Stop the Slow Lane - <AUTHOR> http://stoptheslowlane.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't think this is the right approach. I realize that the principle is fundamentally the same with SOPA protests (depriving users of content to highlight the danger of this passing), but there's a more salient argument that you could make here if you really wanted.

Why not implement a loading bar that actually progressed slowly and then put a brief explanation underneath the loading bar describing the FCC "slow lane" and how it would negatively impact users?

To add insult to injury, give the user 3 options:

\- pay the site owner to access the "fast lane" to your content

\- send an email (to FCC chair? maybe a representative?) to voice their anger

\- get used to waiting; that'll be the new norm if nobody prevents this, right?

The first option would be incredibly controversial, but would underscore how objectionable the "Slow Lane" idea even is. If anyone is stubborn enough to pay, you could funnel that money into the EFF or some other relevant organization.

The point is that just throwing people a loading screen (especially without a good explanation) will leave the user confused. Once the content loads they'll probably forget about that loading screen anyway (at least on a conscious level), so don't wait until _afterward_ to explain what just happened.

As an aside, there was a comment that users will wait for a website that's sufficiently highly trafficked, but I don't think that's true. I remember some Google presentation[0] where an engineer explained that virtually any extra loading time was enough to discourage users from returning. Maybe that's just with search or other highly interactive sites (rather than reading a blog, for example), but I wouldn't want to test that hypothesis with any site I cared about and managed.

0: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il4swGfTOSM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il4swGfTOSM) \- The "impact of slow sites" comes up early on.

<comment><USER3> We're adding more explanation to the loading screen. Also, for folks who don't want to interrupt users, here's an anigif to post. [http://imgur.com/PQRaxNa](http://imgur.com/PQRaxNa) (putting this up on the site now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What do you all think of this alternate version of the loader that rips on Comcast?

[http://rubbingalcoholic.com/#ALWAYS_SHOW_SL_WIDGET_COMCAST](http://rubbingalcoholic.com/#ALWAYS_SHOW_SL_WIDGET_COMCAST)

If anyone wants to help out with this or give me feedback directly, please email me email@example.com

<comment><USER5> Be careful -- practically speaking, using Comcast's and TWC's names/logos is more likely to attract their attention early, and will give their lawyers a stronger argument (against Github or third-party sites) to have it taken down.

<comment><USER6>
         will give their lawyers a stronger argument

No it won't. Using the name and marks of the FCC to dicuss policy and actions by the FCC is clearly fair use.

<comment><USER5> I've edited to be clearer -- I'm referring to the use of Comcast's (and Time Warner's) logos, not the FCC's.

I agree that there are fair use arguments, which is why I said "practically": hosts take down fair-use content every day. A subset of that is eventually restored, but only after the parties have argued it out (frequently through their lawyers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Think about someone visiting your site for first time. They'll just think something is wrong with your website. So it needs some context. It should say somewhere that this is a form of protest against FCC's new Internet rules. Get inspired by some of the SOPA blackout messages, like the one from Wikipedia for example, to see how it should be done right, but instead of a "black image" covering the screen, they could get the slow loading animation:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Wikipedia...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Wikipedia_SOPA_Blackout_Design.png)

There should absolutely be a _call to action_ to Congress representatives and FCC, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> While I understand the sentiment, this seems more likely to just encourage site visitors to hit the back button rather than take the desired action.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. If the site is somewhat heavily trafficked already (which is the kind of site that will actually have an impact), then they'll wait.

<comment><USER10> Heavily trafficked sites are already paying for a "fast lane" in the form of CDNs that cache everything but dynamic content. These CDNs already have interconnect agreements with the large ISPs (and have for years).

<comment><USER11> Interconnect agreements are different than "fast/slow lane". CDNs will need to pay a premium so that their traffic will not be slowed down, regardless of the peering agreement.

<comment><USER10> Interconnects are exactly what the "fast/slow lane" argument is about. Netflix bought interconnects from Comcast and Verizon. Just through buying interconnects to the ISPs, the CDNs ensure their traffic won't be slowed down by an intermediary like Cogent.

They're not intending to provide higher QoS for sites that pay up -- that's insane and it wouldn't work anyway.

<comment><USER11> It's my understanding that interconnect agreements solve congestion on the network by having a larger connection to infrastructure.

Fast/slow lane practices throttle that connection, regardless of how large the pipe is.

So, my small business website could be using a large internet connection that technically has plenty of bandwidth to carry my traffic but, unless I pay Comcast a premium, traffic from my website will be put in the slow lane and throttled back.

<comment><USER10> Then your understanding is incorrect (sorry; not trying to be flippant). Interconnects are the entire story here.

The media has framed a lot of the congestion issues in the context of "fast/slow lane" but what they come down to are business disagreements between the transit providers and the ISPs. The solution to these disagreements from the viewpoint of a large service provider is to purchase an interconnect directly to the ISPs. If you are a small service provider, the solution is to purchase delivery through a CDN. Netflix used to purchase delivery through CDNs until it got too expensive for their business model; so they started building their own CDN that they called "OpenConnect". They used their positive brand image in conjunction with the ISP's poor brand image to launch a PR campaign with the goal of knocking down the price they would have to pay for interconnect service. It worked; they knew they were always going to have to pay the Comcasts and Verizons of the world but they were able to talk the ISPs down a significant amount.

Strategically, it's a bad position to be in for a service provider because the ISPs can raise the price at any time (which is why Netflix has continued complaining about it). But realistically, the ISPs sit on such a strong market control point that nothing can really stop them from setting prices (common carrier status just means they have to offer the same price structure to everyone; not that they can't arbitrarily raise prices).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some reason this seems to be the go-to "show 'em" methodology. I think people, in general, understand what slower means.

I mean this is cute but I think this might be the fourth or fifth implementation I've seen and they all have better likelihood of just annoying someone instead of educating them.

I realize a standardized alert message delivered via JS doesn't have the same "share-able" impact, but it's probably more effective overall.

I'm imagining Wikipedia's fundraising drives and whether they'd do as well if they just blurred out a large portion of every article to raise awareness versus a prominent message.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are considering an option that blurs out the page instead. Also - we'll add more context to the page.

<comment><USER12> I think you may have missed my point there.

<comment><USER3> If we made a version that stripped out the slowdown effect and just had the action ask, would you run that?

Our impression (and experience) is that people get more excited about doing something symbolic.

Again, any direct recommendations about how to improve this, and we'll improve it :)

<comment><USER12> You're asking about the efficacy of passive messaging - I don't think it would work if you asked people. Likewise, I think simply _doing_ it is more likely to annoy people than incite passion.

Visibility is the issue, not understanding the problem. I think the message of "the internet could be slower without net neutrality" is the one that needs to be delivered. People generally know what "slower" means.

As I mentioned, a standardized message would probably be more effective, but it's also not something that would be particularly exciting to share on, say, Hacker News.

<comment><USER13> I daresay annoying people is the whole point. Combine that with the logo example given upthread, and you've got a very effective campaign going on. What I see happening:

"Why do I keep getting this bloody message with Comcast's logo on it every time I hit random websites? _readreadread_ Fucking Comcast at it again.."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please let me know if you have any problems or feedback on the widget. I've also tried to set it up to be easy to remix and add your own slowdown animations (more info coming soon!)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not 100% sure that annoying your visitors is the best way to either retain said visitors OR warm them to your cause.

<comment><USER15> Wasn't that the strategy prior to the SOPA vote when Wikipedia blacked out? It seems the strategy is more to give everyday internet users an idea of what life would be like if this was passed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another idea is to provide a banner with a good message and a "toggle" button for the slow lane. So users can experiemnt it, but be in control as not to harm the product experience. Maybe it's too passive?

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think end-users will get the message. Can you illustrate to them how much slower their service will be as a result of rising costs?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would have signed the petition if it weren't being done through MoveOn.org -- really don't want to end up on their mailing list.

<comment><USER19> which petition site's mailing list do you want to end up on? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> perhaps it should be a button on the website, like "experience the site with FCC's Slow Lane".

That way, they can see what the site is like and if they choose to press the button, they can see what it is like to be on the slow lane. Otherwise, the first time visitor may not give the site a chance at all.

<comment><USER3> If it's a site you visit regularly, it's likely to make you really curious, right?

We're making a version that's just an anigif that people can embed. That should be live really soon. So, that works for people who don't want to interrupt visitors with a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The closing quote on the <script src"..."> tag in the "1\. Add slowlane.js to Your Website" section is missing. Not really an issue, but it looks unprofessional.

<comment><USER4> Actually it was an issue. It would break entire websites >_<

Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do they define the "slow lane" as the speed you are paying for and the "fast lane" as some "free" bandwidth (paid by companies)?

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be nice if the user were able to disable it once they got the message.

<comment><USER4> It will only show up once per user, unless you throw in a URL parameter for it to always show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Condescension is not exactly the best way to win people over to your cause.

<comment><USER25> I don't think this is condescension. It's more like a demonstration for the policy makers.

<comment><USER10> How do you know this is what will happen?

<comment><USER25> The ISPs have been pretty clear about what they want: the ability to charge for fast delivery. They already have money coming in from both ends (the home subscribers as well as the companies like Netflix and Google). But hey, these guys are making _money_ from their "pipes"! Don't they deserve a cut of that money, because, hey, pipes!

