What's a disease? Or: shoud fat/shy/alcoholic people be blamed or treated? - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_questions_about/ <comment><USER2> When I was a psych major, we dealt with questions like these all the time. I think the author raises excellent points, but presents a rather limited view of the social pressure that people can exert. "We should blame and stigmatize people for conditions where blame and stigma are the most useful methods for curing or preventing the condition, and we should allow patients to seek treatment whenever it is available and effective." There are many conditions that are susceptible to influence by social pressure, but very rarely are blame and stigma the best means of exerting that influence. In most cases, I'd say they are downright harmful.

Take alcoholism. The most effective treatment today for alcoholism is AA. (there are many thing about aa that kind of creep me out, but it is a fact that it has the highest success rate of any course of treatment that has been studied). AA works almost entirely through social influence. But a key component of its social influence is talking about alcoholism as a disease, as something separate from an individual which can be done away with. Talking about alcoholism as a moral failing simply does not help. If you are morally bankrupt, what are the odds of your morally bankrupt self digging your way out of that hole? If you have a disease, though, maybe you can find a cure.

Similarly, as a child, people yelling at me that I was a lazy bum just didn't help. My primary reaction was resentment, not shame. Though I had shame, too. Its just not so easy to motivate oneself when feeling like a shameful failure. When I started thing of laziness as a behavior that I happened to have, rather than something that was intrinsic to myself, (i.e., I am being lazy right now, what can I do about it, as opposed to I am lazy), I started being able to have more control over it. Not perfect control, of course, but much more than I had.

<comment><USER3> "Similarly, as a child, people yelling at me that I was a lazy bum just didn't help. My primary reaction was resentment, not shame. Though I had shame, too. Its just not so easy to motivate oneself when feeling like a shameful failure."

This varies with personality and situation - I know exactly what you mean because I was shouted at for being fat and lazy as a child and it never did any good, but I can also think of many situations in my own life where the opposite was true and people yelling at me for failing provided the impetus to do better...

I think the risk of not doing anything is worse though. If poor behaviour is tolerated, and not given some kind of negative feedback then it can become accepted. I suspect this is part of the obesity problem - if living as a fat person were really horrible less people would be inclined to do it and, at the risk of sounding cruel, if medical help were refused for obesity related problems then the genetic element would take care of itself...

I'm fat - and if I die because my heart clogs up with all the byproducts of that fatness then it is my own /stupid/ fault.

<comment><USER4> > This varies with personality and situation - I know exactly what you mean > because I was shouted at for being fat and lazy as a child and it never did > any good, but I can also think of many situations in my own life where the > opposite was true and people yelling at me for failing provided the impetus > to do better...

Yep, absolutely. Maybe it's that I listened to too much punk rock as a kid, but I have this odd personality trait where if someone criticizes me for something that I consider illegitimate, I get this instant, visceral "fuck you" response, and their critique does me no good.

In other cases, I take too much to heart.

Human emotions are silly, fragile things.

<comment><USER5> ' Maybe it's that I listened to too much punk rock as a kid, but I have this odd personality trait where if someone criticizes me for something that I consider illegitimate, I get this instant, visceral "fuck you" response, and their critique does me no good.'

Oh, been there, done that. :)

I used to despise the people who would give me grief for smoking. They were wasting their time, and it was none of their fucking business.

Later, after I quit smoking, it occurred to me that those admonitions helped. Much as I hated to accept that, the regular jibes kept alive the idea of quitting.

I hate being told what to do, especially if it's coupled with the idea that what I'm currently doing is both wrong _and_ stupid, but that's just pride.

I didn't quit smoking because people told me to, but having people constantly tell me to quit did help keep the idea percolating in the back of my head, a contribution to my finally coming to terms with what needed to be done and mustering the reserve to just do it.

There's the risk that some people will spite themselves just to show the world how independent they are, and the more you tell them what that _must_ do, the less likely they are to do it. But provoking people into reconsidering their actions, even if it annoys them, may help in the long run.

<comment><USER6> I've reluctantly come to a similar conclusion. I moved to California from the UK in 2001 thinking that the anti-smoking laws in bars, etc were oppressive 'nanny-state' measures. I was finally able to give up smoking though, and it really helped that it was socially unacceptable to light up a cigarette in most situations. It also helped that I left behind my smoking friends and hung out with people who didn't smoke, so it wasn't just the laws, but it made me reconsider my previous position on paternalistic regulations.

<comment><USER5> When I was quitting smoking I noticed that there were many places I could not smoke, and that when there I did no have quite the same impulse to smoke as when I was, say, home.

Basically, so long as I knew I had the option to smoke I was way more inclined to want to do so, and found it harder to resist. This was sort of encouraging, because it suggested that a lot of the urge was psychological, which seemed better than a relentless chemistry-driven compulsion I might never beat.

That's not to deny the physical addiction part, but to note that appreciating that it's not _all_ physical addiction makes it seem less impossible to beat.

(I also noticed that the urge to smoke in the morning was greater after I had that first one. I then started throwing any remaining cigs down the toilet before going to sleep. _That_ took will power. :) Sure, I would buy smokes on the way to work, or at lunch time, but it helped me cut down. I must say, addiction sucks.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honest question: What I don't get about the "obesity is genetic" is, why is the obesity rate climbing? Are obese people proliferating at a quicker pace than before? Are the genes responsible dominant?

<comment><USER2> Well, with any gene, it takes the proper environmental factors for it to be expressed. So while very few people would argue that height isn't largely genetic, most people also accept that it takes proper nutrition in order to grow tall. So even though height is genetic, and South and North Koreans largely share the same genetics, South Koreans are way taller than North Koreans.

The genetic argument for obesity is that in areas of occasional famine, it made evolutionary sense to horde food in your gut, particularly fatty food. Until very recently in human history, there just wasn't that much fatty food for your average citizen to horde. Now there is, particularly because food corporations have realized over time that the fattier the food, the more of it they sell, and those previously advantageous genes are running amok. Not everyone has those genes because in places of plenty, those genes aren't that advantageous.

I'd agree that that isn't an entirely convincing argument. But I do think it's part of the story.

<comment><USER8> Can't we directly conclude from your argument that the obesity epidemy can be entirely solved by fixing the environment, which is probably easier than fixing the genes ?

Heroin harms us because of our genetic makeup, yet we don't talk about how heroin-induced illness has genetic causes. We simply try to keep people away from heroin.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily. The point is that given the current environment, some people become obese and others do not. The difference between the two groups may be partly due to genetics.

And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction. I recall one doctor suggesting that a small percentage of the population are born addicted to opioids from birth whereas most people will have greater difficulty developing opioid addiction.

<comment><USER5> "And actually, we do talk about the genetic basis for opioid addiction."

Plus, a major health issue with heroin is the shit product being sold. Attempts to restrict access makes it more dangerous to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I think all interesting questions boil down to semantics.

One nit: libertarian (classic, not anti-government) attitudes were described thusly: * People who make good decisions are intrinsically good people and deserve good treatment; people who make bad decisions are intrinsically bad people and deserve bad treatment.*

Er no. Libertarian thought tells us that variations in individuals are more important than societal standards. Not that people are "bad" or "good"

 _Taking a determinist consequentialist position allows us to do so more effectively._

This strikes me as the difference between an academic argument and a practical one. Academically, sure, the numbers add up. Practically, this is completely terrible advice, for the sole reason that the criteria suggested are not only indeterminate but suffer large variations as applied by different individuals. And offering up some sort of scientific committee or standards for what to blame people for is totally whacked, for reasons I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.

I liked the observation that people who condemn others may do so because others have not sacrificed. This fits intuitively with what I have observed.

I'd add another detail, though. There is a long tradition in western thought that the individual's struggles with character traits that he or she don't like has value in itself. We always should have a place we would like to be that we cannot attain. Western medicine and ideals, however, seem to feel that if we commonly view one condition as "better" or "worse" than another, some sort of chemical or social intervention is required in order to make people better. This worked great when "worse" = the plague, but the model is falling apart when "worse" = too fat. The types of structures and systems of thought we have set up for the plague do not naturally extend to shyness. The word has stretched too far.

I support looking at the necessary and sufficient conditions, but I felt the analysis was loose and incomplete, which led to a muddled set of conclusions.

<comment><USER4> > libertarian (classic, not anti-government)

Slightly offtopic, but did you mean 'classic liberal?' I thought original recipe libertarians were anarchists. I only ask because I only recently learned that fact, and found it interesting.

<comment><USER10> Be careful of words with political annotations -- liberal, conservative, libertarian. The problem is that there is the theory, and then there is application of the theory. For instance, "liberal" has changed quite a bit over the last hundred years, as has "conservative"

You can cherry-pick various people or parties that have called themselves liberal or conservative and come up with all sorts of positions. It's a fun parlor game, but the only thing it proves is that people can take a simple idea and twist it into all sorts of things. Doesn't mean the idea is whacked.

Libertarian is the same as the rest of them.

