the card brands (MC, Visa, Amex and Discover).
This is making the huge assumption that these same retailers who couldn't keep
their customers' credit card numbers secure can somehow do a better job with
their bank accounts. And for what? So we can get a free cup of Starbucks or a
couple percent off a fill up?
The more retailers that get breached (Staples was the latest this week) the
harder a sell that is going to be for the MCX cartel members.
A consumer who signs over their bank accounts to MCX is giving up all the
protections that they currently have with their credit cards.
~~~
gst
1) Your bank account number is relatively public anyway - afterall it's
printed on all of your checks.
2) It's relatively easy to reverse an ACH debit. Which protections would I
have to give up?
~~~
nicwolff
It's not hard to reverse an ACH debit _if you notice it within two months_.
After that, it's impossible. (And business accounts only get two days.) Also,
the credit card companies are actively trying to prevent fraud and will notify
you of unusual transactions; with ACH, there's no-one looking out for you but
yourself.
------
martingordon
These guys ask for your Driver's License and Social Security Number during the
on-boarding process:
[https://twitter.com/hasanahmad80/status/526551322523623424/p...](https://twitter.com/hasanahmad80/status/526551322523623424/photo/1)
They say the information isn't stored on your phone like that's a good thing.
------
paul9290
This really pisses me off and makes me not want to shop at the stores involved
and or associated with it! Also, they want me to give them my account number,
Target even???
Whether it's Google Wallet or Apple Pay users all these stores just ticked off
thousands and thousands of early adopters/their customers!
ON a different note I have seen this topic appear yesterday on Hacker News. It
quickly was at the top of the page then quickly demoted. This needs and I hope
it goes to the top of HN and stays there for a long time! These retailers need
their hand forced for their own sake due to a possible PR/consumer backlash.
------
steven2012
The problem with using ACH is that you can't prevent overdrawing your account.
Unless this has the ability to query your bank account and ensure you don't
accidentally overdraw, then using a credit card is far superior. At least you
will get an error message immediately as opposed to a day or two later.
------
aosmith
What a shitshow.. I pitched the same technology around the time bitcoin was
being developed, 2009. I must have talked to the wrong VC's because they
thought ACH over QR was a horrible idea.
Needless to say I've since moved on to bitcoin.
------
sytelus
While CurrentC sucks, it's hard to blame retailers. When you use your credit
cards, _you_ are the one paying that extra 2% for the privilege to use a piece
of plastic because every single merchants simply transfer that cost on to you.
Apple Pay only makes getting rid of whole evil of credit cards harder.
Credit cards are drag on consumers and invisible tax created by banking
system. They are effortless machines that generates profits without producing
anything or adding a significant value. Before you make a case that credit
cards protects against frauds, you should know that less than 1/700 of each
dollar of credit card transactions are lost due to fraud. So in essence,
99.93% of your transaction fees goes in to bank and other middleman's pockets
for no apparent value add. A small part of this CC companies throws at you as
"reward" breadcrumbs. Also credit cards are hardly useful as debt instruments
because of exorbitant interest rates most of them carry.
What we need is _not_ another mechanism to use credit cards more easily but
eliminate them completely. So if we can build a mechanism that identifies you,
debits some sort of spending account directly and provide fraud insurance at
the rate of 0.07% of your annual charges then we can get rid of all these fat
middlemans who are essentially leaching on consumers without a value add.
CurrentC doesn't seem like perfect contender yet but it's step in right
direction where retailers are fighting back.
------
drivingmenuts
1\. CurrentC's UX is worse than using a credit card. 2\. CurrentC's UX is
worse than using a debit card (and mis-keying your PIN). 3\. CurrentC's UX is
worse than Apple Pay's UX (near as I can tell). 4\. CurrentC's UX is worse
than using _cash_.
All of the above, I can complete in fewer steps than I can using CurrentC.
Also, I don't have to give up my health information or join a loyalty program.
If you want to make an alternative to Apple Pay, make something easier to use.
------
SwellJoe
_Former Walmart CEO Lee Scott reportedly once said “I don’t know that MCX will
succeed, and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers.”_
I want Visa to suffer, too. So, I'll likely use this. It's not clear to me if
it is point of sale only, or if it'll work in an online context. The QR code
thing would be an intolerably bad experience online, of course (and it's a
pretty clumsy experience offline)...but, if the payment network is not
intimately tied to the method of verifying the owner of the account, I could
see it being possible to handle payments without the QR code.
And, if the people implementing this stuff aren't entirely incompetent, I'd be
surprised if they don't implement a non-QR code method in the future,
including NFC. The end user app _really_ isn't the hard part of this equation.
------
garyrichardson
Canadian here. We have NFC built into our CC's already. I look forward to our
neighbours to the south getting the same technology.
I'm extremely happy with my iPhone 6, but Apple Pay/CurrentC both seem DOA to
me -- I already have it and I don't have to worry about charging my credit
cards.
As a side note, I never realized how terrible CC transactions were before we
had paypass everywhere. Canadians had to swipe+pin before PayPass. Whenever
I'm at a store without PayPass I feel like an animal having to type my pin
into the pad.
------
T-A
Reading this, I am reminded of
[http://shouldiuseaqrcode.com/](http://shouldiuseaqrcode.com/)
------
allanjenn
does anyone care to help retailers save 3%? and, do they know the money still
comes out of a credit card company and that they can change their rules
whenever they want? no wonder why it isn't a startup but a bunch of mad
corporations
------
ntakasaki
Apple Pay charges 0.15% and the credit cards 2 to 3%. If the costs were really
revealed to the consumers, I wonder how many of them will opt for the
convenience versus entering a PIN with a debit card, use a check or pay cash.
~~~
RockyMcNuts
Well, if you shop for it, a cardholder can get a minimum of 1% rebated back to
them, more in cases of special promotions.
But yeah, it's a stupid way to run a payments system.
You would think Starbucks would give you a free cup or something if you filled
up your Starbucks stored-value card by EFT instead of credit card. (You would
also think Starbucks wouldn't make me accept the wifi TOS every goddamn day,
when they have an app/loyalty card relationship with me.)
You would also think that maybe Apple is leaving their options open in the
future to 1) link up with retailers' loyalty programs and 2) help retailers
bypass Mastercard and Visa and share in the savings.
~~~
dingaling
> Well, if you shop for it, a cardholder can get a minimum of 1% rebated back
> to them, more in cases of special promotions.
The reward level is set by the card issuer and the merchant pays that, too, as
part of the interchange fee.
In Australia legislation was passed that enabled merchants to add a surcharge
for credit card use. The result was that 'rewards' disappeared from the
market.
~~~
saryant
Merchants can offer cash discounts in the US. Few do and credit card rewards
are the strongest they've ever been. 2% on everything is easy, bigger
discounts are available if you work for it.
------
chx
There's an advantage here people don't think of: credit cards are, in their
current form, a danger to society. It encourages people to spend money they
don't have and creates debt that doesn't create new value. You could say that
credit cards raise consumption and so on but at the end of the day the
interest actually decreases your consumption ability.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Minimal explanation of the CAP theorem - Dave_Rosenthal
http://blog.foundationdb.com/minimal-explanation-of-the-cap-theorem
======
jayvanguard
This is a very good explanation actually.
> Pro tip: If an article includes a diagram with a triangle, stop reading
Exactly. I've seen many explanations that try to turn it into a trade-off
between three things analogous to the maxim "resources, features, schedule:
fix any two and the third must change".
------
brianpgordon
> Choosing (C) only requires stopping the machines that got disconnected, not
> the whole system!
This post is generally good but I take exception to that statement. Partitions
can occur between nodes. If nodes A and B are partitioned from nodes C, D, and
E, but they all still receive requests, it's not clear which machines have
been "disconnected." Generally you use a quorum of greater than 50% of nodes
to decide which nodes should die. It's a more complicated picture than whether
the network interface is up or down on the server.
~~~
Dave_Rosenthal
Totally agreed that I glossed over how you actually resolve the split-brain
scenario and that it's not just about the network interface being up.
There are a lot of options for how to deal with the issue. For example, in
FoundationDB, a server needs to be able to talk to a majority of user-
designated "coordinator" nodes that are running PAXOS to be a part of the
cluster.
------
notacoward
Unfortunately, this "correction" itself isn't quite correct. "Availability" in
CAP doesn't require that _all nodes_ remain up (point 1b) but only that all
_non failing_ nodes remain up. The article also fails to provide even a
minimal definition of consistency, but those definitions are critical to
understanding what Gilbert and Lynch actually managed to prove. Without that,
I think this fails Einstein's test.
"Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler"
~~~
Dave_Rosenthal
Clearly in 1b a node cannot be up if it is failed--we are talking about the
case nodes remaining "up" when they are disconnected. (There aren't many
interesting tradeoffs available for completely failed nodes!)
Also, the post does define consistency: "Normally, the system is consistent (a
read sees all previously completed writes)."
~~~
notacoward
Yes, clearly a node cannot be up if it's failed, and yet you refer to
"perfect" consistency and "all" nodes. That's the inconsistency (heh) that you
need to fix.
Speaking of consistency, I stand corrected that you did define it . . .
incorrectly. That's a definition of consistency, but it's not the operative
one when it comes to CAP. Gilbert and Lynch specifically refer to atomic or
linearizable consistency in 2.1, and that's a stronger requirement than yours
as it also precludes reading still-in-progress writes. The definition of
consistency is central to the proof, so if you want to put down others for not
understanding CAP it helps to get it right yourself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lightspeed Summer Fellowship - kparikh
http://lsvp.com/summer-fellowships/
Earn up to $45,000 this summer to build your startup at Lightspeed!<p>Are you an aspiring entrepreneur looking for more than an internship this summer? How about getting quality time with some of the investors behind companies like Nest, Snapchat, TaskRabbit and GrubHub? Follow in the footsteps of the founders of Pinterest, Pulse and Lark. Lightspeed Venture Partners’ is now accepting applications for its Summer Fellowship Program.<p>What exactly is Lightspeed’s Fellowship Program? Think of it like a scholarship - we provide resources, mentorship and guidance so you can spend your summer experiencing what it is like to build a company. Now in its 7th year, the program’s alumni include over 150 fellows, including Ben Silbermann of Pinterest, and a number of successful founders of companies.<p>Each selected team will receive $5,000 per team and $10,000 per team member, mentoring from Lightspeed’s partners, space at Lightspeed’s office in Menlo Park, CA and additional resources to help you make connections and get started. Fellows are under no obligation to Lightspeed and we receive no equity as part of the program.<p>To see a short video about the program here: http://bit.ly/VXOsN4<p>Applications are due March 22, 2013. For more information about the program, past participants and the application check out: http://lsvp.com/summer-fellowships/<p>--
Krish Parikh
Lightspeed Venture Partners
======
kparikh
Application deadline is March 22, 2013
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Today we were the victim of a malicious social engineering attack. - mappu
http://blog.whmcs.com/
======
mappu
Summary: Malicious user managed to answer all the security questions of
WHMCS's webhost in order to reset the password and gain access to the server.
Apparently credit card details are at risk.
An email was sent out earlier to all licensees with the following content:
<https://gist.github.com/2771537>
This is a nightmare situation for WHMCS, and it's even worse when your product
is this popular - i can only hope there's no backdoors hidden in the ioncube'd
PHP, since that could be disastrous for all their hundreds of thousands of
licensees (of which my company is one..)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon announces new Kindle Paperwhite - adamkochanowicz
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/kindle-announces-new-119-paperwhite-e-reader-with-a-font-thats-easy-on-the-eyes/#.ueknbe:0t2k
======
tomcam
I wish so dearly they would allow ragged right text.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I’m betting my retirement on Facebook stock today - daryn
http://www.geekwire.com/2012/betting-retirement-facebook-stock-today/
======
tworats
I hope he's not actually putting his retirement money on the line here.
It's not about the quality of the ads, which he argues will get better with
more data. It's about intent.
When I search on Google, my natural next action is to click a link. That link
can be organic or an ad. If it's an ad Google stands to make money.
When I browse Facebook, my natural next action is not to click a link to an
outside service/store. It's to continue to read status updates and browse
around. Clicking an outside link is unnatural and unpleasant in this context.
This is the same reason ads on other Google properties such as gmail do so
poorly - they may know exactly what you're likely to buy and could therefore
present you with the perfect ad, but the activity you're engaged in does not
naturally lead to clicking on ads.
~~~
vibrunazo
I just checked and Facebook gives you the option to buy ads per click, around
$0.25 per click in my category. So why does it even matter if it has a low
CTR? If the user didn't click, you didn't pay for it anyway. If the user does
click, well there's your intent.
From my point of view as an advertiser, how is the CTR even relevant? Why do I
care if google has 1% CTR and Facebook has 0,1%? If you assume both has the
same cost per click. And I spend $100 on each. I'll still get the exact same
amount of people clicking my ads on both.
Why does everyone keep repeating that facebook ads are only for branding,
there's no intent, CTR is low? Doesn't the pay per click auction makes all of
these irrelevant?
~~~
jack-r-abbit
CTR is one piece. But conversion in another. And intent is important. Take two
identical ads on Facebook and Google, with the same CTR and CPC, if the Google
traffic has more intent to take action _beyond_ the click (I'm not saying they
are necessarily) then Google traffic is worth more. I worked in the LeadGen
space for a good number of years and conversion rate is a very important piece
of the puzzle. Generally speaking, intent leads to a better conversion. Plus,
advertisers do them selves a disservice to attract higher clicks if that means
their conversion rate is lower because the ad was bait. I've noticed that FB
ads tend to have a spammy/scammy feel to them... bait.
~~~
vibrunazo
That perfectly answers my questions, thanks a lot.
Does anyone happen to have some real world example data of conversion rates
between these ad platforms?
------
fjorder
Say I decide to buy a new set of speakers. Do I tweet that I'm looking for
speakers? Do I announce on facebook that I'm looking for speakers? Or do I
just start googling?
Twitter and Facebook might occasionally be clued in about some of my
purchases, but google is in on virtually all of my purchases that are
considered while I'm at a computer. They're first past the post and privy to a
much higher percentage of what I buy.
------
debacle
Google's pageviews have more value (because they know exactly what people are
looking for), Google IPOed at a valuation of 20% of what Facebook wanted in
valuation, and Google is already entrenched into the market that the author is
suggesting Facebook is going to have such an easy time moving into.
My money is on Google.
~~~
galenward
Sure, 20% of Facebook's valuation but also 1/2 of Facebook's revenues.
Facebook still has a lot to prove, but they also have a lot more opportunity
to improve.
~~~
debacle
> but they also have a lot more opportunity to improve.
What's your case for that? They have almost a billion users. How many more are
they going to get, and are users outside of the US and Europe (and a few
scattered nations) of any value to Facebook at all?
------
jonknee
Facebook has a lot of data about what you say you like, but Google has a lot
more data about what you actually like. Hope you really didn't bet your
retirement.
------
eshrews
Betting one's retirement on a single security seems like a bad strategy
regardless of how successful it's likely to be. I'm hoping the title is just
hyperbole.
------
gawker
I've never clicked on the ads in Facebook. I've clicked on more ads while
using Google. When I'm looking to buy something, I use Google. As with
tworats, I do hope he's not actually planning on retiring with Facebook stock.
Privacy laws could easily render the data that we give to Facebook off-limits.
------
jack-r-abbit
So... Facebook has some code you can put on your page and you have an instant
like button. Well... what if Facebook starts providing a neat little bit of
code that also embeds an ad? If the Like button knows who you are... so will
the ad widget. So now they are serving "Facebook ads" on other sites. Of
course that is what Google does with AdSense... but does Google know as much
about _you_ on that page as it does about that page? I could see it _possible_
for Facebook to grab eyeballs on other sites... sites that are currently
monetizing with AdSense. Not that I'm convinced they would make a dent with
this approach... but you can't just compare the ads ON Facebook to the ads on
Google search. If Facebook was putting the ads on pages that had a different
focus than what you do on Facebook... there is a chance.
------
sicxu
AdSense has much lower margin compared with AdWords because Google has to pay
publisher for displaying the ads. In the early days, (AdSense revenue around
1B) I remember google was almost paying every penny they got from AdSense back
to the publisher. Only later, they started to make money, but still capped by
the competition from microsoft/yahoo.
Facebook entering the AdSense market? It won't generate a lot of profit for
facebook. The true profit engine for facebook is still the facebook site.
------
apalmblad
I feel like the author is overstating the benefits of a like button on every
page. Google - and many other ad networks - also know the products being
viewed if the site owner is using retargetted ads. Might facebook offer
compelling retargetting? Sure. But I imagine the conversion rates would be, at
best, comparable to other retargetting networks. Probably not a game changer.
I'm not even mentioning the reach of analytics.
------
Havoc
All the author of that article managed to convey is an overwhelming sense of
fuzziness in his thinking. e.g.
>Do the math on this: instead of growing it organically, we wake up one day
and Facebook has taken over Google’s Adsense business. That’s $10B in revenues
alone.
------
audeamus
Bit awkward given the recent happenings over the weekend
[http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/lawsuits-
pile-...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/lawsuits-pile-up-over-
facebook-ipo-20120524-1z5yy.html)
------
sethish
The graphs he cites as evidence are referring to google's display network
verses google's total revenue. If that is the case, then the author is
presenting no information about facebook. I hope that he did not invest based
on these graphs.
------
jriley
This struck me: "Even if you didn’t click on the Like button, Facebook
probably has a pretty good idea of what your next purchase will be."
I imagine the people best able to predict my next purchase issued my debit
card, no?
------
joe_the_user
You should never substitute a belief for an investment strategy. Seriously,
even if your idea of Facebook's long term potential is correct, you can take a
haircut on whatever random thing occurs today. Balance the utility of what you
gain if you're right compared to the utility of what you lose if you're wrong
(think twice if you _really_ want to make a "heads, double your house's square
footage, tails live off dumpsters at 65" bet).
If you want to start investing based on your beliefs, go ahead. But have a
pool of money for that and be ready to lose it.
But for your retirement, diversify.
~~~
gm
Agree. Did not read the story because once you say "I'm putting all my eggs in
[this one basket]" then you are taking WAY too much risk on a single
investment.
The guy probably should take some courses on retirement/investment planning.
------
SagelyGuru
Don't do it, unless you plan to work long years and/or die young. FB price
might well be around $10 before long.
------
fourstar
Sensationalist headline. Bad mistake.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Neom, megacity with its own moon, dinosaurs, and robots, reaches next phase - jelliclesfarm
https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/neom-megacity-with-own-moon-dinosaurs-robots.html
======
Colegno
404 in the page
~~~
jelliclesfarm
[https://bigthink-
com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/bigthink.com/tec...](https://bigthink-
com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/bigthink.com/technology-innovation/neom-megacity-
with-own-moon-dinosaurs-robots.amp.html) : the amp link works for me...how do
I fix it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Registration conversion rate - burgalon
Hey everybody,
I've been working for some time now on my private project called 9folds, and have been trying to understand conversion rates for users, and why users seem to drop out mainly on the registration/login phase, and how can I improve on that.<p>Currently I'm using Google Accounts login since I thought it's the easiest and most safe (to avoid spam). However, it seems like people are somewhat intimidated by the Google Account signup form. My idea is that people mostly do not understand the difference between a Google Account and GMail and end up thinking that by signing-in they give access to their mail account, which is of course spooky but completely untrue.
Also of course there are people that do not have Google Account or prefer to avoid using it for different reasons.<p>So I was thinking... maybe I should add Facebook Connect? Would that have better signup conversion? It seems to me that for some reason, people are pretty comfortable with that option even though it exposes much more private information than any other.... I couldn't find any statistics to support these assumptions.<p>Finally I was thinking I should just add a built-in registration... This flow is widely familiar for users... however people are mostly lazy going through the process and shut off the window as they see such a form...<p>So now I'm thinking which of the options should I choose:
1) leaving the current Google Account implementation
2) Adding Facebook Connect
3) Adding internal registration
4) Adding both<p>I'd appreciate any feedback or insight
======
patio11
I think you are attempting to create rationalizations for users' behavior from
numerical data. _This is dangerous._ Low conversion rates do not necessarily
imply any particular reaction to the signup form -- for that matter, the
entire notion of a "low" conversion rate is suspect unless you have a thorough
understanding of the domain and the traffic mix you are seeing, which is rare
for an early stage startup.
On the basis of several years of dealing with non-technical users and their
reactions with OpenID and other single signon technologies, my opinion is that
in aggregate non-technical users are very confused by them and confusion leads
to failure to convert. The most common user behavior is to create a
username/password at your site and use the same credentials they always use.
This is what they've been doing for over a decade now. The newfangled options
have not been explained to them and they do not understand the fundamental
"Facebook Connect replaces having an account with this service" value
proposition. For that matter, many of them have a severely broken mental model
of what having an account means in the first place. (I have some users who are
convinced they need one bingo account for the blue Googles and one for the
green Googles.)
I would certainly implement accounts for your service, and test that against
Google. This assumes you have 100+ visits a day, which you'd want for A/B
testing. If not, I'd implement accounts and deemphasize the Google option
(e.g. give it a simple text link when the signup form was prominently visible
with big colorful buttons). You can always test later after you have some
traction.
With regards to technical users, I have no data which I can share with you but
I strongly, strongly suggest rethinking any strategy which does not have
internal accounts _unless_ you are committed to customer acquisition via spam-
early-spam-often viral mechanics.
~~~
burgalon
Hey Patio, Thanks for your insight... indeed you are correct, I do not have
enough data to actually conclude that the Google Accounts is what actually
hurting the conversion. I have less than 100 visits a day. However what I do
know is that I can see in the raw logs people forwarded to the Google Accounts
signin and never come back... which is a bit frustrating.. however it is
possible that they are reluctant anyhow, any would probably fail to convert in
just the next step.
Indeed I agree that OpenID is confusing for most users.
I guess I will follow your advice and implement an on-site registration.
Thank you
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
KiTTY – A fork of PuTTY 0.67 with many additional features - xenophonf
http://www.9bis.net/kitty/
======
Mahn
Fun fact: The ssh-agent equivalent for Windows that ships with PuTTY (pageant)
has a limited amount of memory reserved to store the actual keys (8kb) which
causes it to stop responding when more than 25 keys or so are used. Because
they have no GitHub, no easy way to collaborate on the source, and the
developers don't reply emails, this has gone unfixed for years, and even
though PuTTY is open source and you can fix it yourself and use your build
(which we did), the worst is that we quickly found out that almost every
independent tool on Windows that relays on SSH copy pasted the source of PuTTY
almost verbatim, since we found this bug in many places afterwards, including
closed source applications.
Bottom line, set your workflow on Linux or at least bash for Windows if you
manage or plan to manage many machines.
~~~
INTPenis
I very rarely use Windows but one particular client has a VPN that only works
in Windows so I recently switched from Kitty to Cygwin and am much happier.
Configured mintty with solarized colors, source code pro font and it's as good
as it gets on Windows.
~~~
emmelaich
Love mintty with solarized!
------
randallsquared
Coming from Linux/macOS, PuTTY was one of the things that always drove me
bonkers. So much clicking to change settings. So many times I was uncertain
about whether I'd edited or saved the right session.
I'm trying out Windows again, and the whole environment seems to have
massively improved in the four years since I last played with it: after
installing bash for windows and docker for windows and openssh through scoop,
I can open a command line and use native ssh, or type "bash" and use the usual
Linux version, or "docker run ..." and use whatever I'm used to there. Given
all these great options, it's not clear to me why anyone would go back to a
separate GUI tool?
~~~
tokenizerrr
> Given all these great options, it's not clear to me why anyone would go back
> to a separate GUI tool?
You're clearly a Linux person. Or at least a command line person. I am too.
Quite a few programmers at my work have never used anything but Windows and
barely touch any servers. So they don't really use the command line at all,
ever.
They also insist on using graphical clients for Git. This is of course
horribly inefficient and leads to plenty of problems (mostly due to their
choice of the Eclipse Git Client, which seems to have a lot of bugs). But they
think the command line is scary and too difficult to understand.
So, my point is, there are a lot of people who have used GUIs their entire
life and are used to be able to figure things out by just staring at the GUI
and spending 30 minutes aimlessly clicking about. Then when they use a CLI
program they have no idea what to do, and get frustrated. Because they're not
used to RTFM.
~~~
egeozcan
We wanted to switch to Git from Mercurial because we wanted something like
Gitlab. The only reason we didn't was that there wasn't any app for Git which
was as user-friendly as TortoiseHg.
~~~
WayneBro
There is TortoiseGit!
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Which pales in comparison to the multi-platform goodness of TortoiseHg since
it is an independent creation designed from the ground up for the distributed
workflow rather than a reworked TortoiseSVN. I wish someone would do a Git
conversion of THG.
~~~
WayneBro
Besides not being cross platform, how does it pale in comparison?
I've been using it for over five years and I can't imagine what it could
possibly be missing...
------
thunderbong
I've been a very happy user of MobaXTerm for many years. Generates keys, has
inbuilt sftp, and X11 forwarding.
[http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/)
~~~
teh_klev
Totally agree, I don't know why there's such a blind spot for MobaXTerm. You
can run up multiple copies of the free version to get around most of the
limitations (I even do that with my paid for edition because I get better
session tab management) .
~~~
zem
i'd not heard of it before; it does look like it has some very nice features.
wonder why it didn't come up when i was searching for a windows sftp client
recently.
~~~
teh_klev
It was Sam Saffron, one of the ex Stack Overflow and now Discourse developers
that turned me on to it:
[https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/05/03/eliminating-my-
tri...](https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/05/03/eliminating-my-trivial-
inconveniences#comment-4)
------
mickrussom
Honestly, the #1 terminal program is SecureCRT and its worth paying for. The
only reason: There are two great and efficient ways of managing logins and
session information. I wish there way an open copy of SecureCRT but I've yet
to find one and SCRT is cheap enough to where I just stick with it. Kitty is
interesting but I wish session management was scrt style.
~~~
blueatlas
Try mRemoteNG. It's not quite SecureCRT, but I switched long ago and haven't
regretted the move. It has a nice tabbed UI and supports many protocols (ssh,
RDP, VNC, etc.). It has recently returned to active development.
------
tachion
Isn't `ssh` the best SSH client in the world, despite the KiTTY's claim? Not
to mention, that I'd describe PuTTY/KiTTY more like 'only usable ssh client on
windows platform' rather than what they're claiming on their website ;)
~~~
zokier
There are several ports of OpenSSH for Windows if you prefer that.
~~~
justincormack
Microsoft is porting it officially too now.
------
tw04
I've always preferred this build:
[https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/](https://puttytray.goeswhere.com/)
------
oblio
IMO just abandon the crutch provided by PuTTY and use Cygwin +
Console2/ConsoleZ/Conemu. You'll get the "official" SSH, with support for
normal SSH keys, a rather complete and solid Unix tools setup plus a decent
terminal wrapping the Windows console. You'll also be able to switch between
Cygwin / cmd / Powershell with ease.
------
sprremix
For everyone who works with multiple sessions, there's this tabbed putty
version out as well:
[https://github.com/jimradford/superputty](https://github.com/jimradford/superputty)
~~~
sofaofthedamned
I've always had issues with these wrappers around Putty, in that they never
seem to deal with focus correctly.
My biggest issue with KiTTY was that it saved the username for subsequent
windows - which was really hard to deal with when i'd mistyped the name!
Anybody know a keyboard shortcut to forget which user was entered?
~~~
joatmon-snoo
I think this may actually be a PuTTY bug itself. I use PuTTY Tray on a regular
basis and see this whenever I switch machines.
------
freewizard
Good work!
Could you replace the url with an HTTPS one?
[https://www.9bis.net/kitty/](https://www.9bis.net/kitty/) seems working.
It seems a no brainer, but I 'm just surprised that putty.org is http only.
~~~
voltagex_
That's because putty.org isn't the official site for PuTTY. Think of it like
"friendly" domain squatting, then despair at the security implications.
See [https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-
saf...](https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-safely-is-
nearly-impossible/) (but many of the points have been resolved)
------
makkesk8
Kitty is quite great, but there's better ones like xshell
~~~
linker3000
I seem to have stuck with mRemoteNG due to its tabbed interface support for
ssh, VNC, RDP and other protcols
------
CraigJPerry
I sometimes think the lack of password saving in putty did more to promulgate
the use of ssh keys than anything else.
Kitty has a bunch of useful features , I'll give it a go.
~~~
frumiousirc
The ability to leak and reuse passwords in general did more to promulgate the
use of ssh keys than anything else.
------
urza
If you are on windows and want nice console, I like Cmder:
[http://cmder.net/](http://cmder.net/)
------
denfromufa
It is a pitty that tty is not natively ported to Windows. Jupyter terminal is
not available due to this:
[https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/172](https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/172)
~~~
duskwuff
TTYs are a kernel feature which aren't present at all in Windows. It's not
clear how one could "port" them, short of writing a driver (which I'm not sure
is even possible).
~~~
denfromufa
Although winpty is not feature-complete and requires 2 tool-chains for
building, still it is not a kernel driver:
[https://github.com/rprichard/winpty](https://github.com/rprichard/winpty)
------
_RPM
One of the most annoying things about PuTTY is that the black default
background is too dark to see. For example, I always have to change it to
light background because I can't see my VIM buffer very easily. It also handle
the alt arrow keys.
------
barbwire
"KiTTY is a fork from version 0.67 of PuTTY, the best telnet / SSH client in
the world."
Wow - if PuTTY is "the best client in the world" then this must be, by
definition, an inferior product.
------
neolefty
Is there a link to the source code?
Edit: found it on the downloads page
[http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=Download](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=Download)
------
rhabarba
And if you want to stay updated with new versions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12938269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12938269)
;-)
------
slim
The best is Teraterm [http://ttssh2.osdn.jp](http://ttssh2.osdn.jp)
------
mythz
I'm happy with bash/ssh in Ubuntu on Windows 10 - finally a clean, full-
featured SSH client.
~~~
freehunter
But if all you need is SSH, I'm sure Kitty is smaller than Ubuntu.
------
KirinDave
There is an officially maintained port (by microsoft) of openssh for
PowerShell. There's also full ssh support in the Bash for Windows support.
Maybe someone can explain to me what's valuable about PuTTY or KiTTY given
this?
~~~
coredog64
I only see one release on GitHub: v.0.0.3.0.
The first line of the release notes is the following sentence: "This is a pre-
release (non-production ready)".
Microsoft's implementation includes the full sshd. While I'm happy they're
finally onboard with that (could have used it 10 years ago), that's overkill
compared to PuTTY/KiTTY.
~~~
KirinDave
Why?
Most people will never run it.
------
Nexxxeh
I love KiTTY, the little additions makes Windows use smarter and easier.
------
robhack
How does it compare to SmarTTY? (other than its awesome name!)
------
joshbaptiste
This is cool.. The pscp integration alone is worth me trying.
------
phyushin
I like putty... It suffices for my needs
~~~
freehunter
Yeah, there are a few things that annoy me about Putty but not enough to
actually switch. Granted, Putty is pre-installed on every machine I touch that
doesn't have ssh natively installed, but for the most part it just works. All
the problems I have with it disappear as soon as I'm logged into a remote
server.
------
dinnouti
After fighting with Putty to managed saved sessions between computers, I end
up using cmder and the ssh CLI.
------
jjawssd
Where's the Github/Gitlab repo?
------
epalm
How is it possible in this day and age that both
[http://www.9bis.net/kitty/](http://www.9bis.net/kitty/) and
[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
are not HTTPS?
~~~
harryf
How is it possible in this day that Microsoft is not able to provide a decent
SSH client for Windows?
~~~
tw04
They do... both native and via subsystem for linux.
~~~
harryf
If that's so why are we still using PuTYY / KiTTY (serious question)?
~~~
tw04
Well, I would guess first and foremost: why change? People that already use
putty probably have no desire to switch just to switch. If the alternative
isn't SIGNIFICANTLY better, most people aren't going to switch just to switch.
Second: not everyone is on Windows 10 which is a requirement for the Linux
subsystem.
I guess last but not least: in both cases they require installing software.
Some corporate users have no control over their own laptops. Putty has a
portable version that you don't have to install anything to use.
------
based2
[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Malaysia Wins Young Singaporean Science Whiz - tokenadult
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575012950290932696.html
======
houseabsolute
What an embarrassment that they spend so much effort on fighting over a
foreigner instead of ceasing the religious oppression of their own people and
spending on their own educational and physical infrastructure.
~~~
patio11
On the other hand, over-enthusiasm about foreign talent often precedes
throwing resources into creating home-grown talent. First you go nuts about
the foreigners, then you send your kids to get educated with their kids, then
your kids send their kids to your schools, then your grandkids gripe about all
the damn foreigners taking up spots in their kid's classes. (Timeline not
necessarily to scale. See Japan in Meji through Taisho eras or China/India in
the last decade or two.)
------
yjsoon
His dad's blog is, frankly, quite ridiculous. Read it and my eyebrows hurt
from all the raising. <http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Life Of A Helicopter Lineman - diaphanous
http://www.graybaresp.com/helicopter-lineman/
======
RickJWagner
Wow, that's a seriously dangerous combination. Top shelf cool factor, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What tools are you using for your site's documentation - iantimothy
I'm fascinated by the beautiful documentation from companies like Stripe (https://stripe.com/docs), Parse (https://www.parse.com/docs) and Filepicker (https://developers.filepicker.io/docs/web/). Beautiful in clarity and presentation. What CMS or other tools are you guys using to generate your documentation?
======
anujkk
Do we really need a CMS or any other tool for good looking documentation? I
don't think so. All that is needed to make good documentation is ability to
write good content and present it in a simple manner. Tools doesn't matter.
A look at source of filepicker.io documentation is enough to tell that it is
using twitter bootstrap for its documentation. They have three static pages
powered by twitter bootstrap, one each for web, ios and android documentation.
------
saiko-chriskun
Stripe's full api docs look like they were generated with something similar to
<http://rtomayko.github.com/rocco>
------
jspiral
I like sphinx (e.g. readthedocs.org), if you need to generate documentation
for your code
~~~
benji-york
Agreed. I also like to test my documentation
(<http://packages.python.org/manuel/>).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lost and Found: Digging into the Abandoned Cart Email - mevlow
https://medium.com/reallygoodemails/digging-into-abandoned-cart-emails-136b193cff8#.ifyvhvbn6
======
squaredeye
So stoked to get this out there! What would you change about this article if
you could?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Startup Employee's Real Guide to Stock Options - grdeken
https://www.stevenmoseley.com/blog/the-startup-employees-guide-to-stock-options
======
grdeken
Thought this was a great piece on options worth reading in a time where many
are getting laid off and/or options are under water.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: review my startup touchqode - source code editor for android - mks
link: http://www.touchqode.com<p>Touchqode is source code editor for use on your mobile phone. Its main idea is to let you think about and work on your code even if you are away from computer. It features syntax highlighting, code suggestions (autocomplete) and incremental search. We support Java (most mature), Python, C++, C# and Ruby (all have somewhat basic support).
Touchqode has just been released in an early alpha version for Android and we are eager for your feedback. If you want to see it in action you can also check out youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40QQnrNXUk<p>Thank you
======
sirwitti
to be honest, as a developer i wouldn´t use it beause it´s so inefficient to
edit text on touchscreens. if i wanna work on code or think about it, i mostly
take a sheet of paper and write stuff down when i´m not at a computer.
nevertheless i wish you guys all the best :)
------
mks
clickable links: <http://www.touchqode.com> and
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40QQnrNXUk>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I regularly hire women for 65% to 75% of what males make - amirmc
http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/hvv2m/i_work_for_a_large_multinational_tech_company_i/
======
patio11
Having been a male engineer for a couple of years now, it is very disquieting
to learn that there is any population of people anywhere who are getting
ROFLstomped by male engineers in negotiating savvy. A potted plant could
handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at one
point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when
asked.
~~~
bethling
As a woman engineer, who's a really bad negotiator, I'm not surprised. I know
"how" to be better, but I do wilt and get scared when I've gotten an offer - I
think only once or twice I've ever made any sort of counter.
I don't know why I don't act in my own best interest though. It wouldn't
surprise me if there was some societal element to it, but it really seems
strange/weak/victim-ish to blame something external for what really does feel
like a personal shortcoming - after all my own sister doesn't seem to have the
same sort of "conditioning".
Are there tips out there to help getting over the fear of negotiating? Not
really thinking about looking for something else at the moment, but there
always seems to be a "next job" out there somewhere.
~~~
phillmv
> I think only once or twice I've ever made any sort of counter.
Argh! This kills me inside.
>Are there tips out there to help getting over the fear of negotiating?
It's the same with asking someone out.
The worst that can happen is they say no, and if they make such a big stink
out of it you were better off with someone else in the first place because
they are _douchebags_.
~~~
drewrv
Makes me wonder if maybe men get better at asking for raises,and dealing with
potential rejection, because they often are the ones who ask women out.
~~~
phillmv
No. I think it's a good analogy, but the correlation stops there – I think
I've asked a sum total of two girls out in my life. There are ample
opportunities for women to get rejected as well.
My theory goes that men as a rule of thumb have more opportunities to get into
LOUD OBNOXIOUS arguments with someone who is SO WRONG that you can't let it
stand. Somewhere in that process you learn to push a few boundaries. We're
just conditioned to be/are naturally more aggressive.
------
Peroni
In the UK the pay difference between males & females under the age of 40 in
Tech roles is nominal. There is a difference but it's not even remotely close
to the disparity you would find 20 years ago.
That being said, over the past twelve months, female candidates consisted of
approximately 5% of the people I represented. There are very few women in the
industry and I've rarely come across any who are afraid to argue their worth.
On the contrary in fact. Occasionally I have come across one or two women who
were demanding a salary that was simply far beyond their worth and I imparted
the same advice to them as I would to a male candidate and both women were
incredibly offended by my feedback and refused to budge whereas almost every
single male that I challenged actually listened to my advice and adjusted
their rate to suit.
The idea of negotiating salary offers still appears to be a relatively unknown
phenomenon here in the UK. You'd be surprised how few candidates stand their
ground and push for more than 5% of the original offer regardless of gender.
~~~
ticks
The concept of salary negotiation is alien to me. Given how difficult it is to
find developer jobs in my part of the UK and given that employers are
expecting to pay lower and lower amounts these days, I would consider a salary
negotiation too risky. There's just too many people applying for too few
positions.
That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already
know the salary (or at least the salary range). Obviously, there's
disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be
fixed with a bit of research.
~~~
danssig
It's attitudes like yours that are pushing the prices down. Your view is also
wrong. There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them. You could also
just go abroad. There are lots of nice places to work and with English you can
work in pretty much any big city in western Europe.
~~~
Peroni
_Your view is also wrong._
He voiced his opinion and it was a valid one.
_There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them._
In certain parts of the UK and moreso throughout Europe jobs are in fact quite
scarce regardless of your development ability.
------
lionhearted
I've hired a lot of people recently, so maybe my opinion here will be
interesting.
With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals
harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X
monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..."
That just _screams_ "negotiate me down."
I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think
of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I
actually negotiated that woman's pay _up_ 25% of her ask (which was too low),
but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar
industry, it was _still_ painful for me not to negotiate down.
