Taking meldonium for performance enhancement - <AUTHOR> http://deadspin.com/i-doped-like-maria-sharapova-and-it-was-actually-pretty-1798352480 <comment><USER2> Honestly PEDs should be legal and regulated in athletics, if not for performance, then at least for recovery. It's completely arbitrary what's legal and not anyway and a good training program and the best coaches also function as a PED.

Make it uniform and regulate it and maybe you keep everyone safe. Or not. I don't really care, I build scripts for a living. /shrug

<comment><USER3> I wish there were a sport where anything goes performance enhancement wise. Full-on hulks just roiding out and showing PEAK human performance. Is there anything like this in the world?

<comment><USER4> There are power lifting federations where they are not tested which can give you some information. PED seems to increase strength between 5-20 percent with most around 10% probably.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-powerlifting- tells...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-powerlifting-tells-us- about-the-effects-of-peds/)

If you want watch people go all out with AAS, HGH, insulin and all that you can watch modern bodybuilding.

<comment><USER5> By the way, that's not a 10% increase in individual performance, but rather a 10% increase in relative performance for your weight. People on PEDs will usually move up a weight class from increased muscle mass.

Edit: See here for a really detailed comparison from someone who knows what he's talking about: [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/steroids-and-strength- diff...](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/steroids-and-strength-differences/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doping does work. There are reasons athletes do it and take enormous risk with their careers and health.

I remember a long article in Outside magazine where the journalist doped with EPO and HGH to compete in amateur cycling at a level he found to be surprising: [https://www.outsideonline.com/1924306/drug- test](https://www.outsideonline.com/1924306/drug-test)

Using the word "cheating" is too simplistic of a dismissal for doping, I think.

<comment><USER7> Doping really, really, really works!

Once I did a lot of weight lifting. I gained weight from 65 kg to 75 kg but then hit a wall. Whatever I did I couldn't get above 75. There were several guys like me but all of a sudden some gained weight again. Not just a little, but 10 kg in 8 weeks. I asked them what's going on and they all told me they got steroids from Poland. The progress was amazing. Since then I am pretty sure that all top athletes take something. The advantage is just too much.

<comment><USER8> 100% of people that want to start in Mr Olympia takes steroids, not 99% or 70% but 100%.

<comment><USER9> Not just Olympia but majority of "natural" fitness models you find on instagram are on steroids as well. It's just impossible to look like that year round naturally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd highly recommend the Netflix documentary _Icarus_. The filmmaker starts out trying to more or less replicate the doping routine of Lance Armstrong while competing in amateur cycling.

I don't want to give anything away, but the documentary takes an incredible turn once the filmmaker meets Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov — who ran the Russian anti-doping lab prior to Russia's ban from the Rio Olympics.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/ic...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/icarus- review-netflix/535962/)

<comment><USER11> +1 for Icarus. Excellent, fascinating documentary. Don't get distracted by the weird title.

<comment><USER12> How is it a weird title? Icarus flew too close to the sun and suffered the consequences. Fairly good analogy for athletes using Performance Enhancing substances and flying to high and have it all crash down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with performance enhancing drugs isn't their use per se, it's the fact that competition at a high level more or less forces you to use any and all means at your disposal to win, and this forces would-be winners to consume large, unhealthy, long-term unstable and harmful amounts of drugs.

People who manage sports associations are comfortable with people sacrificing time and fortune for their passion, but they are not (in general) comfortable with creating an environment in which people must sacrifice their health and well-being to compete.

PEDs in some form should probably be (and in fact are, in most states) legal for personal use, but I believe that anything with the potential to cause long term bodily harm when abused should be banned in organized competition by the organizers (not some state, unless it's a publicly funded athletic organization). I further believe that unless demonstrated to be safe, most medications should be assumed to be damaging, within reason. There should be a long, slow, tedious path to approval.

That's the world view that, to me, does the best job of creating a healthy environment for athletic competition.

<comment><USER14> As a sports outsider I see the problem with doping to be moral and societal.

Moral: we agree on some rules, compete, and the guy who won may have broken a trivial rule to get an advantage. How is this acceptable?

Societal: I'm not a fan of spectator sports in general, but... when people become rich and famous and powerful by cheating, that probably strenghtens the view in many people that winning at the expense of others and ignoring our own earlier declarations is more important than cooperation, fair conduct, honesty etc. Not a world I would like to live in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The stigma steroids have gotten because of MLB and a few other notable famous athletes is really unfortunate. Low doses of testosterone in men shows great health benefits especially for men >40\. HGH and other growth hormones like IGF-1 have also shown great general health benefits. Steroids are schedule 2 drugs on the same level as opioids so just about everyone who is taking them (besides wealthy people who can afford to go to anti-aging clinic where you can be prescribed for this) is doing so low key which makes awareness and education very difficult.

<comment><USER16> That stigma started with the parents of teenagers, who committed suicide while taking steroids, appealing to their congressman. Prior to reading The Waxman Report, I had no idea what the fuss was about.

[http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-steroids- era](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-steroids-era)

[https://www.amazon.com/Waxman-Report-Congress-Really- Works/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Waxman-Report-Congress-Really- Works/dp/0446519251)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The generic concept of performance enhancing drugs has always concerned me. I've seen nootropics crop up on hacker news occasionally, and I have this terrible feeling that someday the only way to remain competitive in whatever you do will be to take performance drugs regardless of the consequences (unknown or not), be they mental, physical, or otherwise...

<comment><USER18> > I have this terrible feeling that someday the only way to remain competitive > in whatever you do will be to take performance drugs

Nicotine gum is pretty much the only reason I can stay focused at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting how Meldonium works.

When I was doing research on SARMs, GW501516 often came up. It basically works in the opposite way that Meldonium does, increasing cellular metabolic preference for lipids as opposed to glucose. I wonder which metabolic pathway is optimal for weight-loss; probably a combination of the two.

<comment><USER20> I hiked up a modest mountain to watch the eclipse and found myself winded after about 1 hour of light (~10-15 degree incline) and my feet were like trudging through molasses for the remaining 4 hours of climb (45+-ish degree incline)... I'm not in terrible shape (I can do 11 pull ups, and maybe about an hour of medium cardio without discomfort at sea level). I wonder if meldonium could be used to combat altitude sickness.

<comment><USER21> I would think twice about it although. GW501516 for example: 'was abandoned in 2007 because animal testing showed that the drug caused cancer to develop rapidly in several organs'

<comment><USER20> that's understandable, since it kicks in fat burning, which is a more oxidative process, there's likely to be more oxidative stress on the cell. Meldronum on the other hand reduces the net oxidation performed by the cell by shifting. Of course, the eye is a very bad medchemist, so take what I say with a grain of salt

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know the regimen of tests players go through in professional sports, but I've thought for many years that players who depend more on mental sharpness than physical performance (For example a QB in the NFL) are doping to improve mental performance. It always seems the investigations and testing that I hear about or read about in the news revolve around (a) illegal drugs, and (b) drugs that improve physical performance. I've never heard of a case of testing for drugs that improve mental performance.

<comment><USER23> What are you thinking, modafinil?

<comment><USER22> I'm not educated enough in this to specify a single drug / nootropic. It's just always seemed like the professional leagues leave a large gap in coverage of their tests if they are (a) testing for "performance enhancing drugs", and (b) leave out drugs that improve mental performance. If they do test for this type of drug I've just never been made aware of it.

<comment><USER23> It's a good question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be interesting to know from an evolutionary standpoint why the heart preferentially burns fatty acids, when burning glucose is supposed to be better. The heart muscles have one of the highest rates of use. Maybe there are long-term side effects associated with the glucose pathway?

<comment><USER25> Purely speculation, but that could be because fatty acid is easier to store, so you need to use it later, and because glucose would be kept in reserve of high intensity effort (like running away from a predator) in case you really need it. Several fitness websites suggest that when exercising at 50% of your maximum heartrate, you burn more fat compared to carbs than when exercising at, say, 75% of your max heart rate. But that may be completely false, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There isn't any proof that this drug provides any benefit to athletes. It is easy to think all PEDs work when your only knowledge is EPO and steroids. Other stuff... much less testing and the performance boost might be neglible.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I first heard about this drug (from the Sharapova incident) and looked it up, it sounded like a miracle drug for Rock Climbers, which I am. I have family in Russia as well, where you can buy it over the counter, but I haven't had the courage to try it out yet.

This article really makes me want to give it a shot, just for curiosity sake. My main limit on wall climbs isn't technique or strength, it's getting pumped out. Training endurance has been incredibly hard for me. Even when I was younger and played soccer, I was getting winded way before anyone else, even though I was just as active. I've always felt like I have some kind of oxygen weakness, compared to other people.

<comment><USER28> > I was getting winded way before anyone else, even though I was just as > active. I've always felt like I have some kind of oxygen weakness, compared > to other people.

This should go without saying, but you should really get that seriously checked out before trying doping. You might have a heart problem that isn't a problem until it is the last problem you'll ever have, or it might be nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Better explanation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk- eiAUgO9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk-eiAUgO9w) albeit information from the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ironically it could prevent sudden death syndrome in sports.

