Show HN: garlic.js - don't let your users lose their form data - <AUTHOR> http://guillaumepotier.github.com/Garlic.js/

<comment><USER2> I think the desire for this kind of project is very reasonably based, and it looks like you have done great work on most of the implementation. I have one gripe with it, though.

It would be nice if the documentation mentioned that garlic.js requires an HTML5 browser with localStorage implemented. Remember, there are people who are still using Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and these browsers are incompatible [1]. This is a minor details considering browser marketshare, but a fallback using cookies would be a nice-to-have feature.

Besides that, awesome work!

[1] <http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/html5.html#t00>

<comment><USER3> For all intents and purposes, IE6 and IE7 are dead. They account for less than 1.5% of worldwide browsers [1]. At this point, seems okay to leave out.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined- ww-daily-20121107-20121109-bar)

<comment><USER4> That depends on your user base. If it's just the wider internet that's accurate, but if you're aiming at government or big corporate clients, you'd better check your analytics first.

<comment><USER5> We're talking about something that prevents form data loss. If it doesn't error on IE6/7 and simply doesn't work, then that's fairly graceful degradation that provides a benefit to users on more modern browsers.

But I suppose if your userbase is predominantly IE6/7, then it may not be worth the effort for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm getting a 404. <https://github.com/guillaumepotier/Garlic.js>

<comment><USER7> <http://garlicjs.org/> works as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The provided github link 404's. But this one works:

<https://github.com/guillaumepotier/Garlic.js>

Another link worth knowing about -- perhaps even more so, since there are demos there:

<http://garlicjs.org>

</comment><comment><USER9> > don't let your users lose their form data

This is a huge problem, and is the reason I've had Lazarus installed for a few years now.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/lazarus- form-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/lazarus-form- recovery/)

Apparently it exists for Chrome now, too.

<comment><USER10> Thinking about it, I'm mildly amazed that the browsers themselves didn't solve this problem back in 1996 or so.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it's a security issue? With some sites you might not want that information saved, perhaps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. Not thought about that. At least, it is shown to the user, and not hidden and recorded secretly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't want to be that guy, but what's different from <http://simsalabim.github.com/sisyphus/>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I was totally unaware of this one. Never mind, it clearly shows that there's a lack here on this browser behavior. My project is juste a few hours pet project. I'll try to maintain it and make it as advanced & usefull as sisyphus, for fun :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a way to differentiate between data that's only saved using Garlic (local) vs data that's also been saved to the server? This could be a huge confusion for users if there isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'll need to work on that, if there is already server data. Maybe in a tooltip like, let the user choose which version he should use

<comment><USER14> I wonder if you should have some sort of icon or text indicator (per field) that shows there is saved form data available, but don't populate until the user triggers it, or an option to restore all available form data in one click? There are situations where I want to clear a form so I'll refresh the page if a clear option isn't available. I guess the solution would be for everyone that uses garlic.js to make sure they have a clear option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work! I've added garlic to cdnjs: [http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/garlic.js/0.0.1/garlic...](http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/garlic.js/0.0.1/garlic.min.js)

</comment><comment><USER16> 'Loose' is the opposite of 'tight'; to 'lose' is to misplace, which is the word you were going for.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just a heads up, the <title> of your page is still "Bootstrap".

<comment><USER18> That was a test.

You passed.

<comment><AUTHOR> ahah ^^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just hope everyone gets to use it. I added it to my "great to have" Javascript libraries list. Good work!

<comment><USER20> Ruben, can you please share your "great to have" Javascript libraries list? It sounds promising.

<comment><USER19> It's still a work in progress, but of course! I have many (many!) bookmarked pages with more libraries in my instapaper feed, some emails to myself and a few emacs .org files I use as buckets. I just decided to start collecting them last week and made a quick sweep-clean with the most recent tabs I had open and the few I had linked to recently:

1.1 Markdown 1.1.1 <http://> attacklab.net/showdown/

1.2 DBs 1.2.1 <http://jazzrecord.org>

1.3 Unit tests 1.3.1 <http://jsunittest.com/>

1.4 Documentation 1.4.1 <http://www.naturaldocs.org/> 1.4.2 <http://fitzgen.github.com/pycco/>

1.5 Visual 1.5.1 <http://lab.hakim.se/kort/>

1.6 localStorage 1.6.1 Redis inspired, at twilio <https://github.com/twilio/BankersBox> 1.6.2 Amplify.store <http://amplifyjs.com/api/store/> 1.6.3 Persistent form data <http://guillaumepotier.github.com/Garlic.js/>

I'll probably end up posting the list (or the mind map that forms it) on my blog sooner or later (probably as soon as I hit 30 or when I finish my current Javascript RTE project)

<comment><USER21> Anyone else ending up on a "UPVC Doors and Windows" site when going to <http://jsunittest.com/> ?

<comment><USER19> Jsunit's site is dead, too. <http://qunitjs.com/> looks like a good one having similar abilities (test in browser was my main feature for this one)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Should add an option for users to disable this (like remember me on login forms)... not good for public computers if you don't know the form you just filled in but didn't submit will retain the data. Other than that, cool!

<comment><USER23> Persisting localStorage seems to be controlled by the setting to delete cookies after exiting the browser. If i have it set to delete cookies, it deletes localStorage. if i allow it to keep cookies after quitting the browser, then it persists localStorage.

(Noticed this because the demo failed for me the first time.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure of that? I've tested the behavior of cookies / localStorage on iPads recently, and on private sessions without cookies, Safari on iPad had localStorage persisted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Getting a 404 on the OPS link. This seems to work <https://github.com/guillaumepotier/Garlic.js>

</comment><comment><USER25> While convenient and technically fine, this can get creepy for users. "Wait, I didn't submit the form on purpose but the data has been saved?"

<comment><USER26> I had this same thought, but I think it would just be best to use these sort of plugins wisely, and not on every form element possible. Or to maybe have some sort of form "note/tip" that mentions it's being auto saved. Sites like Quora do this via drafts of your comments/responses that you write. That way people know to erase the content if they truly don't want it saved.

Like many UX features similar to this, I would say it mainly comes down to who your audience is, and where it's being used on how "weirded out" users would feel by this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pretty cool - another very similar option that comes in the form of a jQuery plugin that I just noticed in the [new] section of HN.... <https://github.com/simsalabim/sisyphus> \- It looks pretty slick.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, github has some difficulties with the page url and tend to show some weird 404 :(

Please, could you update the link of this post to <http://garlicjs.org>?

Thx!

</comment><comment><USER28> As a side note do not use the Bootstrap class .well together with .row cause it overflow because of padding. Create this structure: div.row > div.well > the content.

</comment><comment><USER29> They have been doing this for years!!

<http://www.bonsoni.com/post_ad.php>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your first comments ;) This is a very very early alpha release. 1h of work in fact.. Please, feel free to contribute!

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is this a website feature instead of a browser extension, where it would work for every site?

<comment><USER31> I would imagine it's easier for a site owner to provide this than get everyone to install a browser extension.

<comment><USER21> I think anothermachine meant it should be default behavior in browsers. I agree, with the attribute to disable or enable this from the html it would be a nice feature for browsers to implement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was thinking about this the other day and I thought "How is this not standard!?"

Good job!

<comment><USER33> It's not standard because people frequently do things like type a credit card number into a form on a public computer. Lots of potential for privacy breaches.

<comment><USER21> With and option to disable this behavior from the HTML websites could chose to disable it on forms which might contain sensitive data. Browsers could even disable it by default and let the websites enable using an attribute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Huh, this is very nice. Congratulations!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Link doesn't work (404)

</comment><comment><USER36> i like it. workaround for older browser possible?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes possible. Someone mentioned usage of store.js, i'll dive into it next week

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> it's gooooone!</comment>


Show HN: Blood glucose control without pricking - <AUTHOR> https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/do/10.1002/was.00060006 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we developed a new way to detect blood glucose non-invasively and wrote down how it works.</comment>


The War On Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/the-war-on-hackers/

<comment><USER2> This should be upvoted simply because it's a article on Techcrunch that does really involve a company's latest funding round, VC's or an app.

But on a more serious note what the post talks about is worrying we can't have computer illiterate people making laws and decisions that could have far reaching implications on how we use computers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you kidding me? No, of course you aren't. Of course we're reading TechCrunch playing blog-telephone with a story that _started out_ with a terribly misinformed blog post.

Original comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6595993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6595993)

Things to know:

No, a judge did not order Thuen's laptop siezed because he was a "hacker".

No, the fact that Thuen claimed to be a hacker did not play into whether Thuen's laptop was examined and imaged.

No, Thuen did not simply leave Batelle to create an open-source version of his project.

There are no similarities between Thuen's case and Swartz's.

What happened here is straightforward. Thuen was an employee of Batelle. He was a developer on Batelle's "Sophia" project. While working for Batelle, he commenced work on his own version of "Sophia", called "Visdom". Batelle fired him. He took "Visdom" and created a new company, "Southfork", which sponsored "Visdom" as an open source project. Batelle sued, and Thuen admitted copying at least some components from "Sophia". Batelle prevailed in a preliminary injunction to have "Visdom" taken down, and, in the ongoing suit, made a discovery request for an image Thuen's laptop. The court agreed, as is routine in civil cases, with the proviso that the image be delivered directly to the court for escrow and not examined directly by Batelle.

