Orwell - Improve your speed reading - <AUTHOR> http://robinduckett.github.com/orwell/

<comment><USER2> I've been using Spreeder to read online articles and long blog posts for a few years now. I'm amazed at how much information I retain from reading at 300 words/minute.

<http://www.spreeder.com/app.php>

<comment><USER3> 300 words/minute looks awfully slow to me. I can speak faster than that. Reading speed can be much faster than speech, especially if you get rid of subvocalization ("speaking" words in your head as you read).

I don't see the advantage of flashing a word at a time. Reading works best when the eye can scan a bunch of words simultaneously. If anything, I'd try flashing a _line_ of text at a time.

<comment><USER4> 300 wpm is average reading. Speaking at 300 wpm with clarity takes a lot of practice, and most listeners require practice to comprehend that rate of speech. Research shows that with compression (i.e. articulate speech sped up, 'contentless' gaps removed), people without training lose comprehension of spoken word at about 210 wpm.

Unless you're talking with former debaters, I'd slow down that speech a little. Even if you live in New York!

<comment><USER5> At first I thought, "Really? 300 wpm is average? I tried that setting and it's pretty slow." So I checked it out: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)#Reading_rate> If anything, that's the _high_ end of average!

Holy cow. I was getting bored and consequently losing focus at 300wpm. No wonder "people" don't like to read, if a huge chunk of "people" can't even go _that_ fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The way you're calculating words per minute is wrong. You're calculating the page change without taking into account how many words at a time are being presented. So for instance, the refresh for show 30 / read 1 is the same as the refresh for show 30 / read 30. Yet clearly, if 'read 30' is set, the refresh should be substantially slower than if 'read 1' is set. Refresh in seconds should be (words at a time / words per minute) * 60. Right now you're just doing (60/wpm) and ignoring words at a time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was waiting for someone to bring this up, it's because I put that "calculation" in before I put in the variable read rates in.

If you know how I can fix that, any advice will promptly be implemented :)

<comment><USER4> Not sure what you changed, but I set WPM to 60, show 1, and read 1. This should refresh every second (1/60)*60, but it's updating very slowly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, procrastination filter got me for an hour :(

And it's updated exactly as you said, and I timed it. "slowly" is exactly once per second as far as I can tell.

<http://www.github.com/robinduckett/orwell> is the repo, take a look yourself :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speed reading is great to remember isolated facts and data, but it doesn't work to really _understand_ anything.

If I want to absorb a complex idea and integrate it into my base of knowledge, I need to pause while reading, digest what I've read, figure out its implications, and think about it in relation to what I already know and understand. Speeding up the physical act of reading doesn't add any value here.

When I try to use these techniques, I usually end up mechanically scanning the text word by word without consciously comprehending anything, and having to keep going back to re-read the same paragraphs over and over again.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, but that is absolutely not true. Notice that every statement you use to back up your premise contains "I". You may not be an effective speed reader or haven't been able to properly train yourself, but your blanket statement that speed reading "doesn't work to really understand anything" is completely absurd.

The goal of speed reading is to increase the rate at which you can _comprehend_ what you read, not just increasing the number of words your read per minute. My dad practiced speed reading while getting his PhD in business management precisely so that he could read the mountains of dense, academic research he needed to in less time. He can read and comprehend fully around 600 wpm. Try telling him that it doesn't work to really understand anything.

It's not something you can master in a week or even a month. It takes a long period of dedicated practice but it can definitely help anyone willing to commit to the training.

<comment><USER8> Hi dlnovell, I am trying to learn this skill. Any advice or book recommendations? Do you speed read well also, or does your comment only pertain to your father? Thanks!

<comment><USER7> The program my dad used was developed by Evelyn Wood. It's old school, and one of the main techniques is underlining each line of text with your finger or a pen, so it doesn't really work as well for reading on a computer. However, once you train with underlining on paper, your speed without it will still be significantly faster than before. It would probably work normally on a kindle or ipad.

I dabbled with it when I was in high school and had something like a 50% speed up after a week, but I'm not a particularly disciplined student. I'm sure that if I had kept with it I'd have been able to double or triple my reading speed.

<comment><USER8> Hi dlnovell, thank's for the response! I have a book on the Evelyn Wood technique named The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program which I believe was written by someone who used to work for Evelyn Wood rather than by Evelyn herself. I haven't been able to get my hands on the original Evelyn Wood training material as of yet. It is really great to hear feedback from someone that this technique has worked for. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a cool idea. I suppose it would need some rudimentary analytics over time to work as an actual training tool?

One suggestion: For me, at least, my reading relies on the shape of the sentence. And I think for everyone they would be looking at the right edge of the sentence as more words are coming in. So it's really jarring to have the right edge jumping around, and it might make more sense to right-align the marquee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added text alignment prefs, just refresh :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This thing needs to move pixels at a time, rather than words at a time. It's really hard to calibrate your eyes to the next word when the length of the next word is unknown.

You lose the spatial cues of where each word's position is each time a new word is shifted on to the screen. Something like a smooth stock ticker would be much better.

Although, Spreeder looks much better.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool idea, but I would prefer it if you calculated words as groups of 5 letters (that's how it was calculated back when I was learning to type), and not as number of logical words. Because right now you're getting variable length chunks of text but my eyes really like to scan in uniform length chunks.

For instance suppose I am reading in 5 word groups. Some groups I read faster than others. So even though my average reading speed is a bit above 700 wpm, at 700 wpm in your application I have noticeable pauses where I've finished the current chunk, and I have chunks I do not finish. It is very frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you consider smooth scrolling instead of adding/removing a word at a time? The bouncing around due to different word-lengths is troubling me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't considered smooth scrolling, I'll have a look when I get home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool project. Some ideas:

\- let users play with fonts/colors/spacing to find their optimum setup.

\- aggregate user preferences to find good defaults

Then you have an interesting blog post to write.

I think you should blow away the scrolling and have just two controls: chunk size and speed. Personally I found chunk size ~50 to be ideal.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the second point, how do you suggest I go around doing that?

As for the "blow away the scrolling", I made this to be configurable, sure it's nice to be simple, but I made it so I could tweak it on the fly. You wouldn't have found any chunk size to be ideal if I hadn't made it editable in the first place :P

<comment><USER12> On the second point, how about:

"log in to save your preferences!"

As for "blow away the scrolling", I guess I'm channeling steve jobs: "This is the right way to do it."

People _could_ prefer scrolling text, but from everything I know about reading, they ultimately will read faster if they use chunks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's forkable on github, knock yourself out, Steve :P

<comment><USER12> if it's cool with you ... didn't want to steal your thunder :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool

1) It would be cool if the up and down arrow keys would make it faster and slower, or have some kind of gradual slider or something.

2) Doesn't speed reading have less to do with actual linear speed and more to do with effective and efficient scanning of the page? (I've heard people talk about moving from top left to bottom right)

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this just to help me practice, which is why you can set how many words show at once, and how many new words come in at a time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool how sample text comes from the opening pages of 1984 that cover Winston's absolute lack of privacy, describing how the Thought Police can "plug in your wire whenever they wanted to". A topical choice. If only there had been a big social website that would allow him organise a privacy protest group.

+1 for right-aligned text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehehe :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I seemed to get the optimum reading speed and fluidity at 300 wpm, 10 words at a time, reading in 1 word at a time.

Edit: I also second mahipal's recommendation to right-align the text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now right aligned by default, with a setting to change it.

<comment><USER15> Beautiful, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Show words 4 at a time, Read in 4 words at a time @ 500 WPM is the highest comfortable reading speed.

Does this mean I actually read at 2000 WPM?

<comment><USER17> that can't be right, but it seems I can do it too

EDIT: it seems to get a whole lot easier to read when i align the text left. when it was aligned right i was wasting time getting my eyes to the always shifting beginning of the new line

<comment><USER16> Ah. The periods are what kill me.</comment></comment></comment>


Taming the Lizard Brain - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/08/27/taming-the-lizard-brain/ <comment><USER2> I would recommend the documentary [The Century of the Self]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04)) about advertising as propoganda, in which Edwards Bernays plays a central role.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a topic near and dear to my heart. As a freelancer, I sit in my apartment sounded by as much high calorie food as I want that is scientifically optimized to be as tasty as possible, I have a job that requires zero exertion or even leaving the house, most of my work interactions are online and otherwise I'm alone all day.