</comment><comment><USER30> author cheats, thinks it works, roots for cheaters

<comment><USER31> Please describe your feelings on athletes wearing contact lenses. How about athletes who have ever had a surgery? What about athletes who are, at the time of competition, using non-prescription antihistamines? How about pseudoephedrine?

<comment><USER32> Simple. Look up what the WTA/<insert authority of sport you play> regulations ban; everything else is fine.

<comment><USER33> I think the argument was to build a logical rationale for this. Appeal to authority is somewhat weak, in that regard.

<comment><USER32> I'm not trying to appeal to authority. When you play a WTA tournament, it's only fair that you have to abide by their rules. Playing tennis, or playing in another tour that doesn't ban your drug of choice shouldn't be banned.

This has nothing to do with my opinion on general drug use, which I agree has been demonized.

<comment><USER33> It was pretty clear that the post you responded to is looking for "why has the governing body chosen this particular set of rules."

Otherwise, it is a pretty boring discussion. Yes, the authority on whether or not this substance is banned has (or has not) banned this substance. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Meldonium isn't doping. It's an antioxidant, like drinking a cup of coffee.

<comment><USER35> Meldonium is included in the WADA Prohibited List of substances, therefore its use in sport is by definition doping.

[https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/the-prohibited-list](https://www.wada- ama.org/en/what-we-do/the-prohibited-list)

<comment><USER34> In a technical sense, yes.

But really it's only prohibited because it's not licensed by Western corporations.

In Eastern Europe meldonium is an over-the-counter drug that's routinely prescribed for all sorts of maladies and is considered a very mild and inoffensive medicine, just a step above drinking green tea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's simple, have two leagues.

1\. Human performance only - no drugs, no implants, no performance boosts. 2\. Unlimited league. Take all the drugs you want, when we have them, install new muscles, cybernetic implants, whatever. Go wild.

This way, the real purists, who want to push the envelope of human capability get to do so without having to compete with dopers.

AND

High dollar/prestige sports will fund new and interesting areas of biomedical research. It will be like indy car racing for human bodies.

<comment><USER8> This doesn't work like that. You will have dopers in first (clean) league, because there will be all the fame, prestige and money. Unlimited league would be marginal and no one would promote drug users.

<comment><USER36> While it is probable that some will dope in the clean league, a simple matter of instituting lifetime bans and reclassifying any and all records held by an athlete would put a strong disincentive.

As to your unsupported statement that all the fame and prestige will be associated with the clean league, that is a matter of marketing. If there wasn't a market for doped up, super-humans athletes professional sports would be very different. Look at WWE, it's not even really a sport, but it takes in half a billion dollars a year on the promise of watching steroid guzzling guys throw each other around.

For many people the problem with PED is the dishonesty, the unfair advantage it gives a cheat. But when the stigma of cheating is lifted, all that changes.

A more likely outcome is that fans of some sports would shun PED and unlimited league events, others would see it as a natural extension of their attitudes about competition.

[https://www.wired.com/2012/09/sports-and- doping/](https://www.wired.com/2012/09/sports-and-doping/)</comment></comment></comment>


Insanity 4004 – Experiments with the world's first microprocessor - <AUTHOR> http://insanity4004.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> For those unaware, this is a 4 bit CPU! I'm assuming everyone moved to 8 bits after realizing how little you can do with 4.

It would be neat to code some asm for this to do some addition and such to really feel the limitations on it.

<comment><USER3> One of the first computers on the west coast, the SWAC, built in 1950, had a 4-bit op code ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAC_(computer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAC_\(computer\))).

For a year, it was the fastest computer in the world.

I enjoyed programming it in the early 60's. I even wrote an assembler for it that ran on the 1401.

It had a 36-bit word - 4-bit op code and 4 8-bit addresses. It had 256 words of Williams tube memory. It took up a whole room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about experiments with the 1-bit microprocessor?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MC14500B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_MC14500B)

<comment><USER5> From an engineer I talked to who worked with one of these, apparently you can use a toggle switch to single step the processor and do all manner of weird things with it.

That being said, I wonder if you can kluge pulse-density modulation (think: oversampled, 1-bit audio streams. Popular on a lot of nineties DACs) out of something like this.

<comment><USER6> There are other chips like that which can be single-stepped. The one that I've driven with a push-button wired to the clock-input would be the Z80.

The z80 is very tolerant to slow clocks, letting you pulse every second or two to step forwards and watch the data & I/O lines in real-time.</comment></comment></comment>


Hubble discovers first known binary asteroid also classified as a comet - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-09-hubble-unique-solar.html <comment><USER2> This is amazing. It never ceases to amaze how much complex behaviour can emerge from gravitation. After black holes, neutron stars, gravitational waves, solar systems, this is yet another example of a structure that arises from gravitation alone (granted, many other principles of physics are needed for this to happen - for example conservatin of angular momentum). What else will we discover?

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, this is a bit click baity. It's two asteroids orbiting each other if anyone is wondering.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but they're also sublimating ice, so they have a coma and tail. Thus they're also classified as a comet.

As the article goes on to say, they couldn't have lasted all that long like this, so one theory is they used to be one asteroid that broke in two, exposing the ice that is now forming the tail.

<comment><USER5> Not sure I understand. How much H2O/liquid/ice is inside an asteroid? Is the core made of liquid?

<comment><USER6> In short, it simply depends on an asteroid. This one had ice, another might have not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The image isn't clear enough to proclaim such things.

<comment><USER8> It appears to be, to the subject matter experts.

<comment><USER7> You can be wrong at any level if you start extrapolating details.</comment></comment></comment>


We need a conversation about the future of human genetic enhancement - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/01/homo-sapiens-2-0-we-need-a-species-wide-conversation-about-the-future-of-human-genetic-enhancement/ <comment><USER2> I always have this thought with any kind of gene splicing activity:

"Let's change this very, very large, very, very old system that we don't really understand by just tweaking this one value that we're pretty sure does X ... and put it back into production. What could possibly go wrong?"

<comment><USER3> Human biology is a rather robust system.

[https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/survival-of-the- fl...](https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/survival-of-the-flattest/)

>"Let's change this very, very large, very, very old system that we don't really understand by just tweaking this one value that we're pretty sure does X ... and put it back into production. What could possibly go wrong?"

In a good number of cases, what some nucleotide does is pretty obvious.

There is a safer approach that can also result in very good ends. Embryo selection (what was in the Gattaca film). You make up 20 embryos in the lab, sequence all of them, pick the best one according to a set of criteria.

Estimated IQ gain is in the range of 10 IIRc per generation. Chinese are planning to do this - if they pull it off, inside 2 generations they'd have better human capital than Ashkenazi Jews (.2% of world population, 30%+ of physics Nobels, due to average verbal IQ of 115. That really skews distribution in the high-end...)

<comment><USER2> The Ashkenazi Jew intelligence being higher is probably a myth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

<comment><USER3> A myth.

How do you then explain the glaring over-representation in sciences, scientific awards received and so on? (about 10x)

And that coincidentally Ashkenazi Jews outscore others on intelligence tests?

Are they all cheating? Is that what you are trying to say?

<comment><USER2> Not at all. The world Ashkenazi population has maintained _cultural_ emphasis in the intellectual pursuits for centuries. I should know. I grew up with them. Their reverence for intellect and the life of the mind borders on the holy. If only more of us cared in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a space ripe for entrepreneurs to build in.

The article talks about things like determining height, but that's a silly thing to focus on because it is enormously complex. The things to focus on are the single gene alterations that have large benefits, and that can be done either now or very soon in humans, with low cost and high reliability.

What can be done now or soon includes:

a) additional muscle, via myostatin or follistatin, with human trials on non- genetic manipulation of these proteins already showing positive results, at least one human recipient of gene therapy, several natural human mutants, and years of heavily muscled animal studies.

b) telomerase gene therapy, if you're willing to take the cancer risk. It lowers cancer incidence in mice, counterintuitively, but mice have very different telomere dynamics from humans. Also at least one human recipient.

c) extra lysosomal receptors, which has been shown to restore youthful liver function in rodents.

d) and fifty or more other genes with varying degrees of support for things ranging from a halving of post-stroke ischemic damage to lower pace of generation of amyloid to a whole range of other things that sound worth having.

e) and the hundreds of single-gene mutations that cause serious disease. Fixing those.

This is the stuff that will be rolling into action over the next decade. It is so cheap that it will absolutely go the way of early stem cell treatments with widespread availability via medical tourism. That is where entrepreurs can make a real impact The skills needed to build CRISPR therapies are just as widespread as those needed to run a stem cell clinic - and overlap to a considerable degree, so that a large fraction of the existing stem cell centers are quite capable of adding gene therapies to their offerings given a few years of organization.

<comment><USER5> This is a space that will need better public understanding and education before any long-term useful result emerges.

> _A January 2016 poll of a thousand American adults conducted by STAT and > Harvard's Chan School of Public Health found that although 69 percent of > Americans had heard nothing or not much about genetic enhancement, nearly > the same number felt that genetically altering unborn babies to reduce their > risk of developing serious diseases should be illegal. Eighty three percent > felt that genetic alterations to improve the intelligence or physical > characteristics of unborn babies should be banned._

If use of gene-editing technology in humans runs far and fast ahead of public support, the discussion will look like a mixture of the moral panic over cheap and popular drones and that over the videos alleging the sale of fetal tissue.