There is an annoying wrinkle to this story: the judge did use Thuen's statements about being a hacker as justification for the idea that Thuen might spoil the evidence on the hard drive _once notified about the discovery request_ ; Batelle's outside forensic investigator was therefore not required to give advance notice to Thuen. But that is the only thing that the word "hacker" determined in this case.

It is absolutely bog standard for hard drive images to constitute discoverable evidence in civil cases, and it is not at all surprising that an full time software developer might get sued for copying their employer's product (even if it didn't share code, which apparently _isn 't_ the case here).

Jim Denaro read an earlier stage of this game of telephone in Ars Technica and called it "dangerously wrong about the law"; the facts of this case are even more attenuated in TechCrunch, which _does not give a shit if you know what is actually happening_ , and is running this story solely to generate rageviews.

<comment><USER4> I'm hesitant to bring this up since you seem much more informed about this topic, but your statement "Thuen admitted copying at least some components from 'Sophia'" seems to contradict Thuen's statement from the TechCrunch article:

"Visdom is not a translation of Sophia from C to the languages in which Visdom is written. We did not have the Sophia code when we created Visdom."

So I'm interested in what you mean by "copy".

<comment><USER3> My information comes from the court order, which states directly that Thuen admitted to some kind of copying (what kind, we do not know).

<comment><USER5> Uh, no - it states that Battelle claims this, not that the court has found this to be a fact. Kind of a huge difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paul Graham Uses This (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://usesthis.com/interviews/paul.graham/ <comment><AUTHOR> > What would be your dream setup?

> I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't > make something in between the Air and an iPhone.

:P

<comment><USER2> Really. For so many things, it is better to have a light weight client and a very powerful remote server for builds, working with large data sets, etc. Mosh + tmux, combined with at least one beefy server.</comment></comment>


De-Anonymization via Clickjacking in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://m417z.com/De-anonymization-via-Clickjacking-in-2019/ <comment><USER2> This is incredible, I love it.

I'm not going to spoil anything. If you haven't clicked on the link, you should. It's not malicious, but it does demonstrate the vulnerability.

<comment><USER3> We can't know for sure it's not malicious. It could be keeping a list of names, IPs, and profile pictures, (and maybe browser, OS, timezone, time) and publishing or selling them.

<comment><USER4> That's just FUD. What possible use would there be for a list of Facebook profiles and their IP addresses? You can just go on Facebook and get as many profiles as you'd like directly. The IP only gives you an ISP that the user used once at some point in time which means a very crude approximation for location (at the city/country level) which you could probably beat by looking at the profile itself.

<comment><USER3> These aren't just random profiles, they're security interested Hacker News browsers. And they might be correlatable with comments in this post.

IP gives you more than just location. If you own a website, and someone from an IP visits your website around the same time as this log, there's probably a good chance they're the same person. So you could then correlate a username on your website with a Facebook profile.

The whole point of potential attack is to correlate a username on the attacker's website with a Facebook profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure exactly where the proof of concept is. Is it this page?

[https://m417z.com/De-anonymization-via-Clickjacking- in-2019/...](https://m417z.com/De-anonymization-via-Clickjacking- in-2019/?demo)

I tried it in latest Firefox with uBlock & HTTPS Everywhere and it leads me to a 'captcha' page similar to Cloudflare's but there's no actual captcha box. Nothing seems to happen...

Is it uBlock protecting me or is it that I've completely disabled all third party cookies?

<comment><USER6> I think the captcha box is the Facebook comments box restyled. I'm guessing uBlock or Firefox containers are protecting you.

<comment><USER7> It's most likely uBlock - [1]

[1] - [https://i.imgur.com/wpLgp9R.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/wpLgp9R.jpg)

<comment><USER5> In my case a comment box doesn't appear at all. I also don't have Firefox containers enabled. uBlock is blocking google-analytics.com and facebook.net domains only on that page, while Firefox's own tracker blocking is not accepting 3rd-party cookies from disqus, fb and google.

[https://imgur.com/a/gehE6nF](https://imgur.com/a/gehE6nF)

Although these days I'm aware that most large tracking companies are probably going beyond just 3rd party cookies and building shadow profiles based on device fingerprinting which as it stands is effectively impossible to avoid without crippling modern browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does this sign-in not show up the "Apps & Websites" section on Facebook? How do I make it stop recognizing me without disabling sign-ins on other sites? It sure would be nice if these questions and their answers were included in the article!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I tried looking through my Facebook logs, and couldn't find anything. I would have expected that if I leave a comment on a website, Facebook would keep a log of that for me to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Huh. When I go to the example, I end up on a Cloudflare captcha that appears to be missing most of its stuff, such that I can't pass it. I'm running uBlock Origin, nothing fancy. Here I thought it was just Tor users who were inconvenienced!

<comment><USER10> That is the attack. It's a fake captcha.

<comment><USER9> Ah. Normally an attack page then displays my personal data. Guess it doesn't work on me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 11 years later [1]

[1] [https://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa08-08....](https://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa08-08.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Tired comment, but uMatrix protects from this kind of attacks.

</comment><comment><USER13> The example does not appear to work in Safari on iOS; for some reason the Facebook comment form doesnt seem to stay focused. (I also don't have a Facebook account.)</comment>


Ask PG: Can you do it again? - <AUTHOR> I have done nothing significant in life yet. Have not helped anyone or improved the world at all in almost any sense. But still it took me a lot of practice to get to where I am now. I am confident I can do it again and again given same amount of time and same attitude to life from same or little more limits I had and starting from any timeline from 1980 to 2014. Only thing it takes is same amount of practice. This is probably true for 99% people living today.
I am curious if you feel the same way. If you are given back your time and energy but taken back everything else, can you repeat what have you done? Say, starting today? If yes, how much more limits can you overcome?
I have a lot of admiration for you. I consider you my mentor (book, article and other works). This is not to challenge you or anyone- just trying to understand what successful people think about luck, environment and timeline. <comment><USER2> You are confident that you can repeat "doing nothing significant in life" again and again? Whoa, you're really setting the bar high, aren't you? :P

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not improved the world, but I still consider myself successful in personal life.

<comment><USER3> Don't be so hard on yourself about not improving the world. I'm sure that you've positively affected someone. Even if it is a side-effect of your personal success, that allows you, for example, to leave a decent tip at a bar or restaurant. That decent sized tip helped the waitress make rent that month, and not get kicked out to the curb. Which kept her kids in a decent school district, where they learned a lot and will someday cure cancer. (Just an example).

<comment><USER4> By that reasoning nearly everyone has improved the world. Considering the negative impact we all have just existing in our society I'm sure his stance is more accurate.

<comment><USER5> In general, I think the average human being provides some good for the world. If nothing else, the average person in most[1] of the world can vote, hopefully on average stabilizing the political system. [2] They also act as an allocator for the market, enabling capital to go where needed. Each actor in the market acts as part of Adam Smith's invisible hand, helping decide where resources go. At the same time, most are parents to children enabling the whole thing to happen again.

Is your belief based on human impact on the environment, or is it something else?

[1] Better resources a Google away but this is something at least. [http://www.economist.com/node/8908438](http://www.economist.com/node/8908438) [2] [http://www.stier.net/writing/demstab/demstab.htm#_Toc5203975...](http://www.stier.net/writing/demstab/demstab.htm#_Toc520397588)

<comment><USER4> You could say that my views are based on the environment but I would describe it as being on the world on a whole. All your benefits are to our societies and other related tribes. In that regard I agree that the average person provides some good but at a world level that includes the environment, other species, resources, etc I think the in most cases we are a negative force.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [I am not PG]

In the 1980's PG got a phd from Harvard - rumors that he also helped create the internet DoS attack are however unsubstantiated. In the 1990's PG wrote two books, and started a successful web company. In the 2000's PG wrote another book and started a successful company that launched successful companies. There's fighting email spam, creating a new programming language, developing research on continuation servers, advancing our understanding of the dynamics of online communities and their discourse, and a personal life.

Two thoughts come to mind: Chance favors the prepared. If you want something to get done, give it to someone who is busy.

PG seems like the sort of person who is busy. Do you think this thread rises to the level of priority? Should he take time away from his family to participate?

My take is that PG has largely moved on from HN. In part, that's probably just his change. But in no small part I expect it has to do with the changing nature of HN - an HN that Reg Braithwaite abandoned. An HN where fluff like this question gets double digit points - do you have any idea how hard it is to write a 44 point comment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Forums on Internet should balance things automatically. PG (or anyone) has no obligation to reply any question on any forum. Should someone ask a personal question? I don't know. Celebrities are always asked such question- I would not ask same question to someone like me.

<comment><USER6> Acting as if HN was just another forum is a behavior PG spent years trying to curtail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole point of entrepreneurship is persistence, you don't need anything else. If you have persistence, then IQ, upbringing, social environment, education dwarf in importance.

