Steve's Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/mobile-flash-is-coming-soon-i-swear/

<comment><USER2> Correction: killing off Flash Player for mobile.

<comment><USER3> People are going to increasingly use mobile devices to browse the web. Tablets especially are going to be big. iPads, Android tablets, Kindles, and I'm willing to bet even Microsoft makes a dent. Five years from now, I'd say we do 20% of our browsing from mobile devices.</comment></comment>


American Physical Society Meeting cancelled due to fears of Corona virus - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/APSphysics/status/1233950396093214720 <comment><AUTHOR> Normally 12,000+ physicists from around the world meet to discuss topics ranging from quantum computing to biophysics. The meeting was cancelled late Saturday night, while short courses had started before the actual meeting (I was lecturing at one). Was it the right call?</comment>


The cool stuff about Lisp for those of us with day jobs — PART 1 - <AUTHOR> http://joecannatti.com/?p=207

<comment><USER2> Though I don't feel like this is a particularly great example, I think "lisp for people with day jobs" could be a thought provoking series of posts. Focus on solving specific hard problems that real people have at work, without hand waving, advanced vernacular, or references to the OTA fare finding engine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone please down-mode this deceptive crap?</comment>


Opportunism: Regulators Don't Enjoy CDS Games - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-25/regulators-don-t-enjoy-cds-games <comment><USER2> Matt Levine rides again -- a fact that didn't register until "Long Confusing Story".

A treasure to humanity.</comment>


Pebble 2, Time 2 + All-New Pebble Core - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-2-time-2-and-core-an-entirely-new-3g-ultra <comment><USER3> I bought the original Pebble on Kickstarter. I jumped on the Time on Kickstarter when it was announced. I changed my order to the Time Steel when it was made available. I bought an original one for the wife, I bought her a Time as well.

And I'm going to wait on this one. If they're going to delve into the fitness category, I'll be looking at Garmins (of which I have several, albeit older ones with no smart watchy stuff) which are more durable (my $DEITY, does the Pebble get scratched up), go forever on a charge, and I'm willing to bet just plain do the job better because Garmin has been at it for a while.

Given the hurdles on iOS that Pebble can't seem to overcome (for which they are not entirely, if at all, to blame), I'll also wait and see what Apple has on tap. Apple has some shortcomings to eliminate, maybe they'll do that next round.

It's not because I'm unhappy with my Pebbles, I love my current Time Steel. But if I'm going to spend money on a watch that does what Pebble is currently advertising, my options open up to include established competitors in that space. I'm not willing to bet real money that Pebble can outdo those competitors right out of the gate. So I'll wait until it hits retail, see what it really does and what the experiences of others are. Maybe I'll get one, but it's not guaranteed like it was for previous versions.

<comment><USER4> I think Garmin is way underrated as a (hardware) technology company.

Given that they were a GPS company that people wrote off as being irrelevant in the age of smartphones and Google Maps they have done a great job carving out multiple niches in sports devices (and that ignores their "Smart Glass" airplane business).

I have 2 Edge cycling computers and a Garmin running watch and love them all.

The Edge 520 is the type of device that I'd see the specs of and expect to be a half-implemented heap of junk (connects to my phone to receive notifications while I ride? Automatically uploads rides when I finish them? This will never work). And yet it really is rather good.

<comment><USER5> My wife got a pebble time last year after upgrading her OG pepple. It scratched like crazy and had tons of issues.

She bought a Garmin Vivoactive after xmas and both of us havent looked back. We get 2-3 weeks pf battery with moderate gps use. Alerts work way better then the Pebble watch. I highly recommend the garmin. I forget I have to charge it, but it takes 2 hrs to go from 20%-100%.

Also, I only know one person who wears a pebble, and it was a hand me down. Eveyone I know who owned a Pebble switched to Appl, Android Wear, Microsoft Band or Garmin.

<comment><USER6> Thats interesting. I wanted alerts as my primary reason for getting a wrist device.

I agree the garmin was very sharp but mine for whatever reason lost bluetooth connection constantly.

The pebble on the other hand has been great for notifications.

I really wished the garmin had been better about that. YMMV.

<comment><USER7> Alerts are my primary reason also; the only time I do any vigorous exercise I certainly won't wear a smartwatch due to the risk of damage, so that functionality isn't of much use. I don't want to wear a watch in bed or in the shower either. I'm not keen on biometric data being collected anyway so it's good that the latest version of Android Wear allows denying sensor permissions.

What would be ideal would be a smartwatch that can manage to set Google reminders without having to have Google Now turned on; that, plus the occasional text message and even more occasional use of navigation, are all I use it for other than looking at notifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Core is pretty intriguing. Love the idea of a little cheap hackable piece of hardware that also hits the iPod Shuffle niche.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 4GB storage, wireless charging, buttons + expansion port, runs Android... for $70. Not bad.

I love that they're marketing it as hackable. I wish more companies would do that.

I wonder what kind of interface the expansion port is.

<comment><USER10> USB pins are exposed through a removable backplate (next to the SIM slot). We'll release 3D Cad next week or so.

<comment><USER9> Cool. I imagine someone will make a GPIO "backpack", but it would have been nice to have a few out of the box.

<comment><USER11> Agree, but in a device in a minimal form factor it's probably better to have a single high speed bus exposed as opposed to trying to break out everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sad they haven't announced a new Pebble Time Round - I got one after giving up on smartwatches for a long time and it's fantastic. I get compliments on it as a watch before anyone even knows it has smart functionality built into it. At the end of the day, smartwatches are still fashion accessories and the PTR is the only one so far that doesn't look supremely awkward to me.

<comment><USER13> I find it strange seeing non-pebble smartwatches on people's wrists where the display is off by default. I don't think having a device that is passively in sleep mode by default is very fashionable. Kind of like looking at an elaborate painting frame minus the painting. When I hear about people spending top dollar for the higher-end Apple watches, I just think it is so strange that the expensive fashion accessory they are wearing will be seen by others as being off most of the time.

<comment><USER14> Agree 100%. My PTS gets 9 days+ between each charge and the display is always on, whilst doing steps and sleep tracking and integrating with my S6 Edge.

I love the fact that the Pebble is such a focused device; I'd never trade it for an "screen on demand when shaking it around" iWatch, even if they threw an iPhone in for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really love my Time 1. The battery life is outstanding and while most apps are not pretty, there is a lot of functionality here. Even if you limit it to text/email notifications it's pretty great.

I just went on a 6 day vacation and didn't even bring my charger. Worked like a champ.

<comment><USER16> I'd disagree over the prettiness, I think given the hardware they're working with the UI is generally fantastic!

<comment><USER15> I think the UI is solid. Pretty is subjective. I agree with you overall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder why they are launching on Kickstarter and not just coming out with the product since they already are well established?

<comment><USER18> 1\. Marketing

2\. Kickstarter money is technically a donation, so you can spend the money right away if you need to. (taking a typical pre-order is little tricky from an accounting perspective if it's considered revenue)

<comment><USER19> Donation is the wrong way to think of it from an accounting perspective (though perhaps not from a legal recourse perspective.) Preorders are not recognized as revenue. They are a debit (increase) to Cash and a credit (increase) to a liability that's usually Unearned Revenue. As you ship, you credit (increase) Revenue/Sales and then debit (decrease) the Unearned Revenue liability account.

Edit: renamed 'Prepaid' to 'Unearned' \-- had to brush up on my GAAP nomenclature

<comment><USER20> Agreed. That's pretty much how my (UK) accountants treated my Kickstarter revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just a warning to fellow Canadians.

I went in on the Pebble Steel in the past, and while I expected a Duty charge, I didn't expect it to be around 100$ Canadian.

EDIT: Sorry I meant Pebble _Time_ Steel

<comment><USER22> I didn't pay anything extra for duty? I bought my wife a "Round" back in January, and while the Canadian dollar was crappy, I only payed 25% in CDN dollars over the websites listed price. So, not sure if I got lucky or you just didn't. :(

On a side note Canadian shoppers can find the watches at their local Best Buy... at least the current ones anyway. You might not get the style you want though, as they seem to be a bit limited that way. Pricing is usually close to the US price. I paid the extra to get the style I wanted for the wife.

<comment><USER21> Yeah I checked online, and the duty charged to people was all over the place, some correlation with provinces, but not strictly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's crazy to me that Pebble manages to crowdfund most of its operations like this. I assume that since the delivery dates are so close they've almost finished development on the products? So really this more of a pre-order than anything else.

<comment><USER24> It makes a good platform for viral publicity. I presume that's worth the Kickstarter fees for them.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. In addition they also don't have to care about scaling their webshop to now almost 4000 buyers in the first hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was using a FitBit Charge HR but eventually just grew fed up with having to charge it - the cable is (afaik) proprietary and the one they included in the box is hilariously short. So I would often forget to grab it in the morning since it wasn't by my bedside (rather bed-floor). But I did like one thing about it - having the time on my wrist. So I just bought a cheap Casio and couldn't be happier.

I'm intrigued with the Pebble 2 and Time 2 - like that it's always on, and can go a long time between charges. But how does it work with iOS? From The Wirecutter, it looks like it's not a pleasant experience [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch- iphone/#peb...](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-smartwatch- iphone/#pebble) Any other opinions?

<comment><USER27> My Charge HR lasts 4-5 days between charges. I assume the charger is proprietary because the watch is water resistant, so I'm ok with that. I keep the cable at work, and set a vibrate alarm to remind me to plug it in Friday afternoons. If you do need a spare charger, they're $5-$10 on Amazon. Cheaper than your Casio watch I bet ;)

Looking fwd to the Pebble2 though. IMO all smartwatches should be eInk and hackable.