The choice of messages includes: "gene selection improves lives", "cool! luminous goldfish", and "their babies will be Aliens!". Choose wisely.

<comment><USER6> In the US, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We need to shove everyone who regularly uses the phrases "We need to have a conversation" and "Here is why" up against the wall and shoot them in the back of the head.

Smug kills.</comment>


The NSA wants tech companies to give it 'front door' access to encrypted data - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/12/8392769/nsa-front-door-access-encryption-key/

<comment><USER2> The NSA is becoming a real threat to American Internet companies. This is concerning.

<comment><USER3> With the billions in tax breaks and subsidies, I have problems believing there is actually any coercion between the NSA and the biggie tech companies. So I don't see the NSA as a threat to those or any other American internet companies, but rather to everyone else. The NSA are monsters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you need a reason to keep your data overseas, here it is. NSA seems hell- bent on destroying the US' IT economy.

<comment><USER5> As others here have pointed out, US technology companies are very likely to be complicit, having chosen to play along and get along. Are they sacrificing their overseas revenue? Only the revenue from places that aren't the NSA's beotches already. The ones that are know they have no autonomy of decision- making and are comfortable with that.</comment></comment>


Why Internet is so blue - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2014/06/internet-why-so-blue

<comment><USER2> Corporate logos skew heavily towards blue [1] because it is associated with trust and dependability [2].

[1] [http://www.logomaker.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/col...](http://www.logomaker.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/colorsofcorporate.jpg)

[2] [http://thelogocompany.net/blog/infographics/psychology- color...](http://thelogocompany.net/blog/infographics/psychology-color-logo- design/)</comment>


Advice for soon-to-be new grad - <AUTHOR>

How does a new grad with a vast portfolio in hardware design and low-level programming projects get accepted for a software developer role at a startup? It's hard to convince a startup when what they value most are past projects, especially those related to higher level software dev, no? <comment><USER2> Why are you restricting your scope to startups? Larger companies can afford a longer onboarding/training period, and can be less risk-averse when it comes to unproven candidates with potential.

Spend 1-2 years at a big company, and then it might be easier to apply to startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't bigger companies also looking for people who have a solid foundation in algorithms/data structures? Since most of my work has been in hardware, I haven't had a chance to apply these concepts extensively.

Which bigger companies would you recommend given my past experience?

I also feel that all I need is a chance and then I will learn and adapt as is expected by the job and the company. Is this something most other people also feel?</comment></comment>


Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Make Year-End Lobbying Push to Curb NSA Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-14/companies-call-on-senate-to-pass-bill-curbing-nsa-powers.html <comment><USER2> Since when do these companies get such a big say in _our_ Democracy? Since when is "Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Make Year-End Lobbying Push to Curb NSA Spying" a headline and not "American people rally the vote to stop sweeping surveillance"?

Personally, I think it's mostly a show to bolster consumer confidence (rant purposefully left out). But let's say it's not. Why should a handful of private individuals be more important for the direction of legislature than democratic consensus AND what's written into law _by the Constitution_.

A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through.

I'm not upset that (publicly) these corporations are against surveillance, I'm upset that it matters.

Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.

<comment><USER3> The American people just went to the polls to demonstrate that NSA surveillance is not something they particularly care about. If you're an anti- surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue.

<comment><USER4> If you want to use that kind of dumb lazy argument you could also say that the American people voted against NSA spying when they voted against Obama's administration.

But what people actually voted on was a media hype alternate universe that has little to do with any real issues.

<comment><USER5> I'd argue that you could lump the NSA debacle into that media hype alternate universe that has little to do with any real issues. For the past year and a half I've heard a lot about all of the awful things that the NSA could be doing with the information collected (e.g. arrests, blackmail, theft, etc.) but I have yet to actually see any evidence of an American citizen actually being subjected to any of them. My guess is that it's because when the newspapers don't have the evidence to back it up, they rely on narrative that brings in the advertising dollars.

<comment><USER6> How about the US citizen who was killed by drone?

<comment><USER2> The _two_ (non-violent) US citizens that we know about killed by drones, knowingly targetted and killed without a trial.

<comment><USER5> I'm assuming that two you're referring to Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, since they seem to be the most famous.

Just to get some facts straight, to date there's only been one US citizen targeted and killed by US drones: Anwar Al-Awlaki. As of last year, three other Americans are known to have been killed by drone strikes outside the US: Samir Khan, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki and Jude Kenan Mohammed. None were specifically targeted - Samir Khan was killed during the strike against the elder Al-Awlaki, the younger Al-Awlaki was killed during a strike targeting Ibrahim al-Banna in Yemen, and Jude Kenan Mohammed was killed during a strike against a compound in Pakistan. All were killed by CIA drones, not DOD drones (NSA is part of the DOD; CIA is not). The Attorney General declassified the reasoning for targeting the elder Al-Awlaki[1], which was ultimately decided at the Presidential level - not by the NSA.

That said, this is beside the point - when the media is stirring up a frenzy about the NSA and civil liberties, they're not talking about CIA drone strikes in Yemen. It's a little disingenuous to lump the two together. It also doesn't go very far in answering my question regarding evidence of harm to US citizens. Maybe I'm out of touch with the rest of America, but I don't see the USA Freedom Act gaining much traction based on public outrage that 3 people over the last decade were accidentally killed by drones while hanging out with members of a militant group that had declared war against the US, especially when the purpose of said bill is to limit FISA warrants and FBI use of NSLs[2].

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7031...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/703181/ag- letter-5-22-13.pdf)

[2] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate- bill/268...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/2685)

<comment><USER2> Yes Al-Awlaki and his son were the civilians I was referring to.

It was my understanding that Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was a targeted kill; I seem to be in error.

I was not aware of Samir Khan nor Jude Kenan Mohammed.

Regarding [1]: the justification was 'immediate threat', however it appears there was no immediate threat in the common sense usage of the term and the justification is askew with the prior drone strike that attempted but failed to kill him (he did nothing after the strike worthy of the label 'immediate' or 'threat').

Furthermore squaring 'immediate threat' with constitutionally garunteed rights is something that the administration has not done (can not do?). US citizens are guaranteed a trial. Principles are worth a lot less if the administration gets to decide when to apply them.

Regarding NSA v. CIA, I admit coming into the conversation without having read the thread. I merely sought to add information to the leaf. Thank you very much for the high quality comment and information.

Regarding damage to US citizens, one reason is that we do know that NSA contractors and employees stalked lovers and rivals and used these capabilities for personal means. There were also reports of nude photo sharing.

There were also several prominent Muslim community leaders with no connection to any terrorists or extreme ideas inside the United States who were targeted by the surveillance apparatus merely for their religious expression. I don't think I need to argue why profiling individuals based on their creed or color causes harm to these classes of people.

Extending this analysis - we do not know how these systems will be used in the future. In particular Nixon left office for spying on a handful of people. What would a Hoover or a Nixon do with the NSA capabilities? The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should _not_ merely be about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with alternatives.

Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully backdoored services and infrastructure. It is not theoretical or speculative to suggest that these weaknesses may be used by maligned actors: there are several examples today of intercept systems being compromised by interested parties for geopolitical and economic reasons.

Finally, we adhere to principles of civil liberties not just because they are good things on individual bases but also because adopting them as policies gives a net benefit to society (see historical evolutions of Utilitarianism and arguments against forced organ donation). That is one could argue as Bentham did, that rights are nonsense on stilts, except that societies that don't guarantee these rights suffer the pychological consequences of living in a state where no rights are garunteed. To presuppose that all damage must be physical in nature is to be ignorant of the history of the organization of men.

<comment><USER5> I'll definitely agree that the drone strikes are controversial and leave it at that since I think it's separate topic altogether.

On the other topics you brought up: there were a total of 12 cases reported by the NSA in the LOVEINT scandal, and an additional 3 were said to be under investigation without further details[1]. The violations varied in severity: of the 12 for which details were given, 7 resigned or retired, 3 others had their clearances revoked, 1 was stripped of his promotion and given a 10-day suspension without pay, and the last was given a written reprimand. 7 of them had their cases either forwarded to the DoJ or their military command (or both). Of those 12 cases, only 3 were targeting US citizens - the other 9 were instances of NSA employees abusing the system to target foreign nationals for their own purposes. I stress the word abuse - that's exactly what was going on, but this is also an example of the system working to find bad apples and kick them out. You see the same thing with cops - you expect there to be bad ones here and there. It's the police force's responsibility to identify them and either discipline them or kick them out; it's not indicative of systemic police corruption.

The only report of nude photo sharing was one that Snowden said himself. He made the claim a full year after his initial leaks and never substantiated it with any evidence.