I'll go with first line in the wiki article _The term libertarian in a metaphysical or philosophical sense was first used by late-Enlightenment free- thinkers to refer to those who believed in free will, as opposed to determinism_

Historically yes, it was grabbed by anarchists. And you can find examples of libertarian "thought" being used to justify all sorts of crazy stuff. But the point here is that if you are telling me that I am good or bad, you are applying deterministic thought which implies some sort of control. Better to say that we are both free agents acting in our own best interests. If I cut off my toe, you may get very upset. What a bad thing to do! But it was my toe, and if I didn't like it, it was my right to get rid of it. Your tendency to view my actions in terms of your morality is an attempt to layer your version of deterministic morality over my right to do things which may frighten or offend you. The next step would be for you to start labeling my toe-cutting a form of sickness that society would be justified in "fixing" for me.

It's exactly the same thing as the church did, it's just dressed up in science and medicine instead of religion and myth.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the well-thought out response. You touch on a subject that I find to be really interesting, in a game-theory sort of way: words are always changing, that's the nature of language. Yet in order to have reasoned discourse, we need to nail down what words actually mean. There's a certain push and pull that goes on between those two sides, I guess, which is why it's so hard to talk about these things. Everyone has different meanings for everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neither, they should be held responsible for their actions. Only a change in their actions can change the outcome. Treatment is a nonsense word in this application. "Treatment" is just a way to use social tricks to get them to make different choices while making them believe it's a disease so they don't resist treatment. Real treatment for alcoholism is a liver transplant. Real treatment for obesity is liposuction. They only way to stop damaging yourself is to take responsibility and stop doing what you've been doing. Telling people they are powerless robs them of their dignity and is an outright lie. The person with the problem is the only one with the power to change! The treatment industry in America is a racket that is mostly based on the AA 12 Steps. At best it has a 5% success rate. (<http://www.orange- papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html>) If you want a good book on the subject, read Rational Recovery [http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Recovery-Cure- Substance-Addic...](http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Recovery-Cure-Substance- Addiction/dp/0671528580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275311441&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER12> "Neither, they should be held responsible for their actions. Only a change in their actions can change the outcome."

Experiments strongly suggest that choice and strength of willpower have little to do with body weight. Controlled overfeeding experiments in humans have demonstrated a wide variation in weight gain. Some people's bodies are simply resistant to storing excess food, while other people's store it avidly and gain weight rapidly. After the overfeeding phase of the experiment finished, they then lost weight rapidly with no perceived effort or exercise of willpower.

Meanwhile various nonhuman animal experiments have found that body fat is fairly sensitive to things like gut microbes, details of food composition, and subtle differences in the environment. Not one of these can be changed by simply resolving to eat less.

"Real treatment for obesity is liposuction."

Obesity is a disorder of food conversion and storage, not body fat. Liposuction causes temporary and cosmetic changes. Real treatment is a drug that alters the brain centers responsible for metabolism and hunger. (And indeed such drugs exist and are spectacularly effective. Unfortunately the existing ones also have spectacular and dangerous side effects, but much better ones are rapidly being developed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Understanding why many of these controversial diseases are problems in the first place is made a little clearer if we look at the problem through the lens of behavioural economics. Alcoholics, nicotine addicts, many obese people, sexaholics, etc place huge discount rates on future rewards so that in the present, these future rewards are almost worthless. Put another way, these people place the most value on their next item of consumption which allows them to overcome the long-term costs of their destructive behaviour or the long-term benefits to quitting (if we assume these people make an instantaneous cost-benefit analysis each time they eat/drink/smoke/etc). This sort of radical discounting behaviour has been shown to be reversible in those who seek treatment.

Now, to one of the main points of the article: What constitutes an acceptable form of treatment to these gray-area diseases? An economist would probably say that you would have to consider the individual in question and then formulate a solution based on that individual's preferences, likelihood of success, and cost of change. For one obese person, gastric bypass might be the only solution between life and death. For another obese person, paying $25,000 for gastric bypass surgery might be "worth it" and allow them to change their eating habits in a way that would benefit them long-term without having to go through the anguish of months or years of diet and exercise. For another obese person with another preference set, diet and exercise would be far less costly than gastric bypass. Why bring right and wrong into the argument when looking at treatment methods?

Edit: Giving the issue some further thought, some might make a value judgement as to how bad or good heavy temporal discounting is. Given the assumption that it is wrong or bad, then you could hypothesize that the American culture of consumerism has gradually conditioned our population as a whole to shift their preferences to the present, valuing the quick fix over long-term, less costly approaches.

</comment><comment><USER14> l;bra (long; but read anyway)

Articulately put and yummy intellectual fodder. Thank you for the submission brazzy.

Cancer and Obesity should always be "cancers" and "obesities" when we're talking about how we should treat the potential/actual sufferer as it varies from type to type. As pointed out by the article it would seem unhelpful to yell at a cancer patient but we should whine at our kids if they start smoking. Also, as obesity comes in many shapes and sizes maybe do do we know whether Sandy has an underlying genetic condition or whether she likes jam donuts too much.

As a commenter to the article said: a lot of the choices a consequentialist would make sound like utilitarian choices. I'm not big on utilitarianism so I guess I'd be leery of consequentialism.

I absolutely love the idea of breaking down a complex issue into its component parts. It is interesting how some people use outliers rather than type specimens to try to destroy coherent notions which is really unhelpful. For instance to use the example of disease; obesity fails some of the criteria for disease, thus we need to rethink what disease means for us!

Less iPad/Flash submissions and more of this sort of thing would be greatly appreciated :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Articles on these "rationalist" sites often tend towards a mix of smug superiority about one's ability to analyze other people's supposed biases, and lots of references to pet concepts. I posted this one because it does such an excellent job of analyzing the issue in clear, objective terms.

<comment><USER15> _Articles on these "rationalist" sites often tend towards a mix of smug superiority about one's ability to analyze other people's supposed biases, and lots of references to pet concepts. I posted this one because it does such an excellent job of analyzing the issue in clear, objective terms._

I think the article you linked is an excellent example of smug superiority with lots of references to pet concepts while deficient in regard to the core subjects under discussion. The author demonstrates little practical experience with or research into the actual science around obesity, the actual medical practices related to obese patients, the reality of being an obese person, or the linguistic meaning of the word disease.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems you haven't read much else there, and have missed the point; it's not about the scientific details of obesity. And what exactly _would_ be the "linguistic meaning" of the word disease?

<comment><USER15> I think I've missed the point because there isn't really a point.

The author talks about a hypothetical Doctor but doesn't really seem to know much about medicine. The author asks "what is disease" but doesn't bother to do any real work to answer that question.

To answer your second question, a linguistic analysis of the word disease would look vaguely like the author's "What is a disease?" section, except it would involve real observation about how the word is used and in what contexts. The result is that rather than throwing your hands up in the air saying "it's meaningless to talk about whether something deserves to be a disease" you can say something like: "In a medical context, disease means this' in a research context, disease means this, in a casual context, there are two broad groups of people for whom disease means two different things" Armed with this more accurate language, you can start talking about actual concrete examples and explore more detailed and relevant hypothetical examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The semantic criteria listed in the article for defining 'disease' are not rigorous at all and rules out the following conditions that most people would agree are diseases:

Alzheimer's Disease (rule 1)

Any STD, like AIDS (rule 2)

Any pandemic (rule 3)

The Common Cold (rules 2, 3)

Scurvy, Rickets (rules 2, 6)

Also, I'm skeptical that given a clear medical definition of obesity (or more more likely, metabolic syndrome), that it would fail rule 5.

<comment><USER16> I think you misunderstood the list. It is not a list of normative criteria for the definition of disease, but of descriptive criteria, and not even a list of descriptive criteria for disease, but for uses of the _word_ disease. That is twice removed from what you seem to be seeing here. Your observation that many common conditions fail several of the criteria is exactly the point of the list.

<comment><USER15> There is no real point to the list, that's my point.

You're exactly right. It's a partial list of some of the ways that people sometimes under certain conditions use the word disease. That would be merely boring except that he compares the list to the far more carefully specified definitions 'rube' and 'blegg' and subsequently uses the list as criteria in the next 3 paragraphs. He treats the list as if it's an actual list of semantic features, when in fact it's not.

Ultimately he gives up on the question entirely:

 _So, is obesity really a disease? Well, is Pluto really a planet? Once we state that obesity satisfies some of the criteria but not others, it is meaningless to talk about an additional fact of whether it "really deserves to be a disease" or not._

What a waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article.

I do object to the medical approaches to obesity, depression etc. it seems a very "un-medical" way to approach the problem and, I'm sorry to say, very American. In many of these cases people do themselves harm through their own actions or inactions - using medicine or surgery to "solve" these problems is curing the symptoms rather than the cause.

Having the freedom to do what we want doesn't free us from the consequences of our actions...

<comment><USER17> As a counterpoint, I enjoy skiing. My enjoyment of skiing has directly lead to a fairly serious leg injury. Fortunately surgery completely "cured" this and I was back skiing next season, ready to potentially do more harm to myself as if nothing had happened. Did the doctors do the right thing fixing up my leg or should they have let me walk with a limp for the rest of my life as a consequence of my actions?

