Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page was hacked by an unemployed web developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-page-was-hacked-by-an-unemployed-web-developer/ <comment><USER2> Although this is blogspam, it's a blogspam that I can actually support...

This is being covered a lot more widely because FB didn't just pay the guy. I know it wasn't about money for FB, but this is easily done a lot more damage then they would have expected and because of their inadequate handling of a single bug report, I can only feel satisfied as I think this will go down as a good case study of how not to be so dismissive with critical bugs.

(I still think they should pay the guy, and it should be double the $5k he would have expected to receive).

<comment><USER3> Dismissive and ignored? Did you read what he submitted to them? It made no sense. He vaguely stated that there was a bug and his education. His bug report was nonsensical. I am not even slightly surprised they ignored it. And he violated the TOS before he even ever tried to post to Zuckerberg's wall.

<comment><USER4> Having dealt with fellow developers that don't have perfect english or thick accents I think it's quite unprofessional to dismiss someone's complaint without even trying to understand them. It's great for us native English speakers that it's such a dominant language but I think we should all give a little more respect for others where it's clearly not their first language and they're the ones having to go out of their way to communicate with us. I for one am glad I don't have to deal with the bilingualism, with a bit more empathy and less dismissiveness the whole thing could have been avoided.

<comment><USER5> I am not a native English speaker. Although I study in England (University of Manchester), I believe half of my course mates are not native speakers either. At least the ones who turn up to lectures. People try to explain their algorithms, ideas in broken English with damn thick accents but they DO explain. They put effort.

From what he managed to write in the blog post, he CAN write English which is not THAT bad.

But this dude doesn't really bother. Hey Facebook, there's a bug. Wanna know it? How about you... beg me to tell you?

I am quoting him: whatever , i dont care for miss spelling , just the idea , i never correct an underline red word ;)

Did FB treat it properly? No. Did he act properly? Not either. But since it's FB... THEY ARE EVIL!!!!111!

<comment><USER6> You do make a good point, but at the same time I was easily able to understand his original bug report. I agree that both sides should be making a little more effort, and engaging in a bit less drama.

<comment><USER7> He didn't make a bug report. He didn't specify how he could post to other peoples' walls. All he said was that he could, and that he already broke the ToS by using it on another person's account. This was his original report:

        -----Original Message to Facebook-----
        From: email@example.com
        To:
        Subject: post to facebook users wall .

        Name: Ḱhalil
        E-Mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
        Type: privacy
        Scope: www
        Description: dear facebook team .

        my name is khalil shreateh.
        i finished school with B.A degree in Infromation Systems .

        i would like to report a bug in your main site
        (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it .

        repro:
        the bug allow facebook users to share links to other
        facebook users , i tested it on sarah.goodin wall and i
        got success post
        link - > https://www.facebook.com/10151857333098885
        -----End Original Message to Facebook-----

From that, you surmised that he exploited the "make a new wall post" form by replacing the user ID with another of his choosing?

<comment><USER8> When you're working across cultural boundaries you realise that most problems stem from an incorrect assumption.

In this case Khalil probably held the incorrect assumption that an actual demonstration of the bug would be how Facebook would want this to be reported, hence the lack of details.

It's not unreasonable for him to think Facebook would take a look at their HTTP logs to find out what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once again, with feeling:

Even if Facebook wanted to ignore the terms of their bug bounty to pay this person, they probably can't. Bug bounties are legally fraught as it stands. Like every bug bounty, Facebook's is clear: if you use a real account, _you must have the consent of the accountholder_. That term isn't just there to make the Facebook security team's job easier; they also can't officially condone people compromising random user accounts.

Facebook also operates in a web of contractual and regulatory concerns, including California's breach notification laws. Exploitation of security vulnerabilities on Facebook's public properties outside of the terms of their bug bounty might be legally more akin to attacks than to pro-bono testing. Further, Facebook obviously needs the ability to reliably enforce their terms, lest they provide attackers with ammunition in a court case if they, for instance, Pastebin large amounts of Facebook user data. "Oh, I was just participating in the bug bounty program; I certainly wasn't setting out to sell $CELEBRITY's data to a tabloid."

Jim Denaro is an attorney specializing in stuff on this. We talked to him on Twitter this weekend when the story broke, and he said he would have advised against paying the bounty here too. Maybe we can get him to write a blog post.

I don't know how much "outrage" this has actually generated in the security community (maybe you can find links). The security people I've talked to think what happened makes perfect sense. Facebook didn't freak out, the acknowledged the bug report (once they understood it) and fixed the bug. They're just not paying a reward, because the bugfinder violated what is perhaps _the most important term in the bug bounty_.

One more thing: people on HN have a lot of strong opinions about Facebook, and while I don't share many of them, I understand and respect them. Understand though that the people working on Facebook's security are real and very smart and by and large not the least bit interested in screwing other bugfinders out of 0.00000000001% of Facebook's operating capital.

<comment><USER10> I understand your position in this, and after reading the full story, I even agree... but I also know a few independent security researchers (i.e. people who don't do this professionally) who do not.

They, rightfully or not, see an independent who was ignored and then persecuted for trying to responsibly report a bug. It's given Facebook a black eye to more than just the HN crowd, and people will probably be thinking twice about disclosing security bugs, particularly if they get "working as intended" as their initial response.

Also, consider the guidelines that go into developing a UI. The more roadblocks you put in someone's way to register for your site, the fewer people will register. Apply that to this, and the more roadblocks you put into reporting a bug correctly (requesting special accounts, fighting to convince staff that your bug is an actual issue), the fewer bug reports you're going to get. That's not a good thing for Facebook in the long run.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how you get from the facts of what happened to "persecution". Could you go a little further into that?

<comment><USER10> Disabling his Facebook account, and deciding not to pay Khalil Shreateh (though the account was later re-enabled after further emails between himself and Facebook).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Shreateh reports he will not, however, receive a bounty for his work — per > an e-mail from Facebook, he violated the terms of the program when he hacked > Zuckerberg's account.

I think this is wrong. He posted on Sarah Godin's wall first before making any report, very clearly breaking the rules FB sets up for its whitehat program. They offer a way to create test accounts for exactly this. Posting on Mark Zuckerberg's wall has nothing to do with it.

As far as I'm concerned. FB's only mistake here was to brush him off instead of asking for further information from the initial report. Hardly newsworthy.

<comment><USER12> From my understanding, Sarah Godin is a fake FB account that he made to test his bug out.

<comment><USER13> Sarah Goodin is not a fake account, she is one of the first Facebook users (back when it was at Harvard only).

<comment><USER14> How do you know that the post to her wall wasn't his initial discovery of the bug? Any occurrence of the bug was a breach of the ToS.

<comment><USER7> Not between two test accounts or two accounts that belong to you (work and personal, which you are allowed to have.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't people just send things in their native language? If the platform for communication is serious (like a place to report security vulnerabilities), I would imagine they would spend the time/money to get a real translation if one was needed. Even Google Translate probably could've done a better job than this guy's original report.

<comment><USER16> There's no excuse for not knowing the English language, first as a 21 century citizen and secondly as a web developer.

<comment><USER17> There's no excuse for not knowing at least three out of English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Urdu, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and German. If you've finished university peeking at a fourth and fifth language can't hurt either.

How many do you know?

Edit: Oh, and how about a bit of Latin and Greek, maybe?

<comment><USER16> I _do_ know English, Spanish and Italian and I'm doing my best learning Portuguese but that doesn't mean we should encourage a world divided by language barriers. I'd be happy to completely forget about every language, including my own native language, and having English as a universal language, it's called progress.

There's no advantage whatsoever in having a fragmented world, and if the mess in my head is any indication the alleged advantages of bilingualism are just BS.

<comment><USER17> While it would certainly be _convenient_ if everybody spoke the same language, I don't think it would be _better_ than the current state of affairs, where most people know two to three languages more-or-less well.

After all, knowing more than one language does give you some different insights, not just into the culture of the other language but also into your own culture. Furthermore, there is a whole canon of classical works in basically every language which would likely lose some of its value if it were only accessible in the translated form.

We can add to the last point by taking note that English is a particularly bad example of a 'world-wide native language'. While its simplicity – both with regards to its vocabulary and its grammar – certainly helps when it is the _second_ language of someone, such concerns are of smaller importance when you want it to be everyone's first language: Such a language can come with a much stronger set of grammatical rules and nicer ways to build composite words and still be (roughly) equally accessible to its native speakers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I don't really understand what significance there is in stating that he is "unemployed." Does that somehow make his actions better/worse or the "hack" more/less tolerable?

<comment><USER18> You're starting to see the fnords. Stop that! Look over there, a celebrity is having marital problems! A pretty young blonde woman is missing!

Journalism is always fair and balanced. They would never, ever use potentially biasing words to suggest that you favor the big corporation over the individual.