With regards to the Muslim targeting, if you look at the original article[2], every one of the 5 people listed by Greenwald has "FBI" in the responsible agency column. According to the article, there are 7485 e-mail addresses in the list who were under surveillance between 2003-2008 by the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Based on a survey of 5 of the individuals targeted by the FBI, Greenwald somehow concludes that there's systemic targeting of Muslim Americans by both the FBI and NSA solely for their religious views. He gives a half-hearted guess as to why each of them might have been under investigation, but ultimately leaves it an open question. I think it's intentional - he wants you to walk away from the article thinking that because he didn't give a reason, there must not be one. Ultimately, we may never know - several others, however have given their own thoughts as to why[3][4].

> Another example of damage to US citizens is the use of purposefully > backdoored services and infrastructure.

Could you provide an example of this? I think I know what you're getting at but I don't want end up assuming wrong, put words in your mouth and waste a lot of time ripping down a strawman.

> The broader point here is that the calculus of damage should not merely be > about singular instances of damage today. It's a bad idea to build a nuclear > reactor on a fault line. Not because it has already done damage. But because > of the magnitude and the likelihood of what it may contrasted with > alternatives.

But you don't just avoid building on a fault line because someone says it's a bad idea - you build elsewhere because there are certain standards for safety with regards to building nuclear reactors that have been agreed upon by experts who are intimately familiar with nuclear engineering, and a fault line doesn't meet the standards.

In my opinion, this is where the NSA issue really gets derailed. Most of the articles I've read will explain the technical capabilities of specific NSA programs without going into the policies that limit them. Snowden has stood up and said that so long as they have the technical ability to do something, you can't trust them to follow policy, but his disclosures have shown the NSA auditing their collection, bringing issues up to the FISA court, removing identifying information about US citizens from collection, etc. When no one was looking, they were following the law. If there's been a failure, it's been a failure of insufficient law and oversight.

And this is where I differ from most of the tech community. The solution isn't to take away technical capability because it could be abused in the future, it's to craft laws and policies to limit what the NSA can do with its technical capability and provide effective oversight. I don't think anyone from even before the Snowden disclosures has argued for less oversight.

As an analogy, the police have the technical capability to walk into every house on the city and shoot everyone inside. But they don't - it's both illegal and makes no sense in terms of law enforcement. For some reason, though, everyone seems to assume that given the fact that the NSA has enormous technical resources for gathering foreign intelligence that _could_ be abused, without any further evidence to back up the claim they must also be carrying out the worst possible abuse and doing so for purposes that have nothing to do with foreign intelligence.

[1] [http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary...](http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciary/upload/NSA- Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA- authority.pdf)

[2] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under- surveill...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/09/under- surveillance/)

[3] [https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleadin...](https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/07/09/misleading- claims-by-greenwald-and-new-york-times-on-nsafbi-spying-on-american-muslims/)

[4] [http://news.investors.com/ibd- editorials/071514-708936-snowd...](http://news.investors.com/ibd- editorials/071514-708936-snowden-mouthpiece-shills-for-islamist-terror- targets-of-fbi.htm)

<comment><USER2> Thank you again for taking the time to write an well formed response.

Regarding LOVEINT and nude pictures. I think it's difficult to evaluate whether the punishments are actually worthy of the abuses and it's hard to know what the culture inside the NSA is, and it is also hard to know how widespread these abuses are and what affect they may have. They are examples of citizens being hurt by the programs, but agree that they are not (AFAWK) examples of systemic abuse.

I agree that the trading of nude pictures was asserted without evidence. I don't know what internal documents they would keep on that, and Snowden has thus far been a very well-spoken and trustworthy source of information. I won't claim it as a fact, but this sort of thing feeds into my last point from the last thread.

> every one of the 5 people listed by Greenwald has "FBI" in the responsible > agency column

Left hand, right hand. The FBI, NSA, CIA, DOD, CSS, etc work with one another. Did the targeting utilize information or capabilities from the NSA?

I would be very interested if the Muslim leaders turned out to be connected to terrorism. They have not been arrested if they are associated with terrorism - I'm not sure what to make of that besides they are just being watched for their prominent role as community leaders.

Overall point regarding Greenwald. He is an advocate for adversarial journalism. He will accuse the government of more than is certain in an attempt to provoke more information/clarification or force them to contradict themselves (as happened frequently at the start of the Snowden disclosures). People feel differently about this. I feel that it is necessary to combat the _other_ side of journalism which trades media spin and coverage for access and sources and shows its belly to USG on the regular.

> Could you provide an example of this?

Yes. I'm going to copy a list from a Bruce Schneier post ([https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/iphone_encryp...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/iphone_encrypti_1.html)).

* The Greek cellphone intercept system was attacked by an unattributed group.

* The Italian cellphone intercept system was attacked similarly.

* China hacked into the Google's US Government request system.

* The Syrian Electronic Army hacked into Microsoft's FBI data request group.

* The US cellphone intercept system has been hacked by unattributed groups.

> And this is where I differ from most of the tech community. The solution > isn't to take away technical capability because it could be abused in the > future, it's to craft laws and policies to limit what the NSA can do with > its technical capability and provide effective oversight. I don't think > anyone from even before the Snowden disclosures has argued for less > oversight.

I think we'd agree here, but we'd likely disagree on what is reasonable. As things currently stand all data is sucked up and kept for longer than 5 years for later inspection. I think it's reasonable for the intelligence community and law enforcement to track individual users, but I do not think it is a good idea to track everyone all the time and limit only by policy and paper what can be inspected.

I find that surveillance, be it by law enforcement, management at my company, my parents, or by a stalker to impede on my right to be secure in my person. I find that legal compulsion for some private individuals to keep files on other individuals is a circumvention of the spirit of the law - and in fact one applied by the Stasi.

The difference between in-house operations, hiring of private surveillance contractors and legal compulsion on private citizens is a blurry one to me. "No means no."

I also find it 'dirty' that the FISA court ( _Foreign_ Intelligence Surveillance Court) should have any say in domestic issues at all. They do not represent the Constitution nor are they are not subject to a system of checks and balances outside of self-policing (I am aware of the review panel suggestions regarding this).

> For some reason, though, everyone seems to assume that given the fact that > the NSA has enormous technical resources for gathering foreign intelligence > that could be abused

Provided fairly recent systemic abuses of intelligence power (COINTELPRO, etc) I don't think these reactions are particularly absurd. Similar to how journalism may have to be partially adversarial, so does the relationship of men to their governments. Men need to ask what is being done, how it is being done and why it is being done. They need to demand honestly from their governments.

I would also ask that you reply to my last point regarding principles (the 'organ donation' one).

Finally, there are some other examples of individuals who have been harmed.

The founder of Lavabit certainly was harmed for providing an email service - his business is now forever underwater and he was served to go to a jury-less court (with all the stress and financial requirements therein).

The CEO of Qwest (Nacchio) claims that (both personal and business-scale) leverage was used to force the direction of his company and resulted in his indictment and arrest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find this article interesting in that it describes a direct clash of motives between two major systematic problems in American government at present: corporate capture of politics, and the runaway NSA.

What needs to happen is for both of these forces to be curbed, before they find a compromise that I don't expect to be in the best interest of the people.

<comment><USER8> > corporate capture of politics

If you look at which companies can actually make things happen in DC[1], it's the ones that are regulated (the reasons for this should be obvious with some thought). Those are not Silicon Valley companies, by and large, but telecommunications firms like AT&T and VZ.

And it's those telecommunications firms that have long-standing surveillance "partnerships" with the NSA, according to leaked Snowden docs, which I wrote about last year here: [http://www.cnet.com/news/surveillance-partnership- between-ns...](http://www.cnet.com/news/surveillance-partnership-between-nsa- and-telcos-points-to-at-t-verizon/)

Here's one reason those regulated telecom companies may not be eager to see reform happen:

"ATT, Verizon, Sprint Are Paid Cash By NSA For Your Private Communications" [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attverizonsprint- are-paid-cash-by-nsa-for-your-private-communications/)

[1] AT&T/VZ/Comcast rolled Google/eBay/etc. on Net neutrality in Congress. Twice. Silicon Valley-backed NN bills were defeated in both the House and the Senate. And heck, Silicon Valley can't even get a permanent R&D tax credit passed. They've been trying forever to get a ECPA reform passed (this has failed). DMCA reform? Over a decade, nothing. They should be heavyweights or superheavyweights but they're bantamweights instead.

<comment><USER9> Given that the NSA was going to get data from the telcos in any case, you'd rather they got it _for free_? If there is some sort of behavior you want to discourage somebody from engaging in, the simplest way of doing so is to make them pay for it. Even nominal fees can be a significant deterrent (this is why ads and eyeballs are the currency of the web). Without this monetary friction, there would doubtless have been even more rampant data collection.

Additionally, the link you provided itself says that the money the telcos got from that is a small fraction of their total revenues, so I am not sure how compelling a reason that would be to oppose reform.

<comment><USER8> That's why I said "one reason."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Money. Not altruism or moral compass or even customer demands.

But lost foreign dollars is the wrong argument, right? Restricting the NSA from bulk collecting US citizen data has nothing to do with their legal rights to do the same to non-citizens.

I'd venture to guess that the NSA cares very little how Brazil builds a trans- Atlantic line, they'll still secretly tap it.

