America's opioid epidemic is worsening - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/03/daily-chart-3 <comment><USER2> I live in Trumbull County in Ohio, the dark red county in North East Ohio. We recently had 23 (non-fatal) overdoses in a two-day period[0]. That's roughly .01% of the county's total population - so yeah, it's getting bad here.

There were recently two shootings within a mile of my house. Several people dead. Both shootings were drug related.

I can't help but look around and believe that the needs these folks are trying to satisfy are completely human, and that forcing the users to resort to black markets leads to violence and overdoses. I can't help but think this problem in my community could be solved by simply letting people get high.

Maybe the answer isn't to make heroin available OTC at Walgreens, but supervised injection sites seem to be gaining traction[1]. I think a lot of the dark red spots on the map, like mine, should probably consider this option.

It's not like anything else is working.

[0][http://www.tribtoday.com/news/latest- news/2017/03/fri-920-pm...](http://www.tribtoday.com/news/latest- news/2017/03/fri-920-pm-23-overdoses-recorded-in-48-hours-in-trumbull/) [1][http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe- injecti...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injection- sites-get-ok-from-king-county-health-board/)

<comment><USER3> Isn't the counterargument to this to point out the Oxycontin abuse epidemic? Doctors are prescribing years worth of opiates to patients. There have been suggestions that Purdue Pharma's formulation of Oxy practically guarantees dependence, because of the way it's dosed. Are the people dying of heroin overdoses in white rural Ohio starting on heroin, or transitioning to it after prescription opioids become too expensive?

Sam Quinones suggests that the actual trade in Mexican heroin is distinctively _less_ violent than in other drugs; there's a pipeline of supply and distribution designed to be low-key and customer-service driven. If violence is coming from addicts and not from suppliers, increasing supply isn't going to make those people any less desperate or violent.

<comment><USER4> If you give them free H, they'll be a lot less desperate and a lot less violent, presumably.

And.. why not? I've got multiple friends in my age group prematurely dead from overdose. It's not like prohibition is accomplishing anything.

<comment><USER5> Checkout Denmark. They had a huge problem with robberies and started giving legal pure Heroin shots to users. They also helped them find jobs. No more deaths and no more black market for Heroin. Hence burglaries also went away.

It looks like our current President is looking at cracking down on pot again though so, I don't imagine we'll have a sensible drug policy anytime soon. Only one motivated by profits.

<comment><USER6> Which Denmark is this? Doesn't resemble the one I live in. Neither the robberies problem nor the legal pure heroin, and most certainly not the disappearance of burglaries - not statistically, not anecdotally, and not according to the several people of my acquaintance who have had it happen to them.

<comment><USER7> In the USA, there's a fantasy Denmark that exists in the media.

In the fantasy Denmark, there's no crime, all the women are hot blondes who never get fat, there's cheap weed every where (and apparently free clean heroin), the furniture is sleek, all the men are feminists who never objectify women (there's no porn), the school system is fantastic (every child is good at math), the healthcare is free and high-quality, education is universal, free and high quality, and there are plenty of jobs for everyone (and high quality ones too!).

Pretty much like the rest of fantasy Europe.

<comment><USER8>
        > the healthcare is free and high-quality
        > Pretty much like the rest of fantasy
        > Europe.

Isn't high-quality healthcare that's "free at the point of use" available in most of real Western Europe too?

<comment><USER9> Well, as long as you are willing to wait about six months for knee surgery, yes, it is free.

Or for any other type of intervention.

<comment><USER10> There is a 3 month gurantee. If they have not diagnosed you, and started treatment within that periode, you're free to go to a private clinic or hospital, free of charge.

<comment><USER11> At least in wife's case there was an additional 4 month gap between "starting treatment" and actual surgery.

<comment><USER10> And with expected times like that, you are entirely free to use a private hospital/clinic. Both myself and my wife have done so twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My sister is a heroin addict. To say this has devastated her life is an understatement. Her body is wrecked. She looks way older than she is, she has a pacemaker / defibrillator installed in her chest. And doctors keep saying she will die soon if she doesn't stop.

Here is the most frustrating part. She has wanted to go to rehab a few times, but since she is poor and unemployed, she has no health insurance for rehab. What are her options? My parents have no money to help her.

I'll never understand the bull-shit US policy towards drugs. Let's spend billions upon billions to "fight" drugs coming into the country, but let's turn a blind eye to the companies pumping out hundreds of millions of pills.

Why the hell don't we spend those hundreds of billions on actually treating the disease? If there was no demand, there would be no drug war to fight. Why don't we try a new way?

<comment><USER13> Is Medicaid an option?

<comment><USER12> Sadly she only has Medi-Cal. Which only covers care for when she is detoxing. No rehab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And a potential solution to it:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/tweaking- fentanyls-c...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/tweaking-fentanyls- chemical-structure-may-create-safer-opioid/)

 _For their chemical makeover, the researchers noted that when tissue is damaged and hurting, it becomes inflamed and more acidic. The pH drops from approximately 7.4—what's seen in normal, healthy tissue—to between 5 and 7. Fentanyl can work regardless of the pH, so it's active throughout the nervous system no matter what. But, if it was altered to only work at the lower pH, then it could target just the pain source at the peripheral nerves, the researchers hypothesized. And with no activity in the central nervous system, it would dodge opioid's serious side-effects, including addiction and systemic responses that can be lethal during overdoses._

They're testing a modified version of fentanyl that only works in lower pH, restricting its activity to injured areas of the body, eliminating the risk of overdose and dependence:

 _In further experiments, the researchers noted that, unlike fentanyl, high doses of NFEPP weren't lethal to the rats. And rats on the NFEPP didn't display impaired motor activity or reward-seeking behavior linked to addiction._

<comment><USER15> That's great, and there are other painkillers on the horizon too, but that's "maybe" and "later". Today we could take concrete steps to alleviate this crisis which we created in the first place. Cannabis is a good choice for people addicted to opiates, along with medical detox. You also have to manage underlying mental health, social, and medical issues.

No amount of throwing new molecules at these problems will solve them.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, and cannabis is a good choice not only for the addicted, but to those suffering chronic pain what would eventually use opioids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given that this article only touches on the supply of these drugs, is there a tacit assumption that the demand for opioids is driven by unemployment? If so, what can be done about the demand for these drugs in the long term? "Bringing back jobs" to those people whose comparative advantage is no longer manufacturing by taxing robots or imposing tariffs is a temporary stall, and to the degree it does work it amounts to a fat, inefficient handout.

Fighting the "epidemic" at the supply level seems like a losing battle, as it is for the hard drugs that plague inner cities. Addressing it at the demand level has to be the answer, but I don't see any possible answers floated.

<comment><USER17> I think its more dissatisfaction with life in general, with unemployment maybe being one of many triggers.

You're probably right about addressing at the demand level. But, I see the problem being more societal - think no one really understands everything. You take away self-reliance of people (whether they realize it or not) at many levels... its cheaper to get some good-enough quality food at 13 places near my home, so why should I learn to cook. I can get any vegetable I want at the store, so I probably don't need to learn how to tend a garden. In both instances as examples I'm losing a little control of my life. And then....

TV gives me entertainment, and the internet even more so, so maybe i'll just sit back and let it entertain me. So maybe I don't need to read anymore. Its easier to have short non-contextual entertainment bits, which rewire my brain further to think differently [wrongly?]... [0]

And, now capitalism has made all margins of businesses so slim that there's no real way to enter a business and still have a safety net in case you fail. You either need to disrupt an industry, create a marketplace, find a niche, or fail hard.

I think we're just starting to see the uglier stuff here. Short of some great awakening I also don't see the correct prescription. Pun intended.

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

<comment><USER18> Postman's book is now 32 years old! I read it as a teenager, which dates me...

I'm not sure about the Amusing Ourselves To Death stuff or the tut-tutting about cooking and gardening, but overall, though, I think you're on the right track. I'm sure that between automation of both manufacturing and services, big-box retailers and the fact that the covering of the 'long tail' is done very well by web-based business. It's hard to picture what a lot of people are going to be able to _do_ in this circumstance and there seems to be the real potential for a cascading unpleasantness.

If you even half-believe the 'technological unemployment' worry, the scary part is that the non-automatable jobs that involved providing goods and services to those displaced by technology will _also_ suffer.

There may be plenty of spare time for people to have that 'great awakening', whatever that might turn out to be.

<comment><USER17> >>cooking and gardening

two examples of many, admittedly probably too personal. Others: technology obsolescence, and the move toward not actually OWNing anything so nothing to learn to repair.

>>If you even half-believe the 'technological unemployment' worry, the scary part is that the non-automatable jobs that involved providing goods and services to those displaced by technology will also suffer.

Yes... My context is now that as a parent, I'm seeing windows closing for the kids' future that I had. I mean programming (maybe; I hope) and robot repair will be very lucrative. So will professions like plumbing and electricians.

<comment><USER18> I feel the 'parent context' too. I have kids old enough to be thinking more seriously about what they want to do when they group up (i.e. early teens) and it's difficult to know what to tell them. I suspect that many of the hopefully lucrative paths you mentioned will be things that gets more and more 'sealed' and routinized (i.e. robot repair == "remove broken assembly, put in new assembly, send broken assembly to factory in low-cost geo for salvage/repair").

