The Malaysian Job: How Wall Street enabled a global financial scandal - <AUTHOR> https://harpers.org/archive/2020/05/the-malaysian-job-wolf-of-wall-street-1malaysia-development-berhad/ <comment><USER2> If I was an US citizen I would be highly disturbed by the level of corruption showed in this article.

I would be displeased if I would have anything to deal with Goldman Sachs and other companies involved in this scheme.

I would be angry if I were a malaysian national.

<comment><USER3> We were

[https://says.com/my/news/drone-shots-of-bersih-4-show-how- ma...](https://says.com/my/news/drone-shots-of-bersih-4-show-how-massive-the- turnout-was)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly recommend Billion Dollar Whale [1]. The relative ease with which Jho Low could get away with this, and the number of people/institutions willing to be complicit (by action or omission) was breathtaking.

[1] - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38743564-billion- dollar-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38743564-billion-dollar-whale)</comment>


AI predicts effective depression treatment based on brainwave patterns - <AUTHOR> https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/24/ai-predicts-effective-depression-treatment-based-on-brainwave-patterns/ <comment><USER2> Is there a bootstrapping problem with these types supervised of approaches?

Per the article:

"Current methods used to diagnose and treat depression are imprecise at best, relying largely on subjective answers to survey questions..."

"... they deployed an algorithm to interpret brainwave patterns unique to individuals with depression..."

Presumably the diagnoses of those "individuals with depression" were based on the same imprecise subjective answers to questions. Thus, is this just modelling the flawed diagnostic?

<comment><USER3> On the contrary, any measurable biomarker for depression is very good news.

In psychology almost all diagnoses are just checklist of symptoms either reported or observed. If the patient checks enough of them, they have that. Accurate knowledge of the underlying causes and conditions or clear tests that verify them don't usually exist.

Depression is extreme version of this, so called diagnostic trash bin. Symptoms of depression are present in many/most other psychological and physical diseases. If the patient shows symptoms of depression first time, it's relatively common for doctor to order full blood panel and other tests to rule out all other causes.

In the end, if nothing else is found and symptoms continue, all that is left is the proverbial "trash bin". If you don't have anything else, but have depression symptoms you are diagnosed with depression. It's not a surprise that medicating depression is just trying different drugs semi-randomly to find out what works.

If we can directly measure for the effectiveness of treatment, it may help to understand how they work, what depression is, or how many different conditions there are behind depression diagnosis.

<comment><USER4> I was put in that trash bin for a few years due to always being tired. The only thing I was depressed about was being tired all the time. Eventually I asked for a testosterone panel, which came back really low. That hasn't completely solved my issues but it would have been enough to put my life on a completely different track.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somehow the term "data correlation" evolved into "AI".

<comment><USER6> For extremely long-range correlations you need a lot of optimization and approximations because the problem space is so large. To navigate enormous computational spaces in a reasonable time you need intelligence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> About 15 years ago, I was in a bookstore in Palo Alto and, while browsing, picked up a book on depression and antidepressants. What it was about, or at least a chapter, was linking antidepressants and the areas of the brain they were known to affect to the function of those areas and how they might be implicated in or be a factor in depression.

I looked up what I knew of my depressive symptoms and yep, regular SSRIs were hypothesized not to work and instead Wellbutrin was probably the better option. It made sense to me, but I am not an expert in these things. But ... the next psychiatrist I spoke to wanted to put me on the immediately physically addictive Effexor, so I told him to stuff it. Psychedelics eventually did the trick, and I should have done a lot more of them...

So I am mystified why this basic idea of tying what we know of areas of the brain and what antidepressants affect what part seems to have not made any impact in the treatment of depression. Brainwaves processed by AI... ok... super cool PR but I can see a bunch of potential problems knowing what I know about "AI". Something a bit more grounded or fundamental as in "this area of the brain might be underactive, so let's try this medication" is perhaps more useful or reliable.

Unfortunately, I forgot the name of that book. Anyone have any idea how to track down it down?

<comment><USER8> I've been depressed for pretty much my entire adult life (I'm 51). Ten years of Zoloft did nothing for me. Should have quit after two. Eventually, I too, found the magic of psychedelics, combined with meditation and extensive body work. Therapeutic uses of MDMA, psilocybin and ayahuasca have completed transformed my outlook and helped me unwind the trauma stored in my body. I am very grateful. This research sounds very promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > AI predicts effective depression treatment based on brainwave patterns

I don't believe a signal thing about this.

Depression detected through brainwaves - out of this world amazing, cutting edge breakthrough.

Knowing what sort of depression - out of this world amazing, cutting edge breakthrough.

Knowing how to treat it - out of this world amazing, cutting edge breakthrough.

Using "AI" \- out of this world amazing, cutting edge breakthrough.

Each of these are billion $ breakthroughs.

<comment><USER10> >>"We know that depression is very heterogenous, and that there are at least 1,000 unique combinations of symptoms that can be diagnosed as depression," said Williams, who is the director of Stanford's Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness. "We've found that brainwave measurements can be used to help identify which particular symptoms change with antidepressant treatment and which do not."

They're not claiming to detect depression, I don't think there is "sorts" of depression. They're measuring a change in symptoms to evaluate a medicines usefulness.

The headline is misleading but I do feel their work has merit. Years ago I had an isolated Major Depressive Episode. It's clear to me that during that period of time there was something different about my brain.

<comment><USER11> They're measuring a change in -- self reported -- symptoms to evaluate a medicine's usefulness.

If SSRIs primary function is increasing indifference, a personality inventory on sadness will still turn up as improved if the patient cares less about it. Saying that this is a treatment of the symptom is confounding effects and could pave the way for decades of poor science. And that's assuming that the data is interpretable in the way that they think it is and that it's not more akin to fMRIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this works it would be quite the breakthrough. You can already get at-home EEG devices (e.g. [https://blog.dreem.com/en/eeg-brain- sleep/](https://blog.dreem.com/en/eeg-brain-sleep/)). Imagine being about to download apps to these devices to detect different mental illnesses.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is very interesting work. My concern is that could this technology be used to test for depression, and might employers require their workforce to be tested, and discriminate on this basis? I guess measuring brainwaves is relatively involved. But that was my first thought after - Wow, that's impressive work!

<comment><USER14> Well there are lof or other diseases that employers could require test for and that can harm productivity. But fortunately this is forbidden by law in most countries. So I don't think it's more an issue that it already is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Using EEG data as a biomarker unrelated to sleep sounds interesting. From the paper [1]:

> At the baseline and week 8 clinic visits, the severity of the participant's > depressive symptoms was rated on the 21-symptom HRSD...

> In addition, electrophysiological measures were also acquired; resting-state > EEG was recorded for 2 minutes while participants were relaxed with eyes > closed and eyes open.

> Electroencephalograms were continuously recorded from 26 sites in 5 regions > (frontal, temporal, central, parietal, and occipital) with a NuAmps system > (Compumedics) and QuickCap (Compumedics). For each site, we computed > absolute and relative band powers for the delta, theta, alpha, beta, and > gamma bands.

[1] [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767367)

</comment><comment><USER16> I was depressed for 17 years or so, everything I did only slightly helped until I cut out sugar and went keto, the more carbs I cut out, the more energy I had.

<comment><USER17> I was depressed for 10 years. Changing diet, environment, and exercise did not help. Psychiatric medication and therapy helped.

<comment><USER18> We are all a bit different - sugar plays a massive role here, mostly if its synthetic. I eat or try to stick to an ayurvedic recipe which is helping alot.

<comment><USER17> I think in my case it was the early emotional trauma and neglect that contributed to my depression rather than diet.

<comment><USER19> Are you feeling better now? What helped and what didnt?

<comment><USER17> Yes, I'm feeling much better now! 10mg of Lexapro daily and a couple of months of therapy helped enormously.

<comment><USER19> Good. Make sure you don't stop taking it cold turkey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anything examining the paradigm of solving depression with antidepressants doesn't get it. Depression is not something to be dominated and rushed away. The dynamics that cause it for each person are filled with clues of how to solve it and meaningful and sustainably improve that person's life.

Our minds tell us a lot, but we are terrible listeners.

<comment><USER21> I don't disagree, but when you link a paper, I think you should disclose that you're the sole author.