This makes about as much sense as the power company getting more money to power a PC than a lamp, or the government demanding a bigger toll if you're crossing a bridge for a vacation.

<comment><USER26> > The ISPs have been pretty clear about what they want: the ability to charge > for fast delivery.

The big conglomerates that offer both internet and content services (which are the largest broadband ISPs, but this interest _isn 't_ general to ISPs, its specific to those dominant players) have been clear that they want the ability to charge anyone for anything, even if they've already charged someone else for it, but they haven't been clear about the real reason -- though the actual places where they've chosen to do this make it very clear: what they want to do is use their market power in the broadband market charge the content firms that have already built businesses in content markets that threaten the conglomerates markets a toll to compete that serves _both_ to limit the outside content firms' ability to profit in the market _and_ subsidizes the conglomerates own competing services. Its pure protectionism; that's the reason that the cable companies (whose bigger business is often selling consumer video services -- cable TV + premium VOD tied to cable TV and, in many cases nascently though they are far behind the "pure internet" video services, video-over-internet subscription services) main target for tolls is Netflix.

Allow this, and the ISPs will start at the top and work their way down, until they've used their tolls to take over every profitable business relying on using the internet to connect to customers.

<comment><USER10> The big cable companies have had the technical capability to deliver video over internet subscription services for years. They haven't released them widely because if they did, it would melt the Internet. Netflix doesn't care about such things because they don't own the infrastructure and aren't responsible if their service overloads the last-mile.

<comment><USER26> > The big cable companies have had the technical capability to deliver video > over internet subscription services for years. They haven't released them > widely because if they did, it would melt the Internet.

The big cable companies have had video-over-cable subscription services for years, and well established customer bases for them, and charge very high prices for them compared to any video-over-internet service. They haven't offered video-over-internet services because they'd be competing _with themselves_ , and only started offering some when people started moving to third-party services. Still, they'd prefer to levy specific tolls on third party video-over-internet services so they don't have to compete and, if they decide to compete, can have their competitors foot the bill. Its a pretty classical way of leveraging market power in one market to prevent free competition in another, and it was one of the prime things that was specifically called out as a targetted concern in every version of net neutrality / open internet regulation that the FCC has issued.

<comment><USER10> I guarantee you that video-over-internet is a strategic priority for the cable companies. Currently, Comcast is limited to selling video services to customers who are connected to their cable network (about 30% of the US). They would love to expand their addressable market for video services by 70%. They've invested a ton of money into their online video platform for this reason. They haven't released it because the customer experience would suck unless there is a precedent and methodology in place for them to ensure adequate interconnect bandwidth exists.

As someone who works in the industry, that's why this whole argument feels false to me. Sure, the cable companies own the infrastructure for their customers, but there's money to be made from selling services to other customers as well. Big companies like Comcast aren't as stupid as you think: their video distribution model will likely look a lot more like Netflix in 5 years, as will the other cable/telco video companies. They're not trying to set up the rules so that Netflix fails; they're trying to set up the rules to ensure they can sell their products in the marketplace as well. How do you ensure your products don't suck? You ensure everyone in the value chain is adequately compensated (at least until you can disintermediate them).

When Comcast enters the video-over-internet market, they will have to pay for interconnects to the other ISPs. But that's fine with them; because it's a marginal cost tied to revenue. You have to tie the fixed costs of expanding infrastructure to increased revenue somehow or the economic model falls apart. That means either charging service providers by the gigabyte or charging consumers. Charging consumers would have a chilling effect on Internet commerce (just look at aggregated mobile data usage stats) so they've opted to go after the service providers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are we leaking too much business logic to the front end? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-leaking-too-much-business-logic-front-end-thanks-like-cervantez <comment><AUTHOR> Curious what everyone's thoughts are on having business logic in the front end, validation in the back is fine but should there be an aversion to making something complex in javascript? Gut feeling is shouldn't but I don't have the experience to really figure out why.

<comment><USER2> I think the philosophy I had heard was that the business logic sometimes has to be on the back end, and you don't want to have to wonder where it is, so since some of it has to be there put all of it there. I think the issue is that the webapp model doesn't really have a front-end/back-end split any more, the backend is in some ways more like the database, with the front end doing what the back end used to.

Except, not always, the backend still does plenty of stuff that is not just like being a database. So, inevitably, it is increasing complexity to split this stuff between the client and server. Which means more developers are needed for the same amount of functionality, and also the code gets into a Ball of Mud faster. The question is whether or not this is an acceptable tradeoff, when the alternative is to have a laggier interface. I suspect it is not, but perhaps I am just biased. Certainly it is a tradeoff that is being widely accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense about wondering where something is because thats one of the things I deal with when debugging. But that's also a problem in the backend, I've run into code that is split into multiple places with different versions of the same program all being used simultaneously.

Is it usually faster to do some logic like sorting and calculations in the clients browser than to do it on the server before sending the information? If so then I could see a reason to move some logic out and I may do it if the gain is appreciable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> An exception to Betteridge's law of headlines.</comment>


A Humble email alternative app with a stop switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.formalapp.com <comment><USER2> Except...you can only receive _not-email_ from other users of the app; so you're stuck with this _and_ e-mail. (Also, hoist the vendor lock-in red flag!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Piskvorrr, thanks for your comment.

Yes, it is a closed app like slack.

But you can request the sender's to contact you through Formal messenger by setting a permanent vacation responder in your email. Only humans read the automatic responder so your notification emails won't be affected.

For your machine communications like notification you can use email.

But for human communications you may consider Formal messenger because it organizes the incoming messages for you with help from sender's themselves.</comment></comment>


Mass Shootings Are Connected to America's Legacy of Anti-Indigenous Violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sand-creek-massacre-wounded-knee-mass-shootings <comment><USER2> Complete speculation by TeenVogue. Absolutely no backing evidence that modern mass shootings are in any way connected to the ones mentioned in the article (probably because they're completely different).

Surprised this made it to the second page.</comment>


Quick check to see if your UDID was leaked - <AUTHOR> http://kimosabe.net/test.html <comment><USER2> Why don't you allow partial UDID searches? I should be able to type, say, ten digits and see some results. You could also make it so I type the first eight and the last eight characters.

Easier data entry and I don't have to give you my full UDID.

<comment><AUTHOR> There would be no way for you to know if you got matched without possibly disclosing other matches as well...

<comment><USER3> The "other matches" are already disclosed, it's too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could this be another attempt to get more UUIDs? Why should I trust this link?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. Gotta trust someone, kimosabe! This is me: <http://linkedin.com/in/bbunix>, and no I don't want UDIDs.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Has your password been compromised? Type it here to check. Please also leave me your email message so I can inform you in case the password gets leaked later on."

Seriously ...

</comment><comment><USER7> You do realize that AntiSec stated they have access to about 12.000.000 UDIDs while leaking only 1.000.001?

Maybe you should note that on your site, so even negative Results don't get too confident in their security

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I'll update it now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone tell me what the AntiSec can do with these UDIDs? I mean they are just phone identifiers, what harm can their exposure cause?

</comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested, the top device names sorted by popularity :: <http://maxnanis.com/files/apple_udid_top_device_names.txt>

</comment><comment><USER10> Has someone here found his device in the list ?

If you found yours (I don't say mine since I don't own a single apple device), what do ?

</comment><comment><USER11> If you've been exposed take some time to help us identify who gave this UDID's to the FBI. (Already working with 3 exposed device owners) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4473833>

</comment><comment><USER12> Another UDID checklist: <http://dazzlepod.com/apple/> Partial UDID search accepted, i.e. search "d565" instead of your full UDID "d56504ca3b268177f76fef0c2c446ba183afd12b"

</comment><comment><USER13> Actually all you need to do is permit people to enter wildcards and print the results if (say) less than 100 matches are found, so they enter 1234 _6789 and you search for_ 1234 _6789_

</comment><comment><USER14> I had some trouble manually retyping my UDID. It turns out that once you click on the serial number, you can go to Edit->Copy Identifier (UDID).

<comment><USER15> You can also click to show your UDID, leave your mouse where it is, and CMD-C like usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does the leak apply to ipads too?

<comment><USER17> Yes. The "article" on pastebin said "iOS devices" and my download of the million-and-one has mentions of lots of iPads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is rather disappointing. After downloading the dump and verifying for myself that We[1] are not on the list, I need a partial match method for the _entire_ list, not just the one-and-a-million released to the public.

[1] "We" - me and the family

<comment><USER18> You could ask the bad guys. Do the FBI have an email address? Maybe you could get somewhere with a freedom of information request?</comment></comment>


BART's Fare Evasion Crackdown Exposes the 'Deadly Elegance' of Hostile Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.kqed.org/arts/13861966/barts-fare-evasion-crackdown-exposes-the-deadly-elegance-of-hostile-design <comment><USER3> This article starts with a valid point and careens into insanity.

Arguably a design that permits a chunk of downtown to turn into a homeless encampment is "hostile" to the original purpose of a bench downtown, which is to be sat on by a range of different people in the course of the day.

