Grafana: Postgres Data Source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grafana/grafana/commit/d1c9760fa8520701ff56a07bbe89ae666783c40f <comment><USER2> Great timing. I was considering building a monitoring setup based on Influx and hookung up Grafana to it. Now, I can play with timescaledb and Grafana instead. Don't know the technical advantages/disadvantages of timescaledb over influxdb. If any of you had any experiences with them, pls share.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tried timescaledb yet because it's not available on RDS (see [https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/65](https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/issues/65) if you want it on RDS btw). But I really can't wait to try it. My understanding is that it's resource-hungrier than Influx but to be really honest, influx has been super unreliable for me with metrics disappearing, very hard to do maintenance on it (eg. how do I find out where my disk space usage lies? etc)

Postgres' maturity is something I miss every single day I deal with influx. I trust postgres' data integrity and tooling every day of the week and I don't have that with Influx.

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks for the shout out :)

In terms of resource-hungry-ness, while we haven't done extensive benchmarking on memory & CPU against InfluxDB, we should compare fine on those resources. The one area we do fall behind is disk usage, but with ZFS or the like we can close the gap.

Thanks for the support! Hopefully we can get it on RDS soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's in 4.6.0-beta1; I've been playing with it a bunch, it's really nice for single stat and when you have time series tables.

Also worth bringing up: [http://www.timescale.com](http://www.timescale.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone using Grafana in production? I would like to hear some opinions and experiences. I found it a bit disappointing as in; at first impression it really looks amazing, and the charts are stunning. However once you go into the knitty gritty and find lacking user/role/permissions management it was disappointing.

<comment><USER5> Did they ever make it suitable for exposing to the public Internet? I've been wanting to embed Grafana charts in a public page [1] for a while now because they're just so much better than the other charting options out there.

[1] [https://mhkweather.com](https://mhkweather.com)

<comment><USER6> As arianvanp has pointed out, you can indeed create public read-only snapshots to share.

You can either create local link to a read-only version of what you're looking at right now. Whoever wants to access it, must be able to access the grafana host. Alternatively, you can upload the snapshot to the raintank site. I have just exported a snapshot of a panel on one of our dashboards, with only one of the panels' data, see [https://snapshot.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/II7NYMU3v9vT...](https://snapshot.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/II7NYMU3v9vTpk9OFy2BB6BuCABDlc6m) for an example. You can zoom in, but not further out.

You can also generate an iframe embed code (for a single panel), but if you want to share that in real-time publicly, you'd need to expose grafana to the public internet.

You can embed from a shared snapshot at raintank, as well. See the one above, if you click the title, you can 'Share' that and then embed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I first came to know about Grafana via the Wikipedia's webpage performance management page: [https://twitter.com/mediawiki/status/630865572654264320](https://twitter.com/mediawiki/status/630865572654264320)

Interesting talk from the Wikipedia folks here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlL6UoRUQAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlL6UoRUQAM)

</comment><comment><USER8> That is an unacceptably big change set for a proper review process.

<comment><USER9> Seems to be a collection of many commits squashed into one. Probably during review, each commit was addresed.</comment></comment>


An Alternative Theory of Unions [2007] - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/unions.html <comment><USER3> Alternatively, perhaps Unions have declined after having suffered from decades of negative publicity from capitalists.

Unions - bringing you weekends, the NHS, paid holidays, sick pay, protection from unfair dismissal, safety standards to ensure you don't get injured and die, and stopping discrimination and exploitation. What's not to like?

I'm a highly educated and well paid technology worker - and I'm in a Trade Union - [http://www.prospect.org.uk/](http://www.prospect.org.uk/) They've helped me when I was made redundant, have held my hand when dealing with difficult work situations, and given me training when my employer wouldn't.

Here's the way I look at it - your employer has some very high priced lawyers on the payroll. If they (or your boss) decide to screw you over, who would you have on your side?

Union dues (in the UK, at least) are the cheapest and most effective form of "insurance" you can have.

<comment><USER4> If my employer/boss decide to screw me over, what's the worst that can happen?

Suppose exactly the day after a paycheck they decide to stop paying me. 15 days later I don't get a check, and 7 days later I stop working due to the paycheck issue not being fixed (maybe I gave them the benefit of the doubt, it's a minor snafu). At the worst, I'm out 22 days of pay, assuming their high priced lawyer lets them get away with this (highly unlikely).

I don't need insurance for low cost, low probability events.

<comment><USER5> If you think the worst case scenario is that you don't get paid for a single period, you have not thought things trough.

Here's another scenario for you: Your employer accuses you of gross negligence to get out of dealing with a harassment claim you've made. Now you're out of a job, in circumstances that makes you basically unemployable, unless you manage to successfully defend yourself.

<comment><USER4> Yes, theoretically my employer could slander me. They could also just move from slander straight to murder, I suppose. So I guess I was wrong about what the worst case scenario was.

Incidentally, in the US the deck is stacked so far towards employees that even if I was grossly negligent, the employer is unlikely to say anything other than "he worked here from $START_DATE to $END_DATE."

<comment><USER6> That's why they don't need to slander you - writing a lukewarm reference does the same job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Um, no. Factory owners have a lot of power (lobbying, uniqueness, etc) when compared to factory workers. We're talking about a newly industrialized world, with a new working class. Their response was to form alliances with each other because they share common interests.

There are many reasons why unions are failing now. Factory workers do not form 80% of the workforce (in the developed world) any more. People now work in various different positions and lines of work, so they don't feel that they have mutuals interests with many others.

Power brings corruption. When the unions gathered a lot of power, we started seeing politicians emerging from the unions to take the power. And gradually they started betraying the people that voted for them and took the unions down with them.

Also, there is now a more egoistic mentality in most people. People tend to believe that they're more worthy than the rest, which is all nice until you realize that that is what most people think and only a few of them are actually going to make it.

There are many other explanations and possible causes on why unions failed: "The best they can do is fall back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations"

No, and we can also do better than a startup analogy that pretends that unions and strikes were anomalies in production that factory owners threw money at. There was a lot of blood spilled for the right to form unions, the 8hour work day, etc. No, most factory owners a couple of centuries ago were not just giving away money like a startup. They hired thugs, killers, had governors in their pockets and used the police, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> It might be worth trying to get a count at how many workers _died_ fighting for the 8 hour working day over several _decdades_ before presuming that these concessions were supposedly granted easily.

May 1st as the international day for workers demonstrations was a tradition that in part started in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket massacre, for example.

US unions first started agitating for an 8 hour working day in 1836. Not even the introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 went all the way there.

 _Hundred years_ of demonstrations and strikes, leading to the deaths of dozens of labor organisers was insufficient.

To then try to propose the idea that it was easy for management to give in to unions, is ridiculous on its face, and indicates a lack of knowledge of the labor movement.

<comment><USER8> Speaking of deaths, people too often focus on benefits and not safety. Even in post-war America, a _lot_ of good men died during that industrial boom. An old co-worker of mine was a shift supervisor in a steel mill and he had horror- stories, and this was in a union shop.

These jobs involve a scale of machinery that makes the human body look like a slug in an elephant stampede. The physics of the situation are horribly unforgiving. Without anyone pulling for safety standards, a heavy industrial facility can be a literal and figurative meat-grinder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you run a seed fund, everything looks like a startup :)

With all respect to pg, the similarity isn't really convincing. The hottest years of industrialization were _before_ unions finally took over; the era that brought us communism and world wars.

Unions were part of the meta-stable order the world settled to then. Now, as the industry is on decline in developed world (due to a multitude of political and social factors), the unions also lose their potency.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Difficult though it may be to imagine now, manufacturing was a growth > industry in the mid twentieth century. This was an era when small firms > making everything from cars to candy were getting consolidated into a new > kind of corporation with national reach and huge economies of scale. You had > to grow fast or die. Workers were for these companies what servers are for > an Internet startup. A reliable supply was more important than low cost._

2007 was when the iPhone was introduced, before Foxconn was in the public mindset....but China's massive growth in manufacturing was well known by 2007...So why isn't China flooded in high-paying union jobs? Or is it because Chinese industrialists and laborers are savvy and forward thinking enough to not every go through the union-building phase?

<comment><USER11> > So why isn't China flooded in high-paying union jobs?

The Chinese government has very strict restrictions on unions; they're effectively illegal. This is normally considered political oppression, not forward-thinkingness.

<comment><USER10> Right, but business can profoundly influence government. Hong Kong, for instance, was largely allowed to do business as usual after the British handover. And Shanghai:

[http://rt.com/business/china-shanghai-free- zone-527/](http://rt.com/business/china-shanghai-free-zone-527/)

> _China launched its first experimental economic free trade zone in Shanghai, > seeking to transform the city into an international financial hub and drive > yuan convertibility. It is intended to boost growth which is now heading for > a 23-year low._

If a reliable workforce was so key to strong manufacturing, as the OP claims, then it would seem that there would be strong advocacy for workers' rights. That China has been able to create a massive manufacturing sector with what seems to be little regard for workers would argue against the OP's assertions.