<comment><USER19> I think it was done to give credence to the web-developers lack of "corporatism", to show an "underdog" narrative. Sort of like "homeless man discovers flaw in millionaire's mansion security".. he's so badass he doesn't need a home, or a job, to be good at what he does.

I think. It's gotten nearly impossible to tell w/ modern journalism.

<comment><USER18> "Unemployed" is _never_ a positive word in American English. In America, if you're unemployed, it's because you're a lazy, shiftless bum - and will quickly resort to crime if your own shortcomings won't let you scam a powerful and scrupulously honest corporation.

The word "unemployed" has such negative connotations here that trying to use it in an underdog narrative is dooming your story to failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Facebook team should have taken better care of this, but the guy should have used one of the test accounts, or created a test account to demonstrate this, rather than fuck with someone else's private Facebook account.

Very bad form.

<comment><USER21> I agree. Why not create a test account and post to his own wall?

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I think we should crowd-source $5k to that guy and make Zuck sure we don't really need him for anything.

I'm ready to toss $10.

<comment><USER22> You would prove nothing other than that crime pays.

<comment><USER23> Crime does pay, that's rather the point of crime, it doesn't really need proving.

<comment><USER22> In that case, crowdsourcing a way to pay this guy $5k for the vulnerability he found and abused would be counterintuitive.

<comment><USER24> WOW WOW you say "abused"... strong language there. He was trying to show the bug to them. This guy looks like he never read the TOS in the first place so he wasn't going after abusing. He didn't communicate properly is the way I would put it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Plenty more discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229858)

</comment><comment><USER26> I find it interesting the amount of attention Hacker News is getting from this in mainstream media.

It makes me wonder, when people unfamiliar to Hacker News read about it in stories like this, do they get the wrong impression and think Hacker News is about the criminal kind of "hacking"?

<comment><USER18> The mainstream media spent twenty years trying to turn the word "hacker" into some sort of unholy cross between thief, terrorist, child pornographer, and teenager. They'd _better_ be getting the sense that hacker == criminal by now!

<comment><USER7> Your replies in this thread have been piss poor, anti-corporation, anti-media, hyperbolic shitposting. Please take it back to /r/technology.

<comment><USER18> If the media hasn't consistently presented "hacker" as negative, why is it seen as such? After all, everyone who actually _knows_ what hacking is a: sees it as positive, and b: is irritated at the media presentation.

Facts is facts, man. Sorry if you don't like the snark, but I'm not sorry for telling the truth.

<comment><USER7> It's the general public's opinion about "hacker", not just the media's. Connotations change. Everyone here knows "hacker" to mean "someone who finds a simple solution to a complex problem" but everyone _elsewhere_ uses "hacker" to mean "someone who breaks into another person's computer system." It's not even the wrong usage; it's just a usage you don't personally like.

That's not touching on the rest of your posts. They've all been hyperbolic bullshit, and I hate seeing it bleed over from the political discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> hasn't this story been posted multiple times already?

Also it was made clear that he clearly violated the TOS and that his messages were unintelligible.

<comment><USER28> It most definitely has. I'm so over arguing over this.

Previous discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229858) +383

and about 10 other single digit posts of various blogspam sites

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=facebo...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=facebook&sortby=create_ts+desc&start=0)

and reddit

[http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1kkvfr/user_report...](http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1kkvfr/user_reports_security_bug_to_facebook_after_user/) +329

[http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/1kkvei/user_reports_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/1kkvei/user_reports_security_bug_to_facebook_after_user/) +532

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ko71v/researche...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ko71v/researcher_facebook_ignored_the_bug_i_found_until/) +831

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1kkoux/hacker_po...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1kkoux/hacker_posts_facebook_bug_report_on_zuckerbergs/) +3005

Can we wrap this one up perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Its simple, Facebook can't set the precedent that people who exploit bugs in this way get paid. If they did, every Joe who felt that their particular bug wasn't being addressed quite right would think that public exploitation is the faster route to their reward.

<comment><USER30> Conversely, they might be setting the opposite precendent, that they might ignore your intial email if you don't speak perfectly, and if they ignore your initial email, even hacking Zuck's account won't get you any offical recognition.

The bad precendent is that if you're not a great english speaker, you might as well sell your bug on the black market. This is not good for facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is wrong with journalists now days. Reading on hacker news and copy pasting stuff in to articles is not what i would call good journalism.

It would be nice if people could stop reposting shit from "average joe" news papers.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would be a class act if Mark Z personally paid him the bounty or maybe if FB employees crowdfunded it.

Then they don't have to admit they were wrong and don't look like jerks. Best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER33> This seems like a lack of communication skills on both parts imho, why would you respond: "this is not a bug" to a bug report you did not understand.

</comment><comment><USER34> poor show FB - thumbs down!

</comment><comment><USER35> lol, you ad serving pricks! XD

Will someone send this Khalil Shreateh a brand new quad-core? TIA

Khalil Shreateh - respect. Let your name be indexed once more.

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook is a top tier company; they don't pay people attention, much less real money, without a track record of like Harvard or Stanford already.

<comment><USER37> I really don't think that's an fair allegation to just throw out there. Care to back that up with some evidence?</comment></comment>


Would you use a Shared REPL for DevOps? - <AUTHOR> https://cto.ai/blog/a-shared-repl-for-devops/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The Dev Console is a simple and popular REPL that millions of programmers use every day, but, what many don't know, is that this simple interface is the basis for one of the best ways to program that reaches far beyond the browser. REPL-driven programming, for those who know, is a subtle programming superpower."

</comment><comment><USER2> "REPL-Driven Development The most graceful way to code."

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great job!</comment>


High Res PSD's layered mobile device photos - <AUTHOR> https://prenticemathew.com/downloads.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the budget for most mobile app startups is, so I'm not sure if it'd be more reasonable for a startup to find some friend with a DSLR to take some shots for lunch or coffee (essentially getting something 80% as good as these, without the extra features of layers etc for approximately 10% of your asking rate). These freebies certainly look like they're high quality, though, and that's a start.

Something that strikes me as way more important is that transforming a screenshot so that it looks natural in the hand of the model is probably the most valuable thing you can offer here. This means giving it some perspective (skew, rotate, etc...), right? Automating that for each image by providing a macro or something would really make these images more valuable in my opinion. Even text instruction rather than a script would be useful.

I don't have Photoshop, and maybe Pixelmator is ignoring scripts such as these since it doesn't understand them, so I may be giving you advice you already know. If not, consider figuring out a way to package that, because that'd certainly make these images more useful (perhaps even worth more than $70, although I really have no context for stock photo value).</comment>


Show HN: a simple command-line rss reader great for browsing unobtrusively - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dpapathanasiou/cmdline-news

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a simple command-line based rss reader which is great for browsing your favorite sites unobtrusively, without having to open a browser window.

Unless people look really closely at your terminal window, they will think you are compiling code or doing some other low-level work related task.

It's great for meeting rooms and work environments where other people are able to see your screen easily and without warning.</comment>


Kindle books get page numbers - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/kindle-books-get-page-numbers-and-social-features/

<comment><USER2> Since you can change the font size, effectively changing the size of a page, I don't understand how this page number would work and be consistent for all the readers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed; plus, can't you turn the iPad/iPhone Kindle app to landscape mode, also affecting pagination?</comment></comment>


Microsoft Defends Surface Pro's Limited Battery Life, Storage Space  - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/microsoft_defends_surface_pro's_limited_battery_life_storage_space500

<comment><USER2> I'd rather have an ultrabook</comment>


Aardvark: Intelligent Answers Via IM or Twitter (useful tools review) - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefultools.com/2009/07/intelligent-answers-via-im-or-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're not interested in our review of Aardvark, you can go directly to <http://vark.com>.</comment>


Quantcast's traffic spikes as Rap Genius traffic falls - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantcast.com/quantcast.com

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one that thinks even though RapGenius does something with lyrics that they think is awesome, it is still a lyrics site that reproduces copyrighted works without permission?</comment>


Equalize.js now equalizes height or width of child elements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tsvensen/equalize.js

<comment><USER2> I've found the best way of equalizing heights/widths is just using display:table/table-row/table-cell. It handles resizing (responsiveness) and doesn't require any JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> So you're back to your layout being entirely dependent on your markup? wasn't this what CSS layouts were supposed to get away from?

<comment><USER4> As opposed to your layout being entirely dependent on JavaScript? I'm not sure I see the difference between requiring JavaScript code to manipulate the layout versus using CSS to do the same. Why is one better/worse than the other?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _sigh_... Yet another simple plugin which needs jQuery for something which could be done in vanilla JS and still need less LOC.

Tim: A better approach would be to iterate through all children and find the maximum using elem.offset(Height|Width).

