U.S. citizens no longer have access to most of the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-july-19-2020-1.5647948/u-s-citizens-no-longer-have-access-to-most-of-the-world-the-global-south-never-had-it-1.5648022 <comment><USER2> I don't understand the problem... There's a pandemic, so people in areas that are more affected shouldn't be traveling as much. The US has been heavily affected, therefore Americans shouldn't be traveling internationally without a really good reason. Americans are _not_ experiencing what Sri Lankans experience, because Americans can't go anywhere, and mostly shouldn't be going anywhere; Sri Lankans (under normal circumstances) experience real pain because of visa issues.

The article doesn't bother to interview any Americans that these travel restrictions have caused actual problems for. That would have been more helpful than interviewing a European academic. An anecdote (or some actual data) would helpful describe the real problem instead of just saying, "Take that, America!"

<comment><USER3> I'm someone who the travel restrictions have caused actual problems for. In March I accepted an offer for my first full-time job out of school at a company in Tokyo. I was scheduled to move in May, but the travel ban put a halt on my visa process.

In the meantime, I've started working remotely, but it has been extremely difficult due to being remote with the 13 hour time difference. This certainly isn't how I expected to start my first job.

Our reaction to the pandemic has been a huge disappointment. Since March, I've been watching closely as other countries see their first cases, make the tough decision to lock down, wait it out a few months, then finally reopen as cases fall.

Here, we never really committed to the lockdown. Where I live in Georgia, it was only a few weeks ago that the governor started recommending mask usage.

Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I leave. This country is hopeless.

<comment><USER4> > Needless to say, I don't plan ever to return to the United States once I > leave. This country is hopeless.

Indeed. I was hoping this year would be my year to get out too, with a masters program abroad. Now, I'm not sure if it's wise to do that, especially as it was in finance and the finance sector in that country's taken a huge hit, and connections I have there aren't optimistic about it hiring well anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an American living (and trapped) abroad - I get looks of sympathy and shakes or the head when I mention I'm from the states.

One thing I have noticed is that countries want tourism but are now super careful about who they let in.

Recently I wanted to travel elsewhere, but was unable to enter most of the world with my American passport. So I got another extension instead for 2 more months.

Another thing I've noticed is that some countries now actually are beginning to realize that their economies are down, but can survive without the hordes of dirty foreigners coming to their country. So there is just no rush to reopen especially with the medium sized and fast growing countries.

Nationalism to some small degree is definitely in play in a lot of governments these days.

And with the resurgence of the virus, lockdowns are being expended and reestablished in many places.

The reopenings planned for August 1 are definitely not going to happen.

No passport is any good right now - except in its own region.

<comment><USER6> > Another thing I've noticed is that some countries now actually are beginning > to realize that their economies are down, but can survive without the hordes > of dirty foreigners coming to their country.

Are you sure? Travel and tourism account for 13% of the economy in Italy and 9% in France and Europe as a whole [1]. So maybe the pain will be tolerated only for a short while before these economies are compelled to open doors to Americans (and Chinese too).

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-tourist-hot-spots- suffe...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-tourist-hot-spots-suffer-as-u- s-big-spenders-are-told-to-stay-away-11594132862)

<comment><USER7> France has a lot of domestic tourism, and to an extent European tourism. The economy has been rebounding faster than anticipated so I'm not sure the government would be keen on pulling its pants down to bring in tourists when it's already got more than enough bad press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an American living overseas I've come to this realization: If Americans cannot respect the rules of their homeland in the language they understand, how can they be expected to elsewhere?

Outside the USA, the opinion of the USA is not great [0] right now and it seems unlikely these bans will go away. It sucks for those of us who are doing our parts to flatten the curve and prevent overwhelming the medical systems.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/europe/Ireland- amer...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/europe/Ireland-americans- break-quarantine.html)

<comment><USER9> > _the opinion of the USA is not great right now_

The "opinion" of the USA has never been great, ever since our country was founded. And yet we're the only ones everyone talks about. And our culture and policies and businesses and finances permeate the world. And people are literally dying trying to get in. And then we need to save the world from one of their crazy dictators and the cycle restarts all over again.

<comment><USER10> I've noticed this too. Currently visiting Canada and I'd say 70% of the national news coverage is the US which I found _really_ weird. Is there not enough going on in Canada or other parts of the world?

And the best part is the Canadian PM is embroiled in a big scandal, but it's getting less coverage than Covid in the US.

Oh and this article _is a fantastic example of that_. Why would the CBC decide this is a topic worth writing about?

<comment><USER11> Its a population issue. the US is very close culturally, and has a overwhelmingly larger population. California alone has more people the the entity of Canada.

<comment><USER10> Completely understand that the US is more relevant to Canada than say European countries, but I guess the coverage is way more than I would expect.

I could see covering the _major_ news stories out of the US, but seems to go far beyond that. If you watched the first 20 min of a 30 min national Canadian news show, I'd argue you'd have a hard time telling it apart from US national news shows.

And to be honest, I think it would be great if Canada covered other important international news out of Asia or Europe.

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER11> hell I wish US news covered more international news

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Americans used to have one of the most prized passports in the world, > considered a golden ticket to wealth, travel and opportunity.

What? This is not at all true. Maybe that's a belief that many Americans have, but the US passport is not one of the most prized passports in the world, there are about 30 other country's passport I'd rather have before having a US one, if you're talking about getting access to other countries with/without requiring a visa. A quick check of any of the "passport indexes" (Henley Passport Index, Arton Capital Passport Index) will show you that the US passport is fairly low ranked compared to the top ones.

Hard to take the rest of the article serious when it starts out with a serious flaw in the reasoning.

<comment><USER13> >but the US passport is not one of the most prized passports in the world

Henley Passport Index ranks the US at #7, by a reasonable definition of "one of the most prized", I'd say #7 counts.

#1 Japan only has access to 6 more countries visa free than the US does.

Edit: The US was ranked #1 in 2006, went down to #7 by 2010, and then was back up to #1 in 2014. We're talking swinging between 185 countries with visa free access and 191 countries here, so the top 10 positions change frequently.

<comment><USER14> To add to this, most of the additional countries aren't really umm... worth traveling to, at least for most people. I compared against germany, and the additional countries are:

        Myanmar
        Pakistan
        Vietnam
        Venezuela
        Iran
        Turkey

I'm sure those countries have interesting places to go to and the people there are nice, but they're not exactly on the top of most tourists' list when it comes to destinations.

edit: not sure what the downvotes are about. maybe hn thinks that all countries are equal, and thinking otherwise is racist?

<comment><USER15> According to this list, Turkey ranks 6th in tourist destinations worldwide:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings#Most_vi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings#Most_visited_destinations_by_international_tourist_arrivals)

<comment><USER16> I think the operative metric is how it would rank for US passport holders in a world where the us passport was entirely unrestricted. I.e. how much is the typical US passport holder losing out compared to their ideal preferences. I think the parent's point is accurate by that metric. I doubt that many Americans urgently desire to travel there compared to most other places. I would actually quibble more with Vietnam -- it seems like a fantastic tourist destination, similar in many respects to Thailand.

<comment><USER15> gruez said the countries on the list are "not worth travelling to" and "not exactly on the top of most tourists' list", but if Turkey is the 6th most popular tourist destination in the world that's obviously not true

<comment><USER14> >gruez said the countries on the list are "not worth travelling to"

correction: " _most_ of the countries", and "at least for _most_ people". [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23977923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23977923)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is just a matter of time. Almost all countries actually want US citizens to come there, for tourism purposes, due to their high spend potential (relative to other countries).

