Professor Brian Cox clashes with Australian climate sceptic - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-37091391 <comment><USER2> Video and transcript are here: [http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm](http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4499754.htm)

It's rare to see such a civil debate on this issue. I was impressed with everyone except for Shadow Minister Linda Burney who went straight to personal anecdote.

Minister Greg Hunt and mathematician Lily Serna had very reasonable positions for lay people: that they accepted the advice of the experts and wanted to find solutions.

Scientist Brian Cox was his usual charismatic self but did get flustered by the end. Skeptic Malcolm Roberts was composed and polite and clearly had a considered opinion.

The meat of the debate was a bit weak. Brian Cox had a cherry-picked temperature graph (land temperature). I have no idea why he rejected vehemently the claim that CO2 rise comes after temperature rise in the long- term record -- maybe he thought the claim was about current times? He was plain wrong on this. He was right to point out the potential damage from climate change in many areas.

Malcolm Roberts was weak in cherry-picking the Central England temperature record. He lost the audience in saying "NASA" was untrustworthy, when he could probably have pointed to James Hansen's record of activism and the close network revealed in the Climategate emails.

The key scientific point was whether the climate models have been validated or refuted. No real information was presented here, just assertion on either side.

<comment><USER3> Thoroughly convincing then for a skeptical public? What do they deduce from not seeing Cox trounce Roberts?

<comment><USER4> We should find better representatives for science than Cox

<comment><USER5> You use the word 'science' like it's an ideal and not a practical set of techniques used to discover natural truths and convince each other of them.

<comment><USER6> Well, Cox is Professor for Public Engagement in Science [1] so perhaps twelvechairs feels he's not very good at his job.

[1] [https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/01/professor-for- public-e...](https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/01/professor-for-public- engagement-brian-cox/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Yes this is my point. Im surprised its apparently not clear to some

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sadly Brian Cox stepped into the common pitfalls (like mentioning "consensus") when arguing with climate sceptics. You can shut down any climate sceptic with two points which can be easily measured and verified in any laboratory:

* We know the absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule to be true

* We know the first law of thermodynamics to be true

Hence global warming. Finished. Arguments like the fact that some models can not accurately predict the exact amount of heat oceans can absorb or that the NASA data might be biased are suddenly irrelevant.

<comment> adam-a I would love to read some accessible information on this - how the models can be so trustworthy. I sort of reluctantly accept climate change, and I generally support environmentally positive politics, for a host of reasons. But when I see graphs like this[1] from the IPCC I can't help but think that predicting 100 years in the future from 100 years of data is never going to be very reliable. What kind of validation have these models had? Surely they are not just fitted to the past 100 years?

1: [https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-...](https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure- spm-5.html)

<comment><USER8> _A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming_ is a history of climate models and data, published by MIT Press. [https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics- Infras...](https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics- Infrastructures/dp/0262518635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471439919&sr=8-1&keywords=a+vast+machine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Debates like this make me realize we as a species have little hope.

Brexit, Trump, Climate Change just shows he who shouts loudest and repeats the most lies gets attention and support.

<comment><USER10> But on the panel, it was the skeptic that was made out to be the crazy person. The audience (which admittedly skews towards more educated, political-left) was clearly behind the majority of the panel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The guy's also a sovereign citizen nutter. Here's a letter he wrote to the prime minister at the time, Julia Gillard. Or rather, The Woman Julia Eileen: Gillard., acting as The Honourable JULIA EILEEN GILLARD.

> [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-05/one-nation-senator- > den...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-05/one-nation-senator-denies- > link-to-sovereign-citizens/7695442)

He's a Queensland Senator now. Awesome.

<comment><USER12> What.

 _" I, Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul has not seen or been presented with any material facts or evidence that I, Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts., the living soul am not living in a free and equal society or should pay for it in some further spurious tax levied supposedly on carbon dioxide, and believe that none exist."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it be hard for a climate scientist to present the numerical evidence in something akin to a Jupyter notebook?

So, something that says

"Here's how we collected the data, and here it is"

"Here's some transformations on it"

"If we're right about xyz, this bunch of statistical tests will turn out like so..."

I tend to give the experts the benefit of the doubt, also on this issue. But everything I hear in the media is simply "consensus" vs "conspiracy".

I actually would like to understand how the data works, and how the models work.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't work that way. Climate change is so politicised that pretty much every source of information is biased. It is impossible to get a clear picture. Politics is absolutely toxic to science. Many people would like to establish something like a world government by leveraging issues like climate change. Even though we really have no idea about the severity and magnitude of the problems ahead of us. I personally think scientists are exaggerating massively; here we have climatologists who cannot even predict correctly whether it rains next week, yet they make predictions about how in 20 years the climate is such and such.

<comment><USER15> > here we have climatologists who cannot even predict correctly whether it > rains next week, yet they make predictions about how in 20 years the climate > is such and such.

Consider observing a forest road in an area with lots of rabbits. You can't accurately predict how many rabbits will dart across the road in the next hour, but you can — based on long-term observations — predict roughly how many rabbits will cross that road in a year, and based on the empirical evidence of bunnies counted conclude that the number furry creatures moving from one side to another is increasing or decreasing.

Symptoms versus trends. The latter can be predicted with some degree of accuracy.

<comment><USER14> You raised a good example with rabbit population. Consider this:

[http://fractalfoundation.org/OFCA/predatorprey.jpg](http://fractalfoundation.org/OFCA/predatorprey.jpg)

Nobody would ever dare to fit any of the two populations with a straight line, yet they do that with temperature data with barely any explanation for the choice of a linear function.

<comment><USER16> Read and understand the IPCC reports, and then we'll talk.

<comment><USER14> Thank you, I will.

For those who are interested:

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

[http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/](http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This needs more upvotes. Like creationism, global warming denial is one of the myths that has strong support on the 'developed' USA yet no basis in actual proof.

The thing is: this issue is vital to our survival (while creationism isn't)

<comment><USER18> Where do I fall in? I believe in climate change. I don't believe climate change is the result of only humans. And if climate change turns out to be bullshit, I'm glad it's being a driver for alternative energy sources, better production of goods, more environmentally friendly packaging, etc. I just believe the cause being humans is over hyped and the fact that we renamed it from global warming to climate change because the models didn't support global warming....

<comment><USER17> What caused it then? Volcanoes? please, farming, livestock and fossil fuels produce much more quantity of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide than anything else? whose fault is that? fertilized plants and Cows? but who mass produces those? Humans.

And can we really take the risk of betting that it's not us?

Yet, you are fundamentally right, there are also other punctual events that contribute to it, but decisively that the major factor is us.

This is like the leaded gasoline incident in the 60s or 70s, now everyone sees how obvious it is but all of the white noise built by special interest groups that control one major party in the US makes it look like it's feasible for it not to be a thing.

It isn't

When Brian Cox talks about consensus, he is not talking about consensus among the average Joe or Jane, he is talking about the scientific community, the ones that are experts in the matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is counterproductive. All he's doing is legitimising the shill's position by debating him on TV.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised we don't have flat Earth debates on TV yet.

</comment><comment><USER21> "I brought the graph, right." is the new tableflip. I also have no tolerance for science skeptics. Enough.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's "NASA", BBC. Not "Nasa".

<comment><USER23> Lowercasing of acronyms is a common stylistic choice made by UK media to aid readability.

"Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."

<comment><USER22> I see. Fair enough, I thought it was odd that it was repeated more than once. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "By who? NASA? The people the… Hang on a minute. No, no, see this is quite serious. But can I just – just one thing. NASA, NASA… The people that landed men on the moon?"

Can anyone explain to me what is happening in this bit?

It's either:

a) Brain Cox doesn't know that NASA is responsible for GISTEMP and is completely incredulous at the mention of NASA (The people that landed men on the moon?), as if they aren't relevant to the discussion.

or

b) Brian Cox is aware that NASA maintains one of the major surface temperature datasets, but thinks that it is completely beyond the pale to question any of the decisions (adjustments, station selection) that go into the construction of GISTEMP, because they are NASA (The people that landed men on the moon!!!).

So which is it? Is he clueless, or just a dick?</comment>


Update to Ask HN: What to do if I'm about to lose my job to mental health issues - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/raw/RdLGZpSC <comment><USER4> Just to save readers a couple of clicks, here's the original Ask HN to which this is a follow-up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17087155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17087155)

</comment><comment><USER5> > My savings had already been wiped out by a car accident

I am always amazed when I see statements like this coming from people in highly-paid professions. It seems like the OP has already figured out that financial insecurity contributes a LOT to stress and can force us into very sub-optimal decisions. Props to them for connecting those dots.

I hope everybody reading this post takes a moment to review their financial readiness for different levels of calamity. If you don't have an emergency fund, make some small adjustments to pile up the cash ASAP.

<comment><USER6> Disability insurance too.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, this advices is potentially too shallow to be useful, as (private/individual) DI is tricky.

For it to be useful long-term, you'll need to find a policy with both guaranteed renewal and guaranteed coverage increase as your income rises, before any chronic conditions appear (or are diagnosed) or things like car accidents occur and become pre-existing conditions.

There are other details that make shopping for a policy tedious/tricky, such as differences in "own occupation" coverage, post-disability inflation protection not being standard, and the fact that you probably want to choose a company that'll be solvent 40 years later (since there's no pre-existing condition exclusion-exception portability like for health insurance, AFAIK).

