The curious case of high blood pressure around the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-12 <comment><USER4> This piece is a great example of entirely the wrong way to think about this issue.

The procession of mechanisms is as follows, starting with layer 1:

\- calcification

\- cross-linking

\- vascular smooth muscle dysfunction

Which gives you layer 2:

\- vascular stiffness

Which then, entirely and all by itself ( [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003634](http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003634) ), causes layer 3 by messing with the feedback mechanisms for blood pressure control:

\- hypertension, raised blood pressure

Which then causes layer 4:

\- microvascular damage, such as stroke, kidney issues

\- major vascular damage and sudden death when combined with atherosclerosis

\- cardiac hypertrophy, which is a maladjustment to hypertension

Calcification may be secondary to cellular senescence and other inflammatory mechanisms. Persistent cross-linking may be made worse by dietary sugars, or may not - the better studied forms of sugary by-product are not all that relevant to persistent cross-linking that stiffens tissue. You can read up on glucosepane to learn more about that. The vascular smooth muscle dysfunction is probably caused by a combination of inflammatory mechanisms and everything else that changes with age and poor health, such as metabolic syndrome.

So if thinking about fixing hypertension, you want to be watching people building cross-link breakers, such as the Spiegel team at Yale, funded by the SENS Research Foundation, or people clearing out senescent cells, such as the current brace of senolytic therapy companies, one of which was seed funded by the SENS Research Foundation. Watching the groups looking into smooth muscle may or may not go anywhere; it is very hard to say at this stage whether there is any one target that might help enough for the usual pharmaceutical development approach to work well enough to care about in the near term.

<comment><USER5>
      The procession of mechanisms is as follows, starting with layer 1:

      - <USER2>

      - cross-linking

      - vascular smooth muscle dysfunction

Could you please throw some links behind that? I've never heard of cross- linking before and I'd never made the connection with calcification and high blood pressure, but it sounds interesting to look into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My dad got diagnosed with high blood pressure when he was 30.

For the past 26 years, our family has maintained a low-salt, low-oil diet. There is regular exercise and walking. Low consumption of alcohol and also junk/saturated fatty food, meditation and breathing exercises.

I'm damn proud of my dad and the way he's maintained his blood pressure problem throughout his life. As a by product, the entire family is health conscious. Props to my mom for making sure we always eat well and healthy. It wouldn't be possible without her constant effort.

As a result of growing up in this household, I'm extremely sensitive to salty, oily,and junk food. In the sense that, it doesn't cause a reaction or anything, but I can TASTE the HIGH amount of salt and oils in All the food that's served around me, and I see people gobbling it up without even realising.

Lifestyle diseases.

<comment><USER7> The lifestyle diseases are apparently not related to oils, and for 80% of the population, salt either (someone posted links earlier).

The culprit appears to be the combination of carbs and fat; there are cultures who have lived on mostly carbs which are healthy, and some who have lived on mostly fat that are; but the combination is lethal.

Also, salt is often demonized unfairly (though in your case, it might be right - sodium sensitivity is mostly genetic). Too little sodium is more dangerous than too much for most people. Keto flu is a flu-like condition often accompanied by rash that is a result of dropping carbs without increasing sodium+potassium+magnesium intake, with salt likely playing the largest part.

I am now increasing my salt intake gradually, after having essentially no salt for the last 40 years (grew up in a salty household but didn't like the taste). It is hard but I am sleeping better, having less muscle cramps, and losing more weight than with the same diet before increasing salt. YMMV.

<comment><USER5> I have a relative who's a kidney patient and who only recently realised her blood pressure was getting too high- it was up to 194/112 back in February this year. She only realised when she mentioned having strong headaches during a doctor's appointment.

My relative is in a scientific discipline and she likes collecting data, I guess, so she's been tracking her blood pressure meticulously since then. I helped her to plot it out in R. You can see the resulting diagram below:

[http://www.goblinopera.com/hn/dec_17_anon.png](http://www.goblinopera.com/hn/dec_17_anon.png)

I think anyone who sees this chart cannot fail to notice the big dip in BP in October: from an average of 140/90 from February to September, to 120/75 after October. So far, this has lasted (with a bit of a recent spike, possibly brought on by the inevitable Christmas Binge™).

This dip follows from her decision to control her salt intake, starting around October. She no longer cooks with salt, or salt her food, she eats very little cheese and generally stays away from food she hasn't prepared herself and can't control the salt content of.

So this is the message I keep from this chart: salt intake can really affect blood pressure.

Obviously, that's a single case and it's hard to generalise- but on the other hand it's impossible to deny that a specific intervention (controlling salt intake) was taken in the hopes of having a desired effect (lowering BP) and that the expected effect directly followed the intervention.

There were confounding factors, to be sure. I've marked various medication milestones in the chart (anonymised, to protect her privacy). My relative was suspicious that "Drug 1" was affecting her blood pressure and the chart has helped convince her doctors that she should stop taking it (see the big spike after "Drug 1" is taken at the end of May). She is now taking an alternative ("Drug 3"). My relative also lost some weight between February and September and that definitely contributed.

However, the fact remains that she was able to lower her blood pressure to the levels considered safe for kidney patients (those are lower than in the general population) only when she started controlling her salt intake.

<comment><USER8> Given that kidneys are responsible for filtering excess electrolytes out of the bloodstream it makes sense to me. A person with compromised kidney function may need to limit intake to a level that the kidneys can handle. This doesn't necessarily mean that a person with healthy kidneys needs to limit intake.

<comment><USER5> Of course. But high blood pressure can damage the kidneys, which can in turn raise blood pressure further- so if blood pressure is high then it's probably a good idea to start lowering one's salt intake, anyway.

My relative has been complaining that she was not made aware of the detrimental effect that high blood pressure has on the kidneys, and how salt affects this, even after multiple visits to a nephrologist. She could probably have avoided those crazy high values at the start of the graph if she was aware.

I was not aware of the connection either and I believe many people are also oblivious to it, so it's probably a good idea overall to highlight it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"diets that include too much salt"

Hasn't that been debunked I thought I read? I certainly hope so.

I had the pleasure of visiting with my Grandma's sister who was down for the holidays with us. She did not eat much of our cooking as she stated that her doctor had her on a "low sodium diet". She said she couldn't eat alot of things she liked, but it wasn't so bad as there was no restriction on sugar intake so she "gets to eat all the sweets" she wants.

And that was demonstrated several times at the dessert table and by the several bags of candy she brought with her from back home. I was quite dumbfounded.

<comment><USER10> What I've read is that only about 20% of the population has salt induced hypertension. Regarding low salt diet which I am on due to kidney disease, our tastes actually adapt the lower salt contents if you do it long enough however you still need enough to bring out the flavor in many things. My solution is to pick things that have other stronger tastes like sweet, sour, spicy, etc.

<comment><USER11> Vinegar or lemon juice also help perk flavors up.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget lime juice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazing to me that the most basic biological system for survival - stress - <USER3> no where mentioned. And we've known for 40 years that relaxation techniques are as effective at treating hypertension as prescription medications.

<comment><USER14> It's a weakness of empiricism that scientists remain reluctant to consider the role of (unmeasurable) psychological states, such as pleasure or stress, in the context of a (measurable) physiological response, such as raised blood pressure.

My guess is that, together with stress, it is visceral pleasures (arising from our relationship to food, sex, drugs, alcohol, or other substances/habits) that are responsible for high blood pressure. Eating food with salt is just one of the ways it can be made more tasty, and thus more pleasurable, since salt heightens the response of our taste buds.

<comment><USER15> Because it's difficult to objectively measure stress and pleasure between people.

<comment><USER8> So we continue to look for our keys under the streetlight rather than in the bushes where we dropped them.

<comment><USER15> Except we don't actually know where the keys were dropped, so might as well start under the streetlight.

<comment><USER14> Science starts with problems, not observations.

If excessive pleasure is unhealthy or bad, why do people seek it? We can use folk psychology as starting point, e.g. consumption of Ben and Jerry's in response to relationship difficulties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I recently found out I'm one of those many people with high blood pressure. This knowledge has been stressing me out (I don't want to die yet).

I'm reasonably active as far as software engineers go: 10k+ steps daily and exercise 2-3 times/week.

My BMI is 28, which is in the overweight category, but I carry a fair amount of muscle along with my flab.

My diet is the hardest part to control. I live alone and spend a lot of time at the office, so I often eat takeout Chinese and other convenience food.

My point is that a lot of us HN-y folks probably lead comparable lifestyles. The kind that we may think aren't _too_ unhealthy, but for at least some of us, that assumption is wrong. Please keep an eye on your blood pressure and your waistline. I wish I had started paying attention to this much sooner. Now I'm not sure whether I can still reverse the outcome.