To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative
purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass.
You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.
~~~
mturmon
Agree. Here's another way of looking at it.
If you're going to be their manager, it's in your interest to have their
salary outcome have parity with other people doing similar work. Later on, if
the employee gets unhappy with their comparative situation, it's much harder
to fix a disparity with annual raises than it would have been to do the fair
thing to begin with.
If their pay is too low, you have made yourself a persistent problem that will
be hard to fix.
~~~
djb_hackernews
Thanks for this. I recently left a pretty damn good job except that I was
extremely underpaid. They tried to point out they were trying to fix it with a
generous annual raise, which was nice, but no where near enough.
I've been struggling trying to explain the situation to myself but you nailed
it.
~~~
mturmon
If you still like the original place, you can always go back after a few
years, using your new rate as a negotiating tool.
The other option (while still at the original place) is to get an offer from
another company. Then, assuming you have your manager's support, take that to
HR and ask for an out-of-cycle increase.
Often by the time it gets this far, people are discontented enough to be at
the point of walking away anyway.
------
bravura
This phenomenon was studied in a book called _Women Don't Ask_.
<http://www.womendontask.com/>
'When Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching
their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her
dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask."'
Incidentally, for a while, the authors would _give_ a free copy of this book
to women who would ask for one.
~~~
caw
A professor of mine one asked the class: "How would you like to live your life
10% better?" Everyone was like "yeah, of course"
The professor's friend would always ask for discounts, everywhere he went. He
would normally get a discount of about 10%. This was simply because he asked.
His theory was that if he could get a discount, why not ask? It doesn't hurt
anyone and you just have to get past the social stigma of "haggling."
So the professor's challenge for us until next class was to ask for a
discount, or more simply "is that your best price?"
Some of the results:
A friend of mine got a free appetizer at a restaurant he frequents
At least 3 people found out that Taco Bell has a student discount program
One person used this in his salary negotiation (literally "is that your best
offer?") and instantly got a 5K bump. He was going to take the job anyway, but
got $5k more without any hassle.
~~~
patio11
If you had called the office supply chain where I previously worked and I was
being very strictly attentive to policy "Is that your best price?" would not
have been the magic words but probably would have gotten you the accommodation
I'm about to describe from 99% of our CSRs.
Basically, we sell the same stuff via a variety of channels, and the catalog
you have in front of you (if you're a regular customer) is systematically
above the prices available to other customers like, e.g., schools districts,
small businesses in California, people responding to our fall circular, etc
etc. The actual software mechanism for this was a three character catalog
code, which would cause the system to reprice everything when it was changed.
If you were ordering from CAT (the big published book that 98% of orders came
from, and you said the magic words -- canonically, "Can you do anything about
lowering the price?" -- I would tell you that we had a competitive bidding
process and, if you'd give me one second, the computer would come up with our
best competitive bid for your business _deletes CAT, writes BID_ ahh, I see we
can knock 10% off the order)
There was actually a Bids group, but you'd have to be ordering office paper by
the truckload (literally -- some people do) to be worth their attention. The
folks in charge of things had long since decided that it was cheaper to just
give 10% to anyone who asked than to involve the folks in Bids on $400
accounts or lose business because a law firm secretary decided to do price
shopping prior to placing her order.
Of particular note: there is literally nothing you can say, starting from
"You're placing an order in CAT", that would cause you to pay more money than
the CAT prices. Savvy purchasing managers understand this, which is why
purchasing departments almost without fail spent the extra 5 seconds asking
for a discount.
~~~
tptacek
... which is why nobody can quote a real price on a website when selling to
big companies; they all have purchasing groups that are required to secure
discounts.
~~~
nl
Which is why you need to keep your price _under_ the purchase authority for
department heads if you do want to sell to big companies via a website.
AKA "The Atlassian Model":
_Scott realized that to get adoption, the software had to also be
inexpensive. This meant there was often no need to get approval from the
C-suite.
Another key was the simplicity of the sales process. “We have a standard
contract and there are no discounts,” said Scott. “We do not want to waste
time and money on legal."_
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2011/06/14/atlassian-1...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2011/06/14/atlassian-100m-business-
with-no-sales-people/)
------
Duff
Sounds like one of the upsides of working at a place where I work now, where
there is a salary scale.
Places that play these kinds of games with salary really annoy me. For my
first post-college job, as a DBA, I was offered $29,000/year (this was in
2000). I knew they had just lost key people and had a bad reputation for
compensation, so I laughed and walked out of the room.
In the parking lot, we agreed to $65k + stock. Most of my colleagues didn't
bother, and got stuck with lousy pay for a couple of years.
~~~
polshaw
Thats quite a nice improvement you got there. Care to elaborate on what
happened (who said what, etc) between walking out and getting the offer?
~~~
Duff
The interviewer followed me, and asked in the stairwell what it would take to
get me hired. I said that I had multiple opportunities in the Boston area
north of $80k, but wanted to stay local. He countered with "I'll get you $35k,
and review your compensation in 3 months". I kept walking.
In the parking lot, we reached an agreement. IMO, it was the first time
someone had walked out on him, and he got flustered. I worked in a busy sales
job when I was in college, so I was used to dealing with his style. Once they
start following you, you've won the negotiation.
Basically, his strategy for any purchase was to dramatically low-ball and act
very important. It worked enough that he was very proud of it -- he would
extract huge concessions from unwary vendors.
~~~
migpwr
I am not trying to offend you, and am only commenting because I believe
stories like these hurt less experienced people who are trying to learn how to
handle salary negotiations.
I personally do not believe this actually happened. Nobody will ever follow
you out of an interview to beg you to take a job, or casually double a salary
offer in a stairwell.
There is no "hard ball" negotiating like this where you walk out and somehow
bring a company to its knees. It's just never that dramatic.
IF you receive a concrete job offer then you accept, decline, or counter. You
should know the pay range by the time a company puts an actual offer on paper.
~~~
Duff
Sorry that you don't believe it.
The guy went from an offer that was low-ball to an offer that was basically
market-rate at that time.
With a big company, there's no way this would have happened. But this was
company that was somewhere between "startup" and "mid size" business. They
hadn't really adopted normal corporate processes.
There was no paper offer. I reported to work on a saturday (to get oriented by
my predecessor, who had left the company already). My paperwork was on my
chair, and I turned it into the VP's secretary on Monday.
------
mhartl
If this practice is generally true, it suggests an obvious gender arbitrage
strategy:
1. Hire women instead of men.
2. ???
3. Profit.
Unlike the usual case, here ??? actually has a value:
??? = Save massively on labor costs vs. your competitors.
As other companies discover the same strategy, demand increases for a fixed
supply, thereby bidding up the equilibrium wage and hence dramatically
improving the negotiating position of women. (Nothing improves the results of
your negotiation faster than a better negotiating position.) In a competitive
market for labor, the equilibrium is for everyone to be paid based on their
productivity and their risk profile. Whether the latter factor favors women or
men isn't _a priori_ obvious; for example, men are more likely to die in a
fight or a car accident, whereas women are more likely to take time off to
have kids (and so on).
Unfortunately, market interventions typically have the opposite of their
intended effect. Rules that punish companies for paying women less than men
increase the risk of hiring women; rules that punish companies for not hiring
enough women increase the risk of interviewing women; rules that punish not
interviewing enough women increase the risk of recruiting women. All of these
factors, _ceteris paribus_ , lower the wages of women. (Those who depend on
the gender rage industry, on the other hand, make off like bandits.)
------
joshfraser
I've coached several of my female friends in how to ask for a raise. Often
they'll complain that they're not making enough but are scared to ask for
more. I'll tell them "your boss might say no, but they're not going to fire
you". Of course, if your boss does say "no", it's a good opportunity to ask
what progress you need to make to get the raise you want. You then have a
concrete roadmap for getting where you want to be. For the guys on here,
encourage the women in your life to speak up. Often they just need someone to
tell them it's okay and that they're worth it.
~~~
danssig
I don't like this advice personally. If you want more money you need to change
jobs. Asking what progress you need to make to get the raise you want is
normally just going to get you strung along doing extra work for nothing.
~~~
nknight
Uh, while I realize the most common method for getting a raise in Silicon
Valley is to switch jobs, the idea that it's the only mechanism or the most
desirable one is very bizarre.
It also seems to imply that wanting more money is somehow mutually exclusive
with wanting to continue working in your current job and/or for your current
company.
You're also demonstrating another classic weakness in engineers, failure to
recognize social capital. In asking for that information, you put management
in the position of articulating their expectations, and when you meet or
exceed them, it pressures them further to agree to a raise.
Management isn't just running some simple equation to determine your salary,
they're exercising their own judgement as to what you're worth to them and
what will keep you working there productively. That judgement can be altered
through psychological means.
~~~
wyclif
The point is that, all other factors being equal, switching jobs as an
engineer is the _easiest_ way to get a raise. People tend to take the path of
least resistance.
~~~
nknight
Really? Easiest for whom? I find switching jobs painful and stressful, and my
largest percentage salary increases have come _without_ switching employers.
And how is that the point anyway? danssig didn't say anything like that, he
just said "If you want more money you need to change jobs.", and assumed the
strategy in question would be blindly applied by an ignorant worker and result
in exploitation. Do you have some insight that allows you to discern he meant
something vastly different from what he said?
~~~
danssig
>I find switching jobs painful and stressful
This is just because you don't do it enough. I used to hate it enough that I
once sued a company to try and make them not lay me off. Now I change every
16mo-5 years and I _love_ the interview part. I would never stay _anywhere_
(besides my own company) for more than 5 years as IMO it makes you appear not
very sought after.
>and my largest percentage salary increases have come without switching
employers.
I find this _very_ hard to believe. All companies have caps on how much of an
increase you can get per year, per performance raise, etc. When you move it's
mostly dependent on your negotiation skills (which get better the more they're
used). The biggest raise I ever got in a company was during the dot com bubble
(they were afraid we would leave). I got 28% (massive, massive exception to
get this. Performance raises were the highest you could normally get and were
capped at 15%). I moved to another company a few years later and more than
doubled my salary. My latest move brought me another 40%.
>and assumed the strategy in question would be blindly applied by an ignorant
worker and result in exploitation.
Everywhere I've ever worked was this way.
------
danielrm26
Ok, I'll be that guy.
1\. Testosterone promotes risk taking (<http://goo.gl/s2gf4>) 2\. Men have
more testosterone. 3\. Salary negotiation is a risk game.
Now for the important part: this doesn't mean it's right. That would be the
naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that because something is natural it must be o.k.
So, yes, absolutely combat this. Learn techniques to overcome the disparity.
But do not, in a forum full of smart people, wonder WHY this is happening. The
answer is obvious to anyone who doesn't mind unpleasant truth.
~~~
sethg
As others have pointed out in this thread, there is practically no risk to
asking for more money.
~~~
bethling
But that may not always be obvious to people - in my case, for some reason I
worry about my future manager "seeing" me in a negative way. Or perhaps they
will decide that I'm not a team player and revoke the offer.
What makes it completely loony, is that I have been the manager, and I never
looked at it that way. But yet, I assume everyone else has a very different
view of things than I do.
~~~
sethg
If the testosterone hypothesis is true, then men who try t negotiate their
salary _also_ falsely perceive that they are risking their jobs, but they do
it anyway. I find that hard to believe.
------
iwwr
Strictly on economic terms, how much of a discount would you get on a
developer if he/she is likely to take 1-2 year off at some point? During that
time, you have to hire another person, train them and then tell them to leave.
~~~
nupark2
You're being downvoted, but this is quite honestly something I've witnessed
C-levels worrying about -- "does she seem like she might get pregnant
immediately?".
I have to disagree with the concern.
There's a cost to hiring humans. People get sick, have babies, attend weddings
and funerals and take vacations. Men take paternity leave, women take
maternity leave. These are the costs of hiring humans.
In my mind, our company exists to turn a profit, but it also exists to employ
human beings. Treating them like human beings is money well spent, not money
wasted.
~~~
iwwr
As an employer, I would do my utmost to attend to these human problems,
especially it's a valuable employee. However, the costs, opportunity-wise,
still exist and we pay them, willingly or not.
------
officemonkey
I think this goes beyond just salary negotiations.
My wife typically comes to me when she has "business politics questions"
(despite that she's been working longer and more successfully than me.)
Most of things we talk about involve how to get something (usually work or
money) from a client without seeming like they're bothering them.
I'm definitely in the "just matter-of-factly send them an email." She's more
in the "I don't want them to get irritated by me contacting them" camp.
This isn't universal though. I've had two experiences where it's been
reversed. One male I recently hired accepted a position when he knew money
would be a problem and didn't bring it up even though it's a bit of a hardship
for him right now. A female I'm in discussions to hire has told me flat out
what her salary requirements are. I actually appreciate this kind of
discussion.
~~~
AutoCorrect
nah, that's just consensus building - another trait of the female of the
species. I've seen it plenty of times before: it takes me 10 minutes to make a
decision, and I call no one. It takes my wife two days, as she goes through
her address book, calling friends and talking it out with them.
------
mootothemax
When I was offered my current job, I replied that I thought the pay was on the
low side, and asked if they could improve their offer. Two hours later, I
received an email with a 15% improvement!
I'm _really_ not very good at negotiation, but getting a 15% raise just by
asking? I'll be doing that again :)
------
johngalt
I discovered this a few years ago, about a large number of women and some men.
My wife got a job and the employer glossed over salary negotiations with an
"assumed sale" of minimum wage! I asked why she accepted that, and she said
"There wasn't an opportunity to negotiate salary. They just gave me the
'standard rate'." She's not a meek woman. No one had ever told her that you
could ask for more. With my help she got a 2x raise just by assertively asking
for it.
She's bragged to her parents about it and I learn that her mother _had never
negotiated a salary or raise in her entire life_. So I ask all my female
friends: same thing, my mom: same thing, then my ardently feminist sister:
same thing! It was a twilight zone moment for me.
The reasons why varied, but they could be generalized as an expectation of
fairness combined with a small amount of irrational fear.
------
dan00
I'm just sick of stuff like this.
An employer is expecting that an employee is loyal, but nevertheless he's
trying to noble the potential employee from the beginning.
But you would be dumb doing it the other way, right? Sorry, but this kind of
smartness harms the whole society.
So all the humble and self-doubting people are getting less than the loud and
playing ones. Sure, the loud ones are the better, more loyal employees, right?
But you have to learn to be louder! No I don't have to and I don't want,
because I like it the way I am.
~~~
thomasgerbe
It has nothing to do with loudness. It has everything to do with having a
spine and it being a business. It really is not that hard to negotiate and I
am an introvert. Yet a lot of women I know do not even try.
------
rbanffy
A long time ago, I hired a PhD from a highly prestigious Brazilian university.
She passed the interview with flying colors, way beyond my expectations, and I
was a bit ashamed to tell her the maximum budget I had - it was much less than
someone with her experience was worth. She seemed more than happy to take my
offer (which was as far as I could possibly go). Later I learned I was paying
her more than 4 times what she earned as a researcher at the university. I
don't know whether her male colleagues earned much more, but I was shocked by
how little she made as a scientist.
To this day I am bittersweet about this. I am embarrassed I never paid her
what she deserved - and I should have, for she is an outstanding professional
- but I am also happy I helped her transition from an dead-end job at an
academic institution to a fast-paced tech company and that this transition had
a very positive impact on her career (last time I heard, she had a team of
kick-ass programmers solving some devilishly hard computer-vision-related
problem). I left a couple months after hiring her, but it's still a great
story.
Well... There are better stories around here, sure, but this is still a good
one.
------
MarkMc
Sheryl Sandberg (COO at Facebook) gives an excellent talk about different
attitudes that women have in careers:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html)
------
stfu
I think the same statement could be made about introverts. Not quite sure if
this is a gender issue or just a personality/mentality issue.
------
vaksel
I think a large part of the problem is that there is no way to figure out how
much each person is actually worth.
Sure we have sites like indeed and salary.com that can give you estimates for
the position and you also have glass door that gives you some salaries in your
area...but they aren't solid numbers.software developer" makes, is pointless
since there are so many alternatives, a VB developer is going to be making
less than a Python developer.
Same goes for glassdoor...sure the numbers help, but you don't know if the
number you are looking at is current...or if it was added 10 years ago when
the site launched.
So here is a startup idea...create a site like salary.com but one designed
solely for programmers/developers. Then create an interface, where someone can
build out a job description/location to get a good feel of what a fair salary
would be for that specific position.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth_ //
You're not buying a person though. In employer terms you're usually buying the
completion of a particularly series of actions. These actions can be analysed
and given a money value.
~~~
vaksel
yes, but employers don't have an incentive to give a fair value for this.
~~~
esrauch
Neither employers nor employees have incentive to give a fair value in one of
the directions. I'm sure there are plenty of overpayed employees that aren't
exactly falling over themselves to get a pay cut, nor companies falling over
themselves to give employees a pay raise.
------
pedoh
I wonder what would happen if you tried to make the negotion process as
transparent as possible; something along the lines of:
"Look, I've read all of the negotiation strategy books, and clearly you're an
expert in your field, so let's agree on the value that I bring to your company
and find the right compensation package."
------
budley
I also hire people for as little money as I can.
~~~
thetrumanshow
Yes, but consider, they may very well alter their effort-level to suit the
salary you pay them, thereby saving energy for things that matter more to
them.
~~~
marquis
When we've had budget issues and need to hire someone I try to find a balance
between what we can afford and the effort we're looking for. A good way to do
this for us is to hire less than 40 hours a week. A savvy employee enjoys
this, as it leaves them time to work on their own projects (which we fully
support) while having a base income. We've had this system now for a few years
that has worked wonderfully, and even though we've lost some great people to
their own startups I'm really proud of them and we keep goodwill that allows
us to call them back in a contract basis if needed.
~~~
lurker17
We need more like you.
~~~
marquis
Oh, that made me blush, thanks.
------
highfreq
Another factor could be that earlier interviews weed out the forceful
negotiators among the women, because that personality trait makes women less
likable. On the other hand, a lack of aggressiveness makes men appear weak.
~~~
marquis
There are many ways to negotiate without appearing aggressive. I'm sure 50% of
the population can alert you to some of these methods.
------
deltaqueue
I'm a bit bewildered there's an entire discussion about this based on a reddit
post. While the OP's circumstances may be true at his or her company, is it
still universally accurate? I don't actually know the answer, but based on
several articles released in the last year I would wager this discrepancy is
no longer uniform for all industries:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/she_m...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/she_makes_more_money_than_he_does_so.html)
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-29/strategy/3007...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-29/strategy/30074989_1_computer-
science-men-tech-companies)
[http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/01/young-single-women-
ea...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/01/young-single-women-earn-more-
than-men/)
[http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-01-single-
wo...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-01-single-women_N.htm)
There are still some statistics floating around that compare salaries without
factoring in control variables (mostly based on generic census data), but
these tend to be less accurate.
~~~
mikeryan
I think you _have_ to look at this on a per industry basis. There are many
industries which don't even have price negotiating. The government, unionized
jobs, a lot of manual and blue collar positions just pay a certain rate for a
particular job.
------
creativityhurts
But that's not a rule, it's because women don't negotiate well. This title can
create a bit of unnecessary controversy, imho.
~~~
D_Drake
Controversial titles drive clickthroughs.
------
ramblerman
if you read the actual text it ends with
_the one person who got the most out of us was a highly aggressive, very
smart, very confident woman_
I guess they wanted to point out women, in general, aren't as aggressive in
demanding higher salaries. Which whilst being an interesting observation seems
kind of a non issue, there is no discrimination here.
~~~
marquis
The poster was clearly not discriminating. Reading this from a female
perspective he was just telling facts, and I don't see this as HR's problem
either. We women need to learn to negotiate, and learn how to do this while
maintaining the need for social inclusion. There are still a lot more men in
the tech business which does affect the manner in which you discuss money and
it's hard even for me to negotiate (and I've been in business for years). It's
a matter of telling your social-brain to shut up and put your personal-
survival-brain first, maybe.
I don't see this as a gender issue so much as a personality-type issue, it's
secondary that many women happen to have the personality-type where social
concerns come first. When clients ask me for a discount we'll almost always
give it, but I'll be much happier to work with a client who approaches the
matter in a sociable way rather than a direct request for a discount (I find
it tasteless, even though the money-brain side of me completely understands
what is happening).
Just a side note: I have male employees who also suck at asking for raises.
------
baltcode
From a free market perspective, do the women then have a competitive advantage
in being hired? (Since the company can get the job done for less). Also, why
does the company simply hire at the lower end of the wage level since they can
apparently get a lot of women and some men to work for that kind of pay?
~~~
wanorris
It's hard to fill technology jobs in the current competitive marketplace. So
it's easier to take a mix of market rates and below-market rates and keep an
average that is still below market rate than it is to exclude people who want
market rate and still fill all the positions with qualified people.
I can't really speak to other fields, though.
------
ericdykstra
If women will do the same work for less money, why don't we see companies that
rely on high volume and low margins hire a lot of females (so that 90%+ of
their employees are female)?
A 30% cost savings on staff seems like it could be a huge competitive
advantage.
If such a company exists, I would love to have someone point it out.
~~~
codergirl
Because there aren't enough females in the field?
~~~
ericdykstra
I'd think that if the average female was making 70% of fair salary, a company
could offer them 80% and get enough to fill a vast majority of their positions
while still saving an incredible 20% on those employees, giving them a great
competitive advantage.
------
codezero
Women aren't the only ones who suffer from this, and I don't even know if it
is something that can be attributed to all or even most women.
I remember when I worked at Red Hat, several years after being hired, I found
out that there were people making half as much as me... it blew my mind. I
asked for a lot when I got hired, more than I was worth, but I stuck to my
guns and they gave me slightly less than I was asking.
The people who made half as much only asked for half as much. What manager
wouldn't hire them if they were willing to work for half the salary? These
were great people, too, by the way, they worked hard and were very skilled,
but they were interoverts and were happy to take the "prestige" of working for
a company like Red Hat as a sort of currency. Fuck that. Word hard, but don't
aim low, ever.
------
michaeldhopkins
This article is behind the times. By the time most professional women have
learned to ask for raises like some men do in 2011, those men will have moved
on to a more advanced strategy to make more. It's similar to how an expensive
university degree is becoming less useful just as women are earning more than
50% of them.
My point is that these men are competitive and they have momentum and the
current salary-negotiation-education strategy won't result in parity. I don't
see any reason it has to be that way, of course.
~~~
dan00
"... those men will have moved on to a more advanced strategy to make more."
Yes, I think it will go this way. A perfect fit is also the article about the
neuroenhancers on hacker news. If you don't want to get behind, you will have
to take them.
But what kind of life is this, or will it be in a even more competitive
future?
If your self-worth is mostly based on making money or your career, than you
will have to go this way.
But is this really the best possible life, the best spend life time?
~~~
michaeldhopkins
Yes, it's acedic to measure the worth of oneself and peers by money alone. But
given that men and women are both in it for money, competing for
equality/inequality measured by sex, it's necessary for the runners up to aim
for the leaders as moving targets.
------
prophetjohn
So for those who think this is a societal problem or a symptom of structural
sexism in the tech field or etc., a genuine question. The OP seems to state
that he negotiates with all people in the same manner, but the women are less
likely to fight for themselves. What kind of solution do you suggest to combat
this symptom of structural sexism? Should HR managers negotiate easier with
women? Offer a higher starting point for negotiation?
It's a genuine question and interested in what people would see as a fair way
to combat these kind of systematic biases toward women. I think there should
be a way to combat these effects of society, but I certainly can't come up
with a solution to this problem that seems fair to all parties involved.
------
moonchrome
A very obvious question arises - why aren't they preferring to hire women - it
sounds like they are ideal employees - lower pay expectation for the same work
and rarely ask for a raise.
------
thenduks
I'm not sure I really see the problem, or even how gender is at all relevant.
I generally don't bother negotiating salary either. Money isn't (even close
to) the most important thing to me and I will take the first offer that puts
me in a comfortable financial position -- assuming I actually want the job and
I am excited to work for the company, of course.
Clearly there are males who don't negotiate hard and females who _do_. It's
not about their gender, it's about their negotiating tactics!
Seems to me the correct title for this would be "I regularly hire people who
don't bother negotiating higher salaries at 65% to 75% of people who do." (And
that's ok!)
------
___o___
Why does HN keep pushing these sexist posts to the main news area?
------
ahoyhere
I'm so tired of the double standard.
If men are raised and "socialized" that they are the rightful leader of the
family, and it's not only okay but right to hit their wives, we hold them
personally responsible for their actions.
If women are raised and "socialized" not to negotiate, we blame society.
Because… women aren't smart enough, or whole humans enough, to do anything but
what they're told?
Ladies, take control of your own destiny, or be a victim of your own making.
It's your choice.
~~~
Skalman
There are a couple of differences that make your reasoning invalid:
\- Women having a lower salary isn't as visible or as visibly wrong as men
hitting their wives
\- Hitting one's wife is an _action_ , while not negotiating salary (well) is
a non-action
Both things are wrong, and we need to try to inhibit both on the society level
(by trying to raise responsible men, and women to negotiate salaries).
Though, I'm very certain that I, as a man, also need lessons in negotiating
salaries - I'm quite gullible/trusting.
~~~
ahoyhere
The comparison doesn't matter.
The fact remains: if men do what "society" has "conditioned" them to do, we
hold them personally responsible. If women do, we rush to take care of them
and save them from themselves.
The moral of the story: women are delicate flowers who cannot decide for
themselves, and must be protected.
~~~
king_jester
Negotiating salary and hitting someone are not the same thing. One is a
violent act of assault and the other is a conversation to decide your rate of
pay. Furthermore, some people do make excuses for men who commit violent acts
on the basis of their social situation and upbringing, even though it is
flawed to do so.
Also, I have personally seen and continue to see news stories, editorials, and
blog posts about social conditions for men, esp. in regards to men taking part
in "traditional" female roles, such as child care, certain types of labor, and
even certain kinds of hobbies.
It is deliberately misleading to say that social conditioning and social
issues treat one gender one way and another gender the other way, not too
mention that such a position completely erases and doesn't acknowledge the
existence of those who are not cisgendered and have a different experience in
regard to their social experience.
------
berntb
Is it really smart for a company to press down salaries so far that they
underpay?
My experience is that if someone is underpaid, they won't be around for long.
It is _expensive_ with high churn rates.
~~~
tobtoh
As a manager, I thought this initially too. But here's the kicker - the
employees sit there and take it. Sure they may complain about being underpaid,
but few will move to another job.
I remember in my previous job, I had a senior sysadmin who had been with the
company for 10 years and earning $70k ... we were hiring new sysadmins off the
street for $100k. He complained about it and I tried everything I could to get
him a payrise because he was a good performer - but company policy was that
pay rises could not be more than 10% without exec approval. So the best I
could offer him was $77k - in my justification for more, I compared market
rates, how much it would cost the company if we had to replace him ($100k in
salary alone let alone recruitment costs) etc - but the reply back from HR was
'we bet he won't leave'. And sure enough he didn't. It really saddened me -
the fact is he could get a job elsewhere that paid way more, but he was too
'comfortable' in his position.
In my experience, people tell themselves all sort of stories why they don't
leave - I'm still learning lots, I like the people I work with, I need a
little more experience etc - all of this may be true to a degree, but going by
the number that complain about being overworked/underpaid, a lot of them
simply are excuses.
Companies know and understand this - and hence people often may get underpaid.
~~~
Jem
You just described me. I am underpaid by about £5k but I don't move because I
like the people I work with. Are the people I work with worth £5,000 a year?
I'm pregnant at the moment though. It don't think it would be wise to
willingly enter the job market in my current 'condition'.
~~~
tobtoh
There are lots of very good reasons to stay in a job even if you are being
underpaid - it very much depends on your individual circumstances - in your
case, I would probably stay too.
Just make sure you periodically evaluate your reasons and circumstances to
make sure you over time that you aren't falling into a trap of 'comfort' for
not leaving.
------
cq
This is bullshit: it is passing the buck. This is strictly blaming women for
their problems, without acknowledging the structural sexism that exists in
virtually all tech fields.
~~~
cq
Here's an example of what I'm talking about regarding this topic:
[http://acceptableparity.blogspot.com/2011/10/four-ways-
men-s...](http://acceptableparity.blogspot.com/2011/10/four-ways-men-stunt-
womens-careers.html)
~~~
dpritchett
That article is painting a fantasy where there's no information asymmetry or
self-interested players in an organization. In reality no one's got the time
or interest to follow along behind _every_ employee (male or female) going
over their work product with a microscope in hopes of identifying and
elevating talent.
The closest you see in the real world is fast-track programs where a few
anointed employees are given challenging high-profile assignments and
challenged to prove themselves before the next promotion. This approach
doesn't scale, but it's better than nothing and so it's hard to resent
companies for attempting it. As an employee outside of the fast track, it's up
to you to change your situation. Often it's easier to get on someone else's
fast track (i.e. at a new employer) rather than trying to catch a train you
already missed at your current employer.
Given the limited attention and political capital your managers can use to
help your career growth, one simply must take it upon themselves to craft and
drive their own vision for career growth.
------
hendrix
What is the big deal? This is a reddit post in the feminist subredditum....
IMO this is just fear-mongering and exploiting the sensitivities of the
(mostly male & slightly nerdy) tech workforce. The point is that women are NOT
being actively discriminated against. If women do not want to ask for more
salary, that is their own fault. You could say the same for recent
immigrants/visa-applicants who do not want to piss off their employer and will
work for pennies so that they can remain in the country.
------
tycho77
Oh thank goodness! It's all the women's fault. I was afraid people would have
to address the residual sexism left in the corporate world.
Not to detract from the story, which by all anecdotal evidence in this thread
appears to be valid, but this is a dangerous train to jump on - I would say
akin to blaming racial disparity on 'cultural issues'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Debt Collectors Cashing In on Student Loan Roundup - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/business/once-a-student-now-dogged-by-collection-agencies.html?hpw&pagewanted=all
======
DanielBMarkham
_“It’s the closest thing to debtor prison that there is on this earth,” he
said._
One of the sadder parts of a credit crisis like we're having is that
privileged players, mostly the government and some Credit Card companies, are
angling for more "aggressive" collection abilities.
Let's be honest, if you get yourself 50-100K in debt with a student loan and
you're not making that much, you are in prison. You'll never receive a tax
refund, you won't be able to own property, you can't have brokerage accounts
even with a 2-3K in them for a rainy day, and so on.
There's an equal or greater number of folks who are just as screwed with
various taxes. The government is now talking about preventing people with back
taxes from travelling overseas. Look for folks to start talking about stuff
like this for the students as well.
This is very dark stuff. Even considering all of our freedoms that are getting
trampled by the TSA and other agencies, this idea that we are allowing people
to be indebted for life without any recourse simply because they have some
sort of "special" debt is a terrible new thing for the U.S. I actually think
it's worse than the horrific civil liberties problem we have. People will get
used to having no anonymity and being tracked like a wild animal on a nature
show (sadly), but they'll never get used to being an indentured servant.
When the United States was formed we made a conscious decision that you didn't
punish people for life for poor money choices they made. We didn't have
debtor's prisons. What the the hell are we doing to ourselves?
~~~
yequalsx
I hadn't heard about a travel ban on those who owe back taxes. The articles I
read after looking this up aren't as bad as it appears. The idea was to ban
people who owe more than $50,000 in back taxes from traveling overseas. But
that's how it works, right? One small step at a time. Pick a number that most
people can shrug off because they don't owe this much and then tighten the
screws.
My answer to your last question is slowly marching toward feudalism. It's
distressing to see how things have gotten worse over the last 30 years. I
remember in the 90s that protest leaders were arrested preemptively before an
international meeting in Washington D. C. No one had committed a crime but the
powers that be could not suffer the complaints of the people. In the last
decade protest leaders were preemptively on faux terrorism charges.
When being slowly boiled it is hard to recognize when the point of no return
had occurred.
~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yep, as you point out these violations of principle always seem to happen with
things that are emotionally outraging to folks and always at some extreme
numbers.
Once the new principle has been established, however, then the system can
slowly clamp down until more and more people are involved -- all without any
political input at all. So that's how we end up in a security state and there
really isn't anybody accountable for how we got here. Lots of little changes
around the edges.
We've ended up in a spot where, if you ask a constitutional scholar, they can
explain to you how it all works and makes sense. But if you ask the average
guy on the street, he'll tell you the system is spinning out of control.
There's a serious structural problem when the system has become so byzantine
that it requires 6 years of study to understand it all. And most of those guys
don't believe that it is fair or correct. We seem to have been overwhelmed by
edge cases.
------
FollowSteph3
A common theme I saw across the examples, AND A CAR PAYMENT. If you're in
debt, then the last thing you should be acquiring is another depreciating
asset that costs money. Not only do you have car payments and insurance, but
you also have maintenance, and everything else that goes along with a car.
Also, how many of these same people have tv's with cable? Cell phones with
data plans? Go out for diners, drinks with friends, and so on?
When I graduated I spent 3-4 years paying down my debt as quickly as possible.
I believe I got my first car, and it was for under $1000, when I was in my
late 20's. I just couldn't afford one.
I also noticed at least one example of someone also buying a home with a
$100,000+ debt. That to me is just a bad financial decision. Anything happens
and your in trouble.
Also I did notice a lot of the examples showed degrees where getting a job
would be tougher, or that it wouldn't pay that well compared to the cost of
the debt. I hate to say this, but not all degrees are created equal, and in
today's world you need to evaluate the cost to benefit. Unfortunately for some
degrees, you can only really acquire them if you have disposable income
because there's no way you can make a profit.
In any case, the most common theme I noticed was that they couldn't afford the
debt with their other expenses. But the author rarely discussed what they
were. For me a car is a luxury. Tv is a luxury. Anything beyond the most basic
$20/mth cell is a luxury. Going out for drinks and suppers is a luxury. Just
saying... ;)
~~~
eric_bullington
Are you saying a car is a luxury for everyone? If so, you must have never
lived outside a large city. At least in many suburbs across the US, and in
rural areas, having a car is most definitely _not_ a luxury if you have a job
outside the home, or if you have kids that have to go to school. I've lived in
metropolitan areas in which I didn't have to have a car. I loved it. I hate
the maintenance and care that a car requires. But a car is absolutely
necessary if you live in the country or in many suburbs, where the nearest
public transportation is many, many miles away.
~~~
kaonashi
There are cars that don't require monthly payments. They don't look as nice,
but they still get you from point A to point B.
~~~
omni
You're making an assumption that a person has a base level of net worth with
which they can buy a car outright. Someone who is "in debt" by definition has
a negative net worth, so even a very cheap car ($500 or so?) would be
difficult to pay for with cash. Additionally, cars that cheap usually end up
costing way more when you account for hidden maintenance costs, etc., so a
decent car is probably going to run you $1500 at least.
------
reader5000
It's really a perfect storm of destruction, driven by greed and exploitation.
1\. If you are a young person and aspire to "middle class" employment, in 90%
of cases you need a 4-year degree. The reason this is true is simply because
potential employers will prefer an applicant vetted by a college admissions
council versus a not-vetted candidate. It's a basic signalling arms race.
2\. Many professions such as law and medicine legally require purchase of the
appropriate degree. There is no option for apprenticing or self-study and
sitting the licensing exams without the degree. If you want the profession,
you are required by state law to buy in. And the degree-supplying institutions
have no qualms about "finessing" employment/income statistics (if they even
pretend to collect them) and the like to give the impression entrance in such
professions is like winning the lottery.
So you have two sources of basically inelastic demand for these little sheets
of paper from young people anxious to find a seat in society. If you are a
supplier of such sheets of paper, how do you exploit this situation for
maximum profit? After all, 18 year olds don't have the cash in their pockets
to be defrauded of. The solution, of course, is the federal government.
Make a deal with the federal government that in exchange for risk-free blank
checks from the federal taxpayer, you, the degree-supplier, will graciously
grant these poor 18 year old saps with seals of approval from your fine
academic institution. Once you have have this deal arranged, blow tuition
through the roof, say 500%+ in the past 10 years, with precisely 0 correlation
to actual costs or say competition in some sort of "free market" where firms
are actually exposed to "risk" etc. Congratulations sir, you are now wealthy.
You won America!
Oh, it's not fair to indenture teenagers with mortgage-equivalent debts at
usurious interest rates for a service most first world nations provide for
free or limited expense? Doesn't matter: 'merica.
Oh, it's not constitutional to disallow discharge of these exploitation debts
in bankruptcy? Doesn't matter: 'merica.
I think basically the question is: why aren't we fucking over young people
more? I think if they want a college/professional degree we should make them
sign contracts like "In exchange for this most valuable degree, any money I
ever earn over $30,000 annually for the rest of my life goes straight to Uncle
Sam, and/or the appropriate collections agency".
~~~
wallflower
> 1\. If you are a young person and aspire to "middle class" employment, in
> 90% of cases you need a 4-year degree. The reason this is true is simply...
A while back, someone on HN replied to a comment about college degrees being
almost de rigueur with a link to a lawsuit I never heard of.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company>
As it turns out, this is the real reason why 4-year degrees have the power
that they do in the world of white-collar employment.
And that is the beauty of HN, you can learn the facts when sometimes most
people just do conjecture
~~~
rmc
It would be 'interesting' if someone could prove in court that degrees were
racially biased. Then companies wouldn't be able to ask about them.
------
avolcano
God, this is depressing.
Young people putting themselves into crippling debt because college has been
sold as the only way to get good, "real" employment in this country. And you
know what? It's probably true in most of industries and for the vast majority
of people. We've been taught that without college, you'll be stuck in a fast
food job forever. Everyone has to go - high schools have replaced all of their
"technical" classes with "college prep" classes; everything rides on that SAT
score, kids having complete breakdowns over not getting the scholarship they
wanted...
All for colleges that gobble up money for degrees that seem to never
correspond to actual intelligence or skill in a field like they're intended
to.
Ugh.
------
forgottenpaswrd
Those are the problems of giving free money, they will give money to people
that can't pay it back and will inflationate the cost of services for all,
because demand has been artificially expanded.
The law of unintended consequences. You make something to "help" and you
destroy society in the process.
I can't understand that someone who is $55.000 in debt has a SUV, like the
woman in the article. I prefer to live poor but free, in fact I had to in the
past.
In Spain something similar happened with real state. In the bubble I saw banks
giving 300.000 euros to a 18year old with a yet to pay Mercedes at the door.
Those people will pay refinancing their debt. This made houses prices to
skyrocket. Now this banks needs to be "saved".
~~~
eckyptang
Living poor but free summarises my ideals. Ironically, this attitude was
brought on by having to pay back student loan in the UK. You don't get debt
collection here, but they take 9% of your income until you've paid it off.
------
gallerytungsten
One of the key factors driving the student debt bubble is "for profit"
colleges. Many of these schools are scams to begin with, and prey on students
who are desperate for a degree, but probably not qualified to attend college
in the first place.
They max out the debt load of their students, and really don't care if they
graduate or get a job. Congress recently tried to crack down on these
education scammers, but the for profit school lobby blocked any reform.