Then create a new <style> in the head for your plugin if it doesn't exist and append a new rule like:

      style.innerHTML += '#' + (elem.id || (elem.id = 'eq' + (Date.now() % 1e9))) + '>*{' + equalize + ':' + val + '}';

If you don't like this you could still use elem.style.(width|height) (and maybe even detach the container beforehand to prevent unnecessary reflows), which will be faster and doesn't require a 90KB lib.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call on a non-js version, this was abstracted from some code for a larger project. When I find the time I'll update the repo with a branch for a non- jQuery version, but there are plenty of simple scripts out there.

Also, jQuery is 32KB minified and gzip'd AND that's if it's not already cached. Using the Google CDN helps as well, chances are you may not even be downloading it. Not looking to get into a jQuery vs. js debate.

"I don't always write jQuery, but when I do, I use Javascript"

<comment><USER5> I know that. In fact I use jQuery in almost every website I'm writing, because I need backwards compatibility with older browsers. But since I started working on a certain website which only supports IE9, I'm pretty much only using jQuery for $.fn.animation. I just feel like it's a huge waste of computing time. Apart from that I think it's important to write "cross- library" plugins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> flexbox

<comment><AUTHOR> Flexbox is a great solution, but only partially supported as of right now for the latest releases of the major browsers (IE9 and below, no support):

<http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox>

Great article on the latest version of flexbox: <http://github.com/doctyper/flexie>

So flexbox will work, but it is a bit unstable right now.</comment></comment>


What's to know about the credibility of empirical economics? (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2013-ioannidis.pdf

<comment><USER2> [http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics- blog/2013/nov/...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics- blog/2013/nov/06/is-economics-a-science-robert-shiller)

When it comes to reproducibility of experiments beyond a reasonable doubt I feel that it's difficult to place economics up against the physical or hard sciences. People are very hard to understand and control.</comment>


How could the new Harry Potter book be published as an ebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6217 <comment><USER2> A certain Richard Stallman (of GNU notoriety) spoke at my University yesterday on copyright history, current copyright law, and its implications when it comes to technology.

While I can't say I stand alongside him on all of his viewpoints, he makes some interesting remarks about ebooks. He says, and I agree, that ebooks restricts a lot of freedoms as a society. The potential of integrated copyright is huge, citing the DMCA and DRM usage. We aren't free to read and share these books that we bought. The books' authors do not have much to gain from this either as it is the publishers that are benefit.

Well, in either case, I was never a big Potter fan. More of a science-fiction geek, myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problems lie in DRM, not the ebook itself. Recently on TeleRead there was an article about starting a website with Creative Commons licensed ebooks. I also plan on writing another article where I'll explore what a publisher/ebookstore can do -- instead of DRM.

ps I haven't read HP either, just saw the movie...wish I had more time to read (lame excuse)

<comment><USER2> You're right. The problem usually isn't in the product, it's usually the problematic current implementation of it.

There's a lot of things to consider and I look forward to that article.</comment></comment></comment>


Inspirational quotes about life, Quote life. 5 Simple rules for happy life - <AUTHOR> http://boomsumo.com/inspirational-quotes-about-life/ <comment><USER2> I like it.</comment>


Physical force alone spurs gene expression, study reveals - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-physical-spurs-gene-reveals.html <comment><USER2> "We found that force can activate genes without intermediates, without enzymes or signaling molecules in the cytoplasm," said University of Illinois mechanical science and engineering professor Ning Wang, who led the research. "We also discovered why some genes can be activated by force and some cannot."

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a bad headline. It implies that nothing else influences gene expression, when the article says that physical stretching of force-sensitive histones can influence gene expression, without the assistance of any other factors.

To be clear, factors other than physical force can also influence gene expression.

<comment><USER4> >when the article says that

"study reveals"

>physical stretching of force-sensitive histones

"physical force"

>can influence gene expression,

"spurs gene expression"

>without the assistance of any other factors

"alone"

<comment><USER5> "He alone is capable of pulling the sword from the stone."

Does this imply he can pull the sword from the stone by himself or that only he can pull the sword from the stone?

<comment><USER4> How about "ARM STRENGTH alone is capable of pulling the sword from the stone."

Does that mean that your leg muscles (which are stronger) are NOT capable of pulling the sword? Does that mean a tractor can't do it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article is here: [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/14/eaay9095](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/14/eaay9095)

Earlier work is described in the U of I press release: [https://mechanical.illinois.edu/news/force-triggers-gene- exp...](https://mechanical.illinois.edu/news/force-triggers-gene-expression- stretching-chromatin) and available to read here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5121013/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5121013/)

Glad that none of the work was behind paywall!

<comment><USER7> > _Force-induced gene up-regulation does not follow the weak power law but > depends on H3K9 demethylation_

I'm sure it's common knowledge to people inside the field, but "The weak power law" is quite vague for non-experts.

From the article I got this:

> _In this study, we reveal that high force frequency ( >50 Hz) does not > induce rapid transcription, although the chromatin is being stretched to > sufficient extents to allow for transcription. Over the last two decades, > studies on the rheological responses of living cells demonstrate that living > cells exhibit a gradual stiffening response to increasing force frequencies > [i.e., the weak power law (12, 27)]._

Ok, that doesn't _really_ clarify that much for me. Is it the _(weak power) law_ or the _weak (power law)_ , for example? I mean we're talking about exerting force, both kind of could make sense.

Any experts willing to explain a bit?

<comment><USER8> You got me curious. Apparently it's "weak power-law" and means a power-law relationship only applies over part of the range. As opposed to strong power law which applies over the full curve, or false power law where only a truncated part of the data fits a power law.

Different types of power laws: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.03408.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.03408.pdf)

Power-law rheology of cells: [https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev- matsci...](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev- matsci-062910-100351)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for looking it up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wondering how this ties into epigenetics.

mount -o remount,rw /dev/dna /neurologicalsubsystem

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting.

So a nice punch in the face or a swift kick in the ass is not enough to produce brain reprogramming. Frequency matters.

I have to test this out on my brother.

<comment><USER11> Well, to be more accurate: they are saying that proteins get created in response to physical force. These don't necessarily "reprogram the brain." It's just that punching your brother in the arm will result in a localized response long before the chemical response arrives from other organs in response to the brain's signals of pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Considering that the primary force on my body is gravity, I wonder whether these gene expression mechanisms underlie weight control...or rather more specifically, my body's stubborn refusal to change weight downward.

<comment><USER13> There is some research on this. I'll try and find an article I read about it a while ago.

Here it is: "Body weight homeostat that regulates fat mass independently of leptin in rats and mice" [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5777058/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5777058/)

It's different than exactly what you were talking about, but the idea of "gravitostat" is interesting so I thought I'd still add it.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! I also read this study a year or ago or so, thanks for reminding me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious how biologists thought callouses formed before this research? Magic?

<comment><USER15> > I'm curious how biologists thought callouses formed before this research? > Magic?

The answer wasn't really known, and the knowledge of this mechanism didn't really exist. This release also doesn't specifically address calluses, though past research (e.g. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2133....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2010.09842.x)) doesn't quite result in a definitive hypothesis either. Could be mechanical, or could be the body's response to damage to specific cells or structures in the skin.

(I may have misstated the above. A dermatologist or other researcher focusing on skin will likely have a more accurate answer than what I could dig up.)

P.s. cynicism is generally appreciated in science, but derision... not so much.</comment></comment>


A little truth leaks out - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/07/29/aLittleTruthLeaksOut.html <comment><USER2> Interesting essay. I'd like to be in the room if Paul Krugman discovered he was being compared with Douglas Holtz-Eakin.</comment>


The JavaScript phenomenon is a mass psychosis - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-javascript-phenomenon-is-a-mass-psychosis-57adebb09359 <comment><USER2> I disagree with you.

Although JavaScript has some flaws, it works and It is easy on the developers.

Frameworks like React, Angular, backbone, amber and tools like Gulp, webpack offer so much versatility.

</comment><comment><USER3> CAUTION: The banner image is NSFW.</comment>


10 Optimizations on Linear Search - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2984631 <comment><USER2> Other ideas, assuming on modern intel (or similar cache size) architecture -- you can load multiple ints at a time and do a bitwise or on the bits higher your largest number.

There's also spagetti sort equivalent [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_random- access_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_random-access_machine)

Also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm)

Original of this: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-fastest-algorithm-to- find-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-fastest-algorithm-to-find-the- largest-number-in-an-unsorted-array/answer/Thomas-A-Limoncelli?srid=X3V5)

</comment><comment><USER3> In this case I feel that an upvote isn't enough - this was intriguing, fascinating, and horrifying in equal measure.

Excellent article.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, asking the question of "Why are we doing this" and "What problem does this solve" is a great way to start a discussion of any engineering solution, and a great way to avoid doing unnecessary work.

There are a lot of things that fundamentally deal with either systems that users interact with or that run on real machines with physical world implications that also make things perform differently, from user interaction latency and pre-computing and pre-caching, to SSD block level reads/writes, cpu caches and other caches, network latency implications, etc.