If those BART gates are anything like the ones in Sydney, though, they are a substantial risk. During the roll-out of our "Opal" card system I got my leg slammed - hard - by the gates doing that thing where the mechanics are a little too slow to keep up with the electronics and a bunch of people are going through one after the other and largely keeping the gate open. To be clear, I'm talking about walking through the gate only after having the comforting little noise that said "yes, I scanned your card and you're OK" \- not me trying to race through the system regardless of status.

I lift weights, am a fairly healthy middle-aged man, and am large (6'2.5", 235kg) and getting hit by that _normal_ gate _hurt_. I cannot imagine what the consequences of this kind of paranoid design - especially amp-ing up the gate with more nasty stuff - would do to someone who is older and frailer (but perhaps not old/frail enough to feel like they have to use the special wide gate). It is completely unreasonable to endanger more vulnerable legitimate transit users to get a little more compliance, especially where the biggest scofflaws will still just vault the gates or 'draft' through behind others.

<comment><USER4> > Arguably a design that permits a chunk of downtown to turn into a homeless > encampment is "hostile" to the original purpose of a bench downtown, which > is to be sat on by a range of different people in the course of the day.

If you are a city official, and you _know_ that you have a significant homeless population that would like a place to sleep that's safer and more comfortable than the ground, which is the more hostile course of action?

a) Propose changes that would result in there being fewer homeless on the streets, or even fewer homeless overall (eg, more & better shelters, providing them with free housing as has been proven to work in multiple places, etc)

b) Propose changes that make your area unfriendly to the homeless so they go elsewhere and lower someone else's property values

c) Do nothing whatsoever

Blithely talking about the "original purpose of a bench downtown" ignores the fact that there are real people suffering, not just because of the policies that replace more standard benches with anti-homeless benches, but because of the mindset that underlies them: homeless are a plague to be driven out, rather than human beings who deserve our compassion and help.

It is a position of privilege to be able to sit and talk about "the original purpose of a bench downtown" as if that's much more important than people's suffering.

<comment><USER3> I like choice (a) best of all. I don't think taking serious steps to help the homeless in incompatible with wanting to have a downtown that isn't full of poo and untreated mentally ill people.

I don't think SF is going to be in a great position to implement any of the steps in (a) if they lose a giant whopping chunk of jobs, revenue and tax base when those 'rusted-on conferences' finally get scared off and move to other cities, or when tourists decide SF is Just Too Damn Sketchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I'm showing my age, but I honestly don't understand what's "anti-poor" or "anti-homeless" or "ableist" about this design? To me, it can only seem this way if you see fare evasion as a natural right of the citizens.

Am I a curmudgeon, or is the level of concern shown in the article a legitimate thing?

<comment><USER6> In some places, homeless and poor people get issued tickets for free rides because of their condition. In others, they put inverted guillotines because it would be unsightly to post armed guards preventing the undesirables from illegally using the service.

It isn't about fare evasion, it's about how a given society perceives its more disadvantaged members: some want to help them, others want them to just die off.

<comment><USER7> > some want to help them, others want them to just die off.

Oh please, as if it that dichotomy were only true.

BART runs a massive deficit each year, and yet you think there should be no deterrents to evading fare? The BART barely collects on the tickets it issues as is[1]. Plenty of people who are able to pay and are of sound mind hop the turnstiles. If you want to subsidize the travel expenses for a certain group, fine, but why promote even more lawlessness in an already terrible system?

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Almos...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/Almost- everyone-gets-away-with-jumping-BART-gates-14048881.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm having a lot of trouble with this article. It's conflating a park bench with armrests or a ledge with spikes (both, I think, at least legitimate points of discussion when it comes to hostile design) with something designed to prevent people from stealing service.

BART service has a fare, gated by turnstiles. People try to steal that service by jumping over those turnstiles. So BART has modified them to make it harder to steal.

Of course the design is hostile - it's trying to prevent theft!

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are. Those turnstiles have always been more or less symbolic - <USER2> are designed to make it obvious that people are fare-evading, not to stop them. If you wanted to stop people fare-evading you would have floor to ceiling turnstiles that are literally turnstiles.

The marginal improvement in the security that adding nasty new bits to the turnstiles increases the chance that less able or unlucky users will get nailed by the turnstile - the young, the old, the frail, the plain old disorganized. There are plenty of people who don't perceive themselves as so disabled as to need the special 'wide gate' but who are put at risk by a system tuned for preventing jumpers and 'drafters'. As I said elsewhere on thread, I've been nailed by a similar turnstile in Sydney (without the extra stuff on it) - while using the system correctly - and it hurt like hell, and I'm a large, able-bodied man. I think the same hit on a 105lb female friend of mine would probably stop her from walking for several days.

It's just not worth it. Want to stop jumpers? Get your security guys off their asses and patrol the goddamn trains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _" Yet an underlying concern is that pilot programs like these could > alienate riders from taking public transportation entirely."_

Junkies defecating in the train station discourages me a hell of a lot more than "hostile design", which for the most part is purely decorative from my perspective because my perspective is not that of somebody wishing to do precisely that which the "hostile design" is meant to encourage.

"Hostile design" is in fact _defensive design_ , designed to protect the common people from the anti-social _and frequently hostile_ behaviors you frequently see on public display in Californian cities. We need more of it.

(Note also that "hostile design" does not focus just on the homeless, but in fact encompasses a wide range of techniques aimed at addressing a wide range of anti-social behaviors. For instance, skate boarders can be discouraged from playing in crowded areas where they present a risk to bystanders with use of furniture and structures specifically designed to discourage skateboarders. This addresses the problem of skateboarders causing property damage or frightening bystanders without threats of force (e.g. property owners calling the police or hiring a security guard) or any other form of confrontation. Isn't that better, or at least safer, for everybody involved? Similarly, "hostile" design allows property owners to discourage the homeless without instigating a confrontation between the homeless and police officers.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Discussion around hostile design always seems to miss the forest for the trees to me. To point out a concrete example, is it better to address homeless populations with some combination of state housing and UBI programs or, accept homelessness as an axiom and design public spaces to that end? The latter seems considerably more elitist and fatalist.

<comment><USER11> I read an economist's back of the envelop calculation on what the appropriate BART fare should be. When automobile subsidies and externalizes[1] were included the appropriate fare was negative. Ditto for Muni.

And example, I took HWY80 to work and paid nothing for the pleasure. Why should the AC Transit or BART riders have to pay a fare when the freeway commuters don't?

<comment><USER12> Looks like you forgot your citation, I'd like to read it if you can update.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/08/so-why-isnt- riding-b...](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/08/so-why-isnt-riding-bart- free-a-back-of-the-envelope-finger-exercise-calculation.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Yet an underlying concern is that pilot programs like these could alienate > riders from taking public transportation entirely.

I thought this was the best line of the whole thing. If you can't pay for it then how can you be alienated? If you are paying for it then isn't the so called "hostile" design no longer hostile?

</comment><comment><USER14> > A city

> BART

> San Francisco

> Fruitvale

Ok

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a politicized article and doesn't belong on hacker news. As someone who used to live in the bay area but no longer does, I can't help but think a lot of the people there have some major issues where they take every normal thing that other cities do to keep quality of life high and berate any attempts to do the same in the bay area as if every decision made for public health, safety and overall cleanliness of an urban area has to be optimized for the homeless and drug addicts. It's honestly pretty strange and seems sick to me.

<comment><USER16> Where do politics belong?

<comment><USER17> Hackernews explicitly lists politics as off topic. While deciding what is and what isn't politics is often politicized in its own right, the moderators do a great job enforcing this rule.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER18> Hacker News explicitly lists " _most_ stories about politics, or crime, or sports, _unless they 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon._" as off-topic - not any story with any political dimension at all, which would likely make most stories posted off topic, were that the case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homeland Security seized $2B from travelers - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/homeland-security-seized-2-billion-from-travelers-but-most-were-never-charged-with-a-crime-report-says/2020/07/30/001c3f90-cd05-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html <comment><USER2> Dulles seems really notorious for this since the article states "About $41 million was taken from travelers, or nearly a quarter of the amount seized nationwide, according to the report. Dulles only accounts for 2 percent of the nation's air travelers."

</comment><comment><USER3> I dunno, the women with 41k was probably doing something sketchy. Having lived in Africa for years, let me tell you, you never, ever, ever want to traveling with large amounts of money across airports. The chance of her having over 50% stolen in bribes is very close to 100%. There's also maybe a 10-20% chance that all of the money would be taken and divided up by officers at the airport.

No one would take that risk, unless they were really desperate or doing something that they couldn't have bank records for.

That's not to say that what Homeland Security did is okay, I think it's totally fucked up that government agencies can just steal your money and then spend it themselves. But I don't buy the medical clinic for women story and I'm guessing neither did they.

Every single time I've traveled in an African airport I've had to pay a bribe to get my bags back. I've also had to give officers at the airport some of my stuff. It happened so frequently that I would purchase stuff like Bluetooth speakers, cigarettes, cheap cell phones, etc just for them, in order to distract them from the more expensive stuff.</comment>


Why I use spaces over tabs - <AUTHOR> http://jarrodoverson.com/blog/spaces-vs-tabs/

<comment><USER2> Editors which treat indentation spaces as tabs only do that some of the time, which is annoying because it's inconsistent. There's also no need to "experiment with configurations", that's just a load of crap. Just put a line at the top or bottom of every file with the settings needed for that particular file. You don't even need a specific editor, there are plug-ins available for most IDEs and editors to read emacs or vim modelines. Anjuta supports both out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER3> Happy 50th birthday, TAB! I love you.