<comment><USER17> I have been diagnosed with borderline high bp (around 140/90, sometimes a bit lower, sometimes higher) 5 years ago and tried everything to reverse it, as the Doctor did not want to put me on meds so early. Lost 10kg (BMI 23.5), 60km of cycling a week, 2x exercise a week, reasonably good diet, no smoking, little alcohol.

From all those measures my BP did not improve a lot, the systolic is nowadays mostly okay, but i seem to have a problem with the diastolic bp which is often in the 90-95 range. Right now i am undergoing more checks again and will probably resort to meds now, which i wanted to avoid (which otherwise healthy, fit 35 year old wants to start taking bp meds) but it seems like i can't and i don't want to damage myself more than i already have.

Until now, no real cause has been found, it could even be some nervous disorder because of high stress times i had in the past, but nobody knows. I also have no family history of high bp, so it still puzzles me and freaks me out to the point i got an underlying anxiety.

If losing weight etc. does not help much, also get your kidneys and thyroid checked. I have some kidney checks coming up and it freaks me out...

The good thing is that it made me a lot more conscious of what i eat, drink and do, i just wish i would have monitored it earlier because i don't even know when it started.

<comment><USER16> Something consider: elevated diastolic blood pressure with a systololic blood pressure of <140 is apparently not correlated to more negative outcomes. Apparently home blood pressure monitors are prone to overreport the diastolic reading by about 7mm in those instances. Source: recently read a paper about this, which looked at multiple large scale studies. Don't have the link on mobile, sorry.

Bottom line: well done on the lifestyle changes, and don't worry if only the bottom number is high.

<comment><USER17> Interesting, I have read quite conflicting information on that though, link would be appreciated. The problem is not just with home monitors though and I read while it's more disregarded in older people it could point to underlying issues in younger people which is what freaks me out since nobody found anything yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> White coat syndrome cannot be ignored too. This is where your BP can increase by a lot just by being in a doctor's exam room.

I went in for a checkup a few years ago and they took my BP and it was like 140/93 with an 87 heartbeat (I was 32 and in decent shape), so my doctor was like, hey I don't want to put you on any medication but your BP looks a little high, let's chart your BP at home for the next 2 months and see how it goes.

So I grabbed a BP machine and about 3 times a week I took my BP, alternating arms and doing it at various times in the day. I could see that my BP was a little high for weeks, but by the end of the 2 months I had a 2 week stretch where it was about 120/80 steady.

I took the same BP machine I bought and took it to the follow up exam and it was 138/87\. That's a pretty big spike.

Now I take it myself twice a month or so (just for good measure) and it's usually 120/80ish with a resting heart beat of 58-62. My dentist likes to take your BP before doing any type of work and it was 135/88 before a cleaning too.

I don't know about you, but I generally don't like getting my BP taken. It causes some anxiety.

I wouldn't immediately discount high BP to white coat syndrome, but you should ask your doctor if you can track your BP at home if you're on the cusp of high BP.

<comment><USER19> Can you recommend a particular BP machine? I have $100 in an FSA I need to spend in the next 16 hours and I've had a similar experience to you with white coat syndrome.

<comment><USER18> My doctor recommended this one [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NY6JXA](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NY6JXA) (it's $42).

Keep in mind, that I'm not a doctor and I don't know if this one will work for you. I would definitely ask your doctor. Maybe run this one by him/her for a confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've had high blood pressure since 24. I've had every possible diagnostic test, tried medication (no avail). I'm not overweight and do walk about 50 minutes a day, eat as healthy as can be expected. And still it averages around 170/90\. I gave up on it. If global disaster doesn't kill me first, it'll probably be a heart attack around 50. There are worse ways to go. Seriously, even lifestyle changes for the relatively healthy only seem to make a 10 mmHg difference, so eh. Whatever.

<comment><USER21> High blood pressure is a largely diet-related western only disease. It's not normal that it rises with age either, just something we got used to it.

If you want to cure your blood pressure, watch this video till the end - [https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-high- bl...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-high-blood- pressure/)

Then if you want the details, have a look at this playlist - [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5TLzNi5fYd8jLx2M6exR...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5TLzNi5fYd8jLx2M6exRO1DoEP0BAzdy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the world-wide trend on high blood pressure is aligned with that of vitamin D?:

\- [https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/17956/PDF](https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/17956/PDF)

\- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396645/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396645/)

\- [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691683](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691683)

\- [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/1080S.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/1080S.full)

\- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5356990/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5356990/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it's fair and necessary to ask: Are the (negative) effects of high blood pressure the same for all genders across all gene pools?

Also, what is the breakdown of high blood pressure being a disease? Vs being a symptom (of another disease)?

We need deeper data.

</comment><comment><USER24> Age factor must be also relevant:

A friend of my father has the same lifestyle and food habits today at 60's as during his 40's and 50's. He always had normal blood pressure until recently.</comment>


Modelling a quantum symmetric key exchange - <AUTHOR> https://adlrocha.substack.com/p/adlrocha-modelling-a-quantum-symmetric <comment><USER2> This was an enjoyable read. Been following along with the NIST standardisation process and it's always nice to see more on quantum cryptography, the google group is quite dry.

What's a quantum rng? Wouldn't most hardware rng's be considered to be exploiting quantum effects or is it something else with additional properties?</comment>


The Octopus That Almost Ate Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/magazine/the-octopus-that-almost-ate-seattle.html?ref=magazine&_r=0&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER3> That octopus has been at Cove 2 on Alki for years. I got my SCUBA certification there nearly 8 years ago and every greybeard diver raved about this particular octupus. One of the stops on the certification dive was this old, broken sewer line that exposed a cornucopia of marine life, including this huge octopus.

May he/she rest in peace.

Edit: Probably not the same octopus [1] but it made me nostalgic.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteroctopus_dofleini#Lifespan_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteroctopus_dofleini#Lifespan_and_reproduction)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is so Seattle. Kid does something legal, but frowned upon. Angry mob forms on internet, spreads his personal information around and makes threats. Mob reforms after they realize how shitty they are being and creates petition to make sure no one can do this again, ever. Meanwhile, they all go to the fancy restaurant that serves the exact same item they are so against some kid harvesting and rave about it. Seattle.

<comment><USER5> How a comment which starts with "This is so Seattle" can recieve a single up vote is beyond me.

You also fail to point out the real unique aspect of Seattle culture in your loop.

"Mayer stepped down, and others took the lectern to recite their prepared remarks, which failed to acknowledge that the threat had effectively just been neutralized. Eventually, Mike Racine stood to speak, representing the Washington Scuba Alliance, whose director of conservation, Scott Lundy, first posted Mayer's photo online. "I did want to recognize that Dylan Mayer is here today. He and his family took a lot of heat over the last week for this legal taking of an octopus. Much of that heat is vitriolic in nature and inappropriate, and Dylan, just so you know, the Scuba Alliance regrets that, and we applaud you for being here," Racine said. The room stood and clapped. Mayer, once a nemesis of the giant Pacific octopus, had suddenly become its most visible supporter."

I don't know a single city filled with people which, when presented with new information responds so positively. Seattle reacts quickly, information spreads quickly here, but people are also very open minded. More-so than anywhere else I've lived.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but we still have our share of dense morons (the "wage theft" people, the May Day crowd, the NIMBY anti-growth types)

<comment><USER5> NIMBY anti-growth types are bad, but the "war on cars group" is my least favorite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know what.. the kid went into the ocean, and wrestled a friggin' octopus out of it. By hand. As far as hunting goes, that's pretty much the most fair way to do it.

Save your lamenting for the industrial-scale mechanized harvest of creatures. His grilled octopus (or whatever he did with it) was orders of magnitude more ethical than that burger you're about to eat.

<comment><USER8> It's got a macho factor, sure... but ethical?

No more of an ethical issue than using an IDE vs typing in the raw binary with your "0" and "1" keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are a few animals I'd really like to have as pets, because of their intelligence. Obviously a dog, but also there are a couple of breeds of cat (aby, burmese, bengal,) plus grey parrots and an octopus. If I could get away with them, I'd also be up for dolphins. I wouldn't have space for a whale.

I occasionally daydream about hacking up an electronic waterproof octopus toy, kind of like an underwater "bop it" that I can customise as they learn new features on it.

It makes me sad to read about any of these animals being hunted. They're too cool, leave them alone.

<comment><USER10> While intelligent, octopus are dramatically different from other intelligent species.