Similarly, on the algorithm front from things like Boyer–Moore to work being done on non-cryptographic hashes (ie, [https://github.com/rurban/smhasher/](https://github.com/rurban/smhasher/) ) that is sometimes mind boggling.</comment></comment>


I'm planning to live in Thailand while working for an American company. Advice?  - <AUTHOR>

The specific country is Thailand, but I'm be interested in learning about similar arrangements in other places.
I plan to use a tourist visa for 1-2 month stints with trips back to the US or nearby countries (probably Malaysia) to renew.  Is this sort of visa abuse risky? How about if the principles of the company are all in Thailand, and possibly employing Thai citizens?
What are the biggest things to be aware of when doing something like this?
Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> I've run two businesses in Thailand and have been here for a decade (a US citizen). If you want me to give you a rundown on how to handle things send me an email at: matthew [at] ramenshoppe [dot] com.

Sorry, I'm too busy to post a long explanation here. The bottom line is it's all doable and it's usually worth making the move here (quality of life can be very high).

<comment><USER3> I'd love to see you write a blog post when you have a moment

<comment><USER4> Me too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A tourist visa is not designed for extended stays, so yes, going in and out of the country not only goes against the visa's purpose, but also, if you do it enough times, it'll probably raise some flags.

The tricky part that I see with your situation is that you want to live in one country, but work remotely for a company outside of that country. If your company has a base of operations in Thailand, you can get a business visa, which most countries will offer.

Some countries have self-employed visas which allow you to stay there with the only requirement being that you show proof that you can sustain yourself financially.

Some countries have entrepreneur visas that require proof of capital and an intent to establish a business in said country.

Some countries have visas for people who want to stay there for a long time, with no other requirement.

Since you're saying the company might hire Thai citizens, some countries also offer visas for people just evaluating a country for a potential place to start (or extend) a company.

I'm sure you've already done your research, but I suggest, if you haven't already, that you contact an immigration lawyer in that country to see what your options are; it's a worthwhile investment, and if it results in you getting the appropriate type of visa, then it saves you money from the plane rides and inconvenience of leaving the country every 30-60 days.

In these situations, especially if it can result in the company you're working for to get involved if things go south, it's best to err on the side of caution.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is something I would be interested to do myself too.

Only difference is, I am from Finland, and at the moment I don't have such a job that I could perform my duties from Thailand. Although I work in IT-field, and technically it would be possible, but for some reason my employer does not agree with this arrangement.

Anyways, I will be eagerly waiting for any advice on this matter also.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also, the following links might help:

<http://www.mfa.go.th/web/2482.php?id=2492>

and this:

[PDF] [http://www.mfa.go.th/internet/consular/StandardProcessforfor...](http://www.mfa.go.th/internet/consular/StandardProcessforforeigners.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> The employer should be sorting this out for you. It is not simple, and the leaving and reentry on a tourist visa is by no means certain. They do catch on.</comment>


Out of acqui-hire stage - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/04/out-of-acqui-hire-stage.html <comment><USER2> Nice post. I tell engineers itching for promotion a similar story. Once you are demonstrating you can be promoted you have to ask do you _want_ to be. The standards of evaluating your work change between code monkey and senior code monkey.

As it is with startups, as you grow the expectations of what you can do also go up. So doing just as well as before when you heard feedback like "cool, innovative" becomes "is that all they do?" as Scott Mcnealy told promoted folks at Sun, "one step up, one step closer to the door."

</comment><comment><USER3> Forgot one: "Go for profitability, make poor decisions, bounce along the bottom for awhile, and then liquidate."

The most likely path.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few 'case studies' and some data would make this a lot more interesting discussion.

<comment><USER5> I would frame this as, Let's hear them!

HN is the right place to ask...

<comment><USER6> Some friends of mine went through the same process and got to actual value. They chose the cash machine and did fairly well - to this date they turn a fairly significant amount of cash and do very well.

The regret they still have to this day is it didn't fit with their life goals. They each wanted to keep doing more things, but they are tied in and cannot exit that easily. Several of the founders would like to move on, but that option is several years off.

I think the lesson I've learned is that as entrepreneurs we should look at those options based on our goals in life. If you'll be satisfied doing the same sort of business for a long time, then the cash machine is open. If you're not, look for - and work towards - that exit.

One of them said to me "The path to your exit starts at day one; people you meet today could be your potential acquirers/partners tomorrow."

[edited to show the last line was a quote]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this largely determined by the number of employees? My impression was that for internet startups the valuation to # of employees ratio tended to be close to constant (since when valuations rise companies raise more money, of which almost all gets spent on employees); which suggests that the valuation to # of founders ratio is proportional to the total # of employees to # of founders ratio.

</comment><comment><USER8> ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., facebook

<comment><USER5> Personally, I would hate to be in Zuckerberg's shoes. I don't mean I would mind the money, but I would hate to literally be in his shoes running the company "with my name on it" as a sole founder. If anything goes wrong, he's pretty much "done" with entrepreneurship. So perhaps a better example is the loads of non-facebooks that make a ton of money on a quiet multibillion dollar exit, without anyone outside a tight circle even knowing who the founders were. (although having a ton of users). Instagram, maybe?

EDIT: you guys don't like this comment. Let me generalize.

\- Facebook is a bad example because it reached a 50B valuation in private equity deals pre-IPO.

It's better if you mention a company that has already IPO'd, been sold outright (founder not involved anymore), or has lower-valuation equity deals, so that the founder is not under as much pressure.

I would not like to be in the position of figureheading such a company pre- IPO.

This is just my personal taste. Please don't think that I'm trying to be prescriptive. You can trade places with Mr. Zuckerberg if you like. I'm just giving you my thoughts of a better example.

now I'm at -2. Would you please explain why ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., facebook can't be replaced with

ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., zynga (i.e. post ipo, valuation 6B)

or ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., instagram (bought for 1b).

Why do we have to use the company loads of people are saying will fail, and which has to start from a baseline of private equity deals that have already happened valuing it at 50 billion?

This is approximately the amount of money Microsoft has in the bank. How many sales does Microsoft make per year.

This is an enormous responsibility to his previous backers and those who believe in Facebook. I hope for him that everything goes right and he makes a great IPO and remains at the head of company that will always be worth more than that.

But why pick an example where he's under pressure to achieve that. Can you imagine how devastating it would be for the day to come when facebook is sold for 5billion? That would mean that 90% of its valuation would have been "squandered".

baselines and anchors are incredibly important. I think you guys are just not failing to appreciate the pressure on him to stay on top.

<comment><USER9> Done? Really?

He's a proven winner, at this stage. He's got billions in revenue, and took a startup from "the kids at that one college" phase to being one of the most used applications on the planet.

Facebook has more users than Microsoft was able to sell copies of Windows 7 to.

I think "done" is a knee-jerk response, as I'm betting that he wouldn't have a hard time finding a team, or funding, or be hampered in any way in his ability to execute on whatever he decides to do post-Facebook, even if he screws it all up.

<comment><USER10> _Facebook has more users than Microsoft was able to sell copies of Windows 7 to._

Not commenting on any other points raised in this thread except to say: you can't compare Facebook users to Microsoft customers, there's a big difference.

Edit: To the downvoter. This is not a Facebook vs Microsoft argument. Users don't pay for the product, customers (I'm assuming they bought the software and didn't pirate it) do. It's not the same metric.

<comment><USER11> Facebook users are not Facebook's customers.

<comment><USER12> Windows users (for the most part) are not Microsoft customers.

<comment><USER11> I know what you're saying, that actual retail sales are not a big deal for them. However, you're making a category error in that "Windows purchases" (as well as Office, etc.) are what defines their customers of Microsoft's software arm where there is no parallel situation on the Facebook side. That is, at all levels, Microsoft's customers are interacting with the same stuff: Microsoft software.

For Facebook it's different. Facebook's customers are consuming and interacting with an entirely different resource than Facebook's users. In fact, I'd say that Facebook's customers (advertisers et al) actually have __very little __social interaction with each other on an experiential basis compared to Facebook's users. This is to say that Facebook likely puts _a lot_ of work into ensuring that nothing on the customer side gets inadvertently shared, unlike the user side.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would young people worry about unable to remember things? - <AUTHOR>

By "young" I mean, before 30 or before married.
Are you guys over-confident about what you can remember? Do you think good memory is a powerful thing? <comment><USER2> So, wait - does getting married suddenly make you 'old'? =P

According to your description I count as young, and not being able to remember things bothers me a lot sometimes. I remember back before cell phones were commonplace, I could remember 3-4 phone numbers in my head (home, girlfriend, parents, local pizza places) - but now that I've become so reliant on my smartphone, I can only ever seem to remember my own number (and, I'll admit - the pizza place).

Does it bother me? Yeah. I talk to relatives (especially of the grand- variety) who are all "I can still remember every phone number I've ever had", and I get a little bit jealous. I help myself get over it by rationalizing that I have access to a lot more information a lot easier, now - so I don't need to remember as much of it.

