A year without caffeine (part 2) - <AUTHOR> http://bryanalexander.org/2013/01/06/a-year-without-caffeine-part-2/ <comment><USER3> The title seems a tad misleading. The author describes some relatively major lifestyle changes (huge changes in diet, sleeping habits, large increase in aerobic/anaerobic physical activity), of which the elimination of caffeine is but a small part.

I used to have some very bad problems with acidity as well, to the point where my doctor thought I might have had acute ulcerative colitis, but what fixed it for me was sleeping more, eating better, and exercising more frequently.

I still drink 1-3 cups of coffee a day (every few months I go for a week without coffee, just to make sure I can still function without it), and have had no flare-ups or problems since I changed the rest of my lifestyle habits.

<comment><USER4> FYI, the dominant theory is that ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease, and the inflammation in the colon has _nothing_ to do with what is eaten. Instead, it's due to the immune system deciding to attack the intestinal tissue. It might be provoked indirectly by things like stress, but coffee or other food are not thought to trigger flare-ups.

(That said, some people find they can reduce their discomfort by modifying their diet once a flare-up begins. But there is no evidence that diet either provokes flare-ups or induces remission.)

<comment><USER5> While that may be the dominant theory it doesn't appear to be true. I follow a doctor out of NJ who uses dietary intervention to successfully treat a lot of diseases most doctors will say are "incurable", including ulcerative colitis, IBS, lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes (the adult onset type). He has an entire newsletter devoted to the following:

Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Aggresive dietary modifications hold key to relief and recovery.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome – Recovery requires adherence to high–nutrient, fiber–rich diet.

Nutritional and Dietary Protocols for IBD – These nutritional basics have helped hundreds of patients.

A Crohn's Success Story – IBD patient makes recovery even after two surgeries.

Specific Carbohydrate Diet – Lack of scientific support and low success rate on this diet.

Eat For Health Recipes – The highest scoring recipes from Dr. Fuhrman's newest book.

[https://www.drfuhrman.com/members/NewsletterDownload.aspx?is...](https://www.drfuhrman.com/members/NewsletterDownload.aspx?issue=36)

He shows (with references to back every claim, as with all of his writing) that these diseases DEFINITELY have a LOT to do with what is eaten.

The newsletter is $7. I wish it were free for as important as I feel this issue is. I would hope that before you continue to make such definite, and possibly dangerous claims, that you would fork over the money to at least make sure you're not helping to send people down the path of needless pain and suffering.

<comment><USER6> If you're a lone voice in opposition to the medical and scientific establishment, then to take you seriously I'd expect to be seeing some pretty extraordinary evidence.

Things that would make me more sceptical of your claims would include:

1\. A glossy website with slick before/after photos that appears to be primarily an advertisement for your (expensive) courses.

2\. Putting all of your evidence in a non-peer reviewed newsletter that you then charge $7 / month for. He's clearly heard of journals (he's even published in some of them, although none of them particularly prestigious) so why isn't he using them?

3\. The invention of bogus mathematical equations to "back up" your claims (Health = Nutrients/Calories... please).

4\. Any claim to be able to cure a wide variety of unrelated illnesses with a simple treatment (cf. allergies, asthma, acne, autoimmune disease (!), chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, diabetes, migraines, and, somewhat mysteriously, "others").

5\. Any association at all with Mehmet Oz.

This guy doesn't even begin to pass the smell test.

<comment><USER7> @Newsletter subscriber: Also some other very common quack sign: > Overly focused on nutrition and supplements for healing all kinds of maladies.

> Toxins everywhere

> Fear mongering

Seems very much you are wasting your 7$: [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/your- disease-y...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/your-disease-your- fault/)

His formula doesn't make any sense. Health=micronutrients/kcal is a useless approximation. Implies that if you reduce kcal by switiching to more micronutrient dense foods, you'll always be healthier. Which is untrue (there are problems such as starvation, hypervitaminosis, drinking saltwater would be a great idea...) and highly depends on a plethora of other factors.

It's pseudoscience.

(And I say that as a future MD who also does science based sports/nutritional consulting, so be assured I know of the importance of diet and exercise in disease&health.) There are far better sources out there.

<comment><USER5> > His formula doesn't make any sense. > It's pseudoscience.

This "formula" appears to be meant as a shortcut to remind people following his plan to eat higher micronutrient per calorie foods. I don't think it was ever meant to be a proper math equation or anything, and I'm surprised people are picking this one aspect out of context to ridicule it endlessly without truly understanding what Dr. Fuhrman means by it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty inspiring. It is always amazing to people how much diet and exercise affect their health, which I find amazing that they are amazed. Its fundamental. Of course the ulcers could have been cleared up with the right antibiotics [1] but regardless, Bryan is in a much better place than he was and it doesn't matter which path he took.

[1] <http://www.cdc.gov/ulcer/consumer.htm>

<comment><USER9> _It is always amazing to people how much diet and exercise affect their health_

This is true. It is equally amazing to me how much abuse the human body can take before it actually breaks down. Sometimes I think it would be better if the results of bad dietary or exercise habits revealed themselves faster - <USER2> suppose it would be more convincing and easier to undo the damage.

<comment><USER10> This is a very interesting observation. Fail fast....

<comment><USER11> Not a very good tought when you can only fail once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 2 years ago, I was drinking 12 cups of coffee on an average day. More than that on days when I had night shifts. For some unknown reason I suddenly started reacting weirdly to all the caffeine. Somehow it sparked anxiousness in me. So I decided to stop drinking coffee altogether, since only a single cup would make me feel and behave strangely.

At first it was hard to concentrate, I had headaches, it was harder to wake up in the morning, etc. However, after two years I wonder why I was drinking coffee in the first place. I feel calmer and more relaxed nowadays and I'm capable of greater workloads now without feeling too exhausted.

Going without caffeine also made me appreciate the power and importance of sleep. In the fast-paced world we're living in, I believe people underestimate that. I honestly know people who think they can achieve more by sleeping less. In my opinion they couldn't be more wrong about it. A good night's sleep is what productive days are built upon.

</comment><comment><USER13> I personally have never been a caffeine user. I had always assumed that if I used it regularly, my body would eventually counteradjust so that I would require coffee just to bring me back to my original baseline level of alertness. Can anyone comment on whether this is the case?

<comment><USER14> I have a purely anecdotal case. Before my Junior year of college, I had drank about four cups (two coffee cups) of coffee every morning since I was twelve. That's about nine years of coffee consumption for me. I stopped one day a year-or-so ago, and besides the two-day migraine, it didn't have any noticeable effect on me thereafter. I still drink coffee every now and then, especially during points where I'm lodging with my parents. I can't tell a difference when I drink coffee or not, other than I think more clearly with coffee. I'm not jittery with or without, or craving coffee abnormally.

Again, anecdotal. I have no idea if this is the general case.

<comment><USER15> That means you adjusted back quickly, but it doesn't really answer the question. Which is: If you have coffee almost every day, does it still provide you an alertness boost?

<comment><USER16> I drink coffee everyday (somedays four or more espressos). I also stop drinking coffe for a few days at least twice every semester, just in case.

Even at peak coffee, more coffee still stimulates my mind and makes me infinitely more focused. The only times coffee hasn't worked is when I'm genuinely sleep deprived, although I typically get 6-8 hours of sleep.

<comment><USER17> I would not conclude an effect of caffeine ingestion. You may be getting the alertness boost from placebo effect, conditioned response or even just the fact of taking a break. I get an alertness boost from getting up to fill a glass of water, for example. I don't have to actually drink from the glass to get the effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reading this gave me chills - the symptoms of withdrawal described here are not unlike those of a heroin addict gone cold turkey.

I can't imagine normal healthy people routinely taking a drug and teaching their children to take one. And yet this happens with coffee all the time. Many are even proud of their addiction ("coffee snobs").

<comment><USER19> There was a heroin addict who filmed himself going cold turkey for his family, and at the end of the video, was himself on camera, having a brain hemorrhage.

Very unlike caffeine.

<comment><USER20> Anecdotal evidence I know, but I was a three cups/day guy for a while then quit cold turkey. After about a week of feeling a bit fuzzy and irritable I was back to normal. Is this atypical or something?

<comment><USER4> Nope, that's typical. I looked up the data a while back. 1-2 weeks is the general timescale for developing dependence and for withdrawal. Once your neurotransmitters reset, you're pretty much back to normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been without coffee for two months now. Having been someone that loved coffee and needed it to "survive" the daily work environment, if I was to have just quit it voluntarily, it wouldn't have happened.

For me I was on a business trip where I fell ill prior to the flight home. Lets just say that it wasn't pretty, my girlfriend picked me up from the Airport struggling to stand up. The next week I wasn't able to eat anything surviving on water.

Seeing that I consumed an unhealthy amount of coffee daily, and how I hadn't had one in a week, I decided to make the break while I could. I was already weak from what ever I had picked up on that trip, but it was nothing to the next few weeks. I was lucky to only get mild headaches, but the lethargy and the sleepless nights drove me insane.