It's not all doom and gloom, of course, and I think it's important to maintain a positive outlook esp. in front of one's kids when talking about this stuff. And of course, the growing helplessness and screen addiction of many of their peers suggests that in competitive terms, finding and holding a good job might be easier and easier (which isn't very encouraging overall, but appeals to the "amoral familism" streak I occasionally get).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to comment here with a plug for the March For Science, on April 22.

Why?

Because the opioid epidemic started with a simple matter of scientists not being allowed to science.

Purdue Pharmaceuticals marketed oxycontin as a drug that lasts for 12 hours.

The evidence indicated it only lasted for 8.

If Purdue's scientists were allowed to act on the evidence, i.e. to be actual scientists, the whole world would have known this years ago. People prescribed oxycontin would have been told to plan for 8 hours of relief, not 12.

Instead, hundreds of thousands of patients were subjected to 4 hours of pain a day, and they sought relief with other drugs, including illegal ones. And the epidemic began.

Science is important, yo.

<comment><USER20> You forgot the best part: It made Purdue rich. Instead of changing the frequency of doses, they told doctors to up the strength which made the company more money. The owners of Purdue are billionaires now: [http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin- part1/](http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maintenance treatments with long-acting opioids like methadone tend to come with a withdrawal that lasts for months.

Meanwhile, short-acting opiates like heroin have a withdrawal period that lasts about a week. Is it any wonder methadone patients switch back to heroin when they try to quit for good?

Mark my words, this isn't going away or getting any better. You can prosecute doctors, regulate all you want, burn fields of poppies. None of it will affect the demand nor the supply. You can't price or regulate someone out of an addiction.

If people get cut off wholesale from their prescriptions because doctors are being prosecuted for prescribing pain medication, they'll turn to heroin. Which will be available, regardless of all the opium seized, regardless of cartels dismantled.

Just like when Oxycontin went under a formulation change making it resistant to abuse, which also caused the price to spike to a dollar per milligram.

People turned to heroin because it was cheaper, more potent, and much more widely available than pharmaceuticals could ever be.

If you think pill junkies are bad, wait until you look down an alley to see a heroin junkie injecting another junkie in the jugular because all her veins are blown out. Watch your step, though, lest you get a syringe in your foot.

<comment><USER22> I've had friends get fucked up by head shop and online Kratom. It's very far from benign.

<comment><USER21> I've gone ahead and edited my comment, not because of your comment, but just because I felt like I wasn't making a clear point. Kratom is not even mentioned anymore, sorry.

While kratom is habit forming and can "fuck you up" if you have no tolerance, the true value is for the person already addicted to opiates looking to get clean.

If you want to keep drugs out of the hands of kids, make them all legal and watch the usage numbers fall. Banning a powdered leaf, that is quite self- regulating, albeit habit-forming, is a step backwards in the quest to put out the structure fire that the opiate crises has become.

<comment><USER23> > If you want to keep drugs out of the hands of kids, make them all legal and > watch the usage numbers fall.

Doesn't the UK experience with alcohol counter this?

(I am strongly in favour of legalisation of all drugs).

<comment><USER21> Amphetamine will be abused by college students. Alcohol will be abused by highschool kids. It's a given. The allure of stuff like cocaine, with the "what else was I lied to about, what am I missing out on" mindset goes out the window when you stop lying and start letting people make their own choices.

<comment><USER24> You can't stop all the drug abuse but the extent of use is not a given. Amphetamine use of UK students appears to be extremely rare compared to the US, its never really been a cultural thing here.

I suspect it is due to very few amphetamine drugs being prescribed, especially to children. It seems to common to hear about people selling their legitimate ADHD/ADD prescriptions to friends in the US. "Speed Paste" is the only amphetamine properly in circulation and its use is mostly restricted to the hardcore "junkie" groups, very much frowned upon from the casual drug community.

None of the above is a solution, just to note the degree to which groups will gravitate towards and use a drug is not a given. Culture and availability probably affect use massively.

<comment><USER21> I completely agree. My example wasn't exactly the best, but relatively applicable to the US nevertheless.

You raise many good points about drug use being different geographically and culturally. It's very much about availability, local drug culture, etc.

For example, the speed paste. As you said, in the UK and in other European countries amphetamine is usually amphetamine in paste form, not crystal methylamphetamine like we usually see here in the states.

Culture and availability absolutely affects use massively, a point I didn't mean to gloss over, and one I'm glad you raised.

<comment><USER24> What a nice response :)

I think identifying these differences between countries will bring governments a step closer to finding some sort of solution. Not exactly an easy one though when it comes to culture though. How do you break strong cultural associations?

There seems to be a number of (bad)role models that glorify different drugs in sub-cultures. Opiate use is glamorised from what I can tell in southern HipHop, Cannabis promoted all over the shop, Xanax frequently referred to in Hollywood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So what is the answer here? Like another poster said, there's a _demand_ problem. How do we as a society address this? I've seen a lot of mumbles about dealing with supply problems, dealing with overdose problems, but it'd be good to head the problems off at the pass before they descend into major trouble.

I should also note, this is a burgeoning problem in the Puget Sound/Seattle region. It's not just rural people dying.

Can someone knowledgeable about drug policy / sociology provide some insight in this thread?

<comment><USER26> Preventing that first time is probably the secret. It's got to be so much harder to resist once you know what you're missing. And it's not like you're rational about it and considering long term consequences when you're confronted with a second opportunity.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where it's all good, live free, don't judge, do what feels good, etc. That leads to things that feel extremely good...

I'm grateful to parents, teachers and some scary videos in high school health class that taught me to stay away.

<comment><USER27> I remember reading somewhere about how a decent chunk of drug users just plain grow out of it as they grow into life roles that it doesn't quite work for.

Nothing to do with theoretical long term consequences, just "this is more trouble than it's worth".

<comment><USER25> I'd concur.... anecdotes from reading Reddit suggest that's true for a number of pot or hallucinogen users. They move on to more fulfilling roles in life.

<comment><USER28> Well sure, for the safest, least-addictive drugs around. For more dangerous drugs like alcohol or the ones discussed in this thread, "growing out of" an abuse habit is orders of magnitude more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We have ~400 overdoses per month here. ~20% of that is fatal overdoses because those ODs are from users doing it by themselves and not inside one of the shooting galleries we have set up. The safe injection sites work as advertised but for many reasons some addicts don't go there, mainly because debt collecting gangsters and drug dealers hover all around the front doors, and stigma of standing in an addict lineup that spreads for blocks for all to see.

There's a few reports here from VANDU a group run by addicts on the effectiveness of peer-run supervised injection sites and needle exchanges, meaning run by other addicts instead of government employees [http://www.vandu.org/reports/](http://www.vandu.org/reports/)

The problem is synthetic opioid is being used to buff out heroin so street dealers can save money by importing less heroin from India (how it comes into Canada). They keep coming up with new synthetics to bypass precursor prohibition or import laws, plus China has factories pumping this shit out legally which can easily be smuggled since it costs far less than heroin from India/Afghanistan.

Whenever you talk to a street addict basically the reason they got on heroin was they had some other substance abuse problem, usually cocaine, alcohol or meth, there was a shortage of that substance because either they couldn't afford it, busts made it scarce, or they were in jail so through peers they accessed heroin instead and got hooked.

Methadone doesn't work, they've already abandoned that idea here and moved to just handing out heroin to the worst cases, or hydromorphone which has a proven success rate in weening addicts off drugs.

Somewhere in all this is a solution that doesn't involve enabling career bums who want free heroin for life and doesn't involve 400+ ambulance calls per month draining our resources.

</comment><comment><USER30> A potential solution:

>Legal Heroin Prescriptions: The 'British System' You Never Knew Existed

Basically prescribe heroin for the addicts so they don't need to deal / steal and the thing dies out. You could link getting the prescription to doing something useful work wise if you want to be moralistic. Been done since the 1920s - tried and tested.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/heroin-prescription- di...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/heroin-prescription- diamorphine_uk_57fd2f6ee4b0430f66f67894)

<comment><USER31> How does the "British system" work out long-term, for the addicts as individuals -- resistance accumulation, vein damage, constipation? Do any live on to old age? Or does it "work" for the rest of society because they die peacefully, at home?

<comment><USER32> There is an issue that people get 'parked' on methadone and never fully come off it. However, some people I know are now in their 70's and still managing their addiction via Methadone prescribed by a GP. They have been on this treatment since the late 80's. They would not be alive and working, paying their taxes if this wasn't about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In the UK it appears that there's a Spice epidemic. It's often called "synthetic cannabis" or "(formerly) legal highs", but it in reality it's all kinds of research chemicals sprayed onto leaves to be smoked. It has some pretty hideous side effects, and seems very addictive ([https://video.vice.com/en_uk/video/the-hard-lives-of- britain...](https://video.vice.com/en_uk/video/the-hard-lives-of-britains- synthetic-marijuana-addicts/55ccad2d2b68305332db7128))

Oh, and the government just handed the whole market over to illegal drug dealers, with fairly predictable results.

<comment><USER23> The spice epidemic is mostly prison related though.

