Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip/ <comment><USER3> I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't personally want to. You may even find some of their arguments compelling. I love it.

<comment><USER4> Has anyone used the greenarray technology for any real world applications? It seems to fit somewhere between an FPGA and a microcontroller, but it doesn't seem that obvious to me what the benefits are, maybe less power than a microcontroller but I can't find any clear cut evidence that is the case for a real world application.

<comment><USER5> you may find the following presentations in using ga144 entertaining, even if stretched. as Chuck Moore once said (I'm trying to get the ref) Forth is about sharing ideas rather than code. these videos are not pure coding session (even if they have their own share) but a mix of engineering and problem solving. \- echolocation like bats \- heart monitor \- digital image processing \- building ga144 controlled robot \- low speed usb host

youtube channel of Daniel Kalný [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVMrX6BlNjIeGfX0QcBobGg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVMrX6BlNjIeGfX0QcBobGg)

hope you enjoy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Greetings from Greg Bailey in Cheyenne, Wyoming where GreenArrays can say, paraphrasing Steve McQueen at the end of the superb movie Papillon, "We're still here, you Bastards!!!"

As an experiment, I will be happy to address any question that anyone might have, including those appearing in this thread, at the GreenArrays shop and lecture hall in Second Life. I propose to stand there, virtually, at 0800 PDT / 1500 UTC / 1700 CET / Midnight in Sydney, AU, on Wednesday, 13 May and again on Saturday, 16 May. The SLURL for the shop is [http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Deneb/80/228/27](http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Deneb/80/228/27) and the name of the shop is "GreenArrays Ventures". My name in SL is GregBailey with UUID f64abbc5-7136-40db-9dd0-a174d93d8742 and I will wait for one hour before logging if no one has shown up.

The experiment will be interesting, whether or not it produces positive results. Failing that I may find time to reply on these threads, and we do reply to questions sent to sales mailbox, domain greenarraychips.com.

So, see you Wednesday or Saturday, perhaps. Advice: To minimize wasted time, kindly go to [http://www.greenarraychips.com](http://www.greenarraychips.com) and do a little studying, or perhaps audit some of the lectures on the arrayForth Institute that is linked from the above, or preferably both.

For the questions about what is it good for, anyone who can multiply the average power of a typical edge device in the "Internet of Things" by whichever fanciful power of ten (we are up to 12 now, are we not?) the Visionaries expect to exist of those edge devices, and then contemplate the obscene amount of average power that product represents, should be able to grasp that by wasting orders of magnitude less resources, including energy, than others do, we ought to be obviously good for something there if nowhere else:)

And now back to work on a software defined GPS receiver. I look forward to meeting anyone who might make it on Weds or Saturday!

I wish you well - <USER2>

<comment><USER6> I stood around for an hour and ten minutes this morning; Daniel could not make it due to a family afternoon outing in CZ. End of experiment, with negative results. However, thanks to whoever made the Second Life account RawNerve, but could not make it as "early" as 0800 PDT, for your interest. Back to emailing us if you have any questions. We do answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me a lot of the Parallax Propeller: many simple cores optimized for bit-banging I/O and programmable logic. Of course this is much lower power and has many more cores.

I think that many core architectures can actually be simpler to program in an embedded context than the traditional single core systems. It's akin to a hardware implementation of the actor model rather than an interrupt state machine or interrupt event loop. Being able to dedicate cores to single I/O tasks means you can bitbang almost anything. Here's HDMI running in a few lines of code on a Propeller 2 with no external components but the HDMI connector: [https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1475075/#Comm...](https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1475075/#Comment_1475075)

<comment><USER8> The DEFCON 22 badge was done on a Propeller. I did a little pokeing around on it--very interesting architecture. But they don't all run at once.... It's just a way to switch contexts instantly.

<comment><USER9> That's not what the datasheet says. It says:

 _"... its eight processors, called cogs, that can perform simultaneous tasks independently or cooperatively..."_

 _" True parallel processing with eight symmetric 32-bit processors (cogs) in one microcontroller"_

 _"20 MIPS per cog, 160 MIPS total with all cogs running"_

 _"All eight cogs are driven from the System Clock; they each maintain the same time reference and all active cogs execute instructions simultaneously."_

[https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/P8X32...](https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/P8X32A-Propeller- Datasheet-v1.4.0_0.pdf)

The shared _hub_ memory is only accessible to one core at once and which one has access is switched between in round robin fashion, each core getting a turn to access it once every 16 clock cycles. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of?

<comment><USER8> Yes! Thanks! 8 years ago, it's hard to remember things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Recorded at Strange Loop 2013. Please add (2013) tag.

Edit: [https://thestrangeloop.com/2013/programming-a-144-computer-c...](https://thestrangeloop.com/2013/programming-a-144-computer- chip-to-minimize-power.html)

<comment><USER11> Added. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The grid layout and having chip(let?)s communicating with the four neighbors reminds me a lot of TIS-100 [1], I'm wondering if the game was inspired by this chip.

Hopefully the real chip is easier to program :-).

[1] [https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/)

<comment><USER13> I swear that the line limitation in TIS-100 was just to drive me nuts. The shear number of times I just needed ONE MORE LINE... Loved that game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Architecture and further details on the GreenArray chip:

[http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#GA1...](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#GA144)

<comment><USER15> Do they need to optimize for reduced memory/communication patterns? Or is that going too far

AFAIK, the memory-communication power can increase by orders of magnitude if u go off-core, off-chip, off-cache, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A more accessible version of some of these ideas: [https://www.parallella.org/](https://www.parallella.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can I repeat my question: how to get something on-hand (like the board, the programmer and even the working environment setup) per this document [http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/support/index.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/support/index.html)

It is very strange. It is like a shop without a front to get things, but keep on trying to tell you - once you got it, you can do wonderful thing.

What is the point?

<comment><USER6> You can place orders for chips and evaluation kits right on the website; take Product Offerings in the menu on the left side of the browser, and you will see this page: [http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do they need to optimize for reduced memory/communication patterns? Or is that going too far

AFAIK, the memory-communication power can increase by orders of magnitude if u go off-core, off-chip, off-cache, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Strange it is all software like. Any hardware to see, to buy one or few times try, emulator to see etc. both the video and the YouTube by another guys seems no such thing.

<comment><USER6> See reply to your other post :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940552)

</comment><comment><USER18> I saw this talk live at Strange Loop 2013, and I'm going to be a contrarian: I wasn't impressed. I don't mean to bash Chuck Moore. Forth is cool, and this chip looks neat, but my impression is that this is a solution looking for a problem. Chuck Moore is having a lot of fun working on it, but he fails to convey why this is useful.

The impression that I had is that the whole talk was Chuck Moore going "look at all the cool assembler tricks I can do!". At no point did he ever demonstrate how his chip could be used to solve anything resembling a real- world use case. Instead, what he demonstrated was that his architecture was very esoteric and impractical to use. Some time could have been spent explaining how this chip can do some common computation (matrix multiplication, image processing, anything) more efficiently than an ARM chip or something we're already familiar with.

He didn't really provide any benchmarks of anything, be it performance or power consumption, and my understanding was that, at the time the talk was given, based on the Q&A session, that he had no customers buying said chips (I wonder why?).

<comment><USER19> They're making their second-generation chip right now, and I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious solution for.

Chuck Moore is bad at presentations to outside audiences. This should surprise no one familiar with the man. This doesn't make the tech less useful, though.

<comment><USER20> > _[...] I think there are a bunch of problems that this chip is an obvious > solution for_

If those were really obvious, tachyonbeam wouldn't have to ask ;-)

In your opinion, what _are_ problems for which this chip would be a solution?

<comment><USER19> 'tachyonbeam didn't ask.

The most obvious one is AI. These things are _incredibly_ parallel & entirely self-contained, and a consumer desktop PSU could power countless amounts of them without a second thought. At $2,000 for 100 chips ($20/chip), you can start to do some _really_ interesting stuff for the cost of a consumer laptop.

It's natural that AI is a problem this chip excels at, given Moore studied under McCarthy and all.

If you feel morally okay with playing with proprietary software, I _really_ recommend playing a little bit with the simulator of the chip. Given what's intuitive with one or two, you'll probably be able to see the possibilities much better after an hour or so of play.

<comment><USER20> > _The most obvious one is AI._

I seriously doubt that. The cores on that chip are extremely memory-limited: 72 _bytes_ per core, that's about 10 kiB per Chip! And if you want to access SDRAM, you need an _external SDRAM controller and bit-bang it_. Gee, I wonder what that does to throughput and latency...

This chip's competition isn't GPUs and AI engines, but very low-cost, low- performance FPGAs, and it would probably lose. Given the extremely constrained environment of the individual cores (no cache, extremely little memory, a stack-based architecture), FPGAs are probably even easier to program.

There are no commercial applications, it's a toy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: "Attendize" – An open-source ticket selling alternative to Eventbrite - <AUTHOR> https://www.attendize.com <comment><USER2> I'm very interested in this, just one question, how do you handle ticket "hording".

I had an issue with eventbrite where if the tickets are free people will just open several tabs and order 10 at once.