<comment><USER12> > Almost all countries actually want US citizens to come there, for tourism > purposes

Please do provide evidence of this. Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care where they come from, as long as they spend money and don't ruin stuff.

Americans, along with the British and the French, seems to be the groups that most people complained about when it comes to groups vacationing in Europe.

Edit: lot's of people replying, which is great. But none of providing evidence, which is explicitly requested in this comment. Would love to see some hard facts rather than people's anecdotes.

<comment><USER18> > Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care > where they come from, as long as they spend money and don't ruin stuff.

Right, but American tourists make up a significant portion of tourist spending. Ergo, if you want tourist money, you want American tourists. Not necessarily more or less than other types of tourists, but that's not important.

<comment><USER19> Americans are well known for tipping astronomical amounts in relation to most European countries. No doubt due to their crazy social construct of paying for a service and paying the person providing a service separately, which is pretty foreign in most European nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are travel restrictions all over the world currently due to the COVID-19 situation. People are not allowed to travel from one city to another in the same country without proper documents. Lots of countries are not even allowing international flights at this point. To tie this in just with US passport is simply politically motivated.

<comment><USER21> It is the mix of current US sentiments, its leadership combined with the total chaos going on in this country - journalists are doing a disservice by perpetuating and provoking tribal instincts of nationalism. They're hyping up the downfall of the United States and hoping to get more clicks.

Folks who are non-Americans are getting a spicy juicy dose of some anti-US sentiments which is being drank in large quantities overseas.

What a sad time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a worldwide pandemic going on, no one currently has access to "most of the world". Not sure the point of spinning this as a U.S. citizen specific issue...I guess Canadian journalists just can't resist

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think losing access to most of the world is a permanent thing. It's purely because of the virus and nothing else which is self inflicted. The foreign policy and all around lack of empathy shown by the WH will all pass.

As a country though, the US has become the beacon of anti-science nut jobs starting from the president. For the leading tech country in the world, it's jarring how anti-science it is. The whole world seems to have gotten a grip on the situation except the US, which is still consumed with frivolous things like throwing the first pitch at the Yankees game , just because he is jealous of Dr.Fauci.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most Americans don't even realize they're trapped in their own country now. You can't leave even if you want to.

<comment><USER24> I just flew from JFK -> LHR via Dublin last week. Quarantine for two weeks, and I could enter Germany as per the UK GOV:

"In line with the European Commission recommendation, from 2 July Germany is gradually lifting restrictions on entry from third states where the COVID-19 epidemiological situation is improving. The rules concern travellers' place of immediate prior stay, not their nationality."

[https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/germany/entry- requi...](https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/germany/entry-requirements)

(I'm not going to leave the UK or even the flat I'm in for the matter). Travel in COVID Era is stressful, but once you are out of the US "illness free" for two weeks, it seems like a US citizen wouldn't be barred.

<comment><USER25> I think they go by your current permanent residence or citizenship, not which country you came from last, otherwise it would be fairly easy to get into the EU just by quarantining in stopover country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This type of news may go stale very quickly... Yes pandemic has instantly created myriad set of obstacles to travel and migration around the world.

Maybe some of these restrictions will take enough time to be lifted... But, does anyone believe that most of the world will suddenly reject American money (for business and leisure) for long term?

I mean, just look at the "in-fight" happening in Europe where southern countries want northern tourists despite pandemic status...

</comment><comment><USER27> If it makes anyone feel better, most U.S. citizens have _never_ had access to any part of the world because they've been too busy barely making ends meet working dead-end jobs with no healthcare or vacations.

So, in the grand scheme of things, is it really so terrible if the middle echelons feel a little squeeze as well as a result of political malfeasance from the people that they (collectively, not individually) put into power?

<comment><USER28> I hear what you're saying but American's travel more, and spend more on travel than almost any other nation (I just looked it up, URL is in another comment)

<comment><USER27> America is a very large nation, and it has more people in it than almost any other. It's also, as an aggregate average, wealthier than almost any other nation.

And at the same time, most people inside it are not individually wealthy enough to thrive inside it to the extent where they could fly overseas for a while.

Per [https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-o...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage- of-americans-who-never-traveled-beyond-the-state-where-they-were-born-a- surprise/)

As many as 13 percent say they have never flown in an airplane.

Forty percent of those questioned said they've never left the country.

Over half of respondents have never owned a passport.

And that's even with lumping Mexico/Canada into the same group as other continents when they are very dissimilar in terms of travel feasibility. Mexico and Canada get 55% of all international travel from the US.

Is that better than an impoverished nation? Absolutely. Does one typically classify the US as an impoverished nation? Not typically.

<comment><USER28> The Forbes article, and the data it's based off isn't insightful unless we have something to compare. How much do citizens of other nations travel from region to region within their own country? What about beyond the countries that immediately border their own?

If the context is _just America_ yes, you can make the assertion that your typical American doesn't, or can't travel as often as they'd like internationally. However in the context of this discussion I asserted that American's will notice a travel ban, because compared to the rest of the world they travel a lot.

<comment><USER27> > _I asserted that American 's will notice a travel ban_

A very small percentage of Americans will notice an overseas travel ban right now, given that:

1\. Only 20-30% of US citizens have _ever_in_their_lives_ traveled outside of North America. (The percentage of people who have ever left the country X the percentage of non-Mexico/Canada international travel.)

2\. There's a global pandemic that the US isn't handling well. People in group 1 are not rushing to rub elbows with strangers in airplanes right now.

The only countries that we can unqualifiedly say that "Americans" _may_ notice right now are Canada and Mexico (by car, flying still allowed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> US Citizenship may have once been a prestigous thing, but now it's met with a sort of elitism that suggests Americans are inferior (stupid, boorish, backward etc). In my experience living here the differences between Canada & the US are grossly exaggerated and many countries respect Canada much more.

I think the well calibrated view would give America more credit for the role it's played/playing globally.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm currently trapped in the U.S. waiting for my passport renewal, which currently takes 3-4 months. Since you have to mail in your existing passport to get your passport renewed, I literally have no passport until the new one arrives in the mail. People who applied for their new passports in March are only now getting their new passports in the mail today.

I know someone will say "oh you shouldn't be traveling anyways". I don't live in the U.S. anymore, I live abroad. I only returned to the U.S. because I had hit my visa limit abroad, and thought I could get my passport renewed within a reasonable time frame in the U.S. (max 1 month). How stupid of me to assume my country took passport processing seriously and with any sense of urgency.

</comment><comment><USER31> What is a theoretical maximum time frame for Europe to ban visitors from the US? It seems like the allure of tourists dollars will likely trump public health concerns at some point. Does anyone see this lasting for another year or longer?

</comment><comment><USER32> The whole backwards part about this is that the Schengen travel restrictions are still in place.

So somebody who has visited a Schengen country even with under 10 covid cases a week (like most Nordics) can't travel directly to the US.

They have to fly to a country like Mexico or Canada (which are both still battling covid) and then enter the border after 14 days.

Oh BUT if you're a US citizen or with a resident visa, you can enter from wherever.

Oh AND if you're a student with in person classes, you can enter.

But me with a house and a job and a visa, can't enter.

How the fuck can this happen?

