Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/culture/sexism-racism-social-stereotypes-100412.html

<comment><USER2> This is a novel finding and does help parse out the difference between how gender bias and racial bias form.

That said, I wish people would stop talking about Williams syndrome as if it were, on the whole, desirable. Yes, these people are blessed with some desirable traits. They are also cursed with cardiovascular defects such as aortic and pulmonary stenosis; renal defects; vitamin D metabolic defects; and often delayed development. Not to mention that their most desirable trait — a lack of social fear which makes them very friendly — is incredibly maladaptive in most circumstances.

<comment><USER3> _This is a novel finding_

Yes, that is why I would look for replication of the finding, including replications with different ways of estimating racial prejudice, before accepting that this generalizes to the whole human population. But it's always a good idea to do research on a long-standing interesting issue (racism) with a new study population (Williams syndrome patients). An astrophysicist who was one of my undergraduate teachers said that one can often make a great scientific discovery simply by putting a scientific instrument where it has never been before. (His example was putting a Geiger counter into earth orbit, which discovered the Van Allen belts.) Similarly, doing this or that kind of psychological or sociological assessment or surveying can find new results if it happens with new subjects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _99 percent of the 40 children studied_

      *facepalm*

<comment><USER5> And to finish that quote... "pointed to pictures of girls when asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars."

Yeah one kid's arm had no gender bias, but the rest of them were full of it!

Also is the 40 kids 40 kids with Williams or 40 kids total? Either way it's a pathetically small sample size, but one is way worse...

<comment><USER6> A sample of 40 may well be enough to indicate a difference, depending on how large the effect is.

But more pointedly, it's not clear to me that saying that girls play with dolls is not a fact and not just an _unfounded_ stereotype. That question seems very different from the racial one.

<comment><USER7> The problem I noted is that 99% is nonsense when your sample size is 40. 39 out of 40 kids is 97.5%. The next gradation, all 40 kids, is 100%.

The small sample size is also a concern, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An actual inability to formulate prejudice, as opposed to an ability to suppress it, would be a dangerous trait to have. Prejudice, whether it manifests itself in the form of latent tribal/racial preference or in sex/gender assumptions, is simply an indicator that the template-matching engine in the nearly autonomous, more primitive and survival-oriented areas of our brains are working properly. It takes training to associate "girl jobs" with girls and "boy jobs" with boys, or to associate skin tone with stereotype (and may we find a way to stop passing on our own training), but the recognition of "other" is probably vital to the survival of the individual. It's how we "smell danger" in details of our surroundings we may not have time to become consciously aware of. It's how we protect children and their nurturers, sometimes at our own expense, without thought of reward.

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding? Nothing -- unless you think of it as a problem of genetics.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Despite their lack of racial bias, children with Williams syndrome hold gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children, the study found. That is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied pointed to pictures of girls when asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars.

The fact that Williams syndrome kids think of men and women differently, but not blacks and whites, shows that sex stereotypes are not caused by social anxiety, Meyer-Lindenberg said."

Call me a crazy ignorant bigoted redneck, I don't think there's ANY bias in these kids minds. These kids do not think black kids are naughtier than white kids because they don't have the deep-rooted xenophobia we all do, so they just observe that on average, white and black kids are equally likely to be nice or mean.

On the other hand, girls ACTUALLY DO play with dolls more often than boys do, and boys ACTUALLY DO run around making explosion noises with their cards more often than girls do. It's not sexist to observe that. Whether you want it to be that way or not is a different question. Whether what you want is realistic is still another.

</comment><comment><USER10> In a related study, blind people showed no racial bias due to skin color.

<comment><USER11> +1 best this actually does point out something important.

If you are incapable of forming biases about your environment, you are blind to the environment input that generates racial bais in most people. As pointed out earlier, this trait is also fatal in the wild, as blindness would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The clear implication is that racism has adaptive value for primates, or at least did in the period when we layed down this trait.

<comment><USER13> It's tribal cohesion, pure and simple: keep close to those like you, and fear those not like you. I wish there was a more widespread understanding that "racism" is just one facet of our instinctual fear of the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think we can all accept that this is how we are. Its pretty consistent with what we see.

At the same time, its in our interest to treat people as individuals. Understanding our natural impulses can actually help us discount them when trying to assess the actual character of the people we meet.

</comment><comment><USER15> A mixture of LSD, psilocybin and early exposure to PBS has been proposed to also approximate this effect.

</comment><comment><USER16> And this is a "disorder", how?

<comment><USER17> "The most common symptoms of Williams syndrome are mental retardation, heart defects, and unusual facial features... many cardiac problems, commonly heart murmurs and the narrowing of major blood vessels as well as supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS)... hyperacusis and phonophobia which resembles noise- induced hearing loss, but this may be due to a malfunctioning auditory nerve... problems with visual processing, but this is related to difficulty in dealing with complex spatial relationships rather than to issues with depth perception"

It is entirely in keeping with Mother Nature that in order to get what you want, you have to make significant tradeoffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating find, but I wouldn't call this a disorder, rather a desired trait. The only issue with this "syndrome" is that they cannot process social danger signals--which I believe can be taught even though it is a fundamentally an intuitive defense.

The trade-off? "They do not experience the jitters and inhibitions the rest of us feel." Talk about a huge advantage.

<comment><USER19> It wouldn't be an advantage. I hate to break it to you, but Mother Nature knows her shit. We've evolved the "negative" tendencies we have for very good reasons and most of them are still doing their job at improving your odds for reproduction.

I suspect that (seemingly) ugly tendencies like confirmation bias, stereotyping, vengeance, shame, etc. all increase your personal odds of reproduction. Likely at the expense of society, but it is what it is.

I can understand how complete social trust and lack of anxiety would be beneficial in a perfect world; alas, we do not live in one.

<comment><USER20> Disagree. We humans are emphatically not optimized for the world we live in today. We're adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessma...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessmaximizers/)</comment></comment></comment>


NTT Internet BGP Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://as2914.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> This cluster on the left are all of the DoD ASNs [http://as2914.net/#/galaxy/ipv4?cx=4134&cy=5005&cz=-884&lx=-...](http://as2914.net/#/galaxy/ipv4?cx=4134&cy=5005&cz=-884&lx=-0.6061&ly=0.6030&lz=-0.3384&lw=0.3930&ml=150&s=1.75&l=1&v=2015-09-05v2) they really stand out as their a group on their own.

<comment><USER2> Thanks job - I was just going to point this out. Did you notice the connection to AS62010, 3DATA LLC, Moscow, Russia? Whose only other link is to AS29226, CJSC Mastertel, Moscow?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didnt see that. Who knows why they are connected! Maybe for the Moscow–Washington VOIP hotline ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wondered why this visualisation was so jumpy and unstable on my iPhone, until I sat up and moved the phone. Only example of a website I've seen which uses accelerometers and gyroscopes to navigate!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In this visualization, you can navigate through all BGP adjacencies as observed from NTT Communications' network. Each star in this galaxy represents an Autonomous System, the edges between stars are derived from all AS_PATHs in the Default-free zone as seen from AS2914.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm literally flying through the internet. This is way too cool.

Arrow keys and WASD move you around.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazing.

And try it from your phone/tablet, it's even more immersive!</comment>


No Copyright Intended - <AUTHOR> http://waxy.org/2011/12/no_copyright_intended/ <comment><USER2> It's an interesting phenomenon, not so much that many people are ignoring copyright, as that they genuinely seem confused about what it is. My guess is that it's partly actually caused by the rhetoric around intellectual property, which can backfire:

1) The ubiquitous trademark-ownership disclaimers ("All trademarks are the property of their respective owners") combined with the conflation of trademark/patent/copyright under the umbrella term "intellectual property", leads to confusion about this area, and a misbelief that a disclaimer like the one used to avoid trademark infringement can also be used to avoid copyright infringement.

2) The rhetoric around "stealing" causes people to apply a more intuitive understanding of what it means to "steal" someone else's work, which then gets interpreted as being a question of plagiarism or profiting, so uploaders make sure to clarify that they aren't "stealing" the work in the sense of claiming it's theirs or trying to sell it.

<comment><USER3> > "All trademarks are the property of their respective owners"

This is another piece of folk-law voodoo, in that, one, it is not required by any law, and, two, it does not make anything legal that would be illegal otherwise.

<comment><USER4> It indicates you're not using the disclaimed marks to indicate origin of goods and services you are offering.

If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't implemented to avoid claims that mere presentation of marks were uses of the trademark. Of course if the language works then there _may_ not be caselaw to support this as litigants _could_ have been put off suing in cases using such a disclaimer.

Are you working in TM law in some form in some jurisdiction?

IANA(IP)L (nor working in IP presently).

As a related aside the UKIPO practice on RTM in patent specifications is of interest [to me]. Generally the examiner would [I'm a little out of date], IIRC, attempt to [get the applicant to] excise all registered trademarks that weren't essential to the understanding of the piece. Any remaining marks were to be labelled in the spec with "RTM" (for Registered TradeMark). So far as I could ascertain there was no legal requirement to do this it was just pushed as best practice. Note RTM in the UK was the legal manner and not use of ®.