This is the exact opposite that the human mind is adapted to, and I'm relatively convinced that in order to be effective in the modern world you have to take an actively counter intuitive path through life. It's hard to be healthy, to be productive, to be social, since the works just isn't set up to make it easy now.

I haven't fully solved this for myself, but I have shifted from being hard on myself for eating a whole chocolate bar in one sitting to asking myself how can I make it harder for myself to find myself in the situation that I'm eating a whole chocolate bar?

As some things I've read have suggested, one way to get lots of willpower is to make any other option impossible. So, don't bring candy bars into the house, pay for a gym membership so I'll feel reptile brain loss aversion for not going, etc.

Especially for an entrepreneur, it seems like a critical thing is just getting out of the way of yourself.

<comment><USER4> > one way to get lots of willpower is to make any other option impossible. So, > don't bring candy bars into the house

Not everyone has this luxury. My office has a shelf of candy that's restocked every couple days. I think I've put on at least five pounds since I joined two months ago.

<comment><USER3> Yeah and it sucks. There's a convenience store right outside my apartment that now sells chips and ice cream. I eat more of those now than I used to. My Android phone will not let me uninstall the YouTube app, and I've been watching more YouTube lately.

My point here is that the modern world almost seems to be conspiring against healthy living, both mentally and physically, so whatever you have to do to be healthy is worth doing. I've played around with various web blockers, and finally got around this YouTube on phone problem by installing both a blocker app and also using the adb command line tool to manually edit the hosts file to also block YouTube in the browser which required unlocking the bootloader and accidentally wiping my phone. But now, I can't watch YouTube on my phone and it's wonderful to not have that temptation now.

I don't know what the answer is to community junk food. I'm at home with parents this week and I was gifted junk food, which I was grateful for but also a little sad about.

<comment><USER3> I've wondered if software can also be the solution here.

Can you make an app that appeals to my emotional lizard brain and prevents me from eating candy and browsing the internet? That's something I'd pay for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The money quote for me is

This represents a great challenge for those who believe that individuals left to their own devices are most likely to make rational choices.

I think that Thaler views on Linertarian Paternalism are looking more sensible. Handling instant gratification for the good of individualas and society seems important

<comment><USER5> >This represents a great challenge for those who believe that individuals left to their own devices are most likely to make rational choices.

The unfortunate reality is that institutions, organizations, and governments are also not prone to making rational choices when left to their own devices, due to them being made up of individuals as well. Paternalism requires a faith that those in charge are somehow more free from the limitations of our flawed nature while also having others' interests at heart.

<comment><USER6> > Paternalism requires a faith that those in charge are somehow more free from > the limitations of our flawed nature while also having others' interests at > heart.

We have technology to coordinate group action plans and execute them transparently, and our culture is gradually beginning to support honesty around failure and change, no longer demanding the appearance of perfection (which seems to be the driving force behind the failure of so many attempts at paternalism).

It would appear, then, that we could collaboratively and openly engineer a culture that supports flawed-but-honest-and-still-competent leadership in their attempts to advance community-sponsored projects and leverage technology to facilitate transparency at scale.

Is there a reason this approach is inherently untenable (as opposed to just logistically difficult)?

<comment><USER7> To quote Henry Hazlitt:

"Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine-the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible."

This is a major obstacle to "collaboratively and openly" deciding on the right policies (paternalistic or otherwise). If the process is open, it probably won't be collaborative: the discussion might end up dominated by those with special interests. I believe this is how the notion that tariffs might be a good idea (for economic purposes, anyway) has made it into public policy—this is one of the items Hazlitt's book goes through[1].

With regard specifically to "paternalistic" policies, one of the chapters is titled "The Assault on Saving", and I could easily imagine that people guided by Keynesian economics would recommend inserting trivial inconveniences to discourage people from saving their money while nudging them towards spending it, so as to increase aggregate demand and therefore the greater good.

[1] [http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one- lesson/contents.html](http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one- lesson/contents.html) , see chapter 11 for tariffs and 24 for "The Assault on Saving"

<comment><USER8> > for economic purposes, anyway

A very important qualifier, thanks for including it. Few people seem aware of that aspect, which I suspect results in a rather large number of confident conclusions about the intelligence of other people, that happen to actually be wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Hope My Father Dies Soon - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/i_hope_my_father_dies_soon/ <comment> vezzy-fnord Since this concerns the U.S. government, I'll say that the vendetta against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide by the Christian right is puzzling. The Bible has a very ambivalent view on suicide (as with any other topic), the tale of Samson being a prime example. The main argument against suicide comes from Corinthians, but it is starkly contradicted by other passages.

A person who is slowly succumbing, immobile, on the brink of death and suffering has nothing to offer or worthwhile to live for. Their life is effectively over and they're simply waiting for the moment their biological functions will at last cease.

Yet the Christian right insists that the agony be prolonged to a maximum. The religion is notably fascinated with martyrdom, asceticism and persecution complexes. But that suffering has no purpose in overcoming tribulation when you're a near-lifeless bag of meat. Then, of course, very few Christians actually ascribe to the ascetic life as laid down in their scripture.

Sorry for your loss.

<comment><USER2> The bible doesn't condemn suicide(or abortion) anywhere in it directly. However, as with any good moral book, it is ambiguous. You can use it advocate any position you chose.

> Yet the Christian right insists that the agony be prolonged to a maximum.

Christianity didn't always hold this view. I suppose some of the movement comes from the commandment "Thou shall not kill". Of course that is a very poor translation. A better one would be "Thou shall not kill without justification".

<comment><USER3> I sort of don't understand the thought of turning "Thou shall not kill" into "Thou shall do everything in thine power to keep the person alive"

<comment><USER4> These rules are not actually from the bible, but from the Greeks, who had much stricter rules.

1) no abortion never jamais, under no circumstances. Nor advising women on how to do it themselves.

2) no euthanasia never jamais, under no circumstances. No advising people on how to DIY it either.

3) no refusing medical aid to anyone for any reason

4) never go against patient wishes for not getting treated

5) never, ever, advise anyone on the use of poison

Some highlights from the Hippocratic oath. The first source of which is, unsurprisingly, not the Bible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of a good C.S. Lewis quote:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

<comment> loup-vaillant Note that this quote only apply to _human_ tyrants. As a Christian apologist, I'm sure C.S. Lewis didn't object to the benevolent tyranny of God. (I would, but I too have my own exception: Friendly AI).

<comment><USER6> And where does your "friendly-AI" draw it's moral template from?

I mean, I'm OK with an AI that works tirelessly in the background keeping the air clean and the habitat habitable. However I don't want a computer, no matter how smart; telling me what I and consenting partners choose to do. Or deciding whether or not we must or can use birth control. Or any of a thousand other forms of infringing on human agency.

<comment><USER7> > I'm OK with an AI that works tirelessly in the background keeping the air > clean and the habitat habitable

Are you sure?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM1-DQ2Wo_w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM1-DQ2Wo_w)

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

<comment><USER8> Love that quote & scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No matter what you think about assisted suicide I'd highly recommend Terry Pratchett's (of Discworld fame) documentary about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY)

He's got Alzheimer's and documented his personal tour of looking into his end of life options.

</comment><comment><USER10> Related: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow- decay/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/)

> this is the way many of my patients die. Old, limbless, bedridden, > ulcerated, in a puddle of waste, gasping for breath, loopy on morphine, > hopelessly demented, in a sterile hospital room with someone from a > volunteer program who just met them sitting by their bed.

<comment><USER11> I got half way through that and had to stop reading.

I have a very close relative with moderately advanced dementia, and it's heartbreaking to see.. I wish I lived closer, because every time I see her (which is as often as I can afford to make the trip), it's worse and worse..

I don't even want to imagine her getting to that stage..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry, but I am getting really tired of this form of discourse.

A million interests prevent you from doing a million things every day, but apparently it's only objectionable and worth remarking about when it's the government. And it's not even like I disagree with him -- yes we should allow assisted suicide. But boy oh boy is it hard not to notice that he wastes no time thinking about _why_ things are this way, or which interests _specifically_ may be preventing things from changing. Nope, it's just THE GOVERNMENT. Short circuit, do not pass go, no further critical thinking necessary.