Is there some kind of IP checking ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually something that I spent a lot of time trying to get right. Currently when a user selects their tickets and clicks 'Checkout', all other sessions they have open will be cancelled and their reserved tickets released.

This still doesn't stop people from completing the checkout process and then starting again though. It's a tricky thing to prevent as most preventative measures are easily circumvented by users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting and nicely done from the screenshots, but there's massive friction to take a real look. There should be a link to a live demo, front and center.

<comment><AUTHOR> Demo up and running now: [https://www.attendize.com/documentation.php#demo](https://www.attendize.com/documentation.php#demo)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I find new job before telling current job about surgery? - <AUTHOR> I am a disabled software engineer at a mid stage startup who is planning to get an experimental surgery with the expectation to improve my quality of life. The recovery time is expected to be 6 to 8 weeks before I could return to work; although one patient recovered in 4 weeks. Several others died.
Should I request unpaid leave from my employer or just find a new job with a start date after a conservative recovery time? I am specifically concerned that revealing any weakness will compromise my compensation negotiation position. It is already a chore with my current employer to receive pay increases to accompany increased job responsibility. Management has a stronger position than I realized when I accepted the job. The tech side is very simple and much more of a minor contributor to the business value compared to sales and structural customer lock-in. Almost all of the engineers are second world contractors from multiple different agencies whereas the handful of stateside employees' purpose seems to be quality control through code reviews.
Has anyone here taken time off for surgery? Do you wish you had lined up another job offer first instead of requesting leave? Did management grant leave and then later retaliate after you returned to work?
For the small fraction of outcomes where I die, is there a best practice way to notify your employer? I know that companies often subscribe to services to monitor employees social media and LinkedIn for signs of disloyalty (looking for another job). Do these services also send notifications if a resource dies? I am interested if sending a courier with a Hallmark "I'm sorry for your loss" card could possibly be the first place they find out? <comment><USER2> It sounds like you aren't very happy at your current job, so by all means look for a new job. That said I wouldn't like the stress of starting a new job immediately after recovering from surgery. Why not request leave and after you come back start looking for a new job?

As for notifying them that you have died, maybe you can ask a close friend or family member to do it?

(Edited to add: in the case that recovery takes longer than expected you definitely want to be employed, so quitting your job and starting a new one is maybe not advisable.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a difficult situation.

Your health comes first, and don't worry for a second about what might happen to your employer in negative situations.

But the issue would be difficult to navigate for someone very familiar with the details.

'Legality' may be of secondary concern here unfortunately - you may be entitled to certain rights, but often companies just don't care and will screw you, leaving you with no choice but to sue etc. - nobody wants to deal with that.

It's rational for them to not necessarily want to pay you more, even for ostensible promotions, but it doesn't mean they don't value you.

Also - consider that everyone is human on some level, you may want to let them know you have to go in for some kind of surgery without disclosing any of the details at all. You may want to indicate that you can have your Doctor contact them. This may seem odd, but maybe you literally want to get a Doctor's note which indicates the seriousness and recovery time without getting into any details. The Doctors note will legitimise the situation so they'll 'have no doubts' \- and with that documentation on file, they'll think twice about doing something screwy: if you end up in small claims and a Judge sees they have something like that on record, it can't be good for them.

Maybe once you've let them know, you can try to judge from their response the level or career risk you face. You can perhaps offer to 'work out a time' with them if that's an option for you.

It can't hurt to put out the feelers for another job as well.

Good luck with your situation. Life is long, your health is the priority.

In the long run, if you find that you're seriously in a situation wherein your company won't cut you some slack for something so serious, then it's almost definitely time to move on.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> The FMLA allows eligible employees to take up to 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period to care for a new child, care for a seriously ill family member, or recover from a serious illness.

In order to be eligible for FMLA leave, an employee must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months, have worked at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work for an employer with at least fifty employees.

<comment><USER5> You have to have 50 or more employees for the business to be required to follow FMLA.

<comment><USER4> That is literally the last line of my post.

But good to emphasize.

If you missed it, OP might have as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you looked into possibility of going on short or long term disability? Where I live (CA), I've never worked for a company that didn't provide disability insurance. A few year's ago I severely broke my arm requiring surgery - my manager offered me the option of applying for disability so that I could take the time off for recovery while still receiving some percentage of my salary. Good luck with your procedure!

</comment><comment><USER7> Talk to your employer and ask for leave - even if you choose not to go back, it is a safety net. If there are 50+ employees, they must grant you leave under FMLA laws. If not, they should grant it out of human decency. If you also want to look for another job, go right ahead. Taking leave does not obligate you to return, and I have seen a few people take leave and then just not come back, in various organizations.

As far as notification if something goes badly (hopefully it won't be a concern), just make a list of who should be notified and give it to whomever is closest to you. My wife and I have that anyway... our "In case I get hit by a bus" documents.

I have taken time off for surgery before, and based on my experience, I have one more bit of advice - forget about work for a while. Just worry about your own recovery. Stressing over a job isn't how you should be spending your energy during a time like this. You'll know when it is time to start thinking about it again - there comes a point during recovery from major surgery where you are tired of recovery and want to start doing something again. That is the time to start thinking about work, not before.

</comment><comment><USER8> I went thru spine surgery, being diabetic from poor health habits and a sedentary job ... Programming, did not help my situation. It takes time to heal and a stable health is necessary to take interview without looking desperate. Also on a new job, to qualify for FMLA one needs to be atleast with the employer for a year. I would not resign a job, if I was in your shoes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Milk them for all they've got. This is about your quality of life, keep your insurance in the green and do what you think is best for your health.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish you a long and happy life. I'm sure surgery will go fine and you'll be alright! A colleague of mine went through some surgery(appendicitis), and he was bedridden for a while. I think he was on paid leave. I believe, one would have more leverage with current employer, where you have established goodwill to cash. I would suggest, stick with the current employer, for now. One may also hire lawyer, if you're concerned about surgical complications. Once you are out of the hospital, well healed, then start a new adventure! One problem at a time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you have benefits at current job? Also maybe check into FMLA to see what kind a protections you have most places have to honor and sometimes pay a % of whatever your monthly salary is. FMLA protects your position, and job i believe for up to 12 weeks time off.

</comment><comment><USER12> y, I took FMLA or tried to when our son was born, they weren't happy and were letting me know they were trying to find any loop hole they could to get out of it, and said there might or might not be a job for me when I came back.

I ended up taking the leave with them, I ended up finding a new job while I was off that started when my FMLA ended.

As far as if you die, don't worry about how your employer will find out. They don't worry too much when they let employees go. As an employee that shouldn't really be a concern for you to worry about.

Focus on your health and having a successful surgery. Good luck, I hope it improves your quality of life.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does your company offer short term disability? Many companies have it.</comment>


Ask HN: Etcd or ZooKeeper? - <AUTHOR>

What do you see as the pros and cons of each, and why do you prefer one over the other? <comment><USER2> I'm the main author of Apache Curator (a ZooKeeper JVM client/lib). My biggest concern would be availablity of reliable, well tested implementations. For example, Curator gives you well tested locks, leaders, registries, etc. If you have to roll your own versions of these things you're bound to mess it up. I've never used etcd so I don't know if it has that.

Another thing to consider - is something else in your stack using ZK. ZooKeeper is a component in a lot of existing open source libs: Kafka, Hadoop, etc. So, if it's already in your cluster you might as well use it for other things.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are you looking to do? Provision these services once and then leave them or are they something you want to be able to auto-scale?

From my experience zookeeper is rock solid from an operations perspective when built on top of the right infrastructure (follow their best practices) but if you want something that you can scale via automation it's kind of a pain. We were able to hack up some stuff to do it but it wasn't ideal. Additionally I feel that their documentation and API are a little less friendly compared to the others. It also feels much "heavier" compared to etcd in my opinion.

I haven't touched etcd in over 6 months and it's my understanding that it has changed quite a bit so keep that in mind. I felt the provisioning process for etcd was a bit painful at the start but once you had a cluster up and running it was easy to add new nodes. The API was really easy to get started with as well but being such a fast moving project there were a couple of times where the documentation I had found ended up being out-of-date aka wrong.

Have you looked at consul by chance? We actually ended up using it as it seemed to be a good fit between stability, ease of use and maintainability.

<comment><AUTHOR> > What are you looking to do? Provision these services once and then leave > them or are they something you want to be able to auto-scale?

Lately I've been doing Leader Election and Service Discovery with ZooKeeper. I've really appreciated the excellent documentation and thoroughness of the best-practices information.

> ...It also feels much "heavier" compared to etcd in my opinion.

Agreed 100% there. ZK also imposes some [rather harsh] limitations - e.g. 1MB max response packet size. Not sure how this compares to the limits of etcd or Consul.

> Have you looked at consul by chance? We actually ended up using it as it > seemed to be a good fit between stability, ease of use and maintainability.

This is not the first time I've seen Consul mentioned. I'll definitely add it to my list of possible future fits :)

The operability of ZooKeeper seems unparalleled, likely [largely] due to being the most mature OSS solution in existence for this domain.</comment></comment>


European Teslas to have built-in Rdio  - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/07/tesla-rdio-support/

<comment><USER2> I hope Tesla won't bundle crapware you can't uninstall.