Having read this article, I'm now re-thinking what I eat as well. I too challenge the heat of my curries... and thanks to desk jobs I don't get out that much. Looks like I'll be changing things shortly.

One kicker that has happened to my health since this change, an ailment that I had never had prior to the removal of coffee, has caffeine as a way to help reduce the effects. My body... hates me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Never having liked the taste of coffee, I rarely drink it. I think the first time I had one was in a school field trip where everyone decided to pull our first all-nighter. Now I only use it when I need to finish something with a deadline and I can't possibly sleep to do it (this would be mitigated with better time management, but alas, this is how it is).

Never having made an habit of it though, a single espresso (1 once) gives me the jitters, a slight disturbing feeling in my heart area and keeps me fully pumped up for about ~4 hours if I am falling asleep when I take it.

I think this way of using it is much more valuable than "wasting" it by accustoming my body to a morning "pick-me-up" ritual.

<comment><USER23> I used to be addicted to soda as a kid, but quit it in high school. Now 21, I can count the number of caffinated beverages I've drunk on my hands since 16. I get the same reaction to caffeine now.

It is really scary to think the _norm_ is to guzzle that stuff like candy daily.

<comment><USER24> It's less scary if you realize that different people react differently to caffeine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think I could do a year without caffeine. But a year without alcohol? IMPOSSIBLE.

<comment><USER26> I just finished my first year without it. First few months were pretty hard, but I got over it. Saved a bunch of money, got more confident in social situations, lost some weight. It was good enough, I've just started my second year...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is green tea not included in the drinks to be avoided. I thought green tea also contains caffeine.

<comment><USER28> Since both green teas and black teas are made from the same plant -a plant that contains caffeine- it seems likely both tea variants contain caffeine. The withering & oxidation processes might increase the caffeine in black teas though: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_processing>

If you want a caffeine free tea that tastes well (imo), consider Rooibos tea. It contains no caffeine whatsoever: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos>

<comment><USER29> I like Rooibos tea. Just ordered a huge bag from Amazon. But because it doesn't have caffeine, it doesn't have the same wakefulness effect that tea does.

I also drink coffee sometimes. And even though both contain caffeine there is big difference. When I talk about tea's wake-fullness it is more like alertness, a much more gradual and pleasant effect than coffee. Coffee is like having someone constantly slapping me on the face. It is more noticeable and it is too distracting. But I also happen to like the taste of a good cup of coffee so I drink it then quit after a while, get headaches, go back to my tea and then after a month of two do it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sort of an odd question, but have you found that the flora of your mouth changed when you cut out all of the acidity and sugary drinks? Less plaque \ bad breath?

How long does it take you to go from first opening your eyes when you awake, to being 'normally awake'? One of my big things is to get out of bed ASAP and get a dose of caffeine right away (powdered, usually). It's a fairly small dose (50mg) but I found that I really despise the first few waking moments enough to keep it up.

<comment><USER31> I quit caffeine cold-turkey about a month ago and when I was still drinking caffeine I was much like you brewing a killer espresso at home or having an energy drink on the way to work.

The basic gist seems to be that caffeine allows you to _not_ have a healthy morning ritual. After you quit you'll have to learn to have a decent breakfast and ideally some exercise as well, since otherwise you'll most likely just be a zombie until lunch every day.

This post, which includes some self-reflection, is the best on the topic I've come across: [http://zentofitness.com/a-story-about-100-caffeine-free- livi...](http://zentofitness.com/a-story-about-100-caffeine-free-living/)

<comment><USER32> Well I don't drink coffee (i can't remember if I've ever finished a cup), and I love to sleep (not an early bird). I can tell you that I have to wake up at Retty early hours (like 5 in the morning or earlier, never the same hour) due to my work, and I never feel sleepy the way coffee drinkers do. Neither I need to exercise. I am also aboe to have heavy breakfasts very early, unlike coffee drinkers who usually can't eat more than a toast. I don't know that many people who doesn't drink coffee, so I don't know if my experience is common or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Going off caffeine gives me 2-3 days of indescribable headaches, then it's a pronounced fatigue for another 2 weeks. It ain't pretty.

However, if coffee must be eliminated from your diet, I believe you can always use caffeine pills - same energy without any side effects on the stomach.

<comment><USER29> I like the taste of coffee but don't feel like a need or want the caffeine boost. Decaf coffees don't taste the same though either. So once in a while I go for about a week or so of drinking coffee, then quit and pay for it with headaches.

<comment><USER34> Decaf taste depends a lot on the process. Out of the different kinds I've tried, CO2 distillate is best.

<comment><USER35> I switched to decaffeinated coffee a couple of years ago (why?[1]). I was drinking about 250mg worth of caffeine a day before I stopped. I had a week of bad headaches, interrupted sleep, night sweats and crankiness and I was done. It's not nice but it's only a week or so. I avoided taking painkillers to mask the symptoms as some contain caffeine (especially the "Express" versions) to speed up the body's metabolism and get them into the bloodstream quicker; suffering the full symptoms also serves as a reminder of why I was doing it.

Decaf still contains some caffeine, so my 5 cups a day are probably still giving me ~25mg or so of caffeine. I drink it because I like the taste of coffee although I'm considering giving it up completely. I'm not a coffee snob and I'm happy with the taste of instant coffee.

25mg is still less caffeine than is contained in a single can of Coke (36mg).

Years ago I stopped eating chocolate and drinking soda for both dental and health reasons (I want to avoid the increased risk of Type II Diabetes from large intakes of sugary drinks).

I still, once a week maybe, have a non-decaf coffee if decaf isn't available, but I try to limit myself to one that day as I do notice the buzz from having a full strength coffee again.

1\. Primary driver was in preparation for some long distance cycling where I'd be getting <10 hours (in total) sleep[2] over 4 days. I needed caffeine to have its old effect of giving me a temporary boost in case I was a few hours from somewhere where I could comfortably get some sleep[3]. Secondary driver was that it's a pernicious drug that I wanted to drop any dependency on.

2\. I cope with sleep deprivation very well, indeed I coped a lot better with lack of sleep than a lot of other people on the event. Having children is good training for sleep deprivation (or at least not getting more than 3 hours sleep in a single stretch).

3\. My planned naps (one or two hours a day) staved off most of the problems but I did get caught out a couple of times. One was at night and so I loaded up with coffee (many locals along the route set up roadside stalls giving out free coffee and food to riders) to keep myself awake for the three hours to the next control where I slept; the other was during the day when it was nice and sunny so I had an hour long nap on some grass by the road side.

<comment><USER34> When I'm coming up to weightlifting competitions I wean myself off coffee (by progressively substituting regular coffee for decaf in my espresso machine) for the same reason: I want to increase the effect on mental energy, but not have the side-effects such as sweaty hands or shakiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > I get as much work done as I used to.

I get _more_ work done without caffeine. When I use caffeine, my attention level spikes and plunges. The increased productivity of the spikes doesn't make up for the dips.

</comment><comment><USER37> if you haven't (though i suspect you have) i would suggest giving napping one more try now you're caffeine free. it's seriously good if you can get it to work.

<comment><USER38> Good thought, andrew, but it still doesn't work for me. It's hard to wake up from a nap, and I'm dazed - and tired! - afterwards. I've tried this all times of day, and each time it's like being clobbered by a baseball bat.

<comment><USER39> I have had similar issues so mostly a "nap" for me is closing my eyes while laying down in a dark room for 20 minutes at most, often with my hands behind my head.

I always feel really refreshed afterwards. YMMV

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Coffee withdrawal headaches and tiredness can be reduced by taking caffeine pills (approx 50mg per day for five days).

</comment><comment><USER41> I am medically curious and would like to hear the dehydration story. :-)

</comment><comment><USER42> Why wouldn't he just get treated for H. Pylori if he had stomach ulcers

<comment><USER38> I should have mentioned this, and will revise the post: yes, I was tested, and no, H. Pylori wasn't the culprit. Which is rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thanks for the article - that was a good read.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is scary to read. GERD, Barrett's Esophagus and acid reflux is _not_ to be taken lightly. It is life altering. I have a relative who has to take 3 days every year to be sedated and have their throat stretched, another 3 later to have it scoped and this is _after_ the surgery that effectively tied her esophagus in a knot (she can't physically vomit).

If you're popping antacids all of the time, be wary.

<comment><USER45> Not to mention the hazards of excessive antacid use, such as bezoars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I guess deleting facebook account will have similar healthy effects on peoples minds.</comment>


Y Combinator-like without funding but with advice, connections, and stock in the startup (what would happen?) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> While it sure is generous and I'm sure the founders appreciate it, a couple of months worth of rent and ramen noodle money isn't really funding a company. What you describe is already what YC is- it's just making sure that you are available full-time to really do something about the advice and contacts. :)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, given the amount YC gives it's as if they just want to make sure poorer founders won't have to get day jobs in the time they've alloted to impart advice.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly how we look at it: the most important thing we offer is advice and connections, and the money is just to pay your living expenses so that you can focus entirely on the startup for long enough to get it properly launched.