The sad thing is, degrees from these schools are worse than worthless. When I
see University of Phoenix on a resume, it's pretty much guaranteed to wind up
in the trash. It makes it quite obvious that the holder of this "degree" is
too dumb to get into a real academic program.
~~~
rjbond3rd
> When I see University of Phoenix on a resume... the holder of this "degree"
> is too dumb to get into a real academic program.
Perhaps, or just as likely, she/he had a family situation which prevented a
traditional full-time academic path. Let's not equate personal or economic
circumstances with intelligence.
~~~
tdfx
In most areas, you can work through up to your junior year of college by
attending evening community college classes and transfer to a state school to
finish. There's never a good reason to attending one of these for-profit
schools, except that you bought into their marketing hype and didn't do your
own research.
------
mtoddh
Articles like this make me think that there is going to be a big cultural
shift in America with regards to how people see debt. I'm guessing that when
these young people get older and have kids of their own, that generation may
have a far less cavalier attitude about taking on debt (for housing, college,
etc) than generations before.
~~~
spaghetti
It's happening already. For example I'm totally opposed to taking on any
substantial debt. The only debt I accept in my life is temporary 30-day credit
card debt which is of course payed off in full every month.
I find the massive debt associated with "owning" a home to be ridiculous. It's
like you're renting the home from the bank for 30 years. In exchange for
paying rent every month you get to maintain the home and pay for repairs,
potentially deal with idiotic HOAs, pay property tax which in some cases is
equivalent to renting an apartment for a year and endure the burden of
cleaning the giant thing.
I realize there are circumstances where the above downsides of "owning" a home
are acceptable. For example when one has a family and/or the home is purchased
very early in the housing price bubble cycle. However I'm already planning
alternatives for my family.
~~~
rayiner
There is a difference between mortgage debt and credit card debt or student
loans. You can't just "cash out" your student loan debt by selling the asset.
You can usually do it with a house. Moreover, unlike a car, TV, etc, a house
is typically an appreciating asset not a depreciating one.
In a way, mortgaging a house is like renting the home from the bank, but there
is a key difference: you own any appreciation in the value of the home, not
your landlord. Your mortgage payment is the same every year (and in real terms
goes down over time because more of each payment becomes principal and because
of inflation). Your apartment, meanwhile, gets more expensive every year. My
rent in downtown Chicago has gone up 11% in three years.
Moreover, the mortgage interest and property tax deductions are among the only
tax deductions available to higher-earning singles and couples. Your $2000
rent payment is not deductible, but $1500 of a new $2000 mortgage payment is
deductible. Also, the portion of your rent payment that goes to paying
property taxes is not deductible, but your property taxes are deductible.
Depending on your tax bracket, this can be a lot of money.
Finally, buying a house is one of the only leveraged investments available to
most people. Say you buy a $500k house with $100k down, at a low mortgage rate
of 4.5% per year (mortgage rates are as low as 3.5% today). Say you're in a
high tax bracket (= 33%). If your house appreciates 10% after two years, then
after paying your interest your total return is 29% on your original $100k
investment.
Now all of the math depends on the specifics of your situation. E.g. in
Chicago property is pretty cheap relative to rent, so buying makes sense for
more people than in places where rents are cheap relative to buying. The tax
deductions are also much more valuable for people in higher tax brackets,
particularly people who get hit with the AMT.
As an aside, it's inaccurate to say that all housing is characterized by a
"bubble cycle." Housing prices in major metro areas increase in the long run
because the amount of developable space in these areas remains fixed while
population grows. This is unlike most commodities. The price or gold may
fluctuate based on the discovery of deposits, but nobody is going to discover
more land on Manhattan. This is not a rigid law of nature, of course...
housing prices in Detroit collapsed when the city entered a death spiral of
shrinkage, but something like that happens once a century. Even in this
current housing bubble, most people in established metro areas are still up
from where they were in 2000. The people who are underwater on their mortgages
are mostly people who bought right before the bubble popped, people who
refinanced, or people who bought in unestablished areas.
------
smoyer
For the last four years I've spent most of my disposable income making sure my
kids ended college without debt ... Not only is it a better way to start their
working life, but it also demonstrates an important life lesson. Sometimes
it's worth sacrificing for something important.
Unfortunately, I'm no longer convinced that a college degree is worth the cost
and my hope that they'll recoup the money spent during their working years is
diminishing.
~~~
jmduke
As a current college student, I'm kind of curious about this. Did your
children work part-time? What sort of factors led your decision?
~~~
smoyer
My son is now a senior and he's had a part-time job since high school. He is
responsible for paying for his books, transportation and food. I pay for his
tuition and fees which amounts to around $20K per year.
My daughter is a national merit scholar and received a scholarship that
covered tuition, her room and paid her a stipend. Since she's also farther
from home, I pay for her car, airfare and to feed her plus some miscellaneous
expenses. I think I'll spend between $7500 and $10K per year for her
education.
Both kids went to a private high school, so we (to some degree) got used to
paying tuition before they headed off to college. We've been fortunate to be
able to afford their educations, but we've certainly sacrificed to do it (I
drive a 20 year-old car).
I worry about the kids who graduate (or don't) from college with large amounts
of debt. Not only have we burdened them with a payment plan, but we've taught
them that you should just borrow money for anything that comes along. If there
are two things I'd like my kids to see patterned by their mom and I it's to
save for what you want to buy (instead of financing it) and that it's okay to
_not_ have everything (at least right now).
The mistakes my wife and I made when she graduated from college and we became
DINKs (Dual-Income, No kids) was that we didn't realize how much disposable
income we really had (we should have saved a lot more) and we thought we could
afford everything our parents had accumulated through-out their life-times.
This is probably a longer answer than you want to hear, but our decision to
help them was born out of our experience. My parents paid for my college but
my wife's did not (I actually paid for her last year of her undergrad and we
took out a student loan for her master's degree). We've warned our kids about
the risks of easy credit and showed them how to save for things they want/need
... it wouldn't seem right to also throw them into student loans if there was
any way to avoid it.
As a final note I should also state that I think their work-ethics are
stronger because of their up-bringing. They're going to make pretty good
employees if someone gives them a chance.
A few questions for you:
a) Where are you going to school? b) What are you majoring in? c) Are you
passionate about the jobs you'll be qualified for? d) What percentage of your
future income will be required to service your debt?
I have to admit I'm a bit intrigued by students who frequent HN _and_ have
their curiousities intact. Ciao.
~~~
jmduke
Interesting! If you don't mind me asking, what kind of paths are they pursuing
(ie lib arts v. pre-law/pre-med v. engineering)?
As for me:
I'm attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia (small public
school, primarily liberal arts) and double majoring in CS and Business
(ironically, I came to the College as a prospective English major -- I only
switched less than two years ago, and haven't looked back.)
I had the opportunity this summer to intern for Big Tech and it was literally
the best three months of my life, so I'm confident that programming is the way
to go for me. At the same time, I feel as though I've had a tremendous
advantage by being 'the computer guy' in most of my b-school classes, and I
definitely don't share the stereotypical disdain of managers/business folk.
In terms of debt, I'm going to be graduating with only barely four-figures,
thankfully in part to a) Pell Grants (state-granted need scholarships), b)
merit scholarships, and c) working 20 hrs/week since freshman year. Another
commenter mentioned that it's pointless to work during college because it
barely puts a dent in tuition, but I've found:
\- Working minimum wage at the rec center might not give you that much money,
but I was able -- as a 16-year-old college freshman -- to make at least $20/hr
(much more at this point) through tutoring and basic (talking Wordpress and
CSS here) web design. $20/hr * 20 hrs/wk * ~15 weeks/semester =
$6000/semester. \- Despite the amount of 'get an internship! get a nice
resume!' advice thrown at college kids, very few of them actually follow
through. I've interviewed with more industries than most other undergrads, and
found that universally having two-three solid experiences (ie. not
lifeguarding) is a huge differentiator.
~~~
smoyer
My son studying "Media Effects" and will also get a minor in IST. My daughter
is pre-med with an emphasis on medical research (as opposed to eventually
having a practice).
It sounds like you're in pretty good shape financially as well as being in a
field you love. I suspect you'll gradually learn to share the "distain" of
management and business folk (I've been both) because you'll have plenty of
"Dilbert moments". The good news is that there are plenty of good managers and
business folk too, but they don't create funny comments. Just reserve your
distain for people that earn it, keep that distain to yourself and you'll do
fine.
------
siculars
I'm the biggest America lover out there but I hate to say the answer may
simply be to leave the US. Simply start over somewhere else. There are plenty
of nice places that would love to have you.
~~~
ak217
Perhaps the answer is not to take the debt on in the first place.
~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Where's the informed consent in regards to any type of student loans?
It would be simple to have bullet points that say things like:
1. You cannot get rid of student debt by bankrupcy.
2. The Govt can garnish wages, social security, and other monies if you dont make regular payments.
3. etc....
But yet, we are sold a bill of goods called "Public University" that has
routinely jacked up rates much higher than inflation. Where's the public
funding making costs cheap? Or, why are private, for-profit colleges protected
from bankruptcy as well?
My mom (in her late 50's), tells me when she was going to university, she
would only have to work during summer a job or 2 to pay for schooling for fall
and spring. If she picked up a job on campus, she'd have spending money for
luxuries and such. That's what public funding did for her. Not so much for
this day and age.
~~~
rjbond3rd
> Where's the informed consent...?
Actually, it exists nowadays. Students (in the US) receiving loans are
required to complete a loan counseling session, which covers the pros, cons
and responsibilities of student debt.
However, this is a relatively recent development that probably wasn't around
for the people in the article.
~~~
king_jester
In my case, my loan "counseling session" was an online form I had to complete
to unlock access to certain features of my online college account software.
You do not get a sit down with someone to tell you about what you are getting
into before you start. Even if you can get a person to talk to, we are seeing
that lots of hand waiving and outright dishonesty is being used to propagate
loan profits.
------
camworld
I understand the problem, and I feel for these people who have the crushing
student loan debt. I left college with a lot of student loan but debt, too. I
struggled but managed to pay it off in less than 5 years. This required
sacrifice, hard work and lot of luck getting jobs.
I made some bad decisions in my 20s and early 30s and ended up with $40K in
credit card debt. I met my wife, got married and had a kid - and in the course
of four years paid off all that debt, saved $50K, bought a house and continue
to save.
It was hard, and required a lot of hard work, coupon clipping and clearance
sales.
Paying off your debts _can_ be done.
~~~
ansgri
Couldn't imagine getting married having any substantial debt at all, sounds
quite irresponsible.
------
nchuhoai
Giving out loans to people who shouldn't get them because they can't repay
them? Sounds familiar
------
steve8918
My college tuition was $1800/year, and it was completely covered by the
scholarships that I received. I just checked, and the funny thing is that
those same scholarships are still at around $2000/yr, but tuition is around
$15k/yr.
If I ever have kids, when they decide to go the college, we will do a simple
cost-benefit analysis to see if it's actually worth it. I would never imagine
that my kids would not go to college, but based on how quickly costs are
rising, and how crazy student debt has become, instead of being laden in debt
until they are 45, it might be better to simply take the $250k (the costs 20
years from now) and try to create a business instead.
------
LogicX
Check if your income makes you eligible for Income-Based repayment:
[http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-
loans/understand/plans/income...](http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-
loans/understand/plans/income-based)
------
Wingman4l7
I keep thinking about this quote:
"That’s how you’re paying for school? Student loan scams?"
"Student loans are already a scam. Impossible interest rates, exponential
debt, easy access. It’s a bubble; I’m in it 'till it pops."
— Weeds, S07E07
------
16s
An important fact that many young people may not realize is that federal
student loans cannot be removed by declaring bankruptcy. Most other loan debt
can, but not these loans. These loans will be with you and are your
responsibility to repay for the rest of your life or until they are re-paid in
full.
------
kenster07
This a lesser-known way in which the education system is broken. When
education is based on the quality of your education compared to other young
job seekers, educational inflation will certainly not benefit the average
student who can pay to play the game.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Critics call foul as Google takes aim at JavaScript with Dart - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/09/critics-call-foul-as-google-takes-aim-at-javascript-with-dart.ars
======
billswift
Two problems with this article. First, the primary critic they quote, and the
only individual named, is the creator of JavaScript. Naturally, with his
emotional and intellectual investment in JavaScript he is going to oppose
anything that may replace it.
Second is their criticism of Google designing the initial version of Dart
"behind closed doors" as a betrayal of open source. Generally, all open source
programs start privately then are opened when they reach an adequate level of
functionality that people can start hacking on them. Mozilla almost died when
it was open-sourced because it wasn't ready for most hackers to work on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hosting a GPT-2 autoresponder bot - luu
https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/190086745889/in-case-anyone-was-wondering-maybe-no-one-was
======
IfOnlyYouKnew
I seem to remember a pretty large pop up like “do not abuse and don’t run
bitcoin mining in collab” from the initial setup process?
In any case, Collab is a great tool, and I’m rather thankful to them. They may
have decided to monitor usage instead of trying to restrict it to make abuse
impossible.
I guess people these days belief that what is possible is also legal, and what
is legal is identical to being moral. To those people I point out: Google
noticing you is possible, shutting you down is legal, and banning you for life
is ethical if only by protecting users that don’t abuse free resources.
Doubly so, If you also blogbrag about it.
~~~
nostalgebraist
If you know what Colab's definition of abusive or disallowed use is (or even
whether they have such a definition), please let me know. This isn't meant as
a gotcha -- I actually haven't been able to find a full TOS or anything like
that, despite looking for one at the outset and then again while writing the
linked post. If it exists I want to know.
As I said in the post, the closest thing I can find is the FAQ at
[https://research.google.com/colaboratory/faq.html](https://research.google.com/colaboratory/faq.html)
(this may be what you're thinking of -- there is no "initial setup process,"
anyone logged in to a Google account can immediately connect to a runtime and
execute notebook cells). It says the following:
_Why are hardware resources such as T4 GPUs not available to me?
The best available hardware is prioritized for users who use Colaboratory
interactively rather than for long-running computations. Users who use
Colaboratory for long-running computations may be temporarily restricted in
the type of hardware made available to them, and/or the duration that the
hardware can be used for. We encourage users with high computational needs to
use Colaboratory’s UI with a local runtime. Please note that using
Colaboratory for cryptocurrency mining is disallowed entirely, and may result
in being banned from using Colab altogether._
To me, this doesn't sound like "please don't use this wrong or too much, and
we assume you know what 'wrong' and 'too much' mean here." Consider how this
is written as an answer to a hypothetical user who has _already_ been
"temporarily restricted" and is looking for more info. They talk about this
restriction non-judgmentally, like it's a practical limitation of their tool
anyone might run into, not a moral line that "good" users will never cross
anyway.
(The part about cryptocurrency mining is different and perfectly
understandable, given the distinctive moral and perhaps legal facts of that
subject.)
See also my post [https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/190114849409/cloud-
ca...](https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/190114849409/cloud-candy) for
more thoughts on the subject. The screenshot there is from the 2017 conference
talk [https://gojko.net/2017/10/05/serverless-design-
gotocph.html](https://gojko.net/2017/10/05/serverless-design-gotocph.html)
which happily discusses unintended but economically rational use of AWS
products, like using IOT Gateway for non-IOT purposes where its pricing model
is convenient.
~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Your attempts to convince yourself somehow make it look even worse. At least
own the decision!
FWIW, whenever it takes you a long time to get something working, such as a
constantly running Collab with a static IP or automatically updated link to it
or DNS: that's a sign. Even more if, as in this case, what you are doing would
be trivial to enable/make easier if Google wanted to.
~~~
nostalgebraist
Serious question: did you read the post? You seem to be critiquing something
quite different from what I did.
------
MrEldritch
"shitpost engineering" seems like one of those wonderfully evocative terms
(like "premium mediocre") that seems to perfectly capture some aspect of our
age.
------
codetrotter
> Google seems to think I value avoiding some slight inconvenience at
> $1000/month, and what’s more, they’ve chosen to provide not a free trial of
> a convenient thing (a tried and true approach) but a free inconvenient
> version of a convenient thing, forever. This can’t even sell me on the
> convenience of the “real” thing, since I’ve never seen it!
Well, tbh my personal experience with so-called “free trials” is a bad one
because they often start to charge you after the free trial is over and when
you have a lot of things going then you forget to cancel which of course is
what they want but IMO a shady and immoral way of doing business.
I’ve been bitten by this a couple of times. Sometimes because I forgot to
cancel on time, other times because I thought I was signing up for something
with a one-time fee that turned out to be the monthly fee and they charge a
full year.
So with my bad experiences I am extremely unlikely at this point to sign up
for those kinds of trials if I can avoid it.
And when companies do that kind of stuff, depending on how they respond when I
discover what happened and get in touch with their customer service, if it
causes me grief then I will not do business with them again and I will tell my
friends and family to not do business with them either.
------
asparagui
Reach out to the TFRC team for some TPU credit:
[https://www.tensorflow.org/tfrc](https://www.tensorflow.org/tfrc)
They're definitely interested in people finding creative uses for TPU's and
blogging about the process, especially with code!
------
mcemilg
Serving an app to 1k daily active user cost you for just $300/month but for
similar daily user with an nlp app will cost you $3000/month. I think the GPU
vms are overpriced because of the AI hype. Buying a GPU server like the old
days is much more cheap.
------
draugadrotten
TLDR; google provides computing resources for demo purposes for free, which
can be exploited for non-intended use by clever automation
~~~
skinkestek
Including some interesting reflections around both the author as well as
Google.
------
3wolf
What's the reasoning behind routing everything through your laptop rather than
just making the requests to Tumblr from collab? Do they block its IPs?
~~~
nostalgebraist
Just wariness about spreading around my tumblr credentials. There’s probably a
secure way to do it, I just haven’t thought about it much.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clock with simulated Game of Life around numbers - daniel-cussen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYNxNkEAIPw
======
pook
The background Game of Life is too faint.
I would have liked to see it set up so at the head of each minute/15
minute/hour, the numbers themselves briefly enter the CA.
Or, perhaps for ubergeekishness, a vertically-scrolling binary clock in which
each second, the previous configuration (above the current one) enters the CA.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple to cease Mac Pro shipments to Europe - bane
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/apple-to-cease-mac-pro-shipments-to-europe-2013021/
======
adamt
I think this is about apple to cease shipping the _current_ Mac Pro to Europe.
If Apple had a new version of the Mac Pro around the corner, then they
probably wouldn't bother release an update/redesign of the existing version in
order to meet new EU laws.
~~~
masklinn
> If Apple had a new version of the Mac Pro around the corner
Which is fairly likely, a Cook-sent email stated pretty much that last year:
<http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1383915>
> Although we didn't have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today's
> event, _don't worry as we're working on something really great for later
> next year_. We also updated the current model today.
(emphasis mine)
~~~
hilko
as an aside, I wonder if there's some Steve Jobs vernacular style guide lying
around at Apple, or if it's just from personal interaction that much of what
Cook says (and others perhaps) sounds so much like him.
Sure, I may be reading too much into 'really great', but I can't stop reading
this stuff in Jobs voice.
------
netcraft
I'm typing this on a 2009 mac pro. I bought it back then, because at the time
it could do everything I wanted it to - snow leopard was fairly new, and as a
programmer / photographer, a *nix box with a gui was pretty much my sweet
spot. But as the newer os x versions have been released and they have stopped
updating the mac pro line, its becoming less appealing as a power user as time
goes on. My next purchase probably wont be a mac. I completely realize that I
am no longer their target demo, but I don't like my overall options really.
But the fact is, for the majority of what I do, a windows 7/8 box with enough
power to run linux vms is my best option.
~~~
pm90
ok, I have a slightly unrelated question: is it advisable (efficient, easy
etc) to run a linux vm over windows or the other way around? Why or wht not?
~~~
5h
I run ubuntu 12.04 on an i5-2500k, 16gb ddr3-1600 ram and intel ssd .. I
currently have 4 windows vms running, 1 for adobe cs4, one for adobe cs6 (both
windows 7) and 2 xp vms for ie7/8 ... runs just fine, quite often have an IE6
vm running also.
using awesome wm for a triple head setup, which i guess is a lot lighter than
unity or whatever.
I ran the same thing but in reverse before, windows 7 with a couple of linux
VMs, for making web stuff to run on linux servers it was painful.
oh, and is it's vaguely relevant i bought the bits for a grand total of £700
excluding screens/keyboard/mouse/optical drive.
~~~
w1ntermute
Can I ask you why you need a VM running CS4 and another one running CS6? And
aren't there better ways to test sites with different browser versions?
~~~
5h
because i've only just upgraded, and cloning a fresh VM & installing CS6 was
quicker than installing it, then removing it when weird things happen (mostly
plugins/file compatibility have pained me in the past).
And sure there are lighter ways to test different browsers, but I don't trust
them, been caught out before by silly differences like font rendering, testing
eflyers outlook express/outlook etc, in the multi-ie-in-one-app things before,
now i have a one-keystroke switch between an environment i can trust 100% to
be authentic, and is easy to move around too.
basically using vm's in this way is one of the things that let me sleep at
night.
------
brudgers
This 'leak' will insure Apple clears out existing inventory quickly without
dropping the price.
~~~
SoftwareMaven
Apple doesn't hold very much inventory and they could always ship them to
another region. If this is a leak, I would bet it is for their customers. This
gives them a month to buy should they want to before the EU regulation stops
them from selling.
------
raverbashing
Unfortunately, due to the evolution of systems the Mac Pro's market share is
diminishing.
Of course, we hope that there's a new Mac Pro around the corner, but the
chances are slim. Also, the advantages are getting smaller, except for the
most specific uses.
I really want Apple to come up with a worthy Mac Pro substitute, something
that has power. I sorely miss the G5 PowerMac, it seemed the epitome of what
Mac could do. (even though the specs look silly today)
------
cllns
Marco was right: <http://www.marco.org/2011/11/02/scaling-down-the-mac-pro>
------
pavlov
This is not the first time that Apple has cut off an obsolete line before the
replacement is ready to ship. They're not afraid to do bold moves sometimes to
empty the channel.
In 2004, the "sunflower" iMac G4 was actually discontinued for months before
the iMac G5 shipped. Today it seems pretty incredible that less than 10 years
ago there was a period of several months when Apple simply wasn't shipping any
iMacs.
~~~
smackfu
Wasn't there a month last year where Apple wasn't shipping any iMacs?
~~~
killerpopiller
I am waiting a month now for my iMac :(
------
lunchladydoris
My wife is a photographer and works with large RAW files. Her year-and-a-bit-
old MacBook Pro is a bit of a dog and she needs something more powerful.
She was considering a Mac Pro but I guess that's out the door now. For those
of you in a similar situation, what do you do? Does an iMac cut it, or have
you moved over to Windows?
~~~
Osmium
The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction, so I
imagine that's what's most important to a photographer. Specs are fine: up to
3.4GHz i7, 32 GB RAM, SSD/HDD Fusion drives, 2GB 680MX, and even with a custom
config would still be cheaper than Mac Pro (though, naturally, much more
expensive than building your own). The new MacBook Retinas are great for
photography too and plenty beefy enough, though will probably need a
supplementary external monitor.
On the subject of the Mac Pros themselves, speculation here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_disco...](http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_discontinue_mac_pro_in_europe_in_march/c871b96)
is that it's because they draw too much power when switched off but still
plugged in. As for those worrying Apple's discontinuing Mac Pros they're on
record as saying there are new ones coming, so this just means they're
probably coming sooner rather than later:
[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-
confi...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confirms-new-
mac-pro-and-imac-designs-likely-coming-in-2013/)
~~~
potatolicious
> _"The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction"_
IMO not good enough for professional image work. The LED backlighting gives
the panel more consistent, longer life, but also means a pretty dramatic
reduction in color gamut.
Even the Dell UltraSharp series will soundly beat out the 27" iMac display in
every color accuracy measure, and those are on the lowest end of the
professional scale - Eizo, NEC, and others have even more exacting panels.
The issue isn't performance - I agree a top-line iMac will trounce practically
any image you throw at it (short of, say, the 100MP images coming out of a
Phase One back), but the monitor is a big problem. Professionals frequently
invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they
aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU.
~~~
Osmium
> Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will
> last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they
> need to upgrade the CPU.
Definitely agreed with that -- the iMac screen certainly isn't suitable for a
lot of pros, but it ultimately depends on what you're doing and what your
budget is. The iMac screens are still much better than a lot of what's out
there, and price-wise is actually a good deal when you consider how much just
the monitor would cost separately. I actually thought they used the same
panels as the Dell UltraSharps? but I must be mistaken about that.
Edit: from The Verge's review
"...on the 27-inch behemoth, you get a 2560 x 1440 panel that's matched only
by the Dell XPS 27."
"The IPS panels are the same as in last year’s iMacs, but they’re better
integrated now — Apple says that by laminating the display to the glass it
reduced reflections up to 70 percent, and indeed the glare problems that beset
so many displays are much less present here, though there's still some
reflection and glare. The improved manufacturing also makes whatever’s on the
screen feel closer to you, almost like things are jumping out of the panel.
The display's glossy bezel, which houses its HD FaceTime camera, is actually
the most reflective part of the whole machine now.
I have to say, I was really surprised to see how much better the screen could
be without a single change to the actual technology — but hey, I guess plastic
surgery can work wonders. Both screens have fantastic color reproduction, are
remarkably (like, blindingly) bright, and have near-180-degree viewing
angles."
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-
mi...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mini-review)
------
barredo
Current Mac Pro. Not Mac Pro as a line forever
------
brianbreslin
Doesn't it boil down to not being able to modify the current power supplies to
comply with EU regulations? I bet they would have a new design entirely coming
out this year. The current design is 8 years old.
~~~
ajasmin
If they had a new design in the queue don't you think they would have released
it by now? Long before that regulation would be effective.
~~~
masklinn
No? <http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1383915>
> Although we didn't have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today's
> event, don't worry as we're working on something really great for later next
> year. We also updated the current model today.
From June 2012, confirmed by Apple as having been sent by Tim Cook.
------
drawkbox
If they stop selling the Mac Pro they have lost many game developers for their
platform, iMacs are nice and I have a couple but I still need a beast. A
laptop doesn't cut it for much of the 3d work and production you need to
launch games. Most game devs I know making cross platform including myself
have a Mac Pro beast that runs OSX and Windows. This is needed.
I think this is a HUGE error on the part of Apple and makes me wonder if Steve
Jobs wasn't just really good but absolutely horrid at picking CEOs. Or maybe
they are updating the line like they mentioned in 2013 and these are the older
ones.
I actually thought Apple would be smart and use their advantage to own desktop
as well (which is a big market for them and not attractive to others). Most of
the people I know that got Apple desktops/laptops get into their devices and
vice versa. At a time when Windows loyalty is weak I think this is an error.
Maybe I am skewed by the industry I am in but I need a big machine that runs
OSX! I do tons of work on my iMacs and Mac Pro but wouldn't rely on just iMacs
yet.
If iMacs are their biggest machines I suspect many game developers going
Hackintosh and that is a HUGE missed opportunity. Sometimes you just need a
tower that can expand big time.
~~~
coob
> HUGE error
Yeah those lost $0.5mm worth of sales are really going to kill Apple off.
~~~
Zarathust
According to this[0], this is closer to $6B - $7B per year. [0]
<http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy12datasum.pdf>
~~~
astrodust
"Desktops" includes the Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro, of which the Mac Pro
probably makes up less than 10% of the sales by revenue and 2-3% of the sales
by volume.
------
yread
A comment on El Reg suggest it has to do with tool-less access to the inside
where there are wires and running fans. Another raises a valid point that
regulation like this is sometimes good for the companies as when something bad
happens to the consumer they can just point to the regulation and say we've
done what is required by the law.
~~~
TillE
Unlikely, unless there's a very specific detail involved. I've seen plenty of
computer cases in Germany that are designed to be opened up with just two
fingers (those screws with a large grippy area).
~~~
astrodust
Apple's computer is the only one so far to be affected by these regulations.
It's possible that a screw, even one like that, qualifies as some kind of
mechanical barrier to entry. Apple's tab apparently doesn't even though,
ironically, it can be locked to prevent access to the components within.
You'd think if they just slapped a zip-tie on the outside of the case they'd
be able to get approval.
------
jseliger
The last paragraph in the article is inane: "Apple’s failure to update the Mac
Pro demonstrates the changing marketplace for consumers. People want Apple
laptops or super thin all-in-one desktops like the new iMac." Not updating the
Mac Pro doesn't demonstrate "the changing marketplace for consumers:" it
demonstrates that Apple doesn't offer a compelling tower and basically hasn't
for at least five years.
Which is a choice, and I've read many defenses of that choice, but let's not
pretend: for most people, the Mac Pro is a terrible value. Right now, it's a
terrible value in absolute terms. If Apple made a $1,000 tower, I'd probably
use that in lieu of an iMac, and there must be others in my situation.
------
jpxxx
The Mac is niche, the Mac Pro is niche^2, and Mac Pro sales into Europe are
niche^3. It's unlikely this event is going to force the schedule of a new Mac
Pro design.
~~~
walshemj
No but it was the MACs lock on the "creative" industrys that helped generate
halo effect on the mac brand.
And high end mac users have been worried that apple is throwing them under the
buss for the consumer market for years now.
If I where MS id set up a workstation division just for this market and
produced built to the hilt machines for the high end users
------
anovikov
These computers really suck for their price, and while some other apple
hardware sucks, too, it still sells because it is a way to show off - not in
this case, you don't carry a bulky desktop with you to show off.
I am a long time apple user, but will not buy a Mac Pro even if it's
available, it is a ripoff at this price.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why is Tim Cook sacrificing the Mac at the altar of the iPad? - housedonuts
http://bgr.com/2015/11/12/ipad-pro-vs-macbook/
======
thinkingkong
I would argue that this has less to do with "people that require laptops" vs
"people that require laptops _for work_ ".
The iPad pro seems to be a direct competitor or option for companies that
previously bought Lenovo or other Windows based laptops - including the
Microsoft Surface.
The specs on the new Macbook lines are the only things that make it feel
weird. If you take that out of the equation it starts to make more sense.
------
Recurecur
I don't believe Cook was referring to Macs when he said "PCs".
He'd like to see iPad Pro cut into the Windows market. I don't think it'll
happen without big improvements to iOS.
Meanwhile, the Mac will continue to do just fine. :-)
------
tomcam
Because it's better to disrupt yourself than have someone else do it.
~~~
housedonuts
Doesn't that presuppose that tablets will disrupt PC sales.. if iPad 2010-2015
hasn't done it, what makes people think 2016 is the year?
~~~
ChuckMcM
Except that it did, and tablets in general. Or perhaps you missed all the hand
wringing press about how laptop sales were down to flat while tablet sales
were growing. (like this quoting IDC :
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048650/tablets-dominating-
te...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048650/tablets-dominating-tech-market-
as-consumers-drop-pcs.html)) but there were many such articles.
------
mkempe
Tim Cook is not a visionary.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA's Curiosity rover spots unexplained light in Mars - karthiekc
http://thespacereporter.com/2014/04/curiosity-reaches-next-destination-spots-unexplained-mars-light/
======
tempodox
I feel link-baited.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why GCP: Compute - coxy
http://www.chriscox.org.uk/why_gcp_compute/
======
jbarciauskas
I don't understand this statement:
>Due to the way GCE instances are deployed (in containers) they do not suffer
from noisy neighbour syndrome
I understand the second half of the statement might be true, but it doesn't
follow from the first.
------
dforrestwilson
What are the big downsides of GCP to other options?
~~~
coxy
I'm not sure I would describe them as big downsides but AWS does have
advantages in some areas.
RDS - Amazon's database service supports more database engines; MySQL,
MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL and Oracle are all available. GCP has Cloud SQL but
it only supports MySQL and PostgreSQL at the moment. I'm sure that will
change. RDS also has some advantages around getting your data in from an
external server.
AWS also has more services making it easier to get up and running quickly.
Whether that's a good thing or not is down to personal preference. Those
services tie you into AWS pretty heavily. That's fine providing you are
comfortable with it. Google are more focused around open standards.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: chinstagram.com - china
http://chinstagram.com/
======
ttran4
Nice simple idea! I like it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Graphene Gives You Infrared Vision in a Contact Lens (2014) - Jan_jw
http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/optoelectronics/graphene-gives-you-infrared-vision-in-a-contact-lens
======
cordite
Should have 2014 in the title.
They demonstrated a technology the size of a contact lense, but did not make a
functioning prototype that resides on an eye.
Still a neat approach.
------
ohazi
Terrible, horrible click-bait title.
Lenses. do. not. work. this. way.
You can't coat a contact lens with a magical coating that expands your ability
to see.
This particular technology allows you to build infrared light detectors, as in
photo cells or pixel arrays. You can make them as thin as you want -- they're
going to do fuck all on a contact lens.
This whole article should die in a fire.
~~~
mablap
Technically you could cover your eyes with an anisotropic photon
up/downconversion material and "see" infrared/ultraviolet. But yes, clickbait.
------
firefoxd
Just make them regular glasses instead. It's probably why we Haven't heard of
it in 2016
------
DwayneGustav
The comments section for this article hilariously has someone correcting the
author's grammar only to be corrected by the author in a subcomment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Big Four: Culture, Innovation and Sentiment - codepower
http://tastethecloud.com/content/big-four-culture-innovation-and-sentiment
======
mrphoebs
brilliant analysis
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland - dkd903
http://digitizor.com/2010/11/05/ubuntu-to-ditch-x-for-wayland/
======
paol
This is a huge shift if it happens. X has been synonymous with GUIs on unix
for more than 20 years, and has accumulated all the attendant baggage (both
good and bad).
There are also some big consequences for the linux landscape. The first and
obvious one is that if other distros don't imitate Ubuntu they will drift
farther apart. People complain about Ubuntu going their own way _now_ , image
what it will be like if they're on Wayland+Unity and others stick to X+Base
Gnome.
Another, subtler consequence of Shuttleworth's announcement is the message it
sends to graphics card vendors (well, NVIDIA really). Wayland is dependent on
the newest linux graphics stack, very much by design. But that stack is
relatively new (e.g. kernel mode setting) and nvidia never updated their
driver architecture to match. I assume this will force their hand because
Ubuntu is too big to ignore.
~~~
pilom
Ubuntu is certainly not too big to ignore. I have never seen any source say
Linux (let alone Ubuntu) has more than 5% marketshare. Does your company
support 800x600? How about IE6?
~~~
paol
Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. _Within
that ecosystem_ , Ubuntu is too big to ignore.
~~~
sielskr
"NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago."
NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?
~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?"
Yes, I think they are because of contracts with big guys that need Linux on
things like supercomputers(almost all of them have linux inside).
~~~
azim
Interestingly enough, a lot of developers argue that Nvidia and ATI are in
violation of of the GPL by releasing proprietary drivers for Linux. The
language is unclear on whether or not the kernel's GPL license extends to
kernel loadable modules or not, many say it does.
------
tumult
I give this the thumbs-up. I'm not particularly fond of X11. In fact, I
suspect it has been holding back GUI on GNU/Linux for a while.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
A _while_? You must have never read the UNIX-HATERS Handbook
(<http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf>), which should be required reading for any
unix fan, along with the Plan9 design documents (cat-v.org). In this case,
"the X Windows disaster" chapter seems most appropriate. Feel free to ignore
the VMS fanboys, though.
And yes, I am a dedicated unix (OpenBSD) user.
~~~
paol
While I loved reading the Unix haters handbook it gets many things wrong. It
gets a lot right too, but the point is it takes some critical thinking (and
good knowledge of Unix) to tell which is which.
In that respect I found the chapter on X to be one of the weakest. They trot
out the old "X named the client and server the wrong way around" chestnut for
example...
~~~
barrkel
Well, the naming is one thing; the architecture itself is worse. It's far more
likely today for you to want to run applications on a server and be able to
connect to and disconnect from them, like VNC or much better RDP, than it is
for you to want all your applications running on the server to terminate when
you disconnect your machine from the network.
~~~
thingie
There is nothing preventing any application to connect to another X display
and push all its windows there, even if the original display session
terminates. Emacs can sort of do that, for example, and there are some traces
that something like that was intended even for GTK. But no application
actually work in such conditions.
------
gvb
Just for comparison, Apple "ditched" X too (they never used X). When they went
to OS X they used Display Postscript rather than X.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript>
This has been a mixed bag: it has been good for Apple-only programs, but it
significantly slowed and complicated the porting of existing and new X-based
programs to Apple.
~~~
rufugee
Yeah, and it made starting up any X-based application on OS X a real pain. X
apps are second-class citizens. This is one (of many) reasons I could never
quite reach a level of comfort on a Mac.
~~~
alextgordon
It's a calculated move on Apple's part. They don't _want_ you to use X11, so
they make it as painful as possible while still keeping it usable so that
developers can't write new apps for it (they have to use Cocoa). It's strictly
compatibility environment only.
~~~
niels_olson
> It's a calculated move on Apple's part.
that seems unlikely in light of:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872915>
~~~
sipefree
AFAIK (I don't have the source right now), Apple originally considered using
X11 for the display server on OS X (in fact, early versions shipped with a
version of xf86 that ran natively as it does on other *nixes), but after
deciding on all the compositing and prettiness features that they wanted, they
would have torn so much out of X11 that it wouldn't be remotely compatible
anymore, so they wrote Quartz 2D.
Later, of course, things like Compiz came along, but they've always seemed
like weak hacks compared to things like Quartz. Hopefully wayland will change
everything.
~~~
flomo
This may be the explanation you are referring to:
[http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=67346...](http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75257&cid=6734612)
------
sgt
I have no worries about this. Linux distributions always do a couple of
releases of "disasters", (e.g. KDE 4) before it starts becoming stable.
Wayland is theoretically superior and with iteration after iteration, I'm sure
it's going to come out on top. Just don't be one of the early adopters, but
that's a given when it comes to Ubuntu, in my experience (unless you really do
like the risks involved with cutting edge software).
The truth is, X is just too old fashioned and it's like trying to spend time
maintaining an old car from the 1970s instead of just buying a new car with
electronic fuel injection and excellent brakes.
~~~
sqrt17
Have you ever tried to repair things in a new car with electronic fuel
injection and computer-driven brakes? A huge advantage of X11 and all that
other "70s technology" is that you can fix things more easily because it's
built for being maintainable in the first place.
Having said that, I think that splitting the X server into one lightweight
compositing manager and one slightly less heavyweight X-server-on-top-of-the-
compositing-manager is less of a disaster than what we got with KDE4. I'll
only start worrying when KDE and Gnome catch up and they start having UI
programs talk directly to the compositing engine.
~~~
barkingcat
I'm not sure about the easy to fix concept. By all accounts the X codebase is
one nasty beast to wrap your head around. The protocols are well documented,
but the actual code - it takes some crazy digging to actually understand it
enough to be able to fix things in X-land.
------
lwhi
I think Mark Shuttleworth is taking bold steps to ensure that Ubuntu is well
positioned for the future. He's creating differentiation between Ubuntu and
other debian-type distributions and he's potentially mapping out a route to
new platforms.
It does seem like he might be a gambling man though.
~~~
daveungerer
Maybe gambling is too strong a word. He's not in it for the money, but to
create a viable competitor to Microsoft. So not taking this "gamble" and
sticking to the status quo would be actually be the riskier strategy for him.