</comment><comment><USER33> Full headline is better:

"U.S. citizens no longer have access to most of the world — the global South never had it"

</comment><comment><USER34> IMO it's temporary. (IMHO!) The population of America is very large, and it's hard for the government to control all the idiots(a good percentage of the population?) who live in it, and also it's hard for the government to be organized themselves because they're busy fighting for power and blaming each other. Great country, but COVID exposed some of the weaknesses.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone know:

How difficult is it for a Sri Lankan citizen to get a temporary visa to come to a developed nation (e.g. for vacation or a business trip)?

What is the reasoning for this situation? Other than edge cases where a nation is a security risk or where illegal immigration is a concern what does democratic a country gain by keeping visitors out?

<comment><USER36> I am a Sri Lankan, and as far as I know only developed nation that allow visa free travel for Sri Lankans is Singapore. If you want to visit any other developed nation, you have to show you have enough funds (or someone else is sponsoring) and have connections to Sri Lanka.

I think one of the why our passport ranks in the bottom was during the Sri Lankan civil war there was lot of refugees from Sri Lanka, so developed countries started to look at every Sri Lankan as potential refugee or asylum seeker. It has been 11 years since the civil war ended, but developed world's treatment remains the same.

The irony is sometimes you will see some European tourists, who had no issues getting visa to Sri Lanka, begging and doing street performance in the streets of Sri Lanka.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's so weird for me personally because while I have absolutely zero interest in boarding a plane to go _anywhere_ at the moment, there is a weird small feeling of being trapped so to speak. like losing the option (that i wasn't going to use anyway) to pick up and go anywhere i could theoretically want to.

not complaining, just observing a feeling because there are more pressing things for this country and myself at the moment and as the article points out we're now experiencing what it's like for a fairly sizable portion of the world. I guess we are in the middle of reaping what we've sown.

</comment><comment><USER38> >considered a golden ticket to wealth

The limits on travel are interesting but overstatements like that really trickle into absurdity.

The US's role in the world is changing, but to demonstrate it folks seem to adopt a lot of wonky ideas of what it was.

</comment><comment><USER39> This clickbait of a title is missing "amidst Coronavirus pandemic"

</comment><comment><USER40> And if your passport expired during COVID-19, like mine did, you can apparently forget about getting a new one for at least a year.

<comment><USER25> At first glance, it would appear so but if you check the FAQ where they list the number of current passport renewal applications and how many they get through per week, right now there's about a ~8 week wait. Long, but not a year.

<comment><USER40> I guess I formed this opinion since I have to apply in person for my childrens' renewals.

<comment><USER25> Ah yeah, good luck with that. They want nothing to do with in-person renewals right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> On the one hand I think "Oh good, all these people who are convinced of the superiority of the USSA will start to get a clue." But, then I remember that these are also the same people who are extremely unlikely to have ever left their hometown, much less traveled to a different country. So this won't phase them at all.

</comment><comment><USER42> haha damn. I just became a US citizen few months ago after waiting a lifetime in the queue :/ .

<comment><USER43> Congrats! I'm still waiting for it. No idea when I will get my EAD. Been almost 9 years in US.

<comment><USER42> Thank you. I got mine after ~18 yrs :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> U.S. citizens != U.S. residents

</comment><comment><USER45> The bigger problem for US citizens is that US Passport is essentially an IRS trap, no matter where you decide to live.

<comment><USER46> How does having a passport affect a US citizen's taxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> In the middle of a pandemic, similar restrictions apply to everyone. These restrictions are generally not based on citizenship but residency. Everybody is encouraged to stay where they are (or were, when it broke out).

US citizens residing abroad are not being treated any worse than they were: it's just more difficult to move from country A to country B anywhere in the world for anybody right now (except within the EU/EEA, which largely reopened). US citizens are not being singled out, and while they're also not being given preferential treatment, it is hard to imagine they would have been had this happened anytime in the past, say 50 years ago. The situation is just largely unprecedented.

It is inaccurate to compare the situation of travellers now and in the past, when travel was much less common and less affordable, and thus the population flows were much smaller: this is the first pandemic of the global era, so of course the restrictions are going to impact more people and be more noticeable than any similar measures implemented in the past. Arguably it has to be so to control the spread of the virus.

On a general note, the US passport was never a great choice for people who mostly live outside the US due to the cumbersome tax regulations one has to endure as part of being a US citizen but, it can be argued, it could remain so precisely due to the power the US enjoys to compel other countries to enforce its laws, as demonstrated with e.g. FATCA [1]. Thus there has always been a steady outflow of millionaires looking for greener pastures. [2]

Separately, the US passport was also never highly-ranked for people who just wanted to travel around as visitors: in that category it is easily outclassed by e.g. Singapore or Japan, which let you visit China or (in the latter case) India visa-free. [3] Still, that was never the reason for it being so prized: the US has likely the best career opportunities in the world, so people want the citizenship and the passport that comes with it to get inside the country, not to stay away from it and go elsewhere. If they do travel abroad however, the US passport still generally affords unrivalled consular protection in most of the world. And nothing really changes in this department just because of the pandemic.

I'm really surprised to see an article like this from what purportedly aspires to be the Canadian BBC. It's really quite poorly-researched for such an alarmist tone.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act)

2\. [https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-citizens-who-left-the-us- to-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-citizens-who-left-the-us-to-avoid- paying-tax/)

3\. [https://www.henleypassportindex.com/](https://www.henleypassportindex.com/)

</comment><comment><USER48> The disconnect between how the world sees the US and how the US sees itself is astounding.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can't even get into some neighboring states! So much for the 'union'

<comment><USER50> Do you have a source on that? As far as I'm aware that is illegal. States can require quarantine periods for visitors, but I don't think they can outright ban travel from US citizens/nationals.

<comment> kube-system I don't think it is the case anywhere currently, but earlier on in the pandemic there was at least one place that put up checkpoints and turned away visitors.

Example: [https://www.obxtoday.com/coronavirus/updated-dare-county- res...](https://www.obxtoday.com/coronavirus/updated-dare-county-restricts- visitor-access-to-outer-banks-clarifies-entry-procedure-for-non-resident- workers/)

<comment><USER50> Just because a government did it doesn't mean it is legal. It seems like that county was quickly sued and had to change its policy.[1][2] I am guessing this restriction wouldn't hold up in court, but you would actually have to get them to court to force them to stop. And the bigger the entity and the more people impacted, the quicker they would end up in court.

[1] - [https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article241852551.htm...](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article241852551.html)

[2] - [https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article2440336...](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article244033667.html)

<comment> kube-system Yeah for sure, I was just sharing the example. There's a lot of executive actions testing the bounds of the law currently.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Antibiotics targeting mitochondria kill cancer stem cells of several tumor types - <AUTHOR> http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=3174

<comment><USER2> There was an article some time ago about fasting to boost the efficacy of chemo, by causing selective uptake in cancer cells.

I guess that should be relevant in this case to, since I guess the fasting should decrease the activity of mitochondria in normal cells but not in cancer cells.

<comment><USER3> Is this is the article you're referring to?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856043)

<comment><USER2> Yeah

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> General thoughts: Cancer patients—in particular those with blood cancers—are routinely immunocompromised and put on antibiotics. Any potent effects would almost certainly have been realized by now. There are a lot of people who have made their careers by tracking what therapies work and which don't—and that includes controlling for "confounders" like those given antibiotics, etc.

Oncotarget isn't a bad journal—and this is certainly a good idea which may have applications we can't quite imagine yet. But it's unlikely to be a potent cancer therapy.

<comment><USER5> Unless I'm missing something...

Getting rid of the CSC's is great for stopping the formation of new tumor- forming cancer cells, but you still need to kill and/or remove all the existing cancer cells.