<comment><USER3> Good point. Its definitely not black and white... but I'd lean on the side of leaving you limping unfortunately. I wonder though - would you ski anyway, if the doctors didn't exist? I'd suspect so...

I "feel" that there is some difference between the injury type situation and the self inflected harm of depression or obesity though - its possible to ski without any injuries, but its not possible to put on loads of weight, or take a depressed approach to life without suffering the consequences. I guess I am more inclined to feel sorry for you because the risk from skiing is such that you might have avoided the injury if the situation were more favorable... its more "unlucky" than "inevitable".

<comment><USER18> If you think depression is a choice, you are incredibly ignorant.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the wealth of information with which to undo my supposed ignorance...

I never said its a choice anyway, just that behaviour can cause it... whether its intentional or not is another story, and I'm not going to claim that all depression is not physiological - I'm sure there are real hormonal/neurological problems which lead to depression. My personal experience however is that change in behaviour solved my own depression... so in at least one case it is true. My doctor prescribed me pills and his attitude towards it was unhelpful, despite being very sympathetic and supportive - a good slap round the face about my attitude would have been much more effective.

I should probably add that I'm pretty fat, bordering on obese perhaps, but I don't consciously over eat...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I applaud the author's instincts: when you're not sure whether something really is an X, and hence deserves Y, the right thing to do is unpack the definition of X and ask what about it implies Y in the first place. In logic, definitions may have hard edges, but in real life the edges are fuzzy. Is a sham marriage really a marriage? It depends on why you want to know. The answer changes depending on whether you want to seduce the wife, settle a tax dispute, or research domestic social patterns.

The author stops short of really applying this approach. He rightly unpacks the definition of disease and observes that obesity only partially satisfies it. But he then discards the definition as useless and regresses all the way to first principles! You don't want to do that. That definition embeds some wisdom; there's got to be a reason we have it, after all. The next step is to ask which bits of the definition are relevant to the question at hand and see how well obesity satisfies those bits. The question he should be asking is not merely "What is a disease?" but rather "What is it about disease that warrants sympathy or treatment?"

The framing of deontology and consequentialism is particularly poor, and I find it unfair to the deontologist. (It is certainly quite silly to say the deontologist is trying to distinguish good from bad _people_. It's just a way of thinking about ethics, man, not a religion.) I would say that deontology says intentions matter and some actions are inherently bad, while consequentialism says results matter and some conditions are inherently bad. It is unfair to the deontologist to paint him as ignoring consequences; inasmuch as they can be known, they count as intentions. And it is unfair to the consequentialist to paint him as ignoring character; inasmuch as effects on character can be controlled, they count as results. Allow the two philosophies to account for all the known facts, and you'll find they give you very similar answers.

So, what's the difference between a disease and a character flaw? Why does the one warrant sympathy and the other warrant reproach? Why should the one be treated and the other conquered?

Asked that way, the answer is obvious. Diseases are unpleasant and involuntary -- simple misfortune. Treatment and sympathy are how you alleviate the misery, and there's no more to the story. But character flaws are more complex. They degenerate and run in packs. A sick person doesn't get new diseases, but a person with poor self control definitely accumulates problems. A person needs to conquer himself, conquer his problems, or he will lose his ability to do so. So our efforts are targeted at motivation. The misery of the situation is a mixed blessing: it sucks to experience, but it also teaches you consequences in a way you'll take seriously and motivates you to change. Quick and easy treatment can be counterproductive, and reproach can be useful to briefly raise the pain above the decision threshold--to shock the boiling frog so he jumps. (I say "can be" because people are always complicated...)

The distinction is critical. Treating a disease is the right thing to do, but treating a character flaw actually does damage. We need to avoid using a fire extinguisher on a flood or throwing an inflatable life raft on a house fire.

So is obesity more like a disease or more like a character flaw?

It depends on the case! It can be either or neither or both.

I know someone who is a very large woman--beautiful, self-confident, merry, old and full of life. "Eat right, exercise, die anyway," she might say. As an intentional choice, her obesity is not a character flaw. And it's certainly not a disease. She needs neither treatment nor motivation, sympathy nor reproach. The right reaction is to respect her right to make her own decisions, and not call it a problem if she doesn't think it is one.

I know someone who just had a baby and is carrying a lot of pregnancy weight. She is generally a motivated and disciplined person, and hates being so fat. She misses her old clothes and her old lifestyle. In this case, the obesity is most like a simple disease--unintended (if not exactly unforeseen), a simple misery. Sympathy is appropriate, and if there were an easy medical fix, it would do no harm.

Then again, look at that same woman a few months later. After a good stab at a diet, losing fifteen pounds, she succumbed to stress and sleep deprivation, abandoning the diet in an attempt to stay sane. Months passed. She built eating habits she didn't want, regained much of the weight she'd lost. Life improved, she started getting sleep, and she didn't go back on her diet. She became more used to her condition, though still unhappy about it, and the simple inertia of the circumstance left her with little motivation to change. What had originally become a simple disease was gradually becoming a character problem; she will need to ultimately address it or risk doing damage to her disciplined nature. Perhaps she still deserves sympathy, but a raised eyebrow when she goes for a second bowl of ice cream would probably do more good than harm. A quick medical fix might not help anymore (and might indeed do harm); she has habits that need to change, and only she can do that.

People are complex. That's the real moral here. Just as "disease" has a definition with fuzzy boundaries, obesity is not all the same. Understanding whether it is a disease means modeling the individual case and understanding the causes and effects and consequences.

Reality is almost always more complex than our definitions. The important thing is to learn to ask the right questions.

<comment><USER20> The interesting thing about the treatment of addiction is that one of the most effective solutions (Overeaters Anonymous, AA, Narcotics Anonymous, etc.) is that getting a bunch of these "addicts" in the same room to talk about their addiction can actually help. The first step in all of these programs begins with the word "We".

One of the little euphemisms I've garnered from friends and such through the years is that "Wellness begins with 'We'; Illness begins with 'I'." Most addictive habits are actually resultant from one thing only, and that is loneliness. OA, AA, NA, etc. WORK for people because they actually force them out of their little isolated states, into situations where they can actually communicate their "feelings" (I know! such a dirty word!) to people who actually understand and "get" where they are coming from. Some of the happiest people I've known are members of AA or some other 12-step program. I think it's true: give more than you think you've received, and you'll be happier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's always good to ask why something is a problem and whose problem it is.

In this case, many people are saying "{x} is a problem and I want to help". That's okay, if it stops there. However, many then conclude "people with {x} are obligated to make my help as inexpensive/effective/etc as possible".

That's incorrect. The folks with {x} are not obligated to do what the helpers deem appropriate. The helpers are free to refuse to help if the helped don't cooperate, but that's the extent of the helper's power.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a fairly political question in the US. Emotional people believe in emotional solutions, like the death penalty, physical discipline, healing prayer. Logical people believe in logical solutions, like medicine, research, and education. The main difference that persists is that those approach any issue emotionally will end up ignoring the _source_ of the problem and just attack the result, while the permanent cure is to fix the source.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, in 23andme, my obesity probability is listed under "disease risk" :)

Interestingly, the average obesity risk according to 23andme is 59%, which is higher than any other "disease" that 23andme offers risk evaluation for. (Type 2 diabetes comes in 2nd at 18.2%)

If something is found in the majority of the population, that sounds less like a disease and more a systemic problem.

</comment><comment><USER24> Blaming fat/alcoholic is part of the treatment. It works, because blame gives ill individual additional reason to fix the problem. Blame can backfire, so it should be used with caution.

</comment><comment><USER25> Everything that is obviously possible to overcome with self-will, patience and persistence - drug addiction and alcoholism (except the last, incurable stage), smoking, obesity, shyness, and especially ignorance - should not be tolerated. Most people didn't even tried. They are just blaming everything and everyone else.

There are a few of special cases, like children of dopers or alcoholics, inherited diseases and other genetic disorders, but even in such cases it is possible to improve their conditions with a right effort.

btw, in the so-called third world word 'disease' means condition which cannot be reversed or cured, such as AIDS, cancer, liver or kidney damages and so on. Everything else, like a fly or stomach aches are just a changing phenomena like weather.

People who cannot stop shooting, drinking, smoking, eating, and passively watching are ignorant, not sick (leaving aside the clinical stages). At least from the point of view of the one who did.

<comment><USER5> "Everything that is obviously possible to overcome with self-will, patience and persistence."

There are people who can lower their blood pressure though relaxation and meditation. Should we withhold blood pressure medication?

"Most people didn't even tried. They just blaming everything and everyone else."

And you know this how? You're just making shit up.

"People who cannot stop shooting, drinking, smoking, eating, and avoiding people are ignorant, not sick. At least from the point of view of the one who did."

From the POV of one who did that is quite an ignorant opinion.

<comment><USER25> Oh, it could be a long discussion, especially in terms of 'withhold medication'.