If you simply never stop, try things that no one else has tried before, it's impossible to not become successful. :)

<comment><USER8> "If you have persistence, then IQ, upbringing, social environment, education dwarf in importance."

Politely disagree here. Most people who succeed in business are usually (but not in all cases) brought up in good homes, in stable social environments and receive good educations. Pull beneath the curtain and even the 'high school/college drop out' is usually from a middle class home or has received private education. There are many other things that play a role as well including race. Remember all the kerfuffle a year or two ago about the lack of entrepreneurs from ethnic minority groups namely black groups who weren't being funded. Its not part of the 'VC Pattern Recognition'. Believe me it also pained me to write about race because I've v low tolerance for it.

Furthermore, there is clear evidence across the most wildly successful companies you will see many entrepreneurs do look very similar. Many have similar upbringings, many have good educations/come from good homes, many are from specific sections in the class hierarchy and many are from specific races. Just look at most of the top venture investors most are white or jewish.

Persistence yes i agree is unbelievably important. By default telling many people you'll start a business will likely result in a mix bag of congrats but many people telling you why it is a bad idea or why it won't work.

However, please do not be so dismissive of IQ or social environment or education. All of these things play a key role.

Look at the S&P 500. The CEOs education is as follows 97% have a college degree and 67% have a further degree. Most common degrees are engineering. Stanford and Harvard have 4% of the CEO population in the 500. I will also include Zuckerburg/Gates in this stat even if he dropped out he still went!

Please do not be so dismissive of other factors it is just myopic and extremely ignorant.

<comment><USER9> _Look at the S &P 500. The CEOs education is as follows 97% have a college degree and 67% have a further degree. Most common degrees are engineering. Stanford and Harvard have 4% of the CEO population in the 500. I will also include Zuckerburg/Gates in this stat even if he dropped out he still went!_

There's a lot to be said about what the makeup of the S&P 500 CEO pool represents, and what it means to look at their educational background, etc.

BUT... It's also important to remember that setting the bar for "success as an entrepreneur" at anything involving the S&P 500 may be a bit excessive. Oh, don't get me wrong... many entrepreneurs (especially _tech_ entrepreneurs, which probably includes a lot of the population here) may have goals to build a publicly traded company, be a member of the S&P 500, or the DJIA or whatever. But not all entrepreneurs fit that mold.

Depending on where you start out and what your goals are, building a company that brings in just enough income to pay you and your employees, while allowing you to avoid being outdoors doing backbreaking manual labor in 95 degree heat, may qualify as "success". Heck, for a tradesman of some sort (plumber, electrician, etc.) it may be enough to have a business that just keeps the lights on for him and his family, while leaving enough to put some money in a college fund for the kids.

 _However, please do not be so dismissive of IQ or social environment or education. All of these things play a key role._

They can, but don't overstate their importance either. I've seen with my own eyes the value of sheer perseverance, coupled with great work ethic, and how that allowed a man with almost no formal education, and a poor, rural, "lower class" upbringing to become what I consider a "successful entrepreneur". I don't know my dad's IQ though, so I won't comment on that bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, but what kind of fluff question is this? Have you even thought about your own question? Your question implies time travel and it comes with all sorts of paradoxes. It's like asking "Can you rewind the tape?". Yes, you can. _But_ , can you watch the movie again in the _exact same manner_ you did earlier?

Given he gets warped back in time and he looses all awareness of his situation, he will probably do it again (there is no "can" because he didn't do it in the future, yet). If he's warped back in time with his knowledge right now, he cannot possibly relive his same life because his state will not be the same as it was back then.

Which brings me to my question and remark: what exactly is the point of this question other than pg-backpatting?

<comment><USER11> I think you misunderstood the question:

      >  If you are given back your time and energy but taken back everything else,
      >  can you repeat what have you done? Say, starting today?

What's being asked is basically, starting today, if everything was taken away from PG (or any successful person) and instead he (or the person) was given the same amount of time (20 odd years ?) and energy, would they achieve the same level of success, 20 years hence.

My own take on this is, yes - Most successful people would become successful irrespective of starting conditions. Of course the level of success might differ since things like luck come into play but most successful people tend to 'build' their luck (ref: every self-help book ever).

<comment><USER10> It will be pure speculation/imagination and no-one will able to confirm/deny the bias. Hence the question is fluff. It's like asking a highly imaginative question and trying to translate it to real world. It's nothing more than luring into something which will never happen. It's not bad that you think about these things, but don't waste your time with it.

"Most successful people would become successful irrespective of starting conditions." \- again bias and imagination/speculation. Success is not something you are born with. You "get" it. Just because you got it once doesn't mean you are entitled to it for the rest of your life. Successful people getting more success have much more means to become more successful so it looks like they would have been successful anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that Paul Graham has great powers of observation. He seems to know what makes businesses successful and what problems in the world need to be solved. I am sure he spends a lot of time thinking and analyzing (whether consciously or unconsciously, I do not know). It is apparent in his essays that he is a brilliant person who enjoys making observations (and he is an artist, which involves like 99% observation).

Paul Graham is really great at what he does. I am sure that you have personal qualities that are great as well. You should try to leverage those. It is good to admire others, but you must forge your own path to success. Words of wisdom can only do so much. In the end, it is the effort and strengths of the individual that matters.

I don't think that you should care so much about helping people. Before you label me as a bad person, I think that if you think too much about helping people, if you believe that you have a social obligation to do so, it can be very exhausting to the heart. Doctors sometimes face "compassion exhaustion." You should strive to be a good person, give when you can, but to over-exert yourself by making yourself feel guilty for not having helped people or improved the world is counter-productive. I say this because I went through the same thing. There are many small ways you can help people and have a big impact on their lives.

I strive to make myself into a person that I would admire.

</comment><comment><USER13> Taking back everything else? Does that include knowledge, experience and lessons learned? Because that greatly affects what pg would start doing today.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have all the knowledge and experience, you are who you are already.

<comment><USER13> Isn't your question then the same as: did you think you got lucky?

<comment><AUTHOR> Luck could one factor yes- but its mostly a question about with enough work can everything man has done be repeated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Success and significance is relative and it is important that you see why it is so. I don't know where you are from but opportunity is a big part of the story. A majority of the world does not have the same level of opportunity as the western world. Being in the bay area, being born with the right passport, being around with the right people, right education etc are really big influencers of success and have nothing to do with individual itself.

This is not to take away anything from what many people like PG have done, but it is for you to realize that sometimes lots of energy is spent by other people just trying to achieve basic things which are usually taken for granted.

As an example, I wanted to travel on a business trip to this country. My partner could go immediately because he didn't need a visa. My visa processing is still stuck and it's been a week now. Lost opportunity and no amount of hardwork and perseverance from my side can fix it. yeah, this is part of the reason that I am writing this comment. I feel terrible about my passport :)

<comment><USER15> Jan Koum, founder of WhatsApp, was born in a tiny village in Ukraine, grew up without a father, worked as a cleaner in a grocery, and was almost homeless. Today he is worth $6.3 billion.

You'll find a way if it's important enough to you.

<comment><USER16> That's not well reasoned. A world in which there is always a way available is certainly consistent with the anecdote, but so is one where there generally is _not_ a way except awarded at random to one otherwise hopeless person in ten million. You need to explain why this isn't isomorphic to "just keep buying those lottery tickets".</comment></comment></comment>


Lua 5.3.3 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.lua.org/home.html <comment><USER2> See also: [http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2016-05/msg00400.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2016-05/msg00400.html)

It's hard to figure out what changed from the site itself. Apparently all these bugs have been fixed: [http://www.lua.org/bugs.html#5.3.2](http://www.lua.org/bugs.html#5.3.2)</comment>


OpenWRT remote code execution via MITM due to bug in package manager - <AUTHOR> https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2020-January/021544.html <comment><USER2> I never understood why domains used to NTP and Package mirrors depend on external, commercial, certificate authorities.

It could be a fallback, with a red big warning to manually check the certs are alright when you need it (e.g too long without synching your root certificates package). But for most cases there is no excuse not having it local at all times.

I mean MITM a domain essential for the "distro" should be at least just a little bit harder than regular MITM.

<comment><USER3> I've always wondered a similar thing... why is reputation-based TLD network security limited to a single verification entity (CA w/ revocation policy)? Seems obvious to me certs should be signed (and thus revokable) from multiple entities by default. I've implemented this before in clients ad-hoc, but why isn't it default?

Don't get me started on authoritative DNS security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's definitely an issue that the sha256 checksum check was broken.

But, can someone explain why a person who is MITM'ing ipk downloads would change the package and not the checksum?

Are there GPG signatures of the package checksums signed with a key that ships with the release?

Are package repos downloaded over HTTPS? Is there a CA bundle in the release with which repo x.509 certs are validated?

<comment><USER3> I installed newest version OpenWRT on a popular brand, recently manufactured wireless router last week.

The OpenWRT firmware couldn't access https sites without installing multiple packages first. Then they had me install all the root certs over an unencrypted connection. The opkg repos and install files are all downloaded over http.