<comment><USER20> I agree. Sorry I removed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Take what we know about AI bias, apply it to this, get shivers down your spine.

</comment><comment><USER23> Technology is pretty great and solving everything through data and technology gives good kick to programmers as well.

Is what we are building today becoming the reason for this depression ?

At the core, "having someone to talk to" would definitely help these depressions.

<comment><USER24> A lot of depression cases are purely chemical in origin. At least 20% of patients are 95% recovered once they find the right medication. Keep in mind that the psychiatric definition of "depression" is quite different from the layperson's definition. It's not a sadness or melancholy, it's basically a shutdown of almost all higher-order mental functions.

<comment><USER25> Psychiatric depression is not that - [https://www.psycom.net/depression- definition-dsm-5-diagnosti...](https://www.psycom.net/depression-definition- dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria/)

Having been thru it, clinically, it's not a shutdown of mental functions. It is more like a lens by which many of your thoughts have to pass through. Many of those neuronal pathways still function just as well as normal.

<comment><USER6> Are there different definitions in different countries?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I found a way out of depression into bottomless joy by one of the modern mystics and his kriya yoga practices. So from my perspective whatever AI predicts is anyway based on modern science which does not look deep into life processes.

<comment><USER22> I really would like to understand what is the thought process behind downvoting this quiet, personal and respectful comment. Sometimes this community really baffles me.

<comment> vertex-four It looks an awful lot like "I know how to cure everybody's depression by Life Hacks and all medical help is worthless", which does not square with my (or many other people's) experiences. Being on antidepressants for a while allowed me to turn my life around.

<comment><USER26> I can elaborate on that, see depression is caused by you in the end, not by circumstances (which may steer you in the direction, but finally you "do" it). See what they do in yoga is they know how to change chemistry in your body in a more natural and balanced way than antidepressants.

It's the same approach but much more subtle than modern medicine can do, and I'm not saying medical thing is worthless - it is super helpful with more "physical" cases, what is called depression, anxiety, stress just involves more aspects. One thing about external chemicals (antidepressants in this case) is you may become addicted to them in many ways, while in yoga it's your own body which is doing the whole thing.

> which does not square with my (or many other people's) experiences

Well I can also show you many other people who feel the same about kriya yoga. Unless you try it you can't know.

About "Life Hacks" \- what medicine is doing today 100 years people would see it as life hacks. Just that you are not comfortable with an idea that someone understands things well beyond your imagination. But what to do, if it works?

<comment><USER27> This sounds like you're mistaking depression for "feeling a bit down lately". "Hey, just realize how great your life is" \- "Oh, wow, thanks, I'm cured".

> Unless you try it you can't know.

Yeah, the same is true for curing cancer by eating nothing but cucumbers for a year. Unless you try it, you can't know.

<comment><USER26> > "Hey, just realize how great your life is"

In a way this is how it is, except not in words nor in your imagination, rather in a real experience of oneness with whole rest of the Universe where every cell in your body explodes with ecstasy. If it happens to you even for a moment you will never see depression (with any of it's grades) ever again. Sounds too good to be true? Well again, if it works it doesn't matter how it sounds.

> Yeah, the same is true for curing cancer by eating nothing but cucumbers for > a year. Unless you try it, you can't know.

That is, if you are interested in genuine knowledge. If you want superficial knowledge to show off with your friends - you can read some books or talk to some people. Reality is only known by direct experience.

<comment> vertex-four "Every cell in your body explodes with ecstasy" is not a description of anything which has ever been seen in a human. I'm certain you would be dead if every cell in your body exploded - I know this because I have seen case studies where many fewer than "every" cell in a body exploded, and the people died. Can you please explain what you mean in, y'know, terms that are scientifically believable?

>> Yeah, the same is true for curing cancer by eating nothing but cucumbers for a year. Unless you try it, you can't know.

> That is, if you are interested in genuine knowledge.

So you would refuse cancer treatment that has been shown to work, and instead you would eat cucumbers for a year, because you refuse the evidence that this does not in fact treat cancer?

<comment><USER26> Why would I refuse cancer treatment? What evidence there is against cucumbers diet?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The War on Interruptions: When Change is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/06/the-war-on-interruptions-an-excerpt-from-switch-how-to-change-things-when-change-is-hard/

<comment><USER2> Anyone at YC want to comment on if there's a correlation between quiet working conditions and successfully launching a startup? Of the successful startups you've funded, how many had quiet/private working conditions vs noisy/shared ones?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in thoughts on how I as a non-leader can modify my environment to reduce interruptions at certain times, but do so in a way that's not off-putting to my coworkers. I work in a row of cubicles and am surrounded on all sides by teammates that I adore, but who love to talk to me (and who I love to talk to). That's great, except when I need to get work done, which is ironically my usual state at work.

<comment><USER4> Headphones, even when you're not listening to music.

Any form of easily-understood signal will help; the only requirement is that it not be rude to those around you. (Alternately, it can be so over-the-top rude that everyone thinks it's funny. But they'll also take the point.) The funniest one I've heard is two students in the sciences who were writing theses - they got a hold of a pair of white labcoats, and put them on when they don't want to be disturbed writing their theses. "I'm doing science".

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Headphones empirically do not work in my situation. Maybe a neon- pink Do Not Disturb sign above my monitor that I can flip into position when I want to zone.

<comment><USER4> Do headphones not work with everyone, or only with a subset of people? It wouldn't surprise me if some people didn't take the hint, but I guess I'd be surprised if nearly everyone missed it.

I know one person who tried a Do Not Disturb sign. Like yours, it was a bit over the top, and that seemed to help. Again, worked with some of his coworkers, and not with others.

<comment><USER5> I've found headphones work better if I use them no more than 30-40% of the time or so; then people wait until I don't have headphones on to ask me something. Doesn't work if I have them on all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Placebo effect?

The nurses are aware that the vest wearing policy is introduced to reduce medication errors. Wouldn't the nurses just be extra cautious while wearing these vests (not because there are fewer distractions around them but because they know they are been observed)?

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't any placebo effect wear off over the 6 month trial period?

Also : Who cares if the true reason is less interruptions? The environment is reducing the error rate.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking that you're right: if the placebo effect reduces the error rate by 50%, then the environment definitely needs a permanently installed placebo like these vests.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you 100%.

All I'm saying is the nurse example doesn't really prove the main argument, which is that fewer interruptions equals fewer errors. Right now, it appears everyone reading this wants to apply this seemingly proven technique in their own work place, when (maybe) all they need is a device that reminds them that 1.) they make mistakes and 2.) their mistakes are being measured and observed.

<comment><USER7> Yes. You make an interesting point about how the research doesn't clearly isolate the cause of the changes. What it does highlight is that you can change the environment to effect performance improvements.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fifty Years of Basic, the Language That Made Computers Personal (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/69316/basic/ <comment><USER2> There's never been anything quite like Basic in the 1980s. It was everywhere and built in. For most users, it _was_ programming.

I wrote my first program on our family's Atari 800 computer. It was a budget machine with a mediocre, slow Basic, but it worked. Millennials are often surprised to learn that there were many Basic magazines with entire game programs printed in them. As a kid I would beg my mom to buy these magazines for me (much cheaper than buying real games), then meticulously type in the program. Inevitably, it would error out because of some typo, at which point I would have to pore over the code and find the problem. Learning how to debug at 9 or 10 years old! When I finally got the program running, I'd play it for maybe 5-10 minutes—the games themselves weren't usually very good or complex—then set about figuring out how I could cheat by changing the source code.

When my family later bought a 386, I mostly played store-bought games on it and left Basic behind. But my high school was progressive and during my freshman year I took a yearlong Basic class, using QBasic. Suddenly the 386 I had in my room (after the family upgraded to a 486) became a Basic machine again!

Basic set me down the path of a lifelong love of programming. First with Basic, then C++, and so on. The only thing I asked for for my 10th birthday was Borland C++. I was a weird kid.

These days macOS comes with Ruby and Python interpreters built in, and learning resources are better than ever. But it's just not the same. The world has changed, and there are more idle distractions than anyone could experience in a lifetime. Programming is hard and the payoff is delayed and not guaranteed. How can it compete with YouTube or modern video games?