Meanwhile, while you're employed, those payments, which can be $50-$100/mo post-tax, may be a total waste, since your employer is likely paying for group disability coverage, and no (reasonably-priced) policy will double-pay. Usually, anything you get from Social Security (or any state-mandated) disability will also reduce the benefit. That is, the total from all sources will be capped by the most generous policy at somewhere around 60% of pre- disability income.

The market seems to be geared toward self-employed professionals, such as dentists, rather than the typical tech worker.

All that said, here's my advice: If your employer offers you a "tax option" or "imputed income" on the disability insurance premium, choose it (and if they don't offer it, ask for it). Paying the extra few dollars per paycheck in tax will mean that 60%-of-pre-disability-income won't be subject to income tax and would actually be close to a total income replacement.

<comment><USER8> _The market seems to be geared toward self-employed professionals, such as dentists, rather than the typical tech worker._

AFAIK private disability insurance folks _love_ "typical" tech workers because they're less likely to malinger than most self-employed professionals, to a degree which makes getting private long-term disability insurance a bit of a challenge if one e.g. runs a software consultancy or SaaS business.

(FYI for folks who might find themselves in that situation at some point: I got Petersen International Underwriters [https://www.piu.org/](https://www.piu.org/) to do a policy for me, despite having at the time a "quite complicated" story on the financial front [0]. They don't sell insurance directly to consumers so one has to use a broker; insubuy.com was adequate for the very modest needs of moving information from my emails into their inbox.)

[0] A major risk in underwriting folks for disability insurance is moral hazard; if malingering on insurance is preferable to going to work, some people might be tempted to do so, and since long-term insurance policies might last until current facts about someone's business/career are no longer true, you have to make a best guess on "OK, does it look like their $200k+ income will continue, or will they eventually face the choice 'Shut down business and get a job at Target _or_ leave the workforce and bill us for $10k a month.'"

<comment><USER7> > AFAIK private disability insurance folks _love_ "typical" tech workers

It's been more than a few years since I've looked, but any love didn't, then, translate to a diversity of products, transparency in pricing (e.g. ease of obtaining quotes), and/or significantly lower premiums (or discounts for periods of double coverage).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad you are getting the help you need.

Michael Jordan has a coach. Programmers and other brain workers have therapists.

It's so obvious to me that having a neutral person who helps you track and set goals, track your moods, and help you process work relationships and events has a huge benefit.

But people ignore this! They are in this macho culture where you need to be self reliant and going to a therapist is weird and weak.

So instead of getting help, they place the burden on their friends and family and co-workers to tolerate and correct their shitty behavior.

Your friends or wife is not your therapist. They are not trained, are not impartial, and wouldn't you rather be having a good time then forcing them to listen to your constant whining?

I'm diagnosed bipolar and have gotten things under control with the help of a therapist WITHOUT medication. It's a powerful experience and a cheat-code to productivity.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations OP and thank you for sharing your inspiring update.

When I read your post it sounded like you were being a little too hard on yourself. Something that helps me is instead of thinking about how far there still is to go, thinking about how far you've come so far. Or as Adam Grant says:

"After reaching a goal, raising the bar often increases motivation but decreases happiness.

To enjoy your success, imagine how your past self would see your current achievements.

If you knew 5 years ago what you'd accomplish now, how proud would you have been?"

You're doing great. Thanks for sharing again and keep it up!!

</comment><comment><USER11> > My post 4 months ago is why I'm here today. It's the singular action that > pushed me to talk to my work, to talk to a therapist, and eventually to talk > to my parents. The truth is it's easy to hole yourself up when you reach a > dark enough place, but sometimes staying silent is its own torture.

Huge props to you for stepping out and sharing what you were going through. If only this was more commonplace for others in your situation.

At the end of the day, we all deserve to be happy, and I hope you reach that point very soon through careful management of all things "life".

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want some help getting your financial life back on track, the folks in /r/personalfinance are pretty understanding and supportive. If you lay out your budget and situation, they can help you come up with a plan, and having a plan to get back on your feet financially will probably have all kinds of good benefits for your general mental wellbeing.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm so happy to hear that things are looking up for you. I remember when you posted the first time, and I was really hoping things would work out.

As someone prone to depression throughout their entire life, I have to agree that a bad job situation can make a depressive-leaning person's life really bad. I've been going through similar things for the last few months.

I think this is also pushing me to get my own therapist lined up again, as it's been a while. Like you, I know that there are some things I need help with, and there's no shame in that. But god, finding mental health professionals is so hard! Just don't slide back, it's so easy to do, and it can really hurt for a long time.

<comment><USER14> I'd go further than that. A bad job situation can make _anyone 's_ life really bad. If you spend more than 50% of your waking hours somewhere, how could it not?

Although my situation was not anything like as bad, I went through a similar situation two years ago. The two things I wish in retrospect I'd done differently are (1) get therapy sooner and (2) get out sooner. The feeling I had the day I quit that employer is one of the best feelings I've ever had, even though it was a place I thought I loved. I'm still doing the same job at a different employer, but the difference is night and day.

At least in my past situation, a huge part of the issue was in recognising that I was in that situation in the first place. These types of workplace issues have a nasty habit of creeping up slowly, day by day, week by week, so that you don't notice them. I kept thinking "it's just this current situation around [x] thing", when really it was the whole environment.

Add even a small amount of home/personal life stress on top of that (dealing with very young or teenage kids, moving house, illness, money worries, relationship problems, ...) and it can be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I really wish good therapy (with a therapist of your choice) was something which health insurance/the NHS paid for (at least in the UK, it doesn't). I hate to think of how many people in these types of situations are put off by the cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well done.. Transitions out of mental illness are personal and difficult - telling your story may help. If you are still suffering you are right you _need_ to get more talking help as that, IMO, will be the key to long term recovery. And I mean long term.

'Shoring up' for the long term is the best you can do for yourself on a practical level now - work, earn, save, clear debts, that's the practical steps.

Medically get all the help you can - be it meds, therapy, new ideas..

Maybe get some new ideas happening for you too? On a philosophical front I mean, I find episodes of depression come with a big slab of "what's the point" and have thus sometimes found (but this is very individual I guess) that exposure to new stuff - meditation, buddhism, books/reflections on philosophy etc helped in the sense of 'seeing a bigger picture'. Getting 'out of oneself' type activities are helpful during episodes IMO as it reduces (a little) that introversion which seems to happen and be quite damaging when in the depth of depression.

I had two years out of work _after_ depression and substance abuse treatment (I managed to keep my job during this period whilst barely functioning for a couple of years, more due to bad HR management than anything I did, i.e. inertia/incompetence on their part). It took 12 months of the out of work time just to get recovery up to a level where I felt I'd be capable of working again, and then another 9 months to actually get a gig..

It's a long road, without light sometimes it feels.. but it will pass if you ensure you keep the minimal practicals together and _ensure_ you get outside help to deal with what's going on in your head. You are absolutely not alone. Take care and good luck! S

</comment><comment><USER16> Great to see that things seem to have turned around for the better for you.

No one deserves to ever feel deppressed, I say this confidently, having been swallowed by depression once and succesfully coming out to tell its woefull tales, it's great to see another person escape from its cold, lonely, and sad clutch.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Fortunately, I had been searching for work before that day, my therapist had > helped me realize, part of my depression was from feeling the job was > inadequate. It involved minimal effort and had failed to fulfill what I was > looking for when I left my last position.

This is part of my issue as well.

But most importantly, thank you for your story. (It seems that someone is cutting some onions at my desk, either that or a lot of dust in my office.)

Never underestimate the power of sharing your story.

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kudos for the courage of writing this up.

Just one thing that occurred to me. Reconsider the necessity to find a _good_ therapist. It can be so immensely helpful.

Best of luck on your ventures and your health!

<comment><USER19> "Reconsider the necessity to find a good therapist."

When I had depression I found this a very difficult and frustrating task that was depressing by itself. I don't want to say that most therapist are bad but they are humans and it's very hard to find one that matches well with the patient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congratulations on clawing your way back. After reading about the "Zunger Shock Sieve" [0], I've started building up my emergency funds. In the US, health issues are unfortunately a common path to financial distress.

[0] [https://shift.newco.co/2017/12/04/your-financial-shock- wealt...](https://shift.newco.co/2017/12/04/your-financial-shock-wealth/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not presently going through exactly what you went through - but I can relate on many levels.

I've been on and off anti-depressants since I was sixteen, and I'm 33 now. My self-confidence has been basically destroyed, and I've kind of been just a shell of a human being ever since middle school. I've never figured myself out, and I've never felt like I've had time to, or the space and energy.

I've been in and out of therapy, I've been to rehab, and I've seen lots of professionals - psychiatrists and therapists.

My current psychiatrist is helping me a lot - but it also seems like it's two steps forward, and three backwards. During the spring, I gained a lot of confidence, and felt like I was back on track, and it only took one thing going haywire in my plans, for everything to once again fall off the rails.

Like you - I finally broke down to my parents (who have been amazingly supportive over the years) - and this isn't the first time I've broken down in front of them - but hopefully it's the last.

I've decided that the career path I've sought for myself, which is the line of work they both worked in, isn't for me.

My main goal right now, which I'm going to need their help with (because at this point accomplishing basic tasks like opening my email / checking my physical mail - are terrifying to me), is to sell the house I purchased several years ago. This thing has been a boat anchor, and has helped keep me stuck by requiring a certain level of monthly income.