And a big HA! for Verizon being sad about the NSA collection while they're unabashedly MITM-ing 100% of its wireless customers.

<comment><USER11> Of course money. You make the argument that your audience is most likely to hear. And between lobbying and campaign contributions, jobs for their constituents, lost tax revenue and so on... money is the argument Congress is most likely to hear.

<comment><USER12> If Microsoft cares about privacy, when will they change Skype back to the encrypted peer-to-peer architecture it had before they bought it? If Facebook cares about privacy, why is their signup page not just a redirect to diaspora, friendica etc.? And why can't google split stuff up into subdomains, even if that'd mean no precious _.google cookies? Okay, the last two are a bit silly, but I just don 't feel like looking up and rattling down all those laundry lists of the ways of how they shit all over privacy again and again, just to eek half a percentage point out of something somewhere, in the name of functionality and convenience as if there aren't lots of more promising and unexplored avenues to improve those.

Of course, none of these companies are monoliths, and I don't doubt that there are people in them that genuinely care. But on the whole, you are _really* saying that the companies care about privacy, but just _pretend_ it's about money because Congress is more interested in money than they are? I doubt that, mildly put.

<comment><USER9> _> If Microsoft cares about privacy, when will they change Skype back to the encrypted peer-to-peer architecture it had before they bought it?_

A bit off-topic, but Skype's actual voice traffic is still primarily P2P. You can verify this yourself using basic network analyzer tools (I used nettop on OSX) to check the destination address of packets. Multiple times over the last couple of years (after they allegedly moved away from P2P) I verified that a voice call between Skype instances on Mac and on Windows was direct between my network and my peer's IP address.

I did _not_ check if IM traffic is P2P. And it certainly connects to a lot of other remote addresses by default, which I'm guessing is for call-setup via their servers.

<comment><USER12> I may have been wrong about it, but I disagree it's off-topic. Lip service is one thing, pressuring other parties to give up _their_ snooping is one thing, actually being committed and simply deleting or encrypting as much as they can so the question doesn't even arise, or even considering and talking about the trade-offs required to do so, that would be quite another. So it's all mostly window dressing to me. I believe that they care about their profits, but that's about it.

These corporations actually _could_ afford to find out stuff about their markets by asking people who volunteer, by super traditional means that have been used for decades before the internet. They don't _really_ need your complete life history, they just need a good rough idea, and then be honest engineers and programmers that make the best products they can make.

This "we need to internally probe you to improve customer service" stuff to a large degree is marketing run amok, not really something that is impossible to do without unless you don't subscribe to "the best product wins", which everybody loves to pay lip service to but then tries their best to circumvent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd be interested to see if the tech companies could push out something to their users to help educate them. Something similar to the news feed notification Facebook pushed out asking for donations to fight Ebola.

The real resource these companies have to use is the attention of their users, not money.

<comment><USER14> > push out something to their users to help educate them

That is not going to happen b/c it would draw the users' attention to the problem of mass surveillance being conducted (be that explicitly or implicitly) by tech giants for the gov't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So with all these companies' support what I don't understand is why an IP standard is not being worked on that demands asymmetric encryption. I envision an ideal future where the IP layer is encrypted, possibly with multiple algorithms, the http layer is encrypted separately, and the javascript message passing layer is encrypted still separately from that.

We already know that encryption works mathematically, but human factors get in the way. No one should ever be able to snoop on someone's traffic content in this day and age.

<comment><USER16> Because the "support" is just a PR move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Senate's intelligence committee, has said there's no urgent need to pass the bill. The law authorizing the NSA to collect bulk phone records expires on June 1, meaning the new Congress can wait until then to pass legislation, Chambliss told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in October."

So this is a public discussion and debate that the country is going to have any way between now and next Fall.

The question then becomes "Why this news article right now?"

Looks a bit like political posturing. If your party is on the way out, you can pretty much propose anything you'd like. Nobody is going to vote it trough, so you get credit for taking a position that you'll never have to live through or defend. It's a win.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for limiting NSA. I'd just like it to really happen, instead of reading 100 articles like this over the next ten years while nothing ever changes, which is the way this seems to be playing out.

For whatever reason, the establishment, that is, both parties, seem to have secretly decided that it's perfectly okay to have the government sifting through all of our personal lives. I like seeing this lobby group make an economic argument to the Republicans: this is killing our tech sector. I like seeing folks in both parties make a freedom argument: this is the not values our country was constructed on. I even like my personal argument from pragmatism: our country cannot keep operating in such a manner. But all of these arguments seem to just bounce off a stone wall. I hear all kinds of people talking, I see speeches made and bills sponsored that will never see the light of day. I see bills that have a chance of passage that look like they hamstring the government but in fact just allow it to keep doing what it's doing. The only thing I'm not seeing is any real movement here. I'm hoping that will change.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe Facebook should stop trying to bug the entire web if they care about spying so much.

</comment><comment><USER19> The only people winning here are the ones who studied law, and now are lawyers, lobbyists and politicians…

</comment><comment><USER20> This article has an an absurd premise.

A Democrat controls the NSA (POTUS).

They don't need to lobby anyone in congress.

<comment><USER21> I don't understand. President Obama seems to be a great friend to the NSA, and I understand the NSA has greatly expanded powers under his administration. President Obama threatened openly in a press conference to punish whistleblowers after the Snowden fiasco blew up.

Why should we put any faith in President Obama and lobby him to do the right thing now? The opacity, doublespeak and contempt shown to the people by this administration ranks it at the bottom in my book.

<comment><USER20> Nothing congress is going to pass will become law without POTUS signature.

The premise of this article is>>> that OBAMA will sign {#INSERT_LAW_HERE}.

So why not just sign an (new) executive order? eg.

 _NSA 's mission, as set forth in Executive Order 12333, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons". NSA has declared that it relies on the FBI to collect information on foreign intelligence activities within the borders of the United States, while confining its own activities within the United States to the embassies and missions of foreign nations_

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive- order-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive- order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on- americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html)

<comment><USER22> You should probably re-read the US Constitution. It's not really very long.

And, once again: the problem with Executive Orders as a solution to overreaching surveillance is that _they are not binding_. This administration, and every other one, can revoke them on a whim. The same thing is not true of an actual law.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An ultra-simplified example of a modern compiler written in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jamiebuilds/the-super-tiny-compiler <comment><USER2> 9/10 times when I see a "compiler" on GitHub, it's just an interpreter, or the compilation phase is completely missing.

In this case I believe the "compiler" is an "ast printer".

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell you are saying "just an interpreter" and referring to this as an "ast printer" because the output language is not machine code.

I'm not sure why that would be so significant. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure targeting some real machine code presents plenty of unique difficulties—but the interesting thing about compilation to me (and I'd wager a significant proportion of other readers here) is effective ways of structuring translation processes.

In the case of this project, the goal is to be a minimal demonstration, distilling the essence of how a compiler is structured. The fact that the output language is not machine code doesn't affect the essential structure of a compiler (as far as I know).

<comment><USER4> What most compiler tutorials are missing is coverage of intermediate representations. There are a billion parsing and calculator tutorials, but not nearly as many that show the process of turning, say, C-style code, into some sort of intermediate format, _before_ emitting machine code.

<comment><USER3> The AST _is_ an intermediate format. Is it important to have an intermediate _language_? Otherwise why does the AST not qualify?

My understanding is that having something like LLVM's IR, for instance, is part of its decoupling the compiler frontend/backend, but probably wouldn't be desirable for a single language compiler. But maybe I'm mistaken, or you are referring to something else :)

<comment><USER5> Not OP and I agree, "IR" is just the data structure that holds the AST or a human readable version of it.

That said I think what they're getting at is that the interesting bits of modern compilers are transforms between ASTs to lower from one IR to another either to perform some kind of optimization or to replace an abstraction with an implementation before it gets to codegen.

For example if you have generators in your language it's pretty easy to see how to turn a "yield" statement into an AST node. But to actually make the system work you'll probably need a compiler pass over your AST to transform coroutine definitions to subroutine definitions and a state machine to represent the execution context and a constructor/destructor for the state.

Same goes for all interesting language concepts, in the compiler the interesting bit is the pass that transforms the top level AST/IR into more explicit IR and going through the pipeline to get to codegen. Which is as complex as everything else these days when it needs to be fast.

The example talks about this but doesn't dive too deep.

<comment><USER6> Not really agreeing on this one. By IR people means middle ground between various semantics. Parsing gets you an abstract structure of the semantic- world you typed in. An IR would be a something bridging the gap between concepts and register machines, or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone is curious, I threw together a similar (although not commented yet) example of how I would write this using parser combinators in Haskell: [https://gist.github.com/neilparikh/b8a9c758ebbbb5a3ee9b2ed99...](https://gist.github.com/neilparikh/b8a9c758ebbbb5a3ee9b2ed999740b0d)

The JS example wrote everything from scratch, so to do the same, I wrote my own parser combinator library (based on [https://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszgmh/monparsing.pdf](https://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszgmh/monparsing.pdf)), but you could use an existing library, and get rid of `Parser.hs`.