It always annoys us when people say YC is a ripoff because we want an avg of 6% of a co for $15-20k. One reason we don't argue (much) with people who say that is that we treat the question as a sort of preliminary IQ test in the application process.

<comment><USER5> hoarding your equity like it's gold dust is a typical mistake of inexperienced founders. we did exactly the same and it got us nowhere. when we realised our equity was worthless unless it was held by the right people, with the right connections, things moved far more smoothly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sound good in principle but there are a lot of people who want advice. You need to find a way to prioritise who would benefit most from your advice and connections. What better way to decide than to ask yourself "Who would I invest in?". Then you're back at the YCombinator model.

If someone can figure out how to make this work then great. I'm not sure YC will work without you narrowing applicants down and giving them money.

Perhaps instead of having a single team who advise founders you could have a self supporting community. Put all the startups in a coworking/barcamp like environment for a summer and tell them to help each other out and to share connections. It would be interesting to see how well they could do on their own. You still have the problem of where they would get money to stay alive without funding.

[sorry if this is incoherent, I'm sleepy. Will edit to make sense in the morning]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since advice and connections are the major benefits of Y Combinator, why not take on many more startups without funding most of them at all?

I suspect that many people would be happy with such an arrangement and Y Combinator may end up making quite a lot more money as well.

<comment><USER7> Two hypotheses:

1.) Y Combinator's advice and connections are a limited resource. There are only so many phone calls their partners can make in a day. Y Combinator's business is not scalable unless they generate more y combinators.

2.) Y Combinator's application process allows them to invest in startups that are most likely to succeed. If they spread their resources around a larger base of companies, they would be investing in startups less likely to success. With more failures, their return on investment would fall, not rise.

<comment><USER4> Actually the scalability of YC is a fascinating question. As hackers we're always thinking about that. And of course as hackers we have ideas about how to do it. We've been gradually growing the number of startups in each batch. But we often speculate about what we'd have to do to fund, say, 1000 startups per year. There has to be some way to do it. Whatever the answer is, it would be something to see, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER8> VCs = Angels = YC = Agents They all finance and support young entities for a % of a future asset.

Compare a very scalable model, IMG Worldwide. Take baseball for comparison sake.

Talent Scout = PG colleague who reviews applications using performance criteria = bank using advanced credit scoring system to approve or reject loans

Reddit = Alfonso Soriano = Successful loan applicant

Paul Allen = PG = Drew Rosenhaus

YC is popular not because they aren't a VC but because they are a VC who provides more perceived value for what they charge. That means just like IMG, their model is scalable as long as their value proposition is maintained and continues to be favored. All YC needs to do to fund 1,000 companies next year is to hire/acquire/develop 50 more PGs with specialties in more focused markets and sub-markets. Not simple but definitately doable. Also fully automate the application and evaluation process so that "people" only touch the top 3%. Continue to be careful with funding amounts but generous with time and connections. Continue to distribute and increase your value through your customers by financing their meeting each other and adding value to each other. Basically, YC is a social network with most of the value right now distributed offline through their customers. News@YC will change that to be sure. I think it's not only possible to grow up real big, but the direction you are already headed. Just make sure your scalability has a bit of Ben & Jerry's thrown in, they did a great job of keeping their value system in place long after they grew. PG, you mentioned it's the scaling of the partners responsibilities that is hard. If the partners maintain the integrity of the barriers to entry (active role in developing and maintaining your application evaluation tool) and support (ensuring key events and high-level connections are solid and cascaded down from their organizations to yours) you can do it. Just my $.02.

<comment><USER6> So what your suggesting is creating mini YCs with specialist interests?

For example you could have a mobile apps 'agent'. This person would seek out the best ideas for mobile apps, find the best teams, maintain connections with mobile blogs & mobile network operators and pass the best teams back up to main YC.

O'r you could have geographical specialists who, for example, look out for startups in the UK and send the most promising over to Boston/Mountain View.

<comment><USER8> Yeah Dan, that's right on. The basic business practices employed today would flow through to the tentacles of specialization and the over reaching controls and management would still reside at the top like any other holding company structure. It's likely you could improve on the typical holding company structure but something along those lines. I work at the Group level of a global financial services firm and I think my stripes are showing a bit here :) Not just mobile apps but also a p2p apps expert, b2b apps expert, transaction processing expert...the options are as broad as the marketplace. I'm thinking big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think the money is the issue here, which results to many companies being funded because of the relatively low cost for them to bring up to life startups, comparing to VCs.

So, they invest enough money to get u going. Their actual contribution is their network and their guidance, which isw hat consumes their time and what everyone applying wants.

So, the quantity and the limit of the "many people" is relevant to how big YC is and how many people they find worthful to invest.

</comment><comment><USER10> YC-organized Startup School supplies advice to a larger audience, along with a chance for connections. I'd also contend that news.yc is another such tool offered by YC.

The summer/winter batches are a chance for picked companies to receive specialized attention. YC can't do that for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER11> I myself rank advice and connections a little more important than the money itself. That's what really pulled me here to Y Combinator in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't it be in YC's interest to take some equity WITHOUT providing any funding in return of advice, Guidance, and a platform and connections.

</comment><comment><USER13> Makes sense to me. But my guess is that time would be an issue.</comment>


Ask HN: Will We Get Close to a General AI in 2018? - <AUTHOR> Year after year people talk about AI being closer to the singularity point, but year after year singularity looks far. Will blockchain projects help AI come? <comment><USER2> Think of blockchain like a new type of database with stricter transaction checking. It maybe distributed (also slow), but it won't help AI progress at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there is no doubt we will get closer but I feel that we are 10 years away from general AI. I think blockchain projects will on some level help nearly all general software.</comment>


Ask HN: What would be a safe and secure VPN to use when I visit China - <AUTHOR> I will be visiting China in 2 days and found that most of the apps social network apps that we use in the US are blocked.
I would like to know a safe and secure VPN.
Thanks in Advance <comment><USER2> I've been successfully using proXPN on my laptops and tablets for a couple of years now. Used it all over the world, though not in China. They have several exit points, in different countries, to choose from.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I heard the problem in China is that they would block VPN servers too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used PIA while in China with no issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> privateinternetaccess.com ?</comment></comment>


A Conversation on Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/a-conversation-about-privacy/ <comment><USER2> Privacy is great, but I feel that when a terrorist attack happens it's too easy for governments all over to start dismissing its importance and say "Come on, do you really not want to give any of your privacy away so we can keep you safe from terrorist attacks?! Really? REALLY??"

Now it's going to happen in Europe, too. We need to focus the discussion more on _data protection_. Because then the compromise isn't as obvious, and they would be talking about undermining data protection with their anti-encryption and anti-strong security legislation. People do want their data to be secure, even if most don't understand all the intricacies of it.

The US government (and UK, and France) currently holds the position that if you're a company you _shouldn 't_ be using encryption you can't decrypt. So basically they are also arguing against future technologies such as ZeroDB or homomorphic encryption, which could help a _great deal_ against data breach.

That's just crazy. When companies get hacked left and right and millions of people's data is exposed each time, how can they possible hold that position? I think that's how we should argue against them.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a great discussion -- one of the most important to-date

</comment><comment><USER4> Any alternative viewing options? I am trying to live a flash-free life.</comment>


Startup with consumer product looking for awesome developers in Canada - <AUTHOR>

We're a pre-alpha startup (ie. we haven't launched) in Canada, and we're hiring a few developers for our core team. These are fulltime salaried positions with benefits, we pay competitive wages (we have good backing).
We're just starting our team, we currently are 1 product guy and 1 lead developer, looking to hire about 3 more people.
The product is exciting, I'll tell you all about it in person. (Sorry, not ready to post details.)
You should know your web stuff, be comfy on *nix command line, and we also need someone who has done iOS, Mac OS and Windows app development.
Here are the details: http://blog.getgush.com/post/3858261541/were-hiring-a-few-senior-developers
(All this assuming that hiring posts are ok on HN, they seem to be and I didn't see anything against them in the guidelines?) <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://blog.getgush.com/post/3858261541/were-hiring-a-few- se...](http://blog.getgush.com/post/3858261541/were-hiring-a-few-senior- developers)</comment>


Programming as a career change? - <AUTHOR> My sister-in-law has asked for my help about a possible career change.
Her current field is social science, and has a masters degree in politcal science, she's worked at NGOs and in acedemia and has recently moved into a marketing/communications company where she isn't overly happy.
She asked me for advice on how to retrain as a programmer, she likes the idea of one day being a "digital nomad" (as she is in her early 30s and has no real ties to the place where she lives).
As she speaks multiple languages and has a good eye for design I think she'd be good as a technical person who can interact with customers and use her social science background to her advantage.
She is interested in web-development (but has no experience at all) so I suggested that she should first participate in some sort of self-study UNIX course, and then move on to a scripting language of some sort.
Does anyone else have any good advice that may help her? <comment><USER2> To me, a self-study UNIX course does _not_ look like the ideal starting point for a journey to web development...