Prisons should stop testing for cannabis; and should consider prescribing cannabis of known strengths (and higher CBD rather than THC content).

(Also, they need to start providing a lot more mental health support and meaningful activity).

<comment><USER34> Artificial cannabinoids are also highly used in homeless populations because of how cheap and powerful they are.

[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/synthetic-weed-is-a- scour...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/synthetic-weed-is-a-scourge-on- brooklyns-homeless-population-727)

<comment><USER23> Sure, but that's the US, not the UK.

<comment><USER34> The vice video rwmj posted is all about homeless spice users in the the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you're looking for a go-to book on America's opioid crisis- Dreamland by Sam Quinones.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529381-dreamland](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529381-dreamland)

The devil is absolutely in the details and it seems like it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

<comment><USER36> Haven't read the book yet but Sam Quinones was on EconTalk recently and it was pretty enlightening:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm on the gulf coast, and we just had a high-profile prosecution of a doctor running a pill mill.

What if this whole mess isn't so much a technical problem to be solved as much as it is our system functioning under its own perverse incentives? Other countries don't have this problem.

In my own area of expertise, I have seen so many non-solutions force-fed to the customer when an actual solution is not as profitable. It is not hard to believe that medicine operates similarly.

<comment><USER38> > What if this whole mess isn't so much a technical problem to be solved as > much as it is our system functioning under its own perverse incentives? > Other countries don't have this problem.

That description could easily be applied to many aspects of the US healthcare system - an epidemic is a failing of public health.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The first time I saw a TV commercial here in the US for a pill to battle opiod induced constipation, I realized just how many people are taking large doses of the stuff. Pretty staggering to me.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, those commercials are painful. If you're taking so many opioids that you have trouble pooping, maybe the solution is to _take fewer opioids_ rather than adding another medication to the mix. Really damning commentary on how easily and flippantly we overmedicate.

<comment><USER41> Even a low dose of less potent opioids such as codeine or dihydrocodeine can cause constipation

<comment><USER40> So get some extra fiber and pop a Colace if it's really bad. Adding another prescription medication seems like a pound worth of solution for an ounce's worth of problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Check [https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/](https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/) for some deep reasons and for a feel how bad it is. Don't blame this or that pharma for it, that's a distraction.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'll never understand locking people up for having an addiction and treating them like criminals. I'm not too educated on how it's handled in America but in Australia you can go to your doctors and get signed up to a methadone program without worrying about any legal repercussions.

My fiancé works at a pharmacy in Melbourne, Australia and says some of the most lovely and friendly people who just want to get themselves together come in regularly to get their $5 dose and it's saddening to see how badly society judges them.

<comment><USER28> I believe you can do the same here, but the (huge, purpose-defeating) difference is that you need to be able to afford the rehab in a country that isn't so keen on providing a safety net (somewhere upthread someone mentions his sister ruining her life with heroin, wanting to go to rehab, but unable to afford the cost, which is uncovered by Medi-Cal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I know the United States will never do it, but Singapore barely has a drug problem because they execute dealers and have mandatory treatment for users. I'm not advocating the ridiculous policy that the Phillipines has, but Singapore doesn't mess around if they find distribution levels of illegal drugs on you. There also needs to be much stricter control of new prescriptions for opioids, which lead to addiction.

<comment><USER21> >There also needs to be much stricter control of new prescriptions for opioids

Like the extremely strict controls in place? Like the prosecution of doctors who run pill mills? Like the rescheduling of hydrocodone formulations?

In my local ER there is an entire framed info-poster explaining why you aren't getting your meds refilled at the ER, you won't be getting fentanyl, dilaudid or oxycodone prescribed to you no matter what. ED's work with your primary care doctor and relay info to them. States have implemented pharmacy tech that allows them to track prescriptions state-wide. (a former massive problem)

Hospitals are already doing this. Pharmacies, already doing this. Doctors are terrified of the laymen telling them they know better in the court of law. Pain is being undertreated now more than ever, which is the flipside to the crackdown you don't seem aware of, which has been happening for years now.

There will _always_ be abusers. It's inevitable. The people who really suffer from this kind of over-reach are people like my grandparents who are nearing life's end. People dependent on pain medication for their quality of life. Non-abusers.

Maybe quality of life means nothing to you, but to them it's all they have left keeping them going. It's the only reason they can continue to live through the constant pain, the enduring misery old age and lives of very hard work has wrought upon them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only thing that is good about this epidemic is that it seems to have moved harm reduction onto the agenda after decades of militarized and/or "lock 'em up and throw away the key" responses. Hopefully the result will be a more rational response for _all_ of America's drug problems regardless of the color of the users.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Are you kidding? The attorney general of the United States is on record saying the one thing that kept him from joining the KKK was their marijuana use, stating that "decent people don't smoke marijuana."

Public opinion may have shifted, but as far as the current White House is concerned, it's their way or the highway.

<comment><USER45> For the record I've noticed the tone of reporting these days is a little different as well, personally. It is harder for people to demonize prescription drug abuse; you don't get quite as much of the broad stereotyping and Hollywood-ization that happened in the 1980s on this subject.

Yes, some people cling to old-fashioned hardened attitudes. But if you look at Gallup's poll on drugs ([http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal- drugs.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx)), people are _way_ more worried about prescription drugs and the related heroin epidemic these days. Way more than cocaine, certainly. It's not in the poll, but it's hard to remember when the last time the boogeyman of the 1980s (crack cocaine) came up in reports.

Support for marijuana legalization stands at 60% now, compared to the 1980s where support was at 25%. There is a large age gap in support, in marijuana at least ([http://www.gallup.com/poll/196550/support-legal- marijuana.as...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/196550/support-legal- marijuana.aspx) \-- 55+ 45% support, 18-34 77% support).

Although I'm sure harder stances will linger onward, as it has in the AG's mind, the AG's stance is increasingly looking out of touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> >States have since cracked down on prescription opioid abuse, creating drug- monitoring programmes and arresting unscrupulous doctors.

So if you look at the chart, when they started doing this, heroin overdoses skyrocketed while pill overdoses stayed about the same. They doubled the deaths with their crackdown solution, as if that has _ever_ worked.

</comment><comment><USER47> > The opioid epidemic has its roots in the explosive growth of prescription > painkillers. Between 1991 and 2011, the number of opioid prescriptions > (selling under brand names like Vicodin, Oxycontin, and Percocet) supplied > by American retail pharmacies increased from 76m to 219m. As the number of > pain pills being doled out by doctors increased, so did their potency. In > 2002 one in six users took a pill more powerful than morphine. By 2012 it > was one in three.

I find this absolutely outrageous. I'm not American, but I stumble upon articles mentioning this, and I do watch enough American TV series and movies to have an idea of how acute the problem is (it's crazy how often in TV series doctors seem to give pain killers like it's candy).

I have the impression that in Europe, painkillers are much less used but I would not be surprised if the American trend were to contaminate medical practice here.

Pain is a minor consequence of disease or trauma. Pain won't kill you, so why would you risk become addicted to very dangerous drugs just to relieve it?

<comment><USER48> > Pain is a minor consequence of disease

There speaks someone young and healthy. Some conditions are extremely painful in the long term.

"It is estimated that more than 100 million people suffer from chronic pain in this country,[11] and for some of them, opioid therapy may be appropriate. The bulk of American patients who need relief from persistent, moderate-to-severe non-cancer pain have back pain conditions (approximately 38 million) or osteoarthritis (approximately 17 million)."

Source: [https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative- activities/...](https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative- activities/testimony-to-congress/2016/americas-addiction-to-opioids-heroin- prescription-drug-abuse)

"aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies"

"United States their biggest consumer globally, accounting for almost 100 percent of the world total for hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin) and 81 percent for oxycodone (e.g., Percocet)"

That does make it sound like a problem created by pharma drug pushing on TV. But that doesn't mean the pain isn't real either.

Really the whole thing needs to be seen as a widespread public and social health problem - which is exactly the sort of thing the US system is set up to avoid seeing. Healthcare is _not_ just a matter of individual responsibility or a contract between someone and their employer.

<comment><USER47> > "aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies"

I'm wondering what that means, concretely. How exactly do they convince GPs to prescribe pain killers even when it's not really appropriate? They can't just pay them, can they?

<comment><USER48> Well, yes: [http://www.pharmadisclose.org/cme/ut000309.html](http://www.pharmadisclose.org/cme/ut000309.html)

[http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/doctors-cheaper-drug- prescript...](http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/doctors-cheaper-drug- prescriptions/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> One of the best books I've ever read on _why_ the war on drugs is a bad idea. It's written by a UK cop who was there nearly from the beginning.

      https://www.amazon.com/Good-Cop-Bad-War/dp/1785032690/
      Good Cop, Bad War (Paperback)
      Publisher: Ebury Press
      Language: English
      ISBN-10: 1785032690
      ISBN-13: 978-1785032691

</comment><comment><USER50> I say this mostly tongue-in-cheek because I hate to apply one bad policy to fix another, but I bet if narcotic overprescription could more readily trigger medical malpractice, you'd see doctors thinking more judiciously about their use.