Having a good memory is definitely a powerful thing - especially when you want to make a good second impression. So far though, 'take copious notes' has basically solved the "I wish my memory was better" problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I assume this is a market-research type question. FYI, I'm 20+-3 years old.

Almost everything I need to know is available online. Knowing the speed of light is useful, but if I forget it google can remind me. Good memory is useful, but not nearly as useful as it was 30 years ago. There are also good tools online for memorising facts by brute force -- for example, I use Anki to learn formulae.

Regards the wetware brain, the only real issue I have is names. I can't remember them to save my life, and it'll be a few years before technology allows me to offload that function.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I knew it, people are young and smart here. Another thing, I'm also trying to understand: How important is your past memory to you? Do you wish that everyday of your life should have something memorable? Or you'd rather look forward?</comment>


Questions for developers who were or still are cannabis users - <AUTHOR> Do you still smoke, are you able to go without it? Do studies showing decreased IQ and memory retention concern you? Why do you smoke or why not? I feel as though most of the projects posted on this site are not by daily tokers.
This is my personal story:
Throughout university, I smoked daily. It was what we did, and got to the point where I smoked to get homework done. I slowly became a lite drug addict. When I graduated, I quit for 4 months, got a job, continued use for a good 4 months then quit again. It's been nearly 5 months since my last break. I no longer have to quit for a career, and I'm pretty tempted to give back. However, I worry about the effect it will have on my work ethics, social abilities, and consistency in personal care. On the other side, without it, I find I drink more, so I really dont know what to do. I found physical activity helped obviously, and I have been slacking lately. <comment><USER2> It's smoke.

Remember the diesel emissions scandal? It's nothing compared to purposely inhaling smoke. This is the problem:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbon#Human_health)

<comment><USER3> Epigenetic mutation is one side effect of inhaling combustion byproducts like carbon monoxide and benzene.

Edibles and vaporization avoid the combustion byproducts. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)

Longitudinal studies may or may not be able to identify causative relations amidst confounding variables like e.g. air pollution.

 _Lung_ cancer incidence from low to high according to one observational study: NS, MS, MTS, TS.

"Hypothesizing that marijuana smokers are at a significantly lower risk of carcinogenicity relative to tobacco-non-marijuana smokers: evidenced based on statistical reevaluation of current literature." (2008) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19004418/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19004418/)

Is that the case for vaping or edibles? Nobody has any idea yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _Do you still smoke, are you able to go without it? Do studies showing > decreased IQ and memory retention concern you? Why do you smoke or why not? > I feel as though most of the projects posted on this site are not by daily > tokers._

You can eat foods that boost the endocannabinoid system (e.g. containing Omega-3)

 _Short-term_ memory loss ("give me 10 minutes and I'll remember") is an effect of THC use (which also apparently stimulates hippocampal neurogeneration) and also of head injury (which results in neuroinflammation, which THC does reduce) which is sometimes the result of contact and collision sports.

Pain can also be distracting. Just numbing pain can be counterproductive. Some inflammation is good: the body responds to injury with inflammation; but hyperinflammation is not good. The endocannabinoid system uses Omega-3 to produce endocannabinoids which help regulate inflammation. Most American diets have more Omega-3 than Omega-6. High Omega-6 to 3 ratios are apparently not advantageous for endocannabinoid production.

What strategies have you written down for minimizing the impact of that potential detrimental adverse effect? (E.g. productivity systems like GTD and 43Folders, task lists, I'll just add it to the list so I'll remember it later but if it's only going to take 2 minutes or less just do it now (GTD))

> _This is my personal story:_

> _Throughout university, I smoked daily. It was what we did, and got to the > point where I smoked to get homework done._

There are apps for recording strain names, their observed effects, and cannabinoid and terpene content.

Some people have identified certain terpenes as resulting in "intelligence". Bronchodilative (more oxygen), anxiolytic, and eating enough food to get nutrients effects may be linked to "intelligence" as a measured effect.

A crutch is a tool. And sometimes people steal your f crutch or it's not helpful when in certain stressful or anxiety-producing situations (such as talking to some professors and VC sweater vests)

Walking in the woods apparently exposes a person to alpha-pinene (which is bronchodilative)

There are hemp flower (low to no THC) strains that also have terpene content, that can make sleep easier than high-THC strains.

Scientists still aren't clear about how much REM sleep is desirable for optimal cognitive and motor performance.

> _I slowly became a lite drug addict. When I graduated, I quit for 4 months, > got a job, continued use for a good 4 months then quit again. It 's been > nearly 5 months since my last break. I no longer have to quit for a career, > and I'm pretty tempted to give back. However, I worry about the effect it > will have on my work ethics, social abilities, and consistency in personal > care._

I think it's cool that you have personal values that you're concerned about upholding. That you have a standard that you hold yourself to, regardless

> _On the other side, without it, I find I drink more, so I really dont know > what to do. I found physical activity helped obviously, and I have been > slacking lately._

Cannabis and alcohol are both anxiolytic vasodilators. Excessive vasodilation ("dangerously low blood pressure") can cause lightheadedness, the spins, etc. THC and alcohol are both paradoxical anxiolytics: at higher doses they increase anxiety ("anxiogenic"; "does anyone in this bar even love me for me anymore?")

Cardiovascular exercise and orgasm both apparently result in release of endocannabinoids.

Like anything else, you can write down a problem and/or symptoms and list and compare solutions (maybe even in consultation with a physician who can recommend things like hemp flower or even actually medically useful medicine or even diet, regular exercise, and a mental health regimen)

<comment><USER3> To be over-reductive:

If you're at -3 due to symptoms, whichever treatment minimizes those symptoms like +3, but the given treatment(s) have short and/or long term adverse effects that are -1, that's a net gain.

But different people assign unnamed different constants with different magnitudes to different things.</comment></comment>


Show HN: FaaS – Serverless functions framework for Docker - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/alexellis/faas <comment><USER2> Anyone knows how this compare to iron functions [https://github.com/iron- io/functions](https://github.com/iron-io/functions)

Looks similar. Docker image with entry point but the entry point is a server instead of process and it reuses the docker container instead of shutting it down

Would be great to get a quick comparison between the two.

Another tool in the same category is hook.io microcule [https://github.com/Stackvana/microcule](https://github.com/Stackvana/microcule)

both iron functions and microcule are battle tested by companies

</comment><comment><USER3> The project and UI looks very cool. But can someone explain to me why FaaS is a good thing? Isn't this just a perversion of microservices with a ton of development, operations, CPU, memory and network overhead?

<comment><USER4> Kindof. If you look at aws lambda, you get a few more things for the overhead price: namely, integration with other services (Iam, cognito) and no need to worry about whether your auto scaling setup or instance sizes are appropriate... It really is just a logical extension of the concept of the cloud.

Then again, I certainly wouldn't use it for everything, but ymmv

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I was thinking about building something like that but this looks very good!

Is there a way to map query parameters and / or http headers to input JSON? (a la API Gateway).

<comment><AUTHOR> So I'd like to know more about your usercases - it's something I want to add to the roadmap. Right now this is designed to be facing services making HTTP POSTs aka webhooks and to act as an event type bus for modern web.

<comment><USER5> Sometimes I've got a service that won't send plain JSON but rather some data in query parameters and some in http headers. So it's rather for integration with others. AWS API Gateway makes it possible to build the input JSON out of any of (body, headers, query params) just before the lambda function is invoked. Note that they are using Velocity templates so it doesn't really look good but if you need this data it gets the job done.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense, do you have any examples? The input doesn't have to be JSON btw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This might be the only reason why I give Docker another try.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the simplicity, but have some issues with the stdin/stdout approach - firing up a new interpreter for every invocation has the potential to become costly in terms of time to first byte...

iron.io seems a trifle better in that regard, although and I've been fiddling with it and trying to figure out the amount of work involved in getting it to run on ARM, which seems to be quite a bit more.

<comment><AUTHOR> This works on ARM natively, just use files named .armhf. there is a cost involved with process pipes but you can optimize this by providing your own web server listening on port 8080, it just has to accept a POST.

Here's a quick-start guide for ARM: [https://gist.github.com/alexellis/665332cd8bd9657c9649d0cd6c...](https://gist.github.com/alexellis/665332cd8bd9657c9649d0cd6c2dc187)

<comment><USER7> It would be nice to see an example of a function that accepts POST, btw., since that would make it easy to do a long-running function that took advantage of recurring requests to cache/optimize parts of a computation.

I went through the repo and didn't spot anything obvious (might have missed it).

<comment><AUTHOR> The post is handled in the watchdog function which is embedded into each function. [https://github.com/alexellis/faas/blob/master/watchdog/main....](https://github.com/alexellis/faas/blob/master/watchdog/main.go)

All sample functions are using a POST - within your function you receive that value through STDIN and output response via STDOUT.

