Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/youtube-kids.html?m=0 <comment><USER2> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The lack of curation on YouTube has been a source of frustration in our house for a _long_ time.

The kids just scroll down the list on the side of the viewer and hit whatever video they think looks interesting.

Then the next thing you hear is swearing, and there's no effective way to stop that from showing up on 100,000 other kid's feeds. (And it would be so easy to implement!)

Our kids _love_ the variety of YouTube. Even Netflix is too slow and inconvenient for them.

<comment><USER3> Last week we were watching "Annie" music videos on YouTube with my four year old and a commercial for a horror movie comes on.

It was a calamity. To stop the video, (which was being Chromecast onto my TV) I jumped to the couch to get my phone, waited for it to wake up, then spasmed on the screen trying to figure out how to exit or pause or whatever. It of course ignored me entirely. After all, the only reason I'd skip an ad is because I'm trying to bypass their ad-revenue. _Le sigh_.

My wife is meanwhile trying to get my daughter's attention innocuously so she won't watch a dead, rotting woman attack a little boy.

...

Needless to say, this change is welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a younger-than-thirteen daughter who would love to be able to __post __her video creations to YT too, and have her own channel. I had created a gmail account for her before, then she tried to create her channel and was asked for her DOB which she answered truthfully resulting in… not only no channel, her whole email was blocked and, according to their statement, eventually deleted. Yes, mea culpa.

YT for kids is welcome, but alas, does not yet help make my little one happy. Is there a way to let little ones publish their own creations on their own terms? anywhere?

<comment><USER5> Lying about your age to get around a low-stakes boneheaded policy is about as white as a lie can get.

I still use my fake birthday (Jan 1 1984) for online accounts even though I'm 25. It's not exactly Rosa Parks level civil disobedience but it seems like the least I can do. January 1 birthdays both allow the provider to cover their ass and allow you to register your contempt for the silliness in a measurable fashion.

<comment><USER6> I still believe that COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) is, overall, beneficial legislation that puts in place the minimum rules for protecting children's PII. As the Internet becomes more accessible to a younger audience, we should be considering the societal benefits of such legislation and how it should evolve with the technology. It's shortsighted to fault Google for complying with the law.

<comment><USER7> For me, that's where it gets interesting: as I understand, it is perfectly legal for Google to provide services to children, but they must obtain parental consent, first [1]. The problem is that isn't something they're interested in doing.

[1] [http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/comp...](http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions#Verifiable) Parental

<comment><USER8> When this happened to my son, rather than deleting everything and losing all his contacts and emails with his auntie etc etc, google just demanded I pay a bribe of 50 cents on a credit card, on the hilarious assumption that the only people in a family with access to CC are parents. At least this is how they did it back in the good old days.

<comment><USER9> > _on the hilarious assumption that the only people in a family with access to > CC are parents_ //

Hilarious? How do under-13s get banks to issue them credit cards? Presumably they only allow the payment from a CC connected to an account rather than a payment card (I assume payment gateways do that sort of differentiation).

Even if some under-13s can access and use a credit-card it seems likely to me that the vast majority would be blocked by such a system. I can see kids stealing cash from their parents, perhaps, but stealing when you know it's going to appear on their bank-statement?? Just to use YouTube? Then you need to be able to actually perform the payment; no-one else [that I know of] knows my CC password and it's certainly not written down anywhere.

<comment><USER10> I got a debit card when I got my first bank account at 10 years old in ~2001. I didn't pay for anything online with it until my mid teens (when I had a job), but I do remember having to use it to verify my account for the SecondLife teen grid.

Virtually all bank accounts come with debit cards nowadays, if your parents are forward thinking enough to set you up with a bank account then you could have a card very young.

<comment><USER9> I got a debit card somewhere around becoming a teenager. But it was probably a decade later that I got my first _credit_ card. They're quite different things.

In the UK under 18 you can't usually be held to a contract and so you don't have to pay back a credit card debt - this makes companies more than a little reluctant to lend to under 18s. You can't get a credit card until you're 18.

Citizens Advice (an established UK charity) say:

>"If you are under 18, it is a criminal offence for anyone to send you material inviting you to borrow money or obtain goods or services on credit or hire purchase. However, if you are over 14 but under 18, you can enter into a credit or hire purchase agreement if an adult acts as your guarantor."

Of course it might vary enormously in other countries but I'd be surprised if it was wildly different in USA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I realize that full curation probably isn't possible as this thing scales, but as a parent, this thing will live or die based on the content they allow into the stream.

I love watching videos of people building stuff with my kids. Moreover, I love watching the creativeness that some of the videos inspire in my kids. Unfortunately, to date, I have had to preview most of the content my children see on YouTube so that they don't either see a video review of something that's got the f-bomb every other word, or that the sidebar video recommendations don't bring up stuff that I really don't want my kid watching. And, to be clear, these are young kids.

In my mind, this is all about the content, the creators they allow into the system, and the curation of those two. I'd love to see an algorithmic way to accomplish some of this, but I expect on the front end, it'll require a lot of human filtering.

<comment><USER12> I don't watch much on YouTube so they may already do some of this but it seems to me like this would be an easy problem to solve if they so desired. Add a rating system where the content creators rate themselves and an easy way for viewers to flag them as incorrectly rated. Add to that a confidence rating of how likely a video is correctly rated (based on number of views without flagging) and you could confidently let your kids view appropriately rated material.

<comment><USER8> Whats it rating and how badly will it get abused?

Imagine a youtube video of President Obama's October 2nd 2002 speech on Iraq policy (not making this up, there is one...)

Or there's a classic nuclear winter / climate change-ish interview with Dr Carl Sagan right before he died in the early 90s.

Or any video that presents atheism or islam in a non-negative light. Say, a BBC interview with Richard Dawkins WRT his biographical book.

I suspect they'll be more than a little political gaming going on here, although theoretically a kid doing schoolwork could stumble upon them as a legitimate primary(ish) source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't find mention of whether or not there are ads. Ads are a deal-breaker for me with the kidlet. Currently whenever she asks to "See ostriches" or "People throwing fish!" (we brought her to Pike's Place market in Seattle and the kid was oddly obsesseed) it's a dice roll whether we sit through a Lexus ad. I'd happily pay a modest amount for a product like this one provided she doesn't have to see ads (regardless of whether targeted to kids of their Lexus-purchasing parents)

<comment><USER14> On PC, AdBlock works great on YouTube. If you're using a mobile app, yeah, I think you're SOL for now. I also would pay a monthly fee for an ad-free YouTube.

<comment><USER15> Recently, I've seen two things change on YouTube:

1) (a few months ago) Adblock stopped working. Fine, ads were rare, short, and skipable, didn't bother me enough to try to fix it.

2) (a few weeks ago) The percentage of videos displaying ads increased significantly, and most of them are now unskipable.

I even had one that lasted for maybe two minutes with no sign of ending the other day (it hadn't repeated yet, it was _that_ long! There was no indication of how much longer it would be) which eventually prompted me to reload the page, which clued me in that the "unskipable" ads can be skipped immediately by refreshing the page—it rarely (maybe 5% of the time, tops) plays an ad on the second load.

<comment><USER16> > _(a few weeks ago) The percentage of videos displaying ads increased > significantly, and most of them are now unskipable._

Whether or not ads are unskippable (and whether or not to show ads at all) is up to the video owner, so it's more likely you've just wandered into a different subset of videos recently.

I almost never see unskippable ads anymore, though it seems like the worst offenders are "official" vevo music videos and (most annoyingly, since the video itself is already an ad) some studios' movie trailers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would also want to know how much stuff is tracked. Disney knows the secret, that the shortest path to a parents wallet is through the kid, I am not against Google-Youtube making money out of this, but just want to know what is and what is not tracked. Of course, ad policy will also help.

</comment><comment><USER18> My kids, 5 and 2, have really been into these weird toy unboxing videos recently. They're fine with me from a "ok for kids" point of view, though I don't see the attraction. Anyway, I just wonder if these type of videos will be available.

example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_e8CPuVepA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_e8CPuVepA)

<comment><USER19> Relax, your kids are normal -- this is a well-known phenomenon amongst children born in the last decade:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers- journey...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-journey- through-the-unnerving-universe-of-unboxing-videos.html)

<comment><USER18> Ha! Thank you for the link. I wasn't worried, I generally figure all kids do "weird" things. I guess I'm more worried they won't be able to see these videos on the Kids youtube, and thus the app won't help me protect them from weirder things they sometimes stumble onto.