</comment><comment><USER3> Basic is a really interesting language for education. Nowadays, apart from Scratch that is a visual environment, mainly two languages are used for education: Python and JavaScript (for the Hour of Code etc.). But when you start, when the kid is 6-years old, Python's indentation doesn't help, and JS is not ideal either. With BASIC, you just start coding.

A while ago I participated in a workshop by [http://www.my- hexagon.com](http://www.my-hexagon.com) ; a Duinomite from Olimex was used there. It was a refreshing experience to see how immediate the response is from the sensors and how quickly you can control the hardware with a simple BASIC interpreter actually running on the board - a huge difference from Arduino when the kid is asking, "Dad, why does it take so long to upload the sketch?" Heck, even with Mindstorms you have this delay. Duinomite is a joy to use, the only drawback being its limited VGA output that is not great on modern high-resolution screens.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I love most about BASIC, and makes me nostalgic for my old TRS-80, is visible in the article.

All the games show graphics. Because writing graphics and taking unbuffered input, is simple and easy in BASIC.

It took me a week, with nothing but an idea and a language manual, to write a primitive Pacman.

Today, I'm not sure if I could write such an easy graphical program without diving into some sort of graphics framework, struggle to find the right language bindings, and get frustrated with the framework not matching patterns common to the language.

There are few languages today that make it so easy to unleash creativity.

<comment><USER5> Lua and the löve ecosystem / thing is quite fun.

[https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Such nostalgia!

I was 10 years old, and on the bus to summer camp every morning I'd read this dog-eared book:

[https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y](https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y)

In between singalongs I learned to program. And loved it.

I was such a nerd. The counselors didn't know what to make of me. Dad complained I should spend more time outside.

Then I grew up, published my first commercial software title and turned that geeky addiction into a career. Thanks mom and dad for buying me that beat up old TRS-80! And thanks Mr. Kemeny and Kurtz for bestowing this beautifully approachable language onto the world, even if your original vision _was_ shamefully bastardized by the time I stumbled upon it.

ps. You can read it, too: [http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/H...](http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Extended%20Color%20Basic%20%28Tandy%29.pdf)

</comment><comment> open-source-ux _" We wanted the syntax of the language to consist of common words, and to have those words have a more-or-less obvious meaning," says Kurtz._

Whether you love or hate BASIC, two ideas in the language still stand the test of time: friendly, readable syntax to make the language more amenable to users (subjective I know) and a small set of commands to reduce the complexity of programming.

Can those ideas still survive in programming languages today? Some modern languages possess one of these features, but rarely both.

</comment><comment><USER7> My first experience with the programming was on a Commodore Vic-20. I vividly remember the users manual, which explained how to use the computer through simple BASIC programs. I still find amazing that in those times computer manuals also were _programming_ manuals! When I moved to IBM PCs, I turned to Turbo Pascal and to a more structured way of programming. But the simplicity of Commodore Basic still holds a special place in my hearth.

</comment><comment><USER8> If anyone wants to recreate a machine that boots straight into BASIC, there's a minimal version of RISC OS running only BBC BASIC available for the Raspberry Pi:

[https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os- pico](https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-pico)

</comment><comment><USER9> Fifty years ago I tried to figure out how to write a program. I found a IBM026 keypunch machine in my high school and used it to punch what I hoped would be my first program: A Fortran implementation of the simplex method for solving linear programming problems. I turned the deck over to someone to take over to the school district main building that housed the district's one computer, and a couple of days later I learned that my program didn't even compile.

Undeterred, I found a book on BASIC in a public library. The language was so simple and so straightforward that I was able to learn to program by just reading the the book. I had no access to a system running BASIC, but that book enabled me to go back to Fortran and write my first successful program (this time a less ambitious one) that simply printed a one page table of trig function values. Sadly, I've lost that first program's listing. I used to keep it folded up inside of my _CRC Handbook of Standard Mathematical Tables_ , but it's no longer there.

Thanks to BASIC, I've had a long, interesting, and successful career.

</comment><comment> no-such-address At the dawn of the "home computer" phenomenon, there was a great deal of optimism computer literacy for the public would include a much richer understanding programming. It's too bad that didn't work out. It doesn't seem fair to blame any specific language or environment because they're all still readily available. It's just that there's so much you need to know, now, to do significant work. I wonder if there's any way to improve this situation. A lot of effort was already expended in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER10> Beginners Allpurpose Symbolic Instruction Code

Never been bettered for a beginner. Particularly when embedded on the machine.

<comment><USER11> I'd argue that Pascal is better for a beginner, especially because Pascal is something you can progress with. Modern Object Pascal is nice to work with.

<comment><USER12> Old Object Pascal was already nice to work with on Apple Pascal and Turbo Pascal 6.0 for MS-DOS (first set of features were on 5.5).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess today, the closest equivalent programming language would probably be Processing. Because like in Basic, it's very easy to learn, and you get stuff happening easily with plenty of examples around and a sane standard lib.

<comment><USER3> Processing has many interesting features, and it appeals to many non-tech adults, too. The difference is huge, though: you don't have every computer sold today equipped with it. You not only need to install it, you also need to know it exists and it fits your needs.</comment></comment>


Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8053471.stm <comment><AUTHOR> It's becoming increasingly hard to argue that the labels are fighting p2p for the sake of the artists.

How they can sue their customers, stifle their content producers, and stay in business is amazing.

<comment><USER2> The labels are distribution companies in the era of the internet. Staying in business _without_ suing customers and stifling content producers would be amazing.

<http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/>

Edit: Perhaps I am being misunderstood. I am saying they are screwed and dragging things out to hold on to profit. How is this a controversial position?

<comment><USER3> I don't buy the Matt Maroon argument. I've worked in large corporations and observed general incompetence at many levels. You only need to look at the state of the finance industry today to see that highly paid experts can get things wrong on a _massive_ scale.

That's not even a function of intelligence - it seems to be more a function of the level of isolation they live in. How thick are the walls of your industry's bubble? For the finance industry, it was thick enough that it's not even completely burst yet.

The music industry, similarly, seems to have an exceptionally thick bubble (probably thickened with dried up bits of Coke, discarded LSD papers, and the money they accumulated over the last 50 years of ripping off the general public and their own artists). I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that these smart people, who, outside of that bubble, would probably think like you and me, really do believe their own bullshit - if only because they spend all day surrounded by people who keep repeating it.

Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing.

<comment><USER4> _Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing._

If anything--they're _more_ susceptible. [http://www.amazon.com/People- Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...](http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe- Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870) is a great book on the topic.

<comment><USER5> Years back I used to go to Mensa meetings in NYC and found that the most distinguishing feature of the crowd was not what the thought or believed, but how they expressed themselves.

Overall, the Mensa folk (for the sake of argument, "smart people") believed much the same things as the average person on the street, but they had a much better vocabulary.

(Actually, one thing else was interesting: beliefs held seemed to be more extreme. E.g., higher numbers of hard-core socialists and libertarians than mainstream population.)

<comment><USER6> interesting...

I have always wondered about the correlation between intellect and the decision to make huge life decisions based on one's own beliefs.

Simply having a consistent set of beliefs (or seeing the inconsistency in mainstream beliefs) will make someone seem more like a hard core libertarian or socialist.

But what does it take for such a person to hit the street and start trying to make change happen? Are such people ever revolutionaries? Or are they content to have a logically consistent worldview but sit on the sidelines?

<comment><USER3> Historically, most famous revolutionaries, from Che Guevara to Ghandi or Trotsky, were well educated, often coming from solid middle-class backgrounds (e.g. Che Guevara was the son of a doctor).

<comment><USER7> Che was a doctor _himself_ , according to

<http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/g/u.htm>

<comment><USER3> Sure, but being a doctor himself doesn't mean he was from a middle class background. The fact that his father was a doctor, though, does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the NPR stream they mentioned: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1041295...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104129585)

</comment><comment><USER9> Edit: bad link.

<comment><USER10> That Rapidshare link isn't a valid RAR file. I posted a working torrent of the album here: <http://neekolas.tumblr.com/post/108678640/my-first-torrent>

<comment><USER11> The 192 KB/s version is 65.4MB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley_

Jesus, this guy's whole life is one big ripoff.

<comment><USER13> While I'm not into the 'mixologist = artist' thing myself, in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice. If you're writing a consumer application and there are great libraries available for much of the functionality, you'd probably use them, right? Is it so bad to do that with music, especially when ~80% of pop music is just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords?

