Ask HN: What's the one software stopping you from switching over to a Mac? - <AUTHOR> For me, it's Shapeshifter Clipboard Manager and it pretty much copies anything. Hold down Ctrl + V and select what to paste from your list of copied items. AFAIK, there's nothing close to this for OSX. If there were programs like Shapeshifter for Mac, I would switch in a heartbeat. Non-Mac users, what's the one software stopping you from the switch? <comment><USER2> No software, just cost overall.

The cheapest way to buy into Mac is a Mini, but even the "top" $999 one has no SSD, only 8GB of RAM, and a older i5. Compare that with a $500 PC, you can get a legitimately high end developer machine including [basic] monitors and the whole works for that.

Then you need to buy Parallels at $99/year and a bunch of Mac/Apple specific accessories which add up fast. This is particularly important since Bootcamp is garbage, Parallels is the only good way to run Windows or Linux side by side (which in our multi-device world is important).

I could likely even afford to spend $1K on a Mac. I just don't feel like if I did so I'd wind up with a good developer machine that will last me three or four years. Seems like $2400 is about the minimum buy-in.

<comment><USER3> No way... I bought a Macbook Air for $700-$800 that runs extremely well as a development machine. Most of my long term storage is online anyways. As long as you get a decent HDD, there's no issues. You don't _have_ to buy Parallels unless you plan on running Windows concurrently for some reason.

I own a Macbook Air, a Macbook Pro, and I have a custom PC that I built for gaming. After looking at all the ins-and-outs of what you get with a Mac and using them for a while now, it's well worth any extra cost. To suggest that that cost is $2400 minimum is nonsense, though.

<comment><USER2> A Macbook Air goes up to 8GB of RAM per Apple. On the machine I'm currently sitting at my utilisation is 6.7 GB and that isn't running Parallels or two operating systems. The Air is has all of the same issues the $999 Mac Mini does.

> You don't have to buy Parallels unless you plan on running Windows > concurrently for some reason.

Most developers cannot avoid Windows or Linux entirely. I am talking about development as a job, not my Ruby side projects. Business customers utilise Windows and Linux regularly. It cannot be ignored simply because it isn't as fashionable.

> To suggest that that cost is $2400 minimum is nonsense, though.

I said development machine, not minimum. You might be able to do it cheaper, but you'll either wind up with a HDD instead of an SSD, or an SSD so tiny (128 GB) that you'll soon regret it.

In 2015 I'm looking at 16 GB of RAM, i7, some kind of graphics acceleration, minimum 512 GB SSD (or a 256 GB SSD + internal HDD). That's what my desktop and Windows based laptop offer, to get it on Mac I am looking at $2K+ easy.

The top end 15" MBP meets all of my requirements but it costs $2,499 + tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not about software at all for me, its about flexibility, experience and ability to customize OS. Even Linux that lacks a lot of software (mainly Photoshop) makes up in so many different ways. I'm amazed that Mac has become the OS of choice for software developers. I do get that it is POSIX based, but for me Macs have always been for non-savvy users.

<comment><USER5> And what about the people that know Linux really well, but don't want so many levers and knobs to fiddle with? I use Linux for just about everything except my workstation. Mac OS is the clear winner there because I don't have to/can't really mess with any of the really low level settings, so I can actually work on things that matter. It's an appliance that makes me productive, not a pile of software and hardware that has to be endlessly configured (I used to run Ubuntu, then Slackware, then Arch).

And is it really so surprising that Mac OS is so popular? You have a stable, non-moving target to build your software for, and you don't have to worry about "Well, what if they have version x of this lib instead of version y? Or what if this kernel config option isn't toggled on? Or.." and so on. There's something to be said for homogeneity, especially for software development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really isn't about the software. Software isn't what keeps people from using macs. You can boot windows on a MAC with bootcamp and it runs as a very nice PC with no limitations that I am aware of.

The real reason is COST. Macs are more expensive for any given spec. It is that simple.

Says, me, the visual studio user that has an iMac.

</comment><comment><USER7> Speaking of clipboard managers, since significantly leaving Windows, I've rather missed the Ditto clipboard manager.

[http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/](http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/)

That said, probably the biggest Mac barrier for me is that I cannot stand the large palm rests, including and especially with (but not only because of) their sharp front edges.

I'm also not especially fond of glossy displays.

Software-wise, I bump up against some instances where Apple exerts its control to stifling effect: 1) Yanking the rug out from under FinalCut users having some... "legacy" requirements; 2) 30% because we can, milking the "walled garden" for maximum effect; etc. On the other hand, someone needed to fire the first bullet into Flash and some of the other Adobe corporate BS.

And to "go Retina". And to advance AES deployment into the ARM hardware environment.

But, these days, my concerns software-wise run towards "open" \-- full stack -- ain't gonna be / can't be taken away (content as well as functionality), and real usability as opposed to what appears to be an increasingly self- serving cadre of "graphic design".

</comment><comment><USER8> OSX stops me. I try and follow the vegan diet of the software world by mostly using FOSS. This can be hard to do for some software (games, photo editing) but for the desktop, GNU/Linux handles my needs quite well.

Assuming Apple went FOSS tomorrow, cost is the other large factor.

</comment><comment><USER9> OSX

(jokes)

<comment><USER10> This (not joking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldn't leave OS X because of the high standard for app quality and UI that isn't there (consistently) in the Linux/OSS world. Even cross-platform GUI frameworks like Qt feel like lipstick on a pig next to a native Mac app.

</comment><comment><USER12> Macports is terrible, bash is always out of date, gdb no longer comes with, I've gotten seg faults on OSX that I've never been able to reproduce on Linux or BSD, virtualization is harder. There are weird things like really low per process file descriptor limits. If you're a web dev, fine. If you're a software engineer it is an unacceptably cumbersome and outdated experience.

In my experience developing I've always found it easier to resolve dependencies on Linux than OSX.

The software that's stopping me is the OS itself.

</comment><comment><USER13> Flycut [1] pretty much works just as you describe including the keyboard shortcut (shift+cmd+v is the equivalent on the mac). It's installed on every single Mac at my office and works really well. Now go buy yourself a shiny new mac _today_ and report back... for science!

[1][https://github.com/TermiT/Flycut](https://github.com/TermiT/Flycut)

(It's MIT licensed and also in the app store... there is a link to the app store version on the github page)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm actually planning on selling my Mac and having a Windows box for gaming/browsing and a Linux box (or VM/VPS) for development.

Can't reconfigure my brain, I use Windows at work.

</comment><comment><USER15> May be relevant or provide a different perspective.

I want to desperately switch to Windows and Surface (Pro or Book). What is stopping me is unavailability of Sketch (a UX Design app) on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER16> I stopped using Windows years ago. Right now I have a Chromebook from Walmart that cost $150. I also put Debian on it with crouton. Blender works fine. The shell works great and I do my work in vim over ssh. WebGL games work. Youtube works.

Works great, does what I need it to, isn't a ripoff.

Also, I don't think anyone should use PCs or Macs because I am against fascism and elitism.

</comment><comment><USER17> Apple's filesystem layer, and Apple's SMB implementation.

If not for those, I could deal with the other warts.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what are the specific problems with those things?

<comment><USER18> The filesystem is annoying but not a deal breaker for me. The biggest problem is that it's a "unixy" filesystem, but it's (by default) case insensitive. You can format it to be case sensitive, but there are some apps that break; a major example in the past was the Adobe suite.

When I was doing web development, I used my Mac because it basically had the good parts of Linux and Windows for what I was doing. Both Ruby and Python work great, and [http://pow.cx/](http://pow.cx/) makes Rails development really nice when you're working on multiple projects. On the flip side, I could use Photoshop when I needed to without needing a VM or dual-boot.

Linux is a way better ruby environment than Windows is, and Windows is a way better environment when you're dealing with clients (Word docs/PPT, PSDs, etc). OSX is kind of the sweet spot in the middle.

Now that I'm doing more DSP and embedded type work, I still use the Macbook occasionally, but most of the work is done on a dual-booting Windows/Linux Lenovo. Linux for writing code (arm-gcc-none-eabi) and Windows for CAD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use Alfred.app's clipboard manager, I think it meets the use case you describe.

[https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/clipboard/](https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/clipboard/)

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://pasteapp.me](http://pasteapp.me) ?

</comment><comment><USER21> (Lack of) native X11 support. I want to compile Awesome [1] and use that as my window manager.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> It is Winamp that keeps me on Windows. (Not that I would ever switch to a mac anyway.)

<comment><USER23> Really? I always thought that Itunes was better. Haven't used Winamp in a long time though (since the 90's).

<comment><USER22> To each their own.

I didn't much like the brushed metal interface they both had back then. While I've never used it iTunes on Windows did have a reputation for being bloated and unstable (if I remember that last part correctly). Quicktime didn't exactly help that reputation either. Thank god for free alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm lucky enough that my lab bought me a Macbook, overcoming my main objection -- cost.

I still wouldn't use one as my home PC, though, because I like to play the occasional videogame.

</comment><comment><USER25> At least they could implement a way to switch or at least configure the window manager, withe everything from behaviour to look and feel.