Labelling a mark as "ExampleTrademark RTM" is pretty much the short-hand equivalent of saying "this trademark belongs to it's owner [and not us]".

<comment><USER3> > It indicates you're not using the disclaimed marks to indicate origin of > goods and services you are offering.

You indicate this by doing it. Merely mentioning a trademark someone else owns doesn't infringe on any of the rights owning a trademark gives you.

> If the marks are shown alongside a notice disclaiming ownership then a > registered trademark owner can't (mitigating circumstances excepting) claim > that you're attempting to pass-off using their mark.

The standard of trademark infringement is confusion; having a product that is labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of what disclaimers you have, having a product that is not confusing is legal even with no disclaimers.

Trademark dilution is a bit broader but, even so, just mentioning a trademark is not dilution. You still have to use it to advertise your own product.

Here is a good overview of trademark law:

<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm>

<comment><USER4> >" _having a product that is labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of what disclaimers you have_ " //

There's the rub.

The disclaimer is the label that [attempts] to remove the confusion of the product with anything which may have originated with the mentioned marks owner.

This statement belies a position of ignorance of legal reality. You're basically saying that in TM law there is no middle ground or gray area between confusion and clarity of use of marks. There is, of course, and disclaimers simply attempt to ensure that ones position on the right side of the line is made obvious. Why do you feel a disclaimer does not speak towards excision of confusion?

I note you didn't answer my question of your credentials?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in the tail start the generation who doesn't understand copyright (though I do, having been a rapid FSF supporter).

The thing is copyright no longer makes sense. It used to, but today we have so many movies, tv shows, albums and books that you couldn't possibly read/watch/hear just one tenth of one percent of them in your entire lifetime even if you did _nothing else_. Copyright was supposed to enable society to be enriched. The constitution doesn't demand that congress make a copyright law, it merely enables it to do so. The moment the public no longer believes that copyright is likely to benefit it, it can simply stop offering it.

So that nobody makes the argument that you take away their property or that the owners somehow has a moral right to it. Nobody is taking their property away from them. What we take away is the (temporary) monopoly they were granted.

And we could properly still put limitations on the commercial use of copyrighted works -- if that had been used as an example, a lot more hands would have gone up among the students.

<comment> muuh-gnu > The thing is copyright no longer makes sense.

From a democratic point of view, it doesnt even _matter_ whether it makes sense or not. The only thing that matters is whether we, as a society, collectively _want_ private, non-commercial copying (i.e. filesharing) to be illegal or not.

Knowing that "we" probably would make non-commercial copying legal, "they" simply do not let us vote on it. Copyright is basically locked out of any democratic decision process, worldwide. Basically all existing political parties shield copyright away from democratic influence like a sanctum.

Only in the recent 2-3 years, in a number of european countries, people have realized that voting on this issue in the current system will basically forever be impossible and have formed pirate parties focused solely on getting rid of the filesharing prohibition.

<comment><USER6> Seeing as it is legal to share files non-commercially in Switzerland I'd say that worldwide is a stretch.

It's also getting there in other countries. The momentum is behind the sharing, not behind the institutions upholding the barricades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture > becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What > happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but > didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")_

Yes, that's exactly what happens: nothing. The US has had (publicly confessed) former drug users as presidents for over a decade and a half now, and look at how it changed the "War on drugs": if anything, it intensified.

This is just wishful thinking.

<comment><USER8> The War on Drugs is not a good analog for IP laws. As difficult as it is for the government to effectively ban substances, it is much, much harder to prevent people from sharing files over the internet.

The War on Drugs is incredibly ineffective, but not nearly as ineffective as any technical "solution" to piracy that would make it impossible for people to share files. Sharing files _is_ the internet. As long as people can connect their computers, almost at will, there will be ways for them to share copyrighted material.

<comment><USER9> It's a perfect analog, politically. The war on drugs is fought much more vigorously than it should be, considering how much good it does or how much public support it has, because it is very profitable for some powerful lobby groups. The fight against piracy, same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anybody has the time, I suggest reading Against Intellectual Monopoly. <http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm>. It's a fairly well thought out and well researched argument for the abolition of copyright. There are a few examples of how people can still make money off of content that anyone can access.

The basic premise is that the content creator has the advantage of releasing the material, and therefore can leverage it for profit even though others can copy the material.

</comment><comment><USER11> Copyright isn't a normal, naturally-occurring thing. It's an artificial construct made to incentivize people to make more things. So people aren't going to understand it instinctively. You have to explain it to them from scratch, show them the difference it makes, and show them their place in the system:

If you want to incentivize creators, you shouldn't copy their stuff.

That's the message that never got communicated to these "kids".

<comment><USER12> A lot of people disagree with you. When talking to folk in their 50's (I'm in my 20's) about this stuff, I often hear how intuitive it is that both copyright owners and patent owners should be paid for their work. Not just to create incentives, but because it's _just_ in the _absence_ of law.

<comment><USER11> Of course they should be paid for their work. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to restrict distribution. Thomas Jefferson argued that copyright protections are not natural, and in fact the US law specifically puts limits on which rights copyright holders can claim, and for how many years. [http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....](http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How many people in the 60s smoked pot? Just because a majority does something does not mean it will become legal.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but there are lots of alternatives to pot.

Also, pot-smoking is _smoking_. It is (and I say this in the nicest possible way, as one who supports the legalization of pot) literally a smelly habit; it affects everyone around you, _even when pursued in moderation_. You can't be in the same suite of rooms as someone who is smoking pot without noticing. The experience of second-hand pot is one hell of a lot better than second-hand cigarette smoke (and not just because I get to worry less about cancer or strain on my heart; it just smells better), but still not one I go out of my way to enjoy. Such a habit is easy to culturally stigmatize compared to, say, alcohol, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous than pot – in all kinds of ways that would take an hour to enumerate – but which bothers others not at all when consumed in small amounts.

Finally, there's a European cultural tradition of alcohol consumption (even _excessive_ alcohol consumption that bothers other people!) that is alive and well in the USA. Pot, not so much. That feature is probably what made it so hard to make alcohol prohibition stick, compared to marijuana prohibition.

There's not a lot of alternatives to learning music by mimicking other musicians, and the act of extensively reading and quoting existing published works is called _scholarship_ and is held in high regard. Quoting creative works doesn't harm the people around you; indeed, people generally enjoy well- played cover tunes, and routinely pay people to play them. And needless to say quoting stuff is a far more fundamental cultural tradition, in Europe and _everywhere else_ , than taking any particular drug.

<comment><USER15> > Also, pot-smoking is smoking.

I don't have anything solid to back this up, but I was under the impression that in places where cannabis is legal/decriminalised/cheaper, there's an increase in oral consumption, rather than smoking (e.g. hash brownies)

I'd imagine this is partly because there's a certain element of wastage or perceived loss, and the ready availability makes it more practical. Then again, things like longer onset time and duration might turn some people off.

<comment><USER14> Oh, the many, many things I don't know about cannabis.

But speaking as an uninformed outsider – clueless, but also the target market of any mass movement – the hash brownie has the opposite problem: It's almost _too_ inoffensive. It's famous as a way to hide marijuana from everyone, possibly including yourself. At worst, it's redolent of shame and fear, and at best it reminds people of things like pain management, which is not exactly a marketing winner.

Smoking may pose many difficulties, but it does have one big advantage: It's a group ritual that serves to advertise itself.

What cannabis needs is a recipe that suggests sophistication and good taste. Imagine if James Bond's favorite drink had had cannabis in it. Men and women of taste would be falling over themselves to blog about the superiority of original-recipe cannabis martinis. There would be tastefully lit Manhattan cannabis bars where your drink's ingredients would be fresh-clipped from live plants growing, hydroponically, in crystalline bowls suspended over each table.

I wonder if cannabis can be pleasurably served with coffee? The legalization movement needs to commission a crack research team of Dutch baristas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely > comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead > of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? > (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't > inhale.")

Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything about that, right?

<comment><USER17> _Just like the generation that smoked but didn't inhale changed everything about that, right?_

It brings to mind the saying, "People become conservative as soon as they have something to conserve."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is a failing of society (parents and schools) to educate children of basic ideas off laws that govern them. I don't mean that the copyright code should be explained in full for every child, but the basic premise that you shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself from scratch.

<comment><USER19> Woah! Watch out! You said something unpopular around these parts with that last sentence. I'm seeing so many people believing that it actually _is_ okay to distribute something you haven't made from scratch. I don't know why but I do suspect that they don't think of is as "distributing something you haven't created yourself from scratch". I've seen so many times in these discussions people defend pirating and saying that all software should be free and then there's excuses like "pirated works are just free marketing" and "well they wouldn't have bought it anyway".