Even if exaggerated by an order of magnitude, stats like this are just indefensible: [http://www.webmd.com/mental- health/addiction/news/20160325/n...](http://www.webmd.com/mental- health/addiction/news/20160325/nearly-all-us-doctors-overprescribe-addictive- narcotic-painkillers-survey#1)

<comment><USER51> What's funny is there is no evidence that these opioid pain killers are actually effective in the long term for the management of pain. If it wasn't for lobbying they likely wouldn't be legal to use in that way.

<comment><USER52> I've been taking opioids for nearly a year and they still work fine. Not sure how long-term you mean.

<comment><USER51> Stop taking them for a few days and you'll see what I mean. Many studies have shown that patients who do not consume opioid medications have better long term outcomes than those who do. It simply isn't effective in managing pain long term, and also is not indicated for use in that manner.

<comment><USER52> When I stop taking them I'm in pain again. I think what you're trying to get at is the opioids don't solve the underlying problem. But to say they're not effective for managing pain is wrong. I use them to manage pain every day. I get regular steroidal-epidural injections to solve the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I read that Medicaid is being used to fuel the black market pipeline.

$3 copay gets you a $1000 street value opioids...

Of course this is corporate welfare for the opioid manufacturers.

I also read that one month 11% of Ohio's population was prescribed painkillers.

</comment><comment><USER54> Read Chasing the Scream [1], a fantastic book that documents drug prohibition in the USA, how doctors who viewed it as a health issue got chased out of their desire to help, and suggests many paths to helping people and making the world a better, safer place.

I've posted this in enough threads that I probably seem like a bot advertising for it, but seriously, it's a book worth reading and that can change someone's entire opinion on the drug epidemic and what legislation we should pass.

[1] [http://chasingthescream.com/](http://chasingthescream.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> This article I recently submitted had some interesting stats on the relationship between opiates and the welfare state:

[https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our- miserable-21...](https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our- miserable-21st-century/)

Although the entire article is worth reading, jump down to the paragraph that begins with "The opioid epidemic..." and read for about ~5 paragraphs if that's all that interests you.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is a war on drugs a good response? Hyper-aggressive policing? Lock up even minor participants for decades?

Consider why people thought that was a good response when drugs struck other communities.

<comment><USER28> This is hardly news: the same dynamic played out in a different chronological order between alcohol and marijuana prohibition. Alcohol was so ubiquitous that Prohibition turned all of society (including "decent" people) into criminals, so the response was that it's clearly an unworkable solution; we can't lock up _everybody_. It's only simplifying a bit to say that marijuana shared much the same ubiquity in certain _other_ communities, so the response was.....let's just lock up everybody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Could weed slow down the opioid epidemic? It gets you high, it is way cheaper, way healthier (not smoked), it isn't addictive, curbs the urge for opioids, easier to make, easier to sell.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/marijuana...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/marijuana- cannabinoids-opioids/515358/)

</comment><comment><USER58> What is causing the variation on the prescription opioid graph do you think? The other two graphs don't have similar patterns to such degree.

</comment><comment><USER59> These stories are so frightening to me that I contemplate just enduring the suffering if I am ever unfortunate enough to be prescribed oxy or dilaudid.

</comment><comment><USER60> I once read of a 20-year-long study that found that when heroin-addicted UK doctors were given unlimited access to pure heroin they performed slightly better than their non-heroin-addicted colleagues, and they had no negative long-term health consequences. If anyone else has heard of this study, or especially if they have some documentation on it, I would appreciate a link.

</comment><comment><USER61> There is something obviously wrong or at least strange with the data that backs that map. Look at the contrast across the border between Tennessee and Georgia or between West Virginia and Virginia. I think some states must be under-reporting things or reporting them differently. I would expect such a map to track poverty maps or unemployment maps, but it does not.

<comment><USER62> Correct. States have a great deal of variance when it comes to tracking overdose deaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Methadone clinics work; Zurich is a good example. Hard to manage; hard on the community; but it eventually kills off the problem.

</comment><comment><USER64> You know Trump's solution? Jail for everyone. No wonder why US has 25% of the world's total inmate population...

[0][https://www.thoughtco.com/states-spending-money-prisons- not-...](https://www.thoughtco.com/states-spending-money-prisons-not- schools-4068528)

</comment><comment><USER65> So the Federal Government should Legalize Cannabis and allow research into it's painkiller effects?

</comment><comment><USER66> I watched this BBC documentary a few days ago: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37992809](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37992809)

It seems that new painkillers such as oxycodone have something to do with the surge.

</comment><comment><USER67> John Oliver spoke about this in depth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o)

Humor aside, he managed to compile an impressive amount of testimonials and facts.

</comment><comment><USER68> The states with medical cannabis don't have anywhere near this problem. They need to cover medical cannabis via medicaid that would seriously put a dent in the crisis or at least keep it from growing bigger.

</comment><comment><USER69> What is causing this? IS this prescription drug dependence? Because this wasn't a problem 10 or 20 years ago!

</comment><comment><USER70> [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5v43rj/how_mike_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5v43rj/how_mike_pence_used_obamacare_to_halt_indianas/ddzapo8/?st=izgcbq4v&sh=d07521d3)

Also read other comments in the thread about history of needle exchange programs etc.

</comment><comment><USER71> I _wondered_ what the political & law enforcement community was going to do, with the clear failure of the War on Drugs and growing demands for legal marijuana.

Never fear! Here's the latest Demon Drug, which we can use to whip up popular support for another round of failed prohibition-mentality policies. No need to worry about budget cuts, reduction in the availability of military weapons, drones, etc. to law enforcement. There will still be a viable career in persecuting some of the most vulnerable members of society.

Those in favour of harm minimisation need to fight for legalisation, or at the very least decriminalisation as a strating point. Not just for _their_ favourite drug, but for those causing the most harm right now.

</comment><comment><USER72> US may need to follow Philippines anti-drug campaign.

<comment><USER73> Suppose people can't overdose if they've already been murdered...

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Hard to believe there is really an "epidemic" beyond typical fearmongering and political noise. People have always used drugs, this is nothing new. Unfortunately all the hype and noise is having significantly negative consequences to the medical community, doctors, and patients who actually need these things.

<comment><USER20> Here are some alternative facts. Red means bad: [https://www.brighthearthealth.com/wp- content/uploads/OpioidA...](https://www.brighthearthealth.com/wp- content/uploads/OpioidAbuseRipplesAcrossAmerica.png)

<comment><USER75> Wonder why the northern great plains are so resistant to this problem?

<comment><USER20> population density? Maybe the pill mills only located in certain areas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do startups park cash? - <AUTHOR> Title says it all — what are best practices (or common pitfalls) for startups and cash management?
Brief background: startup is running at break-even and just received investment from NewSchools Venture Fund [1]. Now trying to figure out what to do with excess cash for 3-12 months.
1: http://www.newschools.org/news/congratulations-newest-ignite-cohort/ (we're BeeLine) <comment><USER2> We typically park cash in a bank account to keep it liquid. Are you trying to do something different than invest in your business?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bank account = checking? We're not trying to do anything fancy, but considering that I always sweep cash out of my personal checking account (and into a high-interest online savings account) I figured it would be prudent to do the same here. Even if it's just $2k per year in extra interest, this seems worthwhile. Is it not worth the time to manage?

<comment><USER2> It's a money market. We move money from the money market to a checking account to pay suppliers/make payroll. We also use company credit cards with to increase available cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If your using a start model you probably shouldn't have excess cash. You would keep it liquid as possible. Why add risk to an already risky situation.

I'm sorry Mr investor, our business kicked ass and it would have been 10x this year but we lost all your money because bitcoin tanked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah not looking to invest in bitcoin or anything risky — just looking for a prudent way to not miss out on interest payments, at the least.

I know there are some high-interest checking accounts that cater to individuals, and I was hoping to learn if there are some that work well for small businesses also.

<comment><USER4> I think you can find 1-2% money market accounts to park a lot of your cash in that you still need to be liquid.

Otherwise, if you have a very large amount of money, you can always throw it into other more secure investments and just take out lines of credit to use if you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check with my bank and see what they offer along these lines. It's good to know what market rates are so that I can shop around if my bank isn't competitive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taking C Seriously - <AUTHOR> http://www.subfurther.com/blog/2011/11/01/taking-c-seriously/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused. Did C stop being taken seriously at some point? C is the only language that you can truly get things done without having to fight the language every step of the way.

I can't say the same of... well, any other language I've used in the past 5 years.

<comment><USER3> agreed. and if you do any sort of embedded work, you must know C and C++. If history is any predictor of the future, chips will continue to get smaller and the "embedded" development world, I think, will proliforate and demand coders to know C and C++ at least for the next several years until fancy tools/compilers argue things like Java and C# code bloat doesn't matter because a 4Gig embedded system will be the norm... ahem..

<comment><USER4> There is a huge swing against C++ in the embedded world since 2007 or so. ABI issues, etc.

Not saying it disappeared, but there is now a bifurcation between C and C++ programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >C was developed between 1969 and 1973, making it nearly 40 years old [...] C ha[s] already made an exceptionally good start on a century-long reign

In all fairness, development continued past 1973. Most C programmers today would have some trouble even reading the code from the 1978 first edition of K&R; and the void* pointer, that the author refers to later in the article, was a part of ANSI C (~1990).