<comment><USER5> I switched from Ubuntu to a Mac in ~2010. This was one of my initial complaints, but over time, I found that not having so many configurable things made me much less likely to be fiddling with configuration that ultimately doesn't matter, which frees up my time to work on things that do.

<comment><USER25> the main thing that annoys me is that it is not possible to turn of the animation for desktop switching, window switching and so on. after three times those become annoying...

<comment><USER5> defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock

^ turns off the animation.

<comment><USER25> oh thx man

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> nothing, I made the switch in July. I was originally planning on using a VM to run linux, but homebrew had everything I needed. I use iTerm2 which is great, and I love the resolution and font on the terminal. It is worlds better than what I stair at on my redhat machine at the office.

</comment><comment><USER27> The very fact that Apple does not allow running OSX in a VM pretty much ends the matter for me.

<comment><USER18> You can run OSX in a VM on a Mac :)

It seems like a somewhat useless feature, but I found it super useful for putting together scripts for prepping developer machines. Snapshot a clean install, run the script, fix things that aren't quite right, revert back to the snapshot and re-verify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> SolidWorks and Altium

</comment><comment><USER29> PHPEd

<comment><USER30> Try PhpStorm if that's really the only thing keeping you on Windows.

<comment><USER29> I tried it. It is significantly slower than PHPEd.

<comment><USER31> It's possible to increase Java VM heap and memory sizes to gain some performance if you have extra RAM, default values are set pretty low imo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


#Hashtags and #Language — Writers on Writing — Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/6c5d51e594f0 <comment><USER2> I am going to have to be the first to ironically use a hashtag to comment on this article?</comment>


The fall of Eclipse - <AUTHOR> http://movingfulcrum.com/the-fall-of-eclipse/ <comment><USER2>
        All that said, Eclipse JDT remained a solid IDE for pure Java development and the go-to choice for students and open source projects looking for a free IDE.

        This was killed by the launch of Intellij Community Edition.

Not in my experience. The majority of students at my university still seems to be using Eclipse.

<comment><USER3> I would suspect this is only because they don't know any better. There is very little defendable reason for suffering with Eclipse for basic Java work when IntelliJ is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd guess that Google switching the Android IDE from Eclipse to IntelliJ had a pretty big effect on usage numbers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given how much the author talks about eclipse getting ugly from 3.x to 4.x it would have been nice with before and after screenshots in the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Use of eclipse is highly correlated with people that use editors as if they are notepad.

<comment><USER7> Yea I use Eclipse exactly like a text editor that has project management features, refactoring support, formatting, automated imports and class completion, dependency management, compiling and packaging.

That is I and most Eclipse users use Eclipse as an IDE. Not as vim/emacs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried IntelliJ and came back to elegance of Eclipse. Nothing beats Eclipse.

<comment><USER7> Until something can do the auto importing that Eclipse can do nothing will beat it.

On a side not I've also disliked IntelliJ's code quality defaults. Back when I tried it, it said that defining List objects without using type definitions for it's generic was ok.

       List test = new ArrayList<String>();

Was not marked as a warning even though you should be defining that in every location possible, imo, to clarify what's going on. There were other things but it was a long time ago and I won't remember them unless I download it and try it again.

Although JetBrains can't be beat for CLion, PHPStorm, soon Rider, and PyCharm.

<comment><USER9> What you describe (generics auto complete) has never happened to me and I use IntelliJ for a long time now.

And here's info about automatic importing: [https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.2/auto- import.html](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.2/auto-import.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I liked JBuilder back in the day and today I use STS (based on Eclipse) because as much as I tried to like IntelliJ, I really don't understand what's going on.

<comment><USER11> Over about 20 years of Java I've personally had to deal with JBuilder, Visual J++, Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans and probably some I've forgotten. I don't understand where all the Eclipse hate comes from - it's fast, responsive, extensible and works well. Looks elegant to me too, where is that vitriol coming from in the article?

I've certainly seen configurations of Eclipse that are abysmal (Rational Application Developer) and/or frameworks that make things unbearable (moreso in the past). But it's always felt more usable and productive than anything else I've tried. I don't understand the passion I see from IntelliJ users either... it's about as ugly and unintuitive to me as NetBeans was. Perhaps it's just what you're used to.

One positive people tend to raise in support of IntelliJ IDEA is it's refactoring support... I've honestly found Eclipse's to be better. Normally I wouldn't defend anything so heavily backed by IBM, but objectively it's far better than anything else as far as I've found.

<comment><USER9> It may be because the fact that Eclipse has cluttered user interface which looks like something developed in the 90s, despite we have 2016 now. Maybe because it has myriads of plugins that are not well maintained, documented, or just does not work. Maybe because auto-completion is slow and does not display most probable candidates. It might also be that dark theme is pain in the eyes. I don't know, really...

Seriously though, I believe Eclipse should hire good UI designer to produce modern, fast and good looking interface. Measure what people use, how they use it, for what reason - and then improve it. I got a feeling that they forgot (and it happened very early in the project life time) about the most important part of every project - end user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even long time ago I felt like the author. Eclipse was somehow never 'round'.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder what percentage of pure Java programmers code in vim with a java- autocomplete plugin.

<comment><USER14> Probably not many. Refactoring support in IDEs for static languages is a huge time saver. Reference management and simplicity of compiling are other benefits. Also IntelliJ has a vim mode.

<comment><USER15> Visual Studio Code uses OmniSharp as middleware for the C# extension for instance to check code, find usages, and lookup types. The "rename symbol" works fine so far. I guess, but am not sure, they use the language server protocol [1] to communicate with OmniSharp.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a Java language server [2] which utilizes Eclipse JDT. Maybe if the Java language server supports refactoring and Vim support the language server protocol, we could have refactoring of Java code in Vim on par with Eclipse.

[1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server- protocol](https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol) [2] [https://github.com/gorkem/java-language- server](https://github.com/gorkem/java-language-server)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Conduct a User Survey for a New App - <AUTHOR> I want to spend about $5-10 per person, to have my user demographic download the app and basically tell what worked and what needs work.
Posting on Fiverr lead to a couple responses but none are in the target demographic. So I tried Craigslist but they suspended my account without giving a reason. I'm appealing the suspension but haven't received any response yet.
Reddit might work but my concern is that it would get flagged as it did on Craigslist.
If someone has any experience conducting user surveys for apps I'd appreciate some tips.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Reddit has a couple of groups like [https://www.reddit.com/r/TestMyApp/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TestMyApp/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/betatests/](https://www.reddit.com/r/betatests/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/alphaandbetausers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/alphaandbetausers/) where it wouldn't get deleted, but I can't tell the traction or if that's your target audience.</comment>


Bitcoin Exchange Makes Apparent Move to Play by U.S. Money-Laundering Rules  - T-A http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323873904578574000957464468.html

<comment><AUTHOR> i guess the headline and sub-headline will have to do, since i can't read this article without an account :(

"Bitcoin Exchange Makes Apparent Move to Play by U.S. Money-Laundering Rules Company Listed as Mt. Gox Registers With Treasury Department"</comment>


A Roundtable on Covid-19 and the Attention Economy - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/roundtable-covid-19-attention-economy/ <comment><USER2> I think the people speaking in this article forgot that the average attention span in US is 8 seconds.

<comment><USER3> Where does this 8s number come from? This article claims there's no clear evidence for it: [https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone want to answer my criticisms on covid lockdowns-

>You sacrifice the 99.5% for the 0.5%.(If not handled perfectly sacrifices 100%)

>Flattening the curve allows people to have access to ventilators saving an additional 12% of people (oxygen can be taken without hospitals or physicians)

>Suicides, drug addictions, home abuse and more are all side effects of attempting to save the oldest, obese, and sickest population, who otherwise can self quarentine.(My only counter point is that the 0.5% can be called into work, and lose unemployment money.)

<comment><USER5> In general, there were two possible paths - not lock down at all, or lock down and do it right. The current divided US was unable to do anything because of political gamesmanship and poor federal leadership. Proper lockdowns work - Germany, France, etc, are proving that it is possible. Most weaker states are struggling, which is not a surprise.

> You sacrifice the 99.5% for the 0.5%.(If not handled perfectly sacrifices > 100%)

This is a slippery slope - let's say your a small minority. You could always argue "well they're just a small group of people, who cares, it's not most so they can suffer." It's a very dangerous mentality.

> Suicides, drug addictions, home abuse and more are all side effects of > attempting to save the oldest, obese, and sickest population, who otherwise > can self quarentine.(My only counter point is that the 0.5% can be called > into work, and lose unemployment money.)

These may follow a quarantine but they are not necessarily caused by it. If a proper safety net existed in the US, I'm sure most of these numbers would decrease. The US on the whole is worse for drug addiction than most first world nations.

The fact is, even if the US KNEW what to do - it wouldn't be able to execute it. Poor leadership, political infighting, marketing to the extreme post stage capitalism is finally burning the US out.

<comment><USER4> >If a proper safety net existed in the US, I'm sure most of these numbers would decrease

Are you going to have government prostitutes to take care of males? I'm kind of joking, but my depressed friends are single males who were first to the bars.