(I don't know what alternative to suggest, because I don't do web development. But UNIX seems pretty far away.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, I'm a long time UNIX user (since the early 90s) and because I see the majority of web-applications running on *NIX systems, I, personally think a grounding in UNIX is quite important. I could be wrong though, so I'm all ears to any suggestions for her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd have to agree with @AnimalMuppet.

Unix is not where I would suggest someone to being if they're new and going for web dev.

I suggest maybe some course on simple html/css first. And then, a course into JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest an online course or bootcamp. Not because graduates of these courses are immediately employable (they're not), but to get an overview of what needs to be learned to be a web developer, and how much interest and aptitude she has. After that, I'd recommend a deeper dive into whatever aspect most interest her, in order to develop employment-ready skills.</comment>


Sir Ken Robinson: Why Should You Care About Creativity? - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/sir-ken-robinson-interview/

<comment><USER2> I love this man.

Highly recommended:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...](http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) (2006)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revol...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html) (2010)

<comment><USER3> He also has a book: [http://www.amazon.com/Element-Finding-Passion-Changes- Everyt...](http://www.amazon.com/Element-Finding-Passion-Changes- Everything/dp/0143116738/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love Robinson's insights about creativity being a process, not an event, and it being available in different formats to everyone.

Also, the notion that we each tend toward certain creative roles, using the example of Keith Richards creating opening riffs, then handing off the melody, speaks to the sometimes highly-compartmentalized nature of the process and maybe even the existence of certain innate creative preferences. Very cool interview.

Robinson's book is a great read, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Probably the most interesting mixergy interview so far. Great job Andrew.

<comment><USER6> Not probably, it definitely is. Sir Ken Robinson is amazingly brilliant, and his value for creativity is revolutionary. Creativity defines the world we live in. He defines creativity as "the process of coming up with original ideas that have value." Just think about that. Everything in the world that we use and take for granted is the result of some creative person somewhere taking a risk. The importance of creativity is the most undervalued characteristic of people in the world. We focus more on SAT and ACT scores, both of which are only a fraction as important.

<comment><USER7> It's not _under_ -valued, it's _non_ -valued. As in, it's impossible to attach a value to someone's creativity, because, as far as anyone has been able to determine, it's not quantifiable. You can't hire with "creative" as a criteria unless you can create some sort of test that will accept creative people and reject non-creative people. Since there is no such test, we don't bother to look for it when hiring, and thus don't build businesses that _depend_ on their employees to _be_ creative, because they haven't been filtered as such.

<comment><USER6> The ultimate test? Work with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish his voice wasn't so annoying...</comment>


Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin) - <AUTHOR> http://popehat.com/2015/06/10/two-kinds-of-freedom-of-speech-or-strangeloop-vs-curtis-yarvin/ <comment><USER2> In case you were wondering what Curtis's talk might have been about (and whether it would have held any technical merit) this page has a link to Clark's earlier introduction to Urbit: [http://popehat.com/2013/12/06/nock- hoon-etc-for-non-vulcans-...](http://popehat.com/2013/12/06/nock-hoon-etc-for- non-vulcans-why-urbit-matters/)

The "Exit, voice, and loyalty" terminology might seem odd if you don't know it's origins. It's from 1970 book by economist A. O. Hirschman that's coming back in popularity: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty). Hirschman gives an 1978 intro/postscript in his own words here: [http://homepages.wmich.edu/~plambert/comp/hirschman.pdf](http://homepages.wmich.edu/~plambert/comp/hirschman.pdf)

I'm surprised by apparent predominance of support here on HN for Strangeloop's position. While clearly legal, it's strikes me as a terrible precedent to require speakers on technical topics to pass a political litmus test. I'd be interested to know the actual direction that the sentiment lies. Do those who support Curtis appearing at the talk (wisely?) refrain from posting out of (legitimate?) fear of career repercussion? Or am I (comfortable speaking because I'm largely outside the industry) in the minority?

<comment><USER3> _Do those who support Curtis appearing at the talk refrain from posting out of fear of career repercussion?_

No and yes. I have been pretty vocal about it on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606474432509394944](https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606474432509394944) [https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606673594198794240](https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606673594198794240)

but I've also been sitting on a 75%-written blog post that I'm hesitant to actually post.

Not because of _career_ repercussions (I have never had an employer who really gave a shit what I write about in my spare time) but because of _conference_ repercussions.

I am promoting a book, and to that end I am scheduled to speak at various conferences and meetups. And I worry that the mob would somehow try to get _me_ uninvited. It's not like there's an actual policy that Yarvin violated that I can be confident I'm on the right side of.

So I am torn between my natural inclination to say exactly what I think, and the more practical takeaway of "don't write or have written anything that might anger the mob".

<comment><USER4> I typically avoid posting in these sorts of threads, very little good has come from political debates on the internet that I've seen, but your last sentence pushes me to speak up.

Status-quo social thoughtcrime is rather terrifying to me. There's no "easy" way to amend laws or lobby a system to address the issue, as one would against a governmental stance.

It's also cyclical, as less "clean" people speak out against it, the "only rapists defend rapist" situation mentioned by sister posts occurs, and the entire culture of defending someone who might be distasteful, separating the issue from their broader history, diminishes.

I can't claim to judge you for your decision, I fully acknowledge the unfortunate state of things and your ability to make a choice that best serves your needs, but for the sake of putting my money where my mouth is; I think he should have been allowed to speak (espousing viewpoints I disagree with is far and beyond an offensive enough act to cause me to want to petition against someone, and even then, I would not attempt to convey that aversion as anything more than my personal stance).

The fact that I (or you, or any of us) feel any uncertainty due to fear of the repercussions for merely voicing this opinion only serves to reinforce my conviction that it needs to be voiced.

<comment><USER5> That is very, very true. It is, frankly, impossible to force change in such a situation unless you already have a large enough soapbox to be heard and can build a network of similarly minded [and widely read/heard] individuals.

I think, regardless of political affiliation, we have to admit to ourselves that most people are prepared & willing to silence people with beliefs they find odious. Please note that I said "beliefs" not "actions".

The right to vocalize and discuss our beliefs freely is something that must be fundamentally protected, _most especially_ when it is odious. The only way to do that is to make it both legally permissible [as the law can apply violent force] but also _socially permissible to the point of indifference_ for people to voice different beliefs [even the odious, bigoted ones].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While Moldbug holds hideous political views, if the talk is on tech. and doesn't overlap him advocating hideous things, then this is akin to the old Hollywood blackballing, the excuse for dropping him was pathetic, and I agree that promoting a culture of free speech must be a core value of a liberal society.

I'm pretty far-left (though more liberal than leftist), and found the black- and-white leftist-bashing in the article didn't add much besides giving the author the opportunity to vent his spleen at a segment of leftists while pretending we're all some monoculture, which is ludicrous. Would have been better to just focus on the issue of why an open society needs to be willing to accept diverse political views, even hideous ones like Marxism or neoreactionary craziness, without using it as a platform for pontificating about a crudely conceived culture war.

<comment><USER7> Hitler was a decent painter, but I wouldn't want him in my gallery.

<comment><USER6> The problem with Hitler wasn't just the ugly and noxious ideas he had, but what he did. Moldbug is a ignorant crank, but on that front he isn't doing much besides ranting, largely in the incoherent jargon he's invented. I don't like him, and can't stand his views, but I fully believe that preserving his freedom to think and say ignorant and stupid things is important to protect, and any attempt at a cure is likely worse than the poison.

I'm been told by plenty of people that I'm a loon with crazy political views (Tea Party family members mostly), but if I was working on an interesting tech. project, and wanted to do a talk at a tech. conference about it, I'd hope that wouldn't be a factor in conference organizers rejecting me.

If I'd started a political party founded on ideals of illiberalism, dictatorship, and subjugation of the people I hated and worked to gain political power in the US, then I'd say not accepting me at a conference could be more easily justified as the conference would then become a political platform for me regardless of what the talk was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clark does a great job elucidating the point I've heard many other people struggle to present. One of the things I love about writers that specialize in legal matters, they're very good at articulating a position.

The "questions for sponsors" bit is particularly sharp at cutting towards the discrepancy between the standards dissenters expected from the conference and those they saw. There may be widely agreeable answers to the "how is this justifiably different?" question, but the conversations so far have largely skated around it with sophistry.

Also, I'd recommend everyone read the "Tolerating everything except the outgroup" link, but the writing style and/or position might prevent you from seeing the message.

<comment><USER9> Despite writing at a legal blog, IANAL, but am a mere techie like yourselves.

Or was, till I took an arrow to the knee.

Anyway, thanks for your kind words re the post!

<comment><USER10> I enjoy your writing but I think I disagree with the successes that you attribute to the blue team. Some of them are right on, but some successes are only that if you say that blue means liberal like Adam Smith was a liberal and not a mercantilist. That's just my take though. Cheers!

<comment><USER11> The general, reductionist way I've seen it put and like, is that the "blue team" has been so successful in the culture war that they are now reduced to policing the battlefield and shooting the survivors. Which Yarvin obviously _was_ , seeing as how there's little to no chance Urbit will ever get a chance in this current totally politicized environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This whole concept of paying attention to fellow techies' political views is weird to me. The concept of caring about them to this degree is even weirder.

