Intermittent fasting: The good things it did to my body - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25549805 <comment><USER4> I don't think we're even close to really understanding how the body works here.

I'm not obese, but I gain weight from eating a little more, very easily. Last summer, I followed a Keto ("ultra low carb, high fat, medium protein") diet for about 4 months. After the first week of feeling terrible, a well-known side effect, I felt perfectly fine. It felt like I was binge eating, I limited _what_ I could eat and just went mad eating it. Any time I was remotely hungry, grab an approved snack. A big plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast, Chipotle for lunch, and a hefty meal for dinner.

I never went hungry, and as someone who likes food, it felt more like a treat than a diet. Colleagues thought I was trying to gain weight, and my girlfriend thought I'd gone mad with hunger. But the fat melted off. I didn't walk into a gym in those 3 months, and dropped 2-3lbs a week (starting ~250 at 6"3'), every single week.

I'm not saying it's perfect, or even viable for everybody -- it's not cheap, it's awkward to eat with friends, and the first week or two can be hell. Despite what people have been told, fat won't make you fat, and Keto has been shown over and over to reduce the risk factors for heart disease, 'cure' diabetics, and provide huge body transformations.

For anyone interested, /r/keto is a reasonably mature community, and can provide a lot more information.

<comment><USER5> I'm a physician. While it's good to lose weight (at least if you are overweight), keep in mind that losing weight is not the only interesting outcome. Any diet might have long term side effects. Such as an increased risk of cancer, arteriosclerosis etc.

Also remember that weight loss is not the only benefit of exercise.

That said, congrats on losing weight. Now start exercising :-)

<comment><USER6> Regarding the diet above, which limits your sugar intake to 20 grams a day, what are some potential consequences of starving your body of sugars?

Sounds good in theory (sugar is bad), but it sounds stressful (body starts producing ketones due to suck a lack of sugar, flu like symptoms for a week).

<comment><USER7> Producing ketones is perfectly normal. The flu-like symptoms can usually be avoided by easing into a low-carb/keto diet and/or ingesting sodium, chicken broth is normally recommended at the early stages.

Potential consequences of reduced carb intake are weight loss. It can be used to treat type 2 diabetes, epilepsy, a wide range of neurological disorders, some cancers (yeah, really), and much more.

I'm not aware of any scientic data that found adverse consequences. You get a lot of resistace from health professionals because for the last decades what you eat on a ketogenic diet has been blamed for heart diseases or high cholesterol, but there never was scientific evidence to back up those claims.

<comment><USER8> Here's a study that shows that while low-carb diets achieved effects faster (involved more weight loss in the first 6 months), after a year the difference in weight was negligible. Low carb diets led to higher levels of LDL cholesterol, which is generally considered to be bad, though were also correlated with better levels of HDL cholesterol, which are considered to be good. [http://www.ceb- institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_in...](http://www.ceb- institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_intern_med_2006_166_285_nordmann.pdf)

Here is a a long term study that shows that low carbohydrate, high protein diets were correlated with higher mortality rates. It's an observational, not a controlled study, so the usual caveats apply, but it's definitely some evidence that there's no automatic win for low-carb, high protein diets: [http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf](http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf)

I'm pretty sure I've seen another study that linked long-term use of low-carb, high protein diets with increased incidence of cancer, but I can't find that study at the moment.

<comment><USER9> Please don't promote "observational" studies. They are not worth the electrons it cost to display them on my screen let alone transmit them across the 'net.

You can find an 'observational' study to promote nearly any point of view. If it's not a properly controlled peer reviewed study it's not worth anyone's time except the shills who got paid to write it up by whatever corporate group commissioned it.

<comment><USER8> Controlled studies about lifelong effects of fairly fundamental parts of your life such as diet are quite difficult to do, especially with large enough populations to be statistically significant and without being overly affected by their dropout rate.

Observational studies have significant problems, as I _explicitly pointed out in my comment about the study_. However, they have some advantages in that they are a lot easier to do for larger populations over a longer time period.

Both of these are valid scientific techniques, to inform us about what is most likely to be a healthy way to eat. There are, of course, other valid techniques, such as studying immediate metabolic effects of ingesting certain foods, and linking those to known risk factors for a variety of conditions. Science is not a single, infallible technique, it is a set of techniques which taken together are intended to give us the best approximation of the truth, though every method can fail in certain ways.

Diet is an especially difficult topic. Human bodies, human behavior, and differences between different people are quite complex. There are a lot of people who are afraid of diseases of affluence or degenerative diseases that you see coming up more often simply due to our longer lifespan. Lots of people are interested in solving these problems, and I think that a lot of people jump to over-simplifying conclusions on these topics. We've seen this played out in the past; a huge over-emphasis on low-fat diets, that seems to have left us unhealthier than ever. Warnings about dietary cholesterol, when it turns out that the cholesterol in our blood stream has very little correlation to cholesterol consumed.

Every time I hear about some new extreme diet that is supposed to work wonders, I get concerned. Low fat, low sodium, low carb, no carb, paleo, high protein, high fat, vegan, raw, gluten free, dairy free and so on. Most of these things seem to focus on some single source of evil, and claim to offer amazing benefits if you follow them. Most of those benefits don't actually play out; despite the huge push for low-fat diets over the 80s and 90s, obesity continued rising at an alarming rate. Despite the huge popularity of Atkins, "paleo", and other low carb diets over the past decade, it has continued to rise.

People keep searching for a silver bullet, and in diets, like much of life, there is no silver bullet. Eat less, exercise more, eat healthier foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains while reducing the amount of sugars and fats, avoiding too much processed food and so on is not some amazing new diet plan that you'll be able to sell some fancy book about, but it's pretty much the actual advice you need to follow if you want to stay healthier.

Anyhow, I see this over and over again, and then I hear from eager people who want to tell me that low-carb, no fasting, no gluten free, no lactose free diets will help them lose weight, prevent cancer, prevent heart disease, prevent Alzheimers, prevent autism or ADHD, do all of the above and more, and there's no risk, they're so healthy, why would anyone not do this? And then I read the literature, and I find that actually, this new diet has quicker effects in the first six months but is about as effective as the last fad diet was after a year, and actually it does have certain dangers, and so on.

Eat less, exercise more, keep it healthy. Beyond that, don't worry too much, and do everything in moderation. Take all dietary science with a grain of salt, since it's a tough field to study the real, long term effects of (20 year studies are considered to be long term studies, but that's only a fraction of a life, meaning that many real long term effects get very little study). Take industrial food with an even larger grain of salt, as it's more likely optimized for shelf life, profitability, or narrow nutrition claims to be able to put some particular label on it, rather than flavor and health. Don't drink soda; I don't care if it's regular or diet, or whether the sugar is corn syrup or cane sugar. Soda is always extra calories that you don't need, or extra sweetness sans calories that confuses your body. And don't drink venti mochafrappucaremelates, or whatever the hell they're called. Don't eat salty snacks on a regular basis, but don't be afraid to put a pinch of salt in your food to make it taste good. Don't have dessert with every meal, but don't be afraid to have a slice of cake at a birthday party.

Anyhow, rant over. I just get upset when I see people getting religious over some new diet fad, which in 10 years will be the diet that the people selling a new diet fad will be talking about in their "you've been lied to for all of these years. Learn how to really stay healthy and lean!"

<comment><USER7> I didn't really see anybody getting religious, but why is it you get so emotional about this?

> Eat less, exercise more

So eating above one's caloric requirement and a lack of energy are always problems of willpower?

> eat healthier foods

I think everybody can get behind this, it's like thinking of the children.

> fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains while reducing the amount of > sugars and fats, avoiding too much processed food

So grains healthy, fat bad? As you don't mention meat that's probably also bad? Well, it's the details that get interesting, what are healthy foods.

<comment><USER8> > I didn't really see anybody getting religious, but why is it you get so > emotional about this?

It's just that there have been one too many threads of people promoting some particular fad diet idea (gluten is poison! sugar is poison! soylent is the food of the future!) and I'm getting kind of sick of them. I've been hearing these fad diet ideas for years, it's just different things which are claimed to be the poison or different combinations of things or combination of restrictions which are claimed to be the be-all cure.

This thread hasn't been particularly bad, though you were a bit overly pushy about ketogenic diets and dismissive of criticisms of them earlier: "I'm not aware of any scientic data that found adverse consequences. You get a lot of resistace from health professionals because for the last decades what you eat on a ketogenic diet has been blamed for heart diseases or high cholesterol, but there never was scientific evidence to back up those claims."

> So eating above one's caloric requirement and a lack of energy are always > problems of willpower?

No, there is not always a problem of lack of willpower. Metabolism plays a role, though diet and behavior play a big role too. There are certain circumstances for which ketogenic diets are appropriate, just like there are certain circumstances for which gluten free diets are appropriate; likewise, just because they are appropriate and effective in certain cases doesn't mean they are appropriate or effective for every case.

I think that for a lot of people, however, the problem is willpower. There are a lot of people who just want an easy excuse or an easy answer, when there really is an easy answer that just takes a bit more willpower.