With full seriousness, I really hope nobody expects operational security using these routers.

<comment><USER5> >The opkg repos and install files are all downloaded over http.

This was a problem because of the bug. But now it isn't one anymore. 'opkg update' updates the package lists. The lists contain information about the packages: name, file size, architecture, description etc., and also the SHA256sum. When you install a package opkg will compare the SHA256sums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who are using the Turris OS OpenWrt derivative: fixed in 5.0-rc0, for 4.0.x there is a bigger problem they are working on, for 3.x it might not have been introduced yet

</comment><comment><USER7> Calling that remote code execution is a bit of a stretch. Maybe technically accurate. don't know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why, because it requires a MITM position?

Actually, using a DNS server serving the wrong IP for downloads.openwrt.org will have the same effect.

<comment><USER8> _Why, because it requires a MITM position?_

Yes, pretty much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tangentially related: I want to run OpenWRT but need at least 500Mbps WAN/LAN filtered routing capacity; my old tp-link 4300 barely manages 150mbps; can anyone recommend a modern home WiFi/router that can run OpenWRT and do line speed packet filtering between WAN and LAN?

<comment><USER10> For ac, 500+ Mbps is primarily feasible only at 5 GHz around 2 m / 5 ft away. WRT3200ACM

If you care about performance rather than open source purity tests, Asus RT- AX88U is the way to go.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. I should have made this more explicit, but I care less about the WLAN performance (as long as it's ok) - I care more about the wired one.

Most OpenWRT ports don't offload the LAN/WAN routing, and doing it on a lowly ARM CPU often effectively limits this to a few hundred megabits - e.g. 150mbps on my WDR4300 (which does manage 800Mbps for the same task with the original closed firmware which does do some hardware offloading)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The bug has been introduced with commit [https://git.openwrt.org/54cc7e3](https://git.openwrt.org/54cc7e3) which failed to advance the proper string pointer when skipping the leading white- space portition of the checksum string, causing the subsequent hex decoding loop to return early with a zero length checksum."

I can't believe someone messed up something so simple! ( Sarcasm )

There HAS to be a better way lmao

<comment><USER12> Yeah, yuck, this definitely could have been avoided if they did some proper lexing/parsing _before_ dealing with the line, instead of manually separating things apart after matching on the beginning of the string...

That said, perhaps it's just too early in the morning but I don't think that commit introduced the error. The math/logic looks to be identical and I think the bug is `line + strlen("SHA256sum") + 1` which was already there before and doesn't increment past any spaces which might come after the (implied I guess?) colon. Though considering the colon isn't checked for in `SHA256sum`, you could put any character there and it'll work. Yay...

<comment><USER13> Nice catch I think. I'll be damned if I can see a difference. Looks like the old code will also skip the checksum in the case of any non hexdigit padding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fixt in new builds of OpenWrt. If you are running the 18.xx or 19.xx branches then update to latest and all is good again.

<comment><USER6> Just updating isn't a very safe way to upgrade, use what they suggest in the mail instead:

To update the opkg package itself without upgrading the entire firmware, the following commands may be used once all repositories have been updated:

       cd /tmp
       opkg update
       opkg download opkg
       zcat ./opkg-lists/openwrt_base | grep -A10 "Package: opkg" | grep SHA256sum
       sha256sum ./opkg_2020-01-25-c09fe209-1_*.ipk

Compare both checksums and, if matching, proceed with installing the package:

       opkg install ./opkg_2020-01-25-c09fe209-1_*.ipk

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm confused, they recommend using your vulnerable version of opkg to update opkg?

<comment><USER16> In that recommendation, they provide clear and easy to follow instructions for doing the checksum verification manually before applying the update.

> Compare both checksums and, if matching, proceed with installing the package</comment></comment>


Why Banning All Chinese Community Party Members Fro the U.S. Is Stupid - <AUTHOR> https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/07/why-banning-all-party-members-is-stupid.html <comment><USER2> dang: please fix the title. There's no community party in China, the article talks about the right thing.</comment>


Show HN: Charlie, a FOSS Chrome extension that upgrades blockchain explorers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/txbatch/charlie <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I worked at a top 20 cryptocurrency exchange for a year. One of the major timesucks at my old job was navigating clunky block explorers.

This Chrome extension is designed to make block explorers easier for enterprise use - specifically, by customer support agents at cryptocurrency exchanges answering deposit/withdrawal tickets.

It is very loosely based off [https://github.com/Posnet/xkcd- substitutions](https://github.com/Posnet/xkcd-substitutions).

If you have any suggestions please let me know via the comments or Keybase.io/JamesScaur, critiques as well, I'd love to hear them!

Cheers, James</comment>


Remix HN: Experimenting with the Hacker News user interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnvue.com/hello.htm

<comment><USER2> I find that one of the signifiers I use to decide which front-page stories to read is "how many comments are there"; sadly this view doesn't include that information.

Also, when opening a link from the sidebar, sometimes it takes a while for the page to load, during which time the previous page is still displayed. It'd be less confusing if the old page were replaced with a "loading..." message of some kind.

<comment><AUTHOR> A new version -- hot off the servers -- now shows all of the classic HN info: points, poster, time, and comments. And there's also a "Loading..." message.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! It's fun to do same-day development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps this is blasphemy, but I...actually like the frames look here. It works, and it makes sense for what it's trying to do, imo.

I'd like to see points/comments in the left hand pane, but otherwise I love it.

(Also, am I the only one who kept recursively opening this story in hnvue?)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I really hate frames.

Although doing that may use up more bandwidth, please make it ajax-like such that we don't need to see any of the original hn frames again (yes hn has no API which makes commenting much harder to achieve)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have mixed feelings about frames, too. In this case, I think the benefits of seeing everything at once might outweigh the drawbacks. (It's all Dojo JavaScript, by the way. No actual HTML frames were involved in the making of this product!)

<comment><USER5> Dojo is a great toolkit that could use more evangelism. Showing separate sites like this necessitates some kind of frames, I thought this was a pretty good use of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very impressed by Dojo. It's amazing how you can do almost everything declaratively -- via markup. That makes it easy to put together simple UIs like this one.

<comment><USER5> Yea, I used to be puritan about it and tried to do everything with Dijit imperatively through JavaScript, but it's so much easier most of the time to do it in markup. It's even entirely HTML compliant now that it uses the new custom "data" tag attributes in HTML5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is the first site I've seen to use frames in about 10 years!

<comment><USER7> everyone has been using iframes though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Iframes are everywhere, but usually in places where it's hard to notice them, e.g., in ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a widescreen monitor and I suspect most people do. How about making the content and comments appear side by side instead?

A "pop-out" link for each frame would also be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a possibility. This is the minimal viable prototype! I'll have to think bigger for version 0.00002. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't resist trying to open this particular link over and over again - disappointingly you can't get very far :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The recursion makes for a fun Mondrian-like UI!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't mind the frames, it gives a nice "back to 1999" look :)

But I do miss the story points on the left frame, as I tend to look first for stories with 100 points or more.

EDIT: I think I'm going to use hnvue as my main UI for reading HN for the next couple of days.

<comment><AUTHOR> The score would be a handy addition. That's not part of the RSS feed, but I'm using YQL to screen scrape anyway, so it wouldn't be hard to add.

I'm curious to hear how hnvue works over a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey dporan this is awesome! It would be more awesome if you:

\- could go to "full page view" when clicking on a Hacker News submission for best web experience

\- could add a function to scroll the left and bottom frames where it was before "full page view" mode (at the moment you have to scroll it manually after everytime you visted a page and wanted to see it on full page view

\- could only show the comments from HN on the bottom frame without HN navigation and all

I hope I could help to make the user experience better!

Cheers

<comment><AUTHOR> All good ideas. Re showing comments without the HN navbar: that would involve some more complex screen scraping, but I agree that it would be nice to maximize the space for the most interesting info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could be improved to having a quick way to swap the sizes of the 2 right-hand frames. When I read HN, I generally read the comments first, then the article. If the comments were big first, then I could click something to make the actual page big, it would be nice.

Granted, I probably still wouldn't use the interface since I read from the RSS, but I think it would improve the site.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps there could be a hotkey to collapse the frames and serially focus the one frame - like Alt-Tab but internal to the site; or simply a floating toolbar with the standard layout, article layout, comment layout as option buttons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I definitely use the number of upvotes, number of comments and post age as part of my decision whether or not to read an article.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've used something like this for a few months actually. <http://blog.libinpan.com/2010/06/hackernews-safari/>

The advantage with the plugin in comparison to tnvue is that the classic HN- look is preserved (including number of comments).

</comment><comment><USER16> This is very nice; please find a way to add the number of points and comments as others have mentioned. Contrary to some opinions expressed in the comments, I think that your use of frame is very appropriate and efficient.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wonderful experiment. Bookmarked. Will be using for the next few days; have fun A/B testing.