<comment><USER8> For those interested in this approach, one of the authors (Hutton) of the paper has a great video explaining functional parsing [https://youtu.be/dDtZLm7HIJs](https://youtu.be/dDtZLm7HIJs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a person who began rewriting this using reason [1]. Sadly, he never got to complete it.

I began tinkering with F# recently and found that ML languages are perfect for parsing. Is there a version of this in F# or ocaml?

[1] [https://medium.com/@javierwchavarri/building-the-super- tiny-...](https://medium.com/@javierwchavarri/building-the-super-tiny- compiler-with-reason-part-1-21460cd4ae7b)

<comment><USER10> Haxe is written in OCaml.

[https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe/search?l=ocaml](https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe/search?l=ocaml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe interesting for a comparison: 21 years ago I wrote my own tiny demo compiler in JS, much inspired by Niklaus Wirth.

[https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/eal.htm](https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/eal.htm)

See the page source for the code. (Probably fun, old syntax both for HTML and JS, pre-ECMA JavaScript [meaning, the semicolon isn't a delimiter, but a separator], even the indentation style is outdated. Mind that back then, even the support of JS object literals wasn't guaranteed.)

Syntax, etc: [https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/syntax.htm](https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/syntax.htm)

Byte code reference: [https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/pcode.htm](https://www.masswerk.at/demospace/eal/pcode.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of this old screencast about writing a compiler in ruby:

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/a-com...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/a-compiler- from-scratch)

</comment><comment><USER2> I want to dispute the 'modern' claim.

I don't know my dates well enough. But is there anything in here that isn't at least 50 years old?

The high-level is tokenize->parse->ast_transform->codegen.

The low-level looks like `char = input[++current];`

</comment><comment><USER13> What does "modern" mean in this context?

<comment><USER14> I don't know but I don't think I want any part of it. A compiler is a very foundational piece of software, where performance is important, you run it many times, often on large things. It should be written in a a language with a very high performance ceiling and quick start up time, imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Petty cool. Very well documented too (I only read through a few hundred lines before bookmarking it for later).

</comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't this be closer to a "transpiler"?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this parse in linear time?</comment>


Show HN: 3geonames.org – A triple name geocode for the world - <AUTHOR> https://3geonames.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Encoding geographic coordinates into a string is a trivial thing. Yet, there are many grid based systems (geohash, PlusCodes, Mapcodes), and some even turn the thing into a business (Zippr, What3Words). I agree with the commonly stated motivation that Latitude and Longitude are not sufficient for identifying a place in both an unambiguous and human friendly way. A single string for this pair of numbers is a better representation, if only it can preserve all the information contained in the original latitude,longitude pair, something no existing geo-encoding system does. That's my goal.

GeoCode is an open source Geolocation Code, mapping (latitude,longitude) to {(one alphanumeric number) or (three geonames)}.</comment>


World's Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant Delivers Power for the First Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519596/worlds-largest-solar-thermal-power-plant-delivers-power-for-the-first-time/ <comment><USER2> The article claims a high cost of mirrors and steam turbines as the big negative. Without seeing the cost-breakdown of the entire project, it is hard to ascertain if materials are indeed the largest factor or if it is something else like labor/salary or technology/licensing. If it costs $200m to build the tower and buy turbines, $2B/200,000 mirrors = $10,000/mirror. I find it hard to believe that cannot be lowered drastically once the research phase is over.

While I feel Solar Thermal (more appropriately CSP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_Solar_Power](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_Solar_Power) ) is very promising, for some reason many don't. Google invested in this company ( [http://www.google.org/rec.html](http://www.google.org/rec.html) ) but has stopped investing more into CSP, preferring photovoltaics ( [http://www.evwind.es/2011/11/24/google-cans-concentrated- sol...](http://www.evwind.es/2011/11/24/google-cans-concentrated-solar-power- project/14860) ).

<comment><USER3> A reality in California is the high cost of regulatory siting. In this case the desert tortoise issue was costly.

In many other cases, you see multi-year court battles (some in regulatory proceedings rather than traditional legal courts). A lot of the time those pushing the fight are not environmentalists but rather NIMBYs who use the laws/regulations to try to prevent progress. Same with High Speed Rail, of course.

The delay and uncertainty adds a higher-than-expected cost since the investment appeal erodes.

It's interesting that California's pro-environmental laws can sometimes be a hurdle to "green" projects in this sense. Different sides of the environmental issue spectrum.

<comment><USER4> Finding and relocating all the tortoises and keeping an eye out for missed ones while the construction was going on is expensive but not relative to the total project cost.

Source: My uncle does this work and was on this project.

<comment><USER3> That's true, the tortoises cost $22 million, a small percent of the overall cost.

But siting, getting approval, finding a place where few folks will fight you, etc etc make it add up in terms of time and uncertainty and then when you do find a place you can move forward on there's a good chance it'll be remote enough to be extra costly to connect.

<comment><USER4> Granted.

However, the large, open, sunny spaces in CA tend to be far from large population centers.

He's now working on the project to replace/upgrade the original transmission lines from Hoover Dam which will pick up this power as well.

I'm in agreement with the other commenters saying energy production should be distributed. However, this'll require a "smart grid" to balance things out - which we don't have - as well as potentially being less efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _When you calculate the amount of power the plant is likely to produce over its lifetime, the cost per kilowatt-hour is likely to be much higher than for fossil-fuel power. It's even likely to be higher than the cost of power from solar panels, thanks to the fast drop in solar-panel prices in recent years. If costs don't come down — and decreasing the costs of mirrors and steam turbines is hard to do — solar thermal power might prove to be a dead end._

I hate this attitude - the costs of the produced energy is not everything. Who said that energy has to become cheaper and cheaper? If you want to reduce the carbon dioxide emission just introduce additional taxes for fossil fuels or even prohibit burning them or subsidize solar energy. Just accept the increased costs and enjoy your clean air.

<comment><USER6> I hate it as well, but I think it is generally anticipated that any greentech solution is never going to be widely adopted until it achieves price parity.

<comment><USER7> Which is another way to say that we won't start using "green" energy until we run out of hydrocarbon fuel.

It's a very dangerous attitude -- we need to use what's left of hydrocarbon fuel to bootstrap new energy while we still can, and have the luxury to afford to experiment.

I forget where the quote is from, but as has been said: "The definition of modern agriculture, is that it is a way to transform hydrocarbons into carbohydrates.". Unless we do something soon, running out of oil, will mean running out of food. We need it for tractors, and for modern fertilizers, for irrigation -- and for transport of food.

Oil (and coal) is cheap energy, because it's basically just laying around, waiting for us to burn it. It's grown harder to get -- but it is ridiculous to wait around for other energy to "become cheaper". If we don't make an effort to change the entire infrastructure the world runs on (quite literally) -- what will happen is that oil will become as expensive as "green" energy -- not the other way around.

And that is of course ignoring all the problems hydrocarbons leaves us with, in the form of various forms of pollution. That we'll have to clean up and/or deal with without cheap energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have information on what type of system could be setup using photovoltaics across a similar 3500 acre site? While its obvious not all the acreage is used for mirrors I am curious as to difference is possible output.

Output is expected at 392mw. I found a few acreage references for coal/gas plants but their output many times one of these plants. One solar plant I found is 25mw using about 250 acres.

Just trying to understand the land use efficiency versus other solutions. Fossil fuel plants do not count usage of road/rail in their size calculations nor the size of the source of their fuels. (coal mines/pits/etc)

<comment><USER9> What's the reflectance of a PV panel? Wondering if the mirrors could be replaced with them, knowing they aren't as good of a reflector as a mirror, but perhaps they reflect enough to run the steam generator, and still produce power themselves. Net win, perhaps?

<comment><USER10> If you could diffuse the spectrum, you could reflect the IR but absorb the UV.

Not being a physicist, I don't know what that would entail.

<comment><USER11> That would probably be a bad idea: The main energy input will be by UV. If it is absorbed, the material will heat up.

Physics states that (Reflection coefficient + Absorption coefficient + Transmission coefficient = 1), all wavelength dependent. Now if you want a high number for the reflectivity in IR, you will have a low number for the absorption coefficient.

If you have a low absorption coefficient you will most probably have a low emission coefficient since those two are linked (equal for black bodies, see Kirchhoff's Law/gray body).

So you have a low emission coefficient in the IR, and the thermal emission due to the heating from the absorbed UV will be quite inefficient, and thus there will be more heating, which is bad (edit: the heat will not be transported away and will accumulate).

Of course if you have good materials you might be able to migitate, but at first glance it looks problematic to me. Sorry for inelegant language.

<comment><USER10> Don't the PVs heat up from the UV absorption anyway? Wouldn't removing the IR from the light actually create a net loss of heat?

<comment><USER11> Yes, they do. The question is what happens with the heat from the UV - it will need to be transported away somehow. If we don't have significant heat conduction or convection it will have to be radiated off.

Sunlight does not bring in a lot of IR, and almost all of that is absorbed in the upper layers of the atmosphere. What you have to consider then is ambient IR radiation from the surroundings due to thermal emission. The process is the same as the one we're assessing for the PVs, and the wavelengths are not too different. PVs are normally warmer than the surroundings due to their higher temperature, so less energy will be absorbed that radiated off in the IR.