I do believe that the low-carb, paleo, ketogenic, and likewise diet fads have at least helped combat the harmful emphasis on low-fat above all else. I recall at the height of the low-fat craze finding lots of fat free and low-fat foods that were stuffed with tons of sugar to compensate.

> I think everybody can get behind this, it's like thinking of the children.

No, I don't think everyone can get behind it. There are a lot of people who take the "you can eat whatever you want as long as it's not carbs" idea and eat way too much bacon, pork rinds, and the like.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are healthy. Eating pork rinds instead of a banana because the banana is fairly carb rich and the pork rinds are not is not healthy.

> So grains healthy, fat bad? As you don't mention meat that's probably also > bad? Well, it's the details that get interesting, what are healthy foods.

I don't think dividing it into "this entire category of food is healthy, this food is not" is a good way to approach your diet. So no, I'm not claiming "grains healthy, fat bad". Both grains and fats are good for you, in moderation. Likewise meat. All of these things can be bad for you when taken to excess; eating too much meat can give you cancer (and some meats are fattier, leading to the problems with too much fat), too much fat can raise your cholesterol leading to heart disease, too much grains (especially highly refined grains) can lead to spikes in blood glucose and harm your insulin response.

What I'm saying is favor fruits and vegetables over grains, favor whole grains over refined, treat meat as a supplement, flavoring, or occasional treat rather than the central part of every meal, favor unsaturated fats (generally vegetable oils and fish) over saturated fats (generally from other animal sources), and keep refined sugar consumption very low. If you need to lose weight, eat a little less, and try to fill up a little more on things without much caloric value like greens (but don't go spending all of your time eating salads, as they generally come with dressings that consist mostly of fat and sugar, defeating the whole point).

Personally, I follow this by eating meat (of any form, fish, poultry or red meat) only about 3 times a week. I never drink soda (can't stand the stuff now that I'm not used to it any more). I generally use unsalted nuts or fruit as a snack if I need something to tide me over between meals (but don't snack often). I usually buy whole grain bread. But I cook with butter plenty (as well as with olive oil, I love sauteing food in a combination of the two), I put cream in my coffee, I enjoy the occasional juicy steak, I eat a lot of cheese (my one main vice), and I have the occasional dessert.

Now, I don't claim that my diet would work for everyone. That's why I'm not out selling it; it's just what happens to work for me. But I do think that it's good to employ an approach of moderation and avoiding thinking about food in black and white terms, unless there's a very good reason why a food should be completely banned (like if you have celiac disease, a nut allergy, or a moral objection to consuming animals).

<comment><USER7> > too much fat can raise your cholesterol leading to heart disease

Actually, foods with a high glycmic load seem to be what's really bad for the heart [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995)

> favor unsaturated fats (generally vegetable oils and fish) over saturated > fats (generally from other animal sources)

Doubtful, [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract)

Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils have to be balanced. Too much omega-6 rich polyunsaturated vegetable oil like from soybean or corn may actually increase risk of heart diseases, [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16387724](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16387724), [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21118617](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21118617)

> though you were a bit overly pushy about ketogenic diets and dismissive of > criticisms of them earlier

Seriously, you keep calling LCHF keto a "fad diet" and accuse people who talk about it of "selling books", calling it the "be-all cure" or eating "way too much bacon, pork rinds, and the like". Your underlying tone is really ad hominem, you seem to think all ketoers are stupid, uneducated or in it for a quick buck.

Edit: Let me also add that keto is a proven treatment for diabetes, epilepsy and there is currently research into more therapeutic benefits: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1325029/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1325029/), [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/), [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826507/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826507/)

<comment><USER8> > Actually, foods with a high glycmic load seem to be what's really bad for > the heart > [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995)

From the referenced study: "associations of harmful factors, including intake of trans–fatty acids and foods with a high glycemic index or load"

You seem to have missed the other half of that statement.

> Doubtful, > [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract)

From the study you link to:

"Of note, in intervention trials that have shown protective effects of reducing saturated fat, ie, the Veteran Affairs (19), Oslo Diet Heart (20), and Finnish Mental Hospital (21) studies, the calculated P:S ratios ranged from 1.4 to 2.4—values that are much higher than the threshold of 0.49 above which CHD risk has been reported to be reduced (44). Relatively high P:S ratios (1.25–1.5) were also observed in the Anti-Coronary Club Study, an early trial that showed beneficial effects of a lower fat diet (30–32% of total energy) (45). The presumed beneficial effects of diets with reduced saturated fat on CVD risk may therefore be dependent on a significant increase in polyunsaturated fat in the diet. Existing epidemiologic studies and clinical trials support that substituting polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat is more beneficial for CHD risk than exchanging carbohydrates for saturated fat in the diet, as described further elsewhere (46)."

Exactly as I said, favoring unsaturated fat in diets over saturated fats seems to have benefits as far as cardiovascular disease, while replacing fats with carbohydrates leads to poor results.

> Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils have to be balanced. Too much > omega-6 rich polyunsaturated vegetable oil like from soybean or corn may > actually increase risk of heart diseases

Sure. I wasn't trying to lay out every possible dietary guideline, just a few rough ones. And I really mean them as rough, and meant to be broken. I don't believe that we know enough about dietary science at the time to make strong judgements; making drastic dietary changes on the basis of poorly understood science can be a bad idea.

One rough metric for whether a diet is good to eat is whether it a similar diet has been eaten over the past few hundred years by agricultural societies; that gives at least some evidence that it works over a large population for a long period of time. It's not perfect, and modern scientific understanding can help us understand and improve it, but it gives you a good baseline.

I don't really buy the paleo idea that we evolved for the hunter gatherer diet, and then evolution stopped; after all, Europeans evolved white skin as a result of agriculture, so I find it a lot more plausible that our digestive system has likewise adapted to agriculture, though it's too quick for it to have adapted to modern industrial agriculture and food processing.

Given that we've been eating butter, olive oil, and lard for centuries, while corn and soybean oil are inventions of modern agriculture, I tend to favor the former over the latter.

> Seriously, you keep calling LCHF keto a "fad diet" and accuse people who > talk about it of "selling books", calling it the "be-all cure" or eating > "way too much bacon, pork rinds, and the like". Your underlying tone is > really ad hominem, you seem to think all ketoers are stupid, uneducated or > in it for a quick buck.

I do think that there's a LCHF/keto fad. I've seen a lot of fad diets over the years, and it has all the trappings of one. I don't think that all ketoers are stupid, uneducated or in it for a quick buck, but I do think that lots of well meaning, smart people can get caught up in fad diets, just like the low-fat fad that was popular for so long (and still has plenty of vestiges in nutrition advice and policy today).

That doesn't mean that that there aren't valid uses for a keto diet. That has been demonstrated in a variety of studies, and a classic example is in epilepsy. What I don't think has been demonstrated is the long-term efficacy of keto diets over normal calorie restricted diets. Keto tends to get results quicker (at the expense of some unpleasant side effects) but the advantage tapers off after a year.

On the other hand, low-fat diets are useful for specific therapeutic purposes as well, such as people having gallbladder problems. We've all seen the damage that over-emphasis on low-fat diets for the general population has done. Look at all the trans-fats people have consumed while avoiding saturated fats; and all the sugars that have been substituted for fats in foods to try to make bland processed food taste better.

From the evidence I've seen, I think that low-carb is likely to be a bit safer than low-fat as it's easier to wind up consuming more calories in carbs when eliminating fat than vice versa, but I do worry that too many people deciding to jump on the low-carb high-fat or low-carb high-protein bandwagon may wind up doing themselves harm; possibly from causes that we already know, and possibly from things that we don't know.

By the way, I think you've mistaken what ad-hominem is. An ad-hominem attack is one in which you attack a person rather than their ideas. That's not really what I've done; I've just been fairly dismissive about the idea. Perhaps I've been unduly dismissive, but having recently been in a thread discussing gluten free diets, I'm feeling a bit uncharitable towards the tendency for people to latch onto a dietary idea that is a very effective treatment for a very specific problem, and decide that it's the solution for everybody and must be evangelized far and wide.

<comment><USER7> > From the referenced study: "associations of harmful factors, including > intake of trans–fatty acids and foods with a high glycemic index or load" > > You seem to have missed the other half of that statement.

What the actual frack? No, I can read, and we weren't talking about trans- fatty acids at all, how on earth could I have missed something we're not talking about? Or did I promote eating processed foods?

Anyway, this doesn't seem to lead anywhere, you have made up your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to see how mainstream intermittent fasting has become. It's worth noting where it started.

A few years ago a few hardcore fitness fanatics started playing with the idea of using controlled fasting for weight loss and/or body recomposition. Two people that should be mentioned are Lyle McDonald[1] and Martin Berkhan[2]. Martin especially made IF popular via his blog, laying out the principles he used as a fitness consultant with his clients.