-You're probably trying to differentiate from the original HN but I'd prefer to maintain the HN orange theme if possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re the theme: I just used one of the Dojo defaults. It's easy to swap them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very nice. Maybe you could you apply a different stylesheet to the comments, and hide any elements which allow you to click through to stories. Just removing everything above the comment box would be fine.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like this view. Good job of putting all the useful information HN offers in one view. Now, how long will this be around? You planning on enhancing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to use it myself, so I'll leave it up and try to enhance it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice. I definitely agree with the comments to show the points and number of comments, but apart from that I think it's really great.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you get the chance, I'd like to see the adding of keyboard shortcuts for expanding/shrinking the different views.

</comment><comment><USER22> Several weeks ago, I made a Chrome extension with an identical interface for the same purpose. I wanted to be able to read through HN in one window, article on top, comments on bottom, just as you've done. Like seeing I'm not alone.

I also ran into the same issues I see hitting your implementation, as well -- namely, sites that do not like to be framed ruin the HN-in-a-window viewer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alas, some sites do bust out of frames. I understand their reasons, but it does make things more complicated for a design like this one.

By the way, when a site does bust out of hnvue, I've noticed that the page can get into a weird state. Closing the browser window (or tab) and reopening hnvue is probably the best solution at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> superb!</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Facebook indexed in search engine, against robots.txt rules? - <AUTHOR>

Facebooks robots.txt : https://www.facebook.com/robots.txt
Facebook Has several different rules for different search engines.
But if you go to the end of file. You will find this one rule.
User-agent: * Disallow: /
The "User-agent: *" means this section applies to all robots. The "Disallow: /" tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site.
site:facebook.com returns About 3,520,000,000 results in google.
Then my question is why is facebook.com indexed in google and other search engines? <comment><USER2> It's not against the robots.txt rules. In Facebook's robots.txt file, there is a section for the Googlebot (as well as several other bots)

      User-agent: Googlebot
      Disallow: /ac.php
      ...

A bot is supposed to follow the its own User-agent section. If that is not found, it should follow the User-agent: * section. [1]

[1] [http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html](http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html)

<comment><USER3> Any supporting link reference for this ?

<comment><USER2> I edited the original comment, but yes, it is in this document: [http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html](http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html)

The key paragraph is:

      If the value is '*', the record describes the default
      access policy for any robot that has not matched any of
      the other records. It is not allowed to have multiple
      such records in the "/robots.txt" file.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing this !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if a different robots.txt is being served up for the real Googlebots?

EDIT:

Based on the comments in their robots.txt it appears that they are whitelisting certain robots. You would have to apply for your robot to crawl their site at [https://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos.php](https://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos.php)

They probably serve up unique generated robots.txt based on whitelisted robots. You'd never know what rules it contains unless you are a whitelisted robot.

<comment><USER5> Or your user-agent is the same as one. Unless they are whitelisting IPs.

I tested this with: wget --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +[http://www.google.com/bot.html)"](http://www.google.com/bot.html\)") [http://www.facebook.com/robots.txt](http://www.facebook.com/robots.txt)

and diffed, but the results are the same.

<comment><USER6> Is your IP range the same as googles?

<comment><USER7> Google doesn't release their IP ranges. It can come from any IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's like a if/elsif/else statement.

`User-agent: *` means for all other bots that didn't match any section above.

Here are the rules for Google:

        User-agent: Googlebot
        Disallow: /ac.php
        Disallow: /ae.php
        Disallow: /ajax/
        Disallow: /album.php
        Disallow: /ap.php
        Disallow: /autologin.php
        Disallow: /checkpoint/
        Disallow: /confirmemail.php
        Disallow: /contact_importer/
        Disallow: /feeds/
        Disallow: /file_download.php
        Disallow: /l.php
        Disallow: /o.php
        Disallow: /p.php
        Disallow: /photo.php
        Disallow: /photo_comments.php
        Disallow: /photo_search.php
        Disallow: /photos.php
        Disallow: /sharer/

\- meaning anything else allowed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I too had same doubt. Hope someone who is expert in SEO could answer this in better way.

<comment><USER9> Interesting

Yeah, Facebook's robots.txt file white-lists specific search engines and offer an option to get whitelisted ,then there is a wildcard disallow for everyone else.

Of course nefarious scrapers can ignore the robots.txt file or even spoof google or bingbot, but it least it sets a precedent and a policy that they can take further action on if needed.</comment></comment>


Twitter can help you produce great content if you have ADHD - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128 <comment><USER2> Being a Nazi or a TERF probably helps, too. Fuck social media.

<comment><USER3> Woah there bucko

<comment><USER2> What's your problem?</comment></comment></comment>


Boy Survives Moose Attack Thanks To World Of Warcraft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/boy-survives-mo.html

<comment><USER2> So is it Mooses, Moose, Meese, or what?</comment>


Federal antitrust oversight of Microsoft formally ends - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110512/tc_digitaltrends/federalantitrustoversightofmicrosoftformallyends_1

<comment><USER2> I remember watching the anti-trust tapes of Bill G's deposition.

The prosecution was absolutely clueless about the technology in question, to the extreme point of trying to link Windows "shortcuts" to some type of anti- competitive behavior.

With a large organization such as Microsoft, you will generate a lot of "dots" (random internal memos/conversation and other other points) that will then be further connected by "lines" (in the court room), and your guilt will be obvious.

I'm not saying that Microsoft did not engage in anti-competitive behavior, but just that the courtroom is the last place you will find the truth.

<comment><USER3> I thought Microsoft required OEMs to place shortcuts to its pre-installed software while disallowing them to install shortcuts to competitors' software.

Is this what you're talking about? If it is, don't you think it is indeed an anti-competitive practice?

<comment><USER2> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYLBA1Ldq6M>

It's in one of the 10 parts.

There was a misunderstanding about what a desktop shortcut was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It will be interesting to see if Microsoft's behavior changes. I suspect it will get worse now that oversight is gone. Ballmer's the kind of guy who would want to take the lead in shady PR back from Facebook.

Perhaps I will be surprised, though.

<comment><USER5> Unlikely. The company is still under intense scrutiny from the EU to publish API documentation.

It's actually kind of sad, because the company burns thousands of man years writing API docs for things no one actually uses. It's certainly not the only reason, but it's another factor in why they ship so infrequently.

<comment><USER6> It's not ridiculously hard to generate automatic documentation from comments. A healthy side-effect would be that the quality of the code would increase and precisely match the quality of the documentation. If the documentation is lacking, incomplete or wrong, you go and fix the comments in the source code and regenerate the docs.

If a programmer told you that if skipping documenting the source code would allow it to be delivered sooner, would you buy it? What's next? Skipping tests?

In my projects my team routinely generates not only API documentation, but also unit-tests from comments. This way, if the docs are wrong, the tests fail.

<comment><USER7> API documentation isn't the issue. MS has that covered easy. Rather its protocols. And the EU standard is a fair bit higher than say the C standard, because there is no such thing as undefined behavior.

MS must specify what happens in all conditions on all potential configurations of all their systems. I need to look it up but I think its like 50K plus pages of non API docs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Price of Bitcoin Just Topped $1,000 - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/01/03/bitcoin-price-1000-three-year-high/ <comment><USER2> Unlikely to sustain as Chinese gov will announce bitcoin as illegal.

What's ironic is that the bitcoin pumpers have sold the myth that money is being snuck out of China through Bitcoin and some of the biggest miners and exchanges are in China.

Now it has the attention of President Xi and when they come down on bitcoin, they are coming down hard, along with the prices. It's unlikely to recover after this year's drop.

<comment><USER3> I see that you know the future. How much money do you have on a short position?

<comment><USER2> I'm bitter that I got out at 744 USD resulting in net loss of $500 USD. $100 USD was the commission fee to sell around 2 bitcoins worth $1400 USD.

$100 comission folks. On buy AND when I closed my positions.

I don't know how to short bitcoin, poloniex didn't offer it? Curious to know more...wait no...I don't think I want to get into cryptocurrency anymore...will get into trading REAL regulated financial instruments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13297455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13297455)

</comment><comment><USER5> Unless people really start using bitcoins for a lot of things fast I'm worried that bitcoins are just this generation's "tulip mania"

<comment><USER6> [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions- total?timespan...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions- total?timespan=all)

<comment><USER5> How many of those are actual business transactions and how many are people buying/selling bitcoins or just moving coins around? While we are seeing more transactions as far as I know the only people buying with bitcoins are people buying illegal things and bitcoin hobbyists. With gold at the end of the day you have a precious metal and fiat currency you can always use to pay your taxes, but bitcoin has the potential to leave you with nothing of any value if it crashes, just like tulips. I'm not saying it definitely will crash but it's a worrying possibility and I personally would never have any large amount of net worth in bitcoins unless something changed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So basically bitcoin is now used as yet another way for the corrupt to launder money out of China?