<comment><USER28> Cheapest Casio watch on Amazon.com is $8. With a wall adaptor it looks like the Charge HR charger is $8 too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Tried Pebble, liked Garmin Fenix 3 MUCH better: it's round, it has GPS (inside, not with an additional gadget), has superb battery life and feels indestructible -- it may not be, it's just how it feels.

It's more expensive but well worth the extra money IMHO.

<comment><USER30> Love my Fenix 3.

Garmin does a nice job bridging the cap between the "smart" watches like Pebble and the Apple watch, and the more serious fitness devices like those from Polar and Suunto.

I have much "nicer" watches, but this one is just far more utilitarian, especially for an active person.

It's also very sharp looking in comparison to the cheaper/plastic looking option.

<comment><USER29> GPS works almost everywhere (including on planes!); compass works absolutely everywhere, including near big metal objects, on the subway, etc. It's really really great.

That said, software could be improved, and that's an understatement. The mess that is "basecamp" is a disgrace, esp. for a company like Garmin which is associated with navigation...

<comment><USER30> Man! I hate Basecamp too! I haven't bothered trying it with my Fenix, but I used it on my Colorado handheld GPS for a few backpacking trips, and it was terrible. Especially the early versions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This seems like a pretty interesting device. I'm an avid runner, and my option is either to wear a clunky GPS device or to carry my smartphone and pair it to a lighter-weight and sleeker device. This basically enables both use cases without having to lug the phone, plus it adds some interesting features with the built-in storage and streaming 3G.

I think that a lot of people will buy if Pebble can price this competitively. Their closest competition is the $250 TomTom Spark Cardio + Music, and it seems like they will undercut that. With that said, 6 months is a long time, and I wouldn't be surprised if new and better devices come out before this ships.

</comment><comment><USER32> I love the concept of the Core, because I often leave my phone at home. Unfortunately it requires a country whith a mature and affordable mobile internet infrastructure, neither of which applies to Germany.

<comment><USER33> You don't need an internet connection to use it. It has 4GB of storage and can do offline syncing over WiFi

> You can also use Core's 4GB of built-in storage to access your favorite > playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks.

> Core also works without a SIM card or cellular plan, using WiFi to sync > offline music and workouts.

<comment><USER32> Open Hotspots in Germany are incredibly rare (due to a just recently lifted law that made Hotspot providers liable for criminal activities commited over their connection). The use cases you described can be covered with an iPod Shuffle or similar MP3 player. The interesting part is really the mobile internet connection, which is hard/pricy to come by in Germany and probably other countries. Especially in rural areas you won't get a good enough connection for Spotify.

Another useful use case would be an emergency button for elderly people. Current devices are rather expensive and/or only work at home.

<comment><USER34> I don't think you need to use open hotspots - assuming you have your own WiFi at home, you can just do your syncing once you're back at home after your run. Also the core has GPS, which the iPod Shuffle doesn't.

I didn't find Germany's mobile internet too expensive, I was quite happy with Congstar prepaid when I was last over there. Certainly comparable with Australian mobile internet pricing. On the other hand, Australia now has free mobile Spotify streaming (on Optus), not sure if Congstar does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As somebody who doesn't use Spotify, I wonder how open the Core will be, e.g. for other audio providers like PocketCast. If I could just tell it to play the latest podcasts from my PocketCast, this would be the perfect fitness tracker for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume it will run standard pebble apps in headless mode.

<comment><USER36> They state in the Kickstarter that the Core runs Android. So basically it runs the Spotify android app. Chances are that support could be added easily for other apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was an original Pebble backer, but since moved to an Apple Watch. Though it's not Pebble's fault, the lack of proper iOS integration (iMessage, HealthKit, etc.) is really a bummer after using Apple's complete package. I wish my Apple Watch had some of the features that Pebble does (water resistance, long battery life), but the Apple ecosystem lock-in is a powerful force...

I wish Eric & the rest of Pebble the best of luck-- they really are one of only three viable smartwatch platforms, which is pretty incredible for such a small company. It'll be interesting to see how they can fit the core into the activity monitor space as well.

<comment><USER38> Although Apple doesn't, the Internet claims Apple Watch is water resistant even for swimming.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, it's more of a peace of mind thing. The new Pebble is water resistant to 30m, which is really, really deep water. Though I could probably swim with my Apple Watch, it's not something I particularly want to risk since it's not an advertised "feature".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't see a lot of folks mentioning it, but what jumped out at me in reading it is that the Core will act as a PAN (Personal Area Network) Internet gateway to provide 3G connectivity to other devices via Bluetooth tethering. That could be a really nice touch for "always-connected" devices without having to tie them to a phone.

<comment><USER40> Good spot!

I wonder whether Google Project Fi will support this. Fi is already very reasonably priced and recently began offering data-only SIM cards extending a base plan with a pay-as-you-go rate.

<comment><USER33> Well, they say that it will support most pay-as-you go plans and such, so I would expect it would. Haven't seen official confirmation though.

<comment><USER40> A reddit thread (link needed) claims the CEO dude said 'yes'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was a Pebble fan, but recent changes are bad. They stuff more and more into their Pebble Health cloud offering.

Just today I opened a support call to figure out what data they transmit to their servers and how long they store it.

I'm also currently unconvinced that you can use the Pebble to track steps/your sleep without uploading your data (i.e. it seems that you either opt into Pebble Health and Pebble gets your data or .. you don't get it either).

Depending on the reaction of the support call I will either dispose of this thing or use it offline - new products from Pebble aren't exactly interesting for me at this point..

<comment><USER42> Pebble engineer here. You can absolutely disable data upload and continue using pebble health. The support team will guide you though it. In the future, we hope to make the settings options to do so more explicit. The only feature that currently requires analytics to work is voice transcription.

<comment><USER41> Thank you, that's awesome and reassuring - although you might take away that it's near impossible to figure out in the settings right now.

You even got a reply on this random board from another pebble customer who's still confused (and usage log doesn't seem likely to me, that sounds like telemetry? "User likes to access feature A" vs "All the sensor data").

In short: I'm looking forward to the support reply. Initial reply was 'forwarding to tech, might need more time'. Please consider making this more explicit, if you're in a position to bring this issue up.

Edit: In fact, this comment of yours convinced me that Pebble (vs all the other watches) IS the right choice - I just backed the campaign for a Time 2 / Core combo). Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If this works as well as advertised, I'm definitely tossing my Fitbit Charge HR. What a colossal waste of money that was.

<comment><USER44> Could you elaborate? I've been looking at the FBCHR as an Apple Watch that I don't have to charge every night and thus could take advantage of sleep tracking. Also unlike WATCH I understand the FBCHR automatically detects runs/workouts without having to start a workout app. Thanks.

<comment><USER43> \- They advertise 5 days charge but I get maybe 3 days. 4 at best.

\- The heartrate reader is only accurate when you're at rest. Any sort of sweat or physical activity and the reading becomes wildly inaccurate or just stops working.

\- The app takes like 5-10 minutes to sync every time and it won't sync in the background. So when syncing, I have to move my finger around on the phone so my phone doesn't lock and mess up the sync. I live in China so that might be the issue here. YMMV

\- It does auto detect but I have a Vespa scooter so everytime I ride my scooter, it counts it as me walking a shitton of steps and I have to manually go on the website to delete those activities. This is also occasionally an issue in cars.

Overall, just dissatisfied with how this product works.

<comment><USER45> The Charge HR sync is garbage in the US as well. It never syncs for me unless I explicitly open the app, and even then it takes forever. "All day sync" is enabled, I've tried resets etc. no dice.

I'm OK with the HR accuracy, but the sync issues make it more trouble than it's worth. I still wear the thing, but only bother to sync and look at the app perhaps once a week at most since it's so damn slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Question: I've been deliberating getting a smartwatch so this is good timing. However, I've been trying to cut down on screen time and distractions. Is getting a smartwatch a good idea?

<comment><USER47> > I've been trying to cut down on screen time and distractions. Is getting a > smartwatch a good idea?

You make it sound like those desires are at odds, when in fact a smartwatch _supports_ your goal. Thanks to my Pebble, I only take my phone out of my pocket when I _intend_ to use it. I don't even take my phone out of my pocket to reply to text messages sometimes now, since I can do it from my Pebble. Ditto for changing/pausing the song on Spotify, or of course _checking the time_ , which I used to use my phone for before I got my Pebble (first first gen, then Time). Not to mention it's great to be able to send calls to voicemail if I don't want to answer them or don't recognize the number, and I can do that without stopping walking.

I'm sure I'd frequently fire up Twitter or Hacker News if I had my phone in my hands after replying to a text, so I think my Pebble saves me from a lot of distractions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Core is super cool, but I feel there's a big miss for tracking heart rate. I suppose you could cobble it together with Wahoo Fintness TICKR X and merge the data after the run, but it would be awesome to combine those two products.

Also would be great to see it tie into other devices like cadence / speed sensors for bike rides.

Does show that these types of devices are just around the corner, which is exciting. For me, I'll keep on trucking my phone with me until I get full integration with tracking heart rate and cycling metrics.

<comment><USER49> It pairs with the watch, which is tracking heart rate. Think of Core as a phone replacement to run the watch, not a watch replacement.

<comment><USER50> Does it? That wasn't remotely obvious from the kickstarter page. I understood it to be a headless Pebble.

<comment><USER51> "Pair with Pebble

Core can take your Pebble watch to the next level. When paired, Core provides a network connection for internet-enabled Pebble apps. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> And here I just bought a Pebble Time. Guess I know why it seemed so cheap.