Politics is a common topic here, of course. I've participated in my share of such discussions. But I couldn't tell you who took what position. I'd definitely never look at a prospective conference speaker and say, oh, that's the guy who believes X, where X is any political subject. Not even as a neutral observation, let alone as criticism.

Is this a real thing? This conversation feels like a window into an alternate universe.

<comment><USER13> _Is this a real thing? This conversation feels like a window into an alternate universe._

I'm with you there.

I've helped organize a couple of small regional meetings, and I have literally zero idea what the political leanings of the speakers or attendees were. Nor did I care.

If someone were into radical politics in his free time, that would be his own business. If any of the speakers had veered off into unrelated violent or rude speech (e.g. racism, calling for war, political uprising, etc) at the podium, for a _technical_ talk, that would be addressed _on the spot_. (I've never seen this happen.)

<comment><USER14> > I've helped organize a couple of small regional meetings, and I have > literally zero idea what the political leanings of the speakers or attendees > were. Nor did I care.

But if you are _informed_ of their political leanings, and then don't take 'appropriate' action, then that says something about YOU, like how you endorse and advocate such politics.

See how it works ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even though I'm deliciously close to 200 karma I'm going to ask this anyway...

If someone has a view that is actually destructive for the forum its aired in ( I'm speaking hypothetically now ) does it have to be accommodated.

By that, and I genuinely want to know what you guys think, what if a political candidate advocated the end of democratic elections? A "one man, one vote, one time" kind of thing. How is that handled in an open society?

Extreme conservative opinions like Mr Yarvins are actually shocking to me. I don't think his particular writings should be banned or anything like that. However, are they so reactionary as to represent to the organizers a position that they don't want to even tacitly or obliquely endorse?

I will say this, the first post on this subject the other day saw me having one of the most interesting exchanges I've ever had on HN. That was cool.

<comment><USER15> Some important context to recognize in this incident is that it was a handful of explicitly (leftist) political personalities that rose any stink to begin with. Clark more or less names them all in his piece. Most of the ones who pushed to censor Urbit from Strange Loop even admitted that they personally were not attending the conference. Most conference attendants would not have had the first clue that a member of the Urbit team maintained a conservative political blog from 2007 to 2013 or so under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. The ones that did probably would not care too much about it as most of them are not preoccupied with aggressive radical politics. They'd attend the talk, or not, and go on with their lives.

It's a heckler's vote. Now, the conversation is about Yarvin and his politics. But if these 3-4 radical and deeply political agitators had not made this an issue to begin with, everyone attending the conference would have just known they were attending a presentation on Urbit (if they even chose to check out that session).

In other words, if this is established as a precedent, then a passionate enough fringe group can create the "destruction" they claim to be _against_ to justify covert ideological policing. That this is occurring at a strictly technology event with a reputation for openness to innovative, experimental ideas is particularly chilling.

"Nice conference you got there, shame if this speaker I don't like created a controversy for you"-type manipulation does not seem as bad or obvious when the targeted beliefs are foreign to your own. Stepping back and anticipating the implications reveals a troubling future, and one that is occurring in many industries at once.

<comment><USER10> You know, I've actually heard of that as an actual racket in other industries...

That's really interesting that the most prominent voices against him aren't attending...I don't know.

I don't think that you have to imagine done kind of follow on effects...i think the US probably irreversibly stopped being a free society when it became a national security state. So, I guess what I'm saying that it doesn't seem our of character in the US. I would just add that it's actually bidirectional pressure from both the left and the right depending on the subject and the area.

I'll stop rambling... Thanks for the background info, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just tangentially related, but I believe one of PG best essay (imo) would be appropriate for all parties involved: [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Thought experiment: is there _any_ extremity of leftist (or progressive if you prefer) thinking (say, on a personal blog) that could conceivably get one disinvited to speak on a technical topic at a conference of this sort?

<comment><USER10> It depends on what you call left. I bet someone that seriously proposed violence against some institutions or industries would get disinvited. Animal rights extremists or eco-terrorist organizations might fit that bill too.

<comment><USER17> I thought of eco-terrorism too. But then I thought of William Ayers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers)

<comment><USER18> As a counterexample? Does he fit here? Does he speak mostly on politics rather than other topics? Then again, his political beliefs/actions are so polarizing that maybe it's hard to separate them from his work in other areas (somewhat akin to what the organizers of Strangeloop claim in their case.)

Does Noam Chomsky get heat for his political views? I was amused when I realized the Chomsky I'd heard about in CS classes was the same person I'd read about in political news. I guess his views are more palatable to the people criticizing Mr. Yarvin.

<comment><USER17> I would say that if being part of a bombing campaign isn't an impediment to becoming a Distinguished Professor at UIC, then being part of a bombing campaign isn't enough to get him disinvited from StrangeLoop either, however many astonished tweets might have greeted his appearance on the program: becuase, in that case, it would have been easy for the organizers to separate his political thought from his educational thought. Of course that's speculation on my part.

<comment><USER10> Just playing devils advocate, he had renounced violence by the time he joined academia hadn't he? He wasn't Carlos the Jackal. Honestly, I can't remember the whole weathermen story.

This whole episode does make you wonder where the line would be drawn in the future.

<comment><USER19> ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'

2001-09-11, NYT

<comment><USER11> Let's emphasize, that was printed on "9/11", with a photo of Ayers standing on an American flag....

<comment><USER10> He didn't know that 9/11 was going to be 9/11 though...It's dickish, but it was planned to coincide or anything.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, but I believe the unfortunate timing makes the lack of reaction to this article even more of interest. Juxtapose that with the leaders of our ruling class singing the very militant _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ in the National Cathedral five days later ([http://www.mrrhoads.com/national- cathedral-dc-battle-hymn-of...](http://www.mrrhoads.com/national-cathedral-dc- battle-hymn-of-the-republic.html))....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To play devil's advocate, a conference is not only about the speeches, but also about the people you can meet there.

Inviting Moldbug bring not only his own person but also his followers. It's understandable if your goal is to foster a diverse crowd to not invite a group of people who constantly argue against any kind of modern society.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, neoreactionaries are mostly notable for their startling lack of real-world achievements. Yarvin is exceptional in this regard. (Tunney has disclaimed "neoreaction" of late.) They tend to have extensive blogging credentials, however. (And are a dab hand with an occasional cheese dip.)

 _edit:_ if there are others with notable real-world achievements, I will eagerly accept correction.

<comment><USER22> Tunney here. I'm not a neoreactionary. I never was.

\- 2014/05/27: @ReactionaryTree I don't identify as a neoreactionary. Although I talk to a lot of people who do. [https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/471281445013843968](https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/471281445013843968)

\- 2014/05/30: @tesseractiv I don't identify as a neoreactionary. I already had my movement. I don't want to join any others. [https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/472425936692854784](https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/472425936692854784)

\- 2014/06/28: @nullvoid9 I'm not a neoreactionary :'( I'm also friendly and will treat you with the same respect you give me. [https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/482757375854522368](https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/482757375854522368)

\- 2014/08/04: Who said I was a neoreactionary? I keep telling people I'm not, but no one believes me. [http://ask.fm/JustineTunney/answer/116475763475](http://ask.fm/JustineTunney/answer/116475763475)

\- 2015/01/15: @DurrutiOvercloc Well, most of the things. Like, I'm not pro- slavery. I've also never called myself a neoreactionary. [https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/555603973286400000](https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/555603973286400000)

\- 2015/03/11: @jhamby @justkelly_ok I'm not a neoreactionary. I've never been one. Also Shanley is a huge racist. [https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/575829516079263744](https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/575829516079263744)

<comment><USER14> Well, if the mysterious sdfghjkl34567 is to be believed, then you don't get to decide what neoreactionary _means_ , and so don't get to decide if you are one or not as far as others are concerned.

On the other hand you did start a petition to turn over government rule to Google, and believe the bottom 1/3 of the population should be live in servants to the top 1/3\. What this has to do with neoreactionarism I have no idea, but apparently many people think it's associated.

P.S. I'm still not convinced that you're not a troll, but then again I'm not sure if this is not exactly the kind of $#@% that needs to be stirred up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ironically, conservatives wouldn't be working themselves up over why Strangeloop might want to exclude Yarvin. Tribalism is intrinsic to humanity, and central to the concept of a tribe is the power to exclude. We like to associate with people that think like we do. We place limits on that for idealistic reasons, but it's ridiculous and futile to try and erase all elements of tribalism from our social interactions.

</comment><comment><USER24> For those interested in the tech, I found this article on the technology behind Urbit a fairly interesting start: [http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional- prog...](http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming- from.html)

Note: it was written in 2010 and I am sure that over the last 5 years a lot will have changed.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a good summary - generally balanced, but skewing toward the side of letting CY speak on Urbit, and asking some pointed questions about why he was removed after acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem I have is not with who was removed or not, which I couldn't care less about, but how it was done.