Most research (and especially the commercial IF knockoffs) only take some part of these principles, but the "diet" part is only part of the picture when it comes to body recomposition. It's almost worthless without the rest (high intensity, low volume weight training, basic compound movements, progressive overload, no focus on cardio).

Quite a few people/company are trying to rip off customers via their IF programs knockoffs and supplements. If you want give IF a shot, read through Martin's blog, and try the original Leangains protocol.

[1] [http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/) [2] [http://www.leangains.com/](http://www.leangains.com/)

<comment><USER11> Another recommendation for Leangains.com - been following it for over a year and have seen good results. Although I haven't followed the protocol to the letter - I eat a good amount of junk food during the week, but also good food as well. The point is to narrow your window of time that you eat during the day. I believe I could be doing even better if I concentrated on eating better and cutting out the crap, but now I have a pretty good balance of being in shape and being able to eat what I want.

Dr Mercola also has some really good articles on IF - www.mercola.com

<comment><USER10> The whole "clean eating" thing is mostly a fad. Nobody has managed to define what food is "clean" and what is not (see e.g. what the typical bodybuilder thinks is clean, and what someone doing paleo, what the average dietitian recommends, etc). The only important things are 1) the number of calories you eat, and 2) what nutrients your diet provides.

When I'm cutting, I don't make a fuss about "junk food", as long as I'm below my calorie intake limit and I'm not missing any important nutrient. Usually hovering around 20% junk food.

<comment><USER12> Do you mean: 1000 kcalories of fries and soda == 1000 kcalories of vegetables, fruits and grains?

<comment><USER10> If you're only looking into weight loss/gain, then yes. Both are terrible choices as a diet, though. The latter will provide more nutrients, so we can call it 'healthier', but you will lack important ones still, and significantly undereat if you are an adult male of average weight and height.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a very interesting documentary on intermittent fasting on BBC Horizon titled 'Eat, Fast, Live Longer' where Michael Mosley experimented with himself fasting trying different types of fasting including intermittent fasting.

It did help him alot but the cool thing was there was a guy who lived on a meal a day which had athlete like body fat levels.

There's also a runner, Fauja Singh, who ran a marathon at 101 years of age featured in it who practices something close to intermittent fasting [1]

It was extremely interesting and I do feel after watching it that 3 meals a day is something conjured by man but may not really be all that natural.

Link to episode intro: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHDBIaibok](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHDBIaibok)

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a derivation on the 5/2 diet. The 25/5 diet. My personal issue with these types of diets is that my concentration levels initially drop. I find the first couple of days extremely uncomfortable.

The best lifestyle change I've made is to drastically cut down on carbs, generally avoiding wheat and try never to eat sugar, in particular fructose. Note this doesn't stop me eating carbs but that I generally try and avoid them in my day to day eating. I no longer feel tired in the afternoon.

I also cycle to work.

<comment><USER15> What did wheat do to you? Are you a celiac, or are there other reasons one might be interested in avoiding it?

<comment><USER16> Not op - My experience is that all grains (corn, rice, wheat) make me bloated and puffy, regardless of caloric content. Wheat is by far the worst offender, also making my breath shorter about 30-60 minutes after eating, lasting a couple of hours, and corn not having an immediately noticeable effect, but causing bloating that will stay for days.

Not celiac, and not anything life threatening, but definitely a huge effect. After dropping wheat, I lost 30 lbs in one month, and it stayed off for 18 month without wheat (but some came on again after a week of eating mostly corn products - which is how I discovered that corn is evil too)

The best way to determine if this is relevant to you is not to read books or articles or consult with a doctor: rather, take a week or two off grains (much harder than it sounds - wheat and corn are used as fillers in many products), and then adding them sporadically and keeping a journal (what and when you ate each day; and whether you felt good/bad the next hour/day)

Not easy, but well worth it and not expensive.

<comment><USER14> Please please do this. It's what I did. If you find similar affects, this can be life changing in a very very beneficial way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been doing IF every day since July 1, 2013. Before that I was eating slow-carb diet and had lost about 50lbs.

When I started doing IF, I was lifting pretty heavy and after the first week I had gained weight. I was pissed because I was hungry all the time it seemed, but I gained weight this week? Huh? Well, fast forward to now, and I put about 20 pounds since July 1, and yet I am not fatter. I am muscular. It's weird, and yes I was lifting, but fasting helped my body get from that chubby kid phase to, 'oh wow, I think I am almost ripped'. There are definitely some real benefits to fasting and no one will tell you that because they can't sell it to you in a pill.

Something really intriguing to me about fasting for 24hrs+ and then having to eat. For me, I crave healthy foods at that point and I also have the instinct to stuff my face and thus one meal/day works for that. It's tough to eat a bunch of crap when you are only eating once/day.

Finally, if you are interested in IF, I recommend reading up on Ori Hofmekler. He is the type of guy who's ideas are so crazy at first they are brushed off. Then science proves him right.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Warrior-Diet-Biological- Powerhouse...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Warrior-Diet-Biological- Powerhouse/dp/1583942009)

<comment><USER18> I too only have 1 meal a day. Some days (few a month?) I cheat, mostly for social reasons. It's hard to refuse every lunch request.

Usually, though, I have an apple and cup of tea about 2PM. Dinner about 8. So I'm doing all my eating in a 6 hour window, fasting the other 18 hours, every day.

<comment><USER17> For lunch requests my go to excuse to people is that I am in the middle of a fast. Thus, I don't mind going to eat with them, I dont seem weird for eating healthy, and for whatever reason, people have been more understanding of the fasting excuse over, oooo I cant eat that.

But with cheating in general, I will move the hours of fast around. So if I do go to a lunch, I'll probably eat pretty damn big and then fast until 6-8 the next day, make a good dinner. It's funny how much you enjoy food when you learn how to eat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it frustrating when people often discuss experience with 'intermittent fasting' without describing exactly what they mean. The term ranges over lots of approaches. I've seen it used to describe just 8 hours (perhaps every/most days) without food, to a full day or couple of days without food (perhaps every other day or once per week or two), to other things, as is the case here.

Fortunately, clicking through to another article in the series ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25498742)) gives more details about what was tested here:

 _The food, during the [5-consecutive-day] period of the restricted diet, was designed to be highly nutritious. It consisted of plant-based soups, kale chips, a nutty bar, a herbal tea and an energy drink. The total number of calories, in five days, was about 2,500 - a little more than the average person consumes in one day. No additional food was allowed. For the rest of the month we were allowed a normal diet. The regime was repeated three times, followed by a control period, when we could eat anything._

<comment><USER20> 8h without food wouldn't be intermittent fasting unless everyone does it when sleeping.

There is one diet type quite popular right now in fitness called Leangains which calls for about 16h of fasting and a 8h eating window (granted that you can reduce the eating window if you feel like it).

Some people even reduce the eating window to just one meal (warrior diet).

<comment><USER14> Isn't this just skipping breakfast?

<comment><USER20> In some ways it is skipping breakfast.

As vidarh mentionned, you also have to take into accounts macros (carbs/fat/proteins split) and having to eat 3500kcal in 2 meals can be tough sometimes (in the weekend i often do a 6h or so).

I've eaten that way pretty much all my life so it was easy for me to adapt (it mainly consisted of more proteins and alternating more carbs on workout days/more fat on rest days).

I made a quick calculator the other day if you want to see how it would look like [http://vincent.is/working-on/leangains](http://vincent.is/working- on/leangains) (github [https://github.com/Keats/kCalculator](https://github.com/Keats/kCalculator) if any angularjs dev want to review some code of an angular newbie!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not really a new thing. In India, fasting is a like a culture. More common with females though. Some of them fast like once every week. There are festivals which are based around fasting. Like Karvachauth, in which girls fast for their husbands etc (we are not very feminist yet). There are festivals during which people fast for straight 2-10 days! (chath, durga puja, somwari etc).

Even in Islam, during ramzaan people fast everyday for 30 days . They eat before dawn break and eat again after dusk.

<comment><USER16> Note that in ramadaan they also don't drink any water during the day; and many who can afford to, flip their schedule to sleep through the day so they can eat at night.

Also, according to superfreakonomics, this wreaks havoc on gestating babies. Seems like all harm and no benefit fasting (which, perhaps is the idea - Jewish fasting on Yom Kippur is specifically spoused to be a soul- torture/soul-searching experience - both translations are valid - although it is often not experienced as either)

<comment><USER22> Pregnant women are exempt from fasting during ramadan.

<comment><USER16> So are Jewish woman on Yom Kippur - but many of them still fast; enough to change date-of-birth distribution for Jews and health-of-newborns for Muslims.

<comment><USER23> Yup but that changed a lot these last years. Some women used to be "ashamed" of the fact that they couldn't fast like other people did, but now (with TV, more education, etc.) they know that Islam prohibits that (as it can endanger the baby) and it's bad for both them and their babies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of the diets mentioned on this thread are a long way from the diet used in this article. Note it is not mentioned in the article, however it is mostly vegetables with some fish. That is a long way from 'chipotle'!!!