<comment><USER20> The Disney collector lady is something like the #1 youtuber in terms of views in North America (or close the last time I checked). I don't think youtube is going to skip her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The YouTube Blog[1] has better description of the product.

[1]: [http://youtube-global.blogspot.in/2015/02/youtube- kids.html](http://youtube-global.blogspot.in/2015/02/youtube-kids.html)

<comment><USER22> The links to the App Store and Google Play weren't showing up for me. Here's why:

        Google Play

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a great start! Ultimately, I'd rather my kid just have a 'kids account' (similar to Apple's model) and my wife and I would be the curators. In that setup Google could just expose a bunch of themed, kid friendly aggregate feeds parents could choose to include or not. For now I would settle for the ability to allow specific channels regardless of rating. For instance, I see Stampy is already in there but he swears occasionally, not enough for me to care but likely enough to get hit by an automated filter.

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't get too excited, global Youtube audience! This is US only.

</comment><comment><USER25> While I do think this is a good move for YouTube, it isn't enough to win my family's viewership, because the age-appropriate issues of YouTube are not their only problem (quality of content is still an issue), and there are other video sources if I want to educate my children via online videos. Khan Academy is the most obvious one that comes to mind, but we also will watch documentaries on Netflix, and watch the Smithsonian channel on our Roku.

</comment><comment><USER26> Have waited too long for you guys to grow up, have family, kids...so you can make web usable for kids. This is better be good and without crapAdwares. Will give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER27> In case you're curious, here are two existing apps that also curate and list only kid-friendly videos:

Cakey (from the creator of HotOrNot):

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cakey/id906087656](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cakey/id906087656)

Wimp:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wimp.com-family-friendly- vid...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wimp.com-family-friendly- videos/id412842333)

</comment><comment><USER28> I want to know if it will have caching for offline use. Don't care if it is like Spotify and needs to check in occasionally but would really like to be able to have something for the kid on long haul flights.

</comment><comment><USER29> Curious to know how many of you with children are going to use the time limit feature? I have a kid on the way and I have concerns about my child spending his formative years glued to youtube...

<comment><USER30> As a parent of three young children, we've established weekends (Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday) as video and screen time. This is pretty easy criteria for the kids to understand which makes it easier to enforce no video Mon-Thu. The weekends are nice because the kids get the equivalent experience of Saturday morning cartoons and it lets us parents sleep in a bit.

Even so, we notice that too much video (more than 40m-1h in one session) makes at least one of our kids pretty cranky. So, we might consider the time limit feature.

To keep them off the screen, we just have lots of clay, crayons, scissors, construction paper, tape, legos, books, puzzles, etc. And playground visits.

We often find that by the end of the day on the weekend, if it was one of those days where they watched a little more video than less, they complain that there was still [some craft project thing] that they wanted to do. So, providing a bit of structure to limit screen time ultimately is letting them get to do other things that they really want to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am trying to download from play store (from India), it shows "This Item not available in your country"

<comment><USER32> try downloading it from apkmirror.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good. Kudos. Too many times my kids surf their way to something weird starting from Peppa Pig or something ;-)

thanks Google.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, it looks really good, especially the old school Sesame Street giving me some memories. Lego channel is cool too but damn App Store search is not even showing it yet I had to download to the desktop and find it in Purchased.</comment>


Britain in two-week coal-free record - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48473259 <comment><USER2> Green washing at a national level. Biomass instead of coal is not necessarily better [1] and the source is very questionable [2].

[1] [https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass- study-2288764...](https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass- study-2288764699.html)

[2] [https://theecologist.org/2017/apr/10/no-drax-theres- nothing-...](https://theecologist.org/2017/apr/10/no-drax-theres-nothing- sustainable-about-big-biomass)

</comment><comment><USER3> Note over that time Britain is importing on average something like 1.5-2.0GW from France and ~1GW from the Netherlands. And producing on average about 15GW from gas. (Not sure how much oil is still used.)

<comment><USER4> Very little oil. The French imports are effectively surplus nuclear, as I understand it, while the Netherlands imports are more mixed.

We do have a lot of gas still.

<comment><USER5> Gas is a fine stop gap (less CO2 emitted and cleaner emissions) until you have more renewables, battery storage, and HVDC transmission lines from other countries with renewable and nuclear reserves.

<comment><USER6> Burning coal is overall much worse for the environment and people, but in terms of climate change, it might not be much better than coal. The CO2 emissions from a natural gas plant are lower than a coal plant, but it isn't clear that if you account for methane releases during production/transporting/storage that it is better for climate change than coal.

>...Back in August, a NOAA-led study measured a stunning 6% to 12% methane leakage over one of the country's largest gas fields — which would gut the climate benefits of switching from coal to gas. We've known for a long time that methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned. But the IPCC's latest report, released Monday (big PDF here), reports that methane is 34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than CO2 over a 100-year time scale, so its global-warming potential (GWP) is 34. That is a nearly 40% increase from the IPCC's previous estimate of 25. ...The IPCC reports that, over a 20-year time frame, methane has a global warming potential of 86 compared to CO2, up from its previous estimate of 72. Given that we are approaching real, irreversible tipping points in the climate system, climate studies should, at the very least, include analyses that use this 20-year time horizon. Finally, it bears repeating that natural gas from even the best fracked wells is still a climate-destroying fossil fuel. If we are to avoid catastrophic warming, our natural gas consumption has to peak sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, according to studies by both the Center for American Progress and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

[https://thinkprogress.org/more-bad-news-for-fracking-ipcc- wa...](https://thinkprogress.org/more-bad-news-for-fracking-ipcc-warns- methane-traps-much-more-heat-than-we-thought-9c2badf392df/)

As we use more and more natural gas, we can expect more and more methane disasters like the leak from Aliso Canyon in CA which was the largest methane leak in US history. This released over 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere and required 11,000 residents to be evacuated.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-35659947](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35659947)

<comment><USER5> > As we use more and more natural gas, we can expect more and more methane > disasters like the leak from Aliso Canyon in CA which was the largest > methane leak in US history. This released over 100,000 tons of methane into > the atmosphere and required 11,000 residents to be evacuated.

While tragic, it did prompt California to require utility scale battery storage replace the gas turbines that used that storage facility.

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/aliso-canyon- em...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/aliso-canyon-emergency- batteries-officially-up-and-running-from-tesla-green)

> CPUC President Michael Picker said the battery projects were deployed with > "unprecedented" speed and cooperation among stakeholders.

> "I was stunned at the ability of batteries and the battery industry's > ability to meet our needs," said Picker, speaking at the launch event > yesterday for Tesla's battery system at SCE's Mira Loma substation in > Ontario, California. "This was something I didn't expect to see until 2020. > Here it is in 2017, and it's already in the ground."

For reference, total time before Brown's emergency order and this battery storage facility turning up was just 1 year.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thousands Say Kratom Cured Their Addiction, Government Says It's Another Opioid - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/kratom-opioid-addiction <comment><USER2> It bothers me that in all the hype about Kratom the fact it does produce dependence is obscured.

I know a few folks who have had a terrible time getting off of Kratom. Only one of which is totally free of it.

All of their cases were similar, going from a small brew a day the first week to doing 6-10g a day within weeks.

People I know who still take it regularly remind me of addicts to other substances - claiming they can quit at any time but since they aren't having a problem they don't choose to quit.

Yet they also constantly crave Kratom and freak out when they can't get it.

Of course there are a lot of legal addictives - like a whole range of mood altering drugs like Xanax, Prozac, etc. - which are far worse long term.

That still doesn't excuse the unrelenting hype that Kratom is safe and that it isn't addictive.

<comment><USER3> So because some people are idiots others should have to suffer? Kratom literally saved my life. I was hopelessly addicted to opioids and went from shooting heroin to ingesting plant matter. I agree that the opiate naive shouldn't stupidly throw themselves into opiate addiction but the idea that because some people can't handle themselves I should have to suffer is ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear -- heroin is processed morphine, which comes from poppy sap. Cocaine is processed coca leaves. Nicotine is primarily extracted from tobacco leaves. Belladonna, strychnine and digitalis... just because something is made from a plant doesn't make it less of a drug or less dangerous.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying kratom is as dangerous as heroin? If not why post this?

<comment><USER5> They are saying just because it grew out of the ground doesn't mean it is safe. I found that pretty clear.