So, this could treat the cancer stem cells as if it were an "infection- vector," but you'd still have to stop any current "infection" to save the patient.

This wouldn't really help late stage or aggressive types, but could make treatment efficacy better for cancers in early stages since it may help remove the cells that help a cancer come out of remission.

Maybe people with higher genetic propensity for covered cancer types could rotate on these drugs on a regular basis to reduce their risk? The eternal z-pak... Be interesting to see what the epidemiologists and actuaries come up with to assess the cost-benefit. Consistent anti-biotics would accelerate incidence of anti-biotic-resistant infections. There is no zero-risk since you can't actually take these drugs constantly. A tumor-forming cell could be produced between cycles. The long-term effects at such dosing levels were likely never studied and side-effects could be problems.

More likely, this would become one part of the full-court-press applied to treatment regimens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At high enough concentrations, you are going to wipe out many eukaryotic cells (cancer or not). I don't really see any good control experiments

</comment><comment><USER7> There are publications (2002, 2003) publications that reported similar results:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11912125](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11912125)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14597870](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14597870)

I wonder why there were few follow-up studies? or what happened to these lines of research?

<comment><USER8> Here's the quote from the abstract that I found revealing:

 _Finally, recent clinical trials with doxycycline and azithromycin (intended to target cancer-associated infections, but not cancer cells) have already shown positive therapeutic effects in cancer patients, although their ability to eradicate cancer stem cells was not yet appreciated._

So, the way I read it, "It's a good idea, but we haven't gotten it to work yet, even after some testing, but it's a good idea."

I've been around a few research science labs and understand the pressures on them. Getting published is good...but not sure of the provenance of this outlet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oddly, they mention azithromycin, but I found this:

[http://aac.asm.org/content/50/6/2042.full](http://aac.asm.org/content/50/6/2042.full)

which says:

"These results were compared to the inhibitory profiles of other antibiotics that function by inhibiting bacterial protein synthesis. Of these, chloramphenicol and tetracycline were significant inhibitors of mammalian mitochondrial protein synthesis while the macrolides, lincosamides, and aminoglycosides were not."

Seems like "doxycycline" would be more precise than "antibiotics"? After all, I assume this effect can not true of those "antibiotics" that are thought to increase the risk of cancer? (I am thinking in particular of metronidazole, and I put the word antibiotics in quotes because metronidazole is a very strange drug that is difficult to classify, and even though it is sometimes used as an antibiotic, it was not initially thought of as an antibiotic.)

</comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like what this means is that after removal of a tumor, a good thing to do would be to undergo a course of antibiotics?

<comment><USER11> At least doxycycline. Whether the results hold up in phase I/II/III clinical trials is still TBD, [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01590082](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01590082).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oddly enough, I was put on Tetracycline to slow down the progression of my mitochondrial disease, i.e, Tetracycline also offers some protection to the mitochondria.

[1] [http://www.neurology.org/content/68/14/1159.short](http://www.neurology.org/content/68/14/1159.short)

</comment><comment><USER13> Who has ever heard of this journal before?</comment>


Wikiid: Can Wikipedia make a Wikipedia page notable enough to avoid deletion? - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Diikiw/Wikiid

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the old joke about induction in mathematics. Maybe it could be adapted as follows:

Claim: Every Wikipedia page ever made is notable.

Proof: Suppose at least one Wikipedia page that is not notable exists. Choose the one whose length in characters is smallest. Then surely this page is notable for being the short non-notable Wikipedia page ever created, making it quite notable, indeed. We have reached a contradiction and hence the proof is complete.

Or something like that.

<comment><USER3> Why does it have to the the shortest page? The logic is flawed.

<comment><USER2> In the 'interesting number paradox' the smallest non-interesting number is chosen. By convention every ordered set has a smallest element which is arbitrarily chosen.

The logic is flawed for the main reason that partitioning sets in any non- objective manner and then drawing conclusions from that is folly, which is the point of such so-called paradoxes.

<comment><USER4> I tend to think of "interestingness" as a fuzzy property that is at or near 1 on the obviously interesting integers {0, 1, ...} and approaches 0 as N -> infinity. But that obviously doesn't alter the fact that "interestingness" is extremely subjective.

Another cool paradox is the one surrounding "the smallest positive integer that cannot be expressed using twenty or fewer English words".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is reminiscent of Hofstadter's desire for a book of reviews of itself (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hofstadter#Columnist>).

Wikipedia tries to keep its integrity, but I think sometimes they need to be more reasonable. Someone ought to create a complement to wikipedia which allows people to add things like this and other non-spam articles which wikipedia editors won't tolerate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess not surprisingly, I attempted to write a book of reviews of itself once. The idea still lingers in my mind, and I'd suspect that after a handful of years I'll pull it out and finish it. (I think the idea will be to mark the book as a "50th anniversary edition" of itself, and have the entire thing just be a history of forwards to the book from various known literary critics, documenting the critical reception of the book throughout history. It's a very conceited idea.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somehow, <http://xkcd.com/545/> and <http://xkcd.com/446/> seem appropriate to mention here.

 _Hint: Check the alt text_

</comment><comment><USER7> > It can be looked at both as metahumor and as a piece of postmodern art.

I think this is more of a recursive humor than metahumor.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, false classification. (Metahumor would be humor about humor.)

Well, it's a wiki page, so anybody can edit it and fix stuff like that.

<comment><USER8> Well, according to wikipedia, in which metahumor redirects to meta-joke:

 _Meta-joke refers to three somewhat different, but related categories: "self- referential jokes", "jokes about jokes" (see meta-) also known as metahumor, and "joke templates"._

Recursive humor would be a subclass of self-referential jokes, going by the definition for self-referential jokes as given by (what else?) Wikipedia.

 _This kind of meta-joke is a joke in which the joke itself, or rather a familiar class of jokes, is part of the joke._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There should be a wiki page about the creation of the Wikiid page (which apparently got deleted?). Surely that's relevant?

<comment><USER10> Well there is:

<http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, it didn't catch it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like a few people are vandalizing stuff - which is pretty awesome and should definitely be added to the page's "history" at some point - but for a reference point, the page looked like this when I submitted it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Diikiw/Wikiid...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Diikiw/Wikiid&oldid=251285005)

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone can make a page notable enough to avoid deletion. Fill it with well written, relevant and verifiable materials and its fine.

<comment><USER12> "Within Wikipedia, notability refers to whether or not a _topic_ merits its own article." (emphasis added) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability>

Topics are notable; articles are not. If a topic is non-notable in the real world, nothing written on Wikipedia should change that.</comment></comment>


Is this the death of Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> https://www.zapchain.com/a/Um4axuvrOl

<comment><USER2> Unnecessarily editorializing the title leaves it open to being answered by my good pal Betteridge:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not done unnecessarily; death of bitcoin is what I talk about. It does look like a linkbait but did you read it? I'd gladly take a 'no' as an answer to the title if you tell me why do you think so..

In fact on the opposite, your hipster comment might have deterred people from viewing it which is something you must think about. Time lost on HN means this is not going back up.

<comment><USER2> I did read the article. The title of the submission here on HN is a lot more sensationalist than both the title of the article as published, and what the content of the article bears out. To use your own phrase, it comes across as very link-baity.