<comment><USER3> If your country restricted the way you could use your money, would it be corruption to get around it?</comment></comment>


Einstein Online: Digitized Manuscripts - <AUTHOR> http://www.alberteinstein.info/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was posted about a year ago on HN, which is about when they began the project to digitize his manuscripts. I thought it would be worth posting again, in case anyone missed it, for new people, etc.</comment>


How to Beat Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination

<comment><USER2> I just want to mention that this article was previously discussed back in February: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185174>

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but a lot of us put off reading it until now.</comment></comment>


Science and Religion: an essay by Einstein - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/albert-einstein-solves-the-equation.php

<comment><USER2> Sam Harris offers a great counter argument to the idea that "science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be" in the Moral Landscape. Essentially, many aspects of human emotional wellbeing are counter-intuitive and can be best studied by empirical means (fMRI, psychology studies, etc.). In that way science offers a better alternative to religion in defining societal rules and ethical behavior.

<comment><USER3> This is making the assumption that emotional well-being is the goal of morality, or that even global immediate utilitarianism is preferable to long- term utilitarian values.

Neither of these assumptions appear to be true, at least to me. It may be better for society to have the individual lead a life in which they find no emotional value. Or it may be better for the species to have an entire society live a miserable life. The idea that immediate individual emotional well-being is a metric for morality is dubious at best.

That's not saying that science can't offer something of value: I'm sure it can. It's just that many times scientists in various fields have a tendency to overstate the implications of their research.

<comment><USER4> > Neither of these assumptions appear to be true, at least to me.

It's been my observation that if you ask most people who espouse a particular philosophy couched in "morality", that they claim that following their particular moral code will lead to well being. I've also found that the strong that belief is, the less likely that those followers have actually spent time thinking on the ramifications of their moral code towards that goal. They _think_ they have thought about it a lot, but typically they've just spent brain cycles thinking about the _code_ and how to follow it most closely -- not what following that code leads to.

I'm not disagreeing, just throwing in an observation -- most moral codes claim to lead to well being, but in reality many of them do not actually go there.

This phenomenon seems to create a particularly powerful barrier to rational thought that very few people seem to be able to overcome and can even seem to defeat some individuals.

I've seen friends, family and colleagues fail repeatedly to come to terms with this, they think it's because they haven't applied themselves completely to some arbitrary code so the only solution is to double down again and again.

After decades of doubling down this seems to drive people closer and closer to a kind of insanity...I've seen a few withdraw into fantasy worlds constructed of such powerful cognitive dissonance (arising from the inherent contradictions of their moral code and the observed outcome) that having a normal conversation about simple things, like the weather, become impossible -- they can barely complete a sentence without contradicting themselves or becoming lost and sidetracked about how such and such random topic has some particularly deep meaning in their hyper acute moralist world.

<comment><USER3> _most moral codes claim to lead to well being, but in reality many of them do not actually go there._

Good points. It's a tough subject and, well, it's open to interpretation. That's the problem.

As a counter-example, I'd offer up Mother Theresa, who suffered a lot and had severe doubts both about her faith and her work, yet most outside observers believed she was a moral person. I would also offer up early Christians, which surprised the Romans at being more than willing to tend to people stricken by the plague. To them it was the moral thing to do.

Moving to the stoics, it's a common belief among them that you train yourself to enjoy life more by purposely taking away things from yourself: sleep on the floor, or try skipping a couple of meals.

The point is that there is no point. You can look at this short-term, medium- term, long-term, from the point of view of the individual, community, country, or species. Or you can imagine some ethereal world in which important things don't align with any physicality. Good arguments can be made for each of these viewpoints.

Hell, it may be that the reason things are generally more or less moral than others is that they promote advancement of the species as a whole, in which case to truly understand morality you would have to be able to understand the social, political, and technological dynamics of 4+ billion people interacting with one another. It could simply be incalculable.

Beats me. I just wanted to provide a counter-example. Your point is as good as any.

BTW, I've also observed this you notice as well, and it's very sad. Perhaps a noble goal of science would be to help folks identify these cognitive dissonances, both in themselves and in their work. I have a feeling it's much more prevalent than we imagine. Always easy to find the fault with the other guy -- much tougher to find it in ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Single-page view: [http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/albert- einste...](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/albert-einstein- solves-the-equation.php?page=all)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't really see how this is relevant at HN.

<comment><USER7> Einstein was a great hacker (for some definitions of hacker) and this essay "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

<comment><USER6> Okay, it's always a question of definition when it comes to "one's". :)

I do get your point however, and since you got more up-votes than me here I wont argue with it. I'm still a newbie at HN. :)</comment></comment></comment>


How many animals can one find in a random image? - <AUTHOR> http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/995095 <comment><USER2> A more honest title would have been "Check out our animal shape generator", though I suppose it wouldn't sound as interesting.

They touch on the cool idea of using an image identification neural network to single out desired shapes from an arbitrarily large corpus of semi-random generated shapes. So the way you program your random generator could determine the style, while the identifier network would determine what will be represented.

<comment><USER3> I think your linkbait detector might be evolving to work like the pareidolia phenomenon mentioned in the article (our animal and people detectors' tendency to produce false positives).

This might not be the best title possible, but it's not clickbait-ey, it's just a little vague.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm stealing one of those to use as my avatar.

For some inexplicable reason, I find this earth-shatteringly fascinating. If such a bewildering array of patterns can be found in random noise, maybe all patterns -- our attempts to ascribe order to the universe -- are illusive.

<comment><USER5> This is certainly beautiful! And fascinating!

But be careful about drawing metaphysical conclusions from this. This is only an example of selection bias. Take random noise, filter it and select examples that probably look animal-like to humans. If the classification algorithm is worth its salt, the selected images are bound to look interesting.

A comparison could be made to the Rorschach test; if the patient finds clear images in the ink blot, that is supposed to say something about the patient, not the image, because the image is by construction random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, Whenever I feel like my brain is firing on all cylinders I often think I see old friends in a crowd.

</comment><comment><USER7> the shower of an apartment i rented long ago had old-school spatter tiles with small random shapes remarkably similar to the ones in the article - very close to what's in the links below, although on the ones i recall, the shapes had smoother edges and more small white dots inside the shapes

with the hot water enveloping me in a multi-sensory white noise, i would stand there for time=n finding faces, animals and aliens in the splotches - very zen

[http://thumbs.picclick.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/9W8AAOSwmLlX5...](http://thumbs.picclick.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/9W8AAOSwmLlX5~~u/$/Z-531V-1-Pc- Vintage-Ceramic-Wall-Florida-Tile-_57.jpg)

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/Z-986-1Pc-Vintage-Ceramic-Wall- Flori...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Z-986-1Pc-Vintage-Ceramic-Wall-Florida- Tile-4-3-8-Sky-Blue-Onyx-Textured- Gloss-/351772457457?hash=item51e745b9f1:g:uVUAAOSwRQlXdbDw)

</comment><comment><USER8> Can't you see anything in any image, given any interpretation?

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the most interesting interpretations are usually based on aprioris learned in this universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome ! I also see a lot of living creatures in flames (try to take pictures with a DSLR during 1/2000 second ;) ), including phoenixes, seehorses and riders.

</comment><comment><USER11> No animal shapes are directly visible.

<comment><USER12> I see plenty or rabbits and few birds. I'm sure I could find more if cared to spend more time on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Satire?

<comment><USER14> Why would it be satire?

The question of pattern recognition in random noise is interesting and a legitimate question. Animals (given our propensity to see then) and an interesting subject matter.

<comment><USER15> Generating random noise and then filtering it to "find" patterns seems dubious, at best. Why not just generate animal shapes in the first place?

Starting from a random image it's possible to manipulate and filter it to find literally anything. It doesn't mean there are "animal pictures" in the random data; it means the image has been manipulated to look like it. It's a tautology.

<comment><USER14> In a sufficiently large random image, you'll (probably) find as detailed of a picture of a rabbit as you like.

The question is about how often image recognition (either human or algorithmic) picks up a signal in random noise -- that is, how often we see things that aren't there (or if you prefer, _are_ there, but by chance). Of course you _can_ find anything, the question is with what frequency.

If you've ever spent much time looking at random patterns, you'd know that we're prone to seeing things that aren't there in noise. Modeling that phenomenon is interesting (at least to me).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Facebook insiders building next wave of Silicon Valley firms - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-friends-20120407,0,6838779.story

<comment><USER2> One of the reasons the PayPal mafia is said to have been such a force is that none of them really got rich from PayPal. I wonder if a huge Facebook exit, which will turn many of these guys into deci-billionaires, will affect them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sigh. The Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory is just up the street from my house. I wish it wasn't a fruit stand.

Someday, when I can afford it, I want to buy it and turn it into a startup lab or something.</comment>


Calacanis Waits To Be Sued — But Angels Say They Won't Oblige - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/52761/calacanis-waits-to-be-sued-but-angels-say-they-wont-oblige/

<comment><USER2> Oh. Jason Calacanis. I'd forgotten all about him. Is there any chance you could stop mentioning him so I could completely free up that part of my memory for something else?

<comment><USER3> I'm at the same point as you are, as soon as I hear some trigger names my mind completely loses interest.