It's very hard to explain why copyright infringement is not okay to people these days because the physical analogies no longer apply. People think theft is when you take something and deprive someone else of that thing. With digital media you're taking something but the creator still has it and that's where things get messy. But just because the author still has the original copy that doesn't mean that it's still okay to take. Then you get into the whole argument about how whichever industry (music, movies, whatever) are so rich and greedy and screw people that it's okay. True or not, it still doesn't change what's wrong with this stuff.

<comment><USER20> Even if we take the premise that it's not okay to distribute something you haven't made from scratch, there's still the issue of whether that should be enforced legally or not.

<comment><USER19> Right, thats an excellent point and I glossed over that. A lot of this touches on a very gray area. In general I'm for copyright and I'm talking about the huge number of people who think there's nothing wrong with pirating movies, music, and software and have a long list of excuses for it. Now, even I can get on board with what you're saying. The 15 year old kid who uses some copyrighted video or audio in a YouTube video should _not_ be prosecuted. And there are lots of cases like that where it would be silly to prosecute. Now, in the case of the Pulp Fiction scene reordering from the post, I don't think anyone should get in trouble and I personally think there's no need to take it down but that's not my call and I think if the creators decide that it shouldn't be published we need to respect that.

We have to remember that the YouTube system is automated though so they can't review things manually. That means no one is there to judge that gray area. So even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights.

<comment><USER20> _In general I'm for copyright and I'm talking about the huge number of people who think there's nothing wrong with pirating movies, music, and software and have a long list of excuses for it._

Frankly I think this reveals a strong bias, since that sentence directly contradicts itself: An excuse is something people have to justify something they see as wrong. I think the fact that you assume they have excuses shows you can't really put yourself in a position where copyright infringement isn't in fact perceived as wrong.

 _I think if the creators decide that it shouldn't be published we need to respect that._

Do we? Why?

 _So even in cases where we think something has been taken down for some silly copyright related reason we really can't bitch because A) it's automated and B) copyright is the law and the holders do have their rights._

Bitching against Youtube¹ is certainly pointless, but we can "bitch" if we believe the law itself is wrong.

¹ at least in cases where the takedown is mandated by law. There were plenty of cases where works covered by fair use were taken down automatically by their algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe "I downloaded but didn't share" will be the new "I smoked, but didn't inhale.")"_

If there is any way I can encourage these young people to run for office and do public service I will do it. We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the gears and sockets of our society that have 'grown up' digital and understand it. I agree with the author that this would really help rationalize some of the copyright and patent madness.

<comment> muuh-gnu > encourage these young people to run for office

Which is raising another, more underlying problem: Why do we as a society have no means to change stuff by voting on it, like in a, as it is called, "democracy"? Why is the only practicable way to change something like the filesharing prohibition, as you suggest, to give up everything else and run for a political office?

> We need to turn this thought experiment into reality, get people into the > gears and sockets of our society

What you're suggesting is basically trying to inject "our" people into the ruling caste because it is completely decoupled from the ruled one. I'd rather say that we simply need significantly more democracy.

<comment><USER22> After seeing the California initiative system up close for the last few years I would disagree that this improves matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Surely the fact that all these people have no understanding of the law means they are less likely to do anything to get it changed than if they were posting videos with "disclaimer: this is copyrighted material but I don't give a shit".

And that scares me more than anything. Not that they're breaking the law, but that so many people are this ignorant. Every time I read one of those disclaimers I want to literally rip my hair out, how can anyone not realise that it's the equivilent of shoplifting while holding a sign that says "no theft intended" is beyond me.

<comment><USER24> Because it's not the equivalent at all.

It's more similar to going into a store. Looking up the ingredients on a box of cookies and writing them down to make your own batch at home, while holding up a "no theft intended" sign.

The basic premise of theft is that you are _taking something_ away from the original owner so _they don't have it anymore_. The only thing you are "stealing" with copyright infringement is fictitious profits that may or may not exist at a potential time in the future.

<comment><USER25> I think you hit the nail on the head there with the recipe analogy. Copyright infringement is a lot more like using your own recipe to make your pizza, while depriving the pizza vendor of a "potential" sale, than outright "stealing" his pizza.

But even this doesn't make a perfect analogy, because when someone pirates something, he may not deprive the owner of a sale, because he wouldn't afford to buy it (or make it) in the first place.

However, the recipe example is still a lot closer to reality than outright theft.

<comment><USER26> I think the recipe analogy is more like making your own movie with the same plot, maybe even with the same actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why do schools and parents teach nothing about copyright laws? We're so obsessed with teaching our kids about drugs and drug laws (DARE), yet the potential punishment for intentional copyright infringement is much higher than being caught with a joint.

I do not agree with current copyright laws, but they do exist. Citizens need to have a better understanding the laws if we ever hope to have them changed.

Many people seem to be incredibly willfully ignorant about copyright stuff.

<comment><USER28> I know that personally I would be happier (as a relative term) being charged in a criminal suit such as having a joint than to be tried civilly as a file sharer. Having to pay a $250,000 fine would do just as much damage to my future as trying to get a job as a convicted felon. I'd be paying the price for the rest of my life anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In regards to "kids these days" and

> What happens when a generation completely comfortable with remix culture > becomes a majority of the electorate

Not shit.

I grew up several generations ago. We all made mix tapes, violated copyright with our VHS and Betamax recorders, Xerox machines, etc.

Then we grew up and most of us discovered we liked money and so sold out to anyone including copyright cartel who would give us a share of their take.

</comment><comment><USER30> People like to say that "kids these days" don't understand copyright, but the fact is that hardly anyone of any age understands copyright. Back in the 90's, people in their 40's and older blindly retold the fable that you didn't have to pay for shareware, regardless of what the EULA stated. I had a friend whose father was a lawyer, who had the largest collection of illegally copied VHS tapes I've ever seen. They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense.

The only thing new about the phenomenon is the ease with which a greater variety of media is now shifted around digitally.

<comment><USER31> My 52 year old mother recently asked me "do you really have a copyright?" after seeing the notice at the bottom of a website I was showing her.

<comment><USER4> You used to have to register directly for a work to be Copyright. The US I gather was one of, if not the, last place to stop doing that when they were added to the already well established Berne countries that under that same convention don't require registration.

However, internally I think the US still require registration for US citizens to sue other US citizens for infringement. Why? Must be making someone rich ...

<comment><USER3> You need to register to get anything more than actual damages, which, in the case of 99% of amateur works, amounts to somewhere between diddly and squat.

More information:

<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html>

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-software- on...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-software-online- applications-30039.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why not make your own film?

<comment><USER3> This is completely orthogonal to the discussion.

<comment><USER32> Given that the answer most certainly is _not_ "because it's illegal" or "because the media companies won't let me", I think it's at least worth considering.

HN evidently doesn't agree, so I'll leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can rip-off the labour of hard-working artists, but eventually something has to give.

</comment><comment><USER34> what is this piece arguing for? the abolition of copyright, or a revision of fair use law? copyright can be a very useful tool for keeping things free, such as using open source licenses for software and the creative commons licenses for other works.

edit: though clearly to be good for free purposes, people need to actually understand copyright. I would say that the rather modern "everyone can create" (or remix) thing, rather than just people with a background in a creative field (which would probably include some education on the topic of copyright) has created a bit of a problem. Some sort of effort to educate the public would be pretty beneficial, in my view (imagine if everyone knew what creative commons was).

<comment><USER35> _what is this piece arguing for?_

Why does it have to be arguing for something? Isn't it posing a question?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> Judging by his username, I'm guessing crimewriter95 is 16 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if most of those million videos were uploaded by people under 21.

That's a pretty lame assumption.

<comment><USER36> The assumption is because of the 95 on the username, which is a strong indicator that the author was born in 1995.

It sounds like you misunderstood and thought he was merely saying that it sounds like a childish username, which he was not. If the username was crimewriter65 it would be strongly indicating that he was 46 years old.</comment></comment>


A self-referential logic test - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1116729

<comment><USER2> <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lorch/personal/self-ref.html> an actually attributed and correct version

<http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/craft/srat-Q.html> this one is the same, but lets you bookkeep</comment>


A philosopher argues that an AI can't be an artist - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612913/a-philosopher-argues-that-an-ai-can-never-be-an-artist/ <comment><USER2> The problem—in my opinion—with arguing "an AI could never do X" is that your argument generally ends up working against you, by creating a well-bounded problem space, which is the first step to solving any problem (in this case, with AI.) I find it hard to create an argument against AI that isn't self defeating.

I personally don't see why a group of smart and soulful people couldn't assemble a database of cultural input data and train an AI to create some meaningful expressions that fundamentally change our human perspective, or change culture, or whatever heuristic you'd like to set for what makes an artist. Particularly as humanity comes to grips with what it means to be human in a post-AI world, this maybe the exact thing that becomes interesting from an artistic perspective.

I guess you could debate about attribution in that case, and a whole bunch about semantics in any case.</comment>


Today Show hosts think gamers over 30 are "weird" - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/07/today_show_gamers_over_30_are_.php

<comment><USER2> I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore gamers who are above a certain age. These games all use the same basic tricks to trigger to pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same, and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a person.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing genuinely novel games when they come out like Katamari Damacy or Braid, but that's still not more than a few hours a year. And I appreciate that gaming can have other ancillary social or parenting benefits.