I don't have any strongly held beliefs regarding bitcoin. Given the title, I was expecting an article that convincingly explained how this threat would kill bitcoin. The article described a challenge to bitcoin, but did not meet my expectations in bearing out its thesis. So, if I saved someone else that same disappointment with my hipster comment, that was my intent.</comment></comment></comment>


New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

<comment><USER2> I "like" the wording in the title: US _Secrets_. So, it's not like they are leaking _OUR private data_ \- which shouldn't be being collected in the first place. No, they are disclosing country secrets.</comment>


Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-toxic-history-of-soda-pop/ <comment><USER2> To this day, almost all aluminum cans carrying soda are lined with a resin that inhibits the insulin signaling pathway, and is associated with Type 2 diabetes. Most of the manufacturers make claims that it's harmless.

[https://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs](https://www.coca- colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs)

Despite what they say, the scientific consensus is opposite, really, with the vast majority of academic papers suggesting quite harmful effects : [https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to- plas...](https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plastic- measures-500cdf1fe528)

<comment><USER3> I was under the impression it's all aluminium cans that need a chemical buffer to prevent aluminium from leeching into the fluids. Long term Aluminium poisoning is probably worse than diabetes since it tends to eat away at your brain.

Either way I'm not particularly fond of the flavor that aluminium cans seem to impart on drinks, and have been starting to avoid them more as I get older.

<comment><USER2> Yup - bisphenol-a containing resins are the precise lining that is used to prevent the aluminum from getting eaten by the carbonic acid.

There was also this fascinating study showing that BPA drove liver fat accumulation much more profoundly than fructose, which I find interesting. Both are clearly bad, but futzing with hormones is especially bad : [https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0300483X120036...](https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0300483X12003617-gr3.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I switched to OpenCola[0]. It tastes pretty close, given that it's based on a reverse-engineered/prototype of the Coca-Cola recipe. I like knowing what goes into it. Plus I put about half the sugar into it that the recipe calls for.

There's a UK vendor that sells the concentrate of oils premade. I keep about a liter of the syrup (concentrate + water + sugar) in my fridge and add a tablespoon of so to 8oz of seltzer/mineral water when I want a soda:

[https://cube-cola.org/](https://cube-cola.org/)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola_(drink)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola_\(drink\))

<comment><USER5> There must be a market for less sweet sodas. I don't like excessively sweet food nor excessively sweet drinks, I like sweet stuff but not on the level must products are. It's really difficult (at least in my city) to find balanced stuff, most of the time I only have two options: regular soda or zero-sugar soda (even sweeter).

<comment><USER3> You'd think that there'd be mote of a market for less sweet drinks, but it probably depends on where you live. I really like honest tea's peach tea, which has almost half the sugar of most bottled drinks, and I can't find it anymore in the stores near my house that used to stock it. I'm guessing the distributor just couldn't sell enough in my neighborhood and didn't want to pay for the shelf space anymore, since it disappeared from a bunch of disperate stores within a week or two.

I'd also really be curious about how the seattle soda tax is effecting honest tea in general. I was mildly annoyed by the tax since it claimed to be a sugar tax but charged by the oz rather than per gram of suger, and also didn't effect starbucks sugary drinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _While the dosages were small, they were certainly habit-forming, and soda fountains stood to profit from such consistent customers._

People typically eat breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. You might even say _habitually._

 _Around that time, it became obvious to the medical profession that there weren't any health benefits to carbonated water on its own, so people started selling it as a treat_

With my first pregnancy, I threw up morning, noon and night for eight months. Carbonated water was one of the things I could keep down and it helped make it vastly more bearable.

Keep in mind these fountain drinks with stuff added for "medicinal purposes" existed at a time when, no, you couldn't go to Walmart and select from a wide assortment of reliable OTC drugs without a prescription. If your medicine cabinet at home has multiple different OTC pain killers and cold medicines, my feeling is you really don't have a leg to stand on for scoffing at such practices from a hundred or more years ago.

Coca-Cola absolutely contained ingredients with medicinal properties. It's the one that is probably the best documented. That doesn't mean the others didn't also have real medicinal benefit. It just means we don't necessarily have the records of what went in them and the proof that X ingredient absolutely has medicinal uses.

<comment><USER7> I had a biology professor tell us in college that both Pepsi and Dr. Pepper were very high in phosphate, which settles your stomach.

I've actually tried it on several occasions when I was sick or nauseous for one reason or another and it really does work well. Just keep the bottle around and take a quick sip when you need some relief.

For me it works a lot better than ginger ale, even though that's supposed to help too.

<comment> village-idiot Ginger ale was the first soda I tried, specifically because I was vomiting.

While I don't drink soda anymore, ginger ale is the one exception when I am very stressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A friend of mine pointed out that all the original sodas were herbal beverages. Coca-Kola was made to deliver the beneficial properties of two tropical plants (coca leaf and kola nut [2]), root beers were flavored with various plant root extracts, Dr. Pepper has 21 natural flavors, etc. The plant extracts provided anti-oxidants, caffeine, and other medicinal substances.

"Adaptogens or adaptogenic substances are used in herbal medicine for the claimed stabilization of physiological processes and promotion of homeostasis." [1] - wikipedia goes on to discuss how the term is not considered valid today, where something is only a "medicine" if it's highly purified, entirely isolated from its natural context, and has specific physiological effects that are understood and described.

I think it important to point out that before the modern era, foods and plant- derived substances were humanity's best option for improving our body's function. I've read how civil war soldiers greatly appreciated coffee (entirely imported from tropical countries).

The Coca-Cola company has a monopoly on coca-leaf flavoring [3]. This substance is a good source of anti-oxidants. Coca-Kola allegedly has been found to have more flower extracts than Pepsi-Kola...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptogen) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_nut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_nut) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#United_States)

Sodas were originally consumed in small quantities - 8 to 12 ounces was typical. Now we're getting plant-free "sodas" (sugar water with artificial colors and flavors, and without plant ingredients) in 64+ ounce servings.

My poor father buys Coke-zero, not realizing that research has found that people who consume artificially sweetened beverages actually consume more calories in total. I think he's desperate for the caffeine (exhaustion), and doesn't realize the metabolism boost of caffeine is best balanced with a small amount of sugar (caffeine without sugar -> low blood sugar -> cortisol release).

I disagree that "soda pop" was originally toxic. I keep a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Kola around for a small serving (8-ounces) of coca leaf and kola nut in the mid-afternoon period, after lunch & before dinner.

<comment><USER6> _I keep a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Kola around for a small serving (8-ounces) of coca leaf and kola nut in the mid-afternoon period, after lunch & before dinner._

"Coca-tea" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sodas even became ubiquitous in our offices! And Hackathons!

But to be real; offices having free soda available has its own health downsides; A cola at lunch can quickly become a cola for lunch and afternoon snack -- and maybe even a pick-me-up when tired or stressed. Only, it leads to weight gain through its sugars and the full supressing carbonic acid; acids lead to bone, nail, and organ side effects; and sugars, hfcs, and phosphoric acid start leading us to diabetes.

<comment><USER10> I'm mostly with you, but carbonic acid is harmless. If anything it might raise the pH in your stomach.

<comment><USER11> Coca-Cola uses phosphoric acid. Here's a Coca-Cola bottling plant receiving a delivery of phosphoric acid.[1] It's marked with a 1805 (Phosphoric Acid, Corrosive, Class 8) placard. Of course, it's diluted as the product is mixed. This video shows the ingredients - tap water run through an de-ionizing plant, high fructose corn syrup in tank cars, phosphoric acid by the pallet load, flavoring (the "secret ingredient", in bags), and CO2 as a gas.