One of these weekends I'm going to whip up a grease monkey script to finally purge HN of $(incendiary tech blog/author) once and for all.

edit:

on further thought, I think general black-list of trends/fads/celebrities combined with a higher up-vote point threshhold would be great.

so then if Arrington discovers a perpetual motion machine or 37s gets an investment round of 2.3 hojillion dollars, both would get through. but otherwise the 'drama of the week' would get cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know where Calacanis got the nerve to call these guys out. He can claim what he wants all day, yet he is doing the same exact thing with the demopit at TC50 .

There is absolutely no problem with angels charging to hear your pitch. There maybe a problem with a perfectly capable group of founders to actually pay. People charge for air guitar concerts. I don't see the value of it, I don't see the value of that 2k they spend on demopit as well neither, but that's me.

<comment><USER5> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881666></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you monetize photos? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Can you provide more context for where these photos are? (I'm assuming digital?) Do you have a flickr-esque site? Mostly mobile or web traffic? etc...</comment>


An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120409/woof-rover-com-fetches-3-4-million-to-be-airbnb-for-dogs/?mod=tweet <comment><USER3> To preempt an impending flood of "bubble!" babble:

It may surprise you how sensible this business idea is. As someone who has had to alter vacation plans due to (reluctant) dog ownership: dog boarding is _very_ expensive, and commercial dog boarding facilities are not great, requiring careful reviewing and inspection before selecting; even then, your preferred venues are likely to book up exactly when you want to be out of town.

<comment><USER4> Dog boarding is indeed expensive, but I can't imagine using such a service for my dogs.

It's one thing to get an apartment trashed with a service like AirBnB - <USER2> stuff is usually replaceable, but the last thing I need is for one of my dogs to get sick/injured/lost/worse from some stranger I found on a dog sitting site.

My wife and I are crazy dog owners who treat our dogs like family, but I think we'd rather overpay someone we trust than use a service just to save money.

<comment><USER5> This is like the argument of "I'd never meet people from the internet in real life". Guess what? Those are real people.

The people you trust with your pets are the same people on rover.com.

<comment><USER4> The people I'd trust with my pets probably represent a tiny subset of the people on rover.com. And I am not interested in a trial and error process that risks my dogs' well being to find out who is as good as they represent themselves to be.

It's not like your dogs can talk and rat out the bad people on rover.com, which makes it very hard to trust the reviews. Think about the review criteria. It's based on a subjective "well, my dog seems ok" assessment from an absentee dog owner who has no proof their dog was treated well or exercised while they were away.

<comment><USER4> >>Fair enough. Could you provide some sort of criteria or anecdote describing how you found your current dog sitter?

I'm spoiled and lucky. My breeders (who are also my friends) board our dogs when we need them boarded. It just happens that my breeder is the director of the breed organization for my region, and his wife is the director of the rescue organization for the same breed in my region.

They are basically what all the books/guides tell you what to look for in a good breeder. I'm not sure many people are fortunate to have that type of resource available to them.

I myself would be uncomfortable boarding a stranger's dogs, and that's counting the fact that both my wife and I have certifications in pet first aid. Not all dogs are alike, and things like how well a dog is going to integrate into a boarder's home with existing dog(s). Not all people are equipped to handle manifestations of aggression or dominance from a boarding dog towards other dogs and/or humans. Not all people are careful about what food they leave lying around within reach of a dog. Not all people are careful about how escape-proof their back yards are. Some of the people could use your unaltered dog for unethical breeding while you're gone. Lots of stuff can go wrong. You get the picture.

All I can say is that if you're really attached to your dog(s) like I am, then you should be very discriminating about who you choose to care for your dog. Finding a caregiver online is totally different from other types of services, and should require careful consideration. It's nothing at all like selling a good, meeting people or dating. You're leaving a live being in the hands of someone based on some relatively anonymous and not necessarily informed reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Despite all the people saying this is not a bubble, it is. Small businesses like this would not have got money a while back. This is not a technology business, it has no first mover advantage, it does not require large amounts of capital to make stuff, maybe it will take off as a product category, but without a bubble it would not get $3 million, or indeed want that amount, being the sort of business you would grow organically. The bubble is people throwing cash around, not a bubble in startups, which have always been created.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with almost all of that.

It's not a technology business? Is airbnb? You need a way to connect folks who are willing to board dogs with those who need boarding. How do you do that without technology? The bulletin board at your supermarket isn't going to make it happen.

It may not be particularly _novel_ technology, but that sure as hell doesn't matter.

first mover advantage: I personally have no idea if any other options exist for this. I have no idea if they are a first mover in crowd-source kenneling options. It certainly doesn't matter. We've beat this topic to death in the startup community, first mover advantage is rarely an advantage in the first place.

without a bubble it would not get $3 million: Says who? Since I see no real signs of a bubble (in the traditional sense), I certainly don't agree. It's a relatively small amount of money for a business that is taking on a _big_ market opportunity.

A bubble is not the presence of investment in the first place. It's not even the presence of a _lot_ of investment. Bubbles form when investments (on a large scale) are shoved into increasingly irrational businesses or investment vehicles in order to cash-in on the perceived momentum of a space. When you're investing just because "startups are the place to be right now" then you're looking at a bubble.

Here we're talking about a company with a solid (proven) idea, in a big space, taking on a modest amount of money. I don't see the problem.

<comment><USER6> Airbnb is not a technology business. The internet is simply one of the major marketing and communications channels we have now, that does not mean that all businessess that use it are tech companies.

Dog kenneling businesses did not get millions of pounds in equity investment based on very small revenues and the idea in the past. They self funded and grew. This is a less capital intensive way of providing the same service, so it has even less need for external capital. But it is taking it because the bubble means that its valuation is vastly inflated, because there is so much money chasing startups.

<comment><USER8> I am willing to be many Dog kenneling businesses started with a business plan and a loan from a bank. When you get down to it 3.4 million is not that far above what it would cost to open a mid sized dog kennel and operate it for a while until you can build up a decent customer base in many parts of the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Next up: Baby.com. When you go on vacation and don't want to take your infant child, just check out a few profiles, pick one, and drop your baby off at the stranger's house. All members are community vetted to ensure quality care. Was your experience less than satisfactory? Simply "thumbs down" the user's profile and write a review to let other members know.

<comment><USER10> Do you come from a society where people don't use day care?

This sounds like a potentially great idea for a Facebook app, actually: Install the app, and it searches your social network for local friends-of- friends who have advertised baby-sitting services and have been hired at least once by one of your friends. Then the app helps you to direct-message the sitter, as well as some of the sitter's customers that it knows about.

Surely something like this already exists…?

<comment><USER9> There's a huge difference between someone operating a daycare and "Airbnb for Babies". What you propose could be fairly decent and avoids the "handing your baby over to a stranger" problem, which is something that "Airbnb for Dogs" would need to overcome as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really excited about this. I've had a really hard time finding boarders for my dogs. The going rate seems to be around 60/night per dog here, but tends to include things like aromatherapy, which I'm not particularly interested in. I just want someone to feed, walk, and pet them.

<comment><USER12> I'm inclined to agree. Growing up, we always had to find hotels that would accommodate our dogs since my parents didn't feel right leaving them in kennels, and trustworthy friends were not always available to come over and take care of the dogs in our house.

I imagine this will be a pretty awesome service for those who need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes I have a dog, I know getting where to leave my pet during trips can be a pain, BUT I also know how DANGEROUS it can be to leave it with ANYONE.

This is not a room that can get trashed, and my dog can't tell if the guy or girl is an ass and just leave. My neighbor once left his dog with a woman he thought he could trust, and when he came back from vacation his dog was starved to death and covered in hundreds of ticks.

It had to be put down...

Airbnb horrors stories are too many to risk your dog becoming a cautionary tale in some blog.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Dogs are something that you should have a much deeper connection to than an apartment, there's no way I'd let mine stay with some random person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing that differentiates this from AirBnB (besides being for dogs) is that they are booking locally. This means that once owners find a place that they like, they are likely to try to book the same place multiple times, assuming availability.

Also, it makes it more likely that people might try to make future transactions directly without using the site, unless booking through them provides value beyond discovery.

<comment><USER16> > it makes it more likely that people might try to make future transactions > directly without using the site

If they make life better for the host, this shouldn't be a problem -- "oh hey sally, glad to hear you and spot are doing well, we'd love to have him stay with us. just go online and you can find all our availability and we'll see your reservation right away. call us back if you have any problems."

<comment><USER17> I agree this is a risk in the business model. However, given how annoying it can be to coordinate schedules, an online scheduling feature could be useful enough to bring them back to the site. (And if your preferred sitter isn't available... you'd need the site for a new one.) I guess it depends on the extra perks of the site vs the cost of use ie. the percentage of revenue Rover keeps for themselves. I'd pay $2 just to avoid a chain of emails asking what day/time works best for any calendar event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Spotwag is in the same space. They're differentiated by leveraging your Facebook friends and friends of friends in order to find care takers. Pets are like children. Do you really want to trust them with anyone?

<http://spotwag.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> This is brilliant; both sides of the market exist and are eager to find the other one.

Rover's biggest problem could be that people will happily watch dogs for free / even pay to do so. This is an unusual problem for a market maker (are there any other examples?)