<comment><USER12> _in an age of abundant content it's a valid choice._

Whatever. I remember hearing the "grey album" and have still not recovered from the aesthetic disgust. It's just absolutely pathetic that people steal, steal, steal, and then add, as their contribution, a load of their own shit-- only to be praised for it! And called "artists"! And base careers off of it! Legal matters aside, it should just be utterly banished from decent society.

 _just a thinly-disguised rearrangement of the same 3 chords?_

Yeah, well, you might as well say, "Geez, music just keeps using the same 12 notes over and over, therefore it's okay to take exact recordings of other people's work, decimate it, and sell it as your own." Dishonor should not be rewarded. Neither should dishonesty.

<comment><USER13> I upvoted you because I think you raise a valid point, but I still disagree. Personally, I know where you're coming from; I make electronic music as a hobby, but I can't bring myself to use samples because then I feel like it's not me any more.

However, I don't see it as theft, any more than I see a production of a Shakespeare play as theft. Stealing is when you're dishonest about the source of your raw material and represent it as your own creation. An interesting juxtaposition of known material is a commentary in itself, regardless of whether you like it; and the guy's career is as a producer, not as a musician or composer. For that matter, both Mozart and Bach were regarded by some as mere hacks, appropriating or accepting tunes from others and applying mere technique to arrive at elaborate (but not fundamentally complex) arrangements.

I'm unsure why you seem so personally offended by this, to the point of finding it indecent and dishonorable. I've been blatantly ripped off by a (book) publisher in the past, and it made me mad, but not to the extent of rejecting an entire branch of creative technique. Can you explain, without the invective?

<comment><USER12> I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for- bit) that people aren't seeing. Or, they see, and don't care. Now, if you make the 2000th cover of "Yesterday" and sell it, that's one thing. If you take the original 2 minute recording of "Yesterday", add yourself belching on top of it, and sell it as your "own", then you're a thief and an artistic wrecker.

I _think_ this comes down to opinion. The principle is firm, but the disgust is sometimes lacking. When this little gem was released,

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJePNFkkvFk>

...the outrage was vicious and near-universal. DM is doing the _exact same thing_ , and I would argue, to a much, much greater extent, because he isn't contributing, you know, actual music, like the above recording.

<comment><USER14> _I guess there's a distinction between remaking music and copying it (bit-for- bit) that people aren't seeing._

Define it.

<comment><USER15> The distinction is the amount of work, energy, creativity and risk required to produce them. One requires a lot of it, the other requires clicking a button.

<comment><USER16> You're overestimating the amount of effort and creativity it takes to play a song someone else wrote, and underestimating the effort and creativity involved in the kind of sampling Danger Mouse did on the Grey Album.

Kenny G definitely had the easier job among those two examples.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reddit adds live-streaming called RPAN - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/rpan <comment><AUTHOR> Some Facts:

* This is a public test lasting for five days until Friday, 23.08.2019. Then they will decide if RPAN will stay permanently.

* Users can stream from 9AM to 5PM PT.

* Streams can be voted to the top of the community feed.

* Reddit wants this to be "Safe-for-Work".

</comment><comment><USER2> This was such a strange advertising route to take. When I stumbled across the sub a week or so ago, I was briefly excited that there might be a cool new ARG, a la Cicada 3301.

That lasted about 30 seconds, until I read a few comments by the admins in the sub. The let down was real.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hijacked my back button :(</comment>


Darktable 3.0 Approaching with Many New Features - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Darktable-3.0-RC0-Released <comment><USER2> After Picasa (the desktop tool) was sunset, Darktable became my tool of choice. It is free and open source and understands real life photo related editing better than GIMP.</comment>


Ways to increase conversions using heatmaps - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/increase-conversions-using-heatmaps/

<comment><USER2> interesting, very hands on insights . Pair ( Couples ) example was good .</comment>


Paul Carr on Macmillan vs Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/07/its-nsfw-because-the-word-fuck-is-in-the-url/

<comment><USER2> Absolutely the best analysis of the several dozen I've read over the last few weeks. In a nutshell: Publishers are resetting of prices of eBooks so they don't cannabalize hardcover sales. Basically, they _don't want_ to sell any eBooks, and the "agency" agreement they are signing with Amazon provides them a mechanism to raise the price on eBooks high enough such that nobody will buy them. The key insight that Paul Carr provides (And it's his unique position as a previous Publisher, and now Author that allows him to do this) - is the following:

A) Hardcover Books don't cost much more than softcover to manufacture

B) As Such, Hardcover Books provide a _lot_ more margin that softcover boooks.

C) Most importantly, the people who used to buy those (High Margin) Hardcovers, were now moving to eBooks.

So, basically the publishers are trying to shut down the eBook market so people will buy Hardcovers instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like this guy's articles... But he seems to have two styles: 1) When he doesn't have much time he'll bang out an amusing, readable rant. 2) When he gives himself space, he writes better than anyone else on TechCrunch. More of 2) !

</comment><comment><USER4> This is probably the first Paul Carr article that I've ever been able to fully read. Excellent analysis of the current situation.</comment>


VimGolf.com - real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - <AUTHOR> http://vimgolf.com/ <comment><USER2> Where are the solutions? That's the fun thing about Perl golf is seeing how people did it in X characters. Without solutions...well, I don't see the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm logging the solutions, but in real MVP fashion... not showing them just yet. Need to bootstrap a vimscript parser first.

If anyone is up for it, would love some help with the client/parser: <https://github.com/igrigorik/vimgolf>

<comment><USER3> MVP meaning 'Most Valuable Player'?

<comment><USER4> Minimum Viable Product

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This awesomeness unexpectedly sucked away half my afternoon. Not really sure whether to be upset about it our not. :)

Only thing is that the key counting doesn't seem to be consistent. :\ Using the command history seems to really, really screw with the counts. I thought it counted up all the characters in the submitted command, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I submitted an 18 for the "Sort and add attributes" challenge, then realized that the text for the new key is longer than that. :\

I'm not really clear on what "counts" as a keypress (shift key? colon for commands? Paste commands? Esc?) and I haven't been able to get any of my "scores" to match up with the count in my head.

All that aside, this is a barrel of fun, and I'm sure these kinks will get worked out.

<comment><USER5> Also, it would be awesome if I could delete some of my scores. :\ My bogus win and early attempts are cluttering up the leaderboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want to go head to head with someone in match play.

<comment><USER7> DJ Hero has a great feature where after you beat a song, you can "Challenge a friend" and it sends a message to them that says something along the lines of "Steve just scored 200,000 points on $SONG_NAME. Can you do better? OK/CANCEL/ABORT"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The people submitting scores of 4 are probably just adding macros to their .vimrc

<comment><USER8> OP: can you figure out a way to get vim to not load vimrc?

<comment><USER9> vim -u NONE

(real Vim ninjas _read man pages_ )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the most wonderfully geeky things I have ever seen. The analogy to golf is exceptionally well-drawn, too! It might be entertaining if you developed the parallel even more, perhaps by adapting some of The Rules of Golf to your project.

<comment><USER11> Not an original concept here.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Perl_golf>

'Golfing' different languages has been around for some time.

No discredit to the site though, certainly happy to have Vim golfing join the ranks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had an idea for an emacs version of this.

Anyone have any ideas on how you'd implement this with emacs?

<comment><USER13> My emacs-fu is pretty stale, but I'm sure it has the hooks to track what you need. Although, Emacs isn't all about keystrokes, it's more about interactive coding and an integrated development environment.

Maybe you could do something more along the lines of Perl golf, where you achieve certain things in as little code as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I held the title on "Brackets or Braces?" [0] for a good seven minutes with a 44 character solution [1], only to be ousted by @ryanmusicman with 42. Can anyone see an obvious way to improve mine?

[0]: <http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4d1a522ea860b7447200010b>

[1]: <https://gist.github.com/757767>

<comment><USER15> A quick thought: use surround.vim plugin for this.

<comment><USER14> Sadly, that's not allowed :(

<comment><USER16> Which kind of defeats the purpose. I use Vim plugins to reduce my keystrokes.