It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of things we consider to be food really does not want to be food. Grains want to be carried away by the wind to plant themselves somewhere else. Their ancestors invariably had toxins in them to dissuade any creatures (including us) from eating them.

Not one single animal, insect or fish has evolved specifically to be eaten. Hence the wide range of defensive measures most animals/insects/fish have to make sure that does not happen too often. Again, toxins come into play. As you move up the food chain so you get an accumulation of those toxins, hence we tend not to eat apex predators.

Compare and contrast with fruit. Fruit has evolved specifically to be eaten, particularly by primates. The idea being that we eat some fruit, wander off to somewhere new, have a dump, eject some seeds from the fruit complete with a handy amount of manure and water. Yep, those pesky plants tricked us into doing all of their work for them! They even managed to get us to cover up our leavings, thereby planting their seeds properly.

Our vision system co-evolved with fruit, we (as in primates) see in colour not because god wanted us to live in some world of puppies and rainbows but so we could eat fruit that is ripe and ready to eat. The plants, knowing that we were evolving colour vision, kindly evolved through some process of natural selection to produce fruit that kick in to 'eat me' colours when they are nice 'n' ripe.

With this colour coded system it is possible for plants to avoid waste. We (as in primates) only pick the ripe fruit, the stuff that is still green is identifiably no good to us so we leave it until it magically changes colour.

Obviously there came a time when grasslands took over and we had to leave the trees, learn to stand up and walk on two feet (so we could see over the grass) and find new meals to try. At this stage the cult of eating dead animals was borne, we adapted, but not that much, our intestines are still a million miles longer than that of a dog, we still have hands for nabbling fruit rather than vicious claws to rip apart stray wildebeest and we can still chew, as you need to do for fruit, in a way dogs don't do.

Much like how multi-vitamins are of dubious benefit to you, so it is with fructose. Sugars in fruit are fine, nobody has died of diabetes due to eating too many apples. The 'fibre' is an important part of it, you need 'fibre' if you are to consume sucrose.

The problem with diet in America is corn. There is nothing edible about corn grown in America today unless it has been processed by an industrial process or another animal first. All of those corn-stuffed animals Americans eat get killed before the corn kills them. If Americans are not careful they will be remembered as 'the corn people' like some of those American Indian tribes that tried and failed to build corn-based civilisations in pre-Columbian times.

<comment><USER25> > It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of things we consider to be food > really does not want to be food.

What they _want_ is irrelevant. As they evolved to avoid being eaten, so we evolved to be able to obtains, eat and digest it. It's not a one-sided process of providing us with a ready made menu.

> At this stage the cult of eating dead animals was borne

Why do you assume we did not eat animals "in the trees"? Is there any evidence to support that? Chimps eat meat on occasion, for example, and when they do the pack literally tears the victim apart.

And describing it as a "cult" is ridiculous. It became important because it is an immense source of nutrients, and available in many places where surviving on available plants/fruits was near impossible prior to the development of extensive trade. The ability to eat and digest meat provided us with yet another evolutionary advantage over many other animals.

> We (as in primates) only pick the ripe fruit, the stuff that is still green > is identifiably no good to us

There's plenty of fruit that's green when it is ripe, and plenty that is a different colour than green for a long time before it is ripe.

> we still have hands for nabbling fruit rather than vicious claws to rip > apart stray wildebeest

Which have proved superior in providing means for killing animals? Our hands can hold and wield weapons. Which approach to eating meat is better: Tearing apart raw meat, or cooking it? You seem to assume that we are not well adapted to handling our new menu entries and/or that these features somehow means we're better adapted to fruit just because we haven't taken on the characteristics of animals that are terribly limited in their abilities.

<comment><USER26> Spot on critique. Two additions:

What about pure carnivores? Surely their food doesn't want to be food, but carnivores do just fine.

While I agree that the amount of corn we eat is absurd, to call it inedible is ludicrous. Raw corn on the cob is plenty edible, and sweet corn is quite tasty, although that's admittedly not what's grown on large corn plantations.

<comment><USER24> True, in the classic 'cheetah chasing wildebeest' scenario the the wildebeest is not 'chemically defended' and the cat enjoys his dinner. However, we aren't pure carnivores are we? Our taste buds are different as is our gut flora, our saliva has enzymes in it plus we have a lengthy intestine. Sure we can eat wildebeest - raw - but we would have to sit around all day - cat style - <USER2> have it digest. Due to the intestine length our 'wildebeest on toast' would start to rot inside us whereas the cat would not have that problem. Hence we cook animals and use the word 'meat'.

98% of the corn grown in the USA is field corn, grown for its starch content. You cannot eat this stuff and enjoy doing so. You need something tantamount to an oil refinery to make it edible or a distillery to make it drinkable.

The corn you are thinking of - the nice sweetcorn in the supermarket - is from a different variety, it is grown for the sugar content, not the starch content.

Essentially field corn is a chemical feedstock, it can be used for many, many things - which is great. However, look at those ingredient labels in the U.S.A. and, after a while, question whether you are eating a great deal of stuff that is not corn-derived. HFCS is obvious, 'xanthan gum' is not so obvious.

You will enjoy this article on it:

[http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2008/11/081111-fas...](http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2008/11/081111-fast- food-corn.html)

<comment><USER27> Good points and rebuttals, but I had to laugh out loud at the end because that last sentence sounded like a command rather than a suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maintaining a program year after year is more important to long term health than the immediate benefits of any diet. Most any diet studied shows a short term benefit. Even just participating in a study (placebo effect) usually happens short term. But few diets have notable retention rates after 2 years.

Having lost >30 lb multiple times and having regained more each cycle, the problem (for me) is that work, stress, sleep deprivation, children, family crises, work crises, business travel, etc. present significant obstacles to any extreme protocols.

I tried IF for 6 months; it worked short term. But I felt so unfocused and unstable during the fast days that it was difficult for me to maintain.

My latest effort (lost >100 lb, for over a year) has greatly simplified things - eat lots of veggies before I eat protein or other foods for any meal. No other restrictions, calorie counting, or biochemistry hacks. Very easy to eat out, travel, maintain. I did not join a gym or buy equipment this time - instead I walk to work (5 miles each way.) Also maintain sleep program - <USER3> more evening alcohol or coffee.

<comment><USER29> What has been working for me (I've lost 8kg in 4 months) is Weight Watchers - not the meetings, just access to their points-rated food database via Web and App, which makes keeping track of your points budget reasonably convenient.

The biggest advantage is that you don't have to make any fundamental changes to your diet or habits and it's flexible enough to accommodate occasional big, unhealthy meals - so there's not too much self control necessary to stick with it.

It also subtly pushes you towards eating fruit and veggies because most of those have no points and thus can be eaten at any time, as much as you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's impossible to have an actual discussion about this in a non-moderated forum given how eager people are to talk about their personal experiences rather than the actual content of the article. For an amusing overview of some research on intermittent fasting (mildly NSFW) - [http://www.leangains.com/search/label/Research](http://www.leangains.com/search/label/Research)

</comment><comment><USER31> I am really interested in intermittent fasting for the health benefits, having watched BBC's Horizon on it.

The thing is I am fairly skinny, and struggle to put on weight. Does anyone know if I am likely to loose weight?

And are there any good site to learn about it in a fairly scientific way? I see lots of blogs, but never sure how much is worth reading.

<comment><USER15> I have for a time put on weight during intermittent fasting (daily 16-19h fast) easily, simply by ingesting excess calories in the "feeding window" for days/weeks on end. If you need 2000 a day and eat 2500-3000 a day or more (averaged over a longer time span), fasting isn't going to reverse that fact. Sometimes it _is_ as simple as calories-in-calories-out.. I did this on purpose to grow some muscle, but some of the "gains" in that approach will always be bodyfat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here's the thing I don't like about fasting - how are you supposed to work out while you're fasting? I can't imagine going to the gym eating 500 calories a day without passing out.

<comment><USER33> I started a Lean Gains style fasting approach in Oct 2012. My version has me stop eating by 8PM and not eat again for about 15 to 18 hours. I work out right before the end of my fast. I lift weights 3 days a week and run 2 days a week. These are vigorous workouts lasting 35 to 50 minutes.

My body has adapted! Initially I couldn't lift as much nor run quite as quickly while working out on empty, but the fat melted off nicely at about a pound a week for the first 6 months. My weight then stabilized for about 3 months.

In the last few months I have been trying a very slow bulk while still keeping to the schedule. Trying to eat above maintenance level and add muscle. It seems to be working I have put back on about 7 pounds and I estimate that about 4 of those are muscle. And, my personal bests in weight lifting have just recently been matched.

I have to say that overall I am very pleased with the results of this style of intermittent fasting and the ability to keep working out.

Having said all that, I am thinking that this year I would like to experiment with some longer fasts of 24 to 36 hours. I anticipate that I will need to significantly reduce the intensity of my workout during that kind of fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I guess this is one of the reasons Our Lady in Medjugorje has been calling us to fast on bread and water every Wednesday and Friday.