Hopefully this won't fragment the app marketplace and it will maintain universal app coverage across all the Pebble watches.

I wonder if it would be possible for an Android Wear watch to do something similar to the Pebble: Long battery life, no touch screen, e-paper display and run alright. I imagine the colour space differences between e-paper and LCD would cause issues though.

<comment><USER50> Android is a much beefier OS than Pebble, which is an RTOS and doesn't scale down nearly as well. Pebble can produce products at such low prices and high- battery costs because they squeeze every drop out of their low cost hardware.

Most Android apps require more system resources than the entirety of a Pebble watch.

Aside, I'm continually impressed with Pebble, and disappointed with Android Wear products. Taking a phone OS and cramming it on a watch seems lazy, not innovative, and the experience has never felt great. What Pebble has done feels really innovative and polished -- they've come a long way.

<comment><USER52> The $100 Pebble Core is advertised at the link as an Android device.

<comment><USER53> The Core is also advertised as lasting through "5 days of 45 minute workouts" \- I imagine that 3:45 battery life isn't too tough to achieve

<comment><USER52> Yeah, their lighter platform seems to be a win for battery. But their cheapest product is going to be an Android widget, presumably because that is an easy path to a broader range of features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's funny seeing how many people are missing the cheaper "Early Bird" tiers that are still available.

"$79 or more Limited (14991 of 15000 remaining) ONE Pebble Core in your choice of white or black."

<comment><USER54> There is a $10 shipping fee in the US, and likely higher shipping fees elsewhere. I believe this is jacking up the tiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> My only complaint is that the buttons are all merged into one on both the Pebble 2 and Time 2, like they are on the Pebble Time. One of the things I liked about my original Pebble compared to my Time was that the buttons were separate, making it easy to press one without accidentally pressing another one.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm a runner, but I generally listen to tech podcasts or audible books while doing so. When someone gives me a watch with the ability to listen to these, combined with built-in GPS, I'm on board. Until then, I'll begrudgingly continue to lug around this phone...

<comment><USER57> What you describe is almost exactly what Pebble is offering: one of their new watches + the Pebble Core (GPS + Cellular + headphones jack)

<comment><USER56> From what I've read it supports streaming music... To stream podcasts it'll have to have an app for that, and for using Audible it'll have to support, well, Audible.

Add to that the fact that it requires its own 3g connection, which will add a monthly cost. I'd much rather have built-in storage sufficient to store audiobooks and podcasts...

<comment><USER33> It has 4GB of storage.

> You can also use Core's 4GB of built-in storage to access your favorite > playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks.

Not sure if it will work with Audible specifically, but it should work with normal audiobook files.

You do not _have_ to have a 3G connection to use it. It has WiFi for offline syncing.

<comment><USER56> Ah, didn't catch that. If it works with Audible, it'll be a win. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think core should be marketed to the elderly, as an emergency button in case of theft or medical emergency. They would sell millions in Florida.

<comment><USER59> Probably won't because of battery life. An emergency button should be able to go years between charges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pebble CEO, Migicovsky, says about the Core, "Look, when you go for a run you can take this instead of taking your phone."

I think the Core is really interesting but his hopeful "instead of" vision might be naive, based on the Core's capabilities.

Leaving a smartphone at home when it only weighs as much as a gulp of water (e.g. a 4 oz iPhone) seems like a step 20 years backwards in convenience and peace of mind when you can't call or message from a Core.

<comment><USER61> One thing I didn't understand though, do you need the watch for the Core to work?

<comment><USER62> Nope, it can be controlled by the watch, but you should also be able to use voice control, headset buttons, and the two on-device buttons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Although I'm happy with my Pebble Time using watchface ForecasWatch by RCY, I pledged to the Pebble Time 2. It's pretty much the same product with bigger screen, heart rate, and more battery life. I was planning to buy another Pebble to give as gift this year, then I'm just upgrading mine and I'll give my older one as a gift.

</comment><comment><USER64> Do these new models still support SmartStraps? Couldn't find anything about it on the Kickstarter page.

<comment><USER65> [https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/012/496/450/ef433d2391d654a...](https://ksr- ugc.imgix.net/assets/012/496/450/ef433d2391d654aa37817295ce10f4a0_original.png?w=680&fit=max&v=1464084071&auto=format&lossless=true&s=057eca4e119d9b9e854a135dc8b4e94a)

Looking at the back, it _appears_ so. I think they've sort of backed off on the Smart Strap strategy after nothing has really materialized out of it.

<comment><USER66> One thing _did_ ([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800343142/tylt-vu- pulse...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800343142/tylt-vu-pulse-for- pebble-timetm)), and unfortunately Pebble just kind of screwed them over. I can't imagine there's any malice involved; integrating HR was an obvious step forward for the product. Backers got an update today advising us that Pebble and Tylt have collaborated such that the Pulse will be able to feed HR data to Pebble Health, so it looks like Pebble have probably been good to deal with.

Still, I imagine it leaves a sour taste in the mouth of anyone else looking at making "Smart Straps".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know Pebble has fans (me being one of them) but it seems they will reach their goal today. Which is crazy!

<comment><USER67> The first Pebble met their goal within 2 hours, the second within 1 hour, so it's not terribly surprising that this one met its goal within about 2 hours. Still definitely impressive though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I assume if you wait a few weeks, you'll see an announcement for the Steel versions of these.

<comment><USER69> The Time 2 already is a Steel version, and the Pebble 2 is intentionally plastic ("sporty").

<comment><USER68> You seem to be right -- other articles mention that the Time 2 has steel casing. I'm surprised they don't mention on the kickstarter page, it was a major selling point for me.

Edit: Also interesting, the new Time 2 has an MSRP $50 cheaper than the Time Steel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Well. And I just got my Time last week... :).

Anyway, I love Pebble, I like their approach with always-on e-paper-like screens. I do am however a bit disappointed they jumped completely on the fitness bandwagon. Is there nothing more interesting to do with wearables than sports?

<comment><USER71> I suspect that heart rate/movement tracking are increasingly becoming something that wearables are pretty much assumed to have, like GPS or cameras have become in phones.

<comment><USER70> I don't mind the heart rate / movement tracking per se, but look at the marketing done here. It's targetting pretty much _only_ people who are obsessed with fitness / sports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Anyone have any suggestions for a Pebble Core competitor that exists today? (I don't want to wait until deep into 2017 for the Core) I'm basically looking for: iPod shuffle, but with BT audio and ideally compatible with a streaming service.

<comment><USER73> > deep into 2017

Are you anticipating major delays? January isn't very deep.

<comment><USER72> January isn't very deep into 2017, but I've backed a good half dozen Kickstarters and they rarely hit their targets (then again, Pebble is pretty solidly established at this point).

But, even if they ship in January that is still a long ways away, and plenty of changes and new products will be launched before (in my opinion, that's the real risk with these long announcement/pay times for this kind of presale).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I enjoyed my original Pebble but I stopped using it quite a while ago and while I would love to pick up a new one they just don't look stylish enough. I mean sure they're getting better and yes this is very subjective...but why do they always have to do a double bezel? It drives me nuts! I'm glad they have improved upon it but most of their marketing shots are with a black screen next to the first, black bezel seems really misleading to me (just like they did with the original Time launch).

Anyway I'm not surprised they'd go back to kickstarter. Tons of promotion and I bet they get a special rate compared to most other users of kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER75> Has Pebble's build quality gotten better? I havw the original, it wasn't made very well. Had the sticky button issue, they replaced it. Then the vibration motor died in the replacement, basically making it useless as far as a smartwatch goes (since I mainly use it for notifications). They wouldn't replace it, since the replacement only had a 90 day warranty. Of course I don't wear it anymore, I would have tried to repair it but it's impossible to open.

Doesn't exactly inspire confidence if a company doesn't stand behind its products. Even Google does a better job.

<comment><USER76> They had a few really common problems with the original, notably screen tearing due to a bad connection inside of the device. They replaced my original twice with no questions asked.

I upgraded to a Time not that long ago and it's been solid. I haven't heard of a whole lot of problems with anything but the originals.

<comment><USER77> I had the tearing issue with my original. I upgraded to a pebble steel rather than replace it (international shipping isn't worth it), and the quality has been second to none. A year and a half on, the leather band is slightly scuffed, but otherwise it feels and looks completely new. The vibrate motor is much quieter and smoother compared to the original one as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Why does Pebble have to go to Kickstarter? Is it because they get money without any strings attached? They are a very well established company at this point. Its a good strategy though.

<comment><USER70> Besides marketing benefit and having ordering&payments basically handled for them, I think it's a sort of tradition. Pebble was _always_ on Kickstarter. I'd be disappointed if the new ones weren't on it too.

<comment><USER62> They didn't KS the Pebble Time Round, but that was explained because it was being marketed outside their core market; they did make a deal for PT Steel Kickstarter users to get one at a discounted price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Never noticed that Kickstarter has live updates for money and backers.. It's crazy how fast they sell (probably in part due to the earlybird specials), almost 1k USD / second.

That being said, it almost feels like an abuse of the platform. It's their third generation of smartwatches after all. I really like the new models with heart monitor though and now they've also added a pure fitness tracker-like device.

<comment><USER79> I feel the same way. Pebble isn't kick starting anything at this point. They're just crowdfunding interest free R&D loans with pre-sales, which is fine, but the use of the Kickstarter platform for the THIRD time seems disingenuous.

<comment><USER70> I don't know. I like them using it much better than the usual use - <USER2> checking product-to-market fit prior to deciding whether to invest in a startup. Kickstarter is long past being used to actually kickstart anything, at least in tech projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Neat. A few months ago (before I had to watch money extra carefully), I was looking to make something similar to the Core by removing the strap of the pebble and dremmeling a hole into the mount and making it into a keychain. It seemed like the perfect thing if paired with a bluetooth dumb phone.