</comment><comment><USER3> This feels like the crapware that gets bundled on some phones.

<comment><USER4> Have you used the Tesla music system before? I use Slacker extensively in the car, and it's entirely skinned to match the car interface. I have no commercials or ads in my streams and the only branding is a small logo in the corner of the music display (which I don't have to have on screen to use). It's not an "app" in the typical sense, just a service that powers the music player.

I would expect it to operate much the same way with Rdio. You'd buy the ad- free plan ($9.99/mo vs $3.99/mo for Slacker) and get the same experience.

<comment><USER3> _Have you used the Tesla music system before?_

No. Can you install your preferred streaming music sources, such as Grooveshark or Pandora or Last.fm?

Can you remove all signs of Slacker if you decide you don't want to be bothered with it?

<comment><USER3> Rather than downvote, perhaps someone could answer the questions. I'm genuinely curious how things are set up in a Tesla. I've not used one so I don't know what options are provided.

Weird that asking how something works pisses people off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Source: [http://gigaom.com/2014/02/06/rdio-teams-up-with-tesla-for- it...](http://gigaom.com/2014/02/06/rdio-teams-up-with-tesla-for-its-first- automotive-integration/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow a CEO talking to users. What good idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Electric Cars Will Help to Kill the Planet [https://stephenrees.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/electric- cars-w...](https://stephenrees.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/electric-cars-wont- save-the-planet/)

I am very in consent with the outrage that William Rees dares to disseminate [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugv0OY6LyuE#t=450](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugv0OY6LyuE#t=450)

<comment><USER8> Will they fix the problem? Certainly not. Are they a step in the right direction? Almost certainly yes.

The main problem with cars I see is that they're inefficient as opposed to mass transport (as Rees seems to suggest in the first article). Additionally, by suggesting that they are the solution, this creates a false sense of security in people having "done their part" to save the planet. For example, if I recycle, that's good, but it hardly means I've eliminated my carbon footprint.

However, where I disagree is that I believe developing these technologies -- engines that can run more efficiently on electricity -- are inherently useful to us building a more sustainable future. If we're able to build electric tractors, boats, ambulances, ATVs, etc. built on top of this technology, then that is no doubt useful.

<comment><USER7> I had to come up with the aspect of sustainablity because it is of utmost importantance in the postoil we have entered whereas it remains outside the mainstream, as opposed with the topic (the electric car), which are deceptevly sold as a synonym of sustainablility, whereas it is opposite because of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

There is also one problem with your recycling analogy. Recycling is always a good thing (after Reduce and Reuse, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy#How_the_hierar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy#How_the_hierarchy_works), of course), no matter what. But, relaying on automobiles is not. The automobile is the source of evil - itproduces antisustaibale environment, aka "urban sprawl" www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPS1y81b1Bw

<comment><USER8> You could make the same argument about recycling. Making unnecessary packaging is a source of evil, in that it uses tons of unnecessary energy and resources. Recycling makes this system incrementally better. Additionally, recycling in some cases uses more carbon than it saves (through transportation, processing, etc.) -- I've heard this figure in relation to NYC's recycling program, in particular (although I don't have a source offhand).

I see what you mean about the idea of efficiency vs. consumption (Jevon's Paradox), although this still ignores the idea that certain automobiles will continue to be used (such as ambulances, construction vehicles, etc. as I mentioned before), and also ignores resources should be eventually used in as much of a closed loop as possible (i.e. solar power to charge your Tesla). For the time being, we don't have the infrastructure to support solely public transportation, so in the meantime it is reasonable to use electric vehicles.

<comment><USER7> > For the time being, we don't have the infrastructure to support solely > public transportation, so in the meantime it is reasonable to use electric > vehicles.

You put everything upside down. You do not have the efficient infrastructure _because of automobiles_ and, by representing automobiles as something recycled, your perpetuate this wasteful infrastructure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$99 Mineserver: The Devil Is in the Details - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2016/03/17/99-mineserver-the-devil-is-in-the-details/ <comment><USER2> > First we needed a mobile app to administer the server so we hired an > experienced mobile developer through guru.com. His credentials were great > but maybe it should have been a tip-off when, right after we made the first > payment, the developer moved from Europe to India... We were naive. The > original development estimate was exceeded in the first week and we were up > to more than 8X by the time we pulled the plug. Still the developer kept > trying to charge us, eventually sending the project to arbitration, which we > won.

This smacks of the client not knowing how to use a developer. Meaning: I can imagine they made a simple (probably incomplete) scope or product definition document, didn't realize where the complexity actually lay, found someone cheap, and then realized that no one had the ability to actually shepherd the project to completion. They knew nothing about their developer -- and she or he knew nothing about them. And they weren't paying that much, really. So it wasn't a huge priority in the developer's life. And maybe the dev was young or just kind of between things and something more important came up or whatever. It actually takes some thoughtfulness to be a professional freelancer. Can be harder sometimes than it looks.

Cheap overseas developer talent is fine. But. There's also a huge value to finding people who you can sit down with and talk to. Meet. Get to know a bit. Professional freelancers will absolutely help naive clients identify and avoid pitfalls from the start. We (professional freelancers) have already fallen into them all and generally have the scars and callouses to know what it really takes to produce good software in a freelance environment. Professionals know how much time and effort it actually takes to do things. They'll tell you if your "I need a Facebook clone next week" project has any chance of success. They'll help you with design and they'll help you understand the trade-offs between money, time, and functionality that all software projects must make.

Sounds like none of that happened here.

Anyway. This just touched a nerve for me. Maybe I'm totally off base.

<comment><USER3> From The Article:

> But $7500 in the hole is not much cost to start a technology business.

Unless I missed something, it doesn't sound like they paid the developer much at all.

<comment><USER4> 7500 / 15 = 500. 500 units times $99 is $50K. With that kind of budget (that's everything, not just dev time) you can't hire a top-line developer.

<comment><USER5> 7500 can get some good (although limited) development done around here (Portugal). Dunno how much time it would take whatever they needed though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Between the port forwarding and security and other kinds of hassles of running a server in your own house, I just used digitalocean hosting for a minecraft server for my kid a few years ago, $5 a month. Here's a script to install the Cuberite version mentioned in the article: [https://github.com/cuberite/cuberite- ocean](https://github.com/cuberite/cuberite-ocean)

Now there are free services like Gamocosm which shut down your digitalocean server when not using it, so that it might only cost $1 or so a month: [https://gamocosm.com/](https://gamocosm.com/) Meaning it would take 8 years before it cost as much as a Mineserver box.

<comment><USER7> _I just used digitalocean hosting for a minecraft server for my kid a few years ago, $5 a month._

What are your ping times like?

<comment><USER8> Also curious, as I ran a $10 droplet to host a Terraria server and the ping- times were >200ms from Vancouver, BC to San Fran. Was basically unplayable, with usage spiking out. Now, it was simultaneously hosting Mumble and an (effectively blank) node site, but still.

For what it's worth, I also hosted a Starbound server, and so long as people weren't doing anything crazy and the population never exceeded ~4-5, things were fine.

<comment><USER9> Home internet should crush those ping times right, because thats how ISP optimize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main thing that surprises me is how someone can be a tech journalist for years and then try launching a product using someone else's trademarks, and not expect to get a cease-and-desist.

<comment><USER11> Cringley is not a single journalist, it's a persona, kind of like the Dread Pirate Roberts.

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

<comment><USER12> Yes, but Mark Stephens (this Cringely) is arguably _the_ Cringely, in that he was the one who made the column popular, and he published a book ( _Accidental Empires_ : [http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions- Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions- Competition/dp/0887308554)) under the name. So there have been other Cringelys, but when people say "Robert X. Cringely," they almost always mean Mark Stephens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm disappointed that a respected technology journalist can misapply the term open source so completely. If he actually meant that java can be decompiled and therefor is 'open source' then why the hell did he capitalize the phrase?

<comment><USER14> Cringely is more unintentionally entertaining than respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Minecraft, which is written in Java, is nominally Open Source_

Minecraft is not open source by OSI's definition and doesn't even have the source code available. The Minecraft server is distributed as a compiled JAR file. What does the author talk about?

<comment><USER16> they should have just used a true open-source minecraft: [https://opensource.com/life/15/9/open-source-alternatives- mi...](https://opensource.com/life/15/9/open-source-alternatives-minecraft)

<comment><USER17> "Cuberite is licensed under the Apache License V2"

<comment><USER17> Would someone like to explain the downvotes? Claiming that the use of Cuberite is not "true" open source is like someone in 2011 claiming that a webserver with SPDY can't be "true" open source because Chrome is proprietary.

<comment><USER18> I assume because Cuberite is only a server component, the examples in the linked article are all open-source minecraft-style standalone games or clients.

Most customers probably want Minecraft, with the mods for the original and such, and not something "minecraft-style", so I don't think that would have been a good option. Maybe a nice extra, but this project really doesn't look like it needs "nice extras" that add complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Nominally?" Pretty sure no.

"Minecraft, which is written in Java, is nominally Open Source, but there are some peculiar restrictions on distributing the code."