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/sl-notes/yarvin.txt](https://s3.amazonaws.com/sl- notes/yarvin.txt)

So on the word of a few individuals he doesn't name, with information he doesn't bother to validate for himself, Alex decides to remove Curtis from the lineup because he might be 'distracting', not because of what he'd say, but just because he'd be _present_. This implies an environment where we're powerless against unnamed accusers, an authority who is unwilling to evaluate the merits of a case, and a group of people who are so unable to separate technical matters from politics that the mere presence of someone they disagree with makes it impossible to focus.

And you know what? I've seen exactly this sort of behavior from other corporations and both the 'left' and 'right'. It's something _all_ groups naturally default to, and active measures need to be taken in order to avoid it. And while I get why people want to remain anonymous, I also know you cannot have the free flow of ideas when anonymous accusers can cost you your position, by making accusations they never need to verify, over things you never intend to address at a venue.

We need to _challenge_ ideas, not bury them, especially at a conference like Strangeloop. And if the Urbit presentation was deemed good enough to hear _before_ these facts came to light, then it's still good enough to be challenged on that basis.

P.S. By excising Curtis Yarvin in an attempt to avoid _" overshadowing the talk and acting as a distraction for launching the conference as a whole"_, Alex Miller has done just that. And if I were to put on my tinfoil hat and give a bad faith reading of all this, considering the internet savvy are well aware of the Streisand Effect, I'd say this was exactly their intent.

</comment><comment><USER25> So, a question: now that Alex Miller's activities outside of the technical content of Strangeloop - I.E., banning a presenter over his personal politics - have created such a large distraction from the technical content that is to be presented at Stangeloop, will he be stepping down?

</comment><comment><USER26> On the one hand, I find this situation disturbing, because a technical talk at a technical conference has nothing at all to do with politics. On the other hand, I somewhat understand Strangeloop's situation: it is pretty clear that even if this a completely technical talk, the other attendees would _make it_ about politics---you know, the whole "bad speech should be fought with more speech" thing?---which would cause problems for the conference.

On the third hand, though, I find the popehat post, complete with the use of "social justice warrior", to be especially repellent. Although I do congratulate Clark on the ability to be a conservative intellectual---I now have a puddle of condescension on my office floor.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've protected my twitter account because of [https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/7cd3267a631c4847c34d](https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/7cd3267a631c4847c34d)

Basically, a Breitbart columnist said that they were putting an article about me today. When this happens, a wave of harassment generally follows. I did not delete that or any other tweet on this issue.

(They seem to have decided to post about something else instead, we'll see.)

As I said in the last thread, I don't really plan on reading and responding to much here, but since this is on the front page, might as well correct the inaccuracy.

<comment><USER28> I'm having a hard time understanding the "hate speech is violence" perspective. I feel like that position can only be held by someone who has never actually been assaulted using real, actual violence. I guarantee, being punched feels a heck of a lot worse than standing next to a person who (potentially) talked positively about slavery.

<comment><USER28> As a follow up, I've read a bunch of Unqualified Reservations since this whole brouhaha started (and I read some before, I find it occasionally amusing) and I've never seen any of the racism or hate speech I see claimed. I have seen a lot of out-of-context examples, but every one I tracked down was simply using shocking imagery to make a larger point. There is quite a bit that speaks frankly of slavery and the relationships involved, but nothing I've seen that I could consider racist, unless the very concept of slavery is supposed to be considered racist... which is ridiculous, in my opinion.

edit: wording

<comment><USER29> > unless the very concept of slavery is supposed to be considered racist

I've never read a word of Moldybug or whatever, but in the American context, the very concept of slavery is absolutely considered racist and rightly so. America's history of slavery is completely inseparable from racism.

<comment><USER28> Slavery as a concept has nothing to do with American racism or American history. Slavery existed long before America was a dirty thought in a pilgrim's hatted head, and it still exists today, and it will likely exist so long as humans are recognizably human.

To outright decide that all mentions of a word have such a narrow context is something I cannot accept as valid. It's thoughtcrime.

<comment><USER29> Concepts are understood in contexts. Everyone involved in this context is American, so it's natural for slavery here to be viewed through an American context. In that context, slavery is inherently racist.

After all, it's not like Moldbug's writing shies away from this idea.

> Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and > intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it > is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. > These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human > populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the > Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political > correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves > and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most > parsimoniously explained by genetic differences.

<comment><USER28> I'll agree, it's very human and natural for people to deliberately misunderstand things so they can work themselves into a rage over things. It's intellectually dishonest, particularly in this case, and so I give it no shrift.

If all you have to make your case is rhetorical tricks (like "look! somewhere in this man's million plus words he talked about Africans being slaves! Slavery is therefore a specific kind of racist in all conversations") then I work from the premise that there isn't much of a case to be made.

<comment><USER29> > it's very human and natural for people to deliberately misunderstand things > so they can work themselves into a rage over things.

Kind of like what you're doing right now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Emerging languages, alternative databases...code-heavy." That's from StrangeLoop's 'About' page. The fact is, the talk would have worked, not the least because it's consistent with the conference's overall mission.

Folks looking for a polite argument with Curtis could have had one.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, he is an active detractor of Democracy, it's possible he could try to spread his agenda through technology (take a look at the colonialist imagery in Urbit).

His view on gender 'roles' is also dangerously close to hate speech (and before any of you calls me an islamophobic: as a non-muslim white male he has no cultural heritage that could justify his opinion, so it's different).

<comment><USER31> I have very little idea what Yarvin's view on "gender roles" is but assume it's a traditional Anglo-European one that subjugates women to men, the same as virtually every culture everywhere has before the past hundred-odd years.

So this seems to suggest that you believe that "non-Muslim white males" have _no cultural heritage whatsoever_ , which is... odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In this context, I think it's worth reading the article "The Curious Case of Mencius Moldbug" at Slate:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/cur...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/curtis_yarvin_booted_from_strange_loop_it_s_a_big_big_problem.single.html)

<comment><USER33> If anyone is wondering about the actual views and arguments of Moldbug and his neoreactionaries, they were covered and responded to by economist blogger Noah Smith here.

[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/neoreactionaries....](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/neoreactionaries.html)

The crux of it (and something I never saw quite covered in all the essays bouncing around) is

"Essentially, neoreaction is the dream of a society of mostly white people, living in a hierarchy based both on group membership (aristocratic lineage, gender, race) and individual ability (IQ). The neoreactionaries do not demand total racial purity. But many seem to think that if multiple races live in the same country, the races should be placed in a hierarchy of power, status, and freedom, apparently based on the average IQ of their racial group. Since the movement is about European traditionalism, it's not clear whether white people would be given a special place in the hierarchy, even above those groups whose average IQ is higher than that of whites.

As for women, many neoreactionaries appear to want them to return to traditional social roles - homemaking and child-rearing - and to submit more willingly to the sexual desires of men. Finally, there is some sense that within these group boundaries, the neoreactionaries might want a limited meritocracy - in other words, maybe the smart should rule. However, some neoreactionaries (particularly Anissimov) praise the idea of aristocracy, apparently believing that naturally superior people would manage to win the titles of nobility, and that their descendants would remain superior.

In other words, the neoreactionaries want the West to be a lot like the Ming Dynasty, but for white people. I've often thought of Europe as "the China that never quite made it"; neoreaction seems like the latest manifestation of a dream that refuses to die. "

<comment><USER32> _the actual views and arguments_

Getting the views of neoreactionaries from Noah Smith is like getting the views of Luther's _95 Theses_ from Pope Leo X. How about, you know, just reading Moldbug?

[http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com](http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com)

<comment><USER15> Looks like this person edited their comment. Anyway, you're right, Noah Smith is one of the less objective filters you could seek to fairly summarize a right-of-left-of-center viewpoint.

Read Moldbug, people.

<comment><USER21> Life is far too short to actually read Moldbug. The man seriously does not state his thesis until at least 1000 words in (I am not exaggerating).

<comment><USER15> De gustibus non est disputandum :)

Life is too short to do a lot of silly things like veg on junk TV or fart around on Twitter or read the entire Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality all day yet I admit that I sometimes persist.

Moldbug is a strange and fascinating bird that is not immediately meant to be understood, but experienced. There really is no one else like him. For those with a taste for the antiquated charm of letters filtered for the post-post- modern generation, he writes entertaining and challenging essays that lets us peek behind the lacquered veneer of modern society to get a feel for what it is that we don't realize we have forgotten. He is certainly not for everyone, but a "fascist racist sexist anti-Christ" he is decidedly not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement)

Ken is the free speech Popehat, Clark is the ... lesser Popehat.