<comment><USER3> And how does that relate to what I posted? I clearly was not saying any plant is safe, I was comparing heroin and kratom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kratom can ease opioid withdrawal it binds to the same receptors.

Opioid addicts use it to "get by" when they can't their drug of choice. It is also used to "boost" the high by combining it with other opioids.

It gives you the same euphoria as taking an opioid. In my opinion anything that gets you high is not a legit treatment for opioid dependence.

What worked for me when I finally kicked opioids a few years ago was to taper off using suboxone quickly over about 2 weeks to get past opioid withdrawal, and then over about a year you have to train your brain to be high on life instead of substances. Easier said than done, the 27th try was a charm. Clean for 2.5 yrs now.

<comment><USER7> The thing with Kratom is that it's very dose-limiting. It tastes terrible, causes bad nausea, and makes you jittery. So let's say you have a dose of Kratom that you enjoy and you want more. You double it and you either puke it up before it all hits or it makes you so miserable you think twice before taking it again.

The real danger is in the so-called extracts, which distill and purify the active ingredient(s). But regular powdered Kratom is, IMHO, less harmful than marijuana and should be legal.

Interesting historical note about Kratom: it's traditionally used in SE Asia as a productivity drug. Farmers would take it to help them get through long days in the field. Much like how coca is used in the Andes.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the extracts are where you end up eventually.

It's true, being high on opioids increases productivity massively while you are high. I remember being able to code 12-18 hours a day, be excited to mow a 2 acre lawn with a push mower, etc. The problem is when you run out of money and are in withdrawal productivity drops to zero, it's hard to even get up to take a pee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm willing to accept that there's some complexity in the regulation of substances people use for medicinal purposes, whether they come out of the ground or a lab. The DEA is an abhorrent institution, though. And while it's clear the writers of the article swing one way about it, the DEA and FDA seem to be acting like they want any excuse to ban the stuff.

When they start locking people up for selling Kratom, and then a year later big pharma comes out with "Kratolizine" at 50x the price, I won't be surprised.

<comment><USER9> Your post's content is the crux of the problem from my POV. The powers that be and the bodies that make decisions about the legality of substances and scheduling of them seem much more interested in general profit and preventing the average citizen from using any sort of alternate route or remedy to combat their addiction. If they focused even a slight percentage of their energy and efforts into actually helping these people or offering real alternatives in terms of addiction care / help I'd be much more willing to believe things they are doing and saying but as it stands everything just seems like a smoke screen or straw man to allow them to continue conducting business as usual.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious what the state of affairs is in Europe wrt Kratom, or do they tend to coincidentally come to the same policy conclusions as the FDA?

<comment><USER11> "In Europe, as of 2011, the plant was controlled in Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden.[15] In the UK, since 2016, the sale, import, and export of kratom are prohibited under the Psychoactive Substances Act."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife has an as yet undiagnosed neurological condition with symptoms that include severe nerve pain, "electric shocks" in her head, and skin pain. She's seen one of the best neurologist in the state, regularly sees another neurologist, and has bi-monthly appointments with a rheumatologist.

For six years the best thing they could come up with was pumping her with 16 high dose caplets of Gabapentin, 8 doses of Tramadol, and a dose of Symbalta at night. I've watched her struggle with that for six years, helpless. And on top of that, none of the symptoms really went away. And if for some reason she ever had to go without Tramadol, you'd think she was detoxing from heroin.

A few months ago she decided to stop taking all of it. She cold turkeyed the Gabapentin and stepped down off the Tramadol. Then she cold turkeyed the Symbalta. It was utter and complete hell.

Now she occasionally takes a Tramadol on her worst nights. But she's free of the overall effects. Except who knows what the long term effects of that many chemicals did to her.

These were all "approved" treatments. Prescribed by some of the most highly educated and accomplished physicicians in the country. And they very nearly killed her, at best, and at worst made her want to kill herself.

The American pharmaceutical industry and the American "health care" industry are the same industry. They own the medical schools. Which at this point are just cheap sales colleges. Doctors in the United States are licensed drug dealers with absolutely no motivation in treating causes, only in receiving kick backs from their PharmaCo handlers.

And the fight against Kratom may be justified. But from my perspective whenever the FDA or any other government org in the US says something is inherently dangerous I can't help but feel high levels of distrust.

These are the same organizations that let Monsanto take over the food supply and make decisions based not on science, not even on what they think or can prove is good for the people, but on what increases their boss's bottom line a fraction of a point.

<comment><USER13> Just thought I'd chime in for this. After my cochlear implant surgery I had all these symptoms.

I was put on the same medications. After a while I started having seizures. Over time, I managed to stop the tramadol, and the others only leaving the gabapentin. Seizures still happened. (the electric shock thing I used to encounter, was probably related).

One day I come across side effects for it and one of the big ones was "causes seizures". So, trying to stop that gabapentin was one of the hardest things I've ever done, such extreme withdrawals, far worse than any tramadol, oxycontin etc.

As soon as I had stopped the gabapentin, all my symptoms disappeared, and I've not had another seizure since.

What we think happened was I had an infection, that had caused the aforementioned pain and shocks, so we went with the medications which obviously masked a lot of the symptoms. However it wasn't until I was free of the meds, that things were actually better, and it was very easy to pinpoint what was causing havoc with me.

When reading about Gabapentin/Pregabalin all over the internet, some people have had such bad experiences with it - and on top of that, doctors give it out like candy in New Zealand as a fix-all, because it's marketed as a very safe drug.

I hope your wife is feeling better these days mate! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's _not_ just another opioid - mitragynine doesn't recruit beta-arrestin, the pathway associated with tolerance build up and side effects like respiratory depression.

I'm certainly not convinced it _does_ cause dependence, especially not to the same degree as most opioids. As a sample size of 1, I was always able to stop taking kratom without suffering any kind of withdrawal, and there are plenty of other similar anecdotes on reddit (to be fair, there are plenty that do talk of cold-like symptoms when stopping it)

<comment><USER15> As a sample size of 1, and a person who has used a lot of different substances (alcohol, cigarettes, amphetamines, psychedelics, marijuana flowers and extracts), been addicted to quite a few of them, and kicked all of them, Kratom has been by far the hardest drug to stop. After reading online about the potential benefits and mildness of Kratom, I started taking it occasionally, and slowly had to ramp up usage frequency because I would start feeling cold and uneasy when not on it, I pretty soon I had to take it consistently to stay at my baseline level.

I managed to taper off down to a manageable level (about half a coffee spoon every 5 hours), but going beyond that was impossible without feeling the withdrawal effect pretty much full force, I decided it was best to bite the bullet and stop cold turkey.

Extremely cold feeling coming from inside on a very hot day, awful restlessness (which made it impossible to sleep more than 2 or 3 hours a night for the first week, before I had to give up and go on sick leave), the most intense feeling of being devoid of energy both physically and psychologically, and pretty much all the symptoms of a strong cold. The extreme sleepiness and impossibility to fall asleep because of the restlessness is one of the most frustrating combos I've ever experienced, but I'm sure that's all too familiar to opioids users.

If you're trying to kick off an existing opioid addiction (or maybe have some sort of pain where the usual pain meds channel are not available?), this might make it more manageable I'm sure, but all the analogies to coffee or tea as "Just a thing you can take if you wanna calm down a bit" can be extremely dangerous to people that have essentially no need for it, and particularly people with an addictive behavior.

<comment><USER16> We all have our weaknesses I guess. For me, nothing was harder to quit than pot. I've regularly used opiates, kratom, and even tobacco and I can pick them up and put them down with ease and lack of noticable side effects (short of a few depressed days). Weed took weeks of dealing with lack of sleep, agression and obsessive thoughts before I broke free, and that was after many failed attempts.

I have personally seen several friends kick regular pill habits with kratom and they got off it OK. We should discuss the downsides but from what I've seen the folks with kratom problems just took way too much(as addicts will do, I guess).

<comment><USER17> Everyone's body reacts a bit differently to different substances, legislation should seek to inform people of the possible downsides rather than banning it completely because some people react poorly. This is well understood with other psychological pharmaceuticals, but with recreational drugs it is frequently overlooked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congress isn't just considering banning it "just because". There's certainly a ton a lobbying money (ie bribes) by big pharma to make sure this un-patentable drug can't cut into their own profits on painkillers. Kratom simply doesn't have the lobbying power to make it a legal drug.