<comment><USER20> Mincraft is not open source. There's way too much entitlement in this post. "How dare you make it hard for me to not profit off of your success."

It's very clear in the terms of service that you cannot make money from Minecraft mods and that only Mojang is allowed to make money from the game. It has always been this way. It's been in the press many times and anyone wanting to make money from Minecraft should know this. Making money from the success of someone else's project should always involve a bit of research.

The ways that people have made money from Minecraft is by providing hosting and by streaming themselves playing Minecraft and making let's play videos. Another way is to host your Minecraft mod on adfly and make ad money from the downloads page. That's pretty much it.

They should have known this beforehand. I knew it and I don't make mods for Minecraft.

<comment><USER21> All they're really doing is providing another hosting solution. It happens to be personal hosting. So sure there are differences between this and a hosting services, but I don't really see a problem.

<comment><USER20> What's in the article sounds like way more than that and it's really the whole tone of the article that bugs me. Yes Mojang doesn't have to let you use its IP to help you market your thing. Yes Mojang can dictate the terms of their product, and no you don't get special treatment because you know people at Microsoft or have a widely read blog. Like really? The article is dripping with petulant self-entitlement. It's disgusting and I say that as someone who usually likes the author.

<comment><USER17> Minecraft certified hardware sounds like a win-win to me. Making that _offer_ is not petulant self-entitlement. You're being ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I am not interested in the specific project, If/when I have kids, I would gladly pay 7500 dollars to have them excited and apply themselves to a project with real world business.

To have the realizations the struggles and successes of such a project, and have that under their belt before they graduate high school is a wonderful achievement.

What a great project!!

<comment><USER18> There is also ~32000 dollars of other people's money at play. I wouldn't write this project off as failed yet, but it sounds like an attitude of "it's a fun project for the kids and we don't really know what we are doing" that doesn't seem to appreciate this fact. (EDIT: on the other hand, he is backing it up with extra money, instead of trying to fail out of it cheaply somehow)

The comments on the article are interesting to read, with people arguing both sides.

<comment><USER22> Agreed, I was commenting on the losing 15 dollars per unit angle, but you are right that there is a burden of responsibility when using other's money. Another part of the great lessons here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have to question the phrase in the second to last paragraph, in the context of servers disappearing from the net:

"It's the final bug, . . ."

Uhhhh.....seems optimistic at best especially considering their experience so far.

<comment><USER24> While still poor writing, in the paragraph a couple up where they start talking about it they say:

"What we hope is our final technical problem "

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think it's interesting that he continually says "we" throughout. As if his kids are really contacting developers and talking with suppliers and mojang lawyers etc. I'm sure they're doing something meaningful like installing the software on the boards and assembling them, but it's pretty clear who is doing the real work

</comment><comment><USER26> A few years ago this desire to profit off of minecraft washed over a small part of the NYC VC scene with a few higher profile firms investigating some people who said they wanted to "solve" problems with minecraft. Anecdotally I found that everyone I talked to was doing so because their kid was into it and that they all looked at me cockeyed when I said "you know that doesn't sound like something a for-profit company would be ok with."

</comment><comment><USER27> yeah, sounds like a typical month at a startup. don't worry, next month will be even worse, and you'll probably have even less money.

what's amazing is how few journalists actually have gone through this process, and how even fewer write about it.

the fact that he wrote a huge blog post about it means he's somehow surprised it's almost always this hard to do actual work on products and services -- which is why success is so vaunted and worshipped, not because it's fun and glamorous, but because it's basically getting just the shit kicked out of you 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER28> " _His e-mail address is right on the case and if something doesn't work he can ssh, telnet, or VNC into the box to fix it._ "

Hopefully the telnet mention is just a stylistic phrase, rather than really meaning they have a telnet daemon enabled by default.

<comment><USER29> Based on the rest of the post, I think that hope might be unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This might be Cringley's first time on the other side of a product launch, which makes it interesting to watch him eat his share of humble pie after countless articles opining on someone else's delay in shipping a product.

<comment><USER31> "[A] new fact has now become painfully clear to me: you don't say you have a working product unless you really have a working product"[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely#Controversy)

<comment><USER32> He has a working product with this blog. It's so entertaining he should get into doing a satirical Silicon Valley rag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The fact that these kids have been able to develop and distribute a product, even if they are not making money, is awesome. The experience and skills they gain with this project will be incredibly valuable for every future projects and jobs. It would be great if schools could offer this kind of hands-on experience with real world applications.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think that you should have a call for programmers right in your kickstarter. Not saying it would have worked in this case necessarily, but having someone actively interested in the project is a great asset.

</comment><comment><USER35> Another interesting project post-mortem from Robert Cringely was his ambitious attempt to design, build and fly an airplane in 30 days as part of a PBS documentary _Plane Crazy_.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1998/pulpit_19980724_0005...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1998/pulpit_19980724_000578.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> This is the first time I've heard of Cuberite. I love the concept, but this has to be a copyright violation, right?

<comment><USER17> Copyright of what, specifically?

<comment><USER36> The protocol that Minecraft developed for their client/server?

<comment><USER18> A network protocol doesn't really have copyright protection, and it seems unlikely Mojang has anything special in there patented. As long as it is cleanly reverse engineered there is not much legal attack surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are lot of services out there that do free hosting for minecraft nowadays, for example: [https://server.pro](https://server.pro) It also gives you a control panel to control your server, supports plugins and has a handy web file manager.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm hearing a lot of gold plating that shouldn't have been in 1.0. Wifi? Mobile app? A slick server that is incompatible with their admin panel? Dynamic DNS? Skip those for Mineserver 2.

<comment><USER39> Aren't wifi and a mobile app essential for their target market? The impression I get from this article, and from going and taking a look at the Kickstarter campaign, is that a big part of the audience is supposed to be people who don't know very much about computers and networking. A lot of these people have a home network that is entirely wifi, running off the wifi router built into their ISP provided cable modem.

<comment><USER18> If I added it up right, more than half of the backers selected a version without wifi. And are there really devices around that only provide WLAN and don't have Ethernet ports?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> personally i understand that father is involved and wants to help. But a valuable lesson would be having the kids write the investor update, learn to face the failure.

I get that they are only 11, but if your going to have them launch a business they should learn the ups and the downs. Otherwise just post your prototype on Hack-a-day and have it be a fun family project.

</comment><comment><USER40> I thought you could distribute OpenJDK freely.

<comment><USER41> I think he was talking about the Minecraft server software not being able to be distributed pre-compiled. Not the runtime environment.

I could have misread it though.

<comment><USER42> I'm pretty sure what they're referring to is a quirk of how Minecraft mods work.

The official Mojang Minecraft server code is closed-source, and is distributed as a .jar file. It does not natively support mods. Mods work by decompiling the Minecraft server .jar, patching it, and recompiling it.

The results of this process are non-redistributable. That's probably what the article is (confusedly) referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Sounds about right, kickstart an idea you had, then try and pay a bunch of consultants and hired coders to make it a reality.

<comment><USER44> Guess he should solder his own mobo, and pull himself off the ground from his bootstraps, like real startups do.

Or, like most businesses, contract out specialty work and put pieces together into something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Looks like they ran into some issues. But an amazing experience for the young boys. I'm not sure many would have that sort of life experience before their first job, let alone before college. Well done to the parents for helping their children to do this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Minecraft codebase is rewritten in C++. New additions of minecraft will be C++

<comment><USER47> This is 100% false.

Minecraft has a 'Windows edition' that is written in C++, and a main version that is in Java. Both version will continue to exist, and be updated, AIUI.

<comment><USER48> I can't believe that they'll maintain both in perpetuity. The Windows edition will probably become the official version the moment that it's feature complete, and the Java version will become the "legacy version" that's never updated again.

<comment><USER18> Not in perpetuity, but until it is there the Java version will be further developed, and there has been no indication at all when this might be the case. I'd expect the console versions to be integrated before they touch the main one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> For all the people with negative things to say, tell me, does your business ideas run without a hitch?

<comment><USER2> You're right. No one who has ever done a wrong thing is ever allowed to have a negative opinion about what someone else is up to. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What a shocking surprise Cringely has no earthly idea how tech companies actually get things done. He's becoming more irrelevent every day, thankfully.</comment>


Founders Fund Makes Bet on Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiels-founders-fund-makes-big-bet-on-bitcoin-1514917433 <comment><USER2> I'm bullish on crypto, but there are many better ones out there other than bitcoin. The scaling and transaction cost issues that have been on display for the past couple of months should scare anyone heavily invested in it. Without serious usage, what good is it?

<comment><USER3> Ok, what's going on here is that people have this expectation of Bitcoin not based in reality.

Bitcoin was not designed to be a high-throughput currency. It's a store of value.

You put your money in it and let it sit. That's it.

If you don't want to do that, don't use it. But that's what it's for. Or at least what it's evolved into.

I think it can cause a gigantic speculative bubble that will put people like Thiel in control over even more wealth in the world than they already have – if BTC goes to $1M/coin, what do you think will happen? $10M? There's no upper limit.

But that's a separate issue.