"The Nanny State Didn't Show Up, You Hired It" [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_nanny_state_didnt...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_nanny_state_didnt_show_up.html)

<comment><USER13> If there wasn't a law against doctor assisted suicide, he'd be able to let his father die as he chooses.

The _only entity_ that can make and enforce laws is government. This makes government distinct from _all other entities_.

Therefore, the government deserves the blame.

<comment><USER14> And yet, I live under a government, one that like the US government has been democratically elected, which does allow assisted suicide.

So maybe "government" isn't the problem. The people are.

But of course it is way scarier to imagine that it's not the government that is making your father suffer, but your friends, family, neighbors and coworkers.

Because that would really be too uncomfortable.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure what inconsistency you're trying to point out. Not all governments are equal. Perhaps it wasn't clear from my comment; the _US_ government is to blame.

Moreover, government is not the only perpetrator of evil things. It's certainly by far the biggest (read: wars), but there are plenty of other evil people and organizations out there. Is that supposed to make me uncomfortable? I'm just calling it like I see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As broken as our system is (and Scott's obvious pain should make it clear that it _is_ broken), there are things you can do to make it suck just a little less.

Please talk to your family and your doctor about your wishes in terms of life- sustaining care. Even in your 20's, in perfect health, please take some time to become informed about what the options are and how you can express what you want done or not done (this may be a DNR, a MOLST, a living will, or any of a myriad of other options depending on where you live).

If the decision you come to is anything short of "do absolutely everything possible to prolong my life" then be sure to have that paperwork in a safe and readily accessible place (and let your family members know where it is).

<comment><USER16> Recently, I dated a nurse who worked on the cardiac floor of the hospital. She had patients who died every day.

One day, the subject of DNRs came up. Interestingly, she mentioned that "they're meaningless". When I asked her about it, she said that if, for example, I had a DNR but an immediately family member told them to "save me", they would disregard the DNR and do it.

The reasoning, she told me, was that regardless of what they did (save you versus letting you die) there was a chance of a lawsuit and that the hospital would rather be sued for saving your life.

(I'm sure it isn't this way everywhere.)

<comment><USER15> I'm in a similar position on a fairly regular basis, and I can tall you that DNRs absolutely do matter. It would take the threat of physical violence to get me to perform ACLS on someone with a valid DNR (this is in a prehospital EMS setting). A DNR represents the expressed wishes of the patient. Disregarding that is a serious breach of medical this.

I'm not sure how often she came across that particular dilemma. As a nurse in an ICU she would have limited decision making authority when it comes to initiating and continuing things like ACLS[1]. That's a doctor's call.

I will say that in my experience as a prehospital EMS provider, I absolutely honor the wishes of the patient (as expressed in a DNR) over the demands of the family. In fact, in my experience, the issue that arises is exactly the opposite. The family doesn't want CPR, etc, and states the patient has a DNR, but they're unable to produce it (hence my original post). In the absence of a valid DNR, I have to assume the person _does_ want all resuscitation measures attempted.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_cardiac_life_support](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_cardiac_life_support)

<comment><USER7> As a pre-hospital EMS provider, how do you have time to determine the presence and validity of a DNR before making your choice?

<comment><USER15> It's pretty simple... is there a DNR in my hand that hasn't expired and has been signed by both the patient and a doctor and hasn't expired? If yes, then don't initiate resuscitation.

Obviously a DNR could be forged, but baring obvious cases of forgery (which I've never seen), we're not liable for honoring a DNR that we reasonably believe is valid.

<comment><USER16> What about a "verbal DNR"?

I was recently involved in a pretty bad motorcycle accident and was asked multiple times (by EMS on the scene, medical staff in the ER, medical staff right before going into the OR, etc.) if I had a DNR and/or if I would want them to attempt to save me if something happened.

I remember thinking that was kinda weird since my assumption was that such requests would need to be in writing. Perhaps it was because I was incapable of writing or signing my name, though (two broken wrists)? Instead of me signing any documents, they just asked me verbally after making sure they had two other employees present as witnesses.

<comment><USER15> That's actually _better_ than a written document as far as I'm concerned. A DNR basically says "If I'm unable to speak for myself, here's how I would like to be treated." If you _are_ able to tell me how you want to be treated, then there's no question (assuming I'm confident in your ability to make informed decisions... not drunk off your ass... etc...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My father was murdered about 10 years ago and really the only solace in the situation is that he was pretty sick at the time and would have suffered through the rest of his life and he was only 47 at the time. My mom has repeatedly told me she has no desire to get to an elderly age, like her mother is now. All I know is perspective on this stuff evolves over the years.

On another note, the only good thing about people being sick is that you can prepare for their death and thus when they die it can be more of a celebration. The funeral won't be as hard emotionally, and because they were sick, you are comforted by them not suffering any more.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry for your loss, that's terrible, but at least you can find some peace in it. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe he just didn't mention it, but nowhere in that post does it say that it was his father's wish to die if he was in such a situation.

Helping someone die who made their wishes clear, I'm perfectly okay with. But assuming someone wants to die, I'm not.

Whether his father made it clear or not, I don't know. It just isn't in the post.

<comment><USER20> I looked for that also and there was no mention. There's no doubt that if that was actually his father's expressed wish he would have featured that prominently in his article.

What he does state is:

> _I 'd_ like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some > dignity. But my government says _I_ can't make that decision. Neither can > his doctors.

He also points out early in the article that there are financial considerations:

> His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of > perpetual suffering.

<comment><USER21> "He also points out early in the article that there are financial considerations:

> His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of > perpetual suffering."

Now you understand the reason for opposition to euthanasia. The purpose of government is to keep the rich, rich, and the poor, poor. Emptying his estate into the medical industrial complex is not an incidental side effect, but the sole purpose of its existence.

You want to see pet (dog/cat) vet assisted euthanasia made illegal? Implement pet health insurance. Try it and see.

<comment><USER22> That's quite a conspiracy you have there.

<comment><USER21> Politicians aligning laws to maximize corporate profits is not exactly unheard of...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suggest watching Terry Pratchett's thought-provoking and humbling documentary Choosing To Die ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY)). It covers the topic of assisted suicide and towards the end of the film we can witness a man ending his life in a Swiss clinic. It is also a very personal subject for Terry, as he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and is afraid to live without being able to use his mind and write books.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow. This touches home with me on many levels. I lost my parents a few years ago. Both suffered. I lost several other close family members who also suffered. And just last week somebody I was close to told me they were dying of cancer.

And I'm a libertarian that strongly believes that government should keep its nose out of my life.

So, of course, I'm going to play devil's advocate, at least a bit. Because if you can't defend the other side's points well, you shouldn't be in the argument.

Here's the thing: physician-assisted suicide is one thing if the doc gives you the pills and you take them on your own. It's something else if the state _requires_ doctors to assist you, or the state requires insurance companies to require doctors to assist you. Then we're getting into the state telling doctors what types moral views they should hold.

Hey, I'm all for you shooting your cat if it's sick. What I'm against is the community all making some collective decision about who's got to go and when, and who has to do the work. That's fucked up. This thing has to be a personal choice among everybody involved: docs, nurses, family, the patient. I could imagine in many cases the patient wants to whack themselves and the family hates the idea. Fine. Then let the guy do it. On his own. Or perhaps the docs have given up hope, but for religious reasons they will never pull the plug. Fine, then let the patient do it. There's a decision to be made, somebody should make it, and the rest of society should butt out -- either from disapproving or forcing everybody else from doing things they don't want to do. It's just as bad to make somebody kill somebody else as it is to make somebody keep somebody else alive in this endless suffering nonsense.

The problem here is a search for some universal rules for a very personal thing. I don't see that playing out too well.

In many cases, we have elderly losing their minds while family members hope against hope that they recover. What to do then?

With the lack of a living will, I think the family members get to decide. That's why we have living wills. I don't like that result, but there it is. (I'd also add that this means the family members should be able to dose up grandma with enough morphine to put her out of her misery -- and I imagine such a thing happens a hell of a lot more than we will ever know. Institutionalizing people and placing all of this in bureaucratic hands is the crux of this problem.)

Also Scott, sorry to hear about your dad.

<comment><USER25> It is important to understand that unless you build an "extreme" living will (food and water denial), there are many circumstances where you will still be tortured indefinitely. I speak from family experience.

My father suffered many strokes towards the end. This caused neuropathic pain ... completely untreatable pain coming from inside his brain (primary somatic sensory cortex). He lost his ability to speak, move, and was basically just in continuous agony, only really maintaining the ability to suffer, with no hope for recovery.