>well they're just a small group of people, who cares, it's not most so they can suffer

"Well the 99.5% is just a small group, who cares if they suffer?"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you addicted to? - <AUTHOR> Let's be honest, what's your addiction? <comment><USER2> Coffee, I drink like 4-6 espresso shots every day and raising the stack almost every 3 months. It's so addictive, never thought I would be a coffee junkie for the rest of my life.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm addicted to computers and the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Women, weather, and wine :^)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sugar, and I think its starting to affect my health. gotta kick the habit

</comment><comment><USER6> Caffeine.</comment>


The man who could stop planes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160210-the-man-who-could-stop-planes/? <comment><USER2> The author is lucky to be alive.

By her story, the man she meet used almost every predator trick in the book. Forced teaming, uncanny guesses, illusionary social proofs showing his power, hints of vulnerability, quick answers for obvious problems with his story ...

Even the the title "The man who could stop planes" would be more accurately described as "The man who claimed to be able to stop planes"

</comment><comment><USER3> `We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee.`

Tor it is!</comment>


Millenials' Most Desired City Features - <AUTHOR> https://www.abodo.com/blog/living-millennial-dream/ <comment><USER2> Text-only Google cache, if you have trouble with the site: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_5WKSpb...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_5WKSpbcInAJ:https://www.abodo.com/blog/living- millennial-dream/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how highly pizza quality is ranked as a factor in the city ratings. Pretty amused to find out that my biggest grievance about the West Coast is a shared concern.</comment>


What I Learned in 40 Years of Doing Intel Analysis for US Foreign Policymakers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-55-no.-1/pdfs/CleanedPetersen-What%20I%20Learned-20Apr2011.pdf <comment><USER2> I work as a digital marketing analyst (think Google Analytics). While reading this piece, I find myself nodding and agreeing with 90% of it. As it turns out, the way that decision-makers incorporate data and expert opinion doesn't change when whether they're in charge of $10k ad budgets, or ten-year occupations of a foreign country.

Some observations of my own, that I can see echoes of in this paper:

Decision-makers have a mental model where analysts' job is to synthesize facts and provide them, and it is the job of the decision-makers themselves to put the facts together into a big picture and/or plan of action. This is generally a poor set-up. Firstly, "facts" with any certainty are thin on the ground, there's only inferences from small spots of data in between clouds of blind spots. Secondly, the analysts have more experience with the trends that they study, and often more training in how to incorporate them into a big picture. Most managers will say "I want all the data," but if you give them what they ask for, they will most often draw incorrect conclusions. You have to spoon- feed them, even though neither party particular wants that.

People don't understand the limits of data, and they sure as heck don't understand uncertainty. If you make 100 predictions, and are 99% sure about all of them, then on average one will be untrue. And all you'll ever hear about was that you were 99% sure and were wrong. In my job, there's actually a consideration about not providing data that we don't totally trust (as opposed to providing with caveats), because a single data point that's wrong erodes trust in data in general. It sounds like that's not an option to the CIA: if they're tasked with a question, they must provide an answer (which is a problem itself).

We've found that if we our client to use our analysis, we actually need to write it with _his_ audience in mind. We literally write it with the design goal that the client be able to copy-paste our words or graphs into his own deliverable. Because that is literally what will happen. The more effort it is for the client to consume our work, the more likely they are to save themselves the time and ignore it. And as bad as that is, it's also probably the best way. If the client re-words things, he may misunderstand things. Encouraging plagiarism cuts down on the game of telephone.

<comment><USER3> _"...the client be able to copy-paste our words or graphs into his own deliverable. Because that is literally what will happen."_

I've spent most of my career in marketing, and as far as I can tell, this happens _everywhere_. Well, almost everywhere. The one exception I've encountered was working at Apple, where people expected you to hammer out a beautiful and convincing Keynote deck on your own. Everywhere else, people more or less copypasted whatever decks, charts, graphs, and bullets their agencies had sent them.

The problem with copypasting is that it _can_ lead to a game of telephone. A sequential erosion in the quality of information. If you're not keeping track of who's been lifting and plagiarizing and pasting which information from which sources, at how many steps along the value chain, you end up with a deck full of secondhand information and hearsay. The quality of the information (or confidence in the information) fades a bit with each subsequent generation of copypasting. Sort of like lossy data encoding. At larger organizations, as you might imagine, there will be many "generations" of each presentation. This makes the lossiness issue even worse.

The culprit here is always time. It's exactly as the author of this article points out. People don't set out to make shitty decks, or to copy and paste information, or to tl;dr their way through analysis. But that's just what people have to do to survive. If you're spending (conservatively) 20-30 hours a week in meetings, and many of those meetings leave you with deliverables on tight deadlines, you're going to be eking out any and all efficiencies that come your way.

I've never done any copypasting, and if I'm being honest with myself, it's probably hurt me more than it's helped me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me this is an excellent argument for the disbandment of the CIA and related agencies. This is obviously a thoughtful, knowledgeable, conscientious person. He probably has colleagues who are the same. Yet, when organized as they currently are, they can't think their way out of a paper bag. There must be a better way to do this work.

<comment><USER5> It may be more of a problem with the "service mentality" the document is talking about. Bad things happen when what your customer actually wants is "Find me a pretext to invade the Middle East and reshape it in a more US- friendly form, because Western intervention in the area has always turned out fine."

<comment><USER6> Bingo. The problem is that in the intel community they used to have that salty old graybeard that would tell general X and politician Y the cold hard truth to power that they _need_ to hear, instead of what they want to hear. Post 9/11, there is evidence that it was mostly vp Cheney who physically intervened in this process, personally pulling in analysts and grilling them...

The problem to me is that the same chilling effects we have seen develop in the journalistic community have also grown in the intel community, and when you have analysts who spend more time kissing ass than calling people out bullshit like they should, we are only going to end up in worse geopolitical situations.

NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well.

<comment><USER7> _NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well._

Can you elaborate a bit or suggest some reading on that point?

<comment><USER6> Well it's more of an insight gained mostly from reading former-spooks books and similar. The fact is that the resources, both monetary and physical, are much larger than the company (CIA). It employs many more people as well, and a lot of people don't realize that the agency (NSA) has paramilitary divisions as well.

The main reason I say though is because NSA has the upstream under their thumb. Pretty much anything the company does is going to be visible to the agency but not the other way around, which creates an information power disparity that is inevitable with the current organizational structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The point about "because" is very well-taken: _Every "may" and "likely to" and "could" requires a "because" statement or its equivalent—the reason we believe what we believe_

It is important to remember that any "may", "likely to" and "could" statement can be replaced with a "might not" statement with precisely the same meaning, unless you quantify the probabilities (difficult and often so imprecise as to be pointless).

We see this all the time in tech journalism: "New technology might not lead to breakthrough in flying cars!" has exactly the same meaning as "New technology may lead to breakthrough in flying cars!" but for some reason we always see the latter and never the former.

I recommend reading any article with unqualified "may" statements with them flipped to "might not". It will rapidly become clear how much of this kind of journalism is hopeful nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER9> This sounds similar to being an IT guy in a big organization. They have 5 minutes, they think they know better (and occasionally they do), they might listen to you and you have to beg them to do so.

Except the ending. That sounds like someone who has spent too much time around politicians and become infected.

<comment><USER10> This is someone who moved up the ranks in the CIA to a very high level. They are very adept politically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Our ability to "raise the level of the debate" or to "help policy-makers make the best decisions possible" or to "speak truth to power"—however one defines the mission—rests on one thing and one thing only: our reputations for analytic rigor, objectivity, and total integrity. Lose that and we lose everything"_

It would have been interesting to see at least some acknowledgement of, and response to, the fact that the CIA currently has acquired itself a reputation for extracting false intelligence clumsily through relentless torture and brutalization. How, despite all the very smart and experienced people working for the organization, does that come to be the output? What goes wrong there?

</comment><comment><USER11> Great. This is how a deluded statist stooge thinks after 40 years of indoctrination.

EDIT: Why was this even posted? Useless garbage.

<comment><USER12> Well, I found it equally fascinating and horrifying. You don't need to agree with or admire an author to be able to learn things from their writing.</comment></comment>


Defining C objects in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtlessbanter.com/blog/2013-02-27-defining-c-objects-in-ruby/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully too many won't have a pep-peeve about "C objects". :)</comment>


The Role of the Statistician: Scientist or Shoe Clerk (1974) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://statlab.bio5.org/sites/default/files/fall2014/bross-shoe-clerk74.pdf <comment><USER2> >"The statistician who wants to be more than a shoe clerk must, therefore, be willing to risk unpopularity and even unemployment to achieve a study with a good scientific plan."

Not just statisticians, although they have many good ideas regarding the planning. Unfortunately, a lot of studies that get funded can never actually achieve the stated goals, but no one wants to admit it because it would ruin careers. The worst is that naive grad students get suckered into this mess, are given an impossible to accomplish task, and then have incentive to believe somehow the significant p-value means their theory is true.</comment>


The Cool Riddles Project - <AUTHOR> http://e-riddles.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm on a train with no wifi and poor 3G reception, but I've had a quick look. You do know these aren't riddles, don't you? They are puzzles. There's a difference.

Having said that - good luck. I literally know hundreds of these, and a raw collection is pretty pointless - I'd love to see how you intend to organise these.