After that, I hope to quit my job and set out across the country to do some soul searching. Hopefully via the house sale and savings I've accrued, I can keep myself afloat for a while, while I pursue new opportunities.

My goal is to enter a new industry, that is arguably more rigorous than the one I'm leaving, but I feel like my current position has contributed quite a bit to my deterioration in mental health, and that it's not what I love - <USER2> even want - to do.

Ultimately, I keep myself going by remembering the alternative is not an option. I try to think that things will get better, but it's difficult at times. The one thing I can always rely on fortunately (and this isn't true for many), is family and my close friends. Networking is very important, and so is remembering that everyone, including you and me, deserves to be happy.

<comment><USER22> Best of luck to you as you make these changes.

Your journey is yours alone to make, so don't take this advice but rather an anecdote.

When I was able to better understand what I valued in life (which is also constantly changing) I was able to find a lot more peace in my day to day life. I do what I value. I avoid what I do not. Much of what I value comes with challenges, pain, and difficulty, but because I value it the friction proves beneficial in the long wrong. I eschew things I don't value (social media), but constantly reevaluate and challenge myself.

Good luck. I hope you find what you're seeking.

<comment><USER21> Thank you!

I really do value that feedback. I have also stopped using almost all forms of social media. I can't drop twitter - but that is because I value a lot of the content I read there (mostly related to game development).

I've also learned that I need to focus on what is important to my health, and less, on what is important to others.

These are hard lessons for some individuals to learn. It's amusing - <USER3> very much of my behavior is self-centered.

I think the key lesson I've learned throughout my continual growing process, is that thoughtless compassion and service to others, grants you the ability to also be compassionate towards yourself.

Living in your problems, hating life, focusing on negatives all the time, wraps your head around your own negativity and dissatisfaction with life.

It's a fine balance that needs to be maintained, and it's easy to slip up in that regard, but I think it's also critical in healing and recovery.

And even then - living this and thinking it, are two totally different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Antidepressants really do help. Especially for getting out of the lowest lows. Then, when you are out of the lowest lows, the other things (like talk therapy) have a chance to be effective.

<comment><USER24> I absolutely hate anti-depressents but there is some truth to this statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I've been depressed, here's what worked for me.

1) long walks in nature 2) eat well 3) sleep (If necessary get a prescription for trazodone, they're cheap $7.50 for 90 pills) 4) antidepressant meds

<comment> m-i-l _> "When I've been depressed, here's what worked for me. 1) long walks in nature"_

Interestingly "Doctors in Shetland are to start prescribing birdwatching, rambling and beach walks in the Atlantic winds to help treat chronic and debilitating illnesses for the first time. From Friday [5 Oct 2018], doctors working in the 10 GP surgeries on the islands will be authorised by the archipelago's health board, NHS Shetland, to issue 'nature prescriptions' to patients to help treat mental illness, diabetes, heart disease, stress and other conditions." [0]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/05/scottish- gps...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/05/scottish-gps-nhs- begin-prescribing-rambling-birdwatching)

<comment><USER14> Yes. I would add that it's not just "in nature" that's important (and it is) but also "walks" \- physical activity, even light physical activity like walking, can be a huge help to some people in combating stress and depression (but of course, everyone's different so these aren't completely universal).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had a psychotic break from reality while employed a few years ago. This was mostly due to a long term viral infection...

It sounds like you can barely work. Is it possible for you to get a easier job or one that's more physical? Taking care of the bare minimums like food and shelter are priority number one. Everything else comes second.

Therapy and meds can go a long way but you'll still face living with a disability.

The outlook is bleak unless you can provide for yourself and at least enjoy eating.

I recommend cats and cspan.

</comment><comment><USER27> Keep seeing your therapist along this journey - it will help you 'take a time out' to think about your situation and validate your progress.

1\. Break your fall.

Depression, and any 'invisible' illness, are highly distracting. Like trying to getting an A while getting electric shocks during every class and study. It can be done (not by me, but by some I guess) but it is really really hard. You'll miss obvious problems, solutions, and obvious signs that act as cues at other times. You need to turn down the voltage a bit.

First, quick fixes. These are antidepressants. They are a good temporary measure but not more than 3 maybe 6 months. Depression kills all forward progress, and antidepressants can release some of this pressure temporarily - freeing you to begin moving to long term solutions. That is really all antidepressants are good for.

2\. Find out-of-the-box effective solutions to your depression - immediately.

First, I have been helped by western herbals (St. John's Wort is proven long term effective but takes time to get going), ayurvedic Indian herbal treatments (start with Ashwagandha), Chinese herbs, gut related bacteria and probiotics (strong ones like kombucha every day - not gentle 'nudges' like yogurt).

Focus on the medicine vs the doctor/treatment. Dr visits can take a month or more and are expensive - your health can't wait. Focus on the herbs themselves vs visiting the ayurvedic practitioner, acupuncturist, or Chinese Herbalist. Via the internet, I stole bits and pieces of the most effective treatments in non-western medicine and cobbled together my own solutions.

Second, Yoga exercise routines, and add the Yoga mindfulness stuff later if you can (but at least the exercise routines). You must do this. Yoga is proven and will help you - but you can't stop there (and will find it hard to start if you have not broken your fall yet). Exercise and treatment must always be combined.

Third, mindfulness. Know you will make it through. You may not know how yet, but you will make it. Fake it 'til you make it is a proven strategy - but not enough alone.

3\. If you do not have the ability to share your focus with your job (balancing your health treatment and your job) get a quick fix (antidepressant) going right away to 'turn down the voltage'. And let whatever happens to you job - happen. Panic and anxiety about a job you may be losing is waste of your very precious and limited resources (you may even find your wrong about your fears!).

Remember your solution order -

1\. Break you fall (quick fix) and turn down the voltage a little.

2\. Come up with long term solutions/strategies to turn it down a lot, and keep it down.

3\. And finally - focus on your job last. Your good health will do much more for your job and life than your very best but highly distracted efforts can ever do.

Best of luck - I will be watching for your updates.

You have a chronic problem - you must treat it like one.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good luck and I hope you continue to thrive and feel well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Zoloft man. It has helped me so much

</comment><comment><USER30> Thank you for sharing your story

</comment><comment><USER31> When I read stuff like this I'm so glad to live in a country (France) that doesn't let people without any money when they're fired or have serious medical issues. Nation-wide solidarity costs little to each person but gives a lot to those who need it. So sad that our public unemployment and health systems are getting destroyed piece by piece by successive governments (the current one is particularly agressive).

<comment><USER32> >Nation-wide solidarity costs little to each person

Federal income tax in France is greater than 45%[1]. There's nothing cheap about that. I much prefer the freedom of saving my own money, especially when working in something as lucrative as tech.

1.[https://tradingeconomics.com/france/personal-income-tax- rate](https://tradingeconomics.com/france/personal-income-tax-rate)

<comment><USER33> Wow, that's actually a great deal. The top marginal tax rate in the state of California this year is roughly 65% (and that's excluding employer contributions).

13.3% of all income (State) +

39.6% of all income (Federal) +

5.3% of all income (Federal double tax on State Tax - thanks, Donny) +

6.2% of all income (Social Security - Individual)

=====

64.4%

Then of course your employer pays another 6.2% of gross earnings on your behalf for social security too. And of course, in tech, your employer has to pay for your healthcare too, an average of $19,616, which also actually comes out of your paycheck. [1] Feel free to work out what percentage of your gross earnings that amounts to and tack that on top also. Good thing we've got the freedom to save the remaining ~33% while people go without basic health cover and social services.

In years I earn a lot, I'd actually be better off in Canada.

[1] [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2018-employer- health...](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2018-employer-health- benefits-survey/)

<comment><USER34> You're double counting the "Federal double tax." Also, the marginal Social Security tax is $0, since it phases out long before you hit those marginal rates.

That being said, the reason France can offer robust services while California cannot, even though tech worker taxes are similar between the two countries, is because France taxes _everyone_ that way. In France, the 41% tax bracket (just a little lower than the top bracket of 45%) kicks in at 71,000 Euros (about $80,000). The U.S. federal rate in that bracket is 25%. Then there is the 20% VAT paid by even the lowest income people.

<comment><USER33> Yep, you're absolutely right, I did double-count the double-tax. Your comment had me re-run the numbers, and this is what I came up with. You are correct that Social Security goes down to $0.

Medicare contributions have no cap, and are 1.45% by both the employer and employee and the 0.9% Obamacare surcharges on the employee only portion (until 2035) kicks in over $250,000 also. Therefore, social insurance contributes a marginal 3.79%

So, the numbers to the best of my knowledge should have been:

13.3% of all income (State) +

39.6% of all income (Federal, including the Donny double-tax) +

2.34% of all income (Medicare, Obamacare - Employee Contributions) +

1.45% of all income (Medicare - Employer Contributions)

=====

56.69%

Then you still have to deal with the fixed portions, the $19,616 [1] in healthcare premiums, the $7,347 you'd have paid in social security tax and the $7,347 your employer would have paid in social security tax. [2]

[1] [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2018-employer- health...](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2018-employer-health- benefits-survey/)

[2] [https://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/research- topics/managing-...](https://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/research- topics/managing-your-taxes/payroll-taxes/employers-responsibility-for-fica- payroll-taxes)

<comment><USER35> None of that is on all income; base Medicare is only on labor income, the Medicare surtax is on either (specifically, the lesser of) labor income or net investment income above certain thresholds, and the rest is on "normally taxed" income (but not, e.g., long-term capital gains, or gifts and inheritances—which, even when beyond the enormous exempt quantities, aren't taxed as normal income for the recipient, but to the giver or estate, and in California at a lower combined maximum state and federal rate than normal income tax, 40% federal and no state.)