[1] [https://youtu.be/7V6JO0Rfgas?t=189](https://youtu.be/7V6JO0Rfgas?t=189)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: anyone working on software for vehicles/infrastructures/anything? - <AUTHOR>

There are so many people on HN working on some web/mobile/gaming stuff that I was wondering if there's anyone who writes software for other purposes? Like maybe for controlling vehicles (airplanes, trains) or for managing infrastructures such as huge airports or traffic lights on the roads. Or I don't know, what else needs software and is rarely mentioned in that sense?<p>Could you tell us an interesting story? How is it different? What's your workflow? What one should learn to understand in order to do your job? Or anything you may find interesting. <comment><USER2> We help develop software for a few "traditional" industries that have mostly had installed thick client apps (or mainframe) stuff to date. These applications are now seeing benefits of becoming web applications beyond simpler collaboration suites-> light, mobile and distributed. The advent of development frameworks, agile & TDD driven processes have reduced costs that 5 years ago would have put custom enterprise apps in the several million dollar range. I used to work with a "player" in the "middleware" market which was thriving 5 yrs ago and now only belongs to a few of the big guns.

The extent of command & control experience has been limited, as there are more hesitations with security and less node-based infrastructure, but things have been continually shifting. This market does still command top dollar to the consulting companies, but the SaaS model is doing quite well for new entrants. OPOWER.com comes to mind with energy-savings modules and reporting for consumers and utilties.

Notably, with the advent of lightweight web-enabled control "kits" (arduino for example), we're seeing more and more of this especially in the last 24 months. I'm excited to be in this field and hope that we have a chance to pickup a project or two incorporating more control interfaces in our work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The last few years I've worked on mostly desktop graphics ranging from a virtual oscilloscope to process control UI. Last summer I was working on robotics, some iPhone UI stuff for a spy camera, and a desktop OpenGL based color picker. This year I'm working at my best job ever - I'm doing Windows/WPF and computer vision stuff for guiding lasers for a 3 person company.

As a regular reader of HN one might get the impression that:

(A) The web is where all the developer jobs are.

(B) The alternative to working at a startup is working for Ginorma Corp in a veal fattening cube farm.

(C) Everyone has to pay their dues working on old crusty code.

While the above is mostly true, there is an alternative developer world where none of those things are true.

(a) I've never worked on the web (unless you count web clients for handhelds).

(b) I've spent most of my (non-contacting) career working for tiny companies (1-2 devs) and I love it.

(c) Believe it or not, I've never worked on code that was much more than a year old - and I probably wrote it.

Here's the kicker - I'm not some genius but I've managed to only work at dev jobs I've loved since 1985...

In short, my brothers in the web world aren't the only ones having fun. There a rich development world outside of the web world as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I programmed embedded controllers and interfaces for home automation. It is fun and challenging to integrate lights, security, iPHones, pool heaters, pet doors, disco balls together. It sucks because the it is so closely tied to the construction industry and people treat it the sames as day laborers. I have some examples on my blog if you are interested.

<http://mcotton.posterous.com/></comment>


MENACE - <AUTHOR> http://www.mscroggs.co.uk/blog/19 <comment><USER2> Fred Saberhagen wrote a short story ( _Without a Thought_ ) in which this little "computer" played a role. Published in 1963; I always wondered where the idea came from.

<comment><USER3> Also appears in the classic AI novel The Adolescence of P1 by Thomas Ryan.

<comment><USER2> That's right, I'd forgotten.

Still a good read . . . though I have to keep multiplying the numbers the author throws around for capacity (so many megabytes here and there) by about a billion, to keep from giggling. When the book was written, a megabyte was a really big deal.

<comment><USER4> What I usually think is that maybe they change the byte sizes in the future, so that a "byte" is no longer 8 bits.

(Historical note: A "word" is nowadays usually four bytes, i.e. 32 bits, but older mainframe computer had varying word sizes; 36 bits for a word was not uncommon.)

<comment><USER3> Sadly, P1 is set in the 1970s and has figures appropriate for IBM systems of that era. Near the end, an experimental cryogenic memory system is attached:

*

Testing indicated that the results of a live experiment would be a data storage unit with 87 percent addressability and sufficient structural integrity to allow a map of the "dead" areas to be constructed.

The interface being designed to link the cryostat to the 360/50 was geared to address just over 16 million bytes. It was understood that this capability would grossly understate the estimated final capacity of the cryogen. Modifications were under way to add eight more addressing bits to the computer. This would allow it to address over 4xl0^9 separate locations, or in excess of 4 billion addresses. This was expected to be more in keeping with the ultimate capacity of the cryogen at 150 millimeters diameter by 400 millimeters high. A six-inch cylinder, sixteen inches tall.

*

The System/360 series started with 24 bits of addressing and moved to 32 bits later on, so we're looking at a whopping 4GB. Even if the storage system uses 32 bit words, that's just 16GB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh, reset_menace() is hairy - [https://github.com/mscroggs/MENACE/blob/master/menace.js#L18...](https://github.com/mscroggs/MENACE/blob/master/menace.js#L185)

<comment><USER6> Can someone help me understand why it has to look like this?

       for(var i=0;i<9;i++){for(var k=0;k<i;k++){for(var m=0;m<k;m++){
          for(var j=0;j<9;j++){if(i!=j && k!=j && m!=j){for(var l=0;l<j;l++){if(i!=l && k!=l && m!=l){for(var n=0;n<l;n++){if(i!=n && k!=n && m!=n){
                  pos=""
                  dummy_moves=Array()
                  for(var a=0;a<9;a++){
                      if(a==i || a==k || a==m){
                          pos+="1"
                          dummy_moves.push(0)
                      } else if(a==j || a==l || a==n){
                          pos+="2"
                          dummy_moves.push(0)
                      } else {
                          pos+="0"
                          dummy_moves.push(s[3])
                      }
                  }
                  add_box(pos,dummy_moves)
      }}} }}}}}}

<comment><USER7> continue; could reduce the depth a bit, but it's still gnarly. [https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f3607a28a4c8ad1322f13a2d10...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f3607a28a4c8ad1322f13a2d10f28b5e)

<comment><USER5> I have a ridiculous urge to refactor this.

It's enumerating all of the boards, legal or not. Judging by the letters, it's doing one player's moves at first, in a way that's trying to avoid repeats. If I were to do this, I'd have, well, menace_x and menace_o, and build move n from move n-1. Depth-first would also work, really, as we're talking about only 300-ish boards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This suggests a thought experiment for those worried about superhuman AI. If you add more matchboxes to this setup while teaching it to play something else, is it going to become intelligent eventually? Maybe at a billion matchboxes?

If that doesn't seem believable, why be worried about machine learning algorithms running on digital computers instead of matchbox arrays?

<comment><USER9> > If you add more matchboxes to this setup while teaching it to play something > else, is it going to become intelligent eventually?

No, because the design uses a different matchbox for every possible state of the game. If you taught it to play chess, a billion matchboxes wouldn't be enough to get four moves in.[1] Yet digital computers can play chess.

On the other hand, if you switched to a completely different design that uses matchboxes to simulate an artificial neural network… a design that would require opening _each_ matchbox on _each_ time step…

…and pumped the number of boxes up to 100 billion (number of neurons in the human brain) or higher…

…and ran the simulation for, perhaps, trillions of time steps (need to simulate evolution, not just the operation of the brain during a single lifetime)…

…and changed the goal from playing a game to something that would require more general logical reasoning...

…then who knows, it might well become intelligent (though it's hard to be sure). But at that point I'd say the lack of believability has more to do with the difficulty of performing 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 matchbox operations, than the likelihood of achieving useful results if you did.