They are, somehow, born with their intelligence. Everything else learns it, all the species you mentioned learn from their parents or surrogates.

Octopus are also a K selected species, laying 200,000 eggs on average. Furthermore, they are short lived in comparison to any other intelligent species.

We associate intelligence with individuality and hence with rarity: each human intelligence is rare because it was cultivated, not born. Octopus aren't like that.

<comment><USER9> I'm still not sure that it's ethical to kill human clones, just because they were born fully formed and with pre-programmed intelligence, and die anyway after a few years.

<comment><USER11> It's ok if they are tasty

<comment><USER9> I don't know whether you're being sarcastic or not[1].

If not, _frown_.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Misleading title! For a moment, I thought a giant marine octopus is attacking Seattle.

Joking aside, I'm very surprised that the teenager was able to escape a nine foot giant octopus. I'm sure he'll have a great story to tell for the rest of his life.

</comment><comment><USER13> My random conspiracy is that octopuses are actually alien life form that crashed into our oceans thousands of years ago.

But seriously; if you're ever up in Seattle, despite the touristy nature, the aquarium is totally worth a peek. Watching the G.P.O ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypaxG8AnTdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypaxG8AnTdE)) in it's tank is marvelous; quite majestic creatures, despite absolutely being one of the things I would least like to encounter in the wild. Countless reports of them ripping off essential diving equipment.

In the video above, if you' watch the whole thing, the aquarium employee says "this one is about half full grown."

Interesting article though, it's always fascinating from a social sciences perspective how the perception of a concept can so quickly shift public policy.

<comment><USER14> The Aquarium docents _love_ to talk about their octopuses. If you get an older one, they'll tell you about the time when they filled the tank near the top and the octopus climbed out and flopped upon an unsuspecting visitor!

The water line is kept lower these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a bait-and-switch title. But while we're here and talking of eating octopodes [side note: octopii is way off the mark, mixing classical languages; octopuses is probably in the end the least obnoxious plural], we might bear in mind our obsession for killing rather than wondering at nature with this cautionary tale: [http://io9.com/vacationing-family-finds-exceedingly-rare- hex...](http://io9.com/vacationing-family-finds-exceedingly-rare-hexapus- kill-939989806)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm concerned a lot less about people eating octopus than about the only _legal_ way to take them being a slow death by blunt trauma. I'm very much a canrnivore, but for pity's sake, make it quick. If the point was to only allow taking them through bycatch, why not just say that?

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that's pretty strange. You can't kill an octopus with a swift knife blow, or a speargun? Every hunter I've met prefers a quick kill, for both ethical and culinary reasons (adrenaline-soaked meat).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm always fascinated by the psychology of eating animals, and how society decides which ones are acceptable to eat and which ones aren't. Not that I'm any exception to it, of course, but I at least try to look at it from the outside a bit.

We have a diver who killed an animal for food, and this generated tremendous outrage. Why?

It's certainly not the bare fact that he killed an animal for food. That happens all the time, and people mostly don't care.

He ended up doing it in front of a crowd, but that's not the reason either. If he had killed, say, a trout in front of a crowd, nobody would really care.

Nor is it the kind of animal that he killed, not alone. If he had done it in private then told the public about what happened, there would have been no outcry.

Clearly it's some combination of the kind of animal _and_ doing it in public. There's no particular reason either one should matter, though. There is, it appears, nothing particularly special about this animal that makes it a bad choice for food compared to other animals. But clearly it does matter.

I think it comes down to the simple fact that this was an unusual event. And though there was nothing specific about this event that should lead to outcry, the mere fact that it was unusual is enough. A lot of city dwellers are fundamentally uncomfortable with eating meat. Most of them still do it, but they hide behind the various structures that exist between the living animal and their dinner plate to kind of ignore it. I've heard of people seriously saying things like, "It's wrong to kill an animal for meat. You should just buy it from the grocery store." I'm sure most people are not that ignorant, but there's a similar sort of avoiding thinking about the stark reality of slaughtering and butchering.

So you have a bunch of people suddenly confronted with that which they try to ignore. Some of them are outraged by the mechanics of killing and eating an animal. But most of them still eat cows and pigs and chickens which are routinely killed in ways not really different from this. What reason could there be for their outrage, then? It can't be that they're outraged at the overall concept of killing an animal for food. But, ah hah! This is an unusual animal, so it must be that!

And that, I think, is how you end up with a conservation campaign for an animal that is not endangered and not, ultimately, all that special.

I could be way off, but it's interesting to think about.

<comment><USER19> > There is, it appears, nothing particularly special about this animal that > makes it a bad choice for food compared to other animals.

Octopuses are intelligent. They are playful and awesome. You've seen the video of octopuses using coconut shells to hide in?

<comment><USER20> Humans have this interesting habit of anthropomorphising animals, especially if they do something that seems "human".

<comment><USER18> Just look at how many people think dolphins (or even dogs!) are happy because they're "smiling".

<comment><USER21> Do we know that dogs are not smiling? Anecdotally, my dogs seem to smile when they are happy (when I pet them, give them treats, play with them, etc.) I'm genuinely curious about this.

<comment><USER18> Some may, perhaps learned from humans, but _in general_ a dog will signal happiness by e.g. wagging the tail, and "smiling" as in baring teeth signals something like aggression or fear.

Which, of course, is why you should never smile at an angry dog.

<comment><USER21> I see the smiling along with wagging their tail, and I know the difference between what I see as a dog smile (mouth open, ears back, tail wagging, eyes squinting) and baring their teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I noticed my site ([http://octopus.org](http://octopus.org)) spiked in traffic today - can't be co-incidental. Octopus are fascinating and the more we learn about them, the more they fascinating they become.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a vegetarian who is supportive of hunting. If you are going to eat meat, hunting and butchering it yourself is by far the most ethical and environmentally sound method of obtaining flesh as food. I simply can't reason with someone who finds it OK to eat an animal, but sleeps with one on the foot of her bed, and rages when someone else hunts.

That said eating octopus and specifically the GPO is particularly unethical if you subscribe to intelligence being related to sentience. Additionally it appears that octpus legs contain brain cells, the part you eat is in part brain.

<comment><USER23> Yes but as someone said above, pigs are also particularly intelligent animals, and we eat the hell out of them.

So how can you reconcile those two things?

<comment><USER17> Why would ryanisinallofus need to reconcile those things? He is a vegetarian.

I'd say that we meat-eaters are the ones who have to reconcile them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a SCUBA instructor (trained and living in Vancouver BC), from Seattle.. and I can definitely attest to the character of pacific northwest divers as being very pro-environment, "protect the wildlife", to the point of craziness. Oh man, I can only imagine the aggressive and passive-aggressive reactions this kid got when he pulled that thing out of the water...

Sure, they're nice creatures. If I had a choice, more often than not I would say let the thing be. But I also own a speargun and hunt on occasion. I like the sport, and it feels good to put your own skills on the table once in a awhile. What irritates me is how irrationally angry people get... it's an act of selfishness, a chance for a relatively passive person to stand up for something. It's not really about the octopus, it's about their beliefs. People have to stand for something... whether that's Obama or an Octopus, it doesn't really matter.

The cool thing about running a company, as I'm sure a lot of people here do, is how quickly you get to see the big picture on the world, and sit in the shoes of everyone else's perspective. Wearing a lot of hats and working on hard things really trains you to only give a shit about things that matter, things you can have an influence on, where the goal is not to change people's opinion subjectively, but to prove, objectively, that you can add value and earn a place on this planet.

</comment><comment><USER21> >> was just liking to look at it reason enough.

This made me think about pandas. I'm not an expert in this at all, so please correct me if I am wrong about any of this, but it seems like the panda bear's evolutionary adaptation is that humans think they are cute. They rarely reproduce, sometimes roll over and kill their own young, and eat bamboo, which I believe they struggle to digest. But, humans love them, so they get lots of protection.

<comment><USER25> That seems more like luck of the draw than an adaptation. They're not domesticated (like livestock or cats/dogs) and probably have not been relying on humans for very long.

Furthermore, IIRC they are more reluctant to breed in captivity than in the wild, so being cute isn't exactly helping their population numbers like it would other animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article has an interesting meta about the conflict between the gourmet and environmental protection approaches to exotic wildlife, that itself is half food article and half human interest story about octopus punching.

Worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find this interesting. Where I'm from (Spain), octopi are routinely eaten and are considered delicious. I guess it depends on the person, but I'd say piscitarians will eat them.

What he did will be considered the same as someone fishing for, let's say, trout.

I guess it depends a lot on the local culture.