Hm, maybe I misunderstood how you want to remove the IR? Let's consider some sort of reflectant shell around the PVs but not part of them. On the inside it would receive the heat from the PVs and of course, also reflect great parts of it back, letting it accumulate. We built an insulation. Not good. Maybe you can explain your idea in more detail?

The mechanism I discussed above is of course not the only relevant process, things like heat conduction and heat capacity of the material are also important.

In conclusion: Yes, there would be a net loss of incoming energy, but the mechanims that let energy be transported off might be severely hindered by our alteration. Thus, an accumulation of heat.

There might be ways to make it happen nevertheless, eg with water cooling, but it would require more infrastructure. (But then, I'm not an engineer..)

<comment><USER10> Not being an expert in the field, I'm not really sure - I know we have films that block UV but not IR, but I'm not sure if the reverse is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steam turbines have been around since 1800s. The tech is well understood. Mirrors are also cheap. These two can't be the reason for the high cost.

My guess is that the fancy molten salt stuff drove up the cost. Molten salt is very corrosive.

I would _love_ to see the breakdown of the costs.

Aside: I drove past the plant this summer, and even from the highway it looked awesome.

<comment><USER13> The official fact sheet [http://www.bechtel.com/assets/files/Renewable_%202013_Ivanpa...](http://www.bechtel.com/assets/files/Renewable_%202013_Ivanpah_Solar_Generating_Facility_4_2012.pdf) makes no mention of molten salt, just a regular boiler on top of the tower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For years there has been talk of building a 1km "solar tower" in my home town.

The basic plan is multiple square kilometers of greenhouses surrounding a 1km chimney. The air inside the greenhouses will heat up and rise up through the tower at high speed. The bottom of the tower will be filled with 32 generators, for a total of 200MW.

[http://enviromission.com.au/EVM/content/home.html](http://enviromission.com.au/EVM/content/home.html)

I still hope they build it.

<comment><USER15> This is called a solar updraft tower (I like to call it a solar chimney): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > When you calculate the amount of power the plant is likely to produce over > its lifetime, the cost per kilowatt-hour is likely to be much higher than > for fossil-fuel power.

Solar thermal is cost effective _if_ you take into account the economic problems that carbon emissions cause over their lifetime in the atmosphere. This is why putting a price on carbon emissions is so essential: to expose the true cost of fossil fuels at the time of sale.

<comment><USER17> So how do you come up with a fair price to capture the carbon externality?

And do you add the externalities to green power like solar? More people have died installing solar equipment than all nuclear accidents. Or what about environmental damage during PV manufacturing? Do we add those to the price of solar at the time of sale?

<comment><USER18> Indeed, it's difficult to exactly price externalities. There are published estimates of the carbon externality. You do you best; it's far better than the "estimate" we currently use ($0).

When comparing, you add in the externalities to everything. To be specific:

\- you don't count the deaths in PV installation as its not an externality. The installers are an involved party; they can (for example) ask for higher wages due to risk. (Also, if you wanted to compare this to nuclear, you need to include deaths building those nuclear plants as well. And possibly mining the uranium.)

\- you do count the environmental damage during PV manufacturing (and turbine manufacturing, and coal mining, and oil drilling, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any lifetime cost calculations must factor in the fact that the fuel is free. I've seen quick comparisons with combined cycle gas, coal, etc. that neglect this obvious difference.

<comment><USER20> api, this is a great point and one that is often overlooked with most renewables vs non-renewables cost arguments. However, when you compare $/kwh of the electricity it does take all of this into consideration.

<comment><USER19> I think of renewables' higher cost as basically paying up front for the fuel instead of over time. At least that's how it should be thought of economically.

<comment><USER20> You're right, but traditional fossil fuel plants still cost a lot (a comparable amount infact) to build ($2billion for 600MW[1]). Renewables just have a much lower energy output (only work when the sun shines/wind blows, and at a lower capacity) and therefore a much longer payback. But you're right, not having to pay for fuel would off-set some of these negatives.

[1] [http://www.synapse- energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07...](http://www.synapse- energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Coal-Plant-Construction- Costs.A0021.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wasn't aware we were building these solar towers in the US. How does this compare to the solar updraft ones being built in Australia? It seems like the solar chimney design is more simple, however there are obvious efficiency concerns (kW/acre).

<comment><USER21> I was going to bring up the same point. The solar updraft systems seem to be more cost effective and generally easier to build. I don't understand why they're not being built more. However, they definitely take up more land. And nature advocates claim they are harder on the environment because they essentially bake the top soil, killing everything (which is probably true). But everything has trade offs.

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

<comment><USER10> It looks like the solar updraft systems are only cost effective when you have vast amounts of cheap/free land - they are very inefficient in Watts per square meter, getting around 1% efficiency compared to 20-35% for other systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do solar sites ever use mirrors and PV panels, in combination?

<comment><USER20> Do you mean, concentrating sunlight onto PV? or Having PV cells that are also reflective?

Reflective PV cells/mirrors wouldn't work well as you're taking the energy out one way or another. The more you reflect, the less you can use for PV, and vice-versa.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for being unclear. I meant concentrating sunlight onto existing PV panels. I suppose that I'm assuming mirrors << PV in terms of cost.

<comment><USER12> I've heard of some folks using a Fresnel lens to concentrate light onto a smaller area, where the silicon is. It improves the efficiency significantly, but can also cause heat issues (which can hurt efficiency).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have information on the water-consumption (steam-loss, cleaning the mirrors, cooling the mirrors, and so on)? I would really love to see, if this is a feasible method of producing energy in areas without that much water.

But I really lack the necessary numbers in terms of consumption of water, to built an idea, if this is a viable technology for deserts and other dry and sunny places on this planet.

</comment><comment><USER23> How do they keep the mirrors clean? How do you keep solar panels clean for that matter? Must require quite a bit of upkeep.

<comment><USER20> Like this.. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLogKN80plY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLogKN80plY)

<comment><USER23> Ha! interesting. Sand and shiny mirrors don't mix very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How can it be more expensive to produce a mirror than a solar panel? This doesn't need astromony grade mirrors... Are steam turbines so expensive compared to inverters?

<comment><USER25> I guess it's not the mirror, but all of the motors and electronics that keep the mirror pointing in the right direction. If only the Sun didn't move around the sky, this would be very cheap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The biggest flaw I see with this solar project is that it's just another continuation of the centralized model. We should be encouraging homes and businesses to be producers of energy and decentralize our power grid.

$2 billion on a centralized project in the age of increasing decentralization seems like waste of money.

<comment><USER27> I've heard various arguments for this, none of which seemed that convincing. Centralized power generation seems like one of the great successes of the 20th century. What do you think the advantages of decentralization are?

<comment><USER26> > Centralized power generation seems like one of the great successes of the > 20th century.

From the point of view of large producers and investors, sure. Tesla's idea of decentralized power was viewed as pie-in-the-sky by his benefactor, JP Morgan.

I wouldn't call nuclear power a success story.</comment></comment></comment>


Tarot for Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://christine.website/blog/tarot-for-hackers-2019-07-24 <comment><USER2> The use of tarot decks for divination dates back only to the 18th century, well after magic stopped being useful (because all the skilled or talented magicians rebranded to "scientists" or "naturalists"), so I'm skeptical of its value as a system of symbols and motifs. (You will find preachers condemning it much earlier, which is often cited wrongly as evidence of its use for divination, but they were condemning card games, not divination.) For me, it's like squeezing blood from a stone, despite the cool illustrations that _look_ like they should form a symbolic system of Rider-Waite (1910!).

If you're serious about your magic, you should probably cast the I Ching for this sort of thing (imo).

<comment><USER3> What's the point of being serious about magic? I doubt that the I Ching works better at predicting the future than other RNGs.

<comment><USER4> Tarots, the I Ching etc. can guide creativity. Not because they are magic in any way; it's just that their rulesets act as a framework for thought processes.

See: The Man in the High Castle (PKD wrote it by using the I Ching) and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Calvino (based on tarot readings).

<comment><USER5> Brian Eno (Producer on Bowies Heros) actually produced a deck of cards to help with inspiration.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this intrigues you, Oblique Strategies[1] (online version[2]) might also interest you.

Although created for artists (musicians in particular), it can help reframe almost any creative endeavor in interesting ways.

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

[2] [http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html](http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html)

<comment><USER7> Along similar lines, Pretend Store (purveyors of fine goods such as the Pocket Developer[1]) have a set of Prompting Cards[2].

[1] [https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket- deve...](https://pretendstore.co/collections/all/products/pocket-developer)

[2] [https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting- cards](https://pretendstore.co/products/prompting-cards)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tarot cards and similar forms of divination can be really useful if you use them right.

The cards you draw are random and have little significance. A GOOD tarot reading asks you to reflect on how your life fits to the cards you drew. It doesn't tell you anything you don't already have in your head. It just provides a context to present your personal crises and reflections to yourself. Done well it gives you a chance to reflect and learn about yourself. It has no power over anything but your own mind.