<comment><USER33> And NSO stock options, which is likely very relevant to this audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> CBD helped me significantly.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why don't you see a doctor, and get prescribed some meds?

<comment><USER38> That was answered in the post:

> _I 've put off finding a new therapist and psychiatrist because of the same > catch-22 that was affecting me earlier, being depressed removing my > motivation, but writing this post and reliving the last few months has > reminded me that nothing good will come of continuing that._

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm glad the therapist worked for you. For me, my stance on therapy is that it's bullshit tried and true. I was in therapy for 1 year before realizing that I was going in there and making up problems I was having. I had 4 therapist in that time. The first 2 were actually horrible, and it was basically a sweatshop getting you in and out.

Basically, they sit there and listen, and let you talk about things. Giving you advice? No way.

Being an authoritative person? No. I was not able to fully accept that the empathy therapist show is FAKE, it's not real. You're literally paying them to sit there and listen to you.

I wasn't able to get over the fact that they don't care about you or your life, at the end of the day it's a business.

For instance, let's say one day you lose your insurance? All of sudden your therapist isn't going to help you anymore, etc.

It's all bullshit.

<comment><USER40> I think it being a business doesn't preclude their empathy. I'm sure most therapists care about their patients.

I care about the software projects I'm on, and really want them to succeed, and my clients to gets lots of value out of those projects. But I'm not going to work for them for free.

If you want to talk to someone for free there are friends, family and acquaintances. But that comes with its own set of obligations. If every time I saw a friend I complained about the same issues over and over again I wouldn't have many friends.</comment></comment>


Daydream Labs: Teaching Skills in VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/daydream-labs-teaching-skills-vr/ <comment><USER3> "no matter what warning we flashed if someone virtually touched a hot steam nozzle, they frequently got too close to it in the real world, and we needed a chaperone at the ready to grab their hand away. "

Obviously they need to "die" in game, a few times starting the whole thing all over from the beginning and they'll never "burn" their hands again. I wish I could tell the author this....

<comment><USER4> > And no matter what warning we flashed if someone virtually touched a hot > steam nozzle, they frequently got too close to it in the real world

Yep. I don't think they were trying hard enough to make the experience unpleasant and memorable. If they didn't get further than flashing warnings with various sizes and wordings then they were a little premature in this conclusion.

And the comment about hand tracking is odd in that they haven't even acknowledged the existence of Leap Motion - which would work fairly well in this scenario (less of the occlusion issues that prevent it being a good general purpose VR controller.

<comment><USER5> >Leap Motion

it's really crappy for VR. You need LOS to the base station, and obscured digits don't show up. Also, the range sucks.

<comment><USER4> They make a mount for sensor that puts it on the front of the headset and the software corrects for headset position.

The newer model Leap Motion has 180 degree field of view so essentially - <USER2> your hands are in front of you then it can track it.

The range only needs to be as long as your arms.

Some hand positions are self-occluding but this is a problem less often than you'd expect.

Direct sunlight used to be a problem because of IR interference but this might have improved (I haven't tried the it since last October).

<comment><USER5> I own a Vive headset; I do not have a leap motion.

The community opinion on leap seems to be negative. I was basing my argument on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will be extremely useful for teaching how to use 'always on' equipment like big electron microscopes where the cost of training someone is enormous if you have to give up time where the equipment could be running.

<comment><USER7> One of my 'someday' projects is a virtual electron microscope ... so much with TEM becomes easier with hands-on experimentation, but that often isn't practical (or even safe for the instrument without someone present to guide you).

Trouble is, something like that requires a fair amount of domain knowledge to code, and the intersection of people who can code and who also understand electron microscopy sufficiently well isn't that large... but considering the cost of the instruments, it'd surely be worth doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is funny. All I would've thought you'd need is a score, which you'd increment if you get a shot of espresso out quickly, or decrement if you touch a hot pipe. Let people figure out the rest!

<comment><USER9> Make it boring. Touch the hot pipe and you have to call an ambulance, wait for the ambulance, go to hospital, wait hours for a doctor (there are more urgent cases...) get bandaged, have the cost of your medical care deducted from your wages etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have a link to an academic-like paper? Would be interested to see the details of the experiment (i.e % improvement with VR). We think so much about teaching computers it's interesting that we still could have room for improvement figuring out how to better teach other humans. Could we get 2x, 5x or even 10x better at learning? What would that look like?

</comment><comment><USER11> Something like this for changing drum brakes in a car would be great. Or changing a baby's diaper.

It's probably not worth a headset for any single one of those tasks, but for one that can be used with some training platform to learn any manual task, that would be great.

</comment><comment><USER12> If they married teaching skills in VR for training and their Google Glass enterprise that would be interesting. Train people to get the basics in a VR that could potentially be done anywhere. Then augment them in the Enterprise with their AR offering Google Glass enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER13> > In the end, it was much easier to model the trainer like a video game, where > every object has its own state.

Uh? Making an interactive simulation was easier if made as an interactive simulation? How could this possibly be a surprise?

It's not like we don't have simulators - flight training being the canonical example.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there somewhere I can download this if I own a Daydream headset and Pixel?

I happen to be in the market for a home espresso machine. I'm also interested in learning the "craft" of it, and this could be a fun intro.

</comment><comment><USER15> This would make an awesome game!

<comment><USER16> Check out "Job Simulator." It's meant to be entertaining and not teach any real skills, but bears some similarities to what the article describes. My daughter loves it.</comment></comment>


Shut Up And Row - <AUTHOR> http://www.jchenry.me

<comment><USER2> Sorry to say that, but implying that the "other" 99% are all just lazy asses is amazingly stupid.</comment>


Show HN: Awesomeblog.club – self-hostable directory for small blogs and links - <AUTHOR> https://awesomeblog.club <comment><USER3> The return of personal directories continues. Love to see it! Really cool that you opened up the code.

Since directories are my own personal obsession, I'll pass on my take on the topic: [https://www.kickscondor.com/foundations-of-a-tiny- directory/](https://www.kickscondor.com/foundations-of-a-tiny-directory/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built this site in response to various ask HN posts asking for niche blogs. I know it's [0] getting hard to find stuff you want in the search results or on big platforms.

It is made with next, newcss, and mdx. It should be easily self hostable with few changes so you can have your own curation site.

Edit: I am aware of the firefox issue now. I fucked up and didn't test on it. And it's fixed now.

[0] [https://awesomeblog.club/motivation](https://awesomeblog.club/motivation)

<comment><USER4> This is nice !

> So how to discover novelty?

Everyday I'm listing all the non-commercial blog posts submitted to HN for people to discover new blogs. You can see it here : [https://hnblogs.substack.com/](https://hnblogs.substack.com/) (yeah substack... but free)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've also started building my curated list of blogs after reading the recent HN posts. If anyone's interested it is at [https://blogs.sirodoht.com/](https://blogs.sirodoht.com/)

<comment><USER6> Great list - a lot to explore. (and I'm tickled to have found my blog on it - thank you)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see all the data is stored in one JSON file in GitHub. [https://github.com/searchableguy/awesomeblog- club/blob/maste...](https://github.com/searchableguy/awesomeblog- club/blob/master/database.json)

Can I ask, why JSON, and why one file?

I'm interested because I'm currently slowly working on an Open Source tool for this use case - community data sets in Git. However I think it's better to have one file per entry. (Easier to edit, much less chances of merge conflicts.) Also while it's currently based a lot round JSON (so we can leverage several useful existing tools like JSON Schema) I'd like to add a YML/TOML/MD-with-meta-data option later as I think that's easier for humans to read and edit (and also because I've already seen several Git repos that follow this format).

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

I wanted it to be easy to copy and share and since I didn't think curation should add anything that fits the bill, using a single file would limit the number of items people would add to their curation. JSON also has a small limitation in the fields that it cannot have multiline strings which was originally supposed to force to shorten the description.

But yeah you are probably right, I will do something to migrate it later into a directory of files.

<comment><USER7> Ok - can you let me know when you do? I'm looking for real world uses of this idea.

For future reference, [https://github.com/DataTig/DataTig](https://github.com/DataTig/DataTig) \- but, er, I haven't written any documentation yet.

You can ping me on an issue there or reply to this comment.

> limit the number of items people would add to their curation

Interesting. I suspect there is a natural limit anyway to how much data one person could curate, given the demands to keep it up to date. It would be interesting to see what a tools UI would encourage/discourage here.

> supposed to force to shorten the description

JSON Schema can set text length limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love this.

I'm tired of the Web being made up of nothing but four big sites each full screenshots of the other three, so I've been planning to do something similar for a while. No blogspam, no content marketing, no SEO nonsense - just a directory of people doing interesting stuff on their own bit of the internet.

It's why I like the Tildeverse and alt-protocols like Gemini and Gopher so much as they're defiantly non-commercial attempts to make a space for experimentation and expression that has been lost - or at least obscured - <USER2> the horrorshow that is the modern Web.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's really cool! I remember checking prototype a day or two ago and now it's finished - great job!