If it backfires, it doesn't take him that much further away from achieving his
original goal.
------
limmeau
"Ditch X server" sounds like they're going to completely abandon X11. However,
the Wayland FAQ[1] outlines ways of integrating X11 with Wayland, so I suppose
users of, say, ddd are not going to suffer much.
1\. [https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-
server/web/f...](https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-
server/web/frequently-askeds-questions)
~~~
Someone
If this gains sufficient traction, and if this provides a better-looking way
to render stuff on screen, I guess this will lead to applications that talk
the superior protocol, not The X protocol. Such applications would not run on
X displays.
If I interpret things correctly, the link you give explicitly describes such a
scenario:
_Further down the road we run a user session natively under Wayland with
clients written for Wayland. There will still (always) be X applications to
run, but we now run these under a root-less X server that is itself a client
of the Wayland server. This will inject the X windows into the Wayland session
as native looking clients. The session Wayland server can run as a nested
Wayland server under the system Wayland server described above, maybe even
side by side with X sessions._
So, the X protocol could still be there for quite some time to support 'old'
applications, but new applications wouldn't use it anymore.
There are quite a few if's here, though. The first non-Ubuntu application to
drop X support could face quite an uphill battle.
~~~
xorglorb
So essentially it would be like Apple's X11. It will be there for backwards
compatibility with older applications, but it will be considered
"undesirable".
~~~
Someone
Yes, technocally, it would be like that. Sociologically, however, things would
be quite different; Apple's users did not have zillions of X applications that
they already used.
------
naner
This is the actual announcement by Shuttleworth:
<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551>
------
cookiecaper
Unless they're planning this for 13.04 or later, it definitely sounds like a
bad deal. Wayland _just_ moved to a "real" project space outside of Kristian's
personal repo, and it is nowhere near mature enough to support something like
Ubuntu. Even if GTK and QT "mostly work", there's still a lot more in the X
ecosystem that is hard to replace, namely proprietary drivers and the
knowledgebase associated with working with X.
Even Ubuntu has a history of pushing out reliable, mature applications for
much less mature ones on the basis of theoretical improvements. Look at
Empathy and Pidgin; I still get crashes from Empathy all the time, the
skinning and font-size support have problems, etc., whereas Pidgin just works
great. Why couldn't they have just affixed the Telepathy backend as a major
player in Pidgin, or at least forked and made Empathy a Pidgin derivative? It
would have worked out much better.
I'm just hoping that Arch doesn't freak out and fear that Ubuntu is becoming
more "bleeding edge" than Arch and remove X for Wayland in the next three
weeks.
~~~
dfranke
You're right, which is why I'll continue to stick with Debian stable or Ubuntu
LTS while this all blows over. It _will_ blow over, however, and I'm happy to
have a major player out there forcing it to happen.
~~~
barnaby
We use Ubuntu LTS at work because of the stability.
On my laptop at home though (which I only really use for watching movies, and
for hacking on side-projects that one day may become HN stories) I'm always on
cutting edge Ubuntu. I love the thrill of the beta's.
So I'll do the dual strategy of letting it blow over for work purposes, and
playing around in the mud for personal purposes.
~~~
lhnn
Where do you work? If you're allowed to say, I'm always interested in hearing
about Linux deployments, much less Ubuntu and/or professional "desktop" Linux
usage.
There should be an Ubuntu testimonials website... Weekend project?
------
sielskr
I've been unhappy with X since I learned enough (in the 90s) to have an
opinion -- but not for the reason Shuttleworth gives:
"We don’t believe X is setup to deliver the user experience we want, with
super-smooth graphics and effects. I understand that it’s _possible_ to get
amazing results with X, but it’s extremely hard, and isn’t going to get
easier. Some of the core goals of X make it harder to achieve these user
experiences on X than on native GL"
My unhappiness stems from my perception that the ways I have tried to
customize X and things closely coupled to X (e.g., my window manager) have
proved much more difficult (and in particular have forced me to contend with
much more _complexity_ ) than they could have.
~~~
wmf
In that case, I think you'll hate future Ubuntu because (like its mentor OS X)
it won't be very configurable at all. Easy things will be easy and everything
else will be impossible.
~~~
hasenj
Except the code will be open so if Canonical doesn't make it configurable,
other people can, and if they do it right without introducing unneeded
complexity, their patches might just make it upstream (Ubuntu).
This is assuming of course that people who like to fiddle with their display
will stay with Ubuntu.
Not many people like to do that anyway. But if there are people who want that
kind of control, it's not impossible.
------
Aegean
For me X has always symbolized old, hard to configure, clunky, and ugly. It
wasn't meant to be part of Unix but it mixed in. I am glad to see it go at
least from our desktops.
~~~
beza1e1
I found X quite easy to configure. Just set a few values in Xorg.conf and
nowdays it even works without this sometimes.
X11 as a protocol is old and mature like TCP or SMTP. Just like SMTP it has
some problems, but Wayland throws away some core features to fix it.
Hopefully, Wayland is flexible enough to get network transparency like X11 at
some point.
~~~
baq
>Just set a few values in Xorg.conf and nowdays it even works without this
sometimes.
you make it sound like it was an advantage.
------
macco
That is why I love Ubuntu: They like to take the bold decisions. Mark
Shuttleworth is a small Version of Steve Jobs :)
~~~
utku_karatas2
Let's say "open version".
~~~
macco
Nice own.
I met him personally. Totally incredable guy, who knows how to work with
people.
------
maguay
With the Software Center, Unity interface, and now a new display server, looks
like Ubuntu is shooting for the mainstream OS business. Interesting to see an
Linux distro trying so hard to set itself apart.
~~~
fhars
Ubuntu has always been shooting for the mainstream, it is the central goal of
the project. Just look at bug 1.
~~~
steveklabnik
Link, for those that haven't seen it:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1>
~~~
maguay
Thanks, I'd never seen that. Very humorous :)
They should make another one:
Bug #2: Apple has a majority mind-share
------
marcusfrex
That is factinating. What makes Mac OSX on desktop is based on Quartz and
Linux needed something like that to be more solid and modern on desktop
environments. So let be it.
------
alexyoung
I'm not familiar with Wayland, so I read the architecture article:
"Wayland is a complete window system in itself, but even so, if we're
migrating away from X, it makes sense to have a good backwards compatibility
story."
<http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html>
~~~
skymt
I'd rather see Wayland implement the X protocol themselves rather than proxy
to Xorg. Running X and Wayland simultaneously could have performance
implications on older computers or netbooks, two of Ubuntu's biggest targets.
~~~
loewenskind
Why would running two systems _help_ performance. A better designed system
that doesn't have to have network transparency code paths should be able to
run faster than X and Linux applications are written in Qt or GTK anyway. Port
those two and call it done.
~~~
skymt
Sorry, I wasn't clear: running X alongside Wayland would _hurt_ performance
(at least in RAM-critical environments).
------
rams
Sigh,my first job was to work on a proprietary X-server extension. Despite Jim
Gettys' and Keith Packard's continued interest, and some interest from vendors
as well, X seems to be losing hacker mind share. There were some fast
proprietary X servers made by a few companies like Xig graphics that delivered
truly incredible performance. But the really exciting things that could be
done with X never saw daylight outside a small community of display
manufacturers for defense, air-traffic control, etc
~~~
bokchoi
_But the really exciting things that could be done with X never saw daylight
outside a small community of display manufacturers for defense, air-traffic
control, etc_
What sort of exciting things?
~~~
beza1e1
Here is one vendor for example: <http://www.x-software.com>
------
jamii
I guess this means someone is going to have to port xmonad...
~~~
dfranke
You mean all 2000 lines or so of the core that almost everything else is built
on?
~~~
thingie
Xmonad core doesn't provide any kind of X11 encapsulation and convenience
interface, every single xmonad extension, any piece of configuration, can (and
does) directly use X11, both API and behavior. After all, it's an X11 window
manager. You have to rewrite everything.
------
zokier
So the sound system is actually working again so lets break the display system
next.
------
chopsueyar
How will this affect LTSP and the future of thin clients with regards to
Ubuntu?
~~~
wmf
They'll probably use Wayland with SPICE.
~~~
chopsueyar
Do you have a link? All I can find is the circuit simulator results.
~~~
wmf
I can see how that would be confusing. I'm talking about Red Hat SPICE, a
replacement for VNC. <http://www.spicespace.org/>
------
topbanana
Is there a distribution I can download that is already using Wayland? I'd like
to take a look. For my part, the desktop manager is the one thing holding me
back from Linux. (OK, that and Visual Studio)
~~~
AntiRush
I don't believe so. Wayland is in the really early stage of development right
now, which makes me read this announcement as "Ubuntu is going to start
committing developers to Wayland.
You can build it with these instructions:
[https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-
server/web/b...](https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-
server/web/building-and-running-wayland) .
------
jbk
I really wonder how we are going to manage Wayland for video: \- does it
support Xv or the like? Or are we going to use the broken OpenGL drivers (no
working overlay for most of them...) \- does it support VAAPI or VDPAU, that
seems very linked to x11 too?
We'll see, but I have a bad feeling.
~~~
benmccann
My fear is lack of remote desktop. I would never use a Linux desktop without
NX support.
~~~
loewenskind
Remote desktop is easy, there's no reason to make it the _focus_ of the GUI
subsystem.
------
motters
It looks as if Shuttleworth is concentrating squarely on desktop bling, and
this may be the right strategy if he wants Ubuntu to gain mass popularity and
really eat into the Windows user base.
~~~
StavrosK
How? From what I gather, Wayland is better for the mobile/touch space, servers
don't use GUIs and there's not much that uses _only_ X...
~~~
jrockway
So, did you post that comment from a mobile phone or a server?
Oh yeah, there's this thing called a "workstation". I hear there are a few in
existence...
~~~
StavrosK
That's odd, the comment I replied to was saying that x is useful for things
other than workstations, and I was saying that it wasn't more useful than
weyland on mobiles and servers.
I have no idea how this comment mixup happened...
------
templaedhel
>>After shocking everyone with the announcement that Ubuntu 11.04 will have
Unity on the desktop instead of GNOME Shell, >> Unity is going to use Wayland
display server instead of X. This will not be implemented in Ubuntu 11.04
however. >>X will remain until 11.04 however. I assume the last two relese
dates/version are incorrect, because unity is being added for 11.04, and the
article seemed to say the change to Wayland would happen after the change to
unity.
------
cjtenny
does this mean my hometown will fade into even greater obscurity (as
quantified by google search results)?
:(
<http://www.wayland.k12.ma.us/>
------
augustl
I would just like to point out that Arch Linux with GNOME works just fine. I'm
sure there are tons of other distros out there, too, that work just fine. If
you don't like what's coming in Ubuntu, just switch. you probably won't notice
much difference between ubuntu 10.10 and [insert distro] with GNOME.
------
known
<http://www.microxwin.com/architecture.html>
------
mhd
Named after Wayland the smith? Who killed the kids of his employer and
fashioned goblets out of their skulls? Erm…
~~~
ableal
Something about the performance review process, possibly: "[...] he was
captured in his sleep by King Niðhad in Nerike who ordered him hamstrung and
imprisoned [...]" (according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_Smith>).
------
guest
I have a worry of this turning out very badly.
~~~
mahmud
Wayland uses OpenGL ES for rendering, preparing Ubuntu for handsets.
Ubuntu must be eying a future alongside Android, which is an excellent bet.
There have been many attempts at X replacement, all well justified, and if
Wayland is the best of them, it would still be better than the baroque X
protocol.
Like almost every C++ programmer working in the early 00s, I too hacked on
Berlin :-|
~~~
FooBarWidget
It looks like Wayland runs on top of X, not replacing X.
Which makes sense. OpenGL is just an API, not a hardware wire-level protocol.
Unless Wayland implements its own graphics drivers (which I find highly
unlikely), it'll just make use of the same drivers that X uses for
implementing OpenGL. And that still leaves things like input handling.
From the Wikipedia entry it looks like Wayland uses X for input and rendering,
but other apps can connect to Wayland to have things rendered. Kind of like
how X itself works.
~~~
mahmud
This is straight from this FAQ:
_Wayland is a nano display server, relying on drm modesetting, gem
batchbuffer submission and hw initialization generally in the kernel. Wayland
puts the compositing manager and display server in the same process. Window
management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations
and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library._
That last part about integrating the compositing manager and display server
into the same process .. that's your main point of departure.
~~~
metageek
> _Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own
> decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a
> toolkit library._
Well, _there's_ a bad idea. I suppose I could see an X replacement which
incorporated window management into the server, instead of into a special
client; but letting all the clients draw their own borders is a recipe for
chaos.
~~~
hencq
Isn't an X window manager just another X client too at the moment? Couldn't
that system still work on Wayland?
I might be completely wrong about this though, so someone more knowledgeable
please explain. :-)
~~~
metageek
Yes, but it draws the decorations for other clients. The GP said that Wayland
clients draw their own decorations.
------
rick_2047
Just one question, I hear that Wayland is hugely dependent on the latest
Graphics cards. So that would mean that ubuntu will no longer be usable by
people like me who have moderately old hardware (mine is p4 with on board
intel graphics, which are already having problems even with X).
I liked how ubuntu was stable on my computer (till around 8.10 I think and
9.04 was not bad). I will miss the compatibility
~~~
agentultra
Same here. My three year old laptop has gotten slower with every consecutive
release of Ubuntu. I'm afraid to upgrade to the latest let alone to this new
GL-based display server.
Guess I'll just have to switch to a 'lighter' distro with less fireworks.
I'm sure it will pay off for Ubuntu in the end... I just hope it doesn't
_actually_ start a trend for other distros to follow suit.
~~~
rick_2047
I switched to puppy linux and am loving the no-os-on-my-HD style (of course I
can do a frugal install, but I am just lazy)
~~~
jawee
I too love Puppy Linux! It works great on my netbook.. faster than any of even
the netbook-optimized distributions. I'm still running 4.3. The hardware
support was even perfect with the LuPu on my main laptop, but I'm holding off
as a lot of software packages I use are a pain... (openSUSE on this machine).
------
hasenj
This is great news for the Free Desktop.
Ubuntu is really setting itself apart as its own OS rather than just another
Linux distro.
It might take about two years for this whole thing to sort of stabilize
(Wayland + Unity), but when it does, Ubuntu will be kick-ass like it's never
been before.
I love it when people step outside the box.
~~~
nodata
Wayland was started by someone at Red Hat.
~~~
hasenj
It would be great to see Fedora using it too, but I don't know if that will
happen.
RHEL is not likely to use it, IMO, because it's not network-transparent. And f
RHEL won't use it, Fedora probably won't use it.
That said, what's setting Ubuntu apart is the fact they're moving away from
the traditional stack (X -> GNOME). This is significant enough IMO. Other
distros might follow, and in that case, there will be two kinda of distros:
those that use X, and those that use Wayland.
------
theclay
God! I can hardly stand to read the digitizor website from all the crap they
have jacked up and hyperlinked for advertising.
I'm on Chrome. Is there a feature that lets you get control of that mess?
Edit: I apologize for the off-topic posting, but the linked website is a good
example of what readers of Hacker News seem to have tricks for handling.
~~~
cpach
I recommend Readability: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All The Top Investors Are Scrambling To Invest In A Startup Called Chromatik - earbitscom
http://www.businessinsider.com/chromatik-ipad-music-app-investors-2012-12
======
mgalica
"Startup"? This looks more like a "business". Cheers to them for staying low-
pro & avoiding the hypebeast for all this time.
------
anigbrowl
tl;dr sheet music on iPad. There's a $20 billion music buyer market in the US
and $80bn overseas, but most of that money is spent on instruments. The market
segments Chromatik is chasing are a) classical musicians, of whom there are
few (but enough) and b) high school band musicians, of whom there are plenty.
The crossover with computer-based musicians is almost non-existent. Outside of
the classical sphere hardly any working musicians use sheet music.
~~~
earbitscom
Realistically the number of people who would like to learn an instrument is
astronomically high. Most people try, get frustrated, and quit. If Chromatik
makes learning far more enjoyable and simple, they could easily grow the size
of this market.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mathematicians who died under unfortunate or unfitting circumstances - GuiA
http://www.kellenmyers.org/deaths.html
======
stiff
Two whole schools of mathematics died in "unfortunate and unfitting
circumstances", namely the Lwów school and the Warsaw school:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Lviv_professors)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-
Aktion_in_Poland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ruziewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ruziewicz)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82odzimierz_Sto%C5%BCek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82odzimierz_Sto%C5%BCek)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Auerbach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Auerbach)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kaczmarz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kaczmarz)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_%C5%81omnicki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_%C5%81omnicki)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Schauder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliusz_Schauder)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Saks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Saks)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Mazurkiewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Mazurkiewicz)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Lindenbaum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Lindenbaum)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein_%28mathematici...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Dickstein_%28mathematician%29)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Marcinkiewicz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Marcinkiewicz)
Some members emigrated before or during the war and spread all over the world,
mostly in the US. After 1945 almost none of the original members were still
alive and in Poland/Ukraine.
~~~
ajuc
Many of L'viv (then Lwów) professors (for example Stefan Banach, of the
Banach-Tarski paradox fame) survived only because they were hired as "lice
feeders" in the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Weigl)
institute, and he managed to persuade Germans that they need consistent data,
so they can't take his feeders away just because they are Jewish or Polish.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_of_lice#Lw.C3.B3w_academ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_of_lice#Lw.C3.B3w_academics_and_intellectuals_as_feeders)
------
ddlatham
Tycho Brahe
_Tycho suddenly contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a
banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later, on 24 October 1601. According
to Kepler 's first hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to
relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette._
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death)
------
542458
"Turing committed suicide in 1954, by eating a cyanide-laced apple, although
the circumstances of his death were ambiguous enough (deliberately) so that
his mother could maintain, for her own sake, that it was an accident."
I feel that this is an unfair statement. There are lots of reasons to believe
Turning's death wasn't suicide.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death)
I also think that Fermat deserves an honourable mention for particularly poor
timing.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem)
~~~
cbd1984
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was
hardly inactive in that period. Had he even thought he actually had a proof,
he would have published it, and we would all know it was wrong.
A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a
false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother
to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia.
The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem"
is precisely _which_ false proof he most likely had.
~~~
cperciva
_Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and
was hardly inactive in that period._
Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it
was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted;
nothing to do with when he made the claim.
------
Pfiffer
Grothendieck apparently died recently:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck#Retirem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck#Retirement_into_reclusion_and_death)
~~~
AlfaWolph
Unfortunately, we recently lost Ralph Faudree under terrible circumstances as
well.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Faudree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Faudree)
~~~
indians_pro
The page doesn't even mention his death, save for wikipedia classifying the
page under '2015 deaths'.
------
anoopelias
Rajeev Motwani
Rajeev Motwani was a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
whose research focused on theoretical computer science. He was an early
advisor and supporter of companies including Google and PayPal, and a special
advisor to Sequoia Capital. He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001.
Further,
Motwani was found dead in his pool in the backyard of his Atherton home on
June 5, 2009
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Motwani](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajeev_Motwani)
------
grifter
John von Neumann -- December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957 (cancer) -- was a
Hungarian and later American pure and applied mathematician, physicist,
inventor and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields,[2]
including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis,
ergodic theory, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum
mechanics, hydrodynamics, and fluid dynamics), economics (game theory),
computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating
machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. [1]
"A von Neumann biographer, Norman Macrae, has speculated that the cancer was
caused by von Neumann's presence at the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests
held in 1946 at Bikini Atoll." [2]
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Later_life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Later_life)
------
sendmarsh
No Hypatia? Skinned alive by Christian mob..
~~~
acheron
If you're actually interested in Hypatia you can read this series...
[http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-
stre...](http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-streets-of-
old.html)
~~~
sendmarsh
Thanks, having basically understood the "Cosmos" account of her life it was
good to read a detailed researched account.
------
nicklaf
Hermann Minkowski. Died suddenly of appendicitis at the age of 44.
"In the early years of his scientific career, Albert Einstein considered
mathematics to be a mere tool in the service of physical intuition. In later
years, he came to consider mathematics as the very source of scientific
creativity. A main motive behind this change was the influence of two
prominent German mathematicians: David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski." [1]
[1] [http://www-history.mcs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowsk...](http://www-history.mcs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Minkowski.html)
------
yodsanklai
Jacques Herbrand died at 23 in a mountain climbing accident.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Herbrand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Herbrand)
------
alimoeeny
Issac Newton is on this list, his death at 84 hardly qualifies as unfortunate
or unfitting. I mean, even today, 84 is well above life expectancy in most of
the world.
------
olalonde
On a related note, "Dangerous Knowledge" is a great documentary "about four of
the most brilliant mathematicians of all time, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann,
Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, their genius, their tragic madness and their
ultimate suicides".
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520274/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520274/)
~~~
Xophmeister
Do Cantor or Gödel's deaths count as suicide? They weren't really self-
inflicted, but more due to mental illness.
Thanks for mentioning the documentary: I will check it out...
------
Zibulon
Just for the records, Grothendieck maybe "disappeared", but he also died a
couple of months ago, it was all over the press...
~~~
contingencies
Grothendieck was Satoshi!
------
kriro
I once had a couple of slides on Cantor->Turing->Gödel that finished of the
AI101 lecture I held. One could create a narrative that their particular work
lead to their unfortunate deaths and I'm pretty sure I actually read that
somewhere but think it is far fetched (particularly for Turing) and didn't
mention it.
------
ild
Yutaka Taniyama, suicide
------
tylerneylon
Felix Hausdorff committed suicide in 1942, after having put in quite some
effort to escape Nazi Germany.
------
myg204
Maurice Audin was a young Mathematician who died in 1957 in Algiers under
torture by the French Military because he supported the Algerian independence
cause.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin)
------
sk8ingdom
William Rowan Hamilton, credited as the inventor of quaternions, died of a
severe gout precipitated by excessive drinking and overeating.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton)
------
rotten
Archimedes! Run through by a sword by an impatient soldier while he was trying
to finish up a math problem instead of heeding a summons to some bureaucrat or
general or something.
~~~
amelius
I'm actually amazed that he reached the age of 75! I didn't know people could
become that old back in those days. Was he an exception?
~~~
Evgeny
I don't think so - there is a widespread confusion about life expectancy. If,
for example, child mortality was high compared to modern times, the life
expectancy at birth was low.
However, for those who survived childhood, the life expectancy would not be
very much different from modern.
Example: triplets were born, but one died at birth, another when he was 10,
and another lived to 80. So, life expectancy at birth is only 30 years, but
measured at five years of age it is 45 years, and measured at 20 years of age
it is full 80 years.
This short article gives some explanation.
[http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-
constant-2-...](http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-
constant-2-000-years.html)
~~~
maxerickson
75 would have been somewhat unusual in the US in 1900:
[http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html#w...](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_10.html#wp1041324)
It shows the age 30 life expectancy, in 1900 it was 35 years, so 65 year old.
Compare to today which is 47 years (77 years old).
There are life tables for historical periods, but the modern data is likely
more reliable and still shows quite some difference.
Your link makes a good point about life expectancy at birth not being the
right measure, but there is a very real expansion in life expectancy that has
taken place. I guess infectious disease control probably pulled a lot of that
expansion into the last 100 years.
------
abruzzi
I think the photos of Archimedes and Isaac Newton are inaccurate. Edit: seems
to be a bug in iPad safari causing the wrong images to display...
------
thisandthat
Anyone else between 1950s and 2010s?
~~~
compbio
Gareth Williams (26 September 1978 – c. 16 August 2010) was a Welsh
mathematician and employee of GCHQ seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service
(SIS or MI6) who was found dead in suspicious circumstances at a Security
Service safe house flat in Pimlico, London, on 23 August 2010. His decomposing
naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside,
in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)
Philip Taylor Kramer (July 12, 1952 – February 12, 1995) was a bass guitar
player for the rock group Iron Butterfly during the 1970s. After this he
obtained a night school degree in aerospace engineering, he worked on the MX
missile guidance system for a contractor of the US Department of Defense and
later in the computer industry on fractal compression, facial recognition
systems, and advanced communications. His disappearance on February 12, 1995
caused a mystery lasting for years.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Taylor_Kramer)
~~~
tedunangst
Kramer obviously disappeared into a wormhole as part of his research into
faster than light communications.
------
evrim
That Galois story is obviously a fairy tale. Probably the story is written by
his father who is the real one behind. Math history is full of those urban
legends because its better like this. A hero of his time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your favorite GitHub project mascot? - alixander
======
timetraveller
How about we start with yours.
~~~
alixander
[https://github.com/libuv/libuv](https://github.com/libuv/libuv)
Maybe not my all-time favorite but a recent one that I liked!
------
cpg1111
Octocat
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do Software Engineers inflate the reported hours they claim to work? - pjtham
Every now and then I hear a Software Engineer (often from the Bay Area) report how they work or are expected to work "60 to 90 hours a week", for example this guy: https://youtu.be/dvdL-21o3GM?t=224<p>60h/w is 12 hours a day 5 days a week and 90h/w is almost 13h a day 7 days a week...<p>I cannot imagine how you can stay productive during such extended period of time, not to mention any time to sleep, commute, self-care, basic house chores, family, games etc. Yet still, my impression is that plenty of Bay Area engineers are staying up-to-date with various Netflix shows, computer games and contribute to open source projects... this just doesn't compute.<p>Probably one of the largest surveys of IT professionals on how long they work (still self reported) is the Stack Overflow survey, which shows that the average is actually more like 42h a week in the US: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-hours-worked-per-week<p>0. Are Software Engineers inflating the reported hours per week they claim to work?<p>1. Why would they do so? Doesn't this contribute to a worse, unhealthy working conditions overall for everyone?<p>Thoughts?
======
uberman
IT professionals in the "Bay Area" do not reflect the broader nationwide IT
community. They tend to be younger, often fresh out of college with no family
connections in the area.
My first job out of college (actually while I was in college doing a co-op
program as well) was with a large IT company in Redwood Shores. I lived in SF
proper. I had left my family and friends "back home" and joined my new
"family" at work. Looking back, they were not co-workers, but more like fellow
cult members.
It was routine day in day out that we would get to work around 10am and work
until 10pm then go clubbing for a couple of hours. This was work in the office
and before the rise of startup houses. With a startup house and a fresh batch
of fellow cultists right out of college working from their bedrooms, 60 hours
a week seems easy to me.
This is clearly not the way the broader IT community functions. Today, I work
from home and put in 10 hour days Monday to Friday plus whatever I put in on
the weekend. My wife who does defense/intelligence tech routinely works longer
than me.
------
dusted
TLDR: No-one pays for hours, they pay for value. Nothing else matters (to
quote metallica).
I think some companies (and people) need to change their thinking:
One might be thinking intensely about the problem for 2 hours, and spend 1
hour writing the code, they might report 7 hours. Not because they're lazy
slackers, but because they're backburning, seeking flow and inspiration,
getting interrupted and all the other stuff that gets in the way of coding..
I code mostly the first hour when I arrive, when I've got the clear idea from
all the backburning that I couldn't help but do the night before when doing
house chores, playing Apex Legends and on the drive to work. When that's been
flushed, I read some articles and "wait for it to come back", then there's
lunch, and after that I will read another article or two, listen to music, do
reviews, and then think hard about the problem.. Then for the last 2 hours,
"it" will be back, and I will write the code down.
Am I lying when I've logged the days time?
No.
That code costs a days worth of salary, it does not matter how many lines it
is, or even how hard it was to write.
What matters is that my employer is satisfied with the value they got for that
amount of money in that amount of time.
If they can't accept that, they'd have to find someone else..
But would they want that?
Would that guy who sits and types the entire day produce more code than me?
Maybe not, maybe he's doing more interation. Maybe, maybe he's just better
(tm) than I am. Maybe not, maybe he's writing more, but worse. But it does not
even matter.
Would the money for a days work be better spent on him than me?
I wouldn't know. But I can't feel bad, because I'm doing the best I can, and
my intention is good, and nobody can ask for more. I've been here for 6 years
and never heard a word for it.
------
w_t_payne
A few years ago (2014ish) I would start the work week pulling 7am to 10:30pm -
approx 15 hour days -- but couldn't sustain that for more than a couple of
days, so by Friday my hours would drop to 10-11 hours per day, and I would
spend pretty much the entire weekend asleep - so significantly less than the
90h claimed and much closer to 60h. After a couple of years of this, I was in
the middle of an emotional breakdown with rapidly encroaching early-onset
rheumatoid arthritis - my body couldn't handle it any more. So ... while I
don't think it's totally impossible - it's also a long way from being a
healthy lifestyle. (Needless to say I try to avoid this sort of thing these
days).
~~~
pjtham
Thanks for sharing your experience, glad to hear that you got a better handle
on this now!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: CTO of Twitpic, in SF 11/9 to 11/18, want to meet up? - stevencorona
Hey HN. I'm going to be in San Francisco all next week. It's my second time, I'm usually on the East Coast in Charleston, SC. I don't know anyone in SF, though, and I know there's a ton of cool people out there.<p>Want to meet up and grab some coffee?* We can talk startups, social apps, scaling, programming, business, whatever.<p>Shoot me an email, steve AT twitpic<p>* or beer. I'll buy.
======
vhf
Can't make it since I'm 9.8k km away, but still I take the occasion to thank
you for sharing so much relevant stuff on your svbtle blog !
Enjoy SF
------
Spoom
I'd love to (I'd mostly want to talk about the feasibility of my startup idea)
but I'm stuck in the Cleveland area. Looking forward to your book.
------
wanghq
Almost want to fly to SF to meet someone who can mentor me on startup. Let me
know when you come to Seattle.
------
timhaines
How about we meet up for a naked run?
~~~
stevencorona
You know I'm always up for a naked run
------
digitalWestie
Sure!
ps. I'm not an SF native. Just a visitor too.
email: giannnichan[at]gmail.com
------
sarahevans
If you stop over in Vegas, LMK. I'm happy to buy you a beer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Police thwarted by criminals using BlackBerry Phantom encrypted phones - angry_octet
http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/are-encrypted-phones-allowing-criminals-to-get-away-with-murder-20150523-gh82gv.html
======
jkestner
"Phantom" is a service not provided by BlackBerry itself. But this title made
me think that there will also be benefit someday in using obsolete or obscure
tech, much in the way that Macs were shielded from most viruses back in the
day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google: The Beginning - mjfern
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576444363668512764.html?mod=rss_Technology
======
markerdmann
If you like this article, you would probably enjoy Stephen Levy's book In The
Plex:
[http://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-
Shapes/dp/141...](http://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-
Shapes/dp/1416596585)
~~~
ladon86
You'd probably enjoy the forthcoming book which this article is promoting -
it's pretty much an extract from it.
~~~
e1ven
I've read both, and I greatly preferred "In the Plex". It seemed like a book
that really had a thoughtful (if sympathetic) view into Google's inner
workings. Levy's book drew from numerous interviews, and wove them together
into a narrative that had structure, meaning, and was a great read.
"I'm Feeling Lucky" is a more personal book; It gets a LOT more into the
nitty-gritty of personal politics, which can be interesting in a ValleyWag
way, but didn't necessarily make me feel like I understood Google in a more
meaningful way.
I got a lot of insight into Edwards' family, his mindset, and a much lower-
level view into the Google offices.. But if you're only going to read one,
read the Levy book.
~~~
skarayan
"It gets a LOT more into the nitty-gritty of personal politics"
That's the feeling I get from the author's last few posts that have made it to
the top of HN.
It seems very superficial and focused on how he felt versus something
substantial.
------
knowledgesale
Not directly relevant, but on the subject of Google in foreign languages.
Every time I visit a foreign country and use a local computer there, the
default search language is in this local language (in spite of me being logged
in into my non-local google account). One can click to search in English, but
the next search is shown in this language again. And "google.com" redirects to
"google.local country". If you stay abroad long enough, it is a great way to
learn some Pavlov reflexes in obsessive clicking.
Definitely a first world problem, but if someone could let folks like me know
how to address that issue, that would wonderful.
~~~
akamaka
<http://www.google.com/ncr>
------
garyrichardson
Article does not make me want to read the book -- all the anecdotes are about
how his marketing education didn't apply to Google. Every one of his stories
are "I told Sergey to do it this way, he didn't listen and was wildly
successful."
------
traldan
Seeing this guy give a talk next week.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Fork the Quote – Create, Share and Fork Quotes. Flutter and Serverless - ForkTheQuote
https://forkthequote.com
======
pzubkiewicz
Do you have a case study about how you implemented this application?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Every C99.php shell is backdoored - chewxy
http://thehackerblog.com/every-c99-php-shell-is-backdoored-aka-free-shells/
======
kijin
The whole thing _is_ a backdoor. Backdoor in a backdoor? Surprise! Of course
it's backdoors all the way down ;)
But of course, script kiddies aren't particularly good at securing the servers
they pwned, are they? [1]
A couple of months ago, I wrote QADE [2] for fun, a "quick and dirty" PHP-
based text editor and webshell for editing files and running commands
remotely. I deliberately failed to implement any authentication-related
feature, because I didn't want to give an illusion of security. A secure
webshell is an oxymoron.
[1] [https://blog.avast.com/2014/06/09/are-hackers-passwords-
stro...](https://blog.avast.com/2014/06/09/are-hackers-passwords-stronger-
than-regular-passwords/)
[2] [https://github.com/kijin/qade](https://github.com/kijin/qade)
~~~
leni536
What about putting it behind https and use basic http auth? If it's only for
you you can always have a self signed certificate.
~~~
kijin
That's exactly what I do with my own installation of QADE on my dev box. The
README on GitHub recommends others to do the same, since it's pretty much the
only way to make QADE secure.
------
astrodust
Why would anyone who's not completely insane install anything like C99 in the
first place?
Not only is the idea completely nuts, but all Google produces for C99shell is
how it's used in backdoor tools.
Surprises: Zero.
~~~
scintill76
Apparently it's mostly used by script kiddies who compromise someone else's
server and install it.
~~~
danielweber
Well, I hope someone tells them their backdoor has been compromised.
------
Udo
In all my years of writing PHP code I have yet to find a legitimate use case
for extract() - PHP should have gotten rid of it generations ago.
~~~
ars
You can use it to pass a bunch of variables between functions, without having
to constantly get them from an array.
function qux() {
return compact('foo', 'bar', 'baz');
}
And in the other function:
extract(qux());
You can have one "preparer" function that works on the data and sets up the
variables, then several others that work on it, and all call the same
preparer. Or the reverse.
Obviously you can do the same thing by just passing arrays but sometimes a
simple variable is easier and less cumbersome.
~~~
kabdib
... and to think that my contempt for PHP couldn't be increased.
Wow. This is the anti-Scheme. It's like they took everything good in language
design and decided to do the exact opposite. "Let's make a function that has
the side effect of introducing variables into scope. That's a great idea."
Oh, Bog....
~~~
ars
> This is the anti-Scheme.
Since when is Scheme the arbiter of what is good or bad?
PHP lets you do this, or not do this, your choice. Like C, PHP doesn't tell
you what to do, it's up to you.
That's why people actually use it.
~~~
fleitz
Exactly, what's wrong with a double clawed hammer?
Use it or not, if you don't like it you can smash stuff with the triblade
screw driver. Or the 7 point socket wrench.
PHP provides a wealth of very useful tools that you can choose to use or not.
I don't know why people think my 7 point socket wrench is dumb, it works quite
well to round the edges of 6 sided bolts and saves a lot of money on buying
those special bolts that can't be removed once tightened.
~~~
ars
If this is the quality of the argument then I have nothing to concern myself
with.
Your post might be [slightly] humorous, but as an argument against PHP
language constructs it fails miserably.
~~~
steego
It really doesn't. Especially when you see people pulling out the double claw
hammers at your company.
Features that have limited real benefits with lots of risk get abused all the
time. They are the retarded tools of the world creating technical debt for
everybody else and they should be retired.
Extract is one of the stupidist language feature conceived precisely because
it puts something so ripe for abuse into the hands of idiots. It even has a
simple name that practically encourages its abuse.
~~~
fleitz
Yup, then you see people building sine wave roads for the square wheels they
build last week.
Or making critical parts of infrastructure work by a cron job that calls wget.
For some reason PHP needs extract, because a dictionary just won't do.
foo["var_x"]
// for some reason needs to be:
$var_x
~~~
officialjunk
I think you mean catenaries, not sine waves.
------
gnyman
I have only every seen the c99.php shell used by script kiddies which utilizes
some well known php vulnerability and uploads this as the control point.
It would be cool if somebody wrote an automated script which would seek out
these c99 and try to identify those which are used on hacked sites. It could
then use this to get access and remove this script and fix the original
exploit.
Using exploits to help people is of course a can or worms but I like the idea
of good hackers helping everyone.
~~~
cmgreen
Please don't do this. Max Butler did that to DNS in 1998 with patching bind
(plus a backdoor). He went to prison 18 months. Then coming back out, he ended
up doing carding and back to prison.
[http://www.securityfocus.com/news/203](http://www.securityfocus.com/news/203)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Butler#FBI_investigation.2C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Butler#FBI_investigation.2C_guilty_plea.2C_and_sentencing)
~~~
danielweber
Fixing a broken BIND and then installing a backdoor is a much different kettle
of fish than just writing a worm that fixes the bug and then walks away.
That said, I would agree completely that it's very legally dangerous. If it's
not yours, don't mess with it!
As an academic matter, I think such a worm _could_ end up being socially
useful, _if_ there are enough compromised machines _and_ the people running
them are sufficiently incompetent _and_ those machines are being used against
other people _and_ you can be sure that your fix doesn't break something else
_and_ the machines just won't get re-compromised again next week. That's too
many conditional clauses for me, but maybe someone else feels like taking one
for the team.
Legally: again, don't do it. It's not yours.
------
dutchbrit
I'm actually disgusted to see how many people use extract in bad ways! As some
others here have mentioned, I've never found a legitamate reason to use
extract - and the php documentation clearly mentioned not to use it on input
data.
Example:
[https://github.com/search?l=PHP&p=1&q=extract%28%24_GET%29%3...](https://github.com/search?l=PHP&p=1&q=extract%28%24_GET%29%3B&ref=advsearch&type=Code)
Yuck...
------
barbs
Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://thehackerblog.com/every-c99-php-
shell-is-backdoored-aka-free-shells/)
------
norswap
Got confused for a minute. Why the hell call your shell after a C language
standard? Also, the term "shell" is terribly overloaded nowadays.
------
leigh_t
> due to a vulnerability in the extract() command
No.
This is due to insane usage of the extract() function. Not a vulnerability
with the function itself.
You can pass user-supplied input directly to plenty of other functions which
have equally idiotic outcomes, it doesn't mean that they have vulnerabilities,
it means the author is a liability.
~~~
mandatory
Right, didn't mean that in the original post - obviously this is how the
function is designed to work. Fixed up the wording to clarify.