There are some basics, like the difference between symptoms and their causes. In the cases in which it is possible to deal with causes, not the symptoms, using self-will and altered behavior one should do it.

Medications, in most cases, are eliminating the symptoms but not their causes. Prozac and is the best example.

The complex of cognitive, behavior and psycho therapies in the sub-clinical cases and with medication in the clinical ones usually help, while just a medication without changing the habits will probably fail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Disregarding glandular, hormonal, or similar problems, obesity is certainly not a disease: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXTq2_3LfXM>.

<comment><USER27> Out of curiosity, did you read the full article? It does a great job in making the point that disease/not disease may not be the right question to ask (which is a good thing because it isn't straightforward to answer).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Marketing and Pricing Advice for Self-Published eBook - <AUTHOR>

	If you were writing a technology centric eBook, would you publish it free online and sell a digital eBook (PDF/ePUB/etc.) and Print on Demand version, or just have it for sell with a free sample chapter like most traditional publishers? I'm noticing many online eBooks that are available fully free online but with for pay extras, http://railstutorial.org being a good example. The free content would obviously be a great way for people to discover your writing, but also lowers the likelihood of them paying. Then again, a for-pay eBook that no one knows of won't get sold either. Most of all, there's no reason we need to stick with only the most traditional sales methods with eBooks. What's your feelings about each method, and which would you choose? I've almost decided what I want to do, but would be interested to see the general thoughts on both models<p>Note: This is a repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042898, as the original post didn't get any response. <comment><USER2> When we published Getting Real (<http://gettingreal.37signals.com>) we only offered it in two flavors: $19 for a personal-use PDF, and $49 for a you-can- share-it-with-10-friends/colleagues PDF. We didn't offer a free version.

A few years later, we offered a free version in HTML online. Sales of the PDF plummeted. That was fine with us - we'd already pulled in ~$500k on the PDF. At that point we just wanted to spread the Getting Real word as far and wide as we can. The free HTML version helped do that.

But the lesson is: If it's pay only, people will buy it. If it's pay and free, you'll lose a ton of potential buyers. Id start with pay only (starting at $19) and then phase in a free version down the road once you're happy with the money you've already made.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't realize Getting Real wasn't always available free, but then I only discovered it last year. Very interesting; I assumed the free online book was designed to drive sales of the for-pay PDF. (As a side note, thanks for the great info offered in Getting Real; it's a book I recommend often!).

I was actually planning to price my eBooks very low, even undercutting the industry average $9.99 just to try to gain traction. Would you still start at a high price even as a new book author? I have a fair online audience from various blogs I write for, but really am virtually unknown in tech writing. I know 37signals always advocates charging higher prices for products, but would you feel the same starting out fresh without an already strong readership and support?

Thanks so much for your advice; I really appreciate you taking time to reply!

<comment><USER2> I'd charge $19. If people don't know you, they probably aren't going to buy your self-published book anyway - even at $9.99 or less. Those who do know you, and want to support you, will pay $19. If they book is excellent, and people begin talking about it, people will pay $19 if they are referred by someone else who liked it.

My quick 2 cents. In the end it all depends on your goals. Is it to spread your message as wide as possible? Is it to profit nicely? Is it somewhere in the middle? Some stuff to think about. Remember: You can always lower the price and/or go free later. Raising the price later is always harder. I'd test the higher end of the market at $19 first. See how that goes.

FYI, even today we still make a few thousand dollars a month on the PDF and paperback version of Getting Real.

Thanks for your kind words re: Getting Real.

<comment><AUTHOR> My main goal is to profit while addressing a market I feel is under-served. At the very least, I planned to shoot for a $9.99 or less price to get the higher royalty rate on Kindle (and to not looked overpriced versus other books in the same eBook marketplace). I notice Rework is $9.02 on Kindle; does this pricing have anything to do with the Kindle Marketplace dynamics?

So, essentially, I'm planning on writing eBooks that I would sell as PDF/ePub on my own site or in a marketplace like TutsPlus, and also list the same eBooks in the Kindle and other eBook marketplaces. I'm hoping to fill a need I see, as well as take advantage of the increasing popularity of eBooks and eReaders in general. Just like the iOS store, there's a bit of market advantage to having a lower price since it gives your item more visibility. My idea is to make books that are somewhat small (~150 pages or 10 short chapters), but a good value for the size. Additionally, many self-published eBook writers are recommending taking the prices extremely low, to as little as $2.99 or so just to boost overall sales.

I know this isn't the approach 37signals usually takes, but with the above in mind, would you see an advantage to lower pricing or would you stick with a higher price? Thanks again for your time and advice; I appreciate it more than you could ever know! I'm thinking I ought to go ahead and get Rework about now...

<comment><USER2> "Additionally, many self-published eBook writers are recommending taking the prices extremely low, to as little as $2.99 or so just to boost overall sales."

I would recommend against this unless you don't want to make much money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just finished writing a programming book (an R graphs cookbook), in the traditional way, so here are my thoughts.

I had a print publisher, who did all the administrative and editorial work on the book. I just had to do the writing.

Because of the publishing house's work, my job was easy. But I don't think I will ever do it this way again. Why? Because publishing books, especially programming books, in the traditional way just feels completely out of sync with the times.

If I had to write a book now, I'd rather blook it. Blog every day and then compile and edit the blog posts into a book. It's the only way that makes sense to me now, especially for programming books because they need to be live, fresh and up-to-date documents, not works of art frozen in time (unless that's what you are aiming for).

So I would give away the whole thing for free in the form of blog posts and also sell it in various convenient ebook formats.

That's my opinion based on very limited experience. Here are some more qualified opinions:

[http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-should-self- publis...](http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-should-self-publis..).

<http://ejohn.org/blog/programming-book-profits/>

<http://ejohn.org/blog/online-book-vs-ebook/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much! Lots of great food for thought here. I'm thinking the same as you; I'm planning on writing tech-centric books, aimed at a general audience but with eBooks that are priced much better than the average tech eBook for normal readers. At any rate, at least for my first one, I really think blogging the book a chapter at a time (or hey, parts of a chapter at a time) would be a good way to do it.

Thanks again for your time, thoughts, and info! Greatly appreciated :)

<comment><USER3> I just bought a Kindle and noticed that Amazon sells subscriptions to blogs ($1-$2). If you can get your blog on that, it would be a great marketing/advertising platform, if not money maker.

<comment><AUTHOR> That might be a great idea. I've never thought my blog would actually be something someone would subscribe to on Kindle, but you never know. Plus, that'd be a great idea for syndicating a blogged book and making a little extra revenue while it's in writing. Definitely something to keep in mine. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Demo Day: Which Will Be The Next Dropbox? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/03/28/y-combinator-demo-day-which-will-be-the-next-dropbox/ <comment><USER2> with this many companies competing for attention, YC demo day feels like startup hunger games.

<comment><USER3> I think it is the opposite of that. YC companies are not really competing with each other for investment; the success of a few helps the others, too. That Dropbox is worth over a billion dollars probably raises the valuation of each of the YC companies in w2012 by some measurable amount. There are a lot of investors who would only invest in certain kinds of companies, too, so it isn't even possible to have a universal rank ordering of attractiveness to investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this reporter would have identified 'Dropbox' when it demoed as 'the next dropbox.'

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm impressed by 42Floors and Your Mechanic. I like that each company identified an area full of inefficient orthodoxy and innovated - like AirBnb. 42 Floors also seems to have an especially strong team (Flightcaster) and has a slick design.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Or, which will Dropbox be the prelude of?

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know which is the next dropbox but shoptiques might be the next Etsy. That company is going places.</comment>


Microsoft to Ban 'Offensive Language' and Monitor Your Private Account - <AUTHOR> http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/03/27/microsoft-ban-offensive-language-xbox-skype-office-account/ <comment><USER2> This is the next step in the outsourced Big Brother we've been building for the last twenty or so years. All I have to say is, Fuck off, Microsoft.</comment>


Show HN: Pensamientos – Open your thoughts to the world - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livae.ff.app

<comment><AUTHOR> I have created an app which aims to let young people to express theirselves freely. The idea behind is that in moderm social networks we have an identity and we have to take care of what we say, we are not completely free to express ourselves, we need to be anonymous in order to say what we really think. I created hte app inspired by a famous instant messaging apps. Right now it allows private chat, public anonymous chats in your contacts numbers and private anonymous chats. But I am thinking about expanding the funcionallity adding public chats based on topics. I will also add in the future other features as group chats and file sharing.

Any feedback or critic is welcome.</comment>


Steve Wozniak shuts down his Facebook account in protest (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/04/09/steve-wozniak-shuts-down-his-facebook-account-in-protest/ <comment><USER2> >"The profits are all based on the user's info, but the users get none of the profits back."

>"As they say, with Facebook, you are the product."

Whenever people become products or property of another party it's a pretty good sign something has gone very wrong.

Perhaps its time we had a Personal Data Emancipation Proclimation and positively asserted the intellectual property rights of one's own personal information over those who seek to own it through coercion and deception.