But at it's root most serious games today are designed to exploit the mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of the brain.

That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and extrinsic motivation.

<comment><USER3> I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore sports fans who are above a certain age. Sports all use the same basic tricks to trigger to pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same, and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a person.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy watching genuinely novel sports when they come out like Foosball or Ultimate Frisbee, but that's still not more than a few hours a year. And I appreciate that sports can have other ancillary social or parenting benefits.

But at it's root most serious sports today are designed to exploit the mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of the brain.

That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and extrinsic motivation.

<comment><USER4> I think your comment is actually a convincing argument that we should be skeptical of hardcore sports fans rather than a convincing argument that we shouldn't be skeptical of hardcore gamers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a gamer, and I will be a gamer in a couple years when I'm over 30. But one mistake that I've seen a lot of gamers make when getting riled up over this issue of perception, including the author of the linked article, is making a faulty jump in logic -- from "The average gamer is over 30 years old [according to a variety of sources]" to "People over 30 years old are more likely to be gamers than not". I have yet to see a credible source come out and directly say this. Take a look at the ESA stats in the article comments from Lea Hill -- they're given in a way that tries to imply it.

In this regard and many others, the rhetoric around social acceptance, identity (including age, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political belief, and ethnicity or nationality), and maturity is really twisted. Most people are defending opinions instead of examining realities... I've been a lot happier since I stopped following the discussion in any serious way.

<comment><USER6> I'd also like to see a median age rather than an average. It's one of those times when one direction of the average has a limit (how young you can be and still be a gamer) while the other side of the average (maximum age) is far less limited. Lets say the average starting age for a gamer is 7, that means they can only be 23 years younger than the 'average' game, while someone who is 70 years old is 40 years older than the 'average' gamer. I bet the median is lower than 30.

Not to mention if you time weight it. When I was 15 I spent a heck of a lot more hours playing games than I do now. I'm probably still a 'gamer' because I have Starcraft 2 installed on my PC, but I havent played it in 5 weeks. When Starcraft 1 came out, I was lucky if I saw the sun in 5 weeks because I was playing Starcraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The headline refers to celebrities on the _Today_ show, not "people".

It is sometimes hard to wrap one's head around the fact that generational change happens at the speed of... _generations_. One year per year, on average. Tune in ten years from now, when the average age of gamers may well be 47, yet gamers over 40 will be considered "weird" by people significantly older than 40.

<comment><USER8> I think it's more of a "you should have kids/be spending all your time with your kids in your thirties!" thing more than a "you shouldn't be playing games in your thirties" thing. So if, ten years from now, the average age for childbirth has not increased, we may still be seeing this kind of prejudice.

<comment><USER7> Good point. Time does march on, and human activity is not age-invariant, especially after age 120.

This is also a better hypothesis because it has better explanatory power: The _Today_ show is predominantly watched by people who are not scrambling to get to work in the morning, and that group is going to contain a high percentage of people with kids, and such people think like... people with kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think many people in the Today show's late morning audience, were they to be mapped to the technology adoption curve, would be classified as late mainstream or even "laggards". Calling adult gamers "weird" plays into preconceived or outdated notions of gaming that many of them have.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I for one think this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of gamers and a general ignorance towards the video gaming community.

First of all, the question being posed is sexist, it only asks about "men over 30", which tells me there must be a stereotype about "girls not being able to game" or something ridiculous.

Their laughs disgust me, and I'm a bit scared at how many people their opinions influence per day.

<comment><USER10> _...this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of [] and a general ignorance towards the [] community._

Fill in the blank and welcome to the mainstream US mindset, where Taco Bell resembles Mexican food, Dick van Dyke can sound like someone from England, and all folk dancers stick out their elbows and move like Popeye.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For what it's worth, I think people who watch the Today Show are weird, independent of age.

</comment><comment><USER12> I bet they judge men who watch television more favorably.

<comment><USER13> Anyone who thinks of "TV-watcher" as a significant part of their identity is a bit weird, too.

<comment><USER14> The things we do that are considered weird by other have a way of forming part of our identity, whether they otherwise would have or not. Nobody thinks its weird to watch a lot of TV, so even those people who spend way too much time watching TV consider themselves "TV-watchers".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." -John Lennon

</comment><comment><USER16> I believe the inflection point when video games became mainstream was the release of the original Playstation in 1995. Prior to that point, at least in my experience, video games were strictly a pass-time for nerds. The Playstation was very successful at marketing video games to a wider, if not older audience.

People who were in their early teens when they got their Playstation are just now reaching their thirties. Anyone older than that is likely to have acquired a contempt for video games before they became mainstream, and hasn't seen fit to update their opinions in the intervening decades.

</comment><comment><USER17> Who cares?</comment>


Merry Quine-mas - <AUTHOR> http://mamememo.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-quine-mas-2010.html <comment><USER2> This should be at the top of HN for a week.</comment>


Tell HN: my results from "how to hire a programmer.." - <AUTHOR> Derek Sivers recently wrote an excellent article with advice on how to hire a freelance programmer online:
http://sivers.org/how2hire
I'm a sys admin but I occasionally need a web designer when build sites for others. I currently need a designer so I thought to try Derek's approach.  As well as writing a detailed spec I build a html wireframe showing all 3 of the pages required from the site.  I also included  detailed requirements for a logo. I posted the project to elance, odesk, guru and vworker with an hourly rate of $25 per hour or a maximum budget of $1000.  I also added the following magic phrase at the end of the description:
VERY IMPORTANT: To separate you from the spammers, please write I AM REAL as the first line of your bid.  We will delete all bids that do not start with this phrase, since most bidders never read the requirements.  Thank you for being one who does.
It has only been 3 days so far but here are the results:
Elance: 8 bids. 2 included the magic phrase
Guru: 13 bids, 3 included the magic phrase
odesk: 19 bids, 2 included the magic phrase
vworker: 23 bids, 4 included the magic phrase
Of the 11 bids including the magic phrase, 4 were from providers in the US, 3 from Canada, 1 from Romania, 1 from Ireland, 1 from Pakistan and 1 from Great Britain.  From the bids that did not include the magic phrase were from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil, and Bulgaria.
Out of all the providers portfolios the most looked like standard template monster copies. In every case the bidders who did not use the magic phrase have a poor portfolio. Many portfolios use tables for layout and (or) make strong use of flash.  Overall the quality of design is poor and from the 63 I have I have shortlisted only 3.
The experiment isn't due to end yet but already I'm feeling averse to hiring this way. The last designer I found was through sortfolio and she charged $2000 for a logo and layout/template with 4 pages but from start to finish it was a friction free process.
I will post a follow up after 4 more days if there is interest. <comment><USER2> I missed the how to hire article so I'm glad you included it. (For anyone else who did, here's the HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1445500> )

Are you going to also follow his advice and hire two or three different people to work on the the first bit of the project?

I think it's an interesting idea; it acknowledges how likely it is for a software project to fail, or to at least be mediocre. I've always wondered whether large companies might be able to do well with several teams working on the same projects, and a process where one team's code is periodically selected to form the basis of the next version, then everyone else starts from there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Comparing Sortfolio to elance is like apples to stale Runts candy

</comment><comment><USER4> Why are you surprised that a $25/hour designer uses templates and tables? Are you expecting someone who keeps current in, or takes pride in, their craft for that rate?

This seems like a pretty dubious experiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said I was surprised. In fact there is very little opinion in my post - it is mostly factual

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have deep inroads into the design industry and really good freelancers, and the absolute rock bottom price for design I can get is $40. Lower than that, you're playing with fire.

<comment><USER6> Is that $40/hr or $40 for a single logo design?

<comment><USER5> $40/hr. I'd expect to pay at at least $2,000 for an identity package which usually means some collateral as well as the "logo" itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested.

I'd also be interested in hearing how the CVs look if you kept everything else the same (including the maximum budget) but raised the rate to, say, $50/hr.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I don't end up hiring one if the current shirtlisted bidders I will raise the bid and try again. I suspect however that I will still get buds from a very large number of bidders with poor portfolios

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am also interested in seeing how this goes. If anything it looks like this is better way of finding that diamond in the rough on those sites.</comment>


After 20 Years, Maryland Man's Mac IIci Finally Dies - <AUTHOR> http://cultofmac.com/after-20-years-maryland-mans-mac-iici-finally-dies/12420 <comment><USER2> My condolences to the man and his family. We all know how it feels to lose a beloved machine. An evil conspiracy of an ex-girlfriend and, hopefully soon, ex-mother, have sent my collection of Apple IIe's to the dumpster. All that scaped were the manuals.

<comment><USER3> Of course what is lost is lost, but can't you buy one? I bought an Apple //c for $10 off eBay, as a "temporary replacement" for the one that I grew up with but had to leave at home in India.

<comment><USER4> Did you get a chance to play with the Apple archive I sent you?