<comment><USER19> I wonder how much of its effectiveness in moderating addiction comes from the fact that the active ingredients have not been isolated and available in concentrated form. Already, people seem to be studying different strains. Is it only a matter of time before it becomes abused?

Having no first-hand experience with addiction, opioids, or kratom, I am skeptical since many of the article's subjects remain daily kratom users, often with increasing supply. Keeping it affordable with more socially mild symptoms allows these people to live functional lives. But it seems that the goal is not to attempt abstinence. Why?

<comment><USER20> Abstinence for its own sake is frankly not all that useful to society. Harm reduction is a much more important goal.

Millions of Americans are hooked on coffee and have withdrawals if they don't drink it, but nobody's up in arms about our caffeine dependence, precisely because it has very little in the way of social harms associated with it. If we can convert drug use with huge social harms (e.g. heroin, oxycontin) into drug use with negligible social harms (e.g. kratom), that would basically solve the opiate crisis.

In my mind the goal isn't to stop people from using opiates-- it's to stop them from dying, committing crimes, and running their lives into the ground due to opiates.

<comment><USER19> A positive step, to be sure. It sounds like further study is warranted, especially once the active ingredients in kratom are isolated and concentrated. The coca leaf was used for millennia, but became socially harmful in its concentrated form.

<comment><USER11> Some might say the same thing about refined sugar without the naturally occurring fiber it always occurs alongside in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is just my personal experience, maybe because I take it in lower doses but I really do experience it like tea only more so. There are such sharply diminishing returns on the effects that I doubt this story about high addictivity.

My guess is that people do a lot because of the diminishing returns. Which you could argue is just another facet of addiction but I would disagree.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is an opioid, that many people get quite dependent on. Methadone is an opioid that helps people get off heroin, it also has people that get addicted to it.

Just because something, when used a certain way, has positive benefit doesn't mean it should just be sold to anyone that wants some.

<comment><USER22> One twist to the equation is that Kratom isn't _that_ pleasurable to people who aren't already addicted to opioids.

I bought a pack after I had surgery- I never finished it and never expect to take it again. In a large way it feels gross and unpleasant, completely unlike codeine/vicodin/oxycodone. (I don't feel like I ever got addicted, despite taking it daily for a couple weeks, and haven't taken any opioids in the 8 months since the pain stopped interfering with my life)

<comment><USER5> That's true of many addictive things though. Problem is, the stuff is unregulated and coming from all sorts of sources most of which probably have zero quality control and then it's readily avialable to buy for anyone with access to the internet and a credit cad.

Sure, people can also go on a DNM and with bitcoin they bought with a credit card order as much cocaine or heroin to their door as they want but most people see cocaine and heroin as bad and would never do that.

However, when you have people on podcasts and YouTube going on and on about how great kratom is, how kratom makes their anxiety better, how kratom helped their friend's cousin's room mate's girlfriend get off heroin, then people are like "oh shit, I'm gonna order this panacea" and you have people that likely would never have tried some random opioid ordering the substance and consuming it.

People will try something if it becomes part of a (their) culture or when someone they put trust in talks well of it (podcast host, YouTuber they follow). Look at when people discovered hacking productivity with Modafinil, you had domestic and foreign websites popping up like crazy selling real modafinil, fake modafinil, super harsh on the liver pro-drug versions of modafinil, to anyone that had a credit card all because a few tech journalists reported on how some in silicon valley were using it to hack their productivity.

Look at 'k2' and similar synthetic cannabinoids that popped up several years ago. People were all 'hey man, it's legal and like weed!' and within months it was for sale in every headshop and even many independently owned gas stations. And whoops, once you had a bunch of people trying it turns out it wasn't exactly like weed and people were having basically bad trips and even seizures from mild to moderate comsumption and then state after state quickly started making it illegal.

Then 'bath salts'.

Go back 20ish years and kids were fucking around with freon and dying because it quickly entered certain cultures as a free way to get high at home.

We live in a world where ideas are highly contagious. While kratom does seem to have benefit in some cases when used correctly and does have a traditional use, it just shouldn't be something that John Q Public can hop on the clearnet and order for self-medicating.

<comment><USER16> Kratom has a long history of widespread use, so it's not really like anything you're trying to equate it to.

<comment><USER5> Nowhere near the levels it is now nor in the quantities it's being consumed by individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the article, it seems like the government wants to ban the plant in fear of a new opioid crisis—all while opioid class drugs are relatively accessible. It's amazing how large of a grip big pharmaceutical companies have on the US government.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is there still a prevalent knee-jerk attitude towards some drugs (or external catalysts that affect the body)?

Are the lawmakers uninformed on the real effects the drugs have?

Do they know but they can't take a 'pro sense' stance because of (irrational) fears that they'd get booted by their constituents?

Are they influenced (lobbied) by powerful players to resist pouring more money towards research or being more open to moving towards legalization?

Do they actually know but don't care?

<comment><USER25> _Are the lawmakers uninformed on the real effects the drugs have?_

Maybe to some extent.

 _Do they know but they can 't take a 'pro sense' stance because of (irrational) fears that they'd get booted by their constituents?_

Perhaps. If so, it would be the result of decades of successful propaganda. See below.

 _Are they influenced (lobbied) by powerful players to resist pouring more money towards research or being more open to moving towards legalization?_

Yes.

</comment></comment><comment> nv-vn Why is it so hard to say that both sides can be right? Kratom definitely helps many people, much the same as cannabis, amphetamines, and other opioids. It has a clear medical purpose and maybe even a recreational purpose. We have not seen a huge epidemic of kratom-related deaths after all. Yet it is still an addictive drug at the end of the day, and anyone who argues that it isn't (or that weed isn't) is just hurting our ability to have rational conversations over these things. Alcoholism is a thing, yet it's clear that blanket bans of alcohol do far more harm than good. As much as people try to paint kratom as a magical cure for every disease under the sun, it's irrational to argue that it has no harmful effects. Getting to the point where we can accept this type of nuance is necessary if drug policy reform is a serious goal of ours. Simply trying to shut out the other side with phony pseudo-science juju shit about cannabis reversing the effects of smoke inhalation and being some magical gateway into another realm is just reinforcing their beliefs.

<comment><USER10> Of the two sides, to me the FDA is the one exhibiting the most phoniness, their blatantly dishonest stance on marijuana being a perfect example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In this article ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670991/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670991/)) there is a dude who was pretty heavily addicted to opiods and used Kratom to manage his withdrawal symptoms when trying to quit. Unfortunately he went a bit overboard and had a seizure. So he abused Kratom a lot and also opiods. After that he understandable quit the Kratom and had minor withdrawals.

My takeaway here was that quiting Kratom is not like quiting opiods, and Kratom could be useful in allowing people to quit opiods more easily.

I certainly think it's worth studying more, and to do that you don't want to ban it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, no argument it is an opioid (or probably a couple different opioids). That said, it has at least three significant advantages over black market heroin (IMO):

1\. It is extremely inexpensive! Even grey market production, shipped halfway around the world, sold in small quantities across the internet, is just extremely cheap. Almost anything you would cut or adulterate it with is _more_ expensive and thus adulteration is not as economically viable.

2\. Dose (quantity). It's much less concentrated than heroin.

3\. Dose (method). Taking drugs orally doesn't provide the same immediate gratification feedback loop that injecting (especially) or smoking does. (And as other commenters note, it tastes bad. It's like drinking dirt tea.)

</comment><comment><USER28> Kratom is not an opioid...

[https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml](https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml)

>By 1940 three alkaloids in addition to mitragynine had definitely been characterized viz. mitraphylline from the bark of M. rubrostipulata (Michiels and Leroux 1925), rhynchophylline from the bark of M. stipulosa (Larrieu, 1930) and rotundifoline

It does not contain any opiate alkaloids. It has zero morphine, thebane or codeine in it.

<comment><USER29> It's an opioid. (Or rather, contains opioids—more than one, by the way!)

Every purported "non-addictive opioid substitute" in history has turned out to be an opioid. If it acts like an opioid and quacks like an opioid, assume it is one.

> > [https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml](https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml)

Try:

[https://erowid.org/references/refs_view.php?ID=7348](https://erowid.org/references/refs_view.php?ID=7348)

(linked from [https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_basics.shtml](https://erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_basics.shtml))

<comment><USER30> >Every purported "non-addictive opioid substitute" in history has turned out to be an opioid.