Even with durable power of attorney, withholding food and water requires court orders and takes time (sometimes months)... why is making someone die horrifically of dehydration perfectly legal, but painlessly giving them a shot is illegal?

> I'd also add that this means the family members should be able to dose up > grandma with enough morphine to put her out of her misery -- and I imagine > such a thing happens a hell of a lot more than we will ever know

That is how my fathers suffering ended. Not by a family member, in the end it was by a nurse. The nurses and doctors and everyone seemed to give quiet nods of agreement after days of failed attempts to mitigate the constant grimace of agony. I don't think anything was ever said explicitly, but eventually a male nurse came in and made it clear that if we wanted it, today could be the last day. The decision ended up falling on me, and I said yes, the door was closed and the nurse pulled out multiple needles of something, to this day I am not sure what, but it was obviously they were packaged individually for dosage control and he had a handful of them. he slowly injected each into the IV without saying a word and my father slipped away. I am not sure I have ever been more grateful for anything prior or since.

<comment><USER26> If you don't mind saying, in what country did this take place?

<comment><USER25> USA. It was absolutely illegal, but it was also IMHO, the only moral thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They should have pinned a medal on him, instead they threw him in jail.

Thanks for trying, Jack. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavorkian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavorkian)

</comment><comment><USER28> Any form of suffering on the helpless scale is especially painful. There's something hellish about helplessness that can't be described, you just have to experience it. Anyone who goes through months or years of helplessness without committing suicide is a warrior. The particularly insidious part of this kind of trauma is the intense PTSD that is the result of this mental torture. Reading the S.Adams blog entry, you can just see the PTSD dripping off every word. I feel for him. I feel for anyone who has gone through this because there is no justice at the end of the bulls __t rainbow that the Christians describe.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Singularity is about 30 years out, or so we're led to believe. It takes about 10 years and billions of dollars to create a new drug, and that time and cost is not decreasing.

Stories like this are a grim reminder of how much work we really must do. "Fixing" the human body is a really hard problem.

<comment><USER30> There is no problem at all. Wanting to live forever is just your body's primitive instinct, and you should be intelligent enough to understand that people don't need you, or anyone, being around for longer than you will live already. Just look at the current old people - how they drag the whole progress, the whole society back. Now Imagine what would happen if everyone would be old - stagnation, that's what. Human brain is not evolved enough to keep being fresh for so long. After some time we slow down our learning rate because we have already learned much things. If everyone would live forever we would stay at the exact generation the "singularity" would be invented. People need to die in order for everyone to push things forward.

<comment><USER31> If clinical immortality was possible, who's to say that mental rejuvenation couldn't be possible, as well? And that people will develop new psychologies as they become immortal?

<comment><USER30> Mental rejuvenation would mean wiping out your brain and growing new one, which would mean a new person. Brain has a limit on how fast it can adapt over time by design, not because of some illness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't wish to minimise his situation but it seems like he considers his father's suffering not quite as bad as his own suffering were he just to do the killing himself and take the jail sentence.

<comment><USER33> That's a good point actually. Especially if you could do it with low risk of being caught/convicted. Which should be possible with someone who is dying anyways and you have full access to them in the hospital and could just slip some poison or something into them.

I don't blame the author for not doing that though. Maybe it didn't even occur to him. But it's a good point that if you truly thought it was so terrible you should want to try to stop it even if it's illegal.

<comment><USER34> But there is also the risk of inflicting even more suffering. Even killing (instead of, say, crippling) oneself with all the time and resources in the world to do it is not an easy task; but killing someone you love, without inflicting even more pain and without getting caught, in a hospital of all places, now that seems near impossible for a layperson.

<comment><USER33> Depends on the method of killing. And even a painful one is still probably preferable than long drawn out suffering.

I assumed the poisoning would be easy and doctors wouldn't look for it but that may not be trivial. But if you actually cared it would be worth a few hours of research at the very least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> To avoid the slippery slope, couldn't there be a jury system that could decide the genuineness and applicability of a case of euthanasia? Leaving it only in the hands of a single person, be it the patient, or doctor or relative is bound to attract criticism. But if a jury can sentence one to a life-sentence in a crime case, they could arguably be trusted to deal a similar sentence for someone terminally ill.

</comment><comment><USER36> Although I'm on the author's side, things like [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alzheimers- tr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alzheimers-treatment- breakthrough-british-scientists-pave-way-for-simple-pill-to-cure- disease-8869716.html) make me think twice on whether I'm right or wrong.

<comment><USER37> 1\. Wait until something ships before thinking it's changed anything. Medicine is littered with would-be wonder drugs which turned out to have critical shortcomings — if these were easy problems, they'd already be done by now.

2\. In many cases, new treatments don't help outside of the early stages — in the story you linked, the description suggests that the treatment wouldn't help someone who's already in an advanced stage of the disease. Great for the future, perhaps, but cold comfort to when someone is already past the point of permanent damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Follow the money

Today patient has to pay lot of money to be kept alive. Also deciding about death is expensive and this burden would be on government.

In a few decades elderly people will be 40% of population. Government will probably have to pay bills for most of them. Only then will this become norm, but in really hideous way.

<comment><USER13> > Also deciding about death is expensive and this burden would be on > government.

Why? The burden should be on the person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Please HN don't disappoint me with "slippery slope" and "it's too complicated" arguments. I want to continue to believe the level of discourse here is better than that. Its not just do-able ... doctor-assisted suicide is right.

<comment><USER40> Yes, because slippery slopes doesn't exist.

Or because we should not discuss the implications of a possible slippery slope?

Note I'm not telling you what is right or wrong but I insist on the right to discuss relevant issues, in ethnic as well as in technical questions.

<comment><USER39> Slippery slopes certainly exist. However, the use of "slippery slopes" as a counterpoint is not useful. In fact, its harmful as it is posed as an end to the argument. We can certainly all agree its a complicated issue that requires a complicated solution, but our discourse should be on the solution, not simply stopping calling it slippery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Fortunately, doctors can still fiddle around the edges. My 96 year old grandmother went into the hospital last Thursday. After some tests it was concluded she would have a couple more months with rehab or maybe a couple weeks without. We decided to just have her loaded up with morphine and she passed on Sunday surrounded by her children. The morphine didn't kill her, her heart was mush, but it likely knocked some time and suffering off the end. It's unfortunate that we dont all get to die so gracefully.

I dont forsee euthanasia ever being legal in the US given the absurd response to medicare requiring just basic end of life planning with a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER42> Very important: by law in most states, you can control the conditions of your end of life care. State laws vary but if you are in California, this[0] is the form you print out, fill out, have notarized, and give copies of to your regular physician and the person(s) holding your medical power of attorney.

Every person should do this, because without this clear and legally binding statement of your wishes, medical people are compelled to do everything possible to preserve your life.

Part 1 establishes who can act for you when you can't act for yourself (i.e. in a coma). Unless you are legally married or a minor (when your spouse or parent can act), nobody can intervene to make medical choices for you. Under privacy laws, nobody can even ask about your condition. So your live-in lover or best friend is helpless to change how you are cared for -- unless they are named in a document like this one.

Part 2 expresses your wishes on how you want to be cared for at end of life. If Scott Adams's father had filled out this form and checked 2.1(b), none of that tragedy would have happened! And you can add more conditions. On my form, for example, I specified that if I was unable to read, to watch TV, or listen to audio with comprehension, and had no reasonable prospect of regaining those abilities, my life was over and I wanted to refuse all medical interventions except pain management. My idea being, to die quickly of pneumonia is nearly as good as assisted suicide.

However you fill it out, do fill it out, and encourage your loved ones to do so as well. A stroke or fall or collision can wipe out your consciousness at any age, and this form relieves your survivors of a lot of horrible choices.

[0] [http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/pdf/ProbateCodeAdvancedHealthCare...](http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/pdf/ProbateCodeAdvancedHealthCareDirectiveForm- fillable.pdf) (PDF)

</comment><comment><USER43> i am wondering if i am the only person who read this, who felt the piece was a very strange way to consecrate his father's passing. "i wish i could have put him down like a cat, and if you disagree with me, i hope you die a horrible death." there is a good case for euthanasia, and there is a case against it, it just seems inappropriate to approach a dialogue with this piece as a starting point. in the end, i'm sorry he lost his father in a painful and ugly way and felt captive to a hospital. the end of life situations in my family were also pretty gnarly but involved hospice care. i'd love to know the circumstances here, and how the situation could have been improved. but you'll never win over your opponents starting from a place like this.