<comment><USER2> Development on C hasn't stopped. C1x is coming soon (probably 2012 or 13), and has a lot of interesting enhancements including bounds checking.

<comment><USER6> According to Herb Sutter's obit for Dennis Ritchie ( <http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/12/dennis-ritchie/> ), C1x already passed its final ballot, so all that's missing is an official announcement.

It would be nice to know if there are any changes from the April draft, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pure C seems to be enjoying a bit of language fad hipness lately but I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C.

That C is still in wide use after 40 years is a testament to the elegance of its original design but let's not get carried away.

<comment><USER8> The Linux kernel, Subversion and PHP are pure C. And don't get me started on the BSDs or binutils... ld and libbfd are pure C and its C++ replacement (gold) is still not widely used.

And this came without thinking about it... surely in two more minutes or by going to ohloh I could fire a couple more large bodies of non-trivial low- level C code at you.

<comment><USER9> > The Linux kernel, Subversion and PHP are pure C. And don't get me started on > the BSDs or binutils... ld and libbfd are pure C and its C++ replacement > (gold) is still not widely used.

Please pick gcc to mention or, indeed, any other C program ever written, before libbfd ;)

<comment><USER10> But then, the new star (clang/LLVM) is written in C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Saying that "TIOBE rankings are at least the best system we currently have" for gauging uptake of a programming language is like saying that astrology is the best system we have for predicting the future.

<comment><USER12> It would be interesting - but a lot of work - to add "time to modify" and "time to debug" metrics.

Each task would come with a modification, and an error to make in implementing the original task. You'd recruit undergraduates, who hadn't used the language before. Some would be given the original program to modify, others the broken version to fix. You'd measure how long they took to do it.

This way, language communities that gamed the machine benchmarks would pay a price on the human ones.

<comment><USER13> Yes, because untrained undergraduates are the programming workforce in every industry, especially aerospace and medical device makers.

<comment><USER14> Hello, "Enterprise"? Beam me up, there's no intelligent life here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Those TIOBE numbers (linked to in the article) are quite interesting.

As well as C refusing to go away, there's a noticeable surge for C#, Objective-C and Lua, and a substantial erosion in the popularity of trendy languages like Python and Ruby.

<comment><USER16> Lua is small and embeddable. You can run multiple independent instance of it in the same process. The lua table is a very useful data structure.

Then you have luajit - also a small, easy to embed solution, that approaches standard "C" written code, and it's main weakness, from what I understood (Mike Pall had a post about it) is it's garbage collector.

On top of that, ffi bindings make "C" calls extremely fast, when the jit is active, and not very bad when the interpretter runs (but slower).

And the lua/luajit license allows you to embed it in your application, without the need to share source code.

Mike Pall is working on ppc, arm versions (and I think there might be already ppc jit).

Not last to forget - awesome community (comp.lang.lua).

<comment><USER17> Using LuaJIT with minimal FFI C code to optimize, seems to be the best way forward in maximizing both performance and maintainability.

What would be really interesting is to see someone highlight specific cases where this approach ultimately fails to measure up in performance with using pure C.

I would think that the LuaJIT approach would be tens of times more maintainable for a sufficiently large application, so it's really imperative here that we ask 'Why not?'

<comment><USER16> You can always find cases where it would fail. And that's ok. For what it's doing, and what it allows it's simply unbelievable (at least to me) how it succeeds in doing it (I understand very little of compilers, and little of interpretters).

One area which is not easy translatable is OpenMP (www.openmp.org), inlined assembly, and SSE packed floats. But that's okay, and even then there is probably a better alternative - a language more suited to such tasks, instead of "C" - OpenCL (www.khronos.org) or DirectCompute.

But for general coding, it's very very good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whoa, that page is hard on the eyes....I didn't get far in that article, but I think C has continued to live on as well as a foundation that has spawned other great languages. I don't see it (or variations of it) going away anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem is, nothing in this article even begins to address the actual criticism people have of C, instead saying that it's possible to write good C code and that Java is a memory hog. The first is true, the second is debatable, both as to whether it's the case and whether it matters.

For example, read this: <http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html>

> In a large application, a good garbage collector is more efficient than > malloc/free.

My point isn't necessarily to disagree with the article, but to point out that the article has practically nothing to disagree with. It has no substance.

<comment><USER19> JWZ also states "Java and Emacs are really bad examples of GC-oriented environments." in that same article.

And later, in 2000, he states "Today, I program in C." <http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html>

JWZ is an entertaining read, but unless he's updated in a post somewhere in the last 11 years, it isn't clear to me where he comes down on C at the moment.

Btw, I program in C.

<comment><USER20> From the "Coders at Work" interview in 2009, JWZ says that he mostly writes Perl scripts for small one-off tasks, and every now and then a new screen- saver in C.</comment></comment></comment>


Bad news for JDK 7's lambdas - <AUTHOR> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/lambda-dev/2010-April/001290.html

<comment><USER2> Even if it happens, the libraries won't actually accept/return lambdas until jdk 8. [http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/lambda- dev/2010-April...](http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/lambda- dev/2010-April/001295.html)</comment>


Perfectionism versus Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-truisms-wellness/201612/perfectionism-vs-obsessive-compulsive-disorder <comment><USER2> I got to admit an OCD/perfectionism trait (out of many I will not all list) I used to have when I was younger... I would install say an Linux distribution on my computer and somewhere a few hours or days afterwards I would make a slight mistake in configuring it and I felt a level of discomfort that I must reinstall the whole thing from scratch. One summer I spend a good part of time doing this kind of stuff and getting no productive stuff done. Used to think it was normal behavior until I learned about OCD in a book by chance. I called my hospital and spoke to a psychologist and the CBT therapy worked great for me. Thankfully I've not had OCD compulsions since then. I just look back at my youth and how much time I wasted acting that way...

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of a friend mine. When we were teens we'd be reformatting our machines every other month it seemed like. The one time he created the partition and ended up with something like 49.9GB instead of an even 50GB. He proceeded to redo the entire install and partitioning while I stood by dumbfounded that he'd waste all that time.

<comment><USER4> I've done this myself! :/ It feels like the relief of getting it "right" outweighs the time wasted, at least at the time. But it's kind of crazy when you think about it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the things about all these mainstream psychology arguments is that the phenomena are presented either a pathological condition with associated brain chemistry _or_ a simple psychological difference of little consequence. There is no room anywhere in these discussions for person's condition to shade between cognitive difference that can be quite useful in some situations and related behavior that might be seen as a serious dysfunctional in other circumstances (and people).

<comment><USER6> I thought that the DSM's criterion for pathology vs. eccentricity was whether it negatively effects the person and/or those around them. Treatment is only indicated insofar as the condition is actually causing a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is striving for an elegant solution making optimal use of resources same as striving for perfection? Question is half rhetorical, asking because I would like to hear other opinions.

<comment><USER8> I don't think so.

Perfectionism is about meeting an premeditated ideal. Striving for an elegant solution involves approaching a problem with an open mind, and making compromises.

Elegance minimizes and co-opts cruft. Perfectionism's anxiety refuses to admit that cruft is an unavoidable and often necessary part of life, and is usually too expensive to entirely eliminate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR: Perfectionism is OCPD (where 'P' stands for 'personality').

I think that most people who call themselves perfectionists are not really, they just like the way it sounds. But if they really are (whether because of OCPD or because they are trying), they tend to wreak havoc on things they want to make perfect - including their own lives...

<comment><USER10> Sometimes havoc is optimal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Individuals with OCD who prepared a meal may not be able to eat their food because of thoughts that the stove might be on._

I have a coworker who told me that he used to take a photo of his stove before going out of the house so when he was at work, he could simply take out his smartphone and confirm that the stove was off. Engineers sure get inventive with their coping mechanisms :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone met an actual perfectionist (i.e. someone who produces near perfect work)? All the "perfectionists" I have met are either delusional (i.e. their output is far from perfect), or who are just slow and who use it as an excuse for their lack of productivity.

<comment><USER13> Perfectionists don't produce perfect work. As described in article, they obess with details, lists, loose sight of big picture and then can't finish work (half of task being perfected other still untouched ) or finish it after very long time.

I met some people who did very little mistakes. In anything non trivial there tend to be differences of opinion about what is perfect solution.

<comment><USER12> I understand what the clinical definition of a perfectionist is - I was more interested to know if anyone had met an actual perfectionist.

The people I have met who have produced the best solutions are the least like the clinical definition of a perfectionist - they are efficient, see the big picture, and pump out the best (or near best) answer first time.</comment></comment></comment>


Is the tech bubble about to burst? - <AUTHOR> http://pitchandpixel.com/2010/11/is-the-tech-bubble-about-to-burst/

<comment><USER2> Insider selling itself isn't a warning sign that the company is overvalued. Many directors and execs get a large portion of their compensation as stock grants, and they have to sell to fund their lifestyles. Heck, many tech CEOs take $1 salaries - you don't actually think they live on $1/year, right?

Insider _buying_ is almost always a sign that the company is undervalued in the market. People inside the company are usually overweight on their employer's stock, because they receive it as compensation and usually will get enough of it that it's by far their biggest holding. If they want _more_ of it, despite the risks to diversification that this entails, they must have a pretty good reason to believe that the company is doing better than the Street thinks it is.