<comment><USER20> Que? I would love to find some sweet old lady to watch my dogs for free rather than pay $25-50/night to board my dog in a box not much bigger than my CPU. I would pay a nice commission to the site to connect me with such a benevolent, non-crazy old lady such as this (if it does in fact exist).

<comment><USER21> _a box not much bigger than my CPU_

Somehow, I don't think any dog would survive in such a box...

<comment><USER22> I'm sure you could do it. The trick would be finding the right frequncy to push them in at so they don't get stuck. I think I read somewhere that the resonating frequency of the average dog was ~2GB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We're definitely excited about this and ready to shake up a giant market. And we're looking for more solid developers.

If you love dogs and want to talk about software (We're all on a Django stack) send us a quick introduction to email@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER15> Another company in the space is dogvacay (<http://dogvacay.com/>) which recently got a million dollars in funding (<http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9299700.htm>)

<comment><USER24> Pretty cool. Example: "2 inground pools, one for people and one for dogs" -$15 night

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, this is awesome. We have two large dogs that we always have trouble finding affordable boarding for when we can't take them with us.

A quick search on this site turned up several options that look superior to the boarding we have been using and at half the price.

Solid business!

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks silly, but it is actually a really solid concept in my view. It may even be better than the airbnb for humans.

</comment><comment><USER27> I remember seeing that there was a project pitched as airbnb for dogs at startup weekend st louis last year, and I thought it was an amazing idea. I guess this isn't those guys, but It's still cool to see the idea taking off.

<comment><USER23> Nope - it's not that, though we did come out of a Startup Weekend! (It was the June 2011 one hosted at Amazon's new buildings in South Lake Union.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great concept - as a dog owner (and father of 2 young kids) always hard to solve both sides of the equation (babysitter + dogsitter, often they are mutually exclusive)... when will it come to the uk... or maybe I will just..

</comment><comment><USER29> Non-native speaker here: It took me quite too long to figure out that the boarding you are all talking about has nothing to with planes *doh

</comment><comment><USER30> And spends all of it on their domain name.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've met a couple of the developers and they seem knowledgeable and excited.

<comment><USER32> I can echo this enthusiastically.

<comment><USER23> Excited? Definitely. Not sure about knowledgeable. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can totally see them getting their a$$e$ sued off for skirting kennel licensing laws. There's a reason that kennels are expensive: they have to take steps to make sure their pet hotels are safe for pets, and more importantly, that they have taken appropriate measures to prevent the transmission of diseases.

Describing this as AirBnB for dogs is very accurate, as it has many of the same problems. It's only a matter of time before someone's dog dies and the first thing the mainstream public hears about this site is a horror story.

This site has some merit, but not $3.4 million worth. Maybe in SV people might be willing to leave their dog with unlicensed strangers. In the rest of America, people will leave their dogs with family, friends, people recommended by their family or friends, or a kennel (in that order).

<comment><USER34> "It's only a matter of time before someone's dog dies and the first thing the mainstream public hears about this site is a horror story."

Unfortunately this is the first thing I thought when reading about this.

The story of the Airbnb-using lady whose apartment was trashed by a bunch of meth-cooks is likely to look absolutely quaint when compared to the first Rover.com horror story.

<comment><USER17> I love this idea. Yet, if I were the founders, this is the issue that would keep me up in the night, not just for what could happen to the pets, but for what could happen if a dog bites a child. I don't think the site is for every pet owner, but with a $4 billion US market in pet services and plenty of pet owners who hate kennels, I think there is sufficient demand to make this a success. It will be interesting to see how they offset the risks.</comment></comment></comment>


McDonald's to introduce bone-in chicken wings across the U.S. next month - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/mcdonald-s-to-add-chicken-wings-across-u-s-next-month.html

<comment><USER2> ...awaiting first lawsuit against McDonald's for choking on a chicken bone in "next month +1 day"

</comment><comment><USER3> More chicken, that's what the U.S. needs.</comment>


You Are Not Your Brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/03/25/alva_noe/index.html

<comment><USER2> Must be dense today, but I don't really see what the arguing was about. That the environment conditions and affects consciousness? There's hardly a single neuroscientist who would object to that.

The analogy with car was really horrible, not to mention the point of it is unclear.

It is understandable however that many people would find the idea of consciousness as product of neural interaction uncomfortable. It strips human of certain degree of divinity. I haven't read the book, but from the article this seems to be author's major concern.

<comment><USER3> "That the environment conditions and affects consciousness?"

That the environment is an integral part of consciousness.

<comment><USER2> This suggests two interpretations for me: one is that the environment directly affects the flow, shape and composition of one's conscious experience (i.e. what I said), the other that the conscious process happens to some degree extra-corporal so to say. Maybe there's some third interpretation that I miss?

<comment><USER3> "one is that the environment directly affects the flow, shape and composition of one's conscious experience"

I think he is saying not just that the environment "affects" consciousness, but is part of what we mean when we use the word "consciousness." In other words, the idea that you can "see" consciousness in an MRI scan is fundamentally in error. You need to also examine the environment and context in which that scan was taken, in order to make any progress in understanding what consciousness is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think by "consciousness" he may mean a different thing than I was expecting. My definition goes back to the classic Cartesian "I think, therefore I am", though I reject his subsequent dualism.

I think a brain-in-a-jar could also realize that he exists; he thinks, after all, if life support is there. Of course, the world may well be necessary for consciousness; maybe a brain-in-a-jar would never realize that he exists. But the world is not involved in the "being conscious", any more than the road is involved in my driving on it.

<comment><USER3> "any more than the road is involved in my driving on it."

The road is absolutely involved in you driving on it. If it was not there, you certainly would not be driving on it.

<comment><USER5> The road does not actively participate in your driving; it is indifferent to it. Were you not driving, the road would still be there.

s/road/world/

s/driving/thinking/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "But the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wrong, it's ugly. <snip> I find this a very sad and ugly picture of our circumstance. Now contrast that view with a sense of ourselves as engaged in the flow, responsive to the things going on around us, part of the world. It's a very different picture."

So...is he arguing that brain-as-self is wrong because it's untrue, or wrong because it's depressing? I've always understood myself as a being within a brain, using my body for I/O. I agree that on its face it's a somewhat alienating concept, and I'd love to believe otherwise, but Noë did nothing to convince me it's untrue. Another example:

"The dominant view in neuroscience today represents us as if we were strangers in an alien environment. It says that we go about gathering information, building up representations, performing calculations and making choices based on that data. But in reality, when we get up in the morning we put our feet on the floor and start to walk. We take the floor for granted and the world supports us, houses us, facilitates us and enables us to carry on whatever our tasks might be. That kind of fluency, that kind of flow, is, I think, a fundamental feature of our lives. Our fitting into the world is not an illusion created by our brains, it's a fundamental truth about our nature. That's what I mean by home sweet home."

I don't understand how he can assert that the process he describes has no part in the way we start our day. We may not consciously decide whether the floor is something we should walk on every day, but that doesn't mean it's not a subconscious or instinctual decision that takes place within the brain. It seems to me all he's advocating is a change in perspective, suggesting that we are comfortable beings in a familiar "home," but this does nothing to shed light on the nature of consciousness. Of course consciousness is an emergent process that rises out of mind, body, and environment, but if it doesn't take place within the brain, then where is it?

<comment><USER3> "Of course consciousness is an emergent process that rises out of mind, body, and environment,"

This, I think, is his point.

"but if it doesn't take place within the brain, then where is it?"

My guess is he might say asking "where" consciousness takes place is a meaningless question.

<comment><USER5> I take his point, but I think you can agree with it and still treat consciousness as something that takes place within the brain. I guess the disagreement is over whether body, brain, and environment are all literally parts of consciousness, or whether environment interpreted through the body is an input to a consciousness process that takes place within the brain. Noë doesn't make much of a case for his position, he only says it's a more comforting way to go about things. Well that's fine, but that doesn't say much about whether it's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He is doing what all second tier philosophers do: fiddling with semantics.

<comment><USER7> Oh, burn!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alva Noe has simply demonstrated that he is uncomfortable with science and incapable of logical thought with regards to the brain. Neuroscience probably invalidates his career.

</comment><comment><USER9> Since when is reductionism a bad thing?

<comment><USER10> Reductionism is a bad thing when you reduct away useful or necessary information.

<comment><USER9> Then you are slitting your wrists with Occam's razor. Nobody ought to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I highly recommend reading "Concsciousness Explained" by Dan Dennett. After reading that it will be very easy to see how one's self can be identical to one's brain.

</comment><comment><USER7> So what's his proof?

</comment><comment><USER12> I AM my brain. All of my experiences happen within the physical construct that floats in the calcium construct of my skull. The physical processes of my neurons happen within the same physics that allow everything from quarks to quasars to function. There is a physical process, not yet fully described, that will describe how experience is formed and perceived. We're still getting the data, and are working on the answers.

<comment><USER13> I've always liked the "brain is to self as guitar is to music" analogy. Sensory input is the guitar player. The monkey represents sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You are a product of your environment. --Clement Stone</comment>