The technically literate like Woz and many on HN are among the greatest critics of these human data traffickers, while the technically illiterate masses continue to "voluntarily" give up their data; reminiscent of how upon learning to read, Frederick Douglass finally understood the reality of his bondage while noting that his fellow slaves were contented in being illiterate and ignorant.

<comment><USER3> Facebook gives its users access to a social platform, which is clearly something users like, without asking for any money in return. It isn't like they're forcing people to use it, people are free to decide for themselves unlike slaves.

Of course no stuff is really free, so they have to get money some other way... but maybe they should be more open about it, maybe offer an "enhanced privacy mode" for like $10/month? You're still free to use any other social network though, including the ability to self-host a blog and email if you wish.

<comment><USER4> I think they tried in the past but their tests showed that it would be less profitable and uncovering that they make more than 10usd/month on "free" users would convince lot of users to leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Submission's title is inaccurate:

> Still, he didn't delete his Facebook account — just deactivated it — for > fear that someone else would snatch up the screen name "stevewoz."

</comment><comment><USER6> Would people be interested in a social network that allows them to own their data? I built a prototype. Check it out here: [https://www.timelines.co](https://www.timelines.co)

=Timelines -- A social network that allows you to own your data.

=Share beautiful moments of your life with friends, family or the world.

=Easily customize who sees which post.

=Maintain ownership of your data at all times. Timelines stores your data in a specific folder on your Google Drive which is sandboxed from all your other data on Google drive.

=You'll need a Google account to use Timelines!

What do you guys think?

<comment><USER7> This looks like a bad joke. If I want to own my data I would not use your website, especially given that it requires a Google Drive account.

<comment><USER6> How else do you propose to own your data? What if I encrypt the data before storing on Google drive and decrypt it after fetching from google drive?

Your data is pretty much all over the internet anyway. On HN news servers, your mail servers, etc etc. So, how do you decide who to trust and who not to?

<comment><USER8> Private data I will store on my own computer. Public data I will store both on my own computer and elsewhere, and I don't care where they copy it; it is public so you can put it wherever you want to put.

<comment><USER6> Let's say you are sharing pictures with your friends and you want them to access those pictures even when your computer is offline. That would mean that those pictures need to be stored on a server from where they can be served. So, we can rule out your computer.

How do you propose that we store the data in this case? I can only think of storing it on some server in an encrypted form. Your thoughts?

<comment><USER8> Depending on the intended distribution, I might use DVDs or printouts or other kind of physical media like that. But, for some uses that won't do, so then you would encrypt them and store them on a server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (2018)

</comment><comment><USER10> that article is more than one year old published April 9, 2018

<comment><USER11> You created an account just to say that?

<comment><USER12> Well, obviously HN doesn't allow non-registered readers to comment, so...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (April 9, 2018)</comment>


Porting the Unity Engine to .NET CoreCLR - <AUTHOR> http://xoofx.com/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-coreclr/ <comment><USER2> CoreCLR will be nice for Unity with the 2x performance improvement.

I wish Microsoft had moved to it quicker and Unity wouldn't have had that lull on Mono 2.x .NET and had to build IL2CPP.

When IL2CPP was being rolled out it was quite impacting to build size and actually making iOS builds for a while in 2015 from like March to summer was not workable for months. Now they have Android on it and it works well but keeping all that up to date is cumbersome for a smaller tech/engine team.

I still would love a C++ engine/lib like they were going to do back when Apple was forcing AOT instead of JIT languages around 2010 [1], but having a C# engine that can be comparable in performance is killer.

As long as this update is smooth and is truly faster that would be welcome. It was harder to trust Microsoft before during the Mono/.NET disconnected period so Unity treaded carefully but after Microsoft bought Xamarin and went .NET standard/core it seems like they are embracing and not extinguishing. Microsoft's new focus is Azure and .NET core/standard help expand that as well as its use by Unity (always a C# champion) and even Unreal Engine possibly which some have attempted [2]. If Unity switches to .NET core/standard possibly Unreal Engine will be compelled to add it natively.

[1] [https://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/07/02/unity-and- ios-4-0-updat...](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/07/02/unity-and- ios-4-0-update-iii/)

[2] [https://mono-ue.github.io/](https://mono-ue.github.io/) or [https://github.com/xiongfang/UnrealCS](https://github.com/xiongfang/UnrealCS)

<comment><USER3> They put up their editor source code on Github recently ([https://github.com/Unity- Technologies/UnityCsReference](https://github.com/Unity- Technologies/UnityCsReference)), and originally it also included the full source to their runtime garbage collector, which ended up being the standard open source C++ boehm collector ([https://github.com/ivmai/bdwgc](https://github.com/ivmai/bdwgc)) from the 90s.

Unity should replace it with a reference counting object management system, or update to a newer garbage collection technique to minimize the inadvertent sweeps that cause huge choppy frame rate drops.

<comment><USER4> I hope they don't use naive reference counting. It would reduce throughput and would not eliminate pauses. A standard incremental or concurrent generational tracing GC would be a better choice. In games you have a lot of knowledge about timing that you can use to help schedule GC: you always know (or should know anyway) how much time there is until the next VBLANK, so you can use that to bound pause times for your major collections.

<comment><USER3> Large parts of iOS and its ecosystem use automatic reference counting, and it has a reputation for the interface being noticeably smoother than Android, which uses Java's garbage collector.

<comment><USER4> Android doesn't use the HotSpot garbage collector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But also, you will notice lots of work related to ARM32 and ARM64, including > corporate work from Samsung for the Tizen platform

It's nice to see this recognized. Source: I worked on open source at Samsung.

<comment><USER6> Hopefully I can use some of the postmarketOS work to run Tizen on some more devices. The ghost of the Nokia N900 lives on!

<comment><USER7> Actual Tizen has nothing to do with Nokia N900 spirit, other than using a Linux kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if Unity regrets using Mono / C# as their scripting language, it seems like they have so many workarounds and hoops that they jump through that it must be a nightmare to maintain.

<comment><USER9> I don't think they had any better options available to them at the time. Embedding and integration for an engine like Unity is just a tremendous challenge no matter what stack you use. I've done this sort of integration w/ various languages (python, lua, vbscript, c#, actionscript, javascript, etc) and C# is one of the most reasonable choices, if only because it was designed with native interop scenarios in mind. There are pointers, there are structs, etc.

Also keep in mind Unity did offer multiple scripting solutions - they had Boo for a while (eventually dropped), and there's UnityScript, though I'm not super familiar with how it works... C# is the one that won.

<comment><USER10> Wasn't UnityScript just Unity-flavoured JS, like ActionScript was for Flash?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Killed our 6-month old photo startup, and this came out of it - <AUTHOR> My co-founder and I saved up enough money to quit our jobs 6 months ago and go full-time. We began working on, while bootstrapping, a photo sharing startup. Unfortunately, after many iterations, it wasn't working well enough and we decided to kill it.
However, through that process, we conducted a lot of user tests and interviews, and realized that finding users to test is a pretty hard problem.
That's why we made Gemba, Japanese for "the real place", which is a service that connects companies to testers on demand for in-person interviews.
URL: http://gemba.me
Would love your feedback! <comment><USER2> You appear to have references to Zenpathy, which I assume is a name which didn't make the cut. Might want to standardize on Gemba, if you're going with that name.

Also, while I think 現場 does have some sheer genius as a product name, I question the wisdom of using it in an English-speaking market. It would take me five minutes to explain why it's a really good name and, in that time, I should have been selling the actual product rather than the naming decision. Gemba isn't one of the few dozen Japanese words you can reasonably expect college-educated Americans to know. I can guarantee you that even as a Japanese speaker I will botch your romanization the next time I try to talk about this company. Additionally, expect to be "That jewelry thingamagig" if non-Japanese speakers remember the name at all.

Great idea for a service. You might consider eventually creating some resources on how to conduct one of these interviews for the maximum benefit of the company.

<comment><USER3> If anyone else is curious after reading the above content, the Wiki article here -> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice pivot! Couple of small things: \- It isn't clear to me what products you can find testers for. Is it just tech related, or do you find testers for anything? Like, do you just provide testers for apps/websites, or also for a new flavour of soda?

\- Please make a form or a dedicated page for aspiring testers. What are you looking for in a tester? What will I get out of it? Whatever you do, never make a link that points to a mailto:. It's super annoying when I want to find more info about becoming a tester and instead of opening a web page (it's a link after all) it just opens a new message in Outlook, but I use gMail.

\- The name doesn't bother me. It doesn't speak to me either, but so aren't 90% of all startup names. Having a seemingly nondescript name with a really cool meaning is still better than having just a nondescript name. You could consider getting genba.me to avoid confusion.

On a side note, I admire you guys for making the decision to kill your photo sharing startup. Those are hard decisions to make. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your thoughts. We'll be making some improvements based on your points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shopify was an online snowboard shop, until they realized the only thing they were doing well was the e-commerce stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice, my normal work flow for doing this is hanging out at the Metreon and asking people or at the starbucks near by. $5 gift cards work well if you need extra incentive, most people are pretty nice about a quick test of a feature/homepage though.