I thought Naloxone was non-addictive (and clearly an opioid)? Or am I misreading? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxone)

<comment><USER31> Naloxone binds to the same receptors, but it is an antagonist, so has the opposite effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Still waiting for the iboga renaissance ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> I constantly see ads for NALOXONE. Does it use Kratom?

<comment><USER4> No. Naloxone (Narcan) is an opioid receptor blocker that prevents other opioids from having an effect while not producing any pleasurable or pain- relieving effects itself.

Interestingly, it's made from oxymorphone, one of the more powerful members of the opioid family.</comment></comment>


Here's what happened to that world-record in journalism crowdfunding - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/de-correspondent/heres-what-happend-to-that-world-record-in-journalism-crowdfunding-cc5bac50b812

<comment><USER2> None of the money went on "how to design infographics" courses, it looks like. Although they do seem to be doing ok for their first year if they've retained 11k and added 17k users.</comment>


Remember that Y2K aesthetic? This collection of old Winamp skins will remind you - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/winampskins <comment><USER2> I miss when technology was fun, even if it was usually also tacky</comment>


Show HN: Use SQL Syntax to Query MongoDB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/orgoldfus/sql2mongo <comment><USER2> I think the main benefit of using a SQL database instead of nosql is that you can do joins. Using sql to query a single mongodb collection means that you have the disadvantages of both worlds combined.

<comment><USER3> I do find that interpretation of nosql vs sql very interesting. Personally I believe that the difference between them is slowly fading. E.g. at FaunaDb which most would probably categorize as a no-sql we do offer joins and other typical relational functionalities (and we do offer SQL as well). I'm particularly interested in how developers today look at what is the difference between SQL and no-SQL.</comment></comment>


Relativistic Asteroids: prepare to be blown away - <AUTHOR> http://www.referencegames.com/classic.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome idea. I've been telling people for years that a great way to teach physics would be to write a FPS where c = 10 m/s.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty cool way to see relativity in action! I actually like the Nine 'Roid game these guys made more than the classic game</comment>


Ways to think long-term: a cognitive toolkit for good ancestors - <AUTHOR> https://blog.longnow.org/02020/07/20/six-ways-to-think-long-term-a-cognitive-toolkit-for-good-ancestors/ <comment><USER2> > Out of the ashes of World War Two came pioneering long-term institutions > such as the World Health Organisation, the European Union and welfare > states.

Comparing the length of the existence of those organizations to how long many cathedrals took to build (some decades, but some centuries to complete), I don't understand how they're considered "long-term" institutions. It seems like if we want to look at institutions that have been successful long-term institutions, we would want to look at (1) secular governments such as the Roman Republic/Empire (which arguably lasted from the republic's founding in 509 BC until 1453), or Ancient Egyptian or Chinese societies (each of which also lasted through various dynasties as a continuous organization for thousands of years) and (2) various religious groups such as the Catholic/Orthodox Christian Churches which have existed as centralized institutions for a couple millenia.

<comment><USER3> I believe the academy is the longest lasting institution, founded by Plato in 387 BC.

<comment><USER4> I googled this, found the relevant wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy)

Seems like it has not endured unbroken from then until now. But if you disagree I'd love to read about your take.

<comment><USER3> Sure, the academy shut down several times. But, it was a novel mode of social organization -- and as such, it continues today with great effect. Surely the role of the academy in the scientific revolution is certain, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my favorite papers highlighting the counter-intuitiveness of the world on a truly long term is Rohde et al, 2004, "Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans". Wherein they show using computer simulations, with conservative assumptions, that it's almost certainly the case that the so-called "identical ancestor point" was as recent as a few thousand years ago (a blink of an eye in geological terms).

What is this "identical ancestor point"? The IA point is the most recent time t such that if you choose any human alive at time t, then there are only two possibilities: (1) everyone alive in 2020 is their descendant, or (2) they have no descendant alive in 2020.

Or in other words: it's the most recent time t such that for every two people in the world today (say, me and you), the set of {my ancestors alive at time t} and the set of {your ancestors alive at time t} are identical.

And, with high probability, that time is within the past few thousand years. One consequence: if you were alive a few thousand years ago, it would be easier for you to literally become an ancestor of everyone alive in all of 2020, than it would be for you to write a book and have that book survive to 2020.

<comment><USER6> That is either a very Eurocentric calculation or there has been a lot more congress with sailors than anyone wants to admit.

How could the people in the Andes trace a common ancestor a few thousand years ago with people in Tibet? Their ancestors probably last saw each other 12-14,000 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Bear in mind, you don't need regular trade routes from Andes to Tibet, you only need the tiniest "leakage" (e.g., one outcast per 250 years leaving/entering the Andes, one outcast per 250 years leaving/entering Tibet, one explorer per 25 years starting after 1400AD traversing the Atlantic, that would probably be more than enough).

In their paper, Rohde et al take all this into account, they do their homework, see p. 564 for the data they use about most recent establishment of routes. I'll quote this interesting tidbit from the paper: "Several factors could cause the time to the true MRCA or IA point to depart from the predictions of our model. If a group of humans were completely isolated, then no mixing could occur between that group and others, and the MRCA would have to have lived before the start of the isolation. A more recent MRCA would not arise until the groups were once again well integrated. In the case of Tasmania, which may have been completely isolated from mainland Australia between the flooding of the Bass Strait, 9,000–12,000 years ago, and the European colonization of the island, starting in 1803 (ref. 13), the IA date for all living humans must fall before the start of isolation. However, the MRCA date would be unaffected, because today there are no remaining native Tasmanians without some European or mainland Australian ancestry." To force the IA older than 9000-12000 years ago would require Tasmania be totally isolated, without even a single sexually productive immigrant/emigrant per 1000 years, for all that time.

[http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/CommonAncestors/Nature...](http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/CommonAncestors/NatureCommonAncestors- Article.pdf)

<comment><USER7> The authors express the problems with their paper very well within it: "the model contains several obvious sources of error, as it was motivated more by considerations of theoretical insight and tractability than by realism."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I strongly disagree with this claim that is presented uncritically and without evidence:

> _Additionally, the more we set our sights on escaping to other worlds, the > less likely we are to look after our existing one._

The _opposite_ seems to be true. There's some evidence the Apollo program fostered the environmental movement. As Carl Sagan said, "Whatever the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of Apollo."

The "Overview Effect" has apparently caused a strong movement among astronauts to protect the Earth, from both war and environmental degradation.

The two most prominent benefactors of human expansion into space, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, flawed as both men are, seem to also be sincerely concerned with the long-term ability of humanity to live on Earth sustainably. Musk does this through Tesla (accelerating clean energy transition), and Bezos through climate donations and, of course, funding the Long Now foundation that thoughtpieces like this are the product of.

And NASA is deeply involved in environmental protection, whether monitoring the ozone layer or climate change. Few other agencies are as focused on protecting the habitability of the Earth as the only agency that is involved in sending people to other worlds, and you'd find fewer more strident proponents of protecting the environment than astronauts who have seen the entire Earth as it is.

So this is just a false dilemma. A straw argument & it seems likely the exact opposite is likely to be true: lack of focus on the reality of Earth in space and the long term of humanity possibly taking root among the stars seems to make ignoring of environmental degradation easier, not harder. When you do not see Earth as "finite, alone," it's easy to lose the perspective that we must protect the Earth... the only home we've had and by far the best planet.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is distinctly at odds with the techno-optimist view that is so prevalent on this site, and in the tech world in general, that expects technology to address societies ills in a way that allows us to forgo systemic changes.

<comment><USER10> that's not bad as one-line critiques go, but few people are narrowly techno- optimist. few would say that only technology will fix our ills, with no other structural changes.

but certainly technology as solution can be misguided. UBI for instance (applying the term 'technology' broadly), as a path to labor and leisure utopia that actually further entrenches power/wealth in the hands of the few, thereby making no meaningful structural change addressing unproductivity or unfairness.

<comment><USER11> If people wish to push for structural change, having time to do so is a good affordance of UBI.

<comment><USER10> a better affordance might be a wealth tax that supports grants to individuals and organizations pushing for structural change, perhaps encouraging civic participation and jumpstarting economic opportunity in disadvantaged regions. a fixed and constant cycle of money that distorts economic, political, and social incentives is not the only way, nor even a good way, i'd contend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great post, tempted to read the book.