<comment><USER34> You might want to try using an argument of some sort next time.</comment></comment>


Surprise Quiz Puzzle - <AUTHOR>

The professor for class Logic 315 says on Friday: "We're going to have a surprise quiz next week, but I'm not telling you what day... if you can figure out what day it will be on, I'll cancel the quiz."
The students get together and decide that the quiz can't be on Friday, as if the quiz doesn't happen by Thursday, it'll be obvious the quiz is on Friday. Similarly, the quiz can't be on Thursday, because we know it won't be on Friday, and if the quiz doesn't happen by Wednesday, it'll be obvious it's on Thursday (because it can't be on Friday). Same thing for Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday. So it can't be on ANY day, so there's no quiz next week!"
They tell the professor, who smiles and says, "Well, nice to see you're thinking about it."
On Tuesday, the professor gives the quiz, totally unexpected!
What's the flaw in the students' thinking? <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox></comment>


Show HN: BulletinBurst - A lean online press office - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on this (mostly) myself for quite a while. It's a lean online press office, where companies can post their latest press releases or news together with 140 character max titles, which will be listed on the main page by latest as well as by category.
The vision is to cut out the barrage of spam that feature journalists get in the mailboxes by offering them a portal (with RSS feeds) to access releases from (or at least be one of the options). On the other side of the coin, it's a way to get exposure for your company/brand/product and some SEO-fu with it.
It's not the prettiest of things yet and does have issues, but if I don't ship now, I might never.
Check it out http://www.bulletinburst.com
Also, there's a South African version - http://www.bulletinburst.co.za with a different design.
Suggestions page is here: http://www.bulletinburst.com/vote/suggestions.php <comment><USER2> Congrats on starting! I checked it out - I'm probably in your target market (small web company with no marketing dept). I don't get why I would use you though. HN isn't the place to "sell" me (so a long "What we do" reply isn't necessary) - I'm just telling you so that you can focus the message on page.

Example: I have no reason to click another link on your site after reading your main pitch - "Does your company have news? Is there an event you want the world to know about? Tell your story; you have 140 characters..." - and I quit reading at that point. Immediately I thought "I'd just use Twitter if I only wanted 140 characters."

Sorry for the negatives - but I really don't see why I would use you for press releases/PR vs. anyone else and nothing on the site explains why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shot. Yeah I'll be changing the copy and pitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Suggestions for the US version: 1) Move the banner up ~ 5 pixels 2) Make the banners auto-rotate on a slow timer (15s?) 3) Add alt-text to the banners to make them more accessible 4) Move the Select Category drop-down to the right of the Select Category label, or get rid of the label 5) Make the hover highlight color for the top-of-screen menus have greater contrast with the background color. 6) The font used in the pricing grid is a bit overcrowded. Also all-caps for anything but "FREE" is a bit overzealous. 7) In the About page, put about 5px space between the art and the text. 8) You need alt-text for the art there too. 9) If you want to set up a long-term relationship with clients, you should introduce yourselves more thoroughly. Make a Team page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the feedback.

Points 1 - 8 on my to-do/consider list. Thanks.

Point 9 - Mostly just me (for now).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.bulletinburst.com>

South African version - <http://www.bulletinburst.co.za> with a different design.

Suggestions page: <http://www.bulletinburst.com/vote/suggestions.php>

</comment><comment><USER4> How's this different from a service like <http://pressitt.com/> ?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the most successful one-man companies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> POF.com was a multi-million dollar/month operation long before the founder hired any employees!</comment>


Ask HN: Has "Clippy" ever been done right? - <AUTHOR>

As most of you know, Clippy (a.k.a. Clippit), was an "office assistant" in MS Office that interjected itself into a normal workflow to provide help on the current task.  It has been criticized as being intrusive and unhelpful by many users and has since been removed from MS Office.<p>My question to the HN community: Have you ever encountered software that has implement "Clippy" the right way? In other words, is there software that provides context-specific messaging in the middle of a workflow that is actually beneficial and unobtrusive? <comment><USER2> It's not even close in concept to clippy, but to answer your specific question:

      > is there software that provides context-specific
      > messaging in the middle of a workflow that is
      > actually beneficial and unobtrusive?

I can think of several:

* Auto-suggestion (google, visual studio)

* Spell-checkers (word procesors, browsers)

* Gmail's tips (the yellow bar on top with the "undo" link that appears every time you delete/archive/send a message)

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing I'd love to see would be a system that detected when I used the mouse to run a command that had a hotkey shortcut and displayed the shortcut while performing the action. For example, if I used the mouse to click the File menu in notepad and then clicked Save, I want something to tell me "HEY! You're doing it wrong! Try Ctrl-S next time."

Whether this is handled at the OS level or on an application by application basis, the interface would need to be spot on to keep people from deleting the damned thing, but I would love to see this sort of functionality integrated into more of the things I use on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER4> I want one that can say stuff like "your trying to configure virtualhost in apache, but you've buggered it up..." ...and then offer helpful fixes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google's spell checker (Did you mean...?) and gmail's file attachment reminders are two which come to mind immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> <sarcasm>bonzi buddy!</sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER7> No.</comment>


Ask HN: Code Reuse or Just Plain Well-written Code? - <AUTHOR>

Someone said (or maybe it's not attributed to anyone) "great programmers reuse code".  Even if you change that to great programmers "write reusable code" it's still hard to see how it is true in practice, since both great and non-great programmers write reusable code. But I guess it takes a great programmer to do it well, so maybe that was the gist of the saying.
In my experience the only kind of reusable code that is immediately helpful is a library of functions.  Beyond that it seems like the effort required to integrate say, a pre-made javascript widget into an application you are creating, and then understand the widget code well enough to make it work perfectly with the application, is about the same amount of time it would take to write it yourself.
That is not to say I have no interest in a  pre-made widget, and in fact not being as good of a widget-maker (in the time I have available for the project) as the widget developer apparently is, it seems like a very appealing idea to reuse their code.  But reusing it will often result in something less than optimal.
So it seems to me that something approaching an ideal solution in cases like these is that code should be quasi-reusable, or perhaps it should break into discrete parts that could be reused.  More importantly, it should be possible to readily understand the code so that some part of it or all of it, could be integrated into the application you are creating, making changes to it that are not klugey but make sense with how the code is intended to be used.
This is of course an old topic, but I'm curious to hear what people think is currently the best way to approach this ages-old problem. <comment><USER2> At my work (C++/Qt) we do a bunch of GUIs for a set of several customer applications that need the same look and feel. So we do end up reusing the team's custom widgets wherever they answer our requirements.

I find I often write something as helper functions for a GUI or library, then break it out when someone else needs to call it. It's definitely better from my perspective to leave it sitting in the old class until you come up with something more urgent than scenarios for how someone might use such a library someday.

Coding standards are also extremely important to ensure that someone will be able to look at your code and use it without deciding to rewrite it from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have found myself that I often reuse functional stuff(I write functions to do stuff and continously add fucntions in different programs that kind of belong together and then I realize I have a library) but I rarely reuse class- oriented stuff. Sure sometimes you have a class that can be used in many programs but I dont find it happening that often.

Seems logical as well, you reuse your hammers and screwdrivers, not your house.</comment>


What if an Engineer was President? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2128881_2128882_2129194,00.html

<comment><USER2> What a strange question. In the US we know what can happen if an engineer is president. Herbert Hoover was an engineer. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the current president of Iran, and his PhD is in transportation engineering and planning.

Going through a list of engineers, Arafat got a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, Hu Jintao of China got a bachelor's in hydraulic engineering, Ramos of the Philippines got a masters degree in civil engineering, Wasmosy of Paraguay was "trained as a civil engineer" but I can't tell to what level, and Yeltsin of the USSR "graduated from the construction department of the Urals Polytechnic as a civil engineer."

What if a movie star were president? Ronald Reagan. What if a chemist were president? Margaret Thatcher. What if a playwright becomes president? Vaclav Havel.

The Time article actual plays it right; it mentions the candidates engineering background, but doesn't ponder the significance of "What if an Engineer was President?"</comment>


New airport scanner which will take just five seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/8559307/New-airport-scanner-which-will-take-just-five-seconds.html <comment><USER2> There is something very sinister about publicly sending a passenger down the suspicious-person tunnel.</comment>


Bill Gates faces "daunting" nuclear energy future - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/bill-gates-faces-daunting-nuclear-energy-future-6bafb442-d2a1-48c9-acd7-5492d62789a4.html <comment><USER2> If NuScale is the best the US nuclear industry has to offer, it's a sorry future indeed. It's basically a scaled down conventional water cooled reactor. This is NOT Get IV nuclear. Where is the fundamentally safer design? Where are the cost savings? Where is the waste solution? The only improvement is the ability to circulate water naturally in case of power outage and without any other problems. Who hoo - it's a bit safer. But it's still expensive, barely modular, and essentially conventional technology. Needless to say, it's a government incubated "startup" to the tune of nearly $1B with expected completion of first prototype when? BTW, started in early 2000s… 15 years in and all they have is a promise for a first power plant in 7 years? I call BS on US nuclear efforts.</comment>


Ask HN: Which programming language has the best `number' implementation? - <AUTHOR> Might sound like a vague question but I'm thinking here in terms of a complete type hierarchy that's faithful to mathematics, going from Natural numbers to Integers to Rationals to Reals to Complex numbers (and others?). That caters for native primitive machine number types be they floating or fixed point or whole numbers, signed or unsigned.
That knows that i is the square root of -1, that knows that √2 is irrational but π and e are transcendental. And so on. Also looking for a language that has a complete efficient implementation of surreal numbers (prompted by Conway's recent passing), or at least allows you to plug one in seamlessly/transparently if you so desired. <comment><USER2> Julia has the type hierarchy that you're describing and it's very easily extendable.