<comment><USER3> I am still procrastinating it to death for no reason whatsoever! :) Thanks for the nudge dude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with 2.2Mb of data to back-up?

Can't fit it all on a single floppy disk. No wonder he didn't back up for 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER6> You know, given that this is 1980's tech, a quick refresher in circuits, a steady hand with iron and multimeter could probably identify the faulty component since he can physically see it with his eyes and even replace!

Never give up!

<comment><USER7> My Laser 128 can't read floppies ever since the magic smoke came out of it. Wonder if I could fix it.

<comment><USER8> In the eighties I bought a C64 for the price of a beer from a guy who said it was a total loss - there had been smoke coming out of it! Turned out it was just a blown fuse. The same thing happened again a few years back with a pinball machine, which also worked fine once I replaced the fuse. So check for fuses :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Finally"? He must have abused it somehow...mine is still running fine. So are my SE and SE/30. I just wish new equipment had the same lifespan.

<comment><USER4> I have a //c that was purchased in 1985 that still works but it is rarely booted these days (not even once a year). I also would expect it to last basically forever because it doesn't have a hard disk. My floppy disks might demagnetize but I've got them all backed up so the data will never be lost.

<comment><USER10> Is the battery still on the motherboard? It will lose its charge or worse, corrode, and damage the motherboard.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a battery. No need since it doesn't have a clock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only computer I've ever worn out was my first "real" box, a Mac Plus that I acquired in 1993. After a few years of faithful service, a design flaw reared its head (no fan => hot computer) and killed the power supply. Fortunately, replacement power supplies were easy to come by back then, so a quick swap made everything good as new. That computer continues to function even today, albeit more as a curiosity than a workhorse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone know what software was on this computer that couldn't run in a newer OS? Anytime I hear that I just feel baffled. Couldn't a newer machine at least emulate the older OS?

</comment><comment><USER13> My BBC B+128 is still alive. My father bought it in 1985. Just last week I managed to hook up a brand new 3.5" drive and format a disc in single density (FM).

</comment><comment><USER14> My wife had a mac from that era and it was toast. I got it running again with a logic board from the same model which I found in the back room of weird stuff for $20. I love that back room. We got the data off and now I have the data backed up like crazy.

Weird stuff is -the- place to find old hardware.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm feeling nostalgic now. I think I might go get my Amiga 500 out from under the house and see if it still works. Anyone got a spare 1084 monitor? I went "PC" when it broke back in 93.

</comment><comment><USER16> condolences, man...

bummer.

My Apple ][c is still kicking!</comment>


Does this PDF manual, saved locally, DoS your iOS 13.x Books app too? - <AUTHOR> https://thermaltake.azureedge.net/pub/media/productattach/db/support/usermanual/_43bacb0aa92a4f4eb1ada50512c1986e.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> It's Thermaltake's Core W200 user manual from this page:

[https://www.thermaltake.com/C_00002894.htm?id=C_00002894#pro...](https://www.thermaltake.com/C_00002894.htm?id=C_00002894#productattach)

Also, it seems to DoS Files app preview, which probably uses Books' rendering.

Note that it doesn't appear to affect Mobile Safari's ability to render the PDF in the browser, albeit it's really slow on complex CAD drawing pages.</comment>


Meet 'The Best Technology Reviewer On The Planet,' Who Is Only 20 Years Old - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-marques-brownlee-the-best-technology-reviewer-on-the-planet-2014-8

<comment><USER2> MKBHD is the only thing on youtube that I have ever subscribed to on purpose. I watch almost all of his videos when they come out. He's the reason I own a Nexus 5 and why many of my friends own Audio-Technica headphones now.

The guy is great and deserves the attention.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course he's only 20. We'd have it no other way.</comment>


Beyond the Flynn Effect (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond-the-flynn-effect <comment><AUTHOR> The first two comments here make me wonder how many people will read the submission through to the end. Please do. This is one of the most clear online presentations of what the Flynn effect is all about. (By contrast, the Wikipedia article is still TERRIBLE.) Contrary to what the second comment posted says, Flynn is a very highly regarded researcher on psychology. Arthur Jensen wrote in 1987, in his festschrift _Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy_ "Now and then I am asked by colleagues, students, and journalists: who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind. His book, _Race, IQ and Jensen_ (1980), is a distinguished contribution to the literature on this topic, and, among the critiques I have seen of my position, is virtually in a class by itself for objectivity, thoroughness, and scholarly integrity." And Charles Murray, surviving author of _The Bell Curve,_ wrote in his back cover description of Flynn's 2007 book _What Is Intelligence?_ "This book is a gold mine of pointers to interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses are in his debt."

Not everyone knows yet that IQ test scores have been rising steadily around the world throughout the century when IQ tests have been in common use in the developed world. Further gains in IQ are expected in most developing countries, although some developed countries (notably, those in Scandinavia) may be seeing the end of this trend. This phenomenon of IQ test scores rising over time ("secular increase in intelligence," from the point of view of psychologists) is these days called "the Flynn effect" since Herrnstein and Murray referred to it that way in the 1994 book _The Bell Curve_. That terminology has become mainstream because Flynn was the researcher who did the most to raise awareness of the phenomenon and confirm it across data sets from all over the world. Flynn had some important publications in the flagship psychology research journal in the United States, _Psychological Bulletin,_ [1] that are widely cited to this day. The 2006 lecture text linked here is Flynn discussing the implications of the rise of IQ scores, what they mean for the definition of human intelligence and what societal changes we can expect to go along with rising IQ.

AFTER EDIT: I don't fully agree with Flynn's political opinions, but he expresses them very thoughtfully, while introducing a lot of interesting data I don't see often mentioned in other books on social policy, in his book _Where Have All the Liberals Gone?_ [2] I liked that book a lot better and learned more from it than I expected to.

[1] Flynn, J. R. (1984). The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978. Psychological bulletin, 95(1), 29.

[http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/flynn1984b.pd...](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/flynn1984b.pdf)

Flynn, J. R. (1987). Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psychological bulletin, 101(2), 171.

[http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/flynn1987.pdf](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/flynn1987.pdf)

[2] [http://www.cambridge.org/tn/academic/subjects/politics- inter...](http://www.cambridge.org/tn/academic/subjects/politics- international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/where-have- all-liberals-gone-race-class-and-ideals-america)

<comment><USER2> The best simple explanations I've heard for the Flynn effect are better nutrition and outbreeding. The world today is seeing a historically unprecedented degree of migration and genetic mixing, which typically produces stronger not weaker offspring in various ways (on average).

It's one way the Nazis were utterly wrong. Their program of Aryan purity would likely have produced a master race of inbred knuckle-dragging ubermenschen.

<comment><USER3> Once you exclude the nasty effects of inbreeding, what's the evidence that mixing leads to healthier offspring?

<comment><USER2> It's actually a very complex subject. Start with things like outbreeding, heterozygote dominance, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcrossing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcrossing)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis)

There are of course counter-cases. _Nothing_ in biology is totalistic or absolute, including this sentence. :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression)

Yet most of the evidence I've seen e.g. in immunology (which doesn't suffer from the PC bias against studying it like IQ) suggests that _on average_ outbreeding tends to boost fitness to some extent. More distant crosses tend to have healthier immune systems... again on average.

To a great extent outbreeding is the entire point of sexual reproduction-- to use mating assortment to decrease the likelihood of being stuck with lower- fitness genes that keep repeating in the same lineage. If it didn't work that way we'd probably all reproduce by budding.

Edit: wacko left-field hypothesis: what if the immune system boosting effects of outbreeding have helped the human race avoid a global super-plague brought on by unprecedented degrees of mobility? In other words-- what if the genetic effects of all that mobility have counter-balanced the immunological risks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a related question: why are race and IQ so intertwined?

It seems to me that if you believe IQ is important, and that IQ tests can measure it accurately, then why deal with races at all? Just administer the test to individuals. It seems strange to be that concerned about IQ and then decide to give a low IQ individual the benefit of being arbitrarily grouped with higher IQ individuals, or vice versa,

</comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping this to be about Kevin, rather than James... oh well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Egalitarians need the Flynn Effect. They are very bothered by the reams of data showing IQ is over 70% heritable and group differences are persistent over generations. The Flynn Effect is more comforting and makes it possible to wave your hands and say IQs are rising. Nevermind that Flynn is just some random Political Scientist, not a Psychologist or psychometric expert, or genetics expert. And also nevermind that Flynn is active in left wing organizations.

<comment><USER2> I'm a liberal who kind of agrees with you.

If you want to change some miserable condition of the world, you don't start by denying reality. You start by acknowledging the way things are, and then you start thinking creatively about how one might go about changing things.

... which leads me to be an ardent supporter of all kinds of research that often falls under the popular banner of "transhumanism" \-- human genetic engineering, cognitive enhancement, augmentation of human intelligence, etc. I also think a great way to "sell" that kind of research is to position it as a way to treat severe cognitive impairment. After all, if we can allow someone born with an IQ of 50 to function normally, what can we do for someone with an IQ of 100? 150?