</comment><comment><USER35> if the study didn't control total calories between groups, the improved health markers on his tests were likely a result of lower total calories over time. i.e. the studies probably did not match calories between groups.

</comment><comment><USER36> This sounds awfully like regular crash dieting.

<comment><USER37> "Crash dieting", as commonly practiced, is to eat less until your weight goals have been reached, and then go back to "normal". IF is hardly that; instead, it's a controlled pattern of _regularly_ , and for _specific durations_ , reducing your caloric intake. Some IF practitioners use a 6:1 cycle, where they have one fast day a week, some 5:2, and yet others 25:5, as in TFA. Some just take a random fast day whenever they feel like it, even.

IF is much less about _weight_ than it is the other, generally scientifically demonstrated benefits of reduced caloric intake — though it does tend to confer some benefit in weight reduction as well.

<comment><USER25> And some just reduce the window of food intake _within the day_. E.g. leangains is 16 _hours_ fasted, 8 hours or less eating window.

> IF is much less about weight than it is the other, generally scientifically > demonstrated benefits of reduced caloric intake

That depends on the type of IF. Again Leangains is not specifically about calorie reduction, but about obtaining some of the benefit of being in a fasted state part of the day coupled with avoiding adding body fat, which for many who uses Leangains still means consciously adding weight.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. The fasted state is key here, giving the body a chance not to be processing food. After doing this for a while I can't understand the deal with eating small meals a bunch of times a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It also might have given cancer to Steve Jobs

<comment><USER39> Citation? I've seen a lot of studies saying intermittent fasting might not help bodyfat loss as much as you'd hope; but no studies saying it increases cancer risk.</comment></comment>


About Hiattus: a platform for writing and publishing, anonymously - <AUTHOR> https://hiattus.com/p/6xeYZT/about-hiattus

<comment><USER2> I can publish anonymously in any number of places. The problem is _keeping it published_ in the face of takedowns and this site seems to be completely silent on the subject.</comment>


Emojis as a Language (simulation) - <AUTHOR> https://fatiherikli.github.io/emoji-language/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I'm the creator of this project, and also "language-evolution- simulation". I tweeted some examples of the simulation: [https://twitter.com/fthrkl/status/1055574821520715776](https://twitter.com/fthrkl/status/1055574821520715776)

You can ask me questions here, I'll try to reply to them.

🧞

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm a little confused how this works. There seems to be one button and that's it. Clicking it does nothing.</comment>


How do I become a hustler? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Career-Advice/How-do-I-become-a-hustler <comment><USER2> 1\. Listen to this podcast - <http://www.lifestylebusinesspodcast.com/define- hustle/> 2\. Do everything it says.

Hustler = Action</comment>


TextMate 2.0 (rc 10) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/textmate/textmate/releases <comment><USER2> Does TextEdit have features or performance that Sublime, VS Code, or Atom cannot match? I'm always open to a new editor, just want to understand its sweet spot and strengths.

<comment><USER3> It's main feature is it actually feels and behaves like an OS X app.

Obviously for many people this really doesn't matter but a niche of people this is a huge advantage.

<comment><USER4> This is mainly my reason for using it as well. It's hard to describe but other editors just don't feel at home on the mac for me. Small things like how the cursor navigates across the document and the modifier keys to select parts of text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On this note, do any of these nice GUI editors provide a good API for control of the buffer contents, multiple cursor positions, multiple highlights, etc?

I'd love to experiment with various editing models but hate the idea of implementing the entire GUI layer. Also I'm dying for a pretty GUI for Kakoune (my editor of choice).

I'd pay hundreds for this honestly. Maybe I'm too niche for it to matter, but I feel like these companies putting so much work into their editors are not fully utilizing the effort they put into it.

Ie, many don't want to switch from Vim, but if we could take a really well polished and established editor like TextMate and make it the GUI _for_ Vim? Well that's just amazing. I'd buy it hands down, for quite a lot. It would need to be full access though, and not explicitly tied to (Neo)Vim.

<comment><USER6> I strongly agree with the sentiment. It would be wonderful to be able to plug GUIs on top of an editor of your choice (kak, (neo)vim, emacs, nano, sublime, notepad++).

It seems a very tough (if not impossible?) problem describing the GUI/editor relationship in a generic and thin API, because of each one's many designs interacting with their usual interface. I would like to follow a project attempting it though!

What do you mean by "being full access"?

<comment><USER7> Isn't that what Google is making with XiEditor?

(separating the engine from the GUI)

[https://github.com/google/xi-editor](https://github.com/google/xi-editor)

<comment><USER8> Separating the engine from the gui is also were Neovim is headed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used textmate for awhile as my job had a site wide subscription. It was that and BBEdit. I used both as much as I could. I previously came from Atom at the time with all its plugins and I thought hey textmate and BBEdit both have sort of plugin/bundle functionality.

For what it's worth if anyone is considering switching here are some pros and cons that I personally found. It's largely based on my specific tastes as well so please if in doubt do try as they're both excellent software.

Some pros of Textmate(IIRC it was 2.0rc1 or there about):

\- the SSH support was very good. Textmate has functionality for this called rmate that lets you edit remote documents and I found it to be very fast and IMHO preferred this over tmux + vim for pure editing of remote files

\- textmate has a decent ecosystem of plugins I felt. Lots of themes and bundles for all kinds of features and languages.

\- out of the box editing experience is relatively well featured in broad scope

The down sides:

\- while I felt like textmate had lots of good third party bundles a lot of them also were really old and were not well maintained. Even some that are maintained dont see tons of updates

\- at least for the languages I used (mostly a web stack of JS SCSS/CSS HTML and Python) the autocomplete would leave much to be desired if there was any at all. In parcular I could never quite get Jedi to work with it for python (and the listed bundle in their readme doesn't really work and updating it wasn't going well for me) and forget about typescript definition files. I don't know if this changed at all.

\- the API (to me) was a little terse and I didn't feel it was super well documented IMO. I also found that a lot of the documentation wasn't or didn't feel like it was as current as the API could handle too and examples that were up to date are very sparse.

So generally if you rely on very good autocomplete like you get in VS Code, Atom, or an IDE it might not be the best fit for you. This of course was at the time and a lot of this may have improved I have not investigated this in some time.

I have similar feelings about BBEdit for what it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still use 1.x everyday. "Edit Each Line In Selection" and vertical multi line character selection are killer features. I'm really amazed JetBrains hasn't embraced those features...

<comment><USER11> Have you tried VSCode? I believe it has this as well. And Sublime.

<comment><USER12> And Emacs (C-x r t), and Eclipse (Alt-Shift-a to switch to rectangle mode).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Textmate is still the best Mac native text editor for programming. It's fast, stable, and gets out of your way. The newer CotEditor is a nice swift based implementation, but still lacks the extensibility that TM has. Long live Textmate!!

PS Textmate 3 should be subscription based to support the next generation of Mac text editor!

<comment><USER14> As someone who moved from Linux and is moving between VS Code and Sublime - how is Textmate better?

<comment><USER15> Compared to VS Code: Speed. Textmate opens files instantly, VS Code takes forever to open a new window.

Compared to Sublime: Better Find interface. I really hate the sublime multi- file search result list, it seems like a hack, not a real interface... I just don't get why they would do it like that.

<comment><USER16> One thing that is nice about the way sublime does it is that you can search the search results. Since it shows the found search items contextualized, it can be useful to search the contextualized parts.

<comment><USER17> You can copy the search results in TextMate, then paste and continue your second search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For a general GUI text editor, I just want notepad++ for Mac. I've yet to find one as good as n++.

<comment><USER19> I was quite happy with BBEdit. Happier than I ever was with n++, but I never really got into n++ very much

<comment><USER20> Same here. I've been using BBEdit on the Mac for 20 years now. I suspect BBEdit on the Mac and vi(m) in the terminal will be the only editors I'll ever need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been a vim user for at least 18 years, but I still use textmate often as #2. TM's find/replace system is the best of any text editor I've ever used, and if I have to bulk-convert a file from one format to another by hand, the multi-column editing support is first-rate. Often I can just select all first- positions, and word-move around all lines at once, inserting commas and deleting parens. Those features just seem native and intuitive to me, and I miss them dearly elsewhere in the OS. Other editors try to implement those features but it's usually janky and hard to call native-feeling.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate on the multi-line editing problems?

I've been using Sublime Text for a long time, and briefly used Visual Studio Code, and all the actions you've mentioned are supported (if I've understood them well).

However, I'm curious if I'm missing something.

<comment><USER21> Most of my issues with e.g., SublimeText are on the selection side of things. For example, last time I tried SublimeText, I tried ^W to build a multi- select. Didn't work. Tried incremental-find, didn't work. Finally try quick- find, didn't actually multi-select (yellow highlights), but then notice there are cursors without selection, so finally can move them around and build the selection. I don't remember there being any issues once the multi-cursors are turned on.

Other editors get the other side of the coin wrong, and don't have all the movement operators needed to do a some jobs (word-move while selecting/deleting to remove ragged whitespace).