I've also started exploring craigslist for tests @ $10 gift cards/20 minutes. That has worked out well so far too! I guess the biggest issue for bootstrapped companies is how many tests you do and at what cost. I've done over 100 at this point, so the pricing you have is def a bit too high, but I imagine with some seed money this would be a no brainer in terms of time saved.

<comment><USER7> when r u next doing this at metreon

<comment><USER6> Won't be for a bit, the UI hasn't changed too much since then. Why do you ask?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Consider creating a more accommodating form for your "become a tester" link...maybe it's not a priority right now, but if recruiting good testers is key to your plan, a form that...well, for one thing, doesn't pop up my un-used Mail client when I click on it... _defines through its questions what you look for in a tester_ would be valuable to both testers and tester- requesters...right now, the page doesn't speak enough about what you see as important qualities in a tester.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great idea. I think the pricing is way too cheap for on-site though. You might be able to get away with < $50 for some kind of screenshare, but there is definitely a market for what you're selling and the current market is priced way higher.

usertesting.com costs $49/participant and there's nothing interactive about it - you submit a list of questions, and they send you a ~15 minute video of someone testing your product. Your service is more valuable, and your costs will be higher too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great idea. I was talking earlier with some friends trying to figure out the best way to get qualified testers for apps. This makes it so much easier, and adds screening. Nice work.

Well-priced as well, though I wonder if you would be able to drum up marketing with an introductory 3-for-2 offer.

</comment><comment><USER11> clickable [http://gemba.me](http://gemba.me)

</comment><comment><USER12> You need to answer more questions on your homepage.

\- locations? \- how do you select people (anyone who has done tests is familiar with the 'professional testers' problem) \- more detail!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We'll make it more clear and detailed.

Right now, we are focused in San Francisco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea. Some feedback that is less useful than patio11's: bold, don't underline, today in the header.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any chance of expanding down to Palo Alto and Mountain View?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely in our future plans. We started in San Francisco because we thought it was a good dense location where we can build a vibrant community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a good idea. Don't live in SF though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Brave decision & congrats</comment>


Ask HN: Created a PHP Debugger. Would you use it? - <AUTHOR>

For the past months I have been working on what's going to be a stand-alone PHP xdebug debugger app, the first one to actually implement pretty much all the features that an IDE debugger has but without the heavy resources usage, and actually fun to use.
Here's a screenshot of the work so far: http://imgur.com/hP9pF bare in mind that this is still a work in progress and I have yet to finish some features and interface design.
What it currently does:
- You can use it by just enter "xdebug_break()" in your code. It will automatically get your source code and stack, and u are ready to go.
- OR you can just Set/remove breakpoints like a regular debugger
- Change variables at runtime
- Eval
- File map to your local folders in case you don't want it to download the remote source code
- Editor with themes
So what do you think guys ? Is this something you would like to use instead of an IDE debugger ?
I know this is just a screenshot but it's no ready for sale yet.
I'm expecting to have RC by the end of the month, with a new polished layout (working on it atm) and bug free.
I also need some beta testers in case anyone is interested. I will offer a free license when V1 is released to anyone who helped me out.
You can contact me @: henrique [at] 3heap.com <comment><USER2> This actually sounds quite interesting. Usually I print out the variables I need, but this could actually be useful if I want to change some variables when I am debugging and force a specific case. I would certainly love to give this a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> This app is a front end for Xdebug(<http://xdebug.org/>), and with it you can easily trace your code, follow your triggered functions, see the variables changing as you run the debugger.

The available tools for the mac don't work well enough for for a reason or another and I created this as a personal tool, but it started to grow into something that I can show and let other use it. Hopefully :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 100% interested. Is there a github repo I can watch?

Edit: or a site I can bookmark? Is this going to be a paid product? Still interested!

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but there will be a website very soon. Meanwhile you can be first one to put it's hand on, drop a line @ henrique [at] 3heap.com , I'll make sure you receive a beta version while it's being completed for final launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely! MacGDBp is pretty much useless and full blown IDEs are overkill (plus I prefer a lightweight editor like ST2). Email sent.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe we have the same setup, ST2 user here as well. Hope to hear from you

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interested in beta testing - MacGDBp isn't fun to use, would love something better/more stable. How do I contact you?

<comment><AUTHOR> henrique [at] 3heap.com . Thanks ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks very interesting. Is it Mac only? If it'll run on Linux I'll give it a spin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mac only for now, sorry :(

<comment><USER6> No problems, if that ever changes be sure to let HN know!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is JavaScript the Good Parts still relevant? - <AUTHOR> During the past year I've been heavily involved in building and strengthening the tech community in Puerto Rico. As a result many students and beginning devs have asked me for advice on how to really learn Javascript. My response is always "start with Javascript the Good Parts".<p>In the state the the JS world is right now does this still hold true? Should I recomend some other book in addition to JtGP? <comment><USER2> "The Good Parts" is still a good one, but my recommendation these days now goes to Effective Javascript:

[http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific- Software...](http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific-Software- Development/dp/0321812182/)

Outside of books, [http://superherojs.com](http://superherojs.com) is another good resource to recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

[http://superherojs.com](http://superherojs.com) look really good. I'll definitely check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It strikes me as a poor apology for the crap status of JS with a sprinkle of Douglas's debatable opinion rather than a useful primer in modern JS.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can highly recommend books written by Nicholas Zakas.

[http://www.amazon.com/Professional-JavaScript-Developers- Nic...](http://www.amazon.com/Professional-JavaScript-Developers-Nicholas- Zakas/dp/1118026691/)

There is one shorter book that he wrote recently: [https://leanpub.com/oopinjavascript](https://leanpub.com/oopinjavascript)

</comment><comment><USER5> Speaking JavaScript by Axel Rauschmayer [http://speakingjs.com/](http://speakingjs.com/) is quite well suited for people coming from other languages rather than newbies to programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> You may also want to check out Eloquent Javascript . [http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/) . This is my goto book for Javascript

</comment><comment><USER7> Javascript the Good Parts is for folks who already know Javascript. The concepts are more advanced than most beginners would encounter (currying, memoization etc).

</comment><comment><USER8> I would recommend pointing them to this resource as well (19 pages and counting): [http://wtfjs.com](http://wtfjs.com)</comment>


Ask HN: So your manager fires one of your coworkers no word why, What do you do? - <AUTHOR> Today, one of my coworkers got fired, great developer and the company just fired him today.  I hate when this happens and management doesn't share why they let go the person, but I work for a startup and this makes me worried that they can pull the rug under my feet.    The developer that got fired was a key developer in many pieces of our stack and maybe he made a mistake recently but I can't see why someone would get fired just like that.   We all make mistakes or life gets in the way a good manager talks to you before they just fire you.  Companies can be so cruel :( <comment><USER2> Probably not what happened here, but it reminds me of a medium-sized business owner I once encountered. A few years before I met him, he had fired one of his IT staff. The firing quickly became a debacle, as the recently fired employee had been performing herculean feats to keep the company's infrastructure running. The business owner ultimately needed to hire four new employees at more that the original fellow's rate to get everything back under control again.

The owner vowed that he'd never let something like this happen again. Of course, he decided that this wasn't his fault. After all, if the employee had gotten sick or was hit by a bus, he'd be in the same situation. Instead, the problem was that the business had a single point of failure. Too much business knowledge was only available in a single place.

His solution was an early form of Netflix Chaos Monkey, but applied to HR. A couple of times a year, he'd fire an employee at random. The plan was to ensure that knowledge was in the company, not in people. You didn't get used to asking Bill from Accounting how to file your expense forms, since Bill could disappear at any time. Instead, you insisted that Bill (or whoever was currently in accounting) create easily accessible documentation for the expense forms. Then, when Bill disappeared, everything was documented and the business continued smoothly.

From what I've heard, the owner may now be in minimum security prison for shady financials at the company, so there could have been another reason to encourage people not to stay too long.

Edit: Fixed stupid homophone

<comment><USER3> I'm intrigued, can you just be fired like that in the US? In England it's really hard to just fire someone without a valid reason (gross negligence, etc).

<comment><USER4> Yes. As an anecdotal at a startup I worked at years ago the founders best friend who had become COO would bring women up to the office after hours and fire call center employees at random to show off "his power in the company." Another time the company was having a hard time paying the bills so they fired quite literally half the staff seemingly at random and then delayed their final paychecks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ask a manager or higher-up in private if you can discuss the firing. Even if they have a policy of not discussing why someone is let go, you can certainly voice your concerns you have about your own job security, how your coworker's departure will affect your workload and the company's bottom line, etc.

Points you may want to seek clarity on:

\- Was the fired coworker given advance notice?

\- Was he given a chance to change things to avoid the firing?