Unfortunately that makes me a lonely liberal indeed. Most liberals today insist on simultaneously ignoring the reality of heritable inequality and taking a naturalistic-fallacy based position against any form of human augmentation or genetic tinkering. "No GMO!" The total takeover of the "left" by naturalistic fallacy thinking is insane.

Where in nature do we see equality, fairness, or an active attempt to uplift the disadvantaged outside of very small family and kin groups? Nature is all about selfish genes. Evolution takes some meat, wads it up, and throws it at the wall to see if it sticks. Never mind that it's sentient and gets to _experience_ its success or its failure. Fuck nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The mental retardation paradox is the most humorous indictment of the popular understanding (amongst upper-middles, anyway) of the Flynn Effect.

One need only look at the quality and quantity of fin de siecle science, engineering, letters and arts to retire the concept with uproarious laughter.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does Reddit.com always complain about resources: Why not use GAE? - <AUTHOR>

Every week, I see a post or two about Reddit not being able to keep up with the growth due to lack of hardware.<p>Google AppEngine seems to have all the features they need, is cost effective, and is built for this kind of scaling. So why not use it? <comment><USER2> Google Appengine has a lot of limitations and is still sees frequent downtime. GAE is simply not a viable solution for a site with Reddit's traffic at this time.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Google Appengine has a lot of limitations"

Well, that is kind of exactly what this question is asking, right?

"and is still sees frequent downtime."

Ok, so downtime is a valid reason.

"GAE is simply not a viable solution for a site with reddit's traffic at this time."

Again, not sure if I can learn anything from this sentence.

<comment><USER2> This was on the front page of HN a couple weeks ago and can answer better than me: <http://www.carlosble.com/?p=719></comment></comment></comment>


Bootable minesweeper game in a 512-byte boot sector - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/io12/bootmine <comment><USER2> The final code takes 399 bytes, so there is still free space for the disk label (bytes 440-443), read-only flag (bytes 444-445) and partition table (446-509).

      truncate -s 100M disk.img
      dd if=bootmine.img of=disk.img bs=512 count=1 conv=notrunc
      fdisk disk.img
      # n -> enter -> enter -> enter (new primary partition, use all space)
      # t -> c (set type to FAT32)
      # w (save)
      sudo losetup -f disk.img --show -P
      # it will print the device path, e.g. /dev/loop21
      # -P is to auto-detect partitions
      sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/loop21p1
      # Now you can use e.g. GNOME Disks to see that
      # the partition is "normal" (you can mount it,
      # put files there, etc).
      # Does it boot?
      sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=/dev/loop21
      # Looks good to me, though I don't have time to play rn.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool.

nanochess has some interesting boot sector games like [https://github.com/nanochess/cubicDoom](https://github.com/nanochess/cubicDoom)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sneaky Lenovo uses/used more than 512 bytes for booting, hiding the extra code in a 1MB gap before the first partition. I got caught out when copying partition images and the boot sector over to a bigger drive (I think I was resizing both partitions or something, so didn't just dd the whole drive).

<comment><USER5> Sneaky Lenovo does more more sneaky stuff like insisting on installing their software on your machine even if you elect to install fresh Windows from other media than the one provided by Lenovo.

[https://www.windowscentral.com/some-lenovo-pcs-reload- softwa...](https://www.windowscentral.com/some-lenovo-pcs-reload-software- even-clean-windows-install-there-fix)

<comment><USER4> Yeah. That kind of nastiness came in a few years after my last Lenovo device (which was also a "business" model, so came with little crapware).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's cool. How can I learn how to do this? What's the background material?

<comment><USER7> This is a very good series if you want to build it in rust. [https://os.phil- opp.com/](https://os.phil-opp.com/)

That minesweeper game seems to only use the vga buffer and that blog series explains that tech very well.

<comment><USER8> I doubt you'd be able to fit compiled Rust into 512 bytes, though.

<comment><USER7> True, fitting a game and a boot loader into 512 bytes is very impressive. You can build pretty tiny rust binaries if you don't link the std library though. Check this out for some tricks: [https://github.com/johnthagen/min-sized- rust](https://github.com/johnthagen/min-sized-rust)

That blog post explains the vga buffer quite nicely so you should also be able to use the same information when writing assembler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of working on my C64. When I was young, I thought this was how all programming would be done.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can easily add a DOS/Windows/Linux bootsector as an optional bootmenu entry in Windows, but usually you will need to enable the CSM/Legacy BIOS feature of the mainboard if all you have is a UEFI system.

Although UEFI actually requires booting to MBR-partitioned USB drives even without CSM enabled, often this does not work due to simple engineering failure.

Also the Windows NTLDR and/or BOOTMGR, will need to be present on an Actively Bootable Marked primary FAT or NTFS volume of non-GPT partitioned drive hardware, such as floppy, HDD, CDROM, SSD, USB stick or SD card. Proper MBR and Windows VBR would be expected to be in place according to whether you were using NT5 (ntldr) or NT6 (bootmgr) at the time. Plus the target bootsector(s) (each in the form of a file) will need to be available and accesible by the WindowsNT boot process. Desired NT5 or NT6 bootsectors can be properly placed using BOOTSECT.EXE. The resulting bootsector can then be copied to a 512-byte binary file using a disk editor or the dd command in Linux.

With NTLDR you will also need NTDETECT.COM, and a BOOT.INI file which contains the bootmenu. BOOT.INI is a plain text file which can be edited using NOTEPAD.

With BOOTMGR you will also need a \BOOT\BCD folder/file which contains the bootmenu. BCD is a binary file which can be edited using BCDEDIT.

Either of these Windows bootmenus is always present, but bypassed on bootup if there is only one bootentry (such as the usual single Windows default entry), or if the TIMEOUT is set for zero or too few seconds. Adding a second entry to your already-present Windows bootmenu is what makes the menu visible upon bootup.

.

Therefore adding a bare-metal bootmine option to Windows NT5 PC's (while simultaneously enabling the NT5 multiboot menu) is quite easy and straightforward:

On a regular Wxp system, copy BOOTMINE.IMG to the root of your C: volume.

Edit your BOOT.INI something like this:

[Boot Loader]

timeout=10

Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[Operating Systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

C:\bootmine.img="Bootmine bootsector gaming"

Note: for DOS reference, a C:\bootsect.dos="DOS on FAT32 volume" entry in BOOT.INI can be _conveniently_ abbreviated as simply C:\="DOS on FAT32 volume". IOW (on the C: volume) if the bootsector file you wish to load is named anything other than BOOTSECT.DOS, you must specifiy the filename explicitly. C:\BOOTSECT.DOS is the filename given by Windows to the automatically saved DOS bootsector when an NT system is installed over a DOS/W9x system, before the DOS bootsector is overwritten with an NT bootsector.

.

The equivalent bare-metal bootmine option on an NT6 system is quite easy and straightforward also, provided (using CSM if necessary) you have installed W10 on a traditional MBR-partitioned (not GPT) drive:

On a MBR W10 system, copy BOOTMINE.IMG to the root of your C: volume.

Using an administrative command prompt, BCDEDIT to add a bootmine entry:

bcdedit /create /d "Bootmine bootsector gaming" /application bootsector

_Windows will reply with the GUID it automatically assigned to your new bootentry:

The entry {your-new-bootmine-guid-here} has been successfully created.

_use that guid to complete your new bootentry, add it to the items displayed upon bootup, and adjust the timeout with the following commands:

bcdedit /set {your-new-bootmine-guid-here} device partition=c:

bcdedit /set {your-new-bootmine-guid-here} path \bootmine.img

bcdedit /displayorder {your-new-bootmine-guid-here} /addlast

bcdedit /timeout 10

You may also need to disable Windows SecureBoot if present for a UEFI system to work, sometimes even with CSM enabled.

To later remove the new BCD bootentry use the following command in an administrative command prompt:

bcdedit /delete {your-new-bootmine-guid-here}</comment>


'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

<comment><USER3> This is surprisingly like the first step you'd take if you were about to start hacking the firmware on an embedded board: before you change bits, you upload a known good firmware to prove your programming process is working correctly.

<comment><USER4> But the next steps looks more like software on a computer: You'll have to fix all those compilation-errors on first run, then look out for bugs in the software. Finally, when you ship the software, people use it and report other bugs. And since you can't update running processes at the current moment, you need to terminate and replace it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Better write up: [http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/first- functional...](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/first-functional- synthetic-bacterial-genome-announced.ars)

<comment><USER6> Or <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958>

<comment><USER7> My favorite part from that article:

 _So that the assembled genome would be recognizable as synthetic, four of the ordered DNA sequences contained strings of bases that, in code, spell out an e-mail address, the names of many of the people involved in the project, and a few famous quotations._

<comment><USER8> I guess sooner or later the random mutations may make these string "corrupted".

<comment><USER9> I hope they included checkbits!

<comment><USER10> it may be a misconception but i think that checkbits are a feature of organic dna?