Bitcoin doesn't have to do anything except what it was designed to do. And it was designed this way. Satoshi certainly thought through this scenario and specifically decided to do this, and not something else. So those who are putting money into BTC are betting on Satoshi's original vision.

Now, do you think Satoshi really believed BTC would be the only crypto? I think he knew others would spring up. He solved the byzantine generals problem with sybil resistance. Of course he knew others could solve it too, in slightly different ways.

So I think he just said "Well, let them do that." And hence, use different cryptos for different circumstances.

<comment><USER4> Where does this "bitcoin is a store of value, not a medium for exchange" nonsense come from? Literally the first line of the white paper:

> A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments > to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a > financial institution.

<comment><USER3> And it is. When you pay Coinbase, they send you BTC. Then you're free to send your BTC around if you decide the $20 transaction fee is worth it.

<comment><USER5> In that scenario you're not using bitcoin, you're asking a centralised, trusted third party to adjust a couple figures in a database.

If I wanted to do that, I would ask my bank to do it, because they're better at it.

<comment><USER6> Which is fine until they decide to freeze your assets.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that is the problem with relying on Coinbase. You have essentially no recourse when they freeze your assets, which happens a _lot_ more often than the banking system, with its consumer protections and actual regulations.

<comment><USER6> That's why you don't store assets on coinbase...the whole point of crypto is that it allows you to be in exclusive control of your assets. Why is that so hard to understand?

<comment><USER5> The response when somebody tries to do transactions on-chain:

> And it is. When you pay Coinbase, they send you BTC. Then you're free to > send your BTC around if you decide the $20 transaction fee is worth it.

The response when somebody tries to do transactions off-chain:

> That's why you don't store assets on coinbase...the whole point of crypto is > that it allows you to be in exclusive control of your assets. Why is that so > hard to understand?

The important thing is to make sure that no matter what anybody does, they're wrong, and that way bitcoin cannot possibly have any flaws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really wish I knew how he is hedging his bets on this.

One of the first rules you learn in managing other peoples money is always hedge the downside. Or put another way, you need asymmetric upside/downside risk inorder to make any investment.

One of the biggest risks to bitcoin is the old saying that in down markets all products have a correlation of 1. Meaning when panic sets in, leveraged firms, which is almost all hedge funds, have to deleverage.

Unfortunately, in a large crash this means that everything gets sold pushing down prices more and causing another round of selling.

If the US cash equities markets does have a large crash this year, bitcoin is in the cross hairs as one asset that could have a selling spree that retail money has no hope of supporting.

 __EDIT __

Ah this is his venture capital fund, so I guess the LP 's are used to not being able to hedge and hence the naked speculation is appropriate....

<comment><USER8> Founders Fund: $3,000,000,000

Invested capital at risk: $20,000,000 (the 'hundreds of millions' is based on how much that investment has appreciated)

I think a more appropriate "first rule" would be don't freak out and over- analyze a risk that represents 1% of your portfolio.

<comment><USER9> Jesus, that is some money right there.

Always boggles my mind when something in the value of billions is compared to millions.

20 million is .6% of 3 billion. The math is simple and straightforward but the real world metaphor as applied to cash actually blows my mind.

<comment><USER10> People generally have a hard time to understand the dimension between billionaires and millionaires, they are not in the same category at all.

<comment><USER11> I agree by numerical value the difference is huge and under appreciated. But like many things wealth is correctly perceived logarithmically not linearly. There aren't hundreds of shades of gray between a millionaire and a billionaire, there are few steps, I wrote about them here [http://www.kmeme.com/2017/11/the-richer- scale.html](http://www.kmeme.com/2017/11/the-richer-scale.html).

<comment><USER6> Is that a joke?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Surprised it took so long. The original thesis for PayPal was as a digital currency not controlled by a single entity but as we know, the final implementation was short of that. In that original pursuit Bitcoin ticks a lot of the libertarian boxes.

</comment><comment><USER13> No one seems to be talking about how venture investors have transformed into cryptocurrency hedge funds over the past year.

The conversations you see from VCs has similarly changed - instead of talking about teams building enterprise value, you hear something that sounds more like speculative bubble FOMO language.

Maybe i'm wrong, feels ominous.

<comment><USER14> Batten down the hatches.

It won't be long before investors try to find ways to triple their returns, scheming and repackaging begins akin to '08\. Derivatives and CDO-esque shit. You know your 401k will in some way be underpinned by some vast quantity of poorly rated repackaged crypto assets.

And good luck with regulating this nascent market in Trump's America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/ajjKB](http://archive.is/ajjKB)

</comment><comment><USER16> How is a 1% position in a VC fund a monster bet?

</comment><comment><USER17> Reddit discussion, with a cached version:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7nod60/peter_thiel...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7nod60/peter_thiels_founders_fund_makes_monster_bet_on/)

</comment><comment><USER18> 15-20mill is not a big bet in terms of BTC market.

</comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps he has cornered the market(1) for bitcoin, and is even now manipulating the price...

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

<comment><USER20> 15M-20M in bitcoin is nowhere enough to "corner the market". there are hundreds (?, maybe thousands?) of whales with more ownership than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if he also has money in Ripple and Ethereum.

<comment><USER22> Ripple would be too centralized for a libertarian.

<comment><USER23> Is it though? I thought the "Consensus" protocol was just as decentralized as anything else and is mostly different in that it allows nodes to say which other nodes they trust. That and it makes more realistic assumptions about how important it is in practice to avoid history collisions.

From what I understand, the Ripple people are only making libertarians mad because they're not opposed to making a crypto system which could actually be easily adopted by existing institutions which does not make them "centralized" by default. Being able to process more TPS doesn't necessarily make you centralized.

<comment><USER24> No, Ripple depends on a handful of so called "validator" nodes. Right now the handful of validators that exist are all run by Ripple themselves. Double spend protection in Ripple comes from trusting validators not to defraud you. So Ripple is neither trust less or decentralized in the sense that the original Bitcoin whitepaper would describe the concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a bonus, this press release will create a fresh wave of greater fools for him to sell into.

</comment><comment><USER26> Good. I hope he loses it all.

<comment><USER27> Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN, regardless of how bad you feel someone is? You may not owe them any better but you do owe the community better if you want to participate here, the same way you wouldn't drop litter in a city park.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> He bet wrong. Should have made a monster bet on Cardano.

<comment><USER29> Why?

<comment><USER30> Because they have a vastly superior PR department. And all the company's employees have PhD's.

So you're bound to get a cryptocurrency so complicated that no layman can figure out its problems until it's too late.

<comment><USER22> my thoughts exactly (knowing how academics work)

<comment><USER28> This isn't pure academics. It's applied and constrained by time and resources. 2020 is when IOHK's funding contract expires and renewal is contingent on performance. They've already proven Ouroboros as valid - I bought ADA, it's running. Can someone find a hole in it? Sure. The world could also come to an end tomorrow. Anything's possible. As it is, they've put more rigor than any coin so far run by "gut feeling" (e.g. testing but without formal proofs) rather than formal proofs and verification.

IOHK/Charles is pushing for performance, it's not just academic showboating.

Some of the greatest things ever were created when academic minds and experience were fused with strong business and leadership ethics.. Qualcomm for example - started out with a bunch of Ph.D.'s and a grand idea - CDMA, or rather power control and new modulation and coding schemes applied on CDMA, which is what their invention was (CDMA had existed since WW2 I think, commercially Qualcomm made it happen).

What bothers people is that most of the stuff Charles is talking about is flying way over most people's heads...so instead of sucking it up and learning about it, it's easier to just dismiss him, IOHK, Cardano, etc.

Since I don't know the future anymore than anyone else, you could be right too. Just in case, I put some money down on Cardano/ADA. So maybe I'll be right. If I'm not, feel free to gloat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'll just leave this here:

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

</comment><comment><USER32> This is definitely big. There are already tons of reputed investors from Silicon Valley and otherwise who started to invest heavily in Cryptocurrencies.

But bitcoin will end up being a just a store of value(like Gold) instead of an medium of exchange. What I also wonder is, apart from store of value and medium of exchange there's hardly any need for Cryptocurrencies. If two of them solve each of the above problems, why do we need 1000's of alt coins?

<comment><USER29> Go to [https://www.coinmarketcap.com](https://www.coinmarketcap.com), visit some of the websites of the listed altcoins, and each of them will (hopefully) make a case on why their coin is different, and what problem it solves. Many of these altcoins are made by scammers who want to make a quick buck from a pump and dump.

For a notable example of an altcoin that solves a tangible problem, consider Monero. This coin uses a sophisticated transaction system to hide the identifiers of participants in a transaction. I don't know whether it is bulletproof, but it does claim to be much safer in terms of privacy.

Another one is Verge, which routes all of its transactions through Tor. I'm more bearish on this one, and its recent spike in market-cap was short-lived, suggesting that the idea still needs work.

<comment><USER33> > Verge, which routes all of its transactions through Tor.

Wouldn't it be possible to use Tor with any coin?

<comment><USER29> > Wouldn't it be possible to use Tor with any coin?