<comment><USER12> I have no idea which way you are arguing, since the OP was you, and your replies don't seem to address the points raised.

 _If a reliable workforce was so key to strong manufacturing, as the OP claims_

Agreed.

 _then it would seem that there would be strong advocacy for workers ' rights._

Disagree, and historically this hasn't been the case.

For example, in 19th century Britain the demand for cheap labour effectively depopulated the countryside as people rushed to the cities to work in factories. There was a race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions (eg, children working in mills), and it was unions and a public campaign that stopped that.

 _That China has been able to create a massive manufacturing sector with what seems to be little regard for workers would argue against the OP 's assertions._

There are similarities between China and Britain in the industrial revolution - a huge rural population rushing to the cities for better opportunities. Both Britain and China were hugely successful at creating a massive manufacturing sector while completely ignoring workers rights (although to be fair, China seems better than 19th century Britain in that regard).

Like I said - I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you or not. If I am, then good.

<comment><USER10> I think we agree...When I say OP, I mean the post that has been submitted for discussion. I was arguing from a "if OP is correct, then we should expect x,y in China" perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unions are just another group of people, with leaders and political aims and a focus on advancing their own interests. (This isn't a judgment - <USER2> does this, and non-unionized workers do this too).

I've seen unions mired in bureaucracy and questionable decisions, just as I've seen unions with an honest interest in advocating for their members (for example, legally defending members from bizarre attacks from the public and unfounded criticism).

When the leadership and rank-and-file act intelligently, then unions work well. When they operate in bureaucratic and self-serving ways, then they break down and lose public support.

</comment><comment><USER14> Man, sometime this union bashing must get old.

Maybe unions don't have the leverage they had because China.

Maybe unions don't have the leverage they had because per-worker productivity went through the roof while production did not keep pace.

<comment><USER15> I am very pro-union and very sensitive to union bashing, but this article is not guilty of this particular bias. If anything, it might be guilty of a slight is-ought fallacy[1].

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This explanation may well be a partial explanation, but it cannot, by any means, be the only reason, because it discounts a shift in the view Americans (and to a lesser extent the rest of the western world) have toward the worker vs. the consumer. It is undeniable that in the past decades American businesses have placed increasing importance on consumer satisfaction over worker rights and dignity; on low prices vs. fair prices etc.

So this is probably as much a cultural change as a "rational" reaction to economic pressure.

</comment><comment><USER16> One other point about the "golden age" of unions (say, 1945 – 1973): it occurred at a time when almost the entire developed world had destroyed its entire industrial plant.

At the same time, much of the developing world as we know it now had caught a nasty ideological virus that's not good for industry and trade.

</comment><comment><USER17> In the 19th century, most corporations operated in trusts and cartels, making it difficult for workers to get a fair deal without forming cartels of their own (unions). Most of the violent struggle labor proponents go on about was during this era, when monopolistic trusts would have hired guns (Pinkertons) to suppress labor disputes, and unions in response developed a tendency towards mob violence of their own.

By the 20th century, progressives had enshrined many labor protections into law and broken up the trusts. Some industrialists, like Henry Ford, unilaterally increased wages to inspire worker loyalty and poach the best workers from his competitors. This is perhaps the most analogous situation to the tech boom we see today, and it's this stage in history that pg writes about. Yet despite their gains, unions not only continued operating as cartels but even, in many cases, continued their violent tendencies and developed corruption and ties to organized crime.

Today we have a situation where labor unions have achieved absolute control of certain sectors (longshoremen, teachers, police, Hollywood, airline pilots). The results vary, but are pretty bad for everyone except whoever runs the union. Senior airline pilots manage to capture all the profits generated by the airline while pushing all of the risks onto stockholders, leading to a bankruptcy cycle. ([http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and- airlines](http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines)). Longshoremen's unions control the assignment of work, erecting a barrier to entry for prospective longshoremen. Hollywood guilds are satisfied by simply rent-seeking. Teachers unions establish themselves in the public eye as credible authorities on education rather than simply a labor union seeking better terms for its members. (Rhetoric about standardized testing can't be taken at face value--notice how often you hear that a teacher's subjective judgment of student performance is more reliable than a standardized measurement. What the NEA really fears is any system that can measure the performance of _teachers_ rather than simply trusting them implicitly once they have their union card.) Police unions--well, you tell me why shooting a black kid in cold blood gets a cop paid suspension and anyone else criminal charges.

In most cases, unions will resist automation, resist any measurement of performance in favor of seniority, and otherwise impede the efficient operation of their employers. And in many cases, they don't even help the median worker all that much. Once a union has a closed shop, the tendency to reward seniority will metastasize until the union shits on junior pilots and "casual" longshoremen more than management would have done in the first place.

And this is why people who support unions will tell you all about what unions did a hundred years ago, because what they're doing now is not a very pretty story.

(Note: I'm referring chiefly to American unions. In Germany, unions have seats on the board of directors and presumably also stock in the companies their members work for. This presumably tempers the parasitic tendencies American unions have developed. It's worth noting that UAW vehemently resisted having to hold stock in GM as a condition of the government bailing them out of GM's insolvency.)

</comment><comment><USER18> It has always seemed like there was a real libertarian streak among silicon valley types, but this kind of historical revisionism sounds very "southern republican" to my ear.

The thing is that people fought and died for the, if this is to be believed, trivial concessions that management made to workers. You know, those same trivial concessions that management made with little or no animosity that stemmed from entrenched political viewpoints or historical precedents.

This article is the labor relations version of Jesus riding a dinosaur.

Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't this Paul Graham guy have something to do with this site?</comment>


YUI 2.7.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/02/18/yui-270/ <comment><USER2> I used to use YUI heavily, but not so much any more - I really rely on jQuery to get most of my work done. I still use YUI for the heavy lifting stuff, like creating dialogs, calendar widgets, that kind of thing.

But I found I was really over-relying on YUI stuff just because it was there. For example, we use YUI buttons throughout our app because I figured them out and thought they were cool and looked nice. Which is all true, but it adds extra overhead to pretty much any form we create now.

I try to keep to jQuery as much as possible and only delve into YUI when strictly necessary (though I really wish jQuery would bundle an onAvailable method into the core.)

<comment><USER3> "(though I really wish jQuery would bundle an onAvailable method into the core.)"

Why? (Serious question - I'm the creator of jQuery.)

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg Their rich text editor is finally usable. It stopped generating extra empty lines and producing crap on Safari. It also has gotten a lot faster, highly recommended. Load times are blazing fast: they serve it off their own CDN with very aggressive cache control and you can "bundle" multiple components into a single JS file using their "download builder".

Who else is using YUI? Their forums aren't very helpful, where do you guys hang out? Recently I had a couple of trivial questions and couldn't find answers online:

* How do destroy a control (RTE or anything else)

* How to put focus on RTE (not on startup, but later)

<comment><USER4> I started relying on YUI, because it is very complete and very well documented. Yes, I know jQuery is cool and all the cool kids use jQuery -- but you can't really compare the two, they have different focus and different scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like YUI a lot - especially the components they've written for it.

The YUI Rich Text Editor blows away everything else I've tried.

And on a current project, I'm using the YUI DataTable to get in browser sorting (and it does a lot more than that, too).

But for day-to-day stuff we use Prototype or jQuery because it's easier to write.</comment>


Microsoft and NBC officially call it quits - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57472662-93/microsoft-and-nbc-officially-call-it-quits/

<comment><USER2> To clear up the confusion:

MSNBC's brand has always been two different companies: MSNBC TV and msnbc.com. It's been extremely confusing. MSNBC TV has a hosting agreement with msnbc.com to host the webpages for the shows on the network and some of the podcasts and video clips.

In 2005, NBC bought back 32% of the interest in MSNBC TV and later bought the last 18% in the next two years. They kept the name MSNBC in the process though. Microsoft still owned 50% of msnbc.com.

Now Microsoft has sold off it's 50% in msnbc.com and as part of the agreement is changing it's name. MSNBC.com will become the website for the shows on MSNBC TV and NBCNews.com will become what msnbc.com is today in 2013.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like typical MS naming issues, although 8 looks like it will be clearing it up some (with the exception of recent "Surface for Windows RT")

<comment><USER4> It's true that MS is not great at naming. Windows Live Mail is newer than Window Mail but runs in conjunction with Microsoft Hotmail, previously known as Windows Live Hotmail and MSN Hotmail. Oh, and not to be confused with Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.

<comment><USER5> At least MS backed down from calling their smartphone platform "Windows Phone 7 Series" ([http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series- everything...](http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything- is-different-now)). What the heck does the word "Series" even communicate in that name?

<comment><USER6> That it was the start of a new mobile platform. It made a little sense at the time. I think the logic was that Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Phone 7 just sounds like a rebranding with a version number increase, whereas "Windows Phone 7 Series" sounds like a reboot, a new lineup.