Everyone called me crazy for wanting to do it, but it looks like that market actually exists - without a screen, even.

</comment><comment><USER81> I like gadgets as much as anyone but I'm still struggling to find a use case for a smart watch. My preferred mode of exercise is cycling and I already have a GPS bike computer & HRM. I know I could see notifications from my phone on my wrist but that just isn't enough to tempt me. Having said that if I did get one the Pebble looks like the best option.

</comment><comment><USER82> I wear analog mechanical watches, I really wish Pebble would release a band with a small screen. I'd like to be able to check my meeting schedule without grabbing my phone or computer.

There's one absurdly overpriced smart band on the market currently and it doesn't function well. Right now if I want one I'll need to build it myself :/

</comment><comment><USER83> I love that they announced a couple weeks ahead of an expected Apple Watch 2 announcement. Excellent marketing.

</comment><comment><USER84> What is the most affordable way to get GSM service for the Pebble Core? It looks like it would cost $20 per month to add a "tablet line" to my current mobile plan which is way too much for me.

<comment><USER57> If you have Google Fi for your main phone (20$/mo + 10$/GB) you can add up to 9 data-only SIMs for 0$/mo + 10$/GB. The per GB is really fair (I think it rounds to the nearest MB and everything left over rolls over to the next month).

[https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Unfortunately, no Windows (mobile) support. That's a shame.

<comment><USER86> Windows mobile sales have dropped to less than 1% of the market ([http://www.cnet.com/news/windows-phone-market-share-falls- be...](http://www.cnet.com/news/windows-phone-market-share-falls-below-one- percent/)).

Not sure there is enough value in supporting it, compared to the outlay on development.

<comment><USER85> It's obviously up to them if they want to omit even 2 million potential customers.

Personally I don't get the 'not enough value in supporting it' considering the other phone systems obviously had to gain support at some point - now, more than ever considering the universal platform, Windows development makes a lot of sense.

Still, it's their choice - I'll just spend my money elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I bought a Pebble Time yesterday for around a 100$, I was suspecting the uber low price to be the sign of a new pebble watch :)

</comment><comment><USER88> I had Pebble 1, then switched to Moto 360, and after about 1y tried Pebble again (don't like droid notifications). And on pebble nothing changed! No new apps, some existing apps didn't work any more, everything looked like dying platform. Compared to droid, where i could find hundreds of watchfaces and apps, pebble app store looks like a joke. Very sad about that, since imho smartwatch OS concert on pebble is better than droid.

</comment><comment><USER89> Time 2 Gold (with color display!) + Core. Fantastic. If only did they ship to my country.

</comment><comment><USER90> Are the voice reply capabilities for iOS still limited to certain carriers?

<comment><USER91> Yes. I still don't have it on T-Mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Frankly it seems that focusing on fitness is a distraction.

The core is apparently a smartphone without the touch screen, or perhaps a mobile router with extra smarts.

Anyways, i am really not a fan of this timeline thing they have been going with on their recent watch models.

</comment><comment><USER93> Just less than 1 day and Pebble already reach their goal

</comment><comment><USER94> Maybe Apple watch should do a kickstarter campaign.

<comment><USER95> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> They have reached the goal. This is crazy fast.

</comment><comment><USER97> So Kickstarter money is counted as donations, right?

Does that mean that they don't have to pay sales tax on any of these preorders?

<comment><USER98> Kickstarter takes between 8%-10% [0].

0 - [https://www.kickstarter.com/help/fees?country=US](https://www.kickstarter.com/help/fees?country=US)

<comment><USER99> Surely Pebble have cut a better deal with Kickstarter...

<comment><USER98> Kickstarter takes 5%, so that piece is likely negotiable. The 3-5% is for payment processing and it seems like it is through Stripe or Braintree. Both start at 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction but bulk pricing is available at $80,000/month (which Kickstarter definitely meets). So there is some wiggle room on both side, but this is Kickstarters profits so likely won't cut a ton of percentage points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> just pledged for both core and time 2. I think this is an exiting development.

</comment><comment><USER100> The Pebble reminds me of "mp3 players" that used to flood the market during the iPod era.</comment>


Ask HN: What OS are you running on your Macbook and why? - <AUTHOR> I'm constantly switching between ArchLinux and macOS. I feel so much more at home with ArchLinux. But macOS gives me 12 hour battery life and closing the lid hibernates it properly.<p>What are you guys running and why? <comment><USER2> Mostly OSX. Seriously thinking about ditching the thing and going and getting a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to elaborate why you're switching?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Windows 10 under bootcamp as I do a lot of development for Windows. Strangely Win 10 runs faster on my mac than OSX El Capitan.

</comment><comment><USER4> windows 10, runs faster than macOS and now it is better for development than macOS itself and I could do a load of things much better and faster in w10 so I don't really see the point in using macOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> How's the battery life?

<comment><USER4> Its not bad ,gives about the same as macOS. 7-8 hours usually but there was a time when I used to get 12 hours but that was when I just installed w10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OS X because I don't get paid to futz with my OS to get it working right.

But, most of the time I also have a Linux VM image running to give me a closer production like environment.</comment>


Exploring how deaf people 'hear' voice-hallucinations - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303 <comment><USER2> Please add (2007) to the title.

<comment><USER3> Are the findings dated?

<comment><USER4> It's standard protocol on HN to put the year as a parenthetical if the content being linked to isn't current.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating!

Voices in the head that are not actually voices. I wonder if deaf-blind schizophrenic would 'hear' them in Braille.</comment>


Darpa Unveils Perfected Nano Hummingbird | Walyou - <AUTHOR> http://walyou.com/nano-hummingbird/ <comment><USER2> This type of flying machine is called an ornithopter in general, and many hobbyists have made their own. You can even buy toy ornithopters I believe. However, most cannot be controlled, and those that can probably can't be maneuvered as well as with this particular design.

<http://www.ornithopter.org/>

Many ornithopters use elastic bands for power, whereas this seems to be battery-based. I'm impressed with the 11 minutes of flying time. I wonder what sort of battery they are using that's so light. The weight of batteries seems to me to be the biggest issue in making smaller ornithopters.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome, 11 minutes of flying is not bad considering its size and current battery technology.

It literally gives a birds eye view :)

</comment><comment><USER4> More interesting, at small scale, aerodynamics gets all funky (the viscosity of the air becomes critically important). For small ornithopters like this, the wings aren't just flapping back and forth, they're probably _rotating_ as well...operating more like paddles in a pond.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. From the sounds of the video it is quite a bit louder than a real hummingbird, but it might pass in an intelligence gathering situation outside a window, for example.

</comment><comment><USER6> Company who made it:

AeroVironment <http://www.avinc.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome, although my definition of "perfect" would include "quiet."

</comment><comment><USER8> reminds me of this [http://www.youtube.com/user/ciagov?blend=21&ob=5#p/c/7DA...](http://www.youtube.com/user/ciagov?blend=21&ob=5#p/c/7DAEBD9D7D3080A6/0/dJyNU1aXXwo) which was developed by CIA's Office of Research and Development in the 1970s

</comment><comment><USER9> I just don't get what's nano about it... It's about the size of a living humming bird, if not bigger.

<comment><USER10> Nano compared to any other UAV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry, but the title is pure BS and linkbait. Not surprising since it's one of those sites with pictures w/ catchy subtitles to generate click traffic and OMG LOLZ photos.

Define "perfected." How is this "perfected?"

And nano? What about a larger-than-life hummingbird is nano?</comment>


Show HN: A hexagonal grid for collaboration - <AUTHOR> https://tohive.com

<comment><USER2> Have anyone thinked of this before? It is in fact a cool idea.

<comment><USER2> Actually, the implementation is not bad.

        Cell contains free flow text with formatting.
        It supports  concurrent editing, inline comments
        and meta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What exactly are those tables in the center of the clusters?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Summary View that updates based on filters that you specify. It has a link to the original cell.

<comment><USER3> Filters for text from content? Or just meta?

<comment><AUTHOR> The filters are based on Meta. We support types in Meta (string, number, date, users).

Meta can also be placed in content to flow with text.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How do you register domains for non-technical clients? - <AUTHOR>

Our site plans on issuing subdomains for free (xxxxx.mysite.com), and also the buy-in opportunity to choose a domain name and have it point to the subdomain via a CNAME.  The site is geared to a non-technical demographic, so ease-of-use is a necessity, hence this question.<p>Are there any API's, reseller accounts, etc, that you've used to accomplish this? <comment><USER2> We're planning to use eNom for this:

<http://www.enom.com/resellers/overview_api.asp>

The testing we've done so far, as we continue to build our service (pre- launch), has found the API capable of everything we need it to do, from domain checking and registration to e-mail forwarding address creation.

Would love to chat, as I suspect we'll be dealing with some similar issues (e.g. how to walk non-technical customers through transfering an existing domain name). You don't have any contact info in your HN about section, but feel free to send an e-mail to the address listed in mine.

<comment> old-gregg Jay, do they have a PDF with their API reference available somewhere for download? I've tried to "get started" but they blasted me with pay up and sign up screen without showing a detailed list of all features available via the API.

Thanks.

<comment><USER2> They do: <https://www.enom.com/resellers/APICommandCatalog.pdf></comment></comment></comment>


Hedera Hashgraph: 50,000 aBFT consensus tx/s, with Solidity smart contracts - <AUTHOR> https://www.hederahashgraph.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Well, Hedera Hashgraph implements Solidity smart contracts -- at >50,000 globally distributed public aBFT consensus (finalized) confirmations per second.