Consider also the paradox of choice. I would expect that most visitors will be overwhelmed and bounce.

The design is not to my personal taste, and nearly unusable on my mobile. I have no idea how big the site is so far, because it's impossible to navigate on this device.

So there's some quick feedback. It's an interesting challenge, and I wish you luck!</comment>


The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420 (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/2018/01/24/the-dreams-of-an-inventor-in-1420/ <comment><USER2> Death star, complete with trench, with starfighters fleeing as it explodes. He was indeed visionary :)

</comment><comment><USER3> His vehicle ideas are also fascinating:

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=40)

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=80)

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=82)

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=37)

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=29)

[https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/im...](https://daten.digitale- sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?seite=30)

I interpret the last two images as controlled projectile vehicles that move along with the usual ship traffic, but with the power of fire!

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed that. Fascinating drawings

</comment><comment><USER5> Many of these seem to describe performances or theatrical props.

>They use some of the forces and themes mentioned above — hydraulics, fire, and flexible or interlocking parts. But because cross section and other visual techniques such as perspective were not used by (and likely not known to) Fontana and perhaps also because his imagination exceeded his skills, what he meant to make and how he thought it was to be done remain something of a mystery. His captions, written in code, do not help much because they describe the function he intended them to perform rather than explain how they were actually constructed or operated.

Is it just me or does the code script or alphabet look a lot like the Voynuch manuscript? Could the Voyneuch manuscript have been based on this book?

Fontana:

[https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4753/27950680369_89fb9a46e6_o...](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4753/27950680369_89fb9a46e6_o.jpg)

[https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4669/39822484052_e6c9686e64_b...](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4669/39822484052_e6c9686e64_b.jpg)

[https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4622/25857692428_4f255d1032_b...](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4622/25857692428_4f255d1032_b.jpg)

[https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4611/39857848872_495b4eb26e_b...](https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4611/39857848872_495b4eb26e_b.jpg)

Voynuch:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Voynich_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Voynich_Manuscript_%28119%29.jpg)

Perhaps theater groups needed books to describe their ideas, performance, perhaps even dialogues, but wanted to simultaneously protect them to prevent them from being copied? If they traveled a large part of the year and never stay put it is hard to prevent others from copying you, but witnessing a single long immensely decorated show would be too much information to copy, so one just needed to protect the knowledge (which might need to be written down, in case an actor or theatre engineer dies,...?)

VM is full of naked ladies in vats and pipes of water, which I never understood but this article explains:

>In addition to his fiery constructions, Fontana also designed many fountains and other hydraulic devices. Before modern water infrastructure, water sources were more visible in people's lives than they are now. The importance of water and the fragility of its supply were not hidden by massive administrative schemes. Water was life, and it was danger, too.

so perhaps the VM is also about theatrical performances for the church or the elites? ("Your tithes at work.")</comment>


Samsung patents smart contact lenses with a built-in camera - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/04/05/samsung-smart-contact-lenses-patent/ <comment><USER2> Okay Samsung, you now have 1 year to demonstrate a working prototype or significant progress and effort spent building towards one, or you lose your patent.

At least that's how it should work.... sigh.

<comment><USER3> Yup, and the article's fancy header graphic? It's of the Google diabetes- monitoring contact lens project: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens) Definitely not misleading...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi, then license them for free to anyone who can actually use them.

Maybe we could get a kickstarter going for it! I say we start with battlemechs and work our way down from there.

<comment><USER5> > _Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology > that we love from sci-fi_

That's actually Nathan Myhrvold's, ex-CTO of Microsoft, business plan for Intellectual Ventures.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_ventures)

He basically gathered around a bunch of visionaries, 'industry leaders' and sci-fi people and then they started patenting ideas that they thought would end up as products a decade+ later. Some accused him and IV of being patent trolls... because they patented all kinds of general stuff.

<comment><USER6> Sadly, IV is known as one of the most egregious patent trolls out there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is in South Korea, not the United States. While the United States patent system is dysfunctional in a similar way (granting patents for things that haven't been invented yet to parties that have not invented them), it is their patent system that this reflects badly on, not ours.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google invents smart contact lens with built-in camera:

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents- sma...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-smart- contact-lens-with-built-in-camera-superhuman-terminator-like-vision-here-we- come)

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who takes this to mean that "in the next ten years, it will be possible to produce a contact lens that has a camera and a powered display capable of any resolution that involves like triple-digits pixels in the horizontal and vertical, and, god forfend, an actual battery for both, for any price including $50M per lens," is dreaming.

<comment><USER10> That's right. Apple will make the first popular one and it'll cost $500 a pair, and require an upgrade each year.

<comment><USER11> If it was $500/year, I would get them in a heartbeat as contacts currently cost $150-300/year, depending on fanciness (monthly/weekly/daily replacement, coatings, etc)

<comment><USER12> Yup. I was just thinking how inexpensive $500 sounded. Will they work with hydrogen peroxide based solution or do I need to upgrade?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article has a link that looks like it should lead to the patent in question, but actually links to a page that pops up the badly-translated message:

> "Is not the normal approach. After searching it uses."

And then closes itself. Does anyone have a link to the patent in question?

<comment><USER13> Their website seems to have a weird linking system. I found the page in question, and because their system is weird, the "get link" button doesn't really do a normal permalink, it just gives you a goo.gl link. Whoever wrote the article in question just copied what was in the URL bar, which doesn't work for any of the patents.

[http://goo.gl/ZKRWCv](http://goo.gl/ZKRWCv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Aha... Vernor Vinge predicted the device. I never realised the future can become past so fast.

<comment><USER15> Rainbow's End is one of my favorite books, and he predicts quite a bit in it.

Patent question--could something like Rainbow's End ever be used to invalidate this patent?

<comment> david-given <pedant> Rainbows End </pedant>

But yes, I really like it too. I wish he'd write a sequel. There's plenty more mileage to Mr. Rabbit.

Also, could someone hurry up and invent UP/Ex? Pneumatic mortars firing disposable cardboard gliders are so obviously better than any sensible approach to last-mile package delivery...

<comment><USER9> It even has a freaking _chapter_ named "The missing apostraphe."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Problem is power. Batteries are holding back the future.

<comment><USER17> Wireless power transmission should solve that. The larger battery can live in your jeans pocket, shirt pocket or somewhere else (all that space in your sinuses is just waiting to be used!)

<comment><USER18> I would be nervous about RF energy directed towards the particularly sensitive parts of my eyeball.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Guess the next step is to embed them into your eyes when your are born. Built in VR.

</comment><comment> gene-h Of course just because they have the patent does not mean it will actually work or that we have the technology to do so.

</comment><comment><USER20> And you thought google glass was creepy. This is a whole new level.</comment>


Ola Raises $500M in Series F from Tiger Global, Softbank and Others - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/ola-raises-500-million-in-series-f-from-tiger-global-softbank-and-others-297/?utm_content=buffer6f394&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><AUTHOR> "Ola has closed over $1.3 bn of external funding, of which over $1.2 bn has been raised over the past year." Astonishing!</comment>


Ask HN: Every website wants to send me notifications - <AUTHOR> Most of the news, blog, or e-commerce websites I visit these days ask me to get notified about the new content. Is this ruining the web experience? Is this overuse of Notification APIs by websites?<p>E.g. mdn.mozillademos.org wants to show notifications. {BLOCK}  {ALLOW} <comment><USER2> I'm surprised you are seeing this with "most" sites - I barely ever see it, but I agree that it's infuriating when I do.

I don't think this trend will last, though. If a user denies the notification request then the site is _never allowed to ask again_ \- the user has to manually enable the permission. People are going to learn quite quickly that if you don't put the request in the context of a specific action you're screwing yourself over.

That said, I wouldn't mind it if these prompts could only be shown in response to click events. Small downside, but it would stop the request spam quite effectively.

<comment><USER3> > If a user denies the notification request then the site is never allowed to > ask again

Sites will start doing what apps have been doing for a while on ios, use a custom dialog to ask for the permission until they agree, only then will they trigger the native, one time only dialog.

<comment><USER4> LinkedIn only offer an agree and a not now option. It's really irritating. I'm literally never going to enable that.

<comment><USER5> It wouldn't be their first UX dark pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's what RSS is for, no? Keeps the subscription under your control, you don't have to share anything with anyone, you can unsubscribe easily and it's trivial to anonymize through a reader that caches/proxies the requests.

Perfect for the end user. Not so perfect for the spam industry, of course, but whenever those guys get to decide how something on the internet should work it always turns ugly, so that really has to stop.

<comment><USER6> To turn it off in Firefox' about:config, switch both to False:

       dom.webnotifications.serviceworker.enabled
       dom.webnotifications.enabled

<comment><USER7> Thank you for that, I keep getting annoyed by that and keep forgetting to look up how to disable that. I finally just disabled it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chrome lets you disable that request: Preferences->Show advanced settings->Content Settings (under 'Privacy')->Notifications

Select "Do not allow any site to show notifications"

Myself, I find this just as bad as the constant overlays asking for you to sign up to a mailing list. I use the 'Behind the Overlay' extension to kill those, but I'd like something that prevented them appearing in the first place.