It's also entirely possible they planned separate editions, not unlike the basic/pro/touch editions of Windows Mobile 6. So when they announced it as Windows Phone 7 Series they has two or three versions in the pipeline but come release the had cancelled all but one so it lost the "Series" moniker.

I'm not sure but I would be surprised if there was no at least slightly logical explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wish that MSNBC TV would change their name too.

There was a time years ago when Microsoft thought that set-top TV boxes were the Next Big Thing - that they were falling behind in. Microsoft made huge investments in associated media that they thought would result in demand for Microsoft TV boxes ...

1\. 221 million dollar investment with NBC to form MSNBC.

2\. 425 million dollar investment in WebTV.

3\. 30 million dollar investment in RealNetworks.

4\. 1 billion dollar investment in Comcast, the cable TV operator.

5\. 5 billion dollar investment in AT&T

6\. Another 5 billion dollar invested in miscelaneous TV and Telco businesses.

Source: <http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-investments-2012-5>

<comment><USER7> I would add the following:

* A short-lived redesign of MSN around the concept of "channels" and "shows" with a focus on animation and video (1996!)

* Partnering with broadcasters to deliver interactive content over a TV broadcast signal (circa 1996-1998)

* Including WebTV software and TV receiver support in Windows 98

Basically, I think that Microsoft followed a strategy focused around the early 90s "Information Superhighway" vision way into the late 90s. A key piece of that vision was that the superhighway would enter people's homes trough television, not computers. When the Internet started to gain popularity, many people still felt that it was a "baby superhighway" or a step along the way to the real superhighway.

<comment><USER8> I think it was just a little ahead of its time and of course without the polish of the current Internet TV executions like : Apple TV and Google TV

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A while" and "a new URL" suggests they're going to break every link that ever existed, which would be a loss to posterity and disappointingly predictable from Old Media.

<comment><USER10> It looks like deep links will not redirect or break, e.g., <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9231761/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but imagine that there are some interesting stories that will come out. When msnbc was created, it was when MS and NBC were both kings of the world. Seinfeld, ER, and some other shows were incredibly popular, Windows was bulldozing everything and NT was taking hold in a big way, it looked unstoppable. I remember being worried about MS taking control of media content and that looked effectively like an end game. Why would you run Linux or Mac if the hottest content was only on Windows? I honestly believe that was the plan too, but it didn't turn out. Next thing you know, msnbc is just another news channel among the many, trying to stand out. Has to be some great culture clash stories.</comment>


"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" -- Pablo Picasso(?) - <AUTHOR>

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" -- Pablo Picasso(?)<p>What you fellows think about this? <comment><USER2> the point he was trying to make is that its the human that comes up with the question, which is by far the most important thing. Bad question means you will always get a bad answer.</comment>


Top-level domain name registry service on Google App Engine (registry.Google) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/nomulus <comment><USER2> I see someone paid attention all the way through to the end of my Google I/O presentation ;)

Nomulus is the platform we use to host all 46 of our top-level domains, including most notably .app which launched last week. Nomulus runs on Google App Engine and uses Cloud Datastore for data persistence. It handled the rush of registrations during the launch of .app just fine, handling a peak of 30,000 registrations in the first 3 minutes (that would be all the registrars sending in their preorders).

In addition to providing registration services, which only registrars interact with, the registry platform also powers the domain availability check seen on [https://get.app](https://get.app) and the domain WHOIS query seen on [https://www.registry.google](https://www.registry.google) . These are the only services provided by the registry platform that the average person uses directly; everything else goes through domain registrars. Every time you create or update a .app domain at your registrar, your registrar is sending us an EPP command to effect those changes. See RFCs 5730-5734 for more info on the exact mechanism.

If anyone has any questions about the code, I can help with them.

<comment><USER3> Thx for putting this out there. Really super cool. I'm thinking about doing "something" in the TLD world, this is great to have as a reference. Of course, I'd have to think long and hard right now before committing to 100% reliably running a project like this vs farming it out to an Afilias or whomever, but maybe it'll come in handy.

<comment><USER2> You could always farm it out to start off with to vet the sanity of your idea, and then transition to (or build out) a self-hosted variant if it goes well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty cool they're open sourcing this, but now it will be much easier for malicious actors to find bugs in the service. A security compromise of such a system would be catastrophic. Is it worth the risk of open sourcing in this case?

<comment><USER5> Well if you have a million eyes looking at the source code maybe you would find more bugs. On the other hand before you release something that you want to open source it might be a good idea to do a security analysis of the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty sure scooping .dev violates their "Do No Evil" mandate, especially when after breaking Puma, Pow and a host of other tools, plus forcing HSTS on it in Chrome, they don't even offer it for sale.

<comment><USER7> Google abandoned that mandate _years_ ago.

<comment><USER8> How can it abandon a mandate that never existed? It's "Don't be evil," which has an entirely different meaning. Due to opportunity cost, everything you do can be considered at least a little bit evil, so "Do no evil" is not even possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just bought my first .app domain a few days ago. Very excited for this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any logic to me being triggered that .google is a TLD now?

<comment><USER6> ICANN ran out of fucks to give a decade ago.</comment></comment>


That Emoji Does Not Mean What You Think It Means - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/that-emoji-does-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means-1770296372 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047)

</comment><comment><USER3> Notable error in the article. They say:

> _about half of the characters used on Instagram are emoji > ([http://gizmodo.com/emojis-are-becoming-the-dominant- > language...](http://gizmodo.com/emojis-are-becoming-the-dominant-language- > of-instagram-1701819068#_ga=1.199050415.1606256242.1460027476) )_

but the linked article says:

> _As of March 2015, nearly half of all text-based communications over > Instagram contained emoji._

That's a huge difference in meaning.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is the paper

[http://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretati...](http://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretation.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> So, I've been texting a gal for awhile. I use Android; she owns an iPhone. Now I'm worried that I've been sending her the wrong signals.

Whoops.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to see that comments sections are moving away from illiterate bile towards performance art.

</comment><comment><USER7> As emoji have become more popular in the corporate messages, this could be a really big problem. I usually contact my credit card operator in chat, and they always include an emoji. Sometimes I really don't understand why they send that smile that is looking as someone anxious. But know I understand better.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I look at the emoji they show for the "grinning face with smiling eyes", three of them strike me as being nowhere close to that description. But I am especially intrigued that the three of them all fail in the same way: the mouth is flat with teeth bared, like a growling dog. I interpret that as much closer to a grimace than a grin.

What's really interesting about that is that it seems like a really unlikely mistake to make. Grins bend the corners of the mouth upward, yes? Surely not many people would say no? At least in the cartoon language of emoji, I would have expected that to be universally agreed upon.

That suggests to me a common cause rather than independent error. Was it a mistake that propagated through copying? Did one initial mistake become established through usage as meaning something different from the specs? Something else?

It would be interesting to know the lineage of these faces and to understand where the mistake was initially made, and if perhaps it was perpetuated intentionally. None of the other emoji have misconstrual measurements anywhere close to that one, which suggests a story.

</comment><comment><USER9> On the iPhone the difference between the "grimacing" emoji and the one discussed here is extremely slight (the grimacing one has circles for eyes instead of arches). The grimacing one is supposed to be the actual negative one.

</comment><comment><USER10> [removed]

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure it's really changing, emoji gives us a tool for something many of us did in grade school when writing notes. We drew faces and other things on the messages. That experience has largely not carried over to computer/phone messaging apps.

Besides, we've had smileys for ages as well. ^_^, :), :-P, D:, :-E (bucktoothed vampire), etc. have all been around for a while and predate emoji, which just give us a single character representation (and a variety, several types of smiles and frowns and sweating and crying that can be used for different things).</comment></comment>


Quantum Supremacy Survey: Has Google Achieved It? - <AUTHOR> https://kahler.substack.com/p/quantum-supremacy-survey-has-google <comment><USER2> The OP asked 150 experts if Google has achieved quantum supremacy. Their answers are... inconclusive.

One could say the answer is in a quantum state, with some probability of yes and some probability of no. Fitting.</comment>


Morph DOM elements from one state to another with smooth transitions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Rich-Harris/ramjet <comment><USER2> Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458268)</comment>


Facial recognition system risks 'chilling effect' on freedoms, rights groups say - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/07/facial-image-matching-system-risks-chilling-effect-on-freedoms-rights-groups-say <comment><USER3> Imagine this capability existed in the US before miscegenation, or same-sex intercourse, or cannabis use, or concealed carry, were legal/broadly accepted. It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities from ever gaining momentum. Social mores would become ossified. Perfect prosecution is not desirable in an imperfect world.

<comment><USER4> > It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught > a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target > criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities > from ever gaining momentum

That's why cannabis was criminalized in the first place: target hippies and PoC, get their leaders silenced.