------
cstrat
After reading these comments I am intrigued. Whenever I have used PHP I pretty
much always run extract three times:
extract($_GET, EXTR_PREFIX_ALL|EXTR_REFS, 'gVar');
extract($_POST, EXTR_PREFIX_ALL|EXTR_REFS, 'pVar');
extract($_COOKIE, EXTR_PREFIX_ALL|EXTR_REFS, 'cVar');
It makes working with get/post/cookies much easier. All variables are
extracted with a prefix... so:
[http://www.yyy.com/script.php?hello=world](http://www.yyy.com/script.php?hello=world)
Results with: $gVar_hello being the variables holding 'world'.
Is this poor form?
I previously used: `import_request_variables` - but thats been sidelined.
~~~
TimWolla
Why is using $gVar_hello easier than $_GET['hello']? Also $_GET and friends
have the benefit of being super global.
~~~
cstrat
It is easier to use in strings, `$blah = "hi $gVar_hello"` rather than $blah =
"hi {$_GET['hello']}";`.
Not that it is a massive deal... I guess I just got in the habit when I was
younger. Like I said, I always used import_request_variables (with various
prefixes).
\----
But back to my question - is it bad to use like I have?
~~~
ohwp
First: this could result in:
echo $blah; // hi <script>alert('foo');</script>
But maybe it's just because you posted an example...
Second: it will double the memory used.
Third: you can't use the variables global anymore
~~~
cstrat
Like you said, I wouldn't use it without first cleaning the input. I guess I
use it more out of habit and preferring a straight variable to an array...
just feels neater.
Good point on the memory, but I wouldn't think thats a big issue. I haven't
tested right now, but I dont remember ever having issues using the $_GET
variable after exporting? Not sure if thats what you meant.
~~~
innocenat
If I am not mistaken, PHP is copy-on-write, so if extract just copy value then
memory usage wouldn't be doubling.
------
drivingmenuts
A tool that's pretty much only useful for hacking is backdoored? Heaven
forbid!
How is this even news?
------
pogue
I think the trouble is now, if this was just released, is that you can easily
google for c99.php and find vulnerable servers with this file hosted on it,
from pre-existing backdoors/phishing hosts, or what have you, and this allows
anyone and everyone to use it, not just the original person who placed the
backdoor. Which, I suppose, kind of enhances the problem exponentially.
As far as I'm concerned though, Google and Firefox's malware checker engines
should blacklist any domain that has the c99.php file located on it and block
their webbrowsers from connecting to it in the first place.
Of course - correct me if I'm wrong here.
~~~
drunkcatsdgaf
actually, google is pretty far ahead of this. trying searching
allinurl:c99.php, most of the returns are actually about the script.
------
jacquesm
this is pretty bad:
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=all...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=allinurl%3Ac99.php&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)
------
mmaunder
The only reason you have C99 on your server is because you've already been
hacked. Its' one of the oldest shells used for backdooring a hacked site - you
rarely see it anymore because there are much better shells now.
------
nnnnni
So... what's the best way to tell if C99 is "installed" on your server(s)?
grep -Ri c99 /path/to/htdocs
would be my guess
~~~
mkarr
There are thousands of variations of C99 used by various 'hackers'. Many of
which are obfuscated (base64, gzip, other more obscure encodings). Generally,
searching for a combination of 'base64_decode', 'gzdecode', and 'eval' will
find a great deal of them. Others may require more manual inspection. Just
searching for 'eval' alone tends to find a lot.
There are a few tools floating about that try to use a more signature-based
approach to searching, and clamav has some signatures for the shells, but they
can be hit-and-miss, as the obfuscation often changes.
------
laurent123456
Is the C99.php shell any popular? This is such a classic exploit of
`extract()` that it seems like very amateurish job. If they even use this
function at all I imagine the rest of the script is not that secure either.
------
whalesalad
I just deployed a lot of these for fun on Heroku. Really interesting stuff.
[http://php-c99.herokuapp.com/](http://php-c99.herokuapp.com/)
------
Jach
I thought everyone knew this already ~10 years ago...
------
fanssex
Is this a joke?
------
nodesocket
Founder of [https://commando.io](https://commando.io). It is utterly
frightening that anybody would consider using c99. If you're interested in a
parallel SSH web-based interface, check us out. Commando.io does not provide
an interactive shell, but instead operates through pre-defined scripts we
called recipes (written in shell, bash, perl, python, ruby, go, or node.js).
Recipes are fully versioned, and we keep a full audit trail of all executions
run on your infrastructure.
~~~
mahouse
Are you recommending us to use your software on servers that we compromise?
~~~
nodesocket
Absolutely not, recommending Commando.io for anybody looking for a web-based
SSH interface for servers they rightfully manage.
~~~
gamed
;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Master 1 language or learn several languages intermediary? - mistick
I'm a senior graduate student studying in India with BS in CS. We've been taught several languages throughout the 4 semesters particularly C & C++ in the junior year. But I always felt that the courses of the languages went by in a fast paced manner, without properly grasping it to a certain level where you feel satisfied with the language.<p>My question is, is it a better idea to completely master 1 or 2 language to the "expertise" level (like for example C++ & Python) or learn several languages (more than 4) at an intermediary level giving them equal time, with a aim to be proficient in multiple-languages?<p>What impact would either of the decision have on a person's job and career?<p>I'm really interested in learning C++ and mastering it to the expertise level where I can do pretty much anything without having to think twice.
======
shreyashirday
I don't think there's any practical benefit in "mastering" any particular
language. In my opinion, it's much more useful to master certain
concepts/fields or platforms. For example, instead of choosing to master
either Node.js or Python, it would be more helpful to master server-side
application development so that potential employers can rely on you to develop
a well-written backend no matter what the language being used is.
Becoming an expert in C++ has little value because you have to also be good at
applying that knowledge to certain fields, and that's especially true when
almost every field (machine learning, application development, embedded
systems, etc) has solutions that can be implemented in multiple languages.
TL;DR Don't focus too much on the language, focus more on the concepts of the
field you want to work in :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ideal HTTP Performance - josephscott
https://www.mnot.net/blog/2016/04/22/ideal-http
======
creshal
HTTP performance is one thing.
Making a blog use so much JS that browsers need 5+ seconds to load the site
another. Rendering text to images in client-side JS, WTF do you need to smoke
to think that's a good idea?!
~~~
yomism
The curious thing is that he chairs the IETF HTTP Working Group and is a
member of the W3C TAG.
Seeing this and how that blog loads make me afraid of the future of the web.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your Body Text Is Too Small - adamcarson
https://medium.com/@xtianmiller/your-body-text-is-too-small-5e02d36dc902
======
enkiv2
Default body text sizes on most sites are too big, resulting in systems that
make 500 words look like an acceptable size for an article. The only time
large body text makes sense is in an advertisement, and advertisements should
have no place on the web.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: If Bitcoins are traceable, can't we trace and find Bitcoin thieves? - panabee
Assuming thieves want to profit from their stolen Bitcoins, doesn't the Bitcoin traceability property mean it's possible to track the Bitcoins stolen from Mt. Gox, for instance, and any related transactions?
======
dfc
Yes. Just drop the criminal transaction ID into blockchain.info. Do you know
which transaction represents the theft?
------
brudgers
What does it mean to claim a bitcoin is stolen? It's not a claim based on the
blockchains but on something else. It becomes a matter of proof based on
something like server logs and testimony of individuals.
Is it even a criminal matter or simply a contractual dispute over ownership of
some assets? Suppose there is a judgement. Who enforces it and how? A judge
can't undo the block chain.
Who is going to testify that they received the stolen bitcoin? Surely not one
or the other side in a Silk Road transaction.
Getting away with stuff is what makes bitcoin useful.
------
gesman
Mixers works well with small "typical" amounts. When 200,000 bitcoins are
stolen - mixers are useless to hide them.
Theoretically it is possible to track down criminal if physical product stores
would cooperate in that.
If criminal buys something to be shipped to certain address - backtracing
logic could be utilized to detect that money are coming from stolen source.
This does not guarantee that actual thief is spending bitcoins but possibility
is there.
I expect some API "bitcoin theft detection" sevices will start popping up.
------
natdempk
You can at first, but Bitcoin mixers make it unlikely. If you take stolen
coins, throw them into a pool with other coins, make a lot of transactions
within that pool and with other addresses, and generate a bunch of new
addresses with new balances its hard to say what belongs to who.
See [http://www.bitcoinfog.com/](http://www.bitcoinfog.com/) for an example of
one such service.
------
patmcc
Yes, except there are ways to launder bitcoins. Put them through a tumbler,
use them to buy something, gamble with them and withdraw later, put them in a
wallet service and transfer them around (wallets may move bitcoins around,
they're probably not wherever they were originally sent), etc.
You can definitely see the first step, but after that it's tricky.
~~~
panabee
thanks for clarifying!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wadler's Law - kols
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law
======
ori_b
Wadler's law, generalized: <http://communitymgt.wikia.com/wiki/Bikeshedding>
------
larsberg
This law seems to depend on the mailing list and the age/status of the
language. I wonder how it went during the "Successor ML" conversations a while
back?
Today, though, it seems as if almost every language conversation we have about
Standard ML is a small set of implementers talking about whether, say, rule 64
is inconsistent in its handling of _where type_s and redundant tycons.
------
oconnor0
This is almost exactly evidenced by
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3370428>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MessageBird raises $60M Series A - joeyvanommen
https://blog.messagebird.com/messagebird-raises-60m-series-a-funding-9c703f95c67e
======
sillysaurus3
I see a lot of "Congrats" type sentiments in this thread. Maybe I should just
say congrats too, but I can't help but wonder: Isn't it a terrible idea to
raise $60M as a series A?
That means you'll either need to be bought for ~$100M just to break even, or
IPO, which seems very rare nowadays.
Could anyone help me understand what the calculus looks like for these
decisions? It's a series A too, not even a series B or C. I get that the
founding team genuinely believes in the vision of the company, but you can
still believe in the vision without removing your ability to exit.
~~~
ig1
If you take any amount of VC money the expectation is that you're going for
>$1bn exit.
Also remember that the Series of the investment doesn't necessarily reflect
the stage of the company but rather the number of rounds of investment it's
had. In this case MessageBird expect to hit $100m of revenue this year.
~~~
austenallred
They’re probably within spitting distance of a $1B valuation. Probably 5-8x at
this point?
The fact that they’re there this quickly is absolutely mind boggling.
~~~
ealexhudson
They're saying they expect to generate $100M revenue this year. I think that
places them a bit further off the $1B _exit_ than 8x, although if they raised
further funding potentially that could be done at an amount that suggests a
$1B value.
I wouldn't want to be competing against AWS Pinpoint, and the problems Twilio
have suggests this is a technically difficult space. Seems like quite a big
bet from the VCs involved.
~~~
terravion
Revenue to market cap multiples in technology on the public market are often
in the 6x range even at slower growth rates than private companies. So if
they're doing $100M they could easily be worth over $1B now.
------
skrebbel
Cool stuff, and as a Dutch chauvinist I like that a fellow Dutch startup does
well.
That said, I've looked at MessageBird a bunch of times but I still don't get
it. What makes them different from all the other SMS gateways out there? It's
the same product everywhere: you invoke some REST API, an SMS is sent to a
number and you get billed.
~~~
tlogan
Good question - but all these gateways have tendency to drop messages, report
weird errors, messages are sometimes delayed by hours, their MMS support if
quirky, etc.
I.e., if you ever worked with Twilio you will learn about "30008 Unknown
error" \- Twilio support tries but because "Carrier Network" problems these
problems cannot be fixed.
In short, reliable delivery of SMS messages internationally is still not
solved.
~~~
juliosab
Do they use any tools to monitor sms reception on real SIM cards?
~~~
robertvis
Yes - we run our own network of real sims for quality control that we only use
for ourselves.
------
petetnt
Hi,
where (in the world) is your data stored physically? The FAQ only says that
> The MessageBird platform is build to be secure from the ground up, through
> all application layers. We have put in place best practices from several
> industry standards to help reduce and mitigate risks. MessageBird’s
> communication platform is hosted at secure data centers that comply with
> leading security policies and frameworks, including ISO 27001 and NEN 7510.
Similar question/issue has prevented us from using Twilio in the past.
~~~
sean_lynch
Curious where you need it stored. EU? Or anywhere outside US?
~~~
rikthevik
If someone could guarantee Canadian data residency for SMS & voice, I would be
a very happy person.
~~~
robertvis
drop me an email robert@ - depending on exact needs can prob help you.
------
techlad84
For those asking what makes them different, this blog post by their European
investor Atomico may shed some light? Starts at paragraph 4
[http://news.atomico.com/our-investment-in-messagebird-a-
euro...](http://news.atomico.com/our-investment-in-messagebird-a-european-
deep-tech-wunderkind-enabling-truly-global-cloud-communications-for-the-first-
time/)
------
earlybike
60M for a SMS gateway in 2017. Confused.
~~~
knodi
Ya, good luck getting that investment back.
------
koolba
Actual title is: "MessageBird raises $60m Series A funding"
I've never heard of this company but looks like the same space as Twilio.
Given how entrenched something like this could be in the API stack of an
application, I can see the value in having a large war chest to drive
development and adoption. Kudos!
~~~
wastedhours
Be interesting to see where the tipping point for adoption would be for
companies (guessing if you're using plain SMS, the switching cost from Twilio
or Textburst etc... wouldn't be great). At what point does the cost become
painful for a small biz doing SMS, and if you can create a plan to grab those
before the next growth phase, could be a good strategy.
~~~
joeyvanommen
Definitely an interesting question, here are a couple of ways to look at it:
\- For companies doing a lot of messages or calls, pricing becomes a big issue
in terms of scaling. Better pricing means they can do more to achieve even
greater results, without too big of a restraint of financial overhead compared
to competitors.
\- For smaller companies doing smaller amounts of traffic, pricing isn't the
biggest issue, all though it does become one when scaling.
An alternative benefit, which is applied to all types of companies, is the
fact that MessageBird is better for security and quality: having more direct
connections and working closely with telco's makes it possible to have
complete end-to-end control over the traffic. This is crucial when choosing a
partner to do 2FA with or other types of sensitive, security related messaging
and calling, but also guarantees an overal better quality of service.
------
gergderkson
We've been using MessageBird to send transactional SMS's for over a year now.
It was much cheaper than our previous provider and their support is first
class. Congrats to them.
------
surfmike
First time I’ve learned about MessageBird— how do they compare to Twilio?
------
base
I see Whatsapp support on their website but I find this very strange, Whatsapp
doesn't have an official API, only some hidden endpoints for their clients
that can be changed at any time. [https://www.messagebird.com/en/chat-
api](https://www.messagebird.com/en/chat-api)
~~~
ballenf
I'm not seeing any mention of WhatsApp on that page. I see WeChat, however,
along with Telegram, Line and [FB] Messenger.
------
EGreg
How does this compare with Twilio on cost and deliverability?
~~~
jsjohnst
Beating Twilio on either point is setting a rather low bar for comparison.
Neither are Twilio’s strong suit, imho. Not saying Twilio is bad, but they are
certainly not cheap or rock solid reliable.
~~~
EGreg
Who would you recommend over them?
~~~
jsjohnst
Depends on needs. If great documentation and easy to use APIs are important,
then I’d recommend a different provider over one for price / reliability. Also
depends what world markets you are focused on too. One other major variance is
if you need MMS or short code support.
~~~
epicide
So which would you recommend for documentation and which would you recommend
for price?
~~~
jsjohnst
Documentation / tooling would probably be Twilio.
Provider based on price depends on how heavily you use US vs World, and if
it's SMS (and/or MMS needed) or Voice or both and what volume you are
operating at. For pure SMS with a balanced mix of domestic and international,
I would probably suggest AWS Pinpoint at this point. Their international rates
compared to Twilio are fantastic for all the locations I spot checked.
------
dzink
These guys seem to be able to connect across video and messaging platforms. In
the age where everyone is trying to be WeChat and connect billions, the pipes
underneath that would be a downright bargain at $1B.
------
veryluckyxyz
Can one of you please point me to their (previous is fine too) FORM-Ds? my
search on edgar comes up with nothing [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?company=message&own...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-
edgar?company=message&owner=exclude&action=getcompany)
~~~
terravion
If this is their first funding as claimed, they wouldn't have to file a Form D
even if they were a US company which it doesn't seem that they are.
------
init-as
Isn't this kind of something that might be phased out in the next few years.
I'd imagine there would be some kind of web tool doing authentication like
this at some point just because of how obsolete sms seems these days. Correct
me if I am wrong though.
~~~
stanleydrew
The products offered are not simply for SMS-based authentication. That is
merely one use-case out of many that you can build on a platform like
MessageBird or Twilio.
------
dboreham
Wondering why the VCs are so keen on companies that seem to be re-doing
something that's been done many times (almost commodity in the case of this
company) and has essentially no proprietary technology and no network effect?
~~~
dirkdk
$100 million revenue per year will do that, I guess they do something better
than the competition
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/03/messagebird/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/03/messagebird/)
~~~
dboreham
Their market (sending SMS to consumers) is dying, replaced by app
notifications.
~~~
nethsix
It may be but probably not that soon since there are a lot of countries not on
smartphones, some industries have multiple dominant players, and users may not
want to deal with an app from each player, e.g., car dealers, etc.
------
tonydiv
Anyone have experience with their VoIP? Currently using Tokbox but been having
some troubles. We integrate it across web, iOS, and Android for a kid's learn-
to-code with live teachers product.
~~~
akoncius
yeah, I'm looking for similar VoIP product too
------
jondishotsky
Congrats to Robert and team, great people
------
pdog
What is MessageBird? Is it a Twitter thing?
~~~
tschellenbach
I was just discussing how good their landing page is, haha, clearly not good
enough!
~~~
robertvis
lol - thanks :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US ICE Contract with GitHub Sparks Developer Protests - throw0101a
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-contract-github-sparks-developer-protests/604339/
======
JanSt
Who is going to choose who the good / bad people / companies / institutions
are? Activists?
You cannot (even in good faith) deny certain groups access without undermining
our societies. E. g. denying certain groups human rights is not acceptable.
Even murderers have to have a fair trial and most countries don't allow the
death penalty because human rights apply to everyone.
It's the same with open source. Once you deny access to certain groups, it's
not _free_ anymore. It's politized. As a german I've learned a lot about where
exclusion of certain groups and people lead. Who is the good guys? From my
grandparents generation POV the bad guys where the "greedy jews" and they were
the good. From my POV the reverse is true.
Values have to be universal, even if you don't like the other side. You don't
have to like ICE, but either you stand with your values or you don't.
~~~
BitwiseFool
We have a system for determining these kinds of questions - the courts. It's
not the open source community's responsibility to make sure other
organizations are behaving ethically.
If people believe ICE has broken laws and violated human rights they should be
pursuing a trial, not attacking the organization's ability to host Git repos.
~~~
mschuster91
> If people believe ICE has broken laws and violated human rights they should
> be pursuing a trial
That would require a fair and balanced court system which the US lacks.
~~~
CompanionCuuube
This is the same kind of justification for taking the law into your own hands
because you don't think that the justice system will do its job.
------
redisman
What is the contract for? The common open source licenses certainly don't fit
with the idea of blacklisting organizations from using them. ICE is probably
on the tamer end of governmental organizations using open source too, I'd
imagine every intelligence agency and terrorist organization in the world uses
some open source code and software.
~~~
mirimir
ICE uses a GitHub Enterprise Server.
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> “Just as Microsoft for more than three decades has licensed Microsoft Word
> without demanding to know what customers use it to write, we believe it
> would be wrong for GitHub to demand that software developers tell us what
> they are using our tools to do,” Friedman wrote. If you place restrictions
> on who can use open source, is it still open?
That is the whole beauty and danger of open source, in that it empowers
developers and users. It is up to the developers and users of open source to
decide how they use that power.
------
BitwiseFool
I strongly believe in the four essential freedoms, especially "(0) The freedom
to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose."
To blacklist organizations from using open source would violate this.
If we allow developers/contributors to add conditions on who can use their
code (ICE), or for what purposes it can be used (Can't be for immigration),
then we establish a bad precedent. Just think of how many other passionate
causes there are today. What if a conservative developer wants to prevent the
DNC from using their code?
If you believe open source code is being used maliciously, then you should use
the tools your society gives you to protest/shut it down rather than change
the meaning of open source.
------
softwaredoug
> open source’s commitment to “inverting power structures and creating access
> and opportunities for everyone.”
I’m pretty sure the current reality is open source reinforcing power
structures. Only large companies with deep pockets can maintain open source,
and they do so to forward some strategy.
~~~
commandlinefan
Even if open source was committed to “inverting existing power structures” (I
don’t think it ever was), the only power structures it would ever be able to
influence would be profit-driven corporations: with open source equivalents to
commercial software, corporations have to work harder to compete and commit to
more transparency. Being able to see and modify software source code is
completely unrelated to government functions.
------
tbrownaw
_In December, Schneeman signed an open letter alongside 2,000 other open-
source contributors, who called the ICE contract a betrayal of open source’s
commitment to “inverting power structures and creating access and
opportunities for everyone.”_
I'm pretty sure I remember an "even if an evil dictator wants to use it to
murder babies" as a quick sanity check for whether a proposed license is
actually open.
_In response to the GitHub fracas, the developer Coraline Ada Ehmke
introduced the Hippocratic License—named for the Hippocratic oath—which
caveats traditional open-source licensing with restrictions on uses that
“actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical,
mental, economic, or general well-being of underprivileged individuals or
groups.” But the Open Source Initiative rejected it. “Giving everyone freedom
means giving evil people freedom, too,” reads its abridged definition of open
source._
Yep.
~~~
Miner49er
The obvious problem here is that in this case open source software is being
used to take away other people's freedoms.
So who's freedom wins out? ICE's freedom to use open source code, or ICE's
victims' freedom?
The activists think that the victims' freedom should win, and I'd argue that's
the case. ICE is using open source software to prevent other people from using
open source software by locking them up.
The freedom to use open source software should stop at limiting other people's
freedom to use it.
"Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins"
~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> The freedom to use open source software should stop at limiting other
> people's freedom to use it.
Since the people protesting ICE's use of open source software, are trying to
limit ICE's freedom to use open source software, then they should not be able
to use open source software.
~~~
Miner49er
Fair enough point, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the real world.
It's like saying, "the guys killing Nazis are just as bad as the Nazis -
they're both killing people."
I mean sure, but if nobody killed the Nazis in WWII where would we be today?
Or another example, kidnapping is illegal, but it's good for a police officer
to "kidnap" (arrest) a kidnapper to get them stop kidnapping, right? The way
your looking at it, the police officer is just as bad as the original
kidnapper.
~~~
CompanionCuuube
Your example is bad because it mistakes arrest for kidnapping, when the two
are different actions.
------
scarejunba
> ... _called the ICE contract a betrayal of open source’s commitment to
> “inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for
> everyone.”_
Hmm, interesting. I always saw open-source from a freedom and power angle. I
have a program, I should be able to edit it. I never saw it in a social
justice angle of "inverting power structures". It may well be the case that
having Linux be GPL helps Amazon more than me and entrenches power structures
and I'd still not be upset because it does help me.
~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
The open source movement is explicitly about power: who gets to (legally)
copy/see/modify/distribute/etc.
So it's always fun to see these demands to "keep politics out of it". If you
did not see that is was nothing but politics before, it's because you don't
notice the politics when you agree with them.
That doesn't mean the analogy you are quoting is entirely valid or meaningful:
OSS is pretty close to communism in it's "from each what they can, to each
according to their needs". But it's easy to see that zero marginal costs are
required for this to work.
~~~
scarejunba
Oh no, I'm not asking to "keep politics out of it". The politics are most
definitely part of it, but like everything else, they very narrowly specify
the politics: "Code must be free. If you have a binary, you should have the
right to edit it.". That's a really wise political angle and I'm grateful for
all the people who made it possible.
But it doesn't take a position on abortion or immigration or anything and I
prefer it that way.
To be clear, I recognize the right for free people to protest companies. I
recognize the right for employees to protest their employers' dealings with
companies.
------
ab_testing
This is so silly. So activists don't want ICE to use Github. Great, they can
just use
\- Gitlab \- Google Cloud Code \- Bitbucket \- Sourceforge \- Azure Repos \-
Oracle Developer Cloud \- IBM Cloud \- AWS Code Commit \- Adobe Cloud Manager
Repository
There are so many options and a lot of these companies love to work with the
US Government
~~~
fourstar
It’s not about just that for these kind of people. What they want to do is
parade around and display (virtual signal) that they are morally superior.
It’s almost poetic, really. They’re upset that an organization known for
deporting illegal aliens is doing their job. That’s really what it’s about.
They want open borders and think everyone is entitled to live in the US.
Judging from the photo posted, it’s exactly the kind of demographic I’d
expect. This is #woke culture in a nutshell. I fully support any tech company
wanting to work with the government.
------
dang
Many threads:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=github%20ice%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&type=story)
------
threatofrain
What do these GitHub protesters imagine is the end-game? ICE goes to GitLab?
~~~
commandlinefan
Or just use Git without Github - Git is free and open source. Or use
Subversion. All these protesters are actually doing is _hurting_ open source
by removing a revenue source that could be funneled into improving other open
source projects. Unless they’re going to follow this line of thinking to its
logical conclusion of creating a special NGGPL (non-government GPL) license
and preventing government agencies from using open source projects.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill - ryduh
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20084939-281/house-panel-approves-broadened-isp-snooping-bill/?tag=mantle_skin;content
======
elb0w
Well I guess we need to write a screensaver that crawls the web. Maybe when
ISP's have to spend $ on all this storage it will give them incentive to fight
this. I remember land of the free .. This doesnt feel like freedom..
------
cmoylan
EFF also has a good form letter:
[https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=Us...](https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=497)
------
molecule
Contact your congressional representative to express disapproval:
<https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml>
------
vdm
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2823009>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
At full speed with Python: a book for self-learners - jventura
https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python
======
chrsstrm
I've used Python sparingly in the past for tooling and helper apps and am now
picking it up in a more serious way as I'm working on a Flask API app. I've
been reading lots of instructional materials and the one thing that I find
lacking across the board is coverage of the toolchain and it's edge cases. For
starters, Macs only come with Python 2.X, tell me about installing 3.X and
some of the walls I might run into in the process. Having used other package
managers, pip is easy to pick up but you might get stuck if you forget you
need to use pip3 instead. virtualenv is something that could use a more
thorough explanation in almost everything I've read, but I'm also now seeing
everyone shift to using pipenv and sorting this out yourself is not easy to
newcomers (I haven't seen a text yet that discusses it other than packages
using it in their install copy and paste and the pipenv site itself). The
small things that seem obvious to seasoned devs are really what I'm looking
for, especially in an accelerated course.
This applies almost equally to most language reference material I've come
across but I'm asking politely, please spend more time on the toolchain.
~~~
scheveningen
Have you tried 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python'? It strives to be exactly
this -- a guide on installation, configuration, and usage of the Python
runtime and development toolchain.
[http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/](http://docs.python-
guide.org/en/latest/)
~~~
chrsstrm
Thanks. I feel like I have read sections of this guide but going back and
seeing some of the now relevant section titles, there appears to be some good
info in here I could use. I hope I didn't skip over some of these when I was
looking for relevant material.
------
asicsp
quick suggestions:
* create sub-headings, for ex: 'Basic datatypes' chapter, create numbers/strings/lists as sub-headings...
* loop iteration - as you are anyway showing how to use 'enumerate', I'd suggest to not show 'range(len(mylist))'
* lots of ' Finally', might want to remove some or rework those sentences
\----
Resources similar to this, but full fledged books
* [http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/)
* [http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/](http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/) \- based on think python
* [https://automatetheboringstuff.com/](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)
and for exercises (disclaimer: these are from my github repo):
* [https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/mast...](https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/master/Python_curated_resources.md#code-practice)
* [https://github.com/learnbyexample/Python_Basics/blob/master/...](https://github.com/learnbyexample/Python_Basics/blob/master/Exercises.md)
------
ivan_ah
Nice book.
The simplicity of the build system for epub is impressive:
[https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-
python/blob/master...](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-
python/blob/master/Makefile#L3)
~~~
333c
The beauty of Pandoc!
I discovered Pandoc in the past few months thanks to a post on HN, and I've
been going out of my way to involve it in my projects because it's so
fascinating to me.
Pandoc: [https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/)
------
neves
PDF is terrible to read in a Kindle. This book would be much more valuable in
a ebook format.
Every time I tried to generate mobi files from Tex they were terrible
formatted. O'Reilly does it fine with some open source books, but I've never
managed to do it myself. Are the good publishing tools for ebooks just
avaiable for specialized publishers?
Which techniques do you have to convert these Tex books to mobi (the Kindle
format)?
~~~
jventura
If enough people are interested, i may try to do something with pandoc to
generate an ebook!
~~~
unixhero
Me too
Epub and mobi formats would be great
~~~
anarchimedes
I would also be interested. LeanPub might also be a good shout.
~~~
jventura
Definitely, the problem with leanpub is that they ask for 99$ to start a book.
I thought about that before, but i don't know if i could sell enough books to
recover at least that inital value..
------
jventura
Could someone suggest which title sounds better: "at full speed with python"
vs "up to speed with python"?
I would like to convey the idea that this is a fast way for people to learn
the basic concepts of python. But I'm not sure that "up to speed with X"
exists, as I cant find many ocurrences of it in google (i'm not a english
native speaker, this is the technique i use to find how certain expressions
are used in english).
~~~
drdave55
"Getting up to Speed with Python" is what you are after. "Up to speed" implies
that the reader is already "there", hence, the book will be targeting readers
that already have considerable knowledge and skill with Python. Clearly, your
statement, "I would like to convey... that this is a fast way... to learn the
basic concepts...", you are targeting those with minimal skills and
experience. Therefore, they will be "getting up to speed" as they go through
the book, with the implication that upon completion of the book, they will be
"at speed".
~~~
jventura
Yes, that's it! Thanks!
(Changed the book title to match..)
------
knorrie
Well done, very well written!
Be aware that the approach this book takes has its own type of target
audience. I guess the audience that will like this book/tutorial are the kind
of people that will usually just read the entire reference manual of anything
to see what's in their toolbox before actually starting to build something. So
by reading it, you help them as a guide to work through it, choosing the parts
of the language that are best learned first. After following the exercises,
the reader can already build some programs using those concepts, whatever it
might be, leaving it to their own imagination.
The other type of audience, which this book might be less suited for, is
people who get bored after chapter 1, thinking "I want to build something fun
now already!". Those might be better served by a tutorial like "we're building
a XYZ game", explaining concepts along the way.
Both are good, both are needed.
I'm one of the first type of people, so I'm really happy to see this kind of
book. The second type of tutorials only give me fragments of information if I
follow it building that XYZ game, while I have my own idea of what to build,
and just want to learn how those lists and dictionaries work when I discover I
need them. ;-]
------
abhinai
Have you thought about releasing this book with something that makes it easier
to read online? For example Gitbook: [https://yumedzi.gitbooks.io/python-
book/content](https://yumedzi.gitbooks.io/python-book/content). I am sure here
are others as well.
------
ultrasounder
"become familiar with Python's syntax in two weeks and are able to implement a
distributed client-server application with sockets in the third week" are
there plans to extend the book to include the design of the distributed
Client-Server Application?Would be super intrigued.
~~~
jventura
> are there plans to extend the book to include the design of the distributed
> Client-Server Application?
I do not know how I could integrate that in this book specifically, because it
is not something that a regular user would need to know to be able to use
Python per se, but I would like to publish something eventually. Maybe
something like "up to speed with socket programming in python".. :)
Basically, I give my students two files (client.py and server.py) with a basic
and very simple use of sockets, and guide them to build a basic shell client
app that sends messages to be evaluated by the server and to receive the
result back.
Other is a very basic http server with sockets. These are not production-ready
things, I'm just interested that they learn the concepts. You can check
something about this http server in this blog post of mine:
[http://joaoventura.net/blog/2017/python-
webserver/](http://joaoventura.net/blog/2017/python-webserver/)
------
jventura
Changed the book title to "Getting up to speed with Python" which is a more
accurate title for what I wanted to write. Made a new release with a few
corrections and the new title at [https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-
python/releases](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python/releases)
Cannot change anymore the title or the link on HN though..
------
jventura
I've included a pandoc generated epub and it seems ok on my computer, would
anyone be able to test it on a epub device to see if it works ok?
[https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-
python/releases/](https://github.com/joaoventura/full-speed-python/releases/)
~~~
argonium
Looks good on my MBP. Thanks for sharing!
------
ausjke
just fixed the Makefile and created a pull-request, it should build both epub
and pdf as long as you have pandoc installed. The pdf file is 18 pages in
total, so it is a very short one, or am I missing something?
~~~
jventura
I've just checked your pull-request, but the resulting pdf is on article form
instead of book. I'm talking about the latex document class:
\documentclass[12pt, a4paper, oneside]{book}
It has to be ran with pdflatex..
------
philliphaydon
I'm starting to learn Python so I'm super interested in this. However for me
the PDF is blurry?
I tried in Chrome/IE/Acrobat and the text is blurry for me, anyone else have
this problem??
~~~
jventura
I've just confirmed on a virtualbox installation of windows 7 and it is
working fine on Acrobat Reader. It may be a crazy suggestion, but can you
reset your computer? I've also made available an epub, so maybe you can use it
instead of the pdf..
~~~
philliphaydon
epub works great. No issues. I got alot of PDF's i donno why only this one
displays weird. :( if no one else has this issue must just be my work pc being
bung.
~~~
jventura
Could you provide a screenshot? You can open a github issue if you want...
~~~
philliphaydon
I think it’s just my work computer on it’s last legs. Worked fine at home and
on the surface.
~~~
jventura
Great, thanks!
------
ultrasounder
Thanks for the reference to your blog. Will check it out. Thanks for making
this book available
------
smortaz
congrats & thanks! would be _great_ to have these as jupyter notebooks as
well.
------
arikalmen
is there a slack channel that has been developed in addition to this learning?
------
anara2696
good book
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I'm tired of trying to meet new people. So I've built another social network - talhof8
http://blog.interestin.co/post/im-tired-of-trying-to-meet-new-like-minded-people-online-so-ive-built-another-social-network#.UXFm8aJT7GA
======
jblok
Everyone, please stop. Seriously, stop. How many more of these things do we
need?
"Find people nearby with similar interests", sounded like a semi-decent
premise 3 or 4 years ago, but no one did it well enough to reach a critical
mass, and nor did the 100 or so clones that followed. I cringe every time I
hear about a startup like this now.
People (maybe just me) don't generally make friends in this way. How many
times have you honestly been walking down the street and thought, "I must find
someone who shares my love of handball as well as Star Wars!" You don't. You
go join a handball club, or you find some nerds that are into sci-fi, and
maybe there might be an overlap. And if not, who gives a shit - there's much
more to liking a person than what their interests are. They might be really
unkind or talk about you behind your back. I'd rather not be friends with them
in that case, even if they love handball and Star Wars more than they love
breathing.
Offering control over your users privacy can not be claimed as a selling
point, as I see so often in social media startups. It is a minimum user
requirement and in some territories, a legal requirement.
I hate to tell anyone that you can't do something, but I think there are so
many more valuable unsolved problems out there.
~~~
talhof8
You see, the goal here isn't to connect you with people who love both x and y,
and so they fit you as potential best friend. The goal here is replace those
tons of friends on your social networks, whom half you (not specifically you
ofcourse) barely know, with people who really interest you and love x, or y,
or even both. Thanks for your comment
~~~
talhof8
And this isn't location based. I've seen too many of those on my iPhone,
claiming to find you some new "BFF's". It isn't the goal
~~~
unalone
Out of curiosity, what's the difference between this and forums which have
many ultraspecific subsections for people to discuss their personal interests?
Is it that this searches for people who have as many overlapping interests
with you as possible?
------
drharris
You know, at first I was thinking this is a cheesy idea, especially with it
not really giving anything new. But then I think, what would I pay to find a
friend that truly has overlapping interests? I'd probably pay decent money for
that, because I can't seem to find a "best friend". The people who share my
sports interests don't understand how I can watch a chick flick. The people
who are into programming can't understand my religious views. And those people
don't take kindly to my love for science. And those people don't appreciate my
musical abilities. So on, so forth. Only my wife understands all that, which
is great, but I need a friend outside that. My existing friends are good for
diversity, but nobody understands me enough to really be my best friend. So,
in short, I'd pay for something that let me find someone who can actually
understand me. Call it "friend dating".
~~~
sixQuarks
Are you saying you're religious, yet love science? I'd like to have a
discussion with you.
~~~
drharris
Not sure if this leads to trolling, but yes, extremely, on both accounts. I'm
both a Christian (even something of a creationist) and manage to love science.
I admit it's not a common combination (hence my post), but it does exist. :)
~~~
unalone
I'm curious. What does "something of a creationist" entail? Is this a Deist
sort of creationism, or are you closer to biblical literalism?
~~~
drharris
It means I believe at the very least, a creator was responsible for initial
life. I also believe that evolution is either a guided process or that the
existing evidence can also point to creation. Do not believe in young earth.
Do not believe the creator started it and has not intervened since.
~~~
unalone
Curious! I can't say I agree with that – at least, not the way you just
phrased it; could just be linguistic ambiguity – but it's interesting
nonetheless. I have to say, that's a mindset I don't usually expect on Hacker
News; now I'm wondering just how diverse the beliefset of this community is.
~~~
learc83
My personal belief is that the earth was created as if it were much older than
it actually is, although their really wouldn't be much of a difference to us.
For example, if God created the first tree, just snapped his fingers and poof,
there it is full sized. Would that tree have tree rings? I think it would.
~~~
unalone
What would be the point of creating something and then faking its age? Is it a
test, for us to ignore empirical evidence and determine that God made it
anyway? Or are you suggesting that, perhaps, the world began with us humans,
and that the universe pre-humanity was manufactured to seem like it gave rise
to is (but it couldn't have, because it started with us)?
I'm interested in where such a belief comes from.
~~~
learc83
I don't think that is was manufactured to trick us, but that for whatever
reason the simulation needed a past. Imagine the world is a recursive
algorithm and it start running at n = 1, you need to define n = 0 for it to
make any sense.
Tree rings are needed to support the tree and would occur once the simulation
started running anyway, so God could either create two classes of tree, or use
the more elegant solution (to my mind) of having that tree appear the same as
if it had grown.
My reason for believing this is that I think it's a more elegant solution
(that is just based on my personal perception of elegance) and that God
decided the world should be in a certain state before humans arrived, so
either he could run the simulation for billions of years, or he could just
fast forward as if it had ran for billions of years. Either one works, but
since there were no people around to experience time why bother with actually
running it (or the opposite argument, why not actually run it).
Another reason why I think the simulation was needed in the first place,
because it moves the limits of our knowledge further away, and gives us more
room to explore.
Imagine if God decided humans needed an energy source, so he put a magic black
liquid under the ground with no explanation. We'd find it, and that would
pretty much be the end of it--we could go no further. However, if he instead
ran set up a simulation and ran it(or skipped ahead) to create oil, we can try
to figure out where oil came from.
Basically we have a whole rich and complex simulated past to explore before we
hit the brick wall of--God did it.
------
kozikow
I had this idea when I was employed at Facebook. I was even considering doing
something similar to it on the Hackathon. I believe in your idea and if
Facebook won't do, in my opinion it it will be big (I didn't see anyone there
interested in picking up this idea, so I don't think they will).