</comment><comment><USER4>
        this kind of           style
        is annoying            to read</comment>


Zero size objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/zero-size-objects

<comment><USER2> In 2013, LWN had an article on Optimization-unsafe code [1]. Essentially, after a pointer dereference, the compiler is allowed to optimize out any NULL- pointer checks, as dereferencing a NULL pointer is undefined behavior (and the compiler may assume that never happens at runtime, thus the optimization).

This article, in a nutshell, points out that memcpy and friends have a similar property: Although code may ask memcpy to copy 0 bytes (which will not crash in practice if argument pointers are invalid or NULL), behavior is _still_ undefined if the argument pointers source/destination are invalid.

I think the article is missing an introduction, as I had no idea initially what kind of "difference" between the pointer/length pairs the author was asking about.

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/575563/](https://lwn.net/Articles/575563/)

<comment><USER3> Ugh.. I'm generally in favor of the recent compiler optimizations dealing with assuming undefined behavior isn't triggered (although it has broken a lot of code that had made poor attempts at overflow checking, mine included) I think doing it for the mem* functions is a step too far.

I think it really was a defect in the C standard to _not_ specify behavior of calls like memcpy(NULL, NULL, 0) It has obvious no-op semantics, and every implementation I've ever seen would accept it just fine. I bet there is a lot of code out there that assumes that memcpy() and friends work in this "traditional" way.

<comment><USER4> I agree. In this case, writing memcpy by hand would work fine, but calling the standard memcpy is undefined. That's just silly. Undefined behavior should be reserved for cases where making it defined is not easy.

<comment><USER5> Even better, your custom memcpy might sometimes result in working code and sometimes be replaced with a call to memcpy[1] and then break. When this happens will depend on the compiler and optimization level and even if you manage to write one that isn't replaced today the next version of GCC might be smart enough to figure it out.

[1] [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=56888](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=56888)

<comment><USER6> Optimizing to assembly that calls the actual external memcpy implementation should be fine. If the custom memcpy works with NULL, without triggering undefined behavior, then any further optimization which assumes memcpy's NULL semantics would be clearly incorrect (which is not to say some compiler won't do it, but it would be a bug). The bug report you linked is about naming a function "memcpy", which is different - and IMO GCC's behavior was indeed incorrect until the change to disable the problematic functionality with -ffreestanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The mentality of compiler authors writing these kinds of optimizations needs examination. Specifically, inferring value constraints based on value use, and eliminating branches on that basis, is suspect for a very simple reason: if you accept as an assumption that value constraints can be inferred from code, using undefined behaviour to eliminate a branch needs to be balanced by the fact that an alternate branch exists, and presumably the user wrote it for a reason. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Technically correct is not a useful standard. Working code is. If compilers make code like this fail, it should fail very loudly, not quietly; silently eliminating null checks is not a virtue unless it is absolutely known that the null pointer use would definitely blow up otherwise. Which is not always guaranteed in practice, as the memset experiment here shows.

If compiler authors really want to pursue this optimization, elimination of dead code by means of detection of undefined code should result in a compilation error, because the code intent is self-contradictory.

<comment><USER8> It's not that simple, because of inlining and macros.

Those optimizations can be used to quickly throw out unnecessary code like null-pointer checks inside inlined functions, so they _are_ valuable and good to have.

So it's a matter of how much energy you spend on diagnostics, which ends up a rather heuristic field and perhaps we'd just be better off focusing on better static analysis tools that are separate from or can otherwise be decoupled from compilers.

<comment><USER7> Are we better served by fast and correct code, or faster and wrong?

The gain from application of an optimization needs to be compared with the time and cost of bugs introduced by the same optimization. And dead code elimination isn't necessarily a huge win - if you're fairly sure code is dead, you can make it cheap at the cost of being more expensive should it actually be alive (see my other comment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These "gotcha" optimizations are infuriating. Whether or not they're legal under the C standard, real-world _programmer_ mental computational models don't include a zero-length memset magically deleting NULL checks before and after the memset call. These optimizations are compiler bugs and need to be fixed.

Not everything the standard permits is in fact a good idea.

<comment><USER10> Why not petition to change the standard if you think it's not ideal? If you change that then you don't have to argue with the compiler authors.

<comment><USER9> Why not both? Compilers have much faster turnaround times than language standards, and a compiler that declines to view memset as a NULL assertion is still perfectly conforming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It should be possible to use a SMT solver to automatically check for code for which the -O0 version has observably different behavior than the -O3 version for some inputs to the program.

Though I'm not sure current SMT solvers are up to the task. (Related: I was using Sugar for something a while back, only to find it was spitting out weird error messages. Turns out it encodes integers as <size of domain> boolean variables, which doesn't work particularly well for large domains - it was hitting a 4 (2?) GB limit on the size of the temporary SAT input file and choking)

</comment><comment><USER12> This just makes the case for a safe subset of C, like Cyclone, Clight, or the recent proposal [which I can't find now] for changing the standard so that what's written is closer to what's executed.

<comment><USER13> Maybe you are thinking of "Friendly C", which is more a pledge compiler authors could take not to be too creative in their quest for improved benchmark results.

[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1180](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1180)

According to the article, OpenBSD changes how GCC's optimization options get enabled with global `-Ox` options, so OpenBSD has a "Friendly C" compiler of sort.

<comment><USER12> Indeed I was, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw the title, and thought it was rather philosophical:

How 'big' is zero? Can zero be quantified? If it can, then how come zero divided by is zero, but anything divided by zero is undefined?

I think it is time for another trip out west, California, baby!

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://prog21.dadgum.com/179.html](http://prog21.dadgum.com/179.html)</comment>


Terra: A low-level counterpart to Lua - <AUTHOR> http://terralang.org/index.html <comment><USER2> As an experiment, I've tried replacing C with Terra for a few projects. It feels like C++, except without the constant guilt. Having a proper hygienic macro system (instead of C's very limited string-replacement "macros" or C++ template hell) is a really helpful abstraction, and the compile-time stuff you can do can basically act as a build system.

So I got excited and planned to use it to make a game, but although it can import existing C libraries [1], it can't import global variables, constants, or macros that take arguments, which puts a whole lot of existing libraries just out of reach.

This doesn't seem to have stopped Leonard Ritter from using it for _Nowhere_ anyway, though being a crazy genius, he seems to have written his whole environment from scratch. [2] [3]

[1]: [http://terralang.org/api.html#c-backwards- compatibility](http://terralang.org/api.html#c-backwards-compatibility) [2]: [http://blog.duangle.com/2015/01/conspire-programming- environ...](http://blog.duangle.com/2015/01/conspire-programming-environment- for.html) [3]: [https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src](https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src)

<comment><USER3> How is terra's performance? You sort of compared it to C++, can it actually be compared with C++ in terms of latency performance?

<comment><USER2> Very good. I didn't benchmark it myself, but the language is designed for high-performance computing, and the authors' PLDI paper [1] shows it is competitive. Given that at the lowest levels, Terra basically reimplements C, and both compile to LLVM IR, similar performance is unsurprising to me.

The main point that gives Terra an edge is that its macro system makes implementing and testing potential optimisations easier.

[1]: [http://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf](http://terralang.org/pldi071-devito.pdf) § 6. Evaluation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terra seemed promising when I ran across it a month ago. Does anyone know if it's possible to use LuaJIT's ffi module while writing Terra code?

What I mean is, there is a large body of existing code that I'd like to run alongside Terra. But if the choice is Terra xor LuaJIT, this becomes difficult.

<comment><USER2> You might be looking for [http://terralang.org/api.html](http://terralang.org/api.html) § _Managing Terra Values from Lua_. Quoting:

> We provide wrappers around LuaJIT's FFI API that allow you to allocate and > manipulate Terra objects directly from Lua.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site is down right now. Here's Wayback Machine:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150424222319/http://terralang....](https://web.archive.org/web/20150424222319/http://terralang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702793)

<comment><USER7> Have a quick look at the 'past' link below the article title. It's a handy new feature.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, but I don't think it's useful because it doesn't actually tell you if previous discussion exists or not until you actually click it. I'm not going to click "past" on every story for the 1% chance that it will actually have results.

For it to be useful (to me at least), it should only show up if previous discussion exists, and it should be more prominent.

<comment><USER8> Insightful comment.

I thought the "past" link was cool when it was pointed out to me. Sometimes past discussions are superior to the current one.

But in practice, I almost never use "past", except when I'm pretty sure I have seen the piece before. Your suggestion might fix the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks very cool, my only concern is that luajit is lagging behind LUA and is in need of a new maintainer, how bound to luajit is terra for JIT compilation features? Is it something the terra developers are going to help with?

</comment><comment><USER10> there's nothing wrong with Lua</comment>


Attention Ye Olde Internet Nerds, Potential Gig Opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2009/02/10/attention-ye-olde-internet-nerds-potential-gig-opportunity/

<comment><USER2> Ad for 'opportunity' to be an astroturfer & coffee-getter at a marketing company in Seattle.</comment>


Symantec issues lame apology, fires wrong people in cert screwup - <AUTHOR> http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/tough-day-leaders <comment><USER2> This submission badly violates HN's rule against editorializing in titles.