</comment><comment><USER28> No one asked the octopus what it thought. Maybe someday we can communicate - <USER2> wonder if we would eat it then.

<comment><USER29> "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." Jack Handy

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Coming soon: Braised Stephen Hawking on lightly buttered toast!

Speaking as a vegetarian(!) I found the content of this article to be quite disturbing. Octopii are very special creatures and it is lamentable that this article is essentially what they taste like, how to butcher them and where to go to eat them.

<comment><USER31> It is a bad idea to eat a creature with nerve disease.

<comment><USER32> iirc, Hawking no longer has the disease. That is, his disease only was actually "active" for about 5 years... it's just that the damage was irreversible. This is why he survived ALS when most people die of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was hoping this would be about the Northwest Tree Octopus.</comment>


Record Industry: Limewire Could Owe $75 Trillion - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/24/record-industry-limewire-could-owe-75-trillion-judge-absurd/ <comment><USER2> Bad lawyering here: as an advocate, it is good to assert every valid legal position that makes sense for a case but it is always bad to cast your client's position in a light that holds it up to ridicule and mockery. When that happens, any valid claim that might exist gets caught in the downdraft caused by your bad judgment and the whole case is compromised.

I feel for the judges trying to apply 1976 statutory law to modern technology. The 1976 revamp of the Copyright Act was the last comprehensive one and its major purpose was to account for the effect (since the enactment of the 1909 Act then in effect) of motion pictures, sound recordings, radio and other then-modern forms of communication on IP laws. Common law is made by judges case-by-case and it is by nature slow and evolving, as is a parallel type of judge-made law based on case-by-case interpretation of old statutes. It is precisely the vacuum left by this case-by-case handling of an antiquated set of statutes that creates the problems today. What is needed is a comprehensive statutory enactment by Congress to bring these laws up to date and to make them fair. Even if that means keeping copyright under the rubric of "property" and defining wrongs in that area as "thefts," this can still be done fairly by defining sensible penalties that are commensurate with the scope of any wrong committed.

Of course, to do this, you need Congress to break free from the grip of lobbyists whose influence would inevitably distort the amending process. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER3> One thing this _will_ shed light on though is how absurd the current laws are w/r to damages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being a businessperson I really don't understand the recording industry's strategy.

They know that their industry is under heavy disrpution and that their old income model is increasingly obsolete. Thus they need to innovate and find new sources of income, while milking their old sources for all they're worth. This much everyone agrees on, including the recording industry.

They have done no innovation, and I can't point to any serious attempts. They must have seen this coming but it took Apple and their Itunes to implement a system that actually worked. Before Itunes there was no easy legal way for me to download music. The recording industry did nothing. At the same time they're using their resources to alienate their customers as much as humanly possible by suing them and harrassing them at every turn. Not a day goes by where I don't see some kind of bad press for the industry, ranging from articles like this to takedown notices on youtube.

Go to the local mall and ask the cool kid who hangs out with the cool girls what he thinks of the recording industry. He'll tell you that they're bloodsucking maggots because he's seen the same articles and takedown notices that I have. And he'll tell you that there's noway he's giving them money, and that you shouldn't either. He's the opinion leader that all industries need to be friendly with.

A whole industry whose best idea of making money is to sue their customers needs to seriously rethink their strategic stance.

<comment><USER5> Their behavior may be rational if they believe that no new business model can work.

<comment><USER4> Interesting point, but I don't think that's what's happening. If it is then some people need to be fired.

Apple is raking in _billions_ from itunes that could have gone to the recording industry.

<comment><USER5> The labels are already getting 70% of every sale; it's hard to imagine that getting 80-90% would save the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You owe the bank $10,000 and don't pay, you have a problem.

You owe the bank $10,000,000 and don't pay, the bank has a problem.

You owe the RIAA $75,000,000,000,000 and don't pay, who has the problem?

This seems like a great example of what I am sure will be an increasingly common problem as more and more laws are written by lobbyists. What do you do when they don't make any sense and were clearly never thought through?

It's so hard to be optimistic about the world in the face of this sort of thing, especially when there are instances of it everywhere you turn.

<comment><USER7> Your analogy doesn't hold, because the first two are debts and the third is compensation for damages. You owe $75 trillion in illusory damages to a party, it's still _you_ who has the problem. If we were talking real damages it might hold, but we're not talking real damages. And of course you can't pay $75 trillion, but you sure can be driven bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that when you ask for more money than the GDP of _the entire world_ you should be laughed out of court and then slapped with a punitive judgment for wasting the court's time and resources.

But that's just me.

</comment><comment><USER9> The real story here is that the RIAA's claims finally got so ridiculous, the judge called bullshit and is suggesting a different way of calculating damages. Specifically, for the law that assigns a $ value per work infringed, he's suggesting interpreting that value as per distinct work infringed rather than per individual copy made.

<comment><USER10> The judge is a 'she'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_Wood>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was a young music fan who taped music because I loved music and had no money. I now buy lots of of music because I love music and have money.

I do not pirate music and I buy (or legally stream) TV and video. But I clearly remember and resent the late nineties and early 2000s when a CD was £15.99 in HMV or Tower (close to $30 in old money).

(I am also fairly convinced that there was price-fixing and monopolistic behaviour then)

Now we have a more open, fairer system for artists and consumers - yet rather than accept that they have been caught-out and the world has moved-on without them the record companies are lashing out at young music fans rather than nurturing and encouraging them.

If you ever needed a reminder of the greed of the recording industry here it is.

<comment><USER11> "(I am also fairly convinced that there was price-fixing and monopolistic behaviour then)"

There was a class action lawsuit in the US covering exactly that back in 2004 or so. I think I got about $7 from the settlement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Judge noted in her opinion about this that $75 Trillion is more money than has been printed since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Your first reaction may be to rail against the lawyers of the record industry, but realize they are just asking for the maximum allowed by federal law ($30,000 per infringement). Indeed, one might argue it is a lawyer's duty to seek the maximum amount of damages allowed, just as it is your accountant's job to arrange your taxes so you pay the minimum allowed by law. The real problem is the disconnect of the law itself with reality. I'm in no way endorsing the behavior of the record industry (imagine how well they'd be doing if they had bought Napster instead of suing it?). I'm merely seeking to point out the root of the problem. If the law was written more intelligently, dying industries wouldn't be able to get life support from the courts.

<comment><USER13> Judges don't have a problem with absurd penalties. US Judges routinely hand out multiple life sentences served consecutively. Or life sentences for victimless crimes.

It doesn't matter how the law was written take something simple that anyone could understand like the Interstate Commerce Clause. Now put it in front of the supreme court all of a sudden growing plants in your closet is interstate commerce. Even though the person had no intention of selling it, let alone out of state. The law will be contorted by those in power to serve exactly what they want to do.

<comment><USER12> Do the drug laws in this country need reform? Yes. Are the penalties for non- violent drug crimes particularly harsh? Sure. Is the entire system of law so contorted and corrupt that it's completely the control of "those in power" as you call them? I rather doubt it. Such an extraordinarily claim requires extraordinary evidence and you've provided none. You've simply waved your hands around and grumbled about how judges "routinely" hand out multiple life sentences, without including any proof, context, or analysis how this alleged fact supports your argument.

Clearly the angle you're approaching this issue from is that of marijuana legalization. Consider this: the fact that you are unable to have a rational view of our justice system is one reason why decriminalization/legalization is taking so damn long. Remember Prop 19? It is one of the most incompetent pieces of legislation I've ever read, mostly in part because of attitudes like yours that the justice system is completely broken and out to ruin the lives of every pot smoker in the US. A good summery of some of the more fundamental issues with Prop 19 here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1864578> and here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1865987>. Point is that the justice system isn't the boogie man, and the thought that it was is what caused Prop 19 to be such garbage. I honestly have no idea where the idea comes from. Last time I checked weed was decriminalized in 12 states and many townships in the US. I'm not trying to convolute the main line of discussion here, but the subtext beneath your post needs to be addressed.

Finally, if you actually believe the rather macabre view of the justice system you're espousing, you should pack up and move out of the country. I for one couldn't live in a country with a justice system like the one you describe. There's a world of difference in believing the justice system in imperfect and in need of reform (my personal view) and your view which seems to be that it's completely broken.

<comment><USER14> No individual or group in the country has all the power. However, most of the power is split up among a minority of players and corruption and abuses of power run rampant.

Small scale: I know someone who did serious time because he picked up some drugs for a old friend who was trying to get a lighter sentence. This is someone who had never sold drugs, and stooped using a while ago. But transportation = distribution and "entrapment" does not count when the cops use a third party.