That's the joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online shopping and the Harry Potter effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.300-online-shopping-and-the-harry-potter-effect.html?full=true <comment><USER2> Topic: Internet and Fat Long Tail

Message: The winner takes it all

Data: Better connectivity between people makes big titles even bigger and unpopular one more unpopular.

 _a small preference for a particular object can, in a highly connected community, rapidly amplify and spread its appeal._ </quote>

Possible explanations:

1\. _Ultimately, he thinks, our love of the blockbuster might just reflect that we humans are constantly looking out for a place to go - one where others are too. "A culture is a set of people who share beliefs, ideas and artefacts," says Watts. "Blockbusters are part of that - they make us feel we belong to something."_ </quote>

2\. _It is this sort of software_ [recommendation engines] _that paradoxically promotes the sales of blockbusters and is responsible for homogenising choice online_ ... _To make useful recommendations, most collaborative filters must make guesses based on previous sales and ratings. But obscure products do not have much in the way of sales or ratings to go on, so the filters tend to point us towards more mainstream offerings_ </quote></comment>


F*** Hackers [For Idea Guys Only] - <AUTHOR> http://neonswan.com/posts/5-f-hackers-days-2-3 <comment><USER2> This is my favorite blog regarding the idea guy: <http://sivers.org/multiply>

<comment><USER3> Don't agree with this article.

Ideas are part of execution. Good ideas are hard work and can be worth millions. A really great idea can even work with bad execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _why is there so much hate out there for idea guys?_

Because it's easy to imagine things. When you're on the other end, you'll understand. You grow to resent the 'idea guys' because you feel like you're doing all the heavy lifting for them. They say, gee wouldn't it be cool to have an underwater car? And you sigh, because you know you're the one who's actually going to have to _make_ the damn thing.

Doesn't help that 'idea guys' often want something impossible or ridiculously difficult & complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, it is easy to imagine things, but i disagree that idea guys should be shunned as TK did. if they provide the creative spark that gets a company to an eventually successful idea, that has value.

yes, hackers can go from idea to concept alone - but that's only if you have a creative brain to get you that idea. not everyone has a creative side, so those guys need idea guys, no?

<comment><USER5> > provide the creative spark that gets a company to an eventually successful > idea

It's not the idea that has value - it's its execution. Every morning I come up with two or three crazy ones. Ideas are cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a very active creative brain, then.

<comment><USER5> Still, unless executed, they are worthless. Without at least a bit of execution, it's impossible to determine which ones are good and which ones are terrible.

<comment><AUTHOR> did i just get downvoted for speaking about this? lol hey, guys i'm one of you now, im just playing devil's advocate!

ultimately, i agree. that's why i'm learning. however, i'd like to know how many hackers out there are thinking to themselves, "Gee, all I need is an idea..."

<comment><AUTHOR> @spooneybarger - sure, it means knowing how to monetize, how to hire, how to market your product(s), etc. almost none of these skills are exclusive to hackers. there aren't any deeply technical barriers precluding idea guys (and im generalizing) from doing these things well, or better, than anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When they have money to pay others to execute, idea guys are great.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, you're becoming a hacker...

<comment><USER8> I'm having a feeling in a few years, if his persistent why the blog post was a bit silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is this, a case of the blind leading the blind?

</comment><comment><USER10> Off-topic but why do you have a donate link on your site that goes to PayPal? What are you offering?</comment>


Golang custom transports and timeouts - <AUTHOR> http://biasedbit.com/blog/golang-custom-transports/

<comment><USER2> I had a similar (though unrelated) problem early on with Golang writing a port scanner, which forced me to hoist my own event loop (build around an explicit select call) into my program: timeout or not, I needed _lots and lots_ of OS file descriptors, and by relying on Golang's own event loop to close stale ones on timeouts, I'd invariably run out.

<comment><USER3> > I needed lots and lots of OS file descriptors

Why?

I ask because I wrote a port scanner professionally once, and I got away with using one fd for network I/O. I can only think of one case where you end up using a lot of fds and that is if you're using TCP sockets and connect(2) where you'd end up with one fd/tested port, and that's not good.

<comment><USER2> It had to work unprivileged in userland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're going across the network, a slow timeout is often trickier than an explicit failure.

I wrote about handling this in Python: [http://www.mobify.com/blog/http- requests-are-hard/](http://www.mobify.com/blog/http-requests-are-hard/)</comment>


Show HN: Guides Embedded Knowledge Base Widget - <AUTHOR> http://userdeck.com/blog/announcing-guides

<comment><USER2> Looks great. Question: is there a way to filter the articles based upon the page? For instance, we have a 4 step input process. Can the widget only display topics based upon each page/step?

If not, could I set up 4 widgets?

<comment><USER3> Good question. We currently only support loading the widget at the top level where it will show all categories/articles. However, we plan to release an update in the near term which will allow you to initialize the widget filtered on a specified category or article, which should allow you to customize the display for each of your steps.

Keep an eye on our blog where we'll announce new features such as this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really slick interface!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Lots more to come...</comment></comment>


Federal health expert drop flossing from health guidelines - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/dentists-forgot-to-study-flossing-for-a-century-recommended-it-anyway/ <comment><USER2> A better discussion about the lack of evidence for flossing: [https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/may-the-floss-be- with-y...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/may-the-floss-be-with-you/)

Basically, yes, flossing helps, but self-flossing really doesn't do anything more than just brushing daily.

I'm a little disappointed at the number of comments here along the lines of, "Well, it's obvious! Why do we need to study it?" That's a very unscientific attitude.

<comment><USER3> Or, people who were assigned a professional flosser _every single school day_ were also more likely to brush their teeth better and were reminded constantly about their teeth and even possibly taught stuff about teeth and so maybe even ate less sugary things. I don't have access to the paper: did they at least have the professional flosser supervise the self-flossing to control for this? Otherwise this just seems like a much more likely reason for these results.

<comment><USER2> The reference is a systematic review, not a single study; only one study in the review was run as you indicate.

Beyond that, I am not sure what you are getting at. The point of the post I posted and the original article here is that self-flossing as an augmentation to brushing does effectively nothing. What you stated corroborates that. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> My point was that from the information in the article that isn't actually clear; it is like when people say that condoms are X% effective as a contraception technique, and so people assume that means that condoms have an X% failure rate, but what they really mean is that "couples who report using condoms as their primary means of contraception have an X% success rate at avoiding pregnancy". While it is interesting from a clinical perspective as to whether "sending a child home and telling them to floss by themselves" is a working strategy or not, it would be taking into account "children don't really floss" and doesn't tell us if an adult who actually knows they are flossing (such as an adult who actually knows they are using the condom every time) has a particular success rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why they don't fund proper studies. Maybe because the effect is too obvious to question? My oral hygienist can tell whether I floss regularly or not, so there must be an observable difference in plaque buildup. Subjectively my gums also feel better and bleed less when I floss regularly.

<comment><USER5> I've never flossed, I don't have gaps in my teeth to get the floss in. My first trip to the dentist in 25 years was a few weeks ago and my teeth were perfect except for a wisdom tooth and the damage it caused.

So i'm kind of skeptical of the effect.

Edit - I always wonder what kind of toothbrush other people use. I've always used electric ones so I wonder if that helps.

<comment><USER6> > I don't have gaps in my teeth to get the floss in.

Same here. Never understood how people can physically floss. Maybe those with undeveloped teeth can do it, others, I don't see how it's even possible.

<comment><USER7> I use one of these: [http://imgur.com/8A3dopG](http://imgur.com/8A3dopG)

For some teeth, I have to force it a little, my teeth are pretty close too. Its so worth it though: much better breath, clean feel, minimized risk of cavities.

<comment><USER5> I've tried them, but they refuse to go in too.

<comment><USER8> I use these. I can bit down on it if I need extra force. [http://www.apteekkituotteet.fi/WebRoot/Euran/Shops/Eura/506D...](http://www.apteekkituotteet.fi/WebRoot/Euran/Shops/Eura/506D/44FC/C30E/E6B0/D550/0A28/1050/7369/plackers_twin.jpg)

Of course people's teeth are different. I know some prefer these, where you push it in from the side. [http://www.tepe.com/uk/products/interdental- brushes/](http://www.tepe.com/uk/products/interdental-brushes/)

<comment><USER6> Thing is, teeth are so close to each other that literally nothing can get between them, not even food. I have however few teeth that get food in between, but these are the ones that already went bad and were fixed, and have gaps as a result of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personal antecedent is that I never flossed for 18 years, and would always walk out of the dentist with a bleeding gum somewhere in my mouth, and my teeth would hurt drinking cold water, etc, but when I finally started flossing all those problems evaporated.

Some mouths probably need it more than others, and it appears that mine is one of them. Is flossing the best option for inter-teeth cleaning? Maybe not. However, even after a good brush I can pull bits of food out by flossing, and I don't think anyone will disagree that it's a good thing to leave it in there.

<comment><USER10> You floss after brushing? I always thought the reverse was the best practice. Of course... there has been zero science, so maybe the best is brush -> floss -> brush -> Listerine -> floss.

<comment><USER11> I am not a dentist, but based on my understanding (derived from reading commentaries by dentists) the "best" would be floss -> brush. Never mouth wash (except when recommended by your dentist for specific conditions).