<comment><USER3> _Insider buying is almost always a sign that the company is undervalued in the market._

Do you have data to back this up? I ask because the standard wisdom was that stock buybacks were a sign that the stock was undervalued. But it turns out, looking at historical data, that it was no better predictor of the stock price in the future than random chance.

<comment><USER4> You're probably talking about COMPANIES buying back their stock, not directors or founders.

Of course companies act for the well being of the company itself, while directors only for theirs, so yeah, insider buying by a company or a director is totally different.

<comment><USER3> I get that their different, but does the data back up insider buying translates to undervalued stock? I used stock buybacks as an example where people used similar logic to justify a stock being undervalued, but the data didn't bear it out.

My question is does the data bear it out (presumably the data exists) or is it just an assumption based on the idea that insiders _should_ have a pretty good idea of the value of the company.

<comment><USER5> Some data here:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=iYuh-gfnwb0C&pg=PA361&#...
Basically, it seems that extreme insider buying is a very good sign for the market as a whole, but it's fairly rare. (31.7% returns in one three month period w/ insider buying signal, vs. avg. 4.2% returns in 75 3-month periods w/ insider selling signal)
In terms of individual stocks, it seems that the predictive power of insider buying as a metric is best when mixed with taking into account the company's dividend yield, and they claim that this gives you a 6.2% edge.

<comment><USER3> That's good to know. I should set something up so that when I do detect insider buying, I go hugely in on the S&P500.

For individual stocks the difference is too small for me to feel comfortable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _That's a total of $9,593,678,790 or 9.6 billion dollars moving out of the tech industry, by people who have intimate knowledge about the future of their companies._

How is that money moving _out_ of the tech industry? Those shares of stock did not disappear when sold; someone else now owns shares of that company. Money changed hands in exchange for stock. That money did not leave the tech industry.

<comment><USER7> I agree. In some cases, like Bill Gates, the money is probably on a one-way trip to Africa. But in many cases the money will probably be used to fund new tech ventures.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's what scott_s meant. When Bill Gates sells his shares, someone else buys them. The amount of money Bill withdraws is exactly matched by a new investor(s). The MS stock price stays roughly the same.

Think of it this way, Microsoft didn't raid its savings account and sell off office furniture to pay him. Another investor pays him.

<comment><USER6> You are correct, that's the point I was trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Capital gains taxes rise in 2011. That might be a factor that the author should consider.

<comment><USER10> And there's a special one-time gains-tax-exclusion for small-business investments before the end of this year -- so a good time to reallocate into startups.

<comment><USER11> I really want to see a top tax attorney analyze this law and how it applies to founders and angels for tech companies.

Specifically, I think the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 can be used by founders to buy founder shares at a trivial basis in one or more corporations founded in q4 2010, built into businesses over the following 5+ years (possibly in parallel...maybe you work on one full time every day, and let a few sit idle with minimal involvement until later...). Then, provided the business capitalization is less than 50mm at exit, and your ownership is 10mm or less, you have zero federal capital gains or AMT liability -- I.e. You win at taxes.

<comment><USER10> I've been wondering much the same thing; so I asked this question on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/What-pitfalls-should-be-avoided-if- inve...](http://www.quora.com/What-pitfalls-should-be-avoided-if-investing-in- a-small-startup-before-January-1-2011-to-take-advantage-of-the- special-100-tax-exclusion-of-the-recently-passed-SJBCA)

IANAL, but it seems any business so formed must be active in some ongoing non- services business. Still, I'm tempted to form a number of small corporations for each of my 'backburner' ideas, make a small investment, then hire occasional contractors to flesh out the ideas through R&D until they (or a closely-related idea) seems ripe -- perhaps years from now. Then, I'd devote myself full-time to it, and my founders' equity appreciation would remain subject to this one-time 2010 gain exclusion.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm probably doing the same thing :)

Question is: should you just do stupid-cheap WY/NV/etc. formations and then redomicile, or do the real $5-10k corps with full paperwork, agreements, etc.? Or would a top-tier firm/lawyer be willing to discount one principal/owner and 10 corps formed on the same day, in exchange for future business when those corps get used more actively, take subsequent investment, etc.?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If there is, it'll just wipe out the half-tries and challenge this generation to evolve or die.

It's not that bad though. People are dependent on technology that keeps getting smarter, faster, and simpler. Who is stopping any of us from spotting large unsolved problems and presenting our solution in product form? JUST DO IT.

We really are living in the best of times and the worst of times...

It feels like Facebook is constricting the unwary masses into a black hole that consumes their time and data. How can we compete for marketshare? Apple has come from almost dead to number 1 in a decade. They used to be hard to hate, now the fanboys are being seduced by the magic of Big Google. Big Google is doing everything for everyone all for free or very cheap, who could resist? It's the same approach that made Bill Gates the world's richest man. It'll probably work and Larry and Sergey can be the founding fathers of the singularity along with that Ray dude.

So...that's leaves us students and hackers alike to try to either come up with a new paradigm of technological innovation or build in their ecosystems for a living. There is a middle path of course, and historically speaking that is the best approach.

If this is what you love and part of your life purpose. Stick to this and don't live in fear. Just keep walking...

</comment><comment><USER13> It's worth noting that the press release that was done on behalf of Ballmer when he did his stock sale is standard industry boilerplate. The verbiage (including the "diversifing his portfolio" phrase and the "I'm excited about our products" bit) is literally identical to the language used following most other insider stock sales. (Which is to say, it's meaningless as a barometer of whether he plans to stay at the company or not, or whether he's going to sell more shares or not.)

<comment><USER14> _"excited"_ is a marker for a CEO lie according to the recent article on HN. <http://searchyc.com/submissions/ceo+lie>

<comment><USER13> Right. More impressive for a CEO to say that the company's customers are excited about their products, and to give examples of who those customers are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The capital gain tax issue has been raised here but there is also the fact that the stock market is hitting highs right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> So the executives sell shares of the stock after a nice jump in the market because they don't want complete exposure to the market as they did last time the (real estate) bubble burst. "A diversification" is definitely a legitimate justification of off-loading some shares.

I know people who saw their net worth fall from $150 million to $30 million when the market collapsed last time. They've made much of it back and they may not exactly be broke but all the rich people that saw their net worth disintegrate last time around are not as interested in betting their entire future on the stock market after seeing the existing vulnerabilities of the system.

I have a feeling that a lot of this money (particularly from technology execs) will end up reinvested in other areas ... including startups. Such a theory would suggest that the bubble is still only beginning.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks to the government response to the financial crash, large companies are sitting on mountains of cash they can use for stock buybacks to offset the dilution from issuing options. Not to mention that the stock market is still depressed. It's an ideal time for top insiders at large public companies to use their options.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you plot a graph of QQQQ between 1990 and 2000, and compare it to the graph between 2000 and today, you'll find that the technology sector is STILL recovering from the first bubble burst. In fact, the NASDAQ could probably rise about 50% from here and still be right in line with historical growth rates.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin> This kind of stuff might require to sell shares to finance too (in the case of Jeff Bezos). I'm sure it can apply to other CEOs as well. Speculation is not the only thing you can do with shares.

</comment><comment><USER20> They know something we don't know.

A 5% increase in capital gains tax in 2011 shouldn't be enough for this movement by these people. They _should_ be planning on holding onto their stock indefinitely, especially at places like Amazon with no ceiling. Why aren't they?

</comment><comment><USER21> While it is very interesting to analize insider trading, I dare to say the tech bubble is not about to burst, it is just shifting gears from big companies selling packaged software (MS, Oracle) to small web startups focused on the long tail.

</comment><comment><USER22> > _"Recently, a number of alarming trades have been made inside major software > companies"_

What makes the recent trades alarming?

Is the current pattern of trades different from those of the past?

</comment><comment><USER23> It's a shame print is a bit of a slump because you can't use the size of tech and tech business magazines as a proxy for a bubble anymore.

</comment><comment><USER24> Bill Gates selling $272 million is like a guy with a $100K RRSP selling $680 in stock.

Even the reference to Ballmer selling $1.2 billion under the 'guise' of diversification, is not big news. Does anyone really think that MSFT is the sole best stock to hold? Ballmer can probably get better returns by investing in startups than by holding MSFT.

That he is diversifying his portfolio is merely the truth. What it doesn't communicate are the reasons, as CEO of MSFT he could negatively affect the price of their stock by giving any answer that belied an investing strategy in which holding MSFT stock was not the best idea. He's pretty much bound by fiduciary duty to his stockholders to give an answer which reveals nothing about MSFT.

Although unpopular right now, if you want to call a bubble, look at gold and other commodities, especially ones on which futures are bought and sold.

We don't have pets.com IPOs, we don't have a lot of public money flowing into the tech sector. Yes, there are deals being made privately, but presumably the companies buying them are buying them because the technology they created can be better capitalized by augmenting an existing tech giant rather than via an IPO.