The site guidelines ask you to "please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the op is referencing the comments below the article rather than the article itself</comment>


Thanks for the feedback: Crocodoc (YC W10) has a new look and improved tools - <AUTHOR> http://crocodoc.posterous.com/thanks-for-the-feedback-crocodoc-has-a-new-lo

<comment><USER2> I see a lot of YC startups create blogs on posterous rather then on their own domain. Is their a SEO reason/advantage to doing this? WOuldn't you want to send traffic directly to your site?

<comment><USER3> This has been done out of convenience. We're moving the blog to a crocodoc.com subdomain soon.

<comment><USER4> We support custom domains, so its just an A record or CNAME away from blog.crocodoc.com =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a software engineer that doesn't really touch too many documents nowadays, I'm probably completely outside of your target demographic, but on my 3GHz Chrome 6/Ubuntu 10 box, the Flash document viewer was quite laggy. Scrolling the page up and down pegged one of my cores and the page content took 500ms or so to catch up to my pointer position.

<comment><USER6> For me, it wasn't TOO laggy (Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz running the 'Ezra' Flash 10.1 betas). That said, the flash viewer scrolled FAR too fast, and was very flickery. It was impossible for me to trackpad-scroll to the bottom of a page without ending up three pages down.

My question is, why would I want a document collaboration system that I can't use at all on an iPhone or iPad (even in view-only mode), when other solutions like Google Docs work (to my knowledge) quite well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you pop up a comment, the hide and delete buttons are kind of confusing. The hide icon uses a 'minimize' analogy, which leads me to believe the 'x' icon means 'close.' On a related note, the popover doesn't really need to say 'comment,' it's pretty clear what it is - that space could be used to separate the hide and delete buttons.

You might try eliminating the word and having the hide button on the left (it seems comments always open anchored at the top left) and a delete button on the right. I would recommend changing the x (maybe make it red or a garbage can?) to make it more clearly signify 'delete.'

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks great Ryan! It's certainly come a long way in the last couple years.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice job!

Little nit-pick - on the CrocDoc.com homepage you've got a space in "mark up" (crossed out) and then in the line below have it all as one word "markup".

Gramatically both should be "mark-up" with a hyphen - markup is used for actual code description . . .</comment>


A Stylometric Inquiry into Hyperpartisan and Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05638 <comment><USER2>
       manually fact-checked by professional
       journalists from BuzzFeed.

The article seems to accept -- uncritically -- "professional journalists from BuzzFeed" as arbiters of fake news. Not a good start.

That said, and anecdotally, style is often a fair heuristic for political agenda. It should be possible to improve the methodology of such research so it is insightful without such arbiters.

As an aside, it is not surprising that "that the style of left-wing and right- wing news have a lot more in common than any of the two have with the mainstream", for they often use the same, or similar tools to undermine society, a goal both have in common. They read the same literature about how do this, typically following a Lenisist approach.

<comment><USER3> 1\. If anybody would recognize what manufactured clickbait looks like, it would be Buzzfeed.

2\. Buzzfeed, and a number of other traditionally disreputable sites, have really stepped up their journalism game over the last year or so. If all you know about them is listicles, you might be surprised at some of the stuff they turn out nowadays.

<comment><USER2> Your (1) is a very good point ... as the saying goes "It takes one to know one!". But I find "were manually fact-checked by professional journalists..." a bit of an unfortunate way of describing BF's expertise.

I would not be familiar with (2) as I gave up on BF a long time ago.

<comment><USER4> They put their names on the work:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages- an...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis)

Which of the journalists there do you think is just the worst? I mean, they work for Buzzfeed right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Fake news detectors" just sounds like a way to abrogate the responsibility of the individual to understand and analyze sources. It's not a good idea to mentally outsource this kind of critical thinking.

Also, Buzzfeed, while sometimes capable of strong journalism, is not the organization I'd pick to help with this. Why not Politifact, Reuters, 538, etc.?

<comment><USER6> It's really not hard to identify partizan news _sources_ , which is what this is based on. They often self-identify themselves.

It's really not hard for professional journalists to fact-check partizan articles, and I'd assume the ones hired by Buzzfeed used several well-known fact-checking sites, including Politifact.

 _> sounds like a way to abrogate the responsibility of the individual to understand and analyze sources_

But of course it doesn't do that. It's just a way of getting a machine to identify partizan stories that are statistically likely to contain a higher proportion of lies, especially if they are from right-wing sources (Table 1).

As we know all too well, individuals commonly abrogate the responsibility to understand and analyze sources all by themselves.

<comment><USER7> > It's just a way of getting a machine to identify partizan stories that are > statistically likely to contain a higher proportion of lies, especially if > they are from right-wing sources (Table 1).

So, anything from the right should be a lie by default? Then google or whoever can just unrank the article to oblivion, since it statistically contains "lies" according to a biased majority? Do you see how dangerous this is?

<comment><USER6> No: see Table 1. It's possible to write partizan stories without using false facts. The Other 98% does it. However, the right-wing sources used -- Eagle Rising, Right Wing News, Freedom Daily -- had a higher proportion of false facts than the left-wing sources.

You must surely know that many right-wing sources are notorious for lying, especially Breitbart and Infowars. Being a right-wing source shouldn't mean your lies get a free pass.

For some interesting information on how right-wing sources are _obliged to lie_ or be rejected by their target audience, see [http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump- drudg...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudge- coulter-2016-8?op=1?r=US&IR=T)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion a lot of comments here are too hung up on the fact that the researchers used data collected by Buzzfeed. I'm not a fan of clickbait either, but their corpus is publicly available here:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ysnzawW6pDGBEqbXqeYu...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ysnzawW6pDGBEqbXqeYuzWa7Rx2mQUip6CXUUUk4jIk/edit#gid=1756764129)

So as far as I'm concerned, so long as the authors acknowledge their source (which they did) then there's nothing wrong here. Even FiveThirtyEight builds most of their models from datasets obtained from third parties. A lot of data science research is carried out using public datasets because collection is often an expensive or time-consuming endeavor, especially for social science research. The authors even say in their acknowledgement "We thank Craig Silverman, Lauren Strapagiel, Hamza Shaban, Ellie Hall, and Jeremy Singer-Vine from BuzzFeed for making their data available, enabling our research".

</comment><comment><USER9> From the article: "It presents a large corpus of 1,627 articles that were manually fact-checked by professional journalists from BuzzFeed."

At first I thought this was an onion article. It turns out they're serious.

<comment><USER10> Much as I dislike BuzzFeed's clickbait headlines and articles, they are using their considerable profits to fund serious journalism: [https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an- investiga...](https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an- investigative-team-from-the-ground-up/396656/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it refreshing that they admit it isn't good enough right in the abstract (although they do point out that it is good enough to supplement an additional method).

</comment><comment><USER12> The next step here is that the marketplace adapts gets to some kind of stylometric equilibrium where Breitbart sounds like NPR.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how well the Amazon Mechanical Turk would do if you put it to the test to determine what is fake news or not.

</comment><comment><USER14> > were manually fact-checked by professional journalists from BuzzFeed.

Anyone else stopped reading there? Because I did.

<comment><USER10> Understandable, but BuzzFeed's considerable profits from clickbait articles are being used to fund serious journalism: [https://www.poynter.org/2016/how- buzzfeed-built-an-investiga...](https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed- built-an-investigative-team-from-the-ground-up/396656/)</comment></comment>


Minimalist and super-efficient news reader - <AUTHOR> https://monoclereader.com/ <comment><USER2> Free trial, then $1.99 a month.</comment>


An open letter to Marc Andreessen and Rap Genius - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hypothes.is/a-letter-to-marc-andreessen-and-rap-genius/

<comment><USER2> I guess the question on my mind is- does it benefit rapgenius at all to contribute to any kind of open annotation? As we can see with twitter, if you're going to bet millions of dollars on a content distribution and consumption network, you're going to have to display ads at some point. In twitter's case, they have slowly and surely begun to limit things that do not contribute to the display of twitter's ads (third party apps and open api access).

With 15 million and more to pay back, rapgenius will need to focus on things that contribute to the display of rapgenius's ads. Rap music is pretty popular, but I think they're aiming higher and broader (I'm guessing there might be a non rap specific product called "genius" out there in a year or so).

I'm hoping that they find it beneficial to their goals to contribute to the open annotation effort as they move forward.

</comment><comment><USER3> +1. The folks at hypothes.is certainly have the hacker ethos of openness and transparency at their core.

</comment><comment><USER4> It would like to see Marc and Rap Genius engaged in the open Annotation effort.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree all perspectives are a plus - It would be great to have Marc and Rap Genius engaged in the open Annotation effort.

</comment><comment><USER6> Agree 100%! Disclaimer: co-editor/co-chair for the Open Annotation W3C Community Group

</comment><comment><USER7> Great points all around.

</comment><comment><USER8> Agree with this completely</comment>


Facebook launches Actions, driving social into everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.theequitykicker.com/2012/01/19/facebook-launches-actions-driving-social-into-everything/

<comment><USER2> What I do like about this:

* Cool shit like listening to Spotify with someone, and the time syncs up with them (supposedly)

What I dislike:

* Most of the time when I click on a friends linked news article it asks me to read it through the websites Social Reader Facebook App... I'm looking at you Washington Post.</comment>


Show HN: Let strangers predict your salary - <AUTHOR> http://salaryfairy.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> We built this site as a social experiment side project and would love to hear your feedback.</comment>


Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/eden-carlson-brain-damage-reversed-drowning-638628 <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am a neurologist

The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press.