That all said, there is a big component of what one is familiar with. I'll admit TM's multi-select was the first good implementation i've used and haven't strayed too much since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Converted to Sublime 3 and never looked back

</comment><comment> drew-y Love TextMate. It was my first editor. But has anybody else noticed a slowdown in startup time? It feels like it takes longer to open then VSCode, which is surprising for a native application.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just stumbled upon Tm when I started coding on the macos five years ago and to be honest none of the other editors have really wowed me enough to learn a bunch of new keyboard shortcuts. I tried sublime but it feels like it gets slower and slower the more files you open, that never happens in Tm.

The only thing lacking for me is split windows but it's not that hard to undock one tab and push it to the left and the other one to the right.

</comment><comment><USER25> I still love textmate and use it daily. I opened up the source a few days back wondering what it would take to add split pane editing (chocolat app's splits would be a good template to copy), no luck as I have no idea what I was looking at. Eventually figured out it was one of the Oak display classes, but still lost. I would be willing to learn objective cpp to get split panes.

</comment><comment><USER26> I dind't realise TextMate was open source, and haven't given it a good look.

What do you get when purchasing a license? [http://shop.macromates.com/](http://shop.macromates.com/)

<comment><USER27> Look at the "last modified" dates at the bottom of the pages on that site. I'm pretty sure you're looking at the very old pre-open-source version of the site from the previous developer.

<comment><USER26> The download section links to 2.0 beta 10, which I assumed to be the one in TFA.

I actually cant find these last modified dates you refer to. The footer just display this for me:

        MacroMates Ltd. — Cyprus — HE 259033 — VAT CY-10259033P

<comment><USER27> Mea culpa, looks like it's only on the wiki pages: _Page last modified on July 27, 2011, at 08:56 UTC_

That, and the blog that was last updated four years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It escapes me now, but I moved to TextMate 1 from BBedit. Was it the lack of tabs in BBedit (they were really against them back in the day), wanting me to pay for again? I forget?

I do remember paying for TextMate. Once.

The Perl bundles come in handy.

</comment><comment><USER29> any improvements to printing capability (especially color coding)? (v1.5 has limited printing features [http://manual.macromates.com/en/printing#printing](http://manual.macromates.com/en/printing#printing))

I know it's strange, but as someone who began a career on teletypes with greenbar paper, I sometimes like to see code on a printed page that I can scribble upon.

</comment><comment><USER30> I loved TextMate back in the day. I remember it being touted as "the beautiful Emacs". I still think it has one of the best snippets engines.

</comment><comment><USER7> Woah I used TextMate for years until I switched to Sublime in 2012.

Would be nice to know what's new in v2.

<comment><USER31> Well heres the changelog from that commit: [https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/9b45699978480cfc90...](https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/9b45699978480cfc90390a424bffd796f4e2adeb/Applications/TextMate/about/Changes.md)

Looks like 2.0 has been a WIP since 2013 though? Not sure.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If the NSA created SHA256, can they crack it as well? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Barring some mathematical or quantum computing breakthrough the rest of the world doesn't know about: Probably not.

Cryptographic hashing algorithms rely on the property that a verifying a solution is easy but finding a solution is hard (P vs NP).

These algorithms are open. Everyone can review and test them. If SHA256 has a flaw that allows the entity that created it to crack it then it's quite likely others will find about it.

That said, it's possible but less likely that the creators of SHA256 have hidden such a flaw on purpose and that flaw as of now has remained undiscovered.</comment>


The Highs and Lows of Side Projects - <AUTHOR> http://andrewdumont.me/side-projects

<comment><USER4> I did a part-time Ph.D between 2004 and 2009. I had a plan for what I was going to research, but in the end ALL FIVE chapters of my dissertation ended up being work that started out as side-projects. Along the way, I got to name two new dinosaurs (and revise one of the best-known old ones).

So needless to say, I am a big fan of side-projects. My experience is that I attack them with an enthusiasm that's rarely present when I am doing scheduled work. Often the momentum that that gives can get them to the point where they have enough substance to be wrestled over the finishing line relatively easily.

(Of course that experience won't translate directly to the kind of work you living from.)

Details of my dissertation here if anyone's interested: <http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/pubs/#diss>

<comment><USER5> It was really just one side project for me, but my story is similar. I started out planning on doing parallel/distributed supercomputing, but in the middle of my 2nd year I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and spent several months learning to deal with that. During that period I couldn't focus on any "real work", so I allowed myself to get distracted by writing freebsd-update... and by writing bsdiff so that freebsd-update would use less bandwidth.

By the time I started by 3rd year, the fallout from bsdiff -- a new algorithm from matching with mismatches and applications to file synchronization -- was enough that I went to my supervisor and said "so, err, I got a bit side tracked, but I'm wondering if I've just done a thesis worth of research".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the key to think about side projects, is that they're just that - projects on the side. If it starts taking up full-time hours and responsibility than it's not really a side project anymore. For me, I have my desk job. Then I have my startup I'm trying to turn into my "desk job" if you will. And finally I have my side projects.

These side projects are mostly fun, or the fleshing out of an idea. But I really don't undertake any that would take a ton of time or effort - <USER2> I'm really, really interested in the solution (it hasn't been done or a better perspective on an old idea, etc). This way I don't spend a ton of time - <USER3> a week of a few hours here and there - to launch it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting thoughts. And it felt like I am reading what I always felt. I have created ,sorry, started many side projects but none of them ended properly. Some left out in the middle, for some after starting I just had no vision what to do next with it.

Most of this is due to my day job(full time job). And so lack of motivation or loosing interest was because of the less time I could devote to it.But I still do not agree on :

"a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

When you work on side projects you learn new things or you practice old things which makes you perfect. So keep doing something is always better than nothing. Because of these unfinished side projects I was able to learn python, machine learning, data mining, django and so many other tools and technologies which I would have never learned as these are not related to my day job(all java).

So I would still vote for keep doing side projects whether or not you finish it you have something learned in the process.

<comment><USER8> I've been working on one for six years now. Id say that it is 70% done -- I just cant bring myself to define, map, and execute that last 30. I'm putting other ideas on hold until I finish this one, ideas that could be viable money makers, but I dont want to leave the original one without at least putting it in front of people who do not know me. I can say that I have learned a lot in the process that will be used for the rest of my career. I'll free myself of this burden by launching in December -- I'll post here as "Look at my 2000 day old startup idea"

<comment><USER9> You should find someone else to go through it with you. An outside voice pointing out possible cuts is often a breath of fresh air and helps crystalize things.

<comment><USER8> Good advice. I might send you a pm soon :)

<comment><USER9> Sure thing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

I'd agree with this statement completely. Everything I've built that I'm proud of has always been something where I took my time, had a clear vision, drafted out exactly what I wanted and then didn't just take it on as "just a side project" but when needed, forced myself to see it through to the end.

I think he has some really good points about side projects in general. I think we (or at least myself) can tend to view them as things like hey let me build a framework so I know how to do it, without any clear goals in mind (besides the vague one). Then you do it for a while and afterwards maybe you have learned maybe not, maybe you just give up because you never have the time, and then you wasted the 4 hours you spent starting the project. This is more for myself, but I think when I get an idea now or want to make a side project, I'm going to force myself to sit down, spend the half hour and write down a clear set of goals that I want to achieve, and only after this start.

<comment><USER11> "a lack of commitment to one thing is just as productive as doing nothing at all."

If your goal is to build a finished product, yes, this is absolutely true. But if you choose ambitious projects beyond your current expertise, bringing the project anywhere beyond the planning stage will be a valuable experience for the purpose of learning.

Me and most people I know just have side projects for the fun of it. Why do we need strict metrics and goals?

<comment><USER12> Side projects boil down to two types - "for fun" and "for profit (maybe)".

My side projects are like yours; I dabbled for some time with machine learning and AI, despite being under-educated and under-brained. And though my projects never really succeeded I sure did learn a lot, and some of that familiarity helps with (and helped me get) my current job. The rewards were the fun of messing around and trying to understand something, and I didn't need a metric or goal for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I went through a little bit of the "lows" in the last couple days on my side project, <http://nbaschedules.appspot.com>. Yesterday, I sat down and made a few key decisions such as:

\- Cutting planned features/Prioritized

\- Stay simple

\- This is a side project, a side project, a side project

\- [important] Making sure it can run with a very minimum time and money forever so it won't just die (hence using GAE, no domain yet).

\- Allocate no more than 1-2 hours a day

<comment><USER14> Hey, this is a cool project, keep it up. Finding gametimes on the NBA website is a PITA. My only suggestion would be to allow filtering by team (or geolocate based on IP and filter for me automatically).

I'm assuming most visitors are interested in their hometeam's games rather than the league at large.

<comment><USER13> Thank you very much!

I don't know who the visitors are but I'd like to fix the actual "game-time" (normalized to UTC, then convert to visitor's local time) and to add TV schedules as well (USA, Canada, Intl) first before doing other things.