That's derived from the idea that brushing is not about cleaning the teeth. It's about disrupting bio-films and depositing fluoride on the teeth. That's the reason why dentists recommend not rinsing your mouth after brushing. If brushing were about cleaning then clearly you would want to rinse to remove everything from your mouth. But since brushing is more about applying fluoride to your teeth, it makes more sense not to rinse as that would remove all the fluoride that you just worked to apply. (The recommendation is to brush, then take a teaspoon or two of water into your mouth to form a toothpaste slurry, swish around, then spit.)

I thus argue that flossing should come before brushing because flossing would remove the food from between your teeth, allowing fluoride to penetrate those areas.

And with regards to Listerine/mouth wash, the alcohol based stuff causes mouth cancer and hasn't shown any benefit to the reduction of cavities (I don't recall its effectiveness with respect to bad breath or gum disease). There is fluoride based mouthwash, which dentists do recommend to certain patients, but for most people there's no point since they're getting all the fluoride they need from the toothpaste. And of course there are mouth washes medicated for specific conditions, which again will be recommended by your dentist when needed.

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that, although possible, if the cancer risk does exist, it's very small; here's an article placing it at 3-4 cases per 1,000,000: [http://aaem.pl/fulltxt.php?ICID=1011054](http://aaem.pl/fulltxt.php?ICID=1011054) (They cite a 2012 meta-analysis which showed no statistically significant effect of mouthwash) Here's a recent large-sample statistical study: [https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/research...](https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/research/labs/population- sciences/hashibe/images/Boffetta2015_Inhance_mouthwash.pdf) They find an 1.15 odds ratio of cancer for mouthwash users, but in the non-smoking non-alcohol- drinking cohort this effect goes the opposite direction (OR 0.83); statistics is hard and there isn't high-quality data to give a real conclusion. But since the overall incidence of oral cancer is roughly 1 in 10000 ([http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/DataStatistics/FindDataByTopic/Oral...](http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/DataStatistics/FindDataByTopic/OralCancer/OralCancerIncidence.htm)) I wouldn't be too worried; all these show is that the effect is tiny. (Of course, if you only remember the big headline from ten years ago with a tiny sample size...)

There's a clear line of research showing benefits in mouthwash: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4948552/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4948552/) It's true that the fluoride in mouthwash does little, and there are some stupid mouthwashes that don't have any real ingredients, but essential oil mouthwashes (like Listerine) and several others (as mentioned in the review) have been shown to have significant gum benefits.

There's also some interesting research with tetrapotassium pyrophosphate and tartar buildup: [http://periogen.com/periogen- studies.html](http://periogen.com/periogen-studies.html) Although I expect these studies are manufacturer-funded and thus overstate the effect, it seems pretty hard to deny that it helps.

Note: I'm not a dentist either, but I read this book my dentist recommended: [https://amzn.com/B009LPLMRU](https://amzn.com/B009LPLMRU). It's well- referenced for everything except water fluoridation and her conflict of interest (xylitol products).

<comment><USER12> Here is the author saying flossing is useless, a few years ago: [http://www.medicaldaily.com/dental-floss-useless-dentist- say...](http://www.medicaldaily.com/dental-floss-useless-dentist-says-243635)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the issue here is not if it is actually helpful or not, but that it was claimed (and advertised) to be without the necessary research.

The AP article explains that flossing had to be dropped from the federal guidelines as those are required to be backed by research.

The groups that claim it is good for you all have a financial reason to claim it. Not alone wrong, but wrong in the absence of quality research backing the claims.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't it about time we got rid of the ridiculous "if we haven't researched it, we know _nothing_ about it" fallacy?

Research is strong evidence that points towards something. Lack of research doesn't mean _complete lack of a-priori knowledge_. If something is obviously good for you, then that's probably a good start for recommending it.

<comment><USER15> I think that's missing the point. And, as an aside, so are all the comments in this thread that are essentially "flossing works for me, so I'm going to keep doing it." The point of this article is not that people should stop flossing, or that it's bad for some reason. The point is that an entire industry of medical professionals were saying "floss because it reduces you risk of tooth decay and gum disease," when in fact there is little evidence that it does either. It is a huge detriment to the credibility of dentists in my opinion.

<comment><USER16> Dentists and dental hygienists look into tens of thousands of mouths over the courses of their careers. It's not difficult for them to see that patients who floss have far healthier smiles, in general.

That said, they should get more studies done.

You could also be a bad flosser, so even the study could be flawed.

<comment><USER17> Again, there's the comparison of people who sell ice cream and see that when they sell more, there will be more drownings. Correlation does not imply causation.

I think it is quite obvious that people who floss also brush their teeth more regularly, and that is enough to give them healthier smiles.

(Regarding the benefits of flossing, I'm agnostic.)

<comment><USER16> It's true that correlation does not imply causation, but you're still wrong from my experience with hygienists and dentists.

They definitely and easily see a difference seen between those who floss and brush and those who just brush.

Also, those who use Sonicare, especially when used properly around the gumlines, also tend to have healthier mouths than those who brush with an old brush.

The one thing that can throw a wrench in this whole thing is smoking. Smokers' mouths are disgusting basically no matter what.

Point being, I love research, but I trust those who put their hands in tens of thousands of mouths more than skeptics on ArsTechnica article comments.

<comment><USER18> They look in your mouth and make assumptions that fit their preconceived notions. ie: "These teeth are in good shape, this person must've followed my advice on brushing and flossing!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me the water flossers (oral jet irrigators) are the best solution yet. I was never able to floss correctly with a wire, especially between the teeth in the back row but then my dentist told me about "the jet thing from amazon" and I wish I had it a lot earlier because it's so easy to use and quite efficient. (Just don't jet your gums with the highest power; it can hurt and make your gums bleed)

<comment><USER20> My wife recently purchased a battery-powered Waterpik and is obsessed with the thing (it works in the shower, too):

[http://amzn.to/2axkvkK](http://amzn.to/2axkvkK)

She had been compulsively flossing, but this device has reduced that desire.

<comment><USER21> In the shower? Why didn't I think of that? I've used a Waterpik before and ended up throwing it away because I invariably made a big mess with it (especially my mirror).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Lots of USA specific views in here. How about:

 _Most patients, even if they bother to get the minty-waxed out the box, are exceptionally heavy-handed and macerate their gums like they've been chewing on bare vacuum cleaner flex. Even in controlled studies, after instruction, the patients taking part couldn't floss properly. I know of no dentist who flosses. Not one._

UK dentist, writing in the Guardian

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/dentis...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/dentists- great-flossing-yarn)

<comment><USER22> This is an interesting thread to read and think about rationalisations, habits and culture. You have a good control group too: Floss usage is about 60%+ in the USA, and 20% or less in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My mother-in-law is a dentist. When she heard I always brush my teeth but rarely floss, she told me flossing is more important than brushing your teeth. For once I didn't get into the science of things, but still I accept that getting old bits of food and other junk away from between my teeth can only be a positive thing.

It runs counter to my sceptic nature, I like to question everything, but I'm slowly starting to learn that sometimes you just have to take an expert's advice.

I'm sure any half-way decent dentist can see pretty quickly how well you take care of your teeth, in the same way a seasoned programmer can often point out a beginner's bad code or a civil engineer warn about the wrong way to build a bridge or a house on a swamp.

<comment><USER24> My father in law is a dentist in Germany and he never recommended flossing. In fact flossing is not common in Germany and we don't hear that Germans have very bad teeth compared to Americans.

So although dentists could notice if you have good dental hygiene I'm not sure they can spot easily if you floss or not. It might just mean that in US good dental hygiene means that you floss, but converse might not be true.

<comment><USER25> > My father in law is a dentist in Germany and he never recommended flossing. > In fact flossing is not common in Germany and we don't hear that Germans > have very bad teeth compared to Americans.

It's all the sauerkraut. It acts as a natural floss.

<comment><USER26> I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From what I read and from personal experience it is a diet that has strongest effects on tooth health, not the the way to toothbrush or floss. For example, in Europe tooth health became much bigger problem after crusades when knights brought various dessert recipes from Lebanon and Syria.

<comment><USER28> It may well be, but since sugar is an integral part of modern diets that doesn't help us much.

<comment><USER29> Once you get started, a diet free from refined sugar is not at all as difficult to maintain as you might think.

<comment><USER30> Don't you need to avoid unrefined sugar and starch too? Which is not impossibly difficult (lots of folks do keto), but is more difficult than just avoiding refined sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are also no studies on whether parachutes prevent death when falling from the sky[1], but I'm sure as shit still wearing one when I jump out of a plane!

[1] [http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459.long](http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459.long)

<comment><USER15> If you had as many people jumping out of planes as those that have teeth, you assuredly would have studies about parachute design, packing methods, survivability in the face of failure. You absolutely would have research that shows that parachutes prevent death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is the same bullshit around how fat and salt was really bad and no one could be bother changing that rule, because it might/is technically correct.

Except everyone just ate sugar in mass quantities and we never moved forward (and probably moved backwards)

We not only need to know if it works, we need studies to know how well so we can compare it to other methods people actually will implement.