We just don't have the inbuilt evolutionary incentives for optimising for long-term/generational success in today's landscape.

We are new to the role of custodians of spaceship Earth and it doesn't look we are ready to be in the driver's seat.

Our genetic reward pathways guide us in the short term. But there is no dopamine hit for recycling, consuming less, polluting less. None of these things were a problem for evolution to optimise away in the past, and the speed of technological development vs timescale of evolutionary pressure to fix these issues is at odds.

I think I agree with Lovelock - best bet is to develop AI fast enough and let it take over long term optimisation for us.

</comment><comment><USER13> Where does the author get the idea that sustainable growth is no longer possible? Even setting aside how unfair it is to tell the global poor they've had enough growth when we've had 10x more, the claim isn't even true for developed countries. Rich countries are comfortably able to grow at rates higher than 1% a year (which, thinking long-term, is 2.7x in 100 years) and there is no reason to suspect that decarbonization will put a serious dent in that. The author seems to believe that growth is predicated solely on physical inputs, when in reality institutions and human capital are the real drivers.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an excellent article, we often get sucked into short term thinking - fighting fire day in and out not only adds unnecessary stress but also keeps us away from thinking long term. People like Elon Musk, Gates come to mind who think long term and take on projects that will benefit not only current but also future generations.

</comment><comment><USER15> Their pathways for civilization ([https://miro.medium.com/max/2086/1*1dhjzhchffxWXdoNZ8V_lA.jp...](https://miro.medium.com/max/2086/1*1dhjzhchffxWXdoNZ8V_lA.jpeg)) reminds me of the outcomes for Sid Meirs "Beyond Earth."

In that game you have five outcomes that I paraphrase as:

\- Failure: you fail the game.

\- World Domination: Your sectarian group becomes dominant. This does not guarantee ultimate survival, just survival in the moment.

\- Biological integration: you merge with the native flora/fauna, taking the "best" from both, gaia-ist style

\- Humanist conformity: you maintain human hegemony ranging from global purity to genetic purity

\- Transhumanist: you merge with technology

I don't know if there are formal philosophical terms or treatise on these topics, but the view is interesting. The only recognizably "human" after millions of years had significant eugenic or otherwise authoritarian overtones. I wonder whether our imagination simply fails us, or we are doomed to a Morlocks/Eloi transformation of the species.

</comment><comment><USER16> Honestly, this article is so Medium.

1\. N ways to X

2\. Cognitive toolkit, Mental model, Ruleset, Guidelines,

3\. "Oh humanity is selfish and has a short term view, we need to think long term and in unity boohoo".

4\. This is just PR for a book.

It feels like a highschooler read some "Think Like Elon Musk" brainporn and decided to write a pop-philosophy article without even thinking about it. After reading the article, I am sorry for those that waste money on this "interesting thinkers" book, because there seems to be nothing interesting or even thought out in this article. I assume TLDR of the whole book is "think about humanity in the long term and not just about yourself", which is exactly what isn't done here.

A lot of the "six drivers" overlap, short/long aren't "the counter" of each other but can actually work in synergy. If you can even call them drivers.

"Tyranny of the clock", no, we just have a social and technological standard enabling us to keep our distributed system in sync. We aren't doing field work all day, we're doing things that take minutes and hours, sometimes even second.

A lot of times, it isn't even technology that captures our attention in technology, it's other people or stories, and if it was 1538, people and stories would still capture each attention, they'd gossip, hang around, go to pubs, theaters, fire dances with the shaman, it was just localised and you were limited to your tribe/area. This brought as much good things as it brought bad things.

We focus on the next election because that is the way we fix the system, not by wishful thinking. Political corruption is a whole another sport that has nothing to do with this set of gloves, but we can also correlate it to age of the politicians, time when the system was established and the information scale at which average human operated at the time (let's say 100 years, my city/village scale). They are remnants of a legacy way of thinking, a way that will be seen as disgusting even by politicians in 50 years. Just like we look at guillotines in disgust.

The same "speculative capitalism" (lol) is what feeds innovation and growth, it's the same thing that enabled us to connect and achieve more, it's the same thing that raised our standards worldwide and made the world a better and safer place to live. The speculation is called investment and it enables long- term scaling and thinking. Yes, we spent the last 150 years destroying the planet in the name of economic growth, but it's also what got us out of the mud, connected to each other, learning more about nature and ourselves, noticing the damage we're doing and pivoting to correct it.

Of course we are "selfish", we have known for nothing but our tribe since the beginning of time, and we worked both to protect our unionized "self" (tribe) and our selfish (me, family, kids..) "self" against anything. For thousands of years we knew nothing but family pride and tribal pride, for the last 100ish years people really discovered national pride (we knew it before, but it wasn't that big of a pond or that concrete of a deal) and now we're just "discovering" global pride.

We have been long-term thinking since the start of humanity, except in a "selfish" way, and we just recently realised "oh wait there is a whole world out there", with the latest generations being the only ones born into that kind of world and growing up understanding that there are other, diverse people around the world and how their actions impact others.

For an article covering long-term thinking, it's a shame such short-term behavior (particulary last 50-100 years) is used to describe a whole civilisation.

<comment><USER17> I would agree it's not informative, and is mostly intended to plug the book.

However, like a lot of stuff on Medium, it can still alter someone's thinking and potentially shake them out of existing context trap or inspire some thoughtful contemplation. There's value there, just of a different kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Talk about hand wavy:

>A more likely trajectory is Reform, where we respond to global crises such as climate change but in an inadequate and piecemeal way that merely extends the Breakdown curve outwards, to a greater or lesser extent. Here governments put their faith in reformist ideals such as 'green growth', 'reinventing capitalism', or a belief that technological solutions are just around the corner.

>A third trajectory is Transformation, where we see a radical shift in the values and institutions of society towards a more long-term sustainable civilization. For instance, we jump off the Breakdown curve onto a new pathway dominated by post-growth economic models such as Doughnut Economics or a Green New Deal.

He makes these statements in these two sections, preceded by a first section in which he criticizes the 20th century business as usual "greed of avaricious capitalism and resource consumption, but then in the third point refers two two specific linked projects that are both exactly what he describes as piecemeal hybrids of capitalism and "new thinking" of the kind that's supposedly wrong in the first quoted paragraph above. Denmark is in no way escaping from the world's modern economic machinery with its so-called doughnut project and the green new deal is a gargantuan exercise in spending, ideological biases that could easily derail it for their lack of objectivity, and problematic, tenuous reasoning at best. Talk about generalization that just sweeps important substance under a rug of feel-good concepts.

So far it is exactly a pragmatic mix of technology, piecemeal innovation, "selfish" market exchange, speculative investment and also of course gradually improved laws coupled with activism that have made the world better over centuries and decades. Not massive "transformative" notions. The literal attempts at applying things in which a complete transformation is claimed have if anything bathed the last 100 years in blood more than anything else.

The author of this essay makes some very good points but more than anything, mashes his overall argument together in a hand wavy way that's riddled with absurdly biased cliches about the evils of modern society and capitalism which are heavily rooted in pop ideology and platitudes without substance. Not the best basis for genuinely objective attempts at long term thinking. The word "blockchain" even managed to get tossed in there.

I mean, imagine the sort of reasoning, biases and specific dogmas that a 16th century version of this document would have in making arguments for how we should plan for the future, and imagine just how absurdly removed they would be from most of the real problems that the future actually confronted us with, especially compared to said hypothetical author's absorption in the shallow, highly specific political correctness of his own time.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is all an exercise in hubris. I really dislike these types of things since they always forget one thing. In a world without infinite resources distributed to anyone that wants them. All of this is pointless. The second anything that has solid long term staying power it will be subverted by people's that wants a bigger share of the pie. In short all of these projects forget or ignore human nature.

<comment><USER18> People have been making your same essential claim in different variations for literally centuries, and have always proven to be wrong by the course of change and more importantly, human creative innovation. The pie may be fixed in certain specific absolute terms but in most ways it's far from that. It has room for many unique solutions that expand the scope of how we can create more from what we have to keep our well-being relatively high for the very long term.

Also, because we have worries about our future sustainability now we should thus stop the "hubris" of planning for longevity? What an absurd argument right from square one.