<comment><USER17> I agree that all users rely on plugins for doing real work. However, seeing how much can be accomplished by using just vanilla features can be enlightening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ugh.. wanted to play with it, but after three years, there still isn't a simple way to get Ruby and Gems working nicely with modern Ruby apps on OSX. Searching for ways to update show a variety of hacks, each uglier than the last. Of course, I could always build it from source.. ::sigh::

<comment><USER6> Not sure what you mean, as the vast majority of Ruby developers I know use OS X. Ruby works out of the box on Snow Leopard. Or try Homebrew. Or RVM.

<comment><USER18> I'm running an MBP received a clean install of the first Snow Leopard release and has subsequently gone through the normal system updates. On this system, and the previous one that was running 10.5, I've never managed to get RubyGems updated successfully.. hence, when I try to gem install vimgolf, it tells me that I need rubygems >=1.3.6. I guess I'm just failing as a hacker and missing something obvious. Grr.

Well, I just discovered that I had two different conflicting gem home dirs. was able to set GEM_HOME and do "gem cleanup" and things seem to be a bit better now. Yay!

<comment><USER19> Just mercifully ignore OSX-shipped Ruby and go with Ruby from ports, homebrew, vanilla-source install. Or just use RVM.

<comment><USER7> I use rvm on OSX every day, Ruby would be worse without it.

I'm going to sorely miss it when I start working in other languages again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ha, I just started working on the same exact project a few weeks ago. Great minds think alike, I guess. I'm taking a different approach, so I'll still launch it to see what people think.

I brought up this idea in a "gamification of software development" talk I gave last April.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like Tim Pope started playing. He's talking about the "anti cheat" mechanisms on twitter: <http://twitter.com/tpope/status/19900265129836544>

</comment><comment><USER15> Until somebody can come up with at least some method of restricting vim scripting, the results are useless(one can easily only use 4 key strokes by key mapping as you can see). But, on the other hand, you can't just disable vim from loading scripts, because there's no point in mastering the plain old vim without any plugins, custom key mappings and such.

<comment><USER22> I've been trying with editing the file in another editor, then :e! :wq which seems to give 17/18 score mostly.

I love this idea and love the challenge, but would love to make it less hackable as well.

<comment><USER21> ZZ instead of :wq will knock a letter off. I'm guessing that's what the current leader with 16 is doing on this challenge: <http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4d1a1c36567bac34a9000002>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You should really make some challenges that require the users to pass multiple tests with the same script. Sure, you can solve the reformat/refactor challenge by

        jd2jVjj=f(ci)*a^]jcfda.join(',')^]

but it wont generalize anywhere. Having a full script though that will detect and do that automagically, now there's the fun part.

<comment><USER21>
        4JD=Gjwci(*a^]jcfda.join(',')^]

God this is addicting. Shaved off a few characters.

edit: switch the first three letters to j3D, as 4JD seems to work differently between my two machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This one gives a score of 32, but I like it just for the sheer one-liner obsfucatedness:

      :g/#/+1s/\v(.*)\n.*/\1\r\1

<comment><USER23> ed golf, eh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's my Flodder Challenge (<http://vimgolf.com/challenges/4d1a4f2ba860b744720000bf>) solution:

        ~wqave~2wq@aw2@ab~ws**^]l~fe~ww@afg@aZZ

(where ^] is an esc). Currently gets a score of 41 (although I only count 38 keystrokes...)

</comment><comment><USER24> Only scored a 27 on the 'Reverse characters in a line' challenge...

I was trying to do this:

      :s/./&\r/g|g/^/m0|j!

However, that causes a to be before b for some reason.

So I ended up doing:

      :s/./&\\r/g|g/^/m0\rV}gJ

Anyone know why appending j! joins everything correctly except a and b?

</comment><comment><USER25> Any tips on improving 'Sort and add attributes'?

I have scored 38 with:

:sor<ENTER>:%s/)/, :country => "USA")/<ENTER>

<comment><USER26> :sor|%s/)/, :country => "USA")<ENTER> works for me

This shaves off a few chars: a) combining the commands b) leaving off the last / in the search/replace

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lets see, for the simple text editing: qa/vim<ENTER>yypjddq@a@a so 18.

<comment><USER28> qa/v<ENTER>yypjddq@a@a

16 :P

<comment><USER27> qa/v<ENTER>yypJDq@a@a

15

<comment><USER8> Nice!

qa/v<ENTER>YpJDq@a@a

<comment><USER27> Arg, the fact that Y and yy are synonyms always messes me up. Why can't it be like c/C/cc and d/D/dd?

<comment><USER17> Because then it would be consistent ;-)

Of course I have remapped Y to be consistent with C, D, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Kinda a bummer for those of us who don't use twitter..

Edit: Still a very cool project though

</comment><comment><USER30> You can also use Vi for hundreds of challenges at <http://golf.shinh.org> alot of the newer challenges are stale but some of the older ones are gold.

<comment><USER21> Different game, that's counting the resulting code that you create. This is counting the number of keystrokes to create the code (for some at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there anything to stop people form just writing a macro beforehand that does each task? I'm guessing that's how the guy who 4 keystrokes on Simple Text Editing accomplished that.

</comment><comment><USER21> FizzBuzz: (score: 71)

        i1^]
        qaYp
        CTRL+a
        q98@aggjjqaA Fizz^]
        3jq32@agg:5
        ENTER
        qaA Buzz^]
        5jq19@a:%s/z B/zB/
        ENTER
        ZZ

<comment><USER31> You don't need the "gg" (move to top) before ":5" (go to line 5)

<comment><USER21> Right, I'm an idiot. Good catch - likewise the ggjj earlier can just be :3[enter]

<comment><USER16> 3G is better

<comment><USER15> who voted this down? 3G is obviously 2 key stokes while :3<CR> is 3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else having problems signing in? I connected my twitter account but its still thinking I'm not logged in.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hey! You demo'd this to me at Beer && Code a few weeks ago. Good to see this has come along!

<comment><USER20> Heh, that was me, and this is actually a completely independent project. Mine's still coming along, and I think it's an improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unbelievable. I had this exact same idea. Get out of my mind!

<comment><USER5> Me too. :) This is a much, much nicer implementation than anything I had in mind, though,</comment></comment>


57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents - <AUTHOR> http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2013/57_fear_government_will_use_nsa_data_to_harass_political_opponents <comment><USER2> You will, no doubt, find plenty of people who trust Obama to not do this. You'll find plenty of people who would have trusted Bush, and you'll even find a lot of people who don't trust either one of them. But there's a fourth corner to that square, and I don't think you'd find many people in it at all: people who would trust both Bush and Obama with data like this.

That's the thing about governments: people have successors. People like Bush and Obama have been elected before, and given enough time, people like them will be elected again. Trusting one administration with a given power means trusting all future administrations, sight unseen, with that same power, and that is rarely a sane thing to do.

<comment><USER3> The other problem -- despite the changing of the guard in the Executive branch -- other branches and workers stay the same.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

I find it confounding how people are still attributing this stuff to Presidents when it should be obvious by now it's not the elected officials running this show. They're being led along by an entrenched bureaucracy with its own goals and agenda, no term limits, and with the ability to shape the world view and hence decisions of our elected officials by what information they choose to provide or withhold.

Stop talking about this in terms of Bush or Obama, Republican or Democrat. The problem transcends any one elected individual or even political party.

<comment><USER5> This simply isn't true. Obama ran on being Bush's third and fourth terms and that's what we got. The two of them have been a radical departure from previous administrations. Two presidencies does not make an immutable law of nature.

Recent political events have demonstrated just how autonomous the President is, there is no reason to think there is some sort of hidden power at play here.

If anything we need a stronger and more professional bureaucracy that's less eager to help the President break the law.

<comment><USER4> _> This simply isn't true. Obama ran on being Bush's third and fourth terms and that's what we got._

No, he ran on the exact opposite - being the anti-Bush. Maybe you saw through that are remembering what you perceived instead.

And there's no "hidden power" in so far as the Federal bureaucracy is anything but hidden. Secretive maybe, but not hidden.

 _> If anything we need a stronger and more professional bureaucracy that's less eager to help the President break the law._

Agreed. That would be ideal. There are elements of it, but it's not universal.

<comment><USER6> Well let's be fair, they _both_ ran on some part by being "not Bush". The GOP couldn't find a corner dusty enough to stick GWB in during that election cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a much more effective method of getting people to reject snooping. Saying "the government can track metadata about who you call" is not very scary.