I consider myself a "Rationalist Chaote" Ritual, Faith and "Magic" have power, abet a small one. They are useful tools for intentionally modifying your own behaviors and outlooks. They are not a replacement for therapy or medical attention when you are having issues but they are a tool you should keep in your arsenal of self-improvement.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been doing quite a bit of research into the origins of the tarot deck.

From what I've found is heavily based in hebrew mysticism, aka Qabbalah. The 22 major arcana are symbolic representations of the meanings of the 22 letters of the 22 alphabet[1]. My most recent finding is even more exciting. The 4 suites numbered 2-10 come out to to 4×9=36 cards. 36×2=72. The myth about the 72 3-letter names of God matches here, where each of the numbered suite cards Carrie's the meaning of a pair of 3-letter names from the set of 72.

[1] I've been researching why the 5 final forms used in the 27 letter alphabet were not included and I dont really know why. I've made a deck adding new major arcana cards for to include this discovery.

</comment><comment><USER10> Someone else has already linked to Oblique Strategies, but I wrote a ~response to Christine's blog post. Mine is about randomness, Tarot, and Oblique Strategies: [https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness- into-...](https://lesser.occult.institute/introducing-randomness-into-chaos- culture-oblique-strategies-and-tarot)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds a bit like rubber-duck debugging: you solve problems by explaining them outside of your head and hope that can get you to think about them in new ways.

<comment><USER12> A great explanation of the rubber-duck method: [http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174....](http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My girlfriend used read them.

One day I said to her: "Maybe they don't predict the future, maybe they _make_ the future."

I don't think she's touch them since.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's a great use of tarot cards. I've heard of it being used to help on therapy and decrease anxiety, but using it to help debugging is an ingenious one.

I believe it helps anytime you have a difficult challenge and don't know where to start, or your previous attempts failed, by introducing some randomness and instigating lateral thinking.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think drawing a random tarot card will help me write a better postmortem. If I started doing so my colleagues would probably start to doubt my judgement. Maybe skimming through all the tarot cards in order to pick relevant ones might be useful though.

Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate.

<comment><USER16> > _Or how about tarot cards for interviews? After I conduct an interview I > read the tarot cards to figure out how to judge the candidate._

I wonder how many tech employers know for sure that their in-person interview process has a higher accuracy than this one. If you've passed a resume filter / internal referral and can demonstrate that you're not simply lying about being able to code (or whatever the job is) does the rest of the in-person interview reliably, provably add signal?

That's sort of the implied argument of the article - that we deal with complex systems so complex that systematic and rational debugging isn't obviously higher-signal than picking things at random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious what the significance of the tarot cards is here. Why not just write the following article: (this also serves as a TL;DR)

When you encounter a problem with your program, consider the following in order:

\- your Motive

\- Facet (localize the failure)

\- Immediate Past (what changed to cause this problem)

\- the Action (that you need to take)

\- the desired Result

While the message is valuable, I'm not a fan of the obfuscation.

<comment><USER18> The problem many technically inclined people have when it comes to thinking outside the box is that they begin by defining the box in such great detail.

<comment><USER19> Which is exactly why I define the box to begin with :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm grateful for Christine. I had the pleasure of working with them before, and one of the things I appreciate is their openness around idea sharing. Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the negativity.

<comment><USER21> > _Talking about tarot or other woo-woo stuff, even philosophically, is hard > in tech circles and posts like this continue to make inroads in dulling the > negativity._

I mean, you can talk about reading tarot at home and I'll support your hobby. No problems there, I'll ask you what you've done with it recently with genuine interest, and I'm not going to even think about saying you shouldn't do what you enjoy.

But you talk about using tarot for debugging at work, there's basically no chance I'll ever take you seriously again. I apologize for my _negativity_ for not wanting to use tarot cards for debugging or a Ouija board for requirements gathering.

<comment><USER22> It's just a form of rubber ducking.

Frankly, a Ouija board for requirements gathering might be a lot less mysterious and esoteric than some of the scrum practices I've seen...

<comment><USER23> Plus, if it works, who cares?

It's a bit strange to have an objection to a thing based on the idea that it's impossible.

I once objected to the idea that colors look fundamentally different in darkness than in light. When put like that, it's kind of silly to imagine that one could object to it. But my objection was mostly to do with the way it was presented: Someone told me to stare at a picture and let my brain "buy into it." I was younger and practically laughed it off. But sure enough, after actually doing it, the picture looked much more vivid.

One possibility presents itself as to why Tarot debugging might be effective: Perhaps it gets you to try more things than you otherwise would have.

The post begins:

 _envision the product or service you are trying to understand more about. Think of the plans that went into it, the users of the service, how this understanding will help them, and where the missing part of knowledge fits into the larger whole. Write this all out if it helps, the more detail the better._

So, user stories. Right?

From further down:

 _draw The Action. This card will help you decide what action you need to take. This could be restarting a server, fixing a communication pattern (or lack thereof), or even just doing nothing and waiting a few minutes. Sometimes it means that you need to stop what you are doing and try to do the read again later. It's okay for that to happen, though that should only be a very rare occurrence._

This sounds pretty similar to ad-hoc debugging techniques I've seen.

I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you _tried_ restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has a decent chance of being effective.

I kind of want to go the other direction and make a deck of cards for debugging. You shuffle the deck, draw a few cards, and see if you've tried all the techniques it mentions. You could even have decks for designing systems, refactoring code, etc.

It seems like there's a deeper disconnect here: We want to believe so badly that programming is scientific work. But it's craftsmanship. Are these rituals really so much stranger than the rituals of Japanese swordsmiths? Why engrave a sword with such embellishment when it serves no functional purpose? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#/media/File:Wakizashi_horimono.jpg)

<comment><USER24> > I'm not saying it's a great idea to, y'know, restart a production service > based on a card telling you. But on the other hand, have you tried > restarting it to see if that helps? Who among us hasn't tried that, > honestly? And being told to do it just to see what happens seems like it has > a decent chance of being effective.

Yeah, restart the malfunctioning thing and throw away what precious state you had for meaningful debugging of a potentially hard to reproduce problem.

If I ever encounter someone guiding their engineering or administration tasks with tarot cards somewhere I have the authority to, they'll be promptly dismissed.

<comment><USER16> Restarting the server because the tarot deck said to is certainly a way _better_ reason than the ones I occasionally see in practice - e.g., "because the uptime was unusually high and that seemed suspicious," well did you suspect that it was manually configured and nobody was rebooting it for a reason? That one is an actively bad reason to reboot a server during an outage, at least the tarot deck isn't making decisions contrary to evidence.

Also, if you read the article closely, it's not advising you to trust the deck blindly, it's advising you to use it as a way to think about the problem from a new angle. If you're restarting it blindly based on a tarot deck, you're the sort of sysadmin who's ready to restart it blindly based on finding a five- year-old wiki page with a vaguely similar error message on a totally different platform. Should that be a fireable offense? (Maybe! Or at least maybe the company should find you a different role that recognizes that making decisions about production servers is not actually one of your skills.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA will not warn us about asteroids over Twitter during the shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/01/nasa-will-not-warn-us-about-asteroids-over-twitter-during-the-shutdown/

<comment><USER2> Yawn, sorry its been done better before... I guess the sycophants in the press had to start somewhere.

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

<comment><USER3> That's a lovely straw man you're hacking to pieces there.

No-one has said anything of the sort except you.

<comment><USER4> Whoosh [http://youtu.be/9S4cldkdCjE?t=2m19s](http://youtu.be/9S4cldkdCjE?t=2m19s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door

And I'm floating in a most peculiar way

And the stars look very different today

Here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world

Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

<comment><USER6> That's more than 140 characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And apparently some Panda in a reserve wont be fed according to the news. It's pretty sick when people believe this is the only way to partially shut down the government.

Most of the NSA (85%), FBI (85%), CIA (85%), Congress (Fully), The Judicial Branch, The Senate (Fully) will be paid and working.

If the US government partially shuts down the government, but chooses to spend on defense but not National Parks and NASA, then it chooses to shut down in that way...

<comment><USER8> > And apparently some Panda in a reserve wont be fed according to the news.

I think you misheard. The panda web camera feed will be shut down. Pretty sure they'll still feed the little critter... [http://jezebel.com/government- shutdown-might-kill-an-adorabl...](http://jezebel.com/government-shutdown- might-kill-an-adorable-panda-cam-1429790611)

<comment><USER9> It's also economically in our best interest to keep feeding the pandas.

We're contractually obliged to China to feed pandas in the National Zoo — if a panda dies due to American misconduct, we have to pay them $800,000. See [http://qr.ae/N5H14](http://qr.ae/N5H14) // [http://web.mit.edu/mherdeg/Public/smithsonian-panda- agreemen...](http://web.mit.edu/mherdeg/Public/smithsonian-panda- agreement-2011.pdf) .

I'm not sure how feeding the other zoo animals would qualify as "essential", but for pandas there are diplomatic (and monetary!) concerns.

<comment><USER7> Wow. Thanks for the detailed information!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't worry, my friend Rick[0] told me it was going to be okay.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_P._Binzel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_P._Binzel)</comment>