<comment><USER33> I agree that most animal fats are healthy (ex. saturates) but I believe excess salt is still considered unhealthy even by current studies? Or am I mistaken on that?

No disagreement on sugar either, definitely unhealthy in excess (in particularly when artificially added disproportionately to the other nutrition within the food).

<comment><USER34> Generally, unless you have a specific medical condition that warrants restricting salt (kidney disease, high blood pressure), there's no need to worry about normal doses of salt in the diet. In fact, too little salt can actually be very harmful.

This study [1] and the response from the CDC is very similar to the OP's article: despite research showing the recommendation is wrong, $BIG_AGENCY refuses to change its recommendation over fears of looking like boneheads.

[1] [http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20140402/cdc-salt- gui...](http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20140402/cdc-salt-guidelines- too-low-for-good-health-study-suggests#1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is the AP article that's mentioned, it has lots more information: [http://www.today.com/health/there-s-little-proof-flossing- pr...](http://www.today.com/health/there-s-little-proof-flossing-protects- your-teeth-or-gums-t101389?cid=sm_fbn)

</comment><comment><USER36> Clickbait based on a 5-year old source which actually says, "Twelve trials were included in this review which reported data on two outcomes (dental plaque and gum disease). Trials were of poor quality and conclusions must be viewed as unreliable. The review showed that people who brush and floss regularly have less gum bleeding compared to toothbrushing alone. There was weak, very unreliable evidence of a possible small reduction in plaque. There was no information on other measurements such as tooth decay because the trials were not long enough and detecting early stage decay between teeth is difficult."

So studies showed flossing helps prevent gum bleeding. This is not what the article reports.

Are there studies of effectiveness of tooth brushing? Imagine the control group - people who don't brush their teeth at all!

<comment><USER37> The recommendation to floss was not justified by reduced gum bleeding, it was justifies by reduces tooth decay. Indees, its now been removes from official FDA recommendations. Likewise, flossing might very reliably make the backs of your teeth whiter, but this is a negligible benefit and is not curing a disease. The headline is a fair summary, even if it could have been more informative by not trying to be funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I used to floss more or less regularly and had constant gum problems. I then switched to interdental brushes, same frequency of use, and my gum problems have since disappeared.

So in my case _something_ was needed for the gum's health, but flossing itself proved to be useless.

<comment><USER38> I use both depending on inter-teeth space. There are different techniques of flossing and different floss types. So, trying different may solve the problem with flossing itself. For those who cannot use interdental brushes. Some doctors suggest moving the floss up and down along the teeth. Others to put it inside teeth and the pull to the side. I found the second more convenient and less traumatic at the same time. But you need a wider floss to make it work. Try different. Me and my wife use different: one brand works better for her, but is too narrow for me. Experiment. I had chronic inflammation since school. Flossing completely solved the problem in a month or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So this is not an argument against flossing it is just there are no studies _for_ it, correct? (Haven't followed the thread)

<comment><USER40> There are studies which show that flossing isn't effective. Here's an older article mentioning three studies:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2013/10/17/dentists-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2013/10/17/dentists- say-you-need-to-floss-science-says-you-dont/#2b54386677d5)

I read the conclusion so that flossing is useless, because it isn't done correctly or it is just a wrong way to clean teeth.

I've had a similar personal experience. My dentist asked me to floss because my gums were bleeding. I flossed for few years, but it didn't cure my bleeding gums. Then my dentist suggested using interdental brushes. I did it for a while and it helped. My gums are no more bleeding.

So, I say no to flossing, yes to cleaning teeth with better means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For most of my life I brushed but never flossed. I had no cavities but I was at risk of losing my teeth due to plaque below the gum line. My teeth were loose and gums would bleed when I brushed. I've had all that fixed and now floss regularly. In retrospect flossing seems more important than brushing.

</comment><comment><USER42> Flossing, meh. WaterPiks, meh.

[http://oralbreeze.com](http://oralbreeze.com)

Hooks right up to your faucet or shower head, has multiple tips, and is effectively an endless and super-quiet WaterPik.

I do own a WaterPik-like device, but I use saline water and a special adapter for sinus irrigation (making it a post-modern Neti Pot I guess). OralBreeze, brushing and sinus irrigation every day. Helps fight bad breath — post-nasal drip contributes a lot to bad breath, as does rotting food stuck between your teeth. For me, it's helped reduce the incidence sinus infections, too. Plus the more advanced "Neti" usage involves allowing the saline solution to flow out of your mouth, so if you're prone to tonsil stones, it can help reduce those.

</comment><comment><USER43> I read this about 15 years ago in a book published a decade or two before that, IIRC. Unfortunately the book did not really make a case, just claimed there was no evidence. It was a book about evidence-based medicine before that was a popular term (unfortunately I've also lost the name the book).

My dental hygienist recently told me that I have to shove bits of wood between all my teeth twice a day. I asked why I hadn't heard this before and for how long, and she said "for the rest of your life because it's good for you". Hmm.

</comment><comment><USER44> > Still, many dentists will continue to recommend flossing for removing debris > between your chompers. "It's low risk, low cost," National Institutes of > Health dentist Tim Iafolla told CNBC. "We know there's a possibility that it > works, so we feel comfortable telling people to go ahead and do it."

Instead of talking about flossing you could talk about keeping a pet rock in your pocket and it'd also be "low risk, low cost ... we know there's a _possibility_ that it works".

</comment><comment><USER26> On a side note, most cavities/caries which get filled can be remineralized. That's particularly unfortunate because fillings need to be redone after two years on average, destroying even more of the natural tooth: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/simple-dental-treatments-may- rev...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/simple-dental-treatments-may-reverse- decay-1460407763)

<comment><USER45> In 2011 I became aware of pain in my lower left chewing teeth. I had no health insurance, and no money to see a dentist. Over the course of two months, the pain got worse and worse. Finally, I decided I would rinse with Listerine, for long periods of time. I would take a swig of Listerine and hold it in my mouth for 30 minutes, spit it out and take another swig, and hold that in my mouth for another 30 minutes. I would do that all day, while I worked at my computer. My thought was that the bacteria could only do limited damage if my mouth was full of Listerine, so I kept Listerine in my mouth for several hours a day. Maybe I was right, or maybe the effect was psychosomatic, but after ten days of such treatment, the pain faded away.

<comment><USER46> Either that or the nerve died, so you stopped feeling pain. I went through that with a tooth (was also unemployed at the time and couldn't afford proper dental treatment for it), and eventually it had to get removed because it decayed so much. It used to hurt a lot but eventually it stopped hurting entirely, even as it cracked and chipped away slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Lack of studies doesn't mean it's not true. Anecdotally, whenever I see a new dentist, the first thing they say (usually the assistant) is "I see you're a flosser!". Then they comment about how healthy are my gums. I'd guess every dental employee on the planet thinks flossing helps prevent gum disease at the very least.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm sure a lot of individual observations come down to genetics. In my own case, I challenged myself to go from flossing once a week to every day over the past six months. Just recently went to the dentist and my gum pocket depths all decreased (signaling healthier gums apparently). Diet remained exactly the same.

</comment><comment><USER49> I never learned flossing, and then in my early twenties I kind of ignored the dentist for around 7-8 years. I still brushed my teeth throughly two times a day, every day.

Got me paradentosis and almost lost me my teeth.

It's completely anecdotal, but I recomend flossing.

</comment><comment><USER50> > _" It's low risk, low cost," National Institutes of Health dentist Tim > Iafolla told CNBC._

Isn't risk something that should be determined by study? I can think of a couple ways that flossing may actually damage a mouth.

</comment><comment><USER51> One word: Waterpik. It's the only thing that has a major influence on my oral hygiene. Here's the one I use: [http://amzn.to/2ahIghr](http://amzn.to/2ahIghr)

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone ever smell the floss after each tooth? Yea, I'm gonna keep flossin.

</comment><comment><USER53> This doesn't surprise me. If I had $10 for every experienced, certified specialist I saw until the age of 13 that said "The best thing for your condition is little-to-no activity, certainly not weight lifting!" I'd be able to pay for my legal steroid cycles for a good 10 years. The only thing that improved my quality of life was getting bigger, stronger, and tougher. That's why I don't look like one of their normal patients - because I refused to believe the counter-intuitive notion that weakness is a good thing biologically. FTR I don't disclose my condition but it's a physical one.

</comment><comment><USER54> Toothpicks work just as well for me.

<comment><USER55> +1 but also a modern twist: intradental brushes. They're a piece of wire with a handle, coated with bits to pull plaque off teeth.

You use them exactly like a toothpick but they have a nice big grip and you can get 90 degree versions with long handles for your back teeth.

A pack will _easily_ last a year.

Cannot be bothered flossing (and I salivate a lot which makes it harder) but intradental brushes are now part of my daily routine.

<comment><USER56> How long does one last? Do you use one for a week, month or just whenever you change your toothbrush?

<comment><USER55> About a month. The main thing is the plastic bumps on the wire wear away after a while.

<comment><USER56> Oh nice. They are pretty cheap then. I don't floss as much as I should (or should I?) so might give these a try. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm going to keep flossing. Screw them.</comment>