<comment><USER20> I dunno. Seems like most Marxist efforts thus far have pretty much made poor assumptions about human nature, causing their collapse or transformation into something less hopeful. Heck, the USA barely survived its first hundred years, and it might be the best example the world has of a long-term plan that's mostly intact. I think the hubris mentioned above is to believe that one set of ideas from a small handful of people are so correct, and their conclusions so obvious, that all of humanity will immediately shift gears in their minds and hearts to conform to them. We _can_ look at history and see this this sort of thinking leads to the necessary killing, enslavement, or exile of human beings who - for some unknown reason - disagree with the ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Now is a good time to think that the code you write today might live forever and in that context stop writing bad code for employers and instead write good code for people.

Good code runs on both Windows on X86 and Linux on ARM.

Good code can hot-deploy. Good code is fast!

For me that means Java SE on the server and C+ (C syntax with string, stream and objects for project organization only) on the client.

HTML, CSS and JS is ok for GUIs only, everything else should be native with command line!

Please comment if you down vote.

<comment><USER22> Programming for longevity is probably less about the specific language or tooling choices and more about things like: can you reproduce the build or does it presume a specific environment? How is the source code stored and how can it be recovered if the primary location is lost? Is the system well documented? Are the abstractions robust, and well composed? Many mainframe systems survived while desktop based systems have been killed because of the server/client architecture that has allowed for new front-ends to built separate from the backend. In this sense, if you are building for malleability, things like good test coverage become very important to support refactoring and changes. I'm sure many other considerations apply.

<comment><USER21> Sure, that's why github backed up everything in the Arctic now.

But C and Java will remain longer than anything else, for good and for bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Zoho Share: Sharepoint Meets YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zoho.com/general/introducing-zoho-share-sharepoint-meets-youtube/

<comment><USER2> Zoho compares their document sharing feature to YouTube 7 times in that press release. I suppose it's clever marketing to announce a Google property as your style inspiration. But 7 times in one blog post? Zoho Share doesn't even handle video.</comment>


Show HN: Share your long weekend project & get feedback. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> No project with any tangible artifacts here... my "project" for the long weekend was to read the Alexander Osterwalder _Business Model Generation_ book. And I'm almost done, so "mission accomplished" on that.

I'll probably start _Open Innovation_ or _Blue Ocean Strategy_ next. And work on some Customer Development briefs, transcribe some notes from last week's batch of interviews, and maybe write a blog post. That should round out my weekend.</comment>


Socket.IO 0.8.0 out with support for Firefox6 WebSockets and Chrome betas. - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/socket_io/browse_thread/thread/f20312fd107a11

<comment><USER2> Just in time for the Node.js Knockout 2012!</comment>


Is Psychometric g a Myth? - <AUTHOR> http://humanvarieties.org/2013/04/03/is-psychometric-g-a-myth/?2 <comment><USER2> The scientific consensus on intelligence in 1997 was quite clear on this issue: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence) . (See conclusion #3.)

Has the consensus changed since '97? I frequently hear people dispute #2 ("Intelligence can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well") and #5 ("Intelligence tests are not culturally biased"). However, I'm not aware of a revolution in IQ testing which overturns the old findings.

<comment><USER3> That was the consensus of scientists who specialized in studying general intelligence, not the consensus of scientists, and was controversial at the time. It did help to fight myths that were being promulgated by popular writers and politically-motivated cranks about what the consensus of scientists who studied general intelligence actually was.

Asking scientists who specialize in Spearman's g whether g is real is like asking astrologers whether astrology works.

<comment><USER2> > Asking scientists who specialize in Spearman's g whether g is real is like > asking astrologers whether astrology works.

Climate change deniers use the same argument -- "Of course people who professionally study global warming will claim it's real!"

Why is your claim valid while the above is specious? It depends on the rigor of the subfield in question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr - a refutation of statistician Cosma Shalizi's essay at [http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.htm...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html) in three parts:

(1) "Shalizi's first error is his assertion that cognitive tests correlate with each other because IQ test makers exclude tests that do not fit the positive [correlation matrix]. In fact, more or less the opposite is true. ... Cognitive tests correlate because all of them truly share one or more sources of variance."

(2) "Shalizi's second error is to disregard the large body of evidence that has been presented in support of g as a unidimensional scale of human psychological differences. The g factor is not just about the positive [correlation matrix]. A broad network of findings related to both social and biological variables indicates that people do in fact vary, both phenotypically and genetically, along this continuum that can be revealed by psychometric tests of intelligence and that has has widespread significance in human affairs."

(3) "Shalizi's third error is to think that were it shown that g is not a unitary variable neurobiologically, it would refute the concept of g. However, for most purposes, brain physiology is not the most relevant level of analysis of human intelligence. What matters is that g is a remarkably powerful and robust variable that has great explanatory force in understanding human behavior. Thus g exists at the behavioral level regardless of what its neurobiological underpinnings are like."

Conclusion: "In many ways, criticisms of g like Shalizi's amount to "sure, it works in practice, but I don't think it works in theory". Shalizi faults g for being a "black box theory" that does not provide a mechanistic explanation of the workings of intelligence, disparaging psychometric measurement of intelligence as a mere "stop-gap" rather than a genuine scientific breakthrough. However, the fact that psychometricians have traditionally been primarily interested in validity and reliability is a feature, not a bug. Intelligence testing, unlike most fields of psychology and social science, is highly practical, being widely applied to diagnose learning problems and medical conditions and to select students and employees. What is important is that IQ tests reliably measure an important human characteristic, not the particular underlying neurobiological mechanisms."

<comment><USER5> Please, can we just call it a "summary" instead of invoking the anti- intellectual air of "tl;dr"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a good discussion of the relative merits of both articles(the linked blog post, and the post it criticizes) on the LessWrong forums: [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/h6p/g_a_statistical_myt...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/h6p/g_a_statistical_myth/)</comment>


Microsoft Design Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.minimallyminimal.com <comment><AUTHOR> I think I need a translation for what the concepts are.

 _We focus on what unifies people- human motivations, relationships, and abilities. This drives us to consider the broader social impact of our work. The result is an experience that has a diversity of ways for all participate._

I'm not sure this has any specific meaning for me. It sounds like before Windows wasn't diverse or culturally aware enough and excluded some users. If you would say that about Linux, I would agree, but it doesn't sound like an urgent problem that Microsoft needed solving</comment>


NSA Spying Continues with Another Rubber Stamp - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/03/nsa-spying-continues-another-rubber-stamp/106365/ <comment><USER2> > "Obama and senior administration officials have repeatedly insisted that > they will not act alone to end the program without Congress"

The guy really is quite interesting, no? Rails against congress, complains they don't do anything, but could stop the NSA completely, without even an EO. The NSA's parent org is the DoD. The DoD falls completely under the control of the administration.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Patriot Act"

"Freedom Act"

Oh, my...</comment>


To Build a Better Ballot – An interactive guide to alternative voting systems - <AUTHOR> http://ncase.me/ballot/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. I have learnt very recently about these alternate voting systems, and as a result I have had many discussions with several friends over the pros and cons of each, and the impact they could have on our society. I absolutely agree with the article that this could help with many of the problems that most democracies face today (polarization, rejection of the establishment, low voting turnout).

I am surprised that our voting system hasn't evolved much since the 18th century, despite its many problems. It is high time for some disruption.

One small piece of important information that wasn't much discussed in the article: a big advantage of these systems is that they make primary elections obsolete (because they are immune to the spoiler effect). The reflection on the 2016 US presidential elections would be more interesting when considering all the candidates of the primaries, all competing in a single race.</comment>


DDR Type 2 Short-wave spy transmitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptomuseum.com/spy/ddr2/index.htm <comment><USER2> Nice work and superbly chronicled. I hope in 60 years someone will find my work and similarly finish all the documentation I never got around to writing today.

<comment><USER3> Are you certain you want to be compared with the Stasi?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a reason why they're so vague about which country it was found in?

It's repeatedly described in the article as "a West-European country", and that it was "close to the border of The Netherlands." That seems to suggest either Belgium or Germany. Is it just to make the location harder for others to find, or because borders are in dispute or have shifted since it was buried?

(Probably unrelated, but I see on Google Maps a forest & bog 20km from the Netherlands border, where the German border appears to be split in two by a Belgian railway line running through it.)

<comment><USER5> That railway and strange border is an old remnant of the Treaty of Versailles.