Example Alexa Skill:

[https://github.com/alexellis/faas/blob/master/sample- functio...](https://github.com/alexellis/faas/blob/master/sample- functions/ChangeColorIntent/handler.js)

Markdown example:

[https://github.com/alexellis/faas/tree/master/sample- functio...](https://github.com/alexellis/faas/tree/master/sample- functions/MarkdownRender)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does this field love to name projects as generically as possible? First "Serverless framework", now this... Either not googleable, or poisoning the search results for the general thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Docker FaaS UI and built-in Prometheus metrics is a great way to build a Serverless configuration. Not to mention how easy it is to install and deploy with one command.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's also [http://fission.io](http://fission.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we're trying to do related but slightly different things. This is for Kubernetes only, FaaS is built on Swarm features which are baked into Docker. I would think either could target both orchestrators in the future.</comment></comment>


IBM Just Posted 5 Predictions About What Life Will Be Like in 2022 - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/ibm-just-posted-5-predictions-about-what-life-will-be-like-in-2022/ <comment><USER2> Feels like a Watson ad.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know how to turn off damn Video Autoplay in Firefox 67? - <AUTHOR> VIDEO, not audio muted or turned off. Id really like to ditch google/chromium, opera has shitty tab handling, firefox I used before.
But this, videos always auto-play, even when about:config set media.autoplay to 1 and muted etc, Ive tried all settings.
Nothing stops videos from being auto-played post Firefox 65. I dont care about audio, there is anyway not a sound-card in this laptop.
Does anyone have a solution? An extension? A fork? <comment><USER2> Type `about:config` in the address bar. Search for `allow-muted`, set that to false.

If that still doesn't work, check other related autoplay settings, like `media.autoplay.ask-permission`.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here: [https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/block- autoplay/](https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/block-autoplay/)

</comment><comment><USER3> ?! I believe Firefox 67 should be doing that out of the box!

Have you tried to refresh the browser?</comment>


Poll: How many HN readers are believers? - <AUTHOR> So here's my question: how many of You believes in religious way in something/someone (I mean here some Godlike being). I noticed that most (around 99%) tech people I know in-person do not believe in God or any other supernatural being. Besides believing, are You participating in all ceremonies (e.g. as a Christian going to church every sunday etc.) ? <comment><USER2> I do believe in God, I'm a christian, I go to church usually 3-4 times a week (because I want, not because the church requires it or any rules) and I'm a very technical person, software developer and I'm also very into astronomy and physics.

When you say "around 99% tech people I know in-person do not believe in God", this may be biased based on your location. For example, my country (Brazil) is predominantly catholic. So, I'd say around 99% of people in tech I know believe in god in some sense.

There is a huge misconception, mainly in the US, with this evolutionist vs creationist thing where a correlation was created where evolutionists are mostly atheists, and believers are mostly creationists, so there must be a "clear distinction" between people that understand science and people that believe in some kind of god.

IMHO even great speakers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson fail epicly doing the same thing they complain about creationists, they reject arguments of anything related to God in a very unscientific way: "oh, so you believe in God? so there is an old guy floating in the clouds? so his special ability is to turn water into beverages" \- How is this different from believing that, as Carl Sagan said, there are dinosaurs on venus? It is just making up a lot of assumptions out of nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pantheism. God is a word to describe the wholeness of reality, seen as a single living being (the One). "Living" here means complex, intelligent, interactive, responsive, loving, joyful, prospering, creative, amplifying, mysterious. To me (PhD, philosopher, entrepreneur, developer) these are the best attributes to describe the world I live in. Science describes this world in excruciating detail and beauty for my mind, religion makes the same available for my intuition.

If I would say "I don't believe in God", I wouldn't be talking about God, because then I no longer talk about the One, but about two things: myself and God. Then I merely criticize my own limited image of God. Which is fine.

Besides that, my religion is a school for love. Loving is tricky: strong emotions, complex beings with individual edges and blind spots, very close to each other, causing friction. Much more tricky than for example driving cars. Yet, we all agree that attempting to learn to drive cars all on our own is not a good idea. Sure, like love, in the end driving cars is about developing intuition and following our instincts, and we can make it work somehow after lots of bruises, but its better to have some guidance and mentoring along the way. We need to learn about the basic rules that make traffic safe, or we'll end up hurting ourselves or others. The same is true for love. Wisdom traditions that provide guidance on how to love (aka religions) are useful tools that add value here.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a practicing Salafi Muslim, but also a Ruby on Rails developer of 7 years.

I have noticed this about the Ruby on Rails world. After working in Rails jobs at 5 different companies in 2 cities, I've met and worked with scores of other Rails devs, but I've only known only one other Rails dev who was even Muslim, and no one who was Salafi. Some would be disheartened by this, but I take it as a source of pride.

I was not born into a Muslim family, but I embraced it later in life. So I love Islam a great deal and consider it to be the best thing that has ever happened to me. But I do not get into debates about religion or God with co- workers or on the internet, because I don't feel it's appropriate. When I'm at work, I'm not there to proselytize; I'm there to make great software and earn money. And on the internet, it's just too pointless. If I'm talking to you about Islam, then I'm not doing it for fun -- I'm doing it because I want you to become Muslim. I find it very unlikely that someone who never believed in God in their life would start believing just because some stranger on the internet talked them into it. Rather, the end result is always a flame war, and that doesn't really encourage good manners.

<comment><USER5> I'm not familiar with Salafi. What are it's basic tenants?

<comment><USER4> Salafi Islam is really just like mainstream Islam, meaning we believe like the other Muslims, pray the same way, etc. The only difference is how we view the companions of the Prophet (sall Allah alaihi wa sallam). We consider them to be authoritative sources on Islam, while a lot of Muslims see them as just regular people. So for example, say here we are living many centuries after Islam started, and someone comes and says they have a "new interpretation" of the Quran -- well, it's not really possible for that person to know the Quran better than the people who actually met the Prophet (sall Allah alaihi wa sallam) and learned it from him directly, while seeing him implement it in his life and hearing him explain it. That's the main tenet, I guess, and it's really just a logical and common-sense way of looking at things. That's probably the best I can do without going into too much detail. Thanks for showing interest.

<comment><USER6> > it's really just a logical and common-sense way of looking at things.

To you, yes. Plenty of other Muslims find it utterly illogical why some random people who happened to be in the right place 14 centuries ago should be taken as any sort of authority. It's as black to them as it is white to you. We all think our own particular beliefs are the logical and common-sense way of looking at things.

In matters of faith, all judgments are subjective by definition. It's human, but delusional and dangerous nevertheless, to assume that they extend to hold objectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An actual poll seems to be missing here, so I'll just add my comment.

I am a practicing Mormon (member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), and do in fact believe in God and the specific doctrines of my religions. I go to church every Sunday, pray and read the scriptures regularly, and plenty of other things besides. The majority of tech people I know in person are also religious, although I am very well aware that this is largely due to selection effects in my choice of friends and places of employment, and not necessarily reflective of general trends in the industry.

Furthermore, I find my education in computer science strengthens rather than diminishes my faith. Education _in general_ strengthens my resolve that my religion is largely ascientific (not non-scientific, but rather outside the realm of applicability for scientific investigation); since it can be neither proven nor _disproven_ by empirical evidence, I am free to continue to believe in it if I like, and I prefer to believe. Education in computer science specifically gives me a fairly unique set of tools compared to the average Christian apologist for investigating the internal logical consistency of my beliefs. For example, while I'm a big fan of C.S. Lewis and his works on the subject, I am also rather fond of the computational approach to the Problem of Pain (aka the Problem of Evil), as overviewed here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiTb6zhqHLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiTb6zhqHLI) .

<comment><USER8> There are at least branches of theology that utilize the tools of philosophy (I suppose theology in general does, but some of it uses the approach more carefully). I guess there is an endless argument available in deciding what the average Christian apologist is, but I think you might be selling their rigor a bit short.

<comment><USER7> I did not mean to question the _rigor_ of more traditional apologetics; merely to note that there are certain approaches and points of view that they tend not to use, which is entirely understandable. Apologies if it seemed that I did (question their rigor).

Beyond that, though, I had in mind more the amateur Facebook/Tumblr apologist than the more professional, philosophically-educated sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no God.

My parents come from different religious backgrounds, my father was raised as a Lutheran while my mother as a Kardecist. Neither cared a lot about their religions, so while they tried to give me the general notions of their religions I was free to make my own mind.

So, having no pressure to follow my parents beliefs, and founding no logic reason or need for the existence of a God, I found myself an Atheist.

I can't believe on it because I can't find any logical reason to do so.

Also, knowing how much evil was done in the name of religion I came to have a strong opinion against the notion of faith. I really think religious faith, that is, believing without proof, is a disease that must be eradicated. No good that came from it justifies all the bad things that came along.

<comment><USER10> > knowing how much evil was done in the name of religion

I always wonder about this stance. Are you against property ownership because of the evil done by those wanting to own what others own? Against money (lots of evil done in it's quest), etc? This really seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally I am still open to persuasion. However I am greatly disappointed when people say they have found God when all they have done is join a religion.