<comment><USER5> It was actually pushed by big-pharma to keep the more lucrative opioid based patented medicines going versus the CBT, THC based equivalents. Look at the new products introduced by Canadian pharma for more details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds great! And us, the public, will have access to this as well.....right? Can we watch a live-map of police and other state-employed persons with a positive facial match as they move about? No? Why not? Well that's how we feel too.

<comment><USER7> especially politicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This stuff is a ratchet. You can win a battle here and there, maybe slowing the progress, but the long term trend is one directional.

The way privacy norms and abstract rules about limiting power come about is *not" through gradualism. It's through hurdled events. The american revolution. The 1989 revolutions. Particular points in time where you can say "Stazi bad. Never again."

The reality is that these chouces involve compromising security. Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument.

Imagine a system where detectives can plug it back a name or a face and retrieve location information from that person's phone, city-wide CCTV video, etc.

Creeoy, but more crimes will be solved.

Gradualism favours security over freedom in the long term. There are 19 rapists walking free in our city today, because limits on police power.... There's only one way this argument goes.

<comment><USER9> > Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument.

It should be when the reality, despite the publicity of occasional terrorist incidents (9/11 included), is "slightly freer and slightly less safe against an event so vanishingly unlikely you should simply forget about it. You're hundreds of times more likely to die in a car accident or falling off a ladder. We should not let the terrorists win by ruining our way of life and associated freedoms".

Surely that's not _that_ hard a message to sell when it has been a winning message for many years in the past?

No, it's the current _fashion._ I expect more of politicians. Of course in today's world I am regularly disappointed.

<comment><USER10> You can argue _it 's not worth paying the price_ to catch more murderers, to protect more children from pedophiles, to stop more rapes. But that's a subjective value judgement and society doesn't have to agree with you.

Be disappointed all you want, but try actually taking their position seriously first.

<comment><USER9> > but try actually taking their position seriously first.

That's a mighty big presumption. Upon what grounds do you say I am not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the medieval days of villages, everybody knew everyone's face. There was little in the way of privacy.

Today we expect a certain level of anonymity, but mostly just because we've grown up with it. It's not been normal through history. It may not even be healthy (to live in a society alone and unknown).

I don't think its the end of the world. It won't even be the end of privacy. Social privacy is mostly pretending in public not to know what you shouldn't know. Nobody 'hears' what goes on behind the bathroom door in their home, because its the height of rudeness to mention it.

We'll have to come up with social norms to not know what everybody is doing every place in public. Not knowing who went to what private clubs, or who visited whom's house after dark when their spouse wasn't home and so on. Unless we saw it in person of course!

<comment><USER12> Those villages were within each persons Dunbar number and had a unified notion of shared interest and tribal identity. I think the argument that we never had privacy or that it is unnatural needs to be put to rest.

Automated facial recognition is explicitly for one interest group to monitor an "other." In most cases, it is a state and its party interests monitoring subjects, or one class monitoring another. It's a weapon and there is nothing benevolent or benign about it.

<comment><USER11> Confused; that argument seems to be endorsing the idea that there was little privacy, then denying it?

And agreed no doubt misused facial recognition will be an issue. Just not a personal-relationship one; it'll be a government one.

<comment><USER13> In case A, a village member knows a private fact about you.

In case B, an arbitrary person or collection of people across the globe know private facts about you.

The hypothetical individual in case A has _drastically_ different incentives regarding disclosure or use of that information. I wouldn't even call it superficially similar.

The modern example would be that your roommate knows fact X, vs. some larger group, or the entire world, knows fact X.

The former can, but not necessarily will, lead to the latter.

<comment><USER11> Hm, disagree. Socially, its only important if someone you have to deal with, knows something about you that they shouldn't. That the set 'people you have to deal with' is larger now is true, but maybe not critical.

<comment><USER13> Larger groups don't act the same way as smaller ones.

If your sister dies tomorrow, you'd probably be quite upset.

If I die tomorrow, you wouldn't care even if you found out.

Consider that your roommate, parent, village member, whatever, finds out that you're gay. It's a small group. They have the information to know whether that getting out would be good or bad for you, whether you'd like that information to be disclosed.

On a global scale that discretion just doesn't exist at all. Facebook doesn't _care_. A random worker who sees that information doesn't _care_. The information can make its way to someone who _does_ matter to you (or at any later point suddenly you may matter to them).

<comment><USER14> You seem to be arguing from the position that people in these villages were good to each other, and that bullying wasn't a thing. You clearly never lived in a small town.

<comment><USER13> Not at all.

> They have the information to know whether that getting out would be good or > bad for you, whether you'd like that information to be disclosed.

Nowhere did I state that they will necessarily act benevolently. The fact is that they have a choice.

At a large scale that decision making process doesn't exist. Your actions become 'data'.

You can move away from bad roommates or out of your village. You can't move out of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _There are also fears about the level of access given to private > corporations and the legislation's loose wording, which could allow it to be > used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime._

Truth is, it _will be_ used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It's alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it.

> _The database will be accessible to federal, state and territory governments > through a central hub connecting the various photographic identity > databases._

This is how it starts, with vague claims of safeguards that belie the actual access and how they can (and will be) misused.

It seems like future generations will have to give up freedom to get some sense of safety (as painted by those in power).

<comment><USER6> >>Truth is, it will be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It's alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it.

It's easy to show an example scenario that _almost always_ causes a system to like this to abuse privacy. Take the system, FR in this case, and insert the use case "Politician XYZ's 3-year old daughter has been abducted, and the FR system we promised not to use for this purpose could identify their captor!". Works every time. Once you do it that first time, the seal is broken for future abuse.

<comment><USER15> That's true. It doesn't even have to be a politician's child. "What about the children?" [1] works quite well to rile people up to surrender their own freedoms and of the future generations.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to experience the 'chilling effect' of facial recognition first hand, go to a meaningful political protest in the UK. These are different to the circus-and-bread protests, e.g. complaining about Trump in some collective Pinch and Judy show.

With the more useful protest events numbers are smaller and those that attend aren't there just to post selfies of themselves looking good protesting at the bogeyman-du-jour on Instagram. Protesting against the arms trade or fracking will be getting yourself proper attention from the authorities. The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting everyone's photo. From then on you know that you will be in some special rogue's gallery, to be denied being able to work for the three letter agencies and other places in the civil service due to being a known troublemaker. They don't need to take your postcode or DNA, just that waltz past the camera will do. As you can imagine this has a 'chilling effect' and curbs one' enthusiasm for wanting to participate in the direct democracy that is so encouraged by our governments just so long as it is part of the 'Arab Spring' or other such nonsense.

Facial recognition for cows on the farm, that is a thing and also has applications for other areas, e.g. nature conservation, so there is nothing wrong with it for other species, putting them under mass surveillance and not needing the physical tags.

<comment><USER17> > The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police > line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting > everyone's photo

Why don't they just ask for an ID? At least that's what police does in Russia. If you don't have an ID - they can detain you for several hours, if you have an ID - they can detain you for something else ("we need to check your documents, please go with us").

<comment><USER18> carrying ID is not required in the UK. The police can ask for proof for identity and address under some circumstances (e.g. they need a reason more than just "you were protesting" and I think generally this would take time and paperwork, including the police giving a receipt to the person. Much easier and cleaner to take a photo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A face is like a cookie, so if there are laws against cookies, there should be laws against facial recognition.

<comment><USER20> Instead they will make laws against facial obfuscation.

<comment><USER21> In case anyone wonders how likely that sort of law is, France actually have a law against covering your face in public areas: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering)

<comment><USER22> While I dislike the ban on e.g. religious garments, it can still be coherent to ban face covering and ban face recording.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this is probably only the tip of the iceberg as well - <USER2> recognition is one thing, although it can be difficult if your face is obscured somehow. The real fun will begin when they can start doing things like gait recognition + other features for person re-id in real-time across CCTV networks. Fortunately I think we're some way off doing that reliably and with a reasonable cost.

<comment><USER11> Or tracing dna evidence instantly (those skin tags we leave on every surface or wafting in the air as we pass).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Further evidence which suggests privacy will soon be a luxury reserved only for distinguished individuals.</comment>


VsVim - <AUTHOR> http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329

<comment><USER2> This seems to be a part of a nascent trend in IDEs. There's vrapper and eclim for eclipse, Vintage for Sublime Text, and now this as well.

I've seen a lot of arguments about how people don't use IDEs because vim/emacs are better, and I always felt they were misguided. I see the feature sets of vim/emacs and your common IDE as nearly disjoint sets, and I couldn't be happier to see the good parts of the two editors being joined with the power of the IDE.

<comment><USER3> IDEs are terrible text editors. Text editors are terrible IDEs. I can't wait until people figure out how to graft good text editors and good IDEs together.