Graph search solves part of this problem - on example you can search "Friends
of my friends, who like tennis, programming and Game of thrones". The problem
here is that it's awkward to contact these people - you won't message person
"hey, I found out that we have similar interests, we may be friends". The
whole problem is "breaking ice". The fact that you know who could be a good
friend doesn't solve this problem, because you don't have a good way of
meeting these people.
I had a few ideas how to solve it, any wasn't perfect. Core thought behind is
that you usually meet new people not through internet, but either on parties
or by introduction through common friend. Maybe you will have any use from
them:
1\. Facebook or your site could algorithmically organize events for people.
But honestly I don't know if people would be interested in attending such
parties. You would sign up for a party and Facebook would find ideal group of
strangers, that according to some machine learning would be your ideal
friends. Having enough data is is possible to make awesome selection, but I
don't know if people would be interested in attending such parties. Some
slight modification is organizing "lunches". Imagine you are working in big
office or at big school campus. Then your site could find ideal people to eat
lunch with.
2\. This is slight modification of point 2. There are tons of public events
and venues. You could suggest what are good public parties and venues where I
could find the most likely minded people. This is probably the least awkward
option, but it is also the least accurate in finding likely minded people.
3\. Introductions. Likely minded people will probably be close to you in your
social graph. There's a chance that you have common friend. He could get a
suggestion from Facebook or your site - "Hey X, we found out that your friends
Y and Z should know each other. Do you want to introduce them to each other?".
But here I am again sceptical if people would do it.
4\. Having option of posting a status to result of graph search query. Then
you could on example post a status "Hey, who wants to play tennis?". Problem
here is that to initiate a conversation another person needs to write a
message to you. Messaging a stranger is always awkward and in my opinion won't
work, unless there will be big mental shift among people.
I believe this is a big problem for a lot of people nowadays, especially
introverted people not good at making new connections. I believe in you, good
luck :).
~~~
talhof8
Thank you very much for your details feedback! Much appreciated!!! I'd love to
talk further, if you'd like to as well, you can find me at contact AT
interestin.co
------
ollysb
I think meetup.com fills this role fairly well at the moment. There's
definitely room for improvement but if you're looking for a group of people
that want to play some tennis, go climbing etc. then it's a pretty good bet.
~~~
hasenj
Meetup.com is pretty good but there's plenty of room for competition.
~~~
jonathanjaeger
While there's room for competition, it does have the chicken-and-egg problem.
People who create meetup groups need to know there are people to join the
group and people who want to go to meetups need to go to a place with a wide
variety of groups. That's why it's hard to do a Craigslist or eBay competitor.
~~~
csmatt
This is very true. If there are only a handful of people in a small town who
have your interest, you're kinda out of luck with meetup.
------
nahname
I have been thinking about something similar to this for a while. The problem
is the negative stigma of hunting for friends. That makes it difficult to get
people to want to signup. The best potential candidates would already have
lots of friends and wouldn't need your service.
However, this would be immensely helpful in finding new friends, especially if
you just moved to a new area. Even moving within a city, it is difficult to
maintain close connections to your friends if you don't live near them.
Best of luck
~~~
hasenj
> The problem is the negative stigma of hunting for friends. That makes it
> difficult to get people to want to signup.
I think it'd be interesting to research why that is and trying to come up with
some solutions. (This problem is also present in dating sites).
I think meetup.com's approach avoids this problem because you're not
explicitly "fishing" for friends.
~~~
resu_nimda
Agreed. I strongly feel the stigma against dating sites, and still refuse to
use them, but Meetup is a great resource I don't even think twice about using.
I just can't get over the thought of "well, I can't do it in real life, so
let's take the easy way and throw it up on the internet and see what sticks."
The funny thing is, relying on chance to put you in the same room with the
right person, let alone identify and connect with them, is really inefficient.
Current dating sites notwithstanding, the internet has a huge potential to
optimize this process. And yet, it just feels so _wrong_. You are trying to
start an intimate relationship through such a clinical and impersonal
interface, and the vision of someone sitting there browsing through hundreds
of candidates "asynchronously" at your leisure is unsettling to me.
------
d0m
I'm really surprised that this post was able to reach the front page with "I'm
building another social network". That being said.. here's a startup that's
trying to deal with this problem:
<http://www.joinbunch.com/group/28/startups/1/>
Still, I find it unclear if the goal is to meet people online or offline..? Or
why I would like to meet someone sharing the same
religion/book/movies/job/etc... My startup buddies don't share all the same
religions, and my starcraft buddies don't share my startup enthusiast.. but so
what?
If the goal is to meet new people sharing your passion, just join the next
meetup or events related to that passion..
If the goal is to meet new people _online_ sharing your passion then.. I guess
that's an interesting problem to tackle. There are lots of verticals going
after this (I.e. finding a fitness buddy). The only difference with yours
would be "having all these in the same feed". Is that enough of a value
proposition?
A friend of mine created something that could clearly hit that market idea..
still unclear if he wants to go in that direction.
~~~
talhof8
The goal is to replace those big numbers of "friends" in your social networks,
with your true friends and people that interest you, if you become their
friend - it's even better.
------
cupcake-unicorn
This would be great, if you could pull it off. I'm stuck in a bad situation
like this - most sites connecting you to a single person are dating oriented,
and that is HELL as a female user, and otherwise I have made a little bit of
use of meetup.com and couchsurfing.org, but I do find it lacking. The issues
with meetup.com is that you have to tolerate sometimes awful group meetups,
and one person will come every time and be really awkward or something...I'm
much better person to person. When I've used OkCupid to meet people, guys
assume they're on a date and start doing a ton of inappropriate crap even
though we're just meeting for coffee. Would love to see the niche filled, and
please see if you can do what you can for gender balancing/creepers, which is
a huge problem for female users of such sites.
~~~
talhof8
Thanks!
------
csmatt
I've been working on <http://www.socialocale.com> . It's interest and location
based. Judges at Startup Weekend hated it. What do you guys think? Is it worth
pursuing? Here's a screenshot of what it looks like on the inside
<http://imgur.com/ciPp9pA>
------
harlox
I would avoid calling it a social network, simply because of the increasing
"social network fatigue." Even when fatigue isn't tangible (and I don't think
it yet is for social networks) it can mean the difference between a potential
user visiting your site and possibly signing up, or never even clicking the
link.
------
cleis
I think this sounds really cool. It would be really interesting to get REALLY
specific into your interests and see if anyone matched up with you.
It's great that it's not designed to be a dating site, I take it there'll be
no pictures or 'how would you describe your body type?' data fields, then?
~~~
talhof8
Thanks! LOL no "body type" things. I'm still in looking to come up with more
features, but I'm not sure weather you'll be able to press a button saying
"find me a friend" like dating sites do, that matches you up. I'd love to
discuss over your ideas/everything you'd like to see in the site via email as
well - contact AT interestin.co
------
syed123
We think we are on track with <http://www.LetsLunch.com> to cater to people
meeting during lunch hour. It is a least friction way for you to meet new
people. Tell us what you think about it? so far 12,000 lunches setup and going
up!
------
tejay
I remember PG interviewing Zuck for Startup School 2012, and Zuck mentioning
that while Facebook solved the "How to connect with existing friends" problem,
it wasn't really focused on solving the "How to meet new friends" problem. So,
nice work!
~~~
talhof8
Thanks :)
------
GuiA
Interesting concept, I'm looking forward to the first release.
> it's not a dating site
The skeptic in me says that if it works to some scale, it will quickly become
one :)
~~~
talhof8
Thanks for your feedback! It's one of my biggest concerns actually. I really
don't want it to become another dating site. Using your (the users) help and
feedback, I'll try to get pass this.
~~~
hasenj
Actually it would be nice if it becomes "implicitly" a dating site, but not
explicitly.
Just like how in real life you can hang out with a mixed group of people where
implicitly/secretly everyone knows a part of it is fishing for a relationship.
But explicitly and on the surface it's only about finding friends and like
minded people.
~~~
GuiA
The problem is that offline, there is an implicit vetting system.
I.e. if in your group of friends, one of the guy is always trying to hook up
with a different girl everytime, quickly people will stop inviting him to
events.
However, some social networks that have become "implicit dating websites"
(meetup.com comes to my mind to some extent), there is no such self-regulatory
system.
------
iterationx
If you want to meet new people is the solution really to spend EVEN MORE time
on the computer?
~~~
talhof8
I see your point and tend to agree. The right title is "I'm trying to meet new
people online" except it's too long. I'd like to try and make social
networking more efficient so people will spend even less time online. We'll
out it'll work.
------
GotAnyMegadeth
I'm interested
~~~
talhof8
Thanks! For any question please don't hesitate to contact me via contact AT
interestin.co or even via Quora (see the link posted on the blog)
------
jdori
Sounds like Reddit++ to me
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tech Industry Needs Female Quotas Now - waitwhat
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sue-black/tech-industry-needs-femal_b_953817.html
======
petercooper
As does the childcare industry. 2% of people in the childcare industry (in the
UK) are men. I suspect this sort of experience early in many children's lives
causes more significant gender relationship issues than when they hit the
workplace.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: First time in 4 years I lost interest working for startup. What do I do? - denverdevguy
I have worked at the same startup for 4 years now. During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore. I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.<p>I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks. But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.<p>What do I do? How do you deal with this?
======
twobyfour
Most people in the world do not in fact feel a burning connection with the
mission of the company they work for.
That's really ok.
Now you've figured out what you really do care about (or at least a piece of
it) - spending time with the people you love. In many ways that's a far
healthier perspective to have on life.
So keep going to work and doing your job because, hey, you've got to pay the
rent. If the only reason you're at this particular job is the company's
mission, then start looking around for a place that pays more or has a better
culture, or where you can learn more interesting things.
And in the meantime, keep doing a good job simply because you take pride in
your work, and most hiring managers outside the weird "have to be passionate"
startup scene will be glad to hire you.
~~~
CamonZix
>"have to be passionate"
That's just code for willing to take less pay.
~~~
throwaway2048
Not to mention dozens of hours a week of unpaid overtime.
------
dougmwne
I think you could still have burnout. You don't have to be cranking 80 hours
weeks to get it. I've seen people burned out with fairly easy, low stress
jobs. Burnout can come from overwork, underwork, the wrong work, the wrong
mission, the wrong co-workers or management. The critical element is always
time. The first thing to go is the excitement.
Not to knock TV, but it is an escape. I know someone who used to get jealous
of rocks(they get to just lay there). If you heal the burnout, you should
start to feel your passions and motivations come back.
------
taway_1212
> During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or
> it's mission anymore.
I've reached that stage at 23, after about a year into my first job. Since
then, I've been working for the money.
~~~
manyxcxi
There's nothing wrong with working for the money, nearly everyone is actually
just working for the money unless they're independently wealthy and working
for no salary.
The difference is this: some people use "I'm just working for the money" as an
excuse for apathy and doing just enough not to be fired. It doesn't have to be
that way, if you reframe your personal mission to do as well as you can at the
things that are within your control you'll likely find that the quality of
your work and job satisfaction goes up.
If I kept my satisfaction based on my employer's goals I'd still be making
1/10 of what I make today working on a system that is just now getting
upgraded to Java 7 and would know nothing about anything else.
~~~
taway_1212
The problem is that programming work nowadays is structured in a way that
prohibits developing any kind of intrinsic goals or motivation. People like us
(HN folks) thrive on autonomy and mastery, while we work on tiny and closely
monitored "stories" in garbage codebases.
~~~
manyxcxi
There is a simple beauty to finding the best solution you can given the
constraints of the system, and often that's the garbage pile that is the old
codebase.
The simple truth is that for every greenfield project we get in life, there's
probably 30 brownfield projects. A lot of big enterprise developers may never
once see a greenfield project. I sure didn't when I was on a product team.
If you want new you may find agency life fun. The downside is that if you love
building new and are proud to watch things evolve gracefully you'll feel
frustrated that you never get time to 'finish' the code. Also it's fucking
chaos 24/7\. I loved it. It will destroy you if you can't manage the always
under the gun feeling though.
------
salesguy222
Make enough money that you can invest most of it into a relatively safe
trading strategy.
Once that investment allows you to withdraw 1-2k per month, quit your job.
You will now be paid enough money to fulfill the costs of sitting at home and
watching TV with your girlfriend indefinitely.
No need to worry about working, products, bugs, etc :)
~~~
velaru7
Any tips on how to get started doing this?
~~~
salesguy222
Howdy pal, yes absolutely I can think of some tips!!
Most people will tell you about the 4% rule, which to me roughly means "the
percentage of your portfolio that you can withdraw every year without
decreasing your portfolio's original value (principal)"
4% is on average what you could roughly expect to make yearly from your
portfolio after taxes, inflation, and abnormally bad losses
It's a decent rule, but most people don't have a portfolio that is generating
between 12,000 and 24,000 USD per year. You would need to have 300-600k
invested!! That's not common for under 30 year olds.
So, you would need to either find a part time online job that you can do while
sitting at home or the beach or what have you. Or partake in riskier trading
strategies, such as day trading actual stocks or ETFs. This all becomes a bit
of a time and happiness sink, so beware :)
1-2k per month in income is actually quite high by the way. There are places
all over the county and the world where 1-2k is more than most people make per
month, and they live just fine.
All about perspective!
~~~
velaru7
Good stuff thanks
------
douche
This is normal. You just show up, do what you need to do for your 40 hours,
collect your paychecks, and go home to do what you actually want to do. Find
meaning outside of work. At the same time, you need to have the discipline to
keep doing a good job at work - just don't expect it to be an all-consuming,
fulfilling purpose of your life.
The dirty secret is that most of us are building software that doesn't really
need to exist. It's hard to stay super-passionate about it, especially as you
get older and more experienced.
~~~
a3n
> The dirty secret is that most of us are building software that doesn't
> really need to exist.
... and won't, after some small number of months or years.
------
sb8244
This is something I'm very sensitive to because I don't want to find myself in
the same situation for long. I have felt it over time, but I've personally
found success in:
Reflecting on why I first got into software development (SaaS for me). Am I
still achieving those things? If not, I probably won't enjoy what I'm doing.
I have seen teams become more disengaged when everything comes top down, even
if the top is a team lead. I have found success in empowering myself and
others to look for things that they believe are important and work that into
their schedule. I would never hold this against anyone as long as they don't
go totally rouge.
Tldr; Reflect on yourself, your goals, and where you want to be. Are you there
or not? If not, it doesn't mean your job is necessarily at fault. Sometimes
the only person who will get you out of a rut is you.
------
CyberFonic
I agree with other HNers who are suggesting taking a break. It really does
look like burn-out.
You could look at how you viewed the startup when you joined. What excited
you, how you felt that you were contributing to the vision. Then look at how
and when that changed. Did the management change? Were a couple of unrealistic
deadlines missed? After 4 years have you had a salary increase? Is it the
still the same product or have there been pivots? Has the market not
materialised? How about further investment? In 4 years things have probably
changed and maybe you have ignored the signs that are now troubling you
subconsciously.
------
partisan
After 4 years, I have to imagine your startup has matured to the point where
you are no longer feeling like you can make a significant impact. It's
diminishing returns for your cognitive output from here on out unless the
company has a reason to invest in a large R&D project and you get to work on
it.
You can either come to terms with working on problems that motivate you
sufficiently or you can hit the road and find your happiness elsewhere.
------
edimaudo
You can deal with it in many ways. First, you need to ask yourself a few
question. Why did the thought occur to you? Where you having a shitty weak,
did you have a bad day or is the product genuinely bad? When you answer this
your next steps should be talking to someone higher up to voice your concerns
assuming there is something wrong with the product. If it is not the product
then take some time off as you sound stressed. Don't do any ounce of office
work just do something fun.
------
dsg42
This may be redundant advice based on what you've already done, but I would
suggest you go on a 2+ week vacation. It's often easy, after being at a
startup for a while, to not really feel like you can actually unplug
completely, and it sounds like it's time for you to do that. A couple weeks
away from everything will give you clarity on the situation, and you'll come
back either refreshed and ready to work, or clear on the fact that you need a
new job.
~~~
sb8244
What strategies do you take to be an active contributor to the situation while
on vacation? Do you reflect on certain things, avoid others?
I'm wary against a physical solution (take a vacation) without advice on
mental and emotional components that will need addressed over time. I believe
a person will get into a cycle if they only use physical solutions to
something which isn't that clear cut.
Taking a vacation isn't bad advice, but I'd be wary about doing so without the
explicit goal to figure the situation out and not hoping it just happens
~~~
dsg42
The key point of taking a longer vacation is to do the exact opposite of what
you just said - you have to truly, completely disconnect from the situation at
work. What helps you do this best is different for different people. For some
people the best way to do this is to go backpacking or hang out on a beach,
for others its a couple weeks hanging out with their kids. My sister prefers
to work on a project - usually knitting or sowing something - full time.
What this gives you is a fresh perspective when you get back. If it's time to
move on, you'll be dreading coming back to work, thinking how stupid your
project is or how much you hate your coworkers. Maybe you'll realize you're
incredibly excited about something else.
Some people really need to journal to think their way through these things,
but others just don't. Again, the process is totally individual. But I think
you'll be surprised how much perspective you get removing yourself from the
situation.
~~~
CyberFonic
I have done this 2+ week vacation approach. I basically chose to chill out and
forget about work (as much as I could). When I got back, I was struck by the
absurdity of the situation and quit soon after. Ever heard about the boiled
frog analogy? You take a frog, put it into a pot of cold water and slowly turn
the heat up. Being warm and cosy the poor thing doesn't realise that the water
has gotten too hot until too late. Shuffling off to work is like that, you
don't notice the slow increase in temperature until you are well done. Taking
a vacation is like hopping out of the tepid water and then dipping a toe in
later and realising just how hot the water has become.
------
jostylr
Work for the money while exploring and enjoying boredom. Save lots of money,
position yourself (or keep positioned) to get good recommendations from your
team. Don't burn bridges.
If you don't eventually get inspired to do something else, take a long break,
possibly quitting, and embrace the emptiness even more. Eventually, something
should catch your heart.
Be open to totally new directions.
Also, 4 years is typically the time to start moving on from a company that you
are not going to stay for a long, long time.
~~~
criddell
If the company he is at still calls itself a startup, then he's likely working
for potential future money.
My advice would be to find a new job that pays well, involves something that
you care about, or will require a great deal of learning.
------
WalterSear
It's burnout.
Feeling the same pain with you right now.
~~~
Clubber
Yup. Perfect example of burnout. He doesn't care because he's burned out of
it. Pretty common. As a warning, the longer you are in that situation, the
longer it takes to get out of it; just like gaining weight.
>During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's
mission anymore.
Burnout.
>I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything
else.
Burnout.
>I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks.
It's burnout.
~~~
jventura
It doesn't have necessarily to be burnout! For instance, I would also rather
do an hundred million things than working.. It may be just a part of "growing"
(as in moving along)
------
TylerJewell
I am founder / CEO of Codenvy, project lead for Eclipse Che, and also sit on
the board of directors for WSO2, Sauce Labs, Eclipse Foundation, and Shift
Mobility. My career in technology has spanned 25 years. I still code and am a
partner in a venture capital company (Toba Capital) along with doing angel
investments periodically. I love the challenging mashup of being very
technical with building businesses / products / markets.
I have felt burn out three times in my career. In each case, I had to
disassociate myself from obligations for an indeterminate amount of time. It
was essentially a responsibility "detox". When faced with the prospects of no
obligations ... which ultimately lead to the prospect of utter boredom ... did
new opportunities and enthusiasm to pursue them materialize.
The last phase of burn out allowed me to quit Oracle for which I was an exec
for a (very) short tenure, begin foolishly day trading, and ultimately lead me
to investing and market opportunities that lead to the creation of Codenvy in
2012.
Burn out caused Codenvy to exist.
------
Sancty
This is something I'm currently working through as well. As one of the
founder, it's not a situation where I can (or would) get up and go. For me
there's obviously a passion for what we do and what we've accomplished. On the
other hand, it feels like the cartoon where the carrot is being dangled in
front of the horse.
Lately, I've been doing a lot more meditation. I'm trying to be as regular as
possible with (at least 2x a day). It's helped quite a bit with feeling
overwhelmed which is the biggest contributor to that sense of apathy.
The other thing I've been doing is working on a framework for creating a good
work/life balance. As a side project, I'm trying to build a small desktop app
that makes it easy to follow the framework. Ideally though, the goal is be
presence when I'm working and focus wholly on that work. When I'm not "at
work" to turn that off. Not having that off switch is something that seriously
exhausts me.
------
tmaly
While you are still there, reframe your thoughts. Is there some interesting CS
problem you can solve within the context of that startup that would be
applicable to other industries?
Do they allow open source? If they do you could always start something that
benefits them but under your own git account. It benefits you in terms of
marketing yourself and your skills.
------
user5994461
> I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore. I would rather be
> watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.
> But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.
Welcome to the world of adults.
We work to live, we don't live to work ;)
It's alright, you can have a job in the day and be with your girlfriend the
rest of the time.
------
petters
I think it is quite common to want to spend time with your significant other
instead of working. To call that burned out is to exaggerate the problem.
I think you should apply to other jobs, just to see what your options are.
------
orschiro
There is nothing wrong with quitting, relaxing and even doing nothing. It is
only in the perception of society that these activities are of lesser
importance but they do not have to be yours.
------
thewhitetulip
I'd say take a break from work, go travel somewhere with your gf, come back
and see how you feel.
If you still feel the same, then stop working at a startup and work at some
established company.
Good luck!
------
hamstercat
Taking a break always helped me when I was in lull. That being said, after 4
years I think your feelings are perfectly normal.
If being fully engaged at work is something you need to be happy, then maybe a
change is in order. Otherwise, as you said you're not doing insane amounts of
overtime, simply having a job that you don't hate and pays the bills might be
enough. Ultimately you have to ask yourself what you want from your job.
------
reiderrider
Have this tough conversation with the founder. You may provide insight (maybe
the mission needs tweaking). It sounds like a lose/lose for you and the
company now. See if the conversation can create a win/win or look for another
job.
------
DrNuke
Find an industry you care (or like at least) and go vertical, that is to say
use your skills for that field. You will still have bad days at office, but
faith losing more probably not.
------
divbit
If you work 40 hours a week, it's not putting you at risk, and you are getting
a reasonable salary, that sounds pretty decent to me (just some words of
encouragement) :)
------
pards
Find a company that is interesting to you and reach out to them directly to
see if they'd be interested in bringing you on board.
------
dkarapetyan
Take a break and if you still don't care find something else. Pretty simple
really.
------
Elect2
>I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore.
Why?
~~~
gtirloni
That's a good question but I would try to answer it after some time off,
looking back with more objective eyes.
------
Nelson69
How old are you and do you need to "believe?"
When I was younger, I couldn't really push hard and work really hard unless I
believed in the mission. I had to have that passion fuel to do it. It's fun,
it feels good when it's there, it's like being in love in a way. And I'd do
'heroic' stuff because of it. I've found, personally, that that passion fuel
is more like adrenaline than actual fuel though. It tends to dry up after a
while; I think this is do to life changes, if you're in a relationship or
having a child or something like that, those things just dramatically outweigh
"building some app" or learning some new tech. At this point in my life
(married with a couple kids) I get buzzed about startup opportunities and
stuff, but I don't think there is any code that will come close to what my
family brings me in terms of that passion. You've made it 4 years so I'd guess
you're not running on passion alone.
For a while, I tried to be really unemotional about work, I just wanted to be
a professional and do that job. Honestly, I can do this, I know some people
cannot. I enjoy making software, regardless of the project I can usually find
aspects to enjoy and just enjoy the craft. You really don't need to give a
shit to fix some bugs, at least I don't, they pay me and I do the work. That
too tends to result in my relative unhappiness after a while; I feel like
certain creative aspects aren't being honored if I'm just doing the job; also
when the rest of my life is in disorder it's more difficult to find any
satisfaction in just being a professional.
It's going to sound cliche but it's really all about balance, at least for me
it is. I try to place the passion more directly in the craft and technology.
I'm passionate about building great teams. I'm passionate about working with
those teams as a team, I really love seeing others grow. I like my current
company's mission and it's something I can get really passionate about but I
try not to get too bent about the details and specifics. Something else which
in ways feels bad to say and it took me a while to really admit it: I'm kind
of passionate about financial successes, my company is making money and that
cures a lot of the little things for me. I've worked on my priorities a lot
and I know that I'd rather be part of something that we build in to success
rather than having my product vision completely realized and fail. Boot
strapping a start up can be remarkably emotional, you work close with people,
you get close, product passions rather than craft passions can make it really
difficult. You want some passion and you want to be a pro at the same time and
you want to balance those things and it's probably a life long learning
exercise to continually tweak them.
Take a real vacation, turn off your phones and devices, spend some time away
from it all and then look at it again.
------
jjt-yn_t
From bitter experience, TV engrosses one such that it is in effect one's
primary HR, lead tech, and union representative rolled into one, each with
double pay for being remote not local by the opposite-side-of-the-nation CEO.
You may be misled into not devoting your time away from the workplace into
bringing in new features you have crafted while the TV was off, into the
morning re-introduction of you to your coworkers. [ not to be critical, but
advising not to make the mistake I seem to have made in TV usage ]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brouwer–Hilbert controversy - drnewman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer%E2%80%93Hilbert_controversy
======
ocfnash
For a long time, I used to dismiss intuitionism but more recently I've come to
find it an attractive standpoint.
For one thing, you really only gain by trying to be constructive. If, in some
logical system without LEM (law of excluded middle), you cannot find a proof
of P without using LEM, you still have a result, namely you can prove LEM ->
P. You haven't really lost anything! Furthermore, I have often been surprised
just how far you can go without LEM. Very often in fact.
Finding constructive proofs can feel very much akin to removing an unnecessary
dependency from a codebase. Also, even if ultimately, you do need LEM
somewhere it is often possible to factor it into the "right" place in the
proof rather than globally just sticking `LEM ->` at the front of the whole
proof.
Also, if you care about, first order logic then in fact you should love
intuintionistic logic: it is a finer logic that actually contains first order
logic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
negation_translation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-
negation_translation)
Lastly, though I have yet to understand this better, constructive proofs seem
to be enjoy better computational properties under Curry-Howard.
~~~
gnulinux
You can construct basically the entire undergrad algebra (vector space, group,
ring, field, Galois, module theories) without LEM. LEM shines in algebraic
geometry though (thanks to Hilbert).
Practically, intuitionistic logic has a lot of applications to computer
science thanks to Curry-Howard.
Philosophically, soundness of LEM depends on where one originates the source
of mathematics. If you're like Kant (or Brouwer) then LEM would make little
sense since the source of mathematics, just like any other cognitive ability,
is human cognition which exists independent of abstractions of the outer
world. But, even without being a Platonist (like Godel) if mathematics has any
sort of external source (e.g. abstracting the world or being a good
abstraction of the world) then it's really hard to argue against LEM, although
some epistemological arguments exist.
~~~
YorkshireSeason
soundness of LEM depends on
where one originates the
source of mathematics
I disagree!
One of Goedel's many great contributions was the double-negation translation
(later refined by others), and what it does is show that (simplifying a bit)
intuitionistic logic and classical logic are _equiconsistent_! In other words:
any contradiction you can derive in classical logic, you can convert into a
contradiction in intuitionistic logic. (The reverse direction is trivial
because all intuitionistic proof principles are also classical.)
------
protonfish
This is fascinating, but only if you hold faith in inherent truth of
mathematical symbolism. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard dogma of
mathematicians, though I haven't seen significant evidence necessary to
warrant this belief.
If you understand mathematics and logic as merely a formalized language of
symbols then you can judge those systems on certain qualities (complexity,
clarity, expressiveness, etc.) but not "truth." The creation of a logical
expression analogous to a natural phenomenon should instead use the methods of
science hypotheses and testing.
~~~
popnroll
I'm really clueless about logic and mathematics theory, but isn't this the
Gödel's incompleteness theorem?
~~~
protonfish
No, the incompleteness theorem only examines how formal systems relate to
themselves, not to reality. It shows that no significantly expressive system
can be designed that won't allow paradoxical statements.
~~~
mietek
_> It shows that no significantly expressive system can be designed that won't
allow paradoxical statements._
The above is a complete misrepresentation of Gödel’s second incompleteness
theorem.
The theorem holds for any _sufficiently expressive_ system, where the term
‘sufficiently expressive’ has a precise formal meaning[1]. Moreover, it is not
the case that any sufficiently expressive system must be inconsistent! The
theorem could perhaps be paraphrased as ‘no sufficiently expressive
_consistent_ system can _prove its own consistency_ ’[2], as long as we are
prepared to explain what ‘its own’ really means.
Importantly, there are systems that do not allow paradoxical statements, and
are nevertheless quite expressive, in an informal sense. For example, any
dependently typed[3] total functional programming language[4], such as
Agda[5], Coq[6], Idris[7], or Lean[8].
All of these languages are designed to be consistent. Of course,
implementation bugs do happen[9].
If you would like to learn more about dependent types, ‘The Little Typer’[10]
is newly out and a lot of fun to read. For an accessible introduction to the
concept of total functional programming, see Turner 2004[11].
[1] Hilbert-Bernays provability conditions,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert–Bernays_provability_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert–Bernays_provability_conditions)
[2] Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theorems#Second_incompleteness_theorem)
[3] Dependent type,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type)
[4] Total functional programming,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming)
[5] Agda programming language,
[http://agda.readthedocs.io](http://agda.readthedocs.io)
[6] Coq proof assistant, [http://coq.inria.fr](http://coq.inria.fr)
[7] Idris programming language, [http://www.idris-lang.org](http://www.idris-
lang.org)
[8] Lean theorem prover,
[http://leanprover.github.io](http://leanprover.github.io)
[9] The rise and fall of @proofmarket,
[https://twitter.com/i/moments/921153475836305408](https://twitter.com/i/moments/921153475836305408)
[10] Friedman, D.P., Christiansen, D.T. (2018) ‘The Little Typer’,
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-
typer](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-typer)
[11] Turner, D. (2004) ‘Total Functional Programming’,
[http://www.jucs.org/jucs_10_7/total_functional_programming](http://www.jucs.org/jucs_10_7/total_functional_programming)
~~~
commanderjroc
I like your paraphrase but I think it muddies the water. We really want to
prove that axioms of a system cannot be contradicted if the system is
inconsistent.
To be even more precise, the system or theory T proves that there is no number
n which provides a proof of contradiction for the axioms of T.
So its the axioms of the systems which all formal systems assume and hold to
be true. Basically its impossible to prove that axioms are true with the same
system.
In short, no formal system can define its own consistency because in order for
its axioms to be true, the system must be inconsistent.
------
danbruc
What exactly is the claim here with regard to the law of excluded middle?
Maybe somewhat naively it seems rather obvious to me that the law of excluded
middle can be true or false depending on what objects you are dealing with.
Maybe not the best possible example but in classical mechanics a particle is
either inside a region R or it is not inside region R while in quantum
mechanics the particle may be inside region R or it may not be inside region R
or it may be somewhat inside region R.
It seems rather obvious that the logic you are using has to match the behavior
of the objects you are applying the logic to or you will of course end up with
wrong conclusions. If we change the example a bit, the particle is in region R
with probability zero or the particle is in region R with a probability larger
than zero, then we again have a case where the set of possibilities is nicely
partitioned into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive sets, probability zero
and probability not zero. But I guess I am missing something or there wouldn't
be a lot of smart people fighting over the issue.
~~~
ratmice
I believe there are a couple of different claims being made in the above, I
went ahead and just made a gist with some proofs (in lean) that try and hit
some of the points about usage of law of excluded middle, double negation
translation
you should be able to copy/paste it into
[https://leanprover.github.io/live/latest/](https://leanprover.github.io/live/latest/)
[https://gist.github.com/ratmice/21f069b5811d1c40911850cb690a...](https://gist.github.com/ratmice/21f069b5811d1c40911850cb690a5b5e)
~~~
danbruc
Thanks for the effort but unfortunately for me the page just says running and
nothing ever happens, especially no output at all. Not even for the small
example included by default.
But besides that I did not really want to make any claims and certainly
nothing that could be easily addressed by a proof, I think. My point was more
that one has to take care that the type of logic one uses has to fit together
with the domain one wants to reason about with that logic. If in the domain
you want to reason about the law of excluded middle does not hold or only does
so in a non-straight forward way, then using a logic with law of excluded
middle will at least be not as easy as it could be or even painful or in the
worst case lead to wrong conclusions.
~~~
ratmice
personally, I will generally just want to construct some artifact which has
some property, e.g. the proof is a program to construct something. Where a
classical proof doesn't give you this program, it merely states that such a
property holds. Which is perfectly fine if that is what you want to know.
------
User23
The invention of computing automata and the techniques required to program
them, such as defining semantics, settles this issue concretely in favor of
Hilbert.
~~~
joel_ms
How so? I've always felt that intuitionism/constructivism were closer to
theoretical computer science due to constructivism requiring you to produce
(or compute) the what you're trying to prove.
~~~
User23
Dijkstra and Scholten's [https://www.amazon.com/Predicate-Calculus-Semantics-
Monograp...](https://www.amazon.com/Predicate-Calculus-Semantics-Monographs-
Computer/dp/1461279240) is a good example of what I mean.
The state space is far too large to show a program is correct by constructing
all possible processes it could execute. Instead you must show that the
program admits no incorrect processes whatsoever, and as far as I know
mathematical formalism is the only possible way to do that.
Of course if one just wants to make money, formal correctness is observably of
absolutely no importance. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to make
money!
~~~
Firadeoclus
From Wikipedia: > Brouwer the intuitionist in particular objected to the use
of the Law of Excluded Middle over infinite sets
It always seems to me that using the LEM over infinite sets is akin to
claiming that all problems are decidable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Most used programming languages in California? - aogl
When looking through Software Engineering jobs in California, the greater majority of roles tend to lean towards Java and Javascript.<p>Is this a true reflection? As all the programming indexes tend to talk about Python being the most used throughout.<p>Or is this only in the areas of DevOps and Data Science still?
======
sarcasmatwork
yes, Normal. I.E FB creating React...
AFAIK, python has dominance in AI/ML land too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In pursuit of tortoise smugglers - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/02/in-pursuit-of-the-tortoise-smugglers-madagascar-trafficking-endangered-species
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
That article smacked so much of colonialism and foreign interference. Foreign
donors create an organization that goes around giving orders to the Madagascar
police so that they can put more if their citizens in prison. I bet if we
looked closely at these poaching laws, I bet they also were heavily influenced
by foreign money and pressure as well.
It seems like many NGO's believe that brown people don't know how to place the
correct priority on their wildlife so the try to use their overwhelming
resources to defacto control the government.
Can you imagine the outrage if an foreign organization came in and told the
FBI how they should run their investigations and demanded a representative
always be with them to make sure they are doing what the NGO wants?
~~~
kurthr
Aren't the foreign smugglers/buyers just as colonial and interfering... only
they do it with different money to a different group of desperate people. Once
you accept that it's ok for foreign money to align the goals of "brown
people", it's not that strange that NGOs and with their diabolical support of
anti-poaching laws would compete with smugglers. It's not property rights,
because I see nothing to show that those tortoises were rightfully gained
rather than grabbed off of public or even other's private lands.
Why find one worse than the other?
Why support corrupt cops more than those enforcing the law?
Why support Thai over Israeli?
p.s. I can read about a foreign power covertly using money and propaganda to
control the FBI in the Washington Post.
~~~
jstanley
I don't have strong opinions either for or against poaching animals, but:
> It's not property rights, because I see nothing to show that those tortoises
> were rightfully gained rather than grabbed off of public or even other's
> private lands.
People are innocent until proven guilty.
I might see nothing to show that your shirt was rightfully gained rather than
grabbed off a member of the public or even another's private land, but you've
got no obligation to show me that. If I want to interfere, the obligation is
upon me to show that it is stolen.
~~~
kurthr
We arent talking about someone's pet. If it was illegal to ship shirts without
a license, and I'm shipping hundreds of them dangerously packed in a huge
suitcase... then maybe it is my obligation. Who's to say they aren't carrying
salmonella and it infects someone on the plane?
For example you can't take more than $10k in cash out of the US (or into most
countries) without declaring it. Is that an example of colonialism?
~~~
jstanley
Being illegal to ship shirts without a licence, and illegal to ship more than
$10k without declaring it, are both perfect examples of invasive regulations
making criminals out of harmless members of the public.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project - gkolli
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/11/20910330/mastercard-stripe-ebay-facebook-libra-association-withdrawal-cryptocurrency
======
lucasverra
David Marcus update [1] :
Special thanks to @Visa and @Mastercard for sticking it out until the 11th
hour. The pressure has been intense (understatement), and I respect their
decision to wait until there’s regulatory clarity for @Libra_ to proceed, vs.
the invoked threats (by many) on their biz.
I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course,
it’s not great news in the short term, but in a way it’s liberating. Stay
tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you’re on
to something when so much pressure builds up.
[1][https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/1182775728431087623](https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/1182775728431087623)
~~~
john_moscow
The fate of Libra isn't tied to Visa/Mastercard's withdrawal. It's ultimately
about whether there is a market for a new mechanism for international money
transfers.
As someone who runs a business that has (small) offices both in EU and North
America, let me share a quick overview of the current state of things.
When you want to transfer a non-trivial amount of money between 2 countries,
you have likely received it in the originating country's currency and are
planning to spend it in the destination currency. Now because you don't want
to pay ~3% currency exchange fees to your bank, the only reasonable way to do
this is to get an account with a business forex broker, that will offer you a
rate in the ballpark of 0.5% off the spot price. You will have to do the
KYC/AML [0], but the complexity of the whole transfer is basically this:
1\. Do a domestic wire to your broker's office in the originating economic
zone.
2\. Wait for them to call you and confirm the exchange rate.
3\. Receive a domestic wire from the broker's office in the destination
economic zone.
You often need to show the invoices/contracts showing the origin of the funds
and the purpose of the transfer, but if you are running a legitimate business
that pays taxes, you will need those for accounting reasons anyway.
Now the 0.5% fee charged by the forex trader (that is bound to a bunch of
rules and regulations making it harder for it to run away with your funds) is
not worth putting your trust into a fully automated distributed ledger, where
a lost password or a hacked computer could permanently eat away your money
without any legal recourse.
So the only potential audience of a new international coin would be people
actively trying to evade KYC/AML and that's exactly why the governments will
do their best to prevent it from getting adoption (which is very easy since
you can outright ban the fiat endpoints in your jurisdiction).
On the other end, there's a bunch of people who have never written a response
to an AML inquiry and have hardly done any business outside of their own
state, that are hoping to get rich quick by grabbing a stake at something they
haven't fully researched and later reselling it at a profit to someone who
will actually need it. I wouldn't see any reason for it to be successful long-
term, sorry.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer)
~~~
lyqwyd
What do you consider non-trivial?
I transfer money to Africa on a regular basis, and I don’t have these same
issues other than the difference between published exchange rate and realized,
which is about 1-1.5%. Transfer fees are minimal.