<comment><USER11> Yep! There is some error-checking built into dna-replication. The protein that does the replication is called DNA Polymerase. From its wikipedia article:

Error correction is a property of some, but not all, DNA polymerases. This process corrects mistakes in newly-synthesized DNA. When an incorrect base pair is recognized, DNA polymerase reverses its direction by one base pair of DNA. The 3'-5' exonuclease activity of the enzyme allows the incorrect base pair to be excised (this activity is known as proofreading). Following base excision, the polymerase can re-insert the correct base and replication can continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gripe: "artificial life" already has a somewhat lengthy history of usage, referring to emulating biological activity or traits in software or hardware. It's often shortened to just alife or a-life.

It's related to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and the like.

It would be nice if the using-real-chemicals-and-alive-stuff hacking were called "synthetic life", or something to distinguish it from existing terminology.

<comment><USER13> That use maybe should have been "simulated life" all along, so as to be more exact. This is a living organism that is artificially made, "artificial life" applies to it just as much as the other subject. Though the more specific terms that capture the way in which their somethings are artificial are good too.

<comment><USER12> 'This is a living organism that is artificially made, "artificial life" applies to it just as much as the other subject.'

Maybe. But if you end up with a living organism, then that it's not artificial life; it's life (albeit artificially manufactured) . Whereas the software stuff is never anything but artificial.

Long run I'd expect anything that's alive to be called life, regardless of the process that lead to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Call me a luddite, genetic engineering gives me the willies.

<comment><USER15> Luddite.

In all seriousness, the dangers brought up in the article can only come from a person lacking significant knowledge of bacteria.

Unimaginable numbers of bacteria permeate every part of the world, including miles within the earth, deep sea volcanic vents, radioactive waste, the rain drops falling on our heads, and us, up our noses, in our skin pores, our guts, etc.

Those simple bacteria evolve at staggering rates, and swap genes like DJ Danger Mouse mixing tracks.

Any new synthetic, or extraterrestrial, or magical, life form would have to compete. And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche.

The grey goo danger often thrown at nano-tech, is possible only if we violate one or more of the basic laws of thermodynamics.

And when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria, well we are already doing a great job of breeding those within ourselves.

But if you grew a barrel full of MRSA and then poured it down your toilet, the SA wold quickly lose its metabolically expensive MR. Because there is no Methicillin in the sewer, the resistance to Methicillin is a disadvantage. And the only way the Staphylococcus aureus could survive is if it dumped this feature.

But luckily you're probably taking antibiotics so you are a niche where MRSA can out-compete and thrive.

<comment><USER16> > And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre- > existing niche.

Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Not being constrained by needing to have come from slow gradual iteration might open some possibilities, some terrifying. Biology doesn't produce the wheel.

To consider this as a possibility is not to believe in magic.

<comment><USER17> > Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds.

There's no comparison.

I'm sitting here looking out the window at my car, and there are caterpillars out there that are moving faster than it. Not only that, but that caterpillar can refuel itself. And it'll turn itself into new ones next year. In the meantime, my car will sit and rust.

Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved.

(And I'll apologize for the tangent, but this is also the fatal conceit of those who believe that any central authority can manage our economy any better than the market can on its own.)

<comment><USER18> _"Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved."_

Why? Technological progress through logical deduction is patently more efficient than evolution through natural selection. Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan.

Just because a caterpillar can self-replicate, doesn't make it better than a car in every single respect, otherwise we'd be riding caterpillars to work. In terms of self-replication and regeneration, nature has us beat (for now). But if you want to send packets of information halfway around the globe, there is no biological process that comes anywhere close to our technological capability.

 _"(And I'll apologize for the tangent, but this is also the fatal conceit of those who believe that any central authority can manage our economy any better than the market can on its own.)"_

But it can, or at least, a market with regulatory oversight is more efficient than a completely unregulated market place.

Natural environments and unregulated markets suffer from very similar problems. They don't magically gravitate toward the most efficient solution; very often they'll do incredibly stupid things that would leave an intelligent observer scratching their head.

However, natural selection does produce very _robust_ ecosystems, which is why life has flourished for millions of years, and why caterpillars will outlast your car.

Logically, the best approach is to combine natural selection with intelligent oversight. Left to its own devices, an unregulated market has a tendency to fall into traps which benefits an individual or subgroup for a short time, but disadvantages the market in the long run. The Prisoner's Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons and the Market of Lemons are all common effects that can be circumvented by intelligent regulators, but would cause great damage to any market left to its own devices.

<comment><USER15> _Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan._

They key words here are: "in a number of areas"

In a number of areas indeed. Can a plane fly without oil drillers, oil refiners, fuel trucks, and jet fuel?

Or in a more generalized form: For some X, thing Y is better at X.

Having said that, I in no way belong to those people who think that nature is magical and humans can never do better.

We can quite easily make incremental improvements some of the time.

Note that I consider it an improvement if it still does everything else equally well and some new things better.

If on the other hand, it can't do some things, then it is only useful in _a number of areas_.

So a plane is not an improvement on a bird, but a bird immune to some pesticide would be an improvement IF that immunity didn't have a huge cost.

Or we can say it's better only when lots of that pesticide is in its environment and worse otherwise.

<comment><USER19> I think quoting oil drillers is not really opportune at the moment if you want to give an example of how the damage from technology is going to be 'limited'.

<comment><USER15> See there's thing thing called an apple and this other thing called an orange.

And there's this discussion about artificial and natural micro organisms competing in the same niche. Like using light energy to capture CO2 for example.

And then there's oil drillers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Announcement here [http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/first-self- replica...](http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/first-self-replicating- synthetic-bacterial-cell/overview/) with the press release, a FAQ and some fact sheets (and the video is promised to be available soon)

</comment><comment><USER21> So when do we get dinosaurs?

</comment><comment><USER22> they've got root

</comment><comment><USER23> DNA: Now jailbroken.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here are my questions about this, hope you smart folks don't mind chiming in:

How do you physically put DNA into a cell? A very small needle? Or is there something fancier?

How were the synthesized pieces of DNA produced? Very tiny robotic hands pushing the molecules together in the right sequence?

How did they stitch together the synthesized pieces of DNA? What would say which pieces go with which?

<comment><USER25> Bacteria will often take up DNA from their environment, and this ability, called "competence" is widely used in molecular biology. In this case, they treated the cells with a chemical called polyethylene glycol, which increases the efficiency by which the cells can pick up the DNA molecules. The procedure for transplanting genomes was described by the same group in a paper in 2007. It is possible to use a small needle ("DNA microinjection") to inject DNA into cells; one can also use an electric field to disrupt the cell membrane and force DNA into a cell, which is called electroporation. In this case though, the PEG transformation was sufficient (and because these artificial chromosomes were so large, they might not survive being shot through a needle or zapped with electricity too well).

The initial pieces of DNA (oligonucleotides) are synthesized chemically - <USER2> components are added to a reaction one at a time, and the reaction is controlled so that at each step, only one base gets added. There is a lot of chemistry optimization and QC to be able to make relatively long fragments accurately. They ordered the building block pieces (1080 bases long) from a company called Blue Heron, which specializes in putting together long DNA molecules.

The sequences were designed to be partially overlapping, so that the complementary sequences could fit together. Overlapping pieces of DNA can be combined by a process called homologous recombination. There is existing machinery in the yeast cells that they used to join together such complementary sequences. The molecules were assembled hierarchically, so they first made 10kb fragments, then put 10 x 10kb together to make 100kb fragments, and then finally put the 10 100kb fragments together. The overlapping sequences at the ends determined which fragments will stick together.

<comment><USER24> Wow thanks. That explains a lot.

What's PEG? The electrical method you mentioned?

So if the DNA pieces overlapped did that overlapping base pairs somehow get removed when the pieces were joined? Otherwise I'd think the next final DNA sequence would look a lot different from what they were intending to copy.

<comment><USER25> PEG is the abbreviation for PolyEthylene Glycol. Just a chemical they add that makes the transformation work more efficiently.

DNA, as you probably know, is a double-stranded molecule, and the strands have complementary sequences. When the overlapping pieces are joined, one strand of one molecule overlaps with its complement on the other piece, and vice versa - the pieces aren't just joined end-to-end.

see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologous_recombination> for all the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perspective: [http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/05/ventners-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/05/ventners- not-all-that/57046/)

(I am not currently well-informed enough in this area to either advocate or not this perspective, just providing it.)

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a huge deal, and I'm not surprised to see that Craig Venter had something to do with it. Kudos!

<comment><USER28> This is a nice step for technology and a _really_ huge deal for human culture and religion.

A certain _Someone_ said once "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth."

That certain Someone later said: "Behold, man has become like one of us..."

<comment><USER29> I can't decipher which English-speaking reader of the New Revised Standard Edition post 1989 you are referring to, _how elusive_!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nature article [http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.253.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.253.html)

Nature asks and eight experts comment on significance [http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.255.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.255.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> Advancements like this make it feel exciting to be young and have so much time ahead of you. The future is bright. Science is key.