Large Scale: UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld is the only person to due time over a multi billion dollar tax fraud.

PS: Don't forget the recording industry is only worth 12 billion a year, yet protecting that tiny cash flow is worth more than pissing off all those pirates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's actually more than the Gross World Product...

<comment><USER16> The CIA Factbook cites the 2010 estimate for GDP at $74.48 trillion:

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/xx.html)

Also of interest, another number close to this is the world's stock of broad money, at around $75.86 trillion. Because this is comprised of all money in circulation, plus the total quantity of money in money market funds, credit union deposits, and other liquid assets, the top end of what is being asked for is almost literally, all of the money in the world.

<comment><USER17> > the top end of what is being asked for is almost literally, all of the money > in the world.

LOL, now THAT is awesome. The RIAA would be the perfect villain if they weren't so ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> I wish that's how the RIAA did the calculation.

Judge: "What are the damages?"

RIAA: "How much money is there in the world? We'll start with that. No, seriously."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If there's really that much value in free music then there's a heck of a case for making music a freely available public good.

<comment><USER3> The good news is that there is _tons_ of legally free music available these days. The internet has let lots of hobbyists, some pretty darn good, publish music that would have otherwise languished in their home studios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Assuming the damages Limewire will have to pay total an astronomical amount, who on earth pays for it? Do the founders take on the debt for the rest of their lives or what?

<comment><USER21> I'm assuming that Limewire is an LLC, which means its debts (don't always) transfer to its principals. This would likely mean Limewire is liquidated and the plaintifs get dibs on whatever is made from that.

<comment><USER22> LimeWire is incorporated as an LLC but plaintiffs are trying to pierce the corporate veil and name the founder personally.

<comment><USER21> >plaintiffs are trying to pierce the corporate veil

They're also trying to get a $75 _T_ judgment. I'd suggest what they are seeking and a likely reality don't overlap much.

<comment><USER22> In this case, the court gave them exactly what they asked for:

"As a result of the actions and benefits described above, Lime Group and Gorton are liable for LW's inducement of infringement. See Capitol Records, Inc., 218 F. Supp. 2d at 284-85; Blum v. Kline, 1988 WL 52916, *2 (S.D.N.Y. May 17, 1988) (finding that president of defendant corporation could be found liable for infringement because he "owns all of [the corporation's] shares and is responsible for [its] daily activities.")."

(full summary judgement here: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/31272055/Arista- Records-Summary-Ju...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/31272055/Arista-Records- Summary-Judgment-Opinion))

<comment><USER21> Well that's mildly disappointing. I guess he'll have to declare bankruptcy.

I still think the judgement should be payable in mass emails of pictures of $20 bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the record industry's inflation adjusted Doctor Evil moment.

<comment> daniel-cussen Roughly the same amount too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Simple. Just dig out your checkbook, write out a check for $75,000,000,000,000, sign and date it, smile, and invite RIAA to take it to the bank and see what happens.

<comment><USER25> knowingly passing a bad check is a crime.

A bit modifying your idea, the Limewire LLC should just accept the 75T debt or even willingly accept another couple hundred T on top of it. Let it be round 1000T to cover any future violations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dr. Evil: "Here's the plan. We get the warhead, and we hold the world ransom for.....One MILLION DOLLARS!!"

No.2: "Ahem...Don't you think we should maybe ask for _more_ than a million dollars?"

</comment><comment><USER27> $75 Trillion..

Apparently the RIAA has figured out how to get blood from a stone?

</comment><comment><USER28> Actually the judge is looking to help them by suggesting that their estimate is bullsh*t, since they are very unlikely to get $75 Trillion.

</comment><comment><USER29> just curious here, but how much money has the record industry made since the beginning of time?

<comment><USER30> Not much with Limewire stealing $75t worth of music from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think its high time that the RIAA should be referenced by its members rather than the face-less acronym.

Imagine how much it would hurt someone like Sony if each time a bad article, comment or story reached the masses it had the words representing Sony in the title.

The largest and most influential of the members of the RIAA are the "Big Four" that include:

        * EMI

        * Sony Music Entertainment

        * Universal Music Group

        * Warner Music Group

<comment><USER22> And rightly so; as far as these cases are concerned the RIAA is merely a PR instrument. The plaintiffs are the record labels, not the RIAA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do we really need any further evidence of the desperation and general incompetence of the entertainment industry.

Never have I seen an entire industry act so horribly wrong to technological advances as the music industry in the face of Internet.</comment>


Ask HN: How to quit your day job with bills to pay, mouths to feed - <AUTHOR> I have a mortgage, car payments, student loan payments, two kids, etc. I work a comfortable job, but I cannot be fulfilled until I work for myself. Working on startups "part time" doesn't work because I cannot invest the necessary time without sacrificing time with my family.
My plan so far is to reduce debt, figure out ways of passive income, and maximize my time. The journey of a thousands miles begins with a single step. I spend 1 hour a day researching and exploring, but I'd like to devote more time.
Advice? Brutal honesty is appreciated. <comment><USER2> Honestly you seem to be struck by the 'Startup' hype. You feel like you're falling behind in the race.

Forget about start-up. Enjoy your life. Be happy. You won't regret not doing startup when you turn 70. But you will certainly regret not enjoying your life.

Believe me. I was in your situation. You work, you get paid. Go home, spend life with joy / happiness.

And you know what, you can live without that startup. There are people who would do anything to get the comfortable job you have, good food you eat, warm bed you sleep on.

Please don't ruin your and hence your loved ones life just for the sake of technology hype.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can't be fulfilled until you work for yourself, clearly the issues here are debts and obligations.

So, pay off the student loans (because they're practically inescapable), sell the car, default on the mortgage.

At this point, divorce your spouse, and let them have custody of the kids-- with you being in such dire financial straits (see previous step), you shouldn't have trouble convincing the judge you aren't a capable parent. File for bankruptcy during this process if you don't have joint accounts, otherwise wait until after.

Congratulations! You're now free to work for yourself and be fulfilled!

</comment><comment><USER4> Take a look as Maslow's Hierarchy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)).

Esteem and self-actualization are way up there at the top. Those may be pursued only after you see to the baser needs.

So you have two options:

1\. Increase your income.

2\. Reduce your expenses.

Paying off debts serves both options. You do not have permission to quit working for The Man until you no longer owe Him anything. The Man, of course, employs plenty of dirty tricks to keep the debts going; you'll have to avoid them.

Live in the cheapest home that fulfills your needs, and resist the urge to indulge your unnecessary desires. Note that this does not always mean that you should own that home. At the point where you are now, that hour you spend researching would be better spent planning your grocery shopping, with specials and coupons.

That single step you take to start the journey of 1000 miles can't fall at the 500 mile mark. You have to start at the beginning. Get out of debt.

Don't waste time researching business opportunities until you actually have enough capital to jump on one. Otherwise, you're just going to end up working for your creditors and investors, rather than yourself. And they will flog you harder than any boss you have ever had.

</comment><comment><USER5> You don't. You have to pay the bills and feed the kids, and foremost, to eliminate debt.

If you can, you may work on your project in the evenings and week-ends.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't quit your job with bills to pay and mouths to feed? I totally get the whole desire to do what you read people successfully doing all of the time, but my own personal experience has taught me that it's a fools errand to try to fit other people's roadmap into yours.

It might take you longer than you want, it might not map out how imagined but at the end of the day, you can't sacrifice everything for what amounts of a lottery ticket ESPECIALLY when it involves the quality of life for other people.

There are ways to do what you want incrementally, but think less about the scratch off ticket of startup homeruns and just do something simpler and grow. Build things that have an audience, do stuff that's closer to your current base of work and build a community around your work. That's not even a guarantee of success, but it's a much closer route and would enable you to make time to do what you want.

But yeah, don't jump out with a plane with a parachute because you only get one.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems like your question is more, how to create passive income so you can pay off debt faster? I suggest posting to Quora and looking there for options. Also, you have to have support of your spouse or it will never work. You have to get rid of what you don't need and yes, sell a car and the house. It will take huge sacrifices to be able to have time to work on your own projects, you can't do both. It's not easy and it takes commitment and creativity. With kids it's harder, I have two and am a single mom, but it is possible. You have to get organized and keep daily visual lists to remind you of your priorities. I don't think you are in dire financial straights but like most people these days just living with a family.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the useful comments.

Family is always first for me. They support me and I support them. Anything I plan to do and have been planning is incremental: reduce debt, learn as much as a can, optimize my time, start small and grow. I think having the big goal of "work for myself" as a driver, I can then incrementally move myself into that position.