But make it more concrete and you get some scary statements:

\- The government can use phone call metadata to build a list of all people who likely own firearms and are gun enthusiasts and pro-gun rights.

\- The government can use phone call metadata to build a list of all women who likely have had abortions or use contraception.

\- The government can use phone call metadata to build lists of likely members of each religious group, and their respective social networks.

Now there's something for everyone to oppose!

<comment><USER8> Sorry but is this the kind of paranoid stupidity I should start to expect from HN now ?

The "government" has been able to collect far more data via the tax and health care systems, TSA, census etc for decades. Imagine all the scary statements I could contrive from those. Or how about we amp up the crazy and talk about all the things the "government" could be doing with their drones and satellites.

<comment><USER9> well, it's not really paranoid stupidity. these resources were used against the Occupy movement. if you look at the 70's, COINTELPRO was created to squash domestic dissenting groups such as the Black Panthers, to great effect.

our government is perfectly fine with suppressing dissent, and the fate of the Occupy movement shows this - a government would not use undercover police, agent provocateurs, destabilizing tactics, etc. if they tolerated dissent. in my city, the local police intentionally broke up homeless camps and moved them near or into the Occupy tent camp, straining the Occupy resources. Then, when the homeless people inevitably did drugs or were publicly intoxicated in the camp, the police came in and started arresting people left and right for drug possession, intoxication, etc. this did a fantastic job of breaking up our local protest.

<comment><USER10> > _well, it 's not really paranoid stupidity. these resources were used > against the Occupy movement. if you look at the 70's, COINTELPRO was created > to squash domestic dissenting groups such as the Black Panthers, to great > effect._

And tons of other similar programs. Like this:

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

What's "paranoid" (== isolated in a private little world and ignoring facts) is to ignore or downplay such things, as the parent does.

If not total naiveness, it's a classic case of "la la la la la hands in the ears" denial.

As Gore Vidal put it: " _Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of 'conspiracy' because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers._"

As if governments all other the world, throughout history, didn't conspire against dissidents. And as if secret services weren't created for this very reason exactly.

<comment><USER11> > As Gore Vidal put it: _" Americans have been trained by media to go into > Pavlovian giggles at the mention of 'conspiracy' because for an American to > believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers."_

While we're on that subject:

There's a very interesting video about 9/11 that every American really, really, really should watch put out by a group called Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

"9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fun science fact: _Fear causes people to think irrationally._

I find it hard to believe that so many people have jumped out of their wits over this NSA news. After all, there are so many more harder and pressing problems in the world. Global Warming, Child Slavery, Drugs, overpriced health care, mortgage and education loans? But on HN, the most intellectual community I am part of (imo) is so worried about automated programs parsing through their mails and tweets, its surprising. Dude, wake up! Your content is NOT so cool. Its like everybody else's -- emails from mom telling you missed on events, defaulting on payments, failures in relationships, failure in school. Everybody goes through those things, and have records to show it.

When I see an article with the title that makes me believe that a bunch of scared folks are now going to set decision making processes for the future, it makes me worried. Very worried. Such community moods have been known to make the worst choices (always conservative than progressive) for the future generations. Today, people complain about the war US took to Iraq, and what a bad decision that was. Five years from now, it will be privacy policies that were set in, after "57% FEARED NSA will misuse their personal info."

Is privacy important -- yes, it is. But should we blow things out of proportion? No. That's never going to lead to a better world.

<comment><USER13> _Fear causes people to think irrationally._

this is the most amazing thing I've read all day. someone using the argument that 'fear causes people to think irrationally' to justify government snooping.

Let's step back to base principles. What's the claimed reason for snooping? To stop terrorists.

How much of a threat are terrorists? If you think about it rationally, not very much.

10K per year die from drunk driving. That's three 9/11's per year. You wouldn't consider allowing the government to filter your facebook and email for strings like 'i've been drinking, now I'm driving', so why would you allow that for a much smaller problem?

Here's something else to think about rationally. Stop and look around the world and history. Have terrorists caused more deaths and taken away more individual rights than governments? I'd say its governments by an enormous margin (I'm not talking about the US govt by itself, although I bet if you dug up all the stuff like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment you might get close even in the US).

We're graced with relatively good government in the US but you don't have to look too hard around the world (Iran, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Afganistan pre-9/11, Rwanda, Bosnia) to see that it's perfectly rational to be wary of government power (its even more obvious if you consider historic examples like the Soviet Union, Nazis, Armenian).

tl;dr it's irrational to fear terrorists, ergo no need to sacrifice your civil liberties

<comment><USER12> You are taking my statements out of context. Almost all my comment talks about HN's reaction to the NSA news. Did I support collecting data from social media websites? No. In fact, if you look at my reply to @Uhhrrr on this thread, you will notice that I mentioned that no org (political or business) should misuse personal information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People seem to forget that democracy and freedom are relatively new to the world. The Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago, many European countries have been free for less than 40 years. Don't take freedom for granted, it's not the steady state system, tyranny is.

I'm sorry to say but a lot of countries will degrade back to authoritarianism within the next 10-20 years due to economy and political problems.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

<comment><USER15> Since we're quoting Franklin, this one is also relevant:

 _(...) I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other._

<comment><USER16> The USA has been like a successful startup. The first people in were the superstars who had vision and made things happen. The next arrivals were strong performers not scared of hard work who could at least understand the vision and keep the momentum going.

Eventually at any new successful company, the hangers-on arrive. The "work hard, play hard" mantra that drove the first generations gives way to just a "play hard" one. The benefits created by the original visionaries are siphoned off mercilessly by those who didn't create them, can't create anything new, and don't seem to care that they're so destructive. With the decline of the company and jerks in power, anyone worth a damn goes elsewhere to find a better environment or if they do stay they tend to work around the system to get their jobs done or just content themselves operating at 1/4 speed for a paycheck. As more good people leave because of frustration, a death spiral ensues since upper management clowns no longer have anyone who can problem solve.

We had a nice run. It's really too bad that we lost our way as a nation.

<comment> brown9-2 This is a poor analogy when you consider that people don't live for hundreds of years and thus there is no such thing as "hangers-on" arriving to a country.

It also ignores all of the things that the founders did that we find reprehensible today (slave-owning), along with how far this country has come racially and in regards to civil rights in the past 50 years.

It also ignores the fact that the size of the US economy has never been larger, and whatever "decline" you are referring to is purely subjective and mostly rosy retrospection.

I wonder what it is about the USA that has made this type of "our good run is over, oh well" sentiment popular for several generations. People have been making complaints like this for several hundred years in this country.

<comment><USER17> > People have been making complaints like this for several hundred years in > this country.

People have been making complaints like this for several _thousand_ years, in pretty much every country. I suspect that its largely because people tend to see things in an overly optimistic way as children and progressively see more of the messy bits as they mature, and this creates a common impression (irrespective of the truth) that things are actually _getting_ worse, and this is magnified by people trying to advance agendas by demogoguery centering around the idea of a past happier age created by exaggerating positive qualities and ignoring negative ones of the past.

<comment><USER18> "I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC).

<comment><USER16> I love quotes from old dead societies that show us how worries that our society is degrading are unfounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is of course, the ultimate litmus test: Would you trust Nixon with this data?

<comment><USER20> _There is of course, the ultimate litmus test: Would you trust Nixon with this data?_

Also: "Would you trust J. Edgar Hoover[1] with this data?"

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey look a push poll from Scott Rasmussen. Shouldn't he be working on President Romney's reelection?

[http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmusse...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen- polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/)

[http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which- po...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/which-polls-fared- best-and-worst-in-the-2012-presidential-race/)

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I've stopped caring much about what the general populace thinks about issue X since they seem to mostly just respond with what they think they _should_ say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Couldn't techniques typically used for finding moles be used to test this? Astroturf a politically antagonistic group with carefully crafted information and see what happens. Similar to inserting random strings into documents with each distributed copy in order to later find who leaked their copy.

Either the NSA(or whomever) would have to be incredibly careful in using the information to some end, or they would abstain from using it at all. I'm not sure the benefits would outweigh the risks here.

<comment><USER24> Don't assume that the NSA's primary goal is to collect factual information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd imagine that 100% of politicians are afraid the NSA will harass them if they opposed the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER26> Given the recent IRS scandal, I'm surprised the number isn't higher.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents_

"Feat that it Will"??????? It already does.