One way to do that is to provide IDE functionality as an external service to the text editor. There's a Scala editing package for Emacs called Ensime that uses the Scala presentation compiler, a service that runs in the background. Every time Ensime is asked to colorize code, provide code completion, or jump to the definition of a symbol, it asks the presentation compiler, which gives it the right answers. No half-assed guessing; it actually runs the relevant compiler passes and provides correct information.

Another way to do it might be to embed a real text editor (not just a crappy emulation mode) into an IDE somehow. I think that's what I would prefer. Emulation modes in IDEs will always be playing catch-up, and power users of a Emacs or vim shouldn't have to maintain a mental catalog of which features have been emulated and which haven't. I don't know how it would work, though, and I don't know of anyone working on it.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about other text editors, but Emacs is actually a pretty good IDE for all the languages I use (JavaScript, Haskell, Scheme and a bit of Python). It's not very good for _Java_ , but it is apparently solid for Scala and supports C/C++ fairly well with CEDET, although I haven't tried that.

So the external service approach works well (Haskell, Python and Scala) as does a native Emacs approach (lisp, CEDET, JavaScript). Either way though, Emacs can make a killer IDE without giving up its text editing prowess or other assorted magic (TRAMP, shell-mode...etc).

<comment><USER3> The things I miss in Emacs compared to IntelliJ, which I use every day for Scala, are find uses, jump to definition, rename symbol (text search and replace in Emacs is usually almost as good as IntelliJ's refactoring tool, but when you do it a dozen times a day, it adds up,) convenient handling of the SBT window and the run/debug window, and git integration (mostly I like looking at filenames and seeing by their color what their git status is.) Having a great editor isn't worth giving any of those features up.

I could probably get all of those features in emacs if I got everything set up correctly, but it's a lot of work. The main difficulty I ran into with Scala was generating an Ensime config. The first time I tried it, it blew up for unknown reasons. A few months later, it didn't work because my SBT project used subprojects. Now there's an SBT plugin that generates the Ensime config, so I'll give it another try someday. I'm very encouraged by Ensime's approach of integrating with and relying on the same tools as the rest of the Scala community (SBT and the presentation compiler.) It gives me hope that it won't be constantly two steps behind like it would be if it tried to reimplement everything from scratch.

However, it's definitely a problem for me if Emacs still can't handle Java well. Most of the third-party libraries I use are written in Java, so I do spend time reading and navigating through Java code. I tried setting up JDEE once and almost suffocated in yak hair trying to get basic features to work. (Granted, that was over five years ago, but still, it was much worse than advertised.)

And you know, when it comes right down to it, I really want an IDE. The whole thing. IntelliJ and Eclipse seem like bloated monstrosities sometimes, but dammit, so much of that stuff is handy when you're working on a complicated codebase. Plus they really know how to make use of my huge monitor. Using that much space _usefully_ with Emacs and terminals is tough. I had speedbar installed for a while, but speedbar felt like IntelliJ's text editor: a half- hearted imitation of a real feature. Actually, I coded C++ in emacs for seven years and never liked using speedbar, CEDET, or even etags. They all seemed like a lot of hassle, and in every case I found that I preferred to just use Emacs as a text editor. All the Emacs-fu I learned in seven years of C++ development applies just as well to ordinary text as it does to C++ code.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you could get most (maybe all, I don't use Scala, so I don't know) of those features. I guess we just disagree on whether a somewhat steep one-time cost is worth it.

I also recognize that it is _horrible_ for serious Java development. I found it fine for browsing through random (usually undocumented :p) libraries, but when I had to use Java myself it was horrible. I ended up doing a bunch of things in Eclipse. Ultimately I solved the problem by not using Java :) Not a viable solution for everybody, but I think it beats the alternatives. (Unfortunately, Emacs's support for Java has gotten worse over the years, unless I missed something when trying to set it up in the past.)

My experience with IDEs and screen space has actually been the opposite: Emacs expands to fill all available space while IDEs tend to be much less efficient. I have all the UI frills on Emacs turned off (file bar, menu bar, scroll bars, flanges...), run it full screen on a 1920x1080 monitor and _still_ don't always have enough space for everything I want. Of course, I tend to have one or two files, one or two shells, a dired buffer and maybe even Jabber or IRC open at one time, so it's doing more than an IDE would.

Additionally, in my experience, it's the IDEs that lack the features I want. I am basically _addicted_ to TRAMP: I have maybe 10 remote buffers to three different servers open _right now_. However, the thing I miss most is elisp: I am able to add features I want _really_ quickly. When I'm missing a nontrivial command (say, open a shell in the current directory, set its prompt and name the buffer) it literally takes _minutes_ for me to add it. Little things like C-u Space (which lets me go to the last place I've marked) and undo-in-region are also extremely awesome.

As far as things like the Speedbar go, I just don't use it: I see no advantage to having something like that, and I basically never use the mouse anyhow. I do use tags, and they are useful--didn't you say you liked jump to definition?

I think the main difference is in languages: I primarily use Haskell, JavaScript and Python with a smattering of lisp, Perl, LaTeX and bash. In the near past I also used Gosu (before the IDE plugins worked, if they do now) and C. Emacs is great for all these languages on top of being both a brilliant editor and great window manager/os (I seem to do everything but browse the internet from Emacs these days).

It really is horrible for Java though. And Java is particularly horrible without an IDE. Still, for quite a lot of other languages, it really is like an IDE. I guess not very many Java hackers use Emacs and not very many Emacs hackers use Java.

<comment><USER3> etags didn't help me much with the C++ code I worked on. It took me to the right place a lot of the time, but between the macro-heavy C code I inherited and the modern C++ code I was writing, it wasn't reliable enough for me to put up with.

The same thing was true of all the C++ IDEs I tried, though. No tool in the world except gcc could handle our C++ code. We even had a file that defeated Emacs. It was a huge file that used a logging macro that included a leading parenthesis but no closing parenthesis, so there were hundreds of lines like this:

        LOG "A log message", logFile);

Result: Emacs locked up when you opened the file, presumably while trying to colorize the syntax.

Whenever language support is that poor, text editors and other Unix text- munging tools win hands-down. All I had to do in Emacs was disable the cc mode hooks and fix up the file using query-replace-regexp. IntelliJ has the equivalent of query-replace-regexp, but it's clunky and bothersome enough that I went from using it as a daily tool in Emacs to almost never using it in IntelliJ. That's pretty much what happened to me with Emacs' IDE features, so it's kind of a symmetrical situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use this plugin everyday.

It's got some serious bugs that make my heart stop.

The biggest one is Undo. Looks like the plugin keeps it's own list of modifications that were performed. So when sometimes I press "u" to undo the latest change - Visual Studio gets suspended for a minute or two, and all my changes that I did since I opened Visual Studio (could be a day or a week) are pretty much gone. The work around is to close the file without saving.

<comment><USER6> That is absolutely horrible. There's no reason to subject yourself to that. Use this instead: <http://www.viemu.com/>

I've been a happy ViEmu customer for... Hmm... Three years? Maybe a little longer. Anyway, it's just perfect.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. ViEmu is better. Use that instead. It's easily worth the $99.

<comment><USER8> Thirded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My development work is a polyglot split across Linux, Mac and Windows/.NET projects. I also use both Vim and Vim keyboard bindings (in other editors) on Unix.

Whilst I prefer *nix, when I have to use Visual Studio, I use the VsVim plugin, and it's a real pleasure to be able to seamlessly move between platforms and development environments, IDEs and text editors in this way.

Not only do I love VsVim, but it significantly reduces the friction of using Visual Studio, and even adds some enjoyment to coding on that platform. VsVim is F# under the hood too (which shouldn't matter to the user, but it _is_ kinda cool).

Thoroughly recommended!

</comment><comment> paul-woolcock Putting the standard key bindings for vi is one thing, but without being able to customize it like vim, it's almost worthless to me. The custom bindings I have set are there to do common operations, and they become an integral part of my vim.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does actually support a limited .vimrc - depends a bit what types of custom bindings you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone tried this and can give some insight in comparison with ViEmu from <http://www.viemu.com/> ?

<comment><USER11> I use this daily in VS2010, and have used ViEmu in previous VS versions.

Generally, I like it, but it can be a bit sluggish at times. The only plugin I have running is JSLint, so I suspect it's VSVim causing the problems (though it only generally bogs down when I leave VS2010 for a bit). The keybindings work as one would expect. As I mentioned in a different thread, I wish it could break out of the tabbed window convention of VS and use buffers.

ViEmu did feel a bit faster (and was less prone to crashing).

<comment><USER12> What version are you using? Prior to 1.2 there was a nasty perf bug with :hlsearch that caused it to be sluggish with 1) very large files or 2) a good number of files opened. The bug is mostly fixed in 1.2 but there are still a couple of corner cases. Those are addressed in 1.3 which will be released sometime next week. A beta drop is available here

[https://github.com/downloads/jaredpar/VsVim/VsVim-1.2-Beta2....](https://github.com/downloads/jaredpar/VsVim/VsVim-1.2-Beta2.zip)

As for crashes I'd love to hear about any you found. Feel free to send me email (hacker news alias at microsoft.com) or post an issue on github.