I would love nothing more than to have this kind of therapy be a reality for my patients. However, I am deeply skeptical of this report.

Why? Because

\- hyperbaric oxygen therapy has a big industry of quackery behind it[1][2]

\- oxygen is a standard part of medical care and can just as easily be harmful as helpful

\- because there is just no way in hell that oxygen is going to reverse cell death.

\- this is in newsweek, and not a peer-reviewed journal.

And if there was no cell death, then the recovery is almost inevitable.

Some posters are skeptical because 15 minutes is impossible.

On the contrary: the key point is the temperature. The article says the water was 4 degrees C. That is cold enough that you _can_ recover fully. In fact, the most amazing recovery is also one of the best-documented: with a 66-minute submersion in Utah that was followed by complete recovery[3] (this is a far more interesting article than the original post - it was in 1988, and utilized extracorporeal rewarming). This observation was used to pursue hypothermia in other causes of anoxic injury, which is clinically used today. I'm sure the 66-minute case also got oxygen during the recovery, but to say that it was due to oxygen (which is standard of care) rather than the temperature is silly.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but this article is just clickbait junk.

1\. [https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm364687.h...](https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm364687.htm)

2\. [https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/HBOT/hm01...](https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/HBOT/hm01.html)

3\. [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/science/the-doctor-s- world...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/science/the-doctor-s-world- ingenuity-and-a-miraculous-revival.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER3> OR:

Dr. Harch is published and well respected. He also has many documented cases of saving divers lives - including working with the US Navy. Could this be just a case of the medical community not accepting a new technique? In March 2000, the American Board of Medical Specialties approved undersea and hyperbaric medicine [1]. He has a legit cv: [http://www.hbot.com/about](http://www.hbot.com/about). Some of this publications:

1\. Harch PG, et al. SPECT brain imaging in the diagnosis and treatment of type II decompression sickness. Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, 1992;19(Suppl):42.

2\. Harch PG, et al. The effect of HBOT tailing treatment on neurological residual and SPECT brain images in type II (cerebral) DCI/CAGE. Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, 1994;21(Suppl):22-23.

3\. Harch PG, et al. HMPAO SPECT brain imaging and low pressure HBOT in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic traumatic, ischemic, hypoxic and anoxic encephalopathies. Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, 1994;21(Suppl):30.

From the article [1] you mentioned: "In March 2000, the American Board of Medical Specialties approved undersea and hyperbaric medicine as a subspecialty of both emergency medicine and preventive medicine."

<comment><USER2> > Could this be just a case of the medical community not accepting a new > technique

That the medical community wants evidence to substantiate an extreme claim is not a valid criticism of the medical community: it's literally the scientific process.

There are just too many extreme claims based on "unconventional" medical ideas to possibly draw conclusions that any one of them deserves closer attention.

It's great that some doctors at LSU think these ones are deserving - I really want them to succeed, because it means my patients benefit. But the mechanistic reasoning behind /why/ we think it /should/ help is so dubious that there are a thousand better places for me to spend my own time.

Bottom line: 99% of doctors want to see new, revolutionary ideas succeed. If they don't think things are work, it's because they haven't personally seen it being revolutionary. And the harder it is to see a revolutionary effect... the less revolutionary it is, by definition

<comment><USER4> Paul Harch wrote a book claiming HBOT can help treat:

• Stroke

• Autism and other learning disabilities

• Cerebral palsy and other birth injuries

• Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and other degenerative neurological diseases

[https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Revolution-Hyperbaric- Groundbr...](https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Revolution-Hyperbaric- Groundbreaking-Disabilities/dp/1578262372/)

Wikipedia is saying there is zero scientific evidence to back up any of this. I'd say Dr Harch crossed the line into quackery by making these grand claims, despite his otherwise reputable background.

Which is sad because his books all have plenty of 5/5 star ratings by people who are desperate for answers and are being oversold an unproven science.

I highly doubt there has been a conspiracy in the "medical community" to not take oxygen therapy seriously. It's not exactly a new treatment, as the OP's comment points out, it's been tested since at least 2000 (17 years ago) by mainstream medical groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is approaching Star Trek levels of medicine. Congratulations to the team who discovered and pull this off, and of course my heart goes out to the family and their child. Drowning is very serious and very scary.

Edit: somewhat unrelated since this girl fell into an unattended pool, but it's important to know the signs of drowning, which are not what you see in movies: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-spot-signs-of-a-child- dro...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-spot-signs-of-a-child-drowning/)

Edit 2: I get that people have a right to downvote whatever they want, but seriously, did I say something wrong here?

<comment><USER6> We are not approaching Star Trek levels of medicine. In Star Trek, they can heal wounds by shining a light on them. They can erase and alter people's memory. They can scan for problems using a handheld device. They can cure blindness with a visor. We are nowhere near any of that.

I know this doesn't really matter much, but if we're going to throw in hyperbole, it should at least be somewhat accurate. I think people are boo'ing anyone who brings up this point because it's such an incredible achievement. That's true, it is, and it's amazing that brain damage was reversed. But Star Trek is a useful, iconic yardstick for measuring our progress. Saying we're close to it discounts how much work we have left to do.

<comment><USER7> I think you have to keep charity in mind on that compliment. It was meant as high praise for the medical achievement of curing someone. Not as reductionism to shining a light and magically curing something. More, that was pretty clear just in the comment.

To that end, I'm curious how Star Trek is a useful iconic yardstick? My assertion would be that it is not. It is a common one. But there is nothing useful in it. Precisely because you have to cherry pick what parts you use and how you interpret them. For example, you interpreted it to refer to the method of curing. The comment was taking it for the level of the sickness that was cured. Both are valid places to look.

<comment><USER6> _I 'm curious how Star Trek is a useful iconic yardstick?_

I suppose it's sentimentality. If you watch TNG (which is difficult nowadays -- it's so far out of time), the writers made some interesting observations.

We now have the capability to ask the computer for information (Google), the ability to send each other messages (email), and we can verbally ask the computer questions (Siri). Touch interface (iPhone). These are landmark achievements, and they were all predicted by a show which ended in 1994, before the advent of the internet. The technology predictions have generally been on-point, and it seems like a useful metric for how far humanity can progress.

<comment><USER8> Call it sentimentality, but I don't feel like watching TNG is _that_ difficult nowadays. It's old and missing some of the tech we have today, but if you can suspend your disbelief on that, it stands pretty well.

(To those who haven't watched TNG, the whole series is on Netflix, mostly (entirely?) in the remastered edition, so no TV-like quality. A piece of caution: this is _not_ your typical sci-fi; it's much more positive about the future, science and technology than what we get served on TV these days.)

RE the yardstick thing - there's still lots of things that in Star Trek are shown as easy, and that they _feel_ like they should be easy with sufficiently advanced tech, and that are still hard for us today. So it's maybe less of an yardstick and more of a goal / reminder that there's lots to be done yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, this event happens enough that it might be worth studying the benefit of oxygen therapy, but I'd be very careful about the conclusions you draw from this.

Maybe the oxygen had a substantial positive effect, or maybe the child would've recovered on her own. We really don't know, since there are other reports of children who have good neurological outcome despite terrible prognosis [1] [2].

I'm suspicious because of the unusual and/or stereotyped responses in the Medical Gas article and the linked YouTube videos: "doctors said she had 48 hours to live" (doctors don't say things like that) and "this demonstrates that we're inducing 8101 genes!" (ummm, OK...), etc.

Also, be suspicious when something like this hits all the pseudo-news sites simultaneously. It reminds me of the articles that go something like "16 year- old cures cancer...DOCTORS HATE HIM!".

Finally, I'm very happy this little girl has been given a second chance and hope for her continued recovery. However, don't forget that a toddler was left unsupervised and submerged in a pool for 15 minutes. Some people call that an accident; some people call it neglect.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=3379747](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=3379747)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=10665559](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=10665559)

<comment><USER10> > However, don't forget that when a baby is left unsupervised and is submerged > in a pool for 15 minutes, it's called neglect.

Whoa there, slow down.

Kids are quick. One moment, your three kids are happily watching Finding Dory on the tv, while you're making dinner. The next, only two are: the third has quietly wandered off.

Unless you know the particulars, be very careful about tossing around words like 'neglect'.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I realized that would be a controversial statement, and modified it to be a little less so.

However, I have a 2 and a 3 year-old. And I would consider it my fault if they wandered into a freezing pool.

<comment><USER11> "Your fault" and "neglect" are very different things. Accidents happen and accusing someone of neglect every time there's an accident is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Concluding, the researchers say that to their knowledge, this is the first reported case of gray matter loss and white matter atrophy (types of brain damage) reversal with any therapy and that treatment with oxygen should be considered in similar cases. "Such low-risk medical treatment may have a profound effect on recovery of function in similar patients who are neurologically devastated by drowning."

I always believed that brain damage cannot be reversed. If version 1 means reversing it in toddlers, maybe version 10 will do miracles for many other people. Truly amazing and congratulations to the medical team!