That's going to leave a mark...

The last 15 minutes or so are a bit, well, terrifying. A globally distributed AI processing 1/2 billion events per second consensus-distributed across millions of machines using Hashgraph. Basically, Google-level AI, available to anybody, using any network-connected camera, microphone and the entire real- time corpus of the 'net (eg. the Twitter firehose, ...). What could possibly go wrong? :)

[https://youtu.be/FCy9FnOq19s?t=5795](https://youtu.be/FCy9FnOq19s?t=5795)

[https://satori.com](https://satori.com)

<comment><USER2> Blockchain doesn't make sense for AI. Check out /r/machinelearning.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Create Your Own Cloud Storage Web App for $0.60/TB per Month - <AUTHOR> https://mtlynch.io/sia-nextcloud/ <comment><USER2> One question. How fast is this. Waiting months to upload a few GB of data was the reason for quitting Microsoft's cloud backup. And I'm getting that for free! Also Google's one is painfully slow. Not sure about Dropbox but granted it is expensive.

<comment><USER3> it depends on your upload speed... I have 400 down, 40 up, and with Sia i can use the full 40mb upload speed (about 5MB/s). With SIA, you usually upload 3x the data, for security and safety stuff, so, uploading 1GB of data actually equates to 3GB, so on my 5MB upload, it would take about 10 min... give or take... YMMV...</comment></comment>


How Steve Jobs, Wright Brothers & Martin Luther King think and inspire action - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Simon Sinek, the discovery that pinpoints out the difference between why->how->what and what->how->why. For most of entrepreneurs out there, I think this is worthwhile watching if you haven't seen it before, because its a great brainstorm session! :)</comment>


Udacity goes live - <AUTHOR> http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs373

<comment><USER2> I'm a little curious about some of the style choices in python code. For example:

        # used by Sebastian
        for k in range(len(measurements)):
            p = sense(p, measurements[k])

vs

        # shorter, saner, and more Pythonic
        for m in measurements:
            p = sense(p, m)

I guess the old aphorism applies: a good Pascal programmer can write Pascal in any language. (Not to criticize Sebastian's programming ability, only to wonder about the pedagogical choice.)

<comment><USER3> A great computer scientist != a great programmer.

<comment><USER4> since i'm a target audience for this course (non-technical person aspiring to learn how to code), how would i learn proper programmer convention (ie the Python way) vs. the computer scientist convention?

<comment><USER2> The first observation is that there is no computer scientist convention, only a heterogeneous collection of bad habits. :) Again, unlike this post's uncle and grandparent, I'm unwilling to assume that Sebastian is a bad coder in general, but this particular code is unPythonic. Maybe that's because he's a bad coder, maybe that's because he had teaching goals that I don't fully understand.

I am aware of two reasonable answers to the "how do I learn idiomatic style" question (in any language, although Python is the only language in which I personally have deliberately sought a better accent).

1) Read great codebases. For Python, the #1 target here is probably the standard library. People also often mention high-profile projects like Django or Twisted; since I haven't tried that I don't know what percentage of that code is beautiful, but I'm guessing it's probably a mix (so you'd have to apply some judgement).

2) The path I have taken is to read a lot of blogs and Stack Overflow questions and so on. Consider this: <http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=pythonic> In particular, answers by Alex Martelli are reliably very informative (even if I find his prose style a little sub-optimal).

3) Oh, and this is a bit abstract, but if you haven't typed 'import this' into your Python interpreter, you should do that, for some guidance about the abstract ethics of "being Pythonic".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I logged in as soon as it went live and did a programming quiz. Immediately after that I received a mail from David Evans,

"You're the first one to pass a programming quiz! \--- Dave"

Hah!

<comment><USER6> That was the best "First!" I've ever seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, the class, "Programming a Robotic Car" sounded pretty lame. When am I going to program a robotic car? Never. As cool as it sounds in principle, I figured it would be pretty domain-specific and relevant only if you were doing autonomous robotics.

However, I must say that the syllabus looks amazing, and pretty hardcore. It appears to have less to do with robotic cars per se and more to do with applied controls and online machine learning. Particle filters? Kalman filters? Extracting signals from noisy sensor data? Shallow planning and search? In a way that's made applicable and not presented as just a series of proofs and theorems?

I've signed up.

<comment><USER8> _Honestly, the class, "Programming a Robotic Car" sounded pretty lame. When am I going to program a robotic car? Never._

Programming is not brick-laying. "Learning to program" is about learning to think and solve all kinds of problems, not learning now to do one specific thing that you are going to do for a job. You become a good programmer by learning about and solving all kinds of problems.

Programming a robotic car sounds incredibly awesome to me; hardly "lame", even though I never intend to work in robotics. In college, I took courses like "Filesystems" (no, I don't intend to write a filesystem), "Operating Systems" (no, I don't intend to be a Linux kernel dev), and so forth. Just because that's not what I'm _doing_ doesn't make them interesting, useful, and fun.

A programmer who has only solved a very narrow range of problems -- and considers others s/he's not too familiar with to be "lame" -- is generally not a very good programmer.

<comment><USER7> I mean, I agree with you in principle. I think programming a robotic car would be really cool. There's a difference between a foundation (FS, OS, algorithms, etc) and lots of random specialist exposures, though.

I consider myself a generally good programmer. I've been doing it since I was ~6-7, so 15 years now, five of them professionally. I've solved problems in dozens of domains, using probably 20 languages in every major paradigm. But my background is in life sciences, and I've been increasingly feeling like checking out every "cool" technology for the consumption value is a great way to end up a dabbler. It's a _little_ bit of a false dichotomoy, but not entirely. _How does this matter to me?_ is a good first-order heuristic when you're already working 80 hours a week.

That said, I do know the fun of diving into things that seem _interesting_ without necessarily having an immediate application -- I learned most of my languages and technologies that way -- but for some reason, "Programming a Robotic Car" I guess just didn't seem intrinsically interesting as stated. Maybe "I'm never going to use this" is the wrong rationalization for that reaction.

<comment><USER8> Is it really a "specialist" exposure, though?

I'm pretty sure "programming a robotic car" involves solving all sorts of problems, not merely ones related to the fact that it is a car, and it is robotic.

Even in ordinary college CS, you're almost always faced with very specific assignments, like "write a memory allocator" or "write a search algorithm to help the cat find the mouse in this maze". The intent is to teach you a wide range of ideas and techniques; the specific goal of the task isn't really what's important.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The title made me _think_ it would be specialist coverage, but it's actually widely-applicable tools just taught in the context of robotic cars. I'm pretty sure you could teach such a class either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like what I see so far. I'm learning programming, and jut went through the first lesson of CS 101. Here's what I liked:

1\. The videos are supplemented by written course notes. This is useful for people (like me) who prefer text to video.

2\. There are quizzes to confirm understanding, and they come very shortly after learning a concept. This provides fast feedback.

Crucially, the quizzes can be repeated until you gets the answer right, and an explanation follows.

The first lesson is pretty basic, but the overall learning framework seems promising. It's focussed on making sure you understand.

I'm just using this as a supplement, but it will be interesting to see where it goes.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm on my Junior year in CS major and I think I will take CS101 on Udacity. Not only do I think Udacity can do a better job than my college, but I think I can learn new things.

</comment><comment><USER11> I only looked over the 101 course, and maybe it's not aimed at someone who already has an understanding of those concepts, but I felt like it was a really fast fly-by of topics and skipped a lot of things.

Thinking of the best way to teach this stuff is something I spend a bit of time doing, and honestly I'm not sure what the right approach is. Once I thought you should learn from Ada's work and the looms all the way up to things like the Enigma machine, and jump into the things that started happening in the 50s research. Basically, grow your knowledge from the ground up and make all the same discoveries.

The other approach is to take a high-level fly by of concepts like strings. Most of us here on HN know that strings and how they work aren't as simple as presented in the 101 videos and there's so much more to know about them.

I'm concerned that this style of teaching (implementing concepts without understanding how they work) is also the style that's lead to a lot of confusion in my personal learning experience as I progressed. Once upon a time everything in the browser like HTTP and rendering was magic and I wrote sloppy web apps. In a similar vein, I never really "got" calculus until I read a book that explained the history of how Newton made up "infinitesimals", Leibniz made up "derivatives" and someone else made up limits. I had no idea how calculus worked until I understood the origins... sure I could write differential equations based on some cheat-sheet, but that deep-rooted understanding never came along until I walked through Newton's shoes. And to be honest, it was simply the dy/dx notation that made no sense to me, and none of my teachers could explain it to me, it was always "oh, that's the derivative of that axis value" (might as well have said "oh, a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors").

On the other hand, learning and doing things without that deep understanding is exactly how I started programming and I turned out _okay._

</comment><comment><USER12> Key point here is that although the courses sound potentially advanced, they seem targeted towards people who are beginners at programming/computer science. I'm not entirely sure if this is stressed enough on the site.

However I'm also curious what the later units will look like, as I completed the final quiz in a few minutes for the first search engine unit without watching any lectures and without any python knowledge. Very basic stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> Having done the AI class last year, I have to say that I'm really positively surprised how much they apparently learned from the results of that class. Sebastian's style is way better now, with those digital scribbles and the combined programming step by step exercises for particle filters. That was exactly the stuff that threw me off sometimes at AI class (and I bet quite a few of others).

</comment><comment><USER14> For those wondering, the first week's worth of videos/tutorials is live and watchable if you sign up (i.e. it's not a dead end like most Coursera courses currently). The quiz interface (being inlined with the video content), is quite clever.