<comment><USER44> I lost my grandfather (father really, he raised me) and I felt the same way, I signed his DNR and if nobody was looking, I would have turned off all measures to keep him stable myself. Watching somebody you love pass is entirely heartbreaking, it's satisfying to see them cross the line into the unthinking. If I had the talent of Scott Adams, the words I would have emitted would have been similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So sorry to hear about the current situation, found myself filled with a lot of emotion as I read through it. Reminds me of a talk I had with a good friend of mine where we basically acknowledged that we're not afraid to die but that we're more afraid of the dying process.

</comment><comment><USER2> Frontline had a nice piece on this issue a couple years ago called The Suicide Tourist:

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Breathing pure nitrogen is a quick and painless way to die.

<comment><USER47> Indeed and I wish this was closer to the top than here at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I get the story and am sympathetic to the OP, but a little confused about this line:

 _And while I 'm at it, I might want you to die a painful death too._

Is he just angry at everyone?

<comment><USER24> "Is he just angry at everyone?"

He is irrationally distraught, to the point of advocating violence.

The reason this piece works (for me) is that _everybody is irrationally distraught at this time in their life_. So while I get that he wants pain and suffering inflicted on those he views as responsible for his dad's suffering, I could line up a million more people who want to cling onto dear grandpa as long as the old guy has a breath. _Everybody_ is irrational and emotional at this time. That's the nature of the phase of your life that involves burying people you love. And it's the exact reason that others behave in ways he finds abhorrent.

<comment><USER49> Voting is already an act of violence.

His father was suffering agony every day because government and its voters decided if anyone in that condition wants to end their life, that the course of action be to put anyone who showed him mercy into a cage or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I if ever become so weak as a man that I would vote someone else's conscience instead of my own, then on that day, Mr. Adams, be my guest: Kill me.

</comment><comment><USER51> Physician assisted suicide is a super slippery slope. I'm stunned when thinking people advocate.

<comment><USER52> It works very well in countries such as the Netherlands, I've seen that first hand in cancer cases. It is the most dignified thing to do for a thinking person. Do you have examples where a large percentage of the cases are obvious malpractice?

I have long planned that I will do everything in my power not to stay on life support, and recommend you do the same for the sake of your family and your sanity.

<comment><USER53> > not to stay on life support

It's not such a simple decision. I know someone who was on life support and minimally conscious and recovered from there to more or less normal health.

It would be better to specify something like: no life support provided there is also no cognitive ability for 2 months.

That gives at least a chance of recovery.

<comment><USER54> There is a difference if you had a car accident and are 20 years old or if you are having terminal cancer at 80.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your goals for November? - <AUTHOR>

A problem shared is a problem halved. Or something to that effect.<p>What will you achieve in November? <comment><USER3> Firstly I want to find a new job, higher paying is my main goal at the moment as I feel I am being undervalued by my current company and their refusal to bring my wage in line with my co-workers despite performing equally, if not better than the majority of them doing the same task. (I should mention they get paid 3 times what I do, the only difference being a degree, the fact that we do the same job, with the same deadlines and difficulty being irrelevant for some reason.)

Next, I would like to work on my relationship with my girlfriend, there has been a lot of tension lately, mostly due to the way I've been acting and I feel as if I owe it to my girlfriend to try and improve the person I am, there is no point in saying "it's all her fault" - I know I'm in the wrong and I need to do something to change that.

After that, I want to put aside some personal me time, I've been overloading on work recently and haven't really had time for fun. I don't remember the last time I went out with friends or even spent a day with one and that's quite a sad thing.

Next I want to save up some money to fly to Spain to see my newborn baby niece. When she was born she had internal bleeding and a myriad of other health issues, we didn't think she would make it, but she proved to be strong and my sister just took her home last week. Plus, I haven't seen my family for 7 months now and as lame as it is to say this, I miss my mum.

Outside of that, putting more time aside for personal projects would be nice but at the moment it isn't a priority for me, just one of those "it would be good to have this" things.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find the needles in the haystack.

<comment><USER5> By coincidence, I spent a good part of today looking at very powerful magnets to extract needles etc from cut grass! If only we could find the analogue for your problem...

<comment><USER6> There's a MythBusters episode about this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2004_season)#Needl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_\(2004_season\)#Needle_in_a_Haystack)

<comment><USER7> Well, I certainly hope pg isn't putting the non-needles into an incinerator like Jamie...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be happier than I have been in October.

To finally give up smoking, which has been a defining struggle in Oct.

To stick with the 5:2 diet.

To do something cool and actually finish it.

<comment><USER9> What made you choose the 5:2 diet? Are you not worried about having no energy on those 2 days?

<comment><USER8> Lack of energy is not a worry at all. I had a fast day yesterday, didn't touch breakfast, dinner and had something very small for tea but wasn't completely drained at all. I had walk to and from the convenience store about 3 times after work, which wasn't harder. It even felt easier climbing the stairs too.

I chose the 5:2 since I'm interested in trying intermittent fasting in general but thought alternate-day would be harder to stick to. The plan is to transition to ADF eventually. There was a BBC documentary that shown the benefits, including more controlled IGF-1 and compared them to a group of people who completely like IGF. The people in this group are only around 4ft tall yet have a immunity cancer and a whole host of other diseases.

Another motivation is that my boss has been doing ADF for the past 3 - <USER2> weeks. He reported a 4in drop in his waist line and felt fantastic overall. He mentioned the story that motivated him to try too. A friend of his followed ADF and within 6 weeks, he looked like a new person. He is also an MD so it makes me much less worried about trying it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really interesting. I'm going to have to look into that, as I have a pretty intense workout schedule (Crossfit + triathlon training) and don't usually do well working out while fasted. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I will wake up at a decent hour every day.

I will reduce clutter in my life, on my desk, and in my head.

I will learn more about App Store marketing so CloudPlay, my music app for Mac, can grow even faster.

The final miracle will be if I can get a shipping beta of CloudPlay for iOS ready by the end of the month. I have no idea; I haven't yet started and this will be my first iOS app.

</comment><comment><USER11> Have fun with my son. Get more access with my son. Move on with life after a difficult year.

</comment><comment><USER12> Switching career and get a programming job, would love it to be something in Ruby on Rails. Be it permanent, remote, freelance, part time, whatever.

I tried different approaches this year, so far nothing come out of it. One gig was discontinued as the owner decided to switch to a local developer. The other project took half a year now and still no further progress from the owner. Just attended an interview which didn't work out.

As someone already mentioned, have fun with my son. Am teaching him Scratch at the moment, hopefully can complete a simple game by end of November :-)

<comment><USER13> Nice to find someone who's sharing goals with me. Though I have to admit I'm not exactly new in programming, my goal for this month is to learn programming concepts (algorithms etc.) in order to prepare myself for the switch to RoR.

I must clarify that I'm beginning with Python mostly because I'm having trouble finding good programming lessons that use Ruby.

This is a comment from a fellow HN user that I use for reference in material <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709336>

<comment><USER12> Hi Nathan, I think there are quite a few good tutorials for Ruby and Ruby on Rails too, perhaps you already know some of them like

Ruby

<http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram>

<http://rubymonk.com>

<http://rubykoans.com>

<http://rubybits2.codeschool.com/levels/1>

Ruby on Rails,

<http://railscasts.com>

<http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book>

<https://class.coursera.org/saas/lecture/preview/index> #coursera saas course with ruby on rails as medium

Challenges or puzzle

<https://www.hackerrank.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Launch a premium wordpress theme I made for personal site/blog/portfolio targeted mainly at freelance hackers/designers. I made it as a side project to be used at my own personal website and I believe there are many others who would love to use it. I will complete its documentation this week end.

2\. Decide about what my next side project will be (preferably something that can be a source of passive income). If possible begin working on it.

3\. Learn Haskell.

4\. Will try to include tabata in my exercise schedule.

5\. Will spend a weekend helping someone else.

</comment><comment><USER15> * Balance work hours - 7:30am to 4pm. Play with kid in beach for an hour, sleep for an hour and get back to work till 11pm.