<comment><USER13> Not to dampen your enthusiasm too much, but please note that infants are exceptionally good at producing new neurons compared to adults; their brain aren't fully developed after all.

<comment><USER14> Infants are also good at working around losing half a brain. If one loses it early enough the rest can develop to become a fully functional adult of normal intelligence, which is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, we have a family friend whose child had half her brain removed at the age of 5. She if normal today. You would never know she only has half a brain.

The surgery was performed by Dr. Ben Carson. I'll admit, not the best in politics, but one hell of a doctor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > was in the 5 degree Celsius water for up to 15 minutes before being > discovered.

as my professor used to say: If you're going to drown, drown in almost- freezing freshwater.

<comment><USER17> I get the freezing, why the freshwater? Saltwater can be a bit colder before ice, so wouldn't it be better?

<comment><USER18> I think the salt is an issue with regard to inhaling the water, not about the temperature.

<comment><USER16> Yes, you and zimpenfish are correct: getting salt in your lungs will almost certainly kill you, because it keeps drawing water from the blood through osmosis, and you'll continue to drown even after leaving the water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What frustrates me is that in the United States, most insurance companies won't pay for hyperbaric oxygen treatment for traumatic brain injuries. My son, 26, was injured in a car accident last November. I would love to be able to get Oxygen therapy for him, but cannot.

<comment><USER20> This is what's nice with a single payer health system. The same cost center has to either pay for disability related costs, or pay for treatments that would potentially end the disability related costs. It's a sane investment by the government here in Canada to make such choices.

On the other hand, if your health insurance is through one system and your disability insurance through another, you have everyone optimizing for their personal local minimums rather than the global minimum.

<comment><USER21> Does Canada pay for hyperbaric oxygen therapy?

<comment><USER20> I have no idea. But if it's proven, available, and makes sense then generally it will be available with prescription for it.

<comment><USER22> That's generally the case with US insurance companies as well, which leads me to believe this is more "experimental" and thus not a good example of the merits of a single payer system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Drowning is from a medical standpoint more complex than the simple notion I grew up with which was in essence "water fills your lungs so you can't breathe air".

In fact drowning does not require filling the lungs completely. Even a volume of a few milliliters/Kilogram of body weight is enough to cause drowning. Additionally, drowning can cause serious damage to the lungs themselves even if the patient survives initial attempts at resuscitation. The alveoli (functional unit of the lungs) are lined with a surfactant that is critical to the exchange of air to the blood stream. Water can severely disrupt the surfactant and impair function not just while the water is present but until the body is able to restore the surfactant layer. Damage to the patient's lungs in this case seems to have been mild enough that the oxygen therapy could do it's job.

Also notable is the 5 degree celsius water temperature (41 degrees Fahrenheit). This water temperature compared with the temperature of an olympic practice pool (~76 degrees Farenheit) is cool enough (though not as cold as many other reports) to trigger the so called "diving reflex" where stimulation of thermo-receptors in the skin triggers a vagal response that shunts blood away from the periphery and to vital organs.

Minimal surfactant damage and the diving reflex (as well as the patient's age) seem likely to some degree to have facilitated successful treatment of the patient.

<comment><USER24> Have you heard of dry drowning? It can happen _after_ exposure to water: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_drowning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_drowning)

<comment><USER23> My primary reference is Auerbach's Wilderness Medicine 7th Edition. It states that a consensus definition of "dry drowning" has been somewhat elusive. While laryngospasm may play a role in some drownings, opinion seems to lean now towards at least some aspiration of water on a consistent basis. The phenomenon is still the subject of debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really awesome. I am curious if this therapy would have been augmented by cognitive enhancers or nootropic substances such as piracetam. Piracetam in particular exhibits neuroprotective effects and improves cerebral vascular function. Several studies have found it to improve recovery following acute/transient ischemic stroke. It has actually been prescribed in several countries for this purpose.

References: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22972044](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22972044) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10338105](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10338105) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9412612](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9412612) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9316679](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9316679)

</comment><comment><USER26> Egad the JavaScript on that page is terrible! Every time I scroll to read the first paragraph, it hides the video or something, causing it to scroll away.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems like they fed the body a lot of oxygen and the body healed itself. I think the body is pretty amazing at regeneration when we are young.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can anyone knowledgeable about medicine explain this article further? For example, I'm wondering why they waited 55 days to give normobaric oxygen therapy. Wouldn't it be given immediately for a patient with brain injury?

<comment><USER4> Most likely the 55 day wait happened because the parents sought out alternative treatments afterwards. As it is very unlikely the original doctors suggested this treatment... there is no supporting evidence that HBOT helps with traumatic brain injury. Also as other's have pointed out in this thread, HBOT is an industry full of quackery with grand claims of curing cancer, treating brain injury, and cerebral palsy with little evidence.

So most likely the parents approached a university research group, or a research group was referred to them, and they did the study with the child at a later date following the initial treatment of the injury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was worried this would be a case of neural plasticity, where the brain just rewires itself around the damage (which is a thing, and it's super cool). But then I read this part:

> An MRI scan a month after the 40th HBOT session showed almost complete > reversal of the brain damage initially recorded. Researchers believe the > oxygen therapy, coupled with Eden having the developing brain of a child, > had activated genes that promote cell survival and reduce > inflammation—allowing the brain to recover.

We can reverse brain damage. Wow.

<comment><USER29> > We can reverse brain damage. Wow

I'm going to tell you that I have never been more glad to read Hacker News first thing in the morning.

I am sleeping in my mother's ICU room @ UIUC after she's suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage causing substantial brain damage. This is coming with me to the ICU team huddle this morning.

Side note: if you're in neurological field or specialize in neurogenesis, please get in touch with me

<comment><USER2> I obviously don't know anything regarding your mom's condition, but SAH (a form of hemorrhagic stroke) by itself can have very complete recovery. The real question is how much ischemic stroke there was with it. If the answer is "none", then, if she survives (scary caveat, obviously), then her recovery could be very very good. Having said that, ischemic injury is common (as is herniation, which is similarly permanent and very very dangerous). I hope she comes through it ok.

<comment><USER29> Thank you for the reply. I can't tell you how much it means to me, regardless of the outcome.

I'm prepared for her to pass; she's in a coma and she's suffered brain damage, but I'm doing my best to advocate for her.

<comment><USER25> Have you looked into pharmaceuticals to possibly mitigate damage? I'm not sure of their efficacy, but there are a few racetams that might aid recovery. Phenylpiracetam is perhaps the most potent.

From Wikipedia:

"A few small clinical studies have shown possible links between prescription of phenylpiracetam and improvement in a number of encephalopathic conditions, including lesions of cerebral blood pathways, traumatic brain injury and certain types of glioma."

Study in rats:

"In Wistar rats with gravitational cerebral ischemia, Phenylpiracetam reduced the extent of neuralgic deficiency manifestations, retained the locomotor, research, and memory functions, increased the survival rate, and lead to the favoring of local cerebral flow restoration upon the occlusion of carotid arteries to a greater extent than did piracetam."

<comment><USER29> The extent of her brain damage was too severe. She passed away Monday night after being taken off life support. Thank you for mentioning this, it might help someone in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is amazing. Does anyone think the cold temperature of the water (5C) had anything to do with the feasibility of recovery? I don't necessarily have a reason to think it would be beneficial or not, just a thought that crossed my mind. I don't think it was mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't mentioned in the article, but it's well documented that the survival rates for drowning, while dismally low, are much better in ice-cold water.

 _Cold water lengthens the survival time by two mechanisms. It triggers the mammalian diving reflex, which halts breathing and conserves oxygen by slowing the heart rate and moving blood to vital parts of the body. This response is stronger in children than adults.(14) An opposing "cold shock response" may predominate, which leads to a faster heart rate with potential fatal rhythm disturbances(15). This response also causes immediate aspiration and swallowing of water, which quickly cools the heart and carotid arteries leading to "selective brain cooling".(4) A reduction of brain temperature by 10° C decreases energy consumption by 50% and doubles the duration of time the brain can survive without oxygen.(16) This "therapeutic" hypothermia is accelerated by surface cooling in children and small adults with higher surface-area to body mass ratios and less subcutaneous fat. Panic by the victim (breath holding and vigorous attempts at escape) and protective gear worn in cold water work against these principles and may prevent therapeutic hypothermia._

[http://www.sitezed.com/an-analytical-look-at-survivable- subm...](http://www.sitezed.com/an-analytical-look-at-survivable-submersion- times/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> [...] and two hours where her heart did not beat on its own.

Impressive. I wonder if there are ways to force this level of regenesis in adult brains with less generative power and neuroplasticity.

I don't think there's anything sweeter to a human being than "here's your child back".

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there data out there about infants in a similar situation who didn't receive oxygen therapy? Is it possible that the developing child brain is what almost solely caused the improvements?

</comment><comment><USER34> First paragraph:

> she spent 15 minutes submerged in a swimming pool

This seems highly implausible, given she survived. Also, how would they know the moment she dropped in?

Further down:

> up to 15 minutes

Ah ok. From what I know, brain damage starts occurring even after 2-3 minutes without air (for adults), so I suppose it was rather on the lower end. Does anybody know a bit more about this?