<comment><USER4> Oh wow! I knew I'd get an interesting reply. That helped me find some more info on the Travel StackExchange [1] & Fascinating Maps [2], if others are interested. I'm especially fascinated by Rückschlag, a single house & garden that is German territory within Belgium:

[1] [https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/105503/is-this- we...](https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/105503/is-this-weird-area- on-the-belgium-germany-border-a-walkway-or-something-differen)

[2] [https://fascinatingmaps.com/strange-german-exclaves-in- belgi...](https://fascinatingmaps.com/strange-german-exclaves-in-belgium- vennbahn/)

<comment><USER6> There's a fascinating YouTube series called "The Most Complex International Borders in the World" about enclaves and exclaves. [1] There are even some "counter-enclaves", e.g. a part of the Netherlands inside Belgium inside the Netherlands. [2]

[1] [https://youtube.com/watch?v=gtLxZiiuaXs](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gtLxZiiuaXs)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle- Nassau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing, cryptomuseum.com on itself is quite interesting.

A question though: how is humidity handled in modern electronics? Is there any sacrificial used on mainboards, or is there any design pattern used on PCBs in general to achieve the same effect?

<comment><USER8> Conformal coating is used, which is a thin layer of polymer sprayed as a film over the finished and soldered PCB.

As modern components are normally much smaller and sit fairly flush with the PCB, there are less nooks and crannies, and so the coating manages to fill them all or bridge them over quite well. It's still not a step used in most PCBs, there are downsides like requiring connectors and switches to be masked off with tape, and so it is reserved for more extreme applications than consumer electronics. Think electric gate control boxes, or marine electronics.

It would probably have existed in some form at the time of the OPs radio, but spraying the PCBs in it wouldn't have saved all the connectors, switches pots and other front panel controls from moisture, and so a more general method was needed.

Finally, a more extreme step is to "pot" the entire PCB by putting it in a sealed container and filling the container with a "potting compound", a liquid resin that sets solid or to a rubbery finish. This makes replacing or repairing the PCB very difficult, requires a lot of thought as to connectors, and it doesn't work well for high power electronics as the potting compound traps heat. It allows you to fully submerse a PCB in water forever, stops sparks if your PCB is working around explosive gases/powders, and is sometimes used as a "security" method in hardware security modules or "secure" USB keys.

For security, potting only really works if tiny wires are embedded in it, which on breaking wipe the encryption keys. Scraping off potting compound can otherwise be done by anyone if they are willing to spend a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that the Stasi chose to hide it in a car battery shell _and_ bury it, ensuring that anyone who stumbled across it would be suspicious.

<comment><USER10> Are we sure it was buried intentionally, and not moved from its original place and eventually thrown away (presumably because the concealment worked as intended and it looked like a junk old battery) to where it ended up now?

<comment><USER4> There's a photo in the article of how it was concealed, it seems like it was very deliberately buried:

[https://www.cryptomuseum.com/spy/ddr2/img/ddr2_cache_small.j...](https://www.cryptomuseum.com/spy/ddr2/img/ddr2_cache_small.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes you think about what they've got nowadays. You can finds lots of recordings of Numbers Stations uploaded by amateurs on Youtube. Also look at [http://www.spynumbers.com/](http://www.spynumbers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Heh, the title made me think that someone made a radio transmitter using DDR2, the memory.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did they try sending? Maybe the Lincolnshire poacher would reply?

<comment><USER14> This is a transmitter, it can't receive replies.

But yes, they tested it:

> The transmitter produces a strong and stable signal at the fundamental > frequency, but also produces strong unwanted harmonics, with the f2 being > only 3dB down. Furthermore, the f3 is only 10dB down and the f5 is just 20 > dB down.

<comment><USER13> The reply would be encoded in the one time stream the numbers station sends: you pick things like the Lincolnshire poacher up on another radio.

Btw, I think it was Russian not east German and possibly was over the horizon radar or a deadmans switch or something else: we need a /j for joke marking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The one shown here, was found in 2018 in a forgotten cache in a West European country. Based on the manufacturing codes on some of the components, it was probably manufactured in 1962. "

"forgotten" it was not - KGB does not forget! just deemed useless to both sides and not worth the extraction risk later on.

also, i wonder if one of Putin's buddies used these back in the days when he was stationed in East Germany in the 80's.

<comment><USER16> But Stasi ceased to exist in an orgy of shredding, so it might very well have been forgotten.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps, but we were reminded just this week that some Stasi memories are well preserved. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/valdimir- putin...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/valdimir-putin-east- german-identity-card-found-in-stasi-archives-report)</comment></comment></comment>


HTML5 Readiness : A visualisation of HTML5/CSS3 browser support - <AUTHOR> http://html5readiness.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting presentation, mostly well done :)

It would be easier to read if each spoke kept each browser colour in the same space. It's much easier to quickly memorize and patrec spatial relationships than colour relationships. If "light blue" (FF 3.5) was in the same location on every spoke, this would be much more useful.

<comment><USER3> Paste this into your console, and it should align correctly:

        var b = ["ie7","ie8","ie9","ff35","ff37","op","sa","ch"];
        var rays = document.getElementsByClassName("css-chart")[0].children;
        for (var i = 0; i < rays.length; i++) {
          var ray = rays[i];
          for (var j = 0; j < b.length; j++) {
            var curr = ray.children[j];
            if (curr.className != b[j]) {
              ray.insertBefore(document.createElement("b"), curr);
            }
          }
        }

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The page looks great, but for the purpose it's less intuitive than a plain table IMHO.

<comment><USER5> Welcome to HTML5! Completely overdone graphics with no usability (for a while anyway).

<comment><USER6> really? can't the same be said about any language with graphics support? it's not a consumer-facing product; it's a language. it's what you make of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the presentation idea, but it should be inverted, so that browsers that have most features would be the innermost ring and create a nice consistent ring around. The outliers in providing features than would become graphically that as well, outliers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a nice idea : [http://github.com/paulirish/html5readiness.com/issues/closed...](http://github.com/paulirish/html5readiness.com/issues/closed#issue/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It interestingly scales up and down when you use your mouse wheel over it.

I'd also make the CSS3 category color something other than a yellow that close to the Safari 4 color.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, looks like people are out with their claws over what is just a simple, fun experiment with CSS transforms.

FWIW, if you dont like it you can try tweaking it yourself : <http://github.com/paulirish/html5readiness.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> The fact that even IE 9 is missing several important things, like the SQL db and Canvas, is ridiculous. I guess it's early-stage enough that they might add more. If not, I think IE might finally die when people see all these cool HTML5 near-desktop-quality webapps that say "just download Chrome or FF and you can use me."

</comment><comment><USER10> I think that HTML5/CSS3 may bring back the days of useless animations, horrible text effects, and web pages plagued by usability problems due to the implementation of "features" for the sake of novelty that we had the "pleasure" experiencing in the 1990's.

I'm looking at all those novices out there that use Expression/FrontPage/Dreamweaver as their environment of choice for writing HTML once those WYSIWYG tools begin to incorporate HTML5/CSS3 into their toolkits.

The rest of us will make good use of these new features and only implement them when it makes sense. Sadly, many unprofessional elements within the web design community will be all too eager to show off their newfound "sKiLLz".

</comment><comment><USER11> Tut tut tut, poor/non-existent support for 1024x768 monitors. The worst fact is the page hijacks the mouse scroll so it took me a few reloads and zoom-outs to realise there was some really bad placed text at the bottom

</comment><comment><USER12> If you were curious about what this looks like in IE8 <http://i41.tinypic.com/24eatud.png>

</comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps this is a good example of what E. Tufte calls "chartjunk" in his book "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information".

</comment><comment><USER14> Imagine the ultimate irony if it were written using Flash.

</comment><comment><USER15> terrible to use to make comparisons.</comment>


My grandma and I are psychopaths  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-Facebook-sign-youre-psychopath-Some-employers-psychologists-say-suspicious.html

<comment><USER2> Already posted at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4349305> with 6 comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I did not see that.</comment></comment>


The best Vine viewer online - <AUTHOR> https://bottlr.co

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about it? i'm the designer/frontend/backend developer so if you have anything that you want to add please comment!</comment>


Show HN: virtualjoystick.js : to emulate joystick on touch screen - <AUTHOR> http://learningthreejs.com/blog/2011/12/26/let-s-make-a-3d-game-virtual-joystick/

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool. I'm most impressed by how fast it tracks my movements, just as fast as if it were native. Gives me hope that web apps can still keep up with UI on native apps.

<comment><USER3> Are you on ios? Lags behind my touch on a galaxy nexus.</comment></comment>