<comment><USER3> Not my area, but it oooks like there's a surreal numbers package:

[https://github.com/mroughan/SurrealNumbers.jl](https://github.com/mroughan/SurrealNumbers.jl)

And a nice paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.10373](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.10373)

<comment><AUTHOR> Spotted that package, and paper – but I don't know Julia so I haven't dug into it yet. Must get in touch with the author. I've made a Ruby implementation and the naive recursive addition/subtraction has pathological code paths.

<comment><USER3> Yah, Julia follows the lisp-y tradition of defining numerical in the language. All the built-in types are defined in Julia. Check out [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/381693d3dfc9b7072707...](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/381693d3dfc9b7072707f6d544f82f6637fc5e7c/base/docs/basedocs.jl#L1458-L1462)

Still for interactive things it can be a bit slow still. I'd recommend using repl/notebooks. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I like Haskell's treatment of numbers. I wrote a comment about it here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18565234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18565234)

Don't really know much about surreal numbers, but I found the following library that defines Fractional and Num instances for it, so that should enable Haskell to work with surreal numbers as if they were native to the language:

[https://github.com/Lacaranian/surreal](https://github.com/Lacaranian/surreal)

There's also this module on transcendental numbers:

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/numeric- prelude-0.4.2/do...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/numeric- prelude-0.4.2/docs/Algebra-Transcendental.html)

auxym might be right, though, that you might be better served with a language that is specialized more in mathematics, rather than a general purpose language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll look into this but I find Haskell very hard for my C-family lineage head to wrap its brain around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you're asking for symbolic math utilities, which exist in a number of languages.

Like for example I've tried to play this game building a toy language from first principles but you run into problems rather quickly. A computer can't represent reals (or even all rationals you care about) with a finite number of bits. You can't guarantee that all integers are representable by all rationals and all rationals by reals and so on.

And if you want to throw out formalism and accept the consequences, every language has a way to do it to varying degrees of success. Matlab, Mathematica, Julia, Python, R, basically anything that might be used by a working mathematician probably has the facilities and libraries to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha, you're thinking like me.

That's why I thought I might incorporate surreal numbers into a toy language early on in the compute chain (before even a "normal"/"traditional" numeric implementation) but I've already run into the problem that the naive recursive plus op implementation is pathologically slow in regular cases so I had to hack the surreal integer case to make it faster.

I don't want the entirety of symbolic math, I just want a sufficiently decent implementation of a useful part of it! The surreal numbers interest me because they are said to be able to represent infinitesimals and infinities …

"A computer can't represent reals (or even all rationals you care about) with a finite number of bits."

This is where my thinking is on this. Because surreal numbers only give you the dyadic rationals exactly it forces you to think about what it means to represent not just exotic numbers like _i_ , _√2_ , _π_ , and _e_ but also non-exotic rationals like the vulgar fraction _⅓_. My thinking is that the algorithm(s) that produce ever greater precision for non-exact representations are finite and recursive which means that the more precise you want something you specify how long you want that algorithm to pump out ever more precise values or you specify a number of bits constraint. Not fixed point, not floating point, flexi-point? If you have _π_ to 100 binary places as a dyadic fraction that's a precision above and beyond what anyone would ever need in practice. I'm thinking that when manipulating symbols that the _algorithm_ is manipulated, not the numeric representation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Factor has the best number implementation. It has builtin support for bignums and rationals. Eg:

        IN: scratchpad 2 63 ^ 1 + 2  63 ^ / 2 63 ^ * 2 63 ^ 1 + =
        t

The corresponding expression would incorrectly evaluate to false in most languages:

        >>> n = 63
        >>> (2**n + 1) / 2**n * 2**n == 2**n + 1
        False

Factor also has syntactic support for complex numbers but not for irrational ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you sir, and would you know about surreal numbers?

<comment><USER6> I don't know anything about them. But since all the binary operators (+, -, *, /, =, <, >, etc) are overloadable they could be implemented in Factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want something like surreal numbers (or anything that might use ordinal induction) you might be better off with a proof assistant.

Lean is being developed specifically for being applicable to math researcher.

<comment><AUTHOR> Proof assistants are too esoteric for me. Coq, Idris, Agda, Lean, way above my pay-grade. Fair play to people that understand them but I can't. It's tough to admit such a thing on a forum like this but there you go. The closest I think I'll need to go along that route is to graft microkanren into a toy language as part of its type system.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Missed all these great replies :( Took a while for them to filter through so I thought my question had sunk like a stone into the murky depths of HN. I'll reply individually now and hope people notice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Julia in the long term

<comment><AUTHOR> A second recommendation for Julia. What's the deal with it?

<comment><USER9> Julia allows for "fast" definitions and and multiple dispatch makes it easy to incorporate into existing code. By "fast" I mean if you make it an immutable struct, it'll inline the bytes into arrays and stuff like that, so it'll be as though it was hardcoded bytes at the end of the day. This is crucial because Julia's floating point numbers are defined in Julia and had to be fast enough to match C, so now when you define a weird number type you get the same machinery for free. But then multiple dispatch is really the kicker here, since if you ask, what is machine learning with surreal numbers like? Well, in Julia, if you give the Flux ML library surreal numbers, it'll recompile everything so it uses surreal numbers and it'll do it fast, so there you go: take the surreal number library, take Flux, slap them together and now you have a pretty well-optimized implementation of surreal number machine learning (and then of course you can optimize it more, since it'll not be able to use CuDNN with surreal numbers so then you write etc. etc. in the language). (Note: SurrealNumbers.jl won't get some of the optimizations by its design, so that's an opening for some work)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Does it do tail recursion elimination? My Ruby implementation is so slow because all the naive surreal number ops are recursive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mathematica?

<comment><USER11> Mathematica isn't really well adapted to dealing with non-commutative number systems like quaternions or Clifford algebras.

<comment><USER7> that might be a bit out of scope, especially since Mathematica handles matrices and tensors nicely

<comment><USER11> > that might be a bit out of scope Out of scope of what? The OP specific asks > about number systems beyond complex.

<comment><USER7> wops, missed that, I actually reread the question to see what you were referring to; guess the quarantine is not doing wonders for my sleep schedule...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Common Lisp, Julia, perl 6.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm never going to use Raku as long as they have that logo. I'm joking.

(I'm not joking.)

<comment><USER13> It would seem that Larry's reasoning for Camelia is working:

"I also take it as a given that we want to discourage misogyny in our community. You of the masculine persuasion should consider it an opportunity to show off your sensitive side."

from: [https://github.com/perl6/mu/blob/master/misc/camelia.txt](https://github.com/perl6/mu/blob/master/misc/camelia.txt)

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfair. Equating the feminine with sensitivity is a subtle form of bigotry in its own right.

I object to the logo because it looks like it's drawn by a five-year-old, it's garish and ugly, it's on the homepage of the docs _twice_ and one is _very large_ , and why a butterfly exactly? Ruby has a ruby, Python a snake, Raku a butterfly, Wikipedia says Raku is a type of Japanese pottery. For some reason it reminds me of the artwork in Dora the Explorer I used to watch with my kid (which I'm _okay_ with in that context I feel I have to stress).

Take a look at:

[https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) and [https://ruby-doc.org/](https://ruby-doc.org/)

[https://julialang.org/](https://julialang.org/) and [https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/)

[https://www.r-project.org/about.html](https://www.r-project.org/about.html) and [https://www.r-project.org/other- docs.html](https://www.r-project.org/other-docs.html)

[https://www.python.org/](https://www.python.org/) and [https://docs.python.org/3/](https://docs.python.org/3/)

Versus:

[https://docs.raku.org/](https://docs.raku.org/)

Even Scratch, which is aimed at kids learning programming, is more subdued and less childish:

[https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

<comment><USER13> > I object to the logo because it looks like it's drawn by a five-year-old

And why should that affect your decision to use or not use Raku? Isn't that ageism in its purest form? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oldie but a goodie: FORTRAN It has evolved a lot over the years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Left field suggestion, I'll take a peek.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have a look at Pari/GP

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, an interesting suggestion.</comment></comment>


The Swedish Visual Copyright Society - <AUTHOR> http://bus.se/en/information/about-us <comment><AUTHOR> These are the folks who are suing Wikimedia for publishing on the web photographs showing public statues in Sweden, asserting copyright violation of the "visual copyright" supposed held by the artist.</comment>


A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=health&pagewanted=print <comment> a-priori Where's House when you need him? :)

</comment><comment><USER2> braaaains!</comment>


Foursquare's Value Will Be Cut by More Than Half in a New Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/12/22/foursquares-value-will-be-cut-by-more-than-half-in-a-new-funding-round/ <comment><USER2> I started using their swarm app again recently. It has a fraction of its previous user base. It's kinda sad. They've added good features and it would be more fun if all my original friends still played.</comment>