<comment><USER15> Two Coursera classes are live as well, Model Thinking and Software Engineering for Software as a Service: <https://www.coursera.org/modelthinking/auth/welcome> and <https://www.coursera.org/saas/auth/welcome>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Forgot password?" doesn't do anything. It doesn't allow me to sign up either, saying "That email has already been registered"

<comment><USER17> Go to the home page and click on "Forgot password?" there.

<comment><USER18> that was a cool hack :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems to me that all the e-learning courses that are popping up these days are focused on programming.

When will we see courses on psychology, Spanish, martial arts, etc? What would those courses even look like in an e-learning format?

<comment><USER20> The tech for online learning is still being developed.so the courses offered are those close to the developers'interests and competencies, much like how the internet was first used for and by scientists. But the tech will spread.

<comment><USER19> Uh, I'm a developer and I work with a bunch of developers. Trust me, programming is not our numero uno interest in life. :-)

Judging from our office discussions, the most popular courses would have to be on picking up chicks, making moonshine, and all sorts of crazy money-making schemes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Exercises are in python. Learning python as needed seems like a good strategy

<comment><USER22> Python is really fairly easy. You shouldn't have much trouble with it unless you are a beginner in programming in general. Even then it should still be possible with a little extra work.

<comment><USER23> agreed, I've found these exercises very doable with close to no python experience.

One thing that is really throwing me off atm, is all the static functions, sum(list), len(list) as opposed to more OO solutions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The course contents doesn't open on a android tablet. It says loading... for sometime, and it just stops after that. I tried with stock browser and Dolphin browser and both have the same issue.

<comment><USER25> Probably because of Flash. I thought the site was down Monday because it just said "Loading...". Then today, I realized I have a Flash blocker. Oops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm having a hard time finding the first homework assignment. Is there one to be found at this point?

<comment><USER9> No, they'll be posted later.

They added an improved FAQ to the main page of each course, in the overview section.</comment></comment>


Samsung beats Apple to release of smart watch - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/galaxy-gear-smart-watch-coming-next-week-samsung-says-50012088/

<comment><USER2> Can nothing released by one party beat nothing released by another?

See also how the HP Slate beat the rumored iPad:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/the-hp- slate/](http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/the-hp-slate/)</comment>


A mattress conspiracy theory got even weirder after top comment got deleted - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/distract/2018/01/22/this-mysterious-conspiracy-theory-about-mattresses-is-everything-we-love-about-reddit/ <comment><USER2> Mattress stores cluster for the same reason automobile dealerships cluster. And just like automobile dealerships, many stores in the same area have the same owner.

There's a Freakonomics podcast episode about the mattress store industry at [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store- bubble/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/)

<comment><USER3> Sure, but these are the exact same brand clustering together in the provided examples. It would be like seeing 3 Ford dealerships in the same block.

<comment><USER4> I've seen 3 Shell stations on one intersection, and a Starbucks literally less than 100 feet across a street from another Starbucks, so I could believe that.

 _For a great joke, look up "Starbucks across from a Starbucks" on google by Lewis Black.

_ *Technically there is a third Starbucks if you count the one in the Barnes & Nobles. [http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2009/09/18/three- starbu...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2009/09/18/three-starbucks-on- one-houston-corner/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Berlin it would be Matratzen Concorde. They have dozens of stores. They always do liquidation sales and inventory replacement and the stores always look pretty much empty. I got some great deals a couple of times there, though. The product is good and during the heavy discount periods you can get good mattresses up to 60% off of the original (probably heavily inflated) price. Gotta consider that the average purchase price in these stores is quite steep. It's totally possible that they are legit, because two or three sales a day are enough to keep the lights on, pay an employee or two and turn a small profit.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because of inventory, ergo a factory ships a mattress, a customer buys a mattress, there's something for investigators to grab onto. This would on the surface make it seem to not be very good for money laundering unless the retailer also controlled manufacturing and could cook the shipment books there which is unlikely. Now here's where this conspiracy theory gets interesting. Stick with me for the briefest of intros to what makes for a good money laundering business.

Typically businesses for which it's hard to account for the number of customers and who don't have inventory that can be traced are better: golf courses, bowling alleys, car washes, etc. The case of car washes is pretty awesome in fact and relates well to the mattress conspiracy theory. At one point they were getting busted because investigators would look at their water usage, but that was quickly resolved by becoming "environmental" and installing water capture and re-use systems. Now it's all about making the power usage look like the place is busy and counting on local investigators to have other priorities than long term 24/7 stake-outs.

Okay, okay, with this in mind, back to the mattress company. How often are we told to replace our mattresses these days? I've quite literally had a mattress from Ethan Allen for 20 years and it's still like new. However, my wife keeps pointing out that mattresses should be replace every eight. With this in mind, how many people are like me? I suspect a lot - if your back isn't hurting, if you aren't feeling springs, if it's still firm, why replace it, heck, that would introduce the opportunity to get a worse mattress. As such, there's likely not a lot of turnover, so... A mattress company could use this to their advantage by making large orders of mattresses, claiming they sold all of them, while only selling a tenth. They could then ship the remaining new mattresses to 'recyclers', claiming they were customer exchanges. Having physical stores, they could claim a lot of their business was cash and by having a lot of stores they make it all but impossible to stake them out with anything but a satellite which few law enforcement agencies who would be interested in catching this scheme would invest in & by being in locations with shared parking lots could make tracking all but impossible even by counting cars. Honestly, I think it could work and we are all part of it for buying into the whole replace your mattress every eight years line! OMG.

<comment><USER7> > Having physical stores, they could claim a lot of their business was cash

The number of people paying cash for a $500-5000 mattress are likely fairly low and I doubt many investigators would buy it either. Money laundering "businesses" are typically places that legitimately do mostly cash transactions (like the ones you mentioned, aka car wash, laundromat, etc).

<comment><USER8> I bet a lot of people buy mattresses on hire-purchase.

I wonder if they have managed to somehow funnel money in through fake hire- purchase arrangements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link to original thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7s36ub/what_cons...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7s36ub/what_conspiracy_theory_do_you_100_buy_into_and_why/dt215gv/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Said mattress company is shady, has gone through rebrandings to avoid collecting a dirty name, and has very anti-consumer policies and tactics. This doesn't make the conspiracy stuff true, but it is... interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Heh, I saw this thread. The top comments were actually surprisingly good as far as conspiracy theories go.</comment>


How to Cheat EBay Sellers and Scam PayPal - <AUTHOR> http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18417&Itemid=8 <comment><USER3> The only way eBay became the category killer (during its heyday) was because of the two-way feedback system.

When they killed the ability to leave negative (or even neutral!) feedback for buyers, fraudsters caught on _fast_.

Just this month, I closed my eBay store after over a decade. The last straw was getting a bogus negative feedback (in a case where the buyer confirmed _right in eBay messaging_ having received and consumed the product). Reason for the negative? I didn't upgrade him to overnight shipping for free at my expense. Even so, the item arrived three days before the eBay stated delivery lead time. They let the feedback stand because "it didn't meet the criteria for feedback removal".

</comment><comment><USER4> ebay/paypal is extremely good at unloading fraud onto the seller instead of absorbing it themselves - credit card companies should be extremely jealous

which is why I laugh at any guarantees made by them

or for that matter that they are separate entities now

I've read though that Amazon is almost as bad though to their sellers - <USER2> happens if a Prime customer returns an empty box to Amazon claiming it was delivered that way? I once received an item that was "replaced" inside the original box with a broken one - Amazon took it back but someone absorbed that and I doubt they pursued the previous person that bought/returned it. I was a bit upset they resold it without inspecting!</comment>


Why care about functional programming? Part 1: Immutability - <AUTHOR> http://miles.no/blogg/why-care-about-functional-programming-part-1-immutability <comment><USER2> I can't make it past the first sentance in the opening without just wanting to scream in annoyance. Nothing about immutable objects means that you are going to write thread safe code. Pretty much period.

Worse, nothing about functional programming is necessarily about immutability. It is a convenience on small and easy problems, but is far from required. Consider how your computer adds two numbers. Lots of things change state under highly timed situations to give you that answer. It is not some magic table lookup that works with immutable facts.

I may just be bitter by a system right now that is using immutable objects everywhere. I realize this is a straw man, but with heavy reliance on deep (3+ levels) of immutable relationships, it is not uncommon to find crap that is the equivalent of this:

        String foo = "hello";
        Character bar = foo.charAt(0);

        ...
        //We need to make sure bar is capitalized everywhere
        baz = bar.toUpperCase();
        //Now to find everywhere this matters and let the caller know.

I realize lenses and zippers and such _can_ help, but so can just being a bit more disciplined about using modifiable items in the first bloody place.

<comment><USER3> Obviously this is just a short fragment and explicitly it's a straw man, but I can't help but get this incredibly strong feeling that this code is immutability bolted on instead of embraced. Lenses, yes, could be used to solve something like this, but it feels like you're facing a problem which is better avoided than fixed.

I'm not really trying to rain on your tirade---surely there are ways to misuse immutability---but I can't look at this example and not feel that immutability is telling you something about a better architecture.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I certainly agree. And really... this is my point. Misused immutability is just as garbage heavy as misused mutability. It does not, ipso facto, prevent bugs or make threaded code easy to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No one prevents you to use immutable structures in OOP.

Getting some help from language is nice, but after 10+ years of programming all those patterns (e.g. immutable) become so natural, that you don't really think much about them. Because you know what data structure you want, and see what language offers you. So the whole "which language" deal doesn't make so much difference (although it's easier/harder in some languages). Tooling/libs and community matters way more.