<comment><USER9> This assumes Chrome bothers to remember your settings in the first place :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I actually like this feature. It's more useful on sites that don't update as frequently or have more obscure content. However, I really dislike notifications from the mainstream websites because I was going to visit them during the day anyway.

</comment><comment><USER11> If I want notifications from a website I add its RSS feed to my reader.

</comment><comment><USER12> And every blog (and not only blog) asks me to subscribe to their newsletter before i even read the article.

Are these things so effective that everyone uses them?

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately yes. Popups get a rather high conversion, and if you want to sell an info product, selling to an email list seems to be the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've never clicked allow. I don't turn on notifications for phone apps either though.

</comment><comment><USER15> My main annoyance is that I'm not sure what they're asking for?

What _kind_ of notification? How does it work? When/where will I be notified? How would I turn it off?

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think it is ruining the experience because it's easy to not allow them, my question is: how is it that so many people are clicking allow that businesses see it worth the annoyance to add this to their site. That's what baffles me.

<comment><USER17> Maybe the problem is that you don't know how few will allow it, before you add it to the site. When you know that nobody cares, all the work is already done and removing the feature would actually require some more effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One good thing about web notification requests is you can use them as an opportunity to evaluate what sites you want to continue reading on a regular basis. When I get a notification request I always stop and think about it for a minute. If a site isn't notification worthy then is it worth reading everyday? Sometimes yeah but I've been able to purge a lot of sites of my daily reading list using this method. I was surprised at just how many sites I was reading purely out of habit. Being forced to judge their quality / importance to me was super helpful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Example: Never miss a great news story! Get instant notifications from Economic Times [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/gov...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/governments- direct-tax-kitty-swells-to-rs-5-57-lakh-crore-between-april-and- december/articleshow/56240236.cms)

This news site is showing a custom popup to ask for permission and blocking the content.

</comment><comment> awinter-py Increased engagement from the users who stay is more visible than the attrition of the users who don't return because of notification overload.

There's a 'silent majority' effect when you measure the impact of a feature that increases engagement.

Imagine a feature causes 50% of users to immediately read another article and the other 50% to never return. That may look like a win after 2 weeks of testing, but the long-term effects on your business can be iffy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Google will punish pop ups in the future. [0] I heard something about early 2017, but cannot find where it's written down.

\- [0] [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users- easi...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily- access-content-on.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone got lucky and had a site do all of the following on the same page?

• Ask to send notifications,

• Ask to use your location,

• Say something about you not having the SharePoint plugin or asking permission to use it or something like that?

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the best way to go about it is to have a switch/checkbox for the user to opt-in. Only then will the browser prompt the user to enable notifications. It's trivial to make this change.

I'm amazed so many sites have this feature, because it was an absolute nightmare for me to get it working alongside Google's sw-precache library.

</comment><comment><USER22> Notifications are the most annoying thing ever. Facebook innovated on the notification icon and concept back in 2008 or so. Since then every one has followed their path. I do not like notifications on my phone unless it is for my email and I am currently on call (Thanks FastMail for having an amazing notification system (real time)).

</comment><comment><USER23> I run Slack in it's own Chrome Window via the Add to Desktop Feature in the Chrome options menu. With Notifications Enabled it is a viable replacement to the desktop app.

Slack's Desktop app is built on Electron, so it's a second installation of Chrome anyways.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been tossing around building a global notifications blocker.

You could turn it on / off when you just want to browse Facebook or whatever site without the notifications and that tiny red badge nagging you away from what you're doing.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hate those in news sites, but I did find them useful for a couple of websites—mainly where I was waiting for a reply for an auction or booking request.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe reverse the behavior. Instead of asking, make it a standard feature in UI:

Alt-N => browser pop under:

[offers notifications][show all][show some]

Or maybe just some icon in the url bar ?

</comment><comment><USER26> Subscription popups/overlays are the anti christ

</comment><comment><USER27> Is the new Pop Up Banner Option?</comment>


The Government Shutdown on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/blog/online-washington-monument-syndrome

<comment><USER3> We shouldn't treat the law as some sort of obscure documents that can only be understood by high priests.

Here's the relevant parts of the anti-deficiency statute:

31 USC § 1341 - Limitations on expending and obligating amounts

 _(a) (1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not— (A) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation; (B) involve either government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law;_

31 USC § 1342 - Limitation on voluntary services

 _An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not accept voluntary services for either government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law except for emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. This section does not apply to a corporation getting amounts to make loans (except paid in capital amounts) without legal liability of the United States Government. As used in this section, the term "emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property" does not include ongoing, regular functions of government the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property_

The government can spend money already appropriated -- either under permanent "mandatory" appropriations or under some more limited multi-year appropriation -- it can spend money under laws that explicitly allow for spending prior to appropriation (the most prominent of which is the Feed and Forage Act of 1861) and under section 1324 above it can spend money in emergencies that imminently threaten the safety of human life or protection of property. That's it. An executive branch official can't just decide it would save money in the long run to spend a little now and save a lot later. The Anti-Deficiency Act is enforced through criminal penalties of up to two years in prison for each violation.

<comment><USER4> This is all nice and good, but can you point to any government/federal agency sources that are citing the Anti-Deficiency Act as rationale for the web shutdowns? Seriously, I'd like to know, since OP just tosses the idea out there at the end of the article without much discussion.

If the Anti-Deficiency Act is not used as justification, then your interpretation of the law, as applied to the web shutdowns, is moot.

<comment><USER3> The Anti-Deficiency Act, and opinions interpreting it from Attorneys General dating back to the Carter administration, is the basis for OMB Memo M-13-22[1] which provides guidelines to heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on how to plan for a lapse in appropriations. Pages 13 and 14 deal with websites and other IT concerns and specifically reference the Anti-Deficiency Act.

Here's question 5 from page 14:

 _Q5: What if the cost of shutting down a website exceeds the cost of maintaining services?

A5: The determination of which services continue during an appropriations lapse is not affected by whether the costs of shutdown exceed the costs of maintaining services._

[1] [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-22.pdf)

<comment><USER5> How do they pay the cost of shut down, if they "can't pay" the cost of operation? Just curious. Math, and all that.

<comment><USER6> > How do they pay the cost of shut down, if they "can't pay" the cost of > operation? Just curious. Math, and all that.

Math is not an issue. The legal issue isn't the _quantity_ of funds that can be spent in the absence of appropriations, but the _purpose_ for which funds can be spent in the absence of appropriations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems to take a one-dimensional approach to these determinations. There's much more at play than raw dollar amounts for running servers. While some commenters might see these web shutdowns as part of a larger strategy to win a political fight, they're overlooking some very basic and practical reasons.

Agencies are _responsible_ for the content of their websites. If the agency is shut down, there is legally-significant content online that is under no chain of accountability. Every web page on a government site is a potential liability. In the normal course of business (e.g. when the government is not shut down), every piece of content goes through some sort of approval process, or at least someone can be held accountable for it.

Imagine a law is amended, but FCC.gov still has guidance published on the pre- amended statute. Kind of a crude example, but I think it highlights the problems of not going whole-hog on shutting down these websites.

Moreover, it's pretty difficult to not defer to an agency's judgment when they have been winnowed from ~1700 employees to something around 12.

<comment><USER7> And that's all well and good, but the OP also points out the inconsistency in policy -- e.g. front page shutdown but many other subdomain sites still running.

I guess in the end one may chalk it up to pure inefficiency. I'm sure there are probably multiple groups of people responsible for multiple servers under one domain, but still, it seems a little childish at this point to shut down one server if you're doing it for liability reasons, and yet leave up a whole slew of others on the same domain. I mean nasa.gov -- really? Was it necessary to redirect that?

<comment><USER8> Hanlon's razor seems to be knocking on the door here. They made their best effort to shut down the sites they're supposed to shut down, by law, whether it's good business or not. They were doing this in a bit of a challenging situation, with a skeleton crew and a lot of legal uncertainty, plus the individuals in charge were probably operating at pretty low morale. Some broken eggs and spilled milk (in the ironic form of better-functioning-than- expected sites) are to be expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article and the many others like it are missing the point. The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money, it's also to force a break in the stalemate. In fact, I'd argue that breaking the stalemate is the _primary_ purpose.

> _That doesn't seem to account for some of the weird patterns we see, > however._

The author is overthinking it. The most likely scenario is that an official email went out to all webmasters with the message "Shut it down NOW, people. And then go home." The assorted webmasters then executed the shutdown with varying degrees of skill and diligence before heading off for a drink. Thus, some subdomains are still available, redirects are implemented inconsistently, etc.

Here's a list of agencies[1] exempt from the Antideficiency Act[2], a more interesting question would be: are any of those websites down?

[1] [http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34680.pdf) (p13)

[2] [http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackgrou...](http://www.gao.gov/legal/lawresources/antideficiencybackground.html)

<comment><USER10> > The purpose of the shutdown is not just to save money

You write like there's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing. There isn't. This is the natural consequence of not setting a budget, which many different sides had different purposes to not set.