I have an idea of making something like "read next" on medium or openring[1] as a service. It's in a very early stage right now, but if you run a personal blog - ping me(info in the profile) I would like to ask a few questions ;)

[1] [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring)

</comment><comment><USER10> I use feeds.pub as an RSS reader and to share the feeds I follow

[https://feeds.pub/timqian](https://feeds.pub/timqian)

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks cool, maybe we can collab?

I recently launched something very similar [https://www.findyour.blog](https://www.findyour.blog)

<comment><AUTHOR> I emailed you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this, I have been amusing myself with your "I am feeling lucky" button and already found some interesting reads.

I will be submitting my blog via pull request shortly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Super neat to see so many sites built with newcss.net</comment>


What's wrong with 2006 programming? - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/post/what-is-wrong-with-2006-programming.html <comment><USER2> Just to amplify his point, if you want your program to take page faults as PHK suggests, it _has_ to be multithreaded. If you choose event-driven concurrency you can't afford to take page faults in mmap() or read(). When you make the threads vs. events decision you're implicitly making a bunch of related decisions about I/O and scheduling as well; a hybrid approach (like using events and mmap) won't work well.

<comment><USER3> You can use events + mmap, you just need to factor the paging latency into your design. Normally, this might mean mmapping a chunk of data at startup, touching it all so that it's resident in RAM, and _then_ beginning to serve queries, keeping an eye on your total resident set so that it never pages out.

<comment><USER4> What would be the point of being able to spill to disk if you've got to keep everything in RAM? Simple serialization?

<comment><USER3> The point is zero-copy on load, not being able to spill to disk. Most high- performance, scalable servers I've seen ignore virtual memory entirely and kill (+ restart) the process if it exceeds the physical memory available on the machine. Yes, that means they use pre-1960s technology; sometimes, the price of performance is ignoring the programming conveniences we've come up with in the last 50 years.

<comment><USER4> Most applications need to perform some computations with data that is read from the backing store. Even simple sorts and searches will vastly outweigh the cost of an extra memcpy. Honestly, an HTTP cache is sort of a perfect case for the way in which Varnish was implemented. There is very little actual processing, if any, that needs to be done with the data that's read from disk. It just needs to be read from the backing store and shuttled over the socket as fast as possible, with very little friction. An extra memcpy or two matter in the Varnish scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stop thinking of RAM/disk/etc as storage systems and start thinking of them as retrieval systems. Then stop thinking of your data costs as $/GB (storage systems) and start thinking of your data costs as $/(IO/sec/GB) (retrieval systems).

I know everyone these days seems to think that removing a structured query language parser from a database makes every other problem go away, but realistically RDBMS vendors spend millions of dollars trying to fix this exact problem. It's called cache invalidation and it's a hard problem to solve in a general way.

SSDs are just a midpoint in the performance trade-off game.

The OS is the worst at this, DBs are somewhat better, but realistically if you want serious performance out of your application you need to make those choices for yourself, and use all strategies where appropriate RAM for records you need instantly (memcache,redis,mongodb) SSDs for the stuff you can't afford to keep on an SSD And hard drives for stuff you can't afford to keep on an SSD.

What you need to think about is the value of your data in dollars per IO/sec per DB ($/(IO/sec/GB), if the amortized value of that data exceeds the amortized cost of the retrieval system then buy it. Focus on increasing the value of your data, not reducing the costs of it's retrieval as that will drop by 1/2 every 18 months anyway. Alternatively, change your business model so you are going short on IO/sec/GB, (eg. pre-sell storage so that when you need to buy it you can do so cheaply)

What I'm trying to say is that the value of a picture is worth more to Flickr than it is to Facebook, thus Flickr will have an easier time building it's retrieval systems than Facebook because of the costs involved. That's why Facebook had to write their own filesystem for retrieving pictures.

I'd bet that any commercial DB will blow rings around redis/mongo/etc if you had your persistent store as a RAM disk and used hard drives for the transaction log. The cost of a SQL Server license is negligible if you're going to buy a server with $200,000 worth of RAM in it. If your data is valuable enough you could just keep everything in SRAM (L1/L2 cache) and buy processors just for the cache.

<comment><USER6> This has been well understood since antiquity (in the CS world at least). Read Jim Gray's "The 5 minute rule" and the more recent papers that cite it. Most likely the access frequency of your objects is not such to demand them residing in L2.

Ultimately there's no need to use a commercial database either, as there are compelling open source alternatives, though if your needs are very specific, a commercial database may be your best tool.

<comment><USER7> > This has been well understood since _antiquity_ (in the CS world at least).

Yes I believe it was first Cicero that pointed this out. Or perhaps even Aristotle. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Again, the kernel will use a simple LRU algorithm, where the granularity is the page._

I don't think it's accurate to describe any performance critical part of the Linux kernel as "simple." For an overview of the page replacement policy, see <http://kerneltrap.org/node/7608>. I wondered if CLOCK-Pro [1, 2] had made it into the kernel yet, but it looks like it has not.

This author makes compelling arguments for implementing application level paging. But the nice thing about doing systems work is we never have to rely on arguments alone to evaluate something - show me numbers.

[1] <http://linux-mm.org/ClockProApproximation>

[2] [http://www.cse.ohio- state.edu/~fchen/paper/papers/usenix05.p...](http://www.cse.ohio- state.edu/~fchen/paper/papers/usenix05.pdf)

<comment><USER9> There was no mention of Linux in the article. This system also runs on the various *BSDs, Solaris, MacOS...

<comment><USER8> Then it's worth noting that CLOCK-Pro is used in NetBSD.

My point here is that a lot of people have spent a lot of time working on the page replacement problem. I am very open to the idea that an application can beat the page replacement policy in the underlying kernel, for a variety of reasons. But: numbers. Always evaluate. The implementation of these algorithms in practice is always more subtle than our high level understanding, so we need to do real performance comparisons to know if we actually improved anything.

(I'm getting my information from the algorithm's author's page: <http://www.ece.eng.wayne.edu/~sjiang/> Jiang graduated from William and Mary while I was a young grad student there.)

<comment><USER10> I'm a bit torn on this. I realize that you need to benchmark to really prove anything, and that optimization intuitions are often wrong, but on the other hand, you really need a wide variety of world benchmarks to approach any form of real world "proof". In the early implementation stages, I think clear thinking such as provided in this article is probably more important than spending 50 times as long setting up an array of benchmarks. Hopefully Salvatore has done some micro-benchmarks during development to guide his thinking, but even if not, it's hard to refute the thinking in this article.

If you think about the problem space of Redis vs Varnish, it's intuitively obvious that Varnish deals with a wide variety of general data without many opportunities to optimize beyond general purpose algorithms such as an OS provides. Whereas Redis has specific data types often with small footprints, and very careful attention paid to the details of optimization for memory and disk usage.

<comment><USER8> I think you're overstating the time it takes to come up with benchmarks to evaluate performance optimizations. Even micro-benchmarks tailored to showcase your performance under ideal circumstances are a start. The longer you go without doing any performance comparisons, the longer you go without knowing if your work was worth it.

I'm not trying to deride his work - it's a neat project, and I will probably read through his earlier entries more. I'm down with all of the reasons provided, but I recognize that as humans, we tend to believe in things we understand. Hence, we need to evaluate.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps I am, but why are we assuming he hasn't done any benchmarks? It seems quite likely that his opinion is informed by actual results. Does he need to draw up graphs and spend more time on a blog post to be taken seriously?

<comment><USER8> Well, yes. I take him "seriously," but I'm not yet convinced his techniques outperform the kernel. That's how systems work is done. If you want to convince people that your way is better, then you need data to back it up.

<comment><USER10> You can't take any of his arguments at face value? Like the blocking argument?

<comment><USER11> No, performance of complex systems is really really hard to predict.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but again, why do we assume Salvatore is just pulling this stuff out of his ass?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I blame Benjamin Zorn in this paper: [http://www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/d...](http://www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU- CS-665-93.pdf)

for the whole "programmers shouldn't manage memory" myth. Clearly, if you know what you're doing, you can do better than the OS and/or malloc() does. If you don't know what you're doing, you have bigger problems than writing your own allocator will quickly solve.

<comment><USER13> It seems a bit strange to blame Zorn for spreading the myth that "programmers shouldn't manage memory" on the basis of that paper, when at about the same time he was writing a bunch of _other_ papers extolling the virtues of customized memory allocators: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=172674>, for instance.

<comment><USER12> Did you read the "CustoMalloc" paper? It's more of the same. Just to illustrate, the paper you referenced has the title "CustoMalloc: efficient synthesized memory allocator".

That is, "CustoMalloc" takes a look at memory usage patterns of a particular program, then _generates_ a semi-customized allocator for that program.

<comment><USER13> Yes, of course I read it. Yes, the allocators are synthesized; so what? The point is that "synthesize a semi-customized allocator for each program" is a very different thing from "just use what the system provides you with; you won't be able to do better".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not an expert, but the application's memory usage being opaque to the kernel sounds vaguely like the problems Azul had scaling its Java runtime to large (>2GB) heaps.

Azul recently open sourced some of their kernel patches:

<http://www.managedruntime.org/faq>

But that is about all I know.

</comment><comment><USER15> In a vaguely similar vein, the recent Mirage paper showed impressive GC improvements by running ocaml on xen without an operating system in between. It allowed them to use a much simpler allocation algorithm.

<http://anil.recoil.org/papers/2010-hotcloud-lamp.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER16> Something like paging virtual memory for Redis is going to be a core feature. I can completely understand why they would want to keep core features "in house". It's not "not implemented here" syndrome if the entire point of your company is to implement things like this.