<https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/issues>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very off-topic, but I am turned off by the URL. Is Microsoft obsessed with UUID? First, they have you use UUID to reference COM components. And now in URL? Next you will see them ask their own employees to use UUID as email addresses.

</comment><comment><USER14> If there's anyone out there comfortable in both the way of vi and the way of Emacs, does this feel better than the Emacs emulation [1]? I'd love to be able to work with text more efficiently in Visual Studio, but the Emacs emulation feels only half way there. [1] [http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/09dc58c4-6f47-...](http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/09dc58c4-6f47-413a-9176-742be7463f92)

<comment><USER15> i used to use the emacs emulation and i agree with you, it only felt halfway. Also, Jared seems way more responsive than the emacs people. i filed a few bug reports and saw few status updates or general updates. After feeling frustrated with that and the half-baked feel i switched to Vim and found VsVim. i've been really happy and havent looked back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks like a non-trivial portion of this is F#, so if you're interested in that, it might be worth poking around the github repo.

<comment><USER17> Funny, I actually cloned this repo last night to contribute. I really want to contribute because it's so useful and @jaredpar seems to be doing a shit ton of work all by himself. But the whole F# part is going to be a hurdle.

<comment><USER12> Yeah F# is a bit of a hurdle for contributors. In retrospect if I'd known I'd stick with the project this long I probably would've chosen C#.

<https://github.com/jaredpar/VsVim/wiki/FAQ#wiki-language>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested, i have a solarized color set fork for VsVim: [https://github.com/jugglingnutcase/visualstudio-colors- solar...](https://github.com/jugglingnutcase/visualstudio-colors-solarized)

i recently screwed up the breakpoints though... now they're pink.

</comment><comment><USER18> there was a similiar plugin for eclipse around, called eclim.

<comment><USER19> Isn't Eclim the other way around? I thought it would include features from Eclipse in Vim rather than bringing key Vim keybindings to Eclipse. There are several plugins for the latter though, like Vrapper[0] or ViPlugin[1]. There were also attempts to integrate a whole native Vim instance into eclipse[2].

[0] <http://vrapper.sourceforge.net/home/>

[1] <http://www.viplugin.com/viplugin/>

[2] <http://sourceforge.net/projects/vimplugin/>

<comment><USER18> check their page; what I meant specifically was the ability to run vim inside of eclipse.

<comment><USER8> "The primary goal of eclim is to bring Eclipse functionality to the Vim editor." Maybe you're talking about vimplugin, which eclim uses a fork of to embed gvim in eclipse?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to Recommender Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/recsys <comment><USER2> I can't judge the coursera course, but for anyone who is interested in this field and wants a gentle introduction, I high recommend _Programming Collective Intelligence_ ([http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do)). It covers many of the types of recommender systems that the coursera course is likely to cover, and comes with a lot of nice Python code examples.

It's highly useful knowledge too. I ran across so many startups that needed recommender systems that I launched a company called Algorithmic.ly ([http://algorithmic.ly](http://algorithmic.ly)) to help companies without the expertise integrate recommendation systems and other types of algorithms into their projects.

<comment><USER3> I was about to buy PCI a few days ago, but was worried that the information may be out of date, considering it was published six years ago. Do you think most of the material is still pertinent?

<comment><USER4> Go for it. It's a great book and except for references to friendster as the big social network and facebook a newbie, nothing else seemed dated to me. Most of the APIs used in the book are still pretty much available except probably(??) delicious API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested in knowing how much deep learning is changing the algorithms used in this field, given the performance of restricted boltzmann machines on the netflix data set [http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/netflixICML.pdf](http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/netflixICML.pdf).

<comment><USER6> I am surprised that there is no mention of this in the course syllabus -- in fact it looks like a lot of recent techniques that are missing. They don't even talking about LSA(/SVD)-based methods until the end of the course.

<comment><USER7> Dumb, general question: should it really be a surprise that an Introduction course doesn't use all the recent techniques?

<comment><USER6> I guess I often assume that topics classes like these assume some sort of background in machine learning. Perhaps that's not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> coursera is killing me with courses I want to take.

<comment><USER9> I just wish you could take the classes at your own pace. I'm getting very little out of the "certifications" or whatever. And the TA's/Discussion forums tend towards pretty useless because of how disorganized they are.

<comment><USER10> Download the resources and you'll be able to take the class at your own pace. There are several tools for that purpose on github. e.g this one: [https://github.com/dgorissen/coursera- dl](https://github.com/dgorissen/coursera-dl)

As a special gift, it's allow you to archive the courses for later review.

<comment><USER9> Mainly I just want the graders to stay up. I've taken 2 programming courses and having the auto-grader feedback really helps in figuring out how I'm doing assignments incorrectly.

<comment><USER11> I think the main reason why any reasonably complex grader is not allowed to run after the course has officially finalized is cost(s).

While for users it's free to take the course, the offering company probably has to pay fees to whatever IaaS they're using to run the grader(s). I would imagine to make it 'cost-effective' for their purposes, they'd be interested in as many people as possible benefiting from the grader's functionality if they're being charged by the hour for example or some other block-allocation unit.

I would suggest giving Udacity a try as well. Most of their courses do not have deadlines.

For example, here is a great course they offer on web development: [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253) , co-authored by one of the Hipmunk and Reddit creators.

<comment><USER9> I'll take "Features I'd be Willing to Pay For" for $100 please, Alex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want a quick start without taking a class, install the Apache Mahout project - one of the Hadoop map-reduce examples is a recommendation system. You can hack away, and run on Elastic MapReduce if you need to scale. ([https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/Recommend...](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/Recommender+Documentation))

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting anecdote: A graduate of my university works for Google who originally had a very complex "machine learning pipeline" for the product recommendations but he has since re-implemented the feature in, as he calls it, a "much simpler bloom filter algorithm".

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, seems interesting = I'm currently doing the Machine Learning one also via Coursera, run by Andrew Ng, and it's good gentle introduction to the subject.

It's a shame we can't view the course content for this one earlier...haha.

<comment><USER11> I may be wrong, but I think it's the 1st time the course is being offered, I don't personally remember seeing it before in their course list.

<comment><USER15> I think that was one of the first courses they offered actually.

<comment><USER11> I think you're probably confusing it with something similarly named. See [http://www.cs.umn.edu/news/news.php?id=1293](http://www.cs.umn.edu/news/news.php?id=1293) which confirms it's being offered for the 1st time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't possibly recommend a site that _requires_ javascript to display _any_ content whatsoever.

<comment><USER17> Why not? JavaScript has become a part of the web, just as much as HTML and CSS. You might as well shun sites that use the <ul> tag, or CSS to style content.

<comment><USER16> JavaScript should certainly be used to enhance content and ad functionality. But the core content should always be available without JS, since not all consumers of that content will have JS enabled, or be able to interpret it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks coursera.

Thank you very much.

Looking forward for this course.

You save my some $$$ :) Will surely donate you.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll drop a link to my (non-free) e-book: [http://arek- paterek.com/book/](http://arek-paterek.com/book/)

</comment><comment><USER20> So many great online courses, and so little time!</comment>


American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tk1twsk466pmt0m7fj6py116kyc71fhv

<comment><USER2> I was always taught by my father to seek joy not happiness. Joy is something you can aim for, it comes in bursts and it's very rewarding and cheap to work towards. Happiness exists at the cost of other emotions which are essential to colour your life. Of course when I was ten I thought he was a grumpy old git but now at 30+ I'm starting to get it :)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you find this article at all persuasive then please read some of the writings of Peter Kramer (just google Peter Kramer melancholy) and you will see the proper counterpoint to this fluff.

</comment><comment><USER4> One word: Emo</comment>


Wealthfront passes $20bn mark with 'break things but make it happen' approach - <AUTHOR> https://riabiz.com/a/2019/9/15/wealthfront-busts-through-20-billion-mark-with-its-break-things-but-make-it-happen-approach-but-its-bedeviled-by-details-when-it-comes-to-customers <comment><USER2> >It's a reseller of a reseller of banks -- namely the services of Hackensack, N.J., cash sifter Total Bank Solutions. It sells access to, and the means to use, a network of FDIC-insured deposit accounts, much like NYC vendors MaxMyInterest or StoneCastle. See: StoneCastle storms into RIA market with high-yield, FDIC-insured accounts in direct challenge to MaxMyInterest for the title, King of Cash.

That seems confusing and ... strange.</comment>


Ludic Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy <comment><USER2> Can't help but feel that people here are missing the point and perhaps too hung up on the specific example in the wikipedia article. The broader point is about the misuse and misapplication of technical/"rational" methods in real life i.e. not thinking about whether the model can actually be usefully applied in a certain real world situation. For example, blindly following rote statistical methods/not understanding their assumptions is what got us into the whole psychology replication crisis mess.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's just a variation of _don't confuse the map for the territory_ , or the more general, _don't confuse the model for reality_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's Taleb. Taleb ran a fund that bought options way out of the money. This loses money every year, unless there's a big crash. His fund happened to be active in 2008, and made a ton of money that year. He doesn't release the numbers for other years. Not clear if this is a net win over a full business cycle.