Ostensibly, the consequences of a government shutdown are, supposedly, lower FUNDING to pay for some government service. Given this, it would seem that HIGHER spending would seem ridiculous. Financial motivations in cases like this are supposed to override anything else. The motivations are clearly NOT financial.

So the belly-aching about how A and B are suffering because of a lack of funding is not necessarily true. It could also be to make this situation seem worse than it is. In public discourse, the squeaky wheel gets the funding.

<comment><USER9> > _You write like there 's some grand unified purpose to this whole thing._

I'd say there's a grand unified purpose at the upper govt level to make the shutdown hurt as much as possible, as alluded to by those mentioning Washington Monument Syndrome. At the lower levels, it's probably more a diffused feeling of "fvck 'em, now we're not getting paid, let's shut it all down". And you've raised a very good point about liability elsewhere - <USER2> take chances?

Nobody is going to analyze the most fiscally effective website shutdown configuration and enforce it. It's not in anyone's interest, which is why I find these articles a bit silly; it's just another excuse to spout anti- gubmint rhetoric.

A much more interesting angle is, "how can we alter our two-party system to prevent these kind of Red vs Blue stalemates"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes it's not about saving money, it's about deliberately making "saving money" look a lot worse than it is.

<comment><USER12> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The point is, it costs something, as a recurring cost, to keep them up. In a shutdown, the only costs you can justify are the costs of shutting down. It is easy to project that the long-term costs of keeping almost anything running will exceed the cost of closing the doors. The author wants to treat the shutdown as though it is temporary, while the executive is required to treat it as though it is permanent.

<comment><USER14> If it costs more to bring the website down (and then back up, later) than it does to simply leave the website up with a disclaimer, that means someone will get paid more money for doing it this way.

In a way, they have a financial incentive to go the more costly route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Healthcare.gov however is still running (sort of, signups are dead today due to the crush of traffic). It's ironic that the site at the center of the shutdown is running but many of the other gov sites are shutdown.

<comment><USER16> Because it's funded already. Ironic isn't it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The sky is still up...so I guess I'll carry on with my day.

</comment><comment><USER18> They should really use a banner that blocks out the page, similar to what Wikipedia did during the SOPA/PIPA protests [1]. This would still make the point that government shutdowns are disruptive to the services that people depend on, without incurring the extra costs of an actual shutdown. Maybe the point is better made by letting people stew in actual frustration though...

[1] [http://www.macworld.com/article/1164871/how_to_access_wikipe...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1164871/how_to_access_wikipedia_during_its_sopa_blackout.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> _It's easy to imagine how this might often be the case: if the "inessential" public-facing Web pages are hosted on the same systems you've got to keep up and running for other "essential" back-end purposes [...]_

Does this not then constitute an information leak about what seemingly "inessential" public-facing sites are housing "essential" services (that perhaps should not be on public-facing hosts)?

</comment><comment><USER20> The FCC is down. As a radio operator, I find this extremely disappointing: [http://www.fcc.gov](http://www.fcc.gov)

<comment><USER21> That just means that now is the time for all those Software Defined Radio experiments we've been putting off. Spread spectrum mesh networks encrypted so NSA can't spy on them... for the win.

<comment><USER22> That is an idea! It would be fun to run SSH over packet radio while no one is around to enforce Part 97!

<comment><USER23> Off topic, but what's the reasoning behind the rule against encrypted traffic on amateur bands?

<comment><USER22> I actually researched this long ago - 2004 - when I was a student at Tech and gave a presentation to the Atlanta Radio Club about cryptographically secure authentication that would be Part 97 friendly. Nothing came of it, but I did later post the write up to my blog it 2009: [http://blog.rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication- withou...](http://blog.rietta.com/blog/2009/08/17/authentication-without- encryption-for/)

My opinion at the time was: " What Does Part 97 Say?

Section 97.113 (4) '…messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof, except as otherwise provided herein…' (emphasis added).

Based on the above quote, we can use any method at our disposal to provide for secure authentication which does not obscure the meaning of communications. As we start using more computing environments and bring the Internet to ham radio, we have to make sure that service is not provided to non-licensed users. In voice space, it is generally easy to spot a non-ham, but when everyone is using the same software there is not a similarly intuitive way to distinguish between the licensed user and the unlicensed user. "

<comment><USER20> Where I'm from ___Tech_ __means Virginia Tech. We beat Georgia Tech in football this year too ;)

Just joking... thanks for that write-up. I'd rather keep the Internet away from Radio (it's too centralized). I much prefer station to station communication over the air rather than packets over some government/corporate controlled network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The sites have not been shutdown, rather they are hosting a shutdown message. They are still incurring the costs of running the sites: power, bandwidth, cooling, and whatever else is used to keep the sites up and running serving up pages.

</comment><comment><USER25> Silly, but a good way to avoid this would be not shutting down the government.

<comment><USER14> A better way would be:

* pass a budget, as is required by law anyway

* spend no more than what was budgeted in the first place

* formulate the budget to be at or below revenue

It's not rocket surgery. Yet all of the above are heresy in DC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In China, the government removes non-government websites to punish the people. In the USA, the government just removes itself. Maybe they should just hide Healthcare.gov at Silk Road's onion address to really make an obfuscated political statement.</comment>


HTML5: Edition for Web Authors - <AUTHOR> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/ <comment><USER2> See also <http://developers.whatwg.org/>, which does the same job but a: is better designed and b: is published by the WHATWG, so also includes bleeding- edge features not yet incorporated into the W3C specification.

<comment><USER3> Only one of those things is a good thing.</comment></comment>


Euclid's Elements (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/elements/toc.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the best-written books ever! Most non-fiction works strive (knowingly or not) to reach such a fine form. Words are massaged into terms, sentences into propositions, and certain paragraphs into arguments. This work is the purest form of that, a true paragon with enviable succinctness. Even if you're not into math, try picking up a copy of Euclid's Elements to see how articulate thoughts _can_ be.

<comment><USER3> Have you read Mortimer J Adler's How to Read a Book? I just finished it a month ago and your mention of terms, propositions and arguments seems straight out of the book's theory of reading :)

Thanks for your review by the way, it motivated me to reread Euclid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Taking a proofs based Euclidean geometry course was the single most useful class I've ever taken. It totally changes the way you think about mathematics, and even made me a better writer. The way it teaches you to begin with a premise and reach logical conclusions through concrete, connected steps is applicable to all fields of thought. _Anyone_ unfamiliar with Euclid should remedy that immediately.

<comment><USER5> Why is this specific to Euclidean geometry as opposed to any other mathematical writing?

If you pick up a modern calculus book, one advantage over Euclid is that the proofs will actually be correct ;)

<comment><USER6> It's probably not _specific_ to Euclidean geometry, but in the american school system it's common to see proof-based geometry in high school, while you generally don't dwell much on the proofs of calculus unless you take a real analysis class at university. So it's more about timing/exposure than the field itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a nicely illustrated and colored text of Euclid's Elements see: _Byrne: Six Books of Euclid_ :

[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/3836559382](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/3836559382)

<comment><USER8> I've worked through at least the first book of this version and it is a very nice intro to the material.

One large annoyance I have is the mistakes. I was trying to follow the proofs closely and there are some errors both in the diagrams and in the text. Many of these are called out in the intro so I found myself flipping between the corrections section and the pages to make sure I had a very clear idea of each proof. This can make some of the later proofs a bit cumbersome to follow since they all build on one another. So if a later proof is built on proofs that contain mistakes it is distracting and a lot of page flipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I spent a year in a "Great Books" college, where there are no textbooks, no lectures, etc., just primary sources progressing roughly chronologically.

For first year math, you go through Elements almost entirely front-to-back. I have mixed feelings about the Great Books programs in general, but the Euclid class was remarkable. It tends not to be a math-heavy group of students, but even those who think they're bad at math can still follow (for the most part) the geometric proofs. It gave all of the students--those of us who were mathematically inclined and those who weren't--a shared vocabulary and methodology for talking about actual mathematics in a way that any of the other math classes I took later after transferring to another university would not have.

If anyone wants to go through them by yourself, do yourself a favor and get the Heath-annotated copies. Those annotations can be a life-saver when you get stuck.

<comment><USER10> I had exactly the same experience -- one year in a Great Books school (in my case, St. John's) -- and can say that doing the Elements was probably the single most transformative experience of my life until I had a kid. I ended up reconceiving almost everything I thought I knew about my intellectual constitution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple of interesting tidbits about the Elements that I've run into:

It had a profound influence on Abraham Lincoln. He said (he was largely an autodidact) that the Elements taught him what it meant to actually know that something was true, or words to that effect.

It's an example of how profoundly the West is indebted to Arabian (sometimes called "Islamic") scholarship. For centuries, the version that Europeans actually studied was a Latin translation of an Arabic translation that Arab scholars made from the original. They rescued much of our Greek heritage this way.

<comment><USER12> > Arabian (sometimes called "Islamic") scholarship

"Islamic" seems like a much more accurate descriptor than "Arabian"? For example, looking up al-Khowarizmi, I see that the first sentence of his Wikipedia page is:

> Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (Persian: محمد بن موسی خوارزمی, Arabic: > محمد بن موسى الخوارزمی; c. 780 – c. 850), formerly Latinized as Algoritmi, > was a Persian (modern Khiva, Uzbekistan) mathematician, astronomer, and > geographer during the Abbasid Caliphate, a scholar in the House of Wisdom in > Baghdad.