<comment><USER17> The code is open source under a BSD style license, so it's not really about benefits for the company, which in this case is VMWare. They make their money elsewhere and pay antirez to hack on Redis, which is a pretty good deal for users of Redis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating article. I wonder how SSDs affect his conclusions, though. If you really care, don't you have an SSD? Especially for the recently mentioned 1:10 problem (10G of data, 1G of memory).

</comment><comment><USER19> Weird to see PHK being referred to as "the Varnish guy". :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed in the article, sorry I was not aware that the "Varnish guy" was a well known programmer.

<comment><USER20> It's like referring to Donald Knuth as 'the TeX guy'.

<comment><AUTHOR> With all the respect, I wish Poul-Henning Kamp the biggest of the fame, but it is hard to compare him with a world wide myth as Donald Knuth.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a 6k-Year-Old Dog Cancer Spread Around the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-6000-year-old-dog-cancer-spread-around-the-world <comment><USER2> Does anyone have more specifics on how the cancer avoids an immune system response?

<comment><USER3> The article in the Atlantic ([https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/ctvt- tum...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/ctvt-tumor-broke- all-rules/595246/)) said:

"Also, the majority of those mutations, including almost all of the recent ones, are neutral. They don't seem to benefit the tumor in any way. Again, that's very different from most cancers, which are constantly adapting to outfox their hosts' immune systems, or to grow a little faster, or to spread to new areas. Not so with CTVT. "We think that the cancer is not adapting anymore," says Adrian Baez-Ortega, who was one of the main researchers on the study. "Maybe it doesn't really need to."

Perhaps, early on in CTVT's history, it found such thorough ways of escaping the immune system and jumping into new hosts that no further tweaks were necessary. Or perhaps it no longer imposes enough harm on its hosts to warrant a counterattack. It's rarely fatal, after all, and if dogs are otherwise healthy, it doesn't grow very fast. "The tumor and the dogs aren't competing against each other anymore," Baez-Ortega says. "They're coexisting. The cells behave like cancer cells, but the ecology of the tumor is that of a parasite." And a fairly benign one at that."

<comment><USER4> >The tumor and the dogs aren't competing against each other anymore," Baez- Ortega says. "They're coexisting. The cells behave like cancer cells, but the ecology of the tumor is that of a parasite." And a fairly benign one at that."

This is pretty much the story of any "old" virus; new viruses (new mutations, species jumping, etc) tend to kill, but they optimize towards coexistence, since killing the host reduces reproduction/spread opportunity.

So eventually they become benign within a population (both by their evolution, and adaptation of human immune system) and only become threatening again when encountering a new population (eg an "infected" city-man visiting rural populations).

Notably, due to the more rapid spread of disease in cities, due to higher density, city-folk tend to have more benign/evolved diseases than rural populations.

Which I _think_ is also the answer to my childhood question: why did the europeans famously have diseases to spread and kill native americans with.. but the native americans could offer no such devastating disease in return? Both groups should have been encountering new diseases; my answer being that the native americans were carrying fewer suppressed diseases.

There's of course the popular answer that europeans were more evil/willing to spread disease with things like chicken-pox blankets.. (and catapulting rotting animals), but it's really difficult to imagine native americans would be so primitive that couldn't learn/mimick the idea... or perhaps its just written out of the history books..

But I never found confirmation on this

<comment><USER5> CCP Makes a pretty good case regarding livestock - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk)

America did offer a new disease that ravaged Europe. Syphillis.

<comment><USER6> And like this disease, Syphillis was initially terrifying, with flesh falling off of victims' faces, before the disease "decided" that it was better to let its victims live with genital sores rather than die horrific deaths. For the disease, it could infect more people on a longer-living host.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon faces boycott ahead of holidays as public discontent grows - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/17/amazon-boycott-customers-holiday-shopping <comment><USER2> More accurate headline -- Amazon, which represents nearly half of all online sales, is being boycotted by two individuals, Steven Shamrock and Laura Klein.

I realize that's not as catchy, and I know there are many on HN who are fed up with Amazon for a number of reasons (especially counterfeit electronics), but _damn_ this article is deceptive and thin.</comment>


How we built a social music sequencer in 48 hours - <AUTHOR> http://somethingcoded.com/

<comment><USER2> I have tried it, and the UI is just sluggish and barely usable (Chrome, i7 CPU, 8GB RAM). Have you thought of optimizing the whole thing, like maybe "rendering" the tune into WAV raw data, and playing that instead?

The social aspect is questionable too, it seems users just add random tunes, and just one user can ruin the tune built by the rest.</comment>


Hyperarchy: Democracy for the Digital Era - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hyperarchy.com/2011/07/19/hyperarchy-democracy-for-the-digital-era.html

<comment><USER2> I like some of these ideas, particularly the flexible system of delegation. But right now the issue-ranking system seems like a weak link. It's too simplistic and could easily devolve into an exercise in voting on bumper- sticker slogans. There should be tools for more reasoned exploration of the issues, like an argument mapping tool for instance (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map>). Don't just let me vote on a tweet-sized solution, let me see the arguments made for and against it in a structured way that I can also vote on.

<comment><USER3> The concept of Hyperarchy was already explored by demexp.org. Look for instance at the aspect of vote delegation: [http://www.demexp.org/dokuwiki/description_of_the_political_...](http://www.demexp.org/dokuwiki/description_of_the_political_project#the_vote_delegation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting idea, but I see some major problems.

1) It's currently impossible to tie a person down to a single online entity. There's quite a lot of inertia/sentiment preventing this sort of situation. If you can't insure that each person only gets one voice, then the system breaks.

2) What happens when the Goon Swarm arrives? No, I'm serious. It's hard to troll the government as it stands today. The internet sees a lot of groups out there whose only goals are to inconvenience others. This system could actually give Anonymous etc. real world power.

<comment><USER5> > It's currently impossible to tie a person down to a single online entity

Actually, it's quite possible nowadays in many countries, with the introduction of smart ID cards.

<comment><USER4> That is... relatively scary. I feel that one of the essential features of the internet is its anonymity. Take that away and it loses some of its value.

<comment><USER6> This isn't the Internet. It may run over the Internet, but it isn't the Internet. It's a government. A more delicate balance of accountability and anonymity is called for.

I'd also observe that nobody is really claiming that we must run out and immediately implement this to replace the US Federal government. Start a house-level government, or a frat-level government, or I suppose more relevantly for this crowd, use it for your open source project's governance. Work your way up, learning from the experience. Anonymity and coercion and a lot of other problems that absolutely must be solved for this to work at large scales need not necessarily be solved at smaller ones. Scale up the security later when we need to, and when we understand the space better. In the future we need better cryptography and P2P and etc etc etc, but let's learn about the space now.

(There's something about the word "government" that just makes engineer's engineering sense go flying out the window and turns them right back into Waterfall designers. It's OK to iterate!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The concept of flexible delegation is really interesting, but what about secrecy of the ballot? Is there any way that can be ensured? The article does not touch on the subject, unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> Secret ballots are only useful to prevent coercion. Why else would you want your ballot secret?

<comment><USER9> Because I might be turned down for a job or apartment or loan because of my political views ?

And because it's frankly nobody else's business how I vote ?

<comment><USER8> Voting is an inherently public, civic act. It's not a personal matter. Your vote has a direct effect on lots of other people. Why shouldn't you be accountable for that?

<comment><USER10> The problem is that, as others have mentioned, from openness results social pressure, and social pressure can severely affect your decisions.

On the other hand, openness of course leads to transparency, and transparency prevents corruption and lobbying (to a considerable degree, at least). Interestingly though, this is _also_ due to social pressure.

My vision would be a system that combines techniques such as the ones deployed in BitCoin and NameCoin (Public Keys) to ensure unique identities but still preserve anonymity. In a such a system, everyone could freely speak their mind anonymously, yet still be accountable (in this case meaning he or she can be identified as some individual, but not as a specific person). This would also lead to reducing debates to facts and arguments, by effectively completely depersonalizing it. It would no longer be about people, it would be about problems, ideas and solutions.

I don't really know if this technically feasible (I'm not even sure if it makes sense to anyone but me), but I think it would solve many of the problems with _real_ democracy.

<comment><USER11> >transparency prevents corruption and lobbying

This isn't really true. I'm interning at the Sunlight Foundation this Summer, and some of our free tools are used by lobbyists with less money to spend than some larger interests here in D.C.

Transparency can actually lead to _more_ , but more _varied_ , lobbying.

The really remarkable thing about transparency is just how much corruption is completely knowable and out in the open, yet totally ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am always reminded of the Athenian state, and how the vagaries of public opinion swung its direction wildly and rapidly.

A stable -archy needs to have an inherent conservatism to prevent public hysteria ( _cough_ MSM _cough_ ) yanking the direction around.

</comment><comment><USER13> TLDR: Vote delegation. Not quite implemented yet, but in progress.

TSDG (Too Short, Don't Grok): _"Even as simple as Hyperarchy makes voting, no one has time to share their opinion on every question. So Hyperarchy recasts representative democracy as networked democracy. Instead of electing a Senator you've never met to represent you on everything, you elect individuals you trust personally to represent you on specific issues. I can give my girlfriend power to vote on my behalf for questions about health and nutrition, while delegating to my coworker for questions concerning programming languages or digital privacy. So when my girlfriend votes about health or my coworker votes on technology, they vote for me as well.