Finding God seems more of a life's work rather than "read this, wear these and you are good to go"

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really believe any anything supernatural. I think there are definitely things that we couldn't possibly understand yet in our universe; which people might see as supernatural because they don't understand. If I showed up in 1800 with an iPhone people would have thought that was pretty supernatural even though all the raw materials to make that phone were already on the planet, all that was lacking was the knowledge.

I believe it living a good life, not hurting others, being empathetic, etc... But don't feel the need to go to any church or anything like that. I think most organized religions scams preying on the weak.

</comment><comment><USER13> Evangelical Christian here - regular Church going, missions, Bible study, etc. Most of my programmer friends are atheists, but I also have quite a few programmer Christian friends, and a lot of agnostics

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm an MSc student in IT/software engineering, and I am a practicing and believing Roman Catholic.

Some of the main reasons for this is

\- having recognized that the teachings are consistent with my embedded worldview and ethical code

\- a perception that living according to these teachings is much more beautiful, much less likely to hurt others or get hurt myself, mostly free from anger and bitterness, etc. The often repeated opinion that "God gave you your life and his teachings are the owner's manual" seems to hold true for me.

<comment><USER15> > much less likely to hurt others

The Catholic rules on abortion are cruel and cause very great harm to women. A woman was raped in her home country. She left that country and sought asylum in Ireland. She discovered that she was pregnant and sought an abortion. Abortion is only possible in Ireland if the mother's life is at risk. She was suicidal, and the two psychiatrists needed agreed that her life was at risk. The third doctor, an obstretician, disagreed about the mental health status of the patient and so she could not get an abortion. She went on hunger strike, intending to kill herself or kill the unborn child. She was subjected to forced naso-gastric feeding to keep the fetus alive until it could be delivered. She agreed to a caesarian section at about 25 / 26 weeks.

This is 2014 in a developed European nation.

And this is under their "liberal" new law, introduced in 2014 after the death, in 2012, of Savita Halappanavar.

The Catholic church spent considerable effort to prevent contraception being made available in Ireland. This delayed the availability of contraception for years. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraception_in_the_Republic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraception_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland)

This cruelty is a direct result of Catholic teachings.

<comment><USER16> Rape is a difficult case.

First of all, I am glad to hear that you want to talk about the difficult cases because it means that you are okay with Catholic teaching in non-rape cases.

With regards to rape, ultimately is comes down to the fact that the child that arises from the rape should not be punished for the sins of the father. Catholic teaching respects the human being and sees the bigger picture.

What is wonderful is that if you want to understand what the Catholic Church teaches anyone can consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) which can be found at: [http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM) . The specific page that you are interested in is: [http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we- believe/c...](http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we- believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm#)

So, you can review the CCC to see what the Catholic Church actually teaches but in asking what anyone think you are getting their opinion and NOT necessarily what the Church teaches.

Finally, you selected a single tragic instance of a rape victim. I think you need to research and follow up with rape victims who have had an abortion and who later regret it. For example: [http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/06/13-year- old-rape-victim-r...](http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/06/13-year-old-rape- victim-regrets-abortion-grieves-for-baby/)

Regards

<comment><USER15> > First of all, I am glad to hear that you want to talk about the difficult > cases because it means that you are okay with Catholic teaching in non-rape > cases.

No, it very much does not. The fact that your failed to comprehend this is telling.

For clarity: the Catholic Church routinely abuses human rights. Sometimes this is a direct result of proclamations from the Pope and thus a core part of the religion (eg use of contraception); sometimes this is because of the structure of the church (eg routine physical and emotional abuse of looked after children; transfering child-abusing priests from one area to a different area).

Parent claimed that following the teachings of the Catholic church made them less cruel. This is a weird position to hold considering the very great harm the Catholic church has perpetuated, even in recent years.

<comment><USER14> Can you educate me about this? I don't understand how a religious stance of "don't use contraceptives" can be an abuse of human rights, when anyone is free to decide whether they follow the teachings of said religion or not?

<comment><USER17> > anyone is free to decide whether they follow the teachings of said religion > or not

Everyone that has enough mental power to escape the mantra of " you are going to hell and burn for all eternity ". Many, many people truly believe that they are going to hell for the use of a condom so they are not as free as you think. They will be punished if they don't obey. That's how religion works, do what we say or you will get eternal punishment in a fiery pit. (but as George Carlin said .... god loves you)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I choose to believe in God; I don't have proof, but I like to believe. It makes life easier and in my case doesn't seem to have any ill effects. Even with everything we have learned through science, there still seems to be room for God. We don't seem to have any way to know what caused the universe to form, and I'd just as soon postulate an eternal God as an eternal universe even if it doesn't follow Occam's razor.

</comment><comment><USER19> Everyone has their own ways of thinking and believing. Once you start to get rid of the labels — _agnostic_ , _atheist_ and _believer_ — you can really listen to others. I've met far too many people who called themselves one way and later understood how unfitting was such label to their assumptions.

Unfortunately, the quest for the true nature of the universe has been reduced to Scriptures and the yes/no question "Do you believe in God?". The human mind is biased toward dualism, so it feels natural to talk about something as a competition of two mutually exclusive arguments.

Another issue I have with belief == religion is merging morality and the Truth. Religion delivers both in one convenient package. However, they are not necessarily bundled together. I love Jesus Christ's teachings but I'm not Christian.

Truth is, many of our predecessors treated religion with much more self- inquiry than strict believers do today. _Biblical literalism_ was not a given. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism)

<comment><USER20> Looks like you are in the wrong forum friend. The question is "Who believes?".

Your response covered essentially what you "don't believe in". I am genuinely interested in hearing what "you believe in"?

<comment><USER19> I think the _origin of everything_ has nothing to do with human morality and It didn't send any sons/prophets. I do not think God HAS memories and even human-like consciousness as Scriptures suggest. However, everything IS part of It.

Another way to put it is that God is always and everywhere: the matter you touch, the thoughts you have, the questions you ask and answers you get. :)

<comment><USER20> I personally do not believe in "all roads lead to rome" kind of spirituality, but I appreciate your candor and insight.

I will up vote your comment as well. Thanks for participating in the conversation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So here's also my answer - I believe in God, I was raised in Catholic environment but lately I stopped going to Church - I've lost faith in Church as a place & organization and started to believe that by being just the good person for other people (& world environment) will be enough to achieve redemption - and I believe God is generous enough to respect my way of 'believing'.

<comment><USER21> The church is the corporation of religion, using religion to bend the will of man and keep power. I know it sound harsh, but I spend a lot of time in the Philippines where the church has way to much power and people suffer because of it, contraception, sexual education, divorce etc. Families do it tough here, but some dude at the front of an alter decides a lot of the rules.

However on the other hand even though I am not religious myself, I see nothing wrong with faith. Especially faith which someone challenges themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I do believe in God. I'm a Bahá'í, so I believe that all major world religions come from the same God and have been sent to humanity at different times and in different places according to their needs with the purpose of educating mankind, promoting its wellbeing and advancing civilization. Most of the activities I participate in are initiated by friends at their homes and have the purpose of contributing something to the community (the neighborhood or the town), like devotional gatherings, study circles to raise the capacity to serve, spiritual classes for children, groups for the junior youth, etc. There are some other events for the Bahá'í community but I wouldn't call them ceremonies because we don't have clergy and they are extremely flexible. These events are usually backed by our institutions, such as a Feast every 19 days where we pray and consult together, a quarterly meeting to reflect on the advancements of our endeavors in the betterment of the world and plan ahead, or a yearly convention to elect these institutions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes,I do believe in the God of heaven. I've read the Bible practically as I learnt to read, and found the Church failed to teach the Bible as it is, but is standing on the sand of human thoughts and traits.. I still read the Bible a lot in case I'd been misguided by my own thoughts but as I found too many lies I resigned the Lutheran Church and joined the SeventhDayAdventists. ..but after it was evident I really know what the Bible says I was promoted to teach them the Bible. After several years I found the people in SDA Church have even more sinister measures than my former Church I got greatly disappointed to human established and maintained Churches and as the Bible says, if any of you are gathered in the name of the Saviour, He is among them. I have some guys believing mostly as I do so that is the only Church I need.

</comment><comment><USER24> Deist - the latest physics makes the universe reek of being a programmer's hackjob. An impossibly narrow hard coded Dark energy constant, holographic principle (need I say more?), probabilistic phenomena coming together to create an illusion of deterministic order (a mask for runtime code injection, or just convoluted Rube Goldberg programming if not). If the inflationary multiverse is proven and people continue to claim anthropic survivor bias I still won't admit defeat - I'll just say that the multiverse is a for-loop. Something put the monkeys at typewriters, and if our addled grey matter can be considered sentience I'm pretty sure that magnificent something can fit the bill of intelligence as well. Sorry, but what more can a mortal say/comprehend?