I transfer about $3,000 per month, but no I could go up to at least $10K
without issue. Occasionally it can have a bit of a delay, but normally it
closes in less than a minute, and I get email and text updates on the status,
no calls needed.
~~~
trakout
Which service, something like transferwise?
~~~
kevinyun
I recently tried helping someone transfer $10k from US to different country.
Only after signing up, filling in all the details, and going through the
entire process, was there an error message that showed a Max of $800 could be
transferred.
I then just advised to use their local bank's wire transfer, which they had to
visit in person at the local branch, as they had originally intended.
Nowhere in my Google searches and Transferwise articles did I see any
limitations upfront. Nor did I figure out how to raise these limits after
searching post-filling-out-everything.
Very disappointed to say the least. But if anyone knows if I can raise the
limit, would be happy to try this again.
~~~
sumedh
Is this some account specific limit or a country specific limit?
------
lacker
I hope this doesn't cause Facebook to give up on Libra.
I personally have no desire to own Libra. But traditional bank accounts kind
of suck as a product and I would like to see more tech companies competing
with them.
The problems with bank accounts:
1\. They charge you fees for things
2\. They try to upsell me stupid financial products
3\. They are not easy to use in other countries
4\. Typing in my credit card number sucks
5\. Typing in my credit card number isn't secure
None of that has really gotten any better in the past ten years. It feels like
banks have mostly given up on making their product better. Instead of
improving their product, they just buy more expensive retail locations.
I would probably rather use a financial product produced by Google, Microsoft,
or Amazon than a financial product produced by Facebook. I just don't want the
rules to end up being, big tech companies are not permitted to compete with
crappy banks.
~~~
NeedMoreTea
Do you _really_ think a Facebook currency is not going to charge fees and
upsell you left, right and centre the first moment they think they can get
away with it? That's as well as targeting advertising and selling data of your
spending patterns.
~~~
lacker
It's not that I think the Libra product is going to be fantastic per se. I
just think that competition will force all the companies to make their
products better. I don't want the government to prevent companies from making
products, I want to be able to choose of my own free will whether it's a good
product or not.
~~~
NeedMoreTea
My difficulty is, at heart, I don't want my tokens of exchange to be a
_product_ at all. I want the guarantee of universality that comes with money.
Accessible to rich and poor alike, good credit or bad. Anything that tries to
edge that out via the market is inherently a bad thing. Ultimately for all
except stockholders. A central bank backed cryptocurrency with all the traits
of universality and legal tender may be a better bet...
I am fully in favour of the various new banking services and apps that are
springing up, services to manage, transfer, save and invest better etc. That's
an appropriate place for the market. Even there it's needed regulation to
ensure the most marginal in society can get a basic bank account, or not get
stiffed on fees.
~~~
bobbyd3
^ this
------
aazaa
> A Visa spokesperson told The Verge. “Visa has decided not to join the Libra
> Association at this time,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to
> evaluate and our ultimate decision will be determined by a number of
> factors, including the Association’s ability to fully satisfy all requisite
> regulatory expectations.”
I suspect the regulatory pushback was the least of the problem. These
companies (and PayPal) have everything to lose and nothing to gain by helping
to advance Libra. The entire business model is to capture value from financial
system friction. Eliminating the friction eliminates their reason for being.
It's a classic innovator's dilemma: the action that will save these companies
is building the thing that will destroy their business models. They can't do
it because established companies are set up to eject people persisting with
such notions. That leaves the field open for an out-of-left field solution
that does away with the friction and the business models it spawned.
The source of the friction is regulatory. AML. KYC. All the laws that deputize
financial institutions as extensions of law enforcement. It's quite expensive.
The only way to eliminate the friction is to eliminate the regulatory
liability. And that's what has been happening with Bitcoin for some time.
What is surprising was that these companies ever lent their names to the
project in the first place.
~~~
pmarreck
Open-source cryptocurrencies that (ideally) no single entity mainly profits
from, are still the future, IMHO.
I don't get why people would get excited about Libra who weren't already
excited by some other cryptocurrency.
Violate an arbitrary rule in financial institutions? Guilty until proven
innocent. (I have real-world experience, here)
Violate an arbitrary rule in crypto and... oh wait, crypto doesn't have rules
and doesn't judge your morality. (Neither does cash or gold, so be careful
about using this as an argument against it.)
~~~
lmm
> Violate an arbitrary rule in crypto and... oh wait, crypto doesn't have
> rules and doesn't judge your morality. (Neither does cash or gold, so be
> careful about using this as an argument against it.)
The argument goes through just the same? Cash, gold, cryptocurrencies and
bearer bonds are all popular with criminals and crazies.
------
john_moscow
Call me cynical, but the whole idea of Libra would be disruptive to the
existing international payment businesses, such as the ones that just exited.
So the only reason for them to join in the first place would be to basically
"know your enemy" \- make certain you get the first-person intel on the
project's vitals and to know what to expect. Now that a couple of governments
made it clear that there would be roadblocks in deploying Libra according to
the original roadmap, it is no longer seen as a threat, so anyone without a
direct monetization interest (Facebook itself?) is going to leave.
~~~
snotrockets
And here I thought the whole idea of Libra is to take marketshare from WeChat
& M-Pesa.
~~~
jpwgarrison
Put more simply, it is about increasing total addressable market.
------
capocannoniere
I'd argue the outcome of this will be that Facebook will launch their own
payments infrastructure on top of WhatsApp. There was no need for crypto or a
Libra association to begin with.
According to the leaked Facebook all-hands audio, Facebook is already planning
to launch payments in Mexico by end of 2019
([https://qz.com/1719731/zuckerberg-confirms-facebook-
payment-...](https://qz.com/1719731/zuckerberg-confirms-facebook-payment-
tests-in-india-mexico-in-verge-leak/)).
I wouldn't be surprised if this goes extremely well for Facebook and WhatsApp
payments becomes WeChat Pay / AliPay for the rest of the world.
~~~
anonimouse5t43w
Just look at what Wechat is currently doing and you can get an idea of what
Facebook will be doing in the future.
------
CathedralBorrow
I wonder how much of this is companies distancing themselves from Facebook
rather than being purely about the cryptocurrency project.
~~~
Matthias247
On the other hand if it weren't facebook they likely would not even have been
interested in yet-another cryptocurrency. Especially if it's even not
available, but just a work-in-progress thing.
~~~
nostrademons
They've been interested for a while - Stripe used to accept Bitcoin, and
various Stripe employees have said they're watching developments in the space.
For that matter, a number of other big tech companies (notably Apple) said
they're watching the space.
I think the main issue is that cryptocurrency still has a few unsolved
research & regulatory problems (like how to handle more than 10 TPS, or how to
record taxes transparently) before it's ready for mainstream adoption. No big
company wants to take the risk that an unsolved research problem may not have
a solution, and so they wait and see how the space evolves rather than
committing large amounts of resources to it. (Other than FB, who has resources
to burn.) If it starts taking off they'll buy a bunch of startups and then
start throwing engineers at it; otherwise they risk nothing.
~~~
lawn
Cryptocurrencies do have scaling issues, but it's very easy to process more
than 10 TPS. Just because Bitcoin chose not to doesn't mean others cannot.
------
celticninja
The centralisation of Libra made it easy to kill. Bitcoin can be hampered but
not outright killed, at least not over night. A death by a thousand cuts is
the most likely solution but by no means guarantees Victory.
~~~
CamelCaseName
Bitcoin can be "killed" in the sense that it can become useless for the
99.99%.
Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate
its exchange.
At that point, Bitcoin would be essentially dead as a rival to any currency.
~~~
capableweb
> Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate
> its exchange.
This is commonly a argument for having drugs illegal too. "If we hunt them
down, eventually there will be no one left"
What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If
Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down?
Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole other can of worms, so
governments might not be able to simply outlaw it.
~~~
rifung
> What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger.
> If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down?
> Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole other can of worms,
> so governments might not be able to simply outlaw it.
It's not as though drugs became _more_ popular because they became illegal.
Prices may have gone up because they were harder to obtain and there's less
competition. Demand was still there because.. well people like doing drugs or
are addicted to them.
With Bitcoin, why would a business risk legal action to accept it? There's
very little incentive as far as I can tell.
~~~
rmilejczz
But they didn’t become less popular either, and instead continued to rise and
grow in popularity. That’s the point, outlawing it won’t stop it.
If bitcoins were illegal then I imagine they would probably only be used in
illegal transactions.
~~~
kebman
To clarify: Necessarily, if Bitcoin was illegal, any transaction with it would
of course be illegal. :p That isn't to say that any and all transactions made
with it, would be for the exchange of illegal goods. You can of course also
use Bitcoin for the exchange of _legal_ goods, but taking Bitcoin even for
legal goods, would hence be illegal. In any case, just like people speeding,
drinking moonshine, or enjoying marijuana where it's not allowed, I'm just as
sure that very few would care.
------
justinzollars
I'm actually kind of bummed out about this. I may not like FB, but I like the
idea of a digital currency backed by a floating basket of currencies.
~~~
echelon
Not one that isn't regulated and that is controlled by a company with a
penchant for walking the legal gray area line.
~~~
lazzlazzlazz
Let's remind ourselves that the entire point of the Calibra organization from
which these companies have withdrawn their applications is to decentralize the
governance of the coin.
Facebook would _not_ have unilateral control by any stretch of the
imagination.
~~~
throwaway_law
>Facebook would not have unilateral control by any stretch of the imagination.
At minimum they are the registered owner the Libra federal trademarks...that's
a funny first step for a "decentralized" project. Satoshi Nakamoto never
trademarked bitcoin or blockchain for that matter.
------
CodiePetersen
I'm actually glad it's dead/dying. It was always going to be controlled by an
elite group who answered to no one but themselves. They had the ability to
monitor all of your transactions and if they didn't like you they could roll
back or block your transactions.
People keep saying oh this is proof crypto can't ever work because government.
This was never a true crypto currency. It was just a private ledger tracking
where actual money went. It was a stable coin at best. Its centralization is
what got it killed.
~~~
xabotage
>They had the ability to monitor all of your transactions and if they didn't
like you they could roll back or block your transactions.
Unlike, what, my established credit card company which still blocks me
randomly when I'm traveling overseas even when I explicitly call their 800
hotline, sit on hold for 30 minutes, and tell some unempathetic worker "I'm
overseas, don't block me"? Yes, thank goodness libra is dying, otherwise there
might actually be some innovation against the exact things you just mentioned
which perfectly describe the current state of affairs.
(Edit) I think it's fair to not trust Facebook with your currency, but keep in
mind the players in the current system (governments, Banks, and credit
companies) have hardly proven more trustworthy.
~~~
SkyMarshal
_> Unlike, what, my established credit card company which still blocks me
randomly when I'm traveling overseas even when I explicitly call their 800
hotline, sit on hold for 30 minutes, and tell some unempathetic worker "I'm
overseas, don't block me"? Yes, thank goodness libra is dying, otherwise there
might actually be some innovation against the exact things you just mentioned
which perfectly describe the current state of affairs._
You should just get a new credit card or bank, whatever you're using is really
out of date. Most modern cards and banks have websites or phone apps you can
submit a travel notice on. Takes all of 2m and prevents you getting blocked
for charges in that country.
~~~
mark_l_watson
Or, get an American Express card. I got one four years ago and then went to
Singapore for a consulting gig. I called them to let them know where I would
be and was told to please not bother, that they expect their customers to
travel.
I was also really please last month to notice that Capital One didn’t charge
international transaction fees when I was in Canada.
------
jtms
There was absolutely no reason for this to project to exist. The only feature
of digital currencies that make __some __of them interesting is that they are
fully distributed and based on absolutely zero trust of other users on the
network. What Facebook was trying to do here was take something that could be
implemented in a standard centralized database, stick some marketing on it,
and try to ride a hype wave that has since (rightfully) died down.
~~~
southerndrift
How else can facebook prevent people from moving on to wechat with its
internal payment system? Why should people stick to facebook if wechat can
offer a whole bunch of services that need (micro) transactions?
~~~
vertex-four
Facebook can have an internal payment system that uses local currencies. There
is no reason it needs to create its own currency, except as a power grab.
Building out a Paypal clone is fine enough.
~~~
repolfx
How can it be a power grab, Libra was going to be at least an open system with
it's own wallet protocols and market for implementations. A WeChat style
system would be totally closed from the ground up.
~~~
vertex-four
No, it was going to be open to partners that Facebook picks and chooses. It
was very specifically not to be a fully decentralised blockchain, which
essentially means it's actually a big permissioned database, which the
database owners get to control.
------
jeremyjh
It looks like a misstep followed by a hasty and ignominious retreat because
thats exactly what happened - no one anticipated the reaction from lawmakers
and rules agencies.
Its kind of hard to see this from the perspective of people who follow tech
and HN, but Libra really may have been the first occasion that the possibility
of crypto as anything other than an investment instrument - e.g. an actual
usage as currency - penetrated the awareness of top national political
leadership. Yes the ICO's got some attention but in many ways that attention
seemed to suggest that crypto would be tolerated. And probably it will be, as
long as it is simply another category of asset.
It will not be tolerated as currency, and governments will destroy any crypto
that threatens to become one. For now, BTC is safe because its usage as a
currency is minuscule and threatens no one. If it were to become successful,
it will be destroyed. I've always known that was a possibility but now I'm
sure of it.
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _no one anticipated the reaction from lawmakers and rules agencies_
_Everyone_ should have anticipated that reaction. Finance is filled with
smart people trying to pull fast ones. Regulators and lawmakers are sensitive
to being blindsided, moreso with anti-money laundering.
The moment I saw the announcement I knew they screwed up. So did everyone in
D.C. who isn’t selling blockchain consulting. It was hamfistedly introduced by
the wrong people (Facebook) at the wrong time.
~~~
repolfx
That's a very D.C. mentality. In law there isn't meant to be a "wrong people"
or "wrong time". Either something is illegal, or it's not. But the rule of law
is very weak these days, especially given the huge bloat of regulations on the
book in America related to AML.
------
twright
I wonder what would have happened if Facebook had simply announced Libra and
released it a week later. Would the legislative backlash have been stronger?
Or would the quick release bring to light the (always preached about but not
always demonstrable) advantages of cryptocurrencies.
I'm not (yet) doubting that Libra will eventually be released, but I can see
it being shutdown before or sometime after release.
~~~
FillardMillmore
I think the legislative backlash would've been much stronger, and I have
nothing to back this up so take it with a grain of salt - just my opinion.
Considering the many negative press stories about Facebook concerning things
like privacy rights, I don't think Facebook would take a risk like that to
begin with, but if they did, the US government would likely want to make an
example out of them to deter future companies eager to act first and ask for
permission later. Especially when it comes to something like this that could
very well disrupt global currencies. There would be many ensuing battles of
litigation and I would imagine the cost for Facebook, if they truly held
steadfast in support of Libra, would be quite tremendous.
------
shakkhar
I have no interest in Libra, but the fact that government basically bullied
these companies out of this initiative is alarming. If the regulators think
that they should scrutinize these companies deeper, being involved in Libra
should not matter. It's like saying, "withdraw from Libra and we'll continue
to look the other way on your sketchy non-Libra activities".
~~~
repolfx
Regulators have very little to do with how law is meant to work in theory,
especially in the USA. Financial regulators are pure extensions of arbitrary
government power: they can make up new laws on the fly without Congress, and
many rules are phrased vaguely enough that anyone could be violating them if
they want it that way.
Basically financial regulators can fine or imprison anyone in the financial
system at any time for any reason or even no reason, unaccountably so. Not
surprisingly this power gets abused. These firms were told they would be
attacked and punished for working with Facebook, so of course they baked away.
------
alibert
I guess that why one of the first investor in Libra - famous Xavier Niel -
published this editorial [1]
(small reminder for people who don't know him, he created the ISP french
"Free" that kind of totally changed the telecom market in France (DSL and
mobile), he also owns Scaleway (cloud), Kima Ventures (VC))
[1] [https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/42886/libra-is-
inevita...](https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/42886/libra-is-inevitable-
better-to-embrace-it-says-its-investor-a-french-billionaire)
[2] Original : [https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/europeens-
libra-...](https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/europeens-libra-nous-
de-choisir-1139165)
~~~
baby
He also completely disrupted/killed the monopole that existed in
telecommunication. Giving French people absurdly cheaper phone plans.
------
lifeisstillgood
I honestly don't see how to reconcile two desirable aspects of digital
currency
\- Frictionless, fee-less digital transfer of a medium of value. To be able to
transfer money natively over the internet.
\- To keep it _secure_ for 7 billion people - reversible, auditable etc - the
benefits we have of a curated financial system.
I am sure there are lots of reading on this available - but those two do seem
incompatible
~~~
swift532
You achieve the first by having a distributed, decentralized, fully censorship
resistant base layer in which the rule set is more or less like the current
Bitcoin rule set.
You achieve the second by building upon this base layer. Just like how in the
real world the base layer is physical transfer of cash and assets (not very
reversible), and we have a financial and legal system built upon that (to
simplify, it's doubtful how relevant physical transfer is any more).
~~~
tsimionescu
But the only way to do the second is to keep a separate 'ledger' associating
real people/companies with network wallets, and to ban the use of wallets
whose ownership is not known.
And this automatically brings back a lot of hassle with verifying paperwork,
it again allows people to be barred from the network, and it again prevents
people withput paperwork from owning currency.
------
vbo
I'm puzzled by HN's attitude towards Libra. I can understand being wary of
having Facebook run the world's money and how a metacurrency such as Libra
could break world economics as we know it, but I can't help be excited about
the prospect of widespread digital money usage and FB is one of the few
companies that can drive that. Perhaps HN draws its animosity towards Libra
from all the cryptocurrency shenanigans of the last few years, but given this
community is comfortable with innovation and risk, I would expect HN to be
imagining usecases and scenarios for digital money rather than dismiss the
whole concept based on emotion related to Facebook and/or cryptocurrencies.
If the world does move ahead with central bank issued digital currencies - and
it seems there's a lot of chatter in that area - then a metacurrency will no
doubt pop up at some point anyway. Because that's what I expect hackers will
find fascinating and because it will suddenly become possible. So we'll get
Libra one way or another, but it may not be Facebook's.
A full fledged digital currency ecosystem will be incompatible with the status
quo to a large degree, but that's no reason for dismissal. Doesn't all
innovation challenge the status quo? Ultimately, the cat it out of the bag and
the question is not if, but how digital scarcity, whether trustful or
trustless (or a mix of the two), will impact our definition and use of money.
We'll have to ensure AML rules evolve to fit the new paradigm and that's fine.
But we shouldn't look at existing AML frameworks and refuse innovation because
our solutions for the past don't fit our possibilities for the future.
And regardless of the outcome of Libra, Facebook is making huge inroads in
prompting conversations and ultimately regulating digital money, which in
itself is a huge win. Given the negative govt and public reactions and their
standing ground on the matter, they're doing it at their own expense and I'll
give them kudos for that. I don't see any of the existing forces in the
finance ecosystem do anything close to this.
Money and payments have stood still amidst the digital revolution. Imagine
micropayments for consuming online content and how they could address some of
the biggest issues prompted by the attention economy. The likes of visa and
mastercard could've made this a real at any moment in the last 20 years or so.
I welcome anyone trying to do something bold. It's progress, regardless of the
outcome of any specific project.
~~~
CJefferson
My fundamental issue is simple. Money, who owns it and how it moves around, is
fundamental to our society. I don't want that power owned by a company who
might decide one day, without warning or reason, to close my account.
~~~
buboard
You can take a company to court, but not a government. Imagine being a
legitimate venezuelan businessman with an account in the US for example.
Money is sort-of fundamental (it's one tool), and that's more so because
today's fiat money is powered by guns. In the past, europe would have a
multitude of coins being used concurrently with some of them dominating like
the Florin. Its a recent development that governments crack down on the money
that people use.
~~~
foepys
You can absolutely take a government to court. What are you talking about?
~~~
buboard
Even if you can you re guaranteed to lose because the govt makes its own laws
How would that work with VZ?
------
speedplane
I don't like Facebook, but I do give them credit for being very smart. They
managed to lock a billion eye-balls on their platform and that doesn't happen
automatically.
That's what makes this whole Libra thing so shocking. I just can't believe
Facebook would be so naive to just shout "digital cross-border currency" and
then expect everyone to cheer them on. Bitcoin has been around for years, and
controversies surrounding it are well known. PayPal has been around for
decades and everyone understands the potential of electronic payments.
The fact that Facebook did not expect this ambivalence / skepticism and
address it upfront is a pretty surprising misstep.
------
narrator
If Facebook wants a currency they should start a country. Given that they are
an organizing platform for various insurgent groups... I could almost see the
headline: "victorious insurgent group 'ZucLiberationFront' agrees to partner
with Facebook to run their country's currency system using Libra. Reasons
cited were gratitude for free Facebook advertising that helped them recruit
rebel fighters"
------
dana321
Isn't it kind of pointless anyway: a large corporation with vast resources
creating a cryptocurrency, why don't they just make their own bank?
~~~
wolfgke
> Isn't it kind of pointless anyway: a large corporation with vast resources
> creating a cryptocurrency, why don't they just make their own bank?
Because Facebook senses an opportunity that in the long-term they could make a
lot more money than if they founded a bank.
------
csomar
I see this is starting to playing out as I'm thinking it should play out*.
Now, I'm waiting for Facebook to stick to its gun. 2020 will be an interesting
year.
x-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162607)
------
dnprock
I think given enough time, Libra project can succeed. But it has to jump
through many hurdles. It will require a lot more investment than Facebook
anticipate.
I advocate for a new type of crypto: digital native and decentralized
stablecoin. By adding a constant inflation rate, coin price can become
somewhat stable. The tradeoff is worthy for permissionless, digital native and
decentralization. I outline the benefits of this new type of cryptocurrency in
this article:
The Next Big Thing in Crypto: Using Inflation to Create Stablecoin
[https://bitflate.org/post/2019/10/10/the-next-big-thing-
in-c...](https://bitflate.org/post/2019/10/10/the-next-big-thing-in-crypto-
using-inflation-to-create-stablecoin.html)
------
Lucadg
I don't like Libra but I wouldn't dismiss it just yet.
\- Governments: We'll ban Libra.
\- Facebook: Let us do Libra and we'll give you access to the financial
transactions which otherwise would go dark with Bitcoin or Wechat.
~~~
tsimionescu
\- Governments: oh yes, we'll trade our ability to set monetary policies for
the off-chance that someone who wanted to hide from regulators will choose to
trust Facebook with their shady transactions, and will continue to do so after
the first time we catch them in the act based on data Facebook provided to us.
~~~
Lucadg
\- Facebook: you are going to lose the ability to set monetary policy anyway.
That ship has sailed.
------
mark_l_watson
I wonder if this was government pressure. I think it was only going to be 50%
denominated in US dollar. Making it easy to effectively (partially) transact
in other currencies must not have gone over well.
EDIT: I assumed that Libra would be for many, many small transactions so
banking know your customer KYC regulations imposed on banks in all countries
by the US and other governments would not really apply. Also, does something
like Apple Pay also fit the need for people paying people in other countries
small amounts of money?
------
mrmcd
In other words every actual payment company didn't want to get a colonoscopy
from every regulator on Earth for Zuck's Spruce Goose hobby.
------
jacquesm
Why was Stripe even in it in the first place?
------
kerng
I found it interesting that Visa and Mastercard were actually on board in the
beginning. Might have been some fear of missing out on something novel and
important (especially since competitors joined Libra also). Now that the
initial dust and Libra is a bit better understood they are seemingly jointly
pulling out.
------
keymone
I hope Facebook manages to launch Libra and that’ll be the final trigger for
regulators to chime in, slap them on the wrist and break up all the giant
corps. The degree to which they are invading our privacy and are greedy for
power and control over people’s lives is beyond scary.
------
undefined3840
Other than eBay, guessing the reason why the payment cos are dropping out
first is because they have the highest regulatory/compliance burden as is, and
don’t need more scrutiny dealing with something they don’t even fully
understand just so they can win some brownie points with FB.
~~~
kbenson
Well, Ebay owned Paypal until they spun it off again. Perhaps the execs still
have nightmares about dealing with financial regulations (or trying to walk
the line so they didn't have to) and don't want to deal with it again.
~~~
xemdetia
I'm more of the opinion that there was a Q2/Q3 deadline to get some sane
regulatory framework by the Libra team and they just whiffed on it or it was
wholly insufficient for normal international banking standards (which was
probably laid out by all the parties that left). The fact that everyone seemed
to bail all at once sounds like there was just a lack of commitment/slipped
deadline by the Libra side. Generally as a new thing is being stood up under a
regulated framework there is some slack provided to get the ship in order
while other interested parties look on, but at a certain point major
requirements must be done. If you are one of the interested parties and it
doesn't look like the other side is making sane progress, the hammer drops
swiftly.
------
elmar
Pegging Libra to just the Dollar could soothe regulators, a16z says
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/libra-denominated-in-
dolla...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/libra-denominated-in-dollars/)
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Pegging Libra to just the Dollar could soothe regulators, a16z says_
Baskets of currencies are nothing novel. The problem goes down to whether this
is a Facebook-controlled currency (which is troubling, given Facebook’s track
record) or a nobody-controlled currency that Facebook profits from (which is
troubling, given the money-laundering concerns).
------
Zetaphor
Notable that OP left Mercado Pago out of the headline, despite it being in the
opening sentence. Mercado Pago is the largest payment provider in South
America. In case you forgot, South America is the fourth largest continent and
contains 12 countries.
------
ur-whale
Interesting to ee Nick Szabo actually answer David Marcus tweets.
[https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/1182775728431087623](https://twitter.com/davidmarcus/status/1182775728431087623)
------
haylel
I'm sure Libra would be useful for payments / economy inside Facebook Horizon.
------
ufo_kid_zero
“If you take this on,” the letters read, “you can expect a high level of
scrutiny from regulators not only on Libra-related activities, but on all
payment activities.”
I wonder who paid them to say this?
------
chillacy
In 6 months: Visa Mastercard Stripe and Ebay create new stablecoin
------
wpdev_63
facebook would better service itself by help small businesses in timely
transactions of cryptocurrencies. With the government debt project to go to
$30 trillion within the decade there will be alot of people hedging against
the dollar with cryptocurrency and whoever is able to help in transactions
with mom and pop stores will make a fortunes. Also it does help you aren't
_directly_ competing with the federal reserve. People have been killed for
less.
------
buboard
I wonder why Stripe followed them? They re positive on crypto in general, and
they would have an immediate competitive advantage if they stayed
~~~
vinniejames
Because politicians threatened them with increased regulatory scrutiny across
all of their business
~~~
buboard
It s possible that the benefit would outweigh the risk - after all they are
already in the payments busines and know how AML works etc. They 've done it
for bitcoin. So, i would assume they were threatened a little less politely
than i imagined.
~~~
vinniejames
Threat letters from the Senate:
[https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Signed%20Letters...](https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Signed%20Letters%20re%20Libra%20to%20Patrick%20Collison,%20Ajaypal%20Banga,%20and%20Alfred%20Kelly.pdf)
~~~
buboard
What a joke of a letter. "But think of child abuse". I can't believe they
linked libra to child sexual abuse ... how would that even work?
Didn't they admit last week that facebook's own detection algorithms are far
better at detecting child abuse than anything else? How does that work.
------
wpdev_63
damn shame with the dollar approaching a $30 trillion dollar deficit within
the next decade[0], it would be very prudent to invest into a competitor.
[0]:[https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-12/trump-budget-
sees-...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-12/trump-budget-sees-us-debt-
hitting-30-trillion-2028)
------
Yuioup
I guess that's it for Facebucks
------
rajacombinator
Major punt by Facebook like many others like Oculus. But you nail one like IG
and it’s all good!
------
equalunique
One would think Facebook's Libra was a country sanctioned by the US.
------
FailMore
I think FB should take a lesson from this - be less respectful. They have done
everything not to tread on anyone's toes, but that is not what innovation is
about. They have the userbase and the ability to give this a shot all on their
own. Do it and make something great, then deal with the consequences.
------
elif
No surprise. The revolution will not be international clearing housed.
------
mesozoic
And the end of the world pushes a bit further away
------
buboard
Wow .. they re bound to see some competition.
------
azizul8692
playstore game purchases
------
MH15
That was quick.
------
WouterZ
Tst
------
dwoozle
Well, this died.
------
raister
I guess people had issues of the currency being used to all sort of illegal
things, e.g., human enslaving, human organ trafficking, and so on...
~~~
jasoncartwright
If this is true, then it was true when they signed up initially. What changed?
~~~
raister
Because raw ideas seem good, then when people ponder it may turn out to be bad
ones... Have you ever heard of the Solar Powered Highway in France?
~~~
wolfgke
I have quite some difficulties with the mentality of first very publicly
announcing that you will join the project, then very soon realizing that it
might be a bad idea, and then (also quite publicly) exiting the project.
Why not evaluate this beforehand before very publicly announcing that you join
the (Libra) project?!
------
dagaci
The current financial system worldwide looks quite suspect right now, negative
interest rates could soon become a new norm in the EU even officially in
retail. Most importantly political leaders in the US(and EU) have scaled up
their massive money-printing schemes designed to keep their banking-financial
overlords in business.
With that in mind, the very last thing the EU and US authorities want is for
the people who (mostly unwittingly) underpin the actual value to have an Exit
from this type of controlled use of inflation into an alternative currency
backed by say gold and other hard to inflate commodities, because allowing any
significant amount of that.. (remember the true impact is inverse of the real
fractional-reserve in play) would lead to a collapse in the power of the
existing political-financial hegemony.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Who were Steve Jobs' mentors? - stellar678
Most of the stories seem to suggest his brilliance or effectiveness came entirely from within, but I'm interested to know who guided Steve when he had questions.
======
huxley
The closest he had to a business mentor was probably Mike Markkula who was
Apple's angel investor (he also was CEO for a few years).
Not strictly mentors, but two of his biggest influences were Paul Rand (who
designed the logos for IBM and NeXT) for graphic design and Dieter Rams (who
started the Functionalist School of industrial design) for product design.
~~~
glimcat
Donald Norman is presumably in there somewhere as well.
------
weston
Perhaps Bill Hewlett when Steve was a kid? He cold called him up when he was
12.
[http://www.hp.com/retiree/history/founders/hewlett/quotes.ht...](http://www.hp.com/retiree/history/founders/hewlett/quotes.html#generosity)
I wonder if Bill mentored Steve later when Steve was at Apple?
------
fjordan
During his trip to India, Jobs met with Neem Karoli Baba and eventually became
Buddhist. He also experimented with LSD. I imagine these experiences, as he
specifically states, had a large impact on his life.
------
jcmoscon
That is a good question. I hope we can find more information on his biography.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unwebbable - Not all documents can be a web page - whalesalad
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/unwebbable/
======
shizcakes
"Nobody seriously intends screenplays on the web to have the same function
they do in real life: getting read, getting optioned or bought, and getting
shot. All of that happens on paper, not on Firefox."
Why not? It's pretty straightforward to paginate something or divide it like a
physical page. In the case of screenplays, the 'page' was engineered around
because it was a physical limitation. The author's example of Final draft and
it's default format of XML is exactly what I am talking about - scripting that
to be presented in HTML is not difficult.
I feel like this entire article is complaining about HTML and HTML5, while
reaching for tenuous examples and not really accomplishing much.
~~~
jsonscripter
Interestingly, Celtx (<http://celtx.com/>) is a screenplay editor built out of
Firefox.
------
mrshoe
I might be an ill-trained author, but I don't mind writing
<h2 class="stage-direction">
instead of
<stagedirection>
I think (X)HTML + CSS is extensible enough for me. The former is only slightly
less readable than the latter for maintainers of my code, and my paramount
goal for the rendered document can be achieved equally well with both.
~~~
roc
Well I'm _certainly_ an ill-trained author and it seems to me that the details
of the markup are wholly irrelevant to the people actually writing and making
movies.
The screenwriter should be chugging along with (e.g.) a dialect of markdown
that keeps the details the hell out of his way. Whether the markup that comes
out the other side looks like XML or HTML just doesn't matter.
And "1 page = 1 minute" is a dodgy heuristic* that could easily be supplanted
by software that could process the source and _know_ what's set direction,
scene changes, dialogue, etc.
* "1 page = 1 minute" has long since gone from handy heuristic to self-reinforcing delusion.
Today, if a screenwriter is selling an average (hundred minutes, more or less)
movie, he will _ensure_ that his script is a hundred pages (more or less).
He'll tweak margins, font sizes, spacing, descriptions and more. He doesn't
want his masterpiece stigmatized when it makes the studio rounds just because
it showed up thirty pages either side of proper.
And so it goes.
------
ergasia
Of course all documents can be a web page. Sumerian clay tablets can be a web
page. Does it make sense to introduce hyperlinks and other markup to Sumerian
clay tablets? Not to me, but that's something I don't feel the need to worry
about.
------
IsaacSchlueter
Wow, alistapart has jumped the shark, I fear.
This article is just complaining about a whole host of non-problems. He's just
made the case that there should be a microformat for screenplays, and a tool
to convert the Final Draft XML format into said microformat, and some CSS to
style it nicely. The <hr> tag is pretty much a perfect analog to the
screenplay page break.
As for MathML, there are authoring tools that a) convert handwritten math
equations to mathml and b) convert mathml to images in web pages. People are
actually using these.
This article just made me angry. _OH NO_ , I thought as loudly as possible.
_PEOPLE ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET!_
While people like Joe Clark decry the shortcomings of our tools, the rest of
us are using these tools to get real world things done.
Also, the picture looks like a penis. Srsly.
------
dlevine
Internal representation is different from display representation. So long as
it looks good on a screen, I don't really care what the markup looks like.
You can then represent it internally in any format that you want. XML sounds
good, because it is completely general, but that generality can also be a
curse (due to its self descriptiveness, it is pretty much never the most
compact way to represent structured data).
Screenwriters are old fashioned, but will definitely come around over time
(just like filmmakers are slowly switching to digital). There are already web
apps that allow you to write screenplays online - <http://www.scripped.com> is
one. I'm sure that, in the long-term, the collaborative aspects of the web
will trump any technical difficulties.
------
_pius
This example seems almost unbelievably bad.
Screenplays have well defined rules of organization and formatting that
actually lend themselves nicely to being represented in HTML.
------
ErrantX
Actually this is in interesting point. One that, I suppose, XHTML was supposed
to fix (but never did).
Developers are getting more and more into (it seems) semantic content. I like
that - but I never really bother because, as this article points out, Html is
too locked in anyway there is little point.
(incidentally it took me a while to take the article seriously... the image
they used looks, well, like a penis...)
------
JournalistHack
Although the title has link-bait value, if taken seriously I would say that it
basically reveals an author with limited vision.
In my experience there are nearly _no_ documents (that have any significant
value to me) that I _would not_ want to see "webified". I love the options
provided - to excerpt, cut/paste, add links, etc. Needless to say... no big
scribd fan here.
------
csbartus
Don't know much about the author and don't really understand his points ..
I've always wondered who are writing and reading the List Apart .. For me
looks like literature about web design and web frontend technology which is
_weird_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best ways to learn a foreign language - domedefelice
http://domenicodefelice.blogspot.it/2013/06/best-ways-to-learn-foreign-language.html
======
patio11
Professional translators often do "shadowing", which is listening to source
material from the language you're weaker at and attempting to just transcribe
it in real time. You can start with source material which is easy, such as
dialog on TV shows, and move to source material which is hard, such as news
broadcasts. (Newscasters speak much much quicker than characters in fiction
and employ large and often unpredictable vocabularies, whereas most popular
culture is dominated by the ~200 words at the head of the zipf distribution
for that language.)
It's totally free and, when you're at intermediate proficiency, both
stupendously effective and the most maddening exercise you'll ever do. (What
happens when you're thrown off the deep end into a newscast about nuclear
power plant issues and you're deeply out of your depth with regards to the
required vocabulary? You try your best, jot down the five words every 3
sentences you actually catch, and then break out a dictionary later to figure
out why _houshasen_ and _shiyouzuminenryoupuuru_ seem to be so key to the
topic.)
("Radiation" and "pool (for storage of) used (nuclear) fuel", respectively.
And there, now you understand 5% more of that conversation.)
~~~
jacques_chester
A small thing I've noticed about seeing news from France and Switzerland.
Swiss newsreaders seem to speak more slowly. I don't know if it's a peculiar
Swiss behaviour, but I wondered at the time if it was connected to the fact
that Switzerland has four official languages, some of them having overlapping
linguistic footprints.
To make a Swiss French broadcast accessible to Swiss Germans who have
rudimentary French, it would make sense for the presenters to speak more
slowly.
Meanwhile, over on France 2, the appallingly videogenic presenters of _Le 20
Heures_ drive a swishy gallic stereotype through the paper thin limits of my
understanding.
~~~
carlob
The French have this stereotype of the Swiss being slow-spoken (some go as far
as to claim they are slow-witted). So it's not just newscasters, but the
general public as well.
------
xiaoma
Learning a language isn't just a process of learning words out of context
(with spaced repetition systems like Anki, or products that piggy back off of
it like Duolingo). I don't mean this in an unkind way, but I get the
impression the author hasn't ever learned a foreign language very well as an
adult.
Until I became an engineer recently, my entire career revolved around learning
and teaching foreign languages. I strongly recommend looking at what L2
acquisition linguists have learned before hitting bloggers for language
learning advice. One great resource is Dr Krashen's website. The video on the
front page does a great job of showing how context and comprehensibility
matter more than brute memorization algorithms: [http://www.sk.com.br/sk-
krash.html](http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html)
And if you _must_ learn from a blog, pick a blog of someone who has learned a
lot of languages well (e.g. Steve Kaufmann) over one who talks of his
"learning hacks" but doesn't any videos of himself speaking a foreign language
in an unscripted setting. That's my 2 cents.
~~~
steveridout
I completely agree with this.
I've created the site Readlang ([http://readlang.com](http://readlang.com)) to
allow learning vocabulary _in context_ by reading uploaded content,
translating, and using SRS flashcards which include the original context.
It's in public beta and would love to get feedback if anyone tries it out.
~~~
nandemo
I checked out your site about the time it was announced on Reddit. I really
like the idea although I noticed some problems using it for my target
languages (Spanish and Hebrew). For inflected languages like these, you really
need a good stemmer/lemmatiser (either one, I'm not an expert, but you get the
idea). I haven't tried Readlang recently though, when I do I'll be happy to
give you more feedback.
~~~
steveridout
Thanks, yes I'm relying on Google Tranlsate at the moment, but eventually I'd
like it to recognize word families and verb conjugations. I use it for Spanish
and regularly edit the generated verb flashcards to indicate the correct
conjugation.
------
opminion
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of what works for some individuals.
However, pointing out the common problems, shared by everybody, is also
informative. Here are some:
* The factors in learning a new language are age (adolescence is a threshold), innate skill, motivation (and guilt), effort and similarity of the languages.
* Sounds are not listener-independent: your Chinese friend does not hear the same sounds as you do, so don't expect that they know which sounds you are correcting in their English when you repeat the word for the tenth time. Same the other way around. I have seen this leading again, again and again to absurd "are you deaf?" situations between otherwise attentive friends and teachers.