</comment><comment><USER8> Downsize - smaller house, one car (or none!)... maybe even to the extreme of living in a tiny house! ([http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/](http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/))

Or. Emigrate somewhere where living costs are much lower.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's called "being an adult and doing what you gotta do for the people who depend on you. "</comment>


The Making of Lemmings - <AUTHOR> http://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-lemmings/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I was just the perfect age - 12 - when the game came out, but I remember it as pretty much the most formative video game I've ever played. It truly blew my mind that you could have something that seemed so open, even to the extent of being able to modify the actual environment. Lemmings just seemed so different from everything else around, in a way that might be difficult to appreciate nowadays.

I must've played Sim City & Populous prior, but something about the platformer genre and the level of indirection combined perfectly to make this game genuinely unique.

<comment><USER3> I only found out about Lemmings when I was past my formative years, and it had long existed. But as a game designer, I _still_ think of it as a pretty seminal game. An RTS is just Lemmings with units that will go where you tell them, after all.

However, the core conceit of Lemmings—the feeling of herding a bunch of autonomous agents around, that will do whatever they like (to your detriment) unless you restrict them—is still pretty unexplored. It never spawned its own direct subgenre, unlike its cousins Tower Defense and MOBA. There were a few attempts—I think from Nintendo there was _Mario & Wario_, and of all things _Krusty 's Fun House_. But generally there's still a lot of unexplored "herding game" mechanics-space.

I wonder why we don't see more of it on mobile? Herding things by tapping them seems obvious.

<comment><USER4> Go on the Apple app store and search for "lemmings". I found quite a few games that were all based on this premise, the biggest one being "Flockers" by Team 17 (the same people who made "Worms").

Maybe it's more popular than you realized?

<comment><USER3> It may be! My belief stemmed from the fact that I've heard of no _break-out success_ herding games besides Lemmings itself. Nobody has _gotten rich_ by making a herding game. There is no herding game with merchandise. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site seems to be down. Here's a mirror. [https://archive.is/t96Pg](https://archive.is/t96Pg)

<comment><USER6> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "But if you ever visit Perth Road in the centre of Dundee, you can see DMA Design's old office at the far west end. A few hundred yards away is a park called Seabraes and here, in front of the entrance to Dundee's digital media park, you can find a pillar with three bronze lemmings clambering up and over it."

News article with several pictures of the pillar: [http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/gallery- lemmin...](http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/gallery-lemmings- sculptures-find-their-way-home-to-dundee-1.115473)

<comment><USER8> Ah I wish I had known about this! I lived in Aberdeen for 7 years and, as a lover of Lemmings when I was younger, I would have loved to check this out during one of the many times I drove through Dundee. Very cool.

<comment><USER9> They're a fairly recent addition. They were originally supposed to be on the side of the original (bright pink) DMA office (along with a blue plaque) but the current owner didn't want them :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Composer Tim Wright pulled Lemmings out of the fire with style, bouncily reinterpreting standards like Offenbach's Galop Infernal and Ten Green Bottles, and adding a touch of class with Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Little Swans."

Since I was about five years old when my parents bought Lemmings, I remember pieces like "Dance of the Little Swans" as "Lemmings music".

I think it's a better choice than 60s/70s music would have been. It doesn't date, and it's less annoying to hear on repeat for four hours straight...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qw...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QwXthGJfHLc#t=390)

<comment><USER10> They actually released an Amiga demo disk with the "60's/70's action music" [1] hidden away on it. None of those tunes played when you played the demo, of course.

If you're interested in hearing them, I reverse engineered [2] the music format a while back and converted them to ProTracker modules [3].

[1] [https://tcrf.net/Proto:Lemmings_%28Amiga%29#Unused_Music](https://tcrf.net/Proto:Lemmings_%28Amiga%29#Unused_Music) [2] [https://bitbucket.org/mindless/sjstomod/src](https://bitbucket.org/mindless/sjstomod/src) [3] [http://www.camanis.net/lemmings/files/rips/music/lemmings_de...](http://www.camanis.net/lemmings/files/rips/music/lemmings_demo_mod.zip)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll definitely check this out later, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once applied for a job working for DMA just before Lemmings came out and in the phone call Dave Jones described Lemmings to me. He sounded really excited about it. I thought it sounded totally mad and couldn't for a minute understand why they would leave behind their totally successful series of side-shooters for a bonkers game about suicidal rodents.

More fool me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Two player lemmings was _crazy_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAedz3nWn9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAedz3nWn9E)

There was a kind of pixel preciseness with the original lemmings that contributed a lot to this being great, but that somehow seems to have got lost in newer versions..

<comment><USER12> > Two player lemmings was crazy

Yeah it was great on the Amiga! Not sure if it worked well on other machines where you could not connect more than a mouse, though !

<comment><USER13> I remember it was possible to play Settlers 2 in two-player split screen with two mice in DOS, and it seems possible to recreate in Dosbox: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfpx0siF5TU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfpx0siF5TU)

If I remember correctly, the trick here was to _not_ start the mouse driver (mouse.com), but let Settlers' internal mouse driver have control :)

I have no idea about two player Lemmings in DOS. I have never played it, at least.

<comment><USER14> that's pretty wild - the game shipped it's own custom mouse driver?

<comment><USER15> Well, define "driver"... This was DOS, so you had to listen to interrupts to catch mouse events. It was more or less standard though, if my memory serves me correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, never even realized you could save blockers (by digging the ground under their feet away). /me grabs PSP

<comment><USER17> No, neither did I - always assumed you had to detonate them.

Equally mind expanding - didn't know that DMA went on to create GTA!

<comment><USER18> Indeed - they became Rockstar North. Their offices are still in Scotland (Edinburgh, though, rather than Dundee).

<comment><USER19> I wonder if Rockstar can sneak in a Lemmings mini game into GTA V without getting sued by Sony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any comment on lemmings being suicidal in popular culture is incomplete if it doesn't credit Disney for chasing a few of the "nasty little rodents" off a cliff.

[http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp](http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp)

<comment><USER21> 1823 Travels Through Sweden, Norway ... [https://books.google.com/books?id=qrNfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA152&dq=l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=qrNfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA152&dq=lemmings+suicide)

1836 The Mirror of Literature [https://books.google.com/books?id=amBEAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA21&d...](https://books.google.com/books?id=amBEAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA21&dq=lemmings)

1841 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh [https://books.google.com/books?id=tC4_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA449&dq=%...](https://books.google.com/books?id=tC4_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA449&dq=%22throw+themselves%22)

1874 Popular Science [https://books.google.com/books?id=_B8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA347&dq=l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_B8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA347&dq=lemmings)

1877 Popular Science [https://books.google.com/books?id=gisDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA404&dq=p...](https://books.google.com/books?id=gisDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA404&dq=perishes+voluntarily)

1947 Life Magazine [https://books.google.com/books?id=bkgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=bkgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&dq=%22death+march%22)

1952 Boys Life [https://books.google.com/books?id=QXO4WXYxnAwC&pg=PA50&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=QXO4WXYxnAwC&pg=PA50&dq=%22death+march%22)

1953 Natural Religion and Christian Theology [https://books.google.com/books?id=j0yEUu8A5hEC&pg=PA116&dq=l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=j0yEUu8A5hEC&pg=PA116&dq=lemmings+suicide)

1953 Boys' Life [https://books.google.com/books?id=z-p67xyiQpQC&pg=PA4&dq=%22...](https://books.google.com/books?id=z-p67xyiQpQC&pg=PA4&dq=%22How+About+Those+Lemmings%22)

<comment><USER20> Very cool, every link! Interesting that the earlier references are to death by self-hanging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great article. I enjoyed the Lemmings games a lot as a kid.

 _'Lemmings 3 was a bit crap … more to end our commitment to Psygnosis than actually do a good game,' admits Dailly._

You gotta give him credit for his honesty. Lemmings was one of many titles that didn't survive the transition to 3D unscathedly. I think it was because a lot of time went into the engine instead of cute handdrawn 2D graphics and map design. Also the 3D camera movements were finicky, while in 2D you could just scroll.

<comment><USER23> Lemmings was terrific. Would it work well on modern touch-based systems? (iPad et al)

<comment><USER18> Yes, it would work very well. There's a near-perfect homebrew port on the DS[1]. I'm not sure why they haven't licensed it yet.

[1] [http://www.mrdictionary.net/lemmings/](http://www.mrdictionary.net/lemmings/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm waiting for a Remaster for years, we had Pingus a while ago and it seems the development is back to the track again. I hope Sony change their mind and make Lemmings again.