Or, looking up ibn Battuta:

> All that is known about Ibn Battuta's life comes from the autobiographical > information included in the account of his travels, which records that he > was of Berber descent, born into a family of Islamic legal scholars in > Tangier, Morocco, on 25 February 1304, during the reign of the Marinid > dynasty.

There were a lot more subjects of Arabian empires than there were Arabs.

<comment><USER11> Why are you mentioning these particular eminent people? Were these the translators of the _Elements_? al-Khwārizmī, of course, is very important in the history of mathematics. But that Battuta guy doesn't seem relevant. Your comment seems kind of random, but maybe you can help me understand your point.

<comment><USER12> > Why are you mentioning these particular eminent people?

They were the first two Islamic scholars who came into my head. I actually can't name many more.

I'm not commenting on the _Elements_ ; I'm commenting on your weird comment that "Islamic" scholarship would be better referred to as "Arabian". That isn't so.

<comment><USER11> Well, the translators of the _Elements_ were Arabs, and they translated it into Arabic, so I don't see what the controversy is.

I've noticed a tendency (a rather "weird" tendency, in fact) for people to refer to "Islamic" science, math, and other stuff. Sometimes even when the work in question predates Islam. I don't remember ever hearing people talk about Newton's "Christian" physics. Or describe calculus as "Christian" mathematics. That would be weird, wouldn't it? Even though he was a Christian, living in a Christian society. As was Leibniz. So I think it's weird to hear about "Islamic" mathematics. Maybe someone can explain to me why this is normal.

<comment><USER12> I agree that it would be unusual for people to refer to "Christian" science etc. However, that's not because it's unusual to want to specify what culture something came from -- it's because the conventional identifier is "Western". You shouldn't have much trouble finding discussions of "Western science".

> the translators of the _Elements_ were Arabs, and they translated it into > Arabic

There was a translation into Arabic, yes. Do you actually know that it was done by Arabs? All wikipedia says it that this was done "under Harun al- Rashid", whose court was in Iraq or Syria (and seems to have been run mainly by Persians). The translation would have had to be done by people who understood Greek; this seems less likely for Arabs than for locals.

<comment><USER13> Both of you make persuasive arguments.

FWIW, in my [limited] understanding it was a strain of Sunni Islam that became enamored with learning and preserving Greek and Roman scholarship. This backfired, though, and a strain of theology which very intentionally rejected empiricism and logical deduction emerged to dominate Sunni religious scholarship. At that point the preservation and further development of Western thought decreased significantly; the works produced--those which hadn't been burned--wait for discovery by Europeans centuries later.

Which is why today there are, supposedly, marked differences in the way a society like Iran finances human and physical sciences domestically versus, say, Saudi Arabia where financing of science education is vulnerable to the ire of religious leaders who see it as more of a threat than they otherwise might, similar to many strains of Christian theology which perceive a conflict between scientific scholarship, and acceptance and adherence to their religious creed. Individual adherents can remain oblivious to these esoteric distinctions, but they can matter hugely in terms of the development and atrophy of institutional support within a society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a conventional truth that _Elements_ was a standard textbook for thousands of years, but now that society is no longer a slave to clacissism, nobody actually learns their plane geometry that way. And I had just assumed that I had learned mine some other way.

Indeed I had learned bits and pieces from my father and my teachers. But thinking back, I realized that the solid chunk of education I got, where I saw and undestood a good body of proofs, was from reading _Elements_ while on a family holiday in Canberra.

It's not like there was anything else to do.

<comment><USER15> > _society is no longer a slave to classicism_

True, that - unfortunately. We are no longer required to learn Latin and Greek or to get familiar with classical writings. Having thus moved away from the "good stuff", we (many of us, anyway) are still slaves of ancient prejudices. What we have lost with classicism and the critical thinking it taught us, we "gained" in falling for obscurantism, pseudo-science, political agenda, and advertisement.

<comment><USER14> Hmm, while I agree there is a trade-off, I am mostly in favour of the shift away from the classics. It's not that we shouldn't learn from the Greeks, it's just that we can only afford one corner of a modern education for them.

For one thing, languages are a big things that take a long time to learn. For people in most fields, the time spent learning ancient languages can be spent in better ways. Also, classical educations end up placing Plato and Aristotle on a pedestal, and those guys were wrong about most of the things they said (or rather, less right than their modern successors).

Finally, an education can no longer be well-rounded if it only looks at the classical _West_. Western civilisation has been preeminent since about the 1600's, but if we go back to the axial age, then thinkers from all over Eurasia have to be reckoned with. It's bad enough to distill the Greeks to just Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, but now we have to add Zoroaster, Kongzi, Mengzi, the Buddha, the Upanshads and more just to get a fragmentary and hackneyed overview of classical thought.

<comment><USER15> Still, Aristotle (or Kongzi) would be much more preferable to some of the old books that are almost universally studied today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How much effort must have gone into the Geometry Applet? It's a shame that it's no longer available. (I get a 403 for [http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/Geometry/Geometry.html.](http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/Geometry/Geometry.html.)) But even if it were, I don't think I've had a functioning Java browser plugin in half a dozen years.

<comment><USER17> A lot of the applets are still available on the pages for individual constructions. (I'm using it in a class right now.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Shouldn't the (1997) in the submission title read (300 BC)?

<comment><USER19> It would have to be in ancient Greek.

<comment><USER20> This is Heath's translation from 1908. For anyone who wants a physical copy, I highly recommend Green Lion Press's version, which is a ridiculously well made book for the price: [https://amzn.com/1888009187/](https://amzn.com/1888009187/) (note: this doesn't include all of Heath's critical commentary)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Excellent! I have Heath's edition and read through it 20 years ago. Prompted me to take it off the shelf and bookmarking this site.

</comment><comment><USER22> would it be possible to rewrite Euclid's Elements with a proof assistent like Coq?

<comment><USER12> We don't even understand some of the things Euclid was trying to say.

One of his postulates is "all right angles are equal". How do you recognize two angles as "right" other than by measuring their equality?

<comment><USER23> Euclid was working in a context of classical geometric construction with compass and straightedge.

If you have a line and a point not on the line, you can classically construct a perpendicular through the point. Use a compass centered on the given point, open to an arbitrary radius greater than the distance between the given point and the line. Draw a circle, which will intersect the line at two points A and B. Now draw a second circle centered on A and passing through B, and a third circle centered on B and passing through A. The second and third circles intersect in two points, C and D, one on each side of the given line. Draw a new line through C and D. This line is perpendicular to the original line and forms four right angles with it.

A way to check whether a given angle is right is to pick an arbitrary point on one of the lines and draw a circle centered there and passing through an arbitrary point on the other line. The circle will then pass through a second point on the other line. You can construct the perpendicular bisector of the segment formed by the two points in which the circle intersects the second line, and see whether the bisector is identical to the first line. (Although I'm not sure that's the right classical solution because I don't recall whether "noticing whether two constructed lines are identical" or "noticing whether a constructed line intersects a given point" are allowed tasks in classical construction.)

<comment><USER12> > [...] Draw a new line through C and D. This line is perpendicular to the > original line and forms four right angles with it.

You could define a right angle this way, but that only makes sense if "right angles" were already interesting before you worked out how to construct them. That process is valuable because it produces right angles; right angles aren't valuable by virtue of being the result of that process.

If you believe that, you still need to ask why certain angles were labeled "right", bearing in mind that whatever the reason was, it cannot have implied that two "right" angles were necessarily equal to each other.

<comment><USER23> It seems like they have tons of meaning in terms of squares, parallel lines, and many parts of triangle geometry, including the Pythagorean theorem and the angle sum in a triangle being two rights angles.

<comment><USER12> I don't see how right angles are relevant to parallel lines, but sure, they're significant in many places, including all the others you mentioned.

But again, all of those things are built on an existing recognition of right angles. You could define a right angle as "an angle equal to half the angle sum of a triangle", but then "all right angles are equal" would be an easily provable theorem, not a postulate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of people don't know this, but in the same way Euler is pronounced Oiler, Euclid is pronounced Oiklid.

<comment><USER25> What's your source? "Eu" is a very common Greek dipthong typically take as "yu",for the traditional Erasmian pronunciation, or "Ev" for modern reconstructed Greek.

<comment><USER24> Just a little joke. It's nice for trolling your friends though. They go the whole day thinking it's pronounced Oiklidian geometry.</comment></comment></comment>


The New Yorker looking at better ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/03/web-reading-bye-bye-belly-fat.html

<comment><USER2> _But there is an ever-growing amount of good writing online, much of which suffers from its proximity to these low-rent neighbors._

I'm not entirely sure why good writing 'suffers more' from proximity to a direct-marketing campaign - acai berries, belly fat, whatever - than it would from, say, an ad for a Ford Focus or The King's Speech. Both offer an equivalent amount of visual distraction.

The author here doesn't understand that online advertising is fairly efficient - the 'get four auto insurance quotes' advertisements show up because more- familiar brand advertisements simply don't work well in those spots. People reading good writing online aren't particularly valuable to advertisers, so they get to see no-risk-to-the-advertiser cost-per-acquisition advertisements. Got to try and monetize somehow.