<comment><USER32> _Advancements like this make it feel exciting to be young and have so much time ahead of you._

What, you're still using your original telomeres?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome. Literally, awe inspiring. We now have a compiler for the code which is DNA. Now we just need a "Hello, world!" app :)

<comment><USER19> We'll see if it is awesome, if the compiler is buggy it might turn out to create a 'killall' app instead.

This is great news, but with this new power comes also a very large responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> very informative video on guardian from Craig Venter: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig- venter-s...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter- synthetic-life-form)

</comment><comment><USER35> Oddly enough this makes me feel a bit impotent. Here I am playing with my 1's and 0's... like a caveman. :-p

<comment><USER36> You're using base 2 (0 and 1), they are using base 4 (A, G, C and T)... Not that different, really.

<comment><USER37> Could this mean a step towards biological computers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> They just copied the genome of an existing micro-organism.

Making changes to the genome to accomplish some task is much harder to do.

<comment><USER39> You're probably getting negged because you appear to be disparaging the accomplishment. But yeah, they did copy over an existing dna structure, they didn't create one from scratch.

However, the scientists did (according to the arstechnica article, posted above) have to remove a section of the DNA (something to do with the bacterium cutting DNA originating in yeast into small pieces... sigh, wish I understood this sort of thing). So they did actually make modifications to the genome, I think...

<comment><USER7> To be disappointed that they used existing DNA to do this is uninformed. We are _so_ far away from synthesizing a completely novel form of life from scratch. This step is needed before we ever get close to designing our own cell — it's the leap from using hand tools to CNC.

<comment><USER39> I agree that disappointment in this accomplishment is crazy, it's an amazing feat

That said, people can sometimes go batty and start thinking something was achieved when it wasn't. I think it's reasonable to clarify that this isn't a full realization of "artificial life" just yet (though it clearly is a partial realization, as the scientists did alter the genome (also, apparantly they removed potentially disease-inducing strands of DNA, according to the NYTimes). The poster who got negged expressed this distinction in a fairly dismissive fashion that appeared to disparage the achievement. But you should be able to point out (diplomatically, one would hope)that a monumental achievement isn't an even more monumental achievement without being accused of minimizing the achievement itself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Mandatory: [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/c6dea/synthetic_lif...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/c6dea/synthetic_life_breakthrough_announced_by/c0qeydc)

<comment><USER41> That comment can safely be ignored. It makes lots of vague accusations about Venter, and one concrete accusation - that Venter is responsible for patents on genes involved in breast cancer. That accusation is wrong: it's a reference to the BRCA patent by Myriad genetics, which has nothing to do with Venter.</comment></comment>


Thinking About Function Signatures in Elixir - <AUTHOR> http://rob.conery.io/2015/10/07/thinking-about-function-signatures-in-elixir/ <comment><USER2> That looks neat. But it also looks to me like your error variant has the wrong arity.

      def charge_customer({:error, err}), do: {:error, err}
      def charge_customer({:ok, cart}, card) do

The first one takes a single argument {:error, err}, but the second one takes two arguments, {:ok, cart} and card.

Same issue with the keyword list version, your error function doesn't take a keyword list at all, just the {:error, err} argument.

<comment><USER3> The first function matches any call to it with an error - this is how (apparently) you pass error information on to the result. There's no graceful exit with an error.

The keyword list is pointless with an error function.

<comment><USER2> No it's not.

The error pattern makes it so that if you pass an error to the function, it just pipes it through and returns the same error. That's different than throwing an error, which is what happens when you call a function with the wrong arity.

Which is to say, using the function as defined, if verify_cart() returns {:error, err}, and I pipe it to charge_customer(card: foo), then instead of getting the expected {:error, err} value back out, instead a %FunctionClauseError exception is thrown.

On the other hand, if it were defined as

      def charge_customer({:error, err}, _), do: {:error, err}

then I would get the expected {:error, err} back out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord This is, of course, exactly identical to how things work in Erlang, as well. A lot of conditional logic is done implicitly through polymorphic functions of the same arity that pattern match on parameters. Proplists are a surprisingly versatile data structure to exploit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Man, cases like this just make me appreciate pattern matching in function signatures even more.</comment>


Japan's groundbreaking bullet train is 50 years old - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/shinkansen-bullet-train-now-50-years-old-2014-10?op=1

<comment><USER2> That's pretty cool. I had a chance to travel on the Shinkansen from Osaka to Tokyo last year. It was in the evening and so I couldn't see Mt. Fuji or anything. But it was just incredible esp. the part where the train bends like a bike to take corners.</comment>


Redis Lua scripting implemented: how to play with it. - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/post/scripting-branch-released.html

<comment><USER2> I think there needs to be some way to store scripts on the server. I like the CouchDB method of a storing a view as a special document. Could use a Hash to store the code along with metadata (version, last modified, etc).

That said, if Redis can EVAL a script stored as a String or a Hash->Key, the client can deal with registering and versioning scripts.

Awesome work btw - been looking forward to scripting in Redis for a long time

<comment><USER3> Have a look at the bottom of the article, antirez suggests that a EVALSHA command might be implemented that would allow specification of a script by a SHA1 hash.

Seems like a good idea to get the rest of it sorted before deciding on that bit though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two things: 1) I think this is really cool, especially the guarantee that your script is executed with the same atomicity as an internal command. That gives you a lot of freedom to write simple stuff in a simple way without too much worrying about concurrency (the INCREX sample on the linked page is a good example of what I mean - the data doesn't change between the "exists" and the "incr" call).

and 2) this opens a whole new playground for NoSQL injections: I don't know a lot (well. anything) about lua embedding, but I could imagine that these lua scripts somehow could get access to the file system. This means that you have to be really, really careful not to expose redis to the outside world and not to have it execute injected commands.

<comment><USER3> The fact that it allows separate arguments should make injections vulnerabilities a lot less likely to happen by accident since there shouldn't be any need to interpolate you arguments into the code string (this would also mess up the compiled function cache so you definitely want to do that anyway).

Also, LUA is a very small at core and I don't think it by default includes things like file system access. You pretty much just get what the host applications gives you, which in this case seems to be just the Redis API.

<comment><USER5> First, it's Lua. Not LUA.

Secondly, it does include filesystem access by default, and right now there is no decent protection against it. Hopefully, sandboxing will be implemented before this reaches anything related to stable.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be correct on both of those points.

Sandboxing Lua does seem quite easy though: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1224708/how-can-i- create-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1224708/how-can-i-create-a- secure-lua-sandbox)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would this work like a stored procedure in e.g. MySQL, though with the disadvantage that it will not actually be stored within Redis and the advantage that it uses a more powerful language, Lua?

<comment><USER7> It looks that way. I've been playing with it and I've found two ways to actually store and reuse scripts though:

1) Use loadstring() to compile and run a script from a Redis key. _EVAL "return loadstring(redis('get', KEYS[1]))()" 1 foo_

2) Set a function as a global value, and call that. _EVAL "myfunc = function() return 42" 0_ _EVAL "return myfunc()" 0_

antirez said in his previous post (<http://antirez.com/post/redis-and- scripting.html>) that storing scripts has some problems with regard to Redis Cluster, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> the lua api of redis seems a bit un-lua like, redis.exists('key') would be better also, returning a boolean for exists instead of a number, but it's such a small nit-pick that it hardly wants mention

the possibilities this brings is quite huge tho, so quite excited

<comment><USER9> I quite like that the Lua API is a single function, because it means it completely forward compatible already - the Lua API won't have to have new methods added to it when Redis gets new commands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, it also means: scripting engine _completely_ decoupled from all the rest. Also it is much simpler to do things like dynamic execution of commands, redis(my_command,"var")... or alike.

<comment><USER8> But it is just as easy to do that will a full userdata in lua. You just hook up the newindex metamethod. Even more powerfull</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Experiment: From coder to marketeer in 1 summer. Promotion Suggestions needed. - <AUTHOR> http://www.peakr.net/blog/2007/06/experiment-can-coder-learn-marketing.html <comment><USER2> There is this great myth that a marketer is critical for start ups. However, all the marketing you need for web apps is to verify that there is a serious problem that you can solve/alleviate. If you build something truly useful with a specific group in mind, then marketing will be easy. When people's hair is on fire, and you're the only one with a fire extinguisher, it's not going to be a hard sell. IMO, most hackers have trouble identifying and solving a worthwhile problem.

For your specific application, social networking for climbers, is there really that much of an interest? Is this something that climbers want? Will you be able to compete with Facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> good points yubrew, but without giving it an honest effort you can't find out.

It's not like competing with Facebook, more like competing with Digg. I think niche-specific aggregation sites can be interesting & I've decided to give it a summer to prove me wrong.

climbers do spend a lot of time hunting for videos, pics, news online, so I think aggregation can work, on a small scale

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What have you done so far? As a climber/boulder-er myself, I think climbers can be qualified as an affinity group. In other words if you can get a few climbers using the site (and they like it) they should pass the info about your site to other climbers. Or think of how most climbers use the internet - what sites do they use - that's another source of marketing ideas (think cross promotions). Have you tried to post information about your site on relevant blog/forum sites?</comment>