For now, people can bookmark the URL to their favourite team, e.g.: <http://nbaschedules.appspot.com/heat.html>

<comment><USER15> You can try [https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/runtime#Re...](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/runtime#Request_Headers)

<comment><USER13> Thanks a lot Thomas. I didn't know about this!

Having said that, my app is 100% static pages :) (may change in the future).

There's a JS library out there that can help me to achieve time normalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know what it is about "side-projects". When I think about what I'm doing and why, it is rarely much different than any hobby I've had for as long as I can remember. But hobbies felt much less committal. Sure, I would get consumed by them, but I didn't really get these failure pangs when the plane or rocket sat unfinished for years. Now, it's different. The sludge of half or (worse) almost done projects cluttering my ~/dev folder is a source of some shame, and it can make it difficult to start new things. My best reasoning for why this is: a) there is a constant flood of "Show HN: My Before Morning Coffee HTML5 FPS" type news, which is simultaneously motivating and depressing to read, b) it is very easy to connect the dots between completing a project and some unrealistic outcome, usually involving money or some internet fame.

So I guess I'm basically agreeing with the author. If you want to build a salable product, then focus and do it. But if your really just screwing around because this stuff is neat and it's what you like to do, then call it a hobby and don't worry about it. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself to do.

</comment><comment><USER17> Depends on what your expectations are. I built <https://www.delayed- tweets.com> for myself and I'm a heavy user of it and I tinker with it when I have time (Heroku + Stripe, if you want to know). If it also becomes a source of income, so be it. Otherwise, it costs me just a little more than using an alternate service to do the same thing (like HootSuite, Buffer, etc). But, I get to tinker with it on the side, learning new things and making little improvements as I have time. So 6 months from now, I don't have to be disappointed that it didn't go anywhere. A side project is exactly that, something that you tinker with while you still have a day job.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've just completed an Android app on previous weekend. It's hard to find a good solid block of time to get a project done. I found it hard to even start, fearing it would be started and languished. Luckily there was a hackathon on that weekend, and I used that as an excuse (motivation) to start and finish it.

Staying simple had helped to get it shipped.

Edit: if anyone's interested, here it is. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhillsyste...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhillsystem.dailybadge)

</comment><comment><USER19> I used side projects mostly for idea validation. For example, I am working on an MDSD system that takes a UML or RDFS model and generates a web 2.0 app written in Google Closure and using XMPP to interact with the application layer. All of these technologies show great promise but none of them have really taken off. <http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/mdsd/closure> is where I have documented some of my findings so far in exploring the merit of these three technologies.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just completed a small side project: A little Ruby gem on Github. And when I say completed, I mean it. It's launched, in use in the wild, and _not taking up my time._ I started the project last week and finished it over the weekend. I haven't put any effort into it since, and that's not a sign of failure or abandonment. It just means the project is done, barring bug fixes, and that's a good thing.

Sometimes a side project really is just a side project. You do it, you're proud of it, and you move on. I love those kinds of projects.

<comment><USER21> Oh for side projects that small.

I started my side project in about 1993. I lost it completely[1] some time around 2000 and decided to rewrite it starting in 2008. Since then I'm still only 20% of the way through it (I probably got to 60% before).

Right now it's dropped way down the priority list below: wife, 2 year old daughter, full-time job, part-time degree (now complete!) and startup (that will hopefully take over from full-time job some time in the future).

1\. Long story, I had a backup but the primary and backup were destroyed independently within hours of each other such was my luck.

<comment><USER22> Are you willing to share more info on your side project? Sounds like it's something meaningful enough to work on for nearly 20 years (minus gaps), and yet it sounds like it's not your startup... very curious as to what it is.

<comment><USER21> Sure, it's nothing special, it's a Robot Arena type programming game. Yes there are lots of them about (that have existed for many years), but I'm trying to remain as faithful as I can to a version (by SPA Publishing) that appeared on the RM 380Z/480Z machines back in the late 80's. The robots were programmed in a LOGO style language (I still have photocopies of the manuals somewhere). All of this was going to be open source (if I'd released it earlier I'd be able to find a backup!).

Rather than implement a LOGO interpreter I wanted to do it a slightly different way to learn some useful stuff along the way, so I decided to implement robots as a program running on a virtual CPU. I designed an instruction set and corresponding assembly language, wrote a processing engine that could run multiple robot programs at once, wrote an assembler to go from assembly to compiled robots. Next on my list was a compiler that would do LOGO -> robot assembly.

There was a strong ARM/RISC influence to the instruction set/assembly language as I'd been using Acorn Archimedes machines at college in the early 90's.

I then built a control system on top of the game engine that would run all of the robots against each other in all combinations and provide a league table of which robot came out best. The end goal was to stick it all on a website and allow people to submit their own robots and see where they came in the league table. They'd also be a discussion forum on programming tips/tricks, and for people to write compilers that would take other languages as produce appropriate assembly language.

I definitely learned a lot whilst doing it first time. One of the assignments in my first year at University (Comp Sci) was to design an instruction set for a basic CPU that would be able to be programmed to perform a certain bunch of tasks. It's quite easy when you've got programming experience in Z80, 6502, 68000, x86 and ARM, and you've designed/implemented at least one of your own already.

Other things I remember that were useful were writing my own PRNG (there was an instruction to get a random number) so that I could have individual PRNGs for each robot (and the game engine) all derived from a single 'game' seed number which made each game (with random starting positions) deterministic and repeatable.

Creating a two-stage assembler (thanks to years of typing "FOR loop% = 0 TO 3 STEP 3", "[ OPT %loop", etc), compiler design (for LOGO -> assembly), maths for doing intersection of two lines, intersection of a line and a circle, integer instructions, floating point instructions (and implementing this in a portable way), etc.

In '94 I'd hacked both an X GUI and a linux SVGAlib interface onto it so you could watch the games play out. Later on I'd even came up with a dissertation proposal that used it as a fitness function for robots created by genetic algorithms but decided against it after discussion with the tutor (no less than Dr Noel Sharkey who later sat as a judge on the UK TV version of Robot Wars).

I may finish it one day, and 10 people may remember the game and be interested in writing robots for it, but that bit doesn't matter one bit. It's my side project and I kind of enjoy doing it (or even just thinking about it) probably more than the feeling I'd get if it was finished and done.

<comment><USER21> I dug around and found the latest version of my latest incantation, which is less developed than I thought. It only contains the source of the assembler; there's nothing of the game engine itself. But there's a description of the assembly language and its encoding.

Nothing is uploaded at the moment (I'll start to add things once I've cleaned it up and sorted it out) but I've created a github repository for it <https://github.com/alexkus/robotarena> if anyone wants to watch it and keep an eye on the (slow) progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Glad to know there's others out there with the same understanding on the subject as me.</comment>


A constructive look at the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/16.1 <comment><USER3> Yeah, what a disappointment _that_ purchase turned out to be with my precious allowance money. As noted, it had an impressive IDE for the horrifically limited abilities of the machine, but that didn't make up for the fact that your working set (if I might use that term very loosely) was measured in bytes. There just wasn't much to be done with it other than "print 'mikestew is awesome'; goto 10".

It makes for a cool party trick, but not something to charge unsuspecting children money. I got more value out of the 2600 version of PacMan ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac- Man_(Atari_2600)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_\(Atari_2600\)) ).

<comment><USER4> The Magnavox Odyssey 2 offered "Computer Intro!" which was something similar.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGUfEbHt84g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGUfEbHt84g)

<comment><USER5> I had Computer Intro! (The "!" is part of the name, I'm not that enthusiastic about it)

It was more machine language than BASIC:

[http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2comput.html](http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2comput.html)

 _" Your Odyssey2 can make over 100,000 electronic decisions every second - and there are computers around that are more than ten times faster than that!"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I first started getting serious about programming in the early 00's, I thought, I'll figure out how to code a game for the 2600. Those games are so simple, it must be easy to work with. I couldn't have been more wrong. Imagine coding a game without sprites, objects, threads, or anything really. At a high level, coding a game on Atari 2600 consists of timing the toggling of the beam that is racing left to right and back throwing light onto the tv screen. You literally build screens off that!

On the plus side, when that finally clicked, a lot of the mystery of how a computer worked finally made sense and I could now understand the abstractions on top of abstractions that allow me to just instantiate a sprite instead of having to manage hardware directly.

I never did create that game.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand, the demoscene has been able to show us what the 2600 can _really_ do if pushed hard enough:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WogMZn87hkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WogMZn87hkk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCJM7b9EMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCJM7b9EMU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWq6AOqCLkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWq6AOqCLkA)

<comment><USER8> Holy crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Atari 2600 BASIC was terrible and completely useless, but the fact that it existed and worked at all given the constraints of the 2600 is nothing short of miraculous.

<comment><USER10> > Atari 2600 BASIC was terrible and completely useless

How old where you? As a child I had the Atari 2600 before owning a computer and just "typing" and executing a few lines of code was an exciting experience. Sadly that was my fantasy because I never had that cartridge but remember reviewing the BASIC picture in the Atari catalog again and again.