<comment><USER5> > _No one prevents you to use immutable structures in OOP._

No one prevents you, but what about the code other people write?

<comment><USER4> Good point. Fortunately, I had pretty good engineers in my recent teams, but, remembering my older projects, I totally agree with you that it's good when language makes it hard to write bad code for less competent engineers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's an awful lot of text to advocate for immutable data to prevent shooting yourself in the foot when things go concurrent.

I've got this renderer that takes a huge data structure and uses simple OpenMP constructs to draw images. There is an assumption that the underlying data will not change during a render. Do I need a functional language to enforce this? No. Would it be nice if C++ had a feature to enforce it? Yes. Will I eventually want to make something that can carefully modify the data while rendering? Maybe, but I'm not sure that even makes sense.

I think a bigger threat is event driven code which IMHO is notorious for making things happen in unexpected order.

<comment><USER7> I'm not that great at C++, but can't you use the const keyword to declare that something's value isn't changing?

<comment><USER8> You can. If you want to write immutable C++ simply declare every single variable const. Done.

The only difference between C++ and "immutable by design" languages is that in C++ you'd have to write your own little processor to ensure that your rule is followed (this is no big deal, and I've written much more complex processors to enforce C++ coding standards as part of the build.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Immutability is basically like explicit version control. If the program is interactive, sooner or later you need to write a state machine that updates HEAD. A good example is the foldp function in Elm. [1]

You can probably do this in any language, but efficiency is another issue.

[1] [http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm- lang/core/1.1.1/Sig...](http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm- lang/core/1.1.1/Signal#foldp)

<comment><USER10> Immutability is nothing like explicit version control. So far as I know no language has anything close to explicit version control for state.

This is unfortunate, because it could potentially be a very useful if every single atom of data came with a built-in list of previous states, with timestamps, and with an identifier for the code/process that last changed the state.

Obviously, this is usually what debuggers try to do. But there's no reason why something like this couldn't be built into a language.

(Yes, it would be slow. No, it wouldn't be _that_ slow if done right. It wouldn't even have to be slower than many other standard practices. But yes, it could potentially use a lot of memory unless given a cutoff. Even so...)

CS generally still seems stuck in the "memory is a line pigeonholes" model, and immutability seems to be a crude memory management hack, not a complete state control solution.

I sometimes wonder if a lot of the issues with state are caused by the fact that languages have extremely limited tools for dealing explicitly with representations of historical causality and past/present/future, and not because state itself is inherently evil.

<comment><USER11> > Immutability is nothing like explicit version control. So far as I know no > language has anything close to explicit version control for state.

Well, it depends on which version control system we're imagining. In my mind, the immutable data-structure approach is like git, and I _think_ what you're imagining is more like CVS.

Consider: immutability by itself doesn't enforce versioning; it just makes the state-of-the-world equivalent to state-of-the-root-pointers-of-your-heap, because the pointed-to things cannot change. (I.e., referential transparency.) So it pushes the versioning up to whatever agents manage the root pointers. This is sort of like git: you build an immutable DAG, and you have mutable HEAD pointers that move around in it. (The difference is that git has one HEAD for the tree while this world has one HEAD per global or stack-local root.) When you have a reference, you have a snapshot of the world in time that will never change.

Your "each slot has a list of previous states" is more like CVS in that it versions each "file" separately. This is also useful, but for a different reason: sometimes you really do want that history as a first-class concept. You can derive the per-file history in a git-like system too but it involves some computation. (And coming back from the analogy, in such a memory- management scheme, you would need to formalize the changes to root pointers into some sort of transaction system.)

All of that said, I think what you describe would be really useful for debugging, albeit probably pretty expensive (each store instruction touches an undo log?). Time-reversible debuggers may have done something like this?

<comment><USER9> Yes, Elm has a "time travelling debugger" though I haven't really used it.

[http://debug.elm-lang.org/](http://debug.elm-lang.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _If you do not care about mutability, you will only get immutable data. You can then send the data between different threads, and it will not get corrupted. The reason is that whenever you attempt to change them, a new instance of the structure being changed will be allocated._

There is a lot to recommend a functional programming style in general and forgoing mutation of data in particular, but these are programming practices. Clojure allows mutation. Common Lisp allows it in ways that are as mind blowingly difficult to grok as macros. The shared structure that allows efficient immutability semantics allows a tsunami of value changes if someone is careless or malicious.

<comment><USER13> Clojure allows mutation, but the data structures that use structural sharing aren't mutable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Look, I care about functional programming, I just haz no reason to use it atm

Cheers!</comment>


Researchers are beginning to disentangle pain relief from addiction and overdose - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-morphine-180961774/ <comment><USER3> Interesting, but I just listened to Econtalk podcast[1] where the guest, author of the book Dreamland about opioid epidemic[2], claims that all this epidemy only started at first place because researchers at the time claimed that opioid based pain relief medicine was disassociated from addiction (and pharma companies gladly played along).

Except it wasnt.

Very worthy your time listening to this guy if you are interested in the topic.

[1] [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.html)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate- Epidem...](https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate- Epidemic/dp/1620402521)

<comment><USER4> You have to remember like everything, beliefs around addiction to pain medication ebbs and flows over time.

I can remember back in the late 1990s, there was a _huge_ push from the medical community to be more open about prescribing pain medication. A lot of pain wasn't being adequately treated.

As a result, doctors loosened their reigns over prescribing and things moved drastically in the opposite direction. People were getting _strong_ narcotics for pain that they never would have gotten it for in the past.

As a result, we have a huge upswing in addiction.

My concern is that we're now going to swing back the other way and people will get hurt. There are people out there where narcotics are the _only_ thing that works for their pain. Sometimes they need a lot of them as well, we're talking hundreds of milligrams of morphine per day. They will have physical withdrawal symptoms if they were to stop, but they aren't addicted in the way we think. They don't exhibit "drug seeking" behavior.

I'm worried folks like this will get cutoff and have to live a life in terrible pain. All because other patients get addicted.

<comment><USER5> My girlfriend is in exactly this situation. She has terminal pain from a Whipple and every step of the way the onus is on her to provide evidence that she isn't a drug-seeker. And there are not clear success criterion. Pharmacists can (and have) arbitrarily decide not to fill her prescription, leaving her without pain meds suddenly and unexpectedly (ie baseline pain returns + withdrawal symptoms).

Illinois won't allow sending pain scripts any more, so we have to go to the hospital to pick it up every month. They won't allow you to fill it more than a single day before you need it, and many pharmacies won't have the total number of pills prescribed in stock. If you accept a partial fill - you forego the remainder. Getting the doctors AND insurance (either of which will likely block it) to understand you had to do a partial fill and thus issue your refill before 30 days is a Sisyphean task.

All this means if the pharmacy at the hospital doesn't have enough Morphine on hand to fill her one month description the day we pick it up - we have 24 hours to play Pharmacy Whack-a-mole trying to find one that both does have enough pills and won't just arbitrarily decide to say no. Even better - <USER2> sometimes you can call ahead and ask, often they are afraid you are probing for large supplies with intent to rob them, so they won't always tell you if they have it in stock.

It's a huge pain in the ass with multiple able-bodied family members in her corner. I can't even fucking imagine how torturous this whole process is for someone in her situation without that kind of help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was 18 I had a pretty major surgery (Nuss procedure, to correct pectus excavatum, good times) which required an epidural in my spine.

When I was being prepped, the anesthesiologist joked "ready to feel the best feeling your body will ever experience?"

He wasn't joking - my entire body felt like it was floating, my mind cleared of every negative feeling, and for the 15-20 seconds I remained awake, I honestly thought I was in heaven.

I can totally understand how someone could get addicted to that feeling.

<comment><USER7> I known what you mean. As a child I had an emergency appendectomy and they gave me intravenous Demerol (synthetic opioid) for the pain. It's literally the best feeling in the world and I can totally understand how people become addicted after prolonged use. So I recommend trying every other option for pain relief before letting a healthcare provider give you an opioid. It's scary how even dentists sometimes hand out codeine prescriptions after minor procedures like wisdom tooth extraction.

<comment><USER8> My dentist didn't give me Vicodin[0] unless I had more than one or two teeth out. Even then I never understood how people could like it. I got a little pain relief and a little bit of a relaxing feeling. It was probably a really low dose as well.

Might have just been mine wasn't into giving out prescriptions or they didn't think I would need them.

I have a friend who has so many pain prescriptions after his back surgery that I've lost count of and they either don't work or lose effectiveness or he can't deal with the side effects. The scary part to me is there will never be an end for him unless there is some miracle in medicine that his doctor doesn't know about yet.

[0]I know that's not the same as Codeine

<comment><USER4> This isn't that surprising. Drugs affect people differently and people seek different states of mind.

People talk about how addictive methamphetamine is. I know people who tried and never wanted to try it again. It was the most unpleasant experience. Like you drank way too much coffee and had all the anxiety and jitters to go along with it. For other people, it's like heaven.

This goes back to the idea of "self-medication" as a root cause of drug addiction. People get psychologically addicted to a drug because it solves a psychological issue for them. Depression? It goes away when I take meth. Anxiety? Gone when I take oxy.

Thinking about it that way, we shouldn't really be that surprised when people have trouble beating an addiction. Even with all the negative side effects, would you want to stop taking a drug that cured (imperfectly) a severe problem you've had your whole life?

<comment><USER8> "Even with all the negative side effects, would you want to stop taking a drug that cured (imperfectly) a severe problem you've had your whole life?"

I am not going to go into detail but that really resonates with me[0].