Today is the first day in this schedule & time to go home. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Professionally: Having gone from web design & development into the print design world, I'm looking at getting back into pushing the (and my!) limits of web design & development (starting with building a Personal Portfolio website), and am also interested in continuing my artistic endeavors be it digital or print.

Personally: I have a BJJ grappling competition at the start of December, so by using November to hammer out my game, I will be ready for this tournament.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nanowrimo. And if I don't own the flat I'm trying to buy by the end of the month, it won't be for lack of trying. (Conveyancing, now there's an industry that needs disruption).

<comment><USER18> We (Beeminder) just made a tool to force yourself to spread the writing out over the whole month:

<http://blog.beeminder.com/nanowrimo>

Would love to hear what people think of it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want to begin learning programming (algorithms, data structures etc., already have sources to achieve that), become familiar with using the terminal and related tools, take baby steps towards Vim, get familiar with managing a Linux web server and maybe I'll finally decide on a back-end web development language (for now I find both Python and Ruby juicy and attractive).

</comment><comment><USER19> My main goal for this month is to start applying lean manufacturing principles to my life. I'll be recording all my activities (on paper, since I'm probably the last programmer without an iPhone or Android device), the results of my efforts, and building value stream maps for the important processes.

This will be for all aspects of my life - work, social, health, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> Professionally: Beta launch for my company's (Hey Jimmy) staff timekeeping solution for SME - Team Sheet. Get some funding. Get <http://heyjimmy.net> finished.

Academically: Get all my undergraduate coursework complete on time.

Personally: Get everything (apart from the meal) paid off for our wedding in December.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hopefully I'll get a better-paying job. I am currently getting paid ~$13,000 annually developing software for assembly-line robots.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Improve my swimming technique, culminating in 50 yards proper freestyle.

Build a Letterpress solver.

Enjoy time with my dog.

Run outside with no goals or time limits, just to be.

Teach my first online course, and see how well that content and format works for future courses.

</comment><comment><USER22> * play around with C->Python interface. (<http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8497>)

* complete the wedding preps before Nov 28

* give interviews and find a job

</comment><comment><USER23> I'll try to finish and launch my next startup project, My MD expert (remote medical second opinion from world leading experts). Lots of testing to do, experts to recruit with my co-founder, create the LTD...

</comment><comment><USER24> To get my startup into beta no later than the end of the month

For the record it is called Padseeker - <http://padseeker.com>

</comment><comment><USER25> Get ramen profitable.

</comment><comment><USER26> Write a three-voice fugue in ten tone equal temperament.

</comment><comment><USER27> Integrate several self-tracking services (incl FitBit and Withings) with my generic data collection service, zenobase.com.

</comment><comment><USER28> Release iOS app & plan what to do next.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sign a popular webcomic for a merchandising deal (started with musicians, then youtubers).

</comment><comment><USER30> <http://www.nanowrimo.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Good luck with that! It was seeing friends post about NaNoWriMo that inspired me to post this thread, actually; I'm not doing NaNo, which made me think _what am I doing_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I want to travel Thailand and find out a way to solve my marketing problems!

<comment><USER5> Eh... wants and goals are not really the same.

<comment><USER31> :) well flights and ads are planned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Be more relaxed and happy.

</comment><comment><USER33> Get 1,000 users at the end of month for my startup.

</comment><comment><USER34> Quit my job and do what i like

</comment><comment><USER35> Get married

</comment><comment><USER36> hire an android dev and close a deal with a CPG.</comment>


Torpedo – Share files, passwords, and more with self-destructing private links - <AUTHOR> https://usetorpedo.com/ <comment><USER2> I get: "Your Web Browser is Out of Date! Some features of this site (and many others) may appear broken. Your browser may also have serious security flaws. We recommend you upgrade to the latest version of a modern browser."

This is on Firefox 29.0.1, Mac OS X 10.9.3.

Even if whatever is causing that message is fixed, the language of the message really needs changing. I _am_ running the latest version of a modern browser, and so are the other potential users/customers that you've redirected away from your site!

<comment><USER3> Hey guys, sorry about that. We just rolled that message out a day or two ago. The browser-detection is based on [https://github.com/gabceb/jquery-browser- plugin](https://github.com/gabceb/jquery-browser-plugin) but obviously needs some work. Working on a fix for that now.

<comment><USER4> Detect features instead of browsers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple security issues after a quick look:

> No secure flag set on your session cookie

> No HttpOnly flag or secure flag set on auth-token cookie

> Password reset doesn't require the old password

> Password policy requires only 6 characters

> No x-frame-options header (especially problematic with 3rd item)

> You're running sslstrip on port 10250

> You're MongoDB port is open to the internet

> No support for TLS 1.1 or 1.2

> Info is "encrypted" but keys are kept server side. You may not keep the URL > after generation but it's still sitting in your server logs. Look at mega's > use of strings after # for how to do client side only keys.

<comment><USER6> This is a great list. I wish I could vote it up more than once.

Do you maintain a full checklist publicly anywhere? I've seen some great checklists from security review teams in the past (iSec Partners, for example), but I don't know what their re-sharing policy is.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Unfortunately I don't have a checklist of sorts. Most of what check for is just from habit and memory. I have a project I'm working on that will involve putting one together but that's still a few months out. If I remember I will shoot it over to you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a lot of the commenters here so far have been too hard on this site.

No, it's not the solution to ever problem ever - it's ephemeral messaging for file sharing and trivial logins. It's SnapChat, applied to the Desktop in a way that doesn't revolve around teenagers sending porn back and forth.

Good luck, Torpedo devs. You found a niche, launched a product and are giving it a good shot. I'd love to see a status update sometime in the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have not used it, just browsed the site for 40 seconds. What was interesting is that the /visual style/ jumped at me shouting "To be acquired by Dropbox". Anyone else have the same?

<comment><USER9> Not interested in being acquired or funded. Just built a little idea we've been sitting on for a while, and largely just to test out a few other projects in the field – things we're hoping to open source sometime soon.

I picked the Forward green, nwah picked the Torpedo blue – nothing more.

<comment><USER8> Understood, and completely valid. If you were wondering how it came across, then you know now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it particularly amusing how many commenters are complaining about the lack of statement/explanation on the security model & encryption used behind the scenes--especially those comments suggesting one should hold out for such an explanation before using this service. Not because that isn't helpful information to have, but because it does not, in fact, provide the slightest shred of increased security, or additional reasons to trust this app (or any others).

I mean, the state of HN comments on things like Torpedo all tend to feature such a ring of comments warning everyone to not try something when there isn't a statement about security/encryption. And yet, such a statement is absolutely worthless for decision-making or increased trust. Anybody could write a statement promising all manner of security/encryption awesomeness all over the things they make. We could have a team put out an app that claims it has encrypted its own source code with AES256 4,096 times before deploying to servers and that everything you do is encrypted a billion times over, and it's just fucking words. Yeah, nobody would trust something that claimed that, I'm sure, cos it sounds ridiculous. But it's not inherently more or less trustable and/or secure based on the content alone.

If you're basing your decisions about who to trust on their words, you're using the wrong metric. "We delete everything, trust us" is no different from " the contents of secrets are encrypted with a randomly generated key, using AES 256 bit encryption, before being stored in our database. The key is then embedded in the share URL for the secret. We don't store the key nor the URL in our DB, so the only way to decrypt it is with the URL."[1]

None of this is to suggest you shouldn't trust the guys behind Torpedo and their app. I think you should. But even my words don't matter. No mere statement about security/encryption can be trusted based on the words alone. You can only _actually_ trust something if you've been able to verify that it complies with the statement. And very few of the services anyone uses allow their users to obtain that level of verification.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769443)

</comment><comment><USER11> Until we have more encryption details, I agree with yanatan that the only current value is in automating something I already do manually (deleting a link once the receiver has accessed the content). Also agree with hexagonsun that sending passwords in plaintext is stupid. You could, however, send it via this channel, and the username via another (text message, IM, whatever). Still not super-great, but better than nothing, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER12> >Quickly send passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive information safely. Your data is encrypted and can only be decrypted when viewed using your private link.

Am I missing something here? "Your private link" is what you pass around for others to download see the linked to document/data. Anyone who has the link (or is first to use it) has your password/sensitive data.

<comment><USER13> Nope you're not missing anything. The longer you wait to use the URL, the less secure it is. I could just generate a bunch of random URLs and wget them until I get something.