</comment><comment><USER27> > 57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

The other 43% know it will.

<comment><USER28> Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Alternative title: "American public paranoid, susceptible to leading survey questions".

</comment><comment><USER30> Opponents of a particular party or those of the NSA/Security state?

I wonder if the fears match the reality.

</comment><comment><USER31> A recent poll found 20% of Republicans think Obama's the antichrist...

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't trust Rassmussen even when his polls say what I want them to.

</comment><comment><USER33> Only 57%? We are doomed.

</comment><comment><USER34> (I am not an american)

OK, so obama approves all this today. Don't you guys think he has the common sense to think that he will be a target tomorrow himself when he is no longer president? His wife and kids and their families?

Such things are definitely to worry about in dictatorial countries but nothing to be 'paranoid' about in democracies. While I don't condone the government for monitoring data, I will have to 'respect' their decision if they think it's the way to go about providing security. After all, they were elected by the people and people have to trust them for their brains.

The whole prism thing is completely blown up because media has nothing else to talk about right now. It's just waiting for another news to happen and everyone will move on.

<comment><USER35> > Don't you guys think he has the common sense to think that he will be a > target tomorrow himself when he is no longer president? His wife and kids > and their families?

That depends on whether or not we think that he and his family will be beholden to the same rules as everyone else.

Many of us would argue that that is a faulty assumption.

<comment><USER34> But a smart person is bound to think that this will happen to him tomorrow _regardless_ of the state today. If you were the president, wouldn't you think you are prone to surveillance despite being president today? I definitely would. I know that when my time is up anything can happen to me. Future presidents can repeal all sorts of powers the same way I as president did.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Frustrated economics student from eastern europe needs advice - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN community, i would really appreciate any help on the topic.
I would like to start with a few words about myself: i am in the beginning of my twentieth, living and studying economics in some eastern european country and having a passion for everything about tech ventures. I am able to do some coding (php was my language of choice when i was 15), which, i thought, would give me a perfect opportunity to combine some tech knowledge with confidence in administrational and financial aspects to become actually someone in the tech startup and VCs world.
I will (hopefully) get my bachelors degree in economics this year and now i'm getting more and more frustrated, because i don't see any options for myself with the goals i have defined for myself — there is no such startup scene in eastern europe as in the US or the rest of the world and i am not a programming talent, who could have it far more easily to find his dream job. I am not ready to screw everything a just get a job at a some general business consulting firm because everything i could think about last years were startups, product building, bootstrapping, angels, VCs, valuations and so on.
I am feeling like loosing the perfect timing opportunity, because if i don't start to get myself involved in either one of the sides of the table (startups vs VCs) right now (with the current market bubbles, trends and the fact that i am still young), i wouldn't have the chance to catch the last bus to the fantasy world called startups.
Now, i would like to ask you, my dear HN community, for advice: while being an eastern europe citizen and a non-technician, how to start a career in the startup world?
Thank you for every help. <comment><USER2> Eastern european here. I graduated from high school two years ago. Ditched university for going after my dreams. Now I'm working on my startup and may launch another (seed-funded?) startup soon.

Silicon Valley is not a place. It's state of mind.

Of course, some things are easier in US/SV. But my burn rate is 5x smaller than in Silicon Valley...

If you really want to do a startup and have an idea for it - just do it. Wrong place is just an excuse.

>while being an eastern europe citizen and a non-technician, how to start a career in the startup world?

Launch your own startup!

</comment><comment><USER3> _> there is no such startup scene in eastern europe as in the US or the rest of the world_

I don't know which part of Eastern Europe you live in, but in the part where I live and half way to the south of it there is very active start-up scene. I'm sure there's something to the south of that as well. Yes, it's not Silicon Valley, but there's no place like SV anywhere in the world, like there's no place like any other place. So keep on looking and consider that you might have to broaden your definition of "startup" to more than just another website like HN would like you to believe.

 _> how to start a career in the startup world?_

Well, you have to hang around those companies and understand their needs, like with any other job search. But working at startup is not just a "career", it's a way of life with it's positive and negative sides. Make sure you understand what you're getting into before you do.

 _> I am feeling like loosing the perfect timing opportunity_

I don't think you're losing anything. Take your time and look around, don't just jump into this world head first. Things might actually be much worse than they look now. But good times are certainly ahead :)</comment>


Chrome extension for end-to-end email encryption - <AUTHOR>

So why doesn't this exist yet? Obviously Google wouldn't "like" it because then they couldn't mine our email for determining which ads to show us ... but presumably they wouldn't block such a thing, or would they?<p>It's striking that for web browsing this was taken care of (essentially) eons ago, but for email (a much older system) an "it just works" or "comes built-in" solution doesn't exist yet... at least not for the masses. <comment><USER2> There have been several attempts at chrome extensions. (example: <https://github.com/Mononofu/CryptoChrome>)

It seems pretty clear that the issue is that both sides need to buy into a solution for it to work. How are you going to verify the other sides identity so that you can encrypt for them in a useful, but unobtrusive way?</comment>


Bitcloud - <AUTHOR> http://bitcloudproject.org/w/Main_Page <comment><USER2> Don't really understand what you mean by decentralized systems of trust.

If nodes decide to be dishonest the my data becomes unavailable, correct? The reason for the BlockChain is that some - even many - nodes can be dishonest and as long as a majority of them are honest I still have access to my data and/or funds. How do you propose to work this in a distributed node pool where it seems like if a few nodes break off then I can no longer access my data? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Unless you have a system where concenssus is byzantine-resilient, and access to my data is highly redundant, this can't work.

The reason the BlockChain works isn't simply because miners are being paid to mine. They aren't paid to be trustworthy - in fact, they are paid to remove trust from the equation. BitCoin can get away with this because there is a cryptographic guarantee built into the blocks they mine - so you don't have to trust them.</comment>


DNS over TLS vs. DNS over HTTPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-over-tls/ <comment><USER2> The article is factually wrong about DNS over TLS. The article states: "DoT adds TLS encryption on top of the user datagram protocol (UDP)...".

In fact, it uses TCP which is also an acceptable protocol for DNS queries. It encapsulates the traffic in a TLS session, just like SSL or HTTPS encapsulate TCP connections. When UDP packets are sent in a TCP tunnel, they are properly termed "tunneled".

This is demonstrable to the average web programmer in the fact that e.g. nginx can be used to front TCP connections to a DNS server and provide DoT.

When DNS requests/responses are sent over TCP they are prepended by a length field. Here is a working Python asyncio TCP-only forwarder which supports plain TCP as well as DoT: [https://github.com/m3047/tcp_only_forwarder](https://github.com/m3047/tcp_only_forwarder)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I was already wondering if they actually respecified TLS for UDP for this...</comment></comment>


Why Are Math Jobs So Much Fun? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/davenport/2009/01/math.html <comment><USER2> I worry a lot about trying to get kids to study math simply because it's well paid indoor work with no heavy lifting.

That's really, _really_ not why math should be studied. Math should be studied because it's interesting and fun. You might get a short term burst by claiming it will lead to more money, but study after study after study show that money is not a good motivator, especially the promise of money in the far distant future.

Math should be shown to be intrinsically interesting. It is, honest. We just need to figure out how to convey that. And if you don't think it is, you haven't found the fun bits.

OK, it doesn't suit everyone. But if we can find out how to teach it, then we'll find that it suits more than it does now.

<comment><USER3> I didn't encounter any _interesting_ maths until I was 18 and in my first year of a Mech Eng degree. Perhaps it was just the way it was taught in secondary school, altho' I was good at it there didn't seem to be much point. Then they taught us linear programming and it was literally mind-expanding. Suddenly a whole class of things I couldn't even think about before was opened up before me. The question is, how can that moment be experienced younger, by people who don't already have an A-level (or high school diploma, whatever you call it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are well-paid because relatively few people are good enough at maths to do it at a professional level. And we need the Harvard Business Review to tell us that?

This just in: rock stars make a tonne of money (and I mean actual rock stars, not Rails developers) so why aren't kids learning to play the guitar?