[0]I'm not addicted to anything don't worry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I refuse to take opioid pain relievers anymore :( After my knee surgery (subluxated knee cap, hyperextension, multiple tears, loose bodies in joint), I was prescribed oxycodone. I felt very happy, very relaxed (usually I would consider myself high anxiety). But after the dose wore off, it felt terrible and I felt a craving even know my knee necessarily wasn't hurting. That up/down cycle scared me and I realized why people become addicted to these pills and that I'm probably at risk. I flushed the rest and asked the doctor for a NSAID alternative which he was able to find a good one for me. Prescription medicine shouldn't leave you craving more.

<comment><USER10> Probably a good decision to switch to NSAIDs (at least when possible) please don't flush meds again though.

<comment><USER11> > please don't flush meds again though.

Curious why you say that? I was always told that this is what you were supposed to do

<comment><USER12> I'm not totally sure why that's any better than throwing them into the trash. Are people really digging through garbage just hoping to find opiates?

However, presuming you're not on a septic system, they end up in the river, just like any other form of pollution.

Lots of police departments are taking them no questions asked. The city where I work's police/public affairs building has a big metal box with a one-way lid for unused drugs.

<comment><USER11> > Are people really digging through garbage just hoping to find opiates?

Where I live? eh... it's not common, but it definitely happens. And it's probably not _just_ for opiates, but anything will probably do. I do get that putting them into the river/ocean is undesirable, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The root of the problem may be our inability to very accurately remember pain intensity levels over long periods of time. Evolutionarily, it's important to remember that something was painful; but not that it was exactly 6% more painful than some other sensation, or even 40%. So we don't, and we therefore lack the most important bit of information to get us off painkillers.

The CDC says there's no evidence opiods reduce pain (at all) in the long run, and that's been my experience, too. But when you don't remember previous pain clearly enough to be sure you're back where you started (despite the drug) and you know that even partial withdrawal is really painful; it's easy to believe that the drug is still doing you good.

In my experience, this means that most who people taking opiods for long periods end up back at their old pain levels, but aren't able to clearer remember what their pain was like before, whereas they know all too clearly that less painkiller means more pain right away, so they stay on the drugs. Even though they may now be getting no long-term benefit in reduced pain. But once they complete withdrawal they'll tell you that they don't seem to be worse off, for pain now that they've fully quit the opiods. Their pain levels seem about the same.

Evolution has robbed us!

Prove this, and most of the arguments over opiods for chronic illness and pain may end.

</comment><comment><USER14> For some reason, I kind'of always assumed the act of removing pain was itself the addictive part. But now it seems obvious that a drug could simply make you feel as you did right before hitting your thumb with the hammer.

<comment><USER15> My layperson's understanding is that the opiates remove the pain and eventually, the person's body re-calibrates its interpretation of pain based on this new state. When they stop with the opiates, normal levels of pain return, which are above and beyond what they're prepared to handle and they'll do nearly anything to make it stop.

One time, I heard a recovering addict talk about his hair hurting. He had been numbing himself for so long, the movement of the hair on his scalp felt agonizing to him.

<comment><USER16> Based on my conversations with friends who were/are addicted, that seems about right. After stopping long term opiate use, your sensitivity seems amplified. That's why addicts who can't get their fix are often seen scratching themselves - they feel itchy everywhere.

<comment><USER17> Generally opiates make you itch while your on them, not while you are withdrawing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the peer reviewed work cited indicates a decreased level of nausea, but says nothing about addiction:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24954166](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24954166)

There's the study on monkeys later on, but that's talking about BU08028, which isn't mentioned as being an active component of Oliceridine (the main drug being promoted in this article). I actually don't see anything here that makes the claim that Oliceridine will be less addictive. It appears to just be a conclusion that people are supposed to assume is implied without a close reading of the article and information.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm recovering from a car accident and they gave me plenty of opiates in the hospital. Honestly I didn't see the appeal outside of pain relief.

For pain relief they are great. I went from "I'm being eaten by a bear" to "Meh" pain levels in minutes. But other than that it wasn't too pleasant. There was no euphoria just dizziness and constipation. As soon as I could switch to Ibuprofen, I did.

According to my doctor, there is a genetic component in how people respond to opiates. Guess I was lucky.

<comment><USER20> Yep. With the exception of some intravenous Valium right before my wisdom tooth surgery, I've been fortunate that opiates and do not get along. The pain relief works, but I also feel like I'm going to throw up. Then about 45 minutes after taking a dose, I fall asleep. No euphoria, no feeling of warmth or comfort. Obviously not everyone has this reaction.

<comment><USER21> Valium is a benzodiazepine (not an opiate) but don't let that fool you. I've met several people struggling with addiction that swear benzo withdrawal can be as bad or worse than opiates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I find weird is that it seems like the body can be in permanent pain, but it isn't able to achieve a permanent state of feeling good.

For instance, there are people with spine damage who feel chronic, unrelenting pain every day of their life. On the other hand, for any drug that makes you "feel good" (oxycodone, morphine, even Adderall), your body eventually builds a tolerance and requires more and more of that substance to achieve the same level of "happy". So why doesn't the body do that with pain — where it eventually gets used to your "average pain state" and requires ever more intense infliction to feel the same level of "hurt"?

<comment><USER23> At the risk of an evolutionary just so story I think "feeling good" is a larger risk for our animal ancestors.

Not standing in fire is always relevant even if your leg is broken. However, not finding a mate because you just ate, or not eating because you found a mate is counter productive.

Also, as I understand it evolution cares less about edge cases than we do. Improving average outcomes can be worth not regrowing limbs for example.

<comment><USER24> Apparently the prospect of mating can do funny things to mammalian priorities...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> On a domestic flight I sat next to a physician. During our chats we talked about the opioid epidemic and he pointed to a push by pharmaceuticals to make pain a distinct item that needs to be treated. And how this in part led to the runaway addictions. I had thought it was purely socio-economic reasons, but the big pharama angle was new to me. Curious if there are sources for this.

<comment><USER26> > push by pharmaceuticals to make pain a distinct item that needs to be > treated

It's totally reasonable to treat pain as a distinct item, especially in patients where the cause of pain is vague, or the surgical fix carries high risk - ex: chronic back pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting. It would be good to have more ways to relieve pain, and ways to help patients avoid addiction.

One of the best ways to help patients avoid addiction would be to decriminalize these compounds and reduce or eliminate the prohibitions against them. That's a strong statement, so please allow me to make the case.

(1) the iron law of prohibition says this: prohibition drives out all but the most potent, and hence easiest-to-smuggle, formulations of the prohibited substance. During alcohol prohibition in the USA, NOBODY smuggled lite beer. It takes the Busch Clydesdales to move the stuff around, and it's too obvious. It was ALL strong stuff like whiskey and "white lightning." The most potent formulations of opiates are easier to misuse in a way that promotes addiction.

(2) a corollary to the iron law is this: people without training in chemistry or sterile procedure will adulterate the strongest stuff so they can sell more nickel bags, or whatever, on the street. That makes the dosages unpredictable. Unpredictable dosages promote addiction by unpredictably pushing a user's thresholds. Adulterants can be be dangerous and can induce pain.

(3) if the stuff's illegal it's expensive. Then addicts have the incentive to sell some to their friends to help pay for their habits. Teenagers get addicted this way.

(4) offering the substances to addicts at reasonable cost in competently supervised circumstances allows for a variety of treatment options for addiction. At the same time, addicts' lives don't fall apart. Treatment regimes can, brought out of the shadows, be examined for their success rates by agencies like Cochrane: [http://www.cochrane.org/CD011117/ADDICTN_opioid- maintenance-...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD011117/ADDICTN_opioid-maintenance- medicines-treatment-dependence-opioid-pain-medicines) . The current "state of the art" in treatment is cold-turkey twelve-step. It works for some people, but is it evidence-based? Sure it's evidence based, like reducing stress helped people with stomach ulcers until pylobacter was discovered.

(5) if the government stops demonizing addicts as they have been doing for almost a century then they can come out of the shadows and deal with their problems.

(6) decriminalization weakens the incentives for pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Labs to create supposedly "safe" time-release formulas like Oxycontin, and then promote those formulas in ways that lead to addiction. [http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin- part1/](http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/)

(7) We won't have to hear news about people with names like El Chapo any more. Any aura of underworld glamour around this stuff will evaporate. It will become boring and fluorescent-lit like pharmacies should be.

Why is this change difficult? It challenges the narco-industrial complex. Decriminalization means lots of police will be laid off. It will cut profits for big pharma. It will cut government revenues by cutting into civil asset forfeitures. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken)

It's also difficult because of recent successful efforts to decriminalize cannabis. The successful argument in Massachusetts USA and Colorado USA for decriminalization has been one of recreation. "It's safer than alcohol, so go for it." That's obviously a crazy argument to make for decriminalizing opioids : because it's NOT safer, and because it plays into peoples' prejudices (see point 5 above).

</comment><comment><USER28> Before the article even begins it gives erroneous information: "Morphine is extracted from opium, a compound found in the seeds of the opium poppy."

Edit: The research looks interesting though.

<comment><USER29> Care to clarify what's erroneous?

<comment><USER30> The active compounds are not concentrated in the seeds. The seeds are even in the way of extraction of the opioids from the rest of the plant.

Also, Opium is not really a compound, it's a mixture (which is maybe getting pedantic, but it's ~8th grade science).

<comment><USER28> Correct, the seeds themselves are inert, the latex surrounding the seeds is what contains the opium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This reads like an advertisement. Also, my nurse friend said only older doctors use morphine. Most hospitals use fentanyl now.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone with irreparable nerve damage (and has to ration pain meds as a result) this is incredible news!</comment>