</comment><comment><USER25> Practicing Christian, participate in multiple ways within a local church.

I have a MA plus additional grad level work in quantitative social sciences. Many but not all fellow grad students were either atheists or agnostics.

I am fairly technical, in addition to grad level stats I have added semantic analysis, database and web development to my skill set in the past few years and combine it all in data science consulting and building my own web apps.

I worked in a start-up for awhile where 2 of the other top technical contributors including the founder were practicing Christians. We also had team members in India or from India who were likely Hindu. I don't think our religious beliefs were ever a topic of conversation at work. And, only rarely came up in personal conversations.

</comment><comment><USER26> I kind of see logic or the laws of nature as being "higher forces," but I can't bring myself to believe in sky wizards, ghosts, time travel, psychic powers, and the like.

As a philosophy major, I think something dissuading me from the religious persuasion is that most attempts to define/describe God are either different kinds of logical games (God = Beauty; this is what beauty is; therefore, god is // God = Perfection; this is what perfection is; etc // God = Nature, Light, Truth, etc etc) or completely illogical ones (The Bible says that God is true, so he must be!).

The Problem of Evil, in particular, sways me from placing faith in a god like the Christian one.

<comment><USER27> The Old Testament god strikes me as quite evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There may well be a god, even a judeo-christian style one. He might even have a beard.

But there isn't enough rational evidence for one. Even supposedly rational arguments like Intelligent Design fall laughably short, arguing that life is too complex and sophisticated not to have been created by something even more complex and sophisticated.

My take is that anyone who does 'believe' is either doing so out of cognitive dissonance, for emotional/psychological reasons, or just plain-old fear of being stoned to death (figuratively or literally depending on where you live).

Apologies to anyone offended. Just an opinion.

<comment><USER29> Every major religion defines God as the one and only thing that exists. The thing that every other thing is made out of. So, wouldn't existence itself be rational evidence for the existence of a thing that makes up all other things? What if we find something that looks like it's the single cause of all observable phenomena? (The most fundamental building-block of nature.) Have we found God?

The idea of God is so singular that I'm not sure regular logic can be applied here at all. What other thing do we rationalize about that is similar to the idea of God?

Are you sure that you're being rational or are you simply using one type of rational logic which lends itself mainly to materialism?

I guess the other problem is - what exact definition of "God" is anybody using at any given time?

EDIT: I don't mean for you to answer all of these questions, but it's fun to think about! :)

<comment><USER28> It sounds like you're trying to engage me in a debate, but there really isn't one to be had here.

To have any kind of rational discussion about whether God exists, you first have to define what a God is. Either that or have some pretty strong evidence that can be used to draw a box around the question you're asking.

The existence of God is a non-question, because we have neither a definition, nor evidence, nor a way to prove or disprove even if we could agree what it was that we thought we were talking about. You, me, nor anybody else has the slightest figment of a clue, not a scrap. Nor apparently can we, because conveniently all major religions also define God as unknowable and untestable.

Sure people can have faith if they like, maybe they've been touched by a deity and I haven't (personally I doubt it), but anyone taking a _rational_ position that there either is, or isn't, a God, is just expressing a fantasy that originates in their own emotional needs.

To try and dress up either atheism or theism in rational arguments is absurd.

<comment><USER30> >> To try and dress up either atheism or theism in rational arguments is absurd

Why? I know plenty of philosophers that are great with rational arguments that spend their time in atheism or theism. I know several who believe in God or some kind of higher power simply because of free will. Can you give a definition of free will? Can you provide evidence of it or prove or disprove it even if we can agree what it is that we think we are talking about? Just because we may not have the slightest figment of a clue, not even a scrap, doesn't mean that we can't feel strongly whether free will actually exists or not or posit experiments or rational arguments to explain its existence or non-existence one way or the other. Do you believe in free will? I do and I know several philosophers who do too, who feel that since they feel so strongly about its existence, despite it going against everything we understand about a physical universe (causal relationships, action and reaction and whatnot) that there must be something else going on in the universe other than mere atoms bumping into atoms, the existence that we can observe. Sounds like a pretty rational argument that dresses up atheism or theism quite nicely. Maybe you just haven't explored enough rational arguments or questioned your own ability to think and act freely to even reach the questions? Maybe you have. I don't know you, but I do know that there are all kinds of ways to talk about atheism and theism in very rational ways.

<comment><USER28> > Why?

For the reason I highlighted in the post you replied to.

You're welcome to explain why you think I'm wrong, but saying 'I believe X and so do my friends' doesn't satisfy.

<comment><USER30> I'll be the first to admit that I've heard a lot of irrational arguments from people trying to advocate or disprove a particular religion. But you're saying that because you've only heard or explored irrational arguments for theism or atheism that all arguments for theism or atheism are irrational. Your argument is irrational.

<comment><USER28> That's not what I'm saying at all. Don't mistake me for an atheist.

I'm saying that without the ability to even vaguely define what a "God" is the question "does God exist?" is a non-question.

Sure you can define God as the 'metaphysically ultimate being' but that's a cop-out definition that means nothing. 'Ultimate' just means there isn't another one after that... ranked assumedly by some magical badassery rating.

I might as well ask you "is there a Fnooob?" on the basis that Fnooob is the metaphysically penultimate being. You have no basis on which to answer the question because the question is nonsense.

We're all familiar with stories about various gods because we've been fed them since childhood, and that familiarity makes us think we know what they are, but we really don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Until I was 13, I belonged to an Indian sect and strongly believed that I, like everyone else, had the incarnation of the one God within me, who also happened to coincide with a short Indian man named Sai Baba. At the time of my Christian confirmation (I belonged to an otherwise protestant community), my minister couldn't give me any satisfactory answers to my questions. At that point, I believe I started thinking for myself, because that's when I picked up programming also. Today I'm an atheist.

I miss the Indian comicbooks with the blue men, though.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am starting my own religion!

If that doesn't sound crazy enough, see its commandments: 1\. You should know that God doesn't exist. 2\. But you may ask god to help you do things that you think are somewhat out of your control. Eg: Please God, give me a good GPA this semester. 3\. You have to acknowledge that just saying stuff won't actually make it happen, but doing it might. 4\. You may or may not fight self righteous wars in favor of this religion.

</comment><comment><USER15> > I noticed that most (around 99%) tech people I know in-person do not believe > in God

Do they talk about it? Some religious people are not particularly evangelical, especially in the workplace, so maybe some of them are observant religious and you just don't know about it.

(Btw: I'm atheist if it helps.)

</comment><comment><USER33> An atheist.

I was born in catholic family and was baptized and sent to church as a kid. I very soon found it to be rather boring and brain washing and proclaimed myself an atheist before I was of full age. I simply did not need the god hypothesis to explain the world around me.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm Pastafarian. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

</comment><comment><USER35> Question: If God made man(intelligent design), you open a whole new plethora of questions, including "Who made God", and we're back to square one.

<comment><USER3> God is the "primary" source of everything. If God were created by something else, then we aren't talking about "God" anymore, but a part of God.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am Full Stack Developer with strong believe in GOD Muslim

</comment><comment><USER37> I am not believer.

</comment><comment><USER38> why u no poll?

<comment><USER39> The user doesn't have enough karma to create a poll yet. Even if I think the user didn't look for absolute or percentage values, but wanted to start a discussion around religion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why are you asking?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just curious. As I mentioned before most tech people I know doesn't believe in God and I was interested how it looks like a bit beyond my neighborhood.

<comment><USER40> I suspect that is because tech people tend to be smart.

<comment><USER29> There are many, many smart scientists and other people in the present day and throughout history who are also religious, so there goes that theory.

Einstein was not an atheist. Neither is Neil Tyson. The smartest people know what they don't know and seem to have some humility with respect to the question of human existence.

<comment><USER40> Smart people may have been, and may be religious, but I don't agree that _many_ smart people are religious, at least not dogmatically religious. In my experience _many_ smart people are not religious. As is the OPs experience. You can always find outliers.

And I wouldn't call Einstein religious, at least not the late Einstein. Nor would I call having "humility with respect to the question of human existence" being religious.

Basic inquiry is a trait of smart people. Dogmatic religion requires, maybe even demands for its own existence, that most enquiry (i.e. the "why" questions) be put aside on faith alone. Smart people just tend to not accept the "faith" argument. Smart people tend toward experimentation and logic, over blind faith.

<comment><USER29> You seem to be conflating religiousness with the belief in God or in the possibility of God. There are _many_ smart people, not outliers, who are not atheists.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LLVM-Based Compiler for .NET - <AUTHOR> https://mdavey.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/llvm-based-compiler-for-net/

<comment><USER2> Submission from yesterday: Announcing LLILC: An LLVM Based Compiler for .NET CoreCLR [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9375398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9375398)

<comment><USER3> Here's one with a full discussion:

 _LLILC – LLVM-Based Compiler for .NET CoreCLR_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9371238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9371238)</comment></comment>