<comment><USER14> Take a look at the urls and do some calculation on how likely you are to actually get anything. It looks like 14 characters, alphanumeric with uppercase, which is about 10^25. Even if you can try a thousand urls per second, that would take you about 10^16 days to go through them all (that's a long time).

Or, if you want to calculate probabilities, assume that a billion urls are used (this is an astronomic overestimate). That's 10^9 urls. The chance of hitting one of those with a random guess is 0.00000000000014% (if I counted the 0s right). Not very likely.

Now if the url is observed in transit - that's a completely different thing. Just don't think that random guessing is going to reveal this. It's similar to people thinking you can guess your way to product keys for software (hint: you can't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the idea, however this seems like a feature DropBox could add easily. Unless you're giving me all the technical details of how it's encrypted, NSA can't get it or you will go down like LavaBit etc.. (not true with DropBox) I don't see the value in adding another app/service to the mix - For me, others might have a different take.

<comment><USER9> Torpedo isn't intended to replace DropBox. We just think about file sharing a little differently – we'd rather think of it the way sharing files over IM is supposed to work (which it doesn't), or the way AirDrop works.

We personally don't use DropBox, but a lot of people do. Hopefully DropBox will add the feature for those users, but I think they solve a different problem and it's probably not a priority to them.

We'll get an FAQ section up on the site with the questions from this thread, all good feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since the file is uploaded to Torpedo servers, details on the encryption/security should probably be shared.

<comment><USER3> Hey Fatbat, I'm a dev for Torpedo.

Files are not encrypted (but 'secrets' are). Files are actually uploaded directly to a private S3 bucket over HTTPS.

Secrets (text) are sent over HTTPS and encrypted with a randomly-generated key using AES 256 bit encryption before being stored in our DB. The key is embedded in the share URL for the secret. We don't store the key or the URL anywhere on our servers, so the only way to decrypt the secret's contents is if you have that URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this service. I do it manually all the time when sharing passwords with coworkers and family. It would be nice to eliminate the trust issues by open sourcing the software though and allowing hosted versions. Could even charge for a mac app that connects to your hosted version of it.

<comment><USER10> > _Could even charge for a mac app that connects to your hosted version of > it._

They do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good stuff. This actually solves a minor, but frequent real problem.

A couple of things. This needs a way to audit the downloads, i.e. to be able to see that the link was accessed by these IPs at this time (mind the time zones!). And perhaps also log and show cookies and user-agent.

Secondly, what's up with SignUp and Login? Just let people download the app and give them N uploads per month for free. Or just M lifetime uploads for free. Then ask to top up the credit, pay for a month or perhaps, shockingly, get a monthly subscription. All this signing up and logging in just muddles things and fits the app like a square peg in a round hole.

</comment><comment><USER19> note: it detects firefox nightly user agent as out of date and probably unsafe. its actually really up to date! :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Still, sharing passwords in plaintext is stupid.

<comment><USER3> Hey hexagosun, I'm a developer for Torpedo.

We actually use 1Password internally, but once or twice a week we were getting passwords emailed or IMed to us from clients and other people we worked with, so we added the secrets feature to Torpedo for those folks, to at least greatly reduce the chance of those passwords from falling into the wrong hands if someone's smartphone is stolen or email is hacked.

Also, the contents of secrets are encrypted with a randomly generated key, using AES 256 bit encryption, before being stored in our database. The key is then embedded in the share URL for the secret. We don't store the key nor the URL in our DB, so the only way to decrypt it is with the URL.

<comment><USER20> Hey nwah_,

That's cool, I wasn't really trying to knock the product. I just get a little paranoid :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks interesting, although more information on the encryption schemes used, how the key is stored/represented/generated would be nice given that the idea is to trust the service with my private data.

<comment><USER3> Hi Iburinoc, I'm one of the developers for Torpedo.

Files aren't encrypted, but for secrets (i.e. text) the encryption happens server-side. We originally wanted to do client-side encryption (before heartbleed), but opted not to in order to keep the API simple.

When we get a secret, a random key is generated, that key is used to encrypt the secret using AES 256 bit encryption, the key is then mixed up with an identifier for the secret and that's included in the URL. We don't store the key itself anywhere on the server, nor do we store the URL (as it contains the key).

When request comes in to view/download a secret, we extract the decryption key and secret identifier from the URL, look up the secret, decrypt it using the key, then send the decrypted contents to the user (over HTTPS).

<comment><USER15> If it's happening server side the best you guys can give is "we won't look, pinky swear" \- sorry, might as well just use Dropbox.

<comment><USER22> I think you need to add client side encryption with an open source client. for the super paranoid. but, then I would be too paranoid to use that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An alternative for pure text is One Time Secret, [https://onetimesecret.com/](https://onetimesecret.com/)

<comment><USER24> I also really like [http://privnote.com](http://privnote.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The little animation on the homepage is pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER26> So far so good, signed up, installed, works great! My staff is entirely remote and this comes in handy.

<comment><USER27> I don't want to be a downer, but - you signed up you and your staff without any details on how this is secured on the server?

It looks promising, but I'd want to see more information before I kept anything sensitive here - and by its nature, that's going to the only thing it would make sense to keep here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Feature request: adjustable expiration time</comment>


IBM Open Sources Multi-core Smalltalk VM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/smarr/RoarVM#readme

<comment><USER2> Is anyone here using Smalltalk for a production application? What are your thoughts on this VM?

<comment><USER3> It's still at the research stage. It won't be production-ready for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got all excited, and then:

"Hosting an Object Heap on Manycore Hardware: An Exploration"

and

"Garbage collector is as simple as possible it is neither concurrent nor parallel performance can be problematic"

Well, they've solved the allocation part... but that's kind of not really useful without a concurrent+parallel collector.

</comment><comment><USER5> And Squeak just went to a massive effort to get everything MIT licensed. Wonder if they will incorporate this given its license.

<comment><USER6> addendum: My mistake, there appear to be some Pharo oriented files in the release already. Happy days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me be the first to say it: Wow!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my reaction as well. I've been learning Smalltalk recently, and this seems like a really great addition to Squeak!

<comment><USER7> I learned a bit of Smalltalk in the mid-80's. It took me eight years to decide to learn C++ after that. It never felt very object oriented (or oriented).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Today, the RoarVM supports the parallel execution of Smalltalk programs on x86 compatible multicore systems and Tilera TILE64-based manycore systems. It is tested with standard Squeak 4.1 closure-enabled images, and with a stripped down version of a MVC-based Squeak 3.9 image._

Combined with the recent efforts to tidy up and pare down Squeak's image, this is really exciting!

<comment><USER7> Now I _really want_ a Tilera workstation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone knows if there are Tilera powered systems in production environment? (And what can you run on them?)

I happen to have a manycore fetiche :D

Edit: <http://www.tilera.com/solutions/cloud_computing>

I want one of these. Anyone has one of these SQ2?

</comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting to see if Pharo merges in this work, but.. regardless, this is an excellent development and I look forwards to playing with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> i hope for a ruby front-end will emerge for it.

like what happened with maglev: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/MagLev_%28Rub...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/MagLev_%28Ruby_interpreter%29)

a language cannot have enough active implementations. yet only needs one spec.</comment>


Ask HN: Best places other than HN to recruit PHP devs? - <AUTHOR>

Hiya!
So, I'm about to be looking for a new senior dev for the startup I'm running, and we need a slightly unusual skillset.
Obviously I'm going to be posting on HN's "Hiring?" thread, but other than that, I'm wondering if people could suggest any other good places to look for devs who fit the bill.
Specific skills we'll need include PHP, MySQL, some JQuery, and strong statistical math skills - it's the last one that makes this somewhat tricky. It's a remote job, ideally +-5 hr of GMT timezone-wise.
Any suggestions? Have you found a good dev somewhere unexpected in the past?
P.S. Apologies if this comes across as a stealth job ad - really not meant that way. I am honestly looking for places to find applicants, not applicants directly (I figure they'll be reading the monthly "hiring" thread anyway.) <comment><USER2> Honestly, I haven't found much luck on any for-hire/freelance oriented site ... they all just "feel" insincere/fake wrt quality of skillset, communication skills, process management, etc. That's one of the things that actually brought me to HN was that people were walking the walk instead of just talking. Semi-related, I'll be keeping an eye out for that posting later ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll be in the regular HN "Hiring?" thread ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> you could try the job board at [http://www.datasciencecentral.com](http://www.datasciencecentral.com)

I haven't used it but most of the people visiting this site combine statistical knowledge and programming skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic - thanks! I shall indeed check that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since its remote job, try oDesk for small projects and see how it goes. You have to realize that there will be pain in the beginning until you get what you want. Another place is to search LinkedIn by yourself for developers and approach them directly.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's something we're considering, but as you say it's likely to be kinda painful. We'd ideally prefer to get higher-quality developer contacts.