[1] [http://www.bernmedical.com/blog/how-many-possible-move- combi...](http://www.bernmedical.com/blog/how-many-possible-move-combinations- are-there-in-chess)

<comment><USER10> Related: [https://xkcd.com/505/](https://xkcd.com/505/).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask mods: could we please get a [letter icon] on HN if we have new replies? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes people post clever stuff and I don't see till the next time I get around to checking my replies. This means a potentially interesting conversation in an active post becomes a slow dragged out process over a few days in a dead post.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> ... or just subscribe to HNReplies:

[http://www.hnreplies.com/](http://www.hnreplies.com/)

<comment><USER3> This is the standard answer and works well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To discuss a feature proposal, it might be useful to contact the moderators directly using the |contact| link at the bottom of the page.

My personal take is that the number of interesting discussions that notification of responses would generate is probably significantly fewer than the number of inflamed discussions it would prolong.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some of the Chrome extensions for HN offer a feature like this.

[https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker- news/t:chrome/](https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-news/t:chrome/)</comment>


Using Django Forms With Pylons - <AUTHOR> http://marcuscavanaugh.com/posts/pylons-django-forms/ <comment><AUTHOR> I never thought I'd say that, but now that I use Django Forms with Pylons, I don't want to go back. I've converted my startup's forms into Django forms, and it really fits together nicely.

The glue code I posted is just a few hundred lines, so it's not a problem to maintain. And I know that Django won't change things on their end without plenty of advance warning.

No more @validate decorator for me, that's for sure.</comment>


Postfix has no public version control - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mailing.postfix.users/6Kkel3J_nv4 <comment><USER2> I guess open source authors can work however they wish, but the sheer disdain displayed for good-but-differing practices is depressing.

So, now I'm a "kid" (with the obvious insinuation that I'm dumb and inexperienced) if I think maybe perhaps version control is a good idea, especially for open source projects that actually want contributions? Neat.

And git is "bloatware"? Is that guy running on a Commodore 64 or something? Bizarre.

<comment><USER3> What would you do if someone shows up on your mailing list and demands that you change your decade-old workflow that works fine? Weitse and others replies are not inappropriate.

Some projects do not want contributors. It belongs to the maintainer. Knowing what not to put in is sometimes the best way to keep good code.

<comment><USER4> > Knowing what not to put in is sometimes the best way to keep good code.

What does that have to do with exposing a _read only_ versioned history? Nobody is asking him to give the whole world commit privileges.

<comment><USER5> There is an existing, available source of read only versioned history, available online for anyone to see:

ftp://ftp.porcupine.org/mirrors/postfix-release/index.html

It's tarballs for each release, with associated patches for each release. That's a pretty complete read only versioned history.

Why does it have to be a VCS?

<comment><USER4> Because that history is way too coarse to answer the kind of questions that a VCS can answer.

And because _they already have a VCS_ , and are just stubbornly unwilling to share all that useful information with the wider community.

<comment><USER5> What questions do you need to answer at a finer level of granularity? Is it really critical to know that someone fixed a typo in something day over day, but that the typo wasn't included in any releases?

I get that this clashes with the culture you're used to working in, but I don't see where it's actually impactful in a real world sense.

edit: a slight rewording

<comment><USER4> I search through other people's commit histories all the time. Commit logs are by far the most thorough documentation you'll find in the typical codebase. Not for the big things that appear in changelogs, but for the little things like "why the heck does this line work that way?"

Giving Weitse the benefit of the doubt, his commit logs are probably _very useful_ indeed, and not sharing them makes the codebase that much less useful to everyone else.

Edit to add: the canonical example is bisection. When something breaks, it is awesome to bisect it down to the precise change that broke it. Bisection lets you narrow the scope down to a vastly smaller problem space than a whole release would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wietse uses source control. He just doesn't open it up to the hoi polloi.

In the era before _social coding_ (when postfix originated), this wasn't uncommon for open source projects. qmail and sendmail didn't have public VCS either.

Not everything has to be like everything else. Wietse is a dedicated, responsive, talented steward of his project. We don't need to see his WIP commits, and he might not have the inclination to accept patches from unvetted strangers.

I'm ok with letting him run it the way he thinks works best.

<comment><USER4> > and he might not have the inclination to accept patches from unvetted > strangers.

I keep seeing this implication, but it simply doesn't follow at all. Nobody said anything about letting everyone commit changes in a free-for-all.

<comment><USER7> Since Wietse is wary of accepting patches from other people, publishing even a read-only version control repository does absolutely nothing for him. Instead it would only be a burden, not only because he might have to change his workflow, but also because it would invite patches from people who only know how to use version control and can't make it over the barrier of using tar, diff, and patch.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't follow at all. There are open source projects that expose read-only VCS _and still only accept patches via email_. Postgres, for example.

<comment><USER7> The point is that public VCS doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he have one? A public VCS only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development.

Postgres is a different project and they no doubt see a different cost/benefit ratio for public VCS, probably because they have many more core developers and contributors than Postfix.

I've actually had a patch accepted to Postfix and while I found it inconvenient not to use my usual VCS-based workflow, I also realized that the Postfix world revolves around Wietse, not me, and as a user of Postfix I benefit most when the project is optimized for him and not other people.

<comment><USER4> Let's rewrite this:

"The point is that public VCS doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he have one? A public VCS only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development."

Like this:

"The point is that publishing source tarballs doesn't benefit Wietse, and by extension Postfix, so why should he? Publishing the source only benefits other people, most of whom aren't even contributing to Postfix development."

The answer to both question is "he doesn't have to, but if he takes seriously the goals of open source it would be silly not to." It's not unlike choosing to withhold your Makefiles, or documentation.

<comment><USER7> Wietse obviously wants to benefit people who _use_ Postfix, which is why he releases tarballs, Makefiles, and documentation, so people who want to use Postfix can get it, compile it, and learn how to use it. VCS does not further those goals, but instead benefits would-be developers (and an insignificant minority of users who aren't worth optimizing for).

<comment><USER8> A writeable open VCS would also make heartbleed-like vulnerabilities more likely. As such the OP's comments should be evaluated as potential astroturf. Were the NSA looking to introduce new and effective backdoors, and we know they are, this would be one way to pressure IBM/Weitse for access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like the very old projects are very set in their ways (unsurprisingly). I complained about ImageMagick's process a while ago to no avail: [http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse- server/viewtopic.php?f=...](http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse- server/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=25185)

<comment><USER10> Is using Subversion really so bad?

Until pretty recently tools like git, hg, bzr didn't exist. Now one of those is looking abandoned in its own right.

Switching repos and tools isn't trivial, and really if the tool is free software and works across common OSs, I really don't see the problem. DVCS doesn't have to work for everyone.

<comment><USER9> No, using subversion isn't that bad. It's the rest of ImageMagick's workflow that was bad. SVN was just the cherry on top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Disclaimer: I am a primary maintainer for a couple open source projects and I contribute to a few others for 10+ years now. And I've seen quite a few email threads similar to this one :)

1) If you don't like how postfix is run then feel free to use other tools, fork it, or start your own project. This is open source and you have the power to do it better. If you are indeed right then your project will be successful. Put the money (effort) where you mouth is.

2) You can politely suggest something but you will get a much better traction if you first establish your reputation among people who work on this project by contributing code, documentation, whatever or even simply answering the questions in the mailing list (after about a year it gets really boring since questions are always the same).