Taleb is sort of a counter to Black-Sholes option pricing. Black-Sholes assumes a Gaussian distribution. Given that assumption, a few numbers let you quantify risk. That's convenient, but somewhat unrealistic, and was taken way too seriously by the bond market from the 1980s to 2008. It provided a philosophical underpinning for the junk bond market. (They can't possibly all go bad at the same time, can they?)

</comment><comment><USER5> The book Range talks about a similar idea, the idea of "kind" and "wicked" learning environments.

In kind environments (most games) "patterns recur, situations are constrained, and importantly, every time you do something you get feedback that is totally obvious, all the information is available, the feedback is quick, and it is 100% accurate"

In contrast, wicked environments (most of the rest of life!!!) none of the properties of kind environments hold, and in some extreme cases the feedback teaches you the exact wrong lesson.

In the book, he similarly warns against taking the lessons from successful people in chess or golf and applying them to our own wicked lives.

<comment><USER6> What did people think about that book ?

I enjoyed it but felt like it was a bunch of other peoples ideas (Taleb, Kahneman, Levitin, etc) strung together.

<comment><USER7> that's every book

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The nicest example of this I've seen is that Tim Ferris won a kickboxing championship without being a kickboxer, [https://www.martialdevelopment.com/how-to-win-kickboxing- wro...](https://www.martialdevelopment.com/how-to-win-kickboxing-wrong/)

The fallacy is that winning a world championship at kickboxing _must mean_ that you're an excellent kickboxer, but nope.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what kind of championship that was but for an experienced fighter having a 30 pound "handicap" versus an inexperienced one should amount to no real life disadvantage. Don't underestimate what a 165 lbs person's tibia can do to a 195 lbs person's head on even thigh. There's no "hack" to not getting your lights knocked out with one punch/kick from a good fighter 30 lbs lighter than you. And tricking the weigh in is something that has been done since the second ever weigh-in.

The fact that he was able to hold off experienced fighters, even if they were below his weight class, means he was plenty qualified to be there despite his very modest self assessment.

[Edited from here] He seems to be an actual fighter under Dave Camarillo but the framing of this story, that he's just an average "stuff my face with peanut butter sandwiches, tricked the weigh-in" kind of guy, is just in order to sell his "life hacks" books.

All I can find is that 1999 was the second year for the championship which could mean not very strong competition. But there's no mention of him in any Wushu/Sanda/Sanshou championship. He also used to claim that he is a "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions (MMA)" (since removed from his page). Being a 4 time world champion would have contradicted his "just a regular guy using life hacks" premise. Without an actual record of him winning that "Chinese Kickboxing National Championships 1999" I guess he's just peddling the same "tricks" from his book. One of them might be "just say you did it".

<comment><USER10> > an actual record of him winning that "Chinese Kickboxing National > Championships 1999"

There appears to be some footage of it in this video.

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

<comment><USER9> I may have edited too late. He does seem to be an actual fighter and at least for a while under Dave Camarillo, but still very far from being a world champion. Given that he makes a living selling such tricks I think that is a compilation of random training sessions and championship fights intertwined with shots of his face and nothing more.

From what I gather from a short internet search he changed his story repeatedly depending on what sold more. He's either an experienced fighter with multiple world championship wins, or an average guy using his own tricks to win. But his name is not associated with any official leaderboard or championship win as far as I can tell.

As someone who has consistently excelled at amateur martial arts I can guarantee there's no way a world champion gets beaten by some guy pushing him off the lei tai repeatedly even after the same technique was used in every round and with all other opponents. I could knock out almost any "non-trained" person with a single well placed punch or kick, and if they weren't well placed they would still do some temporarily debilitating damage. Yet whenever I had friendly fights with well trained pros, including ones with good results in international championships but no gold medals, I have no words to describe how inadequate and unprepared I felt.

All I'm saying is that the story is not what it seems. Whether he is an actual pro worthy of a gold medal, or some incredible fluke made him fight severely unprepared opponents I don't know. But he certainly didn't win anything because he tricked the weigh-in (that's standard procedure), or because he pushed opponents off the lei tai round after round, opponent after opponent and none of those world class fighters had any recourse.

This is how a fight would look like [0]. You win that by going to a lower weight class and "pushing" only if you are perfectly able to take the hits anyway and are already _good_. Tricks will get you from silver to gold, not from peanut butter.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a long winded and sanctimonious way of saying that models are simpler than the reality that they mimic.

Bears in woods and catholic popes come to mind.

<comment><USER12> It sounds obvious, but in practice it's not. It's an election year, so take polling as a great example:

Every poll of a race comes with two numbers, one a fraction of support for whatever issue or candidate is being measured, and the other a "margin of error" (which in the industry is a 95% confidence interval, I believe). This is just a statistical measure based on sample size. It's backed by two centuries of math and no one interestingly disputes the way the number is calculated or whate it means.

And there are a LOT of these polls taken. So take all those polls, check their variance, and you'll find that it's _much higher_ than the value you'd expect given the margins of error they reported. This is a routine effect. So square that: why are the MoE numbers "wrong", given that multiple measurements of the same number are giving values with more noise than expected?

The answer is exactly this paradox. The model, that all these polls are measuring the same thing, is wrong. They aren't measuring the same thing. The different polls use different sampling methods, they weight their data using different algorithms, with opinion polls they phrase the questions slightly differently (or just ask the same questions in a different order), all of which affect the results.

And this happens everywhere in science. It's a frightenly easy mistake to make, especially as data sets get large.

<comment><USER13> Hmm this is a surely a common mistake to make but what does it have to do with games? If you sampled poker plays with similar differences you'd get similar errors.

<comment><USER14> You're getting too hung up on the word "game." In this context it just means the rules of the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I haven't understood this as a fallacy.

In the "suspicious coin" example, there is an opening assumption that the coin is fair, but it transpires clear evidence to the contrary.

It isn't a fallacy to continue to treat this as a game: it has just become sensible to drop the assumption and treat it as a game where you are unsure about whether the coin is fair (as the second player in the example, in fact, does).

<comment><USER16> > In the "suspicious coin" example, there is an opening assumption

I understood it differently: there are no assumptions per se, just a request to make an assumption. The request is made by a third party and all this is part of the thought experiment.

> It isn't a fallacy to continue to treat this as a game

True. The article states that "The ludic fallacy here is to assume that in real life the rules from the purely hypothetical model (where Dr. John is correct) apply.".

> treat it as a game where you are unsure about whether the coin is fair

This significantly modifies the scope of the original game.

I understood this as an example of how simplified models might easily stop being useful because of real life conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And yet companies make a fortune betting on markets or sports using those exact "Ludic Fallacy" models - like linear regressions, probability etc. They know it's real life, and many someone else is fixing the coin toss, but they can still get an advantage. In any real casino, 99 blacks in a row and they'd shut down the table.

<comment><USER18> ...and then a financial crisis hits and suddenly they expect the government to bail them out because they didn't account for that risk in their models.

<comment><USER19> Or they knew all along that the government would bail them out, so they were playing a very different game than everybody else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One core example of modeling something as a game is dating (as in "The Game" by Neil Strauss).

Two literal takes on that are:

\- "Super Seducer: How to Talk to Grils" a (somewhat controversial) game on Steam by Richard La Ruina, a Pick-Up Artist - [https://store.steampowered.com/app/695920/Super_Seducer__How...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/695920/Super_Seducer__How_to_Talk_to_Girls/)

\- "If Dating was like Who Wants to be a Millionaire" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E33j3gQg98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E33j3gQg98)

While some analogies of a game are in place (depending on someone's action, it's "fail" or "progress"), I think that the worst fallacy is that one always can, and should, "win". Depending on the attitude, it is anything from frustrating (obsessing why one has failed despite the effort, or ending in a relationship with a wrong person) to outright dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER21> All models are simplifications of real-world phenomena, the question is how useful they are. Taleb's Ludic Fallacy is a useful prod to remind us to consider our core assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. I see the examples don't cite "technical analysis" of price action of stocks. Is that also an example of Ludic fallacy?

<comment><USER23> The ludic fallacy could apply here as well. If you calculate that on average you will make a profit but in actuality this profit fluctuates so wildly that you will almost certainly go bankrupt in the process the ludic fallacy could apply.

Another criticism by Nassim Taleb to this field is the use of the normal distribution to distributions that are not normal at all. This could lead to the problem that I described in the previous paragraph.

<comment><USER19> Also the fact that many market players got bailed out by governments when things went south. They may have been aware that this would happen all along, which would mean the explicit market game and the real market game are 2 very different things with very different rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't the first example extremely bullshit?