<comment><USER35> Children are known to be able to survive much longer without oxygen than adults. I'm not sure we know the exact reason for it though. Also people are known to be able to survive much longer submerged in cold water than warm water, perhaps due to the mammalian dive reflex - [https://youtu.be/00RKh6NRMqc](https://youtu.be/00RKh6NRMqc)

<comment><USER36> That's fascinating. I had heard people can survive longer submerged in cold water (like falling through ice), but didn't realize there was such a profound and easily induced effect on heart rate. Can be used therapeutically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It would interesting to know if better results could be obtained using even more oxygen, in combination a ketogenic diet/exogenous ketones (which would negate the risk oxygen seizures).

</comment><comment><USER38> This is cool but will other people try it or will it be another forgotten technique?

</comment><comment><USER39> How is nationality relevant?

<comment><USER40> I think it's just because the article title tries to convey that this happened in the U.S.

It seems like a word flow thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Drowned U.S. Toddler. U.S. is unnecessary here.

</comment><comment><USER42> ?

</comment><comment><USER43> Does drowning not imply death? Is there different definition for drowning (or death) in medicine?

EDIT: I'm referring to the fact that the title says the girl drowned, not that she was at some point "drowning".

<comment><USER44> > The World Health Organization in 2005 defined drowning as "the process of > experiencing respiratory impairment from submersion/immersion in liquid".

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

<comment><USER43> That is the act of drowning though, or isn't it? eg. You can be drowning, but still be rescued.

It's no big deal, but I've also thought that if someone drowned it implies they died.

<comment><USER45> Define "died". It's not as easy as you might think, because as medical technology improves, the point of no return slips farther away. Per the article, this child's heart stopped beating for 2 hours.

<comment><USER43> I know, hence my original question. Although it says the child's heart stopped beating "on its own", which implies that it was still beating through "artificial" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It is also _completely irrelevant_ to the correctness or incorrectness of the argument, which is often what gets missed. Authority is a heuristic, nothing more.

The evaluation of P -> Q happens independently of the speaker. If you're trying to refute P -> Q by mentioning an attribute of the speaker, you're necessarily answering some other question entirely, while making an excuse to ignore the original question.

You can say that someone making such an argument is _more likely_ to be incorrect based on their beliefs, but that's still an untested hypothesis (more bluntly, a rationalization) until you actually sit down, stop making excuses, and verify it yourself.

Excuses aren't logic. You can say you don't have time, and that's valid, you can say you don't want to, and that's valid, but don't say you're doing logic. You're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic.

<comment><USER47> > _You 're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic._

This crosses into incivility. Please don't do that here.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER46> ?! That was in no way incivil or a personal attack. There is a hard line in the sand between making a logical argument and making another kind of an argument, and I just explained where that line is in a very objective way, and in a hypothetical no less.

 _If_ you are making arguments to authority, _you are not doing a logical argument_ , period. _You are making excuses to avoid doing logic_. Is also not a personal attack, it is a statement of objective truth when you ignore correctness in favor of anything else.

That was a general statement and was not directed at tpatacek, and now this thread makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > Disclaimer: I am a neurologist

> {informed comments}

A little off-topic but I see this so often I feel like I should mention this at some point:

I think you mean "disclosure" and not "disclaimer" (and most likely it's best if both are omitted and you just mention you're a neurologist).

"Disclaimer" means refusing to accept responsibility, which doesn't make sense when it's a preface to what looks like a comment based on expertise. If, on the other hand, you're really trying to say that you're refusing any responsibility for what you say, then the disclaimer should probably be something more along the lines of "I'm NOT {a qualified lawyer/neurosurgeon/whatever}", and not "I AM {a qualified whatever}".

<comment><USER47> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813211) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER48> What does it mean when you say you marked it as off topic? I don't see any such notes even in incognito, I'm not sure what it means.

<comment><USER47> "Marked as off-topic" means tagged as off-topic in HN's software, which causes it to fall in rank on the page.

<comment><USER48> Oh I see, cool, thanks!

Edit: I couldn't even post this because I've been supposedly "posting too fast" when I've only had ~5 comments in the last day. Are you causing/influencing/related to this in some way? I had never seen this happen before but ever since our last conversation I have seen it happen twice, both when you have been around the thread.

<comment><USER47> Moderators sometimes rate limit accounts that post too many unsubstantive or off-topic comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. You've posted a ton of comments that match that description lately. That includes this subthread—the site guidelines specifically ask you not to post this kind of thing. Others include [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792835) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14793511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14793511).

Rate limiting is a crude tool, but it's one of the few mechanisms we have to try to prevent discussion quality from degrading. If you limit yourself for a while to comments that are substantive, not flamewars, and not generically off-topic, email us at email@example.com and we'll be happy to remove the rate limit.

<comment><USER48> ...Wow. Both of those comments were direct responses to the topic and your second example in fact had 8 upvotes and others who supported it as well.

I suppose in addition you'd naturally hope for me to assume this was a totally unbiased decision _not at all_ associated with the fact that I had recently criticized your treatment of another user immediately beforehand publicly, right? I was so happy I'd found a moderator who really seemed to want to treat people well and equally, and instead what I'm seeing now is a moderator who instead turns around and actively follows his critics to stab them in the back silently. Never mind the normal process of giving them a warning or some other signal that you think there might be anything wrong with their behavior at all.

And I'm sure you're going to claim this was a totally independent decision and not anything revenge-like on your part, which I'm supposed to again believe despite so much direct evidence to the contrary, and I'm sure you cannot comprehend how someone with good intentions could possibly think otherwise. Like you've said yourself before -- it's not like the dynamics aren't well- known. Shame on _me_ and my naiveté for thinking HN mods would be able to take some criticism and treat a critic like a normal user instead of looking for a way to stealthily get e-revenge at the guy who gave it.

Edit:

Regarding "this subthread" also being off topic, which I just noticed -- I didn't recall that rule, so my bad on that. Now that I've already written this, though: like I said before regarding your moderation of the previous user: I would've expected a warning or some other kind of moderation that's like a normal treatment. Not a silent stab like this, especially given the surrounding context. It's extremely hard to view things generously when you moderate things you disagree with so harshly and unusually.

<comment><USER47> I'm sorry there's some sort of weird misunderstanding between us. That's definitely not what we're aiming for, and I would be happy to correct it if I knew how.

<comment><USER48> Please see my edit, I missed a crucial part of your reply. (And I think it answers your question as to how: i.e. don't respond harshly when you don't have to, whether to me or anyone else. There were lots of gentler options available in both our cases here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I swear to God, from the three videos I've seen, the drowning kid was always black. Was that luck, or was that an actor?

<comment><USER50> Does it matter in any way? Is it even a fact worth observing?

<comment><USER51> Yes, it does. Lifeguards will tell you it's part of their training. It may be non-PC, but the statistics say that when you're watching the water, African- American children are more likely to drown. I don't know if it's specifically African American children, or black children (of any origin) in general. I've heard it's socioeconomic - potentially less likely to be able to swim, but I'm not sure honestly. If you're watching the water, though, it's very relevant.

<comment><USER52> One of the things I was taught _mumble_ years ago was that black people tend to have more dense fast twitch muscle, while white people tend to have less dense slow twitch muscle. Hence, white people float more easily, and black people dominate the 100m sprint. We did an experiment where we would cannonball the swimming pool and see who floated. Admittedly, the amount of air you have in your lungs affects your buoyancy more, but there was a difference.

<comment><USER53> As I replied in a sibling comment regardless of whether those biological traits have a real impact or not I don't think it's particularly relevant in this context.

Maybe nature will prevent a black person from reaching Michael Phelps-levels of swimming proficiency but I don't think it would prevent anybody from learning natation 101.

I don't think I'll ever win the 100m sprint at the olympics but I can definitely run 100m and probably faster than the average black person too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> No, not really. You're making a hyperbolic statement. I've been watching Star Trek for 40 years. We're definitely still in the Dark Ages:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMaGnpVaSGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMaGnpVaSGQ)

<comment><USER55> Just to be pedantic, isn't referring to where we're at now as "the dark ages" equally hyperoblic?

<comment><USER56> If you've ever been in a dialysis clinic, you might see how someone from a culture that doesn't have them would view us as being in the dark ages.

<comment><USER57> For those who have no idea why a dialysis clinic makes us look like the Dark Ages - could you elaborate?

<comment><USER56> [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/-god- he...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/-god-help-you- youre-on-dialysis/308308/) They're not well-regulated.

First they install a permanent port into your bloodstream. Your kidneys aren't working, so after 2-4 days you're feeling bloated and your blood is full of various toxic metabolic by-products. You bum a ride to the dialysis clinic where they cycle your blood out of your body, run it through a filter, and push it back in, for hours. They try to be careful of your red blood cells, but some of them get smashed up in the machinery. They try to regulate the temperature of your blood as it gets returned to your body, but it's often too cold or too hot. You get very dried out during this process because you want it to last another 2-4 days, so you overdo it a little. You and the dialysis clinic want to get this over with as quickly as possible (they have other customers to schedule) so you have 2-4 days' worth of filtering to do in a few hours, which puts a lot of stress on your internal organs.

The #1 cause of death of people on dialysis is people deciding to quit because they'd rather die in the next few weeks than continue the treatment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>