3) (IMHO) There is no silver bullet. Git (or any other tool) will not make your code/project better. Moreover you might find that Git (or any other tool) is not perfect and there are problems with it in a particular environment (hint: there is no free lunch). Recognizing the tradeoffs is a very important skill for a software developer. Learn it early and you'll make less mistakes.

<comment><USER12> Having worked with CVS, Perforce, subversion, bzr, mercurial, and git, in distributed teams, as a sole developer and in large local teams for over 20 years, I can't think of a single plausible situation in which git is not superior in every way to all the other version control systems.

Git _is_ a tool, and it's certainly not going to be a 'flip a switch and everything is better'. It does require that you define how you're going to use it in your particular context, but the only tradeoff I can see with git is learning it. It's interface and naming is an absolute horror show of usability, but its no worse that something like regular expressions or vim/emacs. But once it's in place, you have change management calculus, and everything else was algebra at best.

I understand the frustration of people who are used to having the benefits of open history in addition to open source. And who don't want to step back 10 years and learn dead end technologies, and who aren't used to being confronted with ivory towerism or gatekeeperism.

Otoh, I also understand why a maintainer would want to keep their codebases close to their chest, when they've achieved expert level finesse in a project/codebase, and the noob hordes with their ill-conceived ideas demand responses to their pull requests because they spent their _free time_ writing some crap, and demand you spend _your_ free time educating them on why their patch is a tub full of fail.

<comment><USER13> _I can 't think of a single plausible situation in which git is not superior in every way to all the other version control systems._

I don't want to get into an emacs/vi style flamewar but other VCSs have their own advantages, and are better in some situations:

\- I prefer SVNs handling of trees/subtrees. I can checkout and work on one small part of a large project.

\- Fossil has ticketing and wiki out of the box. It is easier to set up a server and enables true distributed offline working.

\- Mercurial is easier to use for the most frequent use cases.

<comment><USER12> Git's submodules and git-subtree are definitely clumsy to work with, but you can always use sparse checkout if you want to work on a small part of a large project.

Ticket handling/wiki aren't really version control features. Decoupling those features from your VCS allows you to select the one that works best for your situation.

Mercurial is easier to _learn_ for the most frequent use cases, and its interface make a _lot more sense_. No argument there. But like I said earlier, once you do learn it, its no more difficult to use, follows the same paradigms, but really allows for the edge cases to shine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People can run their own projects how they want. But this is not just a question of preference -- an open source project developed this way is strictly less useful than one that exposes its true fine-grained history.

They quite literally throw away (or keep locked up, which is the same for us non-insiders) information that is relevant to understanding and debugging the project.

The only reason for that is misplaced vanity.

Note that nobody is asking to see your code before you're ready. You still get to choose when to push that fancy new release to the public repository. And nobody is asking you for write access.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is pretty off-putting to me that such a critical piece of infrastructure isn't developed completely in the open, especially with such a large amount of security code. Companies get criticized all the time for this style of open source development.

<comment><USER15> It's not like the postfix code is hidden, or even difficult to find. Nothing is being done in secret here.

If you want to work on a new feature that'll take a long time and require several people, grab the code, stick it in git, and work on it with your team. Once the work is done, send a patch to the postfix maintainer, and he'll merge it if it's worthwhile.

Linus created git because the above workflow was killing him trying to handle the patches for the Linux kernel. He was doing it almost exactly as described above for a long time. I suspect postfix sees a far lower volume, and the above workflow probably works just fine.

</comment></comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Someone did a github mirror: [https://github.com/vdukhovni/postfix](https://github.com/vdukhovni/postfix)

Their worklflow seems to be:

        * Make a change
        * Write the meaning of the change in the HISTORY file
        * Release a tarball of the source with the change

Here is the HISTORY file: [https://github.com/vdukhovni/postfix/blob/master/postfix/HIS...](https://github.com/vdukhovni/postfix/blob/master/postfix/HISTORY)

<comment><USER16> That "someone" is, Viktor, one of the Postfix developers (who commented in the linked thread).

<comment> Dorian-Marie Thanks, I googled his name and looked at his Github profile but couldn't find if he was a Postfix developer or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Postfix (1998) predates Git (2005) by 7 years. That isn't to say that a VCS of some kind wouldn't have its benefits, but it's completely up to the author's decision.

<comment><USER18> So does Linux...

<comment><USER19> Well, except that git was created _for_ Linux _by_ its creator, Torvalds. It still was the author's (Torvalds) decision to use a VCS. But no need to fall into the troll. The author of the original thread is obviously clueless.

edit: fixed 2 pretty big typos.

<comment><USER20> Keep in mid the story is a bit more complicated than than - Linus/Linux was using Bitkeeper, until their free license to all kernel devs and interested parties went away - _then_ Linus wrote git.

The need/usefulness of version control was orthogonal to (and preceded) the decision to write his own (d)vcs.

(Edit: misrememebred the actual vcs, originally posted Mercurial instead od Bitkeeper - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper#History) )

<comment><USER19> Absolutely.

Here's the link to "A short History of Git": [http://git- scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-o...](http://git- scm.com/book/en/Getting-Started-A-Short-History-of-Git)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm seeing a lot of misinformation in the thread about what public source control entails. Scary!

<comment><USER22> Care to enlighten us, or shall I just guess at what you're talking about?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just read a thread about a bunch of grumpy software traditionalists who are probably close to my age, but the similarity stops there.

I have been working with software for over 20 years and I still think git is the coolest thing to hit development teams since dynamic languages.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I read somewhere that postfix is used by around 30% of the internets to send mail. That's really concerning because we have no history for the code, just a code drop. Given the amount of criticism for projects like android (which does have a public git repo but is also a code drop), I posted this here as I was wondering what people thought of such projects.

These days I think of free software to have a public version control as a given. So coming across this was a shocker for me. I think Wietse is free to do whatever he wants but it's just sad that we have to depend on this software so much :(

<comment><USER24> There's plenty of history:

ftp://ftp.reverse.net/pub/postfix/official/

Additionally, the history is mirrored on all the continents except Australia, [http://www.postfix.org/download.html](http://www.postfix.org/download.html)

Sure, there's no commit history for every change, but there's release notes for every version. What is the use case for knowing what intermediate things may have been available to some small group prior to release?

<comment><USER4> > What is the use case for knowing what intermediate things may have been > available to some small group prior to release?

It's a use case that actually comes up a lot.

"This line looks funny, why does it do that?"

Go read the commit log and see why it was last touched.

I find and fix bugs in open source things I depend on _all the time_ using this method. Or just as importantly, I realize my own understanding was mistaken and the author had a good reason for what they did, so I don't go asking stupid questions on a mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there something like Postfix, except it has useful features that work out of the box without a lot of extra configuration that is hard to figure out? So I could actually send/receive encrypted email that would pass big provider's filters consistently without needing to use a mail API?

There must be some similar projects to Postfix that are written in modern programming languages and do use source control etc.

<comment><USER24> Being an MTA is a big complex thing, so it has a big complex configuration.

Postfix's configuration isn't bad compared to Sendmail. You might try exim instead, it's also well regarded.

I'm guessing if you use a distribution package of postfix to get a basic configuration, and follow the TLS documentation [1], you'll end up mail that's encrypted in transit (which I'm guessing is what you mean by encrypted mail). Make sure you have a relatively clean IP (not on any blacklists), and that forward and reverse dns match, setup SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and you should be good. Do be sure you're not an open relay, cause you'll be found and abused (but I'm pretty sure most distro configs should start you off without being an open relay)

[1] [http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html](http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> He uses source control; he just doesn't have a _public_ one. So what?</comment>