The LinkedIn suggestion is excellent - thanks!</comment></comment>


Did Google Manipulate Search for Hillary (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEvD1Wu9uQo <comment><USER2> Google is known to remove bad suggestions. I suspect they deliberately avoid anything contentious.

If you try "Donald Trump" and then start typing Collusion, it won't suggest collusion until it gets to "Donald Trump Collu" at which point it suggests.... "Donald Trump Collusion Speech".

From Google's own documentation[1]

>If no predictions appear for a search term, the algorithm might have detected that:

>The search term isn't popular.

>The search term is too new. You might need to wait a few >days or weeks to see predictions.

>A potentially disparaging or sensitive term was associated with a name and an automatic rule was applied.

>The search term violates Google's policies. Learn more about Autocomplete policies.

Basically they just avoid anything controversial.

[1][https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?co=GENIE....](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en)

<comment><USER3> But somehow doctoring results is not controversial?</comment></comment>


10 Laws of Insider Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-12/the-10-laws-of-insider-trading <comment><USER2> I love Matt Levine's column. I get it (emailed to me) for free.</comment>


Pydeps: A Useful Program - <AUTHOR> https://aroberge.blogspot.com/2019/12/pydeps-very-useful-program.html <comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of pydeps! Recently, I have been using it to discuss with developers the structure of their code. Being able to quickly show them how interconnected their imports are, and ask which of the "lines" they might remove is a great teaching tool.

Cutting out "lines" isn't always the right decision, but it's been helpful to visualize and discuss.

</comment><comment><USER3> My projects use a bit of dynamic imports (Flask blueprints imported using `werkzeug.import_string`. From a quick trial, pydeps only works with static imports. A similar project (or the same one!) which collects data at runtime would be useful in this case.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "version" file I had created early on, was really redundant since its > content (a single variable) could easily be incorporated in the Public API > file.

What if it was not? How would you re-structure the program in that case?

As for me program structure is the hardest part of Python and I haven't seen a single Python program which's structure wouldn't look at least slightly ugly to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pipdeptree is another useful tool in this vein except cli driven on display. Poetry as a package manager also has some ice built is via their show sub command.

[https://github.com/naiquevin/pipdeptree](https://github.com/naiquevin/pipdeptree)

<comment><USER6> How do you use pipdeptree or poetry --tree to see which files in your project depend on which?

<comment><USER7> You can see which package depends on which package, if that dependency is declared in the package's metadata. But nothing at the file level.</comment></comment></comment>


Brand new community news site - <AUTHOR> http://fickyeh.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The site was thrown together in a few hours using telescope: [http://www.telescopeapp.org](http://www.telescopeapp.org)</comment>


Physicist's ideas of time - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1279371/this-physicists-ideas-of-time-will-blow-your-mind/ <comment><USER2> The example he gave is from special relativity where there's a distinction between coordinate time and proper time.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just a very bad explanation of general relativity.

General Relativity have some definition of time locally, that is more complicated than the time in Special Relativity.

The problem in Special Relativity is that time is not the same for every observer, because if you are moving the "time" you see is different than the "time" I see. Anyway, you can convert your time to my time or vice versa using some clear small math formulas.

In an abstract setting, it's essentially the same problem that right and left have. Everyone has a different definition, but you can convert them. For time the conversion looks more weird because in usual conditions you can approximate that everyone has the same time and live happily, but it is only an approximation.

In General Relativity the space-time is curved, so it is more difficult to do the conversions. It's more difficult because the math is more difficult and because you must stich the times from different parts, so there are real problems to stich them. If you like bad analogies, it is the same problem that make so difficult to make a good planispheres. Drawing the spherical surface of the Earth in a plane cause problems. [https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

In Special/General Relativity, the universe is made of "events", they are like the "points" in a plane but instead of having two coordinates like (x, y) or three like (x, y, z) they have four coordinates like (t, x, y, z). (For technical reasons, you will be happier if you multiply the time by c and use (ct, x, y, z).)

Each point in a plane exist on its own, but it is easier if you add some differentiable structure and consider that the point (7.9999999999, 4.00000001) is "close" to the point (8.0, 4.0). In spacetime you can add a similar structure to the events with four coordinates, but there are some technical details because time is special. But it is not much more surprising than defining the nearby points in a plane. In General Relativity the curvature make everything more complicated, but not mind blowing.

I think the article mix the thermodynamic arrow of time to increase the confusion, but if you want to understand the problem it's better to read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not very illuminating.. simply simply says time does not exist..</comment>


British jihadists had phones hacked by GCHQ before being killed by drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-isis-jihadists-had-phones-hacked-by-gchq-before-they-were-killed-by-drone-strikes-10503076.html <comment><AUTHOR> The article claims GCHQ used a Surespot exploit.</comment>


SublimeVideo HTML5 player released as a service - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jilion.com/2010/08/31/introducing-sublimevideo-player-as-a-service

<comment><USER2> It's really unfortunate that this pretty player will be only as a service - with a monthly fee.

I'm not willing to trust them with hosting the player and/or videos. This also seems to severely limit customization.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know how ICANN works? (gTLD application, 312 pages) - <AUTHOR> http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/draft-rfp-clean-28may10-en.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to read a cryptic 312 page document to get in on the new TLD domain game. What is this "ICANN" and where does all the money go when they release a new round of TLDs? Seems to me like it's all a game.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't think 312 pages is _that_ long for something as big as a gTLD. I thought there'd be a lot more policy and bureaucracy for introducing new gTLDs.</comment>


Voicemod and Stream Deck – The definitive audio solution - <AUTHOR> https://www.voicemod.net/stream-deck/ <comment><USER2> This submission might interest the HN community, but probably not as currently written. Instead you should post it as a Show HN and have a page that gives a lot more technical information. You should also add an initial comment to the thread giving the backstory of how you came to work on this, and explaining what's different about it. That tends to seed discussion in a good direction.</comment>


Code for America - <AUTHOR> http://codeforamerica.org/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I just wish that the timeline integrated closer to college graduation.</comment>


Thunder Lizard by Mike Maples Jr. - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/9602107 <comment><USER2> Executive summary: VC Mike Maples Jr. makes an extended analogy between Godzilla and ambitious startups that are challenging incumbent giants by using new technologies. Around the 14-minute mark, he starts talking about "Hatching a Thunder Lizard"; this is the most substantive part of the talk.

To the HN audience, this solid 30-minute talk is valuable primarily as an indication of what top VCs are looking for. In a nutshell: a huge potential market that no one else is tapping, either because of some inherent advantage you have (IP or unique expertise) or, more interestingly, because you're going against conventional wisdom.</comment>


Redhat may be stacking the deck against Openstack rivals - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/05/16/red-hat-openstack-mirantis-rhel-support

<comment><USER2> Lock-in? This is bullshit, they're simply focusing on just one product to reduce their software consulting costs. If their customers don't like that, then they can go and ask for support somewhere else (OpenStack and Linux is not less opensource because of this, therefore the aforementioned lock-in is not there).</comment>


Country OS - <AUTHOR> https://projects.invisionapp.com/boards/NY1JX0GEH4FJD#/2608864 <comment><AUTHOR> sorry - i posted the link to the press kit - here is the actual site: [https://countryos.com/](https://countryos.com/)</comment>


A lightweight, no-dependency top progress bar library - <AUTHOR> http://djyde.github.io/ToProgress

<comment><USER2> I'm assuming the buttons under "Quick Look" control an example bar, but I see nothing...

I'm using Firefox

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I'm working on it.

<comment><USER2> Looks like everything works, I get no console errors and in the inspector I can see the progress bar div, it's just invisible.

When I manually added a background-color to the div it looks (I assume) correct, so I guess it's just styling

<comment><AUTHOR> v0.1.1 has been released. You could have a look.</comment></comment></comment></comment>