But the real power is when influence flows through multiple connections in the social network. Suppose I delegate to my girlfriend on questions about nutrition, but she in turn delegates her vote to an expert like Michael Pollan. Then he inherits not only her vote, but mine as well. This transitive nature of delegation allows power to flow to individuals with expertise. By gaining the trust of a few influential people, Michael Pollan can emerge as a super-representative, voting on behalf of a huge number of followers. But you can change your delegation at any time, so Pollan would keep that power only as long as he deserved it."_

</comment><comment><USER14> The founders didn't design things they way they did because they traveled by horse (and I highly doubt it took a week from Monticello to Philadelphia), they designed things so that only the most capable citizens would be elected to leadership. They say this explicitly in the Federalist Papers (ok, maybe that bit was Hamilton, but still). They rejected direct democracy: by framing the nation as a "republic", with the assumption that only landowners would vote, through the electoral college, through the creation of the Senate, and by vesting remaining powers to the States. The term "democracy" is hard to find in American political discourse prior to the McKinley administration (the start of American imperialism) and didn't really get going until Wilson (entry into WWI). The most populist Presidents (Jackson and Bush II) have notably been among the worst.

Then again, if this tool really scales to 300M people, what's to stop the delegation of votes from leading to the same representative power structures and coalitions (which have more to do with game theory and human psychology than the prevailing mode of transport)?

<comment><AUTHOR> "It was a long journey in those days from Monticello to Philadelphia, where the Congress was held. Part of the road ran through the wilderness, and it took more than a week to get there."

<http://all-biographies.com/presidents/thomas_jefferson.htm>

Footnote at the bottom of the page: Source: "The Lives of the Presidents and How They Reached the White House" by Charles Morris, LL.D., 1903. (We didn't check the book though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had the same exact idea regarding delegation years ago, but I no longer have the requisite faith in humanity to agree with it.

How many of us are actually wise enough to delegate a vote, when we think ourselves wise and others foolish?

And how many of us are actually qualified to decide public policy, when we can barely manage our own affairs?

Just imagine what sort of absurd tyranny a vast mob of common humans could accomplish if the power were truly given to them.

It would be surreal.

( A minimal republic, and a system of full-on social darwinism, to me, appears to be ideal. )

</comment><comment><USER16> I have recently created something related, targeted to the Swedish political scene. The basic idea is similar but the concepts I use are quite different. If I may say so myself, my take on it is less sophisticated but more elegant.

Google Translate does an OK job with the site (although the Swedish word "Kontakt" should not be translated as "Plug"):

<http://digitaldemokrati.se>

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitaldemokrati.se)

(The site currently runs on a minimal Heroku setup, so it will go down quickly if this catches some attention here on HN. Nevertheless, enjoy it while it lasts.)

Also, the project is open source, although the main public repo is currently in bad shape and not quite up to date:

<https://github.com/digitaldemokrati>

If there is some interest in this, I could do a write-up in English and post it here as a separate submission. Anyone interested?

PS. After lurking and posting from throwaway accounts since 2007, this is my first HN post in my own name!

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't seem to find the option that allows me to delegate. If that's implemented, I haven't been able to test it.

With that in mind, I wonder about how the delegation would work in practice. It sounds like a good idea, but the devil's in the details. For example, if I delegate my vote to someone else on a whole class of issues, but I want to cast my vote on a specific issue in that class, would that work?

Also, it would have to have some good controls for notifications. On the one hand, if I delegate my vote, I would like to stay informed about how that vote is being used. On the other hand, if there's a lot of voting going on and I get a notification every time my vote is used, it might just turn into noise for me. And the quantity might increase drastically if I have a long chain of delegation and people in that chain keep "overriding" the links that are further away.

All in all, it sounds like a great idea, but there's a whole lot of details that remain to be solved. I'm really interested in seeing whether and how they'll address those details.

<comment><USER13> According to the last paragraph on the linked page, vote delegation isn't implemented yet, but that seems to be top of their to-do list now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or we could use the freedom of information, power distribution, disintermediation and distribution efficiency made possible by the internet to obviate the need for centralized government.

I'd vastly prefer that to yet another version of allowing other people to determine my life for me.

<comment><USER18> It seems to me that that is exactly what this has the potential to do. It's only being framed in the language of centralized government because people might not be ready to deal with the truly revolutionary implications of such a system.

<comment><USER11> Not if anyone is still bound by the decisions of the majority.

<comment><USER18> Just because people are bound by the decisions of the majority doesn't mean it's centralized. They may decide that the cost of sometimes having to abide by group decisions that conflict with their individual preferences is outweighed by the benefit of being part of a group with an optimal decision- making process that (presumably) provides benefits to its members that they would not get if they chose to remain unaffiliated. All the while remaining decentralized.

Reading <http://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton.html> totally altered the way I look at this.

<comment><USER10> >Just because people are bound by the decisions of the majority doesn't mean it's centralized.

That wasn't the point my grandparent was making. The first and foremost critical flaw of democracy is (and always will be) that the majority can dictate over the minority. That has nothing to do with centralization.

Also, it's not about "personal preferences". It's about minorities effectively being dominated by the majority, without them having _any_ way to fight back. While there might be some basic rights to protect minorities, they are essentially always stripped of the most important and fundamental right in such a society: _influence on decisions that concern themselves_. That is - factually - a tyranny for everyone who is not part of the majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a pretty useful tool for doing retros at Pivotal Labs. Makes figuring out what to talk about super easy and eliminates the whole dot voting awkwardness.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good ideas in principle but I'm reminded of my experience tuning PID controllers for servo motors: too much P and you have wild, out-of-control oscillations, too much D and you never get to your target. The I value has to be carefully chosen to make sure misrepresentations are gradually amplified to break through the collective perception threshold.

As stated I think there's not enough damping in hyperarchy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Where is the contact info for the people behind Hyperarchy? This is similar in concept to something I published a few years ago called "The Electors" (<http://theelectors.org/>), and it would be cool to chat with the Hyperarchy crew.

<comment><USER22> firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com they would love to talk to you. i am email@example.com, their sister/gf respectively, so i help them in my free time get in touch with interested people and whatnot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's about time. That do remind me of Philip K. Dick's novel where the President is replaced by a computer program, tho!

</comment><comment><USER24> kind of reminds me of the daemon/freedom™ novels by daniel suarez, in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a terrific concept, but it's also too important to be relegated to a private web site. Until the software can be run as a local application (perhaps as part of a mutually-corroborated P2P network) and its internal workings made fully verifiable, this is merely another fancy web-based-UX demonstration.

</comment><comment><USER26> Elected representatives have set terms. We trust them with our vote for a specific period, and they can even make decisions that hurt some of our interests. Has this been taken into consideration? If we can switch votes at will, then it's not much different than crowdvoting. What about abuse of power? Is there a third leg (justice) to punish abusers?</comment>


Why Misunderstanding Startup Metrics Can Cost You Your Business - <AUTHOR> https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-misunderstanding-startup-metrics-can-cost-you-your-business-352923a53dcb?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_YixWur9ZgyHjHNzLer3ZUwEcvpGN5JJBdIivRUwXQq8JAn0mFfRoVmoAds3Wzp9lM7QfA2NRJ__eV0I1cgriCTif8LA&_hsmi=29010063#.41354c6gb <comment><USER2> Really good stuff from Mark Suster. I remember a time when this would have been at the top of the HN front-page, instead of the latest general news story from the NYT or whatever. Too bad that the Eternal September finally got to HN, despite pg's efforts. Still, the "old" HN had a good run.

As for the article itself... the one metric that he didn't mention explicitly, but sort of indirectly alluded to, is CoGS - Cost of Goods Sold[1]. CoGS is directly related to your per-time profit margin and can explain how you can have the scenario he described where _revenue_ exceeds _customer acquisition cost_ but you still lose money.

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

Edit: to be fair, the front-page is actually full of fairly interesting stuff ATM. But man, is there WAY more "general news" most days, than there used to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Startups are risky and there's no guarantee that you are going to be successful and make money with it.</comment>


We should retire the idea of race - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25534

<comment><USER2> Sadly the person who wrote this didn't even do the most basic of research. The human genome project pretty clearly defined that while the classic classification of racial groups was wrong, it wasn't far from the mark in terms of genetic diversity.

[http://i.imgur.com/LBaKdf6.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/LBaKdf6.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> The author of that post has done a lot more research than that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Experimented with Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (TDCS)? - <AUTHOR> I've read up on it a bit and am considering getting a device, but would like to hear from this thoughtful community before I commit <comment><USER2> For what reason? What device do you consider buying and how do you plan using it? I wasn't even aware that they can be bought anywhere for non-medical use. I don't see any reason why it would be a good idea to buy one.</comment>


Convox Rack 0.7: Papertrail and SSL - <AUTHOR> http://convox.github.io/blog/rack-0-7-papertrail-and-ssl/ <comment><AUTHOR> One of the founders of Convox here. Happy to answer any questions about Convox or deploying to AWS in general.</comment>


"In Theory There Is No Difference Between Theory and Practice" - <AUTHOR> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/04/14/theory/ <comment><USER2> > There is one difference. Practice won't let you forget anything or leave > anything out. In theory, problems are easily solved because you can leave > something out.