Getting _any_ well paid job involves first paying your dues in practice or study. Anyone who is willing to do that will prosper in any field. _That_ is what schools should be teaching.</comment>


Clever ideas that failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.yacoset.com/Home/clever-ideas-that-failed

<comment><AUTHOR> I was impressed by the humility of this article. It's good to remind ourselves that probably most of the cool, clever ideas we think up are over- thought/over-designed for the problem at hand. Try to solve the problem at hand in the simplest, most direct way, and leave the clever tricks to where actual performance data demonstrates that it's required.</comment>


Show HN: My hardware implementation of the DCPU-16 in Verilog RTL - <AUTHOR> http://sybreon.github.com/dcpu16/ This is a pipelined hardware implementation of the DCPU-16 cpu designed by @notch for his new game 0x10c in Verilog RTL.
It is written entirely in RTL Verilog and is fully synthesisable. While basically functional, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Took me a few days of hacking to get it out. I was only focused on functionality so there is plenty of room to reduce chip resource usage - primarily in the EA calculator.
I will still continue to work on it in the short term to iron out any kinks. <comment><USER2> Very cool, a hardware cpu for a virtual one in a game yet to be released.

I think it's great some many people are interested, even I wrote a disassembler and an assembler.</comment>


10 Daily Habits of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/10-daily-habits-of-the-most-successful-entrepreneurs-9a0bb5e9e91b <comment><USER2> Good stuff. At the end of the day - self discipline and focus are the keys to success.</comment>


Upzoning will ease housing affordability problems - <AUTHOR> http://cityobservatory.org/will-upzoning-ease_affordability/ <comment><USER2> Not a NIMBY. But. What these type of pieces never discuss is _how much_ they think rents will be brought down by upzoning.

Manhattan/the Bay Area/LA/DC would need staggering rental decreases to reach anyone's definition of 'affordable', much less the government's definition of a middle class family. Like, 33-50%+. I struggle to find examples of this happening in market economies outside of a major natural disaster.

If the US was an authoritarian dictatorship and we bulldozed every single family home in the Bay Area, and replaced them with 100 story apartment buildings as far as the eye can see, of course rents would dramatically decrease. Seeing as that's not an option- the discussion is how much could rents be brought down by upzoning in a market economy where only so many homes are sold every year, developers can only build so much per year, development is very economic cycle and interest rate driven, etc. Like, upzoning only works once the existing single family home owner sells, and then a developer purchases. Did you know the average turnover in many neighborhoods is 1-2% annually? Thousands of units are not exactly going to flood the market overnight.

I'm for upzoning generally, but people assign it magical properties that don't exist IRL. The whole NIMBY/YIMBY/build more discussion is kinda reaching unrealistic fever pitches among the right crowd of people who, like, follow Noah Smith on Twitter or whatever

<comment><USER3> Upzoning would not make a place like manhattan more affordable, there have been studies ([https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018035pap...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018035pap.pdf)) that evaluate what up to a 20% increase in housing supply would bring to any one given area and they never say it would fall by anything more than 2% (and that would be if the supply was introduced all at once in todays current environment).

What is shown by this is that, when you build more housing in desirable areas, people will always move in to fill it. The value of which being that more people can now experience such desirable areas. In fact, the price decreases aren't coming from the actual housing supply increase directly, but that prices fall when there is a bigger competitive pool of those seeking housing and those supplying it even with 1:1 increases on both sides.

So what's the solution?

The truth is there isn't one, in our current political environment we will neither see a command economy that seriously solves housing issues (or even something like what singapore does). We won't see national multifamily by right zoning/building codes that enable economies of scale for high density construction. We won't see every suburb in America allow density increases to the level that automotive travel becomes a serious hassle. Additionally, we won't see major financing efforts come about for new housing production at the scale of a trillion dollars a year (which is the level of investment needed from a debt financing perspective).

Within the broader market, the cost of financing and construction are just too high right now for housing prices to fall on the production side of the equation. It is not possible to build 1000 sqft apartments in existing dense parts of the US that cost $100k on the production side (what it would cost to build a similar sized average single family home) in any of these major cities, and that's before land acquisition costs.

The truth is, that the most viable way for creating affordable housing in this country right now would be to build an entirely new city made up of moderately sized row homes that would have the ability to sprawl as such for 60 miles in any direction from its center.

<comment><USER2> Was with you until that last sentence. The most viable way to create affordable housing is to admit that a very small number of Tier 1 US cities are effectively full- and encourage smart young people to move to Denver and Charlotte and Miami and Raleigh and Indianapolis and Phoenix and Burlington and Madison and.....

But yeah, everything else you said is spot on. I previously worked in commercial real estate, and I find the Matt Yglesias-types' understanding of how property development works to be bordering on magical. I mean, again, I fundamentally agree with the YIMBY movement, and that many zoning laws are glorified rent seeking. But the affordability issue is fast leaving rational discussion and entering belief system territory. Manhattan & the Bay Area & LA are expensive because the demand to live there is 10,000x or 20,000x what it is to live in, say, Milwaukee. This is the root of the problem- you cannot possibly build enough to sate demand in a non-command economy

<comment><USER4> > The most viable way to create affordable housing is to admit that a very > small number of Tier 1 US cities are effectively full

Density of San Francisco: 18,838/mi^2.

Density of Barcelona: 41,000/mi^2.

> encourage smart young people to move to Denver and Charlotte and Miami and > Raleigh and Indianapolis and Phoenix and Burlington and Madison and

This is a failed strategy, and a bit of reflection shows why it is. Think from the perspective of Google. If Google thinks the best engineers are in the Bay Area†, Google needs to be in the Bay Area. Otherwise, the best Bay Area engineers, _who have a choice in where they work by virtue of the fact that they 're the best engineers_, will go work for competitors. Now realize that this dynamic is true for Apple, Facebook, and even Amazon and Microsoft, and you see why the situation is the way it is. Given this, the realistic options are (1) drive everyone but the rich out of the Bay Area; (2) build more housing. So far, rich municipalities like San Francisco are choosing option (1) under the guise of "progressivism".

Besides, even if it were possible to force Google to move, it isn't fair for rich people in the Bay Area to gentrify Modesto just because they don't want to build housing.

†I'm not arguing that engineers in the Bay Area are _actually_ better than engineers elsewhere. The point is that the big tech companies think that the best concentration of engineering talent is here, and economically, that's what matters.

<comment><USER5> I find it ironic that leading _Internet software_ companies, of all things, don't go all-remote and start hiring people from all over without requiring them to relocate to a few over-populated hubs. Wouldn't that solve the problem? We know that distributed software teams can indeed work effectively.

<comment><USER4> If the market was going to solve the problem that way, then it would have by now. Hoping that Google would hire remotely more often won't fix the housing crisis. Some employees prefer offices, and not all jobs can be remote, such as Apple's hardware work. And there are other benefits of physical proximity: meetups, conferences, venture capital, etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what you're saying is a published paper failed peer reviews yet is heavily cited.

Welcome to modern science reporting and interest groups. :(

</comment><comment><USER7> The important question is who the new housing is for.

Building new housing for locals is good, but in some cities what is occurring is new housing is being explicitly marketed to foreign investors seeking yield. This doesn't benefit locals and doesn't ease affordability problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> Post title is materially different than article headline.

<comment><USER9> The transposition of two words (the first two) seems to make the headline less clickbaity, more clear, and accurately reflect the general opinion in the article. I feel it's a good and fitting title.

<comment><USER8> The article does not arrive at that conclusion at all. It actually tears down the Upzoning idea and further states nobody is making the Upzoning argument anyway. Aside from the title of this post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The arguments against increasing the supply of housing remind me of the arguments that losing weight isn't just a matter of calories in and calories out. I mean- yes these are complex systems we're talking about, yes there are lots of effects and if you paint with a broad brush you're going to make mistakes sometimes.

But at the end of the day there are simple dynamics you can't get away from.

<comment><USER11> Do you think induced demand might be a problem? It's been shown that by increasing the size of highways, for example, you increase traffic:

[https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced- demand/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)

<comment><USER12> I think induced demand is real, but it's a second-order effect. So while building one unit might attract an additional 0.1 people to an area (for example), it's not going to attract more people than it houses. So building more housing is still the right thing to do to lower prices. Even if you don't get perfect efficiency of 1 person's housing needs met per 1 unit built, meeting the needs of 0.9 people is still pretty good.</comment></comment></comment>