<comment><USER9> My first exposure to computers was with a Commodore 64, on which I had also first learnt to code. I wasn't even aware of the 2600 until later. Compared to what I could do on the C64, 2600 BASIC _was_ useless. Doesn't make it any less of a technical marvel, though.

<comment><USER10> Useless means different things to different people, it is a subjective quality. It was useless for production use but not useless as a child experience where you don't have any access to computers. I can say the same to the first programmable calculators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This program was by Warren Robinett, of Adventure fame; both were released in 1979. He later went on to write Rocky's Boots for the Apple II, a rather more successful educational game involving logic gates.

<comment><USER12> his easter egg in Adventure absolutely blew my mind

<comment><USER13> It blew my mind as a kid. Now, knowing about the hardware available on the 2600, it's way, way more impressive.

<comment><USER14> Same feelings here. I read "racing the beam" a couple years back - <USER2> limitations and inventiveness to get around said limitations were both crazy.

About 13 years, I was reminiscing about Adventure, searched around a bit, and found Warren Robinett's email address. I wrote a fan email, and ... got a nice thank you email back! I was ecstatic! I later moved down to the Raleigh area, and, last I understood, he was working around the Chapel Hill area, so our paths may one day yet cross :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The "IF statement is an expression" functionality is neat. I don't think I've seen another BASIC that does that.

<comment><USER16> Atari BASIC is close:

A = (B < 5)

Will put the result of comparison into variable A.

<comment><USER17> Actually, many BASICs will do this. What's unique about the 2600's IF syntax in this situation is that it's functioning almost like a ternary operator.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I was unaware many BASICs will do that.

And, yes that is a cool construct. Makes the most of the limited environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This really makes me want to fire up the BASIC cartridge for my Atari 400.

<comment><USER19> Does your Atari 400 still have a working keyboard?

<comment><USER16> Mine does, but some keys require a pretty hard press.

<comment><USER19> I can relate... I never used an Atari 400, but did spend several afternoons entering code into a Timex-Sinclair 1000 (or ZX-81 if you prefer).

(There the big problem wasn't so much the keyboard as it was the 16K memory expansion falling off the back of the machine while you were typing. Just writing that makes me SO thankful modern hardware is as good as it is...)

<comment><USER16> I had one of those for a short time. Glitch city!

No kidding. We live in an amazing time hardware wise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gawker Media founder to file for personal bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gawkermedia-founder-idUSKCN10C2RV <comment><USER2> I want to feel bad. I really do. I have a lot of journalist friends and they have made cogent and reasonable arguments about how this will set a precedent that will quell their speech. Even if they are reporting something that isn't libelous, they will always fear in the back of their mind that a wealthy person who doesn't like them will bring a case against them that will bankrupt them, even if what they wrote was legit, just through having to defend themselves.

On the other hand, I don't like Denton or Gawker because they have no ethics. I was personally harmed by them when they decided to make their hobby doxxing controversial reddit users, and I know someone whose life was completely destroyed by Gawker but didn't have the money to sue.

I'm also not a fan of the fact that a lot of their early content was literally them reposting reddit content without permission.

So if this were anyone else with any other media organization, I would totally be on their side and agree that this is a travesty of justice that Theil was able to fund this lawsuit.

But for Denton and Gawker? Good, they deserve to go down in flames.

Edit: I would like to add that some of those journalist friends work for Gawker Media, are upstanding, ethical, and wonderful people, and will most likely loose their jobs, and I feel terrible for them. It's just a few bad eggs at Gawker that ruined it for everyone, but it came from the top (Denton).

<comment><USER3> > So if this were anyone else with any other media organization, I would > totally be on their side and agree that this is a travesty of justice that > Theil was able to fund this lawsuit.

There are two different things here, and I'm not sure I understand all the issues.

1\. The personal vendetta. I understand this. (At least, probably)

2\. The posting -- without permission -- of a sex tape made without Hogan's knowledge and in a private location. This seems morally indefensible to me. This is where I get a bit lost as to people defending Gawker. Shouldn't posting such a video be illegal?

<comment><USER2> > The posting -- without permission -- of a sex tape made without Hogan's > knowledge and in a private location. This seems morally indefensible to me. > This is where I get a bit lost as to people defending Gawker. Shouldn't > posting such a video be illegal?

Yes, probably. The issue stems from the fact that someone else paid for the lawsuit, which is a moral gray area, and in fact was illegal for a long time, even before the US existed (in British common law): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance)

<comment><USER4> >and in fact was illegal for a long time

Yeah, no. NYTimes v. Sullivan determined that public figures sacrifice a good deal of their privacy when they when they enter the public sphere. For instance, the same such video of, say, a governor would certainly be newsworthy. Where it's unclear is to what degree is Hogan a public figure and whether the actual publishing of it, as opposed to just reporting on it, is constitutes newsworthiness.

In terms of lawsuit financing, it's perfectly legal. There's an entire industry devoted to third-party lawsuit financing – otherwise, poor victims of car attacks (or other consequences which injured their ability to work and earn) wouldn't be able to pursue personal injury claims.

Without it, only those with means could pursue legal recourse.

<comment><USER2> I was saying that funding other people's lawsuits was illegal for a long time.

<comment><USER4> My mistake, I misread. I edited my post to address this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > raised alarm bells in U.S. media circles over the prospect of wealthy > individuals using the courts to muzzle the press

Is that really true? What legitimate media outlet thought this was about muzzling the press? Libel has never been allowed.

<comment><USER6> That's because you are reading from a journalist.

They are like a mob in this case.

You're obviously right, it's libel, full stop. And Hulk Hogan didn't win because he had Thiel money, he won because he was right, and if Gwaker would win, it would be because of money, and that would be something anormal.

<comment><USER7> > You're obviously right, it's libel, full stop.

Libel requires falsehood. That's not the case here.

<comment><USER6> Invasion of privacy, doesn't matter. It's a crime against Hulk Hogan and whomever was on that tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much this will actually affect Denton. Often people file bankruptcy as a means of protecting their assets, as opposed to accepting that they have none.

I think Denton/Gawker were and are a net disservice to society. But they're also far from the worst or most egregious examples of the archetype of a say- anything-for-money tabloid.

What do others think of Thiel's hand in all this? On one hand, I respect it. Well-played, thus far. On the other hand, it isn't good that a select few (the extremely wealthy) can wield so much influence when other less wealthy people who may have been similarly wronged simply cannot. Equal opportunity and equal justice, etc. That lack of equality is likely a symptom of our costly and cumbersome legal system, though. Also, anyone think this will blow back on Thiel? Perhaps Denton can countersue? Perhaps behaving this way will have costly knock-on effects elsewhere in life or business?

<comment><USER9> Assuming he's a NY resident, the laws here are not particularly generous. For example, our homestead exemption for a married couple tops out at $331,100.

I don't really understand all the ins and outs of chapter 11 bankruptcy (it is more commonly used by companies than individuals) but I don't think he is going to be able to retain all that much wealth if the judgment ends up standing. On top of that he'll have to pay all "disposable income" to creditors for five years.

<comment><USER10> He'd have to be a complete idiot to not have any offshore money.

<comment><USER9> All assets have to be listed in the bankruptcy petition. He'd have to a complete idiot to commit perjury given his prominence and the fact that one of his creditors (Hogan) has good lawyers with unlimited budgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hopefully we'll see less tabloids outing people for advertising revenue in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Denton took some big risks and should have seen it coming. The ironic thing is that in 5 years' time, this guy will probably be rich again. In fact, he probably just transferred all his assets to foreign accounts.

The whole Gawker vs Hulk Hogan saga just shows what a joke the whole system is. It's painful to live in this society and have to breathe the same air and survive on the same currency as these people.

<comment><USER13> > _he probably just transferred all his assets to foreign accounts._

Wouldn't that be a crime, if done just prior to filing for bankruptcy? I don't know the US legislation so well, but I would expect it to work that way.

(Over here (Finland), there is no personal bankruptcy in the same sense; debts stick even if debtor has no assets, though there is a sort-of-Chapter-13 arrangement with some expiry provisions in 15 years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hear that the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for their company, for themselves, for their employees, for their family, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is the Linux Fnd "open source conference" invite-only? - <AUTHOR> I just got fed a Twitter promo for Linux Foundation's Open Source Leadership Summit and noticed it's invite-only. I'm newer to open source, still getting my feet wet, but I'm hoping some veteran can explain how that goes with the open source philosophy. It looks like they only want executives to attend, so why do they advertise it and invite people to "ask for an invitation", instead of just hosting a private meeting of their preferred attendees? Came across as a "not open" approach, but I'm probably missing backstory or perspective on Linux Foundation. <comment><USER2> It's not that uncommon in academia to have events that are limited to speakers so that everyone is contributing. This looks like that kind of event. Note that LF has plenty of conferences that are open to the public.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is LF, this is to be expected. Go to somewhere like FOSDEM or linux.conf.au for a real open source conference.</comment>