1 - [http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html](http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html)

<comment><USER25> There is a Lemmings clone in DHTML but it seems to have legal problems [1].

[http://crisp.home.xs4all.nl/lemmings/lemmings.html](http://crisp.home.xs4all.nl/lemmings/lemmings.html)

<comment><USER26> I was waiting for that one to pop up :p. That is actually a web game from way before web games, AJAX, or Javascript animations were a thing. That's probably just as important history as the Lemmings game itself is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Special editions, ports for almost every system that existed, it was really the closest thing to Angry Birds of the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's also "The Complete History of Lemmings" [1] for Mike Dailly's (the guy who inspired the game) take on the making of Lemmings.

[1] [http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm](http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/Lem_1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER28> Google cache link: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3Hvd...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3HvdUM7QgJ:readonlymemory.vg/the- making-of-lemmings/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER29> > Already a keen programmer, Jones used his £3000 redundancy cheque to invest > in a top-of-the-range Amiga 1000 and begin taking software engineering > classes,

If you were already a keen programmer, what would software engineering classes in the 80s have given you?

> to the chagrin of his parents, who saw a better future in his hardware > expertise.

Perhaps rightly so, he could have invented mobile telephony for instance :)

<comment><USER30> > If you were already a keen programmer, what would software engineering > classes in the 80s have given you?

A lot of us keen programmers had just learned our way ourselves, and had very little exposure to existing research on things like data structures (a binary tree is nice!), algorithms (bubble sort is not!) or software engineering practices (yes, you really need a version control system and some automated testing!)

So, software engineering classes could give a lot. I remember how clever I felt as a starting freshman, and how humble I had got in about three years' time when my professor took me through the Compilers class. A lot of education and classes is not really teaching you to know things, it's just to teach you to know how much there is to learn.

<comment><USER31> > algorithms (bubble sort is not!)

I invented bubble sort, independently, as a young self-taught programmer. I remember thinking "Okay, I have a very large list, and I need to sort based on whichever parameter they picked... let's see, how can I accomplish this without running out of memory."

When I learned that sorting was a hot topic in computer science, I remember feeling a little sheepish. When I learned my algorithm was old hat, I felt more sheepish. When I learned it was relatively crap.... Yikes.

<comment><USER29> Well, at least you came up with an algorithm that was functionally correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cache from Google (site unreachable at the moment): [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3HvdU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8O3HvdUM7QgJ:readonlymemory.vg/the- making-of-lemmings/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie)

</comment><comment><USER33>
        ... he also recalls it was partly funded by royalties
        (75p per £25 sale) from DMA's first two games

They had 3% royalties on their two first games. It seems retrospectively incredibly low compared to what people currently get from app stores.

<comment><USER15> I agree it was low, but I wonder if their contribution was larger in marketing and distribution of the game? Those were different times...

<comment><USER34> Physical duplication, packaging, inventory and distribution would have been significant costs borne by a publisher. Retailers would have taken, what, over 50% of the cover price I assume? Kids today with their digital downloads have no idea :) Still, 3% of gross seems low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ah, this brings back memories. My parents had acquired a second-hand Amiga 500, which we then hooked up to the green monochrome monitor from our Apple ][e (also acquired used several years previously) - we couldn't afford a 'real' monitor :)

The Amiga came with a big box of floppies, one of which was labelled 'Lemmings.'

I don't believe I've ever played Lemmings in color (I'm having trouble picturing it, actually), but it was still pretty amazing in monochrome. Though, my only basis for comparison at the time was the games I'd played on the Apple ][.

</comment><comment><USER36> Feeling nostalgic for the soundtrack? This guy did a medley -> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0_ZHEDZ-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0_ZHEDZ-4)

<comment><USER12> The MODs are probably a better way to get the actual sound quality out of your speakers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> ObLemming: [http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/](http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/)

</comment><comment><USER38> imgur backup: [http://imgur.com/gallery/zeDuXtN/](http://imgur.com/gallery/zeDuXtN/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I still remember Lemmings 2: The Tribes when I played it for the first time. I still listen to its music sometimes. It was a masterpiece!

</comment><comment><USER40> Looking over the history of DMA Design, i am struck by how prolific they were. Yet it never dawned on me that they were Scotland based.

</comment><comment><USER41> I played Lemmings 2 recently on an Amiga for the first time since about 1992.

There was something magical about that game.

They make great Halloween costumes also.

</comment><comment><USER42> There was a good cloned game about pigs on mobile recently...

</comment><comment><USER43> 503 - Service unavailable :(

</comment><comment><USER44> 503 - Service unavailable :(</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript plugin to build 360-degree images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scaleflex/js-cloudimage-360-view <comment><USER2> There's also the <model-viewer> custom element that displays gltf files: [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/02/model- view...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/02/model-viewer)

Demo: [https://model-viewer.glitch.me](https://model-viewer.glitch.me)

<comment><USER3> looks promising, but loading one large model takes lots of time. It is simpler and faster to load if we have asset of images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently built a similar plugin [1] inspired by a bug report I had to resolve at work. Back then I had hard time trying to find a good open source solution and this one here is nearly perfect. It's a little bit sad I didn't see it coming earlier.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635380)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing Tridi! I found it very easy to use and I liked the fact I could dump my images into a local folder and be done. With js- cloudimage-360-view, I first had to create an account on cloudimage.io to get a token (for CDN delivery) and then put my images on S3, Google Cloud or Azure Blob which require credit card information for the free trial.

<comment><USER3> no at all. It's possible to use images from local folder, I'll add an example. You may not need to use Cloudimage token if you don't need responsive features (or you can make it yourself or use any other service). Only responsive features require Cloudimage token. However, it's great to use Cloudimage service as you can forget about resizing and compressing images for all devices or different screen width.

You can check how cloudimage-responsive works here [1] [1] [https://medium.com/cloudimage/responsive-images- in-2019-now-...](https://medium.com/cloudimage/responsive-images-in-2019-now- easier-than-ever-b76e5a43c074)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expected a more fluid experience, especially on mobile (touch events maybe?)

It would be better to use the images and photogrammetry software and instead make a real 3D textured model and use a good OBJ web-based viewer.

<comment><USER3> The plugin is under polishing, especially for mobile. I'm sure it can be smooth for mobile devices as well.

About using real 3D textured models, I think it depends on use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can use the plugin not only for 360 product view. As idea for renting homes, you can make the camera to be set at the focal point instead of the object and you can spin around and view the room that you are in.

check a quick example for outdoor and indoor view: [https://cdn.scaleflex.it/demo/home.html](https://cdn.scaleflex.it/demo/home.html)

(photo credits: Bush-Jaeger)

we need to do some work on it (nice arrows, forbid to go from last to first image, and a few more things) but it's already usable

</comment><comment><USER7> There seems to be a bug on the demo page: the Mercedes spins the wrong way when you drag.

<comment><USER3> added a new param spin-reverse, demo updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how can one take 36 pictures or 72 pictures, how does this camera process works?

<comment><USER9> There are devices that rotate the camera while it takes photos at intervals.

<comment><USER3> yeah, something like [https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61xosUOD7bL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61xosUOD7bL._SX425_.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> w-ll I feel like I would have used a video file and basically make the dragging move the time scrubber.

I'm pretty sure the video file would be smaller than all the individual images, and only required 1 network request.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are planning to add the feature which takes a video (even from your mobile phone) and creates an asset of images of the product. In this case, using high-quality images helps for product detailing as you can also zoom in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can this work with images taken using Insta360 ? I hate the sharing option in the app which uploads the image to their ad-ridden website.

<comment><USER3> sure, any images are fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if it's possible to catch horizontal touch events only. As it stands, the demo page is nearly impossible to scroll.

<comment><USER3> should be good in version 2.0.1 (demo page is updated)

<comment><USER11> Can confirm, works like a charm!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool! Might want to add a section / link on what kind of images we should use to give the maximum wow factor</comment>


OpenCAPI Unveiled: AMD, IBM, Google, Xilinx, Micron and Mellanox Join Forces - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/10759/opencapi-unveiled-amd-ibm-google-more <comment><USER2> I really enjoy the way AMD and Nvidia fight.

Nvidia makes GSync. So the GPU can control and adjust display refresh rate on the fly. Proprietary, closed source, requires private Nvidia License. AMD makes FreeSync. FreeSync open sourced, added to the HDMI, and Display Port standards.

Now we see Nvidia makes NvLink. Proprietary, very fast, requires private Nvidia license. AMD partners with IBM, Google, etc., etc. to make OpenCAPI an open standard that can revise/replace PCIe3.0

Why does this feel like Microsoft vs Linux but with Hardware Standards.