It can also work the other way! Solving an NP-hard problem for the theory means solving it for every case. Solving it for practice means solving it for the cases you'll encounter - which may let you leave some bits out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny to see this here, because my previous post here on HN included that phrase. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16831875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16831875)

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jan_L._A._van_de_Snepscheut](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jan_L._A._van_de_Snepscheut)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know what the difference might be?

<comment><USER6> Yes. Reality... :-)

<comment><USER7> "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

<comment><USER8>
      - Philip K. Dick</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Lita.io uses the RubyGems and rubygems.org APIs - <AUTHOR> http://www.jimmycuadra.com/posts/how-lita-io-uses-the-rubygems-and-rubygems-org-apis

<comment><USER2> Excellent explanation of your process.</comment>


Tim Sweeney: Oculus is treating games from Steam and Epic as 2nd class citizens - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/714478222260498432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw <comment><USER2> This is possibly a bigger threat to WebVR than anything else, a bit further down from the quoted thread (one of the Chrome WebVR devs):

> So that really screws over WebVR. :( Not quite as bad as the lockdown on > GearVR, but I suspect 90% of users will never check that box.

[https://twitter.com/Tojiro/status/714473569426640896](https://twitter.com/Tojiro/status/714473569426640896)

</comment><comment><USER3> Meh, Oculus' thing is that they want to "do VR right". If that means they need to be gatekeepers like Apple (hey, it works for Apple...) then so be it.

Saavy users will be able to get around this in seconds. Unsaavy users will be protected from saying things like "this doesn't work on the copy of Bejeweled I downloaded 10 years ago from PopCap!"

<comment><USER4> > Oculus' thing is that they want to "do VR right".

If that were true, then they would not have shipped without VR controls. Having an XBox One controller be the standard baseline for VR is detrimental to the entire industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really happy to see that Tim recognizes that Oculus and Android's "unknown sources" checkboxes prevent third party competition almost as much as a fully closed ecosystem does.

He's criticized Google, Microsoft, and Apple before for their continual walling in of their platforms.

</comment><comment><USER6> Steam has a VR abstraction layer, and Oculus probably see that as a threat.

</comment><comment><USER7> But isn't this the big hardware developer's dream? Make some popular hardware and then create an app store for it? Seems that way. Leap Motion (worst hardware on _Earth_ , man) did that. And I guess making it a walled garden is just the next step, if your hardware is _really_ popular.

<comment><USER5> This was probably a big part of why my Leap went back in it's box, and still sits in another box of crud most of the time. Rather than becoming a common piece of hardware that I could find supported by various software in my every day life, I'd have to specifically go looking for software in :their store: to use it.

<comment><USER8> Leap employee here. Have you tried the new Orion tracking software? It's like night and day, especially for VR.

<comment><USER5> I honestly haven't taken it out of the box since I moved a year ago. I'd have to look for it.

Though that doesn't address the point of my post. I'd be more inclined to use it if software through other stores (Windows Store, Steam) had Leap support built-in. Having a third-party store just for your hardware is off-putting.

<comment><USER8> Fair point. Right now most of the activity is taking place on our developer gallery ([https://developer.leapmotion.com/gallery/](https://developer.leapmotion.com/gallery/)), which is entirely free. But content distribution is definitely an issue. We have embedded Orion hardware that's being embedded into future HMDs, so I'd expect to see more in other stores once the input becomes standard (rather than a peripheral).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, the more I read about Oculus, the more I want to move over to the Vive.

It looks like the Vive is going to have much wider support for games, platforms, and possibilities for developers.

I'm super torn right now but to be honest, the way I'm approaching it is "I'll wait for Oculus to finally drive me off", so I guess I'll just need to see what happens over the fall and winter release windows.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully this blows up in their face by driving away developer mindshare.</comment>


Show HN: Base Deploy – visual web app builder focused on user-generated content - <AUTHOR> https://basedeploy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, my name is Stephen. Base Deploy allows users to build web apps without coding. Its focus is user generated content.

Here are the major features that other builders do not offer:

\- User registration

\- User generated pages

\- User subscriptions - <USER2>

\- Sell products - Stripe Relay

\- Allow users to sell - Stripe Connect

I'd love to here your feedback on the app and if this makes sense while using the app.

<comment><USER3> Hi Stephen,

Once I signed up, it looks really interesting, but I couldn't actually tell what the product really was until I clicked "Get Started". This might be because I was expecting a more technical description though, so not necessarily something that needs fixing, just thought I'd raise it.

I can imagine the use-case for this is that people want to build an MVP quickly. For that, I think this could work really well. A few other tools that could complement it might be imports from spreadsheets (for importing/rudimentary management of content/products), I've used that in the past and it has been useful in getting up and running quickly.

One thing I'm concerned about is what happens when the MVP works. I can imagine throwing together an MVP in a day or so with this, getting it live, and a month or two later wanting to move to my own platform that might take a week or two to build. What's my upgrade path, and how do you monetise me? On my side, I would like a data export so that I can get going easily on the new site, but also from your perspective, can you re-coup the costs of acquiring a user in the < 4 months that they might run the application? I don't think charging for data export (while an easy solution) is the right answer here though. This may not be the common usage pattern though, so I don't know how much of an issue this would all be, just thinking about how I would use the product.

Final note, after signing up, there's nowhere to see the pricing without going back to the landing/marketing site. Also, the pricing on requests sounds incredibly high cost for what you get. 2000 requests for $20 is very expensive!

Just a few thoughts, I may be way off the mark with these, but on the whole it looks useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Dan,

This is great feedback. Thank you.

I was playing with a more technical landing page, but didn't want to make it seem overly complicated.

We are definitely working on options for growing apps. I want any transitions to be as smooth as possible. We are also working to find the right pricing.

Thanks again for trying it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a demo app built with BaseDeploy.

[http://demonstrate.website](http://demonstrate.website)

<comment><USER3> Bug report, this page doesn't work: [http://demonstrate.website/users/wmitchell/88c3a613-50db-4d2...](http://demonstrate.website/users/wmitchell/88c3a613-50db-4d2a-ae0b-bf9170a68d96)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed!</comment></comment></comment>


How Twitter Got an App Store: The Oneforty Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/10/06/how-twitter-got-an-app-store-the-oneforty-story-part-1/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand where Oneforty is adding value for developers. If you are a developer of a Twitter app then why would you want to drive traffic there? I would think you'd want to drive traffic _away_ from there and toward your own site. As soon as users end up on Oneforty then (a) the paradox of choice kicks in and (b) if you convert a sale, you are forced to share a big chunk of revenue with Oneforty.

Maybe there is some added value that I don't see. But, really, it looks a lot like Yelp, GetSatisfaction, or Ripoff Report: they create this big community focused on saying stuff about your app and it ends up costing you if you participate (in $$$) or if you don't (in customers).

Twitter already has an incredibly effective app-discovery mechanism: the "from AppName" that appears on every tweet on the website. And, that mechanism is 100% free (for now). I don't really see how oneforty improves upon that.

Twitter app development is kind of a no-mans-land right now. Any day, Twitter can change the cost model of developing apps for their platform. Recently, Twitter just made app development much more expensive (in manhours) by adding features that are fairly complicated to implement. In the future it seems likely they will ask for some direct financial consideration too--e.g. charging for use of their trademarks and/or charging for increased API rate limits. So there's a lot of risk from the cost side, because you don't know how much it is going to cost to develop & maintain the app.

Plus, there is the problem that 30% of 0 is zero while 30% of $1.00 is far from zero. These AppStore taxes hurt people who charge money for their apps and help the people who don't. In fact, the people who charge money end up subsidizing their own competition in a not-so-indirect way.

Now, maybe Oneforty has some plans to add value that is worth more than the value they are taking from app developers. But, reading through the material they present, I haven't seen it. I sincerely hope that they come up with a business model that is a net benefit to themselves and to app developers. But, until then, It seems less risky for (commercial) app developers to nicely ask Oneforty to pull their apps' listings from the site.

<comment><USER3> I do see potential here. Think about better statistics for developer, a "from AppName" link that goes directly to the store site (if they can prove better conversion rates), or a centralized payment mechanism for premium apps (hard to achieve but not impossible).

<comment><USER2> Twitter already has "from AppName" go directly to the developer's website, which is his own private app store under his full control.

In the long term, I think Amazon, PayPal, and mobile carrier payment mechanisms will work well for selling direct to customers. Amazon and PayPal charge less than 10% per transaction. I think in a couple of years, mobile carriers will be charging ~10% (like the Japanese carriers do). Once this happens 70%/30% will seem ridiculous and will only be tolerated for platforms that give developers no alternative, like the iPhone.

<comment><USER3> Brian, i said "a "from AppName" link that goes directly to the store site", i should have added "instead of to the developers site". I'm fully aware of what the links do today.

In regards to the payment, i just meant that if oneforty offers the payment (presumably via Amazon or Paypal) the developer has less to worry about. I understand that this will only work if rates are not much higher than through those payment providers directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> oneforty is a great idea, well executed and Laura rocks! I wish them all the best. Also, if i were Twitter i would buy them now - great asset to have in the long run.

<comment><USER4> Agreed it's a natural extension of their little ad badges on the web interface.

<comment><USER3> Also think about the potential of using the "via Tweetdeck" etc. links to directly point to the app store. I understand that developers like them to point to their site, so maybe developers could choose. It would be interesting to compare the conversion rates of both, a twitter owned app store (or oneforty for that matter) and a developers homepage.</comment></comment></comment>