\- Was this decision due to technical reasons or a "culture clash"? (You may not get an answer here)

\- Was he offered a severance package, or at least paid for his last 2 weeks and unused vacation time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I will bring these question this friday and will ask my boss to get together and just explain that I am worried that the same thing can happen to anyone including me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got layoff and I left professionally. If you want to know why you can also ask him. I also contact everybody saying that it was nice working with them and I'd like to keep in contact professionally.

In all honesty, I knew the project was going to shit. It was dead from the get go. So I started to learn as much as I can from my peers and waited until they finally fire me. It was a great opportunity to learn and pad up my resume anyway.

If you're that worry you can start apply for other places. You don't have to accept the offer you can just practice your interview skills.

</comment><comment><USER7> Track down your coworker and go out for a couple of drinks and a debrief.

</comment><comment><USER8> Move on. Interview people around. Keep in touch with the person if I'm interested.

</comment><comment><USER9> There can be reasons where the termination was "for cause". In those cases, you may not be able to get the straight story from the manager for legal reasons. You also may well not get the straight story from the former coworker.

Or, the boss could just be a psychopath who likes firing people for no reason. The boss and coworker may say the very same things they said in the "for cause" scenario.

Bottom line: You may not be able to get a straight answer from anyone. If you do, you may not be able to tell that it was a straight answer.

</comment><comment><USER10> At my current job, the boss fired a coworker I got along very well with. After that, the environment deteriorated and it's obviously time to move on.

If they fired someone and you think it's unfair and they wouldn't explain it to you, then it's time for you to move on.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most probably they had a very valid reason. Why don't you first try to talk to your coworker who got fired? And there is no harm in talking to your manager as well about it; just act neutral, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did ask my manager but he couldn't give me a concrete reason as far as my coworker I don't want to reach out to him right away because I know he is probably feeling very hurt and know he probably needs a little time to process what just happened.

<comment><USER8> You can't know for sure about feelings of other people. I'd love to be fired - there's so much fun stuff around:) So I'd count not talking as your excuse, not his.

If he can't give you a reason, he can give you a reason why he can't give you a reason ;)

<comment><USER12> If you ever get to the point where you'd legitimately love to be fired, quit.

It's scary, but often worth it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm quitting just now, but never connected those two thoughts together - thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/ <comment><USER2> It is everybody else's fault but the people who wrote the emails.

I doubt it was Russian. So far it looks like there was disgruntled democrat leaker - the allegedly "russian" breech was quite bigger in scope.</comment>


Instacash - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am thinking of an idea to enable cash delivery at home (or point of consumption). Order cash and get it delivered for a nominal fee. Fee is dependent on how quickly you need it. Question is do you need cash regularly? Do carry cash in your wallet? Have there been times you wanted to cash (say for laundry, hair cut) and you didn't have it on you. <comment><USER2> I feel like it'd have to be a really weird overlap between:

\- A place that doesn't already have an ATM

\- A place that doesn't have an ATM on the way

\- Needing the cash so quickly and immediately that I'm willing to pay a service fee that would make it worth it for both the driver and the company

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a fee for this service? Many places have ATM's.

Also, many places with humans typically direct you to use the Cash App from Square.

While I think it's cool, I also wonder about the risk of theft. I imagine it high.</comment>


Show HN: A standalone C++ TMP parser generator (inspired by spirit::qi) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FrancoisChabot/abulafia <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I know this being written in C++17 is going to turn a lot of people away, but it was a very interesting exercise. I'm still debating wether or not I should go through the pain of porting this to C++14, as I estimate it would roughly double the size of the library.</comment>


Python That Doesn't Suck: Whitespace-Inactive Python - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/jackowayed/ptds/tree/master

<comment><USER2> Great. So now you can write code that you can only get the rest of the world to use, if it's so absolutely magnificent that they'll replace their default interpreter for it?

They might have also made it auto-insert the "self" method parameters, while they were at it (I'm ignorant enough that I don't understand the usefulness of those...)

<comment><USER3> No reason it can't be preprocessed. It should be a straight 1:1 translation between indentation depth to an opening/closing brace (a simple push-down automaton.)

[Edit: he chose to go with begin/end; let's call this a Ruby That Doesnt' Suck]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a joke? I don't mean to be insulting if it's not, but "Python That Doesn't Suck" seems intentionally inflammatory. And as a Python coder, the idea of the parser disregarding the indentation seems silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I went with that name 1) because I couldn't think of anything better, and 2) because if you don't think python's whitespace-activeness sucks, you're not going to use it anyway.

Truthfully, I think I could get used to it (I'm a rubyist myself). But I've talked to a number of people who have said basically, "I've heard it's a cool language, but I hate/will not use whitespace-activeness.

<comment><USER5> Why is it that people hate active whitespace? I think it's great that the parser can detect where blocks end just by maintaining a nice code structure. I guess people are just against it on principle? Just in edge cases where indenting wouldn't make sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> One question, does python have an equivalent to irb (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Ruby_Shell>)? If so, how do you get into/out of blocks?

<comment><USER4> Yup. If you start the python interpreter, it opens up into an interactive shell. You still have to indent inside the block, and python interprets the code after you enter a blank line.

ipython is an improved python shell, with tab-completion and some other cool features.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AWS Innovation at Scale – James Hamilton [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQETrFC_SQ

<comment><USER2> In summary, AWS rides the benefits of economies of scale. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale))

They design/build their networking gear, full hw/sw stack. This is cheaper and more reliable (their code is simple/customized to their datacenter use case.)

They also have SingleRoot I/O virtualization at each server: each guest VM gets its own hardware virtualized link, which is great for reducing the giant tail at scale problem (google for Jeff Dean's description of the problem.)

Their relational DB system RDS is getting popular: 40% of customers using them. So they compete with Oracle by offering similar highly-available service with much less price. They keep adding new relational DBs: Aurora, RedShift, EBS.

They design/build their power infrastructure. Faster.

They are very customer oriented, they make things simple/painless for customer use cases. They are obsessed with metrics, measuring everything, with tight feedback loops to improve things weekly. They rolled 449 new services + major features in 2014 alone.

<comment><USER3> Actually, all of what you just mentioned is considered "economies of scope" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scope](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scope))

 _Here, economies of scope make product diversification efficient if they are based on the common and recurrent use of proprietary know-how or on an indivisible physical asset._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These guys are the new x86. On that note I was surprised they actually get custom chips from Intel, but I guess it makes sense. At the AWS summit in SF earlier this year the only AWS supplier with a booth was Intel.</comment>


Ask HN: You're dying. What are the last words of wisdom you say to your son? - <AUTHOR> Lately I've been thinking about death (in a good way, if that makes sense) and the question of : what exist because of me? What will be left of me when I'm gone? Our fathers have let us down, failing in the crucial task of gifting us with the knowledge and wisdom that has been passed down from generation to generation for ages. That's why we feel the disconnection and confusion we feel inside. We shouldn't pass down the same sin to our sons. What is the most important, most crucial nugget of wisdom to pass to the next generations for you? <comment><USER2>
      child—to lose
      dad—to find, on this morning walk
      afraid both are

I'd start with listening, so any wisdom you pass to whoever comes from the place of compassion and understanding and has the right context. You'll learn a lot along the way, too

</comment><comment><USER3> I will give him the key for my ledger

<comment><AUTHOR> On point. I always despised my father because he never did that with me when I was young

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i dont and never will have a kid but if i did id probably say: never have regrets, the choices you made were the best ones at the time with the information you had

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a hard one for me to understand and integrate. Totally agree on the crucial importance of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trust no one.

No kidding. Trust must be earned, not advertised.

<comment><USER6> If you don't extend trust how do you know if someone will betray it?

I always like to grant trust because knowing someone is untrustworthy is always worth more than the loss of betrayal.</comment></comment>


Building a Python monorepo for fast, reliable development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Pinterest_Engineering/building-a-python-monorepo-for-fast-reliable-development-be763781f67 <comment><USER2> I'm ready for an Apple Pencil enabled APL programming environment on my iPad. Could be fun.</comment>


Scrabulous highlights the failure of American Copyright Law  - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/2010/scrabulous/

<comment><USER2> It's more complicated than this, though. Copyright protects the direct expression of a game, but not the rules themselves. You can't copyright the way scrabble is played any more than you can copyright the game of "football" under the laws governing "the NFL rulebook" (an actual document).

What seems to have happened is that they decided they just didn't want to fight this, and I don't blame them. Ultimately though, it's not at all clear that Hasbro would have won this as a copyright case. Note that at least one other Hasbro property, the AD&D 1st edition rules, exists in a "free" form on the web as "OSRIC", using rules compatible with the original but without any of the copyrighted material. The Wikipedia page on the game talks about this in more depth: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSRIC>

And to be clear: "Scrabulous" almost certainly _did_ have a trademark problem, as it clearly evokes the name of the original game.

<comment><USER3> > You can't copyright the way scrabble is played any more than you can > copyright the game of "football" under the laws governing "the NFL rulebook" > (an actual document).

As companies other than EA have discovered, you can use the non-copyrighted rules to the game, but you can't use the NFL team names and logos in your version. Scrabulous picked a name that was a trademark problem and copied the board exactly to add a copyright problem to the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Created in 1938 and protected through 2063. One hundred and twenty five (125) years of protection does seem like a bit much...