> A third party asks them to "assume that a coin is fair, i.e., has an equal > probability of coming up heads or tails when flipped. I flip it ninety-nine > times and get heads each time. What are the odds of my getting tails on my > next throw?"

Istm that Fat Tony here gets the right answer to the wrong question. Whether we _should_ assume this is not part of the question. That this is a useful thing to ask IRL doesn't change the fact that if you posed this to me IRL and smugly quoted the ludic fallacy at me for correctly answering your question I'd be strongly tempted to deck you.

[https://xkcd.com/169/](https://xkcd.com/169/) comes to mind.

<comment><USER25> But the assumption is the point. When you have enough data to suggest your model is wrong, you should throw away the model and the assumptions it's based on, not the data.

The fact that your model can be justified as technically correct is irrelevant. When the data doesn't fit the model any more, the supposed absolute correctness of the textbook model _blocks your ability to understand what 's happening._

This isn't even about games, but about whether it's possible to be open-minded enough to consider that simple textbook "solutions" are not guaranteed to be a good fit for real problems - especially if you don't understand their limitations or the assumptions they're based on.

And it doesn't just apply to statistics.

<comment><USER26> > When you have enough data to suggest your model is wrong, you should throw > away the model and the assumptions it's based on, not the data.

In the example, you agreed to assume the coin is fair. That is, you agreed to stick to the model even if it turns out to be wrong. Throwing the model away, however suggested by the evidence, is just violating the rules you agreed to.

<comment><USER27> I'd call it the opposite. There is statistically no such thing as 99 heads in row. So when someone says "assume the coin toss is fair, 99 heads in row happen, what are the odds the next will be heads". Your answer should not be "50%". Your answer should be "You just asked me a bullshit question because there is basically no such thing as 99 heads in a row in the real word. In a hypothetical world maybe but in the real world nope"

Or maybe to be nicer about it the proper response is "So are we talking about the real world because in the real world the odds of 99 heads in a row are 1 in 2^100 which is effectively zero so I just want to verify you understand that your hypothetical situation and conclusion will have no basis in reality. If you actually saw 99 heads in a row then the odds are infinitely higher the coin is broken and is not fair"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I get the idea (although I'm not sure I'd call it a 'fallacy'), but the examples are horrible.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think The Emperor Wears No Clothes.

This has no meaning.

But it's vague and meaningless enough you can pull it out when you want to prove something involving statistics or models not working, which they mostly don't.

<comment><USER30> A case against hubris but also the next step to declare every written word as fallacious.</comment></comment>


Dreaming about Better Sleep: Dreem, Oura and the Rest - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tombarys/dreaming-about-better-sleep-dreem-oura-and-the-rest-fb29c99f0aad <comment><USER2> Based on the short literature research I did that's visible in my other comment, I came to some rough ideas on how to make a good sleep tracker. If there are people who want to work on it, feel free to reach out. Creating this as a side project might be something I was going to do anyway to learn about data science and some simple hardware hacking. It's currently 2nd on the list (only beaten by the 1st thing: prepping for interviews).

What I think that technically needs to happen at minimum is:

1\. Movement

2\. HRV

3\. EEG (brainwaves)

That will be the minimum viable product that may become as good as polysomnography and bring sleep lab tech to your home. Dreem claims to be doing this, but it isn't clear whether their claims are true.

Companies like Zeo produced presumably good results, yet they are now bankrupt. It's quite infuriating to see. So there's a business model (or simply an organizational problem at Zeo at the time) and I'm not clear what it is. The tech is already here! For example, Somté PSG shows that it can be done, and I'm simply thinking to myself: this could be more user friendly, couldn't it? [1]

Marketing-wise, I think the following needs to happen:

1\. Get multiple unrelated universities to test your device against polysomnography and iterate against it.

2\. Once it's within the 90% agreement range, then even make a YouTube video about such tests. Keep testing it against the golden standard, because if you are as good as the golden standard, then you can really state you track sleep.

3\. Also test different PSGs with each other, because while PSG is the golden standard, no study told to what extent they actually agree on sleep metrics. There probably are studies on it but they didn't test this (or comment on it even, I believe) when wearables such as a Fitbit were studied as well.

4\. Make ridiculous cool claims like everyone is already doing. Really go for the full appeal to authority, like Dreem is doing (nothing new).

[1] [https://www.compumedics.com.au/products/somte- psg/](https://www.compumedics.com.au/products/somte-psg/)

<comment><USER3> I have a watch-like thingy that tracks my pulse and give interesting data about sleep patterns but every time I sleep with it I am self conscious about it. It emits light to track the pulse and it's annoying to have something at my wrist.

I can't imagine having a headset and sleeping as I normally sleep. The results wouldn't be fully representative.

<comment><USER2> I've noticed I'd become used to it. I've gotten used to a sleeping mask and earplugs in a similar way (they really help me).

I've noticed I don't have issues wearing something around my wrist, but I get that that's a factor. I'm also noticing that I don't get anxious about the data, because it's all a bit guesswork anyway, so I guess I'd want to see an aggregate form of data if it gets more precise, so that it still feels a bit like guesswork, unless there's something wrong in a big way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...is this an advertisement?

Also, as appealing as the device sounds, I'm terrified of giving this kind of personal data away to a tech company:

>Dreem works as a long-term sleep expert and one-on-one coach: it monitors your sleep habits and sleep quality for a week, asks you for a lot of more details about your life (day and night), and downloads your activity data from other personal health apps

The overly suave marketing on the dreem site makes me wary as well. Between personal data abuses and shady marketing practices, how is anyone supposed to trust modern tech anymore?

<comment><USER5> Ad or not, one of the best sleep science overviews I've read.

I want to know whether one can get their nightly EEG data.

<comment><USER6> The normal data export only includes summary data for each night in csv:

      Type (sleep, nap, relax)
      Start Time
      Stop Time
      Sleep Duration
      Sleep Onset Duration
      Light Sleep Duration
      Deep Sleep Duration
      REM Duration
      Wake After Sleep Onset
      Duration
      Number of awakenings
      Position Changes
      Mean Heart Rate
      Mean Respiration CPM
      Number of Stimulations

Not sure if there's any way to get the raw sensor data.

There appear to be two terminals on the band which are not used by the normal user. I assume they are for flashing the firmware on bricked devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I won't be able to find all my sources. I'm sorry for that.

I just looked into this 2 days ago! While I'm not the OP, this submission happens to be one of the most exciting articles I found (I should've submitted it :P). I was asking myself whether I should update my Fitbit Flex 2 to a Fitbit Versa or an Apple Watch or anything else really.

The answer is: don't upgrade, keep the Fitbit Flex 2, it's about as good as journalling your own sleep times and that's all I need really, a very rough estimate. More importantly, the newer wearable devices are not good enough at giving a reliable breakdown of your sleep that polysomnography (the gold standard would give).

With that said: the Basic Health Tracker (doesn't exist anymore, I think), Oura Ring, Philips Actiwatch Spectrum were all able to do things that trackers that the Fitbit and other wearables couldn't.

Specifically:

> Only mean values of sleep efficiency (time asleep/time in bed) from > Actiwatch correlated with PSG, yet this correlation was weak. [2]

> Light sleep time differed from PSG (nREM1 + nREM2) for all devices. Measures > of Deep sleep time did not differ from PSG (SWS + REM) for Basis. [2]

> From EBE analysis, ŌURA ring had a 96% sensitivity to detect sleep, and > agreement of 65%, 51%, and 61%, in detecting "light sleep" (N1), "deep > sleep" (N2 + N3), and REM sleep, respectively. [4]

A good literature review on it is [3].

Some facts (which can be found in [3] or its cited papers):

* All trackers overestimate sleep by about 30 minutes.

* The biggest problem for all these wearable trackers are: estimating when you're simply lying awake in bed but you're not moving (it thinks you're asleep).

* Devices like the Fitbit Flex are about as accurate as sleep journalling with regards to total sleep time.

Dreem has the following issues. It's hard to see whether their scientific papers are peer-reviewed. Yes, they produce science articles in PDF formats but not in journals. Yes, they collaborate with universities but it isn't clear how. Nothing is peer reviewed and almost nothing seems to be cited. This was echoed in a Gizmodo article [1], but I figured it out myself first.

I'm not saying they aren't legit, because another thing I have noticed is that the scientific community is a bit but not too keen on testing these devices with the golden standard (polysomnography/PSG). There is still space for a startup who is clearly capable of demonstrating this and other research institutes confirming it independently for their device.

Edit: I hope I gave enough sources to make my comment a bit credible.

[1] [https://gizmodo.com/this-smart-headband-was-supposed-to- help...](https://gizmodo.com/this-smart-headband-was-supposed-to-help-me- sleep-bette-1822568894)

[2] obtained from abstract @ [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27164110](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27164110)

[3] obtained from abstract @ [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8648428](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8648428)

[4] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28323455](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28323455)</comment>