* It might be helpful to discuss metalanguage: direct objects, word order, verb transitivity, nouns vs verbs, parsing, etc. This is something you learn in school in France, Spain, Germany, some Arab countries, etc, and if you studied Latin. But if you went through a standard English-speaking school system you might want to catch up with that.
~~~
rtpg
>don't expect that they know which sounds you are correcting in their English
when you repeat the word for the tenth time.
This phenomenon is probably the most interesting thing I've found out in my
life. The fact that some people simply cannot hear certain sounds goes against
everything we would like to think.
When people talk about varying tone inside words (such as in Chinese or Thai),
while I obviously hear that something is happening, I cannot for the life of
me reproduce what I hear or even retain the tonal information. For me , tone
is a separate aspect to vocabulary and I can't assimilate the two.
Inversely, seeing the plight of poor Japanese people, who get taught English
from an early age through the limited japanese syllable system (not sure the
exact name), unable to repeat words properly, and sometimes going completely
off the mark.
This just accents the need for everyone to be exposed to as many languages as
possible as a child.
------
snoonan
I would disagree with much of this article. While Duolingo in particular is
popular, its main focus is on teaching translation. It's hip, but it's not
about teaching how to speak and understand a language. Similarly, the focus on
vocabulary study in the other tools has similar limitations.
Self study needs to be augmented or driven by spoken conversation practice in
the least. Your brain is a neural network to learn language as audio input.
While challenging, it's the most effective way. Google doesn't support this
due to the link popularity of a lot of software-driven methods.
Disclaimer: My business in the online language learning space.
------
3oheme
+1 to watching TV with subtitles, and even better repeating out loud the
sentences you find more interesting. That way y * It will be easier to
remember and * You will improve your pronunciation
~~~
dpapathanasiou
I have a language learning site[1] which started out as text translation, but
I'm also experimenting with videos, the idea being it's helpful to see
captions in both languages simultaneously as the video plays.
Examples here[2], here[3], and here[4].
[1] [http://www.macaronics.com/](http://www.macaronics.com/)
[2]
[http://www.macaronics.com/article/6e9812608f0b4dcdba8cfab3e6...](http://www.macaronics.com/article/6e9812608f0b4dcdba8cfab3e6fe6730/?lang=en)
[3]
[http://www.macaronics.com/article/9540f24d080241dd9b27f7939c...](http://www.macaronics.com/article/9540f24d080241dd9b27f7939c7a0772/?lang=en)
[4]
[http://www.macaronics.com/article/a6ab2c3d8c364ad38401d6dba3...](http://www.macaronics.com/article/a6ab2c3d8c364ad38401d6dba3190804/?lang=ja)
------
the1
you need a repetitive stream of natural language. then brain automatically
analyzes it.
usually, you pick one 30 minute to 60 minute video, and watch it every day, 6
days a week. make sure you take a break every week. you watch it to the point
where you can mimic what they are saying as the video is playing. you don't
have to know exact meaning of your utterance. but you already have some sense.
then, you transcribe it on paper (you need to learn writing system by this
time). maybe use dictionary to learn actual words. rehearse with the video. if
have friends, rehearse with them. memorize it. move on to the next video.
start with sitcoms then maybe news broadcast, reality shows (court shows are
great), movies...
video is just one example. if you're learning a language where you can't find
suitable videos (there might be no production in the language), make friends
who speak the language. record their conversations. play repetitively until
you can follow along with a loud voice. transcribe.. etc.
------
laichzeit0
Didn't see any references for us Classicists so I'll add my two cents:
I'm still struggling with classical Latin after 8 years. The problem being
that it's a "dead" language and immersion/conversation is difficult to achieve
on a modern era time schedule.
Over this time I've come to the conclusion that you need to start "speaking"
in any language as soon as possible. The approach of learning grammar for a
year and translating sentences on pen-and-paper is not effective enough.
My current toolbox for learning Latin is:
1\. Supermemo (Anki is a free equivalent) for vocabulary and anything that
needs to be committed to memory permanently. This takes away the burden of
worrying about anything that needs to be remembered.
2\. Follow Evan der Millner's "Comenius" Latin project, which attempts to
teach you Latin the way school children were taught back when they were
expected to speak, read and write it fluently. This is a reconstruction of the
way Comenius would have taught children. [1] project overview, [2] reading of
the texts. [3] Oral lessons, so you can start Skyping other Latin speakers and
talking as soon as possible. (this is not "church" or Italian pronunciation,
but the received Classical reconstructed pronunciation). Everything you need
is available for free off the either Google books, Evan's YouTube videos and
archive.org.
3\. Know and use Diogenes
([http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.heslin/Software/Diogenes/](http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.heslin/Software/Diogenes/))
for Windows or Linux.
4\. Install the "Language Immersion for Chrome" extension and set it to Latin
so you're forced to read the Internet in Latin as you browse ;)
[1] [http://latinum.weebly.com/comenius-
project.html](http://latinum.weebly.com/comenius-project.html) [2]
[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMH5SfME31ZKYChsIWSp_D...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMH5SfME31ZKYChsIWSp_DkEb2k6jPBka)
[3]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0NIMm2eM8c&list=SPC6E7F1C5D4...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0NIMm2eM8c&list=SPC6E7F1C5D4F96ACC)
I'm attempting Attic Greek this way (Evans has started an Oral ancient Greek
course on YouTube too) and can't wait to enjoy reading Plato, the Iliad and
the Odyssey aloud in the reconstructed native tongue in my old age some day :)
~~~
maw
I have downloaded and tried to play with Diogenes several times. I can never
seem to get it to do anything. As best as I can tell, you need to provide it
with data sets as well. Do you know where you can get these?
~~~
laichzeit0
You don't need the data sets unless you're interested in exploring the Greek
or Latin texts. On it's own it's useful for entering dictionary words in their
declined/conjugated forms and it finding the correct entry(ies) in the
dictionary.
For the data sets: In all honesty, just torrent it. What you're looking for is
TLG /PHI/ Cd-rom_E, which is the Thesaurus Linguae Gracae and the Latin texts.
~~~
maw
Wow, you're right. It does come with some data out of the box after all. Its
UI isn't all that it could be, though.
------
ExpiredLink
> _One of the best ways to improve your expressing skills is to talk with
> natives._
Go to the foreign country and don't speak one sentence in your native
language. Jump in at the deep end (BTW, I had to look up that phrase because I
never lived in an English-speaking county).
------
leke
Having a general interest in languages, I've tried many things to improve my
language learning. The thing I was probably most impressed with though is the
Michael Thomas method.
------
tokenadult
The submitted article had some interesting tips, and several of the previous
comments are quite good too. I've been developing a FAQ on language learning
as this interest is mentioned on Hacker News from time to time. As I learned
Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to support my family for
several years as a Chinese-English translator and interpreter, I had to tackle
several problems for which there is not yet a one-stop-shopping software
solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of West
Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like those
of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound system, so that what
is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the other language.
[http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha...](http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm)
But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not
perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language
(the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of
those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having
the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to
target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032)
It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps
especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't
exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound
distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the
learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and
"he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable,
and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all.
Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular"
and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is
remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to
distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than *
"he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).
Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved
simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target
language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with
explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics)
with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet.
[http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html](http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html)
Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on
sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target
language, and no software program for language learning should be without
those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to
a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of
pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.
After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring
vocabulary, and this is the task that most language-learning materials are
most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.
The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially
to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated
for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages,
not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and
every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different
set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.
The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure
to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.)
written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master
language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the
section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book
Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in
1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading
can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of
the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ"
(capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well
acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese
in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context
produced by native speakers of the language.
I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my
personal website,
[http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html](http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html)
and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to
take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word
broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives
you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s,
I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-
language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can
gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of
unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language.
That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with
vocabulary.
The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which
is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every
language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known
explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a
foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to
understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring
and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native
speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick
books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,
[http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-
Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-
Grammar/dp/0520066103/)
[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars/dp/0415150329/)
[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0582517346/)
[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0521431468/)
and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your
native language(s) and about any language you are studying.
------
gordonguthrie
Getting an ear for a foreign language is quite difficult - getting to the
point where you can separate the words out (without necessarily knowing what
they are) so that you can learn them. I have quite good reading French (I can
read proper full-length books) pretty poor written French and bloody awful
spoken/hearing French. Listening to a lot of French pop music on Spotify
really helped me get an ear.
------
danielharan
Hack 0 should be to find a good motivator to learn the language. Only then do
tools matter.
I got bored learning Kanji. Had I known that 300 of those were enough to read
a food menu -- and what they were, I would have prioritized them and learned
them in a month. Instead, I stopped after thinking it would take too much time
to ever get to 2,000.
------
bigd
I'm quite happy with rosetta stone. do you have any particular reason not to
like it? (beside paying?)
~~~
domedefelice
Hi bigd. I've only tried the free demo of rosetta stone and it was too short
to make me form a useful opinion about it. Anyway I would prefer free
material.
------
Dewie
I find that using mnemonics is an efficient way of learning words. The only
problem is to find good mnemonics, which can be easy if the word sounds like
something you already know, and hard if it reminds you of nothing and the word
represents a very abstract concept.
Memorizing something like the top 1000 words used in everyday conversation,
with little grammar exercises sprinkled in, seems to be a good strategy. I've
only got to memorizing something like 500 words (give or take 150 words...) so
I haven't put this method quite to the test yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Meet the Woman Who Rocked Particle Physics Three Times - 0xbxd
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-woman-who-rocked-particle-physicsthree-times
======
merricksb
Active discussion of same article in Quanta Magazine, where it was originally
published:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17580449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17580449)
------
BrandoElFollito
She is a great physicist.
This said, particle physics is very unfair : one gets the Nobel price for the
work of hundreds.
On the bright side, you get to be published all the time, on subjects you
barely know (having been in the team, together with the 353 others).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Best Free Programming Books - ingve
http://www.toptal.com/software/toptal-s-list-of-top-free-programming-books/
======
na85
No mention of Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp?
Learning Lisp has really improved my productivity when it comes to prototyping
and one-off projects. It also translates to using smaller lisps like Scheme in
the embedded space.
I wish CL was more widely used.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Obamacare, Failing Ahead of Schedule - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/douthat-obamacare-failing-ahead-of-schedule.html
======
hga
" _The disaster can presumably be fixed. As Cohn pointed out on Friday, many
of the state-level exchanges are working better than the federal one, and
somewhere there must be a tech-world David Petraeus capable of stabilizing
HealthCare.gov._ "
But a general can relieve a subordinate of command a lot easier than I expect
the people responsible for this mess. Some evidence already in
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6581567](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6581567)
where they're talking about a "tech 'surge'", i.e. more cluelessness from
people who've never read or experienced a bunch of the lessons in _The
Mythical Man Month_.
And I've read that the state exchanges depend on the federal for subsidy
calculations, and that tests of that function are showing a lot of errors.
And his claim that there is a single, let along exchange based "right-of-
center vision for health care reform" is ludicrous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Anybots Telepresence Robots Go into Mass Production - jlhamilton
http://singularityhub.com/2010/01/25/anybots-telepresence-robots-go-into-mass-production/
======
jacquesm
Hehe, couple this with the amazon mechanical turk and you can have _real_ I
(instead of AI) controlling telepresence robots to do work.
Rent-a-brain for remote control of your robot to do the chores, such as
laundry, vacuum cleaning and feeding the animals.
I can see a tele-operated McDonalds capped robot smiling and saying 'hi may I
help you' with a bit of an accent in your near future.
Outsourcing is about to enter a whole new phase.
~~~
pg
You're not far off, actually. One of the original raisons d'etre of Anybots
was to do labor market arbitrage, by letting workers in one country perform
operations in another. But that's not the intention of the QB. It doesn't have
any hands.
~~~
ericd
Wow, that's a really exciting idea. How does one deal with the latency,
though? I would see that as being the biggest technical issue standing in the
way of a really seamless experience. For the labor arbitrage application
especially, if there was a sort of VR setup, I imagine that the lag would get
sickening pretty quickly.
~~~
tlb
VR goggles are OK with 150 mS round-trip delay, as long as the user's head
movement is compensated for locally. There are lots of wrong ways to do it,
such as moving the robot's head to match the operator's, but it's not too hard
to do it the right way.
It turns out the human nervous system has 100 - 200 mS delay. Peripheral
nerves conduct at only 10 - 50 m/S, so your brain is already adapted to some
delay. More delay makes juggling & stuff harder, but most office work is only
slowed down slightly.
------
pg
I was at the bots today and there were 5 QBs in various stages of
construction. I knew it would look impressive when there were n of them, but I
was still surprised.
(The article has it slightly wrong. The QA was the previous model.)
------
philwelch
Congratulations tlb!
------
TrevorJ
Any word on price? My gut tells me that something that relies on off-the shelf
tech will be easier to adopt since we could keep the price points lower.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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New component vue js for vuesax Update image - luisdanielfly
https://github.com/lusaxweb/vuesax
======
eberkund
Why do I need all this overhead for something as simple as a button or other
native form input elements?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What is the Apple Star N84? ARM hybrid, touchscreen MacBook, just a new iPhone? - rbanffy
https://www.pocket-lint.com/laptops/news/apple/144651-what-is-the-apple-star-n84-arm-hybrid-touchscreen-macbook-or-just-a-new-iphone
======
Mononokay
"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work.
Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.
It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and
after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work,
it's ergonomically terrible.
Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.
For a notebook, that's why we're perfected our multitouch trackpads over the
years, because that's the best way we've found to get multitouch into a
notebook.
We've also, in essence, put a trackpad -- a multitouch track pad on the mouse
with our magic mouse. And we've recently come out with a pure play trackpad as
well for our desktop users.
So this is how were going to use multitouch on our Mac products because this
(he points at someone touch laptop screen) doesn't work."
_-Steven Paul Jobs, Oct. 20, 2010_
~~~
melling
Who says a laptop needs to have a vertical screen.
Invent a better computing device. Leap Motion + eye tracking + voice input +
Google Soli + ...
[https://atap.google.com/soli/](https://atap.google.com/soli/)
Even after the stock buyback, Apple has plenty of remaining cash to invent the
future.
~~~
roryisok
I say it. If it doesn't have a vertical screen it might be a great device but
its just not a laptop anymore, as far as I'm concerned.
Before anyone trots out dictionary definitions, I just mean the world
identifies a laptop as a device with a horizontal keyboard and a vertical
screen. Even ones that rotate the screen aren't called laptops anymore,
they're called tablets or convertibles
------
roryisok
Apple make the lions share of their profit from two lines of arm devices, and
they build their own processors. It makes absolute sense for them to start
stuffing arm in macbooks, especially given how powerful arm chips are these
days.
In five years time we'll probably see the end of Intel macbooks, maybe Intel
macs entirely.
~~~
wilsonnb
Thus far we've only seen ARM chips that can compete with the low end of
Intel's offerings. An ARM processor in the 12" Macbook makes sense. I don't
see Apple switching the MacBook Pro line to ARM in the next five years,
though.
~~~
skellera
A dual processor MBP would be interesting. A higher performance Intel chip
along side an Apple chip. Would allow for a lot of power savings on the go. It
could also take advantage of the AI chip that's included in the iPhone for
various things.
Other than that, it's a big jump from the A series chips to something like an
Intel i9. Maybe if they can make a 10-20 core version of their chip but I
don't know how well high core count ARM chips work.
------
willstrafach
This is not a mystery. It is a new iPhone device. The original reporting
greatly misinterpreted some technical information and assumed the device to be
something else.
------
wpdev_63
Until arm can compete with x86 in single thread performance, which might be
never, it won't replace intel.
------
qop
An ARM64 Macbook would be the line where i jump into an apple product.
~~~
ketralnis
Why would the processor architecture change your mind about it?
~~~
qop
Because I don't buy intel. Not a single intel chip in my home today.
~~~
roryisok
I think that makes you an edge case. Apple are not building an ARM laptop to
capture that 'people-who-refuse-to-own-intel-chips' market.
~~~
qop
Wow what a revelation, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Of course I am an edge case. I never made a contrary claim, just dropped my
two cents in the bin, but of course I've been HNed for doing so.
~~~
roryisok
> HNed
Not familiar with that. I know 'slashdotted' but what's HNed?
Why won't you allow intel chips in your house?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you know of any startups working on wildlife/habitat conservation? - rblion
Trying to find out anything and everything about startups that have or still work on wildlife/habitat conservation. Please share any that you know of.<p>Thank you for your time :)
======
stevenrace
While I'm not aware of any that explicitly focus on conservation, there are
established ways to get involved as a business. I'm in the sensor-networking
space and spend a lot time following this domain. What follows is just general
advice in leu of respoding with 'I want to know too' to your post.
First, (and USA-specific) check the RFQs from various government
organizations. The process can be foreboding and favors established companies
- but a real need (and money) exists for those that follow this path.
Secondly, check with local universities to see what research is currently
underway or planned.
Lastly, profit models really only exist in parallel with regulation. Sadly,
unless corporations/landowners are chasing tax breaks or avoiding fines, you
won't see people flocking to buy technology for auditing water/air/soil
quality.
Edit - Also Agriculture is a profitiable conduit for developing conservation
tech. (Water conservation , animal tracking, soil quality, etc are all in
demand)
~~~
memracom
Just a quick not in reply to your use of the phrase "get involved as a
business". There is a lot of entrepreneurial activity nowadays that is not the
kind of "business" that you probably meant. Social entrepreneurs create new
charitable endeavours to do something that falls under the banner of non-
profit activities. In some countries there are even MBA programs that offer a
"social entrepreneur" track.
It's worth keeping in mind that the startup world has grown well beyond the
bounds of profit-making businesses.
------
nowarninglabel
It depends on how you define a startup. Do small, growing non-profits count?
If so, then there are a number, such as
[http://www.spaceforgiants.org/](http://www.spaceforgiants.org/)
There's a number of ones on the periphery, one for example is Airware
[http://www.airware.com/](http://www.airware.com/) which is working on
autopilot for drones, which you may say what does that have to do with
wildlife/habitat conservation? Well they are partnered with Ol Pejeta Wildlife
Conservancy in Kenya which is deploying a drone to monitor/deter poachers of
rhinos.
~~~
rblion
In my view, a startup can be for or non-profit. The main thing to me is the
driving motivation and the overall experience.
That's a great use of drones. Poaching poachers. :)
------
RussianCow
There's a non-profit in Portland, OR called Ecotrust[0]. Their goal is to make
fishing and farming more sustainable for the environment. They also have a
for-profit child company called Point Nine Seven[1] that mainly deals with
fisheries.
[0]: [http://www.ecotrust.org/](http://www.ecotrust.org/)
[1]: [http://pointnineseven.com/](http://pointnineseven.com/)
~~~
rblion
Inspiring work. Will definitely be keeping up with this project.
------
skadamat
Depends, what kinda aspects? E.g., there are a few companies that make drones
and satellites for governments & wildlife agencies to better spot poachers and
track deforestation and do targeted, efficient, data-driven efforts to reduce
them. Just bringing this up since most people have listed the direct agencies
& nonprofits but nobody mentioned people who are making technology to help
agencies and nonprofits!
~~~
rblion
That's a great use of drones. Poaching poachers. :)
------
memracom
Yes, your startup. I just finished reading your Indiegogo.com project page a
few moments ago, just before I stepped into my time machine and popped back to
2013 so that I could write this comment.
Good luck on your project. More and more people are finding that it is more
satisfying to fund projects through sites like indiegogo.com and fundrazr.com
than it is to make charitable donations in the traditional way.
~~~
rblion
I think you have me confused with someone else. I've never created an
indiegogo.com project page.
------
HashThis
EarthEconomics.org is and they are great. They are Zillow (house valuations
estimator), but for undeveloped land. They put a value on the property if it's
natural state is removed. They use academic research data to calculate the
value of wetlands, wild life, erosion control, regulatory compliance, etc.
------
Jd
We do something like this with Evergreen (www.evr.gr). It's a virtual currency
that is partially backed by rainforest that we purchase when people exchange
other currencies to ours. We are for-profit but have partnerships with a
couple non-profits that manage the conservation efforts.
~~~
rblion
Fascinating idea. I just downloaded the app for Android.
------
naboavida84
We're a Tech SMB working on Natural Ecosystems and Habitat conservation and
development. Read more about us at
[http://www.earthindicators.com](http://www.earthindicators.com)
------
alexandros
Some friends are involved with this. Feels pretty relevant:
[https://www.tigernation.org/](https://www.tigernation.org/)
I can connect you if you like, email in profile.
~~~
rblion
thanks. I really appreciate that. Just emailed you. :)
------
oomkiller
I don't know of any that are hiring, but there are lots of non profit
conservation orgs that could probably seriously use some tech help if you're
just looking for somewhere to volunteer.
------
mapmeld
Check out Nerds For Nature in the Bay Area:
[http://nerdsfornature.org](http://nerdsfornature.org)
------
mikeburrelljr
Cuipo: Saving the Rainforest One Meter at a Time
[http://www.cuipo.org](http://www.cuipo.org)
------
rblion
Wow, thanks everyone. I didn't expect this great of a response.
------
jenntoda
Not directly, but can support related projects: microryza.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pornography and the Butterfly Effect - DmenshunlAnlsis
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/27/pornography-and-the-butterfly-effect/
======
pjc50
Two threads here: one is that copyright in porn has largely broken down,
resulting in a single giant company making a lot of money from recordings
without paying the performers.
The second is: what is the effect of production and distribution of porn, on
those producing it, consuming it, and third parties? This was a huge issue for
feminism in the late 70s and early 80s, with Camille Paglia on the pro side
and Andrea Dworkin on the anti side. It has still not been resolved. It's a
huge and complex question, and the answer almost certainly depends on the
details of the content.
------
damagednoob
> Did you know that teens are having substantially less sex than the previous
> few generations? It’s true! And generally interpreted as a good thing. But
> Ronson suggests that this is in large part because porn is replacing sex,
> and, in fact, making real sex with real woman seem alienating and difficult.
Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality
fallacy but there are surely other explanations for this. The rise of cheap
entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
~~~
ronnier
There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an unlimited
choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice — the dating
world for most men has become a lot more difficult over the last couple of
years.
I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have
unlimited options.
~~~
throwawaymath
_> There’s also been a shift due to online and apps that give women an
unlimited choice of men while giving the majority of men nearly no choice_
How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other?
What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
_> I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have
unlimited options._
I can counter your anecdata with my own...many of the women I know are having
great difficulty finding men online because, in their experience, they're very
picky. Speaking as a man, I would say I've also become more picky over time,
not less. Here we're trading localized experience, but I think that there
should be an accountable cause that would explain only men being adversely
impacted.
I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for
men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in
online dating is that it's harder for _unattractive people_ to find partners,
regardless of sexual identity or preference; conversely it seems to be getting
progressively easier for attractive people to find partners. People are
presented with significantly more options, which makes me hypothesize that
they're willing to say no to many people they would otherwise settle for. I
don't think that's particularly harder on men than it is on women.
~~~
andriesm
>>I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for
men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in
online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners,
regardless of sexual identity...
On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with
the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below
average.
It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are
less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.
This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency
in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.
------
mjfl
I think pornography is going to be a significant selection pressure on the
human race, much more than we realize. We're basically running a global-scale
experiment right now. Who knows what's going to happen in 10-15 years, when
the first generation with firehoses of firehoses of HD porn just a click away
their entire lives, comes of age to marry and have children. I think it's
going to effect both men and women pretty badly. Men will be emasculated by
the relative difference between the pornography they watch, the expectations
porn creates, and the barren reality of their actual sex lives. I think this
is going to disincentivize men even more from pursuing sexual relationships,
even more than just having their desires pseudo-satisfied by the porn itself.
Women are going to be stunned by the attenuation of men's desire for them,
desire that came as an assumption to thousands of years of cultural norms
(male-led courtship) and perhaps even instincts built into our genes. Porn may
require/cause a genetic readjustment. We won't live long enough to see.
~~~
bitL
Video games are now more interesting than Hollywood productions; most TV
shows/movies are borefests comparing to what you can experience in some
advanced videogame with almost photorealistic graphics. Soon we will be able
to deploy more AI-based goodies like completely replacing NPCs with people we
know by providing single photos, realistically synthesizing their voices etc.
At some point we will be able to directly stimulate brain's pleasure centers
which might kill off drugs, porn, art and as a side effect, civilization. Our
present time is already looking like a badly directed reality show; I believe
it is going to be a lot worse, Kafkaesque and artificial.
------
rayiner
These phenomena aren’t limited to porn. Content industries have several
players competing for limited revenues. Customers don’t care who gets what,
they’re willing to pay a certain amount for the content (even if that amount
is in the form of advertising). The chief battle is between distributors and
content producers. When copyright breaks down, as it has in porn, distributors
get all the leverage and all the profits.
Accordingly, distributors have huge incentives to push for weakening of
copyright. The lobbying of middle-man companies like Google, etc., against
copyright can be viewed through that lens. Distribution channels like YouTube,
etc., are a lot more valuable when they can distribute other peoples’ content
for free.
------
hfdgiutdryg
_" Did you know that erectile dysfunction rates have risen tenfold among young
men since the rise of free porn? Correlation does not prove causality but it’s
hard to imagine that those two things aren’t somehow related."_
I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia
than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that
people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years
or so.
~~~
bob_theslob646
> I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia
> than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me
> that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last
> 20 years or so.
That is also a little harsh, but I agree. Most likely they did not have the
means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today.
It also could be that it was not considered manly to talk about your feelings
20 years ago...
You also did not access to hundreds of thousands of naked men and woman within
seconds with a simple google search 20 years ago, whereas you had to find
yourself some "contraband" if you were under 18 ,back then.
~~~
0xcde4c3db
> Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than
> the means at which they do so today.
Or what they're looking at is _diagnoses_ of erectile dysfunction, which might
have some connection to drugs being approved and heavily marketed for it.
------
hrktb
Is it still a butterfly effect when it’s a first level effect of the
phenomenon ?
Otherwise there seem to be a lot of pushing of that Montreal company, when the
coming of free sex to the net must have been a more decentralized and varied
phenomenon.
In particular there is a dynamic between pro and amateur pornographic content
that is completely ignored to focus on the “incel” concept I am not sure is
even correctly discussed in the article.
------
silveira
I listened to this series. At the end I was surprised that the author was not
blaming 9/11 on porn, because he was blaming pretty much everything on porn.
~~~
ggg9990
It’s interesting that you mention 9/11 because one theory I’ve heard is that
polygynous societies where there is a surplus of unmarried men breed violent
young men (both married and unmarried).
------
elorant
I was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in the
billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much every
competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I missing? Are
the rumors for the industry's size overstated?
~~~
kinsomo
> I was under the impression that the size of the online porn industry is in
> the billions. And yet, the article states that Thylmann bought pretty much
> every competitor with just $362 million. That doesn't add-up. What am I
> missing? Are the rumors for the industry's size overstated?
Maybe he just bought up the competing free content sites for $362 million.
Maybe the production companies made billions in the past when the industry was
more profitable, who knows what they make now.
------
ikeboy
>As for beneficial — well, as a good San Franciscan I am of course sex-
positive, pro-sex-workers, and pro-porn as a concept … but it would be
disingenuous to pretend that Ronson doesn’t show a lot of dubious-trending-
negative emergent effects of essentially unlimited free pornography.
That 5 negatives in a row? Impressive.
~~~
zbentley
I only counted three; what five were you seeing.
(Yes, blatantly tangential).
~~~
ikeboy
disingenuous, pretend, doesn’t, dubious, negative
If you count the "but" as negative then it's 6
~~~
zbentley
That's fair. I interpreted "dubious trending negative" as a subject rather
than a negative qualification of one.
------
vinayms
I wonder if there is a user content monetization scheme in porn industry. By
that I mean whether all those people, regular people and not porn actors, who
voluntarily upload videos where they have sex, bathe, undress etc get paid. I
think a large portion of such videos are really private but are leaked by
bitter exes, or stolen from lost mobiles etc, but there is a portion that is
indeed voluntary. I wonder about that.
This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it
happens.
~~~
Roritharr
In Germany MyDirtyHobby has been active for a very long time and has, from my
pov, spearheaded Online User Content Monetization.
~~~
vinayms
I found only German Wikipedia page and had to translate to English. It says
the same Fabian from the article owns this company, didn't expect that! It
seems the users are actors and not regular people. The page even uses 'so
called amateurs' to describe the users.
I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at
least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
------
bambax
I've read somewhere (but can't find now) that boys / men and girls / women
reaction to porn is different in that for males, porn is a satisfactory
substitute for sex, while it isn't for females.
Don't exactly know what to make of that, but was disappointed with the article
because it didn't seem to take gender in consideration at all.
------
temp-dude-87844
The widespread availability of pornography probably _does_ drive home several
extra layers of resentment in someone whose personal track record with
courting, dating, and sex has been unsatisfying. At a surface level, it seems
to demonstrate that sex -- and not just fruits of performances thereof -- is a
transaction, and that the attributes that they bring to the marketplace
(appearance, aesthetic, attitude, interests, personality, attainment) are
unpopular among the potential pool. Amateur pornography exacerbates this,
because it appears to suggest that sex, and the mood of sexual adventurousness
required to film it, is extremely common, and taking place between average,
everyday people. This can further their fears of inferiority.
This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences
in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of
empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing
-- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to
date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but
not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine. The protocols
around communicating preferences to others and getting them accepted by one's
peers is a quagmire where social conventions haven't ventured, so everyone
lies for self-preservation ("I like you as a friend", "I don't wanna be tied
down"), and those left out are left to draw their own conclusions.
This is all terribly unfortunate, but not really new; the incel movement,
however, feeds not solely on rejection and obsessing over the base biological
reasons thereof, but the implicit entitlement they they'd deserve otherwise.
~~~
te_chris
> At a surface level, it seems to demonstrate that sex -- and not just fruits
> of performances thereof -- is a transaction, and that the attributes that
> they bring to the marketplace (appearance, aesthetic, attitude, interests,
> personality, attainment) are unpopular among the potential pool. Amateur
> pornography exacerbates this, because it appears to suggest that sex, and
> the mood of sexual adventurousness required to film it, is extremely common,
> and taking place between average, everyday people. This can further their
> fears of inferiority.
Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Seriously, if these sovereign individuals can’t forge social relationships
with others, especially women, and use that to further their understanding and
connection with the real world, then that is their problem, as individuals.
It’s not society’s fault that these individuals choose to not engage with
society on society’s terms. It’s certainly not women’s fault and very much not
their responsibility to fix.
~~~
natalyarostova
Political and social institutions are systems that require system level
solutions.
A call for individual impetus or responsibility to fix system issues isn't
necessarily wrong, but it's usually futile.
Consider: some set of features that identify an individual, over time, begin
to predict a worse or less ideal state. Is the cause and solution most likely
to be a collective individual moral failure, requiring a collective individual
improvement? It's possible. But is it likely?
Or perhaps a better question, is this proposed solution likely to improve the
state of the world to one we all like? "Be better, it's not our responsibility
to fix your issues." If this is repeated enough does the trend reverse? Or if
it doesn't reverse, do we simply not care? If we don't think this will reverse
the trend, and if we do care, then this seems like a poor strategy.
You don't have to care or not care about any individual, and you don't have to
take any individuals belief or claim at face value. That's the difference
between trying to divide up lines and attribute moral defect to society or
individual, and trying to map out a complex system at understand solutions
that aren't about assigning blame or worth, but rather improving society for
all.
Still, an ability to have empathy for those who suffer, whether they are part
of your side of the culture war or not, is (only in my opinion) a beautiful
trait.
~~~
te_chris
I really appreciate this comment.
I agree and this has made me rethink my comment and the angle I took.
The suicide of famous artists such as Chris Cornell and Scott Hutchison -
particularly Hutchison - has really shocked me and made me think more widely
about what it means to live happily as a man these days. I think we need more
people thinking about it positively. And more people need to embrace and
encourage civility as you've done.
It's so easy to fling rocks in the culture wars, and satisfying too, but in a
junk food way.
As you say, there's a bigger picture.
Thank you.
I like the war and peace reference too ;)
------
iuguy
From the site here in GDPR-land:
"Select 'OK' to continue using our products, otherwise, you will not be able
to access our sites and apps."
Looks like I'm not reading this then.
~~~
eilyra
Wait, weren't dialogues that force you to give consent for non core parts of
the experience forbidden under the GDPR? As in, you can't force people to
consent by witholding service if they don't?
~~~
superkuh
Yeah, and it's by far the worst part of the GDPR. It's based on the implicit
premise that you don't own your company and can be compelled to provide
services to random people by the government at the point of a gun.
~~~
dasil003
It's crazy where the Overton window is that no one gives a shit about privacy
issues unless they tie into politics somehow, and government trying to protect
citizens' privacy by means of laws with actual teeth (read: fines) is equated
to physical violence.
Ad tech has taken full carte blanche for long enough. If you actually dig into
GDPR you find that it's quite reasonable, far better than the cookie law and
other earlier iterations that fundamentally misunderstood technology.
~~~
superkuh
Oh, I care a lot about privacy. Because of that I made many choices to never
even start using services like Facebook or carry a cell phone with me. I also
run white-list only javascript in browser and host all my own services
(web/mail/voice chat/etc). These things have made it harder to stay involved
with friends, harder to use the web, but it was my choice and the right one.
The idea that people have to be protected from themselves and their choices is
at the heart of GDPR. It prevents people from making the correct choice of not
using services you disagree with and keeps those services profiting and ever
more centralized.
But digging even deeper, there's this delusion that your usage patterns of
someone elses' property are _yours_ and to me it seems crazy. You wouldn't say
that physical grocery stores cannot keep track of who enters their premises
and what they bought (or how long their phone SSID was in range of $x aisle).
Or that they should be fined, and have those fined backed up with government
violence, if someone demanded the grocer delete the data.
~~~
iuguy
> Because of that I made many choices to never even start using services like
> Facebook or carry a cell phone with me.
Yet services like Facebook will have a shadow profile for you from data built
up through abusing access to other peoples' systems.
------
emsy
>Perhaps the most volatile question: does widely available free porn encourage
“incels,” the latest boogeymen from the Internet, and the calls for “enforced
monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics who people inexplicably take serious?
In a world where objective journalism doesn’t pay, does every site become
Vice?
~~~
erric
>”enforced monogamy” from e.g. blowhard academics
Are academics advocating wholesale monogamy? That’s usually the field of
organized religion.
~~~
redka
Jordan Peterson, whose being referenced here explained what he meant[0] and it
doesn't seem unreasonable. It's uncharitable to jump to a conclusion here
without going beyond our presuppositions.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44)
~~~
da_chicken
Peterson seems to have a knack for not explaining himself well and expecting
people to just understand where he's coming from. He's also really bad at
phrasing. He constantly seems to get into hot water for what he says, and then
if you try to figure out what he says he actually said it's never for what
we're told he says.
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a _really good
editor_.
~~~
jstarfish
This is the hallmark of cult (or any organized religion's) literature. Also
how therapists operate. Be vague, and let your customers project the meanings
onto your words that they most want to hear.
If you actually _gave_ people answers, their quest for meaning would be
complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.
~~~
deno
How do you manage to put the blame on the person cited out of context instead
of on the journalists, whose _job_ it actually was to verify such things?
I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked
explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very
straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.
Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this
treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including
in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal
experience.
The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn60-8Ql_44)
------
frenchpress123
For posterity, here is Jordan Peterson responding to the numerous articles
that misinterpretation his usage of the phrase "enforced monogamy":
[https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-
and-...](https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-
monogamy/)
~~~
k__
This doesn't make any sense.
Monogamous relationships remove 2 people from the dating marked, non-
monogamous ones remove none.
~~~
dragonwriter
Exclusive relationships remove 2 or more whether they are committed monogamy,
committed polygamy (polygyny or polyandry), or committed two-sided polyamory
(the last seems the most rarely attested, if it is a thing at all outside of
fiction, and is included only for the same of excessive completeness.)
Committed polygamy does so asymmetrically with regard to gender, particularly,
a committed polygynous relationship removes more women from the pool than men,
and thus can be seen (from a numbers-game perspective) as disadvantaging not-
yet-attached men more than monogamous commitments.
~~~
k__
"committed two-sided polyamory"
That's the one I'm talking about. I'm living it for 10 years now and know many
living it too.
The public awareness doesn't seem to be high in that case, but I have the
impression most monogamy-proponents simply leave it out because it falsifies
their points entirely.
------
mmjaa
Maybe porn isn't the butterfly. Maybe sexism is the butterfly, and porn just
the wind ..
------
PKop
Here's an enlightening video on the detrimental effects of porn on the brain.
Porn addiction shows similar effects as opiates.
[https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU](https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU)
Related: "NoFap"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/)
~~~
wavefunction
NoFap is of course the pseudo-scientific movement promoted by "Proud Boy"
Gavin McInnes. When I consider the constellation of associated movements and
groups with these sorts of things I have to step back and say "no."
You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and also
with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.
~~~
deno
> You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and
> also with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.
Do you think you’ll catch wrongthink by even accidentally interacting with
people that have different political views than your own?
I don’t have a dog in this fight but this just struck me as such small-minded
thing to say…
No Fap is self-evidently apolitical. Though it’s true it is
“pseudoscientific,” but really that should be obvious—it was started around a
meme.
There’s also Porn Free[1] which evolved independently alongside the website
Your Brain On Porn[2], that is very much evidence-based.
[1] [https://reddit.com/r/pornfree](https://reddit.com/r/pornfree)
[2] [https://yourbrainonporn.com/](https://yourbrainonporn.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Selling stuff on Twitter - eberfreitas
http://tuy.im/
======
WesleyJohnson
I hadn't really thought about using Twitter to sell anything, but now the the
idea is in front of me I like it. I think you could take the intergration with
Twitter fruther, but I'm not sure I have the best ideas on how to do that.
My only initial concern was that in reading your footer text on your PSP ad
(You can contact me on Twitter or email me....) I found myself looking for
your Twitter handle down there as well and was confused that I couldn't find
it. It actually took me a few seconds to realize it was up top. Would be worth
knowing if other people are experiencing the same confusion.
~~~
eberfreitas
Yeah, I guess I need to put it there as well!
------
houseabsolute
Interesting idea, but the periods and commas in the example price are in the
wrong order. Is it going to mis-format something I try to sell as well? Edit:
apparently not, it's just a text field in the listing.
~~~
sdz
It's not really misformatted. The roles of periods and commas are swapped in
some countries. In fact, all of these countries in green use commas for the
decimal separator rather than periods:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DecimalSeparator.png>
------
eberfreitas
My blog post about it <http://www.eberfdias.com/blog/tuy-im/358/>
~~~
there
link to that example for-sale page from the homepage, or show some kind of
example there. from just reading the text, it's not clear at all how it works
or looks.
~~~
eberfreitas
Done!
------
fara
Small suggestion. Change #2 and #3 paragraph positions. It will be easier to
read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carl Sagan's 1994 “Lost” Lecture: The Age of Exploration - gj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_-jtyhAVTc
======
Tepix
Nice find, thanks!
~~~
gj0
:)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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