If you want to find a bubble go look at who made tonnes of money in the real estate bubble and look for them pouring that money into a speculative market.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seriously, we have to ask this right now, when we _might_ be starting to emerge from the worst depression since the Great Depression? Bubble? What bubble? Entrepreneurial activity != a bubble. It means capitalism is at work.</comment>


Show HN: HazeOver "productivity hack" for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hazeover-for-mac

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for duplicate, but I just realized there's a dedicated section for something that you've made yourself. HazeOver is my hobby project. I hope you find it useful.</comment>


How to take Better Naps - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/ <comment><USER3> I've made it clear at every job I've had since college that yes, I take naps. Almost every day. The post lunch, put your feet up, headphones on, 20 - <USER2> minute siesta does more good than coffee (and I LOVE coffee) ever could for clear, effective thinking later in the day.

I've found the folks that are most freaked out by it are those who (often for good reason) aren't confident in their work and place a very high value on looking busy as opposed to actually accomplishing things.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing how incredulous people get when I tell them my office has a sleeping room. Its really sad and unfortunate that something this natural has been demonized to such an extent.

<comment><USER5> I wish upon my own life that my office had a sleeping room. I'd gladly settle for sleeping on the floor in my cube from 1:30-2:00pm, but instead I stare ahead blankly from 1:30-4:00pm. Totally worth my company's time to make sure I'm awake.

<comment><USER6> I find if you go for a walk, it can help. Not as good as a nap but it can make you more alert for the rest of the day.

Plus it seems to be more acceptable in the workplace to actually disappear for a half hour than it is to nap.

<comment><USER7> Siestas are one of the best traditions ever.

As for corporate america though, I find that one can actually take a "decent" half-hour nap in the car, if you have to.

<comment><USER5> Unless you ride the train to work :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article explains it well. My great-grandmother told me 30 years ago: a 25 minute nap in the afternoon is essential; over 45 minutes is not good. This old wisdom from a hard working farmer took how much scientific scrutiny to finally be called the "NASA nap"? Don't listen to all your elders, but ones with true wisdom are pretty obvious.

</comment><comment><USER9> Naps are the cure all for me in general. Need a little energy boost take a nap, have a headache take a nap, not feeling well cold coming take a nap. Most of my friends are amazed that I don't drink coffee.</comment>


Editors (Vim) - <AUTHOR> https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/editors/ <comment><USER2> This (advanced?) vi/m tutorial I really liked and found it useful over the years [https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other- stuff/vi/009-in...](https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other- stuff/vi/009-index.html). It is by Walter Alan Zintz, originally published in UnixWorld Online, dvelves into more advanced vi/m use. From [https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/unidex/](https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/unidex/), that itself I find a gem (e.g [https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix- as-ide/](https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/)). Long time lurker first time poster, registered for this :-O

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel about Vim the way RMS seems to feel about Linux. Even though, (presumably) everyone knows the relationship of vim to vi, I don't feel there is enough explicit acknowledgement of that fact. Vim is evidently a wonderful tool, (I say this as a confirmed 20 year emacs user for whom emacs is only usable due to excellent vi emulation possibilities) but it clearly wouldn't exist without the basic foundation provided by canonical vi which is in my estimation a work of genius.

<comment><USER4> I use vim regularly on my day job. However, I am not familiar with more of the advanced side of things, and would never call myself an advanced user. That aside, I was always of the impression that vim was simply vi but extended in a sense.

Is that not the case? How different is vi to vim?

<comment><USER5> In my eyes, vi is ok for system administration, but not for programming.

The differences are not huge, but even if I have a "small" .vimrc with one single plugin, I have issues using the vim.tiny installed on Debian by default.

The Vim help has a list of the differences:

[https://vimhelp.org/vim_faq.txt.html#faq-1.4](https://vimhelp.org/vim_faq.txt.html#faq-1.4)

The most important to me are:

\- a real undo \- buffers \- macros (recorded on the fly with ththe q key) \- visual mode (included the block selection mode) \- text completion (ctrl-p, ctrl-x-f) \- automatic indenting \- advanced text objects (selecting everyting between '()')

Not having one single of them would not hinder me much... but all of them at once: that hurts!

<comment><USER6> The "killer feature" for me is asynchronous jobs. It makes life so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has eye-tracking been explored for improved code editing beyond Vim?

Vim does away with the hand-travel delays, but many of these ninja keystroke moves to navigate code are just what your eyes do already (but not all, such as the search function).

<comment><USER8> Looks like it has. E.g.

\- [https://medium.com/fast-company/the-mouse-of-the-future- your...](https://medium.com/fast-company/the-mouse-of-the-future-your- eyeballs-dd728cc7e111)

\- [https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/190368020/...](https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/190368020/ReType_CHI2019.pdf)

more [https://www.google.com/search?q=eye+tracking+text+editing&oq...](https://www.google.com/search?q=eye+tracking+text+editing&oq=eye+tracking)

<comment><USER9> Was going to read the first link, but can't be bothered to sign up / sign in to medium.com. Screw that platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Vim is a well-sharpened pocket knife, a precision tool that excels at editing text interactively.

It's interesting to me the different models for tools that address similar problems. I used to use vim, and the chords of keystrokes are still fresh in my mind, even though I switched to emacs years ago.

And now I use vanilla emacs —but that model is totally different, it's an okay text editor but an excellent customizable user shell. It's not a matter of better//worse, but of different philosophical approaches

<comment><USER11> When deciding between whether to learn Vim or Emacs, Vim won me over with three things:

1) Learning Vim increased my efficiency across multiple machines, and not just my dev machine.

2) It's extremely lightweight. Note: you still need to be careful with plugins!

3) Modal editing is easier on the wrists. Most of my time as a developer is spent navigating through code (whether editing or browsing), and Vim's normal mode keybindings are much less modifier-based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been a happy vim user for many years, over a decade. But I was shocked at how this talk, published on YouTube in 2018 from a recorded lecture by an engineer at Yelp named Leeren Chang, basically made vim's internal model "click" for me and made vim even more fun to use. I really feel the presenter did such a great job showcasing vim ideas — conceptually, visually, and by direct example — that, by the end, I downloaded the talk into my "great tech talks" stash and labeled it, "vim's missing manual."

Here it is: [https://youtu.be/E-ZbrtoSuzw](https://youtu.be/E-ZbrtoSuzw)

<comment><USER13> Heh, "how you access ex commands shipped with Unix since like the 90s"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been using vim as an advanced beginner off and on for more than 15 years I think.

I use it lots of times (not for everything, I also use Visual Studio Code), mainly because it means that I can just ssh over to a VPS and edit a file in there, without having to set up fuse or some other way to edit locally. It seems like less work to just get into files and set up a new VPS. And I know there will be syntax highlighting for everything.

And also I have kind of a sunk cost of finally learning how to do basic things over the course of many years.

But personally, I think that it is embarrassing for people who seriously espouse that modal editing is better than more modern concepts. The reason we have hjkl for movement is because that is what the terminal was like when vi was invented. And the reason its Escape which is a little inconvenient on modern keyboards is because the Escape key on that terminal was more like where Tab is. And the reason its modal editing is because "real time editing" didn't even generally exist when vi was invented:

"Back in 1970s, terminal screen are 80 columns by 24 lines. There's no real- time editing. You edit by typing a command, then call another command to have the screen update to show the result of your command. Vi's "modal editing" is evolved from this." [http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.htm...](http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_hardware_and_key_choices.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel like it would be far more useful to just talk about _vimtutor_. At least for me, it was the only way I was able to grok vim.

<comment><USER16> This. And if you get to the end of vimtutor, you'll see a recommendation to continue learning via `:help user-manual`. I would have saved myself months of effort trying to learn Vim if I would have just RTFM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm by no means a high level expert of command line, but if I need to do a quick edit I just use nano, and if I need to get down and dirty I use VS Code. Is this abnormal? I know a lot of power users use Vim, but I've just never fallen in love with it.

<comment><USER18> This is unfortunately not uncommon. I feel like most of my coworkers at most companies Ive worked for don't use vim. One killer app of vim for me is macros. You can record a string of commands and map doing that to a letter. This makes certain mundane changes you have to do sometimes in software a breeze. For example, I had some code where someone was using string literals everywhere when they should have defined an enum. The convention we use for this kind of thing is to use UPPER_SNAKE_CASE and the strings were in camelCase. I was able to define two macros that let me improve this code in a few seconds. If I wasn't using vim I'd probably just leave that code as it was because it would have been so much effort.

<comment> j-james > If I wasn't using vim I'd probably just leave that code as it was because it > would have been so much effort.

Most modern editors, Visual Studio Code included, have powerful refactoring abilities. Not only that, but they're usable without needing to be an editor expert - just right-clicking and selecting "Change all occurrences" (or pressing F2) does the trick.

<comment><USER19> This is reasonably fast, but not nearly as fast as if can be on Vim. IDK how GP did it, but one quick way might be searching for strings and hitting . whenever the macro needs to be applied. So you would end up doing something like n n n . n n . n n and so on, where each n means "go to next string" and each dot corresponds to finding and renaming something manually in other editors. You can go through dozens of occurrences in seconds, orders of magnitude faster than other editors.