<comment><USER5> Blame Mickey Mouse. An old analysis: [http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.ht...](http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN - How do Quora, Reddit and SO monetize? - <AUTHOR>

I mean they provide a great service, but surely display ads can't be their monetizing strategy.
Will each of them eventually have to revert to an Experts-Exchange styled business model?
Or am I missing something very obvious? :) <comment><USER2> In the case of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, see Jeff Atwood's (slightly dated - IIRC job candidates are no longer charged) answer to "What is Stack Overflow's business model?":

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is- stack-...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack- overflows-business-model/79448#79448)

And their Careers 2.0 employer page:

<http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer>

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit displays ads and sponsored stories (which lately have become almost indistinguishable from regular stories).

Reddit Gold probably makes them more than either of the above, but I'm just pontificating here.

SO can probably monetize pretty well with ads - their demographic is much more targetted. I think they also have a paid jobs posting service. Again, just speculating. I don't know the financials of either of these companies.

<comment><USER4> _Reddit Gold probably makes them more than either of the above, but I'm just pontificating here._

I think you're misusing the verb _to pontificate_. Maybe you wanted to say _guessing_ instead?

 _SO can probably monetize pretty well with ads - their demographic is much more targetted._

Here you're mildly pontificating when you're telling SO what they should do to monetize their service.

<comment><USER3> I think I'm using it just fine - talking out my ass.

<comment><USER5> Ah. Language drift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that no one have answered how Quora makes money.

They dont seem to have one yet.

But here are possible avenue they could explore.

[http://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business- pl...](http://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business-plan-be)

</comment><comment><USER7> StackOverflow makes money off their jobs board: <http://careers.stackoverflow.com/>

whether it is enough to support the rest of the company- I'm not sure.

<comment> why-el And the ads obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As noted, I think employment opportunities are one way to potentially get some cash. the bigger opportunity is being able to quantify knowledge and expertise in a subject. All these sites can verify and demonstrate a given understanding and communication of concepts, experience and expertise. Seems like the way to drive revenue would be to provide a potential employer or current employer with a skills evaluation or the ability to find expertise.

Plus, all have the ability to connect people who would pay for access to individuals with info or knowledge. Similar to Gerson Lehrman Group.

<comment><USER9> Interesting.

"Recently GLG has created Hightable (formerly known as G+),[26] a professional question-and-answer website, edited and organized by its community of users to compete with Quora[27] and to attract more experts to their platform."

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Craigslist is a good model: Stay lean, and find one or two small areas of the site that people are willing to pay for, then use that to fund the rest of it for free.

</comment><comment><USER11> Try posting it on Quora for a direct response from founders

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers.h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers.html)

<comment><USER13> Do you have any context for this link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure about Quora, but Reddit has Reddit Gold (monthly subscription, $4/month I think) and Ads (I'm not sure of anything else), and SO has the jobs platform where businesses are charged to post employment opportunities ($350 for 30-day listing) and again, I'm not sure of any other monetization strategies for SO.

</comment><comment><USER15> I read someone's estimate of SO's revenue a couple years back. Does anyone know if this was a reasonable estimate or not?

[http://blog.olegkokorin.com/2010/03/04/stackoverflow- revenue...](http://blog.olegkokorin.com/2010/03/04/stackoverflow-revenue- estimated/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazon's affiliate program

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/26964/auto- inserting...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/26964/auto-inserting- stack-overflow-affiliate-into-all-amazon-book-links)

</comment><comment><USER17> You know, and this got me off the Facebook: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

I'll wager dollars to doughnuts that all those sites are selling user data to Madison Ave et al.

<comment><USER18> So what about credit cards and bank accounts that have no annual fees (essentially free to use)? I suppose your money is the product being sold (in terms of interest) in this case.

<comment><USER19> Stores have to pay to use Visa, etc. So you're still paying for that credit card via slightly higher prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They have your eyeballs, now they just need someone to pay for them.</comment>


Why so many minds think alike - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/15/social.conformity.brain/index.html

<comment><USER2> Also answered in this article:

\- Why exactly you're getting downvoted on HN for that unpopular opinion you just posted

<comment><USER3> A fact that reflects well on YC News, IMHO, is that it's not _only_ having a dissenting opinion that gets you voted down, but rather being poorly reasoned, inadequately substantiated, badly stated, etc...

<comment><USER4> If you re-frame this idea a little, you can come up with a better idea of how this bit of brain function probably operates in real life. (Experiments like this are carried out in pretty artificial circumstances, after all)

HN formed after reddit started getting... frivolous. Lightweight. Unserious. Dumb and trollish. We're here in part to have fun, but it's a forebrain kind of fun.

So rather than saying that you get voted down on HN for sloppy thinking, inarticulate, lazy, or generally being a dick [1], it might be more appropriate to say that, the community punishes people for violating its norms.

Or to get pedantic about it, the community assumes each of its members will behave this way, and steps in to punish those who aren't averse enough to being different in unacceptable ways.

[1] I think one of the site's official policies used to be "just don't be a dick. You know what that means," or some such, but it seems to be gone now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking of the Asch experiments well before they were mentioned in the article. Notably, I seem to recall reading elsewhere that later attempts to replicate Asch's work failed, and suggestions that the particularly conformist culture of 1950s America was responsible. Yet this article suggests that what the subjects perceived, in the case where the question had an objective answer, actually changed according to brain imaging, not that they were made unsure and went along with the group.

"Asch talked about the power of the "minority of one." When a unanimous group pressures the individual, that group is weakened as soon as one person breaks off."

Wouldn't it be more accurate -- and perhaps more revealing -- to call this the "minority of two?"

</comment><comment><USER6> _The research calls into question decision-making bodies that operate by consensus, Berns said. For example, in the U.S. legal system, many cases are decided by the unanimous judgment of the members of a jury._

 _"You can't separate those judgments from the fact that you have 12 people who have to come to a unanimous decision, and have to conform their opinion to each other, so of course it will distort how they view evidence," he said._

I wish the article expanded a little more on that point... It's both interesting and terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is significant for entrepreneurs. Apple was absolutely on to something when it said: Think Different. Why think different? Because the masses are wrong. (In fact, the masses are asses. =) ) And this is why many startups and entrepreneurs are perceived to be pursuing inane, crazy or irrelevant ideas. Prevailing wisdom isn't, and it takes a crazy dreamer to ignore the massive and overwhelming tidal wave of group think.

</comment><comment><USER8> My take on why so many people think alike and any idea you have is usually thought up already; is that people get the same inputs.

We all read practically the same news, read the same top ten books, watch the same Tv. talk about the same subjects. Sure we all have different areas(Software Entrepenuers -> HN) but in reality we all have the same inputs and outputs no matter how special we feel.

<comment><USER5> I don't remember the last time I read a top-ten book, and my list of recently- read books is probably wildly different from yours, as are both from a random third person here. The Internet opens up news and alternative news dramatically -- it's not a three-channel world and hasn't been for a long time, which brings me to TV -- a lot of people here don't watch it at all. I don't watch much. "Same subjects" might be true from a big enough view -- there are only so many categories of thought to go around, but within politics, science, world events, local events, philosophy, games, sports, etc., there's a lot of territory to make up a huge variety of subjects that people talk about.

Oh, and even though I disagree with your post and recognize that it's irrelevant to the article, I voted it up because it's relevant to the topic at hand and shouldn't have been voted down to 0.

<comment><USER8> Thank you. I did read the article I am just saying the majority do everything the same in a similar matter with similar inputs.

When it comes down to it we are a computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to explain why many brilliant people also have such unusual quirks. They do not gravitate towards this "average" mentality (at least in some fields), and this allows them to develop greater than average ideas in other fields. Of course, none of them can truly be said to be "perfect" in their resistance to to the norm, but there seems to be a correlation. Just my $.02

</comment><comment><USER10> This explains a lot, in my mind, about how otherwise intelligent people can get pulled into cults and various other troublesome situations that rely on a prevalent group-think. It's not that you can't think of why something is wrong, but there's a strong natural impulse to go along with the crowd regardless of how wrong it is and you may know it to be.

</comment><comment><USER11> For those of us who cannot watch it: what's the scoop?

<comment><USER12> The video doesn't say anything more than the text. It's basically the first 3 paragraphs of the article (which is like 200 words?)

What's interesting about this study is that apparently they are finding that conforming people are actually genuinely perceiving the conformed opinion, rather than just pretending (which would be a simple case of cognitive dissonance).</comment></comment>


Secure Publication of Datadog Agent Integrations with TUF and In-Toto - <AUTHOR> https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/secure-publication-of-datadog-agent-integrations-with-tuf-and-in-toto/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, happy to answer whatever questions you have about the blog post, thanks!</comment>


Home Page - My ASP.NET Application - <AUTHOR> http://localhost/WebApplication1 <comment><USER2> Serious? A Asp.Net application and the url is localhost?</comment>