<comment><USER3> > I really enjoy the way AMD and Nvidia fight

That's why I was so sad AMD was having trouble later year and hope they pull through. Competition is valuable and benefits the consumer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It felt so buried in the article, it's worth pointing out: OpenCAPI == "Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface"

<comment><USER5> Thanks for posting this. What does "coherent" mean in this context, and why is it special?

<comment><USER6> Basically, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_coherence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_coherence). You want to ensure all the devices on the bus have the same view of memory contents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anand Tech seems quite excited about OpenPower and it does tend make me more interested in the Talos platform. [https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php](https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php)

</comment><comment><USER8> Was "anyone" as "annoyed" as I was about the "scare quotes" littered "throughout" the article? It was "hard" to read the "story".

I've been guilty of using too many quotes in the recent past. Someone on HN called me on it, and I've since toned it down. Now it's something that sticks out at me.

<comment><USER9> It makes it seem like the "journalist" doesn't believe his own "reporting".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related post on the Google Cloud Platform Blog: [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing- Zai...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google- and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hopefully this effort will get us rid of PCIe for good, unlike the version of CAPI available on POWER8.

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with PCIe? The devices are ubiquitous. It's point-to-point, allowing for device to device connectivity. We have external PCIe enclosures and cables. We have a healthy set of PCIe switches.

This is similar. It's also point-to-point, and it has an external story. Skimming the spec, they've even thought about higher latency (200ns) links, and optical. Even with these advantages, I'm unsure how it'll work due to the lack of IP available as compared to PCIe.

Interesting, though. Will be fun to see it play out. It bums me out a little bit though that POWER isn't easily available yet.

<comment><USER11> PCIe is still rather slow. A single-packet transaction on PCIe costs 120ns.

The lack of IP is the reason why P8/CAPI stuck to PCIe. In the original design, CAPI was to simply reuse the PCI link layer, not the transaction layer.

With a cache-coherent system based on PCIe, especially when the coherency layer is set at L3 like on POWER8, you are looking at ~500ns latency for a single cache line. This kind of latency is just too much for many applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "NVIDIA is a member of the OpenCAPI consortium, at the "contributor level", > which is the same level Xilinx has. The same is true for HPE (HP > Enterprise)"

Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmmm, interesting. I wonder what this means for the new Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing? I liked the approach of many cores on one bootable chip, all having a reasonable amount of local memory, and high bandwidth interconnects: no need to offload data to a peripheral (GPU) device. However with this standard the currently limited bandwidth between peripherals and the main cpu will improve a lot.

To me it is obvious why Intel is not joining this party.

<comment><USER15> well, i think its a bit more about market segments and interoperability than anything else. currently overall systems from ibm, and, and intel are fundamentally incompatible. the PCI-E bus that knights landing hangs off of is a qualitatively different thing than the kinds of memory-coherent inter-cpu busses that are being addressed with the CAPI proposal. Intel has their own proprietary QPI. AMD has a quasi-open hyper transport (still?).

If this is done properly it means you could make generic motherboards, and generic memory controllers, and all sorts of different accelerators and mix and match them from various vendors. So its no surprise that the smaller players in the market and trying to gang together and the larger player is trying to keep lock-in.

Knights Landing as it stands would already integrate in systems better if it were using an inter-cpu bus than a peripheral bus as well as GPUs, FPGAs, and certainly RDMA/memory window systems like Mellanox.

Inherent distrust of standards aside, this could be a great win for people putting together bespoke systems in interesting configurations (i.e. Google), I don't think there is any downside in theory for Intel except more competition.

<comment><USER16> There are KNL variants that sit on a cpu socket and talk to the rest of the system via QPI.

<comment><USER15> I haven't caught up with the latest phi releases, but I'm really interested to do so. I haven't been able to find any discussion about a coherent QPI on KNL, but have found reference to OmniPath, which looks like a non-coherent large scale memory network. Is that what you were thinking of, or maybe could you post a reference?

<comment><USER16> You are right, I was misremembering. The socketed KNL does not have QPI at all, so no multisocket boards are possible. Still the socketed KNL doesn't hang-off the PCI bus as it is its own host processor and has a dedicated link with memory.

Omnipath is used to drive both the Ethernet and PCIe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No Intel ? Without them joining on board this might not be as useful.

<comment><USER18> We have every big name in this, including an x86 vendor. We don't need Intel. That's not a statement I can make often. :)

<comment><USER17> Intel has 99% of the server market.

<comment><USER19> Do they need the market leader to take on the market?

In the end, that's also what is at stake, and the reason Intel might not be that interested. They will maybe see the light and see that they would have to steer the collaboration toward a more beneficial direction (for them), but at first, they will probably wait for it to gain momentum before deciding that they have to invest money to push the effort in the right direction (for them).

They have to be a threat for the established company to make a move. What nickpsecurity is saying by telling that they don't need Intel is that they are not yet a sufficient threat and that they are capable of becoming one.

<comment><USER18> Which they will be if they have a competitive technology that has a migration path for both x86 ISA and about everything else dominating in acceleration space. Intel might respond by supporting it or deploying their own thing. They're sure to loose market share, though, if the coalition's standardization commoditizes accelerators more than Intel's side does. They could loose some profit margin in the niche along with the market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Exciting news on the hardware bus side.

Now waiting for AMD Power9 processors.

</comment><comment><USER21> Given AMD's involvement, what is the difference between this and coherent hypertransport?

<comment><USER22> The difference is that NVIDIA, Mellanox, and Xilinx never adopted coherent Hypertransport.

<comment><USER21> There was at one point cHT IP available for Xilinx. But that is what I am kinda getting at. Did cHT fail for reasons of pure timing? Too far ahead of the market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is also a member of this consortium (the source article was updated to reflect this)</comment>


Ash HN:For Dockerized apps why is it a bad practice to use NFS for shared data? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not really a bad practice per se. It's just that if your app requires high performance, then NFS can become a bottlebeck. It's not any fault of NFS, but NFS was not designed to run at high speed. But in the absence of anything else or if your app is like any other regular app, NFS is perfect to use, especially NFS 4.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because old versions of AWS didn't support NFS. This is called Elastic Stockholm Syndrome (ES2).</comment>


UI / UX Design Interviews, Matt Carvalho - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ux-design-interviews/matt-carvalho-3e4a2eb2b404

<comment><AUTHOR> Frank : What do you think about Dribbble? Is it a good way to get a job? What's the best way to find a job as designer?

Matt : Yeah, dribbble is great! Those guys have done a great job over there and I am thankful that the design community is able to connect through their product. I am very thankful for dribbble.</comment>


Show HN: Fdir 3.0 – Even more faster true glob alternative - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/fdir <comment><AUTHOR> I posted 2 months ago about fdir being a glob alternative. However, at that time it didn't have glob support.

I am back again with fdir 3.0. It has been completely overhauled, improving the speed by upto 40% over previous versions, includes a Builder pattern API and of course true "glob" support using picomatch.

Please feel free to try it out! I am here if you have any questions.

P.S. I had to use the npmjs link here because HN wouldn't let me repost. So sorry for the inconvenience.</comment>


Ask HN: Would it be wrong for a BSD to use Linux for the kernel? - <AUTHOR> In what way, say, FreeBSD kernel is better than Linux? <comment><USER2> Debian GNU/kFreeBSD does the reverse. In my opinion, where Linux outshines FreeBSD is in hardware support.

</comment><comment><USER3> A BSD using a Linux kernel would make it a Linux.

Now, if you actually mean using a BSD userspace on a Linux kernel, that somewhat exists, but requires a lot of syscall porting as the two kernels, while both *NIX, are quite different.</comment>


Quickbooks Online down for hours, anyone know of a decent alternative? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a consultant and have been using quickbooks online for years for invoicing and managing my accounting. They have been down all day today (isn't the first time either): https://qbo.intuit.com/c27/v0/offline.shtml
I've never been very happy with their service, but have been unable to find a decent alternative. For example, until recently their "web interface" was only compatible with IE. Now they have beta support for Safari (works ok), and Chrome (doesn't work well). Their web interface is really old school, slow and clunky.
Does anyone know of a decent, low cost web-based accounting system for a small business? Something fast and easy to use like mint.com, but for business (i.e. invoices, sales orders, income statements, credit card processing, etc.) <comment><USER2> We use Real Time Bookkeeping as our hosting provider - it allows us to use the Full Desktop version of QuickBooks instead of the limited edition that QuickBooks Online is. They are reliable and can be used with many different browsers. www.realtimebookkeeping.com

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree - we need a revolution</comment>