<comment><USER20> The vscode rename is much simpler/faster than that - cursor over the symbol/variable, press F2, type in the new name, press enter. Renames all references across all files in your project.

edit: no shade on VIM and VIM macros; they're great. I'm a very experienced vim power user, but have switched to vscode with vim keybindings, and I'm very very happy with the switch.

<comment><USER19> This is true for renaming a variable but GP mentioned converting string literals to enums. For tasks like that, I think Vim is pretty much the fastest. Also, Vim can also rename variables with coc ([https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim](https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > no matter what shell you use, you can export EDITOR=vim

Nit: in csh, it's 'setenv EDITOR vim'

</comment><comment><USER22> Researched a bit for last few days about IDE and Vim seems to be the only viable long term option. I like Atom but it crashes all the time, VSCode doesn't feel clean to me. IntelliJ is the best but expensive. Only option I think is vim or Emacs. I loved the time I spent with Emacs last time, but gave up quick. I will learn to use Vim this time.

<comment><USER23> Or both! I was a long time Vim user that switched to Emacs with evil mode. Using spacemacs.

I have a couple friends that swear by Sublime Text. It costs money but its not terribly expensive, and super fast. Its vim plugin is a bit lacking though so it wasn't that usable for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 20 years ago I got a job and went from Windows to Unix. Tinkered with both emacs and vim, and for some reason had this craziness where I'd start new files in emacs and make small edits in vi/vim. I have dabbled with neovim and vim-modes in other editors, but I keep going back to a somewhat-customized vim with ~8 packages.

I'm not really an advanced vim user. I have to think and remember how to do column edits, and I never yank to registers. For some reason I want to make a concerted effort to learn emacs again but the idea of not having edit modes concerns me.

<comment><USER25> Evil mode in Emacs is almost perfect. My biggest complaint is that undo works differently than vim (if anyone knows how to fix that, I would be forever grateful!) I originally used Emacs for about 20 years and then switched to Vim for a variety of reasons. I love the editing model in Vim. But for the last few years I've been using Emacs with Evil and it's been the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER26> Here you go: (setq evil-want-fine-undo t)

<comment><USER25> You are my hero!!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you like modal editing, consider [https://www.spacemacs.org/](https://www.spacemacs.org/)

The org-mode[1] outlining and magit[2] wrapper for git are most worthy.

[1] [https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/)

[2] [https://magit.vc/](https://magit.vc/)

<comment><USER28> I used spacemacs for a while, but once you use several layers it becomes so slow that it makes VSCode feel snappy.

I also find that because it has such a customized way of doing things it often becomes quite difficult to make your own customizations, especially if you try to follow guides written for pure emacs.

I've just started using doom emacs, another "distribution" around evil-mode. So far I really like it, it is much snappier than spacemacs and the layering and customization system is much closer to traditional emacs.

<comment><USER27> I'm one of those for whom the 'space' in spacemacs is essential.

The regular key chords tore me up badly.

The performance/layers have never given me grief with spacemacs.

<comment><USER28> I agree, fortunately Doom uses the same type of keybindings as spacemacs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If anyone is looking for some vim-porn (in the form of screencasts of a decade-long user going through various workflows), I'd like to use this opportunity to share some screencasts I recorded that I think will resonate with fellow HN readers:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=futay9NjOac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=futay9NjOac)

</comment><comment><USER30> The best part about vim is modal editing and the key-command interface. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as everything else, worse, cus vimscript is an abomination.

Best setup is vscode with vim emulation and I've been using vim profesionally almost 15 years now.

Funny enough, I actually liked writing prose with Vim but I'm using Ulysses as an editor for writing prose now

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm so used to vim as a code editor that I assumed, after the introduction, this article was going to be castigating me for trying to write prose in vim (which I indeed try to do on a regular basis, with what feels like a lot of friction.)

Perhaps, as they imply, I should dust off a copy of Microsoft Word and switch back to that!

<comment><USER32> There is no conflict if you use LaTeX :)

<comment><USER31> Goyo.vim was pretty helpful. So was formatoptions +a.

(The typesetting part isn't the issue. Concentration and ease of flow in the editor feel hard in vim, and LaTeX wouldn't fix that.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I respect Vim, I've seen it used with impressive speed, BUT I am so used to command-s to save, that I don't feel ready to :w enter all the time. VS Code is powerful, and learning the keyboard shortcuts for that are getting better every day (command-shift-p format-selection enter).

<comment><USER34> You can put something like this in your .vimrc:

      " save with ctrl+s
      nmap <c-s> :w<CR>
      imap <c-s> <Esc>:w<CR>a

Edit: I guess it should be:

      nmap <D-s> :w<CR>
      imap <D-s> <Esc>:w<CR>a

<comment><USER35> You can also use

        imap <C-s> <C-o>:w<CR>

<C-o> in insert mode can be used to execute normal mode commands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> do set -o vi in bash and watch all your dreams come true.

<comment><USER18> I discovered this last year and it has made me so happy

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love vim but I always get a feeling that I'm only using 1% of its features. It is hard to memorize all the availanle keybindings, specially if it is something that you don't use often.

Does anyone have suggestions of what worked to help learn mor Vim commands?

<comment><USER38> I spend a lot of time in tmux and I frequently open and close terminal sessions so I made this

[https://github.com/cboppert/motd](https://github.com/cboppert/motd)

It's message of the day but with ViM tips. It worked fantastically for getting small tips throughout my day that allowed me to consume and learn without necessarily dedicating any tangible amount of time to it.

<comment><USER37> I love this idea! Basically a vim version of "fortune". Did you compile that list yourself?

<comment><USER38> I think I took them from a big ViM cheatsheet somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you think Vim emulation is a replacement for Vim, either you don't know Vim or you don't like Vim. VSCode Vim emulation? Spacemacs? They are miniscule, pale comparisons. VSCode is a fine editor. Emacs is a fine editor. Spacemacs is pretty fantastic. But if you you think that's Vim, you simply don't know and appreciate Vim. That's ok, but it's not even in the same universe as the real thing. By all means use what you want, but don't try to sell it as close enough.

<comment><USER40> Would you care to elaborate and point to some specific features and workflows that you consider to be unique to the real Vim?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would have expected MIT to rep Emacs, not vim...

<comment><USER42> Intellectual diversity lends itself to a diversity of editors as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Vim emulation in VSCode worse than any other IDE I've used.

All extensions have to run on the same thread in a background process and intercepted keystrokes are passed to that process over IPC. So if other extensions (like the TS language tools) are tying up the extension host process, the Vim extension can't respond to your keyboard input until other extensions yield.

Performance issues come and go but for awhile I was stuck waiting for several seconds any time I typed a < after an identifier.

A lot of us have tried to demand a separate process for extensions that intercept keystrokes to solve this issue permanently. But the maintainers don't really care.

<comment><USER44> As a long time vim user, I've tried VSCode a few times and I cannot for the life of me figure out what all the hype is about. Can anyone who is proficient with it explain the philosophy behind it and what makes it so great? This is a sincere question, not a rhetorical one.

<comment><USER45> It's Emacs for Javascript people - a good thing since Emacs is moribund and most programmers are at least a little bit Javascript people. A highly programmable, cross-platform editor with zillions of extensions/modes that support all sorts of languages and environments. People complain about its resource requirements and performance, just like they did with Emacs. Vi(m) users are the natural enemy of VSCode, just like they were the natural enemy of Emacs, continuing their long proud tradition of being wrong about everything. I think that's roughly where it fits 'philosophically'.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I'm going to _partially_ disagree.

> It's Emacs for Javascript people

I'll accept this premise.

> a good thing since Emacs is moribund

And here we part ways.

> and most programmers are at least a little bit Javascript people.

You might be living in a bubble.

> A highly programmable, cross-platform editor with zillions of > extensions/modes that support all sorts of languages and environments.

Agreed; I think you're actually underselling how helpful it is that it's apparently a lot easier to get started with than emacs or the vi family. Power tools with a lower learning curve is a good thing.

> People complain about its resource requirements and performance, just like > they did with Emacs.

And they're right to do so, especially with Moore's law wearing thin. Besides which, emacs (and n/vim, for that matter) are still around, and are just as functional in a much smaller resource footprint.

> Vi(m) users are the natural enemy of VSCode, just like they were the natural > enemy of Emacs, continuing their long proud tradition of being wrong about > everything.

LOL, that's... semi-fair, even if you're on the wrong side, of course;)

> I think that's roughly where it fits 'philosophically'.

I think it's fair to call VSCode "EMACS but with JS", but I think you're really glossing over the issues that it has in practice; maybe with a decade of maturation it'll be on par, but today I would argue that it _is_ a resource hog, and still suffers from some poor design choices (such as letting extensions trample eachother, per the upthread discussion).

<comment><USER46> It's not really.

The difference between VSCode and Emacs is the difference between an extensible editor and a software omnitool intended to be extended, shaped, and refined _as you work with it_. Writing short programs in Emacs Lisp, seeing their effects _immediately_ in the live editor environment, and then (should they prove generally useful) refining them into full-fledged modes or commands is quite a bit different than writing a packaged extension.

There is, still, _nothing_ like Emacs in the editor world today. As much as Visual Studio Code gets right, it has a long way to go to get within spitting distance of Emacs in terms of adaptability and power (to say nothing of resource consumption).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>