I suspect there's a certain bit of class snobbery here - the reader is engaged in something _literary_ , so how dare he be subjected to an ad so déclassé, it belongs on a gossip site? Obviously he, a refined soul, deserves more tasteful commercial distractions!

There are two solutions here. The reader _could_ be extensively and thoroughly tracked, so we know enough about him to show him an ad for that off-Broadway adaption of Silas Marner he's been jonesing for. But that approach is currently under attack from all parties - and besides, when people are tracked, the ads best suited for them are often less sophisticated than they'd anticipate.

I prefer the more direct solution: if you don't like the ads, pay for the content through some other means, and eliminate the need for advertising altogether.

<comment><USER3> _I'm not entirely sure why good writing 'suffers more' from proximity to a direct-marketing campaign - acai berries, belly fat, whatever - than it would from, say, an ad for a Ford Focus or The King's Speech. Both offer an equivalent amount of visual distraction._

It's not about visual distraction, it's about reputation and the reputation- by-assocation of the publication on who's website the ads appear. I trust car manufacturers and movie studios a lot more than the people behind those acai berry and belly fat ads, which to me, are as bad as spam about Viagra and Cialis.

<comment><USER2> According to the article, it's about 'protecting visual space for reading'. But now that I see this comment's been upvoted, I'm curious - if good writing does in fact 'suffer' when placed beside an advertisement you don't trust, why is that, and how exactly does the writing suffer?

You'd be capable of identifying good writing without any advertising alongside it. But when the exact same article is placed beside an acai berry ad, somehow the experience is worse. How come? Does having the acai berry ad there make you feel foolish somehow? Do you not want to be associated with it? Are you worried that someone might see you reading something alongside an acai berry ad? When you read the content, are you thinking of acai berries? These thoughts never enter my mind, but I could be atypical. Perhaps you're simply less likely to start the article, having seen the acai berries first?

If most people out there can't evaluate content independent of the advertising that supports it, that's got interesting implications for the online ad industry. Perhaps quality brands should start charging sites for the privilege of displaying their reputation-enhancing banners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that the set of people who

A) want to read long form writing online, rather than in print,

B) but they don't use RSS, they don't use Readability, they're not using a mobile app, and they use the default website layout instead of the print stylesheets

C) and they're irritated or turned off by weird ads,

D) but they don't use an ad blocker

is a very large set, and I don't think it's growing any bigger.

<comment><USER5> I'm almost certain this is the majority of the people who read the New Yorker online. Among the HN crowd, you might be right (though I doubt it), but regular people just aren't aware of almost anything you listed.

It might be hard to believe, but there are millions of intelligent people out there who read long-form writing online but have almost no idea that websites are mutable. There's nothing wrong with that--they just have different priorities.

<comment><USER4> That does seem surprising to me. I can pretty much divide up my social circle into people who don't read, people who have print subscriptions to stuff like the New Yorker and Harper's and think that the Internet is mostly good for shopping, and people who have every writer in the universe in their RSS feed and never leave Google Reader.

<comment><USER5> I can see a lot of the same people in my social circle as well, but I'm not sure they're representative of the norm. I think as geeks who know what HTML and CSS are, own approximately a dozen devices that can access the web in some capacity, and don't think that Greasemonkey is a brand of motor oil or something, we have a tendency to form an everyone-must-be-just-like-me myopia. And even worse, we tend to (even subconsciously) assume that people who, say, don't know what the difference between a browser and Google must to be too stupid to read long-form content online. They're the ones reading MSN.

I'm not accusing you of doing this personally, it's just a recurring deficiency I see in tech communities (and I'm certainly not immune to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm reminded of the punchline of the old econ joke "we've already established what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling over price." We always have to remember in web publishing, ads _are_ content. Your users _will_ judge you based on the ads you display (if they are not in the tiny minority who block them). And, rightfully so. Do you think Vogue would allow some crappy ad from T.J. Maxx between LV and Prada? Never. That (and their readership who pour over the ads to see what's hot) is why they have sky-high CPMs. It can be done online, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Today I learned there is a whole universe of bizarre ads on web pages that I have never seen, thanks to AdBlock. Seriously, I had no knowledge of the ads described in this article.</comment>


New design points a path to the 'ultimate' battery - <AUTHOR> https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-design-points-a-path-to-the-ultimate-battery <comment><USER2> They talk of lithium dendrites, shorting and explosion risk. But this battery is lithium-air. Can a battery with no builtin oxide burn/explode like a conventional lithium battery? Or would it 'slow burn'?</comment>


Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found by scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-root-molecular-declining-health-scientists.html

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

 _".. The scientists found that the basic cause of age-related health decline is malfunctioning telomeres — the end caps on cells' chromosomes that protect them against DNA damage ... DePinho published a study in Nature in January 2011 that demonstrated it was possible to reverse the symptoms of extreme aging in mice by increasing their levels of telomerase, the enzyme that maintains the health of the telomeres ..."_

A bit late. Elizabeth Blackburn won the nobel prize for physiology in medicine 2009 for ...

 _"... The trio has been credited with creating a new field of science, with their investigation of chromosomes and the discovery of an enzyme which they named Telomerase. Telomerase is almost like an anti-ageing solution - it is critical to the regeneration of cells, which are the building blocks of life. If cells cannot replenish, humans are more prone to disease. ..."_ ~ <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/05/2705473.htm>

<comment><USER2> Also, mice do not suppress their telomerase. Without telomerase, tumors have a hard time getting larger than a golf ball. This is why large mammals like humans actually suppress telomerase expression in most cells. We might survive a golf ball sized tumor. A mouse? No way! There's no value in a mouse suppressing telomerase, so they're designed to have it switched on all the time.

Would we want our telomerase to be switched on all the time? This would probably make us abnormally prone to developing cancer.

This is also why whalers find tumor scars in whales all the time, but never run across whales that are going die of cancer. It's hard for a tumor to get larger than the size of your head. For us, this would likely be fatal. For a whale, it's no big deal.

<comment><USER3> That is an interesting trade off.

Still good new though, in my opinion. Cancer seems much more tractable than aging. If we can reduce the problem of aging to something that only requires us to additionally solve cancer, I would be ecstatic.

<comment><USER4> One of the things that cancer is good at is switching "on" telomerase (enabling the cancer to spread), so naturally working out how to switch "off" telomerase in cancer tumors has actually been one of the key vectors in cancer research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The popular press pieces are, as usual, breathlessly overhyped. Some commentary on this:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/another- proposed-...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/another-proposed- link-between-short-telomeres-and-dysfunctional-mitochondria.php)

"it is certainly the case that damaged mitochondria and shortening telomeres are only two of the possible reasons we suffer age-related degeneration. Many of the other causes of aging involve a build up of varying forms of damaging waste product that the body cannot remove - mechanisms which are quite capable of causing disability and death on their own, telomere shortening or no telomere shortening.

"That said, telomeres, mitochondria, and p53 are all large and healthy areas of research when it comes to the biology of aging. I imagine that anyone would be pleased to produce good evidence that might mechanically tie them all together, such that one or more are secondary effects rather than primary causes. From an economic perspective, we should all be hoping that some of our present candidates for the primary causes of aging turn out to be secondary effects - because then we don't have to devote any time towards developing repair biotechnologies to fix them.

"On a closer reading of the new research, I have to say that it looks to me very much like an independent confirmation of discoveries from 2007 and 2008 relating to mitochondrial damage, telomere length, and the enzyme telomerase. In a nutshell, it may be that telomere shortening is entirely driven by mitochondrial dysfunction"

Etc. Links to more in the post.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't see anything new in the press release. Everything it states has been known for several years at least.

Wish there was a link to the original study, but all links are either advertisements or internal links. The harvard.edu on the bottom does no good. What is the point of such press releases?

<comment><USER7> They even gave a Nobel prize for the basis of this work like a year or two back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting stuff. I know it's just a small step, but it makes you wonder if maybe good ole Ray Kurzweil is onto something with his talk about achieving immortality.

Which leads to some interesting questions... if there was a drug available that would let you live to be hundreds or thousands of years old, barring accident, would you take it? What would be the effect on society if death were all but eliminated? Would our population quickly overrun the limits of Earth's resources?

Thinking about this almost feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

<comment><USER9> A cure for aging terrifies me, my gut tells me that it would be the end of homo sapiens.

Think about it, do you really think all higher order life has this "defect" for no reason? Without aging, the youth would be at an eternal disadvantage in society. The rush to have children would all but disappear without a biological clock. Evolutionarily speaking, a cure for aging is a dead end.

That said, i could easily see it happening, so like I said, I'm terrified.

<comment><USER10> I think by the point that we can banish aging technological self-improvement will have overtaken evolution by a long way. We already severely handicap evolution by using medicine to compensate for disadvantageous features such as short-sigtedness.

<comment><USER11> We just alter the criteria for selection. Evolution is still there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So is the "news" here that the telomeres are the root cause rather than a contributing cause? I'm not seeing anything else I didn't know.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh no! singularity is playin itself out</comment>